The fog on the mirror was a thick velvety frost; Cas wiped it away, but the steam in the bathroom obscured the trails his fingers made nearly as soon as they left the glass. Cas left it; he liked the indistinct impression of his reflection, a dark blur among the white. He hummed softly to himself as he carded his fingers through his hair, longer now than it had been when he Fell, prone to unruliness and sometimes ringlets at the back of his neck as it dried. Dean had flicked at these once, making some remark about mullets and finding a barber, but by the way Dean had looked pointedly at Sam at the latter half of the statement, Cas suspected that the remark had not been entirely for him.
Cas liked showers. He liked standing with his eyes closed under the hot spray, as hot as he could make it, mentally following the sensation of the water pounding at the crown of his head, joining in rivulets running down his back and legs before joining the pool at his feet. He liked the pink flush of his skin as he stepped out. He liked the plush of the fresh towel as he pressed it to his face, deeply inhaling the scent of fresh linen. He liked letting the water drip off him in the steamy bathroom, listening to his tuneless humming bounce off the tiles in a belated answering echo.
At night, while the boys were asleep, he would indulge himself in all the hot water the Bunker's prodigious water heater would allow, sometimes letting the water run out entirely just for the sensation of standing under the freezing cascade with goosebumps and shallow gasps for the few seconds he could bear it before jumping out. On occasion he would turn the showerhead to its massage setting and let it beat at his shoulders, where the muscles that remembered wings ached with the loss.
Dean was awake when Cas wandered into the kitchen in his bathrobe, hair beginning to drip again despite its vigorous rub with a towel. "If we had a water bill, I'd yell at you," Dean said before lifting the bottle of beer to his lips.
Cas had tried to explain to Dean about showers, but Dean already knew too much about showers. They were dull, matter-of-fact, a chore to fit in between sleeps. Showers were so indoctrinated into Dean's life that he'd never had the wonder of discovery. Cas had once suggested that they take a shower together so he could better explain, not realizing that he was breaking dozens of taboos - masculinity, nakedness, sexuality, and countless others that were so easy to list but difficult to fathom or explain - and he had since given up trying to explain.
Instead, Cas merely shrugged. "I like showers," he said simply. It was a simple truth, after all, and since being human was a maze of convoluted truths twined about themselves in a tangled mass, the simple truths were worth stating, because they could be.
Dean shrugged in response; Cas watched his shoulders rise and fall beneath the cotton of his shirt. "Whatever floats your boat. 'Night." He left the kitchen and Cas turned to watch him go, disappearing around the corner into the hallway that led to the bedrooms.
Now that was a complicated truth, one that transcended words. Cas had never had occasion to form a sexual identity; in an angel's true form it was irrelevant, and within a vessel such a thing would have been distracting. But so many sparks were falling amongst the tinder and smoldering that Cas did not have to smell the smoke to know the truth: Cas liked Dean.
What should have been a simple truth grew more complicated every time he tried to do something about it; it caught at his tongue whenever he tried to say anything, gripped at his chest whenever he tried to act. And so it remained buried, smoldering in hot tendrils, ready to burst into flame at the slightest provocation - and Cas didn't have the faintest idea of what he might do when it did.
Best to just stick to the simple truths, then, and leave untangling the difficult truths to the ones who had been human for longer than he. Maybe someday he would understand showers too well, and then he could tackle the tempest that rose within him when he looked at Dean, the complicated truth made easier by its layered simple truths that he finally understood.
Cas liked showers. For now, that was good enough.