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Don't think about it, Dean tells himself as Cas' fingers slip into his and sparks flare up in his stomach.
Don't think about it, as they're sitting in a diner and their knees bump against each other under the table.
Don't think about it.
But of course he does, and that pretty much ruins it.
Dean and Cas aren't friends anymore. They're definitely not brothers, not with the way Cas has become an expert at finding dark and quiet moments, the in-between spaces where somehow it doesn't feel weird to find Cas right there in Dean's space: casual, steady, completely deniable. Not with the way they scrupulously don't look at their hands, calmly hold conversations as if nothing's going on, while the movement of Cas' thumb against the back of Dean's hand feels like touching a live wire. Every time it happens, Dean gets all fluttery and dumb, but that doesn't make any sense, because he can't really be into Cas, right?
What even is this, though?
Well. He's pretty sure that by now Sam has plenty of opinions on the subject, but so long as neither of them actually brings it up, Dean can keep on being pretty sure but in denial (instead of very sure, and absolutely mortified).
So anyway, he drinks. There's a bar half an hour's drive away, but it's a freakin' Tuesday and he refuses to be the loser getting quietly and efficiently drunk amid a sea of empty tables. Instead Dean holes up in his room with bad sitcoms on Netflix and a bottle of whiskey, and falls asleep somewhere around five. He wakes up with a pounding headache, a feeling like something crawled into his mouth and died, and a sneaking suspicion he spent at least part of last night arguing at top volume with his laptop, which Sam is probably going to have something smarmy to say about this morning.
He's sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at his coffee as it cools, by the time he realizes he's not alone. "Good morning," Cas says, resting a hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean tenses at the touch, but no sparks this time. It just feels nice. Warm and solid and Cas.
He sighs. "I don't wanna have sex with you, man," he says into his mug.
"Okay." Cas says it slowly, like he's trying to work out which vital conversational step he missed here.
Breakfast. That should probably happen. Dean goes over to the fridge and opens the door - closes it, then opens it again, utterly failing to register whatever's actually in there.
"I mean, I do, sort of," Dean says as he closes the door again, "but I don't. Uh. Not like you're supposed to." He is too sober, too hungover, too Dean for this conversation right now, take your pick. "You know?" he finishes desperately (he's pretty sure Cas doesn't).
"No," Cas says, his face completely goddamn unreadable when Dean turns around.
"So I've thought about it, once or twice. Having sex. With you." Coffee's probably cool enough by now; he sits again. It scalds his tongue, and he puts it back down with a grimace. "I think it could be good. Hell, I think maybe it'd be fun. But it's just an idea, right? You're supposed to feel it. I mean, I definitely feel all, uh, when you," he gestures vaguely, "you know. So there's that."
"There's that," Cas agrees.
"But I don't feel like, like I wanna bone you, or vice versa, or whatever." At this point Dean's not even sure he can blame the hangover for how terrible he's being right now. Why is this so weird.
Cas sits next to him, and now he's definitely getting the could you be any more human right now face. "You're upset because you don't want to have the sex we're... not having."
"I'm not upset."
"Because you don't want to have it… correctly?"
"Don't you?"
"No."
Oh. "Shit." He scalds his tongue again and he doesn't even care. Oh shit, oh shit. "God, Cas, I'm sorry, forget it."
"Dean." A hand closes around his for a moment, cool where the mug between his hands radiates heat. Dean stills, but doesn't look up. "It feels like… a sudden need?" Cas chooses his words carefully. "A pull that comes from nowhere? You imagine doing something to them, and you can't stop thinking about it."
Dean finally meets Cas' eyes. The angel's mouth is quirked upward in a faint smile.
"You said you don't feel it."
"Not what you seem to be assuming."
He shifts, aligning himself with Dean, and Dean is now acutely conscious of the scant inches between them, Cas' knee almost but not quite touching his thigh. "I want what we've been doing. I want this. Maybe," Cas says, leaning closer still. "Maybe this." His lips brush lightly against Dean's, catching for one excruciating moment before Cas draws back again.
Oh. Shit.
Dean huffs a laugh, glancing away again. "What the hell, though. What are we even doing."
"I don't see what the problem is. Do we have to have sex?"
"No. I don't know. How is this not just, you know, being friends?"
Cas' posture shifts and loosens in what Dean recognizes from long experience as a full body eye-roll. "Dean, I'm not human. For most of my existence I haven't had what you would think of as a body. We are made of light and sound and will; we lack… the necessary equipment, when not in a vessel, but you have to understand we don't see it as a lack. It's a peculiarly human characteristic to consider this a requirement for intimacy.
"If you want to have sex, Dean, it doesn't matter to me if you want it the right way or not. It would be different, I think, from what you're expecting, but not unpleasant. If that's what you want to do."
Dean's coffee is finally cool and he drains the whole thing in one go, giving himself time to consider. "Okay," he says at last, looking Cas in the eyes. "Cool. Okay."
Sam wanders in a few minutes later to grab a bottle of water, hair plastered to his face with sweat from his run, and he and Dean start bickering about the coffee grounds Dean spilled all over the counter (hangover, man, come on, he can't be expected to deal with this right now).
Sam doesn't mention how close Dean and Cas are sitting next to each other, or the way Cas keeps looking at Dean.
But the whole time, Dean's smiling.