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It started on a late summer day when Dean was feeling particularly unlike himself, almost as if he’d woken up and, instead of putting on the wrong clothes, he’d gone ahead and put on the whole wrong person. But really, he’d been feeling this way for a very long time.
Dean had stopped at motel with Sam and Cas. This was the first time they’d gone hunting with Cas since he’d become human. It seemed silly to get two rooms, so they got the usual one.
When it was time to sleep, Sam had said, “He’s your angel.”
Dean had shrugged, and that’s how Cas and Dean ended up sleeping in the same bed.
It was like that every night and every town where they hunted. Dean would slide into bed and Cas would follow him. They stayed on their own sides, and it was fine.
Simple as that. Easy as that.
Dean never expected how much he’d get used to having Cas around. He memorized Cas’s order at diners (B.L.T. with onion rings and root beer) and what he wanted at the filling station (Munchoes, Heath bar, Strawberry-Kiwi Snapple). Dean knew Cas’s shoe size (11) and his favorite color (green).
Cas seemed to be learning Dean in new ways too. Cas would never forget the pie, always picked up after himself in the Impala. He knew how to find a radio station Dean would like, and in the motel he always knew to turn on TV Land.
It became easy to share things too.
They didn’t really need two tubes of toothpaste, or two duffle bags for their clothes, or two trips to the laundry. Sometimes when Dean was thirsty and he’d run out of his own drink, he’d take a sip of Cas’s Snapple. It wasn’t a big deal.
Simple as that. Easy as that.
When they arrived back at the bunker, Cas had carried his and Dean’s bag right into Dean’s room and flopped down on the left side of the bed. (Dean always had the right side).
There were a lot of other rooms in the bunker, but Cas didn’t seem to understand that concept. It wasn’t really a big deal to Dean either way.
So that was that. They lived in the same room, and Sam never said a word about it.
In the morning, they’d share the bathroom and Dean would flush the toilet if Cas had been in the shower too long. Dean would make breakfast and Cas would make coffee. If they didn’t get a call to hunt, they’d find something to do. Sam, Dean and Cas would watch movies or play cards or clean their guns.
Sometimes at night, Dean and Cas would lie there and talk about things. All sorts of things. Funny stories about hunts. Jokes they could play on Sam. They’d talk about their pasts. Sometimes Cas would tell these beautiful, impossible stories about things like how the Grand Canyon was formed or what touching a star feels like. They’d talk about their futures too. About places they wanted to go (Cas wanted to go to Disneyland and Dean wanted to go to Niagara Falls). About things 5, 10, 20 years from now. They talked about how insufferable they’d be together as old men. And they’d talk and talk, just looking at each other, until one of them fell asleep mid-sentence.
Simple as that. Easy as that.
But of all the things they did, they never touched. Not really. Not more than a pat on the shoulder or a grazing arm. Still, there was a flow to their being together. A movement that seemed perfectly natural. So natural that this seemed like an entirely everyday thing to do.
Cas was sitting at the kitchen table, taking an occasional sip of coffee (black, 3 sugars). Dean had just made Cas’s favorite breakfast (waffles, strawberry syrup, whipped cream) and after handing Cas the plate, (“Thanks, Dean.”) Dean thought nothing of leaning down and pressing his lips to Cas’s.
He’d already turned back toward the counter when it hit what he had done. Stomach launched into his throat, Dean turned around ready to apologize, explain, give an excuse, when he saw Cas take a bite of his waffle and smile.
So, whatever, simple as that. Easy as that.
It just became something they did every once in a while. Dean would reach around for his deodorant in the bathroom and peck Cas on the neck. They’d kiss quickly during a movie. Cas would always kiss Dean once before they went to sleep.
It was the only thing they did and Dean told himself it didn’t matter like that.
On a hunt, Sam wanted to get some research done and Dean was feeling restless, so he talked Cas into going to the 1950’s style ice cream parlor they’d seen on the way into town. They each got double-scoop ice cream cones (Dean got cinnamon apple. Cas got chocolate and peanut butter) and there was lake, so why not walk around it, because it was a nice day after all. So they did. So their hands kept bumping into each other, and it seemed like the right thing to do to grab Cas’s hand. It would stop the bumping after all.
Dean would find himself holding Cas’s hand sometimes. When Cas would Cas would call shotgun. Under the table at dinner. On their occasional walks.
It was fine, nice, to have someone’s skin to feel against his skin.
Simple as that. Easy as that.
It was all small, disappearing kisses and touches until one day when Sam had gone to visit Garth. Cas and Dean had the bunker to themselves. Dean was sitting on the couch when Cas brought in the bowl of microwave popcorn and two beers. He sat the food and drinks down and then settled by Dean, kissing him once as they always did.
Something hit Dean in that moment, whether it was the dim lights or how Cas’s lips tasted like butter or the fact that Cas was damn wearing one of his shirts, but he leaned in for a second kiss. Softer, slower.
His hands went to Cas’s hair, fingers twisting in the strands. Cas’s mouth opened for Dean, and Dean couldn’t help himself. So they kept kissing. Lips trailing down necks and to ears and back to mouths. The tips of tongues touching.
Then they stopped, (Simple as that. Easy as that.) and turned on the movie. They ate their popcorn and drank their beer, and Cas fell asleep on Dean’s shoulder.
But a kiss like that wasn’t something that could only happen once. Cas and Dean would steal moments to kiss and kiss and kiss in the back seat of the Impala, in closets on hunting trips, really anywhere they could find a bit of privacy.
Except for their bedroom. There seemed to be an unspoken rule about that.
One day, Sam and Cas were arguing about some nerd thing Dean didn’t understand, so he took Baby and went for a drive. He wasn’t sure where he was going but he saw this strip of historic buildings that had been turned into stores. He had little better to do (maybe one of them would sell pie).
Dean stepped into an antique shop and navigated his way through the old armoires and weird doll collections. (He was about 95% sure at least something in here was haunted.) Then Dean stopped at a small glass case. Inside were two iron rings, slightly dented, but in a way that made them kind of perfect. And iron. That was perfect.
Dean bought the rings with cash and then kept them in the front pocket of his jacket.
It wasn’t until another few weeks that Dean pulled them out again. He had no reason to pull them out. It had been a day entirely in the ordinary. But still he sat there on the edge of his bed, clinking the rings together between his hands.
When Cas sat down beside him, Dean didn’t put the rings away.
“What are those for?” Cas asked easily.
Dean kept his eyes on the rings. “I was thinking maybe you could wear one.”
“Why?”
“Well, you would wear one and I… I would wear one.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have to.”
Cas paused. “I want to.”
Dean let out a breath. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so. They’re a promise, right?”
Dean looked right at Cas, holding out one of the rings. “Yeah. Me and you.”
Cas swallowed. “For as long as we-“
“Yes.”
Cas nodded. “Yes, Dean.”
Dean pressed the ring onto Cas’s left ring finger and then he handed the other to Cas who did the same for him.
Simple as that. Easy as that.
It took Sam a few days to notice and when he did he said, “We could have a party or something. Jody, Charlie, Garth… everyone, you know, Crowley maybe.” Sam laughed.
Dean looked over at Cas and then back at Sam. He shook his head.
Sam grabbed Dean’s shoulder and said, “You two at least have to have a beer with me.”
Dean half-smiled. “Okay, Sammy.”
The first time Dean actually said it, he hadn’t been thinking about it. He was on a case and questioning a witness when his phone rang. It was Cas and he said to the woman, “Sorry. It’s my husband. Gotta take this.”
Simple as that. Easy as that.
It wasn’t long after that they had their first real fight. They’d argued over stuff before, but it had never been like this since things had started to change between them. All Dean knew was that it was really, really scaring him.
“You can’t just do that!” Cas shouted.
“Do what?”
“Control everything. Control me.”
“I’m not. I don’t.”
“You think I’m a child and can’t do anything myself.”
“I don’t.”
“You called me a baby.”
“When?”
“You know when.”
“That was years ago. You can’t just bring up the past, Cas, and use it against people. Let it go.”
Cas’s eyes narrowed and he scowled. “Fine. I will let it go. I will let it all go.” He stormed out of the room and slammed the door.
Dean’s head was spinning; he felt sick to his stomach. What did Cas mean by “I will let it all go.”? What if Cas left? What if Cas left him?
He didn’t care how mad he was, or how right he was, Dean couldn’t let that happen.
“Cas, Cas,” he called through the bunker, terrified he was already gone.
But Cas wasn’t. He was sitting at the kitchen table, dipping the tube of cookie dough into a bowl of M&Ms and eating it right out of the wrapper.
Dean laughed.
Cas turned around. “What?”
“I love you.”
Cas sighed, a little sadly. “I love you too, Dean.”
It was the first time they’d ever really said it aloud.
Simple as that. Easy as that.
Six months after Dean and Cas were married, they were lying in bed and Cas leaned over kissed him. Not the normal once or twice for lying in bed but a lot.
Cas’s hands went to the edge of Dean’s shirt and started to push under. “C-can I?”
Dean swallowed, his mouth dry, and nodded. Despite everything else that had happened between them, their physical relationship had been mostly an over-the-clothes, nothing you’d be embarrassed to tell your grandma kind of situation.
Even their kissing had been just that. Kissing.
Dean had an interesting relationship with sex and he was afraid of bringing that baggage into his relationship with Cas. With the exception of Lisa and Cassie, sex had always been a one-night thing, a release thing. Not an intimacy thing. But even his relationships with Lisa and Cassie were nothing as complex and intricate and special as what he had with Cas. Cas was it for Dean. The end. (The beginning).
What if sex screwed everything up?
Cas’s hands were rough but gentle across his skin. They moved slowly, carefully, like Cas was trying to memorize the pattern of the light layer of hair across his chest and the thicker line that led from his navel into his pants.
Dean took the bottom of Cas’s shirt into his hands and pulled it over his head, revealing inch by inch of his slightly tanned skin, a circle of freckles, two moles, Jimmy’s birthmark maybe.
Holy hell, Cas was beautiful.
Dean kissed Cas. It wasn’t fast or slow. It was just reaching, searching, stretching out endlessly into the dark, hoping against hope to latch onto a planet or a comet or a swirling galaxy. Cas, Cas, Cas everywhere around him.
Dean pulled off his own shirt.
Cas sighed, hand on Dean where Cas’s handprint had once been. His voice was reverent as he spoke, “After I pulled you out of hell, I remember spinning you back together, molecule by molecule, atom by atom. I touched every part of you, breathed my life into every part of you. Not just your skin and your bones but your soul. I thought ‘I get it now. I get why God loved humans more. You’re exquisite. You’re a miracle.’.”
Dean leaned down and kissed Cas. Hard.
“You’re the miracle,” Dean said against Cas’s mouth. “You’re my miracle.”
Cas pushed down on Dean’s boxers. “I want to see you again. All of you.”
“OK.”
Dean turned on the light.
He pulled off Cas’s boxers.
Dean was really, really glad he turned on that light.
They melted together. Like fire and candlewax, fingers running over hot, hot skin. Mouth and teeth and lips. And touching places they’d never touched before. Memorizing and knowing and learning.
Dean was holding himself above Cas, still in total awe that this was happening. That something this good could be real. “You ready?”
Cas nodded.
So Dean moved closer, closer, closer and Cas’s eyes grew wider, wider, wider.
Both Cas’s hands were on Dean’s arms. Dean could feel him shaking.
“What is it?” Dean whispered.
“We’re so… so… close.” He sounded strangely surprised.
Dean chuckled and ran his fingers down the curve of Cas’s cheekbone. “I noticed.”
“It’s good being close.”
“I’m going to move now,” said Dean.
Cas grabbed him tighter. “Away?”
“No like this.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Oh Dean.”
There was no rush. Dean wanted to feel everything, hear everything, see everything. He kissed Cas softly, licking at his lips and into his mouth.
Dean felt something wet on his cheek. He pulled back. There was a tear on Cas’s face.
“Am I hurting you?” Dean asked.
“No.”
“What is it?”
Cas smiled. “It’s just I feel like… like myself.”
“Me too.”
Dean was exactly where he needed to be and exactly who he wanted to be. He was himself.
Simple as that. Easy as that.