March-Stalkers Mighty: 16a/22
(Requies.)
Okay, so. Cas could make answering “how do you want your eggs” sound like he was the guy in that old song, trying to work out how close to Scylla’s cliff he had sail to avoid toppling ass over ears into Charybdis. Clearly, he needed to laugh more.
Leontes: What fine Chisell
Could euer yet cut breath? Let no man mock me,
For I will kisse her.
Paulina: Good my Lord, forbeare:
The ruddinesse vpon her Lippe is wet:
You’le marre it, if you kisse it; stayne your owne
With Oyly Painting.
A Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare, c. 1610. (Statue scene.)
There was this thing Dean wanted to do.
These last six days, since Sam and Cas had come back, had been insane, and exhilarating, and freaking exhausting. Everyone was talking round and round in circles, everyone had an opinion (and dragged out years-old grudges to support it), everyone was passionate, a lot of people were still grieving. Everyone had something to argue about, and it was the most alive the town had felt in years.
And then, on the other hand, there was Cas, lying still and quiet in his bed. Sleeping almost solidly, eating voraciously whenever he was awake before dropping straight off again. Dean had already spent too many hours leaning in the door of the room watching him sleep, whenever he could steal any time from all the work that needed doing outside. It was July, after all, and shearing and hay-baling and so on wouldn’t just wait on his pleasure.
Dean didn’t know quite what to make of it all. It felt like something out of a storybook. And though he kept that thought firmly to himself, once it had lifted its head it wouldn’t go away. Because, after all - what kind of a storybook? What story were they in?
It felt... epic. Enormous and life-changing, not for one person but for the course of history. And at the same time, there were all these messy little details, like the argument outside the smithy being turned around completely by the way Gordon tripped over the mangy cat darting out from under the woodpile and stubbed his toe, and the strings of curses and personal accusations that had followed that, especially involving the stiffness in Samuel Colt’s knee since he’d broken it years ago, and the incongruous realisation that came out of the conversation of just what it would mean to have allies around the place who could heal, heal anything - not just dramatic gaping battle wounds, but all those little niggling problems that were just part of everyday life, and the drudgeries of age.
There was one topic of conversation in the town, and it raged back and forth fierce as a blaze, and erratic as a litter of kittens with a straw doll.
So, whatever story this was, it wasn’t just about Dean any more (if it ever had been). And he was sure - almost sure - that it wasn’t a monster story. Not one of those ones you heard late at night, with the peaceful farmer who starts acting strange, just when his neighbours start turning to mangled corpses on the full moon. Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t the monster now. Weird and messed up, maybe, but nothing distorted or infected. He knew what it felt like now to have a monster in him, and nothing he’d ever felt before was anything like that. He was pretty clear now on what was him and what wasn’t. Even if the warm fluttery hope in his belly every time he thought about Cas wasn’t what anyone could consider normal.
And the angels weren’t monsters, so it wasn’t the story of the beautiful stranger (or strangers) who appear at the inn and charm everyone around them until the whole town is under their thrall and then they show their fangs. If anything, this had been the other way around. The angels had passed through the Gate known as monsters, and the longer they stayed - the more Anna ventured out into the town with Sam and Gwen and Ash and (increasingly) Charlie, earnestly delighted with everything she saw and greeting everyone like all the deaths were just theoretical facts, not something she felt - the more like people they looked.
Not a story with monsters, then. So that left all those stories about people, people fighting other people. And much as he’d love to be in a story where it was just him and Cas and Sam riding around being knights slaying nice simple evil things, this wasn’t about that. There was more than just them to think about: Cas had people to look out for, and Dean was part of a whole town that he couldn’t just leave in the dust. Which pretty much only left the “warring families who’re never going to stop shooting at each other even if a couple of people on either side do their best to sort things out” story, and the “glorious but ultimately pointless war in which we respect our opponents but are going to keep on stabbing them in the face anyway” story.
None of the stories were that promising. And it was only a few days until they were meant to be meeting Gabriel to fix Bobby’s legs. Castiel (in those brief little moments when he was awake) had insisted that the archangel was the only one of them powerful enough to heal an injury so delicate, particularly when the body had already healed around it, so Gabriel it was.
Somehow, by general undiscussed consensus, that had become the deadline: the occasion on which a decision would be made, on which formal words would be spoken. Only they didn’t know what they were going to say, how they were going to make this into something that meant reconciliation or what exactly reconciliation meant anyway. And also Dean still hadn’t quite persuaded Bobby to come outside the walls when he couldn’t even walk and put himself at the mercy of an angel, no matter how much Sam argued about it being a symbolic gesture of unity for the future.
Bobby wasn’t big on being a symbol. He preferred to be alive.
Anyway. Dean couldn’t think of any kind of a story in which this stupid truce meeting thing could possibly end well.
Which was possibly why Dean was feeling very rebellious about stories just now.
It didn’t fit into any story, what Dean wanted to do. If there was no story where the meeting went down well, there was definitely no story in which Dean got to quietly hang out with Cas for a while, just to talk. Especially if it might clear up some misunderstandings. Grand plot denouements were built on festering misunderstandings, after all.
But screw it. Dean wasn’t going to hang around like some damsel and wait for things to happen around him. He wanted a chance to figure Cas out. He wanted to do something just for himself, for once, and that something was to hear Cas talk, like he’d never got a chance to yet.
It had been just his story for years, only his. Then it had been his and Cas’, and Sam’s too. Now, suddenly, it was everyone’s story: all over the town, discussed openly like there was no shame or secret in it, everything that Dean had hid for years. Everyone got to have an opinion.
Which was awesome, sure, Dean knew that. It made no sense to be… jealous. Or whatever. Like something had been taken away from him, like suddenly he’d lost the reins. And it didn’t help that everything in him was urging him, every hour of every day, to go talk to Cas, and Cas just kept right on sleeping.
He wanted to work out how to make Cas smile.
Just to spend a day outside of the story, outside of time.
Which was why, a week after the angels had turned up, Dean found himself climbing the stairs toward Cas’ bedroom with a basket of food slung over one arm, thinking frantically over all the things he wanted to say to Cas, and unable to decide on any of them.
Dean’s jittery mood couldn’t last, with Cas sprawled inelegantly on his stomach over the bed, and the room heavy with the sweet smell of sleepy angel, and the sun streaming glorious through the open window. The cornflowers were out, and someone had put a little vase of them on Cas’ windowsill. The colour of his eyes. The air felt like summer, smelled like it, lazy and warm and sweet, and Dean was here waiting on Cas with all the day ahead of them like he hadn’t been able to do since he’d been a kid. Even the birds sounded cheerful.
He stacked the fire up in the grate without bothering to be quiet, taking his time, drawing it out slow against the shimmering knot of anticipation in his gut. Cas - Castiel - had agreed Dean could “stop by for a bit” this afternoon, now he was staying awake for more than five minutes at a time. Dean had no idea what that permission really meant, or what Castiel wanted or thought. He did know that he’d named Castiel aloud (and vehemently) as his friend more often in the past week than he’d mentioned him at all since he’d been a kid. And sure, it was weird, talking about him openly, even if he was steering pretty damn clear of the whole feelings shit. Talking about getting along with angels was one thing. Talking about Castiel was another thing altogether, and Dean was kind of surprised his brain hadn’t dribbled out of his ears yet in confusion.
On the other hand - well. Pretty much everything since the Trickster had popped his wings had been weird as hell, so maybe Dean was just getting an immunity. And at least this weirdness - digging in his heels and saying loud as he could that Cas was his friend, that he wasn’t raising a hand against another angel ever again, sticking to his guns on that - this felt good. Damn good. Like burning out a leech.
And even better, he wasn’t alone. He hadn’t really had time to notice it in the madhouse of the last week, but up here, with just the background murmur of life drifting in through the window, he let himself think it: he had people in his corner now. The sun was warm as syrup over his cheek and neck and hands, the first eager tongues of flame were catching at the dry wood, Castiel was stirring and making sleepy little grumbling noises on the bed behind him, and for the first time in years everything wasn’t looking completely hopeless.
Yep. Definitely surreal. Definitely an interlude, outside the story, whatever the story was. Even if all he got was one day, Dean could damn well make the most of it.
Dean dragged the hot plate and its tripod into the grate to heat up over the flames, rubbed butter on it, set the young eggplants and the tomatoes that he’d picked that morning on top of it whole to char-grill a bit, laid out the strips of bacon and set aside the eggs in their bowl. He hummed a bit as he did it, kind of self-conscious, so that between that and the crackle of the fire as it got going there wasn’t any chance of Cas missing that he was here.
So when Dean heard the creak of bedsprings and rustle of sheets behind him he just looked back over his shoulder and grinned and waved the spatula in greeting, all cocky.
“Morning, feathers. Welcome to the Dean Winchester indoor picnic. Fried or poached?”
Castiel went very quiet and still, all at once. Like there was some glowing centre in the depths of him that Dean had just reached out and touched.
Was that wrong?
“Um,” Dean came up with, in the face of a hundred-yards blue stare. “Or boiled. I could do boiled, I guess. Only I’d have to borrow a pot off Ellen, and it’d take a while to get to boiling, so...”
Dean Winchester, playing it cool. Castiel was going to inform him earnestly that it was actually afternoon, wasn’t he?
Castiel’s head tilted over to one side, and he gave Dean one of his quiet, frustrated looks, like humanity was a problem he had to solve.
“Fried?” he offered cautiously.
Okay, so. Cas could make answering “how do you want your eggs” sound like he was the guy in that old song, trying to work out how close to Scylla’s cliff he had sail to avoid toppling ass over ears into Charybdis. Clearly, he needed to laugh more.
Dean shoved the bowl of eggs across the bedspread at him and grinned his best shit-eating grin. “Great. Your job, dude. Get on it.”
Turned out, when you gave the task of Frying Eggs to the guy who’d spent most of his adult life at war and trying to keep people from dying, he set about it with the kind of intense precision Dean sort of associated with stitching up gushing wounds. Dean would never have put that much frowning effort into marshalling each egg into a perfect disc on the hot plate - in fact, he kind of liked the burnt crunchy bits you got when the egg went everywhere and the grease from the bacon trickled over to join the party - but he was hardly about to argue. There was a little rivulet of sweat creeping down Cas’ temple from crouching too close to the fire, and the hair at the nape of his neck and in front of his ears was crinkling up into damp little curls, and his knee was pressing in against Dean’s where they were both playing the game of hover-gingerly-over-the-flames-and-poke-at-hot-things, and there was an irritated little moue at the corner of his mouth like disobedient eggs were the most important thing in the world right now.
In fact, Cas was pouting. And, lord help him, Dean Winchester thought it was kind of adorable.
Dean snagged the last of the eggplants just before it split its skin, halved it, and sprinkled salt and oregano on it like the others. Then he rescued the third of the bread rolls he’d brought from passing “nicely toasted” and heading into “charcoal crispy,” bundled it up in his discarded shirt with the other hot rolls to keep it warm, and leaned over to poke at the edge of one of Castiel’s eggs with the tip of his knife. A sad little clear trickle made a break for freedom, and promptly got frozen into crispy white goo.
Castiel made a quietly wounded noise, like Dean had stolen his cookie.
Dean nudged him.
“It’s just eggs, man. Loosen up.”
Castiel fixed him with a cool blue stare, that disapproving look that Dean secretly suspected meant he was trying not to smile. Dean smirked at him, daringly trying out happiness, and thumbed a smear of charcoal over Cas’ cheek. “Nothing matters today, ‘kay?”
Castiel’s hand, halfway (maybe) to doing something childish (playful?) like batting Dean’s away, froze half-risen. Dean’s eyes flickered down to it - then they suddenly did that thing they sometimes did on hunts where they narrowed right in on really tiny details, the ones that always turned out to be important, though they sometimes didn’t look like much at first.
Like right now, the angle of Castiel’s fingers, half-crooked, midway between loose and tense, and the promise of strength in that.
The fine dusting of hair across the backs of the first joints, and the shiny smear of bacon grease over the knuckle and under the thumb.
The broken edge of the third nail, and the little mess of white under the first where he’d been nudging at the half-cooked eggs.
Dean’s tongue caught dry on the edge of his lip.
Then Castiel’s fingers closed firm and long around his wrist, and Dean’s hand was turned over in an unarguable sort of way to rest open in Castiel’s. Castiel dragged one fingertip whisper-soft across the centre of Dean’s palm, thoughtful like he was checking for something; and Dean lost all the air in his body in a rush.
Huh. Who knew hands could be that sensitive?
When he looked up, Castiel’s eyes were fixed on the fire, though Dean could have sworn he’d been able to feel the weight of them on his face a moment before. Then he dropped the tongs into Dean’s hand, with a smug kind of gravity that said pretty damn clearly “not even the fact that your bread is burning?”.
Dean swore and grabbed the last roll, with hands that had suddenly decided being shaky was a great idea. “Okay, no, that was your fault. This one’s your bread now.”
Castiel cut him half a look sideways, sly with the edge of a smile, the kind of look that sidled right into Dean’s head and made him feel like home. “I am a stranger to local manners, of course,” he murmured, innocently inquisitive. “Is it customary to invite a friend to dinner, burn his food, then keep all the best bits for oneself.”
“Course it is,” Dean bullshitted cheerfully, shovelling the bacon gracelessly off the hot plate and into the bowl on top of the vegetables. “And you get to wash the dishes, too. All three of them.”
Castiel nodded gravely, as if to assure Dean that he was looking forward to it, and stole Dean’s knife to slide the eggs off the plate.
There was a game they were playing here, Dean was pretty sure. He hadn’t a clue what it was, or how to play it, but it was kind of heady.
Chapter split in two, because livejournal is picky. Continue on!
Okay, so. Cas could make answering “how do you want your eggs” sound like he was the guy in that old song, trying to work out how close to Scylla’s cliff he had sail to avoid toppling ass over ears into Charybdis. Clearly, he needed to laugh more.
Leontes: What fine Chisell
Could euer yet cut breath? Let no man mock me,
For I will kisse her.
Paulina: Good my Lord, forbeare:
The ruddinesse vpon her Lippe is wet:
You’le marre it, if you kisse it; stayne your owne
With Oyly Painting.
A Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare, c. 1610. (Statue scene.)
There was this thing Dean wanted to do.
These last six days, since Sam and Cas had come back, had been insane, and exhilarating, and freaking exhausting. Everyone was talking round and round in circles, everyone had an opinion (and dragged out years-old grudges to support it), everyone was passionate, a lot of people were still grieving. Everyone had something to argue about, and it was the most alive the town had felt in years.
And then, on the other hand, there was Cas, lying still and quiet in his bed. Sleeping almost solidly, eating voraciously whenever he was awake before dropping straight off again. Dean had already spent too many hours leaning in the door of the room watching him sleep, whenever he could steal any time from all the work that needed doing outside. It was July, after all, and shearing and hay-baling and so on wouldn’t just wait on his pleasure.
Dean didn’t know quite what to make of it all. It felt like something out of a storybook. And though he kept that thought firmly to himself, once it had lifted its head it wouldn’t go away. Because, after all - what kind of a storybook? What story were they in?
It felt... epic. Enormous and life-changing, not for one person but for the course of history. And at the same time, there were all these messy little details, like the argument outside the smithy being turned around completely by the way Gordon tripped over the mangy cat darting out from under the woodpile and stubbed his toe, and the strings of curses and personal accusations that had followed that, especially involving the stiffness in Samuel Colt’s knee since he’d broken it years ago, and the incongruous realisation that came out of the conversation of just what it would mean to have allies around the place who could heal, heal anything - not just dramatic gaping battle wounds, but all those little niggling problems that were just part of everyday life, and the drudgeries of age.
There was one topic of conversation in the town, and it raged back and forth fierce as a blaze, and erratic as a litter of kittens with a straw doll.
So, whatever story this was, it wasn’t just about Dean any more (if it ever had been). And he was sure - almost sure - that it wasn’t a monster story. Not one of those ones you heard late at night, with the peaceful farmer who starts acting strange, just when his neighbours start turning to mangled corpses on the full moon. Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t the monster now. Weird and messed up, maybe, but nothing distorted or infected. He knew what it felt like now to have a monster in him, and nothing he’d ever felt before was anything like that. He was pretty clear now on what was him and what wasn’t. Even if the warm fluttery hope in his belly every time he thought about Cas wasn’t what anyone could consider normal.
And the angels weren’t monsters, so it wasn’t the story of the beautiful stranger (or strangers) who appear at the inn and charm everyone around them until the whole town is under their thrall and then they show their fangs. If anything, this had been the other way around. The angels had passed through the Gate known as monsters, and the longer they stayed - the more Anna ventured out into the town with Sam and Gwen and Ash and (increasingly) Charlie, earnestly delighted with everything she saw and greeting everyone like all the deaths were just theoretical facts, not something she felt - the more like people they looked.
Not a story with monsters, then. So that left all those stories about people, people fighting other people. And much as he’d love to be in a story where it was just him and Cas and Sam riding around being knights slaying nice simple evil things, this wasn’t about that. There was more than just them to think about: Cas had people to look out for, and Dean was part of a whole town that he couldn’t just leave in the dust. Which pretty much only left the “warring families who’re never going to stop shooting at each other even if a couple of people on either side do their best to sort things out” story, and the “glorious but ultimately pointless war in which we respect our opponents but are going to keep on stabbing them in the face anyway” story.
None of the stories were that promising. And it was only a few days until they were meant to be meeting Gabriel to fix Bobby’s legs. Castiel (in those brief little moments when he was awake) had insisted that the archangel was the only one of them powerful enough to heal an injury so delicate, particularly when the body had already healed around it, so Gabriel it was.
Somehow, by general undiscussed consensus, that had become the deadline: the occasion on which a decision would be made, on which formal words would be spoken. Only they didn’t know what they were going to say, how they were going to make this into something that meant reconciliation or what exactly reconciliation meant anyway. And also Dean still hadn’t quite persuaded Bobby to come outside the walls when he couldn’t even walk and put himself at the mercy of an angel, no matter how much Sam argued about it being a symbolic gesture of unity for the future.
Bobby wasn’t big on being a symbol. He preferred to be alive.
Anyway. Dean couldn’t think of any kind of a story in which this stupid truce meeting thing could possibly end well.
Which was possibly why Dean was feeling very rebellious about stories just now.
It didn’t fit into any story, what Dean wanted to do. If there was no story where the meeting went down well, there was definitely no story in which Dean got to quietly hang out with Cas for a while, just to talk. Especially if it might clear up some misunderstandings. Grand plot denouements were built on festering misunderstandings, after all.
But screw it. Dean wasn’t going to hang around like some damsel and wait for things to happen around him. He wanted a chance to figure Cas out. He wanted to do something just for himself, for once, and that something was to hear Cas talk, like he’d never got a chance to yet.
It had been just his story for years, only his. Then it had been his and Cas’, and Sam’s too. Now, suddenly, it was everyone’s story: all over the town, discussed openly like there was no shame or secret in it, everything that Dean had hid for years. Everyone got to have an opinion.
Which was awesome, sure, Dean knew that. It made no sense to be… jealous. Or whatever. Like something had been taken away from him, like suddenly he’d lost the reins. And it didn’t help that everything in him was urging him, every hour of every day, to go talk to Cas, and Cas just kept right on sleeping.
He wanted to work out how to make Cas smile.
Just to spend a day outside of the story, outside of time.
Which was why, a week after the angels had turned up, Dean found himself climbing the stairs toward Cas’ bedroom with a basket of food slung over one arm, thinking frantically over all the things he wanted to say to Cas, and unable to decide on any of them.
Dean’s jittery mood couldn’t last, with Cas sprawled inelegantly on his stomach over the bed, and the room heavy with the sweet smell of sleepy angel, and the sun streaming glorious through the open window. The cornflowers were out, and someone had put a little vase of them on Cas’ windowsill. The colour of his eyes. The air felt like summer, smelled like it, lazy and warm and sweet, and Dean was here waiting on Cas with all the day ahead of them like he hadn’t been able to do since he’d been a kid. Even the birds sounded cheerful.
He stacked the fire up in the grate without bothering to be quiet, taking his time, drawing it out slow against the shimmering knot of anticipation in his gut. Cas - Castiel - had agreed Dean could “stop by for a bit” this afternoon, now he was staying awake for more than five minutes at a time. Dean had no idea what that permission really meant, or what Castiel wanted or thought. He did know that he’d named Castiel aloud (and vehemently) as his friend more often in the past week than he’d mentioned him at all since he’d been a kid. And sure, it was weird, talking about him openly, even if he was steering pretty damn clear of the whole feelings shit. Talking about getting along with angels was one thing. Talking about Castiel was another thing altogether, and Dean was kind of surprised his brain hadn’t dribbled out of his ears yet in confusion.
On the other hand - well. Pretty much everything since the Trickster had popped his wings had been weird as hell, so maybe Dean was just getting an immunity. And at least this weirdness - digging in his heels and saying loud as he could that Cas was his friend, that he wasn’t raising a hand against another angel ever again, sticking to his guns on that - this felt good. Damn good. Like burning out a leech.
And even better, he wasn’t alone. He hadn’t really had time to notice it in the madhouse of the last week, but up here, with just the background murmur of life drifting in through the window, he let himself think it: he had people in his corner now. The sun was warm as syrup over his cheek and neck and hands, the first eager tongues of flame were catching at the dry wood, Castiel was stirring and making sleepy little grumbling noises on the bed behind him, and for the first time in years everything wasn’t looking completely hopeless.
Yep. Definitely surreal. Definitely an interlude, outside the story, whatever the story was. Even if all he got was one day, Dean could damn well make the most of it.
Dean dragged the hot plate and its tripod into the grate to heat up over the flames, rubbed butter on it, set the young eggplants and the tomatoes that he’d picked that morning on top of it whole to char-grill a bit, laid out the strips of bacon and set aside the eggs in their bowl. He hummed a bit as he did it, kind of self-conscious, so that between that and the crackle of the fire as it got going there wasn’t any chance of Cas missing that he was here.
So when Dean heard the creak of bedsprings and rustle of sheets behind him he just looked back over his shoulder and grinned and waved the spatula in greeting, all cocky.
“Morning, feathers. Welcome to the Dean Winchester indoor picnic. Fried or poached?”
Castiel went very quiet and still, all at once. Like there was some glowing centre in the depths of him that Dean had just reached out and touched.
Was that wrong?
“Um,” Dean came up with, in the face of a hundred-yards blue stare. “Or boiled. I could do boiled, I guess. Only I’d have to borrow a pot off Ellen, and it’d take a while to get to boiling, so...”
Dean Winchester, playing it cool. Castiel was going to inform him earnestly that it was actually afternoon, wasn’t he?
Castiel’s head tilted over to one side, and he gave Dean one of his quiet, frustrated looks, like humanity was a problem he had to solve.
“Fried?” he offered cautiously.
Okay, so. Cas could make answering “how do you want your eggs” sound like he was the guy in that old song, trying to work out how close to Scylla’s cliff he had sail to avoid toppling ass over ears into Charybdis. Clearly, he needed to laugh more.
Dean shoved the bowl of eggs across the bedspread at him and grinned his best shit-eating grin. “Great. Your job, dude. Get on it.”
Turned out, when you gave the task of Frying Eggs to the guy who’d spent most of his adult life at war and trying to keep people from dying, he set about it with the kind of intense precision Dean sort of associated with stitching up gushing wounds. Dean would never have put that much frowning effort into marshalling each egg into a perfect disc on the hot plate - in fact, he kind of liked the burnt crunchy bits you got when the egg went everywhere and the grease from the bacon trickled over to join the party - but he was hardly about to argue. There was a little rivulet of sweat creeping down Cas’ temple from crouching too close to the fire, and the hair at the nape of his neck and in front of his ears was crinkling up into damp little curls, and his knee was pressing in against Dean’s where they were both playing the game of hover-gingerly-over-the-flames-and-poke-at-hot-things, and there was an irritated little moue at the corner of his mouth like disobedient eggs were the most important thing in the world right now.
In fact, Cas was pouting. And, lord help him, Dean Winchester thought it was kind of adorable.
Dean snagged the last of the eggplants just before it split its skin, halved it, and sprinkled salt and oregano on it like the others. Then he rescued the third of the bread rolls he’d brought from passing “nicely toasted” and heading into “charcoal crispy,” bundled it up in his discarded shirt with the other hot rolls to keep it warm, and leaned over to poke at the edge of one of Castiel’s eggs with the tip of his knife. A sad little clear trickle made a break for freedom, and promptly got frozen into crispy white goo.
Castiel made a quietly wounded noise, like Dean had stolen his cookie.
Dean nudged him.
“It’s just eggs, man. Loosen up.”
Castiel fixed him with a cool blue stare, that disapproving look that Dean secretly suspected meant he was trying not to smile. Dean smirked at him, daringly trying out happiness, and thumbed a smear of charcoal over Cas’ cheek. “Nothing matters today, ‘kay?”
Castiel’s hand, halfway (maybe) to doing something childish (playful?) like batting Dean’s away, froze half-risen. Dean’s eyes flickered down to it - then they suddenly did that thing they sometimes did on hunts where they narrowed right in on really tiny details, the ones that always turned out to be important, though they sometimes didn’t look like much at first.
Like right now, the angle of Castiel’s fingers, half-crooked, midway between loose and tense, and the promise of strength in that.
The fine dusting of hair across the backs of the first joints, and the shiny smear of bacon grease over the knuckle and under the thumb.
The broken edge of the third nail, and the little mess of white under the first where he’d been nudging at the half-cooked eggs.
Dean’s tongue caught dry on the edge of his lip.
Then Castiel’s fingers closed firm and long around his wrist, and Dean’s hand was turned over in an unarguable sort of way to rest open in Castiel’s. Castiel dragged one fingertip whisper-soft across the centre of Dean’s palm, thoughtful like he was checking for something; and Dean lost all the air in his body in a rush.
Huh. Who knew hands could be that sensitive?
When he looked up, Castiel’s eyes were fixed on the fire, though Dean could have sworn he’d been able to feel the weight of them on his face a moment before. Then he dropped the tongs into Dean’s hand, with a smug kind of gravity that said pretty damn clearly “not even the fact that your bread is burning?”.
Dean swore and grabbed the last roll, with hands that had suddenly decided being shaky was a great idea. “Okay, no, that was your fault. This one’s your bread now.”
Castiel cut him half a look sideways, sly with the edge of a smile, the kind of look that sidled right into Dean’s head and made him feel like home. “I am a stranger to local manners, of course,” he murmured, innocently inquisitive. “Is it customary to invite a friend to dinner, burn his food, then keep all the best bits for oneself.”
“Course it is,” Dean bullshitted cheerfully, shovelling the bacon gracelessly off the hot plate and into the bowl on top of the vegetables. “And you get to wash the dishes, too. All three of them.”
Castiel nodded gravely, as if to assure Dean that he was looking forward to it, and stole Dean’s knife to slide the eggs off the plate.
There was a game they were playing here, Dean was pretty sure. He hadn’t a clue what it was, or how to play it, but it was kind of heady.
Chapter split in two, because livejournal is picky. Continue on!