[SPN] Crossroads State, Epilogue (12/12)

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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



Epilogue

"What the hell do you want to buy a coat now for? It's still like a hundred degrees out."

"Unseasonably. The weather is unpredictable and I'd like to have it if I need it."

"Yeah, yeah, climate change apocalypse. How about this one, Al Gore?"

"Dean."

"What? What's wrong with it?"

"I'm not wearing a leather jacket."

"What's wrong with leather jackets?"

"Nothing at all, on you. I think this is more what I'm looking for."

"Seriously?"

"I know it's not particularly bad-ass, but--"

"Dude, Cas, that's like a park-bench flasher coat."

"I'm sure it will be obvious that I'm wearing clothes underneath. What do you think?"

"Holy shit."

"Do you object to it that much?"

"No, I take it all back. Less flasher, more John Constantine. It's kinda hot, actually. So maybe you shouldn't get it. Might distract the kids."

"I doubt that will be cause for concern."

*

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Castiel rarely sees Zachariah even during the year, except at staff meetings and the occasional uncomfortable parent conference, but it's a small town with a finite number of restaurants and El Torrero has become very popular since it opened. He honestly dislikes speaking to Zachariah any more than absolutely necessary; the man makes him squirm, and for some reason him being here feels, irrationally, like some kind of invasion. Trying to ignore his presence across the restaurant has the opposite effect, enough that Castiel bumps into someone's chair and doesn't notice their party is smaller than expected until they're sitting down.

"Shouldn't we have a table for three?"

"Unless you need one for Constantine, no. Thought I told you, Jess managed to get out of work after all so I doubt we'll be seeing Sammy before he comes to load his car and pick up the dog."

"Oh, I must have forgotten."

"'s weird," Dean says around a mouthful of salsa. "Now that Sam doesn't have to live in the dorms, I think I'm actually gonna miss the big slobbery bastard."

"Sam?"

"Bones, dumbass," Dean laughs. "But remind me to tell Sam you called him a slobbery bastard."

"I misunderstood." Zachariah is handing the black folder with the check back to the waitress with the kind of smile he wears at school board meetings when tuition's being raised.

"Hey." Dean reaches across the table to touch the back of Castiel's hand. "You here?"

"Of course. I'm sorry."

"I was actually kinda thinking, I might--"

"Well, fancy seeing you here, Dr. Milton! I hope I'm not interrupting anything." Somehow in the few moments that Castiel wasn't looking at Zachariah, he's made his way over and is now looming over the end of the table, his wife lingering a few paces behind him. Castiel tenses and Dean pulls his hand back.

"Hello, Mr. Adler. How are you?"

"Oh, just fine. I won't keep you and your friend from your dinner, but I wanted to come and wish you luck." Castiel doesn't dare look at Dean, and his prayers that Zachariah will stop talking after a clenched word of thanks go unanswered. "I'm only sorry I didn't hear about it until after the fact or I could have written a letter for you. I'm sure they would have been very interested in what I'd have to say."

"It was all very rushed and I felt Joshua's recommendation would be sufficient."

"Ah, good old Joshua." Zachariah smiles and claps his hands together once. "Well, again, best of luck. I know you must be eager to find a position that suits your, ah, lifestyle." He twitches a partial sneer at Dean and walks away.

Castiel closes his eyes and opens them to see Dean somewhere between disbelief and anger. "What the hell was that, Cas?"

"That," Castiel sighs, "was the headmaster of St. Benedict's. We don't get along well."

"And the other stuff? Good luck, position, lifestyle?"

"I wasn't planning to tell you unless they make an official offer. There's an unofficial one, but it still has to be approved by the--"

"So, what, just 'surprise! I'm outta--'"

"It's not Chicago. It's here. In the history department at IU."

"Seriously? Wait, do you even do history? And how come the other one was gonna take a year but this one took like five minutes?"

"Seriously. I'm well qualified for ancient history, and the specifics of academic budgets and hiring practices would interest you even less than they interest me."

"But you're staying. Here."

"With you. Yes."

"Cas, don't do that for me."

"It's not a sacrifice. I'm doing it to make myself happy too."

Dean's never been one for public displays any more than Castiel, but he leans across the table for a kiss that either no one or everyone sees, quick and nearly chaste and sweet with oversugared cheap margaritas. "The only reason I'm not dragging you home right now is 'cause we already ordered and I'm really hungry," he says, and the rough timbre of his voice says as much as anything.

"We have time."

*

It's 5:30 and the shrill bleat of the alarm clock is predictably cut off by the sound of it hitting the floor and Dean grumbling something unintelligible that experience indicates is profanity. Castiel tries to sit up, but he's pinned down by Dean's knee locking across his hips. "Nope," Dean says, eyes still closed, lips warm and jaw rough against Castiel's neck.

Castiel laughs lightly and lets himself sink back into the pillows for a few minutes, stroking his fingers through Dean's hair with his mind at an impasse between concentrating on the warmth of arousal spreading through him or on the long list of everything he needs to accomplish today. Dean apparently only managed to hit the snooze button because the alarm clock gives an anemic series of chirps from the floor that taper out like a dying bird. "Dean, I need to get up."

"Mmm, feels to me like you already are."

"That's terrible," Castiel says, but he's smiling, and he doesn't resist being rolled over and pulled on top of Dean.

"You love it." Dean breaths the words in a wet kiss-whisper against Castiel's ear and rolls his hips up lazily, chases away timetables and room numbers and enrollment limits and office hours.

"I love you," Castiel says without meaning to. And no, he's never said it, but Dean would have to be blind and deaf not to know, not to see it and hear it in everything.

Dean stills, turns his head from where he's been gently biting at the cords of Castiel's neck and looks up. It's still dark, so Dean's shadowed in the shapes of tree branches and curtains from a dimming streetlight outside and the sky just beginning to turn pale, but their eyes can still meet. "You mean that?" Dean asks, drawing a thumb across Castiel's bottom lip, and it nearly hurts to hear genuine uncertainty behind sleep-gruff bravado.

"Absolutely," Castiel says. He kisses the tip of Dean's thumb, then his lips, softly.

Even as dark as it is, Dean's smile is bright enough that it's easy to see. "That's-- damn." Dean pulls him down and kisses him, for once without joking morning-breath apologies to prompt Castiel into saying he doesn't mind, and they hold on tight to each other until another squawk from the alarm clock makes them break apart laughing.

"I think you broke it," Castiel says.

Dean smiles against his mouth. "My bad," he says without a hint of apology. "What time do you actually have to leave?"

"My first class is at nine."

"'Cause I meant this to be quick so you could go do whatever, but--" Dean gives his hips a very deliberate twist and Castiel's eyes flutter closed-- "I really, really want you to-- am I still allowed to say 'fuck me' now that we're in love and all?"

Castiel knows better than to believe that Dean thinks the words brought the feelings into being, knows he's saying it that way to make a reciprocal statement without having to make one, and it wouldn't really have mattered if Dean said nothing at all. Still, he can't help teasing, and musters as serious a tone as he can. "No, Dean. You have to frame it in terms of throbbing manhood and special secret places."

Dean blinks at him once and then dissolves into laughter. "You fucker!"

"I believe that was your suggestion."

Dean stops laughing once he's sucking two of Castiel's fingers into his mouth, once Castiel's nudging his thighs apart. He's slow, careful, both because he can count on one hand the times Dean's asked for this, and because the shattered vulnerability when Dean's finally coaxed to relaxing and is writhing against his hand and saying, "Now, yeah, c'mon," is a beautiful sight. So is Dean looking up at him and Dean tight around him and kissing at a strained angle and speaking nonsense and clutching at him and no, Dean didn't have to say anything at all.

The alarm clock has given up all signs of life by the time Castiel is in the kitchen making coffee and tea, but the microwave says it's 6:58. Dean comes down in yesterday's jeans and yet another old t-shirt of Castiel's he'll be claiming as his own, hair still damp from the shower and smelling of Castiel's shampoo. He wraps his arms around Castiel's waist from behind, kisses his bare shoulder and tickles his fingers into the line of hair below Castiel's navel. "Hope you didn't have anything too important to do."

"Not really. I meant to go for a run." Dean rarely comes with him now that Sam doesn't have to live in a dorm and has taken Bones back to Stanford with him; he says he feels weird just running for no reason.

"I think you got your exercise."

"Do you want breakfast before you go?"

"I wish. I gotta run home first 'cause my dumb ass left the shop keys there and I gave everyone else a four-day Labor Day weekend. Which given how Chuck and Becky were looking at each other by the time they left Bobby's yesterday, they're gonna need the recovery time. Ugh." Dean shudders theatrically. "But hey, what're you doing for lunch?"

"I didn't have any plans. My afternoon class doesn't start until three."

"Okay, meet me downtown at like 1:30? There's a...thing."

"A thing?"

"I got an appointment. You should be there."

"Dean? Are you sick?"

"Dude, no, nothing like that. It's a good appointment. Just trust me."

"I do."

And Dean looks happy, excited, but Castiel knows he'll get no more information. He gives Castiel a lingering kiss and nearly drops the travel mug of coffee Castiel's just handed him. "Have a good first day, Professor," he says. "I love you too, by the way."

The sappy smile manages to leave Castiel's face at 8:35 when he exits his new office and it finally sinks in, as he crosses the quad, that he's about to have to engage a room containing twelve adults who are interested enough in history to take an elective seminar. Who will probably argue with him and bring up points from unassigned sources and who he won't have to correct about gum-chewing or the state of their uniforms. He doesn't know whether to dance in the middle of the hallway or cry.

What he thinks is a heart attack at 8:45 is actually a rapid succession of text messages vibrating in the breast pocket of his jacket, because there's little to no service in his basement office and everything's suddenly coming in at once.

From: Sam
Good luck today!! PS tell my stupid brother to call me.

From: Jo
gl 2day drinks on the house 2nite :)

From: Gabriel
Knock em dead prof

From: Anna
shut up, you'll be awesome. <3

From: Michael
I'm sure I don't need to wish you luck, but I hope it's with you anyway.

From: Balthazar
good luck w yr new bigger kiddies. xxx luc has 1st solo lecture this am, shitting self vicariously send booze

From: Dean
breathe. youll rock. tell them the thing about the guy & the bees its awesome.

From: Dean
ilu

At 8:50, Castiel's smiling again when the first student comes in and presents his first administrative difficulty. "Mr. Crowley? You're not registered for this class."

Crowley grins and takes a seat in the front row. "I will be, sir. Someone's bound to drop."

"I thought you were going to Kenyon."

"Change of plan. Turns out the old man didn't quite have the funds, so it's a few more years round here."

"I'm sorry it didn't work out, Crowley."

"I can be Miss Ohio some other year. Thing or two up my sleeve. But for now it's good old Dr. Milton and some heresy."

"In case you wondered, Crowley," Castiel says when another couple of students wander in at 8:55, "I am having a very nice life."

At 9:03 he resigns himself to having Crowley smirking at him from the front row for the rest of the semester, because Meg Masters isn't there to answer when he calls her name. By 9:30 everyone's introduced themselves and Castiel's said, "Welcome to Heresy and Orthodoxy in Medieval Europe," and he's taken Dean's advice and begun with the account of Leutard of Vertus receiving divine revelation through a swarm of bees that entered his body through his genitals and caused him to jump down a well.

At 10:50 he's arguing with a student about the assigned reading because Clare of Assisi and Margery Kempe are relegated to footnotes in the syllabus. She objects on feminist grounds and he's forced to end the conversation rather harshly and tell her that the scope of the course is not confined to female mystics, but she'd be welcome to explore them in her papers.

At 11:05 his office phone rings and the headache that's been developing dissipates when it's Dean asking, "How'd it go?" and Castiel gets to recount all of it.

At 12:00, his first office hours begin with a student from a class that won't meet until tomorrow, worried about the writing prerequisites, and the headache threatens to return because the student's real concern is assuring himself of satisfying a requirement with a class he can get an A in before the add/drop period ends.

At 1:20, Castiel is circling downtown looking for a parking space and wishing he'd taken the bus. He finally parks on a side street in front of someone's house and walks a few blocks. Dean's already in the diner sipping at a milkshake, the other half of which is in a glass in front of the seat that Castiel slides into.

"I already ordered," Dean says. "Hope you felt like a BLT."

"That's fine. I take it we're pressed for time."

"Appointment's at two. I was afraid they'd get backed up with orders."

Castiel leaves his car where it is at 1:45 and gets into the front seat of Dean's Impala. Dean keeps glancing over at him but not saying anything until they're pulling onto South Walnut Street and parking in front of a sign with a pawprint logo that says City of Bloomington Animal Shelter. Dean's hands are tight on the steering wheel and he's looking straight ahead.

"Dean?"

"You remember like, three weeks ago when you bought the sexy Constantine coat and we ran into your asshole headmaster?"

"Former headmaster, yes."

"I was about to say something about this but then he showed up and I kinda forgot about it and you were busy every time I had to go. But, uh, there's this dog."

"Here?"

"Yeah. They make you do a bunch of visits and stuff before you can take 'em home, and this is the last one. I figured since you'd be kinda stuck with him too, I mean, at least however long you're stuck with me, we might wanna make sure you like him."

"I plan to be 'stuck' with you for the forseeable future, so it might be prudent."

Dean kisses him and keeps doing it even when the woman parked next to them comes out with her new dog, some large-breed mutt that keeps barking at them as she tries to coax it into the backseat of her car.

Castiel's tie is crooked through the whole of his afternoon lecture, but he doesn't notice it until he goes to the bathroom afterwards and sees himself smiling in the mirror. At 6:50 he's walking through the aisles of Petco with Dean, who's holding his hand whenever he doesn't need both to keep an overexcited German Shepherd named Misha from chewing everything in reach. At 7:35 he's eating a burger at the Roadhouse, which is welcoming its first-ever canine patron, and still thinking he's having a very nice life.


THE END

---

Notes: Misha the dog has his origins in the_reverand's awesome fic Trade Show. <3


Thank you for reading!

Comments

Re: This was just .......

[thirstyrobot.livejournal.com]

Since you were interested in a PDF, I thought I'd let you know I have one up now here. :)