Written for July 2016 Troping Along challenge
Dean ducks into the office. "Sam, quick, give me your sweatshirt!"
Sam doesn't look up from the computer. "Dude, get your own. You'll just get grease all over it."
"I know, that's the point! My shirt's all covered in grease!"
"I thought you loved grease, whether of the artery-clogging or engine-cleaning variety. That's why you work in a garage. And eat burgers."
"Sam, this is an emergency!"
Sam finally stops typing and looks up, arching an eyebrow. "Is this 'emergency' the guy who wanted his tires changed twice in one month? I can't believe you took his money."
Dean totally doesn't blush. "…three now, actually. And I told him he doesn't need a tire change, I can just do some, you know, tune up. Stuff."
"Oh my god Dean, just ask him out already. This is truly pathetic."
"Maybe he just doesn't know much about cars! He drives a Prius, Sam."
Sam's sweatshirt hits Dean in the face.
"You're welcome," Sam says.
Dean grabs a handful of tissues to clean off the worst of the grease and dirt and general leavings that come with being an auto mechanic, then throws on the sweatshirt and tries to impose some kind of order on his hair.
"Pathetic," Sam says, like he doesn't spend hours on that mop he calls hair.
Though it is a little pathetic. Maybe.
The thing is, the guy is really, seriously hot. And funny. And kind of a nerd, but in a hot way. He's a professor of linguistics, which means he probably speaks about a hundred languages, and Dean took two weeks of Spanish in middle school and that's it so he stupidly quoted Wrath of Khan at the guy because he's the lame kind of nerd and also cute smiles turn him into a complete idiot.
And then the guy spoke Klingon back. Dean quickly got in over his head as far as Klingon vocabulary goes (and in other ways, if you ask Sam), but they talked Star Trek and Tolkien, two of Dean's favorite subjects, until Bobby came out to see why none of the cars were moving.
Which is fair, because Dean isn't getting paid to chat up customers, but it kind of threw him off his game a little. They were having a good talk, but it ended pretty abruptly and then the next time the guy came in Dean felt sort of awkward because he hadn't caught his name yet and now it's weird and he couldn't think of anything to say and now it's really weird because this is their third meeting now and even a guy who purposefully buys a Prius can't be that ignorant about tires.
So Dean really needs to put his best foot forward here, and that means not looking like a grease-monkey and having interests that weren't written or aired before he was born.
Right. He's totally got this.
Dean yelps as Sam pushes him bodily out the door.
The guy's patiently waiting behind the counter, wearing a sweater vest and black-framed glasses, and instead of looking hopelessly dorky he's giving off kind of a Clark Kent vibe, like there's a lot going on beneath the surface.
Dean really wants to find out if that's true.
"Hello, Dean," he says, and flashes that smile again; a little crooked, a little toothy, and a lot adorable.
All thoughts dribble out of Dean's head. "Uh, hey," he says. So lame.
He fiddles with the papers at the counter, just to give himself something to do.
"Oh, wait, you know my name?"
"It was on your nametag," the guy says, which, duh.
"Heheh, right," Dean says, chuckling awkwardly.
"My name is Castiel," Castiel says.
Dean tries to think of something to say besides how weird a name that is.
"It's weird, I know," Castiel says, like he's reading Dean's mind. "My father was a biblical scholar."
That explains exactly nothing, but hey, Castiel didn't name himself. "I get that," Dean says. "Not the biblical thing, but I'm named after my grandmother, so that's, you know, kind of weird."
"Your grandmother's name was Dean?"
"Deanna, actually. Dean's kind of a nickname. Not that Deanna is actually my name, it really is Dean, just, like, a nickname that's on my birth certificate." Dean forces himself to stop babbling, and the silence stretches.
"So you like the penguins?" Castiel asks.
"I love penguins!" Dean says, jumping gratefully on the subject. "I've always loved penguins."
He's all ready to launch into the embarrassing story of how he loved Mr. Popper's Penguins as a kid and campaigned hard to go to the South Pole and get a bunch of penguins of his own, which he thinks is mostly just embarrassing but has been called endearing by previous crushes, but then he looks down at himself and realizes there's a penguin on his shirt.
The Penguins. As in, the sports team, not the animal.
Oh god, does he even know what sport this is? This is what he gets for borrowing Sam's clothes, he who hates baseball and football and bald eagles.
Dean's still trying to surreptitiously check out his own chest when Castiel says, "I don't meet a lot of hockey fans around here."
Right. Ice hockey. About which Dean knows precisely nothing. "Same here," he says. And soon he will know one less, because he's going to kill Sam for putting him in this situation.
"Are you watching the game tonight?" Castiel asks. "My brother has one of those embarrassingly over-sized widescreen TVs and he tends to see the Stanley Cup playoffs as the perfect opportunity for a two-month party, so, it should be a good party. If you're watching anyway, that is."
"Of course I'm watching," Dean blatantly lies. "And, yeah, that sounds good. I make a mean taco dip."
Castiel smiles, and Dean melts a little inside. "Just don't tell Gabriel you can cook, he might never let you leave."
"It's just taco dip, hardly cooking," Dean says. "I'll give you my number and you can text me the address."
"Good."
"Great."
Castiel leaves without actually getting anything done to his tires or car, and when Dean goes back to the office he finds Sam laughing like a hyena, because he's an eavesdropping little shit.
"Shut up," Dean says. "No, wait, tell me everything you know about hockey, and then shut up."
"Tempting as that is, I'm off to see my girlfriend. With whom I can have an actual, grown-up conversation," Sam says.
"Sam!"
"Just remember: three times is a hat trick." Then the bastard leaves.
"Hey!" Dean calls after him. "Is that a hockey thing or a sex thing?
Dean totally means to look up hockey on google, but two customers come in right at the end of his shift and it's all he can do to shower and put on a clean, non-ripped pair of jeans and throw together a decidedly subpar taco dip before dashing out the door.
He texts Sam for emergency assistance, but the jerk just sends him a string of stupid emoticons, and a warning not to have sex in his sweatshirt.
Dean really hates his brother sometimes.
He pulls up to the house and has to check his phone to make sure he's at the right place. He has no idea what Gabriel does for a living, but Dean wants in on that. He didn't know they even had houses like this in Kansas.
Dean chews a breathmint and checks that his hair isn't fluffing too much in the summer humidity (it is, but it won't flatten back down so he decides to just leave it). He's halfway to the door before he remembers the taco dip and has to run back to his car to get it.
So really it's just fitting the general theme of the evening when the door opens and Castiel looks like a person who is trying not to look upset.
"Is everything okay?" Dean asks.
"Yes, just… I'm so, so sorry. Gabriel found out that I invited someone, and he has this idea that I never socialize, and he decided to just fly to Pittsburgh instead and bring his friends with him, so, no one else is here."
Ah. Suddenly this has gone from two guys going to a sports party together to two guys alone in a palatial house. Maybe Castiel really had meant his invitation in a bro kind of way and not a date kind of way.
"We can go to a bar," Castiel says, looking pinched and sad.
"Didn't you say there was a sweet TV?" Dean asks.
There is a sweet TV, in an honest to god theater room, with plush seats with their own cupholders and those weird flat couches they have in gladiator movies. The whole room is wallpapered—if that's even the right word—in red velvet, and has a bunch of gaudy gold light fixtures.
"…wow," Dean says, unable to help himself.
"My only defense is that this isn't actually my house," Castiel says.
"Does it have surround sound?" Dean asks.
It does.
"We don't have to look at the walls," Dean says, after experiencing the sound system for himself.
Castiel laughs, finally relaxing. "I suppose I might as well break the rest of the bad news: he took all the pizzas, too."
Dean's taco dip is looking very sad all by itself, and they go scrounging for something to add to it.
What they find is shelf after shelf of candy. Like, two whole pantries full of it.
"Good thing I brought chips," Dean jokes.
"I would say he's not normally like this, but he totally is," Castiel says.
"I get it," Dean says. "I've got a little brother, Sam, and sometimes I don't know how we're actually related."
Castiel orders some new pizza and Dean carries an armful of Sno-Caps and Reese's Fast Breaks into the theater room, where the pre-game talk has started.
Right. Hockey stuff. About which Dean knows precisely nothing.
And without other people to take his cues from, faking it got a whole lot more difficult.
Dean finds a place to put his phone where he can hopefully google on the sly in case of emergency. Castiel is obviously way into this hockey thing, because he has an actual signed jersey for Lemuh—Lemee—Lumox? Number 66.
He's doomed.
Castiel is off paying for the pizza and Dean is attempting to smother himself in the plush cushions when the game starts.
"Oh, did I miss the face-off?" Castiel asks.
"Uh, yeah, sorry, I should have paused it, sorry."
Castiel shrugs. "Looks like I haven't really missed anything."
"It wasn't anything special," Dean says, then stuffs his mouth with pizza.
Dean hates hockey. He was mostly indifferent to it before tonight, but no more. It's completely impossible to tell where the puck is or what's going on, and he's forced to take all his cues from the spectators. Thank god it's a home game. Match. Meet?
He and hockey officially have a hate for all time.
"Yes!" Dean says, half a beat behind the crowd. Something about a penalty? He's going to assume it's on New York, since penalty is generally a negative thing. Though he's been caught once by the crowd cheering a particularly loud slam into the walls, on account of it being awesome rather than any actual benefit to the team.
"I try not to get my hopes up," Castiel says. "The Pens aren't exactly number one on the power play."
"Oh, well… you just never know," Dean says awkwardly, cursing Sam and hockey and his life and also Sam. "This could be our night."
Castiel gives him one of his brain-melting smiles, and Dean thinks back to what he just said and how cheesy and rom-com that probably sounded and wants to kick himself. It's fine, he just needs to say something cool and unambiguously about hockey, he's got this.
"Our night for power. And playing," is what he actually says, which, seriously.
Castiel is laughing at him. "Maybe save that for the second date," he says.
"Huh?"
Dean forgets to hate hockey for a second when Castiel brushes their hands together, deliberately, and when Dean doesn't jump off the chair or run away he leans in for a kiss.
Which is, of course, when the TV goes completely nuts. "Score!"
They both turn to the noise, and the whole screen is taken up by some guy with a very thick, round beard and the actual most awkward smile ever worn by a human being.
Dean's the first to laugh, but then Castiel starts laughing, too, and they end up sort of half-hugging and chuckling on each other's shoulders and Dean wants to go in for a full hug but also doesn't want to drop his pizza.
"So, this was awkward," Castiel says, when they've calmed down a little.
"Sort of a main feature of dating me," Dean confesses, with a sheepish smile.
"And what about this evening has suggested that I'm any different?" Castiel asks. "Considering… every single event of this evening. I probably should have just gone with my first idea, which was tell you how cute you are and ask if you wanted to go out sometime. If I'd been thinking at all I never would have offered to introduce you to Gabriel until we'd been dating at least five years."
With the tiny corner of his brain that isn't giddy over the 'cute' and 'five years' bit, Dean knows it's time to 'fess up. "Right, so, I should tell you that I don't actually know anything about hockey. It's my brother's sweatshirt, and I just saw the opportunity to hang out with you, and I took it. So, sorry about that."
"Well, I can hardly hold it against you when this is my sister's jersey."
"You're joking."
"Nope."
Dean has to laugh. "And after ten successful minutes of pretending to have a clue what we're talking about, our big moment is ruined by… who was that guy?"
"I have no idea. We can look it up, though." Castiel reaches for his phone. "And we don't have to watch the game if you don't want to."
"Nah, let's do it," Dean says. "It's more interesting than I remember. Now that I'm not terrified that I'm going to make an idiot of myself by saying the wrong thing."
"No judgment here," Castiel says. "Now let's see if we can match some names to numbers."
They end up sitting a lot closer together this time, to Dean's complete satisfaction. "Sounds good. And maybe explain this power play thing, because seriously, I have no idea what's going on. And… what the hell is a hat trick?"
For their one year anniversary, Dean and Castiel both buy each other the same gift: Phil Kessel shirts.
"You two idiots deserve each other," Sam says, with a judgmental eyebrow. "You don't even like hockey."