Chapter Text
Chapter Mixtape:
- What You Do to My Soul by Air Traffic Controller
- Kiss the Misfits by Felix Hagan and the Family
- Medicine for Melancholy by Rivers Cuomo
The full playlist with all songs in chapter order is available here.
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So you hate your job? Well just forget it 'cos it's over now
The suit doesn't suit you, boy. So shed it 'cos it's over now
-”Kiss the Misfits”, Felix Hagan and the Family
“Your shirt is inside out.” is the first thing out of Dean Winchester’s mouth when Castiel pauses his presentation to ask “any questions?” He looks down at himself, sees the seam running up his side and tries not to let it get to him. He owns ten shirts (all identical), four ties, and one jacket, in the attempt to not draw any attention to his appearance, which makes it even more aggravating that it’s being pointed out by a new, snarky candidate. He’s tempted to duck his head, the spark of embarrassment making him feel young and incompetent. He stuffs it down.
“Winchester?” He replies instead, in a clipped tone. “I asked if you had questions. Save your extemporaneous comments for the end.”
Dean’s jaw tightens, then releases, and he chuckles. “Sorry, sir. Wasn’t tryin’ to create a ruckus.” His gaze looks Castiel up and down, and Castiel has to resist the urge to check that the rest of his appearance isn’t also a socially inept disaster.
Instead, he sucks in a breath and glares at the new candidate. “Then stop disturbing my class.” He turns away, back towards the holo-screen. He pinches the screen with a finger to zoom in on the projection that’s showing the figure of a person, until it’s a close up of their face, mouth open, sharp teeth jutting out just below the gumline.
“This is what a werewolf looks like when they’re alert, but not yet feral. At this point, they still have human mental capabilities as well as werewolf-level strength, which makes them exceptional hunters. This is a sign that it’s your last window to take one alive before it chooses to attack. You can still reason with a wolf when they’re in this state, though you should be prepared for them to become feral at any moment. If you’re able to take a wolf alive at this stage, then, IF they haven’t fed yet, they can be cured. This state only lasts for an hour or two at most before they will transition to fully feral, at which point, they will not be able to control the urge to feed.” He purses his lips. “If they feed before they get to the feral stage, but you’re still able to to secure them and bring them in to HQ, they can be humanely killed, which is the Corp’s preferred method, rather than killing them in the field.”
There’s the soft tapping sound of candidates noting down information on their slim, Corp issued tablets, and he’s just settling in, the disturbance from a few minutes ago forgotten, when the same voice speaks up again.
“There’s no cure if they’ve fed? What if they don’t want to feed again? Can’t we help them?” Dean says. When Castiel looks up, Dean is perched on the edge of his seat, a shock of dirty-blond hair falling into his eyes. He wears a blue-brown plaid shirt loosely hanging off a skinny, almost emaciated frame, but still, the energy he’s emitting is electric, his entire posture screaming “ready for a fight.”
Castiel is confident he could win that fight, particularly when it comes to anything related to hunting (he hasn’t climbed the ranks in the Corp for nothing), but he’d rather cut incompetence off at the source, quickly, efficiently. This is basic information, after all - werewolves are one of the most common monsters to meet in the field - but he’s never seen a candidate come in asking how to save one before.
“Unfortunately, that’s irrelevant. If they’ve fed, they have to be put down.” Castiel says in a clipped tone. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Winchester.”
Dean’s eyebrows shoot up nearly to his hairline, and he sits up in his chair, that electricity he’s giving off in his focused stare only increasing.
He proceeds to ask quite a number of questions that Castiel would consider stupid. He asks if werewolves are still human when they’re not in feral wolf form, and if they are, shouldn’t they be consulted about their own fates? He asks if sentient monsters deserve choices. He asks if vampires could be rehabilitated with animal blood. He asks if Castiel is single and if that’s why his outfit looks like a drunk toddler dressed him. He asks if Castiel has even hunted before.
His volley of questions comes so fast and so continually that Castiel is quickly drowning in it. Dean gives him the chance to answer every question, but he also adds a rebuttal to every explanation that Castiel has carefully prepared. He finds himself fiddling with the tablet in his hands, his fingers sliding over the cool metal, trying to ground himself.
Finally, Castiel has to admit that he’s entirely lost the rest of the class. They’re tittering every time that Dean opens his mouth. Castiel is deeply regretting his policy of taking every newbie’s question seriously. Dean’s questions are not only (mostly) not serious, but fifteen minutes in, they seem to be actively trying to get a rise out of him. Dean seems not only annoyed at his carefully crafted hunting related questions, but is actively combatting the answers.
Castiel is exhausted from giving answers to Dean’s inane queries, and he’s beginning to develop a stress headache.
Ten minutes later, he snaps.
“Winchester. If you have this many questions, you might not be ready for what the Corp does. I’d suggest that you speak to whoever recruited you. If you do return tomorrow, I’d like to see that you at least have some actually useful hunting knowledge or experience under your belt - or I don’t know how you managed to get yourself accepted in the first place.” He stares Dean down with every word, pulling at the edge of his tie unconsciously until it feels like it’s choking him. He hates confrontation. He knows that he let the pressure build up until he couldn’t hold it in anymore.
He thanks his lucky stars that he’s a practised enough person to say every word in the same level tone. This whole time, he’s kept his voice calm, and he’s responded to Dean’s every query with a practised indifference that’s half the reason he was given the role of training new Corp recruits.
He doesn’t yell at Dean, and when he’s done speaking, he allows himself to relax his shoulders a miniscule amount. Dean opens his mouth, but Castiel raises an eyebrow, and his look must be dangerous enough that Dean goes quiet and waits for him to finish his speech.
“If you can’t learn, you won’t make a good hunter. If you’re not willing to listen and take in the answers to your questions, and if you can’t follow protocols, you’ll be actively a danger in the field. Stop. Asking. Stupid. Questions. Let me teach. Is that clear?”
Dean stares at him, his eyes twinkling with something in between amusement and frustration. “I thought asking questions is generally how we get to learning.” He leans forwards, hands on his knees.
“I guess you haven’t had someone with as many questions as me before…Sir?” The last word is almost mocking. Castiel has had enough.
“Most people consider their questions before they spout off every inane thing in their mind.” Castiel says. He turns toward the projector, switches it off. “I think that’s enough for today.”
“Dismissed.” He looks around the room, making eye contact with several recruits, but studiously avoiding Dean. “Be sure you get your practical combat training hours logged by tonight. I’ll see you at your next scheduled training.”
He rolls his deep red leather jacket onto his body, fumbles with the zipper, and doesn’t look at Dean when he passes him, the jacket feeling like armour as he leaves the room.
He thinks he sees Dean wink, but he doesn’t stop to chat. When he gets back to his pod, he thinks, he’ll look at Dean’s file and find out why the hell a smart-mouthed, apparently willfully ignorant kid got brought into the Corp.
It turns out the wilfully ignorant kid is actually a pretty damn good hunter, at least according to his intake hunting observation session. There’s almost no other history or background information about him, frustratingly. How they found him, who knows. But John doesn’t recruit often, and he only takes people he thinks will actually make good, by-the-book hunters. Dean may be annoyingly inquisitive and his questions may be incredibly useless, but if he’s as good as he looks like on paper, nobody will care once he gets through training.
Which means that during training, Castiel will probably have to bite his tongue and hope that the man gets with the program and stops being a nuisance. It’ll be a long three weeks. And he doesn’t even want to think about how annoying it’ll be to have incessant, ridiculous questions once they get into sim trainings.
He knows he’s being irrational, but despite the fact that logically, this is at worst a short-term problem (it’s pretty easy for him to avoid candidates once they’re certified and taking on their assigned hunts), he can’t shake his annoyance, and that alone makes him even more irritated at Dean. It’s not like he’ll likely ever have to actually hunt with the man, but still. Someone will. Castiel doesn’t envy them.
Instead of throwing his tablet across the room (like he feels like doing), he marches himself the short trek across the compound and logs three straight hours in the randomised sim. There’s several candidates in there with him (notably, not Dean) but he works alone, taking on a werewolf, then a shtriga, then a vengeful spirit. He walks away with only a couple of abrasions along his ribs and a bruised lip, which reminds him that he’s good at this job. He’s a Field Training Officer for a reason. He’s more than equipped to teach younger, newer hunters how to get the job done. What the rules are. What to expect. What the Corp does, and why it’s good.
Dean Winchester be damned, he’s not about to doubt that. If you ask stupid questions, it’s no wonder you make the person answering feel stupid. It doesn’t mean anything. It just makes it clear that Dean is a punk newbie who thinks he knows everything about hunting but doesn’t actually know jack shit about working in an organized, effective team (and will soon get that lesson pounded into him in training, if Castiel has anything to do with it).
He’s grimly anticipating that, if he’s honest, but he’s also irritated that he’s let this get to him as much as it has. As he finishes in the sim and walks the forested path to return to his pod, he takes a breath in, inhaling the smell of the woods and tuning his ears towards the quiet chirping of birds, invisible in the trees around him. It takes nearly the whole walk back, but he’s eventually focused enough on trying to identify what bird species he’s hearing that he’s calm enough to have let his thoughts of Dean Winchester go.
Inside, he cleans himself up, shucking off his sweaty shirt and putting back on an undershirt, button-up, and loose dark grey slacks. He fumbles with the tie for fifteen minutes before giving up and going without it. Checking the time, he realizes he’s already got to leave for dinner.
The air outside of his pod is cool and evergreen, the smell of a coming rain settling on his cheeks. He attempts to focus again on the bird noises as he walks the six minutes to Bobby Singer’s pod through the trees, ignoring the cleared path in favour of trekking through the underbrush. This is his habit, anyhow, and it’s good practice for field work, practice that keeps him in shape mentally as well as physically. Under the trees, all of his senses are alert.
There’s no monsters possible here, not behind the invisible, doubly warded and electrified fence that sits two miles in a circular radius around the Corp’s compound. Every once and a while they bring some captured wolves and vamps in to do a real-life practice in preparation for surprise attacks, but they had one of those recently enough that Castiel doesn’t expect one again. Still, he’s honed his ability to pay attention while also losing himself in his thoughts, and that ability carries him through the trees.
Unfortunately, the ability to split his brain between observation and actual thoughts means that he’s once again thinking about Dean Winchester.
There were no answers in his paperwork about where he came from, or why he’s here. No recommendation from another hunter, no name recognition that Castiel knows, no strong likelihood that he’s a legacy hunter kid, let in because of some dead parent or one of their contacts in another state. He’s too old to be a igh school graduate ‘recommended’ by one of their public school contacts. It’s like Dean was just discovered out of nowhere, or that he just waltzed up to the compound and inserted himself into the program -
Castiel shakes his head, trying to clear it of his wandering thoughts. He determines that he’ll ask Bobby if he knows anything about Dean over dinner, and that thought spurs him on, increasing his walk to a brisk pace. Their weekly pre-arranged meal is the only social event he regularly does, and he likes the routine of it; the comforting simplicity of his relationship with the older man.
Bobby’s a bit of an anomaly. The older hunter doesn’t fully fit in the Corp. Some of his ideas about hunting are a little unconventional, bordering on disallowed, but Castiel knows there is some kind of history between him and John, their elusive, strong-armed Head of Ops.
Bobby’s the kind of hunter that doesn’t always listen to the rules but also doesn’t rock the boat. Anyone else with his kind of disregard for Corp policies (and lip towards John) would be banned from hunting, their license denied or revoked, but Bobby gets away with more than most. Castiel has seen others get the boot for their attempts at similar behaviour. Bobby mostly keeps to himself, and he doesn’t ever go too far out of John’s boundaries, and unless Bobby suddenly gets chatty about his past, Castiel doesn’t expect he’ll ever know the real reason Bobby stays with the Corp.
Still – in pondering it, Castiel calls to mind a memory of a conversation he had with Bobby, back when he was newly trained, a conversation full of several of the same talking points that Dean volleyed at him earlier. The thought worries at him until he arrives.
Castiel steps out of the brush and into a round clearing, in the middle of which is another angular pod structure. The cool grey metal home sits like a spherical bubble stacked on top of another bubble, but instead of being smooth, the walls are all angles and sharp lines. It’s larger than Castiel’s own pod, but also older, the metal a coppery rust colour at some of the corners and the metal door refurbished. There’s graffiti across the back of the pod that Castiel hadn’t noticed before - he notes the new splash of colour that almost looks new - but there’s very few teenagers in the compound, and he’s surprised that Bobby hasn’t removed them.
As he gets closer, the art becomes more clear - the swooping image of a bird done in light blue and dark purple, about to crash-land on the ground. A cartoon thought bubble above the bird says “Oh shit!”
Castiel shakes his head, laughing a little at the image in spite of himself, and raps on the door.
“Castiel!” Bobby says, a smile behind his gruff tone. “Good to see ya. C’mon in.” He swings the door open and the metal creaks. “Hope you don’t mind, it’ll be a full house tonight - I wanted you to meet my nephews, if you haven’t already ‘round the training rooms.”
He’d rather not meet Bobby’s nephews, honestly, after the day he’s had, but he smiles faintly and makes his body mechanically nod.
As Bobby swings the door fully open and Castiel steps inside, what he sees makes a groan push its way up past his lips, instantaneously. A familiar, aggravatingly bright voice laughs. Dean isn’t laughing at him (not yet, Castiel thinks grimly). He’s standing with his back to Castiel, leaning against a wooden island in the middle of Bobby’s kitchen, his head thrown back, loud and boisterous. There’s a younger boy there too, gangly, who looks in his late teens, with floppy brown hair. He’s standing across the island from Dean, overexaggerating an eye-roll.
“Wasn’t even that funny, Dean.” He groans. “I swear, you’re twelve. Maybe not even twelve. You’re ten.”
“Aw, Sammy. We gotta work on your sense of humour.” Dean says, coming around the island and wrapping the younger one - Sammy - into a headlock. Sammy is just protesting loudly when Dean looks up and locks eyes with Castiel.
He lets go of Sammy immediately, still laughing. “Heya, Castiel. Bobby – you invited the trainer with the stick in his ass?”
“Dean!” Bobby says, smacking him on the side of the head. “I take it you two have met.” He looks at Castiel.
Sighing, Castiel begins to take off his coat, laying it on the end of one of Bobby’s worn kitchen chairs. “Dean was in my Basics training lecture this morning.”
“...Which is a joke, Bobby –” Dean whines. “Bunch of fuckin’ useless rules and information that I already know…”
Bobby ignores him and looks at Castiel. “My heartfelt apologies. Kid’s good at hunting but better at running his mouth.” He levels Dean with a half glare that’s more affection than ire.
“It’s a waste of my time, Bobby.” Dean insists.
“Not my call, kid. Take it up with the big man. He’s the one that put ya in training.”
Castiel thinks, for a second, that Dean’s smug look falters at that last comment. The arrogant mask is back before he’s sure, though, and Dean is changing the subject.
“Okay, so, Cas, how long’ve you been a hunter?” He fixes his gaze on him, his clear green eyes intent. “Or are you more of the book learnin’, nerd type and that’s why you’re so stuck on rules?”
“Dean!” Sammy interrupts this time. “Geez, why are you always such an asshole?!” He rounds the island, sticks out a hand towards Castiel. “I’m Sam. Dean’s brother. Unfortunately.”
“Sam. Nice to make your acquaintance.” Castiel says, shaking his hand firmly. “I assure you, your brother’s behaviour does not reflect upon you.” He flicks his gaze at Dean, eyes narrowed.
Sam snorts. “Good to know.”
“Well?” Dean says, louder this time. “You gonna tell your origin story, Cas?”
Castiel blinks at him. “My name is Castiel,” and Dean raises an single eyebrow. When Castiel stares him down, Dean eventually blinks. “Okay, sure. Castiel. Do you have a grand origin story, or do we have to hear Bobby’s dinnertime werewolf decapitation tale again?” He says it as if it’s an insult, but Castiel hears Bobby chuckle, sees the warm glance he gives Dean.
Maybe Dean is an asshole, but he’s still Bobby’s nephew, and it’s still curious to Castiel that he’s never heard of him or Sam before. It’s also curious that this information wasn’t in Dean’s file, something that niggles at the back of his mind uncomfortably. Bobby doesn’t share a lot of personal information during their weekly dinners, but he knows about Bobby’s wife, he knows about his younger hunting years - he’s never once heard about any nephews.
Castiel makes a calculated decision. If he can tell his own story, maybe he’ll worm some information out of Sam, who seems the more rational one of the two. If nothing else, he’s curious.
“My parents… were victims of a vampire attack when I was eleven,” Castiel begins. “I was their only child. Their miracle, they used to say – they had thought they couldn’t have children, so we were … very close.” He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, Dean has reoriented himself and is sitting in a chair directly at Castiel’s eyeline, and his green eyes are staring, serious and focused.
“I ended up in the foster care system, for a while. I had a lot of people - doctors, mostly - tell me that I was delusional, that the vicious attack my parents had suffered was just some psychotic human. But I’ve always had a penchant for history and lore.”
“You sure it wasn’t just some psychotic human?” Dean asks, his tone more curious than questioning. “There’s lots of those out there, too.”
“I saw one of them drinking my mother’s blood from where I was hiding in the closet.” Castiel says quietly. “Pretty damn sure.” He looks Dean directly in the eye. “Like I said. I’ve always liked history and lore. I started doing my own research, and that led me to hunting – and that led me to Bobby, four or five years ago.”
“Castiel’s one of the best we’ve got,” Bobby chimes in from the kitchen counter where he’s roughly chopping up vegetables. “Gotten me out of a couple scrapes, and his eye for detail is some of the best I’ve seen aside from Sam’s.”
Dean looks impressed. “High praise, Bobby. You haven’t seen what Sam can do recently. Boy’s a wizard in finding impossible things. Betcha he’s still worlds better than Cas here.”
Sam hisses a “Dean! Asshole!” and Dean bites his lip, looking apologetically in his direction again. “Sorry, Cas. Just defending my brother’s higher than average geeky skills.”
Sam is trying to maintain his glare, but there’s a tinge of pink in his cheeks and he looks away and ducks his head, a smile attempting to break free as he glances back at his brother.
Cas finds he doesn’t mind the snark when it’s in defence of the boy that Dean so clearly has a protective, (parental?) streak over. It’s the first thing he’s noticed about Dean that he distinctly likes, rather than is annoyed by.
That fact, however, is deeply annoying. He decides not to give Dean any visible indicator of credit for the apology and instead narrows his eyes and continues his story.
“I met Bobby on the hunt where I found my parents’ killer. He says I’ve ‘gotten him out of some of some scrapes’ but if he hadn’t shown up when he did, I would have gone the same way as my parents.” He unclenches his hands. He hadn’t realized he was clenching them, telling that part of the story.
He can’t look at Dean, or Sam, when he’s sharing this bit. Instead he looks at Bobby, who is nodding, his expression softer than the old hunter usually lets show. He gives Bobby a small smile of thanks.
“Got lucky that we were hunting the same thing,” Bobby finishes. “Just happened that you went in first.” Castiel nods. Bobby doesn’t tell the part of the story where Castiel was bleeding out, where a vamp had their fangs into him, how he can’t ever forget the feeling. How he still regrets that Bobby was the one who took out the thing that killed his parents while Castiel was trying to hold in his intestines. He sucks in a halting breath. Bobby puts a hand on his shoulder for only an instant. Castiel clears his throat.
“Bobby introduced me to the Corp after that. It’s a better set up, having training and a team and intel for a hunt. I was already licensed, but finding a place that actually regulates what they do, provides support and a team–” He looks at Dean again. “Lots of hunters go off on their own, think they know everything, thinking they can make up the rules as they go - and they get themselves killed. The Corp kept me from becoming one of them.”
“And now that the Corp regulates all hunting, they’ve got you training new recruits,” Dean says, his expression unreadable. “You ever hunt anymore, or are you strictly desk duty?”
“Occasionally I’m out in the field, but I …” his voice falters. “My skills are generally better suited to training, as I’m one of the more experienced and knowledgeable in terms of history and lore. I’m a valuable resource that it’s generally not worth risking.” He says it without effect.
Dean looks like awe and scepticism are having a war on his face. He’s not very good at hiding his feelings, Castiel is noticing. He catalogues that information away. It’ll be important to take that into account during training. Maybe his approach of immediately dismissing Dean’s questions pushed Dean towards the defensive, rapid-fire verbal assault earlier.
Dean opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, but then he closes it. He seems to consider his words, running long fingers through messy blonde hair. The cuff of his flannel slides up as he does, and Castiel can see streaks of black ink entwining his wrist.
“Maybe that’ll be a good route for you, Sammy.” He says. “Make use of that brain of yours, and then I won’t have to watch your slow ass in a fight.”
“Yeah, right, like my slow ass didn’t save your ass in Lincoln, Houston, Montgomery, Greely…” Sam puts up his fingers and ticks them off one by one. “Pagosa Springs, Chicago, …”
“Alright, alright.” Dean laughs. “Fair enough. Not questioning your partner skills, Sam. Just thinkin’ you might like the opportunity to get out of the fight.”
There’s a long, awkward pause where Sam and Dean stare at each other, and Castiel isn’t sure if Sam looks grateful or angry.
Finally, Dean clears his throat, but Sam beats him to the words. “I think I might like a research position.” Sam says thoughtfully. “But if you think that means I won’t be going on hunts with you sometimes, you’re outta your mind, Dean. ‘Sides, I don’t think any other hunter here’s gonna like your attitude, if Castiel is any indicator.” He flashes a grin at Castiel.
“Cas and I’ll figure our shit out,” Dean smirks, fixing Castiel with another one of those looks, piercing green and intent. “I’ll try and listen in class, and he’ll maybe get the stick out of his ass and give me something other than Corp answers.” The words are equally as challenging as before, but the tone is different. There’s a distinct lack of the mocking tone, and Dean’s raking his eyes up and down Castiel’s frame as he says it.
He feels a shiver snake down his spine, not unpleasantly, at the attention.
“Whaddya say, Cas? Start over?” Dean says.
“If you stop asking ridiculous questions in class.” Castiel says firmly. He doesn’t allow himself a smile even though he can feel one just behind his eyes. Dean appears to see it too, and he sticks out a hand.When Castiel takes it, he can feel a map of scars and callouses, Dean’s skin rough and warm against his. Dean is wearing thin, scratched up rings on three of his fingers and the cool metal scrapes against Castiel’s palm. His shake is firm, and he looks Castiel in the eye the whole time, unblinking, until Castiel releases his hand.
Castiel is aware that his heart has started beating a great deal faster than a minute ago, and he breaks eye contact with Dean, willing himself not to flush.
As he wracks his brain for some acceptable conversational segway, he curses himself for the fact that Dean Winchester, apparently, is his goddamn type.
Dinner, it turns out, isn’t Bobby’s usual menu of baked lasagna, frozen garlic bread, and wilted lettuce. Instead, Dean pulls out a black apron with a flourish, saunters over to the ancient lime green cooler box, and begins a whirlwind of preparation.
“I mostly stay out of his way when he cooks”, Sam says helpfully, pointing Castiel towards the adjoining living room and Bobby’s worn mustard couches. He sits down, folds his legs into criss-cross position, sitting with his body sideways on the couch so he can face Castiel, who is smoothing down the fabric of his pants and trying not to be distracted by the way that, in his peripheral vision, he can see Dean’s fingers moving to knead a large ball of bread dough. Dean has rolled his sleeves up past his elbows, but there are only slivers of pale skin visible underneath swatches of black ink. Dean’s arms appear to be covered in patterns and symbols that Castiel can’t make out from across the room but that he’s itching to see up close.
He tears his eyes away, looks at Sam, who is staring at him expectantly.
“Does he cook often?” Castiel blurts the first thing he thinks of.
Bobby snorts, lowers himself onto the couch next to Sam. “He did as a kid. Don’t reckon he’s had much opportunity lately.”
Sam’s shaking his head. “He hasn’t. It’s … it’s good he’s getting to, again.” Sam looks at Dean, and Castiel looks at Sam, noting the young man’s expression, suddenly tight around the edges. He looks again at Dean. The older brother is stretching to reach a pan on the top of the fridge, and as his shirt rides up, Castiel notes a bony, undernourished frame that tells him that this home cooked meal might be the first Dean had in a long time.
He also sees more ink, criss-crossed with what looks like raised, ragged scars that the tattooed vine pattern masks, but doesn’t fully hide.
He glances back at Sam with the intent to observe. Sam is also lanky, slightly taller than Dean (he noticed when they were standing) and wiry. He also looks underfed, but less so than Dean. Sam’s frame looks like the product of an active lifestyle and not quite enough food, whereas Dean - the more Castiel looks at Dean’s arms, the more he sees the slight tremble, the bones a little too visible.
As Castiel catalogues it, the more the truths of Dean’s body betray that there’s some story there, some situation he and Sam have come from. Neither Sam or Bobby seems like they’re willing to volunteer more information, but that doesn’t mean Castiel can’t wonder. Or that he can’t ask. He opens his mouth but pauses, trying to think of a question that will give him information without being invasive. When he’s looking for lore or checking information for a case, he’s generally good at that, but in his interpersonal life –
Well, let’s just say that the things he’s learned about Bobby have been mostly stories dragged out of him by Castiel’s persistence, not his social graces or tact.
Bobby stretches, stands up from the couch. “I’m gonna get us a drink. Beer?” He asks Castiel, who nods.
He decides, while Dean is in the kitchen and Bobby is occupied, to “shoot his shot” as Bobby would say, and hope that Sam responds well to bluntness.
“Where’d you come from, before here, Sam? I didn’t know Bobby had nephews.”
Sam’s jaw tightens. “Well.”
“We’ve been moving around a while,” Castiel doesn’t hear Dean’s footsteps on the hard floor, and he starts a little at the words, suddenly spoken right behind his head. Dean reaches over Castiel, his warmth ghosting over Cas’ shoulder as he hands Sam a bowl of dried fruit.
“We’ve been… been on the road for a while, taking … I was fixing cars, job to job, and we’d lost touch with Bobby. Mon— jobs were getting scarce where we were, and then we found out he had set up shop here, and” he gestures his hands around with a flourish, “here we are. Hunter training school.” The last words are said with some bitter edge Castiel can’t quite grasp at.
That is entirely an impossible story. Castiel knows it. Dean knows it. Sam knows it, and is squirming in his seat, not looking at either of them. Dean is staring Castiel down like he’s daring him to question the story. Like he’s daring him to point out that hunting, ‘on the road’ and wherever they’ve been, sounds suspiciously like ‘hunting without a licence’, and is definitively illegal.
Castiel drops his gaze for a second, letting Dean have this one. He reminds himself that he’s got three weeks of training to go, and Bobby’s nephews or not, he doesn’t know these boys, and has no reason to trust them. He trusts Bobby, but only because of their history. He’s not really sure why John trusts Bobby, and he’s never had the guts to ask either of them.
If Dean was placed in the training program, though, that means that John approved it, and even if there isn’t a lot of detail in the files, John doesn’t bring in green hunters, or hunters who are likely to be a liability, so there must be a reason Dean is here, whatever shady hunting he’s done in the past.
He gets lost in that train of thought for a minute. There’s something about Dean and Sam that pings on his radar for not-quite-right. There’s something missing. Castiel has always been good at sus-ing out when someone is holding back part of the truth, and the way that Sam and Dean share glances when Castiel asks a question is making him more and more sure that there’s something more than ‘missing nephews return after a long absence because surprise, we found a cool training program’ to this story.
Over dinner, he tries to ask probing questions of all three of them. Bobby answers most of them straightforwardly, but with little information. Sam tells elaborate stories of lore and history and hunting-adjacent anecdotes (further confirming his theory that they’ve been hunting illegally) but somehow manages to leave out any personal information that wouldn’t be plausibly deniable. Dean is the most evasive of all. Every question Castiel asks is met with a wink, an innuendo, or silence, those green eyes locking onto him until he eventually drops the question, every time.
He’s not sure how Dean does it, but by the end of dinner, he’s so flustered internally that he forgets his jacket until he’s a hundred metres into the woods and shivering.
There's rustling in the leaves behind him, and he whirls around to see Dean running towards him, jacket in hand. He holds it out to Castiel.
“In that much of a rush to leave, Cas?” He says. In the twilight, with the last remains of sun sending shadows through the trees, Dean’s eyes are even more impossibly bright, reflecting the shades of green from all around them. Castiel can’t bring himself to correct him on the nickname, and he wants to less than he did earlier in the night. Inexplicably.
Dean’s hand brushes Castiel’s. He starts to hand the jacket over, then stops, instead unfolding it and slinging it over Castiel’s shoulders dramatically. “See ya in training tomorrow, Sir,” he says, throwing up a mock salute that turns into a wave and a wink.
Castiel, for the life of him, can’t get that wink out of his mind for the rest of the night. Maybe it’s the small act of kindness, of returning his jacket in the almost-rain, pitch-black forest. Maybe it’s just that it’s been so long since he’s been flirted with, long enough that he’s not even sure if that’s what Dean was doing, but also long enough that he’s reading into it nonetheless, and it’s making something in him ache.
He stuffs the feelings down.
In his pod, he hits the switch and his bed comes down from the wall with a whirring noise, locking into place. He lays down, curled up with his face towards the wall, and he tries not to think about Dean Winchester.