Chapter One: The Night You Can't Remember
"Before you left your garrison,
You had a drink—maybe two.
You don't remember Paris, hon,
but it remembers you." - The Magnetic Fields
.
Here is a very short list of catalysts that can change your life forever:
Fire.
An acceptance letter that does not belong to you.
A phone call.
Brake lines.
A knock at the door.
.
Dean Winchester is about to settle into a session of Call of Duty when he hears the knock. He sighs, annoyed, but pads down the hall—I really have to get this stupid carpet removed—to the front door and checks the peephole.
There's a strange man standing on Dean's front stoop. Handsome guy, though a little round in the cheeks, with wavy hair and a mischievous spark in his eyes.
"Can I help you?" Dean calls through the door.
"Yeah, the name's Ed, I have a delivery for you."
"...I'm not expecting anything, thanks."
The guy looks directly at the peephole, and Dean unwittingly flinches at his gaze. "Listen, bud, I have something here that belonged to a John Winchester, and this is where he lives. Can I just give you this, please?" He holds up the package: a sheaf of papers and a small book that looks somewhat familiar, all bound in a large manilla envelope.
Dean's stomach drops to his toes as he unlocks the door and stands back to let it open. Ed isn't from any delivery company—he's not in a uniform, at least—and on the street beyond Dean can see an old Lincoln has been left running, waiting.
"There we go. Now can you take this?" Ed asks, shoving the papers into Dean's hands.
"What—where did you get these? What is this?"
His eyes sparkle mischievously. "A gift. From me to you, with love and kisses."
Dean's brows knit and his palms itch to punch this smug motherfucker. "I don't want it. John Winchester is dead."
"Oh, I know, Dean," Ed says. "And I have to say, you grew up into a decent-looking gent. Ta!" He turns to go, but Dean reaches out and grips him strongly by the shoulder, stopping the guy in his tracks.
"How do you know who I am?!" Dean snarls, consumed by the old paranoia that dogged his childhood and still makes him squirrelly about strangers who know too much.
Ed puts his hands up in surrender. "No harm meant, my man. I knew your father, years ago—while he was working. He left those with me."
"Were you a client?"
A shake of the head. "No. More like...a fan, I suppose. I had a respect for his line of work, and we met on neutral ground a few times. My line of work lent itself to the secure storage of personal items, and your dad dropped something off on his way out of town. Never came back for it; in fact, even I forgot about him after a time. A few weeks ago I was going through some stuff in my lair, so to speak, and came upon this."
Now that the papers are in Dean's hand, he can see that they're old and worn, mostly faded. The journal—John kept many, but Dean's never seen this one before—is partially burned and blackened from smoke damage.
Dean feels queasy. John Winchester had a bad history with a lot of things, but fire might just be the worst of them.
He waits until the shock passes before he speaks again. "What am I supposed to do with it?"
"I don't know, dude. Make a bonfire, if you want."
"Maybe I will," Dean replies sardonically. "Looks like a useless pile of trash."
Ed's face widens into a smug grin. "Except you won't, Dean Winchester. There are too many answers you still don't have." His smile gets bigger and Dean's face goes grey. "John was involved in some dark business; you know it, I know it. However much you may pretend like things are all settled down now, I'm willing to bet he shuffled off this mortal coil with a shoelace factory's worth of loose ends."
He's right. Of course he's right.
Ed snaps Dean out of his reverie, holding out a business card. "Here. Someone who can help make things a little clearer."
Dean takes the card and reads it: C. James Novak, Professional Document Restoration and Archival Preservation. The address is an office at the research library of the local university. When Dean looks up, the strange guy is already climbing into the Lincoln and speeding off.
Inside, Dean places the envelope on the hallway table and looks at the photographs on the wall—of his mother and father's engagement days, of the Winchester family when they were still whole, and of Dean and his little brother Sam grinning over beers. Dig up those you've buried, the photos seem to say. They're not dead. Dean's face feels hot from a nonexistent flame.
"No," he protests softly to himself. "No. I'm done, dad. I'm done." But even as he grabs his coat to go drink away this new awful anxiety, he knows it's a lie. He leaves the card on top of the envelope instead of throwing it out.
That's one way life can change.
.
And for the record:
You can be four years old, and shaken awake by your dad in the middle of the night. The look on his face makes you want to cry but there's no time—and you smell the smoke and hear screaming. There isn't even time to grab your teddy bear; instead your dad pushes your infant brother into your arms and tells you to run outside as fast as you can and you do it, running all the way across the lawn to collapse in the dew-ridden grass. The baby's little pink face scrunches up against the heat, squalling inconsolably.
Your dad comes to get you an undetermined amount of time later, and when you ask where your mother is his face breaks and you start to cry just from the sight alone.
That's another way life can change.
.
(8:00 pm)
The Wet Lion has an absurd name, but it's an okay bar overall, and against all odds Dean Winchester really likes it there. Just the right amount of grit to make it appealingly dive-y, without actually being a true dive bar. The low lighting and occasionally sticky decorations keep the trendy college kids away, and the beer selection is just ostentatious enough to drive out the truckers and hustlers. In fact, the combination only sits well with a select type of patron, and therefore it's always easy to get a seat and hear yourself think. But it has a fucking absurd name.
So now Dean is sitting in a booth, waiting for the waitress to get him a new beer. When he waits, he watches people.
It's mostly weeknight regulars: a few grad students, some middle-aged men drinking away the memory of their divorces along the far side of the bar, and a girl with short blue hair reading a copy of Watchmen and nursing her microbrew. Dean comes here more often than he'd like to admit; there's a cozy bleakness that appeals to the parts of his psyche he doesn't like to think about very much. But tonight there's a disruption in the atmosphere—a blaring kink in the system, undeniable and obvious. And he's sitting at the bar, wearing a tan trench coat and sipping tequila with mechanical, miserable dedication. It's mesmerizing—and a little bit pathetic—to watch as he takes a sip from his shot glass and fights off a grimace again and again. This is not a drinker, Dean thinks. This is not a guy who knows how to get drunk. Bless him, he's trying, but it's like watching a hippo trying to dance ballet.
Dean's not normally one for charity cases (that's a filthy lie, you pick up strays all the time). He's developed the keenly honed loathing of pity which comes from being a charity case himself. But nonetheless he slides out of the booth and approaches the bar to take a seat beside the guy in the trench coat.
"Hey, man, don't take offense at this, but drinking: you're doing it wrong," Dean says. Trench Coat looks up, startled, greeting Dean's gaze with a pair of incredibly clear blue eyes.
"Excuse me?"
Dean tosses a bill on the bar. "Gord. Two beers, please?" The bartender complies, and Dean passes a pint to the guy. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to judge, but if you want to drink yourself to your happy place you're better off with beer. Things only end badly when you dance with the devil water."
"I...I don't want to go to my happy place," the little guy replies tentatively.
"Well, your sad place, then. Whatever it is you're trying to do here."
"I'm not trying to do anything."
Dean shrugs, taking a drink of what turns out to be a pleasantly light wheat ale. "Sure you are. There's a long and proud history of young men drinking themselves blind in bars like this; don't be ashamed. What's your drama? Girlfriend throw you out?" He looks Trench Coat up and down for a second. "...Boyfriend throw you out?"
Trench Coat blushes, and Dean nearly chokes on his beer because Jesus, has this guy been raised in a fucking middle school?
"No, nothing like that," Trench Coat replies. "It's a long story. Difficult to explain."
"...And you're hoping to drown a long story in tequila, the patron liquor of creating awkward long stories that are difficult to explain."
A small chuckle. "I suppose I'm not used to this sort of thing."
"Y'think? Take it from a long-serving professional drunkard: tequila is only appropriate if you are a college girl on spring break. Or trying to seduce a college girl who's on spring break."
"I left my short shorts in Cabo last April," comes the deadpan response. Dean snorts, and Trench Coat breaks into a smile.
"I'm Dean, by the way." He holds out a hand and is pleased at his new drinking partner's firm shake.
"I'm Castiel Novak"
"You have got to be fucking kidding me."
"I'm sorry?"
Dean's face feels hot. "Uh, nothing. Sorry. Never mind. Nice to meet you, Castiel." Look at you, getting jumpy about a man's last name. Dumbass.
Castiel offers a small smile. "Or Cas, if you like."
Dean considers Cas for a moment. He's got delicate features—the aforementioned blue eyes balanced by full lips and a well-carved jaw. He looks as if he broods for a living, but there's something about his tentative mannerism that sticks in Dean's puzzle-solving craw. When his brother Sam gets into stuck-up mode he's totally immutable against Dean's good-natured riffing; Castiel, on the other hand, has hints of a sense of humor—it's refreshing. There's something about him that Dean can't quite put his finger on—something otherworldly, and complicated, and interesting. Last name similarity notwithstanding.
"So what's got you down, Cas?"
"I have a friend who has been...away. Now she's coming back," Castiel says simply, before draining his pint with alarming speed.
Dean raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"
Castiel nods. "It's been a few months."
Dean puts a hand on Castiel's shoulder and turns him so that they're facing one another squarely. "Cas," he says seriously, "are you friends with a felon?"
Castiel's brow furrows. "What? No! She's, well, she's my roommate, basically."
Dean's eye narrows. "Are you sure? Because there are some pretty crazy chicks out there. I should know; my boss's wife and stepdaughter have both threatened me with shotguns. And they like me."
"You're kidding."
"I'm really not," Dean says. "Ellen and Jo are tough broads. Salt of the earth, don't get me wrong, but..." The door bells chime, and his voice trails off as he sees two women come into the bar and take a seat at a nearby booth. One of them, a brunette with tiny curls bunched tightly against her head, stands out like a beacon, flaring bright, overwhelming him with a memory—
(No. No, no. Dad. DAD. Get up. Please, get up. SOMEONE HELP ME—)
His face doesn't show it, but internally his heart drops to his toes. The safety of his beloved Wet Lion has been breached, and now Dean Winchester feels stripped naked and flayed raw.
"...Dean?"
"Hang on a second, would you, Cas?" Dean asks absently, never taking his eyes off the women. "I'll be right back." He slides off the stool and goes over to the booth, hands shaking, because he knows that there is no way this is going to end any way but painfully.
.
Castiel knows he should be weirded out about being approached by a random man at a bar—if only because that's just not what men really do—but he has to admit that he's actually enjoying himself. Based on their limited interaction, Dean is a man of easy outward charisma and mysterious inner psyche—the epitome of still waters running deep. For years, Castiel's circle had consisted entirely of fellow academics; they were wonderfully intellectual, but also sensitive and petty and serious. Towards the end, Castiel himself had become sensitive and petty and serious, and that's when he'd known it was time to move. He hasn't made many friends since coming out west.
He tries not to peek, but he can't resist watching out of the corner of his eye as Dean approaches the young women at the booth. He specifically speaks to one of them: a slight girl with a head of short brunette curls. Her face makes it seem as though Dean is a ghost; when Castiel sees her shoulders shake with an involuntary sob, he turns back to the bar, orders one more beer, and busies himself by mentally pondering the conversational avenues by which men become friends. He's that type of analyst; it's been joked that Castiel tries to quantify every relationship he has, but truth be told it's the best way for him to figure out new people. He likes finding out what makes a man tick, and Dean is completely—refreshingly—different.
There was something about his attitude—the willingness to approach a stranger in public, to offer a hand of friendship with no obvious benefit for himself. Dean seems like a man who isn't burdened by over-thinking, and that's something Castiel needs to do more. So he plans to try to establish a camaraderie. Ask lots of questions. Don't talk about yourself too much. Don't talk about work nonstop. Ask more questions. Listen and follow up.
When Dean returns to the bar, Castiel is quite ready to have a witty and intelligent conversation in which he gets to know his new drinking partner, except that Dean's skin is very pale and his lips are tightly drawn.
"Dean? Is everything okay?"
Dean nods, but he starts to grab his coat. Damn, thinks Castiel. Damn damn damn. Didn't even get a chance.
"Cas, I don't know you that well and you don't know me, but what do you say we get just royally fucked up right now?"
Castiel furrows his brow. "Wait, what?"
Dean nods towards the door. "I have liquor at my place, it's only a few blocks away. And I am in the rare mood to drink with a buddy."
"But weren't you just saying about beer—"
"—I know what I said, but I feel that we would benefit from whiskey. A lot of whiskey. You coming?"
It's like being invited to go for a stroll with the Pied Piper. Castiel pays up and follows Dean out the door, out into the chilly wind and whatever oblivion awaits him.
.
(11:00pm)
Dean and Castiel are slumped on the couch in Dean's living room, with an empty bottle of scotch and another one just opened. They have traded the traditional drunken comparisons: where they were educated (Cas: "Nothing but prep schools until graduation."), favorite guilty pleasure movie (Dean: "Don't tell anyone—no, seriously, shhhhhhhhh...I loved The Notebook. Now shhhhhhh."), preferred supermodels (Cas: "...is Tyra Banks still a thing?"), pet peeves (Dean: "Cobbler is not pie. That waitress in Reno was a filthy liar.") and best drunk story (Castiel: "None, really, except for the time I found out that this guy liked The Notebook, and—hey! Don' throw coasters at me! Those coasters had wives and family!"). Now Castiel's eyes are slightly unfocused, and Dean keeps rubbing his hand across his face. A lull falls across the room as both men assess their own intoxication, and then Castiel takes a slow, brave breath.
"Dean, who was that woman you were talking to?"
"Hmm?"
"The, uh. The woman in the Wet Lion."
Dean's smile fades in an instant, and he pours himself more than a generous helping of scotch. "It's personal," he says, voice suddenly rough.
"I don't mean to pry. I just...I dunno," Cas sighs. "I do not drink well." Despite himself, he starts to giggle, but his mirth is cut short when he sees the look on Dean's face.
"She was the nurse who looked after us when my father died," he says softly, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands dangling between them.
"I'm so sorry, Dean," Cas says.
"It's okay. It was just rough to see someone who was involved," Dean says, almost wistfully. "Three years ago my dad and Sam and I were driving back from having dinner. Sam had just announced he was going to law school instead of coming back to work with us, and my dad was royally pissed instead of proud. They were arguing, and so my dad didn't see, and we got T-boned by a semi that blew through its stop sign at eighty miles per hour."
"Jesus."
Dean's voice is steady, all drunken mirth drained away. "Sam got lucky; he cracked his collarbone and had bruises, but that was it. I broke four ribs and was in a coma. Cerebral edema."
"Brain swelling."
"Yeah," Dean says with a shrug.
"...are you..."
"I'm fine now. I woke up and I was an orphan." Dean pours another shot into Castiel's glass. "So...I guess I'm not fine. I don't know. Sam took it pretty hard and he won't really talk about it much."
"...and the woman?"
Dean looks down into his drink. "She was a nurse there. I think she was one of our main caretakers and...I remember her face, when I woke up. She was the first one in the room when Dad died, and I think she felt responsible. She sent flowers to the funeral."
"So what did you say to her?"
Dean shrugs again. "What can you say? Hi, I guess. Asked her how things were going. It was awkward. Now I'm drunk."
Castiel sits up straight. He doesn't know what to say; this is not how the conversation was supposed to go. He feels a miserable unbalance growing between them, though it could all just be in his head, and wow that scotch goes down smooth, he could have sworn Dean had just poured this round but now it's already gone.
He hears Dean chuckle a little. "This is all pretty heavy stuff to bring up on a first meeting," he jokes. "I promise I'm not this much of a downer in real life, Cas. Most days I'm certifiably hilarious. Unless you ask Sa—"
"—My two brothers are dead," Castiel interrupts. The words flow from his mouth unaided—his eyes widen as he realizes he's said them. But he feels an overwhelming urge to reciprocate, to balance the scales, to reach out and reassure Dean that he's not alone. "Michael and Luke. Those were their names, my brothers. There was a fire."
Dean's right eyebrow has climbed up his forehead; he's surprised at the outburst—surprised Castiel had that much to say in one go, if he's honest. Right now he's too drunk to put two and fire together.
Cas looks away, grabs the whiskey bottle, tries to pour into his glass, and then gives up and just takes a direct swig. "They were fighting. Luke was in a mood and Michael was usually the only one who could calm him. He told me he was going to hash things out, and then...the place was on fire. We never talked about it. No one would—" Castiel is cut off by a sudden weight; Dean has reached out and put his hand on his shoulder. The silence leaves him feeling embarrassed and remarkably naked. "I...well, yeah. That happened."
Dean's Adam's Apple bobs as he swallows, and then he smiles crookedly. "It's possible we're getting off to sort of an intense start, don't you think?" he slurs.
"I'm sorry, Dean. I didn't mean to make things awkward, I just..."
Dean shakes his head. "I get it, dude. Not a problem. Okay; how about we scratch this all and totally start over?" He puts the glass down on the coffee table and holds out his hand. "Hi. I'm Dean Winchester. I work at an auto mechanic shop with my godfather. I like rock music, hamburgers, and long walks on the beach. And our friendship is over if you tell me you're a vegan."
It's such an absurd break to the tension that Castiel can't help it: he bursts out laughing.
Dean feigns outrage. "What? Is it the long walks on the beach thing? Because a man likes to feel sand between his toes," he says in mock-defense, which just adds to the hilarity.
Cas fights to bring himself back under control and then wipes his eyes. "S-sorry. It's just...this conversation is insane," he manages between chuckles. "I don't think I've ever failed this badly at making a first impression."
Dean cracks up too. "It's pretty bad."
"Castiel Novak," Cas finally says. "I come from a large and impressively fucked-up family and fled all the way to the other side of the country to ensure I never have to deal with them again." Dean's expression grows serious and he raises an eyebrow, until Cas quickly adds: "Oh! Right. Reformed vegetarian."
"Good man. Cheers to that. Now let's finish this bottle of scotch before I think too much."
