Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dean’s staring at him. Cas doesn’t look up, just narrows his eyes at the words on his computer screen. The cafe hums around them like a heartbeat.

he walked forward, light falling all around him like

light falling all around like sparks

Jesus, it is sparks, has he just forgotten how to write?

sparks falling all around like fireflies

like struck metal

light falling all around like

fuck it, why bother trying? This is just work for hire, anyway.

walked forward, sparks falling all around him. Neal staggered backwards

“What are you doing?” asks Dean. He’s still looking. Shit. Cas never should have called him over. What was he thinking? If he’d just kept his stupid mouth shut then he wouldn’t be in this mess.

“Writing,” he says shortly.

“Yeah, I get that, smartass,” says Dean. “So. Are we gonna talk about it?”

Neal staggered backwards, scrabbling for his knife.

“Talk about what?” asks Cas as he types.

“Talk about how the hell you know my name,” says Dean.

Oh. Yeah. That.

So here’s the thing. Cas’s been coming here, to this cafe, for the past week. He’s got a new project, and a new project means he needs a new place to write in. He doesn’t like sticking around anywhere too long. When he does, it starts getting too gummed up with awkward memories, and he can’t think properly there any more. So he finds a new spot, somewhere he’s never been before. And this is the place he’s picked for the new book. He’s doing work for hire, ghostwriting the next in a series of ridiculous horror novels about two hot brothers, Neal and Mark Colt, who hunt monsters together. It’s pretty popular, apparently, and the fans are desperate for the next instalment — which is a problem, because the guy who usually writes them just up and vanished a couple of months ago. He left behind a signed contract and the outline for the next two stories, so the publisher’s been looking for someone else who could pick up where Chuck left off.

That’s where Cas comes in.

He first finds out about it all when his agent, Crowley, calls him.

“Whaddaya say?” asks Crowley, like they’re already in the middle of a conversation. Cas sits up in bed, wiping the drool off his face and pretending he hasn’t been napping at 2pm again. It’s been a slow few months, and he’s running out of stuff to do. “You’ve seen the email, right? Supernatural. You know, the beefcake ghost books. A lot of descriptions of men’s chests as they get out of the shower. Ghosts being shot in the face. Werewolves ripping girls’ heads clean off. Sexy demons. Some porn, but always kept tastefully softcore. A general sense of subtextual homoeroticism. This Chuck guy’s done a runner, so Clarence Wing Press need someone to pick up the pieces and make them a few bestsellers. Naturally I thought of you.”

“Because I wrote that demonic possession book?” asks Cas.

“That demonic possession book that didn’t sell,” says Crowley. “I told you, it’s not sexy enough. And yeah, something like that. Get me a sample by tomorrow morning. I sent you the info. Three chapters. Go.”

As always, Cas gets the strange sense that Crowley is trying to say something to him, in a language Cas doesn’t speak. He ignores the feeling, and opens the email Crowley’s sent. He’s suddenly more hopeful than he has been in a while.

So, when CW picks his sample, Cas doesn’t say no. Technically, he can’t. He needs the money right now, because that demonic possession book took a long time to write, and it seriously didn’t sell. And so here he’s been in this cafe, writing away (or trying to) for the past week. And so has Dean.

Cas notices Dean on his first day. He gets a seat in the corner, where he can let the café chatter wash over him in a soothing hum as he types. Normally, once he’s in the groove, he doesn’t look up. But this book - the sample went fine, obviously, because he got the gig. Now that he’s signed the NDA and is sitting down with Chuck’s notes, though, he can feel something’s wrong. Something doesn’t hang together in the story. He read all the other books last week, and they’re stupid, but they work. He can see why they’ve got such a cult following. But this one? It’s like there’s a piece missing. Neal, the older brother, died at the end of the last book. Now he’s back from the dead, but nothing about it makes sense. He’s just scrabbling around, looking for answers, and so’s Cas. So he looks up from his laptop screen in annoyance and that’s when he sees Dean.

Not that he knows it’s Dean at the time. Just some guy in a plaid shirt, cocky smile on his face, bouncing on the soles of his feet as he waits in line. The barista melts as she meets his eyes, and Cas watches her laugh at whatever he’s said to her. He stands waiting for his coffee, playing with the sugar packets, ruffling his hand through his spiky brown hair. He’s never still. Then he turns his head and catches Cas’s eye. Cas looks down, blushing at being caught (not that he was doing anything. He was just looking), and he only glances up again when he hears the barista calling a name. The guy bobs his head, and takes the cup, and Cas is left staring at the empty page in front of him and replaying one word in his head over and over.

Dean.

He’s there before Dean again the next day, so he gets to watch the performance again, but Dean beats him to it on Wednesday. He’s early, or maybe Cas is late, sitting at the table next to Cas’s when Cas gets there, and Cas doesn’t look at him at all while he sits down. Dean’s jacket slides off the back of his chair onto the floor, and Cas bends down and picks it up.

“Thanks, man,” says Dean, reaching out for it. Their knuckles touch, and Cas looks up to discover that Dean has green eyes. It isn’t what he expected.

Someone’s appeared in Cas’s manuscript, since Monday. The thing is, Neal’s story still wasn’t clicking for Cas. How did he get out of Hell? He didn’t do it himself. So someone must have got him out. Chuck’s notes seriously don’t make sense – Mark made a deal? But with what? – so Cas … invents. He’s a writer! That’s what he does. It can’t be a demon, since they put him down there. How about an angel? Yeah. An angel might do it. Not that there have been angels in the books before, but there are vampires and ghosts and demons, for fuck’s sake, so angels just make sense. And anyway, this book’s all about the apocalypse.

An angel, called … huh. Raphael’s too obvious, Lucifer’s too obvious in the wrong direction. Something that sounds angelic but isn’t a famous name. Okay. Belaquiel? That’s not bad. Bel for short. In human form (because if demons have human forms, so do angels) he … well, yeah, he just seems like he should be a he … he looks … young. Not too young, though. Maybe about 30. Brown - no, black hair. Blue eyes. He just seems like he’d have blue eyes. A sharp, delicate face. A little ethereal. And Bel’s who saved Neal, even though Neal doesn’t know that yet. He tries to get in contact with Neal, but Neal can’t hear him calling out his name. His human mind can’t perceive the sound of an angel speaking in his own celestial tongue. And Bel realizes this, so he decides to appear to Neal in human form to explain himself.

Which is where Cas’s at on Friday early afternoon, when Dean comes into the café. He’s heading for the counter when a woman stands up from a table and yelps, “Ben? Is that you? Oh my god, hi!”

And the look Dean shoots at her, confused and then horrified, makes Cas, without even thinking about it, stand up and raise his arm and call, “Hey, Dean! I’ve saved you a space over here!”

And that’s how they’re here, sitting across the table from each other while Dean stares at Cas and Cas stares at his computer screen and Neal Colt staggers backwards, scrabbling for his knife.

“I’m writing,” says Cas, again.

“Yeah, buddy, I got that,” says Dean. “Is it more stuff about me? My birthday? My social security number? The name of that chick over there? Cause if you got that, I’d be grateful.”

“You don’t know?” asks Cas, horrified enough to glance up again. Dean’s eyes are still fixed on him. He’s got freckles. Another thing Cas wasn’t expecting.

Dean wriggles his shoulders uncomfortably. “I didn’t — I didn’t expect to see her again. Look, I — I don’t do that kind of thing a lot, I just — I just fucked up, is all. It’s been a tough month. A tough year. But hey, I guess you know that, since you know everything about me.”

“I do not!” snaps Cas. “I don’t! I just heard your name the other day when the barista called it. And I thought you might need help, that’s all.”

“I guess I did,” says Dean, and his face suddenly lights up into that enormous, wicked smile that Cas has seen him train on the barista. “Thanks, Cas.”

Cas can feel his mouth drop open.

“Heard it when the barista called it a couple days ago,” says Dean, and he winks. “But thanks for saving me, I guess. What’s that short for, anyway? Casper the friendly ghost?”

“Castiel,” says Cas grudgingly. This guy just won’t stop talking.

“Fancy. So. Castiel. Cas. Nice to meet you.”

“Sure,” says Cas, feeling embarrassed and unsettled and very distracted by the way Dean’s blunt fingers are moving across the table, touching the grooves in the wood of its surface, tapping at a drop of coffee that he spilled from his cup. “Look, I’ve got a deadline –”

Which, yeah, he does, but it’s still a month away, and these things go fast once he’s begun them. And now he’s got a handle on Bel, he can feel the story starting.

“So, what are you writing? What’s the deadline for?”

This guy! Cas never should have called him over. He did not intend for him to sit down and make himself at home, but it’s pretty clear that Dean’s done just that. He’s pulling out a notebook of his own, a beat-up dark red exercise book with stains all over its cheap cover. He’s sticking around. Cas can’t work with other people around. He tried it once, years ago, and it just didn’t take, so no. Now he’s on his own, and that’s better.

“Just work for hire,” he says dismissively. “It’s – publisher gives me a brief, and I go away and type it up.” (He tries not to think about the fact that Bel was not in the brief).

“Hold on, wait – you mean you’re gonna be published?” Dean’s eyes are wide and his mouth is making an O of excitement.

“Uh, not under my own name or anything. It’s not really – it’s just a job. It doesn’t mean –”

But Dean’s fired up. “That’s so cool, man! Published! What’s the book about? Have I heard of it? Have I heard of you? Wait, are you famous?”

Cas’s stomach clenches. Because yeah, that was the dream, wasn’t it? Have his name on a book. Have his name on the New York Times bestseller list. That was the dream, but now even though he’s written twenty books – a kids’ series about a vampire in fourth grade, a YA trilogy about soulmates (with a famous YouTuber who literally never responded to his emails, why he’s so clear about only working alone), and a series for adults about ghosts who solve their own murders, he still hasn’t had a single thing published as Castiel Novak. It’s all been work for hire. He’s also still living in a shitty apartment with two roommates who smoke a lot of weed and have loud sex he can hear through the wall, and he’s unsure about how he’s gonna pay the rent next month. The possession book was supposed to be it, but like Crowley said, it didn’t sell, so now he’s back to square one. And Supernatural.

“No,” he says stiffly. “Not at all. And the books are just – well, they’re about these two brothers who hunt monsters, and –”

“SUPERNATURAL?” Dean yelps. “Hold the fuck on, are you serious? Are you L. S. Shore?”

Cas blinks. Dean doesn’t seem like the type – he thought that the fans were supposed to be women in their teens and twenties. That’s what Crowley told him, anyway. “Yes?” he says slowly. “I guess so. Chuck used to be, but he’s gone, so it’s me now.”

“No, but – oh my god!” Dean’s practically vibrating. “What happens to Neal? How does he get out of hell? He is out, right? They wouldn’t kill him? Oh man, this is so cool. Can I read it?”

“No, you can’t read it,” says Cas protectively. “I mean – not yet. I mean. You want to read it?” He can feel himself wavering. Dean’s got this thing – he locks his focus on you, and it feels … it feels great. But Cas has just seen Dean blank some girl he slept with. This guy might seem nice, but he’s obviously dangerous. Best to keep his distance. “You can’t read it,” he says again.

“We’ll see about that,” says Dean with a confident grin, and Cas can see why he’s a hit with women.

“Well, I’ve gotta write it first,” Cas points out, because time’s ticking and he’s wasting it talking to this random man who might be a fan, but who isn’t going to help him type out the book.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” says Dean, sighing and sitting back in his chair. He flicks open the notebook and starts reading through it, chewing a pen that he’s dragged out of his pocket. It’s frayed at the end, its plastic peeling against Dean’s lips. Oral fixation, thinks Cas, then shakes his head and pulls himself back into the barn with Bel and Neal.

He can really see it, now – Neal lunging forward in terror with his knife and plunging it into Bel’s chest. But Bel just looks down at it, and then back up at Neal, with a confident grin, and says, “Hello, Neal.”

“Who are you?” Neal gasped. Bel glared at him.

“I’m the one who saved you,” he said.

Hold on, no he can do better than that.

“I’m the one who raised you.”

Almost there. It just needs something more –

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”

Shit. That’s good. Kinda wasted on work for hire, but still. It’s good.

He realizes he’s looking at Dean’s hand again, where it’s gripping his notebook. He’s writing something too, now, his forehead creasing with effort, and Cas suddenly wants to bother him.

“What’re you doing?” he asks.

Dean looks up, blinking.

“S’nothing,” he says. “Just – promised myself I’d actually sit down and do some notes, this week. I’m – I’m not great at writing stuff down, and then I forget, and then – yeah, well. I’m trying to be better. I need a tight five if I’m gonna – yeah. Well.”

Cas realizes that for the first time since they started talking, Dean’s nervous. He’s rubbing the back of his neck, face flushing.

“Tight five?” asks Cas, and then wishes he hadn’t. Jesus, what the hell is that? Has he just asked about some kind of sex act he’s never heard of? (Wait, maybe he needs to research more. He writes porn now, doesn’t he? Softcore, like Crowley said, but still. Oh my god, he’s going to have to write sex scenes. He hasn’t had sex in two years and he’s going to be writing sex scenes.)

“Uh,” says Dean, turning redder. “It’s a comedy thing. It’s what you call your set, when you get it down. Tight five. Tight ten.”

“You’re a comedian?” Of course he is. He’s probably famous, too, and now Cas and his creepy behavior is going to turn up in one of his routines. Cas imagines Dean telling the story: and then this guy – who I’ve never even spoken to! – just stands up and calls me over to his table! Calls me by name! Can you believe that weirdo!

“Uh,’” says Dean again. “I’m trying to be. Just, like – it’s hard to break in to, but I’ve got a plan, and I get Friday nights off and there are a lot of stand up nights on Fridays and if I can just –” He stutters to a stop. “I just need to get my tight five down.”

“What do you, um, talk about?” asks Cas.

“Weird guys who hit on me at coffee shops,” says Dean with a grin, and Cas’s stomach falls right out of his body and hits his toes. “Shit! I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’d never – and anyway, you didn’t, and I wouldn’t – fuck. Sorry.”

Cas hears himself saying, “I’m straight.” It’s an out of body experience. He can feel his voice buzzing in his chest, and his mouth making the words, but it’s like he’s in another room watching himself on TV. It’s true, isn’t it? It’s true. It’s just – maybe it’s just that he’s known this guy (officially) for an hour, and he’s already discussing his sexuality with him. What the fuck is happening to him?

“That’s cool,” says Dean. “That’s great. I mean. It’s neutral. It’s a neutral fact. Thing. About you. Okay. Look, there’s a table free over there, I think I’m gonna just go –”

And Cas has another out of body experience, because he hears himself say, “Hey, you don’t need to. It’s fine. Stick around.”

Dean looks up at him, startled, through his lashes. And Cas gets this feeling – he can’t put his finger on it, it’s like – but no, it’s gone.

He looks down at his computer screen again and starts typing. Bel and Neal are staring at each other, electricity crackling all around them. “Don’t you think you deserve to be saved?” whispers Bel, and Cas knows, right then, that he’s written something good.

When he glances up, Dean is writing again, and he’s smiling.

Chapter Text

Dean’s not there the next morning. Why would he be? It’s Saturday. Cas is only there because he has no social life, and Dean seems like someone who’d have friends. So Cas isn’t worried not to see him there. He sits down in his usual seat, and drinks his coffee while he watches the weekend brunch crowd filter in around him.

He’s hit his stride, now. Neal’s out of Hell and back on the road, reunited with Mark, so Bel’s gone, his work done. He was a cool character, but it’s time to go back to Chuck’s notes. Neal and Mark are back to doing what they do best: hunting ghosts. And Mark’s been sneaking around with the demon woman Violet, too, but Neal doesn’t know that yet. Cas hammers out three thousand words of Neal and Mark facing off with ghosts from their past (thank god he did his research about who these people are!) in what’s going to be the first sign of the coming apocalypse, and then pauses.

He’s written almost twenty thousand words in a week. He feels great. But he also remembers the directive Clarence Wing gave him. The fans want what they want, and what they want is some skin. It wouldn’t be a Supernatural book without the brothers stripping off. He wants to give the relationship between Mark and Violet some time to build (plus, the idea of sex scenes is still kind of scaring him), so that means Neal’s up. And he’s got the perfect excuse: a scene where Neal checks out his new post-Hell body. He’s standing in front of the mirror, shirt off, staring at himself. All of the cuts and scars, the dings his body has taken over the years, they’re all gone. He’s smooth, made new, his history erased. Cas can imagine it, that weightless feeling, Neal stretching out his arms in wonder, looking at his perfect hands – fingers a little blunt, maybe, the kind of hands that could fix cars, load guns. He flexes his biceps (he’s got actual biceps, unlike Cas, who’s let his gym routine slip on account of not having enough money for a gym routine) and grins to himself, licking his lips a little as he stares at his abs. And he –

A hand comes down on Cas’s shoulder.

Cas flinches so hard he almost breaks his keyboard. He swings his head around to see who the hell that was. And there’s Dean, grinning down at him. He’s got on a ratty flannel and his hair’s sticking up a little and he looks tired but happy.

“Hey dude,” he says.

Cas sucks air into his mouth and tries to remember the normal thing to say. He feels like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. It’s stupid, since he’s literally doing his job, writing a book that’s going to be read by tens of thousands of people. They’ll all see Neal’s glistening abs as clearly as he can. Dean’s going to see how Cas saw Neal’s abs. That feels – strange.

“Hello,” he says stiffly to Dean. “How are you?”

“Not bad,” says Dean. “Late night. What’re you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” asks Cas, not wanting to explain that he’s working because he’s got literally nothing else to do.

“Uh, I live two blocks away,” says Dean. “Which you should know already. You’re slacking.”

“Oh my god,” says a woman’s voice, and Cas realizes there’s someone with Dean. She’s short, with long red hair, a Princess Leia t-shirt and combat boots. Not what he was expecting Dean’s type to be, for some reason. “This is the guy?”

Cas is flooded with self-hatred. He actually rocks forward in his seat, in an agony of embarrassment. Dean’s been talking to his girlfriend (who he’s been cheating on!) about what a freak Cas is. They’ve been laughing about it together. Dean’s entire tight five is probably on Cas, weirdo Cas, stalker Cas –

But –

“Nice work, dude,” says the woman. “He told me you saved his ass. Not that he deserved it.”

She gives Dean a long look, and Dean wriggles under it.

“Cas, this is Charlie,” he says, putting his arm around her and squeezing hard, so Charlie’s pulled in against him, her face buried in the side of his flannel shirt.

“How long have you been together?” asks Cas, heavily. They must have a very unusual relationship, if Dean tells her about his other conquests.

“Oh my god, gross!” yelps Charlie, shoving Dean away. “Oh, no, absolutely not. Ugh! Can you imagine?”

“Yeah, thanks, Charlie,” says Dean, rolling his eyes. “We’re just friends.”

“Best friends,” says Charlie. “But I’m absolutely never going to be into him unless he grows boobs.”

“She’s a lesbian,” explains Dean.

“I’m a lesbian,” agrees Charlie.

Cas can feel that they’ve practiced this double act. He was right that they’re intimate, just wrong about the nature of it. He gets the ache he always does, when he sees two people who adore each other. It looks so simple, when it’s other people. It’s so easy to write about. But in real life, for him – not so much.

“So we’re gonna go now we’ve got our coffees,” says Charlie, nudging Dean’s boot with her own. “Places to be. But nice to meet you, Cas. You know, I thought you’d be –”

Whatever else she was going to say is lost, because Dean knocks into her by mistake and she spills her coffee. She yells at Dean and Dean tells her to stop being such a pussy and they totally forget about Cas, sitting there watching them. Dean practically shoves her out of the café. The door closes behind them and Cas is alone, apart from all the other people at the tables around him. And it’s strange, but Cas can still feel the warm pressure of Dean’s hand against his upper arm.

He looks back down at his computer screen. There’s Neal, and his gleaming abs, and suddenly Cas feels like he’s too perfect now. He needs something, some kind of mark, to show that he’s been changed by his time in Hell. Or – no. Something to show that he’s been saved. Even good things leave scars behind. Neal’s frozen, his arm upraised to flex his bicep, and – why not? Then he turns his body to see that he’s not perfect at all.

There was a brand on his skin. Raised and angry, it ached when he touched it. He traced his finger across it, twisting to look at it in the mirror. He realized then, with horror, that it wasn’t a brand at all. It was the print of a hand – five fingers and a palm, pressed into his smooth skin. He pressed his own hand over it, and his fingers fit within it. Whoever – whatever – made it is larger than him.

The hairs on Neal’s neck prickled, and he suddenly felt very cold. He took away his hand again, reaching for his t-shirt, but he could still feel the press of a hand burning on his shoulder.

*

Cas writes all weekend. He’s still feeling good about the book, and he’s not bothered at all by the absence of Dean. His head’s full of the Colt brothers and their adventures. He decides to go back and add in a scene where Neal and Mark go to a psychic to try to work out who Bel is. She confirms that he’s an angel, not a demon, but the summoning she does is so powerful that it ends up burning her eyes right out of her face. It shows how dangerous Bel is. He’s saved Neal, but he can’t be trusted, and so he can’t stick around.

Chuck’s notes tell Cas that the main players in this book are Neal, Mark, Violet the demon and a mysterious woman called Alice. In the first act, Neal, Mark and Violet end up working together, despite their differences. The yellow-eyed demon from the first few books is back and hungry for blood, and Neal and Mark need the powers Mark gets from Violet’s blood to defeat him. The next big set-piece is an arc where Neal’s sent back in time to try to stop the yellow-eyed demon before he ever gets hold of baby Mark. He’s supposed to be reading their dad’s old journals when a spell activates and drags him into history. Which, fine, but it’s kind of hinky plotting. Why wouldn’t Neal have activated the spell before? He reads those journals all the time. It’s in all the earlier books. Is it because of something that’s happening in the present? Maybe Neal’s got new powers post-Hell that Cas could use. Maybe …

Cas sighs, and shrugs. His neck hurts, and when he stretches his shoulders pop. He needs some air. He packs up his laptop and his water bottle and leaves the café early.

Outside it’s a sunny day, blue sky, smelling of spring. Cas walks, squinting into the sun, heart lifting. It feels, right now, like maybe it’ll be okay after all. Maybe he can get out of the shitty sex apartment. Maybe this Supernatural thing will work out, and then the possession book will sell, and then he’ll – he’ll –

It’s here his imagination always cuts out, because he doesn’t know what he’ll do then. Live in a nicer apartment? With a cat? Or a dog, a dog would be nice. Be rich enough to go to the dentist sometimes. But he wants –

For some reason he thinks about the way Charlie looked when Dean crushed her against his chest, pissed off but delighted at the same time. The lack of space between their bodies, and how that didn’t matter to either of them. He wants someone to do that with. He wants a friend.

But he has friends. He does! It’s just they’re all writers, and writers can be … a lot. He opens his phone and looks at the author group chat he’s in. It’s the reason he always sets his phone to focus mode.

Gabriel’s saying I got a new deal but I’m not allowed to tell you about it. It’s really big though.

You fucking liar, says Balthazar. By the way, anyone want to come to my book launch tonight? Timothee Chalamet’s going to be there.

No he isn’t, says Zachariah. But I want you all to know that I’ve just sold Italian translation rights on the new book. That’s twenty territories!

Oh, fuck you, says Naomi. This is so unfair. Why can’t that happen to me?

Naomi, Cas knows perfectly well, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for ninety-four weeks.

He closes the app, and puts his phone back in his pocket. None of them have noticed that he hasn’t replied for a month. He’s really starting to think that he might need some new friends.

*

Cas gets to the café on Monday morning, and of course Dean’s not there. It’s fine. He’s doing the back-in-time scenes, where Neal meets his own parents as young adults and tries (and fails, of course) to change the course of history. But he knows he’s writing on sand. He still can’t work out how Neal got back there, and now he’s back there he doesn’t know how to solve the problem of Neal without Mark. The brothers bounce off each other, process through each other, and with Mark in another decade Neal’s got no one to talk to.

It's one thirty and Cas is eating the café’s lunch time special (avocado and bacon on rye) when Dean walks in.

Avocado spurts out of the bread and lands on his shirt, and Cas is frantically scrubbing at it when he hears Dean say, “Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean,” says Cas, sighing and tilting his head up again. Why can’t he ever be just a tiny bit fucking normal around this man? “I seem to have had a mishap with my sandwich.”

“Yeah, I see that,” says Dean, grinning at him. His eyes flick down to Cas’s shirt and back again. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“No,” says Cas. “Yes. Fine. All right. Black, please.”

Is Dean actually going to come sit down with him? Apparently he is. He gets their coffees and thumps down on the chair opposite Cas’s.

“Morning,” he says, leaning back and sipping his latte (it’s this week’s special, something weirdly fruit flavoured and faintly purple). “Afternoon. Whatever.”

“I’m writing,” says Cas.

“Gee, I’m glad you’re pleased to see me,” says Dean, rolling his eyes.

Cas pauses. “I am glad,” he says. “I didn’t think you’d be back.”

“Like I said, I live two blocks away. Plus, I’m still working on my set, and I don’t have work until later.”

“I thought —”

“What, that I was a full-time comic? No way. I’m still waiting for my break. In the meantime I do bar work for a buddy of mine.”

“Oh,” says Cas. He’s never met anyone who, on paper, he’d be less likely to get on with. A smartass, slutty wannabe stand-up comedian? A bartender? Cas hasn’t been to a bar in … don’t ask how long. But there’s something about Dean that paper doesn’t cover. He’s — Cas struggles for the words — he’s easy company. They’ve met three times now, and Cas still doesn’t feel the sense of danger he usually does around new people. He doesn’t want to leave the room, or the city, or the entire world, to escape him.

“What, you got a problem with that?” asks Dean, seeing him hesitate.

“No,” says Cas, and he can feel himself flushing. “I just … I don’t get to bars much.”

“Oh,” says Dean. “Well. This bar – I guess it’s not really for you, anyway.”

What does that mean? Cas is confused.

“You really don’t mind me being here?” asks Dean. Cas wasn’t expecting that. He blinks at Dean, who’s suddenly looking worried. “Friday — I got some work done. Usually I — I’m not great at focusing, but Friday worked. Put down some good stuff. So I thought — if you’re okay with it, I could try again.”

And there it is again, the surprising sense Cas gets from Dean sometimes. It’s like he’s nervous, like he’s trying to prove something to Cas. Like the ball’s in Cas’s court, and it’s Dean who’s got avocado on his shirt and has been wearing the same pants for five days.

“It’s fine,” he says, and he really means it. “I —” I liked you being there. “I don’t mind, I promise. You’re a Supernatural fan, anyway. I might have some questions for you.”

Dean beams at him, heartbreakingly excited not to be kicked out. Then he pulls out his notebook, licks his pen and starts jotting stuff down.

So they’re working together now. It’s a thing.

Cas looks over at Dean’s bent head, and realizes that he’s been going about it all wrong. He knows what he needs to do to make the time travelling work. He’s got to bring back Bel.

And as for how he’s going to do it? It doesn’t even feel like a question. He can just see it, as clear as a memory. Mark leaves Neal asleep in their motel room to meet up with Violet. Neal’s hunched up on top of the covers, wrapped in his dad’s jacket. He flinches, dreaming of Hell. And then he opens his eyes, and Bel is there next to him.

“Hello, Neal,” he said, in his rough voice.

Neal’s heart raced. Bel was so close, but he hadn’t heard him come in. Of course he hadn’t. Bel was an angel.

“What do you want?” he snapped. “D’you like watching me sleep, you freak?”

“You have to stop it,” said Bel, reaching out his hand. He touched it to Neal’s forehead, and Neal flinched, half-afraid of another brand. But Bel’s touch was gentle. Neal’s eyes closed without him even meaning to, and when he opened them again, he was somewhere else.

“Yes!” mutters Cas, and Dean looks up at him with a grin.

“Another ghost get ganked?” he asks.

“Something like that,” says Cas, his heart racing. He’s got it, he can see it. The transition works now, and even better than that, Neal’s not alone now. Everywhere he goes, Bel’s there, griping at him that he’s not working fast enough to solve the problem. Bel and Neal glare at each other distrustfully, sizing each other up like enemies, but Cas can feel the sizzle between them. Their dialogue just works, bouncing off each other in the perfect double act. Neal doesn’t know what Bel wants, and he doesn’t trust him, but he can’t look away.

Cas thinks of Dean and Charlie. That’s the feeling he wants – no, not quite that. A mixture of Charlie’s face as she was pressed into Dean’s chest, and the way it felt when he went walking in the hills once, years ago, and turned a corner right into a mountain lion. Something beautiful that you might let kill you.

Obviously, he doesn’t write any of that down. This is Supernatural, after all. He’s gotta keep it fun, macho and sexy.

Neal’s mom turns out to be a hunter too, and also hot (this is in Chuck’s notes, Cas feels gross about it, but Supernatural’s always had a strange relationship to family). His dad’s not a hunter, but kind of cool anyway. Neal’s freaking out about finding out all this stuff, and seeing his dad in a new light, and Bel keeps turning up to snark at him about it.

“Can you make abusive parents funny?” asks Dean, and Cas startles. It’s like Dean’s seen right onto his laptop screen, but he can’t have. “Like, if I did a set about my dad being kinda an asshole sometimes, would I get carted off to the crazy house?”

“Probably don’t start by calling it the crazy house,” says Cas. “But no. I gather there’s a lot of mileage in childhood trauma.”

“Jeeze, don’t call it trauma!” says Dean. “We weren’t traumatised. Just lightly bruised. Oh, shit. Is that something?”

“It’s definitely trauma,” says Cas. “And I think you’ve just been cancelled. Go to therapy.”

They’re both grinning at each other.

“Dumbass,” mutters Dean. “I just asked a question. What’re you writing about?”

“Childhood trauma,” says Cas. “And Neal just got dressed up as a priest.”

“Hell yes! Seriously, can I read it? I love it when Neal does his YMCA thing. His vestments hugged the lines of his slim body, all that kind of shit.”

“That is not – no,” says Cas. “I am not putting that in.”

“If you put it in, I want ten per cent of the royalties,” says Dean with a wink.

“You have no idea how the royalty system works,” Cas tells him.

Cas waits until Dean’s bent over his notebook again, and then he scrolls up to the paragraph where Neal gets out of the car in his priest outfit.

He adjusted his dog collar as he started up the path to the house. His vestments hugged the lines of his slim body, and he wiped away a bead of sweat from his brow. It was already a hot day.

Then he gets up and buys the next round of coffees.

Chapter Text

That week, Cas writes like he’s possessed (which is ironic). The story feels solid, clear, inevitable. Chuck’s notes, combined with Bel’s presence, makes everything sing. Neal’s discovering the lesson his trip into history was meant to teach him: destiny can’t be changed. All roads lead to the same dark path, to baby Mark in his nursery, and a blast of fire as Mark and Neal’s mother goes up in flames. And from there, the apocalypse.

Bel is there as Neal struggles with this, a snarky but caring presence. Bel’s good at hiding his emotions (or maybe he isn’t used to having many emotions) but this trip into the past is changing him as much as it’s changing Neal. They’re becoming a team.

Dean comes to the cafe every afternoon. Cas is getting used to seeing his spiky hair bent down over his notebook, his quick glances up at Cas when he wants to know whether this or that joke’s funny. They usually are, but Cas does his best not to show it. Dean knows he’s a funny guy already. Cas has seen how easily he moves through the world, how quickly he can make everyone else laugh. Dean doesn’t need an easy audience. He needs a challenge.

So Cas holds his face still, pinching his thigh under the table and biting his tongue, and says calmly, “Huh. Not bad, I guess.”

“You fucker!” grouses Dean. “You’re the worst audience ever. Okay, but what if he caught the fish?”

“Sure, catching the fish is funnier,” says Cas, letting himself crack a smile. “Okay, what do you think about a rougarou? For a case? Is it too similar to a werewolf?”

“Huh, no, don’t think so,” says Dean, checking on his phone. “You’re good. Can I read it yet, man?”

“If you keep asking I’m never going to let you,” says Cas. “Even when it’s published. An everlasting embargo just for you. So back off.”

“You make me feel so special,” says Dean, fluttering his eyelashes.

Cas kicks him under the table, and Dean kicks back, and Cas feels — that thing, again. A pulse of something like nerves, in his chest. He hasn’t had a friend like Dean in as long as he can remember. Wait, are they friends yet? When does someone become a friend, anyway? He’s never been sure. The rules are confusing. He knows not to ask, because asking tends to make people nervous, but he looks at Dean and sees Dean grinning back at him and he thinks that as far as he understands anything, the signs he’s getting from Dean are positive for friendship. He just needs to make sure not to push it too far. 

“I gotta go,” says Dean, and Cas nods at him. It’s getting late, and he’s finished with his words for the day, but he knows that if he stands up too it’ll seem like they’re leaving together. That, he knows from experience, is too much.

“See you,” he says, and then panics, because what if he doesn’t? Dean’s under no obligation to come back tomorrow, is he? And they don’t have each other’s phone number. It’s possible, at the end of each day, that they’ll never see each other again.

“Yeah,” says Dean, smiling. “See you tomorrow.”

As he leaves, he stops to open the door for another guy, saying something to make the other man tip his head back in amusement. That’s Dean. He could be friends with anyone.

Cas looks back at the manuscript, and decides that the rougarou case needs to be brothers only.

*

It rains all day Thursday. Cas is still afraid that Dean won’t come in, and he buries himself in disgusting rougarou descriptions, but then in the early afternoon the door to the cafe opens and Dean comes running in, shaking water out of his short hair. His jacket is soaked — of course he doesn’t have an umbrella. 

He waves at Cas, beaming huge and happy, and Cas waves back. Maybe it’s simpler than he feared, yesterday. Maybe they really are friends, now.

Dean’s bubbling over with excitement. There’s a stand up night at a local bar on Friday, and he’s going. He thinks his set’s ready, maybe, but anyway, he’s gotta try, right? Charlie’s agreed to come with him, says she’s gonna heckle him mercilessly, but that’s just Charlie, she doesn’t mean it. “You wanna come?” asks Dean, shucking off his jacket and wiping at his wet face. Cas can see water droplets in his eyelashes, water on his parted lips.

“Oh,” he says. “Uh — I can’t, sorry.”

That’s a lie. He’s just so overwhelmed by the indisputable fact that Dean does think they’re friends, that he wants him to be there, that he can’t be cool about it. If he said yes, he knows he’d just be weird. Sometimes Cas can’t trust himself in social situations.

“Oh,” says Dean, face falling. “That’s cool. No worries. Hey, anyway, wanna hear what I’ve got? And you have to laugh.”

“If I laugh when it isn’t funny, you’ll be expecting the laughter tomorrow and you’ll bomb,” Cas points out. Why is he like this? Dean’s funny. He’s fucking hilarious. What if he’s too mean to Dean, and he stops wanting to be friends?

God, he’s got to stop behaving like a middle schooler. He’s thirty years old. He’s an adult. He writes books for adults, in which people shoot guns and have sex. Which reminds him — shit. He can’t put off that sex scene much longer.

“Hey, have you thought that maybe if you’re nice to me I won’t care about bombing tomorrow?” asks Dean.

“Fine, try me,” says Cas, sighing.

Dean nods.

“This is the year I realized that my dad maybe isn’t perfect,” he starts. “Now, the first thing you gotta know about John Winchester is that he’s a hero …”

Cas listens. He lets himself laugh twice. Dean glows each time.

Then they work in companionable silence (as far as Dean can do anything in silence), Cas picking away at Mark and Violet scenes, and Dean writing and rewriting his set.

“I gotta go get ready for work,” says Dean at last, checking his watch. It’s still pouring. Cas knows that Dean lives close by, but all the same, he feels bad about letting him get wet all over again. And also, bad about the fact that he only laughed twice. There were at least ten jokes so funny that his eyes are still watering a little.

“I’m heading out too,” he says, trying to sound casual. “Want me to come with you? I’ve got an umbrella.”

He hates how that sounds, as soon as it’s out of his mouth.

“All right, Don Lockwood,” says Dean, which from the way his eyes screw up Cas can tell is supposed to be a joke. “Wait. You don’t know Singin’ in the Rain?”

“I tend to not want to stay in it for long enough to sing,” says Cas, and Dean lets out a wheeze.

“Seriously, why’s it me trying the comedy thing? You’d kill, man. Okay, let’s go.”

Dean claps him on the back and then lets his hand rest there, manoeuvring him forward out of the café. It’s a surprising gesture, not one that Cas is used to. He likes it.

Cas pops the umbrella up once they’re outside, tucking his left elbow against Dean’s right arm to make sure they’re both under cover. Their heads are bent together, and Dean still has his hand hovering over Cas’s lower back. It’s pouring, sidewalk shiny with puddles, and despite Cas’s best efforts he can see Dean’s left shoulder darkening with water, and feel rain leaking down his right arm.

“Where are we going?” Cas asks breathlessly.

“Hey, come on, you know this,” says Dean, grinning sideways at Cas. His face is a soft shade of blue in the light through the umbrella. “Birthday January 24^th, phone number 555-911-2424, home address 121 Lebanon Boulevard, apartment 6. Remember?”

“I have not – I do not know any of those things about you,” says Cas.

“Well, you do now,” says Dean. “It’s this way.”

He leads them across the street, and then right. His knee keeps knocking against Cas’s – he’s a little bit bow-legged. There’s something very tender about knowing that, like seeing Dean’s baby photos.

Dean stops, and Cas jostles against him. Dean has to reach out and catch Cas’s arm. Cas is pulled round a little to face Dean.

“We’re here,” says Dean. “Thanks, man.”

They’re in the entranceway of a big building. It’s run down, its bricks dirty. It looks a lot like the outside of Cas’s own apartment building. He’s been thinking of Dean as someone effortlessly cool, but here he is living somewhere just as shitty as Cas.

“Great,” says Cas. “Goodbye, Dean.” He pauses. “Was that your real number? Before.”

“Yeah,” says Dean, with a shrug. “See you tomorrow, Cas.”

Cas nods, and turns away. Then he gets out his cell phone, and dials. He’s always had a good memory for stuff like this.

He doesn’t actually think Dean was telling the truth until the ringing stops, and a familiar voice says, “Believe me now?”

“Sure,” says Cas, and he turns back to see Dean with his phone up to his ear, standing in the entranceway and watching him. He waves and winks, and Cas raises his chin back, and then hangs up the phone.

*

Dean’s the first one to send a message.

Cas is on the couch, watching porn. He’s doing it for research. He really needs to write the Mark and Violet sex scene, so it just makes sense to get some background on the situation.

The problem is that it’s pretty hard to find the sex sexy, once he’s started to see it as a project. It’s just like how he felt the first few times he tried to read after he got his first contract. Suddenly all he could see was word choice and sentence structure, the author’s intentions and their mistakes.

And now – all he can see are the details. Is that woman moaning? Or sighing? Is moaning cliched, anyway? Okay, and now she’s licking – tongueing? Oh my god, no, definitely not that – down his … wait. What’s the series style for Supernatural? It’s not cock, is it? Dick, he knows they say dick to each other as a curse, but can he say that during actual sex? Fuck, it’s not shaft, is it? Shaft makes him think about mining. Why the hell is sex so unsexy the second you start describing it? Oh god, or has he just lost the ability to find sex sexy any more? His editor is going to read this scene and cancel his contract. Crowley is going to read this scene and call him up and just laugh down the phone like the demon he is. Dean is going to –

He checks his phone, and his heart flips.

There’s a message from Dean.

whatre u doing?

Watching porn, writes Cas. Dean’s inability to use proper grammar makes him itch, and because of that, he doesn’t smile as he sends his reply.

wait seriously?! im coming over

joking

JOKING!!!

that was a joke cas

Thank you, Dean, writes Cas, after his heart rate has returned to normal. It’s just for research, anyway.

sure cas. thats what everyone says. tell me about the porn

It is! Cas can feel his face warming up. I have to write that Mark and Violet scene. I told you about it, remember?

youre an author. are you telling me u cant write about people bumping uglies?

I

Cas stares at his phone

It has been a little while since I’ve had any practical experience.

jeeze cas i did not need to know that!! also is this how i find out youre a ghost hunter in real life??

It’s different, writes Cas.

its not different youre just a coward, Dean writes back. debbie did not do dallas for you to disrespect the genre like this

Aren’t you at work? Cas asks, frustrated.

yeah

slow night

can you describe the porn to me

for research

NO, writes Cas.

buzzkill

okay fine. talk to me

What about?

anything

My housemates are out this evening for once, writes Cas. He’s turned his phone off focus mode.

this doesnt make me want to come over any less cas

All I’ve got in the apartment is cereal.

holy shit what kind of cereal? captain crunch? trix??

is it count chocula cas?? if its count chocula im in the car

Raisin bran, writes Cas.

youre breaking my heart!! oh shit hold on customer

And Cas is left sitting on his couch, trying to wipe the smile off his face. He beams at the woman getting railed on his laptop screen. She’s doing her job, and so can he.

He clicks to a new video. For research. The girl has Violet’s long dark hair and her sulky, direct expression. The guy’s got spiky brown hair, muscular shoulders and big hands with blunt fingers. Cas politely ignores him and focuses on the girl. Maybe he’s getting over only being able to see the details, because this is definitely sexy. He’ll leave the book’s sex scene alone for a few days. He can fill in other stuff, and move forward with the funny little pocket plot Chuck outlined where the brothers face a shifter pretending to be Dracula. But right now … he glances over to where his phone’s sitting silent on the table next to him. Dean’s with a customer. His housemates are out of the apartment. If he’s quick …

He slides his hand under the waistband of his pants. He’s looking at the Violet girl, but his eyes keep catching on the guy’s hands. It’s research, it’s research, it’s –

It’s only afterwards that it blurrily occurs to him to wonder why it mattered where Dean was.

*

Seeing Dean the next afternoon gives Cas an uncomfortable jolt in his stomach. They’ve been messaging constantly, all last night and into this morning. Cas didn’t sleep that well, and he feels spacey today. Words are not going down on the page easily.

Dean grins at him and plops down his bag in his usual seat, but Cas keeps his eyes on his laptop screen. He almost feels … guilty? He can’t work out why, and then Dean leans forward and taps him on the hand, his fingers drumming against Cas’s wrist, and it all comes back in a rush, like vomiting. The porn thing.

“Hello,” he says, looking up and trying not to blush. There’s nothing to blush about. He’s an adult. It was research. Dean knows – Dean knows. Except he doesn’t know everything. And also, what’s there to know? Because it was research.

“Brought you something,” Dean is saying. Cas blinks at him, and then blinks again when Dean reaches into his bag and pulls out a box of Count Chocula.

“That is an abomination,” Cas says.

“Yeah, but have you tried it? You gotta try it, man. It’ll rock your world.”

He’s holding it out to Cas, his face eager, so Cas basically has to take it.

“Thank you,” he says warily.

“You’re welcome,” says Dean. He’s bubbling over with nerves today ahead of his big debut. He can barely sit still, and when Cas finally gets him to stop talking his phone starts buzzing with Dean’s messages.

hey cas

hey whatcha doing buddy

hey

cas

what if I called you casper the friendly ghost

what then

what would you do

would you be mad

I would tell you that isn’t my name, Dean.

yeah but what if it was your name

what if there was a world where it was your name

Calm down, Dean.

im so calm cas its fine im doing great

Dean. Stand up. Go outside. Run around the block ten times.

Dean’s eyes light up. He jumps to his feet and strides to the café door, and Cas wonders if maybe he’s a little too into it. He just wanted to shut Dean up for five seconds, and he’s realized that you sometimes need to tire him out like he’s a large dog.

Twenty minutes later Dean’s back, panting and wiping his forehead. He strips off his flannel to reveal a Metallica t-shirt and a pair of surprisingly muscular arms. All the women in the café turn gently towards him.

“Hey ladies,” says Dean, grinning. “Hey Cas.”

“Hello Dean,” says Cas, as stonily as possible.

He has to send Dean out to exercise once more before he gives up entirely and calls it a day.

“What’re you doing this evening?” Dean asks as they head out. They’re heading out together again, Cas notices. He didn’t even mean to do it this time.

“Dinner with my agent,” Cas lies. This’d be a new one on Crowley. He only takes authors out to dinner when they’ve sold a book, and Cas hasn’t sold shit. Maybe he could call him, though. Ask to talk through how Supernatural’s going.

“Cool,” says Dean, face falling. Cas is noticing how easy it is to track Dean’s moods by his facial expressions. He doesn’t hold much back at all. “Fancy. Okay. My thing’s at ten thirty, so, you know, if you’re done …”

“Thanks, Dean,” says Cas, feeling like crap. He’s not even sure why he’s doing this. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t go. It just seems like a bad idea, in a way he can’t define.

“Ah, hey, Charlie’ll be there,” says Dean. “And I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“You’re going to be great,” Cas tells him, and he reaches out and squeezes Dean’s wrist.

It startles them both. Cas can’t believe he’s done it, and Dean gives him that surprised up-through-his-eyelashes glance that he’s turned on Cas before.

“Thanks,” he says. “Thanks, Cas.”

And then he crosses the road and he’s gone.

Chapter Text

The first Cas hears about it is when his phone rings at 11:44pm.

He’s sitting in his bedroom, eating a bowl of Count Chocula (it’s gross, but he can’t stop) and writing.

It turned out that his lie was kind of true. Crowley called him on the way home.

“Just spoke to CW,” he says, before Cas could even say hello. “They wanna know where you’re at. How’s it going?”

“Fine,” says Cas. “Good. Great, actually.”

“Well, that’s fucking good news, because they want the first 40K on their desk by Monday.”

This is not in the agreement. Cas is at 35K, but the writing’s still scrappy, half of the Mark and Violet plot’s missing (he’s been way too focused on Neal and Bel, who shouldn’t even be there) and there’s a big blank page where a sex scene should be.

 Shit.

He shouldn’t have spent so much time working on Dean’s set with him. He works better on his own, doesn’t he? Why did he forget that so fast?

“Why are you quiet?” asks Crowley suspiciously. “I don’t like it when you’re quiet.”

“I’m just thinking,” says Cas. “It’s fine. I can do it.”

“Yeah? Good. Send it to me by Sunday evening, so I can see it before they do.”

Shit.

So that’s why he’s writing. He’s totally focused on the story. He’s got to get this done. His phone is off quiet mode, though, just in case – just in case.

He types Good luck! at 10:29pm, but doesn’t send it.

And then at 11:44pm, the call comes in.

Cas picks up on the third ring. He hears confused noises – music playing, the clatter of glasses. Someone’s shouting in the background, and there’s breathing down the line, heavy and slurred.

“Dean?” asks Cas.

“CAS!” says Dean, and his voice is slurred too. “’ve been trying to call but CHARLIE wouldn’t LET ME. Where were you? I fucked it up, man. I really fucked it up – I need – NO! GET OFF ME! CHARLIE! HEY!”

Someone else is saying something, and Dean is yelling, and then there’s a gasp right by Cas’s ear and Charlie says, “Hey Cas. Sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” asks Cas. He’s spilled the bowl of Count Chocula across his comforter. He’s going to have to clean that up.

“He couldn’t go on,” says Charlie. “Got kinda freaked out.”

“Should I come find you?” asks Cas. He wants to ask Is this my fault? but he can’t.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Charlie. She sounds efficient, and loving, and kinda done with Dean’s shit. “It’s nothing to do with you. His dad – he hasn’t been the same since John died. And obviously, the set’s about him. I’ve called Kevin to come help.”

“KEVIN!” Dean screams in the background. “I – just – don’t call Sammy, okay? DON’T CALL SAMMY.”

“Who’s Sammy?” asks Cas.

“His brother,” says Charlie. “Have a nice night, Cas. Sorry about this. I’m keeping his phone.”

She hangs up, and Cas sits staring at the Count Chocula stain and feeling awful.

He’s been thinking that he and Dean had some kind of connection. They’ve been spending every day this week together, after all. But really, they barely know each other. He didn’t even know that Dean has a brother. He didn’t know that John is dead. And who’s Kevin? Dean’s a huge dark map that Cas will never have the key to. He’s been so stupid. He should have gone tonight – but no, he shouldn’t, because he’s just some guy who met Dean a couple of weeks ago. They don’t mean anything to each other.

He types, I’m sorry, Dean, switches his phone off, and goes back to writing about Mark drinking Violet’s blood.

*

Cas’s phone stays off for most of Saturday. He gets up early and goes jogging. This has nothing to do with Dean. He picks up breakfast on the way home, bacon and avocado, and he gets a latte just because he feels like it, and not because of Dean. Then he remembers he doesn’t like lattes and throws it in the trash. He keeps working on the book, and Bel isn’t there, just Neal, Mark and Violet, arguing with each other after Mark and Violet’s affair has been discovered.

It's not until 6:32pm that he cracks. And there isn’t anything important there anyway. Just twenty messages in the author chat and

one from Dean.

dont worry. nothin to do with you. my fault

What are you talking about? asks Cas. He was the one who didn’t turn up on Friday.

i fucked up says Dean, almost immediately. couldn’t handle it. pussy behavior

Are you still hung over?

yeah. its what i deserve. i cant do shit. guess dad was right all along huh

Cas ponders. This is a side of Dean he’s never seen before, and it’s alarming him. He’s not sure what to say, so he settles on

At least you didn’t bomb.

fuck you

Cas’s heart jumps. It was supposed to be a joke. Did he just fuck up? He goes for something more sincere.

You can keep working on the set. You’ve got more chances.

i cant do it cas

Why not?

because i cant. im a fuck up. all i do is fail. failures what i deserve

That’s ridiculous. You don’t think you deserve good things?

good things dont tend to happen to me. in my experience

Then get better experience, Dean.

Cas is suddenly angry. He hasn’t had a good thing happen to him in years. His last girlfriend left him because he was ‘too cold and unfeeling’, whatever that means, his book didn’t sell, he’s stuck in a gross apartment with a bathroom full of mold and he’s spending his Saturday evening working on a stupid book he’s going to get a few thousand dollars for at most. He doesn’t even have the copyright!

There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re very funny. You can try again.

you think im funny??

Shit.

Yes. Don’t tell anyone.

fuck you!! i knew you were lying before!! you think im funny!!

I think you’ve said some funny things in your life. I think stand up comedy is the lowest form of entertainment, but your set still made me laugh twice. I think you’re

He’s what?

all right

good

nice

enjoyable company.

are you 90 years old cas??

I am 30.

whatre u doing?

dont say writing

Writing. I have a deadline.

you always have a deadline

This one’s serious. Publisher wants the first forty thousand words by Monday, which means I need to give it to my agent by Sunday night.

but youve done that already right??

Not quite. Almost. There are just a few more scenes I need to work on.

you still can’t write the sex scene can you

Shut up, Dean.

makes me feel better you know. that youre bad at something. anyway if u get bored come to the bar. roadhouse on 25th

I’m not bored, Dean. I’m working.

sure. whatever u say

*

By Sunday afternoon, Cas is done. It’s ready.

Except.

There’s still a page that just says INSERT MARK AND VIOLET SEX SCENE HERE. He stares at it. It stares back. The glow of all that blank white space is starting to hurt his eyes.

He can do this. Come on! He can do this. He has had sex before, plenty of times. He is objectively fairly good at sex. Several women have said so. But writing it down makes him feel – like his father’s whispering in his ear that he’s damned now, that he’s lost for ever, that he’s cast out. It makes his stomach churn and his eyes water. It’s quite obviously the opposite of sexy.

He, he slowly types.

kissed her naked

Oh my god.

her naked torso

Is she a dead body?

her naked breasts

He’s sweating. He actually cannot do this. He wants to throw the laptop out of the window. He feels dizzy.

I can’t do it, he messages Dean.

so i guess its your turn to have a breakdown, Dean messages back. what happened ?

I cannot write this scene. They’re going to fire me, Dean.

no one is gonna fire you buddy. come to the bar

But I can’t write it!

come to the bar

I do not need to get drunk right now!

thats not what i mean. get over here. i can help. trust me

Trust Dean? He drinks, he sleeps around, he doesn’t tell Cas important facts about his family. Cas sits and stares at his laptop for three more minutes. Then he slams its screen closed and calls an Uber.

*

From the outside, the Roadhouse is dingy and rundown. It sits in the middle of the block, between a Chinese restaurant and a laundromat. There’s a lit up neon sign in the window and a faded old flag hanging above the door. It’s not so faded, actually, now that Cas looks at it – it’s pretty new, but someone’s torn it up and splattered paint across it. He can still see multicolored stripes showing through.

The same flag design’s on a sticker on the door. Someone’s scratched it away, and someone else has put another sticker over the scratched up version. It’s rainbow stripes, with a brown and black and pink and white and blue zig zag across one side around a yellow triangle, and –

Oh.

Cas isn’t so hopelessly straight that he doesn’t know what that means. He remembers Dean saying that the bar isn’t for him, and he finally understands. But actually, it just opens up a lot more questions. Why is Dean working in a gay bar? He said he was helping out a friend, but – well.

Huh.

He pushes open the door, and he can feel his heart thumping. He doesn’t belong here. It’s just another thing (like the stupid sex scene!) that isn’t for him. He should go home and cancel the contract and delete Dean’s number and eat ramen for a month and maybe move back in with his mom.

And all of that sounds so awful that he steps inside.

The inside of the bar’s dim, lit up faintly red like the inside of his eyes when he closes them in bright light. There are several people in here, and they all turn towards him quickly. One of them, a big white guy in dark clothes with a cap on his head, stands up and steps in front of Cas.

“Who’re you?” he asks.

“Benny! Hey, stand down, man. He’s fine.”

Dean’s coming through a door from another room, a crate of beers in his arms. He nods at Cas, and Cas has never felt more self-conscious in his life. He’s hopelessly overdressed. He put on a button-down before he left the house – it was a bar, after all, he didn’t want to look like a slob – but now it feels like he might as well be wearing a banner that says BORING STRAIGHT MAN.

“Looking good,” says Dean, grinning, and Cas wants to sink through the floor and die.

“You told me to come,” he says accusingly. This is all your fault, he wants to say.

“Yeah, I did,” says Dean. “Okay. Sit down. I’ll get you a drink.”

“I’m working,” says Cas, perching uncomfortably on one of the bar chairs. There’s a couple making out in the corner. Do not look at them. Do not look. He’s not homophobic. When marriage equality passed he read all the articles about it. He’s seen Brokeback Mountain three times. He preferred the book of Call Me By Your Name to the movie version, because obviously he did. The book’s always better. But he’s never been in a place like this before.

“You’re in a bar,” says Dean. “Drink. Here.”

He passes Cas a glass, and Cas is immensely annoyed to notice that Dean’s got his order right. It’s an Old Fashioned. Dean is holding a tall glass full of some kind of bright colored liquid.

“Sex on the beach,” says Dean, with a wink. “Don’t worry, it’s mine. Now pass me the laptop.”

“No! What? I told you you can’t read it!”

“Jeeze! Relax. I’m not going to read the rest of it. Just give me the laptop. Do you want to have something to send to your publisher or not?”

“Maybe,” grumbles Cas. He’s still not sure what the plan is, but the first sip of his drink is already making his body unfold. It turns out that Dean is also a great bartender. Another thing never to tell him. He pulls his laptop out of his bag and shoves it over to Dean.

“Okay,” says Dean, opening it. “So. This scene. What do you want to have happen? Holy shit, Mark does it with Violet? Nasty.”

“Mark’s been drinking Violet’s blood to gain the power to kill demons,” explains Cas. “And, uh, they have sex. They’re supposed to have sex.”

“Okay, so. Oral sex for sure, both ways. Penetration?”

He’s looking up at Cas like he’s a waiter and Cas is ordering from a menu. “Uhhhh,” says Cas stupidly, feeling himself blushing.

“That’s a yes,” says Dean. “Great. Here goes. Amuse yourself. Talk to Benny.”

“I’m just enjoying watching this whole thing,” says Benny. He’s sitting on another one of the bar stools, staring at them both with a smirk on his face that makes Cas uncomfortable. “You writing straight sex, Dean? Incredible.”

“Fuck you, Benny,” says Dean, without looking up from the laptop. He’s started to type something.

“Frequently,” says Benny, and he reaches out to clink his glass against Dean’s.

Cas stares at Dean as he works. His face is lit up by the bright screen, and he can see every freckle on his nose, the intensity of his gaze. He keeps smiling to himself.

“Where did he pick you up?” asks Benny. He’s watching Cas, his head on one side.

“In a café,” says Cas. “And he didn’t pick me up. I don’t – I am not open to that.”

“That’s what they always say,” says Benny. “But Dean Winchester works in mysterious ways. You’re a new one on me, though.”

“Benny,” says Dean, without looking up. “Lay off. He’s my friend.”

“I’m your friend,” says Benny. Cas is deciding that he really doesn’t like Benny. “But sure, fine. So you write books? Have I heard of you?”

Cas grits his teeth. But at least he knows how this conversation goes. They work through why aren’t you rich and where do you get your inspiration from and do you know James Patterson, and then Dean looks up and says, “Done.”

He spins the laptop back around to Cas, and Cas takes a deep breath. He’s seen Dean’s message style, so he’s not expecting much. Dirty napkin scribblings, maybe the kind of graphic descriptions of sex acts you see in public bathrooms.

But what actually meets his eyes –

He looks up in surprise.

“Told you I could do it,” says Dean, with a shrug.

It’s perfect. Okay, maybe not always capitalized or grammatically correct, but otherwise – perfect. Flawless, filthy, extremely inventive and perfectly tonally in line with every other Supernatural sex scene. Cas can feel that his mouth’s hanging open. He feels so stupid. Dean’s a writer. A good writer! He could make money from this! He should be writing Mills & Boon Dare books or something.

“Holy shit,” he says roughly.

“Hey, it’s nothing,” says Dean. “Is it good enough for your agent guy?”

Cas just nods.

“Nice,” says Dean. “Okay. You want another drink?”

Cas still can’t quite get his head around the fact that he’s not going to get fired, that he’s been saved by Dean, that Dean works at a gay bar and maybe is also gay? He’s still struggling to say anything coherent. He nods again, and Dean pours them both a shot of neat whiskey.

And the night goes from there.

The bar’s a little busier now, and a slight Asian guy with long hair has appeared next to Dean (“Kevin, Cas, Cas, Kevin,” says Dean, so that’s one mystery solved), and Dean’s put on a cowboy hat for some reason (“He loves cowboys,” says Benny to Cas affectionately. “Little freak”), and Cas’s head is buzzing.

“You didn’t tell me your dad was dead,” Cas says to Dean, in a quiet moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Eh,” says Dean. “Don’t like talking about it.”

“You’ve written a whole set about it!”

“Never say he’s dead though, do I? Don’t have to think about it if I don’t say it. And it’s hard to explain, how good things were, even when they were fucked up. People don’t get it.”

Cas nods. “I grew up in a cult,” he says.

Dean puts down the cocktail shaker he’s been holding with a crash.

“My dad ran it,” says Cas. “I didn’t know it was a cult when I was younger.”

“What? How the hell – what are you doing here?” asks Dean.

“I went on Wikipedia when I was fifteen and found the entry for cults,” says Cas, with a shrug. “Then I stole two hundred dollars from his bedside table and ran away to find my mom.”

“That is awesome,” says Dean. “Of course you fucking did. I think that calls for another drink.”

And then another drink, and another, and somehow it’s 11:52pm and Cas realizes he still hasn’t emailed Crowley his manuscript. Dean connects his laptop to the bar wifi (it takes him three tries to remember the password, he’s had a lot more drinks than Cas thinks is strictly responsible) and Cas hits send on a very sloppy and confused email just as the day ticks over to Monday.

“Still technically Sunday night, though!” says Dean, clapping Cas on the shoulder. “Nice work, Cas!”

He keeps his hand there, and Cas leans against it a little. He’s tired and blurry, and the warmth of Dean’s skin through his shirt feels like an anchor.

“Thanks,” he says, blinking. “Thanks.”

“Maybe we should get you a cab,” says Dean, and Cas doesn’t like that at all. But he also can’t keep his eyes open, so when he feels Dean’s arm go round him, pulling him upright, he lets himself be moved. Dean smells of sticky pink drinks and sweat, and his flannel shirt is soft against Cas’s cheek.

“Saved me,” Cas mumbles into his neck. His whole world has narrowed down to the scratch of Dean’s stubble, the way Dean’s throat moves as he swallows.

“Sure, I saved your ass, buddy,” rumbles Dean. “Now get in the cab. Where do you live?”

“Oh, you know,” slurs Cas. “Know my name and everything. Joke.”

Dean sighs. “Gonna need more than that,” he says.

“111 Paradise Avenue,” says Cas. Even drunk, he’s always able to keep hold of himself enough for crucial details. 

Dean pulls open the cab door, and shoves Cas forward into it. There’s a strange moment when their arms are still around each other, Cas’s face pressed into Dean’s shoulder, like they’re being pulled together by gravity. Then Dean lets go, and so does Cas, and he’s alone in the back seat of a cab, holding on to nothing more than his laptop.

This is going to hurt tomorrow, he thinks, and he closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

When Cas wakes up the next morning, it’s 10am and Crowley’s calling him.

“What the fuck is up with you?” Crowley snaps as soon as he picks up. “I’ve called you three times.”

“Sorry,” says Cas. His mouth is fuzzy and his head is aching. He opens his eyes, and then shuts them again. The daylight is very loud. “I had a – late night.”

“Yeah, I heard,” says Crowley. “Got an email from you at 11:59pm that says Hello Crwwly heres your mansucrpt scuk on it lots of love cAs. It’s not your usual style. I wondered if you wanted to comment on that?”

“That was not me,” says Cas, sitting up in horror. “My friend – that was not me. Crowley, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t –”

“Yes, but the manuscript itself is you. Isn’t it?” asks Crowley. His voice has gone low and silky, the way it does when he’s about to destroy someone’s life.

Cas swallows. He thinks of Dean, face lit up by his laptop screen. He thinks of that scene.

“It’s me,” he says. “Mine. Me. Yes.”

“It’s just that I wondered, when I saw so many things that were new to me,” says Crowley. “So many things that, as far as I recall, were not discussed in any planning meetings. Where are you, Cas?”

Cas looks around his bedroom. His comforter still has that chocolate stain on it. The window is misty with condensation.

“I’m in a café,” he says. “The one on fortieth and Valentine.”

“Fine,” says Crowley. “See you there in fifteen.”

Cas doesn’t bother showering. He just pulls on a clean(ish) t-shirt and pants, brushes his teeth, splashes some water on his face and runs for it.

On the way he checks his phone. There’s a string of messages from Dean, starting at 9:10am.

hey buddy hows the head?

any complaints?

just checking in

please tell me youre not dead

obviously youre not dead that was a joke

but just making sure that youre fine

u were pretty hammered last night

hey cas?

Hello Dean, Cas types as he runs. The world’s a lot, now he’s out in it.

I’m not dead.

Just woke up. On the way to the café. Agent called. I think I’m in trouble.

i wasnt worried

but glad we didnt kill another customer

dont need any more bad press

wait what kind of trouble??

cas??

Cas doesn’t reply. He’s got bigger things to worry about. Such as exactly what Crowley meant, and what punishment is awaiting him. He knows this is about Bel. What if CW are angry? What if they cancel his contract anyway, because he didn’t do what they wanted? Shit, shit, shit.

He arrives at the café, sweating, and has just taken his seat when Crowley comes swinging in. He scowls at the other patrons, curls his lip at the barista and sits down in Dean’s chair opposite Cas.

“You look like you smell,” he says. “What the fuck happened to you last night, apart from a pint of whiskey?”

“I needed – I was finishing the manuscript,” says Cas. He drinks his coffee and tries to stop his hand shaking.

“Actually, I don’t care,” says Crowley. “More importantly, what the fuck happened to your brain to make you put yourself into a Supernatural book?”

“What?” says Cas.

“What?” asks Crowley. He glares at Cas. “Oh my god. You don’t know? Bel, you fucking idiot.”

“But Bel’s – Bel’s not me,” says Cas. His brain feels like it’s being scraped.

“Fuck. Writers!” says Crowley, to the café at large. “He’s about thirty years old, he’s hot, he’s got dark hair and blue eyes and he talks like he’s on a completely different plane of existence to the rest of us mortals. He’s you.”

“Are you allowed to say that?” asks Cas.

“Take it up with HR. Oh, wait. HR’s me, and HR says shut the fuck up. Anyway. So you made up a hot little man who apparently isn’t you. Now you need to tell me what you were thinking. Come on. Out with it. What’s the plan? How do I sell this to CW?”

“I,” says Cas. He wants to go sit under the table. He focuses on breathing in, and out, and in again. “I thought Neal needed a friend,” he says at last. “Mark has Violet in this book, so Neal – and I needed to get him out of Hell, and the plan wasn’t clear. I don’t think Chuck finished it before he left. I improvised. I had to!”

“Okay, okay,” says Crowley, holding up his hands. “Calm down. So, friends. Fine. That’s what we’re calling it.”

Cas blinks at him. Crowley sighs and continues.

“Listen, despite appearances I’m not mad at you. Well, I am mad at you, but I also sense an opportunity. Wherever the fuck he’s from, Bel’s a good character. He spices things up. I see it, and I can make CW see it too. I’ve sent the manuscript over – cleaned up, of course – and I’m going to give them a call now to explain things. As long as you tell me that there is a plan here, and you’re not just –”

He stops. He’s staring at something to the right of Cas. Cas turns his head, and sees that the café door’s opened, and Dean’s stepped through it. He looks annoyingly unaffected by last night. He looks like he smells good. He waves cheerfully at Cas, and then his gaze turns to Crowley. His face drops, and his eyes widen. When Cas looks back at Crowley, he sees him glaring at Dean.

“What the fuck,” he says to Cas, “is he doing here?”

“That’s Dean,” says Cas, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Why’s Dean here? How does Crowley know Dean? Does Dean know Crowley?

Crowley’s mouth opens, and his eyebrows raise.

“Ahhh,” he says, looking from Dean, to Cas, and back to Dean again. “Suddenly many things are becoming more clear. Well now. Dean, is it? Hello, Dean. I never caught your name at the Roadhouse.”

Dean’s marched up to their table. “Cas, how do you know this guy?” he asks.

“This is my agent,” says Cas. “Crowley. I told you about him. Uh. Crowley, this is Dean.”

“Interesting,” says Crowley, who has a glint in his eye that makes Cas feel sick to his stomach for a reason he can’t quite fathom. “Well then. Nice to finally know your name, Dean. And Cas – I’ll call you when I’ve spoken to CW. Goodbye, boys.”

And he’s gone.

“Fuck,” says Dean, sitting down. “That’s your agent? Holy shit!”

“I didn’t know you knew each other,” says Cas. Everything is still too loud. He can’t think.

“Uh, we don’t – I mean – Roadhouse, y’know,” says Dean, wriggling. “He and I – yeah – it doesn’t matter. Anyway.”

Cas is suddenly swept with bleakness. Is everyone he knows gay and having exciting sex with each other? Not that he wants to be having gay sex, exciting or not, but he just feels – left behind, at moments like this. In the kitchen at the party. In his room, eating cereal.

“Please don’t tell me,” he says heavily. “The less I know about what Crowley gets up to when he’s not speaking to me, the better. You know he doesn’t even have a HR department?”

“Believe me, man, I do not want to be talking about this,” says Dean. “What the hell happened? Why are you in trouble?”

Cas stares at him. The pieces slot very slowly into place.

“You’re worried about me,” he says.

Dean coughs and frowns. “Uh, no,” he says. “I was just. I was coming to get coffee. And I saw your messages.”

“You never come in so early on a Monday,” says Cas. His brain is telling him that these are the kind of thoughts that should stay internal, but he ignores it.

“Shut the hell up,” says Dean. He’s gone red. “Got a day off. Wanted coffee. It’s a free country. Tell me about the trouble or I swear I’m going to walk out.”

Cas can’t stop himself smiling. It’s the hangover. Then he thinks about what Dean’s asked, and he doesn’t feel like smiling any more. “My publisher,” he says. “The manuscript. I wrote some things that weren’t in the plan.”

“And that’s bad? Sounds pretty good to me.”

“No!” Cas struggles to explain. “This kind of book – I’ve got a plan, and I have to stick to it. I just have to write the story everyone agreed on. But the story didn’t work. I tried! It just didn’t make sense. So I added something. Someone. He shouldn’t be there, but I put him in anyway. Crowley’s going to call them and try to get them to approve it, but if they say no – they’ll either make me rewrite the whole thing, or they’ll just cancel the contract. And then I’ll – fuck.”

The room’s swimming, and black spots are dancing across his vision.

“I really need the money,” he hears himself say, from a distance.

“Hey,” says Dean. He’s come to kneel in front of Cas’s chair, one hand on Cas’s chest. “Breathe. In through your nose, then out through your mouth. Listen to me. In through your nose, then out through your mouth. Okay? Okay. Are you breathing?”

Cas nods. Dean’s hand and his voice are warm and heavy. He does smell good, a little sweet, but a pleasant sweetness. Cas breathes, and slowly the feeling he had of falling headfirst into black ooze fades.

“I’m fine,” he says at last. “I’m fine, Dean. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” says Dean. “Just don’t need you fainting on me, is all. Who’d you add to the book?”

“An angel,” says Cas. “Bel. He’s the one who gets Neal out of Hell. He – he makes the story work.”

“Yeah? He sounds great. They’ll love him. Don’t worry about it.”

Dean does not understand how publishing works. Cas opens his mouth to say this, and then decides that it’s too much for him right now. “Thanks,” he says.

His phone buzzes. It’s Crowley.

Told them your story. They’re considering. Will read MS and then get back to us by this afternoon. Fucking disobedient writers!! Have a nice day with Dean. Kiss kiss.

“Oh shit,” says Cas. The black ooze is back in his chest. He’s got to wait until this afternoon? He might be dead of panic by this afternoon.

“For fuck’s sake,” says Dean. “Get up. Come with me.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re not gonna be able to write today. So let’s do something else instead.”

*

Cas is apprehensive. What does something else mean?

He’s even more apprehensive when Dean leads him out of the café on exactly the route they followed on Thursday.

It’s obvious pretty quickly that this is the way to Dean’s apartment.

And Cas has a moment – just a moment – where he thinks. Dean invited him to a gay bar last night. And now they’re going to his house.

It doesn’t mean. Obviously it doesn’t mean. But what if it did? What if he’s missed the signs? What if?

No, absolutely not. He said to Dean very clearly, last week, that he was straight. And Dean’s world is already full of gay men who frequently have sex with him, so why would he be interested in Cas? Cas hasn’t even showered this morning. But that’s irrelevant, and not the point. The point is that Cas is being ridiculous, and probably homophobic, actually, thinking that just because a man is gay (technically bisexual, given that woman) he must be into every man he comes across.

So, no. Dean is just a very friendly person, and Cas’s hangover is making him think some really fucking ridiculous things. He shakes off the whole idea.

They really are going to Dean’s apartment, though.

Dean opens the block’s cracked front door and leads them up a set of low concrete stairs that smell like a bathroom. “Cute, right?” he says.

“Are you about to kill me?” asks Cas. It’s the only other explanation his brain’s been able to come up with. That ghost detective series taught him a lot about murder, and about why you should never go to a second location with anyone. This is definitely a second location.

“That’s exactly it, buddy,” says Dean. “Thought it might distract you. Hope that’s okay.”

“Asshole,” grumbles Cas, reassured.

Then Dean’s unlocking an apartment door, and gesturing Cas inside. And Cas is standing in the place where Dean lives.

It’s really strange, to be here. For the last two weeks, Dean’s existed for Cas as part of the café. Going to the bar last night shook some of that, but it still feels unsettling to see him at home. This is who Dean is, when he’s not out in the world. And who Dean is … is a nerd. The walls are covered with posters of muscle cars and space ships, pulp horror movie posters and a really big picture of that woman from Lord of the Rings (that one’s surprising). There’s a low, wide couch covered with comfortable cushions, a coffee table piled high with pop culture magazines, a huge TV and several well-cared-for plants. He’s also clean. Everything’s spotless.

“You live here?” Cas asks, because he just was not expecting this. He thought he was going to be stepping into something more like the Roadhouse. But this –

“No, I killed the owners and I’m squatting here,” says Dean. “Yeah I live here. With Charlie. Hey! Charlie! What’s up?”

Charlie, the red-haired woman Cas met last weekend, has just wandered into the living room. She’s got a phone in her hand and a headset on her head, and she’s squinting as she listens to whatever it is the person on the other end is saying. “Hi Dean, hi Cas,” she says. “Yeah. No. That’s what I said. Just try it for me, will you? Try it. I’m not joking. It’s going to work.”

Then she presses the mute button and looks up at them both. “Idiots,” she says. “They don’t believe me. But they’ll see.”

“Charlie works in IT,” says Dean proudly. “She’s a genius.”

“I’m not,” says Charlie. “Everyone else is just kinda stupid. Whatcha doing here, Dean?”

“We’re distracting Cas,” says Dean. “Work stuff.”

“Oh we are, are we?” asks Charlie, shooting a look at Dean that makes him shift his shoulders. “Cas, you’re a writer, right? Dean told me.”

Cas nods. It’s strange, again, to think that Dean’s been talking about him to Charlie. But maybe she just means the conversation they must have had after they met in the café. That’ll be it.

“Well,” Charlie goes on. “Enjoy whatever it is you’re doing. I’ve gotta get back to telling these doofuses how to run their own systems. Catch you later!”

And she ducks out of the living room again.

Cas and Dean are left alone.

“Hi,” says Dean.

“Hi,” says Cas. “So, what are we doing?”

“Oh! Yeah. Right. Okay. Singin’ in the Rain.”

Cas bites his tongue right before he can point out that it’s not raining and they’re not singing. “The movie?” he asks, remembering.

“Yeah, the movie! You’ve never seen it, right? It’s really long and really great, and I figure it’ll get you through to this afternoon. That’s when you’re hearing from your publisher, right? Whaddaya think?”

Cas nods slowly. He’s not sure. He’s never really been much of a movie person. Or much of a pop culture person. He lost those first fifteen years, and after that it was hard to catch up. It’s another thing that makes him feel like he’s stuck in the kitchen at a party.

And most of the time, when he admits he hasn’t seen something, it freaks other people out. They start asking why, in a tone of voice that tells Cas they think there’s something wrong with him. So he’s developed a slight aversion to the whole thing. When people tell him he’s got to watch something, he says yes absolutely I’ll add it to my list and then quietly decides never to speak to them again.

But Dean’s looking at him with a guileless, cheerful, excited expression. “Oh man, I can’t wait for you to see it!” he says. “You’re gonna love it, I swear.”

“But what if I don’t love it?” asks Cas.

“Then I’ll just –” Dean starts. Then he sees the look on Cas’s face and stops himself. “Then we’ll just try another movie,” he says. “No worries.”

Cas nods. “Is there singing?” he asks nervously.

“Oh, there’s so much singing,” says Dean, beaming. “I swear to god, man. Just hold the judgement. You’ll see. Okay. You want popcorn?”

Cas nods, again. He’s expecting Dean to put a packet in the microwave, but no. Dean gets out a pan and a bag of kernels and actually pops the corn on the stove. At first Cas stands back in shock, or in case Dean explodes the whole kitchen, but when the pops begin he moves forward almost against his will. He ends up hovering just behind Dean’s left shoulder, peering in fascination as the hard little kernels burst and bloom, pushing up the pan lid. It’s like a tiny miracle.

“Isn’t it great?” Dean asks, turning his head to smile at Cas. The heat from the pan has made his eyelashes damp. “Like a fucking magic trick.”

They walk back into the living room, Cas carrying a huge fragrant bowl of popcorn (it’s the best he’s ever tasted, buttery and soft) and Dean with the drinks (a beer for Dean, and water for Cas, because it’s still only 11am and the thought of alcohol makes him want to throw up right now). Dean takes the right hand side of the couch, and Cas takes the left, the popcorn between them.

“Okay!” says Dean, bouncing in his seat. “Okay! Here we go! Are you ready? You’re not ready.”

“I’m ready, Dean,” says Cas, smiling at him. “It’s okay.”

The movie starts. Oh god, there’s singing. There’s singing, and dancing, and it’s corny and weird and … huh. Wait. It’s kind of fun, actually. Cosmo and Don are total dorks together, and somehow Cas is reminded of Neal and Bel, even though obviously there are no similarities. Dean keeps flicking at Cas’s hand whenever he reaches into the popcorn bowl so he can tell him an important movie fact, which should be annoying but somehow isn’t, and by the time Kathy bursts out of the cake at the party Cas can feel himself beaming.

When Cosmo starts his dance routine to Make Em Laugh, Dean turns to Cas with stars in his eyes and whispers, “This is it, man. I saw this when I was nine and I just knew I wanted to be him.”

“What, a dancer?” asks Cas, mischievously, and Dean says, “Oh, I can dance. You wanna see? I’m a triple threat.”

And he actually gets up and does a couple of bars of soft shoe shuffle, right there on the living room floor. Is Cas ever going to stop being surprised by this guy? Dean holds his hand out to Cas at the end of the routine, but Cas … is not a dancer, and doesn’t want to show himself up.

At this stage he’s completely forgotten about CW, and Crowley, and the book contract. There’s nothing in the world except this dim room, and the brightly colored movie on the screen in front of them. Don and Kathy are falling in love, but they don’t ignore Cosmo while they do. Cas likes that.

Dean sits back down, and he and Cas fight over the last piece of popcorn in the bowl. Cas wins, and Dean mock-lunges towards him, saying “Hey!” He grabs for it right as Cas puts it in his mouth, and Cas sticks his tongue out at him and then Charlie walks out of her room, headset on, says “Oh, nope, absolutely not,” and shuts her door again.

Dean goes back to his side of the couch. They both watch the movie. Don is finally singin’ in the rain, water pouring down all around him, and it should be joyful, but Cas has a strange tightness in his chest. It’s like the feeling he used to get when he was a kid, when he’d done something wrong and was waiting to be punished. But he’s not – this isn’t that. They’re just watching a movie.

He darts a glance at Dean, and sees Dean glancing back at him. They both look away again.

“I’m coming out now,” says Charlie.

“Fine,” says Dean loudly. “You can watch too. It’s a free country.”

“I know it is,” says Charlie. “Hi, Cas.”

“Hello, Charlie,” says Cas. Why does this feel so awkward? They weren’t – nothing’s happened.

But then he turns back to the screen, where Kathy, Don and Cosmo are busy outwitting Lena Lamont, and he forgets all the weirdness. Dean was right. It’s a really good movie.

The credits roll, and Dean turns to him with a happy bounce. “See?” he asks. “See? I mean – hey, if you didn’t like it, that’s okay. But did you like it?”

“Very much so,” says Cas, smiling to put him out of his misery.

“I fucking love the way you talk, Cas,” says Dean. “Seriously. It’s like you’re the youngest old man I’ve ever met. And hey, look! It’s this afternoon.”

Cas’s heart stutters. It’s two pm. And when he checks his phone he’s got an email from CW. Shit. Shit. Shit.

He opens it, hands shaking, and this time it’s Dean’s turn to crowd in over his shoulder. The email’s long, and at first he can’t focus on all those words. It’s like he’s lost the ability to read. But then he sees enjoyable and intriguing character and happy for him to remain and gasps.

“Are they firing you?” asks Dean, right in Cas’s ear.

“No!” says Cas.

“Fuckin’ A!” cheers Dean, and he grabs Cas from behind and squeezes. Cas is flushed and out of breath and celebratory. He’s gonna be fine. He’s still going to get paid. Bel can stay (and that somehow matters almost as much as the getting paid thing). And then he reads the full email.

Dear Cas,

Thank you for the first part of the MS of SUPERNATURAL 7. I’m pleased with your work, and overall found the experience of reading it enjoyable. I note that you have deviated somewhat from the plan laid out by the previous writer. Having spoken to your agent, I understand that you have good reason, and we do agree with him that Bel is an intriguing character who furthers Neal’s planned plot.

My initial impulse – that you replace him with an earlier introduction of the character of Alice – has altered over the course of the day. I am happy for him to remain, but on the understanding that you develop Alice’s character in the back half of the book and ensure that she becomes Neal’s romantic focus. As you know, she’ll become a pivotal part of the apocalypse plot in SUPERNATURAL 8, and so we won’t need Bel as a main character from this point forward. I feel that your innovation in bringing angels into the world of SUPERNATURAL can work here – I’m suggesting that Alice’s character becomes another angel, one who has perhaps worked with Bel. Bel can then return from time to time to help Neal, Mark and Alice. He’s a great character, as I’ve said – I just don’t want his presence to detract from Neal’s planned arc with Alice.

I’d like to schedule a call with you this week, to discuss the book. As I said, I enjoyed it, although I do feel it could sometimes benefit from an injection of humor. Remember that these books are overall light in tone. I also applaud you on the big Mark and Violet scene – a real stand-out moment. But there are other scenes with them that I feel could work harder – I’d like to ask that you bring some of the passion from their love scene into earlier moments.

Thanks so much, and speak soon,

Sera Wing

Editor, Clarence Wing Press

“Shit,” he says out loud.

“What’s wrong?” asks Dean.

Cas just silently hands over his phone. Dean reads.

“Shit,” he says at last. “They’re gonna make you can him?”

“Yes,” says Cas. He feels unexpectedly devastated. Bel and Neal – they just work. They shouldn’t, but they do. And as for Alice – she seems fine, but Cas hasn’t got a good handle on her yet. When she first turns up, she’s a prophet, burdened with terrible visions of the apocalypse. She seems pretty intense, frankly, maybe not someone who the smartass, easy-going Neal would have a whole lot in common with. He doesn’t get how the two of them are supposed to have a big romance together. But he’s got to try. That’s the job, isn’t it? To make the plan work. He’s not supposed to be rebelling and doing his own thing.

“I’m sorry, dude,” says Dean. “But hey, you get to keep your apartment! And they liked my sex scene. Passion, huh? I’ll take that.”

“Do you – do you want anything for it?” asks Cas. He suddenly realizes he should have asked about this last night. “I can pay you. I mean, not much, but – I can pay. Just – please don’t tell anyone that I couldn’t do it.”

“Relax,” says Dean. “I don’t want money. And I’m not gonna grass to this Sera chick either. Your secret’s safe with me. But, actually – there is something I’d like.”

“What?” asks Cas. What’s Dean going to ask for? He imagines – no. He can’t imagine at all.

“I wanna read the book,” says Dean.

Chapter Text

It takes Cas until he’s back at his apartment and showered, in new sweat pants and a clean t-shirt, that he realizes he hasn’t actually asked the most important question of all.

He picks up his phone from where it’s sitting next to his half eaten PB&J. He’s staring at it, trying to work out the best way to phrase it – he’s a writer, dammit, he should be better with words! – when a message from Dean pops up.

i still think you shouldve stayed for dinner. i cook a mean burger

Absolutely not, types Cas. If I’d stayed longer I’d have stunk you both out of the apartment.

By the way, Dean, I’ve been meaning to ask.

He pauses.

uh oh

i didnt do it officer

although it depends what it is

How did you know how to write that scene?

The moment he’s pressed send he wants to take it back. He almost deletes the message – but Dean’s already seen it. He’s typing.

how do you think cas?

its not hard

well some of it is hard if u know what i mean

Cas can picture Dean smirking to himself. He tries not to smile.

That’s not what I mean.

You’ve had practice

You know what you’re doing

Why are you so good at it

Fuck, why does everything suddenly sound like an innuendo?

okay fine ill put you out of your misery. stop typing out the same message 8 times

i write this kinda stuff a lot

I knew it! Which publisher?

Oh fuck, his guess was right. Dean must moonlight somewhere. He got an actual romance writer to help him. He’s going to get in so much trouble. Someone’s gonna see Dean’s scene and recognize who wrote it and Cas is going to be ruined.

jeeze not for a publisher!! fuck.

no

okay

okay fine

so you know supernatural?

I know the book series I am writing, Dean, yes.

smartass

i told you im a fan

and fans like to talk about the show. online. right?

and there are these servers where people talk

and some of the people think that

uh

don’t be mad

They’re not my books, they’re Chuck’s, Dean. I don’t care. What do they think?

How does this fit into anything? Cas is confused. Is Dean a professional or not?

so they kinda think neals bisexual

and the guys he hangs out with right. they think they

u know

and some people like to write about what that would be like

Oh my god.

Oh my god. So Dean’s not a professional at all. He’s –

and funny story but im some people

youre not mad right?

do not tell your publisher

i mean i guess they already know in general but

cas?

cas??

You write DIRTY FANFICTION?

OF SUPERNATURAL?

AND YOU DIDN’T TELL ME?

yeah nope i didn’t

come on buddy how do you think that would have gone?

but im telling you now

breathe

I AM BREATHING!

DEAN!!

Cas can’t take this in. It’s too much. He’s been catfished. Wait, is it catfishing when you meet the actual person in real life and then they lie about who they are online? Reverse catfishing? No, that sounds like a sexual position. Ignore that.

He’s been tricked, anyway. Did Dean know what Cas was doing, when they first met in the café? He probably did. Has he been pretending to be friends with Cas, just so he could worm his way into Cas’s good graces, to find out stuff about the book? He’s lied to Cas again, and this time his lie’s actively dangerous. Cas has to stop this right now. He can just delete that scene and write his own version, no problems. He can absolutely do it. He’ll get really drunk and do it. He never needs to talk to Dean again.

cas?!

come on man!!

i had no idea who you were when we met

i havent been tricking you. calm down

i just didnt say anything because it sounds insane

oh hi i write free porn of the book series youve been hired to write.

thats not normal cas!! i was trying to seem normal!!!

Cas takes a deep breath. Dean only sends strings of messages like that when he’s genuinely upset about something. Does this mean that he’s actually being truthful here?

You are definitely not normal, he types.

dont i know it

but hey. it worked out for you right?? free sex scene in your hour of need

listen. ill do whatever to make it up to you

ill send you my handle!

u can see what ive done. think of it like blackmail material? if i ever piss you off you can post it on every social media u want

please?

Cas takes a deep breath. Despite himself, the please has got him.

You promise you didn’t do all this to find out about the book?

i swear. i didnt know who you were until you told me. and then it was too ridiculous to admit

friends?

Friends.

thank you cas

okay

impala69

thats it

look if u want (probably dont look though)

im gonna go pretend all of this never happened

Cas takes a deep breath. He opens his laptop and types in ‘impala69’. The top link is to Archive of Our Own. Cas knows about it of course, all authors do, but he’s never actually visited it before. He winces as he clicks. He feels dirty.

Holy shit. Fifty-seven fanfics. He sees Neal/Agent Rickard, Neal/Ace, Neal and … wait, who even is that guy?

It’s not totally guy on guy – Cas sees three that are Neal/Bessie – but most of it is, and it’s all rated E. His cursor hovers over the link to the top kudosed fic, a Neal/Agent Rickard story with … what the hell? More than 59,000 hits. Then he stops himself. Dean’s made himself vulnerable here. He’s given Cas this ammunition. He doesn’t need or want Cas to actually look behind the curtain. So he clicks away from the page as fast as he can and turns back to his PB&J.

Fifteen minutes later he opens up the page again.

Then he slams the laptop shut.

He picks up a book and reads two chapters.

He opens the laptop to see his cursor still hovering over the Neal/Agent Rickard story.

He shuts it again.

He opens the page and clicks.

Then he says “NO,” to the empty room, turns off his laptop and goes to bed.

*

He’s up early the next morning. He wants to make a start on the next part of the book. He was distracted yesterday (and very distracted last night) and remembering it gives him an uncomfortable taste in his mouth. He knows way too much about Dean Winchester now. Cas has this thing – it’s hard to explain. The more he knows about a person, the less he likes being around them. He gets embarrassed just looking at them, after a while. Knowing their likes and dislikes, their preferences and secrets, feels like knowing what they look like naked, and that makes it impossible to face them. He’s waiting for that itch to start with Dean, and it hasn’t, and that’s making him itchy.

So it’s time to get back to what matters: Supernatural. He’s refocusing, he’s going to be a good little soldier, he’s going to write the epic love story of Neal Colt and Alice the prophet angel and his editor is going to sign him up for four more books and pay him … at least $20K per book. Yes.

Neal and Mark are called to a psychiatric hospital. They find that a troubled girl (he checks Chuck’s notes – how old is she supposed to be? Early 20s is weirdly young, isn’t it? Neal’s pushing 30. Maybe he’ll age her up a couple of years) has escaped. Alice has been having visions of demons, and Hell, and seals being broken – the psychiatrist dismisses it all, but Neal and Mark know that what she’s saying matches what they’ve heard from Bel: seals are breaking all over the world, as the demon Lilith tries to jump-start the apocalypse.

Neal and Mark track Alice down to her local church, where they find her hiding in terror. But when they call her out of her hiding place and tell her who they are, she’s delighted – she can hear the angels talking, so she knows Neal from Bel’s stories.

Cas pauses here for a second. Is that okay, bringing Bel back again like this? But it’s just a mention, and anyway it ties everything together – if Bel did raise Neal from Hell, he’d obviously tell the other angels about it. Although maybe this’d work better if Neal and Bel had met a couple more times –

No, Cas. No more Bel. Sera was clear.

Okay, so this is the first time Alice and Neal meet. It needs to work hard. Sparks have to fly. What does she look like, this girl? Chuck’s notes were vague, beyond young and hot (Chuck’s attitude to all female characters, Cas has noticed). Blond is the obvious choice, but Cas doesn’t want to go for obvious. How about … he has a sudden vision of Charlie talking on the phone, her long red hair falling around her shoulders. Wait, why does Charlie keep appearing in his head when he’s writing? He doesn’t have a crush on Dean’s lesbian roommate, does he?

He checks in with himself. Nope. He’s clear. So it’s fine for him to borrow that hair. It’s great hair, objectively.

Alice’s hair was red, long and wavy, falling around her delicate face. She looked frightened, but there was determination in her gaze that Neal liked.

“Neal Colt?” she said, voice trembling. “There you are! I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Cas! There you are,” says Dean, thumping his bag down on their table. “You beat me here. Want a coffee?”

“It’s eleven thirty, Dean,” says Cas, looking up. “If I’d been waiting for you to buy me a coffee I’d have collapsed by now.”

“Fine. Want another coffee?”

“Fine,” says Cas. He’s staring at Dean. This man can tap dance and make popcorn. He watches musicals. He writes copyright-infringing gay porn featuring the characters Cas’s been hired to write books about, and he didn’t tell Cas about it for two whole weeks.

He’s waiting for all that to sink in. He’s waiting for the itch. But all he sees is Dean. He’s got a dark green flannel on today that brings out the color of his eyes, and as he waits for their coffees he dances from foot to foot along with the beat of the song that’s playing, chuckling at something the barista says to him.

He catches Cas’s eye, and Cas looks away. He looks up again, and Dean winks at him. It’s distracting, and Cas is annoyed. Why’s Dean so – himself? Why doesn’t that bother him?

“So,” says Dean, sitting down in his seat. His coffee today is oddly yellow. The special this week is a turmeric latte, so Cas shouldn’t be surprised, but he can’t suppress a shudder. His coffee, as always, is black. “Didja read it?”

“Read what?” asks Cas, and then realizes what he means. He feels his face flush. “No,” he says, with as much dignity as he can muster. “I decided not to.”

“Are you lying to me?” asks Dean, and he leans forward across the table to peer into Cas’s eyes, so close that Cas can see each of his freckles and feel Dean’s breath on his cheek. He holds himself very still.

“No,” he says. “I don’t lie, Dean. I didn’t read them. I understand why you gave me the information, but I’ve decided not to use it against you. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Huh,” says Dean, slumping back in his chair. He has an odd tilt to his shoulders that Cas almost reads as disappointment. That’s wrong, of course. “Well. Can I still read the book?”

“You still want to?” asks Cas. He’s flabbergasted. “I thought – after what you told me – how do I know you won’t tell your friends on your servers?”

“I swear I won’t,” says Dean. “Pinky promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. Scout’s honor and all that shit. I just wanna see, man! I’m so curious. Please.”

Cas considers. Emailing the manuscript to Dean is right out. Not happening. But he did promise – and he did give Dean the ability to ask him a favor, after what he did. He doesn’t want monetary payment, so how else is Cas supposed to reimburse him?

“Fine, you can read it on my laptop,” he says. “I was going to use this afternoon to plan in my notebook, anyway. You’ve got it until I need it back. All right?”

It’s not a lie – he does need to sketch out the second half of the book more fully from Chuck’s ever-confusing and vague notes. But it’s also a kind half-truth. He could have carried on writing for the rest of the day. He’s got the bit between his teeth, and the sense that he wants to get the whole Neal and Alice thing over with as fast as possible. It’ll be like going for surgery: the quicker he starts, the quicker it’s over. He’s not even thinking about the inevitable Neal/Alice sex scene. All the sex scenes. They’re supposed to stay together through the next book too. Maybe he’ll get used to it. Yes, of course he will. Alice will have hidden depths.

He clicks to the top of the document and slides the laptop over to Dean before he can think better of it.

“Don’t be an asshole about it,” he says shortly. “It’s not finished.”

“Promise I won’t be,” Dean says. “Don’t worry, Cas.”

*

Cas worries. He worries frequently, over the next two hours.

Dean isn’t a quiet reader. It’s actually highly annoying. He gasps. He giggles. He kicks Cas under the table and says, “Hey, dude, I did not see that one coming!”

“Dean, I am trying to work!” says Cas uncomfortably. He isn’t used to this level of feedback. And it’s not all good, either. He can tell when Dean gets to a scene he doesn’t like. His eyebrows gather together and his mouth turns down and two discontented dimples appear in his cheeks. “Why’d you –” he starts, once, and Cas says, “Dean if you ask that question I’m taking the laptop back. I am trying to work.”

“Yeah, got it, I know,” says Dean. “You’re the writer, man.” But the dimples stay. Cas is dying to know what put them there. Is it the rougarou plot? He doesn’t like it much either, but Chuck was clear about it. Is it – wait, it’s not Bel, is it? What if Dean doesn’t like Bel? He realizes he’s clenching his fists, and stretches his fingers out, trying to act like they’re tired from all the writing he’s doing.

He's barely written anything at all. Watching Dean is taking up too much brain space. Does he like it? Does he hate it? Is it as good as he could do? a tiny voice in Cas’s head whispers. Dean’s funny, he’s smart, and he can write. He knows the series better than Cas does. He knows how to give fans what they want, because he is a fan.

His coffee goes cold, but he keeps sipping at it. His hands feel too warm and too damp. His shirt is bothering him. The music’s too loud in here, when did they turn it up so loud? He’s only good at one thing, and maybe he’s not even so good at that.

Dean shuts the laptop and slides it back across the table. Cas looks up at him, heart thumping. He’s not sure how to arrange his face.

“So?” he asks. “Was it up to your standards?”

Dean smiles at him. “Loved it,” he says, and he holds out his right hand in a fist towards Cas. Cas stares at it. Dean sighs, reaches forward with his other hand, picks up Cas’s right hand, bunches it up and taps it against his outstretched fist. “Congrats, man, it’s great.”

“You’re not just saying that?” asks Cas. “I saw you. You had doubts.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not perfect. But nothing is! C’mon, you heard my set. Piece of shit, right?”

“Not a piece of shit!” says Cas, shocked. “It was very funny. I’m sorry you couldn’t perform it. You’ll have another chance.”

“Yeah, well,” says Dean again, gaze sliding off Cas. “Whatever. Anyway. Your thing is good, I swear. Bel’s awesome. Seriously, I love him. Him and Neal are – uh – fans are gonna love it, is what I’m saying. No notes.”

Cas is pleased about that. He almost opens his mouth to repeat the thing that Crowley said to him, that Bel is based on himself. It isn’t true, and he wants Dean to confirm it. But then he reasons that if Dean had thought it, he’d be saying it. It’d be the first thing that’d occur to him, because he knows Cas. So it isn’t true, and Dean’s proven that.

“So, what’s the problem with it?” he asks.

“You really wanna know what I think?” asks Dean. He looks uncertain, a little surprised.

“Of course I do,” says Cas, and he’s surprised to find that he’s not lying.

“Uh,” says Dean. “Obviously I’m not – I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I don’t do this for a job, like you do. I’m just – a fan. So you can ignore me. Seriously, if I say anything off base, just ignore me.”

“But?” Cas prompts. Dean really should be more sure of himself.

“But. Uh. The thing your editor said, that it could be funnier? She’s right. Not – I mean – seriously, it’s funny. It’s so funny. I laughed a bunch of times, you saw me. But it’s the way you’re funny. Really dry and weird, so most people don’t notice it.”

Cas’s heart sinks. He’s dry and weird. Of course he is. Dean thinks he’s dry and weird.

“No, no, don’t look like that! It’s a good thing! It’s just that – that isn’t how Supernatural’s funny. It always goes for the obvious jokes. Like a gross innuendo or a dick joke or something. Things that look like boobs but aren’t. You need to connect to your inner twelve year old boy.”

“I don’t think I was that kind of twelve year old boy,” says Cas, after a pause for thought.

“I know you weren’t,” says Dean. “At this point, I’ve worked that one out.”

“So how do I make it – funnier?” asks Cas. He’s feeling the way he does when he gets an editorial note he just can’t crack. If he’s not that kind of funny, what does he do?

“Hey, don’t freak out. It’s really not that hard. Difficult. Look, right there, see? That level of dumb shit. Hard. Wet. Duty.” Then he snickers to himself, one side of his mouth raised. Cas rolls his eyes. This is supposed to be humor? “But okay, I’ll show you. The part where they’re drinking in the bar before they go fight the Hammer Horror villain guy, and Neal tells Mark about getting healed when he got raised from Hell. Make that a sex joke.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Look, here.” He’s pulled his chair halfway round the table so he can look at the laptop screen at the same time as Cas. His shoulder jostles against Cas’s and he swipes Cas’s hands away from the keys so he can type.

“Personal space, Dean,” grumbles Cas. It’s his book, after all.

“Shut up, Cas. Okay. So have Neal make a sex joke. Right here. Something like … ‘that’s right, Marky. I am pristine. I have been rehymenated.’”

“That is disgusting,” says Cas.

“That’s Supernatural, baby,” says Dean. “That’s Neal. You know I’m right.”

And the worst thing is, Cas does. It fits, just like Dean’s sex scene did. He makes a face as Dean beams at him, eyes sparkling. “I want ten per cent of the royalties,” says Dean.

“You said you didn’t want any money!”

“It’s called a running joke, Cas. Look it up. And no, I don’t want any money, you fucking idiot. I don’t give a shit. I’m just helping a friend out.”

Cas hates that he can feel himself blushing. He’s still not used to Dean calling him a friend. He’s still not used to having a friend, full stop. “I might not accept your changes,” he mutters. “But if I did. What else would you add?”

Chapter Text

It takes Cas a while to admit it, but he’s got a Neal and Alice problem. He shouldn’t! But he does. And what makes it worse is that the rest of the book’s going really well. Dean’s been through the manuscript twice, punching up (or down) jokes and adding spice to Mark and Violet’s encounters, so all Cas needs to do is push on to the end and hit send to CW.

But Alice and Neal just aren’t working.

It’s not that he doesn’t like Alice. She’s actually an interesting character – she’s had to break away from her upbringing to discover who she really is, and she’s struggling to cope with the truth of her angelic identity. There are plenty of ways that she and Neal do connect, now that he’s thought about it. They’re both reluctant players in a bigger game, soldiers who fight even though they’re not sure the end goal’s worth fighting for. They’ve lost faith in the plan. They’re also both hot, and young, and available. Is that it? Is that what romance is? Being near someone for long enough to just hook up with them for something to do?

He keeps trying to get Neal and Alice together. She’s currently in hiding, under the care of Violet, while Neal and Mark fight off the demons who are trying to destroy her to stop her talking about the upcoming apocalypse. Alice wants to help Neal and Mark, but she can’t without her … Cas pauses. What should he call it? Her wings. No. Her powers? No. Her grace! That’s it. She can’t help without her grace, so she and Neal have to go on a mission together to find it. And they’re about to head off when Bel turns up.

Wait, no he doesn’t. Bel does not turn up.

Except that, actually, it’s kind of a good story if he does. What if Bel and his fellow angels are trying to track Alice down too, and punish her for her disobedience? She’s out of Heaven, so she must have fallen. And Bel wants to stop her before she can fall further –

No.

No, Cas.

Focus on what matters: Neal and Alice.

He writes the scene with Bel anyway, though. He and Neal are furious with each other, up in each other’s space, the air crackling between them. Neither of them can understand the other’s perspective, which is hilarious, because they’re actually really similar. They’re both doing what they think is right, and operating without all the information they need.

But he can’t be here, because this is the Neal and Alice show. So Cas sends Bel back to his angelic garrison (these angels are warriors, obviously) and shoots Neal and Alice off together in the car, road tripping to find Alice’s grace. A road trip is very romantic. When you’re close to someone, you begin to feel how they’re feeling. You can connect without speaking. And then there are all those motel rooms, and – and – this’ll be easy.

He won’t need to use Dean again.

The stolen sex scene still haunts Cas. Extra lines are one thing, but a whole page of text? That’s cheating. That’s a copyright issue (if Cas had the copyright). So it’s not going to happen again. He’s perfectly capable of writing the Alice and Neal sex scene himself. And he will! He will. He just has to get to it.

He sends Neal and Alice out into the dark together, one evening. The trail of the grace has gone cold. They feel hopeless, confused and desperate. They need to lean on each other. The future feels uncertain – any night could be their last.

“Why would you fall?” asked Neal bitterly. He doesn’t understand it. Giving up all of heaven, for earth?

Alice shrugged. “There are some good things, Neal,” she said. “Love. Sex. Feelings.”

“Feelings are overrated,” said Neal. But he smiled down at Alice, and she smiled back at him.

smiled wickedly back at him.

Finally, they understand each other.

Alice stepped towards Neal and –

Cas stops.

Isn’t this too rushed? Alice barely appeared 10,000 words ago. Will readers feel like this is earned? Huh. What if he – hey, here’s an idea. That Halloween witch chapter from earlier in the story that didn’t really go anywhere. What if he moves it forward into this part of the book, and makes it more obviously apocalypse related? Mark and Neal are trying to stop another seal being broken, and so are the angels – but the angels are doing it by just trying to smite the whole town, and the boys have to stop them. Yes, Cas likes that. Neal could have had to leave Alice behind with Violet to go on this adventure. So he’s stressed, and angry at angels in general, and that means that he and Bel –

Fuck.

Well, but hold on. Sera didn’t say no Bel. She said no more Bel as a main character. If Bel’s the antagonist here, it throws Alice into sharper relief as the angel who gave it all up to fall and become human. She’s the angel who questioned, and Bel’s the angel who stayed.

And Bel and Neal – Neal’s a smooth-talking smartass, and Bel’s a stick-up-his-butt good boy. They work together because they don’t work, because they push against each other. Sera’s right, it’s best for the story that Bel stops turning up.

But then, as Cas stares out across the café, at Dean’s scruffy hair as he bends over his notebook, he feels a scene dropping into his head.

The town’s been saved, and Bel and the other angels have been defeated. Neal’s sitting alone on a park bench, staring at a group of kids playing on the swings. And then he blinks, and Bel’s sitting beside him. They nod at each other, not quite looking at each other, and there’s a sense of peace that comes over them both. They’re at ease.

“Guess you lost,” said Neal.

Bel paused.

“Can I tell you something, if you promise not to tell another soul?” he asked. He didn’t wait for Neal to reply before he carried on. “I have questions. I have doubts. I don’t know what is right and what is wrong any more. I was praying that you’d choose to save the town.”

Oh shit. So Bel’s not such a good boy after all, and Alice isn’t the only angel who’s falling. Fuck, that’s so interesting. Bel really is changing, the way Cas thought he was back during the yellow eyed demon plot. Neal’s changing him. The implications of that! He could just –

“Why do you look like you just got struck by lightning?” asks Dean, glancing up.

“I’m thinking,” says Cas. “Be quiet.”

“You’re so fucking rude when you’re writing,” grumbles Dean.

“It isn’t my fault if you interrupt me! I was thinking.”

“Fucking nerd,” says Dean, smiling at Cas, and Cas has to smile back. He knows Dean doesn’t mean anything by it, and he knows Dean knows that he’s not really mad.

They get each other, by now.

*

Friday night, and Cas is over at Dean and Charlie’s. None of them talk about the fact that Fridays were supposed to be Dean’s stand up nights. The bruise from that failed evening is still fresh. Cas catches Charlie’s eye while Dean’s in the kitchen cooking, and he knows that they’re both there for the same reason: because they’re worried about Dean.

And also to watch Star Wars.

Dean found out that Cas hasn’t ever seen it on Wednesday and basically popped a vein with excitement.

“Oh my god! Cas! You’ve gotta – oh man – you’re gonna love it. I swear!”

Cas is dubious, but he does remember Singin’ in the Rain, and so he’s a little more willing to go with Dean this time around, even if he does think that all of the names that are coming out of Dean’s mouth – wookiees and Ewoks and Death Stars and Tattooine (is that a person? A place?) – sound completely ridiculous to him.

Dean insists on cooking beforehand. He puts on an apron that says Kiss The Chef (Charlie tries to kiss him and Dean yells “NO TOUCHING!” and hits her with a spatula), goes into the kitchen with a determined glint in his eyes, and emerges half an hour later pink-cheeked and holding a plate full of burger patties and buns.

The burgers are delicious, actually, Cas is surprised at how delicious they are. Dean wasn’t lying about making a mean burger. They eat while Dean starts the movie, elbowing Cas in excitement and almost making him spill ketchup all down his shirt. Cas grits his teeth as the title card rolls. He’s here for Dean. He doesn’t have to like the movie. He’s being a supportive friend. He –

He likes the movie. It’s beautiful to look at, sweepingly epic, but it’s also funny in ways he wasn’t expecting. He loves the little gold robot who doesn’t understand the way the world works, and when Han Solo comes swaggering onto the screen he bursts out laughing. Dean looks at him in bewilderment, and Cas doesn’t want to explain that he’s seen Dean move that way when he’s trying to impress people. Some of Han’s catch phrases, too – Dean’s starting to make a lot more sense, all of a sudden.

He finally can’t hold it in any longer. “You’re Han Solo,” he whispers to Dean during one of the big battle sequences.

“And don’t I know it, Chewie,” says Dean, winking at him. Cas shouldn’t be pleased to be compared to a large hairy beast man who only communicates by wailing, but he has the feeling that Dean means it kindly.

He can tell Dean and Charlie have seen this movie many times before. Charlie starts off barely paying attention, typing away on her phone to her girlfriend, Dorothy, who lives in Australia, but she keeps looking up, mouthing along with the words and grinning to herself. Soon she and Dean are back in their double act, reciting lines together goofily and even once getting up to act a scene out. Cas leans back, laughing, and watches them. This all feels very warm. He likes being in a room with two people who like each other so much.

The movie finishes, and then rolls into the next one. Apparently there are many wars that must be fought. Dean goes to get more beers, handing one to Cas. It clinks against the neck of Dean’s, a gentle, intimate noise. “You in for one more?” he asks.

Cas thinks about his room back at his apartment, and his comforter (still with that Count Chocula stain on it), and the mold on the walls.

“I’m in,” he says.

They keep drinking, and Cas feels warmer and warmer, held safely by the couch, and this room, and these people. He loves everything about it. He catches himself thinking that, and feels how strange it is. But it’s true. He leans towards Dean and murmurs, “I very much enjoy these star wars.”

Dean cracks up, and then Cas starts laughing too, even though he doesn’t understand exactly why.

“All right, nerds,” says Charlie. “I’m going to bed. Save the universe for me, okay?”

“She’s not going to bed,” whispers Dean into Cas’s ear. “She’s going to have phone sex with Dorothy.”

“Fuck you, Dean, I heard that,” says Charlie amicably. “Dorothy says hi, by the way. Turn up the volume.”

She shuts her bedroom door behind her, and they’re alone, still tipped towards each other on the sofa, Dean’s mouth next to Cas’s cheek. Cas realizes his heart is beating fast. It’s strange to hear people being so open about sex. He’s not used to it.

His eyes meet Dean’s. They’re very close together now that he’s turned his head a little. He can see the freckles on the bridge of Dean’s nose, his ridiculously long eyelashes. Dean breathes in, a tiny inhale, his mouth opening, and Cas is suddenly seized by the ridiculous mental image of himself reaching out and touching Dean’s bottom lip, putting the pad of his thumb right where he can feel the warm dampness of Dean’s breath.

Shit, is he drunk?

“Can I have another drink?” he asks, which is literally the opposite of what he meant to say.

“Yeah,” says Dean, jumping up. “Yeah, sure, hold on –”

He comes back with more beers, which Cas definitely doesn’t want. He’s struggling to follow the story on screen. He closes his eyes for a moment, to settle himself. He’s fine.

“Hey, Cas, don’t fall asleep on me!” says Dean. “You gotta watch this scene. It’s the most romantic moment in cinematic history.”

Cas’s eyes pop open. His heart’s beating hard again. Shit, he is drunk.

Han Solo and Princess Leia kiss, and then Han is dragged away. “I love you!” Leia cries.

“I know,” says Han. And then – what the hell? He’s turned into a giant cube.

“Wait, what?” he yells at Dean.

“I know,” sighs Dean.

“That is not romantic! He didn’t even say it back! He just left her! It’s not romantic unless they stay together! That’s – that’s hardly a confession!”

“Oh my god, Cas! You’re serious, aren’t you? That’s so cute.”

Cas scowls. He doesn’t like to be described in that way. Cute? He has very relevant issues with this plot. How can it be described as romantic?

“I am a writer!” he hisses at Dean. “This is bad writing!”

“Shh, sweetheart,” says Dean, stroking his arm and taking another swig of his beer. “It’s okay. Keep watching.”

But Cas is furious, and even more so when the movie ends without anything being resolved.

“Yeah, because it’s the second in a trilogy. You wanna watch the next one?”

Cas is really very drunk. It’s one in the morning. He should go home. He’s got work to do tomorrow. But instead, he says, “Yes.”

And then he promptly falls asleep.

*

When he wakes up, the screen is still bright. Small furry creatures are celebrating as the sky explodes. He can’t help feeling that he’s missed something.

He becomes aware of a weight on his right shoulder. There’s something pressing against him. He turns his head, just a little, and his cheek brushes against soft spiky hair.

Dean’s head is tucked against his neck, and Dean’s body is slumped against his own. One hand has fallen loosely against Cas’s right knee, palm up and twitching slightly, and he’s breathing gently. Cas can feel the weight of him, heavy and warm, feel every rise and fall of his chest, the way his shoulder’s digging into Cas’s right arm just a little. He smells of beer, and ketchup, but also of that sweetness that Cas has noticed before.

He breathes it in, wondering, and then finally realizes what it is: Dean’s shampoo. He must share it with Charlie. It’s fruity and sugary and makes Cas think of those advertisements where women with long hair like golden retrievers splash around in jungle streams. Then he realizes he’s imagining Dean splashing around in a jungle stream, and stops himself.

Dean sighs, and licks his lips, and burrows further into Cas’s neck. This is a surprising situation to be in, Cas thinks to himself. Not one he was expecting. Should he get up? Wake up Dean? What’s the etiquette here, between two friends? Or is this all part of friendship? If it was Dean and Charlie, he can’t imagine either of them would care. And if he does wake up Dean, and show him that he’s uncomfortable – is that homophobia, again? There’s nothing wrong with what’s happening, after all. They both just fell asleep.

And he’s not, actually, uncomfortable. The couch is soft and puffy, and Dean’s weight is reassuring. He feels safe. He leans gently to the right, so Dean’s face is more comfortably tucked into the curve of his shoulder. He considers moving his arm, but is worried it might wake Dean – and anyway, that might be misconstrued. He breathes in again, and closes his eyes, and falls back asleep, where he dreams of Dean jogging in a forest. Dean stops at a stream, and pulls off his t-shirt. “Hey, dude,” he says to Cas. “I’m gonna take a shower. You got my shampoo?”

*

Cas wakes up again to light and quiet. A blanket’s been thrown over him, but his right side’s still cold.

Dean’s gone.

“Morning, dude,” says Dean, walking in from the kitchen. He’s carrying two steaming mugs. “Made you a coffee.”

“Thanks,” says Cas, reaching out for it. He can feel himself blushing, which is ridiculous. Is Dean going to mention what happened? But why would he mention it? He probably woke up and didn’t think anything of it. He probably does this kind of thing all the time. He probably – with Benny, with Crowley – no, Cas, come on. It’s just that Cas is a weirdo who hasn’t been that close to another human being for – oh, wow. Two years. It mattered to him more than it ever would to Dean.

But he can be normal about it! He can. He’s not going to say anything weird. He’s going to be completely normal about the completely ordinary friend-sleeping-on-another-friend situation that happened.

“I enjoyed last night,” he says.

Dean, taking a sip of his coffee, coughs. Liquid spills all down his shirt, and he jumps up and says “Shit! Shit!”

“Sorry!” says Cas. “I meant the movies. They were enjoyable. I –”

But. Oh no. Dean’s put down his mug on a coaster on the coffee table and now he’s – he’s taking off his t-shirt and scrubbing at his chest. Of course, it makes sense, hot coffee can be very dangerous, and Cas knows perfectly well that when left untreated, stains can be stubborn. Just look at his comforter. But he wasn’t expecting to see Dean’s naked chest so early in the morning. It looks – not that he’s looking – but it looks not dissimilar to Neal’s. Dean clearly works out. Should Cas work out more? (Should Cas work out full stop?)

Cas suddenly remembers the muscular weight of that chest against his, last night, the smell of Dean’s hair. He’s struggling to swallow his coffee.

“I’m just gonna – go get another shirt,” says Dean, his voice rumbling in his chest the way he does when he’s embarrassed. “M’ fucking clumsy.”

“Excellent,” says Cas, and he stares straight ahead at a poster of a large black muscle car until Dean comes back with a new t-shirt on.

Okay. Now is the time when he starts being normal.

*

Cas walks home through the bright morning streets, and as he does a new scene pops into his head.

Neal wakes up in the middle of the night, and as soon as he does he knows something’s different. He gets up, and in his t-shirt and boxers he pads into the kitchen. And there’s Bel, leaning against the sink. His head’s thrown back and he’s staring at Neal – he’s been waiting for him.

“Hello, Neal,” he says.

They face off – but in the dark, distances are telescoped. To see, Neal has to get close, close enough to smell the strange ozone scent coming off Bel, notice the sparks crackling darkly in his hair.

Bel threatens him with the coming apocalypse. This must be an early scene, Cas realizes. It’d fit into that section about the returning ghosts, and set up the whole apocalypse plot really nicely. He tells Neal, standing so close to him that Neal’s half overwhelmed, that he’d better fall into line and help the angels.

“You should show me some respect,” whispered Bel. His voice was low and terrifying. Neal’s breath quickened and his hands shook. He hadn’t been this near to another person since he came back. “I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in.”

And then he’s gone, and Neal’s waking up in his bed alone.

Cas writes it all up, inserting it into chapter four. He’s getting the feeling he always does when the story really starts to hang together, when he’s finally able to pull all of the pieces, the moments he’s seen so clearly, into a coherent whole. It’s exciting, and a little dizzying, like being able to see in three extra dimensions. And yeah, it’s just work for hire. It’s not gonna be his name on the cover. He doesn’t really matter, and no one will remember what he did to make this story work. But it still feels great.

He knows he’s less than a week off finishing. He’ll be able to get the book in before CW’s deadline, which has to count for something. All he needs to do is clean up a few loose ends and – oh, yeah – write the end of Neal and Alice’s arc for this book. Which includes their sex scene.

But he can do it. He really can do it!

Right?

Chapter Text

Cas doesn’t crack on Monday, when he spends three hours writing seven words and discussing the substandard (or not) storytelling of Star Wars with Dean.

He doesn’t crack on Tuesday, when he writes twenty-seven words and then lets Dean practice his set on him ten times in a row (it’s all new material, and it starts “When I was ten, my dad told me that if I turned out gay he’d shoot me himself. Good news is, I’m alive, and that’s because my dad is too fucking bigoted to understand what bisexuality is.” Cas is worried it’s a little dark, and embarrassed about how hard he laughs at a couple of the jokes).

It takes him until Wednesday, when he writes fifty-two words in four hours and drinks five cups of coffee and eats twelve of the café’s tiny delicious cookies until he’s buzzing with caffeine and sugar and nerves, and Dean leans across the table and puts his hand on Cas’s and just says, “Dude.”

Cas flinches. He’s felt strange about Dean touching him, since the sleeping incident. Every time he does it, Cas can feel all of the other touches that have gone before, mapping his body like scars that only he can see. It doesn’t help that Dean’s a very tactile person. Cas hasn’t really clocked it before, but now he can’t stop noticing. Touches on his arm, his leg, his shoulder, his hand. They make him feel … he can’t find the word. Like touching that orb full of electricity in science class that made your hair stand up on end. Like the hypnic jerk right before you fall asleep.

Dean looks at him, confused, and Cas feels so bad about it. He doesn’t want Dean to think he’s mad at him. He’s not.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just – I’m stuck again.”

“Yeah, I know you are,” says Dean. “I’ve been waiting for you to say it first, I just got bored of waiting. Let me help, man.”

“It’s not right! It’s supposed to be my work, Dean. I should be able to – it’s not – it’s not difficult. You can do it.”

“First of all, that hurts my feelings, Cas. I’m an expert.”

And of course, he winks, his eyes crinkling up at Cas.

“What’s the second thing?” asks Cas grumpily. The wink was not fair. He thinks about those 57 fanfics. He still hasn’t read any of them, and he’s not going to, either.

“Second thing is I gotta go to work in five. Come with me? I’ll write your dumb scene while the bar’s still empty.”

“No,” says Cas, automatically.

“Free drinks? Come on, Cas. Free sex scene. And I swear I won’t tell anyone about it. It doesn’t matter. I just wanna help.”

Cas pauses. The no is on the tip of his tongue. But why should he say no? Is he being strange? Dean is his friend, and he wants to help. That’s what he says, and at this point Cas has learned to believe him. And he does want to go with Dean. The other option’s another evening alone with a PB&J and a crushing feeling of existential despair. But if he gives in again, and lets Dean write this scene too …

Wait, but what if he decides this really is the last time? It’s all a matter of practice, isn’t it? Dean said it: after 57 fanfics, he’s an expert. So Cas just needs to become an expert too. He’ll let Dean write this scene, and then he’ll get back to his research. He was going about it the wrong way before, looking at visual porn. He needs to read it. Yes! And he can ask Dean for pointers –

No. For some reason that feels … wrong, in a way he can’t define. But does he need to ask? There are those 57 fics, posted and freely available. Dean will never need know that he’s read them. This is an excellent plan! Ignore what he thought earlier.

He realizes Dean’s staring at him.

“What?” he asks, feeling himself blush again.

“Waiting for you to finish whatever train of thought you’re riding on,” says Dean. “You ready to go yet?”

“Fine,” says Cas. He can hear how sulky he sounds. “Fine. But this is the last time!”

“Sure is,” says Dean easily.

They go back to Dean’s apartment, and Dean gets changed into his bartender outfit (black jeans, Sex Pistols t-shirt, boots you could drop a keg on), and then they both get into Dean’s car. It’s the first time Cas has driven in Baby, even though he’s heard Dean talk about her a lot before. He was kind of expecting her to be sentient, from the things Dean has said. But she’s just a big black car. Dean cranks up the volume on some Zeppelin song Cas doesn’t know the name of and beats time against the wheel, his feet tapping as Baby accelerates under him. Cas smiles at him – because how could you not smile at Dean, when he’s like this? – and that’s when Crowley calls.

“Where the fuck are you?” he asks, when Cas answers. “Raves aren’t usually your scene.”

“I’m in DEAN’S CAR,” says Cas, glaring at Dean to turn the noise down.

“Of course you are,” says Crowley, with something in his voice that Cas can’t read. “How’s your boytoy, then? Things still going well between you, are they?”

“Dean is my friend,” hisses Cas. “What do you want, Crowley?”

“Hey, Crowley!” Dean yells, waggling his fingers.

“He says hello.”

“I heard. All right, Cas. I’ve just been on the phone to Sera. We’re still working to the June pub date – get everyone while they’re lonely and horny in airport bookstores – so they’ll need the manuscript in by the end of this week. Think you can do it?”

Cas nods, and then says, “Yes.” He looks over at Dean, who’s giving him a thumbs up. His eyes are not on the road, which worries Cas. He gestures at Dean to look where he’s going, and focuses on Crowley again.

“They’ve sent me over a cover draft – it’s not bad, I’ll send it through later – and they’re also going to send you a new version of Chuck’s book 8 notes,” Crowley goes on. “Now you’ve introduced angels they want to tweak some things to keep the universe coherent. She sounded excited. I think your fuck-up worked, you lucky bastard. Just hit your deadline, and once they accept it we’ll celebrate. And Cas? You did listen to her about Bel, didn’t you?”

Cas stares at the red light ahead of them, the grey apartment blocks and the crosswalk and the mail box and the food kiosk. The afternoon is bright and clear and he can see all the way down the street.

“He’s only in four more scenes than he was before,” he says, which is technically true. Then he hangs up and cuts off Crowley’s swearing.

*

Cas goes to sit in a corner booth while Dean opens. A couple regulars come in, and Dean serves them, and then he motions Cas over to the bar.

“Figure we’ve got a few minutes,” he says. “Let’s get this out of the way. Faster I write it, faster you can spend the rest of the night working on some random-ass diner scene that’s gonna get cut by your editor.”

“It will not get cut!” says Cas, who really loves those scenes. Mark and Neal hanging out together, bantering and working through their problems? Perfection.

“I love you, dude, but we both know they will. Okay.”

He scrolls up through the file, pursing his lips until his dimples show.

“What’s wrong?” asks Cas. His throat is dry and his heart is pounding. He should be used to this, but he suddenly feels very exposed, like Dean’s flipped him over and is poking at his belly.

“Nothing’s wrong! I’m reading! Man, personal space.”

“That’s my line,” grumbles Cas. He realizes he’s twisted his body to the side so he can see what Dean’s seeing, until he’s half laying on the bar.

“Don’t touch the bartenders or you’ll be thrown out!” says Dean, shoving at Cas with his shoulder. Cas shoves back, automatically, and almost goes face first onto the bar mat. “Okay. So Alice and Neal are having a moment, and then – god, Cas, no. I’m deleting all of this.”

All eighty-six words vanish with a tap, and the page is blank again.

“Okay. So they’re gonna fuck in the car – do not argue, Cas. Alice on top. White lingerie. A little bit strip club angel costume, a little bit Titanic. Got it. Now personal fucking space and let me do my thing.”

Cas sighs, grabs the drink Dean made him (another really good Old Fashioned) and goes to sit back down in his booth.

He doesn’t feel as bad as he usually does for staring. He knows Dean’s lost in the words, and anyway, the light from the screen’s dazzling him. From over here, though, he looks like he’s got a radiance around him, like the rest of the bar’s glowing with the red light of Hell and only Dean’s shining heavenly white. This must be what Alice looks like to Neal when she’s above him in the car, Cas thinks suddenly, and then shakes that inappropriate thought away.

“What’s your deal?” asks someone, right in Cas’s ear.

Cas jumps so hard he spills his drink. It’s Kevin, walking past with a tray of empties.

“Sorry!” he says, shifting the tray in his hands. “Sorry. I probably – I just wanted to ask. Dean – he likes you. He can’t stop talking about you, and we all – Dean’s a good guy. He makes us all feel like we’re family here. So I just – wondered –”

Kevin, what Cas can see of him in the bar lighting, looks stressed but determined. What is going on with everyone all of a sudden?

“Dean is my friend,” he says. He’s really been saying that a lot, lately. “I like him very much.” He feels an ache in his chest as he says it that tells him how true that is. He really does like Dean a lot. It’s only been a month, but he likes Dean – so much. He clings to his glass, suddenly anxious.

“Okay,” says Kevin dubiously. “So you guys –”

Then some guys at the next booth call him over, and he hurries away. Cas is left with that half sentence. It gives him a prickling sensation in his spine. He’s feeling increasingly like he’s missed something really crucial, some huge fact that everyone else can see but him. But there isn’t anything. There’s just Dean.

Who’s waving at him from the bar.

“Seriously, I think this is some of my best work,” he tells Cas. “Real top-drawer shit.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” says Cas. His eyes skim over what Dean’s written, and – shit. Wow. He’s somehow made Neal and Alice work. He’s made a sex scene into character development. How the fuck does someone do that?!

One moment catches his eye. Neal’s pulled off his shirt, and Alice is leaning over him like she’s blessing him (Cas thinks about what his father would say if he saw that, and shudders). She reaches down and puts her hand against his shoulder, fitting her fingers over the handprint that Bel left on his skin.

Neal arched upwards. The touch was agony, and it went straight to his dick.

“I knew you’d like that,” said Alice, her voice sweet in his ear.

“You remembered the handprint,” says Cas, looking up at Dean in surprise.

“Course I did,” says Dean, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It was smart. Y’know, you get in your head too much. You write hot shit when you’re not worrying about it.”

“I,” says Cas eloquently. Does he? Is that true? No he doesn’t. But Dean said it. Dean Winchester looked at his writing and thought that it was – he thought that –

His laptop’s still connected to the bar wifi, and a new notification pops up from Crowley.

Thoughts?

Cas clicks.

“Oh hey!” says Dean. “Nice!”

It’s the draft cover. It’s in Supernatural’s pulpy hyper-illustrated style, all the main characters standing in profile staring off into the distance. There’s Mark, one hand on a gun and one on Violet’s shoulder. There’s Neal in a muscle shirt, the handprint livid on his shoulder. (So maybe Dean remembering that detail doesn’t mean as much as Cas for some reason thought it did. Obviously it doesn’t). There’s Alice, mournful expression on her face and her long hair flowing (though she’s blond, not a redhead, Cas’ll let them know). And on Neal’s other side, there’s Bel.

Dean lets out a snort of laughter. “Why’ve they got him in a suit?” he asks. “He looks like he lies about playing golf so he can fuck his secretary. I always imagined him dressed kinda like Constantine. Oh jeeze, Cas, please don’t ask who’s that?”

“Fine, I won’t,” says Cas. Then he sighs and stares at Dean with the biggest, most bewildered eyes he can manage, until Dean bursts out laughing, grabs the laptop and types John Constantine into the search bar. Cas is confronted by several pictures of a cartoon man wreathed by smoke, wearing a shirt and tie under a bedraggled trench coat.

“Oh!” he says. “I like that!”

“Yeah, you’re welcome. Hey, y’know, the guy looks like you there, though. In the face, kinda.”

“He does not! He just – the faces are very generic. Neal looks as much like you as Bel looks like me.”

Dean strikes a pose, staring off into the middle distance with his eyes narrowed and his lips in a pout. “Hey, you’re right. I coulda been the next Fabio,” he says.

Cas does not know who Fabio is. But he’s suddenly struck by the realisation that Dean isn’t wrong. He is, objectively, very good looking. He’s always known it in the way the rest of the world reacts to him, but he hasn’t really felt it until now. Dean is extremely attractive. Objectively. He’s got a pleasing, symmetrical face, a chiselled jaw and an excellent physique.

Cas really must be straight, not to have noticed that before.

“I should go,” he says. “I really – need to –”

“Get back to your diner scene, I know, dude,” says Dean, sighing and patting his shoulder. “Figure I got you for longer than usual today, anyway. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“You’d do plenty of things I wouldn’t do,” says Cas.

“You know it,” says Dean, with a wink. But somehow the wink seems more forced than usual, like Dean doesn’t really mean it. Cas has a rush of guilt. Dean’s done something genuinely kind for him – helped him do his job, basically – and Cas is being rude to him. It was supposed to be a joke, but obviously it didn’t come out that way.

“See you tomorrow,” he goes on, and practically runs out of the bar, like all his bad decisions and failures are chasing after him. 

*

Cas doesn’t end up working on that diner scene after all. The scene Dean wrote unlocked the next one in his head, a tender morning-after moment in the barn (the setting for the book’s final set-piece fight) which gets interrupted by Bel. Bel’s baffled by what he’s seeing – angels don’t understand feelings, obviously, even angels who are beginning to question their divine orders – so he stares at them as they kiss, puzzled. And maybe, thinks Cas, a little jealous. If Bel is starting to shake off his celestial brainwashing, feelings might seem more attractive than they should. And Alice is very pretty. That’s what Chuck wrote in his notes, and what Cas has put down on the page.

And he must have done it successfully, because Dean said that he wrote hot shit when he wasn’t worrying about it.

He scrolls back to Dean’s sex scene. He tells himself he just wants to read it one more time, but as he does, an addition occurs to him.

“I knew you’d like that,” said Alice, her voice sweet in his ear. The curves of her slender body were lit up and glowing with an angelic white light. Neal lifted up his hand to touch her in amazement.

Cas likes that. For the first time, he can see why Neal might think she was beautiful.

It’s almost midnight, and Cas has written a thousand words. He’s only got two scenes to finish tomorrow and he’ll be done. He should go to bed.

Instead, he clicks open that Archive of Our Own tab he’s had bookmarked for days.

He suddenly needs to know. What does Dean write, when it’s not for publication? What would he do, that Cas wouldn’t?

Cas has never actually read fanfic. It’s not something authors are technically supposed to do. It’s a legal and moral minefield if it’s your books, and if it’s someone else’s – well, Cas has never seen the appeal. He knows that it exists, for some of his friends’ books – Naomi’s series has two male leads who are the subject of an extremely popular online pairing. She’s spent a lot of time ranting about how aggressively anti-feminist it is in their group chat. She also keeps a close eye on the fic tally, and threw a small party when it hit ten thousand works. But the books Cas has worked on have never had much of a fandom. Supernatural’s the first thing that actually has any kind of online presence.

So he hesitates, his cursor hovering over a Neal/Bessie story from a couple of years ago. Is this going to mess anything up for him? What if he reads it and – the ultimate horror story – starts getting mixed up about what’s Chuck’s idea and what’s Dean’s? But Bessie’s been written out of the series for five books now. And besides … he knows what’s Dean’s already. It’s two entire scenes in a book that’s going to be published in June. How much more screwed can he be? Anyway, there wasn’t anything about fanfic in his NDA.

And that’s what finally spurs him to open the page.

He scans through it. He always gets anxious, when he’s reading things by people he knows. What if they’re not as good as he is, and he has to try to pretend he doesn’t hate it? What if they’re better than him, and he gets smothered by his own inadequacy? He’s read some of Dean’s stuff, sure, but not a whole story. How will it all hang together?

The answer is: pretty damn well, actually. It’s not perfect; he can tell immediately that Dean’s improved in the two years since he wrote it. The writing’s jagged, Dean skipping from idea to idea with restless urgency. But the bones of what makes his sex scenes so compelling is here, the raw vivid energy of them, coupled with the off-the-wall funniness that Cas is used to from Dean’s stand up sets. He’s never really thought much about Bessie before – he didn’t gel with her when he read the earlier books, and then promptly wiped her from his mind – but now he finds himself liking her. And seriously buying her relationship with Neal. Sure, they’re not for ever, but their right now works.

He thinks again of Dean calling his writing hot shit and realizes that what he thought was an honest compliment has to have been a lie. Because this is hot shit. Cas usually skips over sex scenes in books. He finds them slightly embarrassing, like seeing someone fall over in public. But this? He’s on board. He needs to know if Neal and Bessie are going to resolve their differences, and therefore he really, really needs to read about Bessie sucking Neal’s cock.

He finishes the fic in a daze. Fuck. Maybe it’s just that he’s tired, and still a little tipsy from his drink at the bar, but he’s feeling kind of – no, he’s not.

Nope.

He just needs to go to sleep.

He gets changed, and brushes his teeth in the mold-smelling bathroom. In the mirror, his eyes look wild, like he’s just seen the face of God.

He climbs into bed, and he’s still thinking about that blowjob scene. He lies there, fists clenched, trying to switch off his brain. And then, almost of its own accord, his hand slips down to his dick. It’s not that weird, he tells himself. It’s not like it’s his Neal. It’s someone else’s version. And it’s not like it’s his Dean who wrote it. It’s some faceless person on the internet, some version of the guy he knows who doesn’t exist any more, not the Dean who was lit up in front of him this evening, not the Dean who’d do things he wouldn’t, not the Dean who –

Chapter Text

And suddenly, it’s June, and the book’s coming out next week.

Cas has been trying not to focus on it. He’s burying himself in work for Supernatural 8. The editorial process on book 7 went easily, once the manuscript was in. Sera didn’t even cut that many diner scenes. She did request some more Mark and Ruby ‘spice’, which makes Cas think, disgustingly, of them pouring hot sauce over each other, but Dean comes through with a well-placed blowjob (in the book. In the book!) so everything is fine.

Book 8, though, is proving more problematic. Bringing Alice back, in line with Chuck’s notes, is like pulling teeth. Cas is taking refuge in brothers-only cases (a ghost girl bricked up in a wall, a stage magician murdering his competitors) so he doesn’t have to think about her. He still doesn’t get it. Why would this person be the one for Neal? She’s just – she’s not – she’s not even the best love interest Neal’s had so far. Bessie, he now realizes, had hidden depths. He’s starting to wonder if he should bring her back. But Alice? He can’t explain it, apart from to say that whatever souls are made of, Neal’s and Alice’s are different. That makes him sound like a Victorian lady novelist, though, so he doesn’t say it, just types away at a case about a haunted school bus that sends Mark and Neal down memory lane. It all feels kinda pointless, but it is in the notes, so he might as well write it.

He's not doing too well, if he’s honest. He’s realized, sickeningly, that the rest of the world’s about to be able to see what he’s written. For the first time in his life, people are actually going to care about his story. No one bought the kid vampire series, or the adult ghost series. The numbers prove that. People did buy the YouTuber trilogy, but Cas’s theory is that no one actually read it. It was just merch, like the star’s press-on nail set or her purple hairbrushes. But Supernatural – people have been waiting for this.

He can’t sleep. He does yoga, but it doesn’t make him any calmer. He spends a lot of time messaging Dean, who apparently, from the speed at which he replies, isn’t sleeping much either. He gets to the café early each day and drinks a lot of coffee and writes a lot of really long scenes where Bel and Neal sit and talk to each other, which he then deletes.

And now it’s June, and there are five days until the book comes out, and he’s here in the coffee shop again and he thinks he’s about to lose his mind. He just has to play it cool. He has to hide how terrified he is. He can do this.

“Are you okay, man?” asks Dean, leaning forward across the table.

Cas looks up at him. He realizes that his hands are shaking and his heart’s pounding. He wants to get into a box and then live there, alone, for ever. He feels like there’s a searchlight right in his face. “I’m fine,” he says, teeth gritted. “You worry too much.”

“Okay,” says Dean again. Is he buying it?

He’s not buying it.

Shit.

“Up. Get up, come on.”

Cas hunches his shoulders and digs into his seat. He doesn’t need to go anywhere. He’s fine.

He’s trying to give off the aura of someone who should just be left alone, hopefully to die, but Dean ignores it. He stands up from his chair, comes round behind Cas, puts his hands under Cas’s shoulders and pulls.

“What are you doing?” asks Cas indignantly.

“Come on, Winnie the Pooh,” puffs Dean. “Stand up, you fucking sonofabitch.”

Other people in the café are looking. This is extremely embarrassing. So Cas stands up.

“Great,” says Dean. “Now put your laptop in your bag and come with me. We’re going for a walk. And don’t even think about sitting down, I swear to god, do not do it.”

A walk does not sound good to Cas right now. He walks to the café in the morning and home in the afternoon and sometimes also to Dean and Charlie’s apartment and back, and that is all the walking he does. There’s no need for more walking. But Dean grabs him by the elbow and practically drags him outside.

It’s hot out here, and the sun stings his eyes. Cas cowers backwards, but annoyingly Dean’s hand is on the small of his back again, his fingers brushing the hem of Cas’s t-shirt, so he has to keep moving. “Where are we going?” he asks sulkily.

“Park,” says Dean. “Move it, asshole.”

Cas is offended, but also distracted by the way Dean’s hand is still hovering at the base of his spine. How long is he going to do that for? He remembers Dean’s face turned towards his under the umbrella a couple months ago and wishes, strangely, that it was raining right now.

They walk to the park, Cas squinting at Dean as pointedly as possible, to show that he doesn’t enjoy what’s going on. Dean slides on a pair of extremely cool sunglasses, and he grins at Cas through them. “Look at you,” he says. “You’re having fun.”

“Fuck you! Give me those!” says Cas, and Dean ducks and runs, and Cas runs after him, his laptop bag bumping against his leg. He’s already feeling lighter. As usual, he realizes, Dean’s idea was a good one.

He catches Dean a couple hundred yards inside the park gates, lunging forward and locking his arms around his body. Dean staggers, groaning, and Cas almost tips over with him. They’re both panting and laughing – Dean’s laughing so hard that his breath is hitching like he’s about to cry – and Cas can feel Dean’s back against his chest, his bare, slightly sweaty skin against Cas’s stomach where their t-shirts have ridden up. They’ve never been this close together in daylight before, he realizes. Dean leans his weight against Cas, and Cas can feel his heart pounding against Dean’s shoulder. Then Dean twists around and elbows him in the ribs. Cas lets go, and Dean leaps away, and then they both notice at the same time that they’ve dropped the sunglasses.

They hunt for them, and then Dean puts them back on and collapses down on the grass.

“Come on,” he says. “Sit down, dude.”

So Cas does.

“What the fuck is up with you this week?” asks Dean, once they’re both settled. They’re in a patch of half-shade, the sun dappling across Dean’s cheeks and deepening his freckles.

Cas opens his mouth to tell him to fuck off. But what comes out instead is, “I’m scared.”

“You’re what?” Dean twists to stare at Cas. His eyes are hidden behind the glasses, but Cas can see his eyebrow’s raised.

“Everyone’s going to hate the book. And I’ll be fired and they’ll send pipe bombs to my house and I’ll never write again.” Cas can feel the breath tight in his chest, feel his hands beginning to shake. He’s suddenly cold.

“Pipe bombs, dude? Come on.”

“I read about it,” says Cas. He can’t look at Dean any more, so he stares down at the grass. An ant is crawling across a daisy right by his hand. There’s a fleck of dirt on his thumb. “It happens.”

“It doesn’t happen, you fucking dumbass. And why would they hate the book? The book’s good. They’re gonna love the book. I love the book.”

Cas looks up at him, then. “Really?” he asks.

“The book’s my favorite thing ever,” says Dean, and clears his throat. “Partly because I wrote most of it.”

“Hey!” yells Cas, whacking Dean on the shoulder. “You can’t say that!”

“Relax! I swear, I’ll only ever say it to you, because it pisses you off so much. No, dude. You wrote it, and I just … helped you realize your vision. Chuck’s vision. Whatever. And listen – you’ve gotta calm down. I promise it’s all going to be fine. Swear to god.” He leans forward, sliding the glasses down his nose. His eyes must catch the color of the grass, because Cas has never seen them so green.

“What if it’s not fine?” whispers Cas. He’s horrified to notice that he’s on the verge of tears.

“Then we can change our names and run away to Canada together,” says Dean. “It’ll be fine. C’mon.”

Cas stares at him, and then takes a deep, slightly shaky breath.

“Good,” says Dean. “Relax.”

He lies back on the grass, his arms behind his head. Cas hesitates, and then lowers himself down next to him. Their elbows are almost touching.

It’s strange, Cas thinks, how he can always tell where Dean is now. It’s like Dean’s a radio station Cas is constantly tuned in to. He knows what a weird thing that is, but it’s true. He’s got ESP, but just for Dean. He’s pretty sure, at this stage, that if he was blindfolded and wearing earmuffs he’d still be able to walk straight to where Dean is without hesitation. What’s that about?

He shifts his arm just a little, and it bumps into Dean’s. He can feel Dean twitch, his muscles flexing, but he doesn’t move, and neither does Cas. They just lie there together, staring up at the clouds. Cas’s skin prickles with warmth where it’s touching Dean’s. And what’s that about?

“That one looks like a butt,” says Dean dreamily, after a while. “Hey, did I tell you what Sammy said to me the other day? He really reminds me of Dad, sometimes.”

And as they talk, Cas forgets about the book completely for the first time that week.

*

Monday night, though, he can’t sleep. The air is hot and close, and his thoughts are tangled and terrified. He’s checked the book’s Amazon rankings thirty-five times already. It’s higher than any of his books have ever been, even the YouTuber’s. It breaks the top 100 just after 5am on Tuesday morning. Why is anyone awake and buying books at 5am? Why is he awake? What if he just passes away, right now, from stress? People are reading it. Someone might post a review soon. What if it’s a bad review? What if they hate it? What if Dean was wrong about Canada? He’s really bad at aliases. He never had a fake ID. The idea scares him.

He gets up and drinks the rest of his housemate’s orange juice out of the fridge. Then he feels terrible for drinking something that doesn’t belong to him. He checks his phone.

fucking relax man

stop pacing

its gonna be ok

What if I don’t like Canada? asks Cas.

no one likes canada thats not the point of canada

we can not like canada together

Promise?

promise

Cas finally relaxes enough to shower and get dressed in clothes that he hasn’t worn for three days already. He’s got hours before the café opens, but he wants to be ready. Plus, he’s got something he needs to do.

He got his author copies on Friday, but he hasn’t been able to open the package. He doesn’t want to look at it in case there’s something wrong. What if there’s a typo? What if the whole thing is misprinted?

But now he grits his teeth and rips open the envelope. Three copies fall out onto his sheets. There’s that illustrated cover (now with a red-haired Alice and a coated-up Bel). Supernatural: Lazarus Rising, it reads. By L. S. Shore. Cas can’t help a flinch when he sees that. But he flips to the imprint page, and there, in tiny letters, it reads: with thanks to Castiel Novak. His name on a book. Not big. Not where it should be. But there.

But he’s not really here to stare at his name. He turns to the title page of one of the copies, and picks up a pen from his bedside table. He’s been thinking about this for a while, and ultimately he’s decided that only one joke will do.

To Dean, he writes. I owe you ten per cent. Cas.

Now all he needs to do is wrap it, and –

It’s at this point that Cas realises there’s no wrapping paper in the apartment. There are no paper bags that aren’t ripped or greasy, either. Shit!

He paces around frantically, opening drawers, and finally finds a roll of aluminum foil. That’ll have to do. Hopefully it’s the thought that counts?

At this point it’s 7am, and hey, the café opens at 7:30, right? He might as well head out.

*

Dean isn’t there when Cas arrives. Obviously he isn’t. But then he’s not there at eight, or nine, or ten.

Finally, at 10:30, when Cas is on his fifth coffee and seventy-fifth Amazon rankings check (the book is at number 66, Cas is going to faint) Dean comes rushing through the door, looking sweaty and disheveled, something clutched in his hand.

He waves at Cas, and Cas waves back. Where’s he been? And what’s he holding?

“Shit,” says Dean, flopping down in his seat. “Sorry I’m late, man. It’s your big day! Didn’t mean to miss it.”

“You haven’t missed it,” says Cas. “It’s not even eleven yet. And nothing happens on publication day unless you’re famous. It’s just another day.”

“Hey! I don’t wanna hear that negativity. You had a beautiful book baby, and we are celebrating. Look, I got you a present.”

He slides the bag he’s been carrying across the table at Cas. It narrowly misses his coffee. It’s a little gift bag with IT’S A BOY! on it in bubbly blue font.

“What’s this?” Cas asks suspiciously.

“I had to go to three stores for it,” says Dean. “’S why I’m late. It’s stupid, but – open it.”

Cas remembers, at this point, that Dean’s not the only one who brought a present. Now he feels stupid. Dean went to the trouble of finding a nice (nice?) bag for Cas’s gift, and Cas just wrapped a book someone else sent him in some foil. “I got you something too,” he says. “Don’t laugh.”

“You know I can’t promise that,” says Dean, smirking. “Depends what it is.”

Cas pulls out the foil-wrapped book – shit, it just looks like he’s brought Dean a sandwich, like he thought he might get hungry or something, this is terrible.

“Here,” he says, embarrassed. “I ran out of wrapping paper.”

“Aw, honey!” says Dean. “You baked!”

Cas can feel himself turning scarlet. “Just open it,” he mutters.

To distract himself, he takes a look in the bag Dean’s given him. It’s – huh. That’s weird. It’s a book. No, not just any book. It’s – it’s Lazarus Rising, by L. S. Shore. But why would Dean buy him his own book? He opens it, puzzled, and there, on the title page, he sees a message.

DEAR CAS,

U O ME 10%

PAY UP

DEAN 😊

He looks up at Dean, right at the moment Dean looks up at him, and he knows that there’s the same expression on both their faces.

“Running joke,” says Dean, beaming. “I knew you’d get it eventually. Hey! You didn’t notice the most important part!”

He reaches out for Cas’s copy of the book, flicking it closed. His fingers touch Cas’s, and Cas feels that same prickle of energy he’s noticed before. His heart’s throbbing. He ignores it.

“Look!” Dean says, tapping the front cover.

And Cas finally sees. The words L. S. Shore have been roughly crossed out in black Sharpie, and above them, in Dean’s big, goofy handwriting, are the words CASTIEL NOVAK.

His name on a book.

He has to look away for a second to compose himself.

When he can speak again, he says, “Give me the pen.”

“What?”

But Dean does, fishing it out of his pocket.

Cas takes it, and writes three more words on the cover. Then he hands it back to Dean.

CASTIEL NOVAK

L. S. Shore

With Dean Winchester

“Ten per cent,” he says.

There’s a pause.

“You asshole,” says Dean, hoarsely. “Hey. Uh. You doing anything tonight? Don’t say writing.”

Cas carefully doesn’t say anything.

“Okay. Okay! Cas, we are going out.”

“Absolutely not,” says Cas.

“No! Fuck you! You – we – made a beautiful book baby and now we need to take it out and get it really, really drunk. C’mon, man. You with me?”

Cas pauses. It’s true that it’s traditional to drink alcohol to launch a book. However, usually this happens in the dingy basement of a bookstore, with some warm white wine. He’s absolutely certain that whatever Dean’s imagining … isn’t that.

And he also feels … he can’t explain it. Like this is a bad idea. Like being around Dean right now is such a good idea that it turns all the way around and becomes the worst idea in the world again. He should go home, and do some more writing, and stop this.

But instead, because something incomprehensible happens to his brain and his heart and every atom of his body when he’s near Dean, he says, “Fine.”

Chapter Text

It’s kind of hard to focus on work, after that. Cas tries as hard as he can, but after his 105^th Amazon rankings check (the book has fallen to 86^th place, and he contemplates death), Dean says, “C’mon, let’s get out of here,” and Cas finds himself slamming the laptop shut and following him out of the café.

Cas is expecting to be heading to Dean’s apartment, but Dean looks at him and pulls a face that makes his dimples appear, deeper than ever, and says, “You gonna wear that?”

“Wear what?” asks Cas, confused. Then he looks down at himself and realizes that what he put on after his shower was a t-shirt with grease stains on it and a pair of sweat pants that haven’t been washed in two weeks. “Oh. Maybe? Yes. Is that wrong?”

“I swear to god, Cas. Good thing you’re so charming and hot. Okay. First stop, your place.”

Cas is almost too busy analyzing that compliment to worry about the fact that Dean’s on the way to his apartment for the first time ever. He knows perfectly well that he’s not charming in the slightest. People comment on it all the time. Ergo, Dean was joking about that. Ergo, Dean was also joking about him being hot. Huh. Fine. It’s not important, is it? Because – because. The fact is that he is straight. So it doesn’t matter what Dean thinks about him. Yes.

It's only when he’s almost at his front door that he remembers to panic about the fact that Dean Winchester is going to see where he lives. Dean Winchester is going to smell where he lives. Oh no.

“Huh,” says Dean, standing in the middle of Cas’s living room like a panther in a litter box. “You make so much more sense to me now.”

“Shut up!” says Cas furiously. “It’s – it’s not always like this.”

Usually it’s worse, he thinks to himself, but he can’t bring himself to say that to Dean. Why does he live like this? He thinks about Dean’s clean, beautiful, bright apartment, like the inside of his head, like he painted his personality across the walls. Is this what Cas looks like inside? Is he an ugly mess?

He goes into his room and digs through his closet. What does he own that isn’t crumpled and coffee-stained? He turns around and Dean’s there, watching him with a smile on his face. “I haven’t done laundry for a while!” he says defensively.

“Hey, man, I’m not saying anything. Apart from no to whatever that thing is you’re holding.”

“But it’s my best shirt!”

“Cas. No.”

Dean also says no to two more options that Cas thought were real possibilities (this is not fair!), but finally, when Cas brings out the button-down that he wore to the Roadhouse that first time, he nods.

“Okay. That, and then some jeans that you haven’t spilled shit on.”

Then he just stands there, watching Cas. Cas has to shoo him out of the room so that he can get changed. Personal space doesn’t mean anything to Dean. Or is that Cas, being homophobic again? Because he is straight, and they are just friends, so why shouldn’t Dean see him in his boxers? It’s just the same as if they went swimming together. This is not something they’ve ever done, but if they did, it would be completely fine and normal. Thinking about Dean in a pair of Speedos is not in any way an arresting image for Cas. He’d look really good in them, obviously, because he is objectively very attractive. But that’s just a fact.

Cas buttons up his shirt and stares at himself in his bedroom mirror. He’s hoping to see something, he can’t work out what. But he just looks like someone who hasn’t slept in a week, who’s got bags under his eyes and needs a haircut and nicked his cheek while he was shaving this morning. His lips are chapped, and his skin is pale.

He sighs, and goes out into the living room. He’s done the best he can do. He’s never gonna look like Dean, but no one can.

“Looking good!” says Dean when he sees him, and Cas wishes he wouldn’t say that. It isn’t true. “But dude. Who taught you to button your shirt like that? You look like a Mormon. Sorry! Come here.”

Cas is confused, and a little upset. How many ways are there to button a shirt? And Dean knows – he knows about Cas’s father. But here’s Dean, up in his personal space again, reaching out to Cas’s left wrist.

“If you’re going out, you need to show some skin,” he says, blunt fingers deftly popping open Cas’s cuff button and rolling up his sleeve almost to the elbow. “Work your assets. Ladies love forearms.”

Cas really must be tired, because he can almost see the traces Dean’s fingers leave across his skin. His hairs prickle and stand up like the room’s suddenly cold. Dean grabs his right arm next, and Cas is mesmerized. He feels like a cat, being stroked.

“And,” says Dean, and his hands move up to Cas’s throat, and Cas can’t even look at him, just feel his breath on his neck, “you gotta undo at least two buttons. I’d go for three, but maybe that’s kinda advanced for you.” His gentle fingers are on Cas’s collarbone, pushing aside the fabric of the shirt, and Cas is going to pop like a balloon –

And then Dean steps away, and it’s over.

“Wanna head over to our place?” he asks. “I’ve got a bottle of whiskey there to get us started.”

“Sure,” says Cas stiffly. “Fine.”

“You okay, man?”

Dean’s looking at him, concerned and a little amused. His cheeks are pink and he’s biting his lip, one eyebrow raised.

“Fine,” says Cas again. His heart is beating in his chest and he can hear his breath, way too loud in his ears. “Let’s go. I’m fine.”

Because he is fine. He wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.

*

Back at Dean and Charlie’s, they break out the whiskey, even though it’s only three pm. They start off just sipping it, but then Cas checks Amazon again, and Dean catches him doing it, and before Cas knows what’s happening they’re playing Cas Vs Jeffrey Bezos. Every time the book goes up in the rankings they take a shot, and every time it goes down they throw something at a hastily drawn picture of Jeff’s bald head that Dean’s stuck to the kitchen door.

Charlie comes in right when the book has dropped to 117^th place and Cas is trying to tee up a fork while Dean cries with laughter.

“Hey Dean,” she says, “Hey Cas, congratulations,” and Cas totally whiffs the shot turning to smile at her. (Is he in love with Dean’s lesbian housemate? He has to keep considering it. His behavior has been very strange recently, and that could be an explanation.)

Dean explains the rules of the game, and Charlie joins in. She turns out to have killer aim and a better tolerance for alcohol than Cas. They keep playing, and talking, and making stupid jokes about Jeffrey Bezos, and then Charlie orders pizza and Cas realizes with a jump that it’s almost eight. Surely Dean can’t still expect them to go out? But then there’s a knock on the door, and Kevin appears and congratulates Cas too (it seems like whatever he was trying to say at the bar has been put behind them), and then Dean goes into his room and puts on a really, really tight t-shirt, and apparently they are going out, right now.

Which is how, for only the third time in his life, Castiel Novak finds himself in a club.

He didn’t think this was actually going to happen. It doesn’t really feel like it is happening. Cas is floating on a wave of whiskey and happiness, and his brain is doing some strange things. He keeps looking at Dean in his tight black t-shirt and thinking about Neal’s vestments hugging the lines of his slim body. Dean said that to him, and he wrote it down, and now it’s in the book. Now it’s published. He published a book, except it wasn’t just him. It was him and Dean, together.

The book’s in Dean’s hands, currently. It’s the version with their names Sharpied on the front of it. He buys them all shots (shots that are on fire! Is that safe?) and there’s an extra one for the book, which Cas drinks to stop Dean pouring it over the book’s cover. The lights from the dance floor are beating in Cas’s brain and the music moves like water over everything and everyone keeps cheering and holding the book up above their heads. Someone called Jo has turned up, and everyone seems to know her. She’s tall and alarmingly beautiful, and she kisses Cas on the cheek and says something about Dean into his ear.

“She works at the Roadhouse!” says Dean in his other ear. He’s pressed so close against Cas that Cas can feel the buzz of his voice against his chest rather than actually hear it. His arm’s looped over Cas’s shoulder and Cas can smell that he’s wearing some kind of cologne, something muskier than his usual sweet shampoo scent. The crowd sways, and Cas grabs anxiously at Dean’s waist, and then somehow it’s easier to leave his hand there. Dean is the steady point in all of this bewildering noise and movement.

Then Charlie swoops on a free table, and everyone rushes after her. Cas lets go of Dean, regretfully. They order more shots, which cannot be a good idea, and then Jo and Kevin get up and start dancing together, the kind of goofy dancing that Cas understands means I adore you but I will never in a million years sleep with you. Charlie joins in for a while, and then moves across the dance floor to where a woman with long wavy hair is gesturing at her. They embrace, and then – huh. They kiss in a way that quite clearly means we have slept together and we will do it again.

“Shit, Gilda’s back,” says Dean, mouth on Cas’s ear again. Cas startles, just for a second. He can’t help it. “Charlie’s once and future ex.”

“But Charlie has a girlfriend,” says Cas.

“She and Dorothy are open,” says Dean. “And Gilda’s cool. Didn’t think she was in town, though. She travels a lot.”

Cas is trying to process this. Why does everyone else have such an exciting sex life? It’s like he missed out on reading the How To Have Sex Like An Adult manual and now he’ll just never understand it.

“I can feel you freaking out,” says Dean, his voice buzzing in Cas’s ear.

“I am not freaking out!” says Cas, and then he realises he’s turned his face towards Dean’s, and now they’re almost nose to nose. For some reason, Dean’s freckles are even more obvious under the spinning club lights.

“You are so –” says Dean. He puts his hand on Cas’s shoulder, rubbing his thumb in a slow arc. Cas can feel it through his shirt. “Never change, okay?”

This worries Cas. What if he does change, without noticing? And, worse, what if he’s stuck the way he is right now?

“Look, man, I’ve been thinking,” says Dean, barely taking a breath. “I know you said it was a while since you got any action. So we’re here, right, and you’ve had some shots and you’re having a good time, so maybe this is the perfect opportunity.”

And Cas feels the pressure of Dean’s thumb, and the line of Dean’s leg against his, and the warmth and sweat from Dean’s body, and for a second he cannot work out what Dean is suggesting. He looks down at Dean’s lips, slightly parted, and he thinks – he thinks –

“Let’s get you a girl,” says Dean.

A girl. A girl! Of course. A girl. That’s who Dean means. There are girls at this club, and Dean thinks he should have sex with one of them. This is a very natural thing for Dean to think, and very normal for him to suggest, probably.

“A girl,” he repeats. He sounds very stupid. His chest feels like it’s crumpled inwards. Why is he surprised? What other option would there be?

“Yeah, man, a girl. What, you want a horse?”

“No horses, thank you,” says Cas, and if his heart suddenly feels heavy too, that must just be the shots hitting.

“Great,” says Dean. “Cool. Good. Okay. Hey, Charlie! Come over here and watch the table! I’m going to get Cas LAID!”

He does not need to speak so loudly, Cas thinks. And Charlie clearly thinks so too, because she shoots Dean a very strange look. But she drags her not-girlfriend Gilda over to them, and then Dean drags Cas upright and pulls him forward, and then they’re off to look for the mythical girl.

Dean’s hand is wrapped around Cas’s, their fingers threaded together. But that’s just practical, so they won’t lose each other in the heave.

Then Dean stops, so fast that Cas almost crashes into him. “Forgot to ask,” he says, leaning against Cas. Cas breathes in the smell of him and tries not to feel the black ooze overwhelming him. “What’s your type? Blonds, brunettes? Redheads?”

“Type,” says Cas. What is his type? What is a type, anyway? How do you know? His ex, Hannah, had brown hair. Is that his type? It’s what Dean wants him to say. “Brunettes,” he tells Dean, obligingly. Really, it’s a stupid metric. After all, Dean has brown hair. Most people in the world do.

Dean nods against Cas’s cheek, and then he moves forward again. His fingers are still looped through Cas’s.

They stop in front of a group of women, all dancing in a circle together. Some of them have brown hair. The women stare at Dean and Cas with unfriendly eyes.

“Hello, ladies!” says Dean cheerfully. He has obviously not read their expressions correctly.

“We don’t do threesomes,” says one of them.

“Then you’re missing out,” says Dean. “Sorry for your loss. C’mon Cas.”

He’s finally dropped Cas’s hand, so Cas has to shove his way through the crowd to follow him. Those women thought – they thought that Dean and Cas were trying to – No, but why would they? Dean, sure, he looks like the kind of guy who would (would he? Is this one of the mysterious, exciting things that Dean has done?), but not Cas. Every atom of Cas’s body screams boring and straight. So why would –

But Dean’s found another girl.

This one’s dancing with just one friend, and she smiles at Dean and Cas. “Hey,” says Dean, shoving Cas forward. “Can I introduce you to my shy but devastatingly handsome friend, Cas?”

Cas swings his head around to look at Dean, which is not the right thing to do, but – what the fuck? No, the girl, he should be focusing on the girl. He sidles closer to her. She’s attractive, thin face, big eyes, long brown hair that she keeps shaking back. She looks worryingly breakable, and slightly too young, now that he’s closer to her. She reminds him, offputtingly, of Alice. But she must like him, because she’s dancing closer and closer. She reaches up and puts her arms around his shoulders, so he has to dip down a little towards her.

Then her face is pressed against his. Her lips are sticky with gloss, and small, and she keeps trying to dart her tongue into his mouth. She is very drunk, so she keeps missing slightly. The dance floor rolls underneath him, and he realizes that he is very drunk too. This is a bad idea.

He steps backwards, unhooking the girl’s arms from his neck. “Excuse me,” he says. “I’m sorry. I need to go.”

She probably can’t hear him, but he doesn’t care. He turns and flees. His knees are shaking, and he feels faintly sick. He’s drunk too much, he can’t think, there are people pressing against him from all sides, everything has gone wrong –

And he runs straight into Dean.

Dean’s arms go around him and Cas sags against him in pure relief. He can feel Dean’s chest rising and falling, feel Dean’s hand cupping the back of his head.

“What the hell happened, buddy?” asks Dean, his voice thrumming through Cas’s body. “She bite?”

Cas shakes his head. He really shouldn’t be flopped against Dean like this. It’s undignified. “I’m drunk,” he says, and he pulls himself up into a standing position, still chest to chest with Dean. It takes a lot of effort. It also brings him almost level with Dean’s eyeline. He’s only got an inch on Cas, maybe two (and Cas is pretty sure that some of that is in the heels of the shoes Dean wears). They stare at each other, half a step apart, and Cas thinks that Dean looks more than a little drunk himself.

Dean reaches up and brushes his thumb across the corner of Cas’s lip. “Got some lipstick on you, bud,” he says quietly. Cas turns his head into the touch, and for a moment they’re pressed together from forehead to cheek. Dean sighs against Cas’s mouth, and then he steps backwards and says, “Let’s get you back to the table.”

*

Cas is absolutely not going to drink any more. He feels like he’s drowning in the dark ocean. He can’t stop trembling. It’s probably the tequila. He slumps backwards on the seating, his book in his arms like a life preserver. Dean’s next to him. The drinking’s caught up with him too, and he’s leaning against Cas. Somebody could come and rob them both, Cas thinks, and they wouldn’t even put up a fight. The club is a terrible place, and he is not coming back here again.

“Cas,” says Dean, in his ear. “Congratulations. ’m so proud of you, man. You’re the best.”

Cas tries to remember what he’s talking about. The book! This book. Their book.

“You wrote it too,” he mutters. “It’s your book. I couldn’t do it without you. You know – all about sex.”

“I do,” agrees Dean. “Don’t know about anything else but I do know about that.”

“No!” says Cas. “Not true! You know how to tap dance. And you make burgers. You know everything, Dean. You’re the best.”

“Shut up,” mumbles Dean. His mouth is resting in the curve of Cas’s shoulder, and every time he talks, Cas can feel it. “You’re the best.” He presses a kiss against Cas’s neck, just above his collar bone, and then another next to his Adam’s apple. Cas shivers before he can help it, and then holds himself very still. The kisses are butterfly-light, unbearably gentle, but they make Cas’s skin flare with heat. Dean kisses him right on his pulse point, and Cas has been holding his breath for so long that he thinks he might faint, and then someone says, “Jesus fucking Christ! Come on, you two, I’m taking you home.”

Cas’s eyes fly open, and he and Dean both sit up. Charlie is standing above them, arms crossed. “I called an Uber,” she says. “Let’s go.”

They sit at opposite ends of the Uber, and then Cas rides it back to his apartment alone, and as he climbs into bed, pulling his cereal-stained comforter over his head, the last thing he thinks is What the fuck?

Chapter Text

When Cas wakes up the next day, he has one second where he can’t remember anything. And then he falls down into a bottomless pit of self-hatred. What the fuck happened last night? What did he do? He acted like a fool, and kissed some poor girl, and then Dean – and he and Dean – and he – and Dean –

He puts his pillow over his head and groans into it. He has behaved terribly. Dean took him out to celebrate, and Cas – did whatever that was. He cringes in horror, remembering his hand on Dean’s waist, his arms around Dean’s neck. He needs to get a hold of himself. Dean is his friend, and he trusts him not to be – not to be lewd. (When Cas is angry with himself, it’s his father’s voice he hears in his head.)

Cas is disgusting, and weird, and freakish. But as he knows perfectly well, he is also straight. Whatever that was last night, whatever fascination he had in the moment, was absolutely irrelevant. Dean’s thumb on his lip. So he just needs to snap out of it, and stop thinking about what happened. Dean’s mouth on his neck. Okay, enough! He’s never going to let himself be drunk around Dean again, because it’s clear that all of those shots made him behave in a way that’s completely out of character for him. Yes. Great. Problem solved.

Should he apologize to Dean? Or would that make it worse? No, that feels like it’d make it worse. He’s so stupid! He’s just never going to talk about it. If he doesn’t mention it, and Dean doesn’t mention it, then it didn’t happen. And Dean won’t want to mention it, will he? He must be embarrassed. He’s never – he’s never –

For some reason, Cas is overcome by the memory of Dean’s freckles under the lights, the way they scatter across his nose and cheekbones. He’s even got some on his lips. It’s hard to notice, at first, but –

He thumps his hand against the side of his head to get the thought out again, and winces.

All right. From now on, Cas going to be normal, and not creepy. Starting today, he’s going to … his eyes fall on to the pile of clothes at the corner of his room.

He’s going to clean up. He’s an adult, isn’t he? He’s going to start acting like it. His brain feels like it’s packed full of sand, but right now, the idea of punishment seems refreshing. He behaved badly, and he needs to suffer as a result.

There are five messages from Dean on his phone, but he doesn’t let himself open them. He marches to the shower, puts the cold water on full blast, and sets about having the worst day ever.

Once he’s done washing he stomps back into his room, still shivering, pulls on a sweatshirt and pants and starts throwing dirty clothes into bags. They smell. The whole room smells! Cas is a mess of a human being (Dean’s lips on his skin, just beneath his jaw) and he needs to change, now. It’s just like that Rilke poem. You must change your life. Yes, that’s exactly how he feels.

Then he remembers the rest of the poem, and his stomach curls uncomfortably.

Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

A male god’s naked torso just seems like the wrong image, for today. He tries to push the thought aside. But the final line keeps beating in his head all the way to the laundromat. You must change your life. You must change your life. You must change your –

*

He stands staring down into the drum of the washer. Pretty much everything he owns is in there. How long has it been since he’s done laundry? He pauses for a second, then pulls off the sweatshirt he’s got on, and his socks. He considers adding his t-shirt and pants, but decides that this might not be in the spirit of not being weird any more.

While his clothes whirr behind him, he sits on a hard chair and pulls out his phone. He wants to sleep, but he can’t let himself. Besides, if he lets go for a second he starts thinking about last night again, Dean’s hand in his, his fingers pressed into the dips between Dean’s knuckles, and – shit! Where has this come from? It’s like he’s obsessed, all of a sudden. But why? Is it just that he’s never really had a bisexual friend before, so now he’s fascinated with the idea of gayness? Is that it? He’s disgusted with himself.

To distract himself, he types in shirt men buy into Google and clicks on the first link that comes up. The shirt is fairly nice, actually, and pretty similar to what he was wearing last night. So he uses part of his publication payment to buy it in three different shades of blue, and then buy two different pairs of jeans. He should probably start wearing jeans regularly. What about shoes? What kind of shoes should he wear? He should ask Dean – no.

He leaves the idea of shoes alone.

The washer beeps, and he pulls out his clothes again (nothing looks markedly smaller, which is a relief) and shoves them all into a dryer.

He checks Amazon (the book’s at number 42) and checks his author group chat (there are three messages asking how he’s doing and if he wants to go for drinks, which tells him that everyone else has seen the Amazon rankings too), and then somehow his finger moves across the screen of its own accord and opens the messages from Dean.

He’s cringing automatically as he does it. He’s half expecting five messages telling him to go to hell.

hey man

howre you doing

good night last night?

dont remember much

you go home with that girl?

Cas’s heart jumps. Thank fuck! Dean doesn’t remember what happened. He doesn’t remember anything. Cas is safe. Everything can go back to normal.

No. She wasn’t really my type, he writes back.

your fault for not being more specific

brown hair isnt much to go on cas

She was too short, writes Cas. And too young, and too drunk. And too –

remind me never to take off my boots around you cas

ok ill look for giant women for you next time

I think perhaps we stop looking for a while, thank you, Dean. I’m perfectly happy as I am.

On another topic, I need some new shoes. Can you help?

Dean immediately sends through five different links. Cas is suspicious.

Have you thought about this question before, Dean?

not even for a second. im just that good

worth me sticking around

This is a puzzling statement. Where else would you go? Cas asks.

good news is not to canada

early reviews are in

the server loves it

youre safe dude

im so proud of you

“Lucky you,” says someone loudly, right in front of Cas. He looks up, confused, to see an old lady walking by him, carrying a pile of laundry.

“Excuse me?” he asks.

“That beautiful smile,” she says, nodding at him. “Lucky you. Whoever made you smile like that, she’s a keeper.”

She walks on, and he’s left staring blankly at the place where she was standing.

*

He goes to get a haircut on the way home from the laundromat. He hates getting his hair cut because he never knows what to ask for, so because this is Punishment Day he makes himself go in and sit down in the chair.

“What do you want?” asks the barber. He’s unfriendly and his hair looks stupid. Music is blaring out from the speaker behind him, and Cas grits his teeth uncomfortably. He bites back the obvious reply, that he doesn’t know. Why does everyone else always seem to know what they want, anyway? Why can everyone else make decisions so easily? Dean looked at that girl last night and decided that she was for Cas, and Charlie looked at Gilda and Dorothy, presumably, and thought the same thing, and at some point Dean and Crowley must have looked at each other and – ugh. No. Don’t think about Crowley having sex.

“What do you want?” asks the barber again, and Cas jumps.

“Short,” he says carefully. “But – not too short.”

The barber rolls his eyes.

“Sure,” he says. “You got it.”

It isn’t the haircut he really wanted, obviously, but it’ll do. It’s not bad. It’s definitely short, but not too short. Cas rubs his hand across it and thinks, frustratingly, of Dean’s spiky hair, the way it felt against his shoulder last night, the way it felt against his neck the night they watched Star Wars – oh, fuck, and now that memory’s tainted too. He should have woken Dean up, and he didn’t because he wanted to let him keep sleeping there. So this didn’t just start last night. This –

No. He stomps back home, folds his clothes and puts them away (he hates this, he hates being an adult) and makes his bed with fresh sheets. The chocolate stain is only slightly visible now. Then he gets out the vacuum and aggressively cleans his room, head throbbing, stomach churning. There’s no more room for inappropriate thoughts about Dean. He’s starting again, scrubbing all of that out of his mind the way he’s scrubbing mold off of the corners of his window. He’s fresh, he’s clean, he’s new. Tomorrow he’s going to go to the café and get back to the epic love story of Alice and Neal. Get rid of Bel, get rid of all the mess that no one asked for, that no one wanted. What’s left will be pure, simple, good. He really does feel better, now that his room is clean again.

Tomorrow, he’ll start again.

It never once occurs to him to find another café to write in.

*

Cas’s resolution lasts all the way until he sits down on Thursday morning and opens his laptop to stare at Chuck’s notes. The next chapter is supposed to be about the brothers encountering a siren, a creature who’s been preying on men by giving them what they desire. To Chuck, of course, this can only mean one thing: blond women. The boys fall under the siren’s power in the course of the investigation. At first it seems like Mark’s the one who’s been caught, but that’s a fakeout (Cas could’ve told you that immediately, because the hot female doctor Mark falls for is dark haired). It’s actually Neal who gets hooked by the siren, in the guise of the sweet blond female FBI agent who’s apparently there to work the case too.

Cas hates this. Neal spent the night with Alice just weeks before in the timeline of the books, and she’s supposed to come back in just a few chapters’ time. Yeah, Neal sleeps around, but he always ends up forming a real connection with the girls he sleeps with. Just look at him and Bessie. Why would he pass up Alice so quickly in favor of the siren? Why would he even have the kind of desperate, raw desire that sirens picks up on, the endless yearning that calls the monster to its victim? Neal’s just had sex with a woman he’s supposed to really like. Wouldn’t he want her?

But if Neal doesn’t want a hot blond piece of ass, and he can’t want a fake version of Alice (the boys would pick up on that trick pretty quickly) what does he want? What the fuck can Cas do with this plot?

The café door opens, and Dean comes in. He takes off his sunglasses and raises his hand to greet Cas, his mouth quirking up in a smile. Cas is horrified to feel himself blushing at the sight of him. No he’s not! Get a fucking grip! He has to be normal, remember? Nothing happened on Tuesday night. He’s just Dean’s friend, and Dean happens to be bisexual, a perfectly normal and unremarkable fact about him that has no bearing on Cas’s life.

He looks down at his keyboard. He can’t meet Dean’s eyes. “Hello,” he says gruffly.

“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” says Dean. “Looking good.” Cas does glance up at him then, despite himself, and sees that Dean’s cheeks are pink. It must be warmer outside than he thought it was. Of course it is – it’s almost eleven am.

Dean puts a new coffee down in front of him, and then sinks into his seat with a sigh.

“You aren’t still hung over?” asks Cas.

“No, I’m not hung over. How about you? You were hitting it pretty hard on Tuesday night. Eh? Eh?”

He wiggles his eyebrows and kicks Cas under the table.

“I’m fine,” says Cas tightly, not kicking back. He does not want to think about the girl. “I’m writing.”

“Yeah, man, I heard.”

Cas sighs. Dean is so frustrating, sometimes. He just needs to focus on that aspect of him. He’s frustrating, and undependable, and ridiculous, and –

But then Dean opens the bag he’s carrying and pulls out a laptop. It’s pretty beaten up, and it’s got a Princess Leia sticker on it, plus one that’s just pink and peach and white stripes, but it’s definitely a laptop.

“What’s that?” asks Cas.

“Laptop,” says Dean. “Seen one before?”

“Very funny. Where did you get it?”

“Charlie, obviously,” says Dean, gesturing at the stickers. “Not mine. Not a lesbian, famously.”

Shit! Cas is blushing again. Dean’s annoying. He’s ridiculous. He’s – “Why do you have a laptop?”

“To write with, dude,” says Dean, rolling his eyes. “Figured this way you wouldn’t have to keep passing me yours all the time. Thought I’d help you better if I had an actual computer. What do you think?”

“Oh,” says Cas. “Oh. I – guess –”

Damn it! Why does Dean have to keep doing this? Turning up and being so fucking nice, and thoughtful, and kind, and –

“But don’t you need to work on your set?” he asks, and immediately knows he’s said the wrong thing. Dean’s unhappy dimples appear like clicking off a light.

“No,” he says shortly. “Still can’t – not ready for that. Don’t worry about me, dude. Focus on the book. Where’re you up to?”

And he suddenly looks so excited, leaning across the table towards Cas, eyes wide and mouth a little open, that Cas finds himself explaining the siren problem.

“I just don’t think he’d sleep with another woman,” he says anxiously. “Would he? But I can’t bring back Alice yet – I mean, a fake Alice. What do I do?”

Dean thinks. Cas can see the ideas chasing across his face, in the quirk of his mouth, the way his eyes crinkle, the tap of his tongue against his teeth. Cas realizes, maybe a little late, that he shouldn’t be watching Dean so closely. He looks down at his hands.

“Huh,” says Dean at last. “So. I know what I’d do.”

“Yes?” asks Cas.

“And I’m not gonna tell you.”

“What?” Cas is outraged.

“It isn’t what you’d do! It’s probably a bad idea anyway. I don’t wanna fuck your brain up. If I start feeding you whole plots, the books just become fanfic. You gotta get there yourself.”

“I asked you for your help!”

“So send me the chapters you’ve done. I’ll sex ’em up, while you work on the new part. Like I said, you can get there yourself. Neal wants stuff. Everyone does. You’ve just gotta work out what it is.”

Cas, attaching the first chapters into an email to Dean, huffs. “Some people don’t want anything,” he says. It’s what he’s been thinking, after all.

“Everyone wants something,” says Dean. “Sometimes they just pretend they don’t.” He’s staring at Cas, chin a little raised, eyes direct, like he’s issuing a challenge.

Cas is really mad, now. He glares back, as hard as he can. It’s not true, what Dean’s saying. Not everyone walks around wanting all the time. Real people aren’t like book characters. He hasn’t wanted anything all day. He’s a big heap of not wanting. He wants to not be writing this book. He wants to not be awake, or in this cafe. He wants to not – not keep fucking thinking about Tuesday night all the goddamn time, but apparently that’s too hard for his brain to manage.

He wants to go back to that first day, when he called Dean over to his table. He wants the simplicity of that moment. He wants to start again, without all this confusion.

“See?” says Dean softly.

Cas glares down at his laptop screen. He is not willing to admit anything.

Except. What if that’s what Neal wants? Mark’s still fucking Violet, and even when it’s just the brothers together he’s distracted by her – or, in this chapter, by the hot Doctor Clara. Wouldn’t Neal miss his brother? Wouldn’t he want a friend, someone who’d listen to him the way Mark used to?

OK, so what if the FBI agent isn’t a woman at all? What if he’s a man? The kind of guy that Neal instantly trusts, who slips by all of his careful emotional background checks?

Sure, maybe he’ll have to slightly tweak the whole siren set up to make the desiring not as specifically sexual as Chuck’s laid it out to be, but it could work. It could really work!

“See?” says Dean, grinning at him. “Told you you’d get there.”

“Fuck you,” says Cas.

*

For a while they work in as close to silence as Dean ever manages, which is to say not very silent at all. Dean gasps and laughs and sighs and snorts and keeps looking up at Cas.

“What,” asks Cas at last, frustrated. Neal and the FBI agent have gone to the strip club where the siren’s been operating. They’re hanging out, drinking some beers, making jokes about how weird this case is, how lonely the road is sometimes. They’re comfortable next to each other, at ease, their arms not quite touching. They smile at each other as they turn over the clues and suspects, trying to work out what could have happened. It’s an interesting scene, because obviously Cas knows that the siren knows what’s really going on. He’s playing Neal, his comfort all an act, but Neal doesn’t realize that. He just thinks he’s having a good time with his new buddy.

“You’re good at this,” says Dean, grinning at him. “That’s all.”

“You keep telling me so,” says Cas, a little grumpily. He almost says, but doesn’t, that if he was really that good at it he wouldn’t need Dean helping him.

He takes a swig from his water bottle, and puts it back on the table. Dean, head already bent down towards Charlie’s laptop again, reaches out and drinks from it too. And Cas is supposed to be the messy one! He didn’t even clean the lip of it.

“Dean!” he says.

“Huh?” asks Dean. “Oh. Sorry, man. I guess I got your cooties now.” He looks up at Cas again, through his eyelashes, and winks.

“It’s not hygienic,” mutters Cas, shifting in his seat. He picks up the bottle and runs his finger across the top of it. Then he drinks, and he only realizes as he’s doing it that he forgot to wipe the inside of the lip.

A scene pops into his head. The FBI agent and Neal are sitting in Neal’s car together, supposedly on a stake out to look for the siren. The agent (the siren!) is drinking from a bottle of beer as the two of them talk, at peace, just existing in the same space.

Neal breathed out. He hadn’t felt this calm for a long time. This guy just understood him. He didn’t need to worry about Mark, or Bel, any more.

Fix that.

didn’t need to worry about Mark any more.

He felt his friend holding out the beer bottle to him, and took it without turning to look at him. He took a deep swig, and smiled to himself. Everything was gonna work out OK.

“Hey, Neal,” said Agent Mike. “Neal. You should have wiped that off before you drunk from it.”

Neal turned his head to the side in confusion. Mike smiled at him. His teeth suddenly looked sharper than normal. His face was fuzzy – or was that just Neal’s vision? He shook his head, but the fuzziness didn’t go away.

And then the world went dark.

Cas finishes the chapter, and then peeks over his laptop at Dean again. He’s writing away, grinning at something Cas can’t see. Friends, thinks Cas. They’re friends.

And he licks the place on his top lip where it touched the inside of the water bottle.

Chapter Text

It’s not until Cas has the page open that he begins to worry.

Every individual step thus far has been completely explicable.

He’s still studying erotica. He’s going to write a version of the Mark/Doctor Clara sex scene before he hands it over to Dean, because he wants to show him that there’s been some improvement since that woeful 86 word deletion. But he’s read all three of Dean’s Neal/Bessie fics so many times that he feels like he could have worn a hole in their internet pages by now. So he needs more material, and he thinks that if he starts looking for more Neal/Bessie he’ll start picking up other people’s ways of writing Neal, and get into some very dubious legal territory. CW would not be happy.

So it has to be Dean’s fics. And that means it has to be Neal and a guy. It’s not that he wants to read that, per se, there’s just no other option.

And that’s why he’s about to read his first ever gay fanfic.

Cas has chosen a Neal/Agent Rickard story, the longest one Dean’s written. He figures he wants a story, not just sex. If they go straight into fucking he’s going to chicken out, he just knows it. But if he eases himself in, it should be fine. Like going swimming in the sea. You take one tiny step after another, and in twenty minutes you’re up to your neck in the water. You barely even notice how salty and wild it is.

Now that he’s clicked on the link, though, and agreed that there might be adult sexual content (there definitely is going to be adult sexual content) he’s started to feel uncomfortable. This seems … bad, in a way that looking at the Neal/Bessie fics didn’t. What if Dean finds out that he’s read it? He can’t find out, can he? Cas is reading as a guest. There’s no way to track IPs (is there?). No, it’s fine. Dean will never know.

But he’ll know. He’s going to have to see Dean tomorrow and look at him and think about the things that he imagined, that he wrote down, that he presumably did. What if Cas can’t cope with it? What if he hates it? He’s going to hate it, isn’t he?

What if he doesn’t hate it?

What if he likes it?

Well, but everyone likes lesbian porn, don’t they? So maybe liking gay porn is the same thing.

It doesn’t seem like the same thing, for some reason, even though logically he can’t work out why not.

Focus, Cas. Just read the story. It’s not going to bite you.

He takes a deep breath, and begins to read.

His hand is shaking for some reason, which is stupid, because it’s all just words on a page. He’s not seeing anything, or doing anything. He’s just reading a story. And when it begins, it’s not anything that Cas himself wouldn’t have written. The boys are on a vampire case in Agent Rickard’s area, and through a series of misunderstandings the agent becomes convinced that Neal’s responsible for the deaths of the victims. He trails Neal, and almost ruins the big vampire nest bust in his zeal to catch his man. There’s a fight, and Rickard is left holding Neal’s shoe, vowing to catch him next time. And then the chase is on. Rickard becomes obsessed, tracking Neal’s movements, calling up his phone and sending him angry emails. And Neal, because he can’t resist, starts responding to the messages and leaving clues about where he’ll be next. They follow each other across the country, closer and closer, mutually fascinated, unable to look away. They’re each other’s shadows, and their correspondence becomes more and more intimate, heated in a way that’s not about anger any more.

It’s a real Javert and Jean Valjean situation, thinks Cas, as he reads, and then in the next fucking paragraph Dean has Agent Rickard make a Javert joke. Cas bursts out laughing, and his hand automatically goes to his phone to send Dean a message about it. He only just catches himself in time. Shit! Dean can’t know he’s reading it. That’s the rule he’s set himself.

But the moment brings Cas down to earth with a bump. It’s reminded him, unequivocally, that the Dean who writes all of these stories is the same person as the Dean who sits opposite him in the café each day. That Dean – his Dean – writes gay porn. And that reminds him that this is gay porn, and Cas is reading gay porn, and shit. Shit.

He shuts his laptop screen in a panic. There’s still time to turn back. He hasn’t seen any dicks yet, metaphorically speaking.

But … dammit if Dean doesn’t write a compelling romance plot. It’s the same whether the people in question are a guy and a girl or two guys, apparently. He wants to see how the tension between Agent Rickard and Neal resolves itself. Their dynamic is totally fucked up, and Cas is so, so in.

Then Neal and Agent Rickard both end up on the trail of what seems to be a bloodthirsty unicorn. They both get caught breaking the law and the overzealous sheriff books them and throws them in the county jail. They’re locked in the same cell overnight, and left alone while the sheriff heads back to her family. Neal’s told Mark to keep hunting without him, and no one’s coming for the agent until the morning. So. They’re stuck, with no help coming, no way out … and no supervision.

At this point, Cas’s courage gives out. He shuts his eyes and breathes through his nose.

He tells himself he doesn’t have to keep reading.

He keeps reading.

He could skip the sex scene?

But, in Dean’s stories, the sex scene really is part of the plot. He’d miss all of that character development, the resolution of Neal and Agent Rickard’s character arcs.

His heart is pounding and his head is pounding and his throat feels dry as Neal yells into Agent Rickard’s face and Agent Rickard yells back, moving forward until Neal is pressed up against the wall of the cell. They’re panting, their faces almost touching, and then Neal grabs hold of Agent Rickard and kisses him.

Cas feels like he’s just been struck by lightning. He can feel the shock of desire coursing through his body, as though he’s the one who’s been kissed. He reads and reads, as Neal and Agent Rickard fumble open buttons and rip off belts, rough and desperate and wildly hungry. Cas thinks, feverishly, that he’s never read anything this sexy. He always assumed, in an unexamined way, that there must be something fundamentally different about gay sex, some more exotic thing that happens, but this is just the same old motions, blowjobs and hand jobs, mouths and fingers and skin on skin. So why do these ordinary ingredients suddenly make him feel like he’s going to combust? This is better than Dean’s Neal/Bessie fics, better than most of the porn he’s watched. He’s stupidly hard, he feels almost sick with it. Is it that he can just imagine the pleasure that both Neal and Agent Rickard are feeling? That there are double the usual number of body parts he has in play?

That must be it. Why doesn’t everyone talk about gay porn more? Fuck. This is a game changer.

He finishes reading the fic, he closes the laptop and he puts it as far away from himself as possible. Then he lies on top of his comforter, staring up at the ceiling. He can still feel his heartbeat throbbing in his chest.

He rests his hand on his stomach. The thing is. If he’s brutally honest with himself. He does have a routine. He reads one of the Neal/Bessie fics in the evenings, and then about five minutes later he jerks off.

The two things aren’t connected, they just happen in a sequence. It’s like brushing his teeth and then putting on his pajamas. He assumed that the Agent Rickard/Neal fic wouldn’t have the same effect (it isn’t even an effect, as he’s said!). He was all ready for that not to happen this evening.

But. What if, unconnectedly, he wanted to jerk off right now? It’s not because of what he just read. It’s because he’s bored, and it’s night time, and he’s thinking about sex. Don’t think about why he’s thinking about sex.

So if he did want to do that. Why shouldn’t he? He’s alone, and it’s a free country. No one will know. Dean won’t ever know. (Why should it matter whether Dean ever knows?)

He moves his hand down onto his cock. He’s so hard he flinches at the sensation. He can’t stop thinking about Neal and Agent Rickard together; what they did, what Dean made them do – shit, don’t think about Dean, stop thinking about Dean, Neal and Agent Rickard – no, hold on, Neal and Bessie, but Bessie keeps turning into Agent Rickard, and then Agent Rickard presses Neal up against the wall, but Neal becomes Dean, and Cas can see Dean’s open mouth, the freckles on it, and Dean kisses him on the neck, his hand on Cas’s cock and –

Shit.

*

Cas wakes up the next morning with a fuzz of shame across his brain. It’s like unbrushed teeth for the soul. Last night he did terrible things. He’s betrayed Dean’s trust in a multitude of ways. Not only is he reading words that he as good as promised Dean he wouldn’t (not that there were specific promises, but the expectation was clear – the fic was to be used as a kind of nuclear code, not as his own personal spank bank), but he’s objectifying Dean himself. They’re friends, and yet Cas is puppeting him around in his mind, making him a tool of his own weird psychosexual experimentations.

It's bad, essentially. It’s really very bad.

And now his head is full of forbidden thoughts, like Dean’s lips and Dean’s hands and all the times that Dean must have reached out for another man, and enjoyed it. And would Cas enjoy it? If –

No.

So he gets to the café early, buys himself a large coffee, and tries to bury himself in the completely unremarkable chapter he’s working on, a case where the brothers discover that someone’s stopping people in one small town from dying. It’s all going to feed into the apocalypse plot – there are reapers, and a demon from Neal’s hellish past, and ultimately (says Chuck) the boys are going to realize that this was a seal, and they’ve prevented it from being broken.

But he can’t stop thinking about the Doctor Clara and Mark scene that he promised himself he’d write today. There’s even a space for it on the page, a few chapters ago. He just needs to fill it in. It’s a couple of hundred words, at most. Last night, he felt like he had a handle on it. Last night it felt possible.

Yeah, well, maybe he should have written it last night instead of wasting an hour reading Dean’s story, five minutes touching himself and then seven hours sleeping on top of his comforter.

He takes a deep breath. He can do this. What has he learned, from Dean’s stories? It’s all about character development. Sex is a conversation between two people, and it follows on from what they’ve been saying – or not saying – to each other before. If he thinks about Doctor Clara and Mark, they’ve been circling each other since he first walked into her office. The attraction was instant, on both sides. It’s not like he needs to do much, to push them together. For Mark, the doctor is something good, fun, light. There are no demon strings attached, with her. For the doctor … Cas gets the feeling that Mark’s something similar. A rebound after a tough break up, maybe? Not in Chuck’s notes, because when do women get backstories, in Supernatural? But that could work.

The one thing Chuck’s written next to Doctor Clara’s character is BOOBS. Cas sighs, but he guesses he can work with that. Fine, he’ll give her boobs too.

Mark walks into the doctor’s office, apparently to ask about a case. Clara’s waiting for him, leaning back in her chair, a glass of whiskey in her hand (why does everyone in this series drink whiskey? Cas drinks whiskey, and so does Dean, but shouldn’t there be some kind of variety?) and her breasts very visible underneath her shirt.

Mark noticed that a button on her shirt had come undone since he’d visited this afternoon. He could see the curve of her breasts

the swell of her breasts

the swell of her tits

What’s the series style for breasts? He should look it up – no! Focus, Cas. Think like Dean. Think what Mark would see. Exact word choice is not important. He keeps going. They have a drink together, and Clara gets up and moves towards Mark.

She was standing close enough to him that her hair tickled his cheek. She leaned forward, and he thought she was going to whisper something in his ear, but instead she put her lips against his neck. He

“Hey, Cas,” says Dean.

Cas swears. He hasn’t even noticed him coming in, but there he is, right in front of him, Dean: grinning and freckled and gorgeous.

Wait, what?

He’s blushing. He can feel all the blood in his body rushing up into his face. All he can think of is that Neal and Agent Rickard scene, and the other one, the one that he made up, where Dean –

No, do not think about that. Do not!

“You looking at porn?” asks Dean, flicking the side of his mouth up in a smirk. Cas can’t speak for a moment.

“I am,” he says, after a pause so long he can feel the earth turning. “Writing.”

“Like hell you are. Let me see!”

And Dean reaches forward and spins the laptop around.

Cas watches as his eyebrows raise. “Huh,” he says. “So maybe I wasn’t completely wrong. Didn’t think you had it in you, Cas.”

“I have been practicing,” says Cas, and then wants to kick himself. That sounds disgustingly suggestive, when in reality what he means is I have been reading your erotica, and also thinking about you touching me. Which is actually worse. It’s worse!

Dean gives him a very strange look. “Guess so,” he says. “You’re getting better. You’re not gonna need me soon.”

“Of course I will,” says Cas, automatically, and then he really thinks about what Dean’s saying. It’s exactly what he’s been hoping for, isn’t it? He can’t keep asking Dean to write parts of the books for him. He’s been aiming to get good enough to write everything himself. Dean helping was supposed to be a temporary measure.

So why does the idea of going back to working alone feel so bad? It’s what he likes best! On his own, no one to bother him, just his brain and the words on the page. He can act out life without it overwhelming him.

But what if he wants to be overwhelmed?

That’s such an alien thought that it stops him still.

“Hey,” says Dean. “Hey! Earth to Cas!”

“I’m here,” says Cas, with difficulty. “Apologies. Dean, I –”

He can’t say it. He’s not even sure what it is he wants to say.

I need you?

Don’t leave me alone?

I want to press myself into you until your skin becomes my skin and I can feel everything you’ve ever felt, and even then that wouldn’t be close enough?

“I like you being around,” he says at last. Fuck, why does he keep blushing today? What is wrong with him?

“Oh,” says Dean, rubbing at the back of his neck. His face is pink. Cas has embarrassed him. “Thanks, bud. I guess you’re not so bad either. Hey, uh, you get my notes on those chapters?”

Cas swallows uncomfortably. That was something else he’d meant to do last night, go through Dean’s comments on the beginning of Book 8. But instead he wasted his time being a complete freak. And now he’s behind! Behind with only three more weeks to finish the whole book. He has to focus, he can’t let this … whatever it is mess up the publication schedule.

“Uh,” he says, his brain scrolling vividly through the Agent Rickard/Neal kiss for the twentieth time this morning. “I started –”

“Cool,” says Dean with a bounce. “So I was thinking, the school chapter – what if you made Neal the coach, not another janitor? You could have him bullying the kids, throwing balls at them and shit.”

“That is not ethical,” says Cas severely. Dean’s pulled his chair around the table, and is leaning in towards his laptop. His forearm brushes Cas’s, and then his fingers tangle against Cas’s as he tries to scroll through the document, and Cas feels almost high from the contact, like a prophet receiving the word of God. Your brain is making this up, he tells himself. There is nothing strange about this at all. It’s just your friend Dean.

His brain, unhelpfully, stops thinking about Dean only to feed him a sudden flash of a new scene between Neal and Bel. It must happen at the end of the dead people not dying chapter, after Neal and Mark have saved the reapers. Bel turns up, aggrieved as always, standing way too close to Neal. Neal asks him how it’s fair, that their triumph means that good people have to die.

“For everything, there’s a season,” said Bel. “There cannot be any exceptions.”

“Bullshit,” said Neal. “You made an exception for me.”

Bel looked at him, his blue eyes burning, only half a step away from Neal. “You’re different,” he said.

It took Neal’s breath away.

“Course it’s not ethical,” says Dean, nudging his shoulder and bringing him back to the café. The scene can’t go in, of course. No Bel, in this book. But he likes it. “It’s Neal. C’mon, man, where are you today?”

“Sorry,” says Cas, shaking himself. He’s got to stop this. “Late night. I’m fine. Okay, I’ll think about it. What about the stage magic chapter?”

“Oh,” says Dean, turning to beam at him. “I’ve got a lot of ideas about that one. Did I ever tell you Sammy had a magic phase?”

Cas tries to let himself relax into the normality of the day. It’s just him and Dean, working on the book (technically, it should just be him working on the book, technically Dean is a bartender who writes explicit Supernatural fanfiction, and should not be anywhere near the book) the way they have been for the last three months (it’s only been three months of this, only three months of Dean. How is that possible?). They’re friends, and that’s it, and if Cas’s brain would just shut up he might be able to enjoy it. It’s nice to have a friend like Dean. He’s kind, and funny, and thoughtful. He’s a good addition to Cas’s life. Which is why it’s important for Cas not to mess this up by getting too intense.

His phone buzzes – he’s forgotten to put it back into focus mode now that Dean’s here with him. Out of habit, he checks it. It’s his author group: Ezekiel, inviting everyone to his book launch.

“Who is it?” asks Dean.

“Authors,” says Cas briefly. He doesn’t like Ezekiel much. He used to publish under the name Gadreel, but then it turned out that he’d been lying about having cancer, and was also sending anonymous hatemail to reviewers who didn’t like his books. He’s rebranded, and is trying to start afresh. This is his first book under his real name, and he’s hoping that no one will catch on. “Want me to go to a book launch.”

He's about to close the app when he sees his name.

@Castiel, come along! We miss you.

It’s a lie, of course. Ezekiel’s just seen the Amazon rankings.

“Hold on, that’s the kinda party you were supposed to have, right?” Dean looks, for some reason, excited.

“I told you, they’re not worth your time,” says Cas irritably. “You just stand around drinking bad wine and making small talk.”

“Yeah, but – Cas. Free wine, Cas.”

“There’s free food too, sometimes,” says Cas, unwisely.

“Free food? Holy shit, is it canapes? Cas! You gotta get me in! I want to go to the free wine and food party!”

“No,” says Cas. “Absolutely not! Ezekiel is one of the worst people I’ve ever met.”

“Then we can steal his shit and make him pay for it. Come on, Cas!”

And he tilts his head down and looks up at Cas through fluttering lashes. Cas’s heart jumps.

“We’re not going to Ezekiel’s launch, Dean,” he growls.

“Yeah we are,” says Dean, and he turns his most heartbreaking grin directly on Cas. It feels like being caught in a searchlight.

And Cas, it turns out, is weak.

Chapter Text

But actually, by the time the launch rolls around, Cas is feeling more cheerful. He’s solved the problem he’s been having. The Dean problem.

He’s spent a lot of time thinking about it, and his hunch was correct. It’s not that he’s actually interested in Dean. Of course he’s not. That would make no sense. What’s happened, instead, is that his brain’s gotten caught up in possibility.

It’s like the way that if someone tells you not to think about an elephant you have to do it. You can’t breathe without visions of elephants dancing across the insides of your eyelids. Elephants are suddenly everywhere, and it doesn’t stop until you forget you’re trying not to think about them. Dean, in this case, is the elephant. Because of the whole book writing thing, Cas has been putting Dean and sex into the same part of his brain, and what’s come out is this mixed-up incorrect rush of emotion.

It’s objectively sexy to think about sex scenes, even if the person you’re working on them with isn’t someone you’re actually attracted to, so it’s not surprising. And Dean is very tactile, not to mention the whole bisexual thing, and that’s why Cas has become so … fixated. So confused. Thank goodness nothing actually happened at the club last week, because that would have been very bad. As it is, he avoided doing something he’d regret, and Dean’s still none the wiser, and now that Cas has worked out what’s going on he can nip the whole thing in the bud. He’s decided not to read any more of Dean’s gay porn, just to be safe, but as long as he keeps reminding himself that brains are weird, and he’s been lonely, and it all means nothing, he’ll be fine.

Maybe he should go find himself a girl? But the thought of dating’s unappealing. After he’s finished the book, maybe. Or next year. There’s no hurry.

So that’s why, as he and Dean walk down the stairs of the bookstore, he’s feeling good. Plus, it’s kind of – it’s a little cool, to show Dean that being an author isn’t just sitting in a café in dirty sweatpants writing until your eyes ache. He’s down on Zeke, because he sucks, and he’s down on book launches, because they generally suck, but he knew that this launch was gonna be fancier than the average, and it is. Ezekiel’s thrown money at this PR charm offensive, and it shows. Yeah, the event’s still in a bookstore basement, but it’s the nicest store in the city, and tonight it’s been decked out with flowers and strings of lights that glow softly. There’s music playing – heaven, I’m in heaven – there’s a bar, and there’s a table full of food that doesn’t look like someone just ran to the nearest Walmart for some crackers and cheese. The room’s busy already, and Cas spots at least fifteen people he knows. This evening’s going to be an ordeal, but at least Dean’s here with him. Is that a strange thing to think? But it’s true.

Dean swings round to look at him, stars in his eyes. It’s always a rush to see how much of a kick Dean gets out of life. He’s fucking excited by everything, his whole body switched on and buzzing. “Dude!” he says, shoulders wriggling. “They’ve got charcuterie!”

“Told you launches are crap,” says Cas, trying not to smile at him. He’s glad he put on one of his new button-downs. Several people here are in sequins, and he just spotted Zeke in a velvet suit. Asshole.

“Fuck it, I’m gonna go straight,” says Dean. “I’d switch kudos for this any day. You want wine? I’m gonna get you wine. How many wines do they let you have?”

“As many as you can carry,” says Cas, which he means as a joke, but isn’t sure Dean takes as one. Dean bounces away towards the bar table, the waitress flustering as he approaches – and Cas hears voices he recognizes behind him.

“All I’m saying is,” Crowley’s murmuring, “he never texted me back, and now Castiel’s had him at his beck and call for three months. It’s fucking unfair.”

“Messy!” says Balthazar gleefully. He’s another of Crowley’ clients, who writes self-help books and is generally almost as big a shit as Crowley. “Never thought your tastes would cross over, but I’ve been wrong before. And I certainly see the appeal. Look at that ass.”

Cas wheels around furiously. They’re only a few feet behind him. They must know he can hear them, but when he glares at them they both pretend they’ve only just noticed him.

“Evening, Castiel,” says Crowley, waving. “Nice to see you out. And I see you brought the boy toy. Showing him a good time, are you? I was just talking about you with Balthazar.”

“Lay off, Crowley,” says Cas, surprised at the flare of anger he feels. “I heard what you said.”

“All in good fun, I’m sure,” says Crowley, patting him on the back. “I assume you missed the part about what a fucking star you are. We’ve all seen the charts. You’re CW’s golden boy. I’ve got some news about that, actually, I’ll talk to you later. Balthazar, meanwhile, I still haven’t had that fucking proposal in my inbox. What’ve you been doing, you little shit?”

“Too many parties, my friend. I swear I’ll get it to you.”

“Move on it, man! I was speaking to Metatron the other day and he’s already had three clean living proposals this month. The market’s going to be saturated if you don’t get off your coked-up butt and write it.”

Cas zones out. He looks across the room to work out where Dean is, and sees him hovering beside the food table. As he watches, Dean scoops up a handful of what look like tiny arancini balls (this party! What the fuck!) and shoves them in his mouth. Then he spins around, catches Cas’s eye and grins, his cheeks puffing out like a hamster’s. He’s got two wine glasses in each hand. Cas beams back at him so wide his own cheeks ache. Dean Winchester is the most ridiculous person Cas has ever met. He’s just – he’s just – Cas feels –

“I take it back, not even that fine ass can make up for that repulsive display,” Balthazar’s saying. “Your boyfriend’s a rube, Castiel. Her, on the other hand – get a load of her!”

He’s gesturing at someone to Cas’s left, and Cas turns his head to see a blond-haired woman in a sparkly dress wandering past him. She’s okay looking. The dress is fairly tight, and it’s nice on her. But Crowley is whistling, and Balthazar says, “Excuse me,” and ducks away after her. Cas can’t see the appeal. He looks beyond her, and there’s Dean again, taking a swig from one of his wine glasses while he talks to the waitress.

Cas’s heart jolts. The waitress is pretty, dark-haired and velvety-eyed. He remembers that first day they met, and the woman who recognized Dean. Of course Dean’s entitled to hit on anyone he wants. Despite what Balthazar said, Dean is not and never will be Cas’s boyfriend. But just – not tonight. Not at this party. That’s all. Not now.

“Right, Cas, lemme tell you about what CW –” Crowley begins, but Cas ignores him.

He’s across the room before he can even think. Dean turns his head as he approaches, his face lighting up. “Dude!” he says. “Sorry, I was gonna come find you, but – this food! No one’s eating it, man. Lisa says she’s not allowed to while she’s working, which is shitty. Oh hey, this is Lisa. She’s doing her PhD in psychology. Lisa, this is Cas. He’s an author and he’s fucking awesome.”

“Everyone’s an author here,” mutters Cas, embarrassed at the thoughts in his head. Dean’s obviously just being friendly. He noticed what Cas didn’t, which is that everyone’s being a total shit to Lisa, grabbing drinks off her table and not thanking her or talking to her. As he watches, Uriel grabs three glasses of red without even looking up and stalks away.

“Yeah, but you’re the best one,” says Dean, bumping Cas on the arm. “I got you some wine. Red and white. I dunno what you’re into.”

Cas looks at the two glasses Dean’s got clutched in his left hand. “Uh,” he says. It’s just wine. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything. “Red. No, white. I don’t care.”

“If you mix them together, you can make rosé,” says Dean, leaning forward to whisper into Cas’s ear. His fingers brush Cas’s as he hands over the wine. “Bartender secret. No one ever fucking notices.”

Lisa laughs. “It’s actually true,” she says. “Hey, Dean, do that trick with the bread sticks again.” Cas’s heart, which has been beating normally again, stutters. Oh. He knows that tone of voice. Lisa’s not just being friendly. She’s interested in Dean.

And Dean is totally allowed to go home with her, if he wants. That would be completely fine. Would it? It would.

Would it?

“Hey! Cas! My man!” someone yells from behind him, and Cas turns around to see Ezekiel himself bearing down on them. He’s taken off his suit jacket, and he’s looking tanned and toned and even smugger than he usually does in a white fitted t-shirt. Just annoyingly great, really. Cas does not like him.

He claps Cas around the shoulder, and some of Cas’s wine sloshes out onto the floor.

“Hello, Ezekiel,” says Cas, through gritted teeth, taking a big slug of white wine. Why did he come to this party again?

“Cas! Long time no see. I hear great things about you, man. Great things.”

Ezekiel’s muscular arm is still squeezing against Cas’s shoulder. He smells overpoweringly of body spray, and he looks like a catalog model. Cas shifts uncomfortably. He doesn’t like being this close to someone else. “Ezekiel,” he says. “Congratulations on the book.”

“Yeah, man, and congratulations on yours!” says Ezekiel, finally stepping away. “I mean, it’s not really yours, but you know what I mean. You’re a fucking talent, dude. Now you just gotta stop throwing your genius away on tacky work for hire bullshit, write a real book and the world’ll be your oyster. Hey!!”

Cas can’t quite work out how it happened. One moment Dean’s standing holding his wine glasses and staring at Cas and Ezekiel, and the next moment he’s tripped forwards, straight into Zeke’s chest. Zeke’s t-shirt suddenly has a red Rorschach blot across it, and wine’s dripping down his abs and onto his velvet pants.

“Oh shit!” says Dean, stepping backwards. “Fuck! I’m so sorry, dude. I don’t know what the hell happened. Guess I must be clumsy. Damn.”

“Who the fuck are you?” snaps Zeke, wiping at his abs. “What the fuck? This is designer!”

“He’s with me,” says Cas. “Ezekiel, I’m so sorry about your shirt. We’ll go.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” says Zeke. He’s fuming. His fists are clenched and his face is twisted up in rage. “Nice to fucking meet you, or whatever.”

“You too, man,” says Dean. “Really sorry. Hope it dry cleans okay. See you around, Lisa.”

They flee. As they’re heading up the stairs, Lisa yells “Call me!” after them. Dean doesn’t turn back.

“I’m so sorry,” says Cas, as they head out into the evening. It’s barely been half an hour. “That was supposed to be … better. I wanted to –”

I wanted to impress you.

Dean turns to him. For some reason he’s grinning. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks. “I just had the best half an hour of my life. The canapes were amazing, I got to throw wine on an asshole and look what I lifted from the drinks table while Lisa wasn’t looking.”

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out – how the fuck did he hide that? – a full bottle of red wine. “I know what this bottle costs, and it ain’t cheap. C’mon, let’s go sit in the park and drink it.”

“You spilled your drink on purpose?” asks Cas. His chest feels light.

“Course I did,” says Dean. “No one messes with my buddy. Anyway, fuck him. No one’s gonna read his stupid book, and everyone’s reading yours.”

His shoulder bumps against Cas’s again and their hands brush and Cas thinks this might just be the best book launch he’s ever been to.

*

They walk aimlessly for a while. The evening’s clear and fine, there’s a buzz to the city and – it’s nice just being with Dean. Seeing the way he sees the world makes everything brighter, almost electric. They talk about nothing but it’s still the funniest fucking conversation ever, they pass the bottle between each other (they don’t wipe the lip, and it gives Cas a strange jolt each time, like licking a battery) and finally they end up in a quiet neighborhood, walking along past a high brick wall.

“Here we go,” says Dean, stopping halfway down it. Cas looks at him in confusion. “Said I was gonna take you to the park, didn’t I? Here we are.”

“This isn’t the park,” points out Cas.

“It doesn’t look like the park. But I’m about to blow your mind. Charlie and I found this place a couple years ago. The house it’s connected to’s abandoned, so it’s totally private. C’mon.”

Cas just stares at him. He can’t see any doors or gates.

Dean rolls his eyes. “We gotta jump the wall,” he murmurs. “It’s fucking – jeeze, fine, boost me up first.”

Cas makes a step with his hands, and Dean braces himself, wine in one hand, takes a running leap and kick into Cas’s palms and flings himself upwards to sit on the top of the wall. It’s a practiced motion. He’s done this before. He sets the bottle next to him, and then reaches back down for Cas.

Cas stares at his outstretched hand. If he takes it, they’ll be holding hands. But it’s not holding hands, is it? It’s just a friend, helping another friend climb a wall. It doesn’t reveal anything. Dean can’t see what’s in Cas’s head. He reaches out, and then Dean catches his hand firmly and pulls, and Cas goes up the wall in a rush. He knocks slightly into Dean at the top of it, panting, and for a moment they’re leaning against each other. Cas can feel the curve of Dean’s arm through his jacket, feel Dean’s warm blunt fingers still on his wrist.

Then Dean leans forward and jumps down on the other side of the wall. It’s twilight now, the sky darkening, so Cas can’t quite see what’s down there, apart from that it’s some kind of garden, tree-lined and intimate.

“C’mon!” Dean whispers, gesturing, and Cas, without letting himself think about it, jumps.

He misjudges the distance a little. He can’t reconstruct exactly what happened, except that he stumbles, and his arms go around Dean, and Dean’s arms go around him. It’s that magnetic pull he’s felt before, like something’s making them press against each other, like it’s not even a choice. Their noses brush, and Dean murmurs, “Whoa, buddy,” into Cas’s ear. His breath tickles Cas’s cheek.

Cas steps away hurriedly. He shivers, even though the evening’s warm.

“This isn’t a park,” he says accusingly, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Yeah it is,” says Dean, gesturing around at the overgrown trees and the tall grass. “It’s our own private Idaho. It’s perfect. Look, there’s even a bench.”

And there is. It’s rusty and small and it looks like they should worry about whether their tetanus shots are up to date, but it’s definitely a bench.

Dean sits down on it, and Cas, very carefully, sits next to him, not close enough to touch. Dean takes a swig of wine (the bottle’s still miraculously unbroken) and passes it to Cas, and Cas drinks, so deeply Dean says, “Hey! Dude! Leave some for me.”

There is still a lot left for Dean, he’s just being over-dramatic as usual. Cas points this out, and Dean snorts and bumps Cas’s shoulder with his. He’s doing that a lot this evening, and Cas wishes he wouldn’t (and wishes he would, wishes he’d just leave that shoulder there, wishes he could lean in and keep on leaning).

They sit in silence for a while. Then Cas says, “Why aren’t you at a comedy night tonight?”

It’s something he’s been worrying about, lately. It’s been months since that 11:44pm telephone call, and since then Dean hasn’t as much as mentioned stand-up without being asked. It’s nice that he’s helping Cas, but if it’s at the expense of his own career? That doesn’t seem right. It’s like Dean said: everyone wants something. Dean used to want to be a comedian, so what changed?

“Forget it, man,” says Dean, and Cas doesn’t have to look at him to know that his dimples are out.

“I’m not going to forget it, Dean.” Cas pauses, because the thing he’s going to say next has been on his mind for weeks. He takes a deep breath. “Did I do something? Was it – have I been pushing you too hard, on the books? You don’t have to help, if you don’t want to. You know I can’t compensate you. I just want –”

“Cas,” says Dean. “Shut up.”

Cas shuts up. Crickets chirp in the grass, and there’s the rustle of birds in the trees. This place is very peaceful.

“It’s not you, you dumbass. I love working on the books. It’s been – the most fun I’ve had all year, okay? It’s me. I just can’t – I’m fucked up in the head. I can play with other people’s stuff, fine, I can sound like anyone else in the world, but when it’s my own shit – I lose the plot. Why the hell should anyone listen to what I’ve got to say? I’m a stupid fucking waste of space, that’s what Dad said, and he’s right, Cas, he’s fucking right, and even though he’s dead that’s what I heard when I tried to get up there, that’s all there was in my head. I’m a failure. He’s right.” He stops, and takes a jagged breath.

Cas is struggling to breathe. He clenches his fists, digging his fingers into the thighs of his jeans so hard that he knows he’s going to leave scratch marks.

“John Winchester is paying for his sins,” he growls. “You don’t need to pay for them as well.”

“Dude,” says Dean, in a very small voice. “What the fuck? That’s my dad.”

But Cas isn’t done. “I’ve never met this man,” he says, “but if that’s what he thought of you, then I’m not sure he ever met you either. You are extremely intelligent, and very funny, and much better at my job than I am, and if I ever heard anyone saying the things about you that you just said about yourself I would pour an entire bottle of wine over their head. You can still like your father, but I don’t have to.”

“Dude,” says Dean again. “You can’t just say shit like that.”

“I can,” says Cas furiously. “I am your friend. And you deserve to be listened to. Now get up and do your set for me right now, otherwise I’ll – I’ll kick your ass.”

He would not, in fact, kick Dean’s ass, and he’s a little worried that Dean’s gonna call him on that, but Dean lets out another jagged breath, and then he stands up from the bench, rubs his hands together, and says, “Uh. You seriously want to hear it?”

“Seriously,” says Cas, folding his arms. His heart is racing.

Dean rubs at the back of his neck, and wiggles his shoulders. There’s a long silence. Then he takes a breath and starts. “So. Uh. When I was ten …”

It’s so dark by now in the garden that Cas almost can’t make out Dean’s face, but he knows their eyes are locked on each other anyway. Dean talks, and talks, and for the first time ever, Cas actually lets himself react how he wants. He was wrong, before. Dean doesn’t need a challenge at all. The world’s a challenge to him every day, just like it is to Cas. So he stops biting his tongue, and laughs. He laughs so hard that he’s worried someone’s gonna come find them. He laughs until he feels weak, and he’s got tears in his eyes. He laughs until Dean stops, and bobs his head, and says anxiously, “Don’t fuck with me, man. How was it?”

“I loved it,” says Cas. “Seriously. I loved it. Didn’t you hear me?”

“You asshole,” says Dean. “Did you? Really?”

“Yeah,” says Cas, and he reaches out to clasp Dean by the hand. He means it to be one of those manly congratulations that he’s seen other people do, but he’s not really sure how to finish the contact, so they end up just … holding hands again, for a moment. Then they both let go at once, and Dean clears his throat and sits back down next to Cas, reaching out for the bottle.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. “You really think I should go for it?”

“I really do,” says Cas, passing it over. “Next Friday. I’ll come with you. We’ll all be there. It’ll be great. You’re great.”

“Shut up,” says Dean. “You’re great.”

Something scratches at the back of Cas’s brain. They’ve said something almost like this before. It was – it was – oh, fuck. It was at the club, and they were slumped next to each other, and Dean had his head on Cas’s shoulder, and then he –

Dean drinks, and hands the bottle back to Cas. He doesn’t let go, though, so Cas’s fingers end up cupped over Dean’s, their thumbs touching. Dean’s shoulder brushes Cas’s – they’re closer than Cas thought they were, so close that when he turns his face a little he’s breathing right into Dean’s space. He can feel the air between them, feel the hairs on his neck and arms shivering, and he suddenly knows that if Dean leans even a fraction of an inch forward Cas is going to kiss him.

Neither of them move. Dean’s fingers clench against the bottle, Cas can feel his tendons flex. All he can think about is pushing the bottle to the ground, wrapping his hand around the back of Dean’s head and pressing their mouths together. It would be so easy, and if he did it – well, if he did it Dean would never talk to him again. Cas would be alone, and his life would go back to the way it was this spring, and everything would be over.

Instead, with the last shreds of self-control he can muster, he forces himself to take a deep breath, close his eyes and – stand up.

“We should go,” he growls. His voice sounds very strange. His knees are trembling.

“Sure, man,” says Dean quietly, after a moment’s silence. “Okay. I get it.”

But he doesn’t get it, Cas thinks wildly. He has no idea. He’s not being haunted by whatever the hell this is. He’s just been sitting in a garden with his buddy having a drink. He’s not messed up in the head the way Cas clearly is. He’s not incapable of going five minutes without thinking about kissing his friend, touching his friend, making his friend –

Come on, Cas. What the fuck!

He doesn’t wait for Dean to help boost him back over the wall, just jumps for it. It goes kind of wrong – he’s stuck scrabbling helplessly for a few seconds, and then when he does make it over he rips his shirt on a nail or something – but he just can’t touch Dean right now. Dean, obviously, gets over without a hitch. He doesn’t need Cas at all.

“Uh,” says Dean, once they’re over. “You walking home?”

Cas nods wordlessly. They both live in the same direction from here, and Dean knows it, so it’s not like he can pretend he has to head off somewhere else. So after all that he’s stuck, walking back next to Dean.

They don’t look at each other, but Cas can feel Dean itching nervously. Cas has his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He’s keeping a careful three foot distance between them. He’s doing his best to evaporate.

“Uh,” says Dean after a few minutes. “So. You, uh. How’s the book going?”

This is a stupid question. Dean knows how the book is going. It’s going fine.

“Fine,” says Cas sulkily.

“Is it?” asks Dean. “Seriously? Because you’ve been weird about it lately. And I’m only saying this now because you’re already being really fucking weird all of a sudden, so I figure what else do I have to lose, ya know? So you might as well tell me. Or you can fuck off and get into that taxi, I don’t give a shit.”

“I’m not being fucking weird,” hisses Cas. “I’m fine. The book is fine.”

Dean waits, pacing along beside him. Cas glares around at the neon lights above them, the cars swooping past them, the dark sky.

“I don’t like Alice,” he says at last. “I don’t know why. It’s stupid.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Dean.

“You do not know!”

“I do,” says Dean, and Cas looks at him and catches him staring back with an expression that makes his heart skip. That’s not fair, he thinks, and looks down at the sidewalk, and their feet moving forward together, Dean’s work boots in time with his new shoes.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” he says, and he knows he sounds whiny. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve just got to write her anyway. It’s what they want.”

“What if you wrote about Bel instead?” asks Dean.

Cas stops walking. It’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. He forgets he’s not looking at Dean and glares at him.

“Seriously, Cas. You like Bel. So write about Bel. He and Alice are basically the same character – don’t fucking make that face, they are! Write about Bel, and then I’ll just change the name and pronouns to Alice’s before you send it to CW.”

“I can’t,” says Cas. “I can’t write about – Alice is the love interest, Dean.”

“God, you’re unbelievable sometimes, you know that? Fine, you don’t have to write about Bel and Neal making out or anything. Just write them the way you always have, and then when I go through I’ll spice it up for you. Bel and Neal are – you know they click, Cas, you’re not entirely fucking stupid.”

“Yes, but they’re not – they’re not – they’re friends, Dean.”

“I. Know,” says Dean, and why does he sound so angry all of a sudden? “But it’s all chemistry, dumbass. Writing any relationship’s just writing chemistry. Neal and Bel have chemistry. So use it.”

Cas doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know what to say to anything, right now.

But one thing he does know: it turns out that he hasn’t solved his Dean problem at all.

Chapter Text

Cas is ignoring Crowley. He’s still mad about last night. There was a message on his phone when he checked it after he got home, saying where the fuck did you go? and three more this morning.

Call me

Missed call: 10:22am

Missed call: 10:24am

Are you ignoring me, Castiel?

Do you want to hear this or not?

On balance, Cas thinks not. If Crowley really wants to get in contact, he knows where to find him. It’ll just be another message from CW asking for Alice to replace Mark as the other lead. For Alice to be cloned by some kind of magical potion. For Cas to legally change his name to Alice. He doesn’t want to hear it. So he ignores Crowley, and he writes.

It’s not true to say that Cas is writing as a displacement activity. It’s not true at all. It’s just that, annoyingly, what Dean said last night about replacing Alice with Bel turned out to be … really good advice.

CW’s latest notes tell him that Alice has been away trying to stop seals being broken. Now she’s got her grace back, her angelic powers have been restored, and so she’s at full strength, able to challenge the demons and work to stop the apocalypse. And she’s back in this chapter, for one of the most fucked-up plots Cas has ever been asked to flesh out. Someone’s been killing angels (another seal, Cas can’t help but feel like there are maybe too many seals in this book) and Alice needs to know who it is. So she’s captured Armand, the guy who tortured Neal in Hell, because she’s sure that he’s got information about the murderer. And now she wants Neal to torture Armand to find out what he knows.

Cas hates this. Alice is supposed to be in love with Neal. Why would she force him to go back to the darkness he escaped? He only just got out of Hell in book 7, and it still haunts him. Asking this of him is an act of real cruelty.

But if it’s Bel? Well. There’s a streak of cruelty in Bel. He likes to push Neal, to challenge him, to dangle him off a (metaphorical) precipice. And for Neal, being close to Bel’s a form of torture already. He’s overwhelmed and unsettled by him, left shaking from each encounter. This request, coming from him, doesn’t make their relationship any more fucked up than it already is.

Cas types away furiously. It’s a Saturday, so Dean’s not here, which is good. He can’t be near Dean right now. He can’t have Dean touching him like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t knock him down and shatter him into a million pieces on the ground.

In the scene he’s working on, Neal and Bel face off, so close they’re sharing air. They’re mad at each other again, because when are they not? Behind them’s Armand, slumped on the rack, and Bel’s trying to persuade Neal to keep going with the torture. Cas is maybe a little worried that what he’s writing isn’t going to translate as easily into Alice as Dean thinks. Would she say any of this? Would she do any of this? Isn’t Alice … nice?

Neal, trembling, musters up all his courage to ask the questions he needs to. Why does Bel care so much? Why is this the only way? Last time they spoke, Bel seemed to be becoming gentler, more human. What changed?

Bel glared at him. The air around him crackled, and Neal swayed towards him.

“I got too close to the humans I’m protecting,” he said. “You.” His eyes flashed, and Neal swallowed. “It can’t happen again.”

Neal knew that was a warning.

It can’t happen again, thinks Cas, and looks down at his phone to see that Crowley’s calling. He sends it to voicemail, and turns back to the manuscript.

His phone buzzes.

Check your email, you twerp.

And there’s the email, popping up on Cas’s phone screen. And the subject line is – wait, what?

Bel

‘Dear’ Castiel,

Pardon the Saturday email, but I thought you’d want to hear this. I was going to tell you last night, but you and the boy bailed before I could nab you.

I spoke to CW yesterday. Seems they’ve been doing some market research now that LAZARUS RISING’s out, and the upshot of it is that fans hate Alice. I could have bloody told them that – she’s a woman. Instead – and I could also have bloody told them this – they want more Bel. Everyone they spoke to went nuts for him, apparently. He’s the man of the hour.

So, they’ve got a new plan: Alice out, Bel in. New new version of the notes attached, so work from this and delete all older versions. They’ve given you an extra week to make the changes necessary.

Congratulations, you lucky shit. There must be someone watching out for you.

Crowley.

Cas picks up his phone. He needs to call Dean. This is huge. This is huge.

But then he remembers: the Plan.

Last night, when he got home, he went into crisis mode. It’s very apparent to him, after his behavior yesterday, that this has gone far beyond a thought experiment. This is – and how the fuck this happened he can’t understand, can’t parse, because it should be entirely impossible – a crush.

He has a crush on Dean Winchester.

Shit! Shit!!

But it’s an undeniable fact. Don’t think about what this means. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just his brain doing something fucked up, a total one off.

And now he has to deal with it.

Cas has had inappropriate crushes before. They’re very annoying. He had a crush on an older girl at the compound who left messages for him in his planner, and another on his twelfth grade English teacher. He had one on his professor, at college – huh, now he thinks about it, he might have a thing for people who write well. Then there was that episode with his friend, when he was fifteen – but that wasn’t a crush. That was something different. And his father had been so mad, and he’d never seen the boy again, and then he’d found that Wikipedia article and – Focus, Cas. The point is that he’s had crushes before, and he knows how to deal with them: you follow the Plan.

Cas came up with the Plan years ago, and it’s always worked for him. It goes like this:

1. Never be alone with the person.
2. Do not talk to them more than strictly necessary, or look at them for longer than one second at a time.
3. Do not touch them, or allow them to touch you.
4. Remember at all times that this is your problem, and you have to deal with it.
5. Act uninterested as hard as you can, until the act becomes real.

So this is what he’s following with Dean. The question is: would a phone call with Dean be acceptable under the Plan? Because they’re not in the same room, 1 and 3 don’t apply, and neither does the second half of 2. But the first half … it’s dubious, at best.

But maybe it is strictly necessary? Dean is working with him on the book. He needs to know that CW have changed their minds about Alice and Bel. And yes, it’s a Saturday, but Dean’s days off don’t follow the normal pattern, so Saturdays are work days for him. It feels like this would in fact fall under strictly necessary contact. So it’s okay! That’s a relief.

He calls Dean. Dean picks up on the first ring, and Cas’s heart jumps. He tries to remember 5: Act uninterested as hard as you can. He clears his throat, and says, “Hello, Dean, I have some news.”

“Good morning to you too,” says Dean. Cas can hear him sigh and yawn, the phone very close to his mouth. There’s a creaking noise, like he’s rolled over on the couch. Cas can imagine him, stretched out in his living room, one arm up behind his head, smiling. “What’s up?”

“My publisher got in touch,” says Cas, trying to keep his face straight. It’s strangely hard, with Dean. He can feel himself smiling into the telephone. “They have some thoughts about the book.”

“Oh yeah?”

“The fans don’t like Alice,” says Cas. “They like Bel.”

“What? Seriously? Whoa, Cas, this is crazy! I can’t believe it!”

“Yes, I was also surprised,” says Cas. Then he catches Dean’s tone. He can practically feel Dean’s eyes crinkling up, the way his mouth quirks when he’s teasing. “Dean! You’re joking.”

“Huh? No I’m not, man. This is brand new information on me. I can’t believe it, my mind is blown, I think you should get a second opinion, because –”

“Don’t be an asshole. You knew. This is why you said that stuff about Bel yesterday, isn’t it? Dean!”

“Yeah, I knew. C’mon! I’m a fan! What, am I supposed to stop reading the chat? Plus, I kinda wanted to know what they thought of my scenes, y’know. So yeah. People like Bel. They, like, really like Bel.”

“What are they saying about him?” asks Cas. He’s hovering between skeptical and curious.

“Ba– bud, trust me, you do not want to hear specifics. It’s going to freak you out. All you need to know is you’ve created Supernatural’s new sex symbol, and all you’ve gotta do now is roll with it. More scowl, more smite, more coat. More Bel.”

“The coat was you,” points out Cas.

“Stop trying to deflect. Maybe I made him cool, but you made him. He’s all you, dumbass, take the win.”

Cas isn’t sure what to say, and for once Dean doesn’t fill in the conversational blank space. They’re both quiet, and Cas can hear Dean’s breathing down the phone. He closes his eyes and listens.

But you made him, he thinks, out of nowhere. You made me make him. He’s all you.

Then he realizes that this train of thought is not in the spirit of the Plan at all. He’s got to cut this call short, before he thinks something even more dangerous. He’s about to say goodbye, when Dean starts up again.

“Cas, I know last night – it was – look, forget it, it doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have – anyway. Shit. I’m sorry, okay? I just wanted to say. You were right. I’m gonna – Friday. I put my name down. So, yeah. Thank you, I guess.”

He hangs up so fast that Cas is still stumbling for a response when he realizes the line’s gone dead.

That was definitely not following the Plan, he tells himself. Telephone conversations turn out to be disturbingly intimate. So, no more phone calls. (Unless he has to). No messages. (Unless it’s just to reply to Dean). No emails. (Unless he needs to send Dean a new chapter).

Is he setting himself up for failure, here? Is the whole Dean thing too much in itself? But – no, it can’t be. What he’s aiming for isn’t to cut Dean out of his life. He’s trying to cut out the crush and leave himself with the healthy normal friendship. He likes Dean, really likes him. He’s funny, and interesting, and kind. The idea of a life without him fills Cas with existential bleakness. He has to keep reminding himself that that’s the price of failure: if the crush grows to a place where Dean can spot it, then their friendship will be over forever.

So Cas has to get a grip, and get with the Plan.

*

At least he’s got enough to keep him busy. Cas buries himself in the book the whole weekend, hammering out almost eight thousand words. Once again, putting Bel back in the story unlocks every single part of it, even the chapters he’s not in. Cas writes the weird AU chapter where Neal and Mark are memory wiped and given fake backstories (and now it makes sense! It makes sense if it’s Bel and his angels, testing them! And there’s something nice, too, in the way Neal and Mark do find their way to each other, something reassuring in the idea that two people so connected will always recognize each other, no matter what the world tries to do to separate them). He also finishes the torture chapter, giving Bel a near-death moment that will hopefully scare the fans.

It’s strange to think that Bel has fans. That they have fans.

He's so in the zone that by the time Monday rolls around, and Dean comes into the café again, Cas barely even remembers to freak out about it.

He does freak out, of course, but only a little, because Dean looks so good that it makes his chest ache. He catches a waft of Dean’s sweet shampoo smell and doesn’t let himself look up again until he can control himself. This hurts. Why does it hurt so much?

After that, though, Cas feels fairly proud of himself. The Plan helps him overcome numerous problems over the next few days.

He creates a google document and shares it with Dean, to avoid them emailing back and forth constantly, and especially to avoid the way that Dean sometimes comes and leans over Cas’s laptop to see what he’s been up to. Dean compliments him for finally entering the 2010s, he stays on his side of the table, and throughout the day Cas gets a string of comment notifications on ‘SUPERNATURAL 8’ from impala69 that make his heart sing every time. (So that last one isn’t exactly a win. But it feels good. Cas doesn’t think too hard about it.)

He avoids going to Dean’s on Monday evening to watch The Lord of the Rings. Charlie’s going to be there too, but it still feels too much like breaking 1: Never be alone with the person. What if she goes to her room, like she did before, and there’s another couch sleeping situation? Instead he tells Dean that he’s got too much work to do, and he spends the night reading more of Dean’s Neal/Agent Rickard fics and jerking off.

Okay, yes, this really doesn’t seem like it’s following The Plan, but there’s actually a secret final rule, the most important rule of all:

6. Give yourself the itch.

This is not referring to a literal itch, of course. It’s just the moment when Cas knows too much about someone to ever want to be in the same room with them again. His crush on his professor ended when she had a cold for two weeks and kept wiping her nose with the same wet piece of kleenex. He fell totally out of love with his twelfth grade teacher when he watched her eat the core of an apple whole, like she was some kind of horse. And the girl at the compound turned out to have bad breath. So he just needs to find out what’s wrong with Dean.

Except – he already knows what’s wrong with Dean. He drinks way too much, he sleeps with inappropriate people (he slept with Cas’s agent! The man who sends him pissy emails about book deadlines! The man who Cas is going to have to keep being in rooms with for ever!),  and he has disgusting table manners. Cas has seen Dean cram seven arancini balls in his mouth at once, he’s watched him tap dance, he’s heard him sing (people singing unprompted usually makes Cas want to crawl out of his own skin) and he’s witnessed Dean commit many low-level crimes. And none of that – none of that – gave him the itch. So what’s it going to take?

Cas has considered this, and really, there’s only one logical answer. His brain has, for some reason, decided it has a crush on Dean. But it’s managed to forget the most crucial fact: that Cas isn’t gay. So he just has to remind himself what kissing Dean, appealing though it seems right now, would actually lead to. There are things involved in gay sex that Cas would absolutely never want to do, and if he just finds out exactly what those things are, he’ll be so repulsed that he’ll snap out of this crush and go back to normal. Presumably.

That’s the aim, anyway. And that’s why he’s reading more of Dean’s fics – he’s going to find out what Dean’s into, and he’ll see that it’s not what he’s into, and it’ll be fine.

Except.

The more he looks, the more he doesn’t see a problem. There’s nothing here that he wouldn’t actually do. Apart from anal sex! Of course. Of course. He’s always thought it must be very uncomfortable. Although Dean makes it sounds far more pleasant than Cas had assumed, and also mentions a variety of positions that Cas had not realized were available to gay men. He’s actually kind of curious about –

No he isn’t. Shut that down.

Anyway, the point is that he was expecting (hoping for?) something so awful that he can’t ever imagine himself engaging in it. But everything seems (shit!) pretty sexy. Dean writes it all so well. There’s a scene where Neal dresses up in silky panties, and Cas was sure that this was going to be his breaking point, but – huh. It’s actually really fucking hot.

He just has to keep reading. There’s got to be something. Doesn’t there?

Doesn’t there?

Until he finds it, he’ll just have to keep jerking off.

*

On Tuesday, he starts work on the next chapter of the book. The latest notes from CW just say Bel punished for disobedience. Sent back to Heaven but saved by Neal and Mark. Easy, and a nice parallel with the beginning of the last book.

But punished for disobedience makes anxiety writhe in Cas’s stomach. It’s because of what’s happened with Neal. Bel got too close to a human man, and now he’s being punished for it. Just by existing, by standing there, by being kind and nice and normal, Neal made Bel fall. It’s not Neal’s fault, of course. It’s no one’s fault, but it happened, the huge, dark, unmentionable thing, and now it needs to be fixed. Now Bel’s paying the price.

Cas wonders, suddenly, if it’s just Bel who has to pay. Bel’s true angelic form isn’t human-shaped, after all. He’s had to inhabit the body of a man. Who was that man, before Bel took him over? What must it have been like for him, being so caught up? Cas imagines it must be very similar to being chained to a comet. And who was his family? Who does he miss? Cas can see him. His name is Jimmy – no, Johnny – Chekov. He was a man of god. He had a wife, and a daughter, and Bel made him leave them both. But now Bel is gone, he has to go back to them. It isn’t right. Bel made his body do terrible things, things that aren’t in his nature, things that –

“Morning, Cas,” says Dean, swinging his bag down on the table. Cas pulls his laptop aside, just a little, so that nothing of Dean’s touches anything of his. Rule 3. He sees Dean seeing him do it, and tells himself it doesn’t matter. Boundaries are healthy, actually. “Want a coffee?” asks Dean.

“I have my own,” says Cas, looking up at him for the one second he’s allowed to and then looking back down at his laptop screen again. Dean’s wearing a Creedence Clearwater Revival t-shirt that’s ratty and pulled down at the neck, so Cas can see the dip at the base of his throat. He concentrates on breathing steadily.

“Cas,” says Dean. Cas doesn’t look up. “Cas, if I –” Cas doesn’t look up again. He hears Dean sigh. “Forget it,” says Dean, and heads off to join the line for coffee.

Cas tries his best to blank the world out and focus on the tragic life of Johnny Chekov, which is why he’s so surprised when, five minutes later, a plate thumps down next to him, and Dean says, “Here. Got you this.”

It’s a jelly donut. Cas looks up – he can’t help it! – and finds himself staring straight into Dean’s eyes. “Cas,” says Dean. “You good?”

And he puts his hand on Cas’s shoulder.

Cas is startled. He doesn’t know what to say. His mouth won’t form words, because his brain is busy screaming about the fact that Dean has his hand on Cas’s shoulder. He’s such a child! This is a completely ordinary thing for a friend to do to another friend. This is fine!

He’s suddenly overcome with a wave of exhaustion. It’s been four days of the Plan, and he’s so tired of it. He hates it. Why can’t Dean stop bringing him donuts and touching his shoulder and make his life easy for once?

He realizes he’s let his head sag sideways, so his forehead is resting on Dean’s wrist. He sighs, relaxing into the warmth of Dean’s skin, and as he does so he hears Dean take a small breath in. Shit! Fuck! This is not part of the Plan. He jerks his head back upright and twists his body away towards his laptop. “I’m fine,” he says roughly. “I’m writing.”

“Sure,” says Dean. “Okay.”

That’s the last time they speak all morning.

Cas loses himself in Johnny Chekov, who’s running away back home as Neal and Mark chase him, trying to protect him from the demons who are after him. Mark’s trembling with desire for more demon blood, his powers waning (Violet’s holding out on him, in a plot that will all come back at the end of the book), and Neal – Neal’s shaken without Bel, untethered and afraid. Which isn’t fair after what he’s done to Bel, Cas thinks, but he doesn’t put that in the book.

*

Tuesday night Dean’s at the Roadhouse, so Cas can repeat his ritual from Monday night. He reads fanfic after fanfic, gorging himself on it. If he just reads enough, he can find the itch. He knows it. He just has to find it, and then all of this will be over. But he can’t find it, and it’s all so fucking hot, and he’s making this worse, because now he’s got really vivid, specific images of the things he wants Dean to do to him, now he knows and he can’t switch off the knowing, so what the fuck is he going to do?

He falls asleep on top of his comforter, all the lights on, and he doesn’t know he’s dreaming until he realizes he’s standing in the secret garden Dean took him to last Friday. It’s dark, but he can still see the trees around him, all loaded down with ripe apples. Someone’s with him – it’s Alice, her eyes wide and her hair down around her shoulders. She’s wearing an outfit like the one Dean put her in for the scene he wrote, a lacy white teddy and panties, garter belt and stockings. She reaches out her hand for Cas, and pulls him towards her, tipping her face up to his. He puts his hand on her arm and leans in to kiss her, but the mouth he kisses is plump, its jaw square, the arm he’s touching muscular and broad. He steps back to see that it's Dean. He’s still wearing the lingerie set, and his hair is sticking up in wild bedhead, and he looks – oh, fuck, he looks so good. Cas has never wanted anyone more in his entire life. He surges towards him, grabbing him by the shoulders, wrapping his arms around him, and Dean lets out a gasp and –

Cas wakes up.

“Shit,” he says, to no one in particular.

Aching, bewildered and uncomfortably horny, he gets up and walks into the living room. It’s dark – his phone tells him it’s two in the morning – but the fridge light’s on, and one of his housemates is standing in front of it, eating something. Cas frantically readjusts himself and starts backing away into his room again, but she’s already heard him. She turns around, and Cas sees that she’s got a slice of his pizza in her hand. She takes a big bite, and stares at him, her head on one side. She’s wearing boxer shorts and a thin, loose t-shirt. Cas can see her nipples through it, and he looks away politely.

“Hello Meg,” says Cas, resigned.

“Hey, big boy,” says Meg. “Can’t sleep?”

This is such an obvious question that Cas doesn’t deign to answer it.

“That’s my pizza,” he says.

“Sure it is,” says Meg. “Want a bite?”

She holds out the slice she’s eating. Cas is repulsed.

“I can hear you, you know,” Meg goes on. Cas doesn’t know what she means, until – “In your room. Moaning. Lonely, huh?”

Cas’s heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his throat.

“None of your business,” he growls.

“Aw, baby, you should come see me again,” says Meg. “You know we’d have a good time.”

Cas glares at her. The fact is that after Hannah dumped him two years ago, and he moved to this apartment, he and Meg had one very ill-advised night together. It was a completely horrifying experience, and also some of the best sex of Cas’s life. It’s very depressing to think that Meg is still the last person he’s slept with.

“No thank you,” he says. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Hey,” says Meg, as he’s turning away. “Hey, come on. What the fuck’s wrong? You’re being weird. I know I’m a bitch, but you can tell me. I probably won’t laugh.”

Cas pauses. She certainly will laugh, he knows that for a fact. But – he doesn’t really have to tell her, does he? He can say it without saying it. And who the fuck else does he have to say anything to, right now?

He fixes his eyes on the dark kitchen window behind her. “What would you do,” he says carefully, “if you had a crush on the wrong person?”

Meg snickers. “Oh, angel,” she says. “Whatever’s happened to you?”

“None of. Your business,” says Cas furiously. “I asked a question. You don’t have to answer.”

“Fuck you,” says Meg, without rancor. “Okay, you really want to know what I’d do? I’d fuck them. Get them out of my system. Easy.”

Cas is so horrified that he meets her eyes for a second. She’s smirking, one eyebrow raised. “Or you could fuck me,” she says. “You know where to find me.”

Cas slams back into his bedroom and locks the door. Unacceptable. Absolutely not! That is not a possibility.

He checks his phone, and sees a message from Dean.

u up?

He has to stop this. The Plan isn’t working. He has to go further.

I am vomiting, he types.

I am very unwell. I probably won’t be able to come to the café tomorrow.

Or Thursday.

shit dude im so sorry!!

need anything?

i can come over

I don’t need anything, Dean, thank you. I’m fine on my own.

And he can be, he tells himself. He will be. He is.

Chapter Text

The problem is, Dean turns out to be a difficult person to deceive.

Cas was intending to spend two days in his room, working on the book and not worrying about Dean Winchester. But on Wednesday morning he wakes up to three messages from Dean.

how are u feeling

do u like soup

im really good at making soup

I hate soup, writes Cas. It’s true. The texture has always distressed him. But he also does not want Dean to turn up at his door with soup. Would he do that? Surely not. But if he wouldn’t, why ask about it?

seriously??? wow ure a bigger freak than i imagined cas

Thank you, Dean, I appreciate hearing that.

u know im joking

anyway takes 1 to know 1

seriously tho how are you feeling

I am fine, Dean. Please don’t worry.

Cas considers, and then writes, Although I did just vomit again. I think it may be infectious. Best to scare Dean away a little.

shit dude!! seriously do u need anything? i can come over

hold your hair while u puke

got nothing else to do

My hair is very short, Dean, writes Cas, frustrated. Now I am going back to sleep, please do not come over.

Then he pauses, and sighs, and writes, Thank you for your concern.

Dean doesn’t come over, thank goodness. But he does keep checking in throughout the day. He sends jokes and videos and frankly horrifying memes that somehow make Cas laugh every time, and by the evening Cas has realized something. The Plan has to go. It doesn’t work. It was set up for people Cas barely knows, people who usually haven’t even noticed Cas exists. Not for a friend. Not for Dean.

Dean, for some reason, really appears to care about Cas. He worries when Cas is sick. He wants to bring him soup (disgusting, but a nice idea). Not calling him, or messaging him, or looking at him, isn’t an option.

And because Cas can’t burn this crush out with the Plan, he’s going to have to do something much, much worse: he’s going to have to live with it. He’s going to just have to white-knuckle it through the times Dean pats his hand or slings an arm around his shoulder or falls asleep on him on the couch. He’ll simply smile when Dean tries to set him up with some girl, and when the worst happens and Dean gets into a relationship (with Benny, with Lisa, with – oh, fuck, please no – maybe even with Crowley), Cas will clap him on the shoulder and tell him how great they are together. Hey, maybe Cas will find a girl too. They can go on double dates together. Surely it’ll stop hurting at some point? He’ll forget all about it, eventually. It’ll be a neatly healed scar, something that only aches a little when there’s a thunderstorm.

It'll be fine.

So he goes back to the café on Thursday, and sits opposite Dean, and looks at his lips and his hands and his shoulders and his neck and doesn’t try to fight it. He just lets it exist. It’s there. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.

He finishes the Johnny Chekov plot. Johnny’s wife and daughter get kidnapped by demons, and Mark, Neal and Johnny rush to save them. But in the chaos, Johnny’s hurt, fatally wounded. With his last gasp, he calls on Bel to return to his body and use it as a vessel. And that’s the end of Johnny, the end of his white-picket-fence dream. He’s left his family forever – they’ll have to fend for themselves from now on. Cas feels bad, but also – well. He’s realized that dream could never have worked out. Johnny was fine, but Bel’s the character everyone wants to see.

Neal rushes up to Bel once he’s back in Johnny’s body. He’s overwhelmed and overjoyed to see him safe and healthy. But Bel steps backwards, glaring furiously at him. Neal asks what’s wrong, and Bel says – he says something that shows that the special relationship they’ve had is over now. He was on his way to falling, but now he’s rethinking his relationship with his masters in Heaven. Neal isn’t allowed to matter to Bel more than the other angels do, and he needs to say that. With a line that’s something like –

“I serve heaven, I don’t serve man, and I certainly don’t serve you.”

Oh, shit. That’s good. He glances up and sees Dean staring at him.

“Good line?” asks Dean, with a grin.

“No,” says Cas, automatically. “Maybe. Yes. How did you know?”

“Your face,” says Dean. “Your eyebrows do this thing – eh, ignore me. Sorry.”

Cas kicks Dean under the table, and Dean, with a startled look on his face, kicks back. Cas’s heart lifts. Maybe there’s hope, just a little. Maybe he can make this okay.

Which is still how he’s feeling when Friday rolls around, and with it Dean’s stand-up debut.

*

Dean’s a ball of nervous energy all day. Cas wakes up to a string of messages that barely make sense, and things devolve from there. Dean comes to the café early, drinks three cups of coffee and starts folding up pieces of paper from his notebook into airplanes and throwing them at Cas. Cas sends him for three runs around the block (purely to tire him out, not because of the way Dean always returns panting and glistening) before he gives up and tells him to go back to his apartment to take a shower. Then he spends an hour pretending to work, to give Dean time to shower and get dressed again (because he might have given up the Plan, but it still doesn’t seem like a good idea to walk in on Dean showering – don’t think about Dean showering), closes his laptop and heads to Dean and Charlie’s.

Dean comes to the door, hair still wet and practically writhing with anxiety. He’s wearing his Kiss the Chef apron (Cas doesn’t kiss him, or even hug him, because again there are limits), and the whole apartment smells delicious. Dean smells delicious, he thinks, and then tells himself off – but he does. Cas can smell that sweet shampoo from where he’s standing.

They go through into the kitchen, and Cas hangs out next to the fridge, drinking a beer and watching Dean work. He’s making an incredibly intricate Mexican menu – each dish has about seven processes, and Dean explains each one to Cas and gives him spoonfuls of sauce to taste and dances to the music coming out of the kitchen speakers and doesn’t say a single word about tonight, except when Cas asks who’s coming.

“Charlie,” says Dean, hopping from foot to foot as he stirs a pan. “You. Me. Kevin.”

“Dean, we are not going to be able to eat all of this.”

“Yeah, well, so what? I don’t want you guys to get hungry. Shit, how are you feeling? I forgot.”

He looks genuinely mortified, and Cas feels genuinely mortified, because obviously he wasn’t ever feeling sick at all.

“Fine,” he mutters, and takes another swig of his beer. “Don’t worry about me, Dean.”

Charlie comes out from her room and grabs a beer too, and everything feels almost normal until, just after five, the buzzer rings.

Charlie runs to answer it. “Hey, Kevin, come up,” she says into it, and presses the button. A minute later, there’s a knock on the door.

“It’s on the latch!” yells Dean, opening the oven with a burst of smoke that makes Cas cough – but the person who steps into the living room isn’t Kevin.

He’s a tall white guy with big shoulders and long floppy hair, carrying a duffel bag. Charlie, who’s ducked into her bedroom to grab something, stops short on her way out again and stares at him.

“Uh,” she says in a small voice. “What the fuck? Dean!”

Dean comes out of the kitchen, a spoon in one hand and his beer in the other. “What?” he asks. Then he clocks the tall guy, and he freezes. “What the FUCK,” he says. “Sammy? What the FUCK?!”

“Uh, hey Dean,” says the tall guy. Sammy. Wait – Cas knows that name. Sammy’s Dean’s brother.

“You didn’t say Sammy was going to be here!” says Cas to Dean.

“I didn’t know he was,” says Dean through gritted teeth. “Sam, what are you doing here?”

“Um,” says Sam, and he rubs at the back of his neck the way Dean does when he’s embarrassed. Cas has been staring at him, trying to catch the family resemblance, and this is the first echo he’s found. “Surprise? I knew it was your big night, and I wanted to come support you. I’m so proud of you, man.”

Dean has gone completely rigid, like he’s glued to the spot. Cas doesn’t even have to look at him to know that he’s panicking. What is going on?

“Hey Dean,” says Charlie loudly. “Can you come help me with the beans?”

Cas knows perfectly well that this is a ruse to get Dean out of the living room. Charlie is not the one cooking, and Dean finished the beans twenty minutes ago. Nevertheless, Charlie and Dean go into the kitchen, and Cas can hear them yelling at each other in low voices. Whatever’s happening here is not good.

He’s left alone with Sam. They stare at each other. Cas thinks that Sam is not as attractive as Dean, objectively. But this is Dean’s brother, and he should be nice to him. (And he should not be thinking about Dean’s attractiveness anyway). He can see that Sam’s duffel bag is full of books. Perhaps they have some interests in common?

“Hello,” he says, because Sam has not yet said anything, and someone has to. “I’m Castiel.”

Sam’s eyes light up. “Oh my god!” he says. “You’re Cas! I’ve heard so much about you. I’m – sorry, I’m Sam. It’s so great to meet you! Y’know, Dean doesn’t usually let me meet his boyfriends, so I guess there are some advantages to turning up like this – I seriously thought he’d be pleased to see me. Isn’t he pleased?”

If Cas really was recovering from being unwell on Wednesday, he would probably just vomit on Sam’s shoes right now. As it is, his whole body feels like it’s trying to turn itself inside out. He can hear a roaring in his ears.

“Dean is not my boyfriend,” he says stonily. “We’re just friends.”

Sam gapes at him. “What? But he – he’s always talking – oh, shit. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean – I mean, I totally know that male friendship is valuable in and of itself, and, uh, platonic relationships are so important, especially in the modern world. It’s really great that Dean and you are. Uh. It’s great that he’s found a friend.”

His whole face has turned red.

Charlie comes back out of the kitchen. “Oh, Sam,” she says, glancing from Sam to Cas and back again. “You didn’t.”

“Shut up, Charlie,” says Sam, not looking at her. “Shut up. Is Dean okay?”

“You tell me,” says Charlie. “You’ve gotta call ahead, dude! You know how sensitive he is about this. But – hey, it’s good to see you. How’re you doing?”

And they start talking about things and people Cas has no idea about. He heads back into the kitchen to check on Dean.

Dean’s staring down into the pan he’s stirring. The steam’s wreathing around his face, and it must be hot, but he doesn’t move. Cas comes up behind him and stands, waiting for him to turn around. Dean says something Cas can’t catch.

“What?” asks Cas.

“Can’t do it,” says Dean, louder. “Cas. I fucked up. I can’t do it.”

“Is this about Sam?” asks Cas.

“He wasn’t supposed to be here! I shouldn’t have told him – didn’t think he’d – Cas, I can’t do it.”

Cas puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder. It feels daring, but he does it anyway. He stares at his knuckles, tensed over the loud check of Dean’s plaid shirt.

“You can,” he says quietly. “I know you can.”

Dean turns his head into Cas’s hand, so his cheek’s pressed against Cas’s fingertips. “Thanks, man,” he says.

Then Sam comes into the kitchen and they break apart hurriedly. Dean starts trying to find Sam a beer, and asking if he’s been eating enough and about how his girlfriend is and if she’s still with him and why, when his hair looks like that. Cas has never seen Dean in big brother mode before and he’s both amused and charmed.

Kevin turns up (and Charlie must have messaged him to say that Sam was there, because he’s almost too calm about it), and they eat, and it turns out Dean can cook. Like, really cook. The burgers were just the start. They keep drinking, too – they’re all pleasantly buzzed when Charlie shoos them all out of the apartment to head for the bar the stand-up night’s being held in. They take a bus, and Dean’s jittering so much that Cas practically has to hold him down in his seat. He’s really given up on the no touching thing by now – and anyway, it doesn’t seem to matter as much after four beers.

When they get to the bar, they grab a table, and Charlie goes to get drinks while Dean checks on where he is in the line-up. It’s not too packed, yet – and it’s a small place, dingy and sticky, not exactly an impressive venue – but Cas can tell, from the way Dean’s head keeps turning to look around the room, that he’s terrified.

“I’m fourth,” he tells them all, when he comes to sit back down, and then he necks two shots in a row. “Hey!” says Sam. “That one was mine!”

“You snooze, you lose, Sammy,” says Dean, smirking at him, but under the table his knee is bouncing non-stop and his fist is clenched. Cas puts out his hand and rests it on Dean’s leg, pressing down until Dean stills. He can feel Dean taking a deep breath, and then Dean’s hand comes to rest next to Cas’s, their little fingers just brushing together. They stay sitting like that, and Dean rallies, wisecracking and laughing and teasing Charlie and Sam and Kevin.

Cas looks up once and Charlie is watching him, her mouth flat and her eyes appraising. He looks away uncomfortably. Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s going on. Dean slides his thumb over the back of Cas’s hand, and Cas takes a deep swig of his latest beer. How many beers has he had by now? Don’t think about that.

Then the acts start. The first guy’s too nervous to make much of an impression, and the second guy’s just bad – painfully, embarrassingly bad, Cas remembers that he kinda hates stand-up – but the third act, a girl, is great. Funny, self-deprecating and very clever. Cas can feel Dean tensing up next to him, feel him winding up to running out, so he presses down harder on Dean’s leg. “Breathe,” he says quietly. “Keep breathing.”

“Fuck you,” says Dean, clinging to his hand, but he breathes. And then the MC’s calling his name. He stands up, and Sam claps him on the back, and he gives Cas one last desperate long-lashed backwards look like he’s heading off to the gallows. Then he’s walking onto the stage.

He starts off bad. Someone whoops, and it throws him off the rhythm of that first sentence, and then Cas can see him forgetting the line. He catches Dean’s eye, and mouths when I was ten. Dean grips the mic and breathes out. “When I was ten,” he tells Cas. “My dad told me that if I, uh, if I turned out – gay – that he’d shoot me himself. Good news is, I’m alive, and that’s because my dad is too fucking bigoted to understand what bisexuality is.”

Someone boos, but someone else laughs, and Dean stands up a little straighter, keeps looking at Cas, and goes on talking. It’s not great, not as good as Cas knows he can do. He’s hesitant, thrown off by being on stage – he lets some jokes slide past the audience because he doesn’t pause for long enough, and he misses some lines entirely. But it’s a start. When his five minutes are up, there’s applause, and Dean beams and rushes off stage. Charlie and Kevin both leap up and tackle him, whooping and cheering, and Sam grabs him in a bone-crushing hug.

Cas isn’t sure what to do. He gets up too. “Well done,” he says stiffly.

“Come here, you dumbass,” says Dean, opening his arms, and he pulls Cas into a tight hug. “Couldn’t have done it without you,” he says roughly into Cas’s ear. Cas’s mouth is pressed against Dean’s shoulder and he breathes in the smell of Dean’s skin and reminds himself that this means nothing and it is nothing and he’s in for years more of this precise flavor of agony. Great.

Kevin goes to get the next round of drinks, and the mood at the table changes. Everyone’s surfing Dean’s high, relaxed and triumphant and (although no one’s saying it) deeply relieved. They drink, and drink, and everything gets funnier and the lights get brighter and the noises get louder and Cas lets go. He leans against Dean and Dean puts his arm around him, and that’s fine. They get into a cab back to Charlie and Dean’s, and there’s not enough room so Dean sits in Cas’s lap, and that’s fine, it’s perfect, it’s so overwhelming Cas is almost choking on it.

They get back to the apartment, and Dean turns the lights down low, and Charlie puts on a playlist full of songs Cas has never heard of (Dean complains that it’s lesbian music, and Charlie says, “Shut up! You love it!” and Dean says, “Yeah I do,” and kisses her on the forehead), and they all sit around and talk. Cas is parked at one end of the couch, with Sam at the other and Dean in between them. Dean’s propped up against Cas’s shoulder, and he and Sam are having a really intense conversation about their dad that’s almost an argument, even though it’s very quiet. Cas closes his eyes and tries not to fall asleep.

He thinks he’s managed it, but then Kevin says, “I should go,” and he jerks awake. Dean reaches back and pats his knee, and then leaves his hand there.

“Yeah, I’m gonna go to bed too,” says Charlie. “Sam, you staying?”

“He’s taking my room,” says Dean. “Cas can sleep on the couch, I’ll take the floor.”

“No, no, I’ll go home,” says Cas, because that seems like the right thing to do. He doesn’t like the thought of Dean having to sleep on the floor. He doesn’t move.

Kevin leaves, and Charlie kisses Dean’s cheek and ruffles Sam’s hair and puts a hand on Cas’s shoulder and goes into her room. Sam gets up too, and then it’s just Dean and Cas on the couch. They lie there, slumped against each other, and Cas listens with his eyes shut to the noises of Charlie and Sam moving in and out of the bathroom, the rush of water as they brush their teeth, the flush of the toilet, and then the slam of two doors.

“I should go,” says Cas again, opening his eyes. The living room’s gently lit by a small lamp on the side table, and the music’s still dimly playing, some soft, looping song. He’s comfortable and warm, and Dean’s next to him, his head on Cas’s shoulder just the way it was the night they watched Star Wars. It’s perfect. So he has to leave.

“Hey, don’t go,” says Dean. He flings an arm around Cas. “Stay.”

“You shouldn’t sleep on the floor,” says Cas, batting Dean away. “It’s not fair. I’ll go.”

“’s plenty of room on the couch,” says Dean. “’s a fold-out bed. Look! Get up, get up, I’ll show you.”

Cas stands up (the room sways, and he begins to seriously doubt his ability to find his way home) while Dean scrabbles around in the depths of the couch, says “SEE!” and pulls on something that makes the couch groan and extend sideways. It actually is – huh! – a fold-out bed.

“But,” says Cas, squinting at it. “You can’t sleep on the floor. So I’ll go.”

“Cas,” says Dean. “This bed is huge. Look at it. Huge. You can sleep in it and I can sleep in it. ’s fine. Get the stick out of your butt. ’s fine.”

The bed is a small double. Dean is, as usual, exaggerating.

Dean flops down on it and stretches out. “Look,” he says, waving his arms and kicking his legs. “So much space. It’s fine, Cas, promise. Come try it.”

Cas is not going to do that. He’s not so drunk he can’t sense the danger of what’s going on here. He leans forward to tell Dean that he’s being ridiculous, that he’s going to leave, that he’ll see him on Monday. And right as he’s doing that Dean reaches up, hooks his arm around Cas’s shoulders and drags him down onto the bed.

Cas ends up sprawled sideways with his body across the mattress and his feet on the floor. Dean’s arm is still tight around Cas’s neck, pulling him in, their faces very close. They both breathe in together.

And then they’re kissing.

Cas can’t remember who started it, his memory just kind of skips. Or maybe there is no in between. Maybe it’s like the way ice becomes air sometimes, without stopping at water – they aren’t kissing, and then they are, one state to another.

So he’s kissing Dean. Dean’s kissing him. They’re kissing. And not just kissing, either. Cas thinks of kissing as something polite, closed-mouthed, upright and outdoors. This is making out. His whole universe has narrowed to the slick slide of Dean’s tongue against his, Dean’s fingers in his hair, his hands clutching Dean’s shoulders. Dean tastes of beer, and somehow also of himself, exactly the way Cas thought he’d taste, and his mouth is warm and wet, and he bites down on Cas’s lower lip. Cas is overwhelmed by it. He can feel himself shaking. He wraps his legs around Dean’s and pulls Dean close. He wants – he wants to – he wants to get rid of all the space between them, then maybe that’ll be enough.

He can feel a line of tiny sharp circles digging into his chest, and he can’t work out what they could be until Dean moves his hands down between them and very gently begins unbuttoning his shirt. He doesn’t stop kissing Cas, which is good. He wasn’t anticipating the way Dean’s fingers would feel on his bare skin though, like a shock, like a burst of light. Dean pushes open his shirt and slides his fingers across Cas’s lower back, and Cas gasps against Dean’s mouth. His head is spinning. He is very, very drunk, and half hard, and so is Dean, he can feel it, and this is all too much.

“Hey,” says Dean softly. “Hey.”

He puts his hand on Cas’s cheek, and Cas turns his face into it, kissing the inside of his palm.

When they kiss again it’s slower, softer, safer. Cas’s head is pillowed on Dean’s arm, and he breathes into Dean’s mouth, eyes closed, drifting. He leans forward and kisses Dean one last time.

“Dean,” he says, and then he falls asleep before he can work out what he meant.

Chapter Text

When Cas wakes up, it’s light outside, and Dean Winchester is next to him in bed.

They’re still facing each other, lying astonishingly close. Cas can see all the freckles on Dean’s nose, the sweep of his lashes against his cheeks. His mouth is smooshed against the fabric of the couch, his lips parted plumply. He’s drooled a little in his sleep, there’s a wet patch beneath his mouth, and somehow he still looks beautiful.

And right then, last night comes crashing into Cas’s head all at once.

Dean’s tongue was in his mouth. His tongue was in Dean’s. That saliva is probably partially his.

They made out, and then he – he – oh no. He spent the whole night throwing himself at Dean (because he was, he can admit that now, he was trying to seduce Dean all evening), and then he kissed Dean, and then when it all came down to it he couldn’t go through with it. He’s spent so much time convincing himself that he has some kind of huge crush on Dean, but at the very first physical test of that theory he’s already failed. It was not at all like the fanfiction promised it would be. He freaked out, and behaved like a prude, and rejected Dean’s advances. Last night was probably his one chance to have stuff happen and he couldn’t go through with it.

So is that proof? Not that he’s been searching for proof, but maybe he has. It’s been unnerving, having all those thoughts in his head. They haven’t felt enormously straight, but he is straight, so what gives? But now he has the answer. He is straight, and he isn’t even the slightest bit gay, because if he was, last night would have ended differently.

He has to get out of here, now. Dean can’t wake up and see him. What if he’s mad? What if he’s disappointed? What if it’s weird, and they can’t look at each other, and Dean says that it’s probably best if they don’t hang out any more?

He moves backwards on the bed, slowly, until his knees find the edge of the mattress and he can swing himself down onto the floor. Kneeling, he buttons up his shirt (he remembers Dean’s fingers sliding down his chest, unbuttoning him, and blushes), and then he stands up carefully.

Dean sighs, and flaps a hand, but he doesn’t wake. Cas tiptoes to the door of the apartment and lets himself out. It’s only then that he notices how much his head is aching. He feels heavy, painful, dark and awful. He’s ruined it, broken it, for ever. If he’d just – if he hadn’t – the problem is he can’t even think, his brain is pounding, the sky outside is so blue it’s stripping his eyeballs. He puts a hand up to his temple and groans.

“Bad night?” asks a guy walking by, and Cas gives him a glare so ferocious that he steps backward.

He catches sight of himself in a store window, pale and hollow and dirty. You’re a disgrace, he thinks, in his father’s voice. And there’s no coming back from this one, either. He could crawl on his knees from here all the way home and it wouldn’t erase what he’s done. He’s fucked everything up, just because he thought he had some stupid crush, but obviously he didn’t, because if he did he’d have –

he'd have –

His phone buzzes, and he looks down at it.

It’s Dean.

hey

Cas waits for the blow to fall, for him to be cast out for ever.

whered u go?

was gonna make u breakfast

He stops still, and someone walks into the back of him. Does Dean not remember what happened? He was very drunk, after all.

I had to go home, he writes.

Feeling unwell again.

yeah man thats called a hangover

dumbass

thank u for last night tho

seriously

meant a lot

So Dean doesn’t remember. He’s clearly talking about the stand-up night. It’s fine.

Then the three dots appear again. Dean’s typing. Cas doesn’t breathe.

also

What, Dean?

Cas’s elbows are sweating. He feels dizzy.

im not saying it

but u know

fun

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT, DEAN, Cas types, and then deletes it.

IT WASN’T

I DIDN’T

IT ACTUALLY

Fuck, what is he even trying to say? He types three more messages, and deletes every one.

calm down jeeze

we dont have to mention it cas

thats cool

Cas shoves his phone back in his pocket and walks home as fast as he can, his brain bouncing horribly every step of the way. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. Dean remembers. Dean remembers, and Dean is still talking to him, and Dean thought it was

fun.

And there’s a question worming its way through Cas’s head. He ignores it, but it won’t go away. It just gets bigger and bigger until he can see it glowing behind his eyes every time he closes them.

Had it been as disastrous, in the moment, as he’d remembered when he woke up? Had it been unpleasant? Had he really pulled away from Dean because he hadn’t been enjoying it, or was it because of something else entirely?

Had he thought it was fun too?

*

When he gets home, Cas drinks all of Meg’s orange juice out of spite, and then he goes into his room, shuts the door, turns off his phone and lies on his bed. The next chapter of book 8 floats into his head. It’s the culmination of Mark’s blood drinking plot, where Neal and their uncle Robbie lock Mark in Robbie’s demon containment chamber to get him to detox off the stuff.

That’s what he’s doing today. A detox. A Dean detox.

The whole addiction metaphor has mostly passed Cas by so far, at an emotional level. It’s not something that really resonates with him. He’s tried drugs a couple times because he thought he should, but he didn’t much care for them, and he doesn’t tend to drink that much when he’s not around Dean. But being addicted to a person – suddenly, he gets that.

He has a sudden flash of memory, Dean’s fingers brushing across his skin, Dean’s teeth on his bottom lip, and he writhes on his sheet.

He closes his eyes. His head aches so much that his whole body is throbbing in sympathy. He needs to sleep again, but he can’t. He has to stop thinking about Dean. Think about anything that isn’t Dean.

Okay.

Mark’s on the bed in the containment chamber, devil’s traps all around him. He’s sweating, heart pounding, feeling the demon blood leaving his body. It hurts like fire under his skin.

Someone’s with him in the room – Armand, the demon who tortured Neal in Hell. He leans down and whispers hideous threats into Mark’s ears. Then he pulls out his torture devices and begins to dig into Mark’s body while Mark screams in agony.

Cas stops himself. This feels a little too unpleasant for his current state. Maybe not Armand. He rolls over on his side, and changes the scene.

Someone’s with him in the room – a small and determined presence, someone who doesn’t take up much space. Mark opens his eyes to see that it’s a child, a little boy. He knows this kid. It’s – hey, it’s him as a kid.

“What did you do?” asks baby Mark, a resentful look on his face. “Why did you do this to us? We were almost out.”

“I had to,” whispers Mark to his child self. “You know I had to. It’s the only way to stop the apocalypse.”

Baby Mark frowns. “But we coulda been normal,” he says. “I thought we were gonna be normal. We were supposed to be normal, but you had to go and mess it up, Cas. You had to go be a – freak.”

Cas turns away from him, ashamed. It hurts too much to look at his own innocent little face. But on the other side of the bed’s his father, glaring down like Cas’s disappointed him.

“You know you can’t get away from me,” he tells Cas. “I’ll always be here. And I’ll always know what you are. You’re a monster, Castiel. You’re beyond saving.”

“I’m not,” mutters Cas. He’s struggling to speak. His head feels heavy, and his throat is sore. If he could just move – “I’m not. I’m just not the person you wanted me to be.”

“Look at your soul, Castiel,” says his father, holding up something in the palm of his hand. It’s a black oozing lump, hideous and squat. “Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve become.”

“That’s not me,” says Cas frantically. “It’s not. Leave me alone. Please!”

Then he flings his hand out to push his father away, so hard that he wakes himself up.

Cas opens his eyes. He’s in his bed, in his room, alone. There’s no devil’s trap above him, no father or young self beside him. None of it was real.

His cheeks are wet.

He falls back asleep, but this time he doesn’t dream.

*

He dozes on and off throughout the day, unable to write, or think, or do much of anything. He doesn’t turn his phone back on. But on Sunday morning he wakes up feeling almost human again. He writes up those Mark scenes that he hallucinated the day before (art was imitating life a little too closely there, he feels uncomfortable remembering it, but no one else is gonna know how he came up with the feelings Mark is having). He turns his dad into Mark’s mom, just to be safe, and adds in a vengeful Neal to be the one to call Mark a monster.

Then, heart pounding in his chest, he sends Dean a message.

Hello Dean. I am feeling better.

It only took him half an hour to come up with that wording. It seems terse, but everything else looked like he was trying too hard.

thought youd died man, writes Dean, almost immediately.

glad you havent

want me to bring over something that isnt soup?

Dean wants to come over. Dean wants to come see him. If he says yes, Dean might come to his apartment. Okay, he should not keep using the word come and Dean in the same sentence.

Cas pauses, his fingers hovering over his phone. Suddenly everything he wants to say in reply seems like a flirtation. That’s bad, right? He should not be flirting with Dean after what happened on Friday.

Wait. Is Dean flirting with him by inviting himself over? What is flirting, anyway? How do you know when it’s happening? Obviously Cas understands it conceptually – it’s when you do things to indicate to the other person that you would like to have sex – but the actual mechanics of it have always been mysterious to him. He’s not very good with witty one-liners, and even worse with body language cues.

Does he want to flirt with Dean?

This is truly a lightning-bolt of a question. No. No! Surely not.

But. If Friday night was less of a bust than he’d thought. If Dean actually did find it – fun. Then maybe Dean is flirting. And maybe. Maybe he could attempt to flirt back.

But is it fair, to ask Dean to participate in this experiment? Cas is not gay, and Dean is (or rather, he’s bi), so it feels … what’s the word? Like a trick, maybe. Like this is all under false pretenses. Cas is pretending that he might actually be interested, when obviously he’s not. He just has a crush, and he wants to see how far it goes. To do what Meg suggested, and flush it out of his system. Ultimately, he’s not actually looking for anything … real.

Although, why is he assuming that Dean is either? Cas knows he sleeps around. He knows he’s slept with Benny, and Crowley, and probably a lot of other people too. He’s never talked about wanting to be in a relationship. (Why the hell is Cas thinking about relationships right now?) So maybe he won’t care. Maybe this is normal, for Dean. Just a casual hook-up or two, between friends. It won’t necessarily change things between them. They can go back to just hanging out, afterwards.

Probably.

Definitely.

He takes a deep breath.

I am busy today, he writes.

See you tomorrow?

This feels very daring.

sure cas

hey wanna come over after work? charlie and I are gonna watch thelma & louise

Cas ponders this. Is this a flirtation? Probably not. Dean is indicating that Charlie will also be there, so they won’t be alone. Shit, has he missed the window here? Should he have responded more positively to Dean’s messages on Saturday? (Should he have responded at all?) Also, Thelma and Louise does not sound like a romantic movie. But he’s got to try.

Thank you, he types. I would like that.

Dean sends back

😊

Cas realizes he’s grinning.

*

Cas often feels as though he’s not quite sure how to be a human being, but he has never felt it as strongly as he does on Monday morning. He showers and gets dressed, putting on a clean t-shirt instead of one of his button-downs (there is absolutely no reason why he’s doing this), and then he heads to the café. He sits down in his usual seat (is he sitting normally? How does he hold his hands? Is it weirder to be working or not working when Dean comes in?) and then remembers he hasn’t got his coffee and stands up too fast and almost knocks over his laptop and can’t find his phone to pay and he’s sweating, he’s not going to be able to do this, why did he think he could do this?

“You okay?” asks the barista.

Cas blinks at her, and she smiles at him and pats his hand.

“I just wanna say,” she says. Cas’s stomach clenches. If she says what he thinks she’s going to say – what everyone seems to say – he’s going to walk out of the café and never come back.

But – “You two are my favorite customers,” she goes on. “You’re really great for each other.”

Oh, that’s somehow worse. Because he’s not great for Dean, is he? Is he?

“Hey,” says Dean, and Cas drops his coffee. It splashes all over the counter, and over the barista’s apron, and over his arms. Good thing he wasn’t wearing that button-down.

The barista yelps and leaps backward, and Dean says, “You okay, Anna?” He’s grabbed a wad of napkins and is blotting up the mess while Cas just stands there, unable to do anything. He thought he’d have time to prepare before he saw Dean. He thought he could get ready. But now he’s here.

Dean finishes cleaning up the mess, and Anna ducks into the back to get a new apron. The other barista, Ruby, makes Cas a new coffee – Cas is so embarrassed that he drops a huge tip into the jar – and then there’s nothing to do but sit down opposite Dean. He can still smell the coffee sticking to his skin. It makes him feel faintly sick.

“Hey, dude,” says Dean, nodding and folding his arms across his chest.

“Hello,” says Cas. He can’t think of a single thing to say. He keeps staring at Dean’s mouth, and catching himself staring, and looking away. Dean scratches at his neck uncomfortably and taps his fingers on the table.

“I’m going to start writing,” Cas says, at last. Why did that take so long to occur to him?

“Great idea,” says Dean, his voice rumbling in his chest. “Fantastic. Me too. Yeah.”

Is it possible that Dean is also nervous? Cas wonders. No, surely not.

He turns back to the manuscript. Robbie and Neal are asleep at last, and Mark is alone down in the containment chamber – until Bel turns up. He pops the locks of the room with a contemptuous flick of his fingers and Mark comes staggering out. And, of course, he does exactly what Neal and Robbie wanted to stop him doing: he runs to find Violet and her demon blood. When Neal wakes up, hours later, and tears the place apart, it’s too late. The detox is over, and Mark is back to his wicked ways. Mark and Violet meet in an old motel, and the moment the door to their room slams shut they’re on each other. They –

Cas swallows. This is Dean’s territory. Yeah, he wrote the outline of that Doctor Clara/Mark scene, but he still knows that the truly horny stuff needs Dean, and this, the last Mark/Violet scene, has to be seriously horny. But asking Dean, today – he just can’t do it.

So he’ll try to sketch it out himself. Except that when he tries to imagine Mark and Violet, hands on each other’s bodies, tongues in each other’s mouths, he just remembers Dean, and how he felt under Cas’s hands, and – shit, do not get a hard-on in the middle of a café like a teenager, Cas, come on!

Okay. No sex scene. But then what’s he supposed to do? Dean is still writing industriously, brow furrowed, eyes unfocused. Cas should be writing too. He stares at Dean’s lips. He’s going to Dean’s apartment tonight. Is something going to happen? Does he want something to happen? Does Dean want something to happen?

He should write.

He can’t write.

It turns out that this laptop has Solitaire on it. Cas plays fifty-three games of Solitaire in a row. He is very good at Solitaire now. He could probably win the Solitaire world championships.

“Hey,” says Dean. Cas closes his fifty-fourth game of Solitaire and tries to look like someone who’s been writing. “Wanna get out of here?”

“Yes,” says Cas, way too fast.

Dean grins at him, and then clears his throat and frowns and says, “Cool.”

They head out of the café and back to Dean’s apartment together, and they don’t touch once, not even by mistake.

*

Charlie’s at the apartment when they get there, which is a relief. (It is a relief). She and Dean start talking about some shitty company she’s doing freelance work for, SucraCorp – Cas gets the feeling that Charlie’s complained about them before, because Dean seems to know a lot about these guys.

“Good news is, though,” says Charlie, with a grin, “the latest mix-up they’ve been having? It’s really weird. Their bank account somehow got linked to all the local food delivery apps. It took me half an hour to unlink it, and in that time everyone in the city who ordered got free deliveries. Super weird, right?”

“Charlie,” says Dean. “You didn’t.”

“Moi?” asks Charlie, making a face, as the buzzer rings. “Never. At least, I’m never gonna admit to it. Oh, hey, that’s our supper.”

Then she winks at them both.

She’s ordered from the Thai place Cas never goes to because it’s too expensive. Dean whoops. “I forgive you for being a bad person,” he says to Charlie.

“Please! I’m Robin Hood, Dean. I’m looking out for the little guys.”

They sit down to eat, and then Charlie says, “Sam’s coming over too, hope you don’t mind.” Dean coughs on his spring roll, and Charlie says, “Gotcha! It’s just us.”

“Charlie!” howls Dean, and he throws the bag of prawn crackers at her. Cas relaxes, watching them both. It’s all so normal, so safe. Nothing’s gonna happen tonight. There’s no way, not with Charlie around.

They have a couple beers with dinner, enough to loosen Cas up, and then Dean pops a batch of popcorn and they sit down for the movie.

Dean’s expecting another fun, cheesy romp, but he realizes pretty fast that this is not what’s going on. Thelma and Louise are having a night at a bar, and Thelma’s dancing with some guy – Cas tends to forgive her for that, considering the husband she has. Except then the guy takes Thelma out to the parking lot and tries to assault her. And Louise, to save her, shoots him dead.

Cas turns a horrified look on Dean.

“Yeah,” says Dean. “I know. It’s rough. Stick with it, though.”

“Dean. You did tell him what this movie’s about, right?” asks Charlie.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Dean, who has done nothing of the kind. What the heck are they watching?

But things do pick up from there. Thelma and Louise go on the run across country, ducking the cops and picking up a hot drifter, who – oh, come on, sleeps with Thelma and then steals all her money. Cas is indignant. Can’t these two catch a break?

Cas and Dean are sitting at two opposite ends of the couch, the popcorn bowl between them. Cas is very careful not to look at Dean. He keeps his eyes on the movie and reaches out for the popcorn by touch. The third time he does that, though, his fingers bump against Dean’s in the bowl. He freezes, and Dean puts some popcorn into his hand and gives his palm an affectionate flick. The fourth time he puts his hand into the bowl, Dean brushes his fingers over Cas’s knuckles. The fifth time, Cas closes his thumb over Dean’s.

Cas tries to concentrate on the movie. He thinks that he maybe knows where Dean got some of the background for that Neal/Agent Rickard roadtrip fic from now. Some of these settings seem awfully familiar. Dean strokes the inside of Cas’s wrist, and Cas clutches the arm of the couch like it’s the only thing saving him from drowning.

Right around the time Thelma and Louise, with a cop locked in the trunk of their car, are shooting at some asshole’s fuel tank, Charlie’s phone pings.

“Hey,” she says, looking up at them. Dean drops Cas’s hand and tosses a fistful of popcorn into his mouth. “What?” he asks. Cas crosses his legs and hopes he looks normal.

“Gilda’s around tonight. Wants me to go out for a drink.”

“What’d you say?” asks Dean, pausing the movie. Louise has her gun raised, and Thelma’s laughing.

“I said yeah, obviously,” says Charlie. “It’s Gilda.”

“Aw, Charlie!”

“What? I’ve seen this movie before. Plus you’ve got your whole Bert and Ernie thing going on here, and I don’t wanna mess up the vibe.”

“Charlie!”

Cas can work out from context clues that she’s said something outrageous. Dean’s voice is shrill, and he’s puffed himself up the way he does when he’s trying not to seem rattled.

“You’ll be fine,” says Charlie. “I’ll be gone all night. Love you.”

She grabs her jacket and her keys, shoves her phone into her pocket and she’s gone.

They’re alone.

They’re alone.

They don’t look at each other.

“Who are Bert and Ernie?” asks Cas, after a while.

“Fuck, Cas! They’re – uh, they’re puppets. Hey, I’m gonna make some more popcorn. Want another beer?”

Cas nods, and Dean leaps up out of his seat and goes into the kitchen. He has the feeling that he’s only been told half the Bert and Ernie reference. As fast as he can, he googles it on his phone. Huh. They are puppets, an orange one and a yellow one. They’re just puppets for children, and –

oh.

The most commonly asked question about Bert and Ernie is ‘Are Bert and Ernie in a relationship?’

Oh.

But surely Charlie didn’t mean to imply that –

Dean comes back into the living room, beer and popcorn in his hands. He passes Cas a beer and sits down next to him, bowl of popcorn on his lap.

Sits down next to him.

There’s no space between them now. Dean’s thrown the couch blanket across them both, and under it their knees are pressed together and their hips are bumping. Cas can smell Dean’s shampoo, can feel the bare skin of Dean’s arm against his. He’s panicking. He can’t do this. This was a bad idea.

Dean presses play on the movie, and Cas tries to focus on Thelma and Louise. They make their way to the Grand Canyon, where they’re caught by a helicopter and cornered by police. But they’ll get out, right? They’re the good guys. The good guys, in Cas’s limited movie experience, always win.

Thelma and Louise stare at each other, the camera close on their faces. “Let’s keep going,” says Thelma. “You sure?” asks Louise. Thelma nods, and they – whoa, what? They kiss, Louise’s hands cupping Thelma’s face. Wait, has Cas missed something here? Was that what they were to each other, all along? He can’t stop himself – he glances at Dean, and sees Dean staring at him. He looks back at the TV as fast as he can.

Dust rolls, Hal chases after the car as it drives forward, Thelma and Louise grasp each other’s hands and – what the fuck? – they drive right off the side of the Grand Canyon. The movie’s over.

Cas forgets all about not looking at Dean. He swings around furiously. “That can’t be the end!” he yells. “They can’t – they can’t die, Dean, not after everything that happened to them! They were just – they were gonna be – they deserved to be happy together. They were good people! That is bad writing!”

And Dean throws back his head and howls with laughter. He presses the heel of his palms into his eyes and roars. “I fucking knew it!” he yelps. “I knew you were gonna freak out. God, I – Cas –”

Cas is offended. “You showed me a whole movie because you knew I wasn’t going to enjoy it?” he asks.

“No,” says Dean. “I showed you a whole movie because it’s a great movie. And also because I knew the ending would piss you off. I like it when you get mad at stories.”

Cas isn’t sure what to say to that. He scowls and collapses back on the couch. Dean is ridiculous.

But leaning backwards has brought his face closer to Dean’s. Dean wipes at his eyes, still grinning, and then his gaze flicks down to Cas’s mouth. Cas sees it happen, sees him swallow, his Adam’s apple jumping. And now he realizes he’s looking at Dean’s mouth. He looks up again, guiltily, and sees Dean staring at him, and for the second time Cas knows that there’s the same expression on both of their faces.

Dean tilts his head forward, eyes never leaving Cas’s, and Cas understands that this is his last chance to get up, walk out of the apartment and go home.

He doesn’t move.

Their foreheads touch.

Cas closes his eyes.

And opens them again in shock when he feels the touch of lips against his neck.

Dean’s dipped his head down to press his mouth against Cas’s collarbone. He moves upwards, dragging his lips against Cas’s stubble, to kiss his Adam’s apple, and then up again, his breath hot on Cas’s skin, to suck at Cas’s pulse point. It’s a sequence that’s been living in the darkest reaches of Cas’s brain since the night at the club. Dean remembers. Dean meant it. And now –

Cas slides his hand around the back of Dean’s head and pulls him up into a kiss.

It’s barely a brush of skin against skin, because Cas slightly misjudges the angle – he catches Dean’s upper lip, and their noses bump together. But then Dean grabs him by the shoulders to hold him still, tilting his mouth into the kiss, and Cas remembers how it felt on Friday night. It felt like this.

Why had he ever thought this could have been an unpleasant experience? Dean’s mouth is warm and wet and his tongue licks against Cas’s. He’s pressing into Cas’s space, and Cas presses back so enthusiastically he almost knocks Dean over. He’s lit up with desire, overcome, again, with the need to be as close to Dean as possible. They’re kneeling up on the couch, breathing heavily against each other, the blanket shoved to one side. Cas isn’t sure what to do with his hands. What he wants to do is slide them under Dean’s shirt, but he’s not sure whether that would be too forward, so he kind of clings on to the front of Dean’s t-shirt like he’s on a fairground ride until Dean mumbles, “Fucksake, Cas,” grabs one of Cas’s hands and puts it firmly on his ass.

Cas pulls Dean against him even more tightly, and Dean grinds his hips into Cas, the friction of it making Cas ache. He runs his other hand up Dean’s back, fingers bumping across the ridges of Dean’s spine, and he thinks as he does it how incredible this is, how obscene, how miraculous. To be allowed to touch Dean like this, to kiss his way down Dean’s throat, to lick the sweat from the hollow of Dean’s neck and feel Dean gasp and sigh. It’s unbelievable.

Dean slips his fingers into the waistband of Cas’s jeans, at the small of his back. Cas shudders, and Dean says, “Sorry! Shit, sorry, Cas,” and pulls his hand away.

“No, no,” says Cas, in a panic. “No, Dean, please – please take off my shirt.” He winces at himself – he sounds so desperate, it’s pathetic, Dean will laugh at him – but Dean just grins against his mouth and drags the shirt up and over his head. Cas gets a little bit stuck in it (fanfiction was not this awkward!) and tips forward, pushing Dean down onto the couch under him.

“I did not mean to do that,” he says, embarrassed, and Dean says, “shut the fuck up, Cas,” wraps his arm around Cas’s neck and pulls him down into another long kiss that blots out everything Cas was trying to think about.

Cas has been so hung up on how different it’d feel, with Dean, how he’d get stuck on the stubble and the pecs and the shoulders but actually, it’s hard to remember how anyone else has felt, now that he’s actually doing this. He’s lost in the way Dean’s hands feel across his back, how Dean catches his lower lip in his mouth and sucks on it very gently, how soft Dean’s hair is as he strokes his thumb across the nape of Dean’s neck.

It could be anyone, he tells himself, but that’s not true, is it? It’s Dean, it’s Dean, it’s Dean. It couldn’t be anyone else.

He grabs at Dean’s t-shirt, trying to lift it off, but it’s stuck under him. Then Dean winks, and wraps his legs around Cas, and – what just happened? – Cas feels himself flipping over. Dean’s suddenly sitting on top of him, pulling his own shirt over his head.

“Uh?” says Cas, intelligently.

“State youth athletics wrestling champion,” says Dean, smirking. “Comes in handy sometimes.”

Cas wonders, dizzily, if there’s anything Dean Winchester isn’t good at. But he doesn’t pursue that thought too far, because Dean’s still straddling his lap, and he has to really focus on the most important difference in all of this.

It’s not that – he doesn’t – he hasn’t been ignoring Dean’s hard-on, exactly. They’ve been pressed together, grinding against each other, the friction from it making Cas’s knees shake. But there’s that, and then there’s the look on Dean’s face as he very slowly pops the button on Cas’s jeans. There’s shirtless, and then there’s naked, and they’re on the way to naked. And then – and then there’s no more pretending. And then Cas is going to have to deal with the fact that this version of sex contains 100% more dicks than he’s used to. What if he does it wrong? He’s going to do it wrong. He’s going to fuck it up.

“Breathe, Cas,” says Dean, still with his hand on Cas’s pants button.

“My boxers are ugly,” says Cas. It’s true. For some reason this morning he put on his baggiest, oldest light-blue cotton pair. There’s a hole in their crotch and everything. “I didn’t – wear – fuck, just don’t –”

Dean snorts with laughter. “Sorry!” he says. “Uh. Am I still taking off your pants?”

Cas puts his arm across his face. “Yes,” he says.

He feels the zip slide open, and the drag of Dean pulling his jeans down his legs, and then he hears another zip, and the couch bounces as Dean wriggles off him for a second. His heart is pounding.

“You know,” says Dean, into his ear. “I like your boxers.”

Cas opens his eyes. There’s Dean, grinning at him, gorgeous and shirtless.

“I actually really think,” Dean goes on, his fingers trailing down the hair on Cas’s stomach, “that your boxers are the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.” His hand stops briefly at Cas’s waistband and then keeps moving. Cas can’t stop himself shuddering.

“No, they honestly are,” murmurs Dean, his breath hot on Cas’s cheek. His index finger is tracing the line of Cas’s cock, so gently that it should hardly register – but at the same time he can feel every motion so intensely that he can’t bear it. “I want to fuck these boxers,” says Dean, against Cas’s jaw, rubbing his thumb over the head of Cas’s cock, where the material is damp and sticky and the sensation is almost painfully good. Cas groans, catching Dean’s mouth in a desperate kiss. Right now, he’d do anything Dean asked him to, he thinks.

Then Dean’s fingers snag on the hole in Cas’s boxers and Dean snorts with laughter and Cas says, “Just fucking take them off!” before he has time to wonder whether he’s being too forward. Dean laughs again and slides them off, cupping Cas’s ass, and Cas is almost delirious with how good this feels, how much he wants Dean to never stop touching him. He’s greedy for it, hungry, obsessed. He grabs Dean and pulls him close against him, thigh over Dean’s hip, cocks rubbing together. Dean puts a hand down between them and begins to stroke Cas, and Cas is truly concerned that he’s going to just come, right then, like a teenager.

Dean’s still wearing his boxers – and they’re objectively actually sexy boxers, black and tight – but Cas kind of feels like it’s not equal until he’s naked too (plus, it’s a distraction from what’s going on, and he really needs distractions right now). So he pulls at Dean’s waistband, easing it down over his cock and – oh. This is worse, actually. This isn’t a distraction at all. He thought that seeing Dean’s cock would be strange and a little off-putting, but the sight of it is kind of – fuck, it’s really sexy.

He gasps, and Dean says, “Yeah, I know, I’m pretty great.”

“Asshole,” says Cas, with difficulty. “Fuck – Dean –”

Dean spits into his palm, and winks at Cas, and keeps going. He is really good at this, Cas thinks weakly. He keeps varying the rhythm, sliding his thumb over the head of Cas’s cock. Cas closes his eyes and buries his face in Dean’s shoulder, breathing in Dean’s smell and feeling his body hard against him. Dean’s hand is on his cock, it’s not just a fantasy, it’s real, and oh, shit, it’s better than he ever imagined, he’s aching with pleasure, nothing has ever felt like this before, oh, fuck –

“Dean!” he says, and comes.

Then he realizes that he’s been very rude. He never comes first, that’s basically a rule. And anyway, usually he feels weird about asking for what he wants. It’s easier to pay attention to the other person. He’s been ignoring Dean.

But. Although he technically knows how to jerk someone off, the mechanics of it are kind of bewildering to him when it’s someone else. Everything is backwards.

He moves his hand down, hesitantly, and slips it around Dean’s cock. It shocks them both. Dean groans, and Cas feels a spike of desire in his stomach, hot and wonderful. So it’s not – it’s definitely not that he’s turned off by the whole cock thing. Interesting. Worrying. He’s not quite sure how to move his hand, with the whole everything being backwards issue, but then Dean fits his hand around Cas’s, guiding him, and this should be embarrassing, because Cas doesn’t know what to do, but somehow it’s hotter than ever. They move together, and Cas thinks he’s starting to get the hang of it.

Then Dean groans against Cas’s mouth, kissing him frantically, and Cas feels him spill over both of their fingers. They pull away from each other for a moment, panting.

Cas’s heart is still racing. He can’t believe any of this is real.

When Dean kisses him again, they’re both smiling. Cas should be cooler about this, he thinks. He has to behave like a person who normally has no-strings-attached hook-ups. With men? With men. Oh fuck, he just had sex with a man. Was it sex, though? Technically it was just touching, which is probably why he liked it so much. Fuck, he liked it so much. He has to admit that. He liked touching Dean, and being touched by him, and he wants – he wants to do it again. That wasn’t what he unexpected.

So, okay. He’s still basically straight, but Dean is clearly the exception. The way people sometimes talk about free passes has always confused Cas, but now it makes sense. He’s straight, but also he wants to have sex with Dean again, right now, and keep doing it until he shrivels up into a husk. It’s not dicks in general, it’s just Dean’s particular dick. Okay. This makes sense.

Dean reaches out for something to wipe their stomachs, and of course he grabs Cas’s boxers to do it with. “Dean!” Cas protests.

“Come on, you can take a pair of mine,” says Dean, ignoring him. Cas is outraged. Somehow the idea of putting on Dean’s underwear seems far more intimate than anything they’ve just done.

Thinking that makes him realize he should go. He can’t be here when Charlie comes home tomorrow. And anyway – yeah, okay, the idea of staying, and maybe giving in to round two, is way too appealing right now. He has to get away. He needs to think.

He stands up, and he gets an urge to cover himself, even though he knows perfectly well that Dean’s already seen it all.

“Aw, Cas, seriously?” asks Dean. “Stay!”

“I need to go home, Dean,” says Cas, not meeting his eyes. “I need –”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He pulls on his t-shirt and his jeans (“Commando!” says Dean. “Kinky!” and Cas blushes) and heads for the door.

“One day I’m gonna get you to stay for breakfast,” says Dean, right as he’s leaving.

Cas wants to turn back, but he doesn’t.

Chapter Text

Cas can’t sleep that night. He lies in his bed clutching his comforter and staring at the ceiling.

He had sex with Dean. He saw Dean naked. Dean found out how completely incompetent Cas is at sex, and he’ll probably never want to have sex with Cas again and –

Wait. That’s not what he should be worrying about. He should be worrying about the fact that he had sex with Dean and he still doesn’t have the itch about him. The crush is still – he checks – yes, definitely still there. And what is that about? What has Dean done to his brain? He’s starting to get very concerned about what Dean’s done to his brain.

He picks up his phone. It’s blank and still. No new messages.

Which is fine.

It’s fine!

Should he say something? Is it polite, to say something? A thank you message? What’s the correct thing to do in this situation? Or would a thank you make it seem like Dean just gave him an edible arrangement, not a hand job?

Come on, Cas. Be serious. This was a hook-up, like the night with Meg. He never thanked Meg after that. In fact, he did his best not to see her for the next six months.

He swipes his messages open, and hovers his fingers over his thread with Dean.

Hello, Dean.

hey cas

Shit! That was way too fast. It’s 3:23 am, he should be asleep. Why isn’t he asleep?

Cas has no idea what to say next. He types out That was and then Thank you and then I don’t and then deletes them all and just stares at his phone screen. And right then, Dean video calls him.

Cas panics. He lets the call ring out, in case it was a butt dial, but when Dean calls again he guesses he can’t pretend not to have seen it. He presses answer warily.

The screen blinks, and there’s Dean, lit up by its glow and squinting a little. Cas’s heart jumps. Dean’s in bed too, clearly, wrapped in a dark grey comforter but with his shoulders bare beneath it. He’s obviously still naked. Cas thinks about the fact that he was the person who got Dean naked in the first place, and his heart jumps again. That actually happened. That happened, four hours ago. It could still be happening, if he –

Shut up, Cas. It’s not going to happen again.

“Hey, Cas,” says Dean, rubbing his face and grinning. His voice is low and rough. “Thought I’d save time. This way you don’t have to spend half an hour typing out the same message twenty times and deleting it again.”

“I do not do that,” says Cas.

“Yeah you do. And hey, we don’t have to – you don’t have to say – look, whatever. I just wanted to. Uh. Call.”

Cas can feel himself blushing. He’s been doing that far too much lately. He wants, desperately, to touch Dean. He puts out his fingers and hovers them over the screen.

“Hello,” he says, stupidly. “It was.” Be cool, Cas. It was a hook-up. It’ll never happen again. “I’ll wear nicer boxers, tomorrow,” he hears himself say.

Dean bursts out laughing. The phone wobbles so hard that Cas gets a view of Dean’s bedroom ceiling for a second. Fuck! Fuck! Why did he say that? It gives Dean the impression that he wants to do this again, and he absolutely should not want to do this again.

“Hey, I thought you were done with underwear,” teases Dean, when he’s back in focus on the screen again, and Cas can feel the blood rush to his cheeks, desire twist in his stomach. Oh, fuck, he does want to do this again.

“I’ve got work tomorrow night, but – you wanna come to the Roadhouse?” asks Dean. “You could. Uh. Hang out until I’m done. You don’t have to! But, y’know.”

Yesterday, Cas wondered whether Dean might be nervous around him. He was wrong then, and he must still be wrong now, but it is strange, how hesitant Dean is being. If Cas didn’t know better, he’d think that Dean didn’t do this very often. But he obviously does, and more importantly, he wants to do it again with Cas. For some reason all Cas can think about is whether or not he actually owns any nice boxers. He has a sudden flash of that dream he had, Dean in panties, and feels temporarily dizzy.

“I would like that,” he says, before he can work out how to lie. Shit. Fuck! This is all very bad. He has to end the call. What can he say? “But I should go, Dean. I need to get some sleep.”

“Shoulda stayed here,” says Dean, and then he hangs up before Cas can press the red button.

*

Cas wakes up late Tuesday morning. It’s only the thought of CW’s deadline – which is creeping closer and closer – that makes him get up and climb into the shower. He scrubs at his stomach, still flaky with come, and he’s jolted back to last night, Dean’s mouth on his neck, his hand on his cock. He’s hard again just thinking about it.

He thinks, as he comes again, that he’s never had a crush quite like this one.

When he gets to the café Dean’s already there, typing, head-down and industrious. Cas tries to see what he’s writing, but Dean must have heard him, because he closes Charlie’s laptop and turns around.

He gets this huge, goofy grin on his face, when he sees it’s Cas. It lights up his face, and even though he catches himself and folds his expression into a casual nod a few seconds later, Cas is already grinning back, even though he swore to himself he wouldn’t. When Dean smiles at you, it’s impossible not to respond.

“Hello, Dean,” he says, still smiling. Shit! Stop smiling, stop smiling!

“Hey,” says Dean, his eyes crinkling up.

Why have they become so stuck on greeting each other, recently? It’s like they’ve run out of things to say. It should be awkward, but for some reason, it’s not.

Cas sits down. Dean’s already got him a coffee. “Thank you,” he says, gesturing at it.

“Eh,” says Dean, waving his hand. “They gave me a freebie. We’re here too much.”

“Are we?” asks Cas, worried. Should they meet less, now? They probably should, because now he’s looking at Dean and fuck does he want to kiss him. What does that mean? Because if the crush isn’t going away even after they kissed twice and had sex once, and if Dean asked him to the Roadhouse tonight, and if he said yes, and if he wants to go, then –

Then it all adds up to something that Cas can’t look directly at.

“Fuck no,” says Dean. “Just the right amount. I mean. I think. Uh.”

Cas opens his laptop. The Mark and Violet sex scene is flashing at him, a big blank page, but – he can’t do that right now. He’ll leave it to Dean. So Cas skips back a little, to a scene between Bel and Neal. They know that Violet and Mark are back together, and that Mark’s determined to prevent the apocalypse by any means necessary. But Neal can’t let his little brother shoulder the burden of killing Lilith. He’s sure that he has to be the one to face the consequences. Despite everything Mark’s done, Neal still knows he’s the true sinner. Doesn’t his time in Hell prove it?

Bel tells him that there’s still a chance. All he has to do is bind himself to God and his angels, and he can become their weapon, the tool that will end Lilith’s plan and stop the apocalypse. Neal’s skeptical, because there’s always a hidden cost, with Bel. Words mean more around him, and things that aren’t said mean the most of all. But Bel is certain. Neal has to go all in.

“The only question is whether you’re willing to accept it,” he said. “Do you swear to serve God and his angels?”

Hmm. That line needs a little more.

“Do you give yourself over wholly to serve God and his angels? Do you swear to follow his will as obediently as you did your own father’s?”

“Yes, I swear,” said Neal, his voice rough. He stared at Bel, and Bel stared back. Neal thought that he might have sworn to obey all the angels, but there was still only one angel he’d trust as far as he could throw him. All the angels, to Neal, meant Bel.

Can that stay in? Cas wonders. That seems kinda – romantic. Kinda too much. Kinda terrifying. He looks up at Dean, who’s got his cheek pillowed in one of his hands, staring at something on his computer screen. He catches Cas’s gaze, though, and smiles at him, and then a second later Cas feels a gentle touch on the side of his foot.

He startles, and almost spills his coffee, and Dean rolls his eyes at him, as though he can’t believe Cas’s deal. And there’s the touch again.

Oh.

Oh, so that’s Dean’s shoe, tapping against Cas’s. No, it’s Dean’s foot, he’s taken off his shoe. His sock brushes Cas’s ankle, and this time Cas shivers.

How to respond?

Then Dean winks at him, and Cas, without thinking, kicks him under the table. He slightly misses, and kicks the chair leg, and Dean collapses with laughter. Cas kicks him again, and this time finds Dean’s foot. His shoe ends up pressing against Dean’s instep, and they sit like that for a while. Neither of them type much. Cas starts wondering if he’s going to meet his deadline at all.

Cas wonders, again, what this is. Is this like the thing with Meg, just – more drawn out? And what does it mean for Cas if they are? It doesn’t mean anything to Dean, obviously. Cas is just the latest in a long line of people. But for Cas – doesn’t Dean know that he isn’t this kind of person? Doesn’t he know that Cas isn’t into people like Dean?

That free pass idea made sense to Cas yesterday night, but in the light of day – he’s not so sure. He’s starting to feel anxious. One hand job from a man isn’t enough to alter Cas’s entire life thus far, it doesn’t erase all the women (technically, seven women, a perfectly significant number of women) he's slept with, but it – Cas has to admit that it does change things. It makes him think – stuff that he doesn’t want to think. And what if they keep going? At what point does that start meaning something?

He stares across the table at Dean. He doesn’t know, he thinks. He doesn’t know what he’s done. He feels, although he can’t put his finger on why, that this is Dean’s fault.

Right then, Dean rubs his foot down Cas’s calf absently, his eyes still fixed on his laptop. And Cas, as always, is overcome with how much he wants Dean to keep touching him.

So he’ll go to the Roadhouse. He’ll see what happens. But ultimately, this has to end. At some point, this is going to end.

*

When they get to the Roadhouse Kevin’s already there. He stares at Cas when he gets out of the car after Dean, like he can see the line of kisses Dean left on Cas’s jaw, the knee Cas shoved between Dean’s legs when they made out against the door to Dean’s room while Dean was getting changed for work.

“He’s got a deadline,” says Dean gruffly. “I said he could come write here tonight.”

“Oh, yeah, cool,” says Kevin, but he keeps glancing at Cas curiously and then looking away again.

Cas sits in a booth pretending to work while Dean and Kevin open, but after a while, when a few people have drifted in and the music’s playing and Kevin’s in the back checking stock levels, Dean nods Cas over to the bar. Cas sits, with an Old Fashioned in one hand and his laptop at his elbow, and tries not to stare at Dean and tries not to smile at Dean and tries to be normal and totally fails at each one of those things. Dean leans forward across the bar, and his fingers brush against Cas’s knuckles as he holds his drink.

“How’re you doing?” he asks.

“Good,” says Cas awkwardly. This is weird, isn’t it? This is so weird. He feels very exposed.

Then one of the tables in the corner comes over with a big order, and Cas gets to watch Dean as he mixes drinks and pours measures and reaches up above the bar to grab a stack of glasses with a motion that lifts his t-shirt up over the waistband of his jeans. Cas can see the flash of skin. He shouldn’t look, he thinks, he shouldn’t be so obvious, but he can’t look away. Dean’s a great bartender.

Dean hefts the bar tray up and comes out past Cas on his way to serve the table, and as he goes by Cas feels a gentle touch on his shoulder, a brush of fingers across his back. A minute later Dean goes past again, and this time Cas shivers as he feels Dean’s thumb stroke the base of his neck.

“Hey, Cas,” says Dean. “Can you help me lift some kegs in the back?”

This is an odd non-sequitur. “I don’t think I should be doing that,” says Cas doubtfully. “Shouldn’t you ask Kevin?”

“Oh, yeah, of course I’ll help you, dude,” says Kevin, who for some reason looks very amused. “Let’s go.”

Cas stares at his screen. The words are not flowing, and he has the uncomfortable feeling that he may have missed something important in the last social interaction.

Kevin comes back, and starts rearranging bottles of spirits behind the bar. Dean, apparently, is still lifting kegs. Cas stares at the bottles of rum and vodka and whiskey glittering under the low bar lighting, and the photos hanging up around them.

“Hey,” he says to Kevin, “How come you’ve got Bruce Springsteen on the wall?” It’s that picture from the front of the Born to Run album, where he’s leaning against his saxophonist’s shoulder, the two of them grinning back at each other.

Kevin turns to him with a strange look on his face. “My father listened to him,” Cas says, by way of explanation. There wasn’t much music allowed into the compound, but Springsteen made it through. Cas’s father thought he was the perfect American man, and said so a lot.

“I guess cause he’s bi?” says Kevin. “Plus he’s my mom’s favorite singer, and this is her bar.”

That’s way too much new information for Cas to take in at once. “What?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says Kevin. “Him and that guy, Clarence Clemons, used to kiss on stage and everything. My mom loves him. And yeah, this is her bar. Didn’t Dean tell you? It’s called the Roadhouse because Tran’s would’ve been kinda on the nose.”

But Cas is still stuck on Springsteen. He’s not bisexual. He can’t be. If he was then Cas’s dad wouldn’t have – he’d have known, and he’d never – but if it’s true, and he didn’t know – then – then –

It’s not fair, he thinks suddenly. He met Dean and now the whole world has turned upside down. Everything’s been made strange and new, and he’s sitting here in a gay bar finding out that pretty much everyone he’s ever known is gay and kissing men all the time. He feels sick.

“You okay?” asks Kevin. Cas gets the feeling that Kevin doesn’t really like him.

“Yes, thank you,” Cas lies, just as Dean comes out from the back again.

“Hey, Cas,” he says. “I got an idea about chapter twenty-four.”

There is no chapter 24, Cas knows this, and he’s about to point that out when he sees the way Dean’s eyes are crinkled, his lips pursed up in a grin, so he lets Dean lean into his space and spin the laptop towards himself. Dean’s shoulder is pressed warmly against Cas’s and his pinkie finger slides over Cas’s thumb as he types something into the document.

Next time I ask you to do something say yes. Dumbass.

“Right?” he asks, out loud. “That makes it way better.”

“What?” says Cas, blinking at the words on his screen. “Oh. Yes.” Fuck. So the thing about the kegs – that was a flirtation.

“You are so fucking bad at this,” murmurs Dean into Cas’s ear, and then he disentangles himself and is across the bar serving a bald-headed black guy in a suit before Cas has finished processing everything.

His heart is pounding. Dean wants to hook up here. This seems very risky to Cas. What if someone catches them?

Then he remembers that because this is a gay bar, probably no one would care. Except him, because – because he is not gay. Mostly. Doing what he and Dean did is not – well, it is technically – but if one of the people doing it is not gay, then – then it basically doesn’t count.

He stares at the picture of Bruce Springsteen on the wall. It makes him feel cold, even though it’s objectively very warm in here. If his father had known …

He can’t finish that thought.

He turns back to the manuscript. He should go forward and start sketching out the final chapter – Neal kidnapped by Bel and the angels, Mark and Violet kidnapping a nurse to start the apocalypse – but instead he stares at those eleven words Dean typed. Next time I ask you to do something say yes. Dumbass. And he finds himself scrolling back to that Mark and Violet sex scene.

Mark threw her down on the bed, nudging his thigh between his legs.

pushing his thigh between his legs.

her legs.

(Shit, glad he caught that).

Violet held out the knife to Mark. “Cut me,” she said, voice low, head thrown back and hair dark across the pillow. She smiled at him wickedly. “You know you want to.”

Mark took the knife, and ran it down

“Hey Cas,” says Dean, putting a hand on Cas’s shoulder. “Can you help me take these empties out to the trash?”

Cas jumps. Dean is hefting a huge bucket of empty beer bottles with one hand (Dean is very strong, which doesn’t do anything to Cas’s brain), and there’s another one on the floor next to him.

This is not about the bottles, he reminds himself. Dean wants him to follow for sexual reasons.

“Yes,” he says, mouth fuzzy with nerves.

“Cool,” says Dean. “C’mon.”

Over behind the bar, Kevin is serving a customer, and doesn’t look at them.

Cas follows Dean out the back of the bar, through a storage room and then another door, into what turns out to be a narrow alleyway. There’s a large Dumpster there, and Cas can see bottles piled up in it. It smells heavily of beer. Cas thinks that he must have misunderstood, because there is no way anyone would want to hook up with anyone else out here.

He pours the contents of his bucket into the Dumpster with a crash, and Dean does the same.

“Dude,” says Dean, turning to him and putting his bucket down on the ground. He’s smiling. “The keg thing? You gotta work with me here.”

“How was I supposed to know?” asks Cas, offended. “You didn’t tell me the code.”

“There’s not a – you’re just supposed to –” Dean pauses. “Yeah, okay. Next time I’ll speak Cas.”

“It’s not my problem,” says Cas, even more offended. “People should be clearer.”

“Yeah, sure,” says Dean, grinning at him. “Okay. Now I’m being clear.”

He’s stepped right up into Cas’s personal space, so close Cas can feel the warmth of him, hear his breathing. Dean is correct. He is being very clear.

Bruce Springsteen, Cas thinks, illogically, as Dean leans forward, lips parted, to kiss him. Then he doesn’t think about much at all.

Dean maneuvers him around the side of the Dumpster, shoving him up against the brick wall where they can’t be seen by anyone coming out of the Roadhouse’s back door. The weight of Dean’s body pressing against him, his tongue in Cas’s mouth, his hands sliding under Cas’s shirt is, Cas has to admit it, unbearably fucking hot. He’s been imagining doing this all day, which makes the fact that it’s actually happening feel almost too real, like the saturation’s been turned up too much on a photograph. Every touch of Dean’s skin against his is electric, colors bursting behind his eyes when he closes them. He desperately wants to take off Dean’s clothes, and only remembers with difficulty that they’re currently in an extremely disgusting alley. Getting naked would be a very bad (very good, but very bad) idea. The thing is, it worries him, how much he likes making out with Dean. It feels so good. Should it feel this good?

And right as he’s thinking that, he feels Dean’s fingers on the button of his jeans, the zip sliding open. Dean slips his hand down to cup Cas’s cock and Cas bucks against him, gasping and wrapping his arm around Dean’s shoulders.

Then Dean takes hold of Cas’s hips and – oh, shit, oh fuck, oh no – he’s dropping to his knees in front of Cas. Which cannot be hygienic! He peels down Cas’s boxers (which aren’t exactly sexy, but at least they don’t have a hole in them, Cas checked) and pulls out his cock and – shit, shit, shit – slides his mouth down over the head of it.

Obviously, Cas has gotten blowjobs before. It’s a very pleasant experience. Objectively, this shouldn’t feel any different to all of those other times. It’s just a mouth, on his dick. If he doesn’t look down at Dean, if he keeps his eyes closed, he shouldn’t be able to tell the difference. But his heart is pounding. He can feel the roughness of the bricks pressing into his back, feel Dean’s finger and thumb looped around the base of his cock, the way his tongue licks up its underside, feel the wetness of Dean’s mouth and the way his lips tighten around Cas. He grabs at Dean’s hair, thrusting against him, and Dean’s other hand squeezes his hip. He’s terrified that someone’s going to come out of the back of the Roadhouse and catch them, and somehow that makes this even hotter.

Then Dean slips off Cas’s cock for a second and murmurs, “Are you going to come for me?” and Cas does, highly ashamed of himself because that line should not have hit him so hard, Dean saying it should not have made him completely weak at the knees. What has happened to him?

He lifts Dean back up to his feet, pulling him against him. Their mouths bump, and Cas presses forward for a kiss, but Dean turns his face to the side.

“I don’t think you want that, bud,” he says, tapping his lips with his finger and giving Cas a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Oh. Cas files that away for future reference. He’s surprised that Dean is hung up on that kind of thing, and strangely hurt by it, but if it’s what Dean wants, then fine.

Then he realizes that he’s got a bigger problem. He’s come first, again. And now, presumably, Dean wants him to … reciprocate.

But doing that feels too much. Way too much. It heads right into big, dark, can’t think about it territory. A hand job, though? He’s already done that. Okay. He can do that again.

He fumbles at Dean’s fly, his mouth on Dean’s jaw since Dean seems really serious about the not kissing thing. When he gets it open, and gets his hand on Dean’s cock – fuck, it’s just like last night, so unbelievably, mind-meltingly hot that he can’t think what to do for a second. Plus it all still feels confusingly backwards. Then he realizes that there’s a very easy fix. He grabs hold of Dean’s hips and spins him around, pushing him up against the wall so his ass is rubbing against Cas’s crotch.

Dean gasps and presses himself back into Cas, his breath hot on Cas’s neck. Cas holds his hand out and Dean spits into his palm and then, for the second time ever, he’s jerking Dean off. Jerking a guy off. It’s getting him hot all over again, the power he has over Dean right now, the noises Dean’s making, whimpering and groaning and saying, “Fuck, yes, Cas!” Cas knows he’s not that good, knows Dean’s just blowing smoke, but hearing it’s still devastatingly sexy. Dean braces himself against the wall, tipping his head back, and then he comes, slumping against Cas, his eyes closed and his eyelashes fluttering. Cas carefully doesn’t try to kiss him.

At that point he focuses back on the fact that they’re standing in a very dirty alleyway, and also that he’s got a hand covered in come. Great.

“Here, dude,” says Dean, digging in one of his pants pockets, and he pulls out some only slightly used-looking bar napkins. Cas wipes off and throws the napkins in the Dumpster. Then he glances at Dean. He can feel himself blushing. He’s really bad at this part. With women, you usually cuddle so you don’t have to look at each other, but how much cuddling can you do next to a Dumpster full of beer bottles? Plus, Dean is not a woman. That does not apply.

(Would he like to cuddle? Ridiculous question. But would he?)

“Thanks,” he says at last, gruffly.

“You’re welcome,” says Dean, and he winks at him. Cas is outraged, and deeply attracted, which just makes the outrage more potent.

“I think I should go,” he says. “I – I have a deadline.”

“Oh,” says Dean, frowning. “Yeah, sure, okay. I thought –”

Cas waits for him to finish that sentence, but he doesn’t. It just hangs between them strangely.

“Eh,” says Dean at last. “See you tomorrow?”

Cas should say no. He can feel the balance tipping. Three hand jobs. One blowjob. It’s adding up. He’s walking down and down the path, like Mark on his way to kill Lilith.

“Yes,” he says, and his stomach twists as he sees the way Dean lights up, feels the way his own heart leaps.

Look at yourself, he thinks. Look at what you’ve become.

And even though the evening’s warm, he shivers.

Chapter Text

It’s Wednesday night, and Cas is almost asleep when his phone pings.

u up?

just got out of work

want me to come over?

Cas didn’t go to the Roadhouse tonight. It’s not that he didn’t want to. He did want to, and that’s the problem. Because today, after what happened in the alleyway last night, he’s had to face facts: the crush on Dean hasn’t gone away. It’s just gotten bigger, and bigger, and more and more intense, ballooning up until he feels swallowed whole by it. Meg’s helpful suggestion hasn’t turned out to be very helpful at all. Each time he’s with Dean he just ends up hungrier. He’s not getting Dean out of his system at all. Dean’s flooding every corner of his brain, every pore of his skin, every hair, every vessel, every vein.

And what does it all mean? Cas keeps adding up the moments, working through the logic, but whenever he tries to reach a conclusion it crumbles through his fingers. Because the place he sees it heading – no. Not possible. Does not compute.

So he’s back to square one, back to lying on his bed staring up at the ceiling. He feels very tired, all of a sudden. He’s got that bone-deep exhaustion that he hasn’t had since … huh. Since the days last week when he tried to follow the Plan.

Which is why, when Dean sends him the message, Cas replies

Yes.

He wants to not be tired, for an hour. He wants to stop thinking. He wants Dean. He’s the problem, but he’s also the solution, because when Cas is around him he almost forgets to worry. It’s only when they’re apart that the black ooze starts covering his brain again.

Cas’s housemates are both somewhere else tonight, so there’s no one else in the apartment. Why shouldn’t Dean come over?

Thinking about the words Dean and come next to each other makes Cas’s pulse race harder than ever. He tries, just like he always does, to be cool. And he thinks he’s managed it until the buzzer rings. He opens the door, and there’s Dean leaning in the doorway, one arm crooked above his head, smirking at him.

“Delivery,” he says.

“Shut up,” says Cas, and he grabs Dean by the t-shirt and drags him inside.

*

Afterwards, Cas lies with his head on Dean’s arm and stares up at the ceiling. Dean’s other hand is resting on Cas’s chest and his nose is pressed against Cas’s jaw. Cas can feel his spiky hair tickling his forehead, hear his breathing lengthen.

Every atom of Cas’s body is relaxed, so peaceful that he almost feels like he’s floating. But his brain won’t stop clenching anxiously. Maybe he was wrong about the ooze. Or maybe it’s just getting worse.

Dean can’t stay here. What if Meg comes back and sees him? What if Cas falls asleep like this, and then wakes up and makes Dean breakfast (be serious, pours him a bowl of cereal) and Dean stays, and he keeps staying, and this keeps happening? Because maybe it feels like this right now, maybe all he can think about is how he wants to roll on his side and wrap his arms around Dean and breathe him in, but at some point it’s going to – going to – at some point he’s going to wake up, and remember who he really is. Dean’s a man, and Cas doesn’t like men that way, so it could never actually work.

And anyway, Dean doesn’t want anything serious, so Cas would just be ruining himself, forever, for someone who doesn’t actually care.

“You should go,” he says. He can feel Dean opening his eyes.

“Oh,” Dean says quietly. The muscles of his arm tense. “Yeah. Sure. I –”

“What?” asks Cas. He’s suddenly annoyed. Why does Dean keep making this so hard? He’s the one who hooks up with people all the time. He should know how this goes.

“Nothing,” says Dean. “It’s cool. Okay.”

He gets up and pulls on his jeans and t-shirt. He puts a hand on Cas’s shoulder as he turns to go – still no kissing after blowjobs, that really seems to be a thing for Dean – and it’s strange, but Cas can still feel the ghost of Dean’s handprint there half an hour later as he finally falls asleep.

*

On Thursday, Cas is starting to very seriously worry about his deadline. He’s on the beginning of the final chapter, at least, the strange bottle plot where Neal’s trapped in Heaven’s green room, but he just can’t focus. He feels like he’s drowning, like the words won’t come, like everything’s falling to pieces in his hands.

At least Dean’s not bothered, he thinks resentfully. This morning he’s typing away industriously opposite Cas, new notification emails popping up on Cas’s screen constantly. Cas is way behind on reading all of Dean’s latest changes. His brain’s too full of Dean already, he tells himself, but he knows that’s not the real reason. It’s because once he’s accepted every one of Dean’s comments, it’ll be over.

The book’s almost finished, and then he’ll be out of contract with CW. His stint as L. S. Shore will be done, and once it is there’s no reason for Dean to keep helping him. And this thing – whatever it is – between them can’t keep going for much longer, either, for all the reasons he’s already outlined. He’s weeks away at most from a world without Dean.

He takes a deep breath and clutches the café table. It can’t hurt worse than the time he broke his arm when he was eight. It can’t be more terrible than Hannah giving him 24 hours to get out of their apartment and refusing to give him his deposit back. It’ll only ache a little, that’s what he’s told himself, so it must be true.

In the scene he’s writing, Neal’s desperately trying to escape his heavenly prison. It’s full of his favorite things – beer, burgers, the promise of women – but he’s still not buying it. He starts defacing his surroundings, smashing statues, kicking the walls, and as he does so Bel appears behind him, face set.

Neal demands to be taken to Mark, but Bel refuses. Mark’s on his own, he says. And isn’t it better this way? Neal is safe here, and he has everything he needs to be happy. He could gorge himself on burgers, drink himself into oblivion, spend his days wrapped in the arms of beautiful women.

“Isn’t temptation supposed to be what the other place does?” Neal asked angrily.

Bel looked at him, arms folded, eyes direct. “If we were to tempt you, you’d know about it,” he said.

“Yeah?” said Neal. “Or maybe you’ve been doing it all along.”

Cas stares at what he’s just written, and then deletes it.

“You wanna come over tonight?” asks Dean gruffly.

Cas looks up, startled, and sees Dean staring at him.

“Just got a message from Jo – she’s on late tonight with Kevin, so they’re letting me go early. ‘m supposed to be prepping for my set tomorrow, but it’s already done. And, uh, Charlie’s gonna be out with some chick she met online. Won’t-be-home-all-night kinda thing. In case that makes a difference.”

It does, and Cas knows that Dean knows it does.

The balance is tipping, and Cas can feel it, he’s itchy with it. He gets the same sick feeling in his stomach that’s been bothering him more and more this week. But he can’t stop now. He doesn’t want to stop now. It’ll stop soon, anyway. He wants to grab every moment he has left.

He looks at Dean, grinning hopefully at him, and the words he gave to Neal float back into his head.

Or maybe you’ve been doing it all along.

*

Cas is outside Dean’s door at 10:35pm. That’s half an hour for Dean to get home from the Roadhouse and get changed, and five minutes to seem like Cas is not actually that eager.

Cas rings the buzzer and then knocks on the door, and then he wonders if he should stand like Dean did last night, but he’s not really sure how to do that without looking stupid, so he crosses his arms nervously and holds his breath and that’s the position he’s in when Dean opens the door.

“You OK, man?” asks Dean, raising an eyebrow at him and Cas says “Yes,” and feels resentful all over again, because Dean knows how to do this – this thing, whatever it is, knows how to be sexy and cool and fun, and all Cas knows how to do is cross his arms awkwardly. He’s in over his head, here. He doesn’t belong.

He doesn’t belong with Dean.

It’s true, but thinking it gives him an actual pain in his stomach. He can feel himself making a face, and Dean says, “You don’t look too hot, dude.”

Which is the entire problem!

“I’m fine,” he says shortly. “Can I come in?” He’s uncomfortable standing out in the hallway where anyone could see him.

Dean gestures, and Cas steps through into Dean and Charlie’s apartment. The door shuts behind him, and they’re safe. Cas turns towards Dean, meaning to kiss him, but somehow instead he steps into a hug. His arms wrap around Dean and he buries his nose in the warm skin of Dean’s shoulder. Dean squeezes him back, just as tightly, and Cas can feel them both breathing in unison. They stand like that, pressed together, for a surprisingly long time. Cas doesn’t want to let go, even though he knows perfectly well that this is not correct hook-up etiquette. Hugs might feel good, but they are not part of the deal.

“Cas,” whispers Dean into Cas’s ear. “I –”

Cas turns his head and kisses him. Who knows what Dean was going to say, and Cas feels like it’s best if he doesn’t hear it.

He keeps thinking he’s got to get tired of kissing Dean soon, but it still thrills him, still feels like the most fantastic innovation. He opens his mouth into the kiss, sliding his hand down to the small of Dean’s back and pulling him even closer, their bodies flush together.

They walk backwards through the living room, stumbling against each other and laughing (it’s strange how funny sex with Dean is sometimes, like it’s an in-joke they’re making) and then they bump against the side of Dean’s bed and fall into it together, Cas covering Dean with his body. His thigh pushes between Dean’s legs. Dean puts up a hand and Cas catches it in his, holding it above Dean’s head as he kisses his way down Dean’s jaw and bites at his ear.

He's feeling bold, tonight. Maybe it’s because he knows this has an expiration date. He’s only got so long to push the boundaries, to find out what he would and wouldn’t do, to finally discover what’s too much. He doesn’t know how many times he has left, how many memories of Dean he can take in before it’s over. He needs to remember what Dean liked, how it felt to touch him, what made him groan. He can’t have Dean forever (and he doesn’t want him forever, because if that was true, then – but anyway, it’s not true), but he can have the memories. He probably won’t even want them, in a few years. Ten years? Five. Five is more reasonable.

So he’s feeling brave, and that’s why he moves slowly down Dean’s body, kissing his shoulder, his nipple, his stomach, his hip. Dean realizes where this is going almost before Cas has let himself fully understand it.

“Cas,” he says, and Cas can feel the rumble of it in his chest, “you don’t have to, seriously.”

I want to, thinks Cas, but what he says is, “Yes I do.”

He kneels on the floor, Dean’s legs each side of his shoulders, and he gets the same feeling he has before, that all of this is backwards. It’s like he’s looking at himself from the outside, at the wrong angle. He’s used to being the person being knelt in front of, in this scenario.

He’s going to hate it, he’s not going to be able to make himself do it, this is the moment that it all falls down and he has to admit to Dean that he’s been faking it. Faking most of it. Well, not actually faking it, but – but –

He leans forward and slides his mouth over the head of Dean’s cock. He can feel Dean’s thighs tense up, hear his breathing quicken. So it’s not bad. And it’s not, actually, like he doesn’t know how to do this. He knows what he likes, and if he just does that, then – then it’s like fantasizing about it happening to him, and feeling it happen right in front of him at the same time, and it’s … it’s really hot. He can feel himself getting harder.

Dean wraps his legs around him and arches his back and says, “Cas! Oh fuck, Cas!” and just knowing that he’s not completely shit at this, that Dean likes it enough not to tell him to stop makes his heart pound, his body ache with desire. Has it ever been as good as this? He can’t remember a time.

He takes Dean more fully into his mouth, feeling the strange weight and shape of him, the salty taste. Dean moans, and the muscles of his legs tremble under Cas’s fingers, and Cas is overpowered by the realization that he’s happy, right now. That this is perfect. That he wants to keep doing this, and doing this, forever, ideally. He knows he’ll tell himself later that he’s confused, but he doesn’t feel confused right now. And he can’t even be worried about it. There’s no room in his brain for anything but what’s happening.

Then Dean says “Cas – shit – I’m gonna –” and comes in Cas’s mouth, and Cas coughs and Dean says, “Sorry, man, I shoulda –”

Cas suddenly notices how careful Dean’s being with him. He’s been careful all week. It’s not something Cas was expecting. He always thought that Dean would be – not that he thought about how Dean would be – but if he had, he’d have assumed that Dean’s fanfic was drawn from life a little more.

“I don’t mind, Dean,” he says, because he doesn’t.

“Sure,” says Dean, pulling Cas up off his knees, and Cas carefully doesn’t kiss him, just presses his mouth to Dean’s cheek and breathes him in.

*

When Cas wakes up, the room is light and warm. There’s sun on his face, and a comforter draped across his body. Someone’s in bed next to him, and without thinking he turns and pulls them against him. Dean – it’s Dean, of course it’s Dean – sighs and rolls into him, wrapping his arm around Cas, and Cas strokes his hand down Dean’s back lazily. Dean stretches like a cat, kissing Cas’s shoulder, and Cas is pulling Dean closer still when they both hear a sound from Charlie’s room next door.

Cas freezes.

There it is again. Someone – two people – moving around and talking in quiet voices.

“You told me Charlie was going out!” he hisses at Dean.

“She was,” grumbles Dean, rubbing his eyes. He’s got bedhead just like he did in Cas’s dream. Cas tries to ignore that. “They must have come back here instead. How’m I supposed to know?”

This is a disaster. This is a huge problem. What are they going to do? Cas sits up in bed and looks around desperately. Where’s his t-shirt? Where are his pants?

“What are you doing?” asks Dean.

There’s no time. Cas leaps out of bed, grabbing the first clothes he can see. He struggles into them and as Dean says, “Cas! What the hell!” he pushes open the door to Dean’s room and rushes towards the living room couch. If he can just make it look like he slept there last night –

He’s lying sideways on the couch, the blanket half over him, and Dean (now wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else) has taken two steps into the living room, when the door to Charlie’s room opens and Charlie walks out. With her is a dark-haired woman who looks weirdly familiar to Cas. He’s pretty sure he must just be panicking until she does a double take and says, “Dean? Cas?”

“Lisa?” asks Dean. “Charlie, what the hell?”

“What do you mean, what the hell?” says Charlie ominously, and Dean and Lisa both scramble to say no, no, not like that.

Then everyone turns to look at Cas.

“Dean and I watched a movie last night,” says Cas, his voice very loud in his ears. “I fell asleep on the couch.”

Then he looks down at himself and notices that the t-shirt he’s currently wearing is the one Dean had on last night.

“Sure,” says Charlie. “Sure, Cas. Dean, Lisa and I are going to get breakfast. Can I talk to you later?”

“Yeah,” says Dean. He’s leaning back against his doorframe, arms crossed. “Cas won’t be staying long.”

“Nice to have you here, Cas,” says Charlie. “Next time, the couch folds out.”

Cas just nods at her, because he can’t think of anything to say. He’s shaking.

“Bye, guys,” says Lisa awkwardly. “Nice to see you both again.”

The door closes behind them, and Cas and Dean are alone.

“What the fuck was that,” says Dean pleasantly. “What, you think Charlie cares?”

“It’s not,” Cas starts. He still can’t find the words. It feels like his brain is shutting down, piece by piece. “I just.”

“Whatever, Cas. Seriously, whatever. I don’t know what I expected. Give me my shirt back.”

Cas pulls it over his head and throws it to Dean. I’m sorry, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He stares down at his hands, clenched in his lap.

“Look at me,” says Dean, but Cas can’t.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Dean goes on, and why does he sound like his heart just got broken? Cas still hasn’t said anything.

He stands up and puts on his own shirt. He feels numb. His whole face is tingling.

“You don’t have to come to the show tonight,” Dean says as the door to the apartment closes behind Cas.

And Cas has no intention of going.

*

That all changes at 10:32am.

Cas toys with whether he should work today, but in the end the deadline scares him more than anything else. He goes to the café – and of course Dean doesn’t follow him there, which makes sense, which doesn’t hurt – and he writes. He buries himself in a Mark and Violet scene, losing himself in the nastiness of the way they play off each other as they drag their nurse victim to the nunnery Mark knows is going to be the location of Lilith’s last stand.

But then he pauses. He’s at the point where he needs to write another scene between Neal and Bel in the green room. For some reason, though, he just can’t face them today. And he can’t go forward to the end of the book without them.

So, instead, he decides to go for the easy option: flipping back through the story to read Dean’s suggested changes on earlier chapters. Despite what just happened this morning, Cas trusts Dean. It should just be a matter of accepting Dean’s additions and moving on.

And at first, that’s what happens. The changes are just normal Deanisms. Carefully crafted fake-stupid jokes about boobs and dick size and getting laid, horny moments between Mark and Violet, everything obvious and filthy and funny. It all makes Cas smile, his chest ache.

But then.

Where does the unease start, for Cas? When do the hairs on his neck start standing up, his heart start pounding?

He’s reading through the chapter about the siren, and some things Dean’s added jump out at him.

He felt the agent holding out the beer bottle to him, and took it, turning toward him. Their fingers brushed against each other, and Agent Mike caught Neal’s eye. Neal took a deep swig, grinning at him. Everything was great.

“Hey, Neal,” said Agent Mike quietly. “Neal. You know you should have wiped that off before you drunk from it.”

Neal blinked in confusion. Mike’s teeth suddenly looked sharper than normal. His face was fuzzy – or was that just Neal’s vision? He shook his head, but the fuzziness didn’t go away.

That’s different, right? Not so many words different, you wouldn’t know unless you knew, but the scene’s changed from a casual drink between friends to … something more. But Cas specifically said to Dean that the siren’s interest in Neal wasn’t going to be sexual. So why would he –

He suddenly remembers some tweaks Dean made to the chapter where Neal and Mark are trapped in an alternate version of their lives. They’d just seemed like meaningless jokes, but …

He flips forward through the manuscript again until he gets to it. Project Runway. Juice cleanses. Neal in an immaculate pinstriped shirt and red tie. They’re just descriptions, right? They don’t mean anything. The joke is that without the family business (saving people, hunting things) Neal would be able to bring out another side of himself: fastidious, fashionable, dramatic. Cas didn’t think anything of it. Characteristics are just that, neutral facts about a person. But. By putting them together in that way, is Dean hinting that …

No. He wouldn’t do that. This is a published book, not fanfic. He knows not to do that, doesn’t he?

But Cas flicks and flicks and everywhere he looks he sees things Dean’s put in, tiny moments, little references, that all add up into something that makes Cas’s hands tremble. He wouldn’t. He has.

The levee breaks when Cas goes all the way back to that magician chapter. Dean added in a whole scene there, and Cas is hoping desperately that it’s going to be something about Neal and a hot magician’s assistant.

Then he reads it.

Neal’s been given a clue to check out – a name to ask for at a house number in an unfamiliar neighborhood. He leaves Mark to keep investigating another strand of the case and heads there on his own. It’s late, and Neal gets more uncertain the closer he gets. Surely this can’t be the right place?

He knocks on the door (hardly a door, a hole in the wall) and a tattooed guy in dark clothes peers suspiciously out, asking Neal what he wants.

“The Chief,” said Neal.

The guy looked him up and down. “If you’re sure,” he said with a smirk that made Neal put his hand on the gun hidden in his jacket. He knew something was wrong here, but he couldn’t work out what it was.

Neal’s led down a set of stairs into a dark alleyway. The guy tells him to wait, and then leaves, and Neal’s getting more nervous by the second. And then a door in front of him opens, and music blares out, and there in the doorway stands a man, leather jacket tight on his chest, muscular arms bare, dark cap on his head. He’s holding a whip in his hand.

And Neal gets it.

“I think I’ve been had,” Neal said.

“Oh, you ain’t been had,” said the man, slapping the whip into the palm of his hand, “until you’ve been had by the Chief.”

Neal gulped.

The scene ends, then. But it’s enough, isn’t it? It’s enough to say the thing that Cas thought Dean understood needed to be kept to his fanfic. It’s enough, with everything else in this book, to make that fan theory about Neal just a fact.

Without telling Cas, Dean has used his access to the book to – to turn Neal Colt bisexual.

Cas is furious. How dare he? How could he?

He creates a new document and drops the manuscript into it, rejecting every single one of Dean’s suggested additions. He doesn’t need him anyway. He should never have asked for his help, never have called him over that day, never have done any of it. He’s an idiot.

And what about Dean? How could he fuck with Cas’s career like this? If this got out – if it got to CW, or worse, actually got printed, Cas would be ruined.

Suddenly Cas is spoiling for a fight. It’s not enough to reject Dean’s work. He needs to say it to his face, tell him how fucking selfish and stupid and disgusting he’s been. He wasn’t going to go to Dean’s stand-up night, but fuck that. He’ll be there. He’ll be there, and he’ll sit in the front row, and he’ll tell Dean Winchester to fuck off, forever. It’s over. He’s done.

*

And that’s how Cas ends up in another dive bar at 10pm on Friday evening, sitting with a beer in his hand and seething. He’s been trying not to lose the edge of his anger. He knows that if he lets go even for a moment, he’ll start remembering all of the good stuff, the jelly donuts and the sex scenes and the sex, and that isn’t acceptable. He has to stay mad, otherwise this confrontation’s going to go to shit. So he focuses on the Chief and on red suspenders and on hands touching over beer bottles until his rage is white hot and diamond sharp.

He's in the third row, because actually, no one wants to be in the front row at a stand-up comedy night, plus he doesn’t want Dean to see him until he’s on stage. He knows Dean’s here, he saw Charlie’s red hair at the side of the bar a few minutes ago, and he’s fighting the urge to turn and look. That pull towards Dean’s still there, despite everything. He can feel it twisting in his stomach. He ignores it.

The first act walks on stage. It’s not Dean. It’s a woman, out of her depth and fumbling. Then a man, also unimpressive. The crowd’s restless, waiting to get to the good stuff. And then Dean appears.

He looks natural, up there. He’s more confident than he was last time. He grins and smiles at the audience, and then he sees Cas. His eyebrows raise and his lips quirk, but he doesn’t stumble. That makes Cas madder than ever.

Dean really has worked on his set since last week. The lines Cas knows so well are still there, but they’re interspersed with cracks about the room, off the cuff comments and audience interactions. It’s good. Cas hates that it’s so good. He hates Dean, who can stand up there in front of a room full of people and just tell them who he is. Like it’s easy. Like it’s even possible.

Dean’s pointing out people in the crowd now. “You,” he says, winking, “Sorry you’re having such a rough night, man. Maybe you shouldn’t have come to a comedy evening if you want to have fun. And you. Are you serious with that? Dude!”

“But you –” his finger moves across the room until it’s pointing directly at Cas. “You’ve got an interesting vibe. Huh. Not for nothing, bud, but the last time someone looked at me like that, I got laid.”

The audience erupts.

Cas is frozen.

He sees lights floating in front of his eyes. He wants to get up and leave, wants to run on stage and put his hands around Dean’s neck, but he knows enough to be aware that if he does anything right now he’s toast, socially speaking. He has to sit there and take it. The next three acts are a blur. He’s so furious he’s struggling to breathe. As soon as the break’s called he rockets up out of his seat and stomps over to where Dean’s sitting. He doesn’t even have to look for him. He just knows.

“Get up,” he says. “Get the fuck up and come outside.”

“Watch it, Cas,” snaps Charlie, her skinny shoulders squared, her hands in fists.

Dean grins at her emptily. He looks like he’s been drinking. “Stand down, kiddo,” he says. “Okay, Cas, whatever the hell you want. Let’s go.”

He doesn’t seem mad, but Cas can see the glitter in his eyes, the way his lips are pressed together, the tightness in his shoulder muscles.

They walk to the back door of the bar together, not looking at each other, and Cas stays quiet until the door slams shut behind them and there’s nothing but the cool air of the evening and the far-away sounds of the main street out to their left.

“So?” asks Dean, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall. “What’s up, Doc?”

“Don’t you fucking – don’t you just –” Cas is panting. This is all going wrong already. Focus! He’s been yelling at Dean in his head all day. “I read your comments on the book,” he snarls. “I know what you did.”

“Oh yeah? What did I do, Cas? Apart from your job.”

“Fuck you. You – you made it fanfic. The siren? The Chief? Dean, you can’t put that shit in a published book. You can’t do that. This is serious. Neal might be fucking every single male character apart from Mark in your fics, but he still can’t be bisexual in the actual fucking series.”

Dean snorts. “Oh, sure, right,” he says. “Just like you can suck my dick but you can’t look me in the eye the morning after. Great logic, Cas, really stellar.”

Cas gasps, winded. How could Dean bring that up? “That’s not the same –” he stutters.

“Yeah it fucking is, asshole. And you know what? I don’t give a shit any more, so I’ll say it. I’m not the one who made Neal bi, Cas.”

“What are you talking about? Chuck didn’t –” None of Cas’s points are coming out of his mouth properly. He wasn’t expecting Dean to respond like this. He wasn’t expecting that look in his eyes. Dean, he realizes, is even angrier than he is, and it suddenly terrifies him.

“I’m not talking about Chuck. Chuck isn’t the guy who made up Bel, Cas. I’m not the guy who made up Bel. You are.”

Cas’s stomach drops like he’s riding a roller coaster. “Bel –” he says weakly.

“BEL is the FUCKING ROMANTIC INTEREST, CAS!” roars Dean. “He’s YOU. You put yourself in the book and made Neal fall in love with you. They’re practically fucking by their second scene together, and you’re the only person in the world who can’t see it. You goddamn dumbass – you think you can’t write sex scenes? Every single scene Bel and Neal have together is the hottest thing I’ve ever read. And it’s not just Bel. Making the siren a man? That was you too. It’s all you. It’s all there in the books, way before I got my hands on them. Why the fuck do you think Crowley put you forward? What do you think CW hired you to do?”

“But,” whispers Cas. He can’t think of anything to say. The conversation’s falling away from him like sand underneath his feet. “I’m straight.”

“I swore I wasn’t going to fucking do this,” snaps Dean. “But fuck it. Cas, dude, I’ve got no idea what’s going on with you, but for sure you aren’t straight.”

Cas stares at him. His vision’s blurry. It’s hard to breathe.

“You know, I really thought it’d be fine,” Dean goes on. “I’ve been with closeted guys before. I thought I knew what it’d be like. Charlie and Kevin told me I’d be sorry, but I just – I really thought that maybe you – if I tried hard enough you might end up feeling – But I was wrong. And you know what? I give up, Cas. I’m not playing this game any more. You can work it out or not, I don’t care. I’m gonna go back inside and get blackout drunk, and you – you can go finish your stupid book and pretend you don’t want to fuck me. Sorry my comments were so crap. Guess you don’t need me after all.”

He turns to go. Before he has time to think, Cas puts out a hand to stop him. Dean looks down at it.

“Don’t fucking touch me again,” he says quietly.

The door opens again, and then slams behind him, and Cas is alone.

“But Bel is you,” he says to the empty air.

Chapter Text

It hurts. It hurts worse than his broken arm, worse than Hannah, worse than climbing on that bus when he was fifteen years old. It doesn’t just feel like he’s lost a friend. It feels like devastation.

Cas doesn’t sleep that night, or at least, he doesn’t remember sleeping. He’s stuck in a loop, hearing Dean say all those things to him, again and again and again. He knows Dean’s wrong, knows that if he’d just been able to say what he wanted to he’d have won the argument. He knows that until 4:02am. Then the doubts start creeping in. Then what Dean had told him begins to make an uncomfortable kind of sense.

Dean never says Neal is bisexual in the text of the book, does he? You’d only know from the hints if you were looking for it, and Cas had been looking for it. And even though he’d been sure that Dean told him to make the siren a man, when he thinks back to their conversation that day he suddenly remembers Dean saying that he wasn’t going to tell Cas what to do. The decision had been Cas’s. Dean had maybe heavily hinted at it, but Cas had taken the step himself.

But! But. Neal and the siren were supposed to just be friends, like Neal and Bel. And even if they didn’t end up reading that way to Dean, that was almost certainly more to do with the mind of the person reading it than it was the writer. Cas hadn’t intended any of it. And surely there’s nothing more straight than not even considering that two of your characters might be gay and in love with each other. It never so much as crossed his mind! He was just writing about how it felt to be around Dean.

Then Cas hears himself think that, and the bottom falls out of his mind.

He was just writing about how it felt to be around Dean.

Dean, who’s unlike any friend Cas has ever let himself have before. Dean, who he called over to sit with him the first day they met, something he has never, ever done before, just because he wanted an excuse to see him close up. Because he liked looking at him. Because he had a feeling just from seeing him in the café that they should – oh, fuck – be friends. And then Cas spent the next few months trying to be around Dean as much as he could. He went to a bar for him! He went to a club for him! He sat and watched movies for him, and Cas usually doesn't like movies, but he made himself do it because of Dean. Because of the way Dean’s hair smells and the freckles he has on his lips and the smile he gets when Cas tells him a joke. Being near him shakes Cas to the core, like some kind of religious experience. Like Dean’s an angel, and Cas is the stupid, helpless hunter who’s been thunderstruck by him.

Oh no.

If Dean is right, then maybe Cas did put all of that emotion into the book. And that was what Dean saw, and that’s why he said what he did, except – except – Dean doesn’t know he’s Bel. He thinks Cas has been writing about himself in some kind of weird wish-fulfilment relationship with Chuck’s made up character, all-American hero Neal Colt. So Dean doesn’t actually know how Cas feels about him.

But what exactly is it that Cas feels?

There’s been something safe about calling his feelings for Dean a crush. Crush sounds random, a little childish, just a meaningless physical impulse. But what if it isn’t just a crush? What if it never has been? What if Cas has been – has been –

He doesn’t want to think it. But it’s 4:34am, and he’s alone, and there’s nothing to stop him finally looking down over the edge into the abyss below.

What if Cas. Has been. In love with Dean Winchester. All along.

But. Wait. It can’t really be love. Cas has been in love before, but it’s never felt like this. He loved Hannah, didn’t he? He loved the way her brow furrowed when she was thinking a problem through. He loved the way they’d wash the dishes together, her cleaning, him drying. He loved how safe she’d made him feel (until she left him, that is). Liking being around someone, being comfortable with them: isn’t that love? What he feels for Dean is like having a blowtorch turned against his heart.

He hears Dean’s voice again, saying I’ve got no idea what’s going on with you, but for sure you aren’t straight. How can Dean know that, though? How can Cas? Maybe he’s in love with Dean, but he’s never been in love with any other men. It could still just be a kind of – cosmic mistake. The exception.

Because he’s never felt this way before, with anyone.

Has he?

There was that boy, though. Adam. Cas was fifteen, and Adam’s parents had just moved into the compound, and when Cas saw him for the first time he knew they were going to be friends. Adam was so – so – Cas struggles for the word. So perfect. They’d become inseparable, and Cas had been overwhelmed with joy to have been chosen by someone so wonderful. And then, one evening, they’d been sitting on a couch reading a book together, heads close. Adam had his arm around Cas and he was whispering something in Cas’s ear, Cas can’t even remember what, although he knows it was funny enough for him to laugh at – but he does remember looking up and seeing his father staring at them. Cas had never seen him so angry. He yelled at them both to stand up, and go to their rooms, and that was the last time Cas ever saw Adam. He never read the end of that book, either. Adam must have taken it with him when he left.

Adam, Cas realizes, might have grown up to look a lot like Dean Winchester.

Wait. Was that love? No, it can’t have been.

But –

One could be a mistake. Two is a pattern. But surely, still – he’d have known, wouldn’t he? How do you know?

He reaches over and swipes open his phone. Perhaps the internet can help. He pauses, and then types in how do I know if I am

The final word is very hard to write. In fact, it’s impossible. He settles for not straight.

He’s surprised by how many quizzes pop up in the search results. He takes a deep breath, and clicks one.

First question:

Have you ever had feelings for a same-gender close friend?

Cas’s heart is pounding. It’s just a quiz! No one can tell he’s taking it. No one will know his results.

He clicks I think so.

Next question.

Have you ever kissed someone or wanted to kiss someone of the same gender?

Cas swallows. Definitely, and it was great.

He keeps going.

Has anyone ever asked you if you were gay?

Have you ever felt attracted to someone of the same gender?

Cas answers as honestly as he can, and then, finally, he gets to the result.

You might be gay!

Shit.

But maybe they tell everyone that?

He takes another test.

It comes back 63% gay, 37% bisexual.

He takes another test.

You are probably gay!

He takes another test. And none of them, not one of them, tell him he is straight.

Cas is reeling. He flips to his call history to tell Dean.

And stops.

He can’t call Dean. It’s over. He’s the reason it’s over. He fucked it up between them, for ever. He said things to Dean that he can’t ever unsay, and Dean said things to him that – well, maybe they were true. Maybe they weren’t wrong. But Dean made it clear that he doesn’t want to see Cas again. There’s no chance for Cas to make things right.

Because it’s all too late now, isn’t it?

And anyway, Dean couldn’t want Cas. Not really. Dean understands who he is, and Cas, apparently, has had no idea. People who he’s never met seem to know Cas better than he knows himself. What could he offer Dean? He imagines actually being with Dean, walking down the street together holding hands, and feels sick. That’s not – that’s not for Cas. It’s fine for other people, but not Cas. Even thinking about it conjures up the image of his father, staring at him, angrier than he’s ever been in his life, and Cas, before that glare, is weak.

So there’s nothing to be done. He just has to finish the book, and send it to Crowley, and then never think about any of it again. Maybe he’ll move. Find a new place to write. Redraft the possession book. Start something completely different. Maybe it’ll stop hurting soon.

Five years?

Ten.

Eleven, if you add on ten per cent.

Which is the point when Cas really starts to cry.

*

He wakes up late on Saturday morning, with only one thought in his head: he needs to finish the book. Now.

It’s the end-of-project feeling, but this time there’s nothing pleasant about it. It’s like a headache beating at his temples telling him to hurry the fuck up, just get on with it.

Fine. Cas can do that. It’s his job.

He grits his teeth and opens his laptop (he’s just sitting on his bed to write, because he absolutely does not deserve coffee and donuts while he works today). Half a chapter left. Get Neal out of heaven, kill Lilith, kill Violet, start the apocalypse, end the book. Easy.

But there’s one remaining question: why would Bel let Neal out of the green room? Obviously, he’s really doing it because he knows it’s too late for Neal to stop what’s about to happen, but what reason can Cas give the readers, so they’re still shocked at the final twist?

Then he knows. It’s obvious. If what Dean said is true – if what Cas is realizing is true – then Neal really does love Bel. And Bel – maybe it’s not love, not for him. He’s not the kind of being who loves. But he feels something. Cas can use that.

Neal pleads with Bel to defy heaven and let him go.

“You could come with me,” he said. “Help me and Mark, Bel. I know you don’t want to be part of this.”

Bel stared at him, cold-faced. “It’s what I have to do,” he said. “It’s what my father wants. We’ve been through so much together, Neal. I’m sorry it ended like this. But I cannot help you.”

“Yeah you can! You’re lying! This whole place – this is all just built on a bunch of lies. Pretending to be better than the other guys, when you’re just the same. You’re disgusting, Bel.”

“What would you have me do?” asked Bel, his jaw set. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” said Neal. “And you’re choosing not to give it to me.”

Bel looked down at the floor of the green room. “I have no choice,” he said.

“At least look at me when you lie to me,” said Neal. “You spineless, soulless son of a bitch. I’m done with you.”

Bel looked up then, one bright blue glare, and Neal felt himself blasted backward, out of the green room. He whirled through space and then landed on a hard floor, all the breath knocked out of him.

“Neal?” said Mark’s voice, behind him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Where’s Bel?” asked Neal. But he knew before he said it that he was alone.

So Bel’s done what Neal asked of him. He’s let Neal out. But he still believes in heaven too much to leave it just for a human man. So he’s stayed behind, obedient to his father. He can’t shake off his heavenly programming the way Neal wants him to, and that means that it’s over between them. Bel can’t come back from this. There’s no coming back from this.

And of course, even though he’s out, Neal’s too late. Mark has already killed Lilith, and in doing so broken the final seal. Lucifer is rising, and there’s no stopping the apocalypse now. Mark’s horrified when he realizes the truth, but Violet is exultant. This was her plan all along. She didn’t love Mark at all. She was just using him.

Neal stabs her in a rage, and she slumps down dead next to Lilith. It makes Cas’s heart ache. It all seems like a waste, all of a sudden. Both brothers’ hearts broken. All their good intentions for nothing. Their lovers dead, or lost for ever, and nothing before them but more destruction, and more, until the end of the world.

But maybe that’s how the story ends, sometimes. Maybe that’s life. He’d thought, for a while, that maybe there was more to it than that, but he was wrong. It’s just going to be cereal, in bed, with his laptop, until he withers away and dies.

He opens his email. It’s one am on Sunday morning, but who gives a shit about that.

Crowley, he writes. Here’s the book you wanted. It’s a piece of shit but I guess it’ll do.

Castiel

He sends it, and then he closes his laptop and lies in the dark, staring at the wall.

*

Cas knows he must have fallen asleep, because he’s woken by Crowley calling him.

He ignores it twice, but the third time he gives up. He just wants the noise to stop.

“What,” he says into the speaker.

“You stole my line,” says Crowley. “What. The fuck.”

Cas clutches the phone defensively. “I sent you the book,” he says. “It’s not late.”

“Late isn’t the problem. What the fuck happened to you?”

Cas pauses, because he’s not quite sure what Crowley means.

“The ending, you little shit. What the fuck is that?”

“That’s life,” says Cas, flopping back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. “That’s what happens, Crowley.”

“Oh no. No. No. Is this about Dean?”

Cas sits straight back up. “What do you –” he starts.

“Oh, don’t give me that. Did he finally break up with you?”

Cas can’t breathe properly. Denials flood his brain. But what he says, after the silence becomes unbearable, is, “It was my fault.”

“Are you fucking telling me,” says Crowley, “that you broke up with Dean Winchester?”

“Maybe,” says Cas miserably. There’s a tight band around his chest. Having the words out in the air is sickening.

“You’re the stupidest man in the world,” says Crowley. “I spent months – months! – trying to – and then you – you little shit – and you let him get away?”

Cas has never heard him so incoherent. His voice is trembling. He suddenly reassesses a lot of what he’s been assuming about Crowley.

“In the spirit of professionalism,” Crowley goes on, “and because I can’t represent someone I’ve murdered, I will not continue this line of questioning. But I hope you know how thoroughly I think you have fucked things up. Capisce?”

“Yes,” says Cas, slumping back against his pillow.

“Good. Now. What the fuck do we do with this book?”

“I’ll rewrite the ending,” says Cas dully. He can do that, right?

“It’s not just the fucking ending. You’re right, that entire last chapter needs to be ripped to shreds and shat on. But it’s the whole book, Castiel. It’s dry as an nonagenarian’s cunt.”

“Crowley!”

“If you don’t like me saying it you shouldn’t have written it. Explain. I thought we’d turned a corner with Lazarus Rising. It was funny. I laughed. Twice. This is like that bloody possession book all over again.”

Cas takes a deep breath. It’s time. He has to say it. He always knew he’d come to the end of the road eventually, and here it is. Oh, fuck, he doesn’t want to. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth. Say it, Cas.

“It’s Dean,” he stammers.

“Yes, you’ve already told me the sordid tale, I don’t need to hear more,” says Crowley.  “Wait. What’s Dean?”

“Dean. Was. Dean was the jokes. In Lazarus Rising. I – he – it was only supposed to be a one time thing!”

Cas can hear his voice cracking.

“Tell me more,” says Crowley, silky smooth. So Cas does. It pours out of him – the sex scene, which became two scenes, and then became punching up lines, and then became – became co-writing book 8.

“You absolute fucking moron,” hisses Crowley, when he’s done. “Do you read the contracts you sign? You know you have to promise that the work you submit is yours alone? Not yours alone and also your boyfriend’s who you met randomly in a café one day, you stupid little twat. You are going to be sued. We are going to be sued. And I do not like being sued!”

Cas is very glad he left out the part about Dean also writing Supernatural fanfic.

“What do we do?” he asks.

“Let me think,” says Crowley. “Sit still. Don’t steal anyone else’s writing and pass it off as your own until I’ve had the chance to consider the problem.”

Cas drapes himself across the bed and tries not to resent Crowley. He’s an asshole, but he is trying to help.

“Right,” says Crowley, at last. “Question. You said that you rejected all of Dean’s changes. Did you happen to save them anywhere before you did that?”

“They’re still in the google document,” says Cas, confused. “But –”

“Shut up. Shut up. Okay. So. We’ve already published one book with Dean’s additions. The crime has already been committed, as it were. We can’t get more sued, unless it emerges that you told me what was going on and I didn’t do anything about it.”

“But you did –”

“Shut the fuck up, Castiel. Here’s what happened. You sent me a draft of the manuscript that was unacceptable. This is because you had recently broken up with your boyfriend and you were unhinged by grief. I telephoned you to tell you to sort it out, and while I was on the phone to you we both managed to delete that original email. Cas, delete the email you sent me. Right. Then I told you to punch it up and send it back to me, and you did. You didn’t have time to rewrite the ending before CW’s deadline, so I sent them the first twenty-one chapters on Monday, and then you spent the rest of the week rewriting chapter twenty two before you sent it to me at the end of the week. CW gets their book, we get paid, the book gets published, bish bash bosh.”

Cas is, by now, thoroughly confused. “What?” he asks.

Crowley sighs. “Fine. To put it into Castiel. Delete that email you sent me. Delete the shitty version of the manuscript. Send me the version that Dean punched up for you. Spend the next week rewriting chapter twenty two to give it some kind of happy ending while I try to placate CW with those first twenty one chapters, get through the editing process, get the book on shelves and walk away from this whole thing hoping that Dean Winchester isn’t vindictive enough to rat you out.”

“He’s not,” says Cas dully.

“Isn’t he? How do you know?”

Cas knows. He remembers the look in Dean’s eyes. He almost wishes Dean was vindictive. It’d be better than the alternative.

“This is damage control, Cas. Do you understand? You’re kissing any more contracts with CW goodbye, but at least you won’t have to go to jail.”

“They wouldn’t send me to jail!” says Cas, horrified.

“They wouldn’t send me to jail. I’m rich. You? Not so much.”

He wouldn’t really have to go to jail, would he? Cas thinks Crowley must be lying. But – he did commit a crime. He did break the contract he signed, and who knows what happens to authors who break their contracts.

Crowley’s plan is stupid, but Cas has to admit it sounds better than the alternative. He pulls up their shared google doc, drops it into an email to Crowley and hits send.

“There,” he says.

“There,” says Crowley. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? I’ll send on to CW on Monday. Now go finish the fucking book again, and make it fucking hopeful. Apart from the apocalypse.”

The phone goes dead in Cas’s hand.

*

Cas has had writers’ block before. But he’s never had anything like this. He has as long as he needs to write one chapter. Essentially, he has as long as he needs to write one scene, the one between Bel and Neal. He can’t change Violet’s fate, because it’s kind of tied up in the whole Lilith dying thing – and obviously Lilith has to die too. So he just has to work out how to deal with Bel.

But he can’t.

How can he give Bel and Neal a hopeful ending? It’s impossible. Bel is stuck, unable to get out from under Heaven’s thumb. And, even if he could, what would their future be together? The most they could hope for is to go out in a blaze of glory, Thelma and Louise holding hands and driving off that cliff.

People who – are – people who are like them don’t get happy endings, in Cas’s experience. You always end up crying into a shirt, or alone in front of a fire. That’s how the story goes.

Right?

Right.

So, because Cas is out of hope, out of a contract and out of a relationship that he hadn’t noticed he was in (Crowley’s voice saying “you had recently broken up with your boyfriend” haunts him), he goes to the one place in the universe he thinks might be able to save him: a bookstore.

He shouldn’t be here, he thinks to himself as he steps through the door. He’s got one hundred and sixty dollars in his bank account to get him through until CW approves the manuscript, which they won’t do until he writes the final chapter, which he can’t do because he’ll probably never write again, which means that he’s going to run out of money in about a week and have to go begging to Crowley again. Which means that he shouldn’t be in a bookstore right now.

But he breathes in the smell of pages and feels himself relax. The shelves of books make his shoulders drop, his brain unclench. He liked that one, he hated that one but it’s got a great cover, he met that author once at a party and she was a dick, he’s been meaning to read that one and hey, it had a NYT review last week. Cas is among friends, and enemies, and colleagues. He’s safe. He runs his fingers gently along a row of spines, tipping one out to touch it softly. Cas feels about deckled edges the way some other people feel about kittens.

Then he sees the display. It’s a wall, with books propped up on tiny shelves in a wheel around a sign with the words AN EDUCATION in big bold letters. Cas recognizes some of the books – Educated, Prep – and then he sees a book he’s only dimly heard of before. The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Its cover is a girl lying on a hay bale in a field. Curious, Cas reaches forward and picks it up.

The night Cameron Post's parents died, her first emotion was relief. Relief they would never know that hours earlier, she'd been kissing a girl.

Cas fumbles the book in his hand and almost drops it.

“Oh hey!” says a voice behind him. “Great choice!”

Cas turns to see one of the bookstore assistants. Her hair is bright blue, and she’s got a ring in her lip. There are pin badges all over her brightly patterned dress. Most of them Cas doesn’t know, but he can’t miss the rainbow flag on her lapel.

“I really love that book,” she says excitedly. “Made me cry, though. Get ready for it.”

“Uh,” says Cas. There are a lot of things he wants to say. This means nothing. I picked it up by mistake, because I love farming. I seem to be lost. Where am I?

But what actually comes out of his mouth is, “I’m looking for a book for a friend.”

“Oh yeah?” asks the shop assistant. “Sure. What kind of book?”

“It’s, uh,” says Cas. “Like … this one but … a happy ending.”

“Oh, this has some hopeful moments,” says the shop assistant. “Just, it's really sad too. She gets sent to conversion therapy camp midway through it. Rough stuff. My family are Baptists, and I – yeah, anyway, never mind. It just spoke to me, I guess. Sorry, you wanted happy. Okay, we got that. Come this way.”

And Cas is led through the store, hands clenched around the copy of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, to the romance section. Cas doesn’t usually come to this part of the store. He’s not really a romance kind of guy. And anyway – hey, what’s he doing here?

But the assistant’s pulling out a stack of books from the shelves.

“Okay, so this one,” she says, brandishing a cute pastel-pink cover at him with a cartoon drawing of two guys on it, “this one is super cute. He’s the President’s son, he’s the crown prince of England, and obviously they fall in love. The movie just came out. Only problem is, your friend might already have read it? It’s super popular.

“This one – this one’s great too. They’re magicians, and … oh hey, I guess I didn’t ask. When you say happy, do you mean romcom? Or just, you know, romantic? And do you want sapphic or Achillean? For your friend, I mean.”

“I,” says Cas. “What?”

“Lesbian or gay,” says the assistant, like it’s nothing.

“The, uh, the second one,” says Cas, feeling himself blush. The assistant keeps piling more books into his arms and telling him how great they all are, and he believes her, and he wants to buy them all. He’s read books where guys fall in love before, obviously – he read The Song of Achilles, because everyone was talking about it and it was historical and – and – maybe he should have thought more about why he read The Song of Achilles, now he comes to think about it. But he’s now realizing that he’s maybe been hanging out with the wrong authors. There are people out there who are writing books where guys fall in love and don’t die. A lot of people. And a lot of books. He can hear Balthazar and Naomi sneering at these covers, smirking over how trite the blurbs sound. But fuck them, actually. They sneered at Supernatural, too, when he got the gig.

He staggers out of the store half an hour later, wild-eyed, with Red, White and Royal Blue, Simon vs. the Homo-Sapiens Agenda (“it’s YA,” the assistant had said to him, “so no sex or anything, but it’s so cute. The author came out as bi a couple years ago, did you see?”) and his copy of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which he hasn’t been able to let go of.

He feels so stupid. He’s an author. It’s literally his job to know about books. But he never realized that there were so many happy stories about people like – people like Dean. And him. People like them.

He reads all afternoon. He starts with Simon, which makes him so jealous he feels sick. The parents are hardly believable. And these teenage boys? Bullshit. Who could possibly – who could just be so –

He puts it down, and picks up Red, White and Royal Blue. This one he can’t stop reading. He’s aching for these two men to get together, and even though he knows it’s going to happen, he gets that same lightning bolt feeling he gets from reading Dean’s fic when it does. This is fanfic, he thinks. They let this author write fanfiction about their own made-up characters, and publish it, and it didn’t ruin their career. In fact – he googles it, and almost drops his phone – the book has sold more copies than almost anything he’s ever heard of. Just like the assistant said, there’s even a movie. This book, where two men fuck, and fall in love, and end up together, is a global success story.

Then he turns to The Miseducation of Cameron Post. He’s already knocked sideways, shaken and vulnerable, but for some reason after what he’s just read he’s expecting another kind of romance novel. What he gets, instead, is a kind of slow horror story. It scrapes him raw from the inside out, watching Cameron beaten down further and further. Who she is dooms her to years of suffering – and it isn’t fair, he thinks. She didn’t ask for it. If she’d just had someone who understood her, she wouldn’t have to waste years of her life struggling for something that should be easy. The section about the conversion therapy camp leaves his hands trembling. He thinks, inescapably, of his father. But he never did anything to Cas! He never hurt Cas, or said anything to him – or –

But he didn’t need to, did he? Cas knew what he thought. He knew the limits of what he could be. He knew that after what happened with Adam, there was nowhere else to go except that bus. And even then, he brought his father along with him. He’s still here, perched in Cas’s mind, whispering that he’s disgusting, disgraceful, lost. That he doesn’t deserve anything. That he should suffer.

And Cas, for the first time ever, suddenly wonders why. What has he done, that’s so bad? What did Cameron do?

Nothing.

Yes, but it’s bad to be – everyone knows that –

Except that shop assistant didn’t. Dean doesn’t. Kevin, and Charlie, and Jo, and Benny (not that he likes Benny, but that’s not the point) don’t. Crowley might be one of the worst people Cas has ever met, but that’s just because he’s an agent, not because he sleeps with men.

But they’re not like Cas. There’s nothing wrong with them, but there is with Cas, because – because –

Because his father told him so. No other reason.

But his father didn’t know everything, did he? He didn’t know about Bruce Springsteen. He didn’t know much of anything, now that Cas thinks about it, apart from how to scare a couple hundred people in a dusty compound. When Cas was a kid, his father told him and the other children that he’d met God and they were friends, and now Cas thinks about it, that cannot be factually true.

And if his father was wrong about that, then maybe he was wrong about everything. Maybe – maybe – maybe the world isn’t what Cas thought it was. Maybe there’s hope in it after all.

He turns back to the books on his bed, and picks up Simon again. And this time, he’s not annoyed by it at all. He remembers what the shop assistant had said, the author came out as bi a couple years ago, and it’s like suddenly seeing a magic eye picture. This is a fantasy. This is a what if.

What if you’d known yourself so young? What if you had been strong enough to fall in love? What if your parents had been proud of you?

He finishes it, and he’s crying, which embarrasses him. He’s not a teenager, so he should definitely not be sobbing at a YA romance novel.

So it’s too late for him and Dean. He’s given up on that dream. But – but maybe Bel and Neal’s story doesn’t have to end. Maybe Bel could break away from Heaven. Maybe he could get on the bus, and not look back.

What if he – what if Bel went with Neal, somehow? It wouldn’t be like the ending of Simon, or Red, White and Royal Blue. No kissing. This isn’t that kind of series. But maybe they could be allowed to just … stay near each other. That would be hopeful, wouldn’t it? Even if there were more Alices, Neal would still be near Bel. Isn’t that happiness? Just existing, in someone else’s sunshine. Just knowing, even if you never say the words.

And maybe the next writer who CW brings in after him will pick up his loose end and run with it.

And then in fanfic – in fanfic, Neal and Bel can be whatever people need them to be. They can be together for real. Cas knows perfectly well that fanfic writers will fill in all the possibility he leaves with their own stories. They’ll see what he wants them to.

He thinks about Dean, telling him that he wouldn’t want to see what the internet was saying about Bel, and smiles for the first time in days.

Without even thinking about it, he flips open his laptop. He needs, right now, to be near Dean just a little. He can’t call him, or send him a message. He’s banned himself from that for the rest of time. But there’s no harm in losing himself in the familiarity of Dean’s stories for an hour or two. Dean won’t know. He’s still reading Ao3 as a guest. So he clicks through to Dean’s profile page.

And stops.

There have always been 57 fanfics on Dean’s profile, for as long as he’s been reading.

But today?

Today there are 58.

Chapter Text

Cas really thinks he’s misremembered, at first. But there’s the date it was uploaded: two days ago. Profound Bond. Rated E, with a really alarming number of hits already, and the pairing is – Cas’s heart skips a beat – Bel/Neal.

The first new fic by Dean since he met Cas (Cas knows, he checked the time stamps when he began to read Dean’s fics, Dean hadn’t uploaded anything in months), and he’s chosen to write about Bel and Neal.

He hears Dean in his head, yelling “BEL is the FUCKING ROMANTIC INTEREST, CAS! He’s YOU.”

And this is – holy fuck – fifty thousand words about Bel. Who Dean thinks is Cas.

He can’t read it. It’s not fair on Dean. Except – he posted it two days ago. Maybe he thinks that it’s fine, now that he’s never going to talk to Cas again. But he can’t have started writing it after last Friday, can he? Not even Dean works that fast. He must have been working on it for weeks.

Cas remembers all those times he saw Dean writing away in the café. He thought that Dean was working on his set, or on the book. But he was wrong again, just like always.

He can’t read it. Can he?

But Dean will never know. They’re never going to see each other again, so Dean will never know. And Cas is so, so curious.

And then it’s too late, because he’s clicked on the fic.

The first thing he thinks is that shit, Dean’s good. He has an innate sense of the tone of the Supernatural books, better than Cas ever has. His lines read like Chuck’s, but with an extra twist of something that makes them even more darkly funny and compulsive.

The next thing he thinks is what the hell? This isn’t fanfic. It’s just a rewrite of Lazarus Rising. Neal’s busting his way out of his grave, roaming the countryside to work out who pulled him out of Hell. Glass shatters, Neal covers his ears with his hands, he runs to Robbie, they corner the being in the barn and – Bel appears.

The man – the being – what is he? – struts forward, smirking. Neal staggers backwards, scrabbling for his knife. I’m about to die, he thinks. I’m about to die, and the guy who’s going to kill me is really hot.

Cas can’t help flinching at that.

Neal stabs Bel, a hail Mary effort, and while he does it Robbie grabs the second where Bel’s distracted to cast the spell he’s prepared on the two of them.

Bel whirls around. “What did you do to me?” he grates out, his voice rumbling through the barn.

Why is Bel’s voice so low in this fic? Cas’s voice isn’t that low, is it? It’s a completely normal voice, actually. Dean must be making that part up. Also, Cas is not – hot. So maybe Dean’s version of Bel doesn’t actually have anything to do with Cas at all.

“Spell I picked up,” says Robbie. “Keeps you with Neal, so you can’t go runnin’ away. We gotcha.”

And there it is: the difference. Because this is a version of Lazarus Rising where Bel can’t leave Neal. They’re stuck together. Wherever Neal goes, Bel has to follow.

Cas has to hand it to him: this is a very good romance set up. Damn it, Dean!

Events move forward in much the same way as they do in Cas’s book, except for one crucial difference: Bel can’t go more than thirty feet away from Neal at any point. He spends his nights sitting sulkily in the corner of their motel rooms, wings mantled (Cas loves the way Dean writes the angels’ wings – see-through and nebulous but still very much there. He wishes he’d had that idea when he made up Bel), and his days prowling after the brothers on their hunts. Mark is pissed at Neal, Bel is pissed at the world in general, and Neal … Neal’s trying to pretend that he’s pissed to be stuck with Bel. But he’s not sure anyone’s buying it.

He just can’t stop looking at Bel. At the way his dark hair sticks up, the way he moves like he’s not used to being in a body, the way he sometimes stares back at Neal like he’s hungry and Neal’s food. He’s so beautiful, and Neal’s not used to using that word when he thinks about men, but he is. His cheekbones could cut glass.

Where did Bel get his human vessel from? Is there still someone else in that gorgeous body? Does he care that there’s an angel driving him? Would he care, if Neal – but yeah, of course he would. He’s probably got a wife and kids somewhere. Probably goes to church every Sunday. He’d probably freak out, if he knew what Neal was thinking about him.

So Neal doesn’t think about it.

He doesn’t think about it much.

He doesn’t think about it when it’s raining during the hunt for the rougarou, and Bel automatically puts out one half-transparent wing to shelter him. They’re standing close enough to touch, Bel’s face softer than Neal’s ever seen and tinted a little blue in the evening light.

“Who needs an umbrella?” jokes Neal, clenching his hands at his sides and hoping Bel won’t see.

“I don’t know,” says Bel, blinking at him. “Who?”

He doesn’t think about it when Mark goes to bed early after the whole thing with the shapeshifter, and he’s left on the couch with Bel, coming down from almost dying (again) by watching Hottie MD reruns. Neal’s gonna be responsible and go to bed too, but the couch is comfy and he’s so bone-achingly tired after what happened. He closes his eyes, just for a second, and when he wakes up he’s lying against Bel’s shoulder. He can feel Bel breathing, feel the agonizingly light touch of Bel’s wing feathers brushing against his neck. Bel is very warm, warmer than most humans, and he smells like a pine tree burning down. That doesn’t sound devastatingly sexy, but it is. Neal knows he should get up, but fuck, he doesn’t want to. Maybe Bel hasn’t noticed he’s awake. Maybe he can just go back to sleep and pretend this didn’t happen. So he does.

In the morning, Bel behaves like nothing happened the night before. It probably didn’t, in his mind. Who knows if angels have even heard about sex? They’re probably all junkless underneath their clothes. Neal’s hand shakes thinking about what’s underneath Bel’s clothes, and coffee splashes on his t-shirt. So he takes it off right there in the kitchen, because he’s nothing if not a fucking masochist, and he wants to prove to himself that the pull he feels is all one way. He’s just a sucker for unavailable guys, and you don’t get more unavailable than an asshole angel. In response, Bel stares directly at his naked chest, head on one side, like he’s watching a kid do a handstand. Something small and strange, performing an uninteresting trick.

Yeah, so it’s never going to happen. Except. Sometimes Bel stands closer to him than he can bear, puts his hand on Neal’s waist to keep hold of him in a crowd. Sometimes Neal wakes up, and Bel’s sitting on the edge of his bed staring at him. Sometimes Neal is in the shower and Bel walks right into the room, straight through the locked door, to ask him a question about hot dogs or the internet. It fucking sucks, and Neal is so horny, and there’s nothing he can do about it because he’s got an angel less than thirty feet from him at all times.

Neal begs Robbie to take off the spell, but Robbie won’t. “We need him,” he says. “Man up, boy.”

So by the time he’s on the road looking for Alice’s grace, Neal’s about to explode. Alice is cute, and he thinks that maybe she could be a good distraction. But Bel won’t fucking leave them alone. He’s there, in the back seat of the car, asking Alice theological questions while Neal is trying to flirt with her. Neal sends him away on an errand so he can have some time alone with Alice, but Bel’s back before he can lay his moves on her. He stands right by Neal’s shoulder and glowers down at her, his arms folded.

“You two want some time alone?” asks Alice, with a grin.

“Yes,” says Bel, firmly. “You can go now.”

Neal wants to scream. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks, once Alice has sloped away. “Why don’t you like her?”

“I do like her,” says Bel grouchily. “But I like you more. As you know, we share a profound bond.”

Neal really fucking wishes he wouldn’t say shit like that. It’s not fair.

“Yeah, well, I guess you’re not so bad yourself,” he says, trying to make it sound like a joke. “If I’ve gotta be stuck with someone, it might as well be you.”

They walk through the town they’re staying in until they come to a high wall, trees visible over the top of it. Neal climbs up it, then gestures for Bel to follow him. Bel opens his wings and breezes over, but as he comes in to land he knocks against Neal, almost pushing him to the ground. Neal’s forced to cling to him, arms around Bel’s muscular shoulders. They both pause, staring at each other. Bel reaches up and touches his thumb to Neal’s lips. Neal opens his mouth into the touch. He can’t stop himself. And then Bel shakes Neal off and steps away. Neal thinks that he’s never been hornier or more confused in his entire life.

And Cas, reading all of this, thinks that if someone came bursting through his bedroom door screaming at him right now he wouldn’t even bother to look up. Because he knows these scenes. The umbrella? The couch? The fucking walled garden? He was there. He remembers them. But he doesn’t remember them like this.

It was – it was him, who woke up and felt Dean against him, while Dean stayed asleep. It was him who was trying not to give anything away, who was trying to be normal and not just lean in and kiss Dean that night in the garden. The story’s all wrong. Why would Dean – why would Dean write that Neal took off his shirt to try to get Bel to look at him? Because that did happen, but it was a perfectly innocent moment from Dean’s perspective. He just spilled his coffee and didn’t want it to stain his shirt. It was Cas who couldn’t stop looking at his chest, Cas who was the freak. Right?

Right?

Except that if Dean’s written this, and Dean thinks that Bel is Cas (does he? Really? Because Bel is so sexy here, so unknowable and magnetic, and Cas is just a weirdo who doesn’t blink enough), then – then that means –

Fuck.

Then Dean has been.

Dean Winchester has also been.

No! Come on! That can’t be true.

He keeps reading. He’s trembling all over.

Dean’s deviating from the book more and more. The final battle between the angels and demons takes place at night, in a maze of city alleyways. Neal and Bel get separated from Alice, Mark and Violet, confused and lost. Neal’s hurt – a long cut from an angel blade on his chest.

“Here,” says Bel. He shoves Neal into the wall and pushes the material of his shirt aside, pressing his fingers over the cut in Neal’s flesh. Neal can feel his heart beating against Bel’s hand. He’s breathing roughly, and he can hear that Bel is too. Bel’s staring down at Neal’s lips, his face hungry, and right then, because Neal’s stupid and he doesn’t think, he leans forward and presses his mouth to Bel’s.

Bel’s frozen for a second, and then he moves. He wraps his arms around Neal and opens his mouth into the kiss. Neal’s completely surrounded, Bel’s wings encircling him, the heat from Bel’s body making his skin flush. He pulls Bel’s shirt open, running his hands over his narrow ribs. Bel grabs Neal’s hips and spins him around, pushing him against the wall, and Neal can feel Cas’s hard-on –

Cas stops breathing. He checks the sentence he just read. Nope, he’s not imagining it.

Dean Winchester typed his name during a sex scene. A sex scene that is, once again, eerily familiar.

Oh, fuck.

Fuck.

So there’s no doubt any more. Bel, to Dean, is Cas. Dean’s writing about Neal getting railed in an alleyway by Belaquiel, angel of the Lord, and it’s Cas he’s imagining when he writes it.

Well. That’s information that could have been useful to Cas once. But it doesn’t matter any more, does it? It doesn’t matter how Dean felt about him. It doesn’t matter that, if this fic is anything to go by, he was completely incorrect about what Dean has been thinking over the last four months. It’s over.

He skips forward to the end of the fic. Neal’s looking for some acknowledgement from Bel that what happened in the alleyway the night before meant something, that this has changed things between them. But Bel is just his usual inscrutable self. Neal puts his hand on Bel’s arm, but Bel shakes it off, staring at Neal as though he’s grown a second head. And Neal gets it. It’s not like that, for Bel. Angels might be able to fuck, but they’re still junkless in all the ways that count. He’s never going to be able to give Neal what he really wants. He can’t fall in love. He’ll never feel about Neal the way Neal feels about him. But – hey, Neal’s an optimist. Maybe he doesn’t need that. Maybe it’s enough just to be near Bel. They’re still bound together, right? Maybe it’ll be fine.

But he knows, even as he thinks it, that it won’t.

And then the fic’s over.

Cas thought that he’d been in pain before, but nothing is worse than this. What they were doing – it wasn’t a hook-up for Dean after all. He wanted Cas to fall in love with him.

But of course he did. Of course he fucking did. He said so, didn’t he? He asked Cas to stay, but Cas thought he was just – just joking, or something. He didn’t think it was serious. He didn’t think that Dean meant it. He didn’t – oh fuck. Cas didn’t just reject breakfast. He rejected everything.

He thought he knew the story, but he had no idea.

If he hadn’t been so stupid – if he hadn’t been so scared – he could have had Dean. For real.

He scrolls down to the comments.

Hey! Imp finally got on the AngelColt train! I knew we’d get him.

Shaking screaming crying throwing up. I can’t cope!!!! Devastated!

Nooooo! But they’re in love! Damn you Imp!

HOT. Who’s Cas tho?

Sequel please!! These two knuckleheads need to work out how they feel about each other.

Cas can’t read any more. He slams the laptop closed and lies on the bed with his eyes shut.

He can’t cope with this. How is he supposed to cope with this?

But of course, he knows how he’s going to cope with this.

He opens the laptop again and clicks through to his Book 8 document. Just one scene left to write. And he finally knows how to do it.

Neal and Bel are back in the green room, yelling at each other.

“You know what I want,” said Neal. “And you’re choosing not to give it to me.”

Bel looked down at the floor of the green room. “I have no choice,” he said.

“At least look at me when you lie to me,” said Neal. “You spineless, soulless son of a bitch. I’m done with you.”

Maybe it all went wrong in real life. It always does, for Cas. But right here, in this story, he can get it right. He deletes the rest of the scene, and types a new line.

When Neal looked up again, Bel was gone. He was alone.

There’s only one thing that can happen now. Bel has to change his mind.

Neal wanders the green room in a frustrated daze. He’s lost everything. He’s powerless, and stuck, and desperate. And then he feels a hand burning on his shoulder. Before he can turn, Bel grabs him from behind, spinning him round and pressing him against the green room’s wall. He’s got one hand over Neal’s mouth and nose, and with the other he pulls out a knife, but Neal isn’t afraid. He’s suddenly calmer than he has been all day. They stare into each other’s eyes without saying anything, and Neal nods. He knows as clearly as he’s ever known anything in his life that it’s going to be okay.

Still not speaking, Bel cuts his own arm with the knife and daubs blood across the wall, making a sigil that Neal recognizes. He’s only just finished when more angels come storming into the room. Bel glares at them and then slams his hand down on the sigil. The angels are blasted from existence.

“What the hell, man?” gasped Neal.

“They won’t be gone long,” said Bel. “We have to go now, before they come back for me. We have to stop Mark, before he kills Lilith. She is the final seal, Neal. If she dies, the apocalypse will begin.” He took hold of Neal’s shoulder again and the green room winked out of existence around them.

And there it is. The only way this works: if Bel defies Heaven and tells Neal the truth before it's too late. If Bel leaves with Neal.

Cas is changing their ending. Now Bel’s there in the nunnery, just as distraught as Neal that they didn’t manage to get there in time to prevent Lilith’s death. He stands between Neal and Mark, hand braced on Neal’s arm, as the ground shakes and Lucifer rises. Whatever happens next, he’s going to be part of Neal’s story. CW can get rid of Cas, but they won’t be able to say goodbye to Bel as easily.

Cas reads it all through one more time and then sends it to Crowley. It’s done. There’s nothing more left. It’s over.

Chapter Text

Except life doesn’t work like that. Cas still has to eat, and do laundry, and clean his room. The payment from CW comes through, and he goes grocery shopping. He buys Count Chocula cereal. He cries in the shower a lot.

And then one Friday evening he’s alone in the apartment. He orders a pizza. It’s cold when it gets there, and it kind of sucks. He takes three bites and gives up. He leaves it on the kitchen counter for Meg to eat and goes back into his room.

He’s not sure when he makes the decision. He’s taken off his sweatpants and t-shirt and put on jeans and a button-down before he’s even consciously thought about it. He looks at himself in his mirror. He looks like shit. His hair’s sticking up. He’ll have to do.

(Have to do for what? Because he’s not – he’s not actually going out, is he?)

He walks out of his apartment door and down the stairs.

He gets on a bus. Its lights are flickering. A woman leans against him and he can smell her perfume. The bus stops and he gets off, and then he’s right outside a bar that’s holding a stand-up night tonight.

But he’s not going in, is he? What would be the point of going in? He’ll just look like a weirdo, and upset Dean. If Dean’s even there. He might not be there.

It’s 10:31pm. He might have missed Dean’s set. He’s probably missed his set. And he hates stand-up, actually! This is a waste of an evening. He should just go home and start work on the new draft of the possession book.

He pays the entrance fee and walks into the bar.

The room is dark, and full, and hot, and it makes Cas’s head buzz. The tables are crowded together – there’s nowhere to sit. Which is fine, because Cas needs to stay right beside the door. He can’t go any further.

And that’s because Dean is on stage.

As Cas realizes this, there’s a wave of laughter. Dean pauses, grinning. He looks so natural, so confident up there. Dean deserves this. Cas is so fucking proud of him.

Then he hears what Dean’s saying.

“– then this guy, he stands up and yells my name. And this is when I should have turned and ran, right? Because he’s gorgeous, but serial killers can be gorgeous. But all I thought was, hey, maybe he won’t kill me straight away. Maybe he’ll just tie me up a little first. So I went over and sat down next to him.

“The thing is, I’m stupid and I have no impulse control. And he also had these really blue eyes. You know those kind of blue eyes? This guy could have walked into a bank and asked to rob it and the manager would have just said cool, okay, by the way, sir, you have eyes like a summer afternoon. I think I love you.

“So I was waiting to find out how I was going to die, and I was getting kinda excited about it, because those eyes were so blue, and then do you know what he says to me? I’m straight. Just like that. I’m straight. So it turned out that he was actually worse than a serial killer.

“And then, right. And then guess what happened next? I fell in love with that asshole anyway.”

The crowd laughs and groans. Cas can’t move. It’s the set he’d been afraid of, all those months ago. He’s watching Dean talk about him to a whole room full of people. He’s watching Dean tell a whole room full of people about how weird Cas is. This is the worst case scenario. This is a nightmare. This is –

This is the most depressing thing he’s ever heard, actually. He wants to burst into tears. He understands, even more clearly than he did when he read Dean’s fic, that he fucked up. He hasn’t ever seen Dean the way Dean wanted him to – and he hasn’t been able to see himself the way Dean saw him either. All of those jokes about how devastatingly handsome Cas was? They weren’t jokes. Dean as just telling him what he thought. Just like he’s now confessing to everyone in this bar that he fell in love with Cas the day they met.

He stands next to the door, gripping the wall so hard his fingernails leave dents in it, and he listens to Dean talk about him. Dean’s version of him is a total asshole, but – also weirdly charming. Maybe kind of cute. Cas can understand how someone might fall in love with the Cas Dean knew.

He’s glad he’s so far back. The stage lights are falling right in Dean’s eyes, and there’s no way the room’s any more than a blur to him. No way can he see Cas in the back, next to the exit. Cas is safe in the darkness.

The crowd laughs, and sighs, and it’s perfectly obvious to Cas that they’re all falling in love with Dean too. Cas really isn’t special. There are going to be people lining up around the block for Dean, after this. He’s going to be fine.

On stage, Dean pauses, waiting for applause to die down. “And that,” he says, looking straight at Cas, “is, fucking depressingly, the story of the best relationship I’ve ever been in.”

And he puts the mic back in its cradle and walks off the stage.

Fuck. Did he imagine that look? He has to have imagined it. There’s no way – oh, fuck, he should leave. He didn’t mean for Dean to see him. He looks like a total freak, following him here like this. He’s going to leave, right now.

But as he turns to run, someone puts their hand on his left shoulder.

“Hey, Cas,” says Dean.

Cas grits his teeth and turns around. He doesn’t lean into Dean’s hand. He doesn’t think about how great Dean looks, his face still flushed from the stage lights. He just stares. He’ll apologize and then he’ll get out.

“Hello, Dean,” he says. “I was just leaving.”

Dean raises an eyebrow and folds his arms. Cas’s left shoulder tingles. “Oh yeah? And what were you doing here in the first place?”

Oh, this is bad. This is so bad.

“Watching you,” he says, at last.

Dean tightens his jaw. “You don’t fucking get to do that, man!” he says. “You can’t do that to me. I didn’t ask for much, but – you gotta leave me alone. It’s not fair.”

“I know,” whispers Cas. The words he was going to say are freezing up in his mouth. None of it has been fair on Dean, and now here he is, making things even worse. “I’m sorry, Dean.”

“Nope,” says Dean. “No. You don’t get to be sorry, Cas. You don’t get to just say shit like –”

And something snaps in Cas. He’s burned through all his chances, he knows that. Dean hates him. He shouldn’t have come here tonight, and he’ll never do it again, so whatever he says now won’t matter. “Dean,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never thanked you for everything you did for me. I'm sorry I never told you how amazing you are. I just wanted to say – I’m so glad I met you. You changed my life.”

“Stop it, Cas,” says Dean. His face is closed, and Cas can’t read it. He plunges on anyway. He’s never been more embarrassed in his life, but fuck it.

“I love you,” he says. “I really – I love you. I’m sorry, but I do. That’s all. I’m going to go now.”

Dean is completely frozen. Somehow, this has gone even worse than Cas imagined it would.

“Goodbye, Dean,” he says, tears in his eyes, and then he turns around and shoves his way out of the bar.

*

He stands in the street, taking big gulps of fresh air. A Black woman in a leather jacket comes out and stands beside him.

“Shit,” she says, looking at him. “That was intense. I’m guessing you’re the guy from the story?”

“No,” says Cas, and then, because he hates lying, “yes.”

“Sucks,” she says. “He was right. You really are cute.”

“I’m an asshole,” says Cas, still trying to breathe. What the hell did he just do?

The woman laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “I get the feeling that’s why he liked you, though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Cas. The pain is starting to hit. Oh, fuck, why does it hurt so bad? He’s already broken up with Dean once. “It’s over.”

“Huh,” says the woman. “Maybe. He’s following you, though.”

Cas spins around. There, unbelievably, is Dean. His arms are folded and he’s glaring at Cas, but he’s definitely there.

This doesn’t seem right to Cas. He’s supposed to never see Dean again. What’s the point of a heartfelt confession when you have to keep looking at the person afterwards? It’s just embarrassing.

“Go away,” he says to Dean.

“Fuck you,” says Dean. “It’s a free country. Are you serious?”

Cas stares at him.

“You just told me you love me,” says Dean. “Asswipe. Are you serious?”

“Uh,” says Cas. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it fucking does. Are. You. Serious?”

At this point, Cas can’t tell if this is about to turn into a fight. He stares at the tensed muscles of Dean’s arms.

“I’m gonna go,” says the woman, behind him. “Good luck with whatever’s happening here!”

“Yes, I’m serious,” says Cas. “But it doesn’t matter, Dean. I just – wanted to tell you. I’m sorry. I was an asshole. I didn’t understand.”

“And since I saw you two weeks ago you’ve, what? You’re bi now? It’s all fine? You’re expecting me to what, Cas?”

“I’m not expecting you to do anything,” says Cas stubbornly. Why isn’t Dean getting it? “You can go. I know it’s over. And.” This part is hard. “And. Uh. I don’t think.”

“Yeah, I know, you’re straight, you’ve told me a hundred times and I’m fucking sick of it,” snaps Dean.

“Dean. I don’t think that I’m. I mean. I think I’m mostly just.”

He absolutely cannot say it. Dean is glaring at him suspiciously. This is not fair. Why does he have to say it?

“I think. I’ve thought about it and I think I’m mostly just. Gay, actually.”

Dean’s mouth drops open.

“What the fuck,” he says. “Who are you?”

“I’m Cas,” says Cas defensively.

“Oh my god,” says Dean. “You fucking dumbass. I love you.”

Then there is a very long and very awkward pause.

“I didn’t mean that,” says Dean, after a while.

Obviously Dean didn’t mean that.

“Should I go?” asks Cas. He’s still not entirely sure what the stakes are here. Isn’t the correct thing to do after making a hopeless confession of love to leave? Why is he still standing in the street staring at Dean while people walk past them?

“No,” says Dean. “Did you hear my set?” He’s rubbing at the back of his neck.

Cas nods. “It was amusing,” he says. “I don’t think you can talk about how hot serial killers are, though.”

“What, that’s your biggest takeaway? You think they’re gonna cancel me or something?”

“I think you definitely need to go to therapy,” says Cas, smiling at him. “And I liked how you made me sound. I’m not – I’m not really that great.”

“I thought you were,” says Dean. “I still kinda think you are.”

“You are,” says Cas. “And you’re a better writer than I am. I read your fic –”

“You read my fic?” asks Dean, with a weird look on his face. He’s moved closer to Cas. They’re standing face to face now, a foot from each other. Cas can smell Dean’s shampoo.

Cas nods. “You’re wrong about Bel,” he says quietly. “I never told you. He’s you.”

Dean looks up at him through his lashes, that familiar startled glance. “Dude, he’s you,” he says.

Cas shakes his head. “He’s – when I saw you in the café – before we even met – I made him up then.”

“Holy shit, you actually are a serial killer,” whispers Dean. He’s close enough for his nose to brush Cas’s cheekbone as he says it. Cas is ashamed. It’s true. He was using an attractive man he’d never spoken to as the model for his character, which is absolutely not an ethical thing to do.

“I’m not!” he protests. “I just thought you were. I thought you were beautiful.”

That’s embarrassing to admit.

“Fucking weird coincidence,” says Dean. “Because I thought the same thing.”

Cas can feel him smiling against his cheek. If he turned his head – but he’s not going to turn his head. He needs to leave. That’s what he’s doing, isn’t it? He’s leaving.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” says Dean, which is a weird thing for him to say. Cas knows he hasn’t. Then he reaches up and puts his thumb against Cas’s bottom lip. It’s exactly the way Bel touched Neal in the garden in Dean’s fic. Cas opens his mouth in surprise, and he finally turns his head towards Dean. They’re looking at each other, so close that Cas can see Dean’s long lashes, his blown pupils.

“Are you going to kiss me?” asks Dean roughly.

“Yes,” says Cas, and he does. Dean’s mouth is warm and open, and he smells like home. He brushes his fingers against Cas’s cheek and sighs as Cas pulls him close.

They’re kissing in the street, Cas thinks. Outside. Where anyone can see them. He has his eyes closed, but he can still hear people walking past them. There are a couple whistles and a laugh, but – no one stops them. No one cares. He slides his hand into Dean’s hair, and he can feel Dean grinning. He wants to tell him to be serious, but he knows he’s smiling too.

“You asshole,” mutters Dean. “I haven’t forgiven you yet.”

“You have,” says Cas, because he’s finally realized what’s going on.

“Yeah, I have,” says Dean. “I guess. Maybe. Fuck you.”

“Okay,” says Cas, and he moves backwards for just a second, so he can see the expression on Dean’s face.

“Charlie’s at Lisa’s,” says Dean, very fast. “Uh. I mean. If you –”

“I don’t care,” says Cas. And it’s partly a lie, and it makes his heart pound to say it, but it’s also partly true, and maybe that’s why his heart’s beating so fast.

“Cool,” says Dean. “Great. Okay. You’re paying for the cab.”

Chapter Text

They sit in silence in the taxi. The driver’s blaring country music and Dean looks at Cas and mouths along with the words and winks at him. Cas is having trouble breathing again. The thing is that he might have confessed to Dean, he might have said the words, he might know they’re true, but … the ooze hasn’t really gone away. There’s still the voice whispering in his head that he’s ruining himself. But he’s not. He’s not!

He reaches out and strokes his pinkie finger against Dean’s thumb, and then Dean slides his hand over Cas’s, his fingers bumping across each knuckle. Cas tries to let the sparks from each touch drown out the rest of his brain. It turns out that just making the decision once isn’t enough. He has to keep making it, and making it, and making it. He is in a cab with Dean. He is going back to Dean’s apartment. He is not leaving. He loves Dean. (And he said it. Fuck, he actually said it, and Dean said – huh. He said – but no, obviously he didn’t mean it in that way. There are many ways you can love something. Cas, for example, loves coffee, and his laptop, and the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser. He’s not in love with any of them.)

Dean brushes his thumb up against Cas’s palm, and Cas shivers. Thinking so much is overrated.

He pays for the cab, and they get out, and then – and then – neither of them can get up the stairs fast enough, and Dean’s key doesn’t work in the lock, and every second feels like it’s going on for forty years. But then the door bursts open and they both fall into the living room together.

Cas realizes, then, that he was right before: Dean’s been holding back on him. Because this version of Dean is hungrier than he’s ever seen. He unbuttons Cas’s shirt, pushing it open with insistent splayed fingers, and the look he gives Cas as he does it makes Cas tremble. He’s never been stared at like this before, with this kind of heart-stopping intensity, pupils blown, starving. It makes Cas’s knees buckle.

They’re kissing hot and rough, teeth and tongues and breath, Dean sucking at the skin of Cas’s neck hard enough to leave a bruise. He can’t stop touching Cas, hands all over his body, fingers digging into Cas’s skin. It feels like a fight, and one that Dean is desperate to lose. Cas backs him up all the way to the couch, popping open Dean’s belt and dragging his pants down around his ankles so hard that it leaves a scratch on Dean’s thigh. He wants to ask whether Charlie is definitely not gonna come back, but he doesn’t want to make it seem to Dean like he’s still worried about that, but he also doesn’t want Charlie to walk in on them, but –

Then Dean grabs him and drags him down on top of him. So apparently that decision’s been made.

With one hand, Cas pins up Dean’s wrists above his head, and with the other he strips off Dean’s boxers, jerking him off fast and hard. Dean groans and bites at Cas’s jaw, gasping nonsense words into his ear – Cas can just make out please and god and Cas.

“I’m not god, Dean,” whispers Cas, and Dean comes. He sighs, and folds himself against Cas, and Cas runs his hand down Dean’s arm and for a long moment just holds on to him, feeling the smooth warmth of his skin, the shape of his shoulders and hips that fit perfectly against Cas’s.

Then Dean sits up, and in one fluid movement flips himself across Cas and down onto the floor. He looks up at Cas, and he still has that same hunger in his eyes, desire so enormous that it gives Cas a lump in his throat. (And, if he’s honest, and he’s being honest this evening, his boxers).

“Cas,” says Dean, leaning forward, his hand brushing Cas’s hip bone. “I –” he pauses, and Cas thinks he’s going to actually say – but that’s ridiculous, a total fantasy. Dean wouldn’t. “I need you.”

Cas rocks forward, breath catching, and pulls Dean into a kiss, gripping Dean’s hair. Dean breaks it first, moving his hands down Cas’s chest to slide his fingers into the waistband of Cas’s boxers. He pulls them off and then pushes Cas’s legs open to sit between them. He dips his head to Cas’s cock, licking his way up it, and Cas thinks that this might actually be what heaven feels like. He usually stares up at the ceiling when a blowjob is happening, because no one actually looks good under those circumstances and he tends to want to give women their privacy at an awkward moment, but tonight he can’t look away, and Dean looks straight back up at him through his eyelashes and Cas is so turned on that his whole body feels liquid with it. He can’t work out what it is about Dean that makes him so crazy, what makes this so different, but then right as he comes he wonders, with his last working brain cell, if maybe the answer could be love.

*

They make it to Dean’s bed, in the end, and lie there in the light from Dean’s lamp, grinning goofily at each other and not saying much.

Cas can’t stop touching Dean, running his fingers across Dean’s collarbones, the veins on his arms, the hair on his stomach, his ass. He doesn’t mean it to lead to anything, but the ass was clearly the last straw for Dean, because he hooks his leg over Cas’s thigh and pulls him close. Then he pauses, nose to nose with Cas, like he’s waiting for something. Cas can’t work it out – he’s so fucking distracted by how hard Dean is against his hip – and then he gets it. The kissing thing.

He should respect Dean’s boundaries, he thinks. That’s the responsible thing to do, right? But – fuck, he wants to kiss Dean right now.

“Dean,” he says. “I don’t care. You can kiss me. I mean – if you want –”

He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it definitely isn’t the surprised huff that Dean makes.

“What?” he asks. “But you –”

“You never asked,” says Cas. “I – it’s fine. I’d like it.” Now he feels embarrassed, because Dean probably has a whole thing about it, and he’s pushing it, and maybe it’s gross and he just doesn’t know, and –

And Dean’s kissing him, tongue sliding into Cas’s mouth, and Cas can taste himself on Dean’s lips.

Cas leans in to the kiss – and if he wanted to test whether maybe it wouldn’t be as great the second time, then his test failed.

Afterwards he realizes he’s desperate to pee. He doesn’t want to get up, but unfortunately he has to, and he’s rolled to the side of the bed and stood up before he turns to look at Dean.

His heart jumps as he sees Dean’s expression. The way he’s been looking at Cas all evening’s suddenly gone. If Cas didn’t know Dean, he’d think that he was just tired, but Cas does know Dean, and he can practically see the shutters going down.

“You goin’ already?” he asks Cas, and anyone else would think he was being casual.

“To the bathroom!” says Cas. “Just – sorry – I’ll come right back.”

“Oh shit,” says Dean, and his face clears, and Cas watches it change and feels his pulse slow back down to normal. “Fuck. Sorry. I mean. It’s fine if you –”

“No it isn’t,” says Cas. Honesty, right? He’s being honest, even if it kills him, even if it’s the most embarrassing thing in the world. “I’m staying for breakfast.”

“Oh,” says Dean again huskily, and he turns his head into the pillow. “Okay. Cool.”

Cas looks at himself in the bathroom mirror as he washes his hands. Some part of him is still waiting for the change to happen. For what he’s done to express itself on his face. But he doesn’t look different, even when he squints. Except – he looks one more time and sees his mouth curling up at the corners. Huh.

And he goes back to bed, and Dean.

*

Cas isn’t sure when they finally fall asleep, or what time it is when he wakes up. He can feel a body against his own, a chest rising and falling under his arm, hair tickling his cheek. He tightens his grip and breathes in, and Dean says muzzily, “Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean,” says Cas into Dean’s shoulder.

“Shit,” says Dean, and Cas can feel the buzz of his voice through his skin. “I didn’t actually think you’d still be here.”

“I can go if you want,” says Cas, and Dean says, “No, you fucking asshole, why do you always – I mean – I don’t want you to go, okay? Stay as long as you want.”

Cas thinks that if he did that, he’d never leave. Dean’s apartment smells clean (apart from Dean’s room, which smells like sex). Everything has a place. Dean is here. It’s kind of perfect.

“Thank you,” he says, and then Dean rolls over to face him, looping his arm around Cas’s neck and pulling him into a kiss, and just like that they’ve lost another hour.

Cas could have sworn he wasn’t hungry, but then as they lie curled up together, Dean’s head cushioned on his stomach, it rumbles extremely embarrassingly.

“Oh shit!” says Dean. “Sorry. I should feed you.”

“I’m fine, Dean,” says Cas, because who needs food? It’s not important, in the grand scheme of things.

“Shut up,” says Dean. “I’m gonna feed you. Do you like pancakes? I mean, you’d think everyone would like pancakes, but you don’t like soup, so. Do you?”

“I love pancakes,” says Cas, more touched than he expected to be to find out that Dean still remembers the soup thing.

“Cool,” says Dean, with a huge grin, and he bounces out of bed and pulls on a floral bathrobe that’s hanging on the back of his door. It’s very short, and he looks very good in it, and Cas can’t stop staring.

“Charlie’s aunt gave it to her,” says Dean, twirling and giving Cas a wink. “It’s not really her kind of thing, so I got it.”

“I love it,” says Cas. He loves everything today, pancakes and slutty bathrobes and Dean. Especially Dean. He hasn’t said it again, because there’s a difference between saying it when you don’t think it matters and saying it when the person you want to say it to is right there offering to make you breakfast. The second one’s a lot more scary. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

He follows Dean out into the kitchen and watches, mesmerized, as Dean lines up ingredients and pulls out bowls and utensils and pours and measures and flicks on the stove and smacks down a pan and sings along to whatever playlist he’s lined up on his phone. Dean cooking is like a dance, or one of those glossy technicolor birds displaying on a nature documentary.

“Are you gonna make the coffee or what?” asks Dean, spinning around and pointing at Cas with the spatula he’s been using as a mic, and fuck, but Cas loves him. It’s embarrassing how much he loves him. He can’t stop beaming at Dean, and Dean beams back, cheeks dimpled with delight. Is it always going to be like this? How is he ever going to get anything done if it’s always like this?

He makes the coffee, and Dean piles pancakes up on their plates, and they’re just sitting down on the couch to eat when Charlie walks into the apartment.

She takes in Cas in one of Dean’s t-shirts, a plate on his lap, leaning against Dean in his floral bathrobe, she says, “Oh what the fuck. Absolutely fucking not. Come on!” and she slams the door shut again.

It’s a river of cold water down Cas’s spine.

“Hey, Charlie, wait!” says Dean, leaping up and shoving his pancakes at Cas, and he rushes after her back out into the hall, the bathrobe gaping open. He doesn’t close the door all the way, though, and so Cas can hear half of their argument even though he’s doing his best to pretend it’s not happening.

Fuck, Dean –

he told me he –

this is bullshit and you –

come on! He stayed for –

Dean he literally – I cannot believe you’re – Kevin and I told you –

one more chance. Come on. You know I –

yeah, I know you’re a – one more chance and if he –

he won’t –

Dean, you’re such a – fine. Fine –

Love you, Charlie –

Wish I didn’t. Jesus Christ, you have no taste, you know that?

Sam tells me all the time.

The door opens again and Charlie walks back in, glaring at Cas.

“You,” she says, pointing at him. “Hurt him and I’ll kill you with my bare hands. You’ve never met Dark Charlie and you don’t want to.”

“She’s joking,” says Dean, putting his hands on her shoulders and trying to grin at Cas.

“I’m not joking,” says Charlie, narrowing her eyes at Cas. “What are your intentions towards Dean?”

“OKAY!” says Dean. “Cas and I are gonna eat breakfast, and you’re gonna go into your room and calm the fuck down.”

Charlie is bristling like a cat. Cas feels he has to say something to defuse the situation. It’s not surprising that she’s being so protective. He has behaved terribly, and it’s hurt not just Dean but all of Dean’s friends. He has to be honest with her as well.

“I am sorry,” he says to her. “I love Dean. I made a mistake.”

Charlie gapes at him. “Oh holy shit,” she says to Dean. “You weren’t joking. What happened to him? Is he a clone?”

“I don’t think clones are real,” says Cas. “So no, I’m not a clone. How would I know if I’d been cloned, though? What are the signs?”

“I hate that I like that question,” mutters Charlie. “Okay. I won’t kill you yet. But you heard what I said. Be nice to Dean.”

“I promise,” says Cas.

Dean points at him. “Hey,” he says, smirking. “You have to be nice to me now. You promised.”

“Haven’t I been nice to you?” Cas asks him, and Charlie says, “OKAY! I’m going to my room! Noise cancelling headphones, I’ve never been more grateful for you! Bye!”

The only reason Cas and Dean finish their pancakes before they head back into Dean’s room is because they’re really, really good. Among a lot of other things, Dean is a great cook.

*

Cas spends most of that week in Dean’s apartment. He goes home every few days to get new clothes and spend some time not being around Dean. This is because he doesn’t want to overwhelm Dean, and also because he’s gathered that it’s not polite to just never leave someone’s house, even when you’re regularly having really, really great sex with them. It turns out that Dean does indeed have panties a lot like the ones in Cas’s dream.

He doesn’t like leaving, but he does it. He wishes Dean would stop sending him messages while he’s away, asking him what’s up.

I’m not supposed to be talking to you, he finally writes back in frustration.

what did charlie say to u???

She hasn’t said anything. I’m making sure you don’t get bored of me.

youre the weirdest fucking person ive ever met. why would i get bored of u

I’m not a very interesting person, Dean. And I read that it’s important to keep some distance at the beginning of a relationship.

u think this is a relationship???

Fuck! Shit! What should he say? Has he messed up? He pauses, fingers hovering over his phone.

Honesty. He has to be honest.

Yes, he types, and then he shoves his phone into his pocket and absolutely does not look at it until it buzzes.

okay

me too

if u do

i guess

but only if u do too

I do, types Cas, and he gets up off his bed and walks back to Dean’s apartment as fast as he can.

*

He thinks that by Wednesday Charlie is maybe beginning to thaw, but he’s not sure. She might have smiled at him once, although it’s possible he misread the situation. She’s possibly glaring at him a little less when she walks in on their movie afternoons in the living room.

Cas is enjoying the movie afternoons. Dean’s actually very good at choosing things Cas will like – or maybe Cas just likes them all because Dean’s chosen them? Also, they usually get kind of distracted during the movie. So when Dean suggests something called But I’m a Cheerleader, Cas just shrugs, even though the poster image – a teenage girl in a pink prom dress – looks absolutely unlike anything Cas would be interested in.

He's even less certain when the credits start rolling, and they’re treated to a lot of shots of cheerleaders’ chests and skirts as they jump up and down. Cas is beginning to feel highly uncomfortable, but Dean slings an arm around his shoulder and cuddles up to him on the couch and says, “Seriously, babe, trust me. It’s not that kind of movie.”

Cas gets it during the scene where the cheerleader main character Megan and her boyfriend are making out, her face completely blank as he licks at her mouth like a dog eating an ice cream. Oh.

He looks at Dean, and Dean looks back at him, straight faced. “It’s a classic of the genre,” he says, and then he winks. What genre isn’t hard to work out, as Megan drives with her parents to the camp that’s going to cure her of the homosexuality she can’t even admit.

It all feels too close to home, too close to Cameron Post, and Cas feels his breathing short, his heart pound.

“Fucking relax, man,” murmurs Dean, his breath warm in Cas’s ear. “Just watch it. I promise it’s gonna be okay.”

He moves his fingers over Cas’s wrist, stroking down the side of Cas’s thumb, and Cas turns towards him, distracted. When he looks back, Megan is in tears, admitting that she’s a homosexual, and all Cas can think is that maybe he should have gone to this conversion therapy camp when he was seventeen. This movie is making it look like he’d have probably worked things out sooner if he had.

Megan and the other homosexuals go through the course, rediscovering their gender identity and discussing the roots of their sexual perversion, but somehow every activity designed to put them back on the path to heterosexuality only makes them … gayer. Oh. This is … this is funny, actually. Hot, maybe? Graham and Megan have a spark between them that’s undeniable. And the son of the programme leader is – Cas blinks – sexy. He’s actually, definitely, sexy, and Cas just thought that, and nothing happened.

“I always liked Dolph,” says Dean, like he read Cas’s mind. “I knew a guy like him on the wrestling team.”

“Weren’t you the guy like him on the wrestling team?” asks Cas, and Dean says, “Hey!” and jostles against Cas, laughing and tickling him. Cas pulls him down into a breathy kiss, Dean’s tongue sliding against his, and when they look up next Graham and Megan are sitting next to each other as they watch a slideshow, Graham’s fingers brushing Megan’s arm.

The kids sneak out of the camp house under cover of darkness to go to a gay bar that looks a little bit like the Roadhouse. Megan dances with a girl while Graham looks on with an anxious knot in her stomach. When they finally kiss in an alleyway, Megan trying to push her desire for Graham away, it’s like a punch in the gut. Cas knows exactly how that feels. This movie is too close to home, he thinks. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like seeing these children’s hearts get broken.

Because they will get broken. This movie might be funny, but underneath the humor there’s a black hole. The danger’s real, he can feel it, and the scene where the conversion camp kids are forced to picket the Morgan-Gordons’ home is too real to be comfortable.

Graham and Megan sleep together, and Cas’s breath catches, but the next morning they’re found out. Megan’s kicked out of the program and Graham gives up Megan for the trust fund her parents are offering her. So there it is: it’s over between them. Maybe there can be happy endings for gay people in books, but movies are still different.

But then. Then. Graduation day rolls around, and Megan’s not giving up. She crashes the party, pulls out her cheerleading outfit and stops the show to beg for Graham back one last time. It’s obviously not going to work, but Cas admires her for trying. “I love you,” she says, and Cas can feel Dean looking at him. Oh.

And then Graham breaks and runs after Megan. They kiss in the back of the truck as it drives away, the camera rolls up to blue sky, and that’s it. That’s it. The movie’s over. They’re staying together. They get a happy ending. Cas can’t believe it.

Dean’s still looking at him.

“What?” asks Cas gruffly.

“I’m waiting for you to tell me it’s bad writing for some dumb reason,” says Dean. “You’ve always got a problem with the endings of these things.”

Cas just shakes his head. He looks at the screen, and then he looks at Dean, and he thinks that he’s never realized there are so many possible endings like this.

*

Crowley calls him on Thursday. Cas, sitting in their usual spot in the café with Dean and picking away at revises to the possession book (it still isn’t working), answers without thinking about it. He maybe is ready to give up on the possession book.

“Thank fuck you picked up,” says Crowley. “Castiel, we’ve got a situation.”

Dean raises his eyebrows at Cas, and Cas shrugs.

“Yes?” he says. He can’t really bring himself to care about publishing drama right now.

“Don’t you fucking yes me, you little shit, this is serious. CW want to sign you up for four more books.”

Cas nearly drops his phone into his coffee. His knee bangs against the underside of the table.

“What?” he asks. Dean makes a worried face at him.

“I fucking know,” says Crowley. “I told them you weren’t interested, I told them you were done and they needed to find a new L. S. Shore, and then they bloody well offered me thirty grand more per book. Per book, Cas. Lazarus Rising has already outsold every other book in the series, and they’re creaming themselves over Lucifer Rising.”

“But we can’t,” says Cas. “You told me we can’t.”

“Castiel Novak, we are talking about one hundred and eighty thousand dollars here. Can and can’t are out the window. They’ve asked for a call with you tomorrow morning. What the fuck do you want to do?”

Dean’s looking more and more concerned. Cas knows that his face is doing strange things.

He could say no, he thinks. Maybe he could write something else. Does he actually need the money? He’s been fine up until now, after all.

Or he could say yes. Dean’s not going to tell on him now. There’s no way. They keep on doing what they’re doing and nothing changes except that Cas can buy some really nice shirts sometimes.

Or.

Or.

There’s a third option. Crowley’s not going to like it. No one is going to like it.

But Cas likes it.

“Tell them I can call at eleven tomorrow morning,” he says to Crowley. “See you then.”

And he hangs up on Crowley’s yelp of confusion.

“What was that?” asks Dean, wide-eyed.

Cas hooks his foot around Dean’s ankle under the table and smiles at him. “Hey,” he says. “Are you free tomorrow morning?”

*

When the Zoom call pops into life, Cas is ready. There’s Sera, a white office cubicle wall behind her, and there’s Crowley in a big chair, a stark stone wall behind him. Crowley looks pissed. He keeps sending Cas messages asking what’s going on, but Cas has ignored them all.

“Hello, Cas,” says Sera, smiling at no one. Zoom calls always freak Cas out. They’re just the wrong side of unreal. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got Robbie Clarence here with me this morning. He wanted to speak to you.”

Cas obviously can’t say no – why did she even ask? – because here’s Robbie, popping in from the left of Sera’s screen. “Cas!” he chirps. “So great to see you. I just wanted to say how much I love Lucifer Rising. What you’ve managed to do with the brief – the fans are going to eat it up. Sera and I are just thrilled. We all are.”

Cas nods. What is he supposed to say? He knows the new version is good. It’s the best thing he’s ever written. Or – well – the best thing they’ve ever written.

“Crowley’s told us you’re hesitant about moving forward with the series, and we wanted to get on a call to talk it through. See if we could change your mind. Crowley, you spoke to him yesterday about financials?”

“I let him know, yes,” says Crowley, still sour. He’s glaring through the screen at Cas, and then a message pops through on Cas’s phone:

What the fuck are you up to?? And where are you???

“We can’t move above that number – budget reasons – but I hope it’s an indication of how serious we are about your involvement going forward. We want you with us on this.”

Robbie pauses, and he and Sera stare hopefully into their camera.

Okay. He has to do it. He has to say it, now, because if he doesn’t say it he’s never going to be able to say it.

“Uh,” he says. Come on, Cas! He’s got something in his throat. He coughs. “Um. I want to introduce you to – this is Dean.”

“Hey!” says Dean, popping his head into Cas’s camera range. They’re sitting on the couch in Dean and Charlie’s living room. “Uh, hi. I’m Dean.”

“Fucking h–,” says Crowley, and then mutes himself.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING CASTIEL

YOU STUPID PRICK

THIS IS NOT THE GAY BOYFRIENDS SHOW

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS CAS

I AM BUILDING A KITCHEN EXTENSION DO NOT FUCK THIS UP FOR ME

“Hello, Dean,” says Sera, her forehead wrinkling. “Cas, why –”

“Uh, Dean is my,” says Cas. He’s shaking. Dean puts a hand on his knee. “He’s my. He’s the. He’s my partner.” He sees the look on Dean’s face in his laptop screen, and hastily adds, “writing partner. We write together.”

“Crowley,” says Robbie. “You didn’t tell us about this?”

Crowley gestures.

Sorry I seem to be having problems with my microphone, he writes in the call’s chat box.

I’m sure Cas will explain.

“Dean and I,” Cas plunges on, “we started to work together. Recently. And now I can’t write without him, so because of that I can’t – I can’t work on any more books with you. I’m sorry.”

“I do jokes,” says Dean. “That’s kinda my thing. I’m funny. Some people think I’m funny, anyway. I got a five star review on –”

“Are you saying the books you've submitted were by both of you?” asks Sera. “Is that what you’re telling us?”

“No ma’am,” says Dean, sounding like a kid explaining himself to the principal. Cas has never seen him this nervous before. “I just do the jokes. Cas is the writer. I just – I started suggesting a few things.”

There’s a long pause. Robbie and Sera look at each other. Cas clings to Dean’s hand. Robbie writes something down, and shows it to Sera, who nods.

“We can’t offer you more money,” says Robbie at last. “Our budget –”

“I had no knowledge of any of this,” says Crowley, who’s suddenly given up on his broken microphone story. “This is the first I’m hearing about any of this.”

“So Dean’s not your client?” asks Robbie.

“But of course,” Crowley goes on without pausing for breath, “since they do happen to both be my clients, I would get twenty per cent of both of their fees. If we were negotiating. Is this a negotiation?”

“Forty five per book,” says Robbie. “We’re not going higher.”

“And you don’t bloody mind there are two of them?”

“If Castiel signs a waiver certifying that Dean’s involvement on the series will begin with Book 9, and he had no connection to either of the previous books, and if he’s happy to split the agreed fee, then no. We work with a number of writing teams on projects like this.”

Cas can’t believe it, and when he looks at Dean he can tell that he can’t believe it either. Ten per cent, he mouths at Cas, and Cas grabs his hand breathlessly and squeezes it. Robbie is talking about NDAs and delivery dates and payment structures, and Crowley is nodding and agreeing and looking like he just swallowed a wasp.

“Do you have any ideas for Book 9?” asks Sera suddenly. Cas blinks.

“We’ve gone beyond Chuck’s notes at this stage, of course. Robbie and I have worked something up, but we’re happy for you to give your thoughts too, especially on Bel. Now he’s out of Heaven, I think we could really do something interesting with his plotline. I was wondering if maybe he could get a girlfriend?”

“I don’t think that would work,” says Cas carefully.

“We need some kind of romance plot,” says Sera.

“Oh, there’ll definitely be a romance plot,” says Dean. “Promise. We’ve got this.”

And what is it about Dean? Because there’s Sera, who’s always so firm with Cas about structure and planning, blinking and blushing and saying, “Oh, good.” A couple of months ago – a couple of weeks ago – Cas would have been jealous. But today, he’s just so fucking relieved that he wants to sink to the ground and fall asleep. It’s all going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine. He’s going to work with Dean, on four more books.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it up as we go.”

Chapter Text

WRITING FROM THE HEART

At home with the writing partnership who are changing the face of genre publishing

By Becky Rosen

February 14^th 

Two men walk into a café, sit down at a table together and fall in love at first sight. This meet-cute is probably familiar to you if you’ve seen one of Dean Winchester’s numerous comedy specials. But what you might not have heard before is the other side of the story. Winchester’s partner is the author Castiel Novak, with whom Winchester writes under various pseudonyms. Over the past twelve years, as well as penning the New York Times bestselling paranormal series Supernatural under the name L. S. Shore (a pseud they inherited from creator Chuck Shurley), they have created both the bestselling Doctor Sexy medical erotica series and the Wild Heart cowboy fantasy series under the name Castiel Winchester. They’re also currently working on the screenplay for the hotly anticipated TV adaptation of Supernatural.

They’re clearly a winning combination, both professionally and personally, but what’s the secret to their success? I sat down with them in the home they share with friends, foster children, and several dogs and cats, to talk about life, love, writing, the perfect burger, and why they’ve finally decided the time is right for their most famous creation, the fallen angel Belaquiel, to marry his on-again-off-again sweetheart Neal Colt in the upcoming (and final) Supernatural novel.

I quickly realize that it’s going to be hard to get a straight answer from Winchester and Novak. When I start off by asking about that famous café meeting I spark an argument that lasts five minutes. Both of them insist that they saw, and fell for, the other first. “I thought he was beautiful,” says Novak. “And I still do.” “Well, I thought he was a murderer,” quips Winchester. “Still do.” That’s the tone that they take throughout our meeting – I get the sense of two people who are bound together in every aspect of their lives and who delight in that bond. When I ask whether it’s hard to write together, live together and parent together, they both look at me in confusion.

“I write the first draft, and Dean punches it up,” explains Novak, even though it’s not exactly an answer to my question. “And the kids are great,” Winchester adds. “They came to us kinda late in life, but since they’re from the same place Cas is, it all works out. We all get each other. So no, we’ve got no complaints. We’ve got a good life.”

But don’t they ever fight? Don’t they ever get bored? “The secret is, we never stop fighting,” says Winchester. “Keeps things fresh.” It strikes me as I listen to them that I’m as close as I’ll ever be to meeting Bel and Neal in real life. When I put that to Winchester and Novak, though, they both baulk at the suggestion.

“I’m not Bel,” says Novak firmly. “Yeah, Bel’s way sexier than this guy,” says Winchester, clapping Novak on the shoulder as he fries me up one of his famous burgers (it’s delicious, he won’t give me the recipe). “I should know.”

It is true, though, that Bel and Neal’s relationship has often mirrored Winchester and Novak’s. They met while Novak was working on Lazarus Rising (in which Bel is first introduced), they began dating around the time Lucifer Rising published, and they married a few months before the publication of Survival of the Fittest, the book in which Bel and Neal’s relationship becomes explicitly romantic. I point this out, and they both agree. Then I ask why they chose to connect themselves to their stories in this way, and Novak immediately takes the lead in answering.

“It wasn’t a choice. People need to see themselves in stories,” he says. “It matters, especially when it happens in places you don’t expect.” “Yeah, and why the fuck should straight people have all the fun?” Winchester chips in. “When you do it, sure, you get some hate, but you also reach the people who need it.”

And they’ve definitely reached people. The Supernatural books are massively bestselling – new titles regularly sit on the New York Times bestseller list for months – and the anticipation for the final book in the series is off the charts. But Winchester and Novak are close-mouthed about it, apart from that all-important wedding detail.

“It will be a happy ending for Bel and Neal,” Novak confirms, as his husband nods. “We wouldn’t have it any other way.”