xylodemon:

hey, have you see the…? oh; accidental truths

–

“Dean,” Cas says, coming into the storage room. “Have you seen the…? Oh.”

Dean sits up with a groan, inching away from the weird, stone-carved statue beside his foot. He’d caught it on instinct when it came tumbling out of one of the boxes, and it’d immediately knocked him on his ass. Some kind of mojo had jolted through him; a bright blue electric shock that still has him twitching a little.

“Are you all right?” Cas asks.

Dean starts to say, “Yeah,” but what comes out is, “My ass hurts. I think I bruised my tailbone.”

Cas picks is way through the other stuff that fell out of the box, mostly papers yellowed with dust and age. “What happened?”

“I knocked over a box, and that fell out of it. I – I, um –”

“Did you touch it?”

“Just for a second.”

Cas frowns at it. “It’s a statue of Ma’at, the Egyptian goddess of truth. I’ve seen similar statues of Veritas and Altheia; in ancient times, they were used to make criminals confess.”

“Oh, God,” Dean says, rubbing his face. He’s got plenty of truth inside him, and none of it is the kind of thing he wants to admit to Cas. “Can you fix it?”

Crouching beside him, Cas lightly touches his forehead. He grits his teeth against the familiar, chilly sweep of grace; once it passes, he still has an itch under his skin.

“Sorry,” Cas says, shaking his head. “This is old magic, and.. tenacious. If you only touched the statue briefly, it should pass in a few minutes.”

“Okay, okay,” Dean says. “Can you, can you –um.”

“I’ll go if you want.”

Dean starts to nod his head, but then his big, dumb mouth opens and he blurts out, “No, I don’t want you to go. I never want you to go. I wish you’d stay here all the time.”

Thankfully, Cas doesn’t try to respond to that. He just clears a space on the floor with his foot and sits down about three feet away. A full thirty seconds ticks by; Dean does his best to ride the restless, rising feeling inside him, but eventually it crests, washing over him like a wave.

“I want you to sit closer.”

Cas studies him for a moment, then shifts over about a foot. “Is that better?”

“No,” Dean says. God, he wants to die. “Closer.”

Cas shifts again, straightening his leg and pressing his thigh against Dean’s. Another thirty seconds rolls by; the words crowd into Dean’s throat, spilling out before he can swallow them.

“I want to hold your hand.”

“Okay,” Cas says, offering his hand palm up. When Dean doesn’t take it – he’s too busy staring at it, horrified – Cas just reaches over and laces their fingers together.

Another thirty seconds; humiliation is a living thing in Dean’s gut, but he can’t fucking stop.

“Cas, I — you, um – ” Dean takes a deep breath and bites the inside of his cheek, but it doesn’t stop the words from bubbling up. “Cas, I –”

Cas leans in and kisses him, soft and slow. He tips his head to the side as he pulls away, asking, “Is that what you wanted?” in voice that makes heat wrap around the base of Dean’s spine.

“Yes,” Dean admits, heat flooding his face. “I’m sorry, you –”

“Dean.”

“You should just –”

Cas kisses him again, tugging on his hand until he’s half in Cas’ lap. His coat smells like the inside of the Continental, and his other hand curls into Dean’s hair. He makes a gorgeous noise, so throaty and deep Dean wants to nudge him down onto the floor, slide over him, kiss him everywhere, but that thought startles him back to reality.

“Cas,” he says miserably. “You don’t have to. I’m just –” he waves his hand “ – it’s okay.”

Cas frowns at him for a second, then leans over and brushes his fingers over the statue’s feet. Everything flashes blue.

“Cas –”

“I only leave because I must,” Cas says, his voice far steadier than Dean’s has been. “If I had my way, I would stay here with you. I wanted to kiss you. I’ve loved you for years.”

Dean chokes out a noise. “Fuck.”

“When we were first given the mission to retrieve you from hell, I feared at what we would find, but your soul was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” He touches Dean’s chest, then slides his hand to the hollow of Dean’s throat. “It was so bright.”

The mojo floods out of Dean in a rush, but he looks at Cas and says, “I love you too,” and means every word.