Well, I woke up this morning, I got myself a beer
Well, I woke up this morning, and I got myself a beer
The future's uncertain, and the end is always near
- "Roadhouse Blues," The Doors
An entire career path, another truncated future, and it packs up into one box of medical journals, a few personal items and a folded white coat, the entire parcel small enough that he can tuck it under one arm. Zachariah has one of the security guards check through it, as if Castiel is trying to smuggle out an entire surgical suite in a shoebox, and the general indignity of being treated like a thief is enough to see him through the entire ordeal straight-backed and smoldering in anger.
It only settles in that Castiel is being treated like a criminal in part because he is a criminal after he's out of the sliding doors and onto the sidewalk. Still, he's glad he managed to cling to his righteous indignation and fury long enough to clear him from watching eyes.
Castiel walks to the bus stop out of habit and out of the desire to be away from the hospital entryway. He watches a bus pull away without moving away from the curb, shaking his head slightly at the driver's questioning stare before the doors slide closed, and with a grating screech of the breaks, his only guaranteed ride for three hours is gone. He stares after it for a long moment, and it slowly settles in that he has no doubts that a man who has disappeared on him at the drop of a hat several times in their very short acquaintance would abandon him here today.
It's a level of trust that his brothers would declare naive. That Zachariah would lament as idiotic. He clutches his box closer to himself, closes his eyes, and waits silently, listening to cars and trucks roll by him on the busy street without slowing, standing uselessly by the side of the road rather than risk retreat to the bench. That would be admitting he expects to wait. Dean said he would be there, and he will be there. Castiel's stiff posture only relaxes once he hears the growl of a muscle car five minutes later. It reminds him of Dean's voice, as if the man has tried to emulate his beloved vehicle every time he gets upset, a basso roar.
He mechanically opens the door once the car slides to a smooth halt beside him on the curb, slipping inside the vehicle, the leather sun-warmed and welcoming like an embrace, and he clutches his box closer and sinks into it.
Dean is staring at him in concern from the driver's seat, keeping the car in park. "Shit. What happened, Cas?"
"Drive, Dean." He wants to put this entire place as far in the rearview as he can, right now. Pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingertips, he coils his other arm tighter around the box and closes his eyes, leaning against the door to rest his temple on the glass of the window.
"Please, just drive."
xXx
It shouldn't surprise him that they end up at the Roadhouse, parked between Jo's car and Ellen's Explorer. Short of Castiel's apartment, it's the only place within Lawrence that they have in common that would be any real draw to Dean. It takes Dean circling the car and taking the box from Castiel's hands for him to notice that he stepped out of the Impala still holding it, and that's more alarming to him than it is to Dean.
Castiel dislikes what it says about his mental state. It may be his career, but that's just a job. It was his choice to leave it. He knows he made the right decision. He thinks he did. He hopes he did. He prays to God he made the right choice, and that he didn't let his pride and his fierce protectiveness of Dean get the best of him. It's all tangled up in his head right now, and all he can think is how many times this makes now that he's turned his back on his professions without a safety net. The apartment means next to nothing to him: it was a place to sleep. The job, though. . .
The job defined him. The job gave him purpose.
Castiel is in love, but even he realizes that his sole purpose in life cannot be Dean Winchester. And he cannot become a burden for Dean to have to carry; Dean carries enough.
"I'm fine, Dean." Castiel assures him, and receives a blatantly skeptical look in return. Castiel has spent so much of the time since they met trying to support Dean, to bolster him, and witnessing him in truly terrible situations: he's not used to that being turned around on him. The fact that Dean is an older brother who essentially became sole caretaker of an infant at four years old shines through now in his bearing, his posture, and the way he hooks an arm around Castiel's shoulders without taking no for an answer, guiding him towards the bar.
"Yeah. Sure you are. You look 'fine,' Cas. C'mon. You haven't eaten, we need to talk, and if we go back to your place we're not going to talk."
"We've talked at home." It's important to him that he clarifies this, corrects him. In part, because he doesn't want Dean thinking of it just as his apartment. And mostly, because he doesn't want Dean to believe that since they've become a sexual relationship, sex is all Castiel is offering. Dean rolls his eyes, opens the doors before them, and propels Castiel inside.
"Not the point. You look like shit, and I'm not waiting for a lunch delivery to get you talking. Just get inside, Cas. You bossed me the second we met, 'shock' and all. . ."
"Shock is a medical term. I'm not in shock." Castiel contradicts, and after a moment he argues more. "And I was not 'bossy,' I merely. . ."
"You 'merely' stole my car keys, drove me to your place, and smothered me in bandages and blankets."
"I'm smothering you. . .?"
A mug hits the counter in front of each of them simultaneously. "Two exits down the highway." Jo beams at the nearly synchronized head-turning looks of confusion leveled on her by both men, and rests her elbows on the counter, chin in her cupped hands. "The hotel. Since I'm about to tell you two to go get a room, instead of bothering me with your foreplay before we're even open yet." Jo catches sight of Castiel, stops, and frowns in concern. "Wow. You look like shit."
Dean flips a hand at her, triumphant. "See? So shut up and talk."
"Those are counter-indicative, and you cannot take every person to interject as proof that you've won. . ."
"Oh dear God, shut up both of you!"
Dean smirks to himself, smug and proud of something, and nods to Jo conspiratorially.
Castiel blinks and stares at Dean a long moment, and realizes it helped. Dean heckled him, verbally prodded him, and now he's out of his stunned state, back in his right mind, and he suddenly understands; Dean does this on purpose. In the police cruiser and now here, he's taken Castiel enough out of the moment that he can get perspective on it. He's certain from watching Dean's interactions with his brother and now with Jo that this isn't the first time he's done this, either.
It's unorthodox, but as tactics go it's brilliant.
"I'm fine now, thank you." Castiel's heartfelt gratitude makes Dean blink: it's probably the first time anyone has ever thanked him for being deliberately irritating.
"Well, good." Resting his hand on Castiel's thigh below the edge of the bar-top, away from Jo's inquisitive stare, he squeezes gently and frowns at Cas, the smart assed exterior stripped away now that it's not needed. "You ready to tell us what the hell's going on, then?"
"Think we'd all like to hear that one." Ellen leans against the doorway to the back of the bar, arms folded. "You here for the usual, Dean?"
"If it's not too much trouble?" Sam may be the king of puppy dog eyes, but Dean's no slouch in that department either. The entire interaction makes little sense to Castiel, but he's busy framing how to explain what happened.
"I went into the disciplinary hearing with the chief of medicine." Ellen and Jo exchange a look, and Ellen props the door open to hear, stepping out of sight, though they can hear her moving in the kitchen beyond. Castiel's attention is caught and kept by Dean, as it always seems to be, and he squeezes Castiel's leg gently beneath his palm, green eyes attentively fixed on his. "I have had difficulties at the hospital already. You noted that I was placed with the comatose patients as a punishment of sorts. Their reasoning was that I could form no attachment with them. Zachariah believed that I let myself get too close to the patients in my charge, and it affected my ability to remain appropriately clinical."
"'Clinical'. . . what, are you supposed to be a friggin' robot?"
Castiel shrugs slightly, drawing his fingers through the condensation on his mug, and he swipes his hand over the shape once he recognizes it as a crude Caduceus. Jo is listening as well, though she's busying herself readying the bar for its open hours. "No. But I am supposed to be more detached. He is not entirely wrong, Dean. I have broken hospital rules, and violated the guidelines of my profession. While I've never outright defrauded them, I've manipulated insurance documents in the past to allow patients who would not be able to afford necessary procedures to obtain them, and pushed others to non-surgical solutions so they would not pay thousands."
"Coulda used that when my Dad got sick. Some way to work the system." Jo offers quietly, and Dean nods; Bill Harvelle's body gave out long before the man himself would have, and the Harvelle family finances have never recovered entirely. Illness had turned the ash within the Harvelle patriarch's lungs nearly into concrete. Rules were made to be bent, as far as Dean Winchester was concerned. Particularly if a stupid rule cost good people their lives, or bankrupted them.
Cas's words tumble out, now, disjointed from the rest of the story. "I quit, Dean. He offered to let me come back, offered to have the hospital legal team make the lawsuit disappear if I was obedient. But I quit."
"So you wanna go back a step, son?" A plate slides into place between Dean and Castiel on the bar top, burgers wrapped in paper towels, pickle spears beside them and chips dumped between them, and Ellen snags one of the pickles and points at him with it. "How'd we get from 'all sins forgiven' to you giving the asshole boss the finger?"
Castiel rubs the back of his neck, then reaches for a chip, eyes averted, and Dean and both Harvelle women hone in on the motion, eyes narrowing. Dean voices what they're all wondering, his words thick with repressed laughter at the sheepish expression on Castiel's face. "Cas, did you actually give him the finger or something?"
"Not. . . exactly." He has danced around the topic: even in their short acquaintance, Castiel has come to realize how very little Dean would appreciate knowing that Castiel turned his back on a lucrative career in large part because Zachariah insulted him. How he would never have done it on his own behalf. "He was infuriating, and then insulting. And he then attempted to tell me that coming to Dean's aide was. . . misguided. He said something particularly insulting and I threw my hospital credentials at him and then insulted him in front of a large portion of the staff."
Dean is staring at him, and he can feel that regard like a weight against his skin. It's Ellen who breaks that, pushing the plate closer to them both.
"Well good for you, then. Eat your burger, Castiel. Been making those for Dean when his day sucked, for a long damn time: taught Dean his way around that kitchen back there until he became a better cook than me. You oughta convince the boy to cook for you sometime." Ellen Harvelle can read between the lines, and has decided that Castiel is part of the family.
And she'll cuff Dean upside the head if he lets this guy go without a damned good reason. The look she shoots Dean shuts his jaw with a snap, but he's pensive for the rest of their meal.
xXx
"Alright. Ellen's got a point. We're going shopping tomorrow." Dean declares, tugging Castiel out of the passenger seat of his car in the parking lot of the apartment, wrapping an arm around his waist as the doctor tucks his box beneath his arm on the other side. "Take-out food is crap and costs more, and. . ."
Well, and they've got a damn short amount of time left until they're not going to want anyone knocking on the door while they're otherwise occupied with Dean's Heat. It's looming over them, making Dean antsy, and he swears he can feel it creeping under his skin already, the threat against his control and the cold sweat of knowing that he's willingly putting himself in the hands of an Alpha when he won't have an iron grip on himself. Hell, that it's so assumed by both of them that he'll be in Castiel's bed that neither of them has even broached the topic.
It'd be easier if he had actual scars to show for his time in Alastair's 'employ.' The mental scars, the mistrust and the fear, they itch in a different way. Castiel leans into his side for a moment, a steadying weight against him, as if he can read Dean's hesitation, fill in the trailed off words for himself. Maybe he can.
Castiel doesn't notice the rental car in the lot; the sleek lines and crimson sides of the Aston Martin catch Dean's practiced eye, but he's never had any indication that Cas is a car guy. Grown man takes the friggin' bus, relies on public transportation and walking to get him anywhere. Still, it's a sweet ride, even renting it from the KC airport would cost an arm and a leg.
It's not until they're halfway up the steps and Dean stiffens, straightening and drawing away from Castiel, that Cas realizes something is wrong.
"Cas, you lock the apartment before we left?"
"Yes? Just before I gave you the key." He can see it too, now, though. The apartment door is open, just a hair: someone's inside. Dean doesn't wait for him. It's a little disturbing to see Dean shift modes, the way he twitches for a gun that isn't there and settles instead for a slow prowl, coming toward the door from the windowless side. Dean doesn't trust the police in this town . . . he doesn't trust the police in most towns, so he's not calling the cops for an open door. Especially not when he's out on bail himself. The knife on him is just barely legal, and Dean's a firm believer in pushing the letter of the law.
If those assholes hadn't caught him on a bad day in the parking lot, his hands full and his mind wandering, they wouldn't have had the chance to pen him in.
Castiel, conversely, strides past him box in hand and head high, like he's fucking bullet proof, straight-arming the door open. Dean would be tempted to think he was a dumb cocky sunuvabitch, if he hadn't seen Castiel fight before. Clearly, though, his is a very different style: Dean's never got enough of an upper hand that he can be so brash about it, and for some reason Castiel is pretty damn sure he can wade into a fight and walk out the winner.
He falls in behind Castiel just in time for the doctor to come to a complete halt, stiffening in the living room, staring at the intruder's back. A white suit jacket sits across broad shoulders, sandy blonde hair is cropped short and spiked, and the man stands with the framed silver photograph in hand.
Castiel isn't in a fighting stance, but he's damned sure displeased. Dean doesn't know what to make of this situation.
"Get the hell out of my house."
"Very funny." The stranger tetches, finally turning to meet Castiel's furious gaze head-on. "Barely in the door and the 'hell' jokes begin. Isn't that more Gabriel's routine than yours, Castiel?"
Oh.
"Hello, brother." Lucifer smiles.