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Cas brings things home, magpie-like, every time he goes out. Sometimes they’re for Sam, sometimes he keeps them for himself - but most often, he gives them to Dean. Maybe it’s a shiny pebble, or a flower, or a crinkled-up photograph of strangers. Or a pen, or a feather, or a pair of broken glasses.
Dean keeps them all, arranging them neatly on every surface in his room. The flowers he hangs on a string on a wall, so that they’ll dry. They make his room smell faintly of rose petals, which he likes without saying so.
Cas isn’t doing it to be cute. He doesn’t blush or flutter his lashes when he pushes a gift across the table or places it in Dean’s upturned palm. He only looks serious - perhaps tilts up a slight smile. Dean’s the one who’s bashful, still stumbling stupidly over his thanks, even weeks after this began.
Today’s gift arrives home when Cas does, after a day out chasing down a dead-end case not too far away. Dean is reading in the library, blinking down at the book in front of him without really seeing it, paying attention to the thud-thud of shoes approaching.
A hand appears over his shoulder, and drops something onto the table with a small clink. It’s a perfect golden circle. A ring.
Dean blinks at it dumbly for a second, and then twists in his chair to look up at Cas.
“Is this… ?” he says, not wanting to misunderstand. Maybe it was from the case.
“It’s for you,” Cas confirms. He’s still wearing his trench coat - he’s come straight here, then, not even stopping off in his bedroom first. He flicks that strange, solemn smile, the one that Dean likes without saying so.
Right now, Dean’s throat is dry as week-old roses. He swallows hard.
“Thanks,” he says. “Did you want me to… wear it?”
Cas pauses for a second, and then says,
“It’s yours, Dean. For you to do with as you wish.”
Dean picks it up and turns it over in his hand for a long, long moment. Cas has moved away - he’s already across the room - when Dean stands up and says,
“Cas - why do you bring home these things?”
His voice comes out a little louder and rougher than he intended. The ring is in his fisted hand, small and cool.
Cas doesn’t answer at once. Their conversations are always like this; so careful, so full of guarded silence. Dean wishes that once - just once - their words could spill out, that he could break the glass holding them in, holding them back.
“It - there is more than one reason,” Cas says at last. There’s a strange light in his eyes. He looks almost - afraid, as though he’d frightened himself somehow, as though that first impulsive word was the start of something he wanted to say, but couldn’t.
“Tell me one of them,” Dean says, not giving himself time to think. He can feel his hands on that glass, testing it. Cas looks taken aback.
“Which one do you want to hear?” he says.
Dean shrugs. “Any of them,” he says.
“Because - because I like your smile when I give you something,” says Cas, after a moment of thought. Dean blinks, a little colour rising to his cheeks.
“And?” he says, fast, not leaving a pause.
“And because I like that you own things that are from me.”
“And?”
“And because… I have nothing much to give you, but I want to give you something.”
“And?”
“And because I worry -”
Their rhythm falters as Cas seals up his lips, shuts down. There it is - the thing that had Cas frightened of speaking before. Dean debates for half a second whether to let it go, but the push is already out of his mouth before he can stop it.
“You worry about what?”
Cas is frowning down at the ground, not meeting Dean’s eyes. He wants to dismiss it, Dean can tell, but he doesn’t.
“I worry - I - I worry,” he grinds out, “that one day - I won’t be allowed to stay here anymore. I want you to have things to remember me by. I know it’s - I know it’s foolish. I’m guessing you throw away most of the things I give you, but I thought - if I can just find one thing you like enough to keep, then - then you can look at it sometimes. After I’m gone. And you can think of me.”
He isn’t crying; not quite. Dean, on the other hand, can’t help the fullness of his eyes. He blinks hard and looks away for a second, trying to compose himself. He clears his throat, and then walks past Cas, heading for the door.
“Come with me,” he grunts back over his shoulder, not trusting his voice to speak more kindly without shaking. He leads the way to his room and bangs through the door, throwing open a vision of a treasure-trove: there are all the stones that shine, the feathers, the flowers, the pens and photos and coins and broken spectacles.
Cas steps into the room, looking around him with more reverence than Aladdin in the genie’s cave. He stares at the broken, lost, and disparate things with silent, fist-clenched awe.
“I keep ‘em all,” Dean says. Cas turns to look at him, and he sweeps a hand around his room, needlessly. “I keep ‘em all.” He doesn’t know what else to say.
“I thought…” Cas says, and then stops.
“This is your home,” Dean says. “This is your home. You belong here. OK?”
“I… “ Cas begins, and then trails off. “You keep all of them?” he says disbelievingly, looking around again, as though the things will disappear if he doesn’t watch them.
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Why?” Castiel says. “Why do you keep them?”
Dean swallows, his heart beating hard. Everything is suddenly moving very fast, so fast he can hardly keep up. He can feel things sliding, emotions shifting to the fore, bravery rising.
“There are lots of reasons,” he says. He can still feel the ring in his hand, warmed now by his skin.
“Tell me one of them,” Cas says - and he says it differently to Dean, his voice softer and yet somehow more commanding, but the look in his eyes is the mirror of Dean’s feelings.
“Because - because I like it when you think of me, and bring me things,” Dean says.
“And?”
“And because I like having things from you all over my room.”
“And?”
“And because I - it feels - it feels closer to you to have them in here,” Dean says, teetering on the edge of sheer unadulterated bravery, of the words he’s been wanting to say for so long.
“And?” Cas says, an expression on his face that hopes, hopes, hopes…
“And because,” Dean says, and lets go, allows the moment to carry him, light-headed and brave and terrified - “because - I love you.”
There is silence, and then there is a small noise; Cas drawing in a breath through parted lips. His eyes have a look of Jericho falling or Rome burning, as though Dean’s confession were as dangerous and strange and beautiful as fire against the dark of the night.
“And I don’t want you to leave,” Dean says. “I don’t want you to leave, Cas. I worry that you will, I - I wake up sometimes and I look at all these - these things, and I think - I think about what it’ll be like when these… are all I have of you. All I have left.”
His voice is soft as falling rose petals. He closes his eyes briefly, runs a hand over his face, trying to pull himself together.
He smells clean clothes and apple shampoo and - something else, a scent that he recognises, but which has no name. He opens his eyes, and the name is Cas, and he’s standing close. As close as Dean has wanted him to be for a long, long time.
“This will never be all you have left,” Cas says. He catches one of Dean’s hands in his own, and looks him in the eyes. “Dean. If everything else has gone. If the world has turned to ash, and darkness. If you think nothing remains. I will be what is left.” He speaks the last words with a grace-infused juddering force that takes Dean’s breath away, has his knees weak. “Whoever you are and whatever you have done, you will always have me. Because I know who you are, and I know what you would want to do, and I trust you. And I love you, Dean.”
Cas’ free hand, the one that isn’t already wound into Dean’s fingers, is brushing at the back of the fist that Dean has made around the ring. Dean brings his palm up flat, holding the circle of gold in between them.
“I wanna wear it,” Dean says quietly.
When they kiss, it’s like the whole world has been waiting on each other’s lips, saved for when they come together.