Five
"God, Charlie, can you please stop hitting me like that?" Cas shouts after Charlie smacks him across the arm for the fourth time.
"Yeah, well, you deserve it!" she screams.
"She's kind of right, brother," Benny chimes in. "You kind of do deserve it."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Cas asks. "Why do I deserve this?"
"Because!" Charlie screams. "Michael cheated on you and now you're just going right back to him! You just totally ditched Dean for him! Dean, your best friend, the guy who cares for you more than probably anyone else in the world, and you just totally chose that asshat over him!"
"I didn't choose anyone over Dean!" Cas yells back. "I'm not going back to Michael, I don't want to be with him, he's a jerk and I could care less about him, and if you'd bothered to ask, you'd know that that's exactly what I was telling him at the bar. Although, I do think my speech to him contained less words like "jerk" and more words like "bastard" and "fuck off."
"Oh. Well… Oh," Charlie says, her anger simmering away.
"Wait, so… If that's what you were telling Michael, then why did Dean storm out?" Benny asks.
"I have no idea," Castiel responds. "He didn't wait to see what I was telling Michael either. Michael asked me to talk, Dean exploded on him, and when I told Michael I'd talk to him, Dean just got mad and left."
"Well of course he got mad, you stupid, stupid man!" Charlie exclaims. "You just readily agree to run off and talk to your ex-boyfriend, who cheated on you, when you're supposed to be on a date with Dean, of course he's going to be mad!"
"But we weren't even on a real date. He's just helping me get back at Michael. And it worked, too," Cas responds a bit smugly.
"Cas, seriously, there is no way you can actually be this dumb. This was not a fake date. I know it, Jo knows it, Benny knows it, even freakin' Dean knows it. Trust me, the guy likes you. You can't look me in the eye and tell me that the show you two put on out on the dance floor was for Michael. You didn't even know he was here yet."
Cas's eyebrows draw together and he tilts his head to the side. Now that he thinks about it, Dean has been acting strange all night. Holding his hand at the restaurant, waggling his eyebrows along to what Cas now suspects were flirtations, dancing so closely. Cas had just thought that Dean was extremely committed to the bit, determined to make Michael feel like shit. But Castiel had felt an electricity between them on the dance floor, right before Michael had interrupted. For a second, he even thought that they might kiss—but then he'd quickly shaken if off as just his imagination after Michael interrupted. Because Dean didn't like him like that, right? They were just friends, weren't they?
"Dean… likes me?" Castiel asks, his head still tilted to the left.
"Oh. My. God." Charlie sighs out. "You two. You two are the biggest goddamn idiots I've ever known."
As soon as Dean arrives home, he storms past his brother and dad who are in front of the television in the living room, and barricades himself in his room. He flops onto his bed without bothering to remove his shoes and stares at the ceiling. He can't even begin to fathom his anger.
After everything that Dean and Cas have been through together, he can't comprehend that he would choose Michael again, after the bastard cheated on him. Dean cannot imagine why Cas would choose that over him, even as just his best friend and not a boyfriend. Dean knows that they weren't actually dating, but something, something was about to happen on that dance floor tonight. He knows that he wasn't the only one who felt it; he could see it in Castiel's eyes. They'd almost kissed for crying out loud.
Dean pulls his pillow above his head and buries his face in it; he screams until his throat hurts. He lies on his bed, imagining what Cas is doing now. He's probably laughing at one of Michael's stupid jokes, or holding Michael's hand when he should be holding Dean's. Maybe he's even kissing the stupid asshole.
Dean doesn't know when he falls asleep, or how long he's been that way when he hears a knock on his bedroom door. He rolls over so that his back is facing the door.
"Go away," he calls.
"Dean," Cas's voice says hesitantly, "let me in."
Dean springs off the bed and stomps to the door with grand plans to really lay it out on Cas. He's yell at him, scream out his rage, possibly even land a punch or two. He's going to shout at Cas that he feels betrayed, that he doesn't understand, that he really just wants to put Nair in Cas's shampoo, not Michael's. But the second Dean opens his bedroom door, all the fight leaves him. He sees Cas standing in the doorway, and he just can't be angry anymore. His shoulders fall, he exhales heavily, and he steps aside.
"What do you want, Cas?" Dean asks tiredly.
"I… I just… I wanted to talk to you. About Michael."
"Michael," Dean says with a scoff. "What about him? Wanna tell me how you went running right back? Wanna tell me that he's great, that he just made a mistake, all that jazz?"
"No," Cas replies with an expressionless face. "I wanted to tell you about how I told him to fuck off and how I don't want to see him anymore. And how I told him he's an asshole for cheating on me. And that he doesn't deserve me, because I know I'm better than that. I know. I deserve better than him. I deserve someone better, someone who will care for me and stay loyal to me and do anything for me."
Well that wasn't at all what Dean was expecting.
"Well. Uhm. Well, uh. Yeah. You do deserve that."
"God, you really are an idiot," Cas says, stepping forward. "I deserve you."
And then Dean's world stops turning and focuses on nothing but how Cas is stepping closer and closer, grabbing Dean's face and pulling him closer. Cas is only a foot away, a few inches away, only a hair's breadth away, and now Dean can feel Cas's lips ghosting over his own. Cas moves no further, letting Dean decide what to do, whether to really kiss him or pull away.
A hundred moments flash before Dean in that moment. He sees his first meeting with Cas, when they were only in kindergarten, playing in the sandbox and racing to the swings. He sees their first day of middle school, walking into the enormous hallways together, hunting down their lockers. He sees their junior prom, both going with dates they didn't really like, then ditching them both halfway through to hang out with each other. He sees the first time they got drunk, the first time Dean drove a car without his dad, their first failed tests and all of their more numerous victories. Dean literally can't remember a single big moment in his life that Cas was not around for.
Then he sees the hundreds of little moments of the past two weeks. All of the hand holding and hugging and movie watching and "dating," all of the weird cuddles and awkward flirtations and every single moment of jealousy that Dean had for Michael.
Dean sees all of this in a short second and doesn't even begin to question what his decision will be. With absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, Dean wraps his arms firmly around Cas's waist and seals their mouths together, writing every memory he's recalling with his lips onto Cas's own. Every tear they've shed together, every laugh they shared, every failure and triumph, every late night phone call and early morning text is whispered between the two as their lips move in tandem in the middle of Dean's bedroom.
And Dean can't but think that this is perfect. Despite the fact that it took them twelve years to get here, despite the fact that it took Cas dating another boy and being cheated on, despite the fact that they had to pretend to date for two weeks to actually start dating, Dean still thinks that it's absolutely perfect. And Cas couldn't agree more.
Dean pulls away with a smile stretched across his face.
"Well, maybe not that big of an idiot," he says as he leans down to kiss Cas once more.
Dean and Cas lie in Dean's bed talking and kissing for hours, and Cas eventually falls asleep wrapped in Dean's arms. Dean lies awake for a while longer, staring at the ceiling with the most ridiculous of smiles on his face. Though Michael really hurt Cas and seriously pissed off Dean, he can't help but thank Michael whole-heartedly for being such a massive, shitty douche canoe.
