Archive of Our Own ^beta

For some reason unknown to man Cas develops this weirdass obsession with tea, and it's driving Dean crazy. 

"You're a grad student," he tells Cas emphatically, brandishing a box of lemon ginger at him. "You shouldn't be buying this shit when it means the only food you can afford is fuckin' ramen."

Cas blinks at him. "I like ramen."

Dean throws his arms into the air and walks away, for the good of the world, mostly. He can already see the headlines: 'MAN KILLS PROMISING ASTROPHYSICIST ROOMMATE OVER UNGODLY CONSUMPTION OF HOT DRINK'. Or something. 

So Dean goes to work and inhales the smell of books to wipe out the lingering scent of chamomile in his nostrils, basking in the soothing familiarity of organising shelves and watching a customer's face light up when they find what they were looking for. 

There aren't many things Dean can say he's proud of (Sam and Cas, basically) but his bookstore may just make the list. Having graduated Columbia with a degree in Engineering and decided he wanted to do absolutely nothing with it, he used his savings and took out a business loan and bought an empty storefront on the edge of downtown, just a ten minute subway ride from their apartment. 

He poured his blood, sweat and tears into this place (his brother and Cas can attest to that), but it's been a couple of years now and business is, as they say, booming. Well, maybe not booming. But he's doing okay. He's found his niche (he's far enough away from the big stores like Barnes & Noble and his prices are sufficiently competitive to draw in plenty of students) and has managed to build up a loyal customer base. 

He also called it Little Dickens, which he thought was hi-fucking-larious, even when Sam bitched at him at for being gross and Cas squinted up at the sign in confusion for a full two minutes before declaring that he didn't get it.

But Cas never gets Dean's jokes and Sam spends most of his days bitching at him, so whatever. Honestly, he despairs of the both of them.

A kid and his mom come in just after the schools let out looking for a book on space. Dean takes them to the children's section and smiles and crouches down and tells little George all about his rocket-scientist best friend who's gonna go up to the moon one day.

George is completely enraptured and his exasperated mom ends up buying three books and a solar system wall chart. Dean winks and apologises to her, and throws in a pack of glow-in-the-dark stars for free. 

(Cas hates those stars, has been lecturing Dean on the inaccuracies of them since they were eight years old and staring up at them on Dean's bedroom ceiling. Naturally, Dean tacked a hundred of them above the lounge of their apartment the day they moved in.)

After he's closed-up shop he stops at Whole Foods and buys groceries just so Cas doesn't die of malnutrition or vitamin deficiency or something. And if he rolls his eyes and throws a box of herbal tea in the basket because it's on special, well, that's his prerogative. 

When he gets home, the apartment is eerily quiet. For one heart-stopping moment Dean wonders if Cas was really mad at him for his tea-attack and has gone off to sulk at the lab or wherever it is nerds sulk, but then he sees a light on in his bedroom and breathes out again. 

"Hey, Cas!" he yells, hefting the grocery bags onto the counter. "Get your lazy ass out here and help me unpack."

There's a creak when the door opens and then the sigh of a martyr as Cas shuffles into the kitchen, still in his PJs and frowning at Dean, all squinty-rumpled. "I was working," he says, loftily. 

Dean eyes him critically. "We've discussed this. Working is not an excuse not to shower, man. Look at you, you're disgusting."

This is actually a bit of an exaggeration. If Dean was being totally honest with himself here he might say that Cas in sweats with ink-stained fingers and disastrous hair where he's been scrubbing his hands through it is actually sort of cute--but he isn't, so he doesn't. 

"I'm gonna cook dinner," he does say, and turns around so that he doesn't have to look at his friend because Cas has been able to read Dean like Dean reads his books since they were ankle-biters and it's a pain in the ass.  

"You went grocery shopping without me?" Cas asks, and Dean pauses where he's putting a can of chili beans in the pantry and looks pointedly at Cas's designated 'DO NOT EAT ANY OF THIS, DEAN WINCHESTER' shelf and says, "Well, I think, I think, you're good on noodles right now."

(Incidentally, Dean has a 'DO NOT EAT ANY OF THIS, CASTIEL NOVAK' shelf too, but it actually contains shit worth coveting, like beer and chips and a metric fuckton of Reese's peanut butter cups.)

When he turns around Cas is still pouting, so Dean rolls his eyes and says, "Look, let me cover the groceries for a while, okay? I'm the one with the job here, I can afford to keep us fed and watered for the foreseeable future." He rummages in one of the bags and pulls out the box of tea. "Anyway, see how good I am at it? I even got your dried mulch."

Grinning, Dean pushes the box at him, only for it to go flying out of his hand when Cas launches himself into Dean's arms, hugging him tightly around the shoulders. Dean is so shocked that he does nothing but flail for a full thirty seconds before remembering to hug back. 

Thing is, Dean can count the number of times they've hugged on one hand (when Cas fell out of a tree aged ten and Dean thought he was dead, when thirteen-year-old Sammy yelled at Dean for being like Dad, when Cas finally told his Uncle Zach where he could stick it, when Dean broke up with Lisa, when Dad died last year) and the purchase of tea bags hardly seems worth making that list. 

"I am very lucky to know you, Dean Winchester," Cas mutters into his shoulder.

Dean isn't sure what to do with that so he just pats Cas's back and says, "Right back atcha, dude," which is lame and not good enough, but Dean doesn't have the words to say it any other way. 

-

It's Cas's transition onto the loose-leaf phase of his tea obsession that shakes something loose inside Dean that he can't put back together. Namely, the desire to be near his best friend 100% of the time like some sort of creepy stalker.

It's weirding him out, big time.

Sure, they've always been close. Sam calls them freaks consistently, but then Sam's a dork who's just jealous because his best friend is Ruby and Ruby is this snarky firecracker with a filthy giggle who scares the crap out of Sam. (Dean sort of loves her.)

Anyway, they've always been close but Dean's started getting these strange sort of... sensory urges lately.

Like, he wants to smell Cas's hair properly, more than the faint whiff of shampoo he gets when they brush past each other or sit side-by-side on the couch. He wants to touch him sometimes, just place a hand on his chest to make sure he's breathing or thumb across his cheekbone. He wants to taste those goddamn herbal teas, lick the peppermint right out of his mouth. 

Dean isn't stupid, he knows what's happening here. It's not exactly a new feeling, is rooted way back in their high school gym where he once caught Cas making out with a dude behind the bleachers. But it's scary as hell and he is nothing if not the master of repression. 

"I was thinking," he says one evening, sitting at the table and watching Cas attentively read the brewing instructions on the back of some Sleepytime tea like he's going to be quizzed on it later. "We should go somewhere."

"We only just got home from The Roadhouse, Dean. I don't want to go anywhere, I'm tired."

Dean only just manages not to tear his hair out, but it's a close thing. "No, you literal-minded sonofabitch, I meant like this summer or something."

This gets Cas's attention. "You mean like a vacation?"

Somehow, Dean can't picture the two of them in swim trunks lying on a sandy beach sipping piña coladas. What he can see, however, is him, Cas, his Impala, and the wide open road. 

"I mean like a road trip," he grins. "How awesome would that be? Get Baby out of that damn parking garage, head out west."

"It's a nice idea," Cas smiles, and Dean senses the 'but' before it even arrives. "But you can't take all that time off work, who would mind the store? And besides, I'm hoping to have heard back from NASA by then. I might be in Texas."

Wow, talk about popping the fucking balloon. "Right," Dean says, feeling grouchy and miserable and itching to go get the bottle of Jack that Cas hides in the bottom of his sock drawer. 

"That is not to say," Cas adds, resting a warm hand on Dean's shoulder. "That we can't do that someday. I'd really like to take a road trip with you, Dean."

But Dean's lost all enthusiasm for the idea now, because thinking about his best friend potentially moving all the way to Houston is something he's been putting off for a very long time, and the realisation that it's finally happening is fucking awful. 

So he swallows hard and gets up, reaching for the Xbox controllers. "Here, fifty dollars says I kill more zombies than you," he teases, plastering a smile on his face.

Cas says, "I don't have fifty dollars."

"Well, you'd best hope you win then."

Dean waits until three days later to get really drunk, because Sam offered to work in the store and Cas has got lectures all afternoon and he's not as good at hiding the booze as he thinks he is. 

The apartment is too quiet with just Dean rattling around in it; it seems bigger. This is what it will be like all the time, when he leaves. Cold, lonely. Fuck. 

He drinks himself into oblivion, only waking up when the room is considerably darker and there's a soft weight being draped over him. 

Through the crack in his eyelids he can see Cas placing the empty bottle on the coffee table before smoothing down the edges of the blanket around Dean's legs and Dean thinks, not the first time, that he really doesn't deserve to have Cas stick around anyway. 

"Hey," he rasps, and Cas offers him a soft, rare, smile. 

"Hello, Dean." He takes a step closer, crouches down to Dean's eye level. 

"Ugh, 'm sorry," Dean slurs. 

Cas does that smile thing again, which makes him feel like he could cry, maybe, a bit. 

"I know," Cas says, and he pushes a hand through Dean's hair. It's nice. Dean lets his eyes close again. "But don't think I'm not going to be entirely unsympathetic and pissed with you in the morning."

And Dean falls asleep smiling, because he wouldn't really expect anything less.

-

Cas starts getting these little packages in the mail. Which is fine, at first, except he won't let Dean see any of them and then he starts getting suspicious.

So Dean stealthily searches Cas's disaster zone of a bedroom when he's at college one day only to find nothing more unusual than half a dozen empty Starbucks cups with gross dried up tea bags and a picture that he drew of a rocket when they were kids that he didn't know Cas had bothered to keep. 

He stars wondering about drugs, and freaks the fuck out. What if the pressures of grad school and NASA applications have really got to Cas and he's acting all shady lately because he's ordering freaking magic mushrooms or pot brownies in the mail?  

When Cas gets home, Dean arms himself with a flashlight and storms into the kitchen, where Cas is (naturally) making tea. 

"Dean, what--?"

Dean places two fingers on Cas's neck to search out his pulse and potentially blinds him by shining the light directly in his eyes with the other. 

"What is it, Cas? Weed? Coke? It's okay, I just want to help you."

"Dean. Dean." Cas slaps his hands away. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Hmm. There's no strange pupil dilation. No red-ringed eyes. No pasty skin or whiff of smoke. Just to be sure, Dean grabs Cas's wrist and yanks his sleeve up, inspecting for track marks. None of those, either. 

"You're not doing drugs?"

Cas laughs, startled. "Dean! How could you think that? Of course not."

The relief is sudden and overwhelming. "Oh. Good. But then what the hell have you been getting in the mail?"

Looking contrite, Cas sighs and glances away. "You'll tease me."

"Well yeah, probably. But at least I'll know you're not shootin' up while I'm at work."

Which is how Cas opens one of the drawers next to the fridge and shows Dean his collection of tea strainers. 

"Tea strainers?" Dean repeats, dumbly. "What the ever-loving fuck is a tea strainer?"

"They're for loose tea leaves," Cas explains, all earnest and eager. "I've been finding them all on the internet. Look, this one is even shaped like a manatee. Mana-tea, get it?"

Dean stares at him. Keeps staring at him. Then says, "I"m going to go to my room now, blare some obnoxiously loud music, and pretend that this conversation never happened."

-

Apparently there's flu going round campus, and when Dean comes home from Little Dickens one day to find Cas all snotty and miserable on the couch, he laughs. 

"I thought you didn't get sick?" he says cheerfully, while half-carrying Cas down the hall to his bedroom. 

"I don't," Cas croaks, utterly betrayed by his own immune system. 

"Yeah, well, looks like it's bed rest for you, sunshine. I'll make soup," Dean promises, and throws Cas's covers back before depositing him under them. "Potato leek, yeah?"

Cas smiles drowsily and nods, so Dean goes back to the kitchen to do just that. He brews some lemon tea while he cooks, figuring it will soothe a sore throat if nothing else, adds a couple of Tylenol cold and flu tablets, and takes everything back to the bedroom a while later on Cas's extremely gay floral lap tray. 

"Thank you," Cas mumbles gratefully, raising the spoon to his lips with shaky hands, and Dean's amusement dissolves into sympathy.

Cas hates being sick, has always hated it. Dear old Uncle Zach never gave a shit about him and he used to come over to the Winchester house when he wasn't feeling well, knowing he'd get more sympathy there. Dad would set up the camp bed in Dean's room and dose Cas up on meds, and Dean would sit on his own bed and read a book until they both fell asleep. 

"All right, which one?" he says now, gesturing at the overflowing bookcase in the corner of the room. 

Cas blinks at him, eyes fever-glazed. "What?"

"C'mon, man, you know how this works. Pick a goddamn book before I change my mind and leave you here to suffer alone."

A slow, dazed smile spreads over Cas's face. "You know which one."

Dean rolls his eyes and plucks the battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from where it's buried. For a man of science, who protests the inaccuracies of plastic stars and once even corrected a tour guide at the Science Museum (much to Dean's complete humiliation), Cas loves this book unreasonable amounts. 

"Fine," Dean says, and settles down on the left hand side of the bed. "But the second you interrupt with your own commentary, I'm stopping."

Cas doesn't even look up from his soup, so Dean huffs and starts with the prologue. "Far out in the unchartered backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun..."

Naturally, Cas falls asleep before Dean can even reach the middle of chapter one, and he smiles and sets the book and the tray on the floor before pressing the back of his hand to Cas's clammy forehead to test his temperature. 

"Dean, I--" Cas mumbles, catching his wrist. "I have to tell you--"

"Yeah yeah, I know, I'm awesome," Dean whispers, because he's worried about the end of that sentence. "Get some rest, sleepy."

Later, lying on the couch pretending to watch the ten o'clock news while he actually stargazes on the ceiling, Dean comes to a realisation. Not a pleasant one. The sort of realisation a drowning man might come to right before he takes his last breath of air. 

Dean is in love with his best friend. 

-

Dean goes for lunch with his brother at an Olive Garden (Sam's choice) and blurts, "Dude, I think I'm in love with Cas."

Sam doesn't falter where he's drizzling oil on his salad. Instead he just snorts rudely. "Well, I could have told you that."

Despite the sense of brain-spinning nausea that's putting him off his meatball sandwich, Dean snarks, "How about you quit bein' a wiseass and tell me what to do about it."

Giving him that 'I'm so much more emotionally-developed than you' look that Dean hates, Sam says, "Crazy idea, but why don't you try telling him?"

"Ha, no."

"Dean, you're twenty-six years old, don't you think it's time you man up and do something about the fact that you've been crushing on your best friend for the better part of two decades?"

Dean freezes with a meatball halfway to his mouth. Then, "Fuck you," he says, and wonders why he even went to his brother for advice in the first place.

-

For a couple of months life goes on the same as it ever did. Being in love with Cas is actually not that much different from before, when he was--well, when he was still in love with Cas but also blissfully unaware of the fact. 

They still drink beer and watch a game together, or play on the Xbox for several unhealthy hours at a time. Cas gets asked to do a couple of guest lectures and Dean is there clapping the hardest afterwards (even though a good ninety-five percent of the talk went straight over his head). They hang out at Little Dickens a lot more, Cas bringing some work with him and taking semi-permanent residence in one of the squashy armchairs. He still tells Dean to remove the glow-in-the-dark stars from the ceiling at least once a week, without making any real effort to remove them himself. 

So Dean gets lulled into this false sense of security and starts to think that hey, maybe this will all turn out okay. Cas hasn't dated in ages so there's minimal risk of that happening any time soon, and if Dean starts jerking off in the shower with an alarming propensity, no one has to know or be disgusted with him but himself. 

It all goes to shit on a Thursday. 

-

Dean finishes work feeling surprisingly cheerful. It had been a long day of mostly inventory and reorganising the romance section, but he always has enjoyed seeing hard work pay off. 

So he's whistling when he enters the apartment and kicks off his scuffed old boots, idly thinking about whether to cook dinner or go straight to the beer and takeout menus. 

He doesn't see Cas, at first, standing by the couch and chewing nervously on his bottom lip. 

When he does, Dean tenses and asks, "What's up?"

There's hardly a pause before Cas says, "I got accepted on NASA's training program."

Dean gapes, his brain stuck on 'he's leaving me he's leaving me' and he thinks about saying don't go or I'll come with you, but what comes out of his mouth is, "I don't think you get loose-leaf tea on the moon."

Cas tilts his head in confusion, then says, "Dean. I'm going to decline their offer."

He swallows hard. "What?"

"I'm going to tell them no."

"You--what? But Cas, this your dream! Building robots and shit on the International Space Station. Kicking alien ass and taking names. Vacationing on Mars or whatever. What the hell do you mean, no?"

A frustrated puff of air escapes past Cas's lips and he starts pacing, clearly wound tight. "Everything I love is here, Dean. Everything. Columbia is here, and the Science Museum, Central Park and Starbuck's chai tea lattes. That cat that lives on the fire escape that I've been feeding scraps to... You. You are here, Dean."

"But--"

"I want to teach," Cas goes on, frantic, unable to look at him. "I want to further my research and I want to stay, so please, Dean, please don't give me a reason to leave."

He stops pacing and looks at Dean, eyes so uncharacteristically nervous, wide and scared, that Dean knows this is the real deal and it's not a decision Cas has come to lightly. This is the inevitable conclusion to two decades of being whatever the fuck they are. And this is really fucking easy.

"Cas, you dumb sonofabitch," Dean rushes out in a single breath, and then he's across the room and in Cas's waiting arms and their chests bumps and their noses collide and oh. Oh. 

Cas's mouth is a hot, desperate thing and he kisses like he's dying and Dean is salvation, drinking him in with soft presses of his lips and skimming hands until Dean is dizzy with it. 

"Are you sure?" he asks, gasping. 

Cas kisses the dip below Dean's bottom lip and wraps an arm around his waist, steady and certain, then smiles. "Never been surer."