"So, who's the new crush?"
Dean looks up from his beer to the busty girl with messy brown hair across the counter. "Excuse me?"
"You only stop pretending to hit on me when you have a crush on someone," she says, leaning on the bar.
Dean flashes her a smile. "Who says I'm pretending?"
She rolls her eyes. "Dean, please. Just because I'm a bar tender doesn't mean I'm an idiot. Remember that time I went to MIT?"
"You got kicked out."
"Still got accepted. Besides, if you don't tell me I'll just bug Sam about it later."
"Ash, I don't want to talk about it."
"One of his professors, then."
Dean groans. "Ash, please."
He's at The Roadhouse, his regular bar for almost the entirety of his last five years in Portsmouth. Probably because Joe, the owner's burly and ridiculously hot son, actually beat Dean to the Swayze jokes when he found out that the new film professor had come by. They may or may not have turned it into a drinking game. Dean may or may not have obsessively shadowed the bar for the next month in the hopes of seducing Joe.
Ashley, resident computer genius and obsessive microbrewer, enjoys reminding the entire patronage about this. Her other hobbies include criticizing music choices by any and all patrons, nagging Ellen about updating the tech around the bar, and telling Dean what to do about his love life. He would never admit it, but she usually has pretty good insights.
Ash rolls her eyes again and pulls two tumblers out from the bar. "Seriously, dude, better out than in." She steps away to pull a few beers, and eventually returns with a bottle of Makers Mark. She pours a healthy double for each of them. "Come on, Dean, spill."
Dean kills his beer and hands the bottle to her. "I don't want to talk about it. It'll all be real if I talk about it."
She grins crookedly and takes a swig of whiskey. "Fine, I'll do it, then. You met one of Sammy's professors and are nursing a stiffy for them. It's natural. No shame in that."
"According to Sam there is. Or I'm going to ruin his life by delegitimizing his studies by becoming 'involved' with his mentor. Something like that." Dean sighs and takes a gulp of his drink, reveling in the smooth burn down his throat.
Ash whistles lowly. "Damn. Novak? I've heard about him. Nice piece of ass."
Dean grimaces, for some reason really bothered by her cavalier banter. "Jesus, why can't you be a normal chick?"
"We all know what boners are."
"I—sorry. Just… he's more than a nice piece of ass."
Ash snorts. "Shit, Dean, you've got it bad. Not even a month and you're already his knight in shining armor, saving his reputation from crude harlots like me?"
Dean glares at her and drinks instead of answering. Joe saves him by coming out of the kitchen bearing Dean's bacon cheeseburger and fries.
"Whiskey," Joe observes as he slides the food in front of Dean. "Must be a new crush. One of Sam's professors?"
"I don't—."
"Not just any professor," Ash says. "Mentor."
"The guy with the weird name? Students seem to like him. Especially the girls." Joe pauses, considering. "Well, especially everyone, really."
Dean gives up and lays his head on the bar. Ash and Joe argue about Dean's chances and plausible timelines for romantic involvement until Ellen shoos them both back to their jobs.
"Gotta admit, kid, it's not looking good right now," she mutters to him as she wipes up a spill nearby.
Dean grimaces and taps the rim of his glass for more whiskey. She grins and pours him another double.
#
Cas drags his tongue over the taught skin of Dean's stomach. He follows the same path with kisses and nips, marking Dean's flesh as his own. Dean is his and he will know it when he looks in the mirror tomorrow. He'll know it when he sits down at his desk and he's sore.
They're in their office, Dean backed against the bookcase, his pants down around his knees. Cas's knees rest on the itchy carpet and he thinks he might have bruises there later, but he doesn't care. The door to the office is locked, but Dean is whimpering so loudly it probably doesn't matter.
"Fuck, Cas," Dean says, his fingers weaving their way into Cas's hair, messing it up further.
The rough sound of Dean's voice sends a wave of pleasure over Cas. Cas takes a long lick of the underside of Dean's cock, feeling it out with his wide tongue. Dean lets out a groan, loud and obscene. Cas puts his hands on Dean's thighs, keeping him pinned against the wall so Cas has complete control over Dean fucking his mouth.
Cas wakes up with a start. He's sweaty and sticky. It takes a ridiculous length of time for him to realize he's had his first wet dream in… well, an even more ridiculous length of time. He's not a kid. He's a little pissed too because he has to clean his sheets and himself and he took a shower last night and changed the sheets two days ago. It's also a little unnerving that all he has to do is think back to the dream, think of Dean's fingers tangled into his hair and his dick gives a little lurch.
He enjoys feeling like he can control his life. At the very least his daily routines provide him shelter and a stable foundation for when unforeseen circumstances throw the rest of the world into a frenzy. It is difficult to see this fascination with Dean Winchester as anything other than a crack in that foundation. He does not look forward to the ensuing struggles of keeping himself mindful and on task.
#
Dean has the door to the office propped open and he can hear someone with a loud Boston accent talking on a cell phone. It isn't such a strange occurrence in a school that people call a suburb of Boston, but there's something about the voice that sounds familiar.
"Gabe...yeah...it's just wicked inconvenient. I've gotta teach classes and grade papers and shit. You can't just show up and take over. Don't give me that bull about you being a gracious guest. How're you getting up here? Fine. Fine. Don't be a bastard about this, okay?" The door to Dean's office opens a little wider and Cas walks in, holding his phone to his ear. "Yeah okay. I'll see you when you get here. Just let me know when you get on the train."
Cas throws his phone down on his desk and sits down in his chair without removing his jacket. His phone bounces off the desk and hits the floor.
"Jesus fuckin—," he growls, bending over to pick it up.
"What's the Marky Mark accent you've got going on?" Dean asks.
Cas glares and mumbles, "You would know the underwear model."
"Seriously, Cas. Have I been missing out on the best damn Departed accent I've ever heard?"
"It's a little bit more than pop culture references, Dean," Cas says, suddenly speaking slowly and deliberately.
"No," Dean whines. "Keep the accent. It's hilarious."
"It's not funny."
Dean makes a feeble effort to hide his smile. "It's a little funny." Cas's face is still closed, so Dean nudges the subject a little bit to the side. "So you went to grad school at Harvard?"
"I did undergrad at BC," Cas says like it's difficult.
"Where'd you grow up?"
Cas looks like he doesn't want to say it, "Charlestown. Mark Wahlberg is from Dorchester. There's a difference."
"So do you rob banks and shit like Affleck?" Dean asks.
"I don't understand what you're referencing this time,"
Cas says. "The Town. It's about Charlestown. It's a movie."
"I haven't had the chance to see it," Cas says. "But I don't rob banks. I study theology."
Dean stares at him for a moment in exasperation. You'd think a guy who analyzed holy books written by dudes a thousand years dead would have more of a handle on figurative language, perhaps theological texts are short on irony. "I've noticed. So why do you try to hide the accent?"
"I don't really want to talk about it."
"It's cool, you know. I never met people with real life Boston accents before coming here. I kinda thought it was a myth."
"If you knew my family you would know it's not a myth," Cas says.
"Were you talking to your family?"
"Yes. My brother, Gabriel."
"He's coming to stay?"
"How do you know that?"
"You were speaking very loudly."
Cas looks alarmed. "Yes. I do that when I'm on the phone with them."
"You also swear and have a different accent apparently."
"They bring it out." He stands up and gathers his things together. "I've got to get to class, Dean. I will see you later."
"Cas," Dean says, trying not to laugh at his friend. He repeats that phrase to himself in his head. His friend. He likes that. "Do you want to grab a brew and talk about it? I hate that chick flick crap, but if you really need it..."
"I don't," Cas says, leaving their office without saying goodbye.
"Okay great see you later, Cas," Dean mutters to himself. He goes back to work, still bitterly playing out a one-sided conversation, "Good talk. We should do it again sometime. Maybe with both of us in the room."
"Is this a bad time?"
Dean jumps. "Jesus!"
"Close enough," Garth says, an eager smile begging Dean to appreciate his joke. Dean stares at him stonily. Garth's face falls. "I…wanted to check if you wanted to adjust the paper prompts before I ran copies."
"Uh, shit. Yeah. Gimme a sec…."
#
When Dean sees Cas later that afternoon he expects the same cold demeanor. Dean can't blame the guy. Family shit is hard no matter who it's happening to. Not that he expected Cas to somehow be even more angry about family baggage than Dean is himself.
Instead Cas smiles at him when Dean enters their office to gather up his things before leaving for the night. That might be worse. Dean immediately wants stick his tongue down the guy's throat.
"I apologize for how I acted earlier," Cas says.
"You don't have to," Dean says. "Families suck."
"Yes."
They don't say anything for a second.
"So," Dean says, trying to make everything less awkward and not doing any better at it than if Cas had said something. "You getting ready to go too?"
"It's an hour until the next bus to Portsmouth."
"You didn't drive?"
"If it makes sense I take the bus," Cas says. "I don't want to be wasteful."
"Well," Dean says. "If you want I can give you a ride home."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Course," Dean says. "It's not like Portsmouth is so big you're putting me out."
"All right," Cas says, pulling his papers together and putting them into a briefcase. "Just give me a second."
Dean watches Cas pull himself together and throw his signature trench coat on over his suit. Dean wishes that it covered less of him up. He wants to push it over Cas's shoulders, letting his hands slide down Cas's arms. And… other areas.
"Are you preparing any exciting movies for your class to watch?" Cas asks Dean, as they walk down the hallway towards the parking lot.
"Yeah," Dean says. "Sort of. We're doing some Woody Allen. So everyone likes that. I'm going to watch Bananas tonight if you want to come over and hang out while I take notes."
Dean doesn't know why he's asking. He feels like an idiot for saying anything at all. Sam will be furious and he'll just sit on the couch waiting for Cas to leave so he can shut himself in his room and jerk off for hours over the way the way Cas holds a pen.
"That would be nice," Cas says. "I have to correct some papers. It will be a nice change of scenery."
"Sam'll be around," Dean says. "So I'll order a pizza and we can make a night out of it."
Dean doesn't actually know if Sam will be home, but he prays he will be. Bananas is possibly the least romantic movie, but Dean still doesn't think he can trust himself alone on a couch with Cas.
#
Cas, Sam, and Dean sit in the living room of the apartment, eating meat lovers pizza and a salad for Sam. Sam is alternating bites of salad with texts on his phone. Some of the texts are going to Dean's phone, telling him to put his eyes back on the TV. It's stupid to invite Cas over like this. Dean can barely concentrate on what he's supposed to get done for his class.
"Is this movie offensive?" Cas asks, looking up from the papers he's grading.
"Yeah," Dean says, swallowing nothing and looking back at his empty notepad.
"So," Cas says, biting his bottom lip and Dean just wants to fucking die. "My brother is coming to visit for a little bit."
Dean knows this already from Cas's phone call earlier, but he's surprised that Cas is talking about it.
"I didn't know you had a brother," Sam says.
"I have three," says Cas. "And a sister."
"You never talk about them."
"I tend to be very private." He laces his fingers together, avoiding both of their eyes. "I just wanted to let you two know about my brother because he will be around a lot. And since I spend most of my time with you, you should be prepared."
"He'll be in the office and stuff?" Dean asks.
"He'll be everywhere." Cas looks distinctly distressed at the idea. "He'll want to go out for drinks and I will probably need you two to join him and me in order to convince him that I do actually have friends here. As long as you don't object to my including you in that familiar of a category."
"You're being more formal than usual," Sam says.
"Gabriel puts me on edge."
"Gabriel," Sam says. "Are you all—?"
"We're all named after angels," Cas finishes. "It's why my name is so strange."
"When's he coming?" Dean asks.
"The next couple of days. He doesn't like to make definite plans. Anyway, that's it. I should probably be getting home."
"You aren't going to finish the movie?" Sam asks.
"No," Cas says. "How much do I owe you for the pizza, Dean?"
"Don't worry about it," Dean says. "You only ate like two slices."
"I'll see you around, then," Cas mumbles and leaves way too quickly.
"What the fuck was that?" Sam asks.
"Dude's got some family problems apparently," Dean says turning off the movie. "I don't feel like finishing this."
"Huh. Nice to know it's not just us."
"It wasn't that bad."
"We don't know how bad 'that bad' is."
Dean rolls his eyes. Sam and his goddamned semantics. "I'm always telling you. We had it pretty good."
Sam snorts. "If by pretty good you mean it wasn't the worst childhood possible, then yeah, we could have been lived in the walls of a Victorian house living on rats and sneaking out through closet paneling."
Dean stares at his brother for a second. "What the fuck have you been watching, man? Do I need to outlaw horror movies in the apartment? Because I'm not gonna lie that would be really friggin' inconvenient since I have an entire class about the development of horror as a genre."
"I don't know, Dean. Just…as we get older I'm starting to notice where our childhood messed us up."
"Speak for yourself," Dean says, stomping into the kitchen.
#
Castiel has photographs all over his apartment. His family sends them to him in cards. He gets them for holidays and birthdays. And even then, he has some of his own. Pictures he's taken over the years when forced to spend time with his family.
There's a picture on a bookcase of himself and his father. His father has his hands on Cas's skinny seven year old shoulders. He and his father are wearing matching RedSox t-shirts and grinning from ear to ear, standing in front of Fenway. Cas is holding a game winning ball in his hands. His father looks so happy. Not that they won the series that year. They didn't win until long after Cas's dad died. Cas didn't miss his dad. He was a mean drunk with a short tempter. But when the Sox won the series in '04 and he sat on the couch with his weeping mother, Cas missed him. His dad should have lived to see them win.
Next to that picture is a photograph of his whole family, excluding his father. It was taken just before he left for grad school. Grad school was only forty-five minutes away, a little bit further than college, but his mother liked to take pictures of momentous occasions. They had a lot of them.
Michael, the oldest, stands to the left of them. He's wearing a red button-down shirt and jeans. He's got his arms crossed over his chest and Cas can see the wedding band on his left hand. He and his wife had just had their second baby. A boy, their second in a gaggle of (so far) five rowdy boys. Even the one year old joins in on the screaming and fighting. But when they see Cas they run and fling themselves on him in a hug. If Cas tries really hard he can get all of them into one hug and he kind of loves it.
Standing next to Michael is Balthazar wearing too tight jeans and a t-shirt with a deep v-neck. He likes to think of himself as the sex god of the family. He bleaches his hair blond like Sting and wears too much jewelry for a man. When he and Cas are home at the same time, Balthazar gets made fun of for being more gay than Cas is and Cas is the one who sleeps with men. Balthazar is obnoxious like Dean is, boastful and loud. Except he has no right to it like Dean does. Balthazar acts like he's the smartest man around when he barely finished high school. He's involved in the same shady business as the rest of Cas's older brothers and doesn't do as well as Michael and Raphael ever did.
Gabriel is standing with his arms around Balthazar's and Cas's shoulders. He has a goofy smile on his face and looks more like their father than the rest of them do. Cas has no clue how his brother can look so carefree and happy. Cas remembers how tense the house in Quincy was that summer, how Raphael had to basically escort Gabriel around until Balthazar forked over enough cash to pay off Gabriel's debt. Gabriel never cared about that stuff. Death threats and other horrible things never stopped him from placing bad bets. Sometimes Cas thought he did it on purpose.
Cas is sandwiched between Anna and Gabriel. He's smiling, but only because his mother told him too. He's wearing a Harvard t-shirt that was too big on him then, but is a little too tight now. Anna isn't smiling. Her hair is dyed dark red and she's wearing a long sleeve shirt even though it's summer time. Cas's mom didn't want anyone to see the tattoos covering her arms. She's got a little diamond ring on her finger. She had just gotten engaged to her boyfriend, a man she'd been dating in college. They have two little girls now. A four year old and six month old.
Standing a little further away from everyone is Raphael. He's got his father's height and a mean face. He's at least 6'4" and even though his blue eyes should be soft and kind they aren't. He's wearing a nicely tailored suit with diamond cufflinks. He's adjusting his sleeves and Cas can see the bruises on his knuckles. When Cas was very young and hadn't learned not to ask questions those knuckles had found their was to Cas's cheek. Cas was twelve and Raphael was twenty-eight. He shouldn't have punched a closeted pre-teen who was confused about why his brothers would disappear for days or stop talking when he entered the room or why Balthazar had ruined his favorite towel when washing blood off his hands. Cas was lucky that Raphael kept it light enough that he didn't break anything. He could have if he wanted to.
Raphael was shot and killed three years after the picture was taken, four years before Cas came to UNH. Raphael's death wasn't so surprising. From what Cas could glean from the snippets of conversations he heard, Raphael was at the top of everything after Dad went. Some ambitious young idiot took him out thinking that he would take over. Cas had no doubt that Gabriel, Balthazar, and Michael went after the kid. What was surprising was how hard it hit Cas. He could still feel it four years later, weighing on him worse than the death of his father. And now Gabriel was coming and he would tell all sorts of stories Cas didn't want to hear and he'd take days to leave.
Cas sets up the futon for his brother and his phone buzzes. He sees the name Winchester and his heart gives an unexpected lurch. It's only Sam, asking if Cas wouldn't mind if he sent his draft of the article they were working on in the morning rather than that night.
Cas sighs. He's feeling overwhelmed and he should have gotten that beer with Dean.
There's a knock at the door and Cas has to take a breath before opening it.
"Hey, little bro," Gabriel says.
