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“I like to watch him sleep,” Cas says like they’re in the middle of a conversation and not, you know, staking out a back water beer joint with a demon infestation.
Sam squinches his eyes shut and then lets out a long sigh. “No.”
“I am certain that I do, Sam.”
Sam doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that Cas is staring at him with that particular brand of confusion only an angel can pull off. He opens them anyway and yup, one very confused angel staring at Sam like he’s got all the answers or something.
“That’s not...” Sam trails off with a shake of the head. “Do you really think now is the right time to have this conversation?”
Cas doesn’t even blink. “Yes. Dean is not here.”
“That’s right,” Sam says slowly. “Because he’s out being bait for our trap. Which is why this is most definitely not a good time. How about we reschedule this discussion for the twelfth of never?”
“Because that date does not exist.”
“Yeah.” Sam deliberately turns his back on Cas, hoping that he gets the point. Which, of course, he doesn’t.
“I like to watch him sleep,” Cas repeats. “I take great comfort in it, actually. Have you ever had this,” a long, pregnant pause, “reaction?”
“To watching Dean sleep?” Sam snorts. “Never.”
There is a rustle in the bushes up ahead, thank all that is holy, and then the sound of laughter mixed with screaming. To Sam, the sound has never been more welcome in all his life.
*
Sam is sitting at a dinged up table searching the web for anything that could possibly explain their most recent case when Cas suddenly materializes.
“Dean isn’t here,” Sam says, then adds, “Oh shit, I’m alone with you,” because being around Cas is like suffering from Tourette’s.
“Yes,” Cas replies in that calm, dead way of his. “I have been waiting for a chance to finish our conversation.”
“What conversation?” Sam asks like he doesn’t already know.
Cas smiles. “Your brother, he is special to me.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Sam shuts his laptop and pinches the bridge of his nose. “But I don’t see what that’s got to do with me.”
“You understand him in ways that I do not.”
Sam glances at the door, praying that a vampire would come crashing through it. Or a ghost. Or anything really. Because then he could deal with that and not with his brother’s creeper of an angel. But fate sort of hates Sam, so nothing happens except that Cas moves so that he is standing in Sam’s line of sight.
“Please don’t ask me if my brother has a mancrush on you,” Sam says, because his angel Tourette’s is kicking in again.
“What’s a mancrush?” Cas asks in that totally unhelpful way of his and Sam just sighs because what the hell is wrong with his life?
He leans forward, resting his head in his hands and tries not to scream while he attempts to formulate an answer that won’t make his life suck even more. “A mancrush,” Sam says slowly, “is an attraction that one man feels for another. A sexual attraction.”
“You would not be pleased if your brother were to have a sexual attraction to me?”
Cas sounds wounded and Sam feels like a shit, but then that’s how he normally feels, so he just lifts his shoulders and says, “Pretty much. But, look, it’s not you, dude. I really just don’t want to think about Dean having a ‘sexual attraction’ to anyone, you know?”
“No,” Cas replies. “I don’t know.”
“Of course not,” Sam grits out, his head starting to pound. “Have you ever thought of maybe talking to Dean about this?” he asks because he really just wants to not be involved in his brother’s sex life.
Cas blinks. “Yes, I have. I decided it would be better if I spoke with you instead.”
“Well isn’t that just great for me,” Sam mutters, unhappiness settling over him like a cloak.
“Tell me more about this mancrush,” Cas says and Sam lets out a groan.
*
“I think Cas is avoiding me,” Dean tells Sam halfway through a breakfast of eggs and bacon. “I haven’t seen him in nearly three weeks.”
“That’s funny,” Sam replies without thinking, “I saw him last night.”
Dean stops chewing and stares at him in a way that makes Sam long for one of Cas’s baffled-as-shit looks. “You what?”
Sam clears his throat. “I, um, saw him. Last night.” He takes a drink of his juice and looks anywhere but at Dean’s thundercloud of a face.
“You wanna tell me what you and Cas talked about?” Dean asks after a long, horrible moment of silence.
Sam shakes his head. “No, not really.”
“Damn it, Sammy, don’t play coy with me,” Dean shouts, slamming his hand on the table and making his plate jump.
The whole of the diner suddenly stops what it’s doing in response, turning curious eyes in their direction. Dean doesn’t even bother with his it’s-all-right-folks-nothing-to-see-here smile. He just keeps on keeping on with the death glare he’s got leveled at Sam. And that, right there, is the moment that Sam realizes that he’s at the butt of a heavenly practical joke.
“You’re jealous,” he says, half laughing at the ridiculousness of it.
Dean, however, does not laugh. Dean just mutters to himself, throws a handful of bills on the table and stomps his way out of the diner. Sam rolls his eyes at the universe and follows him out the door.
*
“Castiel, get your dirty trench-coat wearing ass down here right now,” Sam prays, his teeth on edge and his hands clenched in fists because, seriously, this has been the shittiest two weeks of his life.
It’s one thing to have your brother mad at you because you made bad choices. Because, dude, you made the bad choices. It’s a whole other ball of wax to have your brother up in arms at you for some stupid shit you didn’t even do. Because, seriously, even if Castiel offered him everything under the sun, he still wouldn’t hit that. It’s... just wrong to poach your brother’s, erm, angel. And even if it wasn’t, Sam is so not on Team Gay-For-Angels.
Cas, of course, doesn’t show up. Cas never shows up when Sam prays to him. He only does that shit for Dean, who is currently crying about his manpain in a corner somewhere. Or, you know, scoring with some chick who will give him gonorrhea and steal his current batch of credit cards.
Sam lets out a disgusted noise and glares up at the sky. “Just see if I ever let you unload your stupid angel feelings about my stupid brother on me ever again,” he shouts. The sky, Cas, and all of the universe, can’t even be bother to laugh.
*
“Stop taking your frustrations out on me,” Sam snaps a good five days and nine hundred miles later. “It’s not my fault Cas doesn’t think the sun shines out of your ass anymore.”
Which, given the situation, is not exactly the wisest thing he could have said.
Dean slams on the breaks while simultaneously swerving off of the road, his face all twisted up and angry looking. “I am not taking my frustrations out on you,” he bellows.
This time the let’s-not-make-things-worse part of Sam’s brain shouts at him louder than the pissed-off-little-brother part and so he doesn’t make a crack about how Dean just proved his whole god damn point. Instead he sits there with his teeth gritted and his eyes focused on the rain soaked scenery out of the side window. Dean, for his part, mutters about idiots and angels under his breath, yanks the key out of the ignition and jabs his thumb into the release button on his seat belt.
“Where are you going?” Sam asks as Dean pushes his door open.
“Out,” is his brother’s curt reply a second before he slams it shut behind him.
Sam watches as Dean stomps down the side of the road, figuring that it’s better not to chase after him right now. There’s nothing he can say to fix Dean and if Dean wants to get soaked to his skin over some creeper of an angel who stares too much and can’t give a straight answer to save his life, well, that’s Dean’s choice to make. He just wishes Dean had left the keys so that he could listen to some music or something. Sam frowns and leans his head back against the headrest, figuring he might as well catch a few winks while he waits.
So, of course, this is when Castiel decides to make an appearance.
The faint rustle of angel wings and that slightly sweet-sour smell are all the warning Sam gets before Cas speaks. “Dean is very unhappy with me,” he says, once again jumping into the middle of a conversation that Sam’s missed the first half of. “He told me to piss off and die.”
“Did you interrupt him in the middle of his personal time again?” Sam asks, keeping his eyes closed.
There is another rustle, this time of the trench-coat-on-leather-seat variety. “He did not call me The Patron Saint of Peeping Toms,” Cas replies, like that answers everything.
And, well, it kind of does. “You’re right,” Sam says with a sigh, “he is very unhappy with you right now.”
“Why?”
Sam opens his eyes and turns his head so that he can see Cas in the backseat. The angel is rumpled, his hair looking like it’s never been brushed, and his eyes -- they are the saddest puppy-eyes that Sam has ever seen. He sighs again and shakes his head. “Because Dean thinks you’re in love with me.”
“That’s absurd,” Cas says with a bonafide yuck-face.
“You’re not my cup of tea either,” Sam shoots back, closing his eyes again. Cas makes a frustrated noise and Sam thinks how’s it feel, big fella?. But what he says is, “Here’s an idea, why don’t you go talk to Dean about your big, gay love for him?”
“I am not in love with Dean, big, gay or otherwise.”
That gets Sam to crack his eyes open. He gives Cas an oh-really look, with a raised eyebrow and everything. “You like watching him sleep,” he says in his you’re-stupid voice.
“I am interested in him, yes. And I do derive pleasure from his company...”
“You like watching him sleep,” Sam repeats, cutting off whatever bullshit Cas was about to spout. “Is there anyone else in the whole wide world you feel that way about?”
“No.”
“Points to me, then.” Sam shifts in his seat, trying to find a way to get comfortable. Unfortunately for him, there is the world’s most clueless angel staring at him from the backseat. So comfortable? Not going to happen. He lets out the longest, loudest sigh of his life and then says, “Dude, you’ve got the hots for my brother. And, guess what, he’s got the hots for you. It’s weird and I don’t understand it, but whatever. And, really, it’s probably the healthiest relationship Dean’s ever been in. So, yeah. Go have creepy-angel-sex with him or something so he stops bitching at me all the time.”
“I am not in a relationship with Dean,” Cas says, completely missing the fucking point. Again.
Sam leans as close to Cas as the front seat will let him and opens his mouth to say just that when the side door opens and, holy shit, it’s Dean. Looking both pissed and hurt at the same time, his eyes darting back and forth accusingly between Cas and Sam.
“It’s not what you think,” Sam says because Sam always says the stupidest things.
Cas stares at Dean for a moment and then frowns. “He’s right, Dean. It’s not what you think. I am not interested in having hot monkey sex with your brother.” He pauses, his brow furrowing. “I’m not sure I am interested in having hot monkey sex at all.”
And Sam, well he has to laugh at that, which... is not such a smart move since it brings Dean’s attention back to him. “Dude,” he says, holding up his hands to stave off whatever wrath is about to rain down on his head from that direction. “I’m going out. You and your angel clear the air while I’m gone, okay?”
Then he tugs on the handle and gets the hell outta dodge before either of those two idjits can say a damn thing.
*
When he comes back, a good two hours later and a whole hell of a lot wetter, Dean is alone in the car. It’s clear even from a distance that he’s in a fine mood. AC/DC is blaring and Dean is air-drumming like there’s no tomorrow with a smile the size of Texas on his face.
“Work things out?” Sam asks as he slides into the passenger seat.
“Yup,” Dean says and the look he gives him is so happy that Sam decides not to comment on the fact that his shirt is on backwards and the whole freaking car smells like sex.