Act 2, Scene 2
February 12, 2016
"…and when we finally found him, he was about half a mile into the woods, sitting on a tree branch about five feet off the ground. I didn't even know four-year-olds could climb trees."
"Well, you did help raise him. It was probably inevitable that he'd absorb some of your personality."
Dean and Cas had been sitting in the small diner for more than an hour, catching up on years of stories. Cas had worried at first, thinking that he had so little to share, compared to all that Dean had surely seen and experienced in his education, but Dean seemed just as fascinated by Cas's journey.
"It was difficult to play that role sometimes," Cas admitted, scrolling through the photos of the boy on his phone as he showed them to Dean. For as clear as it was that he genuinely had been nothing more than Meg's close friend, he was as proud of her son as if he were his own. "Jesse knew very well that I wasn't his father, but neither was I a peer, obviously. When I tried to discipline him, he often seemed slightly confused by it."
"Probably he was just picking up on your worries about it. Kids are pretty flexible, and they get better than we do that family doesn't end with blood. Remember how Mom and Dad pretty much parented you a lot of the time when we were kids? I saw Dad lay into you like he did to us when we were trying stupidly dangerous stuff, and you weren't confused by it, right?"
"I was at first," Cas admitted, remembering. "But that was probably more because I'd never really been disciplined much at all, rather than because I was used to somebody else filling that position."
Dean grimaced. "You always kept that part of your life so secret. I never wanted to push, because I figured you didn't like thinking about it, or you were trying to get away from it."
"That wasn't entirely it," Cas sighed. "It was more like…if I had told you what my home was like, where I came from, you'd have tried to help me, right?"
"Of course," Dean said without hesitation.
"But, Dean, you were a boy. What would you have done?" Hesitantly, Cas reached across the table and gripped Dean's forearm. Their plates, long since cleaned of the last crumbs of pie and ice cream, lay forgotten; the waitress, sensing the weight between the two men, had avoided cleaning the table in order to give them their privacy. "You were already doing everything you could have done. You listened to me, and you let me be quiet as well. Your home was always open to me when I needed it. Would knowing that I was there because I was avoiding more bruises at the hands of a brother have changed anything? And before you answer," he said, stopping Dean with a raised hand, "please know that I would not have wanted you to rescue me through further violence."
Dean looked stricken. "But you should have had somebody stand up for you."
"You did. Even if you didn't know it." Cas reflected for a moment. "Do you remember the day we met?"
Chuckling, Dean nodded. "A little, anyway. You were up in that tree by the creek. Just like Jesse, huh?"
"Yes and no," Cas said. "I loved climbing that tree, just like he loved doing it, but I was there for comfort, not adventure. That wasn't my clubhouse, Dean – it was my sanctuary, where nobody could find me. Except you did. The day you found me in that tree, I finally felt like I had a reason to climb down."
"Cas, I have to ask." Dean looked nervous, worried about finally approaching directly what they'd only touched upon so far. Steeling himself to finally discuss what he'd always kept locked away, Cas waited. "That day, when I left. You told me that I'd been trying to force my dreams upon you, not paying attention to what you wanted. Is that really what I was like?" His eyes were clouded with self-doubt and regret, and Cas hated what he'd done to put those feelings there.
"I wasn't being fair. Not to either of us, I think. Maybe I was so worried that I'd end up pulling you down that I wound up setting you up to fail instead. You couldn't have known what I wasn't telling you, but then part of me felt so alone and lost because I wasn't letting you in. You were never anything but open with me, but I didn't afford you that same respect."
"Well," Dean said with a tiny smirk. "I wouldn't say I was entirely open. Cas, you said earlier that you knew how I felt about you back then. That true?"
"I think," Cas said, blushing a little. "But I thought I was imagining it. Even when I came out to you, you were so encouraging, but you never said anything about your own feelings."
"Yeah, well, apparently I didn't need to say it, or even think it, to start feeling and showing it. Would you believe Sam thought we were a secret couple back then?"
Castiel choked on a laugh. "Well, that explains why he kept giving me sorrowful looks every time you talked about your dates. He either thought you were cheating on me, or else that you were putting on such a good show that you might have been hurting me."
Dean laughed as well. "Okay, well, first things first. If we were dating, I would never cheat on you." He smiled warmly and wrapped his hands around Cas's. "If I was ever that lucky, for real, I'd never be dumb enough to throw it away. Not a second time, anyway."
"Well, if I were dating you , I'd never give you a reason to want to stray," Cas teased back. "You'd be nothing but satisfied, and I'd feel like the lucky one, getting to be the one putting that smile on your face."
"I'd patch up your scrapes," Dean argued. "I bet you still can't cut vegetables without needing a bandaid or two."
"I'd read the newspaper to you when you come home exhausted and are still too proud to put on your reading glasses."
"I'd drive you around town in my gorgeous car, and you'd never have to worry about getting your feet cold in the snow."
"I'd teach you yoga. I've been taking lessons at the Y for years now, and it's done amazing things for my flexibility."
Dean arched an eyebrow in interest, but refused to surrender the fight. "I'd take care of you when you're sick. I've paid a lot of money to learn how to do so. No using Doctor Google on my watch."
"I'd bake you fresh pie."
"Oh, come on!" Dean threw up his hands. "That's playing dirty! No way do you actually know how to bake pie!"
"I've learned a lot of things since you left," Cas said smugly.
"Yeah? Well, so have I," Dean said, leaning across the table to brush his lips across Cas's cheek.
Cas blushed crimson, grinning, then suddenly had a flash of insecurity that made his stomach clench. He bit his lip, looking down at the table, and he felt Dean's hands tighten in concern. "Dean," he said slowly, "I'm still not sure about…well, this. Part of me is sitting here, looking at you, and you've got the medical license and the education and probably a tattoo of a caduceus somewhere on your body." Dean laughed and winked but denied nothing; Cas fought down another blush. "But that wasn't all of what you wanted when you left. If you stay…if you and I try…I'm just afraid that we'll be right back to what scared me so much when we were kids. You were meant for more than this place." He ducked his chin, resolutely refusing to lift his gaze.
"Hey." Dean curled forward and lowered his head, tilting his face upward to try to catch Cas's eyes. "I want to make something clear. I came back here because I wanted to be here. I think I'm starting to see what it was I missed back then. It was bigger than just fucked-up family dynamics or emotional constipation." He gestured at himself for that point, grimacing. "What I wanted was to move toward something, something grand. You wanted to move away , to run from something horrible."
"So you're saying that neither of us got what we wanted?" The thought made him ache.
"I'm saying we both are still getting there. I'm saying that geography is only one way of moving. And maybe we've, like, driven on our own mental roads far enough by ourselves at this point, gotten enough of our shit sorted, that we could drive the rest of the way together. And if I keep going here, I'm going to run this metaphor completely into the ground and either be babbling about mind melding or merging brain traffic, so I'll just stop, okay?"
Cas couldn't help but chuckle. "Perhaps it's best that I'm the writer," he teased. "But I think I understand."
"You still haven't convinced me about your reasons for coming back here, specifically," Castiel said as they walked along the downtown sidewalk. Neither of them seemed eager to end what could no longer be described as a "coffee date" with any kind of accuracy. Cas had already called the neighbor he'd asked to sit with his dad, making sure she was okay if he spent a little more time out; she had actually chastised him for asking, arguing that he was foolish to have avoided asking for much help before now. "Your 'unfinished business' aside, you could have gone anywhere. There are plenty of rural programs who would have been thrilled to have you, and as good as your mother's dinners are, home cooking is no basis for a decision like that."
"Really? I think it's been too long since you've had her pot pie, man," Dean said with exaggerated sincerity, making Cas lift a deadpan eyebrow. "Okay, maybe it was another one of those things I've learned since I left. Everybody always talked about how I was meant to be a doctor because I couldn't help taking care of other people, right?"
"You're a natural caretaker, Dean. Nobody who knows you can help but see that."
"Sure, but it took leaving here – leaving my family and my best friend – to make me see that I wasn't really taking care of me . There I was, on my own, and nobody had any kind of reason to care about what I wanted, and I guess I realized that not only did I want to be in a place where I saw my patients as people, I needed to be where they'd see me as a person, too. And I realized that there were things I wanted that were all mine, and that it was okay to want them, even if it felt a little selfish and weird at first."
Snow was beginning to fall lightly around them, and Castiel watched the flakes eddy in the slight breeze. "And what were some of the things you wanted? Just, say, for example." He was hinting shamelessly, he knew, but he still felt unsure enough about where the two of them might be heading that he needed the reassurance of Dean's boldness. When he grasped Castiel's elbow and turned him to face him, Dean wore a determined smile.
"I wanted this," he said, pulling Cas into a tight embrace, hands spread against his upper and lower back. Cas felt Dean nuzzle his face into his hair, exhaling against his temple. "And I wanted this," he murmured, pressing his lips against the hinge of Cas's jaw, trailing kisses along his cheekbone until he had almost reached his mouth, where he paused and pulled away slightly to lock eyes.
"I wanted to see your blue eyes again. I missed them like you wouldn't believe, even before I admitted why that was." He leaned forward again, and Cas closed his eyelids to allow Dean to place gentle kisses on each of them.
"And I wanted to hear your voice," Dean said, moving one hand up along Cas's neck to comb softly through his hair. "God, that voice. Even when you were pissed and shouting, I still wanted to hear more of it. Sometimes I teased you just to make you get all growly. Love it."
"Dean," Cas sighed, feeling positively hypnotized.
"Yeah, there it is," Dean breathed. "And…and I wanted…" He lifted Cas's chin, waiting for him to open his eyes and meet his own. "Cas, please." He hovered, waiting to see understanding and approval before he would close the final inches between their lips.
Cas had no such self-control.
The kiss, as Cas launched forward and took what he'd never thought he could actually have, felt like coming home, perhaps. Until that moment, Cas would have been hard-pressed to say that he had ever had a "home." Dean's arms were refuge and unconditional acceptance; the heat of Dean's body pressed against his was contentment and safety. Dean's lips met his with an eagerness that spoke of a need for him , for his presence. Cas had never felt so wanted, so desired, so…loved.
If the snow got a little deeper on the ground around their feet, dampening their socks, they could be forgiven for not noticing. And if, later that night, an unfamiliar car remained parked in front of the Novak house until very late, the neighbors were too polite to mention it, other than one curious comment about whether Castiel's father had taken a turn for the worse, needing Doctor Winchester to stay. Everyone else who saw Dean and Cas together, the next day or over the course of the many that followed, knew better.
After all, those two boys were inseparable. Especially once, a year later, they wore the rings to prove it.
