DCMB 2010 - Start Quoting Shakespeare and We're Done (2/2)
Chapter VIII: In which Sam Winchester notices a trend.
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“Oh hey, look who’s back!” Gabriel calls from across the shop when Sam walks in. “How go things on the Dean front?”
“He came home last night with Leaves of Grass,” Sam says, no small look of horror crossing his face. “My life is officially weird.”
“Oh gross, not that book! One of my least favorites,” Gabriel grimaces.
Sam is taken slightly aback. “You’ve read Walt Whitman?”
“Actually, no,” Gabriel shrugs. “I was just trying that whole commiserating thing on for size. They didn’t really cover too much literature in culinary school. I can carve an apple into a swan in under a minute, though. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
Sam makes a noncommittal noise, then says, “It’s just been weird, man. Over the weekend it was I Am Legend, then on Monday a collection of Lovecraft short stories. Which, okay, strange-but he was really into Ray Bradbury when he was a kid, so it’s not a huge leap, right? But last night he came home with Leaves of Grass and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. That is not normal Dean fare, I’m sorry. In fact, I’ve never seen somebody willingly read either of those who wasn’t either deeply invested in literature or a total pretentious douche.”
“Kaaay,” Gabriel replies, elongating the word in a way that very clearly says and your point is?.
Sam scowls. “So what I’m thinking, right, is that on Monday I’m going to run an errand to the library and see what’s been going on.”
Gabriel shrugs. “I’m always up for subterfuge, don’t get me wrong. But have you tried, y’know, talking to him about it lately?”
“I’m sorry, did I not show you the bruises he gave me last week when I asked?” Sam bitches. “I’m not bringing it up again so bluntly. Dean’s a fucking mule, Gabe. Both in stubbornness and in the strength of his kicks. No thanks.”
“You called me Gabe,” Gabriel says, a surprised smile taking up residence on his face.
“So? You call me Sammy all the time. Despite me asking you not to,” Sam frowns.
“Nicknames are a sign of affection,” Gabriel explains, peering around Sam at the large group of women that had just entered the shop.
Sam rolls his eyes. “It’s cute how you grasp at straws like that.”
“Ha, and now I’m cute!” Gabriel hands a stack of paperboard boxes to one of his assistants, and Sam can tell he’s getting a bit distracted. It’s a pretty big number of customers at once. “This is a good day so far, I gotta say. But a word to the wise, Sammy-I’m gonna guess that’s a bridal party, so it’s duck-and-cover time.”
Sam steps aside slightly and a middle-aged woman takes his place at the counter. Sam sips at the coffee Gabriel’d set out for him when he’d showed up, just watching the commotion.
It was true, he had called the guy Gabe. It’d just seemed like the thing to do, okay? It’s kinda weird, actually, how much he’s grown to enjoy stopping into BOOM every day after work. At first it was just under the pretense of talking about Dean to someone who was on his side, but he’s finding he actually-gasp-enjoys Gabriel’s company. Which is something he’s never gonna admit, least of all to Gabriel himself, because the guy would just become insufferable.
Speaking of whom. As Sam watches, Gabriel manages to charm his way straight into the lady’s good graces. Well, the chocolate probably helps pave the way, but Gabe is laying it on pretty thick. It’s surprising, really, because where his comments needle at Sam, they seem to just endear him to the woman. He’s busy plying her with the almond-based A-Bombs while his staff runs around trying to fill orders from the rest of the group.
“These are wonderful,” the woman tells him. “My anniversary is this weekend, and I’m telling my husband these are an absolutely vital gift.”
Gabriel takes a moment to waggle his eyebrows at Sam, which earns him a disbelieving snort. Somehow, through a combination of enthusiasm and free samples, he gets the woman to buy herself a dozen bombs that day anyway, with the promise that she’ll share them with the other ladies.
Sam watches him tear through the rest of the party, charisma going full blast. It’s sight to behold. But the longer Sam observes, the more he notices differences in Gabriel’s attitudes. He’s in full-on shop-owner mode now-he’s laughing and joking and selling everything up. It seems strange somehow. Like it’s coming too easily, like it’s a smooth and polished thing. So what does that make his little tête-à-têtes with Sam? Unscripted? Genuine? Sam’s always half-assumed Gabriel is just fucking with him. What if he hasn’t been?
Oh jesus. Oh fuck.
Sam’s just standing out of the way, watching the guy, and for the first time something like actual affection is spreading through him. That is ridiculous. He cannot believe he’s staring at Gabriel, that obnoxious little bastard, and actually considering...something. Something other than what they’ve been doing for the last little eternity.
Oh man, Dean’s gonna have a shitfit if this actually goes anywhere.
By the time he’s done panicking quietly to himself, the crowd is clutching various ammo containers and camo-boxes; a few are carrying hand grenades full of cocoa mix or rations of flak. Gabriel slumps against the counter as they head en masse for the door.
“Look at you, being all salesmanship guy,” Sam comments after they’ve left.
“What, you thought I stayed in business without a little schmoozing?” Gabriel chuckles. “But it’s just my luck that I fall for the only guy immune to my charm.”
“Is that what you’re calling it now?” Sam muses, leaning back against the counter next to Gabriel and smiling. “Well, I don’t wanna make it too easy for you.”
“Sam,” Gabriel smirks, lacing his fingers behind his head, “if you made this easy it’d take away half the fun.”
Sam hmms into his coffee.
--
Chapter IX: In which the world is Dean Winchester’s oyster.
--
It’s a particularly warm Friday afternoon, and Dean’s changing the oil on a Camry, spacing a little and thinking about the weekend. It’s been almost two weeks since he and Cas first started talking on a regular basis, and he’s just about made up his mind to ask the guy out for a beer and some nerd-speak. Possibly a little hot-and-heavy action afterward.
Thing of it is, though, Dean thinks he’s actually starting to like the guy. He usually tries to avoid that like the plague, the liking thing. It hadn’t ended so hot the last couple of times he’d tried it, but god help him if he doesn’t like Cas. He’s nice but not too nice and he’s smart and he’s ridiculously hot and he doesn’t think Dean’s some sort of illiterate idiot, which people tend to do when they find out he’s a mechanic with a GED.
And he’s been going out of his way to talk to Dean, draw him into conversations between himself and Anna. Dean’s been having a fantastic time, reading the shit Castiel suggests and then going in the next day and having these big animated conversations about it. Twice now Cas has told him that he brings a unique view to the texts. And not in that bullshit yes that’s very nice but you’re wrong way, but in like a legit wow that’s interesting I never thought of it like that way. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it makes Dean feel kind of awesome. Like he’s contributing or something.
Long story short, stumbling upon Cas a month ago when looking for that digest has been one of the best things to happen to Dean in a long time. He figures if he can just ask the guy out and get a yes for an answer, life’ll be as perfect as it can reasonably get.
“Yo, Dean!” one of the guys calls, breaking his train of thought. “Some guy out front wants to see you!”
“Finish this up for me?” Dean asks Bobby, the owner of the garage. It earns him a glare, but Bobby scoots under the Camry anyway.
Dean wanders toward the main doors. Just inside the entrance to the garage is, to his immense surprise, an ugly little orange 1981 VW Rabbit.
“Hey, man!” Dean grins, wiping off his hands on a rag as he leans down to look into the driver-side window. “What’re you doing here?”
“Hello, Dean,” Cas smiles briefly. “It’s my lunch break and I thought perhaps I should stop by for a check-up.”
“Tune-up, you mean?” Dean offers.
“Yes, that,” Cas replies, coloring ever so slightly. Dean turns his head away to hide his smile.
“All right, can do. Hop out and I’ll get ‘er up right away,” Dean says. As soon as Cas is standing off to the side, Dean commandeers one of the lifts. Caleb gives him a dirty look, but whatever.
“Should I...wait somewhere?” Cas asks, looking stiff and out of place in his tie and waistcoat.
“No, dude, it’s fine,” Dean calls. “Just come over here by me. Stay out of the way and you should be a-okay.” Technically Cas should be in the waiting room, but hell if Dean doesn’t wanna keep an eye on him.
Popping the hood before he hoists the car, Dean starts poking through the Rabbit’s guts. It’s not in terrible condition-it’s obvious that Cas tries to maintain it to the best of his ability. But it’s also obvious that Cas is not a car guy. There are half a dozen things that are currently functional but just a few months from trouble. It takes Dean no time to decide to replace the most critical of the problem parts, then plan for a series of upgrades over the next few months. As it is, he’d be a little worried sending Cas away in the car, but he thinks he can patch things up pretty good for now with a minimal amount of trouble.
“Did you start with Leaves of Grass or Waiting for Godot?” Cas asks suddenly.
Dean pulls his head back out from under the hood. “Huh?”
“Oh,” Cas says, shifting awkwardly. “I probably shouldn’t talk to you if you’re working. My apologies.”
“What?” Dean blinks. “No! No, it’s fine. Did I what now? Oh, I started with Leaves of Grass. I’m sorry, man, but I wanted to punch that Walt Whitman dude in the face.”
Cas lets out a startled laugh. “Well, you aren’t the first person I’ve heard with that opinion. I’m sorry Anna insisted you take it.”
“Nah, no harm. She means well, I’m sure. But damn. ‘Song of Myself’? How narcissistic can you get? Was he having sex with his own ego at one point?”
Castiel continues to laugh. “I think that’s one interpretation of that passage, yes.”
“I got a few pages into Waiting for Godot this morning, too. You didn’t tell me it was a play,” Dean says, rooting through the Rabbit’s engine.
“Did I neglect to mention that? I apologize. Yes, it’s a play,” Castiel replies, voice drifting over to where Dean’s got his head buried in the Volkswagen. “One of the community theatres put on a production of it a few years back. It was...about as good as you’d expect, being a community production.”
Dean chuckles. “Well, I’m not gonna lie to ya, man-it’s pretty opaque so far.”
“Absurdist literature isn’t known for being easy to digest. ‘Oh, is that symbolic or just nonsense?’ I’m pleased that you’re at least trying, though. It’s more than Anna would do for years.”
“I’m gonna love telling her just how much I enjoyed Whitman, then,” Dean laughs.
“Which reminds me,” Castiel says suddenly. “The library is closed to the public today for quarterly reorganizing. There’s no need to swing by this afternoon.”
“Oh. Uh, okay,” Dean nods, slamming the hood shut. He finds himself suddenly wondering what he’s going to do with his evening.
“But,” Cas adds, “we’ll be back open tomorrow. You should stop by in the afternoon, Dean.”
This statement is layered with a significant look that makes Dean jittery just thinking about it. He determines not to read too much into it, but damn if he doesn’t wonder if this is his break.
They spend the rest of the time talking about Slaughterhouse Five, which pretty much makes Dean’s afternoon. He gets Castiel’s car done in near-record time despite the distraction so the guy can get back to work. He manages to fix it up a bit too, which pleases him to no end.
“You’re done,” he declares, lowering the Rabbit back to street-level.
“Excellent,” Cas smiles. “Where should I pay?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dean shrugs, grabbing a new rag off a shelf. “On the house this time.”
Cas readjusts his glasses nervously. “You really shouldn’t do that. I don’t mind paying.”
“Nah, it’s cool,” Dean waves him off. “Consider it a thanks for keeping me entertained every afternoon.”
“Well, thank you,” Cas says.
“You’d better get back,” Dean says nonchalantly, holding the driver’s side door open for him. “Don’t want you getting in trouble with your boss. So, uh, tomorrow afternoon, right?”
“Yes, tomorrow afternoon. Any time after one,” Cas nods solemnly after he’s backed out of the garage. “Good luck.”
Before Dean can wonder what that’s supposed to mean, Cas has pulled out towards the intersection.
“Kid, I ain’t paying you to make doe-eyes at your boyfriend,” Bobby shouts from the depths of the garage. “Get your ass back in here and fix this Accord before the owner gives me a new breathing hole! I said it’d be done by four!”
Dean spares an extra moment to watch the Rabbit disappear into traffic, then grins to himself and heads back inside.
--
Chapter X: In which Sam Winchester does not play fair.
--
“Hello?” Sam calls, having stepped into an apparently empty BOOM that Friday afternoon.
“Gimme two shakes, Sam, I’m in the middle of something here,” Gabriel calls.
“What, too busy for me all the sudden?” Sam grins, wandering over to the window back into the kitchen to find Gabe piping decorative swirls of dark chocolate onto a tray of truffles.
“Never too busy for you, baby,” Gabriel replies easily, not looking up. “But the rest of the staff is off early tonight and if this stuff cools before I’m done it’ll be a pain. And I know how much you love to cause me grief, but since you eat enough of my revenues already, I’m hoping you’ll spare me this inconvenience.”
“Lies,” Sam scoffs. “I barely eat anything from here.”
That makes Gabriel look up, if only for a moment. “Now who’s lying? Three H-Bombs yesterday, a quarter pound of almond flak on Tuesday, and overall enough coffee to sustain a grad student the week before finals. You’ve run up quite the tab around here, Sam-for you, though,” he adds, throwing in a broad wink, “I’ll accept payment in sexual favors.”
“Well thank god for that,” Sam shrugs.
Gabriel glances back up, a look of confusion crossing his face. Sam blinks innocently, though, so he goes back to piping.
“Anyway, it’s your own fault,” Sam says. “You got me accustomed to your ridiculous candy. Now if I don’t stop in I’m all disappointed for the evening.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’re missing your daily bask in my awesomeness?” Gabriel offers, turning the tray to reach the other truffles on it.
“Or maybe I just miss the chocolate.”
“Hey, who’s to say my awesomeness is not synonymous with chocolate?” Gabriel counters, false indignation in every word. “I did create this shop, after all. I have spent every day of the past six years in this kitchen working with any number of fine cacaos and accouterments. I am so steeped in confections at this point that if you kiss me, I probably taste like chocolate.”
Sam frowns at him. “No, I’m sorry, no matter how much time they spend working with it, people do not actually taste like chocolate when you kiss them.”
Gabriel shrugs. “Wanna test that theory? I mean, in the interest of scientific research.”
“Oh, shut up,” Sam says, and skirts around a stack of ammo crates to get to the kitchen door. Gabriel barely has time to drop his piping bag and form a question before Sam’s pulling the shorter man up by the collar of his shirt and kissing him hard. He does not taste like chocolate. He does taste a little like old coffee, though. Sam finds he actually rather likes it despite this, which is something of a surprise. After an initial moment of stiff shock, Gabriel melts thoroughly into him, twisting his hands into Sam’s shirt and holding on for dear life. He nips lightly at Sam’s bottom lip as he pulls away, then grins like his birthday just came early.
“Easy enough for you?” Sam asks smugly.
“Like breathing,” Gabriel replies, and his smirk is kinda ruined by the way it keeps turning into a dopey smile. “Let’s do that again, because I’ve been waiting way too damn long for this moment to let it be over that quickly.”
Just then, the air-raid siren that Gabriel has hooked up the shop’s entrance gives a quick and blaring wail, followed shortly by a man’s voice going “...Hello?”
Both Gabriel and Sam snap their eyes away from each other and to the door that leads from the kitchen to the main showroom.
“We’re closed!” Gabriel shouts irritably, tightening his grip on Sam’s shirt like he’s afraid Sam is gonna skitter off now that someone else is around. For his part, Sam’s having trouble keeping a lid on his laughter.
“The sign outside said you were open,” the voice calls back, sounding perplexed.
“Weekday hours, we’re only open ‘til six,” Gabriel glares at the door.
A pause, followed by the beep of a cell phone. “…it’s five-thirty.”
Sam stifles snickers as Gabriel makes a strangled nnngh sound and thunks his forehead against Sam’s chest. “You planned this!” he mutters accusingly.
“I did not!” Sam laughs indignantly.
The man’s voice, again: “I need to get a gift for my wife. Our anniversary is tomorrow and she demanded chocolates from here. Something about an atomic bomb, I don’t know?”
“Hoisted on your own petard!” Sam cackles. Gabriel continues to beat his head against him and make irritated noises. “Go on-I’ll still be here when you finish keeping yourself in business. Can’t promise you won’t lose some stock if you leave me unattended for too long, though.”
“Stay outta the pistachio flak, that’s special order,” Gabriel grumbles, releasing Sam and smoothing his hair. “I will be right back.”
“Kay,” Sam smirks, snagging a truffle from the nearby tray and popping it into his mouth. It turns out to have a liquid caramel center lightly flavored with some orangey liqueur that is absolutely fucking amazing and Sam makes a surprised little moan and lets his eyes slip half-closed.
Gabriel whines, “That is not playing fair, Sam Winchester.”
“Better hurry,” Sam manages around a mouthful of chocolate.
“Fastest transaction ever,” Gabriel swears.
--
Chapter XI: In which Dean Winchester has had better days.
--
Saturday morning crawls by. Dean rolls out of bed around eleven to find Sam already gone. He feels like maybe Sam mentioned that he had plans of some sort, but damned if he can remember anything at all from last night except the massive headache he got from Waiting for Godot.
He watches ESPN and eats a mixing bowl’s worth of Lucky Charms, resolutely not thinking of Cas. He has a handful of errands to run before he can go to the library anyway-a stop at one of the dumps to look for usable junkers, a quick trip to the post office to pick up some specialty parts that just arrived for the Impala, and hell, he’s due for a haircut too.
By the time he eases into a parking spot at the library, he’s been not thinking about Cas so much that it’s starting to make him twitchy. It’s not until he gets out of the car, books in hand, that he realizes there’s no ugly little Rabbit in the lot. It makes him uneasy-why would Cas not have his car? But maybe he carpooled. Or something.
He wanders inside, disconcerted. Then, of course, he gets to the front of the library and Castiel’s desk is empty. Everything is neatly put away, the computer is shut down, and there’s a little sign reading please direct questions and requests to another station placed over his nameplate.
Dean just kinda stands there listlessly, not sure what to think. For a moment a blind worry seizes him-he fucking knew that Rabbit was a deathtrap! What if he’s hurt? Or sick? Or fired? Or-
“He’s not here, Romeo,” Anna calls from her desk when she spots Dean.
“Huh?” Dean replies, super-eloquently.
“Cas. He’s not here today. He never works weekends,” she shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Dean drifts over to her desk and folds his arms defensively, Leaves of Grass and Waiting for Godot tucked against his side. “He dropped by the garage yesterday and told me to come in, though.”
“Oh,” Anna says, frowning. “Um. Hold up. Michael would know if there was a schedule change.” She turns around toward the main office and waves an arm. “Hey, Michael! Did Castiel swap shifts for today?”
Michael, the head librarian, appears in the doorway. He leans over to peer at a whiteboard on the wall, then shakes his head. “No, he didn’t. Doesn’t work again until Monday, like usual.”
Anna grimaces. “Sorry, Dean,” she says. “He’s definitely not supposed to be here.”
For one brief, nonsensical moment Dean wonders if this is Castiel’s revenge for insulting the Rabbit. But that’s stupid, because they’d parted on pretty friendly terms, right? And there’d been the wink-wink-nudge-nudge look when Cas had mentioned that Dean should come in today. What if-what if Cas had cottoned onto the fact that Dean was into him and this is his way of telling him to back off?
Well, if it is, it’s a pretty crappy way to do it, Dean decides. What bullshit.
“Dean?” Anna says gently. “You okay? You need help with anything? I could look up Castiel’s number if you think it’s important.”
Dean shakes himself. “What? No. No, it’s fine. Here.” He drops his books on Anna’s desk and stalks out of the library.
His pride is wounded, and he’s confused as hell. The longer he’s confused, the angrier he gets. And-unfortunately for everyone around him-the angrier he gets, the more he sulks.
The next three days are not fun. Dean spends the rest of Saturday methodically dismantling a worn-out Oldsmobile lying around the garage, then all of Sunday in bed. When Monday rolls around, he comes home straight after work and is generally unpleasant to be around.
Sam barely sees him at all, except when Dean’s nuking himself some food-or stealing Sam’s. The extent of their conversations (from Dean’s end, at least) are monosyllabic answers and grunts. Dean, basically, is in a grade-A, top-of-the-line funk.
Being a good brother and all, Sam is suitably concerned. Being a younger brother and all, Sam is also way done with Dean’s emo bullshit.
(What? Don’t look at him like that. Concern came first, okay?)
--
Chapter XII: In which Dean Winchester does not recall eating his brother’s asparagus.
--
“What’s he doing here?” Dean scowls when he broods his way into the living room Tuesday afternoon and sees Gabriel sprawled on their couch, playing Xbox with Sam.
“We’re kinda going out now?” Sam replies, smashing buttons furiously.
“Whoo,” Gabriel adds distractedly, desperately smacking everything on the controller as his character dies painfully at the hands of Sam’s. “Well shit.”
“Bitch,” Sam grins, “you’ve got nothing on Dean. That was like taking candy from a baby.”
“Oh, ha ha, how many times do you think I’ve heard that one in my life?” Gabriel growls, scrolling through the stats screen.
“Fine, would you prefer taking candy from a short dude who blows at Halo?” Sam chortles while Gabriel sneers.
“Shut up, both of you,” Dean snaps. “Can we go back to the part where you’re apparently dating?”
“Would it help if we called it having loud, creative sex together instead of dating?” Gabriel asks, putting down his controller and smiling sweetly up at Dean.
“No, not really,” Dean replies, looking more capable of murder by the minute. “When’d this happen?”
“Uh...Friday?” Sam drawls, scrunching up his nose like he’s thinking about it.
“Wait, so you’ve been...whatevering...the candy-dude for four days already and didn’t think it was a good idea to tell me?” Dean frowns, hackles going up.
“Chill, man,” Sam says, putting down his controller as well. “I did tell you. Friday night. ‘Hey Dean, you’ll never guess what-,’ remember that?”
“No.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Oh for-I told you about this! Your head was just too far up your own ass to pay attention, I guess. I thought it was weird that you ate my roasted asparagus without complaint.”
Dean’s frown deepens. “I don’t remember that either.”
Gabriel gives Sam a significant look, and Sam shrugs before addressing Dean again, “I dunno, dude, you came into the kitchen with your nose stuck in Waiting for Godot, grunted at me, and stole like half my dinner. You’ve been really out of it, man. I’m worried about you at the garage. I mean, if I was spacey, the most I’d have to worry about is a papercut or maybe stapling myself someplace painful. I’m afraid you’re gonna get a leg electric-sawed off.”
Dean blinks. He still doesn’t remember that actually happening, but it sounds pretty plausible. He actually doesn’t remember much at all between Cas showing up at the garage and realizing he was nowhere to be found the next day except for a lot of absurdist shit like how Estragon complained that Vladimir stank of garlic and wondering if the carrot was really just and carrot and getting the sinking feeling that if Godot never came maybe nobody else ever would either. Forget Stephen King-fucking Samuel Beckett. And maybe he has been in something of a funk since Saturday. Shaking his head to clear out the fog, he mutters, “What? No, I’m fine, Sammy. It’s no big deal. I’m, uh, gonna go lie down for a while until dinner.” He levels a halfhearted glare at Gabriel. “Don’t you goddamn dare make a mess of my couch or so help me I’ll turn you inside out.”
Gabriel raises an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t that just make more of a mess?”
“Yeah, but that one’d be worthwhile,” Dean grumbles, stumbling off to his room.
“Wow,” Gabriel whistles once Dean’s door is safely shut.
“I told you, man. I told you,” Sam says, shaking his head. “Something is up with him. At least on Friday he was happy-distracted. Now he’s just pissy all the time, like he got left on the curb on prom night.”
“You think maybe he did?” Gabriel asks, picking up his controller and cycling through match choices.
Sam shrugs. “I dunno. He’s not talking to me about anything important. Hell, I’ve never even gotten a proper confession outta him that he is interested in somebody.”
“Uh, obviously,” Gabriel snorts.
“Yeah yeah, I know,” Sam says with a wave of his hand as he snags his own controller. “Dean’s pretty transparent. Give me fifteen minutes-I am formulating a battle plan. But, in the meantime! Best to three, loser bottoms tonight?”
“Ugh,” Gabriel groans, slouching back against the couch. “I’m totally fucked.”
“Probably,” Sam grins toothily.
Gabriel stares at him for a long moment, a look of absolute disapproval on his face. “That was just bad.”
--
Chapter XIII: In which Dean Winchester is well-fed but deceived.
--
“Yo, Dean!”
Dean pretends not to hear anything, just smashes his face deeper into his pillows. It’s murky-dark in his room and just the right temperature and he is quite fine with not getting up until tomorrow, even though he’s vaguely aware that he’s fully clothed and he’ll be sorry in the morning if he sleeps like that.
“Dean, get up. Dinner.”
“What we having?” Dean garbles into his pillow, with the end result that the noise that reaches Sam on the other side of the door sounds nothing like what we having.
Sam, bless him, has been fluent in Deanlish for twenty-six years now, though, so he thumps on his brother’s door again and says, “Burgers. Get up.” He’d open the door and bodily drag Dean out, but one of the unspoken rules of living with each other as adults is that you do not open the door. Strict adherence to this rule earlier in his life would’ve kept Sam from a lot of mental scarring.
Okay, burgers sound pretty good. Dean just hopes they’re not the crappy veggie kind Sam tried to trick him into eating once. That had been one of the worst food-related incidents in Dean’s life, and with their dad raising them pretty much on his own after their mom died, there had been quite a few. John Winchester had excelled in many different areas, but cooking had never been one of them. But burgers, as long as they are made out of meat, are pretty hard to fuck up, in Dean’s opinion. So he rolls out of bed, then groans when his back pops. Fuck this getting older shit.
When he opens the door, Sam grins. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
“Piss off,” Dean grumbles, shoving Sam out of the way and stumbling down the hallway. Okay, wow, it actually smells really good in here. Like real food and not take-out or microwaveable garbage, which instantly makes Dean suspicious. Sam can cook passably-he’d taken some sort of “basics of the kitchen” class as an elective during college-but he only makes shit like burgers or steaks or chicken or other, y’know, appetizing things when he’s either a) buttering Dean up or b) apologizing for something or sometimes c) one and the same.
Dean squints and blinks when he gets to the brightly-lit kitchen and dining area, looking around just in time to see Gabriel pull a cookie sheet full of what, if Dean had to guess, he’d say were sweet potato wedges out of the oven and toss them lightly with some seasonings.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he smirks, grabbing a spatula and sliding a portion of the potatoes onto a plate next to what has to be the most goddamn gorgeous burger Dean’s ever seen.
The prospect of getting to eat that takes most of the heat out of Dean’s response of, “Too late, asshole, Sam beat you to that one.”
“So tell me,” Gabriel asks, handing a plate to Sam as he walks by before delivering Dean’s himself, “are you always this pleasant or is it just a sleepy thing?”
“What’re you talking about, I’m a ball of sunshine on a cloudy day,” Dean snorts. He lifts the top bun and sniffs. Shit, that’s awesome. “What is this?”
“Bacon bleu burger with cajun sweet potato fries,” Gabriel grins. “Used to be the specialty at the joint I was a pastry chef at before I bailed to start my own shop. Sam said you were a fan of red meat, so I thought it’d be a nice oh hey, I’m fucking your brother introductory meal.”
“Gabriel,” Sam clucks irritably, and crosses his arms over his chest like a scandalized woman.
Dean pauses mid-chew to glare, but only for a second. The food is amazing, everything absolutely beautifully cooked. After another noisy bite, he swallows thickly and looks thoughtful. “Okay,” he says after a minute. “If this is, like, the modern version of offering a sheep for Sam’s virginity, I am completely and utterly cool with it.”
“Dean!” Sam squawks, ratcheting his scowl up to eleven. Dean just loves how he sounds more indignant now than before, like as the older brother he’s supposed to defend Sam’s honor or something. Whatever, the kid needed to get laid, like, last week. It’s been for-goddamn-ever since Sammy got any action that wasn’t from his own palm. And also, wow, amazing the things beef could do for his mood. Sam better start taking fucking notes, man.
Shrugging, Dean takes another bite of his burger and garbles around it, “Seriously, have your way with him. Just not on any of my stuff.”
“Wow, that went way better than planned,” Gabriel says, pleased surprise coloring his tone. “I didn’t even have to break out the blackberry cobbler.”
Dean shakes his head, slurping at some of the juices trying to escape down his chin (seriously, eating this damn burger is becoming more pornographic by the moment), and warns, “Forget it. When I am done with this, that shit is mine.”
Sam laughs with his mouth full and belatedly tries to cover it with his hand. Gabriel snorts affectionately, like he doesn’t even think it’s all that gross and is more amused by Sam’s apparent shame.
Thank god Dean has meat to distract him from the fucking puppy love going on in their kitchen.
“Where’d all this stuff come from, anyway? I’m like ninety-nine percent sure we didn’t even have Wonderbread four hours ago, let alone these fancy-ass poppyseed buns,” Dean asks, starting to wipe his fingers on his jeans before Sam frowns and hands him a paper towel.
“We went to the grocery while you were passed out,” Sam says, geekboy enthusiasm overtaking his former bitchiness. “Gabe showed me this little local-product market a few blocks over. It’s awesome. Oh man, you should see the fresh produce section, it’s absolutely gorgeous. They have like sixteen different kinds of squash, Dean!”
Dean levels a flat look at Gabriel, who shrugs in a way that Dean is nearly certain means what can I do, squash gets him hot. He whisks Dean’s plate away and replaces it with a smaller one full of cobbler and melting ice cream, then plunks down a cold local lager from the fridge. “Taa-daa, the spoils of our crusade.”
“Okay, man, if you’re trying to get on my good side, you’re doing it right,” Dean sighs around a mouthful of hot cobbler.
Gabriel and Sam exchange significant looks, and Dean’s mind immediately screams trap, traaaaaap! and oh fuck, he shoulda known this was too good to be true.
“I’m gonna, uh, go,” Sam says, fluttering his hands a bit. “Do...something. Important. Something important.”
Dean glares after him as Sam fairly flees the room.
Gabriel tsks as he leans around the countertop to watch Sam’s retreat. “Oh, he’s smooth, isn’t he?”
“Super smooth,” Dean agrees. “Okay, man. Let’s just get this over with. You can have his hand if you guys wanna get, like, gay-married-it’s cool. Although I gotta say, I think you’re rushing into it. Four days isn’t enough time to really experience the true essence of Sam. He’ll bitch your ear off the first time you leave your socks any place but the hamper and he’s gassy as hell if you let him eat anything with beans.”
“Thanks for that,” Gabriel snorts. “But Sam actually wanted me to see if I could get something outta you regarding your attitude of late. I’m not sure how I became the damn confidante for this little drama you boys are putting on, but there it is. At this point I’m already involved, so we’re getting to the root of this so I don’t have to listen to Sam bitch about it anymore.”
“Peachy,” Dean sighs. “He’s got you totally whipped, doesn’t he? It’s been under a week, dude. You don’t have to be doing his dirty work just yet. Wait until you at least get to the freaky stuff.”
“I like you,” Gabriel decides, taking Dean’s plate and putting another huge scoop of cobbler on it before handing it back. “But you’re also a fucking moron.”
“Where’s my second compliment?” Dean asks, stabbing at the cobbler a little more viciously than strictly necessary.
Gabriel’s eyebrows creep up. “Excuse me?”
“You’re supposed to sandwich every negative comment between two nice things. So you like me. Well, that’s just awesome. Where the hell is my you’re also a fucking moron, but so damn handsome ending?”
Gabriel laughs. “The cobbler is your second nice thing, champ. I can take it back if you’d rather have a cheap remark on your looks, though.”
“Fuck off,” Dean growls, taking a large bite.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
They’re just quiet for a minute, Dean inhaling his dessert at the dinette table and Gabriel leaning against the breakfast bar, resting on his elbows. Finally, as Dean’s scooping up the last of the blackberries, Gabriel says, “So this guy you’ve been after, he turn you down?”
Dean feels his shoulders bunch up into a tight little ball of stress, the same knot they’d been in since god-knows-how-long (well, god ain’t the only one, because Dean knows too-since 2:30pm Saturday), the knot he’d thought had been loosening a bit. But despite that, despite his solemn oath to not talk about it, he finds himself shrugging, “Seems so.”
Huh. Sonuvabitch. He hopes Gabriel didn’t, like, roofie the cobbler or something. He squints at his plate, trying to decide if that’s even feasible.
“That sucks,” Gabriel commiserates. “What happened?”
Dean leans back in his chair, laces his fingers behind his head. “Nothing happened.” Oh there we go, he’s remembered how to not talk about it.
“Look, Deano,” Gabriel sighs, “how long did I carry a really blatantly obvious torch for your behemoth of a younger brother before that paid off? I get the fucking unrequited thing. Newsflash: you’re not actually a teenage girl. Stop acting like one and tell me what the hell is up. I’m not gonna go running to Sam with the latest 411 on you the minute we’re done here if you don’t want me to.”
Dean frowns, then repeats, “Nothing happened.” But this time he says it slowly, carefully, almost just to himself. Because it actually means something this time. Nothing happened. He’d gone to the library and Cas hadn’t been there, then he’d left and hadn’t gone back.
“Well thanks for that, but you’re gonna have to be a little more thorough for the uninformed,” Gabriel huffs.
“Uh,” Dean stutters. “Jesus, shit. You are not to repeat this to Sam, you got it, candy-man? I will tell him myself,” he growls, flexing his shoulders. “If I find out you beat me to it, I swear they’ll never find all of your pieces.”
Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Yeah yeah, you’re terrifying. Dish, Winchester.”
Dean sighs, and then pretty much word-vomits everywhere. “Fuck, I don’t know. There’s a guy at the library, and we’ve been talking, and he’s hot as hell, man, you don’t even know. But he also turns out to be really nice, and I start like, I don’t know, stalking him or what the hell ever. And we’ve been talking for like two weeks, and he’s been making reading suggestions to me and then we talk about ‘em like our own mini goddamn book club and I thought maybe we were going somewhere and then he came to the garage and was all like, ‘oh come to the library on Saturday,’ like, meaningful and shit. And I do, but he’s not working-and no, he didn’t take, like, a fucking sick day or whatever, he was never working-and so now I feel like this utter chump. Was he fucking with me? Was that his way of telling me to peace out? I don’t know, dude.”
Gabriel blinks, taking a moment to sort through this pile of drama and profanity to find the vital bits. “So what you’re saying is…you feel stood up, and you don’t know why.”
Dean wrinkles his nose. “I-I guess?”
“And it’s been half a week and you’re avoiding the library because of it, despite the fact that you’ve been there essentially every day for like a month.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Gabriel launches a dishtowel at Dean’s head. “What did I say? Fucking moron.”
Dean swats it outta the air and glares. “Hey! I am baring my soul here, you ungrateful bastard.”
“Have you ever, I dunno, considered asking him out? Or you know, expressing your interest in some definite way? Because it sounds to me like you made moon eyes at him for a month and then skedaddled the minute things didn’t go according to plan. You hear that saying, that the course of love never runs smooth?”
“...yeah?” Dean mutters.
Gabriel wings the other dishtowel at his head. “Well you aren’t even on the course! You’re off tromping through hedges and destroying Mrs. Baker’s prize azaleas with your giant unwieldy woe-is-me boots. Jesus!”
Dean is reduced to a rumbling pile of discontent at their dinette table, torn between wanting to separate Gabriel into tiny bits and wanting the earth to open up and swallow him. Neither option comes to fruition, unfortunately.
“Just go talk to him, Deanna,” Gabriel sighs with a wave of his hand. “See what happens. At worst you get a definite no and you send Sam to the library for whatever you need for a while. At best, well.”
Dean sulks.
“Anywho! If that’s all, I am done playing relationship guru for the evening, thanks. Go get non-fucked-up. I’m gonna go ravish your brother. Or, uh, I guess get ravished. Hm. Well, whatever. Hope you have some headphones.” He punches Dean’s shoulder on the way by, and it takes Dean next to no time to decide to be elsewhere for an hour or two.
--
Chapter XIV: In which Dean Winchester learns the importance of communication.
--
That’s how Dean finds himself back at the Shurley Public Library the next day after work, feeling for all the world like a dog with its tail between its legs. Sure enough, there’s Cas at his desk, sitting behind his little brass nameplate, stamping due dates on a stack of children’s audio books and handing them to a frazzled-looking mother.
He spots Dean as soon as he’s done, frowning as he stares at him over the top of his glasses. Well that’s not encouraging. Dean’s just debating the merits of full-on fleeing, maybe picking somebody up in a bar that evening and totally expunging Castiel from memory, when the librarian crooks two fingers at him in a get over here motion.
“Dean,” Castiel sighs when he gets within quiet speaking distance, and his voice is exasperated but undoubtedly fond. Which, okay, strange. “Where have you been?”
“Licking my wounds?” Dean shrugs in what he hopes is only a mildly bitter way.
“Licking your wou-what for?” Cas asks, confusion coloring his tone. “It couldn’t have gone that badly. Anna just glared at me when I asked what happened, but Michael said you were barely here at all-that you simply dropped off your books and left.”
Dean scoffs. “Why would I have stuck around, man? You weren’t here.”
“Anna?” Castiel says, giving him a significant look, and oh jesus christ, Dean is just about sick to death of significant looks at this point. He never seems to interpret them correctly.
Tossing up his hands, he sighs deeply. “Okay, you’ve lost me. What about Anna, now?”
Castiel looks a little taken aback. “I was hoping you’d take the opportunity to talk to Anna without my interference.”
Dean purses his lips, thinks about that for a minute. “Nope, still lost. Talk to Anna about what?”
Castiel’s fingers dig into his blotter as he makes a thoroughly frustrated expression. “I don’t know, whatever it is men talk about with women they’re interested in. Ask her out for a beer or something.”
“Waaait,” Dean says, with the sinking feeling that things are finally starting to fall into place. “Wait wait wait. You thought I’d been hanging around for Anna? You sent me here on Saturday to try to hook up with Anna?”
“...yes?” Cas offers.
“Oh hell, and I’m the one who got the speech last night. Look, Anna’s great. Real nice. An all-around awesome girl. But I’m not interested in her.”
“Oh,” Castiel replies, sitting back a little. “I’m sorry, I just assumed-”
“It’s you,” Dean cuts in. “Look, sorry. But it’s you, dumbass. It’s been you this whole time. You’re kinda ridiculously attractive to me, and then I found out I actually like you as a human being and, uh. Shit. This is coming out wrong. Okay, let me try again. Oh, hey there, dude I am interested in. You wanna, like, go grab a beer or something? In a totally non-platonic way?”
Cas lets out a surprised breath and blinks up at Dean. “You’re joking.”
Dean freezes, all that nervous energy turning straight to terror. Okay, so maybe he was wrong. Maybe coming here was a terrible idea. Maybe now would be the perfect time for backtracking. One thing’s for sure, though-he’s going to strangle Gabriel.
“Well, all right,” Cas says, pushing back his chair and standing. “That’s-good. That’s fantastic.” He makes this sound that really wants to be a chuckle but dies about halfway through. “I, um. You’ll have to forgive me, it’s just. I’m really terrible at this. The last person I was interested in turned out to not actually like men, so I’m perhaps overly cautious. Anna did mention her suspicions concerning your attentions, but I suppose I didn’t really give them much credence.” He pauses, his fingers drumming against his blotter. “And, again, I’m sorry-I tend resort to unfortunately stiff language when I’m nervous.”
Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to hone in on just what direction this conversation had bounded off to. He has the sinking suspicion that this is what Gabriel felt like last night, and he can’t believe he’s empathizing with the guy who’s sleeping with his little brother. “So, wait. What’s happening here is that we have this mutual...thing...going on but you were worried that you were having another big gay crush on a straight dude?”
“Something like that?” Cas grimaces. “It’s not like your actions weren’t open to interpretation, though.”
“Forget my actions!” Dean counters, voice getting progressively louder. “I want to go back to the part where we are apparently on the same page, thing-wise!”
“Volume!” Cas shushes him.
Dean instantly clams up. They just kinda look at each other for a minute, separated by Castiel’s desk. Dean feels himself start to grin. Well goddamn. Okay, granted, it coulda worked out better a little earlier on. But everything seems to be headed in a pretty awesome direction after all-a direction that may actually lead to Dean getting to perform obscene acts with Cas’s tie and make a hell of a lot of librarian jokes while doing so.
As if Dean’s grin is infectious, soon enough one begins to appear on Cas as well. “So we’re on the same page?”
Dean barks out a surprised laugh. “Yeah, man, I think so. That’s pretty sweet, I gotta say.”
“Are you guys gonna, like, kiss now?” Todd asks, watching them attentively from one of the computer stations.
“I’m sorry, did you want to play Oregon Trail or not?” Castiel says archly after the moment it takes them both to remember that oh yeah, they’re in public.
“Shutting up,” Todd chirps, sliding in his chair to face his monitor.
“That kid is totally the sort that’d shoot fifteen buffalo knowing he could only carry two hundred pounds of meat back,” Dean snorts.
“Nnn,” Castiel sort-of agrees as he snags the fabric of one of Dean’s sleeves and starts dragging him away. Dean follows happily enough. As they pass Anna’s desk, she mouths oh thank god at Dean, who can’t help but frown at her in return. But before he knows it he’s in some sort of little break room and Cas is slamming the door shut. And then pressing him against it. With a surprising amount of insistence.
“You’re a bit more aggressive than I imagined,” Dean notes mildly. “That’s also pretty sweet.”
Castiel has his hands wrapped around Dean’s biceps and is staring at him contemplatively over the top of his glasses. “I’ll complain to you about American Library Association policies.”
“I don’t know what that entails, but okay,” Dean nods.
Cas frowns lightly. “I may bring up dense literary theory at dinner parties and not realize nobody cares.”
“I can help change the subject,” Dean offers.
“I have an unhealthy obsession with making sure Wikipedia articles are properly cited.”
Dean raises both eyebrows. “Facts are always good.”
At this point Castiel looks like he’s grasping for any reason for this not to work. “I’m not giving up my car.”
“I can deal,” Dean shrugs.
“I am absolutely helpless at book sales,” Cas adds. “I rescue them and keep them in boxes and on shelves and next to my bed. You will possibly drown in books.”
“I come home half the time with my skin and clothes grease-black,” Dean counters. “And smelling like burnt oil. I cuss too much and I have communication issues and I live with my ridiculous brother and he has this brand-new ridiculous boyfriend and it’ll be loud every time you come over.”
Castiel thinks about this for a moment, his thumbs swirling lightly against Dean’s arms. “Fair enough,” he says finally.
And then he kisses him.
--
Chapter XV: In which Dean Winchester stars in an epilogue.
--
“...and then the only thing left is the dad’s bloody wallet, because the lions ate them,” Dean grins.
“That’s sick,” Todd says appreciatively.
“Your mother’s here,” Castiel states, appearing behind them. He watches Todd jog off before frowning down at Dean, who is sprawled across one of the couches. “Stop fraternizing with the enemy.”
“You can’t fool me,” Dean smirks. “You like him.”
“Nnn,” Cas shrugs.
They’ve been an item for a month and a half now, and it’s been going pretty awesome, if Dean does say so himself. He still spends most of his evenings at the library, but now he gets to go home with the hot librarian at the end of the day. Which, total improvement over how his evenings used to go. And like half the time his baby brother’s obnoxious boyfriend has made some sort of amazing meal and there’s always a ton of leftovers, so he gets to have dinner and hang out with Cas, who-by the way-gets along famously with Sam. They basically nerdgasmed at each other for a full hour the first time they met, which Dean would call a total success, so okay.
Anna had come up to him the day after he and Cas had discovered they were actually into each other and told him that she a) was really happy for them, b) had totally told Cas that it was him Dean was after and not herself, and c) loves Cas more than anyone outside of her own family and that if he doesn’t get treated right, she’ll force-feed Dean his own dick. Somehow he doesn’t doubt that in the least.
He hangs around, engrossed in some book by Neil Gaiman that he’d picked up off of Castiel’s bedside table that morning, while the activity at the library winds down around him. Finally, eight rolls past and Cas locks the front doors. Dean puts down the book while he watches him go through the closing checklist; he bids Michael and Anna good night as they head home. Soon it’s just the two of them in the library.
“Whaddya wanna do tonight?” Dean asks, watching Cas shut down the last of the computers. “We can’t go back to my place, Sam’s called it for the evening. Apparently Gabe managed to, and I quote, ‘beat him at Halo for once,’ which I’m almost positive is code for something I really do not wanna dwell on.”
Castiel grimaces a bit, then hits the main switch. The entire central area of the library is thrown into darkness, with only the glow from the exit signs providing any light. “I have some ideas,” he says, and Dean sees him mostly as a dark shape as he stalks over to the couch.
Suddenly Dean has a lapful of warm, solid librarian. He voices his approval when Cas runs his blunt fingers through his hair, then catches Dean’s mouth with his own. Dean shoves Cas’s glasses to the top of his head, up out of the way, and proceeds to give as good as he’s getting. Before long he’s fiddled open the buttons on that damn waistcoat and has his hands running down the hot stretch of Castiel’s sides, the thin dress shirt feeling like almost nothing.
Cas rocks against him deliciously, and in his last coherent moment Dean thinks back to Mr. Byler and Castiel’s smile and how this whole thing started.
Thank god for that damn librarian kink-that’s all he’s got to say about this whole business.
End.
MASTERPOST | PART ONE | PART TWO | NOTES AND THANKS
--
“Oh hey, look who’s back!” Gabriel calls from across the shop when Sam walks in. “How go things on the Dean front?”
“He came home last night with Leaves of Grass,” Sam says, no small look of horror crossing his face. “My life is officially weird.”
“Oh gross, not that book! One of my least favorites,” Gabriel grimaces.
Sam is taken slightly aback. “You’ve read Walt Whitman?”
“Actually, no,” Gabriel shrugs. “I was just trying that whole commiserating thing on for size. They didn’t really cover too much literature in culinary school. I can carve an apple into a swan in under a minute, though. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
Sam makes a noncommittal noise, then says, “It’s just been weird, man. Over the weekend it was I Am Legend, then on Monday a collection of Lovecraft short stories. Which, okay, strange-but he was really into Ray Bradbury when he was a kid, so it’s not a huge leap, right? But last night he came home with Leaves of Grass and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. That is not normal Dean fare, I’m sorry. In fact, I’ve never seen somebody willingly read either of those who wasn’t either deeply invested in literature or a total pretentious douche.”
“Kaaay,” Gabriel replies, elongating the word in a way that very clearly says and your point is?.
Sam scowls. “So what I’m thinking, right, is that on Monday I’m going to run an errand to the library and see what’s been going on.”
Gabriel shrugs. “I’m always up for subterfuge, don’t get me wrong. But have you tried, y’know, talking to him about it lately?”
“I’m sorry, did I not show you the bruises he gave me last week when I asked?” Sam bitches. “I’m not bringing it up again so bluntly. Dean’s a fucking mule, Gabe. Both in stubbornness and in the strength of his kicks. No thanks.”
“You called me Gabe,” Gabriel says, a surprised smile taking up residence on his face.
“So? You call me Sammy all the time. Despite me asking you not to,” Sam frowns.
“Nicknames are a sign of affection,” Gabriel explains, peering around Sam at the large group of women that had just entered the shop.
Sam rolls his eyes. “It’s cute how you grasp at straws like that.”
“Ha, and now I’m cute!” Gabriel hands a stack of paperboard boxes to one of his assistants, and Sam can tell he’s getting a bit distracted. It’s a pretty big number of customers at once. “This is a good day so far, I gotta say. But a word to the wise, Sammy-I’m gonna guess that’s a bridal party, so it’s duck-and-cover time.”
Sam steps aside slightly and a middle-aged woman takes his place at the counter. Sam sips at the coffee Gabriel’d set out for him when he’d showed up, just watching the commotion.
It was true, he had called the guy Gabe. It’d just seemed like the thing to do, okay? It’s kinda weird, actually, how much he’s grown to enjoy stopping into BOOM every day after work. At first it was just under the pretense of talking about Dean to someone who was on his side, but he’s finding he actually-gasp-enjoys Gabriel’s company. Which is something he’s never gonna admit, least of all to Gabriel himself, because the guy would just become insufferable.
Speaking of whom. As Sam watches, Gabriel manages to charm his way straight into the lady’s good graces. Well, the chocolate probably helps pave the way, but Gabe is laying it on pretty thick. It’s surprising, really, because where his comments needle at Sam, they seem to just endear him to the woman. He’s busy plying her with the almond-based A-Bombs while his staff runs around trying to fill orders from the rest of the group.
“These are wonderful,” the woman tells him. “My anniversary is this weekend, and I’m telling my husband these are an absolutely vital gift.”
Gabriel takes a moment to waggle his eyebrows at Sam, which earns him a disbelieving snort. Somehow, through a combination of enthusiasm and free samples, he gets the woman to buy herself a dozen bombs that day anyway, with the promise that she’ll share them with the other ladies.
Sam watches him tear through the rest of the party, charisma going full blast. It’s sight to behold. But the longer Sam observes, the more he notices differences in Gabriel’s attitudes. He’s in full-on shop-owner mode now-he’s laughing and joking and selling everything up. It seems strange somehow. Like it’s coming too easily, like it’s a smooth and polished thing. So what does that make his little tête-à-têtes with Sam? Unscripted? Genuine? Sam’s always half-assumed Gabriel is just fucking with him. What if he hasn’t been?
Oh jesus. Oh fuck.
Sam’s just standing out of the way, watching the guy, and for the first time something like actual affection is spreading through him. That is ridiculous. He cannot believe he’s staring at Gabriel, that obnoxious little bastard, and actually considering...something. Something other than what they’ve been doing for the last little eternity.
Oh man, Dean’s gonna have a shitfit if this actually goes anywhere.
By the time he’s done panicking quietly to himself, the crowd is clutching various ammo containers and camo-boxes; a few are carrying hand grenades full of cocoa mix or rations of flak. Gabriel slumps against the counter as they head en masse for the door.
“Look at you, being all salesmanship guy,” Sam comments after they’ve left.
“What, you thought I stayed in business without a little schmoozing?” Gabriel chuckles. “But it’s just my luck that I fall for the only guy immune to my charm.”
“Is that what you’re calling it now?” Sam muses, leaning back against the counter next to Gabriel and smiling. “Well, I don’t wanna make it too easy for you.”
“Sam,” Gabriel smirks, lacing his fingers behind his head, “if you made this easy it’d take away half the fun.”
Sam hmms into his coffee.
--
Chapter IX: In which the world is Dean Winchester’s oyster.
--
It’s a particularly warm Friday afternoon, and Dean’s changing the oil on a Camry, spacing a little and thinking about the weekend. It’s been almost two weeks since he and Cas first started talking on a regular basis, and he’s just about made up his mind to ask the guy out for a beer and some nerd-speak. Possibly a little hot-and-heavy action afterward.
Thing of it is, though, Dean thinks he’s actually starting to like the guy. He usually tries to avoid that like the plague, the liking thing. It hadn’t ended so hot the last couple of times he’d tried it, but god help him if he doesn’t like Cas. He’s nice but not too nice and he’s smart and he’s ridiculously hot and he doesn’t think Dean’s some sort of illiterate idiot, which people tend to do when they find out he’s a mechanic with a GED.
And he’s been going out of his way to talk to Dean, draw him into conversations between himself and Anna. Dean’s been having a fantastic time, reading the shit Castiel suggests and then going in the next day and having these big animated conversations about it. Twice now Cas has told him that he brings a unique view to the texts. And not in that bullshit yes that’s very nice but you’re wrong way, but in like a legit wow that’s interesting I never thought of it like that way. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it makes Dean feel kind of awesome. Like he’s contributing or something.
Long story short, stumbling upon Cas a month ago when looking for that digest has been one of the best things to happen to Dean in a long time. He figures if he can just ask the guy out and get a yes for an answer, life’ll be as perfect as it can reasonably get.
“Yo, Dean!” one of the guys calls, breaking his train of thought. “Some guy out front wants to see you!”
“Finish this up for me?” Dean asks Bobby, the owner of the garage. It earns him a glare, but Bobby scoots under the Camry anyway.
Dean wanders toward the main doors. Just inside the entrance to the garage is, to his immense surprise, an ugly little orange 1981 VW Rabbit.
“Hey, man!” Dean grins, wiping off his hands on a rag as he leans down to look into the driver-side window. “What’re you doing here?”
“Hello, Dean,” Cas smiles briefly. “It’s my lunch break and I thought perhaps I should stop by for a check-up.”
“Tune-up, you mean?” Dean offers.
“Yes, that,” Cas replies, coloring ever so slightly. Dean turns his head away to hide his smile.
“All right, can do. Hop out and I’ll get ‘er up right away,” Dean says. As soon as Cas is standing off to the side, Dean commandeers one of the lifts. Caleb gives him a dirty look, but whatever.
“Should I...wait somewhere?” Cas asks, looking stiff and out of place in his tie and waistcoat.
“No, dude, it’s fine,” Dean calls. “Just come over here by me. Stay out of the way and you should be a-okay.” Technically Cas should be in the waiting room, but hell if Dean doesn’t wanna keep an eye on him.
Popping the hood before he hoists the car, Dean starts poking through the Rabbit’s guts. It’s not in terrible condition-it’s obvious that Cas tries to maintain it to the best of his ability. But it’s also obvious that Cas is not a car guy. There are half a dozen things that are currently functional but just a few months from trouble. It takes Dean no time to decide to replace the most critical of the problem parts, then plan for a series of upgrades over the next few months. As it is, he’d be a little worried sending Cas away in the car, but he thinks he can patch things up pretty good for now with a minimal amount of trouble.
“Did you start with Leaves of Grass or Waiting for Godot?” Cas asks suddenly.
Dean pulls his head back out from under the hood. “Huh?”
“Oh,” Cas says, shifting awkwardly. “I probably shouldn’t talk to you if you’re working. My apologies.”
“What?” Dean blinks. “No! No, it’s fine. Did I what now? Oh, I started with Leaves of Grass. I’m sorry, man, but I wanted to punch that Walt Whitman dude in the face.”
Cas lets out a startled laugh. “Well, you aren’t the first person I’ve heard with that opinion. I’m sorry Anna insisted you take it.”
“Nah, no harm. She means well, I’m sure. But damn. ‘Song of Myself’? How narcissistic can you get? Was he having sex with his own ego at one point?”
Castiel continues to laugh. “I think that’s one interpretation of that passage, yes.”
“I got a few pages into Waiting for Godot this morning, too. You didn’t tell me it was a play,” Dean says, rooting through the Rabbit’s engine.
“Did I neglect to mention that? I apologize. Yes, it’s a play,” Castiel replies, voice drifting over to where Dean’s got his head buried in the Volkswagen. “One of the community theatres put on a production of it a few years back. It was...about as good as you’d expect, being a community production.”
Dean chuckles. “Well, I’m not gonna lie to ya, man-it’s pretty opaque so far.”
“Absurdist literature isn’t known for being easy to digest. ‘Oh, is that symbolic or just nonsense?’ I’m pleased that you’re at least trying, though. It’s more than Anna would do for years.”
“I’m gonna love telling her just how much I enjoyed Whitman, then,” Dean laughs.
“Which reminds me,” Castiel says suddenly. “The library is closed to the public today for quarterly reorganizing. There’s no need to swing by this afternoon.”
“Oh. Uh, okay,” Dean nods, slamming the hood shut. He finds himself suddenly wondering what he’s going to do with his evening.
“But,” Cas adds, “we’ll be back open tomorrow. You should stop by in the afternoon, Dean.”
This statement is layered with a significant look that makes Dean jittery just thinking about it. He determines not to read too much into it, but damn if he doesn’t wonder if this is his break.
They spend the rest of the time talking about Slaughterhouse Five, which pretty much makes Dean’s afternoon. He gets Castiel’s car done in near-record time despite the distraction so the guy can get back to work. He manages to fix it up a bit too, which pleases him to no end.
“You’re done,” he declares, lowering the Rabbit back to street-level.
“Excellent,” Cas smiles. “Where should I pay?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dean shrugs, grabbing a new rag off a shelf. “On the house this time.”
Cas readjusts his glasses nervously. “You really shouldn’t do that. I don’t mind paying.”
“Nah, it’s cool,” Dean waves him off. “Consider it a thanks for keeping me entertained every afternoon.”
“Well, thank you,” Cas says.
“You’d better get back,” Dean says nonchalantly, holding the driver’s side door open for him. “Don’t want you getting in trouble with your boss. So, uh, tomorrow afternoon, right?”
“Yes, tomorrow afternoon. Any time after one,” Cas nods solemnly after he’s backed out of the garage. “Good luck.”
Before Dean can wonder what that’s supposed to mean, Cas has pulled out towards the intersection.
“Kid, I ain’t paying you to make doe-eyes at your boyfriend,” Bobby shouts from the depths of the garage. “Get your ass back in here and fix this Accord before the owner gives me a new breathing hole! I said it’d be done by four!”
Dean spares an extra moment to watch the Rabbit disappear into traffic, then grins to himself and heads back inside.
--
Chapter X: In which Sam Winchester does not play fair.
--
“Hello?” Sam calls, having stepped into an apparently empty BOOM that Friday afternoon.
“Gimme two shakes, Sam, I’m in the middle of something here,” Gabriel calls.
“What, too busy for me all the sudden?” Sam grins, wandering over to the window back into the kitchen to find Gabe piping decorative swirls of dark chocolate onto a tray of truffles.
“Never too busy for you, baby,” Gabriel replies easily, not looking up. “But the rest of the staff is off early tonight and if this stuff cools before I’m done it’ll be a pain. And I know how much you love to cause me grief, but since you eat enough of my revenues already, I’m hoping you’ll spare me this inconvenience.”
“Lies,” Sam scoffs. “I barely eat anything from here.”
That makes Gabriel look up, if only for a moment. “Now who’s lying? Three H-Bombs yesterday, a quarter pound of almond flak on Tuesday, and overall enough coffee to sustain a grad student the week before finals. You’ve run up quite the tab around here, Sam-for you, though,” he adds, throwing in a broad wink, “I’ll accept payment in sexual favors.”
“Well thank god for that,” Sam shrugs.
Gabriel glances back up, a look of confusion crossing his face. Sam blinks innocently, though, so he goes back to piping.
“Anyway, it’s your own fault,” Sam says. “You got me accustomed to your ridiculous candy. Now if I don’t stop in I’m all disappointed for the evening.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’re missing your daily bask in my awesomeness?” Gabriel offers, turning the tray to reach the other truffles on it.
“Or maybe I just miss the chocolate.”
“Hey, who’s to say my awesomeness is not synonymous with chocolate?” Gabriel counters, false indignation in every word. “I did create this shop, after all. I have spent every day of the past six years in this kitchen working with any number of fine cacaos and accouterments. I am so steeped in confections at this point that if you kiss me, I probably taste like chocolate.”
Sam frowns at him. “No, I’m sorry, no matter how much time they spend working with it, people do not actually taste like chocolate when you kiss them.”
Gabriel shrugs. “Wanna test that theory? I mean, in the interest of scientific research.”
“Oh, shut up,” Sam says, and skirts around a stack of ammo crates to get to the kitchen door. Gabriel barely has time to drop his piping bag and form a question before Sam’s pulling the shorter man up by the collar of his shirt and kissing him hard. He does not taste like chocolate. He does taste a little like old coffee, though. Sam finds he actually rather likes it despite this, which is something of a surprise. After an initial moment of stiff shock, Gabriel melts thoroughly into him, twisting his hands into Sam’s shirt and holding on for dear life. He nips lightly at Sam’s bottom lip as he pulls away, then grins like his birthday just came early.
“Easy enough for you?” Sam asks smugly.
“Like breathing,” Gabriel replies, and his smirk is kinda ruined by the way it keeps turning into a dopey smile. “Let’s do that again, because I’ve been waiting way too damn long for this moment to let it be over that quickly.”
Just then, the air-raid siren that Gabriel has hooked up the shop’s entrance gives a quick and blaring wail, followed shortly by a man’s voice going “...Hello?”
Both Gabriel and Sam snap their eyes away from each other and to the door that leads from the kitchen to the main showroom.
“We’re closed!” Gabriel shouts irritably, tightening his grip on Sam’s shirt like he’s afraid Sam is gonna skitter off now that someone else is around. For his part, Sam’s having trouble keeping a lid on his laughter.
“The sign outside said you were open,” the voice calls back, sounding perplexed.
“Weekday hours, we’re only open ‘til six,” Gabriel glares at the door.
A pause, followed by the beep of a cell phone. “…it’s five-thirty.”
Sam stifles snickers as Gabriel makes a strangled nnngh sound and thunks his forehead against Sam’s chest. “You planned this!” he mutters accusingly.
“I did not!” Sam laughs indignantly.
The man’s voice, again: “I need to get a gift for my wife. Our anniversary is tomorrow and she demanded chocolates from here. Something about an atomic bomb, I don’t know?”
“Hoisted on your own petard!” Sam cackles. Gabriel continues to beat his head against him and make irritated noises. “Go on-I’ll still be here when you finish keeping yourself in business. Can’t promise you won’t lose some stock if you leave me unattended for too long, though.”
“Stay outta the pistachio flak, that’s special order,” Gabriel grumbles, releasing Sam and smoothing his hair. “I will be right back.”
“Kay,” Sam smirks, snagging a truffle from the nearby tray and popping it into his mouth. It turns out to have a liquid caramel center lightly flavored with some orangey liqueur that is absolutely fucking amazing and Sam makes a surprised little moan and lets his eyes slip half-closed.
Gabriel whines, “That is not playing fair, Sam Winchester.”
“Better hurry,” Sam manages around a mouthful of chocolate.
“Fastest transaction ever,” Gabriel swears.
--
Chapter XI: In which Dean Winchester has had better days.
--
Saturday morning crawls by. Dean rolls out of bed around eleven to find Sam already gone. He feels like maybe Sam mentioned that he had plans of some sort, but damned if he can remember anything at all from last night except the massive headache he got from Waiting for Godot.
He watches ESPN and eats a mixing bowl’s worth of Lucky Charms, resolutely not thinking of Cas. He has a handful of errands to run before he can go to the library anyway-a stop at one of the dumps to look for usable junkers, a quick trip to the post office to pick up some specialty parts that just arrived for the Impala, and hell, he’s due for a haircut too.
By the time he eases into a parking spot at the library, he’s been not thinking about Cas so much that it’s starting to make him twitchy. It’s not until he gets out of the car, books in hand, that he realizes there’s no ugly little Rabbit in the lot. It makes him uneasy-why would Cas not have his car? But maybe he carpooled. Or something.
He wanders inside, disconcerted. Then, of course, he gets to the front of the library and Castiel’s desk is empty. Everything is neatly put away, the computer is shut down, and there’s a little sign reading please direct questions and requests to another station placed over his nameplate.
Dean just kinda stands there listlessly, not sure what to think. For a moment a blind worry seizes him-he fucking knew that Rabbit was a deathtrap! What if he’s hurt? Or sick? Or fired? Or-
“He’s not here, Romeo,” Anna calls from her desk when she spots Dean.
“Huh?” Dean replies, super-eloquently.
“Cas. He’s not here today. He never works weekends,” she shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Dean drifts over to her desk and folds his arms defensively, Leaves of Grass and Waiting for Godot tucked against his side. “He dropped by the garage yesterday and told me to come in, though.”
“Oh,” Anna says, frowning. “Um. Hold up. Michael would know if there was a schedule change.” She turns around toward the main office and waves an arm. “Hey, Michael! Did Castiel swap shifts for today?”
Michael, the head librarian, appears in the doorway. He leans over to peer at a whiteboard on the wall, then shakes his head. “No, he didn’t. Doesn’t work again until Monday, like usual.”
Anna grimaces. “Sorry, Dean,” she says. “He’s definitely not supposed to be here.”
For one brief, nonsensical moment Dean wonders if this is Castiel’s revenge for insulting the Rabbit. But that’s stupid, because they’d parted on pretty friendly terms, right? And there’d been the wink-wink-nudge-nudge look when Cas had mentioned that Dean should come in today. What if-what if Cas had cottoned onto the fact that Dean was into him and this is his way of telling him to back off?
Well, if it is, it’s a pretty crappy way to do it, Dean decides. What bullshit.
“Dean?” Anna says gently. “You okay? You need help with anything? I could look up Castiel’s number if you think it’s important.”
Dean shakes himself. “What? No. No, it’s fine. Here.” He drops his books on Anna’s desk and stalks out of the library.
His pride is wounded, and he’s confused as hell. The longer he’s confused, the angrier he gets. And-unfortunately for everyone around him-the angrier he gets, the more he sulks.
The next three days are not fun. Dean spends the rest of Saturday methodically dismantling a worn-out Oldsmobile lying around the garage, then all of Sunday in bed. When Monday rolls around, he comes home straight after work and is generally unpleasant to be around.
Sam barely sees him at all, except when Dean’s nuking himself some food-or stealing Sam’s. The extent of their conversations (from Dean’s end, at least) are monosyllabic answers and grunts. Dean, basically, is in a grade-A, top-of-the-line funk.
Being a good brother and all, Sam is suitably concerned. Being a younger brother and all, Sam is also way done with Dean’s emo bullshit.
(What? Don’t look at him like that. Concern came first, okay?)
--
Chapter XII: In which Dean Winchester does not recall eating his brother’s asparagus.
--
“What’s he doing here?” Dean scowls when he broods his way into the living room Tuesday afternoon and sees Gabriel sprawled on their couch, playing Xbox with Sam.
“We’re kinda going out now?” Sam replies, smashing buttons furiously.
“Whoo,” Gabriel adds distractedly, desperately smacking everything on the controller as his character dies painfully at the hands of Sam’s. “Well shit.”
“Bitch,” Sam grins, “you’ve got nothing on Dean. That was like taking candy from a baby.”
“Oh, ha ha, how many times do you think I’ve heard that one in my life?” Gabriel growls, scrolling through the stats screen.
“Fine, would you prefer taking candy from a short dude who blows at Halo?” Sam chortles while Gabriel sneers.
“Shut up, both of you,” Dean snaps. “Can we go back to the part where you’re apparently dating?”
“Would it help if we called it having loud, creative sex together instead of dating?” Gabriel asks, putting down his controller and smiling sweetly up at Dean.
“No, not really,” Dean replies, looking more capable of murder by the minute. “When’d this happen?”
“Uh...Friday?” Sam drawls, scrunching up his nose like he’s thinking about it.
“Wait, so you’ve been...whatevering...the candy-dude for four days already and didn’t think it was a good idea to tell me?” Dean frowns, hackles going up.
“Chill, man,” Sam says, putting down his controller as well. “I did tell you. Friday night. ‘Hey Dean, you’ll never guess what-,’ remember that?”
“No.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Oh for-I told you about this! Your head was just too far up your own ass to pay attention, I guess. I thought it was weird that you ate my roasted asparagus without complaint.”
Dean’s frown deepens. “I don’t remember that either.”
Gabriel gives Sam a significant look, and Sam shrugs before addressing Dean again, “I dunno, dude, you came into the kitchen with your nose stuck in Waiting for Godot, grunted at me, and stole like half my dinner. You’ve been really out of it, man. I’m worried about you at the garage. I mean, if I was spacey, the most I’d have to worry about is a papercut or maybe stapling myself someplace painful. I’m afraid you’re gonna get a leg electric-sawed off.”
Dean blinks. He still doesn’t remember that actually happening, but it sounds pretty plausible. He actually doesn’t remember much at all between Cas showing up at the garage and realizing he was nowhere to be found the next day except for a lot of absurdist shit like how Estragon complained that Vladimir stank of garlic and wondering if the carrot was really just and carrot and getting the sinking feeling that if Godot never came maybe nobody else ever would either. Forget Stephen King-fucking Samuel Beckett. And maybe he has been in something of a funk since Saturday. Shaking his head to clear out the fog, he mutters, “What? No, I’m fine, Sammy. It’s no big deal. I’m, uh, gonna go lie down for a while until dinner.” He levels a halfhearted glare at Gabriel. “Don’t you goddamn dare make a mess of my couch or so help me I’ll turn you inside out.”
Gabriel raises an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t that just make more of a mess?”
“Yeah, but that one’d be worthwhile,” Dean grumbles, stumbling off to his room.
“Wow,” Gabriel whistles once Dean’s door is safely shut.
“I told you, man. I told you,” Sam says, shaking his head. “Something is up with him. At least on Friday he was happy-distracted. Now he’s just pissy all the time, like he got left on the curb on prom night.”
“You think maybe he did?” Gabriel asks, picking up his controller and cycling through match choices.
Sam shrugs. “I dunno. He’s not talking to me about anything important. Hell, I’ve never even gotten a proper confession outta him that he is interested in somebody.”
“Uh, obviously,” Gabriel snorts.
“Yeah yeah, I know,” Sam says with a wave of his hand as he snags his own controller. “Dean’s pretty transparent. Give me fifteen minutes-I am formulating a battle plan. But, in the meantime! Best to three, loser bottoms tonight?”
“Ugh,” Gabriel groans, slouching back against the couch. “I’m totally fucked.”
“Probably,” Sam grins toothily.
Gabriel stares at him for a long moment, a look of absolute disapproval on his face. “That was just bad.”
--
Chapter XIII: In which Dean Winchester is well-fed but deceived.
--
“Yo, Dean!”
Dean pretends not to hear anything, just smashes his face deeper into his pillows. It’s murky-dark in his room and just the right temperature and he is quite fine with not getting up until tomorrow, even though he’s vaguely aware that he’s fully clothed and he’ll be sorry in the morning if he sleeps like that.
“Dean, get up. Dinner.”
“What we having?” Dean garbles into his pillow, with the end result that the noise that reaches Sam on the other side of the door sounds nothing like what we having.
Sam, bless him, has been fluent in Deanlish for twenty-six years now, though, so he thumps on his brother’s door again and says, “Burgers. Get up.” He’d open the door and bodily drag Dean out, but one of the unspoken rules of living with each other as adults is that you do not open the door. Strict adherence to this rule earlier in his life would’ve kept Sam from a lot of mental scarring.
Okay, burgers sound pretty good. Dean just hopes they’re not the crappy veggie kind Sam tried to trick him into eating once. That had been one of the worst food-related incidents in Dean’s life, and with their dad raising them pretty much on his own after their mom died, there had been quite a few. John Winchester had excelled in many different areas, but cooking had never been one of them. But burgers, as long as they are made out of meat, are pretty hard to fuck up, in Dean’s opinion. So he rolls out of bed, then groans when his back pops. Fuck this getting older shit.
When he opens the door, Sam grins. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
“Piss off,” Dean grumbles, shoving Sam out of the way and stumbling down the hallway. Okay, wow, it actually smells really good in here. Like real food and not take-out or microwaveable garbage, which instantly makes Dean suspicious. Sam can cook passably-he’d taken some sort of “basics of the kitchen” class as an elective during college-but he only makes shit like burgers or steaks or chicken or other, y’know, appetizing things when he’s either a) buttering Dean up or b) apologizing for something or sometimes c) one and the same.
Dean squints and blinks when he gets to the brightly-lit kitchen and dining area, looking around just in time to see Gabriel pull a cookie sheet full of what, if Dean had to guess, he’d say were sweet potato wedges out of the oven and toss them lightly with some seasonings.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he smirks, grabbing a spatula and sliding a portion of the potatoes onto a plate next to what has to be the most goddamn gorgeous burger Dean’s ever seen.
The prospect of getting to eat that takes most of the heat out of Dean’s response of, “Too late, asshole, Sam beat you to that one.”
“So tell me,” Gabriel asks, handing a plate to Sam as he walks by before delivering Dean’s himself, “are you always this pleasant or is it just a sleepy thing?”
“What’re you talking about, I’m a ball of sunshine on a cloudy day,” Dean snorts. He lifts the top bun and sniffs. Shit, that’s awesome. “What is this?”
“Bacon bleu burger with cajun sweet potato fries,” Gabriel grins. “Used to be the specialty at the joint I was a pastry chef at before I bailed to start my own shop. Sam said you were a fan of red meat, so I thought it’d be a nice oh hey, I’m fucking your brother introductory meal.”
“Gabriel,” Sam clucks irritably, and crosses his arms over his chest like a scandalized woman.
Dean pauses mid-chew to glare, but only for a second. The food is amazing, everything absolutely beautifully cooked. After another noisy bite, he swallows thickly and looks thoughtful. “Okay,” he says after a minute. “If this is, like, the modern version of offering a sheep for Sam’s virginity, I am completely and utterly cool with it.”
“Dean!” Sam squawks, ratcheting his scowl up to eleven. Dean just loves how he sounds more indignant now than before, like as the older brother he’s supposed to defend Sam’s honor or something. Whatever, the kid needed to get laid, like, last week. It’s been for-goddamn-ever since Sammy got any action that wasn’t from his own palm. And also, wow, amazing the things beef could do for his mood. Sam better start taking fucking notes, man.
Shrugging, Dean takes another bite of his burger and garbles around it, “Seriously, have your way with him. Just not on any of my stuff.”
“Wow, that went way better than planned,” Gabriel says, pleased surprise coloring his tone. “I didn’t even have to break out the blackberry cobbler.”
Dean shakes his head, slurping at some of the juices trying to escape down his chin (seriously, eating this damn burger is becoming more pornographic by the moment), and warns, “Forget it. When I am done with this, that shit is mine.”
Sam laughs with his mouth full and belatedly tries to cover it with his hand. Gabriel snorts affectionately, like he doesn’t even think it’s all that gross and is more amused by Sam’s apparent shame.
Thank god Dean has meat to distract him from the fucking puppy love going on in their kitchen.
“Where’d all this stuff come from, anyway? I’m like ninety-nine percent sure we didn’t even have Wonderbread four hours ago, let alone these fancy-ass poppyseed buns,” Dean asks, starting to wipe his fingers on his jeans before Sam frowns and hands him a paper towel.
“We went to the grocery while you were passed out,” Sam says, geekboy enthusiasm overtaking his former bitchiness. “Gabe showed me this little local-product market a few blocks over. It’s awesome. Oh man, you should see the fresh produce section, it’s absolutely gorgeous. They have like sixteen different kinds of squash, Dean!”
Dean levels a flat look at Gabriel, who shrugs in a way that Dean is nearly certain means what can I do, squash gets him hot. He whisks Dean’s plate away and replaces it with a smaller one full of cobbler and melting ice cream, then plunks down a cold local lager from the fridge. “Taa-daa, the spoils of our crusade.”
“Okay, man, if you’re trying to get on my good side, you’re doing it right,” Dean sighs around a mouthful of hot cobbler.
Gabriel and Sam exchange significant looks, and Dean’s mind immediately screams trap, traaaaaap! and oh fuck, he shoulda known this was too good to be true.
“I’m gonna, uh, go,” Sam says, fluttering his hands a bit. “Do...something. Important. Something important.”
Dean glares after him as Sam fairly flees the room.
Gabriel tsks as he leans around the countertop to watch Sam’s retreat. “Oh, he’s smooth, isn’t he?”
“Super smooth,” Dean agrees. “Okay, man. Let’s just get this over with. You can have his hand if you guys wanna get, like, gay-married-it’s cool. Although I gotta say, I think you’re rushing into it. Four days isn’t enough time to really experience the true essence of Sam. He’ll bitch your ear off the first time you leave your socks any place but the hamper and he’s gassy as hell if you let him eat anything with beans.”
“Thanks for that,” Gabriel snorts. “But Sam actually wanted me to see if I could get something outta you regarding your attitude of late. I’m not sure how I became the damn confidante for this little drama you boys are putting on, but there it is. At this point I’m already involved, so we’re getting to the root of this so I don’t have to listen to Sam bitch about it anymore.”
“Peachy,” Dean sighs. “He’s got you totally whipped, doesn’t he? It’s been under a week, dude. You don’t have to be doing his dirty work just yet. Wait until you at least get to the freaky stuff.”
“I like you,” Gabriel decides, taking Dean’s plate and putting another huge scoop of cobbler on it before handing it back. “But you’re also a fucking moron.”
“Where’s my second compliment?” Dean asks, stabbing at the cobbler a little more viciously than strictly necessary.
Gabriel’s eyebrows creep up. “Excuse me?”
“You’re supposed to sandwich every negative comment between two nice things. So you like me. Well, that’s just awesome. Where the hell is my you’re also a fucking moron, but so damn handsome ending?”
Gabriel laughs. “The cobbler is your second nice thing, champ. I can take it back if you’d rather have a cheap remark on your looks, though.”
“Fuck off,” Dean growls, taking a large bite.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
They’re just quiet for a minute, Dean inhaling his dessert at the dinette table and Gabriel leaning against the breakfast bar, resting on his elbows. Finally, as Dean’s scooping up the last of the blackberries, Gabriel says, “So this guy you’ve been after, he turn you down?”
Dean feels his shoulders bunch up into a tight little ball of stress, the same knot they’d been in since god-knows-how-long (well, god ain’t the only one, because Dean knows too-since 2:30pm Saturday), the knot he’d thought had been loosening a bit. But despite that, despite his solemn oath to not talk about it, he finds himself shrugging, “Seems so.”
Huh. Sonuvabitch. He hopes Gabriel didn’t, like, roofie the cobbler or something. He squints at his plate, trying to decide if that’s even feasible.
“That sucks,” Gabriel commiserates. “What happened?”
Dean leans back in his chair, laces his fingers behind his head. “Nothing happened.” Oh there we go, he’s remembered how to not talk about it.
“Look, Deano,” Gabriel sighs, “how long did I carry a really blatantly obvious torch for your behemoth of a younger brother before that paid off? I get the fucking unrequited thing. Newsflash: you’re not actually a teenage girl. Stop acting like one and tell me what the hell is up. I’m not gonna go running to Sam with the latest 411 on you the minute we’re done here if you don’t want me to.”
Dean frowns, then repeats, “Nothing happened.” But this time he says it slowly, carefully, almost just to himself. Because it actually means something this time. Nothing happened. He’d gone to the library and Cas hadn’t been there, then he’d left and hadn’t gone back.
“Well thanks for that, but you’re gonna have to be a little more thorough for the uninformed,” Gabriel huffs.
“Uh,” Dean stutters. “Jesus, shit. You are not to repeat this to Sam, you got it, candy-man? I will tell him myself,” he growls, flexing his shoulders. “If I find out you beat me to it, I swear they’ll never find all of your pieces.”
Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Yeah yeah, you’re terrifying. Dish, Winchester.”
Dean sighs, and then pretty much word-vomits everywhere. “Fuck, I don’t know. There’s a guy at the library, and we’ve been talking, and he’s hot as hell, man, you don’t even know. But he also turns out to be really nice, and I start like, I don’t know, stalking him or what the hell ever. And we’ve been talking for like two weeks, and he’s been making reading suggestions to me and then we talk about ‘em like our own mini goddamn book club and I thought maybe we were going somewhere and then he came to the garage and was all like, ‘oh come to the library on Saturday,’ like, meaningful and shit. And I do, but he’s not working-and no, he didn’t take, like, a fucking sick day or whatever, he was never working-and so now I feel like this utter chump. Was he fucking with me? Was that his way of telling me to peace out? I don’t know, dude.”
Gabriel blinks, taking a moment to sort through this pile of drama and profanity to find the vital bits. “So what you’re saying is…you feel stood up, and you don’t know why.”
Dean wrinkles his nose. “I-I guess?”
“And it’s been half a week and you’re avoiding the library because of it, despite the fact that you’ve been there essentially every day for like a month.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Gabriel launches a dishtowel at Dean’s head. “What did I say? Fucking moron.”
Dean swats it outta the air and glares. “Hey! I am baring my soul here, you ungrateful bastard.”
“Have you ever, I dunno, considered asking him out? Or you know, expressing your interest in some definite way? Because it sounds to me like you made moon eyes at him for a month and then skedaddled the minute things didn’t go according to plan. You hear that saying, that the course of love never runs smooth?”
“...yeah?” Dean mutters.
Gabriel wings the other dishtowel at his head. “Well you aren’t even on the course! You’re off tromping through hedges and destroying Mrs. Baker’s prize azaleas with your giant unwieldy woe-is-me boots. Jesus!”
Dean is reduced to a rumbling pile of discontent at their dinette table, torn between wanting to separate Gabriel into tiny bits and wanting the earth to open up and swallow him. Neither option comes to fruition, unfortunately.
“Just go talk to him, Deanna,” Gabriel sighs with a wave of his hand. “See what happens. At worst you get a definite no and you send Sam to the library for whatever you need for a while. At best, well.”
Dean sulks.
“Anywho! If that’s all, I am done playing relationship guru for the evening, thanks. Go get non-fucked-up. I’m gonna go ravish your brother. Or, uh, I guess get ravished. Hm. Well, whatever. Hope you have some headphones.” He punches Dean’s shoulder on the way by, and it takes Dean next to no time to decide to be elsewhere for an hour or two.
--
Chapter XIV: In which Dean Winchester learns the importance of communication.
--
That’s how Dean finds himself back at the Shurley Public Library the next day after work, feeling for all the world like a dog with its tail between its legs. Sure enough, there’s Cas at his desk, sitting behind his little brass nameplate, stamping due dates on a stack of children’s audio books and handing them to a frazzled-looking mother.
He spots Dean as soon as he’s done, frowning as he stares at him over the top of his glasses. Well that’s not encouraging. Dean’s just debating the merits of full-on fleeing, maybe picking somebody up in a bar that evening and totally expunging Castiel from memory, when the librarian crooks two fingers at him in a get over here motion.
“Dean,” Castiel sighs when he gets within quiet speaking distance, and his voice is exasperated but undoubtedly fond. Which, okay, strange. “Where have you been?”
“Licking my wounds?” Dean shrugs in what he hopes is only a mildly bitter way.
“Licking your wou-what for?” Cas asks, confusion coloring his tone. “It couldn’t have gone that badly. Anna just glared at me when I asked what happened, but Michael said you were barely here at all-that you simply dropped off your books and left.”
Dean scoffs. “Why would I have stuck around, man? You weren’t here.”
“Anna?” Castiel says, giving him a significant look, and oh jesus christ, Dean is just about sick to death of significant looks at this point. He never seems to interpret them correctly.
Tossing up his hands, he sighs deeply. “Okay, you’ve lost me. What about Anna, now?”
Castiel looks a little taken aback. “I was hoping you’d take the opportunity to talk to Anna without my interference.”
Dean purses his lips, thinks about that for a minute. “Nope, still lost. Talk to Anna about what?”
Castiel’s fingers dig into his blotter as he makes a thoroughly frustrated expression. “I don’t know, whatever it is men talk about with women they’re interested in. Ask her out for a beer or something.”
“Waaait,” Dean says, with the sinking feeling that things are finally starting to fall into place. “Wait wait wait. You thought I’d been hanging around for Anna? You sent me here on Saturday to try to hook up with Anna?”
“...yes?” Cas offers.
“Oh hell, and I’m the one who got the speech last night. Look, Anna’s great. Real nice. An all-around awesome girl. But I’m not interested in her.”
“Oh,” Castiel replies, sitting back a little. “I’m sorry, I just assumed-”
“It’s you,” Dean cuts in. “Look, sorry. But it’s you, dumbass. It’s been you this whole time. You’re kinda ridiculously attractive to me, and then I found out I actually like you as a human being and, uh. Shit. This is coming out wrong. Okay, let me try again. Oh, hey there, dude I am interested in. You wanna, like, go grab a beer or something? In a totally non-platonic way?”
Cas lets out a surprised breath and blinks up at Dean. “You’re joking.”
Dean freezes, all that nervous energy turning straight to terror. Okay, so maybe he was wrong. Maybe coming here was a terrible idea. Maybe now would be the perfect time for backtracking. One thing’s for sure, though-he’s going to strangle Gabriel.
“Well, all right,” Cas says, pushing back his chair and standing. “That’s-good. That’s fantastic.” He makes this sound that really wants to be a chuckle but dies about halfway through. “I, um. You’ll have to forgive me, it’s just. I’m really terrible at this. The last person I was interested in turned out to not actually like men, so I’m perhaps overly cautious. Anna did mention her suspicions concerning your attentions, but I suppose I didn’t really give them much credence.” He pauses, his fingers drumming against his blotter. “And, again, I’m sorry-I tend resort to unfortunately stiff language when I’m nervous.”
Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to hone in on just what direction this conversation had bounded off to. He has the sinking suspicion that this is what Gabriel felt like last night, and he can’t believe he’s empathizing with the guy who’s sleeping with his little brother. “So, wait. What’s happening here is that we have this mutual...thing...going on but you were worried that you were having another big gay crush on a straight dude?”
“Something like that?” Cas grimaces. “It’s not like your actions weren’t open to interpretation, though.”
“Forget my actions!” Dean counters, voice getting progressively louder. “I want to go back to the part where we are apparently on the same page, thing-wise!”
“Volume!” Cas shushes him.
Dean instantly clams up. They just kinda look at each other for a minute, separated by Castiel’s desk. Dean feels himself start to grin. Well goddamn. Okay, granted, it coulda worked out better a little earlier on. But everything seems to be headed in a pretty awesome direction after all-a direction that may actually lead to Dean getting to perform obscene acts with Cas’s tie and make a hell of a lot of librarian jokes while doing so.
As if Dean’s grin is infectious, soon enough one begins to appear on Cas as well. “So we’re on the same page?”
Dean barks out a surprised laugh. “Yeah, man, I think so. That’s pretty sweet, I gotta say.”
“Are you guys gonna, like, kiss now?” Todd asks, watching them attentively from one of the computer stations.
“I’m sorry, did you want to play Oregon Trail or not?” Castiel says archly after the moment it takes them both to remember that oh yeah, they’re in public.
“Shutting up,” Todd chirps, sliding in his chair to face his monitor.
“That kid is totally the sort that’d shoot fifteen buffalo knowing he could only carry two hundred pounds of meat back,” Dean snorts.
“Nnn,” Castiel sort-of agrees as he snags the fabric of one of Dean’s sleeves and starts dragging him away. Dean follows happily enough. As they pass Anna’s desk, she mouths oh thank god at Dean, who can’t help but frown at her in return. But before he knows it he’s in some sort of little break room and Cas is slamming the door shut. And then pressing him against it. With a surprising amount of insistence.
“You’re a bit more aggressive than I imagined,” Dean notes mildly. “That’s also pretty sweet.”
Castiel has his hands wrapped around Dean’s biceps and is staring at him contemplatively over the top of his glasses. “I’ll complain to you about American Library Association policies.”
“I don’t know what that entails, but okay,” Dean nods.
Cas frowns lightly. “I may bring up dense literary theory at dinner parties and not realize nobody cares.”
“I can help change the subject,” Dean offers.
“I have an unhealthy obsession with making sure Wikipedia articles are properly cited.”
Dean raises both eyebrows. “Facts are always good.”
At this point Castiel looks like he’s grasping for any reason for this not to work. “I’m not giving up my car.”
“I can deal,” Dean shrugs.
“I am absolutely helpless at book sales,” Cas adds. “I rescue them and keep them in boxes and on shelves and next to my bed. You will possibly drown in books.”
“I come home half the time with my skin and clothes grease-black,” Dean counters. “And smelling like burnt oil. I cuss too much and I have communication issues and I live with my ridiculous brother and he has this brand-new ridiculous boyfriend and it’ll be loud every time you come over.”
Castiel thinks about this for a moment, his thumbs swirling lightly against Dean’s arms. “Fair enough,” he says finally.
And then he kisses him.
--
Chapter XV: In which Dean Winchester stars in an epilogue.
--
“...and then the only thing left is the dad’s bloody wallet, because the lions ate them,” Dean grins.
“That’s sick,” Todd says appreciatively.
“Your mother’s here,” Castiel states, appearing behind them. He watches Todd jog off before frowning down at Dean, who is sprawled across one of the couches. “Stop fraternizing with the enemy.”
“You can’t fool me,” Dean smirks. “You like him.”
“Nnn,” Cas shrugs.
They’ve been an item for a month and a half now, and it’s been going pretty awesome, if Dean does say so himself. He still spends most of his evenings at the library, but now he gets to go home with the hot librarian at the end of the day. Which, total improvement over how his evenings used to go. And like half the time his baby brother’s obnoxious boyfriend has made some sort of amazing meal and there’s always a ton of leftovers, so he gets to have dinner and hang out with Cas, who-by the way-gets along famously with Sam. They basically nerdgasmed at each other for a full hour the first time they met, which Dean would call a total success, so okay.
Anna had come up to him the day after he and Cas had discovered they were actually into each other and told him that she a) was really happy for them, b) had totally told Cas that it was him Dean was after and not herself, and c) loves Cas more than anyone outside of her own family and that if he doesn’t get treated right, she’ll force-feed Dean his own dick. Somehow he doesn’t doubt that in the least.
He hangs around, engrossed in some book by Neil Gaiman that he’d picked up off of Castiel’s bedside table that morning, while the activity at the library winds down around him. Finally, eight rolls past and Cas locks the front doors. Dean puts down the book while he watches him go through the closing checklist; he bids Michael and Anna good night as they head home. Soon it’s just the two of them in the library.
“Whaddya wanna do tonight?” Dean asks, watching Cas shut down the last of the computers. “We can’t go back to my place, Sam’s called it for the evening. Apparently Gabe managed to, and I quote, ‘beat him at Halo for once,’ which I’m almost positive is code for something I really do not wanna dwell on.”
Castiel grimaces a bit, then hits the main switch. The entire central area of the library is thrown into darkness, with only the glow from the exit signs providing any light. “I have some ideas,” he says, and Dean sees him mostly as a dark shape as he stalks over to the couch.
Suddenly Dean has a lapful of warm, solid librarian. He voices his approval when Cas runs his blunt fingers through his hair, then catches Dean’s mouth with his own. Dean shoves Cas’s glasses to the top of his head, up out of the way, and proceeds to give as good as he’s getting. Before long he’s fiddled open the buttons on that damn waistcoat and has his hands running down the hot stretch of Castiel’s sides, the thin dress shirt feeling like almost nothing.
Cas rocks against him deliciously, and in his last coherent moment Dean thinks back to Mr. Byler and Castiel’s smile and how this whole thing started.
Thank god for that damn librarian kink-that’s all he’s got to say about this whole business.
End.
MASTERPOST | PART ONE | PART TWO | NOTES AND THANKS