Chapter Text
Chapter 1- The Big Hat Emergency
Dean didn’t normally work the front of the shop much. It was kind of a Sam thing, but Sam was kind of out of commission for a while, what with his busted up hand. Mom couldn’t pick up Sam’s hours, between her first job at Surekill Exterminators and her second job as a personal assistant. It was Dean’s day off at his day job, so here he was. He did his part to keep the family business up and running.
Dean was normally down for doing the ordering, helping stock the place after hours, doing the book keeping for them, making the schedule for their part timers, that kind of thing. For some reason, most customers just assumed he couldn’t help them out, that he didn’t know anything about knitting and that made working the front of the shop kind of uncomfortable. Their shoppers, and they were mostly women, made assumptions about him, like he was too manly to know anything about yarn. He wasn’t sure why people never made the same kind of assumptions about Sammy, but they didn’t.
The store was pretty quiet this morning. They’d had a late open, but the shop would stay open late for Thursday night stitch and bitch, so it all worked out. Kevin would start at three thirty and Charlie did her half shift starting at five, so he’d have help when people arrived. And at least most of the regulars at the Stitch and Bitch knew that he knew the difference between a SSK and S1K1PSSO and could find his way around a lace chart with the best of them.
It was quiet and he kind of yearned to pick up his project bag- the gansey he was making for Michael. The front of the shop with its big plate glass window was just about perfect lighting for working with the dark navy yarn. But no. There was actual work to do. They’d just gotten a big order of circular needles, so those needed to be checked in and stocked. Someone had gone ham on the sock yarn yesterday and it all needed to be rearranged and probably not a bad idea to check the inventory and get some orders in. Oh, yes, always plenty to do around the joint. There was almost never time to just sit and knit like people assumed.
He was busy with the sock yarns when their next customer walked in, the bells on the door jingling. He stood up from the cubby of yarn he’d been working on, smoothed down his plaid flannel, looked to be sure he didn’t have too much wool lint on his “You can make fun of my knitting- but remember, I’m the one with the pointy sticks” t-shirt. He started his way to the front of the store.
A middle aged lady with the ‘Can I talk to the manager’ haircut walked in. He tried to open minded, but that particular haircut was like a warning sign. Like a great flashing stop sign or something.
“Hi, welcome to Twisted Stitches. What can I help you with today?” He said, giving her his lady-killer smile. That sometimes got things off to a better start. She had some kind of project poking out of her tote, one of those huge ass blankets that people made from stuff that was little better than plain roving. She had a pair of knitting needles visible so big they could be used to kill vampires or something. Like broomsticks. They sold a lot of that particular kit, so Dean couldn’t totally hate it, but he definitely totally hated it.
She frowned. “I’m sorry. The other young man. The one with the beautiful hair. He normally helps me. Such a nice young man.”
“Sam’s out today,” Dean said. “I’m subbing for him.”
“I just needed some help with my project and Sam said I could stop by any time and he’d help me out.”
“Sure, you want me take a look and see what you got?”
“Oh, no, I’ll just come back tomorrow. That’s Mary’s regular day, right? She’ll know what to do.”
Dean looked around the shop, at how more than half the sample projects displayed had come off his needles. He could knit the pants off his mom. No one ever believed that. Like, even when they saw him knitting they assumed he didn’t know what he was doing. He’d learned not to argue with them. He’d just nod and do his thing.
“Well, I’m glad to help any time. Sam will be out for a couple more weeks at least. Or you can come back for the knitting group that meets here this evening,” he said, plastering on his cheery smile.
“Tell Sam that Nancy said hello. Has he met any nice boys yet? I wish I could set him up with my nephew.”
“Not as far as I know,” Dean said.
That was the other thing. Everyone assumed Sam was gay. He couldn’t figure it out himself. Maybe it was the hair? Sam was a ladies man if ever there was one, not a bit of gay in him. Nancy flustered off again with her big ass stupid blanket and another chorus of “Such a nice boy.”
Dean sighed and prepared to go back to the sock yarn apocalypse, but the door opened again almost immediately with a frenetic jingle of the bells. He was suddenly face to face with a tiny but fierce woman, with long dark brown hair pulled back from her face.
“You have to help me,” she said.
She brandished her phone in front of him, a picture displayed one of the most beautiful men Dean had ever seen. He had eyes the color of London blue topaz and cheekbones that looked like they’d come from a sculptor’s chisel. His cleft chin was covered in a slight fuzz of stubble, as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. What you could see of his hair under the hat was dark brown and unruly. He was wearing one of the most ridiculous hats Dean had ever seen, in a life that was far more prone than average to ridiculous hats. The man was grinning in way that could only be described as adorable, with his nose squished up and his eyes crinkled. He seemed on the verge of laughing. It was the softest, warmest smile Dean had ever seen and he was smitten instantly.
It was one of those ear flap hats, but it was also a sock monkey. It was crocheted. It had a simply enormous red pom-pom on top of it. Biggest Damn pom-pom he’d ever seen in the wild.
“I need you to show me how to make one these now,” she said. “Like, I have to get it done tonight before he gets home.”
Of course. The man in the picture was undoubtedly her boyfriend. Maybe her husband. Anyway, Dean was taken. Off the market at least.
He thought they probably had the stuff for it. Red yarn, definitely. White yarn, for sure. He was pretty sure they had two big black buttons in the drawer of random plastic buttons. The gray-beige marled stuff, probably. The hat was crochet, so, given an experienced hooker, it wasn’t unreasonable to get it done tonight.
“So what’s the big hat emergency?” He asked.
“There was tequila involved,” she said. Her voice had a certain odd quality to it. Then he got it. She was hard of hearing. No big. He’d just make sure she was always in line of sight to his face. She seemed to read lips okay. She added, “And a barbecue grill. Mistakes were made. Oh, I hate that stupid thing, but his brother bought it for him. I was soooooo drunk. He’s going to hate me.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“What? No, Cas is definitely not my boyfriend! He’s my roommate. He has a boyfriend. Fiancé. They’re on vacation together but he’s coming home tonight.”
“Okay, so, replacement hat for the definitely not your boyfriend. I got the yarn I think. You an experienced hooker?”
“What?!”
Ah. Yeah. He forgot sometimes. She had to be a newbie.
“You know how to crochet already? Or are you going to have to learn?”
“Oh!” She seemed alarmed, as if she hadn’t anticipated that part of it. “No, I never have before. Could I pay you to do it?”
“Not on your life,” he said. Maybe Sam would have done it. Before the accident that was. He could be kind of obsessive. Dean could crochet. He chose not to. She seemed crestfallen though and he hated to disappoint a pretty lady, especially when it came down to a hat for that guy in the picture. “Look, buy the yarn and I’ll teach you. Maybe you won’t finish before he gets home but I’m sure he’ll appreciate the effort you went through to get a replacement. He seems like a nice guy.”
She got the yarn. He tried to teach her. She was tragically bad at it. Which Dean just didn’t understand. How hard was it to use a hook to pull a loop through another loop? The little crocheted fabric she managed to produce after an hour of instruction and practice was lumpy and terrible in every way. Not that she couldn’t get better with practice and easing way the heck up on her tension, but there was a snowball’s chance in hell she’d manage to complete the hat before her roommate definitely not boyfriend returned tonight.
“Okay,” Dean sighed. “But only because I’m a sucker for a pretty face. You buy me lunch, I’ll make your hat.”
It wasn’t her face he was a sucker for. She was nice looking, sure, but there was just something about her that faded away in comparison to Mr. Blue Eyes as pictured on her phone. He figured if he doubled the worsted weight yarn, sized his hook all the way up to an L or M, he could whip that sucker up in a couple of hours, at least the basic hat shape. The Pom-Pom would take extra time along with all the trim details.
“Does he have a big head? Cause that’ll take longer.”
Shamefacedly, the woman dug the remains of the monkey hat out of her messenger bag. It was encased in a large ziplock bag and in pretty bad shape. He pulled it out to get a better look at it and little white grains of something fell out and poured onto the table. Salt? The hell?
“I’m pretty sure it was cursed,” she said. “I’m Eileen, by the way.”
“Dean,” he said, setting the scorched, salt crusted object on the table and getting out his tape measure. “Dean Winchester.”
The door jingled again. Someone walked in. Sam.
He was looking pretty busted up still and big brother that he was, Dean couldn’t stop himself from saying, “You look like four different kinds of crap. You need to get yourself back to bed.”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to see how you were doing. I know you’re not a big fan of the front of the shop.”
He was in not just a cast on the hand, but an elaborate sling thing to immobilize the whole arm because he hadn’t just broken several bones in his hand, he’d dislocated both elbow and shoulder too. Only Sam could have hurt himself so badly in a dog walking accident.
Eileen was staring at him like she’d seen the holy grail, only she looked away shyly the instant he glanced at her.
“It’s fine, we’re not busy,” Dean said. He’d taken his measurements, consulted the pattern he’d found. Grabbed the white yarn and pulled his first loop through, then got to hooking. A couple of singles, joined them. Hook around those with doubles, then, next row, increasing smoothly so he had the start of a yarn circle.
“Dean, you’ve got to swatch with crochet too!” Sam protested, looking at what he was doing finally. “You’re going to end up with a bathtub cozy.”
“How do you know I didn’t earlier?”
“I know you. What is this anyway? You don’t crochet.”
“It’s a hat emergency, Sammy. What does it look like? I can hook. I just chose not too most of the time.”
Eileen pulled up the phone photo again of the blue-eyed handsome man in his ridiculous hat, and then looked down at the charred remains of the monkey hat on the table. “Mistakes were made,” she said.
“Your boyfriend’s hat?”
“Definitely not my boyfriend,” she said. “I am very available. Very, very available.”
“I’d help with your hat emergency but I’m kind of,” Sam indicated his completely immobile arm with his other hand.
“I see that,” she said. “I promised Dean there lunch if he helped me with his hat. Do you know what your co-worker likes?”
Sam grinned, a prank definitely on his mind. Wickedness and malice. And definitely pay back for that time a month ago when he gave Leticia Sam’s phone number. Dean gave him the stare that definitely meant, “don’t you dare, bitch!”
“Oh, some woman named Nancy stopped by. Wanted help with her blanket. She wants to set you up with her nephew.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
Sam frowned, but gave up his diabolical plans. “My brother likes that burger place down the street.”
Soon they were gone. Dean pulled loop after loop after loop after loop. Say what you like about hooking, it was fast and easy. By the time the door bells jangled again, he’d built up enough that it was starting to look like a hat. Or a bowl or something. Eileen had left her phone on the table and for some reason, it hadn’t powered down or gone to the Lock Screen. Mr. Blue Eyes was still staring from the screen. Dean was a sucker for a pretty face, that was for sure.
He made pretty good progress, and despite Sam’s predictions, he did not hook up a bathtub cozy, but smoothly increased less and less until the circle turned to a shallow bowl, turned to a bowl with higher sides. Only one or two more rounds until he switched to the red for a row. He compared it closely with the sample had that Eileen had left. Pretty close.
It wasn’t until Kevin showed up that he realized that Sam and Eileen had never returned with his lunch and he was starting to feel a little hangry. That was what he got for working on a stupid hat with on the promise of lunch in exchange.
“Whoa, what’s with the crochet? I thought you were making the world’s most boring navy blue sweater for the dude you live with and have sex with but who won’t even call you his boyfriend,” Kevin asked, eyebrow raised.
“You can’t force someone out of the closet,” Dean said, thinking about his sort of roommate with benefits/almost but not actually boyfriend. Easier to think of it as a situationship. They’d met at work, Dean’s day job. Michael was a driver engineer and had big hopes of making lieutenant of the company before too much longer. Dean was happy just to be a firefighter and have a chance to save people and help them. Plus, the long hours of sitting around the firehouse when he was on shift, waiting for the alarm call, were good to get a lot of knitting in. Michael, he had ambitions though. Dean wasn’t sure if Michael thought he could get to fire chief in this city, but Michael was definitely going to be fire chief somewhere someday.
Anyway, technically and officially, Dean didn’t live with Michael. Yeah, they spent all the nights they shared off together at his place, but Dean lived officially at home with his Mom and his brother. That’s where his mail was delivered. So what, he still wasn’t acknowledged in public after two years? At least the sex was pretty good and Michael was awesome when they were at home alone together.
“But you could chose not to date him though. And not make him a sweater. That never ends well,” Kevin said.
“For the last time, there is no such thing as the curse of the boyfriend sweater. It’s an urban legend, a myth.”
Kevin ignored Dean’s assertion, just rolled his eyes. “Seriously, what’s with crocheting a novelty hat? Aren’t you like Mr. Knit-snob?”
“I’ll have you know, I’m going to come out soon. As bicraftual.”
Kevin snorted, said, “I guess that makes me pancraftual.”
Dean set the hook and yarn down, dug out his wallet and said, “Could you go get me some lunch from the Dog House? Sam was supposed to go but he kind of got lost. A pretty girl might be involved.”
Kevin snorted and took the money, shaking his head. Dean suspected there’d once been a massive crush there, that had eventually faded in the face of Sam’s relentless heterosexuality. It had only expressed itself once, at the after party to the shop’s post Christmas celebration, when Kevin, well into his cups, had said after Sam walked out the door, “If he weren’t so damn straight, I’d climb him like a tree.”
What Kevin said this time was, “You still on a double onion kick?”
“Double onions, double cheese.”
One more round and Dean was ready for the red yarn, but Kevin came back with a greasy looking brown paper bag and change. “Ugh. Crowley was being a creeper again.”
Fergus MacLeod, known for some reason, as Crowley, was a tailor and ran the shop next door. Custom suits and alterations, also, it was the only custom kilt shop in the upper Midwest. And, as Kevin said, he was kind of a creeper at times.
“You want I should have a word or two with him?” Dean asked, pushing the hat supplies and pattern to the middle of the table in favor of two chili dogs, extra onions, extra cheese.
“No!” Kevin said. “He just told me he could hem my pants for me, but there was something about the way he offered to measure my inseam for me though.”
Well, Kevin was a bit of a short stack and it was hard for him to find pants short enough. Sometimes, he folded a cuff into them, sometimes he let them drag a little. Dean was willing to tell Crowley to knock it off if he needed to. Crowley wasn’t a pest generally, but he could make telling you the time a lascivious act. Kevin could take care of himself but people did tend to listen faster when Dean told them to knock something off vs the short nerdy guy. Dean shoved some much needed food into his face while Kevin took a gander at the pattern Dean was vaguely using as a guide.
“Oh. I call dibs on making the pom-pom,” Kevin said, fingering the remains of the charred and salted original.
“I was hoping you’d say that. You got your jumbo pom-pom maker on you?”
“You know it.”
Of course, it wasn’t all laughs and pom-pom making. People came into the shop and they wanted to buy stuff. They wanted help with projects. Luckily, Kevin was there and any awkward questions about people wanting help with their stuff could be shunted off to him. People made assumptions and were happier to think that the short, nerdy kid was better able to help them with their knit issues than the dude who’d been knitting for longer than Kevin had been alive. Kevin could do well enough with the simple stuff and luckily most of the people that came in were looking for basic help. Dean ran the register, shut his mouth and between customers, he’d started in on the marled gray.
It was nearly five by the time Sam and Eileen returned. They were both glowing that special glow, looking at each other like heart eyes and other emojis. Not in love yet but both of the obviously stupid over each other already. Sam’s hair was all mussed up, or at least it was until he ran his good hand through it and miraculously, it settled down and became perfect.
“You didn’t!” Dean accused.
“Didn’t what?”
“We stopped for Starbucks and ended talking for hours,” Eileen said. “I mean, I offered to climb him like a tree and rock his world but your brother is a classy lady. He wants to be wined and dined first.”
“Damn straight my brother’s a classy lady and you’d better treat him right. And I’m nearly done with your hat.”
“Dean! Did you just defend my honor? I don’t need you to defend my honor.”
Eileen just grinned a big old shit eating grin. Then she pulled something out of her bag. It looked suspiciously like a granny square, only slightly uneven, not the lumpy mess she’d made earlier. “Look what Sam taught me.”
Yeah, well, maybe Sam might possibly be a better teacher than Dean but he was not a better knitter or hooker. Besides, Eileen seemed to have a vested interest in paying attention to the guy. She probably hung on his every motion.
Just then, two phones pinged, simultaneously receiving text messages. Eileen’s phone also vibrated and the screen flashed. She and Dean both grabbed their phones.
“I have to go,” she said. “My roommate wants me to pick him up from the airport. He got an early flight. The hat…”
“It’s July 27 and ninety-two degrees out,” Dean said. “He’s not going to be looking for his ear flap hat. I’ll have it done tomorrow, day after latest. I’ll give it to Sam and he can give it to you when you pick him up on that date to wine him and dine him.”
“You don’t know my roommate.”
“Later tonight? I’ve still got the ear flaps.”
Dean demonstrated that though he had a tall bowl shape of a hat in white, red and marled gray, there weren’t any flaps yet. Or pom-pom. Or red trim. Eileen frowned but she also seemed to understand that a man could only work so fast, even with doubled yarn. She and Sam exchanged phone numbers and then she was gone.
“By the way, you have your emergency socks with you?” Dean asked, digging in his project bag, once Sam had walked back in. “That was Mom. She’ll make it to Stitch and Bitch after all. Dean pulled out a pair of socks with a slip stitch pattern on the cuff, done up in blotchy hand painted yarn in olive, brown, and gray with neps of burgundy.
Dean pulled off his boots and the novelty socks he wore under them, the ones with a take out container print that said, “Send Noods”. He pulled on the hand knit socks, because he loved his Mom. And she knew. She always seemed to know, even if he was wearing boots and jeans that should have covered any hint of sock, if he was wearing the socks she made him or not. Ninety-two degrees or not, she would have been disappointed to see him wear anything else, and he loved his mom.
Mary, as her sole domestic outlet, knit socks. Nothing else to speak of really. Dean had been disillusioned the day he realized that their Mom’s fantastic ‘homemade’ meatloaf had come from the Piggly-Wiggly and was just heated up, same with the pies she ‘made’. He’d gradually come to understand that the only thing she really knew how to cook was “Winchester Surprise”. Mary had worked hard, at two, sometimes three jobs, so Dean didn’t blame her. She had ever since their Dad walked out around the time Sam was born. Dean had taken up the domestic arts when he was young solely in self defense, so that he and Sam had something to eat that wasn’t takeout or reheated, something that made his mom happy when she got home at night.
When Dean had taught Mary how to knit after he’d picked it up in middle school, she’d picked up on socks for some reason. She had been knitting them obsessively for her boys ever since.
“I’m good,” Sam said. Rather than his usual boots or athletic shoes, he was wearing some kind of godawful beige slide sandal, without socks. It suddenly occurred to Dean with his hand and whole arm out of commission, there was probably no way Sam was up to tying shoelaces at the moment.
“Are you wearing Birkenstocks?” Dean asked in disbelief.
“Shut up,” Sam said. “Broken hand here. Birkenstocks get a pass.”
“You know, that girl must really like the look of you if she’s willing to ask you out while you’re wearing that hippie shit,” Dean said. He was done changing out his socks, tucking the thin novelty socks very deeply and carefully at the bottom of his project bag where he wouldn’t accidentally tug them out. Then he went to turn the air conditioning down another degree or two because it was the last weeks of July and he was wearing wool socks.
Slowly, people trickled into the shop. Charlie showed up, took over organizing the sock yarn, that Dean had never gotten back to, having been completely distracted by the stupid monkey hat. Mom looked exhausted but she took her usual place at the big oak table in the center of the shops biggest room and picked up her socks, this time in blue and white. They were huge socks, so Dean figured they were meant for Sam and his size 13 boats. Gunner came in too. He used to be some wrestler. Dean wasn’t sure what he did for a living these days, but for a hobby, he knit some of the tiniest, most heart breaking doll sized baby clothes you’d ever seen. There was a charity he donated them to, so that parents who unexpectedly lost a baby could have something to bury their lost child in. There were other, larger, baby clothes he knitted too, for the living, also donated to charity.
Lisa and Ben were there, a mom and son. They’d picked up knitting as a hobby they could do together, much like Dean and Mary back in the day. It’d taken Dean a good long while to convince her without actually being hurtfully direct about it that he wasn’t in the market for any kind of girl friend at the moment. Maybe if he hadn’t been in his situationship with Michael at them moment, he might have tried to pick up a relationship with a woman again. It might have been awesome. She was, after all, a yoga instructor and very, very pretty.
There was Francis and Kelly Kline, who had just announced her pregnancy but had already knit a massive stack of baby stuff. Most of the regulars arrived and things were beginning to get merry, chatter rising up over the sound of knitting. Someone brought out a big bag of individually wrapped chocolates. Dean let Kevin take over register duty and settled in at the table, getting into the home stretch of the monkey hat, making the mouth. He could have figured out how to work it in a color work, but the original had an applied oval in red and white, so he made it like that.
The bells on the door jingled again.
Nancy and her big stupid blanket walked in. She had someone in tow with her. At first Dean was concentrating on the mouth, so he didn’t look up. It was Sam’s turn to deal with the woman anyway. She cried a shrill cry of sympathy she took in Sam’s condition.
“You poor, poor boy,” she said. “What happened to you? Were you mugged?”
“It was a dog walking accident,” Sam said, patiently. “I was walking three Huskies and a German Shepherd. They managed to pull me off my feet.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I ran into my nephew on the way here. He’s just back from a vacation with his friend. He can help me with my blanket. He’s a knitter too! Did I mention that? Sam, I want you to meet my nephew Castiel. Isn’t he adorable? He’d be perfect for you.”
Dean wanted to snort.
Perfect for Sam, except for the fact that this poor nephew had a dick. Why did none of the ladies who came into the shop try and set -him- up with their adorable nephews who were also knitters? It was always Sam who got this. Not that Dean couldn’t pull just about any dude, if he wanted to, if he were looking for that, but almost none of them were knitters and they just didn’t get it.
He reminded himself that he was taken. Sort of.
Nancy said, “Here, take him out for coffee on me. I insist.”
Dean stopped himself from smirking, wondering how Sam was going to get himself out of coffee. Then the nephew spoke. It like he’d had a lifetime of drinking harsh whiskey and smoking cigarettes. Harsh whiskey and gravel and honey. It was a deep rumble, like thunder. Dean’s cock stood up and took an interest. Luckily, he was sitting at a table and no one could see. But he definitely couldn’t look up from the hat now. Not without betraying his interest. Because, whoa, was that a voice or what? A voice to make your panties drop. Not that he wore panties.
Well, not often anyway.
“Aunt Nancy, perhaps you remember our prior conversations about boundaries?”
“But I just thought,” she said.
Her nephew sighed, then addressed himself to Sam directly. “I’m sorry, Sam. I hope you haven’t been given any misapprehensions. I’m not, as the phrase goes, on the market.”
“No, no misapprehension. I’m not on the market either. I just met someone. So get this though. I think you know her. Eileen, your roommate. We met this afternoon.”
Hold up! This was Mr. Blue Eyes?
Dean couldn’t stop himself from looking up. He was greeted by the sight of the most gorgeous man he’d ever seen. Like, model gorgeous. A lot of guys, they took a good picture but you saw them in person and you realized it was all camera angles. Or the illusion was shattered the moment they spoke. No, this guy had it all. Then, miracle upon miracle, he sat down at the table. He had a project bag with him. He pulled out the most fucking gorgeous fair isle sweater Dean had seen that hadn’t come from his own needles. He flipped open a pattern book and then took up the gold yarn in right hand, the green yarn in his left and started knitting. What the hell was a guy who could knit like that doing wearing a stupid crocheted monkey hat?
He did his best not to be disappointed that Castiel had a boyfriend/fiancé. After all, so he had someone too. Well, something like a boyfriend. Dean was vaguely aware that Mary smoothly dropped her sock and greeted Nancy, had taken her and the big fleecy blanket under her wing.
“How did you happen to meet Eileen?” Castiel asked Sam as he knit, smoothly, quickly.
“She came to the shop this afternoon,” Sam said. “Looking for help with something. She’s amazing.”
“So, you knit as well?”
“When I’m not out of commission,” Sam said, indicating his elaborate sling. “I do okay. The real talent in the shop is my brother Dean over there.”
Dean had been entranced, just watching Castiel’s talented fingers switch so rapidly from the right hand color to the left hand color, the stitches creeping along the needles, the sweater slowly growing. He’d just kind of been holding up the in progress monkey hat, totally forgetting that this was supposed to be some kind of secret kept from Mr. Blue Eyes until Eileen either managed to pass it off as the original or she’d explained why she’d commissioned the copy.
Castiel turned his attention on Dean, his eyes sharp, flashing. Bright, bright blue. He frowned, squinted, the set his jaw.
What are you doing with my hat?” He demanded. “Why do you have my hat?”
Dean didn’t know what the hell to say. There was no good story or explanation that didn’t throw Eileen under the bus. Yeah, she was the one who’d tried to incinerate the thing, but the hell if he was going to let his future sister in law take the fall, even if she was the guilty party.
Except, he didn’t have to.
Sammy stepped up.
“So, you know, there’s kind of a funny story about that,” he said. Then he turned on the eyes. Those puppy dog eyes. And the smile. Oh, God. The smile. The one that probably had charmed the panties off dozens of undergrad women back when Sammy was in college. The smile that probably was why all the middle aged women tried to set Sam up with their adorable nephews. The one he used to cute himself out of all kinds of run-ins with the authorities. Dean had see it happen, with cops even.
He laughed a little, as if in chagrin, the big bullshitter. “So you know know Eileen had a party last night and things may have gotten a little out of hand, but you know no harm was intended.”
Castiel frowned, but said, “My roommates celebrations do get a little wild for my preferences, but so long as all the property damage is mended by my return, I don’t mind what happens when I am gone.”
“There may have been a little too much tequila involved and there might have been some marijuana, which, woah, not a good combination. A group of her friends got it into their heads that there was a curse on your hat. Something about monkeys.”
Castiel snorted a little and shook his head. Eileen must party a lot harder than Dean thought, because he was buying it. Sam’s lying was masterful, a slurry of utter hokum studded with just enough truth. He insinuated it was his fault without actually confessing to anything. It helped that he was laying on the charm pretty thick. Of course, Sam could lay on ten different kinds of bullshit and get you to walk away from the deal thinking about what a good purchase of cow manure you’d just made.
“Mistakes were made,” Castiel said, shaking his head. “But not by her, of course. That still doesn’t explain how your brother has the charred remains of my favorite hat.”
Castiel had put down his magnificent sweater with the confident assurance of a man who was utterly and completely unlikely to lose his place in the middle of a row. He walked over to where Dean was sitting, still dumbstruck at this turn of events. And fuck, the man smelled good even. Like some super expensive cologne bought at an exclusive men’s bespoke shop in London or something. Dean couldn’t even describe it but it made him want to lick the man’s pulse points or something. Bury his face in the man’s neck.
Castiel picked up the burned original by the corner of its ziplock bag and held it between two fingers, as if inspecting a dangerous biological specimen.
“That’s on me,” Sammy said. “Since Dean can make just about anything with yarn, I was the one who talked him into making a replacement hat. I’d have done it myself but as you can see, I’m kind of laid up at the moment. It’s almost done.”
It really was. All Dean had left were the little circles for the monkey ears, the last bit of red trim and sewing it all together. Castiel fixed his eyes on Dean and raised his left eyebrow, tilted his head a little, looking down at Dean and his replica hat. Damn that left Dean a little week in the knees. “Might I?” He asked. Dean nodded and offered the mostly done hat to Castiel, who inspected it closely.
“This would never have fooled me into thinking it was the same hat,” he said. “It’s too well done. The stitching is too even. My brother bought the original at a souvenir stand. It’s acrylic, not wool and it was starting to pill already.”
“I used the cheapest yarn we’ve got,” Dean said, defensively. Dean did most of their ordering and other than stuff meant for babies and some novelty yarn, nothing in the shop was synthetic or acrylic. If you wanted that shit, that’s why they had Walmart and Michaels.
“I suppose my boyfriend Mick will thank you for doing that,” Castiel said to Sam, ruefully. “He hated that hat with a passion. So did Eileen.”
“But it was gift from your brother,” Dean said. That kind of stuff was sacred as far as Dean was concerned. Dean picked up the hat again, got to work on one of the circles to make the ear. If he had a boyfriend who wore a ridiculous anything just because it was a gift from his brother, he’d tolerate it at least.
“It was,” Castiel said, sitting down and picking up his project again, examining where he’d left off for a moment before starting up again. “I’m sure he’ll get me something even more ridiculous for next Christmas. You’re very fast.”
The last was addressed to Dean, who’d been determinedly hooking his way through the stupid monkey ear. Now that the jig was up, he just wanted to get over with the damn hat. And definitely he wasn’t going to have to distract himself from the sight of the gorgeous man working on his gorgeous sweater.
Especially because Dean had just gotten a text message from Michael. Eggplant emoji, plus sign, eggplant emoji. Not much of a romantic, Michael, at least not over the phone. He found himself wondering what kind of texts Castiel would send. Probably he wouldn’t. Or if he did, he wouldn’t use eggplant emojis for sure.
Still, maybe Dean should wrap things up so he could get back home to Michael. Meanwhile, Castiel had stopped long enough just to click his row counter. Because of course he used a row counter. And stitch markers. He probably wove in his ends as he went along too, so he didn’t have whole dangly forest of them to taunt him at the end of the project like Dean always did. All in all, Castiel was a careful, fastidious knitter. He laid the project out on the table and got out a measuring tape, measure and compared what he got to the pattern book. Dean got his first full look at the pattern he was knitting and holy hell it was as gorgeous as the man.
“Is that an Alice Starmore you’re knitting?” Dean asked, in awe. He’d taken on a simpler pattern by that designer and it’d been challenging enough. He was starting to wonder if Castiel needed to be Dean’s nemesis and not his crush, because this town might not be big enough for the both of them if he was going to walk around knitting stuff like that. Dean had never had a rival before. It might be fun. “Luskentyre?”
“Yes, you recognize it?” Castiel asked.
“Got the yarn for it in my stash,” Dean admitted. “For yourself, I assume?”
Castiel smiled, that stunning grin Dean had seen in first photo. “No, not me. For Mick.”
From the other side of the table, Castiel’s Aunt Nancy said, “He’s Castiel’s British boyfriend. Very posh.”
“For the last time, Aunt Nancy. Mick is my fiancé.”
Dean would be lying if his heart didn’t sink a little when he heard that. Of course, Dean was a lying liar who told lies all the time. You had a little hope when it there was just a boyfriend in the way, but a fiancé meant he’d put a ring on it. Not that Dean was available. He had a very hot situationship with a dude who was apparently very much DTF tonight if the recently arrived emoji of the rocket ship in his texts was any indication. Besides, Castiel was going to be his nemesis and knitting rival.
Dean wondered though, why Aunt Nancy was trying to set Castiel up with nice boys like Sam if there was a fiancé on the scene.
“Some fiancé,” Nancy said. “Off to London for three months on his own, told you not to come with. No wedding date planned. No date planned for four years now.”
“I have work. Here. In this city,” Castiel said. “Work that I can’t bring with me to London. Work I have commitments for.”
“What’cha do?” Dean asked casually.
“My nephew’s a doctor!” Aunt Nancy announced proudly.
“I have a PhD in physical therapy,” Castiel said. “I also teach yoga. I’m working on my certification in Hot Yoga.”
It certainly would be hot yoga, Dean thought. Unable now not to think about Castiel, all bendy and sweaty. Right. Maybe it was time for Dean to make his exit. He shoved the almost, but not quite finished monkey hat into his project bag.
“Cool. Lisa there is a yoga instructor too,” he said to Castiel. Then to Sam, “You and Mom can close up without me?”
He checked his phone again. Michael had sent a donut and a banana. Well, not for nothing, the last time Michael sent that, Dean had gotten laid and laid so well he was pleasantly sore for days. He shot off a quick text to Michael, ‘DTF, home in 10.’
“I think we can handle it, honey,” his mom assured him. “You want to get home to your man. I know that look. Don’t stay up too late. Your twenty four starts at six, right?”
Like most firefighters, Dean worked twenty-four hours on call, forty-eight off. It used to be, most of his shifts coincided with Michael’s, so they could pretty much maximize their time together. Now though they always seemed like they’d gotten off sync. Still, Michael was just off shift this morning, so he’d have napped and they could have a good evening before Dean had to get some sleep.
“Can I have your number?” Castiel asked as Dean was leaving the table. “For the hat. When you’re done.”
Dean just about handed Castiel his phone to enter his number into contacts, but then realized he had about a half a dozen dirty emojis up on the screen and it’d be awkward.
“I got a feeling your roommate and my brother will be seeing a lot of each other,” Dean said. “I’ll give it to him to get to her.”
“Very well then,” Castiel said. “Goodbye, Dean.”
