Chapter Text
Cas slept in for the first time in years, maybe in his life, on the Saturday after his bar exam. He woke up groggy and grumpy with a face full of over-warm sunlight, groaning and grumbling his way across his rumpled bedding to yank the curtains shut. He was exhausted from the long weeks of studying that were now behind him and a headache from oversleeping kicked in the minute he deigned to move. He seriously contemplated falling face-first back into bed and compounding the problem by sleeping even more.
The smell of coffee from the kitchen and the buzz of an incoming message on his phone combined to just barely convince him otherwise. He sighed down at his phone. Coffee first, he decided, and God or Buddha or whoever bless the inventor of the automated coffee maker in the first place.
He shambled naked out of the bedroom, scratching idly at his chest and wondering if he had a single item of food in his kitchen that wouldn’t require effort. He only bothered with cooking when it was for someone else.
He went for a piss, then grabbed the first of what would be several cups of coffee and a bottle of aspirin, taking both back to the bedroom. It was a very nice bedroom, objectively, if not exactly “him.” His sister Hester, whose career was interior design, had basically just grabbed his credit card and kicked him out of his own apartment for a day when he’d moved into this place. It was bougie, all off-white and burnt umber and black accents, classy and comfortable. Hester was good at what she did, even if it was kind of obvious she didn’t know her own brother particularly well. Par for the course in this family.
He set the coffee and aspirin down next to the ever-present supply of weed on one of the stupid floating shelves that Hester had installed, so he could put on some underwear and a t-shirt and not fully scandalize the whole neighborhood when he opened the curtains back up. Then he picked up his phone and snapped a picture of his gathered supplies and sent it to Meg with the caption breakfast of champions.
Seems about right, she replied. She was clearly still typing, so Cas brought it all over to the open window to sit on the sill with his head and shoulders leaning out into the light. He lit up a blunt while he waited for her and washed down a couple of aspirin with a too-hot first swallow of coffee. Cas was not one to let the threat of being scalded get between him and caffeine.
His phone buzzed. If you want some actual food, we could go grab brunch. Your treat, obviously, Mr. Bigshot Lawyer Man.
He contemplated it. Brunch with Meg was never just brunch, of course. It would be boozy and bitchy, and then they would go back to her place and laugh their way through sex. He’d spent many enjoyable Saturdays during law school that way, but today he was kind of worn out and wanted to save what energy he did have for his plans for the evening.
Knowing that his lack of immediate reply was already answer enough for Meg, he quickly checked his other messages. There were a few congratulatory things from relatives and friends that he could answer later, but the one from his dad he opened right away.
I don’t care what you do with your weekend, but I expect you in the office at eight o’clock on Monday so bear that in mind.
Cas rolled his eyes and took a long drag. As if he’d ever been late to work a day in his fucking life.
Of course, sir , he replied quickly, wondering who had snitched to Dad about the younger generations’ plans for a night out. Then he went back to the thread with Meg and wrote nah, feel like shit this morning, but maybe next week. He tried not to think about the fact that if they did hook up next weekend, it would probably be for the last time. He didn’t invite her to come along tonight, either, because she got along with the rest of his friends and family about as well as a feral cat at a dog park.
He was so trained to be studying or working at every idle moment that just sitting by his window with his coffee and his blunt felt like playing hooky. And he intended to indulge in every illicit moment of his last weekend of freedom, so he went and grabbed a second coffee and came right back to the window to get a proper weekend high. It required a certain callous disregard for the full might of the California sun in August, and he was already sporting the beginnings of a sunburn across his nose when he finally got bored enough to look for something else to do.
He spent the day feeling lazy and indulgent. He went down to the gym in his building for a while, but he skipped cardio. He ordered delivery from Chateau Lemongrass. He looked through his closet to get an outfit together for the night, as well as making sure the nice suits (courtesy of his aunt and uncle as a graduation gift) didn’t warrant a dry cleaner’s visit before Monday. He watched whatever stupid show Amazon recommended to him for some background noise. He kept a maintenance high the whole time because being alone with his thoughts when he didn’t have any people or assignments to distract him was turning out to be fucking intolerable.
Gabe and Balthazar descended upon him at eight-thirty. He was in the shower and unaware they somehow had a key to his place, and was not even remotely expecting them to be sitting on his bed arguing about whether Balthazar should swipe left or right when Cas walked in bare-assed with his hair still dripping water. He could be forgiven for shouting in surprise and throwing an ashtray at them.
“Jesus, put that thing away!” Balthazar yelped, falling back dramatically with a hand over his eyes while Gabe made exaggerated retching noises.
“You wanna sneak into my house then you don’t get to complain about what you see!” Cas shouted as he grabbed the first pair of underwear his hand touched and retreated to his tiny hallway to put them on. “Fuck you guys!”
“Be nice to us, Cassie, we’re family.”
“I’ll be nice when you give me my key back,” he said, stepping back into the room and going for the pants he laid out on his bed before the shower.
“Never,” Gabe said, snatching the pants away from him. “Someone has to be able to perform a wellness check next time we don’t hear from you for two weeks.”
“I was studying, not that you would know what that means. Will you fucking give me those? What are you even doing here? I thought we were meeting at Purgatory.”
“We’re rescuing you from showing up in jeans and only being able to get the attention of tasteless bitches,” Balthazar said. “Gender-neutral term, obviously.”
Cas rolled his eyes, and Gabe cackled.
“Someday you’re going to roll your eyes hard enough that they get stuck in the back of your head.”
“You. Are wearing jeans,” Cas said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, because these ones make my ass look amazing?” Gabe shot back. “Bowser brought a bunch of different shirts, I’m stealing one to change into.”
“I could swear that we all became able to pronounce my name at around age seven,” Balthazar sighed, but that was a battle lost long ago and he knew it.
Cas noticed the nice little weekend travel bag sitting at the foot of his bed now. He stopped and held up a finger and walked out of the room. He heard them futzing around trying to connect to the Bluetooth speaker on his nightstand, while he was fetching a bottle of Grey Goose from his freezer and his cigarettes from where he’d tossed them on the kitchen counter the previous night. He re-entered the room while swigging directly from the bottle, still holding his finger up as some shitty pop song started playing from Gabe’s phone. His cousins miraculously obeyed, shoving at each other but not speaking as he handed the bottle over, then stalked to the window. Once he’d lit up and taken a drag, he finally lowered his hand.
“There. Now I can deal with your shit. Show me what I’m wearing.”
Balthazar already had the bag open and was holding up a shirt in each fist. “Purple or black?”
“Not purple,” Cas tried to say, but Balthazar cut him off.
“Ah-ah! Not you. I’m asking Gabe.”
Gabe was suspiciously not chugging vodka, just holding the bottle.
“You’re not drinking?”
“I’m playing DD tonight,” Gabe shrugged.
“Why?" Cas asked. "We can just get an Uber.”
Gabe smiled his most courtroom-shark smile. “Kali said if I come home drunk or smelling of another woman’s perfume she’s going to divorce me, and your dad says the family reputation can’t afford another divorce this year and he’ll have me shipped off to one of those European spa things that are secretly rehab if I don’t sort it out.”
“The European spa things aren’t that bad,” Balthazar said.
“You also said that about boarding school and look what that did to you,” Cas said skeptically. “Gabe, you could consider not cheating on Kali every time you get drunk, and then maybe she wouldn’t immediately associate the drinking with the cheating.”
“Oh my god, we’re not talking about this,” Gabe said, jumping up and stealing a cigarette from Cas’s pack. Cas shoved him over to the window to prevent him from lighting up right in the middle of the room. “Anyway, back to the matter at hand: did you bring that see-through shirt, Bowser?”
“No,” Cas answered before Balthazar could.
Both of them were grinning at him. He took another long pull each from the bottle and the cigarette.
“Fuck you both.”
Anna and Ruby were officially drunk and/or high enough to start making out just to tantalize other people, and Cas didn’t necessarily need to watch his cousin macking on his most competitive law school frenemy, so he decided it was time for his next drink.
He’d been striking out on the dance floor anyway, courtesy of Hannah. There had been a lovely woman in a blue dress named Daphne that he’d hit it off with, but Hannah kept trying to insert herself because she had never once been able to grasp in all their years at school together that Castiel was not into her, so Daphne had drifted away, and last he’d seen her she was dancing with Uriel, who was his second most competitive frenemy. Cas had danced with Raphael for a couple of minutes just to scrape Hannah off, which had thankfully worked. He and Raph loathed each other, of course, but Raph was hot so it wasn’t all bad.
He wove through the packed crowd to the bar, plucking Bowser’s stupid sheer shirt away from his chest. He was feeling grudgingly grateful for it since it was keeping him from having a heat stroke in the crowded bar. He was less grateful about the body glitter and makeup that Hannah and Ruby had forced on him in the girls’ bathroom. The other women who filtered in and out didn’t even complain about a man’s presence, instead cat-calling Castiel and suggesting eyeshadow colors.
But what did it really matter? He was here to drink the alcohol that his friends and family bought him and accept all the pats on the back about finishing the bar exam, and hopefully find someone hot to go home with. One last hurrah before his dad and the title of Junior Partner at Milton, Shurley, and Adler officially took over his life. He fully expected his dad to start hinting that he should be dating Anael Adler before the month was out and no doubt the entire extended bunch would be looking for an engagement ring by Christmas. Weirdly enough, for all his controlling bullshit, his father wasn’t homophobic and probably would accept Raph as an option. So it was too bad about the loathing.
Just for a change of pace and to avoid getting too drunk too fast, he ordered a beer. Someone bumped into his back while he was waiting, and they were already apologizing when he turned to look at them.
“Sorry, man, it’s just crowded—oh, wow. Hi, there,” the guy grinned. Cas’s physical response was embarrassingly immediate, but in his defense the guy was incredibly hot and smiling at him with pretty obvious flirtation.
“No need to apologize,” Cas said quickly, raising a hand to flag the bartender down again. “What are you drinking?”
“Oh, you’re real sure of yourself, aren’t you?” the guy said, but his stance was loose and relaxed, and his smile was self-assured, so Cas took it as a statement that the guy liked it.
“Should I not be?” Cas asked, shuffling a little closer even though they were barely a foot apart in the first place.
The guy was dressed in a simple outfit, black pants and a white t-shirt that glowed faintly purple in all the flashing lights. He had a few bracelets on his wrists and rings on his fingers. His eye color was hard to tell, but Cas’s eyes were caught on the dusting of freckles across flawless cheekbones and the fullness of his lips, which parted as Cas moved in closer. The tip of the guy’s tongue crept out to lick at his lower lip.
“I just got here, maybe I want to shop around a little,” the guy chuckled. “Or hang with my friends,” he said, jerking his head toward a trio of women who were elbowing each other and giggling.
“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you,” Cas said. “But let me buy you a drink anyway.”
The guy’s smile remained easy, open, so Cas figured he wasn’t pushing too hard. “Yeah, why not?” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Cas. You?”
The guy’s eyes went wide and interested, his face shining eager in the strobing lights. “Tell me that’s not short for Cassady.”
“No, it’s short for Castiel. Why?”
“Whew, close call. My name’s Dean. I’m named after the character in the Kerouac novel, who’s based on a guy named Cassady. Would have just been funny, is all. Would have had me believing in fate or something. You said Castiel?”
Cas had no idea what the hell the guy was talking about, but at least he’d got his name. “Yeah, but everyone calls me Cas.”
“I like it. Castiel,” Dean said, pronouncing each syllable thoroughly and lingering over them like he was savoring them. “It’s exotic.”
Cas couldn’t help the genuine smile that pulled out of him. “If you say so.”
“More exciting than Dean, anyway,” he laughed, putting a familiar hand on Cas’s shoulder. “Nice to meet you.”
Cas’s beer landed in front of him, and he pushed it toward Dean. “Here… unless you want something more exotic?”
Dean laughed again, grabbing the beer and taking a long drink. Cas tracked the way his lips wrapped around the neck of the bottle and the ripple of his throat as he swallowed. He lowered the bottle and his smile dropped into something a little softer, a little more personal.
“Hell, who am I kidding, you’re definitely the hottest guy here and I like talking to you,” Dean said. “Let’s get a couple of shots and hit the dance floor, huh?”
“That sounds great,” Cas said.
They made small talk while they waited for the bartender’s attention to finally swing their way. Dean was here to celebrate, too. He was an aspiring actor who’d come to Hollywood from Kansas, which was so typical as to be nearly painful, and a movie he’d been in had just been released. The girls he’d come with all worked on the movie set; a camera operator, an effects artist, and a set designer. You couldn’t spit in this town without hitting someone who worked in the movie business, so Cas was used to it. Dean seemed shocked to find out that Cas was a lawyer rather than an actor or model himself.
“You obviously know you’re hot,” Dean argued as six shot glasses of tequila finally appeared. “You could totally make it in Hollywood.”
Cas just shrugged. “It’s the family business.” He pointed out his cousins and friends. “About ninety percent of us wind up as lawyers or judges or police. Bowser’s a music producer and my sister is a designer and everybody thinks they’re weird. Anyway, who cares about all that crap? I’m here to drink and dance.”
Dean grabbed a glass. “Hell yeah. Cheers.”
They clinked their glasses, shot their tequila, bit into their lime wedges and laughed at each other’s squinted expressions. They quickly finished off the rest of their shots and made their way over to dance, with Dean keeping a hand on Cas’s shoulder to avoid getting separated, and shooting an exaggerated wink back at his friends.
Cas’s own party were all giving him thumbs up and exaggeratedly-mouthed “nice ” statements of approval as they saw him come back. He ignored them all, because the only thing he cared about was getting his hands on Dean’s gyrating hips as soon as possible. Dean clearly didn’t mind, as his hands were already stroking at Cas’s chest and into his sweat-dampened hair.
The dancing got dirty, fast. Cas had meant to take a drinking break and instead he’d shot tequila like an undergrad, which meant he was well and truly soused. Dean’s ass ground against Cas’s pelvis and thighs, and Cas fisted a hand in Dean’s hair and sucked a kiss into the back of his neck. Cas kept thinking any minute now he was going to yank Dean toward the bathrooms but every time, the song would change and Dean’s eyes would light up and he’d say something like “I love this song!” or “oh my god, now that’s a beat I can shake my ass to!” and so they kept dancing. Daphne in the blue dress came back and sandwiched herself between them, but Dean didn’t seem to mind, so Cas didn’t either. They both paid her some attention and they were all having fun, until she got lured off by Dean’s trio of girlfriends.
Dean was the one who dragged him off the dance floor, in the end.
Finally they played a song that Dean didn’t care about, or maybe he’d just had enough of foreplay, because he sent both of them crashing into a bathroom stall and kicked it shut with his hands already halfway down Cas’s pants. In the new lighting situation, Cas finally got to see that Dean’s eyes were a brilliant shade of green. Cas focused on getting his hands under Dean’s t-shirt, feeling up his Hollywood-perfect body, while Dean was focused on getting their pants and Cas’s shirt buttons open. Cas attacked Dean’s neck with his mouth and made Dean moan, grabbed a solid handful of Dean’s pert ass that made Cas moan with satisfaction right back. Dean finally freed both their erections. Cas immediately pressed in close, trapping both of their cocks between two flat, toned stomachs. Dean shuddered happily and bit at his ear and pawed at his bare chest.
They both pulled back enough to get hands around each other. Cas thumbed the head of Dean’s cock and gathered a bit of precome to smooth over his hot, sensitive skin.
“Fuck, yes,” Dean said. His own hand stuttered on Cas’s erection without accomplishing much. “Yeah, Castiel, please.” He said Cas’s full name so reverently, and it was going straight to his dick, which he’d thought was about as hard as it could get, but apparently not because it plumped up just a little more in response to Dean’s hoarse whispers. “Oh my god, oh my god,” Dean whimpered. “I want that in my mouth. Please tell me I can suck you off.”
Cas nibbled along Dean’s jaw and worked his dick with firm, even strokes, going back frequently to catch the dribble from the tip and smear it with his palm. “Whatever you want, I’ll let you do whatever you want, but come for me first.”
“I can wait,” Dean panted, his head thrown back against the wall of the stall and his eyes glazed over with pleasure. “I wanna get you in my mouth. Come on.”
“I want to see you,” Cas insisted, reaching his other hand into Dean’s shirt to tweak a nipple and feeling pleasantly rewarded by the way his breath caught and stopped for a moment. “You first.”
“That gets you hot, the other guy coming first?”
“Yes,” Cas said simply, focusing most of his energy on working Dean over. “Or girl.”
“Oh god, yeah,” Dean said, hands clawing into Cas’s hips. “I always gotta eat a girl out before I do anything else with her. Nothing hotter than a woman having an orgasm.”
“Nothing?” Cas said, pinching at his nipple again.
Dean smirked, even as he was steadily reaching his peak. “Change my mind.”
Cas moved his hand down to cup Dean’s balls and roll them in his hand. “Working on it.”
Dean didn’t last long, coming with his face pressed against Cas’s shoulder to muffle his groan. Cas held him up like that for a minute, feeling Dean’s panting slow even as he dazedly mouthed along Cas’s neck. Cas grabbed some toilet paper and cleaned the come off their bellies, grateful it hadn’t gotten on their clothes.
Then Dean slithered down to his knees, pushing Cas’s hips against the partition wall.
“My turn,” he murmured, pulling a condom out of his pocket. He maintained eye contact with Cas the entire time he was fitting the condom over him, and Cas was breathless from the combination of dark, hungry eyes and sure hands on his dick. Once he was wrapped, Dean slowly and carefully worked his way down Cas’s length as far as he could go before he ran out of mouth. He wrapped his hand around the base, humming happily, and got to work. Cas watched Dean’s cheeks hollow and felt the tip of Dean’s tongue sliding against the underside of him, and Cas breathed in quick, shallow gasps, letting his hands rest on Dean’s shoulders.
Dean’s eyes were closed and he looked blissed out. Cas’s body glitter was all over Dean’s face and neck and hands, and he was definitely smearing it on Cas’s cock. It would probably be funny if there was a single active brain cell in Cas’s head, but he was busy getting one of the best blowjobs of his life. Sweat dripped from his hairline and trickled down his neck and bared chest, but he barely noticed because his entire sense of self was centered on Dean’s mouth. He lifted an unsteady hand to play with Dean’s hair and Dean somehow looked even more blissful, groaning and sending vibrations along Cas’s shaft that made Cas shiver.
Cas didn’t last long, either. Dean wore a very self-satisfied smile as he slipped his mouth off and stood up to help Cas remove his condom and clean off.
They stayed for a minute to exchange lazy kisses while straightening up each other’s clothes and smoothing out their hair a little. Dean teased Cas for the stripe of sunburn on his nose that he was finally noticing, told him it was adorable, which was certainly not a word Cas had ever heard applied to himself before. Dean was smiling nonstop and Cas was pretty satisfied with where his night had ended up.
“Hmm, still think women might be hotter,” Dean said. “Maybe we have to do that again sometime, just to test the theory out a little more.”
The crazy part was that Cas genuinely wanted to say yes. But the hesitation was there, and Dean was observant enough to pick it up.
“Yeah, you know what? I’m going with, this has been magical and awesome and let’s leave it at that. You were amazing, Castiel.”
“So are you,” Cas replied, letting his hand linger on Dean’s cheek and stroking a thumb against his lips. “I don’t want you to think my hesitation is to do with you.”
“Pffftt, of course not,” Dean said jovially. “I’m hot shit. See you around, tiger.” He swaggered out of the stall without a care in the world and winked at the first guy who glared in his direction. He washed his hands and exited.
Cas locked the door and stayed in the stall for another couple of minutes, staring at nothing, hands loose at his sides. He breathed through the unexpected twist of disappointment in his guts.
Dean was beautiful, and funny, and confident, and interesting, and Cas liked him. Kind of wished he could see him again. He even thought he might have liked to take him on a proper date, the kind that involved dinner or a museum or something, before inviting him home for a whole night of fucking and maybe even making him breakfast in the morning.
But that part of his life was coming to an end, and he’d gone out clubbing tonight with a fixed idea in his mind that this was the last time he’d do this. Come Monday, his career properly started and so did the search for some respectable partner with whom to share exactly two children. And that was what Cas wanted. He liked studying law and he was looking forward to being a lawyer. He’d worked his ass off because he liked being the good kid in the family. He liked being someone people could count on, someone to be proud of. He liked it when Gabe or Anna or Bowser did something stupid and his dad looked at him like he was glad Cas was his son.
So a minute later, when he had his head screwed back on, he took a leak and washed his hands and went back out to find his friends and have one more dance and one more drink with them. He didn’t look for Dean in the crowd.
Their leaving was the usual jumble of shouting and laughing and arguing about who was going where. Balthazar and Hannah were walking with Anna back to her place and maybe sleeping there, since her boyfriend was out of town and couldn’t protest about the inconvenience; Raph and Uriel were going to go find a pizza with Daphne, who had attached to the two of them but still did not seem certain which of them she would follow home afterward; Ruby was hitching a ride with Gabe back to Cas’s place to sleep on Cas’s sofa because she was too drunk to schlep all the way to her place; and Gabe would go to his own home because if he didn’t, Kali would either file for divorce or possibly just stab him to death with a kitchen knife.
Ruby called shotgun and Cas didn’t care, climbing into the mess of empty fast-food bags and candy bar wrappers in Gabe’s backseat. He was starting to sober up, which left him feeling tired, but he’d have to keep it together a while longer. He wanted a tall glass of water and a cigarette before he went to sleep. He’d have to get Ruby a blanket for the couch and a towel for the shower and a t-shirt to sleep in, too. She was almost certainly going to smoke all his weed and not even say thank you about the hospitality.
He rested his head against the glass of the window. In his reflection, he saw that the makeup on his face had smeared, making it look like he had a black eye. He stared at himself until Gabe caught his attention with a couple of sudden, jerking braking maneuvers while trying to back out of the space. Cas couldn’t tell what was going on, but Gabe was the sober driver so it was his responsibility to worry about it. Cas dismissed Gabe’s driving and his own reflection in favor of daydreaming about Dean’s lips.
They cruised along for a couple of minutes, but the second time Gabe drifted over the lane line and jerked the wheel to correct it, Cas broke himself free of his reminiscing and glared at him.
“What the fuck, Gabe?”
“It’s fiiiine,” Gabe sang, and Ruby giggled.
“Yeah, Cas, don’t be such a wet blanket,” she slurred. “Even though you can’t help it. Pathological for you.”
“Gabe!” Cas snapped, his heart picking up speed. “Are you fucking drunk?”
“No,” Gabe said with a smug smirk. “I barely drank at all. I know when to stop.”
“Are you serious? Pull over.”
“We’re like three blocks from your place, Cassie, it’s all good,” Gabe said.
“Pull the fuck over right now, Gabriel!”
“Oooo, you got full-named,” Ruby giggled. “Think he’s serious, Gabe.”
“He can shove serious up his ass along with the dick of that gorgeous guy he hooked up with,” Gabe laughed, looking over his shoulder at them and smirking and paying absolutely zero attention to the light turning red up ahead.
“Gabe!” Cas shouted. “Stop!”
Gabe seemed to take that as another plea to pull over, and pressed the gas pedal even harder in response, while Ruby howled like a wolf out of her open window.
According to later evidence in court, Gabe was going twenty miles per hour over the speed limit at the time he entered the intersection and t-boned the beautiful black 1967 Chevy Impala that was being driven by Charlotte Bradbury, en route to drop off Donna Hanscum and Jody Mills at their shared apartment before continuing on with Dean Winchester in the front passenger seat to their own shared apartment. It was Dean’s vehicle, but Charlie had chosen not to drink that evening and decided to drive them all home. She’d been driving in a safe and careful manner. Gabe sent both cars careening across the thankfully otherwise-empty intersection and onto the shoulder of the road.
Cas didn’t know what had happened, for those first few seconds.
The squeal of the tires, the crunch of metal and glass, the feeling that they’d left their stomachs a few yards behind them—it was confusing, sudden, and for a moment, all Cas knew was that he was shaky and nauseated. He’d been flung forward, caught by the seatbelt, and flung back to crack his head against the window. Then he heard screaming, and he blinked, and saw Gabe crumpled into the embrace of his deflating airbag, Ruby bleeding from the head as she fought with her own airbag, and just barely visible past all that was the crumpled side of a second car. But Cas was fine, he thought giddily. Somehow, he was fine.
“Ruby!” he shouted, unbuckling himself and stumbling out of his door to come forward to her open window. “Fuck, Ruby, are you okay?”
“I hit my head,” she moaned, pressing a hand to the gash on her forehead. That she was talking and alert was something, at least.
“Gabe?”
“M’okay,” Gabe muttered, bracing on the tangle of fabric covering the steering wheel and lifting himself to sit upright. “Don’t feel hurt. Think I’m good.”
First things first: Cas called 9-1-1. He hung up as soon as he’d given bare details about the number of cars and their location, because people were hurt and there was every possibility some of them couldn’t wait for an ambulance.
Cas quickly made Ruby follow his finger with her eyes, determined she had a mild but not serious concussion, and told her to keep pressure on her injury. Then he stumbled over to the other car. The front of Gabe’s car had left a deep crumpled-in dent in the front passenger side door and there was no room to approach it, so he went around to the driver’s side, and felt the first swoop of real, true horror when he vaguely recognized the redheaded woman in the driver’s seat. She was leaning away from her window toward her passenger, hands hovering uselessly over him.
“Dean?” she sobbed out. “Oh my god, Dean?”
Cas couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it, but he peered through her window and saw the man he’d just had sex with in a club bathroom slumped and unconscious, held upright only by his seatbelt. Blood trickled sluggishly from where a huge piece of glass was embedded in his face. Cas turned and vomited into the grass.
He could hear another 9-1-1 call in progress in the backseat, one of the other two friends shakily babbling into her cellphone. The woman on the passenger side looked like she was in pain, but Cas didn’t see any visible injuries. Cas took a few deep breaths, and got as much of his composure as he possibly could.
He knocked gently on the driver’s door to get the woman’s attention. “Hey. Are you all right?”
“My friend, oh my god, he’s—” she gasped, barely even looking at Cas.
“Yeah, I see that. I’d like to have a look at him, but first I want to make sure you aren’t injured.”
“I don’t think I am,” she said, turning a pale face toward him, but then she winced and put a hand to her neck. “My neck hurts.”
“You probably have whiplash. Fingers and toes all working?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s great news. Can you get out and let me sit there?”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No, but I trained as an EMT for a few months.” He opened the door, and held out his hand to help her out of the car, figuring an assertive approach was best. It seemed to do the trick. She turned slowly, carefully, wincing the whole time, to put her feet on the ground and put her hands in his. He lifted her to her feet and passed her into the waiting arms of her other friend.
“Wait, aren’t you…?” asked the blond woman who took the red-headed woman into her embrace. The dark-haired woman was slowly sliding out on the same side, clutching her shoulder and gasping.
“Ma’am, do you need immediate attention?” Cas asked her.
“No,” she replied, hard-faced. “No, Dean needs help first.”
“Please say something if any of you start feeling dizzy or numb or have trouble speaking,” Cas said firmly, and climbed into the vacated seat. He saw immediately that it was pretty bad. Dean’s right leg was crushed in between the crumpled-in door and the dashboard, and his breathing was poor, which wasn’t good. Cas inspected the glass in his face and determined that it hadn’t damaged his actual eye, which was better news.
He put a hand to the uninjured side of Dean’s face, felt sick to his stomach again when he saw a smear of glitter there.
“Dean?” he whispered.
Dean grunted, and turned his face into Cas’s hand as if seeking him.
“Wake up, Dean,” Cas urged, tapping a finger against his cheek.
His eyes fluttered open.
“Castiel,” he said with a faint smile. Then his face turned alarmed and he sucked a wheezing, terrible breath. His eyes flickered all over, going wider and panicky. “What—?” he coughed. “I can’t—breathe.”
“It’s okay,” Cas said immediately, grabbing both his hands and squeezing them. “Look at me. You’re okay. Stay calm. We’re going to breathe together.” He sucked in an obvious breath, held it, let it out. “Like this, okay?”
Dean shivered in his grasp. “I’m—hurt—bad—”
“Yes you are,” Cas said, holding his eyes and feeling absurdly grateful that he didn’t seem to have a severe head injury as well. “But there are paramedics on the way. And you’re going to be fine. I’m right here with you. All you need to do until they get here is breathe.”
“My leg—” Hot tears were sliding down Dean’s face, mixing with the blood trailing from the glass that only just hadn’t taken out his eye, and his hands started to squeeze Cas’s so hard that it hurt.
“Nothing we can do about that right now. I know it probably hurts, that your chest and face hurt, too, but you’re going to make it. Just breathe with me.”
Dean nodded, shaky, and started breathing with him. It was sharp, shallow, pained. His eyes kept drifting to his leg, and Cas kept using their joined hands to direct Dean by the chin back to look at Cas instead. Once he’d got Dean breathing in a decent rhythm, he turned and asked if any of the girls had blankets or jackets or anything. They dug a pair of denim jackets out of the backseat and Cas folded one to press firmly over the blood soaking into Dean’s pant leg. He had to practically sit in his lap to do it. He used the other jacket to drape over Dean’s lap, hiding the sight of his leg from him, and helping him keep warm. Dean cried the whole time, breathing through pursed lips that had a faint tinge of blood at the corner.
Cas stayed with him until the paramedics arrived, and before they were separated, he ducked his head to drop a furtive kiss to Dean’s knuckles.
“You did so well, Dean,” he said softly, only loud enough for Dean to hear him and no one else. “You did so well. Someone else will take care of you now.”
“Cas—”
“Goodbye, Dean.”
He slipped out of the car, and was immediately swarmed by police. The flash of their lights felt like it was stabbing him in the eyes and he was getting a terrible headache now that Dean was in better hands.
It was a long night.
Sunday morning saw Cas, his father Chuck, his uncle Michael, Gabe’s sister Anna, Zachariah and Inias Adler, and two paralegals named Kevin and Channing all gathered into the conference room at the firm. Cas figured the reason that his aunt Amara wasn’t there was because she was sleeping off the chill pills that Michael had made her take to prevent her from making a scene at the police station in the middle of the night.
Cas envied her. He certainly hadn’t slept and had barely even had time to go home and shower and change into clothes that weren’t covered in blood and glitter before getting picked up and brought down to the office. He was chain-smoking at the window and Inias was being nice enough to keep a steady supply of coffee in his mug. It was doing nothing for his pounding headache, but he’d already taken all the aspirin he safely could. He wanted a joint more than anything in the world but he couldn’t do that shit in front of his dad or uncle. Anna and Zachariah had both already bummed smokes off him this morning, and he decided he was going to bail on this whole session whenever the pack ran out.
They had already decided on Aunt Naomi to represent Gabe because she was as cutthroat as they came and wasn’t technically a relative of his. She was Cas and Hester’s aunt by way of their estranged mother. Nobody had been able to get hold of Naomi yet but they’d left voicemails. With any luck, the case could be heard by Judge Anubis Saad because he and Chuck were golfing buddies, and Zachariah was promising to make a few calls to see if he could make that happen.
“Cas, how much did you tell the police?” Michael asked. “Be specific.”
“I told them the truth,” Cas said.
Most of them looked at him like he said he’d taken a shit in the coffee pot. Only Anna looked pale and grieved.
“Chuck, you’d better call Luke, you know he won’t listen to me,” Michael said.
“Why would you call Uncle Luke?” Cas muttered. “He’s police, he’s not gonna represent—oh.” He suddenly realized they’d ask Uncle Luke ‘lose’ his original statement and replace it with one where he’d been drunk and in shock, and had no idea what happened. “Never mind. Jesus.”
It was hardly the first time they’d tried to pull a similar stunt. He just somehow hadn’t expected it to ever be about him . The integrity of his word.
He leaned further out the window because he thought maybe he was going to be sick. The sun was bright and making his headache worse. He briefly remembered Dean touching a finger to the pinkened bridge of his nose and saying “ adorable” last night. Yeah, he was definitely going to be sick.
“Kevin, Channing, what did you find on precedent for getting this knocked down from felony to misdemeanor?” Michael asked. “Anything about first-time offenses?”
It was not, in fact, Gabe’s first criminal offense, but his priors were for drug possession, not DUI, and they’d gotten all but one of them expunged from his record anyway.
“It will be tricky because of the severely injured party,” Channing spoke up, “but I have a couple of files for you to look at.”
“Perfect, thank you.”
Naomi wouldn’t take kindly to having her work done for her, Cas thought dully as he flicked his cigarette butt out the window, feeling increasingly dizzy as he watched it fall six stories to the ground.
“‘Severely injured party’,” he repeated with a scoff.
“What was that, son?” Chuck asked sharply, turning to look at him.
“Nothing, sir,” Cas said immediately, even though he already knew it was too late. He just had to run his big, fat mouth.
“Don’t be like that, Cas, we need you on this team. What did you say?”
His father was not going to be placated, so Cas might as well go all-in. “The severely injured party is named Dean Winchester.”
“What on earth does it matter?” Chuck asked, clearly baffled. “All we need to know is that he’s not dead , so there’s a chance we can keep your cousin from becoming a felon.”
Anna was refusing to look at Cas. She was the only one in the room who knew, because she’d been there last night and seen Cas and Dean come out of the bathroom together. He didn’t know why she was keeping his secret. She wasn’t usually that nice.
“No, sure, why would Gabe need to be a felon if he’s only responsible for shattering a man’s femur and patella and dislocating his pelvis and puncturing his lung? Clearly that’s misdemeanor territory,” Cas said, feeling like he couldn’t get a proper breath and like his pounding headache was driving him mad. He stood up too fast from the windowsill and the dizzy feeling got worse. He had to catch himself on a chair. The lights above the conference table were an abomination that was ramping up his headache to even greater heights. “Never mind the six stitches in Ruby’s forehead, her sprained wrist, Jody Mills’s dislocated shoulder, literally everybody in that car having whiplash and neck strain, and fuck, I think I have a concussion. By the way.”
His father was staring at him with his nostrils flared and his eyebrows drawn up and his eyes like chips of ice in his face. It was a look Cas had a long history with, and he waited impassively for his father’s hand to fall on him.
“You need to calm down, kid,” Zachariah said, shifting his weight in a way that looked casual but put him just very slightly in front of Chuck, so that Chuck would need to bump into him if he wanted to go to Cas. “You had a weird night, maybe you’re not thinking clearly.”
“He needs to go to the hospital,” Anna said, already standing up and grabbing her purse. “Didn’t you hear him? He has a concussion. I’ll drive him.”
“Why didn’t you get checked out by the paramedics then?” Inias asked curiously.
Cas willed himself to puke on Inias, but couldn’t conjure it up. He just brushed past them all and followed Anna to the elevator, feeling his father’s cold stare on the back of his neck the entire time.
“Oh my god, Cas, that was the closest I think I’ve ever come to wanting to strangle you,” she gasped as soon as the elevator doors closed them in. “Are you insane?”
Cas slumped against the mirrored wall. “Maybe it’s the TBI,” he muttered.
“And provoking your dad to hit you will improve that how exactly?”
Cas waved a weary hand. “Whatever. He hasn’t done that since I was nineteen.”
“Yeah, because you haven’t given him a reason since then. I know you have no sense of self-preservation, but was the dick really that good?”
Cas snapped to attention. “Fuck you.”
She looked surprised. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“You think?”
“Look, Cas, I know you liked the guy but I also know you didn’t even ask for his number. And yeah, Gabe obviously fucked up, but you know as well as anybody that it’s not exactly easy to be a member of this family and he doesn’t deal with the pressure as well as you and I do.”
How well Anna dealt with the pressure was up for debate, Cas thought but didn’t say. They exited the elevator and Cas was digging his sunglasses out of his pocket and putting them on before they stepped out to find Anna’s car. It didn’t help his headache as much as he would have liked.
“Don’t give me some sob story about how Gabe didn’t get enough hugs and that’s why he has to be a cokehead who cheats on his wife every chance he gets. I know he’s your brother, but even you know he’s a huge dickbag. We’ve gotten him out of so much shit already and he never learns. He has earned what’s coming for him.”
“Don’t,” Anna said, reaching into her purse angrily and yanking out a pack of tissues. She blotted at her tears like they were offensive to her. “Yeah, he is my brother, and you’re my cousin, and we’re all completely messed up people, including the Roché cousins. Gabe isn’t worse than the rest of us, he just wears it more on his sleeve. He doesn’t deserve to go to jail.”
“Nobody deserves to go to jail, jail is fucking bullshit,” Cas snorted. “But Gabe deserves to have the same thing happen to him that happens to everyone else who drives drunk and almost kills a bunch of people.”
“That attitude is going to get you far at this firm,” Anna said dryly, still blotting tears carefully and trying not to ruin her mascara.
“Yeah, I know,” Cas said sourly.
“Maybe we should run away and go start our own practice,” she said.
It was the kind of thing that Cas would normally ignore or even laugh at, but she wasn’t even looking at him. She was looking at her own reflection in the glass of her window, and her lips were trembling.
“Anna,” Cas murmured.
“No, shut up and get in the car,” she said. “We’re not talking anymore. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“They can’t even do anything for me at the hospital,” Cas said. “I can already tell it’s just a mild concussion.”
“You had better have a hospital bill to show your dad if you want to get out of the stunt you pulled back there. Besides, I’m taking you to Marina del Rey. That’s where they admitted your boytoy.”
“Why would that matter?”
“I figured you’d want to visit him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I am the very last person he would want to see right now.”
“Well, see or don’t see him, but that’s where you’re getting your head checked out,” Anna said stubbornly.
They rode the rest of the way in silence.
Cas got diagnosed with a moderate concussion and was given a prescription for painkillers and some advice he paid no attention to. He found out what room Dean was in and promised Anna he’d get a different ride home so she could take off.
As soon as she was out of sight he texted Ruby and told her to keep an eye on Anna for a couple of days, at least until her boyfriend got back from his trip. She was overdue for a sleeping pill overdose or a self-harm incident and having her brother in jail waiting for a bail hearing wasn’t exactly conducive to her stability. She and Ruby pretended to barely tolerate one another, but he thought maybe Ruby cared enough to keep her distracted and high on something sensible until she leveled out.
Then he spent a further ten minutes pacing in front of the ER with his last cigarette, trying to decide between seeing Dean or simply going home to smoke some weed and get some sleep. There was nothing to say to Dean, really, and it wasn’t like he or Dean actually owed each other anything. There would inevitably be consequences if his father found out he’d done something that could harm Gabe’s defense, too.
Cas eventually accepted the fact that he was just here because wanted to see with his own eyes that Dean was going to be okay. Which was dangerously sentimental and kind of pathetic. But yeah, that was what he wanted. If Dean wanted to be angry at him, that was fine, too. Maybe even better than fine. Maybe getting yelled at would help him shake off the rebellious feeling that had gripped him in the conference room and made him act out, and he could go back to trying to be the dutiful, reliable son who didn’t need to think about this anymore.
He hit Dean Winchester’s hospital room at something of a determined stride, shoulders already braced for the worst, and was pulled up short by the sight of a tall, rangy younger guy sitting at Dean’s bedside wearing a rumpled, red flannel shirt and holding a paperback book in his hands.
“Oh. Sorry,” Cas said awkwardly. “I just wanted to see how he was doing.”
“You a friend of Dean’s?”
“Sort of. We only met last night.”
“Oh,” the guy said, setting the book aside and reaching up to tuck his chin-length hair behind an ear. “Are you the one who sat in the car with him until the ambulance got there?”
“Yes,” he said, deeply surprised that this guy knew about that.
“Dean was asking about you.”
“He was?” Cas asked in shock, his eyes going from Dean’s companion to Dean himself. There were bandages on his face where the glass had been last night, and there was deep bruising around it. His bed was raised about halfway to keep him propped up to help his lung heal, and oxygen puffed steadily through a cannula under his nose. His leg was in a heavy-duty frame contraption of some kind with pins poking out of it.
“He just came out of surgery right around the time I got here,” the guy continued. “They woke him up for a minute to make sure he came out of anesthesia okay, and he asked right away if you got hurt and where you were.”
“Did he…?” Cas looked away. “Did he remember that I was in the car that hit him?”
The guy stood up. “He didn’t say anything about that.”
“Well, I was,” Cas said sourly. “I wasn’t the driver, that was my dumbfuck cousin.”
“I’m Dean’s brother Sam,” the guy said, but his face was very guarded now, and he was steadily shuffling his remarkably tall frame a little further in front of Dean.
“I’m Cas Shurley. Listen, I just came because… I feel terrible about what happened and I wanted to apologize. It’s not my fault, but I don’t believe for a minute you’re gonna get that from anyone else in my family, least of all from the asshole who actually did this, and I thought… somebody should.”
“Dean’s hurt really bad, you know that?” Sam said, his face solemn and unaccepting.
“Yes. I know.”
Another round of dizziness hit Cas, and he stumbled into the tiny ensuite bathroom to puke. He hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours, and all that came up was a bitter, sour rush of coffee. He had to stay on his knees for a couple minutes afterward because he didn’t think he could get up.
“Hey, are you… good?” Dean’s brother asked uncomfortably from where he still stood next to Dean’s bed.
“Just a concussion,” Cas groaned. “Maybe low blood sugar. It was a long night.”
“You haven’t slept or eaten anything?” Sam’s voice softened a little.
“Not yet,” Cas said, eyes closed and kneeling in front of a hospital toilet and feeling like a fucking idiot. “Should probably go ask a nurse if I can get a toothbrush or something.”
“I’ll do it,” Sam said. “You just hang there for a second.”
Cas was deeply looking forward to going home and getting high as fuck so he could stop thinking about the fact that he needed to go back to the same conference room tomorrow and do his job. He would have just snuck out of the room and disappeared while Sam was distracted if he thought he could get up.
Instead, he had to deal with a concerned nurse with the promised toothbrush calling down to the ER, confirming he’d already been treated there, highly recommending he didn’t go home alone and asking if there was anyone he could go stay with.
He could call Meg. He didn’t want to explain everything to her right now, so he wasn’t going to call her, but there was someone he could stay with, so he said ‘yes’ when asked. The nurse brought him a pudding cup and told him to eat it before he left.
So Cas sat in a pool of cold sweat and shame in Dean’s hospital room while Dean’s brother openly stared at him devouring a pudding cup in about three seconds flat. Sam opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was died on his tongue because Dean groaned and moved his hand.
“Dean!” Sam whirled toward him immediately, and Cas tensed.
Dean’s eyes fluttered open, and he immediately grimaced and let out a coughing, keening cry of pain.
“Oh shit,” he said in a raspy tone, and blinked up at his brother in surprise. “Sam?”
“Yeah, man, I’m right here.”
“Charlie?”
“Sent her home for some rest. She’ll be back later,” Sam said, leaning close and putting his hand on Dean’s arm where it wouldn’t disturb his IV or finger monitor. “Dad’s offloading his open jobs to other mechanics in the area as fast as he can, and he and Mom are trying to get here by tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Dean said shakily. He turned his head and his eyes went wider when he saw Cas sitting on his other side. “Oh.”
Cas felt something in him trying to cringe, but outwardly he held himself rigidly straight. “Hello, Dean.”
Dean managed a tiny, weak smile at him. “Wasn’t expecting to see you, Castiel.”
“I’ll go,” he said, jumping to his feet.
“No,” Dean said immediately. “Didn’t mean it like that. S’good to see you.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Sure I do,” Dean said, but then he grimaced again and coughed again. “Ah, shit.”
“I’m so sorry, Dean,” Cas said, gripping the back of the chair he’d been sitting in until his knuckles were white. “I didn’t know Gabe was—I was trying to get him to pull over, I distracted him, this was my fault—”
Every ounce of legal training he had was screaming at him to not say these things, but he didn’t care. He just didn’t.
“It’s okay,” Dean mumbled, blinking at him with tears of pain in his eyes. “Just glad I get to say thanks for staying with me. Was freaking out so much, but you helped.”
Cas nodded, and felt, to his horror, that he was about to start crying, too. It was instinctual to dig his nails into his palms and focus on the feeling until the urge passed. Crying had never once helped him in any way.
“I’m glad that I could help,” he said carefully. “I just came to see how you were, and to apologize. I’ll go now.”
“Castiel,” Dean said firmly.
“Yes?”
“You can leave if you want to, but you don’t… have to.”
Sam was silent at Dean’s side with his eyebrows trying to climb into his hairline, and Cas felt his face heat up as Sam stared at him.
“I can stay a little longer,” Cas said cautiously.
“Don’t you need sleep?” Sam asked bluntly. “And food?”
Cas sat back down and smirked at Dean’s confused, concerned look. “I just finished law school, I promise it’s not my first all-nighter.”
“You also have a concussion?”
“Not my first of those either,” Cas said, because he was exhausted and stupid and forgetting that he wasn’t talking to one of his cousins. “Anyway, Dean, I promise you won’t be awake for long. I’ll just stay until you fall asleep.”
“Okay,” Dean said, and Cas could tell he was already starting to flag. “Thanks.”