A/N: This is an idea that's been swimming around in my head for a long time. Enjoy!
Cas likes drinking with Dean—just to two of them with the road sprawled out before them and the liquor hot on his tongue. It takes more to get him drunk than the Winchesters can afford, but he likes the heat of it. He likes how, after a few bottles, he starts to feel warm and the rougher of Dean's edges start to soften. He likes the way Dean's eyes lose their sharp edge of hard focus and shift so something almost peaceful.
He likes it here, sitting on the hood of impala on nights like these. They talk, more than they get to under other circumstances. And the liquor—or maybe the atmosphere—relaxes Dean, until he's a little less the hunter and a little more the man.
Tonight, they really haven't said much of anything; they haven't needed to. The company is comfort enough. Cas nurses his beer while Dean rifles through his pockets until his finds a cigarette. He fumbles with the lighter and Cas turns to look at him, surprised.
"I didn't realize that you smoked."
Dean looks down at the cigarette as though he's just been made aware of it.
"Oh." He says. His gruff voice sounds unusually small out in the open air. "I uh—I started after Sammy died, you know. I just needed something to do with my hands." He stops long enough to take a deep drag. "Used to be worse, but I let up for Ben's sake. Still haven't said anything to Sammy." He stops to laugh at himself. "Hell, he can probably smell it on me." Turning his head up, consulting the sky, he says, "Things got bad there, for a while."
Castiel lets the silence sit between them, untouched, while he looks for the words to form his thoughts.
"The relationship between you and Sam—it's not traditional of brothers, is it?"
Dean lets out a laugh, but it's clipped and sharp and Cas can hear the danger in it. "Since when has anything about us been traditional?" Dean downs more of his beer and thumbs the ashes from his cigarette, looking anywhere but at Cas—the ground, the sky, his feet. He sits forward and every angle of his body is a dare: every muscle taut and expectant. "So, I guess now is when I get the speech about what abominations we are, right? About how we're a blasphemy and disgusting in the eyes of God or whatever the fuck you think of us, huh?" When he does finally turn to look at Cas, his eyes are hardened.
Cas looks at him, silent for only a moment.
"I think it's beautiful."
Dean blinks in surprise. "You… you what?"
Now it is Cas's turn to avoid Dean's eyes—to fiddle with his fingers and roll the sweaty beer bottle between his palms. The words do not come easy. "Love is… love—of your kind—is not something in abundance in heaven. It is not… it is not something we are encouraged to feel. Angels do not fall in love. We… aren't allowed."
Dean's eyebrows knit together. "But you feel."
"I'm not… certain. I have felt jealous of the lovers I have seen—I have wished to understand the bond that they share but things in heaven are not like they are here. We do not have that freedom."
Dean can't say what exactly it is that makes him to it, but he reaches out to cradle Cas's cheek in his palm—stares at him and tries to come to terms with what he's going to do, with why. But he doesn't know why. If anything, he knows all the reasons why he shouldn't. But there's a need buried behind this. One that has nothing to do with Cas, one that has everything to do with Cas. But mostly, it all has to do with himself.
He kisses Cas like he means it—something solid and unwavering and almost soft. A kind of love he's unfamiliar with, even with Sam. Because what they have is something that comes from being two parts of a whole: a pair in complete synchronization with one another. There's no effort or thought to the way they work, it just happens.
Cas is different. He kisses Cas and he's so uncertain—nervous, like a teenager. Light, lost. Because Cas is something so pure and untaintable. A literal, honest-to-god angel, for christ's sake. Just touching him brings on a kind of conflicted agony in his chest.
On the one hand, he feels like the corruptor: the villain, the unclean bringing sin upon the sinless.
On the other hand, when he hears Cas's breath hitch, when he feels the angel shift beneath his fingers and lean into the touch, when he feels Cas's lips pressing back—he feels absolved. He feels blessed. He feels the closest to reverent that he's ever gotten in his entire life.
Then it's all he can do to drag Cas closer and hold him in both his arms and get lost in him. The angel's arms wrap around his body and for a moment—just a moment—his skin feels on fire: a white, golden heat that wraps him up and cradles him.
It's a long time before they pull apart. Dean finds it strangely difficult to pull away. It's made worse by the fact that the space between them leaves room for too many uncomfortable questions. Eventually, the feeble dam has to break.
"Sam-" Cas starts, but he never finishes. Dean shakes his head.
"He'll be okay with it." Dean stops, suddenly not so sure of himself. "I think he will. We—both of us have seen people, even though... it's complicated."
Cas looks at him, full of questions he doesn't have any idea how to ask, filled with thoughts he has never before allowed himself to have.
After a long expanse of struggling with his words, Cas says, "I don't know what this is. I am—unfamiliar with this feeling."
"That makes two of us."
"What happens, now?"
"Hell—I wish I knew. I've got no idea."
Cas looks Dean over a moment before taking the man's hand. Dean looks down, surprised.
"This is what you are supposed to do, isn't it?"
Dean chuckles to himself. "Yeah, I guess."
FIN
A/N: To be honest, I'm not quite sure I like the ending, but I've been working on this for entirely too long and I just wanted to get it posted. Let me know what you think!