A/N Sorry for my long absence! Hope you enjoy!
Dean drove along the winding road, nothing but flat brown fields and a ribbon of black tarmac to be seen. She had told him that the bar was about five miles outside the town of Russell, so he thought he must be close. Unless he had taken a wrong turn or read the directions wrong or…
But before he could think of any more reasons to worry, a building came in to view, a solitary bar in the middle of nowhere. Dean pulled up in front of it and immediately realised that his was the only car in the lot, he was surrounded completely by motorcycles, black and shining in the evening sun. I should have known, he thought to himself with a little smile. He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened the dating app where he'd met Emily, or rather HellsAngel67 as she'd called herself in her username. He took one last look at her picture to make sure he would recognise her when he entered the unfamiliar bar. She was very pretty with dark hair and brown eyes, with red lipstick and the outline of a tattoo peeking out from beneath her dark green tank top.
He checked his watch. It was only 5.45pm, he was early, and unusually nervous. He waited a little longer in the safety of his car, looking around the familiar interior and he found his thoughts wandering towards its previous owner. He wondered what John Winchester would have thought about him dating a girl he'd met on the internet. No doubt he wouldn't approve. Even though he was long dead, Dean couldn't help the automatic pang of guilt at the thought of disappointing his father. He checked his watch again and only a minute had passed but he was becoming too nervous to remain stationary any longer. He stepped out in to the mild evening air and entered the biker bar.
As soon as he set foot inside he realised there had been no need to memorise Emily's face; there wasn't a single woman in the room, it was nothing but enormous, burly, bearded men. Dean walked up to the bar and ordered a beer, periodically scanning the room, listening intently through the low rumble of male voices for any hint of a female presence. If he hadn't been so preoccupied he would have appreciated the look of the bar. It was a little dim but homely, and it reminded Dean of Bobby's house. The whole place had a lived-in feel, the floors were scuffed, the seats were worn, the felt on the pool tables was beginning to peel, and the air still smelled of cigarettes, as though the entire bar was clinging to the memories of a time long past.
Dean switched between checking his watch and checking the clock above the bar, convinced that one of them must be wrong. At first he worried about possible conversation topics and making a fool of himself, but after a short while his biggest concern was that he was being stood up. He tried to convince himself that she was still coming, after all, they'd really hit it off. They had been texting back and forth for almost a week and she seemed funny and clever, not to mention beautiful.
A big, leather-clad man pushed past him on his way to the bar and Dean apologised hastily, despite not being the one at fault, and it was then that he realised how out of place he felt, and perhaps even a little threatened. No one had cast him so much as a sideways glance since he had arrived but nevertheless he pressed his arm a little closer to his side to feel the comforting presence of his gun in his jacket pocket. But as he checked his watch again, he forgot all about feeling intimidated as his thoughts returned to Emily.
By 6.20pm he was genuinely concerned by her absence. By half past, he resigned himself to the fact that his date wasn't coming. With his very last scrap of hope, he got up from his bar stool and wandered around the periphery of the room, wondering if perhaps Emily had been sitting just out of sight this whole time and was feeling just as disheartened as he was. He was half way around the room when he glanced in to one of the booths and recognised the face looking back at him.
Dean sat down opposite, poorly concealing his disappointment.
"You look nothing like your picture," he said dryly.
"I admit it was taken a few years ago," Cas joked.
Dean didn't return his smile. "What the hell are you doing here, Cas?"
"I heard your prayers."
"I haven't said any prayers," he said shortly.
"Well you think very loudly," Cas said with a small shrug. "I heard you when you started to worry that your blind date wasn't going to show up and you seemed disappointed…" He trailed off, suddenly sitting up a little straighter and glancing around like a child who had spotted something shiny. "Do you feel that?" he asked.
"What?" Dean asked impatiently. Had he not been so frustrated at being stood up, he might have taken Cas's concerns a little more seriously.
Cas just shook his head, seemingly unable to pinpoint exactly what was troubling him. "Nothing," he said. "There's just something off about this place." Dean didn't feel the mysterious feeling, he just continued glaring at Cas.
"Like I said," Cas continued, glancing around once more before his attention finally returned to Dean. "I came to make sure you were okay."
"I'm fine," Dean said.
"No you're not, you're only on this date because of what I said last week."
"Look, it's for the best," Dean said. "I'm sorry, man, but I think we should just forget about all of that."
"That's not your decision," Cas said, his voice rising. "I have spent the last six years with my feelings for you burning a hole in my chest, you don't get to brush yours under the carpet."
"Who said I had feelings for you?" Dean said defensively, instinctively lowering his voice to avoid being overheard. Cas just shot him a derisive look. "Okay, fine, maybe I do," Dean continued under his breath, "but there's a reason I haven't acted on them. It's a terrible idea, it'll never work, and we're both just going to end up hurt."
"Don't you think it's worth the risk? Don't you think we're worth the risk?"
"I'm sorry Cas," Dean said. It's selfish but the last thing I need is someone else that can be used as leverage against me. There's always going to be someone out to get me and if something happened to you I don't think I'd be able to come back from that."
"Nothing will happen to me," Cas said.
"Dude, you've died four times since I met you."
"And I've always come back to you," Cas persisted. "It's a dangerous life, Dean, we're always going to be at risk, whether we're together or not."
"I can't take any more loss, Cas," Dean said.
"I can't promise to stay alive, but I can promise to stay with you for the rest of my life, Dean," Cas said, his patience failing and his voice rising. "Why isn't it enough that I love you?"
Dean was about to warn him to keep his voice down, but it was too late. The four large men who had been shooting pool a few feet away had overheard them. They exchanged glances before laying down their cues and advancing on Dean and Cas in their booth. Dean stood automatically, placing himself between Cas and the men and he was concerned to find that, even at 6'2", he was still dwarfed by the group of bikers as they surrounded them. Dean had been so preoccupied by the bearded man who was approaching him that he didn't notice another biker slip behind him and sit across the booth from Cas. The bar fell silent and Dean felt his pulse begin to rise as he realised they were surrounded. How much had they overheard? And what were they going to do about it?
The man across from Cas had his hands under the table and Dean immediately wondered what he was concealing. Then a few things happened in very quick succession. The man began to lift his hand out from under the table, Dean grabbed for his gun inside his jacket, but the bearded man grabbed his arm to stop him.
"Relax, kid," said the man, as the biker in the booth took his hand out from under the table and extended it to the angel. Cas shook his hand, looking a little surprised, and the bearded man released his grip on Dean's arm.
"My friends call me Bear," said the man, reaching out to shake his hand.
"Dean," he replied, still a little wary, but he let go of the butt of his gun and shook the man's large hand nonetheless.
"Haven't seen you boys around here before," said Bear over the rumble of voices as the people in the bar resumed their own conversations.
"We're just passing through," Dean said vaguely, not taking his eyes off of Cas who was now talking cheerily with the man opposite, clearly feeling none of the apprehension that had Dean on edge.
"That your car out there?" asked Bear, glancing out the window.
"Yeah," Dean said, ready to jump to the defence of his four-wheeled ride.
"67 Impala?"
"Yeah," Dean said again, a little surprised.
"Don't make 'em like that anymore."
"They sure don't," Dean agreed, suddenly feeling a little more at ease around this man. His bushy eyebrows and thick, wiry beard didn't look quite so menacing anymore. All Dean could really see were his eyes, friendly, and, for some reason, almost familiar. Bear walked over to the bar and slapped a fifty down on to the scraped wood.
"Beers all round, Andy," he said to the bartender. "You play pool?" he added to Dean.
"Play?" Dean echoed. "It's how I make my living." Bear laughed, grabbed a beer from the bar and set up the balls. Dean had only taken his eyes off Cas for a moment, but when he looked back around, the angel was surrounded by bikers, dealing cards for a game of poker. Dean marvelled at the angel for a moment, making friends and playing cards, almost unrecognisable as the man he'd met six years ago.
Although Dean played two games of pool and made conversation with Bear for over an hour, his attention never really left Cas. After Cas won his seventh hand in a row, Dean hurried over to him.
"Reading minds is cheating," Dean muttered in to Cas's ear. Cas turned to look at him and smiled.
"I'm not cheating," he said. "You just taught me well."
"Well you might want to lose the next couple of games or no one's gonna want to play with you."
"Noted," Cas said, scraping his winnings from the middle of the table towards him. Dean walked back to Bear to finish his game. As he approached the pool table he noticed Bear was watching him closely.
"Now are you going to tell me what you boys were fighting about earlier?" he asked.
"It's not important," Dean said, leaning down to pot a yellow ball.
"Let me guess," Bear said. "Your daddy was a military man."
Dean looked up at him, surprised by this seemingly abrupt change of subject. "Yeah."
"And he brought you up to be tough, no room for feelings, especially if those feelings are for another man."
Dean stared at him for a moment, a little bewildered to be having this conversation with a 300lb biker. "I guess," he said eventually.
"So you're scared to admit your feelings to that guy over there because that would mean making yourself vulnerable and disappointing your father all at once."
"You seem to know me better than I do," Dean muttered, a little embarrassed by how obvious his feelings for Cas must be.
"You listen to me," Bear said sternly, and Dean looked up at him, "you're lucky have someone you love and who loves you back. And you'd have to be some kind of moron to let an opportunity like that get away from you, because if you're not careful you'll wake up one morning, your life will be behind you and you'll be alone."
"Yes sir," Dean said automatically. He paused for a second, realising that he'd just spoken to a near stranger as if he were speaking to his father. He was about to mumble an awkward apology but Bear just gave a short laugh and continued.
"My wife died," he said. "And I've been too angry at the world to find anyone else, so I know what I'm talking about. Still, I get to see my son every now and again, so every cloud."
"Does your kid ride a bike too?" Dean asked.
"You kidding me?" Bear said. "Those things are death traps, I wouldn't let him near one."
Dean laughed. "He's lucky to have a dad like you."
"Damn straight," Bear replied, straightening up from the table to look Dean in the eye. "I'd do anything for that boy."
The rest of the evening passed in amicable conversation until the barman called last orders. Bear looked at the clock, apparently surprised at how late it had gotten.
"Looks like we kinda ruined your date," he said, just as Cas came over to join them at the pool table. Cas looked tentatively at Dean, apparently trying to gauge his mindset. With Bear's words still at the forefront of his mind, Dean looked at Cas and felt all of his worries and doubts fall still, he felt at peace, and his mind felt clear.
"Don't worry about it," Dean said. He was addressing Bear, but his eyes were fixed firmly on Cas as he reached out and took his hand. "We've got the rest of our lives."
Dean and Cas said their goodbyes and headed out in to the car. Bear stood at the window, watching the car drive from the parking lot and the taillights getting smaller and smaller. He smiled to himself, feeling for the first time in his life that those boys were going to be okay.
"Idjits," he muttered, as the car finally vanished in to the night. Behind him, a man appeared from nowhere, reaching out to touch his shoulder.
"Ready to go back to Heaven, Bobby?"
"As I'll ever be," he said, scratching at his bushy beard. "I just can't wait to be out of this damned disguise."
A/N Hope you enjoyed! Don't forget to review if you have a second.