The rain was pounding down on my car so hard that, no matter how fast I made the windshield wipers go, I could only see properly for about half a second. The front lights of my car lit up the droplets of water in front of me, the forest to both sides mostly obscured from vision. I was going ten miles per hour out of sheer fear of crashing my baby into another car, or a tree, or a lamp post. Honestly, I liked my share of rain every now and then, but this was just overdoing it.
Aerosmith was booming from my radio, which I had tuned in to the only decent channel in the area, and I was singing along off key, but I didn't care. It wasn't like anyone was there to call me out on it anyway.
I drove along with my amazing speed, headbanging to the music so enthusiastically I almost missed a figure walking on the side of the road. A flash of a drenched trench coat went by my window and I silently pitied the guy filling it. We were miles away from any form of civilization, so he would have a long time to walk through this crappy weather still.
Before I knew what I was doing my foot was flat down on the brake and I was putting my baby in reverse, driving backwards to the trench coat in the rain. I leaned over as my car drew to a stop and rolled down the window on the passenger side, turning down the radio simultaneously.
"Hey," I said loudly to make myself heard over the rain, "need a ride?"
The trench coat bent down and looked into my car. I could see a mop of dark hair that looked tussled even when sticking to his head, and bright blue eyes. He looked puzzled.
"I will drench your car," he said in a low, gravelly voice that seemed out of place coming from his small frame.
"No worries," I said, even though he brought up a valid point. I reached to the back of the car and pulled some plastic bags from the relative junk there. "See? Completely waterproof!" I said with my most winning smile, laying out the bags on the passenger seat. He seemed to consider my offer for a while.
"Very well then," he said and got in quickly.
"Name's Dean," I said, turning up the heat and urging the car to the incredible speed of ten miles per hour again.
"Hello Dean," the trench coat said. "My name is Castiel."
"Well nice to meet ya, Cas," I replied. We drove on a bit in silence, the radio now softly playing a Kansas song in the background, until we reached the edge of town.
"Where to?" I asked, glancing over at Cas the trench coat, through my rear view mirror. I could only catch a glimpse of his dark hair that, now that it was drying a bit, seemed somehow tussled to look that way on purpose. Like a hairdresser had spent a good ten minutes styling it to look just so.
" The corner of Main and Williams Street will be perfectly adequate, thank you," the man replied.
"You're kidding, right?" I said. "I live on Williams street. Which number?"
"Thirty one," he said with that deadpan voice and face of his.
"Thirty two," I said incredulously, smacking my hand on the steering wheel. "How come we've never met before if we live right across the street from each other?"
"Most likely because our respective jobs have different working hours, or we have biorhythms that prevent us from being outside simultaneously."
I gaped. "That was rhetorical."
He looked at me. "Oh."
This guy seemed to be incredibly unnerving, but what made it even more so was that I didn't mind. As a matter of fact, I found myself chuckling at the obvious lack of social skills of this man, finding it endearing. I suddenly wondered whether he would look at me strangely if I tried to come on to him. Of course he will, Dean, I scolded myself. I just picked him up in the middle of nowhere and invited him into my car. The guy would think I was some kind of messed up rapist. Didn't mean I wasn't going to try though. I just had to be careful about it.
Our street was at the other end of town, so we still had about a good twenty minutes to go before we reached our respective homes. Kansas had made way for some dreary love song on the radio, so I switched it off.
"So tell me, Cas, how does a man end up on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere on a rainy night like this?" I asked, trying to strike some conversation.
"I missed the last bus because I was working overtime. And you? What makes a man decide to pick up a stranger on the side of the road? I could be a serial killer." He replied. I smirked; this was my opening.
"Well, I couldn't leave such a pair of gorgeous blue eyes out in the rain, now could I?"
Castiel looked puzzled.
"You were driving up from behind me. There was no way that you could have seen the color of my eyes before-"
"Just take the compliment, man." I sighed, still slightly smirking.
"Oh," Cas the trench coat said. "Thank you." When I looked over, I saw the slightest hint of a blush. Bingo.
"Besides, it's pouring out there and you would have taken at least another hour and a half to reach even the edge of town." The man nodded. This apparently seemed like the more plausible explanation.
After that, a dam had opened. It turned out that Castiel, the socially awkward man in a trench coat, was an astronomer. His job included staring at stars, which was why his job was so far out in the middle of nowhere. The 'local' telescope was built far away from any interfering city lights. I told him about my job in return, explaining what my position as site manager in the main branch of a callcenter entails.
"You're a site manager?" He asked curiously, looking at me.
"Yeah, so?" I said, not understanding what he was hinting at.
"You just don't look like the type of person to be one," he explained, and I laughed. It wasn't the first time I had that reaction when I told people about my job. After all, a guy walking around in jeans and AC/DC shirts doesn't exactly scream management position.
"I get that a lot," I said. "We're very casual at work, and it is actually quite handy from time to time."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, half of the people working there often don't realize I'm the big chief, so I get to peek around without everyone flipping out, or changing their entire work method the moment they see me coming."
Castiel nodded and we continued talking about… well, everything. Halfway through an existential argument which was way above my usual level of involvement in the matters of the world, I realized this guy was actually easy to talk to. It hardened my resolve to make sure I would see him again. I inconspicuously started working in innocent touches in our conversations; a light fist against his shoulder, a hand clapped on his leg in laughter when the man said something funny. I even managed to find a perfectly reasonable excuse to wipe some rain off of the man's face. To my satisfaction, every time I noticed a slight reaction. A blush, a stiffening in his posture, but he never pulled away.
Eventually, I turned into our street and stopped the car in front of Castiels house.
"Well Cas," I said, "awesome to have met you."
"Yes," he said, smiling a slightly crooked smile, his head tilted a bit as if in contemplation. "It was an absolute pleasure."
He was about to reach for the door handle when I grabbed his hand, fumbling for a marker on the dashboard. Before I could think about what I was getting myself into, I scrabbled my phone number in the palm of his hand.
"Call me, okay?" I said, the cap of the marker clenched between my teeth while I wrote down the last digits. Cas stared at his hand in wonder when I was done and gave a non-descript nod before climbing out of the car and walking up to his house. I parked my baby in the garage and as the garage door closed again, I was having a hard time staying calm. I may just have met a great dude, and I could only hope that he would call me.
Stop being such a girl, I scolded myself.
I got into the kitchen, walked up to the fridge to get myself a beer and found I couldn't stop myself from smiling. I had just popped open the bottle of beer and settled myself on the couch when my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I checked the number, but it wasn't known to me.
"Dean speaking," I answered my phone. I immediately recognized the gravelly voice on the other side of the line.
"I appear to have forgotten my keys at work."
"You're locked out?" I asked, forgetting about being exhilarated that he called within a minute, and smiling instead because this seemed something that was very typical.
"Yes," Cas said, "it actually happens more than I would like to admit, but I never knew anyone in the neighborhood before. I was sort of hoping –"
"Of course! Get over hear before you freeze to death in this weather." During the conversation I had scooted over on the couch a little bit to peer out of the window and I actually saw the trench coated figure standing, slumped, in front of his house, completely soaked once more.
"Thank you." Was the only reply, before he hung up. The figure in the pouring rain started walking across the street towards my place, and I made my way over to the front door. Not wanting to seem over eager, I waited a couple of seconds before opening it.
Castiel was walking onto the porch, looking remarkably like a drowned kitten.
"Is this rain ever going to stop?" He asked me, his voice sounding even gruffer. I smiled the widest grin I could possibly muster.
"Well, I'm no weather man, but I think you can expect more than a couple of inches tonight."