To the tune of: All for You by Sister Hazel

There is something terribly depressing about stories that start in cafes. Castiel Novak hates them. He hates how beautifully easy it is to lead in with an introduction about hearth-warmed brick walls, polished wood counters, and the scent of hot coffee. He hates that it's almost always gray or snowing outside of the frosted windows that the main character of a story props himself (or herself) up against. How delicately the author describes the frothing sound of foaming milk and the clanking of ceramic mugs! How envious a reader should be of that quiet back corner where someone can tuck themselves away with a disgustingly good book that has about a 47% chance of being a topic of conversation and a 23.3% chance of playing a bigger role in the overall arch of the story. The 26 year old knows for a fact that these writers have never once been in a café because if they had, they would understand that not many cafes have enough space for a "back corner" to exist and if they did, they are probably overrun with a steady stream of loud customers- some families, some students in the middle of exams, and some, just like him, business men on their five second caffeine recharge break.

Castiel hates stories that happen in cafes because they are decidedly predictable. Said protagonist is usually approached by an antagonist that eventually shifts into a friend or possible romance after a long rollercoaster of a conversation that could be either sweet or, more likely, a bit of a struggle. He hates how easy it seems for one human being to stroll up to another, interrupt their daily ritual, and introduce themselves. Castiel has spent at least 8 years hearing stories like these and the last 4 of his life watching the interactions in cafes for signs of legitimacy. There is little interaction outside of friend circles except for the regular approach of a semi-desperate man to a pretty female companion. Even this half-hearted and usually disappointing interaction has begun to bore him.

Castiel Novak hates café stories.

Which only makes it worse when he becomes the unassuming lead of one.

The Grace café doesn't have exposed brick or big, open windows. It's barely wide enough to fit the counter and a row of short tables along the wall with a space to walk between the two. It's a regular tunnel for people in a hurry, funneling them through a quick q&a before sending them off with a steaming hazelnut latte or double skim macchiato. Actually the Black Wing is better known for a particularly tasty assortment of vegan treats and a lava-warm pudding thick hot chocolate that all but suffocates you on the way down. Castiel comes for the simplest cup of black coffee because the café is just across the street from his firm and by saving himself time from the short walk, he can prop himself up at one of the front tables long enough to catch his breath and skim the editorial section of the local newspaper.

There's a pretty blonde barista by the name of Jo Harvelle who greets him with a full-hearted smile on Thursday afternoon and has a cup of coffee on the counter before he has to be bothered with small talk. She's too busy to keep him long anyway. It's another packed day and there's barely enough room to sidestep other customers. They exchange the usual pleasantries, hello, how are you? how has your week been so far? Enjoying the fall while it lasts? Would you like anything else?

Castiel answers them all quickly and vaguely except for the last which gets a very pointed "No. I'm fine, thank you." And that's about as far as he gets into his regular schedule before it all goes to hell.

He picks his coffee cup off the counter in one hand and tucks his newspaper under his arm so he can locate his table. As he turns around, however, Jo lets out a shout that sounds very much like "Dean!" and something collides with Castiel's arm.

"Son of a-"

Castiel isn't really sure what happened, but his coffee is down the front of his white button up and there are ceramic pieces all over the floor. Everyone in the café is staring at him like he just walked on water, which he might have given how light headed he suddenly is.

He doesn't feel anything at first. He just stares back at the crowd in confusion.

"Oh god, Dean."

Castiel is certain God has nothing to do with this at all. Slowly his senses return to him and he begins to wish that they hadn't. His arm is on fire, covered in something heavy and brown that's running slowly around wrist and down to his elbow. He can smell the chocolate and he can feel the burn. But that's not all. There's a sharp stinging sensation underneath the burn, starting somewhere on his palm between his index finger and thumb. When he turns his hand over to survey the damage, he has to look away again.

There's a piece of ceramic lodged in his hand, pumping a greasy stream of blood through the thick chocolate. There's another long gash over the top of his forearm that starts from the knot of his bone at his wrist and tapers off at the freckle on the inside of his forearm. Castiel can only stare at the spotted pattern of red and brown on the stone floor while Jo rushes around the edge of the counter and the guilty party grabs at his arm. Castiel hisses at the contact and pulls back.

"Wait, wait. I'm just going to get the broken bits out…"

"Dean! You can't do that! He'll bleed to death. You're not supposed to remove it!"

Castiel dares to look up at the man that just turned his five minute breather into a three hour trip to the hospital and is less than impressed to find said 6 foot frat boy staring at him like he just ruined Christmas. Or maybe that stern expression is reserved for moments in which he must argue the legitimacy of a man's ability to bleed out from his thenar webbing.

This is Dean Winchester- who has never spent more than twenty minutes in a college classroom and most certainly had nothing to do with frats, not that Castiel knows this yet. All the businessman-turned-bloody-sunday knows is that Dean is a compact body of muscle dusted with freckles and topped with a pair of limerick eyes. He knows that the shine of the talisman that hangs around the other man's neck is the same as the glow on the brightest curves of Dean's hair. Dean is warm, like he's been out in the sunshine, and dresses in cools the ground him into reality. The leather of his jacket is worn down like it's been around for a while, probably passed down through the family. These are things that Castiel can appreciate more than a variety of dairy-free brownies or the musty scent of ink when he turns to the editorials, but right now his arm is on fire and Jo is dabbing at it gently with a wet cloth to get the chocolate off. It only stings more and brings another stream of blood to the surface of his cut. He might as well be in ribbons.

"You have to take him to the hospital, Dean." Jo is saying over the chorus of a metric song. "You have to take him because he needs stitches and I can't leave here and you don't have the insurance to cover an ambulance and don't you dare give me that look."

Dean is giving the poor girl his best "but-I-promised-Sammy-I'd-pick-him-up-from-the-library! (or something…)" look, which Castiel will come to recognize within the next month and a half as a signature one of dean's when he is eager to get out of a situation that makes him uncomfortable. He will secretly enjoy replying to it with a well placed smirk during their first get-to-know-the-novaks dinner, at least until Gabriel stares down his baby brother's newest fling and says "Well Dean-o looks like he could bite the pillow and take a few rounds, Cas." At which point, the youngest of the million Novak siblings will turn every shade of red and sweet, sweet Anna will "accidentally" dump her drink all over the offender's crotch.

All of this, however, does not keep Castiel from resenting the man before him for ruining any chance of getting his latest ad project done on time. And really, it had been Castiel's last chance to hod onto the remains of his fading job. He had never really gotten the knack for understanding the greater population of society ("But I don't understand how hip hop stars have anything to do with wet cat food…") and as a result, his concepts never made it past the doodle on napkin phase anyway. He'll get the unfortunate call while waiting in the emergency room only an hour later. ("I'm sorry, but we really needed someone we could count on for this. You're a good kid, but…") He will wish that he didn't have to interrupt Dean's nervous ramblings about his promising younger brother to accept the news of his own failure, but he'd like to at least have a chance in keeping a reference number on his resume since he'll be needing it again soon. In a week he'll be sitting at the hospital again, having the stitches taken out by a nurse that looks like she's about to pass out any second. Castiel will wonder if this is his life, if he was really and truly doomed to pondering his existence to the smell of amonia. He'll wonder if he'll have to call up Gabriel and strike up a deal to earn himself some couch space for an extended period of time. Then an unrecognizable name will call his phone and he'll listen to Dean begrudgingly try to offer some form of payment for the accident and Castiel will find himself asking about Dean's couch instead because he isn't sure he can get any lower than he already is and he'd rather chew off his own arm than wake up to a sticky lollipop stuck in his hair on a regular basis.

The café bell bids them farewell and the stranger named Dean, the one who Castiel is certain is the worst possible company for the 30 minute drive to the hospital, introduces Castiel to the only car he's ever seen in this decade with a cassette deck. "I know she's a bit rusty now, but I'm working to fix her up." Dean tells him, looking reluctant but proud. This is obviously something Dean has worked for-is still working for. Castiel finds it endearing but he doesn't say it out loud, not now and definitely not when he sits himself out on the stairs of their apartment in the middle of July the next year to sip on fresh iced tea and watch the shirtless Winchester dirty himself up underneath the Impala's hood. He instead says it by pressing his lips against Dean's shoulder when they're laid out together in the backseat, only the soft light of snow to watch over them. Castiel will forever joke that whenever they have sex there he can always smell the must of mold blowing through the heating system. Dean will insist that the smell is phantom and they'll both insist that they go another round just to make sure.

But Castiel doesn't even consider that future a possibility when Dean slides his first mixtape into the mouth of the console. He wants to take it back. He wants to tell Dean, no, it's ok… really. He'd rather just bleed out in front of Jo on the café floor. Maybe that'd be a more admirable use of his time than listing to Ramble On on repeat going 8,000 miles an hour with the understanding that he is certainly going to die. Castiel imagines that when they hit the guard rail it will be very much like the collision of their mugs, only instead of being stabbed through with a piece of cheap ceramic, he'll put his own head through the windshield of the dusty Impala and Michael will have to come identify the remains of his body. Castiel imagines that his brother would be twenty minutes late and would lecture his dead corpse about the importance of not inconveniencing others when they are very busy bathing in their gross income.

Castiel snorts and Dean glances at him out of the corner of his eye.
"Something funny, Cas?"

Cas. The nickname isn't his first, but it's certainly the most logical. He drinks it down like his first shot of hunter's helper, reluctantly and with an aftertaste, but he shakes his head in response because he's not ready to admit that he likes the way it rolls off Dean's tongue, as if they've known each other forever. When they have known each other forever, he draws it off of Dean's tongue himself.

"Oh God, Cas-"

"Cas, seriously man, Madonna?"

"Cas, come on, open the door please…"

"….Cas… you know I'm not good with words…" Which is Dean's way of saying "I love you" when they're both standing in the pouring rain on the side of the highway because the Impala is still a work in progress and really, It had sounded funny before they even hit the highway. He'll just smile and run his fingers over the Impala's wet hood, and then take Dean's ice cold hand and say. "Yes, Dean, I know." Which means "I love you too, you idiot" in a way that won't make Dean get the urge to run screaming.

And Sam will smile when he comes to pick them up, because he's always liked Castiel.

"He's got this sort of… otherworldly feel." He'll tell Dean over dinner. "he's too good for you."

"I like him. He gets real fired up when you point out how much of a flamer he is." Gabe will say loudly, so that Dean can hear him.

"I really don't know about this, Castiel." Lucifer will admit drunkenly at thanksgiving. "But he's good to you?"

"Well at least he's pretty." Anna will breath in the spring, watching the Winchesters argue over how to assemble the tent.

And Michael will toast to them at the wedding, all teary eyed and serious. "If he hadn't been so graceless, I wouldn't be telling this story today…"

Suddenly Castiel's own Café story will no longer be just that and the reason he hates them so much is not because of what they are, but what they never get the opportunity to be. He hates them because if he was to sit down and tell his own, it would end with him walking out of the building with a bloody hand and no job and he would never be able to tell anyone how beautiful Dean Winchester looks against the lights of the boardwalk Ferris wheel. He would never be able to tell anyone how Dean grips his hand tight the first time they have to take a cross-country flight, or how he never did sleep on Dean's couch, but Dean did more than once. He wants everyone to know that Dean sings in the shower, and he always forgets to salt the front steps when it's icy, and how he hums when he eats the first bite of pie.

There's something terribly depressing about stories that end in cafes.

Castiel Novak hates them because he simply isn't ready to let his end.

I don't really know the best way to relate this story to the song that inspired it, but it was also inspired by a story a coworker told me about another job she had where a server was carrying a plate of food and hit a counter causing the plate to shatter and slice up her hand and arm. So you get Destiel out of that. lol. I'm sorry? (naaaah)