A/N: Sorry this was such a long wait! But I'm done with my dissertation and done with exams! So the next chapter ought to be up super soon :) (like, a matter of days) Hope you all enjoy

Chapter 54 - Part Time Lover

Dean stays round at Castiel's during nights until Dean's mom says she wants him spending more time in his real house. Dean undermines this by asking Cas to stay with him most nights at the Winchester's. Eventually Mary gives up, exasperated, and Dean spends most of his time away from home. Sam trails behind them, often, and especially as the weather warms will be found playing catch, skipping stones, hanging out in the treehouse with the older pair. Castiel sits in silence with Dean, reading, doing their homework; Castiel listens quietly while Dean plays guitar and sings; Castiel lies awake beside Dean, head feeling tight with worry and chest feeling tight with the pressure of love tainted sorrow.

How did he fall? How could he not have noticed?

Dean is too distracting to allow Castiel a moment to wonder why he is distracted. Ten years, and it crept up on him—but Castiel knows now. He can name love, now, heart pinned to his chest to stop it from tumbling onto his sleeve, tongue pinned to the roof of his mouth to stop his heart climbing up through his throat.

Love with Dean was slow and easy. Perhaps Castiel always knew he would fall; there seemed to be a fatal inevitability to their friendship—but what could a pair of four year olds know of that? What could Castiel, only fourteen, know of it now?

Jaw locked, he swallows, and swallows back tears. Love is fear, he has learnt: fear of losing Dean, fear of disgusting his best friend with the diamond-crush of feelings trapped within his chest, fear of himself, fear of the heat in his gut when that presses at his insides he wakes. Love is a fearful beast and Castiel must constrain it.

"Are you awake?" Dean whispers out into the darkness of Castiel's bedroom. Castiel confirms, taking a steadying breath. Dean rolls over in the bed to face his friend. His eyes shine black in the darkness.

"What's the matter?" Castiel asks, voice quiet. He can barely see, but Dean's eyes, shining black, stare at him for several moment's silence.

"John wasn't like Jimmy," Dean says, and Castiel is confused, but nods, unsure if Dean can even see it.

"No," He agrees.

"John wasn't like Jimmy," Dean says again, "and I'm kind of jealous of you for it. Is that wrong?"

"No," Castiel says again. He listens to the rising and falling sound of Dean's steady, thoughtful breathing.

"Dads are complicated," Dean says into the darkness. The dark hugs at his words, childish in their simplicity.

"Yes," Castiel agrees.

"Even yours," Dean says. "I didn't used to think so. I didn't understand. But now I do. Better, at least."

"We're all a little complicated, Dean," Castiel says, gently.

"Yes," Dean replies, but it comes out quickly and a little frustrated, Dean forgetting to whisper his reply. "But dads. I'm talking about dads."

"Okay."

"John wasn't like Jimmy," Dean says again. "Dads are complicated. I'm not good at—" Dean sighs. Castiel stays silent. "I think if John hadn't been himself, I'd be different to the way I am, now. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing."

Castiel swallows.

"I'm sorry…"

"Me too."

"I think you're great the way you are—"

"It's not about that," Dean says, and Castiel can feel him shake his head minutely against the pillow.

"Oh…"

"I think that—that becoming a parent is dangerous. You risk a lot. It's a dangerous thing. You don't quite know what you'll become. You just… it's a blind leap."

"I suppose it is," Castiel agrees, lost at what it is Dean is driving at.

"I'm tired," Dean says, and rolls back over. "Goodnight, Cas."

"Goodnight…" Castiel says to the darkness of Dean's back turned.

"I hope you don't mind me spending so much time with you…"

"Not at all."

"Goodnight, Cas."

Dean's voice betrays a small smile. Castiel smiles too.

"Goodnight."

Almost a year after John's death, Dean and Castiel toss a football to one another on the lawn of Castiel's front garden. The sun sends shards of light swimming down to meet them. Jimmy is sat, reading, in the living room, sat on his favourite armchair. Sunk into it, limbs relaxed, he glances up every once in a while, over to Dean and Castiel, and smiles at whichever he makes eye contact with, mouth closed, eyes creased.

Castiel's feelings for his best friends have, unfortunately, not dimmed as he prayed they would. The flame has grown hotter, brighter, these past months—no aided by the fact that he and Dean are now closer than ever, which is saying something; grief has knotted the two together so that they are more inseparable than they were even as kindergarteners, when Dean was stubbornly attached to Castiel and Castiel was stubbornly afraid of anyone else. Grief has bound them, Dean knowing strange sorrow for his father inverting the strange sorrow Castiel knows for his mother. Not many fifteen-year-olds can understand that.

And, as Castiel's feelings for his best friend have unfortunately not dimmed, the one aspect of himself that he keeps concealed for Dean Winchester is one of the aspects closest to him, most intimately, most neatly bound to his soul—and to his relationship with Dean. Castiel listens, acutely aware, to the sermons he hears in temple, to his family's words on politics, and most vitally, to his father's.

Gabriel, if he is religious, takes a strange and new view of it that Castiel is not familiar with, living a hedonistic life filled with liberalities. Michael, by contrast, is dating the same girl he has dated since college; their wedding is in June. Castiel guesses that if he were to tell one of his brothers of his feelings for his best friend, the safer bet would be Gabriel. Michael, in every measure of his character, is conservative: evasive to change, bowing to authority, sensible, pragmatic, intellectual but not creative… Gabriel is an agitator, by very nature—though does this mean that Castiel should confide in him? Perhaps not—Gabriel, a rebel, unconventional, sybaritic, flexible and permissive as a result. But Castiel doesn't want to confide in a rebel. He wants to confide in someone kind and empathetic, someone to whom listening to Castiel is second nature. Is that Jimmy? Is that Dean?

"You worried about somethin', buddy?" Dean asks with a concerned frown. Castiel glances from the living room back over to his friend, just as Dean tosses the football to him.

"Sort of," Castiel replies, unsure.

"Sort of," Dean repeats with a smile, rolling his eyes. "You gonna elaborate, or keep it secret?" Castiel tosses the ball back to his friend.

"I don't know," Castiel shakes his head, and begins to laugh. "Sorry."

"Can you give me a hint about what kind of thing you're worried about?" Dean tosses. Castiel catches.

Castiel glances back to the house a moment, bathed in sunlight. It rises up behind him, windows bright with sunlight like eyes, wide and tall like the house is raising its eyebrows, inquisitive.

"Family," Castiel answers. "And me. And where I fit. And if I fit. And what it would take for me not to fit, any more. If I ever fit, at all."

Dean's eyebrows slope.

He looks sad.

Castiel searches the gleams in Dean's eyes, sometimes. Sometimes, the flecks of gold within green trail out, into the air, in tiny threads of sunlight, and Castiel chases them. They flee like ribbon tugged sharply away. Sometimes, Castiel thinks he tastes the eternal when he looks at them. Charlie tells Castiel she likes girls. They stand behind the cafeteria, out of earshot of anyone. Somebody jokes that they've gone there to make out, as they pass. Charlie glowers, face red. Then she says it again: she likes girls. Not boys. Not boys, at all, in that way. Then she jokingly punches Castiel's arm and says that if she had to pick a guy, though, it'd be him. She tells Castiel that Dean already knows, that she's already told him. She tells Castiel that Dean was the first person she told—well, first guy. And first person in real life. Everyone else she's told has been an online friend.

Castiel can't smirk at Charlie's use of the phrase 'online friend' because he's too distracted: Dean knows? How did he react?

Charlie frowns quizzically at his questions.

"Uh, he made a dumb joke," Charlie rolls her eyes. "Duh."

"A dumb joke?" Castiel asks, concerned.

"He said he'd guessed, since I'd never tried to make out with him," Charlie answers. "Then I hit him. Then he started laughing, and told me he really had guessed, but obviously not because of that. He said it was cool and that I'm like a little sister to him. Why?"

Castiel swallows, looking away.

"I've just—" He shakes his head, "I've never known what he thinks about… that kind of thing. I've never been able to figure it out."

"'That kind of thing'?" Charlie repeats, raising her eyebrows. Castiel sighs.

"You know what I mean."

"And why were you trying to figure it out?"

"He didn't seem to care?" Castiel asks, sidestepping this question.

"No," Charlie shakes her head. "He didn't. Why?"

"I don't care, either," Castiel evades, again. "Not, like, I don't care—but I think it's cool. Thank you for telling me."

"There are some people I felt comfortable in telling," Charlie shrugs. "For me, it's not such a big deal. I just don't think I'm ready for the whole school to know."

"Oh."

"But I felt comfortable telling you."

"Why?"

Charlie shrugs again, but this time it is deliberately careless.

"I just figured, y'know, I'm like you."

Castiel and Charlie are about as different as night and day. Castiel frowns.

"How so?" He asks.

"In the same way I feel like I'm like Dean. You must get that?" Charlie watches Castiel carefully.

"No, not at all," He shakes his head. "As in, I get why you feel as though you're 'like' Dean—you two are very similar. But me and you?"

"In the same way that you're like Dean," Charlie says, with a frown. "That's how I think I'm like you."

"How am I like Dean? In that we're friends?"

Charlie's frown twists a little more at her features.

"Friends?" She repeats. "Is that all you two are?"

Castiel reddens, and finally understands what Charlie is driving at.

"Yes," He says quickly, face hot. He doesn't normally flush, not like this. "We're just friends."

"And that's all?"

"Did Dean get asked all these questions, too?" Castiel asks, hotly.

"No," Charlie shakes her head. "Of course not. You know how he'd react."

"So why do you ask me?"

"I thought you might answer a little more reasonably, and a little more honestly."

Castiel looks down. He doesn't like the feeling that coils around his gut.

"Dean's my best friend," Is all he says, toeing softly at the ground. He looks back up. "The others will be wondering where we've got to."

Charlie's face settles.

"Okay."

Dean's affection comes in waves. Slowly, he stops liking sleeping in the same bed at Castiel, starts glowering at the suggestion that they do, starts snapping at people who joke that the pair are a couple, or worse, married. He stops the banter, the skirting around flirtatious conversation, stops touching Castiel: fewer hugs, then no hugs; fewer occasions in which, when Castiel is sad or needs comfort, he takes a kind, reassuring hold of his friend's hand, then none at all; fewer lingering pats on the shoulder, then none at all. He recoils against Castiel's affection, rails silently against it in the looks he gives, even to the glances he pays to the space between him and Castiel. It makes the dark-haired boy make more room for Dean, move away from him if he worries they are too close; worried that Dean will think they are too close.

Then, like a rising storm, the looks Dean pays to the space between them will stop being angry and start being sad. His hands will balance out on the table between them when they sit opposite each other, moving listlessly, worried, distracted with some strange unobtainable purpose. And then the storm breaks, and Dean will cry—cry and not tell Castiel why he is crying but angrily fist at his bedsheets and pull at his hair and bite his lip, all of him trembling, until Castiel comes and sits beside him, wraps his arms around him and stays there. Dean cries into his shoulder and tells him he's sad about his dad, but doesn't tend to specify on anything more than this. He says sorry for being weird. He says sorry for being withdrawn.

He starts needing Castiel's affection at any given moment, hungering for it, touching Castiel's arm to get his attention and lingering there a moment longer than necessary, maybe several moments, maybe Dean doesn't remove his hand until a whole minute has past. They've gone whole conversations, Castiel's heart pounding, with Dean's warm hand wrapped around Castiel's upper arm. Dean begins ruffling Castiel's hair again, when he gets up from the dinner table, when he leaves a room and Castiel has to stay behind, when Dean says something patronising and Castiel rolls his eyes. He starts hugging Castiel again, in greeting, at random moments. He starts holding Castiel's wrists and hands, again, tugging Castiel out of rooms and into others, holding them when either he or his friend needs comfort. He starts reaching out across the table between them if they are sat opposite each other—to ruffle Castiel's hair, to graze a curious finger against a cut, usually a papercut, on Castiel's knuckle, to tap his friend on the arm and get his attention, and, on one occasion which stops Castiel's breath, to remove a stray eyelash from just below his eye.

He starts sleeping in the same bed as Castiel, again, inviting himself over under the guise of homework, and staying until late, very late, then saying there's no point going home, now: it's too dark. Castiel doesn't point out that Dean's 'home' is a matter of yards away from Castiel's front door. Dean even starts reaching out for Castiel in the night. Only innocently. Only hands tangled. Only jovial, light kicking. Only fingers grazing Castiel's elbow or back. Dean is tactile and always has been. But it comes in waves and crests, with Castiel: Dean will crest, all affection and touch and needing to be touched, and then fall, plummet in slow motion, withdraw and scowl at Castiel's attempts to reach out, physically, and engage with his best friend.

But it stops when they're both seventeen, in their final year of High School. Dean stops withdrawing altogether. He only starts engaging. His fingers resume dancing over the skin of Castiel's arms. There is something nervous, something waiting, something excited, something there, in their touch. Dean stops withdrawing and he slowly starts touching more and more, until it is second nature for them to be always shoulder to shoulder, for one to reach out to graze the other's skin: for his attention, for his comfort, for… Well.

They sit shoulder to shoulder, tonight. The sky in front of them swallows the world, but Dean and Castiel are immune to it. The light from Cas's bedroom behind them ekes out onto the roof they sit on; they swim in a sea of yellow as they sit. Dean's frame is taut like he can sense the pressing weight, the awkwardness, the grim inevitability, of the conversation Castiel is about to start. But the moment before he begins, Dean leans against him a little heavier, moving to pick up another bottle and opening it. It steals Castiel's breath and he watches, trying not to watch, as Dean drinks, then finishes his bear. Silence. Castiel's mouth turns down in sorrow. Fourteen years, and he's never been able to tell exactly what his best friend makes of him.

"So, I've been meaning to tell you." Castiel's voice comes out tight and coiled, creasing at its edges. Dean frowns at the sound distractedly, peeling the label of his beer. "I got accepted onto that… Uh, you know the Fulbright Scholarship—"

Dean's gaze flicks up to Cas's face in a motion that twists sharply at Castiel's insides. Dean stares, something in his expression akin to defensiveness, something else to familiarity, something else to fear. It takes a moment, apparently, to sink in.

"You got a scholarship?" He asks, eyes wide.

"Uh-huh," Cas confirms, gaze shifting away. He feels a prickle of guilt rise up in him. So does an awful lot of fear. Castiel can feel Dean's gaze on the side of his face as he stares out at the empty street ahead of them.

"So wait—" Castiel catches Dean frowning in his peripherals. Dean's jaw goes slack. His expression sours with something unknowable in an instant. His limbs tighten around him. "You—"

At last, Cas turns to look at him. Dean frowns into the gaze Castiel presses at Dean, but then his features swim, only for a moment, into something else.

Is this the beginning of the end of their friendship? Will going to Cambridge be the most regretful decision Castiel makes? It would be stupid not to go, for the sake of a friendship, for the sake of a friend; and yet the temptation is there, though Castiel will never succumb to it. But in a strange moment of clarity, like being drawn out of the hazy seduction of a dream, Castiel realises that this will be a decision that will pain him forever. He will never not think about it. Even if he would never change it.

"—You're going to Cambridge—"

"I can decline if I want," Cas says quickly, embarrassed that perhaps he has said this a little too quickly, and sits back, glancing up at the sky, which collapses on itself dramatically, colours swallowing colours in bursts of anger and messy pain.

Dean stares. In the twilit darkness, his eyes seem watery.

"Cas," Dean frowns. "You got into Cambridge. University. In England."

"I know, Dean," Castiel squints, confused. Dean pulls a face, but in a nauseous wave it changes again, and he carries on staring as before, eyes wide and sad. "What's your point?"

"You can't turn it down," Dean laughs strangely, shaking his head. "You just can't. This is—I don't know. This is your dream."

"I know," Cas repeats, letting out a long, forlorn sigh. "But now—now the dream seems so close. What if it's not everything I hoped that it would be?"

Dean laughs more convincingly, now, knowing and affectionate.

"You have an amazing habit for overthinking things, Cas."

"You're one to talk."

Dean snorts and pulls a wry expression. Then it rips into something else. Castiel watches it, afraid.

"So, English Literature, huh?" Dean asks after a deafening silence. "At Cambridge?"

"Looks like it," Castiel sniffs, taking a swig of his beer. He draws his knees up to his chest. Balances his chin on them. Dean stares steadily at him, unusually determined.

"You were always gonna do big things, Cas," Dean cracks a sorrow-smile. "Big things. Good things. You're a damn genius. You and Sammy, you put me to shame."

Castiel lets out a reluctant laugh. It bubbles out of him like a brook swelling after rain, liquid and soft.

"You've got your music," He points out.

"My music is nothing," Dean shakes his head. "Not on you. Not on what you can do. And not on what the word's got planned for you—"

Castiel can't help himself. If physical touch has become instinctive to him and Dean, over the past few years, then now so, more than ever. It's like turning your head at the mention of your name. Dean swallows—no, gulps—and his heart presses hard against Castiel's chest.

Gravity seems to have fled the rest of the world only to crush with particular force on Dean and Castiel in this moment. Dean breathes slowly.

"Your music isn't nothing," Castiel murmurs. "Your music is everything. You're everything."

And Castiel means it. More than Dean can know. Maybe, he thinks, terrified, more than Dean would ever want to know.

"So—uh—" Dean coughs out the words awkwardly, only affirming Castiel's fears, "King's College, right?" But this question is posed with warmth and a strange pride that Dean has remembered, knows that it matters.

"Right," Castiel beams, pulling back from Dean. Dean takes a large swig from his beer. Castiel catches his hands shaking minutely as he does so.

"You excited?" Dean asks. Here, Castiel can answer honestly, in spite of the fear gnawing at him.

"I'm gonna explore the UK before term starts, I've decided," Castiel nods. "I can't wait. Dad's gonna pay for it, and I'm gonna get a job in summer to cover some of the costs. But then—in like, July, August time, I'm gonna fly to Britain and just explore. I'll visit Edinburgh, learn about philosophers and the Enlightenment, visit the castle—go to London, learn all of its streets and shortcuts, go to Canterbury like Chaucer did. The whole thing will feel like… I don't know, my own pilgrimage, like what Chaucer took, but instead of looking at some martyr killed by a king, I'm gonna be breathing poetry and plays and novels… Which is spiritual in itself, I suppose." Castiel beams at Dean, who stares at him with a fatal expression. "Term starts in October. I'll have ages."

Dean scrunches his hands together.

"That sounds awesome." But he seems distracted by his own hands.

"I'm a little scared," Castiel admits, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Don't be." Dean's voice comes out certain and he looks up firmly to Castiel again. "You're gonna be great. They'll love you. You'll do amazing things."

Eternity softens Castiel's soul.

"Thank you, Dean," He says sincerely. His words contain depths he can't yet fathom. "Your faith in me…" He looks back out to the road. "It's always meant a lot."

Dean sniffs.

"You earned it."

Worried that Dean, too, is afraid of all that Castiel is afraid of, at the thought of going to Cambridge, he speaks suddenly.

"We'll stay friends. I promise."

Dean snorts. It's bitter beyond his eighteen years.

"We will," Castiel frowns, stubbornly. You doubt we could? He wants to ask. What have these fourteen years been worth to you? "I'll come back for the holidays, and for summer, and in England, a bachelor's is only three years—"

"Three years, Cas—" Dean tries, expression torn like wet paper.

"We've got fourteen years on that," Castiel points out. "I'm pretty sure that whatever life throws at us, we'll stick together. Fourteen years, Dean. Fourteen years of friendship versus three years of away, and totally contactable. Which do you think is going to win?"

Dean looks out at his house, its face and the lights inside its rooms hovering opposite them. His thoughts seem to stray as he stares at it, dancing around the building, and Castiel realises what he's thinking: we've lived opposite each other for fourteen years. It's not hard to be friends when you're the first person I see most mornings.

Sorry coils around Castiel's heart.

But living opposite each other doesn't explain the words they share, the looks, the touches, the years of history and shared experience, shared sorrow. Fourteen years of that doesn't just go away. Not ever.

"What's three years on fourteen years, Dean?" Castiel asks again, harder, this time.

Dean smiles, its corners tinged by insincerity and sadness, and he shrugs uneasily.

"I, uh—of course I want you to do this, Cas," Dean says, sad but at least, this time, sincere. "I guess I'm gonna miss you, that's all."

Dean always—he—

Castiel's soul softens but it is with the bittersweet taste of his love for his best friend.

"And I'll miss you." And he will. He really will. "But I'm not leaving for ages, remember? And after three years, I'll be back in Lawrence, probably teaching English—because what else can you do with an English degree?—and we'll—"

Dean hugs his friend tightly. Castiel falters this time

"Do it," Dean says. "Go. This is good, it's a good thing. It hurts for me because—well, you're my best friend. Of course it's gonna hurt. But I'm so happy for you, too. So ignore me if I get emotional. I'm proud of you."

"You're my best friend, too, Dean," Castiel chokes out.

"I think fourteen years have kind of already established that, Cas," Dean laughs. "No need to say it like it's such a confession."

The lightness of Castiel's laughter is liberating. He hits Dean lightly. Dean smiles. His frame still trembles.

"You going to Charlie's on Saturday?" Castiel asks, desperate to change from the pain of this subject.

"Yeah, of course," Dean smiles, seeming as relived by the change as Castiel. Affection returns, renewed, to his features and his tone. "You want me to give you a ride?"

"It'll have to be late if you do," Castiel winces, inhaling through his teeth. He isn't as pained over this as he's making out, and in fact, honestly, expects Dean to drive him. Dean grins and shrugs, confirming this.

"That's cool. Wouldn't be worth it if you weren't there, anyway."

These words shoot up Castiel's insides and almost shock him.

"I'm glad you think so."

Dean pushes the other boy lightly, chuckling. His eyes continue to burn Castiel hot and cold, however.

The words out, Castiel suddenly realises the gravity of moving to England. What it means to him. What he hopes it means to Dean. And how cruel, that he hopes it means this to Dean Winchester, that he hopes it causes his best friend pain. But he wants to be longed for in the way that he longs; wants Dean to figure his relationship with Castiel almost as its own entity, as a person in its own right, entitled to privileges and dignities and being sustained and kept alive, allowed to flourish. How would it be sustained, kept alive, allowed to flourish? By Dean and Castiel remaining close, loving one another. Forever. Castiel wants that. He wants that.

Dean looks out across the street again.

The spring air around them has grown suddenly cold with the sun having set.

Fourteen years of friendship drift out into the ether in front of them.