Chapter Text
Before I Can Breathe Easy
“The river's running free and oh the joy it brings to me
But I know it'll have to drown me before I can breathe easy”
September 22
Morning sun slants across a bedspread that isn't his. Buttery light pools in the dips of the checked fabric, makes the white lines glow. Cas blinks slow and heavy and lets out a long breath through his nose, inhales again to the smell of warm and whiskey and a little dust, and – oh. He remembers. He shifts his head to the side.
The pile of limbs and bedhead next to him stirs slightly, looking as melted as Cas feels. It's a shame to not be touching any of that skin, sun-browned on the nape of the neck, maybe a hint of half-healed burn towards the shoulders, dusted everywhere with almost-invisible freckles. Cas shifts again, onto one side all boneless and lazy, drifts one hand over those shoulders. They're air-cooled, blood-warmed, a perfect tension of the elements, and Cas drifts his hand along them, dips his fingers behind a shoulder blade, slides up until his thumb is in the soft brown hair, sideways until his thumb nudges behind one ear.
The shoulders twitch and a faint sound huffs into the pillow. The world's laziest effort at a laugh.
“Morning,” Cas says, so quiet it's almost a whisper, not wanting to disturb the soap-bubble unreality of this perfect moment. This is not a thing he does, going home with a virtual stranger he met at a bar. The faintest embers of anxiety are trying to fan themselves to life in the pit of his stomach but he fights the feeling with the cloaking shroud of light and warmth and the memory of a mouth that had seemed, at least at the time, to be just as invested in the experience as he was.
“Tickles,” says the sleep-raspy voice muffled by pillow.
Cas presses his thumb a little harder, rubs it firm behind the shell of the ear, around the lobe into sideburn, cheek.
Dean turns his head slightly into the touch, moving his nose out of the pillow with a little huff, and now Cas can see the curve of his cheek and his lashes sun-bleached against tan skin. Not just some random man at the bar, either, but the bartender. Cas smiles to himself, at himself. He doesn't do things by halves.
“Morning,” Dean mumbles. He hasn't opened his eyes.
Cas closes his again, too, dozy. He feels the sunfall creep up over his back with the passing minutes, warming almost to discomfort, but his hand stays splayed over the side of Dean's neck, fingers rubbing gently into the short hairs behind his ear, barely firm enough not to tickle.
He has no idea how long it is before Dean makes a sound like “Mmhhnm,” and turns his head under Cas' hand. Cas opens his eyes, thinking for a second that Dean's trying to escape his fingers, but it's just that a tiny patch of light had fallen over one of Dean's eyes. Actually, the bartender appears to be completely asleep again.
It's Cas' turn for a lazy half-laugh. But he's awake now, too awake for more dozing, and he needs to pee, and he's hungry, and at some point today he's going to have to go to work. The soap bubble has officially popped, much less painfully than it could have. Cas feels at least marginally prepared to deal with this Morning After business now.
He lifts his hand from Dean's neck and rolls onto his back with purpose finally taking hold of his muscles. He levers himself up to an elbow, swings his feet off the bed. It's a nice bed, he thinks, a double with old wooden head and footboards covered with rough carvings as if handmade; and the mattress was apparently kinder on his back than his own has been for a couple of years. He stretches and the lack of machine gun-fire in his spine confirms that speculation. He looks around, hoping to spot the bathroom without having to go exploring in a stranger's home.
He does have to peek into the hall outside to find bathroom, which is mercifully right next door. He takes care of business, then steals a tiny dab of toothpaste out of the closest tube of Colgate and rubs it around his mouth with his finger because he isn't going to use someone else's toothbrush like a heathen but by the same token his morning breath is offending him. He brings cupped handfuls of water to his mouth, swishes the mint out, splashes tepid water on his face until he feels totally awake. There's an open-faced cabinet set in the wall full of towels; none of them match and many are frayed, but there isn't anything dirty or dusty in sight. Bare caulk is visibly filling some cracks around the door frame – took the time to caulk but not to paint, Cas thinks; repair was important but cosmetics were not. It's a lived-in, cared-for, cobbled-together place. Cas likes it.
He slips back into the bedroom and looks around for something to cover up with. He eyes the pile of clothes on the floor, picks up his white shirt by the sleeve, doesn't even have to bring it close to his face to recoil from the whiff of whiskey (a spill, it had been funny at the time) and stale smoke (the bar is not a non-smoking establishment and Cas would never have gone there voluntarily, but damn is he glad he got dragged along in Gabriel's wake yesterday). He doesn't remotely need to see the state of yesterday's underwear to know he isn't going to put them back on.
There's a walk-in closet. Cas doesn't want to poke around in Dean's things while the man snores faintly into his comforter, but he tugs the door open carefully, hoping for – perfect, a bathrobe hung on the inside of the door. It's a size larger than he would get for himself and he feels comfortably swamped by it.
He pads back to the bed, leans over Dean and hesitates before putting one hand on his exposed shoulder. He grips a little, fingers pressing smooth divots into flesh. A little zing of sense memory from last night hits Cas right in the pit of his stomach and it seeps warm up his spine. God, that mouth.
“Dean,” Cas murmurs.
“Mmhng,” Dean grunts.
“Yes, morning,” Cas confirms. “Can I use your kitchen? Coffee.”
“Hmn.”
“I need more vowels.”
The little bit of Dean's brow that is visible scrunches up. He breathes in and very deliberately grunts out two syllables. “Uh. Huh.”
Cas squeezes his shoulder and leaves.
He doesn't get well and truly embarrassed until he's standing in Dean's small kitchen, looking around the countertops and hesitantly opening cabinets. He has never, ever done this before, poked around a stranger's home like this. Making coffee is so second-nature at his own apartment that he usually sleepwalks through it. Here, the very appliances make him nervous. There's the coffeemaker on the counter – easy enough. What if it has some odd quirk, though, like appliances have a way of doing? The number three button on Cas' microwave doesn't work. That's weird. If someone asked to use his kitchen he would warn them about that, probably, maybe, if he remembered to. What if he does something wrong in here and something blows up. Fuck. His stomach is all knots now. This was a terrible idea, he should just go back to the bedroom and get his clothes and tell Dean he's leaving and stop pretending he knows what the fuck he's doing. Damn it...
But thinking of Dean calms him down a little bit, a reminder of why he's here – namely, that he was invited here, that he was wanted here, that he isn't doing anything weird by just trying to make coffee. That's normal, that's totally normal. Isn't that normal? He doesn't know what's considered normal for people who ditch their sibling and friends to go home with hot bartenders and have lots of brain-melting sex, because that's not normal for him.
He shakes his hands out a little bit, willing away the early tingles of anxiety, and thinks: water. He opens cupboards until he finds cups, takes one, fills it at the sink, drinks deep and cool. His head's clearing some. A little panic is not unwarranted, he assures himself. It's reasonable to be uncertain about Dean at this point. Just because dicks were in mouths a few hours ago does not mean that Dean isn't still technically a stranger.
Those warm freckled shoulders, though, and that barely-there furrow in his sleepy brow, and the gravel thunder-roll of his voice huffing out dirty jokes, dirtier invitations, fuckin hells and yeah yeah there, gods. And the eyes Cas hasn't seen yet this morning to confirm how green he thought they were last night, but he's pretty damn sure they were Disney eyes, and no one can hold him accountable for following that kind of incentive home and fucking it stupid.
Okay. Okay. Water in the reservoir, open the lid. Paper filters, got it. Where's the coffee? He has to go looking for it, finds lots of coffee cans but discovers upon opening them that many are just old cans that have been repurposed to hold other things like flour and sugar. He tries to out-smart the kitchen, stands at the coffeemaker and lets his eyes drift around to where one might naturally stash in-use coffee grounds if one reaches for them every day. Aha, behind a jar of honey, with a plastic tablespoon with a few grounds clinging to it lying on the counter just by it. He spoons in probably too much, but he's sure Dean won't object to strong coffee.
He's feeling very proud of himself for handling his first real Morning After like a goddamn adult when he hears a door open elsewhere in the apartment. Dean's up. He takes a steadying breath. It won't be weird, he thinks. Dean's too easy in his own skin for it to be weird. Dean's slow slink of hips and hands and seduction will totally make up for Castiel's lack of the same. Maybe – maybe – it'll be more than a perfunctory goodbye? Maybe get Dean's number, although the thought of using a phone sends the same old rusty railroad spike of anxiety through him. Shut up, he tells anxiety-brain firmly. You will not ruin this. Anxiety-brain has it out for regular brain. They are mortal enemies.
He schools his face into something he hopes is a smile and not a weird grimace and turns to face the hall, where – where. Oh.
This person is altogether too tall to be Dean. There are miles of legs and arms and torso and bare feet, topped with a mop of floppy brown hair. Lots of hair. Dean's hair was too short to get a grip on.
The stranger raises one hand and pushes the hair back from his forehead, scratching his scalp and yawning, not quite focused on Cas yet. He says “Hey Dean,” unthinking, not looking.
And all Cas can think is, absurdly, How do they keep FINDING ME.
Because his eyes are saucer-wide now as he recognizes the boy, the young man, who is one of his fucking anthropology students. And Cas is used to being accosted by students, being held up in his office long past the end of his posted office hours, he's used to being approached on the lawns and in the gazebo and in the cafeteria and even in the damn teacher's lounge, sometimes even while he's jogging the riverwalk, and he's used to being called at inappropriate hours with questions that frequently make him want to strangle someone, but this is too much. This is absurd.
His brain refuses to supply a name for a painfully long moment. He becomes aware that his mouth is open. He becomes aware, with a sudden sweep of heat, that the bathrobe is showing a deep vee of skin to halfway down his chest.
The abrupt, jerky movement of him yanking the robe shut up to his throat seems to be what snaps Sam's attention to him. Sam, Cas thinks giddily. Sam! And he's usually so bad with names until later in the semester! But of course it's Sam, the tall, gawky boy, the boy who writes with such astonishing insight into ancient cultures, who doesn't raise his hand but talks firm and clear when called on, the boy who sits to the side-front of the room, the perennial Seat of the Nerd. Castiel really likes Sam. Has liked him since he assigned the first partnered project of the semester and Sam had done a great job, as predicted, but his partner had also done a good job which was a huge improvement on her work which means that Sam had really helped her which means that Sam is passionate and probably has some aptitude for teaching and -
Cas's brain is going into meltdown. Sam is only wearing boxers and his eyes are starting to go wide as he looks at Castiel's face and the same gears of recognition are grinding.
“Fuck,” Sam blurts, then looks down at himself and is out of the room and back down the hall like a startled rabbit. Out of sight, he bellows, “DEAN” and a door slams.
Cas stands there for a second with the bathrobe in a death grip while the coffee percolates. Things are clicking in his head. There had been more than one tube of toothpaste in the bathroom. (He spares a heartbeat of giddy relief that Sam didn't walk in on him in there.) At some point last night Dean had uttered words to the effect of “got the apartment all to ourselves” between rough kisses and throat-biting. (Shit he hadn't checked in the mirror for bruises, there's no way he isn't all marked up.) Cas remembers dismissing it as maybe Dean had a roommate who was out.
Dean did have a roommate who had, at the time, been out.
Cas startles into motion, striding towards the hall, a question burning in his throat. “Dean,” he calls as he nears the door at the end.
“Shuddup Sammy 'm sleep,” is his grumbled, muffled reply.
Cas opens the door. The patches of sun have slid off the bed and onto the wall, but his heart still skips a beat when he sees the man all sprawled out there, on his back now, legs spread, comforter just under his bellybutton. He stretches, arching his back off the mattress, and the cover slips lower. Cas's mouth goes dry.
“Dean, what's your last name?” he demands.
“Mmwhat,” he groans, thumbing into his eye and scratching his fingers back over his hair.
“Is your last name Winchester?” Cas asks, loud and clear.
Dean flashes him a wide white grin. “Don't wear it out,” he says, and his sleep-rough voice sounds so much like his sex-rough voice that Cas has to turn right around and leave again.
“What?” Dean's voice drifts down the hall after him as he stalks back to the relative safety of the coffeemaker. He wishes it would hurry up because this is really too much to be asked to deal with before he's even caffeinated.
There's stomping elsewhere in the apartment while Cas focuses on the slow drip. It trails off, the coffeemaker hisses, there's a puff of steam. This is okay, Cas tells himself. This is okay. This is not the end of the world. He remembers the cabinet that had held cups and checks it again for mugs. Finds lots of them. Picks up a plain blue one, fills it, takes a sip that's far too hot but it's perfect, it's exactly what he needed. The roof of his mouth stings.
He turns and braces himself.
Sam shuffles back into the open-plan living room fully dressed. He runs a nervous hand over the back of his neck and doesn't quite look at Cas. “Hi, Dr. Novak,” he says, so forced-casual it's painful.
“Sam,” Cas says, and just saying the name out loud makes red flush so high up on his cheeks he swears he can feel the sweat popping out.
Half a second later, Dean appears out of the hall wearing nothing but low-slung sweatpants and slaps Sam on the back. Cas accidentally takes too big a gulp of hot coffee. The red on Sam's face probably mirrors Cas'.
“Mornin' Sammy,” Dean says. “This is Cas; Cas, Sam -”
“I know Dr. Novak, Dean,” Sam grinds out between clenched teeth.
“Say what?” Dean's already striding across to the kitchen and half-turns to look back at Sam.
“Doctor,” Sam enunciates slowly, “Novak.”
“That's that teacher you like,” Dean says, then gestures vaguely. “Yay high, dirty blonde, dumpy, sweaters?”
“That's Dr. Oppenheimer.”
“The old dude with the squint?”
“That's Dr. Roberts.” Sam sounds pained and Cas suddenly chokes on a laugh. It's mostly hysteria, but Sam and Dean both notice.
Dean takes the opportunity to cross the last distance into the kitchen and sidle up next to Cas, where he proceeds to shamelessly press into Cas's personal space, bare arm against Cas's robed one. “Thanks for making coffee,” he says, flashing a grin too close to be construed as anything other than sexy as hell.
“Um,” Cas says stupidly. Somewhere Sam is making a strangled noise.
“Dean,” Sam snaps.
“What?” Dean shoots back, getting a mug.
“You jerk!”
“Bitch,” Dean says easily. “Get your panties untwisted, Samantha, professors aren't celibate monks who live in seclusion on Mount Bookworm. Besides, I didn't know.” He quirks an eyebrow Cas's direction while he dumps two spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee.
“I, uh,” Cas tries, then has to clear his throat. “I don't recall mentioning my profession, no.”
Sam's ears are red, even, but he sidles into the kitchen and exudes petulance while grabbing a bowl and a box of cereal. “You are impossible,” he mutters at Dean.
“What?” Dean demands. “I didn't even think you'd be home! What happened to staying at Brady's for the weekend?”
“It's Monday, you idiot,” Sam says, rolling his eyes. Cereal patters into the bowl.
Dean frowns, does some mental math, then makes an “okay, point” face. “Well, whatever, I still don't deserve to get raked over the coals for this one.” He looks at Cas and his eyes soften. “You got an opinion, quiet guy?”
Cas huffs a laugh into his mug, taking another long sip of black coffee. It's the right temperature now. He shifts the mug so his whole palm is pressed around it, soaking in the heat. “I am sorry, Sam,” he says over the lip of the mug. “I would never – I mean, if I'd known -“
“Hey, whoa, what now,” Dean says. “No way, you were totally coming home with me even if I said I was the queen of goddamn England.”
Cas can't keep the grin off his face. “No, I just mean,” he tries. “Surely you can see, the conflict of interest – legal, I don't know, there's probably something illegal about it, family of a student, I don't know.” He's blushing again, hides his face behind the coffee mug.
“Oh my god, you're adorable,” Dean says, just as Sam says, “Legal guardian.”
“What?” Cas asks.
“Fucking adorable,” Dean repeats, and Sam rolls his eyes and says, “Dean is my legal guardian. And brother. And asshole.”
Cas clears his throat. “Dean,” he appeals. “I mean, sleeping with the parent of a student. You'd think that was skeevy, right?”
“Not as hot as you are, no,” Dean says distractedly, eyes drifting to Cas's throat and yeah, there must be bruises.
“God damnit, Dean,” Sam mutters, pushing past them to the fridge and emerging with milk.
“Look, no, I'm not gonna get guilted!” Dean exclaims, and slurps coffee. Damn everything to hell, Castiel wants to kiss him while his mouth is coffee-hot and sugary. “I knew none of this, I forgot what day it was, I just flirted with a hot guy and got laid and it was fantastic, what do you want from me?”
Sam grumbles incoherently but the heat seems to have gone out of him as he shoves cereal into his mouth. He just gives Dean a truly exaggerated eye-roll and goes into the living room to flop onto the couch with his bowl.
Cas eyes Dean sidelong. Dean notices, flashes that grin again.
Cas takes a steeling gulp of coffee before he says, quiet, hoping Sam won't hear it, “Fantastic?”
“Amazing,” Dean says immediately, turning so he's facing Cas. “Mind-blowing.” He puts his mug down on the counter and reaches up to touch Cas's neck above the top of the robe. His hand is hot. “I can keep going, I'm a total thesaurus.”
“No, I get the gist,” Cas says, unable to keep in the soft smile that he knows crinkles up his eyes and sometimes that makes him feel old, but not now. Dean's hot hand moves around the back of his neck.
“Glad you came?” Dean asks, low, teasing.
Cas swallows. “Mm,” he hums.
“Wanna do this again sometime?”
Cas's eyes widen fractionally. Okay, this is going way better than he'd hoped, awkward brother-student-meeting-while-naked notwithstanding. “Yes,” he breathes into Dean's mouth and then they're kissing and Dean's just an inch or so taller than him so his chin's tilted up and he melts against the counter.
“Oh my God,” Sam shouts, and Cas hears him stomping out of the room, and Dean bursts into laughter.
---
Cas isn't sure what to do with himself then, while Dean launches into action in the kitchen, making no indication whatsoever that he thinks Cas is leaving. He asks how many eggs Cas wants while cracking them into a bowl, which seems to settle that question – he's making breakfast for both of them. And more. Cas finishes his first coffee and pours another and hovers uncertainly. If Sam weren't around he might – he's feeling daring enough, buoyed by how well this whole experience has gone, he might touch Dean, a hand on his back between his shoulders or lower, he might press his mouth to that skin he still has an itch to taste. And he could probably distract Dean from breakfast in a heartbeat if he did it.
But Sam's around, though not in sight, so he can't. He just can't. Sam being around makes him think about work, too, and classes, and he starts making a mental to-do list for the day, sadly relegating Dean to the end of the list. What the hell happens after a random bar hookup? Cas has no frame of reference. The only person he can think to ask is Gabriel and the idea of calling Gabe with this conundrum makes his blood run cold.
Sam comes back in with a stack of books in his arms right when Dean dumps the eggs into the hot pan with a sizzle. Sam drops the books onto the little table in the kitchen with a loud thud.
“Sam, don't be bitchy,” Dean drawls without even looking. “Manners, we got company.”
“You,” Sam huffs. “You don't even – I don't even know what to say to you.”
“Dude, you gotta warn me ahead of time if your teachers are smoking hot.”
Cas is going red again.
“How would I know?” Sam grumbles, flipping a book open harder than necessary.
“Hey, you're always going on about how much you love his classes,” Dean says, pulling nearly half a loaf of bread out of its bag and sticking the first four slices in the toaster. “I know you love him for his brain, Sammy, but you gotta have eyes in your head.”
Cas slinks away from Dean, clutching his coffee. Sam finally looks up and by chance their eyes meet; Cas grimaces, Sam's mouth quirks into a hint of a smile. A tiny bond is formed over mutual mortification. Cas slides into a chair at the table, furthest from Sam, altogether too conscious of not having anything on under the bathrobe.
After a moment filled with Dean humming tunelessly, Sam extends the olive branch. “I'm so sorry for my brother, Dr. Novak,” he says, fidgeting with a page as if he might turn it, although he hasn't read anything.
“No, that's,” Cas starts. He clears his throat again. “I really. He's been.” No, there is no good way to end that sentence. “I don't do this,” he says finally, and buries himself in coffee.
Sam's brow furrows.
“Bars,” Cas mutters into his coffee. “Spontaneity. Fun. I don't have fun. I do live on Mount Bookworm.”
Sam actually laughs. “I guess Dean has that effect,” he says grudgingly. “Why were you at the Roadhouse? I mean, I'm sorry, it's none of my business.”
“Brother,” Cas says, daring to lower his mug an inch from his mouth to talk more clearly. “Gabriel. Dragged me out with threats of 'losing' my manuscript. Him and his friends, sort of a bachelor party. He's getting married. Second marriage. To the same woman.”
“They dragged Cas out to be the designated driver,” Dean chimes in from the kitchen, “but I wooed him with shots and he called them a cab instead.”
“I need to call Gabe,” Cas mutters. “Eventually.”
Sam's rubbing his temple. “Manuscript?” he says, and even as Dean snorts in the kitchen, Cas jumps onto the miraculous lifeboat of academia that's been thrown to him in this stormy sea of interpersonal interaction.
“I've been collaborating on a thesis, Ms. Wilson's, she's going for her PhD in linguistics in the spring semester,” he says, relaxing into sentences longer than fragments and lowering his coffee mug to the table. “She's done extraordinary research into paleolinguistics and her thoughts on cuneiform and runic alphabets prompted me to go back to an old study of mine on Mesopotamian culture and the development of language. I emailed her about it, it's silly, we work in the same department, but we bounced ideas off each other over email for months before she asked if I would contribute to her thesis – second credit, of course, I told her she didn't have to credit me at all but she said her advisors were fiends for sourcing, and... ah.” He ducks his head, realizing belatedly that Sam is staring at him and that Dean has come around from the kitchen with a stack of plates in one hand and a pan in the other.
The coffee mug is automatically back at Cas's mouth like a shield (and a mute button) before he even thinks about it.
“That sounds awesome,” Sam says, and Cas starts. He really looks at Sam, and – he actually does look interested.
Dean smirks and puts the plates down, starts doling out eggs. The toaster pops in the kitchen and he's gone again, taking the empty pan.
“It's,” Cas mumbles, “I'm just interested. It's interesting.”
Sam pushes hair behind his ear. “I'm, uh, I'm going into law,” he says. “And that section on the Hammurabi code was so interesting, I've kinda been looking up stuff about ancient systems of law on my own. I just, I like getting the bigger context for how and why modern law developed like it did? Because it's not perfect and you can trace a lot of the flaws back...”
Cas is nodding already, opens his mouth to say something about the Egyptian notion of ka and justice after death, but Dean's back with a plate of buttered toast and a handful of forks and he sits between them, all tan muscle and freckles and teeth, and Cas's throat dries up.
Dean's got such a shit-eating grin that Sam immediately rolls his eyes and grabs a fork, digging into eggs even though he just had some cereal. But he's the size of about three normal teenage boys, so Cas figures he must eat a lot.
“Don't stop nerdgasming on my account,” Dean smirks, shoving toast in his mouth.
“Shut up,” Sam mutters, and Dean laughs.
It's oddly comfortable after that, even though Cas's instincts are still tensed for flight. Sam seems to have relaxed as though he long ago resigned himself to a socially awkward fate of Dean's making. Cas eats and thinks about how this must be a regular occurrence, then, a normal thing for Dean to do, and his appetite dies some at the thought. Well, it hadn't exactly been unclear that while going home with a stranger from a bar was not normal for Cas, it was normal for Dean.
It isn't jealousy he feels, just – inadequacy, he supposes. A little stupid, a little naïve. Dean said “fantastic” like he really meant it but then he'd had lots of opportunities to practice sounding sincere.
Cas finishes the eggs and coffee in more a mood of politeness than enthusiasm, annoyed with himself as much as anything. He wants his brain to shut up for a second and let him exist in the moment, but it's never done that, why would it start now?
Sam and Dean don't seem to have noticed or mind that he's gone so quiet, filling the atmosphere of the breakfast table with idle chatter and bickering. Sam is, what, 20? He's a sophomore; if he's on track for going into law he must be finishing out his core this year with a straggling few 100 classes like Cas' Introduction to Cultural Anthropology while he lines up his 300s and 400s with special topics. Cas had never asked how old Dean was last night, the act of bartending alone meaning he had to be legal, but even if he hadn't been pouring drinks Cas would have assumed, from the wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled... from the multitude of small scars on his hands and arms, so many years' worth... he just seemed closer to Cas's age. But then, there could still be a difference. There could be a significant difference. He doesn't know. That's another discomfort to add to the pile.
If Dean is still Sam's legal guardian it must be for tax reasons, he thinks idly, crumbling the edge of a piece of toast that's gone cold. Or a health plan, maybe. Sam's plenty old enough to be independent but Cas knows how much harder it is to manage on your own, without having dependents to claim. Sharing adulthood with someone else makes it bearable. Cas has been alone for a while now.
“Hey,” says Dean's voice, and a hand takes his away from the mauled toast. “You good?”
Cas looks up, realizes he's spaced out. Sam's gone from the table, clacking around in the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Cas says automatically, hand frozen under Dean's, not sure if he wants to pull it away.
“Is this weird?” Dean's eyes are searching and maybe even understanding, but not pitying.
Cas swallows. “Some,” he says, then decides to dive into the deep end because he did last night so why not. “Yes. I'm sorry, I just. I've never done this.”
“I get that,” Dean says easily. Cas watches him. He really doesn't seem perturbed at all. “I really forgot Sam was gonna be back today. He musta come in real late. And I had no clue you were his teacher.”
Cas' mouth twitches up. “I know,” he says. “Consent-wise, could have been more informed.”
“Totally enthusiastic, though,” Dean says with a smirk. “Before you got drunk, even.”
“I wasn't drunk,” Cas objects, but the smile is coming a little more fully formed now. Everything that clenched up inside him in the last twenty minutes relaxes again when Dean grins and squeezes his hand. He turns it, slips fingers together. Dean's thumb settles in the middle of his palm. He misses the unoppressive stillness of the bed in the sunrise. Every inch of him craves to pull Dean in close, bury his face in Dean's neck, just be touching another body for a while. He admonishes himself for being so new and needy and doesn't do it, just focuses all his concentration on the warmth of Dean's hand in his.
“Thank you,” he says impulsively.
Dean waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “You're welcome.”
Cas laughs, the sound pulled out of him unexpectedly, and he hasn't been startled into a laugh in a long time. “No, I mean, for this part. I don't know what I'm doing, I could've ended up. I don't know.”
Dean leans back in the chair, but his arm stretches taut because his hand doesn't leave Cas's. “Hey Sammy, I'm getting the thanks for not being an axe-murderer speech,” he yells.
Cas laughs again, ducking his face into his free hand.
He loses track of time then, because Dean squeezes his hand again and stands when Sam comes back from the kitchen, and then Dean's gone down the hall and Sam asks one innocuous question about last week's reading, and that's it. They're off. Cas brings up that point he'd wanted to make about ka and Sam's already got his anthology of primary source quotes from a Western Civ class with him, starts flipping for a Book of the Dead excerpt; they talk about souls and justice and cosmic questions and human morality and all the sorts of things that ought to be too deep for a First Real Conversation but Cas never loses Sam even when Sam frowns in concentration, trying to keep up. Cas takes Sam's anthology and flips for a while, noticing the pages Sam's highlighted in the most, mentions that he has some of these texts in complete forms if Sam wants to read more than an excerpt, and Sam falls over himself with enthusiasm. Cas asks what kind of law Sam wants to pursue and Sam says he doesn't know yet, he just wants to help people. He especially wants to help people who might not have anyone else fighting for them.
A hand lands on Cas' shoulder; he looks up. Dean's dressed in boots and jeans and two shirts, which brings Cas abruptly back to the fact that he's the only naked one here. Dean squeezes his shoulder and says, “I gotta get to the shop before too long.”
“It's your day off?” Sam's nose scrunches questioningly.
“Nah, Roy called in. I'm not taking his whole shift, just Bobby called and said he needed help getting some priority jobs done.”
“Roy's a total flake,” says Sam. “That's the third time in two weeks.”
“Don't think Bobby's gonna keep him,” says Dean. “There's been a kid hanging around asking if we're hiring, he's lookin' better every day.”
Cas' confusion must show on his face, because Sam looks at him and says, “Dean's a mechanic.”
“Thought you were a bartender,” he says.
“Weekend nights,” Dean says. “Gets busy, all hands on deck. Sometimes I cover for big game nights, too.”
Cas considers this. For his first effort at a random hookup, he has somehow managed to snag the most archetypal example of modern masculinity he has ever met. He's strangely impressed with himself.
“You got classes?” Dean asks Sam.
“Um.” Sam slips his phone out of his pocket in an unconscious gesture to click it on and check the time. “I...” He looks at Cas. Some of the awkwardness is back. “Dunno?”
Cas suddenly feels like something is escaping him, a left-the-gas-on feeling. He furrows his brow at Sam, who reddens.
“It's, uh,” Sam says, “your class?”
There's a heartbeat like walking off a cartoon cliff and standing in the air before realizing he should panic. Fuck. Fuck! “Fuck,” he says out loud, too loud, and then Dean's laughing again while Cas surges out from under his hand and away from the table. “What time is it?”
“Dude, it's only ten,” Sam says, trying to be reassuring, but ICA is at noon and there was so much shit he'd meant to get done this morning. He should've been in the office hours ago. Has he even finished grading the papers he's supposed to hand back in 334? If he's even one class late getting those short essays back to the grade-crunchers he'll be drowning in emails from every overachiever in that class, and given it's Forensic Anthropology, that's every damn one of them.
And he's not even at his apartment and his clothes smell like alcohol and sex and “My car is still at the Roadhouse,” he blurts and realizes his hands are in his hair and he's panicking.
“Dude, calm down,” says Dean, laughter still on a low simmer in his voice and really, both of them need to stop saying “dude,” Cas thinks. “You're going to the same place, Sam'll give you a ride.”
“I will?” Sam nearly squeaks. “Uh, sure. I mean. Yeah.”
“But how am I”
“I'll pick you up when you get off work and take you to the bar,” Dean says, shrugging like it's no big deal.
Cas takes a deep breath. “Thank you,” he says carefully. “Uh...”
“Go shower,” Dean says, anticipating the next problem and jerking his head towards the hallway. “You can raid my closet if you need to.”
Cas flees.
---
Fifteen minutes later his hair is damp and he's wearing yesterday's slacks, which aren't too bad, and a green button-down he'd found in Dean's closet, which is too big and has an oil stain on one sleeve. If he tucks in the shirt and rolls the sleeves up, the stain vanishes and the fit is marginally better. He does not, as a rule, go commando, but he draws the line at taking Dean's underwear, so.
Yesterday's shirt and suit jacket are a whiskey-ridden lost cause. He holds them uncertainly, then folds them and puts them on a chair. Then he thinks, no, now the chair will smell like whiskey. Although Dean might not mind that. But no, that would be terrible. So he picks them up again and looks around, bewildered.
Dean picks that moment to open the door.
He sees what Cas is holding and takes pity, plucking the bundle of fabric from his hands and putting it down on the chair Cas just rejected as an option. “They'll make your chair smell like whiskey,” Cas says, having apparently lost all brain-to-mouth filter since yesterday.
“Oh well,” says Dean, and walks up to Cas, puts his hands on his face and kisses him soundly.
Memory of last night surges back, a flood of sense impressions and tingling that sweeps the anxiety right out of Cas's veins and replaces it with something velvety. He makes a little involuntary sound into Dean's mouth. Dean still tastes like over-sweetened coffee. Cas pushes into the kiss with a possessive hunger he could at least blame on alcohol last night, but now it's just – it's all him, it's everything, it's a magma core at the center of him that's gone untapped for near his whole life and he isn't inured to the burn, not yet, maybe not ever. Dean scrapes teeth light over his bottom lip and Cas wants to bite and take and bruise and have all the same done in return.
Then Dean's pulling back and he looks a little glazed. “Shit,” he whispers.
Cas is gripping Dean's arms and he makes his fingers relax. There's a fine tremble in them.
“Shoulda woken me up earlier for a morning round,” Dean murmurs.
Cas huffs out a breath, not really a laugh, not really a groan. This time he succumbs to the urge and pulls Dean close, nosing into his neck, pressing mouth to skin. Dean holds him back, hand around the back of his neck and up into damp hair.
After a minute, one of Dean's hands drops to his side and swipes over the side of his hip before pushing into his front pocket. Cas jerks a little, gathering his wits enough to pull back, something like “no I really need to go to work” on the tip of his tongue, but Dean just raises something black to Cas's face – oh. His phone.
Dean grins, reclaims his hands, wipes shower-dampness off on his thigh and holds Cas' phone so familiarly while he types. Cas watches his thumbs a little too intently. Then Dean hands the phone over.
“Call me when you're ready to pick up your car,” he says.
---
At 10:30, as composed as he's likely to get, Castiel walks back into the living room of the Winchesters' apartment. Sam's at the table still, absorbed in a spiralbound jam-packed with notes in small handwriting, tapping a ballpoint in an idle, distracted way.
Cas isn't actually sure where this building is in relation to either the Roadhouse or campus, but he's guessing it won't be too long a drive. He hates to interrupt Sam's studying, to be a problem or a burden now that he's already been the source of enough humiliation for one morning -
But Sam's already looked up, noticed him, and is closing the notebook as he says, “Ready to go?” He stands and hefts the strap of a messenger bag over his shoulder.
“You're studying – if you don't -” want to or have time trip over each other in Cas' mouth, giving Sam an opening to interrupt.
“Nah, 's cool,” Sam says, “I already texted Jess to meet me at the library, we've gotta cram for this biochem quiz this afternoon.” He flops the notebook in his hand.
Cas smiles. “I hope you're as prepared for my class,” he says, not quite sure yet where the boundaries of teasing should be here.
Sam laughs. “Yeah, but how prepared are you for your class?”
Apparently the boundaries are a little farther out than Cas thought. He's happy with that.
It's a beautiful autumn day out, California-warm for late September, but the sun is hazed by a film of gauzy clouds so that the light isn't blinding. There's a whisper of cooler air in the steady breeze. The kinds of teachers who take their classes outside will be doing it today. Cas would, but he's not worried about the students getting distracted so much as he is about himself. On a morning like this without a preceding night like last night, he'd have been up with the sun and already gone running. Four or five miles, maybe, on a day this nice, stretching the limits of what his schedule would allow.
The schedule which is currently blown to hell anyway, so what does it even matter? And he can't even care. Grading or Dean? It's not even a choice.
Dean's car is already gone. Sam has a battered old sedan, hilariously small in comparison to Sam's lanky frame. He folds into the driver's seat with old practice but his knees are nearly bumping the wheel even with his seat all the way back. Cas tries not to laugh as he settles into the passenger seat.
“But seriously, do you need to pick up anything, should I swing by your place?” Sam asks as the engine coughs to life.
“No, everything's available at the office. Dropbox.” He has an increased data account, in fact, he's so reliant on it.
“Cool.” Sam leans back, one hand on the wheel, then kinda glances at Cas and puts the other hand on the wheel, too.
Cas smiles. “I'm not grading you on your driving.”
Sam rolls his eyes but after a minute his hands go back to their natural positions. They roll through two greens in silence before coasting to a stop at a red light.
“I won't tell anyone,” Sam says abruptly, and Cas looks over at him. His brow is slightly furrowed.
“Pardon?”
“I mean, if you were worried,” Sam says. “I'm not gonna. Spread gossip about you or whatever.”
“I didn't think you were,” Cas says.
Sam twitches one shoulder. “Okay,” he says. “Cool.” Then, after a beat, “There's just jerks out there. You know.”
“I know,” Cas says quietly. “Is this about anything in particular, Sam?”
“No,” he says, too quickly.
Cas looks at him for a long minute, jostling with the movement of the car, hair whisked away from his temple by a thin slip of breeze coming in through an inch of rolled-down space.
“There's this bunch who hang out,” Sam says at last, “who don't like your classes and they're just crude about it, okay? They're like that with every teacher who takes things seriously and asks them to do actual work. And they talk shit, like in the cafeteria, and me or Jess or whoever's around tell 'em to shut up and they just laugh.”
“There are always students like that,” Cas says slowly. Part of him wants names, part of him doesn't.
“Yeah,” says Sam, hand a little too tight on the wheel. “Ad hominem bullshit just pisses me off.”
Castiel nods, looking out the window. No, he thinks, he doesn't want names. Not right now.
“I feel shitty for making assumptions now, is the thing,” Sam says, startling Cas because he'd thought the boy was done. “Like, whatever they said, whatever names they called, I rejected it outright. So I, y'know, I'm sorry for freaking out on you back there, it's just that I didn't think you were even, uh. Well, I've seen you around with a woman and a kid and I thought you were married.”
Ah. Cas breathes deep and lets it out before answering. “Divorced,” he says.
“Oh.” Sam glances over. “Sorry. I'm really, I'm gonna stop talking now. Just tell me to shut up.”
Cas smiles a little. “No, it's fine. It was very amicable. We were married for nine years and we have a daughter. We still spend a lot of time together as a family.”
He can see Sam not asking the next question, so he relieves the poor boy's suffering. “Truly, it's astonishing how many gay men from strict religious upbringings have wives and children,” he adds mildly.
Sam gives the faintest hint of a nod. After a while he says, “Dad was ex-Marine. The way he brought us up, it was like boot camp. All the damned time. Dean's a shit and I yell at him but, man, I'm so damned happy he's finally shed all the bullshit we got fed growing up.” He glances sidelong at Cas. “I mean, I don't know if he would've made it if he was gay. He's – I dunno, bi or pan or just anything-that-moves, but at least it meant he could parade girlfriends in front of Dad like shields.” Sam shakes his head.
Cas thinks on that. Dean hadn't shown any hint of shame or hesitation, not in flirting, not in making the decision to invite Cas home, not in initiating contact in any way. If he'd had hangups from his youth he'd clearly moved past them in record time compared to Castiel, nearly thirty and still feeling pathetically virginal even though he's had plenty of sex in his life.
He doesn't need to tell Sam anything, but maybe it's the lack of obligation that makes him more willing. Cas has never met people like the Winchesters, giving and mellow and comfortable in vulnerable moments that so many other people in Castiel's life would have used as an opportunity to strike past his defenses.
“Amelia saved me,” he says after a while. He can see the distant rise of the stadium; they're close to campus. “For my earliest years I had nothing but the church. I never saw my father, too busy studying the Word in seclusion. I lived in a house on the church's grounds with my mother, until she got too sick, and my aunt and siblings. I went to the charter school the church ran. That's where I met Amelia.”
He looks out the window, watches the cars in parking lots flash by.
“Her faith wasn't as blind as mine. As blinded, perhaps. She had a foot in the real world where I didn't. She brought me music I'd never heard and took me to the library and made me read 'Salem's Lot. When I didn't want to risk my aunt finding my library card she would check books out for me and keep them at her home. She was my best friend.” His chest is tightening up and he knows he needs to back off before he goes too deep. So he just says, “The worst thing I ever did to her was ask her to marry me. But Claire came out of that, so I don't let myself feel regret.” Not too much.
After a while, Sam says, “That really sucks, man. I'm sorry.” And he sounds so sincere that Cas cracks a smile again, even through the discomfort.
“We're still friends,” he assures Sam. It doesn't need to be said that the friendship is different, now, that the magic is gone, but doesn't that happen to so many childhood friendships, in so many different ways? “I wouldn't say either of us asked for the divorce, it was just an agreement that solidified with time. We kept waiting for Claire to get older. May have waited too long, I think. Even Claire seemed relieved when we separated. She can tell we're both happier.”
That is, Amelia's been happier than Cas for some time now, which he doesn't tell Sam; because she'd told him a couple months ago about the man she'd started seeing, who was a nurse and very kind and wore glasses and Claire liked him and would Cas please give her his blessing, please, and Cas had said of course but you know you don't need it, I want you to have anything to make you happy, you don't need my permission to be happy, and she'd cried hard into his shoulder and said I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. And he'd held her and understood. And then he'd gone to his empty apartment and thought about Amelia and Claire making a home without him in it and methodically drunk almost a whole bottle of vodka.
He forces the thought of that conversation out of his head. Forces out a laugh instead, although it sounds bitter and abrupt. “I didn't come out to her,” he says, trying for 'humorous aside' but probably only reaching 'uncomfortable overshare'. “She told me. Bad week, stupid argument, and then I was trying to explain something to her, I don't remember, something about why I was angry, and she said 'Babe, it's 'cause you're gay.' How's that for revelation.” He lapses into silence.
They're on campus now, going past the library at a leisurely 15 mph. Cas nearly asks Sam to stop and let him walk the rest of the way to his building, but he doesn't want to open his mouth and find that some more word-vomit has decided to spill out unannounced. He keeps his eyes fixed on the buildings and doesn't look at Sam.
Sam parks near the side entrance and Cas immediately opens his door, is out of the car well before Sam unfolds himself. Cas checks the time on his phone; it's only 10:45. (He finally notices the little flag that means missed calls and doesn't need to look to know it's Gabe.) He can get the essays for 334 done at least.
He finally makes himself look up at Sam, who's come around to the front of the car and has a hand on the ticking hood. Sam looks uncertain.
“Thank you for the ride,” Cas says, sounding stiff even to himself.
“Hey,” says Sam. “If Dean ever hurts you, I know the best places to hide his body.”
If Cas expected anything, that wasn't it. He mouths for a second, then says, “Isn't that supposed to be the other way around, with family?”
“Nah,” says Sam, turning towards the car door again and grabbing out his bookbag. “Not with Dean, anyway. See you at noon, Dr. Novak.” And he's in front of Cas, smiling all big and it makes him look so young and Cas realizes he's holding out his hand.
Dumbly, Cas shakes it. “Cas,” he says, “please.”
“Cool,” says Sam. Then Sam's loping off back in the direction of the library.
Cas forgets to say hi to Annie in reception. He bumps into the door frame of his office. He grades in a daze for over half an hour before he even turns on his computer to check his email. He stares at the email for a while without opening anything. Then he leans down and hits his head softly against the desk over and over.
That's how Annie finds him, in his doorway with a cup of coffee in each hand. “Um – professor?”
He raises his head, presses a hand over what's probably a red spot on his forehead. “Good morning,” he says, sounding remarkably calm.
“Coffee?” she asks, holding out one cup.
“Thank you,” he says, taking it.
“Here,” she says, pulling a stack of paper out of her jacket pocket. “You didn't check your inbox.”
“Oh,” he says, taking it. “Thank...”
“And, uh, your brother called an hour ago,” she says, and he finally notices the grin she's trying to hide.
“Uh,” he says.
“He said to tell you some things I'm not comfortable repeating.”
“Um.”
“But basically he hopes your date went well and he wants you to call him when you get a chance.”
“Yes. Thanks. I will.”
The grin isn't even hidden now. “So, uh, did your date go well?” And she's eyeing his shirt, which is pretty obviously not his shirt. Also he still hasn't checked his neck. Damn it.
He goes for the tried and true tactic of occupying his mouth with coffee.
“Okay, well,” she says, smiling. “I just wanted to let you know that if I see your brother's number calling again, I'm not gonna answer it.”
“No,” he says. “Absolutely. Don't. In fact, pick up the phone and slam it down.”
She laughs and leaves.
It's 11:30 and he really needs to look over his lesson plans and get in the right headspace for teaching, but first, he pulls out his phone and taps out a text.
I hear you got home in one piece, so stop harassing my staff. I have class, I'll call at 5.
He's absorbed in outlines when the phone chimes and he swipes it absently.
did the bartender harass ur staff?? ;D
He rolls his eyes so far back they ache and turns his phone off.
---
Somehow, he makes it through classes.
It isn't even that bad. Sam doesn't raise his hand and Cas doesn't call on him. He'll have to get over that after today, he reprimands himself, because he refuses to let this color how he would treat any student, and he does want Sam to be involved in the discussion – especially after this morning's chat. On that thought, he spends ten minutes after class perusing his own office shelves and pulling out books. Puts a lot of them back again, because maybe he's being overeager. Eventually he settles on three.
The sight of those three books on the corner of his desk drags a smile out of him every time he sees them, and every time anxiety threatens to creep up his esophagus like bile he makes himself think about talking with Sam about Urukagina somewhere down the line.
He lets himself be overrun in 334 by a passionate argument between Jo and Katie about methods of determining the geographical ancestry of human remains. Usually he would break it up and try to get them back on track, but today a break from talking is a relief.
Annie brings him a sandwich somewhere in there and he barely notices eating it, having finally opened his email and read the long stream-of-consciousness brainstorm Ava Wilson had sent him last night. He suspects she had been drunk while writing it because her spelling is usually better than this. But she must have had some sort of tequila-breakthrough because the points she utterly fails to articulate are still clear enough to set Cas on a train of thought that has him writing furious notes on the back of a page of manuscript.
Five o'clock passes before he notices. At twenty after, Annie leans in the door and knocks on the frame.
“Your brother's called three times in the last five minutes,” she says. “I've been hanging up but I don't think he's gonna stop.”
“Damn,” he mutters, picking up his phone. Forgot it was off. “Sorry, I'll deal with it.”
“Kay. I'm heading home,” she says, waves herself out.
He braves the power button and within seconds the phone's ringing. Bastard must have been dialing constantly.
“I can't believe you ditched me for a hot piece of ass,” is the first (loud) thing that comes out of the speakers and Cas winces, holding the phone several inches away from his ear.
“Gabriel, I'm sorry I left –“
“I am so proud of you!” Gabriel crows.
Cas puts his face in his free hand.
But it's a blessedly short torture, just Gabe demanding details that Cas point-blank refuses to give, then Gabe demanding a name, which Cas reluctantly admits. Then for seven interminable minutes Gabe regales him with the story of whatever drunken hijinks had ensued after Cas left the bar, and texts him pictures Cas never needed nor wanted to see, all of which Cas deletes immediately.
“And the cab driver,” Gabe starts, but Cas cuts him off.
“How's Kali?” he asks, knowing it'll be a bucket of ice water over Gabe's hyperactive head.
He does sober up, but only a little. They haven't broken up in the intervening hours since Cas last spoke to Gabe, which is better than can be said about previous attempts the two have made at getting serious. Well, no, they're always serious. Serious as a house on fire.
Cas is resigned to his fate of handing the ring over at the wedding again, followed several months later, he expects, by his fate of owning the couch on which a burnt-out Gabriel will crash for weeks. Moping. Telling endless stories about Kali. Leaving candy wrappers stuck to everything.
But he loves his older brother, he really does – strained at times, a tiny seed of love buried under a mountain of aggravation always, but Gabriel is the only member of his immediate family who will still have anything to do with him. Gabe had run away from home when he was sixteen and Cas was ten. When Cas was twenty-six and nearing the gasping end of his dying marriage, Gabriel had reappeared in his life out of nowhere, arm in arm with a woman who was all dark fire and force of nature. Gabriel himself had not been anything like Cas remembered from childhood, and yet – after a few months of reacquainting, somehow he was also exactly the same. Perpetually sugared up, possessive and protective and consumed with grand ideas about the kind of place the world ought to be.
As much of a drama queen as Gabe had been about it, Cas is secretly glad he got the chance to be there for his brother after his first breakup with Kali. He's never been good at making connections, and the ones he has with Amelia and Claire and Gabe are really all he has, fucked up as they all are.
He will never, ever tell Gabriel any of these thoughts, under pain of torture and death.
He finally begs off the line with Gabe, who seems to have exhausted his avenues of teasing (for now). The sun is low in the sky, red and huge through the trees outside his window, and if he ever wants to get home tonight he has to make another call.
In the quiet absence of Gabe's chatter, Castiel listens to doors open and close elsewhere in the building. There's at least one evening class in the one classroom that has stadium seating and a big projector, but otherwise the building is pretty much abandoned after 5:30. The clock by the door informs him it's nearly 6.
He takes a controlled breath as he scrolls through his contacts. Dean W is right there, looking so innocuous. Cas had half expected Dean to enter his number under some sort of dirty pun. He taps to dial before he can talk himself out of it, because he is not going to sit here and dither like a teenage girl.
If he angsts slightly while the phone's ringing, at least no one's around to see it. On the fourth ring his tension is turning into panic and by the sixth he's sure he's lost his voice.
Then the line connects and there's an unexpected blast of sound in his ear – a combination of distant rock music, a barking dog, and an undifferentiated cacophany of machine noises that almost make him miss Dean's voice snapping, “Ah – shit, yeah, hello?”
Heart somewhere in the vicinity of his tonsils, Cas swallows and his unconscious phone manner takes over. “Hello, this is Castiel Novak, is -”
But he's interrupted by a clang and Dean yelling “Fuck!” not, thankfully, directly into the phone. Then Dean bellows “BOBBY” into the distance and Cas takes the phone from his ear and stares at it like it's an animal that might bite.
He catches something like “-as? - there?” from the phone and jerks it back to his ear.
“Dean?” he asks hesitantly.
“I am so sorry,” Dean says, still too loud, as though he can't quite hear himself. “Still at the shop, you would not believe the day – Rumsfeld, SIT! Goddamn dog.” There's a loud rustling and a thump, and Cas can't even imagine any visuals to make sense of what he's hearing.
Except that Dean sounds out of breath, so he's probably sweaty and hot and – okay, well, he's got that visual.
“You don't have to come get me,” Cas hears himself saying, self-sabotaging bastard that he is. “If you're busy -”
“Cas, hey,” Dean says, pleading, “this is getting tragic. Listen, I'm gonna hang up now – call me back in a minute. One minute!”
The call ends.
In the sudden silence Cas becomes very aware of his pulse pounding in his throat and temples, and the fine sheen of sweat on his palms. This is absolutely pathetic. He's so irritated with his body right now.
He stares at the time on the phone screen and jabs redial the moment the last number ticks up.
There isn't even one full ring before Dean's answering, not overpowered by other noises anymore, and he's dropped his voice to a ridiculously low, husky register as he says, “Hey there, hot stuff, so glad you called.”
And Cas loses it. He laughs so hard he has to shove his knuckles in his mouth to muffle the sound. He can hear from Dean's breathing that he's still a little breathless and now he's fighting with laughter, too, but still, he manages to go on in that same exaggerated voice: “What's so funny, babe? What's got ya all tickled?” And then Cas is laughing so hard he snorts and that makes Dean crack, too. It isn't helped by the sound of a door opening on Dean's end and a voice Cas can clearly make out saying “Boy, get outta my office!”
The machine noises swell again, but they pass while Cas is catching his breath and then Dean's end is quiet except for the last hitched breaths of hysteria.
“God,” Dean groans, and Cas can just imagine him scrubbing his hand over his eyes. “Sorry, I couldn't help it.”
“Indeed,” Cas says, trying to recover some of his usual deadpan, but the waver of laughter is still there.
“So listen, I'm filthy right now, just lemme clean up and I'll -”
“Dean, seriously, if you're busy,” Cas starts.
“No, no,” Dean says. “I am a goddamn gentleman. Besides, I've been ready to get outta here for hours. I'll be there in twenty, is that okay?”
“Yes,” Cas says, and he can't stop smiling.
---
The streetlamps have lit and the red is fading to bruise-purple in the sky. Cas is standing in the umbrella of light under the pole outside his building, a stack of books and papers in his arms, flipping idly through the top one to remind himself all about Urukagina and the kingdom of Lagash.
He hears the Impala before he sees it and deliberately doesn't look up, smiling down at the pages that are too fuzzy to really read in the twilight. He only chances a glance up when the car hugs the sidewalk right in front of him.
Dean leans out the open window. “Hey, baby, lookin' for some company?”
“Yes, I take kindly to being compared to a prostitute,” Cas says drily.
Dean snorts and leans across the front seat to pop the passenger door from the inside. Cas walks around and slides in. Part of him thinks this shouldn't feel as comfortable as it does.
He pulls the door shut and turns to find Dean's face unexpectedly close to his own. “Been thinking about kissing you all day, do you mind?”
Cas shakes his head.
And it's still comfortable, somehow. Both his hands are occupied with books so he can't return the gesture of the hand Dean puts on his face. The hunger of this morning doesn't even rear its head, Cas's long-sublimated sexuality lashing out too strong when it's faced with opportunity, because this kiss isn't chaste but it isn't all that deep, either. It feels like a promise of Dean's continuing presence and availability and the probability of more, more, but later. Not right now. Right now this is all that's needed.
Then Dean's sitting back and pulling into the road again, grinning.
“Smooth,” Cas says finally.
“My middle name,” says Dean.
“I sincerely doubt that,” Cas says.
“So how was work?”
How can Dean be so casual and not-casual at the same time? How is Cas supposed to answer? The situation begs something more than a perfunctory “okay” but how can Dean actually care about the details of his day? They don't even know each other. But what if he wants them to know each other? How else are they supposed to get to know each other? Is this dating? Did any part of the last 24 hours qualify as a date? Cas is pretty sure the talking-about-your-day kind of dating doesn't normally start with frantic whiskey-flavored blowjobs. Maybe sometimes it does? Does it even matter what's normal for anyone else? Dating also usually doesn't start with subverting religious authoritarianism and keep going for over a decade without any actual sexual attraction. Probably. Okay, in fairness, it's possible Cas has never been on a date that qualified as such by some sort of arbitrary set of criteria determined by a collective social consciousness of what constitutes a date, and this is a very stupid train of thought that he can't seem to escape from.
“That bad?” Dean asks, and Cas realizes that he's frozen up and hasn't spoken in a painful minute and a half.
“Fine,” Cas says, too abruptly. “Fine! You?”
Dean's face is a mix of concern and amusement, like he's pretty sure he knows what's going on in Cas' head.
“My day,” he says with a deliberate drawl, leaning back and laying his arm along the rolled-down window. “Christ almighty, my day, let me tell you.”
It's an obvious rescue tactic, but it works. Dean's tale of garage drama is far more engaging than Gabriel's exploits had been. Dean explains all about Roy the flake, how Bobby (the owner, Cas gathers) had already told him he was going to be let go but had invited him to work out another few days for a last full paycheck. When Dean had gone in this morning, all had been calm at the shop, if understaffed. The kid – Jake – who had been sniffing around for a job opening had shown back up and spent near an hour talking with Bobby in what Dean supposed was an impromptu interview. Then in the afternoon Roy had shown up, more than a little drunk, and expressed outrage that Dean was there working on his projects. Bobby had ended up in a long shouting match with the belligerent man.
“So Roy bein' the idiot he is, he picks up a wrench and starts wavin' it like he's seriously gonna try to take Bobby,” Dean's saying, his palm steady on the wheel while his fingers gesture expressively. Cas can't decide if Dean is being careless about a threat of violence that normal people would take more seriously, or if his tone is more one of pity towards Roy for his stupidity. Cas supposes he'd have to meet this Bobby to know for sure. “And he gets this look in him, I guess that disgruntled ex-employee look you're supposed to look out for, and right when he starts to make a move, fucking Jake is right there. Roy starts to swing and Jake just catches his wrist like it's nothing. And Roy's got a beer gut, sure, but he's not a little guy, you know, can pick up tires without breaking a sweat. Jake's near as tall as Sam and he's kinda thin, but good god. The way he held Roy off it was like he coulda done it with one finger.”
Evening is well and truly fallen outside, only faint traces of indigo coloring the dark sky. The thin cloud layer has cleared and the cool breezes from the morning have turned into a crisp nighttime. The open window whisks cool air through the car, bringing in smells of dust and asphalt, manzanita and sagebrush. Cas has lost track of where they are, just listening and breathing and feeling.
“Best part is,” Dean laughs, “the main thing I went in to work on today was a Charger that belongs to a cop friend of Bobby's. And Victor happened to show up just then to check in, right when Roy was yelling all this shit at Bobby and Jake, calling Jake the n-word, all this vile crap I didn't even know the guy had in him. And Vic walks over and just arrests Roy cool as you like, for drunk and disorderly. When Roy yells at him, threatens to add assault. Guy wouldn'ta landed a hit on anyone anyway, he was weaving all over the line.”
Cas isn't quite sure he finds this story humorous. Dean glances over, having apparently expected a chuckle at minimum. “It's not like that all the time,” he says. “Bobby's place is always so chill, everyone's great there. Can't believe we didn't get rid of Roy sooner. I think Jake's gonna fit in just fine.”
It's odd how Dean just talks about these people as if it doesn't matter that Cas hasn't met them and doesn't know them. It's... nice, to be invited into another person's day like this, no expectations, no agendas, and no secrets. Cas casts Dean a smile because he can sense that the other man is worried he's given Cas the impression that violence and police intervention are nonissues for him.
“I'm glad your day was adventurous, then,” Cas says.
Dean snorts. “I'll be fine with not having a repeat, but it worked out well.”
“My day was good,” Cas says again, different from last time. Genuine. “Very good.” He smiles at Dean, who gives a hesitant smile back. “I do think I'll need to lock two of my forensic students in a broom closet for the rest of the semester, though,” he adds, in the spirit of sharing, and Dean barks a laugh.
This breezy car in the cool, starry evening is almost as soap-bubble perfect as the bed in the patchwork morning sun. Castiel doesn't understand how this day is even happening to him. Days like this don't just happen.
Dean turns the wheel, tires crunch; they're already at the Roadhouse. Cas points to his car across the lot and Dean coasts easily into the open space next to it. He shifts to park and turns off the engine.
The air is so still without the momentum of the car drawing the slipstream in through the window. It's cool against Cas' warm face. For the first time all day, he's sure the tingling in his hands isn't from an upswell of anxiety.
He looks over at Dean, who's looking at him, eyes soft.
He quickly looks down into his lap, balances the papers on his knees and picks up the three books on top of the stack. He lifts them between himself and Dean. “These are for Sam,” he says. “If he's interested. He can get them back to me any time, I don't need them for classes this semester.”
Something flickers over Dean's face as he takes the books from Cas and glances at them. Cas can't read the expression; it's dark in here now, anyway. But when Dean speaks, his voice is a little heavier. All the flirtation and levity he's put on all day is gone, but somehow his tone is even more intimate without them. “Thanks, man,” he says. “Sam'll fangirl all over these.” He huffs a quiet laugh.
“I want,” Cas starts abruptly, and stops just as short.
Dean puts the books down on the seat between them and pulls Cas over to kiss him again.
It's some time before they break apart, but Cas isn't even breathing all that hard when they do. It was deep and slow and a better thank you than words would have communicated. Cas still has one hand steadying his papers but the other is around the back of Dean's head, brushing idly through his hair. He shifts to run a thumb behind Dean's ear, exactly where it was this morning.
“I want to see you again,” Cas says this time, and it isn't even unsteady.
Dean nods against his forehead. “It's a date.”
“An actual date,” Cas clarifies, half-questioning, half-stating.
“An actual date,” Dean laughs, “with chocolate and flowers and all that crap.”
Cas exaggerates a shudder. “God, no,” he says, and Dean laughs again, harder.
“But dinner,” Cas adds. “Or something.”
“Definitely,” Dean says.
Cas may be imagining it, or projecting, but it seems a bit like they're both feeling through unexplored territory now, rather than Cas just following in Dean's wake.
“You should get home, then, unless you wanna sit here and make out in the car like teenagers,” Dean says.
This time Cas laughs. He reclaims his hand and tucks his papers up into the crook of his arm, pushes open the door. It's almost chilly now. He wishes he had his coat, the khaki one Gabriel's threatened to set on fire a few times. It might finally be the right weather to start wearing it again.
He turns and leans down into the open door. Dean's leaning across the bench seat, hand propped on the stack of books in the center. “How soon can I call without pushing my luck?” Dean asks.
Cas grins. “I can't do anything tomorrow,” he says, because Tuesdays he has meetings with his grad students and a long evening seminar on top of everything else. “Wednesday?”
Dean groans. “Man, I'm covering a shift at the bar.”
“Dinner on Thursday,” Cas says firmly.
“Yes,” Dean says.
“My first class isn't until noon on Fridays.”
Dean's eyebrow goes up. “Hell yes.”
Cas smile is wide and uncontrollable. “Good.” Dragging himself away to his own car is almost painful. He digs out keys, manages to get the door open, moves the papers to the passenger seat and slides into the driver's seat.
When he looks over again, Dean's still sitting there with a goofy-looking grin.
“Oh, go home,” Cas says without any heat, still smiling as he closes his door and rolls down the window.
He starts his car first and backs out of the space before this can get any more ridiculous.
---
He's still lightheaded when he gets to his apartment building and trips over his own feet going up the stairs. It's not that late, he could still get some work done, but his head just isn't in it. He stares into his fridge for altogether too long before he just says fuck it, opens the freezer, pulls out the pint of pistachio ice cream and goes to sprawl on the couch and watch terrible cop shows for a while instead of thinking.
At nine he's already as bone-deep exhausted as if he'd spent the day running a marathon. In the middle of brushing sticky-sweet ice cream residue off his teeth, he finally remembers to check his neck in the mirror. They've had a whole day to fade, but the bruises are there. He touches one over his pulse point and forgets his toothbrush for a minute.
When he takes off Dean's shirt, he smooths it out, folds it lengthways and drapes it over the back of his desk chair. He'll give it back on Thursday.