mittensmorgul:mittensmorgul:Rating: TWords: 14kTags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Human Ca
mittensmorgul:mittensmorgul:Rating: TWords: 14kTags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Human Castiel, Fluff, POV Castiel, First Kiss, Background Case, Fluff and Angst, but only a little bit of feelings-adjacent angst because these guys can be idiots, Pie, Bees, but to be fair this is imitation pieSummary: For years, “Goin’ out for a drink” had been Dean’s standard excuse whenever he needed a little time alone. When Cas raised him from Hell and was ordered to keep an eye on the Righteous Man, Dean’s strange little ritual escapes from the drudgery and horror of his everyday life intrigued the angel. He’d secretly watched the man who was destined to save the world try to save himself, one small adventure at a time, and learned some of his greatest lessons in what it means to be human in the process. Ten years later, he figured it was about time to come clean– for both of them.on AO3It had been several weeks since Cas had fallen from Heaven and landed permanently in the bunker when the opportunity he’d been looking forward to with equal measures of anticipation and dread finally came to pass. Cas had been watching over Dean Winchester for nearly ten years, and he knew almost all of Dean’s secrets. This one in particular had long intrigued him, mostly because it was something that Dean had never shared with anyone , and Cas wasn’t sure how Dean would take the news that he’d been in on his most closely guarded secret all along.In the beginning Cas hadn’t comprehended that it was even supposed to be a secret. His assignment from Zachariah had been to observe and report on Dean’s activities. It had given him ample opportunity to learn that there were some things that Dean went to great pains to conceal. Cas may not have understood his reasons at first, but he’d done his best to respect Dean’s personal space to the best of his ability, and never mentioned these unusual occurrences to anyone– including Dean. As the years went on, it became just one more aspect of Dean that he’d grown to admire.Now that he was human too, and spending nearly all his time in Dean’s company, he thought it might finally be something he could share with Dean for real, instead of as Dean’s invisible shadow, or his guardian angel.They’d driven all the way out to the northern California coast to hunt a creature who’d flung a few hikers off a mountain trail and chased several others across a remote stretch of recently washed-out hillside. It turned out to be the vengeful spirit of a gold rush miner. The trickiest part of the hunt was finding the old collapsed mine shaft where the man’s bones had been hidden for nearly a century before the cranky ghost was roused from his rest. A rockslide had dislodged about half his skeleton, and finding the other half buried in the rubble of a treacherously shifting cliffside while also dodging a pickaxe-wielding spirit had meant several days of rather unconventional grave digging under the relentless July sun. In some ways it was easier than digging straight down into hard packed earth, but tunneling sideways into an unstable hillside perched a few hundred feet above a rocky trickle of a creek bed had put their endurance to the test. After two days of illegally camping out by the site and then hiking back out of the wilderness with all their gear– minus a few pounds of salt, a gallon of gasoline, and pretty much every scrap of food they’d hiked in with– none of them had been ready to climb back in the car for an extended road trip.“I need a shower and a real bed, and possibly a chiropractor,” Sam said as he’d tossed his pack into the trunk of the Impala, and then stretched until his spine made several audible popping sounds and he sighed in relief.“And food,” Dean said. “Something that wasn’t cooked on a stick over a campfire.”“And coffee,” Cas added.Dean groaned. “Maybe in the morning. Last thing I need right now is to finally get in a real bed and be too buzzed to sleep.”“There’s always decaf,” Cas countered.“If we learned about decaf from the goats, you can tell them I said they can keep it,” Dean replied.Sam checked the GPS and found the nearest town with any sort of lodging, and Dean blearily steered them westward into civilization. He pulled into the parking lot of the first motel they came across, and nobody complained that it looked to be at least two steps up from their standard motel fare. After two nights camping in the wilderness, they agreed they deserved it. They’d probably only be spending the one night there, long enough to clean up and recuperate from their labors enough to move on to their next hunt. Or at least that had been the plan.Continue reading on the Ao3I reblog this fic a lot, but today is Dean’s 42nd birthday and I haven’t written a new story to celebrate (I know, I’m terrible…). But I have been rereading this again, because it’s filled with Nice Things For Dean, and he should have a day off for his birthday. <3 -- source link