Middle of December 2015

One afternoon in December Dean came home from his swim meet to find Sam and Ruby sitting at the dining room table, huddled so close together that their foreheads were almost touching. Dean cleared his throat. "What is going on here?"

Sam, flustered, jumped back when he saw his brother. "Nothing's going on, we were um, we were just studying."

Ruby smiled sweetly at Dean and reiterated, "Yep, we were just studying." Somehow, Dean didn't quite believe that.

So, he asked Ruby to follow him into the kitchen. When they walked into the kitchen, Dean walked up to the sink and motioned to Ruby to come stand next to him. She came up to him and muttered, "What?"

He turned on the water so that Sam wouldn't be able to hear before angrily saying to her, "What do you think you're doing?"

She smiled coyly and twirled a finger around a strand of her hair. "Nothing, Dean."

"Don't do that shit," Dean said. "He's four years younger than you."

Ruby's coy smile faltered. She sighed and placed an arm on Dean's shoulder placating. "Dean, relax, I was just joking," She said. "Your kid brother's adorable," She added on, smiling. "But as you said, he's four years younger than me and that would unacceptable, not to mention gross," She pulled a face. "I do have standards, you know."

Dean nodded. He felt more at ease now. But he still wanted to know why Ruby was here. "Then what are you doing here?"

Ruby rolled her eyes. "Jesus, you really are overprotective. We're here to study. The kid asked me to tutor him."

"Tutor him?" Dean asked, surprised. "That kid's a genius."

"Well, he definitely isn't a genius in Spanish," Ruby replied. Then she pointed at the sink that was now overflowing with water and said, "Might want to turn that off."

As Dean mumbled, "Shit," and turned to turn the faucet off, Ruby sauntered away, back into the dining room.

As he turned off the faucet and started to make dinner, he heard her say to Sam, "Cómo estás?"

At Sam's hopelessly uttered, 'huh,' Dean snorted. His brother really was bad at Spanish.

A few days later

Dean and Cas were at the park hanging out and Dean was telling the story of Ruby being over to tutor Sam and how worried he was that Ruby would try something.

As he recounted what happened, he was looking at Cas, who was listening to him intently, nodding along in all the right places, and looking so earnestly at Dean when it hit him.

He was in love and he was so, so, fucked.

His stomach was queasy and he thought he was going to be sick. Cas asked him something else but Dean clearly wasn't listening as all of a sudden, he blurted out, "I love you."

Cas stopped talking. Then he blinked, taken aback. "What?"

"I love you," Dean said it again. Then he ran up to a nearby trash can and vomited into it.

"Well that definitely wasn't how I had imagined you telling me," Cas said teasingly as he rubbed Dean's back soothingly and then offered him a water bottle. Dean graciously accepted the water bottle and gulped it down.

Once he was finished drinking the water, he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and laughed. Then he coughed. His throat was still a bit sore from throwing up so he drank some more water.

"I guess it just really scared me to admit that," Dean said. Then he smiled sheepishly. "Probably should've picked a better time to tell you."

"Dean," Cas said softly. "You know when you're in a car and your favorite song starts to play but then it turns out that you're almost home but you want to listen to it over and over and you never want it to end?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, but what does music have to do with this?"

"The way someone feels about their favorite song is the way I feel whenever I'm with you," Cas said. "Whenever we're on a date, I never want our time together to end," Cas smiled brightly. "Dean, the point is that I love you, too."

Dean smiled back. "I would kiss you right now but you know, I did just vomit." Cas laughed at that.

They stood in silence for a few seconds, just gazing at each other when Dean broke out into a grin. "So, you imagined me telling you I love you, huh? Was I riding a horse or was I in a cape or was it both?"

Cas blushed. "Oh, shut up."