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Cas has a theory.
He thinks it’s possible that Dean wants to kiss him.
It starts with a prayer, flung Cas’s way with a Dean-like nonchalance that belies the rising panic he hears in Dean’s voice:
Sure could use some help down here, Cas, I’m a little tied up at the moment.
And with that, Cas hurls himself in Dean’s direction.
Naturally the situation is dire; it always is with Dean. He’s chained to a wall in a warehouse, arms over his head and blood dripping down a tube; the work of a djinn, Cas surmises, and as the lights flicker, casting shadows on the sigil-encrusted walls, Cas is reminded momentarily of the barn where he first saw Dean through his vessel’s eyes.
“Behind you,” Dean says through cracked lips, and Cas turns in one quick motion, kicks the djinn’s feet out from under him; snatches the creature by the neck and forces it to its knees on the concrete floor. He places a hand on the djinn’s head and smites it from existence, allowing it’s corpse to fall to the floor.
“Cas?” Dean rasps, and it takes Cas a moment to turn around to look at Dean, still chained to the wall, pale and shaking.
Cas lays his hands on the chains wrapped around Dean’s wrists, and when they break apart and fall to the floor, he lets his hands stay linger on Dean’s skin for a moment. Dean closes his eyes, his knees buckling, and Cas wonders uneasily if he’ll fall over, if Cas doesn’t keep holding him up.
“You were there,” Dean says in a choking sort of way. “That’s how I knew it wasn’t real.” He leans against Cas’s shoulder, unusually close.
Then Dean opens his eyes.
“Are you all right, Dean?” Cas asks, distracted by the way Dean’s looking at him, mouth slightly open, eyes wide with something Cas might could have called wonder if he’d seen it in the eyes of anyone other than Dean Winchester.
“Yeah,” Dean breathes. “I’m all right, Cas.” He licks his cracked lips, and it’s then that Cas notices the way Dean’s eyes flicker down his face to rest on Cas’s mouth. Cas shifts, uncomfortable in his borrowed skin, and narrows his eyes.
And all at once, it finally clicks.
Dean is going to kiss him.
It’s a wild, startling sort of realization, and Cas can’t quite understand why it affects him so strangely; no one has ever wanted to kiss Cas before, but that does seem to be the reason Dean’s leaning into his shoulder, that must be the reason why Dean is standing so close, so close he could number every freckle on Dean’s face, which is absurd because he doesn’t need to: he already has.
“Good,” says Cas shakily, and disappears.
Cas keeps a close eye on Dean, after that.
He starts a catalog of Dean’s sudden peculiarities; the way Dean begins to stand too close, the way Dean’s gaze darts restlessly up and down Cas’s face, the way Dean starts to lean over, talking quietly into Cas’s ear.
He’s suspicious, because it’s all so unlike Dean, and he’s also slightly annoyed at this new development, at being forced to track Dean’s every move, wary; shying away when Dean gets too close for comfort, doing his best to ignore the squirming sensation he feels in the pit of his stomach when Dean frowns at him thoughtfully, as though he’sconsidering something.
Dean’s going to kiss him. Cas just doesn’t know when.
Cas worries he won’t see it coming, worries that he’ll miss it altogether if he doesn’t pay attention, so he tries his best to stay alert, watching closely for any signs of approaching kisses.
The thought keeps him on edge; it makes him nervous, the way his his fingers burn with a sudden heat after touching Dean’s shoulder. And it’s all very uncomfortable, the way Dean’s lip twitches when he looks at Cas, the way his mouth falls open slightly whenever he catches Cas’s eye; it’s disconcerting, the way Dean’s odd behavior affects Cas’s vessel, and when Dean’s hand brushes against Cas’s arm, Cas grows slightly concerned at the way his vessel forgets to breathe.
Cas decides to test his theory.
It happens in the headquarter's library, in a quiet moment that feels almost natural. Sam’s vanished, and when Cas leans over Dean’s shoulder, ostensibly to look at the book in Dean’s hand, Dean turns his head to meet Cas’s eyes.
For just an instant, Cas can almost swear that it’s going to happen, that Dean’s leaning in for a kiss, and then the most inexplicable thing happens: Cas’s eyes flutter shut for just the slightest of moments, he holds his breath for just a second, but in the next instant he feels the brush of displaced air.
He opens his eyes and Dean’s moved on, standing by the table to hover over Sam’s laptop.
So, he thinks, his theory must not be right after all, and it’s completely unreasonable, how he feels something that must be, of all the unaccountable emotions, disappointment.
It’s not too long after that when Cas forms another theory.
He thinks it’s possible that he’d like to be kissed.
There’s something warm and wet touching his lips, and Cas jerks awake, fighting his way back to consciousness with the sinking feeling that somehow he’s missed something of vast importance.
Dean’s face hovers above him, tense and worried, and Cas feels obscurely comforted by Dean’s presence.
“Did I miss it?” Cas asks hazily, and Dean’s hand stops its soothing journey up and down Cas’s arm.
“Miss what, buddy?” Dean asks, and his voice sounds uneven.
Cas touches his lips, and he discovers that wet warm something is blood, trickling down the side of his mouth. Not lips, after all. He closes his eyes.
“Nothing,” he says, because it’s foolish, the way disappointment settles in his bones, because it’s undignified, the unhappiness tangling him in knots and ruffling his feathers, and Cas wonders how long he’ll wait for something that isn’t coming.
Cas stops waiting, but he can’t stop watching, following Dean wherever he goes. He watches Dean at bars, flirting with the waitress, and he concludes he must have been wrong about the whole thing; of course that’s not how Dean looks at him, it’s nothing like that.
But all the same, he finds himself wondering about touch, something he’d never considered before, how it might feel to touch more of Dean than just his shoulder, how it might feel to wrap himself around Dean, to work his way into Dean’s heart and arms and bed.
And it aches, the thought of holding Dean like that, of being held in return; he aches with all the things Dean makes him feel, aches with the possibilities, with all the ways Dean can love.
And it aches, when Cas considers wistfully about the probability of Dean ever loving him that way; it aches because no, most likely he won’t.
He does try to to explain it to Dean. "I’m tired,” he says, and he has to look away, because Dean is radiating a fierce unhappiness. ”Of waiting for something that’s never going to happen. Of everything. I just want to go, Dean.”
“You just don’t get it,” Dean is saying, his voice filled with fury and something that sounds almost like hurt. ”Don’t you get that I don’t want you to leave? Don’t you understand that I want you to stay?”
“Dean,” Cas begins wearily, but Dean cuts him off.
“What do you want from me, Cas?” Dean demands, and throws up his hands. Cas blinks, startled; it’s unlike Dean to give up. “You want a fight? You want me to get on my knees and beg? What do you want?”
“You,” Cas says hopelessly, because there’s no point pretending otherwise, and it aches it because it’s true, and because it can’t be true.
Dean doesn’t seem to be able to move; he stands so still, and Cas mechanically catalogs the way Dean’s breath hitches in his throat.
“Okay,” Dean says quietly, and nods, almost to himself. "Okay, Cas.”
Dean gives him a strange look, then, one Cas can’t properly catalog because he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything like it on Dean’s face before. It’s a look of fragile wonder, of pure acceptance, it’s a look that that’s oddly sweet.
He closes his eyes against Dean’s gaze, but when he opens them again Dean’s still looking at him with the odd mix of affection and tenderness, and it’s almost too much to bear.
This isn’t something Cas saw coming.
“You’ve got me,” Dean says, and closes the gap between them.
He takes Cas’s face in his hands, and moves slowly, almost hesitantly, breathing lightly against Cas’s cheek. “Is this it?” Dean whispers. “What you were waiting for?”
Dean brushes his lips against Cas’s, and Cas leans into him hesitantly, but Dean seems to know what he’d doing and yes, this is what Cas has been waiting for all along, Dean, all of him, warm and loving and pressed so close, and the ache disappears like it never was.
“Yes,” Cas tells him, and kisses him back.