Chapter Text
As soon as Dean walks into the Harvelle-Milton residence he smells the most incredible chilli he has yet to eat in his life, and his mouth starts watering Pavlovian style. He drops his bag just in time to hear the thundering sound of Max and Rio charging through the apartment to slobber all over him.
“Guys, guys, please, I’m single but you gotta buy me dinner, first!” He laughs and Anna comes out looking frazzled.
“Shoo, both of you! Christ, I’m so sorry, Dean!” She tugs them away by their collars, even though they whine at her. “That’s enough out of you two! Sheesh, where’s the fine print on border collies?”
She helps Dean up and he dusts himself off.
“Dean here?” Jo calls from the kitchen. Dean swings around the bend to see her stirring the pot and checking on the rice. When she looks up to see him, he grins and she yells, “WINCHESTER!”
He gets caught in a hug sandwich and everything inside him settles. “So we eatin’ or what?”
At the table, he can barely hear what anyone’s saying over his own chewing until Jo smacks him upside the head, “Ow, I am almost thirty Joanne Beth, enough with the hitting!”
“Oh, Beth,” Anna says wistfully, “Beth would be such a nice name.”
Jo pauses mid-spoon smack and Dean recognises her expression as ‘shit, cat’s out the bag’.
“What-?” he starts, but Anna’s eyes widen comically.
“Aw, shit,” she says, but she’s smiling, “well? Might as well, since he’s gonna be the- ”
“ANNA! Spoilers, much?!”
“Would one of you please speak a language the rest of the class can understand, I am begging you.”
Jo shakes her head with a laugh and places her hand over Anna’s. They do that gross couple-y thing where they communicate entirely via eye contact. Jo lets out a breath and turns to Dean.
“We’re doing IVF. I’m, uh… I’m gonna carry it and Anna’s gonna donate the egg, so… yeah,” she’s smiling so wide despite how casual she tries to sound and Dean nearly launches across the table so he can hug them both at the same time. He kisses both of their heads, yelling about finally getting to be a cool uncle.
“Actually, Dean,” Anna starts.
“What? Wait, you don’t need my like. Goods, right?”
“Gross, Winchester, none of you is getting inside my wife,” Jo manages to catch him in the rib with her tablespoon. He’d complain but he knows he’s lucky it wasn’t her knife.
Anna laughs, “No, no, we- we want you to be their godfather!”
Dean drops to his knees behind their chairs. “You’re serious?”
“‘Course,” Jo says at the same time Anna says, “Completely.”
They look at each other again and Dean goes into the kitchen to find any alcohol available to celebrate.
As they get teenage drunk on dessert wine from three years ago, Dean swivels his glass and asks, “Hey, so, am I the first person you told?”
“Yeah, but don’t go blabbing and telling everyone, got it? Not even Cas,” Jo slurs and Anna smacks her arm with a quick look at Dean. “What? He said they made up, that- ”
Anna claps a gentle hand over Jo’s mouth, and Dean would ask to know more but the room’s a little too spinny. “I’m gonna- we’re gonna go to bed. You good to camp out on the couch, Dean?”
“Sure. Night, you two!”
He hears Jo complain and sees the silhouette of Anna kissing her forehead before they go into their room, and Dean- he’s happy. He totally and completely is, for the first time in a really long time. But he gets that same ache every time.
He scrolls through his contacts and, against his better (read: sober) judgement, he calls the one person whose voice he wants to hear.
They pick up on the second ring, “Hello? Dean?”
“Cas,” Dean practically whispers. “Hi.”
“Hi. It’s very late, Dean. You woke me up,” he says, and it might be the crackle of the line, but he doesn’t sound completely pissed.
“I’m sorry,” Dean says, “I- I wanted to…” What was he saying?
“Dean?” His voice… it’s soft, but it’s gotten rougher. Cas- They’ve both gotten older.
“How do you feel about the book launch?” Dean tries changing the subject, staring at the inert ceiling fan and wondering about babies and futures and what even is the installation process for a ceiling fan? Dean tangents into wondering if they grow like dandelions, randomly popping up in people’s houses. Who has a ceiling fan in Michigan?
Oh wait, Cas is talking. “- all a little nerve-wracking, you know?”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch all of that, one more time, baby,” Dean says, sleepily settling into the couch. Squishy, squishy couch…
“Baby? Huh,” Cas murmurs, “how much have you had to drink tonight?”
“Enough to talk to you.”
“I see. Is it such a daunting task?”
“Duh. The last time we talked I was the biggest- uh.”
“I was… angry. Maybe a little harsh,” Cas says slowly.
“Maybe a lot harsh,” Dean complains, sounding kind of baby-y, but it makes Cas relent.
“Maybe a lot harsh,” he says with a small chuckle, but he pauses for a while and comes back more solemn. “You hurt me so much, Dean.”
“I know, Cas. How do I make it better?”
“I… I don’t know.” Dean waits for a moment, but that’s until he hears the sound of Cas sniffling over the wire and he can’t bear it.
“Please don’t cry,” Dean whispers, barely able to hold himself together right now, “baby, please don’t cry,”
“I miss you,” Cas says, his voice watery. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Okay,” Dean points at the ceiling, wiping his face, “I’m coming over!”
“What?! No, Dean, stop,” Cas sounds breathless, but he’s not crying anymore. Already a massive improvement.
“Nope, I’m- the bus is still running, right?”
“Dean,” Cas giggles, and it trails into a proper round of laughs that makes Dean’s whole body sing.
“Oh, I missed that,” Dean sighs. “God, I missed that sound.”
“Sleep, Dean. Sleep well,” Cas says, so quietly that if it weren’t the only thing Dean could possibly focus on right now, he wouldn’t have heard it.
“Okay, Cas,” he murmurs, “Love you.”
He holds the phone away from him a little as his vision starts to blur more, but he just manages to catch a hesitant, “I love you, too.”
When Dean wakes up in his own drool, his phone still clutched in his hand, he’s rudely reminded of what an ass he made of himself last night. He groans and Jo kicks him a little from where she towers above him.
“You’re getting old, Winchester.”
“Have pity on me, I gave up drinking for Lent.”
“Sucker. So when are you gonna meet up with Cas?”
Dean sits up too quickly then takes a moment to like, not dry-heave over their nice carpet. “The hell?”
“I have his new address, if you want it.”
“He’s still in Michigan.”
“Yep, already said that, dumbass.”
“I have to- go…”
“You need to shower first,” she grins and yanks him up from the couch, clapping her hand against his cheek despite being a full head shorter than him. “Be happy, idiot.”
Dean practically skids into the bathroom.
He breathes against his hand to check for bad breath for the third time in a minute as he finally gets to Cas’s place. He smooths back his crappy haircut (why oh why hasn’t he switched barbers yet? WHY DIDN’T HE GO TO A BARBERS BEFORE THIS? No time to panic, there’s no time!) and knocks.
He hears Cas lean against the door as he looks through the peephole. “Dean?”
“Sorry it took so long, traffic was a nightmare.”
He hopes that wasn’t a dopey thing to say. Maybe Cas just wants to forget last night. Forget him. God, what was he thinking? He’s doing it again-
The lock unslides and the door opens. “Dean. You- Are those Don Bluth movies?”
Dean holds his bluray copies up sheepishly. “I also brought snacks,” and he rustles the plastic bag in his other hand to demonstrate. “I- I know we’re still. That things are still rough. But, before any of this, we were friends. Best friends. You’re my best friend, Cas, in the whole world, and I missed that even more than the- y’know other stuff. I’d rather have you in my life, love you like that, than do this without you anymore. I don’t- I don’t wanna be unhappy, anymore. But!” he holds his hands up (with some difficulty, given everything he’s holding), “No obligation, you can slam the door in my face, and I’ll go home, and- ”
“Shut up,” Cas breathes and pulls Dean inside, grabbing his coat so they can hug. Hug. He gets to hold Cas. “You’re still using that convenience store cologne? Aren’t you a billionaire or something?”
They settle in with the films, balancing Cas’s laptop on the table, not sitting too close, but not miles away from each other. The films are fun, nostalgic, but they talk the whole way through about everything, about nothing in particular. It should be strange, how easily they still slot into each other after so long, but neither of them could care less.
Suddenly, as All Dogs Go to Heaven winds down, Cas leans against Dean. “Ah, the famous Winchester layering system. How many flannels are you wearing today?”
It’s a thinly-veiled excuse to cuddle, but Dean’s not about to call it out. “Only three, plus my undershirt and my jacket. Don’t knock a winning system, buddy. We’re not all living space heaters.”
They talk into the night, barely awake as their throats get dry and scratchy. It doesn’t matter. They keep talking.
The cherry blossoms are in bloom again when Dean picks Cas up from the station just a little outside of Chester. Dean tries not to let the excitement get the better of him. Decay, their (their!) graphic novel picked up wind on the indie circuit and received an amazing amount of praise from critics and fans of Dean’s other work at their launch. An unmitigated success. That’s what Cas said, argued that they should make a habit of working together. For business purposes. Of course.
Dean was practically bouncing on his toes.
As Cas escapes the platform, he alights on Dean and walks a little faster. He get right up to Dean and smiles fondly. Dean whistles.
“Nice wheels, Cas,” he says, pointing at his bright green suitcase with some cartoon character and their huge teeth, “Which six-grader did you steal that from.”
“Very funny. It’s a very compact piece of luggage, a real bargain.”
“Hope it can stand the walk,” Dean nods behind him. “It’s quite a trek.”
“Oh, I think it’ll handle it just fine.”
Cas looks at him just a little too long and Dean’s palms are sweating like he’s eighteen again.
They walk along the pavilion and Dean finally gets to give the tour he didn’t get to last year.
“Over there’s old man Rufus - literally, everyone calls him old man Rufus, like this is some damn Twain novel - and he likes reading at his temple. He’s a softie, really, but you wouldn’t know it at first,” Dean rambles, and it feels right. Jody was teasing him about it for days before Cas arrived, but he’s been more animated recently. He’s had something to look forward to.
“And, finally, we have my humble abode.”
“Quite the grand tour, I’m almost overwhelmed,” Cas smirks.
“Almost?!”
“Dean, this town is barely a couple miles across, I’m sure it’s never meant to be overwhelming,” and Dean laughs, maybe a little out of nervousness, maybe because the way the pink of the cherry blossoms hits the light behind Cas makes him look ethereal and perfect, maybe a combination of the two. Palms, sweaty, for fuck’s sake.
But suddenly Cas stops smiling and leans in quickly. He feels dry lips on his for a moment, then they’re gone waaaay too quickly.
“Sorry! Sorry, I- God, that was… I can’t believe I- I’m sorry, you just looked so, and I was caught up in the moment, I’m- ”
Dean couldn’t care less than Cas is apparently unable to finish a whole sentence. In fact, it makes his heart leap more, and he kisses him back to prove it.
They melt against each other, and it’s more than Dean could’ve ever wished for.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Cas?”
“This is… this is okay, right? I mean, we can take it slow, but- ” Cas gives him his steely determined look and Dean wants to kiss him so badly, “I want to try again.”
“Snap,” Dean murmurs and leans in again.
When he opens his eyes the blossoms are falling around them. Dean picks one out of Cas’s hair and kisses his cheek.
“Come inside?”
Dean holds out his hand and, without hesitation, Cas takes it.