A/N: Title is taken from the song of the same name by The Offspring. Written for the LiveJournal community spn_teamfic's latest challenge, using the following prompt :- "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde
Session.
Dean had been in the Green Room in Heaven for hours. He was bored out of his mind; had too much time in which to spend in thought. He couldn't take much more of it - either the boredom or the thinking. Focussing too much on his own thoughts, memories, was like spending time in his own personal Hell.
So Dean had resorted to drinking the beer left behind by the angel Zachariah, after first lining his stomach with a burger or three. After almost an hour of near solid drinking, Dean was suitably numb, sitting in the corner of the room and staring off into space, still swigging mindlessly from the almost empty bottle he held between slightly numb fingers.
"Don't you think you've had enough, Dean?" Zachariah asked, making Dean start violently at the suddenness of his arrival, almost spilling what was left of his beer onto his jeans.
"I'll decide when I've had enough, Zach," Dean told the angel, words only slightly slurred as he struggled to his feet unsteadily.
"Why? Why do humans find it necessary to drink to the point of falling down?" Zachariah asked, watching the hunter as he continued to struggle to stand, finally managing it, to sway unsteadily upon heavily booted feet.
"Humans do it to forget," Dean replied, sadly.
"And what is it you have got to forget?" Zachariah asked next, with open curiosity, as he walked over to stand in front of Dean.
The hunter peered into the angel's face, blinking owlishly at him, trying to focus on Zachariah's slightly smug expression.
"Why the hell should I tell you?" Dean asked, before shaking his head. "Nah screw it, it's because of him, isn't it? I can't get him out of my head, can't stop thinking about him. It's like a curse that I can't out run. I don't even know if I want to any more. Out-run him that is."
"Who? Who is it you're talking about, Dean? Your brother? He can't be saved, you know that," Zachariah said, gently, in what was very nearly kindness in the normally prickly angel.
"No, not Sam, I don't mean Sam. I mean, him. Castiel," Dean said, staggering away to retrieve another beer from the ice bucket on the table.
"What do you mean?" Zachariah asked, a glimmer coming into his eyes that Dean didn't see.
"Castiel is everything, he surrounds me. I can't - I don't know when this began, Zach. All I know is that it just did. Every day, every week, it's the same thing - waiting for Cas to arrive, Cas to come back to me. It's just like a - what is it again?" Dean asked, squinting at Zachariah unsteadily.
"Rendezvous," Zachariah supplied, absently.
"That's it. What you said. I just wish they wouldn't end, you know? I don't know how long they'll last - my moments with Cas, I mean - but they're never long enough," Dean said, staring off into space, at an internal memory of Castiel.
He pictured the way that the angel looked, of the way that he stared at Dean sometimes when he thought the hunter wasn't looking, of fleeting words meant only for him, of many moments when Dean wished he could just kiss the angel, yet wanted so much more from him.
"I know where I'll always be, I'll always wait for him, will always be where he is. I just keep wanting him to come back for more,," Dean confessed to Zachariah softly. "I don't know what to do, any more, Zach. He's really got a hold on me, and I'm not even sure he knows just how much."
"So what is this? A confession?" the angel asked, giving Dean one of his scarily direct gazes, that seemed to look deep within a person's soul, that was so like Castiel's, yet was nothing like him at all.
Castiel's glances were gentle, loving, kind, when he hadn't been ordered to do otherwise, while Zachariah's glances were arrogant, self satisfied, almost cruel with no deviation at all.
"This is my confession," Dean said, before he started to laugh. "Never thought I'd make a confession, least of all to a freaking angel."
"I fail to see why this is so funny, Dean," Zachariah said, looking true to his word, unamused.
"Yes, but you're not drunk," Dean remarked, suddenly seeming more sober in that one instant than he'd been for a while now. "You should try being drunk. It loosens you up."
"I think I'll pass. Drunkenness is merely a mask that humans hide behind to mask their pain. They think they're hiding their true selves, yet that's when the truth really comes out, because they're more vulnerable," Zachariah said.
"Tell that to the judge," Dean said, raising his next beer bottle in a salute to the angel. "I'll just plead I'm wearing a mask next time I'm arrested for being drunk and disorderly on the streets."
Zachariah looked over to Dean's left, gave a triumphant little smile, before he turned back to the hunter, who had taken another pull on his bottle, grimacing slightly at the bitter after taste of the beer inside.
"I think my time here is over. I'll leave you now to have it out with the Castiel," he said.
"Wait, what? What do you mean? Cas isn't here," Dean spluttered, eyes growing large in his head at the angel's words.
"Hello, Dean," said a voice behind the hunter, soft yet gruff at the same time - a tone that only Castiel could do.
Goosebumps stood out upon Dean's skin, and he turned slowly to face Castiel, standing behind him, intense look upon his face.
His eyes were as blue as Dean remembered them, warmth trapped deep within them, kindness, and almost amusement.
Dean turned sharply, but Zachariah had already gone. The hunter would bet his last beer that the smug faced son of a bitch was laughing at him somewhere. He wouldn't have put it past him to have set this whole thing up.
"Cas," Dean croaked out, wondering just what the hell he was supposed to say to the angel whom he'd just spilled his love for. "Cas, I'm sorry."
"For what? It is only natural that you'd be attracted to this form after all," Castiel said, with a small bow in Dean's direction that the hunter had never seen him give before. "He is a nice vessel, isn't he?"
"Yes," Dean said, still staring helplessly wide eyed at the angel before him, before deciding just to go the whole hog and admit to how he really felt.
It wasn't as if Castiel had heard anything else of what Dean had said previously, after all.
"But it's you that I love," Dean finished of his own sentence in a rush.
"And I you, Dean," Castiel said, looking a little surprised at his own admission.
He smiled slightly but still met Dean's gaze head on, eyes unblinkingly honest and direct.
Dean muttered a soft - "Screw it!" - beneath his breath, before he placed his partly drunk beer upon the table, before heading over to Castiel, who was waiting patiently for him. The angel did not protest when Dean pressed lips to Castiel's own, hands resting lightly on the hunter's hips, as Castiel full lips caught Dean's in a warmth filled kiss.
Dean broke away from the angel before apologizing again.
"I'm sorry, Cas, I'm drunk," he said.
"But I'm not. I still responded. Does this mean you regret it?" Castiel asked, head tilted to one side, confused smile touching his lips as he tried to understand.
Dean blinked, then he grinned.
"That's right. You're not! I guess that means I don't regret it," he said, smile still touching his lips, his eyes, making them warmer, though still slightly dazed with beer and Castiel.
He leant in for another kiss, receiving one, Castiel moaning slightly at the contact, shifting slightly against Dean as the y kissed. Again, Dean was the first to break away, to lean his forehead against Castiel's shoulder, before sudden snores filled the air. Castiel's slender fingers stroked Dean's head gently, before he gently laid Dean down upon a couch by the wall. He cushioned Dean's head in his lap, to wait patiently, endlessly, just as he always had, waiting for Dean to wake up in the morning.
He was still there, when Dean's eyes fluttered open, blinking blearily in the light, before focussing on Castiel's placid face. He winced slightly at the hangover dragging at the corners of his eyes, gripping his head in its tight embrace, before Castiel soothed away the pain with a gentle press of his fingers to Dean's forehead.
"Thank you," Dean said, quietly. "Next time I go on a bender, you're gonna have to come with me. You're the best damn hangover cure I've ever known."
Castiel smiled at that, before gently toying with strands of Dean's hair laying listlessly upon the hunter's forehead. Dean didn't protest, just settled down further into Castiel's lap, blinking up at the ceiling, stealing glances at the angel upon occasion.
Every time, he met Castiel's steady blue gaze, unflinching, unwavering, unapologetic in their intensity.
"I know what I said last night, Cas. I'm not gonna apologize for it, if that's what you're waiting for," he said, gruffly.
"I didn't ask you to," came Castiel's immediate response.
"Good, because I really wanted to do this again," Dean said, raising himself up on his elbows, to steal another kiss from Castiel's willing lips ....
fin
