Castiel pirouettes around the living room. His back arches. His arms rises over his head as the oboes began to swell.

Sam tromps darkly across the room, but not fast enough. Cas twirls and grabs Sam's hands for support before he dips all the way back. His head practically touches the floor. He raises a leg and flexes his toes straight at the ceiling. "Did I ever tell you about how I landed Show Boat right after my agent changed my stage name to Angel Caido?"

Of course, Castiel had told him this story, on multiple occasions. With his basic Spanish, Sam has always found the name every bit as ironic as his tattoo.

"She passed me off as a Miami-born Cuban for five years. It was genius. I had never had so much work. And there, my boy, is the soft underbelly of white privilege. All before your time, Sammy. All before I found my own angel."

Castiel rights himself and drapes his arms around Sam's neck. He nips at Sam's unshaven chin.

Sam purses his lips, stares ahead and allows Castiel to hang there. Cas reaches down to drag Sam's arms around his waist. Sam lets them drop again. "I'm just trying to get breakfast."

"Dance with me, Sammy," Castiel whines.

Sam rolls his eyes and diverts them out of the glass door to the balcony.

Castiel shoves him away. "What's with you these days? You were always dull. Now, you're just pathetic."

Castiel mocks Sam with a clownish frown. Chalupa yelps as Cas kicks her in the ribs.

Sam steps between Castiel and the dog. "Stop it."

"Make me."

Sam scoops the little dog up under his arm and trudges to the kitchen. It's been a few days since he's eaten much of anything. He has to force something down so that he doesn't pass out.

Jo approaches Dean's locker, cautious and slow, like a trainer moving toward a young lion. "Hey. You feeling any better?"

He just glares at her and hopes to God she'll go away without him having to tell her to.

"A few of us are going fishing this weekend."

"Good for you."

She jumps out of the way when he slams the door shut. "All you had to do was say you didn't want to come. You know, you have turned into a complete dick."

Dean sneers sharply. "How would you know, Princess? When's the last time you ever saw a dick?"

It's been a week. An entire week since he last heard from Sam. And it shouldn't be a problem. He's gotten laid. They had won their last two games. Both had been close calls, but once Dean had his head in it, they had come around. He should be good. Should be over the godamn moon, but he feels like dried up horse shit.

Yesterday, he ripped Garth a new one for bringing him a coke. He regretted it after the fact, but done is done. Dean doesn't want to be mean to Jo; he just wants her to leave him the fuck alone. In the moment it takes her to recover, he stalks away.

She has to jog to keep up with his pace as he forces his way through the crowded hall. "What is going on with you?"

Jo excuses herself left and right but somehow manages to keep up. "If you don't want to talk to me, talk to my dad. He can help you, whatever it is."

Dean scoffs. "You really believe that, don't you?"

She touches his arm, trying to get him to slow down. "My mom said to tell you to come by for-"

"Not interested."

"If this is how you act when you have a winning streak, I hope you lose every game for the rest of the season."

Dean laughs out loud at that. "Yeah. I'm sure your daddy feels the same way."

"Dean, would you please…"

He stops so abruptly that she has to turn back around to face him.

"You're not my girlfriend, Jo. What is your deal?" Dean's jaw is clenched so tight he might crack a tooth.

She gasps like he just punched her in the stomach. Then she murmurs. "I'm just trying to be your friend."

Dean bangs his fist against a locker. A crowd of people stop what they're doing and turn to stare at them. "I don't need any more fucking friends."

Sam stares at the cursor blinking on his screen. He has been watching it for the last twenty minutes. He doesn't have the mental or physical energy for anything else.

Dean can't believe the rush he gets from beating the shit out of an inanimate object. Caleb's red pickup truck was a rusted out piece of crap before Dean ever took the Winchester's baseball bat to it. He had never really gotten into baseball, but the crunch of wood striking against metal sends a tremor exploding down his whole body. The crack and splatter of demolishing glass is like heaven. Every time the bat connects is almost better than fucking.

He bashes all the windows first. Next, he goes for the headlights and the taillights. Then, he beats the crap out of that stupid fucking license plate: SMPR F.

"Semper fuck you."

By the time Caleb comes running out of McGinty's, Dean has half stomped the fender off. A small crowd of drunken shitheads hollers for Dean like he's Babe Ruth in the World Series. 'Fuck them.'

At first, Dean doesn't see Caleb. He just hears a rebel yell over the mob. He turns in time to see the guy charging right for him. His brain doesn't even register the attack. Instinct kicks in and Dean hits a fucking home run with the guy's chin.

The dull thud of wood on bone is an entirely different sensation from hitting aluminum or glass. It makes Dean a little sick to his stomach. Caleb spins on his heels like a cartoon character. Dean doesn't even see him go down because he's too busy running like hell.

Dean doesn't slow down until he slams the door and bolts every lock behind him. He leans against it, panting like he's just run 4 miles, because he fucking has. This is the first time he sees that the tip of the bat is bloody. He tosses the thing on the floor just to get it out of his hands.

He shrugs out of his hoodie and stoops to wrap it around the bat. Then, he shoves the whole package under the sink just as Jody stumbles into the kitchen. Dean closes the cabinet door and stands to face her.

"Where have you been, you little shit?" Her left eye is puffed all the way shut. The bruise on her cheek is a dark purple now.

Without actually touching the discolored skin, he cups her face in his hand. "It's worse."

She leans away. "Where did you go?"

"Had to take care of something." His breath is finally returning to normal, even if his mind is still racing like crazy. He grabs himself a beer from the fridge.

"Is that the last one?"

Dean pops the can. "Yes, it is, and I'm fucking well going to drink it."

Jody marches over and tries to pry it away from him. He effortlessly holds her back with one hand while he turns his head up to drink with the other. She gripes and swats and eventually manages to knock the beer from his hand.

Dean gapes down at the liquid spilling out onto his shoes and all over the floor. "You know why only assholes want you? Because you're a fucking bitch."

Her hand connects so hard, so loud across his face that it stuns them both. When Dean was a little kid, Jody would lift him by his collar and give a good shake if he begged too loud in the dollar store. She would hold her face an inch away from his and hiss threats between her bared teeth when he wasn't walking fast enough. This is the first time she's ever hit him. Neither of them seems to know what to do about it.

Finally, Jody strokes the reddening skin on his cheek. The touch burns, too, but Dean doesn't turn away. The expression on her face is pitiful and sweet. She kind of looks like a mom. "What did you do?"

"I should have fucking killed him." Dean drops his face onto her neck.

His mother rubs his back, cooing softly, "It's okay, baby. It's okay."

Sam rubs his eyes. He tries to focus on the screen. The calculator clicks as he feeds in more numbers. Suddenly, he gets that eerie feeling of being watched.

Castiel stands in the door frame with the handle of a rolling suitcase in one hand. A tapestry bag full of Chi-poo hangs off the other arm. "You don't even look at me anymore."

Sam gawks up at him, unsure of how to respond.

"It's clear that you don't want me. It's been like this for months, Sam. Maybe longer. I don't know. How long has it been since I satisfied you? Since you were happy with me? You don't have anything to say, do you?"

Sam only blinks. He doesn't dare break the spell by saying something that might make Cas stay.

"You know what? Fuck you, Sam." Castiel's voice is perfectly serene.

He doesn't even slam the front door when he leaves.

Sam blinks a few times and picks up his cell phone. He hasn't heard from Dean in nearly two weeks. He puts it back down and continues his work.

There's a patrol car parked out front of the school. Dean glances around the parking lot and starts walking backward in the direction he had come. Once he's in the woods, he turns and bolts.

The bell over the door of the salon dings when he slinks in. Every head in the shop turns to watch him enter.

"Hi, um. Is my mom here?"

"Jody!" The lady working at the first chair shouts without taking her eyes from his face.

"Dean? That you, darlin'?" The familiar rasp of Mildred's voice almost puts him at ease.

Dean's buddy is all the way across the room with her head leaned back over a sink, so she doesn't see him wave. "Hey."

"What are you doing out of school?"

Before Dean can think of an answer, another woman waddles right up to him and pinches his chin between thick fingers. Mag, the owner of the shop, is a short, stout slug of a Puerto Rican lady with a mustache and a salt-and-pepper beehive. Her dry and calloused fingertips scrape loudly over his cheekbones. "Would you look at this child? Jody, no way this came outta you."

"Up yours, Maggie." Jody carries a plastic bin full of nail polish from the back room. She has makeup caked all over her face. From where he's standing, Dean can't even see how busted up she is.

Despite being in a good position to be guillotined, Mildred chimes in her agreement. "Doesn't he look like he was hand chiseled by angels?"

Dean has heard it all before, but he's never really gotten used to old ladies creaming their Depends over him. He suffers the compliments with what could be a smile but isn't.

Jody opens her palms as if presenting him to the world. "There you go. That should be your Indian name. Don't you have school, 'Chiseled By Fucking Angels'?"

"Didn't feel like it today." He shoots her a loaded glance.

He doesn't have to do any more explaining. They've run from enough trouble to know the look.
She nods and hands him a broom. "Well, then, you better make yourself useful, Gorgeous."

On his break, Sam steps outside. A few of his coworkers are smoking. They look him over curiously, but no one says a word. He has no idea where to start. After working at this firm for two years, he has never said more than the obligatory 'hi' or 'bye' to any of them.

So, Sam hunches up his shoulders against the drizzle. He steps back under the awning to keep his phone from getting wet.

Dean has pumped up his mother's chair as high as it will go so that his feet dangle over the edge. He lounges, eating a sandwich, while Mag brushes his hair back from his forehead. It feels so good he can't even be ashamed of himself- not even when Jody shakes her head at him. "Maggie, do you have any idea what kind of monster you're creating?"

"You really ought to pamper him more, Jody." Mag smooths her hand over Dean's hair.

"Why on earth would I do that? He's practically an adult. He ought to get a job and start pampering me."

Dean's jacket hangs on the coat rack by the door. When the pocket buzzes he just eyeballs it, like it might be a whole hive of pissed off bees.

"That your phone? You can go ahead and get it, sweetheart." Mag sets the brush aside.

Dean sighs and goes to get the thing. He groans and makes a face at the screen. He didn't ever think he'd hear from this asshole again.

SW: How you been?

He puts the phone facedown on the countertop. All the old women have gone back to work. His mother is the youngest by thirty years or so, but she fits right in. He smiles, watching her wash their hair or paint their nails. Jody shoots the shit or listens to them babble about their grandkids. It reminds him of when he was a little kid, curled up under her work station with a comic book and Gram, that nasty, filthy stuffed dog he used to love so much. 'What ever happened to that thing?'

"Where are you?" Mildred rests her freshly manicured hand on his shoulder.

Her hair looks the same as before: spiky and carrot colored. It totally suits her. It'd be a shame if she ever changed it. She grins like the Mona Lisa, waiting for an answer.

"I don't know. Just…" Dean stammers and shrugs.

Mildred's head inclines toward the phone. "You going to answer?"

Dean picks up the phone again and thumbs in response.

DS: OK.

Then, he puts it back down. It buzzes again in less than a minute.

SW: Been a while

Dean flings the phone and his sandwich onto the foil on the counter in front of him. It takes a lot to ruin his appetite. This conversation has done it.

"You really like her, huh?"

Dean shakes his head no. He sees no reason to correct the pronoun. Mildred smiles. Dean stares at a wall and growls the confession through clenched teeth. "A little."

"That bad?" Mildred's skin creases even more to make this concerned expression.

"It's fucking torture, Mil." He speaks quietly because he knows the rest of the old ladies would lose it to hear him swear.

"Then, don't worry about anything else. If she likes you back, it'll be good. If she doesn't, at least you'll know."

Dean picks his stupid phone back up and sighs.

SW: How's it going with your girl?
DS: Done
SW: That's too bad. How come we stopped talking?
DS: IDK

"Because you were fucking around with my head," Dean hisses out loud to the phone, as if he were holding Sam in his hand.

One of ladies clucks, "Language."

"Sorry," he grumbles.

Mildred laughs - not at him, but close by.

SW: I miss it
SW: Miss you

Dean squints at his screen. "No, thank you. Not again, you fucker." His head snaps up to the old woman who'd just scolded him. "Sorry."

He starts to thumb in a message, but Sam is quicker.

SW: Would you send me a pic?
SW: Of you

Dean isn't sure what to make of that. He winces at the phone.

SW: Waist-up
SW: Shoulders up
SW: Fully clothed
DS: What for?
SW: I can't exactly remember what you look like
SW: I'd like to see you

Dean hates it. He hates how fucking bunched up his guts feel. Hates how much he wants this to mean Sam wants him. For that reason alone, he puts the phone down on the counter again and walks away from it.

"Dean," Mildred calls, but he can't deal with her now.

Can't deal with any of this.

He plods over to the front window. Watches cars pass for a while. He gets a quarter from Mag and buys himself a stale gumball from the machine by the door. From all the way across the shop, he contemplates his phone.

The phone isn't the problem. Sam isn't the problem. Dean, himself, acting like a lovesick little bitch is the problem. He finally comes to a conclusion: fuck it. It's a pic. Not doing it is stupider than doing it.

Dean snaps a selfie, but it looks like shit. So he erases it and tries another one with a smile. It's worse. He cozies up next to Mag behind the counter. "What do you think of this one?"

"You look constipated. Jody, come help this boy take a decent picture."

Jody gives him the finger and goes on clipping pins into her customer's hair.

Mildred is having her feet done now. She reaches out and motions to him with her fingers. She takes his phone, but still beckons. She wants him to lean down so she can tousle his hair. "Girls want you to look a little wild and dirty nowadays. God knows why. It's what they like."

Mag bellows, "That is true. That Robert Patterson boy. From the Twilight trilogy. Messy messy messy. That Justin Bieber. Used to be so clean and nice. Look at him now, with all the tattoos."

Dean groans at being compared to that dirtbag.

"The girls don't like nice anymore. They want dirty. You give 'em dirty."

Dean is somewhere between a smile and vomit. "Should I go roll in the mud?"

"Don't be a smart-ass." Mildred snaps a few shots.

She scrolls through and suggests one where Dean doesn't look like a self-absorbed spazz or a constipated, nervous moron.

"You look nice," she says.

It isn't half bad. He sends that photo to Sam.

"You be sweet to her, hear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

It's Mildred's turn to grimace. "Don't you ever call me that."

"Ma'am?" Jody crows, mocking him as she comes back in from the back room. "Who are you and what have you done with my heathen?"

Dean smirks at her just as the phone vibrates in his hand.

"She like it?" Mag's penciled in eyebrows raise.

Every woman in the shop stops - all the customers, every stylist, even his mother. They pause to hear his answer. Dean takes a deep breath and looks down at his phone.

SW: Jesus.
SW: And you call me beautiful?

He subdues his smile and nods to his anxious audience.

The old ladies whoop and shout like Dean just ran in for a touchdown. Mildred and Mag give each other a high five. Dean laughs and takes his phone out to the front of the building for some privacy.

SW: I could be wrong, but I recall you look even better in person

"Don't tease me, Sam," he murmurs out loud to himself.

SW: Would it be okay if I come by and confirmed that sometime?

- Author's Note: Thanks for keeping up with the boys so far. The story becomes NC-17 after this point. Please feel free to follow the rest over at AO3

/works/9566213/chapters/21631142