When I said that I would kill you last...I lied. So yeah, didn't even make it a week without updating, it's actually medicinal – it helps my coursework writers block I swear Next update might take a while as it's going to be a but fraught and emotional. Got to look up some synonyms for 'angrily'.
Dean sketches out a plan on the inside cover of his Lit anthology during a particularly dull lecture. It goes something like this –
Come out to Sam.
Come out to Mom and Dad.
Tell Everyone about Cas.
Graduate and move in with Castiel.
He admits it's overly simplistic, but it's pretty much everything on his life 'to do' list right now.
He paces his dorm room that night, drumming the phone against his palm and wondering what the hell he's going to say. 'Hey Sam, you know the family priest who you really liked before he just up and left the parish? Well, I'm screwing him. I've been in love with him since I was your age and he love me too and it's the best thing that's ever happened, EVER in the history of everything. Because he loves me back – and we're going to be together, after everything.'
Yeah, because that's going to cut it.
It sounds ridiculous whenever he tries to explain how he feels. Feelings have never been his strong point, he's spent too long either trying not to have them or trying not to show them. Hauling everything to the surface, for someone who isn't Cas feels...wrong, somehow. Like Castiel obtained a direct route under his skin and that connection somehow makes it easier to talk to him about all the emotional stuff flying around his head.
But Sam's his brother. Dean reasons that he'll never be properly close with Sam until he knows the truth about the last three years.
He dials his home number and waits for Sam to pick up.
"Dean?" Sam's half puberty mangled voice comes onto the line.
"Hey Sam...can we talk?" Dean flips the anthology closed.
"We are...well, I'm talking and you're being weird." Sam rambles.
"Shut up." Dean says automatically. "Listen...I have something to tell you."
"Shit, what's wrong?" Sam yelps.
"Nothing, stop being such a..." Dean sighs. "Look, don't tell Mom or Dad right now...but...oh, fuck this is hard..." he trails off. "Oh screw it, I'm gay, alright?"
There's a slight pause.
"Well...duh." Sam huffs.
"What?" Dean blinks, waiting for the expected reaction of confusion and upset.
"Dean...you've never had a real girlfriend, you spend way too much time with Michael and...well, we used the same computer for years Dean, you never cleared the history."
Dean flushes.
"So, is it Michael?" asks Sam interestedly. "You two decided to get serious?...is he going to make an honest woman of you?"
"Bitch." Dean mutters. "No it's...uh, someone else."
"No! Michael's nice, he took me out to the museum last time you were home, remember?"
"Sam, that's not really how great relationships are founded." Dean gripes.
"No, but..." Dean can almost feel Sam frowning on the other end of the phone. "Is it because he likes someone better? Or, he doesn't want to deal with Dad...or, I don't know, is his penis..."
"Sam!" Dean shuts his eyes and slaps a hand against the wall. "It's not...no penis talk ok? You're my brother."
"Sorry, but I liked him. Who's this other guy then? The 'better than Michael' guy." Sam had to be the neediest kid brother alive.
"He's not better, just...I love him. That's it." Dean tries to down play it but underestimates how much of a girl Sam can be.
"You love him?" Sam squeaks. "Oh my God, seriously?"
"Yes, and shut up."
"Do I know him? Is it one of your friends?"
Sam's puppyish enthusiasm makes him feel bad about keeping it a secret. Knowing that all the happiness his brother feels for him will dissipate once he hears the news that it's Castiel that Dean's attached himself to.
"He's uh...look, I'll tell you next time I come home ok? I need to explain a few things."
"It's not bad is it? Like one of your teachers? Someone's dad?" Sam guesses childish horror in his every word.
"Look, Sam, I'll tell you when I come home, but you've got to promise not to tell Mom or Dad until I decide to."
There's a slight pause.
"They're going to freak." Sam says quietly.
"I know." Dean groans.
"No, Dean – They. Will. Freak." Sam insists, deadly serious. "Charles Shirley, that guy in my English class? He came out last year and they made him leave the church – Dad agreed with it."
"Well then they'll hate me for life." Dean says with a great deal more belligerence than he feels. "I've still got you, right?"
"Sure...but I bet he's not as great as Michael" Sam insists.
"He knows twice as much nerdy crap, and he can make pancakes." Dean says bluntly.
"Good pancakes or your kind of pancakes?" asks Sam after a slight hesitation.
"Slit your throat and die, they are so beautiful type pancakes." Dean confirms, choosing not to point out that Castiel has been teaching him how not to clump all the batter together and burn it into nuggets.
"Hmmm." Says Sam noncommittally, before launching into a story about someone in his home economics class setting fire to the stove.
Dean breathes an internal sigh of relief. He's still got Sam at least, and Sam accepts at least half of his decision to be in love with Castiel, publically and wholly. After the conversation winds down he hangs up and calls Castiel to tell him the good news, only to find that Cas himself is in a terrible mood.
"What happened?" he asks to Cas's tired 'hello'.
"Ruby, in a word." Castiel sighs. "She believes me to be an abomination, and one which should not be allowed to work in the parts of the library where I might encounter children who are 'vulnerable' to my influence."
Dean says something entirely appropriate but unrepeatable, featuring the words 'Bitch' 'Stick' and 'Fist'
"Quite." Murmurs Castiel, sounding vaguely appalled but heartened. "I've filed a complaint but...it's unpleasant to deal with, to hear one's own worst beliefs about oneself spoken to your face..."
"I wish I was there." Dean sighs.
"I wish you were too." Castiel says, and Dean wonders where he's sitting, curled up in a ball and watching Montag prowl around on the floor or bunched up in bed.
"Cas...after graduation...what are we going to do?" he asks.
There's silence on the line.
"I'd thought that...well...it's a little assuming to think that you'd move in here, but I'd like to...you don't have to stay here..."
"Cas, would you like to live with me?" Dean asks firmly.
"Yes...but not if you have other...wants." Castiel finishes lamely, clearly uncomfortable with what he saw as coercing Dean into a decision.
"Castiel I'd like to live with you, and your slut of a cat." He says formally.
Another pause stretches between them.
"Good...ok." Castiel says in a small, pleased voice.
Dean crossed two items off of his list and reflected that the remaining two might as well read 'perform open heart surgery on myself' and 'climb mount Everest afterwards' for all the chance he had of completing them easily and painlessly.
