[SPN] Crossroads State 11/12
Mar. 12th, 2012 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue
Dean's never understood why cheap hotels give you stuff for free (or just don't bother) but nice ones make you pay for it. They must figure that if you can afford their rooms, you can afford ten bucks extra for internet and twenty for parking and a buch of tips to random people for shit you could do yourself and fifteen for the breakfast buffet. But whatever, it's all on Gabriel's tab. Dean would normally feel a little bad about it and at least offer to pay his own way, but A, Gabriel makes lawyer money, B, doesn't seem to care, and C, is kind of a pain in the ass.
A hungover pain in the ass, no less, and playing it up for all it's worth, wearing douchey sunglasses indoors and trying to drink his Bloody Mary through the celery stick. Dean tries to remember that he should be nice to the guy who not only saved his brother's ass but is also related to his best-friend-slash-brand-new... what, boyfriend? That's a crappy word; Dean's always thought it sounds like sixth grade and 'do you like me?' with yes-no-maybe checkboxes, but 'lover' is kind of smarmy and 'partner' sounds like either business ventures or moving vans, and that's scary.
Except it's kind of not that scary. Even when Cas is interrogating the waiter about the tea selection in a way that Dean would find annoying as hell if it were anyone else, it's not that scary. It's a little scary that it's not scary after not even 24 hours of something there's not even a word for yet. A something that might already be doomed if Chicago stays on the table. Dean doesn't want to think that far ahead right now.
"I've defended a couple of pretty shady characters, you know," Gabriel says with his eyebrows raising over his douchey indoor sunglasses when Cas has gotten up to get fruit salad, of all things, and left Dean to the tender mercies of the sibling torture panel. Anna's being cool, at least, since she was already half-accidentally in the loop about all Dean's borderline-teenage-emo-poetry feelings, but there's no telling how much she has or hasn't filled Gabriel in. And Gabriel is still a pain in the ass. "They were innocent, of course. On those charges, anyway. They were very grateful."
"You can save the shovel speech, dude. I get it."
"Shovels, huh? Creative. I like it." Gabriel grins in a way that's hopefully creepy on purpose and not just creepy, and Dean realizes too late that he's not only just quoted Becky, but quoted Becky quoting fucking Buffy. Luckily no one else notices.
"Be nice," Anna says.
"I can't be nice. My stomach's full of hell-beasts and my head's been invaded by half of Sea World, and yesterday I banged my ex-wife and possibly someone in a bathroom."
Dean winces. "Overshare."
Cas comes back with two bowls of fruit salad and sets one between Dean and his half-finished bacon. Dean's about to register an official 'dude, what the hell?' because there's moving-van scary and then there's eat-your-tofu-dear scary, but then he sees that his doesn't have any cantaloupe or honeydew, that it's actually just a bowl of strawberries. So he means it when he smiles and says thanks.
"You know what'd go great with that?" Gabriel says. "A banana."
Which is oh, hilarious. Dean's not incredibly proud of getting so bent out of shape about the condom incident, but Gabriel had hit a little too close to the truth. A couple of truths. The I-am-a-total-teenage-girl-over-Cas truth and the actually-I-hope-I-need-that truth. He's almost never been in the position of having to outright say 'yeah, sometimes I like to fuck guys,' not even around other people who also like to fuck guys because they're there in hopes of fucking guys and it's just kind of a given. He was even spared having to have that conversation with Sam because of some seriously bad timing on Sam's part a few years ago and they've never actually discussed it. Anna only got it because Dean was caught off-guard and what else would he be doing in a gay bar, and because she's smart as hell.
"So this person of pointedly unmentioned gender you've got a thing for who's with someone else, their name wouldn't happen to start with a C and end with an 'astiel,' would it?"
"What? Where'd you even get that--"
"Dean, come on. I don't really know you, but I know my brother pretty damn well. He tries not to talk about you to me because I guess he thinks it's awkward to remind me of the hot guy that shot me down and I might go crazy again or something, but he has to try pretty hard to stay off the subject. And Gabe has like, zero filter. If I didn't know he was dating Balthazar, I'd think he was dating you."
"I'm not gonna do anything about it."
"Up to you. But I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that letting Donny there blow you in the bathroom isn't going to help."
Anna's miming stabbing Gabriel in the head with her fork and Cas is blushing down at his fruit salad. Cas's hand is warm when Dean catches it under the table and so is the smile he turns his head to give Dean. Dean thinks he probably deserves cement overshoes from some acquitted criminal if he screws it up, because that's still kind of what he wants to do to Balthazar, even though his loss is Dean's gain and Cas hasn't seemed upset about it.
"So, what?" he mutters at Anna when they're left alone for a few minutes down in the lobby while Cas goes back upstairs to help Gabriel look for his phone charger and she's prodded him with a 'so?' that he can't pretend is about anything else. It doesn't mean he wants to talk about it. "We're good, okay?"
"Told you."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean can't help smiling a little.
"Just make him happy."
"Do my best."
It's funny how easy it is to get used to driving with one hand on Cas's knee, to pass him the old shoebox full of tapes and let him pick something (it turns out they agree on the Allman Brothers, at least), to make stops for things like bookstores and poky little local history museums, to talk more about himself and his life than he maybe ever has to anyone, even if it's just in the form of old stories from other roads. They're headed due west because it's as good a random direction as any, and when the sun starts to set, they don't drive into it, but they do stop to watch it, sitting on the Imapla's hood close and quiet.
"Hey, Cas?" Dean starts without knowing how to finish. The last pinks and purples are fading into the flat of the horizon and Dean's thinking that the next place with a diner and a motel should be where they stop for the night, maybe find a bar and teach Cas how to shoot pool, but that's not the stuff he needs to say. He needs to say 'I'm scared shitless' and 'I'm going to do my damnedest not to fuck this up 'cause it's really important' and 'I'd go anywhere with you' and 'don't move to Chicago' and a hundred promises that Cas deserves to have made, but he can't drag it out of himself. He says, "This is--" and "I'm, uh--" and feels like an asshole.
There's this space behind Dean's ear that it took Cas about two seconds to learn makes him weak in the knees, and that's where Cas's lips are pressed when he slides even closer (and Dean doesn't even spare a thought for what the rivets on his jeans might be doing to the paint) and says, "Later," and stays there until the stars start to come out and says, "This makes me very happy," in a warm whisper.
"Good," Dean says, and he has to swallow because his throat's all locked up. "Me too."
_______
Castiel is terrible at pool, to a frustrating degree, and it's not easy to concentrate on advice and corrections to his posture with Dean leaning over his back and touching more than he needs to. He knows it's deliberate even before Dean aims the eight ball straight into a pocket and says, "Oops, guess I lose," and then, closer, "let's get out of here before I do something that gets these farmers wanting to kick both our asses," which is pressing Castiel up against the back of their motel room door as soon as it's closed behind them. Dean's every bit as breathtaking against the outdated red-white-and-blue backdrop of this room at the Crossroads Inn with its badly wired flickering lamps as he was sprawled on luxury sheets under soft lighting, as he was in the pink of the sunset, as he's always been in kitchens or on sofas or covered in engine grease. And for all it starts out near-frantic urgent edged with careless teeth, it slows, hushes; they've got all the time in the world and they take it, and when one of the lamps gives out with a flashbulb pop, Dean kisses between Castiel's shoulder blades and whispers about dreaming of lightning and angel wings and fireworks.
They cover the miles back home quietly, slowly, another room and another sunset and a goodbye that isn't one at all. The miles from there aren't driven over blacktop-- they're run over memorized sidewalks and tripped barefoot between rooms and place to place within the space where their lives meet that keeps stretching a little bigger. Sometimes forward, the times when Dean finds words for what he knows he could make Castiel understand just by showing, simply because he knows it's important. Sometimes backward, because they both still have years of things they've always kept to themselves and a thing guarded closely can become like a secret. Sometimes just wider to the sides when a family dinner is suddenly a full house or the first time Bobby talks to Castiel about anything that isn't a direct necessity.
Sometimes forward-backward-forward circles that tinder their way to explosive, when Dean sees Castiel talking to Balthazar at the airport and his smile turns to glaring, which is not mistrust but jealousy coupled with the specter of an uncertain future that Dean doesn't want to hold him back from but doesn't want to lose him to, and which somehow he still thinks he doesn't measure up against. Castiel shouts so much that Dean is speechless for a full minute, but they both make themselves understood in the end.
Dean fits into spaces that Castiel never knew were empty, and into new ones he carves out and claims, but he won't ask for Castiel's promise not to leave. Whether it's for Dean or himself or for them or for some of all three, for what they have a chance at if someone asks for it, Castiel loses no sleep over his decision once he's made it.
Next: Epilogue
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
Dean's never understood why cheap hotels give you stuff for free (or just don't bother) but nice ones make you pay for it. They must figure that if you can afford their rooms, you can afford ten bucks extra for internet and twenty for parking and a buch of tips to random people for shit you could do yourself and fifteen for the breakfast buffet. But whatever, it's all on Gabriel's tab. Dean would normally feel a little bad about it and at least offer to pay his own way, but A, Gabriel makes lawyer money, B, doesn't seem to care, and C, is kind of a pain in the ass.
A hungover pain in the ass, no less, and playing it up for all it's worth, wearing douchey sunglasses indoors and trying to drink his Bloody Mary through the celery stick. Dean tries to remember that he should be nice to the guy who not only saved his brother's ass but is also related to his best-friend-slash-brand-new... what, boyfriend? That's a crappy word; Dean's always thought it sounds like sixth grade and 'do you like me?' with yes-no-maybe checkboxes, but 'lover' is kind of smarmy and 'partner' sounds like either business ventures or moving vans, and that's scary.
Except it's kind of not that scary. Even when Cas is interrogating the waiter about the tea selection in a way that Dean would find annoying as hell if it were anyone else, it's not that scary. It's a little scary that it's not scary after not even 24 hours of something there's not even a word for yet. A something that might already be doomed if Chicago stays on the table. Dean doesn't want to think that far ahead right now.
"I've defended a couple of pretty shady characters, you know," Gabriel says with his eyebrows raising over his douchey indoor sunglasses when Cas has gotten up to get fruit salad, of all things, and left Dean to the tender mercies of the sibling torture panel. Anna's being cool, at least, since she was already half-accidentally in the loop about all Dean's borderline-teenage-emo-poetry feelings, but there's no telling how much she has or hasn't filled Gabriel in. And Gabriel is still a pain in the ass. "They were innocent, of course. On those charges, anyway. They were very grateful."
"You can save the shovel speech, dude. I get it."
"Shovels, huh? Creative. I like it." Gabriel grins in a way that's hopefully creepy on purpose and not just creepy, and Dean realizes too late that he's not only just quoted Becky, but quoted Becky quoting fucking Buffy. Luckily no one else notices.
"Be nice," Anna says.
"I can't be nice. My stomach's full of hell-beasts and my head's been invaded by half of Sea World, and yesterday I banged my ex-wife and possibly someone in a bathroom."
Dean winces. "Overshare."
Cas comes back with two bowls of fruit salad and sets one between Dean and his half-finished bacon. Dean's about to register an official 'dude, what the hell?' because there's moving-van scary and then there's eat-your-tofu-dear scary, but then he sees that his doesn't have any cantaloupe or honeydew, that it's actually just a bowl of strawberries. So he means it when he smiles and says thanks.
"You know what'd go great with that?" Gabriel says. "A banana."
Which is oh, hilarious. Dean's not incredibly proud of getting so bent out of shape about the condom incident, but Gabriel had hit a little too close to the truth. A couple of truths. The I-am-a-total-teenage-girl-over-Cas truth and the actually-I-hope-I-need-that truth. He's almost never been in the position of having to outright say 'yeah, sometimes I like to fuck guys,' not even around other people who also like to fuck guys because they're there in hopes of fucking guys and it's just kind of a given. He was even spared having to have that conversation with Sam because of some seriously bad timing on Sam's part a few years ago and they've never actually discussed it. Anna only got it because Dean was caught off-guard and what else would he be doing in a gay bar, and because she's smart as hell.
"So this person of pointedly unmentioned gender you've got a thing for who's with someone else, their name wouldn't happen to start with a C and end with an 'astiel,' would it?"
"What? Where'd you even get that--"
"Dean, come on. I don't really know you, but I know my brother pretty damn well. He tries not to talk about you to me because I guess he thinks it's awkward to remind me of the hot guy that shot me down and I might go crazy again or something, but he has to try pretty hard to stay off the subject. And Gabe has like, zero filter. If I didn't know he was dating Balthazar, I'd think he was dating you."
"I'm not gonna do anything about it."
"Up to you. But I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that letting Donny there blow you in the bathroom isn't going to help."
Anna's miming stabbing Gabriel in the head with her fork and Cas is blushing down at his fruit salad. Cas's hand is warm when Dean catches it under the table and so is the smile he turns his head to give Dean. Dean thinks he probably deserves cement overshoes from some acquitted criminal if he screws it up, because that's still kind of what he wants to do to Balthazar, even though his loss is Dean's gain and Cas hasn't seemed upset about it.
"So, what?" he mutters at Anna when they're left alone for a few minutes down in the lobby while Cas goes back upstairs to help Gabriel look for his phone charger and she's prodded him with a 'so?' that he can't pretend is about anything else. It doesn't mean he wants to talk about it. "We're good, okay?"
"Told you."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean can't help smiling a little.
"Just make him happy."
"Do my best."
It's funny how easy it is to get used to driving with one hand on Cas's knee, to pass him the old shoebox full of tapes and let him pick something (it turns out they agree on the Allman Brothers, at least), to make stops for things like bookstores and poky little local history museums, to talk more about himself and his life than he maybe ever has to anyone, even if it's just in the form of old stories from other roads. They're headed due west because it's as good a random direction as any, and when the sun starts to set, they don't drive into it, but they do stop to watch it, sitting on the Imapla's hood close and quiet.
"Hey, Cas?" Dean starts without knowing how to finish. The last pinks and purples are fading into the flat of the horizon and Dean's thinking that the next place with a diner and a motel should be where they stop for the night, maybe find a bar and teach Cas how to shoot pool, but that's not the stuff he needs to say. He needs to say 'I'm scared shitless' and 'I'm going to do my damnedest not to fuck this up 'cause it's really important' and 'I'd go anywhere with you' and 'don't move to Chicago' and a hundred promises that Cas deserves to have made, but he can't drag it out of himself. He says, "This is--" and "I'm, uh--" and feels like an asshole.
There's this space behind Dean's ear that it took Cas about two seconds to learn makes him weak in the knees, and that's where Cas's lips are pressed when he slides even closer (and Dean doesn't even spare a thought for what the rivets on his jeans might be doing to the paint) and says, "Later," and stays there until the stars start to come out and says, "This makes me very happy," in a warm whisper.
"Good," Dean says, and he has to swallow because his throat's all locked up. "Me too."
_______
Castiel is terrible at pool, to a frustrating degree, and it's not easy to concentrate on advice and corrections to his posture with Dean leaning over his back and touching more than he needs to. He knows it's deliberate even before Dean aims the eight ball straight into a pocket and says, "Oops, guess I lose," and then, closer, "let's get out of here before I do something that gets these farmers wanting to kick both our asses," which is pressing Castiel up against the back of their motel room door as soon as it's closed behind them. Dean's every bit as breathtaking against the outdated red-white-and-blue backdrop of this room at the Crossroads Inn with its badly wired flickering lamps as he was sprawled on luxury sheets under soft lighting, as he was in the pink of the sunset, as he's always been in kitchens or on sofas or covered in engine grease. And for all it starts out near-frantic urgent edged with careless teeth, it slows, hushes; they've got all the time in the world and they take it, and when one of the lamps gives out with a flashbulb pop, Dean kisses between Castiel's shoulder blades and whispers about dreaming of lightning and angel wings and fireworks.
They cover the miles back home quietly, slowly, another room and another sunset and a goodbye that isn't one at all. The miles from there aren't driven over blacktop-- they're run over memorized sidewalks and tripped barefoot between rooms and place to place within the space where their lives meet that keeps stretching a little bigger. Sometimes forward, the times when Dean finds words for what he knows he could make Castiel understand just by showing, simply because he knows it's important. Sometimes backward, because they both still have years of things they've always kept to themselves and a thing guarded closely can become like a secret. Sometimes just wider to the sides when a family dinner is suddenly a full house or the first time Bobby talks to Castiel about anything that isn't a direct necessity.
Sometimes forward-backward-forward circles that tinder their way to explosive, when Dean sees Castiel talking to Balthazar at the airport and his smile turns to glaring, which is not mistrust but jealousy coupled with the specter of an uncertain future that Dean doesn't want to hold him back from but doesn't want to lose him to, and which somehow he still thinks he doesn't measure up against. Castiel shouts so much that Dean is speechless for a full minute, but they both make themselves understood in the end.
Dean fits into spaces that Castiel never knew were empty, and into new ones he carves out and claims, but he won't ask for Castiel's promise not to leave. Whether it's for Dean or himself or for them or for some of all three, for what they have a chance at if someone asks for it, Castiel loses no sleep over his decision once he's made it.
Next: Epilogue
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Epilogue
no subject
Date: 2012-04-27 08:39 am (UTC)"Shovels, huh? Creative. I like it." Gabriel grins in a way that's hopefully creepy on purpose and not just creepy, and Dean realizes too late that he's not only just quoted Becky, but quoted Becky quoting fucking Buffy. Luckily no one else notices.
i love you more than words can express.
buffy was my first love.
'nuff said.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-28 06:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 07:25 am (UTC)