It sort of became a habit for Dean, after that. Visiting Castiel with poorly refined pretenses: Half the time he managed to waltz in with a muddy shirt or a torn belt loop or a pair of pants that needed to be taken in. At some point, where any outfit Dean had previously only worn around the apartment – tattered undershirts and baggy vests – were now fit enough to be in his regular rotation, and his typical wardrobe had by extension expanded by about half, and he was seriously considering rifling through Sam and Jess's things just so he could have more stuff to bring in, Castiel lightly smiled at him and said: "You don't have to come here because you want something from me, Dean."

He blinked. "What?" It was April now; spring. But only in the technical sense.

"I mean, you don't have to show up because you have to give me work to do."

"Are you trying to slack on your job, Castiel?" But Castiel kept on smiling.

"No, I'm just inviting you to stay here and talk to me. Just because. What you're doing seems closer like dealing with a whore. Sorry. Prostitute." He seemed almost embarrassed that common vulgarity slipped into his words; as if Dean would have been offended by it. The man had a more formal tone than he did, for Christ's sake. It was… something; Dean didn't really have the ability to describe it.

"Hey, those girls work hard, I can give you that much. Fine then." Dean moved in a bit closer to the other, pressing his legs up against the counter. "How has it been in your neck of the woods, Castiel? What have you done this week?"

"It's Monday, Dean."

Dean waited patiently.

"Well," Castiel glanced up. "I went to church yesterday."

"I don't remember yesterday," Dean muttered. "I was sleeping, I think."

"You don't go to church?"

"That's Sammy's thing; he's the good Catholic kid. Once I got confirmed I got out of that place as fast as I could. Saved me a lot of trouble. And sleep." Castiel seemed unimpressed. "You, uh, you're a…"

"Orthodox."

"Huh. How's that?"

"Probably not that much different than being a Catholic. Or a Protestant. Or Quaker or Jewish – there's only one God, after all." He leaned his face closer to Dean, who soaked up the close contact, the details of Castiel's face and his warmth and his scent. "But don't tell anyone I said that."

"Don't worry; I'm not interested in putting you down for heresy." Castiel raised his brows and let out a one note laugh at that. There wasn't much humor in it; irony, maybe.

"But doesn't your brother get upset? Your family?"

"Sam's the only family left that matters," Dean noted, solemn-faced. Castiel looked at him with another impenetrable stare; his irises looked like blown glass; marbles – the best kind, that kids kept in tin boxes under their beds and only took out when no one was around to see. Dean pulled up immediately; what must have been shock in Castiel's face at the idea of family only consisting of two people. He carried on. "And he doesn't mind enough to drag me."

Castiel made his voice drop low, so it wasn't just scratching gravel, it was digging tunnels underground. "So you do not believe in God?" Dean shrugged.

"I… believe," he inwardly winced at the doubt in his words. "I just don't think He's as big a deal as everyone thinks."

"Has something happened to you that would make you say that?" The tables turned quickly. Just like that, and Dean felt a rush of hot air flash through him. "The people I know that don't – well, lack of faith comes from plenty of things." He was trying so hard not to seem judgmental.

Dean looked off to the side. "If all it takes is a few bumps in the road; what are you doing on the pews every week, huh?" he closed his eyes and felt his lashes rub against his cheek. He kind of wanted to run off, but instead he went on; "Let's talk 'bout something not too serious today, man. It's only Monday after all – wouldn't do much good to get all worked up over it. Get shot next time I'm out on a job. And you… pricking your finger or whatever it is tailors do when they can't think straight." He looked back and Castiel's face was calmer – bemused even, with Dean's words.

"I'm sure you would make it out alive."

Dean smiled at the praise. "Of course I would. But the moaning I'd get from Sam. And you'd have more work from me anyway." His bottom lip jutted out in consideration. "What does happen when tailors stop focusing on their work? I never talked to one before you."

Completely straight-faced Castiel replied: "We tend to get our shirt sleeves stuck in the machines and lose a portion of our limbs. Thumbs, usually. Or the small ones at the end."

"Pinkies, then."

"Yes." He let the digit in question twitch and he cast a curious glance over it. "And then there might be some blood libel, but I believe that's just a cultural aspect." Dean looked worried for a moment. "That was a joke, Dean. I can joke."

"It was the tone, man. You could be a sight at a poker game. You've ever been to one?"

"…Not in civilized company."

"What, you bring out a deck to all the woodland creatures or something?" Castiel didn't respond to that, and looked away, much like Dean had previously; uncomfortable. Dean furrowed his eyebrows and tried to think of something to say to get an answer when the door opened and two women strolled in. "Cousins?" Dean asked.

"Customers." Castiel said, eyes forward now at the newcomers.

Dean straightened. The urge to run came back and this time Castiel didn't seem all that eager to reel him back in. "I'll come back later, then."

"Goodbye, Dean."

Dean felt something unnervingly similar to regret – but less potent than normal, for once – sting in his throat as he walked home. It wasn't until the halfway point that he remembered he hadn't formally bid Castiel a proper goodbye, as per usual.

He contemplated turning back around the entire rest of the way home.

xxxx

"Castiel,"

"Yes?"

"How did you know about Romano, and the money?" And roughly every other exploit he had done from the first time he had come into Castiel's shop, from then until now?

Castiel seemed to be thinking the same thing. "And the fire, robberies and murders of the Five Point gang members?"

"Well that, everyone in the neighborhood knows about that."

"One of their leaders was sent to jail recently, correct?"

"For a year. He didn't have a kid or an heir or anything and it's becoming a free-for-all down in the Sixth Ward. We – well, Lucifer's group – "

"Was nipping it in the bud?"

"That's a good way to put it. It looks like a war out there. It's awful." Dean was leaning against the counter, staring out at the rain outside, bearing down in dark sheets. He heard a word that sounded like 'shit' in Castiel's native language, followed by a light clatter of metal.

Dean turned his head around. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. Lost concentration, I suppose," Castiel grumbled, picking up a pair of thin scissors, gold leaf on the end carved to look like a bird's feathered profile. Their eyes met, as if it was a subconscious thing at this point. "A token from home," Castiel said, reaching out and letting Dean take them. They fit just barely in his palm, "It's not real gold of course. Colored nickel, I think. It wouldn't have made it if it was gold." Dean let them go back to Castiel, fingers touching because he could.

"Do you miss Mother Russia at all?" Dean asked, feeling dark and sardonic with the terrible weather outside; spring his ass. Castiel shrugged, leaning back down to an extensively long jacket that had an owner who wanted all of the buttons switched to white. Sure, why not. When Dean had shown up, Castiel immediately moved his work and a stool up towards the table.

"I suppose. It wasn't easy to learn English and American customs, nor to leave friends and family behind."

"You speak English pretty good for someone just off the boat, Cas."

"You make it sound like I arrived last week. I've been in the city longer than you." And it was true, despite the accent, and the way that Castiel would mumble around certain words he was uncertain about, trying to break out of the informal slurs of Russian and American voices that he probably used otherwise, and slipping upwards, into something a little more formal with Dean.

"I grew up here." Dean said, in an attempt to win a losing battle. "Till I was five." He neglected to mention that he had been born out in a place full of corn fields, only moving to the East after his Mother was killed and his Dad couldn't seem to bear staying at one place anymore; as if his soul went along with his wife, and he had spent the rest of his life trying to track it down, going up and down the most colonized parts of America, stretching down South and West before finally getting offed in Jersey. Him and Sam moving up to Brooklyn seemed almost fitting, besides the extended family that had never moved farther than Ellis Island, like their parents had – the animosity between the states was a hollow comfort; as if the rest of New York sympathized with them.

Castiel clucked his tongue and plucked an ivory button from a pile on his left. "Well I read a bit. I still do. The newspaper especially, and after a few years I started to notice crime patterns."

"Crimes aren't tailoring, Cas. It's not that easy – "

"Sure it is. I could see where the gangs placed themselves in the City and what sort of… trade, you might say, they got involved in." He dropped another old black button into a small dish on his right, probably to be used later. "Drug smugglings, gambling, bar and club fundings, etcetera."

"Uh-huh, and how did you know about Sam and me?"

"Well, once and a while they get the names out." Castiel said.

"We have fake names. Papers too."

"I've seen your face, though. And there are always rumors, even up here." He nodded outside. "I'll smoke out against the side of the building, out there. You'd be surprised, how many people hold little meetings 'round here. Usually Russians and Italians, of course. Neither can really go farther either way without people talking."

"Fat lot of good that does, if you're saying stuff." Castiel shrugged. "No one ever catch you spying?"

"I'm not spying, I'm smoking. They're the ones not being careful enough."

Dean grunted. "So, you were able to guess what sort of crimes me and Sam have done's what you're saying."

"It's not a perfect system, but yes. I only knew of Romano – a hundred percent, at least – because everyone knew about Romano."

"And the smuggling?"

"I could only think of two people working under Lucifer that could handle that big a project and walk away without making any shallow graves." At that Dean paused, and glanced over his shoulder again. Castiel was poking a piece of black thread through the eye of a needle, the tips of his fingers a pressurized white color; everything else around it puckered and pink. He flicked his gaze up to Dean once he could feed more thread through, running his fingers across the strand like an instrument's string he was setting to play.

No music came, but his voice, again. Rumbling down from somewhere Dean couldn't reach. "You always distance yourself from them. Lucifer and his… what'd you call them? Demons. Demonics…"

"Well with a name like that," Dean's gag turned tail and ran the moment it made contact with the open air and Castiel's deadpan look. "Yeah." He mumbled, after a moment. "Yeah I do. I told you, Cas – me and Sam are family. We have cousins and uncles and half of the district related to us. Hell, I'd be surprised if some girl I've dated hasn't shared a bit of blood way down the line. But there's only one person that I'm gonna take a bullet for – or count as family, and it ain't any of Lucy's minions. His boys are tougher than nails, but they're barbaric, too. 'Worse than the Russians', they say." Dean paused at the saying he let slip. "Well, that's what other people say, at least.

"They kill for the fun of it. Like to hear their targets scream – that's what one of the guys told me, over beers once. No jokin' at all. The look someone gets when they're about to die, you know? Have you seen it?" Dean cast his gaze to Castiel, but he had his face angled down, eyes shadowed by hair falling out of place. Dean sighed, turning back around and leaning his back into the desk again, putting his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't be tempted to reach out and touch the other's face; see what was going on in those pretty blue eyes of his. Maybe he had always been a sucker for baby blues – though Cas' – Castiel's - were worlds away from any beach blonde out of a magazine picture; and miles away from California's sand. His eyes were too dark, anyway. Dangerous and stormy, and not icy like the harder women he'd met in the city, who kind of matched the hard-boiled tone of New York, at least in his mind. "They look like dead cattle," he said quietly, thinking of ice and blood and gunpowder. "That is one of the worst things you could see. And these bastards like it? One thing about them: Don't stay long. Too crazy; not careful enough. Give 'em a Tommy and they think that they're a step away from becoming the next Devil of Brooklyn." A nice little name for his boss; he'd always been good at nicknames, Dean figured; Cas… "It's a fifthly business, working with Lucifer. There's always an uprising being planned, someone trying to split the gang up, and Lucifer always kills the guy himself. It helps make an impression, and things get calm for a bit before a new wave of demonic henchmen roll in as replacement after the bloodbath, and the whole thing starts up again. It's like he doesn't care if his employees live, die, or if he cuts the traitor's throat himself. And they don't care about anything. No respect for nothing."

"But not you, though."

"Or Sam." Dean added.

"Or Sam."

Castiel looked at Dean, and Dean stared out the wetted windows; the rain continued to fall in a removed, far-off way.

"Why?" Castiel said, and there were a lot of things he could have been asking about, and Dean didn't feel like answering any of them. He closed his eyes on the misty, wet streets outside, thinking that it was too much for too little – visiting Castiel and everything.

He had been thinking that for a while, actually.

One day he might even be pressed to stop and ask himself why he bothered – another 'why' he never really wanted to get around to.

"Keeps the landlord happy," Dean said sullenly, dragging his words out. His arms were back on the table, hands stretched out on the edge. "And if it wasn't us doing it, it'd be someone else, and you know it."

"I wasn't trying to imply – "

"Yeah you were." Castiel shut up. "And like there's any way to make an honest living and be happy at the same time. Anyone who does that is just lying to themselves. I don't know if I'm happy, but Sam and Jess seem fine, and none of us are starving or anything like that, so I figure…" he was rambling, sounding stupid and drunk and he couldn't seem to spit out any semblances of truth, or any half lies of 'I don't know' and –

Castiel's palm was warm on his knuckles, fingers open and spread on top of his in a reassuring wave of – something. Dean hardly got touched by another person – he kind of loathed it, his brother pinning it down to some mental scientific rubbish he didn't buy for a second. He just wanted his space. And as far as Castiel was concerned, he just wanted to instigate something, that was all.

But this, he twitched his hand and forced it to go lax. This was alright.

"Sorry about that," Castiel whispered, eyes down at his slowly progressing work when Dean turned his head back around to look. Dean wondered if he meant the line of questioning or the gesture.

"I don't mind." Dean said, despite himself. They stayed like that for another minute or two or ten, one pinpoint of contact; Dean staring and Castiel, who picked an awful moment to feel averse to staring back.

When he walked towards the door; Castiel's hand fell away like the shadow of a touch. Dean reached for his hat – looking lonely on the shiny coat rack."I'll be back in a few days," he promised vaguely, because his trips were never exactly planned anymore, and normally he wouldn't bother, but he figured Castiel would kick himself for half the week if he didn't offer some type of assurances that he hadn't scared Dean off. He wasn't mad, not really, it all just left a bad taste in his mouth; gave him more to think about than he usually tried to have.

Dean went into the cold storm, feeling soaked and sick on impact. He didn't glance back at the tailor, nor see the blissfully relieved look on the other's handsome face.

xxxx

A/N: I enjoy skipping around in my narration, so both these scenes happened several weeks apart. And another little factoid; the Five Points Gang was a bit of a notorious, long-running Italian mob that existed in a Manhattan neighborhood formally known as Sixth Ward.