![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: come back to the place you are
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Rating: PG
Fandom: SPN (Dean/Sam)
Warnings: None
Notes: Written for Fandom Free-For-All forlazy_daze who wanted Castiel as awkward matchmaker trying to heal the rift between the boys.
Summary: Castiel is trying to fix Sam and Dean, without realizing that they shouldn't necessarily be doing... that.
"So, you're not happy."
It's not a question, but a statement and comes eight beers in, four after Castiel had decided to let them affect him. Dean had been complaining bitterly about being Gimli to Castiel's Legolas and while he hadn't necessarily understood the reference, he'd understood that Dean was irked and so...
"Yes I am," Dean says because he obviously doesn't understand that it wasn't a question but a statement and came eight beers in, all of which would have affected him, being Gimli and all.
"No, you're not," Castiel insists and then feels his lips because they're not responding as expected. They're making his words mush together and he's checking to see if something's going on with them. "I mean, you can't be because Sam makes you happy and you and he aren't... you're not..." Castiel makes an expansive gesture with his hands to encompass the all-encompassing nature of Dean and Sam's dysfunction and its very impact on the fabric of space and time.
It's so expansive he nearly tips himself off the bed.
"The only thing Sam makes me at the moment is bonkers," Dean says, raising his beer and peering at it.
"Where is Sam?" Castiel asks, noting somewhat belatedly that he's mysteriously absent. Castiel frowns after asking because it was Dean who was supposed to notice that kind of thing, not just shrug and make a beats me noise.
"This is not acceptable," Castiel decides, unearthing his spiral-bound Strawberry Shortcake diary from his coat. It had been a present from Sam when Castiel had remarked on Sam's journal keeping habits and he'd kept it despite the strange-looking girl with the poofy hat on the cover because Sam and Dean had smiled at each other for what felt like the first time in weeks when Sam had handed it over.
Now he found it extremely useful.
"Dear Diary," Dean begins in a strangely high voice when he notices what Castiel is doing. "Today Dean let me drink with him because he is the coolest boy in the whole world."
"I don't understand why that is amusing," Castiel remarks dryly, not even looking up from his book. He decides not to be drunk anymore because it really affects his penmanship and ability to color-code.
"I don't understand why your face is amusing," Dean rejoinders mushily before dropping his current bottle on the floor and promptly passing out.
Castiel simply sighs and starts writing.
000
"I think I'm close to a solution."
Socks and underwear go flying when Castiel just appears behind Sam in the laundromat. "I swear Dean's right. We need to put a freakin' bell on you," Sam grouches, stooping to scrape his clothes off the laundromat floor and making a noise of complaint when he sees that most of the socks have fallen into a puddle of something green and sticky.
"The problem is that you're currently in a Tragedy," Castiel continues in such a way that Sam can hear the capital T, pulling himself up onto the washing machine opposite where Sam is re-sorting clothes. He pulls his notepad out and taps it thoughtfully. "They never end well and more often than not someone dies."
"Do you need me to be involved in this conversation because I'm kinda tired and you seem to be doing just fine on your own," Sam says, nudging the stained pile of socks in between two dryers. He can always get more socks and he's not willing to touch whatever that was.
The socks were Dean's anyway.
"We need to move your lives onto a more positive course," Castiel continues like he didn't hear and Sam sighs. He turns to face the angel, leaning back on the change dispenser and crossing his arms. "Perhaps a Buddy Comedy?"
Sam raises his eyebrows but instead of explaining further, Castiel just looks at him hopefully. It's an odd expression on him because his usual default is either serious or blank and it makes Sam uncomfortable. He looks unnervingly like a person.
"Cas, honestly, I have no idea what you're getting at."
"Maybe a Romantic Comedy instead? You both like each other quite a lot... usually."
"Cas-"
"Yes! A Romantic Comedy. I've been meaning to try out an equation a lovely teenage girl gave me on the probability of you two ultimately ending up together and it's a good starting point."
Sam was starting to get a Very Bad Feeling about all of this.
"Cas, are you talking about me and Dean?"
"Yes," Castiel answers, head down, writing furiously.
"Um," Sam puts a hand up and out, resting it on top of the book. Castiel manages to write Sandra Bullock across the back of Sam's hand before he notices and stops writing. "We're not... romantic."
Castiel laughs and for about three seconds Sam feels relief because maybe, just maybe Castiel grew a sense of humor and is messing with him.
The relief is short-lived however because Castiel just shakes his head and says, "Not yet."
000
"Did you get Castiel stoned while I wasn't here?" Sam asks, pushing through the motel room door with a duffel full of clean clothes. Dean is in the bathroom making terrible noises so Sam does the only logical thing he can think of.
He pushes the door open and leans in, rapping Dean on the back of the head with his knuckles.
"Ow, what the fuck?" Dean complains, dropping back from his full-body embrace of the toilet long enough to eye Sam balefully. "Can't you see I'm busy throwing up my internal organs?"
"Okay, drunk would have been my next guess," Sam says and pats Dean's head this time, but he does it with a damp washcloth and Dean looks slightly mollified.
"What about Cas?" Dean asks, following Sam back into the main room with the damp cloth hugged under his chin like a kid with a teddy. He's wearing Sam's too-long tracksuit pants with the legs pushed up to his knees and Sam feels a swell of affection so sudden and blinding that he sits down with his head turned away. Instead of looking at Dean he digs into the duffel and brings out a package of new socks he'd bought on the way back to the motel when guilt had gotten the best of him and tosses it to Dean.
"Awesome, cushion soles. You really do love me after all, huh?" Dean says, sounding pleased but then they both freeze and there's an awkward silence.
For once Sam is relieved when Castiel just pops into existence between them, hugging a stack of videos to his chest with his diary balanced precariously on the top. "I have research material," he announces.
"Oh hey, I'm not done throwing up," Dean says so matter-of-factly that Sam would any other time find it kind of hilarious. All he can do now though is watch Dean disappear rapidly back into the bathroom.
"Sam, look!" Castiel says, shoving one of the tapes under his nose and for a second all Sam can see is the ugly green sticker that says that the tape was three dollars and therefore probably unearthed from a bargain bin somewhere but then the title swims into focus.
"Sleepless In Seattle?" Sam says slowly.
"The video-store clerk was very helpful," Castiel nods, dropping the rest of the movies onto Dean's bed and pushing them around until they're all flat with the titles turned up. Sam sees While You Were Sleeping and When Harry Met Sally before he closes his eyes and squeezes the bridge of his nose hard.
000
They come home from evicting an honest to god Swamp Thing from the local swamp to find a candlelit dinner set up on the single rickety motel room table. The table is fairly groaning under the weight of the food heaped on it and considering it was fairly groaning under the weight of air Sam feels like a structural collapse is only too imminent.
Dean seems to ignore the fact that it's set up as a romantic candlelit dinner and makes a pleased noise, angling for the table straight away, Swamp Thing guts in his hair be damned.
"Dean!" Sam barks, because the last thing Castiel needs is to be encouraged by them sitting down to the carefully prepared dinner like they really are on some kind of weird, dysfunctional date and Castiel is the precocious youngster who has organised the whole thing in a bid to get mom and dad back together.
"What?" Dean asks as he plucks his plate from a very pedantic place setting and begins to pile things on it. He manages to make an impressively teetering tower of food and then moves over to the end of his bed, switching the television on with the remote, sitting and still balancing his plate in one impressive move.
Sam shrugs because that's definitely one way around the problem.
"Y'know," Sam says, copying Dean's example and using the table as a buffet. "You really need to talk to Castiel."
"About what?" Dean asks around a mouthful of bread roll dipped in mashed potato with gravy.
Sam just stares at Dean for a second because surely he's not the only one that's noticed their wayward angel trying to set them up. Sam gestures at the spread on the table, himself and then Dean with the hand not occupied with a plate. When Dean just blinks at him, Sam gestures again, but more emphatically when he hits the him and Dean link.
This, after all, was definitely the last straw after Sam ended up listening to Dean on a radio talk-back show about his failing love life and Castiel found them a "hunt" that ended up necessitating their presence on the top of the Empire State Building.
Apparently Castiel had watched Sleepless In Seattle first.
Dean's eyebrows raise and then he shrugs and rolls his eyes, all his communication having to be non-verbal because his mouth is currently otherwise occupied, cheeks bulging.
"Are you okay with this?" Sam asks slowly.
Dean shrugs again, but now his ears are going pink and he's starting to hunch over his plate.
Sam's world tips.
"Dean," he repeats, just to be sure. "Are you okay with this?"
"Maybe this is what we need," Dean says, staring hard at his plate, at his shoes, at anywhere that isn't Sam. "To be happy," he adds mulishly.
"We can't just-"
"Why not?" Dean snaps, tossing his dinner aside so the plate explodes against the far wall. It's saying something about the motel wallpaper pattern that after a few seconds it's hard to see where the splashed food is.
When Sam's answer is only stunned silence, Dean's mouth thins down into a pinched line and he stalks into the bathroom. A few moments later the pipes grown to life as Dean bullies water out of the ancient plumbing.
Sam goes outside to sit on the small concrete stop in front of the Impala's car space and rests his forehead against the left headlight.
000
It's not like he hasn't thought about it.
Sam's thought about him and Dean that way with the same kind of morbid fascination a person contemplates throwing themselves off a tall building whenever they find themselves on a roof. It's not like he was ever going to do anything about it because, like throwing yourself off a roof, it would end up being ultimately self-destructive and leave a big ol' mess behind.
Castiel clears his throat and Sam looks sideways to see Castiel sitting next to him.
"Maybe one of you needs to be in a coma," Castiel says and something Sam didn't necessarily expect would be for Castiel to be so hung up on Sandra Bullock. "Or a struggling prostitute with a heart of gold?"
"Yeah, you really gotta stop talking now," Sam says, rubbing fingers into his temple.
"Shall I leave you alone?"
"No, that's... you don't have to go. Just, no talking," Sam says after a pause, because something he doesn't want to be at the moment is alone, no matter how odd and deluded his company.
Castiel merely inclines his head and turns his attention to the three girls on the other side of the parking lot. They've drawn a hopscotch game on the ground with bright pink chalk and are currently engaged in a heated debate about who's going to go first.
Sam watches them try to break the deadlock with a three-way rock, paper, scissors game and smiles to himself.
000
Of one thing Sam is sure, Dean is the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with.
When he thinks about what's been happening in those terms, and that Dean would probably feel the same, the leap that Castiel made in an endeavor to ensure their lives turned out better actually doesn't seem that far-fetched. Even while with Jess, Sam's future plans had always had his brother in the foreground. That meant that he basically wondered just how mad Jess would get when a battered and bruised Dean would end up on their couch every few months with no warning.
Dean was always his future and he couldn't believe that an angel with little to no real grasp on the human condition was the one to truly understand that before him.
Sam makes his way back to the motel room after straying to the bar on the corner for some traditional courage in a bottle. When he gets into the room, Dean is pacing.
"So, if you're going to go then do it quickly," Dean snaps. His hair is standing up in haphazard spikes like he's been yanking at it but his face is a careful blank. Dean is usually one to wear his emotions on his face so it's an especially bad sign when he's folded his expression down to nothing.
"Go where?" Sam asks, playing dumb on purpose. It makes him mad that Dean is still seeing Sam with one foot out the door, ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. He's not mad at Dean exactly, more at himself that he's driven Dean to a point where his brother sees him as that guy.
"I tried," Dean says, sounding defeated. "I tried to not want... this." Dean sketches the space between them with a hand and Sam is hoping he's defining a line linking them rather than one separating them. Dean drops onto the corner of the closest bed and puts his face in his hands. "To not want you," he mumbles and Sam isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.
"Dean, what-?"
"It's wrong that I don't think it's wrong," Dean says, raising his face out of his hands and looking just plain tired. "I've been waiting for you to catch on, to figure it out one of these days and leave permanently."
"Dean," Sam sighs and sits on the bed next to him, raising a hand so his knuckles bump Dean's jaw, trail down his throat and pause at his collar bone, exposed because the shirt Dean's got on is about fifty washes past actually being wearable and the neck gapes. Sam drums his fingers for a second on Dean's skin. "Man, I know it sounds dumb but I just figured this out, that this is what I want too."
"Don't you dare," Dean groans, tilting away from Sam so his fingers slip down Dean's arm and off as he stands. "Don't you dare do this for me when you don't-"
"I'm not doing it for you, you idiot," Sam says, following Dean to his feet and getting hands on him again. One thing he knows about Dean is that you can scream and yell all you like but nothing communicates to his brother better than touch. Sam's said I'm sorry with a fist bump or forehead touch more times than he can remember. Sam manages to grab Dean by the elbows and haul him into his body, Dean resisting automatically but finally relenting and allowing Sam to press their chests together.
That's when the Peter Gabriel starts playing.
000
"How long do you think he can hold that thing up?" Dean asks, eyeing Castiel who is standing in the middle of the parking lot, holding an old-fashioned boombox over his head with In Your Eyes playing at full volume.
"Not sure what an angel's stamina is like," Sam says, dropping a fist onto Dean's shoulder. Dean moves automatically into him until their shoulders are fitted together.
They both look at each and laugh for what feels like the first time in years.
** Title from Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes"
Author:
kellifer_ficRating: PG
Fandom: SPN (Dean/Sam)
Warnings: None
Notes: Written for Fandom Free-For-All for
lazy_daze who wanted Castiel as awkward matchmaker trying to heal the rift between the boys.Summary: Castiel is trying to fix Sam and Dean, without realizing that they shouldn't necessarily be doing... that.
"So, you're not happy."
It's not a question, but a statement and comes eight beers in, four after Castiel had decided to let them affect him. Dean had been complaining bitterly about being Gimli to Castiel's Legolas and while he hadn't necessarily understood the reference, he'd understood that Dean was irked and so...
"Yes I am," Dean says because he obviously doesn't understand that it wasn't a question but a statement and came eight beers in, all of which would have affected him, being Gimli and all.
"No, you're not," Castiel insists and then feels his lips because they're not responding as expected. They're making his words mush together and he's checking to see if something's going on with them. "I mean, you can't be because Sam makes you happy and you and he aren't... you're not..." Castiel makes an expansive gesture with his hands to encompass the all-encompassing nature of Dean and Sam's dysfunction and its very impact on the fabric of space and time.
It's so expansive he nearly tips himself off the bed.
"The only thing Sam makes me at the moment is bonkers," Dean says, raising his beer and peering at it.
"Where is Sam?" Castiel asks, noting somewhat belatedly that he's mysteriously absent. Castiel frowns after asking because it was Dean who was supposed to notice that kind of thing, not just shrug and make a beats me noise.
"This is not acceptable," Castiel decides, unearthing his spiral-bound Strawberry Shortcake diary from his coat. It had been a present from Sam when Castiel had remarked on Sam's journal keeping habits and he'd kept it despite the strange-looking girl with the poofy hat on the cover because Sam and Dean had smiled at each other for what felt like the first time in weeks when Sam had handed it over.
Now he found it extremely useful.
"Dear Diary," Dean begins in a strangely high voice when he notices what Castiel is doing. "Today Dean let me drink with him because he is the coolest boy in the whole world."
"I don't understand why that is amusing," Castiel remarks dryly, not even looking up from his book. He decides not to be drunk anymore because it really affects his penmanship and ability to color-code.
"I don't understand why your face is amusing," Dean rejoinders mushily before dropping his current bottle on the floor and promptly passing out.
Castiel simply sighs and starts writing.
"I think I'm close to a solution."
Socks and underwear go flying when Castiel just appears behind Sam in the laundromat. "I swear Dean's right. We need to put a freakin' bell on you," Sam grouches, stooping to scrape his clothes off the laundromat floor and making a noise of complaint when he sees that most of the socks have fallen into a puddle of something green and sticky.
"The problem is that you're currently in a Tragedy," Castiel continues in such a way that Sam can hear the capital T, pulling himself up onto the washing machine opposite where Sam is re-sorting clothes. He pulls his notepad out and taps it thoughtfully. "They never end well and more often than not someone dies."
"Do you need me to be involved in this conversation because I'm kinda tired and you seem to be doing just fine on your own," Sam says, nudging the stained pile of socks in between two dryers. He can always get more socks and he's not willing to touch whatever that was.
The socks were Dean's anyway.
"We need to move your lives onto a more positive course," Castiel continues like he didn't hear and Sam sighs. He turns to face the angel, leaning back on the change dispenser and crossing his arms. "Perhaps a Buddy Comedy?"
Sam raises his eyebrows but instead of explaining further, Castiel just looks at him hopefully. It's an odd expression on him because his usual default is either serious or blank and it makes Sam uncomfortable. He looks unnervingly like a person.
"Cas, honestly, I have no idea what you're getting at."
"Maybe a Romantic Comedy instead? You both like each other quite a lot... usually."
"Cas-"
"Yes! A Romantic Comedy. I've been meaning to try out an equation a lovely teenage girl gave me on the probability of you two ultimately ending up together and it's a good starting point."
Sam was starting to get a Very Bad Feeling about all of this.
"Cas, are you talking about me and Dean?"
"Yes," Castiel answers, head down, writing furiously.
"Um," Sam puts a hand up and out, resting it on top of the book. Castiel manages to write Sandra Bullock across the back of Sam's hand before he notices and stops writing. "We're not... romantic."
Castiel laughs and for about three seconds Sam feels relief because maybe, just maybe Castiel grew a sense of humor and is messing with him.
The relief is short-lived however because Castiel just shakes his head and says, "Not yet."
"Did you get Castiel stoned while I wasn't here?" Sam asks, pushing through the motel room door with a duffel full of clean clothes. Dean is in the bathroom making terrible noises so Sam does the only logical thing he can think of.
He pushes the door open and leans in, rapping Dean on the back of the head with his knuckles.
"Ow, what the fuck?" Dean complains, dropping back from his full-body embrace of the toilet long enough to eye Sam balefully. "Can't you see I'm busy throwing up my internal organs?"
"Okay, drunk would have been my next guess," Sam says and pats Dean's head this time, but he does it with a damp washcloth and Dean looks slightly mollified.
"What about Cas?" Dean asks, following Sam back into the main room with the damp cloth hugged under his chin like a kid with a teddy. He's wearing Sam's too-long tracksuit pants with the legs pushed up to his knees and Sam feels a swell of affection so sudden and blinding that he sits down with his head turned away. Instead of looking at Dean he digs into the duffel and brings out a package of new socks he'd bought on the way back to the motel when guilt had gotten the best of him and tosses it to Dean.
"Awesome, cushion soles. You really do love me after all, huh?" Dean says, sounding pleased but then they both freeze and there's an awkward silence.
For once Sam is relieved when Castiel just pops into existence between them, hugging a stack of videos to his chest with his diary balanced precariously on the top. "I have research material," he announces.
"Oh hey, I'm not done throwing up," Dean says so matter-of-factly that Sam would any other time find it kind of hilarious. All he can do now though is watch Dean disappear rapidly back into the bathroom.
"Sam, look!" Castiel says, shoving one of the tapes under his nose and for a second all Sam can see is the ugly green sticker that says that the tape was three dollars and therefore probably unearthed from a bargain bin somewhere but then the title swims into focus.
"Sleepless In Seattle?" Sam says slowly.
"The video-store clerk was very helpful," Castiel nods, dropping the rest of the movies onto Dean's bed and pushing them around until they're all flat with the titles turned up. Sam sees While You Were Sleeping and When Harry Met Sally before he closes his eyes and squeezes the bridge of his nose hard.
They come home from evicting an honest to god Swamp Thing from the local swamp to find a candlelit dinner set up on the single rickety motel room table. The table is fairly groaning under the weight of the food heaped on it and considering it was fairly groaning under the weight of air Sam feels like a structural collapse is only too imminent.
Dean seems to ignore the fact that it's set up as a romantic candlelit dinner and makes a pleased noise, angling for the table straight away, Swamp Thing guts in his hair be damned.
"Dean!" Sam barks, because the last thing Castiel needs is to be encouraged by them sitting down to the carefully prepared dinner like they really are on some kind of weird, dysfunctional date and Castiel is the precocious youngster who has organised the whole thing in a bid to get mom and dad back together.
"What?" Dean asks as he plucks his plate from a very pedantic place setting and begins to pile things on it. He manages to make an impressively teetering tower of food and then moves over to the end of his bed, switching the television on with the remote, sitting and still balancing his plate in one impressive move.
Sam shrugs because that's definitely one way around the problem.
"Y'know," Sam says, copying Dean's example and using the table as a buffet. "You really need to talk to Castiel."
"About what?" Dean asks around a mouthful of bread roll dipped in mashed potato with gravy.
Sam just stares at Dean for a second because surely he's not the only one that's noticed their wayward angel trying to set them up. Sam gestures at the spread on the table, himself and then Dean with the hand not occupied with a plate. When Dean just blinks at him, Sam gestures again, but more emphatically when he hits the him and Dean link.
This, after all, was definitely the last straw after Sam ended up listening to Dean on a radio talk-back show about his failing love life and Castiel found them a "hunt" that ended up necessitating their presence on the top of the Empire State Building.
Apparently Castiel had watched Sleepless In Seattle first.
Dean's eyebrows raise and then he shrugs and rolls his eyes, all his communication having to be non-verbal because his mouth is currently otherwise occupied, cheeks bulging.
"Are you okay with this?" Sam asks slowly.
Dean shrugs again, but now his ears are going pink and he's starting to hunch over his plate.
Sam's world tips.
"Dean," he repeats, just to be sure. "Are you okay with this?"
"Maybe this is what we need," Dean says, staring hard at his plate, at his shoes, at anywhere that isn't Sam. "To be happy," he adds mulishly.
"We can't just-"
"Why not?" Dean snaps, tossing his dinner aside so the plate explodes against the far wall. It's saying something about the motel wallpaper pattern that after a few seconds it's hard to see where the splashed food is.
When Sam's answer is only stunned silence, Dean's mouth thins down into a pinched line and he stalks into the bathroom. A few moments later the pipes grown to life as Dean bullies water out of the ancient plumbing.
Sam goes outside to sit on the small concrete stop in front of the Impala's car space and rests his forehead against the left headlight.
It's not like he hasn't thought about it.
Sam's thought about him and Dean that way with the same kind of morbid fascination a person contemplates throwing themselves off a tall building whenever they find themselves on a roof. It's not like he was ever going to do anything about it because, like throwing yourself off a roof, it would end up being ultimately self-destructive and leave a big ol' mess behind.
Castiel clears his throat and Sam looks sideways to see Castiel sitting next to him.
"Maybe one of you needs to be in a coma," Castiel says and something Sam didn't necessarily expect would be for Castiel to be so hung up on Sandra Bullock. "Or a struggling prostitute with a heart of gold?"
"Yeah, you really gotta stop talking now," Sam says, rubbing fingers into his temple.
"Shall I leave you alone?"
"No, that's... you don't have to go. Just, no talking," Sam says after a pause, because something he doesn't want to be at the moment is alone, no matter how odd and deluded his company.
Castiel merely inclines his head and turns his attention to the three girls on the other side of the parking lot. They've drawn a hopscotch game on the ground with bright pink chalk and are currently engaged in a heated debate about who's going to go first.
Sam watches them try to break the deadlock with a three-way rock, paper, scissors game and smiles to himself.
Of one thing Sam is sure, Dean is the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with.
When he thinks about what's been happening in those terms, and that Dean would probably feel the same, the leap that Castiel made in an endeavor to ensure their lives turned out better actually doesn't seem that far-fetched. Even while with Jess, Sam's future plans had always had his brother in the foreground. That meant that he basically wondered just how mad Jess would get when a battered and bruised Dean would end up on their couch every few months with no warning.
Dean was always his future and he couldn't believe that an angel with little to no real grasp on the human condition was the one to truly understand that before him.
Sam makes his way back to the motel room after straying to the bar on the corner for some traditional courage in a bottle. When he gets into the room, Dean is pacing.
"So, if you're going to go then do it quickly," Dean snaps. His hair is standing up in haphazard spikes like he's been yanking at it but his face is a careful blank. Dean is usually one to wear his emotions on his face so it's an especially bad sign when he's folded his expression down to nothing.
"Go where?" Sam asks, playing dumb on purpose. It makes him mad that Dean is still seeing Sam with one foot out the door, ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. He's not mad at Dean exactly, more at himself that he's driven Dean to a point where his brother sees him as that guy.
"I tried," Dean says, sounding defeated. "I tried to not want... this." Dean sketches the space between them with a hand and Sam is hoping he's defining a line linking them rather than one separating them. Dean drops onto the corner of the closest bed and puts his face in his hands. "To not want you," he mumbles and Sam isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.
"Dean, what-?"
"It's wrong that I don't think it's wrong," Dean says, raising his face out of his hands and looking just plain tired. "I've been waiting for you to catch on, to figure it out one of these days and leave permanently."
"Dean," Sam sighs and sits on the bed next to him, raising a hand so his knuckles bump Dean's jaw, trail down his throat and pause at his collar bone, exposed because the shirt Dean's got on is about fifty washes past actually being wearable and the neck gapes. Sam drums his fingers for a second on Dean's skin. "Man, I know it sounds dumb but I just figured this out, that this is what I want too."
"Don't you dare," Dean groans, tilting away from Sam so his fingers slip down Dean's arm and off as he stands. "Don't you dare do this for me when you don't-"
"I'm not doing it for you, you idiot," Sam says, following Dean to his feet and getting hands on him again. One thing he knows about Dean is that you can scream and yell all you like but nothing communicates to his brother better than touch. Sam's said I'm sorry with a fist bump or forehead touch more times than he can remember. Sam manages to grab Dean by the elbows and haul him into his body, Dean resisting automatically but finally relenting and allowing Sam to press their chests together.
That's when the Peter Gabriel starts playing.
"How long do you think he can hold that thing up?" Dean asks, eyeing Castiel who is standing in the middle of the parking lot, holding an old-fashioned boombox over his head with In Your Eyes playing at full volume.
"Not sure what an angel's stamina is like," Sam says, dropping a fist onto Dean's shoulder. Dean moves automatically into him until their shoulders are fitted together.
They both look at each and laugh for what feels like the first time in years.
** Title from Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes"
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