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Dean and Castiel had barely been at the party for an hour before Pamela suggested they all play a game. At first Dean was on board with it, the warm, pleasant buzz of alcohol having just set in. He assumed she would suggest something like Never Have I Ever, or a hearty game of Truth or Dare. Unfortunately, it seemed like Pamela had other ideas…
“We’ll blindfold someone and then they have to guess who they’re kissing!” Pamela announced, looking between the rest of the partygoers to gauge their reactions.
Dean glanced at Cas, expecting to find his best friend looking as confused as he felt. They may have different opinions on a lot of things, but surely they could sit this one out? He was about to say as much when he caught sight of what was, unmistakably, Castiel’s ‘game on’ face.
Shit.
“You guys go ahead,” Dean said, trying his best to be diplomatic. “I’ll be the judge or something. Scorekeeper, I dunno.”
“You’re not playing?”
It suddenly seemed like all eyes were on him, and Dean could offer them nothing but a simple: “Nah.”
He knew he was probably just going to dig himself into an even deeper hole by refusing. The sad part was that it wasn’t even a matter of not wanting to kiss these girls. He wasn’t exactly opposed to the idea. He stole a glance at Cas. It just felt like something was missing.
“Why not, Dean?” Cas challenged.
And there it was, that fucking infuriating smirk was right back on his friend’s face, just like the first time they’d met. Dean was struck by how much nothing had changed even though it felt like everything had.
Random roommate assignment rarely ended well, and in Dean’s case, it certainly had a rocky start. Cas was insufferable at first, just sizing him up for the first few days. And then it seemed like a switch had been flipped and everything changed. He just roared to life, electric and intoxicating. It turned out he was actually a pretty big personality. Cas was sarcastic, charming and smarter than he had any right to be as a freshman.
Over the course of their friendship Cas consistently pushed Dean out of his comfort zone. Usually these little departures from sanity ended as well as could be expected, and they always made for a great story.
Dean sighed. If Cas wanted to play, well fine, Dean could make an exception. Besides, Cas was his ride and they weren’t going to get home any faster if Dean just hung around watching people make out, twiddling his thumbs.
Even still, he couldn’t resist probing a little into Castiel’s sudden bout of childlike whimsy. “Since when is this your type of thing?” he asked, eyebrow quirked upwards in question.
“You think you know what my type of thing is?"
And yeah, come to think of it, he probably didn’t. Despite everything that had happened to them over the past few years, he’d never been able to nail Cas down. Dean sometimes felt that he knew everything there was to know about Cas and still didn’t know exactly who he was. Facts and habits were one thing, but he always got the sense that maybe there was something else there, bubbling just below the surface.
“I just didn’t think you needed a game to get a little tongue action. But hey, a man can be wrong.” Dean teased, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that his friend was drawing ever closer.
Cas paused for a long moment, barely a foot away. (He did that a lot actually, the standing and the staring and the intense blue eyes thing). Over the years Dean had figured out that this strange disregard for personal space was just something Cas did. The one thing he couldn’t quite remember is when he stopped backing away.
Dean grinned, cocksure and wild, never breaking eye contact, until finally Cas huffed a low laugh and said: “Watch and learn, Winchester.”
It turned out that watching Cas sit blindfolded in a chair and systematically kiss all six girls in the group was nothing like Dean expected. He nursed a beer the whole time, watching as each girl took their turn with his roommate. Sure, it was little hot, especially when Bela broke the rules and dropped down into Cas’s lap. It was just that Dean still didn’t understand why they were playing this game at all. His friend wasn’t usually the type to dance around what he wanted. He wondered if maybe Cas was playing the long game on someone, although he couldn’t imagine who it would be.
By the end of his turn, Castiel was in the lead, having correctly identified 5 of the girls from kisses alone (although Victor protested that Bela shouldn’t count because she’d broken the ‘no touching rule’.)
“Think you can do better?” Cas asked as they moved to trade places.
There it was again, that feeling Dean always seemed to have that Cas knew something he didn’t. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to spot a good kisser.”
Cas just smirked.
Seeing nothing better to do, Dean moved into position and Victor agreeably set to work blindfolding him. He was determined to get each kiss right, if only to wipe that stupid preemptive triumph off Cas’s face. He didn’t understand why he was suddenly feeling so angry, but he figured he could channel it into the game.
Pamela was first, a softball really, since Dean had already kissed her more than a few times over the years. Next up was Anna, who tasted like wine and kissed all perfect and proper. Dean identified her the fastest. The third kiss was a toss-up, because she didn’t linger, simply breezed gently across his lips. It seemed like the kind of thing Tessa would do, but Dean could also imagine it was Bela, trying to throw him off. He took a guess, and heard Tessa sigh in defeat.
A perfect run so far.
Everything ran smoothly until the fourth kiss. This time he heard a brief whisper from Victor, who sounded a little uncertain. After a few seconds everything fell silent again and he felt someone approach him. He tried to remember what each girl was wearing, thinking it might give him an edge. He was so lost in thought that he wasn’t actually expecting it when lips touched his.
In comparison to the other kisses, this one was universes away. His heart beat faster until he thought he could feel it in every inch of his flesh. It reminded him of long rides in the Impala, the ones where Cas ignored all his protests and cranked the bass on the stereo until he could feel each note through the floorboards.
The kiss started out slow, a gentle meeting of lips with just light pressure. The first few seconds of contact were almost uncertain but his mysterious partner gained confidence quickly, and suddenly he felt a warm wet tongue swipe across his bottom lip. It was deep and slow and by this point Dean had completely forgotten that he had an audience. He felt fingers dance through his hair and Number Four deepened the kiss, pressing harder against his lips. Dean pushed back, returning the desire and immediately lifted his hand to mimic the touch, fingers eager, when he heard Victor shout “Leave some room for Jesus!”
The mouth on his let out a sharp exhale of hot breath that Dean decided was either a laugh or a sound of frustration and then tugged a little roughly at the ends of Dean’s hair as their hand withdrew.
It was exquisite torture having his senses so deprived, being unable to reach out and touch. Dean wanted to be able to see and feel properly but since he couldn’t do either he focused his attention on all his other senses. He thought he could taste the slightest hint of mint, but more than any particular taste he could name, it tasted like something he’d been waiting for. Dean was absolutely certain he had never kissed this person before and yet it still felt familiar.
As they neared the fifteen second time limit, Dean realized he was no closer to identifying Number Four, but he figured it was worth missing a point in a game if it meant he got to enjoy a kiss of this magnitude. With a pleased little hum, he ran his tongue over the soft flesh of his partners bottom lip and under this careful inspection he felt the slightly rough texture of chapped lips. The mouth on his jerked away instantly, and Dean didn’t even hear his own gasping breath of air.
This time Victor didn’t get to ask for his guess. Although, to be fair it wasn’t intended to be an answer when Dean whispered: “Cas…”
Dean broke the rules then, reaching up and yanking off the scarf-turned-blindfold, only to find himself staring into a pair of self-satisfied baby blues. Cas stepped away from him, cheeks flushed. He was breathing a little harder than usual and his bottom lip was red and plumped from where Dean went to work. He was smirking, like always, but for once it didn’t quite meet his eyes.
“And, we have it in one!” Victor cheered, smiling at the others who were clapping that Dean had guessed correctly. Except he hadn’t guessed. The minute those lips touched his, he’d known it was Cas: from the hair tugs he’d confessed to enjoying one drunken night to the way he exhaled like a laugh. He may not have consciously put it together, but he’d known.
“What was that for?” Dean asked lamely.
A small ripple of tension moved through the group but his friend seemed predictably oblivious to the change in social climate. “I thought it would give me an edge,” Cas shrugged.
“…You thoug-,” Dean started to repeat the words incredulously but before he could finish Victor was in motion.
“Alright guys, three more to go, and then we can declare Dean the winner and move on.” Victor said, fastening the blindfold over his eyes again.
Dean could feel Victor’s hand squeeze his shoulder reassuringly. He was asking him to save this, not to make a scene in the middle of the party and just to talk to Cas later.
It wasn’t really in Dean’s nature to make things deliberately uncomfortable so he agreed to play through the rest of the game. He wound up mixing up Jo and Bela, but it was decided that he was still the grand champion, since he’d been able to guess correctly even when they threw a Castiel shaped curve ball at him.
When the blindfold finally came off for good, Cas was nowhere in sight. Dean asked around but no one had seen him. He tried to stave off that little stab of worry and instead wandered outside as calmly as possible to call his friend. It was there that he found Cas leaning up against the Continental. He wasn’t entirely sure, but it certainly looked like Castiel was taking pictures of the moon and Snapchatting them to Charlie. (He’d been on the receiving end of Cas’s nature Snaps on more than one occasion himself.)
“Hey.”
Dean was pretty sure he’d actually startled Cas, but the other boy didn’t even flinch.
“Hello, Dean.” He didn’t make eye contact, but he did lower his phone and continue staring at the stars.
If this were a movie, Dean imagined that the sound of crickets would have filled their silence. It started to seem pretty clear that Cas had no intention of talking this out if Dean didn’t bring it up, so, he decided to bite the bullet. “I just wanna know why you did it, I guess.”
Dean watched Castiel’s eyes dance over the stars, mentally tracing over constellations like a galactic connect the dots. There was a long pause. “Is there a reason I could give that would make you less angry?”
Somehow, this was not a question Dean was prepared for. “I’m not…I mean, it surprised me, but… I’m not exactly mad. I’m just confused.”
And it was true. He wasn’t mad. He didn’t really know what to feel, because yeah, maybe he’d wondered once or twice what it might be like to kiss his best friend, but in all his day dreams, in all his midnight fantasies, it had never felt anything like the real thing.
Cas’s lips twitched into a wry, tentative smile. “I don’t think hearing my thought process is going to solve that particular problem, unfortunately.”
“Try.”
Castiel sighed and finally, with aching slowness, turned to Dean. His blue eyes were uncertain and it was just short of disconcerting. Brave Castiel, always charging ahead with a smirk and sarcastic response, had nothing left to say now except: “I wanted to.”
“You wanted to?”
“I’ve wanted to since the day I moved in, and you were in there covering the walls with your stupid AC/DC posters.”
“Hey! I thought you liked my posters!” Dean protested.
“Really? The posters are what you’re taking issue with right now?” Cas asked.
“…I-…well…”
Cas seemed to decide Dean was taking too long to gather his thoughts and continued anyway. “Listen, I’m sorry. It was a shitty thing to do without your permission, and a complete violation of trust. I think it’s probably too late in the semester to request a room transfer, but we could always lo-“
“Wait, what? You’re moving out?” Suddenly images flashed through his mind of living with someone else, of waking up to something other than the sight of Castiel bleary eyed and brewing coffee. His stomach twisted uncomfortably.
“…I assumed you would want me to.”
“Listen, you already put your tongue in my mouth tonight, don’t put words in there too.” Dean actually laughed a little at his own joke, a valiant attempt at levity.
Amazingly, it seemed to be working, for in Castiel’s eyes he could see it. Violent and reckless and dangerous hope. “So you don’t want me to move out?”
“Dude, no! Actually, I…..,” Dean caught his breath and wavered on the razors edge of possibility. He took a step closer to Cas, like the other boy’s presence was some sort of gravity, a vacuum in which he might finally be able to say the words.
“What?”
“I liked it. The kiss.”
And for the first time since the kiss, Castiel’s trademark smile returned. “You did?”
“Yeah.” Dean said. His heart pounded a little faster when Cas took an answering step toward him.
“….Can I do it again?”
Dean nodded.