Don't you love it when you're trying to make everyone happy, whilst nobody wondering if you're okay, and everything's awkward between you and your best friend and you don't know what happened and you're on the brink of tears and you can't talk to people about normal things and you can feel people getting bored of you even as you're trying to talk them?

Anyway, I hope you have a great day, you fantastic small child.

Fez.

Dean raised an eyebrow at his room-mate, who was sprawled over the sofa, crooning to himself. Dangling from one hand that hung over the edge of the cushion was a bottle of vodka.

"Dean!" Gabriel cried and lurched off the sofa, a wide grin on his face.

"Isn't... Cassiel... Meant to be picking you up soon?" Dean attempted the name, but it was too pretentious for him to really try.

"Cassie..." Gabriel slurred, slumping down on the cushions with a grin on his face.

Dean blinked. "What the hell, Gabe?"

Gabriel had been talking all week about seeing his little brother, Captiel or something, and going out for a catch-up dinner together. As far as Dean could tell, they had been really close as kids, but since then they'd grown apart. Gabriel adored him and was really looking forward to it.

And now he was drunk on their shitty sofa, when Dean was certain the smaller man did not have a drinking problem.

Before Dean could scold Gabriel anymore, the doorbell rang.

Gabriel struggled up, giggling softly. "Cassie, Cassie, Cassie." He whispered.

Dean pulled the drink out of his roommates hand, after a brief struggle and went to answer the door.

A tall dark-haired man stood on their doorstep and Dean's mouth fell open. The man had big blue eyes, and pouty lips that would look fantastic around a co-

The man gave Dean a very obvious once-over before his gaze stopped on the bottle. Dean felt himself go red and put it on the window next to the door.

"I'm here for Gabriel." The man rumbled and Dean almost fell over when he heard how deep his voice was.

"Uh, Gabriel." How do you tell someone their brother was drunk on the sofa?

"Castiel, right?" He desperately tried, and was rewarded by the man grinning wide.

"Uh huh. And who might you be?"

"Dean, Dean Winchester."

Dean stumbled back to let Castiel in, "I'm- I'm not sure if Gabe is ready yet."

Castiel turned around, just before he entered the living room.

"Nothing new there." He joked and opened the door.

Gabriel flung himself out of the room, flinging his flailing arms around the man's neck and planted a massive lewd kiss on his cheek.

"Cassie!" He cried drunkenly and Castiel sighed, pushing his brother away.

"Seriously Gabriel?" Then he turned his unimpressed face towards Dean. "You let him become this drunk? At eight pm?"

Dean took a step back, holding his hands up in surrender.

"I've actually just gotten home from work. He doesn't even tend to drink." Dean protested, against the man's stare.

Gabriel was still hanging around Castiel's neck, making the taller man stoop as to keep his brother's feet on the floor. He was quietly humming 'My lil' pony... Friendship is..." He hiccupped and Dean fought a laugh.

Gabriel was /not/ going to hear the last of this from Dean.

Castiel sighed and waddled into the living room, leaning over the sofa without holding on Gabriel until he let go and fell, giggling onto the sofa. Castiel turned around and picked up the two remaining bottles of vodka. He sniffed the tops and wrinkled his nose.

"Gabriel didn't tend to like spirits." He informed Dean who was leaning against the doorway. "He always preferred cocktails."

Dean stifled another laugh and went over to the man and helped him.

"We were going to go to the Gilded Truffle for dinner." Castiel continued, walking after Dean this time as he put the bottles by the backdoor for recycling. "He ran away from our father and brother when he was seventeen."

Dean glanced towards the door to check that Gabriel was not listening in, he knew that if this was the first he'd heard of it since moving in with Gabe two years ago, the man probably didn't want to tell him.

"He was following our older brother, who had vanished, three years before that. He promised he would come back for me, the second I turned sixteen, but he never did."

Castiel saw Dean looked from him to the living room where Gabe could still be heard singing 'My Little Pony' to the pictures they had on their mantelpiece.

"It wasn't his fault." Castiel said quickly, "Our other brother, Lucifer, he stopped him from going back to the house, saying that Michael and Dad would get him and not let him go. Luci- Luci was almost as bad as Michael."

Dean didn't know what to say to that. Gabriel would be mortified to know that Dean knew all of this.

"What are you doing now then?" Dean asked, gesturing to the living room where Gabriel was crooning at the fireplace.

Castiel shrugged, a dismayed expression on his face. "I can't exactly take him there and it would be a waste to let the reservation go..."

Cas looked up through eyelashes and a flop of fringe, at Dean.

"Do you want to go with me?"

Dean blinked, his brain going blank.

This perfect man wanted him to go to dinner with him?

"What?" he said, amazingly intelligent.

Castiel cracked a smile and at the sudden humour Dean was hit with a wave of suppressed horror 'Had that been a joke? Of course it had been, Cas wouldn't want to go out with him.'

"Do you want to have dinner with me?" And Dean saw the sincerity in the other man's eyes and found himself nodding, a small smile spreading across his face.

"Yeah, let me go and grab a jacket." And Dean turned and sprinted towards his door, before the man changed his mind. He only spent a few seconds trying to calm himself down, when he was out of Castiel's sight.

He had his massive smile under control by the time he walked out into the hallway again.

XXXxxxXXX

Dean grabbed the beer bottles out of the fridge and stashed them in his room, kicking yesterday's boxers under the bed as Cas followed him, holding a few more bottles.

"That's all I know about," he told Cas, who looked slightly shocked at the amount of alcohol that the small-ish flat contained. He shut his door firmly, hoping that Gabriel in his drunk state wouldn't look under his bed and his shirt drawer for more alcohol.

Cas nodded, looking at a watch on his wrist, then back up at Dean biting his lip.

"Fifteen minutes," He reminded him and Dean nodded.

"Im'ma tell Gabe that we're leaving and leave a note in case he sobers before we're back." Dean replied and went back to the kitchen, scrawling a note on their whereabouts on the small blackboard that they kept for mostly these purposes.

Cas was waiting at the door when he finished, having told Gabriel they were going to be met with a giggle.

"Ready?" he said, and on a whim, Dean extended an arm towards Castiel, like an old-fashioned Victorian gentleman. The dark-haired man looked confusedly for a second, but smiled and took it.

"Ready."

I'll post another chapter to this later, btw.