Dean opened his eyes and blinked, the light from the lamp didn't hurt for once. Weird. He felt…different. He paused for a second trying to put his finger on exactly what that feeling was, and then he realized that it was both the absence of the dull buzz of alcohol in his system, as well as the absence of a hangover when the alcohol wasn't there. He was stone cold sober for the first time since, well, since he could remember. It had been awhile. A long while.
Not moving, he just took a moment to adjust to the feeling. The bright light of sobriety flooded his brain with memories of the past weeks and months, everything he had been drinking to forget in the first place. Fear, loss, and grief washed over him in wave that came out of nowhere and physically stole his breath and he made an noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a sob.
"Shhh Dean, it's ok, I'm here. You're safe."
He froze again, remembering the past few days. Cas coming back and leaving again, the night he got black out drunk, Sam and Cas's "intervention", the hospital, and the medication they had given him to weather withdrawal. It must have worked out of his system now too, because everything was clear. Clear enough at least because he could feel Cas snuggled up behind him, chest to back, legs tangled in his own, arm swung over his side pulling him close, hips pushed against his ass, and his breath tickling the back of his neck.
"Cas, what's going on?"
"Keeping you warm, remember?"
Ah, yes now he did. He not so delicately moved out of his embrace and sat up on the edge of the bed. "I'm good now, thanks."
Cas didn't move and was still lying on the bed when Dean turned back to look at him. He looked damn fine in the rumpled blue flannel and grey shirt that he'd stolen from Dean's closet. Ignoring the draw to check out his hips and legs, Dean shifted his eyes up to meet Cas's deep blue ones. He wasn't sure if he was seeing amusement or concern, probably a mixture of both. Cas didn't say anything and just waited for whatever Dean was going to say next.
Dean was tempted to head back into familiar territory, play it cool and play it straight, move on and pretend they hadn't just been spooning like lovers in a bed that way too small for two men their size. But he also remembered how it felt the last time he watched Cas walk out the door, the way Cas had sat with him on the kitchen floor, the way Cas had claimed him as his partner in front of Sam and then at the hospital. The memories were fuzzy but they were there, and damn it if he didn't want that life more than he wanted the familiar. Terrified or not, he wasn't stupid enough to lose his angel again. He leaned over Cas and kissed his cheek lightly, with more promise than passion. "I need a shower, I feel gross. Can you meet me in the kitchen in half an hour with coffee? We should probably talk about some things."
Cas smiled back, reached across the bed, and squeezed Dean's hand. There was no tension in his expression and the look of adoration shining in his eyes had Dean second guessing his decision to leave the room. "I will make the coffee and something to eat, you get cleaned up."
Dean stood under the hot water for a luxuriously long time, scrubbing every inch of skin at least twice as if trying to wash away a lifetime of regret and bad choices. The heat and shower pulse relaxed the tension in his neck and shoulders that had been sitting there for as long as he could reasonably remember. He could have stayed all day, but Cas was waiting for him and that was more than enough enticement to get out, get dressed, and make his way towards the kitchen. Fresh start he told himself under his breath as he followed the smell of brewing coffee, feeling more than a little nervous about how things were going to unfold. Even a sure thing can be a scary thing.
This time, Cas was already seated at the table, waiting for him. Two bowls of what looked like chicken noodle soup with grilled cheese on the side, and two mugs of coffee. "It's canned soup, I'm still learning to cook, I figured you'd prefer this over a burnt offering."
"Looks great Cas, I'm thankful no matter what." He took the seat in front of his meal, shooting a smile across the table to show that he was sincere. Canned soup was canned soup, but he had to admit that the grilled cheese was properly made with a perfect ratio of cheese to bread and a deep golden color. "You've, ah, done a good job taking care of things around here while I was out of it, I just want you to know that I appreciate it….all of it."
They ate in silence for a little bit, not awkward, but pensive. Cas was a perpetually patient angel and Dean figured it was always going to be up to him to break the ice for conversations like this.
"So, about everything…"
"Wait! I almost forgot." Cas jumped up and ran over to the oven pulling out a plate. Looking pleased with himself he grabbed a fork on the way by and walked the plate over, setting it down on the table in front of Dean.
"Is that cherry pie?"
"I brought it home for you from the diner the other day, but you weren't in any condition to eat it. Sam suggested that I cut it up and freeze if for when you were feeling better. I think now you are feeling better."
"After the way I fucked everything up and hurt your feelings, you bought me pie?" Dean swallowed thickly, he wasn't going to cry. He wasn't.
"I shouldn't have left like that, I'm sorry Dean, I was trying to make amends."
"Well you can bring me pie anytime Sweetheart." The words slipped out without thinking and Dean's cheeks pinked up with embarrassment, looking quickly as he saw to spots of color on Cas's as well. I guess that was his cue.
"OK Cas, let's try again. About everything…" Sip of coffee and a deep breath. He reached across the table and rested his hand on top of Cas's, while he stared back at him intently, waiting. "About everything…"
"You've said that three times Dean"
"Help me out here man, this is hard."
"Sorry, how are you feeling?"
"Honestly? I'd kill for a drink right now, I know it's not going to happen, but here I am, wishing." Dean took a bit of pie and continued. Cas moved his hand under Dean's and changed position, so their fingers were laced together. "I'm ok with that, I hope it'll get better over time. But I expect it'll take a while, I don't even remember a time when I wasn't drinking, it's just been part of my life for so long."
Cas didn't comment, he just watched him with an open expression, waiting for him to continue.
"It's ok though, I mean, I don't want to go back. The last few days have been beyond awful and the days before that - well I never want to go back there. I just felt so lost and out of control, and then when you left…" he swallowed another lump in his throat while his eyes got glossy, "…I never want to feel that way again."
"I'm not going anywhere, but you know that you're the only one who can make those choices about whether or not you drink, or how you are going to react when bad things happen."
"I know Cas, I'll see the counsellor with Sam so we can both figure out our shit. It's my job to not drink, but promise me you'll be there if I ask for help?"
"That I can do." Cas squeezed his hand and sent him a reassuring smile.
More companionable silence while Dean picked away at his pie and coffee. There was so much he wanted to say, but his mind was jumbled and emotionally he was wrecked from the rollercoaster ride he had been on these last few days. He just felt so raw. Finishing the pie and coffee he released his hand and carried the dishes to the sink. Washing could wait for tomorrow. Turning, he leaned back against the counter, crossed his legs at the ankles, and looked at Cas, really looked at him.
A lot of life - and death had happened to them both over the past 12 years, and the lines were etched in both of their faces to show it. Dean was 41 and too old to play any more games or put up with anyone else's shit, and definitely too old to be causing it for the people he…loved. When Cas had first appeared in his life, he looked as young as Dean had at the time, giving off that badass angel vibe with a full head of messy hair that looked exactly like he'd just had wild sex, and a lean build that was featured in more of Dean's fantasies than he wanted to admit. Now, the sex hair was still there, the build still the stuff of Dean's hottest imaginings, but the badass angel vibe was somewhat muted and his face, just as aged as his own, with the lines that Dean had probably put there. Flat out, he took his breath away, and he was still more than a little afraid that if he blinked, Cas would be a mirage that disappeared.
"Listen, I have a few things that I want to say, but I'm terrified that I'm going to fuck it up. Can you promise me, before I say anything else that you won't walk out if I do? That you'll give me a chance maybe to explain it better or figure out what I did wrong?"
"I'm not going anywhere." Cas expression was open, and his eyes meeting Dean's with patient kindness. Just like the clothes and the room change, he was going to make this as easy as possible for Dean to get to where he needed to be. He titled his head to the side and waited.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck nervously and chewed his bottom lip for a moment.
"Hunters don't get to live long or happy lives. That's what my dad told me, all the time, my whole life. He was 52 when he died, always a tough sonofabitch, and I always figured I'd have been dead and gone before I got anywhere near there. I mean, you can't do the shit we did and expect to even get up the next morning. There was never any point of me thinking about a damn thing other than making sure Sam was safe, I was always a dead man walking."
He paused to corral his thoughts and figure out what he wanted to say next. "Didn't matter if I drank, so long as I could still kill monsters, didn't matter if I got hurt so long as Sam was safe, didn't matter what I wanted so long as the job got done. Maybe a quick lay with a pretty girl – or sometimes a guy- along the road when I was feeling lonely, well that was pretty much all the happiness I was told that I was entitled to. It didn't matter, because I never mattered."
"And the thing is, I knew it was true because every time I pushed against it, every time I hoped for anything more, Chuck ripped it away. The people I got close to always suffered for knowing me. Anytime I let my guard down and tried to grab even a little more than the pile of shit I knew I was entitled to, people got hurt, people died. I've always been poison."
By now Dean had crossed his arms across his chest, subconsciously trying to protect himself from his own words. He'd stopped looking at Cas while he spoke, staring at the floor instead. Thinking something about yourself was one thing, but speaking the words out loud left him feeling incredibly vulnerable. He continued.
"And I was fine with all of it, just went through the motions doing what I had to do and kept everything in check…" And here is when Dean looked back up at Cas, meeting the blue eyes that were watching him intently. "…except for you. I wanted – I've always wanted…so much…when it came to you…and it terrified me. I mean, the way you look at me, the way you were always there, saving my ass, giving a shit about me when no one else ever has…I'm not that stupid, I knew how you felt the whole time, and so help me, I wanted it so damn bad. But I don't get to have a happy ending, and I sure as shit didn't deserve a literal, fucking, angel, so I just treated you like crap figuring you'd eventually bail."
"Dean, I…" Cas had heard enough and got up from the table and crossed the kitchen to stand in front of Dean. Intimately close with his legs apart, framing Deans and placing a hand on each bicep.
"Just let me finish ok?"
"I'm listening, but then it's my turn." Dean nods and continues.
"And every time you left, when I drove you away, I felt like I deserved it. But the times when you sacrificed yourself for us, for me, I just wanted to crawl into a bottle and wait there unit I died, and so help me, I think I was getting close."
He was almost there, just a little more.
"I thought that seeing you being taken by the Empty was the absolute worst, but it wasn't. It was when you came back, and left again because I had screwed it up, just like I had been afraid that I always would anyway." Dean uncrossed his arms, trying to open up his posture and draw Cas closer by circling his hands around the back of his neck.
"Honest to God Cas, I don't even know exactly what happened between you walking out the door and you standing here right now, but I want it, I want all of it." Dean's green eye's captured Cas's blue ones and held them with clear intent. "I'm an over the hill, out of work hunter with a mountain of baggage and a drinking problem, but, I love you so much that sometimes I can't even breathe. Would you please wait here with me until I can get my shit together, so I can love you the way you deserve after putting up with me for so long?"
Castiel didn't answer right away, which would normally triggered another internal spiral downward in Dean, except he remained close enough that their breaths were mingled together. Except, he was still wearing Dean's old clothes and Dean had found his belongings stashed in his bedroom over the past few days. Except, before he said a single word about what Dean had just laid bare before him he had brought his hand up to catch Dean's jaw making sure that he couldn't look away or move out of range. Wordlessly and not at all gently as you would expect a first kiss from an angel, he slammed his mouth hard against Dean's, no longer denying himself of something that he'd been waiting a long, long time for.
Meeting him measure for measure, it took a few moments before they came up for air, resting their foreheads together. Panting from a combination of oxygen deprivation and lust, after a few deep inhalations, Cas spoke in a voice that was impossibly deep.
"Is it my turn now? Because if it is, I want you to pay very close attention Dean." He was still holding Dean so he couldn't escape his gaze although the intensity itself would have pinned a lesser man to the spot anyway. Dean nodded slowly, green eyes not wavering.
"I should not have left you this last time, I was feeling…embarrassed. At the time I thought that being close to you was enough, even if you didn't feel the way I felt, but I couldn't handle it. I am sorry for the hurt that this caused you. Please forgive me." This time he did lean in a kiss Dean gently.
"I am not sorry that it happened if it means that we are here now though. This, you here with me is already more than I had ever hoped, and I'm not going anywhere. Ever again." He ran his thumb down along the line of Dean's jaw, and around to rub it across his bottom lip. An intimate gesture that Dean accepted and encouraged in return by parting his lips just enough to quickly dart his tongue out lick the pad, following it with a feather light kiss. Cas choked back a loan groan and his pupils blew wide and dark.
"Later. Talk first. " It came out pretty close to a growl, he swallowed and started again. Squaring his shoulders so Dean would pay attention and not try to distract him.
"That was the absolute last time you are ever going to talk about yourself that way, do you understand?" He punctuated every word to make sure they landed where Dean would hear them.
"You are NOT poison. You matter. Your life is precious. Do not ever say otherwise again. Are we clear on that?" Shocked because that was the last thing Dean had actually expected to hear at that moment, he froze in place. "I pulled you from Hell and literally stitched your soul back together with my own grace, I know who you are and who you are not. I have not sacrificed and waited for you all of this time because you were not worthy of being loved, I did it because you were. You are."
Dean desperately wanted that to be true, but the gap between hearing and believing was so very large. He thought he would have been out of tears given the emotional rollercoaster he'd been on over the past week, but he was not. They coursed freely down both cheeks, a healing balm this time that somehow watered hope deep in his heart.
"I don't know if that's true at all Cas, but you make me want it to be." Almost shyly he framed Cas's face with his hands and leaned in kiss him, and then resting their foreheads back together. He sighed feeling like maybe, finally things were going to be ok. "Where do we go from here?"
"Well, I'm a fallen angel with weakening grace that currently leaves me 7/10 human. I would like to spend the rest of it, and my eventual human existence at your side until such a time as we can convince our son Jack to admit both of us into Heaven together. I don't plan to lose you again."
"You're a goddamned genius Cas, you know that right?" The mood had shifted, finally some lightness and levity.
"By human standards? Absolutely, except maybe for cooking."
"Yeah, well I've got you covered there sweetheart. You're not going to go hungry for food…" Dean grinned like he was up to something, and he surely was. "…or for anything else. I've waited too long and had too many sleepless nights thinking about you to wait a minute longer. Bedroom. Now."
Bunching the front of his flannel in his fists, Dean pulled Cas in for a kiss that was open and sensual, nibbling on his bottom lip. So long had this been coming that it really didn't take much to go from a spark to intense flame. It had been a while, but Dean Winchester knew how to build that particular flame into a raging fire. Cas was, for once helpless to do anything but go along. Never letting go of his shirt, and lips parting only to come up for air, they made their way to the bedroom and kicked the door closed.