Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hard neon lights, soft-edged darkness. A smile, small and shy, then wide and brilliant, eyes a brighter blue than he's ever seen before. Tiger, flower, bird. Laugh. Lips moving, and they shape his name, silently.

Dean doesn't wake up so much as slowly become aware he's no longer dreaming, broad white expanse of the ceiling swimming into view as his eyes drift open. There's a long moment where he's caught between the two states, empty-headed and aimless.

A soft, almost ticklish sensation draws him out of it, into his own body that's stiff from sleep and pleasantly achy, into warm sheets and a heavy weight pushing him deep into the mattress. Someone breathes out against his skin, again, and Dean tips his head down to meet the sleepy, slit-eyed stare of the man draped over him.

“… it’s Castiel, right?” he says after a moment, chin on his chest. “From accounting?”

Castiel gazes calmly back. “Yes. Assistant Controller of Finance, at your service,” he murmurs, head resting heavy and immobile on Dean’s sternum.  He looks more than half-asleep still, with his slow blinks and the wide, honest yawn he hides behind a hand. But he smiles drowsily into the curve of Dean’s ribs, raises that hand to slide careful fingertips along Dean’s jaw.

“Good morning, Dean,” he murmurs, and lifts Dean’s chin as he shifts up to press a firm, open-mouthed kiss to Dean’s slack lips. Surprised into kissing back, hand moving of its own accord to tangle in Castiel’s hair, Dean can almost taste the gold light streaming in the windows, clinging to their lips and pooling on the bed’s jumble of sheets and skin like something sweet and thick and sticky.

Castiel’s head falls again, body falling around Dean's with easy intimacy as his eyes slide closed.  His hand drops to rest over Dean’s heart, and Dean frowns down at it, at Castiel, more than a little bewildered.

It should be awkward as hell. Dean's waiting for it, bracing himself for the inevitable moment when they give each other queasy smiles and pull apart, disentangling their arms and legs and, for the unlucky bastard whose room this isn’t, tugging on stained and wrinkled clothes and making the furtive, hopefully unnoticed trip back to their own suite. Last company conference that bastard had been Dean, and Bela hadn’t been at all shy in kicking him out as soon as the sun rose.

Castiel nuzzles into him, and when Dean thoughtlessly burrows his fingers deeper in his hair the man lets out a pleased, purr-like groan and arches into the touch like a big cat.

This… Dean’s not sure what this is. But it isn’t awkward. 

At a loss, he looks towards the windows, thick hotel curtains flung open to the punishing Las Vegas sun. It's shining high and bright above the neon and glass stretches of the city, leaving them in stark silhouette against the desert hills. The light sends a twinge through his head, the beginnings of a hangover headache threatening.

"When was the flight back again?" he asks the quiet room.

"We’ve missed it," Castiel assures him. He uncurls his body in a long, leisurely stretch, relaxing into a sprawl all along Dean's. There's nothing between them but warm skin and a little sweat, and Castiel lifts his eyes to Dean's and runs his tongue along the pink swell of his lower lip, suggestively.

Dean grins and urges him up into another kiss, and it's just as sweet and unhurried as the first, like they have all the time in the world to enjoy themselves. He feels a stab of regret he doesn't remember more of the previous night— with how eagerly Castiel moves with him, how his hands splay familiarly at his waist, drag down to grip his hips and set them rocking lazily against each other, Dean knows it must have been good.

The sheets slide down Castiel's back to the curve of his ass, and Dean's attention is momentarily arrested by riotous color. “You have tattoos,” he says, intrigued. Though the word ‘tattoos’ doesn’t seem quite enough to describe the vivid, strangely organic tangle of animals, feathers and flowers that flows down Castiel's back and twines restlessly over his shoulders, winding around his arms. The tallest branches of one tree crest just over the nape of his neck, naked and thorny, almost abstract in their stark black lines.

Castiel hums agreement against his jaw, mouthing at the soft skin just under his ear. “Yes.”

“They’re beautiful,” Dean says honestly, tracing the fluid lines that move between them with a light fingertip. Tiger, flower, bird. “Not very accountant-y.”

“Assistant Controller of Finance," Castiel corrects, mouth moving along Dean's throat. "And I was a rebellious child.” 

"Mm, yeah," Dean says, tipping his head back. "I bet you were."

It's a few minutes later, Castiel's teeth digging into the slight mound of flesh just under Dean's navel, Dean grabbing a handful of sheets and the pillow under his head as he arches because damn, he did not know that was a turn-on, when he sees it.

It's a slim, smooth band, gold or gold-plated, snug at the base of the third finger on his left hand. Dean stares at it, because he doesn't remember buying any new jewelry and besides, the rest of his rings are silver—

"Cas," he pants, urgently.

"Hmm?" Castiel sucks at his mouthful and Dean's legs draw in tight against his sides.

"Christ, stop, stop for a second. Give me your hand," Dean says, fumbling for it.

Castiel looks up, a confused squint on his face as Dean grabs his left hand and holds it up to the light.

"Ah," he says.

"Holy shit," Dean says weakly, because there's a ring there too, his ring, tarnished silver thick and a little loose on Castiel's finger.

"Interesting," Castiel comments.

"Interesting? Interesting?" Dean holds his hand up to Castiel's, spreading his fingers wide. "What the hell happened last night?"

"We each appear to have gotten married to someone," Castiel says, and his voice is solemn but there's the suspicion of a smile lurking around his eyes, turned up to Dean's with an almost mischievous expression.

"No shit, Sherlock," Dean says, collapsing back into the pillows. He rubs a hand over his face. "Oh my God. Married in Vegas. Who does that?"

"Apparently, we do," Castiel says, and he sounds almost smug about it.

"Dude," Dean says, pained, "you didn't put roofies in my drink so you could have your wicked accountant way with me, did you?"

"Of course not." Castiel's face is a little more genuinely serious now as he props himself up on an elbow, a faint furrow creasing his forehead. Guy has eyes like a poet's grab-bag of metaphors, like skies and oceans and cornflowers. "I wouldn't."

"Then what happened?"

Castiel's head tilts, and he stares at Dean with a strange, almost worried look in his eyes. "Dean, you don't remember?"

"I remember... the bar downstairs. And beer," Dean says with finality. "Lots and lots of beer."

"... oh." Castiel's eyes drop away from his.

"There might have strippers?”

"I see," the man says quietly, and turns to sit up.

Dean catches his arm. "Wait," he says, "how did we even decide to—?"

"You were very persuasive," Castiel says, pulling gently but firmly out of Dean's grip. "And I was intoxicated as well."

He slips off the bed, and Dean rolls onto his side to watch him walk towards a suitcase lying open on top of the desk, ink moving over his muscles like water. From the small of his back, the tiger snarls at Dean.

"We should get cleaned up," the man says, pulling jeans and a tee shirt out. "And start looking for alternate flights."

Dean reaches over and grabs the hotel alarm clock on the nightstand, bringing it up to his face and squinting until the numbers come into focus. "Shit."

"I'll be quick," Castiel promises, and disappears into the bathroom.

Dean slowly sets the clock aside, staring at the closed door. "I didn't mean…" he says to the room, to the warm sunlight and the messy sheets and his cock, still lying thick and expectant against his thigh.

"I didn’t mean it like that," he says. "Damn it."

He lies back across the mattress, arm thrown over his eyes as he sighs. After a moment, he lifts his hand to look at the ring again. It really is a cheap piece of shit, already nicked on one side, and he reaches up and twists it uncertainly around his finger. 

He should get up, get back to his own hotel room. It'll be check-out time soon, and he has work tomorrow— if he doesn't catch a flight soon, he'll touch down in Boston just a couple of hours before he has to be at the office, and that always sucks.

Castiel-from-accounting and he will sort this out. This is Las Vegas, for crying out loud, there's bound to be a quick and easy way to annul marriages. Hell, the front desk probably has pamphlets. He should just leave the ring here and go.

Nodding to himself, Dean tugs at the ring, gets it up to his first knuckle… and stops, thumb stroking over the minutely grooved surface of the edge.

The shower door opens outward and Castiel turns to face Dean, blinking under the spray.

"I figure, why waste water when we can share," he says offhandedly, and backs Castiel up against the tiles with a leer and a deep kiss, filthy as he can make it, hands coming up to frame Castiel's face as he swallows the man’s surprised moan.

"Why indeed," Castiel says dazedly when they separate, and lets out a startled, delighted laugh when Dean ducks his head and bites teasingly at the wet skin of his shoulder, roses winding through the feathers of the wing that's inked there.

They miss checkout. They nearly miss dinner, and even then it’s only when his stomach gives an angry, inopportune growl that Dean realizes how late it’s gotten.

“It’s nearly six, shut up,” he protests breathlessly as Castiel muffles his laughter in the damp skin at the crook of Dean's thigh. “And don’t stop, c’mon, Cas—”

They’re downstairs twenty minutes later, and the girls at the concierge desk give them knowing smiles. The one taking their keycards says, “Can I call the newlyweds a cab?”

“I think we need some dinner first,” Dean says, and while she lists places within walking distance Castiel wanders over from where he’s been examining a potted palm and leans into Dean, warm in the artificial chill of the hotel lobby. Dean tries not to enjoy the way he fits against his side, and to resist the urge to sneak an arm around his waist and pull him closer. When he fails on both counts, it’s easy enough to rationalize— they just spent the entire day in bed; who wouldn’t be a little clingy?

Normally, Dean. But when the girl gives him a coy smirk and says, “And the hotel has a honeymoon supper special, if you’re interested,” he squeezes Cas a little tighter and tells her that they are.

There’s a dim corner and candlelight, steak and lobster and champagne, and Castiel sitting on the same side of the table so he can feed Dean small forkfuls off his plate. Dean’s head feels like it’s full of the same bubbly sweetness that fills their glasses and it crowds out everything else, the worries and the knowledge that this is a temporary indulgence. Just until they get back home and can file the papers.

And if he’s only going to be married for a few days, why not champagne? Why not kiss Castiel over tiramisu and coffee, why not hold hands in the taxi to the airport, why not make a point of announcing that his husband has a bag to check and flashing his cheap ring at the sour-faced airline employee? 

The flight they’ve switched to is a redeye, and their seats are next to each other in one of the furthest-back rows. Castiel lays his hand over Dean’s white-knuckled grip on the armrest and doesn’t say anything, even as the plane shakes its way airborn and Dean struggles not to hyperventilate most of the way into the stratosphere.

“Sorry,” he mutters when they’ve leveled out, but Castiel doesn’t respond; somehow, through the noise of the engines and Dean’s almost-panic attack, he’s managed to fall asleep, head dropping to rest on Dean’s shoulder. The flight attendant brings a blanket without being asked and Dean tucks it around him, smiling when it provokes a grumble and more determined burrowing into Dean’s neck.

The woman in the aisle seat looks like she’s watching a Hallmark commercial live, and when he accidentally catches her eye Dean ducks his head in embarrassment, turning to the window and the far-off constellations of highways and cities below. It’s just a blanket, he wants to tell her. Jesus.

They stagger into the deathly-quiet terminal at three in the morning Boston time, Dean gritty-eyed and surly, Castiel with a sleepy scowl and dragging feet as he plods after Dean into the main body of the airport.

"I'll walk you to your car," Dean says, looking over his shoulder.

"I took the bus," Castiel mumbles. “You can walk me to the depot, if you like.”

“Or I could drive you home,” Dean offers. “You look like you’d fall asleep and end up in Tallahassee.”

“New York,” Castiel admits. “And only the once.”

Dean chuckles, tugging him along by their still-tangled fingers. “Yeah, I’m driving you. This way.”

Castiel tries to crawl into the backseat of the Impala with their luggage, eyes barely open, and Dean reels him back with a handful of ass-ugly trenchcoat. “Whoa there, sleepyhead. I’m going to need directions.”

“Nngh.”

“C’mon, Cas,” he coaxes, pulling him towards the front seat. “You can sleep soon, I promise. Address first.”

The street name Castiel yawns out isn’t one Dean recognizes, but then he says, “Salem Turnpike,” and that at least Dean can follow.

They head north on empty city streets and pass out of Boston, neat rows of suburbia rolling past the open windows. Then forest. Then more suburbs.

“Castiel? We got a turnoff anytime soon?”

“Mmhm,” Castiel says, head on the door. The breeze they make as they cruise down the road is ruffling his hair into new and interesting shapes. Dean wants to smooth it with his fingers.

“At least take a look,” Dean says, tapping his knee instead. “We’re almost in Salem.”

“’S past Salem.”

“How far past?”

Castiel’s eyes blink open at that. “… Manchester Bay?” he says, contrite.

Dean rolls to a stop at a red light, staring at him. “That’s quite the commute.”

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says, yawning again. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s fine,” Dean says, shaking his head. “Not like I was going to get much sleep as it is.”

“You should stay over,” Castiel says determinedly. “I can lend you a shirt.”

Dean imagines it, and snorts. “Not sure that will work.”

“I’ll iron one you have, then. You’ll get to sleep, at least for a few hours,” Castiel says. “I’ll make breakfast.”

“You had me at sleep,” Dean says, because a reasonably-cushioned flat surface is rapidly becoming the only thing he wants from life. “No need for the hard sell.”

“Excellent,” Castiel says, settling back, “as I haven’t gone grocery shopping in three weeks and I doubt there’s anything edible in the entire house.”

It surprises a sputter of laughter from him and Castiel smiles, quick and furtive, as if that was what he’d been aiming for.

It’s twenty more minutes of easy silence before Castiel touches his arm and says, “There, on the right,” and Dean turns the car onto a narrow private drive, trees and underbrush crowding in close to the asphalt. Massive oaks and chestnut trees arch over the road on both sides, creating a tunnel of green his headlights can’t penetrate.

“Another right," Castiel says, and Dean obediently follows the curve of the road as it rises.

"Hey," Dean says, struck by a sudden thought. "Are we anywhere near the—?"

They break out of the trees for a scant second and the ocean is suddenly there, crashing against the base of the rocky cliff the road runs parallel to. The moon gleams above the dark water, gilding the tips of the waves as they crest.  

"Whoa," Dean says as the trees swallow them again.

"There," Castiel points. "Turn there."

Dean slows, searching the shoulder for a curb. "Where?"

"Here." Castiel leans into him craning to look out the driver's-side window. "Right here, turn—"

The gravel drive is almost invisible, undergrowth choking out the stones, and Dean turns the Impala onto what looks more like a goat track than anything his baby should be setting wheels to. “Are you sure?”

Castiel gives him a patient look. “Yes, Dean. I’m sure.”

The gravel winds its way through the trees, and Dean follows it, creeping along through the tall grass until suddenly, he sees it.

"Cas— you live here?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

Castiel frowns at him. "Yes?"

Dean stares out the windshield. "Jesus fucking Christ."

His first impression is big, followed by huge and then fucking enormous. Once, in bygone days, the house might have been the summer home of some Rockefeller-type tycoon, a robber baron who'd made big money in steel or timber and had bags of it to throw away on palatial 'cottages' on the cliffs above the beach. They dot the coast north and south of Boston, as common as shells and seagulls.

Now it sprawls through overgrown gardens, stone stained and cedar-plank siding gone patchy and weathered to a soft silver-grey, the white paint on the trim faded and flaking. He can see that it sits right at the edge of the treeline and hill, dark rock, sand and seagrass sloping all the way down to the beach below.

Two wings of the house and a crumbling gate flank a paved courtyard, and Dean rolls through the rusted wrought-iron to come to a stop in the center of the flagstones, still staring.

"Cas… this place must be worth millions."

Castiel shrugs, pulling off his seatbelt. "It might be. I inherited it."

"You—?"

But Castiel's already out of the car, and Dean shakes his head and follows him, turning off the engine and opening his door.

The headlines turn off but if anything, the night seems brighter. Dean follows Castiel to the broad stone steps leading to the front door, a small gust across the courtyard bringing the salty tang of the sea and the sound of the waves. Castiel fits his key into the lock, shoves the door open with his shoulder and reaches back for Dean's hand before stepping into the darkness.

When he shuts the door behind him, Dean can’t see more than vague shapes in the gloom, but Castiel squeezes his fingers and leads him unerringly around indistinct shapes that might be boxes and might be furniture, pulling him deeper and deeper into the house.

“I could sleep on the couch,” Dean offers, even as Castiel draws him past rooms, through doorways and down a long hallway to stairs that coil like a nautilus shell.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Castiel says, and he pushes open the doors at the top to reveal a two-story room, ceiling soaring to a point and the walls all finely-paned window. A giant unmade bed sits on the floor in the middle of it, and moonlight gives the sheets the lustre of a pearl. Castiel sheds clothes as he goes, and he’s down to dark briefs and socks when he crawls onto the mattress, pulling the sheets up with him.

Dean slowly toes off his shoes. “I’ll just— climb in there with you then?”

“Dean,” Castiel says crossly. There's something unworldly, otherworldly about him, about the way he looks at Dean while the moonlight pours over his shoulders.

“Alright already.” Dean draws off his shirt and leaves it and his pants draped over a chair, and Castiel reaches up and tugs him into the mess of pillows and blankets. He shifts and wriggles in the sheets until they’re both cozily ensconced in the center.

“I feel like I’m in a giant bird’s nest,” Dean tells the top of his head. The moon outside looks like it’s melting down the thick warped glass. "Or a bear’s den."

“Mmhm," Castiel sighs. "Go to sleep."

"Really—"

"Sleep." Castiel's fingers find his mouth, trace out his lips a moment before Castiel's mouth finds his again, a kiss that's brief and somehow chastising.

Dean mutters, "Yes, dear," and sleeps.

Chapter Text

Dean wakes up feeling groggy and half-dead— unsurprising, as he’s probably managed three hours of sleep at the most— and rolls over onto his side in a cool, empty bed. The sheets are soft and smell like mint and camphor, and it’s very tempting to ignore his internal clock and the weak sunlight and close his eyes again.

He hears a muffled thump from just beyond the cracked bedroom door, followed by a gasp and the clatter of something falling down what sounds like every single step of the spiral staircase.

“Cas?” he croaks.

The door is nudged open and Castiel appears, balancing a tray on one hand and holding a mug of something steaming in the other.  Dean slowly sits up, braced on his elbows, and a smile spreads across his face as Castiel wobbles forward with a determined expression, almost tripping over the clothing he’d left on the floor before setting the tray on the sheets next to Dean.

"I did promise breakfast," he says, almost shyly.

‘Breakfast’ is a tower of slightly burnt toast smothered with red jam and splotches of butter, a few late-season peaches rounding out the plate. Castiel climbs onto the bed and solemnly presents the mug to Dean, about two thirds-full of black, tar-thick coffee that sloshes over the lip to drip on the sheets.

"I spilled some on my way up," he confesses. "And I dropped the silverware."

"Hey, it's toast," Dean says, taking the coffee. "No silverware necessary."

"And I should have brought napkins," Castiel frets.

Dean picks up a piece of toast, holding it like a New York-style pizza slice. “I’ve got no problem licking my fingers clean,” he says, just as a glob of jam drops onto his stomach. “Crap.”

“You might have trouble reaching that,” Castiel observes, and bends down to lap it off Dean’s skin with a matter-of-factness that has Dean snorting, even as he's squirming to get away from the sensation.

The toast is messy but the peaches are even messier, overripe and gushing. Dean ends up getting the juice all over his hands and chin, dripping down his forearms and onto his chest. "Oops," he says ingenuously, giving Castiel raised eyebrows.

Castiel's eyes twinkle, and he licks and laves and sucks until Dean drags his head up by the hair . Christ, that mouth.

“We’re going to be late,” Castiel says, smile turning smug as he’s borne down into the mattress by Dean's weight.

Dean licks the last of the juice from his lips and grins. "I think I can make it quick."

----- Original Message -----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2013 08:40 AM
Subject: Still alive?

Hey, bro, haven’t heard from you in a while. Drop me a line when you get a chance, okay?

Sam

-

Sam Winchester
JD Candidate 2014
School of Law, Stanford University
[email protected]

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 06:47 PM
Subject: Re: Still alive?

You never call, you never write… makes a man wonder if the natives finally killed you for being a Yankees fan.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 09:53 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Still alive?

Jesus, Bobby, don’t send that to my company email! What if they find out?

Sorry, guys. I’m alive, I’m just really busy. Life’s been crazy— literally crazy, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

I’ll call soon, okay?

-DW

Dean Winchester
Creative Director, Talbot Partners
46 Waltham Street 4th Floor
Boston MA 02118
p 617 555 5400
f 617 555 5499

Being a Yankees fan in Boston is the least of Dean’s problems, currently.

On the way into work, Dean's focus is on weaving in and out of the utterly insane snarl of traffic between them and the office, but out of the corner of his eye he thinks he catches Castiel watching him once or twice. Whenever he turns his head, though, the man’s eyes are firmly on the tortoiseshell buttons of his coat.

Well, it was a nice twenty-four hours, Dean thinks a little wistfully. Longer than he’s had with some. Maybe after they sort out this divorce thing, he and Cas can grab a beer some time like normal people.

When they’re coming up from the underground parking garage, though, Castiel abruptly turns, hooks two fingers under Dean's collar and lays a kiss on him that makes the elevator fucking spin.

"Thanks for the lift into work," Castiel says breathlessly, drawing back an inch.

"Uh huh," Dean says dazedly, swaying forward.

Castiel smiles and tilts his head up, but their lips have barely brushed before the doors open and he slips away, Dean’s ring glinting on his finger as his hand trails the length of Dean's tie. He throws Dean a look over his shoulder that has Dean ready to climb out after him, maybe find the nearest men's room and see if that mouth feels half as good as he remembers somewhere else.

"Goodbye, Dean," Castiel says, voice pitched to smolder, and the doors close in Dean's face.

Dean spends the rest of the ride up to the fourth floor grinning at his reflection like an idiot. He has to school his face quickly when he steps into the creative offices, because Benny’s head whips up like a hound scenting blood and there’s a distinctly wolfish gleam in his eye.

“I am wounded,” the man announces, shifting over in his chair to lean heavily on the edge of Dean's desk. Their workstations abut each other, which gives them more room to spread copy and color tests, but has also led to a truly staggering number of hours lost to turf wars and paper football championships.

Dean ignores him, and Benny leans in closer. “I just can't believe you'd get hitched without me. I thought we’d agreed that if I wasn’t your bride, I’d at least be your second best man after Sam,” he says with a sad headshake.

“Oh, fuck off,” Dean says resignedly, stomping behind his desk and knocking the man’s elbows out from under him with his briefcase. He’s somehow not surprised that Benny knows, since drinking with him is one of the last clear memories Dean has of Saturday night. “And keep it down, will you?”

Benny slips but catches himself, and goes right back his sad sighing and woeful stare. “Too late for that, brother. You should ask Ms. Moseley to renew your vows sometime soon. The cafeteria would be a nice venue. We could invite the whole company.”

“I don’t do weddings, funerals or birthday parties,” their office manager says from a few desks over.

“Maybe Vicky can, then,” Benny says, thumb jabbed over his shoulder.

“And maybe I can kick your ass instead,” Victor says mildly, without looking away from his monitor. "Congratulations, Mrs. Castiel Milton. You can thank Becky down in reception for broadcasting your big news to everyone in the building.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dean says, feeling a sudden cold seep of terror. Benny grins, the bastard, and points to his screen.

Dean scoots around his desk to read the text of the email Benny has up, which is just the agency’s daily briefing on appointments and absences. But sitting in the notices section, framed by bolded text and wreathed in extraneous exclamation marks, is—

“Oh my God,” Dean says, horrified.

“I think it’s a cute photo,” Victor says maliciously. “I had no idea you were such an Elvis fan. Or where you even found leis that color.”

“Oh my God,” Dean moans, a little louder. “I’m moving to Anchorage. I’m moving to Nome.”

“Not without your husband of one day, I hope,” Benny says. “Is the spark already gone, mon cher?”

“There was no sp—”Dean cuts himself off, because of course there's a spark, he can still feel it burning a hole in his gut whenever he thinks about Castiel too long. “He’s not really my husband, we’ve just got to file the papers!”

“Tragic,” Victor says, utterly deadpan. “What will you tell the excitable Ms. Rosen? Or the thirty dumb fucks who just hit 'reply all', Christ.”

“Oh God, no,” Dean groans into his hands. "No, no—"

“Dean!” someone shouts gleefully from the door, and Charlie sprints into the room on kitten heels and flings herself at him. “Oh my God, that’s so cool! I had no idea! Did you have a bachelorette party? You have to have a party, Dean!” she says, hopping in place with her arms around his shoulders.

“Not a bachelorette,” Dean manages through her vise-like grip. In unison, Victor and Benny snort, then glare at each other.

It only gets worse from there.

People keep coming up and congratulating him, some just to engage in good-natured ribbing but others surprisingly, guilty squirm-inducingly sincere about it. Dean likes people, and most people like Dean, and even in a firm as large as Talbot Partners it shows. He barely makes any headway on his work in the morning, because every five minutes there’s another coworker 'just dropping in!' to offer their warm wishes.

Dean wants to explain, but there’s nothing he can do at this point. He can’t tell a person like freaking Naomi, who’s been the fire-breathing dragon that guards the gates to the partners' offices for longer than Dean's been alive, that he married Castiel when he was piss-drunk and plans to dissolve the union as soon as possible— especially when she graces him with a rare, rare smile and a gruff, "Good for you two.”

Dean nods stiffly and waits, petrified, until she leaves and then quickly stands, making for his door. "I'm going to get some fresh air," he says hurriedly over his shoulder. "Or coffee. Maybe some cyanide pills—"

He turns, and bumps straight into Anna, who has her arms folded akimbo and her head angled in a way that promises violence.

"Coffee, what a good idea," she says sweetly. “Why don’t you treat me.”

Oh, crap, on top of everything else. Dean tries frantically to think of what he might have done to provoke the ghost of girlfriends past, and comes up completely blank.

"Uh, sure," he says, aware of Benny and Victor's interested stares. "Let me just— I'll get my wallet."

They go to the café on the first floor, some kind of swanky Starbucks knockoff with tiny tables and tinier chairs. Anna orders some variety of frothy mocha-latte-ccino, and Dean graciously pays for it and his more modest, “Uh, coffee. Just coffee. Thanks.”

They find a corner table and sit, and Anna watches Dean stir in his sugar like she’s debating where best to hide his body. The little shredded pieces of his body, maybe; he wouldn’t put it past her to have plotted his bloody murder down to the tiniest detail. Accounts planners. Can’t trust them.

“Married in Vegas,” she muses finally, and Dean twitches. “I can certainly picture you doing it, but it seems so out of character for Castiel that I didn’t believe it until he told me it was true.”

“You... know Cas?” It’s a horrifying thought.

“Not as well as I thought I did, obviously,” she says, an amused curl to her lips. “He’s my brother.”

“Your—”  Dean stares at her in horror. Castiel Milton. Anna Milton. Oh, Jesus. “Your brother?”

“Yes,” she says. “The only brother I still speak to, actually. So imagine my surprise and delight when I opened up my email this morning and saw his after-the-fact announcement.” She takes a slow, steady sip of mocha, eyeing Dean. “I’m going to assume that this is all your fault, since I find it very difficult to believe he was the one who propositioned you.”

“He, uh, says I did,” Dean mutters, glancing towards the exits. “I don’t really remember.”

“Surprise!” Anna says dryly. “And as someone intimately familiar with your brand of love ‘em and leave ‘em, I feel I can say with reasonable certainty that you have no intention of staying married. Right?”

“Uh,” Dean says, caught. “Well. No.”

“Oh, well. Too bad,” she sighs, sitting back. “He’s getting to that spinster age, and I want nieces and nephews to spoil.” She takes a noisy slurp from her cup, getting whipped cream on her upper lip in the process.

“Really?”

Anna glares. “No. I think we can both agree that the sooner he gets rid of you, the better. Just... promise me you’ll be careful about it.”

Dean frowns at her. “Careful?”

“Of Castiel. He’s very… ” She stares into the middle distance as she searches for the exact words. “He tends to take things to heart, and he has this— this desperate aversion to upsetting people. He told me it was his choice, but if I find out you somehow took advantage of him—”

“He’s a grown man, Anna,” Dean says, aggrieved. “It’s not like we had this big romantic courtship and I promised him the stars or something. We got drunk, probably messed around a little, and then for some god-awful reason decided to get married by a Hawaiian Elvis,” he says with a shudder. He still hasn’t figured that part out. “He’ll be fine.”

Anna smiles ruefully down at her mocha. “Don’t take it the wrong way, Dean. As a big sister I’m contractually obligated to threaten you. What if some sleazy bastard you’d picked up at a party once tricked Sam into marrying them, hmm?”

Dean would find them and gut them, but that’s irrelevant. “I’m not sleazy! And I didn’t trick him.”

“You said you don’t remember,” she points out, but her small grin says she’s just playing with him now.

“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not like that,” Dean says. “If he didn’t want to get married to me, he could have just said so.”

“Yes,” Anna says, a thoughtful look in her eye. “Yes, I suppose he could have.”

The conversation leaves him uneasy for reasons he can’t quite pin down, so Dean throws himself into the afternoon’s client meetings with grateful abandon. There are always proposals to run and cold calls to make, and he takes the ones that send him halfway across town just to get away from the building, where a slowly rising tide of hastily-signed cards, cheap flower arrangements and even a set of casserole dishes from some over-prepared busybody is incrementally taking over his desk. If one more well-wisher comments on what a cute couple they make, Dean just might deck them, and he doesn’t need that on his annual performance review.

Dean genuinely loves his job, and loves it best on days like this, when he can roll down the Impala’s windows and just cruise through the narrow winding streets of downtown on his way to the next meeting. The cool breeze smells like rain and wet concrete and a few stray drops hit his windshield, but Dean is safely inside when it begins to rain in earnest, looking over a campaign for a small cupcake chain struggling to get a foothold in the already-glutted market for bakeries in Southie.  

Talbot Partners has big-name clients on both coasts, companies that shell out millions of dollars every year for everything from billboards to magazine spreads, and Dean can’t say he hates the billables they generate but he likes this more— talking to the owner of a business one on one, really seeing a company’s soul so that he can bring it to the drawing table. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the owners in questions, at least on this job, are two button-cute grandmothers and that they insist on feeding him during every consultation.

The grannies and their cupcakes are doing a great job of keeping his mind off of things when it suddenly occurs to him, about halfway through the most deliciously-frosted thing he’s ever put in his mouth, that Castiel doesn’t have a ride home.

Then it doesn’t stop occurring to him, throughout the rest of the meeting, walking to his car, hitting every fucking stoplight until he smacks the wheel and sighs, “Damn it.”

It’s just polite, right? He can’t leave the guy stranded at the office.

And his apartment in Charlestown is just a few blocks away. If he hurries, he can grab a suit and tie for tomorrow.

The firm’s accounting department takes much longer to locate than he expected. After wandering up and down the first floor hallway for a few minutes, he finds it housed in an unmarked suite, a long, windowless room filled with rows of cubicles taller than Dean is. They block his view of the corners and give the impression of beige fabric walls extending into infinity. There’s a quiet, directionless hum of soft voices and muffled footsteps, and the clatter of keyboards is easily the loudest thing in the room.

Dean edges uncertainly through the door, coming up to the empty reception desk and scanning the vicinity for someone to approach. He’d kind of hoped Castiel would be front and center, or at least immediately visible, so he could just grab him and go. What few people he can see are deep in focus on their respective monitors. A woman bustles past Dean holding a ream of paper, and doesn’t even seem to hear his, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

He steps directly into the path of the next person, and the man nearly runs into him, blinking rapidly as he’s forced to stop short. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you lost? Payroll is across the hall—”

“I’m looking for Castiel Milton,” Dean says.

The man looks even more nonplussed. “Why?”

Dean stares at him disbelievingly. “Does it matter?”

“Well, I can’t just interrupt him,” the man blusters. “Do you have an appointment?”

Dean waves at the unoccupied reception desk. The plant on the corner is a dry, desiccated husk and the blank nameplate hasn’t been dusted in months, if not years. “Exactly who would I be making an appointment with, huh?”

“Inias,” someone hisses, and a boy in the worst-fitting suitjacket Dean has ever seen appears at the man’s side. “Inias, that’s him.”

The man—presumably Inias— looks down at him. “Who?”

“Hello, Mr. Winchester,” the boy says nervously, standing up very straight. Everything about him screams ‘intern!’, from the suit two sizes too big to the gel cementing his hair into a smarmy sidesweep, circa the fifties. “Mr. Milton’s desk is this way, if you’ll follow me?” His voice cracks on the last word.

“Thank you,” Dean says, exasperated, and he follows the boy into the rows of cubicles.

Castiel is in a far-flung corner of the room in an actual office, glare from the fluorescent lights tempered by the butter-toned glow of a lamp on his desk. He’s surrounded on all sides by unstable-looking piles of paper and folders, frowning intently at a stack of Excel spreadsheets with a paper coffee cup halfway to his lips, like he’d forgotten about it mid-sip.

“Sir,” the boy says, and Castiel glances up, eyes narrowing in that already-familiar squint of confusion.

“Yes, Alfie?”

Dean leans around the boy and lifts a hand. “Hey.”

Castiel drops his coffee.

“Oh, God— bless it,” he says, the front of his shirt and his pants soaked, milky liquid dripping down his tie and onto the floor. He pulls the material away from his chest and looks up with a resigned expression. “Hello, Dean.”

Alfie yelps, “I’ll get some paper towels from the break room!” and runs off. Dean is acutely aware of the half-dozen heads popping out of the cubicles around them, and the growing susurrus of whispers.

“Sorry, is it hot?” Dean tries, reaching out.

“No, just mortifying,” Castiel mutters, grimacing as he pushes back from his desk and stands. “Did you... need to talk to me?”

“Well,” Dean says awkwardly. “It’s getting close to quitting time.”

“Uh— yes?” Castiel looks at the clock on the wall and back. “Yes,” he confirms.

Dean puts a hand on the back of his neck at looks down at the carpet, the ugliest maroon needlefelt he’s ever laid eyes on.  “I thought, since I gave you a ride in, and I don’t know how you usually get home…”

“Oh,” Castiel says, still staring at him. “Oh!”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean says gruffly.

“I usually just take the T, and a bus,” Castiel says.

“Okay,” Dean says, feeling ridiculous. “Sorry, then, I’ll just—”

“But I wouldn’t mind a ride,” the man rushes to add. And then, like a gavel or a guillotine, his gaze falls to the small, fussy box in Dean’s hand, tied with a pretty pink bow because the grannies had insisted.

“And I, um. Brought you a cupcake,” Dean says offhandedly, like he can’t feel his face turning the same color as the fuck-ugly carpet. Son of a bitch. “From a client.”

“Oh,” Castiel says again, in a completely different tone, and when Dean looks up he’s starting to smile.

Alfie chooses this moment to come running back with the paper towels, followed closely by Inias and two others. Castiel, still dripping all over the carpet, looks alarmed.

“Balthazar, Hester, there’s really no need—”

“You’re real,” the woman, presumably Hester, says. It takes Dean a second to realize she’s talking to him.

“Last time I checked, yeah,” he says cautiously. “Why?”

Balthazar nudges her in the ribs and holds out a hand. “Pay up.”

“No, wait,” she tells him, still looking at Dean. “You actually married him? This man here? Of your own free will?” she says, pointing at Castiel, who’s glaring hotly at everyone as he mops himself up.

Dean holds up his left hand in mute response.

“Pay up,” Balthazar crows.

“We thought perhaps Ms. Rosen had photoshopped your face into the picture,” Inias confides, looking much happier now that Dean’s identity has been confirmed.

“You’re even more delectable than Castiel insisted you were,” Balthazar chimes in.

At that, Castiel’s head whips up and he pins the man with a hard stare. “I hardly think that’s pertinent information,” he snaps, but the damage is done.

Dean leans against the office wall and grins. "You were talking about me?"

"We should leave before rush hour," Castiel announces loudly, and he grabs his coat, a briefcase and a handful of Dean's sleeve before barreling through the assembling crowd.

"Your ass is even nicer in person, too!" Balthazar calls after them, and Castiel makes an inarticulate noise of rage and walks even faster.

“So, the accounting department knows too,” Dean says when they're in the hallway, half-jogging to keep pace with Castiel's quick steps.

“The daily briefing is interdepartmental, yes,” Castiel says, hardly slowing to shrug his coat on. It hangs off of his lean frame like so much sailing canvas, baggy and shapeless. “There was general consensus that no one as attractive as you would possibly deign to sleep with me, let alone endure the Wedding March played on a ukulele.”

Dean sputters out a laugh. “You’re kidding.”

Castiel gives him a flat stare.

“You’re not kidding. That actually happened?”

“You are the one who picked the venue,” Castiel says waspishly, jabbing fiercely at the elevator buttons.

"Hey," Dean tries as the doors slide open and they step inside. "Hey, come on." He pulls Castiel around to face him, squeezing Castiel's shoulders. "I hate to break it to you, but you’re pretty 'delectable', too. For an accountant.”

“Assistant Controller of Finance,” Castiel says irritably. “And yes, I know. They seemed to think my personality would be the issue.”

Dean laughs again. “Well, I kinda like that, too,” he says.

It comes out unintentionally soft and confessional in the quiet of the elevator, and Dean feels a little uncomfortable until Castiel sighs, deflating under his hands. "I'm sorry," the man says.

"For what?"

"For them," he says. "For that picture. I have no idea how the receptionist found it. I know you didn't want—"

"Hey, it's fine," Dean says. The elevator doors open and they step out into the warmer, muggier air of the parking garage. "It's not your fault. If anything, it's mine." Fucking ukuleles. Jesus Christ.

“The paperwork is fairly simple,” Castiel says abruptly. “We’ll have to get a copy of our marriage license from the state of Nevada, which may take a week or two.”

“For—? Oh,” Dean says quietly. “Right.”

They walk in subdued silence to the Impala, where Dean's forgotten the cassette he left playing until Led Zeppelin comes screaming out of the speakers. Castiel, frozen in the middle of pulling on his seatbelt, stares owl-eyed until Dean cranks it down.

"What was that?" he asks.

Dean looks at him in surprise, fingers hesitating on the dial. "What? Never heard it before?"

Castiel is still giving the speakers a suspicious stare. "Not that I'm aware."

"Then, Cas, allow me to introduce 'Black Dog," Dean says, and cranks it right back up.

The house shows its age more obviously in the evening half-light, whole sections of cedar siding missing on the windward corners, brick and stone crumbling under the grasping tendrils of ivy. Dean would honestly think the lot was abandoned if he hadn’t just spent the night there.

They get there a little after six and Dean walks Castiel to the door, where a small calico cat is waiting just to the side of an empty planter.

"Oh, you're back," Castiel says to it, and immediately stoops and picks the cat up. It blinks lazily at Dean as Castiel fumbles one-handed with his keys.

"You have a cat?"

"Sometimes, yes," Castiel answers distractedly, and bodily slams the door open on a long, drawn-out shriek of the hinges. Jesus, first thing on Dean's list is oil for the damn things—

Castiel steps inside and turns, standing across the threshold from Dean. Dean, caught by surprise, stops short.

“Well,” Castiel says bracingly. “Thank you for taking me home.”

“Oh. It was nothing,” Dean says, left flat-footed.

They stare at each other, and it gives Dean the sudden feeling like these past two days have been one long marathon date and they're both debating whether it rates a goodnight kiss.

Dean glances out into the yard. The shadows under the trees have the chill of deep water, twilight on the tipping edge of true night.

“It’s getting late,” he says.

“Yes,” Castiel agrees, cat draped bonelessly over his shoulder.

Dean clears his throat, studying the rough stone at his feet. “I’m pretty wiped. I’d hate to hit a deer or something on my way back.”

Castiel nods, slowly. “It would be a pity.”

“And there's all that leftover toast in the fridge,” Dean says, looking up through his lashes. It's a good angle for him, and he knows it.

“Would you like to take some home?” Castiel asks solicitously, and Dean sighs.

“I was actually thinking that you could invite me in, I could cook you a real dinner and we could have sex all over your giant bed again,” he says, looking directly into Castiel’s face.

“Oh,” Castiel says, tongue sliding out to wet his lower lip. "Yes, that— that sounds acceptable."

Dean steps up, and Castiel steps back, and Dean pulls the door closed behind them.

Chapter Text

They never make it to the bed, and it's mostly Dean's fault. There's something about Castiel's baffled irritation with his own kitchen appliances, his resolute dedication to the tasks Dean sets him anyway ("You realize the oven's not even on, right?"), Castiel glaring at the stove, Castiel smiling at Dean, that makes it hard to keep his hands to himself. When they settle down to eat in an adjoining room with an ancient television, Cas somehow gets a smear of pasta sauce up one cheek all the way to his hairline and Dean just stops trying.

"What?" Castiel asks as he gets crowded into the couch armrest, still holding his half-finished plate. “What did I say?”

"Shut up," Dean mutters, grabbing the pasta and setting it on the floor before taking Castiel's face in his hands.

Making out on the couch turns into sex on the couch, a burnt-orange corduroy monstrosity that Dean would have ribbed Castiel mercilessly for owning if he wasn’t so busy clutching at the cushions and babbling, “Yeah, like that, fucking amazing,” while Castiel rides him into delirium, a hand on the backrest for balance and the other splayed hot and firm over Dean’s stomach.

“Dean,” Castiel gasps, sweaty and flushed clear down to chest, shirt hanging off of one arm as he works himself against Dean’s dick, hips moving like an overheating piston. “Dean, Dean, is it good?”

Dean is almost incapable of speech at this point, but he manages, “So good, so fucking— Cas, I’m gonna—”

Later, Dean wakes up half-in, half-out of his clothes, sweat long since cooled except where his arms and legs are tangled with Castiel’s, the man’s breath coming warm and even against his forehead. The tacky mess on his stomach reminds Dean that he never did get up and get a towel like he meant to, and Dean laughs a little under his breath and presses a soft kiss to Castiel’s throat. When was the last time sex left him this brainless? Probably high school. Maybe not even then.

He gently pulls himself free of Castiel’s grasp, sliding down to kneel beside the couch, and Castiel makes a protesting noise and gropes after him.

“Shhh,” Dean whispers. “I’ll be right back. Gotta piss.”

“Mmph,” Castiel retorts, rolling into the warm spot Dean’s left behind.

The room is pitch-dark, save for the meager light from the windows that open onto the courtyard. The french doors rattle in a sudden wind, and the cold draft raises goosebumps across Dean’s bared chest. He hurriedly pulls down his shirt, feeling along the floor until he finds his pants and can pull those on too.

He goes in the direction he thinks the kitchen’s in, sliding a hand along the wall until he finds a doorway, then a switch. Dean steps into the room as the sconces flicker to life, and then stops, blinking in the still-dim silence.

He’s standing at the entrance to a whole suite of unused rooms, doors flung wide open between them. There are a few of the battered, brittle cardboard boxes that fill the rest of the house scattered here and there, but the rooms are mostly empty. Furniture sits draped in white cloth, and there are brighter voids on the walls where photographs or paintings might have hung. The ceilings soar, maybe fifteen feet at their highest points, and the windows facing the water rise from floor to criss-crossing beam.

Dean, curious and with a vague hope there’s a bathroom hiding somewhere in the tangle of hallways, steps forward into the middle of the first chamber and turns to slowly survey the space. The old maple flooring creaks and settles under him, wood ridged and rough from decades of neglect.

All the furniture, mostly dusty chairs and fussy endtables, is pushed up against one wall, leaving the room bare and open as a barn. There’s another draft coming down the chimney of an old, empty fireplace, interior darkly stained with soot. Taking the hallway to the right of it brings him into what might have been a smoking room in another century, which leads into a series of dustier and dustier hallways, dirty windows and stuck doors and no goddamn bathrooms, until the next switch he hits illuminates Castiel, standing in an open archway with sleepy eyes and bare feet.

“Jesus,” Dean starts, jumping back a little.

Castiel tilts his head. “Dean?”

“Sorry, I-- you just scared the crap out of me, that’s all,” Dean says, moving towards him. “I got turned around.”

“Ah.” Castiel nods. “Yes. I haven’t been in this part of the house in some time, but I remember it can be confusing.”

They turn off lights as they find them, Castiel reaching back for Dean’s hand and towing him down a few identical hallways until they emerge in the kitchen, through a doorway Dean hadn’t noticed before.

“This is a lot of real estate for one guy,” Dean observes, once they make it back to the ugly corduroy couch and the television, a late-night infomercial for exercise equipment playing quietly in the background.

“About sixty thousand square feet in all, I’m told,” Castiel says, and doesn’t seem to notice Dean’s eyes bugging out.

Dean finds the bathroom, and then they put away the leftover pasta, gone cold and congealed in the pot, and pile their plates next to the sink. Castiel takes the sponge out of Dean’s hand and says, “We’ll clean up later.”

“Later, when?” Dean asks, but doesn’t resist when Castiel pulls him away from the counter.

They crawl into bed and Castiel maneuvers Dean into the position he seems to prefer, head on Dean’s shoulder, limbs sprawled out over Dean’s chest and legs.

“It’s my turn to cook, next,” he says drowsily, and Dean, remembering the earlier Mexican standoff between Castiel, the broiler and the garlic bread, manfully doesn’t laugh.

Early Tuesday morning, however, Dean follows his nose down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Castiel is standing at the stove, prodding at something sizzling away in a pan. There are eggshells on the floor and flour everywhere, streaked through Castiel’s hair and smeared over his bare torso. At the small of his back, the tiger yawns.

Something about it feels dangerous, like he’s skirting the edge of someplace too deep to get out of again, but Dean can’t help stepping forward and sliding his arms around Castiel from behind, mumbling, “Good morning,” into the knob of his spine and the thin spidery branches tattooed there.

Castiel leans back into him, turning his head towards Dean’s for a languid kiss. “Good morning.”

Dean smiles and rests his chin on Castiel’s shoulder, glancing down into the pan.

“Holy God, what the hell is that?” he says, flinching back with his entire body and pulling Castiel with him.

“… pancakes?” Castiel ventures, spatula poised in midair.

“That is not a pancake, that is a charcoal briquette,” Dean says, and oh, Jesus, there’s a stack of the greasy flat things six inches high on a plate between the burners. “Give me the spatula. Now.”

Castiel relinquishes it with a scowl, and Dean uses it to point at one of the mismatched kitchen chairs. “Go. Sit.”

“I want to help,” the man protests.

Dean looks at the plate and shudders. “Oh, I think you’ve helped enough.”

He has to make the batter from scratch and start with a new pan, because there are bits soldered on to the old one and they won’t come off no matter what he does. Castiel refuses to be banished to the table and drags over chair to sit next to the stove, drinking coffee and sulking.

“I really appreciate the thought," Dean tries, sliding readily-identifiable-as-such pancakes onto a clean plate. "I do. I'm just trying to limit my carbon intake this month."

"Your editorializing is unnecessary," Castiel says irritably.

There's a reedy meow from near their feet, and the stray cat jumps onto Castiel's leg when he pats his lap, purr jagged like an old engine as he kneads behind her ears.

Dean leans back against the kitchen island, hands braced on the edge of the counter. "What’s its name? The cat, I mean."

“The cat doesn’t have a name,” Castiel says, smoothing her fur in long, slow strokes. “She’s a stray.”

“She’s wearing a collar,” Dean points out.

Castiel frowns down at her. “State law mandates that rabies vaccination tags must be visible on the animal at all times.”

“You got her vaccinated?”

“It’s illegal not to.”

"Yeah, if you own the cat," Dean says, and the stray reaches up to pat Castiel's chin and yowls, like she knows they're talking about her. Castiel looks down inquiringly, and the cat takes it as permission to begin grooming the rough stubble on his cheek.

"Like fun she's a stray," Dean mutters, turning back to flip his pancakes.

"Stop that," Castiel gently scolds her, obviously not listening. "No, stay off the—"

"Hey!" Dean says as a furry body eels around his arm, aiming straight for the steaming plate of pancakes. "No! Bad cat! Hot stove!"

There's a lot of swearing and grabbing and protesting meows, and the cat ends up on Dean's shoulders, having clawed her way there from his arms and apparently content to stay curled around his neck with her diesel-motor purr lodged right next to his ear.

"Goddamn cat," Dean groans, stooping awkwardly so she won't fall, and glances over at Castiel when he hears a choked noise.

A grin's broken wide over Castiel's face, visible even behind the hand he has over his mouth, and his eyes glint with suppressed laughter. Dean feels the cat's tail curl under his nose like a calico mustache and Castiel bursts out laughing, a sound of sweet and uncomplicated happiness.

Dean stares.

"Oh, my Lord," Castiel chuckles, hiding his eyes now, head bent and shoulders shaking. "Oh, I think she likes you, Dean."

"Uh," Dean starts, eyes dropping to the pan. He has to clear his throat because his heart isn't beating quite right and his voice comes out a little hoarse. "Sure. Yeah. Hey, these are almost ready, why don't you get out the syrup?"

"Syrup," Castiel says, like a kid at a spelling bee hearing a foreign word.

"You philistine," Dean says, appalled, and he lets exaggerated shock overwhelm the strange moment until his heartbeat settles and he can look Castiel in the eye again.

He must be out of his goddamn mind to be prolonging this, Dean decides emphatically on the drive into work. He should ask if Castiel’s actually sent for a copy of their marriage license yet, if there are any papers he needs on his side to end this.

“Have a good day at work,” he says instead. It comes out low and warm and oh God, what is he doing?

In the hallway outside accounting, Castiel reaches up to smooth Dean’s lapels and gives him a smile, the one that’s small and mostly in his eyes, private, like it’s meant only for Dean. “You as well.”

Dean doesn’t visit Castiel at the office that day. He doesn’t offer him a ride home. He goes back to his apartment, eats chunky beef stew from a can and sits on his couch watching baseball season highlights.

He feels jittery, fidgety. He'd gotten a smaller place after Sam stopped spending summers with him, but he hadn't realized how small the one bedroom and one bathroom could feel. Maybe he’ll go for a run.

He does five miles on the treadmill in his complex’s basement gym, sleeps horribly and wakes up feeling like something scraped out of the drain in the bathroom floor.

He doesn't see Castiel at work the next day, or the next, and he spends his conference calls and his afternoon meetings doodling the empty rooms of the house in the margins of his notes, sketching bookshelves and prints on the bare walls, calculating how many one-by-fours he'd need to fix the back deck and the rotted-out balustrades besides. He’ll need a lathe, but Bobby’s got one out in his workshop and if Dean went down one weekend—

“Oh, hell no,” he says out loud.

“I’m sorry, are we bothering you?” Victor says from the head of the table, holding up a logo swatch the color of rotting mushrooms.

“Uh, sorry,” Dean says meekly. “I thought we were going with the granny smith green?”

Victor’s eye twitches, and Benny smacks the table and says, “See? See?”

The rest of Thursday is spent sorting out the embittered battle of color schemes he’d inadvertently stumbled into. On Friday, the weekend stretching long and lonely in his mind’s eye, he finally caves.

He’d long since memorized Castiel’s entry in the company directory but now his fingers pause on the last key of his office number, hesitating. Email is probably safer, right? Less demanding. More casual.

----- Original Message -----
From:[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 2, 2013 12:43 AM
Subject: Lunch?

Hey, did you want to get lunch or something? There’s this new North Carolina BBQ foodtruck on 20th I’ve been meaning to try.

-DW

It’s an agonizingly long time before Castiel replies.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 2, 2013 01:01 PM
Subject: Re: Lunch?

I’ve never eaten at a foodtruck before.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 2, 2013 01:02 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Lunch?

Is that a yes?

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 2, 2013 01:07 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Lunch?

I might not have the time. I’ll call you.

Dean sits back in his chair, a little stunned. Was it the idea of foodtrucks? Cas hadn’t struck him as a food snob-- actually completely the opposite, but why, then? The barbeque?

“Dean, you still going on this call?” Benny asks, peering over his monitor.

“Call?” Dean says, still distracted and rereading the emails for any clues.

“The one thirty with Peterson in Newton?”

Dean freezes for a moment. “That’s today?”

“It’s your calendar I’m looking at, brother,” Benny says dryly, and Dean forgets about lunch entirely in the scramble to grab the sample boards and get out the door in time to make the appointment.

Peterson is a fussy old man with fussy old tastes, and it takes all of Dean’s powers of persuasion and most of the afternoon to steer him away from the stodgy layouts he’s been using since the seventies and towards something a little more modern and clean-cut. Dean staggers back into the office weary but victorious, at least until he runs into Missouri on her way out.

“The hubby dropped by,” she informs him, digging in her purse while they trade places in the elevator. “It’s too early to be standing your man up like that. He’s going to think you don’t care.”

“Crap,” Dean says, jogging for his desk. “Crap, crap—”

It’s a little after five and Dean lets his bag clatter onto his desk, digs around in his pocket to pull out his cell phone. Dead. A scan of his office phone shows three missed calls and one message, and Dean hurriedly lifts the receiver to dial Castiel’s number.

No answer, and Dean leaves three seconds of dead air on the answering machine before hanging up, unsure of what to say. He redials.

“Listen, Cas, I’m sorry about this afternoon. I was out at a meeting and my phone was dead. Maybe we can do something next week? On Monday?” Christ, desperate much, Winchester? “Whenever you’re free.” Oh God, that’s even worse. “I’ll just, uh. I’ll see you then.”

Feeling smooth as sandpaper and very sorry for himself, he gets in the car and, driving home, doesn’t notice he's missed his exit to get back to his apartment until he's already halfway down the Salem turnpike.

“Freudian, much?” he mutters to himself. He’ll just have to get off at the next one, turn around and go back.

He does take the exit, but he stops at a grocery store and spends half an hour throwing anything that looks good into a cart. At the Home Depot in the next strip mall over, he finds his way into the lumber yard and buys an armload of one-by-fours and cedar shingles.

When Castiel answers his door forty minutes later, looking surprised and a little wary, Dean presents them like an overlong bouquet.

“I got you something,” he says, trying to keep the nerves out of his voice.

“... thank you?” Castiel says hesitantly, peering up and down the long shafts.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls,” Dean goes on determinedly. “I forgot about a client meeting, and my work cell-- the battery ran down.”

“Yes, I thought it might be something like that,” Castiel says. “Dean--”

“I also brought groceries.”

“Groceries?”

Dean hefts the boards with a hopefully winning smile.  “I’ll make you hamburgers after you show me where I can put these.”

“Hamburgers?” Castiel asks, looking a little overwhelmed.

“As an apology,” Dean says. “I brought the boards to replace the broken ones out back. On the deck,” he adds when Castiel only stares blankly at him. “So... can I come in?”

Castiel says nothing for long enough that Dean starts to sweat, shifting uneasily where he stands.

“Do you really intend to fix my deck?” the man asks, finally.

“Well, yeah,” Dean says, surprised. “I’m no professional, but I’ve done it a bunch of times. This house is amazing, if you just spent a little time on it...”

“And you would do that? You’d—” Castiel seems to searching for words. “Spend time. On the house, I mean. With me,” he adds, as if clarifying.

“Yes,” Dean says instantly. “Whatever you need.”

Now Castiel looks honestly confused, as if he can’t fathom why Dean would offer such a thing, and Dean continues. “I can’t build you an entire extra wing, or do much in the yard beyond cutting grass. And I was never any good at hanging drywall. But I can do other things.”

“Like... make hamburgers?” Castiel says, a bemused smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Dean says, relieved. “All the hamburgers you want.”

“In that case, you can leave the wood anywhere you like,” Castiel says. “I’ll help you with the groceries.”

Dean laughs as he strides purposefully down the stairs, brushing past him on his way to the Impala. “Guess I know the way to your heart, then, huh?” he says.

Castiel throws him a look over his shoulder that Dean isn’t sure how to interpret, something a little exasperated and maybe rueful.

“I guess you do,” he says, and turns back to the car.

They’re in bed by ten, technically, but they spend another few hours with the house’s original plans spread out on the comforter and a stack of home design mags Castiel had squirrelled away somewhere, pages dog-eared and yellowed. Castiel’s reading glasses are perched low on his nose, and they’re probably the most ridiculously attractive thing Dean’s ever seen.

“I’ve always wanted bookshelves in that room,” Castiel says, pointing. His head is on Dean’s shoulder and there’s a plastic bag full of wood and carpet samples in his lap, apparently remnants of that nebulous time in the past when he’d thought of working on the house.

Dean dutifully writes it down in his notebook. “Freestanding? Or built in?”

“Built in, and above and below the window,” Castiel says. “Is it big enough to put in a window seat?”

Dean snorts. “We’d have to extend the wall in by a good two feet.”

“Let’s do that, then,” Castiel says firmly, and Dean laughs, turning his face into Castiel’s hair to kiss his temple.

God, he’s so fucked.

Chapter Text

From: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 08:53 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: SPAM: Re: Re: Still alive?

Okay, I know I said I'd call, and I swear I will— I'm just really busy right now with work and other things. We've got a few big project deadlines coming, and I just started helping one of my coworkers fix up his place. The guy has this gorgeous house, maybe a hundred years old and out by the coast, and it hasn't been worked on since the fifties or something. Crying shame. Dad would have loved to get his hands on it.

Speaking of busy, how's school? Your fall semester is starting soon, isn't it? Let me know how that’s going.

-DW

Castiel is a mystery.

He’s a mystery, wrapped in an accounting-controller-financer whatever, wrapped in a fuck-ugly trenchcoat candy coating, and somehow still so irresistible that Dean spends maybe a day or two a week in his own apartment, mostly after late client meetings and not at all if he can help it. It always feels like a punishment now, going home alone.

Castiel seems to exist independently of any family or real friends, Anna notwithstanding. His main hobbies appear to be watching the ocean, reading brick-thick novels in foreign languages and bringing work home to squint at on his bulky Gateway monitor, which must be closing in on a decade old.

Oh, and sex. Dean can personally testify that when Castiel isn’t working, there’s a fifty percent chance or greater that he’s wrapped around Dean, on their bed or across the couch or outside under the trees, tugging Dean down with him into the grass after he shows him the ruined gazebo that clings to the top of the rocky slope. When Dean darts furtive glances at their distant neighbors and says, “What, here?” Castiel snugs his calves behind Dean’s knees and growls, “Yes, now.”

He’ll disappear while Dean’s prying up rotten boards and pounding in new ones, and Dean will spot him hours later a hundred feet down the beach, crouched on the jagged rocks that frame their sandy cove. He brings Dean shells, sand-dollars, and on one memorable occasion a hermit crab barely bigger than his thumbnail. The crab gets a name-- Herman-- before he’s released to make his crabby way through life. The cat, which sleeps on their bed almost every night, remains nameless.

Objectively, Castiel should be boring.  His job is boring (though he insists it’s vital to the company’s continued existence), his clothes are awful and boring, his routines (save the sex) are incredibly boring.

But Cas is probably the most interesting person Dean’s ever met, and in his childhood Dean covered more ground than a travelling circus. The way Castiel sees things, the paradoxical combination of frightening insight and complete obliviousness that characterizes his view of people, his stubbornness, intelligence, the unselfconscious way he carries himself through life— it’s amazing, and baffling. Dean sometimes feels like even after all these weeks he barely has a grip on who exactly Castiel Milton is, this weird little dude who lives an enormous turn-of-the-century beach house that has to be worth millions and hasn’t replaced a single cedar shake, hasn’t painted, hasn’t even dusted from the depth of the cobwebs layered over the foyer’s chandelier.

"What do you mean, you've never been in the basement?" Dean says through a mouthful of Cheerios one morning.

Castiel, who Dean has quickly learned is never at his most amicable or mentally nimble before coffee, glares lethargically at him over the lip of his mug. "It's a cellar. They kept root vegetables in it."

"Still." Dean chews, swallows. "You've been in this place, what five years? And you've never been in the cellar?"

"The doors are chained shut," Castiel mumbles, slumping further in his seat.

“And you don’t have the key?”

Castiel glowers at him. "I have it. Somewhere."

'Somewhere' turns out to be in the ungodly mess that is Castiel's kitchen drawers, and Dean has to comb through every last extraneous letter opener and piece of scrap metal to find it.

“I’m making you a key rack,” Dean threatens.

“Oh?” Castiel says, looking more interested. “Can it be wrought iron?”

It’s cooler today, wind a little brisker, and the waves are energetic where they crash against the beach below. The stray cat is waiting for them on the east loggia, basking in the intermittent sunlight that makes it through the trees. She rolls onto her fat belly to watch them walk past, then casually saunters after them as they make their way across the overgrown grass and viburnum bushes just starting to pink around the edges.

“Key me,” Dean says, braced over the rusty chain and lock, and Castiel drops it into his waiting hand.

There’s a lot of jamming and swearing as the key incrementally turns, and then Dean has to yank at both ends of the chain to pry the lock open, but then it’s off and he can throw open the double doors to rickety stairs and a deep, waiting darkness.

“... flashlights,” Dean decides, and they troop back to the kitchen, leaving the cat to sniff interestedly at the top step.

The root cellar has dun-colored brick walls and rows of empty, dusty shelves. And mice. Dean sees them darting along the walls and very shortly after sees the cat in hot pursuit, eyes glinting eerily as she runs through the beam of Dean’s flashlight.

“I told you,” Castiel says. “There’s nothing in here.”

“Well, it never hurts to check,” Dean says. “And if we cleaned it out, we could…”

He pauses, and holds his flashlight up to illuminate the far wall.

“Is that a door?”

“Where?” Castiel asks.

“Right there,” Dean points, and walks towards it. “Behind that— yeah, that’s a door alright.”

The door opens onto flight of steep, narrow stairs with another door at the top, sunlight peeking out around the frame. The cat precedes them up the treads and sits there until Dean can open it—

—onto a virtual sea of mover’s boxes.

“Ah,” Castiel says, peering over Dean's shoulder. “We’re in the garage.”

“The garage?” Dean sputters, shoving the door further open against the tide of cardboard. “How have you not unpacked all this crap?”

“They aren’t mine,” Castiel says, helping him. “Everything I own is either in the bedroom or kitchen. The majority of the furniture and home accents were my aunt’s, who also kept my grandmother’s things after her death and was an avid collector of various things. I would say she contributed the bulk of these.”

“Cas,” Dean grunts, wedging the door open wide enough that they both can squeeze through, “are you telling me that all the freaking boxes I’ve been shoving around, tripping over and stubbing my toes on aren’t even yours?”

“I was always too busy to look through them,” Castiel says apologetically, holding the door for the cat.

“That’s our first step, then,” Dean says, dusting his hands off.

“First step?”

“Before we can tackle anything else in this house, we’ve got to clean it out. If, uh,” Dean says sheepishly, “that’s okay with you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Castiel says, sounding surprised. “The volume has been overwhelming at times. Will two of us be able to do it?”

“About that,” Dean says. “I think I’ve got a plan.”

“So, Charlie,” he says the next morning, leaning a hip on her desk. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“The same thing we do every weekend, Pinky,” she says, eyes glued to the 3-D model she’s crafting on a computer screen the size of some tables. “Why? Whatcha got in mind?”

“Well, you know. Cas and I were going to have some people over,” Dean says offhandedly, flicking an invisible piece of lint off his tie. “Grill out on the deck we just finished. You interested?”

“Holy cow, am I,” she says, spinning around to face him. “Wait. Wait, you’ve got the look.”

“The look?” he says, feigning confusion. “What look?”

“The look,” she says with narrow eyes. “The ‘heh-heh’ look. The look that says ‘suckaaa, I got you and you don’t even know it’. That look. What are you planning?”

“Well,” Dean prevaricates, “there might be some recreational sorting involved. You’ll love it, I promise.”

“Sorting?” she asks incredulously.

“Boxes, Charlie,” he says, leaning in. “Boxes as far as the eye can see. No one’s looked in them for at least a decade, maybe more. Crazy collector just up and left them. Turn of the century antiques, probably.”

“Oh my God,” she says, but her tone is completely different now, as he’d known it would be. “Let me tell my troupe!”

“Your troop?”

“The community theater is always looking for old clothes and things,” she says, “and we can rent a van to take things for charity, and to the dump if they’re super gross, and maybe I’ll finally find my mom that Fiestaware glaze pattern she’s missing! This is going to be the best party ever!”

Dean leaves her office with a vague sense that he’s bitten off more than he can chew, but that’s certainly nothing new with Charlie.

Then she shows up at the house on Saturday with easily fifty kids under fifteen and their hapless-looking parents, and Dean feels like he should have known this was coming.

“Whoa,” he says, looking out at the crowd. “Hey, this is kinda--”

“Don’t worry, we brought enough food for everyone,” Charlie says breezily, and blows right past him into the house, trailed by her youthful minions.

Castiel takes the invasion of his home by a mob of theater kids with unexpected grace, sitting in a stained damask chair in the middle of the foyer and looking only a little unnerved as they run back and forth across the breadth of the house, shrieking and laughing like a bunch of damn monkeys.

“Sorry,” Charlie says as she hurries past, wincing as something crashes to the floor in a distant room. “I don’t think all that soda at lunch was a good idea.”

“Yes, well,” Castiel says bracingly, just as the cat streaks in, pursued by a gaggle of tween girls. “Oh, don’t--”

Dean scoops her off the floor and she runs by and deposits her in Castiel’s lap, making him the immediate target of the cooing group.

“She’s so pretty!” one of them gasps. “Can we pet her, Mr. Milton?”

“Oh, um, if she lets you,” Castiel says, hemmed in and slightly panicked-looking.

“You know, she might need some alone time since things are so noisy down here,” Dean says. “Why don’t you go see if the older girls need help in the west wing.”

They trail away with a chorus of awwwws, casting longing glances back at the cat clinging with all its might to Castiel’s shirtfront.

“You can go upstairs,” Dean says when they're gone. “Charlie and I are getting pretty good at knowing what you want to keep, and if we have any questions we’ll ask. Promise.”

The look of unspeakable gratefulness Castiel gives him before getting up makes Dean feel like a terrible person. But, looking around at the emptied room and the piles and piles of things marked for donations out in the paved courtyard, he also feels like they’re moving in the right direction, and a sense of deep satisfaction accompanies the thought.

Cleared of extraneous junk, the house is cavernous, huge and bare and echoing. He and Cas are going to change that.

“A house is like a person,” Dean says, warm and drowsy in their giant bed, Cas lying on his side next to him. “It’s got bones, muscle and skin, and veins and eyes. The guy who's coming by this week, the home inspector? He's like a doctor who goes through and makes sure the foundation is solid, the electric work is safe, and the pipes aren’t rusted through. We'll fix those things, and we'll replace the doors and windows that need it. Then we can knock out walls, paint, put in shelves. Move furniture around. Whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want,” Castiel muses, drawing a ticklish line along the dip of Dean’s waist, up the rise of his hip. “What if I wanted— pink polka dots over everything? Zebra stripes?”

“I would consider it my civic duty to try to talk you out of it,” Dean says, which earns him a smile. “But if that was what you really wanted… yeah.”

Castiel’s hand finds his in the sheets and the man’s eyes drop to their fingers, lashes lowered and his thumb stroking across Dean’s palm. It takes a moment for Dean, who’s still floating in that particular languid exhaustion that comes from really good sex, to realize that it’s his left hand. Castiel’s left hand as well.

The rings are something they don’t talk about, though they both wear them. Dean holds his breath and waits for Castiel to say something, glad of the darkness that hides his face.

He's still waiting when he falls asleep, lulled by the movement of Castiel's thumb on his skin and the quiet sound of his breath in his ear.

The third Sunday of every month is Ben's Baseball Day, and Dean can’t miss that— especially not when the Yankees are in town. He casually mentions over next Saturday’s tetrazzini that he has plans for the next day and won’t be around. Castiel grunts to show he’s listening and then goes back to shoveling the casserole into his mouth like he’s never tasted anything better. Sam used to complain endlessly about Dean’s cooking, about the amount of butter and red meat and transfats and ten thousand other things, so the starved way Castiel always goes after his food is always an ego boost.

Dean slips out of the house at ten and speeds across the empty freeways, making excellent time out to the suburbs of Dorchester. He’s even a little early, pulling up in front of Lisa’s cute little townhouse at a quarter after eleven. Ben must have been waiting for him, because Dean’s hardly put the car in park before the kid is out the door like a shot, his mother walking out a little slower with folded arms and a long-suffering expression.

“Dean!”

“Hey, kiddo,” he says warmly, grabbing him in a one-armed hug and Ben flings open the door and throws himself across the bucket seat. “Okay, okay, sit yourself down. The sooner you strap in, the sooner we can go, right?”

“Call me if you’ll be home later than six,” Lisa says, coming up to lean on the Impala’s frame.

“Yes, ma’am.” Dean salutes her, Ben copies him, and she rolls her eyes at the both of them and makes shooing motions with her hands.

“Get, then, you’ll be late.”

“Bye, Mom!” Ben waves at her for a perfunctory second before he settles down and starts talking a mile a minute about the World Series and averages and reciting statistics that would make a casual fan’s ears bleed.

The seats today are pretty decent by their standards, high in one of the last rows of the first deck. Dick Berardino is supposed to be autographing in the Alley later, but Ben’s already got a ball from him, Dean thinks. They settle in with hot dogs and warm cola and sit through twenty interminable minutes of a pregame ceremony to honor a closer who’s retiring before the game starts.

Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s been a shitty year to be a Yankees fan. The first inning starts out promising with a run for the Yankees, but at the bottom of the first the Red Sox get in three and from there, it’s a fucking rout. He and Ben get one pretty solid appearance on the jumbotron in the third before Dean’s just too depressed to look up anymore, but the commentary from the observation booth and Ben’s nonstop trashtalk mean he doesn’t miss a single excruciating instant.

Buchholz pitches six innings of two-hit ball and the Red Sox coast to an easy 9-2 win, their third in a row and their seventh over the Yankees in eleven days. The Yankees don’t even get in that second run until the top of the ninth, and leave the diamond looking like a bunch of beaten dogs. Despondency leaves Dean slumped over with his head in his hands as Ben jumps and hollers and stomps with the rest of the stadium, jabbing his giant foam finger in the air and getting mustard all over his shirt from the forgotten footlong in his other hand.

“Jeez, kid, you’re a mess,” Dean says as they join the crush of people squeezing out towards the parking lot.

“We won! Souvenir stand!” Ben crows, dodging ahead through the crowd, because this is baseball and there are traditions to be upheld. Dean joins a hellaciously long line and grudgingly forks over the money for piece of crap Sox-embroidered hat made in China, which Ben jams sideways on his head with a cocky grin, and another mug for Lisa’s collection. He hesitates, then throws in a Sox keychain in case Cas is any kind of baseball fan.

They go out for milkshakes and burgers afterwards, and Ben describes with great disgust Lisa’s new boyfriend, a dentist from Georgia who “Doesn’t even have any hair, Dean. Like, he’s completely bald. And he calls me sonny, that’s so weird--”

When Dean relates this to Lisa that night she laughs, reaching out to pat Ben’s back where he’s slumped fast asleep over Dean’s shoulder, one arm around Dean’s neck. Poor kid had crashed so hard on the drive back that he hadn’t even stirred when Dean lifted him out of the front seat and carried him inside.

“Why don’t you go tuck him in,” she says quietly. “I’ll make us some drinks.”

Dean gets Ben squared away upstairs and comes down to two steaming mugs at the kitchen table, Lisa already sitting and sipping from the one Dean had gotten at Fenway. He slides into a seat across from her and grabs the other one.

“Hot chocolate?” he says after a taste, licking foam from his lip. “It’s September, Lis.”

“It’s never too early for peppermint hot cocoa,” she says. “Besides, I just found a huge container of it hiding in the back of the pantry. Can’t let it go stale.”

They make small talk for a while, questions about how the gang at Talbot is doing and if Lisa ever got rid of her unexpected bumpercrop of summer squash.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” she says, shuddering. “I’m lucky Mark let me dump so many of them on him. Too nice to say no.”

“Mark?” Dean says casually. “Is that this dentist guy?”

The arch look Lisa aims his way shows he isn’t fooling anyone. “How about your little Las Vegas hook-up, hmm? How’s he doing?”

It’s too late to hide the ring. Dean’s not sure he could get it off even if he wanted to, with all the calluses he’s been building up working on the house. “Uh, good. He’s good.”

“Oh, he must be,” she says, tone nothing short of salacious.

“Lisa,” Dean says, pained, and she laughs at him, setting her cocoa aside and leaning back to look at him with a smile and sad eyes.

“We’re okay, aren’t we?” she asks. “You and I.”

Seeing her will always be a little bittersweet, he thinks. They’d started dating after Dean moved to Massachusetts, about three years with each other when all was said and done. There’d been such a strong sense of fate and meant-to-be with her, because he’d known her in New York before meeting her again in Boston and Ben could have been his, even though she says he’s not.

“Yeah,” Dean says, smiling back. “We’re okay.”

“So, then,” she says, leaning in, “You can ask me about Mark, and I can tease you about this Milton person. Is it true there were coconut bras involved?”

“I was completely wasted,” Dean says defensively, and Lisa cackles.

“Well, I’m happy for you,” she says when she finally gets control of herself. “You’ll have to bring him around some time. I know Ben will want to meet him.”

Dean hadn’t thought of that, though strangely the idea doesn’t sound as far-fetched as it once might have. “We’ll do another baseball day before the end of the season. You should come, too.”

“He’d love that,” she says, getting up to wash their mugs out. “I'd love to.”

When Dean gets back to the house, he finds Castiel sitting on the edge of the still-unvarnished deck, feet swinging in the empty space where the stairs will be as he looks out towards the first glimmer of stars over the ocean. Dean grabs a beer and a ginger ale from the fridge and moseys out across the raw wood, handing him the drink and sitting next to him with a knee pulled up to his chest.

“Nice night.”

“Mmhm,” Castiel says, hooking an ankle under his.

They sit in companionable silence while sky darkens overhead, cerulean to indigo to coaldust.

“Oh, hey,” Dean says, shifting to dig in his pocket. “I got you something from the ballpark.”

He holds out the keychain and Castiel glances down at it, gives Dean a disdainful look. “I actually prefer the Yankees.”

“Dude,” Dean says, eyes widening. “Dude. Get over here and kiss me.”

Chapter Text

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 05:54 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: SPAM: Re: Re: Still alive?

Well, we got most of the funky wiring replaced on Saturday, and this joker kept trying to charge us for punching out extra outlets. It’s like, dude, I can cut the holes myself, just get up that ladder and make sure my chandelier doesn’t catch on fire, okay?

The highlight of the weekend was the new sump pump. It’s overpowered as hell, but if we put a bathroom in the basement we’ll need the wallop. It’s loud, too. The few first times it went off Cas jumped three feet in the air, I swear, just like the cat does. Hilarious.

Took the old boiler to the dump. Thing was seriously forty years old, I have no idea how Cas has been living with ten minutes of hot water for so many years.

The bookshelves in the living room are all in, finally, but I’ve still got to sand them out and put primer down.  That’ll be a job. Too bad you’re downstate, Jo, I could really use some slave labor!

-DW

The house is definitely still a work in progress, but it’s getting there. They’re getting there— not without a few funny moments and odd hiccups along the way, yeah, but Dean is still having the best time he remembers in ages. Definitely since Sam left for Stanford. 

One time, he's elbow-deep in grout and tiles for the new backsplash behind the stove, and he sends Castiel out to pick up another caulking gun, some wood glue and few more pieces of timber. Dean tells him the size and the amount and even the exact bin number, so all he has to do is physically go to the lumber yard and get it. Dean tells him to call if he has any questions, and makes sure he takes his phone.

Castiel comes back four hours later with half a dozen hanging baskets full of riotously pink petunias and an interesting piece of wood he found on the side of the road.

“Okay, first of all, we don’t have anywhere to hang those. We tore out the deck roof last weekend, remember? Second, you stopped in the middle of the highway to pick that up?” Dean says, eyeing what looks like half of a gnarled young tree. “Sticks stay outside, Cas. Bugs. Sap.”

Castiel apparently has an entire wall of interesting twigs, which Dean hasn’t noticed because they’re nailed above the enormous fireplace in the east wing.

“I will build you a display rack,” Dean wheedles, “as big as a room, and you can put as many sticks and branches and crap on it as you want. Please do not put another hole in that brick.  It has to be a hundred years old.”

“But I like them where they are,” Castiel says stubbornly, gripping the branch tightly as Dean tries to pull it away.

“Please.”

It’s a fraught battle, but he eventually allows Dean— more specifically, Dean’s hands on his waist and the lingering kiss Dean presses just below his ear— to persuade him, and the branch is thankfully banished to the potting shed.

There’s a cold snap in the last slow days of September that coincides with a nasty virus sweeping through the building, and Castiel goes down like a baby deer with a broken leg.

“This is because you don’t take care of yourself,” Dean scolds, but gently, tucking the comforter Castiel keeps weakly pushing away back up to his chin. Dean’s well aware of Castiel’s tendency to go in early and stay late when Dean isn’t driving, and he’s lost count of the number of times he’s woken up to find Castiel out of bed and at the computer in the ridiculously wee hours of the morning. “Go back to bed. I’ll pick up some cough syrup on my way back, okay?”

“It’s the end of the fiscal year, I can’t be sick,” Castiel protests hoarsely, congested and gummy-eyed, waving a handful of disgustingly damp tissues. Dean mentally adds Kleenex to his list for the local pharmacy, and scoops the not-stray cat off the foot of the bed. He drapes her over Castiel’s stomach, where she immediately spreads to cover him like a melting chocolate bar.

“Stay,” he says, ostensibly to her, but Castiel’s narrow glare shows he knows exactly who Dean is talking to.

Castiel sneaks onto a bus and goes to work anyway, which Dean only finds out about when Alfie calls up to his desk at eleven and says in a tremulous whisper, “He’s face-down in a pile of liquidity reporting and he hasn’t moved in an hour. I think he might be unconscious!”

Dean then has the dubious privilege of carting his catatonic husband out of his workplace via his rolling office chair and, when he can finally be persuaded to get to his feet, by practically carrying him to the car. Castiel is so incredibly sulky about it, coughing pathetically and using up an entire box of tissues in the time it takes to drive to the house, that when they get there Dean just picks him up and carries him inside as well, ignoring the man’s feeble but adamant objections.

“I am not a child,” he rasps, arms folded over his chest exactly like a pouting two-year-old.

“Could have fooled me,” Dean says, ruffling Cas' hair and getting an aggravated swat for his troubles.

He goes back down to the car to get the supplies he’d left in the back seat, and when he returns Castiel has actually crawled out of bed and is at the computer, hunched over and shivering visibly. He loops an arm around Castiel’s waist and pulls him bodily away from the keyboard.

"This is absolutely vital forecasting," Castiel croaks. "The president of the firm—"

"Shush," Dean says as he kicks off his shoes and wades into the mess of pillows and snot-covered tissues on the bed, dragging Castiel along with him. “You’re staying home if I have to lay on you like the goddamn cat. Here, Nyquil. Drink up.”

“I hate Nyquil,” Castiel says grouchily, and is asleep seconds after he swallows the first dose.

He snores like a freight train and he’s a rumpled, surly mess the next morning, eyes glazed over with fever. Dean stays home and makes him French toast and chicken noodle soup from mostly-scratch and watches horrible daytime television with him, until The View is just too much and they switch to Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer.

“You’re going to get sick, too,” Castiel grumbles in one of his more lucid moments, turning his head to squint at Dean. On his back, the tiger seems caught mid-sneeze.

Dean shrugs. “Maybe,” he says, dutifully swinging his arms as Dora yells “¡Date prisa! ¡Date prisa!”

Castiel gazes at him for another long moment, then turns his face back into his pillow. “Ugh.”

Dean doesn’t get sick, and the next day he goes back to work with Castiel's solemnest promises to take his medicine and stay in the freaking bed, come hell or high water.

That lasts until about mid-afternoon.

CM 03:23PM - Im at the hospital

Dean, surreptitiously checking his phone under the table during yet another color scheme grudgematch, almost drops it in surprise, and swallows hard against the sudden panic flaring in his throat.

DW 03:25PM - What happened?

DW 03:26PM - are you okay??

DW 03:28PM - CAS

CM 03:30PM - Im fine, Castiel writes, then:

CM 03:31PM - the animal hospital, not human

CM 03:31PM - the cat is sick

DW 03:32PM - so are you!

CM 03:32PM - I dont know whats wrong

CM 03:33PM - she might be dying

Ah, Christ.

DW 03:34PM - where are you? address

CM 03:36PM - 303 cabot st in beverly

"Sorry, guys," Dean says to the room, standing up. "I've got to go, family emergency."

"The green is too bright," Victor snaps at Benny, ignoring him completely. "This is an autumn layout—"

Charlie makes a worried face and mouths call me, and Dean nods before making his escape.

The address Castiel gave him is a tidy old house turned commercial building with charmingly steep gables and gingerbread trim. Castiel is slumped in a chair to the right of the door as Dean walks in, and he wobbles to his feet the second he sees Dean.

"Dean—"

"Hey," Dean says softly, striding up to him, a hand going to his forehead, then the back of his neck. “Aw, Jesus, you’re burning up.”

Castiel's face is an unhealthy red and he's still in that damn trenchcoat, with at least two scarves around his shoulders and head and wearing what looks like Dean's old NYU sweatpants. "I'm tired," he says in a small voice, and sags into Dean like a deflating party balloon.

Dean lets himself just hold him for a minute, because the gap between those first and second texts had shaved years off his life.

"Did they say what was wrong with her?" he asks the top of Castiel's head. Castiel shakes his head mutely, and Dean squeezes a little tighter before he releases him and nudges him back into the chair.

"Stay here. I'll go talk to the receptionist, okay?"

"Okay," Castiel parrots, eyelids drooping.

The young woman behind the counter is happy to tell him that the stray ("She's not really a stray," Dean explains, pained, and young woman smiles her understanding) was admitted with signs of acute distress and abdominal tenderness, and that she's currently in surgery. The second they know anything, they'll be sure to tell him.

Cas looks like he's having trouble sitting upright, and Dean sits down and gives him a shoulder to lean on while he checks his work phone for calls, for lack of anything more constructive to do. There's a text from Charlie (CB 04:01PM – is everything okay????!?) and an email chain Victor and Benny keep responding to with escalating levels of passive-aggressive posturing. He sends a reassuring update to Charlie and digs a packet of tissue from his pocket to hand to Castiel when he starts coughing again.

"When was the last time you took anything?" Dean asks.

"Don't remember," Castiel manages around the coughs. "Maybe— hour ago?"

Dean glances at the clock and the receptionist, and sighs. "Okay. We're going to give this another hour and you're going home and getting some rest."

Castiel looks like he'd like to argue, but the coughing is getting worse and when an older man with a small Scotland terrier in a crate beside his leg offers cherry cough drops, Castiel takes them gratefully.

Dean's trying to negotiate a diplomatic truce between Benny and Victor via Blackberry when a thin man in a lab coat comes out of the back and calls, "Mr. Milton?"

When he sees Dean helping Castiel up, he crosses the floor himself.

"You know, if you were a puppy I could give you something for that," he says with a smile. "I'm Dr. Fitzgerald, but everyone here calls me Garth."

"Dean Winchester," Dean says, and shakes his hand. "Is the cat—?"

"Oh, she's fine," the veterinarian says. "She just came out of anesthesia and she's doing great. One of them was wedged in sideways, but we helped the little guy out and got the rest while we were in there. Everybody's happy now."

"The— what was wedged where?" Dean asks. "Did she swallow something?"

"Oh, you didn't know? Then surprise! It's kittens!" Garth says cheerfully. "Five of them, three boys, two girls. Congrats to the happy kitty grandparents."

"Can we see her? Them?" Castiel butts in, wiping his nose.

"In a bit, sure," Garth says. "You'll be able to take them home tonight, if you want. Let me walk you through taking care of the stitches—"

Thirty minutes later, Dean and Castiel are staring down at the sleeping stray, five small scraps of particolored fur nudging hopefully at her stomach.

“We shouldn’t give them names,” Castiel says pedantically, and Dean shoots him an incredulous look.

“So, what, we call them Things One through Six?” he asks, hushed. They're keeping their voices down out of deference to the kittens.

“'Kitty' or 'cat' has been a completely adequate general term,” Castiel says before blowing his nose as quietly as possible in an already much-abused tissue. Dean hastily rips out some new ones from the box on the counter and hands them over.

“Nice thought, but no way, Cas. I’m not going to let you make my life harder,” Dean says, and reaches forward to gently lift a tiny orange puffball. The kitten barely fills his palm but has lungs like an air raid siren, which it uses with full force and vigor to object to the handling. “This is Steve Tyler, okay? We can call him Stevie. And the one who looks like his mom, he can be Jimi—”

Axel Rose (Rosie), Voltaire, and Tolstoy follow shortly.

"It literally translates to fat, you know," Castiel says, scritching under Tolstoy's chin. "And he is very fat."

“And since we've gotten over that weird hangup,” Dean says, pointing at the stray cat. “Her name is Coco.”

“No, it isn’t,” Castiel says mulishly.

“Oh, come on!”

“It isn’t,” Castiel insists, interrupted by a coughing jag.

“Coco is a perfectly good name, look, she’s mostly black and tan—”

“It’s Nabokov,” Castiel says.

Dean stops short. “What's Nabokov?”

“Her name is Nabokov.” Castiel pronounces it with slight accent, staring at Dean as if daring him to comment.

“... Nabokov?” Dean asks.

“It was before I knew she was female.”

“So she always had a name,” Dean says, starting to grin. “Cas, you big softy.”

“Shut up,” Castiel grumbles, though there's a smile creeping around the edges of his mouth as he looks down at Nabokov and her brood. "It's— it's hard not to get attached, when they just keep coming back."

"Okay, softy."

"Dean."

The cat and her kittens are installed in a quiet corner of the newly-habitable library, and Nabokov promptly decides she doesn't like it and moves them in under the kitchen sink instead. Garth had basically said to let her do her thing, but Castiel tends to hover unless Dean can distract him with something.

Castiel fights off the virus and goes back to work just in time to file some kind of extension on end-of-the-year reporting (Dean doesn't even pretend to understand what he's talking about), to the abject and embarrassing gratitude of his coworkers. Castiel describes the hugging and the cake in tones of great bafflement to Dean over the phone.

A few weeks later, he goes away on some kind of accountants-only retreat and Dean dragoons Victor and Benny into a beer-and-pizza-fueled painting extravaganza. He could have hired a professional team, and he'll probably still have to for the crazy-big rooms in the east wing and the foyer, but it wouldn't mean as much, Dean thinks. He wants to do something big for Cas.

The three of them (briefly four, when Charlie shows up on her way somewhere else and gets coerced into finishing the downstairs powder room) manage to fully cover the library, kitchen, three of the five bedrooms and the master suite in a 48-hour binge of blue painter's tape and careful reference to Castiel's painstakingly-organized planning binder, which has specific paint chips labeled for rooms, ceilings and accent walls.

"Never call me again," Victor says very early Monday morning, slumped across the kitchen table. "You are dead to me, Winchester."

"Mon dieu, je vais mourir," Benny moans from the floor.

"Pansies," Dean mutters, but he hasn't made it off the floor himself, so who is he to judge? Also, he thinks there may be Cranberry Dapper in his left nostril, but he's just too tired to scrape it off.

"Dean?" comes a distant voice from the direction of the front door.

Dean freezes, cheek mashed against the tiles. "He was supposed to call me to pick him up!"

"I ain't hiding so you can yell surprise," Benny says. Victor grunts in agreement.

"Dean!"

"Shit," Dean says, trying to peel himself off the floor and just barely managing to roll over.

"Dean, what—?" Castiel steps into the kitchen, looking utterly flummoxed.

Dean throws his arms out from his prone position. "Surprise?"

"You're covered in paint," Castiel says uncertainly.

"So are your walls, mon cher," Benny points out, not unkindly.

Castiel slowly turns in place, as if just noticing that his kitchen's gone from a dingy off-white to the bright, sunny Bay Morning Yellow he'd spent hours agonizing over in the aisles of Home Depot. "Just in here?"

"Three bedrooms, master suite, two bathrooms, kitchen, library," Victor tells the table. "Why the hell is there so much house?"

Castiel's eyes are a little wide. "... you used my colors?"

"Even that celadon bullshit," Victor mutters.

"Don't mind him, he's got a thing about green— Cas?"

"I think you two need to leave," Castiel says evenly, hands trembling a little as he sets aside his suitcase.

Benny and Victor blink at him. "Uh, sure," Benny says slowly.

They gather themselves, and Dean sits up. "I— I'm sorry, I thought—" he starts, "I really thought you'd like it. It's okay, we can paint it over, I can—"

"Dean Winchester," Castiel starts angrily, and then grabs Dean by his paint-encrusted tee shirt and hauls him into a speaking kiss, something rough and deep while his other hand moves to cup the back of Dean's neck and drag him even closer, until Dean's straining up on his knees and making noises he's not strictly comfortable with his friends hearing.

"Okay," Benny announces loudly on the heels of that thought. "I'm just going to—"

"Oh hell no," Victor echoes, and there are retreating footsteps and slamming doors but Castiel's mouth has all of Dean's attention until it draws away, Castiel's eyes heavy-lidded and his mouth pink and wet.

"You are an idiot," he announces. "I love— I love it."

"Oh." Dean says dazedly. "Good?"

"Yes, good," Castiel says, and kisses him again.

The den Dean had saved for the two of them, because it's where he and Cas have spent the most time together since Dean... came to stay. For a bit. They tackle it the week after, when both of their schedules have settled down.

“Cas, you don’t have to get it exactly perfect,” Dean says, demonstrating with a wide white streak against the blond wood and over the bare wall. “We have to prime everything, so just avoid the baseboards and the ceiling and we’re golden, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” Castiel says, frowning in concentration as he rolls out another perfectly parallel line of paint just beside his first.

“Loosen up a little,” Dean coaxes, turning back to the shelves with a fresh brushful of thick primer. “It’s a wall, you’re not restoring the Mona Lisa.”

“Perhaps I’m simply trying to avoid getting paint on myself,” Castiel replies, looking pointedly down at Dean’s well-splattered jeans and t-shirt.

“You’re wearing an apron. You’ll be fine.” And who goes out and buys an apron specifically to paint in? It’s still creased from the package and annoyingly clean, and surreptitiously Dean dips a finger in the paint can. He laughs when Castiel immediately leans away. “C’mon, after the first smear you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“I like these clothes,” Castiel says, brandishing his paintbrush at Dean. “Leave them alone.”

It’s Dean’s shirt and Dean’s sweatpants he’s working in, because Castiel has a very limited casual wardrobe and being sick has completely exhausted his supply. The new washer and dryer are getting in sometime next week, and until then, Castiel shuffles around in Dean's old jerseys and track pants and Dean doesn't mind one single bit.

With a final warning look, Castiel turns back to the section of wall he’s so carefully painting, and Dean’s ring glints on his finger as he puts the bristles to the paneling and starts painting again.

Dean’s smiles at that and shies away from knowing why, so he turns away, working in brisk, wide strokes, coating the blond wood of the shelves with bright white. They haven’t decided if they’ll leave them white as an accent color or paint them the same stormy blue as the walls, so he figures an extra-thick layer won’t do any harm.

"You seem very skilled at this," Castiel says, after a moment.

Dean shrugs. "I did a lot of odd jobs when I was a kid, and my old man was pretty handy. We, uh, we moved around a lot. Fixing up houses was one of the ways we made money."

"Why not do it professionally? Why work in advertising?"

Dean throws him a look. "Well, why did you become an accountant?"

Castiel shrugs, laying down another careful line of paint. “I like numbers.”

“That’s it?”

Another shrug. “A school counselor suggested it after I told her I enjoyed math class more than English.”

“And you just,“ Dean makes a motion like a fish swimming upstream, “until you became assistant finance controller or whatever?”

Castiel sits back on his heels and absently wipes his forehead with the back of a hand, leaving a long streak of white at his temple. “Yes?”

“Wow,” Dean says. Castiel frowns at him. “No, that’s cool, just." Dean shakes his head. "It was a lot more roundabout for me."

Castiel looks at him expectantly, brush poised above the can.

“Hey, keep painting,” Dean orders. “We’ll be in here all day if we take a break for storytime.”

Castiel goes back to painting, but he keeps his eyes pointedly on Dean, and Dean sighs loudly as he turns back to the shelves.

“It’s not really that interesting,” he says, reaching in deep to get the back corners. “I already told you we moved around a lot. Looking back, I think Dad had something going on, y’know,” Dean taps his forehead, “up here. My mom died when I was barely four, but he talked about her all the time. He couldn’t let go. He was a Vietnam vet and probably a paranoid son of a bitch to begin with, so.” He shrugs. “I thought it was cool, living off the grid, skipping town in the middle of the night, jumping across states. I hated school, so I was glad to miss as much of it as I could. Sam, though, Jesus that kid could whine.”

“Sam didn’t like moving?”

“Sam didn’t like anything. He started arguing with Dad when he was barely out of preschool and I swear they didn’t stop to take a breath until Dad was in the ground.”

Castiel’s brush stops moving. “Your father—?”

“Yeah.” Dean doesn’t look up from the shelves. “When I was seventeen. It was—” Dean sighs. “He was crazy, yeah, and a drunk. Not the world’s greatest dad, not even close. But he helped wherever he could. For every job he got paid for, he did three or four for free. He was big on— not charity, really, but… karma?” He shakes his head. “Something like that. Then he gets hit by a runaway semi, dies instantly on impact. The driver was asleep at the wheel. I was really angry about it, for a long, long time.”

“I’m sorry,” Castiel offers softly.

Dean gives him a crooked smile. “It was twenty years ago, almost. I got better at dealing. I had Sam, and he needed me, and that got me through a lot of shit.”

“You’re a good brother."

“I am the best brother,” Dean declares, slapping on a huge glob of paint. “I worked my ass off to support that kid. We moved in with Bobby, who was one of the maybe two or three people Dad would have called a friend. I did every kind of odd job under the sun. Bobby owns a junkyard in Queens and does mechanic’s work on the side, so I got pretty good at selling parts.”

“And advertising?”

Dean glances over at Castiel, his interested look and unmoving roller. “Hey, don’t just let the paint dry, put it back in the tray if you’re not using it.”

Castiel goes back to painting the wall, but he casts an expectant glance at Dean, who laughs and says, “Spanish inquisition much?”

“I’m curious,” Castiel says primly. “You’re interesting.”

“I’m interesting?” Dean protests. “Who here has a tiger for a tramp stamp?”

Castiel’s unimpressed stare makes Dean laugh again. “Fine! Yeah, I did some advertising for Bobby. Kid stuff, calling around to local church bulletins and newsletters for grocery stores, things like that. It was pretty low stakes, so Bobby let me design them. It was fun, and I was good at it.

“So I did some ads for the Harvelles, who were friends of Dad’s too. They have a bar and grill called the Roadhouse, great place, good food. I did this little jingle,” Dean says, “and it was so damn cheesy but it worked. By the time I was nineteen I had six local chains letting me mess around with their ads. But it was just a hobby, you know? I was still working on cars and sorting scrap metal at Bobby’s most of the time.

“And then one day Bobby leans over and says, why don’t you go to school, get something like a marketing degree, make more money and not have to work on the side. I wasn't buying it. I was pretty happy with what I had, for once, and not really wanting to rock the boat in case all that went away."

"What changed?" Castiel asks, stretching up to paint closer to the ceiling.

Dean finishes one shelf and moves on to the next, shifting closer to him. "Nothing, really. Bobby's good at the long game, and he'd bring it up every now and again, and after I got a few more ad jobs around town it started looking like the smart thing. I got applications to the local community colleges for associate's degrees with night classes�— stuff I could do and keep working. I wanted to be realistic, you know? We weren't exactly swimming in dough.

“Then Sam gets wind of it. He starts coming at me with these brochures for five-year bachelors-masters combos from places like CUNY and Columbia, and I'm like, whoa, kid, I've barely got my GED, don't get too crazy. But that's Sam," he says with a grin. "Kid's a menace."

"I'd like to meet him someday," Castiel murmurs, like it’s mostly to himself.

"Yeah? You two would probably fall right in together," Dean says, leaning down and grabbing the paint can. "I talked him down from Columbia, and I wasn't about to let him talk me up from community college. But then Bobby, the sneaky old fart, tells me he's got a college fund with my name on it, almost fifty grand just sitting there." Dean shakes his head. "I couldn't believe it. Who the hell would bet that kind of money on me?"

Castiel is smiling at him. "It sounds like you had a lot of support."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, and good thing, too, because it was fucking hard, even harder than I thought it would be. I barely did anything else but study and work for four years. I had sixteen-hour days and more all-nighters than I really want to remember. But I had Sam, at least until the little smartass fucked off to Stanford on a full ride, and Bobby and Ellen and Rufus and Jo.

"And then, right when I graduated, Talbot himself shows up at our senior exposition. Offers me the junior creative designer position and it was everything I wanted, you know? Good salary, strong brand, lots of 'opportunities for forward advancement' and all that. It was perfect, you know? But it was in Boston, and I didn’t want to leave Bobby in New York if it wasn't to go to Sam in Palo Alto. You know what those assholes said to me?"

"I can guess," Castiel says.

"They told me to stop being a such a self-sacrificing dickhead and follow my dreams." Dean gestures broadly with the paintbrush. "Follow my dreams, right. Like some kind of after-school special."

“But here you are.”

Dean wipes his forehead and looks back, catches the gleam in Castiel’s eye. “Yeah. Here I am.”

Castiel very deliberately sets his roller on the painting tray between them and steps over it, plucking the brush from Dean’s hand and setting it across the open paint can.

“Cas, what—” Dean laughs.

“You amaze me,” Castiel says quietly, so earnest that Dean feels suddenly self-conscious.

“What?” he says on a chuckle, leaning away from Castiel’s reaching hands. “Why?”

“Do you know how few people there are who do what they love?” the man asks. “How few bother to fight for it when they have a chance? You are amazing, Dean Winchester.”  

“I am not,” Dean protests, feeling the heat rising in his cheeks. “Cas, come on, I’m nothing like that.”

“Stop arguing,” Castiel says, pulling him away from the gleaming wet paint of the bookshelves.

“Yeah?” Dean says with a grin, amused by the intent, purposeful stare Castiel is leveling at him. “Gonna make me?”

Castiel backs Dean onto the ugly couch, which they’ve pulled away from the wall and covered with a drop-cloth. “I will do my utmost,” he promises, and pushes Dean down.

He pops up less than half a second later with a growl of, “Lubrication,” and Dean’s left splayed out and laughing helplessly while Castiel stomps from the room.

He shrugs off his shirt and sits up for a second to get his pants off, and he’s laying back against the rough canvas cloth with a grin and nothing else when Castiel comes back, also completely naked.

“Turn over,” he says imperiously, and Dean ends up on his knees with his arms braced on one of the armrests, making encouraging noises while Castiel takes several lifetimes to get the goddamn bottle open.

“Okay back there?” he teases, arching a little. “My ass is getting cold.”

The open-handed smack he almost expects. The bite, he doesn't.

"Ow," Dean laughs, then moans as a slicked thumb rubs firmly at his entrance, pulling the skin taut for the tip of an inquisitive tongue. "Fuck, just like that—"

It's so good when Castiel stops teasing him and finally gives what Dean's rolling hips and stuttering breaths are asking for, kneeling up behind Dean and sliding his hands from Dean's hips down to lace their fingers together as he works inside, unhurried, patient thrusts that have Dean sweating and swearing before he's anywhere close to being full.

The position puts more of his weight on Dean with each careful flex of his hips until Dean's elbows buckle and his chest is mashed into the couch's soft arm. It changes the angle from sweet to incendiary and Dean pants, "Yeah, right there, right there Cas please, I'm going to—"

Dean's trying to tug one of his hands away but Castiel holds him fast, and he keeps up the weirdly gentle rocking as he kisses his way along Dean's shoulder to his ear.

"No," he whispers hotly. "Come on my cock."

Dean laughs again, but it's a wild, gasping sound. "Are you serious?"

Castiel is very, very serious, and goes very, very slowly, backing off when he seems to think Dean's getting too close. "No, no, come on, Cas—" he says desperately.

Orgasm builds gradually, layer on slick layer into something almost threatening in its immensity. When Castiel finally lets him go, Dean slams into the wall at a hundred miles an hour and everything goes hot and airless and electric, body seizing under the power of it, breath stolen and blind eyes rolling into the back of his head.

Castiel bites him again, pain that mellows into a soft burn high on his neck, and Dean shudders out the last few pulses while Castiel comes, grinding it into Dean's body with short,  sharp jerks.

The next thing Dean's even vaguely aware of are tiny paws walking up and down the valley of his spine, Castiel's quiet, "Shh, Dean's very tired," and the subsequent removal of the kitten.

"Nrm?" he asks, turning his face towards the light.

A hand replaces the paws, smoothing up and down his back. "Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"Nmhm," Dean says, and does exactly that.

Chapter Text

From: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 08:40 AM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: SPAM: Re: Re: Still alive?

Dean, we seriously need to talk. Pick up the goddamn phone or so help me god, I'm flying out there five weeks early! I will sit on you, Dean. I will do the loogie drop. I was always better at it than you anyway.

-

Sam Winchester
JD Candidate 2014
School of Law, Stanford University
[email protected]

Sam catches him on a rough and windy Tuesday, when even ESPN is blaring a weather warning every five seconds with angry cartoon storm clouds threatening from the west. A flashing ribbon runs along the bottom of the television, urging residents to stay indoors and stay warm. The front is sweeping across New England from the Great Lakes, trailing the kind of chaos that gets people hoarding duct tape and buying water by the barrel. Dean's plan for the morning is braving the local megamart for some cheap canned goods and getting a couple gallons of gas for their brand new generator.

"Cas!" he calls for the third or fourth time, fumbling for the phone in his pocket as it starts in on a second round of ringing and nudging one of the kittens—either Stevie or Voltaire, they're both orange tabbies— away from the door with his foot. "I'm walking out this door in five seconds, with or without that list! Hello? Hey, Sam! I'm about to get in the car, can I call you back in five—?"

"No, you can’t," Sam says curtly. “I need you to answer something for me.”

"Oh. Okay," Dean says, surprised by the vehemence in his brother's tone. "Just let me— Cas!"

"I heard you the first four times!" Castiel yells from somewhere down the hall. At Dean's feet, Stevie-or-Voltaire meows piteously.

Dean rolls his eyes. "Well, fine! See you in an hour!"

"Dean," Sam says as Dean pushes out into the garage, where the temperature has noticeably dropped. "Why did I have to hear from the internet that you were freaking married?"

Dean almost drops the phone. "What?" he says, irrational panic surging through him. "No, I'm— I'm not—"

"I'm pretty sure that I'm looking at a ring on your finger in this picture on Facebook," Sam says. "And have you even been reading your emails? Cas this, Cas that. My friend Cas, Cas' house, Cas' bookshelves, Cas' fucking basement toilet. I thought you just had a serious mancrush or something but—"

"No, I—" Dean stares down at his reflection in the Impala's hood. "I don't even have a Facepage!"

Sam sighs, long and loud. "Seriously, Dean. Just because you can’t manage anything more complicated than Outlook doesn't mean your friends and coworkers are Luddites, too. You realize Charlie and I talk all the time? Most recently, about how you got married to some random coworker I’ve never even met?"

"It's not like that," Dean says, rubbing a hand over his face. "Look, it's… I just, uh. You remember me telling you about our big interagency meeting in July?"

"Dean," Sam says measuredly, "are you seriously telling me you eloped to Vegas?"

"We didn't elope. I barely knew who Cas was!"

"And you married him?”

Dean makes a frustrated sound. "For God's sake, Sam, we are not really married! I wouldn't just— marry someone, not without you there. No, it… it was a crazy night. I was so drunk I hardly remember it, and apparently I just grabbed him—"

"Are fucking you serious?" Sam says, voice rising. "You hooked up with some dude in Vegas and now you live in his fucking house?"

Dean's hand is over his eyes. "No, we're not living together, it's— I'm just helping him out. It's temporary, Sam. We both know that."

"Referring to some dude's house as 'yours' five times in a single paragraph does not sound very temporary, Dean."

“It’s temporary,” Dean repeats firmly, yanking open the car door and sliding in. “It’s just…” He pulls the door shut behind him and rests his forehead on the steering wheel. “It’s complicated, okay?”

“Then un-complicate it for me, Dean!”

Dean throttles back the urge to hang up on him and starts the car instead, listening to the throaty purr of the engine under him. He hits the brand-spanking-new garage door opener and backs the Impala out into the gloomy afternoon, leaden sky and pewter sea.

“Dean?” Sam asks, more softly. "You there?"

“I do like him, you know,” Dean says quietly. “I’d date him, if we weren’t already married.”

Sam makes a noise caught between a groan and a laugh. “Yah think? Dean, I hate to break it to you, but reading these emails— you’ve known him, what? Two months? And you live with him, you spend all this time with him, you have grandkittens—”

“Shut up, I did not call them that," Dean snaps. "And—Sam, I started keeping clothes here after a week," he admits, turning onto the main road.

“That’s... wow, that's, uh, really quick,” Sam says, in a carefully modulated I’m-not-judging-your-life-choices tone of voice.

"I know," Dean says. "He just... he's different."

“Yeah, I get that. You’re about as subtle as a red brick to the face, Dean. Can you see why I'm maybe a little weirded out?”

“No, man, I totally understand. It’s… but it feels…” Dean trails off. “Okay, with Lisa I really— God knows I’d do anything for her and Ben, you know?"

"I know."

"I love her. I love Ben. But push came to shove and I just… I just felt trapped. And it blew up in my face.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Dean,” Sam says.

“Pretty sure it was,” Dean says on a half-laugh. “You don’t have to lie to make me feel better.”

“Oh, I’m not saying you handled it well,” Sam says, always the honest one, “but it wasn’t your fault— at least not all of it. Lisa has her problems, too. Which makes me wonder about this Cas guy.”

“What do you mean?” Dean says, frowning.

“Well, Dean, there are two people here who got drunk and got married,” Sam says, sounding completely exasperated. “If neither of you planned on it, and both of you agreed it would be temporary, why are you still married?”

“I haven’t been trying my hardest to get away, Sam,” Dean says, and wants to cram the words back in his mouth immediately because of how true they are. "I've been doing everything but, actually," he confesses to the steering wheel.

Sam doesn’t even pause. “And Castiel? Has he been trying?”

“I…” Dean stares out of the windshield, the first few drops of icy rain streaking across it. “I don’t… know?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Dean,” Sam says, sarcasm dripping from every word, “I love hearing about all the fun and exciting ways you’ve found to complicate your life, but maybe, just maybe, you’re married to someone who also wants to be married to you! How about that?”

“... huh,” Dean says.

“Huh,” Sam mocks him. “For the love of God, Dean. Think about it.”

Dean thinks about it.

He thinks about it through the rest of the drive to the grocery store, through edging out an irate minivan driver for the World’s Narrowest Parking Spot, through body-checking soccer moms for the last of the 24-pack water bottles and battling his way through the nonperishable section, through waiting in line at the checkout counter for so long he makes it all the way through Good Housekeeping, cover to cover. There are some good tips on getting towels to dry faster and he surreptitiously tears out one of the recipe cards and pockets it; he’s been looking for good chili ideas for when the weather gets colder.

He thinks about it, running back to the car through the first volleys of rain and howling wind and loading the car like a stevedore loading smelt, fast and messy.

Dean thinks about it, about Castiel and his smiles that start out small and get big enough to split his face in two. About his bedhead and his coffee addiction. His eyes. His kindness. The way he looks at Dean sometimes like he can't quite believe he's real.

Dean thinks about how, if he had to be married anyone, he'd choose Castiel a thousand times over. It dawns on him right there in the front seat: like first light after winter solstice, like seeing a coral-colored sun rise after a storm, of course it's Cas. It feels like it always has been.

Dean sits frozen while the rain pounds on the hood and the wind rocks the car, caught by surprise by the sensation unfolding in his chest. "Oh," he says, staring blankly through the window and feeling strangely breathless. "Okay."

God, he has to tell him. He needs to tell him, right now, and it's that thought that finally gets the keys in the ignition and Dean back onto the winding road to home.

The drive is dicey, the sleety rain and periodic hail whipping horizontally past his windows in driving sheets. He creeps through it and still almost misses the turnoff to the house— they need a sign or something, or to clear the grapevines from around the mailbox— but Dean is grinning now, singing along with Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ as he takes the turn a little too fast and goes skidding on the wet grass, whipping through the trees into the courtyard, drumming his fingers impatiently on the wheel as the garage door rolls slowly up.

The house is completely dark, which dims his mood a little— but hey, he didn’t fight tooth and nail for those candles so they could sit on the counter and look pretty. He still tries the lights the second he comes in, hitting the switch in the mudroom with his elbow as he carries the groceries inside. They flicker on immediately.

Dean frowns at them for a second, but the bags weigh heavy on his arms and there are a lot of them. He shrugs and moves on.

There are two pieces of paper waiting for him in the kitchen.

The first, balled up into a tight wad of smeared ink, is lying on the floor next to the trash can. Dean sets the grocery bags next to the sink and stoops to pick it up, curious.

'WATER' is written first, underlined several times, then 'bouillon'. Next is 'canned mushrooms', followed by a little note: 'I know you don't like them but they'll be good for soup'. Below that are 'green beans', 'tuna', 'paper plates', 'plastic silverware', 'more cat food – I know we have some bags still left, but we have to be ready'.

Castiel's list, Dean realizes. But why is it here, all crumpled up? Yeah, Dean had left without it, but Cas could have called and it's not like him to get mad over something so small. He's remarkably even-tempered, actually, so why—

There's a second piece of paper on the kitchen table, which, as he steps closer, proves to be a stack of neatly-paperclipped pages, perfectly squared and centered in the middle of the wood. Dean leans over the first page with a rising sense of dread.

The heading reads CERTIFICATE OF ABSOLUTE DIVORCE OR ANNULMENT, and it's already signed and dated.

"Shit," Dean breathes. "Cas? Castiel!"

Castiel isn't anywhere in the house that Dean can find, not in their bedroom, not the library or the living rooms or the den that still faintly smells like paint. Dean ventures into the rooms they haven't touched yet, the ones still full of cobwebs and fabric-draped furniture, but Castiel isn't there, either.

"Cas, damn it!" he shouts at the empty house.

It's only when he's cutting back through the kitchen for the third time that he sees the back door is unlocked, and he yanks it open to the worsening storm.

The stray cat leans out around his legs, sniffing at the briny sea air. Dean spares her a glance before stepping out into the rain, lifting a hand to shield his eyes as best he can. It feels like tiny hateful needles on his skin, and the trees toss their branches before the wind like the waves are breaking as they come into the cove, hard and reckless. He can't see the sand itself from here; it's too dark and the seagrass moves too much. Dean closes the door on Nabokov's nose and jogs out across the yard, cursing, arms up over his head.

He comes to the treeline and sees Castiel far below, standing just at the edge of the foaming water with his shoulders hunched under his trenchcoat,.

"You fucking moron," Dean swears under his breath, and skids down the side of the hill as fast as he can, feet sinking deep in the soft sand, pelting rain numbing his skin.

"Cas!" he yells when he gets close enough. "The storm swell is supposed to be five to six feet, what the hell are you doing?"

Castiel says something that the wind steals away before it can reach Dean’s ears, still looking out over the violent ocean. When Dean comes within range he grabs Cas’ arm and tugs him around to face him.

“I heard what you said,” Castiel says without preamble, soft words all but lost in the din. "I went out to give you the list, and I heard you. I'm sorry, Dean."

"You— wait, what?” Dean says, confused. “Why are you sorry?”

"Because," Castiel says with a shake in his voice, and Dean realizes with a pang that his eyes are red and his lips are trembling, something he tries to hide behind a hand. "I've been— I've had those papers for weeks, Dean, and I just… I didn't tell you. But I've signed them now. You can take them, and leave."

"I'm not going anywhere," Dean says forcefully, but his fingers are gentle when they circle Castiel’s wrist and pull it away. "C'mon, it's freezing out here. Let’s get inside, okay? We can talk there."

"Oh," Castiel says, looking at their hands with a terrifyingly blank expression. "I forgot your ring."

He fumbles it off, and Dean feels it like punch in the mouth. He grabs Castiel's hands in his, saying, “Hey, no, no, I didn’t mean—“

“Take it, just take it,” Castiel says, and as he tries to press it into Dean’s palm, the ring falls in the surf. “Ah!”

"Cas—"

Castiel drops to his knees, groping frantically through the sand and the stones, and Dean follows, hissing at the touch of icy water. In the half-light of the storm, he can barely see his own fingers as they carefully through the sharp-edged bay rocks, let alone the ring’s shiny metal. He tries, “Cas, it’s okay. We can—“

“It’s not okay!” Castiel shouts at him, grabbing a handful of Dean’s coat. "Why didn't you tell me no? Why didn't you stop me?"

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean says, grabbing him right back. “We’ll go inside, and we’ll talk. Don’t worry about the ring. We’ll get a metal detector down here in the morning, you can rent them at the—"

“I’m not talking about the ring, you idiot,” Castiel says, and covers his face with both hands.

“Cas,” Dean says helplessly.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he says through his fingers, voice low and tortured. "I know you don't remember. I know you were drunk. I know you wouldn't have chosen me of your own volition. I know you don't— I know you don’t love me,” he says, and it comes out cored.

“Cas,” Dean says forcibly, “you know I—”

“But I'm selfish,” Castiel says over him, hands wiping angrily at his eyes. “I— I took advantage of your kind heart. I suppose I wanted to pretend that someone could feel that for me, that I could have something as, as beautiful as you— and Dean, you were perfect, you said and did all the right things and I just wanted to keep that for as long as I could. I’m so sorry."

Dean’s free hand closes around the ring through water and sand, and he says, "Cas, maybe that's what I wanted too.”

"You don't," Castiel says. 

"Pretty sure I do," Dean says, quietly. "Someone who knows you, who’s seen all your worst parts and loves you anyway. Someone you can trust to be there. Someone to come home to."

Castiel bows his head. "You could have that with anyone."

"No. Not anyone," Dean says, pulling Castiel to him. "It has to be you."

“What are you saying?” Castiel says shakily, head lifting just a fraction.

Dean plants his knees in the cold sand, makes sure Castiel is looking at him as he holds up the ring. “I'm saying that I love you. That I'm sorry I hurt you, and I can't promise that it won't happen again but I'll try, okay? I'll try my best, because I want you, just you. You’re everything I didn’t know I was looking for, and I want to make this work."

He takes a breath for courage, and says, "Cas, will you— stay married to me?”

Castiel stares at him, what might be tears and might be rain running down his face. “No. Why should I? It was just a— a silly, stupid thing.”

“It wasn’t for me,” Dean says quietly. “Cas, I need you. You're weird, and you're fucking incredible, and I love you. Stay married to me.”

Castiel closes his eyes. “It won't work.”

“It's been working fine.”

“Then why did you say those things to whoever was on the phone?”

“I think…" Dean says. "I think I’ve been stuck on what I thought marriage was going to mean. On what it meant before. Settling down, getting a mortgage on a house in the suburbs, having babies, fucking golf. I didn’t want that, Cas. I wasn’t ready for it.”

“But you are now.”

Dean smiles. “I think I could be, yeah.”

Castiel inhales, deep and unsteady, and exhales. Dean waits.

“I'm going to make you do all the yardwork," Castiel says, and Dean looks at him, aching and hopeful. "And I won't let you just throw your shoes under the planning table, that's rude, Dean, and annoying. I forget things all the time, I'm an awful cook, I hate that show you watch with the fish, I want a greenhouse, I want children, I want you with me until we die—"

Dean slides the ring onto his finger, and Castiel stops mid-sentence.

"That was a yes, right?" Dean asks, and his voice catches on the fourth word.

"... yes,” Castiel breathes, swaying closer. "Yes, Dean, I—"

Dean folds their hands together and draws him in. "You don't have to say anything else," he says, and kisses him, once, twice, close-mouthed and adoring. There's something in Castiel's eyes that says he might finally be starting to see it, how fucking much Dean loves him, how gone he is.

The next wave crashes over their legs and Castiel gasps, shuddering with the cold. Dean rises, pulling him to his feet and away from the water, and Castiel throws his arms around Dean's neck and kisses him frantically, tiny breaths in between of, "Idiot," and "Love you, love you."

"I know," Dean breathes back, holding him tightly enough that it has to hurt, but Castiel does nothing but smile. "I love you too. God, more than I ever thought I could, I love you."

"I love you," Castiel whispers. "Dean, let's go inside."

Dean snorts, and says through chattering teeth, "You're the one who decided to brood in the nor'easter, Heathcliff."

"I don't understand that reference," Castiel says, but there's a glint in his eye that makes Dean laugh, makes him draw him close for one more moment, here in the wild crush of the waves. "Inside," he says, muffled in Dean's coat. He tips his head up. "Let's go home."

"Home," Dean agrees, the word melting through him, and keeps Castiel's cold fingers wrapped tightly in his as they climb back up to the house.

They tumble into the kitchen like a couple of drunks, laughing and slipping in the water dripping from their clothes. Dean peels off Castiel's soaked sweater, lets it drop with a heavy wet plop to the floor, and Castiel stretches up on his toes to return the favor.

"C'mon, let's— let's run a bath," Dean says once his head is free from the collar, hands linked loosely behind Castiel's back. Tiger, flower, bird. "You're freezing."

"That sounds good," Castiel murmurs, forehead resting in the curve of Dean's neck. "I love you. I couldn't say it before.”

Dean hides his face in Castiel’s hair. “I— I couldn’t either, I was so afraid you’d—”

“I wouldn’t, I’d never,” Castiel says fiercely.

"I love you, too," Dean sighs, and smiles when he hears a chorus of tiny mews start up from somewhere near their ankles. "Hey, Cas?"

"Yes?"

"Upstairs?"

"...yes."

They climb the stairs, pausing for long, slow kisses that make Dean lose track of his footing, stumbling over the spiral steps with hands patting blindly along the wall until they find the knob. They fall into the room and close the door behind them, shutting the world and the storm (and the cats) outside.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 07:32 PM
Subject: You're Invited
Attachments: xmas_housewarming_invite.png

Y'know, if you don't have anything else planned...

-DW & CM