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When Dean asks if he can move in with Cas permanently, Cas says no.
They have been best friends since their freshman year of college and Cas probably knows more about Dean than he knows about himself. That‘s why he hadn’t even been surprised when Dean and Lisa broke up two weeks ago. Dean has been living with him ever since, while he looks for a new place to live, but what Cas didn’t know is that the list of potential new apartments apparently includes Castiel’s own. Not that Dean actually outright asked him. No, he relied on pseudo-sneaky comments and on Cas figuring out himself that Dean was stalling on something.
Cas got his answer when he reminded Dean that he promised his cousin Balthazar that he could test-move in with him and in order for that to work, Dean has to find somewhere else.
(Balthazar has stopped by laden with cartons and, strangely enough, several hat boxes twice already, huffing and puffing when Cas told him that Dean has not found a new place yet and that he will have to come back tomorrow.)
After some feet-shuffling and mumbling Dean finally blurts out, “Can I just move in with you?”
Cas balks. Dean is his closest friend, he is over at his place all the time and Cas can’t remember a time when he went as much as a whole week without seeing him. But there’s also the fact that he is kind of embarrassingly, majorly in love with Dean. Being around him constantly would put such a strain on Cas’s self control that it might well snap like a rubber band. Cas would very much like to avoid the ensuing awkwardness and gradual death of their friendship that would inevitably follow. He would rather have Dean in his life any way he can than not have him at all. So he says no.
Dean’s face falls and his shoulders slump resignedly. He heaves a sigh and nods.
“I get it, we’d probably annoy the living daylights out of each other” he says, with a shrug that doesn’t quite look as nonchalant as it was probably intended, and pulls out his laptop from under the couch. (Where he stores it for ‘safekeeping’ in case someone breaks in. Cas kind of adores Dean’s little paranoid quirks.) He pulls up several apartment search sites and gets to work.
Cas pulls a bottle of water out of his state-of-the-art refrigerator and sinks down onto his TV armchair, pulling a blanket over himself – it smells like Dean because Dean spends 30% of his time as a blanket burrito – and thinks about how nice it would be to wake up to Dean making breakfast in the kitchen every day. Maybe he could slip his own arms around him at the stove, brush soft lips across the freckles covering his strong shoulders, and Dean would turn in his arms and – Cas shakes himself. They‘re silly daydreams and they won’t ever be anything else.
— - —
When Balthazar wakes Cas up the third morning in a row by serenading his parrot Guapo with what sounds like the whole score of Cats, Cas begins to suspect that he made a terrible mistake. He has never had a fixed opinion on the composer, but now he wishes he could travel back in time and strangle Andrew LLoyd Webber for making his songs so frustratingly catchy.
His suspicions are confirmed when Dean calls him to tell him that he has found the ‘perfect apartment, Cas, and it’s even got a garage space for baby!’ and that he wants Cas to come take a look at it. The apartment is in Brooklyn. Brooklyn. Cas hasn’t lived more than ten minutes away from Dean in over ten years. The commute to Brooklyn is over an hour and with Cas’s usually long hours as a lawyer and Dean’s unpredictable work schedule at his co-owned carpentry business, they are probably only going to see each other on the weekends. Which is unacceptable in Cas’s book. He hits speed dial #1 and asks Dean to move in with him.
(He also really wants an excuse to tell Balthazar that they can’t live together after all. He thought he had managed to escape complete mayhem when he moved away from his parents and five siblings in Connecticut to go to Columbia University but living with his cousin is proving him so very, very wrong.)
— - —
When Dean moves in and suggests they knock down the wall between the master and guest bathroom after a week of hitting his limbs on the walls while trying to navigate his way around the miniscule sink and counter and almost breaking his neck trying to fit his admittedly broad frame into the tiny shower, Cas is convinced that there simply is no winning for him.
He tells Dean yes.
He lies in his bed at night, after squeezing around a towel-clad Dean in the doorway to the bathroom and nearly stumbling over the coffee table and two lamps on his way to his bedroom, and thinks that someone out there must utterly and absolutely hate his guts. There is no other explanation why he would be punished with miles of smooth, freckled skin every night and sleepy, sun-lit smiles in the morning when he has never done anyone any major harm.
(Throwing his toy train at Gabe’s head and causing a family trip to the ER totally doesn’t count. Gabe was being an assbutt and he had been whining about wanting to go to the hospital because “Luke and Mike get to go all the time so why can’t I!” for months anyway.)
— - —
When one of Cas’s most affluent clients, Chuck Shurley, dumps his kids on Cas and Dean on Halloween because his wife wants to go to a convention of some TV show or other (Cas understands approximately every third word that comes out of Becky Shurley’s mouth whenever he has the doubtful pleasure of meeting her), he finds out that Dean is amazing with children.
Which really surprises no one. Dean is gentle and soothing and kind, especially around animals and apparently children. And around Cas. But Dean compares Cas to a helpless kitten quite frequently, so. He is the loveliest person (both inside and out) that Cas has ever met so he really should have seen this coming. The butterflies in Cas’s tummy agree and start up a synchronised flight pattern while he watches Dean chase Chuck’s twins around the living room with an improvised ghost bed-sheet draped over his head. Later, when Dean breaks up a fight over how to split the bounty of their Halloween prowl around the apartment building with soft but firm words, Cas slinks off to the sun room where he has to breathe slow and deep for a while so as not to curl up into a ball of misery because one day Dean will find some pretty girl to have kids with and he’ll move out and Cas will be all alone in his pristine, empty apartment.
— - —
When Dean opens the apartment door much more timidly than usual and shuffles in a box of blanket covered, squirmy somethings, Cas is sure that whatever it is, Dean will have his way. Because Cas can say no to million-dollar company CEOs and his clients‘ douchebag ex-husbands – and even to Sam when he’s cracked everyone else with his puppy dog eyes – but he can never say no to Dean.
And so it goes. Dean reaches into the pile of blankets, struggling a little against the squirming ball of fluff he unearths and plops down two kittens on Cas’s previously hair-free living room floor. The enamoured look on his face transforms into a sheepish smile when he raises his eyes to Cas’s, but he doesn’t even have to say anything. Cas is sold. He’s sold on Dean constantly being in his space, bringing with him loud friends and louder family (and constant hugs and support and love of a kind that makes Cas want to call his own siblings more often) and now apparently also baby animals that will shed on his carpets and sleep on his bed and Cas couldn’t care less.
Even if it means listening to Dean sneezing up a storm and having to buy anti-histamines when Dean runs out and forgets to replenish his stock. Cas will take it all.
— - —
When Aaron Bass moves into the apartment opposite theirs, Cas doesn’t think anything of it. Then said Aaron Bass knocks on their door and Dean answers because Cas is immersed in the court transcripts of his most recent case.
Cas does not expect Dean to invite Aaron in, or for Aaron to start flirting shamelessly with Dean. He doesn’t think much of this either, because he, unlike Aaron, knows that the man is barking up the wrong tree.
What he certainly doesn’t expect at all is Dean flirting back. He becomes all flustered and his cheeks get blotchy and pink, but that’s undoubtedly Dean’s southern boy charm mode activated. Cas has seen it in action at bars and coffee shops one too many a time to not be able to recognise it now.
There’s a horrible swooping sensation in his tummy and his ribcage seems to shrink in on his heart. He mumbles something unintelligible and retreats to his bedroom. He feels shaken and like his skin doesn’t fit him quite right. Since when is Dean interested in men? And assuming this is not a recent development; how could he have missed it for years? This means that it’s not just the fact that Cas is a man, Dean simply has no interest in Cas. The realistion hurts more than it should, considering that Cas has tried to talk himself out of his hopes for more than a decade.
A while later he notices that he didn’t shut his bedroom door properly as he hears two sets of footsteps make their way to the door. He squeezes his eyes shut.
Aarons voice echoes into his room: “You wanna get a drink later?”
Cas drags the pillow towards himself and prepares to squeeze it over his head.
“Um, sorry man, but I’m kind of…,” Dean trails off and Cas holds his breath. “You’re a great guy but I – I’m good where I am right now.”
Aaron chuckles slightly resignedly. “Hey, no bad feelings. I should’ve known, really.”
Cas has no idea what Aaron is talking about but there is a warm feeling in his tummy at the thought that Dean is content and that he is not going on a date with their scruffy, decidedly male neighbour.
The door shuts and after a couple of deep breaths, Cas walks back into the living room. Dean is sitting on the couch, his battered copy of The Hobbit in his hands – he rereads it every December, like clockwork – completely unfazed. Cas clears his throat. Dean blinks up at him.
“Where did you disappear to, buddy?” Dean says and Cas plops down on the couch next to him like his strings have been cut.
“Since when have you been interested in men?” Cas asks, because he’s curious and suddenly it is vital that he knows this.
“What? Since I found out that being interested in people is a thing for me. What’s up with you?” He wrinkles his nose and turns his body to stare at Cas face-on. “Cas. You didn’t know?”
Cas shakes his head, mutely.
“Dude, do you even remember college? I met Charlie at a gay bar, for Pete’s sake!”
Cas splutters. “I thought it was a joke! That you made that up because… the football jock and the lesbian IT-nerd meeting at a gay bar, ha ha!”
Dean stares at him. Then he bursts into laughter, holding his sides and slapping Cas’s thigh. Cas shivers with the jolt that runs up his spine. Dean calms down a little and picks up his book again.
“No, it wasn’t a joke. I’m bi and if I’d known you didn’t know I totally would’ve told you before now. Wait – Cas, this isn’t going to be a problem, is it?” He suddenly looks anxious and Cas wants to reach out and smooth the worried lines from Dean’s face.
“Of course not, Dean. I just – didn’t know. That’s all.”
Dean smiles at him and Cas tentatively smiles back and that’s that.
— - —
When Benny and Charlie both coincidentally have family emergencies that prevent them from coming to the cabin in Vermont where they were supposed to spend a long weekend with Dean and Cas, Cas knows something is up. None of them have ever missed their yearly College Squad Getaway Extravaganza (Dean’s title, of course) and now both of their friends have to cancel at once. Cas is suspicious but he is also not complaining. Spending a weekend with Dean in a cosy cabin in the remote mountains of Vermont, with the very real possibility that they will be snowed in for days? That is literally one of Cas’s day (and sometimes night) dreams come true.
Dean is appropriately disappointed but agrees that they might as well go to have some time to relax before the Christmas madness catches them in its clutches. They load the Impala (“Baby’s got snow chains in the trunk, Cas, we’ll make it there just fine.”) and arrive in the late afternoon.
When Dean makes an elaborate dinner that night, complete with candles on the table, he pulls out Cas’s chair for him and Cas blushes up to the tips of his ears and stomps down on the hope blooming like candlemas bells in his chest.
Dinner is delicious, as always when Dean cooks, and Cas offers to do clean up, because that is only fair.
When strong arms slide around his waist and take a dripping cooking spoon from his hands to drop it back into the water, Cas freezes and feels like the next breath he’ll take is going to brush away the blanket of snow in his heart and all the daffodils and tulips and crocuses will burst from the ground in an explosion of colour. Dean slowly turns him around, looking down at Cas with a soft, nervous shine in his eyes. Cas tries to put all his questions in the way his eyes flick between Dean’s. Dean nods, and smiles. Cas finally takes a breath, lets the flowers bloom and leans in.
— - —
11 months later
When Dean finds a bottle of water in the car they rented for their trip to South Dakota, the look of disgust on his face makes Cas want to press a kiss to his nose. They had to rent a car because the Impala is at the shop after a reckless bike rider scratched her side and there’s no way Dean (and Cas) would miss out on Thanksgiving with Ellen, Bobby, Jo, Sam and a newly pregnant Jess, even if it means arriving in shame (read: a Piece of Shit Car; Dean’s words, not his).
“Is this your water? You didn’t bring any water, did you?” Before Cas can answer, Dean’s eyes widen in horror. “This isn’t our water. I nearly drank this water. It could be anyone’s! Rental-Car-Stranger Water!”
And this is when Cas finally snaps. He pulls the car over to the shoulder of the road, reaches into his coat pocket and turns toward Dean, who looks completely flabbergasted.
“Dude, what –”
Cas opens the little midnight blue box with shaking hands and blurts out the words he has been psyching himself up to say for at least three months.
“Will you marry me?”
Dean stares at the box, and the matching white gold bands inside, and then he fixes his bright, bright eyes on Cas’s face and Cas wonders how he could have ever felt nervous about this. Dean is his best friend and there’s only love in his gaze.
Dean says yes. Despite everything, Cas is so relieved, he can’t help the tears that start falling down his cheeks. Dean peppers his face with kisses and holds him in his familiar warm, all-encompassing embrace, the bottle of water rolling around the footwell, forgotten.
The End