Tell Me What You See, by The Beatles
I was going to use I Want You, also by The Beatles, which was recced by camryn5759, but then I came across this song and thought it fitted it so well that I had to use it.
I thought this chapter was damn well over due!
I was never really into the Beatles that much, they sometimes seemed a little... watered down, in comparison to the rock I normally like, but this song is quickly becoming one of my obsessions!
Dean dialed Sam's number, not without some trepidation. The last thing he wanted to do was call his brother while he was, y'know, in the middle of something. On the other hand, he needed girlie romantic advice, and Sam was definitely the right man for that. So, Dean held his breath and listened to Sam's phone ring one, two, three, four, five times.
"Dean?" Sam picked up, sounding blurry and a little pissed off.
"Yeah. So here's the thing. Hypothetically, if someone were to need your advice on what sort of a first date to take a certain angel on, what would you say? Hypothetically?"
There was a long pause. "Good on you, Dean."
Dean frowned.
"I didn't think you knew the word 'hypothetically'," Sam scoffed. "Seriously? You guys have never been on a date? Like, ever?"
"Well, it didn't really… come up," Dean said, scrunching up his face. "With the whole, he doesn't eat or understand movies thing." There had been the bar, and the movie on Halloween, but they hadn't really been... official. And this just felt like something Dean oughta do properly. Even if he had no clue how.
"And the whole doing the whole relationship backwards thing," Sam pointed out.
"I don't think-"
"Dean, you met when he pulled you out of hell after you kickstarted the apocalypse, it took you years to get your shit together, and you screwed before having your first date."
Dean was silent. Kid had a point, but hell if he was going to admit it.
"So let's just be clear here. You are point blank asking for my advice on something." Sam sounded a little too smug.
"Hypothetically," Dean tacked on.
He could almost hear the eye-roll on the other end of the line. "Well… he likes poetry, doesn't he?"
"Weirdly, yeah." Dean muttered.
"So, take him to a book store or something. Just… I dunno, watch him browse for a couple of hours. Or maybe a poetry recital. Or… uh, I, gotta go," Sam said, sounding suddenly distracted. "You should, ah, bring him flowers…" Sam trailed off.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll let you get back to your sex-fest. Thanks. Y'know," Dean grumbled. "Hypothetically."
"Right." There was a click and the other end of the line went dead. Dean put his phone down with a soft sigh. He laced his fingers together and thought for a few moments.
An hour later, he set about looking for Cas. He found the angel in front of the bunker, watching a bee pollinating the sole flower that was springing up from a crack in the concrete. "Castiel," Dean whispered, looping his arms around Cas' middle and pressing himself against Cas' back. "Would you, uh, wanna go on a date with me?" He asked, letting some awkward schoolboy charm creep into his voice.
Cas frowned, eventually tearing his eyes off the bumblebee. "I don't understand."
"Yeah," Dean said. "Come on." And he dragged Cas by his blue shirt-sleeve next to the Impala, holding the passenger's side door open for him with a cheesy grin. He hopped in the driver's seat, turned the key, felt the engine rev to live under him and obligingly slid the cassette tape into the stereo. "This is the Beatles," Dean said. "They're important, for some reason. The song's not half bad," he muttered. Thankfully, Cas had long since mastered the art of understanding Dean's emotional understatements, and he tipped his head back, foot gently starting to thump to the music.
You let me take your heart, I will prove to you
We will never be apart, if I'm part of you
Open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
It is no surprise now, what you see is me
They pulled up outside a ramshackle bookstore in Lebanon, half second hand and half new books. Some of the shelves are neatly stacked with alphabetized volumes, but in the rest of the store books towered up in high piles that Dean was amazed didn't fall over. Dean held the door open for him with a shy smile, and watched Cas' face light up.
"I was gonna take you out for breakfast or something," Dean said, walking alongside Cas as Cas trawled through the aisles, running his fingertip over the spine of each book he passed. "But then you don't really eat… And I thought maybe a movie, but half the fun of movies is the popcorn and-"
"Dean." Cas cut him off, raising his head to look at Dean. "This is perfect." With a stony glare, he silenced Dean's blabbering.
Thank you, Sammy. Dean thought silently.
They spent hours there, Cas seemingly determined to leave no book unseen. Dean was quite sure he used angel mojo to magic books from the middle of lopsided stacks without making the whole thing fall over. Dean trailed Cas around the store, watching his face light up, eyes scan intently over the back of books, long fingers flip elegantly through the pages. It was the second sign today that he was becoming a complete and utter sap – first the Beatles, now the ability to just watch someone, for hours, and not get bored. Then again, Cas was easy on the eyes, to put it mildly. Dean smiled, feeling the flare of possessiveness warm his chest as he gazed on at Cas and thought, Mine. My angel.
Eventually, Cas picked up a slim blue volume of collected poems. He didn't ask for it, exactly, probably because he was still a little unclear on what the notion of Dean taking him out for a date meant. He just held it longer than he had the others, fingers resting on the pages like he didn't want to let go. "That one?" Dean asked. "Hey, Neanderthals weren't the only ones that got it right, huh?"
Cas gave a single nod, and Dean took the volume from him with a little more care than he would have ordinarily. He held it between his hands for a moment, looking at the slightly scuffed cover, and wondering what it was that had so enraptured Cas. "All right," he said, and sauntered off to the cashier.
When they were sitting back in the Impala, Cas running his thumbs over the smooth cover and the Beatles playing embarrassingly loudly, Dean asked, "So, do you want to-"
"I think we should imbibe intoxicating spirits." Cas answered in a gravelly voice.
And that was good, because Dean hadn't had a fucking clue what he'd been about to say next. Drive all the way to Vegas, get married by a dude dressed as Elvis? Go home, practice our aim with shotguns, shirtless, pretending we're in Brokeback Mountain? Listen to him babble cliché statements about the depth of Cas' eyes? Go see the latest Nicholas Sparks movie? Chop up some vampires together, just like old times in Purgatory? Yeah, it was a good thing Cas hadn't let Dean finish that sentence. "Works for me," Dean said, flashing a grin towards Cas. "Lemme guess. Copious quantities?" This sort of date, he could handle.
Big and black the clouds may be, time will pass away
If you put your trust in me, I'll make bright your day
Look into these eyes, now, tell me what you see
Don't you realize now, what you see is me
Tell me what you see
They found a bar just on the nice side of comfortably divey, and Dean was just about to sit down at the bar when Cas grabbed his wrist. Dean spun around, all too familiar with the gesture in too many different contexts. Restraining him from making a kill, catching him when he fell, stilling him so Cas could kiss him. Dean's eyes were wide as his brain worked to figure out which this was; a hunter's instincts never really dissipated, no matter how much lovey-dovey crap they were crushed under. Cas' eyes narrowed as he watched Dean, clearly understanding the source of Dean's confusion.
Cas just pointed with his other hand and said, "They have seats outside."
"All right," Dean agreed. He ordered a fifth of whiskey and half a bottle of tequila – to start them off. The bartender gave him an indulgent yet skeptical look as she handed him two bottles. He watched her meditatively as she bent to get him two glasses. Nice cleavage. Seriously. Nice. And it wasn't that she wasn't attractive, just that he was completely distracted and uninterested by the fact that she wasn't Cas. Huh.
And Cas was already waiting outside for him, flopped down on the dark green lawn and ignoring the perfectly good chairs. Dean rolled his eyes, trying to pretend the sight of Cas in his light blue button up and dark jeans, looking unusually relaxed on the grass, eyes sparkling, didn't send flutters through his stomach. It didn't work, and so he knelt by Cas, handing him the tequila.
Cas took it appreciatively, swallowing a gulp and smacking his lips – a gesture he surely must have learned from Dean. "Mm."
"Good molecules?" Dean asked, taking a swig of whiskey.
"Very." Cas answered with a wry smile.
And Dean isn't exactly sure how they got from there to them both lying flat on the grass, Cas on his back, Dean propped up on his elbows, Dean absentmindedly picking daisies and laying them in the hollow of Cas' collarbone, dusting him with thin white petals; but he suspects it has something to do with the buzzing in his chest and the intense desire to kiss Cass, all sloppy and hot and –
"I wonder if a human has ever fallen in love with a daisy," Cas said, holding a single daisy up to the red light of the setting sun and studying it.
"You're ridiculous sometimes," Dean hummed happily. He wasn't sure he ever felt this good before Cas.
Cas contemplated him for a moment before simply saying, "I fell in love with you."
And –
Oh.
Oh.
"Is that how you see me?" Dean asked, flabbergasted. "Some sort of… fragile little flower?"
Cas frowned. "Daisies are actually remarkably resilient. I suppose in terms of our respective lifetimes, you could be a perennial flower and I could be an oak tree… All living things, in fact, seem to be a remarkable mix of breakable and resilient… you and the daisy are no exception."
"First roses, now daisies?" Dean asked, a little bitterly.
Cas sighed. "I apologize." He sat up, and with a wave of his hand, the daisies disappeared. Dean frowned for a moment before he saw the picked daisies taking root again, growing once more. When Dean stared at them, watching them, desperately trying to decide if he minded being compared to them, Cas said, "I resurrected them."
"Shit," Dean mumbled at Cas' dramatic phrasing. "I didn't think I was, y'know, killing them."
Cas shook his head. "Can I read you a poem, Dean?"
"By all means." Dean turned over on his back, watching the sky. He decided, privately, that roses weren't so bad. At least they had thorns. And daisies… well, if that claimed him a spot on Cas' skin, he'd take it. But this was a conversation strictly between drunk-him and his brain, which was never to be repeated to sober-him.
Cas watched him, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed before beginning. "A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!" Cas' gravelly voice gained a certain rhythmic lilt when he read poetry, and Dean was quickly suckered in, almost lulled to sleep by the words. "You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!" Cas finished. Dean didn't think it was the end of the poem, and he opened his eyes. Cas was staring at him with a piercing gaze, and Dean sensed that he was strongly making a point with the poem. Dean was too drunk, too happy and maybe even a little moved to argue, so he lazily smiled. Being a flower was all right. As long as Cas was the one who was in love with him.
Listen to me one more time
How can I get through?
Can't you try to see that I'm trying to get you?
Open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
It is no surprise now, what you see is me
Tell me what you see
Later, they collapsed onto the couch together, laughing as Dean tried and fail to get his jacket off, tugging in all the wrong directions. Cas fell on top of him, their bodies tangled together. "Dean," Cas said quietly.
"Yeah, Cas?" Dean asked.
"I enjoyed our date today." Cas said.
"Think I could steal a kiss?" Dean smirked. Cas lifted his head up for a moment, traced the line of Dean's jaw with a finger and then leaned in and kissed him, deep and sweet. Dean let out a soft sigh of satisfaction.
"Could I ask you a question?" Cas looked hesitant.
"Shoot," Dean said, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"It's about free will. How does one know when one is making the right decision? I've… I've made the wrong decision many times, and it usually leads to letting you down… how do I… how do I know," Cas said, not quite meeting Dean's gaze.
Dean stared at him. Not that wanted to admit it, but he was gauging the situation. Was this a genuine question? A prequel to tear-strewn cheeks and shaking hands? A flight risk? He didn't want to misjudge and end up being a dick. "You don't. You can't. You just do whatever seems right, what seems best at the time, or whatever you can't stand not to do."
Cas nodded against his chest, and tightened his grip on Dean. "Thank you."
Dean looked down at him, and ran a hand through his hair. Silky soft and black against his fingers. "I love you," Dean said softly.
"Likewise," Cas murmured against him.
And maybe if he'd been something beyond human, if he'd had Sam's shrink-like ability of gauging emotions, he might have stayed awake a little longer. But he was only human, and drunk, and everything was good, and he was in love, and he drifted off peacefully. He woke up alone.
Listen to me one more time
How can I get through?
Can't you try to see that I'm trying to get you?
Open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
It is no surprise now, what you see is me
Oh.
Never fear!
The poem is Sunflower Sutra, by Allen Ginsberg. It's wonderful, and I must confess I discovered it only through a variety of other fics who referenced it. Thank you, more literary fanfic authors than I!