"consequences & new beginnings"

Chapter 13 .consequences & new beginnings

Dean watched Cas pull into the driveway from his room.

[to Castiel: Doors open, come up]

Dean heard the front door open and shut, and Cas' footsteps up the stairs. He rounded the corner to Dean's room fast and stood in the doorway looking about as angry as he expected.

"What the hell, Dean."

"Sorry, I had a minor freakout." He said not looking up from his phone, scrolling through his apps to get to Skype. "Thought I was going all cuckoo's nest but I think I have it finally figured out."

"What exactly did you figure out?" Cas' exclaimed, still pointedly annoyed.

Dean scrolled through Skype to Clarence's open message and hit the call button, but kept a straight face. He heard the buzz of Cas' phone in his swim trunks pocket filling up the silence of the room. Cas' reached into his pocket and silenced the call while keeping his eye contact with Dean.

He's not getting it.

If looks could kill, this one would. Dean hit the call button again and the buzzing of the phone started up again.

"Cas, answer the phone."

"Dean, we are in the middle of a conversation, I'm not going to let you deflect right now."

"Cas, answer the phone."

He huffed and looked down at the screen finally. It was a Skype call from Bruce and he looked almost puzzled with it. He answered it anyway.

"Now is not a good time for me."

"I think it's a fine time." Dean answered back into his own phone, and he could hear his own voice out of Cas' speakers. Cas looked down at his phone, it was clearly skype, and it clearly said Bruce.

Dean pulled his phone away from his ear and waved it at him, showing the CLARENCE contact

"Oh." Was all Castiel could muster.

"Yeah."

"So this is why you-"

"Ran away, yeah. My vision is pretty bad without my glasses so I didn't notice in the water, but when I saw your back tattoo I knew."

"Oh."

The moment hung heavy between them, silent and hard to maneuver.

"So what do you want to do about this?" Dean tested the air between them

"What do I want to do? It's not about me Dean, what I want is you. I thought I made that clear before. All I wanted for years was to come home and kiss you and have you. And I did, and you said too fast. So what I want, Dean, is to move at your pace. This hasn't changed anything for me. What do you want? What do you want me to do?"

Silence. Those damn bees again. He took a seat on the edge of his bed. The blood in his ears was too loud to think. I don't know what I expected him to say. I don't know what I wanted him to say.

"Take some time." Cas said, turning to leave. "Call me when you have it figured out.'

"Cas, wait."

He stopped, hand still on the door frame, ready to make his exit.

"Stay."

"Are you saying stay because you know what you want from me, or because you feel bad for ditching me?" He almost chuckled out, shaking his head.

"I'm telling you to stay because I want you to stay here. With me. Stay the night. I don't know what I want, but I do know that I thought the only way to get over you was to aim those feelings at someone else. And I know that the only person who even held a candle to you in my mind was just you with a fake name."