Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This couldn’t be happening.

Several men walked into their dorm room uninvited. Campus police. Cas pulled away from the sofa where Ralph was still sitting, his legs spread wide and bliss fading fast from his expression. The big man Cas usually waved to, firmly but not unkindly, pulled his hands behind him and helped him to his feet.

“I need you to come with us, son.”

This had to be a dream.

The man’s words made no sense, but his hands felt real enough. The way his body struggled to comply, still dazed from the interruption and off balance, felt real enough. The cold of the handcuffs against his wrists chilled him to the bone the way no dream ever had.

Castiel’s eyes darted to where Ralph was also being pulled to his feet, his pants still open and falling off his hips. Another officer, less kind, was shoving his pants up into place and securing the belt, not bothering with the zipper. There was a lot of talking, but he couldn’t find enough focus to walk and listen at the same time, so he focused on keeping his feet under him.

His parents were going to kill him.

Castiel’s family was highly regarded for their devotion to their extremely puritanical church. Over the years they had laid out god’s plan for Castiel many times. The plan included a business degree and a wife. It did not include being arrested with a dick in his mouth.

He got into the back seat of the cruiser, and now that his feet didn’t need to move, he made himself assess the situation. Ralph was crying as he was dropped into the seat next to Cas. The words he’d not been listening to started to claim his attention. There was “under arrest”, and “crimes against nature”, and surely that couldn’t mean what he thought it meant.

It was 2001, officially the 21st century, and there was no way this was happening. It had to be one of his anxiety dreams, surely. Somewhere between setting out candles for Ralph’s 19th birthday dinner and his actual arrival, Castiel must have fallen asleep. It was the only thing that made sense.

The next few hours exist only in snapshots. Cas being transferred into another cruiser, alone. Cas being searched, fingerprinted, booked. The face of the man who told him any sexual activity between two people of the same sex was a crime in this state, unless it was in private space. The same face as he explained that dorm rooms, like school lockers and locker rooms, are not technically private space. His mother’s face through the bars of the cell they have him in as she told him that this was his punishment for straying from god’s plan. She’d bail him out if he agreed to go to therapy. Conversion therapy, of course. But those words would require his mother to acknowledge who he is under the mask, and she won’t do that.

He should have known then, and later when he was more rational he’d realize that he did know. But in the moment, it seemed like another staggering impossibility.

Ralph, also talking to his family. They were just as strict as Castiel’s. It was what they first bonded over. It was what made him a suitable room mate, as far as his family was concerned. It was the only reason he’d been allowed to live in the dorm instead of commuting, he suspected. Ralph, leaving him behind, bailed out by his family.

The door closed behind Ralph, then behind his mother, then it was just Cas, and the bright lights all around him. They were inescapable. They forced him to face some hard truths.

He was on his own. He never should have let his parents control his life to this extent. He was 18, a man by any definition, and he’d allowed his parents to tell him where to go and what to do with his life. He should have gone away to college like he wanted to. He should have gotten a job. He knew, all along, what his parents would do if the truth came out. And if he couldn’t take control of his own life, he should have at least had enough self-control not to fall for the first guy that smiled at him suggestively. He never should have allowed himself a hookup, nevermind a boyfriend. He should have known - he should have known -

It didn’t matter what he should have known, what he should have done, he settled on. Only what he was going to do now.

oOo

He lost track of time, at some point. It had been months, that was all he really knew of the world outside. He didn’t know if he was still enrolled at the university. Or what had happened to his things, left behind at the dorm. The public defender he finally met didn’t have any answers yet, but she’d find out.

In that time, Cas had undergone a transformation. No, that wasn't right. It wasn't so much that he'd changed but that he'd figured out who he was. It turned out that, even behind bars, there was freedom in being so utterly forgotten.

For something to do, he’d worked out, and his nerdy bookworm body had hardened and filled out. More to the point, his resolve had hardened more than his muscles. He wasn’t sure yet what options would still be open to him after all was said and done. But he knew he was done with his family. He knew he was done with this state. And he knew he was done with god’s plans. He was his own person now. He'd make his own plans.

He felt, for the first time ever, as though he had a life to live. And he couldn’t wait to get out of there and start living it.

“Just get me out,” he’d told her. “As soon as possible. Just- get me out.”

oOo

Cas sat next to his lawyer as the judge explained the terms of the plea deal. He'd already heard it from his lawyer. He'd considered it. It was a good deal. He got to leave today and never look back.

It should have probably made more of an impression that both the lawyer and the judge insisted that waiting for a full trial might be better in the long run. He couldn't do it. He couldn't face going back to the bars and the relentless light, and the restless sleep. Not when there was another choice. He needed to be out now, no matter what it cost him.

He didn't really understand the cost. He wouldn't, not for years to come. On that day, it seemed to him it was barely more than an inconvenience. A burdensome chore, but one he could manage. Nothing worth going back to jail for.

The sound of the gavel signaled his conviction. He was sentenced to time served.

And for the rest of his life, he'd have to register as a sex offender.

Chapter Text

Sioux Falls, South Dakota was the kind of small town where nothing much ever really happened. The kind of town where you could settle down to a quiet, predictable life. Where you could be just as comfortable and relaxed in the town square during rush hour as you were in front of your own TV on any random evening.

Sioux Falls and the people in it saved Dean's life. When John had left them here with Bobby, he was 12. He could fight like a marine, and read like a 3rd grader. He was well-versed at hustling pool and generally conning whatever he needed out of people. Sam had to eat. He'd seriously asked himself how soon he could safely start turning tricks to make money. He'd already had his first hangover. In short, he was already well on his way to becoming his father.

It was Bobby's book collection that got through to him first. He'd never seen so many books outside of a school library. He'd never had so much time to read. Bobby kept a roof over their head and food on the table, and Dean had precious time to just sit and read. Then Ellen's pie had drawn him out of the house, and the town had won him over.

He never knew if his father had just decided not to come back for them, or if Bobby had chased him off. Sam had let enough slip to give Bobby an idea of what kind of father John was. Either way, getting left behind was the best thing that ever happened to Dean.

He went to school. The same school, all year. He was really behind, but he caught up quickly. He made friends. He mowed lawns and he shoveled snow for pocket money. He got to know everyone. He felt more safe than he ever had before.

When Dean first became Jody’s deputy, some 10 years ago, it still seemed like everybody knew everybody else. He spent most of his time ticketing out of towners that got off the interstate and didn’t slow down before driving down Main Street. And when he wasn’t doing that, or driving home some teenager he picked up trying to get into a bar or something, he was trying to keep Bobby and Rufus from killing each other. Metaphorically speaking, he snarked. Those two old coots wouldn’t know what to do without each other.

There were more people now, but not much else had changed. Jody was still the sheriff, Bobby and Rufus were still fighting, and most everyone still looked out for the kids. Even the ones with a chip on their shoulder. It was like a place out of time. A safe place to call home.

At least, it used to be. That might be changing now. Nothing that he’d faced over the last 10 years had prepared him for what he had to do today.

He’d been notified that a sex offender was moving into the area. The old Newman house. Dean had been wondering who was moving ever since he heard the place sold a week ago. It was a big place. Solid. A house meant for a family. Dean himself had given some thought to buying it once, but small town deputies just don’t make that kind of money. Nice neighborhood too. Lots of families there. Families with kids.

Dean put his coat on and grabbed his radio from the charger. He would have preferred to wait until he had this guy’s file and a better idea of what they were in for. People would have questions he didn’t have answers for yet. But that would take a couple of days and he was expected tomorrow.

Today he had to notify everyone that Castiel Novak was moving in.

Dean parked the truck outside the Rosen place, not twenty minutes later, and took a moment to study the situation across the street. Some security company van was in the driveway of the Newman place, half a dozen people fussing around the outside of the house at various points. Definitely from out of town.

Adjusting his belt, he started ambling towards the Rosen's house, the first house on the right. The Newman house faced the entrance to a cul-de-sac, and he figured he'd start there and work his way out. Chuck was probably at work already, but Becky worked from home, and she should be back from dropping the kids off at school by now.

When he turned to face the house, he spotted her immediately, looking out the window. He'd flatter himself that she was concerned about his presence, but most likely, she was being nosy about the security company van. Becky was like that. Nice lady, helpful when he needed a lead to follow. But she'd get the word out to half the neighborhood before he was done with half the cul-de-sac. Another reason he’d decided to start here.

He waved to get her attention, and she met him at the door.

“Morning, Becky. How’s the family?”

“We’re fine, Dean. Just fine.” He could see her eyes darting to the activity behind him. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, Becky, I’m here to notify you, as required by law, that a sex offender is about to move into the area.”

Dean watched her eyes go wide, focus on the building across the street again for a moment, and then return to him more intently.

“You’d better come in.”

oOo

He had that conversation about 37 more times that morning, and at least 100 times after lunch, as word started to get around and he was approached wherever he went. Each and every time he’d seen concern replace the friendly smile he’d been welcomed with. This morning, it had been a peaceful, open neighborhood. This evening, it was tense, anxious, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He didn’t like it.

Dean had done his best to reassure everyone that it would be fine. That this Castiel would not be a threat to their families. He would personally make sure of it. There was nothing any of Sioux Falls’ finest had on their to do list that would take priority over this. It might have even worked, if he’d had more answers. There was a lot they didn’t know yet, and that just wasn’t a reassuring place to be in.

Still. The man would be here in the morning. His file would be here another day or two after that. He’d have to come in to register with the sheriff. Not like he was likely to go hunting for trouble before he got his stuff unpacked and the paperwork done. They’d have more answers soon enough.

oOo

It was out of his way, by about 10 minutes, but he had the time. He would have made the time, regardless. Even with the house sitting empty, it would be reassuring to the neighbors to see him drive by on his way home from work. He’d drive by on his way to and from work every day at least until they had some solid answers, he resolved. Maybe every day for the rest of his career in law enforcement. He’d be driving Baby tonight, but starting tomorrow, at least for a while, he’d stick to the truck. Image was important at a time like this. So was focus. He turned down his classic rock station, as he approached the turnoff for the cul-de-sac and slowed down.

He hadn’t meant to stop, but where the security van had been before there was a small moving truck. Dean checked the clock on his dash. It was almost 8 pm. Bit late for them to be getting started. Not that it would take long, judging by the size of the truck and the size of the 4 men working to unload it.

Benny might be dealing with a noise complaint when they got down to the furniture, Dean mused. Those were the joys of working the night shift.

He got himself home, ate the casserole that Mrs. Garr had insisted he take for his dinner, and turned on his comfort show. But not even Dr. Sexy could ease the restlessness in him tonight. He looked around the apartment for something else to distract him and his eyes landed on his mantel. Sam’s graduation picture caught his attention, the way it always seemed to when his eyes happened to roam that way.

He checked the time, converted to PST, and decided it was early enough to call. Sam must have been on his phone, because he answered immediately.

“Hey, Dean!”

“Hiya, Sam. Were you in the middle of something? I can call back.”

“Na, man, just doom scrolling. I could use the distraction. How’s everyone?”

“Bobby and Rufus still haven’t killed each other, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Sam chuckled. “I guess it is.”

“Jess still putting up with your shedding?”

“Funny, man,” Sam gave a sarcastic chuckle. “You haven’t even seen me in months. How do you know I haven’t had a haircut?”

There was a scrambling sound, and another voice jumped in.

“Stop picking on your brother, Dean.”

“Hey, Jess. You still there? You know, I’m still available.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve always been partial to Goldilocks.”

“You know I love you, right?” he chuckled.

He could say it to Jess, just that easily, because Jess hadn’t been there when those words weren’t allowed. Jess didn’t know.

More scrambling, and then Sam was back.

“You’re a terrible influence on her. So what’s up?” he cut to the chase.

"Why does something have to be up?" Dean dodged.

"Well, you're calling a few days early, you opened with a comfort joke and you're avoiding the question. That's a triple whammy, man. Something is definitely up."

"You got me," he confessed. "I don't really want to talk about it yet, though. Still a lot I don’t know. But it's unsettling, so I needed a distraction. Figured I'd call and let you tell me all about whatever you're working on right now."

“Uh, family law is just not that interesting, man,” he sounded resigned. “Though I have a custody case coming up -”

He scooted down in his seat and listened as Sam started on about his case, and, for the moment, everything was right in his world again.

Chapter Text

Dean was going to be late.

He’d left early, intending to detour by the Newman house. He had not meant to stop. A slow drive by, just to make sure there was nothing going on that he needed to worry about. This early, on the day the man meant to move in, it seemed highly unlikely. He hadn’t factored in Becky. She flagged him down, but in the end she just wanted to drill him for information he didn’t have yet. It took him more than a few minutes to finally get out of that.

It turned out to be long enough that he’d just missed Castiel Novak. He’d presented himself early, waited for the sheriff to arrive, and completed the registration process just about at the same time that Dean was ditching Becky. He supposed there was plenty of time to meet the man.

One uneventful day bled into another. He drove by the Newman house on his way to and from work every day. On his days off, he jogged by the Newman house. Everything was quiet. No movement outside, no cars in the drive. The house might as well be empty, except that there were sometimes deliveries. He was mostly able to avoid Becky, thank all that is holy, after that first day. Somehow it had been a week, and nothing involving Novak had really happened.

Dean wanted to be relieved, but mostly he felt… itchy.

The documentation had arrived on his day off, and Dean had been meaning to read it, but now that it was here he was oddly reluctant to go through it. Things were going well so far. He was almost afraid that if he opened the file he might break whatever spell was keeping the peace. Still, he had to read it sometime. He was contemplating going back to the station early to read it (it was quiet, like the entire town was holding its breath) when a call came through from dispatch. It seemed he would not be avoiding Becky Rosen any longer.

oOo

Dean looked at his notes again. He had everything delivered. He was never seen coming and going. He was not seen outside at all.

“So tell me about this suspicious behavior,” he prompted.

“Well, don’t you think it’s suspicious to have all these things delivered?”

“Lots of people do all their shopping online now, after Covid,” Dean reasoned. “And he just moved in. It’s a big house. The moving truck was pretty small. He probably bought a bunch of stuff for the house.”

“Messenger services don’t deliver furnishings,” she insisted. “And wouldn’t you think he’d buy his groceries at our grocery store, instead of having them brought in from Hartford?”

“Walt’s doesn’t even have a website, Becky. And last I checked, there was no law against getting your groceries from another zip code.”

“But it’s not normal! And - I’ve not seen him pick up a delivery yet! The boxes get dropped off by his door, and then next thing you know they’re gone again. And when the grocery delivery came, instead of coming to the door, he had them drop everything off inside the garage. It’s like he doesn’t want to be seen, Dean. Don’t you think it’s suspicious?”

“So you think what? He had plastic surgery or something so he wouldn’t be recognized?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she insists, with a sparkle in her eyes that was frankly a bit concerning, “I’m just saying it’s suspicious.”

Dean sighed, and slipped his notepad into his pocket.

“Alright, I’ll go talk to him.”

He walked across the street rather more reluctantly than he should have. He was doing his job, that was all. It was just that, right at the moment, his job seemed pretty stupid. This was an opportunity to meet the guy and get a better idea of what they were dealing with, which was good. But bothering him over keeping to himself wasn’t a great way to make the right first impression. Anyway, he was committed now.

Dean knocked firmly and waited in his most professional manner. After a moment, he heard a chime from the doorbell, and an unexpectedly gruff voice asked him to wait a moment. Left to his own devices, Dean had a look around the porch.

In addition to the Ring doorbell the man had answered, over by the porch light in the corner there was a security camera. There was no furniture, despite the wealth of welcoming covered porch space available. The railing seemed to have been refinished, though when that had happened, or how when apparently he was never to be seen outside, was a mystery. Inspecting the quality of the work he discovered a hidden camera where 3 of the beams met at the corner of the porch roof opposite the first camera. How many cameras were there, anyway?

Before he could give any thought to looking for more, a noise from just inside the door brought him back into his original position.

“Hello, officer. How can I help you?” the gruff voice asked.

Reaching for his notepad, Dean took a moment to examine the man. He was slightly shorter than Dean himself was, reasonably fit, but something of a mess. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed, with messy hair, pajama pants, bare feet and a loose t-shirt.

“Mr. Novak?” he checked.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Deputy Winchester of the Sioux Falls Sheriff’s Department. We’ve received a call about suspicious activity in the area. Do you have a few minutes? I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Of course, officer,” he stepped back. “Please, come in.”

Two steps in, Dean found himself stopping cold. Most of the space in the house was basically empty. He could see an entertainment system setup in the living room with what appeared to be another camera mounted on the ceiling fan, and through an arch, he could see the kitchen, well stocked with everything a well used kitchen needed. But there was no table to eat at, no floor lamps, no end tables or extra seating. No art on the walls. No rugs, or decorative pillows, or any of the usual comforts of home.

No boxes waiting to be unpacked either. But maybe all of that was in a back room somewhere.

“Moving company lose half your stuff?” he probed.

“No,” he spit out, more harshly than Dean had expected.

Novak led the way towards the kitchen, and Dean followed somewhat slower, taking a moment to look into doorways as he passed them. There were towels in the bathroom, and an air freshener, it smelled like, but no rug, no pretty soap dishes, nothing that wasn’t strictly utilitarian. Across from that was another room, apparently an office, with a desk in the corner, set up with a desktop computer and all the accessories that went with it, including another camera.

Not wanting his snooping to be too obvious, he caught up to Novak as he entered the kitchen where a bar stool stood in front of a breakfast nook. Novak gestured vaguely in its direction in what Dean presumed was an invitation to sit.

“How are you settling in?” Dean attempted a casual tone, as if this was just polite conversation before the real questions came in.

“Fine. The house is everything I hoped it would be. My things are here…” he trailed off. This was usually the part where someone else would say something about the neighborhood.

“Have you met all the neighbors yet?”

“No. I’m afraid I’m something of a recluse. I work from home, everything I need gets delivered. I don’t get out much,” he explained.

“About that -” Dean started. “Your neighbors mentioned a lot of deliveries. All kinds, from groceries to messenger service. What can you tell me about that?”

Instead of answering Novak pulled out a laptop, and worked at the keys for a moment before carefully placing it in front of Dean, then reached into a drawer for a file folder.

"Let me save you some time, officer," he sounded almost bored of the whole conversation. Maybe resigned. "These are the packing slips for all the packages delivered since I moved in. If you like, you can match them to my bank’s transaction record, on the screen in front of you, to ensure it's all there."

He clicked over to another tab where he was logged into his account at the grocery chain store.

"Here are the details of the two grocery store deliveries made thus far to this address, as well as the name and contact information of the delivery drivers. You're welcome to contact them. They'll remember. I tip very well to compensate for the inconvenience of driving out here."

The man’s deep blue eyes bore into him as if challenging him to question any of the documents in front of him.

"As for the messenger service deliveries, they delivered documents connected with the sale of my previous house and the purchase of this one, as well as some materials connected with my work."

Dean closed the laptop and the folder without looking through them.

"I appreciate your cooperation, but this isn't necessary," he countered, standing up. "You're not being accused of anything."

Novak didn't say anything, but his smirk said it for him.

"Look, they're just weirded out. It's a small town, they're used to knowing their neighbors. You're just a mystery, is all."

"This is the 7th time I've moved in the last 10 years, deputy. I'm familiar with the process."

Dean looked around again, the lack of those small comforts suddenly making a lot more sense. He remembered moving from town to town like that, before he landed here with Bobby. You learned to stick to the essentials. Nobody wants to pack and unpack a metric ton of junk every few months.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"That'll do it," Dean summoned his most professional smile, "Thank you for your time, Mr. Novak."

He followed the man back to his front door, and stood aside when he opened it.

"What do you do?" He tossed over his shoulder just before stepping out. "For a living?"

"I write books, deputy. I'm a published author."

"Anything I might have read?" Dean asked, genuine curiosity overcoming professional interest momentarily.

"I doubt it."

And since he didn't add anything to that, Dean stepped the rest of the way out and headed back to his car. That, he decided, was weird.

The man had been far too ready with all the information and evidence to support it. Far too willing to expose his private business when they both knew he had no real reason to be asking any of those questions. Almost everyone Dean knew, in this situation, would have clammed up, just out of principle. Or asked a lot of questions in return. They'd have told him to come back with a warrant, if he had asked to see any documents. If they even still had any of those slips and receipts, it would be crushed in a pocket or the bottom of a bag, not neatly tucked into a file folder. Ask him a casual every day question, though, the kind of stuff people ask new acquaintances all the time, and he all but shuts it down. And what was the deal with all the cameras?

That was definitely weird. Dare he say it? Even suspicious.

Chapter Text

Dean had every intention of reading that file when he got back in, but by the time he’d made it back to his desk, and filled out a report, it was well past time to go home, and he was starving.

“There went two hours of my life I’ll never get back. Thanks, Becky!” he grumbled, as he filed the blasted report and grabbed his coat. First thing tomorrow. Time to get this over with.

Except the next day he was off again. He’d forgotten about that, or he would have printed the file and taken it home with him. And as he walked in the door the day after that, Charlie was waiting for him.

“Hey, you’re early! Sweet,” she noted. But her expression was anything but sweet.

“What’s up, Red?”

“Mr. Williams just called the non-emergency line with a tip,” she started.

“Jared?” Dean smirked, picturing the elderly crossing guard, “someone too slow in the drop off lane again?”

But Charlie didn’t laugh, and that had Dean bracing for impact.

“He said he saw someone watching the kids get off the bus this morning. And he’s pretty sure the same person was there yesterday, too. He thinks it might have been our new resident.”

With a sigh, he stashed his personal items and turned to head back out the door.

“It’s not really your job, but can you do me a solid, if you have time?” Charlie waited at the top of the stairs. “Can you print his file for me? And maybe do a bit of digging and see what else you can come up with? I haven’t had a chance to read any of it yet and damn it, if I have to take it home and pull an all-nighter to do it, today is the day.”

“Sure thing,” she agreed, before bouncing back to her desk in the dispatch room.

He should have popped in on his day off to read the damn file.

oOo

Mr. WIlliams lived less than a block away from the school. Exactly where he’d lived since Dean and Sammy used to go to that school. And just like he did then, every morning and every afternoon, he was in charge of the crosswalk directly in front of the school, where he had a clear view of the drop off lane. At least as clear a view as anyone who had to be 80 if he was a day could have of anything.

“Charlie said you called, Mr. Williams,” Dean spoke up. Thanks to Mr. Williams he had mastered the art of speaking loudly without sounding like he was shouting.

“I’m sorry to say that I did, Dean,” he shook his head sadly and motioned to the kitchen.

“You saw something this morning?” he prompted.

“Yes, at drop off time. Would you like some coffee, Dean? You look tired.”

“I’m alright, Mr. Williams. Already had my two morning cups, thank you.” It used to be water, or juice, or fruit, back in the day, before Dean and Sammy had been here long enough to look healthy and strong. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, he supposed.

They sat on the living room sofa, mostly because Dean knew Mr. Williams wouldn’t sit if he didn’t, and he was getting too old to stand around like that if he didn’t have to. In fact, if he wasn’t a freaking local institution, Dean’s pretty sure the crossing guard gig would have moved on to some other person years ago.

“I was standing on the sidewalk, after the Travis children crossed, and I looked over my shoulder to make sure they made it across the parking lot okay. You know how it is at that time, what with the drop off line and people parking to go into the office,” he started, down to business.

“What time would you say it was?”

“‘Bout 8:47, I expect. That’s when the bus drops off and it had just stopped in the bus lane. I saw the doors open.”

“Alright,” Dean made a note of the time and waited for more information.

“I was turning to face the street again when I saw a person I didn’t recognize, at the corner,” he pointed as if they had been standing at the sidewalk. Dean knew exactly what corner he meant. “You know I know everyone in town who has kids by now, and everyone who doesn’t, for that matter. You get to know people as a crossing guard. I got to thinking how weird it was that two days in a row I saw a stranger. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw somebody I didn’t recognize before this. And then I realized that actually, I could. Last week, there was somebody just there too, but I didn’t think much of it then cause it was Friday and you know how different people can look when they wear jeans instead of suits. I just figured it was my old eyes and the twilight, you know.”

“Was this also at 8:47? Both times?”

“I can’t rightly say as it was exactly, but it would have been around that time, because the bus was there every time I saw the man. He was looking towards the bus every time, watching the kids.”

“Did you ever see this person at pick up time, in the afternoon?”

“I did not. Least I don’t recall seeing him then.”

"What can you tell me about this person? What do they look like?"

"Man. Taller 'n me but shorter than you. Dark hair, not too long. Kinda bulky. Can't really say I got a good 'nough look to tell you anythin' beyond that."

"That's a start," Dean says, "but not a great one. Did he do anything?"

"Just stood and looked at the kids for a coupla minutes. Long 'nough to make me think I should go and say something, but I didn't want to scare the kids, you know?"

"That makes sense. You did the right thing. Do you think he knows you saw him?"

"I'm pretty sure. He kinda looked my way, you know, like he was tryna see if he was spotted, and I gave him the look. You know the one."

Dean chuckled. "Yeah, I do."

“If he knows he’s been spotted, he might stay away, at least for a while,” Dean reasoned. “He won’t want to get caught again.”

“I s’pose you’re right ‘bout that,” Mr. Williams agreed.

“Dispatcher said you thought it was that man that just moved in. What makes you think that?”

“Well, I don’t know him yet. I know everybody else. Plus he…” he hesitated, searching for words. “Well, you know what he did.”

SInce he did not yet, in fact, know what he did, Dean chose not to pursue that line of questioning. He really, really had to read that file today.

“Do you have any reason other than not knowing him to think it was him?”

“It’s not that hard to figure, boy.”

“Alright, well,” Dean snapped his notebook closed and started to get up. “I’ll see what I can find out. Thank you for calling it in.”

“You’re welcome,” he started to scramble up from the sofa with some difficulty.

“You enjoy your coffee, Mr. Williams. I can see myself out.”

“Say hi to Charlie for me. Tell her to come see me sometime, too. I’ve got some of those candies she likes, got’em last week.”

“You bet,” he called out, half-way to the door already. “You take care, now.”

oOo

He pulled up outside the Newman house (the Novak house now, he supposed), still asking himself if he should go by the station first and read the damned file. But he was there now, and he had no reason to think Novak would be anything less than cooperative. It would just look weird as hell to change his mind now, leave, and come back after reading the file.

Anyway, he knocked on the door, and waited for the chime. Which is why the sound of the door handle turning almost made him jump out of his skin.

“Deputy,” Novak grunted, scratching at his scalp. “What brings you here today?”

“I’ve got -”

“A few questions,” he interrupted. “Of course you do. Come on in, then.”

He padded to the kitchen, his eyes on his bare feet, with Dean hot on his heels.

"I haven't had coffee yet. Can we just skip the small talk and get to the point?"

"Are you just getting up?"

Cas reached for the coffee pot and poured himself a cup, before turning to face Dean.

"Five minutes ago. Maybe ten, tops."

He sipped, and the first taste of coffee made him lift his face in a way that was almost obscene.

"So you were still in bed at around 8:47 this morning?"

He made a noise like he figured something out, signaled for Dean to wait, and took another sip of his coffee, before reaching for the phone, dialing, and putting it on speaker.

"Milton Security, how may I direct your call?"

"This is Castiel Novak. I have Deputy Winchester with me, and he needs to confirm my whereabouts earlier today."

"Of course, Mr. Novak. I'll put you through," the scratchy voice on the other end helpfully replied.

Hold music followed, and Dean turned to explain to the man that this wasn't at all necessary, but he found him leaving the room and well… while it wasn't strictly necessary, independent confirmation would certainly wrap this up a lot faster.

"Mr. Novak?" came from the phone just as he came back through the door, looking somewhat more presentable.

"Only on Thursdays."

"Thank you for confirming your pass key," the voice continued, pleasantly. How can I help you?"

"I have Deputy Winchester with me. He needs to confirm my whereabouts. Please give him whatever information he requires. Actually, why don't we just give him access? Just give him whatever he needs so that next time he needs to know where I was at any time he can just look it up instead of interrupting my first cup of coffee."

"Of course, sir. One moment while I create a login for Deputy Winchester."

He was giving him access? What the hell? And access to what?

"Alright Deputy Winchester, your login information is ready. Would you like me to fax or email it?"

"Fax, please." He stuttered.

"I'm ready for that number when you are."

He rattled it out without thinking, his eyes on the man's back as he poured himself a second cup and dropped some bread into a toaster.

"What time?"

"8:47 this morning," Novak grunted, since apparently Dran had zoned out long enough that he'd been asked a question and failed to answer it.

"At 8:47 this morning Mr. Novak was upstairs at home."

"Same time yesterday," Dean returned.

He heard the clacking of some keys before the voice responded "Upstairs, again."

"Same time last Friday."

More clacking, and a different answer this time. "At 8:47 last Friday, Mr. Novak was in his home office, at his computer."

"Thank you, that is all." Dean wrapped up.

"Would you like us to save the video evidence for that time, Mr. Novak?" she asked in what he couldn't help noticing was a much warmer tone than she'd used for Dean.

Novak swallowed his coffee quickly and replied over his shoulder. "Yes, please. 10 minutes before and after, as usual."

"I'll put a ticket in for Records."

"Thank you, Jenny. I appreciate your help."

"Any time. Thank you for choosing Milton Security."

The line went dead, Novak set the coffee cup on the counter, and cleared his voice.

"If you don't have any more questions, I'll walk you out."

O, he had questions alright. Lots of questions. But before he embarrassed himself by asking any of them, he had some light reading to do.

Chapter Text

“Charlie!” Dean called out from his desk.

That wasn’t going to work, he realized. Charlie was downstairs in the dispatch room, too far away to hear him. He had to talk to Charlie. Now. He dropped the papers and headed for the open door and the stairwell right next to it.

He called out again from the top of the stairs, not even sure why. If the door was closed downstairs, as it usually was, she wouldn’t be able to hear him at all until he opened it. It must have been open, though, because as he turned on the landing, half way down to her floor, she showed up in the doorway.

“Charlie. I -”

Dean had no idea how to finish that sentence. What did he even want to say to Charlie? What was there to say to anyone? The truth was, he had no idea. He was reading the damned file one moment, and the next he felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him and he needed his friend to find his footing again.

“Did you read it?” he asked, even though the answer was all over her face.

“Yeah.”

They slumped against the wall together. “How is this real, Charlie? How -” he took a deep breath and tried again, “how is it possible?”

Charlie didn’t have an answer, though, so instead of an answer she gave him a hug. After a minute her line rang, she went to pick up the call, and he went back to the file. He still had a lot of pages to get through.

oOo

Dean set aside the file, and leaned back into his chair. That was… a lot to process.

When he made it back to his desk, he thought he was ready for the rest of it. He made himself think through it. It wasn’t so much doing jail time, but all the consequences of a sex crime conviction. Having to explain his record to every potential boss, landlord, or partner. Having to out himself all the time. The loss of privacy. The constant reminder of having to check in, every 90 days, for the rest of his life. He thought he was ready. And then he got to Charlie’s research.

The first few years had - a lot of gaps. He checked in every 90 days as required, always. But his check-ins were all over the place. Sometimes there was no known address. He still had regular jobs, back then, when he had them. There were some gaps there too. Then he settled in Vegas.

It made sense, as a choice. A lot of outcasts end up in Vegas. A lot of people pass through. Most of the locals are too busy minding their own to care about what their neighbors are doing. The same address showed up a solid 9 years, give or take a few months. But they weren't quiet ones.

There were pages and pages of complaints. All over his rental history. Most of them unverifiable (too much noise after hours, shouting in the hallway, he said/he said stuff), and they never really went anywhere. They weren't really meant to, of course. It's the kind of stuff people do to neighbors they don't like, just because they can. All over his work record too, for about 5 years, and then he stopped working regular jobs. Probably when writing started to pay, if Dean had to guess.

But as the complaints failed to chase him off, they got worse. The police were called. A lot. A loud party he wasn't having, a double-parked car he didn't own, it went on and on. Eventually he moved, and it started all over again somewhere else. The first three times he moved were one year apart, give or take a few days. Then the rental history disappeared. He’d bought a place.

This didn’t bode well. In Dean’s experience, nothing escalated a situation faster than taking away people’s avenues for pettiness. Without a boss or landlord to create drama with, they would find other ways to be a nightmare. He took a deep breath and looked at what Charlie dug out of the law enforcement databases.

He’d been questioned in connection to far too many crimes. Possibly anything that ever happened in whatever neighborhood he found himself in. It was exhausting to read, and disturbing to think about. He skimmed through it, having learned more than he needed to know already. Shit. He needed to think about something else or he was going to be useless all day.

Fortunately, he still had a job to do, so he took a deep breath, got his head back in the game and got himself off to the school. Staff were always out in force to welcome the kids in the morning. If there was a stranger making repeat appearances, as Mr. Williams said, maybe one of them had seen something.

He started at the front office. Mrs. Moore, who was usually at the front desk fielding phone calls and preparing tardy slips with an excellent view of the corner in question, hadn't noticed anyone. She assured him that she'd keep an eagle eye out tomorrow, however, and began to prepare extra slips so she wouldn't be distracted when the time came. Mr. Fisher, the custodian that always made a sweep of the playground around that time, had nothing to report but he'd plan to do some landscaping tomorrow morning, right in that area, just in case.

He was already chalking it up to Mr. Williams needing new glasses, but for the sake of being thorough (and maybe because he needed a distraction) Dean decided to speak to the driver of the bus that had been unloading, the principal, and the teacher who had playground duty that morning. That should keep him busy until the kids were released, and he could check in with Mr. Williams before going back to his desk.

As it turned out, the teacher was on his prep period, so Dean talked to him first. Nothing unusual to report there, but he always stayed late grading papers and he’d check in with Mr. Williams. The principal only wanted to add that Dean should check in with her after he was done here, and if he found there was reason for concern, they could discuss a plan and she would call an emergency staff meeting in the morning.

Nothing left to do but talk to the bus driver.

“Hey, Tom, how’s it going?” Dean approached the driver’s window.

“Alright,” he said, easy but alert. Then he noticed the notepad in Dean’s hands and added, “I only have a couple of minutes before the kids start coming in.”

“That’s all I need,” Dean reassured him. “Seen anything unusual at drop off recently? Say in the last week?”

“Like what?” Tom hesitated.

“Anything out of place? Stranger hanging around? Anything like that?”

“There’s a stranger hanging around?” Tom turned to look behind him.

“Maybe. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. You see anything?”

“I haven’t, but I’m usually focused on the kids, making sure they get off the bus safely.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” They heard the bell, and before the bell was done ringing the doors opened and kids started running out. Dean’s eyes made their way to the corner as he tucked his notebook away. “I’ll be here in the morning to check things out, what do you say we touch base then?”

The kids started to line up outside the door, and Dean could barely hold Tom’s attention long enough to get a “sure thing” out of him after that.

In the end, it was a bust. There was no sign of anyone who didn’t belong there. He’d check in the morning, just to be sure, but he was fairly convinced it was a false alarm. He dawdled anyway, in no rush to go back to the desk where that file was waiting.

Dean made it back to his desk just after 4, spent the next hour making far too many notes, making sure every detail of the matter was thoroughly documented. If he was honest with himself, trying to prove that this wasn’t just another neighbor trying to make trouble for Castiel.

Somehow, he was still staring at his notes when Benny came in for his shift. With more urgency than he’d felt all afternoon, Dean tucked the file away in his desk and gathered his things. He needed a drink. Maybe Charlie would join him for one, when her shift was over in another couple of hours. He’d get home, get his shit together, and then send her a text.

He was stopped outside the Newman house before he knew what he was doing. Force of habit, probably. He’d been driving out of his way to come through here since the day before the man moved in. It was embarrassing to think about now. He wondered if Novak had noticed him. If he thought of Dean as just another cop breathing down his neck, looking for an excuse to hassle him.

Should he go knock on the door and apologize? Dean felt like he owed him an apology. How weird would that be, though? Like going out of his way to drive by wasn’t creepy enough, he was now stopped outside said house for literally no reason he could think of, debating bothering the man yet again. He could apologize later. If history was anything to go by, he’d have plenty of opportunities. There’d be another call soon enough.

He should talk to Charlie. Maybe they could figure out a way to run interference on that.

Embarrassed, he drove the rest of the way home in silence, found a rerun of Dr. Sexy to keep his mind occupied, and then sent Charlie an invitation to join him for dinner. He hadn’t cooked all week. He never cooked anymore, unless he had a guest.

He came back from looking through his fridge to an enthusiastic text from Charlie. She was bringing dessert, because she was an awesome friend. There was some chicken he was defrosting in the fridge, and he had just enough time to make chicken parmesan. He cranked the volume up on Dr. Sexy and started prepping the surfaces for cooking.

oOo

"Hey, Sam."

"Shit. What's going on, Dean?"

"I'm not even calling early this time, man," Dean pointed out.

"You never call me Sam without an argument unless something's really wrong."

"How's family law?" And for the life of him he didn't know why he was stalling. He’d called to talk about it. To talk to Sam about it.

"Still boring."

"I… I don't really know how -" he didn't know how to talk about what he was feeling right now. Mostly because he didn't really understand it. So he took a deep breath and fell back on the facts. "Someone moved in, recently. He bought the Newman house. Sam, he's -" he gulped, started with the easy one. "He’s gay. And he’s a registered sex offender."

Sam didn't say anything, but he could hear his brother's breath catch.

"He's a sex offender because he's gay," Dean elaborated, the catch in his own throat making his voice sound unnaturally rough. "He was convicted in 2001, before… before the Lawrence v Texas decision. Crimes against nature, Sam. Charlie pulled his record, his rental and job history, and everything she could find in law enforcement channels and it's just… it's bad. It's so bad. I don't know…"

"Fuck, Dean, I'm sorry."

He was irritated first. What was Sam even sorry about? It wasn't his fault. And it wasn't even Dean it was happening to. Then it hit him that it could have been. If he'd been born a few years earlier, if he’d been caught in the wrong place. Shit, it could have been Charlie. Dean felt himself starting to shake.

"He gets harassed everywhere he goes, man. The calls have already started to come in. It's been over twenty years of hell."

"What are you going to do?" It was that simple for Sammy, because he knew Dean.

"Charlie and I - we talked. We're gonna run interference. Try to get people to give him a chance. At least try to get them to just - leave him alone."

"That's a start."

"It's not much," Dean countered. "I just - I don't know what else to do."

"Sounds like he could use a friend, Dean. Maybe two."

Chapter Text

Dean pulled into the school’s parking lot at 8:40 and took a moment to look around. Nothing was raising red flags right now, but it was still a bit early. Mr. Williams was by the stop sign next to the crosswalk, ready to step out as the neighborhood kids approached. He took a moment to record his first impressions of the scene, then got out to check in with Mr. Williams.

A couple of neighborhood kids were crossing, and they waited until the kids were clear and had moved far enough away not to hear them.

“Can you take a quick look around and let me know if you see him here right now?” Dean asked without preamble. They both knew what he was talking about, and it was best not to cause a fuss if they didn’t have to.

“No, I don’t see him,” he finally said, “but the bus ain’t here, yet.”

They kept up a casual conversation until the bus arrived, watched the street as the kids got out and went to line up by the flagpole, and ultimately found out nothing new.

“Looks like you scared him off, Mr. Williams,” Dean finally concluded. “But just to be safe I’ll run by for the rest of the week and alert the school staff to keep an eye out. If he shows around here again, we’ll know.”

It took another 25 minutes to talk to the bus driver and the principal, update his notes, and then head out. He’d already put in almost a solid hour of work and hadn’t even clocked in yet. When he did clock in, he made a note to remind himself that he’d need to talk to Jody about correcting that punch, and he was placing it on the edge of his monitor when the paper on top of his keyboard caught his eye.

It was the fax from Milton Security. He’d forgotten all about it.

For a moment, he was ashamed. In his hands was far too much access into what should be the private business of someone who had no reason to explain himself to anyone. Handed to him so that he’d have fewer reasons to bother the man at home.

He dropped into his chair and covered his face. He hated his role in this.

Dejectedly, he flipped to the second page, and found a short paragraph informing him of where to go and how to log in. He supposed he might as well check it out, see what sort of access he’d been granted, for future reference.

It took a good half hour just to set up, although most of that had been coming up with a new, acceptable password. There were security questions. There was a pass key, which he might have to use to confirm his identity at any time. He noted everything carefully on the second page of the fax as habit had shown him he needed to. Eventually, he got to a dashboard. A lot of buttons, folders and tabs.

He started at the beginning. Under the 'Records' tab, he found a number of folders. The first one included detailed logs of Castiel’s movements. What time he came downstairs. What time he sat in front of his computer. Any time he went outside and when he came back in again. If he drove anywhere, a reference appeared to a file in another folder, which included the GPS coordinates of his destination as well as the route he took to get there and return, any time he stopped along the way, and how long he stopped for. Both going back about 8 years. Every car he owned, when he bought it, when he parted ways with it. When and where it was serviced, any repairs that required leaving the car anywhere for any length of time. Every home he lived in, when he moved in, when he moved out. Full address of anywhere he spent any night he wasn’t at home. Even without looking through specific files, it felt sleezy to be looking at this.

He moved to another tab, labeled 'Incidents'. These started out benignly enough, with a 'Miscellaneous' folder of random shit that might happen to anyone. Fender benders. Neighborly disputes over whose dog was where and how the wind storm blew the trash. But the next folder was labeled 'Harassment', and inside it was security camera footage of people -

Dean clicked back out of the folder. The sheer number of videos saved was disturbing. He didn’t open any of the other folders, but they were labeled 'Police', 'Vandalism', 'Violence'. He couldn’t do this.

He clicked his way back to the dashboard. Forget about looking through tabs. If he needed to look up anything in particular he’d dig, but all he needed now was a general idea of what was where. He read the rest of the tabs, the drop down menus, and checked out the search options. Finally, he looked at the video section. Two weeks worth of raw footage, apparently. And the live feed from all the cameras.

There were seven cameras outside. One at each corner of the house, one at the front door, one at the back door, and one at the garage door. Inside, there were cameras covering the front and back doors, close enough to capture clear sound. One camera covering the stairs to the second floor, and one covering the entrance to the basement. Three separate cameras covered rooms with windows. The office was covered by what appeared to be a camera mounted on the desk. Maybe a webcam attached to the computer? In any case, there were fifteen cameras altogether. All streaming, all the time. He was in the kitchen, getting something from the fridge. He could tell it was Diet Pepsi by the shape and color of the bottle. It was like the freaking Truman Show.

He shouldn’t be watching this.

His phone chirped, and he unlocked it to find a message from Charlie.

Game night, Friday?

Can do, buckaroo.

He’d finally gotten Charlie to take her LARP skills online and play RDO with him just in time for the death throes of the game. Still, he didn’t know how much longer it would be playable, so he was all for playing as much as he could while he could.

He dropped the phone and reached for the mouse, only to find himself looking at the man’s - Castiel’s - face, up close and personal, as he sat in front of the computer.

“Are you ready to be reasonable?” Dean heard him ask, in the tone people usually use when they’re just thinking out loud, or talking to themselves.

Could be talking to Dean? Was there some sort of way he might know Dean was logged in right now, watching the camera feed? Had he been busted? He froze instinctively, hoping Castiel would say something else. Something that would clarify if he’d been caught.

Castiel’s face arranged itself into a frown of concentration for a moment, before it dissolved into a frustrated sigh.

“I’m the author, you know. I can make your girlfriend leave you,” he threatened. "You should show me some respect."

Relief burst out of Dean in peels of laughter.

“Fine. Be that way. I’ll just work on the revisions then.”

Clicks and tapping of keys followed, and the concentration frown returned. He leaned in closer to the screen, and Dean found himself faced with a closeup of the bluest eyes he'd ever seen.

"Fuck," he mumbled, finally moving the mouse and clicking out of the screen and then the browser altogether.

oOo

Three days of peace. He had three days before the next call came.

Dean was giving one of the cheerleaders a ride home after her car had been involved in an accident and had to be towed. It hadn't been her fault, but he'd spotted an empty beer can in the cup holder, so he was trying his best to be stern. He was mostly amused by how utterly put out she was acting, but she didn't need to know that.

It didn't come through the radio. Charlie had kept it off official channels and texted him instead.

Becky had called again. This time reporting a strange, dangerous looking man who, entirely coincidentally of course, had gone into Novak's house. Charlie had advised her that it was not against the law to have visitors. But policy being what it was, when she insisted that this was no regular visitor, he had to check it out.

He knocked on the Rosens’ door reluctantly. This was getting really old, really fast. Still, he could be professional about it.

“How are you, Mrs. Rosen? Dispatch said you were concerned about a dangerous man in the neighborhood,” he started, as soon as she opened the door.

“Come in, Deputy,” she hesitated. Apparently, she’d caught on that he wasn’t in a friendly mood.

“What can you tell me about this man?” Dean asked, ready with his notepad.

"He looks middle aged, shorter than you by maybe about 6 inches. A lot of dark hair, short but not very neat. He has a mustache, and a beard, both on the short but scruffy side. Wearing black from head to toe like some prince of darkness. Not even a white shirt!"

"Is that right?" He couldn't help asking. And hoping she wouldn't pick up on the sarcasm if he moved on fast enough, he continued. "What made you think the man is dangerous?"

"I can't say, really. He just looks dangerous. You know how it is, Dean, sometimes you just know."

"What did you see this man do?"

"Not much. He got out of his car and went into the house that man lives in."

"Let me rephrase the question. What did you see the man do that might be considered an indication that he's dangerous?"

"Well, he hangs out with sex offen -"

Dean cut that sentence off before she could finish it. "Did he say anything to you of a threatening nature? Or anything at all?"

"No, but -"

"Did he do anything of a dangerous or threatening nature in your presence?"

"Well, no -"

"Had you seen this man before, or do you know anything about him that would indicate he poses any threat to the neighborhood at all?"

"No, not -"

"So. Am I correct in concluding that you assumed this man is dangerous based on his appearance and the fact that he went into Mr. Novak's residence?"

"You would think so too if you saw him."

And, in fairness, Dean couldn't deny that some people just give off that kind of vibe. You just knew they were trouble, even if you knew nothing else about them.

"Just a couple more questions. Are you aware that while calling the police on your neighbors without good cause is just a waste of police time, doing so repeatedly constitutes harassment? Should Mr. Novak decide to do so, he could have you charged."

The look on her face was priceless, Dean decided.

"Why, I -"

"Is there anything else you'd like to add before I go talk to Mr. Novak?"

"I didn't call about him," she spit out. "I called about a creepy man, who happened to go in there to see him."

"Right," Dean closed up his notebook. "Of course."

The front door closed a little too hard behind him and he couldn't help shaking his head. Might as well get this over with.

Dean strode across the street and knocked on the door decisively. The door opened sooner than he had expected and he found himself looking at an irritated Castiel.

"Yes?"

"I'm not any happier about this than you are," Dean declared. "You had a visitor today. Just tell me who he was so I can close out the paperwork, man."

"That was my agent. His name is Crowley."

"Just Crowley?"

"That's what he's known by. If that's not enough, I'm afraid you'll have to get the full name somewhere else."

"Thank you for your time," Dean nodded, before heading back to his desk.

He ended up logging on to Milton Security's dashboard to search for the agent's name. As he suspected, several meetings with the agent were to be found in the daily activity logs over the last few years. And while Castiel himself might not know or want to share Crowley's full name, it was duly noted in the records, along with the official name of the agency he worked for.

He made his final notes on the report, and then, just to settle for himself the lingering question of whether this had really been about how dangerous the man looked, he pulled up the video from earlier that day.

Okay, he supposed for someone who had only ever lived in Sioux Falls for any length of time, the man might look the sort of ruthless you don't want to cross paths with. Looked like a standard big city business man to Dean. Mostly harmless.

He switched over to the live feeds for no particular reason, then saved his work. The sound of a chair rolling made him look up. Castiel moved in to where the chair used to be, printed something, and then grabbed a red pen and a pair of reading glasses. Probably going to work on some edits, then. Dean watched him walk out of the office and make his way onto the living room, to settle comfortably on a sofa placed where he could get the best use of all the natural light. He put on the reading glasses, and went to work.

Chapter Text

Cas picked up all the pages, stacked them neatly together, and secured them with a paperclip. That should be the last of the revisions now. He’d send the manuscript to Crowley, and take the rest of the day off. It was still early. Maybe he’d cook himself a decent meal, for a change. He’d been living off sandwiches for too long. What did he have in the fridge?

Carefully, he stretched, dropped the pages onto the tray at his desk, making sure, out of long habit, that the pages weren’t visible from the camera. The very last thing he needed was for anyone out there to figure out his pen name. Although he supposed that he probably didn’t need to worry about that as much anymore. Not since his books had started selling enough to score him a three-movie-deal. If it got out, that would hurt his future income, sure. But he had saved enough by now that he would be able to keep his life together at least long enough to figure something out.

Still, a few more years of anonymity would serve him well. Long enough for all the movies to be released and maybe pay some royalties. Crowley had scored him a really good deal.

He found everything he needed to make himself tacos for dinner. Or maybe meatloaf, or a nice burger, with all the fixings. Yes, that sounded better. He’d always loved a good burger. There were times in his life when a good burger had been the only thing that could make him feel good. Almost happy, even.

It was a shame Crowley couldn’t stay. Usually, they shared a meal on the rare occasion that he had paperwork that was sensitive enough he didn’t want to trust it to a messenger. Crowley was rather more paranoid than necessary, probably, but it had served him well through the years, so he wasn’t about to argue the point. Especially when these were the only times he ever shared a meal these days.

He’d bought enough for two. Meatloaf was easy to reheat and great for sandwiches, but he didn’t want to deal with making sides. So one burger with all the fixings, and he’d cook the rest of the meat for tacos later.

Decision made, he started to cook.

oOo

Evenings were always the hardest. That time after dinner and before bed that most people seemed to reserve for spending time with their families. That’s why he saved the busy chores for after dinner. Dishes, laundry, dealing with the mail, physical and electronic, dusting. Anything really, as long as it was mind-numbing. Thus far he’d managed to avoid ironing, since he didn’t make personal appearances, but he’d considered it.

It was mostly just sales flyers and standard junk mail in his mailbox, but he made himself go through it as if he was in need of a new mattress or a used car. There was a brochure from the local public library, advertising local events, and he set that aside for later. He’d been here almost three weeks now. It was time to test the waters. Past time, really, but he’d wanted to finish the revisions for his next book first, and get the movie deal finalized.

He looked through the grocery store sales flyer, but there was no website or number to order through. Likewise the hardware store flyer. He might call and ask if they did local deliveries, but it didn't seem likely. He should find out if there was a local paper he could subscribe to. He liked to try to stay informed. No, he was not interested in an extended warranty nor did he want any more credit cards, thank you.

He dropped everything into the recycling, and reached for the library brochure.

He needed a library card. It was almost always the first place he went, out in public, in a new place. When he left, he usually had Crowley send a full set of his books to the library as a parting gift. Not that any of them knew he had anything to do with it. If he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure why he did either of these things. He seldom went back to the library after getting that card. He used their online services, when they were available, but he never went in. Not since -

He redirected his thoughts to the first page. Apparently, there was a fall festival in two weeks. Live music, crafts, a carnival, the works. The kind of thing he'd never been allowed to attend growing up. Too much temptation. His father, who was apparently beyond temptation, usually made a short appearance at their local equivalent. Usually just long enough to buy some sort of local product that he could pawn off on a business associate as a gift and get double credit for supporting the community.

He could do that, right? Seemed to work for his father. Just pop by, spend some money on local products and then leave. It might get him some good will. He might be able to find some local honey, even. Could he do it in two weeks? He should start smaller, see how it went, decide later.

A full page ad for a gardening club reminded him of something that the deputy had said. That the people across the street were used to knowing their neighbors, seeing them around. It's time to plant your spring bulbs, the ad declared in block letters. Mmm. He could do that.

oOo

Crocus and summer trumpets, that's what he settled on. They looked cheerful. Something to look forward to through the winter that would soon be raging. Four clicks and 26 hours later, through the magic of next day delivery, he was ready to venture out and plant them. No time like the present.

It was mid afternoon when the boxes were delivered, and by the time he’d changed into some old sweatpants and organized his supplies, everyone should be getting home.

It was a good time, he had decided. He’d be busy planting, they'd be busy unloading kids and getting comfortable after work. They'd probably take a moment to watch him dig in the dirt from a distance, then go back to what they needed to get done, and if anyone had any ideas about approaching him, they'd be too late by the time they'd made themselves available. He'd be done and back inside in less than 20 minutes. He'd done the research, he knew how to pull it off.

It went off without a hitch. He'd heard cars drive into the cul-de-sac, but kept his eyes on his work. Voices called out to each other, but they didn't call to him, and that was exactly as he'd hoped. Car doors slammed, front doors opened, and he was picking up his tools to go back inside before they were done asking each other if they'd seen that.

Castiel closed the door behind himself with a sort of euphoric relief. Digging around in the dirt with the early fall sun warming his skin was enjoyable. He’d have to go out again in a day or two and arrange the decorative bricks he'd also bought to create an actual flower bed of some sort. Maybe he'd find out what native plants he could grow to attract bees.

He changed out of his marginally dirty clothes and washed his hands and arms thoroughly. He hadn't thought of gardening gloves. In retrospect, he was glad of that. He liked the way the warm dirt felt on his fingers. But it was going to take a while to get it all out from under his nails.

oOo

The knock on the door was not what surprised him. Looking to the screen to see Deputy Winchester standing at his door didn’t do it either. It was the look on his face. He looked… anxious. Unsure of himself.

It might have been the surprise, or the after effects of having spent the last few hours looking forward to watching the bulbs bloom, but he opened the door without irritation to find the same professionally neutral expression that the deputy always seemed to wear.

“Why don’t you ever use the doorbell?” he asked.

A flash of the same anxiety he’d seen before opening the door replaced the neutral expression for a moment, before a shoulder twitched and he answered him.

“Force of habit, I guess,” he flashed a friendly smile. “Can I come in?”

This was weird, right? He’d never been very good at determining what was normal in a social interaction. Wait, was this a social interaction? It felt like one, despite the fact that he was clearly in uniform, and holding his notebook.

“Please do,” he agreed, stepping out of the way. “Let me guess. You got a call about suspicious digging in my yard.”

And still, he wasn’t irritated. In fact, he felt the oddest impulse to dispel the anxiety. Have a regular conversation with someone who lived here, for once. The grunt he got in response was noncommittal, so he tried a joke.

“So what did I bury? Alien artifacts? The dismembered bodies of an army of dragonflies?”

“The shriveled up hearts of a legion of disappointed fans may or may not have been mentioned,” the deputy smirked.

“Mmm. I was told they were crocuses. I guess we’ll see what comes up in the spring.”

They had stepped in the direction of the living room, and stopped in the doorway, the chuckle they had just shared fading into awkward silence, unsure of where they stood. This was the part where the illusion of friendly banter would be shattered by intrusive questions. He should have moved them towards the kitchen, where the packing slip was in the drawer and the empty packaging the bulbs had come in was in the trash.

“Look,” the anxiety returned to the deputy’s face, “if someone calls, I have to respond, and I have to investigate. Those are the rules. I gotta knock on your door and ask some questions,” he held his gaze almost apologetically. “But there are no rules about what I gotta ask,” he smiled.

He waited without comment, his head tilting slightly in expectation.

“So, read any good books lately?”

“Mostly I read young adult novels,” he warned.

The green eyes in front of him sparkled with mischief, as Dean (he couldn’t think of him as Deputy Winchester when he looked the very picture of a kid trying to look older) puffed up his chest and teased “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

They laughed together more openly this time.

“Seriously though, man, young adult books are the best. Don’t get me wrong, I love Vonnegut, and I’ve read Lord of the Rings more times than I care to count. But there’s something about young adult books that’s just -” he interrupted himself, dropped into a seat, “I dunno. Closer. More personal. The good ones sorta become a part of you.”

“I suppose they do,” he agreed. “But in any case, I’ve been deep in writing and revisions, so there hasn’t been much time for reading. Would you settle for a good movie?”

“Hell yeah,” Dean agreed. “Does it have cowboys in it?”

“As it so happens, it does.”

It was the sort of pointless, casual conversation he’d never been very good at, but Dean kept the ball rolling effortlessly. So much so that he was startled to see, as he walked Dean back to the front door, that it had only been some ten minutes since he’d arrived. It felt like much longer.

That was enough excitement for one day, he decided, popping a frozen meal into the microwave. As it cooked, he browsed the library’s e-book catalog for new releases. It was probably a good idea to see what else was being published right now. It had served him well when he started out, and even now that he was established, it was a good way to see how the market was changing. Fifteen years ago, his books had gone out to a very limited market. But culture had shifted, and now it seemed like everyone was interested in what his characters had to say. He’d like to keep that attention long enough to make a difference, if he could.

He found a cover and summary that appealed to him, and borrowed the book before retrieving his food. This should make for an enjoyable evening. And if he was also looking forward to having an answer the next time Dean asked, it was just because it had been a long time since he’d enjoyed some friendly conversation.

Chapter Text

Cas had gone out two days later to lay the decorative bricks in something resembling a neat border around the frankly shapeless flower beds. He seemed to enjoy gardening, but that didn’t mean he was very good at it, thus far. Although in his defense, he’d never had a garden before. Or a house plant. He’d always thought they’d be too awkward to move with.

In any case, when he didn’t get a visit from Deputy Winchester after arranging those bricks, he decided that he would plant a tree next. And also, that he would go to the Fall Festival.

The tree had been delivered by the same service that came around once a week to mow his lawn, but he insisted on planting it himself, right between the two flower beds. It seemed to him that it would make a nice little nook. Once the flowers bloomed and the tree grew enough to cast some real shade. A couple of benches and a small table and someone could work out here, or read, or enjoy an ice cold glass of lemonade with a neighbor. Probably not himself, if experience was anything to go by, but if he was lucky…

He liked it here. The house was everything he’d ever wanted in a house, and with a bit of work the yard could be just as welcoming. He could fence a portion of it for a dog to play in, and maybe designate another section as a bee garden. Maybe pull up that boring lawn and replace it with moss, or clover, or some other ground cover he wouldn’t have to constantly mow and waste a bazillion gallons of water on. A few more trees for shade would be nice. And maybe a small area for a grill or something. That side wall had no windows, and if he whitewashed a section of it, it would make a great screen for watching movies on. He could have friends over for a small BBQ, and then lay under the trees watching the light fade and the fireflies come out. Maybe play a kid’s movie now and then when the neighborhood kids were out of school -

Okay, maybe his imagination was running away with him there. Even if he did manage to find enough peace here to stick around, and a few friends that he could keep, the idea of the neighbors coming over with their kids on some summer evening to sit on his lawn, eat hot dogs, and watch some kid’s movie was just too wild to contemplate. One tree. He was just planting one tree.

oOo

The week leading up to the festival was quiet. He supposed people were too busy to remember their inconvenient neighbor. He worked on making the grass around his flower bed neater, cleaned up the area around the base of the tree, and planned for installing a sprinkler system. He even gave the garage door a fresh coat of paint.

He had also made some progress in planning his next book. Writing, not so much. He was ready, as far as the usual prep work went. He just couldn’t muster the motivation at the moment. Too much on his mind, possibly. He really wanted this place to work out. He was trying not to set himself up for disappointment but hope was a stubborn thing.

Friday night rolled around in its own good time, and he made his way to Main Street for the festival. He drove, of course, so the GPS could record where he was, how he got there, and how long he stayed. Maybe he’d look and see if Deputy Winchester was on duty there and make sure he was seen.

It was busier than Cas had imagined. The entire town must be out. He strolled through the grounds, having decided that he should start by finding something to eat, and as it turned out, the Sheriff’s Department had some sort of booth where none other than deputy Winchester seemed to be grilling burgers while a bubbly redhead took cash and served drinks.

He approached the booth with a smile, only to be greeted with a startled squeak from the redhead. She looked towards the grill as if looking for backup, and Cas looked down at his hands. Just pulling some cash from his wallet, that’s all. After all this time, he’d gotten pretty good at keeping back the disappointment, but he’d never managed to figure out how to hold on to a fake smile.

He’d also gotten pretty good at looking from his hands to wherever signage was posted without looking at the person standing directly across from him.

“Cheeseburger and a coke, please,” he ground out, making much of counting out the cash, looking for exact change.

“I’m sorry,” she said, kindly, “that was rude. I didn’t mean it like that.”

His eyes snapped up to meet hers.

“It’s just that Dean will probably want to say hi. That’s why I was looking around for him,” and then she called out over her shoulder. “We need a Dean Winchester special, hand delivered by the chef.”
A sound of acknowledgment came from around the side and she gave Cas a quick wink.

“Trust me, you’ll love it,” she assured him as she took his money. “I’m Charlie, by the way.”

“Castiel,” he returned, and stepped aside to wait for his meal, just as Dean, in jeans and a flannel, stepped up with a plate.

“Hey,” he beamed. “It’s nice to see you. How are you enjoying the festival so far?”

“I just got here, but so far, so good. It seems like everyone’s here. That’s probably a good sign.”

“Yeah, it is,” Dean agreed. “I gotta go back to the grill, but maybe I’ll see you later. You gotta come back around and tell us how you like it,” he handed the burger over.

“Thank you for the welcome, deputy.”

“Dean, please. This is hardly official business, man.”

Castiel nodded, “Thank you, Dean,” and went to find a place to eat.

oOo

He’d walked the vendor lane from top to bottom once, surveying the possibilities. There was a Park Service booth, where he could grab some brochures, and buy some raffle tickets for the fundraiser. There was a booth advertising local honey. Both essential stops. He’d pick three more to buy from and then call it a day.

There was a booth where someone had made purses out of old hardcover books. Some of them quite big. If the seller was local, and he could find the right hardcover, maybe he could get her to make him a wallet. Or even a briefcase. He should buy something in any case. The work was beautifully done, and even if he couldn’t really use a Wizard of Oz purse himself, that piece was a work of art, and he’d have a friend with a birthday someday. He couldn’t see the cover, but there was something in the back that looked big enough to be a small tote. He could use it to carry his purchases. It turned out to be a larger edition than he’d ever seen of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and it was perfect. He bought both items, grabbed a card, and promised to call her if he found a wallet sized book.

He tucked two beautifully labeled jars of honey into the pockets of the wizard of Oz purse for safekeeping, and grabbed a card there too. If the honey was as good as advertised, he wanted to know how to get more before the next festival. Maybe arrange regular deliveries. He might also have bought a small stuffed bee, and tucked it between the jars. Where to now?

A booth where two old men appeared to mostly be bickering about whether the one’s carvings were better quality than the other’s metalwork, and how much each of the other’s pieces was really worth caught his attention. He watched them argue with some amusement, snickered at the obvious pleasure one of the locals was getting from egging them on, and decided he could use some bookends. Some twenty minutes later, he walked away with a beautiful polished mahogany horse, and an equally beautiful, if more abstract, likeness of a horse made out of painted scrap metal. They hardly spoke to him beyond taking his money, whichever one he wasn’t buying from haggling on his behalf instead, and it was hands down the most fun he had all night. Far more entertaining than the band.

Finally, he made his way to the last booth. There are quilted items of all kinds, but Castiel knows exactly what he wants. There is a stunning king size quilt hanging from a rack that he knew he was going to take home from the moment he first saw it. It’s in a dozen shades of dark blue like the evening sky on a well lit night, with gold and silver stars dotting it from top to bottom. Near the middle, probably in what would be the middle of the bed when the quilt was tucked into place, there was a crescent moon, and a raven flying next to it, its feathers splayed out, each of them clearly defined and textured with expert stitching.

He watched the vendor lift it, fold it as carefully as she could in the limited space, and settle it into a bag, and he handed over his card for scanning without wasting a moment thinking about negotiating. He wouldn’t insult the artist that way. His hands itched to touch it, but he made himself grab the bag politely, thank the vendor profusely, and walk calmly back towards where he’d parked.

He made sure he walked by the booth where Charlie and Dean were still selling burgers to tell them how much he had enjoyed his meal. They were busy and he was carrying heavy bags he didn’t want to drag into a crowd, so he called out to get their attention, signaled his approval, thanked them, and went about his business.

It had been… such a good evening. He'd found some real treasures, had eaten quite possibly the best burger in existence, and other than that brief misunderstanding with Charlie, he had felt surprisingly normal. The distance and indifference he’d run into had been the kind that any new arrival might have found. There was no fear or hostility in it. He’d even felt like by the time he was paying for his items, the people he had talked to had warmed up to him a little.

He walked up to his car feeling more hopeful than he had in a long time. So much so that when he dropped his bags into the back seat and closed the door to find it scratched it didn’t even dim his smile. Who cares about a few scratches? He probably parked too close to the curb. Somebody walked by with a beaded purse or something. Accidents happen.

It wasn’t until he was driving up to his garage door that he stopped smiling. His fresh paint job had been - damaged. Wide, rough lines of angry red streaked across the white surface and he made himself stop looking before he could read the words.

Quietly, he got out of the car, and looked around. The decorative bricks he’d lined the flower beds with had been tossed all over the yard, but the tree and the dirt didn't seem to be disturbed. He didn't see any other damage to the yard, and if the house had been breached, his alarm would have gone off.

Right, so. He’d park, get the leftover paint out and just - paint over it. Toss all the bricks into a big bucket and put them in the garage. By morning it would be as if nothing had ever happened.

Chapter Text

Dean logged into Milton Security’s website.

He had hoped he wouldn’t have to do this again so soon. Once he was done cooking, he’d walked around, talking to people. He’d caught some gossip, as he was hoping to. People knew other things about him now. They knew his love of books, and quirky crafts. They knew he liked honey in his tea, and saw the real value of good craftsmanship. They knew that his smile was soft, and that he was ready and willing to invest in the community and support local artists. They wondered who the purse was for, and smirked about how excited he’d been about a little bee plushy. That was all they really needed. More things to think about. And yet.

First thing on Monday and here he was, dealing with another call. What was with Mondays, anyway? Even if he worked all weekend, as he had that weekend, Mondays always seemed to suck. According to Charlie, Mrs. Carson (directly across the cul-de-sac from the Rosens, and Castiel’s other close neighbor), had called to report that she had heard a loud noise outside, and when she looked across the street towards his house she had seen that his garbage can had been knocked over, and out of it had spilled out a lot of bloody rags.

It was early enough that he was still at his desk, and there were cameras covering all the outside of the house so he'd decided to pull up the video before he headed out to talk to her. He found the trash can easily enough, in its place at the side wall outside the garage. He couldn’t see any sign of spilled trash of any kind, so he skipped back a few minutes at a time until he saw Cas outside picking up spilled trash, and then some more until before he’d come out.

He had a better view than Mrs. Carson would have had, but even through her window it must have been clear that whatever was on the material was far too bright to be blood. Even fresh blood would have been deeper in color, and the cloth was clearly dry. Whatever it was, there was quite a bit of it. Paint, he’d guess. Nothing he could see around the house was bright red like that, but maybe he’d painted an old wheelbarrow or something, now that he’d taken up gardening. In any case, it definitely wasn’t blood.

Cas wasn’t on any of the cameras, so probably still upstairs. Dean hopefully wouldn’t need to disturb him. He would talk to Mrs. Carson, make sure she watched him look in the trash can, and then go tell her it’s not blood. That should be sufficient.

There was a new notification when he returned to the dashboard to log off. He would have ignored it, but it was on the ‘Incidents’ tab. What the hell had happened and why hadn’t he heard about it? He was pulling up the video before he even thought about what he was doing.

According to the date and time on the video, it had happened Friday evening, while Cas had been at the festival. A car drove up, and parked just far enough from the garage door for the headlights to light it up. Three people got out. They had hoodies up, but he knew the car and the first one out looked like the Marshall boy, which made it real easy to figure out who the others were.

Tom and one of the others ran towards the flower beds and started throwing the bricks around, while the last of them went to the garage door and started painting something on it in bright red paint reminiscent of the rags in the trash. The paint was messy, dripping as he went, so that it looked like the letters were bleeding.

It made sense. Those four had been notorious for doing just this sort of thing anytime something pissed them off, for the better part of a year. Dean thought they’d resolved that problem by making the boys clean up after themselves, and telling them they could use the old post office building, now abandoned, to vent all their angst on. Apparently not.

In less than a minute they were getting back into the car and speeding off. Their handiwork was perfectly clear in the ambient light. 'Fuck off', it said. Of course it did.

Dean sighed. He definitely needed to talk to Cas about this.

oOo

He dealt with Mrs. Carson first, quickly and efficiently. Dean drove up, knocked on her door, ran across the street to take a look in the trash can (ok, he probably should have asked for permission first, but it’s not like he was worried about the admissibility of evidence here, or like Cas had ever denied him whatever access he asked for), and then trotted back to inform her that it was not blood. He didn't tell her anything else just then because he had bigger concerns, but he would probably circle around to that soon enough.

Anyway, it was still early enough he figured he could pay a visit to Tom's home and then swing by the Turners’ diner to discuss the whereabouts of the family car last Friday night. Tom Marshall was a junior in high school, and Joe Turner was a senior, so they’d both be in school at the moment, but that was just fine with Dean. He was more interested in talking to their parents first, letting them talk to the kids. Give them something to think about and time to stew. Then he’d talk to Cas. A few hours after school was out, Dean would come around and talk to the boys.

Mrs. Marshall was a nurse, so her schedule could be hard to predict. Dean was relieved to find her at home. He wanted this dealt with today, before the boys got together again and got any ideas to reprise their latest stunt. Her living room looked like the sock drawer had exploded in it, so he probably caught her at the tail end of laundry duty. She invited him to sit, regardless, so he moved a few socks aside and arranged himself on the edge of the couch, then cut to the chase.

“Mrs. Marshall, what do you know about Tom’s whereabouts last Friday evening?”

“He went to the fall festival.” she replied, and then elaborated when she saw him taking notes. “Well, he wanted to go with his friends, so Joe came to pick him up, and they went to get Rod and Craig. I saw them at the festival, but you know how it is. They don’t really want to hang out with mom at that age.”

“What time did Joe pick him up?”

“I didn’t check the time, but it would have been around 6, I imagine. We were all getting ready to go.”

“Are you sure it was Rod and Craig they went to pick up next?”

“Dean, what’s going on?” she interrupted. “What happened?”

“I have security video of Tom and some friends vandalizing someone’s home last Friday. Now, I haven’t had the opportunity to speak to the homeowner yet, but you can see the car roll right up on the driveway, and you can see Tom’s face as he’s looking up and down the street after getting out of the car.”

To her credit, Mrs. Marshall didn’t try to make excuses.

“If they’re not going to keep to the old post office…” she trailed off.

“Mrs. Marshall, I just came by to let you know what happened. I want to give you and your son some time to think about it and talk it over before I come back after school to ask him some questions. I’ll talk to the homeowner as well before then, see what he wants to do.”

“I’m not working today, so I'll make sure he comes home right after school.”

The conversation wasn’t much different at the Turners, except that it involved Mrs. Turner finding someone to cover dinner service for her so she could be home with Joe later that afternoon. Craig and Rod’s parents he was only able to talk to on the phone, but they’d be expecting a visit later as well.

Finally, he went to Cas. He knocked perhaps harder than he really needed to, but he was too busy asking himself why the vandalism hadn’t been reported to care. He thought they were making progress.

Cas opened the door with a puzzled frown and Dean didn’t even bother with niceties.

“Why didn’t you report it, Cas?”

The head of messy dark hair tilted as if he was trying to puzzle out what Dean was even talking about. He’d given him enough time, right? He didn’t look drowsy like that other time, but he clearly hadn’t bothered to run a comb through his hair yet. Although if Dean was honest, it kinda worked for him.

“Your garage door,” Dean clarified after a moment. “Why didn’t you call it in?”

Cas looked pointedly at his uniform before answering, “It was just paint, deputy.”

“The word you’re looking for is vandalism, and it has a way of escalating if it’s not dealt with,” he countered.

“You don’t say,” Cas ruefully agreed, as he led the way to his kitchen.

Reminding himself he was here on official business, he added “They also threw landscaping bricks around. They could have smashed a window, hurt somebody.”

“And if they had, I would have called it in. Nobody was in danger here. I looked up the video. It was just a bunch of kids saying their piece.”

“They can’t just -”

“Dean,” Cas interrupted, with a tired sigh. “Leave it alone. If I want you to do something about it, I’ll call it in.”

“Doing something about it when a crime is committed is my job,” he stated, firmly but not unkindly.

“I’m not going to do anything about it. I don’t want a report, I don’t want charges filed, I don’t want to make a statement. I don’t want them to fix anything. I just want it to be over.”

“Cas -” he tried again

“You’re not going to change my mind,” he interrupted, simply.

This was getting them nowhere. Dean put his professional mask on. “I’ll see myself out, then. You have a nice day.”

“Thank you for stopping by.”

oOo

So Cas wanted it to be over. That didn’t mean Dean couldn’t do something about it. It just meant it was going to stay off their records, much like it had stayed off their records when they’d left “their piece” at the Principal’s house once, and at a few other places besides, before they’d come up with the old post office solution.

He spent the early part of his afternoon writing speeding tickets, since there were no calls coming his way. When he thought there had been enough time to think about the bad choices that had been made and their potential consequences, he made the rounds of the boys’ houses. Since Cas had already cleaned up their mess, they were going to whitewash the old post office walls and put in a few hours at the local park, picking up trash. He made it clear that any further transgressions would definitely get them booked and processed through official channels, even if the vic chose not to press charges.

Then he went back to his desk, spent the last hour of his shift on paperwork, and clocked out. He debated going home to change, or just changing into the extra clothes he kept at the station just in case, and decided he might as well do that. No sense going home just to leave again almost immediately.

When he stepped out of Baby outside Castiel’s house, there was no trace of Deputy Winchester to be found. Just Dean. He rang the bell and when Castiel’s face appeared in the doorway, he flashed his biggest smile.

“Hiya, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.”

Chapter Text

Dean ran his fingers through his hair nervously as Cas stepped aside to let him in.

“I have beer,” Cas offered.

“Not before dinner, but I’ll take a Pepsi or something if you’ve got it.”

They settled on stools in the kitchen, and Cas gestured vaguely towards a bowl of fruit. Dean was too restless to take him up on it, though, so he just started talking.

“Look, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but it’s just Dean and Cas now, and I just - I need to know how I’m going to handle this kind of thing in the future. I guess, I need to know,” he hesitated “why?”

“Why don’t I want to make a big deal of this, and other incidents like this? Why don't I call it in and let you arrest people?”

That wasn’t quite right, but if Cas wanted to start there, that was a good start. He nodded and listened.

“There are a number of reasons. I don’t have the energy. There have been far too many incidents over the years to bother with all of them. I don’t need to ruin anyone’s life with a criminal record. Definitely not over some paint. More importantly, I get it. They mean well. If I thought a rapist had moved into my neighborhood I wouldn’t be too friendly either. They think they’re protecting each other and I can’t really fault them for that, even if I don’t approve of their methods.”

“You could tell them,” Dean suggested. “It’s a small town, but I’ve been out for ages -”

“Wait, you’re gay?”

“Bi,” Dean corrected. “And Charlie’s gay. She’s our dispatcher, you met her at the festival.”

“I remember,” Cas confirmed. “She seems very straightforward and friendly.”

“She’s the best,” he agreed, but returned to his point. “We’ve both been out since high school. Nobody cares, man. If they knew…”

“I wish it was that easy,” Cas shook his head. “I tried, you know, at first. It never really made a difference. Maybe they didn’t believe me. Maybe it didn’t matter. I don’t know. But I don’t waste time explaining myself anymore.” He took a long swig of his drink. “It’s not like it’s a well kept secret. All of it is publicly available information. All they have to do is look at the sex offender website. Two clicks. That’s all it takes. If they cared, they’d look.”

They looked at their bottles in silence for a moment.

“Cas,” he started. But what did he even say to that? How did he finish that sentence? What could he say that had any hope of making any of this better? The bottom line was, he wasn’t wrong. The information was there for anyone who bothered to look. People just… didn’t bother.

“People suck,” he said instead.

Cas chuckled and finished his drink. “You’re alright,” he argued. “Charlie too.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Dean finished his own drink.

Now what? He didn’t want to leave it like this. He contemplated the empty bottle, but before he could settle on anything to say, Cas broke the silence.

“I read a good book recently.”

“Yeah? Tell me about it.”

oOo

Somewhere in the middle of describing the plot, Cas started looking through the fridge, pulling out ingredients. A bag of precooked fried rice made its way out of the freezer, as he cut vegetables for a stir fry.

“So, they made it?”

“Of course they made it, Dean. It’s a young adult novel.”

They chuckled at that, and still neither one mentioned the meal cooking in the wok. Dean made no move to excuse himself. Instead, he launched onto a review of the last book he’d read in return - not a great one, he qualified. Probably not even good enough to read again, if he was honest. But he’d needed a light, low commitment read, and it was entertaining.

By the time he was through with the plot, Cas was putting a plate in front of him, and he dug in as if this was their normal Monday night routine. Not like he had anywhere to be anyway. They ate as they picked apart the book, laughing at the little things that amused them.

“It reminds me a bit of a Young Indiana Jones adventure, actually. Do you remember those?”

“Not really, no. Or old Indiana Jones either, to be honest. Adventure was never really my genre.”

“I’m sorry, what? Please tell me you didn’t just admit to not knowing Indiana -”

“Never read it, never watched it,” Cas reiterated. He looked up from the food to hold his gaze. “Not even a single movie.”

“Alright, you realize this calls for an intervention?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” he countered, cool as a cucumber.

“This cannot be allowed to stand.”

“Should we alert the media?” Cas deadpanned.

“Funny,” Dean rinsed his plate and set it in the sink. “But no. Just Charlie.”

The way Cas' brow twisted asked quite clearly what Charlie had to do with anything.

“You can laugh now, but you won’t be laughing when Charlie is done with you,” Dean couldn’t keep the smile off his face, despite his ominous words.

“I better enjoy it while I can, then,” he smirked.

“Thanks for dinner, man. That was delicious,” and they started walking towards the door.

“Wait, what did you mean about Charlie?”

“I’ll be in touch,” Dean teased, as he stepped outside.

“Good night, Dean.”

“Night, Cas.”

oOo

Dean dropped into his own couch, still chuckling to himself. Charlie was going to get a kick out of this. Or she was gonna nerd out. Or both. Probably both. Should he call her or just talk to her at work tomorrow? Did he want to unleash a full Charlie nerd out at work? Hell, he didn’t want to wait.

“Hey, Red.”

“Dean? What’s up?”

“I stopped by to talk to our new resident and you’ll never guess what I found out.”

“He’s a Capricorn?” she guessed.

“How would I know? No.”

“He’s a rabid stamp collector.”

“Why would I be calling you about that?”

“Fair point. He LARPs?”

“He hardly goes outside, Charlie,” he makes himself sound put out. “You suck at this game.”

“Well, tell me already.”

“He’s never watched Indiana Jones.”

“No way.”

Dean braced himself for the onslaught. “Not even a single movie, he said.”

And just like that she was off. She had all the movies on DVD, but Dean had the Last Crusade on BluRay, so he should definitely bring that. No, they didn’t need the more recent sequels, they weren’t as good. What did Cas like on pizza? Was Wednesday too soon? What about next Monday night, since they were both off on Tuesday? Should she go talk to him first? Had he talked to Cas about Charlie coming over? Why not, handmaiden? Maybe they should do this at Dean’s? Should they bring popcorn? Beer? What kind of beer did Cas like? Why didn’t he know anything important?

Dean chuckled to himself as he let her ramble, glad he’d decided not to do this at work after all, and by the time he hung up, they had plans to swing by casually to give Charlie a chance to say more than two words to the guy, and maybe interrogate him about his food and drink preferences. She was still working on getting him to wear the hat, but Dean had firmly drawn the line on wearing the whip.

He couldn’t wait to see how those two would get along.

Chapter Text

Patience was not Charlie’s virtue. She could manage if she had to, about as long as the average livewire. But when there was any other choice, Charlie hated waiting. Which is why Dean wasn’t even a little surprised to find that she was waiting for him at his desk the next day, and basically twisted his arm until he would agree to stop by Castiel’s house sometime on Wednesday, since she wasn’t working and Dean had the late shift.

With Charlie happily settled, Dean started going through his messages. There didn’t seem to be much that required his immediate attention. Perks of small town law enforcement. He had some things to follow up on, and he’d probably spend his afternoon supervising the whitewashing of the old post office, but overall, it should be a quiet day.

Somewhere on the way in, he’d decided he would keep an eye on Castiel’s cameras today. Cas might not have the energy to address every incident, but Dean had time today, and plenty of days. Truth be told, it felt like an intrusion. The man had said he wanted Dean to leave it alone unless he was called in. But he’d also granted Dean access to the feed so that Dean could do his job without bothering him whenever possible. And his job was making sure that crime was followed by punishment. Even if it was of the whitewashing walls variety.

A quick scan of the cameras told him Cas was probably still upstairs, and he left it up in the background as he went about his morning.

oOo

Wednesday looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. At least that’s what Charlie said when she showed up, earlier than Dean had expected. She had a bag in her hand that smelled like bacon, though, so he took her word for it.

“Kinda early here, Red.”

“What? Nobody said anything about going already. I brought lunch.”

“You’re bribing me with bacon. That’s never a good sign,” he grouched.

“If you don’t want it -”

“Shut up,” he opened the bag and dug around until he found the bacon cheeseburger. It wasn’t a Winchester special, but he didn’t have to cook it and clean up after it, so it was perfect anyway.

“You can’t have my firstborn,” he declared, two bites in.

“Gross,” she made a face. But she didn’t actually say what she wanted instead, so he resigned himself to waiting and he ate.

“So… what did you tell him about me?” she finally came out with.

“Nothing, really. Just that I was gonna tell you about the Indy situation and that you would take action.”

“Take action? Dean, what does that mean?”

He shrugged as he took another large bite of his burger, mumbling around the food as soon as he could work his jaws. “Means you’ll do something.”

“Dean! After how we met at the festival? That’s just - what did you say exactly?”

“You won’t be laughing after Charlie is done with you.”

Her outraged face was funny as ever, and he had a good chuckle until she grabbed the bag away, mumbling about how jerks don’t deserve seconds. Apparently, she was actually nervous.

“Not like that, Charles. I was teasing. He knew that.” He bumped her shoulder with his. “Don’t worry about it. You’re awesome.”

“Fine,” she gave the bag back. “But if he’s all standoffish and scared, it’s on you to fix it.”

As it happened, when Cas opened the door, he was neither. He didn’t look much of anything, truth be told, his usual stoic demeanor firmly in place until he took notice of Charlie standing next to Dean looking for all the world like a polite puppy wiggling in place as she waited for permission to get the treat and zoom around the house. An unrestrained smile lit up his entire being as he stepped aside to let them in.

“Hello, Dean. Charlie. Please come in.” He hesitated for a moment, apparently unsure whether to head for the kitchen or the living room. “Can I get you anything? A drink, maybe?”

“We’re good,” Dean answered for both of them, and Cas settled on the living room.

Cas sat at the chair Dean had seen him do revisions in, and Dean made himself comfortable on the couch. Charlie looked too wired to sit, and Cas must have noticed it too, because he added, with a vague gesture towards the house, “feel free to have a look around, Charlie. Dean’s already had the downstairs tour.”

She darted out of the room, leaving the men to share an amused glance.

“How are you, Dean?”

“Great, nothing much going on,” he declared. ”I’m working the late shift today so we thought it was a good time to give Charlie a chance to make a better impression.”

The brilliant smile came out again at that, and it stayed in place until Charlie came bounding back to them.

“Nice place,” she commented.

“Thank you.”

For a second, there was silence. Before it could get awkward, Dean shuffled to make room for Charlie on the couch and got the ball rolling.

oOo

“You have an Xbox!” Charlie noticed, somewhere after the 10 minute breakdown of all the reasons Cas also needed to watch the Lord of the Rings movies, even if he had read the books, and before any attempt could be made to actually plan for a marathon of the Indiana Jones movies. About the only fandom they hadn’t discussed yet, ironically, despite it being the entire reason they were there in the first place. Dean would have said so too, but Charlie was in full nerd mode and Dean had given up on getting a word in ages ago.

“Yes. Two, actually. The one you’re looking at is an old one. I keep it mostly for watching DVDs on, since I don’t have a player. There’s a newer one in the stand under the TV I actually use for gaming.”

“What do you play?” she wanted to know.

“Mostly Minecraft, these days, though I put more hours than I care to own up to in a few other games. I’ve played pretty much all the sandbox games, to some extent, but none of the others really hooked me. I’ll give most single player RPGs a shot too.”

“Dude, you should add me. I’m working on a ridiculous build that should take approximately a million years, and I could use the help. And the company.”

“Sounds like fun. What are you building?”

“A castle fit for the Queen of Moondoor, plus a town and walls around it, and so on.”

“The Queen of Moondoor?”

“Charlie LARPs. That’s her character.” Dean elaborated, and Cas nodded his understanding.

“I’d love to help. Mostly I just build homesteads in my worlds, and then get bored and abandon them for a new map.” He shifted, reaching into a basket under the coffee table for his controller and the TV remote. “Although lately, since the caves update, I’ve mostly been down there exploring caves instead of building.”

He turned the TV on, and logged into the console, then tossed the controller to Charlie. “Here, find your profile and add yourself.”

But Charlie was looking at his home screen and didn’t catch the controller. “You play Red Dead?”

“I used to play online, before it got overrun by jerks. I quite enjoyed it, too.”

“You gotta join our posse,” she turned to him imploringly, puppy eyes that put even Sam’s to shame pressing her case. “Dean talked me into playing it with him until the servers go down.” Evidently deciding the puppy eyes were not producing sufficient results, Charlie drove her elbow into Dean’s ribs.

“That’d be fun, you should join us, if you want. The jerks are still around but they don’t usually bother posses much, and in any case there’s a work around if they’re being troublesome.”

“I suppose it might be fun to go back for a visit,” Cas agreed. Returning her attention to the screen, Charlie found her own profile and added herself as Castiel’s friend, then found Dean in her own friend’s list and added him too.

“We usually play Friday evenings,” she elaborated, “but sometimes on other nights if we both happen to be online.”

Cas nodded, tipping an invisible hat at her and shifting as he might do on horseback. “I’ll be there,” he drawled in a truly awful cowboy accent. Charlie squealed anyway, and stretched over to hand the controller back to Cas.

oOo

They had settled on pizza toppings and brands of beer, as well as who was bringing what to movie night next Monday. Cas didn’t argue when he was told that he was providing the theater so he didn’t have to provide snacks. Dean had a funny feeling he was going to have snacks anyway. A couple of pizzas weren’t going to get them through 6 hours of movies plus a couple breaks.

Cas and Charlie got along like a house on fire, as Dean had suspected they would. They were two hours into their visit and still going strong. Dean needed to get ready to leave soon, though, as he had to get ready for work. He must have been more obvious than he meant to be when he was checking the time, because the mood shifted in the room and the conversation started to wind down.

“I’m sorry to say it, but I gotta start thinking about heading out,” Dean finally announced, and Charlie nodded in agreement.

They got up reluctantly, taking as long as they could reasonably take on their short walk to the front door.

“I’ll probably get on after dinner to work on the Royal Palace. Feel free to join me if you like, I’ll show you around my kingdom,” Charlie contributed in parting.

“Of course, Your Highness,” Cas teased, reaching for her hand. In one swift move, she went in for a hug instead, and the deer in the headlights look that Cas threw over her shoulder at him was absolutely priceless. Yep, Charlie had that effect on people. Dean smiled his most reassuring smile and opened the door.

“Come on, Red.”

She gave Cas another quick squeeze before falling back, beaming. “We’re gonna be besties, I think. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

Castiel’s smile was more nostalgic than hopeful, so in the interest of making sure they could all hang on to the good mood they were currently in, Dean decided to head that off at the pass.

“Might as well find out now that there’s no arguing with Her Majesty when she makes up her mind about this stuff, Cas. If she’s decided you’ll be besties, you will be. Resistance is futile.” and then in a stage whisper he added, “Just between you and me, I think the crown has kinda gone to her head.”

They all snorted at that, and then Charlie turned to Dean.

“Lead the way, handmaiden.”

And with his best courtly bow, Dean did.

Chapter Text

The whole town seemed to be decorating for Halloween. Dean supposed it was time. Mid October was right around the corner. He should probably start preparing his costume for this year. At least decide what it was going to be.

He thought about it as he watched the boys scrub and sanitize the playground equipment at the park. Maybe he could go with a vampire theme this year. Red eyes, pale skin, fangs. Easy. Cheap. He could probably find a cheap cardboard coffin to set up in front of his door, so it would look like he was coming out of it in the morning. He’d be working on All Hallow’s Eve, of course, but that wouldn’t be an issue.

Charlie, on the other hand, always had the day off. She went all out, decorated every inch of her house and yard, and spent her afternoon getting ready to spend her evening playing the wicked witch. She’d have a cauldron full of candy, but the real treat was something else. She’d make a batch of caramel apples that she would hand out to the kids who had the best costumes. They came from all over town hoping for an apple. It was the stuff of legend. When the kids stopped coming around, it usually turned into a neighborhood party. Dean didn’t live in her neighborhood, but he’d usually pop over there for an hour or so. It was a good time.

The boys were picking up their supplies, so Dean brought his attention back to the matter at hand and made much of inspecting their work before dismissing them. He hadn’t made it back to his car before he got a call about a shoplifter, and shortly after dealing with that he had to go talk down Rufus and Bobby before they wrecked aisle five of their favorite hardware store.

Thank goodness it was Friday. He really needed some game time .

oOo

Dean logged onto his console early, as he did most Fridays. While he showered and got into his jammies (yeah, he was old enough now that he couldn’t wait to get into his jammies on Friday night, thank you very much) his system got a chance to run whatever updates it needed.

He ate his chili cheese fries standing by the counter right next to the sink and returned with his usual snacks, which he left within easy reach of where he intended to sit. He wouldn't need those for a couple of hours yet, but he wouldn’t want to abandon the game later on when he was hungry. It was the wild west out there. A lot could happen in the two minutes you were AFK.

He saw the notification that Cas had added him as a friend and reciprocated. Charlie and Cas weren't online yet, so he joined the game, ran up the white flag and kept himself busy at camp, crafting medicine and horse feed.

It was his dog that first alerted him to someone entering his camp. With the white flag up, he couldn’t be hurt, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone took advantage of the fact that he was in the menus, got a lasso on him, and pulled him outside the camp’s perimeter. Truth be told, it happened to Charlie more than to him, but it happened. But he should greet his visitor anyway.

He got up from where he was crouched over the campfire to find a man at the edge of his camp. FallenAngel01. Cas. Dean waved as he walked up to invite him to join the posse, then sent him a party invite while Cas dealt with the posse invite.

"Howdy, pardner," he drawled, once Cas joined the party. "Her Royal Highness should be moseying along soon. How are your stores? D'ya need supplies? Horse feed? Some meat to cook? Make yourself at home."

"Thank ya kindly, stranger," Castiel’s deep voice returned. "Mighty fine camp y'all got here."

There was a pause as he no doubt checked his inventory.

"I've got plenty of provisions for me, but no horse medicine. I'll need to make a quick run to a stable."

"I'll join ya. Can always use more beets. Plus, I'm pretty much done here until Charlie gets in."

Dean called his horse. Impala was a beauty of a black Arabian, and he brushed his horse carefully before feeding him an apple. Castiel’s horse was a white Arabian. If they ended up racing across the desert, as he and Charlie usually did, he'd be able to keep up. His horse was named Peggy.

"Peggy?" Dean snickered.

"Pegasus would have sounded pretentious." Cas explained.

And that was fair enough, Dean supposed. He marked the nearest stable on his map and they headed out at an easy pace. “I cain’t rightly argue with you there.”

“Are you going to speak with that accent all night?”

“Yep.”

Cas heaved a dramatically exaggerated sigh. “Alright,” he grouched. “Wait, is Charlie going to speak with an accent too?”

“Duh!”

“Does that mean I need to speak with an accent as well?”

“Na. Ya can if ya have a mind to, but Charlie will build ya a whole tall tale ‘bout how ya usta be a doc back East but ya ran into some no good punk and came west to find yurself. Ya know, like that there Dr. Quinn, but more manly like.”

“It’s not too far off, actually,” he mused, and Dean kicked himself immediately.

“Sorry,” he dropped the accent. “I really didn’t think that through.”

“It’s fine. It’s been over twenty years,” and he sounded more exhausted than resigned, so Dean didn’t say anything for a moment.

They were arriving at the top of the Mesa overlooking Armadillo and Dean, currently leading them up the trail, stopped to look at the view. “I’m going to miss this when the game finally goes down.”

“It’s beautiful,” Cas agreed. They enjoyed the view for a minute, and just as Dean was getting ready to move on, he added “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“He was gonna turn on me. Ralph. The man I was with that night.”

“What?”

“His mother bailed him out, and I never saw him again after he left me behind, but -” he could hear Cas hesitate before continuing. “My lawyer talked to him, when she took on the case. She said he had been talking to some Christian counselor” he cleared his throat, “and he had decided that it was all just a regrettable impulse he didn’t know how to resist,” he smirked. “He was my first boyfriend, but I wasn’t his. He pursued me for months. But he had been talked around to saying I made a move on him and in the moment he just didn’t know how to react. That’s why the charges against him were dropped.”

“Shit!” What can you say to something like that? “Is that why you didn’t want to go to trial?”

“Maybe a little. Mostly I just couldn’t stand to be in jail any longer, and I needed to get out no matter what. But if he’d been called to testify and said I coerced him, that we were just room mates and I took advantage of his confusion… my lawyer said we could call his ex and discredit him. It was still a risk, though. It could have gone to 20 years.”

No good punk didn’t begin to describe this Ralph person.

“I don’t really know why I just said all that. Sorry. We’re supposed to be having fun here.”

“Come on,” Dean urged. “I’ll race you to the stable. And then, if Her Majesty is still keeping us waiting, how about we go hijack a train?”

“Hey, now,” Cas perked up. “I haven’t done that in years. I’m in.”

“Have you met Harriet yet?”

“Harriet?”

“Oh, buddy, she is a firecracker,” and he spurred his horse towards the stable.

oOo

As it turned out, Cas loved Harriet. Even, or maybe because, she immediately struck Dean down for hunting, causing him to launch into a small angry rant at her. Cas evidently found his drawled cussing hilarious, at least while superimposed with the enthusiastic pacifism the woman was undoubtedly showering on him. Between his cussing and Castiel’s laughter, they didn’t notice that Charlie had joined the party and then the posse.

“Did ya cross Harriet agin?” she cut in, and startled them into silence.

“He did,” Cas offered, a small chuckle still ringing in his words.

Dean opened his map and found Charlie’s location.

“Charlie, I see where yur at. We were 'bout to jump a train. Rendezvous at Armadillo?”

“Sounds good. Let me know when y’all are approachin’, I need to do some shoppin’.”

They jumped the train at Macfarlane’s Ranch. There always seemed to be a train about to leave the station there.

“Are we going to hitch a ride on her, or take her for a ride?” Dean asked.

“Race you to the engine,” Cas returned, drawing his weapon and setting off towards the front. “Winner gets to drive.”

Cas won, but only because he didn’t stop to loot the bodies of the guards that tried to stop them. They rode the train to Armadillo, picked up Charlie, and spent the next hour riding around showing Cas everything that was new since he played last.

They ended up switching to Charlie’s posse so they could go to her moonshine shack. Cas had never been in one and he absolutely couldn’t miss out on the drunk dancing. They played with the band, swapping instruments every minute or so, and when they’d tried their hands at all of them, they left the band to play by itself and got drunk.

First order of drunk business was, of course, starting a bar fight. Then they attempted to interact with each other, but ended up mostly rolling around laughing at the way they couldn’t even tell what their options were after a few drinks. Finally, they got around to the drunk dancing.

“Hey,” Dean had to cut in a good three hours after Cas showed up at his camp, “I’m sorry to break up the party, but I have to call it a night.” Charlie was good for another half hour, she said, so he left them to their moonshine.

He was getting ready for bed when his phone rang, and for a moment he thought of ignoring it, but it turned out to be Sam.

“Hey, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam.”

“Yeah, I got that, Sammy. How’s Jess?”

“She’s fine, jerk. We both are. We were kinda worried about you, but it sounds like you might be doing alright.”

“Better, yeah,” Dean agreed. “I was just playing RDO with Charlie and Cas.” He updated Sam on the events of the last week briefly.

“Wow, that’s… He seems like a good man.”

“He does. He is,” he corrected himself. “Charlie and I are going over next week for a movie marathon. Indy.”

“That will be fun. How does he get along with Charlie?”

“They’re nerding out together over Minecraft. He’s helping her build her royal palace. They’re still in RDO now.”

“Sounds like a good start. I’m glad he’s making friends he can keep. Even if he does end up moving again, you can always get together and play.”

“Hell yeah, we can.”

But he wasn’t going to move again. Not if Dean had anything to say about it.

oOo

It had been a quiet day in quiet Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Nothing much had happened. Certainly nothing that could explain why Dean was so damn pissed. Ever since Cas had mentioned that weasel Ralph, he’d been quietly building up a good head of steam and by the time he was ready to go home on Sunday afternoon, he was fit to be tied.

Not that anyone could tell, of course. He’d learned to control his reactions decades ago. You can’t live with John Winchester for any length of time without learning. His answers were maybe a little shorter. His general disposition maybe less charming and outgoing than usual. To all appearances he was maybe a little sleep deprived. But inside he was mad enough to make John proud. He hated it. This was not who he chose to be.

The thing was, Dean was protective of his friends. And that's why after he clocked out he sat in front of his computer again. He pulled up the camera feed to check on Cas, and then pulled out a notepad. Today, he was going to dig up the weasel’s full name.

Chapter Text

Cas stretched, found his slippers, and trotted downstairs for his first cup of coffee. For once, he was glad to be up early. Dean and Charlie were coming over sometime mid afternoon for a movie marathon. He had things to do.

Two cups and a big breakfast later, he started cleaning in preparation for having guests he was actually expecting. He set out a brand new soap bar, along with a pump bottle of liquid soap in the bathroom, fresh towels and a new air freshener. He should probably have some sort of stand in here with reading material, but it was too late to do anything about that now.

In the kitchen he sanitized every surface, even though they weren’t likely to actually cook anything. Then he emptied the dishwasher and the trash, opened the window over the sink, and wished he had curtains for it. Not like a set of curtains would weigh him down significantly.

The living room mostly needed a quick dusting, though he made sure the surface of the coffee table was clear and clean in preparation for snacks to be put out. He rearranged the end table so it could be used for drinks, and called a bar stool into service as a second end table, on the other side of the sofa.

The chair he usually sat in to edit was not going to be much use, as it was at the wrong angle for TV viewing, and far too heavy to move on a whim, especially on thick carpet. If he was going to have guests with any kind of regularity, he should really get a bigger couch. At least in here he had a full bookshelf, a few favorite movies and games, a throw he used to keep his legs warm in the winter. Personal touches.

Right, so. All this cleaning was making him feel gross. Cas checked the time. They should be showing up in about three hours. Time for him to hit the shower.

oOo

He had actually managed to put in a couple of hours of work on his new book. The plot was, as they said, thickening beautifully. He knew what would happen to who, how he was going to lead up to things and where he was going to foreshadow, and where he was going to just come out of left field with a stunner nobody was expecting.

He’d drafted three chapters now, and fleshed out the first two. Something wasn’t quite right, but he’d learned years ago that if he didn’t finish the first draft before starting on improvements he’d never get past chapter one. A knock on the door caught him in the act of running his fingers through his hair, and he was halfway to the door before he realized he’d probably look like some kind of mad scientist. Still, he wasn’t about to leave them waiting.

Charlie was all smiles when he opened the door and he smiled back at her, before stepping back to let her in. Dean wasn’t with her, a quick glance outside confirmed. The busybody from across the street was looking at them, so he shot her a big smile and waved. He probably should have just pretended not to see her, but he wasn’t in that kind of mood today.

“Dean is just picking up the pizza. He’ll be here in five.”

He nodded to Charlie and closed the door firmly. Noticing that she had a coat she was going to shed, as well as a purse, he pointed to the entrance closet, where she put her coat on a hanger and dropped the purse on a shelf, stopping to retrieve two DVD cases.

Then she closed the closet door and kicked off her sneakers before heading for the living room like she owned the place. He hadn’t smiled like this, or this often, in decades. Maybe ever.
She dropped the DVDs next to his console just as he stopped on the other side of the couch.

“Need a drink?” He meant to offer to get her one, of course, but Charlie just walked right on to the kitchen with him so he gestured at her to go ahead and help herself to whatever was in his fridge.

She was getting herself some ice water from the dispenser built into the door, telling him about something cute her cat did, when another knock on the door announced Dean. Cas held up one finger and made for the door.

“We’re grabbing drinks in the kitchen,” Cas explained, “but you can drop those off on the coffee table first,” he nodded towards the living room.

Before either of them moved, he hesitated. “Dean, why is there a hat on the pizza boxes?” he asked, but Dean only laughed and waved him off.

Somehow they walked past each other half a dozen times, one of them grabbing paper towels and heading back to the living room just as another thought of grabbing an extra towel to put under the pizza boxes to avoid staining the table. Eventually, they all arrived in front of the coffee table, and Charlie dispatched Dean to put the first movie in. As soon as his back was turned, she made herself comfy on the couch, and pulled Cas down with her.

The way they were sitting, there was no room for Dean, but before Cas could do anything about it, he’d plopped himself down between them and the coffee table, pizza box directly in front of him and the hat next to him on the edge of the table. He looked completely at home. Everything he had been gearing up to say fled. His mother would have been scandalized, but he liked the idea that his friends felt comfortable enough in his home to kick off their shoes, grab whatever they needed out of his kitchen, and make themselves comfortable on his floor.

“Cas, you wanna do the honors?” He passed the controller, and Cas started the first movie.

oOo

“Alright,” Cas said, examining the empty pizza boxes. “Good time to take a minute to clear out the trash, use the bathroom, and maybe get a fresh drink before we start the second movie. What say you?”

“Dibs on the bathroom,” is what Charlie said. Dean went with “I’ll grab the beer,” and so Cas grabbed the pizza boxes and took them out to the trash can. He didn’t really need to use the bathroom, so he washed the pizza grease off at the kitchen sink and then went back to the living room. A six pack was on the coffee table now, along with a bottle opener, and Dean was pulling out three bottles and placing them in front of their places, without popping the caps off.

He didn’t have an ice bucket to keep the other three chilled, but he could probably improvise with a mixing bowl, he decided. He came back to find Charlie swapping out discs and Dean gone. No doubt taking his turn in the bathroom. He placed the bowl on the table and put the beer in the ice to keep cold.

Dean’s appearance had Cas dropping back into his seat, beer and bottle opener in hand. Dean made himself comfortable next to him on the couch, putting on the hat and a rakish grin, and leaving the floor to Charlie, who didn’t even blink before grabbing a pillow from the editing chair and sitting down on it. It probably worked out for the best, as Charlie ended up hiding behind the table at some of the grossest bits.

There were a lot of gross bits in this one. He himself found that he was quite fascinated by his socks whenever any of that business with the ripping hearts out of chests was going on. Also a lot of screaming. He liked the first one much better, even though the kid was really funny.

By the time the second movie was over, he needed a proper break and they all needed a snack, so they made their way to the kitchen and settled on nachos. They set everything out on the kitchen island and stood around it, preparing their own trays and eating where they stood. Once they’d polished off the nachos, they cleaned up efficiently. Then Charlie stepped outside to call her girlfriend and Cas headed for the bathroom.

Cas returned from the bathroom to find Dean examining the books on his shelf. Happy to have a reason to not go right back to the movies (what if the third one was even more gross than the second? The current rate of progression was mildly disturbing.), he approached thinking to engage Dean in conversation about one of the books. He seemed to be just scanning the spines at the moment, so Cas gave him a minute to land on something.

When he did, it was something of a shock. His whole face lit up first, much the way Indy’s face had lit up right before he swapped the idol for the bag of sand.

“Hey, do you mind if I -”

“Go ahead,” Cas allowed.

He watched Dean carefully remove a book from his third shelf. One of his own books. Dean wouldn’t know that, of course. Cas did write under a pen name after all, and his identity, for obvious reasons, was a well kept secret. Should he ask him if he’d read it? If he’d liked it? Had he picked out any other author’s books, he would not have hesitated, but now that it was one of his own, he found that he was rather more nervous than excited.

He’d never talked to anyone about one of his books before. Well, besides Crowley. Even edits went through Crowley, before everything started going through email. Even now, it was an email account that couldn’t be traced back to him that he used to discuss edits and cover art and the like with his publisher. A far cry from actually talking to someone face to face about his work.

The sound of the door closing brought him out of his contemplation. Charlie was back. If he was going to detour into a conversation about the book, now was the time.

“Hey, Charles, look what I found,” Dean displayed the book like a trophy.

“Wow, awesome,” and Charlie looked just as delighted as Dean to see the book.

“I gather you like that one,” Cas ventured.

“O man, you have no idea. This book is how Charlie and I became besties.”

“We were gonna be besties anyway, I had decided months before this book,” Charlie corrected him.

“Yeah, well, I was not on board with that plan, if you recall. You were two grades behind me and I was on the football team. Plus, you know, you were a girl so-”

“I’m still a girl, doofus,” she smacked him lightly on the shoulder.

Dean made a face that he thought was meant to be stern, but it failed rather miserably, and Cas did his best not to snicker.

“Anyway,” Dean continued. “Small town in South Dakota, over a decade ago, there weren’t a lot of books like this around. Hell, there weren’t a lot of books like this anywhere, close as I could tell. Least, I never saw them, with all the moving we did, and all the school libraries I looked through.”

“What do you mean, books like this?” Cas prodded.

“Well, inclusive books, for starters. With characters that don’t just exist as a symbol, but as real people with complicated histories, and relationships that aren’t romantic, and really weird in some ways but so incredibly normal in other ways, all at the same time. Like, you know David is gay, but not because he’s dating some other boy, or mooning over one, and not because he wears pink or has a rainbow anything. He’s just another kid, and his orientation is just another detail he’s kinda working out. It’s not any different than trying to decide where he wants to go to college, or what sport to sign up for. Sure, it’s gonna be important in the sense that it will change where he goes after school and how much fun he has, and maybe even whether he’s got a shot at a scholarship, but also, it doesn’t really matter - the people in his life aren’t gonna care whether he goes to the track or to the gym, ya know? It doesn’t change the way they see him.”

Cas had taken great pains to make it that way. He’d found that he had a lot of time to think, back then, particularly as it became clear that having anything resembling a normal social life just wasn’t going to be in the cards for him. And what he thought about what all the moments in his life when his attraction to other boys had been felt or treated as a problem, and he imagined what it could have been like if it had been treated as any other mildly interesting but largely insignificant detail about him. Why should it matter to anyone around him who he was attracted to? Why should that detail be the thing that defines his character, in their eyes?

“But it’s more than that, too. It’s the way it’s not patronizing, or incredibly dramatic for no apparent reason. Nothing huge and really unlikely happens. There’s no alien ship, no vampires, no crazy industrial accident. Just a bunch of kids being kids and finding ways to love themselves and each other. And more than that.”

Dean paused for a moment, examining the cover like it was a precious thing, then looked directly at Cas, as if he wasn’t sure what he was about to say made any sense. “It’s not even that Jimmy Sinclair’s books feel different because I love them, even though I do. I’ve loved a lot of books, though, that’s not special. What’s different is that it feels like they love you back.”

He suspects Dean is waiting for him to say something, but he just… has no idea what to say. It doesn’t really get awkward though, because Charlie, bless her, gets them back on track.

“Anyway,” she cuts into the silence, “The first few books had just recently come out and they were hard to find in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The public library didn’t have them yet, and the school library had one copy of each title,” she nudged Dean. “Apparently back then there wasn’t much demand for them. Mrs. Kendal, the school librarian, pretty much told us it was just us checking them out. So, Dean and I kinda had a not so friendly rivalry going on.”

“When this one came out,” Dean picked up the story “Charlie and I were both waiting for it. We both had holds, put in on the same day, and the librarian had basically said whoever showed up first to pick it up would get to read it first.”

“So we were both there when the library opened, and we went up to the desk together going back and forth all the way about who would get to read it first. You know, I was saying it should be me because I’m a girl, and Dean was all, I’m older. So I said, well, I got to the door 2 seconds faster, and he said he had practice, cause he’s on the football team, so he should go first, and so on.”

“Finally, he made our way to the desk, and Mrs. Kendal asked who it’s going to be, and it’s crunch time. Turns out that Dean had put in his hold a few hours before I did, so it looked like she was getting ready to give it to him and I just blurted out that I should go first because I’m gay. Like, right in front of Mrs. Kendal’s 3rd period class.” Charlie cringed, but she was still smiling.

“Everything went quiet as hell,” Dean continued. “And it seemed like this might get awkward, but more importantly, that was a pretty good reason and I thought I might have to concede. Except instead of just letting her have it,” he stood taller “I countered that that wasn’t gonna work because I was bi.”

“And that’s how both our dumb asses came out at school,” Charlie sums up, chuckling.

“So who got the book first?”

“Mrs. Kendal suggested we just read it together, so we found a quiet corner and took turns reading to each other,” she explained.

“And after that she started ordering two copies of each book,” Dean added. “We read them together anyway, though. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

Dean carefully put the book back in the same place, and tapped the spine of another one.

“This is the last one I read. I didn’t realize there were half a dozen more books.”

“You’re welcome to borrow them, if you like,” Cas offered. “Or any of these books.”

“Maybe I will, yeah,” Dean agreed, at the same time that Charlie was also saying “That’s so awesome, thanks.”

And before they could launch into another argument about who was going to borrow them first, Castiel cut them off at the pass.

“So, who’s ready for the last movie?”

They raced for the couch, and Cas ended up on the floor this time. It was only fair, it was his turn anyway. The third movie, it turned out, was the best.

Chapter Text

Somehow October was over. Cas had been playing RDO with them every Friday and a few other days besides. He’d been meeting Charlie for Minecraft at least once a week too. Apparently, he’d taken over the building of a blacksmith’s shack in her royal village and it was going well. Charlie was going to invite him to build himself a house in a corner by the keep. She’d been working on getting Dean to play and build his own home there too, but Dean had outgrown Minecraft a good half decade ago and could find no reason to go back.

That is, until last night when Cas had shared a picture he’d taken when he was playing on his own map earlier that day. He’d found a beehive, and the bees were out feeding on flowers. You could clearly see a baby one next to the frankly terrifyingly large adult bees, but they all had specks on their little bee butts, clearly intended to be pollen, and Cas had put so many heart eyes and bee emojis in the message that came with the picture that Dean was tempted into asking what else was new in the game, just to feed that good mood. It turned out, there were mountain goats now, that would butt you off the mountains. This Dean had to see for himself. Apparently, he was going to play Minecraft again.

oOo

The call came as the sun was setting on Halloween. It was Becky, of course. He should be grateful that it had been a few weeks since the last time this happened. Truth be told, he was happy to have a reason to pop over and see Cas in person before heading out for the day. It had been a couple of busy weeks since the movie marathon and they hadn’t actually had a chance to hang out in meatspace, as Charlie would put it.

“Good evening, Mrs. Rosen,” Dean had intended to sound more stern but alas, he was not feeling stern at all.

“Good evening, Dean,” she looked over his shoulder before waving him closer. “See, there he is again.”

Dean looked over his own shoulder in the direction she was looking to find Cas looking down the street from his living room window. “Is there a problem, ma’am?”

“He’s been there for about 45 minutes now. On and off. Ever since the trick or treaters started coming around. Just standing there watching the kids like a creep.”

“And what are you doing tonight, Mrs. Rosen?”

“You know very well what I’m doing, Dean. Handing out candy to trick or treaters.”

“Chuck taking the kids out after dinner?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And you’re just going to stay here alone at home handing out candy to other people’s kids, telling them how good they look in their outfits, like a creep?”

“Dean!” She looked positively scandalized. “It’s Halloween, it’s supposed -”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it? Have you ever seen Mr. Novak doing anything like this before? Standing in front of his window watching kids?”

“Well, no.”

“And do you have any reason whatever to think he is interested in anything beyond the Halloween costume parade?”

“Well, I haven’t talked to him, I don’t know what he’s interested in.”

“No, you certainly haven’t. You have a good evening, Mrs. Rosen.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, since you asked, I’m going to have a quick chat with Mr. Novak about what constitutes harassment in the event this continues and he decides to do something about it, then I’m going back to my desk to file a report.”

And before she had a chance to say anything else, he turned tail and headed for Castiel’s door. He knocked, but the door opened so quickly he was fairly certain Cas had been standing there waiting for him to knock.

“You got another call,” Cas observed, by way of greeting.

“Yes. You were standing in your own window looking at the public street for a creepy amount of time.”

“How rude of me.”

“You know this is harassment, right? You can do something about that.”

“Dean - ” he paused, then started again, “Deputy, we’ve had this conversation before. I appreciate your concern, but if I want to get the law involved, I’ll call you.”

“Alright. I just had to say it.”

Dean turned to head back to his car when the thought occurred to him that this was just the sort of night when some rowdy group of teens might take it upon themselves to egg someone’s house. He stopped cold, half way down the walk. “Hey, you doing anything tonight?”

“I guess I’ll probably just see what’s on TV.”

“Want some company?”

Cas hesitated, but settled on “You’re always welcome.”

“I’ll see you in about an hour or so.”

Charlie would understand.

oOo

He parked the Impala right in the drive, under the lights, where it would announce to everyone that the deputy was inside. He had debated bringing the cruiser, but everyone in this town knew Baby and how much Dean loved her. While the cruiser would have warned everyone that a Deputy was present and ready to mete out legal consequences, Baby would inspire everyone who considered egging the house to imagine what Dean Winchester would personally do to anyone who so much as thought about getting her dirty.

As deterrents went, it was much more effective.

He rang the doorbell.

“Come on in, Dean,” Castiel’s voice came through the speaker. “The door is unlocked.”

He had a moment of hesitation, where he wondered if it was safe for the door to be unlocked given how Cas had been dealing with harassment and vandalism. He hated that the thought had even presented itself, but there it was.

Dean made his way in, and found Cas in front of his TV, a small bowl of candy in the center of the table and the channel guide open on his screen. Dean dropped the six pack he’d brought next to it.

“Can’t find anything that appeals?”

Cas just shook his head “It’s all slashers and gore. Not really my speed.”

“You’re looking in the wrong channels, my friend,” he gestured for the remote. “Now before this goes any further, I’m afraid I’m going to have to swear you to secrecy. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can know about this. Not even Charlie.” Dean extended his pinkie between them, and Cas hooked his own pinky into it.

“You have my word,” Cas returned, solemnly.

“I mean it. On pain of tickling.”

“Should I redirect the camera?” he deadpanned.

Dean’s bark of laughter broke through the feigned severity of the moment, and scrolled down to the family movie channels. “Here we go. We’ll find something here that’s a little less IT and a little more Hocus Pocus.”

“Hocus Pocus?”

“Hocus Pocus it is. It’s bound to be on. It always is.”

oOo

Cas was laughing far harder than there was any reason to at the image of the witch riding the vacuum cleaner when she couldn’t find her broom and it suddenly hit Dean that something was off. Watching Cas laugh was… endearing. He found himself watching him far more than he was watching the movie, utterly fascinated. It was probably just because Cas was usually so serious. Even when he made jokes he was completely deadpan. Yeah, that was probably it.

He turned back to the screen, currently filled with kids in their Halloween costumes.

“I missed out on all this,” he heard himself say. “We were on the road all the time, living out of the car and cheap motels, when I was at that age, you know, and by the time I landed here and set down roots I was a teenager and way too cool for that stuff.”

Cas turned to look at him briefly, but seemed to understand it was easier for Dean to talk if he wasn’t looking at him directly.

“I took Sammy once, but after that he wanted to go with his friends from school, and I got door duty. I was too messed up at the time to realize it, but now looking back… ” What was he doing? He never talked about this kind of shit. He never talked about life with John Winchester unless -

“I missed out. Not just on trick or treating but all the fun kid stuff. All the normal kid stuff.”

Castiel’s eyes stayed on the screen but his hand reached out and briefly squeezed his shoulder before retreating back to the couch. Dean accepted the support as quietly as it was offered, grateful for the way Cas seemed to know what he needed just then. It could have been so awkward, if he’d stopped the movie and turned to look at him. Dean was so relieved he could -

Shit. The way that sentence ended was, he was so relieved he could kiss him.

Fuck.

Was he into Cas?

“My parents were very religious.” Cas spoke, his tone quiet and contemplative. “Incredibly strict. They used to say Halloween is the devil’s birthday party. I was never allowed to have any part in it. When they had Halloween events at school, I was kept home for the day.” He cleared his throat.

Dean looked down at his hands, the impulse to reach out to Castiel’s hand on the couch between them slowly stealing his attention. He made himself focus on the words.

“I kept hearing the other kids talking about how much fun they had and I knew I was missing out, but I told myself that when I grew up…” he swallowed. “I’d make up for it. I’d have the best candy, and my yard decorations would be so epic that kids would line up around the block,” he smirked. “I’d be everyone’s favorite neighbor on Halloween.”

Dean’s hand took on a life of its own and brushed against the back of Castiel’s in a brief acknowledgment of their shared loss. His thumb wanted to linger, but what Cas needed right now was a friend, so he pulled his hand back into his own lap.

They watched the rest of the movie in silence, sipping their beers, lost in their own thoughts.

“Are you hungry?” Cas asked, as the credits started rolling.

“Yeah, actually. I haven’t had dinner yet.”

“I’ve got left over pasta,” he offered, “and apple pie for dessert.”

“You have pie?”

“It’s not fresh, I made it yesterday.”

“You have pie that you made? From scratch?”

“Well, I didn’t make the crust. I can, but I don’t usually bother.”

Fuck. He was falling for Cas. Hard.

oOo

They ended up watching Halloween Town next, and then he looked outside and decided the night was basically over. There were no kids walking around any more, and porch lights were off. Charlie’s afterparty was well underway by now. In fact, he checked his watch, usually, he’d have gone over and left by now. He’d already sent her a text to let her know he wouldn’t be coming, but he’d text her again, just to check in.

“I should go. I’m working tomorrow.”

“Thank you for being here. It was nice to have company.”

“Thank you for the pie. Pretty much any time you want company, that will do it for me. Certified, grade-A Dean Winchester bait.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cas announced, “and I promise I’ll use it only when necessary.”

“Necessary is for Deputy Winchester, Cas. You can call Dean anytime.”

Cas nodded, but didn’t say anything else.

“Night, Cas.”

“Good night, Dean.”

“Hey,” he turned around at the door. “You want to go out and get a drink sometime?”

Cas hesitated, studied his toes as if the answer was down there somewhere, and when he didn’t find it on his shoes, he looked for it in Dean’s eyes.

“Dean, I’m still getting used to having friends. I can’t -”

“We’ll bring Charlie, too.” he retreated. “We can hang out at the Roadhouse for a bit, introduce you to Ellen, and maybe Bobby and Rufus if they’re around. They’re cool, and they’re institutions around here. It will help if you’re seen to be hanging out with us. People trust their judgment.”

“So no pressure, then,” Cas snarked. ”I’ll think about it.”

Chapter Text

Charlie, of course, figured it out. She had been his best friend for ages. Sometimes he was pretty sure she knew him better than he knew himself. She’d taken one look at him and prodded and probed until the whole story was out.

“You’ve got it bad,” she announced.

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna need you to keep a lid on that.”

“But Dean -”

“Charlie, the man isn’t interested right now. We’re going to respect that. Give him some space.”

“Look - ”

“You look, Charlie. He’s got enough shit to deal with, he doesn’t need to be uncomfortable around the only friends he has here. Leave it alone.”

Charlie gave him a hug.

“He’ll make more new friends, right? He’ll settle in. Stop worrying about having to move.”

“Yeah, he will.” Dean agreed.

And maybe, if the conditions were right, once Cas was settled in, he might take another shot at it.

oOo

It ended up being about a week before Cas told him, via party chat while they were out collecting blood samples for Harriet, that he had thought about it, and decided to take Dean up on his invitation to join him and Charlie at the Roadhouse for a drink.

They quickly worked out the next day they both had off and arranged to meet at the bar the evening before, after work. The Roadhouse served the best burgers around, save Dean’s of course. They could have dinner there, enjoy a drink, and then play the rest of the night by ear.

Charlie and Dean were talking by the Impala as Cas pulled up, and they went in together, settling into a booth. Within a couple of minutes, they were approached by Jo, who had been told to be on her best behavior.

Ellen was polite but a bit frosty at first. Dean didn't give it away, but after all these years he knew her well enough to know when she was keeping a discreet eye on him. The easy friendship between Dean, Charlie and Cas, won her over before their burgers were gone, and she brought them their second round of beer. They hadn't ordered any, so Dean called that a good sign.

"Thought I'd take my break now and join you for a cold one. It's been a while."

"Yeah, it has," Dean agreed. "It's been busy."

"I can imagine," she let the conversation stall out for a moment. Everyone did their best to ignore what they all knew to be the reason, but Cas shifted awkwardly anyway.

"So, Thanksgiving soon," Charlie launched into a new topic. "Got any exciting plans?"

"Na, just gonna close the place for business and invite everyone over for dinner. The usual deal. Extended family welcome," she looked significantly at Dean.

"Sam's gonna go to Jess' parents this year, so I may take you up on that," Dean returned. "Red?"

"I volunteered to work dispatch," Charlie added, "and after my shift I'm off for a little personal time with Dorothy."

Knowing smiles went around the table before everyone turned to Cas.

"I don't really celebrate," he explained.

Ellen's eyes darted to Dean momentarily, and she must have seen something in him because when they returned to Cas, they were softer.

"Is that for ideological reasons or just for lack of someone to celebrate with?"

The silence she got in response didn't last, but it spoke for itself anyway.

"Well, you're welcome to come along with Dean if you're so inclined."

Bobby's arrival at the table interrupted them, and before all the exchanged greetings died down, Ellen had gone back to work.

Bobby and Cas recognized each other from the fall festival, where apparently Cas had bought something from Bobby. Come to think of it, there had been a bookend on his shelf that looked like it might be Bobby's work, but he hadn't put it together at the time.

Cas seemed to have made a good impression at that time, because Bobby was his usual self instead of the brick wall he usually was when he first met a new person. They hadn't quite finished their second beer when Rufus also came in.

"Balls!" Bobby had grumbled, before excusing himself and making his way to the bar.

Rufus made the rounds, stopping at a number of tables, including their own, on his way to the bar. Introductions were made, and he moved on. He didn’t linger anywhere, just dropping by to greet friends, drop the occasional pointed comment and eventually settling next to Bobby at the bar.

“Balls!” they heard again, all the way from the bar.

“Are they always like this?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Castiel’s amused smile was growing strained, though, and when he finished that second beer, he started getting restless. Sure enough, as soon as there was a gap in the conversation, he began to excuse himself.

Dean excused himself barely ten minutes later. There wasn’t much left to keep his interest. And since he had the next day off and nothing much to do with his night after all, he logged on to his console. As it turned out, Cas was online playing Minecraft, and Dean joined his game, a party chat invite coming through from Cas as the game loaded.

“Hello, Dean. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Got the day off tomorrow, so I figured I might as well check out these mountain goats of yours.”

“As it so happens my base is not far from some high mountains.”

Cas met him at the spawn location, and dropped a map for Dean. The base was clearly visible on the map, but Cas was leading the way, so he put the map away and followed Cas instead. It wasn’t far from where they were in any case. Just on the other side of the savanna, and not far from a village. At base, Cas got him set up with basic tools, armor and food.

“We’re in peaceful mode at the moment,” he explained “so you shouldn’t need much. I hate having to deal with mobs while I’m exploring. Mostly because it tends to be disorienting and I get tired of getting lost or falling off cliffs.”

“This looks like a whole different game, man.”

“It has changed a lot over the years,” he agreed. “Look, beehives.”

He walked up to a couple of boxes and harvested the honey, sending the bees out to feed and collect pollen.

“These things are way more cute than they have any right to be.”

Cas just laughed at that. “Wait till you see the deep caves.”

“Goats, man. I’m here to see goats.”

“Alright then, the mountain is that way. Watch out for powder snow.”

“Powder snow?”

“Looks just like regular snow, but you will sink into it and freeze to death if you can’t dig yourself out fast enough.”

“You know what? I’ll just follow you.”

They started climbing, for a while all their focus went into getting up the side of the mountain. Cas was moving way too fast for Dean, clearly completely at ease with the game mechanics. Dean was less so, and fell behind often.

“Wait, I have an idea,” Cas finally took pity on him. "I’ll climb to the top and make a waterfall. Then you can just swim up to the top." In another minute the water was running downhill directly at him. It washed him halfway back down the mountain, but once he figured out how to swim again, getting up to the top was a breeze.

A short walk around the top was all it took to find a few goats, though in peaceful mode, they refused to headbutt Dean at all. He might have been as close to pouting about it as Dean Winchester ever got. Cas laughed at him, but then told him to log off so they could get out of peaceful mode and then they could go tick off the goats.

Dean enjoyed getting hurled to his death far too much, truth be told. Even riding the waterfall up the mountain was a lot of fun. They spent an embarrassing amount of time playing with the goats before going to their separate beds with plans to go cave diving the next day.

oOo

It felt like a date, and Dean had to remind himself that it wasn't one for the fifth or sixth time when they got into the amethyst geode.

It was just that they'd met at a specific place at a pre-arranged time in order to go somewhere special together, just the two of them, that was all. They’d picked flowers to feed the bees. The bees went into love mode, and there was Cas, surrounded by big red hearts. He may or may not have taken a screenshot. Then they went to the cave, slid down the waterfall, and Dean's world had been rocked.

They’d settled on a carpet of moss, surrounded by blossoming shrubs. Glow berries lit up the ceiling of the cave much like stars in the night sky - well, if the night sky was green. Some sort of giant pink ceiling flower was showering them with spores that looked like green and pink confetti. The cave walls sparkled with diamond and gold ore. It wasn’t even fair, and that was before the amethyst geode.

For the sake of his sanity, when they had sufficiently admired the geode, he decided to call it a night. It was like their own personal wonderland, and there was only so much Dean could take of laughing and exploring this place with Cas when there was so much more he wanted to explore.

They made their way back up to base, and maybe because his leaving early was reminiscent of Cas leaving early the night before, he let the conversation get serious for a moment.

“Before you left, last night,” he started “it seemed like you weren’t having fun anymore. Like something was bothering you. Want to tell me about it?”

“I was just tired,” he paused. “Also, I was a bit concerned.”

“About what?”

“Let’s just say that historically, being seen around town with me has not been great for the social lives of former friends.”

Dean let it rest for a moment, not really sure what to say to set his mind at ease. Then they were at base, and it was too late.

“Night, Cas.”

“Good night, Dean.”

oOo

He was still thinking about it at work, both Cas worrying that Dean would lose friends and the whole cave experience. It really was something. If things did work out with Cas eventually, he’d want to go back to these caves and explore everything there was to explore. Maybe they could build a cozy little home base down there. Maybe he’d find a way to get a beehive down with them. Maybe if everything went really well, some day, eventually, he’d get Cas busy with something - maybe ask him to catch one of those axolotl in a bucket - and he’d find some diamonds, hold one in his hand so Cas could see it and -

“Boy, you’ve got it bad.”

“You said that already, Charles.”

“It’s still true.”

And yeah, he was sitting here, at work no less, daydreaming of playing house and finding diamonds and they weren’t even dating. Or likely to, anytime soon.

“Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”

oOo

Dean had been working on the paperwork he’d meant to do every time he’d ended up day dreaming over the last few days. There was starting to be a bit of a backlog, and he was up to his elbows in it when his cell phone rang. He wouldn’t normally answer it at work, but when he pulled it out to reject the call, he saw that it was Cas.

Cas never called. On any number.

“Cas?”

“Hello, Dean.” There was some sort of pounding in the background making it hard to hear Cas clearly. “I apologize for calling you on your cell phone, but I wanted to make sure the message would get to you and not some other deputy.”

“Cas, what’s wrong? What’s that noise?”

“I need deputy Winchester at my house, as soon as possible.”

He was already reaching for his keys. “Cas? Cas, what is the noise?”

“I need help.”

Chapter Text

“I’m on my way,” he’d answered, and the call was disconnected.

What the hell was going on? Why hadn’t Cas answered him? Why had he hung up? There were so many questions.

“Winchester, this is dispatch. Come in, please. Over.”

“Winchester. Go on, dispatch. Over.”

“Dean,” Charlie’s voice lost some of its official tone, “the school just called emergency services. They can’t find Sunny Rosen. The bus dropped her off at her corner, but she didn’t make it home. That’s all we know so far. Over.”

Fuck! That probably explained the pounding in the background of that call. Someone, probably Becky, had likely decided he was responsible and was pounding on his door, demanding that he surrender the child or something.

“Are we bringing more hands in on this? Over.”

“Jody is calling everyone in as we speak. Over.”

“I’m en route to the Rosen’s. Over and out.”

“Copy that, Winchester.”

He found exactly what he was expecting as he pulled up at the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Becky and Chuck were at Castiel’s front door, between the pounding on the door and their raised voices making enough noise to be virtually incomprehensible. Dean informed dispatch of his arrival on the scene and was told Benny and Adam were en route to meet him there. Then he approached the couple and made his presence known. It took a moment for them to even realize he was there, focused as they were on getting Cas to open the door.

“Mr. and Mrs. Rosen,” he finally pushed into their space, notebook already in his hand, “I understand your child did not arrive home as expected. I can only imagine how you must be feeling right now, but I’m going to need you to focus and answer some questions for me, so we can get busy finding Sunny.”

That seemed to finally get their attention, and while initially they just turned the loud voices on him, at least the pounding had stopped, and Dean got them in their own house, looking for a recent picture of Sunny that he could use in the search, as well as something she’d recently worn, in case they got search dogs involved. Honestly, that part was mostly to give them something to do and get them away from Cas. The Rosens complied, but continued to insist they were wasting time and that he should be asking Cas all these questions instead.

In most of these cases, Dean informed them, the child turned out to be at a friend’s house, blissfully ignorant of the panic she was putting her parents through. This sent Becky to the phone, as Dean had hoped it would, and she was soon calling the parents of all of Sunny’s friends. Benny and Adam arrived, and Jody soon after them. Adam was dispatched to the school to see what he could discover there. Jody sent Benny to walk the child’s path from the bus stop at the corner to the entrance to the cul-de-sac, looking for some sign of her passage, or anyone who might have seen her. Dean went to talk to Cas.

Cas must have been keeping an eye on the situation across the street, because he opened the door before Dean had a chance to knock.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yes,” Cas nodded. “Please, come in.”

“I’ve got -”

“A few questions, I know,” he sounded exhausted. “I have nothing to do with it. I haven’t gone anywhere or talked to anyone…”

“I know, Cas. You’re a potential witness, not a suspect.”

“What do you think I might have witnessed?”

“It’s hard to say. Mostly, I’m hoping that your cameras picked up something useful.”

“We can certainly look,” Cas agreed, going to his desktop and bringing up the Security company’s website, and navigating his way to the live feed. They selected to monitor the two outside cameras with a decent view of the cul-de-sac entrance. The residence itself was barely in the picture, but there was a clear view of the street right outside and the path Sunny would have arrived on.

“Bus drop off time for her exit is 3:18, so back it up to about 3:10 and let’s see if anything stands out.”

They noticed the car because it came into the frame three times in about twelve minutes. As if someone was circling the block. It might have been missed entirely. Just another SUV driving through on its way somewhere, but the two hubcaps that were visible were different, and that made it stand out enough that when it went through again a few minutes later they knew they had seen it before. The angle didn’t really allow for a clear shot of the plate, but neither one of them recognized the car, and nothing else of any interest had been caught on camera.

Dean took a picture of the SUV on his phone. “I don’t suppose you noticed this car before or have any idea if this was the first time it circled the area or who it might belong to?”

“I don’t remember seeing it before, but if it’s been doing that, it will be on film. I’ll have Milton Security do some digging. And no, I have no idea who it belongs to.”

“I don’t recognize it either. It’s not great, but it’s a lead. Thanks, Cas. Keep me posted.”

“Thank you for getting the situation under control.”

“Of course,” Deputy Winchester responded. “We’re going to need to talk about what they were doing outside when you called, but right now…”

“You need to focus on finding the child. Of course. There really isn’t anything to discuss anyway. They were just looking for her. No harm done.”

And that might be true, as far as physical damage went, but Castiel’s eyes were telling a different story. Dean wanted to comfort his friend, but unfortunately, that was going to have to wait.

oOo

So far, there was no sign of Sunny anywhere. Everything was unremarkable until she got off the bus, and then there was just nothing. Dean had shown the picture of the car around to everyone he could find and nobody had recognized it. It had been about two hours since the child had gone missing, and they had nothing to go on. It was becoming incredibly unlikely that there was any remotely benign or innocent explanation for this.

The Rosens had been giving him increasingly resentful looks through the window. Those started when he returned from “interrogating” Cas with a picture of the car and reporting that Cas didn’t know anything and there was no reason to think he was involved. The look they exchanged declared quite clearly that they were going to make their way back around to this later. Whatever, Dean had more important things to worry about.

He had sent the picture of the car to Bobby and Charlie, in hopes that either the car contacts of one or the mad internet skills of the other would find them some sort of lead. Neither had panned out (yet, he mentally added). So when Cas called, Dean, Jody, Benny and Adam were standing around the hood of Jody’s cruiser trying to come up with some kind of plan of action. Dean answered the call and put it on speaker.

“You’re on speaker,” he answered.

“I just got a preliminary report from Milton Security. That car shows up on camera every day in the last two weeks. At least once a day, and at apparently random times. They sent a record of every time it appeared, tagged with date and time. It stopped twice, but nobody entered or exited the vehicle. Those are indicated in the report as well.”

“That sure sounds like our guy,” Benny spoke up.

“It turned into the cul-de-sac once. The image isn’t clear enough to read the plate but they were able to determine it’s a specialty Iowa Schools plate.”

“Thanks, Cas. Let me know if you get anything else.”

“Of course,” Cas agreed, before hanging up.

“Alright, let’s get that report,” Jody nodded to Dean. “We’ll look for additional security footage from other security cameras in the area around those dates and times, particularly anyone on a corner,” he heard her go on to the others as he ran towards Castiel’s house. Cas met him by the door, with printouts, and he was back out in a heartbeat.

“Might even get lucky and get a full plate,” Jody was saying. A road map had been laid out on the hood. “If our perp is from out of state, he’s likely going to try to take her across state lines. Let’s get some eyes on 11.”

“If he was going that way, he’s likely already in Iowa,” Adam pointed out. “But he might be headed South, to Sioux City. There are two state lines there. He could cross into Iowa or Nebraska from there, leaves him more escape routes.”

“Let’s get in touch with Sioux City and get eyes on 29 too,” Jody agreed. Benny and Adam headed back to the station, with Dean to follow in his own cruiser. Charlie was going to be pulled from dispatch to help with the search for security footage. Jody was going to check in with the Rosens before heading back herself to contact the feds.

“Sheriff,” Dean stopped her before she went inside. “You heard them earlier. They’re sure Novak is involved and they’re going to be out here again the moment we all leave.”

“You’re probably right,” Jody agreed. “We need everyone on this, we can’t spare people to babysit the Rosens. Does he have someone he could visit with for a couple of days? Preferably not far out of town, in case we need him?”

“I don’t think so. Bobby’s got that cabin outside of Lennox, though. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“Alright, set it up.”

He called Bobby, who easily agreed to let Cas crash at the cabin for a couple of days, on his way to the station, and then Cas, who was a bit harder to persuade but eventually relented. While Cas packed himself a weekend bag, Bobby would run over with the keys and directions.

Jody checked in a few minutes later. She was out of the Rosen’s house, and just as she was driving off, Bobby passed her going the other way. Apparently they’d kept her for several minutes, insisting that she needed to arrest Cas and look into his participation herself, as Dean was his friend and probably covering for him. They were really going to have to have a chat about that when this was over.

By the time Jody arrived, Sioux City was on alert and setting up to monitor 29, more of their own men had been called in to watch 11, and Charlie had found the same vehicle on a couple of traffic cams. It appeared to have headed South along local roads. If it was avoiding the interstate, it would be harder to keep track of, but also slower, and that could work to their advantage.

A call from Bobby followed quickly. He’d noticed neighbors arriving from work, and the sort of milling about that indicated they were aware that something was afoot, so he’d stuck around long enough to see Cas safely off, making like he just happened to be there and was wondering what was going on himself.

With Cas on the road to the cabin and out of harm’s way, Dean dove back into researching Dodge SUVs with Iowa Schools plates registered near the state line.

Chapter Text

Cas punched Bobby’s directions into his GPS. He checked that his phone was at full charge, or close to it, and just in case, placed the phone into the special docking station he’d had custom made. It placed the phone so it could operate as a dash cam, recording sound and video from an app running in the background and streaming it. The last thing he needed was to have someone jump in front of his vehicle, trying to stop him, and end up with some kind of assault charge. He set the phone up, watched it pair with the car’s systems, waited for notification from the app that he was streaming, and then drove out of the garage carefully.

People were out, but mostly they just gave him dirty looks. There was some shouting, but nobody tried to stop him. Charlie would probably have to field some calls about how he was “escaping”, but right now that was the least of his concerns. And probably not high on Charlie’s list either.

Had they been able to identify the car? Dodge SUVs weren’t exactly rare, and even with the color and specialty plates to narrow it down, there would likely be too many vehicles to be useful. Not like there was any way to search vehicles with mismatched hub caps. Hopefully Sunny was okay, and not too scared.

He’d not really gotten a very good look at her before he saw the amber alert picture that went out earlier, but he’d spent enough time staring at it since that the image was likely burned into his retinas. She’d seemed happy. Carefree, the way children should be. Cas made himself focus on the road. His exit was coming up soon, and thinking about Sunny right now was not likely to be conducive to safe driving.

He took the exit without incident, and began to pay more attention to the GPS directions. He turned left to skirt the town and glanced at the GPS. It was a few blocks before he had to turn.

He’d not seen too many Dodges on the road so far, so perhaps, with Charlie’s help, and the resources available to the sheriff’s department, figuring out who the vehicle belonged to would be easier than he was expecting. Although, now that he was thinking about it, there was one now, at the intersection he was coming up to, and it was even red. Maybe they were as common as house flies and he simply had never noticed before. It was a four way stop, and he glanced at the other cars. No more Dodges. Just the one moving up to the stop directly across from Cas. It had Iowa Schools plates, now that he looked at it. He supposed a lot of SUVs were owned by the proverbial soccer mom, and it would make sense that they supported their school system.

The SUV was signaling a left turn, and when it moved into the intersection, Cas couldn’t help noticing that the hubcaps were mismatched. Perhaps it was going to be even harder than he thought. There might be a rash of red Dodge SUVs with mismatched hubcaps and Schools plates, if another one was so easy to spot without even searching.

The car to his right moved, and now it was Castiel’s turn. Without ever making a conscious decision, he found himself turning right. The GPS announced that it was recalculating his route, and urged him to turn left. He muted it. What on Earth was he doing now? He had enough to worry about without chasing down some suburban soccer mom just trying to get home after a long day, if he could even keep track of the vehicle after dark.

Just turn, Castiel, that voice in his head he’d never been very good at listening to urged. Maybe he’d try harder if it didn’t sound so much like his mother. In any case, his hands refused to activate the turn signal. His feet refused to shift on the pedals. His eyes refused to move from the car ahead.

There was a traffic light flashing red two blocks down. That meant the car would have to stop. The intersection looked to be well lit up too, as far as he could tell from where he was. He should be able to get a look at the inside of the car. That was all he needed. He’d just make sure it was some tired looking lady at the wheel, with two kids and a dog in the back, and then he’d go about his business.

The car stayed on the road they were on, and Cas was able to close in on it without any sudden changes of speed that might give him away. The darkness actually seemed to work in his favor, He was mostly just a set of headlights in the rear view mirror. As they pulled up to the light, Cas was right behind the Dodge, but couldn’t get a look inside the car. It went through without turning.

He should pass it, right there where there was still light. The other lane was empty, so it was safe enough. As soon as he cleared the intersection, Cas sped up to pass the other vehicle. The light from the street wasn’t as useful as he had hoped by that point. He could tell the driver was a man, and there was a child in the backseat, but he could discern nothing beyond a child's shape.

Okay, so it was a soccer dad, and he only had one child. That didn’t mean anything. It was the twenty-first century, dads didn’t just leave parenting to moms anymore. He should just go. If the Sheriff decided they needed him and he wasn’t where he was expected to be, they’d find that suspicious. That would spell nothing but trouble for him. Still, he couldn’t make himself turn around.

He was coming up on another intersection and now the car was behind him. Should he continue south or turn? He glanced at his mirror, to look for a turn signal. The other car was signaling a right turn, so Cas turned right, and his eyes returned to the mirror.

Fuck. That was Sunny in the back seat. He could see her face in the street lights as the Dodge stopped at the stop sign and that was Sunny. He was as sure as he could be. He needed to call someone. Dean. Or Charlie. Was he still in the same county? Could he just call 911 or would that get him another sheriff’s department? He had no idea. Better to just call Dean directly, probably. It should be Charlie, most likely, but he didn’t have her number.

The road he’d turned into was dark and empty, and Cas touched his screen to pull up the screenshot he’d taken of the amber alert. He wanted the picture on his screen when he had another opportunity to get a look at the child. Just to make sure he wasn’t about to do something really stupid. He took a left turn next, continuing in a generally southerly direction. Thank goodness for turn signals. It was probably easier to follow someone without giving yourself away if they were in fact behind you.

Maybe not the best way to get another look at the back seat, though. Maybe if he slowed down or pulled over entirely near the next light. He should call the cavalry anyway, so if he paid him any notice at all, the other driver would just assume he’d pulled over to check his messages or something. At the next intersection, he pulled over under the streetlights and turned on his hazard lights. Right, check the picture, and wait to hear the car roll up next to him to pass.

This time he had a clear view of the child’s face as she turned her head to look at his car as they passed. No doubt his hazard lights were the most interesting thing within her viewing range. It was Sunny. No doubt whatever.

He opened his message history with Dean and pushed the call button, before turning off the hazard lights and getting back on the road. Right, so. He just needed to keep an eye on this car long enough to tell them where it was and they’d take it from there, right?

Only Dean didn’t answer his phone this time. A message would have to do.

“Dean, I need you or Charlie to call me. I have a visual on the vehicle. Sunny is in the back seat.”

That should suffice. But what if Dean didn’t check his messages anytime soon? Should he call 911? He followed the car at a discreet distance and weighed his options. He was fairly certain he’d passed a county boundary at some point. That would mean a new department to deal with that didn’t know anything about the situation. A potential nightmare. He would much rather deal with Jody, Dean and Charlie. He could give them a few minutes to get back to him. If it looked like he might be losing the other car, or something else came up before then, he’d call 911. That seemed like a reasonable compromise.

They passed a small shopping center, then a church, then there were only a few dark shapes along a dark road and lights in the distance. The GPS indicated they were basically running parallel to the interstate. The road went on almost all the way to the state line, so it was likely they would continue along this way for some time.

The phone started ringing and drew his attention away from the GPS. He hit the button on his steering wheel that answered the call and adjusted the volume.

“Hello,” he said simply, not knowing who was calling.

“Cas?”

“Charlie, thank goodness. I wanted to call you but I didn’t have your number.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I was skirting Lennox when I saw the vehicle and started following it. Pull up Milton Security’s website. You should be able to access my exact GPS location and my camera feed from there.”

“You have a camera in your car?”

“I have a phone, Charlie. Of course I have a camera.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

There was some noise in the background, voices he couldn’t quite make out, and then Charlie was telling someone, likely Dean, to pull up the website.

“How sure are you that it’s Sunny?”

“I’m sure. I pulled up the amber alert picture to double check. It’s her.”

“Alright, we have your location and feed. What else can you tell us?”

“We seem to be approaching some sort of town. There are a lot of lights up ahead.”

“On your left? That should be Beresford.”

“He’s picking up speed, I have to move in closer.”

“Be careful.”

He could see more cars entering the road, too, as he approached the town. He’d have to be careful not to lose the Dodge in traffic. He could vaguely hear different voices in the background, questions being asked and answered. Phones ringing, radio static. He made himself drown it all out and focus on the car. They stayed on the outskirts and kept moving right past Beresford and South.

“We cleared the town. I still have eyes on the car. Still moving south. What’s going on there?”

“Feds are here. Jody has them in her office for briefing. They’re asking a lot of questions.” There was a moment of silence while both of them contemplated the implications.

“What am I doing, Charlie? What’s the plan here?”

“Well, I’m not in charge of anything, but I think the first question is, what do you want to do?”

Cas snorted, “I don’t think what I want to do is an option, unless you have a way to get me back to yesterday before all this happened.”

“I wish.”

“It’s a maze out here, Charlie. There are hundreds of turns they could take from where they are now, and we’re maybe fifteen minutes away from two state lines. We’re on back roads where there’s barely a traffic light, never mind traffic cam or even many businesses that might have security cams. I don’t even really know how complicated trying to intercept them on the road would be. Even if we could figure out where to set up a barricade or twenty, we might not be able to recover the child without violence. Sunny could get hurt, Charlie. Or disappear completely.”

“All of that is true, yeah.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Turn around and go back to Lennox? To do what, even? How do I look in the mirror after leaving the child to her fate? And what do you imagine would happen when I went back home, eventually? Everyone would blame me for whatever happens to her. I’m not entirely sure they’d be wrong.”

“You’ve already done all that you’re required to do.”

“If I stay on them, at least until someone else can take over, there’s a better chance we can get her back quickly and safely. Before anything even worse happens to her. We’ll know where they are at all times. They’ll have to stop somewhere eventually and hole up, and we’ll know where that is.”

“All of that is true too. But Cas, you don’t have to put yourself at risk.”

“No, Charlie. I really think I do.”

Chapter Text

“Alright, Cas. I’m gonna put you on speaker and mute my mic. You won’t be able to hear me for a few minutes, but I’ll still be able to hear you. I’m just going to quickly talk to Dean about all this, and let him be the one to handle Jody and the feds. I don’t want you distracted though, so I’m going to mute my mic.”

“I’ll be here. I’ll let you know if anything significant changes.”

Cas wondered how Dean was doing. If previous experience was anything to go by, and it usually was, every one of the people currently convinced he’d abducted the child was also sure Dean had failed to stop him, somehow. Worse, they’d think him an accomplice, at the very least probably involved in arranging his 'escape'. He was probably too busy to care right now, but that would hurt, when he had time to stop and think about it.

“I’m back,” Charlie announced. “We don’t like it, but we agree that if you’re willing, sticking with them as long as you can is our best plan. Someone will be sent to take over the tailing, but it’s not our jurisdiction.”

“That’s the plan, then.”

The call falls silent for a moment, each of them thinking of the work ahead of them.

“Were you able to get a clear plate from the stream? Do we know who this guy is? How he managed to grab Sunny?”

“We got the plate, yeah. Dean’s running it. Everyone else is returning to base. Now that we know where they are, we can do a lot of the work from here.”

“Are you supposed to be telling me all this, Charlie? I likely already got Dean under suspicion, I don’t want you getting in trouble too.”

“You’re part of this investigation.”

“Just - don’t get yourself in trouble for my sake.”

For a full 10 minutes, they stayed on the line, just keeping each other company as Cas drove and Charlie typed away at the keyboard. From time to time he’d hear someone in the background saying something to her, and sometimes he’d hear Charlie say something in return. He gathered they knew who the car was registered to, but he hadn’t been told, and he hadn’t asked either.

“Charlie, we seem to be heading into Sioux City.”

“I can see that. Police there are on standby to rush in if we need them to, but the feds agree that right now it’s best to just follow. They are discussing sending someone out to take over from you. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they’re trying to figure out who to send and where to intercept.”

“We’re getting really close to the state line, Charlie. Am I going to be in trouble if I cross into Iowa?”

“Shit, hang on. Let me find out.” There was more typing and then, “You’re good. You have 5 days before you need to worry about it,” and then a few more clicks. “But it would be a felony for you to be alone with someone else’s child, so like, if he stops to get gas and leaves her alone in the car to go to the bathroom or something, don’t try to get her out. Fuck, I’m sorry.”

Cas didn’t comment. There was no need.

“He’s signaling a turn. Looks like he’s getting on the interstate.”

“Probably trying to avoid any chances that someone on a city street will see the child and recognize her. He has no reason to think we know what he’s driving but he definitely knows an amber alert would have been issued by now.”

“That makes sense. We just crossed the state line.”

“Copy that. Let’s hope he stays on the interstate. It would make it easier to send some unmarked car from Sioux City to hop on the interstate and take over the tailing.” More talking in the background ensued. “They’re deploying an unmarked vehicle, but the nearest one is several blocks away, so it’s going to be a few minutes before it can catch up.”

The interstate was mostly clear of traffic, and they picked up speed fast. City streets flew by in his peripheral vision. He thought there would be more access points. A turn in the road put some distance between the road and the city lights, and now they were sticking close to the river, as separated from the city as they could currently be. Signs on the road indicated that they were approaching an exit to Nebraska.

“Charlie, what if he turns into Nebraska?”

“I’m looking into it, give me a sec.”

This was exhausting. It had been over twenty years and he was exhausted. He was getting too old for this shit.

“You’re good. You have 3 working days in Nebraska. FYI, the unmarked vehicle is now on the interstate.”

But he didn’t turn into Nebraska. They went right past 75, and just as he was checking the map on his GPS, to see if there was another way across anytime soon, the Dodge’s turn signal came on. He took the very next exit and pulled into a truck stop.

“Charlie, he’s pulling into a truck stop. How far behind us is the unmarked vehicle?”

“Not far. Even if he’s just stopping for gas, this may be our chance.” She called out to the room that he was stopping.

“They’re dispatching backup to your location. A couple of cruisers won’t look too suspicious at a truck stop.”

“They parked by the front door and are getting out of the car.”

“Thank god. The cavalry will be there in under five minutes. It would probably be safe enough for you to leave now.”

“I can see them through the window. Guy left the child sitting in the diner and went towards the main hallway. Probably using the bathroom.”

A number of voices responded to the announcement. Charlie must have put him on speaker.

“They’re calling the truck stop diner.”

The longest minute of his life ticked by. A man in a private security uniform came into view, and started talking to Sunny. A fuel truck pulled up and started preparing to stock up the station tanks. Voices came and went from the other end of the line, but nobody was talking to him, and Cas probably wouldn’t have heard them anyway. The front door opened to let a trucker out, allowing him to see more of the empty hallway. The security guard walked Sunny towards the back of the diner. Perhaps to a service entrance. She was safe now. He could go. Well, no. At the very least he was a witness and they’d have questions. He couldn’t just leave.

Even if he could, where would he go? If people had assumed he was involved in the kidnapping before (and they had), what would they think when they realized that he’d found her? He never went anywhere and his every movement was documented by an independent 3rd party, so he was fairly certain he wouldn’t face charges. But they’d all just think that he got away with it. Maybe that he’d planned it to get back at the Rosens. Maybe even that he’d set it up to play hero, win them over by saving the day.

Dammit, he’d made friends! He’d even dared to hope that maybe, if things settled down, if he was able to stay long term, if he could be sure he wasn't mistaking Dean's kindness for interest, or reading his own loneliness as reciprocation, Dean could be more than a friend, someday. He had a house he loved. He’d bought a bigger couch. And curtains. And he’d planted a tree. He had literally set down roots. And now this - this - person - had ruined it all.

He was so damn tired of other people destroying the life he worked so hard to build. No, actually. He wasn’t tired at all right now. He was pissed. He was furious. He was sick of it. The door opened again and this time, he could see the man walk back to the diner. A quick glance around the parking lot revealed no cruisers.

“Charlie, you have an ETA on that cavalry?”

“Two minutes,” she called out.

That was long enough for him to leave. Long enough for him to disappear back into the outskirts of Sioux City or forward into the outskirts of Sergeant Bluff. Or he could get back on the interstate and cross into Nebraska or even back into South Dakota. He was going to walk up to the diner, see that Sunny was gone, and turn around and head out the door to go ruin someone else’s life. Maybe take someone else's child.

Well, fuck that. Maybe it was time that Cas ruined someone else’s plans for a change.

He put his car into gear and started moving. There was an exit by the gas pumps, but he’d probably not take that one. Especially with the fuel truck there, complicating things. He’d go for the exit by the restaurant. It was closer. It exited to the cross street that lined him up neatly with the interstate ramp.

He saw the man walk rapidly out of the building and get into the Dodge.

“I’ll be damned if I let you get away with ruining my life,” he muttered to himself, as he made for the exit.

“Cas? Cas, what are you doing?”

But he wasn’t paying attention to Charlie. He drove up to the exit, jerked his steering wheel into an impossible position and killed the engine, effectively blocking the two exit lanes.

The Dodge stopped halfway to the exit, assessing the situation. Stall, Castiel. You just had some sort of mechanical difficulty is all. Just give him an apologetic wave and pop the hood. The man looked towards the other exit and Cas got out of the car. The moment his door opened, he heard sirens. The cruisers were finally here. The other man must have heard them too, or perhaps seen the lights as the cruisers pulled up around the fuel truck.

Suddenly looking furious himself, the kidnapper looked at Cas for a long second. Then the Dodge lunged forward, and it was all Cas could do to scramble out of the way and dive for cover.

He heard the crash of the Dodge hitting his own car, dragging, popping sounds. Then another crash, and silence.

He’d tried to ram his way past the blockage, lost control of the Dodge, and wrapped it around a lamp post across the street. Both cars were totaled. He had no way of going anywhere, even if he wanted to. His phone had still been on the dash. It was probably destroyed in the crash. It probably wasn't safe to approach the car to find out.

Cas stayed where he was as one of the cruisers rolled up to assess the situation. Another car pulled up behind him - probably the unmarked car. They went to the Dodge first. The airbag had inflated, and the driver appeared to have been knocked out. He heard them call for an ambulance.

More lights showed up from all directions. Someone reported that they had the child safely in custody. Then one of the cops approached him and Cas found himself, again, in handcuffs.

Chapter Text

“Cas? Cas, what are you doing?” Charlie called out, and Dean knew that tone, so he rushed to the desk where Charlie had set up shop to look over her shoulder.

Before he could say anything, a loud crash came through the line and everything went dead. The call disconnected. The live feed went off the air. Nothing but dead space.

“Please tell me he wasn’t in the car.”

“I can’t be sure, the camera wasn’t pointed that way, and he didn’t say anything about getting out,” she edged, “but I did hear the door slam.”

“See if you can call back,” he urged, and Charlie tried, but the call went immediately to voicemail.

Vague noises from the other end of the room celebrated the announcement that the child had been recovered safely with not a scratch on her, then everyone went quiet as the lead investigator asked about the perp.

“We have two caucasian males on the scene, One is unconscious. He’s in the car we were following. Looks like he lost control of his vehicle and got knocked out by the airbag. Ambulance is en route. The other driver seems to have suffered no injuries. We’re holding both of them for questioning.”

Some indistinct background chatter followed before the feds responded.

“We’ll go get the Rosens and head to you.”

No doubt they needed the Rosens to authorize a physical examination of the child, as well as to be present as investigators talked to her. Dean didn’t like having them too involved in this. They would likely try to lead the child right into incriminating Cas.

“Winchester will go with you to assist as needed and escort the Rosens back when the investigation is over,” Jody agreed.

The Rosens ended up driving their own car, following behind the feds, with Dean in his cruiser bringing up the rear. It was a much shorter drive for them than it had been for Cas or Sunny. On the interstate, it was just over an hour. No side roads to slow them down.

He used the time to strategize. What did they know, so far?

They knew the car was registered to some Phillis Jones, who turned out to be as boring as any person could be and the least likely to have actually troubled herself to harm anyone. However, she was also the mother of Gary Jones, the new tech guy at the school Sunny goes to. Gary splits his time between three schools in the area, and he lives across the state line, in Iowa. About two days ago, Gary had reported the car stolen. If the driver turned out to be Gary, that wasn’t going to help his case at all.

If statistics were anything to go by, it was gonna be Gary.

Now, Gary had access to Sunny at school, and a legitimate reason to be there, so why would he be messing around at the cul-de-sac? The obvious answer was, he was serving Cas on a silver platter to the authorities. Which Dean found was just insulting on a number of levels. The intended fall guy could be placed near the area the child was lost from at the right time, he had a beef with the child’s parents, and he was a sex offender. He’d be looked into for sure. But it would never stick.

Of course, Gary didn’t know about all the security Cas had going, and how easy accounting for his whereabouts at any given time would be. The most cursory of interrogations would discredit him as soon as he claimed to have met with Cas or spoken to him at any specific time. But it would set them on the wrong trail, and buy him time to disappear with Sunny.

Had he meant to be at school the next day? To hear the reports about how Sunny was missing and who the sheriff suspected? Had he hoped in time to snatch another child?

Anyway, if he’d gone to the trouble and the risk of setting up a fall guy, chances were good he was going to try to implicate Cas now. Maybe claim that they were working together and Cas had only stopped him because he didn’t like the way they had meant to split the money. Maybe even that Cas had intended to get rid of him so he wouldn’t have to split it. Who knew? He’d gone to too much trouble to set Cas up to stop now, was what Dean was thinking.

Maybe they could make it work to their advantage. Lying to the FBI, more than one false police report, libel. On top of kidnapping, or possibly abduction, across state lines, making these federal crimes. And then there was whatever had happened in that parking lot. He still wasn’t clear on that, but there was some potential there, especially if he’d used his vehicle as a weapon. By the time they were done stacking those charges, he’d be lucky to get out before Sunny had grandkids.

Cas had prepared for this sort of thing, and once he was over the sheer staggering awfulness of that understanding, he was relieved. He wasn’t a fed, but he couldn’t see any sort of charges being brought or any of this making it onto his record. Hopefully, they could clear that up quickly and get Cas home along with the Rosens.

oOo

As Dean had expected, it did turn out to be Gary. Also as Dean expected, Gary immediately claimed Cas had put him up to it, to hit back at the Rosens for harassing him. Tried to get himself a deal to testify against Cas for a reduced sentence.

Unfortunately, that meant that there were lengthy interrogations, investigations to verify claims and establish the reliability of records, and more interrogations. They recorded everything he said on video. Eventually, they gave him an official statement to sign. He signed it. Then they told him all the times they could prove he had lied.

Gary had then tried to get himself a deal by turning on the people he’d intended to deliver Sunny to. Apparently, they were going to let him think he was getting one, for the time being. Dean didn’t stick around for that part.

It had taken almost a full 40 hours since they’d arrived in Sioux City. Sunny had been checked out. She was fine. She’d been confused, and worried that she would be in trouble for going with Mr. Jones without checking with her mom first, but otherwise she was unharmed. The Rosens had taken her back home to catch up on some sleep before the sun was up. Dean had escorted them back there, called Sam, slept, showered, and gone to work. Then he’d gone right back to Sioux City.

Cas had spent all that time in a holding cell.

oOo

“Hey, need a ride?”

“Yes,” Cas answered simply. “I suppose I should arrange some sort of rental, until I can buy a new car.”

Cas looked… defeated. He hadn’t exactly been given a hero’s welcome back in Sioux City, and he had no reason to expect one in Sioux Falls.

“About that,” Dean started “for now, the car is being kept as evidence, but when they’re done processing and release it back to you, we’re gonna have it towed to Singer Salvage. Bobby and I can fix it. He’s probably got whatever parts need replacing right there in the yard, and most of the rest is sweat and elbow grease.”

He’d hit on the idea on the way back with the Rosens. Leaving Cas behind was hard. This whole mess was just beyond fucked up and he hated that he couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t fix the way people seemed determined to see their worst fears when they looked at Cas. He couldn’t fix the procedures that were right now keeping him in a holding cell. He couldn’t fix the damage Gary, or Ralph, or any of the other assholes that had crossed his path had left in their wake. He couldn’t fix his past, his present or his future.

But he could fix the car.

Bobby had been all over the idea. He started asking all kinds of questions about the condition of the vehicle, and told Dean not to come back without pictures of the damage. And when Dean had sent him the pictures, he went to work figuring out what parts would need replacing and what kind of paint to get, and setting up a tow. As soon as the car was released, they were gonna get on it.

Cas didn’t really seem too excited about that. Maybe he didn’t want it. Maybe he’d rather just get a new car, like he said. The idea was weirdly terrifying. So he went on about all the ways Bobby was already preparing, the paint they’d ordered, the space they’d made in the garage so the car would be out of the elements while they worked on her. It wasn’t just about the car either, or even about fixing what he could fix. He needed Cas to know that he had people on his side now. Not just Dean.

He needed a taste of what it was like to belong to a community. To just belong. Maybe if he got a taste, he wouldn't leave.

And there it was, presenting for consideration, the thing he was really afraid of. Worried about. That all this was just too much, and Cas would just… move away. That that distant future he'd been hoping for was turning into an impossibility right before his eyes. That by this time next year Cas would just be that good online friend he played games with.

He couldn't let himself think about that. At least, not while he was driving. So he focused on the car, and he talked about how they were going to fix her up, and tried not to read too much into Castiel’s silence.

oOo

Something immediately felt off when they turned onto Castiel’s street. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt it. The first thing he noticed when they approached the entrance to the cul-de-sac was that all the neighbors seemed to be there, and out in the street. It was barely after noon on a workday. Why weren’t they at work? Why were they tucked into the cul-de-sac, where they couldn’t be seen from down the street?

He pulled up as close as he could get to Castiel’s front door.

“Cas, I need you to go straight inside and lock your door. I’ll handle it.”

They got out, slammed their doors, and froze. They’d been so focused on the gathering they didn’t see it until then. The yard was trashed. Literally. It looked like someone had emptied his trash can all over his yard. Ripped open the trash bags, even. The garage door had been vandalized again. And this time the front door didn’t look right either. He’d have to get a better look at it once he had dealt with the current situation.

His heart fell when he looked at Cas. He looked… distant. Detached. Like he wasn’t really there anymore. He shook his head with the kind of resignation that people usually save for kids that do reckless things, despite all warnings. Then he ran his fingers through his hair, sighed, and scanned the whole scene.

“Thanks for the ride, Dean. I - I’d better go.”

And Dean was pretty sure he didn’t just mean inside, to lock his door, as Dean had asked him to do. He felt like letting him go inside right now without arguing the point was a mistake. That this was the last chance he’d ever have to get Cas to stick around and give him time to turn things around. But the people in the cul-de-sac demanded his attention, and it was not the sort of conversation they should be having outside, where anyone could hear them.

Dean handed his phone to Cas, and nudged him towards the door. “Call Charlie, Cas. Tell her we need some uniforms out here.”

Cas went inside, and Dean turned to face the people making their way across the street.

They walked up and fell into a sort of semi circle in front of him, looking at each other in a cloud of indistinct chatter as if they were trying to decide who should speak up. Dean let them. He didn’t know where the nearest deputy would be right now, but most likely it would take a few minutes for one of them to get here. Then a nod indicated one of them was about to step up, and wouldn’t you know it, it would be Chuck.

Of course it was Chuck. The guy whose daughter Cas had basically single handedly saved was here to run him out of town. He couldn’t help the bitter chuckle that broke through at that. Fuck it. He was going to throw a monkey wrench into whatever they were planning here.

“Alright, quiet down” he called out, loud and clear, in his best authoritative voice, “who did this? I’m going to need you to come forward. And don’t bother trying to lie to me, it’s on video and I’m going to check.”

They looked at each other, uncertainly, but now that they had Chuck ready to speak for them, most were content to fall silent. Apparently, they had not prepared for opposition.

Dean surveyed the crowd. “Tom? This looks a lot like your handiwork. You got something you want to say to me?”

Tom Marshall stood up straighter, lifted his chin and walked up, every inch the high school punk. “Yeah, it was me.”

“And who else?”

“Nobody,” he spat out.

“Well, at least you’re loyal. But before you make an official statement, you should know lying to the police is a crime and again, I have video.”

Several voices started mumbling in the crowd. He was fairly certain there was something about how now he cared about the law and how they knew for sure now what side he was on. The same boys that he had supervised as they whitewashed the old post office stepped up.

“I told you what would happen if you did this again, didn’t I?”

But now, louder, older voices started coming from the rest of them.

“Leave them alone!” he heard, and “They’re not the problem here,” and “They were standing up for Sunny.” That was probably what did it. The irony. It was hilarious for all of two seconds, and then it was infuriating. “You know what he did!”

He was out of uniform and off duty. No badge, no gun, no cruiser. Fuck it.

“Yeah, I do,” he cut them off. “You wanna talk about what he did? Alright.”

“Two days ago, after Sunny went missing,” he announced “he found us the lead we needed to track down her kidnapper.” He turned squarely to Chuck and Becky then and relished the words as he said them “I hope you know that if it hadn’t been for Cas, we probably would have had zero chance of finding Sunny. We had nothing to go on. Zilch. They’d have been long gone before we had any clue who we were even looking for.”

He turned back to the crowd, “Then, when we decided it would be better for him to get out of town for a few days so we could focus on finding Sunny instead of making sure your dumb asses didn’t end up in jail and sent him to Bobby’s cabin, he crossed paths with the kidnapper and spotted Sunny in the back seat. So instead of going where it was safe, he followed them and called us. He’s the only reason Sunny was back in her bed before daybreak. Meanwhile, you, who have known Sunny all her life, were out hassling your neighbor and vandalizing his property.”

Whispers and mumblings went through the crowd again.

“Isn’t that a little too coincidental? That he found the clue, and he found my daughter? He was probably in on it,” Chuck finally spoke up.

“They’ve never even met or talked to each other, and we can prove it. Cas had nothing to do with it.”

“Yeah, you would say that, you’re his friend,” Chuck countered, “but he’s not just some random guy. He’s a felon. With his history…”

“What do you know about his history, Chuck?” Dean cut him off. “What do any of you know about it?”

“Dean, you’re the one who told us -”

“I told you we didn’t have all the answers yet. That it would be a few days, and then you could look it up. Did you look?” He stared them all down. “Did you?” There was no answer.

“I didn’t think so. Take your phones out, right now. Do it!”

A few of them pulled out their phones. Close enough. They’d start passing the word around soon enough.

“Alright, open your internet browser and Google the sex offender registry. Look up your address.” He watched a few more phones coming out of pockets as people began to realize something was up. “You see him, on the list? Tap that entry. What does it say?”

They didn’t answer him, but the looks of confusion and disbelief were clear enough.

“You see it? That’s his crime. That’s what he did.”

He sounded angry now, he could tell, and he couldn’t even be sure who he was angry at. The crowd? Ralph? The entire system that allowed this travesty to exist in the first place? The boys who vandalized the place - again? Gary, for precipitating all this?

He saw a couple of cruisers approaching. “That’s what he did,” he repeated. “And a couple of days ago, he got Sunny out safely and totaled his car to keep the bastard from getting away to take someone else’s child. Then he got locked up until the feds had proof that he had nothing to do with it. And instead of thanking him when he finally gets home, you’re here trying to run a good man out of town without even bothering to find out what he did. Shame on you.”

“These four,” he told Benny and Adam as they walked up. “Are responsible for the vandalism. Book ‘em. Cuffs, mug shots, prints, the works. Cas probably won’t press charges, but they broke our agreement and they’re going to spend the night in lockup.”

Benny and Adam began to lead the boys away from the group. Dean watched the shock spread from face to face, and the crowd began to disperse. If he wanted to have any chance of getting Cas to stay, he should get his shit together before they talked.

Chapter Text

It had gone quiet outside some time ago. Dean didn’t knock or ring the bell, so Cas figured he probably had some followup to do. Paperwork, something like that. He’d probably be back later. Clearly, he had things he wanted to say, and while Cas couldn’t really see what difference they could make now, he would listen.

He needed a new phone. Probably should have asked Dean to stop at one of his provider’s stores on the way, since he didn’t have a way to get around until he secured a rental. Still, it was the age of next day delivery. He could just log on to his account and order a phone from his laptop. He could even order a rental and have the rental company drop off the vehicle. That sounded like a good way to keep busy while he waited.

He’d never much cared about what sort of phone he had, as long as it did what he needed it to do, so he didn’t bother to look at the sales pitches all over the page. Two minutes in, he had a replacement phone on its way. Same model, and he’d bought the same case for it.

Finding a rental that would do a drop off would be trickier. He was ankle deep in research when a knock on the door drew him away from the laptop. That would be Dean now, though it didn’t seem like it had been long enough for him to go do whatever needed doing and come back. He opened the door to find Bobby standing there, turned so he could both keep his eye on the door and look out at the yard.

“Bobby?”

“Hey, kid.”

Cas smiled at that. He’d be 40 this year, and he couldn’t recall the last time anyone had called him something so… innocent.

“Come on in, Bobby. Can I get you a beer or anything?”

“I’ll take one, if it’s not piss water.”

“I’ve got Dean’s favorite.”

“That’ll do,” he nodded.

They headed into the kitchen, and Cas produced the beer out of the fridge. This actually sounded like a good idea. He could use a drink after the last few days. Honestly, he could use something harder, but it was still too early for hard drinking.

“Listen, kid,” he said, roughly, “this ain’t what I came here for, but I’m gonna say it anyway. I ain’t gonna debate it, so you can take it or leave it as it suits ya. But you need to press charges this time.”

Cas took a long pull from his own bottle, unsure what he should say to that. In the end, he just nodded.

“What did you come here for?”

“Well,” he launched into it like a man who’s at ease with his topic, “I figured, if we’re gonna fix up yer car, ain’t no reason we can’t make her better than she was. Might be able to put in some upgrades for ya, or at least paint her in whatever color ya like. If we hash it out now, we could have everything ready to go when she’s released.”

That was extraordinarily kind of the old man, and for a moment, Cas was overwhelmed by the possibilities.

“Why don’t we start easy? If you could have her in any color, what color would you like?”

“But Dean said you already bought the paint,” he objected.

Bobby waved him off. “Just standard black paint. We go through that stuff like it’s going out of style just touching up Dean’s Baby anytime a damn weed scratches the undercarriage,” he smirked, “ain’t gonna put me out none to order another color.”

“He is a bit obsessed with that car, isn’t he? Is it because of his father, do you think?”

“Dean told you about his father?”

“Not a lot. Little things, mostly. Enough to know it’s… complicated.”

“You can say that again,” Bobby nodded. “And I reckon it partly is that. That car was the closest thing to a home that boy had until he landed here.”

They talked about colors, radios and tires, about what the likely condition of his engine was, and what it would take to get her going again.

“That’s a lot of work,” Cas finally came around to. “And likely a good chunk of change. Be cheaper to just get a new car, honestly. She’s just a car, she’s not that special to me.”

“Well, we’ve got the parts in the yard already, and you ain’t payin’ us for doing what we want to do, so never you mind that. ‘Sides, between you and me, kid, I think you’d just about break that boy’s heart if you went and bought a new car.”

Castiel’s head tilted halfway to his shoulder.

“How do you figure that?”

“You know he’s crazy about you, right? Like head over heels gone.”

“I have wondered -”

“Kid, he’s a goner. And he ain’t very good at sayin’ it, but he’ll show ya every day, for as long as you let him. He’ll fix whatever needs fixin’, and he’ll turn up and be a pain in yer ass if you ain’t seen a doctor yet, and he’ll remember every damn thing that matters, even if you tell him it doesn’t.”

Cas studied his beer carefully.

“Look, I ain’t tellin’ you this to force your hand. It’s your call, and you should be the one to make it. But I figured, in case that would matter to ya, somebody ought to let ya know.”

Cas nodded thoughtfully, “It does, actually. Thanks, Bobby.” He took another swig. “So, do you think you could get her outfitted with a tape deck?”

“Now you sound just like ‘im. I thought we were upgrading this thing, not taking her back to the 70s! Damn fools, both o’ya. Tape deck,” he grumbled. “Yeah, I can probably find ya a tape deck. You sure?” and when Cas nodded, he added ”Idjits.”

oOo

They were discussing what to call her when another knock on the door interrupted Bobby’s list of reasons why Honey was a stupid name for a car, no matter what color she was. Cas didn’t actually intend to name her at all, but he wasn’t ready for Bobby to leave yet, and besides, he knew the man enjoyed having something to gripe about.

Anyway, now, he expected, it would be Dean. It had probably been long enough for paperwork, and anyway, who else would have any reason to drop by? He grabbed a beer from the fridge and took it with him to the door.

He opened it to find, of all people, Becky and Chuck Rosen. He really needed to stop this business of opening the door without checking to see who was there. He’d gotten too comfy with the idea nobody but Dean had any interest in visiting. Even Charlie hadn’t come by without Dean.

“Hi!” Becky was saying, a big fake smile on her face. “We’re the Rosens, from across the street. We saw you moved in and we thought we’d come say hello, introduce ourselves.”

He was stunned speechless. What on Earth was going on now? What was that they were carrying under the towel? Could they have some sort of weapon? What did they want here? The questions chased each other around in circles. Should he call Dean? Or Bobby? The silence stretched, and the longer it went on, the more Becky’s fake smile dropped.

“Look, I’m sorry. We talked to the FBI and they told us everything - well, everything they’re allowed to tell us, anyway. We might have lost her forever if you hadn’t been there. We wanted to thank you for getting Sunny home. Especially after everything,” she straightened her back, “and also I wanted to apologize. We haven’t been very good neighbors since you got here, and now that I know - all of that was completely unnecessary and uncalled for. I’m just… so ashamed. I’m sorry.”

“We’re both sorry,” Chuck corrected. “And grateful. And ashamed.”

Cas looked from one to the other with some hesitation. Were they really here to apologize? Should he believe them?

"Well, you damn well should be, the way you were carrying on," Bobby's voice chimed in from behind him.

"I guess I thought - we started off on the wrong foot, and that's on us, but maybe we could… start over?" Becky continued. "I understand if you don't want to. I honestly can't think of a single reason why you would. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. But from what we've seen so far, you are definitely the bigger person here, so I thought it was worth a try."

Still, he had no idea what to say. Or even where to look. So he half turned to look at Bobby, who nodded encouragingly, and stood firmly at his side.

The Rosens had taken his silence for refusal apparently, because they exchanged a resigned glance and began to turn away.

"Rosen, you said. Is that the blue house at the entrance to the cul-de-sac?"

"That's right," Chuck confirmed, this time with a smile that looked genuine.

"Would you like to come in?" Cas stepped aside to leave them room to come in, "I'm afraid some of my furniture isn't here yet, so we'll have to make do."

"We can do that," Becky agreed.

And yes, maybe they could. Maybe they could figure this out. Maybe they could give each other a second chance.

oOo

Dean had decided the best way to keep himself busy and refocus was to head back to his desk and find something to do. He pulled up Milton Security’s website because he wanted to keep an eye out for any further problems. He knew Cas would call if it got out of hand, but he didn’t want to ever let things get that far again. At the first sign of trouble, he’d be on his way.

When he saw Bobby come in, he was relieved. Even more so when they sat down to a nice long chat in the kitchen. With Bobby there he could stop worrying. He checked in with Charlie, then Jody, then paid Tom and his friends a visit. As it turned out, they had apparently watched a lot of crime shows on TV, because the moment they saw him they started talking about making their call.

Why not? It might be amusing to watch them tell their parents where they were. One at a time, he put them in cuffs and walked them to the phone. It must have taken longer than he thought, because he was just returning the last of the boys to their cell when he heard Charlie call out for him.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve got to see this.”

She was watching his screen, so he guessed something was up at Castiel’s house. Something good, though, because she looked happy about it. Probably Bobby up to something, he reasoned, as he walked back.

It was not Bobby. Apparently, Cas had guests. Bobby was still in the kitchen, but now the Rosens were with him, just sitting around the kitchen island eating cookies, shooting the shit, and sipping beer like it was no big deal. Cas was in his living room with the Sullivans. It looked like he was giving them a tour. He seemed at ease, or as close to at ease as Cas ever got. Hopeful.

“What the hell?” he heard himself wonder out loud.

“Look,” Charlie pointed at the entrance camera. Someone else was walking up. They couldn’t really tell who, because whoever he was, he was carrying some sort of potted plant that obscured most of his face. “It’s like a housewarming party.”

They watched Cas answer the door and accept the plant to reveal Mr. McCoy, the neighbor at the very back of the cul-de-sac. He didn’t seem to be coming in, though. He was tempted to switch to the single cam view so he could hear them talk, but he wanted to keep an eye on the people that were in the house already.

“You know, I can see some cookies over there, and some kind of covered dish that might be a casserole. That looks like Becky’s homemade bread in the basket,” she paused and lifted her brow significantly. “This party could really use some meat. Maybe some Dean Winchester specials?”

“You know, it really could,” Dean started grabbing his things. “I’ll see you later, Red.”

“Save me a burger, Winchester. I’ll swing by after work.”

oOo

The next time there was a knock on the door, Cas had no idea who to expect. It seemed like everyone had come by already. Ironically, now that he had stopped expecting him, it turned out to be Dean. For some reason, laden with grocery store bags.

“Do you need help with that?” Cas reached for some of the bags.

“I’ve got it,” Dean turned to make his way in the door without releasing any bags. “I looked at the camera feed, just in case things went south again and I found out you were kinda having a party, so I got burger fixin’s.”

“That was thoughtful of you, thank you,” his smile opened wider and Dean cleared his throat and suddenly looked away.

“It’s… kinda heavy,” he said, making his way past Cas and towards the kitchen. “When did you clean up the yard?”

“I didn’t,” Cas hesitated. “I was going to call some sort of service in the morning, actually.”

The yard was clean? When did that happen? How had he not noticed with all the times he went to the door? He left Dean to his own devices and walked out just far enough to look. Sure enough, it looked a bit trampled out there, but the trash had been picked up. Must have happened while he was talking to Bobby before the Rosens showed up. He’d look at the video later.

He hadn’t been out there long, but when he followed along to the kitchen, Dean already had everything he needed out, and he was shaping the burgers for cooking. “Charlie said she’d be over after her shift,” Dean informed him without looking away from the burgers. “Just FYI.”

“That’s good, thanks.”

“How many people? I counted four, besides us, on my way in.”

Bobby and the Rosens had moved to the living room to get out of Dean’s way, so it was just the two of them, for the moment.

“There should be five, right now, although before you got here the Rosens were starting to hint at going home, so I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be here.”

“Alright, I’ll make seven for now, and if they leave, we can have seconds when Charlie gets here,” Dean winked over his shoulder.

Damn, but he was adorable when he wanted to be. Cas bit back the lineup of completely inappropriate returns he could make to that as it presented itself for consideration. They should probably talk before any lewd references were made.

“Sounds good to me. Your burgers make me very happy.”

They exchanged a smile, and Cas approached the counter to see what else Dean had laid out. Okay, maybe just to get into Dean’s personal space, but it was as good of an excuse as any. He reached for a tomato and pretended to examine it.

“I wonder if I could grow some of these in the backyard. They’re so much better when you grow them at home,” he pondered out loud.

“Yeah,” Dean beamed at him. “Don’t even need a permit, if you want to set up one of those small greenhouse kits.”

“I’ll look online, see what I can find. Might be able to find a good deal on one, this time of year.”

“Awesome.”

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stick around, after everyone’s gone?”

“Hell, yeah,” Dean promised. “For as long as you want me to.”

Well, that was starting to look like it would be a considerable length of time.

oOo

Benny ended up swinging by on his way into work, and then the Rosens left shortly after, the rest of the neighbors following soon. By the time Charlie showed up, It was just Dean, Bobby, and Cas.

“Took you long enough, Red. Did you come by way of Siberia?”

“Someone’s in a good mood,” Charlie remarked in response. “I had to go pick this up,” and she produced a cubic box that turned out to have a desk lamp in it. A Minecraft beehive lamp, with a cute little bee hanging from the pull cord.

“This is going on my desk. Thank you, Charlie.”

“Welcome to Sioux Falls, Cas.”

Cas sat at the desk, alone in his office, just long enough to put the lamp together and plug it in. He could hear his friends talking just across the hall, and for the first time in decades, he realized, he didn’t feel lonely.

Bobby went home shortly after, and they ended up back in the kitchen, where a second round of burgers was served (smaller ones, this time, for everyone but Charlie) along with a round of soda. He’d not been expecting visitors, and his beer supply had run out long before Charlie’s arrival.

“I should make fries, next time. Burgers this good deserve fresh home fries,” Cas declared, as he leaned against the back of the chair, full, “Made from scratch.”

General agreement followed his announcement, and Dean grabbed both their plates and took them to the sink.

“Well, crap. I got ketchup on my shirt. You got any of those stain wipe things?”

“In the bathroom, under the sink,” Cas directed.

“Alright, spill,” Charlie demanded, as soon as Dean was out of earshot.

“What?”

“Come on, he’ll be back any minute now.”

“Charlie, I don’t -”

“Cas, you’ve been all over his personal space since I got here. What gives?”

“O, well. I-” he hesitated. “Charlie, we haven’t talked about it yet, but I think Dean and I -”

She had apparently heard enough, because a high pitch squeal erupted from her just then, and she started bouncing in her seat.

“I knew it!” she squealed again.

What she knew Cas never found out, because Dean returned from the bathroom with a big wet spot on his shirt.

“Did you break Charlie while I was cleaning up?”

“I’m really not sure what happened.”

“Yeah, doesn’t take much with her sometimes,” he returned to his seat, right next to Cas, and Charlie jumped up almost immediately.

“I should head out. You guys probably have things to talk about,” she was clearly working hard to contain her excitement, but her hands gave her away. “Or whatever.”

Cas stood up to walk her to the door and she flew at him, hugging him hard, before making the excited noise again.

“It’s fine, I can show myself out,” she bounced. “Later.”

“Thanks for dropping by, Charlie. And for the lamp,” he called out, but she had been moving so fast he wasn’t even sure she heard him.

“What was that about?” he asked Dean.

“Hey, I was in the other room.”

They cleaned up efficiently, keeping up a steady stream of chatter about what this or that visitor had said. Then they made their way to the living room and collapsed onto the couch.

“You must be exhausted.”

“I am,” Cas agreed, letting gravity lead him where it would. "But also oddly pumped. Hopeful, even."

His body stopped slipping sideways along the back of the couch and rested on something. Dean’s chest, as it turned out. He was too tired to argue with the forces of nature unless he absolutely had to, so he waited to see what Dean would do. Dean's arm settled against Castiel’s side, towards the back, anchoring him, and he shifted slightly to give him a better angle to lean into. Cas chose to take that as permission to make himself comfy for a few minutes and snuggled in.

"Thank you for all your help, especially in the last few days."

"You're welcome. Thank you for giving us a chance."

He wasn't sure if that us meant Sioux Falls, the neighborhood, or just the two of them and he was too tired to work it out right now. He shifted to look up at Dean, hoping for clarification, somehow trying to tilt his head without lifting it from where it rested. Dean’s smile went all sappy at his efforts and Cas felt it warm him right down to his toes.

He wanted to kiss it. He wanted to kiss Dean.

Cas shifted closer, his eyes on the prize. He felt Dean's arm move with him, keeping him close.

"Dean," he heard himself say. He thought there were supposed to be more words, but his brain had checked out for the night, apparently, because he couldn't remember what they were supposed to be.

Dean's lips twitched slightly, and then the tip of his tongue made a short appearance, swiping across them. It was by far the most captivating sight he'd ever seen.

His fingers wanted to find their way up to where they could pull those lips closer and he closed them around Dean's shirt preemptively. This was probably not a great idea. Any second now, Dean would stop him and they'd be grateful they could pretend it was just sleep deprivation.

He felt Dean's breath catch, Dean's hand close around his waist.

"If this is a bad idea," he managed to articulate. But before he could complete the thought, Dean had closed the rest of the distance and all that existed was the touch of his lips against Castiel's.

Soft. So soft. Gentle. Kind. But the grip on his waist, the brush of Dean's fingers against his scalp, had something of hunger to them that he was going to want to explore when he wasn't so damn tired.

He opened his eyes when the contact broke, somehow breathless.

"I should go," Dean sighed, "you need to get some sleep."

"Come back tomorrow?"

"Yeah, of course."

Cas peeled himself away reluctantly, and started towards the stairs.

"Hey, Dean? You wanna go out sometime, for a drink? Just the two of us."

"Yeah. Wednesday after my early shift?"

"That will work," Cas agreed.

He locked the door behind Dean, and dragged his tired bones to bed. That would work. This time, he really thought, it would work.

Chapter Text

Cas couldn’t believe it was Christmas Eve already. Then again, if he stopped to think about everything that had happened since the impromptu housewarming party (how was it only 6 weeks ago?), it seemed like it should have been much longer.

He’d met everyone that mattered to Dean. They’d gone on a number of dates now. They’d been spending a lot of time together, basically every day Dean had off work. They didn’t always go anywhere. Sometimes it was just cave diving in Minecraft. But they went to the Roadhouse about once a week, and they’d even gone to the movies.

Cas had mentioned that he’d heard Sinclair’s books were being made into movies. Dean was excited to find out, but didn’t ask him how he knew. Charlie had essentially the same response, and Cas wondered if Dean had talked to her about it. Maybe it was just a side effect of their line of work.

Speaking of, he’d finished the first round of revisions on his new book a few days ago, but he still hadn’t sent it to his editor. They weren’t due until the first, in any case, but he was hoping to have some additional feedback before he sent it in. Which brought his thoughts back around to his Christmas Eve plans.

Sam and Jess were in town, so they’d be celebrating Christmas Day at home. Cas and Charlie had been invited to join them for a sort of brunch celebration at Dean’s home, where gifts would be exchanged, and then around lunchtime they’d head out to the Roadhouse, where everyone would be gathering and spending the afternoon together. There were likely to be gifts exchanged there as well, but they were neither expected nor necessary.

Cas had been thrilled to have people to shop for, and he’d taken great delight in finding something for everyone. Even Jo and Rufus. Dean had helped him figure out what to buy for more than a few of them, but even Dean had no idea what was under the tree for Charlie, Sam and himself.

He had a tree this year. He hadn’t bothered before, but with wrapped gifts ready to distribute it had seemed like he had to have a tree to put them under. Also, Dean and Charlie were going to come over for Christmas Eve dinner. Back when Cas had celebrated, it was always on Christmas Eve. Next year, maybe they could all just stay over. Castiel’s home was certainly big enough. There were enough guest rooms for everyone to crash here comfortably. They could have Christmas Eve dinner, spend the evening watching holiday movies, playing games or whatever, then pick the celebration back up in the morning, no travel required, until it was time to head for the Roadhouse.

He checked on the food, and then started getting the room ready. There was a dining room now. With an exquisitely carved oak table that seated ten, with matching chairs. The dining room adjoined the living room, and the tree was set up between them. The table was ready to go, set for three, and decorated with holy and candles. He dimmed the room lights and turned on the tree lights. There was a fireplace in the corner, and he got a fire started. He’d had it and two others installed with an eye to cold snowy winters and the possibility of losing power in a storm.

At the other end of the table, nearest the fireplace, there were two gift boxes. Dean and Charlie were not expecting gifts tonight, but these weren’t typical gifts. He couldn’t just hand these out tomorrow with the other presents. He fiddled with the ribbons, nervously, until the doorbell snapped him out of it.

That was probably Dean. He usually arrived a few minutes early, in theory so he could help Cas get everything ready, but more accurately so they could neck in the kitchen until Charlie arrived. Should he give Dean a key? He’d had a copy made two weeks ago, but it seemed a bit premature to give him a key to the house so soon. Maybe for Valentine’s Day?

He opened the door wide and - it was Charlie. She was early.

“Merry Christmas to you too, grumpy,” she teased.

“Come on in, Charlie. Sorry, I thought it was -”

“Yeah, I got that,” she winked. “I think I hear Baby now, so he’ll be right behind me.”

Was it incredibly rude to neck by the front door while Charlie was alone in the kitchen? Probably. He considered it anyway. But she was still fiddling with her winter gear, and putting things in the hall closet when Dean walked up to the door, so on to the kitchen they all went together.

Dean, bless him, handed Charlie a pie he’d brought for dessert, and asked her to go put it on the table while they got the roast out of the oven. It was nothing too fancy, just some prime rib, some mashed potatoes and -

The moment Cas released the pan, he found himself spun around and pressed against Dean.

"Hey, Cas."

"Hello, De-"

When he could think again, he was going to have to talk to Dean about the dangers of such acrobatics around hot ovens and casserole dishes, but for the moment he was too busy being kissed senseless, so he held on and enjoyed the ride. A not at all subtle clearing of Charlie’s throat made Dean groan.

"Come on, Red. You could have given us a minute here."

"I gave you five, Winchester. I'm hungry."

"Alright, alright. I'll grab the potatoes, you get the drinks out of the fridge."

They made something of a sight, marching the food into the other room. Maybe he should get one of those rolling kitchen carts. If everyone did end up here next year, it would make it a lot easier to get the feast on the table.

Cas found himself eyeing the gifts whenever he wasn't eyeing Dean. Why was he nervous about this? He knew they were going to love it.

"What’s up, sunshine?" Dean finally asked as they replaced the dinner plates with dessert dishes. “You seem anxious.”

“I am, a bit. Not really sure why, to be honest. I’ll have to swear you to secrecy before I say more, but let’s eat the pie first.”

Glanches were exchanged along with plates as Dean cut the pie and Charlie put a plate in each of their places.

“If it’s secret, should we be talking about it in this room?” he nodded towards the camera in the corner.

Cas took a moment to get Dean’s undivided attention, then took a bite of pie. “It’s alright,” he said with a knowing smile, “I had the inside cameras turned off yesterday.”

“They’re off?” Dean asked.

“Yep.”

The temperature in the room shifted measurably, and Charlie groaned.

“Alright, you two. Even with secrets, if you’re going to be making eyes at each other all night, next time I’m bringing Gilda.”

He supposed they were being terribly rude, but he couldn’t bring himself to apologize. Besides, Charlie was their biggest fan. She’d even started referring to them together as Destiel recently. He kept his eyes on the pie anyway, and kept them there until he was finished eating and had thanked Dean for bringing it. Everyone else seemed to be done as well, so it was time.

He stood by the gift boxes and wished he’d taken the time to plan what he should say exactly.

“I have a… gift, of sorts, for both of you. I know I can trust you to keep a secret, but before I let you see it, I need you to understand that it is a secret, and for very good reason. Nobody else knows, except for Crowley, and nobody else can know. At least for now. Not even Gilda. Not even Sam.”

Dean and Charlie had gone very solemn, and he worried he was making them think all kinds of strange things with all this talk of secrets. He took a deep breath. Charlie and Dean nodded to each other and then to Cas.

“Alright,” he slid one of the gifts across the table towards Charlie, and the other to his side, where Dean was sitting. “Ready.”

Charlie pulled off the bow without untying it and went right for the paper, lifting a corner and ripping right across before Dean was even done with the ribbon. Cas held his breath as she revealed a stack of papers bound together with binding clips. He wished he could have taken them somewhere to be properly bound, but the risk was too high, especially now that word of the movies was starting to get out.

There were only maybe 10 words on the top page, the title and the author’s pen name, and Charlie must have had time to read them at least four or five times before she slapped her hand on top, looked up at him for confirmation and then started bouncing up and down in her seat, clearly trying her best not to give it away until Dean, who had just peeled all the tape off, caught up.

All the movement got Dean’s attention and he looked up.

“Did you break Charlie, again?”

Charlie bounced harder, and Dean must have received the message because he finally spread open the wrapping paper and looked at his own stack of pages.

For a moment there was silence.

“Cas?” he hesitated. “Is - is this what I think it is?”

Cas would have liked to play coy and ask him what he thought it was, but Charlie’s excitement could no longer be contained. She jumped up with a loud squee, followed by a lot of rapid fire questions he could barely separate, much less answer, before she was crushing him and squeeing again, into his ribs. Cas hugged her back and nodded to Dean.

“It’s my new manuscript,” he confirmed. Charlie pulled back and stopped to listen. “I just finished the first round of revisions. It’s due to my editor next week but I thought…” he cleared his throat “that maybe you might like to read it and let me know what you think before I send it.”

Charlie went off again, too excited to be still for any longer than she had to. Was he really Jimmy Sinclair? The real one? When was this book going to come out? Was the manuscript signed? OMG, did he have any idea how much this was worth? Could she keep it? Should she hide it? What if Gilda found her reading it? What if Gilda found it while Charlie was asleep or something? Was he really Sinclair? On and on she went as Cas and Dean shared an amused smile over her head.

“O, shit!” Dean suddenly sat back as if all the implications had just hit him, “you’re Sinclair!”

Cas watched the surprise give way to wonder and then mischief.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to thank him for what his work did for me at a really vulnerable time,” he winked and lowered his voice. “I look forward to showing you my appreciation later.”

Cas had no idea what to say to that, but fortunately Charlie made some more excited noises and he let his eyes do the talking for him.

“Uh… ” Charlie glanced between when the tension in the room got her attention, “I should go.” Her eyes sparkled as she leered, “Got some reading to do.”

They walked her out, Cas holding the manuscript as she put her coat and gloves on. It felt like an eternity, but then she was ready, Cas handed her her copy, tucked into a gift bag, and she went off into the winter darkness.

Dean closed the door behind Charlie and locked it firmly. “All the inside cameras?”

Cas reached for his shoulder, turned him around, and backed him right up against the door. “All of them.”

Dean let his head fall back against the door and Cas moved in closer, his stubble brushing against Dean's neck in just the way that always made his knees weak. He could hear Dean's breath catch, and turned his head to retrace his path with the softest brush of his lips.

And then Dean's arms were pulling him in, every inch of his body an open invitation that Cas was only too glad to take him up on.

Chapter Text

“Caaaaaas,” his name broke through the dense fog of deep sleep, “wake up, come on.”

“Why?” he managed to groan.

“It’s your birthday, sunshine.”

“Still -” he started to slip back into the fog, but something was tickling him. “’ll still be mbirthday later.”

“But Sam and Jess will be here soon, Cas. We talked about this.”

“Let’em in. ‘s fine.”

“C’mon, baby, I gotta go to work, I’m not gonna be here to let them in. Besides, they’re gonna want to wish you a happy birthday and hang out. They have a surprise for you.”

“Don’t- ” he grouched, “don' like s’prises.”

“You’re gonna like this one, I promise.”

Cas had no response for that, so he didn’t give one. Maybe if he stopped responding Dean would go to work and let him go back to sleep.

“Alright, you leave me no choice.”

There was a lot of shuffling, and the covers were lifted from his body momentarily, but before he could protest the cold he was covered again. That tickling sensation started to make a beeline across his chest, slowly expanding and resolving itself into fingers trailing across his pecs. Little brushes of something soft and wet led to hard, pointy nibbles across his collarbone, and a cold foot made its way between his shins.

His body recognized Dean’s hands, Dean’s mouth, Dean’s teeth, and it shifted to accommodate and welcome him. The groan he had been about to release turned into a moan, and the fog began to clear in earnest.

“God, the way you just make room for me is so fucking hot,” Dean whispered into the hollow at the base of his throat as he shifted into place, his hips settling between Castiel’s thighs. The lips started working their way to his nipple and Cas squirmed, wanting to meet them halfway. “You’re so fucking hot,” Dean’s tongue circled his nipple, “even grumpy,” he nipped at it, “and half asleep.”

“Dean,” his hands found Dean’s body and made their way to his hair.

“Mmm, you like that, do you?” he sucked on the nipple gently and chuckled when Castiel’s fingers tightened in this hair, urging him to keep moving.

Dean slid down his body slowly, making sure to maintain just the barest brush of contact on the way, his lips making his way to Castiel’s sternum and then working their way down one careful inch at a time.

There was more shifting, Dean’s weight settled more firmly on Castiel’s hips, and one of Dean’s hands started roaming. Under Dean’s fingers, Castiel’s body came alive. This man could play him like a well tuned fiddle. How was that even fair? His hips started to squirm, but those lips and that hand were staying stubbornly above the waist.

“I hear ya, Cas, I do,” Dean was saying in the general neighborhood of his navel, “but there are limits to what a gentleman can do when the guy under him is half asleep.”

Sleep? What was sleep? What did it have to offer that was better than this? “’m awake,” he mumbled. Dean’s hand rewarded the statement by sliding under to cup his ass.

“Yeah? I don’t know, sweetheart,” his lips started trailing along Castiel’s waistline, “you still sound pretty out of it.”

Cas shook his head, cleared his throat, and tried again.

“I’m awake,” he declared, firmly.

Dean’s face suddenly showed up in his view, mischief glinting in his eyes.

“You sure are,” he agreed. “Great! I’ll start the coffee while you get up.”

And Dean was gone. Cas looked down at himself with a frustrated groan, and made his way into the bathroom.

oOo

“You’re officially uninvited from the surprise party we’re not having later,” he declared as he arrived in the kitchen, dressed for guests, even though it was just Sam and Jess.

“But, Cas,” Dean objected as he fixed Castiel’s coffee exactly the way he liked it, “if I’m not at the party we’re not having, who’s going to drag you into the closet to make out while all our friends aren’t here?” He handed over the cup and answered his own question, “nobody, that’s who.”

“You make a good point,” Cas begrudgingly admits, before taking a long sip. “And a good cup of coffee. Thank you.”

Dean guided him to a chair and put a plate of pancakes in front of him. Blueberry, drizzled with local honey instead of syrup.

“Eat up, we’ve got like ten minutes.”

Cas hoped the look he leveled at Dean was expressive enough of what he would have preferred to do with those minutes.

“Later, I promise,” Dean dropped a kiss on top of his head. Damn him, the pancakes were perfect. Dean scurried off to get ready to leave for work, and Cas ate his breakfast with more enthusiasm than he would admit to anytime soon.

He was just rinsing his plate in the sink when a knock on the door made him check the time. They were early. He finished his cup of coffee and braced himself for socializing. He could hear Dean opening the door, and letting them in. Would Sam and Jess like a cup of coffee? He should start another pot. It was too early to offer them beer or probably even soda.

All thoughts of hospitality fled the moment they came through the kitchen door, however. It was pretty obvious by the looks on their faces that something was going on. Something bigger than a birthday visit to your brother’s boyfriend. Cas and Sam were becoming good friends, but they were far from being close enough for his birthday to elicit the sort of anxious thrill that Sam had walked in with. And Jess looked just as hyped.

Castiel’s head tilted, unsure what to make of it. He turned to look at Dean, who was returning to his side. The usual greetings were exchanged and he was wished a happy birthday. Sam produced a large manilla envelope and gestured for everyone to sit down.

“Cas, after everything that happened with Sunny,” Dean finally spoke, “Sam and I talked. I asked him to dig in and figure out what we could do to make sure that something like this would never happen again, even if you moved away from here. He contacted some colleagues in Massachusetts, and well -” at a nod from Dean, Sam extended the envelope to Cas. “Happy Birthday.”

What on earth could they have done? He’d had his own lawyers look into things in the past and they hadn’t given him much hope. Cas opened the envelope as carefully as his anxious fingers would let him and pulled out the contents. The first thing he saw was the official seal.

“Is this???” He pulled the paper the rest of the way out, looked to Dean first, and then to Sam. “Dean, this is a pardon.”

“Yeah, sunshine.”

He felt dizzy. It was kind of Sam to make sure he was sitting down for this. Also, he seemed to be having trouble focusing.

“Dean -” the rest of the sentence seemed to be caught in his throat, but Dean knew. Gently, he took the paper from Castiel’s hands and set it on the table, then drew Cas into his arms.

“I got you,” Dean was crooning, his fingers stroking through Castiel’s hair the way they sometimes did after a bad dream. He let himself be soothed, and after a bit pulled back to find that he’d been crying all over Dean’s uniform.

“I’m sorry,” he sniffled, brushing at the fabric as if his fingers could wipe away the tears.

Dean’s own fingers reached up to dry his face.

“Sam’s got to explain some things to you, okay? Ready?”

“Yes,” he nodded, “of course.” But he stayed where he was, in the shelter of Dean’s arms as he turned to face Sam.

“Okay so, first thing you need to know, being your birthday and all, is that you don’t have to register any more, in any state.” Hearing it said out loud floored him again, and he looked at Dean.

“Is this why you kept coming up with an excuse after another all week to keep me from going in to register?”

Dean nodded, rather unnecessarily, and Cas dropped a quick kiss on his chin, before turning back to Sam, still sniffling, but also smiling so widely his face hurt.

“Also, since it happened in Mass, this basically wipes your record clean,” Sam continued, “even if someone runs a background check or something, it’s not going to come up. Of course, it doesn't erase every trace. News stories about the incident, anything the college might have printed or recorded, records of all the times you've been brought in for questioning, anything like that is still out there, and there's probably not much that can make it go away. But officially, your record is clean.”

“Thank you,” he looked at Dean through wet lashes and then back to Sam. “You have no idea -”

“I was happy to help. What happened to you was just… so messed up. This kind of thing is why I went into law. I just wish I could make it go away for everyone.”

“How - how did you pull it off? Last time I talked to a lawyer about it was years ago, but he basically said it would take a lot of time and effort and my chances of success were basically slim to none.”

“Yeah, tell Cas about that.” Dean smirked.

“After I spoke to my colleague, who incidentally, basically said the same thing as the lawyer you talked to, I decided to dig through the legislature to see if there was anyone who could be persuaded to maybe facilitate the process. I thought, maybe someone in a more liberal district was up for re-election or someone in a position of power had a gay child or something. But get this. It turns out that one of the up and comers in the Massachusetts state senate is no other than one Ralph Leavitt. Dean might have mentioned the name to me and I remembered it.”

Cas made no comment, and Sam pressed on like a man who was just getting to the good part of the story. “So I figured, worth a shot, right? But just asking was probably not going to work. He’s super conservative. Anyway, I called him up, and I left a message that said I was calling as a courtesy to inform him that we were filing this paperwork on your behalf, just in case he felt the need to make any arrangements of his own, or secure counsel.” Sam paused dramatically. “Cas, I want to clarify that I wouldn’t have had anything filed on your behalf without running it by you first. It was just a bluff, to see if there was anything there.”

“And he offered to help?” Cas prompted, in a rather doubtful tone.

“He called me back with a bunch of nonsense about how he had nothing to do with it, didn’t know who you were, and so on. I informed him that I was not interested in arguing the case on the phone or at all, and now that he was informed of my intentions, no further communication between us was needed. I added that I was only interested in righting an injustice, and not in inconveniencing him, but I would not hesitate to do so if it became necessary. He must have gone off to talk to his lawyer or campaign manager or whatever, because I got another call a few days later. This time he said upon further reflection, he did remember sharing a dorm room with you, and wondered what happened to you when you stopped showing up. And as he had fond memories of that semester, and his father was a personal friend of the governor, he would speak to the governor directly and just bypass the whole process. You know, just for the sake of expediency.”

“I’m sure,” Cas couldn’t actually see Dean’s face, but he was pretty sure that was his eye roll voice.

“So, I sent him the necessary information, and the pardon came through like two days ago.”

“Sam, I -”

“I hope I didn’t overstep, but when he said he’d get the pardon for you, without the long, burdensome process, I jumped on it.”

“Thank you,” Cas cut in, “both of you.”

“Wanna go tell Charlie?” Dean asked, his eye on the clock.

And he found that actually, he kinda did.

oOo

Usually, he made an effort to look presentable before going outside. Today, he probably looked like a mess and he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was fairly certain he was also being far too clingy and he couldn’t figure out why, exactly. This was good. Why was he clingy when things were good? But when he started to make some comment about how his face was all splotchy from crying, Dean would look all sappy and tell him his eyes looked so much bigger and brighter than usual that nobody could see anything else. He would remind himself to give Dean some space, and Dean’s hand would show up and keep him right where he wanted to be.

They arrived at the station more than a few minutes after change of shift, but there seemed to be something going on, because the outgoing shift was still there and Charlie was in the main room with her headset instead of down in the dispatch room. Benny had somehow produced a very large bakery box full of donuts and a smaller one with fresh bagels. Nobody really seemed to know what was going on, but since pastries were involved, there seemed to be a general consensus that it was going to be good.

It was starting to make him a bit nervous. He’d come in to tell Charlie, not to make a speech to the whole department. He grabbed Dean’s hand, and signaled to Charlie that he wanted a quick word with her outside in the hallway.

“Charlie, I -” he hesitated just for a moment, still in awe of the words. “I don’t have to register anymore. I got a pardon.”

He watched her process the words, watched her face light up, and then.

“You got a pardon?” Cas nodded. “OMG, YOU GOT A PARDON!”

And just like that everyone in the building knew. Not usually his preferred method of sharing personal information, but at least that speech had just become completely unnecessary. She crushed him in a hug, then dragged him into the room to tell Jody, which he dutifully did.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that,” Jody had said, and the sentiment was echoed by all the others, one or two at a time, as they stopped to offer a word of support or congratulations on their way to whatever duties were awaiting them.

Eventually, it was just them and Jody. Even Charlie had gone back to the dispatch room, pink donut with sprinkles in hand, and bouncing like it was Christmas morning again.

“Thanks for coming to tell us the good news. After everything, it was sort of making me sick, thinking about you coming in here to - well, nevermind. No more of that now. You get on out of here and celebrate.”

He was feeling clingy again, though he remembered to keep his distance, but it must have been really obvious because Jody turned to Dean.

“You too, Winchester. I think we can manage without you for a day.”

“You sure, Sheriff?”

“It’s not exactly Gotham City out there. Besides, your brother is in town and if I know Sam, he’ll be gone again tomorrow, so go spend some time with your family while you can,” before she turned back to her office, she added, “don’t get used to it.”

oOo

It started around half past three in the afternoon, when Rufus, of all people, showed up in a beat up truck with a birthday present - a beautifully finished porch chair, deceptively simple in design but intricately carved where you least expected it, and much heavier than it looked. It took them a few minutes to unload, and a few more to decide where to place it, but eventually, they had it on the back porch, near the section of the back yard that would be the pollinator garden come next spring.

Moving it was heavy work, so they headed inside for a cold drink, and they’d barely walked back into the kitchen when they heard Sam welcome in Bobby, who’d come by with a chilled 6-pack of his favorite beer and a beautiful, leather bound poetry book. They all sat around the kitchen table enjoying Bobby’s beer while he griped about what a waste it was to let Rufus have one and Rufus went on at length about how it should have been whiskey. They’d been at it long enough to finish the beer when there was another knock that turned out to be Ellen swinging by to wish him a happy birthday and bring pie.

With pie at play, Dean decided he might as well cook up some burgers so they could eat, and everyone moved out to the back porch. Dean fired up the grill they’d bought last spring and then went to prep the burgers while the rest of them enjoyed the late summer afternoon.

The burgers were cooking when the noise, or maybe the smell of food, drew the attention of none other than Sunny Rosen, as she arrived home from school. She ran up to investigate and upon being informed by Sam that it was Castiel’s birthday, wished him a happy birthday and asked for a hotdog. This mortified Becky, who had caught up with Sunny just in time to overhear the exchange. She apologized for the intrusion, but when they told her the child was welcome to stay for a hotdog, she remembered she’d made a batch of her deviled-egg potato-salad earlier, and went off to go get some.

Dean put 8 hot dogs on the grill, just in case.

Sunny’s excitement got the attention of the other kids in the cul-de-sac, and less than twenty minutes later Sunny and three other kids were eating hot dogs on the lawn, while their parents fixed themselves a plate by the kitchen island. Where had they found coleslaw? Cas was sure there was no coleslaw in the house five minutes earlier. Other things that seemed to have materialized out of thin air: more burgers, a plate of what seemed to be home made cookies, and a veggie tray that Sam was basically sitting on.

It wasn’t until Charlie showed up with both cake and ice cream that he realized that somehow, they were hosting a party. It was small enough that it almost slipped under his radar, especially with people coming and going to their own houses across the way. It wasn’t rowdy, there was no music, no alcohol, and no fuss. Nobody meant to stay more than five minutes, but with good food and good company, people lingered.

The cake was cut, the kids decided to play tag, and Charlie made herself comfortable in his new chair, looking over the entire scene like it was organized for her amusement. It was… surprisingly peaceful.

And then Bobby announced he had to meet some guy who was dropping off his truck at the shop after work, the kids were ushered home to their homework, and as spontaneously as they’d gathered, everyone went about their business, taking their tins and bowls with them.

They hadn’t even left a mess to clean up.

“I didn’t just hallucinate that, did I?” Cas checked with Sam.

“Nope,” he produced a trash bag full of paper plates as evidence. “Happy birthday, man.”

“Thank you.”

Sam abandoned the trash bag after closing it, and offered a hug, before he started looking around as if he too was getting ready to leave.

“You’re not staying?” Cas asked.

“We’re gonna crash at Dean’s place,” Jess chimed in, “unless you found a renter?”

“No, not yet.” Dean responded. “You sure? Place doesn’t even have a TV.”

“Yeah, Dean, that’s totally gonna be a deal breaker. Sam and I have really been looking forward to a couple of days away from the city without urgent calls from the office specifically so we could sit around and watch late night TV. Honest.”

“Okay, shut up,” Dean made a big show of covering his ears, but then added. “It does have a bed. And a fridge.”

“Sold,” Sam reached for Jess. “No offense, Cas, I love you guys and I love this place, but nobody wants to have to put on pants just to get a glass of water.”

“He makes a good point,” Cas agreed. ”He should have one of those mini-fridges installed in the guest room.”

And then Sam and Jess were gone and it was just the two of them and a long late summer evening.

Chapter Text

Was he dreaming?

Dean was taking out the trash, and Cas had gone to put his new book on the shelf. A shiny black model of a Chevy Impala was parked in front of the spines of his books where Dean had carefully placed it. Behind him, he knew he wouldn’t find his old TV. That was upstairs now, in a bedroom he shared with a man he loved. A man that slept curled into his body one way or another, every night.

He slid the book into place, and let his fingers trail the back of the couch where every other movie still turned into a makeout session. The couch Charlie now refused to sit in because she’d seen the way they were looking at each other halfway through well, everything. They let her think the chair next to it was safe because they enjoyed movie night, but truth be told, that chair had seen at least as much action as the couch.

He smirked. It was probably best if Charlie didn’t know how many flat surfaces had seen action down here since the cameras had been permanently turned off, about a week before Dean moved in. Could this really be his life? It seemed… unlikely.

And yet.

When he moved to the side table to turn on the lamp, he heard Dean’s soft footfalls on the hardwood floors. Dean’s hands slid around his waist in that gentle way that never failed to make him melt as he clicked the light on. Dean’s lips brushed at the back of his neck as his hands held him close, like some priceless treasure to be cherished. No. Like a sacred gift to be worshiped.

Cas reached for the other button, at the base of the lamp, and closed the curtains. The kisses turned slowly into nibbles on the side of his neck, and Cas turned in Dean’s arms, sliding his own up Dean’s chest and around his neck to pull him into a kiss. Kissing Dean took his breath away. He didn’t need it anyway. Not as long as he could have this.

He clung to Dean, vaguely aware that they were moving, and Dean’s hands shifted with purpose, kept him close as he lowered them to the couch. Then Dean’s lips moved to his neck and rational thought became impossible. His world was the hands sliding under his shirt, gentle enough not to break the spell, more heat than contact, making his skin crave any contact it could get. The nudge of a button against a nipple. The way the fabric slid across this chest as Dean’s hands moved. The puff of breath just under his collar, zeroing in on that spot that always drove him crazy.

“God, you’re beautiful like this,” Dean whispered into his collarbone. The heat of the words, the raw roughness in Dean’s voice. The way it broke when his hips moved into Dean’s in a slow grind. “I wanna watch you fly, angel,” the softest of nibbles along his jawline. “I still can’t believe i get to watch you fly.”

Dean’s hands teasing at his waistband made him whimper, but Dean didn’t stop there this time. They worked their way to the narrow space between them, his fingers tracing the dips and flats in his path, and converged on his zipper.

“Fuck, baby, you’re so hard already,” Dean’s fingers made quick work of undoing his pants.

“Dean,” he moaned. The only word he was capable of at the moment. It was enough. Dean’s fingers closed loosely around his cock, his other hand splayed wide to support his lower back. The same barely there touch moved through the length of him, and he felt his whole body shake and stutter with it. Dean’s legs moved to support him and then Cas was tipping back, his hips suddenly free to move as they wished.

“Take what you need, sweetheart,” Dean’s fingers closed around his shoulder, shaped themselves around his cock, and Cas took. “I’ve got you. Fly.”

oOo

Somewhere in the part of his brain that kept him breathing and still knew which way was up, Cas was aware that his body was being moved. Gently, his shirt was removed, and he was cleaned up and placed carefully on the couch. Then his pants were gone, along with his underwear. A moment later, Dean’s body was sliding in next to him, his head was settling on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean’s lips were brushing softly against his temple. He snuggled in and let himself drift back to reality, slow and easy.

Eventually, Cas lifted his head to look at the smug smile on Dean’s face. He chuckled, then stretched to kiss it, pushing himself up fully on top of Dean. The smile only seemed to get more smug when he pulled back, so he went in again, this time nipping at Dean’s lower lip. Something flashed in Dean’s eyes, and then somehow they were flipping over. Instinctively, Castiel’s legs closed around Dean’s waist, holding on for dear life.

Dean’s body loomed over his head for a moment, as he reached over the armrest for something on the end table. Castiel’s smile turned into a smirk, and he took advantage of the opportunity to put his hands and lips to work on all that delicious naked skin. So far, today had been pretty one sided, and birthday or not, he meant to fix that. His legs pulled Dean’s hips in and just in case that wasn’t clear enough, he arched up.

Dean’s hands fumbled, then slid under his back to grip at his ass, as Cas knew he would. With a writer’s attention to detail, he began to take Dean apart. He felt Dean’s hands falter as they worked him loose, felt his body shudder, his breath catch and his head drop, reaching for self-control. The next time he arched up, Dean slid home and they were too lost in each other for smugness.

Slow and deep, their mouths came back to each other as much as their lungs would allow, whispering secrets between kisses. Hands stopped roaming and held on, fingers gripping at all the right places. Trembling limbs locked around trembling bodies, and they took each other over the edge.

Chapter Text

Dean tugged at his hair in frustration. What the actual - He was gonna need more coffee for this.

Two sips of strong coffee and a phone call later, the headline hadn’t changed. “Conservative Think Tank Plans to Define Trans People as Pornographic.”

How had it come to this? Less than ten years ago he celebrated the fact that he’d be able to marry whoever he wanted to, someday, maybe adopt a kid. And today, there were plans to make people, by definition, pornographic, and a good chance that they might come to fruition if the wrong guy won the next election. Was he on Candid Camera or something? Was that still a thing?

He pulled his favorite picture of Cas out of his wallet. It always managed to calm him down when he needed to think clearly. It was taken last summer, after a colony of bees had moved into the hive in the pollinator garden. Dean had come home to find him coming in from the garden with the biggest, dorkiest smile he’d ever seen and had made him stop for a picture. He was holding his basket in front of him, loaded with tomatoes and green beans from his greenhouse, and nestled among all the beans was a big bowl with a chunk of honeycomb in it. He looked so damn proud of himself it was hard to see the man he’d first met. How had Dean managed to hit the freakin’ love Megamillion jackpot all the way out in nowhere, South Dakota?

He tucked the picture back into place. This was supposed to be a good day. A happy day. The second movie based on his book series was opening this weekend, and tonight they were going to watch the first one again, on their newly whitewashed outside wall, weather permitting. The forecast was looking good. He’d found them one of those old fashioned popcorn cart things, and they were going to make a metric ton of it, just for fun. He gave it twenty minutes for the whole neighborhood to show up once they figured out something was going on. He might have somewhat more private plans for after the movie. Or before, if he ran out of patience.

If he was honest, he ran out of patience a lot, these days. There was a sense of urgency that he couldn’t shake. He’d never been happier in his life, but every time he took a look outside their home, what he saw happening left him afraid for the future in ways he never thought he’d have to be. Since Roe had fallen, he’d been fighting a really bad feeling that they were running out of time. South Dakota was mostly hands off, which meant the state was, for the most part, not actively trying to hurt them. Unfortunately, it also meant it wasn’t doing much to protect them, and it had actually tried to ban gay marriage not long before Obergefell made the whole debate moot.

Right. Movie night. Popcorn. Special plans.

He took another look at the picture, and reminded himself that Sammy was out in Cali, anyway, and there was no reason to think California would be any less safe in the foreseeable future. If it came down to it, they could just… move closer to Sam.

He hated that Cas might have to give up the first real home he’d ever had. The first place where he’d felt safe. Welcome. Proud.

He told himself to snap out of it and make this day special for Cas. All this shit would still be there for him to worry about tomorrow. Today, he had places to go, people to see, things to prepare. He had, in fact, taken the day off so he could prepare them. He needed to get to it.

oOo

He’d stopped at their favorite Chinese restaurant on the way home. Later, they’d be stuffing themselves silly with popcorn, so dinner was early and light. They’d set up the projector outside while they still had daylight, and then the popcorn cart. More to keep himself busy than anything else, Dean set out their lawn chairs too. Was it time yet? Should he string some lights out there? The waiting was driving him nuts.

“Are you okay? You’ve been anxious all day. I can feel it from upstairs.”

“Yeah, I’m - I’m fine. Just - should have stayed away from the news earlier.”

“That will do it,” Cas gave him a half hug on the way to drop a stack of popcorn containers on the cart. “We should probably make it a rule not to look at the news on days that are meant to be celebratory. Just to be safe,” he added, when he came back into the kitchen.

“Not a bad idea, actually.”

Because Cas was just that awesome, he checked the time and then tucked himself into Dean’s arms. “Need a distraction?”

Dean’s frown magically turned into a predatory smile, and Cas chuckled into his shoulder.

“We don’t have time for that. And anyway, aren’t we too old to jump each other’s bones every time we have 10 minutes to fill?”

“Do you feel too old?”

“Not really, no,” Cas agreed. “I feel about 20 years younger than I did 20 years ago.”

Dean rewarded that with a kiss that just about knocked his socks off. Now was a good time, right? Why wait?

As it turns out, because Charlie and Benny were walking up to their front door. Cas went to let them in, and Dean tried not to be a little bitch about it. They’d been invited, after all. By Dean, no less. Fine. After the movie it was.

Only, he couldn’t settle down. They’d played host to their friends, and Dean couldn’t stop finding excuses to go back into the kitchen, just to move. They’d made their way outside, and Dean started pacing the yard like he was mowing the lawn, for some reason. Some of the neighbors came over, and Dean hovered like he was afraid they were going to make off with the paper popcorn containers. They sat down to watch the movie and he fidgeted enough to make Charlie look over her shoulder to throw a dirty look and some popcorn at him.

He worried the kids were going to follow her lead and it would turn into a free for all, but apparently, they were into the movie and not paying attention to the old people. Dean retreated to the bathroom anyway.

“Alright, get your shit together, Winchester,” he mumbled to the mirror. “You’ve got maybe another hour to go, no big deal.” He washed his hands for no particular reason, just as he came into the bathroom for no reason he could name. The sound of the water was oddly soothing, and he ran his wet hand across the back of his neck, letting the coolness calm him, before drying his hands.

Dean opened the door to find Cas waiting across the hallway.

“Alright, what is it?” he asked. “What’s on your mind?”

“You’re missing -”

“Dean,” shit, he knew that tone. That was the tell me now or else I’m really going to start worrying tone. This was supposed to be a happy occasion, dammit.

“I’m fine. Just nervous,” Dean walked right into Castiel’s space, slid his arms around his waist and pulled him closer. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Is this still about whatever was on the news?”

“Indirectly, maybe,” he conceded. “You remember how when we were talking about our shitty families and you mentioned that you wanted to change your name?”

Castiel’s brow went up, and his head tilted. Dean could practically hear him wondering where his family came into this. “Yes. Vaguely.”

“Is that something you still want to do?”

“I haven’t thought about it in a long time. I suppose it’s been long enough now that it doesn’t feel so important, but I - it doesn’t feel like my name.”

“How do you feel about Winchester?”

“Are you thinking about chang-” he stopped mid word, and his head tilted the other way in a gesture that at any other time would have been hilarious, but Dean was just too anxious right now to fully appreciate it. Instead, he rambled.

“I know it’s probably too soon, but - what if we wait a year or two and then we can’t?”

“Too soon?”

“Marry me, Sunshine.”

“Dean,” and that was much better. That was the same tone Cas used when he called to tell him that a queen had moved into his hive.

“We could go to Vegas. It’s Constitutionally protected there and there’s nothing South Dakota or the Supreme Court can do to make that disappear. Sammy could drive over to meet us there, whenever we’re ready. Charlie would -”

Cas stopped his rambling with the softest of kisses. “How do you feel about short engagements?” He whispered into Dean’s lips.

“Short is good,” Dean agreed, “how short are we talking?”

“Vegas is lovely this time of year,” Cas hummed against his neck.

“Next week?” Dean’s arms locked around his waist, and in two steps pulled Cas with him back into the bathroom. “Is that too soon?”

“I would have married you three days after you moved in.”

What was a guy supposed to do after that? He backed Cas against that door and started fumbling with his belt.

“We have a-” Cas tried to object, even as he pulled Dean’s head closer and guided his lips across his neck, “a perfectly good bed right,” Dean nibbled at the spot that always made Cas shudder and moan and he did not disappoint, “right upstairs.”

“Yeah,” Dean’s hands left the belt hanging open in its loops and moved on to the button, “but everyone out there is staring at the other side of that wall right now.”

“Fair point,” Cas agreed, going to work on Dean’s jeans.

“Besides, haven’t you ever wanted to like - blow someone in a bathroom stall?”

“Well, now that you mention it…” and before Dean knew what hit him, Cas had pushed him back against the sink.

oOo

They emerged just before the credits started rolling to snickers from the peanut gallery. Dean stuck his tongue out at Charlie, since there were kids around, and went to bag up the rest of the popcorn in the popper, intending to send all the kids home with a treat for later. Right on cue, just as he was sending the kids home with their treat and Charlie was collecting the chairs, Dean’s phone started to ring.

“Hey, Sammy. Thanks for calling me back so quickly.” He made sure he was good and loud, he wanted everyone in the yard to hear him. “Yeah, it’s kind of urgent.” He let Sammy ask a bunch of concerned questions without giving him time to answer them and watched as Charlie and Benny approached, prepared to offer help if it was needed.

“No, it’s nothing like that. I need to know if you have anything important going on in the next couple of weeks, anything that can’t be rescheduled, or whatever,” he winked at Cas, "gonna need you to meet us in Vegas for a couple days.”

Charlie’s expression had gone from ‘what’s wrong’ to ‘hello, showgirls’, and Dean winked at her too. “Well, I guess that depends on how important you think your big brother’s wedding is.”

Everyone still in the yard converged on the two of them, all smiles and congratulations. “It’s Vegas, Sammy. All you have to do is pick a venue and sign a check. They do the rest. Besides, the whole point of eloping is not having to do all of that planning.”

Speaking of planning, he’d sort of forgotten a big part of his plan when he got carried away in the bathroom. He balanced his phone on his shoulder and dug through his pockets. “We’re going to have a thing here for everyone that’s not going with, probably in a couple of months. You can get with Cas and Charlie, nerd out and do all the planning then.” He found what he was looking for and approached the cluster of people that had Cas in the middle. “I don’t care, man. I just want to put a ring on it, even if it’s at a drive through, in our jammies.” Everyone laughed at that, and Cas rolled his eyes affectionately. “Speaking of, I gotta go put a ring on it. Let me know when you’re available.”

He slipped his phone into his back pocket, and pulled Cas into his arms. “I guess I sort of skipped a step up there,” he explained, holding up a box between them. He watched as Cas opened the box, and carefully pulled a silver band inlaid with black opal out of it. The blues and greens of the stone danced as he lifted the ring, and Dean watched the wonder fill his eyes before he took the ring from him. “You sure you really want to marry the guy who didn’t even remember to give you the ring when he asked you the first time?”

“I’m sure,” Cas confirmed.

Dean slipped the ring onto his finger, and got a brief, soft kiss in return. Somehow, they both had tears in their eyes when their eyes met again. The neighbors had all gone back to their homes, and it was just them, Charlie and Benny now.

“You guys are coming, right?” Dean asked as they made their way back inside, carrying the odds and ends that needed to go back in for the night.

“As long as Jody is on board with all three of us being out of town at the same time,” Benny agreed, “count me in.”

Right, they had to tell Jody. And Bobby. And a lot of other people. Tomorrow. For now, they’d get everything put away, walk their friends out, and curl up on the couch to think about Vegas.