#dcpf 2018

“I don’t want your explanation,” Dean says. “I want you to leave. I don’t care if you’re back for good. I don’t care where you’ve been. Hell, I don’t care if you go back to wherever you were and don’t come back here at all.”

“Dean —” Cas says, shocked and hurt.

“Oh, fuck off.” Dean glares at him, hoping Cas can make out enough of his expression to read how dead serious he is but not enough to see his watery eyes. “You don’t get to drop out of everyone’s lives and then pick right back up where you left off. That’s not how this works. Sam might buy it, this whole ‘let me bring you food and tell you a good story about why I left’ act. Everyone else might buy it. But not me. I’m the one who almost filed a fucking missing persons report for you, Cas. I’m the one who took the call telling me I could go straight to hell.”

Cas gapes at him.

“Is that what Gabriel said to you?” he asks, choked.

“Close enough,” Dean mutters. He wishes he told Cas and his donuts to turn around and go the second they got in the Impala, but Dean is weak for both fried pastries and his former best friend/unrequited crush.

Also, he’s still a little spun out by the events of the other night, and he doesn’t want to be alone. But Dean will face the unseen terrors of Highway 9 by himself if the only other option is sitting here trying to keep it together in front of Cas and failing miserably. God, Dean needs to cry or hit something right now, but he also needs to walk another round along the construction site to make sure the equipment stays undamaged. And Cas needs to leave so he can do both.

“That’s not at all what I told him to say,” Cas says, and Dean debates the best way to get Cas out of his car. “I told him to tell you the truth. I don’t understand why —”

It’s in the middle of Cas’s sentence that Dean spots it again. A thin, flickering line of yellow, dropped through the dark out of nowhere. This time it’s halfway down the valley, over the second bridge on the side of the road that’s closed. Dean throws out a hand and grabs Cas’s arm. Cas stops talking immediately.

“Do you see that?” Dean asks, low and urgent.

Cas leans up, unconsciously getting closer to Dean. Just like old times.

“What is that?” When Dean turns to look at Cas he sees Cas’s gaze is riveted to the bridge. Dean’s first thought smacks of relief — I’m not sleep deprived, not going crazy, he sees it too — his second thought is oh shit, it’s real.

Later, and not for the first time that week, Dean comes to on Crowley’s hideous chintz couch, drooling into an overstuffed satin pillow, groaning as his reluctant host clatters around the kitchen louder than is probably necessary. His head is pounding and his throat is on fire as he croaks out, “how the hell did I get here?”

“Well, let’s see,” Crowley muses, expertly flipping pancakes. “It may have been the six Boilermakers that I - regrettably, in retrospect - served you, or the two Singapore Slings that your lovely red-headed friend bought for you, or perhaps it was your virtuosic, triple-curtain-call one-man performance of Bohemian Rhapsody -,” and here he pauses to leer over at Dean, who can’t do much more than grunt and drop his face into his hands in shame, “- which you then toasted with a round of Sambuca like the strange masochist you are, before eventually falling asleep in one of my planters. Overall, Winchester? The answer is likely to be Poor Life Choices. Coffee?”

“Christ. Please.”

“In fact I am somewhat of your personal saviour, having dragged your sorry arse upstairs alone, since your gorgeous hulk of a brother wasn’t around to help me.” He crosses the room and puts a steaming mug and a tall glass of water down on the table in front of Dean, pressing a couple of aspirin into his hand. “Take these. I thank you for not vomiting on any of my property or belongings - small mercies.”

“Speaking of small mercies, ‘least I woke up with all my clothes on,” Dean mutters, trying not to move too quickly as he rights himself, lest he startle his stomach into revolt; Crowley huffs and scowls at that, but after a few moments the sizzle and smell of frying bacon start to fill the apartment.

“You think so little of me, Rocky,” he’s muttering, “I may be a degenerate of some stripe, but I’d never take advantage of someone who was too bollocksed to walk on their own, let alone consent. Besides,” he adds, throwing a plate down in front of Dean, “in the extremely unlikely event that I did have designs on you last night, you spent far too long prattling mindlessly on about Novak for it to have been anything but ego-crushing, thank you very much. So quit flattering yourself, and just eat your fucking pancakes.”

Dean’s quiet, contemplating his breakfast. “Loose lips, huh?”

“It’s not as though your crush on Castiel is any kind of secret, you know. For a man who’s so well-versed in hustling my tourist customers out of their hard-earned dollars, you really have a terrible poker face when it comes to a certain set of big blue eyes. It would almost be sweet if it weren’t so sad.”

“I guess you’re not going to be shocked if I tell you Benny said something similar?”

“In part because you told me no fewer than fourteen times, darling. But no. Sometimes your longing for him is such a visceral thing that I’m shocked he ever managed to convince himself you were wholly straight, the poor lamb.”

“I don’t…long.”

“Right, right, and you’re drinking yourself off the bar stool every night because you’re utterly fine that he’s marrying that posh teacher of his.”

“Do you guys ship students?” Charlie can’t help but ask.

Ms. Hanscum throws her head back and laughs. “Oh, that’s is the most popular topic.”

Charlie is positively bouncing in her seat. “So who’s your favorite couple of everyone?”

“I don’t think that would be the most appropriate topic for us, kiddo,” Ms. Hanscum says apologetically. Charlie frowns and Ms. Hanscum can’t help but feel bad. “How about I tell you about my favorite couple? They’re older, so you won’t know them. They got married last year.” Charlie perks up, and so do some other students.

“Well, it was about twenty years ago now, mid-way through November and there was a new student…”

Cas’s favorite part of owning the bookshop is his weekly calendar.

On Mondays he opens the space to a local book club. It’s made up of single moms and older women who get together and discuss romance novels. It’s cliché, but this month they’re reading a relatively well-known gay romance novel, and their discussions have been enlightened and endearing to the point that Cas found himself joining in with gusto last week.

Tuesdays are two-for-one days on nonfiction and children’s books, and he gets a fascinating mix of customers looking for either or both. A little boy named Ben comes in with his mom every week to fill up on new books and tell Cas all about the ones he devoured in the last week.

Wednesday nights there is a group of college students that use the small lounge space to study late into the night. Kevin, their ringleader, is pre-med, and he convinced Cas to host the study night because of his proximity to a local coffee shop. Cas thinks Kevin just likes the atmosphere.

Fridays are game night; teenagers and college students stuff the shop full and play everything from Scrabble to table-top RPGs well past closing time.

Saturdays are a standard business day, but they’re also his highest volume day of the week, so he can usually tell if he’s going to make rent or not based on his sales.

He decided to close on Sundays to save money on utilities and to give himself at least one guaranteed day off a week.

And then there are Thursdays. Thursdays are his favorite day of the week. Thursdays are delivery days.

Thursdays weren’t always his favorite. In fact, when he first opened the shop he dreaded having to go through the whole process of cataloguing and unpacking new inventory. The weekly arrival of the delivery truck was simply part of the solo-shop-owner package. He’d sign for the boxes, take in the new stock, and go about the rest of his week.

Then, six months ago Cas opened the back door to find the sunny smile and impossible facial symmetry of Dean-the-Delivery-Guy waiting for him with boxes full of books. The brown uniform did nothing to hide his athletic build, though the shorts did highlight the endearing bow of his legs. It was as if the universe had granted all of Cas’s wishes at once.

Throughout the months, Dean has featured in more of Cas’s masturbatory fantasies than Cas would care to admit. He’s avoided jerking off to thoughts of Dean on Wednesday nights after one particularly embarrassing Thursday when he could hardly look the delivery man in the eye. His face burned bright red, prompting Dean to ask if he had a fever. Cas thought he’d die of embarrassment.

The universe plopped Dean on his doorstep. Now, Cas just has to figure out exactly what to do with this unexpected gift.

A quiet cough draws his attention from where he’s twisting gold and copper wires together into the body of a small bumblebee.

When Dean looks up, he meets the piercing blue gaze of the man standing still and patient by the front of his stall, his attention seemingly caught between Dean himself and the variety of items laid out across the table. His eyes hold Dean’s for a few seconds, then fall away as if magnetized to the array of gleaming metal and sparkling glass.

While he’s looking over Dean’s wares, occasionally touching with reverent fingers and holding items up to see how they catch the light, Dean has an opportunity to study the man in turn. He’s dressed in loose but practical clothing that accentuates broad shoulders, and the silver band encircling his right forearm gleams in the sun and contrasts with the deep tan of his skin. In comparison, his eyes are jewel-bright and searingly blue, and his hair a mess of dark locks atop his head.

He has to be one of the most beautiful things Dean has ever seen – and Dean makes beautiful things for a living.

“Can I help you, sir?” Dean asks, slightly reluctant to pull the man out of whatever reverie he seems to have fallen into. When those blue eyes return to his again, this time he feels a near-irresistible pull. The man blinks once, twice, then smiles. It’s slow and soft and even just a tiny flash of white teeth steals the breath from Dean’s lungs.

He doesn’t even know the guy, has never seen him around, but he’s utterly captivated.

And that was before he heard the man speak.

“You have very green eyes,” he says, his voice deep and level and calm, as if that’s a totally normal greeting for someone you’ve just met. “Like garnets.”

Dean has had the pleasure of working with some beautiful gems in his profession, and certainly knows which have the best colour and shine. The comparison of his eyes to green garnets has him blushing at the tips of his ears – whoever this man is, he’s definitely chosen the right way to flatter Dean.

Before he can reply, though, the man continues right on, as though he hadn’t just been flirting with Dean. Had he been flirting? He doesn’t have time to figure it out.

“Are any of these items for sale?” the man asks in that deep, rumbling tone, with the strength of mountains and earthquakes and the cool tranquility of a clear, still lake. It seems to reverberate through to Dean’s bones, though he doesn’t recall the man having spoken that loudly, and it takes him a second to reorient himself.