Chapter Text
“You know, when I went to tell Sam about… about how I was hopelessly in love with you,” Dean pauses, lets out a soft chuckle. “You know what he said to me?” He asks.
Cas who’s sitting next to him in the passenger seat flipping through a catalog of invites that all seem awfully similar to Dean, finally looks up expectantly, waiting for Dean to continue.
“That the only people who didn’t know that we were in love, were the two of us,” Dean smiles. A younger, more brash Dean would have been angry for having lost all that time pining. Or maybe the younger, more brash Dean would have never even been able to come to terms with the fact that his affections for the ex-angel next to him were nowhere near as well hidden as he thought they were. A younger, more brash Dean probably would not have been able to admit that Cas is not only the man that he loves but the love of his life. But this is not a young and more brash Dean. So, he smiles. "I was pouring my heart out, man. I was scared, like scared shitless, right? And all he cared about was the fact that I thought he didn't know me well enough to already know."
“I’ve gotten similar responses as well. Even when we told everyone we were getting married, they all said something along the lines of how this was "a long time coming",” Cas scrunches his nose as he uses actual air quotes, and Dean will never admit it but that makes him fall just a little more in love with Cas.
But wait, that was a younger, more brash Dean, which he is not.
“Stop using those fucking air quotes, Cas,” Dean chides with absolutely no heat whatsoever.
“Why?”
“You’re making me fall more in love with you.”
“How is me being extremely loveable a bad thing?” There’s so much smugness in Cas’s voice, Dean has to smile again. “I mean, for you maybe.” He adds after a second, “I have you, how does Sam put it? Oh yeah, ‘whipped’,” again with the air quotes.
“Oh, fuck off, you smug bastard. Confessing to me was literally, and I mean literally your moment of true happiness,” Dean says, looking away from the silent and empty road, jabbing at finger at Cas. “You sappy fuck.”
“Yes, it was, but you know what’s sappier? Looking for me, in Purgatory. Praying to me, without fail, every single night,” Cas closes the catalog in front of him, puts it in the back seat, and pulls one of his legs up so he can sit facing Dean completely.
“You don’t get to use that! Absolutely not, no. That was traumatic as fuck, okay?” Dean looks back at the road, arms flailing.
“Oh, and dying and getting taken to a place filled with nothing but your worst regret is a cakewalk then?” Cas rolls his eyes.
Dean sobers up. “That’s not what I meant, Cas. I’m sor-”
“I thought we were joking around Dean,” Cas cuts him off, caressing a gentle hand across Dean’s cheek. “I know what you meant.”
Dean still feels like utter shit.
“You can ask,” Cas says after a while.
The car remains silent for a moment.
Finally, “I don’t have anything to ask, sweetheart. Well… not about that. I just want to know; how can I help?” Dean asks.
Cas shifts closer towards Dean and slowly begins stroking his hair. Cas runs his callused palms made rough through years, millennia of fighting battles he rather hadn’t, across Dean’s scalp and Dean feels like, again, for what must be the hundredth time, he understands the sentiment ‘Heaven is a place on Earth’.
“This helps,” Cas says softly. “You always help.”
“Cas…” Dean pleads.
And Cas, as per usual, never denies Dean anything.
“I don’t think I understand dreams. I had them the first time I became human, but only briefly. I never had the comfort I do now, so I didn’t often get the chance to sleep peacefully enough to have dreams,” Cas’s words are meant to be an explanation, and they hold no resentment whatsoever, but Dean’s guilt makes itself known regardless, and that too with the loudest, most gut-wrenching thud possible.
Cas, as if on cue, drops a soft kiss on Dean’s cheek. It’s a comforting touch that does more to say the Cas would never hold the tough decisions against Dean than probably any words ever could. He continues then, “But now, I have my guard down. I have a home and warmth and a very handsome man next to me every night I go to sleep, so I dream.” Cas sighs with great effort. Dean thinks he might need the pause, to either collect his thoughts or perhaps to look for courage, so Dean waits patiently.
“My dreams… I… I’m not quite sure how to explain this but the best I can do is to say that they remind me of being in The Empty. Dreams are such a fickle thing, they melt into each other, falling from one to another. I feel quite lost. The sensation is so new and the idea of visualizing scenarios and worlds I haven’t seen or lived somehow connects back to being in the slumber The Shadow put me under… It might begin as something beautiful and comforting, but more often than not it spirals into malicious and cruel,” Cas is looking in front now. Watching the rising sun illuminate the abandoned backroads that they both drive around so often, aimlessly. The aimlessness of it feels far more comforting than any aim would.
Dean takes a hand off the wheel and slips it into Cas’s free one. “I have them too. In our line of work… I think nightmares become like that creepy uncle at family get-togethers. You don’t want them there but well fuck, kinda part of the package, know what I mean?”
Cas nods.
So, Dean continues, “Honestly, I don’t think I have a solution. If I did, I would have used it myself. I still have nightmares about hell and the Mark, and Purgatory, and watching Sam die, about Chuck and… losing you.” Cas squeezed his hand once, an affirmation that he is going nowhere, not again. Dean soaks it up, imbued with resolution adds, “So I’ll give you this instead; I’ll be here. I might not be the best at words. I mean I’m fifty shades of emotionally constipated but I’ll always listen. Always. And if you wake up at the ass crack of dawn, upset and fucked up, and ask for a distraction, I will always be there to take you for a drive. I’ll do my best, Cas. I’ll give you whatever you want, but you gotta promise me one thing…”
“Anything” Cas’s statement is absolute.
“You gotta ask for what you want,” Dean looks at Cas, hoping his eyes convey that he’d bring Cas the stars if he ever asked for them.
But hoping that his eyes say it for him is something a younger, more brash Dean would do.
So, he exhales, gathers his guts up, and adds, “I’d give you the stars if you asked, sunshine. But you gotta ask.”
Cas’s face breaks into a grin that justifies the use of the nickname he used only moments ago. He kisses Dean, a soft chaste thing. Because they can do that now. The quickness of it indicates that they have all the time in the world and that makes Dean so very giddy.
“As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I think I already have everything I will ever need,” Cas says easily and he sounds absolutely content in his proclamation.
Dean’s heart warms and he grins too.
Moments pass and both of them savor the monotony of watching the green fields pass them by.
“Oh!” Cas exclaims breaking the silence and shaking Dean.
“What the fuck, man?”
“This is why Crowley used to be so fucking jealous!”
Dean feels like words are alien things that he never learned to begin with.
Cas however, unfazed by Dean’s silence, continues, “He obviously had a thing for you. And obviously, I cannot blame him. Just like I don’t blame Benny. But I quite liked Benny. Crowley though…” Cas scowls.
Dean opens his mouth and then closes it. He repeats the action two more times and then squeals, “Crowley did not have a fucking crush on me!”
“Sure, it’s not like you guys had a Flickr album together or anything… oh wait.” And Cas smirks, the smug bastard.
“That was a fucking Demon Dean adventure thing, alright?”
“Oh okay.” Cas’s sarcasm game was always very strong but Sam’s company is making him lethal. Two words and he’s breaking Dean down.
“Well, what about Balthazar, huh?” Dean counters. “That smarmy British asshat was so smitten with you; he went to war.”
“Oh, oh! We’re talking about smarmy British asshats, are we? Might I remind you of a certain Arthur Ketch, then?”
“Oh my god, fuck off! Mick used to drool over you like you were a gift from God.”
“…technically he wasn’t wrong now, was he?”
Dean can’t help it. He gives in, “Fuck no, he wasn’t.”