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“Dean, did you know there are 31 towns in the United States named Winchester.”
“I did not.”
Castiel is perched on a shop stool, slippered toes wedged against the chrome foot rest that runs in a loop around the single central leg. Dean always glares when Cas doesn’t wear proper footwear in the bunker’s garage, but Cas continues to do it anyway. “I’m an angel, I believe my feet are safe,” he explains. “Mmm, you’re about half of one at this point and I don’t think you really want to be testing which half can handle getting a wrench dropped on it while you’re just wearing socks,” Dean counters. Neither of them will ever change their mind about which of them is right.
“There’s a Winchester, Kansas.”
“D’you think they sell t-shirts?” Dean’s under the Impala, working on an oil change that turned into a general tune up about an hour ago because he hadn’t wanted to stop his tinkering just yet. His voice is taut with concentration on whatever it is he’s doing down there, and a breathy “Shit…” punctuates his question, followed immediately by the sound of something small and metal clacking against the shop floor where it’s fallen.
“Hmm, no, the current population is 461 so I think that's unlikely.”
Cas falls back into silence while Dean finishes up, the only sounds the occasional grunt of effort and the quiet shuffle of Cas’ slippered feet against the foot rest.
Finally, Dean rolls out from under the car, socket wrench gripped loosely in a hand stained dark with grease and soot. He doesn’t get up from the creeper right away, just lays there letting his arms rest from being held in an awkward position for the better part of the afternoon. Just lays there thinking. “Would be kinda fun to have a shirt from each one.”
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“Hey Sam, anything going on I should know about?” Dean, showered and changed and scrutinizing the slightly expired mayo he’s just pulled out of the refrigerator, still has a little car gunk deep under his fingernails. He rubs them a few times on his jeans then decides he’d have to try pretty hard to get what’s there into the BLTs he’s making. And even if they do somehow become BLTGs, Dean and Sam have, in all certainty, eaten worse. He shrugs; the mayonnaise is probably fine too.
“Uh, like, with me?” Sam looks up from his laptop, drumming his fingers. His phone buzzes on the table next to him.
“No I, wait is there?”
“No. Why do you ask?” Sam closes the computer, attention fully on his brother now.
“Why do you ask?”
“You asked first.” His phone buzzes again.
Dean rolls his eyes. “I meant if there were any hunts you knew about, what’d you think I meant?” Dean eyes the bacon that’s draining on a paper towel and decides he can spare a slice.
“Nothing, I—” Sam’s phone buzzes twice in quick succession.
“Dude who is texting you?” Bacon and mild annoyance mingle to slur Dean’s words.
“N—, uh, hey!”
Too late, Dean’s swiped Sam’s phone off the table and starts to read aloud. “Eileen says… Eileen!” He shoves the last of the bacon in his mouth to give himself a free hand to gesture as he reads aloud, but quickly falls silent, his grin widening as he makes his way through the last few texts.
“Dean, come on, give me my phone back.”
“Oh Sam, you dog, you two are gonna ‘do some research’?”
“We are! She’s tracking a… uh, something. That’s what we’re going to, you know, work on.” It’s an astonishing thing to admit, but Sam might actually be a worse liar than Cas.
“Yeah mhmm, I didn’t believe you when you said that when you were 14 and I don’t believe you now.”
“I was doing homework when I was 14!”
“Except that one time.”
“Alright yeah, except that one time. Why’re you asking about hunts?”
“Was just thinking, if there isn’t anything going on, maybe Cas and I could take a drive, be gone a few days.”
“Awww, you’re going on a honeymoon.”
Now it’s Dean’s turn to deflect the conversation, and he directs his attention back to the huge foofy farmer’s market heirloom tomato he’d been in the middle of slicing. “Come on, we’re not even married.”
“You two are way beyond married.”
Dean stops and looks up like he’s listening to something, flashing a nervous smile like a kid who just got caught with his hand in a candy jar before turning back to Sam. “He says that he can hear us, his uh, his angel hearing still works just fine, and that we are in fact married. Sorry babe!” he shouts into the air above him as he slides a few slices of bread into the toaster.
At first it had been a little odd, this whole “Dean being able to hear Cas’ prayers” thing. A lot odd maybe. A lot odd definitely if you were Sam. Castiel had been right that prayer was borne of a particular state of mind much more than it was any specific topic, so anything, really, could be a prayer. But it was hard to maintain that frame of mind without looking “contemplative” (Cas’ word), or “constipated” (Dean’s), so even though the potential for unspoken communication was always present between them now, it rarely materialized as the sci-fi telepathy Dean had always imagined it to be.
Rarely, but not never, because sometimes Cas would ask Dean to explain a joke in something they were watching, not aloud but, for some strange reason, through the sacred communion of prayer. The third time it happened, Why does Mister Freeze keep using the wrong words? carefully enunciated right on the edge of too loud into Dean’s brain alongside a few abstract swirls of color and the residual echo of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice saying “Ice to see you”, Dean finally asked what was up with all the movie night prayers.
“I’m embarrassed.”
“You’re embarrassed that you don’t get Mister Freeze’s puns?”
“Cas doesn’t get Mister Freeze’s puns?” Sam asked from his recliner, like this was big news, a break in the case, the sort of thing a younger Sam would have preceded with a breathless “So, get this!”
“This is why I didn’t want to say anything.”
(Later in the movie, Castiel would pray to Dean asking why the nipples on the Batsuits were so prominent.)
But Cas wasn’t the only one to make blasphemously cavalier use of the power of heaven. When he was feeling especially bored or just generally like a little shit and didn’t have anything better to do, Dean would “go prayer mode” and annoy the hell out of his unofficially official husband by closing his eyes, furrowing his brow, scrunching up his shoulders, and beaming as much of Queensrÿche’s “Silent Lucidity” into Cas’ poor, unprotected mind as he could manage.
“Dean!” Castiel would shout from across the bunker, when he got to the goofy spoken word interlude and recited it with as much gravity as he could muster. Dean’s frown of concentration would turn into a grin, but he wouldn’t stop.
“Dude, you look like that one guy from the original Star Trek who glared everybody to death.”
“Charlie X.” Dean said without hesitation, not opening his eyes or seeming at all disturbed in his efforts to lovingly bother Cas.
“Yeah, him.”
“He looked stupid when he did that.”
“Yeah well, he’s not the only one.”
Dean unscrunched his face and then immediately rearranged it into a glare directed at his brother.
“Thank you, Sam!” Cas yelled in relief from somewhere deeper in the bunker.
But really, for the most part it isn’t too weird.
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They spend that night deciding which Winchester they ought to go to, laying in bed and talking in the dark. Dean suggests the one in Mississippi since it’s a ghost town so they can probably scrounge up a job while they’re there, but Cas objects on account of, for once, not wanting to have to be in mortal danger just to spend some time with Dean. Besides, Cas counters, several of the Winchesters are ghost towns. Cas offers up the Winchesters in Massachusetts (“Eww, Massachusetts, no.”), New Hampshire (“Dude I don’t want to go to New England.”), and the original one in old England (“Ha ha, you’re hilarious.”) before finally throwing out…
“Indiana?” Dean opens his mouth, clearly about to complain about this pick as well, but Cas cuts him off before he can say anything.
“According to the map, there is a large pie factory in Winchester, Indiana.”
“Oh?”
“And a speedway.”
“A speedway…”
Cas taps his phone and starts reading. “‘A speedway is an arena where specialized racing cars drive in a closed loop, usually an oval, at very high rates of speed.’”
“I know what a speedway is.”
“Just making sure. Would you like a shirt from the Winchester Speedway?” Cas asks, already knowing the answer.
“You’re damn right I would.” Dean yawns, running a hand through his hair and shifting on his pillow, finding the perfect spot.
“There are many, many different types of oval racetracks, Dean,” Cas says, still propped up against the headboard a little, his bewildered squint lit by the glow of a phone that’s now being held far too close to his face. “It’s… excessive. I’m not sure this level of specificity is really necessary.”
“Never should have told you about wikipedia.” Dean gently pries the phone out of the other man’s hand and sets it on his night stand. “Come on sunshine, try to get some sleep. We got shit to do tomorrow.”
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They head out early the next morning, not because they’re in any sort of rush but because they want to give themselves the time and space for a leisurely trip if they want it. It won’t be a long drive, just two days there and and other two back, with maybe a day, day and a half in Winchester. It’s not a big place, and other than the raceway and a few slices of pie Dean doesn’t think there’s going to be a whole lot to do. If this were a job he’d be there in a single day’s drive, but it isn’t, and despite Dean’s earlier scoffing about this being a honeymoon, yeah it kinda really maybe is, and you don’t rush those.
Unfortunately, they get off to a bit of a false start, Dean remembering after just a few miles that he forgot to fill up Baby the last time he took her out. It’s while he’s standing in the gas station minimart trying to decide between a couple different breakfast sandwiches that he hears it.
Dean, get me a Moon Pie.
Except it isn’t so much heard as felt. Dean’s step falters as he’s hit with pure sensation, an overwhelming mouthful of soft graham cracker and marshmallow and that slick fake chocolate, coating his teeth and his tongue and the back of his throat. He opens his mouth, instinctively, trying to dislodge the flavor. It doesn’t work.
Okay , he tries to say back. I hear you. But he can’t focus himself the way he needs to to turn a thought into a prayer. He waits for Cas to stop drowning his brain in the essence of Moon Pie, but the guy just keeps going, insistent, the way a kid is when they really really want something. MomCanIHaveSomeCakeMomCanIHaveSomeCake…
When he realizes he’s not going to be able to get through to Cas this way, Dean leans out the door of the store, jangling the bell, and makes eye contact with the angel staring intently at him from the car. “Cas. I got it.”
Castiel dips his head and the river of thought immediately retreats from Dean’s mind.
A few minutes later, before Cas can ask, three double decker Moon Pies land in his lap where Dean tosses them one by one.
“You gotta learn how to turn down the volume, buddy.”
“My apologies. I… wanted a Moon Pie.”
“Yeah, I got that!” Dean runs his tongue over his teeth, the echo of flavor and texture still present, stale and sickly sweet like unbrushed teeth the morning after a bender.
Castiel moans quietly from the passenger seat, face the same picture of quiet bliss that Dean had seen all those years ago, the night they’d been about to take on Famine together. “Do those ‘make you very happy’?”
Cas laughs to himself, like maybe he’s a little stoned on cheap graham cracker and marshmallow. “They do.”
Dean unwraps the first of his breakfast sandwiches (he got both, sue him) and shakes his head, hoping the lingering flavor of Moon Pie goes okay with an egg sausage biscuit. “Y’know I guess those are kind of like burgers.” He takes a bite. Not bad.
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The second time they stop for gas, the line inside moves like a glacier. Some lady is arguing with the guy behind the counter about scratchers and Dean has no choice but to entertain himself with a thorough examination of the impulse buys lined up near the register. Bic lighters in every color (oh, the orange is new); dubious boner pills (as always); little bottles of 5 Hour Energy in increasingly unlikely flavors (piña colada, really?); and a tray of small terra cotta pots containing tiny succulents and cactuses.
There’s something that looks like a miniature version of the aloe vera plants Lisa had in the guest bathroom, some kind of plant that’s like strands of green balls that looks ridiculous but feels nice to run his fingers though, and then there’s… this other one. Just a round thing the size of a golf ball with white hairs all over it that Dean knows will stick like a bitch if he tries to touch them. It’s kinda ugly to be honest, and there’s this other one that looks way cooler and even has a little flower on it, but when Dean reads the tag sticking out of the soil of the white hairball he knows this is one he has to get.
The scratcher crisis is eventually solved and Dean’s able to put down a cool hundred on three and another five for an ugly cactus.
The car barely sways when Dean slides in, 24 gallons of god’s own gasoline weighing her down good. “Here Cas, got you something.”
“Oh.” Cas seems a little confused by the gift and sets the cactus in a dip on the dash, tucked to one side against the curve of the windshield.
“What’re you gonna name it?”
“Um,” Cas, who wasn’t planning to name the cactus anything because it’s a cactus, says the first thing that pops into his mind. “Thriggh’mal.”
“‘Thrig’— what?”
“He was a very nice man.”
“When’d you meet this ‘very nice man'?”
“Approximately 46,000 years ago.”
“Mmm yeah, of course.”
“At La Ferrassie, in Aquitaine.”
“Wait, is this the caveman guy whose poetry you keep trying to recite to me when I can’t sleep?”
“Neanderthal, Dean, or Shjaal, though as a modern human you wouldn’t know him as that.” Cas appears to be genuinely offended on Thriggh’mal’s behalf. “And yes.”
“Well, it does put me to sleep, I’ll give him that.”
“Dean, it’s a haunting lament on the passage of seasons and the lifecycle of the European red deer.”
“Look I got you the cactus for a reason and it’s not because I wanted a lecture on caveman poetry.” (Cas scowls at the word “caveman.”) “Look at the tag. What does it say?”
Cas picks up the tiny pot and squints at the care instructions stuck into the soil. “Mammillaria senilis.”
Dean’s Latin isn’t great. It’s better than the average person’s, of course, because the average person isn’t conjuring and banishing demons on a regular basis or performing sketchy spellwork out of the trunk of their car. But it’s not as good as Sam’s and it’s certainly not as good as Cas’, who so far appears to speak every language on Earth except Klingon. But Dean knows enough, and what he knows he knows well, so he knows what Castiel just read.
“Senile boob.” Dean grins.
Cas sets the cactus back on the dash. “Thank you, Dean.”
Not too much later, they stop in Hannibal for the night, holing up in a motel tucked off to the side of the town. They’re right on the Mississippi River, and barges go by all night long, their lights peering into the small room like nosy neighbors. Dean could have done without the disturbance, but it gives Castiel something to do when he wakes up after just a few hours of shallow sleep.
Sitting at the small table, he looks out at the black water, watches the ships pass under the bridge’s hulking steel frame, listens to Dean breathe, even and deep. Listens when Dean's breaths get shallow and quick, halting in front of the stuff of nightmares, shuddering at something Castiel can’t see. He gets up, goes back over to the bed, and pulls the man close.
“Hey,” Cas says to a confused Dean, freshly roused from sleep. “You were dreaming.”
“...Yeah,” but the look in Dean’s eyes, like he’s hunting the corners of the dark room for something he knows he just saw, gives it away. He may not remember it all, but he knows he wasn't dreaming, that it wasn't a dream , that it was something else. He could fight the polite fib of what Cas had said, the gentleness of it, the… if anyone else had said it the pity of it, but instead he leans into Cas and closes his eyes again, and soon he is dreaming, while a barge slips past, heavy and slow.
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They haven’t even been on the road for an hour when Dean exclaims “Shit, did you see that?”
“What?”
“Exit for Winchester, three miles!”
It’s a small town, just 1500 people or so, but they take the quick detour to drive through it anyway. There’s a Chevy dealership and a bowling alley and not a whole lot else, but it’s worth it to be able to get off the highway for a bit. Most of this section of 36 is not at all the backroads Dean prefers – it’s boring as hell and straight across – so he’s happy for any opportunity to change the scenery. That he’s actually got a good one in Winchester, Illinois, just makes it even better.
“Hey there’s a statue,” Dean gestures at the town square they’re parked on, the Impala popping and ticking around them as she settles after the morning’s drive.
“I see that, yes.”
“Probably a plaque or something explaining it.”
“Mmm, probably.”
“Do you want to get out and read it?”
“Not particularly. Do you?”
“Nope.” They sit in silence for 10 more seconds before Dean lets out an “Okay!” and starts the ignition.
They spend 4 minutes and 32 seconds in Winchester, Illinois, but it counts. Cross it off the list.
A bit further on they hit Springfield and Dean takes another detour. This one isn’t a surprise, hell isn’t even new – every time he’s near here and has the time to spare he takes this little side trip.
“Where are we going?” Cas asks as it becomes clear they’ve left the highway behind and are heading onto increasingly narrow roads.
“You’ll see.”
There are a lot of touristy joints around here vying for his attention as a motorist, but Dean ignores them. They’re fine and he’s even had good times at some of them, but he knows what he’s here for and it’s not something with a brand new neon sign pointing to it. They drive a little longer, through a town that gives way to a wide-open landscape of fields and farms. Whatever all those neon signs were for, it seems like they must have left it behind. But then, after one last turn, Baby hits something rough.
“What—”
“Route 66,” Dean says with a smile as he looks over at Cas. “Original brick roadway. I drive on this every chance I get.”
“I don’t understand.” Castiel looks both alarmed and confused by just how bumpy the ride is. Dean’s had to slow down to 30 tops, and even at this low speed and in a heavy car, the brick vibrates unpleasantly under them.
“Before all the highways there were other roads instead, and Route 66 was the best of ‘em. LA to Chicago, people passing through small towns, staying at cheap motels, seeing the country.”
“This sounds like what you do now, on any road.”
“I guess it does.”
“But this one is different?”
“This one is different.”
The road’s already smoothed out underneath them, the old brick portion only a mile or two long. Dean pats Baby’s dash and heads back toward the highway.
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“I’m not hungry.”
“Come on Cas, we’ve been over this. We’ll get you something small, off the kid’s menu.”
Cas scowls. “I am over 400 million years old.”
“How ‘bout some loaded hashbrowns?”
“We’re stopped for dinner.”
“We’re at a truckstop Cas,” Dean gestures at the Flying J logo on the menu in front of him. “24 hour breakfast, one of the perks.”
“What are the hashbrowns ‘loaded’ with?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It seems like it would very much matter.”
“It really doesn’t. You see loaded hashbrowns on a menu, you’re gonna be eatin’ good.”
When the food arrives, Dean takes a moment before digging into his own meal to fuss over Cas, pushing the plate closer to him and jabbing the air with a fork. “Eat up.”
“You are frustrating and persistent and—”
“And you love it.”
“I was going to say you are like a gnat.”
“A hot gnat,” Dean says around a mouthful of eggs.
“Well...”
“With a sweet ride.” Dean pauses to shovel another bite into his mouth. “A gnat that's hot and has a nice car and makes you eat hashbrowns when you don't really want to.”
“Precisely.”
“I can live with that.”
Dean eats fast, not because he’s in a hurry but because eating is something he loves to do, and when Dean Winchester loves to do something he does it with his whole self, body and soul. Castiel, on the other hand, takes his time. Dean was right about the hashbrowns being good, and as usual once he’d started eating Cas had understood that he was hungrier than he’d felt, but eating’s still a more mechanical than instinctual process for him. Human enough to need to do it but angel enough to need to really think about doing it, it is, frankly, a pain in the ass. But Dean is patient, sitting and drinking a cup of coffee that the waitress keeps endlessly refreshing, gazing out the window at the 18-wheelers passing in and out of the parking lot outside. He has nowhere to be except right where he is, and it’s nice. When Cas is finally done and they get up to leave, Dean sees that there’s still a piece of toast left and he grabs it for the road.
On the way into Winchester an hour later, the sun setting behind them as the sky paints itself purple bleeding into deep blue ahead, Dean looks over at Cas. Attention flicking back and forth between the road and the angel, he just looks. Castiel doesn’t notice, eyes turned the other way, watching the fields as they pass by, deep in thought.
There isn’t much to do in Winchester this time of day, the place all packed up and gone home for early evening, that much is clear as they drive through. For a guy who does so much of his life’s work at night, especially in these small kinds of places, it feels too early to turn in. The flat white of a drive-in screen stands in the distance, bookending the town, and Dean tilts his chin at it.
“Hey,” Dean says in the silence, “You wanna see a movie?”
The theater is showing Blood Simple, and Dean laughs when he reads the marquee. “You haven’t seen this one. It’s good, not a great date movie though. Tried to impress a girl back in high school, picking this at the video store. I don’t know what I was thinkin’.”
The lot is only half full, not bad for a 30-something-year-old movie on a Friday night, and Dean has no trouble finding a good spot. “C’mere,” Dean says, slouching himself against the door and motioning for Cas to move over into his space. They’ve still got a good 20 minutes before the feature starts, and for a while they make use of it by just enjoying each others’ presence.
“You okay?”
Cas is fidgeting, frowning at his hand, flexing it, turning it; palm up, palm down. “Yes. I’m just…” He rubs his other hand down his arm, one long swiping motion ending at his fingertips. “Do you feel like you?”
“‘M’not sure what you mean.”
“Do you feel like you’re in your body, or like you are your body?”
Dean thinks. “The second one. And mind too obviously, but they’re all one thing. I don’t…” Dean stops and consciously, deliberately tests how he feels. “Yeah I’m, I’m me.”
“I had hoped, as I grew used to my new levels of grace and my more human state, that I would also feel like me.”
“And you don’t?”
“I do not.”
“I don’t mean to be rude but, this ain’t exactly new. You’ve been possessing a guy since I met you. Why’s it bothering you now all of a sudden?”
“It’s not sudden, but it’s, I feel it more now. Maybe because of my changing grace or maybe simply because I’ve never stayed in a vessel for this length of time before. When I took on Claire—” Cas stops himself, looking back on his brief possession of Jimmy’s daughter with new perspective, new empathy. “That was… inappropriate, to possess a child. I should not have done that.”
“Well you did save her from getting sliced up or barbequed or whatever by some demons. And also me and Sam, so thanks.”
“Perhaps, but truthfully that was not my motivation; I simply needed a vessel to continue my mission and she was the most convenient. Hank was on something called a ‘booze cruise’ in Lake Erie near Cleveland at the time and was far too inebriated to properly consent.”
“Who the hell is Hank?”
“Jimmy’s second cousin.”
“Oh. Okay.” Dean briefly imagines a scenario in which he’s lived the last several years of his life getting closer and closer to Hank, or at least the version of Cas who looks like Hank. Fighting alongside him, fighting with him, falling in love. He doesn’t know what Hank even looks like, but he knows the whole idea bothers him. “Thanks for being sloshed that night,” Dean thinks.
Cas smiles. “I heard that.”
“Yeah yeah, so what does all this have to do with your hand?”
“You feel like you are you. I feel like I live in a house that everyone thinks is me but that I know is not. I move between its rooms and speak to passersby through the open door, raising my voice to be heard by people who stand on the sidewalk and talk to the house instead of to me, and look out at the world through the open windows, but I am always inside this house.”
“You want to leave? Fly around as swirly shit for a while, or… do you want a different vessel?” Dean gets nervous. He likes this vessel. Despite everything Castiel has just tried to explain to him, Dean thinks of it as an integral part of Cas. In fact, he really only thinks of it as a vessel when he’s reminded. He realizes he might be one of the people who talks to the house, and he doesn’t like it.
“No. I don’t know if I can safely exist outside a vessel anymore anyway. When you pray to me, it feels like you’re inside the house with me and it’s not so lonely. Sam, Charlie, perhaps also now Eileen, they all come to the door, which I appreciate. Only you come inside.”
“Aww,” Dean grabs Cas’ hand, the one he’d been looking at so strangely just a few minutes before, “And when you pray to me it’s like someone slipped me the brown acid.”
“Dean.”
“It’s just all colors, man. Trippy shit. Colors and about a hundred Moon Pies in my mouth at once.” Dean grins, then leans over and brushes a kiss on Cas’ cheekbone, his lips.
The show starts not long after, and Dean was right – it’s not a date movie, but Cas loves it anyway.
It’s late when they check in, the Stardust Motel exactly what someone would expect from the name: small mismatched rooms, great sign, kinda strange but ultimately good guy running the place. When he tells Dean he’s only got a single queen left, he does it with such genuine apology that for once Dean is actually glad to put himself in what he still feels is an awkward situation in these small towns and explain that really, it’s fine, he and his “friend” (the guy’s word) have no problem sharing. Ten minutes after settling into the room, Castiel answers a knock at the door to find the old guy wheeling in a rollaway bed and not taking no for an answer. It sits unused in the corner all night, and the night after, and Dean wonders what the guy’s going to think when he sees its untouched state after they check out. He’ll either find some way to be even more sure he ruined their stay, or he’ll experience the revelation of a lifetime. Sometimes two guys really are okay with sharing a bed, and it’s not because they’re just being polite.
The next morning it’s race day but before that it’s pie day – Castiel hadn’t been joking, there truly is an actual honest-to-god pie factory with a sit-down cafe in the middle of this little town. Dean’s thrilled, obviously, and makes no attempt to hide it, all smiles and charm as he asks the waitress what’s best.
“The rhubarb.”
“Rhubarb?”
“I’m tellin’ ya.”
“Well uh, what’s the second best then?”
“Not the adventurous sort, is he?” she asks Castiel.
“Oh, no, he travels widely.” Cas was not expecting to be drawn into this conversation.
“Guess not to anywhere with world famous rhubarb pie.”
“No,” Castiel thinks about Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and every other unlikely place Dean’s been and has a hard time imagining rhubarb pie in any of them. The city of Lawrence, Kansas – 1973 or 1978 – surely had pie in it somewhere, but whether it was rhubarb and whether it was world famous at that, Castiel couldn’t say. Nobody had been in a position to investigate the local pie scene as they were, in Dean and Sam’s case, busy staving off the apocalypse, and in Cas’ busy bleeding out in a honeymoon suite with atrocious decor. “They were not. Probably.”
“Alright alright.” Dean’s supposed to be the one this old gal is enamored with, not Cas. “How’s the peach?”
“The peach’ll do.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“How ‘bout the blueberry?”
“Blueberry’ll really do.”
“Slice of blueberry then, and coffee, black.”
“Blue and black. And how ‘bout you?”
Cas looks back down at the menu for a moment before answering “Peanut butter, thank you.”
“Peanut butter pie at nine in the morning, a man after my own heart. Be back in just a bit with your coffee, boys.”
The blueberry pie truly is incredible, and though Castiel has nothing to compare it against since he’s never eaten it before, he suspects the peanut butter is as well.
They linger and drink more coffee than they probably should but the ladies just keep coming with the refills. 30 minutes in Dean orders a second slice of pie, this time strawberry, which isn’t something he normally goes for but it’d caught his eye and the crust is buttery and crumbly and it’s almost like strawberry shortcake and pie had a baby and it’s, oh it’s good.
Castiel smiles from behind his coffee mug. “You’re enjoying that.”
“Yeah, my moaning telling you that? Or no, probably…” Dean points to his temple with his fork. “Getting you back for those Moon Pies yesterday. You wanna try?”
Cas sets his mug down when Dean pushes the plate toward him.
“The crunch of these seeds is… unsettling.” Cas frowns. “But the flavor is quite good, yes.”
After a while – and a few more cups of coffee – they figure it’s finally time to get a move on. When Dean returns from paying the check, he plops something onto the table. “Got you something.”
Cas looks down at the wad of deep red fabric in front of him. Dean’s wearing his “Winchester, Virginia” shirt, the one Cas had shoved into Dean’s hands almost exactly the same way a few months ago. He shakes the fabric out and sees that Dean’s returned the favor with a shirt that reads “Sweet as Pie”.
“What if it’s lemon merengue?”
“Even if it’s lemon merengue. Or an extra tart key lime. Or something that’s been left in the oven a little too long and now the edges of the crust are kinda dry and burnt. Lucky for you Cas, I have yet to meet a pie I didn’t at least sort of like. Hell, I once ate a pie baked from scratch by an actual literal raised-from-the-dead zombie, zombie hands in there working the dough and everything…” Dean looks wistful for a moment, conflicted, like he just bit into something with a different texture than he was expecting. “That was a real fucked up situation, I’m not gonna lie, but the pie was good.”
“Thank you, Dean.”
“You're welcome, Cas,” Dean says, jokingly matching the other man’s seriousness for a moment. “Alright c’mon, let’s go.”
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It’s only 11am – first race doesn’t start til 2 – and already the sparse grass of the field that serves as the speedway’s parking lot is half full, people setting up lawn chairs and digging through coolers. A nice anthracite gray ‘62 Bug sits off across the short side of the lot, backed in against the dense stand of trees that fills the field next door, and that’s where Dean points his Baby. The owner of the old VW gives him a nod of appreciation as the Impala pulls up, and as more folks arrive at the track an impromptu car show aggregates around them.
A Gremlin and a pretty decent Chevelle show up, and a couple of locals add their old work trucks to it too. It’s not an exclusive affair, no one’s snobby about one car being better than another or asking whether a 50-year-old Ford pickup with sacks of chicken feed in the bed belongs alongside an even older Mustang with a pristine paint job. It’s just people who appreciate the same sorts of things enjoying a nice afternoon together.
From where he sits in front of Baby, perched on the trusty green cooler with a beer in his hand and sunglasses and a smile on his face, Dean can’t see Castiel but he’s sure he knows what he’s up to. A subtle, contented warmth comes from the other man, not intruding on Dean’s space, but gently brushing up against it. While the field around them bustles – part tailgate, part block party – Cas looks upward, watching the swallows and flycatchers as they dance and dart here and there in the air above, acrobats on wing.
His thoughts are tangerine and teal blue as his attention turns from the sky to the whole of the present moment. Dean laughs at something and stands, gesturing that the older man who’d come buy, hands in pockets and ratty ballcap on head, was welcome to take a closer look at the car he’d been admiring. Castiel feels a brief impression of Bobby come from Dean, of grief and love, and he looks on as Dean shows this man Baby’s engine and tells him of the last time he’d rebuilt it, and knows he’s telling someone else too.
As the day wears on, moving from morning to noon and beyond, it finally gets warm enough for Castiel to feel it. Judging by the hand fans people have brought out and the fact that Dean had discarded his flannel some point and is just in his shirtsleeves, it’s downright hot out for anyone who isn’t an angel living with half a tank. He walks over to Dean and shoos him off the cooler, grabbing a drink of his own before going back to watching the birds.
“Thunderstruck” plays over the loudspeakers for the fifth time that day as the tailgate starts to wind down. Even so, people are still milling around a bit, grabbing one last beer with the guys, one last lap around the parking lot’s festivities. A woman wanders up to Baby, smiles appreciatively at the car and then at Dean. She’s a bit older, a bit rough, no way around it, the kind of woman John would have called “rode hard and put away wet.” But unlike John, Dean had always been in the life, so where John had seen himself as separate in some ways from the sorts of people who lived on the fringe, Dean saw himself as one and the same. Who was he, a man who’d slept more nights in his car than he could count and who’d sought out a night’s comfort wherever he could find it, to judge?
The lady knows her cars, that much is true; she asks questions about the motor and gives out compliments like candy. But Dean knows when he’s being picked up and boy is that exactly what’s happening here. He basks in it a little, not enough to string her along, but just enough to soak up the warmth. Finally though, when she makes an especially unsubtle comment about the backseat, he decides it’s time to let this gal down easy.
“Oh sweetheart, shoulda met me ten years ago. I’m here with someone.” Dean gestures back toward Cas, who’s deep in conversation with the owner of the Bug about something.
“Aww, your friend’s not gonna mind.”
“Mmm no, I think he would.”
There’s a pause, a start and a stop as the woman works through what Dean’s getting at. He can tell that at first she’d thought he was calling his friend a prude, someone who’d object to a quick hookup just on principle. But then she looks back at Cas, and then at Dean again, and it’s clear that the gears are turning behind her eyes. She opens her mouth and Dean braces himself for something that’s going to really ruin his good mood and his buzz, but instead she smiles and shrugs and says “Three’s a party.”
Dean laughs, surprise and relief and appreciation all there in the sound. “Gotta pass, but thanks for coming over and taking a look at the car.”
“Alright well, if you or your honey change your mind…” And she’s gone with a wink and a toss of dark feathered hair.
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“Is this all that’s going to happen?” Cas asks, squinting into the sun a half an hour later.
“Pretty much, yeah. They just go around and around until someone wins.”
“What about this do people find entertaining?”
“Well, sometimes the cars crash.”
“Dean.”
He laughs at Cas’ admonishment, but Dean’s only half paying attention to the race. He’d whistled and cheered when the cars had come out of the pit, a line of old Crown Vics bought at police auctions and turned into small town fun, but after that he’d kind of checked out. As much as Dean loves cars he isn’t really an auto race guy. And besides, that hadn’t been the point in coming out here, not even for the “Winchester Speedway” t-shirt he’s now clutching in one hand. The point was in the being, in enjoying some time alone with the man next to him, while nobody needed saving and nothing needed doing.
He looks out across the stands, at the people around him, at the sky, at the cars, at Cas, and he feels good.
“Hey, where’s next on that list, sunshine?”