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Dean doesn’t go on dates.
Correction: He doesn’t go on dates anymore. The last person he went on a date with had been Cassie, back when he was still young and impressionable, and willing to believe in things like love and stable relationships. Then she’d started talking about going off to college, and Dean had been reminded of Sam, and he had (understandably, he thinks) said that he didn’t really think they were working out, and then he’d left. She hadn’t questioned him, he hadn’t offered an explanation, and she hadn’t gone after him. That had suited him just fine.
There had been a long string of people, after that, both men and women, but none of them had ever asked him out on a date.
So he’s…freaking out, a little bit. Because Castiel is smart, and ethereally beautiful, and sexy, though he’s sexy in an odd, quiet, self-conscious sort of way. Like he doesn’t know he’s gorgeous, which…how can he not? But the point is that he’s way too good for Dean, way too kind and intelligent, and Dean doesn’t really deserve someone like that, considering how fucked up he is, and yet here they are.
“What the hell happened to your hand?”
Dean glances down at his palms. One is completely unmarked, no evidence there to suggest that he stumbled – fell – at all, but the other is wrapped up in clean, white bandages. The bleeding stopped a while ago, but Dean has yet to take the bandages off. He wonders if it’s sick that they sort of remind him of Castiel.
“I fell,” he says shortly, and Sam squints at him, and then shrugs.
“Must’ve been some fall.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“Everything okay?”
Dean tosses himself onto their couch, putting his feet up, heedless of Sam’s narrow-eyed glare at his boots, which he has yet to take off. He’s dripping meltwater everywhere, but, at this point, he doesn’t care. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know, you seem…nervous.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Sam raises his hands, defensively. “All right! Jeez, no need to snap at me.”
“Sorry.” Dean sighs, thinking about the last time he had a…a talk with Sam. He’d felt…maybe not better, afterwards, but his head had felt clearer. It had been easier to look objectively at what he was experiencing when he’d had to hear himself explain it to someone else. “I…might have a date.”
Sam blinks, and then makes a show of sticking a finger in his ear and twisting vigorously. “I’m sorry, I thought I just heard you say that you have a date.”
“Don’t push it,” Dean warns, and Sam lowers his hand, staring earnestly at him.
“Sorry, it’s just…Really? You’re not just telling me this because I’ve been hounding you about asking that guy out?”
“I didn’t ask him out because of you.” That’s a lie. Dean suspects – no, he’s sure – that he wouldn’t have asked Castiel out if Sam hadn’t talked to him about it. Told him that he was doing Castiel a disservice as well, not just himself.
“Even better.” Sam smiles, and Dean is reminded, almost painfully, of a tiny, tow-headed boy, his cheeks dimpled, excited for the first day of school, every first day of school, until the year he’d realized that there would never be a last day of school. Sam had been ten, maybe eleven, when that had happened. If Dean were feeling poetic, he’d say that that was the day that Sam had lost his innocence.
He’s never been one for poetry.
“So, are you going to tell me his name?”
“Joe,” Dean says, immediately.
“Really?”
“No.”
“Come on, Dean! He’s making you happy, right? When you’re not being a neurotic mess about everything, I mean. Don’t I deserve to know his name?”
Dean narrows his eyes at his brother. “What about you? What’s the name of your boyfriend?”
Sam hunches his shoulders, expression clouded with something that almost looks like…guilt? But then it’s gone, as quickly as it came, and Sam just looks vaguely uncomfortable. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Oh please, Sam, we both know that –”
“I don’t, okay! I don’t. We didn’t…work out.”
Dean freezes, and then, slowly, shakes his head. “Oh. Jesus, Sam, I’m…”
“Don’t.” Sam breathes out, slowly. He’s not…He’s nothing like he was after Jessica. After Jessica, there hadn’t been any sobbing, no grief-stricken mourning, just…silence. Sam hadn’t been the same. He’d cried, a little, Dean thinks he remembers at least that much, but mostly what he remembers is how Sam hadn’t talked. How he’d swallowed all of his grief until it had compressed in his gut like a black hole, sucking in every emotion that tried to surface. Sam had been walking around, he’d been talking, he’d been eating and sleeping, all normal, human things, but there’d been nothing inside of him.
And then, one day, he’d just…switched back on again. Not as though nothing had ever happened, but he’d been Sam again.
This is nothing like those months after Jessica. Sam looks…upset, yeah, but not…
Not upset enough. Sure, Jessica was supposed to be the love of Sam’s life, the gal he was going to marry, but still, this guy, this mystery guy that Sam has been keeping all tucked up safe in his chest, has been a fairly substantial, albeit shadowy, part of Sam’s life for the past couple months, and Dean’s kind of…
Suspicious. A little.
Not enough to say anything right now, though. Just enough that he thinks he wants to keep an eye out for this mystery guy. Just in case. Sam doesn’t always make the best decisions, after all. Sometimes he does stupid things, and Dean doesn’t want his little brother getting hurt.
“Okay,” Dean says softly, and Sam visibly relaxes. “I won’t ask, but if you need me to crack a few skulls…”
“I’m fine, Dean, I promise. It was mutual.”
“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it. But I’ll leave you alone.” Dean points an accusatory finger at Sam. “For now. Got it?”
“Got it,” Sam says easily. Almost too easily. But there’s nothing else that Dean can say without sounding accusatory, and so he drops the subject, reaching for the remote control and turning on the television. He settles in to watch some mindless sitcoms, secure in the knowledge that he can outwait Sam.
He’ll get to the bottom of this. And if it means punching Sam’s mystery ex-boyfriend (repeatedly, if he’s lucky), well, that’s just an added bonus.
~
He is sitting in a car. He is sitting in a car that smells like new leather, even though the car itself is older. The smell reminds him of something that is far distant, something like the sound of rolling thunder, but he does not make the connection until much later: he is reminded of his father’s car, before it became his car, and the smell of the seats when he had pressed his cheek against them, lying in the back with his brother curled small as a kitten next to him. This car’s tape deck is not playing the Best of Bad Company, though. This car does not have a tape deck at all, but a CD player. It is silent.
Outside, the roads and sidewalks are covered with a thin film of grey snow, and the campus lawns are a blank white canvas, occasionally marred by the game trails of wandering students.
There is a smell underneath the new leather, thick and coppery. He feels pain, but he is unsure as to where it’s coming from. He looks down at his hands; one is cupped beneath the other, catching drops of blood as they drip down off his palm. This is the source of the smell beneath the leather.
Driving the car, sitting next to him, is Castiel.
“Does it hurt?”
He blinks, and stares straight ahead. He does not want to look at Castiel, not because the man is displeasing, not because he does not like the man, but because he is afraid of seeing Castiel’s expression. He is worried that Castiel will be looking at him with pity.
He doesn’t think he could take this man’s pity.
“I’m fine,” he says shortly. His palm aches. “So…lunch, right?”
“And tea,” Castiel adds. “If you would like to postpone our arrangement until your hand is healed…”
“No, no, I’m okay. Is Saturday all right? Saturday afternoon?”
“I am free at twelve-thirty, if you are as well.”
He can easily ask Bobby for Saturday off. Bobby is understanding like that. Gruffly understanding, sure, but he’ll get it. And if Bobby, by some miracle, doesn’t get it, then Ellen will. “Twelve-thirty works for me. Can you email me directions to the place?”
Castiel pulls into the parking lot of the student health center; the car rolls to a stop, but he doesn’t immediately get out. His bleeding palm drips steadily into his cupped hand.
He risks a glance at Castiel.
His eyes are blue. His eyes are blue and his mouth is pink and Castiel is staring directly at him. His lips are slightly parted. There is a piece of ruled paper sticking out of the right pocket of his jacket. He is leaning forward.
“Dean,” he says, and he is so close, so close. Warm breath brushes across his cheek, and their lips…
Dean opens his eyes.
“Fuck,” he says, equal parts frustration and dismay, when he realizes what he woke up from. The details are fuzzy, sure, but there’s no mistaking that car, and there’s no mistaking the way Castiel had leaned forward.
Dreams are hazy predictors of the subconscious at best, at least as far as Dean is concerned, but there’s absolutely no way that he can pass this one off as being anything other than what he wanted to happen. Because that hadn’t been how it went at all - Castiel had driven him to the health center, had asked him what day and time he would like to meet, and Dean had asked for directions. Then they had both gotten out of Castiel’s car (ancient, yes, some European car that Dean’s only vaguely heard of, but it had run so smoothly, so quietly), and Castiel had led him up the stairs to the health center, and he’d sat with Dean in the waiting room while a beleaguered-looking receptionist had tried to get him to fill out forms. Dean had cupped his left hand beneath his right, the bleeding slowing, as Castiel had stared at the woman and told her, in calm, measured tones, that his student was in no condition to be filling out forms, and could the receptionist please retrieve the doctor from the back room before Mr. Winchester fainted from blood loss.
It hadn’t been that severe, of course. Dean flexes his hand, the healing skin pulling uncomfortably tight, but, other than that, it’s fine. As if he’d never stumbled at all.
He glances at his nightstand, at the digital clock perched in the center of it like a miniature technological god – Sam had gotten it for him for his birthday a couple years back. If he’s right, Sam’s going to get him something similar this year. Christ, he’s going to be twenty-eight. He doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t…
It’s Saturday.
Dean rolls over, grabbing for the clock and dragging it closer to his face, hoping that he’s reading it wrong – but no, it’s Saturday, and it’s nine o’clock, and Dean has yet to get out of bed.
“Fuck,” he says again, and lets the clock drop back down to the nightstand as he shoves the covers down around his feet and then rolls himself right out of bed and onto the floor. Luckily, he catches himself with his uninjured hand, and he spends the next fifteen minutes (which is roughly thirteen minutes longer than he usually takes) digging frantically through his closet and trying to decide whether he wants to treat this date casually or seriously. Does he go with jeans and a t-shirt? Or does he go all out and pull out the pair of slacks and the dressy jacket he wore when he worked his prom-catering job? Maybe if he combines the two, he’ll reach that comfortable medium between “utter slob” and “pretentious?”
“What are you doing?”
Dean jerks, dropping the pair of jeans he’d been holding. “Jesus Christ, Sammy! Ever heard of knocking?”
Sam laughs, slipping into Dean’s room and letting the door fall mostly shut behind him. He leans against the wall, watching Dean kneel down and pick up the jeans. It’s intense and kind of weird and Dean glances over his shoulder more than once, wondering what the hell Sam is actually doing here.
“Don’t you have stuff to do? Studying or…writing term papers, or whatever?”
“Studying will be there tomorrow,” Sam says dismissively. “You getting ready for a date only happens once.”
“Hey, I’ve been on dates with plenty of people.”
“Name five. Bars don’t count.”
Dean scowls, grabbing for the nearest object – a tennis shoe – and pitching it at his brother. Sam laughs, dodging the projectile, and the shoe thumps harmlessly against the wall just to the right of him. “Okay! Okay, I’ll stop teasing.”
“I don’t care,” Dean protests quickly.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“What’s with you today?” Dean strips off his sweatpants, ignoring Sam’s immediate and girlish protestations about his virtue being compromised, and, deciding to go with the casual-yet-classy combo, he starts to pull on his nicest pair of jeans. Nice, for him, means that the only holes in them are in the cuffs, but they’ll have to do. “You’re awfully chipper for nine o’clock in the morning.” For someone who just got dumped a little while ago. According to you, at least.
“And you’re awfully surly, considering you should be happy that you’re going on a date for the first time in…what’s it been, fifty years?”
“I will hurt you if you start making cracks about my age.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll feel better when you see the cane I got you for your birthday.”
Lacking another shoe to throw, the only thing Dean can do is grumble loudly as he pulls off his t-shirt and starts digging around his closet for something acceptable. Sam watches him for a long moment, then shoves up beside him, pushing his arms out of the way (ignoring Dean’s protests) and pulling out a button-up shirt that Dean, honestly, hadn’t even been aware of owning. It’s a dark green, almost an olive green, and the material feels too soft to be cotton. Sam holds it up, and Dean immediately sees a problem.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get that over my head,” he complains, and Sam shrugs.
“It’s supposed to be like that.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I got you this shirt, you ass. Now put it on. You’ve got to be prepared to sacrifice a little comfort for fashion.”
“What the hell have you been reading? Whatever it is, keep it away from me.” But Dean reaches out and snatches the shirt away from Sam, grumbling as he undoes the buttons, one at a time. He doesn’t look up as he says, “So, uh…You want to talk? About…anything?”
Sam sighs. “Dean, if this is about me and…”
“I know, I know I said I’d leave you alone, it’s just…You’re not acting like you usually do.”
“Usually?”
Dean shrugs the shirt on, wincing at how tight it is across his shoulders. Not uncomfortable, not as in the shirt doesn’t actually fit, but it’s more…form-fitting than he’s used to. “You know, like how you were after Jessica. You’re…happy.”
“I can’t be happy? Look, it was mutual. I’m not broken-up over it, neither is he, we still talk, I just…I don’t know. I wasn’t ready.”
“You weren’t ready? That’s a switch.”
“Just drop it, Dean, please.”
“I get it.” Dean starts buttoning up his shirt, scowling down at his hands. But I will get to the bottom of this.
“I mean, I could be following you around, trying to figure out who your date is…”
“I said I get it, Sam. Christ.” Dean finishes buttoning his shirt, and then smoothes his hands down the front of it, amazed at how…soft the material is. Not like silk, not exactly, but it’s way more luxurious than his shirts normally get. He spreads his arms out, trying to ignore the way the shirt shifts over his shoulders. The way it clings. “Be honest with me: do I look like a complete tool?”
Sam glances over him, a quick up-down movement, and then, slowly, shakes his head. “Uh…no. You actually look…really good.”
“You’re not just humoring me, are you?”
“No! No, you’re definitely date material.”
“Good to know.” Dean tugs at the hem of the shirt, and then skirts around Sam on his way to his dresser. He grabs a pair of socks and then drops down onto his bed to pull them on. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so just…order pizza or something, and put it on my card, okay?”
“I might just go out to eat,” Sam says vaguely. “There’s this new Thai place a couple blocks away…”
“Urgh. You and your weird ethnic food. Whatever, man, just leave the number for Alonzo’s out. Can never have too much pizza.”
“You do realize that pizza is Italian, right? Italian counts as ethnic.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Alonzo’s makes real Italian pizza? Every single dude who works there is Polish.”
Sam pauses. “Good point. Are you leaving soon?”
“Like, twelve, I guess. The place isn’t that far.”
“You’ve got a bit until then. Want to play some Call of Duty?”
Dean finishes tying his boots, glancing up at Sam, who still hovers by the door, looking hopeful and a little bit…evasive. Dean’s good at reading people – not as good as Sam is, and not as good as his father was, but still decent – and he knows a change of topic when he hears one. But still…
“Sure,” he says, and pushes himself off the bed, brushing past Sam as he pulls open the door and steps out into the hall. The smell of coffee wafts out from the kitchen, and Dean heads there, first, needing the caffeine rush to keep him sane for the two and a half hours he has until he leaves for the café Castiel had mentioned.
Sam trails after him, slower, a little hesitant, maybe, and Dean doesn’t question it out loud, but he notes it as something worth remembering later on.
~
The café is called Otto’s, and Dean arrives there fifteen minutes early, due to a combination of traffic not being as bad as he’d thought it would and reckless driving (he tends to go fast when he’s nervous, a failing that Sam has pointed out on multiple occasions). It’s unlike any café Dean’s ever been in, which is, admittedly, a fairly small number of cafés, but still. There are hardly any people inside, despite the fact that it’s noon on a Saturday, and even if there were a lot of people, Dean’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to tell exactly how many. There aren’t any open tables in Otto’s – just booths, built in such a way, into corners and nooks, that every single table is completely private. Dean wouldn’t be surprised if they come equipped with sound dampeners, too.
Otto himself seats Dean, at a two-person booth directly next to a frosted glass window. Dean can’t see out, and he’s pretty certain that people can’t see in, either.
“Mr. Novak will be with you shortly,” Otto says, his thick glasses making him look more like an insect than a spindly German dude. Dean stares at him as he sets two menus down on the table.
“Uh,” he says. “How did you…?”
Otto smiles at him; it’s weird and more than a little creepy, and Dean completely forgets to finish his question. By the time he remembers that other people – especially strangers - shouldn’t know about he and Castiel, Otto has vanished. Just…vanished, like a ghost or something.
“Creepy,” Dean mutters, and picks up one of the menus in order to browse. Otto’s menu is a weird mix of the homey and the exotic – there’s a section devoted entirely to things like quail and partridge, lunches that are expensive enough to make Dean do a double take, but there are also things like steak and eggs, lobster rolls, scalloped potatoes, macaroni and cheese…basic, distinct foods that are designed to evoke memories of home, wherever home happens to be. There’s also an extensive tea and coffee section, which, yeah, Dean can see, now, why Castiel likes this place, especially if he’s a tea kind of guy. He and Sam aren’t big tea drinkers. Dean knows the difference between Earl Grey and green tea (mostly due to the difference in colors), and that’s about the extent of his knowledge. This place, though, lists dozens of different kinds of tea.
He’s trying to figure out the difference between Earl Grey and Earl Grey Floral when Castiel arrives.
“Dean?”
Dean slams the menu down on the table, wincing at how loud the noise is, and glances up at Castiel. “I,” he says, and then stops, swallowing hard.
Castiel is wearing a suit. Not one of those fancy suits that you wear to a funeral or a wedding, but the kind that he might wear to class one day. Dressy slacks, and a nice, white shirt. He’s foregone his customary trench coat, today, in favor of a dark green corduroy jacket, the buttons brass-shiny in the café’s dim light.
Dean glances down at his own shirt, feeling, abruptly, underdressed. Castiel, though, can’t seem to take his eyes off the way the shirt pulls tighter across Dean’s chest.
Great. Underdressed and self-conscious. Dean clears his throat. “Hey,” he says. Lame. Oh God, you’re so painfully lame. No wonder Sam had to help you dress yourself, you can’t even string a full sentence together.
“Hello,” Castiel replies, and then he takes a seat. Otto almost immediately appears at his elbow, cheerfully bearing a pitcher of water and two glasses. His huge, insectile glasses seem to stare, disapprovingly, at Dean and his inability to speak.
“For the happy couple,” Otto says, and Castiel makes a short, startled noise, while Dean, being the class act that he is, chokes on nothing. Otto is gone, though, before either of them can actually protest, and Dean reaches for his glass of water, fumbling with it, and then sipping, gratefully. The cold water soothes his throat.
“So,” he says, and is pathetically grateful to find that his voice does not squeak, stutter, or otherwise give away his nervousness. “Here we are.”
“Indeed.” Castiel reaches for his own glass, pulling it closer but not drinking from it. “Did you find the drive…taxing?”
“No. No, I, uh, I live pretty close.”
“Oh? My home is a fair ways away from here. I often must get up a half-hour early in order to make it to the campus on time.”
Dean rests his elbows on the table, leaning forward. “Why do you live so far away? If you…don’t mind telling me.”
“I do not. It is primarily because I live with my brother, Gabriel. He bought the house shortly before the university hired me, and it seemed prudent to conserve our resources by living together.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” Dean glances down at his menu, lying open on the table. “My brother and I do the same thing. We’ve lived together for most of our lives.” Well, there was the short time where he and Sam were apart, before Sam asked him to give college a shot, but still.
“Sam is a very confident young man,” Castiel says quietly. “And…he inspires a similar confidence in others.”
“Huh?”
“It is nothing.” Castiel smiles, hesitantly, and Dean’s heart thumps erratically underneath his breastbone. “Have you decided on lunch yet?”
The abrupt change in topic is both jarring and welcome, and Dean takes the opportunity that’s presented to him, holding up his menu like a shield and studying the lunch and dinner sections. He hasn’t had chicken-fried steak in a long time – not since dad was still alive, back when they roamed the country while he looked for some kind of…Dean isn’t sure. Closure, maybe. They’d been in Texas, staying at the house of a man that dad had known from the military, and they’d spent the week gorging on ribs, steaks, pork chops. Sam had been thirteen, at that stage in his life where he’d started realizing all the different ways your favorite foods could kill you, and he’d nearly had a fit when he realized that their host’s idea of a balanced meal was adding some canned corn to his mashed potatoes and grilled flank steak.
“Shit,” he says wonderingly. “This place has everything.” He pauses, realizes what he said, and very nearly pinches himself. “I…sorry, I’m used to swearing around Sammy, and…I don’t want to offend…”
“You have not offended me,” Castiel says softly. “I do not want you to change yourself to suit your concept of me, Dean. I find you intriguing. You. Not a caricature of yourself.”
“Oh.” Dean ducks his head, hiding behind the menu. “…Thanks.”
Castiel reaches across the table, touching his fingertips to the bird-fragile curve of Dean’s wrist. His fists clench automatically. “Do not thank me.”
“Are the gentlemen ready to order their drinks?”
“Christ,” Dean says, startled; Otto moves like a ghost, appearing and disappearing and then reappearing again without the slightest indication that he has ever arrived or left at all. Dean puts the menu facedown on the table, casting a look at Castiel. “Are you…ready?”
“I am. Are you?”
“I think so.”
“Very well. I will have the daily special, please, and the Mediterranean wrap.”
Dean blinks. “Daily special? Where’s that at?”
“This is a café,” Otto says, before Castiel can respond. “But we also pride ourselves on our selection of teas, as well as our ability to…judge what a person needs. And for you, sir?”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean,” Dean mutters, more to his menu than to Castiel or the café’s eccentric owner. Then he raises his voice. “The…home-style bacon cheeseburger, I guess. And a Coke.”
“You should try the tea, sir.”
“The tea is very good,” Castiel says softly, and Dean shrugs.
“I’m not really a…you know what? Screw it. I’ll have whatever the daily special is. You only live once, right?”
Castiel nods slightly. “I often take a more cautious approach. However, in this instance, I find myself agreeing with you.”
“That’s because you like tea.”
“Perhaps.” Castiel smiles again, and Dean is…amazed.
“I’ve never seen you smile so much,” he says, and immediately hates himself for bringing it up. What if Castiel has a reason for not smiling? God knows Dean has plenty of those, though he chooses to ignore them. Castiel, though, doesn’t seem offended – it’s hard to tell, but he doesn’t stop smiling, so that’s good, right? – and Dean, slowly, relaxes.
“I have been told that even as a child I was…solemn,” Castiel explains. “I suppose expressions of contentment do not come as easily to me as they might to others. It is simply how I am. Around you, however…” Castiel rolls his shoulders, a rough approximation of a shrug, except someone as serious as Castiel doesn’t shrug. But the intent is the same. “I do not know. I find your informality and your intelligence stimulating.”
“Intelligence? Oh man, you’re on a date with the wrong person.”
“You give yourself far too little credit.”
“Mm.” Dean runs his finger around the rim of his water glass, thinking. What is there for them to talk about? They have, as far as Dean knows, absolutely nothing in common, they move in completely different circles, they practically speak different languages. Castiel will say one thing and Dean will make an assumption, except he can’t make assumptions, he has to ask what Cas meant, and…
Cas. Cas. He wonders if Castiel would mind if he called him that.
“Your tea, gentlemen.”
“God,” Dean says, reflexively jerking away as Otto appears at his elbow. He moves his arm as the guy sets two mugs of tea down – not dainty little cups, like Dean had been expecting, and he’s grateful for that. Otto smiles at them both.
“Today’s special, we have Mayan chocolate truffle, a fruit tea with notes of apple, strawberry, chocolate, and chili. Enjoy.”
“Chili,” Dean repeats incredulously. “That’s…okay, that’s weird.”
“Tea is every bit as complex as wine or beer.” Castiel picks up his mug, blowing across the top of it and then taking a cautious sip. He hums, looking pleased. “The combination of ingredients, the types of tea leaves, and the steeping process all contribute to the complexity of the flavor.”
“Wow.” Dean cautiously picks up his own mug, blowing across the steaming tea and then taking a careful sip. Otto was right – the predominant flavor is apple, with the sweetness of strawberries and chocolate lurking just underneath. He’s left with a slight tingling on his tongue; the chili, he’s assuming. It’s…good. Way better than he thought it would be. The only tea he’s ever had before has been black or green, neither of which he liked. This is something else altogether. He takes another sip. It’s just as good as the first one. “You’re really into this sort of thing, aren’t you?”
“I have a sensitive palate, and it lends itself quite easily to the tasting of food. I am told that I may also apply this skill to wine, cheese, and beer, but I have never had the opportunity.”
“Are you kidding? No, okay, I will find stuff for you to taste, okay? Awesome stuff. Gourmet beer, smelly cheese, you name it.”
And, just like that, they have something to talk about. Castiel has never tried hot wings before – not for lack of opportunity, but for lack of interest – and Dean lists four places he knows of within a five-mile radius that serve, not only hot wings, but pizza, hot dogs, and burgers as well. Dean has never had lobster before, but Castiel assures him that it’s delicious, and they make plans to, at some point, visit a nearby seafood restaurant.
Castiel’s first experience with coffee had been when he was eight, and it’s colored his opinion of the stuff ever since. Dean knows a coffee shop downtown that serves the sorts of things that Sam likes, coffee that’s more dessert than beverage. “Let me buy you the hot chocolate special,” he says, and Castiel, hesitantly, agrees. By the time their food arrives, their mugs are almost completely empty and they’ve made plans for not one, but three future dates, based largely around their mutual love for good food, yes, but also around the fact that Dean has never been to a place where suits and ties are the recommended dining attire, and Castiel has never seen the point of finger foods. It’s things like that that lead them into conversations about how they were raised, what they did as children…their families.
They both avoid the subject of their fathers. Dean gets the feeling it’s a sore spot for Castiel, too.
Dean chews slowly on a fry – the good kind, not the soggy, salty McDonald’s type but crisp, cut by hand rather than food slicer. “This might sound kind of weird, but I promise it’s not actually weird,” he says, and Castiel leans forward, over his mostly-eaten wrap, and stares intently into Dean’s eyes.
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s just that it’s my birthday tomorrow, and…”
“Ah,” Castiel says, and he reaches across the table and grabs Dean’s wrist, holding gently. “Happy birthday.”
“Yeah. But, I was just gonna say that…this is a good present. Finally getting to…to hang out with you, you know? Not having to act like a student.”
“The rules are there for a reason. But…I do know what you mean. It is good to be able to be myself.”
“I wouldn’t think you’d have to act like someone else around other people.”
“What do you mean?”
Dean shrugs uncomfortably, dropping his half-eaten fry and pushing his plate away from him. Castiel slowly lets go of his wrist, though Dean gets the feeling that, had they been possessed of all the time in the world, had they been completely alone, he would have held on.
“It’s just that you’re intelligent, and, you know, you write articles and essays and…You’re just a good person.”
“And you think that you are not?”
“I think people want to believe I’m better than I actually am.”
“I have told you before…”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean leans his chin in his hands, humming softly. “Have more faith in myself.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I…don’t really know.”
“Well.” And Castiel smiles at him, tentatively, almost…hopeful? Dean can’t be sure, but he’d like to think so. “Then that is something we will work on together. Perhaps…we may walk in the park, after lunch? And talk? There is a certain beauty to the trees, this time of year.”
No, Dean thinks. No, that’s definitely hope. Not just in Castiel’s expression, but he can feel it in his own chest, as well. It’s such a foreign feeling, but he thinks he recognizes it from a long time ago.
“Together,” he repeats, and he has never heard a sweeter sounding word.