#this started out as songfic to atl's a daydream away but i decided we deserved fluff

[clairenatural]

Suptober 2020, Day 5: Daydream. ~800 words. Destiel.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon, but neither of them have class today so they slept in, only recently stumbling out of Dean’s apartment and down the block to the diner. Cas is wearing an AC/DC t-shirt that Dean’s pretty sure migrated from his own closet sometime between their Freshman year and last night, and it shows off his collarbones, and the midday sun is shining through the tufts of hair of his eternal bedhead, and Dean is young and in love.

Cas is still grumbling into his coffee, but he’s smiling as Dean teases him about his hangover—a low blow, given how much Dean also drank the night before, but Cas will let it slide in favor of stealing a slice of his boyfriend’s bacon. He’s going straight to the library, after all—that would explain the backpack he’d grabbed on their way out the door—and he needs protein. Dean tells him it’s lame to study for an exam a week in advance, but they both know Dean will be joining him later to cram for his physics midterm.

Yeah, physics. That sounds right, right? He’s in engineering, after all. He’s also wearing a University of Illinois baseball hoodie—he’s on a scholarship, probably. And Cas is, uh. History. Sure.

“Dean?” Castiel—a different Castiel from the young one in front of him—calls for his attention. “I think you’re making that couple uncomfortable.”

He blinks back to reality, tearing his gaze away from the young couple sitting by the windows of the diner…who had definitely noticed him watching them. Whoops. He turns back to Cas—his Cas, sitting across from him, and sighs. “Sorry,” he grumbles, and refocuses on picking at the remnants of his fries.

Castiel frowns. “Are you alright?”

“Peachy.” Dean forces a smile. “You were saying something about a serial killer?”

Castiel sighs and leans forward, the way he does when he’s decided not to accept Dean’s deflecting. “Dean.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean watches the couple stand to leave. The shorter boy—the one with dark, messy hair and an AC/DC shirt—grabs his backpack as the taller, dirty blond kid pulls a few bills out of his wallet and throws them onto the table. They link hands as they move towards the door. Dean sighs.

“You ever think…I don’t know. If we’d met…different?”

Castiel raises an eyebrow. “Different?”

“Yeah, you know. Like…in class, or at the bar, or…I don’t know. Like normal people.”

“We aren’t normal people.” Cas seems amused. He’s not getting it.

“Yeah, I guess not.” Dean frowns and reaches for his wallet, more frustrated than he wants to admit. “Forget it. Let’s go over the case stuff back at the motel.”

“Dean—” Castiel reaches out to catch Dean’s other wrist, across the table, and he stops moving. “Our story could have started a million different ways. It would still have the same ending.”

“Yeah? And what ending is that?” Dean’s smiling now. He already knows the answer.

Cas humors him anyway. “I fall in love with you, you fall in love with me…” he laces their fingers together and holds up their joined hands. Sunlight glints off his wedding ring. “We put poor Sam through Hell with it all,” he chuckles, and Dean can’t help but laugh too. It had been stupidly dramatic. He pulls Castiel’s hand towards himself, pressing a kiss against his husband’s fingers.

“I’m serious, Dean,” Cas continues, apparently not finished, and his tone is almost stern. “You can spend forever daydreaming about everything that could have been, but you’re here now. I’m here now. We’re real here, in this story.”

And, well. Now Dean just feels like an asshole. He squeezes Castiel’s hand and smiles again, but it’s turned sheepish. “I know. I’m sorry. I promise I’m happy to be here, with you, on this ghost hunt in the middle of Illinois, in this lifetime. Because I love you. Okay?”

Cas considers this for a moment before he nods once and seems to accept it (at least...for now). “Okay. Good. Because, as I was saying, Sam just emailed me about this string of murders in the 1980s,” he pulls his hand back and immediately reaches into his messenger bag—because Cas carries around an honest-to-God satchel now—and Dean tries to suppress a groan.

Castiel continues, pulling up maps and case files on his laptop, and Dean listens with half of his brain. The other half is thinking about the couple from earlier, curled up on a couch in the library or drinking coffee in a campus lounge—but they don’t hold his attention. They can’t. Not when it’s a Tuesday afternoon, his husband is talking animatedly about a 40-year-old ghost, and Dean isn’t young anymore but he’s just as in love, and, really…he doesn’t really think he’d change a damn thing.