It happens when you're alone with him in one of your usual cheap motel rooms. Cas just finished speaking, you finished speaking, but when his eyes lock with yours, that's all that matters. His eyes are intense and you can't look away. You find it harder and harder every time to look away.
This time Castiel is much closer than usual. You aren't just staring into his eyes-you can see the individual flecks of color in the irises, you can count his eyelashes. You can see the detail of the perpetual stubble growing in above his lip and on his chin.
You can feel his breath on your lips and you wonder if that should bother you, but it doesn't.
In your chest, you can feel your heart racing, adrenaline pumping, but you're frozen to the spot, watching those eyes stare into yours, waiting for him to vanish from the room, for those eyes to vanish from your sight and release you from the strange hold he has on you.
When the eyes do vanish, it's not because Castiel is gone. His eyes simply close, and you're still frozen in place because now... he leans up and kisses you and his lips are soft and warm and your heart is throbbing and you think maybe you're kissing him back but you can't tell and you're not even sure you want to know if you are so maybe it's best not to think about it, so you don't.
So instead you focus on the gentle, unsure way his lips are moving subtly against your mouth, as if he's not sure what he's doing, and you focus on the way his hand feels against your face when he reaches up to brush your cheek. His fingers are gentle against your skin, the skin on his fingers soft and smooth as he touches you and it's almost unexpected. They're... the hands of a white collar worker, soft hands used for typing and writing and dialing phones... They're not your hands, the hands of a hunter. They're not your brother's hands.
They're not your father's hands.
You remember your father's hands. In the precious, rare times he showed you affection, you can remember the way his hands felt on your cheek, the skin that was rough to the touch, hard and calloused from the weapons he used to save lives, to destroy evil. The dry cracks in his fingers would snag as his hand mussed your short hair. You could remember the sharp grip of his hand when he'd grab you by the wrist to pull you out of the way of some monster.
And you remember the bruises those hands could leave when the man behind them was the exact right combination of frustrated and drunk.
But that was years ago, a lifetime ago, and you aren't thinking about that now. Cas is still kissing you and you should think about that, even if you're afraid to think about it too much, afraid to talk yourself out of it because Cas's lips are perfect and you're almost definitely kissing him back now, your hands are on his shoulders, and the kiss is soft and sweet and tame, but you can feel that Cas is holding back and you start to wonder, start to think about whether or not you want him to, thinking about what might happen if you both just let go and give in to something more than this restrained expression of relief and passion and love and...
And...
And then you wonder what your father would think about this.
Nothing could make you break the kiss faster. Your heart goes ice cold and your hands push lightly at Cas's shoulders. The angel doesn't hesitate to release you, taking a step back. You manage to catch one glimpse of the regret and sadness and the need for forgiveness on his face before you can't manage to look right at him. He hasn't done anything wrong, but you don't know how to tell him that. His heart is breaking, you can see that in his eyes, and you can feel his pain tugging at your soul, but you don't know how to tell him that. You don't know how to explain what's wrong, or why he's not wrong, why he hasn't hurt you, or it's not his fault, because you're the one that's weak, after all. You've always been the weak one and this is your fault somehow. He feels sorry, but it's your fault and you should at least be able to tell him he didn't hurt you, because he didn't.
But you can't.
He vanishes from the room before you can manage to say a goddamn thing and you... you sigh and undress and go to get a shower because you don't know what the hell to think anymore.