The day of their panel—the second day of what had been a relatively successful convention so far—started way to early and with a bit of a hangover. Well, that's how it started for Dean anyway. He couldn't say he was overly fond of the disorientation of waking up in a strange hotel room, but at least it was nice. God knew he had slept in his fair share of cheap motel rooms when he was younger.

He slapped a hand to his face, rubbing it up through his hair slowly, and wondered what time it was. He hadn't opened his eyes yet—didn't really want to—but his mouth was so dry he thought his tongue might fall out and he needed to piss like nobody's business. Still. He lingered a moment and thought about the previous evening.

Dinner with Cas. Castiel. (When on Earth had he gotten to nicknames with the guy?) Drinks with Chuck and Jo (and Castiel, but who was counting). A heated debate between Rebecca—"it's Becky"—Rosen and an editor whom Dean had never met before over the respective merits of different "ships". It didn't matter that Dean didn't understand a word of it, given that there were "ship names" and a hell of a lot of other terminology that he didn't bother learning. It was entertaining as hell. Then the editor had started flirting and she was hot, so yeah, Dean flirted back.

He definitely hadn't gone to bed alone last night, which is why it was sort of weird when he finally opened his eyes and realized that he was definitely alone now. At least there was that. He sat up slowly and a quick scan later proved his suspicions and allowed him to relax: the chick from last night was gone.

A trip to the bathroom and a shower later, Dean felt substantially more human. Which of course brought to mind all of his slightly less physical concerns. His book. The panel. Castiel.

Wait. What?

He didn't know where that last thought had come from. Castiel wasn't a concern. He was just a guy that Dean had only met yesterday. Dean wasn't the sort of guy who made friends easily though, so maybe it was that weird sense of easy companionship that was freaking him out right now. It had taken him years for him to even consider Chuck a friend and even then, Dean had to admit that the two often went months without speaking. The only person Dean ever kept in contact with on any sot of a regular basis was Sam.

Okay, so maybe Castiel was a bit of a concern. It was weird that he wasn't even thinking about the other man. Dean wasn't the sort to linger on things and it wasn't like there was even much to linger on. So they'd had a weird sort of start and then had dinner. So what?

Dean didn't want to contemplate what it meant that he was defending his own actions to himself. He needed coffee. It was too damn early to be contemplating his strange sense of companionship towards a man he had known less than twenty-four hours.

Downstairs the hotel had provided one of those continental breakfast things they do, with eggs in one metal thing, bacon in another, sausage in another… The sort of mediocre breakfast that was a long way from cheap motels but not exactly the Hilton either. It wasn't like Dean had had very many cooked breakfasts since the divorce though, so he wasn't going to be a snob about it.

He filled up his plate, grabbed a mug of instant coffee that was okay if he didn't pay it much attention and went to go sit at an empty table so that he could eat his food and ignore the world. Maybe it wasn't healthy, the way he had been liing the last few months. He should try to talk to people, start to get over the life he had had with Lisa—the one he hadn't seen crumbling until it was too late. Maybe he should stop burying the feelings. Sam had been whining about it incessantly since Lisa had asked him to leave, but that didn't mean Dean had paid him any attention. He had dealt with the loss of their parents and he could deal with the loss of his wife and kid. It hadn't mattered before that Ben wasn't his, but with the divorce months in the past and hardly any word from the kid, he was painfully aware of the fact.

"May I sit here?"

Dean looked up, shocked out of his thoughts, and saw—guess who—Castiel standing over him with a plate in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, sure, go ahead."

He sat and they ate in relative silence. Either the other man had tuned into his dark mood, or he just assumed that Dean was tired from a late night, but either way he left him alone at least until he had swallowed his entire cup of coffee.

Then he asked, "How are you, Dean?"

Dean just stared at his unexpected breakfast partner for probably too long to be socially acceptable. It wasn't like nobody ever asked him how he was, it was just… it was the first time in a long time that anyone besides Sam had sounded like they meant it. Castiel's telephone sex voice, although no less gravelly, sounded so sincere that for a brief moment Dean contemplated actually telling him the truth. That he hadn't been okay in a long time and he didn't even know why. That his writer's block probably had more to do with his recent divorce than he wanted to admit. That he had realized that he didn't really have any friends, but couldn't be bothered to go find any even if he knew how.

None of that he actually said out loud of course. The very fact that those thoughts had even crossed his mind terrified him in a way that he decided not to ponder on too long.

"'M fine," he finally answered, chewing on a piece of toast. Then, because his mama taught him manners, he asked, "You?"

He didn't expect an answer much deeper than his own, but he should have begun to realize already that Castiel was like the freaking Spanish Inquisition. You never expected him.

"I'm nervous about the panel today," he admitted, revealing a very human side of him that for some reason surprised Dean, though of course it shouldn't have. Of course the man was nervous. He was new. This was new. Dean hadn't exactly done anything to assuage the man's fears so far and for that he felt a small pang of guilt.

"I don't even know what we're supposed to be talking about," he continued.

Dean shrugged. "Our books. What makes us bestsellers, what makes us tick. We only have to introduce ourselves and then they take over. Trust me. It'll be easy."

Dean decided not to mention the fact that he had never run a panel before himself, but he had been to enough of them to know that it wasn't so bad so long as you didn't get too nervous about it. Different people ran different panels and Dean knew that they had been put together because of how well their books were selling, not a whole lot else. This was a professional convention though, so that wasn't so unheard of.

"Look, you just gotta remember not to be nervous," Dean told him, waving a piece of bacon in the air for emphasis. Castiel's lips tugged up in what might have been the beginnings of a smile. Dean decided not to think about why that made him feel oddly warm, nor the fact that it led to him spending the next several hours before the panel trying to figure out how to make him smile for real.

He didn't know how it happened. Dean really wasn't all that social. Yet somehow the morning seemed to melt away, shared by Castiel and his quiet but firm assertions that Oscar Wilde was in fact a genius, not an overly wordy asshole like Dean argued. They went to a workshop together and Dean pointedly ignored the look Jo shot him from across the room, deciding that he didn't feel like overthinking just then.

Which is how he found himself standing beside Castiel, who was shaking just slightly, about to go run a damn panel. You'd think, looking at the two of them, that they were about to face down the devil himself—they certainly looked grim enough. They weren't, of course, but Dean couldn't help but find Castiel's warm and slightly too close presence reassuring.

"You ready?"

Castiel turned to him and, before Dean could react, pressed his lips lightly to Dean's cheek.

"Yes."