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It’s a split second thing, fuelled on adrenaline. The bloodsucker at his throat is no longer even a concern, having faded into a fuzzy tickling sensation. Dean’s attention is fixed on the man desperately fighting his way towards them, and he smiles dopily when Cas wrenches the vamp off him and separates her head from her shoulders. “I love you,” he says, and attempts to kiss the heel of Cas’s hand when it cups his face.
“Dean.”
“Love you,” he assures Cas, because everything’s a little bit blurry round the edges and even Cas is looking hazy and uncertain now. “Sorry. Dick move. Ugh. Might be dying.”
Cas says his name with an even heftier dose of distress. Shaking fingers inspect the carnage the leech made of his neck and Dean’s breathing hitches. It takes him several long seconds to get it back under control, and Cas is flushed red and wide-eyed with panic when he manages to focus again. “Very nice eyes,” Dean tells him as the ex-angel bandages the wound shoddily and lifts Dean with surprisingly minimal effort. He breathes in again shakily, adds, “This is very gay but,” with another struggle for air, “you have a good ass.”
*
The car ride back to the bunker is awkward to say the least. Dean’s got the kind of headache only having your innards sucked out by a vampiric cheerleader can inspire, and the staring from Cas in the passenger seat is playing on his last fuckin’ nerve. Jesus. Apparently humanity didn’t impede the guy’s aversion to blinking.
When Cas speaks, Dean nearly drives off the road. “Need to use the bathroom.”
They’re driving through the Arizona desert. “You see a bathroom ‘round here, genius?” Dean is perhaps a little too snappy, judging by the narrowing of Cas’s eyes, and so reluctantly pulls over and pointedly looks away. “Go on. Have fun.”
The door is slammed with a little more force than Dean deems necessary.
*
He thought he was dying, alright? Forgive him for getting a bit mushy on his goddamn fucking deathbed.
Sam gives him mournful puppy eyes at that, and Dean flushes red. Cas has disappeared god-knows-where since they arrived back, and there’s an ache in the werewolf chow section of his chest when he thinks of the radio silence from the other man. This is why Dean doesn’t spill his guts more often (in the more figurative sense). No one else is ever willing to roll in internal organs with him.
With that cheerful thought, he interrupts whatever Disney-esque speech Sam is giving him with, “Gotta wash my hair” and does not retire to his room to hide under the covers.
*
The mattress depresses under the weight of someone else, and Dean determinedly does not remove the sheets from his face.
“Dean,” Cas says, exasperated.
Dean coughs pathetically and tightens his hold on the blankets so they can’t be wrenched from him. “Go away. I’m sick.”
“Boo, you whore,” Cas answers without hesitation, and Dean’s really going to have to stop letting Charlie pick the after-dinner film. “Dean.”
It’s with a final salute to heterosexuality that Dean emerges from his cocoon and lets Cas cup his face with slender fingers and a soft look on his face. “You,” Cas tells him fondly, “are the most ridiculous human I’ve met.”
“There was that trucker in Alabama,” Dean protests, because it really is an unfair accusation and –
Cas kisses him softly, chapped lips and a thumb stroking over his cheek. Dean blinks rapidly, feels something warm in his belly at the contented sigh the other man lets out when he tentatively responds. “Next time you tell me you love me,” Cas murmurs, and Dean opens eyes he hadn’t realised he’d closed to meet the demanding gaze of the ex-angel, “you will not be bleeding out on the floor. Am I clear?”
He nods, swallows so he can speak past the burning ball of happiness building in his chest. “Crystal."