coffeebuddha | Daily Drabble 45 (Reply)

Title: An Easy Battle
Author: coffeebuddha
Rating: PG/FRE
Characters/Pairings: Dean Winchester/Castiel
Word Count: 451
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.
Prompt: "cas/dean, yay we've stopped the apocalypse & all is good in the world & we are sort of useless so let's be domestic-fun!" Requested by

topetine.

***

Dean Winchester is not a cuddler. He does not snuggle or canoodle or freaking nestle. He has no interest in curling up in front of a fire with a cup of tea and discussing anything as stupid as feelings. So far as he has always been concerned, beds are for sleeping and sex, not spooning--although if there's some shifting after he's already drifted off, then there's no way he can be blamed for that. In short, Dean is not Sam.

What Dean is, however, is a man who knows how to pick his battles. So, when Cas walks into the living room, a smudge of cinnamon across his right cheekbone and an apron with more frills than can possibly be healthy tied around his waist, Dean automatically lets the half of his newspaper that's clutched in his left hand drop to his lap and stretches his arm across the back of the couch. Cas moves in with the ease of long practice. He fits, if not completely perfectly, then familiarly against Dean's side. His head tucks neatly into the space beneath the curve of Dean's jaw and his right hand is a warm weight on Dean's thigh.

They hold the paper together, half in Dean's right hand and half in Cas' left. Cas reads faster, but he always reads everything, whereas Dean tends to skim indiscriminately unless something catches his eye, so they rarely even stutter, much less fumble, over turning the pages whenever Cas gives Dean's leg a light squeeze. They just fold the pages together and open to the next.

Every time Cas finds something particularly intriguing, he'll make a soft humming noise, and Dean will lean in to slot his face right next to his to try to line up his vision with whatever Cas is seeing. When that invariably fails--"A spam recall? Really? Dude, you don't even like spam. You called it an 'unnatural abomination'."--Cas will tilt his head and gently nudge at Dean's until he finds the right article.

It was Cas who started their weird newspaper thing. Cas, who kept it up. Cas, who will probably keep doing it until newspapers or they disappear. Dean goes along with it, because it's an easy enough thing to do considering how happy it seems to make Cas, and God knows he owes the guy an infinite number of debts he'll never be able to repay.

If, when Cas is summoned back into the kitchen by the trill of the egg timer, Dean feels a sort of hollow coldness in his gut that doesn't completely go away until Cas comes back, this time balancing twin plates of steaming pie, then that's neither here nor there.

***

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First commenter gets to pick the next prompt! When requesting, please keep in mind that I try to keep these between 100-500 words. For a list of my fandoms and squicks, go here. AUs, crack, genderbending, etc are all welcome in addition to more canon compliant prompts.

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