floorboards creak... [ch. five ]

As Dean follows Cas into the back of the house portion of the bar, Balthazar is already waiting for them, holding one foot up against the door to prop it open and signing for a vodka shipment with his dominant hand. He looks up briefly while an arm is extended, passing Cas two hoodies with his right hand.

Cas takes the hoodies and throws them over his shoulder as he holds the door for Balthazar to take the crate and walk deep into the right side of the Back Of House. When Balthazar heads back towards the front Cas immediately goes for his own shirt buttons. He turns around and faces Dean and…there is much to look at, so…he looks. And doesn’t think too hard about really liking what he sees. 

Later at home in matching hoodies, Cas and Dean climb up the steps of the brownstone and make the same stupid, “Well…this is me” joke and laugh about it. 

Cas hesitates but asks, “Do you wanna….?”. Dean looks awestruck suddenly and his eyebrows start to knit, as Cas finishes, “Watch a baking show?” Dean’s eyes go wide as his eyebrows shoot up with a smile.

“Dude, yes.” He hovers where Cas wants his hands but wavers and lets Cas eventually unlock the door. Cas thinks him strange but starts explaining Baking Impossible in such excruciating detail he almost missed that Dean tripped twice and would have fallen  if Cas hadn’t caught him absentmindedly both times. Once inside, he doesn't resist the urge to plop down after throwing his stuff at the base of the couch. He balks at his own comfort. 

“Sorry, Dean. I got so caught up in explaining bakineering. Urhm. Welcome. May I take your coat? Would you like water?” Dean’s smile has since slightly widened. 

“No, dude, everything’s fine. Go on, baking but engineered; and social commentary. I got it,” he says as he hangs up his coat.

Cas chuckles as he reaches for the remote, “There’s this one gentlemen, older fellow. I previously was miffed that he was always pointing out other people’s inadequate design or methods but it was later revealed he had a learning disability before things like ADHD had mainstream pull at all so it adds a layer, and I see it now.  How because of societal and institutional ableism, life facilitates him being unjustly mislabeled as inadequate for schooling not designed for him to succeed in his studies. But ultimately—” 

Dean clears his throat and says, “Hurt people don’t have to hurt others,” and his smile returns. Cas returns it brightly. 

“Yes. Exactly. They don’t have to continue manufacturing manipulations and mechanisms and modeling other abusers to protect monsters in their own lives.”  

Dean goes silent, Cas follows. 

----------------------------------- 

Suddenly Dean softly asks, “Can I cook you something one of these days? A burger, maybe?” Cas feigns considering it. 

“A mushroom burger, and don’t even pretend to be disgusted.”

Mushrooms. Dean is so smitten, and suggests cooking said mushroom burgers tonight…with Cas.

While assembling the burgers, Dean patty-shapes; he sees all the bee regalia around.

“What’s so fancy about them? Bees.” He hopes that Cas infodumps again.

“Bees are the beginning of the massive chain reaction that allows or disallows for so many edible mediums to exist in the first place. We couldn’t bake without them. Nature has its workers and it loves them, they even make it fun and games. Like, did you know that Australian bush tomatoes, which are unisexual, trick bees into thinking they are aren’t by producing ’male’ pollen. They don’t have much nutritional reward for the bee but it gets the tomatoes pollinated. The stuff on your burgers takes work and even a little manipulation.” 

Dean mumbles, “I think I have the opposite problem.” 

Cas blinks, “I’d rather not be indelicate, Dean, are you saying you...” he looks down, “Dislike tomatoes?”

“Oh, uhm, no I’m not pretending to be uni-uhm-heterosexual.” Dean flounders. Cas, puzzled, looks around at the various pride flags in the space. 

“Uhm, that doesn’t offer a lot of clarity either.” He shrugs gently. 

Dean looks at something that's in the space to save him from the look of consternation that draws on Cas’ face, Dean follows his eyes to the trans flag with a quirked eyebrow. “Yes, and oh, I know no one “pretends” to be male, people can be whatever they want”. The look of consternation from Cas doesn’t let up but a moment to think makes the disconnect click for Dean. 

“Oh, fuck, sorry, I'm not a trans bigot, I swear. I’m bi, Cas, I’m saying I’m bi.” Cas, the first person outside of Charlie and Sammy, and Benny, to ever know the latter about Dean, frowns and tilts his head.

“Flowers to my knowledge don’t have sexual orientation, they have sex characteristics.” Dean blanches at Cas’ reaction and the double outing in quick succession like swift kicks to the chest but Cas rushes to recover, “The problem is humans talking about the act of sex, the characteristics of genitalia and gonads, and bits of sexuality with much of the same language.”

Dean somehow feels faint.

“But I want you to know that I’m glad you feel comfortable telling me that. I didn't think you were a bigot, the language is admittedly sometimes inaccessible depending on where states bought their textbooks and if teachers were over surveilled and also their own politics. I don't think knowledge should be politicized the way it is.”

“Learn something new every day, huh?” Dean knows he needs to sit down when he hears himself squeak but sees no chairs in the kitchen.

Cas says as if it's funny, “Floor time?” Dean accepts and as he does, Cas says, “I had a lot of these same conversations with the first gentleman I met here.” 

Dean doesn’t balk. “Lucky guy.” 

Cas says, “We both were lucky.”

“I—” Dean decided to balk then. Unsure if what was unuttered was a statement, judgment, or question.

Cas tilts his head as he waits. Eventually Cas replies, “Yea, maybe…me too.” leaves him with a grin. Dean smiles.

-------------------------------------

Sam wakes Dean up with 3 questions too many when he sees him still in his yesterday clothes, argument unsettled, and hangover kit untouched. With a demand that he download Bumble and a telehealth app for therapy, Sam begins the chastising…

“Dude, enough! It was one or two drinks. Max.” 

“Dean, the app allows you to vet people ahead of time by video chatting so you know who may almost get murdered by, picking up some random —”

“He’s our neighbor and it wasn’t some bumble pickup thing I just bumped into—”

“Some random bump up of some guy who—”

“Oh my god, he fucking lives in our building, how much more anti-murder can you get?!!”

“—Murders happen in closer quarters, Dean!!—”

“—Talking about it like I was on the grinders like some hopeless—“

Sam cuts in, “It’s definitely not called that, you butch.”

”WHO ARE YOU, SAMANTHA, CALLING A FUCKING BUTCH YOU….BITCH!”

“Obviously you, headass JERK!!”

“Ooooooh my gooooood, can I pleeeeeeease just say sorry already, jeez.”

“Mmmmh.”

“Oh my god! You won’t take an apology from me?? You usually have to threaten to murder me and you’re just …what…considering it??”

“You almost were murdered, you dick!”

“H-he’s a good guy, Cas. I…I don’t know, man. Just relax on it, I want a friend. Just meet him before you get all pissy. Compromise? I’ll even download Bumby.”

“Dude. Bumble.”

“Agh, fine fine.” Dean ruffles Sam’s hair as he walks out of the kitchen. “I am sorry though, about how I did you yesterday morning. That wasn’t cool.”

“Meh, water under the bridge you won’t let me burn, dude.”

“Ha! You know it. Okay, breakfast is scrambled eggs once my head is on straight.”

“Cool, and so now when can I meet this Cas character.”

“Oh man, I’ll text him.” Dean rounds the corner again. “Fuck, I didn’t get his number.”

“God you’re hopeless, just walk upstairs.”

“What if he’s at work??”

“Then fuckin’ go again later, yeesh, Dean.”

“No, twice is too much. I gotta play it cool.”

Sam’s eyebrow twitches up, “You sure this wasn’t a date?”

“I—” Dean doesn’t know. “Don’t know? I told him I wasn’t homophobic so maybe if he thinks it is , then, I’ll…think the same, maybe.”

“May the gay lord bless you in his infinite wisdoms,” Sam says as he grabs his coffee and heads to his room.

“Bite me!”

But Dean thinks about it and he really does need all the help he can get so, quietly he whispers,

“Oh, gay lord, we’re really in it now,” he says to the heavens. He hopes and hopes he’s heard.