The door to the loft is blue, an almost frightening shade of such. The knob: gold. Scratches running from the hinges to the floor. The mat in front of it has six fat stripes from end to end. A Saturday paper is laying on the right side of the striped mat, still in its plastic covering, untouched by its subscriber. We don't yet know who its subscriber is, and neither does Dean Winchester, who is standing outside this door right now.

The door, the mat, the paper, these are all things that Dean Winchester notices about the area in front of the loft, which he's loitering outside, trying to delay the inevitable. Eventually, he realizes he is going to have to knock and face the music, but for right now he is perfectly content to stare at the stripes on the doormat and the bright blue the door itself is painted, a color that's familiar without being truly recognizable. Right now, he is alone with his thoughts, and that is the way he likes it.

But solitude in his own head can only last for so long, and after a good few minutes, Dean sighs, and raises his hand to rap on the door.

He can almost hear Lisa's voice as his knuckles aim forward, whispering at him from somewhere over his left shoulder: "He's the best, Dean, and I'm sure you'll love it."

Out of all the weird things that his art-critic girlfriend has ever said or done, Dean thinks that this has to be her strangest idea yet. On a scale from one to what the hell, he's high in the sky and wondering if there's a way to move to Peru without any money or motivation. Yet Dean is competent at recognizing the necessary evils that are required to keep a relationship together. Admittedly, this isn't exactly flowers and chocolates, but he hopes that it will have the same effect. Because Dean knows, Dean knows while he's standing outside this artist's loft in the middle of New York City, horns and sirens blaring out the window, this bright blue door in front of him. He knows that if these necessary evils are not catered to, it'll be back to Kansas on his hands and knees. He is nothing. He knows this. By now, he has accepted it.

Lisa and Dean been having more fights lately, about silly things, stupid things, but after being together for two years they think it seems pointless to just let everything float out onto the wind; shouldn't they at least try to salvage what they had, the spark that they'd felt when they fell in love?

So Dean is here, here at this artist's loft, here for the strangest thing he's ever done for any girl, including buying every Beatles album on vinyl for his fourth-grade girlfriend, Amy Richter. Saved up his allowance for weeks for that. He had thought that he would at least get a kiss out of the deal, but Amy had taken the vinyl and laughed her way home, leaving Dean by a vividly red plastic slide.

Lisa does art reviews for the Times, and Dean knows that should mean something to him, should make him proud that she's doing so well for herself. And maybe it used to, before she got this crazy idea in her head that it's going to bring them back together to get a painting of Dean made. "We'll hang it up in the house," she had said to him, kissing him on each corner of his mouth and pointing to a bare area above the mantle.

"Isn't that a little creepy?" Dean had inquired, but Lisa's mouth had gone into such a tight line when he said it that he didn't press the topic. Besides, Dean knew perfectly well what his situation was. Without Lisa and Lisa's love and Lisa's house, all he would have is a car that isn't the one he yearns for and maybe enough gas to get back to Lawrence.

When he'd first met her there, God, but Dean had thought her wondrous, with her lustrous hair and her bright eyes and the silk blouses that slipped off her skin with a rush that intoxicated him. She'd come to Kansas for an art exhibit and stayed for Dean, a month and a half of lovemaking in flop motels and Dean's own apartment before she had to get back to the Empire State. "Come with me," she had whispered against his lips in nothing but a powder-blue set of bra and panties.

"Yes," Dean had said, out of breath, and the rest, as they say and we know, is history.

Lisa loves the artist on the other side of this door, raves about him, and because of her connections she was able to commission him for this wackadoodle task. The guy usually does religious paintings, or so Lisa tells Dean (he's not really into art, never has been, probably never will be), but he says he'll make an exception. She's paying him well.

When the door to the loft opens, Dean is so lost in these thoughts that he jumps a few inches back, his head shooting up from where it's been staring at those six fat stripes on the doormat, alternating shades of white and tan. The light in the loft is such that our artist's face is encased in shadow, only lineaments clear in the dimness, though the golden light of the hallway is still bright.

"Hello," says the deep voice from within, and Dean recovers himself, unsure of how he let himself falter in the first place.

"Hi," Dean says, and he holds out his hand. "Dean. Dean Winchester," he introduces himself, and the figure in the doorway steps aside to let him in.

"Castiel," says the artist, and shakes Dean's hand with a grip that's firm, almost suffocating. "I've been expecting you. Come in. Please."

Dean does so, and he feels out of place and out of body, stepping into a world that might as well have been Narnia for all he knows or expects of it. "Uh, my girlfriend Lisa set this up?" he says, his voice lifting off at the end so it sounds like a question instead of a statement. "I'm not exactly sure what..."

"Follow me," says the same deep, deadly serious voice, moving off from the dim entryway into the lighter space beyond.

Dean follows him into a studio space, messy in the corners and clean in the middle, canvases leaning up against every available surface and an impressive cabinet of paints and brushes against one wall. Following Castiel, the first proper look Dean gets of the artist is from behind.

Castiel Novak, famous religious painter, said to be in touch with God himself, looks more like a homeless man than a deliverer of God's testimony. His hair is a mess, sticking up every which way. Tousled, not artfully. More in the "roll out of bed and forget to comb" manner. He is shorter than Dean, thinner, having cloaked his body in a tan trench coat that hangs around his shoulders as though it were no more than a rag. When he turns, Dean sees the paint-splattered jeans and simple white button-down under the coat. His feet are bare, and a stubble is evident on his cheeks.

Having examined Castiel's bodily appearance, Dean flicks his gaze up to the artist's eyes, and receives a bit of a shock; Castiel's eyes are cutting, a bright, brilliant blue that stare intensely at him, his brow slightly furrowed as though he's confused about something.

"Can I help you?" Dean asks, his voice dipping into defensiveness, and Castiel seems to snap out of his trance, flicking his eyes to Dean's right side. The mesmerizing gaze is broken, and the artist opens his mouth to speak.

"I was under the impression that I am being commissioned to help you," he says. "Please, sit down."

Dean locates a stool, brushes a few pieces of crumpled newspaper from it, and sits. Castiel does the same.

"The portrait will require five sessions," Castiel says, looking at his hands, examining dirty nails. "You will not have to do much but sit."

"Like, five sessions in a row, or what? Do I have to take off work?"

"It would probably be better for it to be a weekly affair," the artist answers Dean's question, now playing with a paintbrush. "I do have quite a bit of other work. This is...not my usual type of job."

Dean feels the sudden, compulsive need to defend himself. "It wasn't my idea," he says, and he does not like how petulant he sounds, how resigned to this fate. "It was my girlfriend, Lisa. Art critic? She loves your stuff, and, uh, she wants...yeah. It's what she wants."

Castiel levels his eyes at Dean again, and again Dean feels that peculiar sense that he's being flayed from the inside out, all his secrets and guilty thoughts being overturned like rocks with insects underneath. "Is it what you want?" he asks, and the personal question jars Dean so that he nearly gets up and runs the hell out of Dodge right then.

Instead, he avoids Castiel's eyes and his query, and instead changes the subject. "When do you want to get started?"

"Today would be preferable," the artist responds, standing up from his stool and retrieving an empty canvas, pulling off the plastic wrap and setting it carefully on a honey-colored easel. "You could return each Saturday until your requisite five sessions have been completed."

Requisite five sessions? Is this guy for real?

"Uh, yeah, okay," Dean says, and he shifts slightly on the stool. "Five Saturdays. I can do that, I guess." He clears his throat, messes with the hem of his jacket.

"Good," Castiel says, and he begins to retrieve things from his cabinets, paints and brushes and sketching pencils. Dean looks around the room while he does so.

The paintings drying and half-done all have one thing in common; they're all scenes from the Bible, painted with an aching degree of realism that curls a cold fist around Dean's spine. Dean is the kind of man to take the Lord's name in vain about every twenty seconds or so, only going to church on Christmas and Easter and hating wearing a tie the whole while, but even he can recognize the jarring angle on David and Goliath, a wrathful God wreaking havoc on a village even as the painting next to that scene shows God merciful, benevolent, enabling a blind supplicant to see again. Even the half-finished paintings are haunting, and Dean gets the creeps just looking at them. But there's no doubt that Castiel is as good an artist as Lisa says, even to Dean who knows nothing about art.

"Get up for one moment," Castiel says, and Dean does as he is told, watching as the artist in the bare feet and a trenchcoat moves his stool closer to a window. This is for better light, though Dean doesn't realize this and just thinks of it as a mildly strange random action, and he forgets it a few minutes later. Once Castiel is done, Dean sits back down, feeling out of place and out of his head. His hand is twitching slightly as he rests it on his knees, and when he takes off his jacket, he shivers, though it's not cold in the room.

Castiel picks up a sketching pencil and sequesters himself behind the canvas, only his messy hair visible when he's not taking quick looks at Dean, his eyes raking shamelessly and making Dean feel like he's under examination. Dean's face heats up just the slightest bit, though he doesn't think the artists notices, which is good. He hates this, hates everything about it.

"You hate this," Castiel says, after twenty minutes of Dean sitting and trying to avoid looking at the other paintings in the room. "You hate everything about it."

This efficient mind-reading makes Dean confused, his tongue twisted and unsure of how to form words properly. "What?" he manages, his face probably fatuous and idiotic as he looks at the artist.

Castiel wipes his hands on a rag and steps out from behind the canvas. "You're tense. I can't paint you if you're not relaxed."

Dean tries to relax, his shoulders dipping down a fraction of an inch, and Castiel snorts in amusement. The sound is odd, Dean thinks, coming from him. "You couldn't possibly be further from relaxed," he remarks, circling Dean, who feels a tremor run through the muscles of his back without his permission, making him shake slightly on the chair as the artist rounds his left shoulder.

"Yeah, well, there's not exactly a lot I can do about that, is there?" Dean says, his voice coming out the low and husky tone it always does when he's worried or annoyed. In this case, it's the latter. He is annoyed with this whole situation.

"On the contrary," Castiel says conversationally, putting his pencil down with two fingers, not letting it roll away. "There is plenty you can do about that."

God, this idiot, is what Dean is thinking. Just another pretentious scruffy artist, making his way and living a psuedo-Bohemian lifestyle that couldn't fool George Bush, Dean is thinking, and his jaw clenches. "Look," he says, intending to tell Castiel maybe this isn't such a good idea after all, I'll talk to Lisa and call this whole thing off, but his eyes meet the artist's and the words get stuck in his throat.

"Come with me," Castiel says when Dean doesn't finish his sentence, gesturing with an open palm and one crooked finger before he turns around and goes through another door.

As if magnetized, Dean follows.

Dean isn't entirely sure what he expects, but it isn't a kitchen, which is what he finds himself in. Small but functional, the kitchen is not assuming. The appliances don't look state-of-the-art, though the glass-fronted cabinets appear well-stocked. The place is well-lit, natural sunlight beaming in through windows above a two-top table. Nothing about it Dean can describe as "pretentious."

"Ain't enough room to get an easel in here, Hobbes," Dean says to the artist, who's still surveying him with those laser-like eyes.

"I wasn't intending to paint you in here," Castiel says, his head tilting in genuine confusion. "It's nearly noon. I was intending to prepare some lunch."

"Lunch?" Dean asks, and he is confused about this whole affair, wondering if it's going from bad to worse or bad to better. "Should I, uh. Go?"

"Not hardly," Castiel says, turning to retrieve a pot from a cabinet above the stove."I was intending for you to join me. Perhaps a full stomach will alleviate some of your evidently substantial sources of stress."

Bad to worse or bad to better, either way Dean knows this is really freakin' weird."Uh," is all he can manage.

"Or you can leave," the artist says, not looking at Dean as he picks ingredients out of his cabinets, moving around his kitchen with a familiarity that seems alien to Dean, who is still feeling out of place. "You clearly don't want to be here, and I would hardly force my company upon someone who doesn't want it."

Dean's mouth hangs open slightly at the words, listening to the song of water against the bottom of a metal pot as Castiel fills it, setting it on his stove to boil with practiced hands. For a second, he fully intends to go, get up and head to some bar that serves burgers and good spirits and hide away from Lisa for the rest of the day. But for some reason, the mismatched chairs of Castiel Novak's table seem far more welcoming than the city to him, and the sound of the stove is far preferable to the sound of sirens.

"I'll stay," he murmurs, and even as he says it he is not entirely sure why.

"All right, Dean," Castiel Novak says, setting a sauce on the second burner, and Dean Winchester feels more at home than he has in months.

He thinks that he shouldn't feel that way, and it's strange, and he doesn't know if he likes it or not. He just knows that it's happening, and as someone who's always gone with the flow, he lets it.

Silence reigns between them as Castiel continues to prepare the meal, the soft sounds and smells of cooking beginning to fill the air in the kitchen. Dean rests his chin on his hands and counts the stripes in the placemats, checks his phone, and then puts it aside, not wanting to look at it anymore. Castiel moves around the kitchen with his bare feet brushing the linoleum, creating a soft rushing sound that Dean thinks he's heard before, somewhere, but he's feeling awfully tired and can't place it.

He loses track of time and his own thoughts, and so he jumps a little when a bowl is set down in front of him, filled with a pasta Dean doesn't recognize, covered with a cream sauce that smells truly divine. An identical bowl is set across from him, and Castiel sinks down into his own chair.

"Here," he said, and hands Dean a spoon. "Simple aliment. I apologize, it's nothing special."

"Nothing special?" Dean says before he can think about it, intoxicated by the smell. "Christ, Cas, this looks twelve times better than anything I've ever made." Cas. The name rolls off his tongue, of its own accord, and Dean looks up to see the artist's reaction. He looks surprised, and by that Dean means his eyes widen a fraction, and the corner of his mouth almost twitches, and his head tilts to the side in what Dean's quickly realizing is one of his tics. He's odd, for sure, and scruffy, but "pretentious" and "psuedo-Bohemian" are seeming harsher to Dean with every passing second.

"Kind of you," Cas responds, his voice on the same even plane, and he picks up his spoon. Dean does the same, scooping up some of the pasta and transferring it to his mouth. It's easy, good, warm and soft and comforting. Just the slightest hint of spice, but not enough to ask for a glass of water. Yet five minutes into the meal, Castiel brings him water anyway. Dean accepts it with thanks.

"So why are you doing this?" Dean looks up from where he's engrossed in his bowl.

"What?"

Cas is looking at him, his head tilted again in curiosity and his brow furrowed even more than it usually is. "Why are you here, if you don't want to be?"

Another spoonful of pasta while Dean tries to avoid answering. He clears his throat, but Cas's eyes are still on him, scanning him. "I mean, like I said. My girlfriend wants it, and, uh, I'm kind of...you know. I do what she wants."

"Why?" The question comes immediately, taking Dean aback.

"What, you've never had a girl make you her bitch?" he asks, feeling defensive, not wanting to get into the whole sob story of his stupid life.

Cas's head goes down, his eyes falling to his food. "No," he says, his voice rough.

Dean's mouth quirks. "Guess you've been lucky in love, then, artist boy. Or you've never really found it at all."

"I would prefer to avoid this topic," Castiel says, prim as you please, and Dean realizes he's prying, as well as being a douchebag.

"Sorry," he mutters. "Never mind."

Assuaged, Castiel looks up at him again. "You're too tense, regardless of whether you plan on staying this through or not. I cannot paint you if you appear to be a constipated kindergartener."

Dean chokes on a mouthful of pasta, snorting out a laugh. He thinks that it sounds so strange, coming from this small artist with a trenchcoat and wild hair, who looks far more like a child than Dean ever had. "Where'd you get that one?"

"Reality TV," Cas mutters. "It is a sin and an addiction."

Another laugh from Dean, and Castiel even cracks a smile, which Dean is beginning to realize is rare from him. "Well, then, Dr. Phil, what would you suggest I do to relax? It's not exactly like I can ignore how messed-up and creepy this whole situation is."

Cas eats another couple of spoonfuls of his lunch before he answers. "Meditation can often aid in relaxation," he says, back to his detached way of speaking.

"What, so you're gonna have me Ommmm while listening to Ravi Shankar, is that it?" Dean asks, immediately not into it.

"Not exactly," Cas responds. "Meditation is far less about the sounds you make and far more about your breathing techniques and the flow of your thoughts. Music is rarely helpful, actually, at least in my experience. If you are open to attempting it, then I would be more than happy to assist you."

Really freakin' weird doesn't even begin to cover it, Dean thinks, but if he's going to go through with this, Castiel is probably the best authority on how to start. "All right," he says, albeit grudgingly. "Give it a shot, I guess. Doubt it'll do any good."

"Your doubt may come to fruition if you continue to hold it so tightly," comes the response as Castiel stands up abruptly and puts his bowl in the sink with a small clatter. He returns for Dean's empty dish, sliding it out from between his arms, and stacks them neatly on top of each other. His every movement is careful, focused, as though he rehearses it in his head before he makes it. And Dean finds himself watching him move about the kitchen, how he handles clearing up, and again, doesn't quite know why.

"Alright," he says when he's finished. "Come back into the room, and we'll see what we can do."

Dean follows the artist back into his studio. He's expecting to be creeped out again by the paintings, but on second impression he thinks that they really seem kind of harmless, if a little gruesome in places. "So, what first, Yogi?"

"I am not a master of yoga, nor a cartoon bear," comes the response, and Dean slaps a hand to his forehead.

"Are you for real?" he can't help but ask, as Cas closes the curtains.

"Last time I checked, yes," the artist says, and places a cushion on the floor. "Sit cross-legged, please, with your fists loosely curled on your knees. You should be comfortable. Try to sit up straight, but don't force it."

Dean crosses the room and does as Cas says, sitting on the cushion and feeling very small, him sitting, Cas standing. "This is pretty weird, Cas," he says, feeling uncomfortable with the whole situation.

"Cas," the artist repeats, tasting the name like it's unfamiliar, and in reality, it is. "Close your eyes, Dean, and trust me."

Dean's eyes close, tight as he can make them, and he hears it as Castiel pulls a stool from its original location and sit on it. Another tremor runs through him.

"Relax your eyelids," comes the calm, smooth voice of the artist, falling away without an echo into the silence. "Let them gently cover your eyes, instead of clench against them. Align your eyelashes, smooth the crease of your lids. You have no enemies here. You have no worries."

Dean tries his best to relax his eyes, though his fist clenches against his knee and his jaw feels awfully tight. Cas's voice continues: "Breathe in forcefully and deeply, and hold the breath you take." This, for Dean, is not hardship. His breath is tight, the sound in his nose too loud in his ears. He holds the breath, and a thought drifts across his mind: This is stupid. He tries to dispel it, though.

"Let the air go out slowly, and release the tension in your lungs as you do so," Cas says, and Dean follows the order, breathing out and letting the air flow into the studio's clean, slightly paint-scented atmosphere. "Take another forceful breath, and then let it out again."

Dean does so, another skeptic thought assailing him.

"Now breathe more slowly and evenly," Castiel continues, his voice on the same level plane, slow and enunciated and soothing. "Allow your breathing to relax your lungs and your throat. Let your tongue rest in your mouth, and keep your eyelids soft over your eyes as we move to the muscles of your legs."

Legs? Dean wonders why legs are necessary.

"Tense them up, Dean," the artist says. "As tight as you can make them. Not your jaw, only your legs."

Dean does so, feeling his toes curl, his knees tighten, one of his calf muscles twitching slightly as he tenses more and more, unsure how this is going to help him but going along with it all the same.

"Feel all the muscles, wanting to give up the tension you hold them under," Castiel says, and as he says it it seems as though Dean's legs are indeed asking for relief. "Hold it for just a moment longer..." A long pause. "And now let go."

When Dean does so, it's incredible, the tightness draining out of his crossed legs. "Feel them go limp and loose," Cas says, and Dean feels it. His breathing stutters out, and he remembers to take slower breaths, trying to calm them.

"Enjoy the relaxation of your legs," comes Cas's voice, and yes, Dean is doing exactly that. "And we move to your arms. Tense your shoulders first, your upper arms, then your lower arms. Put your hands into tight fists, squeeze as hard as you can, keeping your legs and jaw relaxed. Feel the muscles, wanting to give up that tension. Hold it for just a moment longer..." The same long pause. "And let it go."

Dean's fingers unclench, his shoulders fall a few inches, and were his eyes open, he would see the corner of Castiel's mouth twitch ever so slightly, pleased with his success. The almost-smile does not affect his voice, however, which continues: "Focus again on your breathing, keeping it even. And begin to tighten the muscles of your back, following the same procedure as you did with your legs and arms."

Cas's voice is low and quiet, gentle and kind. Dean is beginning to feel himself wanting to merely float on it, listening to the sound without realizing the meaning of the words, and yet he finds his back tensing up at the artist's orders, his spine seeming to knit up and tie in a knot. He feels his muscles shaking, and he arches his back in order to tense as much as possible. And when Castiel gives him the command to relax, Dean does so, and he thinks damn, it feels really freaking good.

The process goes on with his stomach muscles, and Dean tightens his core on command, releases it on command, careful to breathe in and out, merely enjoying Cas's voice and the feeling that the meditation gives him, not really thinking about anything. The goal, achieved, though he doesn't realize it until Cas speaks again: "You can open your eyes, Dean, when you're ready. Stay in your state of relaxation, until you're ready to stand up and sit for the portrait."

Dean sighs, letting out one last long, slow breath, and lets his eyes flutter open, blinking slightly against the light that floods the room when Cas opens up the curtains.

"Wow," he manages, his voice slightly rusty from disuse and deep breathing. "That was...wow."

"You appear much more relaxed," Castiel says, looking Dean up and down as he stands, gripping onto the stool to fend of a brief spell of light-headedness. "Please, sit on the stool as before. I can get much more work done now."

Dean does as he's told, sitting on the stool. His muscles feel better than they have in days, his joints loose and easy to move. He's not old, and doesn't often get sore, but sometimes in the morning he can feel just the slightest hint of stiffening in his hips and shoulders. Not bad enough to see anyone about, not even bad enough to acknowledge. But this meditation, Castiel's voice, seems to have quieted any aches in his body.

And also seems to have quieted the worries in his mind, at least for now; the situation with Lisa seems manageable, the fact that the mechanic he's working for is losing money doesn't seem so bad. So long as Dean is wrapped up in this artist's studio, watching Castiel (who's promptly establishing a place as "Cas" in Dean's mind) poke his tongue between his teeth and make a few marks with his pencil, followed by four long swoops...so long as he's here, things seem okay.

And perhaps the strangest thing about it is how completely Dean accepts this change, sinks into the comfort of this near-stranger's strange little home. If he knew what we know, of course, he would realize that acceptance is a side effect of having found a place, having found somewhere to go where he is accepted, understood, where he can be himself, and above all, having found a way to relax.

But Dean does not know what we know, and he is going to sit on this stool for nearly two hours and barely notice the time as it flies right on by, and Castiel is going to keep sketching out the planes of Dean's face, glancing at him every few seconds and continuing to draw. Dean does not know what we know, and so when the artist tells him that he is free to go, that it is almost five o'clock and Dean should be getting back home to his girlfriend, he does not know how to categorize the strange, creeping feeling that starts in his stomach. He only knows that it's cold, and unpleasant, and he has about five seconds where he wishes he could stay in this small artist's loft and not be shoved back out into the hustle and bustle of New York City.

But he thinks he's being ridiculous. And so he picks the Saturday paper up off the doormat and hands it to Cas, who thanks him with a face as unreadable as always. Then he takes a taxi home, and grunts "Fine" when Lisa asks him how the session went.

When they make love that night, it is an out of body experience. He bites his tongue twice, and it lasts too long for his taste, and after a while his mind drifts and he tries to imagine that he's bedding Meghan Fox.

But as much as he tries to fool himself, that doesn't really help him at all.

Six full days pass before Dean stands in front of that bright blue door again, and this visit, the second of five, finds him in far better spirits. The optimal situation (or at least the one Dean would think of right now) is that his increased happiness comes from a mended relationship with Lisa, with a newfound spark and all of his problems solved. But as Dean Winchester's life, in all reality, isn't exactly a textbook case of halcyon and idyll, this is not the case. The actual case is that Lisa has gone to the Bahamas with her friends for a week, and Dean has not seen her for four days. The actual case is that this is merely a Band-Aid, a temporary fix for his unhappiness.

Yet his good spirits are unable to be denied, as evidenced by the fact that he does not loiter outside the door to Castiel Novak's artist loft, instead picking up the Saturday paper laying by the doormat and ringing the doorbell less than five seconds after arriving at the entrance. When Cas opens the door, Dean hands him the paper with a grin: "I'm beginning to think you should cancel your subscription," he says, and Castiel cracks a smile back at him.

Were Dean more observant, he would have known right then. But though Dean is loyal and kind and tough and strong, observant he is not, except when it comes to the nuances of an engine. So he notices nothing.

Castiel invites him in, and Dean moves through the space of the loft with more confidence than last time, knowing the layout better and remembering that the door to the left is a bathroom, the one to the right a coat closet. They head into Cas's studio together, and Dean sees that his stool is already set up for him, close to the window, Cas's easel in the same place as last week.

"I must say," Cas says as he's washing a brush at the paint-splattered sink in one corner. "You're looking far less tense than the last time you sat on that stool."

Dean shrugs, noticing that yes, his shoulders are relaxed, his fists aren't clenching. His jaw doesn't feel tight. He's been taking it for granted, these past few days, and hasn't noticed the effect that Lisa's absence has on his muscles.

"Any reason why?" the artist inquires as he takes up his place behind the easel, his canvas in front of him. Dean notices a painting to Cas's right that had been only half-finished the last time he had been here. It's done now, all brilliant colors and bold brushstrokes, and though Dean knows nothing about art he thinks without really noticing he's thinking it that it's beautiful. But then he remembers the question posed to him, Cas's question, and realizes that the artist in question is staring at him, expecting an answer with his head tilted at a nearly forty-five degree angle.

To answer truthfully would be to put into words all of the things that Dean very studiously doesn't say. For saying them would make them a reality, and making them a reality would just add cracks to the already bulging dam. And that is something that Dean and his sanity really don't need. At least, that's what Dean thinks.

So he merely shrugs. "Dunno," he tells Castiel, and Castiel seems satisfied with the placeholder of an answer as he begins to squeeze paints of several different colors, mostly earth tones but bizarrely a splash of purple, onto a pallet. "So, what, you done with the pencil?"

"Yes," Castiel says, the tone in his voice one of someone who doesn't want to be distracted, and so Dean shuts up and sits. He watches Castiel's messy hair bob around behind the easel for a while, then looks out the window, then looks back at Cas when the artist tells him, good-naturedly, "I can't begin to paint your eyes if I can't even see them, Dean." He feels good. Better than he's felt in...well, since things with Lisa started going south, really. And as with the first time he was here, while he's in this large, airy space, all of his problems seem distanced. He merely sits, and lets Cas see his eyes, and lets his muscles relax, and lets his ankles wrap around the legs of the stool, and lets himself feel like it's a good day. Because it is.

Dean's posterior is just starting to complain about the length of time sitting on a stool when Cas comes out from behind his easel and pronounces that it's time for a break, perhaps for lunch. As with before, Dean follows him into the kitchen, and this phenomenon of Dean speaking before he thinks is just cropping up all over the place. This moment is no exception.

"Hey, uh, Cas, uh," he stumbles out, and then looks like he has no idea what to say next. A breath, he takes a deep inhale and exhale as Castiel looks at him with that perpetually bemused expression of his, one hand on the handle of a pan and the other resting lightly on the countertops, finger- and thumb-tips to the surface and palm in the air.

Dean, eventually, manages to articulate himself. "I mean, it just seems like kind of a dick move to keep bummin' food off you, you know? It's my turn to provide the sustenance."

The hand wrapped around the pan's handle retracts to Castiel's side. "Oh?" he inquires.

"I mean, I can't exactly cook or anything," Dean says, because if that's what Cas is expecting then he's out to be sorely mistaken. "But there's a great Chinese takeout place around the corner and I could call for delivery if you, um, want. My treat." And he's wondering why on earth he's sounding like a high schooler nervous about speaking to a crush (we can draw our own conclusions, oh, Dean, isn't it obvious?), and watching Cas's face for a reaction. A tall order, seeing as Castiel isn't exactly all about visual emotion.

"That would be agreeable," Cas says eventually, and sits at the table across from Dean as the Winchester dials his phone.

He orders a variety of different meats and both white and fried rice, without a menu in front of him to let Cas pick from. The artist in question sits placidly as Dean clarifies that he wants egg rolls and spring rolls, not either/or, and laughs when Dean mangles a goodbye in the only rough Chinese he knows. Dean finds that he likes the sound of Castiel's laugh, likes its roughness, like the way fingers rub over a two-day stubble, or how sandpaper sings against wood. He likes this kitchen, with its smallness and its organic rice cakes poking out of one of the cupboards. (What? Dean thinks, of the rice cakes, not the kitchen.) He likes the warm, comforting feeling it evokes in him. And he likes the fact that the silences between himself and Castiel are not uncomfortable; they are full, and kind, and the kind of silences that don't require filling.

Dean is not familiar with this kind of silence, having always blustered his way through every lull in conversation that he's been involved in. It is a novel experience, and one that he thinks is very agreeable.

They sit in that comfortable silence for fifteen minutes, Cas scribbling away on a napkin, sketching a rough outline of a man with large, dark wings, extending from either sides of his shoulder blades. An angel. Dean watches him for a while, plays Tetris on his phone for a while, and then just sits and ruminates for the last remaining while until the doorbell rings, and then he goes to get the takeout.

"I believe you have gathered enough food to feed a small army," Castiel remarks as Dean spreads the stuff across the table.

"Yeah, well, hope you're hungry," Dean responds, to the cadence of the rustling plastic bags and the soft, short thuks of the plastic containers being opened. "'Cause I'm expecting you to do your fair share. You're too skinny as it is; gotta get some meat on those bones, Cas."

Castiel makes a noncommittal noise in his throat and helps Dean unload the large quantity of food, then gets two plates down from one of his cabinets. "Sometimes I'm working and just forget," he explains himself, and Dean, the man who hasn't missed a meal in nearly a decade, he of the bacon cheeseburgers, laughs in disbelief.

When their first helpings are divided up and they're sitting across from each other at the two-top table, beginning to mix sauce into meat and rice and pick up forkfuls, Dean's the one that speaks first. "So, Cas," he says. "What about you?"

The artist's head raises, and there's that confused expression again. Dean predicts the head-tilt a second before it actually happens. "What about me?"

Dean shrugs. "You know. What's your story?"

"Why is that of importance to you?" Cas asks, and for a moment, Dean falters, thinking that he's said something awfully wrong.

"Uh," he starts, nearly choking on a grain of rice that slides the wrong way down his throat. "Just, uh. Wondering, you know?" His face is turning a light shade of pink, though he passes this off to the coughing fit that takes him a second later. Cas brings him water, which he drinks in one and recovers, feeling like an idiot. "It's not important," he says, trying to bring back the nonchalance. "Forget I even said anything."

"It's all right," says Castiel, as he sits back down. "Your curiosity is understandable, I suppose, though there is not much to tell. I was raised in Michigan to a religious family, and became, ah, estranged from them when I was nineteen. I moved here, started painting seriously, and the rest you can probably guess."

"Art museums and galas, huh, Cas?" Dean says, picking up a forkful of Oriental beef.

The artist does not answer for a moment. When he does, it's not what Dean is expecting: "Why do you call me Cas?" he says. Head-tilt. Again with the head-tilts.

"I don't know," he says with a shrug. "Should I not?"

"No, it's...fine," the artist trails off, and lowers his head, the silence returning between them. It's less comfortable now, and Dean feels compelled to fill it, though he feels like he's something big and stupid blundering into something that's going to blow up in his face.

"Estranged, huh?" he asks. One thing Dean Winchester is not, as we can deduce, is good at broaching sensitive topics.

"Yes," Castiel says, four forkfuls between that and his next sentence: "They did not approve of certain life choices I was making. I turned my back on the Church in their eyes."

Dean quirks his mouth, curious now. This sounds like some soap opera story, and he will never admit it to anyone, but when he's alone in the TV room sometimes he'll turn on Dr. Sexy or Days of Our Lives or something equally soporific. "Turned your back on the Church? You paint scenes out the Bible. It's doesn't get more dedicated than that."

"My estrangement did not stem from my career choice," Cas says, and in his voice is a tone of finality, like this is the last he will say on the topic. Dean takes the hint, finally, and stops his fusillade of inquiry. The slightest idea of what had occurred begins to burgeon at the back of Dean's mind, though he chooses not to dwell on it when that idea starts to seem more plausible.

"Well," he says, trying to steer the conversation back on level ground. "I was born in Kansas, stayed there until two years ago. I have a brother who's married and far more successful than I am, I don't actually like cities that much, and..." And I wish I could just hurry up and end my relationship already. The words are in his throat, on his tongue, and they have weight, but he does not say them. He stays quiet in his chair and bites off half a spring roll in one. "And one time a woman made me try on her underwear," he finishes, and Cas's head shoots up, his eyes narrowing.

"Why would you say something like that?" he inquires, and Dean shrugs.

"I pried into your life, you get to pry into mine," he says. "Fair is fair."

Dean begins to wonder if this wasn't such a good idea after all when Cas looks like Dean's forced a lemon down his throat, and is about to apologize when Castiel cracks a smile.

"I suppose fair is fair," he says, in that deep, husky voice of his, and Dean can't help laughing. Suddenly, this situation is the funniest thing since Michelle Richardson's nipples, eleventh grade. And Cas is laughing too, and God, but this is the best Dean's felt since-

His phone rings.

It lights up all at once in a burst of light and the rock music ringtone he loves, and Dean's laughter slows as he picks it off the table, brushes a piece of rice off the screen, and answers it without checking the caller ID.

"Hello?" he says, into the receiver, suddenly distracted by the way that Cas drags a hand over his stubble as his smile fades and he picks up another forkful of takeout.

"Hi, sweetheart!" comes the bright, bubbly voice from the other end.

If we could take a moment to see from Castiel's eyes, we would see the immediate effect that these two words have on Dean. His practiced gaze takes in the immediate tensing of his shoulders, the way his arms go just a little bit back, indicating that his back is also knotting up. He looks less comfortable in his chair, more rigid, and the expression on his face is one of someone who has just been punched in the stomach. The relaxed Dean that has been sitting for the artist is no longer.

"Oh, uh," this new, tense Dean says. "Hey, Lisa."

"Where are you?"

"I'm at Cas's-uh, I mean, Castiel. Castiel Novak." Dean rests an elbow on the table, his forehead in his hand, and looks down at the grain of the table while he speaks. "Painting thing."

"Ooh, great!" comes the voice, tinny to Cas, all too clear to Dean. "That's really great, I'm so glad you're going through with it!"

"Listen, Lis, what are you even doing? Isn't this call going to be, like, a million dollars if you're calling from Costa Rica?" Suddenly, Dean feels very, very tired, and a headache begins to blossom from his left temple.

"Oh," Castiel says, the whisper floating on the air between them, and Dean does not hear it.

"I just wanted to hear your voice, baby," Lisa says. "You haven't been sitting around the house all week, have you? What have you been doing?"

"Nothing, Lis. Work and stuff."

"Oh. Well, I'm having a great time! The girls and I are going to morning yoga classes, we took an estuary tour...I had a surf lesson yesterday! And I only fell off twice." Dean can picture her, probably lounging out by the pool in the black bikini that had so enchanted him two years ago, that he tries now to associate with those same emotions and finds that he cannot with a lump of panic in his throat. "The food is fantastic. I miss you, though. I miss you a lot."

Dean swallows, takes a drink of the half-empty glass of water Cas had brought him twenty minutes previously. "Miss you too, Lis," he says, and though the kitchen really is rather open and airy for its size, he feels cramped and panicky and claustrophobic. "Listen, Cas...tiel is trying to paint, okay? He's getting annoyed. I gotta go."

"Oh, no problem!" Lisa chirps. "Can't wait to see the finished thing! Only three more weeks."

"Yeah, only three more weeks," Dean says, and that seems to twist the knife already in his gut. "See you."

"I love you," comes the soft, feminine voice in the phone.

"Love you too, Lis," says Dean, and swallows down bile as he does so, and then he hangs up and fights the urge to throw his phone across the room.

"I was not aware I was trying to paint," says Cas, and Dean remembers that he's there. He drags himself out of his sludgey pit of introspection and looks at the artist, whose head is tilted again, his eyes concerned. Dean swipes at his forehead, trying to rub out the headache.

"Yeah, sorry about that, it was the only way I could..." Get rid of her, his mind finishes, but he doesn't say it out loud. "Sorry," he says again, looking down at his plate and realizing that his appetite has vaporized. "And, I mean, it's partly true...you are going to be painting soon."

"Not with your shoulder blades fusing together and your fingers attempting to tie knots," Castiel says, and for a second Dean thinks he's going to lean over and brush his fingers against Dean's shoulders, the veins standing out from his forearms, the joints of his fingers. But Cas does no such thing, and Dean shudders though the room isn't cold, and wonders why he got the inaccurate presage at all. "Perhaps you should meditate again; it seemed to be very helpful last time."

Putting off lunch, Dean nods, feeling like something's stuck in his throat. He won't say it, won't even really let himself think it, but Cas's voice is soothing and good to listen to, a euphony in a world of dissonance, and he is more than willing to submit to another one of the artist's guided meditations. It worked wonders for him the last time, anyway.

Castiel sighs, and Dean misinterprets it, as he does with many things. "Sorry," he says lamely, and he is immediately feeling guilty that he's taking up this artist's time with his stupid problems. Cas seems like the kind of guy who wouldn't say it, but Dean's probably annoying him with all this shit that he's carrying. This is just a job for Castiel Novak, the famous painter. Just a job, and Dean is just a client.

But...it's not like he's expecting to be anything else. Obviously.

"It is quite alright," Cas says, clearing up the table as he speaks, putting their plates in the sink and gathering up the leftover rice and meat, neatly collating it all and then sliding it into his smallish refrigerator. "It'll keep for a few days," he says, almost as if to himself, and then turns back to Dean. His eyes, those midnight blue eyes with just the slightest hints of future wrinkles around them, stare right into the Winchester's. "I only wonder on occasion," he says, with the air of someone choosing his words carefully, "why you continue to associate with the source of your intense stress. However, I realize that this is none of my business and that classifies as 'prying,' to use your phrase, and so I will not ask you to respond. In fact, for your sanity I recommend that you do not."

Dean's mouth hangs open slightly, but per Cas's peremptory recommendation, he says nothing, merely following the artist back into the studio. His thoughts are tumult, and his heart seems cold and faster than usual. His hands are clumsy; he nearly knocks over a container of blue-tinged water on one of Cas's work surfaces, only just managing to right it in time. "Son of a bitch," he mutters, and Cas turns, looking slightly amused.

"Turning to profanity," he comments. "Sit down, Dean."

And Dean, feeling vulnerable and worried and slightly sick and full, sits down.

The cushion is the same one as last week, red and slightly threadbare, a few stitches torn out and stretching towards the floor. When he sits, he feels stiff, and tries to stretch out as much as he can.

"Breathe as you became accustomed to in your last meditation," Castiel begins, low and even and lulling, and Dean's eyes slide shut almost of their own accord. The confusion of the day and the week and the year are overwhelming to try to think about, so he pushes them all away, forces himself to become a machine, listening to Cas's voice and Cas's voice only, and doing what it says.

But when he's tensing up his back per Cas's instruction, he can't help but see Lisa in his mind's eye, her lips pursed in disapproval. As a result, when he's told to relax, the satisfaction is missing, and he can feel himself retain some of the tenseness. The hopeless feeling that he's become acquainted with recently gnaws at his mind despite his efforts to fend it off. The meditation helps him, certainly, mostly in his legs and core, but his shoulders remain hunched, even when Cas calls the meditation to an end.

"Dean," he says, and the pity in his voice makes the Winchester physically angry. For Dean thinks he needs nobody's pity, that his problems are his own to deal with and no one else, especially not this sanctimonious painter who's probably only being so nice to Dean because he's getting paid a nice chunk of change at the end of all this, needs to know or care about them.

"What," he grinds out between gritted teeth, knowing that Cas can see that he's not relaxed. He studiously doesn't look at the artist, instead focusing on a colorful rendition of a blind man's sight being restored by a prophet. Or disciple. Or maybe God himself, though the flowy white beard isn't present. Dean can't interpret a Bible out of a paper bag. All he knows is that this painting that he is looking at, avoiding Castiel's eyes, is colorful and beautiful and calm.

"I hardly think you require me to tell you that you remain a wound spring," the voice of the artist comes, low and without frustration or malice. "Were you perhaps not concentrating as heavily as necessary?"

"I was concentrating fine," Dean says, slightly affronted that the blame is immediately placed on his conscious mind, as though he had been tossing off the meditation as pointless. Which is most definitely not the case. "It's just...every time I try to relax..." He tenses his shoulders for good measure, then tries to let it all go. "They knot back up."

Cas nods, circling Dean quietly, his bare feet padding against the hardwood of his studio. The same soft rushing sound reaches the Winchester's ears, connecting their meetings together and making him realize that he feels he's known this artist far longer than a week. "Perhaps your problem lies in the perpetual," he says, cryptically and almost to himself, then kneels behind Dean, who twists his body around to look the artist in the slightly tired face.

"What are you doing?" he asks, his brow furrowing.

"Trust me," Castiel says, quietly, his eyes deadly serious, and Dean has to swallow down a lump in his throat before he remembers to nod, turning around slowly.

Thus far, the artist and the Winchester have shared a handful of small brushes in contact; upon unloading all of their takeout food, the back of Cas's hand had accidentally brushed Dean's. Dean hadn't thought anything of it. It had been incidental and nothing to be concerned about or analyzed. But when Cas lays his hands on Dean's shoulders, an electric shock seems to travel from the point of contact all the way down to his toes. His spine straightens, the intake of breath he takes is just a little too loud, and his eyes widen, then narrow slightly as his brow furrowed. "Cas..." he trails off, unsure of what he wants to say. Stop? Don't stop? Get away from me?

"Trust me," repeats the artist, and begins gently. He rubs soft circles around the Winchester's neck and shoulders, pressing finger pads against pliable skin. The muscles give way under his hands, obviously practiced at this, for Cas quickly searches out the knots that Dean can feel as sharp stabs of pain, burning in his upper back, and he gasps through clenched teeth when the artist hits a particularly painful place.

He realizes about a minute and a half into the massage that he's tensing up, slightly uncomfortable with the contact and and their proximity, but lets an exhale dispel the tightness and the worry, for the base actions really do feel good. Even though they're painful and Cas seems to be trying to punch a hole through him to take hold of his clavicle and pull, when he lets up Dean can feel something unravel. "Oh," he breathes, when the artist hits a sensitive spot on his neck, and a shot of warmth courses through him along with the spike of pain, and this moment is something he boxes and tries to put away in his brain, for though naturally this doesn't mean anything besides Cas trying to work his subject into a fit state for painting, it feels...illicit. Like he's shoplifting candy under the nose of his sugarfree mother, slipping it into his mouth with a pocket of guilt.

Occasionally, Castiel lets out a little sigh, when he's working on a particularly difficult section of muscle, and the sighs stir Dean's hair ever so slightly. He pretends he doesn't feel them, doesn't comment on them, but listens with that same air of guilt as he sits under Castiel's hands, talented with a brush and a pencil, hands that move around pots and spoons and knives with ease. Rough hands, callused though not as severely as Dean's own, with longer and thinner fingers. More suited for the fineness of his talents, whereas the Winchester's hands seem to have been heavenly designated for reaching into the innards of a car, dissecting a troublesome engine and putting it back together with precision and speed. Castiel would not feel in place with Dean's job, nor Dean in place with Cas's.

Their lives are separated by a variety of barriers, Dean reflects as he sits, trying not to think about the stabbing pain in his shoulders that he realizes is all supposed to be for a higher cause. They met by chance, through a girlfriend who just happened to have the right job and the right time, with the right tastes. And Dean's pretty sure this qualifies as an existential crisis, and he's having it right here on this deep red cushion in the middle of an artist's studio, and this really only serves to make him swallow the lump in his throat again and try not to think about the way he hates coming home, or Lisa coming home to him, the way her constant shopping annoys him, how he feels dread instead of jubilance when her name scrolls across the caller ID.

Cas presses these thoughts from his subconscious, and though Dean's shoulders are liberated, when he finally sits back and then stands up, cracking one of the knuckles on his right hand, his mind is more chained than ever. Denial, Dean Winchester, is the name of your game, as we know and Castiel knows, but Dean does not quite understand yet. And it is paining him.

Yet he chokes out a "thank you" and goes to sit on Castiel's stool designated for him, and for the rest of the afternoon, Cas paints in silence and Dean attempts to keep his mind a pale, blank wall with nothing tacked up on it, brushing away every thought that tries to invade. The artist makes no mention of his own reaction to the encounter, says nothing to indicate he even assigns any meaning to it at all, and yet Dean can't help but think (just briefly, before he wipes his wall clean again and wills it to stay that way) that there's something in his eyes that he's not quite seen before.

He asks to see what Cas has so far when the artist lays down his brush and palette, effectively telling Dean that it's time to leave. He gets no response but a brief, stony silence and then a shake of the head.

"Okay," Dean says, trying to brush off the reaction but finding himself haunted by a pair of haunting eyes, Cas's deep blue ones flashing in his mind long after he leaves the loft and heads back into the bowels of the city. When he leaves, he steps across the doormat with its six fat white stripes and he feels like he should turn back around and say something to the artist cloaked in the shadows behind him, by all accounts ready to close his door and go back to a life that does not involve Dean (maybe with relief, with a sense of Oh-God-finally-he's-gone). He feels as though this is not the way the world wants him to leave this second session of their meeting, yet by the time he begins trying to think of something to say to fill the silence, the door is closed and the moment has passed, and he is still grasping at straws for something to say to the obdurate door which was once Castiel Novak.

The straws fall away from between his fingers, and he goes down the stairs and out onto the street and the house is empty when he reaches it. He is uncomfortable in the silence, and leaves the TV on and a half-full glass of whiskey on the bedside table. He sleeps soundly, and does not dream.

The third time Dean lays eyes upon the striped doormat and forlorn, abandoned Saturday paper, he has made a conscious decision to not be the burden he has been to this man who he barely knows. He has solidified it in his mind since the second time they met that he is, in fact, the aforementioned; a burden, and one for sure the painter can't wait to be rid of. So he decides that he will cease being that burden, and that he will do nothing but sit quietly today and allow himself to be painted with no other distractions.

He has taken measures to make sure this is what occurs, and as a result when he knocks on the door and then puts his hands right back in the pockets of his stiff jeans, he feels lighter. He is optimistic, as optimistic as he can be in a city he doesn't like very much and a relationship that he won't admit he doesn't like at all (but we know better, we know things that Dean doesn't know). And when Castiel Novak opens the door to officially commence their third session with each other, he tries his best to keep the lightness inside his heart, and enters the art studio.

Upon a moment of reflection, the paintings are not really that creepy at all, even the ones where there are spears jabbed into people's sides. Dean does not know why his first impression had been one of fear and uncomfortableness, for he finds them quite aesthetic now. Dean still does not understand art, and he probably never will, but this man's paintings have edged him just a tad bit forward on the path to artistic enlightenment he does not endeavor to walk on for long.

"How's it going?" Dean asks, meaning to refer to the artist's life in general, but Castiel misinterprets.

"Quite well, as paintings go," he says as he steps behind the easel, and Dean takes his place on the stool that has already been set up near the window for him. "Though the colors are not quite satisfactory, I believe I am well on track for finishing in the amount of time I estimated for you. It should not take more than two more sessions after this one to complete."

Dean quirks his mouth, nods a bit, and takes off his jacket as he always does, letting it slide to tangle around his ankles and the bars of the stool. "That's good," he says, not expanding on his question to clarify that it had been about Cas's well-being in general. No, speaking of which, one of the other things he had told himself that he would do today is not refer to the artist by such a casual and friendly name, as he believes it evident that such a gesture is not welcome. So Castiel it shall be, and Dean only hopes he can remember.

After that he sits quietly, not wanting to disturb the artist, though he does watch him as he works. He is not entirely sure why he is fascinated by the deftness of Castiel's hands, the way he wraps thin fingers around a thinner paint brush and swirls colors together with a practiced, critical eye. His hair is even more of a mess than usual, and though his shirt and pants are slightly different than the last time Dean had come, that overcoat and blue tie are perpetual. The coat hangs off his shoulders, miraculously clean of any paint splatters, though the small apron tied around the artist's waist is covered with various colors. And the tie is coming undone, as the tie seems to be wont to, for each time Dean has seen him it has been in a state of sagging sorriness.

The soft slide of paint on canvas is becoming a familiar background noise to Dean, and he finds himself strangely soothed by it, along with the rumble of his own breathing in his ears. To be honest, this is probably the quietest time he's had all week. The mechanic's is usually absent of voice, but the sound of shrieking metal on metal and tools banging against the same doesn't make for a halycon of mind.

He misses the car shop in Kansas often, with his avuncular mentor Bobby grunting around the place in a frayed old baseball cap, sweeping up one corner while leaving the other one coated in dust, but not to be fooled by his looks and habits; the books on Bobby's bedside table were Faulker and Longfellow and Carroll, and his eyes were deep and intelligent and wise. Dean misses him, and he misses his brother, who lives too far away to drive to regularly, and he misses his mother who he could not possibly go and visit without laying a gun to his temple and hoping he sees her smile in heaven. He misses the quiet, and he likes the way it infiltrates the studio now; he suspects that Castiel has soundproofed it somehow in order to not be distracted in his work by the constant rages of the city that never sleeps. He has often thought of trying to do the same with Lisa's house, but she would never allow it. She thrives on the urban life, enjoys being able to power-walk to her favorite coffee shop and stop off at six separate thrift stores along the way, all the while jabbering on her cell phone to one of her friends at the Times.

Dean stops this train of thought before he can get too wrapped up in it, for he remembers his promise to himself not to be a weight on Castiel's day. This means that he must stay relaxed, and it is easy to do when he is simply watching the artist's focused gaze, mostly on his easel, but every once in awhile he looks up and runs his eyes over Dean's form, mapping him out in order to best represent him on canvas.

Castiel paints for two and a half hours, and Dean takes one break during that time period to use the restroom. Cas's-Castiel's bathroom is nothing particularly special, with red walls (the paint's peeling in the corner, providing a delightful haphazard look to the whole place) and a starkly white sink, the gold mirror hung on the wall polished reasonably well. Dean looks at his reflection in that mirror, and what he sees is a man who was once a windy-haired child, a man whose eyes do not show defeat. And he likes the reflection.

When he goes back to the stool, he remains calm as ever, and he allows himself a moment of pride for staying this relaxed.

Eventually, though, Castiel puts down his brush and palette and removes his apron, setting it on a nearby table and smearing paint on the finish, though he doesn't seem to care about that in the slightest. "I find I'm rather hungry," he says, almost like he's not sure whether to believe his own needs or not. He heads towards the kitchen, and looks back over his shoulder. "I do believe it's my turn to provide us with suitable food," he says as he goes, and Dean follows him, speaking nary a word in his continual effort to be as little of an annoyance as possible.

Castiel sautees vegetables in a large, flat pan with a long handle, throwing in ground meat and stirring it all together. The gentle smell of bubbling oil and cooking onions and the crisp, slightly damp smell of fresh-cut green peppers floats over the Winchester, sitting with his chin resting on his hands at the two-top kitchen table and keeping silent, his thoughts drifting aimlessly through his mind with no real direction, desultory and comfortable. He breathes in deeper than usual, enjoying the aromas wafting throughout the kitchen, and he can smell the dish even stronger when it's being ladled onto a plate and slid in front of him.

"Thanks, Castiel," he says, picking up the fork that the artist has also provided him with, and the brief glance he gives the artist after he does so makes him pause; Castiel's brow is furrowed, his head slightly tilted in confusion, the pan still in his hand, though he's not making any move to serve himself a plate.

"I thought," he says when he reverie appears to be broken, and the metal spoon he is using to scoop the food from the pan is scraping against the stainless steel with a soft rasp, "that you called me Cas."

Dean's slightly surprised, as one tends to be when one of their predetermined notions is upset. He's been running under the assumption that him calling the artist such a nickname is annoying, burdensome, and too personal for someone who he had only met recently. Yet Castiel's expression is so confused that he thinks that no, this must not be the case at all.

"Do you want me to call you Cas?" he asks, for clarification, because if there is one thing Dean Winchester has not been recently, it is confident in his decisions and impressions.

A long silence follows, wherein the artist puts the pan back on the stove and then sits across from Dean, picking up his own fork and then looking him in the eyes. "Yes, I would prefer that," he says at least, and Dean nods, his reply getting lost on the way to his mouth, not entirely sure how to swallow the situation.

So he opts to swallow some of the food Cas has cooked up instead, which, predictably, is phenomenal. The meat is cooked tenderly, the vegetables with just the right amount of crisp, and the water that Cas provides is clean and cool and pure. Dean eats and drinks, slightly less silent now as he inquires after Cas's work besides his own painting, which apparently is going well. Cas, in turn, inquires after Dean's brother, which Dean is pleased that he remembers as he responds that Sammy is doing fine, as ever. Sam is very good at doing fine.

Their conversation is casual, and Dean does not feel like he is being annoying or overbearing since he is so relaxed. His lack of tension does not go unnoticed, either; when his plate is nearly clean, leaving nothing but small remnants of meat too small for a fork to adequately pick up, he looks up and speaks.

"I cannot help but notice that you are quite at ease today," he says, casually, and Dean gives a shrug.

"Guess I'm just in a good mood," he says, and continues to eat, looking out the small window to his right to the skyline. Perhaps it is beautiful, when he does not have to listen to it.

"That's good," Cas comments, scraping the last remnants of his own meal together and pushing them onto his fork with a stuck-out thumb, which he wipes on a napkin laid next to him. "Any particular reason?"

And the lightness of Dean's pocket makes him silly, and all of a sudden he feels that it might be okay to reveal this small secret with the artist across the table. He pats the pocket in question, and looks up with a smile in his eyes and a laugh in his voice as he turns it inside out and says "No phone."

Cas looks momentarily confused, but then his forehead smooths out and he nods. "Ah," he says, and there is no need for Dean to explain himself further, for he knows that the artist understands. And he is eternally grateful for the fact that Cas doesn't say anything about it. They go back to eating in comfortable silence, and the emptiness of Dean's pocket seems to put him in even more of a good mood having shared the secret with someone else. He's pleased, because it's going to be an actual normal session this time, no need for Cas to go out of his way in order to try to beat relaxation into a Dean who's usually wound tight. He'll sit for another few hours this afternoon so Cas can work, and then he'll go home.

Just the thought of such a predictable and lazy day gets a small smile touching the corners of Dean's mouth, and if he would be more observant than he might see the eyes that the artist is looking at him with. But he is not very observant, not about this kind of thing, and so he does not see the look in the artist's eye, a sort of mildly stunned look, filled with a childlike sort of wonder.

He sees nothing, except for the array of food on his plate, which he polishes off efficiently and then takes both their plates to the sink. He does the dishes, carefully sponging them off and placing them in the drying rack next to the cutting board. "There we go," he says when he's finished, drying off his hands. "Should I go sit back down?"

Castiel seems lost in reverie for a few moments, but then he comes back to himself. "Yes," he says, once he appears to have retained the power of speech. "That would be agreeable."

So Dean goes, and sits on the same stool he has sat on all this time, and wraps his ankles around the bars of the chair. He is a little bored of sitting, to be honest, but he has pledged to himself not to be a burden and so he will not say anything. He looks out the window, then looks at Cas, plays with the fraying hem on his t-shirt, and then just lets his mind slide into a sweet peacefulness. No phone, no interruptions, no break of his relaxation.

And then the door opens.

It isn't a quiet door-opening either, the kind of method of opening a door used by shy people and people who are not quite sure if they are in the right place or not. It's the thud of someone who is used to rushing around, someone whose default setting is "frenetic and febrile." Castiel actually loses grip on his paint brush and it flies across the room, smacking against the wall and leaving a dark grey streak on the light wall paint. Dean hears him mutter a couple of swear words, and then he doesn't have time to hear anything else.

"Sweetheart!" says the voice that is responsible for the door opening so violently, high and feminine and pouty, and Dean feels shock physically run through him as he assigns a name to the voice, right before the woman it belongs to comes into view.

"Hello," Cas says, and Dean thinks he could probably hug him for sounding so annoyed at the intrusion.

"Lisa," he says, getting up from his stool and feeling a sort of cold settle into his gut, solidifying the lunch he had had into an uncomfortable fullness. "What are you doing here?" His voice sounds as defensive as he feels, for some reason intensely annoyed at her...intrusion of this space, this space that has been one of peace for him in a world she provides that is devoid of peace in general.

"You forgot your phone, baby," says the brown-haired woman, made up as usual, wearing a navy blue suit and carrying her fake alligator skin briefcase. It's the tail end of her lunch break, and sure enough, she's got the familiar slim gadget in her hand. "Thought you might want it, and I figured this is where you were!" She grins brightly, and tucks the phone into Dean's hand.

Cas clears his throat, ever so slightly, and both Dean and Lisa turn to face him. His eyes are distrustful and strange, something in them that Dean hasn't seen before. "I assume you are Lisa?" he says, his voice a little tighter than usual, his posture a little stiffer.

She laughs. "That's right! Lisa Braeden. I love your work," she says, crossing the room to shake Cas's hand, which he participates in, looking a little lost. "I wrote a review of it in the Times a couple of months ago? That new show you opened up in the Bronx? Maybe you saw it."

"Oh," Cas says, after a short pause, as though he's not quite sure what to do with the information. "I might have, yes," he says, though it's clear to Dean he's lying. Lisa grins nonetheless, shaking his hand again and then going back over to Dean, who's standing in the middle of the room feeling slightly lost as to what to do. His hands hang weirdly at his sides.

"Well, I've got to dash," she grins, taking both his hands in her own and leaning up to give him a lingering kiss on the lips. "Don't forget your phone again, baby," she admonishes playfully, pushing him on the chest. "See you at home."

And in a flash, she's gone again with a flick of a curl and a lingering waft of her perfume, the perfume that Dean had fallen in love with and then fallen out of love with, and now he thinks it just smells wrong. He goes and sits back on the stool, but he can immediately tell from the way his back twinges when he does so that it's useless. He looks up at Cas with eyes that are guarded, unsure of what to say, wondering if he's noticed.

The artist is looking at him with pity in his eyes, his hands limp next to his thighs and his mouth set in a concerned little frown. When he meets Dean's gaze, his head tilts, the way it's apt to, and his forehead creases. He walks towards the seated Dean, still with that melancholy expression on his face.

"Oh, Dean," he says, with as much pity in his voice as he holds in his eyes, and he looks for a second as though he's going to reach out and take the Winchester's hand, maybe pull him into an embrace. Dean's eyes cast downward, his shoulders hunch.

"Don't say it," he says roughly, feeling a tremor run through his neck and back, resulting in a long shiver that he's sure Cas can see. "Please, just...don't."

"But..." the artist starts.

"Please," Dean says, looking up at Castiel with eyes that are full of more pleas that he does not know how to put into words, and he scrambles for a way to articulate himself. His voice is gruff, lower than usual. "If you say it, it'll make it real," he says, his voice breaking a little. "And that's what this whole thing is about, this whole painting thing. Making it so it doesn't have to be real."

Cas looks for a moment like he's going to ignore Dean's request and say a lot of things, all at once. In fact, for a few seconds he actually looks angry, a flash of fire in his eyes that Dean's not even sure he really sees before it's gone. But no, he stays quiet, steps back from his proximity to Dean and just shakes his head with a sad little sigh, and Dean feels a burning, heating shame over how he had started the day hopeful that he was not going to be a burden, but as it turns out he is more burdensome than ever. He continues looking at the paint-splattered floor even as Cas goes to retrieve the paintbrush that he'd tossed when Lisa had flung open the door, trying to dab the flecks of grey from the wall. He sticks the brush in a cup of water sitting on one of his tables and goes to get the cushion Dean has been using to meditate out of a cupboard.

"You don't have to," Dean mutters to his knees, hating himself. "I can...I don't know, just. I don't want to make trouble for you."

"It is no trouble," Castiel says, and the quickness of his response combined with his tone makes Dean almost prepared to believe him. "I am only sorry that this must be necessary at all."

Dean's worried for a second that he's going to continue, but he doesn't, merely setting the pillow down on the floor and gesturing to it. "Sit," he says, no malice behind the command, and Dean does so automatically. "I think it will take a little more than meditation to remind you that your muscles are capable of a position besides cramped." And with that, he walks back into the kitchen.

The Winchester is unclear as to whether he's supposed to follow or not, but he doesn't, merely sitting and laying his head in his hands and feeling miserable and wondering how things can go from zero to all fucked up in only the time it takes to open a door.

Castiel comes back only a few minutes later, empty-handed. Dean's not entirely sure what the whole point of going in there in the first place was, but he's so wrapped up in his own emotions that he hardly spares a lot of time to think about it.

"Just relax," he says, his voice low and serious and comforting, and Dean feels his mind ease just the tiniest bit. "Just sit and relax. You know what to do. Start with your leg muscles."

Dean tenses up, and it feels good, feels good to clench up and grit his teeth and relish the trembling that comes along with the actions. He holds it just a few seconds longer than his body wants him to, like Cas has instructed him both days, tries the whole while to keep his breathing level and calm, though sometimes it bursts out of his control. Once those few seconds are up, he relaxes them, feeling the blood rush in them, thudding through him and proving that he's alive. He repeats the same motions with his arms, feeling the cords stand out. He holds them too long, and it starts to hurt and cramp up. When he lets go, it's not nearly as satisfying as he hopes, and that thought alone makes him want to shriek with frustration.

Cas guides him through the relaxation of his abdominals, the muscles of his face and his jaw. "Now just sit quietly," he says, just as quietly. "Keep your eyes closed. I shall be back momentarily."

And then there are the sounds of his bare feet dragging across the hardwood, and Dean realizes that he is alone in the hanging space. He can no longer smell Lisa's perfume on the air, and that, at least, is something to be thankful for.

He sighs to the empty room, trying to sort out his feelings into boxes that they won't fit into, the old stigma of a square peg in a round hole. So he goes back to his method of denial, not thinking about anything in particular, and then he hears Cas come back and opens his eyes.

"Hi," he says as he looks up at the artist, who is carrying two steaming mugs. He sets one down next to Dean's cushion and then pulls another pillow, this one blue and green, up for himself.

"Hi," Cas says in return, gesturing to the mug. "Tea I was gifted at a Buddhist monastery. Supposed to be a muscle relaxant. I haven't had much chance to use it, but...it does taste divine." He takes a placid sip from his own mug, and Dean picks his up with numb fingers, grateful for the warm that seeps into his hands. He doesn't usually drink tea, but the smell emanating from the mug between his hands is alluring enough so that he's willing to try this one.

"Jesus," he said in the same tone as one would let loose an appreciative expletive when he takes the first sip of the tea Cas has provided him. His eyelids flutter ever so slightly, and he tips his head back in appreciation. "This is fantastic."

Castiel, for his part, sits and sips pacific, watching Dean with his studious blue eyes and not saying anything. Lost in the spicy sweetness of the herb-infused water at his lips, Dean forgets for a moment his pledge not to be consumptive, forgets his shame over everything that has happened to him within this studio loft. When Cas finally speaks, it is softer than usual, as though he is not quite sure that he wants to be speaking at all.

"I am glad you enjoy it," he says, haltingly, and when he puts down his mug and slides a little closer to Dean his movements have the same slight compunction, as though he is ashamed of them. "Come here," he murmurs anyway as he lays his hands on Dean's still-tense shoulders, and Dean allows himself to be touched like this again, the second time in two weeks. It should feel wrong, he might think somewhere in the very back of his mind, the one that is not so needful of things that feel what this actually does; right, so right his heart actually aches a little with the absolute rightness of it. The movements of Castiel's hands are slow and easy and dedicated, searching out the points in Dean's muscles that need the most pressure and providing it.

There are a few seconds, somewhere in the middle of this massage (such a odd, intimate word, Dean thinks hazily, and doesn't like the way that it fits in this situation) where he feels such an utter and complete terror for liking all of this so much that it nearly paralyzes him; his eyes go wide, and his hands stutter to a stop around his mug, and his skin feels more like skin and Castiel's fingers kneading knots out of his shoulders feel like they are aggravating raw nerves.

But then the moment passes, and Dean Winchester relaxes, and takes a sip of his tea-from-a-Buddhist monastery. And once Castiel is finished working the hard twists out of Dean's muscles, he relocates his cushion to sit across from Dean on the floor. His tea has been recently finished, but the empty mug is still steaming a little from the leftover residue. He steeples his hands, right middle finger falling slightly above the left one, and rests his chin on the point for a moment like he's praying, though his lips don't move, and his eyes stay open.

"Thank you," Dean manages, breaking the silence that has reigned between them since Cas had told him to "Come here." The Winchester's voice sounds low, and throaty, and sincere.

"It is no trouble," the artist responds with little pause, opening his hands and rubbing them across his stubbly face before dropping them back down into his lap. He looks straight at Dean, levels those deep blue eyes at him, and again Dean feels the strange sensation of being sliced through with an invisible force.

"Is there anything you would like to talk about, Dean?" Cas asks, and his face is open and artless, his voice quiet and encouraging.

There are a lot of things that Dean Winchester would like to talk about, but we know that he will not say any of them, not yet.

He would like to say how utterly much he hates the city, with its constant smog and taxis outnumbering cars in half the parking lots and people falling down drunk in the streets and no one ever looking like they're having a good time and no one who appreciates classic cars like Dean does. On the subject of classic cars, he would like to talk about the '67 Impala that he left covered in a garage in Kansas in favor of this godforsaken place, and how he used to take that car out and roll it down the old main drag every single day, just for the sake of driving it and feeling like he had a place in the world. He would like to try to explain to someone who cannot ever fully understand the way he adores taking apart engines and then slipping them all back together, feeling things click back into place and knowing you've done well. He would like to talk about Sam, and how he is sometimes jealous of the fact that every single time he sees his brother, he looks young and happy and ineffably in love, as though his life has fallen into place as easily as Dean's engines do under his hands, and Dean would like to talk about how he thinks he missed a memo somewhere along the way about how to fall in love and stay in love with someone.

There are a lot of things that Dean Winchester would like to talk about, but he says none of them. Instead, he answers a question with a question. "Why are you doing all this?" he asks the expectant artist sitting in front of him, whose eyes flick up towards the ceiling for just a split second before coming back down.

"Because I want to," comes the brief answer, and Dean does not quite know what to make of it. Then, elaboration: "You are full of pain, and I find that it is painful by association to watch you torture yourself into further pain. Thus, I help you because I want to. Nothing more, nothing less." The artist steeples his hands again, and our Winchester tries to process the answer and what it means and what it might possibly mean in some other reality.

Castiel does not paint any more that afternoon. Once they have sat in silence with each other for a few more minutes, he quietly suggests that it might be best if Dean take his leave. "I do not think I could get much more painting done today," he adds. "I shall see you next week."

"Next week," Dean repeats, his voice a faint parroting, but he takes the tea mugs back into the kitchen and lays them carefully in the sink before he gathers up his jacket and the loathsome weight of his phone inside it to leave.

Castiel leans down for his Saturday paper as Dean exist the artist's loft, and for just the barest second, their hands brush together accidentally.

Dean's jaw is clenched for the rest of the afternoon.

The three times Dean has been at this door with its bright blue hue and its doormat with the six fat stripes, he has looked presentable, but this is not the case when we come to the fourth time he arrives there. Upon the fourth time he arrives there, he is unshaven, and his jacket is hanging lopsided on shoulders slumped in an unknowable defeat, and if we look very closely we can see that he is trembling, just the slightest bit. An involuntary tremor, surely, yet one that he cannot quell and one he barely notices, until he stretched out a hand to ring the bell.

When Castiel opens the door of his loft, there is a second where his eyes are bright, his expression is neutral and unworried, maybe there is even a touch of a smile hinting around his mouth. The moment he processes the appearance of the client (for want of a better word; on whose part? perhaps both), however, his head tilts, his eyes lose their light, and he seems to make some very quick deductions.

"Dean," is what he says, but there are questions and criticisms and proclamations in the name that are intangible and silent, much as the k in knowand a light-footed outcast from society. The one word is heavy with things that fall between them, spreading to the hardwood and left unuttered. And the artist, after a pause, steps back to let Dean in. There is a paintbrush tucked behind his ear, like he'd put it there for safekeeping and forgotten about it; the sight nearly forces a smile out of Dean's lips, set tight in a line.

Cas's eyes are a question mark as Dean takes a shaky seat at the stool near the window; it is the fourth time he has entered this artist's loft, secluded from the helter-skelter city, yet he feels like it is the four hundredth. It is the fourth Saturday he has known that Cas has brown hair and blue eyes and really likes his tan trench coat and doesn't mind ish Chinese takeout and always forgets his Saturday paper on the doormat with the six fat stripes in alternating colors, yet it feels like the four hundredth Saturday. His shoulders are tied in knots, his head bowed in some mix of shame and fear, fear of what he would find in Castiel's eyes were he to look up.

Yet all things must end, and so Dean's studious avoidance of speech or eye contact did: after a few minutes, he looks up, and Cas is still looking at him. His eyes are guileless, a light concern misting over them, betrayed further by his serious mouth.

"Would you like to speak about the matter?" Castiel asks, stepping past a canvas, swirling with a golden-lit figure of Eve, cloaked in red-shot shadow that hides her naked form tastefully. The paint around her hair is shiny; it's still drying.

"No!" is the vehement response, so vehement that the artist with concerned eyes and a paintbrush still tucked behind his ear (streaked with the same color as Eve's hair, cascading around her shoulders) stepped back in slight shock. A second later, Dean realizes his mistake and he hurries to correct it. Always hurrying, where Cas is concerned; requisite five sessions, no more, no less. (Four-fifths: relief or panic?)

"I mean," he says, and his voice is strangled and tight and it seems like it's hard to force the words out of his throat. "I mean, please just get the painting done. It's the only thing that's going to fix anything, the only thing she's, we've got." His eyes are pleading now, and if he had been looking in a mirror, able to see the pitiful light in them, he would have been disgusted. For he does not like feeling this helpless, this panicked, this tied to a city he barely belongs in and this dependent on an artist's loft that barely even recognizes him, let alone molds around him as homes should. But why does he want it to? Dean Winchester wonders.

Castiel looks like he is going to shatter his self-control for a moment and say a whole lot of things that are not distorted by his cool and calculating facade, that are honest and true and outside of this whole mad assignment. As if he and Dean are merely people who have met incidentally on the street, as opposed to a painter and the painter's client, commissionee. For a moment, the thunder in his eyes is such that it is a wonder that it does not explode, and bring his wrath down. Yet the moment immediately following that, they are closed off again, impassive though something in his face speaks to the contrary. And he gives a small nod. "I cannot paint with you in your current state, however. You are going to have to-"

"Relax, yeah, I know." His voice is rough, and out with it comes a little self-deprecating laugh that Dean's hardly aware of making.

He has had a fight with Lisa, and this fight with Lisa has been one of the worst ever; he had casually tossed around the idea of going back to Kansas for a few days to get the Impala and bring it back. Such an innocuous idea, or so he thought, yet Lisa had immediately set those full lips that had once so inebriated him with their mellifluous laugh, the sexy words she was capable of speaking, set them into a hard, pursed line that told him immediately that she did not approve. "It'll get stolen in ten seconds flat," was her response to the only idea that has given Dean any semblance of good feelings in the past two months or so, minus those secluded Saturdays in the artist's loft that he tries very hard not to think about when he's not living them. "This is Upper East Side, Dean, bringing a car like that up here is basically asking for it to get jacked...keyed...whatever else people do these days!"

It is not in Dean Winchester's nature to back down; he was the child that held his breath until he got what he wanted, the one that ruthlessly mowed lawns until enough money for the new Stones record was his. So, naturally, he had fought for the right to go back and get his car, which he is homesick for almost more than he is homesick for the arid dryness of Kansan summers and the simmering roads with no one on them for miles around. Yet Lisa is not one to back down either, and the resulting fight was really almost rather impressive in its length, volume, and gamut of vocabulary used. The argument for and against the car had morphed into Lisa shrieking, holding a dishrag as though it were a lethal weapon: "Why are you so illogical all the time? You came up here to live in the city and you're acting like a town boy, like the whole world should be at your fingertips! Dammit, Dean, you're such an idiot!"

Eventually, maybe to keep from breaking a window and maybe to keep from breaking his own neck, Dean had absconded, escaped and run straight to Cas's, sure that the only way to put this whole awfully no-good fucked-up-almost-beyond-repair situation back together again was to present her with that painting, try to make her eyes light up like they had the very first time he had entered her, try to drag himself back into her life and enjoy it, enjoy it like he had in that virgin six months where he had thought he would grow to adore New York City and its bags of curry-garbage and the rats that scuttled around street corners. Yes, that's what he would do; he would get it done and wrap it up pretty and give it to her as a plea for forgiveness, ignoring the fact that he doesn't actually want to say that he's sorry because he's pretty sure he's not sorry at all for wanting his car, wanting a quiet place to think, wanting somewhere familiar that made him feel like he actually has a place in the world.

But first, he must relax.

"I shall prepare tea, if you are agreeable," says Castiel, and he does not look at Dean while he says it, already turning to make his way to the kitchen. Dean gives a small noise in approval, not trusting himself to say anything else, and he pulls the cushion ("his cushion," a voice in his mind whispers before he tamps it down) to the floor and sits on it and tenses his jaw-neck-arms-legs-back-stomach until his entire body hurts, and when he releases it, a sigh bursts from between his lips. He does it again, and then again, and then one more time for good measure, and by the time he feels like he has worked most of the tension out of his mind and some of the tension out of his body he is left, feeling limp and exhausted, sitting on the slightly threadbare cushion and watching Castiel come back through the door with tea. The steam from the mug in his left hand is ambitious; it rises up high, curled around Cas's head almost like an intangible halo, and then dissipates into the dust motes swirling around the curtains.

"Beautiful," Dean whispers, of the steam, and Castiel hears it but pretends that he does not.

The tea tastes like drowsiness and comfortable mornings and mint, and Dean drinks it gratefully, one sip at a time, nearly burning his tongue in his ambition to take in the flavor all at once. Cas takes tiny sips, as though he's trying to make his own mug last as long as possible. They do not speak at all, for Dean is afraid to speak to Castiel and Castiel is afraid to speak to Dean, for fear of what they might say to each other. The air seems to sigh with electricity at the point when Cas moves a hand to brush his hair out of his eyes and Dean reaches out to catch a piece of fluff fluttering on the slight draft in the room, and their hands touch, just briefly. The Winchester feels a shifting in his stomach that he does not like at all, because it asks him to think.

"Come here," murmurs Castiel after a very long time sitting and drinking tea without saying anything, and Dean is a little bit surprised when his voice filters through the thus-far silent air. His eyes widen just a fraction, the lashes sweeping over them when he realizes that the situation is not removed from normalcy; well, not in the context of these stolen hours, when Cas's hands are laid firmly on Dean's back and Dean himself is trying not to make any sound, because it hurts, it hurts beautifully and he thinks that he would like for it to go on forever but he also thinks that he doesn't quite like that he would like that.

"You've a knot here that is approximately the size of a boulder," Castiel says softly at one point, which wrings a little laugh out of the defeated and confused Dean.

"Rock on," he says, which makes Cas laugh, and when Cas laughs Dean blanches and sinks back into silence. It is far easier to stay quiet than to hear Cas's chuckles and feel the way they shiver in the air. It requires much less thought.

The artist works the knots out of his shoulders and back with dextrous hands, and when he is done Dean feels liberated physically, yet his emotions still weigh heavy on his mind. "Thank you," he says automatically as Castiel stands and steps away from him, and he gets to his feet himself.

"It is no trouble."

"No, but..." Dean does not like the way the artist treats the experience; so cavalier, as though it doesn't inconvenience him in the slightest when Dean knows full well it does; he could be painting Dean right now, getting more time to work on Eve's hair and God knows what else. "It is trouble," he finally manages. "And I don't know why you don't seem to care."

Castiel, who seems to have finally realized that there is a paintbrush behind his ear and is washing it off under a gently flowing stream of water at the sink in the corner, levels his eyes at Dean. There is a long moment of silence, wherein he says nothing and Dean is not sure whether he is going to say anything at all, and then he does. "I think," the artist says, murmurs really, "that it is your time to provide lunch."

For a second, Dean's dumbstruck, trying to connect the dots in his mind and figure out the statement, which seems so out of the blue. Ah. Lunch. Yes. "Oh, yeah," he says, his voice gruff. "I'll call them up now."

"Perhaps you should go a bit easier on the load this time," the artist advises him, just the smallest hint of a smile crossing his face. "I was eating the leftovers from two weeks ago for approximately eight meals straight."

That wrings a laugh out of a Dean who doesn't really feel like laughing at all, or for that matter turning his phone on. Thankfully, the radio waves have remained silent; no voicemails from Lisa, no text messages, no missed calls. Nothing that would destroy the relaxation he seemed to be able to achieve exclusively within these four walls. He orders a lighter selection of food, remembering that Cas had liked the spring rolls and despised the egg foo yung, so he asks for none of the latter and extra of the former. "We'll paint after lunch, right?" he asks Castiel once he's hung up the phone, and the artist nods.

"If that is what you wish, Dean, then I shall continue my work." The paintbrush appears clean, yet Castiel continues running it between his fingers, as though trying to get every molecule of paint out of the bristles, or perhaps like he's forgotten he's performing the menial task at all. "Until then, perhaps I should find plates. I shall return momentarily."

And he's off again, leaving Dean alone with the array of paintings in various states of completion, staring at Eve for just a few seconds too long. The light filters nicely through the window, making the white walls seem to gleam. Despite the relatively unkempt state of the loft, it's beautiful. In a quirky sort of way, to be sure, but beautiful all the same.

When the takeout arrives, fifteen minutes later, Dean is the one that answers the door and forks up the dough, taking the bag as though he actually lives here, which is a strange feeling to say the very least. The plastic rustles as he takes his bounty to the kitchen, where Cas is inspecting a few forks as though they hold the meaning of life.

"I'm not sure whether I washed these or not," he says, by way of explanation, as he keeps staring at them with his brow slightly furrowed, his eyes squinted.

"You're such a ditz," Dean says, easily, forgetting for a moment that he is trying very hard not to kid himself into thinking that he's this artist's friend. Nevertheless, he looks at the forks that Cas holds. "They look clean to me, so executive decision: use them and hope you don't drop dead."

A smile, and Cas sets the forks on the plates, standing back as Dean sedulously spreads the array of food out on his table near its small windows in a tasteful kitchen. "It looks quite good," he remarks.

"It will be," says the Winchester, and fills the water glasses, remembering that they are in the second cabinet to the left of the refrigerator, the ones with the uneven rims and the artful fake cracking around the bottom. He is moving about the kitchen, again, as though it is his own, and he does not notice this.

The artist and the broken man sit across from each other at this table for the fourth time, and neither of them can think of anything to say. Dean could talk about cars or his brother or the way the light slants across the table or how fantastic of an invention chicken chow mein is or maybe about his favorite 70s band or God, really, anything at all and Castiel would listen. But this is the thing that we must understand about Dean: he is not willing to believe that the artist will lend him an ear, any more than he is willing to believe that the artist thinks of him as anything more than a client. Yet perhaps he realizes this latter statement, deep down; however, this has very little effect when one is dealing with a man who is shattering from the inside out, caught in a relationship that is simultaneously his saving grace and the source of his greatest sorrows.

We must realize that it is very complicated to be Dean Winchester right now, and that we must give this broken man time to realize what he truly has, what he truly wants, and who he truly wants to be.

So they sit in silence for a long while, filling their plates and mixing sauce into rice and taking sips of cool, clean water that cleanses the palate and seems to clear the head as well. The silence that hangs between them is not a pregnant one; it is hardly silence, but stasis, for sounds still break through; the scrape of a fork against a plate, the rustling of cardboard flaps of the stylish little boxes, the rsskkk that Dean tries not to register when Castiel briefly drags a hand across his stubble.

When they have both completed their afternoon meal, Castiel is the one that clears the table and does the dishes, the sound of rushing water adding to the quietness in their throats, the clink of silverware against plates and the hush of sponges against both of them into the air.

"We'll paint now, right?" inquires Dean after all of the dishes are in the drying rack, dripping slightly despite the run Cas had made over them with the dish towel.

The artist nods distractedly. "Go out and sit; I shall follow."

Dean does as he's told, going and perching on his stool near the window and taking a glance outside at the city as Castiel takes up his position behind his easel, uncovering the pallatt whereupon the daubs of paint that Castiel had spent a careful twenty minutes mixing still lie. Yet he does not pick up his brush; he stares at Dean, with that calculating, perusing gaze that so cuts through the Winchester, whose response is a nervous little laugh and "You okay?"

"Are you sure this is what you want?" the artist asks, quickly, as if on cue. "Absolutely sure?"

The word yes is a very easy one to think and a very hard one to say; Dean tries to force it between his teeth and finds that his throat is sticking and his voice does not seem to work as well as it should, and so he just shrugs instead. Castiel looks at him for another few seconds, then his shoulders drop a fraction of an inch and he picks up his brush, fixating those hypnotizing blue eyes on the canvas instead. It's almost a relief.

And yet with the shrug comes the doubt; this painting, it's now a peace offering instead of an idle project, something upon which a relationship hangs, and yet does Dean want this relationship to hang any longer? The easiest thing to say would be yes, for all that waits for him in Kansas is a mechanic shop that had been barely getting by when he left it, a car that he misses terribly and yet knows is pointless unless he has the ability to take her places, drive for hours and hours and not care about gas money. His brother gone, his parents gone, his avuncular Bobby not exactly the welcoming type to long-term cohabiting. Staying here with Lisa means that he has a guaranteed house and place to work and a bed to sleep in, a car that runs if not growls, a place outside the tiny town he feels he cannot limit himself to again.

But must he always feel this horrible about it? Must he wince at the grate of her voice, must he always pretend to make love instead of just have sex? Is this what Dean Winchester wants?

In an effort to expunge these heavy thoughts from his mind (for denial is the name of the game Dean Winchester plays, the only way he knows how to ignore this kind of thing), he lets his eyes wander to Castiel instead, Castiel with his hair rumpled and a thick paintbrush stowed behind his ear as he paints with a thin one, an expression of concentration on his face so great that Dean feels it would be nearly sacrosanct to speak, or clear his throat, or even breathe too loudly. The artist's brow is furrowed, his tongue poking ever so slightly between his teeth as he paints. His eyes are blue, and his shoulders are back ever so slightly, and he juts his neck forward in an effort to connect with his painting as much as possible, and Dean feels a warmth erupt in his stomach.

He knows how to identify this, yet it terrifies him more than anything else in these experiences put together. He has felt this way several times in his life. Eighth grade for Patricia Mulqueen, who had been the first girl he had ever kissed, and he felt it in tenth grade for the first boy he had ever kissed, whose name he still does not remember. And for Lisa, he had felt that way for Lisa that month of powder-blue panties and thick, lush dark hair that made him want to sing with joy. But they had all flared, died, dissipated into the darkness eventually, difficult to snatch back once one has allowed them to begin to slip away.

But he has no hope, Dean Winchester thinks, no hope with this odd artist in his odd loft who paints scenes out of the Bible. That's one reason in and of itself; someone who paints Biblical scenes surely wouldn't be open to...anything like that. Although Cas had been estranged from his family, for a reason that he refused to say...no, no, Dean Winchester thinks, there's false hope in that. He has no hope, because Castiel will probably be glad to be rid of him when this is all over. He will not be sorry to watch Dean go out the bright blue door with its doormat of six fat stripes for the last time, and he will go right on painting and forgetting his Saturday paper as though Dean had never intersected his life at all.

But humans are fanciful creatures, this he knows quite well, and so he cannot help but fancy. He cannot help but imagine what would happen if right now, he were to get up from the stool and cross the room and take the paint brush gently out of the artist's hand, setting it on a side table and then replacing the questioning word on the artist's lips with his own mouth. He cannot help but wonder what it would feel like to kiss Castiel; would he taste sweet, or sour? Would the chalky scent of paint fill their nostrils? Would he kiss back, or would he shove Dean away and then send him out, ask him never to return?

That thought makes him grimace, though Castiel does not see it because he is painting studiously, for the fourth week in a row. And if Dean were able to read minds, his situation might be made quite plainer to him, two lines, temporarily intersecting but getting ready to part; zero hour upon them, so close. Dean does not believe in a divine being, and Castiel does, but neither of them realize the universe forcing two people in the same space when it occurs; neither of them are that good at recognizing fate.

Sounds seem escalated to Dean's ears; the rasp of a brush over canvas, the slight slick slide of paint across the smooth palate held in Castiel's left hand, a bird squawking outside the window. And the fight that should be at the forefront of his mind if he wants to reconcile it at all has been pushed to the very back, seeming hardly important in this sweet soft space in the middle of a city that Dean has pledged time and time again to hate forever. It should feel awful, he notes with an impassivity that worries him as little as the tight-mouthed woman at home, but it does not; what feels awful now is that he realizes that he wishes to embrace the artist across the room, catch him up in a kiss and hold him tight and buy takeout for the next ten years or so. He wants to take a chance on this, but this is a chance that would be completely irrational on a logistic level. Kissing Castiel would mean not only certain rejection, but a sudden loss of home.

It is a horrible idea, and it is an idea that he cannot stop thinking about.

He is paralyzed with this idea, sitting there more placidly than he has since these sessions started, and this does not go unnoticed by the artist painting his form; on one of his cursory glances up, Castiel pauses for a moment, though the pensive Dean sees nothing; the severity of his thoughts are clearly evinced on his face. The artist, still unnoticed, gives a tiny sigh, and then goes back to painting.

Three hours. Three hours, Dean sits there, barely moving, never speaking a word, his breathing too soft to make any significant impact on the sound in the room. Three hours he is lost in his own thoughts and the chimerical ideas of himself and Cas and Lisa and the Impala, Kansas and Sam and stories that have happy endings and Shakespearean tragedies, but he barely realizes that it's been three hours until Castiel puts down his brush and his paints and tells Dean in his low rough voice that it's time for him to leave.

"Next week will be your last requisite session," he says, and his eyes are fixed on a point about two feet to Dean's left side. "Best of luck with your..." He pauses, as though either struggling to articulate his words or rather already having the words in his grasp, but being unable to force them out between his teeth. "Situation," he finally says, and escorts Dean to the door.

His hand touches the small of Dean's back, just for a moment before he opens that bright blue door, and Dean jumps as though he's been subjected to an electrical shock. He looks back at Cas instinctively, and their eyes meet for just a little too long. For a second, he thinks that stare can see right through him, and read all the thoughts that have been mulling through his head for the past three hours.

And then the eye contact breaks, and Dean picks up the Saturday paper and hands it to the artist, and then he hurries off down the hallway with his shoulders clenched and his eyes turned up towards the ceiling like he actually does believe in some sort of deity, and he's praying to them to deliver him from this whole confusing situation.

If there is a deity listening to Dean Winchester on this slightly rainy Saturday afternoon, it does not show itself. He spends five minutes at the house he has shared with Lisa for two years, and then checks himself into a motel room with his mind full of thoughts he does not want to think.

Perhaps Lisa can tell the thoughts that course through Dean's head when he finally comes back the following day and desperately launches a last-ditch attempt to launch the relationship back into stability. This attempt goes on for six days, until the Friday of that roller-coaster week. Wednesday, Dean makes love to his waning hope all night long, but even this is not enough to stick them back together with a glue that has any chance of holding; the morning is awkward, their breakfasts separate, and the air outside cold as ice.

Friday, they break up.

We shan't go into the explicit details of the event, we shall only say that it was not amicable; it could hardly be expected to go kindly after the severity of the rifts between them. Dean is afraid his eye will black, and that night he examines it carefully in a hotel room mirror for ten minutes before replacing the ice pack and swearing at a lumpy pillow which sits impassive and apathetic of his travail.

Because this motel room is not the box our story is contained in; ah, yes, the story of Castiel the artist and Dean the faithloser has a box, if only for the sanity of our Winchester. This motel room is not it, nor is the empty-full house of Lisa's signature where still presides an empty space above the mantle for a portrait that she will never see. Our story is contained in a small and easily-messy artist's loft which serves as haven in a city where havens are incredibly hard to come by. The events of our story take place in the home of Castiel, which Dean has latched onto like a child onto his mother's leg, wanting for comfort and warmth and a place to feel accepted for his existence.

And this is where Dean goes.

But, one might say, as Castiel does when he is apprised of the situation of his portrait subject, what need has Dean to go back, what excuse? The portrait is null and void, for even in its unfinished state it served to split instead of unite, cause a civil war instead of mend one. The answer is clear. Dean knows no other place to go than the bright blue door with its mat with six fat stripes in alternating colors and that damn Saturday paper lain carelessly next to them both, forgotten by its subscriber. There is no other place in this godless city where he can feel close to anything resembling the idea that life isn't just there to screw him over.

He has allowed this to go far, further than he thinks he probably should have. Yet he knocks on the door nonetheless, hears a shuffling of footsteps that puts a lump in his throat that he is forced to swallow down, and then watches as the bright blue of the door swings inward.

The artist within is cloaked in shadows, for the light is not so good in the narrow entryway, and this is how he has been every time he has opened up this door for Dean Winchester. When he steps into the light, however, the concern that is etched on his face is immediate and clear; there is a question in the slight tilt of his head as he looks at a defeated and battered-broken Dean, with one eye a tad bit swollen and shoulders slanting in utter annihilation.

"What has happened?" the artist begins to ask the mechanic, who stumbles into his slightly drafty loft and cuts him off as though he will vomit the words through his trembling lips if they are not said as quickly as possible.

"We broke up," he manages, and he cannot see Castiel's reaction at first as the artist is still standing in the shadows. When he steps out into the soft dim light of day filtering through the windows, however, it is hardly of help to the Winchester who has never been good at reading emotions; his visage is a mix of confusion, pity, curiosity, and wonder. As he has proved himself adept at, he mulls over the situation completely in his mind before speaking.

"Yet you came," he says, and this is when Dean realizes his logical fallacy; portrait rendered useless, Cas as the bearer of such rendered useless as well; this is when Dean realizes that he has no reason to be here (or so he thinks, ah, the stubborn fool!). "You came," continues the artist, "though you now have no need of the painting that I would have provided for you. Why is that?"

The silence that follows is one wherein Dean Winchester looks as though he has stuck a fork in a toaster and then tossed them both in hot water.

"I don't know," he says, and as ever a man of few words, he advances back towards the door, his mind a maelstrom of thoughts; yes, this perceived confirmation of his own uselessness, of his delusions, of his accuracy in thinking that Cas holds no affection for him past that of a money-bearer, a few months' rent as opposed to a person. Dean intends to leave and never come back; he does not know what he will do, perhaps go back to Kansas and pretend like he still has a place there, this man who tossed up everything for a love that did not pan out. He intends to leave the artist's loft behind him and attempt to forget that it ever came into his life at all as anything more than a static way to pass a couple of Saturdays. This is what he intends, and what Dean Winchester intends, he carries out.

Except for when Castiel blocks the door.

Dean's head has been hung low at this point, not of his own volition but just as a side effect of having every tier of his shakily managed life undermined and decimated and rearranged in a new and unfamiliar pattern, yet when Cas spreads his arms wide and places his palms flat against the wall, like some sort of avenging angel, as though he will lift his arms further and rise up to hit his head on the ceiling of the narrow entryway...when Cas blocks the door, Dean's face turns upwards, and they are locked in yet another stasis; Dean, staring, Cas, staring, a human wall between the Winchester and the rest of a Castiel-free, uncertain life.

"Stay," Cas says, and his voice is breathless like he has been breathing hard or running miles or kissing for hours or like he has just watched someone die. His eyes bore into Dean's, without a trace of malice, but rather an artless pleading that the Winchester can identify, even in the shadows. "Stay," he says, "if you want."

And Dean steps back.

And he nods.

And he stays.

There are another couple of seconds where Cas is staring like he doesn't quite believe what's happening right in front of his eyes, and then he seems to come back to himself and gives a small nod in return, stepping out of the darkness and into the soft light of the main loft.

"I need to meditate," is what Castiel says, and his voice is shaky in a way that unnerves the Winchester who has elected to remain.

"Then let's meditate," is what Dean says, words careful and spoken through a tight throat, and he sidesteps Sodom and Gomorrah and makes his way over to the cupboard where the cushions are kept and takes out the red and gold one for himself and one in a deep shade of emerald for Castiel, who accepts it. The moment does not feel real to a Dean who is still trying to process the entire situation; his notions of Castiel's opinion of him have just been turned on their head. Perhaps it is merely faux-care stemming from pity that prompts the artist to request that he remain; but that look in his eyes, oh, that look...Dean is not very good at reading people, but the look in Cas's eyes when he had blocked the door had been an awful lot like care.

And then there is a period of thirty minutes where the Winchester and the artist sit in relative silence; Dean, who has never been comfortable with silence, marvels at the lack of desire he feels to fill this one. He tenses his arms and legs and back and stomach and hands and jaw and he matches his breathing up with Castiel's. They coexist together in the space and it is lovely, it is lovely and calm and though his eye still hurts a little and he worries in the back of his mind about where he's going to live when he runs out of money to pay for the motel room with, Dean feels overwhelmingly good. Too good to keep lying to himself that the breakup with Lisa is a bad thing for him; the logistics of his life may be more complicated, but the emotional aspect, to be sure, has lightened to the stars.

He does not feel guilty about feeling this way, and maybe that is most startling to him of all the things that have been surprising him lately.

When Castiel lets out a breath and drags bare feet (the fourth toes of both feet turned slightly at an awkward angle, dipping under the third toe like they're shy; what a startlingly human imperfection...joining the ranks of callused heels, a burn scar on his left ankle) against the floor, standing up with an audible cracking of joints, only then does Dean open his eyes. The light dazzles him for a moment and rushes to white out his vision, the face of the artist from a low angle dipping out and then back in, all calm blue eyes (a lake, where before there had been a river) and even mouth (where before there had been a cable, stretched tight with no hope of release) filling his eyes. And for a moment, the only thing that Dean Winchester can think is Beautiful.

He stands up along with the artist and looks at him for a moment, feeling calmer than he was but still wreckish and unsureish and ish ish ish. He had woken up late and deliberated at the door and he does not realize that he is hungry until his stomach growls, which it does embarrassingly audibly. Castiel cracks a smile and Dean almost feels normal in his rush to defend himself; he forgot to eat breakfast. Or dinner the night before.

"It's my turn," the artist says quietly at the end of a chuckle, the kind of lilting tone in his voice that makes Dean want to smile and cry and fling himself out a window because he barely knows Cas at all but he feels like he knows him the best out of anyone, and he doesn't even know where any rooms in this loft are besides the bathroom and the kitchen and the studio but it feels more like home than Lisa's spacious house has been feeling in the past six months. (No, Dean, don't think about her now.)

The Winchester is rife with confusion, but nevertheless he follows the artist from the studio back into the small and snug kitchen with its stainless steel appliances and good cabinets and refrigerator with an array of fresh vegetables Cas selects from before getting to work, moving about like he should be on his own personal cooking show with an audience larger than the one man who is watching him now. Emotions ebb and flow like the tide in his mind and heart as he sits with his elbows on the table and his chin resting in one of his hands; for a moment content will steal over him and he will feel like this life is okay, but then he will remember that he is attracted to the chef and he is, for all intents and purposes, homeless, and Kansas is barely even home for him now, and he is held to the world by nothing more than a shiny black Impala that he will see again if it kills him. And then when he remembers the crushing factors on his shoulders, he will feel like being very unmanly and bursting into quiet tears in this warm and good-smelling kitchen, tears for the sake of seeing tears, to remember that bodies are still bodies and minds are still minds and no matter what they have gone through they are still able to send signals from mind-to-eyes saying squeeze salt water out of your eyes because you are so goddamned emotional this is the only thing we can do to make you feel any semblance of better.

But he does not burst into tears, because even now Dean Winchester is aware of his image, aware of how he looks to the artist darting from the fridge to the stove with deft motions that almost look rehearsed. He does not want to show that much weakness, does not want to put Cas in such a position to have to see Dean at his worst.

(He has already seen Dean at his worst, when his eyes are empty and terrible and broken, but Dean cannot see his own eyes and so does not know how they look to those around him, and Castiel was not about to divulge what he saw in them.)

Cas does not try to talk to him while is preparing a lunch for the two of them, which Dean is grateful for; he doesn't trust his own voice, not now; he fears that if he were to try to speak, even casually, it would skitter and break and crack and betray what a wreck he actually is right now. Cas does not even try to talk to him when he's putting down the plates and the silverware and handing Dean a paper napkin stamped with purple flowers and serving the chicken-and-rice dish to both of them. He says nary a word, even when he is seated across from Dean with his hands folded, his head bowing for a few seconds. And Dean is confused about that at first but then it connects and oh, what the hell, he might as well put his head down and pray too.

Dear whoever, he thinks, feeling stupid and slow and like he has no idea how to channel his thoughts into one concrete prayer. Whoever is listening. This is Dean Winchester. I don't know who you are or what you are, but I guess if you're tuned in then I'd like to put in a request...like, in the request box or something. I just...want to understand. Why I'm here. On the Earth and in this weird little loft that I like way too much. Yes. That's about all. Thank you, whoever you are.

When he opens his eyes again after fumbling through the half-formed prayer, he finds Castiel looking at him with quizzical eyes, his head tilted and his lips parted just the slightest bit. Dean is lost for a moment in the bow of that mouth and the shockingly blue eyes.

"What?" he says, when he remembers how to speak, and his voice is surprisingly steady. "You started it."

Castiel laughs then, a low rumble of a chuckle that starts deep in his chest and then bubbles up to fall from his lips, his lashes fluttering and his fingers crooking as he tosses his head back, an open-mouthed smile on his face. "I suppose I did," he says, and then picks up his fork. "Who were you praying to?"

"Uh, I didn't exactly figure out an address," Dean responds, shrugging and taking his own utensil in hand. "I just...sorta asked whoever was up there, or around, or whatever."

Castiel nods slowly, drinking in his words. He listens like each syllable can be decoded to delineate the meaning of the universe. "It is a good practice to have," he says after he chews and swallows the first bite of his meal, a pepper snapping crisply and audibly between his teeth. "Even if you are not religious, praying can be a clarifying activity nonetheless."

Another shrug from the Winchester who still hasn't quite bought into this whole religious thing, even though he's willing to listen to whatever Cas throws at him, even if he thinks it's dumb. "Maybe I need to do it a little more, then," he says, lightly like it's a joke, but Cas doesn't smile.

"Perhaps," he says, seeming to slip back into a state of deep thought, and remains there for a few minutes as the halcyon silence between them returns. Dean eats quietly, and it tastes just as good if not better than the meals two weeks and four weeks before, which he can still remember. The rice is fully cooked, and the meat and the look on Castiel's face are both tender.

A question for the artist arises in Dean's mind, and he deliberates for an almost embarrassingly long time before he actually asks it, craven in a way that he would not be had his spirit not been broken by this city and the kindness of a painter. "What were you praying for?" he eventually asks when Cas is between bites, and immediately regrets it; it sounds so bald, so personal out loud.

Yet Castiel doesn't seem to mind, and lays down his fork thoughtfully, his eyes flicking up towards the ceiling and left towards the window for a second before his pondering comes to an end and he responds. "Many things," he responds. "I pray about many things. This meal, however, I asked God to show you a sign so you may choose the right path, and deliver yourself from your suffering."

Dean isn't sure how to take the words, though one impression rises salient over the others; Cas had spent those few seconds with his head down choosing to think of Dean, to fill the corners of his mind with the Winchester in order to ask God to help him. "Oh," he says, a little awkwardly. "Thank you."

"I apologize if it makes you uncomfortable," says the painter, averting his eyes and picking up his fork again, clattering it against the edge of his plate accidentally. "I understand not all people are comfortable with me praying for them, which is why I usually don't go around apprising them of the fact. But since you asked, I only thought..."

"No, it's fine," interrupts Dean, shaking his head. "I'm just...not used to people praying for me."

"Perhaps you are not used to people caring about you either."

Dean's not sure if he's heard right for the first few seconds after the words leave Castiel's mouth, but those few seconds are all the artist needs to get up from his chair and move to the sink with celerity, turning on the water to wash the clinging grains of rice from his plate and blocking out the chance for a quick reply. He wonders at the words, assessing them in his head, drawing the conclusion that should make him smile but instead just renders him more confused than ever: Cas cares about him. Cas cares about him enough to pray for him and say he cares for him and make tea that he got from a Buddhist monastery that he will probably never get a chance to visit again (and there he goes, filling up the kettle and putting it on the stove and taking two mugs out of the cupboards already). Cas cares about him enough to block the door. Cas cares enough to cook, and he cares enough to listen. Cas cares enough to bring the cushions down from the cupboard and meditate with him, and be comfortable with the silence that falls between them so often, especially now.

It's certainly something to wonder at.

The artist returns to the table when the kettle is over a high heat, and he gets halfway through sitting down before he jettisons the chair backwards, realizing that Dean's plate is empty and going to take it to the sink (Cas cares enough to do the dishes even though Dean would be perfectly willing to do them himself). When that's done and he actually returns, he gazes out the window instead of looking at Dean, perhaps regretting his earlier statement, perhaps just wanting to look out on the hazy skyline, made blurry with the smog of the afternoon.

"Thank you," Dean says, diverting Cas's attention from that smeary line of buildings, and causing his head to tilt in that little way he has that has been making Dean's insides shift a fraction of an inch for a few weeks now.

"For?" inquires the painter.

"For everything," Dean says, and for a moment they merely look at each other. Castiel's eyes are loaded with some emotion that Dean can't quite identify (it's mirrored in his own and we can infer as to what it is, though again, Dean cannot see his own eyes and is not quite so perspicacious).

"Dean," he says, the word sounding like a beginning, and then the kettle boils.

The artist leaps up like he's been shocked, nearly knocking over his chair for the second time in five minutes in his hurry to abscond from the conversation that had been (unless Dean is very sorely mistaken) teetering on the precipice of something, something new, something different, something Dean doesn't know how to broach again. So the Winchester sits in silence, a hand absentmindedly scruffing at the stubble that is beginning to coat his cheeks like sandpaper, and watches Castiel pour mugs of the Buddhist monastery tea, taking in the cords of his arms and the curve of his bicep that shows ever so faintly through the tan coat when Cas picks up the full kettle. He watches the part of his lips as he pours the water, and the absent focus in his startling eyes; a ray of sunlight arches through the window and slants right onto his face, making those bright eyes even brighter and making him appear almost as though he as a halo; an angel, Dean Winchester's saving grace.

But a moment after he thinks it, Dean discards the thought. It's silly, irrational, what Sam would call "chimerical" (he always had a better vocabulary and a higher sense of condescension than Dean).

Castiel returns with the mugs of tea, setting one in front of Dean with a soft clunk of porcelain on wood, a satisfying sound that is mimicked a moment later with Cas's own cup, hitting the table directly across from Dean's.

"Thanks," Dean says as he wraps his hands around the mug, feeling the warmth seep through the calluses on his mechanic's palms, root under his skin and stay there even when he takes a sip and then removes his hands.

"You are welcome," Cas responds, drinking from his own mug. Apprehension takes up residence on his face when he looks at Dean, but it smooths out to peacefulness when he looks out on the same skyline, and Dean guesses that Cas finds it truly beautiful. He envies him for that; what he would give to like this place, to feel comfortable instead of consistently dreading the subway rides, the taxis, the buskers who leer at you until you put a dollar in their case for fear of being murdered in your bed. What he would give to enjoy pieces of the city other than this little island of an artist's loft.

Eventually, Dean is the one who breaks the silence, only when his mug of tea is half-drunk and his stomach and throat have joined the ranks of the comfortably warm along with his hands. "I'm sorry," he says, and Cas looks over at him.

"Please don't apologize," he says, frowning so that lines appear on his forehead. "I believe I have already explained to you that I feel no compunction or animus towards helping you in this way. It's not necessary for you to-"

"No, Cas," Dean cuts him off, shaking his head. "Not that. I'm just...sorry for making you start a painting and then not finish it because of my own stupid problems.."

The look on the artist's face is one of the most intriguing ones yet; a mix of surprise (perhaps he had not been expecting Dean's words), understanding (at being corrected), and an odd cross of realization and guilt. It's so abstruse that Dean has to ask "What is it?" in order to have a hope of making sense of it at all.

"It's only..." Cas starts, then stops. Dean raises his eyebrows as a silent encouragement. "It's not exactly unfinished," he says, slowly and deliberately, like he's spelling out each word in his head before he actually says it.

Dean's brow furrows. "What do you mean? This was supposed to be our last session. You were supposed to finish it today, but...that...isn't going to happen."

Cas's gaze turns back out the window, but Dean's does not waver from Cas. There's obviously something that he's not aware of that Cas is, and he's curious now.

"I was having trouble sleeping last night, and I decided that to calm my mind I would attempt to finish a painting," he says, still studiously avoiding Dean's eye, a strange phenomenon since until today, it has always been Dean with the most difficulty looking into his eyes. "I was working on a depiction of Isaac blessing Jacob, yet the frustration I felt with it was immense. The pull I felt towards the medium was not a pull towards my usual plane of biblical scenes." A long pause. "I was being called to paint an entirely different subject." Another pause. "Long story abbreviated, I completed your painting last night."

"Oh," Dean says, truly surprised. What would Cas have done at today's session, had the painting still been needed to mend a relationship that is already dead and gone? Merely bundled it up and sent it back with Dean without another word? "Well, then, I guess I have to apologize again for keeping you up for nothing."

The artist's eyes turn on his own for the first time in quite some time. "It was not for nothing," he says, that X-ray gaze returning between them, and the words are weighted with something that Dean doesn't quite know yet. ("Dean..." Cas had started, like there was something to say, like something important needed to grace the air between them)

"Can I see it?" is what the Winchester asks, curious, especially since the last bit of the painting has evidently been done without the actual Winchester there to reference against.

He expects a quick affirmation, but instead there is another long pause between them, as Castiel actually seems to be considering refusing, for some unknown reason. Yet, when he eventually speaks, his fingers steepled under his chin and his eyes turning from the ceiling back onto the Winchester, what he says is a clear "Naturally."

Dean finishes his tea in one long gulp, slightly burning the roof of his mouth in the process (but that's a price that must be paid for the delicious taste-God, and four weeks ago he didn't even like tea), and then takes his and Cas's mugs to the sink, washing them out as efficiently as possible and drying his hands on a dishtowel he sees on the counter before turning around and clapping them lightly.

"All right," he says, "let's see it," and Castiel is suddenly looking nervous. Dean doesn't understand that; this is Cas, Castiel who has his artwork on display in forty-six countries, whose name and face are far more well-known than Dean will ever be, who has his own Wikipedia page (which Dean has read nine times through since meeting Castiel Novak born in Rainbow Falls estranged from family no known romantic attachments you can help by expanding this article) and probably even gets hate mail every so often for the things he chooses to depict. Castiel, nervous over showing Dean a portrait of himself, or perhaps merely nervous about putting his artwork on display at all? A preposterous idea; note the forty-six countries, the art critics that rave. Anxiety is a strange emotion for this situation, and Dean picks up on that.

"Unless you don't want me to," he tacks onto his earlier statement hastily, but by that point Cas is already shaking his head and getting to his feet.

"Come with me," he says, gesturing with a wave of his hand, and Dean tosses the dish towel back on the counter and follows him back into the studio space, filled with the evidence of Dean; his jacket, hung up on the hook, two cushions still sitting plainly in the middle of the floor, his stool still sitting in the same place as every other time he has been here, and then off to the side of the room, an easel that sits facing the wall, so that the painting on it is not visible to anyone who does not press their backs against that wall, which is what Castiel does for a moment before picking up the easel with familiarized hands and moving it out a few feet so that he can stand behind it and wave Dean over with another gesture and a look in his eyes like trepidation.

Dean is not sure what he expects.

He knows that the painting will be beautiful, though he does not consciously acknowledge it; it is merely a fact, evidenced by the beautiful paintings all done up in the same style scattered in various places around the room. No matter how Cas has chosen to portray Dean, it is subconsciously clear to the Winchester that the painting will be beautiful.

But past that, he is not sure what his mind's eye expects to see on that canvas; perhaps a stony-eyed Dean, perhaps a Dean with the lines of his jaw standing out like a despot's.

Whatever Dean Winchester expects, though, it does not prevent his jaw from dropping when he steps behind the canvas to stand next to Cas and look upon the painting.

His own face and shoulders are painted from a slightly left angle, so that the curve of Dean's nose is clear, the sharpness of his jaw. The basic features are almost aquiline in their harshness, yet the eyes...the color exactly what Dean sees when he looks in the mirror, God, how long had that taken to mix? and shining bright with a profundity and happiness that Dean is not sure actually appear in them (it does, but he just doesn't know it). The background is a muted scarlet, and an effulgent golden light seems to emanate from the painted Dean himself, almost like he's...

"Radiant," the artist says, sounding like there's something caught in his throat, and even as Dean is captivated by the portrayal of himself in front of him, he can feel Cas's eyes on him as though they have tactile abilities. "I painted you radiant," Castiel continues, his voice low and soft and slightly ashamed, for all the world intensely interested in the paint-splattered hardwood under their feet. "Because you are."

That makes Dean look up from the painting, to the artist whose eyes seem to implore a breakthrough, open doors, doors to the soul. And in those eyes, God sends a sign.

"Cas," Dean starts, but finds he is unable to finish.

"Dean," the artist responds, but his voice wavers off into nonexistence as they seem to be magnets, drawing closer and closer together and oh, oh, oh, God...

The kiss, when it comes, is warm and quiet and sweet, feeling more like a discovery than a motion. Castiel's mouth is soft under his own, his hand moving to the Winchester's waist to pull him closer as he tilts his head, kissing with a beauty that Dean thinks he's seen before, in the paintings scattered around the room, in the shiny black of his darling car, in the smeary skyline that so many are enchanted with, the one he has begun to appreciate in this loft.

"Stay," Cas says when they pull apart and Dean is feeling like he's been hit in the back of the head with something heavy, the painter's lips two shades redder and the painter's eyes one shade darker and a happiness softening his features into an ineffable blur...though that might only be Dean's eyes, which are tearing up in spite of his best efforts to keep them dry.

"Stay," Cas says again, and holds out his arms.

Dean steps into them, and is welcomed home.