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Castiel Novak and Dean Winchester were as thick as thieves. They had been that way since freshman year of high school, and Castiel still didn’t understand what exactly made Dean take him under his wing. 

Castiel was sheltered. He grew up in boarding schools with people just like him, with money to burn and odd parents who either cared too much or nowhere near enough. High school was the first time he was ever in public school, and it was very obvious that he was an oddball. He was sure that he was off putting, even Gabe had warned him to maybe smile instead of just watching people, but Dean sat right next to him in their English class, anyway. 

He remembered that first day they met like it was yesterday. It was the very first day of freshman year. Dean shot him a grin, asked his name, and smoothly told him his own name like he had never once heard of first day jitters. He had also announced that he was on the varsity baseball team as a freshman, and he was proud of it. Castiel didn’t understand the hype, but it was obvious that their peers were in awe about it. So, he had just nodded and filed it in his brain that it was an achievement.

The first few weeks between them were awkward. Cas didn’t speak unless spoken to (which was actually a lot because Dean never shut up), but he realized eventually that Dean was actually a nice kid. Maybe a little too confident, but he was nice. He never made fun of Cas, never gave him strange looks or asked where he came from. He treated Castiel like he didn’t just fall out of the sky and into their small town, which meant that he was more than okay in Castiel’s books. 

The first time they ever talked outside of class was when Dean came up to him at lunch. Castiel had been annotating his personal copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, very obviously deep into it with his earbuds in and all, and Dean had waltzed up anyway with that stupid, goofy grin. “Hey, did you read the book last night?” 

Immediately, Castiel had been a little peeved. This kid had broken his quiet, peaceful lunch for absolutely no reason other than to try to get his answers for work he didn’t do. He glared at Dean. “I’m not going to help you cheat. And I’m not giving you the answers.”

Dean frowned. “Answers? I don’t want your answers, I want to talk about it,” he said, plopping down next to him. “Poor Lennie, right? I can’t believe this!”

For a moment, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He didn’t think Dean was stupid or anything, but every time Dean had spoken in class up to that point, it was about some movie or TV show that Castiel had yet to watch. Or even worse, baseball.  He never wanted to talk about school, so Castiel had determined that it just wasn’t his thing. 

“I mean… yes,” Cas had said slowly. “It’s very sad.”

“What are you listening to?” Dean asked, and he tapped on Castiel’s phone screen. Before Castiel could scold Dean about touching other people’s things, Dean’s brows raised. “Uh, you know this song is about a stalker?” 

“Every breath you take” was playing on his phone. It was one of his favorites. It was a song Gabriel used to play as a joke, but it became one of the songs Castiel played the most, and one of the ones that had him wishing he was as skilled at music as he was with a pen or a paintbrush.

“Yes, it’s obviously about someone watching another person very closely,” Cas said, and Dean cracked a smile. “But that doesn’t make it any less good.” 

“It’s all good, I like the song too,” Dean said, and then in another breach of personal space, he took Castiel’s earbud and put it right in his own ear. “We all share music on the bus,” he justified, and then to Castiel’s surprise, he jumped right into the lyrics. 

After a few moments of watching Dean shamelessly mouth the lyrics, Castiel started to mumble them back, both inspired by his lack of boundaries and confused by them. 

And then, as if Dean had cracked open a vault full of gold, he beamed. They finished the song together. 

And that had started it all. 

That very moment had somehow led to Castiel going to a game or two just to see what it was all about, after a time or two do Dean talking him into showing up. He discovered that Dean was actually very good at baseball, just as Dean himself and everyone else had been raving about. And even though the rules never seemed to stick in Castiel’s head, he enjoyed watching Dean play. 

They turned out to be very compatible friends. That evolved into them sitting next to each other at lunch every day. Then Castiel was going to his house whether that was to study or just talk. That was how he met Sam, Dean’s sweet, tall, considerate younger brother who was very smart. He was a good kid, and even though Dean teased him at times, it was obvious he loved Sam to pieces. 

As the years went on and Dean got more and more friends, Castiel always had a seat on the right side of him. Their interactions kept snowballing, and before either of them could understand it, they were always together. And before any of them could stop it, they were stealing glances at each other, subtle hearts and stars lingering in their eyes. 

The stolen glances changed into something more, too. It went from looking at each other and then looking away to holding each other’s stares until one of them (usually Cas) couldn’t bear it anymore. It went from sitting on the bed far apart to being close enough to touch thighs, and then Dean’s hand hovering over Cas’s. By the end of freshman year, it was obvious to the both of them that there was something other than friendship going on between the two of them, even if it remained unspoken out loud. 

The spring of sophomore year changed everything. Cas was going to every game that he could make at that point, just as Dean went to all of his art shows and book competitions. There was one game, one of the last games of the season, where Dean was so happy that he pulled him away and behind the bleachers. For a moment, the look in Dean’s eyes was so wild that Castiel was sure that Dean was on a high, and just like in the movies, they shared a kiss in the middle of May, hidden away from everyone and everything besides the buzzing beehive under the bleachers. 

After the kiss, it still took three weeks for them to put a label on things. That label came on one of the first days of summer, and Castiel felt like he had gained angel wings because he was so excited. After a long time, Dean Winchester was his boyfriend. His boyfriend.

They spent that whole summer together, just the two of them. Sometimes Sam would tag along, definitely suspecting something, but never bold enough to ask his brother about a thing. It was perfect. And as stupid as every high schooler was, Castiel had been so sure that the perfect summer world they had built together would last forever. 

The cruel hands of time led them to college applications and acceptances. They both got into the same school, and after they practically jumped up and down over that, they both committed to going. Dean wasn’t happy with Castiel at first, because he knew that Castiel could have done “more”. But what was “more” without his best friend? It worked for the both of them, having the exact majors they needed and the programs, too. So, they would go to school together, and Castiel thought that it couldn't have worked out any better. 

The summer after high school was their best yet. It was full of laughter and affection and swimming and talking about their future and kissing and love, and it was glorious. 

And then it was time to pack up and head to school. 

It hadn’t come to a screeching halt, though  There was a week left of summer that was full of family visits, and his favorite- a send off party. 

Castiel hadn’t ever heard of a send off party, but if any family were to do it for their child, of course it would be the Winchesters. Dean was going to the same school as he was, just an hour and some change down the road, but Mary Winchester was as celebratory as she had been at their graduation, somehow equally proud of them both. Castiel always felt grateful that Mary treated him as her own on more occasions than one. Gabriel was a great brother, but it was obvious that Castiel was missing a supportive mother figure in his life, and Mary had been kind enough to fill that ever since Cas first came to the house. John wasn’t mean, he was just a tired man who spent most of him time grunting or paying attention to his children when there were accomplishments. He was nice enough to Cas, but Mary was kind, and very inclusive.

And that was what led him to blowing out candles on a cake, standing next to his favorite Winchester of all, grinning from ear to ear.

“Hey, uh, can we talk?” 

Castiel was still smiling. The smoke from the candles on his cake was lingering in his nose, and he noticed that Dean hadn’t even blown his candle out yet. He nudged him. “Make a wish.” Dean just stared at Castiel for a moment, and then after a few long seconds, he leaned down and blew out his candle. 

The kitchen erupted in applause and congratulations, and Castiel couldn’t stop grinning. He graduated, and he was going to college. They both were. It was on to the next thing. They could finally leave town, finally be bigger and better than what they had been confined to. Dean could be more than baseball, and Castiel could… he just could be himself. He was ready to grow, and he was ready to watch Dean grow, too. 

He could feel Dean hovering around him awkwardly, which was funny, because usually it was Castiel who was the awkward one in a crowd. Castiel was always Dean’s little shadow, the shadow that Dean always thrusted forward regardless, the shadow Dean forced to be side by side with him, shown as his equal.

They ate the cake, which was half vanilla for Cas and half chocolate for Dean, and Castiel talked animatedly to Mary, who was still gushing over his perfect GPA and the fact that he was third in his class, to which he was perfectly excited about. That meant he hadn’t had to do a speech. 

He could feel Dean. It was a talent of his that he had acquired in their second year of being best friends. He was good at sensing when Dean was having a bad day, or when he was having negative thoughts. He was good at it, and he knew for a fact that there was something wrong with Dean.

He wasn’t sure exactly what his problem was, but he wasn’t eating his cake with as much vigor as he usually ate desserts. It wasn’t pie, but it was still cake, so Dean should have been excited to shovel forkfuls of it. But he wasn’t. He was pushing it around his plate and looking around like someone was watching him. 

“Can we talk?” Dean asked again after a few more pushes of his cake, and Castiel turned to look at him, really look at him.

He looked nervous. Dean was never nervous. Even when he was, he always had this air of confidence that couldn’t be disputed. He always brought calmness and content wherever he went, and he was so cool and handsome that he could have been a model on a magazine. He could have been a statue, made of strong, beautiful marble. That was Dean. That had always been Dean. 

“Sure,” he said softly, still giving him a small smile, and they walked down the hallway together. 

Castiel was sure that Dean was nervous about being away from home. He had never been away from Sam or his parents before. Meanwhile, Castiel had been sent to boarding schools until high school. Cas was used to being away from his awful parents, he thrived on it, but Dean was different. 

The bedroom door shut, and the second Castiel took a seat in the middle of the bed like he always did, Dean turned to look at him with apprehension written all over his beautiful face. 

“I don’t think we should hang out anymore.” 

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. For a moment, the words bounced around in his head, ringing like a bell and bouncing off the thick walls of his skull. It was all coming crashing down in front of him at once, in the middle of their joint fucking going away party, and all Castiel could do was blink. 

“What, Dean?” He managed to grind out, and he saw the look on the other boy’s face, and his heart sank. That was the look that Dean got when he was about to pull away. 

“I said, I don’t think it’s good for us to hang out anymore. After this,” he amended, and Castiel watched his face closely. 

Hang out. What an immature way to describe what they were doing. Like they were twelve years old and neighbors, playing games on a console until it was time to walk home. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean what I said,” Dean said snippily, and Castiel swallowed at the sharp tone. Dean rarely ever spoke to him like that. That was how Dean sounded when he felt like he was backed into a corner. “I don't…maybe we just shouldn’t.”  

Castiel’s mind was racing. He needed a reason. “Is your dad making you say this?” 

“No, Cas,” Dean said quickly, but Castiel narrowed his eyes anyway. John wasn’t openly terrible, but he hadn’t acknowledged what was blatantly in front of him, and Castiel was sure it was because he didn’t want to. “I just- we shouldn’t.” 

Usually, Castiel wouldn’t pry. He wouldn’t even get close to begging for someone to speak to him, let alone about their feelings. Even worse, Dean. But he had to. “Why not?” 

Dean sighed, but instead of sounding bored, his breath was shaky. “We’re going to college, Castiel. I’m gonna be busy, you’re gonna be busy, we’ll hardly get to see each other-”

All Castiel could see were the decorations in the living room, the dark red and the white, the colors of the school they were going to together. “We committed to the same school-”

“I’ll be doing baseball and you- you have all your art stuff,” Dean paused his rambling, and it was enough time for the words to settle in and for Castiel to start feeling his heart slowly shatter, “and you’ll probably join a writing club. We won’t have time-”

“We’ve always made time before.”

“I’m not good at school and I don’t want to drag you down-”

“Dean, you know I’ll help you with your school work, now what’s actually wrong?” Castiel asked, and for the first time in a while, he was outwardly bewildered. “You’re giving excuses.” 

Castiel saw the moment Dean’s walls, the walls that took years for him to tear down brick by brick, go back up. “What, I’m not allowed to break-to say I want a break from us being around each other?” 

“You are, of course you are,” Castiel said calmly, “but this makes no sense, Dean. We’re both smarter than this, and you know that excuses are stupid and they’re not fair. So what’s going on?” 

There was a pause. That pause scared Castiel, because Dean was rarely ever silent. Unless he was eating. But a silent Dean in a serious conversation meant that there was about to be a bomb dropped on the both of them. 

“I’m just ready to turn over another leaf, Cas.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

Castiel watched as Dean took in a long breath, one that was uncharacteristically shaky considering how pseudo confident Dean always was, and he held a breath of his own, because he knew that whatever came next was about to rip his world apart. 

“I can’t do this anymore.” 

Ow. Fuck. That hurt. But Castiel just blinked and breathed in real slow through his nose, like that would curb the pain. He nodded his head once and ignored the slight shake of his hands. He prayed Dean would, too. “Okay. Can I ask why?” 

Dean looked like he wanted to do anything but answer as he shrugged. His shrug made it look like his shoulders alone weighed a hundred pounds. “I don’t… I just don’t want to be known as the gay guy.” 

Castiel frowned. If anything, that was him. Dean was still the cool baseball guy that just so happened to have the weird little art guy following him around. Castiel was the gay guy who just fell into being Dean Winchester’s “best friend” in the eyes of those who didn’t look close enough. 

“And I can’t… I can’t be with you if that’s not what I want. How I want to be seen.” 

It shouldn’t have surprised Castiel. Dean had never openly claimed him, never openly defended him beyond how a friend would. But that was all to outsiders. That was when Dean had a front on. That was how Dean showed himself to everyone else.

But there Dean was right in front of him, tearing down every banner they had ever hung on their shitty little castle that was never built to withstand the rain and wind. He was ripping it all down and putting up shutters, hiding from the one person who was always allowed in on the other side of the walls.  

 “So… you don’t want anyone to know that you’re gay?”

Dean made a face. “It… it’s not like that.” 

“You want to break up with me so that people can’t see us together,” Castiel said slowly, like every word was glass on his tongue, “because we’re both men.” 

“It’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you.” 

“That's exactly what you just said, Dean,” Castiel said, and he looked toward the closed bedroom door as if he could see through it and make sure no one was listening. “You don’t want to be seen with me.” 

“Cas, you’re my best friend in the whole world-”

“I’m your boyfriend, Dean.” 

Dean flinched. 

“Dean, I’m your boyfriend. I have been for a long time. Ever since we kissed under the bleachers, you know this.” 

And Dean did know it. It was something that they had laughed about plenty of times. They laughed about how nervous they had both been for no reason, how shy that they had been despite having a gut feeling, just knowing, how the other felt. 

“Cas I just-” Dean closed his eyes for a moment. “I realized that I can’t love you how you want me to, alright?” 

That knocked the breath out of Castiel. “What?” 

“I’m not like you,” Dean said, and Cas noticed that he was shaking, too. “I’m not. And you can’t make me be, okay? I can’t love you like that. I just- it doesn’t work that way.” 

“You don’t love me?” 

“Not in that way,” Dean said, and Castiel would have had to be deaf to not hear his voice breaking. “Not… romantically.” 

Flashbacks flew through the shorter boy’s mind quicker than ever. He saw them laughing together, holding hands, looking at the stars late at night and sneaking out of the house just to swim in the lake. He remembered them playing house together while his parents were gone. He could see images of the two of them staring into each other's eyes and then leaning in to kiss like they were magnets. He remembered their hands in each other’s pants for the first time and taking off their shirts like they fucking had to, kissing like their last breaths were in each other’s lips. He remembered all the art shows and how Dean never missed an exhibit, or how he always went to Dean’s games. He remembered the trips they took in the summer and the birthdays and the holidays and getting so close with Sam like it was meant to be and the job at the ice cream shop that they both worked at together simply because it was the only job that let them constantly be on the schedule at the same time-

“You don’t love me romantically?” 

Dean looked like he was about to scream in his childhood home. He looked the smallest that Castiel had ever seen him, beaten down by his own fists. “No. Not like that. I can’t.” 

Castiel wanted to drag it out. He wanted to ask why. He wanted to do the whole “so that’s it” thing, but he knew it wouldn’t go anywhere. Not with Dean. And not with himself, either. He knew the look in Dean’s eyes well enough to know that he would get nothing more, at least nothing that wouldn’t drive him crazy. 

He would be getting nothing more from Dean, at all. And he couldn’t help him, either. 

“Dean, if you can’t accept who you are,” Castiel said slowly, shaking his head, “all you’re going to do is hurt yourself.” 

Dean took a step back like his words had burned through his chest and into his heart. “You don’t get it, Cas.” 

“I do, Dean. I’m gay. And so are you. At the very least, you like men.” Dean shook his head, and Cas wasn’t sure if he was disputing a claim that wasn’t even his, or if he was blocking out the entire conversation. “You’re only denying yourself-”

Dean’s jaw was sharp as he shook his head one more time. “Shut up.” 

“You are,” Cas insisted. “And that’s that. You’ll figure it out eventually, Dean, but I really hope that the fall doesn’t hurt as badly as I’m sure it will.” Castiel turned on his heel, intent on leaving Dean before the heartbreak bled into his expression and his words. 

He got about three paces away before he heard Dean speak again. “Are you mad because I said I can’t love you?” 

“No, Dean,” Castiel said, turning just his head to look at Dean, who was tense standing there, looking seconds away from falling apart. “I’m upset because you’re saying you can’t love yourself.” He forced himself to look at Dean one last time, right into his green eyes, eyes that never cried but were surely shining right then. “Goodbye, Dean.” 

Castiel beelined out of Dean’s bedroom, and as he heard people laughing and celebrating their graduation in the living room, he forced himself to act like he hadn’t just left Dean’s room for the last time. 

He was thankful that he was blessed with the art of the poker face as he faked a headache, thanking everyone for letting him join the party. There wasn’t a person that could tell there was something wrong with him, but Mary looked at him strangely, like she could see right through him, but she let him go without saying a word about it. She hugged him tighter than usual. John waved goodbye, as nonchalantly as ever.

Castiel was ready to go home. He was seconds away from running, genuinely breaking out into a sprint just to get away and get home. He was so ready that he almost forgot about Sam, who seemed to have spawned out of nowhere right by the front door.

“Cas?” Sam asked, frowning, and Castiel could already see the hesitation in his eyes. “Where are you going?”

“Back to my house,” he said calmly, when in reality, all he wanted to do was bawl his eyes out, possibly even scream, but Sam had done nothing to him. He would always think of Sam as his family, despite what his older brother had done. 

Despite what he wouldn't do. 

Sam tilted his head to the side. “But this is your send off party, too,” he pointed out. “You can stay for as long as you want, I’m sure Dean would want you to.” 

Castiel was sure of it before that conversation, too. He had been very sure. After so many touches and words and kisses, he was sure Dean wanted Castiel to follow him anywhere, and that he would have even followed him. But Dean’s teeth were extra sharp to make up for the softness of his lips, and Dean always managed to bite the gentle hand that fed him. 

“It’s alright, Sam. I’ll uh, I’ll see you later, okay?” 

Sam was younger, but he was so observant. It was something Castiel had admired in the boy, especially when it was paired with his intelligence and eagerness to learn. But now, as it was just the two of them by the front door, it made him uneasy. Sam’s stare pinned him into place, and Cas waited for whatever Sam wanted to say to hit him in the chest, just like his older brother's words had just moments before. 

“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” 

That was a weird thing for Sam to say, and he had never said it before. That sounded an awful lot like a resolute goodbye. And as Castiel stood there and watched Sam blink back tears, he knew that they both knew Castiel wouldn’t be coming back. 

“I’ll see you around, Sam.” And then Castiel opened the door and walked out of the Winchester’s house, and he made sure that he never turned back to look. 

§§§

Under any other circumstances, Castiel would have hated moving all of his stuff. He would have hated the packing and the boxes and the shopping for shower caddies. He would have despised buying pots and pans and labeling them and all the other things that he realized were expensive only after swiping his own card. It all would have felt like a tedious chore but as time went on, he welcomed it as a nice distraction. 

Dean would have had about ten people helping him move all of his things, and people buying him stuff, too. He would have had his whole family and his cousins and probably even boys from the team. He would have had so much help and positivity around him, and that was something Castiel had never been jealous of before moving almost on his own. 

Gabriel, even though it was just him, ended up being a big help. He had always been the best older brother, the only one willing to move to a new area just so that Castiel could be normal for a few years before he got out of school and into the real world. Gabe was always Castiel’s best support system, and it was no different as they moved him into his dorm. 

He was enough to make Castiel break a smile every now and then, to take him out of his thoughts with thoughts of something so incredibly stupid that he had to do a double take. Gabriel was funny, but Gabriel also was extremely aware that something happened. And he was too talkative for his own good. 

So, as Castiel and his older brother unpacked the last box, Gabriel looked at Castiel with eyes that were less full of their casual mischief and more full of concern, and it made Cas bite his tongue, bracing for impact. 

“So, you two are done?” 

The ache in his chest got worse instantly, and for a moment, he was hoping that he could just not respond and it all would go away. But Gabriel was still there, watching him silently, waiting for an answer that would surely tear its way out of Castiel’s soul. 

“I’m not sure if we ever were anything,” Castiel said quietly, but the words sounded like a bomb going off in his own ears. 

“What?” 

“I’m not sure if we were anything at all,” Castiel repeated, and Gabriel frowned, just looking at him. Watching.

“Don’t let him do that,” Gabe scolded, and Castiel cocked a brow. 

“Do what?” 

“Don’t let him write the narrative about what you were just because he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on with himself,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t let him make you think that what you two had was insignificant.” 

For a moment, Castiel was shocked. It wasn’t like Gabe to be so profound, or to say something that didn’t circle back to something that was somewhat a joke at least once. “I… he’s not. I guess I was just thinking back on it-” 

“That dumbass was definitely your boyfriend,” Gabriel said, sipping on his Coke, “and you’re going through a breakup. Taking it really well, I might say,” he added, and Castiel looked away. 

Gabe knew about the breakup, but he had no idea why it happened. Cas figured it was better to explain in person right then and there than over the phone in a week or so while he broke down crying, so he sighed.

“He broke up with me because he didn’t want to be seen as gay.”

Gabe was silent for a moment, and then Cas looked back at his older brother. His eyes were narrowed. “How odd.” There was a pause. “Does he know that it’s college and it’s a huge school and no one gives a shit if anyone’s gay here? Like, at all?” 

Castiel sighed. “It was more than that, Gabriel. Deeper than that. I saw the look in his eyes. There was nothing I could have said to get him to change his mind. Nothing I say was going to reassure him.” 

“It’s a personal issue,” Gabe agreed. “That’s all on him. And I honestly feel very sorry for Dean.” That was odd. He had never called Dean by his name, not since he and Cas started running around together. And he almost never said that he was sorry, not for his own actions, not for others. Gabriel was being wholeheartedly serious. 

“Why?” 

“Because Dean is so in love with you, to the point where quite literally everyone close to you guys knows it. And he’s going to shit a thousand bricks once he realizes that he fucked up.” He sipped his soda again. “But, he’ll realize a long time from now. I can see it already.” 

“I doubt it, Gabriel.” 

Gabriel put his soda down, and then with another one of those rare, serious looks, he nailed Castiel with a glare. “Cassie, mark my words. In about ten years, you’ll run into him somehow, some way. And he’s gonna lose it.” 

Castiel wasn’t sure if he even wanted that idea in his head. He didn’t want the hope. He couldn’t afford it. He just… he couldn’t. It was a comfort that may or may not have been real, and he couldn’t cope with any more rugs being pulled out from under him. 

“But he did you a favor, honestly. Now isn’t the time to be tied down. Freshman year!” Gabe practically shouted, and Castiel flinched a bit. “Have fun. Go to clubs. Go on dates. Get laid. Stay safe though, please. Be free and all that. Be a young adult.” 

“I…” Castiel started, and by the time he knew his throat was closing up, it was already too late to stop the tears. “I don’t know how to do any of that without Dean,” he choked out. “He was the one with a hundred friends and- and all the invitations and- I can’t do this without him, Gabe.” 

It hit him like a tower falling down on his head, bricks crushing him to bits. He started crying then and there in front of his brother, as close to sobbing his eyes out as he could get. He just stood there like a big baby, bawling his eyes out and covering his face as if that would shield him from judgement that was never going to come from Gabe in the first place. 

A hand reached out, gentle yet grounding, and squeezed Cas’s shoulder. “You have something better,” Gabe said, and Castiel looked up, wiping his eyes. “You have the guts to be yourself. Without shame. And that’s worth so much more than a hundred friends who don’t really know you, Castiel.” 

Castiel forced himself to nod. The words made sense, they really did, and they were just as calming as Gabriel’s energy in that moment as he swallowed and blinked back tears.

“You’re gonna be just fine.”

“I am,” Castiel confirmed, nodding his head again, and he let Gabriel’s words sink in. and he promised himself that he wouldn’t ever forget them. 

§§§

So far, Castiel wasn’t the biggest fan of college. The university as a whole wasn't exactly his vibe, he wasn’t the biggest fan of some of his roommates (they were either dirty or rude), and it wasn’t as walkable as they had claimed it was when he first toured it. 

Now, there were good points to it. He was in a great writing program with likeminded people, and he felt like he had finally found a small crowd to fit into. His favorite professor already liked him, and he had a single roommate that wasn’t insufferable. It all sounded perfect. When his mother called, he made it sound perfect. When Gabriel called, he let loose and complained a little. In his journal, he was mostly honest. He was missing something, and he was sure that anyone who knew him knew what it was. 

He missed Dean. 

Castiel was trying not to be too hard on himself regarding missing Dean. Dean Winchester was practically his other half for years, years before they ever kissed. Years. So as he closed his eyes holding a jersey that Dean had outgrown and given to him sophomore year, he let himself grieve. 

Castiel had always seen their school colors as ugly. Green and blue, and some white thrown in the mix. Castiel was a color guy, he loved art, but the way that the jerseys looked never drew his eye in a good way. Unless Dean was in it. He remembered commenting on it one night after a baseball game went particularly well, and Dean was beaming under the sunset. 

“I just can’t stand the colors,” he had said offhandedly, and he remembered the way Dean threw him an amused glance. 

“Why not?” 

“Too much blue,” he said, waving a hand over the jersey Dean was wearing. 

“Well, I like it,” Dean had said, and Castiel nodded to himself, ready to hear about how Dean wanted to wear the green and blue for the rest of his life, because as far as he knew, Dean wanted to die with a bat in his hands. “The blue reminds me of you.”

Cas frowned. “Of me?” 

“Well, your eyes,” Dean said casually, and Castiel remembered the way his heart skipped several beats then and there, and the way Dean kept walking like they were talking about the weather. “And my eyes are green. Green and blue go well together.” 

They did. And Castiel was so convinced that they went together too, and that they would forever be immortalized by the stupid fucking jersey, the stupid fucking jersey that he was gripping in his hands like it was slipping through his fingers. 

“Hey,” he heard, and he opened his eyes, still holding the jersey in his hands. It felt like holding ashes in his hands. He couldn’t bear to drop it, so he turned to look at Mick, the one roommate that wasn’t actually half bad. “We’re all going out and uh, did you want to get out of the apartment for a while?”

Gabriel would have wanted him to say yes. He would have been shouting at him to take the offer, actually. So he put a smile on his face and nodded his head despite the fact that it took all of his energy to even think about carrying out conversations with anyone at any type of bar or club. He wasn’t even sure which was worse. 

It took him no time at all to get ready. He never was one to take his clothes seriously, and he really had no reason to, because there wasn’t anyone he wanted to impress. He walked out awkwardly with his roommates, his supposedly new friends, and down the street to the bar. He already hated it as they laughed. Why were they laughing? What the hell was so funny? He knew what wasn’t funny, and it was eating him alive, grinding him up between teeth until he was nothing but mush. 

By the time that they got their IDs checked and led into the glorified room with a dance floor and a bar, Castiel was already having to coach himself into not going home early. It was pathetic almost, but he kept hearing Gabe’s voice in his head, encouraging him to just stay out for the night. Just a few hours. And as the minutes went on and he nursed his first (and probably only) drink, he felt a little more at ease. 

It took a few minutes for Castiel to realize that he was having an okay time. Usually whenever he went out, there was someone (Dean fucking Winchester) that built the bridge over the gap that was caused by his awkwardness. He didn’t have that safety net anymore, and that meant he was mostly standing off in the corner, watching his new roommates live their lives, laughing and dancing and taking shots. 

That was fine by him. He liked to watch people. He liked watching the girl in the pink flush a similar color to her skirt when the boy she was talking to moved her hair to the side. He liked watching the two upperclassmen at the bar take a shot without flinching. He liked watching as a group of girls laughed and danced with each other, carefree and in their own worlds. As his eyes kept trailing around while he hardly even drank his own room temperature beer, they landed on something excruciatingly familiar. 

He knew that back anywhere. He did. He would know it in the dark and under the blinding sunlight. He knew it with a shirt on or off, or wet from the ocean water. He knew it in a jersey or in a long sleeved shirt. And it was hunched forward, bent in the same way he imagined it looked from behind when they used to kiss. 

His stomach dropped. He knew what he was seeing, who he was seeing. He understood it before his poor heart could catch up, and as if he needed more to fill in the blanks, the back turned to the side, and sure enough, there was a girl pushed up close to him, running her hands over his arms, kissing him right there. 

Castiel’s brain fought its way to a conclusion as he stood there in shock. After three seconds of hardcore analysis, he blinked and forced himself to see it. Dean was in a college bar, making out with a girl who had dark hair, striking blue eyes that he could see even from afar, and sharp features. And if Castiel squinted a little, if he wanted to be self absorbed, he would have thought that the girl looked a little like him. Castiel’s brows raised as it all settled in.  

As if it was a joke from the universe, a familiar song started to play. He recognized the starting notes just as easily as he recognized Dean’s back, and the memories hit him instantly. 

Every breath you take

No. It couldn’t be fucking real. He wasn’t living in the correct timeline, because why would the universe force him to watch Dean Winchester kiss a girl while their song played in the background? A song about- 

The only option for Castiel was to leave. He had to leave quietly before he started to bawl on his very first night out. He had to get the hell out of there before Dean noticed him. And then, like he was in his own worst nightmare, Dean’s body straightened, and he turned his head as the girl kissed his neck. Castiel’s blue eyes met Dean’s green ones for the first time in what felt like years.

Dean looked like a deer in headlights. He was frozen as they looked at each other, stuck in time while the girl was completely oblivious to the sudden tension. They stared at each other from across the bar, and with his broken heart and all, all that Castiel could do was shrug. 

Every game you play, every night you stay, I’ll be watching you 

He saw Dean take a deep breath, one that reminded Castiel so much of all the ones he would take as he laid his head on his chest, listening to Dean’s heartbeat and his breaths and trying to sync their bodies together. He watched Dean exhale, and then with a nod that felt so heavy it nearly broke his neck, Castiel turned around and walked away, disappearing into the crowd and walking over to his roommates. 

The one closest to him had a girl next to him, and he looked a little irritated as Cas walked up, but Castiel paid no mind. “I think I’m gonna head back,” he said over the music. “I have a headache.” 

“Alright, man,” his roommate said, but he was clearly focused on the girl who was trying to drape herself over him. Castiel was grateful for it, because he probably would have seen the tears in his eyes if he had paid any more attention. He flew past everyone that he “knew” and right to the door, not even turning back as he ran away. 

The walk to get there had been five minutes, but Castiel was fast. He turned it into a little under a minute, booking it down the street. He was running so fast, with so much clouding his mind, that he didn’t even realize it was beginning to drizzle. The drizzling turned into downpour just as fast as he approached his building, and his eyes were burning with tears as he chose to take the empty stairs rather than risk running into someone in the elevator. 

Every step made his legs feel heavier, and made his heart ache travel even deeper into his soul. Every step was a step away from Dean, and away from the person he used to be when Dean loved him. His hope was torn to shreds in that very moment, and he knew that there was absolutely nothing that he could do for Dean Winchester. 

But he would do himself a favor and leave his memories of Dean back home, where the other Winchesters still loved him, and where they used to have their whole lives ahead of them planted out onto different sides of the same path, running parallel with ivy growing from left and right and intertwining. Castiel was stumbling all through it, tripping with every step and cursing every single seed that he and Dean had ever placed into the ground together. And he had a feeling that he would be falling and getting back up for a long, long time.

Chapter Text

Dean Winchester had a lot of recurring dreams. Most of the time, they were pleasant. They were mostly of his glory days, the days when all that mattered was if he could swing his bat. He would dream about running the whole field, charging past every base and going home every time. He would dream about being in the dugout, or being surrounded by his favorite teammates from high school and college alike, like he was in like some sort of mixed timeline. He had those dreams over and over enough to remind him of simpler times. 

And then there were the recurring dreams that were more like nightmares. 

They weren’t nightmares because they were scary. He didn’t wake up terrified, or in cold sweats, crying. He didn’t wake up reaching for a light or trembling. He woke up from these dreams with a sinking feeling in his gut, one close to guilt and even closer to loss. 

He hated it. 

These dreams were different, but they were all the same. They were all sweet, and that was what was haunting him. And they were so close to his real memories, the ones he suppressed in the daytime because they threatened to push him to insanity. 

They all involved Castiel Novak. 

It was a name that bounced around his head as much as he allowed it to. It was trapped behind iron bars, thrown in a metal box that had a key that Dean convinced himself was thrown away and buried. His dreamscape always opened it without problem, always when he felt he had traveled far away enough from the burial site. 

The dreams themselves were relatively normal. It would be him and Cas, kicking around rocks or throwing them into the lake, trying to see who could skip the most. The next dream would be something like them fake wrestling, or rolling down hills, sneaking out just to go to a late movie, skinny dipping in the same lake that ruled all of their summers. They were normal things. They should have made him feel normal things. He should have been able to brush them off and move on with his day. 

Dean felt anything but normal every time he woke up and remembered what his mind had forced him to relive. 

Castiel was years in the past. He was Dean’s high school best friend, his rock, the boy that understood him more than his own mother did. Castiel was Dean’s favorite person in the world for a very long time, and he supposed his dreams hadn’t quite let go of that yet. 

He wasn’t sure if he let go of it, either.

The five minutes after he woke up from one of those dreams, he let himself think. It was a dangerous game, him sitting in silence after a dream like that, but he did it every time. He let himself dwell, let his mind trail off into the killer what-ifs. He went down paths that would have never amounted to anything in the comfort of his own mind for five minutes, and then he forced himself to move on.  

But he never really did move on. Even if he didn’t realize it. 

He hadn’t moved on, not as he went through women like they were pages in a book. Not as he left college and mellowed out and tried to settle with the first one who didn’t like him just for his looks. Not as he left her and was alone for a while, building up his career. Dean was convinced he had left it all behind, baseball and Castiel Novak alike, until he was sitting by himself, all alone. 

Or worse, sitting across from a kind, smart, beautiful woman and realizing that she just… wasn’t enough. 

He was enough of an adult to recognize that the problem wasn’t the women. They were all kind, all sweet, and he couldn’t ever point out any negative traits. He knew that he was the problem. He was the problem, and something else that he couldn’t put his finger on was the problem, too. But he wasn’t dumb or cruel enough to put the blame on them. 

Another thing about Dean Winchester was that he was successful. He was big in finance, he had money, he had a place of his own. He had a job where people depended on him, and he was respected. He even lived in the same town as Sam. On paper, Dean lived the best version of his life that he could. 

But once again, something was still missing. 

He figured it was a companion, so naturally, he tried for that. Dating apps, meeting organically, blind dates. He tried them all, and even if he had fun, it just… wasn’t enough. 

There were so many beautiful women who were also smart who wanted to be with him. He had been set up with so many of them, too. But they never clicked. It never worked. Dean would shrug it off like it didn’t bother him year after year, but he was getting older and still, he had no one to come home to. He had no one to bring home to his mom at Thanksgiving. He had a place that was big enough for a whole family, but his house was hardly a home. 

Sammy had Jessica, a really sweet blonde woman who he had met in college. They were sweethearts from the start, and it worked out beautifully. Dean loved watching it unfold from afar and giving his little brother advice that he would have never followed himself, but it all worked out. Dean expected nothing less cookie cutter than that for Sam, and he was infinitely happy for his brother. He got the cool lawyer job, he got the girl, he got the white picket fence with a dog. He had everything that Dean didn’t. 

Dean wasn’t jealous of Sam. He was happy for him. All he ever wanted was for Sam to be happy, and he was. But he couldn’t lie and say that he didn’t sometimes look at Sam and Jess, watch them hug and kiss and look at each other like they both had hung the stars for each other, and ask himself why he couldn’t have that, too. 

Dean was at Sam’s house on a random Wednesday night. He typically came around once a week, and Wednesdays were usually the night that worked for the both of them. Sam had offered to grill up some steaks and Jess was cooking the rest, and Dean couldn’t say no to that. A nice little three-person dinner, and he didn’t have to cook? He was there. 

The grill was on and so was the music in the background, and Dean stood there watching Sam man the grill. It was quiet between them, but comfortable. Dean was thinking about work, throwing his mind into it as a distraction, and he didn’t even realize Sam was talking to him until he turned. 

“Dean?” 

“Huh?”

“Do you think you’ll try to call him one day?” 

Dean was so focused on work that he wracked his mind for any person from his job that Sam could have been talking about. He lifted a brow.  “Call who?” 

“Cas.”

Dean’s head whipped up. “What?” 

“I mean, Castiel,” Sam said like it was a name they always said, a name that was constantly in rotation. It was in Dean’s head, of course it was, but in recent years, Sam hasn’t dared to bring him up. “When are you gonna call him?” 

Call Castiel? What the hell? “Why on earth would I call him ?” 

“Because you’re successful, and you have a lot of money, and you’re a handsome and extremely eligible bachelor with more women at your feet than ever,” Sam said, and Dean frowned, “and you’re still miserable.” 

“Me being miserable has nothing to do with Castiel from high school,” Dean scoffed. 

Sam flipped the steaks. “Are you sure?” He asked casually. 

“Sam,” Dean said, taking in a deep breath, “why did you just bring him up?” 

“I haven’t brought him up in years.” 

“Exactly, so why in the hell are you bringing up a friend from high school right now?” Dean scoffed defensively, and if his tone didn’t give it away, the way he crossed his arms did. “Don’t do that again.”

Sam shrugged his shoulders and nodded, giving Dean that face that meant that he understood, but he still thought he knew best. It pissed Dean off to no end. “Okay.” 

“He’s… he’s in the past.” 

“Alright.” 

“It’s over with us. It’s been over a decade.” 

“Mhm.” 

“And besides, there’s no-”

“It’s clearly not over for you, Dean,” Sam said, “you’re still talking about it.” 

“I’m trying to explain it to you, Sam,” Dean spat back. 

“Maybe you should…” Sam trailed off. “Meet up with him. Even if he has someone now, he knows you. Maybe it would help you to talk to someone who you can connect with. And I know you feel bad for what you did to him.” 

“What?” 

“Him seeing you with those girls, telling him you didn’t love him when you did-”

“I wasn’t in-”

“You were, Dean. You were,” Sam said. “You probably still are. That’s why you’re miserable.” 

It was a slap in the face. It was weighted, and it was a slap that he had been waiting on for years. “Sam, where the fuck is all this coming from?” 

“You know it’s okay to be gay, Dean. Like, no one cares.” Dean’s eyes went wide. Sam had always been honest with him, always straight forward, but it was rare that Sam outright said exactly what was eating at Dean, hitting the head on his biggest regret and insecurity all in one. “No one would give a damn about you liking men. No one.” 

“Leave it.” Dean looked away from his brother. “And it’s not like he’s around here, anyway. He’s long gone. He’s… he’s probably far away from here, now.” He had always talked about getting away from their home state, branching out. “He’s gone.” 

Sam didn’t say another word. 

§§

The weekend was either one thing or the other for Dean; a time to relax and recharge after a long week, or a time to go out hunting for a woman that he would spend the night with and never see again. As he left the building on Friday night, he could feel in his bones exactly what type of weekend it was going to be. 

It took no work at all for him to look decent enough to go to the bar. That was his main spot, anyway. He bar-hopped each weekend that he went out, rotating each bar for the night, trying not to dip his toes in the same pool too often. He ended up at the one closest to his house, single and incredibly ready to lose himself, and before he knew it, he was knocking back drinks and winking at the bartender. 

He couldn’t help but think about his brother’s words. Castiel was a huge part of his past, but that’s where he had to say. In the past. Dean had no other choice but to leave him there, trapped in a deep corner of Dean’s mind like a pretty bird in a cage. A bird with wilted feathers. Or maybe it was taking care of its wings on its own, out of his sight. He'd never know.

There were pretty women everywhere. It was a big city. There were so many to pick from, so many throwing themselves at him, but he couldn’t commit to more than small talk and flirty eyes with any one of them until he was no less than four shots deep. Even then, there was something nagging at him in the back of his mind, something scratching at his skull and wiggling around in his stomach, voicing discomfort. 

He eventually found a girl with dark hair and blue eyes and ignored all the feelings, anyway. He agreed to go back to her place because it made her feel safer, and he fucking hated that he wasn’t as into it as he should have been. He despised it. But he went through the motions anyway, he relished in the touch of someone else, he laid in the warmth of another person just for the sake of doing it. 

For a moment, a fleeting moment or two he swore that the arms around him were enough. It felt real. She felt close enough. She felt good enough. And just like all the other times, just like every other attempt, he crashed from his high and realized it wasn’t. He was chasing something, something he didn’t even know anymore. 

He kissed her on the mouth like she mattered, like any of it mattered, and laid down next to her as she settled into the bed, and he was entirely too distracted by the dark hair on the pillow next to him to get a good sleep. 

§§

She looks like the real thing  

Dean shot up, head pounding as he ran a hand over his face. There was someone next to him, and judging by the vanilla scent surrounding them both, it was a woman. His memory came back to him as she sat up in the bed, and he blinked as he looked at the naked woman in bed with him. 

She tastes like the real thing  

The woman started to stir next to him. Dean’s eyes went wide as the lyrics settled into his skin, sinking into every pore and rattling his blood. “Who-” Dean choked on his question for a moment. “Who is playing that?” 

“Ugh, my roommate,” the woman said, running a hand through her hair. “She cleans every Sunday morning. I told her not to, and who even plays Radiohead anymore?” 

Dean blinked a few times, as if that could take the despair away. He felt sick to his stomach as he forced himself to nod, to accept his situation, and he pulled the blankets off of himself. He was thankful that he wasn’t too hungover as he stood up out of the bed, immediately searching for his clothes. 

“Hey, don’t you want breakfast, or something?” 

“Oh, no, no,” he said, giving a small smile that he was certain was unconvincing. “I’ve got uh, a busy morning. Thank you, uh,” he stuttered out, and he gave her a nod as he pulled his jeans on. He left right out of her bedroom door in the most awkward exit he had ever done, thanking God that he was a creature of habit even while drunk as he grabbed his car keys off of her kitchen table. 

The second he got home, he took a shower and scrubbed down. He wanted to scrub his braid, to scrape the ache off of his heart, but he knew that was impossible. So he stood under the scalding hot water for what felt like hours, got dressed, and sat on the couch in silence, unable to escape his own thoughts. 

He fucking hated Sundays.

§§

Monday morning came too quickly, but it was a nice change. Sunday had been full of reflection that Dean figured was unnecessary. He wasn’t ever really good at sitting with himself and digesting his life. He was ready for Tuesday, to watch some baseball and sit and think about what his life could have been if he kept going after college. He was ready to eat with Sammy and Jess on Wednesday. He was ready to do anything but have another weekend when his only choices were sleeping with someone who didn’t matter to him or sitting alone at his house. 

Now, Dean had no problem going out to eat alone. He was a businessman, and he traveled often by himself. He ate in restaurants and sat at bars and went to hotel breakfasts all alone, and he never had a problem with it. He didn’t have one as he sat at the local diner, ready to eat a cheeseburger at his favorite restaurant in much needed yet much avoided silence. 

Dean wasn’t looking as he opened the door to the restaurant. He was on his phone, aggressively texting back a client, when he felt the door push open while he pulled. He shuffled to the side, letting the other person out first. 

“Wow.”

That one word was familiar. It was deep and gravely, mature even, and it sent a chill down his spine. Dean’s head whipped up, and he had to bite his tongue to stop from screaming when he saw who was standing in front of him. 

Castiel fucking Novak, in the flesh.

It had been years since he had seen Castiel. Not in person, not on Facebook, not on fucking LinkedIn. Nothing. His image of Castiel was of how he looked twelve years ago, the very last time he saw him. 

The time when Castiel saw him kiss a girl in the bar after he broke up with him. 

It had been years and years, and Castiel looked different. He was still gorgeous, but he was older. Dean wouldn’t admit that the aging made him look even better, not even to himself. His eyes, still that brilliant blue, seemed to be lighter. Like there was less weight on his shoulders. Dean had a million questions, a million things to say, but he couldn’t find any words more than just one, a name he hadn’t dared to mutter in years. 

“Cas?” 

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel said, and then casually, as if he hadn’t just ruined Dean’s entire fucking day or threw his entire thought process off course for the next month, he stepped to the side of the door and let it close. They were outside together, and Dean was standing in front of Castiel. “How are you?” 

How was he? How was he? Dean didn’t have an answer for himself, let alone his high school ex… whatever, who was clearly happier without him. 

“I’m…” he couldn’t get the lie out. “What are you doing here?” 

“Well, I live here now,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He looked so carefree. “I was in California, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of the heat and the trash. So, I moved back closer to home.” 

“Oh.” 

“You look fancy,” Castiel said, looking him up and down once, and Dean wondered why. When they were kids, Cas would look at him for what felt like hours.

“I uh, I’m on my lunch.” 

“You must be some sort of…” Castiel trailed off. “Finance bro? That’s what you called it, right? Didn’t you want that?” 

Didn’t he? Was that even a question? That was all Dean had talked about besides being a baseball star. How in the world had he forgotten? 

Dean hadn’t forgotten a goddamn thing that Cas had ever told him. 

“Uh, yeah. I work in finance now.” 

And then Castiel smiled. He beamed, like he was truly happy for him. “That’s great, Dean!” 

“Yeah.” It was. On paper, it was. He made a lot of money and he was grateful for his job, but that didn’t change the fact that his apartment was empty. There were paintings hanging on the wall for decoration, but they weren’t Castiel’s. There was a bookshelf that was full of papers and documents, not of Castiel’s favorites, or of the ones he had written and printed out himself. “Um, are you still painting?” 

“Yes, I do it as a hobby.” That shattered Dean’s heart. He had always hoped Cas made his dream a reality. “But I’m a writer now.” 

Dean’s heart jumped. That was always his second favorite thing to do. Castiel was always creating something, always forming something whether it was words on a page or clay. “Wow, that’s… that’s really good. Um, you sellin’ any copies?” 

Castiel chuckled. “Yes. My books have been doing really well. They’re my livelihood.” Dean was terrified to even ask what the books were called. He didn’t want to know, because then he would have to find them. He wasn’t sure he could stomach buying them one day, having a piece of Castiel and his brain and his words inside his home, shoved onto a shelf- “I’m very happy.” 

“I can tell.” Dean could practically see it radiating off of him. Castiel’s joy was the same color as the sunlight that seemed to be absorbing into his skin as they stood outside, and Dean both wanted to never look at Castiel again and never stop. “You look happy.” 

For a moment, Castiel just looked at him with his interrogative blue eyes, and Dean heard the sounds of traffic between their silence. Dean let Castiel look despite how uncomfortable he felt under his stare, because he had missed those eyes. He had missed them so much, even as they looked at him with a guarded expression that he had never seen in them before. 

“Well, I’m gonna go ahead and order my burger,” Dean said, gesturing toward the door, and Cas smiled at him again. 

“Sure,” Castiel said as if Dean needed permission, “it was good to see you.” 

Good to see you. That was what two people who used to sit next to each other in chemistry years ago said. That was what acquaintances said to each other when they intended on never seeing each other again. That wasn’t what Castiel was supposed to say to Dean. 

How fucking painful. 

“You too, Cas,” he said, and he hated the way that the last word faded out. Dean opened the door to the diner and was about to step in when he heard Castiel take in a breath. 

“Hey, Dean?”

Dean’s entire body tensed up at that, and he turned around, hoping that it wasn’t obvious that he was about to fall apart. “Yeah?”

“I hope you’re doing alright.” And then, he watched Castiel give him a small smile, and walk right away from him all over again, with a certain light jog to his step that was new to Dean, leaving him to walk into the diner with a dazed look on his face, and tears in his eyes the second he finished ordering. 

Dean ate his lunch in silence. His burger tasted like ash in his mouth as he thought about the bridge he was sure he had sent crashing down in flames years and years ago. His hands shook, almost like they used to all the way back in middle school when he stopped up to the plate to bat. His heart was racing in his chest, and when he realized his time was up, he left enough money to pay for the tip and left without saying goodbye to his favorite waitress. 

As the day went on, most of what Dean did, he did in silence. Where he would usually be talking or being charismatic, he was a blank sheet of paper. Whether that was the breakroom or the printing area, he didn’t say a word. He clicked away at the computer on his desk with no music on, no background noise, and his door was completely closed. 

On his drive home in his Baby, he didn’t turn the music on. That was a first as he drove right to the liquor store, lost in thought and letting his muscle memory guide him. He went right in, grabbed what he needed, paid, and then walked right out, and before he even realized it, he was home and slipping his key into his apartment door. 

Dean’s house was empty. Of course it was. It was clean, but there was practically nothing in there. There was nothing that stood out. There was no personality. He could imagine that it was the absolute opposite of what Cas’s place looked like. He stomped to his prized cabinet and slammed it open, trying not to think of how there would be at least seven paintings hanging up in his hallway if Castiel shared his space. 

He slammed the liquor bottle down on the table just to open it. He stomped to the cabinet and took out a glass way too big for what was about to be poured into it, and he got to it. He didn’t feel the burn, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was simply used to it, or because it blended in with the agony that he already felt. 

There was too much to think about. He had blocked out so much, ran from so much, that it was all catching up to him in one night. His entire kingdom of not being lonely was crumbling, and it was crumbling because of one sighting. His whole adult life, all that he had built without any consideration of who he once was, was being dismantled because he saw the ghost of his past once. Once. 

As Dean sat at his small kitchen table, he thought about the way Castiel’s eyes had looked years ago when he said the words that broke both of their hearts. He thought about the ache in his own chest while he watched his best friend, his something more, walk out of his bedroom for the last time. 

Seeing Castiel again was like a round of rock salt to the chest, and it had him regretting that it wasn’t a real bullet to put him out of his misery. 

They had dreams together. They had spoken about it under the stars. There were so many that they had thrown out there like most kids in high school did, but the dream was for Dean to be exactly what Castiel had almost not remembered, a “finance bro” who had money. And Castiel wanted to be a painter or an author, and Dean always believed that he could. He was always so good at it. And they were supposed to do it all together. 

He remembered when Castiel used to believe in him, too. Used to believe that he could do good, that he could be strong enough to play through a minor injury, that he could pass all his tests. That he could be a good partner. A good man. 

It all crashed over him at one, and he reached out and threw the bottle into the wall. “Fuck!” It shattered, and instead of it bringing him back down to earth, he got even more angry. He looked down at the table, and he was hit with memories from the summer of junior year, when his dad let him and Castiel paint an old table. Cas had made that old, light brown wood into an entirely new piece, transforming it into a beautiful landscape of a garden. Of course Castiel could make regular wood into something worthy enough of being in a museum. He had tried to do the same with Dean, but Dean was just the wood that wouldn’t be sanded down into something smooth, the wood that was too warped-

“Goddamn it!” He shouted, and he punched the table as hard as he could. He ignored the way his knuckles cracked, and he flipped the entire table in a fit of rage, sending glass flying. He picked up the nearest chair and flung it right into the wall, and he was shocked by how easily the legs shattered.

He was losing it. He could feel his mind spiraling faster and faster, like water in a whirlpool, and he felt like he was seconds away from getting sucked right to the bottom. He put the heels of his hands against his eyes, pressing hard, as if that could rid his eyes of the burning of his tears and the images of Castiel, the ghost that haunted every corner of his mind. 

Dean wasn’t an idiot. He knew when he was getting to the point of no return. It was rare he needed help, and even more rare when he wanted it, but he could feel himself starting to hyperventilate, and he knew that he didn’t have a lot of time left before the real descent into despair kicked in, and there was only one person who could even begin to help him. 

He grabbed his phone, scrolling for one name and one name only. The phone rang three times before it picked up. His hands shook, and his breath was ragged as he tried to speak. “Sammy, I need you to come here.” He offered no explanation and hung up, sliding down to the floor with his head in his hands. 

Dean sat there with his hands cradling his head against the wall silently crying to himself. It was the first time he had openly cried in a long time, let alone about Castiel. His heart was heavy as he leaned against the wall, and his mind was racing with so many thoughts that he didn’t even notice Sam come in until he was being touched. 

“Woah, Dean,” Sam said, putting his hand on his shoulder, “what- are you okay? What the fuck happened?” 

Dean could see his brother looking around the room at the disaster he had caused. Sam looked so concerned that it made Dean’s heart clench even more. He must have looked like shit. “I saw Castiel.” 

Sam’s brows shot up. “I’m sorry, you- what?” 

“I saw Castiel.” He repeated it just the same, shaking his head. “I fuckin’ saw him at the diner.” 

It was quiet for a few moments, and Sam’s hand left his shoulder. “He’s back in town, that’s right,” Sam murmured, and Dean slowly turned his head to look at his brother. 

“What do you mean, ‘that’s right’?” 

“I keep up with him,” Sam admitted with a shrug, and Dean’s heart dropped. “I knew he was moving back in the area, but I didn’t think you would run into each other. Not so soon, either.” 

“You knew?” Dean asked, and he felt his temper rising. How in the hell could Sam know that Castiel Novak of all people was coming back and not mention it?  “You should have told me he was coming back.” 

“In my defense, every time I pitched the idea of you talking to him, you lost your mind.” Sam looked around again, and Dean didn’t need him to speak to know that he was using his current state as an example. 

Dean’s mind made him circle back to one of the first things Sam said. “You keep up with him?” 

“He was my friend too, Dean,” Sam defended. “I knew him too.” 

“So, what, do you two text each other, or something?” 

“I call him on holidays,” Sam said casually, and Dean’s eyes bugged out of his skull. 

“Really , Sam?” 

“Castiel’s family wasn’t too nice when we were kids and it only got worse,” Sam said, “he doesn’t have a ton of people to go home to during holidays like we do, Dean. I thought you would have remembered that.” 

The anger swirled through Dean again. “You think I fucking forgot anything about him?” How could he? Why did everyone think that Dean had just miraculously forgotten everything? Why did everyone think that he didn’t give a fuck? “I didn’t forget, Sam.” 

“Well then, you should know why it’s a good idea to call an old friend at Christmastime, Dean.” 

They sat there in silence, shoulder to shoulder in brotherly camaraderie. The quiet was nice, even as the urge to scream again started to swell inside of Dean. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths, begging to be released from the sight of Castiel in his mind. He was seeing images of him from when he was younger, and he was seeing the newest version, the way he looked now. It was all too much. 

“I think that…” Sam sighed. “I think that you should try to meet up with him, Dean.” 

“I don’t know if he wants to see me.” Dean wasn’t sure if he could stomach seeing Castiel so close to him again, either. Not without throwing up all over his shoes. Not without falling to his knees and letting the guilt and regret take him. 

“I didn’t say that he would say yes,” Sam said, holding his hands up. “But I think you should try. This is… clearly something that’s been sitting on your chest for years. Years.” 

“It’s not his job to clear my conscience.” 

“Exactly. And I think you know that now,” Sam said candidly. “I think… for the first few years you were feeling more guilt than anything else. You weren’t ready then. But recently it seems like you finally realized that the sinking feeling in your gut isn’t pity.” 

He was already sick of Sam and his little therapist act, and he was ready to rip his own fucking hair out. “What?”

“I think you’re finally understanding why nothing helps,” Sam said vaguely. “It's a regret that you’re feeling now. You regret leaving. And I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to move on unless Castiel slams the door on you himself.” 

Dean’s heart stuttered. “Slams-”

“He may open it, who knows? But you hurt him real bad.” 

“I know.” 

“The last memory he has of you is of you hating yourself for being gay.” 

“I’m not-”

“You’re gonna have to cut out that denial thing, and you better do it fast," Sam said, shaking his head. “You like men and you like women. You can’t keep a girl around because you miss one man in particular. I get it. It's no big deal.”

For a moment, all Dean could do was look at his brother, his little brother who was taller than him, and even more to Dean’s disdain, smarter than him. Emotionally and otherwise. And he knew Sam was right. He knew that he was, but that didn’t change the fact that he was in his millionth year of fighting a battle he never thought he could win. 

“I… it’s hard, Sammy.” 

“I know it is,” Sam said quietly. “But it’ll be okay. I just want you to be happy, and I think that talking to Castiel might really help you. Whatever it leads to, I really want you to try. I think that one day you two might be able to be on speaking terms. Is that… something you think you would want?”

It was a hard question. Did Dean even want to live knowing Castiel was back in the area, knowing that they wouldn’t ever be anything but cordial if they saw each other again? Or would he rather be his friend, be someone that Castiel smiled at but held at arm’s length? What was worse? Was there a better option? And then Dean remembered how sick he felt when he saw him unprepared, and Dean nodded his head slowly. 

“But before you try, Dean,” Sam said, “you have to do some work on yourself. You have to. Or you’re just gonna make it worse. Sit with yourself for a while, okay? Get your mind straight, come to some conclusions. Ask for help if you need to. And when you’re ready, ask me for his number. Alright?”

Dean hardly remembered agreeing, but he must have muttered something, because his brother patted him on the back, sat with him for a few more minutes, and then got up to leave. Dean looked at the nearly empty bottle of liquor from where he was on the floor, and he turned his head away from it.

Chapter Text

Dean decided that he was going to actively try to pull himself together on a Monday. Monday was the start of a new week at the office, it was when he started new projects, it was when he started to look at the lineups for games for the week, it was when he grocery shopped. And now, it was when he was going to try something different. 

He knew there was a place that sold baseball cards that wasn’t too far away from everything else in the city. It was a comic book shop, but it had all kinds of trading cards, and he figured that he could maybe meet a like minded person who wouldn't stress him out, and at the least, he could find some cards that would make him smile. So after work on Monday, he drove to the comic bookstore in his work suit and tie, trying to look casual as he opened the door and the chimes went off. 

The store was full of shit he had only seen in TV shows. Life-size cutouts of various characters, comic books everywhere, signs and symbols from TV series and movie franchises all over the place, but the more he looked, the more he realized that there was actually organization within the madness. There was a replica of the Millennium Falcon hanging from the ceiling, and he was stunned for a moment as he just looked at it. 

As he gaped up at the ship, he was greeted by someone coming around one of the tall shelves. A flash of red, and he realized that it was hair, and that the someone was a short woman with a bright smile on her face, giving him the Vulcan hand salute.

“Welcome to Charlie’s Comic Book Emporium-” the red head paused, looking him up and down, and Dean frowned a bit at the blatant judgment written over her expression. “No offense, but you don’t look like you like comics at all.” 

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I don’t usually do comic books, but I heard you guys have baseball cards here?” 

Her brows raised. “Ah, yeah. That checks out.” She grinned at him, and for a moment he wondered if she was a natural redhead or if it was dyed. “Cool! All flavors of nerds are accepted here,” she said, coming from behind the counter. “I’m Charlie.

“Hey, Charlie,” he said, and then his eyes flickered down to the pin on her shirt. It was a rainbow pin that quite literally said GAY on it. His eyes lingered there, and he saw the moment she tensed up. 

“Got a problem with lesbians?” 

His eyes went wide. “What? No.” 

“Cool,” she said, smiling again. “Good to hear. Almost everyone is fruity around here. Or incels, depending on the customer.” 

He was momentarily stunned by her bluntness and her approach to humor, but he couldn’t help but crack a smirk at her. 

“Anyway, I have a book of cards for baseball dudes like you. Come on.” He followed her as she practically skipped through the store, and she went behind a counter. He waited there as she brought out a binder. 

He didn’t expect for her to have pristine cards set up in books. Some of them he already had, but others were rare, and he had never even laid eyes on them himself. He had no clue where she had found most of them, and he realized that he didn’t care as they talked for what seemed like hours, flipping through the books and talking about stats. 

“My dad was big into it,” Charlie said after he asked her when she got into baseball herself, while she was putting the new cards he had picked out into their little protective cases. “Mom hated it, so I figured one of us should indulge him.” 

“Yeah, my dad was into it too,” Dean said, looking around, and his eyes went back to the one little section in the corner for the tenth time since he got there. 

“Is something else catching your eye?” 

“Now that I’m looking around, there are a few things that I used to like as a kid,” he said, looking particularly at the Scooby Doo comic books, and he felt a twinge of warmth go through him when he thought about the times he used to sit with his dad, watching cartoons in the morning. TV, Baby, and baseball. Those were the only three things he and his dad really bonded over. “It’s cool to see. It’s a cool place.” 

“You think maybe you’d be interested in our little community?”

It was a random question to Dean, who was still deep in the world of Scooby Doo. He turned to Charlie with a frown. “Excuse me, what?” 

“Well, some of us get together once a week to read comics together, discuss some stuff like new shows and movies coming out,” Charlie said, looking him up and down. “But it’s not any like, super crazy deep cut comic conversation that you wouldn’t be able to follow along with, promise. Just some like minded people hanging out. And honestly, you seem like you’d fit right in.” 

Back in high school, he might have asked what the hell she meant by that. She was quirky and he was sure that her friends were, too. They were obviously all somewhat gay, she had said it before. And she said that he would fit in.

Instead of being offended, he smiled. It was a small smile, but it was there. He had a good feeling about Charlie. “When do you guys meet up?” 

Charlie grinned. 

§

Dean was nervous. It was Wednesday, and it was seven in the evening. He was skipping dinner at Sam’s for this little comic club meeting, but Sam was more than elated. He was outside of the comic book store, ready to walk in and wearing his casual clothes. He felt like he was six years old again, about to walk into kindergarten and shopping so that the other kids weren’t half as bad as the ones he saw in TV shows. 

“Hey, Dean!” Charlie said. “Welcome. This is our little comic club.” 

She really did mean little. Including Dean, there were four people in the room. Charlie of course was there, gauging his reaction, and then there was a short Asian kid, who looked like he was fresh out of college. He was looking at Dean with slight confusion in his eyes, and Dean realized Charlie must not have told him that he was crashing the party.

The other man was a tall, burly man with a beard. He had on a hat, one of those old fedora-looking hats, and he had a cool, confident look on his face. He raised a hand and waved at Dean, who nodded back. 

“This is Kevin,” Charlie said, gesturing towards the shorter guy, “and this is Benny. This is our little comic club.” 

“Aye,” Kevin said, slinking right up to Dean, “what kind of shit do you like? You look like you like anime, what’s your favorite anime, man?”

“Excuse Kevin, he’s easily the nerdiest of us all,” Charlie said, but Dean could see the way she was holding back laughter. “He’s our strange little ladybug, but he’s the smartest dude I’ve ever met. Benny, this is Dean.” 

The other man, Benny, just nodded his head with a gentle smirk. “Nice to meet ya, Dean,” he said in an accent that was distinctly Cajun and as warm as it was mischievous, “welcome.”

“Welcome to our stupid little club,” Charlie said jokingly. 

Little did Dean know, joining that stupid little club changed everything. 

He hit it off with all three of them. Charlie was witty and had a sharp sense of humor, but she was comforting in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. She was like a ray of sunshine. She was undoubtedly the little leader of the group, and Dean found it amusing. 

Kevin was smart. It became more and more obvious the more he opened his mouth, interjecting his opinion somewhere, giving a point that Dean had never thought about himself. Dean could almost see it in his face how much he thought and how easy it was for him, and he found Kevin beyond interesting. And he could crack a joke or two and take them just as easily. 

Benny was the one that confused Dean. Benny was attractive. He was calm, he was always smiling, and his eyes were inviting. But he also looked at Dean like he knew something, like he was familiar. Dean couldn’t tell if he liked it or not. 

But he knew that he liked the comic book club, and that he was invited again. And again. And again , until the invitation no longer needed to be extended, and he was one of the members that sat at their little round table eating Twizzlers and Cheez-Itz. 

Dean had never felt so fulfilled with just the simple things. Sitting with them wasn’t as exciting as hitting home runs, but it was nice. There was no chaos. He didn’t have to think hard, not like how he did when he was at work. It was just calm. And he realized that it was what he had been missing the whole time. 

§

Something was in the air for Dean, and it felt an awful lot like the changing of the tides. 

The days were getting easier. The nights were still there, the regret and the lump in his throat pressed on, but the days were bearable. Fun, even. He wasn't in bars anymore, he wasn’t winking at anything that had boobs that breathed. He was just there, and he was smiling more than ever. 

Between Charlie, Benny, and Kevin, he felt like a new man. He made good friends out of them in just a few weeks, and he felt like he was an actual person. They made him laugh and he got a kick out of them, too. Kevin recommended him books, and unlike when Sam gave him a list, he actually read them and liked them. He felt like he was willing to be open. 

But the thoughts of Castiel always came back, and every time he saw Sam, he would see the look in his eyes and the silent question that always seemed to be on the tip of his tongue. 

Part of him did feel ready to just walk up to Castiel, say a few things, and wait for the verdict. He was ready to get it over with, hopeful that they could shake hands and be done or… and that was the problem. Dean wasn’t sure what he wanted. 

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to apologize and leave it there, or if he wanted to be his friend again. He didn’t know if he wanted to stop there with friendship, either. Even then, he had to be ready for multiple levels of rejection. But he knew that before he called him, he had to at least know what he was calling for. 

One day on Comic Book Wednesday, Kevin just shrugged after Charlie brought up Dean’s love life as a conversation starter. They all knew about Castiel, and they all had near the same opinion that Dean never asked them for. They saw him clam up a little less every time they brought his old friend back up, and they all took it as a pass to keep adding their two cents in. 

“It’s clear you still like the guy,” he said. “I think that trying to be friends again would just ruin you, honestly. Either do it all at once and rip the band aid off or don’t call him at all.” 

Dean had to give it to Kevin. He was one step ahead, even inside of Dean’s own brain. 

“He’s right,” Charlie said, giving him a pitied smile. “The reason this means so much to you is because you still have feelings for him. But I think it would be better to say it all at once, rather than get to know him all over again just for him to tell you a few months down the line that it can never happen.” 

After two more nights of contemplation that he went through stone cold sober, he agreed with them, and he came to a few other conclusions, too. Ones that he felt his younger self might have even been proud of himself for. 

He still needed work, and he knew he would feel different when he was standing in front of Cas, but he felt like he could try.

He owed it to himself to try. 

That afternoon, he called Sam on the way home. His mind was all mush as he explained himself, as he promised to Sam that he was ready to do it, like he was on some sort of phone interview. It was entirely too easy to get the information from Sam, who seemed ready to let Dean sink or swim. 

Talking to Sam was the easy part. 

The hard part was sitting by his phone at eight at night after dinner, food sitting heavily in his stomach as he looked at the black screen sitting on the table. His breathing was a little shallow as the thousands of ways the conversation could go ran through his mind at the speed of light, and finally, he picked up the phone and turned it on. 

He forced himself to go to Sam’s text thread and press the number he had sent, and the second it started ringing, Dean’s heart rate shot through the roof. He held the phone tightly in his hand as it rang once, twice, three times, and then he shook his head. He’ll think its a spam call, he won’t answer -

Silence. “Hello?”

Dean closed his eyes. Hearing his voice wasn’t easier after listening to it in person. He let it sink in, he marinated in it and the memories it brought despite it being so different from the one he came to know years ago.  

“Um, hello? Is anyone there?” 

Dean’s voice was stuck in his throat. He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t think of anything else. He just sat there at the table, looking at the empty stove and hoping that Castiel didn’t hang up on him. He took a deep breath in, and then he breathed out, closing his eyes. 

There was a short silence on the other end, and then an exhale. “Dean?” 

Dean’s eyes flew open. He hadn’t said a word yet. He didn’t know how Castiel could know just based on his breathing, and that made him even more nervous. Was it possible that Castiel thought of him just as much? 

“Hi,” he finally said, “um, hi, Castiel. It’s Dean.” 

“Yes, I gathered that. Where’d you find my number?” And then there was a short laugh. It sent shockwaves through Dean’s heart. “Sam?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, Sammy gave it to me. I asked.” 

“It must be something important if you asked Sam for something,” Castiel said, and if he didn’t know better, Dean would say he sounded amused. 

This was Dean’s chance. He couldn’t call a second time, that would make him seem desperate (not like he wasn’t). He chewed his own words and tasted them in his mouth for a second before he finally got the strength to speak. “I was wondering if you wanted to talk.”  

“Talk?” 

“Do you want to just grab some dinner?” Dean rushed out, rubbing his forehead, and he swore he could see the blank look on Castiel’s face from in his own kitchen. 

“Dinner?” Why was he repeating everything like Dean was speaking Japanese? 

“Yeah. We could catch up.” 

More silence. Dean stared at the table, contemplating life. “Catch up in what way, Dean?” 

“Just the normal way.” Was there any normal way for them? After what they used to be? The ache in Dean’s heart was screaming at him otherwise, and the warning words from his friends were, too. But he also knew that he couldn’t say it all at once, his mouth wouldn’t let him, and he couldn’t walk away completely, either. “We could sit and talk.” 

The silence that came after was absolutely deafening. Dean could hear his own heartbeat like cannons in his ears, going off rhythmically as he tried to hold his breath. 

“Yes, that’ll be fine.” 

The tension left Dean’s body like air from a popped balloon. “Oh okay, cool. Yeah.” 

“Do you want to try the diner?” Castiel asked casually, and Dean wondered how on earth he could sound so unshaken. “Do Sundays work for you?” 

Sundays used to be the days where I used to sit alone with a beer and think about you, actually, Dean wanted to say. “Yeah. Sundays are perfect. You wanna do this next Sunday?” 

“Sure.” There was a round of silence. “I’ll see you then, Dean.” 

§

Sunday arrived too quickly and too slowly all at once. Dean spent an hour wondering if he should leave the stubble or shave it, and he ended up leaving it. Maybe it would help him feel more grown up than he really did. Dean spent another half hour picking clothes, and he settled on something casual but not too lazy. He contemplated sending a picture to Sam, but realized he was acting like a teenage girl on prom night and decided against it. 

Dean drove to the diner with his hype music on, trying his best to avoid the fact that he was essentially going to his glory or his doom, and that he virtually had to be okay with it all resulting in either one. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, wondering what Castiel’s car looked like as he parked, and wondering if he had shown up first. 

As he walked into the diner, he knew he didn’t show first. Of course he didn’t. Castiel was always early to everything, and he clearly hadn’t lost that trait. He was sitting at a booth, staring off into space, and for a moment Dean just watched him, wondering what had him thinking that deeply, and freely admiring him for a few moments. He wanted to look at him forever, and he probably would have done it, if Castiel’s head didn’t start turning in his direction. 

Dean held his hand up in an awkward wave, smiling as much as he could without seeming scared or like he was trying too hard, and he finished the walk to the booth. “Hey.” 

“Hello, Dean.” 

That was it. He had been craving those two words for so long, like a drink of water after a marathon. 

Dean nodded, and for a moment, they both just looked at each other, drinking each other in, neither one willing nor able to say much of anything. It was a stark contrast from their days in high school, and it made Dean’s stomach churn. Right as he cleared his throat, a waitress that he had been sat with multiple times before was right there with a shake in her hand, grinning. 

“I saw you come in and I went ahead and had it made for you,” she said, sitting it down at the table. Dean thanked her quietly, and though it was embarrassing to be known for a chocolate shake, he was happy for the icebreaker. “What can I get for you, sir?” 

“Water would be nice, thank you.”

“Sure thing,” she said, and then she walked away, leaving the two of them alone again. 

They sat across from each other, not speaking. There was so much to say, so many points to make on both sides, but Castiel was looking at him like he was simply waiting. Dean sipped his shake, and he listened to the song playing. 

I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me 

He cleared his throat when he recognized it. “Fleetwood Mac, huh?” 

“It is.” 

That was a lot less than he was used to Castiel talking. “Do you still uh,” Dean wiped the condensation from his drink onto his pants. “You still like them?” 

“I saw Stevie Nicks live last year,” Castiel said, smiling a bit. “She was amazing. It’s crazy to see her live after all this time of me listening to her music.” 

“That’s really cool,” Dean said. 

“Are you still into dad rock?” 

“Of course,” Dean chuckled. “Still into it, I still drive Baby.” 

“I wouldn’t have imagined anything else,” Castiel said, smiling a bit. “Glad to hear she still runs.” 

“She’ll run until I die,” Dean said proudly. “I take good care of her.” 

Castiel nodded. “Of course. You always did.” Dean’s mind flashed with memories of him sneaking Castiel away in it, laughing as it rumbled out of the driveway at night. Back when it wasn’t his car quite yet, but being dangled over his head as a graduation present, single handedly the greatest thing his father had ever given him. “So, have you been here this whole time?” 

“In the area, yeah,” Dean said. “It’s a good place for my career, not too far from my parents, or Sammy. It’s good.” 

Dean shrugged his shoulders after he finished talking. He figured Castiel had years and years of good stories to tell about the places he had been, and as much as he wanted to hear them, part of him was sad that he wasn’t part of those memories. 

Dean cleared his throat and forced himself to look into Castiel’s blue eyes, peering into the surface like a scared little boy leaning over the edge of the grass to look into the lake. “So, you were out of state for a while, how was that?” 

He saw Cas’s eyes light up. “My writing and my art brought me to a lot of places and I’ve met so many people. I’m so grateful for it,” Castiel said, “I’ve been to tropical islands, and Paris, and Rome, and Tokyo, and I’ve been to cool places inside the country too, like to Colorado in the winter, holed up in a cabin to write my books. I’ve been doing some traveling, but most recently I settled down in California.” 

“California?” Dean asked, brow raised. “California is expensive.” And it wasn’t Castiel’s vibe. Or at least it wasn’t a decade or so ago. Castiel used to complain about how the more people there were in an area, the less original and full of life art became. Dean never really understood what he meant by that, but whatever Castiel said about anything like that was law. 

“Yeah, but I lived with my fiancé-” instantly, Dean’s mind shut off. He was still looking at Castiel’s mouth, the lips he used to kiss were still moving, his blue eyes that used to bring Dean so much peace were still blinking, but Dean wasn’t hearing a thing. 

Castiel had a fiancé. He was getting married? 

Dean was glad that he didn’t have his food yet, because if he had already taken a bite of the burger, he was certain that he would have thrown up all over the table. 

He missed his chance. His window was gone. It was closed. It had been closed ever since he kissed that girl in the bar, and probably before that. He ruined his own life, his own chance to not be miserable, before he even understood the choice in front of him. 

And he fully deserved it. 

Castiel deserved to be loved. He was such a sweet soul. So gentle. So kind. So understanding. Even when Dean stomped on his heart, he wasn’t ever mad at Dean, he felt sad for him. Sorry for him. He was a little oddball, but he was always Dean’s little oddball. Castiel deserved more than what Dean gave him, and he realized that years ago. But he wasn’t prepared for the consequences. 

He wasn’t prepared to hear that Castiel was going to be gone forever. 

“Dean?” Dean forced himself to blink. His eyes moved away from Castiel as he tried to ground himself. “Are you alright?” 

“Uh, yeah. Of course,” Dean said, sipping his shake. It was suddenly too thick for him to swallow. “Sorry, I zoned out, it’s been a busy week. Uh, so you said you were living with your fiancé?” 

“Yes, out in San Diego,” Castiel confirmed matter-of-factly, as if Dean hadn't just forced himself to completely pivot in the middle of the diner.

“You uh, wow,” Dean said, forcing himself to smile. “You’re getting married. Congrats, man.” 

Castiel blinked at him, and that blank expression reminded him so much of when he said the dumbest things back in English class, and when Castiel would simply watch him until he stumbled onto a conclusion that was close enough to the answer. 

“You must have missed the part where I said we didn’t work out and I moved back here to get away from him.” 

Before Dean could jump up and down about the fact that Castiel wasn’t getting married, Dean went into protective mode. “Get away from him? What did he do?” 

“He didn’t do anything,” Castiel said, “but we just didn’t work out. And I didn’t want the memories, so I came back. I can write from anywhere, that’s the beauty of it.” 

“And you chose home?” Dean asked, “you chose to be home, of all the places you could go?” 

Castiel looked Dean up and down, and Dean felt himself flush a bit at the sudden attention. “I find that home is… inspiring.” 

"Inspiring?" 

"Being around things from the past is always good. So is travelling and finding new places and new people, of course. But there's nothing like nostalgia." 

Nostalgia. Dean's biggest enemy and his greatest comfort. His memories were his prized possessions that no one could take away, but they were also the main devices that tortured him. Nostalgia was something he ran away from, and something that he actively chased. The biggest piece of evidence of the back-and-forth war in his mind was sitting right in front of him, telling him that he used that fuel to write his stories. 

“How’s Gabe?” Dean blurted, trying to run from his gaze. “I always wondered how he was doing.” 

“Gabriel is doing really well, actually,” Castiel said, smiling proudly. “He opened his own candy store a few years back, and it’s been successful. He’s selling his own taffies there, too.” 

Dean couldn’t help but grin. “Wow, good for him! He’s the only person in the world with a bigger sweet tooth than me.” 

“He surely does have a sweet tooth,” Castiel said, nodding his head with a small smile on his face. “Sam’s well.” 

It wasn’t a question. “Yeah, he is. Doing his own thing now, married. Isn’t that good?” 

“It is,” Castiel said. “It definitely is.” 

The waitress came by, and she took their orders. Dean ordered a burger, and he swore he saw Castiel smile a bit from the other side of the booth. Cas ordered something similar, and when Dean asked what he was smiling at, Cas shook his head. 

“Some things never change.” 

Conversation was awkward. It was bound to be, after so long. After knowing each other’s bodies inside and out so many years ago. Looking at Castiel was like looking back at his younger self, seeing a reflection of the kind of man he used to be. It went on, casual conversations, until their food was dropped off, and the food helped break the ice even further. 

“So, are you with anyone right now?” 

Dean's brows raised. “Uh,” his mind short circuited. “No. Taking a break.” 

“A break?” Castiel repeated, sipping his water. “From what?” Why was he interested? Dean tried to calm himself down, tried to tell himself that it was just polite conversation, but his heart wanted it to be more, even if his brain hadn’t caught up all the way just yet. 

“Just focusing on myself,” he said, and Castiel gave him a look. 

“I’ve never heard that one before,” he said sarcastically, and Dean’s stomach dropped. 

He knew exactly what Cas was referring to. He wasn’t sure if those were the exact words he had said, but he had lived through enough nightmares to know that he had said something equally selfish years ago. He wiped his hands on his pants nervously and looked across the table at Castiel, and he knew that the biggest apology of his life had finally come knocking on his door. 

“Look, Cas-”

“It’s okay.” 

Dean shook his head. “No, man, it’s not-”

“Dean, that had to happen,” Castiel said, “It just did. We were kids. Eighteen years old, trying to find our way. I don’t hate you.” 

I don’t hate you. Dean didn’t even know that those words were what he had been searching for. Reassurance. Even though Castiel never looked like he hated Dean, the last time he saw him was at a party under LED lights with a girl in his arms. He hated himself for it. 

“I’m not sure what you want out of this, but I know you Dean Winchester, and you don’t ever do anything halfway.” The intensity of his blue eyes struck Dean, and it felt like he was in high school all over again. “I don’t know what your motive is, and honestly, I’m afraid to ask.” 

Dean wasn’t sure either. He wasn’t as he walked into the diner, but after hearing that Castiel was almost swept away, almost married to another man, he knew that the sickness in his gut wasn’t just because they used to be friends. He knew it. And he knew exactly what his end goal had been the whole time. 

“I won’t say anything, then.” 

“Probably for the best,” Castiel agreed. 

Dean swallowed as he sat there in the booth, and he hated the way he felt his eyes start to burn. Instead of speaking, he picked up his burger and ate.

The rest of the meal was in silence. Dean felt more and more clammy as he realized that he had no idea where the town of them stood, especially as Castiel just kept staring. He was on the end of a judgmental gaze he couldn’t quite place. It made him uncomfortable, and made him feel electric all the same. 

Just as Dean thought that he would make it out of the dinner alive and intact, familiar guitar chords started up, and his heart skipped multiple beats as he recognized the song from the hairs standing up on his arms down to his bones. He couldn’t help looking up at Castiel, who was already watching him right back. 

Every breath you fucking take, Dean thought to himself. This has got to be a goddamn joke. He would never forget this song for multiple reasons, all involving Castiel, but the memory that screamed the loudest was the very last one he had of Castiel before meeting him again, the one that arguably ruined it all. 

He played off the sick feeling in his stomach with a smile, one that would have charmed any girl in any bar. “What a, uh,” Dean said as Sting sang. “Blast to the past, huh?” 

Castiel’s face didn’t change, and he blinked at him twice. “The song is having a resurgence in popularity, I’ve noticed.” The waitress came by asking if they were ready for boxes at the best time. 

"Are you two separate or together?"

Dean paid for both of them, and he didn’t miss the small smirk on the other man’s face as he took up the check. They walked out together, and Dean could feel his heart pounding. It was over. They had talked. Dean had gotten his “closure”. He could leave Castiel alone. Even though he didn’t want to. He really didn’t fucking want to. 

“Well, it was uh,” Dean said, clearing his throat for what felt like the hundredth time. “It was nice to see you again. Good to talk, you know?” 

“Yep.” That was a short response. Dean grimaced and tried to brace himself for Castiel to tell him that they could go their own separate ways again, go back to living different lives and never talking, but Cas turned to him. 

“You know,” Castiel said, and Dean looked back at him. “They need a coach, with the little leagues. Well, I think they’re middle schoolers, but they need a coach.” 

Dean’s brows furrowed. “ Who ?” 

“There’s a local little league group of kids that need a baseball coach,” Castiel said, giving him a small shrug. “You’re good at baseball.” 

That wasn’t past tense. Castiel still thought he was good?

“I haven’t played in years, Cas.” 

Dean was hoping that Castiel would ignore how easily the nickname slipped off of his tongue. “I’m sure you could still play in your sleep, Dean. And you were always good with kids. I’m sure they’d love you.” 

“Eh,” Dean said, shrugging his shoulders. “It sounds fun, but I’m not sure.” 

He wasn’t sure if it was because of the past and nostalgia or something else, but Dean finally recognized the look in Castiel’s eyes. It was the very same look he would give a painting. It was the same look he would give a canvas when it looked perfect to anyone else, but there were still a few more brush strokes for him to do in his eyes. He was looking at Dean like he was an unfinished portrait. 

He wasn’t finished with Dean. 

“You should think about it.” 

Dean blinked. “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “I uh, I’ll think about it.” 

“Good,” Castiel said, and then he gave him that same smile as last time. “I’ll see you around, Dean.” And just like that, he was gone again, leaving Dean with seeds of hope that he knew needed to be squashed. Or planted. He didn’t have the slightest clue anymore. 

Chapter Text

Castiel Novak was perfectly fine. He lived a privileged life, as far as he was concerned. He was a successful author, and an artist that just so happened to not be struggling. He had loved and lost, been held onto and let go of, and he had learned so many lessons since he left the nest. He was living the dream that he had always wanted for himself, and he knew that most people couldn’t say the same. 

None of those lessons or experiences gave him a cheat code on how to cope with seeing Dean Winchester again after locking the memories of him far, far away.

He ran into him at the diner. It was unexpected, but it didn’t rock his world like he used to be afraid of– at first. Until the first few years after college, he was convinced that if he ever saw Dean again that he might curl up and die in his car after running away. He was pleased with his reaction this time, and it was strange to be the collected one after he used to see himself as being so weak when it came to Dean Winchester. 

Dean was of course even more gorgeous than ever, because of course even time was kind to him, and Castiel had almost let those green eyes pin him into place like they did over and over again so many years ago, but he noticed how haunted they were. They were eyes that were haunted enough to pluck at Castiel’s heart strings, and send his train of thought chugging along with ideas of what could have happened to him. Was he upset about not being a baseball star? Was he recently heartbroken? Was he out of a job? Suddenly, it became a passion project of Castiel’s to determine what the hell was wrong with Dean. 

He went home, he called Gabriel with slightly shaky hands, and Gabe got him to laugh about the whole situation instead of cry. And for a minute, it was funny, and that was all it was. It wasn’t extremely heavy or a dark cloud for just a moment. And then there was that sinking feeling back with a vengeance in Castiel’s gut, one that told him that he ran into Dean for a reason, and that they crossed paths because of something he had no idea of just yet. And he couldn’t shake that thought. Not even with the help of his typed fantasy worlds, or Gabe’s sweet yet striking words. 

Weeks later when Dean called him, he wanted to say he was surprised. He was initially, but when he thought back to the look on Dean’s face, like he had come up and slapped him, he knew that they were both affecting each other. It wasn’t hard to guess that he got his number from Sam, and when they met again at the diner, Castiel realized that it was actually a nice reunion. It felt well with his soul. 

Until Cas came to the conclusion after sitting with his thoughts that he definitely still had feelings for Dean. 

It wasn’t a crush. He was positive that he wasn’t feeling a crush. Crushes were childish, and besides, he had already been with Dean before. He wasn’t wishing for something that was unknown to him or making up scenarios in his mind, writing love letters in a locked journal. He came to the conclusion the night after meeting Dean at the diner that he wasn’t having a crush, he simply just wasn’t as over Dean as he thought he was. And that irritated him.

It was a weird feeling, to be thinking of him again. In all honesty, Cas had left him completely behind as life churned on, and put his face and his voice in the back of his mind, in a shiny box of fond memories that he rarely opened, a collection of memories that made him who he was. He was perfectly fine with that as he fell in and out of love with others and deeper in love with himself, as he went to pride parades and traveled the world and wrote his books. Castiel was complete. 

He had no fucking clue why all of a sudden, Dean was his newest fixation. 

Well, pause. He knew how Dean became a fixation. Dean was his first love, and he felt the effects of Dean for years after he was gone. He knew exactly how alluring Dean and his charm could be. 

But he should have been able to shake him. 

Seeing Dean at the diner threw him off for a moment. Dean was handsome, he always had been, but he grew even more into his facial features and frankly, he was perfect. But they were older, and Cas shouldn’t have fallen into those green eyes so easily again. Maybe it was the sadness in them that drew Castiel in like they were each other’s magnets. 

He kept telling himself he wanted better for Dean. That was all. They were best friends once upon a time, and it’s normal to want to see someone you know blossom into themselves. But what Castiel knew wasn’t normal was the fact that he definitely wanted to look at Dean’s eyes up close again, and feel his hands, his lips. That wasn’t nostalgia. 

“I was over him,” Castiel said on the phone one night to Gabriel, days after he first ran into Dean. He was sure that Gabriel was already tired of having to walk him through the situation, but there wasn’t another person on earth that knew just how intertwined Castiel used to be with Dean. No one but Dean himself, and that surely wasn’t going to work. “I was. And then-”

“And then you saw him, just like in a fairy tale,” Gabe mocked. “I know. That’s not shocking.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“You and Dean…” he heard his older brother sigh. “You could always live without Dean. You’re extremely self-sufficient, even when you’re in love. I’ve seen you travel the world and fall in love and break up just as easily, you’ve never needed anyone. Not even him. But I think you saw him, and now you remember that you miss him.” 

Gabe was right. Castiel was fine without Dean. He was fine with staying inside, he was content under the light of lamps and with the fan on the ceiling. But there was nothing like walking outside and seeing natural sunlight, and feeling a cool breeze on your arms. There was nothing like the relief of breathing fresh air. And that was what Dean had always been to him. The outside sky. Whether it was sunny and the breeze was making flowers dance in a meadow, or if there were tornados spinning overhead, that was Dean.  

“There’s no shame in missing him. You guys had some fun times together, and I really do think that in another timeline it could have worked out. And what did I say? I told you that one day he’d see you again and it would rock his world. And with the way he seems like he really wants to talk to you, I’m pretty sure I’m right. As always.” 

Cas rolled his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, but it sounds like he wants to be friends.” 

“Well, are you cool with that?” Gabe asked, and there was a distinct sound that Cas recognized as Gabriel smacking on a lollipop. “The can of worms is already open. In fact, it’s been like, exploded, by now. Like a Pillsbury biscuit can. Now, you have three choices.” 

Castiel’s brow furrowed. “Three?” 

“Yes, three,” Gabriel said teasingly, as if Castiel’s sanity wasn’t on the line. “Option one, you block him right now and turn around every time you see him in public, Sam too,” Gabriel said, and instantly, Castiel recoiled as if he had smelled something awful. “And you never speak to him again. Let the past die. Rest , maybe that’s a better word. Either way, this is something you ignore and don’t revisit.” 

He already hated the idea. He had done it successfully for years, and eventually it was all fine and dandy, but to do it again? To do it before he understood what Dean’s angle was? To cut it all off before he got to see Dean’s smile, or his green eyes light up again? To turn around before he knew whether or not dean was dying to relearn him, too? That didn’t sound like much of an option. 

“Option two,” Gabe said, smacking again, and Castiel rolled his eyes. “You go for it. You listen to that hopeless romantic that we all know lives inside of you, and you take the blind leap of faith. And when Dean eventually tells you that he got your number from his bigsass little brother because he’s fucking miserable without you, you listen to his groveling and apologies all the way through, and you tell him at the very end of his blubbering that you’ll take him back. And by the end, I mean like, he needs to be close to tears thinking that your answer is still no. He should be at least a little afraid after what he did.”

Cas’s heart was already racing. It was a situation that he wasn’t even in yet, but his stomach was churning. These were exactly the kind of scenarios that he was fighting off, the childish ideations that a kid in middle school would have about their crush. He’s going to come back. He’ll love me. He’ll apologize. This is just a break. He left because he wasn’t sure, but now he is . 

“Option three, you take the middle road, the easy way out, and become his friend. But I think you and I both know that the friendship stage won’t last long between you two, given your history. And, if you choose this one, going down this same painful road and choosing which part of the fork to choose will be one hundred percent inevitable.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Cassie,” Gabriel said slowly, and it sounded serious. He wasn’t teasing, and that made Castiel sit up a  little straighter. “You two are special. I’ve always thought that, even after the stupid bullshit he pulled. I’ve said it a million times, you two cannot be friends. This either crashes and burns and you two end up fucking hating each other, or you two get married.” 

Castiel’s eyes went wide. “What?!” He sputtered. “That’s not- those aren’t the only two endings Gabriel, what the hell are you talking about?” 

“Why do you think you ran into him? Anyone else can see an ex from over ten years ago and be normal about it, by the way. Anyone but you two. There’s too much still here for you two to let it die. Castiel, you write romance novels, you know it either festers into hate or it blossoms into eternal love, or whatever.” 

“I write realistic fiction with romance infused elements,” Castiel corrected quickly, his mind still racing. “We can be friends, Gabriel.” 

“You can?” He asked. 

“I don’t see why not.” The lie went down as easily as a handful of dirt. 

“That easy way out leads right back here, Castiel,” Gabriel said ominously. “Right here, every time. This choice will always be right here, lingering in the back of your mind until you decide to be a big boy.” 

Part of him knew that Gabriel’s advice made sense. In fact, it made so much sense that it made him feel sick. Castiel was stuck in a hamster wheel of emotions, and so was Dean. They were in the same exact wheel with different perspectives, somehow. Or maybe they were in two different wheels that were positioned right in front of each other, staring at each other between the moving bars and watching  helplessly to see who was finally brave enough to step off first. Castile was definitely stuck in a wheel, and he wasn’t sure what he was chasing. He was even less sure of what Dean was after despite the feeling in his gut, and that made him even more terrified. 

“Thank you for your insight, Gabriel,” Castiel said, half sarcastic yet half extremely serious in a way that only Gabriel could pick up on. 

“Remember your big brother gave you this wonderful advice, Cassie.” 

“Alright, Gabe,” Castiel said, putting a hand over his forehead. “Thank you.” And then his brother smacked around candy again and gave some sort of half assed, dismissive goodbye, and then Castiel was all alone with his thoughts again, dwelling on things he thought had been buried years ago. 

§

Like almost all of Castiel’s words, the advice about directing his energy toward something he used to love rattled around in Dean’s mind until one day, he went and called the number on the flyer that he picked up on a walk one day like he was in the glory days again, waiting for someone to pick up. It ended up being someone’s ecstatic mother who answered, and she wanted him to come to the very next practice. 

At first, Dean hadn’t been sure that he even wanted to do it. There was a lot of commitment that came with being the coach of a team, and on top of that, the season had already begun. He wasn’t used to leading little kids, and he sure as hell wasn’t back in the swing of being on the field. But he showed up anyway, because that poor mom sounded so excited that someone actually wanted to help. 

It was great. Dean instantly fell into the coaching role, and he immediately loved the game all over again. The kids were younger than he was when he started to realize the game could take him somewhere, so they were just playing for fun. They were friends just because they were, not because they had to be, and they showed up because they wanted to play, not because they were obligated by some stupid college contract. There was absolutely no reason for any of them to be out there other than to just play the game, and for some reason, that was the best part. 

Within no time, Dean had improved the team by the time their first game with him as coach came and went. They didn’t win, but all the kids were excited. It was the closest they had been to getting a win, and some of the kids who had lost hope gained it back. They were happy, and Dean realized how much that mattered. 

For a while, between coaching and work and the weekly meetings with Charlie and the gang, he felt busy enough to forget about everything else. His heart didn’t feel completely full, but he felt more occupied than he had been in a very long time, and he could settle for that. He could fill the void with that, and he was doing a good job of living off of a plate that was three quarters full until he saw Castiel on the bleachers one day at a game, sitting there, watching. 

It was so reminiscent of the past that it made his stomach hurt for a few moments. He was older now, they both were, but Cas still had that expression on his face where he didn’t know a single thing about what was going on, but he was watching anyway. Supporting in silence, waiting until someone else from their school started clapping, or until Dean grinned wide or pumped his fist. Dean had seen him that way a thousand times. The only thing that was different was the fact that he wasn’t wearing blue or green, sporting their old high school colors.  

Dean found it both easy and hard to ignore him. They had already locked eyes, so Castiel knew that he knew, but Dean had a team of kids to coach. The kids had no idea that the biggest regret of his life was sitting there watching, and it wasn’t even close to being their problem. So, he took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves when no one was watching and continued on, coaching through the whole game and jumping up and down with the kids when they won for the very first time. 

“I told you guys!” Dean said, and his heart was pumping with that happy adrenaline he had missed so much. “I told you that you guys could do it.” 

There was so much chatter around him as some of the kids hugged him and others ran right to their equally excited parents, and for a moment, Dean remembered that this was what life was about. And then he saw dark hair and a familiar frame flash from the side of his line of sight. 

Dean was heavily aware of Castiel patiently waiting as he chatted with the parents. Dean was practically giving each parent highlight reels of their kids, reenacting and laughing with them, congratulating the whole team as they drank juice boxes and ate rice krispy treats. When the last parent took a few steps back, and the field was emptier by the second, Dean felt the air shift, and Cas came up beside him. 

It was quiet between them for a moment as they smiled at each other, both of their smiles somewhat knowing. “I see you like coaching,” he said, and Dean nodded his head. “I had a feeling you would. You were always good with kids.”

“I think they had fun.” Dean said absentmindedly, squinting to look at Cas, and he noticed that with the way the sun looked behind him that it almost looked like he had a halo. 

“They look really happy,” Castiel noted, nodding his head. “They always used to look so sad, and they carried themselves like they doubted themselves. You’ve changed that.” 

“Eh, they changed it,” Dean said with a shrug. “It’s all about mindset. And these kids are great,” he said, looking out at the empty field. He could still hear the cheers of the parents and the excited shouts of all the kids, and it made him smile.

When he looked back at Castiel, he saw him still looking with those blue eyes, eyes that spoke three times as much as his lips did, even if the words translated as riddles. It was intense as they stood there, just looking at each other, and finally, Dean looked away. 

“Thanks for uh, recommending it to me,” he managed to get out, still looking ahead at the cars speeding past. “I never would have thought of doing it.” 

“You’re very welcome, Dean.” More silence, besides the filler sounds of traffic and far away voices. It wasn’t awkward, it was smothering, like both of them were choking on words that wouldn’t ever be said because they were both either too stubborn or too afraid. “Well, it was good to see you, Dean.” 

There it was. The “good to see you” struck again, rigging loud in Dean’s ear. Dean rubbed the back of his head. “Uh, you’re welcome to come watch another, if you want.” 

Dean saw Castiel’s chapped lips curl upwards, and the twinkle in his eyes, and he knew that he was about to say something smart. “It’s a public field, Dean.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “I just mean it wouldn’t be weird if you came, Cas,” he said, letting his sight trail up from Castiel’s mouth and back to his eyes.  

Dean was convinced that they exchanged more with their eyes than any other two people in the world did. They were somehow standing closer to each other than they were a few moments ago, or maybe Dean was just hallucinating. That seemed like something he was definitely capable of, especially when it came to Castiel. 

“That’s good to know,” Castiel finally said, nodding his head. “Goodbye, Dean.”

“Bye, Cas,” he said, and he watched Castiel raise a hand and wave once, turning on his heel and walking off of the field without a glance back, and Dean wondered if he knew that he was watching him walk away. 

Dean did the same in silence, and the second he got back in the car and on the highway, he turned the music up as loud as it could go. 

§

Castiel coming to games became a regular thing. It was as regular as Dean’s weekly meetings with the Comic Club, which was smoothly transitioning into a gossip club between them all talking about Kevin and his new crush Chandler, and Charlie and the new girl, Meg. Dean thought Charlie was a little too sweet for Meg, who was charming yet somewhat intimidating, but she was nice nonetheless and it was funny to see Charlie be the one to sweat. 

Dean was about to start coaching when a familiar, huge body came walking right up to him without hesitation. “You’re really in your element here.” 

“What, are you gonna write mom about it, or something?” Dean asked, turning to Sam, who gave him a look. 

“Is it that bad that I want to see you happy?” Sam asked, cracking a smile. “You’re lucky Jess had to work, she would have whipped out her phone and started sending pictures to the family group chat like you’re nine.” 

“Thank god she’s not,” Dean muttered, looking at his kids warming up, and then he saw Sam tense up from next to him. 

“Um,” Sam said with his eyes wide, “There’s- is that Cas?”

Dean looked over in the direction Sam was looking, even though he knew his brother was right. Castiel wasn’t even sitting down at his normal spot on the bleachers yet, he was still walking the path, but Sam’s eyes were observant.  

“Yeah, he’s been coming,” Dean said, and Sam’s eyes went wide. 

“He has ? And you didn’t think to bring that up?” 

“I told you that we were kinda friends.” 

Sam’s entire face changed into a look of betrayal. “You said you two talked! Not that you two are friendly enough for him to be coming to watch your hobbies after work?” 

“Hey, shh ,” Dean urged. “Not here.”

Sam leaned in closer with a hushed tone, but all the excitement was still clearly there. “He comes all the time?” 

Dean shrugged his shoulders, even though it wasn’t insignificant at all. “Relatively often.”

“Dean,” Sam said, lowering his head in disapproval. “Are you doing this in a healthy-” 

“Did you have something important to say, Sam?”

“We’re having dinner with Mom and Dad this Wednesday,” Sam said, glancing at Castiel again. “She called me, and I told her that we’d make it.” 

“Doesn’t Jess work on Wednesdays?” 

“It’s the only day Dad’s free, so he says,” Sam said, and Dean rolled his eyes. “She’ll come to the next one.” 

“Alright. I’ll be there.” Dean shrugged, and gestured. “Go sit down. And don’t- you don’t have to talk to him.”

“Why not?” 

Dean knew that the more secretive he got, the more Sam would see it as some kind of code to crack, so he forced himself to loosen up. “You can if you want, just don’t make it weird.” 

“I’d never make it weird, don’t worry about me,” Sam scoffed. “Good luck to you and the kids, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean said, waving him off playfully, and then he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, and he knew instantly who it was.  

He forced himself to wait for a moment, to wait to turn around, but it didn’t take long at all for him to end up turning his head, looking right toward the one person on earth who he felt could see him from the inside out. He raised a hand as the whistle blew, and he waved to Castiel on the bleachers. Cas waved back, and Dean smiled, turning around and beaming at the little faces looking back up at him expectantly. 

“Let’s play this game, guys.” 

§

Dinner was never formal at their house, especially not now that they were all older. His mom still cooked, his father still sat and looked at everyone like he was judging, but it was mostly the same. Dean felt like he was fifteen again every time he sat down at the table to have dinner with his parents, and this time was no different. 

It was a simple dinner, some chicken, rice, and broccoli. Dean was scarfing it down, and Sam was eating politely, but their mother was looking between each of them with amusement interchangeably, like watching them was some form of television. 

“So boys,” Mary said, “is there anything new with you two?” 

“Well,” Sam said, looking at Dean for a split second, and with the look in his eyes, Dean knew exactly what his brother was going to say. He almost opened his mouth to protest. “Dean’s been hanging out with Castiel.” 

“ Really ?” His mom practically gasped, and Dean glared at Sam. “You reconnected with Cas?”

“Yeah, just a little,” Dean said nonchalantly, even though he could feel his heartbeat in his chest. “We’re back to being friends.” Dean cut a look at his dad, who was much more focused on his chicken than their chatter at the table.

“Friends?” His mom asked, and it almost sounded like she was disappointed to hear it. The spark in her eyes dimmed just the slightest, and Dean frowned a bit. 

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat, looking her up and down, trying to see if he was imagining the joy washing away from her face. “We’re friends again.”

“Yeah, if friends typically gaze longingly at each other from different sides of the baseball diamond,” Sam joked, and Dean’s heart dropped. If Sam had made that joke at a regular dinner between them and Jessica, Jess would have rolled her eyes lovingly at him, telling him off gently, and Dean would have only been mildly annoyed. But it wasn’t even close to being a regular weekly dinner. At all. 

Mary gave him a knowing look, but Dean’s heart jumped in his chest when he saw his dad’s eyes drift over to him, blinking almost lazily. Like Sam hadn’t just said something that changed everything. 

“What are you talking about, Sam?” John finally asked after a few moments of silence, and suddenly, it felt like they were all twenty years younger sitting at the kitchen table after one of them accidentally slipped up, blurting out something they were keeping secret out of fear of punishment. Dean locked eyes with his brother, who already looked apologetic, but there was nothing they could do. 

“I’m friends with Castiel Novak from highschool again,” he said, “nothing special.” 

“Castiel?” His dad repeated with his eyes just a little wider, and then, to Dean’s absolute surprise, he simply shrugged his shoulders. “I could have guessed that earlier.” 

Dean forced himself to breathe through the adrenaline, and he pretended that the breath he managed tot take it wasn’t shaky. “Guessed what?” 

“That ‘friend’ is the code word for boyfriend again,” John sighed gruffly, and a Castiel-sized lump sat in Dean's throat. “Could ya pass me more rice, Mary?” 

Dean Winchester’s world was on standby. It was on complete hold as everyone else kept moving around cautiously, like they were all waiting for the other shoe with the patriarch of the table to drop. He could see Sam lag for a moment, and that brought him comfort only because he knew he hadn’t imagined the quick exchange. The shoe was hanging in the air, hanging by one lace as it threatened to crash into the bowl of rice, but it didn't as John spooned more food onto his plate. 

John Winchester didn’t care. 

It wasn’t that Dean had ever thought he would be disowned for liking men. That was never his impression. But he certainly didn’t expect for his father to react like they were talking about the weather. He was sure that he was in store for a few dirty looks, maybe even an unsavory comment or two before he got used to the idea, but there was nothing. Nothing at all even as Dean held his breath and waited for him to say something around his mouthful of chicken and rice. 

Nothing ever came. 

And then Dean was sent back into his own mind, his personal jail cell that had bars with gaps so wide he could have slipped out at any time, and apparently, no guards waiting outside of the walls of the prison. 

There were no roadblocks left. Society didn’t care. His coworkers wouldn’t think twice. The people he would never see on the street again didn’t give a damn,and the parents at baseball wouldn’t question a thing. There was no team full of college boys who he was scared of being outcast from, and now, not even his father would give him any shit. There was absolutely nothing holding back Dean Winchester from being himself. 

And that was as terrifying as it was freeing. 

“Well, that was great mom, thank you,” he heard Sam say politely, and Dean was tossed out of his own thoughts just like that, and he blinked up from his half eaten dinner and nodded his head robotically, thanking his mom. Everyone had finished their dinner, and he wondered how long they had allowed him to just stare off into space. 

“Really good,” he agreed, “um, I have an early morning. I have work,” he explained weakly, and his mother nodded at him sympathetically, but he knew the sympathy had nothing to do with the fact that he had to wake up early. 

“I should head out too,” Sam said, and Dean could have clapped with joy. Maybe if they walked out together, he could hide behind Sam’s big ass body. “It was really good though, thanks for having us over.” 

Fuck hiding. He wanted to run. Dean couldn’t get out of the chair fast enough. He practically scrambled up from the table as everyone else moved at a normal pace, hardly able to look at his dad. He hugged his mom and grabbed his car keys and phone off of the counter, and when he got to the front door, his father was already waiting for him. 

“Castiel, huh?” John said, and Dean swallowed. 

“Yep.”

“Hm." And for a moment, that was all that there was. They were both standing by the front door, face to face, and Dean could feel his father’s gaze on him, like he was examining him from head to toe, looking for any cracks in his exterior. 

“He was always good to you,” John said, sipping his beer. “Don’t be an asshole, Dean.” 

Dean nodded his head twice, his head bobbing like a buoy in the ocean. “Of course not.” 

“Hm,” John grunted again, and he opened the front door. “I’ll see ya, Dean.” There was a pause. “Love ya, son.” 

The lump in his throat got ten times bigger, and Dean couldn’t do anything more than whisper the words back as he practically jogged out of the front door, his hand over his heart, trying to stop it from bursting in his chest. 

§

Dean’s Tuesday was monotonous. It was the same as normal, crunching numbers and talking to clients. The only thing different was Arthur Ketch’s very brief presence. He was a fellow that could have easily been written off as stuck up, but after speaking to him a few times, Dean realized he wasn’t the worst. 

“I saw you at the kid’s baseball diamond this weekend,” Ketch had said, standing over his desk. “You coach little league?”

“I do,” confirmed Dean, typing away. “It’s fun. Cute.”

“That’s nice,” Ketch said, “and who’s that dark haired fellow who was standing really close to you?”

That made Dean stop. “Huh?” 

“There was a man in a long coat, a trench coat maybe? I assume you two were friends, but I didn’t recognize him.” 

“Uh,” Dean said, blinking up at him. “He’s an old friend. You wouldn’t know him.” 

Ketch narrowed his eyes. “Friend?” 

“How long were you sitting at the light for?” Dean asked somewhat jokingly, but he also wondered how close they must have been standing for Ketch of all people to question what was going on. 

“A while. It’s a lengthy light,” was all Ketch said before getting distracted by something else, walking away. “Until next time.”

And for a few minutes, all Dean could think about was the fact that someone had seen him and Cas, and looked at them for long enough to suspect something. And then, as he remembered his father’s shrugs and his mother’s sweet smile, he found that he truly didn’t care. 

The rest of the day passed by quickly. He said goodbye to his boss and his coworkers like it was any other day, but instead of just walking down to his car, he shrugged his shoulders and started to walk down the semi-busy street. 

The noises of the city were somewhat grounding to Dean. Honking horns, people laughing, high heels clicking, chimes above doors swinging in the wind. It all reminded Dean that there was so much more, and that nothing mattered. In a good way. For the first time in a long time, nothing mattered to Dean in a good way. 

Dean was walking past a coffee shop when the door swung open, and he stepped back only to see a familiar, curly head of blond hair. 

“Oh, hey, Dean,” Jessica said, and Dean smiled at her. “How are you?”

“I’m doing good, just heading home after this.” He saw Sam walk out of the coffee shop door, too, waving to him casually. 

“Hey, I saw on Facebook that a familiar face is having a little art exhibit,” Jessica said, and Dean perked up. “It was actually really good. He’s talented.” 

“I should go.” And then, Jessice beamed, like that had been her intention. 

“Yeah, Dean,” she said, nodding her head. “You really should.” 

“She still has game, even after all this time,” Sam said slyly, and Dean couldn’t help but smile at the two. They were so in love that it was damn near gross. “She’ll help you get him back.”

The smile slipped off of Dean’s face, and he nodded his head. “Thanks, guys. Jess,” he amended, and then he nodded back to the way he came, deciding it was time to get in the car and go home. “I’ll see you guys around.”

Dean got home quicker than usual, and he wasn’t sure if he was absentmindedly speeding or if he was off in his own mind during the drive. Either way, he went into his apartment and kicked off his shoes, intent on eating a  quick smashburger and sitting on the couch. He made dinner with thoughts bouncing around in his head, and he found himself logging onto Facebook and looking up events in the area, and sure enough, there was a photo of Castiel’s smiling face and some of his art, and there was an exhibit on Saturday. 

His heart raced as he thought about showing up. He knew he had to show up just like Cas did for him, but he wondered why he never mentioned it. Did Cas not want him there? Would his presence kill the mood? Or did he never bring it up because he thought Dean wouldn’t show anyway? Dean didn’t like any one of those answers, and he knew then and there that he absolutely had to be at the art show, and that the reaction was something to worry about later. 

He was going to the damn art show. 

§

Dean felt sick. He was all dressed, business casual, looking at himself in the mirror as the clock ticked down. He didn’t want to be too early. He wanted to slink into the crowd, walk through and look at the art, show his face a little, and leave Cas to be happy. 

He drove to the exhibit hall in silence. Not even Metallica could calm him down as he sat in stop and go traffic, breathing shakily as he let his anxiety run wild. He ignored the call from Sam, and the text that came after, and when he parked in the lot, he rubbed his hands onto his pants. The lot was pretty full, which made him happy. He was glad Castiel was having a good turn out. His work deserved to be seen. 

He got out of his car on his bowed legs, and forced himself to confidently walk up to the front door. He took a deep breath before he pulled it open, and he was met with small swarms of people walking everywhere, stopping to look at certain pieces. His eyes trailed all around as he looked for Castiel, hoping to spot him first. When he didn’t he walked further into the room, quietly bouncing from exhibit to exhibit.

It was all beautiful. It was all so effortlessly Cas, and Dean felt his heart pump harder as memories swirled. It was so nostalgic but so fresh all the same, and he was glad that he was alone as he looked at every single painting and sculpture there. It felt almost holy to look at after so long, and he resisted the urge to put his hand by his chest, as if that would help his soul from trying to burst out of his body. 

He was busy looking at a painting of Castiel himself, a self-portrait of him with beautiful angel wings, when the soft music playing changed, and instantly, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck perked up when he recognized the first note. 

Every breath you take

He looked up slowly at hearing Sting’s voice, and he could feel his heartbeat in his fucking fingers as he tried to seem relaxed, scanning the room for someone he knew was already there. He had been spotted, and this was Castiel’s response. 

He found him easily. He was standing alone at a distance away, close enough so that Dean could see his expression. He looked surprised, but he didn’t look upset. He didn’t look like he was upset at all, and Dean knew that if he had changed the song to their song, he couldn’t have hated him for showing up. Still, he swallowed thickly, and like a scared kid on the first day of kindergarten, he raised his hand and waved. 

Castiel smiled, and he waved back. 

Like a boy with a crush, Dean turned back around with flushed cheeks and looked back at the painting, focused on the wings. He felt someone come up behind him, like a change in the energy, and he took a deep breath as he prepared himself. 

Castiel slid into his line of sight, and Dean had no choice but to look at him. He was dressed like an artist, casual clothing and with stars in his eyes. “You came,” Castiel said, and Dean shrugged. 

“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

“Do you, uh,” Cas said, gesturing toward the hall, “do you like any of it?” 

“It’s all beautiful. I still think you should open up a museum with only your works-” 

“You’re still the ultimate flatterer, aren’t you?” 

The charmer. The flirt. The playboy. That was him, but it wasn’t anymore. He knew that Cas knew that, but it didn’t sit well with him, and that started to interact with every other negative thought in his head, and he suddenly couldn’t live with the feeling in his gut. 

“Cas,” Dean said slowly, and his heart raced in his chest as he saw Castiel’s blue, all-knowing eyes looking back at him. Like he still knew Dean’s every tell, his every gesture, his every thought. As if there was no time between now and graduation, like they had missed only seconds instead of years. “I… you were right. All those years ago.” 

“About what, Dean?” 

Dean felt faint. Out of all times, of course Castiel chose then to play dumb, like he couldn’t read Dean easier than a book he had memorized. “A long time ago you told me that… I was only hurting myself. By not accepting myself.” 

“Oh,” Castiel said, and for a moment, Dean wondered if that was all Cas had to say. That was all he had to say after Dean had mulled over those thoughts and forced himself to say the words? One syllable? “I was hoping that you would eventually come to that conclusion.” 

Dean nodded his head once. “And this isn’t- this isn’t me begging for sympathy, or pity. I know what I did to you back then. I know, and I’m still sorry.” 

“Sorry about the incident in the club with the girl?” A woman passed between the two of them, yapping about something unrelated as she reunited with the people she came with. 

He was. God knew that he was, but he knew that Cas knew why he had been with her in the first place. Even when it first happened, Castiel knew. God, Castiel was always so fucking smart. He was more mature than most adults when they were just in school, and it seemed that his wisdom had only grown from then. Castiel knew that Dean leaving him and being an absolute horn dog wasn’t a fault on his part. He knew that Dean had something else going on, something internal that he couldn't fix for him. And even as a brand-new adult, instead of getting mad, Castiel had felt sorry for him. Sorry for him, despite the fact that he was the one who was hurt. 

The guilt was overwhelming. It was a tsunami, and Dean’s legs were tied and bound to something he couldn’t see. The wave was coming, and Dean couldn’t do anything but brace himself and hold his breath. “I’m sorry that I killed what we had.” 

Dean was trying not to breathe heavily as he watched Castiel look at him, hardly blinking his pretty, blue eyes. They were ripping the breath from him again, spinning his thoughts into sounds and forcing them right out of his mouth. 

“I’m sorry that I let my own thoughts get between us. Paranoia, immaturity, denial, it was so many things. And I… I guess I’m finally saying sorry. Because you… you had it together. I didn’t. I dragged you down. I got you caught up in all of my shit, and you were a casualty in me hating myself and not understanding. And you didn’t deserve that, at all. So, I’m sorry.”

To his credit, Castiel didn’t look shocked. He didn’t look like he wanted to say “I told you so” either, and that was a win in Dean’s book, but it was still gnawing away at him. Maybe a little less, but his bones still felt like wood, and the exterminator hadn’t quite gotten rid of all the termites. 

“The last time you saw me, I was macking on some girl in the club-”

“That’s not the last time I saw you, Dean.” Castiel said. “I went to your home game. The last game you played.”

Dean swallowed. He would have surely seen Castiel back then if he was there, right? He used to be able to feel those blue eyes on him like he was prey being hunted in the wild. He used to be able to feel his touch from miles away. 

“No, you weren’t,” he said, as if he could have scanned the entire stadium for him and counted him out. 

“I was. I watched the whole thing. You hit a homerun in the last inning. You won the game for the team. You were so happy that day, and your team lifted you up just like you were in a movie-” Cas mused, “and that was the last time I saw you.” 

“You went?” 

“Of course I went, Dean,” Castiel said, and it almost sounded like a snap, “I knew you cared about it. Of course I showed up.” 

Dean’s heart was racing, and his mind wasn’t doing much better. He knew that they were talking about something that wasn’t going to be brought up again. Their rights and wrongs of the past were going to be buried, and he knew that the moment where he could bare his soul and confess was about to leave, and he wasn’t sure when he was going to get another chance. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to wait for another chance. 

“Can we just- get some ice cream or something?” Dean blurted, and for the first time, Cas looked like he had been thrown for a loop. 

“Get ice cream ?” Castiel echoed back, almost like he thought it was a prank, and Dean shrugged his shoulders. 

“It’s either that or I tell you that I don’t think I ever stopped being in love with you, Cas,” Dean rushed out, and before he could even start to take it back, his mouth started running like Baby's motor. “I fucked up. I know it. You know it. Fuck, everyone who knows us knows it. I’m not trying to fix it because I feel bad or because I’m guilty, I’m trying to fix it because I know that you’re my person. You always have been, and I’m just an idiot.”

For a moment, Cas just stood there, and Dean was full of everything from regret to relief, and then he saw Cas’s face break out into a smile. A low chuckle filled the air between them, and then Cas’s blue eyes were looking up at him. 

“How about you help me clean up when it’s time, and we’ll see about the ice cream?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s perfect.”

And for the first time in a long time, everything actually felt like it really was perfect.