mercyrobot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mercyrobot) wrote2012-03-12 06:31 pm
mercyrobot) wrote2012-03-12 06:31 pm
Entry tags:
[SPN] Crossroads State 1/12
Please refer to master post for header information, warnings, etc.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue
5:30 in the morning always finds Castiel shutting off his alarm clock and standing half asleep in his kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. Between 5:32 and 5:33, he pours the (almost) boiling water over the metal ball of loose tea he filled the night before that sits waiting in a mug (this morning it's Darjeeling and World's Greatest Teacher). By 5:38 he's dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and sneakers and back in the kitchen blowing on his tea, and at 5:40 he's drinking it at the desk in the living room, looking over his email and the traffic and weather reports on his laptop. He likes to know what's going to be waiting for him (today it's several parents letting him know that their children will be absent, which is to be expected the last few days of school when all the final exams are over). At 5:55 his mug is in the sink and he's stretching on the kitchen floor.
At 6:00 he jogs down his front steps and out onto the sidewalk. It's Tuesday so he waves to the garbagemen and to Missouri, the nurse three houses down who's just getting off shift. As he runs he lets his mind wander wherever it needs to, to his lesson plans for the day or his grocery list or, in this case, what he should get his sister for her birthday. The scenery is so familiar that he barely has to keep his eyes open-- he knows exactly when he has to feint to the right just a little at the corner of Pine Street to avoid a fire hydrant, and where to be careful a few blocks down on Prospect because the roots of an old tree have torn up the sidewalk, where he needs to cross to avoid a house with children who are forever leaving an obstacle course of toys and pieces of chalk. He doesn't pay little enough attention that he doesn't see there's a new hazard in the form of a man unhitching an old black car from the back of a U-Haul, sticking out of the driveway belonging to the house that's had a 'sold' sign for two months, far enough that it blocks the way, but it's nearly a close call and he has to slow down, and the guy sees him, says, "Hey," and his smile manages to be both sheepish and charming at the same time.
Castiel would rather keep running because he'd just been getting to a good pace just shy of burning muscles, but he doesn't want to be rude. "Hello," he says. "You should pull in further or park on the street; the local police are fairly zealous with their ticketing practices."
"I was planning on it, man, just need to get her unhooked. You live near here? I'm Dean," he says, and wipes his hand on his jeans before extending it to shake.
Castiel realizes too late that his own hand is sweaty, like the rest of him. "My name is Castiel. And yes, I live a few blocks over."
"Guess I'll be seeing you around, then," Dean says, and the smile this time is all charm.
Castiel inclines his head in agreement and runs on.
Sometimes this sort of break from the usual will put him off for the whole day. It's not as bad as the time he witnessed a car accident or the time Missouri slipped on ice in her driveway and had to go to back to her workplace as a patient, but he finds he can't get his mind back to thinking about Anna's birthday. Still, he's back home at 6:30 as always, drinking a tall glass of water and a shorter glass of juice, stretching again at 6:35 and in the shower at 6:45 while another cup of tea steeps in his travel mug. By seven he's buttoned into a shirt and tie with his laptop and papers gathered into his bag, which is leather but too old and misshapen to really qualify as any kind of briefcase anymore. He carries a suit jacket with him but it's already pushing 80 degrees so he won't put it on until he's inside the school's arctic air conditioning.
At 7:30 he's eating a cup of yogurt in the teachers' lounge and finishing up the last of his grading for the year. There is absolutely no way Ruby Watts will be able to graduate next week, he's dismayed to find. Even a foot-high stack of last-minute extra credit can't erase all her unexcused absences. The girl is undoubtedly bright, but she's a troublemaker. Castiel sighs in frustration.
"Bad morning?" Brother Michael asks when he makes his usual 7:45 entrance, glancing back over his shoulder as he pulls a loaf of bread with his name on it out of the fridge. He is one of several monks who teach at Saint Benedict's, but he's the only one of them who speaks to Castiel outside of meetings and interactions necessary to work. They are very nearly friends, or anyway the closest Castiel has to one amongst the rest of the staff. Brother Michael is, as the students put it, "cool." In the ancient tradition he brews beer at home, and he started an extracurricular program to teach the students organic farming. When Castiel came here three years ago, he'd had something of a crush, but it luckily faded with familiarity.
"Not especially," Castiel says. "I'm just concerned about Ruby Watts."
"She's known for months she wouldn't be able to graduate if she missed any more school. There's nothing any of us can do at this point but accept it." Michael waves a slice of bread in question and Castiel nods.
"I'm worried more for what will happen to her when she doesn't. Her stepmother is... unpleasant."
"That's putting it mildly."
At 7:50 Michael presents him with a piece of toast dripping with butter and apricot preserves, and at 7:55 Castiel detours to the bathroom to clean away the stickiness from his hands and lips and brush his teeth. At 8:00 he's in his classroom and starting up his laptop on the desk, and between then and 8:15 the students straggle in. First period is a senior class of Religious Education. Half of them are barely awake and don't care anymore, and the other half are rowdy and excited. He knows better by now than to actually attempt teaching anything--even the school doesn't tempt fate this time of year with trying to get them into chapel before the year-end convocation--and so he puts on a DVD of Jesus Christ Superstar and lets them sleep or talk or sign yearbooks or interrupt his exam grading with pointless questions.
When the bell rings at 9:20, some of them wish him well and he wishes them luck and other pleasantries, feeling awkward, but he means it. Ruby doesn't show up.
"Have a nice life, sir," says Fergus Crowley, the class comedian.
"I'll do my best," Castiel says to the empty room. He's unnecessarily mulling that over when his tenth-grade history class comes in. They're easier to deal with, more obvious, not on the cusp of anything like the other grades are, just wanting the homework slog to stop and be off for the summer, the fact not yet sunk in with most of them that they're going to have to start thinking seriously about college. The junior R.E. class at 10:25 are already full of the excitement of getting to be seniors, and the freshmen after lunch are just relieved they've made it through the year. Brother Michael joins him for chess during his planning period and someone's left a CD on his desk that turns out to be a concept album about David Koresh, most likely a history junior because they've just been over that. It isn't bad for how ridiculous the idea is and Michael ribs him gently and says he should take up guitar and use it as a teaching tool.
"Did any of your students tell you to have a nice life?" Castiel asks as he takes a bishop, his forehead a bit sore from thinking.
"Not that I remember. It's good advice, though. Check."
At 3:00 when the five people who actually show up for study hall (and Indiana Jones and the cookies he'd promised for whomever stuck out the whole day) have left, all the books and supplies that live here during the year go into a box that seems strangely small in the back seat of his car, where it stays until he's wandered the mall for two hours looking for Anna's present. When he comes out, having finally given up and just buying her favorite perfume, there's a shining black Chevy with out-of-state plates parked next to him and he tries not to wonder whose it is.
*
"Creative, bro," says Gabriel when Anna opens the perfume during her birthday dinner.
"Stuff it, Gabe," Anna says, and kisses Castiel on the cheek.
"You couldn't have topped my present anyway, so it's just as well you didn't try." Gabriel waves at the waiter with a big smile and points at his glass, which still has the last third of a White Russian in it.
"If you're going to be a total butthead about it I'll just take Cas to Vegas instead."
Gabriel pouts dramatically but it breaks into laughter when Castiel says, "Please don't," which really isn't supposed to be funny.
He loves his siblings, because they're family, but if they weren't, he's got no doubt he would never have met them, let alone be having dinner together. Anna's headstrong and artistic and has always gone her own way, and so has Gabriel, who loves pranks and jokes and anything he deems fun but somehow still manages to be competent in a courtroom.
Castiel was the one who always tried to follow what he thought their father wanted, Yale and theology and even went so far as to follow it with a New Testament PhD as his father had, even though he was far more interested in mysticism. It never ended up mattering that through his research he'd found that only roughly five percent of the things Christ supposedly said could be backed with historical evidence and that he'd become an instant center of controversy in his field, because his father hadn't acknowledged the invitation to his dissertation defense or his graduation. After that no respectable theology program would offer him anything that even thought about dancing with tenure, just a semester or two as a visiting lecturer, a temporary curiosity to stir the pot a bit. St. Benedict's probably would have been better off not taking him either, but he went to college with Joshua, the chair of the school trustees, who's spent enough time in academia to know you can publish and perish, and hired him out of some combination of pity, decency, and a defiant gesture to the headmaster, Zachariah. Castiel had nearly been too proud to accept, but he's glad he did, even if it's not where he wants to spend the rest of his life.
"No sad faces on my birthday!" Anna waggles a drunken finger.
"Oh, go easy on little Cassie," Gabriel says. His mouth is full of cake and whipped cream and it's barely intelligible. "He's just sent a new crop of indoctrinated ducklings off into the real world."
"One of them told me to have a nice life."
"And you should!" Anna crows, and punctuates it by knocking back the rest of her drink.
"You are long overdue for some bedroom action, little brother. Just because you work with monks and nuns doesn't mean you have to live like one."
"I'm not interested in casual sex," Castiel says, and as luck would have it, he says it loudly just as one of those collective lulls in conversation happens, so everyone in the restaurant hears it.
"Well more damn power to you!" Anna says even louder, raising her empty glass, before Castiel can get too far in contemplating strategies for physically sinking through the floor. He says 'bless you' without words and she gives him a sloppy smile that tells him she understands.
*
The first day out of school is always a bit strange, something that throws the curve and has to be adjusted for. The late night for Anna's birthday and resulting hangover are as helpful as they are additionally disorienting. Castiel sleeps until seven and vaults out of bed in a confused panic before he remembers there's nowhere to be. He's not doing summer school this year because he swore he'd work on his book, possibly visit some libraries overseas that have texts they won't let out or subject to photocopying. He could go back to sleep if he wanted to, but he's been shocked awake so he goes downstairs, feeling grimy and bleary and like his head's full of chainsaws. There's still the tea but he drinks three glasses of water first and dumps out the Darjeeling in favor of strong-brewed Assam with milk, and there's no day to prepare for so he drinks it sitting on the porch and staring out into the street. Running is actually the last thing he feels like doing, but he knows he always feels better after than before so he does it anyway.
He's a hundred feet down the sidewalk and grimacing through a leg cramp when he realizes he forgot to stretch, so he sits down and does it where he is. Missouri nearly runs over him when she comes home, and she threatens to whack him once she learns he's okay and just exceedingly stupid today. Her eyes are tired and her tone is fierce but she doesn't so much whack him as pat him and she smiles in the end. He gets up and runs on and tells himself he'll just keep going until he feels normal, and he does a fine job of dodging the fire hydrant and tree roots and toy minefield as always. The U-Haul at Dean's house is gone and so is the realtor's sign. Even all the way up the driveway under the carport, he can see the blue of the Kansas license plate on the black Chevy, same as at the mall. He doesn't stop, just slows a little to look.
Then there's a voice that makes no sense: "BONES! NO!" He doesn't have time to piece together what it might mean, because something heavy knocks against his legs and he loses his balance, and then he's on his back with the wind knocked out of him and a weight on his chest and something warm and slimy on his face and there's a "Goddammit!" shouted closer.
Castiel pries his eyes open just in time to see a massive golden retriever being pulled off him, and then there's Dean. "Jesus, man, I'm sorry, he just ripped the leash right out of my-- you okay?"
"I think so," Castiel says, and he'd hate how breathless he sounds if he didn't have a good excuse. He still hates it a little anyway. The sidewalk's gritty against his skin and Dean's hand is warm and rough and solid as he reaches out to meet it and lets himself be pulled up.
"This dog is a total asshole. He's actually my brother's and I don't even--"
Castiel's right knee is throbbing and when he tests his weight on it his vision threatens to white out. He doesn't realize that the cracked cry sounding in his ears is his own voice until Dean's swearing again and catching him around the waist, or that the 'shit, okay, c'mon,' is Dean until he's moving, or rather being moved with Dean supporting most of his weight. He hears a door creak and slam and finds himself sinking into a couch.
"Hang on," Dean says, "I'll get you something."
And that's how Castiel finds himself lying on Dean Winchester's couch with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his knee. The Winchester part isn't something he learns until an hour later, but he does learn it.
Once the cold's numbed the pain, he can look at Dean, who's holding the peas in place and explaining again that it's his brother's dog and that he's never been able to make it mind.. "I thought if I took him for a run he'd calm down, not go all hell-hound."
"Mythologically, hell-hounds are more interested in tearing-apart than in licking."
Dean laughs. "Guess we're lucky there. You need some water or anything? Whiskey?"
"I think it's a little early for whiskey. Also, I'm already hung over."
"Dude, what are you doing out running? That's some serious masochism."
"I thought it might make me feel better. I don't often drink to excess."
"Big party or drowning sorrows?" Dean frowns before Castiel can answer. "Uh, sorry, I don't mean to pry."
"You aren't. It was my sister's birthday and my brother cannot be made to believe a celebration is possible without large quantities of sugar and alcohol."
"Sounds like my kind of party." Dean switches the hand he's holding the peas with and flexes the other. It must be cold.
"There's no need for you to hold those," Castiel says. "I can reach."
"Don't worry about it. It's my fault you're hurt. Least I can do is not to give you frozen hands on top of it."
"Technically it was Bones's fault." Castiel knows that taking Dean's hand to warm it would be overly familiar but the urge to do it, he finds, is there nonetheless.
"Nobody but Sammy can really get him to do crap, and him not even much, but he's usually not that bad. Just being cooped up in motels and a truck for days, I guess."
"Change can be unsettling for animals." And for humans, some of them. "Sammy is your brother?"
Dean laughs. "Yeah, but don't let him hear you call him that if you ever meet him. It's Sam to everyone who didn't change his diapers."
Castiel learns that Sam is in college at Stanford, pre-law, and will be spending most of the summer with Dean once he finishes classes. He learns that Dean is a mechanic and moved here from Lawrence to take over the garage business of an old family friend who wants to retire. Dean doesn't mention any family but Sam and Castiel doesn't ask, because he would prefer not to bring up his own parents. He learns that Dean loves pie and Led Zeppelin and that Dean looks humorously, passionately scandalized when Castiel admits that he only vaguely knows a couple of songs.
"The Ocean? Black Dog? When the Levee Breaks? Ramblin' On? Seriously? Oh man, you are missing out. You have to come back when I get the stereo set up."
Castiel has heard a thousand of these polite invitations, 'we should get a drink sometime,' and similar, vague pleasantries that almost never follow through, and this could easily be another. Still, he says, "I would like that," because he would, and because it's the correct thing to do, even if he knows he'll be disappointed.
Dean insists on driving him home, and on helping him down the steps and into the car (a 1967 Chevy Impala, Dean tells him proudly, along with several other specifications that might as well be in another language for all Castiel understands them) even though he's barely limping. Dean's arm is still around Castiel's waist when they reach his door and Castiel realizes the flaw in the plan. "I, ah. I hide the key when I go out running."
"Cas, that is so not smart. Anyone could see where you keep it."
"It's a safe neighborhood and I don't have much worth stealing. If someone wants that badly to rob me of my twenty-year-old television and five-year-old laptop, I'd prefer they not break the door." Only Anna has ever called him Cas (Gabriel prefers Cassie by way of nicknames, unfortunately) and it makes him feel strangely warm.
"Get one of those dorky lanyard things if you're afraid of losing it, or you know they make running shorts with zipper pockets." Dean lets go of him and bends over to lift the edge of the doormat and produce the key to prove his point. "Promise me you won't anymore, okay?"
Castiel doesn't even think about saying no. It doesn't occur to him to invite Dean in until the Impala's roaring away up the street.
*
Castiel can't run for three days and it makes him feel restless and itchy.
On the first day, he samples handcrafted ale in Michael's garden and deflects the gentle prodding at discovering what's got him so out of sorts. He does not mention Dean and tries not to think about him either, because he would cautiously like to think he's made a friend, or has begun to, but he can't say so without sounding ridiculous and would hate to be wrong.
He prices plane tickets to Israel and Germany against his savings and can't make a decision. He catalogs the new additions to his bookshelves, which he normally finds calming but currently finds tedious. He scrubs the bathroom grout and makes a moderately successful quiche with the leeks Michael sent him home with and writes a scathing letter in response to a scholarly article that he knows the journal's editors will publish prominently to stir a little excitement when they see his name. He feels a twinge of guilt at it, but the author, a Hebrew Bible scholar at the University of Chicago that Castiel has met in passing a few times, has done sloppy research and is patently wrong.
On the second day, he tries to ignore the twinge in his knee as he stretches but he can't even make it down the steps in the end. He frowns into his tea and answers emails and types Led Zeppelin into a YouTube search but never clicks the button. He limps his way around the grocery store and does laundry and smiles at drunken photo texts from Anna and Gabriel in Las Vegas and goes over his book notes and outline and is sorely tempted to put it through the paper shredder. Instead he muddles through uploading the photo of Gabriel and Anna with an Elvis impersonator and a pair of just-married strangers to a mail-order service and orders three prints.
On the third day, he decides he's being ridiculous and forces himself into respectable clothes and into his car and into the IU Bloomington library. He waits the three hours for the books and journals he wants to be pulled out of storage and spends the day with dust up his nose and ink on his hands and has an awkward conversation with an M.Div student who's realized who he is from the request slips. But it's a much better day than the others-- he feels he's at least made some progress and his knee barely hurts at all, and maybe he's finally beginning to catch up with himself.
Then he comes home to find a piece of paper stuck to his door. He's confused at first because he assumes it's someone who's tried to deliver a package and he isn't expecting anything that won't fit in the mailbox, but it turns out to be a note written on the back of a receipt and taped to the glass with a mutilated orange $15.99 price tag.
Came to see how your knee was doing but you weren't home so I guess you're OK? Stereo's set up now anytime you want to come by for that Zep education.
Dean
It's written with a pen that wasn't cooperating very well, some of the words gone back over and some of them only readable from the impressions in the paper, and Dean writes in all-capitals as though he's not used to it. Castiel blushes bright red even though he knows there's no one watching. What he wants to do is walk down the street and take Dean up on the invitation, but he stands in the kitchen staring at the note, picturing it turning out to be an inconvenient time and strained words on the doorstep. The receipt on the other side is from Harvelle's Roadhouse for a bacon cheeseburger and three beers. Castiel knows the place, but he's never had the inclination to go inside. It's on the very edge of town where it gives way to open fields and there are always motorcycles out front and he's always assumed it's rough, with pool tables and low light and smoke and men you shouldn't get on the wrong side of. He wouldn't have pictured Dean there, but then again, he doesn't really know Dean.
It's already dark out because he stayed in the library until the security guards came through announcing it was closing, and he tells himself 9:30 is too late to show up on a stranger's doorstep. He doesn't think about what he's doing when he puts the note, price tag and all, into the desk drawer that holds postcards from Gabriel's travels, Anna's college graduation announcement, Gabriel's wedding invitation, birthday cards and ticket stubs and Christmas cards and all the little here-and-there bits that get collected and want to be remembered.
He's watching the microwave heat up a slice of his mediocre quiche and telling himself he'll eat and read a bit and go to bed early because he suspects he'll be able to run tomorrow, if not vigorously, and at first he stares at the microwave in consternation because he thinks the knocking sound is coming from it, but the timer goes off and there it is again.
Castiel goes to the front door and peers out the window and there's Dean, all hard shadows under the porch light and holding a box in his hands. "Hello, Dean," he says across the threshold.
"Hey Cas. I hope it's not too late or anything but I was coming back from helping a friend out and I saw your light on so, uh." He holds the box out. "Apology pie."
"If any apologies were necessary, you've certainly made them already."
"Well, thanks for that, man. But you can't turn down pie anyway, right?"
Castiel has never been overly fond of desserts, but he already knows how Dean feels about pie and doesn't like to be a disappointment. "No. Would you like to come in?"
"I totally would, but I hate to get your house all greasy."
Castiel was too busy noticing the way Dean's freckles stood out in the harsh lighting to pay too much attention to the rest of him, but there are black streaks up his forearms and on his t-shirt and jeans, though his hands are clean. "I think if we stay in the kitchen you can't do too much damage."
Dean smiles and follows him in. "Man, something smells good in here. Were you cooking?"
"Reheating leftovers. It smells better than it tastes. Despite my best efforts to learn, I'm still not much of a cook." He decides not to mention that he hasn't actually eaten said leftovers yet. Pie for dinner once in his life won't kill him.
"I suck too, unless it's breakfast or involves a grill. Ellen's threatening to teach me to make pie so I stop bogarting all of hers, but why mess up a good thing, right?"
"Ellen?" Castiel asks, trying to keep a note of disappointment out of his voice and spending more time than he needs to with his back turned finding plates. He really shouldn't be disappointed; everything about Dean screams straight and any hopes to the contrary would be delusional.
"Harvelle. She runs the Roadhouse up on route 46. That's where I was coming from, putting a new starter in her truck. Looks like a dive but it's still the best damn pie in town."
"You must have eaten a lot of pie in the last few days to draw that conclusion." And made friends very quickly.
"Nah, I used to come here in the summers sometimes. Worked for Ellen and Bobby some."
"And evaluated the local pie offerings." Castiel begins to regret making such a stupid joke but Dean's grinning when he turns around with two slices of apple pie on plates, so maybe it wasn't that bad. "Would you like something to drink?"
"Love a beer if you got-- oh, wait, you said you don't drink, sorry."
"I said I don't drink much. I also have a friend who likes to test his brewing experiments on me."
Dean's eyeing the handwritten label on Michael's vanilla porter suspiciously. "Are we gonna go blind?"
"It's not moonshine, Dean. It's perfectly safe."
Dean shrugs like that's good enough for him and takes a drink. "Oh, damn. Can your friend be my friend? This beer and pie are a match made in fucking heaven."
"He will be pleased to hear that."
"Seriously, I want to shake this guy's hand. Maybe marry him."
"I could arrange the handshake. The marriage would be problematic given the legal status of same-sex unions and the rules of his order."
Dean laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard.
Castiel is more disappointed than he should be when the plates and glasses are empty and Dean's thanking him and saying he has to work early. "First official week as the new head honcho. It's kinda been hell."
Castiel does something he rarely does, because he so often finds it met with vague agreement that's really a hidden refusal. "If you find you need respite from perdition, I don't think I can eat all of this pie by myself before it goes bad."
Dean doesn't refuse. He grins and says, "See you after work tomorrow, then. I'll even shower."
Castiel rinses the dishes with a smile on his face and forgets to take the quiche out of the microwave or portion out tea for the morning.
*
Dean's car is already gone when Castiel runs past his house at 6:10 a.m. He has no idea what time the garage closes or what time 'after work' really is, but he's careful to leave the library early, with enough time to stop by Michael's to collect some more beer. He tells Michael about what Dean said, without actually mentioning Dean by name (and leaving out the profanity) and Michael is happy and also curious. There's no reason not to tell him everything, really, but something jealous in him dodges the questions, as though he'd like to keep Dean to himself.
"I understand," Michael says. "You don't want to jinx it, do you? You've always been superstitious."
"I sincerely doubt there is anything to 'jinx.'"
"Well, you know where to find me if you need me." Michael doesn't look like he believes Castiel for a second.
It's only 5:30 when Castiel gets home, which could mean he's got anything from a few minutes to a few hours to wait, and he finds anything he can to keep himself occupied and not actually be waiting. Despite Dean's apparent enthusiasm, there's always 'something came up,' either as an excuse or the truth or both, and he doesn't want to set himself up for any more disappointment than he already has, so he does his best to do whatever he would do if he weren't possibly expecting someone.
Anna calls while he's boiling pasta, and her tales of mild debauchery from Vegas are a good distraction until she happens to complain that her car is making a clunking noise whenever she turns a corner. He does not say that he knows a mechanic he can ask about it, because know is an uncertain term.
"You should probably have that looked at," is what he says.
"I know," she says. "I'm taking it in on Monday. I'm just pissed this decided to happen right after I've blown a huge wad of cash and rent's due."
"Anna, if you need help--"
"I don't."
Anna hates 'help.' She didn't speak to Castiel or Gabriel for a month after they paid off her hospital bills without telling her because she'd refused to accept it when they'd offered. He's still not sure she's actually forgiven them, but they don't talk about it. She likes to pretend that month of her life never happened, and Castiel wishes too that it could just be erased, as much for her sake as his own personal guilt that it ever came to that.
She pretends this strained interlude in the conversation didn't happen either, changes the subject back to Vegas and meeting an exotic dancer who was doing it to pay for her master's degree and liked Gabriel a lot, not sparing the details about just how much and claiming she can actually hear Castiel's face turning red.
Castiel goes through research while he waits for his lasagna to bake and manages to get deep enough into it that he's surprised when the timer goes off. He's more surprised at the knock on the door, enough that he nearly drops the pan he's holding, because he's been telling himself all evening that it was never going to come.
Dean's standing in the doorway, obviously freshly showered, hair still wet and not a speck of grease on him even under his fingernails. Castiel is suddenly very conscious of his own rumpled shirt and half-undone tie and the fact that he didn't bother to take off his oven mitts to answer the door. If Dean notices he doesn't make any indication of it, just smiles and returns Castiel's greeting and comes inside. He's got a stack of records under one arm.
"I saw you had a turntable in the living room," Dean says with a shrug and a smile. "What smells so awesome?"
"My latest attempt at lasagna. You're welcome to some if you haven't eaten, but I can't make any promises for its quality."
"I was either gonna see if you wanted to get a pizza or I'd just eat pie for dinner, but that sounds way better."
"It needs some time to cool. I haven't used the record player recently but it may still work if you'd like to play one of those."
Castiel doesn't mind Led Zeppelin, and though he doesn't form the passionate attachment to it that Dean has, he's intrigued by the apocalyptic imagery. Dean stops the record to make Castiel look up the original Memphis Minnie version of 'When the Levee Breaks' and they end up talking about Robert Johnson selling his soul at a crossroads, a legend Castiel knows well because of an elective seminar class called The Devil and the Delta Blues that he did T.A. work for in graduate school.
Dean looks more impressed at that than he does at his lasagna, which Castiel probably should have specified was vegetable lasagna, but Dean digs in without complaint and looks surprised.
"Cas, man, I have to say, I actually hate vegetables but this is really good."
"Then maybe you don't hate vegetables."
"Maybe not, I dunno. I'd have a hard time hating anything with this much cheese."
Dean has a tendency to talk with his mouth full and completely ignores his knife in favor of stabbing too-large bites with his fork, and Castiel finds it worryingly endearing.
"How do you know all that stuff about the bible and everything?"
Castiel realizes that Dean's never asked what he does for a living and that he's never volunteered it. "I did my PhD in New Testament studies."
"Holy shit. I mean, uh, crap. Uh."
Castiel can't help laughing. "I believe 'holy shit' covers it very well. Due to that belief I have a certain degree of notoriety in my field."
"So, what, you're like the black sheep of the God-studying family?"
"That's perhaps an oversimplification, but true in essence. No faculty will accept me as anything other than a temporary curiosity, so I've been teaching high school for the last three years."
"Dude, you must have nerves of steel. I never finished high school but I gave a bunch of teachers a big fucking headache before I dropped out."
"The students can be trying, yes. But it's rewarding in a way I wouldn't have expected."
"You go all Dead Poets' Society on them?"
"I don't think my teaching methods resemble those of Robin Williams' character in the movie, no. But I do my best to motivate those who are receptive to it. Why did you drop out, if that's not too personal?"
"It's not. I just sucked at it. Math homework and essays weren't exactly the biggest thing I had to worry about. I was actually pretty pissed when I took the GED because I could have passed it without suffering through three years of that bullshit. The only thing I ever liked was auto shop and I didn't even really need that 'cause I'd been working on the Impala since before I had to shave." Dean shakes his head and takes a long drink of his beer. "You don't want to hear this crap. How about that pie?"
Castiel actually rather does want to hear that crap, but he can tell Dean's done talking about it for now. They eat pie and listen to Houses of the Holy with Dean interjecting trivia and pieces of its history and explaining why 'D'yer Maker' is supposed to be pronounced like Jamaica and not dire maker, and Dean laughs for a long time when Castiel admits that the only reason he knows it is from hearing it on repeat in a college dorm room while a joint got passed around.
The conversation works its way back to Dean's work and a man this afternoon who came in panicking because his Check Engine light was on, which turned out to be because he hadn't tightened his gas cap enough. "I should have charged him twenty bucks for the diagnostic, but I felt bad for the poor bastard," Dean says, laughing. "Anyhow, it's good business. He'll be back when he needs something for real 'cause now he knows I won't jerk him around."
"Do a lot of mechanics do that? Jerk people around?" Castiel asks, concerned for Anna.
"Oh man, you have no idea. There's a lot of assholes out there who just want to make a buck off people who haven't done their homework. And don't ever, ever get work done at a dealership if it's not under warranty because they will take your fucking firstborn."
He can't remember how old Anna's car is exactly. It's new enough that she's still making payments on it but he's never owned a new car in his life and has no idea what a warranty covers or how long it lasts. "What about a clunking sound when you turn corners? Is that usually covered?"
"Dude, your car's what, a '95? Nothing's covered unless there's a factory recall. Sounds like you've got a busted CV boot. You need a whole new axle."
"My car is fine. My sister happened to mention that hers was making that sound."
"If the dealership won't do it for nothing, have her bring it to me. Friends and family don't pay labor."
"But she's neither."
"We're friends. She's your family. Same difference."
He doesn't think about Dean's smile or freckles or eyelashes or the way that a few drinks have him talking louder and closer. He'll get over this crush the same way he got over the one on Michael, with time and familiarity and the reality of the impossibility of anything beyond we're friends.
*
"You could have warned me!" Anna says over the phone by way of greeting.
"Warned you about what?"
"That the mechanic you sent me to was a four-alarm hottie? I thought he'd be some old beardy grandpa. I would have at least made a damn effort instead of showing up in sweatpants and no makeup! How do you know that guy, anyway?"
"Dean? He lives in my neighborhood."
"Oh my god, I need to hang out at your house more. He was amazing. The guy at Honda said it would cost five hundred bucks and take two days, but Dean charged me seventy-five and had it done by lunch. I didn't even have to use a credit card and the receptionist gave me cake. Is he married or gay or anything, do you know?"
"I'm fairly certain he isn't married, but I don't know about the rest."
"I am so getting an oil change next week."
"I thought you'd just gotten one."
"He doesn't need to know that. How well do you know him? Any pointers?"
"He likes Led Zeppelin," Castiel says weakly. Because Dean doesn't belong to him, and Anna deserves to have something she wants if she can have it.
*
"I think my sister may be interested in dating you," Castiel says.
It's Sunday morning and Castiel had been pleasantly surprised while running to find Dean out doing the same with Bones, who's much better behaved with more exercise. They stopped when they came back around to Dean's house and Castiel was about to say goodbye, but discarded his intentions of running another mile when Dean invited him in for breakfast.
Dean's just taken a sip of his coffee and he coughs violently as if he's choking on it. "What?"
"Anna. She said that you're a 'four-alarm hottie' and intends to get an unnecessary oil change next week."
"Uh, no offense to your sister, man, but she's...kind of not my type."
"She did tell me she would make more effort with her appearance next time. She believed that a 'beardy grandpa' would be fixing her car."
"Cas, please never use air quotes again."
"She is a very intelligent woman and objectively speaking, very beautiful."
"Yeah, I saw that when I met her. Don't worry, I'll let her down gently if she actually starts hitting on me."
While he's disappointed for Anna, he's also selfishly relieved. "I didn't believe you would intentionally hurt her feelings," he says. His appetite for the bacon and eggs on his plate is much stronger than it was before this conversation began. "This is very good bacon."
The strained look Dean's been wearing is wiped away by a grin. "Told you I was awesome at breakfast," he says around a mouthful of toast.
*
"I'm going to die alone and unloved and devoured by wild Alsatians," Anna declares to the depths of her wine glass Monday night.
"You've been reading Bridget Jones again, haven't you?" Gabriel says. "Buck up, little Annie. Who needs hot mechanics? He probably smells and gets engine grease all over everything. Right, Cassie?" This last is with a pointed and slightly threatening look, or as threatening a look as it's possible for Gabriel to give.
Gabriel sent Castiel a text message reading emergency family meeting my place 7 bring ice cream and this is the result. He's certain Dean's rejection of his sister was nothing but polite and he hadn't expected it would come as such a blow, but Anna can have unpredictable reactions. And while it's true that Dean does sometimes smell very strongly after a long day working in a hot garage, he's never found it unpleasant. Something to the contrary, really. But this is not, he knows, what Gabriel wants him to say to raise Anna's spirits.
"Boys are smelly?" Anna retorts before Castiel can form an answer that will be neither untruthful nor detrimental. "That's your big comforting line?"
"Well, we are," Gabriel says.
"But I like smelly. Maybe I should go gay. I could go gay."
"Nonsense," Gabriel says. "You'll go to bed and in the morning I'll make you hangover waffles and then you'll go find a nice smelly man to be very happy with."
Gabriel is always better with words in a crisis, but when Anna spills her wine and begins to cry and has to be bodily carried to the guest room, it's Castiel who's useful, to take her upstairs and let her sob herself to unconsciousness. Gabriel puts a glass of water on the bedside table and kisses her forehead and leads Castiel downstairs.
They don't have to say what they're both thinking, what they're both worrying about, whether tonight's episode is a portent of more and worse or is isolated because she's been doing so well for so long. They drink a glass of whiskey in complete silence because they both know how the conversation will go. They don't speak until Castiel calls a cab because he's well past able to drive, and Gabriel hands him a paper towel and says, "You've got snot on your shoulder." That Gabriel will look after Anna and will call him in the morning stays unspoken.
Castiel's cab driver is mercifully not chatty beyond asking for a destination and whether Castiel minds the radio. He gets a nice tip for that.
Castiel is in no way prepared for finding Dean on his porch in the midst of writing a note. It must not be as late as it feels.
"Hey, man, good timing! I was just--" Dean's smile falls away. "Cas, you okay?"
"I've had a somewhat trying evening and I'm a bit drunk." His key refuses to fit in the lock.
"Here," Dean says, and his hand is warm and rough where it lays over Castiel's for a moment as he takes the key and opens the door. His eyes close when another warm hand's on his back guiding him inside. It would be absolutely nothing to let himself sway to one side and have Dean catch him, but he braces himself on the door jamb instead. "I can go if you want," Dean says.
"I doubt I'll be very good company and I think I may be sick very soon."
"I'm not being responsible for you passing out and pullin' a Hendrix, so I guess you're stuck with me. Go see the porcelain god, I'll be down here if you need me."
When his stomach is empty and he can taste nothing but toothpaste and mouthwash, Castiel's mind is clearer but his mood is no better. If anything, it's worse-- on top of his concern for Anna there's now annoyance and embarrassment at Dean witnessing him in this state. He means to appear downstairs just long enough to assure Dean he can safely be left alone, but Dean's sitting at the kitchen island with a glass of water and a plate of toast waiting for him and a small concerned smile that leaves him torn between shame and gratitude.
"Feel better?" Dean asks and pushes the water toward him.
"Somewhat."
"You'll thank me in the morning if you can get some of that toast down now, trust me."
"I'll say thank you now since I doubt I will see you in the morning," Castiel says once he's successfully swallowed a bite.
"Seriously, dude, no hangover running this time. Just lay around clutching your head and hating the universe and eat the greasiest breakfast you can find."
"Lie," Castiel says, a reflex.
"Huh?"
"Lie around, not lay around."
"Oh, man, you know your grammar sucks when the drunk guy's correcting you." Dean laughs and shakes his head and refills the water glass, and he knows without being told to use the pitcher in the refrigerator and not the tap.
"I'm sorry. It's habit."
"No worries. If you're safe to fly solo I can get out of your hair anytime."
He's not sure if that means Dean would like to leave or if he thinks Castiel would like him to, but maybe it's best. "I will be fine on my own. Thank you, Dean."
"Anytime."
*
Castiel must be dreaming because though there's a vicious pounding in his head and the sun is too bright, standing next to his bed is-- "Dean?" It comes out garbled and half-intelligible.
"Hey." Dean's smile is strange.
When Castiel forces himself to sit up, he sees there's a glass of water, two pills, and a plate of food on his bedside table. He scrubs a hand over his eyes.
"So I kinda stole your keys last night, 'cause you staggered up here without locking the door, and I remembered when I went looking for that bread that you had absolutely nothing for a decent post-drunk breakfast. I have to be at work like, ten minutes ago, but voila, one Winchester hangover special."
"I... ah. Thank you."
Castiel eats the eggs and sausage in a bewildered daze. The pills turn out to be Tylenol, which he doesn't even have any of in the house. And he does feel better, less in the half-dreaming haze and more human, especially when it starts to sink in that Dean did this for no reason except kindness. Locking the door was for his safety, the same as Dean insisting on staying last night was, but he could have simply returned the keys without doing anything else.
It leaves him with a warm feeling that stays even when he's stepping out of the shower and the air conditioning raises goose bumps on his skin. He knows there is no reason to infer any kind of romantic overture in Dean's gesture, but he can't help feeling good that Dean in some way cares. While he washes the plate he wonders if he could return it with something else on it, if he could learn to make pie. But he doubts any effort of his could stand up to Dean's standards. Still, something to thank him, he should find something.
Gabriel calls and tells him Anna's fine ('for now' unspoken) and asks him to meet them for lunch. He isn't hungry but he agrees. It's a long walk downtown, but it's not too hot today and cloudy and he needs to move, so he takes it, suppressing the urge to run even though he's not dressed for it and isn't physically equal to it.
Gabriel honks at him from his own car in paused traffic in front of the diner, calls out the window at him to get a table while they park. The place is busy and there are a few people waiting on the benches by the door. Castiel takes a number from the hostess and waits. He listens vaguely to the college student and her parents waiting next to him arguing about whether or not to put her bicycle in storage for the summer. A man in a suit is talking on his cell phone and telling someone on the other end to cancel his four o'clock. And a boy in the booth nearest the door exclaims, "Dean, you're such a dumbass!"
Castiel's eyes clap straight onto them and no, it's not a coincidence. Dean's back is to him and he's only visible in part profile, but it's him, with a child and a woman (who must be the boy's mother, because at the 'dumbass,' she says, "Benjamin!"). Dean and Benjamin are laughing but Castiel can't hear anything but the noise around him and the blood in his ears and barely manages to duck behind a pillar in time for the boy to get up so Dean can slide out of the booth. He doesn't turn around, heading for the bathroom at the back, but he says something to the woman and squeezes her shoulder and she smiles up at him. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that they could be friends, relatives, any number of things, and that even if they're not, even if it's what it looks like, he has no place to be upset by it. He nearly hits an arriving couple with the door when he pushes his way out, stammers out an apology and pushes his numbered slip of paper into the confused man's hand.
He only gets a moment to compose himself before Gabriel and Anna come across the street. "There's a very long wait," he tells them. "We should go somewhere else."
Anna takes it at face value, still looking pale and a bit shaken from last night's ordeal, and suggests the Italian place around the corner. Gabriel gives him a look that tells him he's going to have to explain later, but he can tell the truth without telling it: Dean was there. And whatever his own feelings are, it wouldn't have been good for Anna to see him.
This is what he tells Gabriel while Anna's in the bathroom and he's pushing salad around his plate without eating it. "He was there with a woman and a child. I thought it might not be good for Anna."
"I dunno," Gabriel says. "Maybe it would. If he's already taken at least she'd know it wasn't about her."
"I wasn't aware he was dating anyone or I would have told her." And it would have been very simple for Dean to say so instead of the vague 'not my type' that could have meant anything.
Gabriel shrugs. "Not like you know the guy that well either."
"No," Castiel says. "I suppose I don't."
Notes: This isn't on the soundtrack, but the David Koresh concept album referenced is a real thing-- David Koresh Superstar by The Indelicates. I think they're great but pretty much no one else I've tried to force them on does. XD
Next: Part 2
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue
5:30 in the morning always finds Castiel shutting off his alarm clock and standing half asleep in his kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. Between 5:32 and 5:33, he pours the (almost) boiling water over the metal ball of loose tea he filled the night before that sits waiting in a mug (this morning it's Darjeeling and World's Greatest Teacher). By 5:38 he's dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and sneakers and back in the kitchen blowing on his tea, and at 5:40 he's drinking it at the desk in the living room, looking over his email and the traffic and weather reports on his laptop. He likes to know what's going to be waiting for him (today it's several parents letting him know that their children will be absent, which is to be expected the last few days of school when all the final exams are over). At 5:55 his mug is in the sink and he's stretching on the kitchen floor.
At 6:00 he jogs down his front steps and out onto the sidewalk. It's Tuesday so he waves to the garbagemen and to Missouri, the nurse three houses down who's just getting off shift. As he runs he lets his mind wander wherever it needs to, to his lesson plans for the day or his grocery list or, in this case, what he should get his sister for her birthday. The scenery is so familiar that he barely has to keep his eyes open-- he knows exactly when he has to feint to the right just a little at the corner of Pine Street to avoid a fire hydrant, and where to be careful a few blocks down on Prospect because the roots of an old tree have torn up the sidewalk, where he needs to cross to avoid a house with children who are forever leaving an obstacle course of toys and pieces of chalk. He doesn't pay little enough attention that he doesn't see there's a new hazard in the form of a man unhitching an old black car from the back of a U-Haul, sticking out of the driveway belonging to the house that's had a 'sold' sign for two months, far enough that it blocks the way, but it's nearly a close call and he has to slow down, and the guy sees him, says, "Hey," and his smile manages to be both sheepish and charming at the same time.
Castiel would rather keep running because he'd just been getting to a good pace just shy of burning muscles, but he doesn't want to be rude. "Hello," he says. "You should pull in further or park on the street; the local police are fairly zealous with their ticketing practices."
"I was planning on it, man, just need to get her unhooked. You live near here? I'm Dean," he says, and wipes his hand on his jeans before extending it to shake.
Castiel realizes too late that his own hand is sweaty, like the rest of him. "My name is Castiel. And yes, I live a few blocks over."
"Guess I'll be seeing you around, then," Dean says, and the smile this time is all charm.
Castiel inclines his head in agreement and runs on.
Sometimes this sort of break from the usual will put him off for the whole day. It's not as bad as the time he witnessed a car accident or the time Missouri slipped on ice in her driveway and had to go to back to her workplace as a patient, but he finds he can't get his mind back to thinking about Anna's birthday. Still, he's back home at 6:30 as always, drinking a tall glass of water and a shorter glass of juice, stretching again at 6:35 and in the shower at 6:45 while another cup of tea steeps in his travel mug. By seven he's buttoned into a shirt and tie with his laptop and papers gathered into his bag, which is leather but too old and misshapen to really qualify as any kind of briefcase anymore. He carries a suit jacket with him but it's already pushing 80 degrees so he won't put it on until he's inside the school's arctic air conditioning.
At 7:30 he's eating a cup of yogurt in the teachers' lounge and finishing up the last of his grading for the year. There is absolutely no way Ruby Watts will be able to graduate next week, he's dismayed to find. Even a foot-high stack of last-minute extra credit can't erase all her unexcused absences. The girl is undoubtedly bright, but she's a troublemaker. Castiel sighs in frustration.
"Bad morning?" Brother Michael asks when he makes his usual 7:45 entrance, glancing back over his shoulder as he pulls a loaf of bread with his name on it out of the fridge. He is one of several monks who teach at Saint Benedict's, but he's the only one of them who speaks to Castiel outside of meetings and interactions necessary to work. They are very nearly friends, or anyway the closest Castiel has to one amongst the rest of the staff. Brother Michael is, as the students put it, "cool." In the ancient tradition he brews beer at home, and he started an extracurricular program to teach the students organic farming. When Castiel came here three years ago, he'd had something of a crush, but it luckily faded with familiarity.
"Not especially," Castiel says. "I'm just concerned about Ruby Watts."
"She's known for months she wouldn't be able to graduate if she missed any more school. There's nothing any of us can do at this point but accept it." Michael waves a slice of bread in question and Castiel nods.
"I'm worried more for what will happen to her when she doesn't. Her stepmother is... unpleasant."
"That's putting it mildly."
At 7:50 Michael presents him with a piece of toast dripping with butter and apricot preserves, and at 7:55 Castiel detours to the bathroom to clean away the stickiness from his hands and lips and brush his teeth. At 8:00 he's in his classroom and starting up his laptop on the desk, and between then and 8:15 the students straggle in. First period is a senior class of Religious Education. Half of them are barely awake and don't care anymore, and the other half are rowdy and excited. He knows better by now than to actually attempt teaching anything--even the school doesn't tempt fate this time of year with trying to get them into chapel before the year-end convocation--and so he puts on a DVD of Jesus Christ Superstar and lets them sleep or talk or sign yearbooks or interrupt his exam grading with pointless questions.
When the bell rings at 9:20, some of them wish him well and he wishes them luck and other pleasantries, feeling awkward, but he means it. Ruby doesn't show up.
"Have a nice life, sir," says Fergus Crowley, the class comedian.
"I'll do my best," Castiel says to the empty room. He's unnecessarily mulling that over when his tenth-grade history class comes in. They're easier to deal with, more obvious, not on the cusp of anything like the other grades are, just wanting the homework slog to stop and be off for the summer, the fact not yet sunk in with most of them that they're going to have to start thinking seriously about college. The junior R.E. class at 10:25 are already full of the excitement of getting to be seniors, and the freshmen after lunch are just relieved they've made it through the year. Brother Michael joins him for chess during his planning period and someone's left a CD on his desk that turns out to be a concept album about David Koresh, most likely a history junior because they've just been over that. It isn't bad for how ridiculous the idea is and Michael ribs him gently and says he should take up guitar and use it as a teaching tool.
"Did any of your students tell you to have a nice life?" Castiel asks as he takes a bishop, his forehead a bit sore from thinking.
"Not that I remember. It's good advice, though. Check."
At 3:00 when the five people who actually show up for study hall (and Indiana Jones and the cookies he'd promised for whomever stuck out the whole day) have left, all the books and supplies that live here during the year go into a box that seems strangely small in the back seat of his car, where it stays until he's wandered the mall for two hours looking for Anna's present. When he comes out, having finally given up and just buying her favorite perfume, there's a shining black Chevy with out-of-state plates parked next to him and he tries not to wonder whose it is.
*
"Creative, bro," says Gabriel when Anna opens the perfume during her birthday dinner.
"Stuff it, Gabe," Anna says, and kisses Castiel on the cheek.
"You couldn't have topped my present anyway, so it's just as well you didn't try." Gabriel waves at the waiter with a big smile and points at his glass, which still has the last third of a White Russian in it.
"If you're going to be a total butthead about it I'll just take Cas to Vegas instead."
Gabriel pouts dramatically but it breaks into laughter when Castiel says, "Please don't," which really isn't supposed to be funny.
He loves his siblings, because they're family, but if they weren't, he's got no doubt he would never have met them, let alone be having dinner together. Anna's headstrong and artistic and has always gone her own way, and so has Gabriel, who loves pranks and jokes and anything he deems fun but somehow still manages to be competent in a courtroom.
Castiel was the one who always tried to follow what he thought their father wanted, Yale and theology and even went so far as to follow it with a New Testament PhD as his father had, even though he was far more interested in mysticism. It never ended up mattering that through his research he'd found that only roughly five percent of the things Christ supposedly said could be backed with historical evidence and that he'd become an instant center of controversy in his field, because his father hadn't acknowledged the invitation to his dissertation defense or his graduation. After that no respectable theology program would offer him anything that even thought about dancing with tenure, just a semester or two as a visiting lecturer, a temporary curiosity to stir the pot a bit. St. Benedict's probably would have been better off not taking him either, but he went to college with Joshua, the chair of the school trustees, who's spent enough time in academia to know you can publish and perish, and hired him out of some combination of pity, decency, and a defiant gesture to the headmaster, Zachariah. Castiel had nearly been too proud to accept, but he's glad he did, even if it's not where he wants to spend the rest of his life.
"No sad faces on my birthday!" Anna waggles a drunken finger.
"Oh, go easy on little Cassie," Gabriel says. His mouth is full of cake and whipped cream and it's barely intelligible. "He's just sent a new crop of indoctrinated ducklings off into the real world."
"One of them told me to have a nice life."
"And you should!" Anna crows, and punctuates it by knocking back the rest of her drink.
"You are long overdue for some bedroom action, little brother. Just because you work with monks and nuns doesn't mean you have to live like one."
"I'm not interested in casual sex," Castiel says, and as luck would have it, he says it loudly just as one of those collective lulls in conversation happens, so everyone in the restaurant hears it.
"Well more damn power to you!" Anna says even louder, raising her empty glass, before Castiel can get too far in contemplating strategies for physically sinking through the floor. He says 'bless you' without words and she gives him a sloppy smile that tells him she understands.
*
The first day out of school is always a bit strange, something that throws the curve and has to be adjusted for. The late night for Anna's birthday and resulting hangover are as helpful as they are additionally disorienting. Castiel sleeps until seven and vaults out of bed in a confused panic before he remembers there's nowhere to be. He's not doing summer school this year because he swore he'd work on his book, possibly visit some libraries overseas that have texts they won't let out or subject to photocopying. He could go back to sleep if he wanted to, but he's been shocked awake so he goes downstairs, feeling grimy and bleary and like his head's full of chainsaws. There's still the tea but he drinks three glasses of water first and dumps out the Darjeeling in favor of strong-brewed Assam with milk, and there's no day to prepare for so he drinks it sitting on the porch and staring out into the street. Running is actually the last thing he feels like doing, but he knows he always feels better after than before so he does it anyway.
He's a hundred feet down the sidewalk and grimacing through a leg cramp when he realizes he forgot to stretch, so he sits down and does it where he is. Missouri nearly runs over him when she comes home, and she threatens to whack him once she learns he's okay and just exceedingly stupid today. Her eyes are tired and her tone is fierce but she doesn't so much whack him as pat him and she smiles in the end. He gets up and runs on and tells himself he'll just keep going until he feels normal, and he does a fine job of dodging the fire hydrant and tree roots and toy minefield as always. The U-Haul at Dean's house is gone and so is the realtor's sign. Even all the way up the driveway under the carport, he can see the blue of the Kansas license plate on the black Chevy, same as at the mall. He doesn't stop, just slows a little to look.
Then there's a voice that makes no sense: "BONES! NO!" He doesn't have time to piece together what it might mean, because something heavy knocks against his legs and he loses his balance, and then he's on his back with the wind knocked out of him and a weight on his chest and something warm and slimy on his face and there's a "Goddammit!" shouted closer.
Castiel pries his eyes open just in time to see a massive golden retriever being pulled off him, and then there's Dean. "Jesus, man, I'm sorry, he just ripped the leash right out of my-- you okay?"
"I think so," Castiel says, and he'd hate how breathless he sounds if he didn't have a good excuse. He still hates it a little anyway. The sidewalk's gritty against his skin and Dean's hand is warm and rough and solid as he reaches out to meet it and lets himself be pulled up.
"This dog is a total asshole. He's actually my brother's and I don't even--"
Castiel's right knee is throbbing and when he tests his weight on it his vision threatens to white out. He doesn't realize that the cracked cry sounding in his ears is his own voice until Dean's swearing again and catching him around the waist, or that the 'shit, okay, c'mon,' is Dean until he's moving, or rather being moved with Dean supporting most of his weight. He hears a door creak and slam and finds himself sinking into a couch.
"Hang on," Dean says, "I'll get you something."
And that's how Castiel finds himself lying on Dean Winchester's couch with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his knee. The Winchester part isn't something he learns until an hour later, but he does learn it.
Once the cold's numbed the pain, he can look at Dean, who's holding the peas in place and explaining again that it's his brother's dog and that he's never been able to make it mind.. "I thought if I took him for a run he'd calm down, not go all hell-hound."
"Mythologically, hell-hounds are more interested in tearing-apart than in licking."
Dean laughs. "Guess we're lucky there. You need some water or anything? Whiskey?"
"I think it's a little early for whiskey. Also, I'm already hung over."
"Dude, what are you doing out running? That's some serious masochism."
"I thought it might make me feel better. I don't often drink to excess."
"Big party or drowning sorrows?" Dean frowns before Castiel can answer. "Uh, sorry, I don't mean to pry."
"You aren't. It was my sister's birthday and my brother cannot be made to believe a celebration is possible without large quantities of sugar and alcohol."
"Sounds like my kind of party." Dean switches the hand he's holding the peas with and flexes the other. It must be cold.
"There's no need for you to hold those," Castiel says. "I can reach."
"Don't worry about it. It's my fault you're hurt. Least I can do is not to give you frozen hands on top of it."
"Technically it was Bones's fault." Castiel knows that taking Dean's hand to warm it would be overly familiar but the urge to do it, he finds, is there nonetheless.
"Nobody but Sammy can really get him to do crap, and him not even much, but he's usually not that bad. Just being cooped up in motels and a truck for days, I guess."
"Change can be unsettling for animals." And for humans, some of them. "Sammy is your brother?"
Dean laughs. "Yeah, but don't let him hear you call him that if you ever meet him. It's Sam to everyone who didn't change his diapers."
Castiel learns that Sam is in college at Stanford, pre-law, and will be spending most of the summer with Dean once he finishes classes. He learns that Dean is a mechanic and moved here from Lawrence to take over the garage business of an old family friend who wants to retire. Dean doesn't mention any family but Sam and Castiel doesn't ask, because he would prefer not to bring up his own parents. He learns that Dean loves pie and Led Zeppelin and that Dean looks humorously, passionately scandalized when Castiel admits that he only vaguely knows a couple of songs.
"The Ocean? Black Dog? When the Levee Breaks? Ramblin' On? Seriously? Oh man, you are missing out. You have to come back when I get the stereo set up."
Castiel has heard a thousand of these polite invitations, 'we should get a drink sometime,' and similar, vague pleasantries that almost never follow through, and this could easily be another. Still, he says, "I would like that," because he would, and because it's the correct thing to do, even if he knows he'll be disappointed.
Dean insists on driving him home, and on helping him down the steps and into the car (a 1967 Chevy Impala, Dean tells him proudly, along with several other specifications that might as well be in another language for all Castiel understands them) even though he's barely limping. Dean's arm is still around Castiel's waist when they reach his door and Castiel realizes the flaw in the plan. "I, ah. I hide the key when I go out running."
"Cas, that is so not smart. Anyone could see where you keep it."
"It's a safe neighborhood and I don't have much worth stealing. If someone wants that badly to rob me of my twenty-year-old television and five-year-old laptop, I'd prefer they not break the door." Only Anna has ever called him Cas (Gabriel prefers Cassie by way of nicknames, unfortunately) and it makes him feel strangely warm.
"Get one of those dorky lanyard things if you're afraid of losing it, or you know they make running shorts with zipper pockets." Dean lets go of him and bends over to lift the edge of the doormat and produce the key to prove his point. "Promise me you won't anymore, okay?"
Castiel doesn't even think about saying no. It doesn't occur to him to invite Dean in until the Impala's roaring away up the street.
*
Castiel can't run for three days and it makes him feel restless and itchy.
On the first day, he samples handcrafted ale in Michael's garden and deflects the gentle prodding at discovering what's got him so out of sorts. He does not mention Dean and tries not to think about him either, because he would cautiously like to think he's made a friend, or has begun to, but he can't say so without sounding ridiculous and would hate to be wrong.
He prices plane tickets to Israel and Germany against his savings and can't make a decision. He catalogs the new additions to his bookshelves, which he normally finds calming but currently finds tedious. He scrubs the bathroom grout and makes a moderately successful quiche with the leeks Michael sent him home with and writes a scathing letter in response to a scholarly article that he knows the journal's editors will publish prominently to stir a little excitement when they see his name. He feels a twinge of guilt at it, but the author, a Hebrew Bible scholar at the University of Chicago that Castiel has met in passing a few times, has done sloppy research and is patently wrong.
On the second day, he tries to ignore the twinge in his knee as he stretches but he can't even make it down the steps in the end. He frowns into his tea and answers emails and types Led Zeppelin into a YouTube search but never clicks the button. He limps his way around the grocery store and does laundry and smiles at drunken photo texts from Anna and Gabriel in Las Vegas and goes over his book notes and outline and is sorely tempted to put it through the paper shredder. Instead he muddles through uploading the photo of Gabriel and Anna with an Elvis impersonator and a pair of just-married strangers to a mail-order service and orders three prints.
On the third day, he decides he's being ridiculous and forces himself into respectable clothes and into his car and into the IU Bloomington library. He waits the three hours for the books and journals he wants to be pulled out of storage and spends the day with dust up his nose and ink on his hands and has an awkward conversation with an M.Div student who's realized who he is from the request slips. But it's a much better day than the others-- he feels he's at least made some progress and his knee barely hurts at all, and maybe he's finally beginning to catch up with himself.
Then he comes home to find a piece of paper stuck to his door. He's confused at first because he assumes it's someone who's tried to deliver a package and he isn't expecting anything that won't fit in the mailbox, but it turns out to be a note written on the back of a receipt and taped to the glass with a mutilated orange $15.99 price tag.
Came to see how your knee was doing but you weren't home so I guess you're OK? Stereo's set up now anytime you want to come by for that Zep education.
Dean
It's written with a pen that wasn't cooperating very well, some of the words gone back over and some of them only readable from the impressions in the paper, and Dean writes in all-capitals as though he's not used to it. Castiel blushes bright red even though he knows there's no one watching. What he wants to do is walk down the street and take Dean up on the invitation, but he stands in the kitchen staring at the note, picturing it turning out to be an inconvenient time and strained words on the doorstep. The receipt on the other side is from Harvelle's Roadhouse for a bacon cheeseburger and three beers. Castiel knows the place, but he's never had the inclination to go inside. It's on the very edge of town where it gives way to open fields and there are always motorcycles out front and he's always assumed it's rough, with pool tables and low light and smoke and men you shouldn't get on the wrong side of. He wouldn't have pictured Dean there, but then again, he doesn't really know Dean.
It's already dark out because he stayed in the library until the security guards came through announcing it was closing, and he tells himself 9:30 is too late to show up on a stranger's doorstep. He doesn't think about what he's doing when he puts the note, price tag and all, into the desk drawer that holds postcards from Gabriel's travels, Anna's college graduation announcement, Gabriel's wedding invitation, birthday cards and ticket stubs and Christmas cards and all the little here-and-there bits that get collected and want to be remembered.
He's watching the microwave heat up a slice of his mediocre quiche and telling himself he'll eat and read a bit and go to bed early because he suspects he'll be able to run tomorrow, if not vigorously, and at first he stares at the microwave in consternation because he thinks the knocking sound is coming from it, but the timer goes off and there it is again.
Castiel goes to the front door and peers out the window and there's Dean, all hard shadows under the porch light and holding a box in his hands. "Hello, Dean," he says across the threshold.
"Hey Cas. I hope it's not too late or anything but I was coming back from helping a friend out and I saw your light on so, uh." He holds the box out. "Apology pie."
"If any apologies were necessary, you've certainly made them already."
"Well, thanks for that, man. But you can't turn down pie anyway, right?"
Castiel has never been overly fond of desserts, but he already knows how Dean feels about pie and doesn't like to be a disappointment. "No. Would you like to come in?"
"I totally would, but I hate to get your house all greasy."
Castiel was too busy noticing the way Dean's freckles stood out in the harsh lighting to pay too much attention to the rest of him, but there are black streaks up his forearms and on his t-shirt and jeans, though his hands are clean. "I think if we stay in the kitchen you can't do too much damage."
Dean smiles and follows him in. "Man, something smells good in here. Were you cooking?"
"Reheating leftovers. It smells better than it tastes. Despite my best efforts to learn, I'm still not much of a cook." He decides not to mention that he hasn't actually eaten said leftovers yet. Pie for dinner once in his life won't kill him.
"I suck too, unless it's breakfast or involves a grill. Ellen's threatening to teach me to make pie so I stop bogarting all of hers, but why mess up a good thing, right?"
"Ellen?" Castiel asks, trying to keep a note of disappointment out of his voice and spending more time than he needs to with his back turned finding plates. He really shouldn't be disappointed; everything about Dean screams straight and any hopes to the contrary would be delusional.
"Harvelle. She runs the Roadhouse up on route 46. That's where I was coming from, putting a new starter in her truck. Looks like a dive but it's still the best damn pie in town."
"You must have eaten a lot of pie in the last few days to draw that conclusion." And made friends very quickly.
"Nah, I used to come here in the summers sometimes. Worked for Ellen and Bobby some."
"And evaluated the local pie offerings." Castiel begins to regret making such a stupid joke but Dean's grinning when he turns around with two slices of apple pie on plates, so maybe it wasn't that bad. "Would you like something to drink?"
"Love a beer if you got-- oh, wait, you said you don't drink, sorry."
"I said I don't drink much. I also have a friend who likes to test his brewing experiments on me."
Dean's eyeing the handwritten label on Michael's vanilla porter suspiciously. "Are we gonna go blind?"
"It's not moonshine, Dean. It's perfectly safe."
Dean shrugs like that's good enough for him and takes a drink. "Oh, damn. Can your friend be my friend? This beer and pie are a match made in fucking heaven."
"He will be pleased to hear that."
"Seriously, I want to shake this guy's hand. Maybe marry him."
"I could arrange the handshake. The marriage would be problematic given the legal status of same-sex unions and the rules of his order."
Dean laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard.
Castiel is more disappointed than he should be when the plates and glasses are empty and Dean's thanking him and saying he has to work early. "First official week as the new head honcho. It's kinda been hell."
Castiel does something he rarely does, because he so often finds it met with vague agreement that's really a hidden refusal. "If you find you need respite from perdition, I don't think I can eat all of this pie by myself before it goes bad."
Dean doesn't refuse. He grins and says, "See you after work tomorrow, then. I'll even shower."
Castiel rinses the dishes with a smile on his face and forgets to take the quiche out of the microwave or portion out tea for the morning.
*
Dean's car is already gone when Castiel runs past his house at 6:10 a.m. He has no idea what time the garage closes or what time 'after work' really is, but he's careful to leave the library early, with enough time to stop by Michael's to collect some more beer. He tells Michael about what Dean said, without actually mentioning Dean by name (and leaving out the profanity) and Michael is happy and also curious. There's no reason not to tell him everything, really, but something jealous in him dodges the questions, as though he'd like to keep Dean to himself.
"I understand," Michael says. "You don't want to jinx it, do you? You've always been superstitious."
"I sincerely doubt there is anything to 'jinx.'"
"Well, you know where to find me if you need me." Michael doesn't look like he believes Castiel for a second.
It's only 5:30 when Castiel gets home, which could mean he's got anything from a few minutes to a few hours to wait, and he finds anything he can to keep himself occupied and not actually be waiting. Despite Dean's apparent enthusiasm, there's always 'something came up,' either as an excuse or the truth or both, and he doesn't want to set himself up for any more disappointment than he already has, so he does his best to do whatever he would do if he weren't possibly expecting someone.
Anna calls while he's boiling pasta, and her tales of mild debauchery from Vegas are a good distraction until she happens to complain that her car is making a clunking noise whenever she turns a corner. He does not say that he knows a mechanic he can ask about it, because know is an uncertain term.
"You should probably have that looked at," is what he says.
"I know," she says. "I'm taking it in on Monday. I'm just pissed this decided to happen right after I've blown a huge wad of cash and rent's due."
"Anna, if you need help--"
"I don't."
Anna hates 'help.' She didn't speak to Castiel or Gabriel for a month after they paid off her hospital bills without telling her because she'd refused to accept it when they'd offered. He's still not sure she's actually forgiven them, but they don't talk about it. She likes to pretend that month of her life never happened, and Castiel wishes too that it could just be erased, as much for her sake as his own personal guilt that it ever came to that.
She pretends this strained interlude in the conversation didn't happen either, changes the subject back to Vegas and meeting an exotic dancer who was doing it to pay for her master's degree and liked Gabriel a lot, not sparing the details about just how much and claiming she can actually hear Castiel's face turning red.
Castiel goes through research while he waits for his lasagna to bake and manages to get deep enough into it that he's surprised when the timer goes off. He's more surprised at the knock on the door, enough that he nearly drops the pan he's holding, because he's been telling himself all evening that it was never going to come.
Dean's standing in the doorway, obviously freshly showered, hair still wet and not a speck of grease on him even under his fingernails. Castiel is suddenly very conscious of his own rumpled shirt and half-undone tie and the fact that he didn't bother to take off his oven mitts to answer the door. If Dean notices he doesn't make any indication of it, just smiles and returns Castiel's greeting and comes inside. He's got a stack of records under one arm.
"I saw you had a turntable in the living room," Dean says with a shrug and a smile. "What smells so awesome?"
"My latest attempt at lasagna. You're welcome to some if you haven't eaten, but I can't make any promises for its quality."
"I was either gonna see if you wanted to get a pizza or I'd just eat pie for dinner, but that sounds way better."
"It needs some time to cool. I haven't used the record player recently but it may still work if you'd like to play one of those."
Castiel doesn't mind Led Zeppelin, and though he doesn't form the passionate attachment to it that Dean has, he's intrigued by the apocalyptic imagery. Dean stops the record to make Castiel look up the original Memphis Minnie version of 'When the Levee Breaks' and they end up talking about Robert Johnson selling his soul at a crossroads, a legend Castiel knows well because of an elective seminar class called The Devil and the Delta Blues that he did T.A. work for in graduate school.
Dean looks more impressed at that than he does at his lasagna, which Castiel probably should have specified was vegetable lasagna, but Dean digs in without complaint and looks surprised.
"Cas, man, I have to say, I actually hate vegetables but this is really good."
"Then maybe you don't hate vegetables."
"Maybe not, I dunno. I'd have a hard time hating anything with this much cheese."
Dean has a tendency to talk with his mouth full and completely ignores his knife in favor of stabbing too-large bites with his fork, and Castiel finds it worryingly endearing.
"How do you know all that stuff about the bible and everything?"
Castiel realizes that Dean's never asked what he does for a living and that he's never volunteered it. "I did my PhD in New Testament studies."
"Holy shit. I mean, uh, crap. Uh."
Castiel can't help laughing. "I believe 'holy shit' covers it very well. Due to that belief I have a certain degree of notoriety in my field."
"So, what, you're like the black sheep of the God-studying family?"
"That's perhaps an oversimplification, but true in essence. No faculty will accept me as anything other than a temporary curiosity, so I've been teaching high school for the last three years."
"Dude, you must have nerves of steel. I never finished high school but I gave a bunch of teachers a big fucking headache before I dropped out."
"The students can be trying, yes. But it's rewarding in a way I wouldn't have expected."
"You go all Dead Poets' Society on them?"
"I don't think my teaching methods resemble those of Robin Williams' character in the movie, no. But I do my best to motivate those who are receptive to it. Why did you drop out, if that's not too personal?"
"It's not. I just sucked at it. Math homework and essays weren't exactly the biggest thing I had to worry about. I was actually pretty pissed when I took the GED because I could have passed it without suffering through three years of that bullshit. The only thing I ever liked was auto shop and I didn't even really need that 'cause I'd been working on the Impala since before I had to shave." Dean shakes his head and takes a long drink of his beer. "You don't want to hear this crap. How about that pie?"
Castiel actually rather does want to hear that crap, but he can tell Dean's done talking about it for now. They eat pie and listen to Houses of the Holy with Dean interjecting trivia and pieces of its history and explaining why 'D'yer Maker' is supposed to be pronounced like Jamaica and not dire maker, and Dean laughs for a long time when Castiel admits that the only reason he knows it is from hearing it on repeat in a college dorm room while a joint got passed around.
The conversation works its way back to Dean's work and a man this afternoon who came in panicking because his Check Engine light was on, which turned out to be because he hadn't tightened his gas cap enough. "I should have charged him twenty bucks for the diagnostic, but I felt bad for the poor bastard," Dean says, laughing. "Anyhow, it's good business. He'll be back when he needs something for real 'cause now he knows I won't jerk him around."
"Do a lot of mechanics do that? Jerk people around?" Castiel asks, concerned for Anna.
"Oh man, you have no idea. There's a lot of assholes out there who just want to make a buck off people who haven't done their homework. And don't ever, ever get work done at a dealership if it's not under warranty because they will take your fucking firstborn."
He can't remember how old Anna's car is exactly. It's new enough that she's still making payments on it but he's never owned a new car in his life and has no idea what a warranty covers or how long it lasts. "What about a clunking sound when you turn corners? Is that usually covered?"
"Dude, your car's what, a '95? Nothing's covered unless there's a factory recall. Sounds like you've got a busted CV boot. You need a whole new axle."
"My car is fine. My sister happened to mention that hers was making that sound."
"If the dealership won't do it for nothing, have her bring it to me. Friends and family don't pay labor."
"But she's neither."
"We're friends. She's your family. Same difference."
He doesn't think about Dean's smile or freckles or eyelashes or the way that a few drinks have him talking louder and closer. He'll get over this crush the same way he got over the one on Michael, with time and familiarity and the reality of the impossibility of anything beyond we're friends.
*
"You could have warned me!" Anna says over the phone by way of greeting.
"Warned you about what?"
"That the mechanic you sent me to was a four-alarm hottie? I thought he'd be some old beardy grandpa. I would have at least made a damn effort instead of showing up in sweatpants and no makeup! How do you know that guy, anyway?"
"Dean? He lives in my neighborhood."
"Oh my god, I need to hang out at your house more. He was amazing. The guy at Honda said it would cost five hundred bucks and take two days, but Dean charged me seventy-five and had it done by lunch. I didn't even have to use a credit card and the receptionist gave me cake. Is he married or gay or anything, do you know?"
"I'm fairly certain he isn't married, but I don't know about the rest."
"I am so getting an oil change next week."
"I thought you'd just gotten one."
"He doesn't need to know that. How well do you know him? Any pointers?"
"He likes Led Zeppelin," Castiel says weakly. Because Dean doesn't belong to him, and Anna deserves to have something she wants if she can have it.
*
"I think my sister may be interested in dating you," Castiel says.
It's Sunday morning and Castiel had been pleasantly surprised while running to find Dean out doing the same with Bones, who's much better behaved with more exercise. They stopped when they came back around to Dean's house and Castiel was about to say goodbye, but discarded his intentions of running another mile when Dean invited him in for breakfast.
Dean's just taken a sip of his coffee and he coughs violently as if he's choking on it. "What?"
"Anna. She said that you're a 'four-alarm hottie' and intends to get an unnecessary oil change next week."
"Uh, no offense to your sister, man, but she's...kind of not my type."
"She did tell me she would make more effort with her appearance next time. She believed that a 'beardy grandpa' would be fixing her car."
"Cas, please never use air quotes again."
"She is a very intelligent woman and objectively speaking, very beautiful."
"Yeah, I saw that when I met her. Don't worry, I'll let her down gently if she actually starts hitting on me."
While he's disappointed for Anna, he's also selfishly relieved. "I didn't believe you would intentionally hurt her feelings," he says. His appetite for the bacon and eggs on his plate is much stronger than it was before this conversation began. "This is very good bacon."
The strained look Dean's been wearing is wiped away by a grin. "Told you I was awesome at breakfast," he says around a mouthful of toast.
*
"I'm going to die alone and unloved and devoured by wild Alsatians," Anna declares to the depths of her wine glass Monday night.
"You've been reading Bridget Jones again, haven't you?" Gabriel says. "Buck up, little Annie. Who needs hot mechanics? He probably smells and gets engine grease all over everything. Right, Cassie?" This last is with a pointed and slightly threatening look, or as threatening a look as it's possible for Gabriel to give.
Gabriel sent Castiel a text message reading emergency family meeting my place 7 bring ice cream and this is the result. He's certain Dean's rejection of his sister was nothing but polite and he hadn't expected it would come as such a blow, but Anna can have unpredictable reactions. And while it's true that Dean does sometimes smell very strongly after a long day working in a hot garage, he's never found it unpleasant. Something to the contrary, really. But this is not, he knows, what Gabriel wants him to say to raise Anna's spirits.
"Boys are smelly?" Anna retorts before Castiel can form an answer that will be neither untruthful nor detrimental. "That's your big comforting line?"
"Well, we are," Gabriel says.
"But I like smelly. Maybe I should go gay. I could go gay."
"Nonsense," Gabriel says. "You'll go to bed and in the morning I'll make you hangover waffles and then you'll go find a nice smelly man to be very happy with."
Gabriel is always better with words in a crisis, but when Anna spills her wine and begins to cry and has to be bodily carried to the guest room, it's Castiel who's useful, to take her upstairs and let her sob herself to unconsciousness. Gabriel puts a glass of water on the bedside table and kisses her forehead and leads Castiel downstairs.
They don't have to say what they're both thinking, what they're both worrying about, whether tonight's episode is a portent of more and worse or is isolated because she's been doing so well for so long. They drink a glass of whiskey in complete silence because they both know how the conversation will go. They don't speak until Castiel calls a cab because he's well past able to drive, and Gabriel hands him a paper towel and says, "You've got snot on your shoulder." That Gabriel will look after Anna and will call him in the morning stays unspoken.
Castiel's cab driver is mercifully not chatty beyond asking for a destination and whether Castiel minds the radio. He gets a nice tip for that.
Castiel is in no way prepared for finding Dean on his porch in the midst of writing a note. It must not be as late as it feels.
"Hey, man, good timing! I was just--" Dean's smile falls away. "Cas, you okay?"
"I've had a somewhat trying evening and I'm a bit drunk." His key refuses to fit in the lock.
"Here," Dean says, and his hand is warm and rough where it lays over Castiel's for a moment as he takes the key and opens the door. His eyes close when another warm hand's on his back guiding him inside. It would be absolutely nothing to let himself sway to one side and have Dean catch him, but he braces himself on the door jamb instead. "I can go if you want," Dean says.
"I doubt I'll be very good company and I think I may be sick very soon."
"I'm not being responsible for you passing out and pullin' a Hendrix, so I guess you're stuck with me. Go see the porcelain god, I'll be down here if you need me."
When his stomach is empty and he can taste nothing but toothpaste and mouthwash, Castiel's mind is clearer but his mood is no better. If anything, it's worse-- on top of his concern for Anna there's now annoyance and embarrassment at Dean witnessing him in this state. He means to appear downstairs just long enough to assure Dean he can safely be left alone, but Dean's sitting at the kitchen island with a glass of water and a plate of toast waiting for him and a small concerned smile that leaves him torn between shame and gratitude.
"Feel better?" Dean asks and pushes the water toward him.
"Somewhat."
"You'll thank me in the morning if you can get some of that toast down now, trust me."
"I'll say thank you now since I doubt I will see you in the morning," Castiel says once he's successfully swallowed a bite.
"Seriously, dude, no hangover running this time. Just lay around clutching your head and hating the universe and eat the greasiest breakfast you can find."
"Lie," Castiel says, a reflex.
"Huh?"
"Lie around, not lay around."
"Oh, man, you know your grammar sucks when the drunk guy's correcting you." Dean laughs and shakes his head and refills the water glass, and he knows without being told to use the pitcher in the refrigerator and not the tap.
"I'm sorry. It's habit."
"No worries. If you're safe to fly solo I can get out of your hair anytime."
He's not sure if that means Dean would like to leave or if he thinks Castiel would like him to, but maybe it's best. "I will be fine on my own. Thank you, Dean."
"Anytime."
*
Castiel must be dreaming because though there's a vicious pounding in his head and the sun is too bright, standing next to his bed is-- "Dean?" It comes out garbled and half-intelligible.
"Hey." Dean's smile is strange.
When Castiel forces himself to sit up, he sees there's a glass of water, two pills, and a plate of food on his bedside table. He scrubs a hand over his eyes.
"So I kinda stole your keys last night, 'cause you staggered up here without locking the door, and I remembered when I went looking for that bread that you had absolutely nothing for a decent post-drunk breakfast. I have to be at work like, ten minutes ago, but voila, one Winchester hangover special."
"I... ah. Thank you."
Castiel eats the eggs and sausage in a bewildered daze. The pills turn out to be Tylenol, which he doesn't even have any of in the house. And he does feel better, less in the half-dreaming haze and more human, especially when it starts to sink in that Dean did this for no reason except kindness. Locking the door was for his safety, the same as Dean insisting on staying last night was, but he could have simply returned the keys without doing anything else.
It leaves him with a warm feeling that stays even when he's stepping out of the shower and the air conditioning raises goose bumps on his skin. He knows there is no reason to infer any kind of romantic overture in Dean's gesture, but he can't help feeling good that Dean in some way cares. While he washes the plate he wonders if he could return it with something else on it, if he could learn to make pie. But he doubts any effort of his could stand up to Dean's standards. Still, something to thank him, he should find something.
Gabriel calls and tells him Anna's fine ('for now' unspoken) and asks him to meet them for lunch. He isn't hungry but he agrees. It's a long walk downtown, but it's not too hot today and cloudy and he needs to move, so he takes it, suppressing the urge to run even though he's not dressed for it and isn't physically equal to it.
Gabriel honks at him from his own car in paused traffic in front of the diner, calls out the window at him to get a table while they park. The place is busy and there are a few people waiting on the benches by the door. Castiel takes a number from the hostess and waits. He listens vaguely to the college student and her parents waiting next to him arguing about whether or not to put her bicycle in storage for the summer. A man in a suit is talking on his cell phone and telling someone on the other end to cancel his four o'clock. And a boy in the booth nearest the door exclaims, "Dean, you're such a dumbass!"
Castiel's eyes clap straight onto them and no, it's not a coincidence. Dean's back is to him and he's only visible in part profile, but it's him, with a child and a woman (who must be the boy's mother, because at the 'dumbass,' she says, "Benjamin!"). Dean and Benjamin are laughing but Castiel can't hear anything but the noise around him and the blood in his ears and barely manages to duck behind a pillar in time for the boy to get up so Dean can slide out of the booth. He doesn't turn around, heading for the bathroom at the back, but he says something to the woman and squeezes her shoulder and she smiles up at him. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that they could be friends, relatives, any number of things, and that even if they're not, even if it's what it looks like, he has no place to be upset by it. He nearly hits an arriving couple with the door when he pushes his way out, stammers out an apology and pushes his numbered slip of paper into the confused man's hand.
He only gets a moment to compose himself before Gabriel and Anna come across the street. "There's a very long wait," he tells them. "We should go somewhere else."
Anna takes it at face value, still looking pale and a bit shaken from last night's ordeal, and suggests the Italian place around the corner. Gabriel gives him a look that tells him he's going to have to explain later, but he can tell the truth without telling it: Dean was there. And whatever his own feelings are, it wouldn't have been good for Anna to see him.
This is what he tells Gabriel while Anna's in the bathroom and he's pushing salad around his plate without eating it. "He was there with a woman and a child. I thought it might not be good for Anna."
"I dunno," Gabriel says. "Maybe it would. If he's already taken at least she'd know it wasn't about her."
"I wasn't aware he was dating anyone or I would have told her." And it would have been very simple for Dean to say so instead of the vague 'not my type' that could have meant anything.
Gabriel shrugs. "Not like you know the guy that well either."
"No," Castiel says. "I suppose I don't."
Notes: This isn't on the soundtrack, but the David Koresh concept album referenced is a real thing-- David Koresh Superstar by The Indelicates. I think they're great but pretty much no one else I've tried to force them on does. XD
Next: Part 2
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue
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(Anonymous) 2013-08-20 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)I took no credit in writing it, what so ever, so don't worry about that. I didn't want you to think I was trying to steal your things :p but yeah, you should definitely keep the writing up, you've got talent :)
Thanks for the awesome read!
-Lauren