NOTE: Please note that this story is in no way affiliated with the real Royal Family of England. It is a completely fictional work and serves as no disrespect to any entity. All Jane Austen references are to be credited to the author herself.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man who has just discovered that his ex-wife is now married, is in need of a beer or two.

Especially if he has had the privilege of still maintaining a friendship for years after with the ex. Of still offering advice on her portfolio in the stock market, therefore helping her to earn a substantial amount of money. And now she obviously deliberately chose to withhold the news that she's married to man with a name that sounds like an extra-terrestrial being.

"Evlek Beeker," Castiel mumbled, scowling over his beer and Pete, the cheerful bartender with a pot belly, paused wiping down the counter to stare at his friend. "Who the fuck name's their baby Evlek?"

"I've heard worst. Cupcake. Apple. Hitler. Donald…"

"I'm not politically affiliated," the dark disheveled hair man reminded the other man.

"Was talking 'bout Donald Duck. But okay," Pete offered a wide grin when Castiel turned flat blue eyes in his direction. "But look consider it a good thing that she's handed over to this guy so she doesn't have to call you at two in the morning to ask about how the DOW is doing."

"Her portfolio sucks," Castiel said bitterly. "So does her flat in Massachusetts. And her attitude too."

Pete was highly amused.

The man was an epitome for a deliberate high school dropout. Had chosen to act rebellious against his wealthy family to pursue his dreams as a journalist. Now, after knowing each other for close to ten years, Castiel Novak was still an enigma.

He had recently turned forty, never had a girlfriend since Hanna. Always wore those funny t-shirts with questionable slogans plastered on the front. Black sneakers. Tight black pants. And that damn black frame glasses that gave him the appearance of Clark Kent just waiting to rip off his basic attire to save the world.

Only in the newspapers business, Castiel was one of the 'Lead Journalists' which basically gifted him with his own office, printer and laptop. A decent view of New York Central Park. A bookcase crammed with magazines, Readers Digest, The Economist and newspapers from around the globe. And on his polished wooden desk, there was an antique lantern he had bought from a shop in Maine, three pens lined up with precision: red, blue and black.

Now Pete wasn't a brainer. But he was pretty good at reading people from their attire, countenance and demeanor. So, ten years ago when Castiel Novak stumbled into his bar, on the verge of breaking things after discovering that his wife was cheating on him, Pete offered both his ears and his heart.

He learned over the years that friendship bloomed the most when we find persons who genuinely cared enough to listen to our woes.

Collecting the remote, Pete turned up the volume on the television in the bracket above the bar.

"Hey," he said frowning at the headlines, "what's your take on the Prince?"

"Huh?" Castiel sipped his beer and glared at the television.

If he could have seen her now. Hanna. He would possibly flare up, spittle flying. But then his glasses would fog up from the fumes of his rage. And she would escape, slithering away like the snake she was.

Pete sighed. "Man, stop thinking about Hanna and her alien husband. You heard the Prince is getting married in two weeks?"

"Of course, I have, I'm a journalist, Pete. It's my job to know these things," Castiel's blue eyes barely remained on the screen before returning to his beer. He couldn't care less.

"Think he's going to do a runner again?" the bartender smiled as he resumed wiping down the counter. "Got to say, the Duchess is one fine looking girl. She's from Spain. Got to be one of those fierce types in bed too. I can just imagine the Spanish rolling off of her tongue…"

"Would you grow up?" Castiel asked sourly. "And while you're at it, hand me another beer. Better yet, make it two."

"It's your lunch hour and you shouldn't stagger into work drunk as a fish."

"I can consume a liquor store and walk in a straight line," Castiel said somberly. "And don't I have enough reason to drink? My ex wife has gotten married to E.T."

Handing over another beer, Pete sighed at his friend's blatant attempts to drown in his woes. "What's your take on Prince Dean? Got any idea why he ran from his first two weddings? Left the first one at the altar, did a run as fast as he could to Westfordshire Palace. Second one, he drove up to the church and then speeds away. With the money he's got, I'd figure that he'd have enough brains to know that when God gives you a beautiful woman, you take her."

"Rich, spoiled rotten," Castiel added in his gravelly voice with a shrug. "Gets money served to him on a platter. Has never worked his ass off like you and me. On top of that, he can afford to make all the wrong decisions because he has nothing to lose."

"I'm thinking that maybe he runs because he doesn't want to settle down, you know?" Pete's brown eyes took on a distant look. "Like me, I mean I'm pretty okay running my life by myself. Most people think I'm gay but there's happiness in working on yourself and accomplishing things by yourself. Guess you can relate."

"Maybe I can't. I have a cat that talks back to me. That's enough."

"Man, you're a lost cause."

"Evlek." Castiel rolled his eyes and sipped his beer. "It's possible that he probed her."

"Maybe he's gay," Pete frowned at the BBC reporter, blonde and busty. "The Prince. Maybe he's a hen. Are you a hen, Cas?"

"Are you asking me to come out to you during my lunch break on a wet Thursday?" Castiel tilted his head and stared blandly at his friend.

"Highly unlikely?"

"Far from ever knowing if I am perhaps entirely human at all. No, I'm not gay. I'm just socially awkward, a threat to society and a book hoarder."

"Fuck, you're weird," Pete laughed it off and tucked away his red rag under the counter. "Take the beers free and go, Mister…" he tried to make out the words on his friend's mustard color t-shirt, "…IDGAF what you think. What does that even mean?"

Thirty minutes after, Castiel briskly moved through the hallways at The Daily Scandal's command center as he loved to refer to it as. Vast number of cubicles comprising of proofreaders, editors, journalists, and empty desks of hypochondriacs. Then past the water cooler and towards his ugly gray door that always reminded him of the entrance to a prison cell.

"It's Zachariah," Morales, the asshole who was his boss' male delinquent secretary poked his head into Castiel's sanctuary. Today his curly hair was wild like a lion. "He wants to talk to you. Something about stashing the coffee filters down your trousers."

"Fuck off," Castiel warmly said with a smile.

He scrutinized the view of Central Park behind his desk through the wall of glass and felt contented that the weather was still rainy. He loved rainy weather. Bleak weather. Anything except the sun.

"Give me the time and place and I'd be happy to break your ten years celibacy. Just bring the lube," Morales winked.

"The only thing I'm ever going to give you is a restraining order," Castiel collected his notepad and red inked pen, knowing fully well that the color red pissed his boss off and he brushed past Morales. "Please tell me that's your phone in our pocket."

"No, I'm always happy to see you."

"Assbutt," he grumbled.

Perhaps the most questionable occurrence was always the attention he seemed to attract when traversing the halls at work. People would stare at him, mostly out of wild fascination because of his attire but he couldn't care less. He lived to be rebellious. Always on the precipice of proving to the world that normal was a terrible misjudgment in describing him.

Zachariah was the definition of a migraine.

He highly favored pinstriped suits and an air of babbling in a language that was somewhat a mixture of gibberish and English. Added to that, from the moment Castiel stepped into his office that was always cold as Antarctica, his boss laughed.

"Well hello Mister I don't give a fuck what you think. But you're going to give a fuck what I think because I'm the big kahuna around here. Have a chair."

"Should I take it to my office now?" Castiel asked sarcastically, attempting to collect one of the black leather cushioned seats. "Or should I wait until you try to tell me what to do but fail miserably at it?"

"My best employee," Zachariah was highly amused as always. "You know, without you around here, this place would be as boring as a convent during Lent. I want you to chase a story for me." Holding up his jazz hands, his symbolic display of trying to make sense. "Cas, I get the feeling this is going to be a life changer for you. Maybe you'll get laid in the process."

"Why does everyone around here think that I have not had sex in a while?" Castiel frowned, clicking his pen and leaving it poised above the yellow notepad.

"Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?" Zachariah shrugged. "Anyway, I want you to cover the Royal Wedding for me. If there's going to even be a wedding to begin with because we all know what the Prince's rap sheet looks like. He's a bad boy flirt who loves to give his father more reason to feel like he's about to have a heart attack. Call it a vacation, if you want to."

"Okay," Castiel blinked, utterly confused.

"You don't want to do it?" Zachariah frowned.

"No, I'm trying to internally translate everything you've just said to me into English."

"All expenses paid!" Zachariah shook those jazz hands again like he was announcing a grand prize on The Price Is Right. "All you have to do is…and don't flinch…work with Ruby, the camera woman who has an undying crush on you."

Ruby. Dammit. Anyone else but the whore. "I will never sleep with a woman who has never read at least one Jane Austen novel."

"Which forces me to believe you will become a monk but that's not my decision to make. The decision I want you to sleep on and come back tomorrow to me with, is whether you're going to get your ass to London. Or if you're going to stay here and continue being a hermit." Zachariah glared at the red pen as it scribbled something on the notepad.

"Here," Castiel peeled off what he had written and handed it over.

His boss collected the note, stared at it and sighed. "A smiley face? Really? I've always liked the one with the tongue sticking out." He tried to do a bad imitation of it, instead appearing as if he was choking on air.

By noon the same day, whilst he was shaking Friskies into Whiskers' white bowl and talking to her in a soft nonhuman voice, there was a sequence of knocks on his front door. Pissed he was, to have his afternoon disrupted, but nevertheless, he had grown to memorize the pattern of those knocks.

It had been a while.

"Baby bro!" Gabriel came prancing in like a street dancer, dressed in a blue velvet suit. Accompanying him was a constipated looking Michael.

"I am not receiving mental patients at this hour," Castiel moved to the small living room with the caramel colored leather chairs.

He never liked when people frequented his apartment. It wasn't that he was suffering from OCD. But the nuisance of having his private possessions touched and fondled with by his clownish brother wasn't pleasing at all.

Michael on the other hand always kept his hands to himself. He had big hands. The size of a spatulas. Which reminded Castiel that he needed to stock up on some more pancake mixes.

"How are you, little brother?" Michael sat stiffly on one side of the sofa whilst Gabriel fully occupied the other chair. "We haven't seen you in over a month."

"Has it been that long?" Castiel asked dryly. "Merlot or water?" His feet padded softly on the wooden floor as he went to the kitchen.

Gabriel however was beaming at the interior of the apartment as if he hadn't seen the likes of it before.

"Bring us the bottle, would you? Let's try to finish it before Michael starts talking about his affair with the librarian."

"Again?" Castiel was impressed. "How many affairs have you had this year already?" He collected three glasses, the bottle and returned to the living room. It was his own space that was now invaded. Whiskers had retreated to his bedroom, possibly sleeping on the window seat.

"This is the third one," Michael announced proudly, pouring himself a heavy amount of wine. "I'm the only brother who decided to tie the knot with a woman my parents set me up with. Whilst you, Gabe, Luci and god knows where the fuck Anna is, are all living the single life."

"He's entitled," Gabriel nodded in agreement. "What about you though, baby bro? You rolled around in the sheets with anyone recently?"

"My pillows take many forms, like Anne Hathaway for example," Castiel pointed out. He sipped his wine. "Last night we were sailing in a yacht off the coast of Barbados."

"Hanna really did a number on you, didn't she?" Michael shook his head. He studied the glass wall on the northern side of his brother's apartment and couldn't detect a smudge of any kind. "You clearly haven't been romantically involved with anyone for almost ten years now whilst she's been frisking around with a man who looks like Kermit the frog."

"Is that what he is?" Castiel stared in awe at his brother, holding the stem of the glass between two fingers. "I thought he was a Martian."

"Close to it."

He briefly told them about Zachariah's proposal, whisking him off to London and into the arms of Ruby, the drooling demon. However, instead of appearing disgusted with the idea of having their brother taken away from their prying eyes, Michael nodded in approval. And Gabriel…well he seemed too impressed that for once, maybe his younger brother would fall into the arms of a foreign woman.

"Who will entangle you in the throes of passion…" holding up his glass, Gabriel toasted Castiel who scowled at him. "Look, all fun and jokes aside, you're not getting any younger. You have a substantial amount of income at your disposal—"

"Which he refuses to make claim to," Michael pointed out in a stiff tone.

"And you're fucking handsome as handsome can get. By a long shot, women would be drooling over you if you'd just lose the graphic t's, combed your hair and toned down the sarcasm."

"I think the hair has to stay," Michael disagreed. "I like the hair. It's wild and has a personality of its own. But your attire needs to change. Drastically."

A few seconds of silence elapsed and, in that time, Castiel was slowly scanning the living room. Then suddenly, he rested a shocked look on either of his brothers.

"Oh, were you saying something of import? Forgive me but I wasn't paying attention."

"You know, his problem is his ignorance," Michael pointed out boldly, helping himself to another glass of wine. He wasn't known in the family as the 'blotting paper' for nothing. "He's so full of himself, he doesn't believe that anyone suits him. He's lived by himself for so long, he's practically grown too accustomed to being alone."

"As compared to you twisting around in the sheets with a different woman every month," Castiel said in a clipped tone. He rolled his eyes. "Romance does nothing for me. It is simply an illusion created in the minds of people with low self-esteems who crave the attention of someone else to complete them."

"You better watch your tongue," Gabriel warned, "one of these days, someone is going to come into your life and change your whole perspective."

"Of what exactly? Castiel offered a dull look.

Gabriel sighed. "Of love! Of life. I mean, masturbating isn't that much fun, is it?"

"I think what Castiel's problem is, relates to much more than a simple case of not wanting to look for someone. I think he's the type that needs to be chased by someone. Harassed repeatedly. A major flirt to begin with. England might be a good idea. I've heard that European women are quite bold. They know what they want. They waste no time in respectfully going after what they want. And you, my brother…would be—"

"Eye candy," Gabriel completed with a smile.

Half an hour later, after his two brothers staggered into a taxi and left, Castiel needed to recharge.

He stretched out flat on the sea moss colored carpet on his balcony and studied the stars. The brush of color on the full moon. The soft kiss of the wind on his cheeks and then the roar of the traffic in New York, the city that never sleeps. And his mind couldn't rest.

What they had said to him had some truth, even if it was a sliver.

Lonely was an understatement.

For ten years, he had developed a routine that had become reflexive and boring. His mind had become as plain as vanilla and the only time he wandered out of his comfort zone was when he was writing an article or pursuing a story. Apart from that, the top tier of his most fascinating things to do was snuggling up in bed and drowning in a good book.

But London.

He'd never been to Europe. Mexico and the Caribbean were fascinating for a young nerdy kid who studied maps and obsessed over history. But those were the days when he went to those places with his wealthy family and their flashy lifestyles. Now, he would be travelling alone to one of the places that was rich in history. That was a hub for many things that he become passionate about.

Jane Austen. Downton Abbey. The landmarks. Most of all, the royal family and its substantial influence. It's glamor and daunting secrets. The inner workings of a system that was oiled by so much power and belief and money. He wanted to go to England. He really did. But why was he even second thinking this?

By the time he was tucked in bed with the BBC news on the television, Castiel had made up his mind. But then when the Top Stories were brushed through one by one, his interest was piqued further by the mention of a new scandal from the Royal Family.

"With two weeks left to being wed to the Duchess of Emmerdale, Prince Dean has yet again made a wild public appearance. Could this be a repetition of his history of being the Rebel of the Royal Family? Let's take a look."

Castiel collected Whiskers onto his lap as the screen transitioned into a crowd gathered around the gyrating figure of a man. He was obviously stoned. It was inside a dimly lit bar with the wild whooping of the crowd but then when the Prince's face focused on the camera, Castiel stiffed a little.

"Dear god," he said staring in disbelief.

"Who wants to dare me!" Dean's voice was high pitched and his eyes glassy, "I'd do it! I'd dance to Eye of the freaking Tiger. And I'd do it all with my father's crown on my head. Because he can't dance. I can! And who wants a King that can't dance?"

"He's done it this time," Castiel whispered, although a small smile spread across his face. Even the reporter was amused. "He's fucked." Whiskers peered up at him and meowed. "Hmm, I know, I know. He's quite handsome. But not handsome enough to tempt me."