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The 2,353rd time Cas caught him staring from across the chilled and sunlit-yellow classroom, Dean knew he had a problem. An addiction, really. One he wasn’t so sure he wanted to break, though his grade spoke otherwise. He should have been listening to the professor talk about marketing and human resources departments and whatever the fuck else came spilling from her mouth and onto the board with a squeak of a marker instead of staring at the beautiful man sat three rows up against the window. But, as he said, it was an addiction not so easily broken.
Dean read somewhere that to break an addiction, he needed to acknowledge it. Write it down. Draw attention to every time he did it so he would be more aware. He started to write down every time he stared, every time Cas distracted him, every time he lost his ability to breathe. He scribbled it into the margins of his papers, on the palm of his hand, across the fabric of his chest with his fingertip.
12:01 Because his beauty is gravitationally astronomical. I have never been aware of gravity holding me to this earth, but the pull of him is chest-heavy, irresistible.
12:40 Because the sunlight turns his eyes into ocean waves. Into endless summer skies. Into starlight trapped beneath sea glass.
1:22 Because his fingers wrap around his pencil like a poem, his words tumble from his fingertips like a prayer.
2:00 Because I watch him leave and feel like I am drowning when he disappears. The sun is duller. The sky, bland.
So on it went, as these things do. Dean moved one row closer, then another. He could not bring himself to bridge the gap. His eyes never left the soft skin of Cas’s neck, of his sunlight-swirled hair, of his smile.
12:32 They say the stuff of stars is in our souls. His is that of a supernova, of a red giant, of the constellations. Eternal, and bright.
1:56 His eyes met mine and I have never learned how to look at a God for long. I have never found one walking the same earth as me. I now know why people pray to Gods. Without these secret prayer-laced words, I would burn.
2:01 We walked out the door, together, his fingers brushing mine. I tried to drink him in, all of his starlight and glass-feather beauty. My chest ached the moment he walked away. He has taken the pieces of my chest I need to live. Can you give back things you don’t know you have?
The next week, Cas was sitting in the row Dean had claimed as his own, the barrier between them. He was against the window like always. Dean steadied the roaring water in his stomach and sat down. He kept his notebook open to a blank page, tried to quell the itching of his fingers to write down every reason he craved to stare at him, so close now and so easy to catalogue, to touch.
“Hello,” Cas said.
“Hey,” Dean said and let himself look. Dean, like a drowning man, drank in every detail he could. Wrote the words into his skin over and over again until he could bleed them out through ink.
12:01 Because his voice started an earthquake beneath my feet. Can’t anyone else feel it?
12:22 Because I wanted to wish on each eyelash as they brushed his blinking skin. Like stars within reach, light and soft.
1:58 Because I could feel his warmth today, more than the sun streaming through the window. He radiates it.
2:02 He smiled and the stars fell. If the Gods ask, I will give them willingly and forever to see him smile again.
Cas was there again, waiting beside the window. He nudged Dean, whispered beneath his breath about things Dean wasn’t paying any attention to. Dean could only focus on the soft laughter that brushed the skin of his neck and the way Cas didn’t move his arm where it touched his own. Could only focus on the beauty of it all. He started to write to Cas all the reasons he wanted to stare at him forever.
1:36 You carry electricity beneath your skin. Be careful with it. Try not to stop my heart with your fingertips.
1:40 You laughed and I couldn’t help wanting to bottle it. Wanting to drown in it. What a good way to go, wrapped in the softness of your joy.
1:45 You were not careful enough. Your fingers wrapped around my shoulder and my heart stopped. Maybe it was the distance, so small between your hand and my heart. Regardless, it stopped and started again beneath your touch.
When the words got too heavy, Dean choked down his storm-cloud nerves and let his words spill from his lips. Cas accepted with a grin. They went to coffee down the street and talked the afternoon away. When he went home, Dean wrote down everything that clawed at his throat to get out.
Because this is the latest I’ve seen you and the afternoon drapes itself around you like it has finally found home.
Because we talked nothing and still every word clung to my chest.
Because I kissed you and the Earth’s plates finally stopped shifting beneath my feet.
Because there was magic in your lips, the human kind you have always seemed to carry. The kind that turned seconds into eternities. The kind that turned you into something much more godly beneath my fingers. Can humans touch Gods? If the answer is no, I do not want to be human any longer.
One date turned into two turned into ten. When they slept together for the first time, Dean traced words across the soft skin of Cas’s sleeping back.
Because the moon stands no chance to the way you smile in radiance.
Because your hip bones reach towards the heavens like a wish I want to feel every day for forever.
Maybe we can be eternal, but only together. It is our lips that are holy, our lips that turn the other into a God.
Months later, Dean proposed in the middle of the road as they walked beneath the stars in the stillness of the night, hearts slow dancing and fingers tangled. It was only right to propose there, in the place Cas shined. Even the stars were staring. Even the moon.
Cas asked why and Dean had too many things jumping from his chest to do anything but kiss Cas and walk him home. He would try to explain, but could never get past the words I love you, I love you, I love you. If Gods could hear prayers, is that all they would hear?
It took two days to find everything, every scrap of paper and receipt full of scribbling. Dean tucked it all between the pages of his notebook from class all those days and weeks and months ago. He left it on Cas’s pillow the morning of their wedding and went to get ready at his brother’s house. Dean was not one for superstitions, but this he could not stand to jinx.
Cas called him and breathed into the phone. There was nothing left to be said, but his breathing was calming in a way nothing else was.
At the altar, Dean said his vows the best way he knew how.
“Because, you are gravitational and I can’t help love you. Because, I want to be your Atlas, want to carry every single world of yours on my shoulders so you can fly. Because I have fallen in love with you one thousand times over and I wrote it down every single time. Because I will fill one hundred notebooks until we die each and every time I fall, again and again and again.”