"Be my Valentine?" Dean quipped as he pushed the metal tray across the morgue's lab table.

"Of course, Dean," Cas replied, all sincerity. "Do I need to present you with the heart of a recently deceased man as well? I'm not certain I will have time to acquire one as Valentine's Day is tomorrow."

Dean's mouth fell open, but no words came out.

He'd expected Cas' reaction to be different from Sam's usual eye roll, but what he hadn't expected was for Cas to take the question at face value. He supposed, since he knew exactly how literal Cas was, that the joke was on him.

"Uh, no, Cas, that's, that's alright," Dean sputtered, not quite sure how to tell Cas that he wasn't serious, that he hadn't even really known that it was February.

"Would a paper one be sufficient then?" Cas asked, creasing his brow in what appeared to be real anxiety about the matter.

Dean wanted to tell Cas he didn't need to get him a heart of any kind because they weren't Hallmark or Valentine kind of people, and even if they were, it certainly wouldn't be with each other. But one look at Cas made all the words stick in his throat. Cas' eyes were lit with hope and a smile, and he would hate himself if he took that away.

But, unless he actually did this Valentine's thing, he was pretty sure that he was going to anyway.

He didn't actually want to do this, did he?

What the hell did he just get himself into?

For a fleeting moment, he thought he was being saved by Sam shuffling back into the morgue.

"A paper what?" Sam asked as he leaned over Cas' shoulder.

"Heart," Cas said, shifting the metal tray into Sam's view. Then, as though it were as natural as anything, he explained, "Dean asked me to be his Valentine with this man's, but I don't have anything for him."

Sam's face contorted as he tried not to laugh. Ultimately, he pressed his hand over his mouth until he had stifled the compulsion. Then, because he's a bastard, he asked, "So, Cas, did Dean have plans for you guys?"

"Dean?" Cas asked, turning his gaze up from the liver he'd been dissecting.

He looked directly into Dean's eyes, and, in the face of such intensity, Dean found that he couldn't say no - not flat out.

So, feeling like a deer caught in bright blue headlights, he decided first to deflect and second to run.

Looking back down at the table, he said, "There were traces of sulfur, so I'm thinking ghost. Farmer Brown has a lot more explaining to do. So, I'm..I'm gonna go track the SOB down."

Then he darted for the morgue's door trying his best to ignore Cas and Sam.

"Dean?" Cas asked. Then, when he didn't answer, "Is he alright, Sam?"

"Yeah, Cas, he's just wrapping his head around something," Sam said. "But don't worry, he'll take you out tomorrow."

The hell he would.

XXX

Some two hours later, Dean found himself standing over a grave forcing a shovel into soft soil much more vehemently than strictly necessary.

How the hell had he asked Cas out iaccidentally/i?

He knew this didn't even rank on the list of stupid things he'd done - he'd kickstarted the apocalypse for Christ's sake - but, at the moment, it felt like it was at the top.

For one thing, he was pretty sure, now that he'd brooded pretty damn thoroughly through his grave digging duties, that he had wanted to ask Cas out for real. With like an actual plan. Intentionally.

And, you know, maybe not a first date on Valentine's?

Maybe they weren't Valentine's kind of people, but it still seemed like it was asking for trouble.

Dean wiped sweat from his brow before pulling himself into the grave to get to the bones.

"Hey," Sam shouted from six feet up, "you need help?"

Dean pinched his eyes closed. Truthfully, burning bones went smoother as a two man job, but it left less opportunity for digging through his feelings. So, instead of answering, he asked, "Cas with you?"

"No, he said he had research he needed to do and went back to the motel," Sam said.

Dean considered asking what Cas was researching because he was damn sure it wasn't ghosts. But that wasn't his problem right now. "Okay, you want to help? Don't encourage him with this Valentine's crap."

"Why does it bother you so much?" Sam asked as he handed Dean rock salt to pour on the corpse.

"What...it..it doesn't bother me," Dean said. "Just we're hunters, not teenage girls waiting for roses and candy grams. No need to act like we are."

"Dean," Sam said. He sighed like he wasn't sure he had the patience for this. Honestly, Dean had no idea why he ever had the patience for trying to pull his emotional teeth. They both knew it was pretty hopeless. "You like Cas. Cas likes you. Maybe you didn't mean to ask him out like you did, but what's the harm in going along with it?"

To his own surprise as much as Sam's, he suggested, "Uh, it could destroy our entire relationship?"

"Okay. It could," Sam hedged gently. "But, Dean, if Cas almost destroying the world didn't ruin your relationship, how likely is it that a date's going to? You got past that. I'm pretty sure you can get past an awkward date."

Dean was left dumbfounded by that logic. Finally, he conceded,"Yeah, maybe."

"You two are idiots," Sam added. "You've been in love for like three years. Go on a fucking date already."

"In... love?" Dean over-enunciated, raising his eyes skeptically, a sudden temptation to throw dirt at Sam starting to overwhelm him. Which had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he wasn't so sure Sam was wrong. "Who said anything about iin love /i?"

"Like I said, you're an idiot," Sam said.

So he was idiot in love? Yeah, there was no way this conversation was going to continue.

Dean pulled himself out of the grave and hit Sam's foot with his shovel. Which may or may not have been an accident. "Yeah, well, Dear Abby, you maybe want to finish ganking this guy?"

Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head before throwing a lit match into the grave.

XXX

The drive from Des Moines back to Lebanon the following morning was abnormally quiet. Dean kept licking his lips before almost saying something to Cas, thinking better of it, and saying nothing. Throughout which, Sam kept shooting Dean annoyingly knowing looks, alternating from amused to exasperated.

Cas, oblivious, sat in the back, eyes glued to the window as though the hopelessly flat landscape contained the secrets of the universe. Dean kept flitting his eyes to the rearview mirror, certain he'd fallen asleep.

But he hadn't, and Dean sort of resented him for it. If he was asleep, he'd have a perfectly legitimate excuse for not using his words. As it was, he could only blame his nerves. And Sam's looks. Because those were not helping.

Sam finally gave Dean one last look of exasperation before turning his attention to Cas. The two spent the rest of the drive discussing - of all things - bugs. Cas hadn't been human when the weather was overly warm before, so after spending a few evenings in a graveyard in southern Florida, he had a newfound distaste for mosquitoes and a renewed enjoyment of fireflies. He'd since become interested in hearing all about insects from a human perspective. Sam was indulging it.

Dean usually chimed in on these conversations - he'd yet to convince Cas that their pollen creating abilities didn't tip the scale for bees against their ability to sting - but this time he let Cas and Sam's words wash over him with the smooth sound of the Impala's tape-deck laced underneath.

Once they were back in the bunker, Dean realized, as he watched Cas heading to his room, that he had to say something right then or he probably never would. He'd sit in his room, the one literally right next to Cas', and let yesterday's fluke become just that - a fluke.

Maybe Cas would say something, maybe he wouldn't.

Dean couldn't roll those dice.

He inhaled sharply and Cas' hand was already on the door when he finally managed to shout, much more gruffly than he intended, "7. Meet me out here at 7."

Cas turned back to him and nodded, and Dean untensed. He figured that was going to be that until the date itself. He had the whole afternoon to get worked up again. Or so he thought.

"Will what I'm wearing be appropriate?" Cas asked.

Dean ran his hand down his cheek before looking back up. God was Cas clueless.

His running plan was to take him to a diner and dollar theatre - because Cas had zero dating experience and wouldn't give a shit how fancy anything was in the first place - so, assuming he was wearing clothes period, he'd be fine.

Nevertheless, Dean scanned him from head to toe.

The way Cas creased his brow and left his lips slightly parted as he waited for Dean's appraisal reassured Dean somehow. The nervousness was so human and the puzzlement so Cas. Dean grinned crookedly. Was Cas ever something else.

He knew that for sure when Cas didn't bat an eye when it took him thirty seconds too long to reply.

"Let's see, jeans are fine, but, uh, maybe a nicer shirt?" Dean said. He felt a little weird telling Cas what to wear on a date when the date was with him, but he had asked. So when Cas frowned down at the worn, faded, and slightly mud flecked green t-shirt that had undoubtedly once been his, he clarified,"Not a ratty old t-shirt."

Then, because he had to mess up their version of normal, "You aren't - you aren't supposed to ask me. I mean, not for a first... date or whatever. Uh, ask Sam, maybe."

"I should avoid you until this evening," Cas said conclusively, his eyes going distant as he filed this tidbit away under "strange rituals, human" or "strange behavior, Dean." Maybe both. Then, looking perplexed and discontent, he retreated into his room.

And Dean, like an idiot, instead of stopping him, just gaped at the air between himself and Cas' closed door, feeling like Cas had slammed it even though he hadn't.

He slumped into his own room and threw his stuff down before collapsing on his bed. He stared at the ceiling for all of fifteen minutes before deciding that he ought to just walk Cas through this. Never mind that at a certain point it would be the blind leading the blind and wouldn't take anywhere near four hours to explain.

Yet, when he looked around the bunker, Cas and Sam were both nowhere to be found.

Finally, he found Sam's handwriting scrawled across a note on the kitchen table.

Out with Cas. Back by 7.

Apparently Cas had taken his advice to ask Sam about this dating nonsense. Dean couldn't explain why that suddenly made him mad. It had been his own damn idea.

It was just that he'd made up his mind to spend the afternoon explaining this shit to Cas, and then he'd gone off and asked someone else.

Exactly like Dean told him to.

This was his own fault, and he wished fervently that he could figure out what the fuck he was doing before he screwed this whole thing up.

He thought back to the day before, as he'd watched Cas so focused on dissecting that he hadn't noticed that he'd been dancing the heart across the table for two minutes. Dean had pushed that heart at him, he had thought, to get his attention. But it was more than that. This wasn't completely an accident - he could admit that now that the thought of it going sideways made his throat tighten - and he was damn sure going to make sure Cas knew that.

He hoped.