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Sunlight.
Swaying.
Frosted light spilling across skin. Warm and then cold, an eternity of skin. An eternity of breaths, truth nestled in his stomach.
He opens his eyes, stirs. Dark hair spills over the freckles on his collarbone, soft gusts playing over his skin, a murmur of lips. Dean closes his eyes again, feels the weight of Cas’s head shift with the rise and fall of his chest. His arms are looped around his back, Cas’s fingers curled on his biceps. He is not sure whose legs are whose. Doesn’t matter.
Cas shifts, mouthing at his chest, up to his neck and then to Dean’s cheek and lips. Their kisses are incoherent–– lazy and sunlit.
“I love you.”
Dean wonders when Cas woke up enough to speak, but he supposes those three words come to him as easily as sleeping. It seems that is what Cas does, sleep and breathe and love him. And for a moment, Dean is drowning again, suffocating and he needs Cas’s body, hard and heavy, off, out of the car, but there are so many more things to be scared of, Dean realizes, and Cas is the only one who makes them less scary. He’s a nightlight and Dean thinks that might be unfair to Cas, but Cas has circled his arms around Dean’s neck, smiling at him hopefully from above, and Dean can only lift his head and kiss him back.
“I love you too, Casanova.”
Dean kisses him like he is trying not to break him, because he still hasn’t completely put him back together and Cas is Cas, soft lips and sharp teeth. Their underwear is still wet from the night before and sticks to their thighs as they move. Dean’s fingers run along the stringy elastic edge of Cas’s boxer briefs, and Cas pulls away, suddenly. Dean’s heart is pattering frantically as Cas slides out of the car, lighting up as the sun hits him.
He grins though, free and easy, leaning on the frame. “Come on then.”
Dean follows him, taking his hand, and they run back down the beach, to the waves, gray and flat and impressive in a mundane, I-can-take-you-on way, different than in the dark. The shore is finite in the daylight and as the surf sucks at their ankles as they hurl themselves into the sea, it no longer terrifies him. He is comfortable in this space they have been given. He feels them expanding in the water as they wade out, farther from the shore. His skin is thick and burning with cold, but his hand is warm in Cas’s and he laughs as they trip over the sand bar, feet kicking in empty water. His toes graze the bottom, but he wouldn’t mind if they had to tread.
He pulls Cas to him, laughing, entangling their arms, legs kicking to keep them afloat, finds a miracle in the fact that they can do this now.
“I love you.” Dean is giddy on the words and can’t stop himself. He’s over compensating, he thinks, but they’re as good as pie.
Cas rolls his eyes, biting his lip as his eyes fall back to Dean, intent and focused. “Yeah, yeah.” Dean feels the whatever on his lips and tastes the I needed to hear that.
And Dean knows he will let him hear that in shouts and laughter and silences for as long as he wants to hear it from him. He wants him to want that forever and for the first time, Dean thinks that maybe he will, that maybe he, Dean Winchester, has a chance.
“More than sweaters.”
Cas looks at him for a moment, confused.
“I love you more than sweaters.”
Cas laughs and drops beneath the surface, slipping from Dean like seaweed and Dean falls with him, breaking into the heavy swaddles of sea. There is light above them, a thin membrane flickering over skin, and dark below them. Faintly, he can see the dusty stirrings of the sand as they kick, the faint falling star of a fish shooting away. Everything is blurred but he can still see the curve of Cas’s smile, silt-smeared, hair drifting like a halo around his head, the ends almost red as they catch sunlight through the water. Movement ripples around him as Cas kisses him. He kisses back and their mouths are flooded. Dean wants to choke but instead, he laughs, the bubbles spilling out from between their lips, shimmying upwards, silver and see-through, like hope.