Red Hood (Chapter 3)
The first half of Dean’s shift was uneventful. Not many customers came in, and the ones that did wanted to be helped by Jo, the pretty blond salesgirl. It was the unwritten rule that Dean took any girlfriends wandering in looking for a present for their boyfriends and the guys who stared a little too long at him. Jo took everybody else. The girl was a charmer. If only the customers could hear her cruel, but accurate, impressions of the customers on her break. Between the two of them, everybody left with lighter wallets and feeling significantly more attractive.
It wasn’t until a quiet spell in the late afternoon did something happen. Dean was folding and refolding artfully distressed t-shirts when Jo let out a strange little yelp.
“Uh, Jo?” Dean asked. “What’s going on?”
“I. Cannot. Believe. You.” She staged whispered, leaning across the counter her iPhone dangling from her palm.
Dean’s heart sank. Jo must have heard about that guy David who practically molested Dean at the bar a couple of weeks ago. Dude had been drunk off his ass and kept on telling Dean how Dean’s ‘cock sucking lips’ had turned David gay. Dean hadn’t completely bought it, but it didn’t stop him from letting David give him a clumsy hand job in the bathroom. “Oh man, I’m sorry, Jo.” He apologized, setting aside the shirts. “I totally thought he was straight too, I wasn’t even trying to pick him up because I knew that you liked him or whatever. But then-”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jo demanded, looking genuinely confused. “I’ve never met Cas Novak.”
“Huh?” Dean croaked. “How did you know about me n’ Cas?” There had been one date, three hours ago.
“It’s all over Perez.” Jo said, signaling to her phone.
If anything, Dean was even more confused. “Over what?”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Perez Hilton. The gossip site?” She fiddled on her phone, pulling up the page. “Seriously, do you even live in this century?”
“Is that the really pink one?” Dean groaned.
She made an affirmative grunt as she scrolled through the pages quickly on the touch screen. Suddenly, she stopped, tapped rapidly and thrust the screen in Dean’s face. “Here, read up, big guy.”
Dean almost went blind trying to read off of the tiny screen, but once he focused on the story he almost had a full on panic attack right there. There were about five pictures, all of Cas and Dean exiting the coffee shop, one particularly incriminating one had Dean looking at Cas like he was the messiah. After the pictures, there was a short story.
‘OooOoooOOOOOoo girls. Remember that FINE football player from San Diego that came out of the rainbow closet about a month ago? Cas Novak is his name, kicking the pigskin is his game. Except we think that he’d be better suited as a pitcher if you catch our drift. With those arms? UMPH.
Sorry, we got distracted. Anyways, Novak’s mystery date’s name is unknown, but sources say that he works at the très chic boutique The River Runs Through It. So at least we know he’s got style. This is your mission, angels, should you choose to accept it: FIND OUT WHO THIS GUY IS.’
Dean thought he couldn’t feel any worse until he took a closer look at one of the pictures and saw a crude doodle on it. He sincerely hoped it was supposed to be drool around his mouth.
Jo stared at him expectantly, obviously hoping for a more dramatic reaction than Dean’s blank stares.
“Hel-lo!” She waved a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Dean.” She turned on an imaginary walkie-talkie on her shoulder. “Can you read me?”
Breaking out of his reverie, Dean snapped “What?”
“You were seriously zoning out.” Jo shrugged. “I’m no PR girl, but we gotta work on this, dude. First of all is this even true, or did you just like happen to walk out of the shop at the same time?”
Dean waved her concerns away. “Nah, Jo. It was a bonafide date. With Cas Novak. Football superstar and gay Casanova.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “This is way too much, Jo. That was a first date. A coffee date for fuck’s sake. I don’t think I can handle this.”
Jo cleared her throat. “Not to be nitpicky, but Cas isn’t that good at football. He’s hardly been field tested, way too early to tell...” She trailed off. Jo was the single biggest football fanatic Dean had ever met. At any given moment she could rattle enough statistics to make your head spin. Upon seeing Dean’s unimpressed face, she continued, changing the subject quickly. “And I mean he’s not exactly a Casanova. There have been a lot of rumors,” she waved her hand “but they haven’t been validated.”
“What are you trying to say, Jo?”
“He’s just a normal guy.” She spoke plainly. “And he’s probably weirded out by all this attention too. And maybe,” she added gently “you should talk to him and see what he thinks before you do something dumb.”
Dean frowned. “What makes you think that I would do something dumb?”
Jo only laughed and told him to go back to folding t-shirts.
He had a lot to think about for the remainder of his shift. A few teenage girls wandered by the store, clearly spurred on by Perez’s challenge. In response to the clearly non-customers, Jo was aggressively helpful to the girls and wouldn’t leave them alone for a moment to go stalk Dean. The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet though, which Dean was eternally grateful for.
The situation with Cas was not an easy one in Dean’s mind. On one hand, he really liked the guy. Cas was smart, funny, hot and most importantly, laughed at all of Dean’s jokes. And Dean wasn’t going to lie, it totally didn’t hurt that the guy was massively successful. Success has never looked poorly on anyone. On the flip side, Cas was in the public eye. Even more than the average pro athlete, he was now a gay icon. And Dean didn’t really know if he was comfortable with that. It was one thing to date dudes openly in a liberal city surrounded by friends and family. It was a horse of a different color to be judged on a national or even international level. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He needed an Advil. And maybe a fifth of whisky while he was at it.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Castiel’s head made a ‘thunk’ noise as it made contact with his desk. This could not be happening. He had been innocently checking his email when he heard a ping and there was a message in his inbox. Against his better judgment, he clicked on it.
Sender: ‘Gabe’ (thegaymusketeer@oregon.edu)
Recipient: ‘Cas’ (cnovak@sdwolves.com)
Subject: WFT BRO?!!!
cassssssssssssssssssssssssss!
why didn’t you tell me you had a hot piece of tail stashed away? i had to find out from PEREZ HILTON. who am i? a housewife in ohio? you didn’t tell your own brother? i’m ashamed of you cassie.
Along with the email there was a link to the article from the gossip site. Cas felt like he was going to throw up. He thought he had been so careful too. Personally he didn’t really know why the public cared about him dating somebody that wasn’t famous. Compared to him dating Anderson Cooper or somebody like that, Dean was relatively boring. Already feeling a massive stress headache coming on, Cas wrote out a quick reply.
Sender: ‘Cas’ (cnovak@sdwolves.com)
Recipient: ‘Gabe’ (thegaymusketeer@oregon.edu)
Subject: Ughhhhhhhh
Gabe-
NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO KNOW. UGH. GOD. FUCK.
Also:
1.It’s really embarrassing that you are using your college email still.
a.More embarrassing is your username
2.Why are you even on the gossip sites?
3.You aren’t my brother. Stop telling people we’re related. I keep getting weird phone calls.
The cool wood of Castiel’s desk felt nice against his forehead and helped his thoughts formulate more clearly. First he had to talk to Dean. That much was sure. And Castiel was not anticipating a good reaction with that. One of the impressions Castiel had gotten from Dean, was that he was very much not interested in Castiel’s celebrity. If anything, it was a negative. Of course the one gay guy in California that Cas wanted to fuck didn’t like the fact that he was semi-famous. Just his luck. Second was to find out how that pap had even known Cas was there. Only a handful of Castiel’s friends knew, it seemed like too small a circle for a leak, but you never knew.
Moaning slightly, Cas barely fought the urge to roll onto his plush carpeted floor and curl into the fetal position. It would be so comfy. But ridiculously pathetic. Grabbing his phone out of his pocket, Cas hesitated to find Dean’s name in his contact book. It would be just like ripping a band-aid, right? Quick and painless. With a nervous breath, Cas pressed ‘call’.
“Hey, Cas.” Dean greeted. He sounded tired, Cas noted.
“Hello, Dean. I’m assuming you saw the post?”
Cas heard Dean sigh on the other end. “Yeah, the girl I work with saw it on her phone during my shift.” There was a pause. “What the hell, Cas? Like, seriously, what the hell?”
“I don’t know, Dean.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I honestly have no idea. I obviously didn’t call the paps there, and like next to nobody knew about this.”
“I’m not blaming you.” Dean said, it sounded like his words were being chosen carefully. Cas didn’t like the sound of that. “But-”
“Don’t let this be a deal breaker Dean.” Cas urged. “You had to know this was a possibility when you recognized me.”
“Yeah, but…” Dean trailed off. “The first date, man? It’s a lot pretty fast. There’s already six hundred comments on that post. I don’t know if I can handle this.”
Cas deflated slightly. “Just give it the night, please.” He sounded pathetic. “Sleep on it.”
There was a long silence. “Alright.” Dean acquiesced. “I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
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