Archive of Our Own ^beta

Anna smiles when she opens the door.

“Hey, Dean,” she greets.

Dean smiles right back. “Hey, Anna. Big plans?” He nods at her dress-and-sneakers combo as he passes her by. She closes the door behind him. Her hair’s half curled, half not-yet.

She grins. “Yeah. Dinner and disco. Gabriel pestered me into buying the tickets from him.”

Dean huffs a laugh. “Yeah, he did the same to me. I had to tell him I’d already bought from Ash back home to get him off my back.”

Anna arches her brow. “You bought tickets for the disco for Valentine’s Day?”

Dean puts a hand to the nape of his neck. “Yeah, you know,” he says, his eyes searching the far wall of the apartment, “I gave them to Sammy. Kid was stressing about where to bring his girlfriend.”

Anna laughs. Her curls bounce up and down with the movement. “Ah, the struggles of St. Valentine’s. It’s just a glorified date night, nothing more.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him, but do you think he listens?” He rolls his eyes with his whole head, and Anna laughs again. She has a nice laugh, Dean won’t lie, but that’s it. The sound is good, the way her eyes sparkle is pretty, but that’s it. Today more than usual. He changes the topic. “Hey, where's everyone else?” he asks.

Anna smiles again. “Balthazar’s already out. He’s probably already at a bar, trying to find someone who’ll give him the time of day. Uriel’s still at the library, I think. He asked for you to be quiet when he comes back, because he has an exam tomorrow. And, well,” she jerks her chin towards the farthest room from the apartment door, “your man’s in there. Studying.”

Dean glances in the direction she’s pointing. “Mind if I…”

Anna physically pushes him down the corridor. “Absolutely not! I have to be ready in half an hour and I still have to do half my hair and my make-up.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” he drawls. Anna chuckles, and he smiles. Inner joke, that. Her parents own the apartment (which is definitely why it’s way nicer than the average student accomodations, bathrooms included), and her three roommates just kind of fall in line.

Dean doesn’t. Then again, he doesn’t live here and he has a healthy dose of distrust for any authority except his mom’s.

Anna waves him off and closes herself in the larger bathroom. Dean looks at the brown wood of the door in front of him and knocks.

“Who is it?” asks a voice from inside.

“Hey, Cas, it’s me,” Dean answers.

Cas just grunts in response. Dean grins as he enters the room, and then he frowns when he sees Cas bent over his desk. “Are you seriously still studying?”

Cas doesn’t even turn to look at him. “I hate Economic History.”

Dean drops his backpack in a corner of the room and lies down on the bed. “Yeah, you’ve said. About three hundred times.”

“It’s still better than History of International Relations,” Cas grumbles. Only then does he close his book and turn around. “How did your first day go?”

Dean groans. “I’m this much closer to switching to Management Engineering. They don’t have classes from eight thirty in the morning to seven in the evening in Management Engineering.”

The sound of Cas cracking what feels like his whole skeleton makes him wince.

“They don’t even get to work on machines in Management Engineering,” Cas points out when he’s done evoking body horror images in Dean’s mind. “And you only have one day a week like that.”

Dean groans, loudly. “But I’m a commuter! It should be illegal to make a commuter have to take so many classes in a day!”

“So drop a course. You can follow it next year,” Cas says. It’s reasonable, but that doesn’t mean Dean has to like it.

He groans again, more loudly. Cas glares at him. He smirks back, but he stops. “I’ll probably do that, but I’ll still end up with a sizable hole in my day, ‘cause I can’t drop the one that ends late. Can I steal your room?”

“No,” Cas deadpans. He pushes his chair back (it screeches against the floor. Dean’s wouldn’t, but Dean’s desk is an hour’s trip away) and falls on the bed, smacking a forearm into Dean’s chest.

“Watch it,” Dean grumbles without any heat.

“Cope,” Cas answers. He really loves saying that. “Do you have any plans for tonight?”

Dean rolls on his side so he can properly look at Cas’ clothes. “I take it from the sweatpants that going out is out of the question?” he teases.

Cas looks down at his attire and rolls his eyes. “I don’t have the will to watch people mooning over each other tonight.”

Dean nods with a grimace. “Yeah, same. Pizza okay for you?”

“You’re going to pick it up.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Of course. I’m the one who’s dressed to go outside.”

“I’m calling,” Cas graciously offers, before realising that his phone is still sitting on his desk. He looks at Dean, half-pouting, and Dean makes a big show of huffing and puffing before getting up to retrieve it, but he knows it’s weak. He’s weak for Cas, always has been.

Dean manages to restrain himself and not to flop down onto the bed to “accidentally” smack his arm into some part of Cas’ anatomy. Just because he’s weak for Cas doesn’t mean he doesn’t retaliate occasionally.

“Thank you,” Cas says with the sweetest smile, batting his lashes for effect. They both crack a laugh at the show. Nope, not that kind of person, either of them.

As Cas orders the pizzas (diavola and crudo e mascarpone, because the both of them are nothing if not predictable), Dean rifles into his backpack to find the chocolates mom gave him this morning.

“Eight twenty,” Cas declares, hiding his phone under the pillow. Dean doesn’t know why he does it, but it’s not like he doesn't have his own quirks. “Are those for me?”

Dean passes one of the two tubes over, the pistachio-flavoured one. Mom always goes out of her way for Cas, something that makes Sam quietly fume when the same doesn’t apply to Jess. This morning he pouted when he received only his chocolates, instead of another tube like Dean. To be fair, Dean and their mom have known about Jess for three weeks and still haven’t seen her, while Cas has already come to Christmas for the past two years. And it’s not like Mom bought him pistachios before she was sure he was a pretty stable fixture in Dean’s life anyway.

Also, they wouldn’t even know that Jess existed if she didn’t share Dean’s birthday, thus forcing Sam to explain why he wanted to skip dinner at home that day.

“Tell your mom I love her.” Cas is practically salivating as he tears the package open and unwraps the first chocolate.

Dean shakes his head with a fond smile. “You and your pistachios, man.” He too opens his tube (normal variety, because this year Mom didn’t want to figure out new flavours) and fishes his first prey out.

Because he’s not Cas, he actually looks at the strip of paper inside before shoving the chocolate into his mouth.

“Oh, hey,” he says, not bothering to stop chewing. “Cicero.”

“Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?” Cas dutifully recites, before sitting up to look at the phrase on the paper. “I bet it’s from the De amicitia.”

Dean shoves him lightly. “Really? A quote on friendship from the De amicitia? Who would’ve thought?” Cas narrows his eyes at him. “Do you think Cicero used amare or bene velle to talk about Atticus?”

“And Laelius about Scipio Aemilianus?” Cas retorts. “You know that Cicero was the same one who complained about Catullus and Lesbia, don’t you?”

Dean shakes his head and swallows the chocolate. “What’s yours?”

Cas digs through the empty foil and manages to extricate the slip of paper from it. He frowns down at it. “No idea.” He passes it over and fishes the next chocolate out.

Dean looks at the quote, which is one of the classic “Love makes everything better” ones that are everywhere, not only on Valentine’s Day. At least people could get creative with it, you know? The author isn’t anyone he’s ever heard of, so he just shrugs and puts it with his own. He’ll add them to his collection when he gets back home tomorrow evening.

“Wait,” Cas says, stopping with the second chocolate only a couple of centimetres in front of his mouth. “I should ask Uriel if he wants a pizza too.”

“Is he eating here?” Dean asks.

Cas just looks at him over his shoulder from where he’s fishing his phone back from under his pillow.

“Oh,” Dean says. “Right. You wouldn’t have said otherwise.”

Cas nods gravely. “I may yet educate you on logical assumptions.”

Dean gives him a light shove, not enough to make him overbalance. “Asshole. Remind me who has at least one Maths course in his study plan?”

Cas returns the shove with only one hand, the other busy typing a text. “Remind me who had to take two Philosophy courses,” he replies absent-mindedly, tongue poking out in concentration. “I hated those with a burning passion hotter than the flames of Hell.”

“You know,” Dean points out, “open flames are actually in Purgatory.”

Cas full-on glares at him. “Ulysses,” he only says, and then he bites down on the chocolate he was still keeping in his hand to stress his point.

“Fine,” Dean concedes with a roll of his eyes. “Whatever. Pass me your quote.”

They keep eating chocolates until the tubes are empty, interrupted only by Cas calling the pizza place to add Uriel’s pizza to their order, and then there is a knock on the door.

“Hey, guys,” Anna says, poking her head inside. She’s finished curling her hair and already has a coat on. “I’m leaving.”

“Ok,” Cas says.

“You look good,” Dean says, because she is. Just because they had sex that one time doesn’t mean he can’t tell it as it is.

Anna smiles warmly at him. “Thank you. See you tomorrow!”

“Bye!” they both call in unison, and then Anna is closing the front door behind herself.

Dean stretches with a groan and lies back down on Cas’ bed. “What time is it?”

Cas shuffles a bit and then lies beside him. “Eight,” he says. “What do you want to do?”

Dean yawns and burrows further into the soft surface. “We said pizza, what about a movie and sweet, blissful sleep?”

He feels Cas nod through the mattress. “I have to study tomorrow,” he mourns.

Dean closes his eyes. “I have class tomorrow,” he mumbles.

He’s on the verge of sleep, an unquantifiable number of minutes later, when he hears the sound of keys in the front door.

“Hi!” Cas calls.

“Is Dean already here?” Uriel answers.

“Yup,” Dean replies. His throat is dry. He swallows a couple of times to get rid of the unpleasant sensation.

Uriel appears in the corridor just outside Cas’ room. He’s got his backpack slung only over a shoulder, a hand still twisted in the other strap. “Do I need to go get the pizzas?”

Dean shakes his head and levers himself in a sitting position. “Nah, I’m going.”

Uriel nods. He rifles into the front pocket of his backpack and takes his wallet out, then rifles into that too and hands Dean the money for the pizza. Exact change, because he’s considerate.

Not like Cas, who’ll hand him a twenty for a coffee.

“It’s eight fifteen,” Cas notes.

Dean groans and retrieves coat, phone and wallet. “I’m going, I’m going,” he grumbles.

The air outside is colder than it was an hour ago, so he actually has to zip his coat up to his throat and regret the scarf he left in his backpack. He doesn’t want to get a cold because he’s been lazy.

The good thing about Anna’s apartment is that, while it’s on the third floor of a building with mismatched stairs, there’s a good pizza shop just fifty metres down the block. And the ice cream shop just beside it is the best one in the city, even if none can beat the one near Dean and Sam’s old elementary school.

Once Dean enters the pizza place, he’s insanely grateful for the wood oven heating up the room. Twenty seconds later, he’s sweating.

Luckily, though, they’re markedly less busy on a Monday evening than on a Saturday, so there are already two cartons on the counter. On the top one there’s Novak written in sharpie.

“Good evening!” the employee at the register greets him. “Do you want a table?”

“Ah, no,” Dean shakes his head. “I’m here to pick up three pizzas. Name’s Novak.”

The cashier nods. “Yeah, last one’s in the oven. Do you want to pay in the meantime?”

“Yeah.” Dean retrieves his wallet from his pocket, then he stops when he sees the fridge in the corner of the room. “Can I take a Coke and a spuma?”

The employee nods again. “Sure. That’ll be twenty-nine. Do you have our card?”

“Yeah, sure.” Dean passes it over together with the money. As the employee processes the payment and presses three stamps onto the card, Dean opens the fridge to grab the two bottles, grimacing at the spuma. He knows that he should like it–region of birth and all–but no. Just no.

Uriel can have his spuma, doesn’t mean Dean has to join in the regionalist traditions.

The third pizza’s ready as Dean comes back to the counter, so he gets the great joy and thrilling experience of swiftly and as un-embarrassingly as possible having to balance three cartons of pizza and two bottles in his arms, somehow leaving enough time to pocket his change, receipt and wallet before embarking on his quest.

There’s no way not to feel ridiculous, he accepted that a long time ago, so he just picks his stuff up and opens the door to the outside with his hip.

This is why he hates picking up pizza.

The trip back to Anna’s building and up the stairs to the apartment is uneventful, fortunately—because he’s not Cas, who managed to forget you shouldn’t keep the pizza carton anything but horizontally and ended up with a huge tomato stain on his coat. His roommates and Dean still make fun of him for it.

Cas opens the apartment door for him, and Dean bows into the kitchen to put his catch down.

“Uriel!” Cas calls, not even bothering to turn in the right direction.

“I’m coming!” Uriel answers.

Dean takes advantage of the fact that Cas is the only person he knows who likes cutting pizzas into slices to first wash his hands and then take off his coat.

Uriel gets to the kitchen just in time for Cas to slide his cut pizza in front of him. “Thanks,” he says, before taking both the carton and the spuma back to his room.

“He has an exam tomorrow,” Cas explains.

Dean makes an acknowledging noise. “What are we watching?” he asks cheekily.

Cas doesn’t even look at him as he finishes slicing his own pizza and puts the scissors in the sink. “What do you want to fall asleep to?”

Okay, fair. They both know neither of them is lasting to the end of whatever they put on, but Dean will be damned if he lets himself succumb to sleep over Alberto Angela again.

His stuff can’t be disrespected like that, man.

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?” he tries, even if he knows what Cas’ reaction will be.

Predictably, Cas rolls his eyes. “Just because I know I won’t be awake to see you lip-syncing to it,” he agrees with a huff.

Dean takes the win without pointing out that he’ll probably nod off sooner rather than later.

So they take the pizza and the Coke and they lie on Cas’ bed. Dean takes his laptop from his backpack and boots it up.

Cas munches on his first slice, but he swallows before speaking. He may never hand exact change, but at least he never speaks with his mouth full either. Unlike Dean, whose mom gave up trying to make him stop when he graduated high school.

“Do we really have to watch a movie?” Cas asks.

Dean turns to look at him, smothering the instinctive urge to just strangle him. Dean’s laptop takes a long time to boot up, and he can’t very well shut it off when it’s still in the middle of it, now, can he?

“You’re that tired?” Dean teases him, but he also hopes for an affirmative answer. He is exhausted, and today was only the first day of classes. How will he get to the end of May, and then to exams?

Life of the college student.

“I have no particular desire to watch you fawning over Clint Eastwood,” Cas says, a tiny smirk in his words. You’d never tell from his face, but Cas is a sass master. And a bitchy asshole, but that’s what made Dean like him so fast, the first time they met. Not many chances to cross paths for a Mechanical Engineering major and an Early Modern History one, so Dean is grateful for Anna’s boldness the day she approached him in the dining hall.

He got Cas out of it, how could he not be grateful?

“Then what do we do?” Dean concedes. Truth be told, he doesn’t really want to watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for the umpteenth time either, but it’s a way to pass the time and a background noise he can ignore because he’s watched it so many times.

Also Cas tolerates it, so there’s that too.

“We eat pizza and we go to sleep,” Cas proposes. “I’ve studied all day, and I know you’re tired as well.”

And, well, Dean can’t really deny it, so he just makes a big show of huffing and puffing about having to turn his laptop off, but Cas’ plan sounds like heaven right now.

“Fine,” he concedes with a grouchy tone. Cas prods at the corner of his mouth until he smiles, though, so the pretending doesn’t really work.

Whatever. This is the guy Dean’s chosen. He won’t give him back for anything in the universe.