fic, Supernatural: Doghouse Roses (Dean/Castiel), PG13, for dc_fireplace
Aand, second entry!
Title: Doghouse Roses
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG13 just to be overly sure.
Wordcount: 5600
Summary: And it just says everything that, in order to act instead of speaking, Dean doesn’t just buy Cas a drink but buys him fake roses that aren’t even worth a dollar.
Spoilers: vague references up until 5x13, but since I wrote this at the beginning of February, I'd say general S5.
Disclaimer: Supernatural is most definitely not mine and the title isn't mine either.
A/N: this came to me after reading the first story in Steve Earle's book Doghouse Roses, and well, I happened to love the title, then my head started making connections and here it is. Apart from the presence of the roses in the title it doesn't have anything to do with the short story in question, though.
The first time, it’s blue.
A tiny, plastic blue rose inside an equally tiny plastic cylinder, the only one of that color among another thirty or so, near the checkout of a small convenience store somewhere in Illinois where Dean had to go because Sam stole the last beer from him and he urgently needed a drink of the light kind. It costs 99 cents and it stands out in a dull mix of yellow and pink ones; the blue it’s the rose’s only redeeming factor. A deep, pure shade of blue, not too different from…
Cas’ eyes, Dean can’t avoid thinking, and he’s back to the reason he needs a drink. Because when your own personal angel who is also one of the three people who is currently having your back, not to mention one of the two people close enough to Dean that could be considered family, appears in your room looking tired, tells you that any other day from now he might lose his freaky teleportation abilities and so Dean should really check his phone because Castiel might need to call him if he’s stuck somewhere and then disappears, you need a drink.
He can’t just not think about the difference between Cas’ voice and his face while he talked; the voice was the usual flat deadpan one-octave-lower-than-acceptable, telling it just like it was a matter of fact, but his stare was pouring out something that Dean could only describe as quiet desperation. He had been about to say something but then Cas had said some crap like needing to go because until he could still move freely he should take advantage of it, and then he had disappeared.
And now Dean is thinking about the hopelessness that was pouring out of Cas in waves before, and it just makes no sense at all; he should be doing something, not staring at a fucking fake plastic rose that is reminding him of Cas. Isn’t that just stupid? Not to mention the epitome of chick-flick, but that’s another whole problem. But there’s something fucking fragile about the fucking fake plastic rose, something about the oddness of the blue against all the yellow and the pink ones, and Dean should really just go. He has never bought a girl flowers, not even Cassie, and Cas is a fucking friend, not anything else and not anything more, and if what’s between them is not regular friendship, well, Cas would also be Dean’s first real friend and Dean is fucking thirty years old, so yeah. From wherever you see it, it’s fucked up. Also, friends don’t buy friends flowers, even if they’re fake.
Except that it’s not flowers. It’s one flower, and not even a real one, and it costs 99 fucking cents and it’s corny and stupid and useless; but then again, Dean thinks bitterly, Cas turned his back to Heaven for him (he was pretty clear on that), is losing all that has defined him for… millennia or whatever, has been forced on some crazy quest where he’s mostly alone, has fucking brought him out of Hell and seems to like corny stuff himself (hey, he likes Chuck’s books, dammit). And Dean hasn’t really given him back much if not for a night at a den of iniquity which Cas didn’t even want in the end; what’s 99 cents and looking like a colossal idiot in comparison to it?
Oh, fuck it, he thinks before grabbing the blue rose and putting it on the counter next to the six pack. The store owner looks at him in sympathy as he checks his purchases.
“You need your girl to forgive you, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Most people buying those roses have screwed up and don’t have much time to say sorry. But it works, I tried it a couple times myself.”
“Well, not exactly,” Dean mutters as he gets out of the store. The tiny cylinder in the pocket of his coat feels heavier than the pack of beer.
He doesn’t see Cas for three days, after that; and he almost forgets about it, even if it stays tucked inside his coat. He just doesn’t think about it. This, until Cas pops in unexpected one evening while Sam is at the library researching some crap about how to stop the last horseman from rising; he looks even more tired than usual, his clothes are way too rumpled even for him and he just drops sitting on a chair while Dean barely has time to shut the TV off.
“Is the search…?”
Cas just shakes his head and doesn’t say anything. He looks so defeated that Dean can’t help seeing that future version of him blatantly stating that amphetamines are indeed one of mankind’s greatest inventions, and that should worry him enough; and then he sees Cas reaching for his neck.
“Cas, what…?”
“I think you should take this back. I am beginning to think that…”
Dean stands up and goes in front of the chair; Cas raises his head and Jesus, just, Dean can’t just stand how Cas looks plainly defeated. And then his head goes straight to 2014 and just, no. Even if he would like to have his amulet back, after all, at this point it’s almost a question of principle. If he fucks up, Cas doesn’t need to go down with him.
“Keep that. I don’t want it until you’re done with this, however it ends.”
“It’s…”
“I don’t care. Keep it,” Dean says with a this is definitive tone, and then he remembers that ridiculous rose. Well, considering that it’s not like he has many other ideas to cheer Cas up, he’ll just chance it. As Cas nods, he reaches for his coat and sighs as he sees that the cylinder is slightly bumped, after three days in there; it makes the whole thing look even more stupid, but he’s here, he might as well do it.
“Cas?”
“Yes?”
“Last day I was buying some beer and…”
I saw this and thought of you? No, that’s way too pathetic. Thought you’d like this? And why should Cas like a fake rose that isn’t worth even a full dollar? Does Dean even ever say shit like that? No, he doesn’t. Meanwhile Cas nods at him, like he’s encouraging him to go on, and Dean just drops sitting on the bed, just in front of the chair.
“It’s kinda… scratch it, it’s stupid, but I just saw it and…”
Oh, dammit, he always was better at gestures than at words; he takes Cas’ wrist abruptly, places the tiny tube into his palm and then lets go. The rose is even shorter than the distance between Cas’ wrist and the top of his middle finger and damn, the plastic has cracked even more; the more Dean looks at it the more he thinks that it’s just pathetic, but then Cas’ lips curl up in the tiniest hint of a smile and looks at Dean and then at the rose alternatively for a couple of times before settling his stare on Dean.
“That’s… for me?”
Dean coughs and nods, trying to disguise his embarrassment. “Yeah. Has no real utility, I mean, that was obvious, but… I mean, I guess that if you don’t care much for that it’s fine, really, just…”
“Dean.”
Cas’ voice cuts through his blathering and Dean shuts up.
“Thank you,” Cas says before disappearing, rose and all, a soft rustle of wings, and Dean thinks that his voice might have sounded a bit warmer than usual.
He just hopes that Cas doesn’t know enough about human customs to realize what buying flowers means, but well. After all, it didn’t go half as bad as he had imagined it would. And it wasn’t even a proper flower.
--
The second time, it’s red.
Dean is at another convenience store one morning, an armful of newspaper, beer, a couple of snacks, two new toothbrushes because his and Sam’s are definitely in need of an eulogy and a funeral and then some refills for the first aid kit; and this time he can’t help thinking about why he needed the refills.
The damn angel seemingly can’t even fucking heal himself anymore even if he can still teleport; or at least, if he could, now he wouldn’t be on Dean’s bed with a row of stitches in his side because he got almost gutted while helping them get away from Zachariah’s last ambush.
Not to mention the other wound in his arm from which he drew the blood necessary for the banishing sigil; it hasn’t healed, either.
Dean shakes his head as he reaches the checkout, wondering what the hell he should do or say when he gets back, and then sees the roses again. Same crap plastic cylinders, same crap dimension, just different colors. There are green ones, purple ones, white ones (a fucking acid trip, if you ask him) and then there are two red ones, the last in an almost empty row. Red, apparently, is the shit around these parts.
And it’s a good shade of red; a dark, deep crimson which isn’t crimson enough to be mistaken for blood but isn’t too far on the purple side not to be red anymore. It almost seems made of velvet (clearly Dean knows better; these ones are made of paper, not even plastic); for one second he wonders whether he’s definitely gone crazy, then shakes his head, grabs one of the two tiny tubes and adds it to his purchases.
When he gets back to the motel, Sam is at the laptop and Cas is… all but passed out on the bed. He has never seen him sleep before, unless you count the effects of that trip back to the future (and then he wasn’t sleeping, he was fucking comatose); Dean just hopes that it’s a side effect. Because if now it turns out that Cas needs sleep too…
Dean shakes his head, trying not to feel too guilty, and when Sam says that they could check the local library for a couple of hours, it seems like it’s well stocked, he nods, figuring that they’ll just leave Cas a note. And then, when Sam isn’t looking, Dean drops the plastic tube containing the red rose into the pocket of Cas’ jacket.
--
The third time, it’s white.
So white that it’s almost a punch in the eye as Dean approaches the checkout with a pack of Pepsi cans. He’s perfectly aware that he’s buying it just because Cas is sticking around for this case (they’re in the same town he was because of one of his finding God leads; just made sense that they’d team up, right?), and after that stunt during which Cas stuck a week with them he knows that his own personal almost completely fallen angel seems to like Pepsi a lot. Sincerely, Pepsi beats absinthe if you ask Dean, and so he’s buying it, and then he has to blink against the six rows of white paper roses. All the same, this time. Dean thinks about how much Cas always seems in a hurry later, determined to make as much of his search as possible as long as he can still zap himself anywhere; it won’t be long before it’ll be gone, and Dean doesn’t need it spelled out for him. It’s just blatant; it’s in the way Cas will steal his fries once in a while, in the way he orders something to drink when he’s with them, in the way he spent most of that week when he was stitched up sleeping. It can’t be long.
Dean doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s doing anymore, but then reaches out, grabs a white rose and tosses an extra dollar out.
He gives it to Cas outside a diner; Sam had gone in but Dean had told Cas to wait a second and handed the tube without a word, not even trying to explain himself because he doesn’t have an explanation; Cas’ eyes lit up for a moment as he wraps his fingers around it, though, and Dean is thankful that he doesn’t say anything either.
--
The fourth time, it’s pink. The fifth, it’s green. The sixth, it’s yellow. The seventh, is red again. Then white. Then orange. Then Dean loses the count.
It’s ridiculous.
He buys one every time something happens; something in the sense of Cas looking less convinced than usual, whenever he senses that Cas is about to hand him the amulet back, the day that Cas can’t mend clothes anymore and he has to buy new ones (all Salvation Army, and for some reason Dean isn’t surprised) and he only keeps the coat because it’s the only wearable item. He buys one rose if they have some kind of fight or if they had a beer the evening before after two weeks without Cas dropping by, or after whichever Apocalypse related stunt they have to go through; he buys one whenever he wants Cas to get that he can’t say shit because words aren’t just his thing, never were and never will be, but even if he doesn’t talk he gives a damn.
And it just says everything that, in order to act instead of speaking, he doesn’t just buy Cas a drink but buys him fake roses that aren’t even worth a dollar. Sometimes it feels like every time he gives one of those plastic things he gives something of himself, and well, that’s kind of how much he thinks he’d value himself, these days. The fact that he can’t even remember a time when he’d have thought a higher amount should maybe say something, but he’d rather not think about it.
--
A week after Cas has to switch clothes, he buys a duffel bag. Which is exactly the same as Dean’s except for the color.
Dean tries not to notice that. Or, whenever Cas rides with them, how tiny it is compared to his or Sam’s. Dean had never thought he owned much; his clothes, his weapons, some other things he has kept for a while (a few though; when you live in motels you can’t keep much with you), but when his bag is next to Cas’ on the backseat it’s painfully obvious that his is way fuller. They’re the same size, but Cas’ is mostly empty, just two changes of clothes taking up about a quarter of its space because after all it’s just jeans and shirts and a couple other items, while Dean is almost completely filled. It’s not only clothes; it’s also a couple of guns, four or five books, his dad’s journal, hygiene stuff, a card Sam sent him the first year he was in Stanford and which he had never managed to answer but which he still keeps in this copy of Slaughterhouse Five. There are the pictures that woman who lived in their house in Lawrence gave them even if he never looks at them if not once in a while, too. There’s a good half of his life in that bag. Whenever the bags are near, he tries not to look at them because after all, if it wasn’t because of him, Cas wouldn’t need a bag or to own anything.
The first time they ride like that, Dean goes to the convenience store, buys a six pack he doesn’t need and chooses a plastic rose which is a pale, soft shade of lilac, a perfect mid-way of sky blue and pink.
--
It’s five A.M. about three weeks after the bag appears slung on Cas’ shoulder when Dean is woken by a soft knock on the door; he opens it to find Cas staring at him, the low side of the coat caked in dust, the bag slung over his shoulder, his whole body language screaming tired and an indescribable look in his eyes.
“Don’t tell me that…” he whispers, and Cas nods.
“It’s gone,” comes the answer, matter of fact.
“Where were you?”
“Twenty-five miles from here.”
“You could have called,” Dean says, realizing just how stupid it sounds considering that Cas has basically just told him that he can’t fly anymore.
“It was late,” Cas says, and Dean just shakes his head and lets him in.
He doesn’t think there will be an amount of fake roses high enough to buy this time.
“Listen, you want to grab a shower? I know you probably want to crash but if you walked all the way here…” he asks, wishing he could say something meaningful but not finding the words.
Cas thinks about it for one second, then nods; Dean hands him a couple of clean towels and says that he should just go, he’ll get some clean clothes. Cas nods again, thanks him and locks the door; a minute or so later, Dean can hear the water running and he’s just thankful that Sam is in another room because he and the young, pretty rookie who helped them on the last case hit it off pretty well and well, Dean won’t stop him if he manages to get laid.
And then he remembers that he hasn’t asked Cas whether he’s allowed to look into his bag; well, it sounds stupid for someone who has absolutely no concept of personal space whatsoever, but still. Then again, he won’t go and interrupt the shower and cause some awkward scene; he’ll just check if Cas has something suited to sleep in and if not he’ll lend him some t-shirt. He slowly opens Cas’ bag, ready to find just clothes, and then he freezes on the spot. His hand not holding the bag starts shaking and he feels suddenly punched in the gut. He blinks a couple of times before looking again; and he wasn’t hallucinating.
In the bag, there are all the roses that Dean has given Cas during the last months. Each single one of them. He recognizes every goddamn one, 99 cents for plastic and paper and nothing else, and while most of them don’t have the plastic tube anymore, some do. The red one he bought when Cas almost got himself killed, for example; or a pink one he bought the evening they had some seriously bad argument about he can’t even remember what. And the blue one. The first one. The plastic cylinder is even more battered, but the rose is still there, carefully kept in its wrapping; and Dean can’t fucking believe it. It was just stupid plastic, and now Dean is standing in his t-shirt and underwear in the middle of the room looking inside a bag, unable to search for the suited clothes he should have been searching for, trying to remember the last time something like this happened. After all, when your typical Christmas presents are porn and alcohol, you can’t really think that someone would keep them for more than a month, so Dean has never exactly been angry at Sam because he didn’t keep around his copies of Busty Asian Beauties; and the only gift Dean has ever kept for himself was that amulet. The times when his drawings got attached to the fridge in the kitchen are long gone and he figures it was the last time someone kept something useless around just because he made it or it came from him or whatever crap.
His throat is definitely choked, right now. He forces himself to dig out some t-shirt of his that Cas could use for sleeping purposes, finds some underwear beneath the sea of plastic roses, adds in a pair of trousers he uses to sleep in once in a while and after opening the door of the bathroom carefully he places everything on a chair before retreating, not stealing a glance in the direction of the shower.
Cas is out ten minutes later, his attire mirroring Dean’s; and then his eyes fall on the open bag and Dean doesn’t think he can hold Cas’ stare right now, but he forces himself to.
“You kept them?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.
“Of course I did,” Cas answers, his voice not even faltering; Dean stands up from the chair he was sitting on and Cas comes closer, even if this time he isn’t really invading his personal space.
“Of course? Cas, it’s just… it’s junk, why would you even…”
“It’s not… junk, as you call it,” Cas says softly, coming closer (personal space forgotten again) and picking the blue one from the bag. “Sometimes, material worth is not everything there is,” he says then, staring at the rose almost fondly before reserving Dean the same look; and damn, Dean was right. His eyes and that rose are exactly the same shade of blue.
“What do you mean?” Dean manages then, his voice threatening to fail him. He feels way too overwhelmed.
“One of them might not be worth much, but it’s… the spirit, I believe you’d call it, that is invaluable. And it’s also the number.”
Dean casts a look at the bag again. Jesus, there are at least forty pieces of plastic in there. Which means he has spent more than thirty dollars to buy all of them, and while it doesn’t really matter because it’s still junk, Cas is shaking his head. Why would he?
“This was…” Cas says looking at the blue rose, “… this was the first thing someone ever gifted me with, Dean. I had never… it was the first thing I could really call mine. Why would I want to get rid of it?”
It’s too much, too fucking much.
“And what luck you had, huh? I mean… man, if I had known I’d have bought you something nicer. Hell, I’d have bought you something else at all. I mean, I get you roses like a goddamn girl and they aren’t even real.”
And why is there something almost sweet in the way Cas is looking at him now, the rose still held up between his fingers?
“Do you really think that it would matter to me? Dean, why do you have to sell yourself so short?”
“What?”
“Each… each one of these is… precious. Something you gave me without obligation. Why would I want to discard any of them? I don’t care if they are not expensive or about what your standards consider proper.”
“Yeah, but… after everything… the only thing I’ve been able to give you is fake roses? Cas, come on. It doesn’t even…”
“Again. Why do you assume that they’re just pieces of plastic? Or that it’s really all that you’ve given me?”
Cas is impossibly close now; Dean doesn’t even know why his heart started beating at twice its usual rate and most of all, shouldn’t he be addressing this small inconvenience of Cas practically losing his wings?
“Will you let me try something?” Cas asks then. “I might have enough grace left to do it still.”
Dean doesn’t know what it is but nods anyway and then a finger reaches his forehead.
It’s like life flashing before his eyes except that it isn’t his.
It’s just bits and pieces, but it’s Cas’ life and they are his bits and pieces and it comes a rush of flashes and each of them is a time Dean gave Cas one of those lousy roses.
And that’s when he gets it. He feels everything Cas was feeling then, hears every thought, sees himself through Cas’ eyes (and that does make him feel somewhat uncomfortable); he feels how the first time Cas had felt touched because for some reason Dean had thought of him and bought him that thing, and for a while he had forgotten about his unfruitful search. He feels how Cas had felt even more touched when he had reached into his pocket and found that tiny plastic tube. He feels how, once in a while, Cas would take one of the roses out of his pockets just to remind himself that he wasn’t completely alone in his search. He feels how he’d take one out every time he ended up thinking of Heaven or had to hide from other angels. He feels how receiving one after that time when they had that idiotic argument had brought Cas some kind of relief (because the idiot had been worried about Dean freaking cutting ties with him, like he would, but then again Cas has his own self-esteem issues or so it seems). He feels how special it felt for Cas to call something his even if they were just plastic roses, he feels how looking at the bunch of junk inside his bag would make everything easier to bear, and then Dean blinks and is back in the room, stumbling back and on the bed. He takes long and deep breaths, feeling disoriented; suddenly a tentative hand is on his shoulder.
“Do you understand now?” Cas asks, his voice thin as Dean has never heard it, wracked with tiredness, and then Dean remembers that the guy walked twenty-five fucking miles because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go and anyone else who’ll give a damn, with his coat and his bag full of roses and Dean’s amulet and… and something makes Dean’s heart swell, so much that he just can’t help it. He reaches up, grabs the front of his own shirt which is a bit large on Cas anyway, tugs him down and has an armful of almost completely fallen angel who after the first second completely sags against him. Hand reach Dean’s shoulders, tightening in his shirt, and isn’t that funny that they’re both half naked (well, Cas is wearing trousers, but still) sitting on a half-unmade bed at five AM clinging to each other for dear life?
Dean, surprisingly for his self-consciousness, doesn’t give a fuck. Not when he can feel all the tension in Cas’ shoulders drain away, and it feels good. It feels like he’s doing something which is actually helping, even if he’s pretty sure that this and fake roses aren’t enough to make you ditch Heaven for. And then Cas shakes his head against Dean’s shoulder.
“Stop thinking that one day I will start regretting what I did,” Cas whispers, his voice a gentle breeze on Dean’s overheated skin right in the hollow of his neck, and when did this become about Dean’s guilt issues again?
“I’m sorry. This should have never…”
“Dean. Don’t.”
And Dean doesn’t and they stay like that for a handful of minutes, during which Dean realizes that there’s only one bed and that he doesn’t care as much as he should; at one point he says that maybe they should both go in there, after all Cas looks one step from sleeping where he stands, but even if Cas does agree with him he doesn’t really attempt to disentangle himself from their current position.
The kiss is almost an accident; when Cas does try to move backwards, Dean goes with him by pure instinct and they were so close already that their lips meet midway without either of them doing it consciously. It sends a shiver down Dean’s spine though, a pleasurable shiver, because for that one second it had felt good, it had felt easy, it had felt like he’d like to do it again; when he raises his eyes to Cas’, he notices a faint blush on Cas’ cheeks. They’re both standing now, and Cas’ hand shakes only just slightly as his fingers reach Dean’s temple.
“Dean…?” he asks, sounding just a tiny bit hopeful, and Dean just decides that he really can’t not.
Also, damn. He has bought Cas fucking flowers for months, now. At this point, this wouldn’t even be too weird. And so he nods and leans down, and when his lips meet Cas’ there’s that shiver again, that sensation of rightness that he can’t ever remember from a single kiss in his whole life. Cas’ lips are soft and pliant, his mouth is warm when they part to give him access and his tongue tentatively plunges a bit forward, meeting Dean’s, and just a bare touch feels amazing; he doesn’t push it too much but doesn’t even hold himself back and it leaves his breath short and his heart beating wildly. Though well, if the more-there-than-usual smile that graces Cas’ lips as they part is something to go for, then it wasn’t half bad for Cas either.
Suddenly it all makes sense; it makes sense why he had ever wanted to buy the goddamn roses in the first place and why he wanted to keep on buying them (because it seemed the only nice thing he could do for Cas at the moment and because if Cas was obviously happy when Dean got him one, well, he wanted to keep on seeing that), it makes sense why he cares in a way he usually cares for family only; and if he’s fucked up enough to choose fake roses for the price of 99 cents each, well, it’s nothing they didn’t already know. What he’d like to know is what’s in it for Cas except for him, an apocalypse and a bunch of useless stuff, but then Cas moves a bit forward and gives his lips what Dean thinks was supposed to be a peck but becomes a full-blown kiss just like that. Easily, slowly, and like it’s just the right thing to do. And so Dean goes along with it.
When they drag themselves under the covers, at twenty to six AM, and Cas seems hesitant about getting too close, Dean just figures that at this point he’s in and it isn’t even worth it to pretend shit, and he drapes an arm around Cas’ waist bringing him forward.
He wishes he could tell Cas just how much it means (everything; that he’s here, that they’re like this, that he kept the roses, that he’s giving Dean everything he doesn’t even realize he needs), but it’s late and Cas is already out, his breathing even and warm against Dean’s shoulder; and so he doesn’t, also because he thinks he doesn’t still have the words.
--
The next morning, after scarring Sam for life (yeah, sure, of course, Dean thinks; saying that you’re scarred for life finding two dressed people sharing a bed after you come from a night during which you had sex with the hottest cop of the county, at least, is kind of hypocrite if you ask him), he goes to the only open convenience store; he grabs the newspaper, some beer, some Pepsi, a third toothbrush. And then at the checkout, after he pays, he turns his head and there they are, a bunch of tiny 99 cents plastic roses in a tube, and there’s a blue one left.
Dean smiles for a second and then grabs it, gives the cashier another dollar, tells him to keep the change and places the rose carefully in his pocket.
As he gets back to the hotel, he barely feels its weight. One hour later, they’re sitting at a bakery instead of the usual diner because Dean at least wanted Cas to get a decent breakfast since it’s the first time he has one, Dean and Cas on one side of the booth and Sam on the other. At Dean’s second round of pancakes (Cas is still at the first, but if you’re eating pancakes for the first time you will probably go slow), Sam stands up saying that he’s full and he’ll wait at the hotel, thank you very much, and damn, Dean, that was way too much sugar, I hope you do realize that, he starts; Dean just shakes his head and answers that he can’t even enjoy a perk in life before Sam is gone. Well, if he can’t appreciate good food, then it’s his loss.
Dean lets a breath out, then reaches in his pocket after letting his fork rest against the plate. Then he places the rose next to Cas’ plate. Still blue, still tiny, still fake, still 99 cents, and saying all the things Dean was thinking the night before and which he’ll never manage to say out loud.
“You know something?” he asks then, before Cas can turn his stare from the piece of plastic to him.
“What?”
“I… I never bought anyone roses. Not even real ones,” Dean says then, hoping that Cas gets it as he usually gets everything for some reason, when it comes to him. And I won’t ever buy anyone else flowers, period, Dean adds in his head but doesn’t say.
Cas just reaches forward with his hand, his long fingers wrapping around the transparent tube, and Dean frankly doesn’t even care about how chick flick this whole business is; and how could he anyway when Cas turns to him and it’s just written in his eyes that he gets it? Just like he always does?
“Then I am honored to be your first,” Cas answers after a handful of seconds before letting the rose fall into his pocket and grabbing his fork again, and Dean can hear every layer of that sentence. He lets another breath of relief out and cuts out another piece of pancake. They keep on eating mostly in silence, and if once in a while Cas’ hand reaches into the pocket of his coat or if Dean’s knee is stubbornly pressed against Cas’, it feels just so natural that he barely notices the latter and can’t help smiling at the former.
If it’s everything but normal and if Cas has just lost his wings and if the end of the world is nigh, for five minutes he just allows himself not to care.
End.
Title: Doghouse Roses
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG13 just to be overly sure.
Wordcount: 5600
Summary: And it just says everything that, in order to act instead of speaking, Dean doesn’t just buy Cas a drink but buys him fake roses that aren’t even worth a dollar.
Spoilers: vague references up until 5x13, but since I wrote this at the beginning of February, I'd say general S5.
Disclaimer: Supernatural is most definitely not mine and the title isn't mine either.
A/N: this came to me after reading the first story in Steve Earle's book Doghouse Roses, and well, I happened to love the title, then my head started making connections and here it is. Apart from the presence of the roses in the title it doesn't have anything to do with the short story in question, though.
The first time, it’s blue.
A tiny, plastic blue rose inside an equally tiny plastic cylinder, the only one of that color among another thirty or so, near the checkout of a small convenience store somewhere in Illinois where Dean had to go because Sam stole the last beer from him and he urgently needed a drink of the light kind. It costs 99 cents and it stands out in a dull mix of yellow and pink ones; the blue it’s the rose’s only redeeming factor. A deep, pure shade of blue, not too different from…
Cas’ eyes, Dean can’t avoid thinking, and he’s back to the reason he needs a drink. Because when your own personal angel who is also one of the three people who is currently having your back, not to mention one of the two people close enough to Dean that could be considered family, appears in your room looking tired, tells you that any other day from now he might lose his freaky teleportation abilities and so Dean should really check his phone because Castiel might need to call him if he’s stuck somewhere and then disappears, you need a drink.
He can’t just not think about the difference between Cas’ voice and his face while he talked; the voice was the usual flat deadpan one-octave-lower-than-acceptable, telling it just like it was a matter of fact, but his stare was pouring out something that Dean could only describe as quiet desperation. He had been about to say something but then Cas had said some crap like needing to go because until he could still move freely he should take advantage of it, and then he had disappeared.
And now Dean is thinking about the hopelessness that was pouring out of Cas in waves before, and it just makes no sense at all; he should be doing something, not staring at a fucking fake plastic rose that is reminding him of Cas. Isn’t that just stupid? Not to mention the epitome of chick-flick, but that’s another whole problem. But there’s something fucking fragile about the fucking fake plastic rose, something about the oddness of the blue against all the yellow and the pink ones, and Dean should really just go. He has never bought a girl flowers, not even Cassie, and Cas is a fucking friend, not anything else and not anything more, and if what’s between them is not regular friendship, well, Cas would also be Dean’s first real friend and Dean is fucking thirty years old, so yeah. From wherever you see it, it’s fucked up. Also, friends don’t buy friends flowers, even if they’re fake.
Except that it’s not flowers. It’s one flower, and not even a real one, and it costs 99 fucking cents and it’s corny and stupid and useless; but then again, Dean thinks bitterly, Cas turned his back to Heaven for him (he was pretty clear on that), is losing all that has defined him for… millennia or whatever, has been forced on some crazy quest where he’s mostly alone, has fucking brought him out of Hell and seems to like corny stuff himself (hey, he likes Chuck’s books, dammit). And Dean hasn’t really given him back much if not for a night at a den of iniquity which Cas didn’t even want in the end; what’s 99 cents and looking like a colossal idiot in comparison to it?
Oh, fuck it, he thinks before grabbing the blue rose and putting it on the counter next to the six pack. The store owner looks at him in sympathy as he checks his purchases.
“You need your girl to forgive you, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Most people buying those roses have screwed up and don’t have much time to say sorry. But it works, I tried it a couple times myself.”
“Well, not exactly,” Dean mutters as he gets out of the store. The tiny cylinder in the pocket of his coat feels heavier than the pack of beer.
He doesn’t see Cas for three days, after that; and he almost forgets about it, even if it stays tucked inside his coat. He just doesn’t think about it. This, until Cas pops in unexpected one evening while Sam is at the library researching some crap about how to stop the last horseman from rising; he looks even more tired than usual, his clothes are way too rumpled even for him and he just drops sitting on a chair while Dean barely has time to shut the TV off.
“Is the search…?”
Cas just shakes his head and doesn’t say anything. He looks so defeated that Dean can’t help seeing that future version of him blatantly stating that amphetamines are indeed one of mankind’s greatest inventions, and that should worry him enough; and then he sees Cas reaching for his neck.
“Cas, what…?”
“I think you should take this back. I am beginning to think that…”
Dean stands up and goes in front of the chair; Cas raises his head and Jesus, just, Dean can’t just stand how Cas looks plainly defeated. And then his head goes straight to 2014 and just, no. Even if he would like to have his amulet back, after all, at this point it’s almost a question of principle. If he fucks up, Cas doesn’t need to go down with him.
“Keep that. I don’t want it until you’re done with this, however it ends.”
“It’s…”
“I don’t care. Keep it,” Dean says with a this is definitive tone, and then he remembers that ridiculous rose. Well, considering that it’s not like he has many other ideas to cheer Cas up, he’ll just chance it. As Cas nods, he reaches for his coat and sighs as he sees that the cylinder is slightly bumped, after three days in there; it makes the whole thing look even more stupid, but he’s here, he might as well do it.
“Cas?”
“Yes?”
“Last day I was buying some beer and…”
I saw this and thought of you? No, that’s way too pathetic. Thought you’d like this? And why should Cas like a fake rose that isn’t worth even a full dollar? Does Dean even ever say shit like that? No, he doesn’t. Meanwhile Cas nods at him, like he’s encouraging him to go on, and Dean just drops sitting on the bed, just in front of the chair.
“It’s kinda… scratch it, it’s stupid, but I just saw it and…”
Oh, dammit, he always was better at gestures than at words; he takes Cas’ wrist abruptly, places the tiny tube into his palm and then lets go. The rose is even shorter than the distance between Cas’ wrist and the top of his middle finger and damn, the plastic has cracked even more; the more Dean looks at it the more he thinks that it’s just pathetic, but then Cas’ lips curl up in the tiniest hint of a smile and looks at Dean and then at the rose alternatively for a couple of times before settling his stare on Dean.
“That’s… for me?”
Dean coughs and nods, trying to disguise his embarrassment. “Yeah. Has no real utility, I mean, that was obvious, but… I mean, I guess that if you don’t care much for that it’s fine, really, just…”
“Dean.”
Cas’ voice cuts through his blathering and Dean shuts up.
“Thank you,” Cas says before disappearing, rose and all, a soft rustle of wings, and Dean thinks that his voice might have sounded a bit warmer than usual.
He just hopes that Cas doesn’t know enough about human customs to realize what buying flowers means, but well. After all, it didn’t go half as bad as he had imagined it would. And it wasn’t even a proper flower.
--
The second time, it’s red.
Dean is at another convenience store one morning, an armful of newspaper, beer, a couple of snacks, two new toothbrushes because his and Sam’s are definitely in need of an eulogy and a funeral and then some refills for the first aid kit; and this time he can’t help thinking about why he needed the refills.
The damn angel seemingly can’t even fucking heal himself anymore even if he can still teleport; or at least, if he could, now he wouldn’t be on Dean’s bed with a row of stitches in his side because he got almost gutted while helping them get away from Zachariah’s last ambush.
Not to mention the other wound in his arm from which he drew the blood necessary for the banishing sigil; it hasn’t healed, either.
Dean shakes his head as he reaches the checkout, wondering what the hell he should do or say when he gets back, and then sees the roses again. Same crap plastic cylinders, same crap dimension, just different colors. There are green ones, purple ones, white ones (a fucking acid trip, if you ask him) and then there are two red ones, the last in an almost empty row. Red, apparently, is the shit around these parts.
And it’s a good shade of red; a dark, deep crimson which isn’t crimson enough to be mistaken for blood but isn’t too far on the purple side not to be red anymore. It almost seems made of velvet (clearly Dean knows better; these ones are made of paper, not even plastic); for one second he wonders whether he’s definitely gone crazy, then shakes his head, grabs one of the two tiny tubes and adds it to his purchases.
When he gets back to the motel, Sam is at the laptop and Cas is… all but passed out on the bed. He has never seen him sleep before, unless you count the effects of that trip back to the future (and then he wasn’t sleeping, he was fucking comatose); Dean just hopes that it’s a side effect. Because if now it turns out that Cas needs sleep too…
Dean shakes his head, trying not to feel too guilty, and when Sam says that they could check the local library for a couple of hours, it seems like it’s well stocked, he nods, figuring that they’ll just leave Cas a note. And then, when Sam isn’t looking, Dean drops the plastic tube containing the red rose into the pocket of Cas’ jacket.
--
The third time, it’s white.
So white that it’s almost a punch in the eye as Dean approaches the checkout with a pack of Pepsi cans. He’s perfectly aware that he’s buying it just because Cas is sticking around for this case (they’re in the same town he was because of one of his finding God leads; just made sense that they’d team up, right?), and after that stunt during which Cas stuck a week with them he knows that his own personal almost completely fallen angel seems to like Pepsi a lot. Sincerely, Pepsi beats absinthe if you ask Dean, and so he’s buying it, and then he has to blink against the six rows of white paper roses. All the same, this time. Dean thinks about how much Cas always seems in a hurry later, determined to make as much of his search as possible as long as he can still zap himself anywhere; it won’t be long before it’ll be gone, and Dean doesn’t need it spelled out for him. It’s just blatant; it’s in the way Cas will steal his fries once in a while, in the way he orders something to drink when he’s with them, in the way he spent most of that week when he was stitched up sleeping. It can’t be long.
Dean doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s doing anymore, but then reaches out, grabs a white rose and tosses an extra dollar out.
He gives it to Cas outside a diner; Sam had gone in but Dean had told Cas to wait a second and handed the tube without a word, not even trying to explain himself because he doesn’t have an explanation; Cas’ eyes lit up for a moment as he wraps his fingers around it, though, and Dean is thankful that he doesn’t say anything either.
--
The fourth time, it’s pink. The fifth, it’s green. The sixth, it’s yellow. The seventh, is red again. Then white. Then orange. Then Dean loses the count.
It’s ridiculous.
He buys one every time something happens; something in the sense of Cas looking less convinced than usual, whenever he senses that Cas is about to hand him the amulet back, the day that Cas can’t mend clothes anymore and he has to buy new ones (all Salvation Army, and for some reason Dean isn’t surprised) and he only keeps the coat because it’s the only wearable item. He buys one rose if they have some kind of fight or if they had a beer the evening before after two weeks without Cas dropping by, or after whichever Apocalypse related stunt they have to go through; he buys one whenever he wants Cas to get that he can’t say shit because words aren’t just his thing, never were and never will be, but even if he doesn’t talk he gives a damn.
And it just says everything that, in order to act instead of speaking, he doesn’t just buy Cas a drink but buys him fake roses that aren’t even worth a dollar. Sometimes it feels like every time he gives one of those plastic things he gives something of himself, and well, that’s kind of how much he thinks he’d value himself, these days. The fact that he can’t even remember a time when he’d have thought a higher amount should maybe say something, but he’d rather not think about it.
--
A week after Cas has to switch clothes, he buys a duffel bag. Which is exactly the same as Dean’s except for the color.
Dean tries not to notice that. Or, whenever Cas rides with them, how tiny it is compared to his or Sam’s. Dean had never thought he owned much; his clothes, his weapons, some other things he has kept for a while (a few though; when you live in motels you can’t keep much with you), but when his bag is next to Cas’ on the backseat it’s painfully obvious that his is way fuller. They’re the same size, but Cas’ is mostly empty, just two changes of clothes taking up about a quarter of its space because after all it’s just jeans and shirts and a couple other items, while Dean is almost completely filled. It’s not only clothes; it’s also a couple of guns, four or five books, his dad’s journal, hygiene stuff, a card Sam sent him the first year he was in Stanford and which he had never managed to answer but which he still keeps in this copy of Slaughterhouse Five. There are the pictures that woman who lived in their house in Lawrence gave them even if he never looks at them if not once in a while, too. There’s a good half of his life in that bag. Whenever the bags are near, he tries not to look at them because after all, if it wasn’t because of him, Cas wouldn’t need a bag or to own anything.
The first time they ride like that, Dean goes to the convenience store, buys a six pack he doesn’t need and chooses a plastic rose which is a pale, soft shade of lilac, a perfect mid-way of sky blue and pink.
--
It’s five A.M. about three weeks after the bag appears slung on Cas’ shoulder when Dean is woken by a soft knock on the door; he opens it to find Cas staring at him, the low side of the coat caked in dust, the bag slung over his shoulder, his whole body language screaming tired and an indescribable look in his eyes.
“Don’t tell me that…” he whispers, and Cas nods.
“It’s gone,” comes the answer, matter of fact.
“Where were you?”
“Twenty-five miles from here.”
“You could have called,” Dean says, realizing just how stupid it sounds considering that Cas has basically just told him that he can’t fly anymore.
“It was late,” Cas says, and Dean just shakes his head and lets him in.
He doesn’t think there will be an amount of fake roses high enough to buy this time.
“Listen, you want to grab a shower? I know you probably want to crash but if you walked all the way here…” he asks, wishing he could say something meaningful but not finding the words.
Cas thinks about it for one second, then nods; Dean hands him a couple of clean towels and says that he should just go, he’ll get some clean clothes. Cas nods again, thanks him and locks the door; a minute or so later, Dean can hear the water running and he’s just thankful that Sam is in another room because he and the young, pretty rookie who helped them on the last case hit it off pretty well and well, Dean won’t stop him if he manages to get laid.
And then he remembers that he hasn’t asked Cas whether he’s allowed to look into his bag; well, it sounds stupid for someone who has absolutely no concept of personal space whatsoever, but still. Then again, he won’t go and interrupt the shower and cause some awkward scene; he’ll just check if Cas has something suited to sleep in and if not he’ll lend him some t-shirt. He slowly opens Cas’ bag, ready to find just clothes, and then he freezes on the spot. His hand not holding the bag starts shaking and he feels suddenly punched in the gut. He blinks a couple of times before looking again; and he wasn’t hallucinating.
In the bag, there are all the roses that Dean has given Cas during the last months. Each single one of them. He recognizes every goddamn one, 99 cents for plastic and paper and nothing else, and while most of them don’t have the plastic tube anymore, some do. The red one he bought when Cas almost got himself killed, for example; or a pink one he bought the evening they had some seriously bad argument about he can’t even remember what. And the blue one. The first one. The plastic cylinder is even more battered, but the rose is still there, carefully kept in its wrapping; and Dean can’t fucking believe it. It was just stupid plastic, and now Dean is standing in his t-shirt and underwear in the middle of the room looking inside a bag, unable to search for the suited clothes he should have been searching for, trying to remember the last time something like this happened. After all, when your typical Christmas presents are porn and alcohol, you can’t really think that someone would keep them for more than a month, so Dean has never exactly been angry at Sam because he didn’t keep around his copies of Busty Asian Beauties; and the only gift Dean has ever kept for himself was that amulet. The times when his drawings got attached to the fridge in the kitchen are long gone and he figures it was the last time someone kept something useless around just because he made it or it came from him or whatever crap.
His throat is definitely choked, right now. He forces himself to dig out some t-shirt of his that Cas could use for sleeping purposes, finds some underwear beneath the sea of plastic roses, adds in a pair of trousers he uses to sleep in once in a while and after opening the door of the bathroom carefully he places everything on a chair before retreating, not stealing a glance in the direction of the shower.
Cas is out ten minutes later, his attire mirroring Dean’s; and then his eyes fall on the open bag and Dean doesn’t think he can hold Cas’ stare right now, but he forces himself to.
“You kept them?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.
“Of course I did,” Cas answers, his voice not even faltering; Dean stands up from the chair he was sitting on and Cas comes closer, even if this time he isn’t really invading his personal space.
“Of course? Cas, it’s just… it’s junk, why would you even…”
“It’s not… junk, as you call it,” Cas says softly, coming closer (personal space forgotten again) and picking the blue one from the bag. “Sometimes, material worth is not everything there is,” he says then, staring at the rose almost fondly before reserving Dean the same look; and damn, Dean was right. His eyes and that rose are exactly the same shade of blue.
“What do you mean?” Dean manages then, his voice threatening to fail him. He feels way too overwhelmed.
“One of them might not be worth much, but it’s… the spirit, I believe you’d call it, that is invaluable. And it’s also the number.”
Dean casts a look at the bag again. Jesus, there are at least forty pieces of plastic in there. Which means he has spent more than thirty dollars to buy all of them, and while it doesn’t really matter because it’s still junk, Cas is shaking his head. Why would he?
“This was…” Cas says looking at the blue rose, “… this was the first thing someone ever gifted me with, Dean. I had never… it was the first thing I could really call mine. Why would I want to get rid of it?”
It’s too much, too fucking much.
“And what luck you had, huh? I mean… man, if I had known I’d have bought you something nicer. Hell, I’d have bought you something else at all. I mean, I get you roses like a goddamn girl and they aren’t even real.”
And why is there something almost sweet in the way Cas is looking at him now, the rose still held up between his fingers?
“Do you really think that it would matter to me? Dean, why do you have to sell yourself so short?”
“What?”
“Each… each one of these is… precious. Something you gave me without obligation. Why would I want to discard any of them? I don’t care if they are not expensive or about what your standards consider proper.”
“Yeah, but… after everything… the only thing I’ve been able to give you is fake roses? Cas, come on. It doesn’t even…”
“Again. Why do you assume that they’re just pieces of plastic? Or that it’s really all that you’ve given me?”
Cas is impossibly close now; Dean doesn’t even know why his heart started beating at twice its usual rate and most of all, shouldn’t he be addressing this small inconvenience of Cas practically losing his wings?
“Will you let me try something?” Cas asks then. “I might have enough grace left to do it still.”
Dean doesn’t know what it is but nods anyway and then a finger reaches his forehead.
It’s like life flashing before his eyes except that it isn’t his.
It’s just bits and pieces, but it’s Cas’ life and they are his bits and pieces and it comes a rush of flashes and each of them is a time Dean gave Cas one of those lousy roses.
And that’s when he gets it. He feels everything Cas was feeling then, hears every thought, sees himself through Cas’ eyes (and that does make him feel somewhat uncomfortable); he feels how the first time Cas had felt touched because for some reason Dean had thought of him and bought him that thing, and for a while he had forgotten about his unfruitful search. He feels how Cas had felt even more touched when he had reached into his pocket and found that tiny plastic tube. He feels how, once in a while, Cas would take one of the roses out of his pockets just to remind himself that he wasn’t completely alone in his search. He feels how he’d take one out every time he ended up thinking of Heaven or had to hide from other angels. He feels how receiving one after that time when they had that idiotic argument had brought Cas some kind of relief (because the idiot had been worried about Dean freaking cutting ties with him, like he would, but then again Cas has his own self-esteem issues or so it seems). He feels how special it felt for Cas to call something his even if they were just plastic roses, he feels how looking at the bunch of junk inside his bag would make everything easier to bear, and then Dean blinks and is back in the room, stumbling back and on the bed. He takes long and deep breaths, feeling disoriented; suddenly a tentative hand is on his shoulder.
“Do you understand now?” Cas asks, his voice thin as Dean has never heard it, wracked with tiredness, and then Dean remembers that the guy walked twenty-five fucking miles because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go and anyone else who’ll give a damn, with his coat and his bag full of roses and Dean’s amulet and… and something makes Dean’s heart swell, so much that he just can’t help it. He reaches up, grabs the front of his own shirt which is a bit large on Cas anyway, tugs him down and has an armful of almost completely fallen angel who after the first second completely sags against him. Hand reach Dean’s shoulders, tightening in his shirt, and isn’t that funny that they’re both half naked (well, Cas is wearing trousers, but still) sitting on a half-unmade bed at five AM clinging to each other for dear life?
Dean, surprisingly for his self-consciousness, doesn’t give a fuck. Not when he can feel all the tension in Cas’ shoulders drain away, and it feels good. It feels like he’s doing something which is actually helping, even if he’s pretty sure that this and fake roses aren’t enough to make you ditch Heaven for. And then Cas shakes his head against Dean’s shoulder.
“Stop thinking that one day I will start regretting what I did,” Cas whispers, his voice a gentle breeze on Dean’s overheated skin right in the hollow of his neck, and when did this become about Dean’s guilt issues again?
“I’m sorry. This should have never…”
“Dean. Don’t.”
And Dean doesn’t and they stay like that for a handful of minutes, during which Dean realizes that there’s only one bed and that he doesn’t care as much as he should; at one point he says that maybe they should both go in there, after all Cas looks one step from sleeping where he stands, but even if Cas does agree with him he doesn’t really attempt to disentangle himself from their current position.
The kiss is almost an accident; when Cas does try to move backwards, Dean goes with him by pure instinct and they were so close already that their lips meet midway without either of them doing it consciously. It sends a shiver down Dean’s spine though, a pleasurable shiver, because for that one second it had felt good, it had felt easy, it had felt like he’d like to do it again; when he raises his eyes to Cas’, he notices a faint blush on Cas’ cheeks. They’re both standing now, and Cas’ hand shakes only just slightly as his fingers reach Dean’s temple.
“Dean…?” he asks, sounding just a tiny bit hopeful, and Dean just decides that he really can’t not.
Also, damn. He has bought Cas fucking flowers for months, now. At this point, this wouldn’t even be too weird. And so he nods and leans down, and when his lips meet Cas’ there’s that shiver again, that sensation of rightness that he can’t ever remember from a single kiss in his whole life. Cas’ lips are soft and pliant, his mouth is warm when they part to give him access and his tongue tentatively plunges a bit forward, meeting Dean’s, and just a bare touch feels amazing; he doesn’t push it too much but doesn’t even hold himself back and it leaves his breath short and his heart beating wildly. Though well, if the more-there-than-usual smile that graces Cas’ lips as they part is something to go for, then it wasn’t half bad for Cas either.
Suddenly it all makes sense; it makes sense why he had ever wanted to buy the goddamn roses in the first place and why he wanted to keep on buying them (because it seemed the only nice thing he could do for Cas at the moment and because if Cas was obviously happy when Dean got him one, well, he wanted to keep on seeing that), it makes sense why he cares in a way he usually cares for family only; and if he’s fucked up enough to choose fake roses for the price of 99 cents each, well, it’s nothing they didn’t already know. What he’d like to know is what’s in it for Cas except for him, an apocalypse and a bunch of useless stuff, but then Cas moves a bit forward and gives his lips what Dean thinks was supposed to be a peck but becomes a full-blown kiss just like that. Easily, slowly, and like it’s just the right thing to do. And so Dean goes along with it.
When they drag themselves under the covers, at twenty to six AM, and Cas seems hesitant about getting too close, Dean just figures that at this point he’s in and it isn’t even worth it to pretend shit, and he drapes an arm around Cas’ waist bringing him forward.
He wishes he could tell Cas just how much it means (everything; that he’s here, that they’re like this, that he kept the roses, that he’s giving Dean everything he doesn’t even realize he needs), but it’s late and Cas is already out, his breathing even and warm against Dean’s shoulder; and so he doesn’t, also because he thinks he doesn’t still have the words.
--
The next morning, after scarring Sam for life (yeah, sure, of course, Dean thinks; saying that you’re scarred for life finding two dressed people sharing a bed after you come from a night during which you had sex with the hottest cop of the county, at least, is kind of hypocrite if you ask him), he goes to the only open convenience store; he grabs the newspaper, some beer, some Pepsi, a third toothbrush. And then at the checkout, after he pays, he turns his head and there they are, a bunch of tiny 99 cents plastic roses in a tube, and there’s a blue one left.
Dean smiles for a second and then grabs it, gives the cashier another dollar, tells him to keep the change and places the rose carefully in his pocket.
As he gets back to the hotel, he barely feels its weight. One hour later, they’re sitting at a bakery instead of the usual diner because Dean at least wanted Cas to get a decent breakfast since it’s the first time he has one, Dean and Cas on one side of the booth and Sam on the other. At Dean’s second round of pancakes (Cas is still at the first, but if you’re eating pancakes for the first time you will probably go slow), Sam stands up saying that he’s full and he’ll wait at the hotel, thank you very much, and damn, Dean, that was way too much sugar, I hope you do realize that, he starts; Dean just shakes his head and answers that he can’t even enjoy a perk in life before Sam is gone. Well, if he can’t appreciate good food, then it’s his loss.
Dean lets a breath out, then reaches in his pocket after letting his fork rest against the plate. Then he places the rose next to Cas’ plate. Still blue, still tiny, still fake, still 99 cents, and saying all the things Dean was thinking the night before and which he’ll never manage to say out loud.
“You know something?” he asks then, before Cas can turn his stare from the piece of plastic to him.
“What?”
“I… I never bought anyone roses. Not even real ones,” Dean says then, hoping that Cas gets it as he usually gets everything for some reason, when it comes to him. And I won’t ever buy anyone else flowers, period, Dean adds in his head but doesn’t say.
Cas just reaches forward with his hand, his long fingers wrapping around the transparent tube, and Dean frankly doesn’t even care about how chick flick this whole business is; and how could he anyway when Cas turns to him and it’s just written in his eyes that he gets it? Just like he always does?
“Then I am honored to be your first,” Cas answers after a handful of seconds before letting the rose fall into his pocket and grabbing his fork again, and Dean can hear every layer of that sentence. He lets another breath of relief out and cuts out another piece of pancake. They keep on eating mostly in silence, and if once in a while Cas’ hand reaches into the pocket of his coat or if Dean’s knee is stubbornly pressed against Cas’, it feels just so natural that he barely notices the latter and can’t help smiling at the former.
If it’s everything but normal and if Cas has just lost his wings and if the end of the world is nigh, for five minutes he just allows himself not to care.
End.