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The hardest part of being human isn’t the awareness of his own mortality. Nor is it the never-ending maintenance, the near-constant need to either eat or urinate, or even the feelings, always doing something or other to his body (humans always spoke of emotions in contrast to the body, but Cas finds them to be extremely physical things).
No, the hardest part, now just as it was the first time, is sleeping. Every night, without fail, Cas follows his routine dutifully (several articles on the internet recommend this)— he brushes his teeth, flosses, showers, urinates, and gets dressed in the old shirt and sweat pants that Dean had given him. Then he goes to ‘his’ room (he’d never actually had a room in the bunker before; he’d never needed one), turns out the light, and lies down in the bed. He’s seen humans do it often enough, watched Dean turn onto his side in a motel bed, one arm beneath his pillow, his other hand gripping the blanket tight. Cas copies that posture now, trying it on as he tried on so much else to do with humanity.
As usual, it doesn’t fit. He tries other positions, and manages to get comfortable enough, but he just doesn’t know how to turn his brain off. He keeps on thinking, and never about anything interesting. Just mistakes, mostly, whether from that day or the distant past. Always mistakes.
After a few hours of this torture, he usually gives up. As an angel, he’d often wandered the halls of the bunker at night, listening to the quiet hum of electricity and magic that, combined, kept them safe and comfortable. He used to pause outside of the others' rooms to listen to them breathe. It had soothed him in a way little else could.
He tries it now, as a human, but he can’t hear that well anymore. He just has to trust that Jack is well behind the closed door.
Jack is well behind the closed door. He doesn’t have to hear it to believe it. It’s normal not to hear it.
It’s normal.
It’s fine.
“Cas?”
Cas turns to find Dean, a bowl of cereal in one hand and a spoon in the other. “Hello.”
“What’re you doing up?”
Cas holds his hands out to his sides, as if something might come to him. “Nothing,” he admits finally. “Listening,” he adds lamely.
Dean stares for a second, tonguing his cheek, like he’s listening, too, but of course there’s nothing to hear. “Well, get some shut-eye. You’re an average joe now. No more creeping through the halls at night, Lon Cheney-style.” Dean pushes past him as he says this, shoving cereal into his mouth.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to expose the hypocrisy in that statement?” Cas says.
“Nope,” Dean says, food still in his mouth, lifting the spoon in Cas’s direction in a sort of salute. “‘Night.”
“Good night.”
But Cas still walks the halls every night, after hours of tossing and turning to no avail, and he encounters Dean a few more times, sometimes with a snack, other times covered in grease, like he’d spent the middle of the night beneath the hood of the Impala. Every time, Dean simply tells Cas to go back to bed. Every time, Cas wonders, but what about you?
It takes its toll. After two weeks of humanity, Cas feels like he’s been sleeping on that bus again. He has trouble focusing and even keeping his eyes open during the day. He’s irritable, lashing out at Dean and Sam over the most insignificant things. Jack heals him, which helps him feel better for a few hours, but it doesn’t solve the problem, and neither does herbal tea, magic, whale sounds, or meditation. He just wasn’t built to be human. Instead, he feels like how he imagines zombies in films must feel. Stupid. Angry. Confused.
“Alright, that’s it,” says Dean when he encounters Cas in the hall for the fifth time. “Come on.”
Cas follows Dean down the hall, Dean making little slapping sounds in his slippers and Cas padding along behind barefoot. Dean opens the door to his room and waves Cas in. Cas goes, and stands awkwardly in the middle of it. He’s never been in Dean’s room while human before. He’s never been in Dean’s room at four am before.
“Get in,” says Dean, flicking the lights off.
“What?”
“Look, it’ll help, okay?” Dean’s nothing more than a shadow in the dark room, and Cas’s human eyes are too weak to make out his expression as he says, “Trust me.”
Cas frowns, but follows instructions, heart hammering, too tired to really even think about what’s going on. He wants to be able to think about what’s going on. He wishes he were awake enough to understand— but then he wouldn’t be here at all, would he? He rests his head on Dean’s pillow and pulls the blanket up and finds himself overwhelmed by the smell of Dean. He closes his eyes.
“Uh, dude?” Dean hasn’t gotten in. Has he done something wrong?
“What?”
“Just, uh. That’s my side.”
Oh. Cas had known that, actually, not just from watching Dean in hotels, but from watching him with Lisa. “Apologies.” Cas scoots to the left, rolling onto his side as he does so. The mattress is very comfortable— firm, but giving, and quiet, compared to the groaning springs in Cas’s. Maybe that’s what Dean had meant by inviting him here, to share his superior mattress?
An arm wraps around him, then a body presses up to his back.
Cas almost gasps. This is what Dean had meant? This is what he’d offered?
“Sorry. Cold from being in the garage.”
“It’s okay,” says Cas.
Dean’s body wriggles a little more, getting comfortable against Cas, and Cas is still too tired to really comprehend it, but he certainly isn’t going to complain. “You good?” Dean whispers.
“Yeah.”
“‘Night, Cas.”
“Good night.”
Cas stares into space for a moment, feeling their temperatures come to equilibrium, feeling the beat of Dean’s heart against his back, the even rhythm of Dean’s breathing against his nape. It doesn’t seem real, in the night, in the haze of insomnia. Maybe that’s why he’s able to accept it and eventually relax, leaning into Dean’s body and finally, finally, falling asleep.
When Cas wakes, Dean’s nowhere to be found. The clock on the nightstand says it’s noon. Cas blinks awake and makes himself get up. Human things to do. He urinates, washes his face, and finds himself clean clothes to wear. By the time he gets to the kitchen he feels like a human again. He doesn’t see Dean all day.
“Where is Dean?” he asks Sam that night, as he and Jack play Connect-Four.
“He’s been in the garage, like, all day. On some sort of kick,” says Sam.
That night, Cas goes through his routine— Teeth, shower, toilet, pajamas, and only then does he consider his options.
1) He could attempt to sleep alone, in his own bed. (Sure to fail, if precedent was any sort of indicator.)
2) He could seek Dean out now, and ask permission to share his bed again. (Humiliating. And what was the likelihood of Dean verbally agreeing to such a request?)
3) He could simply… trespass. Ask forgiveness, instead of permission, as the saying went. (Surely this had the highest probability of success.)
He squints at himself in the mirror. He’s had all day to wonder if Dean could have meant anything by sharing his bed. He’s come up with no answers.
It couldn’t hurt, though, could it? They’d done it once. It wasn’t such a great violation anymore; if Dean didn’t want him there, he wouldn’t be cruel about asking him to leave.
Cas musters his courage and goes to Dean’s room. Dean isn’t there yet; the door is as he’d left it, wide open. Cas enters and closes it behind himself. He pauses, once again examining Dean’s private space. It’s neat and clean. Cas is tempted to snoop. He used to be awful about that. Until Dean had very firmly told him to stop, he would go through his things all the time, not understanding it as an invasion. Possessions had been novel to Cas, and he’d loved to see what things Dean had deemed worth keeping, how he’d organized them, how his mind had worked. Everything was always cleaner and more logical when Dean was happy. Things seem clean now. Cas wonders why Dean hadn’t been sleeping well.
He doesn’t snoop. He turns off the light and slides into Dean’s bed, on ‘his’ side this time. He rolls onto his side and pretends Dean is there with him again.
After a few minutes, the door clicks open, letting light fall across the floor, then it shuts again.
“You awake?” Dean whispers.
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna turn the light on for a sec, okay?”
“Okay.”
Cas rolls over to watch as Dean gathers his pajamas from the dresser, glances up at Cas, and leaves the room with the bundle of clothes, turning the light back out as he does so.
Cas waits, impatient now that he has implicit permission to stay. Dean was coming back, wasn’t he? Dean wasn’t just going to attribute any success in falling asleep to the memory foam, and end up switching mattresses with him or something, right?
Dean does indeed come back, only a few minutes that feel like eons later, quietly clicking the door shut, dropping his clothes in the hamper, and crawling into bed. He’s soft and cottony, and Cas lets him line up perfectly flush against his back.
“Good night, Dean,” Cas offers, as a way of acknowledging that he’s still awake.
It takes Dean a weirdly long time to answer. “Cas,” he starts, and Cas doesn’t want to admit to himself what it does to him, to be able to feel his own name leave Dean’s mouth and hit his skin. “Uh, you didn’t….” Dean doesn’t finish the sentence, but Cas can. You didn’t tell anyone, did you? Cas waits, a little masochistically, to see if Dean will finish asking, but he doesn’t, so Cas fills the silence.
“Did you have a good day?” I missed you.
“Yeah, uh. Yeah.”
“Did you sleep well? Last night?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
“I kinda figured.”
They both fall silent.
“‘Night, Cas.”
“Good night, Dean.”
The next morning, it wakes Cas when Dean’s alarm goes off. He groans a complaint.
“Daytime, sleepyhead,” says Dean unapologetically, getting up and yawning loudly. Cas rolls over and buries his face in Dean’s pillow, a little ecstatic to be there, in the puddle of warmth left by Dean’s body. He peeks up a minute later and is rewarded with the sight of a still-sleepy Dean putting on his robe. Their eyes meet for a second, but Dean doesn’t say anything else; he just leaves the room, slippers slapping against his feet as he goes down the hall.
Cas breathes in the scent of Dean’s pillow. How long?
How long would Dean let him get away with this?
Dean returns to bunker society after that, and Cas wonders if his brief sojourn had been caused by him or not. Neither of them acknowledges it. Cas doesn’t tell anyone about their nights together.
Cas sleeps in Dean’s bed again the next night, and the next. They never speak very much— Cas gets the sense that if he says much of anything, Dean will kick him out. In the meantime, Cas can’t believe his luck. The sleep was good, yes, necessary, even. But everything else—everything else was awesome. Every night he received things he’d only dreamed about before; Dean’s touch, Dean’s warmth, Dean’s breath. Dean’s trust was best of all, and the sense that Dean was sleeping better, too. Dean held him so tenderly, as if to protect him even in sleep, and maybe it was foolish, but how could Cas help but think of them a little like secret lovers? Every evening, he stole away to a room that wasn’t his. Every night, he was held in another’s arms. Every morning, he snuck through the halls so no one would see him go.
Days turn into a week, becoming routine. Cas is soon keeping the most normal sleeping schedule he’s ever had. Usually Dean holds him, but sometimes Dean rolls over and Cas follows, getting to be the one to hold, instead. They start to learn how to be comfortable around each other.
One week becomes two. Their nightly habit is interrupted by a hunt, during which they (the three adults, that is) stay at a motel in Colorado for two days. Dean nobly tries to ‘give’ the single to Sam, citing Sam’s back pain, but Sam offers it to Cas, citing Cas’s insomnia, and neither of them can argue with that. So they spend two nights apart, and Cas tosses and turns again. Was Dean tossing and turning, too?
The first night back in the bunker feels glorious, nothing tense about it, just comfort, just the possibility of sleep, finally, blissful sleep, as Dean’s arm wraps around him once again.
In the morning, Cas is the first to wake for once. He moves to slide out from under Dean’s arm, but it grips him tighter.
Dean hadn’t been asleep, then, after all. Cas lets himself fall back into Dean’s chest, lets Dean's arm cover almost his full torso. His heart starts beating wildly. Dean had been holding him? Dean had been lying here, awake? Cas lies there, trying to remember how to be patient— he had known how to be patient, once—but nothing happens, except Dean’s face buries itself between Cas’s upper back and the pillow, as if to reject the morning, and then eventually an alarm goes off, and Dean gets up. Cas watches him select his clothes. Dean tosses a book at him.
“What’s this for?”
“Don’t be creepy.”
Cas sighs, staring at the paperback instead of Dean as Dean disappears out the door to change. He puts it down on the nightstand. Caught, red-handed.
But not banished.
That was something, wasn’t it?
The next morning, when Cas wakes, it’s holding Dean. The ‘big spoon’ as Dean called it. Dean usually claimed this position, but Cas enjoyed it just as well, when Dean rolled over and he was allowed to be the one to hold, for once.
He wonders if Dean is awake. As far as Cas can tell, Dean’s always awake before he is, and usually before even his own alarm. He didn’t used to be so regimented about his schedule, back when they’d first met each other. Cas listens quietly as Dean breathes, his chest expanding and contracting beneath Cas’s arm.
He’s awake, Cas is sure. Cas pulls himself closer, confident now that the motion won’t disturb Dean’s rest. He’s so warm, and soft. The bare skin of the back of his neck is right before him. Cas could kiss it, if he was brave enough.
An alarm sounds. Dean reaches over to turn it off, and this time it’s Cas’s arm that tightens, that pulls the other man back. Dean presses a button on his phone and then lets Cas pull him back into the bed, into Cas’s arms. Cas rests his forehead between Dean’s shoulder blades and breathes him in. Dean liked this. Dean must like this. Something fumbles against Cas’s hand and he realizes it’s Dean’s fingers. Dean plays with him, brushing his skin, folding their fingers together and then letting go again. It shouldn’t feel like anything, but it feels like holy fire in his hand, deadly but miraculously painless.
Strange, but real, Cas thinks, as he breathes Dean’s scent through his sleep shirt. What would happen, if I told him now? Would he tell me not to be ‘creepy?’
Would he tell me he loves me, too?
“I’m supposed to help Jack today,” says Cas instead, and Dean releases his fingers.
Cas hopes, as he gets up, that he’ll have an opportunity to catch Dean staring, for once, but Dean gets up and busies himself at the dresser, and Cas is left the only one looking.
Their mornings grow longer, more comfortable, and also more maddening. They hold hands, now, as they fall asleep and after they wake up. They turn off multiple alarms, in order to lie in bed, awake. They press foreheads to napes, they shuffle awkwardly when one of them gets an erection, their feet touch when fumbling positions. Never do they say a simple ‘good morning.’
Never do they face each other.
It’s Dean, who breaks. Dean leans over to shut off his alarm and turn on the lamp, and Cas, who had been happily asleep in his arms, follows him across the bed, grumbling protestations, wrapping arms around Dean’s waist.
But instead of lying back down on his side and letting Cas spoon him, Dean comes back to bed flat on his back.
It isn’t as nice, really; they don’t fit as well together this way, but Cas can see Dean’s face, now, eminently beautiful, and it makes it hard to close his eyes. Dean’s staring at the ceiling, not at him, still waking up, Cas supposes. He hasn’t shaved in a couple days. Maybe that’s why, on this particular morning, Cas reaches up and scratches Dean’s stubble absently.
As if directed that way by Cas’s hand, Dean’s face turns towards him.
And then his body follows, all of Dean turning onto his side, facing Cas, and suddenly it’s a whole new thing to contend with; legs in conflict with each other and cold feet, and Dean’s eyes, so much closer than is fair, especially before Cas has had his coffee, but there isn’t time to figure it out in the moment.
Cas is still half-asleep when Dean kisses him.
It’s not one kiss, but a series: slow, chaste kisses, lips only, pressing against lips. Dean’s head bobs gently while Cas lies still, holding his hand to Dean’s cheek, feeling the very real scratch of Dean’s stubble to ground him alongside the nearly fantastical softness of Dean’s lips.
Cas sighs when Dean stops, moving his hand to Dean’s back, unwilling to let go. He noses at Dean’s cheek and kisses him, too, licking him just a little, just tasting his lips.
They must kiss for quite a while, because Cas’s alarm goes off, too, and Cas is forced to separate from Dean’s mouth in order to find and silence his phone.
“Time to go?” Dean asks.
“No,” Cas replies, sinking down onto him. “No.”
One hand finds Cas’s neck and the other finds his waist as Cas lowers himself on top of Dean now, caging him there, so they can kiss forever. He mimics Dean’s motions, nodding against Dean’s mouth and sucking his lips and Dean actually groans, which makes Cas stop and gasp in— in what? Arousal? Awe? Genuine surprise? It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore. Dean is still kissing him. Dean is still touching him. Cas sighs in disbelief, or maybe relief. There are too many feelings in the universe. He can’t be expected to dissect them all now.
“I love you,” he says, certain of that one, and that makes Dean stop.
Their eyes meet. Dean is breathing heavily, eyes wide, lips pink. Cas thinks for a second he’s said something stupid, but he can’t bring himself to care. He does love Dean. It feels good to say it. It feels good not to hide.
“Boy, do I feel stupid,” Dean says, causing Cas to tilt his head in confusion.
“Why would my affection make you feel unintelligent?”
“Because, Cas.” Dean’s lips tremble for a moment. “I love you, too, you dumbass.”
“Oh.” And then he’s smiling; he doesn’t mean to, but he is, wide across his face, cheeks straining, it’s so big. Dean’s kissing him but he can’t even stop smiling to kiss back; he can only let Dean push him over, let Dean pepper kisses across his mouth and face. And he understands, suddenly, why Dean had said that he felt stupid, because Cas feels stupid, too. Of course Dean loved him. Of course they wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. Of course, of course. Everything feels obvious now. He was never going to have trouble sleeping again.