DVD Extra: Date Night
Title: Date Night
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Authors: peroxidepest17
Characters: Dean/Castiel, Sam
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3,540
Warnings: none
Beta: zatnikatel and nyoka
Note: While not a full episode, this belongs to our collection of DVD extras - outtakes, deleted scenes, missing scenes, and episode tags/codas that take place before, during, or following an aired episode. This coda follows Episode 15: Ghosts.
Author's Note: For zatnikatel and nyoka, for putting so much into this awesome project and for letting me tag along, wide-eyed and squeeful.
Summary: It's not a date.
~~~
"That's what you're wearing?" Sam says, eyes sweeping over Dean critically. He's using his infinitely unimpressed voice today, apparently.
Dean blinks at Sam in confusion, because he was not aware that hunts now had a specific dress code.
He looks down at himself for a moment, in case there's maybe a stain on his shirt that he'd neglected to see when he'd gotten dressed this morning (or, honestly, that he'd just put there, courtesy of the .29 cent bean and cheese burrito he'd microwaved himself for lunch at the 7-Eleven earlier). There isn't. All he sees are a pair of slightly oil-stained jeans, a well-worn (mostly) white t-shirt, and a gray flannel shirt. Last he checked, this is what they usually wear on the job, barring those times when they need to look official. And okay, one of his socks may or may not have a hole in it, but it's not like Sam can see that when Dean is wearing boots.
"What?" he asks after a beat, when his brother just continues to look at him with a mixture of pity and disappointment.
"That," Sam repeats, like that clears anything up. He waves vaguely in the general direction of Dean, all of Dean, as he says it.
"…Yes?" Dean answers, and is even more confused now. What else would he wear but himself? This feels like a trick question.
"Seriously?" Sam continues, and glances heavenward, like he can expect help from that quarter any second now or something. Good luck with that, Dean thinks.
"Seriously, Sam, what the fuck?" Dean prompts impatiently after Sam gives one of his patented sighs, shakes his head again, and runs his hand through his ridiculous hair like Dean has seen those designers do on HGTV shows when they're challenged to turn around tacky decorating jobs in badly-lit living rooms. "The house has potential, but you've cluttered the natural ambiance of the space with all this extra junk," or something like that. Lisa had been addicted to fix-it-up type shows like that and Dean had suffered through his fair share under her roof. Now that he thinks about it though, it kind of explains all the times she'd been willing to take him on as her own fix-it-up project too.
In the meantime, Sam puts his hands on his hips and raises his eyebrows at Dean, which makes Dean feel like the least gay one here right now. And that says a lot, because he'd had Cas's dick in his mouth this morning. "You're going out with Cas tonight, Dean," Sam reminds him.
Dean nods. That was the plan.
Because halfway back from California, Bobby had called and pointed them in the direction of this case with the clear intention of giving them something simple and old-fashioned, where they could actually come out of it looking like winners in the end. So far what they know is that people are going missing one a night every third night, only to have small parts of them show up again days afterwards, looking like they've been enthusiastically gnawed on by raccoons or something. After doing some routine questioning, Sam has come to the conclusion that their victims are either disappearing from a downtown nightclub called the Cat House, or a hipster Japanese tea café next door called Sentient Cha. All signs thus far seem to point to some sort of man-eating something or other that they'll have to find and gank, except no one knows exactly what that man-eating something or other is as of yet, or how to gank it. As it turns out, there are lots of man-eating things that fit the description. Hence the going out and investigating tonight.
Sam gives Dean a look that says he's just going to sit back and give his brother a moment or two to process exactly how he'd worded his last statement. More specifically, regarding how he had not included the word investigation in it.
Dean takes the full two moments plus some, and then sputters in indignation when he gets it. "Dude," he admonishes. "We're working. It's not a date." First of all, he and Cas are not the kind of guys who date. Dean is a-okay with admitting to himself that he's stupid gone on Cas at this point, but that doesn't mean dating in public is anywhere near their equation. Secondly, there's the whole, you know, man-eating thing eating people still on the loose.
Sam is immovable because Dean's argument holds no sway with him today. "Yeah, well. That doesn't mean it has to suck," he reasons. "You could still have some fun. I mean, you're going to a place where people actually do take their dates. You'll probably be stuck there for hours."
"We're going to a place where douchebags take their dates," Dean corrects. He'd been on the Cat House's Yelp page earlier today, okay. That's not the kind of place you take someone to get to know them, or whatever. That's the kind of place where you pay someone to join you and your "date" for a threesome. He knows, because it had been on one of the Yelp comments as a featured deal.
Five stars for service, apparently.
"At least the douchebags who go there put on respectable clothes before they go out," Sam points out.
Dean looks at his brother like he thinks he might be jumping on the crazy van again. "Jesus, Sam, you want me to bring Cas some flowers and chocolates while we're at it?" he says, before he can stop himself.
Sam grins, like all this teasing is totally worth the fact that he drew the short straw and has to watch over the café alone tonight. "Couldn't hurt. He seems to have a sweet tooth."
Dean would argue about how no amount of nice clothing, chocolates, and/or flowers will cover up the fact that the evening is more likely to end with one or all of them getting bloody and beat up than in any awkward handholding, I had a really good time tonight, moments in front of their room door, except Sam clearly cannot be reasoned with right now. Dean knows that look on Sam's face. It is not worth the effort.
Instead, Dean sidesteps his giant, crazy brother and heads to the door with an incredulous grumble. He needs to fill the Impala's tank up before they go to work tonight.
If he also stops and shells out eleven bucks to get her washed on the way back it's only because it had been a long, dusty drive out from California.
~~~
When he gets back to the motel a little while later and sees a confused-looking Cas holding a shopping bag from the Men's Warehouse down the street, Dean stops to glare at a smirking Sam in the doorway before grabbing his bag from the corner and grudgingly storming into the bathroom to put on some nicer clothes.
He comes out fifteen minutes later wearing his FBI jacket over a black button up and a pair of dark washed jeans that don't actually have any holes in them. By then Cas is changed and ready to go as well, and by that, Dean means his whatever-he-is-to-me-now looks like some sort of ex-boyband member in the gray shirt/vest/slacks combo Sam had obviously picked out for him while Dean had been gone. The two of them share a look that clearly communicates that they think Sam is insane before crowding into the car and heading to ground zero. Sam just looks pleased with himself the entire ride there.
~~~
The Cat House is exactly as classy as Yelp had said it would be, in that it is not at all classy. It is full of T&A, pumps mind-numbing bass driven club music nonstop, and serves weird, neon glowy drinks at fifteen bucks a pop from the bar. Cas looks acutely uncomfortable as they stand in the doorway staring into the sea of writhing humanity before them, and if Dean weren't also acutely uncomfortable in this setting as well, he might laugh a little at the look on Cas's face, the one that says this place is somehow worse than the whorehouse they'd hit in Maine.
To be fair, at least the whorehouse in Maine had decent enough background music.
On the plus side, looking around, Dean is pretty certain that whatever is killing and eating people has to be here rather than where Sam is. Judging by all the loose, happy partiers who are unguardedly sharing drinks, personal information, and invitations into each other's pants, this place must be date rapist/man-eating thing Disneyland or something.
"Well?" Dean begins, after steeling himself a little at the thought, "Where should we start?" He knows where he'd start, but he figures it's gentlemanly or something to let Cas pick the order of events for the night. Even if it's not anything near a date.
"Bar," Castiel answers without hesitation, and Dean does manage a small smile at that. Dude after his own heart, through and through. Destination thus decided, he bumps Castiel's shoulder companionably with his and takes the lead.
From there they try to make their way to the bar through the bobbing mess of drunk and dancing people without attracting too much attention to themselves, but after they nearly get separated by a pair of overenthusiastic sorority girls at one junction and then a couple of European dudes attempting to corral Cas off as the third to their unwashed threesome at another junction, Dean grudgingly grabs Castiel's hand and twines their fingers together. The look of relief on the angel's face as he does it is worth the squirming embarrassment in the long run, but even still, Dean can't help but hope Sam's trendy Japanese teahouse smells like unwashed hippy and is populated with nothing but obnoxious Weaboos, desu. Goddamned Sam.
Cas squeezes his hand as they walk, sticks close, and doesn't say a word about any of it.
~~~
After sitting at the bar and nursing two ridiculously overpriced glow-in-the-dark drinks for over an hour, Dean and Cas are pretty sure they are nowhere closer to finding their mystery man-eating thing. So far the only thing to set off any alarm bells in either of them had been a woman who had sauntered up to Cas, declared he reminded her of her father, and then proceeded to ask if he wanted to have a quickie in the bathroom after that. Dean thinks he might never forget the look of confused horror on Castiel's face as all the pieces of the grossest puzzle ever fell into place for him. But other than that, Castiel's super angel senses don't seem to be picking up any warning signals about any (literal) man-eating things from this side of the club. Dean has his reservations about some of the cougars eyeing them from the corner, though.
"Maybe we should dance," Castiel offers after a moment, and then coughs when Dean whirls to look at him, maybe a little too wide-eyed and panicky at the suggestion. Dean is definitely not a date person, but he is about a million times more a date person than he is a dance person. "It would give us a more thorough view of the building and an excuse to constantly survey the room from various angles," Castiel adds in a reassuring way, while still sounding completely reasonable at the same time.
And yeah. That makes sense, Dean supposes. You know, tactically.
Castiel looks bemused for a moment before wordlessly pushing himself up off the bar stool, clearly with the intention of heading towards the throng of partiers in the middle of the club.
Dean stares after him in confusion at that, and suddenly, he's even more panicky and wide-eyed than he'd been a second ago. "Dude, you meant dance with each other, right?!" he shouts after the angel hastily, and nearly falls off of his own stool scrambling to catch up.
Dean manages - barely - to reach out and pull Cas back towards him by his ridiculous boyband vest before the crowd can swallow him up completely. Cas turns, looks at him with questioning eyes, and then says, a bit too loudly over the music, "We should dance in the center of the room!"
Dean shouts, "With each other right?!" again, because he thinks it bears repeating. He tries not to look like an absolute psycho about it even though he feels like one right about now.
Castiel frowns. "Of course," he says without missing a beat, and in a way that clearly means he thinks Dean is being ridiculous. Dean huffs a sigh of something - relief maybe, though embarrassment is equally in the running for title of extreme champion of the night - and lets Cas drag him right into the center of the crowd. Dean tells himself it's because Cas wouldn't last a second in there by himself with all those grabby hands and strange people. Hell, Dean barely would.
Dean's phone rings in his pocket as they awkwardly fumble together in the center of the throng, but he's too busy wiping sweat off his palms and looking at a thoughtful Cas to hear it above anything else.
~~~
An hour and twenty minutes of dancing later and Dean has the beginnings of a pounding headache. His feet kind of hurt too - possibly because his FBI shoes were not meant to do the Electric Slide in - and everything is uncomfortably warm under the lights and the crush of strangers' bodies rubbing up against his. No one has showed up with the intention of eating anyone as of yet either, though Dean is fairly certain a MILF and her college-aged daughter almost got into a hair-pulling, eye-clawing fight over trying to catch a nibble of Cas. It had been equal parts hilarious and traumatizing to watch (and then forcibly break up).
"Anything?" he asks in Castiel's ear for the umpteenth time as he kind of shuffles Castiel's weight to the left so the angel can look over his shoulder again. Cas shifts his balance to lean further left, and Dean feels the angel's hands tighten just a little bit on his waist so he can crane his neck properly without falling into the people alongside them.
Dean sucks in a breath while Cas huffs in disappointment. "No," he says. "The sleazy gentleman you pointed out just now is really just a sleazy gentleman."
"Damn," Dean mutters, and turns Cas again, nudging a bit with his chest to get them a new eye line while his hands are clasped at the small of Castiel's back. "Thought for sure that guy looked like he ate people."
"Hmm," Cas answers and turns almost elegantly in Dean's arms so that his back brushes against Dean's chest and they can face the same direction again. Dean's hands automatically move to rest right over his stomach. "How about the woman with the inhumanely large mouth by the lounge?"
"I think that's just a bad botox job, Cas," Dean admits, chin unconsciously going to rest on Castiel's shoulder as he frowns at the lady with the stiff face and the unmoving lips again. "Why, you see something on her?"
"No," Castiel admits with a small sigh, and through his tone of voice, Dean can imagine that he's frowning like he wants her to be the man-eating thing if only because he can't imagine that she is human while looking like that. He laughs quietly at the thought and it vibrates through them both.
Cas turns to look at him when he feels it, eyes full of questioning. Neither of them stops swaying to the beat. "Is something funny, Dean?"
Dean grins at him. "Yup," he says, but doesn't feel like elaborating. He brushes his nose under Cas's jaw and nudges him back in the direction of the bar because he is hungry now, and getting way too comfortable on the dance floor despite his aching feet, the headache inducing noise, and the fact that he's probably irreparably sweated through his only decent clothes.
Cas obligingly lets himself be herded off the dance floor.
~~~
It isn't until they are both munching on some over-priced Kobe beef sliders and Dean is explaining why injecting poison into your face keeps you young that Dean thinks to check his phone.
Which has like, ten missed calls and one text message. He blanches immediately and flips it open, thinking that he is an irresponsible moron and that the man-eating thing must have been at the teahouse after all and Sam needed his help and Sam might be…
Just a standard bakeneko at the teahouse. Went down easy; I'm fine. Enjoy your date. Sam
Dean blinks at the text for several seconds while Castiel looks increasingly concerned from the seat beside him. "Dean? Is everything alright? Is something wrong with Sam?"
Dean sighs in relief and passes his phone to Cas, who puzzles over the message for a moment before nodding and flipping it shut. He hands it back to Dean.
"That little shit," Dean says after a beat, rolling tension out of his shoulders. At least the hunt is done. Apparently no one got eaten tonight.
Castiel looks down at the remnants of their sliders and fries. "Then there's no reason to remain here anymore," he suggests after a beat of silence between them.
"Yeah," Dean says, and quickly reaches for his wallet to pay their bill because he can't get out of here fast enough. This place sucks.
Cas wipes his fingers clean of ketchup and stands as well, clearly as impatient to get out of the Cat House as Dean is.
The music is too loud (and shitty), the food and drinks are overpriced, and everyone is either obnoxiously drunk, obnoxiously horny, or a little bit of both.
They straight-line it for the door once the tab is paid and they are free to go, the two of them never looking back for a second until they are out in the parking lot again, where it's much quieter and much easier to breathe. Cas sucks in a great lung full of warm spring air and looks sideways at Dean, clearly relieved. Dean thinks the same expression must echo back on his own face, because after a beat, they both grin a little and get into the Impala.
If it hadn't been for the company, Dean is pretty sure he would have gone nuts within the first fifteen minutes of being inside that place.
As it was, the company actually made the stupid place pretty damn bearable in the end, despite everything.
Suddenly he's not so keen on getting back.
"So," Dean begins casually as he slides the keys into the ignition. "Where to now, boss?" According to his wristwatch, it's barely eleven, and having a hunt under their (well okay, Sam's belt) where they all came out winners in the end is actually leaving him with a pretty awesome feeling in his chest. Dean clears his throat a little as puts the car into gear, arm slung over the seat back so that his hand is resting just above Castiel's shoulder as he turns to back out of the narrow parking space.
Castiel's brow furrows at the innocent enough sounding question. "Shouldn't we return to the motel?" he asks.
Yeah, that's what they should do. And obviously Dean has no idea what he's doing in waters like these, but he can't help but wonder all the same. "I dunno, man, I mean, I'm still pretty hungry and…"
He sees it in his periphery when Castiel's eyes light up inexplicably, just a tiny bit, but enough to make his heart trip a little over itself all the same. "I would like some coffee, Dean," Cas says softly, and Dean feels it when Cas turns his cheek into Dean's hand, which is still resting on the back of the seat, just above the curve of the angel's neck.
Dean finds himself grinning in the dark of the car suddenly, headache fading, feet no longer hurting, clothes no longer too hot or sweaty. "Yeah, okay. Sounds good," he says, and doesn't bother removing his arm then, even when he takes the Impala out of reverse and doesn't have the excuse of a shoulder check to fall back on anymore.
Cas doesn't seem to mind either way.
A few miles down the road they pull into an IHOP with its lights still on and no other customers inside. Dean orders bacon and eggs for himself and pancakes and coffee for Cas. They spend the next few hours nursing crappy (but reasonably priced) food and nudging each other under the table every once in a while. It's ridiculous and they know it, smiling quietly over their drinks while the graveyard shift's wait staff does their best to ignore how incredibly gay their only customers are being.
Afterwards, when they finally pull back into the motel parking lot, Dean still thinks he isn't a date person and that he never will be, no matter how surprisingly unsucky tonight had been in the grand scheme of things.
He figures he's just a with-Cas-person instead.
So far, it seems to be enough for both of them.
end
Next: Episode 16: Mad World
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Authors: peroxidepest17
Characters: Dean/Castiel, Sam
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3,540
Warnings: none
Beta: zatnikatel and nyoka
Note: While not a full episode, this belongs to our collection of DVD extras - outtakes, deleted scenes, missing scenes, and episode tags/codas that take place before, during, or following an aired episode. This coda follows Episode 15: Ghosts.
Author's Note: For zatnikatel and nyoka, for putting so much into this awesome project and for letting me tag along, wide-eyed and squeeful.
Summary: It's not a date.
~~~
"That's what you're wearing?" Sam says, eyes sweeping over Dean critically. He's using his infinitely unimpressed voice today, apparently.
Dean blinks at Sam in confusion, because he was not aware that hunts now had a specific dress code.
He looks down at himself for a moment, in case there's maybe a stain on his shirt that he'd neglected to see when he'd gotten dressed this morning (or, honestly, that he'd just put there, courtesy of the .29 cent bean and cheese burrito he'd microwaved himself for lunch at the 7-Eleven earlier). There isn't. All he sees are a pair of slightly oil-stained jeans, a well-worn (mostly) white t-shirt, and a gray flannel shirt. Last he checked, this is what they usually wear on the job, barring those times when they need to look official. And okay, one of his socks may or may not have a hole in it, but it's not like Sam can see that when Dean is wearing boots.
"What?" he asks after a beat, when his brother just continues to look at him with a mixture of pity and disappointment.
"That," Sam repeats, like that clears anything up. He waves vaguely in the general direction of Dean, all of Dean, as he says it.
"…Yes?" Dean answers, and is even more confused now. What else would he wear but himself? This feels like a trick question.
"Seriously?" Sam continues, and glances heavenward, like he can expect help from that quarter any second now or something. Good luck with that, Dean thinks.
"Seriously, Sam, what the fuck?" Dean prompts impatiently after Sam gives one of his patented sighs, shakes his head again, and runs his hand through his ridiculous hair like Dean has seen those designers do on HGTV shows when they're challenged to turn around tacky decorating jobs in badly-lit living rooms. "The house has potential, but you've cluttered the natural ambiance of the space with all this extra junk," or something like that. Lisa had been addicted to fix-it-up type shows like that and Dean had suffered through his fair share under her roof. Now that he thinks about it though, it kind of explains all the times she'd been willing to take him on as her own fix-it-up project too.
In the meantime, Sam puts his hands on his hips and raises his eyebrows at Dean, which makes Dean feel like the least gay one here right now. And that says a lot, because he'd had Cas's dick in his mouth this morning. "You're going out with Cas tonight, Dean," Sam reminds him.
Dean nods. That was the plan.
Because halfway back from California, Bobby had called and pointed them in the direction of this case with the clear intention of giving them something simple and old-fashioned, where they could actually come out of it looking like winners in the end. So far what they know is that people are going missing one a night every third night, only to have small parts of them show up again days afterwards, looking like they've been enthusiastically gnawed on by raccoons or something. After doing some routine questioning, Sam has come to the conclusion that their victims are either disappearing from a downtown nightclub called the Cat House, or a hipster Japanese tea café next door called Sentient Cha. All signs thus far seem to point to some sort of man-eating something or other that they'll have to find and gank, except no one knows exactly what that man-eating something or other is as of yet, or how to gank it. As it turns out, there are lots of man-eating things that fit the description. Hence the going out and investigating tonight.
Sam gives Dean a look that says he's just going to sit back and give his brother a moment or two to process exactly how he'd worded his last statement. More specifically, regarding how he had not included the word investigation in it.
Dean takes the full two moments plus some, and then sputters in indignation when he gets it. "Dude," he admonishes. "We're working. It's not a date." First of all, he and Cas are not the kind of guys who date. Dean is a-okay with admitting to himself that he's stupid gone on Cas at this point, but that doesn't mean dating in public is anywhere near their equation. Secondly, there's the whole, you know, man-eating thing eating people still on the loose.
Sam is immovable because Dean's argument holds no sway with him today. "Yeah, well. That doesn't mean it has to suck," he reasons. "You could still have some fun. I mean, you're going to a place where people actually do take their dates. You'll probably be stuck there for hours."
"We're going to a place where douchebags take their dates," Dean corrects. He'd been on the Cat House's Yelp page earlier today, okay. That's not the kind of place you take someone to get to know them, or whatever. That's the kind of place where you pay someone to join you and your "date" for a threesome. He knows, because it had been on one of the Yelp comments as a featured deal.
Five stars for service, apparently.
"At least the douchebags who go there put on respectable clothes before they go out," Sam points out.
Dean looks at his brother like he thinks he might be jumping on the crazy van again. "Jesus, Sam, you want me to bring Cas some flowers and chocolates while we're at it?" he says, before he can stop himself.
Sam grins, like all this teasing is totally worth the fact that he drew the short straw and has to watch over the café alone tonight. "Couldn't hurt. He seems to have a sweet tooth."
Dean would argue about how no amount of nice clothing, chocolates, and/or flowers will cover up the fact that the evening is more likely to end with one or all of them getting bloody and beat up than in any awkward handholding, I had a really good time tonight, moments in front of their room door, except Sam clearly cannot be reasoned with right now. Dean knows that look on Sam's face. It is not worth the effort.
Instead, Dean sidesteps his giant, crazy brother and heads to the door with an incredulous grumble. He needs to fill the Impala's tank up before they go to work tonight.
If he also stops and shells out eleven bucks to get her washed on the way back it's only because it had been a long, dusty drive out from California.
~~~
When he gets back to the motel a little while later and sees a confused-looking Cas holding a shopping bag from the Men's Warehouse down the street, Dean stops to glare at a smirking Sam in the doorway before grabbing his bag from the corner and grudgingly storming into the bathroom to put on some nicer clothes.
He comes out fifteen minutes later wearing his FBI jacket over a black button up and a pair of dark washed jeans that don't actually have any holes in them. By then Cas is changed and ready to go as well, and by that, Dean means his whatever-he-is-to-me-now looks like some sort of ex-boyband member in the gray shirt/vest/slacks combo Sam had obviously picked out for him while Dean had been gone. The two of them share a look that clearly communicates that they think Sam is insane before crowding into the car and heading to ground zero. Sam just looks pleased with himself the entire ride there.
~~~
The Cat House is exactly as classy as Yelp had said it would be, in that it is not at all classy. It is full of T&A, pumps mind-numbing bass driven club music nonstop, and serves weird, neon glowy drinks at fifteen bucks a pop from the bar. Cas looks acutely uncomfortable as they stand in the doorway staring into the sea of writhing humanity before them, and if Dean weren't also acutely uncomfortable in this setting as well, he might laugh a little at the look on Cas's face, the one that says this place is somehow worse than the whorehouse they'd hit in Maine.
To be fair, at least the whorehouse in Maine had decent enough background music.
On the plus side, looking around, Dean is pretty certain that whatever is killing and eating people has to be here rather than where Sam is. Judging by all the loose, happy partiers who are unguardedly sharing drinks, personal information, and invitations into each other's pants, this place must be date rapist/man-eating thing Disneyland or something.
"Well?" Dean begins, after steeling himself a little at the thought, "Where should we start?" He knows where he'd start, but he figures it's gentlemanly or something to let Cas pick the order of events for the night. Even if it's not anything near a date.
"Bar," Castiel answers without hesitation, and Dean does manage a small smile at that. Dude after his own heart, through and through. Destination thus decided, he bumps Castiel's shoulder companionably with his and takes the lead.
From there they try to make their way to the bar through the bobbing mess of drunk and dancing people without attracting too much attention to themselves, but after they nearly get separated by a pair of overenthusiastic sorority girls at one junction and then a couple of European dudes attempting to corral Cas off as the third to their unwashed threesome at another junction, Dean grudgingly grabs Castiel's hand and twines their fingers together. The look of relief on the angel's face as he does it is worth the squirming embarrassment in the long run, but even still, Dean can't help but hope Sam's trendy Japanese teahouse smells like unwashed hippy and is populated with nothing but obnoxious Weaboos, desu. Goddamned Sam.
Cas squeezes his hand as they walk, sticks close, and doesn't say a word about any of it.
~~~
After sitting at the bar and nursing two ridiculously overpriced glow-in-the-dark drinks for over an hour, Dean and Cas are pretty sure they are nowhere closer to finding their mystery man-eating thing. So far the only thing to set off any alarm bells in either of them had been a woman who had sauntered up to Cas, declared he reminded her of her father, and then proceeded to ask if he wanted to have a quickie in the bathroom after that. Dean thinks he might never forget the look of confused horror on Castiel's face as all the pieces of the grossest puzzle ever fell into place for him. But other than that, Castiel's super angel senses don't seem to be picking up any warning signals about any (literal) man-eating things from this side of the club. Dean has his reservations about some of the cougars eyeing them from the corner, though.
"Maybe we should dance," Castiel offers after a moment, and then coughs when Dean whirls to look at him, maybe a little too wide-eyed and panicky at the suggestion. Dean is definitely not a date person, but he is about a million times more a date person than he is a dance person. "It would give us a more thorough view of the building and an excuse to constantly survey the room from various angles," Castiel adds in a reassuring way, while still sounding completely reasonable at the same time.
And yeah. That makes sense, Dean supposes. You know, tactically.
Castiel looks bemused for a moment before wordlessly pushing himself up off the bar stool, clearly with the intention of heading towards the throng of partiers in the middle of the club.
Dean stares after him in confusion at that, and suddenly, he's even more panicky and wide-eyed than he'd been a second ago. "Dude, you meant dance with each other, right?!" he shouts after the angel hastily, and nearly falls off of his own stool scrambling to catch up.
Dean manages - barely - to reach out and pull Cas back towards him by his ridiculous boyband vest before the crowd can swallow him up completely. Cas turns, looks at him with questioning eyes, and then says, a bit too loudly over the music, "We should dance in the center of the room!"
Dean shouts, "With each other right?!" again, because he thinks it bears repeating. He tries not to look like an absolute psycho about it even though he feels like one right about now.
Castiel frowns. "Of course," he says without missing a beat, and in a way that clearly means he thinks Dean is being ridiculous. Dean huffs a sigh of something - relief maybe, though embarrassment is equally in the running for title of extreme champion of the night - and lets Cas drag him right into the center of the crowd. Dean tells himself it's because Cas wouldn't last a second in there by himself with all those grabby hands and strange people. Hell, Dean barely would.
Dean's phone rings in his pocket as they awkwardly fumble together in the center of the throng, but he's too busy wiping sweat off his palms and looking at a thoughtful Cas to hear it above anything else.
~~~
An hour and twenty minutes of dancing later and Dean has the beginnings of a pounding headache. His feet kind of hurt too - possibly because his FBI shoes were not meant to do the Electric Slide in - and everything is uncomfortably warm under the lights and the crush of strangers' bodies rubbing up against his. No one has showed up with the intention of eating anyone as of yet either, though Dean is fairly certain a MILF and her college-aged daughter almost got into a hair-pulling, eye-clawing fight over trying to catch a nibble of Cas. It had been equal parts hilarious and traumatizing to watch (and then forcibly break up).
"Anything?" he asks in Castiel's ear for the umpteenth time as he kind of shuffles Castiel's weight to the left so the angel can look over his shoulder again. Cas shifts his balance to lean further left, and Dean feels the angel's hands tighten just a little bit on his waist so he can crane his neck properly without falling into the people alongside them.
Dean sucks in a breath while Cas huffs in disappointment. "No," he says. "The sleazy gentleman you pointed out just now is really just a sleazy gentleman."
"Damn," Dean mutters, and turns Cas again, nudging a bit with his chest to get them a new eye line while his hands are clasped at the small of Castiel's back. "Thought for sure that guy looked like he ate people."
"Hmm," Cas answers and turns almost elegantly in Dean's arms so that his back brushes against Dean's chest and they can face the same direction again. Dean's hands automatically move to rest right over his stomach. "How about the woman with the inhumanely large mouth by the lounge?"
"I think that's just a bad botox job, Cas," Dean admits, chin unconsciously going to rest on Castiel's shoulder as he frowns at the lady with the stiff face and the unmoving lips again. "Why, you see something on her?"
"No," Castiel admits with a small sigh, and through his tone of voice, Dean can imagine that he's frowning like he wants her to be the man-eating thing if only because he can't imagine that she is human while looking like that. He laughs quietly at the thought and it vibrates through them both.
Cas turns to look at him when he feels it, eyes full of questioning. Neither of them stops swaying to the beat. "Is something funny, Dean?"
Dean grins at him. "Yup," he says, but doesn't feel like elaborating. He brushes his nose under Cas's jaw and nudges him back in the direction of the bar because he is hungry now, and getting way too comfortable on the dance floor despite his aching feet, the headache inducing noise, and the fact that he's probably irreparably sweated through his only decent clothes.
Cas obligingly lets himself be herded off the dance floor.
~~~
It isn't until they are both munching on some over-priced Kobe beef sliders and Dean is explaining why injecting poison into your face keeps you young that Dean thinks to check his phone.
Which has like, ten missed calls and one text message. He blanches immediately and flips it open, thinking that he is an irresponsible moron and that the man-eating thing must have been at the teahouse after all and Sam needed his help and Sam might be…
Just a standard bakeneko at the teahouse. Went down easy; I'm fine. Enjoy your date. Sam
Dean blinks at the text for several seconds while Castiel looks increasingly concerned from the seat beside him. "Dean? Is everything alright? Is something wrong with Sam?"
Dean sighs in relief and passes his phone to Cas, who puzzles over the message for a moment before nodding and flipping it shut. He hands it back to Dean.
"That little shit," Dean says after a beat, rolling tension out of his shoulders. At least the hunt is done. Apparently no one got eaten tonight.
Castiel looks down at the remnants of their sliders and fries. "Then there's no reason to remain here anymore," he suggests after a beat of silence between them.
"Yeah," Dean says, and quickly reaches for his wallet to pay their bill because he can't get out of here fast enough. This place sucks.
Cas wipes his fingers clean of ketchup and stands as well, clearly as impatient to get out of the Cat House as Dean is.
The music is too loud (and shitty), the food and drinks are overpriced, and everyone is either obnoxiously drunk, obnoxiously horny, or a little bit of both.
They straight-line it for the door once the tab is paid and they are free to go, the two of them never looking back for a second until they are out in the parking lot again, where it's much quieter and much easier to breathe. Cas sucks in a great lung full of warm spring air and looks sideways at Dean, clearly relieved. Dean thinks the same expression must echo back on his own face, because after a beat, they both grin a little and get into the Impala.
If it hadn't been for the company, Dean is pretty sure he would have gone nuts within the first fifteen minutes of being inside that place.
As it was, the company actually made the stupid place pretty damn bearable in the end, despite everything.
Suddenly he's not so keen on getting back.
"So," Dean begins casually as he slides the keys into the ignition. "Where to now, boss?" According to his wristwatch, it's barely eleven, and having a hunt under their (well okay, Sam's belt) where they all came out winners in the end is actually leaving him with a pretty awesome feeling in his chest. Dean clears his throat a little as puts the car into gear, arm slung over the seat back so that his hand is resting just above Castiel's shoulder as he turns to back out of the narrow parking space.
Castiel's brow furrows at the innocent enough sounding question. "Shouldn't we return to the motel?" he asks.
Yeah, that's what they should do. And obviously Dean has no idea what he's doing in waters like these, but he can't help but wonder all the same. "I dunno, man, I mean, I'm still pretty hungry and…"
He sees it in his periphery when Castiel's eyes light up inexplicably, just a tiny bit, but enough to make his heart trip a little over itself all the same. "I would like some coffee, Dean," Cas says softly, and Dean feels it when Cas turns his cheek into Dean's hand, which is still resting on the back of the seat, just above the curve of the angel's neck.
Dean finds himself grinning in the dark of the car suddenly, headache fading, feet no longer hurting, clothes no longer too hot or sweaty. "Yeah, okay. Sounds good," he says, and doesn't bother removing his arm then, even when he takes the Impala out of reverse and doesn't have the excuse of a shoulder check to fall back on anymore.
Cas doesn't seem to mind either way.
A few miles down the road they pull into an IHOP with its lights still on and no other customers inside. Dean orders bacon and eggs for himself and pancakes and coffee for Cas. They spend the next few hours nursing crappy (but reasonably priced) food and nudging each other under the table every once in a while. It's ridiculous and they know it, smiling quietly over their drinks while the graveyard shift's wait staff does their best to ignore how incredibly gay their only customers are being.
Afterwards, when they finally pull back into the motel parking lot, Dean still thinks he isn't a date person and that he never will be, no matter how surprisingly unsucky tonight had been in the grand scheme of things.
He figures he's just a with-Cas-person instead.
So far, it seems to be enough for both of them.
end
Next: Episode 16: Mad World