[Author's Note: The poems are both by Pablo Neruda, "A Song of Despair" and "If You Forget Me". The title comes from the latter. ]
When Dean tells Castiel he doesn't like poetry - especially the incredibly boring poetry Dr. Crowley, his lit elective professor, has them reading for class - Cas gives him a look. Half-disappointed, half-disbelieving.
"You can't have read much poetry then, Dean. The classics are-" Dean cuts him off with a kiss, heated and full of tongue, and Castiel is momentarily distracted, hands clutching at Dean's jacket and pulling him closer before they break apart, panting softly. It's a good thing Cas's office has a door that locks.
"-boring, that's what they are." He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I know, Doctor Novak, poems can be full of subtle nuances and beautiful imagery and all that. But I still don't like poetry. And did you just accuse me of being uncultured? I am very cultured, thank you."
Cas straightens his clothes, rumpled from Dean's hands, then gives him a considering look. The kind of look that had made Dean notice him on his first day three and a half years ago, coming to college for the first time. At twenty-four, finally able to afford college after years of work as a mechanic, he had been awkwardly older than his classmates. That stare had caught him even through the crowd of nervous eighteen-year-olds. "Maybe you just haven't found the right kind of poetry, then."
Dean kisses him again, then slips his backpack back on and heads towards the door. "It's probably a good thing you never had me in any of your classes. I don't think even you can make me like poetry, Cas."
"Is that a challenge, Dean?" Cas's eyes are bright blue, playful and fond. This thing they have, it's good, Dean thinks. Even if they have to keep it hushed up for another month or two. Cas is only five years older than him and he's never had Dean as a student, but teachers and students seeing each other isn't exactly encouraged regardless. So they sneak quick kisses in Cas's office when he isn't teaching and Dean isn't in class, and wait until classes are over for Dean to drive over to Cas's house so they can make dinner together and fuck in Cas's enormous king-sized bed and sleep wrapped around each other, all haphazard limbs and faces scruffy with stubble pressed to bare shoulders.
Yeah, these have definitely been a good eight months.
"Maybe, Cas. See you tonight." He winks as he leaves for class.
Dean's helping wash the dishes after dinner when Cas wraps soapy hands around his waist from behind. They'd made scalloped potatoes and ham, one of Dean's signature dishes. It feels comfortably domestic, washing dishes together on a warm May night while insects chirp outside of the open window and the breeze rustles the leaves outside in the twilight.
Cas's breath tickles his ear as he murmurs,
"The memory of you emerges from the night around me,
the river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn, it is the hour of departure."
Dean stops drying his hands, swallowing thickly as he turns slowly to Cas. "Trying with the poetry?"
"It's Pablo Neruda. One of my favorites," Castiel murmurs as he kisses Dean softly as his thumbs rub over the jut of Dean's hipbones.
In between the soft press of lips, he continues.
"In you the wars and the flights accumulated,
from you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank."
Dean sighs, closing his eyes and relaxing against him. "I think anything would sound that good if you say it like that."
Castiel just smiles and lets his lips brush the skin below Dean's ear, then ghosts gentle kisses along his jaw.
"Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms."
When they fall into bed, Cas takes Dean apart with teeth and lips and fingers and words, whispered to the curve of his hip, the soft skin of his stomach, the rough grip of his calloused hands, the arch of his neck as he cries out in a sob that makes Castiel's name sound holy, like he's the angel he's named for.
As they cling to each other, fast fading into sleep, Castiel kisses the back of Dean's neck and pulls him closer so that not even an inch separates Dean's back from his front, and in a voice rough with the nearness of sleep and the sounds Dean had wrung out of him in turn, he murmurs,
"And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank."
And Dean rolls over to kiss him, sweet and slow in the dark.
Dean's classes and increasing load of end-of-semester homework keep him away for a few days. Other than brief text messages, Castiel doesn't hear from him until he slips into Cas's office. It's hours after the rest of the students and faculty have gone home, and Cas is grading papers in the dim yellow light. He's surprised to see Dean, who said he would be studying.
Dean locks the door and comes over to the desk, pushing Cas's chair away so he can kneel between his thighs. Castiel manages a noise of protest before Dean leans forward, resting his hands on the armrests as he lets his lips just brush Cas's in a teasing touch, barely a kiss. His eyes are verdant and alive in the lamp light, and he lets his tongue trail up the curve of Cas's ear before he whispers,
"If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart
where I have roots,
remember that on that day, at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But if each day, each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me,
my love, my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine."