Hi guys! Sorry that this is a day late, I had my birthday party two nights ago and I had work last night so yesterday was just me attempting to resurrect myself from the dead enough to resemble a functioning waitress. I managed it, just. Anyway, we've finally reached Cas and Dean's first date! This is a multi chapter event so don't worry when this chapter comes to an end and things you wanted to happen didn't happen. The date continues next chapter. And kinda the chapter after that too. Patience, friends. Also my Cas hair kink is poorly hidden in this chapter haha oops.

This next bit is a message purely for the delightful 'guest' who left a review on this fic yesterday, as I can't PM you. All other readers, the following is not directed at you!

Dear 'guest': You seem dissatisfied with my update rate. I would like to bring to your attention how fucking rude and ungrateful it is to have free access to my work, which you claim to enjoy, and to then berate me for not churning out chapters at the speed you'd like. I put a lot of time and effort into my writing and I honestly couldn't care less whether you feel that it's 'worth the wait'. Are you my employer? Do you pay me for all the careful work and thought I give to this fic? Do I write this solely for your enjoyment? No, no and no. If the frankly generous rate of one chapter per week is too slow for you then feel free to fuck. off. and read something more to your liking. Thanks very much! xxx

It takes me several seconds to move, or even breathe, but after a slight panicked pause I move across to my bedroom door and pull it open with a determined smile.

Sure enough it's Dean, holding a six-pack of the beer I usually see him drinking with dinner or during research. He's wearing just one shirt, a moss green one that actually appears to fit him well enough to wear buttoned up. It looks unfairly good on him, which is no surprise since everything does as far as I've seen. It matches his eyes, which upon meeting mine immediately move up to my damp, wildly mussed hair. Perhaps messing it up was a mistake, but it's too late to fix it now and besides, Dean has seen me looking much worse and apparently still wants to be here. I take a calming breath.

"Hello, Dean," I greet him quietly. "Come in."

Stepping aside, I gesture vaguely behind me at the room. Dean looks into my eyes as he passes, almost smiling but not quite managing it. I shut the door and stare at him as he halts next to the bed, placing the beers on my nightstand next to my phone. He pauses and gazes down at it, obviously listening to the song playing.

"Huh," he says, the first sound he's made since arriving. "Bon Jovi. 'Livin' on a prayer'."

I murmur agreement, walking up to him until I reach his side. He swallows and glances aslant at me, eyes again catching on my hair. It seems to be really bothering him. Dean's hair is too short to ever really be messy. Maybe he hates messy hair. I drag my fingers through it self-consciously and Dean flushes a little as he watches, which is an odd response.

"You look great," he blurts out, staring back down at the nightstand. His face gets redder. I grin, surprised and gratified by the compliment.

"Thank you, Dean. So do you."

Dean makes a dismissive sort of gesture with his head, a kind of half-shrug.

"If you say so. I didn't know you had this music."

"Sam gave it to me," I admit, moving to open the pack of beers. "It's the songs on your mix tape in the Impala."

"Huh," Dean says again. I glance at him and he's already looking so I smile gently, trying to put him at ease. Pulling a can of beer out of the packaging, I open it and offer it to him. He half-smiles as he takes it from me.

"Tryna get me drunk, Cas?"

His voice has that light, teasing quality that it sometimes gets around me and I recognise it with a flash of realisation. It's flirtation. This is how Dean sounds when he talks to women who he finds attractive. How could I have only realised since becoming human that Dean flirts with me? He's been doing it almost since we met. It occurs to me that if I'd only paid better attention, I could have worked out Dean's feelings for me all along. This minor epiphany is both frustrating and oddly comforting. It leaves little room for doubt in my mind, which is good because doubt would be a crippling thing in this situation. I grin at Dean as I reply, standing up straighter.

"I think that this is more likely to affect me than you. Sam and I discovered today that my alcohol tolerance as a human is almost non-existent."

Dean snorts, seeming to relax a little as he watches me open my own beer and take a sip. "That ain't something you tell a date."

"Why not?"

He shrugs, smiling coyly against the lip of his can, eyes twinkling. I stare rather stupidly at him until he rolls his eyes, shaking his head. "Never mind. You, uh, wanna sit down?"

I nod and Dean looks around the room as though expecting chairs to have materialised since he arrived. I wait patiently for him to arrive at the obvious conclusion but he still hesitates when he looks down at the bed.

"I guess we'll just..."

It's my turn to roll my eyes and I do so as I walk around to the other side of the bed and climb on, settling on the covers cross-legged and taking another swig of beer. Dean eyes me with pursed lips before shrugging and joining me, although he sits with his back to the headboard and his outer knee drawn up for his elbow to rest on. He's in the spot I usually sleep in and he drums his free fingers on his thigh, looking nervous again. I cast around for something to say but he beats me to it.

"AC/DC. 'Highway to Hell'. Classic track. Sam always says it's a bit close to home for us, though."

It takes me a moment to understand but then I realise that he's again talking about the song playing. I laugh softly.

"'Highway to Hell'. Yes. That is a little too fitting."

Dean grins at me and takes another drink of beer, eyes drifting off and around the room. I watch him closely, utterly uninterested in my surroundings. Dean is frowning, though, so I glance at my bedroom too even as he speaks.

"This room is so bare, man. You should get some stuff in here. I could take you into town, get you a TV and a... I dunno, a bookshelf? You like books."

I look back at him, shrugging. "It doesn't bother me. It's only a room."

Dean looks a little pained at this, shifting on the bed and fixing me with his full attention. "Yeah, but it's your room. Your space. You should like it in here, it should be somewhere you want to be."

"I want to be here now," I point out, sipping thoughtfully at my drink. This gives Dean pause and he sits back again, flushing a little and looking away.

"Yeah, but that's..."

He trails off and I finish the sentence for him, quietly but firmly. "Because you're here."

Dean doesn't reply but his cheeks stay pink. I resist the urge to chuckle at him. "I'd like a bookshelf, Dean. I don't need a TV, though. Maybe a laptop?"

Dean relaxes again and smiles at me. "Sure, a laptop. There's a decent electronics place about twenty minutes drive from here. We'll go soon."

"After we've sorted all of this out with Sam," I say seriously. He sighs and nods, looking worried, and I regret saying anything about the situation with Ezekiel. I shift closer to Dean on the bed, my knee nudging against his hip. He meets my eyes, looking a little startled at my sudden closeness.

"Sam will be alright, Dean. I remember Ezekiel well and even if he's been changed since then, he was a brave and intelligent angel when I knew him. From what I've experienced, brave and intelligent beings can nearly always be reasoned with. If he intends to harm Sam, we will stop him."

I inject as much conviction into my voice as I can, holding Dean's verdant gaze with earnest determination. He stares at me for a moment before exhaling slowly, blinking, his lips twitching in an echo of a smile.

"I never thank you," he almost mumbles. I cock my head in confusion and he elaborates, voice still very quiet, eyes still locked onto mine. "For always wanting to help. Always being ready to save us."

I'm taken aback by his words but I merely shrug, finally tearing my gaze away and sipping at my beer before speaking. "You don't need to thank me."

I hear Dean snort lightly. "Come on, I owe you a million times over. You deserve way more than just a 'thank you', but still, I mean it. Thank you, Cas."

I can feel my face warming, although I have no idea why I should feel embarrassed by his praise or flustered by his gratitude. There's a moment of silence and I listen to the song playing in the background, realising that it's just coming to an end. I glance back at the man in front of me, opening my mouth to ask something inane about laptops, when I recognise the next song that's starting. It's the one that reminded me of my relationship with Dean, the one during which I planned to kiss him. All at once, I feel illogically terrified.

"Huh, this song," Dean is saying, looking sideways at my phone, obviously unaware of the way I've frozen in place with wide eyes and tense shoulders. "Man, this brings back memories. Haven't actually played this tape in a while, dunno why."

"Memories?" I repeat, hoping that Dean doesn't notice my stiff voice or how I can't seem to relax. He barely glances at me before taking a deep swig of his beer, eyes cast up at the ceiling as he thinks before replying.

"You remember Jo?"

I nod, glad of my rising curiosity because it distracts me from my fear and nerves. "Jo Harvelle. Ellen's daughter."

"Yeah," Dean says, his eyes sad, still staring upwards. His head is tilted back slightly, the column of his throat dusted with light stubble, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows. I scold myself for wanting to kiss the exposed skin when Dean is clearly having a melancholy moment, remembering his fallen friend who was my ally too. Desire is so insensitive, and makes me feel shallow. I refocus as he continues speaking after a moment.

"This song always makes me think of her. Back when I first knew her. Man, she was a slap in the face. So gorgeous and so badass. And so untouchable. I fell for her damn fast, not that she seemed to know it. Guess she had better things to think about, but I wasn't used to that."

I'm not remotely surprised to feel the sharp pinpricks of jealousy spreading through me as I listen to Dean reminisce. I ignore the emotions, watching blankly as Dean smiles into the distance, lost in memory. He seems to be mostly talking to himself.

"She played this track one night when I was hanging around at the bar. Had this song stuck in my head for ages, but really I just had Jo stuck in my head, I guess."

The jealousy is getting harder to push aside as I watch Dean take a sip of his drink, eyes fluttering shut, expression soft. I never knew that he'd had feelings for Jo. It makes sense, though. My memories of Jo are fairly vague but I remember that she was beautiful and brave and her soul shone like starlight. She was worth falling in love with, although I'm not sure if that's what Dean is describing. He may have merely experienced an attraction to the young woman, one which faded into this gentle fondness I'm seeing on his face. I'm staring so intently at Dean that I jump slightly as he looks directly into my eyes, his expression almost shy.

"I thought that could be it for me, you know? Well, no, you don't know. See, until Jo I thought I could never make a relationship work, not even in the short term. Then I met her and it was like, wow, this chick gets it, she can hold her own, she can survive the shitstorm that's my life. Obviously, that didn't work out..."

He pauses, looking away, the sadness back in his eyes. I barely have time to carefully process what he's said before he recaptures my gaze and speaks again, an odd determination in his voice.

"Then there was Lisa, and I did something stupid there. I thought I could leave it all behind and be normal. Ha, yeah, right. No way. She almost died, Ben too, and I thought I'd learned my lesson. It's not for me, that stuff. Domestic bliss or whatever. I can't have that. That's what I thought."

Another pause and this time, Dean doesn't look away. He holds my entire attention effortlessly and I lean forward, enraptured. He's speaking far more than usual, as though there's something he wants to impart, something he's working up to. The jealousy fades rapidly in my gut, forgotten and unimportant. Dean's eyes shine with something bright and hopeful as he says the next words.

"But you..." I tilt my head at him, my lips parted in silent question, and he smiles minutely before explaining. "You were there the whole time and it was so fucking obvious, wasn't it? You must have thought I was some kind of moron. I mean, I was. I am. I knew what you meant to me and I knew what I wanted and I couldn't... I couldn't reconcile it all in my head. I couldn't work it out, because I thought it was all tangled up in stuff that's off limits. But Jesus Christ, everything we've been through, all the shit I've seen. What limits? It's crazy."

Dean stops abruptly, catching his breath, eyes wide and fervent. He's sitting up from the headboard, his face inches away from mine, hands raised where he's been gesticulating passionately during his speech. He blinks at me and looks mildly shocked; his words were clearly unplanned. I feel dizzy and I'm pulsing with emotions, too many to catalogue. I've half-crushed my mostly empty beer can in my lap. I swallow heavily.

"Dean," I breathe, at a loss as to how to respond. He draws up his other knee so that both are raised in front of him, then rests his wrists almost wearily on them, hands dangling down. His gaze releases mine after what feels like a very long time and he sighs, eyes closed.

"This honesty thing is kinda exhausting," he remarks, his voice wry. I huff a rushed breath of laughter, shutting my own eyes and bowing my head.

"I like it," I murmur. There's a still silence and I realise that a new song is playing and I didn't kiss Dean. I don't care very much. Hearing Dean's perspective on his capacity to sustain a romantic relationship was far more worthwhile. Even more importantly, his conviction that he's incapable of being with someone appears to have fallen apart where I'm concerned. It's incredible and astonishing to think that I could be some kind of exception for Dean, that he might achieve something he wants purely because I love him. I've never felt necessary and needed in this way. It's something that I don't want to let go of. My smile grows as I almost sway to the song that's playing, feeling content and warm.

"Cas?" Dean's voice is gentle and I open my eyes to find that he's peering at me. He gestures to the beer can in my hand; his own empty one is sitting on the bedside table. "You want another one?"

It's clear from his light tone and guarded eyes that he doesn't want to discuss what he's just shared with me. I'm alright with that. I shake my head, still smiling, although I pass him the can to put on the table with the other one. The song that's playing ends as he turns to do so and a moment later, I recognise the introduction of that Aerosmith song of Sam's. Dean pauses, staring at the phone, before settling back against the headboard and meeting my eyes with a somewhat mischievous grin.

"Sam ever tell you how he and Jess first kissed?"