mercyrobot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mercyrobot) wrote2012-03-12 06:34 pm
mercyrobot) wrote2012-03-12 06:34 pm
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[SPN] Crossroads State 8/12
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
Waking up and having it hit you that everything's kind of fucked up isn't a great feeling. Sam nearly ruined his life because it turns out that every damn thing Dean's done for that kid wasn't quite enough. Cas is not-in-love with Balthazar and not-with Balthazar but might move to Chicago anyway. And Dean went to a damn gay bar thinking he might be able to get the Cas Thing out of his system somehow (some fucking how) and ended up spilling his guts to Cas's sister instead.
If you look at it like Sam would look at it, Sam screwed up like any 21-year-old might but came off so damn lucky that he scored a job that'll look great on his resumé, Castiel's no longer dating an eccentric British genius with a cool car that's not as cool as the Impala anyway and might not move to Chicago, and Dean didn't end up doing something/one he'd probably regret and found someone willing to listen to him bitch like a damn teenage girl.
But Dean isn't Sam (except for the teenage-girl bitching but that's a totally isolated incident), so everything's kind of fucked up. Even if Cas is technically available now, even if he bought nice-ass whiskey just because he thought Dean might come drink it, even if he was about to make pie from fucking scratch, even if he let Dean take over his evening and fall asleep on his shoulder and covered him in a blanket and almost definitely took his boots off, and a lot of other even-ifs about Why Cas is Awesome, Dean missed the world's easiest window to say, 'Oh, PS, also into dudes,' which is a damn useful thing to be able to say if you're into a specific dude, especially one who accidentally thought your ex-ancient-history-weekend-fling was your girlfriend. He's never been great at the coming-out thing, partly because who he fucks is nobody's damn business, and partly because who he fucks doesn't usually stick around long enough for it to be business, and partly because, okay, he doesn't usually want to deal with the bullshit that comes with it. But he doesn't usually have a best friend who also happens to make his heart and guts go all stupid quite aside from whatever's happening in his pants. But even if all the even-ifs, Cas has been Balthazar-free for what, eighteen hours? That's firmly in red-alert friendship-ruining rebound territory. And that he's actually worried about the friendship-ruining part is firmly in frilly lacy hearts-and-flowers cheeseball territory.
Also, he's going to have to deal with Sam. Like without yelling. There will probably be touching moments where Dean will have to admit he's pissed at himself and a little pissed at Dad, and Sam will be all teary and gigantic and tell him it's not his fault and that he's sorry. It's not that Dean doesn't feel these things; he just sucks at talking about them and Sam always wants to talk about them way longer than Dean can exactly stand.
So yeah, stuff's fucked up. He's going to have to have a big man-pain extravaganza with his brother and count down some unknown acceptable mourning period while he tries to grow the balls to make some kind of damn declaration to Cas, meanwhile keeping Anna sworn to secrecy and not completely losing his shit if Cas does decide to have some kind of rebound thing, because obviously they're all in the ninth grade. Awesome.
Dean hears the stairs creaking and snaps his eyes shut because he doesn't want to look like he was lying there having philosophical thoughts. Dean's good at pretending to be asleep-- useful skill in motel rooms when you don't want to look like you were waiting up and/or watching late-night Cinemax. He'd lie there keeping his breathing carefully even, listening to his dad clatter around until he heard the sounds of another bed or the sofa settling and the pink glow outside his eyelids went black.
He doesn't open his eyes until there's a gentle touch to his shoulder and a quiet, "Dean?"
Cas isn't dressed, still in loose grey cotton pajama pants and a t-shirt with some faded writing on it that looks like it might be Hebrew. He's also got ridiculous bed-hair and is all stubbly and Dean can't help smiling. "Hey."
"I wasn't sure if you needed to go to work today. It's nearly seven."
"Nah. I might go in later just to make sure they haven't burned the place down, but no one's expecting me till Monday. Might as well get up, though."
"I assume you would have been notified in the event of a fire," Cas says with a glint of amusement. "I'll make you some coffee."
Dean takes his time getting up because of the way the stupid pajamas cling to Cas's ass. He's lost a sock somewhere during the night so he just pulls the other one off and sneaks upstairs for a piss. Cas is pouring coffee out of his godawfully trendy-looking French press (brought here by Gabriel, Dean learned the first time he gave it a suspicious glance, because Cas doesn't even drink coffee, just makes it for Dean) by the time Dean gets back down and setting it in front of him with an apologetic, "There's not much for breakfast," because left to his own devices he'd eat organic yogurt and barley flakes or something. "We could go out."
"Yeah, sure," Dean says. They've never gone actually out for anything. It's always been take-out or cooking. It never struck Dean as weird that they haven't, but now it sort of does. "I'm kinda disgusting, though."
That's how Dean ends up being handed a new toothbrush out of a five-pack in the upstairs bathroom and wearing a worn-soft old Yale t-shirt that's only almost too tight. He doesn't know what to do with the toothbrush after he uses it, and he maybe feels a little bit stupidly warm when he finally decides to just drop it into the holder behind Cas's. Dean concedes to walking to breakfast because he knows Cas would be running if he weren't here (or running with him on the days Dean can get off his ass early enough to pose as a respectable dog owner) and it's nice and shady and not too hot yet on the way to a crunchy-looking cafe near the university that Dean didn't even know was there, but for all their local organic mumbo-jumbo and weird decorations (there is actual honest-to-god macrame), they've still got bacon and sausage on the menu.
The waitress knows Cas by name (well, by 'Dr. Milton,' since as it turns out she was a student of his who's in college now) and asks if he'd like 'the usual,' which looks like a huge bowl of fruit but has granola of all things underneath, and which he looks perfectly pleased to be eating. He still steals a piece of Dean's bacon, though, and Dean doesn't even try to stop him. He's lucky Sam isn't here to see that because he'd be saying dumb crap about how it must be love. Or at least thinking it. Not that Dean is, because he doesn't need his brain screwing with him any more than it already is.
Cas drinks enough fruity-smelling herbal tea that he has to use the bathroom before they leave, and that's when the waitress comes back asking, "Together or separate?"
"Uh, together," Dean says, and thrusts his credit card at her even though he has cash because he hasn't actually seen the bill yet and would like her to be as far away as possible while his face finishes turning red for no good reason because that word doesn't mean anything, not really. It's not like they're on a date. Cas just thanks him like it's no big deal when he comes back. It is no big deal. It's no different from going out for a burger with Sam.
Neither is getting several pounds of strawberries from a bizarrely attractive monk, which is what they do after a slow walk back to Cas's house. Monks shouldn't be hot. It's probably in the bible. He figured Brother Michael had to be nice, what with all the beer and produce he's forever giving Cas, but Dean was picturing the dude more like a portly Friar Tuck type. He doesn't even wear burlap or have the weird baldy haircut going on. But it would be stupid for Dean to be jealous, even if he and Cas laugh about school stuff that Dean's got no clue about and Michael isn't exempt from the less-than-usual personal space that Cas tends to allow people. The phrase 'living like a monk' exists for a reason, so it would be dumb.
"I never met a monk before," Dean says on the drive back from the cornfieldy outskirts of town with strawberries pungent in the back seat and something folky on the stereo because hey, driver picks the music and shotgun shuts his cakehole, and Dean's no hypocrite. Mostly. Even if said driver drives a totally sensible and slightly-ancient Toyota and drives it like a damn grandma. At least it's a manual transmission, and the Virgin Mary air freshener is a nice touch ('gift from a student,' Cas says with a smirk). "I totally thought he'd be all old and wacky. And maybe, uh, harder on the eyes."
"Michael is one of the youngest teachers we have, and the object of a fair number of unfortunate crushes. There are older monks on the staff, but I wouldn't describe them as wacky."
"They make beer and grow strawberries too?"
"No, they're more what you might have expected. Though somewhat ironically, Michael is closer to traditional, in the medieval sense."
Dean's given into the temptation and twisted around to grab a strawberry, so all he says is, "Hm," around it. And then, "Dude! Red light!" because Cas isn't paying attention.
Cas slams on the brakes and manages to stop short of the intersection. "My apologies." He reaches back for a strawberry of his own and damn, that's distracting. It actually shouldn't be legal, the way his lips slide up over the fat part as he bites in, or the way he licks the juice off his fingertips after. "Oh," he says, not in a way that could have anything to do with the strawberry. "What does this light mean?" He's pointing at the dash and frowning.
Dean cranes over to look. "Maintenance required? That's nothing, they set those to come on after a certain number of miles. You never had that come on?"
"No, I get it serviced every three months. It must have happened sooner because I've been driving more."
Right, all the trips to Chicago. "It's no big deal. I'll check her over for you this weekend."
"You don't have to--"
"Dude. I will be seriously insulted if you don't tell your old mechanic it's time for you to see other people." Okay, that's pushing it a little. At least he has the sense to stop before he gets to the lube jokes.
"Thank you, Dean. I can pay you, of course."
"These strawberries are going in a pie, right?"
"With any luck, yes."
"Then I'm paid."
It's lucky that they have about ten thousand pounds of strawberries, because it turns out neither one of them has the first idea of how to make strawberries into the awesome stuff in the middle of a strawberry pie, and there's scorched sugar and almost a fire and they eat about a pound between them that never even make it onto the stove and the red stains are probably never going to come out of Cas's borrowed Yale t-shirt. He lets Dean crank the stereo loud enough to rattle the windowpanes and they break into Michael's latest batch of ale and are half-drunk at two in the afternoon waiting for a slightly misshapen pie to cool and Dean hasn't laughed this much in years, and god, he is so, so screwed.
Next: Part 9
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
Waking up and having it hit you that everything's kind of fucked up isn't a great feeling. Sam nearly ruined his life because it turns out that every damn thing Dean's done for that kid wasn't quite enough. Cas is not-in-love with Balthazar and not-with Balthazar but might move to Chicago anyway. And Dean went to a damn gay bar thinking he might be able to get the Cas Thing out of his system somehow (some fucking how) and ended up spilling his guts to Cas's sister instead.
If you look at it like Sam would look at it, Sam screwed up like any 21-year-old might but came off so damn lucky that he scored a job that'll look great on his resumé, Castiel's no longer dating an eccentric British genius with a cool car that's not as cool as the Impala anyway and might not move to Chicago, and Dean didn't end up doing something/one he'd probably regret and found someone willing to listen to him bitch like a damn teenage girl.
But Dean isn't Sam (except for the teenage-girl bitching but that's a totally isolated incident), so everything's kind of fucked up. Even if Cas is technically available now, even if he bought nice-ass whiskey just because he thought Dean might come drink it, even if he was about to make pie from fucking scratch, even if he let Dean take over his evening and fall asleep on his shoulder and covered him in a blanket and almost definitely took his boots off, and a lot of other even-ifs about Why Cas is Awesome, Dean missed the world's easiest window to say, 'Oh, PS, also into dudes,' which is a damn useful thing to be able to say if you're into a specific dude, especially one who accidentally thought your ex-ancient-history-weekend-fling was your girlfriend. He's never been great at the coming-out thing, partly because who he fucks is nobody's damn business, and partly because who he fucks doesn't usually stick around long enough for it to be business, and partly because, okay, he doesn't usually want to deal with the bullshit that comes with it. But he doesn't usually have a best friend who also happens to make his heart and guts go all stupid quite aside from whatever's happening in his pants. But even if all the even-ifs, Cas has been Balthazar-free for what, eighteen hours? That's firmly in red-alert friendship-ruining rebound territory. And that he's actually worried about the friendship-ruining part is firmly in frilly lacy hearts-and-flowers cheeseball territory.
Also, he's going to have to deal with Sam. Like without yelling. There will probably be touching moments where Dean will have to admit he's pissed at himself and a little pissed at Dad, and Sam will be all teary and gigantic and tell him it's not his fault and that he's sorry. It's not that Dean doesn't feel these things; he just sucks at talking about them and Sam always wants to talk about them way longer than Dean can exactly stand.
So yeah, stuff's fucked up. He's going to have to have a big man-pain extravaganza with his brother and count down some unknown acceptable mourning period while he tries to grow the balls to make some kind of damn declaration to Cas, meanwhile keeping Anna sworn to secrecy and not completely losing his shit if Cas does decide to have some kind of rebound thing, because obviously they're all in the ninth grade. Awesome.
Dean hears the stairs creaking and snaps his eyes shut because he doesn't want to look like he was lying there having philosophical thoughts. Dean's good at pretending to be asleep-- useful skill in motel rooms when you don't want to look like you were waiting up and/or watching late-night Cinemax. He'd lie there keeping his breathing carefully even, listening to his dad clatter around until he heard the sounds of another bed or the sofa settling and the pink glow outside his eyelids went black.
He doesn't open his eyes until there's a gentle touch to his shoulder and a quiet, "Dean?"
Cas isn't dressed, still in loose grey cotton pajama pants and a t-shirt with some faded writing on it that looks like it might be Hebrew. He's also got ridiculous bed-hair and is all stubbly and Dean can't help smiling. "Hey."
"I wasn't sure if you needed to go to work today. It's nearly seven."
"Nah. I might go in later just to make sure they haven't burned the place down, but no one's expecting me till Monday. Might as well get up, though."
"I assume you would have been notified in the event of a fire," Cas says with a glint of amusement. "I'll make you some coffee."
Dean takes his time getting up because of the way the stupid pajamas cling to Cas's ass. He's lost a sock somewhere during the night so he just pulls the other one off and sneaks upstairs for a piss. Cas is pouring coffee out of his godawfully trendy-looking French press (brought here by Gabriel, Dean learned the first time he gave it a suspicious glance, because Cas doesn't even drink coffee, just makes it for Dean) by the time Dean gets back down and setting it in front of him with an apologetic, "There's not much for breakfast," because left to his own devices he'd eat organic yogurt and barley flakes or something. "We could go out."
"Yeah, sure," Dean says. They've never gone actually out for anything. It's always been take-out or cooking. It never struck Dean as weird that they haven't, but now it sort of does. "I'm kinda disgusting, though."
That's how Dean ends up being handed a new toothbrush out of a five-pack in the upstairs bathroom and wearing a worn-soft old Yale t-shirt that's only almost too tight. He doesn't know what to do with the toothbrush after he uses it, and he maybe feels a little bit stupidly warm when he finally decides to just drop it into the holder behind Cas's. Dean concedes to walking to breakfast because he knows Cas would be running if he weren't here (or running with him on the days Dean can get off his ass early enough to pose as a respectable dog owner) and it's nice and shady and not too hot yet on the way to a crunchy-looking cafe near the university that Dean didn't even know was there, but for all their local organic mumbo-jumbo and weird decorations (there is actual honest-to-god macrame), they've still got bacon and sausage on the menu.
The waitress knows Cas by name (well, by 'Dr. Milton,' since as it turns out she was a student of his who's in college now) and asks if he'd like 'the usual,' which looks like a huge bowl of fruit but has granola of all things underneath, and which he looks perfectly pleased to be eating. He still steals a piece of Dean's bacon, though, and Dean doesn't even try to stop him. He's lucky Sam isn't here to see that because he'd be saying dumb crap about how it must be love. Or at least thinking it. Not that Dean is, because he doesn't need his brain screwing with him any more than it already is.
Cas drinks enough fruity-smelling herbal tea that he has to use the bathroom before they leave, and that's when the waitress comes back asking, "Together or separate?"
"Uh, together," Dean says, and thrusts his credit card at her even though he has cash because he hasn't actually seen the bill yet and would like her to be as far away as possible while his face finishes turning red for no good reason because that word doesn't mean anything, not really. It's not like they're on a date. Cas just thanks him like it's no big deal when he comes back. It is no big deal. It's no different from going out for a burger with Sam.
Neither is getting several pounds of strawberries from a bizarrely attractive monk, which is what they do after a slow walk back to Cas's house. Monks shouldn't be hot. It's probably in the bible. He figured Brother Michael had to be nice, what with all the beer and produce he's forever giving Cas, but Dean was picturing the dude more like a portly Friar Tuck type. He doesn't even wear burlap or have the weird baldy haircut going on. But it would be stupid for Dean to be jealous, even if he and Cas laugh about school stuff that Dean's got no clue about and Michael isn't exempt from the less-than-usual personal space that Cas tends to allow people. The phrase 'living like a monk' exists for a reason, so it would be dumb.
"I never met a monk before," Dean says on the drive back from the cornfieldy outskirts of town with strawberries pungent in the back seat and something folky on the stereo because hey, driver picks the music and shotgun shuts his cakehole, and Dean's no hypocrite. Mostly. Even if said driver drives a totally sensible and slightly-ancient Toyota and drives it like a damn grandma. At least it's a manual transmission, and the Virgin Mary air freshener is a nice touch ('gift from a student,' Cas says with a smirk). "I totally thought he'd be all old and wacky. And maybe, uh, harder on the eyes."
"Michael is one of the youngest teachers we have, and the object of a fair number of unfortunate crushes. There are older monks on the staff, but I wouldn't describe them as wacky."
"They make beer and grow strawberries too?"
"No, they're more what you might have expected. Though somewhat ironically, Michael is closer to traditional, in the medieval sense."
Dean's given into the temptation and twisted around to grab a strawberry, so all he says is, "Hm," around it. And then, "Dude! Red light!" because Cas isn't paying attention.
Cas slams on the brakes and manages to stop short of the intersection. "My apologies." He reaches back for a strawberry of his own and damn, that's distracting. It actually shouldn't be legal, the way his lips slide up over the fat part as he bites in, or the way he licks the juice off his fingertips after. "Oh," he says, not in a way that could have anything to do with the strawberry. "What does this light mean?" He's pointing at the dash and frowning.
Dean cranes over to look. "Maintenance required? That's nothing, they set those to come on after a certain number of miles. You never had that come on?"
"No, I get it serviced every three months. It must have happened sooner because I've been driving more."
Right, all the trips to Chicago. "It's no big deal. I'll check her over for you this weekend."
"You don't have to--"
"Dude. I will be seriously insulted if you don't tell your old mechanic it's time for you to see other people." Okay, that's pushing it a little. At least he has the sense to stop before he gets to the lube jokes.
"Thank you, Dean. I can pay you, of course."
"These strawberries are going in a pie, right?"
"With any luck, yes."
"Then I'm paid."
It's lucky that they have about ten thousand pounds of strawberries, because it turns out neither one of them has the first idea of how to make strawberries into the awesome stuff in the middle of a strawberry pie, and there's scorched sugar and almost a fire and they eat about a pound between them that never even make it onto the stove and the red stains are probably never going to come out of Cas's borrowed Yale t-shirt. He lets Dean crank the stereo loud enough to rattle the windowpanes and they break into Michael's latest batch of ale and are half-drunk at two in the afternoon waiting for a slightly misshapen pie to cool and Dean hasn't laughed this much in years, and god, he is so, so screwed.
To: Anna they broke up yesterday. how long = long enough??
Next: Part 9
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue