#pinefest previews

As Dean approached the galley, he saw the light on there already, meaning he wasn’t the only early bird up and about today. His mood brightened with a momentary spark of hope—Cas rarely slept, and when he was around the bunker, he usually enjoyed hanging around in the kitchen to read or watch cat videos and shit all night on one of their laptops. But Dean’s bubble of hope burst when he saw it was just his brother, sitting there in his sweatpants and a ratty old t-shirt, chugging a disgusting-looking green smoothie. Sam was no doubt ready to head out on his morning self-imposed torture session—that is, a five-mile run looping around the bunker to Lebanon and back.

Kid seriously had to be the devil’s vessel if he found that kind of physical torment enjoyable.

“Hey,” Dean grunted at his brother.

Sam looked up from his laptop at Dean and nodded. “Hey. You’re up early.”

“You too. Couldn’t sleep?”

“Rarely do.”

Yeah, that was something they had in common. “Anything up?” Dean asked on his way to fill the coffeepot with water. 

“Not really. Just restless, I guess. I found a case, maybe. Not that I was looking for one,” Sam added quickly. “But while I was searching for any signs of Cas, or Lucifer, I came across a news story about some strange deaths in Wichita. It’s not far from here, and—”

“If you wanna go hunt whatever it is, go for it,” Dean cut him off. “Take mom. I know she’s itching to get out of here and do somethin’ other than stare at our ugly mugs all day.” 

“Dean—”

“No, Sam. I mean it. Until I know where Cas is, I just can’t. My head’s not in the game.” A distracted hunter was a dead hunter. That was the rule their father had drilled into them as soon as they each could carry a weapon, and learn about the things that went bump in the night being real. A week ago, Dean had let Sam talk him into going on a “milk run” hunt to clear out a small vampire nest near Toledo and he’d nearly lost his neck thanks to not fully concentrating on the job at hand.

“Okay, I get it.”

“Do you?” Dean snapped. “Cas has been missing for two months, Sam! We have no idea where he is, if he even—”

Dean cut himself off. He couldn’t say it. Not out loud.

If he even survived.

“Hey,” Dean says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Just… wanted to say hi.”

“Oh. Hi,” Castiel says, one hand fluttering nervously down his face and across his hair in an attempt to ensure he’s looking presentable. The tips of his fingers catch on the ugly, jagged ridge of his scar, and he remembers that “presentable” stopped being an option six years ago. He clears his throat and arranges his face in the polite mask of a consummate customer service professional. “Anything I can help you find?”

“Um.” Dean looks uncertain now, as though it’s a question he wasn’t expecting — despite the fact that it’s easily the most predictable question one could be asked in a bookshop. “I don’t know. I was just gonna browse, I guess.”

This is the point in a customer interaction where Castiel would usually withdraw, because “I’m just browsing” is universal bookstore code for “leave me the fuck alone.” But Dean doesn’t give any sign of wanting to walk away. Instead, he simply hovers in front of Castiel’s armchair, eyes gliding aimlessly (and somewhat helplessly) across the shelves to his right.

“What sort of things do you like to read?” Castiel finds himself asking, because it’s impossible not to take pity on a grown man who is capable of looking so bashfully lost.

“Anything,” Dean says. One of his hands flies to the back of his neck, rubbing at it. There’s something terribly endearing about the gesture — perhaps the fact that it makes him look like a boy who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Belatedly, it occurs to Castiel that it’s his turn to speak. His prolonged silence appears to have made Dean nervous, because he’s speaking again, a little too quickly to be altogether natural. “I know that sounds stupid. Like those people who say they like all kinds of music — which I don’t, by the way, just to be clear. Big classic rock fan. Zeppelin, the Stones. Metallica too, which I guess is classic rock these days and fuck, that’s kind of depressing. But, yeah. Anyway. Pretty much anything. Love Vonnegut and Kerouac, but I’ve read just about all their stuff. I’ll read sci-fi, horror, mysteries… actually, I guess I should say I read all kinds of fiction. Non-fiction kinda puts me right to sleep. My brother, Sammy, he’s a big fan though. Crazy about true crime for some reason.” Dean blows out a heavy breath. He abruptly seems to realize he’s scratching at his neck and lowers his arm back down, fingers twitching as if unsure what to do with themselves now. “You probably didn’t need to know all that, huh?”

“No, this is helpful,” Castiel says, getting up. “I’ll show you the layout of the store so you can see which shelves you might be most interested in.”

Somehow, Dean’s shyness makes him feel more at ease. When he first laid eyes on Dean, he thought someone as handsome as Dean must be a smooth and confident conversationalist. But he doesn’t seem to be, and somehow, that makes it easier for Castiel to hold up his own end of the conversation.

Or maybe it’s just that Dean doesn’t know how to talk to someone like Castiel. He wouldn’t be the first one.

Just to the side, off hospital property, a street vendor has set a table up. A very familiar street vendor.

“You,” Dean snarls, almost jogging in his haste to get to the man. The vendor looks up from his phone, a smirk spreading across his face when he sees Dean. Not even Dean’s hand shooting out and grabbing the front of his shirt can dim his superior expression.

Aware of the eyes on him, Dean avoids slamming that smug face into the table, but it’s a struggle. “You,” he repeats, giving the vendor a little shake. “You did this.”

“Afraid you’re going to have to be more specific bucko,” the vendor drawls. “If it was your wife or your sister I knocked up, then honestly, they should be grateful. And even though you are a stud, you’re not really my type, so…”

The last word is elongated into a monstrosity of syllables. Dean’s resolve to not punch the vendor is growing thinner and thinner by the second. His knuckles crack with the strain of holding himself back.

“This,” he finally spits, dragging out the pendant from underneath his shirt. “You gave me this and told me some bullshit story about how it could grant wishes.”

“Hm,” the vendor says, making a big show of pondering. He even taps his chin with the tip of his index finger, the absolute fuckwit. “Doesn’t seem so much like it was bullshit, now does it?”

For just one moment, Dean’s brain is wiped blissfully blank. He doesn’t even have the background noise of static to distract him. There’s just… nothing, but then reality intrudes in the form of someone laying on the horn when the person in front of them lingers for a split-second too long at a green light.

“You’re insane,” he finally says, bringing his brain back online. “There’s no such thing as… As…”

The vendor raises one supremely smug eyebrow. “No? Then explain why your husband just treated you like the annoying kid at a high school reunion.”

Furious, Dean clenches his jaw. He starts and immediately slaughters at least half a dozen sentences. The truth... The awful truth that he can't admit to himself is that there is no rational explanation. Not even his most far-fetched notions explain the phone call, Cas and Meg’s behavior, and the disappearance of his wedding ring.

Nothing except the impossible, that is.

"It's just so painful," he laments a few days later to Rowena, both more than a little drunk in the Bunker's library, Dean and Cas having already gone to bed (unfortunately in different rooms). "They're just…so obvious to everyone except each other. How don't they realize?"

"Noo, why should they? It's not like all of Heaven and Hell figured it out before them or anything."

"I just don't get it. I mean, Dean's eyes are always practically glued to Cas' eyes or lips or his butt and he still hasn't picked up on the fact that there might be something a little weird about that if they really were 'just friends'?" Sam's drink sloshes violently in his glass as he gestures around the room, agitated. "Cas only gets an excuse because he hasn't even been on Earth for a decade, but somebody as old as him should probably at least have an idea what all those feelings are, right?"

"Aye, the poor dears don't have a brain cell between them when it comes to matters of the heart, it seems," Rowena says sagely. "They can be more than a little daft when something doesn't involve killing or dying or crying…"

"They're so hopeless," Sam agrees miserably, burying his face in his hands to rub at his forehead and push his hair behind his ears. "I have to live with them so it's just constant. I-I don't know what to do anymore."

Rowena's quiet for a long moment before she hums to herself. "There might be some way to get their heads out from within their tushies…"

He looks up at that, though judging by the twinkle in the witch's eye, he's gonna regret listening. "What do you mean?" he asks warily anyway, blaming the alcohol for him even considering…whatever it is Rowena is going to suggest.

"Well, all it takes is a wee spell or two and those two will be singing like canaries."

"About their disgustingly sappy love for each other?" Sam guesses, but the witch just smirks.

"About everything. Anything that comes to mind." Sam stares at her blankly, but Rowena doesn't seem to notice. "Oh, I imagine it wouldn't be more than but a few days before certain thoughts come out and certain feelings are revealed…"

"Rowena…"

"Don't tell me you've changed your mind? It's not like there are all that many ways to get those two to sit down and talk about their feelings, Samuel."

Sam considers it, his drunken mind unable to see why this might be a bad idea beyond Dean getting pissed off. Then again, Dean gets pissed if he sees something green on his plate, so Sam's not all that concerned. "What's the cure?"

Rowena's smirk widens, nearly splitting her face in two. "True love's kiss."

He takes the right, barely tapping the brakes. At the first clear patch of shoulder, Dean pulls off and slams the truck into park, shuttering the engine. He kicks the door open, rounds the engine—yanks the passenger handle so hard that he fears it might break. Hands to Castiel’s biceps, Dean helps him out of the seat and into the grass, just before Castiel turns to dead weight in his arms. Keeping him upright is a feat—getting him backed up against the side panel is a miracle.

“Hey, hey,” Dean rasps. He pats Castiel’s cheek, searching for Castiel’s eyes in the dark. “Hey, look at me, okay? Touch me, hey—” He takes Castiel by the wrist and maneuvers him, forcing Castiel to touch the warm cotton of his T-shirt. Limp, Castiel holds on. “Hey, I—I know you’re in there. You’re always in there, alright? Just hold on to me.”

Castiel’s head lists forward; Dean presses him into the quarter panel with all of his strength. “When we were,” Dean begins, a little too brittle, a little too rough. “When me and Sam were teenagers, we went to this… this canyon in Georgia. Dad said it was the Grand Canyon, but we weren’t even in the right part of the country, but we—we didn’t wanna fight him on it, ‘cause he actually took us somewhere, y’know?” He smiles, fighting back the tremble in his fingers, the ache in his heart. “All the runoff from the farms gouged out a canyon in the middle of nowhere, and it was just so…”

He stops to look down at his tennis shoes, so worn that he can almost see his toe poking through. “Sam thought it was the greatest thing ever. I—Shit, I barely remember it, but every once in a while, he’ll still talk about it, like the week before we weren’t chasing a ghoul across the entire fucking state. But I remember looking at it, and I thought…” He tightens his grip. “For once, I felt calm. Like I was… small, and like my problems didn't matter. Picture it.” He sucks in air, slow, like it might spur Castiel into breathing. “Water cutting through the clay. The green of the trees growing around the tops of the canyon walls. A river. Babbling brooks.”

Dean shakes his head, fighting a laugh. “You hear the water?”

Silence—then, a breath, and the weight piled on Dean’s shoulders threatens to bury him in the grass. Castiel blinks, his mouth forming around a word Dean can’t hear. “Hey, hey,” Dean hushes. He clasps both sides of Castiel’s neck, thumbs pressed to his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “Hey, you with me?”

“It’s loam,” Castiel croaks, and Dean lifts a brow. “Most of the soil in southern Georgia is composed of sand and clay—”

“Okay, not what I’m concerned about.” He swallows around the knot in his throat. “Seriously, you wanna give me a geology lesson, any other time. Now, are you good?”

Dean’s jaw dropped before he looked up to see Castiel holding his hands up like he was scared of blowing something up. One of his palms was covered in purple paint as he met Dean’s gaze, wide-eyed. Dean stared back, shocked, with his jeans completely ruined and a purple handprint on his shoulder.

The first chuckle left Dean unbidden, but the sounds kept coming until he was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes and his head thrown back. When he had calmed down, wiping away the tears and gazing back at Cas, the man’s face was a ridiculously cute combination of mortification and fondness, and something warm filled Dean’s insides. “Gee, Cas, warn a guy first before spilling all over him.”

Castiel exhaled a surprised chuckle. “Seriously, is this really the time for a lewd joke?”

It was a relief that the innuendo had been what Castiel had picked up because Dean was feeling kinda winded for giving the guy a nickname practically right off the bat.

Trying to shake off his nervousness, he gave Cas a cocky grin and raised his shoulder in half a shrug. “Not for nothin’ they call me a bisexual disaster,” he said, for some reason, feeling the need to put it out there, to lay his cards on the table.

If he were expecting some kind of judgment, he would be sorely mistaken because Castiel’s smile seemed to grow impossibly wider. “Then that makes two of us. Bisexual and a disaster…” He looked over at the mess they had made. “Bisaster?” the dork added.

Yeah, Dean wasn’t a love-at-first-sight kinda guy, but Castiel was testing that theory.

In the cool evening air, Dean looks around. He’d left the Impala back parked at the dingy motel where he’d rented a room, but he’s not quite ready to call it a night. He opens his remaining beer and looks down the street to see if there’s another bar nearby that might be worth checking out, but before he can make a decision he hears the door to the bar he has just left open behind him. And he knows, he just /knows/, that it isn’t some other random patron headed home.

“What the hell is this, huh?” Dean asks, “Something about ‘not interested’ you’re not getting?”

And then the guy says his name.

“Dean,” the man begins, and Dean gets it.

“Oh, lemme guess, my dad tell you to check up on me?” Dean asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer, just begins to walk, knowing the man will follow. He’s a hunter, obviously. Explains the build, and the suit that is only meant to pass muster at a brief glance, like the fake police badge or FBI creds the guy probably carries. Dean should’ve clocked him from the start.

And for some reason John had thought that Dean needed checking up on. That he couldn’t be trusted to go it alone, nevermind the fact that he had finished the hunt his dad had sent him on two whole days ago and had yet to receive any new case coordinates from John.

To Dean’s surprise, he hears a laugh behind him. He stops, and now he does turn to face the guy again.

“No,” the man says. “I’ve lost count of how often I’ve been told I’m bad at following orders, but even if that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t follow your father’s.”

“Oh yeah? Then how do you know my name?” Dean demands.

“You left your wallet on the bar,” the man replies, holding it up. It’s definitely Dean’s: worn black leather, secondhand from his dad, containing a meager number of bills and at least three fake IDs tucked behind a real one— well, real first name, although it gives his surname as Campbell, just in case.

“Oh,” Dean says, wondering for the second time that night if he has misjudged this guy’s intentions. Maybe he’s just a normal businessman trying to do a good deed for the day and return a lost wallet, despite the wallet’s owner being an absolute weird freak toward him. “Thanks.”

The man offers the wallet out to him, almost gently, like he’s proffering a bit of food to a scared, stray dog, and Dean steps forward to take it. “It’s your birthday,” he says, and before Dean can ask, the man explains, “I saw it on your ID. On one of them, anyway.” Dean nods. “Happy birthday,” the guy says. “I should’ve bought you a beer.”

“Dude! You did what?”

“I found you a new roommate,” Sam explained and Dean knew his brother was rolling his eyes. “As you asked me to.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Dean muttered. “And well, I did, but duh? Did you take the first one that came along?

The silence at the other end of the line was enough of an answer.

“Seriously? The first one? You pick the first Tom, Dick, and Harry that walks into my home?” Dean couldn’t believe it. “You didn’t even—”

“His name is Castiel. And he’s nice,” Sam cut in, defending himself.

Nice?

Before Dean could interrupt him, Sam continued, “So, get this, Castiel is actually in the same predicament as you are. He lives in Topeka, but teaches at KU and he’s already fed up with his daily commute to campus.”

“Castiel? What a mouthful of a name is that?” Dean grumbled.

“As far as I know it’s the name of an angel,” his brother answered calmly, taking none of Dean’s shit.

“Angel?” Dean huffed while another Angel came to his mind. Shaking his head to clear the thought away, he went on, “You telling me the guy is some religious weirdo?”

Sam laughed and Dean could literally hear another eye roll. “Don’t worry. I don’t think that should be a problem. Quite the contrary. He seemed very interested in our library. Or, more precisely, /your/ part of the library.”

Dean huffed. “That’s most of it anyway, dude.”

Groaning, Sam ignored him and went on. “I don’t think he realized how obvious he was when he skimmed through the titles of your collection of gay pulp.”

“Hey, it ain’t gay pulp, not all of it,” Dean protested.

“Pulp, romance, literature — whatever. You can’t deny it’s kinda gay.”

Dean laughed before teasing, “Just kinda?” Even though his brother couldn’t see him, he wiggled his brows.

“How would I know? I haven’t even touched half of it,” Sam backpedaled and Dean laughed even louder. “Somehow I need to keep my sanity,” his brother shot back. Then it hit Dean. “Wait, you showed this guy, this—”

“Castiel,” Sam offered helpfully.

“Whatever,” Dean snapped. “You showed him the library?”

“Dean, he lives there now. Of course, I showed him around. Besides, how do you think I should have hidden the shelves in the living room? You’re not very subtle with your interests.”

Subtle? Dammit, it was his home, for fuck’s sake. “Still, the library? And you let him stay? Alone at home?”

“Yes, because that’s what happens when you rent your house, dude.” Dean could see his brother’s bitchface in his mind. “Do I need to remind you that you were the one who asked me to take care of the viewings?”

“Goddammit, Sammy,” Dean grouched. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath before giving in, “Yeah. Sorry. I did. But that didn’t mean that you decide who lives with me.”

“I don’t know. He just seemed… perfect.”