Archive of Our Own

The first time Dean sees Castiel, he’s five years old and he wants to play with the bricks. It’s the first day of kindergarten and he's so excited by the sheer number of toys available to play with that he never had at home, that he barely notices the other, smaller boy already playing with them. But he notices when Castiel pushes him away, insisting in a firm voice that he’s “going to ruin my colors!” And it’s true, Castiel does have them all arranged so neatly, all organized by colors and shapes, but that’s not the way they’re supposed to be played with, Dean insists, and before Castiel can stop him Dean pushes them all together into one big pile and shows him how it’s really done, which is to try to build a tower as tall as yourself or maybe even taller, not even paying attention to what colors or shapes you’re using. Castiel complains at first, but when he manages to beat Dean's tower building record bu almost a foot, he starts to smile, seeing the potential merits of this game, and Dean frowns, thinking maybe he's created a monster.

The next time Dean talks to Castiel, he finds out his name. Every day their teacher has one of the kids take attendance, helping them out when they struggle to read, and Dean's embarrassed when he can't pronounce 'Castiel' and half the other kids laugh at him. The teacher tells them off, but Dean feels bad, like he should be able to stand up for himself. Castiel sits next to him at the painting table that day and tells him it's OK to call him Cas. Dean tries it out, saying it in different stupid voices, painting it for him inside of a heart. Dean doesn't hear any of the other kids call him that. He feels special even though he knows it's only because he can't say the whole thing right. He feels like it's a little secret just between him and Cas.

The first time Dean protects Castiel, it's the beginning of first grade and their class has moved from the kindergarten playground into the big school playground. Some of the kids are twice their size and they run so fast and Dean himself is a little scared of them, even though he tells everyone he's not scared of anything, but all of that disappears when he sees a couple of the older boys circling round Cas, taunting him. He runs over to the group of guys and it barely even occurs to him that they could literally walk over him because he's so busy making sure they can't get to Cas, insisting to them that his dad goes hunting and will mess them up if they do anything to Castiel. It’s not true – his dad doesn’t care one bit about the kids Dean’s friends with, and Dean knows it – but he must sound convincing enough because the other kids leave without doing anything else to Cas. Cas looks so grateful and Dean swears to himself right there that he will never let anyone hurt the other boy.

The first time Dean calls Castiel his best friend, he really doesn’t think twice about it. They’re sitting together in the back of the classroom whispering to each other and the teacher’s getting frustrated because they’re not listening to her, and she pulls them both to the front of the room on opposite sides. She says they’re not allowed to sit together for the rest of the day. The next morning, she takes them aside before class and says they can sit with each other again now, but if she catches them talking again when they’re supposed to be paying attention, she’ll separate them for the rest of the year. Dean doesn’t think he’d be able to handle this and, anguished, he cries, “But he’s my best friend!” He never even meant to say it, but it’s true, and they all know it’s true.

There must have been something in the way he said it that stayed with her, because although it’s nowhere near the last time Dean and Cas are separated for disrupting class, they’re never kept apart for more than a day.

The first time Dean remembers being properly alone with Castiel, it’s the third grade and they’re allowed to walk home from school on their own. They’re talking about something that happened on TV last night and they miss the turning onto Cas’s street, and suddenly they don’t know where they are, but there’s nobody around and it’s getting dark and neither one of them has their own cell phone yet. Dean's not scared; he knows they'll find their way eventually, but Cas is terrified and there are tears on his cheeks that neither of them will ever mention again and Dean just wants to hug all his tears away and tell him everything will work out fine. When Cas gets tired and he can't walk any further, Dean tries to pick him up and carry him, but he's too heavy and he drops Cas and they both fall down onto the grass together, laughing even while they're crying because of the pain and the fact that they're scared of what's going to happen now.

When they finally make it to the Novak house, they're nearly a whole hour late and Cas's mom yells at him for letting Dean talk him into going off on their own.

The first time Dean falls asleep beside Castiel, it’s their only ever sleepover together. Cas’s parents are really strict and normally they don’t approve of Cas having friends over but Dean’s dad is away again and he has to look after his brother Sam all on his own and after a whole lot of begging, the Novaks finally allow Dean and Sam to come and stay. They’re given a spare bedroom (there are a lot of spare bedrooms; Dean spends the first few minutes in the Novak house just staring in awe, he’s never been allowed inside a house this big before) but as soon as Sam has fallen asleep, Dean sneaks out along the corridor to where Cas's room is. Cas is exhausted and struggling to keep his eyes open but it’s clear he’s been waiting for Dean, and they climb into the tiny bed and it’s so easy and natural for them to curl up around each other and sleep like that, and Cas is out instantly even though Dean is still wriggling around feeling like he's being annoying, and Dean likes the fact that he’s in a big house and there are older and more responsible people all around him and he can just move closer into Cas and feel completely safe.

Sam doesn’t say anything the next day about Dean not being there in the morning, and the Novak parents don’t realize that Dean didn’t sleep in the bed they gave him (although one of Cas’s brothers does give them a funny look) and Dean thinks everything is okay and he got away with it, but John turns up around lunchtime yelling at Dean and Sam not to accept charity from people and never to leave the house again when he’s not around, and he drags them back to his own house and Dean is never allowed to spend the night with Cas again.

The first time Dean feels like he can’t go on is the day Cas tells him he’s moving away.

Cas will finish the school year, he tells Dean, since there’s only a couple of months left, and then his family will all move in the summer. They’re going all the way to New Mexico. They’re not even going to be close enough to visit. Cas told his parents he didn’t want to go, but they didn’t listen, he cries, and Dean tries to calm him down, tells him he’ll hide in his suitcase and they can be together just like usual, he’ll live in Cas’s closet and go to his new school with him. Dean sounds calm, but inside he’s shattering because middle school is scary enough but middle school without Cas just isn’t even worth comprehending.

On the last day of fifth grade they have a party, and it’s in the school gymnasium and pop hits from five years ago are playing over the speakers and the disco lights don’t quite look like they should and there are teachers standing by the food table to make sure the kids don’t overdose on candy, and it’s lame and Dean doesn’t want to be there but nobody’s allowed to leave until their parents come to pick them up. And so Dean drags Cas away from the other kids and into one of the empty classrooms, and he asks Cas to promise him that they’ll stay in touch forever, and even though Cas is allowed to make new friends if he really wants to, Dean always has to be his best friend. Cas promises. Dean holds out his pinky to seal the deal but Cas says he’ll do him one better, and he leans over and he kisses Dean on the lips, and it’s the softest and warmest thing Dean’s ever felt even though it only lasts for a second.

Cas pulls away and they don’t talk about it but Dean doesn’t clean his teeth for five days because he swears to himself that he can still feel Cas on his lips if he concentrates hard enough.

The first time Dean doesn’t see Castiel is the day he starts middle school. Well, if he wants to get specific about it, Cas moved a few weeks ago now so that he could get used to the new town before school started, but this is the day he really feels it. Before now, Cas could have just been on vacation. Now, it’s finally hitting Dean that he’s gone for good, that Dean is going to be forced to live his life without him. Dean’s scared and alone and he’s the youngest kid in school and he just feels so hurt that the Novaks have made him go through this all on his own. Suddenly he has to find different classrooms for all his classes and remember his own textbooks in the morning and carry round a heavy backpack all day, and he’s sure he wouldn’t mind any of that if Cas was here with him, but he’s not and Dean can’t get past that.

Castiel and Dean get their own cell phones and they exchange numbers and they text each other every day. Dean takes photographs of his hardest homework problems and gets Cas to solve them for him, knowing Cas complains but secretly doesn’t mind, and Cas asks Dean for advice when all the kids at his new school already know each other and he’s struggling to find someone to sit with at lunch. During boring classes they go on the Internet and they find funny pictures of cats and they send them to each other and it’s almost a game as to who can go the longest without bursting out laughing and getting their phone confiscated by the teacher, and in the evenings when their parents think they’re doing homework they call each other and whisper about their day and their plans for the weekend and their plans for the future, and these conversations usually end with one of them abruptly hanging up because they hear footsteps on the stairs, but it’s okay because there’s always a text explaining and apologizing a few minutes later.

Until one day when they’re right in the middle of seventh grade finals, and Cas stays on the line with Dean just a little too long, and this time he doesn’t text back.

Dean gets a text from an unfamiliar number a few days later. It’s from Cas. He says he hopes he got Dean's number right; he had to borrow a friend's phone so he could send this, because his dad took his phone and deleted Dean as a contact, says he’s not allowed to talk to Dean anymore. Says he’s a bad influence. Says he doesn’t think something about their relationship is normal.

Dean sits in the locker room and he cries for so long that he misses his English exam and he has to go to summer school, but it’s fine because he needs something to do to distract himself from everything that’s missing from his life.

The first time Dean really throws aside absolutely everything, including all his common sense, in favor of Cas is that summer. Dean sneaks out of his family’s house at five o’clock in the morning and walks to the nearest highway. He tries to hitchhike and he gets as far as Colorado before a woman picks him up and tells him he’s far too young to be out here on his own. She asks him where he lives and when he refuses to tell her, she takes his phone out of his bag and she calls his dad to come pick him up. John is furious and Dean’s not sure he’ll ever recover from his anger and his reaction, and now Dean has nothing to lose so he gets up again the next day and this time he gets all the way to New Mexico and the town where Cas lives, and he asks everyone he can find if they know where the Novak family are, and finally a man in a library tells him that they moved to Boston three weeks ago.

Dean is so heartbroken that he feels like he can’t move. He certainly doesn’t have the energy to make his own way home. He’s thirteen years old and his dad’s always drunk and his brother’s always sad and his friends and his teachers are always treating him like he’s not good enough and everyone seems to think he’ll drop out of school and live his whole life in the same town with no job and no future and he’ll end up getting some girl pregnant and go the same way as his dad and the whole cycle will repeat itself, and he knows he’s too young for people to make these judgments about him, but he doesn’t truly believe he’ll ever be able to prove them wrong, and all his feelings just completely overwhelm him. But none of that would have mattered – he would have forgotten all of it – if he could have just seen Cas; the one person who didn't believe any of these things about Dean, or just didn't care.

He doesn’t even notice that he’s on the floor crying and he hasn’t replied to the man that told him what happened to Cas, until the guy is sitting down next to him trying to console him and trying to figure out how to get him home. He’s horrified when he finds out Dean came all the way from Kansas alone, but he gives him money for a bus ticket back all the same and Dean lies and says he has people who know where he is and who he can call if he needs them.

Dean keeps hurting. Every day he doesn’t talk to Cas is a day that’s a little less worth it than if he could. He makes other friends and he realizes that if he’s careful about what he says and what he pretends like he’s interested in, he can be popular and he can fit in. He talks about sports and video games and computers and develops a genuine interest in cars and music and movies, but he doesn’t ever talk about himself. Not really. Not anymore.

It’s several months before Dean stops crying himself to sleep.

The first time Dean realizes he loves Cas is when he’s on a date with someone else. He’s a freshman in high school and he doesn't have a clue what he's doing. Robin’s really nice and she’s the first girl who’s ever shown a genuine interest in Dean and they go to the movies together every week and take it in turns to pick what they want to watch. Robin picks an action movie and the next week Dean picks a comedy and the week after Robin suggests a romance, and Dean can tell she’s expecting him to complain, but he doesn’t. He actually kind of likes the idea. He was never allowed to watch anything like that growing up because according to his dad it wasn’t ‘manly’ enough, and John would always turn off the TV if anything of the sort came on, and maybe it’s stupid but Dean’s a little curious, probably just because it’s an experience he’s never had before.

Dean watches an attractive man with dark hair and blue eyes fall in love with a woman he can’t even remember after the movie's over and he weirdly identifies with what’s happening on the screen. It’s all so familiar to him even though he’s never seen anything like it before. He wonders if it’s what’s happening between him and Robin so he looks over at her and he takes her hand and it feels nice but it’s not what’s making that man on the screen unable to focus on his job, unable to sleep at night. And then suddenly the camera angle catches the man’s face just the wrong way and Dean is beautifully and horribly reminded of Cas and he snatches his hand away from Robin and shit, what? Cas is a guy. A guy he hasn’t heard from for a year and a half. Yeah, he’s the best friend Dean has ever had and yeah, he still misses him every single day, but it’s not like…

Except it is like that, and it hurts him from the inside out because he knows nobody else would understand and he knows he’ll never be able to tell Cas about this and he knows he’ll never meet someone else who makes him feel like Cas does.

The first time Dean tells anyone, really tells anyone about any of this, he’s about to turn sixteen and he's not long started going to bars after work because it's a good way to avoid his father and sometimes he gets to meet people that make him forget about everything for an hour or so. The guy he meets today is called Benny and he’s older than Dean; he’s a senior at another high school nearby and Dean’s never met anyone quite like him, anyone so big and strong who faces the world so easily but who at the same time will sit down for hours and have a conversation, actually talk, not just sit there grunting about sports the way most of the guys Dean knows do. And Dean never really intended to talk about Cas, but it just sort of happened. One moment Benny's talking about how he’d always planned to start some kind of GSA at his school only by the time he actually got round to putting it into action he’d left it too late and he was too close to graduation, and the next moment Dean is saying ‘so there was this boy with eyes like those pictures of earth seen from space’ and the next thing he knows he’d told Benny the entire story.

That night was the first time since the sleepover with Cas that Dean slept in someone else’s bed without waking up in the middle of the night, hot and uncomfortable and ashamed.

The first time Dean comes out as bisexual is in his junior year, and just like everything else he’s ever done, he doesn’t plan it and he doesn’t expect it, but he’s watching TV with some of his friends on his break between school and work, and some new character walks onto the screen and Dean blurts "Damn, he’s attractive" before he can stop himself. The other guys agree and Dean thinks he’s gotten away with it until one of them adds "no homo, though" (why do people always have to say that, why) and for some reason Dean can’t stop himself from shrugging and saying "I mean, maybe some homo."

It's a stupid thing to say and he regrets it immediately and he hates himself for it, especially when it’s all around school by the next day and he’s having to explain the whole concept of bisexuality to a long line of girls he slept with once and suddenly instead of blending in he’s noticed by everyone. Kids he doesn’t even know are yelling at him in the corridors and telling him he should leave the school or sometimes even worse things, kicking him around for no reason, just because they can and because nobody's going to stick up for the queer kid. Dean’s even more miserable than usual, but having less friends gives him more time to care for Sammy and to pick up more hours at work so he calls that a bright side and focuses on that.

But soon, a strange thing starts to happen. Dean still deals with dicks on a daily basis but more and more often he’s confronted by people who aren’t terrible, people telling him he’s brave and courageous and has done something really great for their school. Dean wants to tell them it’s not like that; it was a dumb comment that he said without thinking things through and in actual fact he’d really like to be able to take it back, but at the same time he doesn’t feel like he can crush people like that, not when this clearly means something to them. And then the principal is calling a school wide meeting and announcing that as of this year, same sex couples are officially allowed at prom, and that's followed by a lot of booing and cries of "gross!" but there’s also a lot of cheering, and Dean feels like a fraud, but if he’s a fraud then at least he’s a fraud that’s made some people happy, and that’s not something he’s been able to say for a long time, maybe ever.

At least his family haven’t found out.

The first time Dean’s heart stops beating and he feels like he’s going to pass out and his entire world is rebuilt from the ground up in the space of a single second is Thanksgiving of senior year, when they make the drive up to Sioux Falls to visit their uncle Bobby, and John stops at a station close by to get gas.

He could have stopped at the last gas station, or the next one.

He could have stopped anywhere.

There was no reason for it to be here.

But somehow it did end up being here, and John thrusts a twenty into Dean’s fist and tells him to buy coffee and chips and cigarettes because he "isn’t stupid, he knows Dean’s got a fake." And Dean gets out of the car and starts towards the Gas’n’Sip and then he sees that face in the window and it makes him freeze where he stands and just stare for a moment, because that face is the last he ever expected to see, and in a population of millions the chances of him ever running into this one guy again are so small he never even let himself dare to think about it-

He tells himself he’s not sure, tells himself it really could be anyone, just someone who happens to look like his old friend… but he knows.

He starts walking towards the store, refusing to take his eyes off Cas in the window.

Cas doesn’t look up. He frowns in concentration over the slushie machine, engrossed in his work no matter how clearly dull it is, and as Dean approaches he can see everything, everything familiar about Cas; those little creases in his forehead and the way his eyes fix on a single point-

Shit. There’s no way he can just walk in there.

He’s worried Cas will have changed too much.

He’s worried he’s changed too much.

Cas still doesn’t look up as Dean pushes open the door and the bell rings, and for a moment Dean considers the crazy possibility that maybe he can get everything he needs without speaking to Cas, maybe he can avoid him, maybe the slushie maker is just that important that Cas won't notice him.

But Dean knows he could never forgive himself if he did that.

He tries to control his breathing as he gathers the things he needs. He’s terrified like he’s being chased by a group of lions and he’s been running for as long as he can but now he’s hurt his foot and it’s completely inevitable, they’re going to get him and there’s nothing he can do.

Cas isn’t a lion, though. Cas is really more of a kitten, Dean thinks to himself and smiles as Cas finishes up at the machine and lifts his arms above his head, stretching out his body after being bent over for so long.

Dean clears his throat.

Cas turns around, and Dean’s not prepared for that uncontrolled look of surprise mixed in with absolute delight, because nobody’s ever looked at Dean like that, like seeing him so unexpectedly is a good thing rather than a massive inconvenience, but it's Cas and Dean believes at once that that's really how he feels.

Dean asks Cas if it’s really him and Cas tells him that it is and Dean’s completely taken aback by that voice, because when the hell did it get so deep? And he looks at his lips and remembers kissing them once upon a time and he wonders if they still feel the same, but he doesn’t dare ask. It’s far too soon. But Dean does give Cas the biggest smile he can find and he tells him he’s so happy to see him and he hopes that says everything he wants it to, and Cas agrees with him, awkward and flustered, trying to ring up Dean’s things like he would with any other customer while simultaneously trying to catch up with his old friend, years and years of missed conversations crammed into a couple of minutes of babbling over each other and beaming and staring into each other’s eyes trying to reassure themselves that this is really happening.

Cas knows Dean isn’t eighteen, but he gives him the cigarettes because he knows how John will react if Dean comes back without them, and Cas throws in a free candy bar as well because it’s the least he can do to make up for four and a half years being out of contact, and they hug goodbye but it’s not a proper hug because the counter’s in between them and because someone’s waiting in the line behind Dean by now, and Dean wants more but there's just not time.

Dean almost throws the candy wrapper out before he realizes Cas has written a phone number on it.

Almost like he’s giving him his number to ask him out, Dean’s brain points out before he can shut it down.

Dean keeps the wrapper in his pocket as a secret reminder to himself of what happened to him today, and he waits until Sam’s asleep in their shared room at Bobby’s house before he pulls out his phone to text Cas.

It takes him far longer than he’s proud of before he can figure out what to write, but eventually he sends ‘Hey, how was the rest of your day?’ and it’s only a couple of minutes before he gets a reply of ‘Not as good as the part where I saw you’ and it’s just that easy for them to fall back into the same kind of conversation they always used to have, and an hour later it stops feeling strange at all and starts feeling like this is what he does every night.

Dean barely leaves his phone alone for the whole of Thanksgiving break. He hardly sleeps, and when he does, he makes sure the phone is right by his ear with the text tone set to maximum volume so that he’ll wake up if Cas has anything important to say to him. When he’s with his family, he’s always got one hand on the phone, usually subconsciously, so that he can be absolutely sure he won’t miss it vibrating. Bobby’s friend Jody notices and asks what Dean's got on his phone that’s quite so interesting and then she suggests that maybe it’s a girl, and really it’s the perfect cover so Dean agrees that it is and he lets himself gush about Cas for a while, calling him Clara out loud, and Jody and Bobby smile because they’re happy Dean’s happy, and happy he’s finally talking about something personal in his life.

And then Sam lifts his head up from his homework and Dean hadn’t realized he was even listening to any of this, but clearly he has been because Sam just turns his eyes on Dean and asks him if he’s going to take this girl to prom.

Fuck. Prom. Dean hasn’t even thought about who he might be taking to prom yet.

Ask him a year or two ago and he’d have told you that he had no intention of going to prom at all, but after everything that happened last year, people are probably expecting him to go. Maybe it’s kind of his duty. And he doesn’t hate the thought as much as he thought he would. Rationally, he knows the past four years have kind of sucked and he doesn’t want to celebrate any part of high school, even if he is celebrating the end, but for some reason he does like the idea of the whole prom thing – the cheesy movie ideal of everyone tossing aside their allegiances and differences for one night and just being.

He tells Sam that prom isn’t really his thing and he doesn’t think it’s Clara’s either, so they probably won’t go at all, but inside, he wishes.

When the new year rolls around, kids really start talking about the big night. Dean rolls his eyes along with a lot of other people when he sees the heartfelt messages written in the snow; the invitation banners strung up in the hallway; and on one memorable occasion a John Lennon impersonator hired for the express purpose of one guy asking his Beatles-obsessed girlfriend to go with him. Dean takes pictures of the best ones (usually defined as funniest or most extreme, not cutest, although once or twice...) and he texts them to Cas and gets even better ones in response. He asks Cas if he’s going to his prom and Cas says no, he only started at his school this year so it doesn’t really mean anything to him. Dean sleeps with a few girls, sleeps with a handful of guys, but none of them ever bring up the idea of going together or seem to expect anything from him. They’ve got their prom equality; it doesn’t matter any more if the guy who accidentally made it happen even shows up.

Dean goes home one night and tells Sam he thinks prom is stupid and pointless because everyone spends months preparing for it but then it only actually lasts for four hours or so and they’re probably not even four fun hours. Secretly, though, he knows he only has one shot at this. He only graduates high school once and then he starts working for his dad and paying rent on a shitty apartment and going out on disastrous dates and drinking just to pass the time and it’s over for him. He wants to go to prom, but he doesn’t want to go alone.

And yet out of all his one night stands, there’s nobody who meant enough to him that he wants to share this with them.

Except that’s not quite true.

There is one person, but there’s just no way…

He could never, ever pull that off.

But never, ever isn’t going to stop him spending hours trying to figure out the exact logistics of it all, how much it would cost and how he could fit it in around work and school and how he could make sure nobody’s parents found out, because yeah, of course he’s not actually going to do this, but there’s no harm in wondering how he would do it, theoretically. Everyone gets bored, everyone messes around thinking about what if. Everyone talks to their boss about putting in extra hours in the early morning before school to get a little extra cash. Everyone sneaks into their dad’s bedroom and steals his diary and writes in a fake appointment for May 9. Everyone locks themselves in their room and forces themself to listen to sappy love songs that they hate just so that they can practice slow dancing.

None of that means he’s seriously going to do this.

The first time Dean takes a huge risk that he’s actually planned out, actually considered the consequences of instead of just jumping impulsively into it is at the beginning of May, when Dean texts Cas and asks him if he’s doing anything important that weekend. Cas says his oldest brother Michael is coming to visit and Dean replies that Cas probably wouldn’t mind missing that and Cas agrees that no, he really wouldn’t, but what is this all about, and Dean forwards him an email.

He acts casual about it, but the truth is that he’s pinning absolutely all of his hopes on this. He’s risking everything he has, he’s going all in at the poker table. Literally as well as metaphorically, because he’d spent every cent he has on putting this together, as well as borrowing quite a bit, but it’ll be worth it if it all works out. And if it doesn’t…

Well, then, at least he got off his ass and did something for once in his dumb life.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean startles. He’s standing in the arrivals lounge of the airport, gazing at the steady stream of people walking through. They’re all going somewhere. Most of them are adults in suits and they look like respectable people with jobs and families and here he is, a scruffy teenager waiting for another guy his age who barely remembers to comb his hair, and he’s never expecting him to actually show, because this just isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find people like them. This was a crazy dream that he took a tiny bit too far, just like he takes everything too far. And he’s just about to convince himself to turn around and walk out the door and drive home alone, when he hears that voice. That voice. They talk on the phone most nights, but still, when he’s not expecting it, that voice…

“Cas. You actually came!” he breathes, eyes wide, taking in the sight of the other boy, dressed in a battered trench coat despite the heat, standing there with half a smile resting among the day old stubble on his face.

“You sent me a plane ticket. How could I not?”

Dean’s beaming and he’s so happy to see Cas that he just throws his arms around him and pulls him into his body so close that he can’t feel any of the gaps between them and he just wants to keep Cas there, connected to him, forever.

Only there are people all around them trying to get past and it’s really only a few seconds before Cas pulls away and he says “Dean, are you okay? I was worried about you… did something happen, is that why you needed me to come here?”

And Dean immediately feels terrible because obviously by being all cryptic about why he asked Cas here, he’s given him the impression that something really terrible has happened; he’s made him stress about this for no reason, and really all this is is Dean being a stupid selfish idiot who was just done with feeling so lonely and somehow thought that made it OK to uproot his friend’s entire life and drag him all the way across the country for nothing.

“No!” he insists, “no, Cas, it’s nothing like that. Nothing’s happened, I just- Cas, I’m so sorry.”

And Cas just slips his arm around Dean’s waist like he’s done it a thousand times (and maybe he has, in his mind) and he leads him to some chairs over at the side of the arrivals lounge where things are a little quieter, and they’re sitting so close together and Cas just says, “Dean, whatever you’re sorry for, I promise you it’s okay.”

“It’s stupid, though,” Dean tells him in a small voice. “I made you travel for hours just for something that isn’t important. Not in general, and definitely not to you. Something that I can’t even explain why it’s important to me.”

“If it’s important to you, it’s important to me,” Cas murmurs, just that statement without any qualifiers, and Dean thinks maybe his mind invented that and maybe Cas didn’t actually say it, because it’s exactly the sort of thing Dean was hoping to hear.

Dean just thinks about this for a while, and then he hears from right beside his ear, “Seriously, Dean, what’s in the bag?”

Dean takes a deep breath and starts to speak. “Cas, are you sure? You know, if you want to turn around and get back on another plane and go see Michael and just talk to me on the phone and be friends and nothing else, then… then I won’t think less of you. Because I didn’t pay for you to fly over here because you’re my friend, I didn’t set up this whole thing because I wanted to just… just hang out with you or something. This was going to be my big, crazy, romantic movie moment, and I know I already messed it up because I’m not good at that kind of stuff, but- here. Take it. And then… your call, I guess.”

He thrusts the big, black bag towards Cas, who moves to open it.

“Not here. Open it in the bathroom or something.”

Cas leaves.

Dean waits.

He waits for a really long time, and he’s sure Cas shouldn’t be taking this long, and probably the dude has bolted now that he's seen what's inside the bag, which is kind of a dick move because it was a rental and Dean is supposed to be returning that on Monday, but he supposes he can’t really blame Cas for freaking out, and damn, he really shouldn’t have sprung something like this on him all of a sudden, should have talked to him about this earlier.

It’s fifteen minutes and an uncountable number of forced-back tears later when Cas taps him on the shoulder.

“Dean, I’m sorry I was so long, it was this tie, I just couldn’t figure out how-“

Dean turns around, and he doesn’t know whether to gasp or cry or burst out laughing, because there Cas is, wearing the tux Dean found for him, hair still all messed up from the plane ride, looking just a little bit uncomfortable in the new style of clothes he's not used to but otherwise just as perfect as he does in all the dumb selfies he sends Dean – with his blue bow tie looking like a complete disaster.

“Cas, you know there were instructions in the bag, right?”

“I know! I found them, but they weren’t easy to follow.”

Dean just smiles at him, and Cas lifts his hands to the tie, misinterpreting. “I’ll try again…”

Without even thinking about it, Dean moves his hands on top of Cas’s to stop him removing the tie. “No! No, leave it. I… I like it like that.”

Cas looks down at the ground, and Dean’s not sure, but he thinks his friend might be blushing.

“Um, there’s one more thing…” Dean reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a bright blue boutonniere, and he definitely didn’t spend over an hour in the flower shop yesterday looking for exactly the right color to match Cas’s eyes, no, he wouldn’t do that. “If you don’t think it’s too much.”

Cas doesn’t complain as Dean pins it to his jacket, and he can feel Cas’s heartbeat through his clothes, and it’s definitely faster than usual.

“So,” Cas says once Dean has finally moved his hands away, definitely without any lingering at all, “I’m all dressed up, but what about you? Please tell me you don’t have a hoodie on under that old coat.”

“Yeah, about that,” Dean grins, and he unzips the coat he stole from his dad (because with all the things John is going to be pissed about regarding this situation, Dean taking his coat won’t really be a whole lot extra) and slides it off to reveal his own matching tux, a tiny bit older and rattier because he had to give Cas the nice one, but fancy enough all the same. “Alright, Castiel Novak, we have a car, good clothes, fake IDs and charming personalities; so really the night is ours to do whatever we want with, but most of the possibilities… we’ll have other chances for those. But the reason why I wanted you to be here today specifically was because… I thought we could go to prom. My prom. Because I want to go, and the only person I want to take as my date… is you.”

Castiel swallows, and Dean wonders how he didn’t see this coming, how he wasn’t planning out his exact response to this while he was trying to put on that goddamn tie in the bathroom. “Me? Your date? But everyone at school-“

“Everyone at school knows I’m not, shall we say, exclusively into girls. And, for that matter, a lot of people at school probably remember you from elementary. You said you didn’t want to go to your prom because you hadn’t been at that school for long, but you were in my school district for a long time, so this could be a prom for me, and it could be a reunion for you, and to the rest of them, the fact that you’re a guy is going to be less of a shock than, well, the fact that you got really fucking hot in the years you were gone.”

Cas looks down at the floor again, embarrassed. “Are you sure?”

Dean pauses. He's tried to sound smooth up til now, like he knows exactly what he's talking about and is confident that Cas is going to say yes, but truth it he's still terrified. “Look, I don’t want to have to convince you. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. We can do anything you want, I mean it. The most important thing to me right now is spending a night with you, but…” He shrugs. Trails off.

Cas looks into Dean's eyes. “Dean, of course I’ll be your prom date.”

Dean smiles tentatively. “Really?”

“Of course,” Cas frowns, like there was never any question in the matter. “I just wanted to make sure you were sure about it, that you didn’t just rush into asking me this.”

“No, Cas, I’ve been planning this for months actually,” Dean admits.

Cas laughs, and he's so close to Dean that Dean can just about feel the ‘well why didn’t you say something before?’ that’s almost on his lips, but he doesn’t say it.

Cas takes Dean’s arm. “Well, I wouldn’t want us to be late on such an important night. Lead the way.”

The first time Dean really lets go in public, lets himself be exactly who he is without worrying about what the rest of the world thinks of him, is about an hour later when they pull up to the school in his dad’s old Chevy Impala. He couldn’t afford a limo or anything, but this is a classic car, as Cas points out, a little unique and definitely full of memories for Dean, who’s been in this car a thousand times throughout his school career. It’s a little shabby compared to all the shiny, polished, chaffeur-driven cars around them, but when they get out and join the crowd heading towards the doors, the cars are all lost behind them anyway, and nobody knows or cares who came here in what.

There are balloons strung up around the entrance to the hotel ballroom; a photographer taking pictures of the couples and groups on the steps as they walk in; waiters offering cocktail glasses full of fruit punch to everybody on their way inside. Dean simultaneously hates and loves how much it perfectly conforms to every prom stereotype he’s ever heard about, and he wraps his arm around Cas's waist for a cheesy photo and then scowls and pulls a face as soon as the flash has gone off and they're walking away, and he goes inside and he sits at his assigned table next to two place cards that just say ‘Dean Winchester plus one’ and he laughs at the reactions from everyone who was at their elementary school when they see Cas – knowing that however pleased they might be to see him, they can never come close to feeling what he felt back at the Gas’n’Sip. Dean drinks spiked punch and regular punch until he can no longer tell the difference between them and he dances with Cas and with a hundred other people until he can barely move because of the blisters on his feet. And even though no less than seven people come up to him and tell him how surprised they are to see someone like him here, at prom, he feels like there was never any question about it.

He’s glad he’s here.

The first time Dean feels complete, like everything might turn out okay, is late that night, or maybe early the next morning. He and Cas are still at the hotel where the prom took place; but the music is over and everyone has long since packed up and gone home. The two of them sit on a bench in the gardens, just far enough away that nobody can see them. It’s a warm, peaceful night and Dean’s had a long day and he’d like nothing more than to put his head in Cas’s lap and fall asleep, but Cas’s flight back is that afternoon and Dean doesn’t want to miss a single minute of his time with him.

Eventually, Cas’s voice breaks the silence.

“Thankyou, Dean. For bringing me here tonight. It was unexpected, and it was… the best night I have had in a long time.”

And Dean had spent such a long time preparing for the worst case scenario where Cas told him he’d read this all wrong and walked out of his life yet again that he’d hardly let himself think about what he’d do if this happened.

“Cas, do you remember the last dance we went to together? When you kissed me?”

Cas nods slowly.

“Why did you do that?”

Cas pauses. “I don’t know exactly. It was a long time ago. I think I was scared that you would forget me, and I thought maybe if I was your first kiss, maybe that would be something for you to remember. But mostly…”

“Mostly?” Dean prompts when it doesn’t seem like Cas is going to finish that sentence.

“Mostly you were very pretty and I just really wanted to.”

Dean blushes, and he’s glad it’s so dark.

“You want to make it a tradition?”

Cas had looked away when they started discussing the kiss. “What- kissing at dances?”

And yeah, that’s what Dean had originally meant, but he changes his mind as he turns and looks into Cas’s eyes like he’s trying to pour his whole soul into them.

“No, kissing in general.”

They’re already close, but now Cas leans in closer still, and Dean closes his eyes because he can't contain all the emotion and the possibility of this moment and holy shit, Cas is about to kiss him, and their lips meet and suddenly Dean is eleven years old again, legs dangling from a beat up classroom desk and feeling the warmth and comfort of Cas’s lips for the first time and never ever wanting it to end – and this time, he realizes, it doesn’t have to.

He kisses Cas like he’s trying to make up for seven years of being too far apart just with this one kiss.

Cas kisses back like he’s been planning this moment his entire life, like everything’s been building to this.

Cas’s lips are a bright light in the darkness he’s been trying to find his way through for years, they’re soft and passionate at the same time and they’re welcoming him home.

When they break apart, the first rays of sun are just starting to appear.

“I can’t believe we have to go back to school,” Cas confesses after a long moment of comfortable, “go to class, take exams, finish up the year as usual… now that this has happened. It feels like this should change everything. But I guess it doesn’t, not really.”

Dean tucks his head into Cas’ shoulder. “It changes me,” he says simply.

Cas slips his arm around Dean and rubs his hand up and down the sleeve of Dean's jacket. “Oh yeah? So what are you – we – going to do from here?”

And Dean has a million ideas of how he and Cas might make this thing between them work; crazy thoughts of leaving his dad and moving across the country and getting a decent job, all of it really implausible stuff that’ll probably never happen, and he’s going to need a little more time and a lot more sleep to come up with any kind of a coherent plan for the rest of his life. But right now, sitting here, he knows he will come up with one, and so he just says “We’re gonna be together, Cas.”

That’s the first time Dean feels like he has a future.