A/N: This was meant to be a light story that ended up with a fair amount of heart in it, too. A friend and I took a trip to Las Vegas, and afterward she commissioned this story: a saga in six parts, following the Winchesters and Castiel on one night's trip through Las Vegas.

This story has recently been substantially edited so that it fits into the mild AU series I've been working on, the Other Guardian 'verse. In chronology it goes after One Step Closer and before Darkness Rising.

There is a more detailed note about the 'verse in my profile, but in brief: after Dean is raised from Hell by Castiel, an entire year passes before the Lilith rises and the seals start to break. During that time, Castiel is assigned to watch over the Winchesters, and finds himself growing closer and closer to Sam

Cas and Sam centric, pre-slash, with plenty of Dean thrown in as well. Some swearing. Set during an alternate Season 4.

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Looking for Love in Las Vegas

Part II: Evening

The woman behind the hotel's customer service desk looked pissed. She glared at Sam over the rims of her leopard-patterned frames with piercing intensity, one hand resting on her keyboard and the other tapping relentlessly against the countertop between them, her long fingernails clicking on the fake marble. Her scowl reminded Sam of a particular librarian in Cleveland who had scared the crap out of his eight-year-old self when John Winchester yanked them out of school without warning and he couldn't return the book he'd borrowed until they swung through Ohio again nine months later. Sam had a rule about taking library books home after that.

He did his best to look genial as he slid both room keys across the counter.

"Are you sure they're not working, sir?" the woman asked, scorn and disbelief dripping from her tone. Sam carefully swallowed his sigh.

"No. Like I said, we tried them both… multiple times." Almost as many times as he'd related this, he guessed. Dean, who was standing at Sam's side impatient to change out of the shirt that two maybe-legal co-eds had drenched in a couple of badly handled appletinis, elbowed his brother in the back. Sam gave the woman a forced smile. "It would be really, really nice if we could get into the hotel room."

The woman picked up the cards and flipped them over in her hand, as though she were checking for vandalism. "You didn't do anything to them?" she asked, her green eyes pinning Sam with unfaltering skepticism.

Sam blinked back at her. "Do anything?" he repeated.

The woman rolled her eyes behind her glasses. "You didn't try to swipe them through a credit card reader, or put them into the slot machines… run them under a magnet…"

Sam's eyebrows drew together. "Why would I do that?" he asked.

For the first time, a flicker of humanity crossed the woman's face, making her expression almost sympathetic for a moment as she shook her head. "You wouldn't believe the things people do." Then the hostility was back, the hardened interrogator tapping both room keys against her palm like key pieces of evidence that might trigger his confession. "Were you carrying them in the same pocket as your cell phone?" she wanted to know.

"Can we speed this up a little bit?" Dean growled in his ear, his still-damp shirt brushing unpleasantly against Sam's arm. "These apple fumes are making me sick. And I smell like a frickin' metrosexual."

"It takes as long as it takes, Dean," Sam muttered back, carefully putting a patient smile on his face before returning to the customer service agent. "No. Neither of them were near our cell phones. They're just… not working."

The woman fixed Sam with a stern look, holding his gaze for an interminable moment like she was conducting some kind of customer service polygraph based entirely on eye contact. Finally she sighed and slapped the room cards down next to her computer, her long French tips pecking away at the keyboard so viciously it almost hurt to watch. "Let me see what I can do," she told him through another sigh, her lips thinning with undisguised aggravation.

Sam fought down a wince. "Thanks. I'm sorry about all of this," he said, wondering why he felt like he had to apologize for making this woman do her job.

The woman's head snapped up from its death glare at the computer screen, a perfectly lipsticked smile suddenly the centerpiece of her expression. "It's no trouble at all, sir. We're here to make your stay as comfortable and relaxing as possible in any way that we can. We value your business."

"Right," Sam replied. "Thanks. I guess."

The woman's attention whipped back to her computer, and Sam found himself patting the countertop with an awkward hand, until her beady eyes fixed on his fidgeting fingers and froze them to the fake marble. Sam wondered if his expression was as pained as he felt.

"This is just going to take a minute, Dean," he said after the quiet had stretched out too long, deciding that even one of his brother's snarky comebacks would be better than standing there at the counter with only the sharp click of irritated fingernails to break the silence. When he didn't get a riposte, Sam turned his head to see Dean staring off across the hotel lobby, his eyes fixed on something near the revolving doors that led out onto the early evening streets. Sam quirked an eyebrow. "Dean, what are you looking at?"

Dean leaned back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest. "Eh, not much, Sammy. Just some girl's perfect bare ass."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, don't be a jack—" Then he turned far enough to realize that the girl in question was standing in the midst of the crowded lobby wearing a tank top and a bright blue thong, with nothing covering her lower half but a flimsy wrap of transparent gauze wound around her waist. Sam couldn't help shaking his head. "Wow," he amended. "My bad. At that point, I guess she's asking people to stare."

"Happy to oblige," Dean told him, giving his brother a grin that showed far too many teeth.

Dean could always get at least an incredulous smile out of him, even if it was only because the cartoonish, slack-jawed expression was more reminiscent of the wolf that drooled over Jessica Rabbit than a bona fide Casanova.

"Whatever, man," Sam said, glancing back at the woman behind the customer service desk, who was still typing away furiously. It seemed like she should have written a novel by now, and he wondered for a second if she was updating her Facebook page or something instead of resetting the room keys—then Sam recognized a silence that he should have noticed a long time ago, and he pivoted on one foot, searching the lobby with suddenly wary eyes. "Dude, where's Cas?" he asked, nudging Dean with one elbow.

Dean glanced at Sam and then out over the sea of heads, shrugging when he also failed to detect a conspicuous tan trench coat in the sea of t-shirts and sundresses. "I don't know. You were supposed to be watching him."

"I was—" Sam threw his hand toward the customer service counter at his back, then stopped, casting his eyes up to the ceiling for a second before he let his arm drop back to his side. "Whatever. Will you please just go find him? He's not exactly in his element here."

Dean shook his head once. "No can do, Sammy. I'm busy."

"Busy doing what?" Sam demanded. "You're just standing there…" Then he realized exactly where his brother's gaze had tracked back to, and he rolled his eyes, his hands settling on his hips. "Oh, for God's sake, Dean."

"What?" Dean said. "You said it yourself, Sammy—she put it out there. I'm just enjoying the view."

Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You can be such a lech, you know that?"

Dean shrugged. "Eh. Like I said—busy. You go find Cas. I'll wait for the new keys."

Sam glanced over his shoulder at the customer service woman, wondering how much attention she'd been paying to his brother and whether she'd be willing to give up the room keys to someone who honestly reeked of oversweet apples—but the woman was still just typing away, no closer to solving their problem, as far as he could tell, than when he'd first walked up to the desk fifteen minutes ago, and an extremely awkward angel on the loose in a place that advertised strippers and criminal lawyers one after another on the highway billboards was potentially much more serious than having to argue with the customer service agent again. With a sigh of general misgiving, Sam stepped away from the position at the head of the customer service line he'd been guarding for a quarter of an hour, slapping Dean's shoulder in passing.

"Okay, I'll find him. But just… stay here until we get back, okay? Don't disappear somewhere while I'm gone."

"No worries," Dean called after him as Sam navigated the cross traffic of the busy lobby. "Right now, I wouldn't be anywhere else."

Sam shook his head once more, sparing a moment to hope that the short-tempered woman behind the counter didn't catch his brother openly staring at another guest's rear and have him hauled off by hotel security. That was also on the first-day don'ts list. But looking for Castiel soon put Dean out of his mind. The hotel's first-floor casino was busier now than when they'd wandered down to the pool after checking in; the roulette tables were in action, and knots of people had gathered around them, gamblers and spectators alike crowded toward the soft green foam and the clack of the spinning ball. Sam felt a sudden lurch of familiarity in his gut as he noticed one figure standing on the outside edge of one of the tables, his eyes riveted to the motion of the white ball over red and black slots.

At least he knew the angel was already out of money.

Sam pushed through the spectators and grabbed Castiel's shoulder. "Cas," he said, drawing that eternally sharp gaze to his face in a second. Sam jerked his head back toward the lobby, forking his fingers through the long strands of his hair, an unexpected feeling of anxiety bubbling up in his stomach. "What are you doing over here? Come on—we've almost got the keys fixed. Don't wander off, okay?"

It was one of Sam's great worries—that his brother would somehow manage to corrupt the angel that deigned to spend so much time with the Winchesters. Cas had seemed mostly immune Dean, but now that his brother had all of Sin City to work with, that worried feeling had slipped into overdrive. Not to mention that Dean had spent half the car ride making up bad information and statistics about the Vegas tables, which Castiel had clearly put too much stock in.

Castiel studied him for a second, his eyes slightly narrowed as if he were considering not only Sam's current request but everything he had been told since arriving in Vegas. Then he glanced back at the roulette dealer with the same critical stare, his expression solemn but sincere when he turned to Sam once more. "This table has the best odds in Las Vegas," Castiel told him seriously, looking up at the young man with an expression that was somehow thousands of years old and completely gullible at the exact same time. "We could win this one, Sam."

Sam wasn't sure whether he wanted to smile or grimace, so in the end he just swallowed, brushing an errant piece of hair behind his ear. The angel's gaze followed the movement.

"It seems like it should work that way, doesn't it, Cas?" Sam said, dredging up half a smile. Then he led the angel away from the temptation of gambling for the second time in one day and placed a light hand against his back—because if Dean could put bad thoughts into the angel's head, certainly Sam must have an equal and opposite power. Or something like that.

"Come on," Sam said, letting his hand slide down slowly. "It's time to eat anyway. We just have to run up to the room first so Dean doesn't smell like a walking minibar—" Then he was struck by a realization that stopped him dead in the midst of the clanging slot machines, and he turned around to face Castiel fully, his disbelieving hand falling all the way back to his side. "Wait a minute. You could have zapped us into the hotel room as soon as we couldn't get the door open."

Castiel's expression was blank. "Yes."

Sam's shoulders slumped, disbelief overtaking his face as he lifted two inquiring hands into the space between them. "Why didn't you say anything?" he asked, shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as he relived his encounter with the slowest customer service agent in the state of Nevada. "I mean…it's just…Cas, we could have gotten into the room an hour ago."

Castiel's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Dean didn't say he wanted to get into the room. He said he wanted the key to work. I could not fix that, Sam."

And it was all just ridiculous enough that Sam found all he could do was laugh a little, leaning into Cas's warm shoulder—because really, angels could be far too literal sometimes.

.x.

Sam had only turned his back on them for a minute and a half.

About ten minutes after arriving in Vegas and definitely about thirty seconds after losing Castiel on the way to the swimming pool, Sam had come to the decision that leaving his brother or his angelic guardian alone, together or separately, was going to be a serious recipe for trouble. So far, he wasn't having a ton of success dogging their heels. This time, though, he'd taken off of his own volition. After the buffet, which had been sixty long minutes of Dean cramming ribs down his gullet in spite of Sam's warnings that five pounds of barbequed pork was not the smartest thing to throw into a stomach already churning with alcohol, and Castiel proving that he could probably have put down the entire buffet without even feeling it, Sam had left them at the cashier and ducked into the lobby store next door to the restaurant for some badly needed antacids. Sam didn't need them, because he'd eaten like a normal person instead of going back for third helpings of everything like his brother insisted, but he was pretty sure Dean would before too long, whatever his idiotic older brother was currently claiming about his iron stomach.

The antacids were right at eye level behind the sales counter, and there was no line, so a minute and a half was all it took Sam to make his purchase and step out onto the boardwalk in front of Treasure Island, where Dean and Castiel were waiting for him next to the ivory pirate ship. Somehow, in that time, a stick of cotton candy had appeared in Castiel's hand.

He and Dean seemed to be fighting about it.

"It's just cotton candy," Dean was insisting as Sam approached—not for the first time, he guessed, if his older brother's aggravated tone was anything to go by. Dean threw one hand toward the swirled pink confection that Castiel was holding out stiffly a full foot in front of him, the paper cone clenched in his fingers. "It's not a nuclear bomb, all right?"

Castiel tracked Sam's arrival with his eyes, but turned back to Dean as soon as the younger man drew up beside him, a few wrinkles that Sam recognized as annoyance that he was being misunderstood creasing the angel's forehead. "I wanted to know what it was," Castiel said gravely, pushing the cotton candy toward Dean again. "I did not say I wanted it."

Dean scoffed. "Well, don't bitch at me. The guy behind the dessert counter gave it to you. You think I wanted to pay for that on top of the buffet? No. But instead of just beaming yourself out here like any normal angel, you walk up behind me while I'm paying, and I get crapped on by the cashier for trying to steal hokey carnival food from an all-you-can-eat buffet. You shouldn't even be able to steal from buffets," he finished, casting his brother a sour look. Sam just shrugged. He had a feeling people like Dean were the reason you had to pay to carry food out of buffets.

Castiel looked even more irritated than before, if that were possible, so Dean changed tacks, slapping one hand onto the angel's rigid shoulder.

"Look, just try it. You'll probably like it—you and that killer sweet tooth." Sam quirked his lips together to hold back his smile at the memory of the three bowls of ice cream Castiel had devoured before they left the buffet, just one more precious sliver of information about the angel that he was filing away for later. Castiel didn't move, though, and Dean rolled his eyes. "It's good, Cas. People like cotton candy."

"You don't want it," Castiel pointed out.

"That's because one wafer-thin mint would pop me all over the sidewalk right now," Dean practically growled. Sam lifted the packet of Tums he'd just purchased, but his brother held up a warning finger, refusing the offer before Sam could say anything. "No. I told you, I'm fine. And you…" Dean turned back to Castiel, his finger shifting target with him. "Deal with the cotton candy. You asked about it, you can eat it."

Castiel studied the older Winchester for a minute more, his eyes eventually drifting down to the paper cone in his hand and the sugar threads of the cotton candy sparkling in the boardwalk lights. After a long moment of contemplation, he lifted his gaze to Sam, holding out the pink swirl to his younger companion instead.

"This is not food, Sam," Castiel said, his voice flat, but with an edge of uncertainty. Sam wasn't trying to laugh at the angel, but he couldn't stop the corners of his lips from quirking up into a smile, because even though it was a little silly—a full-grown man trying to escape from a cone of cotton candy—after months of waging perpetual war against all the bad information Dean insisted on putting into Castiel's head, he would take any victory if it meant Cas was turning to him for answers instead of his idiotic older brother.

"It's candy, Cas," he said gently. "It's fine—you'll probably like it. Just try a bite, okay?"

Castiel's eyes still radiated skepticism, but he dropped his gaze to the cotton candy once more, considering it with his mouth set in a reluctant line. Sam was about one second from suggesting they just find a trash can and put the whole thing behind them when the angel's shoulders relaxed, something like resignation settling into his expression. "How does one eat this?" Castiel asked, searching Sam's face with serious eyes.

Sam racked his brain for the best words. "You just sort of—here." Sam was pretty sure he'd seen this maneuver depicted in a bad '50s date movie, but he tried not to think about that as he tucked his hair back behind his ears and then took hold of Castiel's hand, tipping the paper cone forward until he could get a mouthful of cotton candy. The angel's fingers were warm and inviting under his, but his nerves were too fried to hold on for long—Sam let go after just a moment and leaned back on his heels, licking the threads of sugar from the corners of his mouth. "See? Like that."

As he pulled away, Sam noticed Dean slowly shaking his head, regarding his brother with an expression of deep betrayal. "Sammy—come on, man," Dean said, sending him a look that was becoming all too familiar after a whole summer of Dean calling Cas out on his behavior: no staring, no showing up nude, no touching below the waist—scratch that, no touching at all—no sharing drinks, and on and on, always followed by the inevitable moment when Sam himself broke these rules with barely a roll of his eyes. Dean made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.

"You do not share cotton candy with dudes, Sam. I taught you better than that."

Castiel stared at the place Sam had taken a bite, looking slightly disconcerted. "This portion is disintegrating," he objected.

Sam managed not to sigh. "That's just the sugar crystalizing," he promised. "It won't change the taste, Cas."

At last Castiel did. He didn't say anything about it, but Sam decided the fact that the angel took a second bite a few moments later and didn't toss the contentious sugar swirl into any of the trash cans they passed as they made their way down the Strip, heading to the next bar on Dean's list, meant that it had passed muster. There was only one incident that had to be diffused, and Sam did that as quickly as possible, leading Castiel away from the little girl and her scandalized mother at a near run—because while there was something about an angel in a long trench coat walking down the Vegas Strip at twilight with a stick of cotton candy that Sam found absolutely wonderful, he didn't think it was a good idea to hand that cotton candy out to strangers' children, no matter how good his intentions.

.x.

Dean was not drunk.

Dean knew a lot about being drunk. He'd spent a lot of really good times in that frame of mind. And some not as good times, naturally. But he wasn't focusing on those tonight. Actually all Dean was focusing on right at that moment was how awesome he was, because even buzzed so hard that he could actually feel his skull vibrating—which was still buzzed, whatever Sam said—he had managed to lead his lame-ass brother and their divine tagalong to a club where the barstools were real saddles and a ridiculously stacked chick in a black leather bikini and tasseled chaps was perched on one of them maybe four feet from him, her feet knocked into gloriously high stirrups. Actually, Dean wasn't focused on that either. He was just focused on her rocking belly button, which looked trippy with the killer way the club lights were bobbing over his head.

Yeah. So Dean wasn't drunk. Or maybe it would have been fairer to say that he wasn't drunk yet. Whatever. Point was, Sam had been way ahead of the curve telling Dean maybe he wanted to slow down when he ordered another margarita however long ago—it was the one that was empty in front of him, anyway. But Sam was always like that when they came to Vegas—always wanted to stop Dean short of having too good a time. Like there was any such thing.

Thinking about Sam made Dean realize he hadn't heard his little brother's nagging voice in a while, and he dragged his eyes away from the gyrating Gilley girl, turning around in his chair to survey the rest of the table they'd staked out right by the bar. Sam was gone, his hulking form nowhere in sight, but Cas was still in his chair, stiff and unfriendly as usual and looking like he had a 300-foot pole shoved up his ass—which was maybe about right, considering how big the angel liked to brag his true form was. But Dean was just buzzed enough that he couldn't really bring himself to care where Sam had slunk off to. Sam was a buzzkill anyway until he got at least half as drunk as Dean liked to be most of the time, and his baby brother was being stingy as hell with his own liquor tonight. That was Cas's fault, too. Or, just that. Dean couldn't remember where his train of thought had started. It didn't seem important.

"Hey, Cas!" he shouted over the music—some country mess that he was only putting up with because he had a feeling it was connected somehow to the hot girls in chaps. Sam had said something about a "strip club roadhouse," which sounded like the best thing ever to Dean right now. Especially if they served steak, too. That thought made him grin—and yeah, he was looking over at Cas, but it wasn't like he was really grinning at Cas, so the angel had no right to look all wary and offended and lean back a couple inches in his chair. But Cas could do whatever he wanted, because he looked like a total douchebag sitting there in his beat-up trench coat in the middle of a cowgirl bar. If Dean thought he could do it without losing a couple fingers, he would've ripped that coat off.

"Why are you staring at me?" Castiel demanded all of a sudden, looking all pissy again, like Dean had seriously ruffled his feathers. Dean felt his lips stretching back in a wide grin. He was the funniest man in the room every day of his life, but he was on fire when he was drunk.

Buzzed.

"Havin' fun yet, Cas?" Dean hollered over the pounding guitar riffs. Castiel winced like he was talking too loud—but whatever, maybe angels had delicate ears. Dean wasn't one of those dicks who yelled all the time when they were drunk.

"This is a place of overwhelming sin," Castiel told him, leaning forward in his seat and casting a wary glance over Dean's shoulder—at the smoking hot waitress, probably.

Dean shrugged and took a drink of his beer—he was doing the tequila, beer, tequila thing. "Why do you think we're here, man? We came for the sin." Cas looked mildly affronted at that, but Dean shook it off—the angel was a tool, and Dean didn't like hanging out with him at bars anyway. If Sam was a buzzkill, Cas was a frickin' heart attack. Suddenly Dean was wondering about his teetotaler brother again, and he slumped forward to brace one elbow on the table, squinting at Castiel through the whirling lights. "Hey. Where's our resident Chippendale stripper, anyway?" he asked, sporting an unstoppable grin—but really, who could keep a straight face with that sweet little blackmail moment in mind?

Castiel looked even more offended, if that were even possible, and at first it seemed like he was going to keep his lips zipped—but after a silence so long Dean thought he might have died in the middle and just not noticed, the angel's eyes finally cut across to the door leading onto the open-air patio, his expression grave. "Sam needed to get air," he said, mangling the phrase as usual. Dean wondered if Cas even knew what that meant.

Then he realized how weird that was, Sam getting air, because Sam never left him on his own in bars—not in Vegas. Maybe he thought Cas was babysitting. Dean scrunched up his face. He didn't want Cas for a babysitter, or for whatever you called the friend assigned to sit on you while you got shitfaced in a bar. Maybe that just fell into the category of a wingman. Dean wanted Cas for a wingman even less. Cas was an even worse wingman than Sam, judging by the way he'd shut down Dean's baby brother's chances with the half-drunk Chippendale girl earlier that night. But that was funny, because…

Dean lurched forward in his seat and swung an arm out to punch Castiel in the shoulder. The angel's piercing blue eyes stared at the point of contact like Dean had put a hole in it instead of just giving him a friendly bump.

"You are a shit wingman, you know that?" Dean told him, pointing one only barely shaking finger at Castiel. "I'm a hundred times the wingman you are, and that's just wrong, man. 'Cause you're supposed to be an angel." Castiel's clueless eyes lifted to meet Dean's; the hunter downed the last of his beer and hoisted the bottle in one fist, gesturing sort of in the direction of Cas's back. "Wingman? Angel? How are you not getting this?"

Castiel just narrowed his eyes, which Dean had decided was the angel's version of Sam's bitchface—like he needed to deal with two of those. Sam used to be less bitchy after he'd slept with a demon or a vampire or whatever, though, and that reminded Dean of a bone he wanted to pick with Castiel, because it was one thing for the angel to be all up in his brother's space like they were each half of a pair of handcuffs when he dropped in on them in Nowheresville, Nowhere, but this was Vegas. With another heave, Dean rocked forward and punched the angel's shoulder again, a little harder this time. Not that Cas probably even felt it, being a bastard of the heavenly variety.

"Why'd you chase off that girl before?" Dean demanded. Castiel glanced around him in both directions, and the hunter blew a frustrated breath out through his teeth. "Not here. At the first bar. The Chippendale girl. Sammy could have had that in the bag and you screwed it up."

Castiel tipped his head slightly in confusion. "Sam did not have a bag."

"Ugh…" Dean gave a low groan and dragged a hand down his face, pointing the business end of his beer bottle at the brainless wonder across the table. "Talking to you is impossible, you know that, Cas? Trying to have a conversation with you is like trying to have a conversation with the freak lovechild of a Vulcan and Cousin It." Dean was buzzed enough at the moment to think that kind of sounded like an awesome TV show.

Cas was getting annoyed with him, too, Dean could tell—the angel's eyebrows had drawn together, pinching his face like he was sucking on the lime from the rim of Dean's empty margarita. "I don't understand that reference," Castiel told him flatly—like he couldn't tell that from the look on his face.

Dean slammed his beer bottle down onto the corner of the table. "You know what? Fuck you. We're not talking about you. We're talking about Sam." It took Dean's brain a minute to track back to what he'd wanted to say, but then he remembered, and he braced both hands against the tabletop to keep it from bucking long enough to make his point. "You don't seem to care whether you ever get laid, and that's not my problem—but Sam is, and if he's all set up to get some love from a chick who's drunk enough to think he's a male stripper, I don't want Wingman 2.0 blowing that out of the water. All right?" Dean leaned back in his chair and brought the empty margarita glass to his lips again, wishing the crushed ice tasted more like tequila. "Sam's not smooth enough to score all the time without you slamming the door in their faces, too. So no more of that. You got me?"

Dean couldn't entirely remember all of the words he'd just said, which made it harder to guess how many were phrases Castiel wouldn't have understood—but the angel seemed to have figured out what he was pissed about, anyway, because he shifted in his chair and fixed Dean with a skeptical look, shaking his head once. "Sam said that is not love," Castiel told him, his serious tone making the hunter roll his eyes.

"That's because Sam got all his dumb ideas about love from some chick flick he watched in college," Dean countered. "He's like… Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. He's delusional," he added after a moment when Castiel's expression stayed blank. Then he arched back in his chair and allowed his eyes to roll over the gorgeous lower half of the waitress delivering mojitos to the next table, glancing back at Cas with his ladykiller grin firmly in place. "Take my word for it, Cas—everything you need to know about love, you can learn right here in Las Vegas. Right here in this bar," he amended, reaching over and slipping a five-dollar bill into the belt of the cowgirl's chaps. The flirty little shake of her ass he got in return was definitely worth the money. Dean turned back to the angel and raised his eyebrows suggestively. Then he reached over and slapped a single into Castiel's palm, jerking his head toward the waitress. "C'mon. You try it."

Castiel stared at the bill in his hand like it was laced with something. "I will not—"

"Hey, guys."

Dean looked up into the hazy atmosphere of the lights to find that his soberer-than-thou little brother had appeared at Castiel's shoulder, smiling down at them as he brushed his hair back behind his ears—which was a girly gesture Dean didn't know when he'd picked up, and was maybe going to have to beat out of him. That was his prerogative, being the awesome older brother he was. Sam looked between the two of them with curious eyes like he could feel the pseudo-tension of their not-argument still hovering over the table.

"Sorry—got a call from Bobby while I was outside. He just wanted to know how everything was going. What were you guys talking about?" Sam asked after a beat, slipping back into the seat next to Castiel and tucking himself into the table. Then he noticed the dollar in the angel's hand, and he snatched it away in an instant, sending Dean that trademark bitchy look as he buried the single in his jacket pocket. "Dean, for crying out loud," Sam griped, folding his arms across his chest.

Dean decided Cas wasn't the only crap wingman at the table.

.x.

Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Sam wandered down the sidewalk behind his brother and Castiel, taking in the lights of the Mirage and their reflection in the man-made lake that bordered the Strip. Dean had reached that stage of drunk where he got restless and insisted on wandering from bar to bar, which meant they were seeing the Strip about sixty feet at a time—sometimes around in circles when Dean decided after ten minutes of walking that where he really wanted to be was the bar across the street from where they'd started. In the meantime, Dean was keeping himself entertained with one of his favorite pastimes: telling embarrassing one-time-when-Sam-got-wasted-in-Vegas stories.

Sam wondered if public humiliation was a universal thing for older siblings or if that was just one more way that he'd gotten lucky.

Usually Dean had to tell these stories to himself, to a really chagrined Sam, and to whoever was unlucky enough to be in shouting distance, since Dean's volume was usually a little amped by the time he got in the storytelling mood. But for the first time tonight, Sam felt like he could understand how those people felt in B comedies when their mother-in-law or some other horrible relative was telling their date all the awful secrets they'd rather have taken to the grave. Except Sam didn't even have a date—if anything he was the third wheel, and Dean was outdoing himself, jawing to his guardian angel like he was commissioning a new verse of the Bible.

"So there we are—hottest new club in Vegas. Paint practically still wet on the walls," Dean was saying. He had grabbed the lapel of Castiel's trench coat about the time he stumbled over his own feet and nearly broke his toe on the rim of the Neptune Fountain, and was now sort of half-leading, half-leaning on the angel as they walked, yanking his companion forward with every step. Cas looked a little annoyed, but Sam couldn't help that familiar jealousy at how simple it always seemed to be for Dean to reach out to his angel.

Dean paused his story to take a long swig from the two-foot-long plastic souvenir glass that housed his enormous margarita—probably the reason why walking around didn't seem to be sobering him up at all. He turned back and tossed Sam a grin, then threw his arm over Castiel's shoulders, earning a wary look from the angel at his side.

"Picture this, Cas: ugliest girl you can possibly imagine—played by Sam." Sam was a little embarrassed when Castiel's eyes strayed back to him. "Worst song ever recorded: Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me. Now imagine this: Dya na na na—"

Dean threw his hand up over his head in what was maybe a really drunk rendition of the disco swim and rocked his body in circles to his tuneless singsong, splashing margarita carelessly from the lip of his cup. Castiel's face was suddenly alarmed and he pulled himself well out of Dean's reach, giving the older Winchester a look somewhere between irritation and physical distress.

"This was…required for a hunt?" Castiel hazarded, and his eyes flickered back to Sam, an uncertain expression on his face. Sam fought down a blush at being given the benefit of the doubt. He jogged a step forward until he was right behind Dean, raising his voice over the cacophony of Katy Perry blaring from the nearby casino's speakers.

"Not exactly. Well, actually it wasn't a hunt. But I was only doing it because I—"

"Because he's a freak, Cas—it's all there in the song," Dean cut him off. He sent Sam an I'm so damn precious look that his brother wasn't buying right now, and swayed his hips from side to side, holding his margarita in front of him like a stripper pole. "Come on, Sammy—do the dance for us," he goaded, grinning through his teeth. "I can't remember—did you striptease your jacket off before or after that girl shoved a twenty down your shorts?"

Dean had told these stories to a lot of waitresses and bartenders and drunk keno players over the years. Sam had learned early that Dean liked his own version of the story and it wasn't worth getting into a debate over what did or didn't happen, especially because arguing with Dean when he was drunk was like trying to argue with a religious extremist. By now Sam was pretty used to just taking his licks lying down. But something about the troubled look Castiel was shooting him—given the context, Sam thought it probably translated to Don't you wish your friend wasn't a freak like me—made Sam want to set the record straight for once. Or maybe it was just knowing that if he let it go right now, Castiel would remember it Dean's way forever.

Sam shook his head and lengthened his stride until he was walking abreast of Dean and Castiel, and sent his asshole brother a flat look. "Dude, that's not the whole story and you know it."

Dean threw his head back in a cackle. "Please, Sammy," he invited, sweeping his margarita over the sidewalk before them in a grand gesture. "Enlighten us. I would love to hear what was going on in your head as you shook it on the bar. You made one guy puke, you know."

"He puked because he'd just downed twenty-one shots of tequila," Sam protested.

Dean shrugged. "I think you helped him along."

"How do you even remember this?" Sam asked incredulously, shaking his head. "You were literally passed out over the table, drooling on some girl's purse."

"Some things I would never miss, Sammy," Dean promised him, lifting his eyebrows devilishly.

Sometimes Sam wondered why the things Dean remembered were never the things he wished his brother was paying attention to. Castiel sort of frowned at Dean for a moment before his gaze crept over to Sam, and he seemed to be waiting for the promised explanation, though his lips were pressed into an uncertain line that made Sam wonder if the heavenly jury was still out, or whether this was one more thing Dean had managed to change from fiction into fact just by shouting loudly enough. Sam took a deep breath and stuck a passing elbow in his older brother's ribs, and then turned his attention to the angel on his right, pushing his hair back from his face.

"Okay, um…so first of all, I was really smashed. I was seeing stars. I mean, I think I was trying to count how many stairs I had to climb to get to the bar, and it was a flat floor." Castiel looked, if possible, even more concerned at this, and Sam found himself stumbling forward with his explanation, trying to find the words to make the angel understand. "And we'd been at this club for hours, so we had this huge tab. So then I go up to the bar to pay it off, and my credit card won't go through—none of them. Dean's, either."

Castiel's eyes narrowed slightly. "Is this something that happens often?" he asked, glancing at the bulge in Sam's jacket where he was currently harboring both his and Dean's wallets for safekeeping. To Sam he looked a little nervous.

Sam gave him a smile. "Not that much anymore. Back then we weren't as good at…" He trailed off when he remembered suddenly that he hadn't really explained to Castiel yet that the Winchesters' main source of money was credit card fraud. It was less like a secret and more like a subject he just hadn't felt like broaching with an Angel of the Lord—but Sam sidestepped it either way, coughing once to change the topic. "You don't have to worry about that, Cas. We carry plenty of cash now. But we didn't have any that day. Mostly because Dean had already gone through three strip clubs and cleaned us out," he added, reaching out to slap his idiot brother's shoulder and shooting him a look. Dean was busy performing a very mocking stumble-jive and missed it entirely. Sam rolled his eyes and turned back to his sober companion. "I think he gave the strippers forty bucks each in singles."

"Dean spends a great deal of money that way," Castiel told him, a sympathetic look crossing his face. Sam was impressed that the angel had figured that out after only four hours in Vegas—but then again, Dean had been hitting it pretty hard tonight. But more importantly, when Sam snuck a glance over at the angel, Castiel was looking at him with understanding, not like a piece of mystery meat that had come to life and crawled out of the refrigerator, which was how the waitresses and keno players usually reacted to this anecdote. Sam hurried on with his side of the story, even as Dean crowed "Worth every penny" and took a huge swig of his margarita.

"So the cards are busted. We owe like eighty bucks in gin and whiskey. Bartender's pissed. Dean's down for the count. And I was drunk and we needed money and…" Sam found that he was almost smiling himself, staring up at the only two stars that made it through the Vegas smog and shaking his head ruefully. "I don't know. I just thought, you know, if girls could make money that way…"

Dean was laughing at him again, his teeth bared like a jackal. "My baby brother, stripping and dancing for money. Maybe that Chippendale girl wasn't so far off, huh, Cas?"

Castiel sent Sam a look he couldn't read.

"It wasn't like that," Sam tried, his gaze moving back and forth between the angel on his right and the cackling maniac on his left. "And I couldn't get away with that anymore anyway. I was way younger when that happened."

"How young?" Castiel asked, a note of concern in his gravel voice.

Sam looked up at the distant shape of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel and shook his head, realizing that for the first time ever when sharing these stories he was fighting down a smile. "I don't know, like, seventeen. I was underage," he admitted, wondering as an afterthought if Castiel even knew what that meant. The angel's expression said he was either completely confused or utterly disapproving—maybe both.

"Wait, you were seventeen?" Dean demanded, whirling to face Sam so quickly that he lost his balance and almost toppled over, another splash of his margarita hitting the concrete. He grabbed the shoulder of Sam's jacket to keep himself upright. "You weren't even legal? I totally shoulda clocked that Harley biker in the leather pants who slapped your ass on his way out the door."

Now Castiel definitely looked horrified. Sam felt a flicker against the back of his coat, as if the angel's hand had come up to brush against his shoulder, but Sam would never know for sure because he was too busy digging the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, trying to fight back the Dean headache beating on the inside of his skull. His brother always had to bring up that one extra thing he was trying so hard to erase from his memory. "Dude… if you were conscious, why did you ever let that happen?"

"I was only half conscious, but…" Dean pulled the straw out of his margarita with his teeth and slurped the air through it, holding it out in front of him and waving it like some demented elephant. "I figured you got where you were going on that one. I mean, come on. Dya na na na—"

Sam was distracted from the very disturbing image of his brother shaking his ass in the middle of the crowded Strip by a light tap on his shoulder.

"Excuse me. Will you take our picture?"

"What?" Sam turned to find a tourist couple looking up at him, their Nikon in hand. It took him a moment to process their question, and then he wondered not for the first time if he had one of those overly friendly faces, because it felt like he couldn't take two steps in this town without getting a camera shoved at him. He also wondered who in their right mind would talk to him right now, walking down the street with his obnoxious, gyrating older brother and, well, Cas. He dredged up a genial expression anyway. "Oh. Sure. Smile, I guess."

It seemed like Sam should be able to do a simple favor for another human being without exciting his brother the hyena, but by the time he'd finished snapping the shot and turned back to his companions, something had set Dean off again, and he was snorting into his two-foot margarita, the straw tucked safely inside once more. Castiel was looking at the older hunter through narrowed eyes, like he was evaluating the odds that whatever Dean had was contagious. Sam crossed his arms.

"What?" he asked.

Dean waved him off. "Ah, nothing. Just remembering Bridge Troll."

Sam felt the confusion contorting his face. "Bridge Troll? Dean, what the hell?"

"You don't remember Bridge Troll?" Dean practically howled.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "I… guess not."

Castiel's gaze bounced between them, something between confusion and caution clouding his face. "I am not familiar with this creature. What is a bridge troll?"

Sam fought the urge to laugh, deciding not for the first time that he was going to have to sit Castiel down with Grimm's Fairytales at some point, just to fill the angel in on a few of the most universal references. He racked his brains for a short explanation. "It's not a real creature, Cas. There's this fairytale about three goats—"

"Forget the fairytale, princess," Dean cut him off. The older hunter launched himself with surprising dexterity into the space between Sam and Castiel and threw an arm over each of their shoulders, pulling them forward to continue their walk down the Strip. "I'll tell you a better story, Cas," he said, his margarita tube swinging obnoxiously under Sam's nose. "This story is called Sammy the Camera Thief and the Big Bad Handbag."

Sam couldn't help rolling his eyes. "If you're trying to riff off Little Red Riding Hood, there wasn't even a troll in that fairytale."

"Shut up. It's not your turn to talk."

Dean slapped his shoulder with the mostly empty margarita, splashing a few drops onto Sam's shirt. Castiel glanced between the two of them, frowning slightly—Sam wanted to believe it was because the angel had been happier walking next to him, but a more likely explanation was just that Dean was a really obnoxious drunk. Sam shoved the margarita tube out of his face as Dean went on.

"This was a while back—Sam still had his boy band haircut, instead of this girly mess…" Dean lifted one hand and mussed it through Sam's hair; Sam jerked his head back. "Anyway, I took him to this bar with these Smirnov Jell-o shooters, and he got…" Dean broke off to laugh so hard Sam thought he might have collapsed, if he hadn't been leaning on them already. "Totally bombed. And then we went up on this walkway by the Bellagio. Remember?" Dean asked, smacking Sam in the chest. "Because you wanted to see the candy-ass fountain show?"

"I remember you upchucking down the side of the escalator," Sam replied, wrinkling his nose. Dean ignored him like a pro.

"So we're up there, and all these people keep asking Sam to take their pictures. Like you were sober enough to aim a camera," he added, tightening his arm around his brother's neck—harder than Sam thought he probably meant to, unless Dean was trying to spice up their evening by separating his vertebrae. "Anyway—Sam gets all into it. And he starts, like, chasing people around the bridge, trying to take their pictures—I mean like ripping cameras out of people's hands. Scared the shit out of that punk kid with the skateboard. I think he thought you were going to chuck him off the bridge."

Sam shook his head, wishing that he remembered his own version of a few more of these incidents, instead of just the version he'd heard from Dean year after year. For better or worse, he never recalled much from the times he'd been well and truly smashed. "It's not like I was terrorizing him on purpose," he hazarded all the same. He could feel the flames of embarrassment searing his cheeks, and he couldn't even bring himself to look over and see how Castiel was taking this story.

"Dude, have you seen yourself?" Dean demanded, flipping up his right hand in a gesture of disbelief and accidentally slapping the side of Castiel's head in the process. The angel jerked as far away from Dean as the older hunter's elbow allowed. "All six feet four inches of you, running around with your arms out, that sloppy stupid grin on your face like the whole world is your Happy Meal—you were fuckin' monstrous, man. Anyone woulda run. He probably thought you were on PCP." Then Dean laughed again, stumbling over a careless soda can and gripping Sam's shoulder to stay upright. "I was afraid somebody was gonna call the cops and have your ass hauled off, Sammy. Good thing that old lady stepped in and beat you down with her purse." Dean released them both so that he could throw his arms up over his head, cowering behind the clear plastic of his souvenir glass. "And you're all like, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' Man, she gave you a frickin' black eye. If I hadn't been laughing so hard I couldn't stand up I'd have kicked your ass for getting K.O.'d by an octogenarian."

"She was probably just in her sixties," Sam muttered under his breath. He knew his face was beefsteak-tomato red by now, and he wasn't sure if it was because Castiel had stopped looking at Dean and was now staring fixedly at him, or if it was because Dean's volume was starting to draw looks from the crowd, a huddle of college girls pointing at them and giggling behind their manicures. Sam ducked his head, trying to avoid their eyes and convey some sort of apology at the same time.

He was surprised but definitely pleased when Castiel's voice broke through Dean's guffaws a moment later.

"What about Dean?"

Both Sam and Dean turned to look at the angel, who had been largely silent to that point; Castiel's head was tipped slightly to one side, his eyes thoughtful as he regarded both Winchesters. Dean sent him a drunk, slightly misdirected scowl, frowning at a patch of air a few inches over Castiel's shoulder.

"'What about Dean?'" Dean repeated, his voice purposefully gruff. "What's that mean? Who's that question even meant for? I swear, Cas—every time I think we've got you socialized…"

The way Castiel narrowed his eyes told Sam he knew he was being mocked—but the angel refused to be put off. He turned far enough to face Dean squarely. "You drink more than Sam," he stated frankly. "I have never seen him more intoxicated than you are at the time. Have you never… frightened children or been attacked by the elderly?" His eyes flickered to Sam as he spoke, a thread of confusion bothering his forehead like he couldn't decide how serious the crime really was; Sam sent him a little smile for the vote of confidence. But Dean just scoffed, tossing his head at the thought.

"Me? No way. Because unlike Sammy here, I can hold my liquor."

"Yeah, right up until you can't," Sam broke in, giving his brother a flat look.

Dean's head jerked around so that he could stare at Sam. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Sam gave a laugh that was really more like a sigh, sending his brother a disbelieving smile. "It means that you can drink more than anyone else I know, but once you hit that wall, you become a menace to society. You don't get funny when you're drunk, Dean—you just get stupid."

"When have I ever done anything stupid?" Dean wanted to know.

His brother was obviously way too plastered to realize that you never gave somebody an opening like that. Sam took it all the same.

"How about that time you came out of a strip club without your pants on?" Sam volunteered. Castiel's curious gaze whipped over to him, and Sam felt a laugh bubbling up in his chest, breaking as he raised an eyebrow at his unsteady brother. "What did you tell me? You wouldn't give her your wallet so she asked you to take your pants off, and you were dumb enough to do it—then she stole them while you were zonked out in the booth. And then I had to walk all ten blocks back to the hotel with you in nothing but pirate boxers."

Sam was more than a little gratified to see that Dean was getting the chastising look from Castiel now, though there was something about the angel's expression that seemed amused to Sam in a way it hadn't before. Dean did his best to shrug the story off, taking another slurp of his melted margarita.

"Hey—pirates never go out of style. Plus, I almost scored in those."

"Would that be when you propositioned that woman in the lobby in your bad Irish pirate accent and she told you she was fifty bucks an hour, and no kissing?" Sam pressed, a little surprised how good it felt to get his licks in every once in a while. Castiel's gaze was on his face and Sam shook his head for the angel's benefit, a lighter feeling rising in his chest. "I only got her to leave once I told her you'd already been rolled."

Dean was frowning now, lengthening his stride—as if he had any prayer of getting away from them with as drunk as he was. "I don't really remember that," he said.

"Oh, you don't remember?" Sam echoed. "Okay. How about the time you put some guy in the hospital because you were throwing bar darts totally sloshed and you stuck one in his neck?" Sam shot Castiel another smile over his brother's head. "Or when you got us kicked out of the bar at our hotel because you tried to pay some other hotel guest twenty bucks to sit in your lap? And then we had to slink back in at three in the morning to get to our rooms—I thought that bouncer at the door was going to give you the chair."

"What chair?" Castiel asked.

"That wasn't even the worst part," Sam told him in a lower voice, leaning around Dean to speak to the angel directly. "When we finally got into the elevator…"

Dean was damn good at dishing it out, but Sam's brother had never been all that great at taking it. So Sam wasn't particularly shocked when Dean broke step and whirled around to face both of them, throwing his arms out to the side in a human roadblock.

"You know what? We're done. No one wants to hear the end of that story. Not to mention we should be getting drunk off our asses right now. Where's that bar with the Roman dude?"

Sam came to a reluctant stop, staring at his brother in exasperation. "You mean the very first bar we came to after we left Gilley's?"

Dean shrugged. "Sure. I guess. Come on—we've been walking too much anyway." He lurched between the two of them and started back the way he'd come, in a remarkably straight line considering he probably had more alcohol than blood in his veins right now. Then he turned back and sent Sam a look, raising one finger in warning. "And no more Dean stories, Sammy. You got me?" Sam just rolled his eyes.

Castiel seemed slightly annoyed by the constant change of direction; Sam bumped the angel's elbow with his own, trying to give Cas a sympathetic me too with his eyes as he led the way after Dean's retreating back, both of them silent for once as the sounds of the Strip at dusk swept over them from all sides. The angel seemed occupied with his own thoughts, and Sam didn't want to intrude on that—but as they squeezed between oncoming pedestrians in a busy crosswalk, their shoulders bumping, Castiel suddenly leaned up and spoke into Sam's ear, his breath tingling on the too-warm skin.

"I would like to hear the end of that story, Sam."

Sam ducked his head, a real smile crossed his face—because even though he sometimes felt he had to fight to get anyone's ear, more and more Castiel was becoming the exception. He shifted until he was walking one step behind the angel and then leaned down in return, keeping his voice low enough that only Cas could hear him. "So when we got into the elevator…"

"Hey!" Dean called back, turning around at the opposite street corner and fixing them both with suspicious if watery eyes. "What are you telling him?"

"Nothing," Sam promised, blinking back at his brother like he was an angel, too.

Nothing Dean's liquor-logged ears would pick up from eight feet ahead, anyway.