Chapter Text
Castiel is in love with Dean Winchester. He has been for the past two years. Since the second time he met Dean.
Yes, the second time.
Not the first time, God no. That first impression was… Well, to be honest, Cas doesn’t exactly remember it. He’s not good at first times, okay?
It’s not his fault he passes as a rude, he’s just a newyorker. He's used to not paying attention to other people and expecting them to ignore him as well. All that small-town-charm, chit-chat crap? Not his thing. And it’s really not his fault that Dean is from Kansas and had an apple-pie life until he went to college, and even then his life continued to be just as easy, while Cas’… well, let’s not talk about that because that’s not important.
What’s important is this: Castiel is in love with Dean Winchester.
He has been for the past two years. Since the Second Time they met. Because Dean had called him using -their mutual friend- Charlie’s phone and asked him to go get a cup of coffee. And the deep voice at the other end of the line surprised Castiel at first, but he still agreed to that coffee.
They met in the Starbucks on campus and they talked. Or, mostly, Dean talked. Cas doesn’t even remember what he was going on about -it’s been two years, for fuck’s sake, you can’t blame the guy for not remembering these things. But what he does remember is this: While the blond talked, all Castiel could think was where has this man been all my life, and why aren’t we getting married right now?
But, mysteriously, after that marvelous cup of coffee, Castiel didn't see Dean again for a really long time.
It wasn't that mysterious, really. They had opposite majors (Literature and Engineering) and they had never ran into each other in campus before. It had been luck that they even met in the first place. And Dean had called him using Charlie's phone, so it's not like he had anyway to reach him. And a part of Cas felt sad because he really liked that guy.
It had been Love at Second Sight. At least for him. And he often wondered whether or not Dean had felt something the first time they met because why else would have he called and asked for a coffee? Castiel did not obsess over that thought for months. Not too much, anyway.
Half-way through their second year, Charlie mentioned that, "that dude you had a crush on, remember? Dean Winchester? Well, I heard that he's all lovey-dovey with his childhood friend, Benny. Super hot dude, kinda like a beard-type." And Cas felt a part of him die. Because the past tense was not completely appropriate here. A part of him still has a crush on Dean, and that's the part that dies.
By the time he started seeing Dean again (thanks to his winter semester requiring cross-campus sprinting at lunchtime), he was always holding hands with a muscly, bearded dude. Benny.
So it’s fair to say that, by then, Castiel had officially given up on hope.
That is why, when Castiel saw a kind-of-awkward-but-still-hella-good-looking Dean Winchester sitting in the front row of his econ class on his third year of college, he smiled at the green-eyed boy, but thought nothing of it.
Dean had been his crush his first year, but that was it. No need to get his hopes high or get all excited for something that wasn't there. That crush had been all in his mind. They had only talked that one time. And sure, it had been for hours and it felt like magic, and Castiel doesn't remember ever being that comfortable with someone else. But. Benny. And this was nothing. So he thought nothing of it.
It wasn't Love at Third Sight.
As the semester went by, they began talking again -properly, this time, with phone exchanges and everything. The hanging out came naturally and so did the constant texting. And if that caused Castiel’s old crush to come back to life in full force, well, that's not something Dean needs to know.
Because he knew -he thought he knew- Dean would need more than just hanging out to make sure Cas was worth more than just a friendship. After all, Benny had been his first and only boyfriend, and they had been friends since the fourth grade. Heck, they even continued to be friends even after breaking up and Cas doesn’t know whether or not he should really feel that jealous about it. But he did.
None of his exes still talked to him. Not the ones that mattered anyway. They just used him and left, and came back when they were horny. But of course Dean was still friends with his ex. Because he was perfect, and who wouldn't want to be friends with him?
So they became friends. Cas and Dean. They would hang out, and have lunch together, and they knew each-other’s coffee order by heart, and Dean would go out of his way just to make sure Cas was alright and in his own dorm, and they would text up until 3:00 a.m. and since the moment they woke up in the morning, but Cas knew, they were just. friends.
And Cas knew how lucky he was that this was happening at all. Even if it was just a friendship, he knew his freshman-year-self would have died if he knew he could one day have coffee with Dean on a regular basis and hug him and touch him, and just... look at him when the sunlight fell over his face, making all of the little freckles stand out. But at the same time, it all felt so surreal, like it was another one of his fantasies and he had finally gone mad. After all, what were the chances of the guy he’d had the biggest crush on for the past two years of his life, finally feeling the same way about him?
It was impossible.
Castiel looked back at the past and he thought, he remembered, all the poems he wrote, and the songs he listened to, and the romantic movies he watched, all while thinking of Dean, of this perfect, righteous man, that was just so right for him.
He looked back at his life, and thought about how all of his ex-partners, both men and women, had either treated him like shit or been treated like shit by him. And he thought, “his is too good for you, he’s too good for you, you don’t deserve this, you don’t deserve love, especially his.
So he would go out on weekends and use more drugs than his body would forgive him for the next morning, and hook-up with strangers while thinking it was Dean all along. And we would shed a single tear and whip it quickly before Dean looked back at him from the Starbucks line and smiled that beautiful, perfect, smile of his, right before ordering Cas' favorite mocha, which he knew the dark-haired guy liked with almond milk.