A/N: Hello, my readers! I'm just about to start finals week over here, so I've been holding off writing anything time-consuming. However, after awhile I just needed a break from life and I ended up writing this one-shot. It's short and AU, but hopefully you'll like it.

Since it's so short, I don't spend a lot of time setting the scene. Here's what's going on: Dean and Cas are detectives working on a complex case involving organized crime, multiple homicides, etc. Dean works for the city police and Cas is a freelance investigator who's been hired as a consultant to get around some... ethically sticky situations. They've been investigating for months, but things are coming to a head both in the investigation and between them, and in an unrelated incident, Dean's chief Bobby was just killed. This is the night after they get the news.

Enjoy. Please review and let me know what you think.

The office is dark when Castiel arrives. Almost everyone has gone home, so he could only be here to talk to one person. The one man who won't go home, hunched over, a glass tumbler in his hand. Castiel strides over to him. "Dean."

"Fuck off," Dean says, closing his eyes and throwing back the last dregs of his scotch. Mostly water, at this point, after the ice melted.

Castiel frowns. "I have another lead, one that could –"

"Not tonight, Cas." He rubs his eyes and sighs wearily. "Not tonight. I just lost my chief, so… I'm taking a break, alright?"

Cas's frown deepens, sharpened by the darkness of the office and the light shone by Dean's lamp. "Then why are you still at your desk?"

Dean loosens his tie and pours more scotch into his glass.

"Answer me, Winchester." Castiel's voice is cold and harsh. "I'd like to know."

Dean leans back in his chair and kicks his feet up, takes a long, slow sip of his scotch, winces at the heavy oak burn down his throat.

And suddenly Cas is at his side, knocking his feet off the desk and slapping a folder there. "This is a shipping manifest from last Friday that lists Prudhoe's– "

Dean stands up and shoves Cas back. "I said fuck off!" he shouts, fleck of spittle flying from his lips."What part of that don't you fucking understand?"

And Cas twists his face tight and cranks his arm back, and in one violent movement his fist connects with Dean's eye.

The world bursts in purple stars and Dean's halfway fallen the other way, clutching the desk, his chair knocked aside and spinning aimlessly. The lamp has fallen on the floor, and it shines its beam across the room, leaving them in a dim amber glow.

"Fuck!" Dean groans.

"There are people depending on you," Castiel growls. "Real, human people. They have lives and families and loved ones at stake. It is your duty to defend them."

"Give me a fucking break," Dean gasps, almost laughing. "Spare me the fucking lectu-"

"No." Cas's face is black and steely. "I will spare you nothing. I expected more from you."

Dean slowly straightens himself, still grasping the desk with white knuckles. "Bobby, Cas. It was Bobby. He was like… like a father to me…"

"I know you are grieving." He stands there stiffly, his arms hanging at his side. "We are all. Grieving." He looks Dean in the eye. "But we can't afford to lick our wounds. Prudhoe doesn't give a shit about our grief."

"Our grief." Dean smiles bitterly. "Ours."

Cas's jaw sets firmly. "Yes."

A moment of silence passes.

Dean touches his eye and winces, his skin throbbing. "You punched me."

Cas steps forward. "I'm sorry, I –"

"It's okay," Dean says, leaning toward him. "I pushed you."

He reaches out and gently tilts Dean's chin up, angling his face toward the light, peering at the bruise. "I lost control…" He touches his fingertips gingerly to the corner of Dean's eye.

Dean finds himself strangely aware of the sound of his own breathing, and the sting of Cas's fingers on his skin, and he watches Cas's face as he examines Dean's, and then there's a fluid moment when Cas's eyes slide over and lock with his own.

The corner of Dean's mouth twitches, and he cracks a weak smile, even though it hurts. "Well. You know. At least you hit like a girl."

And Cas's hand drops softly from Dean's face, and he doesn't smile, not anything close, but his worried brow relaxes. "It was unprofessional."

Without thinking Dean says, "I don't give a flying fuck about professional."

Cas freezes, and then swallows.

He turns back to the folder on Dean's desk. "This is the shipping manifest with Prudhoe's cargo."

"Did you hear me?" Dean asks, grabbing a hold of his sleeve. "I said I don't give a fuck about professionalism."

"I believe it was a 'flying fuck'," Cas corrects dryly. "And that doesn't change anything. We have work to do."

"But Cas," Dean says, a note of desperation leaking into his voice. "I'm trying to tell you…"

Cas bows his head. "What, Dean?" he asks quietly.

Dean's mouth is dry, and all the words are gone. He struggles for a moment, then tries. "It's just… I think that I… losing Bobby, I realized that… there are things that matter, and things that don't… and you're one of the things. That matters."

Cas's hand is on the papers, splayed out across the desk. He says nothing for a long time.

Dean can feel his heartbeat around his mouth.

Finally, he presses his palms flat, down into the desk. "It's like I said, Dean. We don't have time. To grieve, to reflect, to love…"

Dean's stomach clenches tight.

"Until we finish this case…" He sighs softly. "We don't have to time for anything of our own." He picks up the shipping manifest.

Dean walks to where his chair has slowly drifted, and sits down. It's nearer to the lamp, a little brighter, the shadows deeper.

"As you can see…" Castiel turns back to him, pointing to an item on the manifest, "Prudhoe's cargo arrived two hours before Lowell came to pick it up –"

"When." Dean can still feel the scotch burning in this throat.

"Eight fifteen, whi-"

"No." Dean closes his eyes. "I mean, when are we going to have the time?"

Cas doesn't answer.

"Every day there'll be something." Dean slides his hands down to his knees. "It's our job. It's what we do."

He can hear the creak of the desk, and when he opens his eyes Cas has sat on the edge of it, staring at Dean, his face unreadable.

"There's nothing we can do tonight without a warrant." Dean leans back in his chair. "Can't we just... take one night for ourselves? One goddamn night?"

Cas doesn't say anything for a while, just gazes at him.

Then eventually he says, "Your eye is bruising."

Dean reaches up to touch it and winces. "Well, you did punch me."

Castiel looks away, into the darkness of the rest of the office. "And yet you've forgotten it, somehow. So quickly."

Dean stands up from his chair. "I didn't forget. I just don't care."

And suddenly those sharp blue eyes cut at him. "You should."

Dean's feet move forward, almost hypnotized, almost involuntary. "Why? I provoked you. I was out of line. It's not the first time."

Cas's mouth presses tight, and his eyebrows knot together, and his eyes are large and sad. "Doesn't it bother you, Dean, how easily we hurt each other?"

And Dean reaches out and puts his hand to Cas's arm, doesn't quite look him in the eye but looks at his collar. "I guess it should," he admits. "We're always fighting, always pushing back at each other. But sometimes I think… we're just pushing so hard because…."

He moves his hand up to the knot of Cas's tie, watches his adam's apple bob just above it. And then he looks up to Cas's eyes.

Cas stares back, transfixed.

Dean's voice drops as he says, "… we're hoping we'll finally break."

They hold eyes, locked in the moment, taut and pulled tense like a wire.

And then with an almost audible crack the invisible dam in the universe snaps open and the flood comes crashing down, and they kiss and gasp and cling to each other because they are about to be washed away completely, and Dean grabs so tightly and won't let go, won't ever stop, his body flush to Cas's and his mouth all over him and his arms around him, because the water is rushing, pummeling down and he knows the second it lets up it will yank them apart and smash him against the rocks and tonight, just for tonight, he can hold on.