Chapter Text
The next time Dean saw Castiel was a week later. Sam was still in the sling, not really able to work yet, so Dean was in the front of the shop again. Thursdays was the day that his mom worked at both the Surekill Exterminators and as a personal assistant for some guy named Arthur Ketch. With Sam laid up and none of their part timers available until later in the day, that meant that Dean was needed at the shop.
The morning started out quiet, no hat emergencies and Dean’s good efforts earlier in the week had gotten most of the stocking and straightening caught up, so he was taking a bit of time to sit up by the register, in the good light coming in through the plate glass window, and knit on Michael’s navy blue gansey sweater. He needed to make good time on it because Michael’s birthday was coming up soon and he wanted to have it ready.
He’d worked hard on the sweater, compounded by the fact that he couldn’t work on it either at the firehouse or at Michael’s, which didn’t leave him much other time. He’d picked a simple enough pattern, just because Michael wouldn’t wear anything even slightly fun or colorful, just the dark neutrals, mostly black. He kind of felt jealous of Castiel, having a fiancé who would wear something like the Alice Starmore pattern he’d been knitting up. So, Dean was stuck with acres and acres of moss stitch in dark navy blue, livened up with a couple of thin cables, nothing crazy, and some bands of diamond patterns in alternating moss stitch and stockinette. It’d started well enough, but by now he was bored as hell of round after round after round of navy blue. He wanted to put the damn gansey in the one, well hidden in the basement, bin of UFOs he had at home and start something fun. Maybe dig the yarn for the Luskentyre sweater Castiel was knitting out of the stash and start in on a sweater for himself.
“Hello, Dean.”
The whiskey-honey-gravel voice startled Dean out of his internal grumbles and he looked right up from the navy sweater to the deep, bright blue eyes of Castiel, who was putting several skeins of sock yarn onto the counter. He’d picked out a gradient of pink, each skein lined up from a speckled pale ballet pink through deeper and deeper shades until the last was outright neon.
Cas himself was not dressed in the trench coat and suit he’d worn to the last stitch and bitch, but in something much more hot yoga teacher. Well-fitted, black lyrca-ish stuff. Stuff that left little to the imagination about how much good yoga had done the man’s body. Short shorts that clung to an ass like a peach and revealed thighs that looked like they could crush a watermelon. Castiel wasn’t huge, not at all, but he was staggeringly well toned, every little muscle defined. It made Dean want to take a bite out of his prominent hip bones, lick his Adonis belt. It would have been the sexiest Goddamn thing Dean had seen all month, except for the fact that the damn monkey hat was on his head. The monkey hat that Dean had finished five days ago and handed off to Sam who had solemnly promised to get it to Eileen. The pom-pom was every bit as ridiculously outsized as Dean remembered it. It really kind of ruined the whole sexy as hell yoga instructor vibe, but Dean couldn’t help smiling.
“Barbie’s dream sweater doesn’t really seem like your speed,” Dean quipped as he dropped the gansey and got to to working ringing up up the pink yarn.
“My brother’s daughter. Her birthday is in a few months. I thought I might plan ahead,” Castiel said. He tilted his head, squinted at the navy blue sweater and said, “You don’t use stitch markers.”
As if that offended him personally.
“I like to live dangerously,” Dean said. Stitch markers were for the weak minded and those that couldn’t count.
“Sam said you were a bit of a knitting anarchist,” Castiel said, handing over his credit card. Dean ran in through the reader and handed it back to him without comment.
“You need to use our winder and swift?” Dean asked, nodding over to their very nice set up. The guy probably had his own, but their winder was electric and very fast. Castiel probably had his set up permanently at the dining room table or something.
“I prefer not to wind my balls until just before I start my project,” Castiel said.
Of course he’d be like that. Yeah, it could stretch out the yarn a little to sit around in balls, but if you did it right, not that much. If Dean wanted to start something, he usually didn’t have the patience to sit around wind yarn. He just wanted to get it on his needles and get started. Besides, he just really liked balls.
Of yarn that was.
“Feel free to bring it back and wind it later if you want. What’s with the hat? It’s ninety degrees out there,” Dean said, getting out the shopping bag for his purchase, but Castiel had already pulled out a reusable tote from his backpack and was holding it out.
“I thought you’d want to see your handwork in action.”
Dean snorted, “Hardly my finest work. I just wanted to help Eileen out. I’m a sucker for a pretty face.”
“You know, you seem very familiar somehow. Like I met you before last week.”
“Rhinebeck? Stitches Midwest? We usually do a booth in the expo hall,” Dean asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around the shop before.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Castiel said, doing the squinty thing. Maybe Dean ought to suggest glasses or something, but he figured that wouldn’t go over real well. Then he had to suppress the thought completely because he would look somehow both adorable and even more hot in glasses.
“Well, I should go,” Castiel said, sort of reaching for the tote bag of Barbie Dream Yarn, but just sort of letting his hand rest on the bag handles as he stared and stared. Then said, “Can I?”
Then Dean realized he was looking at the sweater Dean had put aside. Michael’s gansey. Not Dean at all. Of course not, and it didn’t matter, because they were both taken and Dean was absolutely not thinking at all what Castiel would look like with that fitted ‘I’m nicer after yoga’ t-shirt and those short shorts on the floor beside his bed. Nothing. No thoughts.
“Yeah, sure, knock yourself out.”
So Castiel picked up the sweater, respectfully, but not gingerly. Felt it up, like you did with knitting, just to feel the squish of the yarn, the softness or scratchiness, the whole tactile essence of it. He examined it minutely, almost obsessively, as if looking for flaws or something, but not finding them.
Michael probably would never appreciate everything that went into that sweater and Dean didn’t need him to. Dean had bought traditional five-ply yarn, hand dyed in indigo, from a very small fiber company in the UK, corriedale wool so it would be hard wearing but still soft. He was knitting it up with a lot firmer, tighter stitch than he normally used, because that’s how ganseys were knit.
“Size threes?” Castiel asked. Understandable. Most people would have knit that yarn on sixes or sevens. Sam would have used eights, but he had kind of the opposite issues with his gauge that Dean did. Was kind of a tight ass about the whole thing.
Dean shrugged. You did what you needed to get to gauge. He was a loosey-goosey knitting and if he wanted it firm and tight. Firm and tight was what he wanted. Nope, cutting off that thought off right there.
Castiel had already moved on, “The yarn?”
Dean tugged out one of the label bands for him with all the info- the spinners, the fiber content. Everything he’d want to know. How they did the hand-dying with indigo and everything.
“Do you…” Castiel started to ask.
Dean knew exactly what he was going to ask. “I wish. They don’t have big enough production runs to sell wholesale, so I can’t stock it in the shop. They only do direct ordering. Website’s on the band. Maybe you’ll get lucky when they next stock up the site.”
Castiel nodded and tucked the band into the bag with his pink yarn, since permission to take it had been implied.
“This is very well done. Whoever you’re knitting this for is a lucky man,” Castiel said. “Yourself?”
“Nah. It’s for Michael,” Dean said. “He’s my ‘It’s Complicated.’ You stopping by Stitch and Bitch tonight? I don’t think your Aunt Nancy will be there. She mentioned something about a ‘wine mom’ trip to Napa with her girl friends last time she was here.”
For a minute there, Castiel looked disappointed. He said, “Unfortunately no. I’m co-teaching a candlelight couples yoga class tonight.”
“Maybe some other time.”
“Some other time,” Castiel promised.
When he left, Dean was resolutely not thinking about that ass that was walking away from him. Not at all. The ridiculous bounce of the huge ass pom-pom and the sway of the tassels descending from the ear flaps as he walked helped only a little.
***
“We should do something together,” Dean said to Michael.
They were sitting in the bedroom together after some decent enough sex. Not great sex. It’d been a little lazy for that. Dean had not gotten nailed to the mattress like he’d been hoping for, but there’d been some nice, easy hand jobs and any time you got to come, well, that was a win in Dean’s book. It was early, not time to go to sleep yet, and Michael was playing some video game where you beat the crap out of stuff. Or other players. Whatever. Dean didn’t really care much about video games, but it was enjoyable enough to watch his boyfriend play them naked after sex.
Dean was knitting. Not the navy blue sweater. He was knitting a pair of socks. For Sam’s birthday, which had been a couple months ago, so he was kind of behind. It was just that he couldn’t bear to cast on the second one after finishing the first. That was the thing about guys with really big feet.
They needed really big socks.
Not that Sam really needed any socks at all with how well Mary kept them supplied, but it wasn’t like Dean was going to make his brother a sweater. Dude was just too huge for that. Dean would be knitting the long sleeves for years. Scarves were a no go. Sam lost too many of them. As for hats- well, Sam wouldn’t wear anything fun, just plain gray and black beanies, like the kind you could buy from any store. What was even the point of making a hat if it wasn’t fun? Dean couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Castiel and his ridiculous monkey hat, which was now the monkey hat that Dean had made for him.
“Like what? We do stuff together. We went to the gym together yesterday,” Michael said, after he blew some shit up on the screen.
They went to the gym and worked out, like any two bros would. Dean appreciated that he had to go to the gym. Firefighting involved a lot of heavy lifting. His basic PPE gear was forty-five pounds, up to seventy once you added the axe, the radio and his other equipment. Haul that shit up a ladder, fast. Haul people out of places. Haul hoses under high pressure. So yeah, staying fit was a basic job requirement for him, but it absolutely did not fall into the category of ‘doing something’ or even close to a date. Last year, he’d gotten Michael to agree that they could do things that were actual dates sometimes, so long as it wasn’t likely they’d run into anyone they knew or if they would, that it had to be something ‘just friends’ would do, like the movies, so long as it was a ‘bros’ kind of movie. Not that Dean minded the action adventure flicks, but sometimes a man wanted more than explosions and car chases.
“There’s this couples yoga class I saw. We’re both free on Monday,” Dean said. Yeah. He might have looked up the candlelight yoga class that Castiel taught. For reasons. It was taught on Mondays and Thursdays. Castiel normally taught the Monday session, not the Thursday, but must have substituted.
Michael actually paused his game, set the controller down and turned to look at Dean. He ran his fingers through his spiky blond locks. They actually looked kind of alike, him and Michael, though Michael was a little blonder. Some people said they looked almost like brothers. They definitely were not, though.
“Since when does, ‘Dean “No Chick-Flicks” Winchester’ want to do yoga?”
“It’s not the woo-woo kind,” Dean said, defensively. “It’s just stretching and core strength building and stuff. Anyway, I love chick flicks. Nothing wrong with a good rom-com. And yoga’s kind of sexy.”
“Sorry, still a hard pass for me,” Michael said, taking up his game controller again. “We could Netflix and Chill again on Thursday. We’re both off.”
“Stitch and Bitch is Thursday. You know that.”
“You could skip for once. Why is it so important for you to go knit with a bunch of middle-aged women? Why is your hobby more important than our time together?”
“Because, I own a third of the business,” Dean said. “The shop’s not a hobby. It’s job number two. You know I gotta step up while Sam’s got a busted wing.”
“Speaking of work, we should get to bed. Early morning tomorrow,” Michael said. He saved his game. Dean sighed, thinking about putting the endlessly huge sock back in the project bag. He’d added an inch to it while Michael had destroyed aliens or whatever the creatures on the screen were. Maybe he’d do just a few more stitches. Just one more row.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Michael said.
“Do what?”
“The knitting thing,” Michael said. “I mean, I get that your mom means the world to you and you want something to share with her, but it’s not the most masculine hobby.”
“Afraid the gay will rub off on you or something?” Dean snipped. It wasn’t like he hadn’t explained before that he was the one that had roped Mom into it along with Sam rather than the other way around. And it wasn’t like Michael wasn’t arguably more gay than Dean, being attracted only to dick, unlike Dean. It wasn’t like Dean hadn’t explained that there were plenty of dude knitters all around the world, most of them not gay at all. Look at Sam. You didn’t get much more enthusiastically heterosexual than Sam.
Dean finished the last stitch in his row, tugged the stitches so they weren’t likely to fall off the needles in transport and shoved the sock back into his project bag. He wondered how they’d gone from comfortable post sex torpor to this argument in about sixty seconds. He wasn’t even sure what it was really about. He just hated it when Michael got a stick up his ass about things Dean enjoyed if they were anything but the most butch of activities. Sometimes, it felt like Michael was the son that John Winchester would have wanted. Or at least those few times John had tried to walk back into their lives.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Michael protested. “I just think you’re spending so much time at that shop lately I hardly see you. You get so enmeshed with your family. That’s all I meant.”
Dean grabbed the nearest pair of boxers, realized they were Michael’s and dropped them back on the floor. Then he remembered Michael had grabbed the nearest piece of clothing to wipe the come off both of their bellies and that had happened to be the boxers than Dean had been wearing. Which was kind of rude of him, really, but Dean had been boneless and wrung out at the time, so he hadn’t protested then. The boxers were already deposited into the laundry hamper. Taking a fresh pair out of the one drawer he was allotted in Michael’s dresser would mean walking into close proximity of Michael. Dean was afraid Michael would use his number one technique for getting out of arguments with Dean. He’d grab Dean and kiss him. Then they’d move on to having sex pretty quick because being in body contact with Michael was pretty much the easiest way to send Dean to horny jail. Michael avoided a lot of confrontations that way, apparently a blow job being preferable to a civilized discussion between adults.
Dean pulled on his jeans, discarded on the floor on his side of the bed. Right over his bare skin, which kind of chafed a little. “I’m going home,” he said.
“You are home,” Michael said.
Was he though? Yeah, he was there multiple nights most weeks, enough that he chipped in expenses. Not the full 50%, but enough. Yet somehow, he didn’t warrant more than a single dresser drawer. And Dean thought maybe home was a place where they didn’t try and shame you for the things you loved.
“You know what I mean,” Dean said. “I don’t want to argue with you right now.”
Suddenly, Michael was just steps away from Dean. He reached out and tugged Dean closer to him with a couple of fingers stuck into the waistband of Dean’s commando worn jeans. He was smiling that certain, horny smile, and there was a glint in his blue eyes. Once Dean was close, he put his big hands on Dean’s hips and said, “So, let’s not argue. We don’t have a lot of time together and I can think of a lot better uses for it.”
His hands were soon traveling south down to Dean’s ass and his lips were hot and heavy on Dean’s, making it hard to remember why they’d been fighting just seconds ago. Then Michael’s lips were doing that thing to the sensitive skin on the side of Dean’s neck, that bit just under the right earlobe and Dean definitely forgot why he’d been mad. Sometimes, it sucked that Dean was such a sucker for a pretty face and a pair of blue eyes. Because Michael was so very goddamn pretty.
“You ready for me, Babe?” Michael asked, pulling Dean’s ass to him, grinding a burgeoning hard on against Dean. He meant had Dean cleaned up and generally prepped himself. Dean had done all that earlier, in hopes of more than the hand job he’d gotten.
“Yeah. I’m ready. Bring it on,” Dean said. He really, really needed to stop thinking with his dick so much, he thought, even as he let Michael lead him back to bed by the dick.