This never ending power play
'Tween jealous greed and vicious hate
Is grinding us like giant millstones
But it can't be our only fate
It's time we got our heads together
And let'em know that we're awake
Those in the dark, you know they're no longer blind
They're breakin' from your strangle hold on their minds
- "Power Play," Steppenwolf
"Just. . . damnit, Cas, just stop it and come here." Someday, Dean is going to be able to sleep in past seven AM, and on that day he's going to be fucking ecstatic. Every single day, since he first got the call about his father's accident, it's been early wakeup calls and days that last from sunup until well after sundown. He'd lament how much that sucked if Castiel apparently wasn't such a fan of morning sex that they were scrambling now to try and get anywhere on time. Between the "fuck me" Omega pheromones and the Alpha knotting, the concept of 'quicky' seemed to fly out the window the second they started. Dean couldn't exactly regret that (though he might, given he was going to be sitting upright in the car two hours) but that left them tearing across town to Castiel's apartment to get him ready before he missed the bus to his disciplinary hearing. And led to short-tempered muttering. "How can you wear a suit every damned day and not know how to tie a tie?"
"Clip-ons in school, and a clerical collar in. . ."
Dean glares at Castiel, planted in front of him in the middle of Cas's living room with the tie in his hands, until Cas catches the point that the question was rhetorical and snaps his mouth shut mid word. His blue eyes grow wide and earnest as if he's trying to garner sympathy for having never bothered to learn some basic common sense crap because it didn't directly have to do with work. Work that he seems to have always defined himself by, and was likely going to be unemployed from in a matter of hours. Guilt twists another knot into Dean's guts, and he sighs quietly and resumes straightening Castiel's tie, hands gentle but efficient. "Just because the end's under the jacket doesn't mean it should be on backwards, Cas. There." Raising his hand, he checks Cas's hasty shave with a swipe of the backs of his fingers down his face, a quick caress that has everything to do with the task at hand, and nothing to do comforting each other's obvious anxiousness.
Cas leans into it anyway, eyes closing, and that ruins the attempt to make it just part of getting ready.
"Alright. Jacket on. Grab a comb or something, too, you look like you fell out of a porno. You got your cell? You call me as soon as you know something, or text me while you're waiting. . . I want to know what's going on, you got me?"
"I've got you." Castiel rumbles in response, eyes opening again, and he doesn't bother pretending that he's merely repeating the words back as confirmation that he heard Dean's orders. Castiel has Dean now, and that in his mind makes the rest of this worth it.
Damnit.
Dean kisses him, because he can't not with that kind of sentimental crap being thrown at him, the naked affection in Castiel's eyes that Dean doesn't deserve. And then he grabs Cas by the tie and drags him out of the apartment, because they need to go or Sam will miss his flight and Castiel will be late for his own damned professional funeral and because Dean doesn't want to have to think too hard about what Castiel's saying here.
"Wait." Cas digs his feet in and pulls free from Dean's leashing to step back into the apartment and dig through the entry table's drawer while Dean rocks impatiently on his heels.
"C'mon, Cas, we don't have all day. If you can't find a comb just frikkin dunk your head in water or something when you get there and. . ."
"Here." Castiel pops back out of the apartment, letting the door close behind him again, and catches Dean by the hand. And no, Dean's not going to be the handholding in public type, thank you very much, there's a line where it's just chick-flick, and he refuses to cross it because goddamnit he doesn't care if his body decided he's plumbed both ways, and he likes guys as much as he does chicks, he's not a. . .
Castiel folds Dean's hand around an apartment key, and if it weren't for the fact that Dean's good at reading people and Castiel's starting to become an open book to him, stoicism or not, he'd think Castiel didn't realize the magnitude of this gesture. "In case you finish at the airport before I'm ready to be picked up. Make yourself at home, Dean. Please."
Without giving him a chance to respond, Castiel steals a quick kiss and takes the stairs down two at a time, leaving Dean staring after him.
"You're going to be late, Dean. You should hurry."
He doesn't know what to say to that. Which is why Cas didn't give him a chance to try and respond, shrugging on his oversized and unseasonable trench coat, striding toward the bus stop at the corner.
Dean frowns at his back in confusion until he remembers his deadline, slips into the Impala and floors it in the opposite direction as the bus pulls away.
xXx
"You're checking your texts every five minutes, Dean." Sam drawls from the back seat somewhere between Lawrence and Kansas City, and Dean drops the phone back to his lap and puts his hand back on the wheel, but he knows he's been caught. In the rearview, Sam looks painfully sympathetic, and it's enough to make Dean roll his eyes and reach over to turn the music on.
"You're worried about him." Jessica is smiling at him, understanding shining in her eyes, and hell that's even worse than Sam because he can't just tell her to shut up with uncomfortable observations and knowing looks the way he can his little brother. "I think it's kind of sweet."
"It's not. At best the guy's getting reamed right now because of me, and at worst he's losing his job. I was just hoping I'd get some news about it by now." Dean grumbles, shoulders drawing up as he stares fixedly out the front window, weaving them through highway traffic now as an excuse not to have to talk.
"Dean, he was doing the right thing. You know that. It's not your..."
"Fault, Sammy?" Dean interrupts, scorning the attempt at comfort. "He wouldn't be in this position if it weren't for me. I picked that fight at the Roadhouse the night before. If I'd been paying attention when I left the hospital, and they wouldn't have gotten the drop on me."
"That's not how he, Ellen or Jo tell it." Figures the lawyer was already collecting statements. No one but Dean seems to realize that he began things at the Roadhouse; but he's sure now that he pushed it, made sure it would become physical, a chain of reactions that began with his hand around that guy's throat and ended with Castiel getting fired for him. That fight outside the hospital happened because he couldn't just sit down and drink his drink and ignore the asshole. Because he can't let things go.
"Just trust me, Dean. I can turn this around." Sam's leaning forward, almost into the front seat, and Dean pushes his head back impatiently.
"Doesn't change what happened. Shut up and put your seatbelt on, Sam."
"I think..." Jessica pauses, unsure of if she should interject into the conversation or not before she decides to go for it, mustering the nerve when she's not sure how her soon-to-be brother-in-law will accept the interruption. "I don't want to sound like Susie Sunshine, but I think jobs can come and go. It would suck if Castiel lost his... but he looks at you like you hung the moon, Dean. That's pretty special. Maybe you should look at what the two of you are gaining, not just what he might be losing?"
Dean and Sam both twist to look at Jess incredulously, pessimistic and practical respectively, and she throws her hands up, shaking her head. "Sorry for being the voice of optimism. Geeze, don't drive us into a ditch over it. I'm just saying. . . I'd rather lose a job than lose Sam."
It's a beat before Sam leans forward and presses a kiss to the side of Jess's cheek, wrapping both of his arms around her shoulders in a hug, and its sickeningly couple-y. Dean's overblown groan at the gesture gets him an amused smile from Jess, and a bitchface from Sam.
"Seatbelt!"
xXx
"You do realize why you're here, Doctor Novak." When Castiel first joined Lawrence Memorial Hospital, the attention of Doctor Zachariah Adler seemed a stroke of luck. The older doctor was personable, he made promises of a bright future for the young doctor as a department head in a few short years, and he tucked Castiel under his wing. And in the beginning of Castiel's decline in favor, his criticisms had been couched in a smile, sideways, underhanded, and never direct. 'No one ever made chief of medicine by catering to the patients, Castiel. Stick with me, kid.'
Zachariah played the bureaucratic games of the hospital like it was magic, pressing the flesh, knowing the right people, saying the right thing with an insincere smile. Only months after Castiel arrived, Zachariah had become chief of medicine, as he'd predicted.
Had Castiel 'stuck with him,' he could have likely been a department head, or on the fast track to it. He had the talent. He had the intelligence. But he lacked the 'killer instinct,' as Zachariah put it. He focused in all the wrong place, and lacked the charm Zachariah seemed to ooze. Oily, disingenuous charm.
"I was under the impression that I was here because I assaulted two men in the parking lot, Doctor." Castiel's words fall just short of sarcasm, flat enough that tone one way or another is impossible to determine, and Zachariah's eyes narrow slightly as he attempts to read him and finds bland non-expression as his only answer.
"Yes, but that's just a symptom of the problem, Castiel. I know how it is. I've been watching you at it for over a year, kid." Castiel's eye twitches at being called 'kid,' but he doesn't move otherwise as Zachariah slides out from behind his desk, circling Castiel as he speaks, a tactic to make him uneasy, uncomfortable. "As a doctor we expect you to have empathy, Castiel. We want you to. Make the patients feel safe, make them feel comfortable, but you don't let them walk all over you. You were moved to the long-term ward because why? You were manipulating the system. You were letting every . . . every widowed old lady and dewy eyed kid turn you all around with a sob story."
"I recommended non-surgical options and suggested certain non-invasive remedies that were less financially taxing. . ."
"See, right there!" Castiel's mouth snaps shut again, and silently he fumes at the interruption. This is not the first time this conversation has happened, and every time Zachariah's smug, self-aggrandizing tone makes him seethe. "Castiel, a hospital is not a charity, it is a business. I wish we could just give everyone a pill and send them home . . . really, I do! But in the long-term the surgical option is more effective for the patient and more profitable for the hospital. Everyone wins!"
Castiel isn't certain when this speech stopped having the same effect; when he stopped flinching at Zachariah's disapproval and started gritting his teeth at it instead, but he has stood in this same place so many times, let himself be talked down to so often, that he's not sure why he takes it any more. Dropping his chin, closing his eyes, Castiel remains silent and Zachariah takes it as acquiescence. Encouraged, he rests a hand on Castiel's shoulder, patronizing and irritating.
"But none of that. . . none of that compares to this. You get too involved, Castiel. And now you are jeopardizing your career and the hospital's reputation by getting into some brawl over some pretty piece who batted his eyelashes at you."
"Piece, sir?" How Zachariah misses the dangerous undertone to the quiet request for clarification, Castiel doesn't know. It's not the first time Zachariah's taken him as a naive fool because of his religious background and his faith, felt he had to educate him in the 'ways of the world.'
"That Omega piece of ass, Castiel." Slapping Castiel on the shoulder, clarification given, he continues without registering the reaction, the slow shift in posture. "Now, we still want you here Castiel. Our legal division can help make this all go away for you, and the lawsuit against the hospital is a joke. Obviously there will be repercussions, but the Board of Directors, the administrators . . . we all know how valuable you could be to us if you would just. . ."
Castiel's hospital badge hits the desk between them as Zachariah takes his seat, and he blinks at it before looking up at Castiel before him, as if shocked he had the gall to take action, to interrupt while he was speaking. Holding his gaze for a moment longer, Castiel then turns on his heel, stalking stiffly and silently towards the door.
"Where do you think you're going? We're not done here." Zachariah is all bluster and bruised self-importance, and Castiel pauses with his hand on the open door without turning.
"Yes. We are. Consider this my immediate resignation." It's not enough. He has suffered this man's idiocy for too long, the indignities and petty manipulations since the day he began working for him. Perhaps it's time that Castiel stood up for himself, as Dean has, and damn the consequences. Hands balled into fists at his sides, he turns to look the most powerful politician in the hospital, a man who could smear him and ruin his ability to get any other job in the state, who every potential employer from now on will speak to directly, who can complicate the legal battle and throw him under a bus on behalf of the hospital. . . and then spits then his farewell to that man between clenched teeth, fully aware of the audience of doctors and nurses in the hall behind him. "And Zachariah? Go to hell, you pompous, useless windbag."
xXx
The phone finally rings on the outskirts of Lawrence, as Dean's tossing change into the turnpike and cursing toll roads. He fumbles the cellphone into place as the bar raises, freeing him into traffic again. "Cas? How's it going at the hospital? What's going on?"
"Dean. . ." There's a long silence, and Dean's fairly certain he just heard Castiel sigh. "How quickly can you be here? Hospital security is eyeing me askance, and I would rather be out of here before someone makes a scene."
Well, more of a scene.
Cursing under his breath, Dean merges, cuts around a minivan, and checks the time. "I'm fifteen minutes out. You wanna tell me what's going on, or. . .?"
"When you get here."