It had to be the sappiest fucking thing he had ever done.
If his father had been alive to even suspect it, he would have knocked Dean into next week.
Dean looked at the box, an old moving box he had filched from in front of an old lady's house on his way back to the bunker, taped down in one long, crooked strip across its middle. His heart beat a tattoo against the underside of his ribcage, and the discomfort made him want to forget the whole idea. He could toss the damn thing in a bonfire instead; he and Sam and Cas could slug beer and watch shit burn. No one would ever need to know anything about this stupid gesture.
Except that every time he looked at Cas's stupid face, he heard Ishem. The angel had lambasted Cas, ground him lower than a worm, and Cas had just taken it. "It's okay," he had said, simple, placid, forgiving. Dean gritted his teeth just remembering. He had been sitting there in the booth, wishing like hell he could punch an angel in his smug, arrogant mouth, and Castiel, garrison leader for Heaven, had not said a word for himself.
For the first time, Dean heard the whispered echoes of his own words over the years.
Damn it, Cas.
Angels are dicks.
You spineless soulless son of a bitch.
To make sure you don't do anything else stupid.
He was no better than the heavenly host he judged so harshly. He thought that a few pats on the shoulder, a proferred beverage, the open invitation to tag along in the backseat on car rides made up for his bark and on occasion, his bite.
Dean's stomach had been turning painful somersaults ever since they finished their Lily Sunder case, keeping him from forgetting his own commentary, and even though had had tried out his own kind words, they felt inadequate. Everyone knew he was a man of action, not talk.
The idea had come to him in an embarrassing dream, one that made his cheeks turn red and his body break out rosy and sweaty. It was a silly, stupid, sentimental idea.
He had told Sam and Cas he was going to see a waitress in Canton, Ohio, loaded up the Impala with a full cooler, and back-traced the story his angel had told a few years ago when he'd been human.
I had to leave everything behind at a laundromat because I had these quarters, and I realized that my pain wasn't angelic. It wasn't from falling. It was because I was human. Hungry and thirsty and exhausted. I bought sustenance.
Dean had found three laundromats in the Longmont, Colorado area and toured all of them. After talking to two surly teenagers and one cheery older woman, he had been directed to six possible thrift shops where abandoned clothes could have ended up. He visited four of them, walking a loop around the small stores, and then took a beer break, kicked up against the side of the Impala. In the fifth thrift shop, the middle-aged woman — a creature of colors, scarves, and jingly bracelets — told him she had exactly what he was looking for in the back.
When she walked out, Dean had felt stupid relief. Stupid, lousy, freakin' ridiculous relief. He had paid $16.53 in cash for it and made the long trip back to Lebanon with it riding in the passenger seat beside him. Along the way, he'd found the cardboard box so that he didn't have to answer any embarrassing questions when he got to the bunker.
And now it was three weeks later, and Castiel was back from his most recent search for Lucifer's spawn.
If Dean was too big of a coward to do it now, he was always going to remember it. Until the day he died, he would remember sitting on the edge of his bed, too gutless to follow through. He would taste this slick, thick spit in his mouth, the tightness in his throat that made it hard to swallow. He was terrified.
He'd be terrified until he quit. Like every single time before this one where he had ever even let himself think about the stuff burrowed this deep in his chest.
He quit every time.
Not this time.
He stood up and stalked his way back out to the center of the bunker. Sam was kicked back in one of the comfier leather chairs, a laptop balanced on his legs. The sounds of Game of Thrones floated across the room. Dean wondered when Sam had found the time to finish the books. Castiel sat at the table, turning a piece of parchment, scanning it with eyes squinted until crow's feet appeared around them.
"Hey Cas, you got a minute?" The words crawled their way out of his throat, sticking little feet into the soft flesh along the way. He coughed to disguise his difficulty.
Cas looked up and tilted his head. "Of course."
Over Cas's head, Dean met Sam's lifted gaze, and he'd be damned if Sam — who had no way of knowing — didn't give him a knowing look.
Dean turned and started down the hall, feeling Cas get up behind him and follow. When they turned the corner into the bedroom, Dean's insides clenched so hard he nearly farted. The urge to quit this idea, brush it off for something easier, buckled his knees, but when he turned back around to look at Castiel, he caught hold of the urge and forced it down.
Cas was all gentle concern and patience as he looked at him. Dean knew he could stand there in silence for fifteen more minutes, and Cas wouldn't rush him or get frustrated. In a million ways, he was Castiel, angel of the lord, but in all the ones that mattered to Dean, he was just Cas.
"Listen, buddy, I wanted to talk to you about something."
"I'll listen."
Dean swallowed hard. "Angels have had it tough. Metatron shot everyone out of Heaven, absent father's let the place cycle through a lot of hands, no wings, a little grace. I'm going to assume that's why Ishem and company were being such dicks."
"I am not well-liked in Heaven these days." Cas narrowed his eyes, the impossible blue shifting to grey under the shadow of his lashes.
"See, that's the thing. I know you think you've fallen. I've heard that word a lot. That you're not the same warrior you were, that you're weak."
They stared at one another over the space between them, three feet of unused distance, and Dean knew it was his turn to keep talking, to keep pushing the ball he had started rolling.
"And I was thinking about that. I don't want you to think I see it that way." He wished he had practiced what he was going to say; instead, he had only thought as far as getting brave enough to talk in the first place. Now he paused again, choosing silence over fumbling. "I don't want you to think I've gotten used to you."
"I don't understand."
Dean scrubbed his hand over his face. "You're still a badass, Cas. You healed an angel with your bare hands. You saved all of us. You've saved me more times than I can count." He paused again, not because he didn't know what to say next but because for once, he was entirely certain. "You pulled me out of Hell. I thought I'd never see anything again, never be me again, and I've gotten another decade out of life. You're not weak. I have a handful of heroes: Bobby Singer, my brother… and you."
He moved fast, before Cas could respond, and grabbed the box off the desk. He shoved it roughly into Cas's arms. A normal human would have walked over to the bed or desk, set the box down, and tugged at the tape. Instead Cas balanced the box on one arm and ripped the tape up with the other hand. Dean tried to tell himself it was his stomach clenching tightly, but even he didn't believe it; it was his heart that betrayed him right now.
Castiel looked into the box, and his face changed. The confusion disappeared, the fine lines of the face's planes smoothed out, and the flat line of the mouth — what had been a curveless but pleasant expression — tilted up into a smile. He lifted the pale beige trench coat, so carefully folded, out of the battered cardboard. Dean had no doubt it was the right one; Cas's smile said enough.
"Where did you get this?" Castiel asked. His voice pitched half an octave higher than usual, and it touched Dean's heart like a cool hand on a feverish cheek, soothing the tightness in his chest.
What surprised him was the heightened pitch of his own voice when he answered.
"I drove to Colorado. Went to laundromats and thrift shops until I found it."
"I lost it when I was human."
"Cas, man, you were never human."
Cas accepted the correction. "When I lost my grace then."
Dean motioned to the trench coat. "Try it back on."
Cas nodded, put down the cardboard box, and unfolded the coat. He shrugged his way out of the tan one that had become his new trademark and handed it to Dean. Dean tossed it on the bed, unable to turn his eyes away from Cas. He put on a coat just like anyone else, one arm into each sleeve, a roll of the shoulders to settle the fabric down onto the body.
And yet when he looked up, Dean saw sparks flying around the spread of tremendous shadowy wings, a memory superimposing itself over the present moment, the original vision of Castiel rejoining the wingless warrior he was now. He spread his arms wide, waiting for approval. Dean very much approved.
He didn't say that.
"It still fits," he said.
"I'm an angel. Of course it still fits. I don't change."
Between them, floating in the air around their spoken words, were a thousand unspoken. This time, Castiel pushed the ball forward once more.
"Dean, we have faced death many times. We have said our goodbyes. Why are you doing this now?"
"Because I've been a coward too long." Dean stepped forward into the distance between them, rupturing the bubble of personal space he had cultivated for years. He reached up with his right hand, placed his palm against the perpetual stubble, kept it there even as Cas startled at the touch. He could feel the angel's breath on his mouth, the hitches in both of their breathing in the shared space. Cas smelled like salt water, new mown grass, and mountain air, nothing like a human, nothing like anything else he had ever smelled. Dean smiled shakily.
"Have I read this wrong?" Dean's voice had the softness of a whisper.
Castiel's heart jumped so hard Dean could feel it through the hand on his cheek. "Are you going to kiss me?"
Dean felt his smile steady. "Do you want me to?"
Cas did not answer with words. Instead, he reached out to catch a fistful of Dean's plaid shirt and pull him in hard enough to throw him off balance. Cas's mouth, warm and gentle, opened for Dean, who tasted it hungrily. The entire world roared in his ears as he gave in to all the desires he had not admitted to himself. Desires from his dreams, stifled away in subconsciousness, led him now. He gripped the hard, sinewy muscle of Cas's shoulder, ran his thumb along the strong angle of the stubbled jaw, and licked the hot inner curve of his upper lip.
When Cas let go of his shirt and shuddered closer to him… Dean had to step back to keep from throwing him on the bed. He didn't want to go there, even suggest there, not right now. He pulled Cas in again, not to a kiss but to a hug.
Dean held him there, smelled his scent, felt his warmth, wondered his thoughts. He ran his thumb along the lapel of the trench coat and worried that even the homecoming of an old coat and the newness of a first kiss were not enough, had not said enough of what he wanted Cas to know.
Cas spoke against Dean's shoulder:
"Now I will have to find your leather jacket for you, so that you will understand I feel the same way."
Dean smiled.