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Dean Winchester had faced down Lucifer, Death, God himself, and a truly unreasonable number of vampire nests, and none of it—none of it—had made his hands sweat like this.
He was standing in the Bunker's kitchen at seven in the morning, staring at a box of Trix like it had personally insulted his mother.
"You've been holding that cereal box for four minutes," Sam said, not looking up from his laptop.
"I'm reading the nutrition facts."
"You hate Trix."
"I'm considering Trix."
Sam finally looked up. His brother had bags under his eyes, a flannel buttoned wrong, which was ridiculous in its self given that he never buttons his flannels, and the general energy of a man who'd been awake since four a.m. having a fistfight with his own brain. "Dude. What is going on with you?"
"Nothing's going on with me."
"You've reorganised the weapons locker twice this week. Alphabetically. By monster type.”
"Some of us like a tidy workspace, Samuel."
"You called the angel blade a 'letter opener' and put it in the stationery drawer."
Dean set the Trix down. "Okay, first of all, we don't have a stationery drawer, we have a drawer with staples in it, that's not the same thing—"
"Dean."
"—and second of all, this has nothing to do with anything, I'm just in a phase people go through phases—"
"Is this about Cas?"
The silence that followed was so complete Sam could hear the bunker's fluorescent lights humming.
"Why would this be about Cas?" Dean said, in a flat, too calm voice.
"Because he's been back three weeks and you've said maybe forty words to him that weren't 'pass the salt' or 'nice job on that werewolf.'"
"I talk to Cas."
"You talk at Cas. Like a weather report. 'Looks like rain, Cas.' 'Salt's low, Cas.' You haven't made actual eye contact with the guy since The Empty’s little group nap."
Dean opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I'm gonna ask him out," he said, and immediately looked like he wanted to eat the words back out of the air.
Sam blinked. Then he smiled, slow and enormous. "You're gonna—"
"Do NOT," Dean said, pointing at him, "do the face. I can see the face happening. Stop the face."
"I'm not doing a face."
"Your whole face is a face right now, Sam, it's doing things.”
"I'm happy for you!"
"Nobody asked you to be happy, I haven't done anything, I'm just considering the theoretical concept—“
"You said 'gonna.' That's future tense. That's a plan."
"It's aspirational future tense. It's a maybe.”
Sam leaned back in his chair, absolutely delighted to be watching a slow-motion car crash he had personally been rooting for since 2011. "Okay. So what's the plan?"
Dean sat down across from him, dragging both hands down his face like he was trying to physically remove his own features. "That's the thing. I don't have a plan. I had a plan. The plan was 'say something.' And then I opened my mouth this morning and Cas was standing right there by the coffee pot in that stupid trench coat looking like—like that, all serious, with the head tilt, and he goes 'Good morning, Dean,' and you know what I said?"
"What'd you say?"
"I said 'yep.'"
"You said yep.”
"I said YEP, Sam. Just—yep. Like he'd asked me to confirm a delivery. The man said good morning to me and I responded like a UPS tracking notification."
Sam was laughing now, quietly, into his fist. "Okay, okay. So today's the day. You're gonna do it today."
"I didn't say today."
"You've clearly been building up to something. Rip the band aid, man. Ask him to dinner."
Dean stared at him like he'd suggested performing surgery on himself with a spoon. "You can't just—it's not that simple. This is Cas. This is a guy who died for me. Twice. Officially twice, unofficially probably like six times, I've lost count, the point is the man has died about me on multiple occasions and now I'm supposed to just stroll up and go 'hey buddy, you wanna get a burger, real romantic-like'? What if I say it wrong? What if he thinks I mean like a—a Tuesday buddy-burger, guys' night, no homo—no, scratch that, all the homo, that's the whole point, but what if he doesn't get that it's all the homo?"
"Dean, he confessed his love to you knowing The Empty was gonna swallow him whole, I think—“
"That was different, that was a—a crisis situation, adrenaline was involved, that doesn't count, that's like a battlefield promise, those don't hold up in regular daylight, that's just science."
"That's not science. That's not even a little bit science."
"It's emotional science."
"Not a field."
Dean grabbed the Trix box again and shook it at Sam like a maraca of despair. "I'm gonna go to the store."
"...Okay?"
"I'm gonna get stuff. Pie stuff. And, like, steaks. Good steaks, not the crappy ones. And maybe those little potatoes he doesn't need to eat but seems to enjoy looking at. I'm gonna make dinner and I'm gonna say the thing while I'm flipping the steaks, because it's easier to say scary shit while your hands are busy, that's a documented fact—"
"Also not a field."
"—and that's the plan. Groceries. Dinner. Words. In that order. Don't look at me like that."
"I'm not looking at you like anything."
"You're doing the big sad understanding eyes, stop it, you look like a Labrador that just watched somebody adopt a smaller dog."
"I'm happy for you.”
"I haven't DONE anything yet!”
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The grocery store was doing its absolute best to defeat him, and it had backup.
The backup was Cas, who had wandered out of the library the second Dean grabbed the keys, announced "I would like to accompany you," and was now standing in the cereal aisle holding a box of Lucky Charms up to the light like it might be a Grace infused artifact.
"Cas, you don't even eat."
"I like to look at the marshmallow shapes. They've added a new one." Cas turned the box, brow furrowed in total scientific seriousness. "It appears to be a heart. I find that mildly ironic given my current company."
"That's not irony, that's a coincidence, put the box down and help me find good steaks."
This had not been the plan. The plan was solo recon. Groceries, dinner, a speech Dean had been rehearsing in the Impala's rearview mirror, and instead he had an actual angel trailing him through the store, picking things up, asking what they were for, existing about eight inches too close at all times.
"Hey, Cas, so I got dinner going tonight, and I was thinking—" Dean muttered to himself over the potato bin, then caught Cas watching him with polite confusion three feet away and abandoned the sentence entirely, shoving it down. “Nothing. Talking to the potatoes. Normal thing people do."
"You do that with concerning frequency."
"Sir, are you okay?"
Dean nearly launched the potatoes across the produce section. A stock boy who couldn't have been older than nineteen was looking at him with the type of concern that was reserved for adults talking to root vegetables in public.
"I'm fine," Dean said, clearly absolutely not fine. "Just—thinking out loud. Meal planning. It's a whole process."
"...Cool," said the kid, and left at a pace just short of running.
Dean grabbed a ribeye that looked personally responsible for its own good decisions, dumped it in the cart, and steered them both toward checkout, muttering the entire way like he was reciting a spell he'd only half-memorised. "Steaks, potatoes, pie stuff, and then I say the thing while I'm flipping the meat. Easy. It's just words. I know words. This is not a problem."
"What thing?"
"Nothing. Get in the checkout lane."
They rounded into the nearest register, arms and cart full, and the cashier looked up.
He was maybe early-twenties, name tag reading TYLER, and the second his eyes landed on Cas—on the trench coat, the ridiculous eyes, the total sincerity radiating off him like a space heater—something in Tyler's whole posture changed.
"Hi, welcome in," Tyler said, and it was aimed entirely, unmistakably, at Cas. "Whoa, I love the coat. That's, like, a serious coat."
"Thank you," Cas said, "It has significant sentimental value."
"That's so cool. Is it vintage?"
"It's from nineteen seventy-two."
"Shut up. That's insane, you'd never even know, it looks brand new." Tyler scanned the ribeye without looking at it once, eyes still on Cas. "So are you guys, like, from around here?"
Dean, standing directly beside his own cart, experienced the sensation of becoming furniture.
"We live somewhat locally," Cas said, tilting his head with polite interest, entirely failing to register that he was being flirted with, at a cash register, in front of Dean, over a small potatoes Dean had picked out especially to say something to him tonight. "Underground, technically."
"Okay that's so mysterious, I love that." Tyler laughed, an actual, delighted laugh, and reached for the pie ingredients, and his hand brushed Cas' on the bag of little potatoes, and lingered there approximately one full second longer than any potato related transaction in human history required.
Dean watched this happen like he was watching a tornado touch down two blocks from his house.
"Those yours?" Tyler asked, nodding at the potatoes still cradled in Cas's hands. "You've got, like, really good hands, has anyone ever told you that?"
"No," Cas said, examining his own hands with genuine curiosity, as though this were new and interesting data. "Thank you. I use them for a variety of tasks."
"I bet you do,” Tyler said, and winked.
Something in Dean's chest made a sound like a transmission dropping out of gear.
"Okay!" Dean said, several decibels too loud, stepping bodily between Cas and the register in a maneuver that had absolutely nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with, uh, crowd control. "We're in a rush. Big rush. Very time sensitive dinner plans. Ring us up."
"Oh—sure, my bad." Tyler blinked at Dean like he'd only just noticed he was part of the transaction. "You guys together, or—"
"YES," Dean said, so fast and so loud that a woman two lanes over turned to look. "I mean—we're—he's with me. We're a whole—we came in the same car. One car. Mine. It's black. It's very recognisable, people know that car—"
"...Cool," Tyler said, exactly the way the produce kid had, and swiped Dean's card without further comment.
Dean grabbed the bags before the receipt had even finished printing, took Cas by the sleeve of the sentimentally significant trench coat, and marched him out of the store at a pace generally reserved for tactical retreats.
"Dean," Cas said, jogging half a step to keep up, "you're walking very quickly."
"I'm walking a normal speed."
"You just referred to the Impala as 'very recognisable' to a cashier who did not ask about the car."
"The car came up organically."
"It did not come up organically. You inserted the car."
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He got back to the Bunker in a personal record, blew through the front door, dropped the groceries on the map table with a crash that sent two pens rolling, and rounded on Cas, who had followed him in looking politely baffled, still holding the box of Lucky Charms he had apparently never put down.
"I need to tell you something," Dean announced, "and it's not a big deal, I just need to say it out loud to a person before I lose my damn mind."
Cas set the cereal down, giving Dean the full, unblinking weight of his attention, the one that always made Dean feel like he was being scanned for structural damage. "I'm listening."
"That cashier was hitting on you."
Cas tilted his head. "Tyler."
"You remember his name.”
"It was on his badge, Dean, that's how name tags function."
"He complimented your coat. He asked if it was vintage. He touched your hand on a bag of potatoes and lingered, Cas, I watched him linger, that was not an accident, that was a calculated potato-adjacent maneuver, and then he said 'I bet you do' about your hands and winked at you, an actual wink, with an actual eyelid, in a grocery store—“
"He was being friendly."
"He was not being friendly, Cas, he was running a full seduction campaign over a a bag of little potatoes and you stood there thanking him like he'd complimented your tax return.”
"I don't understand why this upsets you."
"It upsets me because I have spent THREE WEEKS," Dean said, voice climbing, holding up two fingers. He looked at his hand as though it had betrayed him before adding the correct number of fingers. "working up the nerve to say something to you, I bought steaks, Cas, good ones, I had a whole speech half built in the car, and then some twenty-year-old named Tyler rolls up and just—takes a swing at you, right there, over the express lane, while I'm STANDING RIGHT THERE holding steak like some kind of chaperone—"
He stopped.
The Bunker was very, very quiet.
"—and I couldn't even say anything," Dean finished, considerably quieter, "because I don't have any claim to say anything, because I haven't said the thing yet, because I've been chickening out of the thing for three straight weeks, and watching some cashier just walk up and compliment your hands like it's nothing made me want to flip the entire dairy case."
Cas didn’t blink for what felt to Dean like several geological eras.
"What thing," Cas said slowly, "have you been chickening out of?”
Dean dragged a hand down his face. "I want to take you on a date, Cas. Tonight. The steaks, the pie, all of it, that's what this whole trip was for and then Tyler the cashier had the audacity to hit on you before I could even get the invitation out, which is, frankly, terrible timing on his part, and extremely rude, and I want that on the record."
"You're jealous," Cas said, working through it like he was solving an equation, "of a cashier."
"I am observant. There's a difference."
"You referred to a bag of potatoes as evidence in a seduction campaign."
"Because it was evidence! I have a case file, Cas, I could build a whole board with string!"
The corner of Cas' mouth did the small, private thing it did when he'd figured something out and was deciding whether to be merciful about it. He was not, in fact, going to be merciful about it.
"I would like to point out," Cas said, "that in the entire time Tyler was speaking to me, I did not once consider going on a date with him."
"That's not the point—"
"I would also like to point out that I have already died for you. Twice, officially. This seems, on balance, a stronger indicator of interest than complimenting someone's coat."
"Would you stop bringing up the dying, it's not a normal thing to bring up in casual conversation, it's not a conversation starter, Cas, most people lead with the weather—"
"You started this conversation by accusing a stranger of running a seduction campaign over root vegetables.”
"That's different.”
"How?”
Dean opened his mouth. Closed it. There was, he had to admit, watching Cas stand there in his ridiculous, sentimentally-valuable, apparently-devastating trench coat, looking at him with that maddening, patient, ancient eyed calm, no good answer to that question at all.
"Fine," he said. "Fine. Okay. You want the actual thing? Here's the actual thing." He took a breath like he was about to jump off something tall. "I want to take you out. On a date. A real one, not a Tuesday-buddy-burger, not guys' night, an actual date, because I have been in love with you for I don't even know how long, and I bought steaks to try and say that without having a full cardiac event, and then Tyler ruined my whole life, and I need you to know none of that was a coincidence, none of it, I've been building up to this since you got back and I'm an idiot for taking three weeks to just say it—"
The words kept coming, faster now, like something finally shaken loose, and Dean didn't stop them, mostly because he'd stopped being able to.
Castiel crossed the room with the same purposeful, slightly-too-direct stride he used to walk into apocalypse world, and stopped close enough that Dean had to step back a fraction. Cas’ lips were suddenly on his, his hands framing his face, which did nothing whatsoever for his blood pressure.
"Dean?”
"Yeah?”
“Stop talking”
“Okay, can do,” he said, voice rough.
"I would like to have dinner with you. Tonight. As a date."
"...Yeah?"
"Yes." Cas' brow furrowed, working through something with total sincerity and zero awareness of how it landed. "For clarity, I would also like to state that Tyler's interest, while flattering, was entirely irrelevant, and that if it would ease your mind, I have no intention of returning to that particular grocery store."
Dean let out a laugh that was half relief, half something that had been sitting in his chest for three weeks with nowhere to go. "You're just gonna casually boycott the guy?"
"I consider it good tactics."
"You are unbelievable. You let a twenty-year-old flirt with you for a solid ninety seconds and didn't clock it once, and now you're being strategic."
"I noticed it. I simply didn't care. I only wanted you to say the thing you'd apparently been carrying around for three weeks."
"That's—" Dean pointed at him, mouth open, genuinely betrayed. "You knew. This whole time, you knew, and you let me have an entire meltdown in a checkout line—"
"I find your meltdowns endearing."
"Oh, we are not doing this again, we are not starting the date with you roasting me before we've even eaten—"
"I've been wanting to for years. I simply didn't think it was my place."
Dean pressed a hand to his own chest like he'd been shot, which, given everything, felt roughly proportionate. "You cannot just say things like that to a man holding raw meat, Cas, there's a sequence to this stuff—"
"You've spent three weeks failing to follow any sequence at all."
"That's—okay, that's fair, that's extremely fair, I walked into that one." Dean scrubbed a hand over his face, and when he dropped it, he was grinning, helpless and a little wrecked. "So. Dinner. Tonight. Me, you, steaks I definitely overpaid for because I was too busy plotting against a cashier to check the sale sign."
"I would like that very much."
"Good." Dean picked up the grocery bags, then paused halfway to the kitchen, and looked back. "Hey, Cas?"
"Yes, Dean?"
"If Tyler ever compliments your hands again, I want it on record that I will be saying something. Out loud. With words. Possibly with my fists, mainly with fists.”
Cas tilted his head, the corner of his mouth doing that thing it did when he'd decided—correctly—that he'd won. "Noted."
"That's it? Just 'noted'?"
"What would you prefer I say?"
"I don't know, something reassuring, something that isn't gonna make me stress eat an entire pie before dinner even starts—"
"I have no intention of dating a cashier named Tyler."
"See, was that so hard?"
"It required no effort at all. That's rather the point."
Dean pointed the ribeye at him like a weapon. "Go sit down before you say something else devastating. I've got a dinner to burn."
He put the steaks on. He did not manage to say anything smooth while flipping them, he burned the first one a little, actually, because Cas planted himself directly behind his shoulder and started asking increasingly specific questions about the Maillard reaction, and Dean kept losing his train of thought every time Cas' arm brushed his.
Sam found the second steak black on one side the next morning and didn't ask. He just looked at the two of them, looked at the smoke damage on the ceiling fan, and quietly put the coffee on.
Nobody ever did tell him about Tyler.