Title: Conversation, Interrupted
Disclaimer: Not mine
Rating: Light R, mostly for swearing
Fandom/Pairing: Supernatural, Dean/Castiel
Word Count: 2974
Notes: Vaguely non-canon. And also, I still don't know thaaat much about SPN. It's just so shiny. Oh, and beware of pop psychology.
Summary: Dean and Cas, on faith, love, trust, and occasionally, less important things.
-
"Dean," Castiel asks, "do you have faith?"
And because they've had variations on this conversation so many times Dean wants to scream, all he can say is, "Damn it, Cas…"
"Hear me out," Cas says, a quiet sort of command in his voice Dean can do nothing but respect. "You fight the powers of darkness, do you not?"
Coming from anyone else, it would sound like the back cover of a horror story for girls (an oxymoron, in Dean's opinion), but Cas, of course, takes it seriously. Dean's not certain if there's anything he doesn't take seriously.
"Don't ask questions you already know the answer to," is all Dean says in answer.
"It's a style of argumentation," Cas says. "I read about it. Don't be difficult. You fight the powers of darkness, do you not, Dean?"
Dean sighs. "Yes, Cas, I do. This had better be good."
"It is," Cas says. "Now tell me why you fight."
Dean says nothing for a while. "It would be wrong not to, wouldn't it?" he asks, suddenly confused.
"Dean, what would you be without the fight?"
Dean considers answering with a witty comeback, with something sarcastically cutting like I'd be rid of you, for one thing, something that would ruffle Castiel's feathers and get him out of Dean's hair. In the end, though, what Dean says is, "I don't know."
"Yes," Castiel says, "because you've never believed in anything beyond fighting, and your family."
Dean says nothing.
"You fight because you want to make things better, and because you believe you can. Because you believe there is something better to be fought for. And that, Dean, is faith."
"…Bullshit," Dean says.
"No, it's not," Castiel says solemnly. "Faith is faith, Dean, no matter where it's found, and God sees it wherever it's hidden."
"You tellin' me I get celestial brownie points for kicking demon ass?"
"No, Dean, what I'm telling you is that you have enormous capacities for faith, and love, and that you don't need to hide them, because God will see them anyhow."
And then Castiel is gone.
"Capacities," Dean snorts at thin air. "I'll show you capacities. Know what I got capacities for? My fist in your face, you motherfucking son of a bitch."
Satisfied that God can't possibly love him for saying that (and that Sammy can't hear him, because he's pretty sure he misused the word 'capacities', and Sammy can be a bitch about that kind of stuff), Dean presses play and waits for the music to come on, turns the volume up so loud it probably classifies as 'noise' rather than 'music' and pulls out of the parking lot.
Why the fuck does Cas always have to turn up when he's in the middle of something? Now Sammy'll probably be wondering why picking up lunch and coffee is taking him this long when they're supposed to be working.
-
The next time Castiel comes, it's in Dean's dreams. It's a black-and-white dream, but that's okay, because at least Castiel's stupid trenchcoat isn't quite as hideous in grey.
"What do you believe in?"
"Cas, would you just drop it?" Dean's actually in an okay mood- it's a decent dream, not one of the post-traumatic motherfuckers from hell.
"No," Cas says. "Everyone believes in something. If they didn't, they'd have nothing to live for. I know you have faith, of the non-religious kind. So what do you believe in?"
"Pie," Dean says. "And cheeseburgers. Sammy."
"What about love?" Castiel asks, and because Dean's feeling generous, he says, "Yeah, sure, that too."
Castiel smiles, leans over and kisses Dean, and vanishes.
Dean doesn't consider that there might be anything at all wrong with that until about two hours after he wakes up. To his disgust, he's spent those two hours singing in the shower, whistling, and generally creeping the fuck out of Sam.
-
"If you're gonna lecture me about faith and God again, piss off," Dean says, hunched over a table in the darkest corner of the seediest bar he could find. He doesn't need to look up to know Cas is there.
"I wasn't going to lecture you," Castiel says mildly.
"The hell you weren't," Dean says, and finishes his whiskey.
"You aren't very good at trusting people," Cas observes. "I believe I understand."
"Oh yeah?"
"You love very deeply, so it stands to reason you are wary of being hurt."
Fucking hell. Dean wishes he had thought to order more alcohol. "I'm never letting you watch Doctor Phil, ever again."
Cas gives him a wide-eyed, innocent look. "But how else will I learn to understand humans?"
They stare at each other a few seconds before breaking into undignified sniggers.
Dean tries not to notice it when their legs brush under the table, but he does notice when Castiel lifts his hand to his lips and kisses it before he vanishes.
Sam really shouldn't be so surprised when Dean comes back to the motel blind drunk.
-
"Dean," Cas says, legs dangling off the rickety motel room table he appears on, "can you tell me what love feels like?"
"Don't you love anyone?" Dean asks, quickly turning off pay-per-view.
"I don't know," Cas says. "Perhaps not by human standards."
"Well, there's different kinds of love," Dean says, then thinks, fuck this, I'm not an after-school special.
But Cas is giving him the puppy look.
Dean heaves an extremely put-upon sigh. "Loving Sammy and my dad is different than…than…"
"Loving a woman?" Cas asks.
"Yeah," Dean says.
"But you've never loved a woman," Cas says. "How do you know?"
"Because everyone knows the difference between romantic and platonic love," Dean says gruffly.
Cas cocks his head to the side, looking for all the world like a curious bird. "You mean sex?"
"No!" Dean says, then, "well, yes. Um, maybe."
Great. Now Cas looks way confused. "It's complicated," Dean says. "it's like…you're born into loving your family, and…god, I can't explain it. Ask someone else?"
"In theory, then, I can feel two different things for my brothers and for someone else, and they can both be love?" Cas asks, unfazed.
"Yeah," Dean says, and wonders what Cas means for a split second before Cas is kissing him and he knows.
Technically, this is their second kiss, but it's sort of more like their first, because last time, it was in Dean's subconscious, and it was all Cas, and it didn't last longer than half a second.
This is nothing like that. This is Castiel's lips sliding over his, slow and easy, exploratory, because fuck, Cas has probably never done this before, this is Cas' right hand curling around his neck and his left around Dean's waist, this is Dean relaxing into the feeling, his own hand creeping up to sink into Cas' hair, this is a tiny tentative touch of Castiel's tongue to his, before Cas is pulling back, smiling at him, and vanishing into thin air.
"Fuck," Dean says, and slides down the wall to sit on the floor. He's still staring at the leg of the table when Sammy comes in and asks him what the hell is going on.
Even if Dean knew, he's not sure he could answer.
-
Sammy's in the gas station, paying for fuel and snacks for the road, when Cas appears on the passenger seat. By now, Dean sort of knows what it feels like when Cas is coming, so he's not that surprised. Also, he's got his seatbelt on - not too much jumping three feet in the air he can do.
"Hello," Cas says pleasantly, and sticks his tongue down Dean's throat before Dean can respond.
By the time Sammy 's back in the car, Dean's strangely tousled, his lips are swollen, and he can only pray Sammy won't notice his hard-on, because that would be all kinds of awkward.
"You okay?" Sam asks, worry line creasing his forehead.
Dean suppresses his instinctual reaction of smoothing it out, because his baby brother should not be worried, he's supposed to protect Sammy from crap like that, and says, "Yeah, I'm good. You get cheetos?"
Sam grins and hands over the pack.
-
They go to Bobby's for Halloween. On October 30th, Sam wakes him up with about fifty million new cases, state wide, and Dean remembers the date and just says, "No fucking way."
Sam agrees, reluctantly, and they're at Bobby's by sundown.
Bobby's in the kitchen, cutting open a pumpkin with a piece of weaponry that looks like it's seen demon blood.
Dean stares at him in a cross between amusement and concern for Bobby's mental health. Bobby makes a noise like a growl and says, "Your feathery friend wanted to learn about human customs." The way he says it, 'customs' might as well mean, 'festering piles of cow shit'.
That's when Dean notices Castiel sitting at Bobby's kitchen table, and it takes a lot of self-control for him not to blush. Which is all wrong; Dean Winchester doesn't blush.
He and Cas have kissed more times than he can count by now. Sammy hasn't seen Cas in months; Cas always appears just when Sam isn't there. That's pretty much fine by Dean, though Sammy's getting suspicious about the fact that Dean always says "Cas said", and Sam himself has no evidence of Cas ever being there.
Every time Cas is there, though, he and Dean inevitably manage to start making out like horny teenagers before ten seconds have passed, and there is no way to describe exactly how cool it is that Sammy doesn't see that.
"Hello, Dean," Cas says. "Sam."
"Hi," Dean says, and his voice doesn't squeak, which is good. Jesus, he's more than thirty years old, for fuck's sake. He can totally do this.
"Hi," Sam says. "Long time no see."
Castiel coughs discreetly. "We…seem to…miss each other whenever I visit."
"Last time I checked, you were the one who was deciding when and where we meet."
Cas isn't so good at hiding his body's responses yet. Dean valiantly does not think about how he's felt Castiel's erection through his pants several times, and instead concentrates on the delicate flush rising in Cas' cheeks. It turns out that's not much better.
They haven't had sex yet. For one thing, they never have enough time. For another, Dean's a bit freaked out, by the man thing, and by the angel thing. He's not sure what the boundaries are. If there are boundaries. Anyway, Cas has always made the first step thus far. He can do it again, as far as Dean is concerned.
"If it's the demon thing," Sam is saying, "I swear, I'm clean-"
"It's not," Dean says shortly. Sam has enough bad dreams without the idea being planted that heaven is still punishing him. "It's just bad luck."
Cas nods emphatically. A bit too emphatically- he looks a bit like one of those bobble-headed dolls there for a second, and Dean notices Bobby looking between the two of them with a bit too much shrewd on his face.
Sammy is blissfully unaware.
-
That night, Bobby takes Sam out for a drink. Dean declines, and Bobby looks a bit too unsurprised, but Dean decides to let it go for now.
Instead, he and Cas curl up on Dean's bed.
Well. They curl after they've done other things.
Because apparently Cas has had enough of waiting.
So has Dean, quite honestly, and he probably would have before this if he'd bothered considering how good it would be. But he kind of likes it like this, slow and easy, no necessity for overthinking or strategizing or worrying. Not that Dean does that. But he's never done this sort of thing before, and he thinks even he would probably go into Sam-type freak-out mode if it hadn't been this easy to fall into.
Fall in.
Love.
Dean says it, against Cas' naked shoulder, tries it on for size: "I love you."
If Cas answers before Dean drifts off, Dean certainly didn't hear it. No. Nothing there. Just the strong heartbeat of Cas' host body, just the smell of sex, just the steady rise and fall of Cas' chest. Cas' host's chest. Dean's trying not to think too much about that one.
-
They leave Bobby's again before he can ask any awkward questions, which Dean's quite pleased about, but he doesn't really know why he doesn't want to talk about him and Cas. Mostly he just doesn't know how to explain it, he thinks.
They're stranded in another crappy motel, and Sammy's doing research at another public library, and Dean's lonely.
"Cas?" He asks into thin air, and Castiel appears.
"Whoa," Dean says. "I didn't know that worked."
"It does," Cas says. I'll answer whenever you call, is what he means.
So Dean takes a deep breath, pushes Cas up against the wall and kisses him for all he's worth.
It's the first time he initiates something.
After, lying together on what used to be a motel bed, and now seems to be a strange mess of springs and muddled sheets, all sorts of bodily fluids Dean doesn't want to think about drying on their skins, Cas says, "I need to ask something of you."
"Shoot," Dean says.
"Don't take this case," Cas says. "Not this one."
"Okay," Dean says.
"Really?" Cas asks, baffled.
Dean kisses him. "I trust you."
Castiel opens his mouth to say something, but Dean says, "I love you," loudly, and kisses him again, before Cas even has the opportunity to say it back.
-
When Dean finds Sam in the library and tells him the search is off, Sam's a bit pissed off. He's done the research, and he thinks he had something.
"Cas said to stop," Dean says.
Sammy's seen Cas a few more times recently. Cas must have noticed he was getting suspicious. Still. It's kind of weird, and Dean knows that Sam knows it's weird.
"Are you ever going to tell me what's going on with you two?" Sam asks.
Dean feels like someone's punching him in the gut, slowly, only that it doesn't really hurt.
"What do you mean?" He asks.
"Dude," Sam says. "Hickey."
"Fuck."
The librarian shushes them angrily.
It takes four hours, more than two hundred miles, and two packs of Skittles before Dean manages to say, "We may have a thing."
"Cool," Sam says.
"A big thing," Dean says.
"Cool," Sam says.
"I may be in love with him," Dean says.
"Cool," Sam says.
Dean hits him on the upside of his head.
They both smile the rest of the way to Salt Lake City all the same.
-
It takes Dean till Christmas to stop shutting Cas up every time he tries to say it.
They're at Bobby's again, and it's not like it's some stupid holiday tradition, it's more like Sam got beat up pretty bad last week and they need rest and quiet.
Dean's pretty sure Bobby knows all about him and Cas by now- if he hasn't guessed, Sammy probably called him up and told him all about it. And Sammy's seen them making out more than once over the last weeks.
Thusfar, he's always gotten this shit-eating grin on his face and spent the next hour or so pointedly not teasing Dean.
So it's not that big of an issue that he and Cas kiss every now and then (though Bobby's obviously way out of his comfort zone, and, man, is that ever funny).
On Christmas morning, Cas wakes him gently, places a hand over his mouth and says, "I love you."
Dean doesn't answer for a while. There aren't any tears in his eyes, anywhere, because Dean Winchester doesn't cry, damn it.
Eventually, he says, "I believe you," and, funny story, it's the truth.
-
Dean's in the car when Cas appears.
"Things are going to get worse," Cas says with no preamble. Sammy's in the backseat, long legs stretched horizontally, shoes off so he doesn't damage the seats.
"Because everything's sunshine and candy right now," Dean deadpans, but no one laughs. His own fault for travelling with two guys who have the apparent sense of humor of rocks. Boring rocks.
"I don't how long I'll be gone," Cas says quietly, and Dean looks over at him.
"I'm sorry," Cas says.
"You'll be back," Dean says. Not a question, a statement.
"Yes," Cas says, smiling. "I will."
"I can have faith in you," Dean says, and it should be a non sequitur, but it's not, because what with Cas popping in and out all the time, it's as if they never finish one particular conversation, it's as if everything they ever say adds up one whole, and this is just the final part of a fragment of a discussion they once had.
"I know you can," Cas says. "I told you so."
"Shut up."
They kiss, and Cas is gone.
"I'm never gonna understand you two," Sam says from the backseat. "No, don't try and explain, I don't know if I even want to understand."
"We really need to get you laid one of these days," Dean sighs. "Get that stick out of your ass."
"I have manfully resisted all ass-type cracks at you and Cas," Sam informs him. "I demand the same of you."
"Bitch."
"Jerk."
Because Dean can love Sammy and Cas, he can have faith in them both, he can trust them both (most of the time) and he can believe them both. And he can also call his little brother a bitch, because sometimes he really is. There's a tingle under Dean's skin that tells him this is going to end well. That he and Sammy are okay, that he and Cas are great. Dean's not used to that kind of feeling, so he's gonna damn well enjoy it.