The outside world was shut out with a metallic creak, and the sudden lack of rain battering him from all angles was somewhat jarring. As was the odd muffled atmosphere, made more so by the cushioning of the tatty old blanket he was sitting on. The rain still made itself known, in the way it drummed incessantly on the roof and spilled waterfalls over all of the windows, blurring the view of the street.
Dean slid into the driver's seat, glanced sideways once, and then stared out of the windscreen. The atmosphere abruptly sharpened, and they were back to business.
"I don't exactly make a habit of dragging guys into my room to molest them, you know." He started, like Castiel had accused him of doing exactly that. He had to admit it wasn't far from some of the scenarios that had crossed his mind.
Dean continued after a pause, his voice tightening with frustration. "I'm tr-… I'm not good at… I was just trying to show you. Yeah, okay, maybe I came off as douchey but I was freaking out…" He let out a short groan. "I mean, not like that. Feelings, dude. You know I suck at them… I thought maybe it was just that. At first. But it was never the same. It's just you, you ass."
Castiel bristled. This must be Dean's way of telling him that his feelings weren't reciprocated; that it was just him who felt like this.
No… that didn't fit.
He was listening, really; but the information wasn't soaking in quite as well as the rainwater was. He barely understood half of what Dean was telling him, and even that was guesswork. But it sounded… Well he definitely wasn't laughing at him again.
He turned to meet his gaze, and he looked annoyed; desperate to understand. "Cas, I know all this is really What The Fuck and everything, but if you liked it and don't care about the guy thing, I don't know what the problem is." He pushed a hand into his wet hair so it stuck up at the front. "You have to talk to me, man."
It was never the same. Castiel knew what that would have meant if he had said it, but he was having trouble believing the same thing of Dean.
There had been people in the past that Castiel had found attractive, but never, never anything near as strong as what he felt for his next door neighbour. He'd never wanted anyone else like this – there had never been anyone else he'd wanted to be with in every way possible. Because he was in love.
An odd, distant, apprehensive kind of love, but the main reasons for that were self-imposed.
It wasn't as though Castiel had missed chances to get closer to Dean; it was more that he'd decided not to take any risks a very long time ago. He could never have handled the outright rejection; Dean didn't return his feelings, and Castiel would just have to get over it. That's what he'd told himself while he'd been living and sleeping a matter of feet away through a few walls.
Maybe he hadn't realised until now just how much his decisions had been influenced by what other people expected of him. No, not other people; just Michael. Michael, who'd given up his own future to look after his baby brother, and never asked for any thanks. Castiel owed him his safety and security, and so he'd always tried to offer any security he could in return.
Gabriel had always been the one who made a fuss. Then one day Gabriel had walked out after an argument and disappeared, without so much as a written word for nearly two years. And Castiel had felt like he should have tried harder to patch them up, like he used to when he was little; when they were all together and things were easier.
Castiel had been waiting until he moved out himself, until he started a new life, before he directed any sort of romantic feelings towards other people. It was just because Dean was always right there – it made letting go impossible. But he'd known all along nothing would come of it, so he'd given up and never looked back. Not until recently, anyway.
Maybe if he didn't tell him, things could go back to normal in the end. Castiel would be able to return to his state of distant suffering; the kind that didn't hurt anyone but himself, and that nobody knew about. The easy kind.
And then maybe Gabriel's next postcard would send news that he was settling down and getting a steady job and having two-point-five kids.
It just wasn't going to happen.
This wasn't going to go away if he left it; ignoring things didn't make them stop existing.
Dean wasn't going to leave him alone. Not this time.
"I… need…" Castiel started, laboriously. His words were almost scared away by the intense focus they garnered from Dean, but he managed to hold them in place. "…to know…" Every syllable took far too much effort, but the last one was the hardest. "…why."
"Why what? Why I kissed you?"
"Yes."
"Which time?"
That threw him off a bit. "The- Yesterday."
"I thought we covered that?"
I'm sorry, what reality did that happen in? "No. We did not cover that."
Apparently this was cause for embarrassment; Dean suddenly looked ten times more uncomfortable. He shrugged. "Why do you think?"
Because you saw right through me and took advantage of the situation. Everyone liked to feel wanted after all.
"Because you saw right through me." Castiel practically choked on his own tongue. He'd just said that out loud! He'd just thought that in his head and then the same words came out of his mouth. Why did that only ever happen when he didn't want it to?
Dean nodded, relieved he didn't have to explain. "Right."
What?
"Hey, you're not exactly subtle. Seriously dude, bedroom eyes all over the place. If it was actually possible to undress someone with your eyes I would've been naked within seconds of stepping into your house." He did that smirk again. "So when you were there outside my room, looking like you were waiting for me to let you in… Hard to resist."
Oh.
Castiel had known he was right. He had. But it would have been nice to have been proved wrong.
And for a moment, he'd thought…
Castiel closed his eyes. Just shut the world out.
He'd thought there might have been a chance.
He couldn't restrain the crippling hurt from his expression any longer, so he hid, already reaching for the car door as he turned away. He didn't even manage to open it before there were hands clutching at him, pulling with Dean's full weight to keep him inside the vehicle.
"He-ey! I thought we were done with the running away thing! What the hell is up with you - I don't get it!"
And all of a sudden, shame turned to fury; hurt twisted its way around inside him, becoming a defensive weapon. Dean was right; he couldn't keep running away. It was time to choose fight over flight for once.
Castiel stopped straining against his hold, and the tension snapped; Dean let out a noise of surprise.
"How easy it must be to be Dean Winchester. You don't get it? Oh. I'm sorry, what are you having a hard time with? The fact that you don't speak to me for years and then 'molest' me, to use your phrasing… Or maybe it's the fact that you figured-… that you figured me out and thought you could…" His words dried up as suddenly as they'd burst out of him.
Dean was keeping a hold of one of his arms; his expression was set to total bewilderment.
"I thought you were okay with it!"
"No, I'm not fucking okay with it, Dean! I don't know where the fuck you learnt about human emotion, but generally someone is not going to be okay with it when you use them to get what you want, and don't even stop to think how it's going to make them feel!"
"What? I di- Jeez, it was just a kiss! I didn't force- You wanted it, right? We covered the fact that you wanted it."
"How amazingly insightful of you. But it's your motivations that make it not okay. Of course I want you, but I wouldn't be getting all I wanted from you, when you would be getting everything you wanted from me. You can't just use someone like that and expect them to be fine about it! You can't just… use me like that. Just because you know I can't… say no to you."
No, this was too much. He was revealing far too much. He clamped his mouth shut, forcing the flow of words to stop or he was going to end up spilling all his secrets and he'd never be able to hide again.
"Whuh?" said Dean. He looked to be somewhere on the confusion scale between 'Why is that bear riding a bicycle?' and 'I'm seeing little ballerinas dance around your head and I don't know why but it's funny'.
Castiel would very much like that option of disappearing on the spot again.
Then Dean seemed to suddenly comprehend, his clouded eyes clearing. "Cas! Give me some fucking credit! I'm not a complete asshole!" Cas flinched despite himself. "And give yourself some credit too! You seriously thought the only reason I kissed you was because I thought you'd be an easy conquest?"
Castiel clenched his jaw, his quickened breathing swelling his chest. "You just said it was because you saw right through me. So you took advantage."
Dean's eyes widened. "No I didn't. I really didn't say that. Is that what you- Cas. I just told you."
Castiel went back over Dean's stilted speech in his head. Maybe… Maybe he'd been listening, but had only heard what he'd programmed himself to expect. Anticipated disappointment couldn't technically be disappointment, after all.
It's just you. It's just you, Cas. (Nobody else was ever the same. Not even Anna.)
He couldn't really have meant that. Could he?
"I don't-"
"What don't you understand? What don't you get about this, Castiel? You want me to spell it out, step by step? Because I will. I'll lock you in here and explain all night if you want me to."
Dean had turned in his seat to speak directly to his face, still not relinquishing the grip on his arm.
Castiel's mouth was hanging open. "Stop it." Stop screwing with my head so much!
"No." Dean's other hand came in sideways to fist in the front of his coat. There was a ripping sound. "You can't leave until you realise I'm not the douchebag you think I am."
"I don't… think that."
Dean's frown lifted.
"You think I don't care. You really can't see it… I thought you were supposed to be smart?" He said it like he'd been counting on him to figure it out. Like Castiel had personally betrayed him by not living up to his expectations.
Oh. That struck a chord; one of the ones at the higher end of the piano scale. Had that been a factor in all of this? Had Castiel felt hurt not just because Dean hadn't reacted how he'd expected him to (which would have been something like disgusted pity) but because he'd reacted in the one way that Castiel didn't know how to deal with? He would never have considered that turn of events in a million years; he may have imagined it, but he never would have thought Dean would actually kiss him like that. His motivations couldn't possibly have been dream-worthy as well as his actions – that was far too unlikely.
Castiel had idolised Dean in his head, and then interpreted his unexpected actions in such a way that had shattered that built-up image. He'd immediately jumped to conclusions, because anything else was bad; any other version except dream-Dean was the wrong one, and dream-Dean didn't exist. But maybe dream-Dean wasn't such a figment of his imagination after all.
Jesus Christ, he didn't even know what the hell was going on anymore.
"You want to know what I think of you? Okay. You're the best friend I ever had. Yeah, you were a dorky little weirdo who spoke like a college professor, but you never pretended to be anything that you weren't, and you never kicked off over the little things, even when I was trying to get a reaction out of you 'cause I was pissed with my dad, or just life in general… You didn't push Sam away because he was my annoying little brother – you treated him like you would anyone else because you liked him, and you didn't care that you weren't supposed to. And I don't know why I'm saying all this in the past tense because you're still all that now, apart from not kicking off about the little things…" He bobbed his head as he deliberated. "Okay, that's not fair. But I'm telling you that I think you're fucking awesome, Cas, and that you've always been awesome. And I thought the people I've hung out with since you were just different-awesome, because I didn't grow up with them or something, but that wasn't it. They just weren't as fun to be around because they couldn't compete with your superior awesomeness."
Castiel was frozen to the spot, not even blinking as he watched all of these crazy words tumble out of Dean's mouth. Dean wasn't looking him in the eye any more; he was focused on his shoulder, like he honestly couldn't stop speaking but sort of wished he could.
"Like that day I was locked out, I'd been having a really shitty week – my dad was being an ass about stuff and when I rang Sam to see if he'd be back soon he went into total bitch-mode and I kind of lost it a bit. I just wanted to take a damn shower and go to sleep, but the spare key was long gone and I saw Dad had left the latch off his window so I just thought 'fuck it'. And I totally would have made it too, if you hadn't turned up being all disapproving and pouty – but then you were there in the rain and I didn't recognise your voice and it's gotten all deep and growly-sexy since I last spoke to you. Seriously man, I kept asking you questions just to hear you talk – I'm surprised you didn't catch on. And you were making me tea and bringing me towels in that funny patient way I'd forgotten about, and you made me feel a million times better and I missed you."
With that, the tirade finally seemed to come to an end. Dean sat there drawing in great lungfuls of air and blinking widely. "Wow. That just… came right out, didn't it?"
The pause that followed was somehow defensive, like he expected Castiel to laugh at him. Castiel was much too far past amazement to even perform basic functions like laughing, or thinking.
'Impossible' was the word that pinged at the front of his brain.
He left a very long stretch of silence before testing out a response. "Are you… kidd-?"
"For fuck's sake, no I'm not kidding! I like you, Cas. I really like you. And I think maybe I always did." He was staring him in the eyes, boring sincerity right into his brain like a drill, so that Castiel couldn't get away from it.
I think maybe I always did. No, that wasn't fair. This had to be a joke that the universe was playing on him. Or a dream. Castiel couldn't process this; it was far too much to take in on an empty stomach and no sleep. Ah, that must be it. He'd fallen asleep in the woods and caught a fever from being out in the rain, and this was just an elaborate dream. Damn, it was going to be painful when he woke up to reality. For all sorts of reasons.
"You didn't… feel that way about me." You've got it wrong; it was the other way around.
Dean huffed out a sigh. He'd been staring at Castiel's mouth for the last few seconds, but now he looked him in the eye again. He was still leaning right across the seat with his hands all over him; one fisted into the front of his coat, and one holding his arm, pulling it into his own chest, like he thought he was going to try and escape again. "I didn't realise at the time," he muttered. "But why else would I think I'd dreamt kissing you in your closet? I guess I thought the symbolism was too obvious for it to have been real. And it made me think maybe it was 'cause you were a guy, because I never felt the same about any girls I dated." He swallowed. "But then there were never any other guys that I felt this for either. So it wasn't like I had a preference or something." Castiel wondered if Dean could feel his heartbeat through his chest. It was impossible for him not to be able to. "You get what I'm saying here, right?"
No. Absolutely not.
"I think you're hot, and I haven't stopped thinking about you all week. And god help me but I can't imagine wanting anyone else any time soon. You're different. I think it must've been the octopus hands."
Castiel studied his face for a long moment, then blinked once. The rain had eased off to a gentle pattering, so the pause was truer than ever.
"I see." He said.
And he did. At last.
"Seriously? That's your respo-"
Cas cut him off. It was a deep, slow kiss; letting all that heartache and useless pining burn up as fuel, using it to strengthen his determination, to leave any tentativeness far behind. It remained unhurried; hot tongues sliding past cold lips, and the taste of rainwater.
He eventually pulled away to find he'd slipped sideways, and one hand had made its way up to clutch the short hairs at the nape of Dean's neck. The pair of them sat and breathed the same air for a moment.
"Can't argue with that." Dean said.
The palm that rested over Castiel's heart slid down and around his side, between the layer of coat and his sensible crew-neck sweater. Castiel watched Dean's mouth a couple of inches away, from beneath eyelids he hadn't bothered to open all the way. "Mhm," he said, because he thought he was possibly supposed to be replying to something.
"I'm really glad you're on board with this, you know. Last night I thought I might have scarred you for life and you'd have to become a priest or something. And that would be really dissapointing. Or kinky, depending on how you think about it…"
Castiel was only half listening, contentment flaming steadily inside him, but at the mention of priests he swiftly became aware of their surroundings outside the car.
Nothing was visible beyond the steamed up windows so it was unlikely for anyone to be able to see them, but it was still a little too close to home for Castiel. This place held memories of being made to feel ashamed of something that was already painful and confusing enough; but all the same, it wasn't in him to feel spite towards old Father Matthew – he'd been trying to be kind, however misguidedly. And Castiel didn't feel comfortable spitting that kindness back in his face, right on his doorstep.
Any moment, people could start to emerge from the church, for a lunch break or something; perhaps they'd even been waiting for the rain to stop – people that Castiel knew and didn't want to be spotted by. And this car was hardly inconspicuous.
"Why're you wearing this thing, anyway?" Dean was saying, as he slipped his other hand beneath the coat too, so both arms were wrapped securely round his middle. "It's not even waterproo- Stay there." Castiel had suddenly straightened upright and Dean's grip squeezed tighter, dragging him practically into his lap. Castiel had to support himself against the back of the seat.
"Dean- I'm not- I just think maybe we should move away from the church," he managed to force out, having to twist his head to the side to avoid various things.
"Why? You worried they'll grab the pitchforks when they see a coupl'a homos making out on their land?" Not quite what he'd been thinking. "You are freaked out about this, aren't you?"
Cas looked him steadily in the eye. "No I'm not. I'm not, Dean." It was almost funny how much he didn't care about gender, seeing as everyone else seemed to have such strict rules about it all. "It's just… I want to break things gently." He didn't want rumours to get back to his brother before he'd had a chance to talk to him; to find out what exactly he'd meant by telling Dean where he was. It was high time him and Michael let it all out. Of the closet.
Dean nodded, still frowning. "Okay, good. Good. But, erm… Just so you know, I'm kind of…" He swallowed, and Castiel watched as his jaw tightened. "I've never told anyone- I've never told my dad about this… part of me before. Just in case you're planning on shouting it from the rooftops." They both knew that wasn't going to happen.
Castiel closed the small gap between them, pressing his lips gently against Dean's frowning mouth, because he wanted to make him feel better. And he could. He was allowed. He was allowed to kiss him.
He was holding tightly to the tiny, fluttering piece of hope that something might have changed in Michael's attitude, but when it came down to it – even if his brother was made to feel uncomfortable or didn't approve – the only people who mattered in this were Castiel and Dean. Castiel knew that he couldn't stop this, he couldn't hold it in anymore, not now that Dean had given him something back; encouraged him that there might even be a chance for them to be equals in this.
Not that Castiel was saying Dean was in love with him or anything. That was crazy. You couldn't figure out you liked someone and then immediately fall in love; love was a long and agonizing process that lasted years before you got anything in return.
"I can't imagine wanting anyone else any time soon." Something popped into existence in a warm place between Castiel's lungs, building for a moment before rolling its way out of his throat as a bubble of giddy laughter. Its escape into the air was thwarted by what his mouth was busy doing, but then Dean pulled away, and the laugh got its chance to fly free.
"Oh, so now you see the funny side. Thanks, Cas, that's real sensitive of you."
Castiel opened his eyes, his smile immediately dropping. "I'm not laughing at you. I don't think that's funny, I was just…"
Dean levelled him with a flat look, and it said a hell of a lot. "I know."
Oh right.
"Oh."
He got it now. Why Dean had laughed. "What are you trying to do, Cas?" What are you trying to do to me? It was giddy disbelief; he couldn't believe it.
Castiel couldn't believe it.
He'd seen the whole thing through a filter of bitterness and warped confidence; it had built up – layer upon layer of it – as he'd watched Dean get on with his life without him; watched him make new friends; heard his name crop up time and time again in the rumour mill, usually pertaining to girls at school. Spotting him smiling from a distance and not being able to see the colour of his eyes. Everything had added up; it had all made sense – Dean was off limits, unattainable, a different person. He didn't need Castiel, and he didn't want him any more.
But Castiel just couldn't let him go.
I missed you.
His view of things had been clouded over, but now it was like Dean had rubbed away a little section, right in the middle, just enough for Castiel to be able to peer through to the other side and see how things could be. How they really could be. In reality. Not in some fantasy that was tainted by the craving for something he thought was impossible.
But it wasn't impossible. Dean wasn't unattainable. Somehow Castiel had managed to attain him, and he was right here, holding him fast and patiently waiting for the mind cogs to stop turning.
Nothing made sense any more, and Castiel liked it.
Tidiness had never been his strong point.
"Are you done now? Or d'you wanna mull it over some more?"
Castiel brought his right hand round from where it had been resting on the back of Dean's neck, using his thumb to stroke down his cheekbone. Because he could do that now. He could do things like that whenever he wanted. And when he did it made Dean's breath hitch.
"No. I think I'm done now," he muttered.
Is he done? I'm not sure whether to just finish it there. It seems a nice place to stop.
I've already started writing something from Michael's point of view, but I don't know whether to post it as a separate story, or even at all for that matter. It's turning out kind of longer than I expected… What do you guys think? Is there any question left unanswered that you especially want to be answered? Something you want to see happen or are curious about? I'd be happy to look over any suggestions. I think I enjoy being in this verse too much…
On a separate note, if anyone spots any mistakes or discrepancies in the plot, or something I've got muddled, a heads up would be appreciated. :)
If this does turn out to be the end, thank you to all you regulars for sticking with this! Or if you're new, thanks for being drawn in by my summary enough to click the title! But I guess you all did that... Anyway, it's been great fun for me writing this cliché-ridden, drippy sopfest, and I hope you, Reader, enjoyed yourself too.