A/N: On the heels of Light Up the Sky, I decided to write a more humorous story for Sam and Cas, in part because their friendship is so underdeveloped in the series and in part because the seventh season has been determined never to have Sam and Castiel in the same place at the same time, unless one of them is insane. In any case, this one's just for fun, and comes over Sam's shoulder. Set nowhere in particular in the Supernatural timeline. These two could use some more fun in their lives.
Pairing: None; Sam and Castiel friendship.
.x.
Dean was a dick.
Sam knew this about his brother—no amount of denial would have been enough to sweep that under the rug—but somehow that knowledge never seemed to keep him from ending up in the same place. Metaphorically, at least. Tonight the place was the crowded floor of the sixteen-lane Bowl-o-Rama in another small town in western Illinois, staring at the neon bowling pins that were flashing over lane eight because some ace had just bowled another strike. But really the place was always up against some wall, his back half turned to too much noise, with his cell phone pressed to his ear, praying in vain that for once Dean would pick up his damn phone.
Dean's recorded greeting sounded pissed off as usual: "Not here. Leave a message."
Sam squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Dean, hey—it's Sam, again," he said, stabbing a finger into his other ear so he could hear himself think. He wondered if Dean would even be able to decipher his message, on the off chance that he even listened to it. "Look, you kind of left us hanging here… I just want to know what's up, okay? Just—give me a call when you get this. Okay, bye."
Sam hesitated a moment before a beep signaled the end of his message, waiting until the last second for someone to pick up, then ended the call and slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket, shaking his head slowly. Dean being a jackass wasn't really a surprise. The only thing that was really surprising was that his brother acting like a jackass still snuck up on Sam every single time.
"I don't understand this game."
Well, there was one other surprising thing.
With a sigh that really didn't do justice to his headache, Sam turned back to face his bowling companion. Castiel was standing next to him with a fourteen-pound bowling ball dangling from one hand, but he wasn't looking at Sam—he was staring down lane sixteen, a look of intense consternation darkening his expression. Sam glanced down the polished wood lane just in time to see no fewer than eight pins being swept under by the bar. A glance up at the scoreboard showed an animation of ten bowling pins, drawn as cartoon chickens, scurrying out of the way of a drunken bowling ball, until a measly two exploded in a shower of bright feathers. Castiel turned to pin Sam with displeased blue eyes.
"It is very non-intuitive, and the ball does not conform to my intentions. How do I correct this?"
The other surprising thing was that Cas seriously sucked at bowling.
The angel glared at him as if actually expecting an answer, and Sam fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Look, it just takes practice, Cas. Just go again, okay?"
Castiel gave him a hard look. "It is your turn."
Sam waved him off with one tired hand. "Take my turn for me. Take Dean's, too. Just… go."
Castiel considered him suspiciously, but at last he stepped past the ball corral and took a few strides up to the line, and released the bowling ball in a high arc like he was doing the shot-put, so that it landed with a crash almost halfway down the lane. And immediately slid into the gutter.
Sam rubbed his hands down his face.
All of this was Dean's fault. In fact, everything he could think of at the moment was Dean's fault. But the titanic error he was laying at his brother's feet right now was dragging him and their resident ignorant angel out to a bowling alley and then ditching them both one turn into the second game.
It was so very Dean that Sam couldn't believe he hadn't seen it coming.
Sam had been planning on a quiet evening. It was their third day stranded in this midsized Illinois town tracking a string of disappearances; the crimes were almost mundane except that the pattern of abductions seemed to be drawing a spiral pattern counterclockwise from north to east, moving steadily toward the center of town. All of their usual investigation tactics had turned up nothing, and that afternoon they'd finally been forced to admit defeat and call Bobby to ask for some in-depth research.
The older hunter had gnawed Sam's ear off for going in half-cocked as usual, while Sam's ever-impatient brother had paced on the other side of the hotel room and held up his hands every few seconds, silently demanding whether Sam had any useful information yet. In the end Bobby said he'd have to spend a night on it, and ordered them not to go chasing any harebrained leads in the meantime—which they most certainly would have done, if they hadn't exhausted every harebrained lead over the first two days. Needless to say, Dean was restless and Sam was actually looking forward to spending the night doing some research of his own when Castiel showed up to check on them and Dean decided—without taking a vote—that the three of them would go out together for once. And since Dean had exhausted the chick pool at the local bar on the first night (his own declaration—Sam would never, never have asked), his brother hauled them all to the only other place in town where he could get a cheap beer without having to eat something: Thursday Nite Happy Hour at the Bowl-o-Rama.
For the forty-five minutes he'd been there, Dean had probably had a great time.
Castiel rolled another expert gutter ball, then looked over his shoulder at Sam as if the younger Winchester were his subpar bowling coach. Sam swung his arm back and forth in a vague pantomime of the classic bowling throw. Castiel imitated the motion once, his elbow already too stiff and angled wrong. Sam just shrugged. The angel narrowed his eyes a little, but in the end he reached for another bowling ball. Sam sank into a hard plastic spectator's chair and crushed his palms into his eyes so he wouldn't have to see his shot.
The thing Sam had forgotten, when Dean was pushing them all into the Impala and he was only protesting a little at having to leave all of his books behind, was that even polishing off a beer every three turns, Dean was a scary good bowler. There had been one summer when John Winchester dumped them for the better part of three months in a town whose only entertainment venues were a bowling alley and a library. School was already out and without classes to even fake attending, Dean had spent about nine hours a day at the bowling alley, working behind the counter to pay for his lane time. Sam had stayed in the library. The result was that Sam was a mediocre bowler on the best of days and Dean threw about as many strikes as Nolan Ryan. (Dean had boasted this about himself and then had to explain it to Sam, who had no interest in baseball, either.) But Castiel was in a league all his own.
Cas was horrible. Even after Dean had explained the bare bones of the game and Sam had explained, much more patiently, why Castiel didn't get to keep bowling until he'd knocked all the pins down, a concept he struggled with in the beginning, the angel just sucked. He was lucky to knock less than half the pins down with two rolls. Sam had been surprised at first by how hard it was for him, considering that Castiel had picked up bar darts in about two rounds and was so good now that Dean refused to play with him—but he'd decided, after watching Castiel throw his bowling ball all the way into neighboring lane fifteen for the second time, that maybe bowling just involved too much ungainly movement for a socially awkward angel in some other guy's body. That didn't stop Dean from rubbing it in his face, though.
Watching the round wind down, as Dean got drunker and progressively more vocal about how securely he was kicking Castiel's ass, Sam had spared an idle moment to wish that Dean would just disappear from the face of the Earth. It wasn't the first time he'd wished that about his big brother. Which was probably why he'd never considered the consequences of that wish coming true fifteen minutes later.
A tremendous crash pulled Sam's head out of his hands. A green fourteen-pound bludgeon was sliding down the lane, practically bouncing from the force with which it had hit the floor.
"Cas!" Sam hollered over the techno music.
Castiel paused at the ball corral, already reaching for another bowling ball, and turned his head just enough to catch Sam's gaze. He looked exceedingly put out, which helped Sam reminded himself that he was not the yelling Winchester, and that yelling at Castiel never did any good anyway because it wasn't like the angel didn't understand on purpose. He took a deep breath and forced his features neutral again.
"Look, man, you can't throw it that hard, okay? It's bad for the lanes. You don't have to use your divine strength on this—just let it go really straight," he tried to explain, moving his arm in the same slow pantomime. Castiel did not copy him this time. Sam sighed and let his arm fall back to rest across his knees. "Just right down the middle. Doesn't even have to go that fast. Okay? So just don't… hammer-throw it anymore."
Castiel stared at him for a moment without speaking. Then he turned that stare back on his intended bowling ball, his pale fingers contracting against the speckled orange surface. "I find this music obnoxious," he said, tilting his head as if to encompass the speakers on the ceiling; Sam decided the angel's frustration levels must be off the charts, if he was limiting himself to inane criticisms.
With another heavy sigh, Sam pushed himself out of the creaking chair and stood, wincing as Castiel's piercing glare shot back to him. "Yeah, I know. Me, too. Look, Cas, don't worry so much about it, okay?" He did his best to give Castiel a sympathetic smile, though a sharp spike in the pounding music might have made it more of a grimace. "Bowling is hard, and it takes a lot of practice."
Castiel obstinately held their eyes together, crushing the crown of the bowling ball under his irate palm. "Why was Dean so proficient?" he demanded—Sam had learned with time that this was his demanding voice, though to the untrained ear it didn't really sound any more stubborn or unreasonable than his usual even tone. Sam carefully bit down on the inside of his cheek.
"Dean went through a phase where he thought bowling would help him get girls," he explained with a shrug.
Castiel's eyebrows drew together. "Apparently he was correct," he replied. Sam couldn't tell if the angel was trying to be funny.
"Apparently," he conceded. This time he couldn't help rubbing a hand across his forehead, burying it under the fringes of his bangs. "I want to leave, too, Cas. I'll… try calling him again," he offered, raking tired fingers back through his hair. Castiel barely nodded. Then he moved back to the lane and threw the orange ball—much more softly, Sam was gratified to notice. The ball spun like a top and dove into the gutter. Sam turned away with his cell phone before Castiel could look at him.
The thing that he hadn't accounted for, even though it was just so Dean, was how fast his brother would drop them and run as soon as a better offer came along.
They were literally two turns into the second game when it happened. Dean threw another perfect strike and leapt back from the line with his arms up in the air.
Yes! King of the lanes! Dean had crowed at the top of his lungs. Then he'd started pumping his fists, and he'd accidentally stepped back into a pretty blonde girl in a tiny shirt, upsetting the glowing pink cocktails in her hands. A few drops splattered her bare shoulders. Whoa—sorry about that, Dean had apologized, staring at the line of pink alcohol diving down the cavern in the front of her shirt. Then he'd flashed his cocky grin and hooked a thumb back in Sam and Castiel's direction. I was so busy beating those two losers I didn't even see you there.
Sam had missed a few of the inanities in the middle, but the next time he caught the girl's nasal, high-pitched voice, she was asking, Do you know those guys? as she used a cocktail napkin to wipe daiquiri from her chest. Sam couldn't tell if she were more off-put by him, slumped in his chair and watching Dean with a don't-do-this-to-me-again expression, or by the 500-watt laser that was Castiel's glare on the back of his brother's head. Dean looked back at them and grinned.
Who, those letdowns? Nah. Just some dicks I met in a bar.
Sam shook his head, familiar enough with Dean's antics to know where all this was going. Castiel just worked on perfecting his frown. The girl lifted her eyebrows.
You met some guys in a bar and invited them to go bowling?
Dean shrugged like an expert. Nothing better to do, he said, tossing up one hand in a what-can-you-do kind of gesture. Then the shit-eating grin came back. Plus all the girls there were ugly as sin. I guess all the pretty ones were over here.
The girl threw back her head and laughed—Dean wasn't nearly that funny and it was a weak line, so Sam figured his brother could stop trying so hard. He'd never really understand why women threw themselves at Dean on a regular basis, much like he'd never understand how time was relative, but he'd seen enough TV specials that by now he just accepted that, too. The blonde twisted her shoulders anything but casually.
I could maybe find something better for you to do, she offered, tossing her head to flip her hair out of her face. She glanced up at Sam again and pursed her lips before her eyes flickered back to Dean. Unless you'd rather finish your man-date.
You couldn't pay me to go back up there, Dean promised, slipping one arm through her elbow. Then he had bent as if to whisper in her ear—but he must have blown her eardrum out, because Sam could still hear his asshole brother perfectly well even over the crash of techno beats. Honestly, I think it's time I get out of there anyway.
Why? The girl fake-whispered back. Do they suck?
Oh, yeah, they suck, Dean assured her, but I think they need some time alone. They've got all this weird unresolved sexual tension. I mean, that one's definitely gay, he announced, tossing his hand toward Castiel. And I'm about ninety percent sure the other one's a really butch cross-dresser…
Sam held out his hands in a why do that? gesture. Dean just flipped him the bird. Then he waltzed out of the Bowl-o-Rama with a giggling girl and the keys to the Impala, leaving Sam and Castiel to finish the game without him and find their own way back.
Well, finding a way back wasn't actually the hard part, since Castiel was along. Sam was more worried about what they'd find if they did get back to the hotel.
Dean's message machine blared in his ear. "Not here. Leave a message."
Sam exhaled hard and stared up at the ceiling. "Hey, dude, look—I'm not trying to cramp your style, okay? But you just ditched us here… will you just call me and tell me if it's safe for us to come back? I don't want Cas to pop us into the hotel room in the middle of… anything that'll scar me for life. So just… just call me, okay? Please. Before the bowling alley closes."
Sam returned the phone to his pocket with a resigned sigh. At this rate, they could look forward to two torturous hours of decrepit bowling before they were tossed out on the street, unless Castiel put a hole in the lane and got them thrown out early.
Sam couldn't honestly decide whether bowling with Cas was better or worse than hanging out in the parking lot.
With a deep inhale that was mostly covering a sigh, Sam shook his head and turned slowly back to the lane, trying to keep his voice from slipping all the way into its Dean-is-such-a-jackass-that-sometimes-I-wonder-how-we're-related tone. "Yeah, he's not picking up, Cas. You know, at this point we should probably just go somewhere else—there's gotta be a diner or something in this town…"
Sam hadn't really registered that the bowling ball crashes had stopped until he turned around. Castiel was still standing at the head of the lane, next to the whirring wheels of the ball corral, but he was motionless, a bowling ball dangling effortlessly from his right hand like it weighed one pound instead of fourteen. For a minute Sam wondered if the angel had stopped throwing because he had been on the phone, but Cas didn't understand social niceties like that; he glanced up at the scoreboard to see if the game had finally run out, but each of them still had three rounds to go. It was even Castiel's turn. Feeling suddenly like he'd missed something, Sam moved forward until he reached the angel's side, tilting his head to catch sight of Castiel's face.
"Cas?" he prompted. "What's going on? The game's not over yet."
Castiel stared down lane sixteen with a look of resignation on his face. The thinning of his lips was the only proof he'd even heard Sam. Sam felt his forehead creasing.
"Cas," he tried again, lifting one hand to the angel's shoulder.
Castiel's fingers clenched in the holes of the bowling ball. "We should leave," he said at last, so quietly that Sam had to duck closer to hear him.
The younger Winchester nodded. "I know, that's what I'm saying. Dean's a dick, but we can just—"
"This isn't working," Castiel interrupted him harshly, turning suddenly to pin the young man's hazel eyes with his piercing blue ones. Sam took a half step back, surprised by the intensity of his gaze.
"What's not working?" he asked.
Castiel exhaled hard. He lifted the bowling ball in a short arc. "This," he said through his teeth. "I can't use this and you're not laughing."
Sam blinked about four times. "Laughing?" he echoed.
Castiel sighed and turned away. For a second Sam thought the angel was just avoiding eye contact, too aggravated to even finish explaining himself, but then he realized Castiel was staring at another group of bowlers down the alley—a group of guys and girls in their early twenties, camped out at lane eight. A boy in a blue backward baseball cap bent and rolled the ball through his legs, and the whole group cheered as it sped singe-mindedly into the gutter, two hooting friends jumping up to give him high-fives. Castiel pressed his lips into a grim line.
"You're supposed to be laughing," he said under his breath.
Sam thought about reminding the angel that with the way he was bowling right now, Sam wouldn't be laughing with him so much as laughing at him, and every time Dean had tried that Cas had been a little touchy about it—and Sam really didn't want to find himself stranded at the Bowl-o-Rama with no car if his companion disappeared in a huff. But Castiel still looked depressed, so he chose a softer answer, letting his hand slip from the angel's shoulder.
"Look, Cas… maybe this just isn't our kind of thing," Sam suggested, shrugging when those intense blue eyes came back to him. "I mean, I've never been a huge bowling fan and… it's not like you want to be here bowling with me, right?"
Something crossed Castiel's face then that Sam didn't have time to read—a flicker of narrowed eyes, his expression slightly pinched as if he'd been deeply misunderstood—and Sam wondered all of a sudden if Cas did want that, and just didn't really know how to tell him. The angel lowered his bowling ball carefully back into the ball corral.
"Isn't this the kind of thing friends do?" he asked simply.
Sam opened his mouth. Then he was struck by the realization that he couldn't really say what friends did. Between all the moving around as a kid and everything he'd tried to cram into his few years at Stanford, the closest he'd ever had to a friend was Dean, and though they did everything together—drank and wrestled and fought and drove like the entire world was nipping at their heels—they weren't friends, they were brothers, and that always came first. Sam stared back at Castiel who had been trying so hard to knock down ten measly pins, and wondered all of a sudden if Cas had been trying for him, trying to make this botched evening into the kind of thing the young hunter might do for fun. And somehow that changed everything, and Sam found he was laughing, really laughing, leaning back on his heels and shaking his head at the ceiling.
"You know what, Cas?" he said, shooting the angel a full smile. "I honestly have no idea."
Castiel sent him a suspicious look. "Now you are laughing."
Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah, I am. Look, Cas, I'm sorry—we've been doing this all wrong."
Castiel glanced over his shoulder at the quiet lane. "Doing what wrong?" he asked, though his expression said he was half hoping Sam's revelation would explain the mystery of the cursed bowling ball and half perturbed by the notion that the younger Winchester had been holding out on him.
Sam pressed his lips together to keep his smile under control. "Everything," he said. Then he stepped forward and laid one hand against Castiel's shoulder. "First things first. You've got to take this trench coat off."
"What are you doing?" Castiel asked—a little nervously, Sam thought—as the young hunter tugged his coat open. Sam rolled his eyes and pulled his hands back.
"Seriously, Cas, it'll help. Take it off. The suit jacket, too, okay?"
With a level of hesitation that Sam thought would have been fairer if he'd been strapping the angel to a stake and picking out matches, Castiel slowly pulled off his trench coat and the black suit jacket underneath. He looked like a completely different person standing next to Sam in just a white button-down and black silk tie, patchy red-and-tan bowling shoes sticking out from under the cuffs of his dress slacks—mostly he looked unsure as hell, but Sam thought it was kind of a good look for him, less like Castiel and so much more like Cas. Sam took both jackets out of the angel's uncertain hands and shrugged off his own brown coat, leaving him in just a blue polo shirt, then piled all three of them on one of the plastic chairs. He buried his coat at the bottom so that he wouldn't even hear the cell phone if it rang. Then he turned back to Castiel and smiled, scuffing one smooth sole against the polished floor.
"So—you ready to try again?"
Castiel balked, glancing behind him at the lane and the undisturbed cluster of pins. "Sam, I can't do this," the angel said, turning back to his companion with a rueful shake of his head, like he was letting the young hunter down in a matter so much more important than bowling. Sam leaned over the lane computer and punched the red Cancel button.
"Yes, you can," Sam told him as the tragically low numbers fell from the scoreboard and a brand new game grid appeared on the screen. He left Dean's name on there, deciding Castiel could use an extra turn—and anyway, the computer was charging all of this to Dean's credit card. Sam looked up at Castiel and gave him an encouraging smile. "We just need to start over. With one new thing."
Castiel watched with a puzzled frown as Sam hit another button and a pair of bumpers rose on each side of the lane, shuddering up from the gutter. Castiel shot him a suspicious look, and his gaze swept out across the bowling alley, confirming after a moment that lane sixteen was the only one with these fortuitous little rails. Then the angel's eyes landed on a poster on the far wall, advertising reservations for company events and kids' birthday parties, and he frowned, his eyebrows drawing together as his glare shifted from the picture of happy four-year-olds back to Sam.
"I am not a child," Castiel bit out. Sam shook his head.
"No, you're not, Cas. You just need training wheels for a little bit." Castiel didn't look halfway convinced, so Sam leaned forward and folded his elbows across the top of the lane computer, dropping his voice as if he were sharing a huge secret. "Honestly, everybody in here wishes they could bowl with the bumpers up. It's ten times as fun."
Castiel leaned in to study his expression. "Even you?" he asked.
Sam shook his head at the memory that had burst suddenly into his mind: the first time Dean had taken him bowling, at six, and told him that only babies used bumpers—watching his four-pound kids' ball roll into the gutter turn after turn while Dean laughed his head off. Then he looked up and met Castiel's eyes, a genuine smile on his lips.
"Me most of all," he promised.
Castiel's first throw bounced off the bumper four times before it got to the pins, and it only took out six even though it was moving about seventy miles an hour. But Sam didn't care—he taught the angel how to high-five anyway, and then took his turn at a run, lobbing his ten-pound ball into the bumpers on purpose. When he turned around, only one pin left rocking at the end of the lane, Castiel was smiling at him, just a little twitch at the corners of his mouth, and Sam smiled back, jogging over to slap the angel's outstretched palm.
With their crazy, screwed-up lives, why shouldn't they go bowling?
.x.
I hope it was an enjoyable read. Feedback is always appreciated.