Chapter Text
June
Nancy bounces past a family of 6 (all boys) and a few rowdy truckers as she makes her way to their table that morning. Even though she’d been up and working at this pace for hours already, Nancy looks light. Her time at Benny’s All-Nite Diner is coming to a close now that she scored a job at the police station.
Dean was going to miss her.
Change is good though, he reminds himself. He could hardly expect her to stay at Benny’s, making minimum wage, just to make Dean’s mornings more comfortable. And the kid she had been training for the last two weeks, Dirk, seemed alright.
Still, Dean disguises his pout by scratching at some invisible gunk on the table.
“Pie, please, Nancy.” He tells her as she puts down his coffee and Sam’s water on the dark brown laminate table.
Nancy looks between him and Sam and slowly gets her ticket book out of her apron. She has her hair up in a tight ponytail that pulls at the edges of her face, making her look more shrewd than normal.
“Pie for breakfast? What’s the occasion, Mr. Winchester?”
Dean leans back in his booth seat and nods across the table at his brother, “Sam’s got a lawyer job, now. He starts with Crowley on Monday.”
“Crowley?” Nancy asks, her eyebrows drawn together, “That’s a celebration?”
Dean takes a sip of black coffee and grimaces, grabbing hold of the little bucket of creamer and sugar. Nancy puts her hands and her ticket book on her hips and looks at Dean and Sam expectantly.
“ That’s it ?” She prompts when no one speaks. “You mean to tell me we’re having pie for breakfast this morning because Sam’s going to work for Crowley? He’s horns and a pitchfork away from being—”
Dean nodded, trying to keep positive for Sam’s sake. “Crowley’s a smarmy dick, even for an ambulance chaser. But maybe Sam here’ll make him human. Right, Sam?”
Sam manages a weak chuckle and wipes the condensation off of the glass in front of him. Dean knows his brother wants to tell him something. He’s been shifty for a few days, working up the courage.
He figures it has something to do with Eileen.
The morning after Sam dropped the supernatural bomb on her, she showed up at Dean’s house with breakfast from the diner for all four of them. She wanted to know everything, and they told her. Dean had been impressed.
And a little relieved. If Sam woke up in the middle of the night, screaming about ghosts or vamps or clowns, Eileen would be there.
Over the top of his creamed and sugared coffee, he can see Nancy give Sam an exasperated tilt of her head. Sam clears his throat and says, “you know Dean, houses in Joshua are dirt cheap.”
Dean says nothing and takes a sip of his coffee.
Sam continues, moping at the ring under his water glass with his paper napkin, “I still have all that money from Dad’s life insurance and my own savings just sitting in the bank. And Crowley might be a dick, but he’s going to pay me more than he should.” Sam stole a glance at Dean. “I should really tie it up, you know?”
He does know, it’s a smart plan. And probably one he’s had for a while now. It only takes Dean half a second to realize why Sam’s been skirting around it, too.
Dean had never been proud of the way he had reacted to Sam’s Stanford announcement. It had blindsided then, Sam dropped it on them two weeks before the semester was going to start and John had gone ballistic. They were arguing when Dean pulled up to the motel from a beer run. He tried to calm it down, send both men to their corners, and instead sent Sam barreling off at full force.
It had been for the best, but Dean knows it never looks that way when you’re sitting outside your baby brother’s apartment building wondering if he’s eating right. Or when he’s a brat who doesn’t pick up the phone for a year. So, just to make his brother squirm a little, Dean gives him the old “John Winchester thousand-yard glare”.
It works. He can practically see his brother sweat. Nancy, too, seems affected by Dean’s impression of his father. He’s glad suddenly that she’d never see the original.
He takes another sip of coffee before saying, “Saw some really nice houses up for sale in town. It’d be closer to work for both of you. I’ll talk to Max’s sister, Alicia, and see what kind of deal she can get you. “
Dean winks at Nancy, who rolls her eyes and lets out a relieved breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Sam relaxes, letting out a relieved chuckle.
“Thanks, Dean.” Then, tossing his damp napkin to the side, Sam asks, “You gonna be okay?”
“If I miss you, I’ll spit into your backyard.” Nancy clears her throat, nodding over to Sam. Dean rolls his eyes. “Besides, Cas’ll be around more now that he’s got that contract out of Barstow.”
Sam hits his knee on the table when he twitches in surprise. “That’s today?! Cas is moving in today!?”
Dean shrugs. “What’s there to move in? Dude lives out of his—”
“Dean,” Sam cuts him off. “That’s big news! Congratulations!” Nancy preens with Sam’s reaction as if it had been her own news and Dean gets the impression she had been both brother’s secret lunch-time confidants.
She goes off in search of pie for the brothers and when she returns with two slices (one small and one twice as large as it ought to be) Dean rubs his hands together and says, “You also better save for the engagement ring. Those are not cheap.”
Nancy’s eyes narrow but before she can ask why it was Dean knew how expensive engagement rings were, Sam groan and scrubs his face.
“You, too?! What is there, some kind of betting pool?”
Nancy tears her gaze from Dean to give Sam a reassuring smile. “Joshua’s a pretty small town, Mr. Winchester, and we don’t exactly have thrilling social lives. There’s nothing that brings our little Desert Rose Community together quite like a ‘will they or won’t they?’ We had a whole Facebook page for your brother and Cas. Of course, they’re pretty much old news now that they’re official.”
Dean had never been happier to be old news.
When Dean opens the door to the store, he hears Miracle get up from his comfortable pillow in the office. He rounds the corner of the counter with a smile on his furry face.
“Hey, buddy!” Dean says, reaching down to pet him.
“Hey, yourself,” Max teases. “That Aura of yours is absolutely dazzling. I take it Sam finally told you him and Eileen are getting a place.”
Dean chuckles, “Yeah, bout damn time too.”
“It’s too bad. It would have been so much more romantic if they waited 6 years to exchange phone numbers or something.”
Dean blushes, “Yeah, laugh it up, Criss Angel.”
The bell to the store rings and in walks a sweaty, suntanned Claire dressed in her USPS uniform. Miracle barks happily, jumping for the package in her hands.
“Woah Miracle, lemme put this down, buddy, it’s heavy,” she says in the sweet voice she reserves for the dog before glaring at Dean. “Your dad’s killing me with these packages.”
“Not my fault half of Joshua wants a copy of my book,” Dean says, folding his arms across his chest.
“You gonna sign for this, Naruda, or what?”
Dean takes her tablet and makes his mark. “They treating you okay over there at the post office?”
“Yeah, Suzie’s pretty cool and she says she’s gonna help me transfer when Kaia goes to school.”
“Whole big world out there,” Dean says, eyes softening.
Claire puts a hand on her hip. “I know, Mom . I was a runaway, remember?”
“Yeah, well.”
He hands back the tablet and motions for her to come in for a hug. Things were changing quickly in his small town and even though it was all for the better, he can’t help but feel a little vulnerable. Claire rolls her eyes and brings it in.
She smells like sunshine and squeezes him tightly.
When he doesn’t let her go right away, she pats his back. “Dean? I’m not leaving for, like, another month.”
Dean grunts, pulling away with a sniffle. “Whatever, Brat, get out of here.”
She leaves, smiling.
Castiel takes turns off the truck and takes his keys out of the ignition. Sitting proudly in the ring between a key to Gabriel’s storage locker in Boca Raton and the key to his new locker in the Barstow office was a little blue house key.
He’d use it another day, perhaps.
When Cas steps out of the rig, he can smell Burgers sizzling away on the grill. He smiles as his stomach gurgles in anticipation. Until he met Dean, Castiel hadn’t really thought much about what he was consuming. Food, television, sex; he just took whatever it was he was offered.
Dean taught him the joys of being particular.
When Castiel opens the garden fence, he’s sitting in a comfortable lawn chair under an enormous umbrella, shirtless with sunblock smeared on his tanned skin. He has a beer in one hand, a spatula in the other, and had his legs submerged in a small kiddie pull.
He is ridiculous.
He is beautiful.
“Look who it is. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Burt Reynolds.” Dean says, making a noise with his mouth like an entire audience cheering. Cas stops short of the pool and looks down into the face of his beloved.
Dean beams back up at him. “Heya, Cas.”
“Hello, Dean.”
They hold each other’s gaze like a hug before Dean takes stock of Cas and exclaims, “God, get out of all that. You’re making me sweat just looking at you.”
“Dean, I don’t sweat, under any circumstances.” Dean laughs but then frowns when he realizes he doesn’t actually have any evidence to the contrary.
Cas obliges him though, taking off his overcoat and suit jacket and laying them on the patio table. He undoes his tie next, rolls up his shirt and pant sleeves, and toes off his shoes and socks.
“You’re gonna ruin your shoes stepping on the backs of them like that,” Dean says thoughtfully.
Cas steps into the kiddy pull and sloshes his way over to the other lawn chair, the blue one that was set out just for him. It hisses and clicks a little under his weight.
“So, they’re giving you a vacation before you start?” Dean asks, turning his attention to the water.
Cas nods, enjoying the way the water flows around his feet as he moves them a little in the pool.
“Sorry, this ain’t a Carnival cruise or somethin,” Dean says gruffly. The refraction of light off the water wiggles over his handsome features, trying to hide the insecurity behind his eyes.
“I don’t like boats,” Cas says simply, taking Dean’s hand in his.
Dean looks at him, considering this new bit of information, and offers, “I don’t like flying.”
Cas chuckles. “I don’t care much for it either if I’m being honest. The novelty wears out pretty quick.”
“You used to fly?”
Cas freezes, realizing what he said. He looks at Dean, at his new home, and at the dog stretched out under the tarp in the shade and sighed.
If he was in for a penny, he was in for a pound.
“I used to be an angel, Dean.”
Castiel feels Dean tense next to him. He counts slowly and gets to fifteen before Dean sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand.
“Well, that explains how you’ve never seen Star Wars.”
Dean gets up, flips the burgers, and takes back his seat. “‘Used to be?’ That got a story attached to it?”
Relieved by Dean’s casual attitude, Castiel shrugs. “It’s not a very interesting story. We ruined the apocalypse and accidentally won the war.”
He reaches down to feel the swirl of the water on the tips of his fingers. “My brother Gabriel lost a bet.”
“Gabriel, like the archangel?”
Hearing the echo of Gabriel’s laugh, Castiel shakes his head and sighs. “That’s him. Back before we fell, he and James had made some sort of sports bet. When he lost, he had to take the form of an infant, I don’t remember why, and we lost track of him in the hospital.”
Castiel remembers frantically searching the maternity ward, wiggling on the red pumps of the borrowed vessel of a new aunt. His ankles ache sympathetically.
“It turns out demons had selected him to be the afternoon meal of Lilith, the first demon. Gabriel took exception to being eaten and smote her. With Lillith out of the picture early, there was no way to break the last seal on Lucifer’s cage.” Castiel sighs. “And without an epic, last battle to fight, what’s the point of being an angel?”
Dean looks out over his yard for a moment. “Serve God?” He asks with a shrug of his shoulder. “Play your harp up in paradise?”
Cas shakes his head. “I’m terrible at the harp. And we did away with God when we unionized. No one’s seen him in a couple of millennia. To be honest, it was a little depressing when the word came in that we had ‘fucked it all up’.” Cas kicks his feet in the water thoughtfully, “I was supposed to lead a garrison of soldiers into hell to ‘grip tight the righteous man to save him from perdition. Instead, I got assigned to babysit Thursdays.”
“So you threw a hissy fit and joined us poor schlubs here on earth?” Dean wonders.
Castiel nods. “I got a human job that allowed me to see how beautiful the world was. All these ‘schlubs’ are living and doing some amazing things. This is much better than being an angel.” He takes Dean’s hand again and rubs it with his thumb. “And, it turns out I got my shot rescuing the righteous man after all. Only instead of saving him from hellfire and restoring him to Earth, all I had to do was pick you up and bring you here.”
Dean swallows, “Me? I was supposed to be part of this ultimate battle of yours?”
“Yeah. I may not be an angel anymore, but they made my vessel in heaven. I could feel it the second I touched you the first time.”
“So what? Like fate or something?”
“I prefer to think of it as just extremely good luck.” He reaches over and kisses Dean, almost dizzy to do it in the middle of the day with no particular reason behind it. In an awed voice, he whispers, “I’m incredibly lucky to have met you.”
Dean smirks. “Hell yeah, you are.”
The conversation shifts to other things, Dean makes them lunch and they talk about his morning. Sam and Eileen are moving in together, the Server Nancy has changed careers, and Claire is moving to Irvine with Kaia in a few months.
“I know she’s been on the road before but—” Dean pauses mid-bite and then his eyes grew wide.
Castiel nods and completes the thought, “She’s young and recalcitrant?”
Dean snorts, “Yeah. That.”
“I was worried too and called home,” Castiel admits. "But Jimmy told me I didn’t need to worry about it. He knew where she was and when he tried to bring her home, my ‘mate’ punched him in the nose.”
Dean huffs, “well if I would have known he was her father, I would have begged him to take her.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. She’s much happier here. Most of us who fell are enjoying ourselves immensely.”
“Well,” says Dean, holding up his beer to clink with Castiel’s, “Welcome to the club, Cas.”
“Thank you.”
Near to 9 at night, the sun finally gives up trying to fry everyone to death and slinks off to sulk. The desert animals throw a party. Dean and Cas have long since retreated into the house to make out lazily on their (very comfortable) bed. Music drifts through the speakers on Dean’s cellphone. He’s humming along, rubbing little circles on Cas’s back.
This was paradise.
After a beautiful, breathy rendition of “Sweet Child of Mine,” Dean kisses his forehead and says in a low, sleepy voice. “I love you.”
“I know. I read your book,” Castiel jokes. Love and satisfaction anchor his body to the bed he looks up at Dean and asks, “Can I spend this life with you?”
“Sounds good, Cas.”
A year later:
Nancy misses the diner some days. It isn’t so much the job itself that she misses, it’s the people. Her boss, the noise, the stories from tired, grouchy old men, and the view. Benny’s diner always had the best view of the desert.
Just as she’s feeling a little lonely by herself in the police station early one morning, the lobby door opens, and in walks Mr. Winchester. Dean. Her favorite.
Whenever Cas had a day off, they’d go to breakfast and Dean stops by the police station carrying coffee and a styrofoam container with “TIPS FOR NANCY” written every time in Mr. Lafayette’s bold sharpie.
It makes her smile now. The first time she cried.
“Mornin’ Nancy!” He says, tapping on the glass between them.
Nancy goes to the door and lets herself into the lobby to get her breakfast. “Good morning, Mr. Winchester. Whatcha got there?”
“Breakfast for a lonesome cowgirl.”
“Thank you kindly, Sir.” Nancy tips an invisible hat and then takes the container and coffee from him.
“And-!” Dean produces a crisp envelope with a playful flourish. “This.” He puts it face-up on top and when she sees how fancy the script is on the front, she almost drops her meal.
Nancy hurries to put it down on the coffee table in the lobby and opens the envelope gently. She reads the first line and throws her arms around him, sweet tears rolling down her cheeks.
There’s gonna be a wedding.