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When the threat of apocalypse was first dangled over his head, Dean set up three easy rules to make sure he got out in one piece.
First, don’t let Sam go off on his own.
Second, don’t talk about hell.
Third, don’t sleep with the freak angel with the bedroom eyes and the stubble.
(Addendum: Don’t call them bedroom eyes. Don’t even think about bedrooms, or about dark alleyways, or the back seat of the Impala, or any other place his stupid, overactive mind can conjure up. Just because he’s been stuck on the same subject like a broken record since age fourteen doesn’t mean he can project all that crap onto Cas.)
’Course, it’s been over a year since then, and by now he’s broken the first two rules more times than he can count. But absentee God be his witness—with whatever tattered shreds of dignity he has left, he vows that he will never break the third.
* * *
“Dean,” Cas says, like it’s the most important word in the world. His voice still manages to be imposing, holding all the command of a military general even when it’s slowed down and just a little bit slurred. “Does alcohol have the effect of making your body…. warm?”
Dean isn't ready for that. He nearly chokes on his beer, and has to clear his throat a few times before he can even attempt to respond. “What?”
“Alcohol,” Cas repeats impatiently. “I feel warm.”
“Right,” Dean manages after a second. He coughs again for good measure.
If one of them is feeling warm, there’s no way in hell it’s Cas. He looks cool as ever, face drawn together in stern concentration; the only thing giving him away is the slight droop to his eyelids and the lack of urgency in his voice.
Dean, meanwhile, is only on his second beer, and he can already feel his face flaring up with bright red embarrassment. Sure, he’s never been the king of good decisions, but this? Sitting in a cramped motel room with an angel of the lord, getting progressively drunker just so they can—what? Hold hands and go skipping off to the nearest red-light district?
He can hear Bobby’s voice in his head, clear as day: This is a whole ‘nother level of stupid.
But for once, he can’t entirely blame himself. Dean just wanted to help a buddy out, so all he did was suggest, very casually, very respectfully, that some people do better with women after they’ve had a few drinks. Cas, the crazy bastard, didn’t have to disappear for five minutes and come back with bad breath and drooping eyes. That was all on him.
And now those same eyes are just staring at him, waiting for some sort of answer.
Dean knocks back another third of his bottle. “Right,” he says again. He taps his fingers against the glass. “I don’t know about angels, but for humans? That’s pretty typical of being drunk, buddy.”
Cas nods slowly, thoughtfully, looking relieved. “And fatigue?”
“Fatigue?” Dean asks. “Well, yeah, but—how much did you have?”
“Hm.” Cas hesitates for a second, which is never a good sign. “Should I answer in bottles or cubic feet?”
Dean just barely stops himself from choking on his drink again; he has to set it down on the table to avoid any more close calls.
“Are you serious, dude?” He leans forward cautiously, peering at Cas across the small table in their motel room.
All he gets in return is a glare. Or technically, Dean thinks, more of a pout. Turns out drunk Cas isn’t very good at glaring: His eyes are too sleepy to be fierce, and his normally stern bottom lip is curling outward just a little bit, revealing a gleam of soft, smooth pink.
Rule number three, he reminds himself suddenly, wrenching his gaze away from Cas’s lips. He picks a boring spot on the ceiling to stare at and clings to it like a lifeline, repeating the words over and over in his head: Rule. Number. Three.
Thankfully, Cas doesn’t seem to notice his slip-up. He huffs in irritation and stands up, crossing the small room if only to prove that he can. “I’m fine, Dean. If needed, I could travel the world in a second. I could smite a battalion of demons before you even pull out your knife.”
“So what you’re saying is, I can walk in a straight line, officer,” Dean translates. He’s not gonna ask for a demonstration on the whole smiting thing—as friggin’ awesome as that would be—but the first part does raise an interesting question. Him, Cas, and a flight to the Bahamas that lasts a nanosecond and doesn’t give him a panic attack.
Or maybe that’s less of a question, he thinks, and more of a fantasy that should never, ever be spoken aloud.
Which naturally means that he’s about ten seconds away from making an offer right there. Bahamas, here he comes.
But then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Cas waver by the bed, swaying almost imperceptibly. He’s looking down at the pillows like they’re like a strange contraption, placed there just to puzzle him.
“Yes, I can walk as well,” he mutters, distracted.
Dean can’t help the smile that starts to spread across his face. “I’m sensing a but here.”
“Hm.”
“But...?” Dean prompts.
Cas looks up at him with a squint, somewhere between irritated and perplexed. Then he sighs. “But,” he begins hesitantly, glancing down at the pillows again, “I’m also… fatigued.”
Dean chuckles. “Then lie down,” he says, instantly regretting the words. “It won’t bite.”
Cas takes one last look at him and seems to come to a decision—and then he’s gingerly climbing into the bed, trenchcoat and everything, going on his hands and knees like the mattress might throw him off if he doesn’t hold on for dear life.
It’s adorable and ridiculous and frankly embarrassing for Cas. It’s also probably taking about ten years off of Dean’s life.
Slowly, Cas crawls his way across the bed, and when he finally hits the center, he collapses with a sigh. He doesn’t even bother to get under the blankets; he just lies there, face down with his coat spread out across the sheets.
And that’s how Dean ends up watching an angel of the lord pass out in his motel bed, sighing like a man who just found peace.
Scratch that, he thinks. Twenty years off his life. Actually, scratch that—twenty years minimum. At this rate, he’s not living past 35.
* * *
Dean turns in not long after that. After thirty minutes of frantic googling—searches include blood alcohol content calculator and do angels have blood—he gives up and polishes off his last beer. He puts away the rest of the bottles, too; by the time a full hour rolls around, it’s obvious that Cas isn’t getting up any time soon.
He isn’t sure whether to feel frustrated or relieved. He had a whole plan and everything. They were going to find some women and have a nice night together—not together together, of course, but, well. Tangentially together, his brain offers.
But apparently, Cas had other plans, and those plans involved snoring into the pillow that Dean is supposed to be sleeping on.
It was cute for exactly an hour. Now it’s just a problem.
There’s two ways he can go about this, Dean thinks. He can either wake up Cas and deal with a potentially very angry, very confused angel, or he can somehow try to carve out enough space on the bed to get a few hours of sleep in.
He opts for the first route, considering that he’s the one who actually needs sleep. Cas can survive a rude awakening, or else he can sleep on the floor like the freeloader he is. Then Dean stands by the bed, one hand hovering over Cas’s shoulder but too afraid to touch, and hears the softest, sweetest rumbling snore come out of his mouth—like a friggin’ baby bear, snuggling in a meadow of flowers.
Second route it is.
* * *
When he wakes up four hours later, Dean is just barely hanging on.
The first thing he does is take a moment to assess the damage. His legs are hooked over Cas’s to keep from falling off the bed, and one hand is currently clutching onto Cas’s trenchcoat like a golden ticket; from the chest up, he’s curved around Cas in a wide arc, close but not actually touching.
All of this is salvageable, except for one little thing.
Cas is looking right at him. Eyes open, directly at him. He’s flat on his stomach still, his head turned to the side, which means the pillow is squishing his cheek in a way that really shouldn’t be adorable on a grown man. His eyes are still a bit droopy, but this time, Dean can tell it’s not from the alcohol. Maybe, he thinks, this is just what angels look like when they’re happy.
It’s a dangerous thought.
“Hi,” Dean whispers, too afraid—and too comfortable—to move.
Cas smiles, gentle as a breeze. “Hello, Dean.”
“This is the first time you ever slept, huh?" He tries to conjure up the most casual voice he can. "Was it worth the hype?”
Cas’s smile just widens in response, and Dean wonders, suddenly, if this is his first time smiling, too. He can’t remember ever seeing anything on Cas’s face besides a scowl or a quizzical frown, or maybe the barest hint of a smirk. This bleary-eyed contentment is a different beast altogether.
It’s beautiful, in a way. He's beautiful.
Another dangerous thought.
“Oh crap,” Dean realizes all at once, eyes widening. “We slept together.”
The smile drops in an instant, and Dean mentally kicks himself for running his mouth again. But Cas doesn’t look angry—he just looks confused, his eyebrows furrowing together in genuine concern.
“Dean,” he says slowly. “l don’t remember us having sex.”
Dean can’t help but laugh at that. It bubbles out of him before he can stop it. Of course this would be the one time Cas actually understands an idiom—the one time he chooses to follow the figurative meaning rather than the literal.
Cas’s frown deepens, almost comically morose at this point, and Dean loses it. He shoves his face into the sheets to stifle the noise, and while he’s tasting the motel’s laundry detergent, he tries to think of the last time he’s laughed this hard at something other than TV. He never laughs like this with Sam, not anymore.
“Oh,” he hears, right next to his ear. “You were using the literal meaning, as a joke.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You’re very funny.” Cas doesn’t sound amused at all. “We ‘slept’ together—” Dean can almost hear the air quotes, and that sends him into another wave of hysterics—“because we slept on the same bed together.”
The laughter finally starts to ease up, and it’s only in that moment that Dean realizes he’s still holding onto Cas’s coat. Their legs are still touching. And if he picked his head up at that moment, he’s sure that he would find Cas still looking at him, too.
He doesn’t bother to check, but thought alone is enough to make him grin into the sheets like a maniac. It should make him feel embarrassed. It should have him running for the hills, the idea of Cas's attention focused on him so intimately, never wavering, never cruel; instead, it just makes him feel warm.
Maybe he's finally lost his mind. He broke his rules, all three of them, and now it’s the end of the world.
But just for a second, the end of the world feels pretty damn good.
He’s so, so screwed.