Castiel had stayed home for about a day and a half after the "date," letting himself wallow in self pity and watch cheesy romantic comedies on TV the whole time. While eating ice cream? Yeah. Out of the container? Yep. He was going all the way with this sorrow thing. He hadn't even left the couch, damn it, he'd brought blankets out there and just slept on it. The only food he ate was the damn ice cream.

By the evening of the second day, though, he was done with it. His stomach was growling angrily at him, making him roll his eyes even though he was probably the dumb one here, not his stomach. He rolled off the couch and onto the floor, ignoring the sharp pain his hipbones were greeted with and instead standing up, grabbing the empty ice cream container and taking it to the kitchen. There he of course threw it into the trash can, going on afterwards to open the refrigerator. Goddamnit, where was a date when he needed one? Next time he was just going to have them come over here, claim he was going to make dinner for them, but in reality he'd just convince them to do it. Yeah, that's what he'd do.

Hopefully they wouldn't be some sort of criminal of any kind, though. He'd seen Balthazar on the news this morning, apparently he was some sort of serial killer that worked for an even bigger serial killer, or something along those lines. He hadn't caught much of it as he'd been staring down at the melting ice cream.

Deciding to just make some canned soup, Castiel turned on the oven, getting a pan and pouring the soup into it before putting it onto the heat. He hated eating canned soup. He didn't regret it though, this was still part of his own personal pity-party, and while he was done with moping on the couch, he wasn't done with moping completely. No, his lips would be stuck in a pout all day, as far as he knew, his eyebrows would forever be furrowed, his eyes always squinted in almost-disgust. Well, maybe not always, mainly just because the soup looked really gross in that pan, just cooking away. It was tomato, but a very dark tomato soup, as it had many other spices and flavorings in it. So this of course led to the fact that it looked like blood, sizzling away in the pan. But hey, he picked the high-end, expensive soups. Maybe he didn't like eating them, but they certainly looked better in his pantry than really cheap soups with the cans dented in.

He ate the dark red soup soon enough, finishing it quickly even though his tongue hated him for it, the whole thing burnt as hell and yeah that was enough of soup for a very long time. In fact about half-way through he'd stood from his place at the table, taking his bowl back to the kitchen and pouring the soup down the sink. Some people warned him about pouring very hot liquids down the drain, but he didn't give a damn. The pity-party-goers didn't need to care about pipes in the sink.

It was about then that the phone rang, the home phone of course as he had no friends, so Castiel set the empty bowl down in the sink, going to grab the phone from the counter. But really, who the hell could it be? His husband hadn't had much of a life either, and neither of their co-workers had ever tried to contact them.

"Hello?" Castiel got out, his throat still recovering from the burning soup.

"Hello, may I speak to Alfred Novak?"

He narrowed his eyes, hearing the name of his dead husband really wasn't something he wanted to do right now. But he had gotten a lot better about it, it had been two years after all, and a lot of people had known Alfred. They just had never tried to contact him or hang out or anything.

"To whom am I speaking?"

"Um, his brother?"

Ah, that made sense. Castiel couldn't help but sigh, eyes closing in annoyance. Alfred's brother was named Gabriel. He'd always been very annoying, trying to antagonize him at any chance. Why? Because he'd married his brother, of course, and apparently that was the highest offense he could possibly do.

Anyway, when Alfred had passed, Gabriel.. went crazy, to put it simply. He was delusional, he claimed to see his brother, talk to him, and occasionally called their house asking for him even though part of his mind probably knew he wouldn't reach him. He blamed Alfred's death on Castiel, so sometimes he wondered if Gabriel actually only called to get to him. He wouldn't put it past him, after all.

"Goodbye, Gabriel."

"Don't hang up that phone, you bastard. Let me speak to my brother."

"I said goodbye, Gabriel."

The other end was silent for a few moments, before Gabriel muttered out a few curses at Castiel and hung up the phone. Castiel went to set the phone down, walking into his bedroom after that. Gabriel had always claimed that Castiel wasn't actually Alfred's husband, that he was somehow the twin (evil twin, as he'd put it) of Alfred's real husband, and he was just here to bring about his destruction. Which, after his death, Gabriel had been one-hundred-percent convinced that he was right.

Castiel had tried to ignore his conspiracies, for the most part. They had only ever made him feel overly possessive over his husband and angry about someone thinking he'd bring destruction to the man he loved so much. He'd married him fifteen years ago, goddamnit, he'd wore the silver wedding ring ever since he got it. Up until last night, that is. He figured it wouldn't make a good impression on someone if he showed up to a date with a wedding ring. So he'd put it on a necklace, and wore it under his shirt.

He let himself fall face-first onto his bed, the bed that felt so empty now without Alfred next to him. He was thinking about it too much again-he wanted to get past this.

But not today. Today he would let himself have this sorrow, let himself drown in these thoughts, because the day hadn't started off well and he figured it wouldn't end well, either. So he turned all of the lights off, got under the blankets, and slept the day away-or, he would have, at least, if his cellphone wouldn't have started ringing on the nightstand.

He supposed, after answering the call and talking for almost an hour, that the day didn't have to end so badly after all. He'd found another date, of course, they were going to go out for lunch tomorrow. How, he had no idea, but apparently he'd given out his phone number a lot more than he'd thought.