[SPN] Crossroads State 6/12
Mar. 12th, 2012 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mercyrobotPlease 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
Note: Didn't realize I was doing it when I wrote it because it's been years since I read the fics in question, but there's a thing in this part that deserves a nod to (read: is basically a wholesale but unconscious-at-the-time and loving ripoff of)![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sam_storyteller's excellent Rules of Torchwood series.
It's pouring down rain and already dark when Balthazar roars up in a red vintage Mustang convertible that Castiel is fairly certain he didn't own two weeks ago. "Won it off a horseman in a poker game," Balthazar says with a wink. He's in a surprisingly good mood, given that he's been calling repeatedly for the last three hours, very creatively cursing his GPS, Google Maps, Castiel's lack of familiarity with state highways, and the entire state of Indiana. "Think he said his name was Jim LaGuerre."
"Very funny."
"Comic bloody genius." He drops his bag by the front door and grabs Castiel by the hips, cold hands sliding up the back of his shirt and hair damp where Castiel's fingers slide into it as they kiss. "Hello," he says when they break apart. "Miss me horribly?"
Castiel knows it's a joke, and he has missed Balthazar. "I'm glad you're here."
"Good enough. Why don't we get me out of these wet clothes?"
Balthazar approaches sex the same way he approaches most things, as though there's an audience, and he doesn't seem to mind that there could literally be an audience at any moment when he's straddling Castiel's lap on the couch and pulling both their shirts off. Castiel points out that someone could see and Balthazar says, "So? An eyeful serves them right if they're watching."
It's likely that there will be no one who might see, since the only person who ever arrives unannounced is Dean, who he's already told about Balthazar's visit, but he still feels uncomfortably exposed. "I'd rather we went upstairs."
Balthazar pouts theatrically but in the end he climbs off and pulls Castiel along with him. It's not all theatrics; he laughs when he trips getting out of his wet jeans, and in between his graphic running commentary he's also sweet and teasing and watches Castiel's face intently as he comes and whispers encouragement that's only meant for him to hear. He's also happy to collapse on top of Castiel and have his hair stroked until they can't ignore the need for a shower.
Then he commandeers Castiel's bathrobe and says, "Meet me downstairs. I've got something for you."
Something is a bottle of champagne (already cold, so he must have bought it on the way) and a stapled stack of papers with a grey DRAFT in the background of the text. "Academic Programs Committee recommendations for the creation of an endowed chair in historical New Testament studies?" Castiel reads out.
"Your triumphant return to a well-appointed ivory tower." Balthazar touches his glass against Castiel's and smiles. "You'll have to stick out another year or so in that hormonal purgatory you work in while the dead white guys work out the red tape and go through the motions of a search, but it's practically got your name on it already."
"They...want me?"
"There's a slight possibility someone hypothetically mentioned a name or two, one of which was yours."
"Balthazar..."
"You can fall on your knees thanking me later. My refractory period isn't what it used to be."
It's not that he's given up searching for something he's not grossly overqualified for. He hasn't. He applied for a similar position at Emory just last year, and his lecture was the best attended of all the candidates, but in the end it went to someone who Yale hadn't paid not to teach, as all the others before and it did and as this one likely will too. "I am...grateful, of course. But they'll never take me."
"Oh, but they will. The faculty's such a bastard mess that they've had to call in a professional mediator and the dean is tearing his hair out. There's a comfortable majority that would go with you just to say fuck off to the four doddering stiffs who think it's still 1975. Raph Novak won't even turn up to a meeting if he knows I'll be there. We've given up hope he'll actually retire, but he should be dropping dead amongst a pile of Patrologia Graeca any minute now. It's a bloody civil war and you're just the man to lead the charge. Believe me, they want you. It's not an immediate imperative but don't be surprised when they start to court you in a few months."
Castiel considers it: respect and students he doesn't have to police for smoking in the bathroom. A real chance at tenure. No standardized tests to pander to and no Zachariah breathing down his neck. A position he could grow into and time for research that doesn't feel stolen. And Balthazar would be minutes away rather than hours, but he knows that shouldn't have any bearing on it. There's no telling where they'll be by the time all the papers are signed and the funds are in place.
"If it's me you're worried about, I'm brilliant at amicable breakups," Balthazar says. "Not that I'm suggesting any species of one now, but I like to be realistic and I'm sure you're weighing all your futures." And Castiel can't deny that. "Even the endgame doesn't hold me spending my twilight years making you waffles and buying prom dresses for our adopted Chinese orphan daughter, I promise you've got nothing to fear."
Castiel stopped assuming he would grow up to have children when he was fifteen and wanted nothing more than for his youth minister to notice him as anything more than a child himself, which never did happen, and he knows now that it could never have.
"I'm making a massive hash of selling you on this, aren't I?"
"No," Castiel says quickly. "It's simply perplexing."
"Well, be perplexed, then, for now. Or don't think about it till you're forced to. Either way, drink your bloody champagne because it's very good and you're hurting my soul."
Castiel drinks, and Balthazar deftly changes the subject. But he can't help thinking that if he moved to Chicago, he'd be very far away from Dean. Exchange a few emails before it died off into Christmas cards and then to nothing. He's drifted away from friends before, and if he thinks about it and lists them all he regrets the loss, but he can't help thinking that the non-routine of surprise visits and impromptu meals would be more difficult than most to work back out of his life.
*
"I must hate myself."
"It's only lunch."
"With your brother who wants to kill me. Wouldn't you rather drink wine in a boat?"
"That sounds dangerous."
"No more than murderous siblings. Bet you a tenner your sister threatens my balls if I wrong you."
"If this is an exercise in masochism for anyone, it's me. Gabriel's unlikely to kill you even if you do 'wrong' me in some way in the future, and he will entertain you with anecdotes calculated to embarrass me."
"I'm sure I'll find them adorable."
Castiel doesn't particularly relish the idea of these two worlds colliding, but giving in to Gabriel is easier than trying to put him off, and he and Balthazar can't simply exist in a vacuum whenever they're together. People can't be kept in orderly compartments labeled family, work, friend, lover, no matter how much simpler that might make it. He nearly invited Dean today too, but in the end decided it might be too much at once.
"Damn," Gabriel says when he sets eyes on Balthazar. "I thought you'd be younger."
"Funny, that. I thought you'd be taller," Balthazar fires back with a smirk before Castiel can think of a response.
"Boys, please put your penises away." Anna rolls her eyes and brings their right hands together. "Hello, pleased to meet you, Balthazar. And jolly good to meet you, Gabriel," she mimicks for each of them in turn.
"I don't sound like that!" they both say at once, and that's the ice broken.
He hasn't seen much of Anna these past few weeks, and has worried that her claims that she's busy have been untrue and part of some withdrawal, but she looks and sounds happy. Castiel sees paint under her fingernails when she picks up her menu, and he asks her what she's been up to escape Gabriel's retelling of the incident at Gabriel's wedding where Kali's elderly aunt insisted Castiel join in the Electric Slide and proceeded to shamelessly grope him.
"Well, I handed out business cards like candy in Vegas and spent the next week getting photo texts of people's parts, but then this guy who owns a club in Indianapolis actually called me and I've suddenly got this huge commission on my hands. I mean, it's a completely weird job because it's a gay club and so there's all these guys walking around half-naked all the time, and it's called Heaven so I'm painting all these like, sexy angels. And everyone wants to model. Figures the one time I've got a dozen men with washboard abs begging to take their clothes off for me they'd all be gay."
"Oh, I've been there," Balthazar says, now finished laughing at Castiel getting molested by old ladies. "Nice place, but I wish they wouldn't make it rain seventy million bastard feathers every time a show starts. Completely ruins your drink."
Castiel's never liked clubs or the culture of meaningless sex that seems to go with them, and he isn't really sure how he feels about the fact that Balthazar goes places like that, but it's not really his place to judge. No one notices his discomfort but Gabriel, who raises an eyebrow, but Castiel shrugs it off.
"And I get so knotted up standing on a ladder all day that I've started taking yoga, and my instructor is amazing. Better than therapy, I swear."
"Is there very flexible love on the horizon?" Gabriel says, oblivious to their middle-aged waitress's ill-hidden look of shock as he bends a breadstick suggestively. Balthazar's laughing into his drink.
"You bunch of pervs!" Anna exclaims and throws a napkin at Gabriel's head. "My instructor's name is Lisa and no, I did not make good on my drunken threat to go gay."
Castiel would like to sink through the floor, but he's glad they're all getting along.
*
Balthazar won't let go of his questionable scheme to spend an afternoon drinking in a boat, so Sunday finds them selecting picnic food in Trader Joe's. Castiel half-hopes the plan may be off when they're confronted by a blocked-off wine section, because it's Sunday, but Balthazar just says, "Bastard Indiana. All right, plan B. What about that monk of yours? Does he make wine? There must and shall be wine, said Withnail."
"I don't understand that reference. And Brother Michael only makes beer."
"Withnail and I? Really? I'll pirate it off the internet when we're pissed and sunburnt and can't move tonight."
"I'd much rather buy a copy legally."
Balthazar smiles and shakes his head. "Of course you would." He kisses Castiel on the cheek. "What time do they let the bars open round here? It'll cost a fortune and one of us will have to drink a bit of each one, but there's a nice loophole that lets you leave with a bottle or five. Oi, you," he says to a passing employee. "What time do the bars open?"
"If you guys need to buy wine, the wineries are allowed to sell on Sundays. The closest one's out by the lake."
"Deus ex machina!" Balthazar exclaims. "You are a saint--" he glances at the young man's name tag-- "Adam." He takes the shopping basket out of Castiel's hands. "Would you write down some directions for my gorgeous partner in crime here? Excellent. I'll meet you at the car."
Adam has to find someone else to get reliable directions that aren't based on vague landmarks like trees and where gas stations used to be, and by the time Castiel reaches the car, Balthazar's got the hood up and is talking to someone. At first he's afraid there's some problem, but then he hears a familiar voice saying, "Damn, that's nice work. Remind me never to play poker against you."
"Dean?"
And yes, it's him. "Cas! Hey! What're you doing here?"
That's when it sets in that Dean's got no idea who he's been talking to. "I-- well, this is--"
"We're going to get drunk on a boat," Balthazar says. "The oft-celebrated Dean Winchester, I presume."
"Uh, yeah. Hey. You're...Balthazar?"
"So it would seem."
The moments following their handshake are tense. Possibly not for Balthazar, who doesn't seem bothered at all and is just looking Dean over as though he might be about to assign a grade, but Dean's shifting his weight around and clearing his throat and Castiel is resisting an urge to bodily place both of them at opposite ends of the parking lot.
"Well, have fun," Dean says finally, and then quietly to Castiel once Balthazar's stepped away to shut the hood, "Just so you know, I'll be pissed if you drown." Castiel promises not to and Dean laughs. "Seriously, have fun, man. Gimme a call when you're free." When Balthazar's gone home, he means.
"I will."
"At least he didn't threaten to kill me," Balthazar says when Castiel slides into the passenger seat and watches Dean's back disappear into the store.
"He did say he would be pissed if I were to drown."
"As would I, come to that. But I think you'd have to try very hard."
It's a nice afternoon. They guide the rented rowboat out to the middle of the lake and lounge with their legs tangling in the middle and pass sandwiches and wine back and forth. Balthazar quotes dirty poetry and nearly does drown them several times when he unbalances the boat in the pursuit of kissing, and makes a rare mention of his undergraduate days when he competed on the rowing crew at Oxford, "more or less to spite my father. And no points for guessing I liked the 'cox' jokes."
Castiel has no good stories to tell in return, only a hazily remembered rebellious first year that nearly cost him his scholarship, all the years after that a blur of feverish work and study.
"Bad job Yale wouldn't give me enough money when I defected, or I'd have been there when you were," Balthazar says. They removed their shoes and socks some time ago and he's now trying to work each of his toes in between each of Castiel's with tipsy determination. "We could've had a series of scandalous T.A.-undergrad trysts during my office hours."
"But then we might not be here now."
"No, I suppose we might not."
"I like you like this," Castiel says as soon as he thinks it, his tongue loosened by alcohol.
"What, pushing fifty and off my face on shockingly terrible wine? I was much prettier in my doomed youth and could hold my drink a damn sight better."
"No. Or-- Castiel frowns-- "I do, but that's not what I meant. I meant that you're just yourself now." He's not putting on a show, doesn't seem to be playing a character.
Balthazar laughs quietly. "Who else would I be?"
"I meant--"
"I know what you meant. Fact you don't mind me turning out to be a bit of a sad old bastard probably means you're miles too good for me. You're only ever exactly yourself."
"I don't know how to be anything else."
They row back to shore slowly as the sun sets. Castiel's had much less to drink than Balthazar, but neither of them are fit to drive immediately. As soon as Balthazar's feet touch land, it's like a switch flips and he's pressing Castiel up against the car and teasing and joking and saying they should steal a speedboat or go skinny dipping or crash the nearby college kids' campfire. Castiel is still entertained, still aroused, but it's like the man he caught a glimpse of on the lake has been shoved down into a cage. He could work at that, he knows he could, but he should want to learn to accept it, understand it, not eradicate it.
*
Monday morning begins with Balthazar having an afternoon meeting to get to and a rushed kiss goodbye, and as soon as the Mustang's taillights are out of sight, Castiel finds himself desperate to run. He's disappointed when he doesn't meet Dean and Bones, but it's an odd time and Dean's probably already at work. He runs until his lungs are burning and his thighs feel like jelly after he gets out of the shower.
He should feel satisfied, content, rested. He doesn't. He accepts an invitation to participate in a panel at Leuven and books the plane tickets to go there before he can reconsider. He should send a message to Balthazar about it in case he's planning to go or would like to; he doesn't.
He goes to the library not for the comfortable order of the place and the chase of losing himself in research, but because he knows he'll be annoyed if they send back his microfilm before he's done with it and in hopes of encountering Sam as a distraction from the pervading itch that seems to lie somewhere towards the back of his soul.
Castiel is later than usual. Sam is even later than that, and looks like he's slept in a hedge. His eyes are bloodshot and he smells like a bar, and when Jess, the curly haired blonde woman who works at the coffee cart in the afternoons sees him and smiles and starts getting his usual tea ready, he stops her and orders coffee with a double shot of espresso. It's puzzle enough to make a good distraction, but it's not much of a puzzle. "I was out with Ruby," Sam says when Castiel asks him what he's been doing. Castiel can guess the rest given Ruby's state at the party. He can also guess that Sam doesn't want to talk about it, could have guessed as much even if Sam hadn't gone on to add, after a long drink of his coffee, "So Dean said he met your boyfriend."
Castiel tenses. "Yes, briefly."
"Who I've never even heard of. Way to make a guy feel liked, Cas." Sam's joking, he knows, but due to the hangover and also the fact that Sam isn't entirely joking, he delivers it flatly with a belated twitch of a smile.
"It was never pertinent information. I didn't keep it from you intentionally. You've spoken to Balthazar yourself."
"Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm not exactly all here." Sam takes another gulp of coffee as if to illustrate. "I just meant, I know you're technically Dean's friend, but you're mine too, so you can tell me stuff. Even not-pertinent stuff. Even impertinent stuff." Sam laughs at his own joke and Castiel smiles.
"Of course we're friends, Sam."
"I know Dean's not exactly awesome at stuff with feelings involved, so y'know. I'm here if there's anything like that you need to talk about."
He's not sure exactly what Sam's fishing for, but there's something. "If there's something you'd like to know, you're more than welcome to ask me."
"I just meant like, generally." Castiel has been lied to about enough homework assignments and late essays and 'dentist appointments' to know a backpedal when he sees one. Not always-- he's known some very skilled liars, but Sam is not currently earning that distinction.
It's uncomfortable, because Castiel would like to make a reciprocal offer, but he would have his own ulterior motive. Knowing what he does of Ruby, and especially given Sam's state today, he's concerned. Still, missing one part of one afternoon of studying that no one's requiring of him doesn't mean Sam is in some danger, so it's not Castiel's place to interfere. "As your friend, then, I'll pass on some advice that was given to me-- you're unlikely to accomplish anything useful today. You should go home and nurse your hangover."
Sam laughs. "Sounds like Dean advice."
"You know your brother well."
"Too well sometimes. Hey, have you eaten? 'Cause I'm starving all of a sudden, and speaking of knowing Dean, he always has so much crap to do on Mondays that he forgets to eat, and some pertinent information for you is that I can't slack without an enabler." Sam grins, and he looks more like himself, enough to make Castiel think his concern was misplaced.
"You're suggesting I slack with you?"
"You'd be the only thing keeping me from busting out my laptop and logging into Westlaw in the middle of the diner. Plus Dean won't be pissy and eating the entire fridge when he gets home. So it's win-win for me, but I'll buy you a sandwich."
It's an easy decision to go, even if Castiel doesn't reveal that he wasn't going to accomplish anything either. Sam orders a bacon cheeseburger to go at the end of the meal, for Dean, and Castiel adds on a slice of peach pie without thinking, which makes Sam laugh.
"I guess I'm not the only one who knows him too well," Sam says. "And I don't guess you're going to let me take credit for not forgetting the pie."
It's only then that it occurs to Castiel that Sam means him to come along to deliver Dean's lunch.
Dean's made the garage sound like a world of grease and chaos (with cake, according to Anna), which in a way it is-- it's attached to a salvage yard that holds a labyrinthine array of vehicles in various states of disrepair and disassembly surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence, but the reception area is more like someone's home than a business. The waiting area is well-worn couches and chairs, not an awkward too-close-for-comfort row of hard seats in sight, and there's a table to the side with a coffee pot and box of donuts. He recognizes Becky from Dean's stories by virtue of the fact that she unglues her eyes from a TV playing Buffy to greet Sam enthusiastically.
Sam seems put off by her attention, which Castiel understands when Sam introduces him and says they're bringing Dean lunch. "Oh my god, that is so sweet! I'm so glad you came by! Dean talks about you all the time and your sister is so nice--"
"Just smile and keep walking," Sam says under his breath.
The radio from the other half of the shop bleeds into the TV's dialogue because there's only a half door between the reception area and the repair bays, which Sam leads him into with Becky still talking behind them. "I don't want to be rude," Castiel says, "shouldn't we--"
"Believe me, no. Becky's really nice but she doesn't have an off button."
Castiel nearly trips over a man who unexpectedly rolls out from under a station wagon because his eyes are already on Dean, who's working under the hood of the next car over, engrossed in the engine and singing to himself. The blue work shirt with his name stitched on that Castiel has seen him in a handful of times is hanging off the sedan's rearview mirror and he's just wearing a grease-streaked white t-shirt with large wet circles of sweat under his arms, which Castiel should find distasteful, but doesn't.
"You go," Sam says. "He'll be way less bitchy at you for interrupting."
Dean's surprised and nearly hits his head on the underside of the hood, but he's not 'bitchy' when that passes; he looks happy to see Castiel even before he's told there's food. There's a smudge of black across his cheekbone but his teeth are as white as ever when he smiles.
"I hope you don't mind the interruption," Castiel says.
"Dude, are you kidding? Even if I didn't like you, I can smell those fries. Gimme like two minutes to finish this."
Castiel watches with patient curiosity as Dean maneuvers tools around in the arcane mass of car guts. It reminds him of watching his childhood piano teacher demonstrate something, of Anna drawing a picture, of Brother Michael translating pressure and temperature on a batch of beer into knowing when it's ready; of someone who knows and loves their craft. If there was any question in his mind as to why Dean became a mechanic, the answer is obvious now.
"You're very skilled," Castiel says once the hood's slammed shut and Dean's scrubbing his hands in a grime-splattered metal sink with something that smells like oranges and gasoline.
"Well, yeah," Dean says with a grin over his shoulder. "Bobby didn't ask me to run this place just 'cause I'm so pretty. That was nothing, though, just some spark plugs and a hose clamp. Dude could have done that in his driveway for twenty bucks."
"Not all of us have the necessary expertise."
"Lucky for me and my mortgage. C'mon, break room's through here." Dean leads him through a frosted glass door that reads 'employees only' in chipping black paint. Beyond it is a small kitchen with a table, another battered couch (which Sam is currently asleep on, despite the fact that he's far too tall to lie on it comfortably), and a row of lockers. There's a TV and stereo on a ledge amongst a pile of tapes and CDs, and the walls are covered in old ads and license plates and apparently whatever else anyone has seen fit to stick onto them at any point.
Dean strips off his t-shirt and wipes his face with it, then throws it into a hamper with a handwritten sign that says 'if you don't want it bleached, wash it at home' and a smaller subscript of 'no underwear!!!!' underlined three times. Castiel can't help but look at the strong lines of Dean's back as he rummages through a locker. "So, good weekend with Balthazar?" Dean asks. His tone sounds neutral, casual, and the volume of his voice makes no concession to the sleeping Sam, who doesn't stir.
"Yes, it was nice. I hope you weren't put off by the surprise introduction."
"Nah, he seems like a good guy." Dean pulls a fresh t-shirt over his head halfway through turning around, and Castiel catches a glimpse of a tattoo over his heart before it's covered by a faded AC/DC logo, but not enough to tell what it is.
The fridge that Dean pulls a can of Coke out of has a sign too, a long list of rules. Some are fairly normal, if quirky, like 'label your food or it's public property,' and 'no booze during business hours' and 'wash your own damn dishes' and 'the bathroom air freshener is there for a REASON.' It's been added to over time, in different handwritings, with notes and amendments written in, so there's also 'no pornduring business hours ever,' and 'don't talk to Chuck if he's writing' and 'Becky's name is not Babe' and 'Dean's music veto is absolute.'
"You having dirty weekends is bad for me, man," Dean says, and Castiel redirects his attention. "I let Jo get me drunk and shark me out of like a hundred bucks at ping-pong."
"It wasn't a dirty weekend," Castiel says, more sharply than he means to.
"Cas, I was kidding," Dean says. Does he look hurt? Castiel doesn't know what the brief flinch was.
"I'm sorry."
"You okay?" He does know concern when he sees it, the way Dean's eyebrows raise and his mouth turns down.
"Yes, I'm fine. I've felt...strange today." Which is when it occurs to him that he doesn't anymore, that the restless thing that's been prodding at him all day evaporated about the time he laid eyes on Dean.
"Maybe you should take a page out of Sammy's book," Dean says, barely intelligible around a mouthful of burger, and points to his brother on the couch with a fry.
"Won't we wake him, talking like this?"
"Nah. Kid sleeps like the dead anyhow, and I guess that Ruby chick's M.O. is ride hard and put away wet-- and oh my god, I didn't need the mental image I just gave myself." He shudders.
"He did seem somewhat the worse for wear when I encountered him." This, again, would be a good time to speak up about his misgivings on the subject of Ruby, but he'd be subjecting Dean to what could easily be needless worry.
"So not helping, Cas."
"I believe the accepted remedy is to show you a picture of kittens, according to my students, but I don't have access to one at the moment."
Dean laughs loudly and chokes on his drink and Sam mutters 'not the clowns' in his sleep, which makes him laugh more. That's when Dean pops open the second take-out box and sees the pie. "Oh, man, I love you."
"Sam hoped I would let him take credit for remembering the pie, but the food was his idea," Castiel says over the blush rising in his cheeks and the blood throbbing in his ears. It's just an expression, one he should want to hear from Balthazar, not Dean, who's making a borderline obscene noise around his plastic fork.
"This is awesome," Dean says, again with his mouth full. "Ellen never does peach. You had any?" When Castiel shakes his head, Dean says, "You've gotta try it," and holds out a sloppy forkful toward him.
Castiel tries to take the fork, but his hand traps Dean's and they're caught together as he eats the bite off the fork and his lips close over Dean's index finder as well as the pie. Dean's eyes widen and Castiel disentangles his fingers and sits back. "It's very good," he says after he's chewed and swallowed.
"Hell yeah it is." Dean grins and he's back to normal as he shovels more into his mouth. Some filling drops onto that same finger and he licks it off without hesitation. "So hey," Dean says, apparently oblivious to Castiel's internal reaction, which means he's at least managed to keep all of it guiltily internal, "I'm probably not getting out of here before eight, but you wanna drink some beer or something later?"
"I'd like that," Castiel says.
He drives a groggy Sam home and stays long enough to let Bones run around the back yard for a few minutes once it's clear that Sam isn't coming back downstairs, probably asleep again. Lingering for a better look at the family pictures in the living room feels like spying, but he does it anyway, and finds a small one half-hidden on the mantelpiece behind Sam's high school graduation portrait. It's not framed, just leaned up against the wall, and its corners are creased with age. It's of Dean and what could only be his father, sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck smiling with rifles and cans of beer in their hands. Dean's impossibly young, maybe seventeen, but his smile is unmistakeable. The back offers nothing to place the snapshot in context of what little Castiel knows about Dean's childhood and his father, because even in the midst of Dean's drunken confessions his father was more of an absence than a presence, just 'John & Dean '95' in unfamiliar handwriting. Castiel's careful to put it back exactly where he found it. Bones gives him an accusing 'wuff' on his way out.
Balthazar's full of plans for Leuven as soon as Castiel tells him-- where to eat, where to drink, when to make a side-trip to Amsterdam-- and it's easy to get caught up in his enthusiasm. The conference is weeks away yet, though, and he's reluctant to plan everything now around the assumption that their relationship will be intact then. Castiel doesn't have the best track record for holding someone's interest past a few dates, and Balthazar's whims are something of a wildcard. It's not mistrust, just uncertainty.
"Assuming you can still stand the sight of me by then," Balthazar says, and it's just his casual teasing sarcasm, but Castiel thinks it might have the same things he's thinking behind it. It also occurs to him, once they've hung up, that he doesn't particularly want to visit a red light district or drink magic mushroom shakes.
It's so much on his mind when Dean arrives later, straight from work and still a little sweaty, that he finds himself asking, a propos of nothing, "Have you ever taken mushrooms?"
It's badly timed and Dean nearly chokes on his beer. "No," he part-coughs, part-laughs. "Way to be random." Castiel apologizes and explains about the conference and Balthazar's plans, and Dean doesn't so much look at him as the beer label he's picking at when he shrugs. "I mean, it's awesome that you're doing the big-deal academic thing, but maybe doing it tripping isn't the best idea."
"It would be after the conference, but I'm not sure I want to at all."
"So...don't? This isn't high level brain work here, it's like third-grade 'just say no' shit."
Castiel knows all of that, of course. "I'm just not sure if we're going to prove compatible in the long run."
"I'm the last guy you wanna go to for love advice or whatever, but there's nothing wrong with having a good time even if there's not a ride into the sunset at the end of it." Dean's shredded the label and is balling up little bits of paper between his fingers. "And if he dumps you over some shroom shakes, then dude's kind of a dick." He finally looks up. "You're awesome, Cas. Just 'cause one guy's idea of a good time isn't the same as yours doesn't count against that."
"Thank you," Castiel says. Swallowing is an effort and so is holding Dean's gaze.
Dean looks away first, downs the rest of his beer and clears his throat. "So, uh, Chinese?"
Moo shu and fried wontons and sitting on the living room floor despite the fact that he doesn't care if Dean gets grease stains on the couch, Dean making him laugh with stories about an upsetting clown that put on anti-drug education programs at one of his schools (and possibly left Sam with some lasting trauma), hearing the same side of one record four times because neither of them feel like getting up to change it, that's more like Castiel's idea of a good time.
"Would I be a dick, then?" Castiel asks, when Dean's finally changed the record and gotten them more drinks and sat back down closer than he was before, close enough that their knees are touching. "If I ended things with Balthazar over a psychotropic milkshake?"
"I mean... I guess if that's all it is and you're just like, your space shakes suck, it's over, that'd be kind of a dick move, but I'm kinda getting that there's more to it."
"There is, of course. I don't know."
"I can't tell you what to do, man. Even if I thought I could I'd probably be wrong. I guess figure out if it's worth fighting for. Sorry. I kinda suck at this stuff. Sammy says I'm emotionally retarded."
Castiel thinks better of saying that Sam implied as much to him. "I don't think you are. You've said nothing I haven't thought myself but was reluctant to admit."
"Hey, I did say I'd be pissed if you drowned. Goes for rivers too."
"What?"
"De Nile." Dean grins.
"That is a terrible joke."
"You're laughing."
He is, warm with food and alcohol and Dean's body heat next to him, and there's a moment where they stop laughing and they're almost too close, where it would be nothing at all to lean that last bit forward, natural as breathing. He could count Dean's freckles from this distance, can see every little fleck of brown and grey in the green of his eyes, but he can't read anything in Dean's expression when he says, rough and quiet, "I should get going."
Castiel nods. Dean squeezes his shoulder as he gets up, maybe as some acknowledgement that something did just happen, or maybe not. Castiel belatedly remembers once Dean's out the door that he mentioned going to a convention in Indianapolis to make some contacts among classic car restorers, so he won't even know the extent of the damage for several days. Thursday seems years away.
*
If not for the events of the previous night, Castiel might be inclined to expect a call from Dean, just to say hello and perhaps tell him humorous stories of the people he's met so far on his trip. As it is, he doesn't expect one, but finds himself hoping for it anyway until long past when Dean would think it's too late to call. Still, he can't sleep, running over and over last night in his mind the same as he's been all day, and still, when the phone finally does ring, he feels a little spark of hope, then disappointment, then fear when he sees who's actually calling.
In Castiel's experience, there's very little good to be found on the other end of a two a.m. phone call. At best, it's Gabriel in the midst of a party unwantedly sharing his good time. At worst, it's a father with a stroke or a sister suffering a psychotic break. His blood never doesn't run cold when no one in possession of all their faculties would be calling if there weren't something wrong.
"Cas?"
"Sam? What's wrong? Are you all right? Is Dean--"
"Dean's fine. I assume. But I need help. I'm-- your brother's a lawyer, right?"
Oh, dear god. No one's dead, at least, apparently, but that's not much comfort. "What happened? No, wait. Don't tell me. Don't say anything to anyone." He remembers this much from overhearing Gabriel talking to clients. "Have you said anything?"
"I know better than that."
"But not better than to do whatever it is you-- never mind." Castiel tries to remember how to breathe. "Just don't say anything until we get there."
"Thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't know who else to call."
Gabriel is not happy about being gotten out of bed, and even less happy to have to brush his teeth and put on a suit, and he complains through all of it and the whole way to the police station about having his dream about licking whipped cream off Beyoncé interrupted, but he never refuses and gets ready with practiced efficiency, griping around his electric razor en route. He doesn't even ask for details until Castiel's parked the car.
"I told him not to tell me anything."
"Nice job. What do you know?"
"I suspect whatever's happened is due to the influence of his girlfriend."
"Femme fatale, I can work with that."
"Her name is Ruby Watts. She was a student of mine and was always troubled."
"Did you go giving her the benefit of the doubt instead of warning him off?"
"I didn't think it was any of my business. I hoped he might be a good influence on her."
"You have the people skills of an eggplant, Cassie. What about Winchester Jr? Clean record?"
"As far as I know. He's a pre-law major at Stanford."
"He'll be a crappy lawyer. I was representing myself out of drunk tanks by the end of my first semester."
The thing about Gabriel is that while he might be prone to overindulgence, pranks, and saying ridiculous things, he's very good at his job and his quirky charisma goes a long way toward that. He marches into the precinct and works the room like a red carpet, and as soon as he's led to the detective in charge of holding Sam, he's all hard-edged business. Castiel knows the fact that there's a detective involved isn't a particularly good sign, but Gabriel doesn't flinch.
It's an interminable wait once Gabriel disappears into the interview room. Castiel can't make the vending machine give him tea even though there's a button for it, and there are a couple of prostitutes arguing loudly as they wait to be booked. The young receptionist takes pity on his discomfort after a while and separates the shouting women with a threat of further charges, then brings him a cup of tea. It's just a bag of Lipton, but his thanks is sincere. She keeps smiling at him over her computer screen, and he tries to respond politely without appearing flirtatious. He doesn't feel much like smiling.
Gabriel is smiling when he comes out, though Sam behind him isn't. "Charges dropped," Gabriel says airily once they're outside. "Turns out they liked Clyde and his Bonnie for a string of robberies, so once they'd spent seven thousand years clearing alibis with credit card transactions and Ally McBeal here agreed to buy a new door for the nice old couple they busted in on, your boy's home free and I've got a new clerical buttmonkey for the rest of the summer."
"Hey!" Sam says.
"I woke up a county prosecutor for you, kiddo, who also happens to be my ex-wife. Your job title's whatever I say it is."
"What about Ruby?" Castiel asks. Sam scowls.
"Outlook not as rosy," Gabriel says. "I did what I could, but what I could wasn't much given she's not exactly squeaky clean on the priors. Pretty impressive for only being eighteen six months, actually, but thank the baby Jesus for sealed juvvie records. I got it down to simple possession for the pretty blue meth in her pocket and Kali's going to recommend court-monitored drug counseling and probation." Castiel wishes he were more surprised. "Is this little pow-wow over now? I'd really like to get back to the creamy-dreamy Miss Knowles, if it's all the same to you."
The drive to Gabriel's house is silent except for the thanks at the end, and the drive to Castiel's is equally so. Sam doesn't have to be asked not to walk home, just follows Castiel inside and sits mute at the kitchen island while Castiel brews tea.
"What happened, Sam?"
"I was stupid."
"Unsurprisingly, I gathered that on my own. What exactly? You owe me that much."
"I know," Sam sighs, looking down at his hands. "We were kind of drunk. Ruby maybe more than me. And we were walking around and she said this one house was abandoned and supposed to be haunted and we should see if we can see a ghost. It looked all crappy with weeds and stuff in the yard-- I swear I never would have let us break in if I thought anyone lived there, but Ruby had the address wrong or something and suddenly this old lady's screaming bloody murder and her husband's coming after us with a golf club, and Ruby's just laughing and trying to run but I guess they had an alarm because that's when the cops showed up. You know the rest."
It's some consolation at least to know it's just been a reckless whim gone horribly wrong. "And the drugs?"
"I didn't even know she had that stuff. She said she had a surprise for later, but I thought it was, uh. Y'know. Sexual." Sam turns red and Castiel does too.
"I see. I hope you realize how lucky you've been."
"I do. Believe me, I do. I owe you and Gabriel big and I know it."
"Tonight could have cost you your whole future."
"I know, Cas, okay? I fucked up. Just... can you not tell Dean?"
Sam has no way of knowing, of course, that Dean might not even want to speak to Castiel when he returns, but even if he did, it's no less galling a request. "I'm not going to lie to him."
"No, no, I didn't mean-- I mean let me tell him. He's going to hit the ceiling but he should hear it from me."
Castiel can concede that much; he wouldn't want to be the one bearing this news in any case. "You'll need to do it promptly. I'm ill-equipped for deception even by omission." Especially with Dean, especially now that he almost certainly knows how Castiel feels about him.
"I will. I promise. I'm sorry in advance for whatever mood he's in when he storms out of the house and comes over here."
"He may not."
Sam misunderstands that Castiel isn't talking about Dean's reaction to the news so much as where that reaction will send him. "Are you kidding? Talk about fucking up my whole future, I wouldn't even have a future to fuck up if it weren't for him, and believe me, he knows it. He's going to rip me a new one and then rip the new one a new one. We never talk about it, but he's been sacrificing stuff for me his whole life. Even when Dad was alive, it was Dean who took care of me, y'know?"
Castiel did, to a certain extent, just on inference, but Dean never laid it out plainly like this. Of course he wouldn't have. It settles like a lead weight. "Then why, knowing what it means to him, and knowing what it means to you, would you do something so--"
"Stupid?" Sam makes a face. "It was stupid. But we were never normal kids, not really. And then I'm at college and people are smoking weed and going to Cabo on spring break and taking laundry home to their mothers and I just wanted to be normal for a minute, I guess. College kids are supposed to do stupid crap and come back in the fall with something to say that isn't 'I busted my ass on next year's homework all summer' and Ruby was... she thought I was cool, I guess, interesting. I don't know. Did I mention the part with the stupid?"
It's faulty logic, but Castiel understands it. He made the same mistakes and they never made him more normal or more interesting or feel like he was living any more life than before. "I spent my first year of college stoned off my ass and the next three making up for it."
"Seriously? You?"
"I'm fairly certain it did the opposite of making me interesting, or normal." Dean would call this very after-school special. Castiel can practically hear him saying it. "If you actually find recreational drug use and reckless behavior fulfilling and entertaining, there's nothing wrong in it if no one gets hurt, but if not and you're just pleasing someone else, it's a waste."
Around dawn, long after Sam's gone home and nearly as long spent failing to sleep, the thought catches Castiel that listening to his own advice might be worth something.
Next: Part 7
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
Note: Didn't realize I was doing it when I wrote it because it's been years since I read the fics in question, but there's a thing in this part that deserves a nod to (read: is basically a wholesale but unconscious-at-the-time and loving ripoff of)
sam_storyteller's excellent Rules of Torchwood series.It's pouring down rain and already dark when Balthazar roars up in a red vintage Mustang convertible that Castiel is fairly certain he didn't own two weeks ago. "Won it off a horseman in a poker game," Balthazar says with a wink. He's in a surprisingly good mood, given that he's been calling repeatedly for the last three hours, very creatively cursing his GPS, Google Maps, Castiel's lack of familiarity with state highways, and the entire state of Indiana. "Think he said his name was Jim LaGuerre."
"Very funny."
"Comic bloody genius." He drops his bag by the front door and grabs Castiel by the hips, cold hands sliding up the back of his shirt and hair damp where Castiel's fingers slide into it as they kiss. "Hello," he says when they break apart. "Miss me horribly?"
Castiel knows it's a joke, and he has missed Balthazar. "I'm glad you're here."
"Good enough. Why don't we get me out of these wet clothes?"
Balthazar approaches sex the same way he approaches most things, as though there's an audience, and he doesn't seem to mind that there could literally be an audience at any moment when he's straddling Castiel's lap on the couch and pulling both their shirts off. Castiel points out that someone could see and Balthazar says, "So? An eyeful serves them right if they're watching."
It's likely that there will be no one who might see, since the only person who ever arrives unannounced is Dean, who he's already told about Balthazar's visit, but he still feels uncomfortably exposed. "I'd rather we went upstairs."
Balthazar pouts theatrically but in the end he climbs off and pulls Castiel along with him. It's not all theatrics; he laughs when he trips getting out of his wet jeans, and in between his graphic running commentary he's also sweet and teasing and watches Castiel's face intently as he comes and whispers encouragement that's only meant for him to hear. He's also happy to collapse on top of Castiel and have his hair stroked until they can't ignore the need for a shower.
Then he commandeers Castiel's bathrobe and says, "Meet me downstairs. I've got something for you."
Something is a bottle of champagne (already cold, so he must have bought it on the way) and a stapled stack of papers with a grey DRAFT in the background of the text. "Academic Programs Committee recommendations for the creation of an endowed chair in historical New Testament studies?" Castiel reads out.
"Your triumphant return to a well-appointed ivory tower." Balthazar touches his glass against Castiel's and smiles. "You'll have to stick out another year or so in that hormonal purgatory you work in while the dead white guys work out the red tape and go through the motions of a search, but it's practically got your name on it already."
"They...want me?"
"There's a slight possibility someone hypothetically mentioned a name or two, one of which was yours."
"Balthazar..."
"You can fall on your knees thanking me later. My refractory period isn't what it used to be."
It's not that he's given up searching for something he's not grossly overqualified for. He hasn't. He applied for a similar position at Emory just last year, and his lecture was the best attended of all the candidates, but in the end it went to someone who Yale hadn't paid not to teach, as all the others before and it did and as this one likely will too. "I am...grateful, of course. But they'll never take me."
"Oh, but they will. The faculty's such a bastard mess that they've had to call in a professional mediator and the dean is tearing his hair out. There's a comfortable majority that would go with you just to say fuck off to the four doddering stiffs who think it's still 1975. Raph Novak won't even turn up to a meeting if he knows I'll be there. We've given up hope he'll actually retire, but he should be dropping dead amongst a pile of Patrologia Graeca any minute now. It's a bloody civil war and you're just the man to lead the charge. Believe me, they want you. It's not an immediate imperative but don't be surprised when they start to court you in a few months."
Castiel considers it: respect and students he doesn't have to police for smoking in the bathroom. A real chance at tenure. No standardized tests to pander to and no Zachariah breathing down his neck. A position he could grow into and time for research that doesn't feel stolen. And Balthazar would be minutes away rather than hours, but he knows that shouldn't have any bearing on it. There's no telling where they'll be by the time all the papers are signed and the funds are in place.
"If it's me you're worried about, I'm brilliant at amicable breakups," Balthazar says. "Not that I'm suggesting any species of one now, but I like to be realistic and I'm sure you're weighing all your futures." And Castiel can't deny that. "Even the endgame doesn't hold me spending my twilight years making you waffles and buying prom dresses for our adopted Chinese orphan daughter, I promise you've got nothing to fear."
Castiel stopped assuming he would grow up to have children when he was fifteen and wanted nothing more than for his youth minister to notice him as anything more than a child himself, which never did happen, and he knows now that it could never have.
"I'm making a massive hash of selling you on this, aren't I?"
"No," Castiel says quickly. "It's simply perplexing."
"Well, be perplexed, then, for now. Or don't think about it till you're forced to. Either way, drink your bloody champagne because it's very good and you're hurting my soul."
Castiel drinks, and Balthazar deftly changes the subject. But he can't help thinking that if he moved to Chicago, he'd be very far away from Dean. Exchange a few emails before it died off into Christmas cards and then to nothing. He's drifted away from friends before, and if he thinks about it and lists them all he regrets the loss, but he can't help thinking that the non-routine of surprise visits and impromptu meals would be more difficult than most to work back out of his life.
*
"I must hate myself."
"It's only lunch."
"With your brother who wants to kill me. Wouldn't you rather drink wine in a boat?"
"That sounds dangerous."
"No more than murderous siblings. Bet you a tenner your sister threatens my balls if I wrong you."
"If this is an exercise in masochism for anyone, it's me. Gabriel's unlikely to kill you even if you do 'wrong' me in some way in the future, and he will entertain you with anecdotes calculated to embarrass me."
"I'm sure I'll find them adorable."
Castiel doesn't particularly relish the idea of these two worlds colliding, but giving in to Gabriel is easier than trying to put him off, and he and Balthazar can't simply exist in a vacuum whenever they're together. People can't be kept in orderly compartments labeled family, work, friend, lover, no matter how much simpler that might make it. He nearly invited Dean today too, but in the end decided it might be too much at once.
"Damn," Gabriel says when he sets eyes on Balthazar. "I thought you'd be younger."
"Funny, that. I thought you'd be taller," Balthazar fires back with a smirk before Castiel can think of a response.
"Boys, please put your penises away." Anna rolls her eyes and brings their right hands together. "Hello, pleased to meet you, Balthazar. And jolly good to meet you, Gabriel," she mimicks for each of them in turn.
"I don't sound like that!" they both say at once, and that's the ice broken.
He hasn't seen much of Anna these past few weeks, and has worried that her claims that she's busy have been untrue and part of some withdrawal, but she looks and sounds happy. Castiel sees paint under her fingernails when she picks up her menu, and he asks her what she's been up to escape Gabriel's retelling of the incident at Gabriel's wedding where Kali's elderly aunt insisted Castiel join in the Electric Slide and proceeded to shamelessly grope him.
"Well, I handed out business cards like candy in Vegas and spent the next week getting photo texts of people's parts, but then this guy who owns a club in Indianapolis actually called me and I've suddenly got this huge commission on my hands. I mean, it's a completely weird job because it's a gay club and so there's all these guys walking around half-naked all the time, and it's called Heaven so I'm painting all these like, sexy angels. And everyone wants to model. Figures the one time I've got a dozen men with washboard abs begging to take their clothes off for me they'd all be gay."
"Oh, I've been there," Balthazar says, now finished laughing at Castiel getting molested by old ladies. "Nice place, but I wish they wouldn't make it rain seventy million bastard feathers every time a show starts. Completely ruins your drink."
Castiel's never liked clubs or the culture of meaningless sex that seems to go with them, and he isn't really sure how he feels about the fact that Balthazar goes places like that, but it's not really his place to judge. No one notices his discomfort but Gabriel, who raises an eyebrow, but Castiel shrugs it off.
"And I get so knotted up standing on a ladder all day that I've started taking yoga, and my instructor is amazing. Better than therapy, I swear."
"Is there very flexible love on the horizon?" Gabriel says, oblivious to their middle-aged waitress's ill-hidden look of shock as he bends a breadstick suggestively. Balthazar's laughing into his drink.
"You bunch of pervs!" Anna exclaims and throws a napkin at Gabriel's head. "My instructor's name is Lisa and no, I did not make good on my drunken threat to go gay."
Castiel would like to sink through the floor, but he's glad they're all getting along.
*
Balthazar won't let go of his questionable scheme to spend an afternoon drinking in a boat, so Sunday finds them selecting picnic food in Trader Joe's. Castiel half-hopes the plan may be off when they're confronted by a blocked-off wine section, because it's Sunday, but Balthazar just says, "Bastard Indiana. All right, plan B. What about that monk of yours? Does he make wine? There must and shall be wine, said Withnail."
"I don't understand that reference. And Brother Michael only makes beer."
"Withnail and I? Really? I'll pirate it off the internet when we're pissed and sunburnt and can't move tonight."
"I'd much rather buy a copy legally."
Balthazar smiles and shakes his head. "Of course you would." He kisses Castiel on the cheek. "What time do they let the bars open round here? It'll cost a fortune and one of us will have to drink a bit of each one, but there's a nice loophole that lets you leave with a bottle or five. Oi, you," he says to a passing employee. "What time do the bars open?"
"If you guys need to buy wine, the wineries are allowed to sell on Sundays. The closest one's out by the lake."
"Deus ex machina!" Balthazar exclaims. "You are a saint--" he glances at the young man's name tag-- "Adam." He takes the shopping basket out of Castiel's hands. "Would you write down some directions for my gorgeous partner in crime here? Excellent. I'll meet you at the car."
Adam has to find someone else to get reliable directions that aren't based on vague landmarks like trees and where gas stations used to be, and by the time Castiel reaches the car, Balthazar's got the hood up and is talking to someone. At first he's afraid there's some problem, but then he hears a familiar voice saying, "Damn, that's nice work. Remind me never to play poker against you."
"Dean?"
And yes, it's him. "Cas! Hey! What're you doing here?"
That's when it sets in that Dean's got no idea who he's been talking to. "I-- well, this is--"
"We're going to get drunk on a boat," Balthazar says. "The oft-celebrated Dean Winchester, I presume."
"Uh, yeah. Hey. You're...Balthazar?"
"So it would seem."
The moments following their handshake are tense. Possibly not for Balthazar, who doesn't seem bothered at all and is just looking Dean over as though he might be about to assign a grade, but Dean's shifting his weight around and clearing his throat and Castiel is resisting an urge to bodily place both of them at opposite ends of the parking lot.
"Well, have fun," Dean says finally, and then quietly to Castiel once Balthazar's stepped away to shut the hood, "Just so you know, I'll be pissed if you drown." Castiel promises not to and Dean laughs. "Seriously, have fun, man. Gimme a call when you're free." When Balthazar's gone home, he means.
"I will."
"At least he didn't threaten to kill me," Balthazar says when Castiel slides into the passenger seat and watches Dean's back disappear into the store.
"He did say he would be pissed if I were to drown."
"As would I, come to that. But I think you'd have to try very hard."
It's a nice afternoon. They guide the rented rowboat out to the middle of the lake and lounge with their legs tangling in the middle and pass sandwiches and wine back and forth. Balthazar quotes dirty poetry and nearly does drown them several times when he unbalances the boat in the pursuit of kissing, and makes a rare mention of his undergraduate days when he competed on the rowing crew at Oxford, "more or less to spite my father. And no points for guessing I liked the 'cox' jokes."
Castiel has no good stories to tell in return, only a hazily remembered rebellious first year that nearly cost him his scholarship, all the years after that a blur of feverish work and study.
"Bad job Yale wouldn't give me enough money when I defected, or I'd have been there when you were," Balthazar says. They removed their shoes and socks some time ago and he's now trying to work each of his toes in between each of Castiel's with tipsy determination. "We could've had a series of scandalous T.A.-undergrad trysts during my office hours."
"But then we might not be here now."
"No, I suppose we might not."
"I like you like this," Castiel says as soon as he thinks it, his tongue loosened by alcohol.
"What, pushing fifty and off my face on shockingly terrible wine? I was much prettier in my doomed youth and could hold my drink a damn sight better."
"No. Or-- Castiel frowns-- "I do, but that's not what I meant. I meant that you're just yourself now." He's not putting on a show, doesn't seem to be playing a character.
Balthazar laughs quietly. "Who else would I be?"
"I meant--"
"I know what you meant. Fact you don't mind me turning out to be a bit of a sad old bastard probably means you're miles too good for me. You're only ever exactly yourself."
"I don't know how to be anything else."
They row back to shore slowly as the sun sets. Castiel's had much less to drink than Balthazar, but neither of them are fit to drive immediately. As soon as Balthazar's feet touch land, it's like a switch flips and he's pressing Castiel up against the car and teasing and joking and saying they should steal a speedboat or go skinny dipping or crash the nearby college kids' campfire. Castiel is still entertained, still aroused, but it's like the man he caught a glimpse of on the lake has been shoved down into a cage. He could work at that, he knows he could, but he should want to learn to accept it, understand it, not eradicate it.
*
Monday morning begins with Balthazar having an afternoon meeting to get to and a rushed kiss goodbye, and as soon as the Mustang's taillights are out of sight, Castiel finds himself desperate to run. He's disappointed when he doesn't meet Dean and Bones, but it's an odd time and Dean's probably already at work. He runs until his lungs are burning and his thighs feel like jelly after he gets out of the shower.
He should feel satisfied, content, rested. He doesn't. He accepts an invitation to participate in a panel at Leuven and books the plane tickets to go there before he can reconsider. He should send a message to Balthazar about it in case he's planning to go or would like to; he doesn't.
He goes to the library not for the comfortable order of the place and the chase of losing himself in research, but because he knows he'll be annoyed if they send back his microfilm before he's done with it and in hopes of encountering Sam as a distraction from the pervading itch that seems to lie somewhere towards the back of his soul.
Castiel is later than usual. Sam is even later than that, and looks like he's slept in a hedge. His eyes are bloodshot and he smells like a bar, and when Jess, the curly haired blonde woman who works at the coffee cart in the afternoons sees him and smiles and starts getting his usual tea ready, he stops her and orders coffee with a double shot of espresso. It's puzzle enough to make a good distraction, but it's not much of a puzzle. "I was out with Ruby," Sam says when Castiel asks him what he's been doing. Castiel can guess the rest given Ruby's state at the party. He can also guess that Sam doesn't want to talk about it, could have guessed as much even if Sam hadn't gone on to add, after a long drink of his coffee, "So Dean said he met your boyfriend."
Castiel tenses. "Yes, briefly."
"Who I've never even heard of. Way to make a guy feel liked, Cas." Sam's joking, he knows, but due to the hangover and also the fact that Sam isn't entirely joking, he delivers it flatly with a belated twitch of a smile.
"It was never pertinent information. I didn't keep it from you intentionally. You've spoken to Balthazar yourself."
"Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm not exactly all here." Sam takes another gulp of coffee as if to illustrate. "I just meant, I know you're technically Dean's friend, but you're mine too, so you can tell me stuff. Even not-pertinent stuff. Even impertinent stuff." Sam laughs at his own joke and Castiel smiles.
"Of course we're friends, Sam."
"I know Dean's not exactly awesome at stuff with feelings involved, so y'know. I'm here if there's anything like that you need to talk about."
He's not sure exactly what Sam's fishing for, but there's something. "If there's something you'd like to know, you're more than welcome to ask me."
"I just meant like, generally." Castiel has been lied to about enough homework assignments and late essays and 'dentist appointments' to know a backpedal when he sees one. Not always-- he's known some very skilled liars, but Sam is not currently earning that distinction.
It's uncomfortable, because Castiel would like to make a reciprocal offer, but he would have his own ulterior motive. Knowing what he does of Ruby, and especially given Sam's state today, he's concerned. Still, missing one part of one afternoon of studying that no one's requiring of him doesn't mean Sam is in some danger, so it's not Castiel's place to interfere. "As your friend, then, I'll pass on some advice that was given to me-- you're unlikely to accomplish anything useful today. You should go home and nurse your hangover."
Sam laughs. "Sounds like Dean advice."
"You know your brother well."
"Too well sometimes. Hey, have you eaten? 'Cause I'm starving all of a sudden, and speaking of knowing Dean, he always has so much crap to do on Mondays that he forgets to eat, and some pertinent information for you is that I can't slack without an enabler." Sam grins, and he looks more like himself, enough to make Castiel think his concern was misplaced.
"You're suggesting I slack with you?"
"You'd be the only thing keeping me from busting out my laptop and logging into Westlaw in the middle of the diner. Plus Dean won't be pissy and eating the entire fridge when he gets home. So it's win-win for me, but I'll buy you a sandwich."
It's an easy decision to go, even if Castiel doesn't reveal that he wasn't going to accomplish anything either. Sam orders a bacon cheeseburger to go at the end of the meal, for Dean, and Castiel adds on a slice of peach pie without thinking, which makes Sam laugh.
"I guess I'm not the only one who knows him too well," Sam says. "And I don't guess you're going to let me take credit for not forgetting the pie."
It's only then that it occurs to Castiel that Sam means him to come along to deliver Dean's lunch.
Dean's made the garage sound like a world of grease and chaos (with cake, according to Anna), which in a way it is-- it's attached to a salvage yard that holds a labyrinthine array of vehicles in various states of disrepair and disassembly surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence, but the reception area is more like someone's home than a business. The waiting area is well-worn couches and chairs, not an awkward too-close-for-comfort row of hard seats in sight, and there's a table to the side with a coffee pot and box of donuts. He recognizes Becky from Dean's stories by virtue of the fact that she unglues her eyes from a TV playing Buffy to greet Sam enthusiastically.
Sam seems put off by her attention, which Castiel understands when Sam introduces him and says they're bringing Dean lunch. "Oh my god, that is so sweet! I'm so glad you came by! Dean talks about you all the time and your sister is so nice--"
"Just smile and keep walking," Sam says under his breath.
The radio from the other half of the shop bleeds into the TV's dialogue because there's only a half door between the reception area and the repair bays, which Sam leads him into with Becky still talking behind them. "I don't want to be rude," Castiel says, "shouldn't we--"
"Believe me, no. Becky's really nice but she doesn't have an off button."
Castiel nearly trips over a man who unexpectedly rolls out from under a station wagon because his eyes are already on Dean, who's working under the hood of the next car over, engrossed in the engine and singing to himself. The blue work shirt with his name stitched on that Castiel has seen him in a handful of times is hanging off the sedan's rearview mirror and he's just wearing a grease-streaked white t-shirt with large wet circles of sweat under his arms, which Castiel should find distasteful, but doesn't.
"You go," Sam says. "He'll be way less bitchy at you for interrupting."
Dean's surprised and nearly hits his head on the underside of the hood, but he's not 'bitchy' when that passes; he looks happy to see Castiel even before he's told there's food. There's a smudge of black across his cheekbone but his teeth are as white as ever when he smiles.
"I hope you don't mind the interruption," Castiel says.
"Dude, are you kidding? Even if I didn't like you, I can smell those fries. Gimme like two minutes to finish this."
Castiel watches with patient curiosity as Dean maneuvers tools around in the arcane mass of car guts. It reminds him of watching his childhood piano teacher demonstrate something, of Anna drawing a picture, of Brother Michael translating pressure and temperature on a batch of beer into knowing when it's ready; of someone who knows and loves their craft. If there was any question in his mind as to why Dean became a mechanic, the answer is obvious now.
"You're very skilled," Castiel says once the hood's slammed shut and Dean's scrubbing his hands in a grime-splattered metal sink with something that smells like oranges and gasoline.
"Well, yeah," Dean says with a grin over his shoulder. "Bobby didn't ask me to run this place just 'cause I'm so pretty. That was nothing, though, just some spark plugs and a hose clamp. Dude could have done that in his driveway for twenty bucks."
"Not all of us have the necessary expertise."
"Lucky for me and my mortgage. C'mon, break room's through here." Dean leads him through a frosted glass door that reads 'employees only' in chipping black paint. Beyond it is a small kitchen with a table, another battered couch (which Sam is currently asleep on, despite the fact that he's far too tall to lie on it comfortably), and a row of lockers. There's a TV and stereo on a ledge amongst a pile of tapes and CDs, and the walls are covered in old ads and license plates and apparently whatever else anyone has seen fit to stick onto them at any point.
Dean strips off his t-shirt and wipes his face with it, then throws it into a hamper with a handwritten sign that says 'if you don't want it bleached, wash it at home' and a smaller subscript of 'no underwear!!!!' underlined three times. Castiel can't help but look at the strong lines of Dean's back as he rummages through a locker. "So, good weekend with Balthazar?" Dean asks. His tone sounds neutral, casual, and the volume of his voice makes no concession to the sleeping Sam, who doesn't stir.
"Yes, it was nice. I hope you weren't put off by the surprise introduction."
"Nah, he seems like a good guy." Dean pulls a fresh t-shirt over his head halfway through turning around, and Castiel catches a glimpse of a tattoo over his heart before it's covered by a faded AC/DC logo, but not enough to tell what it is.
The fridge that Dean pulls a can of Coke out of has a sign too, a long list of rules. Some are fairly normal, if quirky, like 'label your food or it's public property,' and 'no booze during business hours' and 'wash your own damn dishes' and 'the bathroom air freshener is there for a REASON.' It's been added to over time, in different handwritings, with notes and amendments written in, so there's also 'no porn
"You having dirty weekends is bad for me, man," Dean says, and Castiel redirects his attention. "I let Jo get me drunk and shark me out of like a hundred bucks at ping-pong."
"It wasn't a dirty weekend," Castiel says, more sharply than he means to.
"Cas, I was kidding," Dean says. Does he look hurt? Castiel doesn't know what the brief flinch was.
"I'm sorry."
"You okay?" He does know concern when he sees it, the way Dean's eyebrows raise and his mouth turns down.
"Yes, I'm fine. I've felt...strange today." Which is when it occurs to him that he doesn't anymore, that the restless thing that's been prodding at him all day evaporated about the time he laid eyes on Dean.
"Maybe you should take a page out of Sammy's book," Dean says, barely intelligible around a mouthful of burger, and points to his brother on the couch with a fry.
"Won't we wake him, talking like this?"
"Nah. Kid sleeps like the dead anyhow, and I guess that Ruby chick's M.O. is ride hard and put away wet-- and oh my god, I didn't need the mental image I just gave myself." He shudders.
"He did seem somewhat the worse for wear when I encountered him." This, again, would be a good time to speak up about his misgivings on the subject of Ruby, but he'd be subjecting Dean to what could easily be needless worry.
"So not helping, Cas."
"I believe the accepted remedy is to show you a picture of kittens, according to my students, but I don't have access to one at the moment."
Dean laughs loudly and chokes on his drink and Sam mutters 'not the clowns' in his sleep, which makes him laugh more. That's when Dean pops open the second take-out box and sees the pie. "Oh, man, I love you."
"Sam hoped I would let him take credit for remembering the pie, but the food was his idea," Castiel says over the blush rising in his cheeks and the blood throbbing in his ears. It's just an expression, one he should want to hear from Balthazar, not Dean, who's making a borderline obscene noise around his plastic fork.
"This is awesome," Dean says, again with his mouth full. "Ellen never does peach. You had any?" When Castiel shakes his head, Dean says, "You've gotta try it," and holds out a sloppy forkful toward him.
Castiel tries to take the fork, but his hand traps Dean's and they're caught together as he eats the bite off the fork and his lips close over Dean's index finder as well as the pie. Dean's eyes widen and Castiel disentangles his fingers and sits back. "It's very good," he says after he's chewed and swallowed.
"Hell yeah it is." Dean grins and he's back to normal as he shovels more into his mouth. Some filling drops onto that same finger and he licks it off without hesitation. "So hey," Dean says, apparently oblivious to Castiel's internal reaction, which means he's at least managed to keep all of it guiltily internal, "I'm probably not getting out of here before eight, but you wanna drink some beer or something later?"
"I'd like that," Castiel says.
He drives a groggy Sam home and stays long enough to let Bones run around the back yard for a few minutes once it's clear that Sam isn't coming back downstairs, probably asleep again. Lingering for a better look at the family pictures in the living room feels like spying, but he does it anyway, and finds a small one half-hidden on the mantelpiece behind Sam's high school graduation portrait. It's not framed, just leaned up against the wall, and its corners are creased with age. It's of Dean and what could only be his father, sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck smiling with rifles and cans of beer in their hands. Dean's impossibly young, maybe seventeen, but his smile is unmistakeable. The back offers nothing to place the snapshot in context of what little Castiel knows about Dean's childhood and his father, because even in the midst of Dean's drunken confessions his father was more of an absence than a presence, just 'John & Dean '95' in unfamiliar handwriting. Castiel's careful to put it back exactly where he found it. Bones gives him an accusing 'wuff' on his way out.
Balthazar's full of plans for Leuven as soon as Castiel tells him-- where to eat, where to drink, when to make a side-trip to Amsterdam-- and it's easy to get caught up in his enthusiasm. The conference is weeks away yet, though, and he's reluctant to plan everything now around the assumption that their relationship will be intact then. Castiel doesn't have the best track record for holding someone's interest past a few dates, and Balthazar's whims are something of a wildcard. It's not mistrust, just uncertainty.
"Assuming you can still stand the sight of me by then," Balthazar says, and it's just his casual teasing sarcasm, but Castiel thinks it might have the same things he's thinking behind it. It also occurs to him, once they've hung up, that he doesn't particularly want to visit a red light district or drink magic mushroom shakes.
It's so much on his mind when Dean arrives later, straight from work and still a little sweaty, that he finds himself asking, a propos of nothing, "Have you ever taken mushrooms?"
It's badly timed and Dean nearly chokes on his beer. "No," he part-coughs, part-laughs. "Way to be random." Castiel apologizes and explains about the conference and Balthazar's plans, and Dean doesn't so much look at him as the beer label he's picking at when he shrugs. "I mean, it's awesome that you're doing the big-deal academic thing, but maybe doing it tripping isn't the best idea."
"It would be after the conference, but I'm not sure I want to at all."
"So...don't? This isn't high level brain work here, it's like third-grade 'just say no' shit."
Castiel knows all of that, of course. "I'm just not sure if we're going to prove compatible in the long run."
"I'm the last guy you wanna go to for love advice or whatever, but there's nothing wrong with having a good time even if there's not a ride into the sunset at the end of it." Dean's shredded the label and is balling up little bits of paper between his fingers. "And if he dumps you over some shroom shakes, then dude's kind of a dick." He finally looks up. "You're awesome, Cas. Just 'cause one guy's idea of a good time isn't the same as yours doesn't count against that."
"Thank you," Castiel says. Swallowing is an effort and so is holding Dean's gaze.
Dean looks away first, downs the rest of his beer and clears his throat. "So, uh, Chinese?"
Moo shu and fried wontons and sitting on the living room floor despite the fact that he doesn't care if Dean gets grease stains on the couch, Dean making him laugh with stories about an upsetting clown that put on anti-drug education programs at one of his schools (and possibly left Sam with some lasting trauma), hearing the same side of one record four times because neither of them feel like getting up to change it, that's more like Castiel's idea of a good time.
"Would I be a dick, then?" Castiel asks, when Dean's finally changed the record and gotten them more drinks and sat back down closer than he was before, close enough that their knees are touching. "If I ended things with Balthazar over a psychotropic milkshake?"
"I mean... I guess if that's all it is and you're just like, your space shakes suck, it's over, that'd be kind of a dick move, but I'm kinda getting that there's more to it."
"There is, of course. I don't know."
"I can't tell you what to do, man. Even if I thought I could I'd probably be wrong. I guess figure out if it's worth fighting for. Sorry. I kinda suck at this stuff. Sammy says I'm emotionally retarded."
Castiel thinks better of saying that Sam implied as much to him. "I don't think you are. You've said nothing I haven't thought myself but was reluctant to admit."
"Hey, I did say I'd be pissed if you drowned. Goes for rivers too."
"What?"
"De Nile." Dean grins.
"That is a terrible joke."
"You're laughing."
He is, warm with food and alcohol and Dean's body heat next to him, and there's a moment where they stop laughing and they're almost too close, where it would be nothing at all to lean that last bit forward, natural as breathing. He could count Dean's freckles from this distance, can see every little fleck of brown and grey in the green of his eyes, but he can't read anything in Dean's expression when he says, rough and quiet, "I should get going."
Castiel nods. Dean squeezes his shoulder as he gets up, maybe as some acknowledgement that something did just happen, or maybe not. Castiel belatedly remembers once Dean's out the door that he mentioned going to a convention in Indianapolis to make some contacts among classic car restorers, so he won't even know the extent of the damage for several days. Thursday seems years away.
*
If not for the events of the previous night, Castiel might be inclined to expect a call from Dean, just to say hello and perhaps tell him humorous stories of the people he's met so far on his trip. As it is, he doesn't expect one, but finds himself hoping for it anyway until long past when Dean would think it's too late to call. Still, he can't sleep, running over and over last night in his mind the same as he's been all day, and still, when the phone finally does ring, he feels a little spark of hope, then disappointment, then fear when he sees who's actually calling.
In Castiel's experience, there's very little good to be found on the other end of a two a.m. phone call. At best, it's Gabriel in the midst of a party unwantedly sharing his good time. At worst, it's a father with a stroke or a sister suffering a psychotic break. His blood never doesn't run cold when no one in possession of all their faculties would be calling if there weren't something wrong.
"Cas?"
"Sam? What's wrong? Are you all right? Is Dean--"
"Dean's fine. I assume. But I need help. I'm-- your brother's a lawyer, right?"
Oh, dear god. No one's dead, at least, apparently, but that's not much comfort. "What happened? No, wait. Don't tell me. Don't say anything to anyone." He remembers this much from overhearing Gabriel talking to clients. "Have you said anything?"
"I know better than that."
"But not better than to do whatever it is you-- never mind." Castiel tries to remember how to breathe. "Just don't say anything until we get there."
"Thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't know who else to call."
Gabriel is not happy about being gotten out of bed, and even less happy to have to brush his teeth and put on a suit, and he complains through all of it and the whole way to the police station about having his dream about licking whipped cream off Beyoncé interrupted, but he never refuses and gets ready with practiced efficiency, griping around his electric razor en route. He doesn't even ask for details until Castiel's parked the car.
"I told him not to tell me anything."
"Nice job. What do you know?"
"I suspect whatever's happened is due to the influence of his girlfriend."
"Femme fatale, I can work with that."
"Her name is Ruby Watts. She was a student of mine and was always troubled."
"Did you go giving her the benefit of the doubt instead of warning him off?"
"I didn't think it was any of my business. I hoped he might be a good influence on her."
"You have the people skills of an eggplant, Cassie. What about Winchester Jr? Clean record?"
"As far as I know. He's a pre-law major at Stanford."
"He'll be a crappy lawyer. I was representing myself out of drunk tanks by the end of my first semester."
The thing about Gabriel is that while he might be prone to overindulgence, pranks, and saying ridiculous things, he's very good at his job and his quirky charisma goes a long way toward that. He marches into the precinct and works the room like a red carpet, and as soon as he's led to the detective in charge of holding Sam, he's all hard-edged business. Castiel knows the fact that there's a detective involved isn't a particularly good sign, but Gabriel doesn't flinch.
It's an interminable wait once Gabriel disappears into the interview room. Castiel can't make the vending machine give him tea even though there's a button for it, and there are a couple of prostitutes arguing loudly as they wait to be booked. The young receptionist takes pity on his discomfort after a while and separates the shouting women with a threat of further charges, then brings him a cup of tea. It's just a bag of Lipton, but his thanks is sincere. She keeps smiling at him over her computer screen, and he tries to respond politely without appearing flirtatious. He doesn't feel much like smiling.
Gabriel is smiling when he comes out, though Sam behind him isn't. "Charges dropped," Gabriel says airily once they're outside. "Turns out they liked Clyde and his Bonnie for a string of robberies, so once they'd spent seven thousand years clearing alibis with credit card transactions and Ally McBeal here agreed to buy a new door for the nice old couple they busted in on, your boy's home free and I've got a new clerical buttmonkey for the rest of the summer."
"Hey!" Sam says.
"I woke up a county prosecutor for you, kiddo, who also happens to be my ex-wife. Your job title's whatever I say it is."
"What about Ruby?" Castiel asks. Sam scowls.
"Outlook not as rosy," Gabriel says. "I did what I could, but what I could wasn't much given she's not exactly squeaky clean on the priors. Pretty impressive for only being eighteen six months, actually, but thank the baby Jesus for sealed juvvie records. I got it down to simple possession for the pretty blue meth in her pocket and Kali's going to recommend court-monitored drug counseling and probation." Castiel wishes he were more surprised. "Is this little pow-wow over now? I'd really like to get back to the creamy-dreamy Miss Knowles, if it's all the same to you."
The drive to Gabriel's house is silent except for the thanks at the end, and the drive to Castiel's is equally so. Sam doesn't have to be asked not to walk home, just follows Castiel inside and sits mute at the kitchen island while Castiel brews tea.
"What happened, Sam?"
"I was stupid."
"Unsurprisingly, I gathered that on my own. What exactly? You owe me that much."
"I know," Sam sighs, looking down at his hands. "We were kind of drunk. Ruby maybe more than me. And we were walking around and she said this one house was abandoned and supposed to be haunted and we should see if we can see a ghost. It looked all crappy with weeds and stuff in the yard-- I swear I never would have let us break in if I thought anyone lived there, but Ruby had the address wrong or something and suddenly this old lady's screaming bloody murder and her husband's coming after us with a golf club, and Ruby's just laughing and trying to run but I guess they had an alarm because that's when the cops showed up. You know the rest."
It's some consolation at least to know it's just been a reckless whim gone horribly wrong. "And the drugs?"
"I didn't even know she had that stuff. She said she had a surprise for later, but I thought it was, uh. Y'know. Sexual." Sam turns red and Castiel does too.
"I see. I hope you realize how lucky you've been."
"I do. Believe me, I do. I owe you and Gabriel big and I know it."
"Tonight could have cost you your whole future."
"I know, Cas, okay? I fucked up. Just... can you not tell Dean?"
Sam has no way of knowing, of course, that Dean might not even want to speak to Castiel when he returns, but even if he did, it's no less galling a request. "I'm not going to lie to him."
"No, no, I didn't mean-- I mean let me tell him. He's going to hit the ceiling but he should hear it from me."
Castiel can concede that much; he wouldn't want to be the one bearing this news in any case. "You'll need to do it promptly. I'm ill-equipped for deception even by omission." Especially with Dean, especially now that he almost certainly knows how Castiel feels about him.
"I will. I promise. I'm sorry in advance for whatever mood he's in when he storms out of the house and comes over here."
"He may not."
Sam misunderstands that Castiel isn't talking about Dean's reaction to the news so much as where that reaction will send him. "Are you kidding? Talk about fucking up my whole future, I wouldn't even have a future to fuck up if it weren't for him, and believe me, he knows it. He's going to rip me a new one and then rip the new one a new one. We never talk about it, but he's been sacrificing stuff for me his whole life. Even when Dad was alive, it was Dean who took care of me, y'know?"
Castiel did, to a certain extent, just on inference, but Dean never laid it out plainly like this. Of course he wouldn't have. It settles like a lead weight. "Then why, knowing what it means to him, and knowing what it means to you, would you do something so--"
"Stupid?" Sam makes a face. "It was stupid. But we were never normal kids, not really. And then I'm at college and people are smoking weed and going to Cabo on spring break and taking laundry home to their mothers and I just wanted to be normal for a minute, I guess. College kids are supposed to do stupid crap and come back in the fall with something to say that isn't 'I busted my ass on next year's homework all summer' and Ruby was... she thought I was cool, I guess, interesting. I don't know. Did I mention the part with the stupid?"
It's faulty logic, but Castiel understands it. He made the same mistakes and they never made him more normal or more interesting or feel like he was living any more life than before. "I spent my first year of college stoned off my ass and the next three making up for it."
"Seriously? You?"
"I'm fairly certain it did the opposite of making me interesting, or normal." Dean would call this very after-school special. Castiel can practically hear him saying it. "If you actually find recreational drug use and reckless behavior fulfilling and entertaining, there's nothing wrong in it if no one gets hurt, but if not and you're just pleasing someone else, it's a waste."
Around dawn, long after Sam's gone home and nearly as long spent failing to sleep, the thought catches Castiel that listening to his own advice might be worth something.
Next: Part 7
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue
