The Dean Show - FriendofCarlotta (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Part I: 2008

Prologue

Teen Dream, August 2008 Issue

Exclusive: Interview with Castiel Novak, 19 — Dean Show’s New Teen Heartthrob

You may know Castiel Novak from guest stints on shows like One Tree Hill and The OC, where he impressed us with both his acting skills and dreamy looks. Now Castiel has landed his first role as a series regular, on long-running reality hit The Dean Show. We got the low-down on what to expect and how this teen dreamboat feels about his big break.

Teen Dream: Being cast on a big show like thisis such an exciting opportunity. And in the role of Dean’s new best friend too! Is this a dream come true for you?

Castiel: The funny thing is that I didn’t grow up watching much TV. But when my agent said he could get me an audition for a TV show that has been on the air since 1991, I jumped at the chance. I guess the producers liked what they saw.

Teen Dream: And so do we! How does it feel to know that your poster is about to be on bedroom walls all over America, right next to Dean’s?

Castiel: I don’t know. A little strange maybe? I’m just hoping to deliver a good performance.

Teen Dream: I’ll say! If you do well on The Dean Show, you’re guaranteed an acting job for the rest of your life.

Castiel: Yes. Or the rest of Dean’s life, I suppose.

Teen Dream: Totally! Just between the two of us, can you give us a little sneak peak of your character and how the show is planning to introduce you?

Castiel: I think that’s fine. Like most of the actors on the show, I’ll be using my real name. I’m going to be introduced as a new student who just moved to town from Chicago.

And there you have it! Remember, The Dean Show airs on the American Broadcast Network and select local affiliates. Castiel Novak’s debut is set for September 18.

***

Lawrence, Kansas

September 15, 2008

“Mom? Mom!”

The voice behind Mary registers as nothing but distant white noise. Mary’s eyes are glued to the TV screen, where a seventeen-year-old boy named Dean has just walked into a pristine, picture-perfect school building, nodding slightly bored greetings at people in the spotless hallway.

A camera mounted somewhere near the ceiling tracks his approach, keeping a watchful eye on him while he passes a group of boys in letterman jackets. They wave a friendly hello at him and Dean waves back, but nobody invites him over to talk. According to the fan sites that Mary can’t help scrolling through sometimes, only the actors who have been specifically cast as Dean’s friends, love interests or neighbors are allowed to exchange more than small talk with him.

As Dean comes to a stop in front of his locker, the camera feed switches to a perspective that looks down from the wall just above the lockers.

Dean whistles tunelessly to himself as he turns the lock, then tugs and tugs until the door reluctantly opens. (It always sticks a little.)

The feed changes again, this time to the camera at the back of the locker. Its view is partially obscured by Dean’s textbooks, which are piled willy-nilly into the small space. Dean withdraws them, clearing the view of his face as he stuffs the books into his bag.

Mary’s knees are beginning to ache. She didn’t realize she’d slipped off the couch and onto the floor in front of the TV set again. She sometimes gets so lost in the show that she forgets all about the world around her. Once, the house almost caught fire because she was so focused on watching Dean get ready for his first date that she forgot about dinner cooking on the stove. (The girl he went out with was named Jamie, and Mary didn’t care for her. After two more dates, neither did Dean. She was written off the show three weeks later.)

“Mom!”

Mary sighs at the sound of footsteps descending from upstairs, followed moments later by the unmistakably sulky shuffle of a thirteen-year-old coming into the living room.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Sam demands. “I called you like five times.”

Reluctantly, Mary turns her attention from the screen. As always, the act of looking away causes an ache in her chest; a tug telling her to turn back. Look again. Make sure he’s still there, still alive, still okay.

Sam stands right in front of her, his father’s dark-brown hair falling into his eyes and his pants an inch too short. He must’ve had another growth spurt recently.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” Mary says. In the background, she can still hear Dean’s voice, chatting with one of his classmates (Asa, Mary thinks his name is) as he walks to his homeroom. “Now what’s this pressing problem that you couldn’t possibly solve yourself?”

“I’m going to Brady’s for dinner tonight, and I don’t have anything to wear.”

Mary gives her son the wry look that statement deserves. “Really? Not anything?”

Sam shrugs morosely.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Brady’s parents live in a massive McMansion and you’re trying to impress them, would it?”

Sam shrugs again, with a side of uncomfortable squirming. “Just don’t like being poor, I guess.”

Mary pulls a smile past the ache in her chest as she ruffles Sam’s hair. “Well, stay in school, kid.”

“Whatever, Mom.” Sam squirms away, and Mary sighs as she remembers the affectionate little toddler he used to be, once upon a time. Now he’s all knees and elbows. Where did all that time go? “Can you just, like, help me pick out something to wear?”

“Sure,” Mary says. From the TV set's speakers, the sound of the school bell rings out, followed by the voice of Dean's homeroom teacher, Mr. Adler, calling the students to attention. “Gimme just a minute, huh?”

Sam rolls his eyes at her. “But actually just a minute. Don’t get distracted watching TV again. You’re obsessed with that stupid show.”

Mary swallows past a sudden lump in her throat. “It’s a good show.”

“It’s stupid. And unethical!” Sam’s eyes widen; he’s clearly winding up to a lengthy speech. “This guy has been on TV since he was born and he doesn’t even know it! I can’t believe nobody’s told him in seventeen years.”

Mary cuts him off, because it’s the only way she’ll get a word in edgewise once Sam gets going. “Alright, alright, just head on up there and I’ll be right with you.”

“Fine.” Sam wanders off, back up the stairs.

Mary watches him go, then turns to the TV again for just a moment, squatting down until her face is at the same height as the screen. Dean’s face is shown in profile. There must be a camera somewhere on the shirt of the kid sitting next to him. Maybe inside one of the buttons.

Slowly, Mary lifts a hand and reaches for the screen until her fingertips touch Dean’s cheek. Carefully. Reverently.

He’s grown up to be so handsome. It’s hard to believe he used to be the tiny, red-faced, squalling newborn she held in her arms. She watched him grow older just as Sam did, but always through the barrier of a screen, heartbroken by the knowledge that she had no claim on him. Not anymore. When Chuck Shurley’s people took him away, they let him keep the first name Mary gave him, but they gave him a new last name: Smith. The most common name there is. Just like that, they turned her son into an everyman for the audience to relate to. Now, only a very few people know that he started out in life as Dean Winchester.

“My boy,” she whispers as Dean turns away from the camera; away from her touch. “My poor, beautiful boy.”

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Transcript of Tonight Show Interview with Chuck Shurley, visionary creator and producer of The Dean Show

Air Date: September 15, 2008

Jay Leno: So, riddle me this. What’s made this concept so compelling for seventeen years now? Why do people keep watching?

Chuck Shurley: What you have to understand is that while everyone else may be an actor, Dean Smith is 100% real. His reactions are real. His emotions are real. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing fake about his life whatsoever. What you see is what you get. And that makes for very, very compelling television.

***

Dean meets his own eyes in the mirror.

“Captain Smith,” he says gravely, “it’s worse than we feared. That torpedo took a king-sized bite out of our hull. We’re taking on water.”

Dean’s hand flies to his forehead in a stiff salute. He almost knocks the toothbrush off the edge of the sink with his hip. Lowering his voice until it’s as deep as he can make it, he growls, “Nobody dies today. Not on my watch.”

He blows air into his cheeks, holds it—

—and lets it out again in an explosive sound, imitating the impact of another torpedo in the USS Seahaven’s hull. She’s doomed for sure now — doomed to sink into the Pacific Ocean on what was only meant to be a routine reconnaissance mission off the coast of Japan.

But Captain Robert Smith isn’t as easy to beat as all that. The ship might be sinking, but with the help of his trusted First Mate Dean Smith, he can still—

“Dean! Are you getting dressed?”

At the sound of Mom’s voice through the bathroom door, Dean flinches, glancing guiltily down at the toothbrush on top of the sink. He came in here to brush his teeth ages ago. Always getting distracted, that’s him.

“Yeah, Mom!” he hollers back. “Be right down.”

“That better be true,” comes the reply. “or you’ll be late for school!”

Right. School. Dean hurries through brushing his teeth, then dashes across the hall to pull on some jeans, his most washed-out black shirt and the old jean jacket that used to be Dad’s. He gives himself a once-over and a little wink in the mirror, then hurries downstairs, taking the stairs two at a time. Mom’s waiting for him by the kitchen island, tapping her foot, his brown-bagged lunch in one hand and a piece of buttered toast in the other. She looks perfect as always — a dark blue dress that flatters her figure, her blonde hair piled dangerously high on her head and her face carefully made up. Dean learned years ago that his mom is the sort of person who’s meant to be looked at, but not usually touched.

“This’ll have to do for breakfast,” she says, passing him the buttered toast. “The bus is already outside. Maybe if we got you one of these gorgeous Swiss Hauser watches—” She holds up her wrist, displaying a new silver watch with a gleaming ice-blue face. “—you wouldn’t always be late.”

Through the first bite of toast he’s already shoved in his mouth, Dean asks, “When’d you get a new watch?”

“Just thought I’d treat myself,” she tells him, with a bright, cheery smile. “Get going now.”

“Thanks for breakfast, Mom! I’ll see you tonight.” Dean dashes for the door, shouldering through it as he stuffs the rest of the toast slice between his teeth.

***

The bus ride is boring as always. Other than Dean, there’s really only a couple of kids that take the bus, including that weirdo who always sits three rows down reading the Seahaven Herald. Today’s front-page headline reads,Seahaven Voted Planet’s Top Town.

At least when Lee still lived here, Dean had something to distract him. Lee would ride the bus with him almost the whole way, and he was always ready with a joke or a story about somebody at school. But Lee had to move away about a month ago, and ever since then, life’s been… dull. It feels like all anyone else talks about in this town is the weather, or how great it is to live in Seahaven.

Dean should be used to it by now. Seems like whenever he makes friends with people, they hang around for a couple of years, sometimes only a couple of months, and then they move away. Benny, Victor and now Lee. Dean’s always the one who gets left behind. He can’t wait to finally finish school and make some money so he can get the f*ck out too. Even if it’s just to travel for a while.

Glaring out the window at the perfect blue sky above, Dean wonders when they last had a rainy day. He wishes it would rain today. At least it’d match his mood.

When they finally get to the school parking lot, Dean lets everybody else off the bus first, not exactly eager to start another school day that’ll be just like every other school day: dull, repetitive, lonely. But then the bus driver starts glaring at him, telling him to hurry it along already, and Dean knows he’s run out of excuses to stall.

As he walks past the billboard in the parking lot — today advertising Krunch Cookie Crunch cereal — a group of cheerleaders passes him. One of them, Stacy, points at the billboard.

“Hey, you guys ever try this stuff? It’s so good.”

“Won’t it make me fat?” her friend, Jenny, asks, running concerned hands down the uniform that hugs her slim hips.

“No way!” Stacy answers. “It has zero percent real sugar!”

They keep walking, but another girl from the group steps right in front of Dean to stop him in his tracks. “Hey.” It’s Lisa, the head cheerleader. She moved to town a couple of weeks ago, and Dean’s noticed her a time or two since then. She’s got gorgeous dark hair and a pretty smile. “You’re Dean, right?”

Dean nods, giving her his best lopsided grin. “Guilty as charged, ma’am.”

Lisa favors him with one of her dazzling smiles. “I do like a man with good manners. Listen, you know there’s this dance on—”

Someone passing behind Lisa jostles her, knocking her off balance. With a surprised “Oh!” she trips and falls forward, right towards Dean. He grips her arms to steady her, but not before she bumps into his chest hard enough to knock the wind out of him for a second.

“Wow, rude,” she says, looking up at him through his lashes. “I’m so sorry about that.” She doesn’t look too upset though, and just for a second, Dean entertains the thought that she asked someone to bump into her on purpose so they could get closer. But that’d be crazy. What would a cheerleader want with him anyway? He’s just some guy whose friends keep leaving. Most people barely bother talking to him.

“Hey, no worries,” Dean answers, letting go of Lisa’s arms now that she looks steady on her feet again. “You were saying something about a dance?”

“Oh yeah. The school dance that’s coming up in a couple of weeks.” Lisa brushes a casual touch against Dean’s arm. “Will I see you there?”

Honestly, Dean had pretty much made up his mind that he wouldn’t go, because whenever there’s a school dance, odds are it’ll either be boring or there’ll be some kind of weird, ridiculous drama that leads to a fist fight before the end of the night. Dean tries not to get involved in that stuff, but people seem to go out of their way to involve him anyway.

On the other hand, it’s not like there’s anything else to do in Seahaven on a Friday night. The place is pretty much dead most weekends.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “Can’t wait.”

“Great.” With a coy little giggle and a wave over her shoulder, Lisa disappears back into the crowd of students making their way into the building.

Dean follows a moment later, lost in thought as he reaches his locker and shimmies it open. (The freaking thing always sticks.) Lisa is exactly the kind of girl his mom would encourage him to date: nice, pretty, easy to like. Maybe going to the dance really could be fun. He hasn’t kissed anyone since Jamie, and Lee’s gone, so—

—aaaand he’s not thinking about that. Nope. The time he almost tried to kiss Lee is firmly in we do not go there territory.

Dean shoves the books he’s going to need today into his backpack and heads down the hall to his homeroom, also very much not thinking about how the seat next to him, where Lee sat every day for two years, will be empty.

Except when Dean crosses the threshold, the seat isn’t empty at all.

There’s a guy in it, looking out the window at the lawn in front of the school, tapping a pen absently onto the cover of his notebook. His hair is dark brown, flirting with the edge of black, and it’s like the world slows down just a little as Dean takes him in. His attention catches on the guy’s plump, pink lips. He’s working them through his teeth like he’s nervous.

Well, he’s obviously new. Figures that he’d be nervous on the first day of school.

Dean crosses the room to his seat. He passes by Lisa again, and he can tell she’s looking his way, but they already talked and it would be rude to leave the new guy all alone.

Setting down his backpack, Dean flops into his seat. “Hey,” he says.

The new guy startles, his head snapping away from the window, and wow, he… wow. Lee had blue eyes too, but this guy’s eyes are… blue. Like, really, really blue.

Jesus Christ. If they give out prizes for poetry, Dean’s a shoe-in for sure.

“Oh,” the new guy says, sounding a little breathless. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean opens his mouth to ask how the new guy learned his name already — not like he’s famous or anything, even at a small school like this one — but he snaps it shut at the expression on the guy’s face: he looks absolutely mortified.

“I, um—” New Guy pauses; swallows. “I heard Lisa say your name earlier. Outside. Sorry.” Recovering slightly, he smiles — at least, that’s what Dean thinks he’s doing. His lips are barely moving, but there’s a bit of a warm glow in his eyes, like he might be smiling. It’s nice.

“Right,” Dean says slowly. “Either way, you’ve got me at a disadvantage.”

The guy narrows his eyes and tips his head to the side. Combined with his crazy hair, it makes him look like a disgruntled owl. Weirdly enough, it’s not a bad look.

“I just meant,” Dean clarifies, “you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Oh,” the guy says, nodding. Then he sticks out his hand. “I’m Castiel, but Cas is fine. I’m new in town.”

Dean glances down at Cas’ outstretched hand, not bothering to hide his amusem*nt this time. Cas winces, like maybe he only just realized how awkward it is to shake hands with a new classmate, but before he can draw his hand back, Dean clasps it and gives it a nice, firm shake. “Cas. Nice to meet you. Where’d you live before this?”

“Chicago,” Cas says. He’s still holding on to Dean’s hand, even though they’ve stopped shaking. “I—”

At the front of the room, Mr. Adler clears his throat. Dean didn’t even notice him come in. Usually, Adler shushes them and starts roll-call the second he steps through the door. It’s almost like he was waiting for Cas to finish introducing himself, but Adler’s too much of an asshole to be that considerate.

“Class,” Adler announces, surveying them all from underneath his giant, bald forehead, “meet Castiel, our new transfer student from Chicago.”

***

“So what’s it like? Chicago?”

Dean watches as Cas unwraps his lunch: a PB&J sandwich. They’re sitting at one of the picnic tables outside, since it’s such a nice day. It’s Dean’s usual table — he’s been having lunch here by himself for a couple of weeks now since Lee left. Lisa was giving him hopeful looks on the way outside, but she can sit with her cheerleader friends. Cas doesn’t have anybody to sit with yet. Besides, Dean is curious about the new guy. No shame in it.

Cas tips his head to the side again, like he’s giving Dean’s question some serious consideration. “Big,” he concludes, and takes a bite of his sandwich.

Dean snorts. “Yeah, no kidding. C’mon, man, you gotta give me something here. I haven’t been out of Seahaven in years.”

In fact, he’s not sure when he last left town at all. He’s seen pictures of family vacations, but he can’t actually remember them; he must’ve been too young. And since Dad… well, since all that happened, Mom hasn’t really been able to afford to take him anywhere. Or so she says. They don’t pay her enough at the hospital to go on trips, but apparently they do pay enough for a nice new watch or a new dress every other day.

Not that Dean's bitter or anything.

But sometimes, he's so desperate to get away, he’d be willing to do just about anything. He tried out for the football team, the baseball team, the wrestling team — not so much out of any real interest in sports but because he knows those teams travel to away games. He never made the cut.

“Well,” Cas says, after he’s swallowed his bite, “it gets really cold in the winter, but the lake is gorgeous. And there’s lots of cool places to go, like the Navy Pier and the Shedd Aquarium. They have this one tank—” Mid-sentence, Cas breaks off and clears his throat. “Anyway, it’s fine, but it’s not as nice as Seahaven. And there’s plenty of water here too.”

Dean makes a vague sound of agreement, trying to mask his disappointment as he picks at his own lunch, extracting the L and T from his BLT. If he wanted to hear another story about how great Seahaven is, he could read the newspaper. And sure, the fact that Seahaven’s on an island means they’re surrounded by pretty blue ocean water on all sides, but Dean hasn’t been out on the water in ages.

He’s not about to tell Cas about his weird water phobia though. Not when they’ve only known each other a couple of hours. Hell, probably never.

“Right,” he says vaguely, and looks up to find Cas already studying him. Cas still seems nervous, his fingers fidgeting with the butcher paper his sandwich came wrapped in.

“So,” Cas says, a little stiffly, “I heard there’s a dance coming up.”

Dean sits up, his previous disappointment forgotten. “Oh, yeah, man. You should totally come. It’ll be fun.”

Maybe, if he had another guy to go with, it wouldn’t be so bad. Especially because Cas seems more interesting already than most of the other people at Seahaven High.

For a second, Cas almost looks relieved. “Alright,” he says, nodding. “I will.” After a moment’s hesitation, he adds, “Maybe you could introduce me to some girls?”

Dean’s smile freezes on his face. He’d kind of been hoping he could mostly hang with just Cas and show him the ropes of the social scene at Seahaven High — such as it is — but that would be a weird thing to admit. And besides, he agreed to hang with Lisa for at least some of the time anyway. He almost forgot about that.

“Sure, man,” he says. His voice sounds falsely cheerful to his own ears. “Yeah, we can totally do that.”

***

“Ask him to introduce you to some girls at the dance,” Chuck says into the microphone clipped to his headset, which connects him straight to the actors in Seahaven.

Charlie looks away from where Chuck paces on the elevated platform, turning her attention to the giant screen that takes up one entire wall of the control room. On screen right now is the new guy, Castiel, who says, “Maybe you could introduce me to some girls?”

The question comes out sounding a little awkward, but with someone as new to the show as Castiel, Charlie figures some awkwardness is to be expected. It can’t be easy, trying to carry on a conversation while someone — usually Chuck — is muttering instructions in your ear.

“How the hell did this guy make it through auditions? He sounds like a robot.” That’s Ed’s voice, a little distorted through Charlie’s own headset.

“You’re just jealous because they never called you back after your first round.” That’s Aaron, chiming in.

Unlike those lucky few who can talk directly to the actors live on screen, Charlie is a lowly PA who’s only allowed to talk to other PAs. Like Aaron, who’s cool, and Ed, who’s a bit of an asshole. Also, their headsets are much crappier and lower-range than the ones the higher-ups use to prompt the actors.

“Well, I think he’s dreamy,” Charlie says, watching as Castiel waits anxiously for Dean’s response, blue eyes wide.

Ed makes an ugly snorting noise. “You don’t even swing that way, Bradbury.”

“I can still appreciate beauty when I see it,” Charlie answers.

Dean seems to agree with her anyway, judging by the way his expression dims at Castiel’s suggestion that they pick up girls at the dance.

Charlie didn’t watch The Dean Show much before she accepted the PA job. She always figured it was an incredibly skeevy thing, watching this guy who has no idea he’s being watched. But after graduation from UCLA, she couldn’t get interviews for any of the tech jobs she’d applied to, despite her 4.0 grade point average. It turns out the tech industry in California is almost as oversaturated with candidates as the acting profession. But there are always jobs in LA for people willing to accept the sh*tty hours and demeaning treatment that PAs receive, so when money was starting to get short, Charlie gritted her teeth and put in an application with Shurley Productions.

Since then, she’s caught so much of the show in the background that she’s become something of a Dean Smith expert. For example, she’s learned that Dean sucks at disguising emotional reactions, no matter how hard he tries. And so, if you’re looking for it, his disappointment at Castiel wanting to pick up girls at the dance is plain as day, and Charlie’s queer little heart gives a throb of sympathy.

Come to think of it, Dean’s emotional honesty is probably a big part of what still makes him a draw after so many years on the air. That, and the fact that Dean has the kind of handsome, expressive face that was made for a screen.

Charlie sometimes wonders what the producers would’ve done if Dean’s cute little-boy looks had faded into awkward, pimply teen years.

On her headset, Ed and Aaron’s bickering is abruptly interrupted by Chuck’s personal assistant, Naomi. “Chuck needs a latte,” her voice squawks into Charlie’s ear. “Sugar-free with oat milk. Chop chop, Charlie.”

“Roger that,” Charlie replies, but she allows herself just another moment to watch the screen and enjoy the obvious, instant chemistry between Dean and Castiel.

It’s an open secret behind the scenes that Lee was fired because Dean was getting just a little too close to him. There’s been speculation on some of the fan sites too, but the official line has been to deflect and deny. Lee just “wasn’t a good fit” and “didn’t poll well.”

Yeah, sure.

More like, Chuck has a whole storyline planned out where Dean is going to fall for Lisa (or some other girl of Chuck's choice), marry her and produce two perfect children who can carry on The Dean Show into the next generation.

“Bradbury!” Charlie flinches at the screech of feedback in her headset. Naomi again, of f*cking course. “I can see you standing there, gaping at the screen. That’s not what we pay you for. Go get Mr. Shurley his latte!”

A quick look around shows Naomi watching her from across the control room, eyes narrowed in an irritated glare. Which is more or less Naomi’s default expression, but Charlie should probably get a move on anyway if she doesn’t want to get fired.

“Yes, ma’am, sorry about that,” she says, trying her best to sound contrite.

On screen, Castiel is getting up from the picnic table and shouldering his backpack. The last thing Charlie sees before she turns her back on the live feed is Dean, watching him walk away.

***

It’s with some apprehension that Castiel leaves the school grounds at the end of the day and directs his steps to the nearest checkout point: a bank building down the street from the school that’s really just a storefront with an empty room on the other side and a double-sided door that leads backstage.

He supposes his first day could have gone worse, but it also could have gone better. Dean seemed to like him well enough to suggest they have lunch together, but Castiel's blunder over Dean’s name was hardly an auspicious start.

In Castiel’s defense, even binge-watching his agent’s entire collection of Best of The Dean Show — Fan-Favorite Moments DVDs didn’t prepare him for just how beautiful Dean is in person. More beautiful than Castiel thought people were capable of being in real life. (Or as close to real life as The Dean Show gets, he supposes.)

To quell his first-day nerves, he’d told himself that this was just another acting job. For years now, he’s embraced acting as a refuge from his social awkwardness, especially around very attractive people. But in clinging to the notion of “it’s just acting,” Castiel had somehow managed to forget that Dean isn’t acting at all. So when Dean walked into that classroom and smiled at Castiel with an easy charm that would’ve made anyone weak in the knees — well, the knowledge that Dean’s kind, lovely smile was genuine returned with a vengeance and put him thoroughly off-balance.

Luckily, someone quickly instructed him via his nearly invisible, high-tech earpiece to claim that he’d overheard Lisa mention Dean’s name.

At least Castiel did manage to achieve the main objectives for his first day of filming: to strike up a tentative friendship with Dean and to suggest they go to the upcoming school dance together so they can bond some more.

Sighing, he steps through the front door of the “bank” and into the empty room on the other side. It’s cool here, more so than in Seahaven proper, where the temperature is kept between seventy and eighty degrees at all times. Backstage, the air conditioning runs full blast to counter the heat of a Southern California summer outside the massive Dean Show studio dome.

As soon as the door to the studio area closes behind Castiel, a nondescript male PA opens the second door that leads backstage, ushering him through.

Entering the beehive of the backstage area is massively disorienting after the relative peace of being in Seahaven. There are people running all over with headsets, shouting incomprehensible orders at each other, and the PA who let Castiel inside already seems to have disappeared on some other mysterious errand.

Castiel scans his surroundings, looking for any sign as to what he’s supposed to do next. In one corner of the room, he spots Eleanor Visyak (formerly Eleanor Singer), the actress who plays Dean’s mother. She’s at a makeup station, being prepped to go on-screen again once Dean gets home.

So far, Castiel hasn’t met her, as they haven’t had any scenes together. But if he becomes a success on the show and slides into the position of Dean’s new best friend, he’ll be acting opposite her sooner rather than later. Perhaps he should go over and introduce himself. At the mere idea, sweat prickles on his palms. Again with the social awkwardness — this is why he’s an actor and not a sales associate.

Still, he should be alright if he can just keep from mentioning Eleanor’s ugly divorce from her husband Robert. According to the briefing Castiel received from his agent, Robert “Bobby” Singer is somewhat notorious in the annals of the show. Eleanor and Robert Singer had been married before joining the show and were somewhat known for stints on various daytime soap operas. At the time, casting a real married couple to play Mr. and Mrs. Smith must have seemed like a coup. But over time, Bobby Singer grew to genuinely love Dean like a son and wanted to tell him the truth about his life — an opinion that got him written off the show. Eleanor chose to stay on, and it marked the beginning of the end for their marriage.

Yes. Even Castiel should be able to carry on a conversation without such a significant blunder. He’s just made up his mind to go over and introduce himself when a hand lands heavily on his shoulder.

“Cas,” says a hearty voice from behind him. “Castiel. Mister Novak. How’s it going?”

Castiel turns, and the hand slides off his shoulder. Facing him is a man whose face is almost as well-known as Dean’s own: Chuck Shurley, creator of The Dean Show and the closest thing Dean has had to a legal guardian since he became the first baby adopted by a corporation.

Chuck is smiling jovially up at him — the top of his head just barely reaches Castiel’s chin — but that smile does nothing to ease Castiel’s apprehension. Castiel only met Chuck once prior to this, when he was officially cast for the role of Dean’s new best friend. But even so, Chuck strikes him as the kind of powerful man who shows the world a friendly face to mask utter ruthlessness behind the scenes. Castiel knows such men well — after all, he was raised by one.

“Fine,” he answers, somewhat belatedly. For good measure, he adds, “I enjoyed performing today.”

“Good, good, that’s great,” Chuck says, slinging an arm around Castiel’s shoulders and pulling him along. His other hand is clutching a coffee cup, its contents sloshing dangerously. “Walk with me.”

Castiel does as instructed, wanting to shake off Chuck’s arm but not daring to do so. Chuck steers him expertly through the crowd, past Eleanor Visyak’s makeup table and into another backstage room where a catering buffet has been set up. Castiel hasn’t eaten since his sandwich at lunch, and his stomach growls at the sight of meatballs and chicken wings piled high on the table, but Chuck pulls him onward.

“So,” Chuck says, “good things: you got Dean to talk to you and eat lunch with you. Scored that invite to the dance, too.”

Castiel nods and opens his mouth to agree, but Chuck plows on.

“Not-so-good things: blurting out Dean’s name before he introduced himself.”

Castiel winces. “I know. It won’t happen again.”

Halfway past the buffet table, Chuck stops to roll his eyes at Castiel. “Well, yeah, obviously not. You know his name now. But my point is—” He continues walking, setting a brisk pace, and Castiel follows. Despite Chuck’s short stature, he’s a difficult man to keep up with. “—that sort of thing is forgivable on day one, maybe. We’ll see after we’ve analyzed the audience reactions. But you’ll want to watch yourself going forward. And another thing.”

Castiel already knows what is coming, but he adopts the expression of an avid listener anyway.

Chuck stops again, right in the doorway to the next room. A PA trying to walk past mutters a curse, then looks stricken when he realizes the man blocking his way is Chuck. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily, from Castiel’s perspective), Chuck appears too focused on Castiel to notice.

“You remember your briefing, don’t you?” Chuck asks.

Castiel nods. And he does, though the briefing was four hours long and consisted of so many rules and regulations for interacting with Dean that it was impossible to retain them all. But there’s very little doubt what Chuck is alluding to.

“I’m not supposed to tell Dean good things about the outside world,” he says.

Chuck points a finger at him. “Ding-ding! Correct. So next time Dean asks about Chicago, you tell him it’s a rat-infested, crime-ridden sh*thole.” Chuck grimaces. “Well, obviously not the ‘sh*thole’ part. Can’t say ‘sh*t’ on network TV, as you know. We’re still paying down the FCC fine from when Rufus Turner was on the show.”

From his exhaustive briefing, Castiel also remembers vaguely that Rufus Turner is an actor who was cast as a teacher at Seahaven High, but then written off again within two weeks because he couldn’t seem to keep his cursing in check (and was a little too willing to entertain student questions about off-limits subjects).

Chuck is still blocking the doorway and looking expectantly at Castiel — despite the fact that a line has formed behind the hapless PA, who seems to be carrying a large piece of set decoration. Evidently, Chuck is looking for some kind of reaction from Castiel. Probably an expression of remorse about the Chicago thing.

Castiel adopts a contrite expression. “It won’t happen again?” he says, somewhat tentatively. Partly because he’s unsure as to how much trouble he’s actually in, and partly because he worries that making promises will only land him in even more trouble down the line.

“Glad to hear it,” Chuck says, clapping Castiel on the shoulder again.

Apparently, this concludes their interaction because Chuck is already walking away, back in the direction of Eleanor Visyak's makeup station. “Eleanor! Nice work this morning, but listen, about that product placement for the watch, let’s try to spend more time pointing the product at a camera next time, huh?”

Next to Castiel, someone clears their throat. It’s the PA carrying the set decoration — some kind of large, unwieldy footstool — and looking distinctly disgruntled.

“Oh! Sorry.” Castiel steps aside to let the PA and the rest of the traffic backed up at the door pass him by.

“Hey,” says yet another person trying to get Castiel’s attention. He turns to see the first friendly face he’s encountered since he waved goodbye to Dean in the school parking lot.

The young woman also appears to be a PA — how many of those are there anyway? — judging by her headset. “My name’s Charlie,” she says, grabbing his hand and shaking it before he’s even offered it.

“Castiel,” he answers, a little dazed.

“Yeah, I know.” Charlie beams at him. “I’m in charge of getting you checked out today. You’ll hand in your earpiece to me and I’ll show you where to change back into your outside clothes. Just you watch — I’ll have you outta here in no time, buddy.”

Castiel considers protesting that he’s only just met Charlie, which means they’re hardly “buddies,” but he’s much too grateful to have someone else take charge of him so competently and thoroughly. True to her word, she shuttles him through the bewildering backstage maze in record time, separating him from his earpiece, hidden microphone and the overshirt that has a camera implanted in the second button from the top.

In less than twenty minutes, he’s stepping out of the studio dome and into the scorching heat of the parking lot, where his geriatric Lincoln Continental waits for him.

As he pulls out of the lot and onto Centennial Highway, making his way back to his sh*tty apartment and a lonely dinner of microwaved ramen, he wonders if Dean is thinking about him at all.

***

“So I met this guy today,” Dean says, doodling on his trig homework while Mom’s at the stove, boiling some pasta for spaghetti and meatballs.

“Oh really?” she asks, smiling at him over her shoulder. She’s wearing an elegant black apron over her white nurse’s uniform.

“Yeah. New kid. Kinda weird, but not in a bad way.”

“What’s his name?” Mom asks, setting out the colander to drain the pasta in the sink.

“Cas.” Dean spins his pencil between his fingers and thinks of the restless tap-tap-tap of Cas’ pen against his notebook when Dean first walked into their homeroom. “He moved here from Chicago.”

Weirdly, Cas seemed a little closed off about his hometown, but maybe Dean could ask him about it again, once they know each other a little better. Or maybe he’ll unclench some when they go to the dance together.

“Dean!” Dean’s head snaps up. Mom’s still smiling at him, but she sounds a little impatient, like she’s been trying to get his attention for a while.

“Sorry, Mom. What?”

“I just wanted you to know that I’m trying something new today,” Mom says, walking over to him from the kitchen with a small red cardboard box in her hand. She holds it up for Dean to see. There’s a picture of meatballs on the front, and all-caps writing that reads Mother’s Meatball Helper. “I heard they taste just like Nonna used to make.”

Dean frowns at her, forgetting all about Cas for the moment. “What Nonna, Mom? We’re not Italian.”

“I know that,” Mom answers, beaming at him like he’s said something really clever. “Just wanted to let you know we’re having something special for dinner tonight.”

“O-kay.” Dean shakes his head as he tries to refocus on his trig. It’s not unheard of for Mom to say random stuff out of the blue, but that was weird even for her.

He really does try to focus on finishing his homework, but the page blurs in front of his eyes, replaced by a flash of blue eyes gleaming with laughter in the sunlight. Maybe he should offer to pick Cas up and drive him to the dance, since he doesn’t really know his way around town yet.

That decision made, he finally manages to get back to work.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Daily intro to The Dean Show

The country watched as he took his first steps. Millions tuned in for his first day of school. And at age seventeen, he’s more popular than ever. Broadcasting live twenty-four hours a day from the Shurley Productions Studio Dome, the only man-made structure that can be seen from space — it’s The Dean Show!

***

After his somewhat rocky start on the show, Castiel begins to settle in. Dean doesn’t get any less beautiful, so being around him should be as nerve-wracking as ever, but something about his manner is also very… soothing. Dean sets Castiel at ease in a way he doesn’t usually experience around other people.

On Tuesday, Castiel’s second day on the job, they eat lunch together again, and Dean once more asks about Chicago. This time, Castiel is prepared with a smooth (he thinks) segue into the city’s crime rate.

“We always had to lock our doors at night,” he says. “And one of my friends was mugged once, on the way home from school.”

It helps that all of the above is true. Of course, it’s also true that Castiel loved Chicago and has missed it frequently ever since he moved to LA a year ago to pursue his acting career. But when it comes to Dean, he’s forced to be extremely selective with his truths.

“You really didn’t like anything about it?” Dean asks.

Castiel probably shouldn’t be surprised at Dean’s persistence — after all, this is the boy who taught himself how to ride a bike while his mother was away to care for a “sick relative.” (In truth, Eleanor Visyak’s contract was up for renegotiation, leaving Dean to stay for several months with a neighbor.) He’s also the boy who, at age nine, visited the local police station repeatedly for weeks to find out if his father’s body had been recovered. Eventually, the show’s producers were forced to stage the finding of the body and a subsequent funeral, just to get Dean to back off. Dean never got to see the body himself because Bobby Singer point-blank refused to appear as a corpse.)

In other words, to call Dean Smith persistent would be a vast understatement. He’s irrepressibly curious and incurably tenacious.

“Tell him you liked the weather on sunny days,” a voice in Castiel’s ear prompts. He can’t quite tell apart the members of the control-room staff yet; all he knows is that the voice isn’t Chuck’s.

“I liked the weather on sunny days,” Castiel repeats dutifully.

Dean’s lips twitch up in a slightly tired smile. “Right,” he says.

Castiel’s insides ache at the sight of that smile. He’s the one who put that expression of defeat on Dean’s face.

f*ck the voice in his ear. “There’s this building called Willis Tower,” Castiel says, and Dean’s head snaps up from where he’d been picking listlessly at his grilled cheese sandwich. “It has four glass platforms. They’re a thousand feet up in the air, so when you’re standing on them, it feels like you’re standing way above the city. It’s a little like flying, actually.”

Dean’s eyes soften with wonder. “Wow. That’s gotta be something else.”

“It really is,” Castiel agrees, as the voice in his ear urges him, “Change the subject. Talk about one of your classes or the teachers or something.”

Before Castiel can comply with that order, Dean says eagerly, “Maybe after I graduate and make some money, I could go there and see it. You could come with me, show me around or something.”

That’s never going to happen. The thought is heavy as an anvil around Castiel’s neck.

“Right. Anyway,” he says, “what’s the deal with Mr. Armstrong? I heard he came to school in a bathrobe one time.”

Dean’s excitement fades as quickly as it came, replaced by something far more brittle. Castiel reminds himself that if he does well in this role, he’ll be getting a safe paycheck for life — every actor’s dream.

The argument rings a little hollow.

***

When Dean first met Cas, he was interested in learning everything about the new kid, because who wouldn’t be? Cas is from Chicago. Dean has never been anywhere as exciting as that and he’s buzzing at the seams with curiosity about every little detail. How tall are the buildings? What do you hear and smell as you walk down the street? Do people in a place that big still get that feeling he does sometimes, like he’s stuck in a trap he can’t see, and if he thinks too hard about it, he can’t breathe?

Except now that they’ve known each other for a little over a week, Dean isn't sure he's made much headway in the "getting to know Cas" department at all.

Sometimes, Cas seems just like all the other people in Seahaven: obsessed with talking about how great the town is, how fun the dance is going to be, who’s dating who and all the other meaningless stuff everyone seems to care so much about.

But then other times, he’ll say something that almost knocks Dean out at the knees, makes him feel like he’s on unsteady ground and happy to be there. Like when Cas told him about the glass platforms.

Or the day Dean finds out that Cas knows a lot of really weird facts about marine life.

He can’t even remember how the subject came up, but here Cas is, one day at lunch, sitting on top of their picnic table and waving his hands around as he talks about something called a mantis shrimp.

“They’re only ten inches long, but they can punch with the force of a .22 caliber bullet.”

“You’re making this up,” Dean says, grinning, mostly because he’s discovered that poking at Cas is fun and will make him squint at you.

Sure enough, Cas’ eyes narrow, their blue somehow all the brighter for it. “I most certainly am not,” he says. “Their punch is so fast that it actually heats the water to a boiling temperature as it passes through. I’ll send you a link to this really great web comic—”

“A what to this really great what?” Dean asks, but Cas’ mouth has snapped shut and all the bright excitement from a moment ago has been replaced by embarrassment.

“Um. A comic book,” Cas says. His hands, which were gesturing so animatedly a moment ago, hang uselessly at his sides. “But I think I left it in Chicago.”

“Oh. Right,” Dean says, and he has the weirdest feeling that something’s been lost, but he can’t seem to figure out what it is.

Two days later, though, Cas comes to school with a big grin on his face, carrying a bunch of printed pages stapled crookedly together. It is a sort of comic book, full of hilarious drawings of mantis shrimp and interesting facts about them. It’s the nerdiest thing Dean has ever seen, and he puts it carefully in his backpack so as not to crease the edges. He reads it three times that night before he falls asleep.

That single act of sharing seems to unlock something between them. For days, the two of them trade their favorite facts from the comic back and forth, and within less than two weeks of Cas joining their school, Dean can’t picture a time when Cas wasn’t right there, sitting next to him in all his classes and acting a little dorky and awkward all the time. He actually starts to look forward to school again, because school means he gets to see Cas.

By the time the dance rolls around, it feels like they’ve known each other for years. It’s weird, because they haven’t even been to each other’s houses yet — something Dean realizes when he offers to pick Cas up and give him a ride to the dance. So that night, when he pulls up to the address Cas told him, he’s almost disappointed to find Cas already waiting for him on the sidewalk.

Like every other house in Seahaven, Cas’ home is a bungalow-style one-story with a tidy front lawn. There’s a brand-new SUV in the driveway and flowers in the window boxes. Inside, the lights are on and someone’s moving around, but Cas apparently isn’t interested in having Dean come into the house to meet his parents.

It’s probably because he’s embarrassed of his parents, not Dean.

Almost definitely.

Dean comes to a stop right in front of Cas and waits for him to slide into the passenger seat. The dance is only a semi-formal, but Cas has clearly put some effort in. He always wears a button-down, but today, he’s paired it with black slacks instead of jeans. The dark blue color of his shirt brings out his eyes. He’s also put a bit of product in his hair, which makes his messy look seem slightly more intentional than usual.

For a split-second, Dean pictures what it might be like to run his fingers through those dark, rich tangles. He blinks, and the image goes up in smoke. Why the heck would he think about touching Cas' hair?

“Hello, Dean.” Cas grins his dorky, gummy grin as he pulls the passenger door shut. “Nice car. I didn’t take you for a Prius man.”

“Shut up, it’s my mom’s.” Dean steers away from the curb, checking the side mirror to hide a sudden blush. Someday, he’ll get to drive a car he’s not embarrassed to be seen in. Today is not that day.

“Do you think this dance is going to be any good?” Cas asks him.

Dean shrugs as he pulls up to the nearest intersection and turns right. “Probably not, but there’s never much to do around here on weekends. It’s like the whole town just kinda shuts down.”

“I suspect people are just spending time with their families, since they don’t have to be at work.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Dean agrees. “You think you’re gonna dance with anyone tonight?”

It seems important to ask about Cas dancing with someone; like maybe if Dean doesn't, Cas will figure out where Dean's thoughts strayed a minute ago. Not that there’s anything to figure out. Just a weird fluke.

“Maybe,” Cas says thoughtfully. “April seems nice. I was thinking about asking her.”

Dean just barely suppresses a grimace. “Nah, man. April’s bad news. No one’s ever stabbed anyone in the history of Seahaven as far as I know, but if anyone was gonna start, it’d be her.”

Cas lets out a laugh. It’s a nice laugh — deep and surprised, like Cas himself didn’t expect it. “What? What are you even basing that on?”

“I don’t know, man. Something about her eyes,” Dean says, gesturing at his own one-handed, in case Cas didn’t know what eyes are or something. Jesus. “You can definitely do better than her.”

“Alright, let’s hear it then.” Cas shifts in his seat to face Dean more fully. “Who, according to Dean Smith, is the perfect dance partner for me?”

Dean shifts restlessly in his own seat, trying to think. Obviously Lisa’s no good because she asked Dean to the dance. It’s not officially a date, but it’s definitely something like it. There’s the whole cheerleader crowd, but they’re all kind of brainless. All they ever do is talk about products they’ve tried or want to try.

His brain decides to screw him over by supplying him with another vision: Cas’ chest pressed against his, the two of them swaying to some slow, sappy song. Dean blinks so hard, he can actually feel the strain in his eyelids. What the hell is wrong with him?

“There’s a lot of options,” he says vaguely, scratching at his neck as he pulls up to a stop sign. “Don’t think I know you well enough to judge who you’d like.”

A moment of silence, where Dean can feel the weight of Cas’ eyes studying him. Then Cas says, “I guess I’ll know when I see her.”

Dean manages a feeble laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “Should be a good time.”

***

The school gymnasium is decorated with streamers in various sky blues and ocean greens as well as a large banner along one wall announcing the Seahaven High Under the Sea Dance.

Fast-paced music plays through the speakers on the walls, but Castiel doesn’t recognize the song — not surprising, considering the fact that the music on The Dean Show is mostly older, or by little-known bands. As far as he’s been able to tell, there are two rules for music in this world: the rights to buy it need to be cheap, and it needs to be reasonably upbeat. Grunge, heavy metal or Bob Dylan-style protest music have no place in the world Chuck Shurley has created.

Quite a few young people — Castiel hesitates to call them “students,” seeing as they’re all actors and mostly in their twenties — are already here, dancing on what is usually a basketball court. Others mingle by a table that holds snacks and punch bowls. As he walks further inside, Castiel notices that someone has set up an interesting lighting effect that makes it look almost as though they really are underwater, with shivery wavelengths undulating in a gentle rhythm along the walls. It’s sufficiently realistic that Castiel can almost hear the sound of waves lapping around them.

Overwhelmed as he is by all this sensory input, it takes him a moment to realize Dean is no longer next to him. He turns, eyes scanning his surroundings, to find Dean still on the threshold to the gym. He looks like the cover of a fashion magazine in his tailored slacks and black dress shirt, but his face doesn’t support the illusion: his skin is pale, his eyes wide with panic as they fix on the strange underwater effect dancing along the walls.

Oh. Right. Dean’s phobia.

Anger rises up within Castiel so suddenly and fiercely that he’s forced to dig his fingernails into his palms in an attempt to contain it.

Dean is afraid of the ocean, and Chuck knows it because he’s the one who made Dean afraid in the first place. Chuck is almost definitely the one who chose the theme for the dance as well — even with how little time he’s spent on the show, Castiel has gleaned from conversations among the crew that Chuck doesn’t like to outsource creative decisions. No doubt he thought that forcing Dean to revisit his trauma would make for good television. Perhaps, even now, viewers are being treated to a flashback of the incident that caused Dean’s fear.

It’s all so deliberately cruel that Castiel wants to scream.

There’s a crackle in Castiel’s headset and he just catches the tail end of someone saying “—told you this was a bad idea” before a different voice addresses him directly. “Go back and talk to him. We made a big deal in the promos about Dean hanging out with Lisa at this dance, so try to get him inside.”

Castiel takes a deep, calming breath. In through his nose, out through his mouth. He approaches Dean, reminding himself that he’s not supposed to know why Dean is having a difficult time going inside.

“Dean,” he says. His hand develops a life of its own and comes to rest on Dean’s arm. Dean flinches violently, bumping into the doorframe and stumbling backwards, all the way out into the hallway. The lighting here is composed of the usual plain fluorescents, and the only concession to the evening’s theme are a few fishing nets and blue garlands draped among the lockers.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, fine,” Dean says, but he sounds out of breath. There’s a fine tremor in his hands. “Just need… just gotta go get some fresh air.”

He turns on his heel and stalks away down the hall. The people back in the control room probably want Castiel to stop him and steer him back in the direction of the dance.

Castiel opens his mouth to call after Dean and bring him back. What he says instead is, “I’ll go with you.”

Dean doesn’t acknowledge him, just as Castiel doesn’t acknowledge the voice in his ear instructing him to “get Dean back inside as soon as possible.” He follows Dean the rest of the way down the hall and outside through the double doors.

The air is the same balmy temperature it always is. The studio lights mimicking the moon and stars gleam above them against the top of the dome. They look so real that Castiel could almost fool himself into thinking he was actually looking up at the night sky.

Dean strides across the lawn in front of the school, making no effort to let Castiel catch up. If it weren’t for the nagging voice in his ear, Castiel’s instinct might be just to let Dean go and give him a little bit of privacy in which to calm down. But he has his instructions, and besides, there is no such thing as privacy for Dean. If the camera in Castiel’s shirt button doesn’t film him, there’s undoubtedly a camera on top of a building or stuck inside a tree that will.

It doesn’t take Castiel long to realize that Dean is heading for the picnic table that has already become “theirs” in Castiel’s mind. Dean climbs up on one of the benches before dropping heavily to sit on top of the table, his head in his hands.

Castiel climbs up to join him. “What’s wrong?” he asks, though he already knows the answer. Even that simple, straightforward question is a lie. (Not a lie — a performance, he reminds himself. But it feels like the same thing when only one of them is actually performing.)

“I’m fine,” Dean says, though that statement is somewhat undermined by the fact that his hands are still covering his face.

“Get him to look up,” the voice in Castiel’s ear says. It's Chuck this time. “The mic’s not picking him up too well like this.”

Before Castiel can even form a plan to comply, Dean looks up of his own volition, staring at the school building in front of them, all lit up for the dance. “You probably think I’m some kind of head case,” Dean says bitterly. “Freaking out over going to a stupid dance.”

“I don’t think that at all,” Castiel answers. If anything, Dean is the only sane thing in the bizarre world that’s been created for him.

Castiel means for that thought to stay firmly in his head, but something about the way Dean’s face looks so young and lost in the fake moonlight has him blurting out at least part of it: “I think you’re the only sane thing around.”

Dean’s head swivels around to look at him. “What?” He looks shocked and uncertain, and Castiel doesn’t blame him at all. What a stupid f*cking thing to say.

“Walk that back,” the voice in his ear recommends unhelpfully.

“I… I just meant,” Castiel stammers, with no idea of where he’s going, “you’re my only friend here. So far.”

Dean’s face remains frozen for a long, suspended moment. But then he bursts out laughing, shaking his head, and Castiel’s heart nearly gives out from sheer relief.

“Jesus, Cas,” Dean says, wheezing, “you’re so freaking weird.”

Dean shoves him, playfully, but Castiel wasn’t ready for it and almost topples backwards off the picnic table. He makes no effort to hide his offense at this completely unprovoked attack, which only makes Dean laugh harder, so Castiel shoves him back.

Dean shoves him again, harder this time, and he’s genuinely in danger of toppling off the bench this time, can almost feel the ground rush up to meet him —

— but he doesn’t fall.

He doesn’t fall because Dean has caught him. Castiel is suspended in the circle of Dean’s arms, their faces inches away from each other.

Slowly, he becomes aware of other details. Both of Dean’s hands have gripped him — one of them at his waist, the other on his shoulder.

Even more problematic is the fact that Castiel must have thrown out his own hand to catch himself, and that hand is now resting on the back of Dean’s neck.

Castiel intends to sit up and put distance between them, but what happens instead is this: his thumb strokes, very slowly and gently, across the soft hair at the base of Dean’s skull.

Dean shivers. His eyes search Castiel's face.

f*ck.

Castiel pushes Dean away so hard that Dean’s elbows hit the table. Castiel almost winces in sympathy at the thud of bone against wood.

“What the hell,” Castiel manages, smiling weakly, like this is all some great joke. A performance. Just a performance. “I thought we were friends. Now you’re trying to break my neck?”

Dean doesn’t seem to know how to react. He scoots slightly away from Castiel, rubbing his elbows and looking dazed. Finally, and much too late, he mimics Castiel’s joking tone. “Not my fault you’ve got sh*tty balance.”

Castiel flinches at the profanity. Dean isn’t supposed to swear. Sure enough, one of the voices in his ear chimes in immediately. “Tell him not to swear. Tell him you find it offensive.”

Before Castiel can utter that lie, a voice reaches them from across the lawn.

“Dean! There you are!”

They both startle, like they’ve been caught in something they shouldn’t be doing.

Nothing happened, Castiel tries to tell himself. You made sure it didn’t.

But as he watches Lisa walk up to them, smiling at Dean and ignoring Castiel completely, he knows — as instinctively and deeply as he knows that two and two make four — that Dean would have kissed him if Castiel hadn’t pushed him away.

And what happened once could easily happen again.

What this means is that Castiel needs to be so, so much more careful. After all, he’s read the fan forums. He knows the fan theories on why Lee was written off the show: Chuck realized that Dean was just a little too interested in him. It would seem that those theories are correct at least in one respect — Dean isn’t at all opposed to kissing other boys.

Castiel’s mind, always inclined to be an asshole, spins for him a vision of a future where he loses his job for kissing Dean. Certain news outlets would probably offer him a small fortune to spin tales of his and Dean’s star-crossed gay love. Castiel bites down on the inside of his cheek to dispel these intrusive, unpleasant thoughts. No matter how hard up he was for money before he got this job, he could never betray Dean’s trust like that.

You’re already betraying his trust, a voice tells him, and it’s not the one in his headset this time.

“Hey, Cas.” Dean’s voice reminds Castiel that he is not in fact alone with his thoughts. Lisa is hanging off Dean’s arm, making moon eyes up at him, and Castiel just barely swallows down the instinct to gag.

He clears his throat. “Sorry, got distracted. What is it?”

“Lisa and I are heading back inside.”

Castiel co*cks his head at Dean, trying to get a read on his emotional state. “Are you sure?”

There’s tension in Dean’s face and all through his shoulders, but it’s subtle — Dean is obviously trying to put on a brave face for Lisa. “Yeah, man.” Dean chuckles weakly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Castiel has no answer to that, or at least none that Dean would want him to give, so he simply shrugs.

“You coming?” Dean asks.

Castiel wants to say no, but he can still see the fear lurking in Dean’s eyes, just beneath the layer of bravado he’s painted on top. “Of course,” he says.

The relief that flashes across Dean’s face for just a moment is absolutely worth putting aside his misgivings.

At least that’s how Castiel feels for their first ten minutes at the dance. But as the evening wears on and he’s forced to watch Dean share dance after dance with Lisa while he sips listlessly at too-sweet, non-alcoholic punch, he’s beginning to reconsider.

Castiel does ask April to dance, but he’s self-aware enough to realize that he’s doing it mostly to get a reaction from Dean. Dean catches Castiel’s eyes exactly once to shake his head disapprovingly at Castiel’s choice of dance partner, but if Castiel was hoping that Dean would storm across the dance floor to separate him from April, he was sorely mistaken.

He wishes he could leave, but he hasn’t been called backstage, so he lingers and shares another few dances with a dark-haired young woman. She gives her name, but Castiel forgets it immediately. He can’t seem to take his eyes off Dean, especially on the frequent occasions when Lisa leans in much too close to whisper in his ear.

A few hours into the dance, a couple of the male actors pretend to be on the verge of coming to blows — probably because Chuck felt the dance was no longer sufficiently exciting, now that Dean seems to have gotten past his initial panic and a steamy makeup session on the dance floor with Lisa doesn’t seem to be immediately forthcoming. But Dean steps in to diffuse the situation and it’s over just as quickly as it started.

Out of sheer desperation, Castiel murmurs something to himself about being allowed to leave, hoping someone in the control room is listening, but the voices in his headset remain frustratingly silent. Perhaps this is Castiel’s punishment for the almost-kiss.

Because there is nothing else to do, he entertains himself by wondering when Shurley Productions will get around to casting the roles of his parents. Without actors to play his mother and father, his position on the show still feels somewhat tenuous. Even the house where he’s meant to be living hasn’t been properly set up yet, though a few PAs accompanied Castiel there earlier tonight to set up at least a few pieces of furniture, in case Dean insisted on coming inside. If the subject came up, Castiel was instructed to tell Dean that his parents had gone out of town. Luckily, Dean didn’t seem to mind that Castiel never offered to let Dean meet them.

When Dean finally finds Castiel again, it’s almost midnight. By this time, Castiel has pulled up a chair near the punch bowl and is making no effort to even look like he’s socializing. No doubt, the audience now considers him a weirdo loner and he’ll be subjected to a behind-the-scenes tirade about focus groups and sponsor endorsem*nts, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says, dropping into the chair next to Castiel’s. “You about ready to head home?”

Castiel looks over at Lisa, who’s standing with a group of cheerleaders across the dance floor, looking none too happy. “Aren’t you taking Lisa home?”

Dean gives him a flat look. “You think I’m that much of a dick? I’m your ride, man. I’m not just gonna leave you here without a way to get home.”

It’s not an issue, because Castiel could easily have taken the backstage exit inside the fake bank again, then grabbed a shuttle to the area where he checked in this morning and left his “outside” clothes, but of course he can’t say that. “Well… thank you, but I wouldn’t want to…” The word co*ckblock freezes on his tongue. It’s probably not allowed. “Um, keep you from any fun.”

“Dude, nothing was gonna happen,” Dean says, rising to his feet and clapping Castiel on the back to encourage him to stand as well. “Lisa’s not that kind of girl.”

Doubtful, because when Castiel glances across the room once more, he finds Lisa glaring back at him. No doubt, Lisa’s objective was to get at least a kiss from Dean tonight. She’s obviously failed in that, but that’s hardly Castiel’s fault. It takes two to kiss.

Feeling lighter than he has in hours, Castiel follows Dean out of the gym. As soon as they leave the strange underwater atmosphere behind, Dean’s posture loosens a bit.

“You find any good girls to dance with?” Dean asks him as they make their way back to the parking lot, where Dean’s mother’s Prius sits waiting for them. “And no, April doesn’t count.”

“A gentleman doesn’t dance and tell,” Castiel answers. Not that he could tell even if he wanted to; he still can’t recall the other girl’s name.

They ride home in silence. Castiel knows he should ask about Lisa some more, maybe needle Dean about liking her. It’s what a friend would do.

The voice in his headset agrees: “Start a conversation, for God’s sake. Talk about Lisa some more.”

Wearily, Castiel says, “So, Lisa seems to—”

“Almost back home,” Dean says, talking right over Castiel as he pulls onto the street where he believes Castiel’s home is located. Except the house where Dean picked him up is still two blocks down, so they drive in silence for another couple of horribly awkward minutes. Maybe Dean forgot that Castiel’s home was so far down the street. Or maybe he simply didn’t want to talk about Lisa. Castiel shouldn’t hope for the latter.

“Thanks for taking me to the dance, Dean,” Castiel says when they finally pull up in front of the right house. “I had a good time.”

He flinches inwardly. Now, on top of everything else, he’s making it sound like the two of them went on a date.

“I’m glad,” Dean says, his voice soft and far too intimate in the dark, enclosed space of the car. Castiel could almost fool himself that they’re the only two people in the world, but he’s all too aware that the camera in his shirt and the one hidden in the car’s dashboard both have night-vision capabilities.

“Good night, Dean,” he says, and scrambles out of the Prius before he can do something abysmally foolish like try to touch Dean again.

He just about hears Dean mutter a quiet “Night, Cas” before the passenger door slams shut and the car whirs quietly away from the curb.

Castiel heads slowly up the walkway, exhaling in relief at the knowledge that the show's live feed will have left him behind now. Dean is gone, so Castiel is no longer of interest. He spends another ten seconds hovering at the bottom of the porch steps — just in case Dean decides to return for some reason — then walks back to the curb and waits for the car that will take him to the nearest checkout point.

***

“How was the dance?” Charlie asks as she removes Lisa’s headset.

Lisa grimaces. Her on-screen makeup doesn’t look nearly as flattering in the unforgiving backstage lighting — just smeared and overdone.

“f*cking exhausting,” she says. “And I didn’t even get the goddamn kiss because Dean can’t take a f*cking hint. I’ll never hear the end of it from Chuck. ‘Try harder, Lisa. Be more likable. Make opportunities.'"

Her imitation of what Charlie likes to call Chuck's "motivational speaker mode" is uncanny.

Lisa tugs at a bobby pin in her hairdo, sending a strand of dark hair tumbling over her shoulder. “I don’t even wanna look at my phone. My agent’s probably called five times already.”

“Sorry,” Charlie says, grimacing sympathetically at Lisa as she unclips the microphone hidden inside the brooch on Lisa’s dress. “You’re all set.”

“Whatever,” Lisa sighs, and walks off toward the changing rooms. Halfway there, Chuck melts out of the crowd and corners her, gesticulating as they talk. Lisa nods at whatever he’s saying, a forced smile frozen on her face.

A few feet away, Castiel has also arrived. One of the on-set security guards, Dorothy, is working on unclipping his mic and camera. All the PAs who are still at work this close to midnight must’ve been busy, and Dorothy has never hesitated to help out wherever she’s needed.

It’s one of quite a few things Charlie’s noticed about Dorothy. Some of the other things being her pretty eyes and the sexy air of authority she exudes in her tight, black uniform. There’s just something about her that screams Lara Croft, who happened to be Charlie’s very first crush. She’s basically powerless to resist.

As Charlie watches, Castiel thanks Dorothy and walks away from her, his shoulders slumping like they’re being pulled down by an invisible weight. Charlie is severely tempted to go over there and try to talk to him, but that would be a bad idea — especially when Chuck probably has plans to corner him too.

She can talk to Dorothy though. In fact, this is an excellent excuse to talk to Dorothy because they'll both need to go to the equipment room now to return the mics and earpieces for their end-of-day checkup.

“Hey,” Charlie says, a little breathlessly, when she’s managed to catch up to Dorothy. “So… Castiel didn’t look too happy.”

Dorothy studies her with a vaguely amused expression. “Yeah, well,” she says as she nimbly side-steps a couple of members of the janitorial staff who are clearing the catering table. “It’s been a long day and a long night for everybody.”

Maybe Charlie should just agree and leave it there, but… well, she’s noticed Dorothy, and she’s pretty sure Dorothy’s noticed her back a time or two. Which means Dorothy is the kind of person who might have an eye for the same things Charlie does. Including the reason why Castiel seemed so downtrodden tonight.

“You know they almost kissed, right?” She doesn’t clarify that she’s talking about Dean and Castiel, not Dean and Lisa.

Dorothy’s eyes skitter over to meet Charlie’s, then away again. The lines of her face go a little tighter. “Right. Well, I’m sure that as far as the Powers That Be are concerned, it was just an awkward moment ‘cause they were wrestling. That’s how most of the general audience is gonna see it too.”

Charlie just barely suppresses the urge to fist-pump. Dorothy could still be straight, but it seems significantly less likely than it did a minute ago. “I hate that you’re right,” she says.

They fall silent as they reach the equipment room and turn in the gear to Frank, the grouchy weirdo who seems to man the equipment desk 24/7.

When they walk out again, Charlie says, “You know the fan forums aren’t going to see it that way though. At least… not the queer ones.”

Dorothy stops and turns to face Charlie, her expression grim. “You wanna be careful what you say around here, Charlie. I’ve worked here for years, and I’ve learned to be discreet. Being queer is fine for us, but it’s not fine for Dean. They wrote Lee off the show, and they’ll do the same with Castiel if he steps too far out of line. So you better hope the general audience interpretation is the one that sticks.”

Dorothy turns and heads for the security office down the hall, leaving Charlie alone with the hollow ache in her chest.

She tries to picture what it might be like if she had Dean's life: constantly filmed by someone who polices every detail of your life, down to something as personal as your sexuality. The mere thought of it turns her stomach.

As she watches Dorothy walk away, her eyes catch on the live feed airing on a screen in the corner. It shows Dean’s sleeping face, eyes scrunched up and mouth twisted in distress, like he’s caught in the throes of a nightmare he can’t escape.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Dean’s Bar, Hibbing, Minnesota

“Alright, last call, people!”

At Donna’s shout, a few people shuffle to the bar to put in a final drink order while Jody gets a head start on wiping down the counter for the night.

“I don’t think Lisa is actually right for Dean,” says a woman who’s sitting on one of the stools closer to Jody’s end of the bar. She’s nursing a gin and tonic. The disco ball they’ve put up in honor of the school dance throws shadows across her face and generous cleavage. Almost everyone who came in tonight dressed up in ball gowns, and necklines have been dropping lower as people grow more tipsy. (Jody drew the line at wearing a dress herself, but she and Donna are wearing matching suits for the occasion.)

The woman sitting next to her gives a drunken giggle. “Whatever, Lydia. You don’t think any woman’s right for him unless she’s you.”

"No, listen, I'm serious," answers Lydia, dignified as only the very drunk can be. "I know people, like, ship them, but I just don't see him being that into her. He didn’t even kiss her.”

Her wipedown accomplished, Jody drops her rag into the sink and leans back, watching the live feed of Dean’s sleeping face, duplicated a dozen times across every screen in the bar.

Jody sighs, crossing her arms. When she married Donna, she promised to be there no matter what, and that included helping her carry on her mom's legacy when she died. But maybe they should've burned Mrs. Hanscum's damn bar to the ground instead. Running this place, throwing parties for things like this stupid school dance, plastering this poor kid’s face all over every surface — it all feels too much like they’re complicit in exploiting him.

“Oh look,” Lydia says, pointing at Dean’s face on the nearest screen. It’s scrunched up in distress, small whimpering noises emanating from the speakers. “Bet he’s having nightmares about his dad again.”

***

Dean tastes salt on his tongue. His stomach lurches as another wave buffets their little boat. Water sloshes into the hull, drenching Dean’s legs, but he’s so thoroughly soaked already from the rain that he doesn't even feel it anymore.

He can’t understand what happened. The weather was fine when they left the dock: blue skies, a couple of fluffy clouds. And then, out of nowhere: a storm.

“Dad?” he calls. “Dad!”

His father is sitting utterly still near the stern. He’s holding on to the lines and the rudder, but he’s not making any attempt to change their course and steer them back to the harbor.

That might be what scares Dean most of all.

“Dad!” Dean tugs on his arm, screaming to make himself heard over the howling wind.

Dad turns to face him, and Dean whimpers at his father’s expression. He doesn’t have words for what he sees on Dad’s face, but it’s… sad. So sad that there’s no hope of it ever getting better.

“Dad, please,” Dean tries. “We gotta get back to the harbor.”

“Dean.” Dad’s voice is too quiet for Dean to hear him in the storm, but he recognizes his name in the shape of Dad’s lips, and then Dad’s arms are around him, holding him tight enough to knock the breath out of him.

Dean doesn’t even know how it happens. One second Dad is holding him and the next he’s letting go, falling, plummeting backwards into the water.

“Dad!” Dean screams. “Dad, no!”

He jolts upright, his throat hoarse and his surroundings dark.

Oh. Right. A nightmare.

Dean has this one every so often, but it’d been so long since the last time that he’d almost hoped he was getting better. But here he is. It was probably that f*cking dance. Of all the stupid themes, they had to pick an undersea one.

Unable to stand the darkness, Dean flicks on his bedside lamp. His sheets are soaked with sweat, so he rolls back his sheets to air them out and pads to the bathroom. The lights in here are even brighter, but Dean turns them on anyway, squinting against the pins and needles in his eyes. He meets his own face in the mirror, staring at red-rimmed eyes and pale skin.

“Get it together,” he tells his mirror image. “Captain Smith, you’re our only hope. If you don’t act quickly, all these men will die.”

Adopting a deeper, gruffer tone of voice — it’s supposed to sound like Dad’s, as well as he can remember it — he answers himself, “No one dies today. Not on my watch.”

He fills his lungs to speak again, but loses heart halfway through. Instead, he just stands there and stares into the mirror, trying to find traces of his father in his own face and coming up empty.

***

Castiel’s television set mocks him.

It sits in the corner of his apartment, staring at him out of its single, dull eye. Reflecting Castiel’s own uncertainty back at him.

The simple fact of the matter is that he misses Dean. It’s stupid, but he wishes he could have taken Dean with him after the dance — back to his real home, such as it is. A crappy little studio with peeling paint, cracking countertops and thin walls. Nothing like the comfortable house Dean grew up in, but at least they’d be alone. Really, truly alone to talk freely about whatever they want to, without a voice in Castiel’s ear to interrupt and manipulate them.

Sighing, Castiel settles down on the worn carpet and turns on the TV, flipping channels until Dean’s face fills the screen.

To Castiel’s surprise, Dean isn’t asleep. He’s in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror. There must be a camera somewhere behind the glass.

Dean looks sad and exhausted, and Castiel wants to hold him. He lifts up his hand and touches the screen, feeling a small, illicit thrill as the tip of his finger grazes Dean’s cheek.

He startles back, surprised, when Dean speaks in a voice much lower than his usual timbre. “No one dies today. Not on my watch.”

A wide, almost manic grin stretches across Dean’s face. It never comes close to reaching Dean’s eyes and it fades as quickly as it came, leaving Dean looking tired and worn once again.

“f*cking hell,” Dean mutters. The profanity is followed by a severely belated beep. Whoever’s monitoring the live feed back at the control room must be nodding off.

Dean wanders out of frame and flicks off the bathroom light.

“Goodnight, Dean,” Castiel whispers, wishing more than anything that Dean could hear him; that they could actually talk to each other through the barrier of the screen.

He means to turn off the TV. Instead, he leaves it on and drags his mattress into the living room so he can watch over Dean while he sleeps.

***

Dean could swear Cas was going to kiss him last night.

It’s a thought that was easy to ignore while he was busy talking to Lisa at the dance and trying not to let on that he was constantly on the verge of a panic attack because of the stupid underwater lighting. After the dance, he was exhausted, and then the nightmare…

But now it’s Saturday and there’s nothing to do except lie around the house and procrastinate on homework. After breakfast, he tries to watch TV, but as per usual, there’s nothing interesting on. One channel is showing reruns of The Waltons, the other some old black-and-white musical about… skiing? Nuns?

Obviously, this plan of distracting himself with a movie is going great.

Mom has a shift at the hospital today, so she’s not around to distract him either. Today’s edition of the Seahaven Herald is the only evidence of her pre-dawn breakfast. The front page shows a picture of an exploding building below the headline Traveling More Dangerous Than Ever.

Dean runs his thumb back and forth across the newsprint, remembering the featherlight touch of Cas’ thumb stroking across the back of his neck last night. The touch only lasted a second or two before Cas pushed him away, but it was there. Dean didn’t make it up. And you don’t stroke the back of somebody’s neck like that unless you’re thinking about kissing them.

Right?

The thing is, made up or not, Dean wanted Cas to kiss him. He was seconds from leaning in. He could feel the tension between them, the pull of something that’s on the verge of being really freaking great.

It’s not the first time he’s felt like that either. He felt it with Jamie, but more importantly, he also felt it with Lee. He never got up the nerve to actually kiss Lee, but he almost did, that one time.

We don’t go there, he reminds himself.

Except, now that he’s let those thoughts breach the surface anyway, it might be time to figure out… why not?

He’s never met anyone who’s gay, but Mr. Turner explained to them in science class a few years ago that it’s possible for men to love men, and for women to love women. Some men and women are even capable of loving people of both genders. There was a word for that too, though Dean can’t quite remember what it is. He does remember how he spent the whole rest of that day with a buzz under his skin — some deep-rooted excitement like he’d done something illicit and just found out he could get away with it.

He also remembers that the very next day, Mr. Adler had another talk with them that went a little bit differently. He never said the words “There’s something wrong with that,” but there was definitely an implication that they weren’t supposed to think about it. It was something that didn’t apply to the kids of Seahaven; something that belonged out in the world, where people like Cas fly high on glass platforms above Chicago and traveling is dangerous.

But here Dean is, unable to stop thinking about what might have happened if Cas hadn’t pushed him away. It might be time to entertain the notion that Mr. Adler was wrong: even in Seahaven, boys sometimes like other boys.

What Dean needs is more information. They don’t have a whole lot of books in the house other than what Dean uses for school assignments, and the school library is closed. There’s a municipal library in town though, and it’s only a short walk away.

Happy to finally have something to do, Dean slips on his sneakers and heads out the door.

As per usual on a weekend day, the town is pretty much dead. The only signs of life he sees as he walks are a single car and a woman on a bicycle, passing him on the street.

It takes less than ten minutes to make his way to the square at the center of Seahaven, where City Hall, the Seahaven Saves grocery store, old Joshua’s newsstand and a couple of office buildings stand in a circle around a fountain that depicts a school of leaping dolphins. Dean’s never actually seen dolphins in the water off Seahaven, but then again, he’s kept away from the water as much as possible for years.

“Morning, Dean!” At the feeling of a hand on his shoulder, Dean turns and recognizes one of their neighbors, Ishim Tracey. He’s always creeped Dean out a little, with his cool eyes and sharp-toothed smile, but Dean forces himself to be pleasant because his mom raised him right.

“Morning, Mr. Tracey,” he says.

Mr. Tracey’s hand is still on his shoulder and applying slight pressure, like Mr. Tracey is trying to push him closer to the billboard just to their right, which is advertising some kind of toothpaste.

Dean lets himself be moved, and Mr. Tracey’s hand falls away.

“Where are you off to this morning?” Mr. Tracey asks, smiling his sharp, flat smile.

“Oh, um.” Dean considers keeping his mouth shut. It’s his own business where he wants to go, isn’t it? He’s not doing anything wrong. But answering the question will probably get him on his way quicker, so he relents. “To the library.”

Mr. Tracey nods approvingly. “Good, good. Just make sure you read something cheerful, eh? Wouldn’t want to spoil such a perfect day.” He gestures up at the deep-blue sky above them.

“Right,” Dean says slowly. What a weirdo. Time to get out of this conversation. “Well, it was nice seeing you.”

“You too, Dean, you too! Be good now!” Mr. Tracey calls after him, but Dean doesn’t offer any other kind of acknowledgement. He’s got places to be and things to learn.

The library is all the way on the other side of the square. On weekdays, the sidewalks here are busy, but Dean only meets one or two people today, walking the opposite direction from him.

He’s only been inside the library a handful of times, and he was small enough then that his mom still picked out his books for him, but the white-walled interior is vaguely familiar when he walks in through the door.

There’s a checkout desk to the left, and several rows of shelves to the right. In one corner is the kids’ section where Mom used to sit and read with him sometimes. The carpet looks a little dusty now, like it’s fallen into disuse.

Dean looks around for signs of life, but finds none.

“Hello?” he calls out. “Hello!”

No answer.

At the far side of the room, there’s a set of double doors. Dean pulls down the handle, trying to open them, and then the weirdest thing happens: the doors give way at first, moving about an inch or two, before suddenly slamming shut again. Like someone pushed them from the other side.

Even weirder, it sounds like there are people just beyond the doors, whispering to each other.

“Hello?” Dean calls again. “I, um… wanted to borrow a book?”

There’s no answer, so Dean gives up on the doors for now. Maybe whoever works here snuck in their boyfriend or girlfriend and was busy making out or something. In the meantime, he can start looking through the books. There aren’t that many shelves, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find the kind of thing he’s looking for.

He wanders into the first row, scanning the spines to get some idea of how the books are organized. Except he’s forced to conclude pretty soon that they aren’t organized at all: a copy of Watership Down sits next to a copy of the Bible, which in turn sits next to a book bound in plain green that doesn’t have any words on the spine at all.

Dean pulls that one off the shelf to look at more closely. There aren’t any words on the front of the book either. He cracks it open to see if the title might be on the inside, except…

The pages are empty. Completely blank. Not a single word on them.

Dean’s insides start to prickle with a vague feeling of wrong. Why would anybody bother putting blank books in a library? He looks up, scanning the rest of the shelf in front of him. Now that he’s looking more closely, at least half the books on each shelf look like the one in his hands: a single plain color with no words on the spine.

He reaches up for another one, this one bright red, when the double doors at the back of the room open and hurried footsteps slap across the floor, approaching him.

Turning towards the sound, he finds himself face to face with a girl or young woman who’s maybe a couple of years older than him. Her hair is bright red and her cheeks are flushed. She’s wearing a t-shirt that says “Princess Leia Can Get It,” though Dean couldn’t say who Princess Leia is or what she can get.

The woman is breathing hard, like someone who’s been running. Or making out with her boyfriend in the back room.

Momentarily forgetting the mystery of the blank books, Dean grins at her. “Hey. Did I catch you at a bad moment?”

Her eyes widen in shock, like she didn’t actually expect Dean to talk to her. “Um. Yeah. No. What?”

Dean chuckles quietly. This is too funny. “You’ve got your boyfriend back there, right? That’s why you wouldn’t open the door? Don’t worry, I won’t rat you out.”

He can practically see the gears whirring inside the woman’s brain. A moment later, she nods. “Yeah, that’s… that’s it. Sorry about that. And, um, thanks.” She reaches for the book in Dean’s hands and plucks it from his grasp. “I’ll just… be taking that.”

Now that his attention’s been drawn back to it, Dean remembers about the mystery of the blank books. “Hey, what’s up with that book? Why aren’t there any words in it?”

The woman’s tongue flicks out to wet her lips. “Oh, it’s, um… an art installation. Yeah. There’s normally real books here, but we moved ‘em to the back to make a point about…” She trails off, clears her throat. “The transitory nature of knowledge.”

With an expression that looks suspiciously like relief, she steps around Dean to put the book back on the shelf. Something’s definitely weird, but Dean didn’t come here to question the business practices of the Seahaven Library. He came for information.

“So the reason I’m here,” he starts, and almost falters, feeling suddenly shy about his request. But that’s stupid because this woman is almost the same age as him and she must’ve gotten much weirder requests than this before. “I’m looking for a book about… about sexuality.”

Something very complex happens to the woman’s face then. She looks… proud? Triumphant? But there’s a much darker emotion underneath that, somewhere between resignation and the kind of sadness you can’t cure with easy remedies like a cheerful song or a walk in the sunshine.

“Right, um,” she says. “Anything specific?”

Dean wasn’t really prepared for follow-up questions. Blushing fiercely, he stammers out, “Just… a book that explains what’s… normal, I guess? All the different kinds of… you know. Ways people can…”

Apparently, his stammering added up to some kind of sense, because the woman’s expression goes all gentle and understanding. “Have sex?” she asks.

“Sure, that, and… you know… feelings.”

Dean Smith, poet, that’s him.

“Cool. Yeah.” The woman nods firmly, like they’ve made some kind of pact. “We’ve got all those books in the back right now because of the…” She gestures at the shelves. “...art stuff. But if you come back tomorrow, I’ll have some choices for you. Sound good?”

In truth, Dean’s a little disappointed. He was really hoping to get some books today, but tomorrow is apparently the best he’s going to get, so he forces a smile. “Yeah, sure. Thanks, uh…”

“Celeste,” the woman says, after a beat of hesitation. “My name is Celeste.”

“Celeste,” Dean repeats. “I’m Dean.”

“It’s so great to meet you, Dean,” Celeste says, and there’s a weird, almost fanatical gleam in her eyes that Dean doesn’t totally understand. “Listen, can I hug you?”

“Oh. Um. Yeah, sure.”

As soon as Dean’s given his permission, Celeste barrels into him, hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. Dean’s arms hang at his sides, a little unsure as to whether he’s supposed to be hugging back. Before he can make up his mind, Celeste steps away, her eyes gleaming like she’s on the verge of tears, which makes even less sense than the rest of their already bizarre interaction.

Celeste sniffs once before giving him a watery smile. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “See you then.”

He walks out of the library and back home, feeling more confused than ever. Hopefully he’ll at least get some answers on the Cas issue tomorrow, and then, depending on what he finds out, he can go back to either being just Cas’ friend or…

Or maybe next time he’s got Cas in his arms, he’ll man up and just close the distance between them.

***

Charlie’s hands are shaking. In fact, she’s trembling all over as she steps through the exit to the backstage area that Dean was so very, very close to discovering just a few minutes ago.

Going out there and interacting with Dean, live and on the air, was a spur-of-the-moment thing — a reaction to the panicked screeching in her headset about how someone needed to get out there and stop Dean going through the books.

Nobody was even remotely ready for this. Dean never goes to the library, and they only had two minutes’ warning between Dean’s conversation with Ishim and the moment he walked in through the library door.

f*ck. She is so going to get fired.

“I’m so going to get fired,” Charlie wails in the vague direction of the person who’s stepped up to take her arm and lead her away from the doors.

“You’re not going to get fired,” the person says, and apparently it’s Dorothy, but Charlie is in no fit emotional state to appreciate being manhandled by a hot security guard right now. “You saved their asses in there.” A pause, then, “But Chuck does wanna see you.”

“Of course he does,” Charlie sighs, and lets Dorothy tug her along to meet her fate.

They take the shuttle to the control room, where Chuck sits in a swivel chair on a raised platform, his attention riveted on the massive screen that takes up the entire wall. It shows Dean walking back from the center of town. One of the people manning the control center’s monitors says into his headset, “Bicycle girl, what’s your location? Okay, got that. Ride past Dean going west towards Elm Street, in T minus thirty seconds.”

Dorothy leads Charlie up the steps to the platform, still touching her arm. Somewhere underneath all the panic, Charlie takes note of the fact that Dorothy could’ve easily let go of her by now.

“Mr. Shurley?” Dorothy says when they reach the top of the stairs. “Charlie Bradbury to see you.”

Chuck swivels away from the screen to face them. Charlie almost expects him to be cradling a white cat and sporting a facial scar. “Charlie!” he says, rising with his hands outstretched. Dorothy’s touch falls away and Charlie misses it immediately, especially when Chuck takes hold of her hand with his own clammy palm. “Way to save our bacon!”

“Um. You’re welcome?”

“Sit, sit.” Chuck gestures to the swivel chair he so recently vacated, and Charlie sits. She immediately feels awkward because Chuck remains standing, looming over her despite the fact that he’s actually slightly shorter than her. Maybe this is some kind of power move?

“That was some quick thinking on your part,” Chuck continues. “Unfortunate that you didn’t just brush him off and tell him the library doesn’t carry those kinds of books, but we’ll deal with it. We’ll send someone out and get a couple of acceptable choices.”

Charlie wonders what “acceptable choices” might mean to Chuck. Probably something heavily sanitized and completely unhelpful.

“I’ve got some books at home that I could—” she starts, but Chuck is already shaking his head.

“No need,” he says. “We’ll handle it. And in future, make sure you stay backstage, huh?” He gives her a wide, thoroughly insincere smile. “Well, thanks again, Charlie.”

Charlie doesn’t point out that Chuck never thanked her in the first place, but she recognizes a dismissal when she hears one, so she starts to get up out of Chuck’s chair. That’s when something occurs to her.

“Do you need me to go back out there tomorrow? Just once, to give Dean the books?” she asks.

“As I said, Charlie,” Chuck repeats, with an undertone of impatience, “we’ll handle it. You just stick to your job.”

Feeling chastised and more than a little sad that she won’t be able to talk to Dean again, Charlie nods and makes her way back to the staircase that leads down off the platform. Dorothy is waiting for her at the bottom.

“Sorry,” Dorothy says, grimacing in solidarity.

“Yeah, well,” Charlie says. “Don’t know what I was expecting.”

***

Castiel spends his Saturday morning doing something not exactly illicit, but definitely ill-advised: settling in at the rickety coffee table next to his saggy couch and looking up information on Bobby Singer.

He couldn’t have said why he’s suddenly so interested. Maybe, having met Dean, it’s natural that he would feel a kinship with a man who cared so much for him that he couldn’t continue to remain complicit in his imprisonment.

Or maybe he wants to make sure the man Dean thinks of as his father is still out there somewhere, healthy and alive. He’ll never be able to tell Dean about any of what he’s discovered, but at least he won’t feel like a fraud if he ever finds himself in a position where he has to tell Dean that his father is in a better place.

For the first hour of his search, Castiel finds nothing whatsoever beyond coverage of Bobby’s time on the show and the interview he gave days after his on-screen death. Anything past that is speculation in fan forums, but none have any real, solid information on Bobby Singer’s current whereabouts. Maybe people have simply lost interest. After all, it’s been well over a decade.

He’s on the verge of giving up when he stumbles upon a website that claims to be able to find photos of a specific person on the internet based on existing photos of the same person. It feels a little invasive, but Castiel tells himself that his motives are not nefarious. He grabs a screenshot of Bobby Singer from his final interview, uploads it to the site and waits.

Three seconds later, he’s looking at a results page. Again, most of the photos are the ones his search already turned up, but when he rearranges the results by date, a new image appears at the top. It's of a man in his late forties or fifties wearing jeans, flannel and a trucker hat. His beard, once carefully trimmed, has now grown a little wild and developed a few white patches. But it’s unmistakably Bobby Singer.

Castiel clicks on the image, which leads him back to the website it was taken from. The website for a business called Bob’s Salvage & Repair in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Scrolling down the page reveals a contact phone number and email. For a full five minutes, Castiel sits there, staring at the screen and hovering over the email address with his cursor. It would be so easy to reach out.

But even though he’s inclined to trust a man who cares about Dean deeply enough to throw away a guaranteed lifelong paycheck, he doesn’t truly know Bobby Singer. Any attempts to contact him might be reported straight back to Chuck and could cost Castiel his role on the show.

He’s not ready for that.

Sighing, he bookmarks the page and starts to contemplate what else he should do with his day. It’s extremely tempting to camp out in front of the TV again, watching Dean be just as bored as he is himself. Instead, he goes out for lunch, though he feels a little guilty about having the option to move around the city freely when Dean doesn’t.

Castiel has just been served a steaming bowl of pho when his cell phone lights up with a call from his agent.

“Hello, Crowley,” Castiel says, somewhat warily, because he can count the pleasant interactions he’s had with Crowley on exactly two fingers: the one where Crowley agreed to take him on in the first place and the one where he told Castiel that he’d been cast on The Dean Show.

“Cas,” Crowley says. “I trust you’re using your day off as an opportunity to hone your acting skills.”

Castiel sits up straighter, dropping the spoon he’d picked up to dig into his pho. Crowley never makes idle remarks, and he never calls without a good reason. “Are you saying there’s something wrong with my acting? Did someone from the show call you? Did Chuck…?”

“Well, let’s just say, some people have…” Crowley pauses dramatically here, no doubt to take a sip of the expensive Scotch he favors. He’s no respecter of the drinking hours observed by the rest of Western civilization. “... noticed a certain amount of chemistry between yourself and one Dean Smith. As you were at no point instructed to appear sexually or romantically attracted to your male co-star, I have to assume the attraction is genuine, so I’m here to say: stop it. Think of baseball, nasal mucus or jockstraps. Picture him with a turnip for a head if you have to. Either way, act your little heart out to make the audience believe you and Dean are friends and friends only. What’s more, make me believe it.”

Castiel stares down at his food, wondering why he wanted it in the first place. He’s completely lost his appetite. “What if I don’t?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

“As far as the network is concerned, Dean Smith is irreplaceable. You, however, are not.”

“Right.” Castiel’s own voice sounds disembodied to him, like something echoing off the walls of an underground tunnel. “I’ll do better.”

He’ll have to. If he wants to be there for Dean in any capacity, he has to make nice with Chuck and the network, no matter how much the idea disgusts him.

If he were a better person, he would quit the role now and walk away. But that would mean giving up any chance of seeing Dean outside the confines of a TV screen ever again, and Castiel’s stomach aches at the mere idea. Maybe someday he’ll be able to give Dean up and stand on his principles. But today is not that day.

“Oh, and one other thing,” Crowley says. “Remember the girl you were dancing with last night?”

Castiel casts his mind back and comes up with a vague, dark-haired blur. “Yes,” he lies.

“No, you don’t, so I’m informing you now that her name is Hannah. You asked for her number at the dance and then you called to ask her out the next day. Your objective for this week is to talk Dean into a double date with him and Lisa. Don’t f*ck this up.”

Without further ado, Crowley ends the call. Castiel stares down at the phone, wondering how on earth he's meant to pretend he has feelings for Hannah while watching Dean with Lisa. Sure, he knows how to act, but this isn’t acting — it’s torture.

Maybe he should have quit the show after all.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Dean’s Bar, Hibbing, Minnesota

“Well, now isn’t that interesting!” one of the women at the bar exclaims as she scrolls through her phone.

“What’s interesting?” Donna asks as she pours another couple of mimosas for the table of increasingly tipsy ladies in the far corner. Somehow, the Sunday brunch crowd is always the rowdiest.

“Just got a news alert,” the woman says. “That girl who danced with Castiel on Friday? They’ve officially announced her as his first love interest on the show.”

“Uffda.” Donna shakes her head as she waits for the champagne bubbles to subside before topping off. “Those two had about as much chemistry as a skunk and a tailpipe.”

“Yeah, you know who he’s got chemistry with?” That’s the woman next to Phone Lady, chiming in. “Dean.”

Phone Lady gives her an incredulous look. “I don’t see it. Besides, Dean’s not gay. He went out with Jamie last year.”

“He could still be gay,” the other woman insists. “Or bisexual.”

“Whatever.” Phone Lady returns to her screen, scrolling avidly. “You think everyone’s bisexual.”

From one of the other tables, there’s a mutter of, “Don’t know why people have to make everything gay. There’s no need for that.”

But Phone Lady’s friend isn’t so easily discouraged. “A lot of people are, even if they don’t know it! Sexuality is fluid and—”

Donna tunes out their bickering and finishes pouring the drinks, glad that Jody is in the back, helping the line cooks fry eggs for brunch. Conversations like this one really aren’t helping Donna’s case that saving her mother’s bar — Dean Show theme and all — was a good idea.

This sort of thing has started happening more and more — fans having strong opinions about Dean's love life. Was Jamie nice enough to be his girlfriend? Was there really something to the rumors with Lee?

Of course that's just the tip of the iceberg; folks have plenty of thoughts on other things too. Shouldn’t he be over his dad’s death by now? Shouldn’t he try harder in school?

And yet, nothing has made Donna feel as dirty as this: slinging beers while her customers discuss whether a seventeen-year-old boy is allowed to be queer.

***

When Dean returns to the library on Sunday morning, he expects to see Celeste again. Instead, there’s a lady in a gray suit with her hair up in a tight bun. She’s more what he thought a librarian might look like, but he doesn’t like her nearly as much as he did Celeste.

Before he can figure out how to tell this woman what he came in for, she slaps a single book onto the counter. It has the heavy, worn appearance of a used textbook and its title reads, The Complete Guide to Human Sexuality.

“Enjoy,” the woman tells him, in a tone that discourages lingering. Not that there’s anywhere to linger in the first place — the library doesn’t have any chairs, and the only rug is the worn, dusty one in the children’s section.

So Dean takes his bounty with him to the small park next to the town square. He sits on the grass, crossing his legs and curving his shoulders forward to keep the book out of view as much as possible.

He tries to start reading the introduction, but for a book about sexuality, it’s surprisingly dull, and his thoughts start to drift almost immediately. Giving up on the introduction, he turns to the back of the book for the index instead, scanning down it for terms that he might want to know more about.

His eyes catch on “bisexuality.” Right — that was the word Mr. Turner mentioned, for someone who’s attracted to men and women both. Dean makes note of the page number and turns to that page, about halfway through the book.

Bisexuality, he reads, is the phenomenon of being attracted to both or all genders.

“Both or all”? What does that even mean? Are there more than two?

He contemplates turning back to the index to look up “gender,” but then his eyes fall on the very next paragraph on the page.

Famous historical figures who were allegedly bisexual include Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Josephine Baker and Giacomo Casanova.

The first few names mean nothing to him, but… Casanova? The Casanova?

He slams the book shut, staring out at the square without really seeing it. As a little kid, he always wanted to be an explorer, traveling the world and discovering places no one else had ever been. He’s since realized that dream will probably never come true, what with travel being so dangerous and too expensive. But this feels… well, it feels a little bit like his dream came true after all. He’s happened upon a piece of new knowledge that only a select few people are privy to, like Mr. Turner. It's like the entire world is rearranging itself around him.

Other people are like this. Have been like this, all through history. And no matter what Mr. Adler says about Seahaven kids, Dean knows he’s liked both girls and boys. Jamie and Lee. Lisa, at least for a little while, before he met…

Cas.

He likes Cas.

Does he?

He tries out the thought, bouncing it around his brain to see how it fits.

They’ve only known each other a couple of weeks. But even so, it already feels like if Cas disappeared the way Lee did — the way everyone in Dean’s life seems to keep disappearing — he’d leave behind an emptiness that wouldn’t be easily filled again.

For just a second, Dean decides to indulge himself. He lets his eyes flutter closed, blocking out the ambient noise of people passing on the sidewalk and the occasional car driving past. He pictures himself back on the picnic table on Friday night, holding Cas in his arms. Pictures himself leaning in… slowly, so slowly, and then—

With a gasp, he opens his eyes. The image in his head felt so vivid that he’s almost tempted to touch his lips to see if they’re wet from Cas’ kiss.

Jesus. He must be losing it.

All around him, the world comes rushing back in: the minivan he keeps seeing around town, circling the square now. Old Joshua at his newsstand, reading the Seahaven Herald. (Today’s headline is, Survey: Thousands Want to Live in Seahaven, America’s Safest Town.) The weight of the book in his lap.

Right, the book. The thing that started him on this whole train of thought. He opens it again, back where he left off. He scans the rest of the text on the page, and his eyes snag on a sentence a little further down from where he was reading before.

The first documented gay rights organization, The Society for Human Rights, was founded in 1924 in Chicago.

Chicago.

He’s got to tell Cas about this. Except he can’t. Can he? What if Cas figures him out? What if he… what if he’s like Mr. Adler and the whole subject makes him kind of uncomfortable?

No, that’s stupid. This is Cas. Cas, who Dean is still pretty sure was going to kiss him that night, for that split-second moment before he pushed him away.

Maybe Cas feels a little jumpy about this stuff, exactly like Dean does. So just to be safe, Dean could try to approach the subject in a roundabout way, where he doesn’t make it seem like he’s talking about them.

Yeah, that works.

Dean taps his fingers on top of the book, thinking. He’ll see Cas at school tomorrow, but talking about all this at school feels weird somehow. And with how dead Seahaven gets on weekends, chances are that Cas is home and just as bored as Dean. He’d probably like getting a visitor.

Or maybe he wouldn’t, since he didn’t ask Dean inside before the dance. f*ck.

But the mere idea of waiting any longer to talk to Cas about this is too depressing to think about, so Dean decides to press his luck.

He tucks his book under his arm and sets off across the square, headed for Cas’ street. He’s so focused on the destination that he doesn’t even notice Lisa until he’s walked right into her.

“Hey, De— ow.” She hisses and rubs her arm.

“Oh, hey. Sorry, Lis. I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s alright.” Lisa’s usual white-toothed smile has bounced back already, competing with Seahaven’s constant sunshine for brightness. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

Dean hesitates a moment, but there’s really nothing wrong with telling Lisa where he’s going, is there? “Just headed over to Cas’ place.”

“Oh,” she says. It’s probably Dean’s imagination, but Lisa’s smile seems to dim a little. “Can I come along?”

Dean stares at her, completely at a loss. It hadn’t even remotely occurred to him that Lisa might want to join him. She's never even talked to Cas as far as he knows. And it’s not like he doesn’t enjoy spending time with her, but he really doesn’t want any witnesses to the conversation he’s trying to have with Cas. “Um. Maybe another time?”

To his tremendous relief, Lisa nods. “Yeah, sure. Or we could go grab some ice cream later? Like, this afternoon?”

“Sounds great. Carlo’s Ice Cream Parlor at 3?”

That'll give him enough time to get to Cas' place, hang out for a while, and come back downtown.

“See you then,” Lisa agrees. With a brush of her hand down his arm, she walks away, to wherever she was headed before.

Dean looks after her: hips swaying, gorgeous dark hair bouncing. It would’ve been so easy to fall for this girl. He’d probably be there by now, probably would’ve kissed her goodnight after the dance and asked her out… if not for Cas.

At the thought of Cas, his stomach gives an excited little flip. He clutches his book tighter and starts walking again, putting a little spring into his step.

***

Castiel stands in the living room of his so-called home, surrounded by bits of furniture and random knick-knacks — vases, paintings, figurines — that were all rushed in here and hastily arranged into some semblance of order within the past fifteen minutes. Ever since Dean stopped to talk to Lisa in the square and announced he was going over to Castiel’s house.

Luckily, Castiel had already been backstage at the time, meeting with Hannah to run through some scenarios for how they should act around each other at school this coming week, now that they’re supposed to be dating.

They’d just moved on to considering the idea of a daily kiss hello when one of the PAs, Charlie, stormed into the room and told Castiel he needed to go live immediately. The next few minutes were an absolute blur of makeup application, shouting crew members and a hair-raising shuttle drive to Castiel’s Seahaven house.

Now, for lack of anything else to do while he waits for Dean to arrive, he’s sitting in an armchair in the living room, reminding himself where all the cameras are located. His shirt button, of course, and the fireplace. The clock mounted on the wall above the TV. The lamp on the side table by the front door.

Moments later, Dean’s knock sounds on the door, and Castiel practices a smile of pleased surprise as he crosses the room to answer it.

But as soon as the door opens and he sees Dean standing there, a little red in the face and out of breath but still so very handsome, smiling takes no effort at all. “Dean! What’re you doing here?”

“Hey.” Dean shifts on his feet, nervously eyeing the house’s interior over Castiel’s shoulder. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ambush you or anything, but there wasn’t anything to do and I got kind of bored. Is it okay that I came over?”

“More than okay. I was pretty bored too, actually. My parents are out of town.”

“Cool. It’d suck to have to leave, 'cause it took me forever to get here. I hit this massive construction zone walking over from the square and had to go like three blocks the wrong way.”

Castiel bites his lip to keep his facial expression under control. He had a feeling that people were working frantically behind the scenes to delay Dean’s arrival somehow, but setting up a fake construction zone within minutes? That must have taken some very impressive manpower.

“Sounds stressful,” Castiel answers, and steps aside to let Dean enter the house.

“Yeah.” Dean crosses the threshold, looking around the living room with open curiosity. “Nice place.”

“It’s a little bare-bones still,” Castiel answers as he closes the door. “We haven’t had time to unpack everything yet.”

Dean shrugs. “I like it.”

“Thanks.” Castiel leads the way through the living room and into the kitchen at the back of the house. “Can I offer you anything? I have… water. We haven’t really had time to go shopping yet either.”

“Water’s great,” Dean says as he settles into one of the stools that line the kitchen island. “But what’ve you guys been doing for meals?”

Castiel shrugs as he reaches into one of the cupboards for two glasses and fills them at the tap. “Going out, mostly.”

Dean grimaces. “So which one do you think is worse? Chuck’s Tavern or Shurley’s Diner?”

Of course, Castiel hasn’t actually been to either of Seahaven’s two restaurants, so he improvises, “Shurley’s Diner. By a mile.”

“Right?” Dean says eagerly as he accepts his glass of water from Castiel. “The pancakes at that place are the worst. I’m not a gourmet cook or anything, but even I can do better than that. And don’t get me started on their waffles. They’re an insult to waffles everywhere. At least the tavern has some decent wings.”

“Right.” Castiel takes a seat on the stool next to Dean’s, his attention catching on the book that Dean’s set down on the kitchen island. The cover is facing down, but Castiel knows exactly what the book is about. Dean’s spontaneous adventure at the Seahaven Library is the most exciting thing that’s happened on the show all weekend, so it’s been featured in all the recaps. Recaps Castiel probably shouldn’t be watching because he isn’t supposed to know what Dean gets up to on the weekends until Dean tells him, but he couldn’t resist indulging himself.

“What are you reading?” he asks, nodding in the direction of the book.

Dean shifts uneasily on his stool. Castiel waits him out, sure the voice in his ear is going to instruct him to change the subject any second now. But then, wordlessly, Dean turns the book over to let Castiel read the title.

“The Complete Guide to Human Sexuality? Is that for one of your classes? I thought we had all the same ones.”

“Nah.” Dean’s fingers tap restlessly against the book’s dust jacket. “Just something I was curious about.” The tapping grows faster. Under the kitchen island, Dean’s leg is bouncing nervously. “Hey, you ever heard of something called The Society for Human Rights? In Chicago?”

Of all the questions Castiel thought Dean might open with, this definitely wasn’t one.

He answers quickly, before the voice in his ear can instruct him not to. “Yes. It was the first documented organization asking for equal rights for gay men. Just gay men though — they didn’t let bisexuals join. I suppose it goes to show that bi erasure has a long and sordid history.” His mouth snaps shut as he realizes he’s actually said so much more than he meant to.

Based on the recaps, he had an idea that Dean might want to talk about something to do with queer sexuality, but apparently he still wasn’t completely prepared for it.

“Change the sub—” says the voice in his ear, but Dean interrupts.

“How do you know all that?” He sounds awed. His eyes are fixed on Castiel’s face, his entire body curved eagerly towards him. “And what’s bi er… what was it?”

If there’s an elegant way to change the subject when Dean has just asked him a direct question, Castiel doesn’t know it. He supposes he could stage a sudden fainting spell, but he’d much rather answer Dean’s question instead, so he does.

“Bi erasure. It’s a term referring to the fact that many people don’t believe bisexuality is real — they consider it either an experimental phase for straight people or they think the bisexual person is in denial about being gay. Both are stupid and completely wrong, of course. Bisexuality is very real. I should know.”

Oh. f*ck. f*ck f*ck f*ck. Did he just… did he really just…?

Castiel mentally replays for himself the past few seconds of conversation and arrives at the following conclusion: apparently, he really did just out himself on national television.

It’s a good thing his parents have already cut all contact with him, or they might be tempted to do it now.

Even in Castiel’s headset, stunned silence prevails. Castiel tries not to focus on that.

Dean’s leg has stopped bouncing and he’s staring at Castiel as if he’s witnessing the second coming. Castiel really wishes Dean would blink or at least look away. “Are you… you saying what I think you’re saying?” Dean asks. His voice is almost a whisper, as if to speak of these things too loudly is to invite retribution down on their heads.

Dean doesn’t know how right he is.

Well, f*ck it. Castiel has already made this bed for himself. He might as well lie in it. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m bisexual. I like both girls and boys.”

“Oh.” Dean’s expression is difficult to parse. He looks surprised, but not unpleasantly so. Perhaps, like Castiel himself, he wasn’t expecting this to turn into a coming-out conversation.

Dean shifts on his stool again, putting himself right at the edge and even closer to Castiel. “And are people… do people know about that? Other than me, I mean?”

Only the entire country now, Castiel thinks. Out loud, he says, “I told my parents. They’re… not very supportive. Especially my father.”

It’s a vast understatement. Castiel’s parents and the constant, poisonous drip of their disapproval were the reason why he left Chicago so precipitously after high school to move to LA. He hasn’t heard from them since.

Except… Oh. He isn't supposed to be telling Dean about his family. He's playing a character on a TV show and his parents on the show haven’t even been cast yet. Worse, now he's painted those theoretical future parents into a corner by implying that they’re bigots.

f*ck. He’s going to get fired, isn’t he?

When he manages to look back at Dean’s face, Dean looks desperately sad for him. It always makes Castiel a little weak in the knees when he remembers just what a kind, empathetic person Dean is. It’s a small miracle, considering the cold, sanitized nature of the world he grew up in. Perhaps this is something Bobby Singer deserves credit for.

“I’m so sorry, Cas,” Dean says. He’s still speaking so very softly, as if he’s creating an intimate space just for the two of them, where no one else can reach.

It’s a complete illusion — there are cameras and microphones all over the room and on Castiel’s person — but Castiel finds himself wanting to make-believe.

“If it helps,” Dean continues, looking terrified but determined, and Castiel knows exactly what’s coming. “I think I—”

“Change the subject right now or I’m writing you off the show.” There’s no mistaking the voice in Castiel’s ear, though it’s lost its usual joviality. Chuck sounds absolutely furious.

“I’m dating Hannah,” Castiel blurts out.

Dean’s mouth snaps shut. He looks like he’s been sucker-punched. “You… wait, what?”

“I’m dating Hannah,” Castiel repeats. To distract himself from the sudden, fierce ache in his chest, he keeps talking, letting himself fall into the familiarity of the cover story he rehearsed with Hannah earlier. “We got along great at the dance on Friday. She gave me her number. I called her yesterday and we went out to dinner. I kissed her goodnight.”

Dean’s lips part slowly, then close again without a sound. His leg starts bouncing again. “That’s… wow. Good for you, man. Congrats.”

“Thanks,” Castiel answers. He feels hollow.

“Guess that dance was good for something after all.” Dean’s lips curve up in a smile so strained, it looks physically painful. “I’m seeing Lisa later, so we both got dates out of it, huh?”

“Yeah. We should go on a double date or something,” Castiel says, and dies a little inside.

***

Charlie has been locked in a staring contest with Dean Smith for the past five minutes. For once, no one’s yelling orders into her headset — all she can hear is Ed, Aaron, and Becky from casting, bickering about some snafu involving a misplaced extra that she couldn’t care less about.

Meanwhile, Dean should be sleeping, but he hasn’t turned out the lights. He’s lying on his side, staring off into space. Unknowingly, he’s facing directly towards the camera hidden in his alarm clock. His eyes are unfocused and his lips pulled into a thin, tight line. Charlie has a shrewd suspicion as to what — or rather, who — he’s thinking about.

All day, whenever she had a moment’s peace, she was glued to the live feed backstage, watching Dean read the book and then fumble through a conversation with Cas. She’s absolutely convinced that Dean was on the verge of coming out. And apparently the Powers That Be agreed with her, judging by Castiel's extremely sudden, very unsubtle segue into talking about Hannah. Someone probably threatened him into changing the subject.

Charlie smiles weakly at Dean’s image on the screen, wishing she could go back in there and comfort him. But Chuck was very clear: stick to your job. Stay backstage.

On the screen in front of Charlie, Dean finally blinks. Still, his eyes remain unfocused, staring at some distant point only he can see.

Charlie's insides squirm with how disgustingly awful this entire situation is. Dean doesn’t deserve this; any of it. But nothing's ever going to change for him as long as Chuck holds the puppet strings he calls a life.

The fact is, Dean needs to get off the show, and he can't do it by himself.

He needs help.

Whose help though? A PA has no power whatsoever. They’re everybody’s doormat and completely replaceable. Now, if Charlie was working in the control room, things might be a little different. Chuck would at least have to hear her out.

Something begins to form in the back of her mind. It'd be too ambitious to call it a plan just yet, but it could be one, when the right time comes.

On the screen, Dean blinks again. With a sigh, he rolls onto his back and flaps blindly at his bedside lamp until he’s found the switch. He flips off the light, and the camera switches to night-vision mode.

Charlie wraps her hand around her headset’s mic to make sure her voice won’t be picked up. Then she whispers, “Don’t worry, friend. I’m coming for you.”

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Variety, September 26, 2008

Fans See Romance Between Dean and New Best Friend

A growing audience subset of long-running reality hit The Dean Show has found a new reason to tune in: what they perceive as sexual or romantic tension between star Dean Smith, 17, and his new best friend, portrayed by actor Castiel Novak, 19.

While posts about the pairing, nicknamed “Destiel” by supporters, have exploded on tumblr and other fan sites, the show’s creative team denies there is anything to the rumors about a romance between the two young men.

“It’s just not what the show is about,” said Chuck Shurley, the creative mastermind behind The Dean Show. “In the coming weeks, you’ll see us focused on creating a really gorgeous love story between Dean and Lisa.”

Asked about a recent incident on the show where its star appeared interested in learning more about bisexuality, Shurley said, “He’s a smart guy. He has a lot of different academic interests.”

Shurley encouraged Variety to contact the public affairs office of Shurley Productions with any further questions. Reached via email, a Shurley Productions spokesperson gave the following statement: “Frankly, we think it’s disgusting the way some people insist on sexualizing two teenage boys. Not everything is about sex. There aren’t enough depictions of close, affectionate friendships between two men in media today, and we at Shurley Productions are working to fill that need.”

***

After the bisexuality incident, Cas gets the talking-to of his life. Even growing up with an overbearing, critical father didn’t prepare him for the weight of Chuck’s disapproval.

Castiel and Crowley are both summoned to Chuck’s office the morning after Castiel’s accidental coming-out. The office, which is part of Chuck’s private apartment, is located right next to the control room and has the only outward-facing windows in the entire studio dome. They provide a truly stunning view of the hills and valleys surrounding Los Angeles, but Castiel is in no position to appreciate scenic beauty for the thirty minutes or so he spends in the room.

He and Crowley are sitting on a couch so soft that Castiel feels constantly on the verge of being swallowed. No doubt, it’s a conscious choice: like this, Chuck looms over them as he paces, ranting about how “the rules for interacting with Dean exist for a reason” and “if you can’t follow simple instructions provided by the control room, what good are you?”

When Chuck finally runs out of steam, he stops in front of Crowley, pointing a threatening finger at him. “You, Crowley, need to control your client better. And you.” The threatening finger swivels to Castiel. “You put so much as another toe out of line, your job on this show is history. Is that understood?”

Castiel considers choosing rebellion. It would be so very, very satisfying to tell Chuck exactly what Castiel thinks of a man who has built his fortune on exploiting a fellow human being for profit. But that temptation isn’t strong enough to outweigh the sight of Dean’s hurt and disappointment the previous day, when Castiel told him about Hannah. Or the sight of him that night as he lay in bed, looking like a man who thought he’d found his way, only to become lost all over again.

Castiel is beginning to suspect that his growing affection for Dean is far from one-sided, and maybe that should be all the more reason to quit the show. Chuck will never let them be anything more than friends, so continued interaction will only cause more hurt.

But when it comes to spending time with Dean, Castiel just can’t seem to let go. It’s awful and selfish, but he wants to do everything in his power to stay by Dean’s side. Whatever that looks like.

“Understood,” he says.

But later that day, he pulls up the webpage he’d bookmarked and sends a message through the contact form:

Dear Mr. Singer,

I hope you don’t mind me reaching out to you this way. My name is Castiel Novak, and I recently joined The Dean Show in the role of Dean’s new best friend. I’ve found myself growing very fond of him, and I’m struggling with the dishonesty my role requires of me. I know you also care deeply about Dean. Any advice you can share would be most welcome.

Sincerely,

Castiel

***

Dean has a problem.

Well, two problems really. It’s been about two weeks since he realized he might maybe, just possibly have more-than-platonic feelings for Cas. It’s also been about two weeks since he found out Cas is dating Hannah.

It’s not like Cas and Hannah are being all that obnoxious about their relationship. They’re not stumbling out of broom closets or shoving their tongues down each other’s throats in the hallways. But they do kiss hello and goodbye and hang out to chat with Hannah’s friends between classes. And it seems like every other day Cas has a story to tell about how he and Hannah had a nice dinner or went to each other’s houses to study.

Cas does invite Dean to spend time with him and Hannah, but Dean always finds some excuse as to why he can’t go. Usually, it’s that he has plans to hang out with Lisa, which is only true about half the time. And when he does hang out with Lisa, she keeps asking about a double date with Cas and Hannah, but Dean can’t seem to get himself to follow through on making actual plans for one. He hasn’t even kissed Lisa yet, though he knows she’s waiting for it. It just doesn’t seem right when, every time he closes his eyes, he can’t help picturing the kiss he almost shared with Cas.

Despite all that, Dean’s trying to be happy for Cas and his new relationship; he really is. Cas seems to be settling in and finding his place in Seahaven, which is a good thing. But sometimes, Dean can’t help worrying that in embracing Seahaven, Cas is leaving him behind.

For one thing, Dean still hasn’t been invited back to Cas’ house to meet his parents, no matter how many hints he drops during their shared lunches. And when Dean extends an invitation for Cas to come over, Cas always seems to have plans with Hannah already.

Still, Dean’s nothing if not a stubborn, persistent fool, so two days before a major chem test, he decides to try just one more time.

“Hey, you wanna come over after school tomorrow?” he asks, watching Cas pick at a bag of baby carrots. “We could study for chem together. And I think my mom was planning to make pork chops. They were pretty good last time she did them.”

Cas glances up at him and stops chewing. For a couple of seconds, he’s completely still, like he’s waiting for something. Then he winces. “I, um… I need to check with my parents,” he says.

Dean frowns at him, trying to show his disappointment without being too whiny about it. “Why? You’re over at Hannah’s house all the time, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Cas says slowly, eyes dropping back to his carrots again. “But remember I told you they don’t like the fact that I’m into boys too? They’ve been a little weird about me going to a boy’s house ever since I told them.”

“That’s the issue? They think I’m gonna jump your bones or something?” Dean forces a half-hearted grin. It’s nice to know that Cas doesn’t have some personal issue with Dean, but the idea that Cas is getting such a hard time from his parents is almost enough to turn his stomach. He tries not to think about what his own mom would say if she knew he might possibly, kinda be into boys a little bit too. And one boy in particular.

“I guess,” Cas says, chuckling weakly.

Dean makes a decision then. If a white lie is what it takes to spend more time with Cas outside of school, so be it. It's not like he could hurt anybody else by lying about himself anyway. “Well, it’s not an issue ‘cause I’m not like that. So you can tell your parents to lay off.”

It might be Dean’s imagination, but he could swear something darkens just a little in Cas’ expression. Dean was trying to reassure him, but obviously he’s gone about it all wrong. Seems like the more he gets to know Cas, the less he can figure him out.

“I’ll try,” Cas promises, but Dean knows a gentle letdown when he hears one.

So he’s genuinely surprised when the first words out of Cas’ mouth the following morning are, “My parents said it’s okay. I can go to your house.”

They take the bus together after school. Before Lee moved away, Dean and Lee always used to huddle up in the back row and exchange rumors they’d heard at school that day — who was dating who, who got into a fight. With Cas, the experience is a little different. Dean gets the sense that he’s not really the type to enjoy rumors, but he does seem to be enjoying the ride. He's settled himself right in the center of the bus, by the window, and he seems fascinated by the boring, repetitive streets of Seahaven as they drive through them.

“My friend Lee used to live there,” Dean tells him as they pass Lee’s house. It looks just the same as it used to, except Lee’s parents’ minivan is gone. “And my friend Benny lived down the street. Victor lived two streets over, but they all eventually moved out of town.”

As he turns his attention away from the window, he catches sight of the guy who always reads the Seahaven Herald on the bus. Today’s headline says, Seahaven Has Lowest Crime Rate in the World.

“Kinda weird, isn’t it?” Dean asks.

“What is?” Cas turns away from the window to face Dean. The motion bumps their knees together. Dean should move away from the touch, but he decides that drawing attention to it would be a bad idea and leaves his knee where it is.

“Well… every time I make a really good friend, they stick around for a couple of years and then they move away. Why do they keep doing that if Seahaven really is the best place on Earth?”

The touch of Cas’ knee disappears as Cas straightens up in his seat. “I don’t know. I guess some people don’t know a good thing when they have it.”

Dean is so tempted to shift sideways so their knees are touching again. It wouldn’t even be that hard. He could probably play it off as an accident. Instead, he curls his hand into a fist, hard enough for his blunt nails to dig into his palm. “You’re not gonna move away, are you?” he asks.

“I’m not planning to,” Cas says, and he’s smiling, but Dean somehow doesn’t believe that smile. “Seahaven is amazing. Who would ever want to leave?”

“Right.” It’s no more than people have told Dean all his life, but somehow it sounds like a lie when Cas is the one to say it. He’s been talking up Seahaven more and more lately — ever since he started dating Hannah. It’s like she’s brainwashed him or something. Sometimes, Dean’s not altogether sure he still recognizes this Cas as the Cas he met right after he moved to town.

They fall silent after that, but thankfully it’s not much further to Dean’s stop. They hop off the bus together and Dean leads the way into the house, which smells deliciously of grilled meat.

“Mom?” he calls into the house as they walk in.

“Hey, hon,” Mom says warmly as she walks through the doorway into the kitchen-slash-living room. She’s wearing a figure-hugging black dress and her face is made up like she’s getting ready to go to her own wedding. “And you must be Cas! Welcome to our home.”

“Thank you,” Cas says politely. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too. Did you both have a good day at school?”

They murmur noncommittally — when is a day at school ever really good? — and Dean shows Cas where to dump his backpack.

The three of them settle down for dinner. Dean’s hungry and the food tastes good, but conversation isn’t exactly stimulating because all Mom wants to talk about is the mix she used to make the gravy for the pork chops.

When she finally changes the subject, it’s to something Dean is even less excited to discuss.

“I hear you’re dating Hannah Carroll, Castiel,” Mom says, once they’ve cleared their plates and gone to the kitchen to grab some peach cobbler from Seahaven Saves for dessert.

“Oh.” Cas clears his throat as he hands Mom a dirty plate to put in the dishwasher. “Um, yes.”

“She’s a lovely girl. You know, I work with her father at the hospital. We’re lucky to have a surgeon as talented as him in a small town like Seahaven.”

Dean digs his knife into the cobbler to cut a slice for Cas, trying to focus on his task as opposed to listening to yet another conversation about how amazing Hannah is.

“You know, Lisa’s father is an attorney,” Mom goes on, turning on the water to rinse a dirty dish. “Dean keeps telling me she’s not really his girlfriend, but a mother knows better.”

There’s a beat of silence as Cas apparently struggles with how to answer that. “I’m sure,” he says finally, just as Dean transfers Cas’ cobbler slice onto a waiting plate and moves on to cutting a piece for Mom.

All of a sudden, Mom gasps, and Dean looks up so quickly that he almost slices through his finger. “What, Mom?” he asks.

Mom swivels around to face him, her face lit up like Christmas came early. “I know, dear. You and Lisa should go on a double date with Castiel and Hannah! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Dean’s hold on his knife tightens. What the hell is it with everybody trying to push him into going on this stupid double date? It’s like they’re all conspiring against him or something.

He tries to shake that thought off as Cas says, “Oh. Sure. I’d like that. Dean, how about we ask the girls to join us at Chuck’s Tavern for dinner on Friday? We’ll be done with the chem test by then. We can all celebrate together.”

Dean pretends to be very focused on transferring Mom’s slice to her plate. “Yeah, sure,” he murmurs. “Sounds like fun.”

They eat the cobbler, which tastes like feet, and Dean nods along as Mom tells them about the patients she saw that day. As soon as they’ve eaten and washed up, Dean grabs his backpack and leads Cas upstairs.

When they get to Dean’s room, Dean flops down on the bed, watching as Cas wanders around, taking it all in: the bookshelves with Dean’s old textbooks and the mantis-shrimp comic Cas got for him, tucked safely into the pages of a history book to keep it from creasing or curling; the couple of records he owns; the telescope he asked for as a little boy, but then got bored with when he realized that, like Seahaven itself, the stars never seem to change.

There’s another shelf that holds Dean’s old toys, and that’s the one where Cas stops, squatting down to get a closer look. “Can I?” he asks, pointing at the wooden kangaroo.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”

Gently, Cas picks up the kangaroo and the small ramp it goes with. He settles himself on the floor with his legs crossed, puts the ramp down and places the kangaroo at the top. Dean rolls onto his belly and props his chin onto his arms as he joins Cas in watching the kangaroo hop down the ramp — slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it topples over at the bottom.

Cas looks down at it fondly. “I love this.”

With anybody else, Dean would’ve brushed it off as kid stuff that he doesn’t really care about anymore. But since this is Cas, he says, “Yeah, me too. My dad was a great woodworker. He made lots of stuff like that for me.”

Cas looks up from where he’s just settled the kangaroo at the top of the ramp again. He didn't point it quite the right way this time, so it topples off the ramp after just two lopsided hops. “Your dad,” he says, with the slight awkwardness he often seems to develop around sensitive subjects. “He died, right?” When Dean doesn’t answer right away, he adds, “Sorry. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s alright,” Dean says, though he digs his fingers into the comforter on his bed, trying to anchor himself. “Yeah, he died. Boating accident. ‘S why I freaked out at the dance. I just… don’t like the water much anymore.”

“You were there?” Cas asks quietly. Dean’s eyes flick up to his face, looking for pity, but instead, Cas almost looks angry. That’s how Dean feels most often too, when he lets himself think about it: angry at the unfairness of having his father taken away from him. He doesn’t mind Mom, but he always felt much closer to Dad.

“Yeah.” Dean swallows hard around the lump in his throat. “Saw him go down.”

“I’m sorry, Dean.” This time, Cas’ voice is almost a whisper. One of his hands twitches upward, like he’s considering touching Dean, but then he thinks better of it. Dean wishes he hadn’t.

Cas stares down at the kangaroo, which lies motionless on its side. “He loved you,” he says, apropos of nothing.

Confused, Dean tries to get a read on Cas’ face, but he’s still just staring at the kangaroo like it holds all the answers in the universe. “Yeah,” he says, “I know.”

“Good.” Cas nods, like he’s said what he needed to say, then stretches across the floor for his backpack without so much as uncrossing his legs. “We should start studying.”

Dean drops his forehead onto his arms with a groan. “Ugh. I guess you’re right.”

They pull out their chem books and start quizzing each other about the periodic table until it gets dark. When they’re done, Dean drives Cas home. The lights in Cas’ house are on, but Cas still doesn’t invite him inside.

Dean waits at the curb as he watches Cas walk up the front yard, wondering if Cas’ parents are really okay with him spending time at Dean’s house today; wondering what Cas is going to walk into once he opens the door.

Like a coward, he drives away before he can find out.

***

“So… we still on for Saturday?”

Charlie turns to see that Dorothy’s walked up next to her. She bumps her shoulder against Charlie’s in a way that could be construed as platonic, but she follows it up with a slow trail of her eyes up Charlie’s chest that’s anything but.

“Yeah,” Charlie says, nervously brushing a bit of hair behind her ear. Jeez, she might as well be thirteen again for how smooth she is around Dorothy. “Can’t wait.”

She’d been thinking about asking Dorothy out for a while now, but Dorothy surprised her yesterday by taking matters into her own hands. She suggested they grab dinner at a burger place near the studio dome, so it’s nothing fancy — but fancy doesn’t really suit either of them anyway.

“You in charge of Cas today?” Dorothy asks, nodding at the backstage door next to which Charlie is lingering, waiting for Cas to emerge. They’ve all started calling him “Cas” lately — it’s all Dean ever calls him, and it seems to have rubbed off on the crew by default.

“Yeah. He should be here in just a minute.” Charlie hesitates a few seconds before adding, “He’s been a good boy lately. Following Chuck’s orders and everything.”

Dorothy shrugs. “Guess he figured he’d better, or Chuck was gonna kick him off the show.”

Charlie leans in closer so they can speak without being overheard by the other crew members passing them in the hallway. “You really think kicking him off is an option? People seem to like Cas a lot. And he's like the fifth best friend Dean’s had since he was, what, six? I feel like Dean’s starting to get suspicious about everybody moving away.”

Dorothy shrugs, shifting away from Charlie to glance over her shoulder. “Not sure. I’m just some security guard, you know?”

“Right.” Charlie smiles weakly. “And I’m just some PA.”

As if to remind her of that fact, Naomi’s voice squawks in her ear. “Chuck wants Thai food. Tofu pad thai with the sauce on the side. Get it done.”

Naomi doesn’t bother to stay on the line, so the next thing Charlie hears is a groan from Harry, one of the other PAs and the only one of them who can even remotely stand Ed. “Not it,” he says. “I went last time. And what the f*ck is the point of pad Thai without the sauce?”

“No idea,” Charlie answers, waving apologetically at Dorothy as she turns away. “And also, not it. I’m waiting for Cas to come backstage.”

“I nominate Ed,” Aaron chimes in.

Ed’s response to this is a string of profanity, which Charlie luckily has an excuse to tune out because that’s when the stage door opens and Cas steps through it, already taking off his hidden microphone and earpiece. He’s getting to be a pro at this.

“Hey, Cas,” Charlie says, accepting the pieces of equipment from his outstretched hands. “Good day?”

A half-hearted smile flickers across Cas’ face. “Fine, I suppose. We finally have firm plans for the double date, so Chuck should be happy.”

You’re not too happy though, are you? Charlie wants to ask, but that doesn’t seem like a smart move. Instead, she says, “Hey, I never got to tell you: I thought you coming out to Dean like that was really amazing and brave.”

Cas shakes his head. “It was stupid. I almost lost my job over it. And… it wasn’t what Dean needed to hear.” There’s something flat and studied in Cas’ voice, like he’s repeating something he’s been told is true.

Charlie glances up and down the hallway on either side of them, but there’s no one passing just now. “I think,” she says, “it was exactly what he needed to hear.”

It takes a moment for Cas to respond. His eyes roam Charlie’s face, as if he’s trying to figure her out. Then he smiles again. It’s small, just on the left side of his mouth, but at least it looks genuine this time. “Thank you,” he says. “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”

“You’re welcome.” Charlie beams at him. “Oh my god, did we just become best friends?”

Cas chuckles at that, warm and low. He seems almost surprised to be laughing. “I’d like that. To be honest, I could use a friend.”

“Then you’ve got one,” Charlie says, slinging an arm around Cas’ shoulders as she walks him to the shuttle that’ll take him back to the changing rooms.

She very pointedly doesn’t think about how her newfound friendship with Cas and her equally newfound clandestine plan to get Dean off the show are going to mesh with dating one of the people responsible for on-set security.

***

When Castiel retrieves his phone from his backstage locker, he finds a missed call and a voicemail from an unknown number.

As soon as he dials into his mailbox, a vaguely familiar, gruff voice fills his ear. “Don’t email me again. Emails can be hacked, idjit. If you need to talk, phone calls are better.” Bobby Singer rattles off a string of numbers. “You can reach me there, but only call when you really need to. Don’t think they’re watching me anymore, but you can’t be too careful.” A heavy sigh crackles in Castiel’s ear. “And thanks for… what you said to Dean about me today. You were right.”

With that, the message ends, replaced by a robotic voice asking Castiel if he wants to delete or save the message. Castiel saves it, Bobby’s words echoing in his ears.

Don’t think they’re watching me anymore, but you can’t be too careful.

What on earth has he gotten himself into?

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Dean’s Bar, Hibbing, Minnesota

It’s Wednesday night — always a quiet one at the bar. With the two lone customers freshly served, Donna takes a moment to pull up a chair behind the bar and watch the recap of the day’s Dean Show highlights.

“I love this,” Castiel says on-screen, studying the wooden toy kangaroo he’s been playing with.

“Yeah, me too,” Dean answers. “My dad was a great woodworker. He made lots of stuff like that for me.”

A soft-focused flashback interrupts the scene, showing Dean at maybe age four or five, grinning and tow-headed. He really was an adorable kid. He’s running around the front yard, pulling a wooden frog that rolls on wheels but has cleverly constructed legs that make each roll look a bit like a hop.

Unselfconsciously delighted the way only little kids can be, Dean runs to where his “father” is sitting in a lawn chair, waiting for him.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Dean says, and throws his arms around the actor Bobby Singer in a fervent hug. “It’s the best.”

“You’re welcome, son,” Bobby says, and cradles him close, a fond smile softening his usually gruff face.

The flashback fades, replaced by a return to the scene between Dean and Cas. After a second, failed attempt to run the kangaroo down the ramp, the two of them talk a little more about Dean’s father. When the scene first aired this afternoon, Donna caught Jody watching — and gasping out loud when Dean told Cas about his father’s death. It’s not something Dean talks about easily. Or ever, really.

“Saw him go down,” Dean says, and the scene dissolves into another flashback. As soon as storm clouds fill the screen, Donna knows what she’s about to see, and she turns away. She’s seen the look of grief and terror on little Dean’s face when Bobby Singer disappeared into the ocean before. Once was too many times already.

It’s a cruel thing to do to a kid, and Donna wouldn’t approve of it even if she didn’t think of Dean as something almost like a little brother. Mom started watching the show after Donna left for college as a way to fill the empty nest, and it soon turned into an obsession, until it felt like Donna was sharing her childhood home with Dean Smith every time she came back to visit.

At first, she resented it, but when she saw how Mom’s affection for the show motivated her to keep moving, to the point that she bought and fixed up this old bar at age sixty-two, Donna came to accept her mother’s Dean Show fandom as a fact of life. And lately, working at Mom’s old bar and being practically forced to watch the show all day long has really made it hit her for the first time: Dean never asked for any of this.

Donna still has her back turned to the screen, pretending to wipe a perfectly clean glass when Jody sidles up to her.

“You think those people are right?” Jody asks.

“What people?” Donna peeks carefully over her shoulder to check if it’s safe to start watching again. It is: the flashback is over and the screen shows another scene from later in the evening, of Dean and Cas quizzing each other for their chem test.

“The people who say those two are in love.”

As Donna watches, Cas’ focus returns to his textbook, apparently looking for the answer to a question Dean just asked him. Dean’s attention, though, lingers, tracing slowly over Cas’ profile. His fingers curl tighter around his pen. He’s always been a bit hyperactive and easily distracted, but around Cas, something about him seems to settle.

Donna thinks back to the first time she ever liked a girl: the quiet desperation of it, the uncertainty over what it meant or what to do about it. How lonely it felt, and yet how right; like a piece of herself she never knew was missing had suddenly slotted into place.

“Yeah,” she says, “I think they might be.”

Considering the circ*mstances of that love, she’s not at all sure that’s a good thing.

***

The day of the double date dawns just as perfect as every other day in Seahaven. It’s an unremarkable day in other ways, too — Dean goes to class, has lunch with Cas, hangs out with Lisa by the lockers. As Cas and Hannah kiss goodbye after their final class, Dean watches and pretends he doesn’t.

The most remarkable thing that happens all day is when a fight breaks out right next to Dean, between some of the guys on the football team. But as per usual, the fight is over something pointless, and it fizzles out easily enough after Dean steps in to break it up.

After school, he heads home and changes into a nicer shirt, trying to convince himself he’s going to have fun.

“You’re going to have so much fun,” Mom tells him, like she’s some kind of mind reader. She fixes his collar and kisses the air next to his cheek, then practically shoves him out the door.

Lisa lives close by Chuck’s Tavern, which means it’s easiest for her to just meet Dean there, and Cas and Hannah are traveling separately. So he’s by himself as he pulls into the parking lot in Mom’s Prius. The tavern is right by the beach, and Dean’s skin prickles uneasily as he gets out of the car and stares across the fenced-in lot at the pristine blue of the water. It looks so harmless now, but it can turn deadly within seconds. Dean should know.

It’s still hard to believe that he actually told Cas about Dad. He never talks about Dad, but it didn’t even seem like a big deal when it was just the two of them. Almost since the first day they met, Cas has felt like somebody Dean can trust; someone who makes sense when nothing else does.

You’re the only sane thing around, Cas told him the night of the dance. Dean didn’t really get what Cas was saying then, but he’s starting to get it now. Everything about himself and his life that’s ever felt off or strange… it doesn’t seem so bad when Cas is with him.

Maybe it’s because when he’s around Cas, all he can seem to think about is getting closer and pulling him into that kiss they almost shared. Dean’s thought about that moment so many times, and it doesn’t make any damn sense: the way Cas brushed his thumb across the back of Dean’s neck so gently, like Dean was something precious, and the way Cas leaned in for just one second — only to push Dean away the next.

Dean was so sure Cas actually wanted to kiss him, and when he found out that Cas likes boys as well as girls, he very nearly told Cas that the same was true of him. He would have done it, if Cas hadn’t cut him off to say he’s dating Hannah.

So why? Why push him away? Why date Hannah? It doesn’t make any damn sense. Dean was watching them across the dance floor that night in the school gym, and Cas looked about as interested in her as he might be in a stain on the wall.

Dean walks over to lean against the fence at the edge of the parking lot, staring out at the pristine blue. If he was a sap, he might compare the color of the ocean to the color of Cas’ eyes. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Because Cas feels safe, and the ocean is the terrifying force that swallowed Dad.

Despite that, it’s a toss-up as to whether Dean would rather be out here, facing the thing he fears, or inside, watching Cas and Hannah be a couple all night.

His decision is made for him when Lisa calls his name from the other side of the lot, by the entrance to the tavern.

With a sigh, Dean turns around and braces for the inevitable.

***

Chuck’s instructions for tonight’s date still swirl around Castiel’s brain as he takes his seat in the booth next to Hannah and opposite Dean and Lisa.

I want you acting like Hannah is the greatest thing ever. You’re so in love that you almost can’t stand it. Set an example for Dean and Lisa. Turn up the pressure for Dean to get his act together.

Castiel’s smile feels unconvincing even to himself as he greets Hannah and pulls her in for a lingering kiss. When he moves away, Hannah blushes and smiles so prettily that he could almost believe the reaction was real — if he didn’t know that Hannah is happily married in real life.

Across the table, Lisa is giving them a convincingly sappy awww look. Dean is staring down at his menu.

Conversation moves in fits and starts as they put in their food orders and sip at their sodas. They chat about the fight at school earlier that day, and about how their chem test went. (Badly for Lisa, well for Hannah and Castiel. Dean’s only answer is an ambivalent shrug.)

Dean’s first real contribution to the conversation comes when he turns to Hannah and asks, “So Hannah. Cas still hasn’t introduced me to his parents. What are they like?”

Hannah looks very briefly taken aback, but if Castiel has learned anything in their short acquaintance, it’s that she’s a complete professional, so she recovers quickly. “Oh, really nice. His parents are super friendly.”

Dean’s eyes cut sharply to Castiel. “Yeah, I heard they’re really swell people. Very understanding.”

Castiel shoots him a warning look. Veiled though the remark may be, it’s dangerously close to reviving a discussion that Chuck wants him to pretend never happened.

The voice in his ear says, “Tell him everything is fine with your parents. They’ve been great about your relationship with Hannah.”

“Actually, they’ve been great lately,” Castiel parrots obediently. “They’re excited about my relationship with Hannah.”

Hannah beams at him and Castiel pulls her into another kiss, because somewhere out there, Chuck is watching. Probably on the giant screen in the control room. Castiel keeps the kiss chaste, but he feels filthy anyway.

When he turns back to Dean, Dean is pretending to be very interested in the old movie playing on the TV in one of the corners. Castiel doesn’t recognize it; it must be something obscure and cheap, like all the movies and music in Dean’s world.

“My parents really like Dean as well,” Lisa says, in a painfully cheerful attempt at getting the conversation going again.

Castiel swallows down his resentment as best he can. The show announced a few weeks ago that Lisa’s parents had been cast, days after the school dance. Meanwhile, every time Castiel tries to find out the status of his own parents’ casting, he’s brushed off with a curt, “We’re working on it.”

Ignoring Lisa, Dean addresses himself to Castiel. “So if everything’s so great with Hannah, your folks shouldn’t have a problem with me coming over sometime, right?”

Castiel’s stomach clenches. They’re still skirting painfully close to the wrong conversation entirely.

Almost immediately, the voice in his ear pipes up. “Tell him he can come over sometime next week. We’ll figure something out by then.”

“Sure, you can come over next week,” Castiel says, forcing a pleasant smile, like they’re all having a wonderful time together.

“Next week, huh?” Dean’s answering grin looks even more painfully fake than Castiel suspects his own does. “Why not tomorrow?”

“My parents are out of town,” Castiel improvises.

Dean’s eyebrows rise. “Again? Why’d they bother moving here if they’re never around?”

“They’re very busy with the rest of the move, aren’t they, Castiel?” Hannah says, covering Castiel’s hand with hers on the table. “I’m sure they wish they could be in Seahaven all the time.”

“Yeah, I mean, who wouldn’t?” That’s Lisa, nodding eagerly and obviously grateful for Hannah’s conversational life preserver. “Seahaven is the greatest place on Earth.”

Dean vaults up from his seat, his expression tight and unreadable. Without a word to any of them, he storms away from their table, almost knocking into the waitress who’s just arrived with their food orders.

The tavern’s front door slams behind him.

Lisa smiles thinly. “I’ll go check on him. You two enjoy your food before it gets cold.”

“Good luck,” Hannah says, before picking up her burger to take a bite and making an appreciative noise. “Oh, it’s good, isn’t it?”

Castiel makes a non-committal noise as he stares down at his own untouched food. The live feed is unlikely to focus on them right now, not with Lisa and Dean out there and possibly fighting, so it hardly matters what he does or says.

Anyway, it’s difficult to find the motivation for anything when he’s busy contemplating Dean’s strange behavior tonight. Dean has been rude and abrasive, which is completely unlike him. Dean is funny, tenacious and kind, and a dozen other wonderful things that have endeared him to Castiel so much in the short time they’ve known each other. So much that he’s spent more nights than he can count dragging his bedding in front of the crappy TV in his apartment, taking comfort from watching Dean sleep.

Part of Castiel knows that Dean is probably frustrated. He wanted to come out to Castiel and wasn’t allowed. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in dating Lisa, but the show’s narrative keeps pushing them together.

In fact, the more Castiel thinks about it, the more he analyzes his and Dean’s interactions, the more he suspects that Dean would prefer to pursue a relationship with him. Based on the press coverage that Castiel shouldn’t be reading but does anyway, it’s something the show’s fans are beginning to pick up on as well.

Not for the first time, Castiel wonders how much longer he can in good conscience remain on the show. He’s complicit in perpetuating something horrific and immoral. But if he leaves, what difference will it make for Dean? He’ll be exactly where he always has been, left behind by another person who’s mysteriously disappeared from his life.

It’s a thorny problem and he still can’t seem to find an answer, so he takes a bite of his burger instead.

It doesn’t taste like anything but molecules.

***

Perfect, gentle blue waves roll softly against the sand below the parking lot. Dean is leaning against the fence again, trying to breathe through the irritation simmering under his skin. He wishes it would storm. He wishes clouds would gather overhead and shed their weight on him, washing him clean of thoughts he doesn’t want to have because they don’t do a damn bit of good.

It’s no use thinking about a world where Dean is the one sitting on Cas’ side of the booth, trading kisses and casual touches, because Cas doesn’t want him. Cas wants Hannah. He needs to get that through his thick skull. He needs to find a way to make it make sense so he can stop feeling like he’s losing his mind.

“Dean?” Lisa’s voice is just loud enough to be heard above the surf. The touch of her hand is soft, but Dean still has to fight not to flinch away from it. “Are you okay?”

Not really, Dean wants to say. But that would lead to follow-up questions, and he doesn’t know how to talk to Lisa about what’s bothering him. Hey, you know how we’re sort of dating? Well, funny thing, I think I might actually have feelings for someone else. A boy. Would you believe it? Isn’t that weird?

He watches another two waves roll in before he responds. “Fine. Sorry I was a dick in there.”

It’s easier not to look at Lisa while his thoughts are such an angry muddle, so he stares out at the ocean, wondering what Dad felt when he realized he’d never make it back to shore alive. Could he have imagined in a million years that his son would grow up to meet a boy who makes him want things? Would he have minded?

“Oh, it’s okay,” Lisa says softly. Her hand is still on Dean’s arm, stroking softly over the bare skin of Dean’s forearm. He must’ve left his jacket at the tavern. “You want to tell me what’s bothering you?”

“Nah.” Dean shakes his head down at the banister, scraping his thumb over a spot where the white paint is peeling slightly. There’s something strangely comforting about this little speck of imperfection in a place like Seahaven, where it sometimes seems like Dean is the only thing not polished to a constant sheen.

“You gonna come back inside then?” Lisa’s voice is the soul of patience. It’s more than Dean deserves, and he knows that, but he still can’t make himself want to be the kind of person who does deserve Lisa.

“I think I’d better go home,” Dean says. He makes himself catch Lisa’s eyes as he says this because it seems rude not to, and he’s just in time to spot an instant’s frustration on her face before it settles into placid understanding. On the spur of the moment, he says, “Hey, I left my jacket inside. You mind sending Cas out here to bring it to me?”

Lisa hesitates, and yeah, it’s kind of a weird request. But Dean can’t stop thinking about how Cas should be out here with him instead of in there with Hannah. It’s selfish and stupid, but it feels like the only thing that’ll help the itch of irritation under his skin.

Dean thinks Lisa is going to refuse, based on the way her hand slowly drops off his arm and her lips go pinched around the edges. But then she says “sure” and rises on her tiptoes to press a kiss to Dean’s cheek before she goes. He allows it, squinting up into the bright blue of the sky above until black floaters cross his vision.

“You ever think it’s weird how the weather is always so nice?” he asks. “I can’t even remember the last time it rained.”

But Lisa must already be too far away to hear him, her steps receding slowly across the parking lot. Dean stares out at the sea and waits, closing his eyes as a cool breeze ruffles his hair and dries the tacky imprint of Lisa’s lip gloss.

He senses Cas’ approach before he can even hear his footsteps — something about how the air seems just a little bit heavier with the sheer weight of Cas’ presence whenever he’s around. As if Cas himself is the storm Dean keeps waiting for, striking out of the clear blue of a Seahaven sky.

Still, Dean pretends he’s unaware until Cas steps up next to him, holding out Dean’s jean jacket. When Dean accepts it with a muttered “thanks,” Cas hops up onto the railing next to where Dean is standing. Cas tucks his feet onto the lower rungs for balance and settles in to study Dean in that intense, focused way he has. You could almost say that Cas’ attention punches with the force of a mantis shrimp.

At that thought, Dean bursts into sudden laughter. Cas squints at him, obviously confused, and that only makes it worse; makes it hard to catch his breath.

“What joke am I missing?” Cas asks, when Dean’s finally managed to get himself back under control.

“Sorry,” Dean says, wiping away tears of mirth with the back of his hand. “I’m a dick.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.” Cas’ eyes flick away from Dean and down to the banister, where his nail starts worrying at the same flaking paint Dean noticed a few minutes ago. “Lisa said you’re not coming back inside.”

Dean sighs, swallowing down the last few hiccups of unwanted laughter. “No, I’m really not.”

Above them, the quality of the light dims, and Dean blinks up at the sky to find clouds rolling in — big, gray bulging ones, like the day of the storm that took Dad. It’s almost as if Dean summoned the storm clouds himself; the thought makes him shiver.

The fast-moving cloud cover leeches the cheerfulness out of Seahaven’s pastel seafront, which stretches into the distance on either side of them. The ocean is beginning to show its true colors, whitecaps rolling menacingly against the land. Dean shivers and pulls on his jacket, trying to take comfort from the familiar, heavy weight on his shoulders. That jacket is one of the few of Dad’s things he has left.

“I think it’s actually going to rain,” Cas says, staring up at the sky like he’s just as amazed as Dean is.

Dean means to make some response to that, but the wind is running its fingers through Cas’ hair, setting it on end, and his eyes look steel-gray in the stormy light. He’s absurdly handsome and Dean wants to know what Cas would do if Dean kissed him right now.

“What?” Cas asks when he notices Dean staring. He stares back, and he doesn’t blink.

Dean takes a step forward. Cas looks like he wants to step away, but he can’t because he’s sitting on the banister, his face at the perfect height for the kiss Dean wants to give him. Hesitating at the brink of action, Dean lets his eyes drop to Cas’ lips. They’re dry and plump and softly parted around a shaky breath.

It would be so easy.

“I don’t think you should be with Hannah,” Dean tells him.

Cas tips up his chin a little, and it only brings their faces closer together. Dean can almost fool himself that the breeze against his cheeks is Cas’ breath, washing softly over his skin.

“Why not?” Cas asks. His pupils are larger than they were a moment ago and they’re fixed hungrily on Dean’s mouth. Cas wants this too.

Dean takes comfort from that eager, desperate hunger in Cas’ eyes. It makes him wonder if maybe lying to Cas about what he wants was the wrong way to go. Maybe they just need to level with each other.

Dean clears his throat, and then he begins. “I’ll only say this once, and then I’ll never bring it up again if you don’t want me to.”

“Okay?” Cas stares at Dean like he’s forgotten how to look at anything else.

“I… I lied when I said I wasn’t into guys, man. I guess I was scared because… I like you a lot. As more than a friend. And if you wanted… I mean, if you’d be open to giving it a chance, I would…”

This is where he runs out of courage. It leeches out of him at the sight of Cas’ face, which is suddenly filled with absolute terror. Dean licks his lips, shifting on his feet, unsure of where to go from here. “Cas? Say something, man.”

The sound of his name seems to jolt Cas out of whatever panicked spiral he’d gotten himself stuck in. Still, he looks desperately afraid and Dean doesn’t know how to fix it.

“Don’t do this, Dean,” Cas says — pleads, really — shaking his head. “Please don’t.” He looks absolutely frantic all of a sudden, hands white-knuckled around the banister. “You can’t— they’ll make me—”

Apparently giving up on speech, Cas pushes Dean aside so he can get back onto the ground. He shoves just as hard as he did that first time they almost kissed, and Dean staggers away from him, watching Cas tremble and shake as he clambers awkwardly off the banister. Around them, the wind is picking up.

“Cas, I’m sorry,” Dean says, completely at a loss. How could he have been wrong about this? He was so sure. So damn sure. “Look, I said we could forget it, right? And we can, if you don’t—”

Cas takes a half-step closer before he staggers away again, stumbling over his own feet. “I have to go,” he says. “I’ll see you at school on Monday.” More quietly, he adds, “I hope.”

“What?” The wind’s whistle has grown to a howl. Dean raises his voice to make himself heard. “Cas? What does that mean?”

Cas doesn’t answer. He turns his back and hurries away across the parking lot. The first drop of rain hits the top of Dean's head, the second his cheek, and then the skies open.

Dean is drenched within seconds, and that’s when his feet decide to start moving. No matter what happened between them, Cas is going to make himself sick if he tries to walk home in this weather, so Dean’s going to give him a ride, whether Cas likes it or not.

Darting forward, Dean hunches his shoulders against the rain, but then—

—it stops.

Or rather, it doesn’t. It’s still raining over by the banister where Dean was standing a moment ago.

Confused, Dean eyes the deluge to his left and the dry pavement surrounding him now, less than ten feet away from that spot. His mouth opens to ask a question that no one’s around to answer.

But before he can get a single word out, the rain catches up to him all at once. Cold water pours down around him, saturating the pavement, his hair, his jacket. It’s raining so hard now that he has to squint against it, trying to find Cas again amid the sudden storm.

He’s not in the parking lot anymore, so Dean hunches his shoulders and hurries to the other side of the lot, where it meets the road that leads back to the center of town and from there to Cas’ house.

When he reaches the sidewalk, he brings up a hand to shield his face against the rain and he turns on the spot, trying to find the familiar shape of Cas’ retreating silhouette.

But no matter how hard or long he looks, Cas seems to have vanished off the face of the Earth.

***

“f*cking hell! f*ckf*ckf*ck!”

Charlie aims another kick at the side of the toilet stall, letting the tears of rage flow down her face where no one can see. Not even Dorothy.

Especially not Dorothy. Charlie has no illusions about the fact that she’s an ugly crier.

A sound malfunction. Of f*cking course. The worst thing is, way too many people are going to buy that bullsh*t story when Chuck tries to sell it to them — in part because shortly after Dean’s confession, the rain machine actually did malfunction. It’s been known to be buggy, which is why it hardly ever rains in Seahaven, but that’s in no way connected to the sound feeds.

Of course, the audience doesn’t know any of that.

The official story, as Chuck’s people are going to tell it, is that there was a sound glitch the literal second Dean started to answer Cas’ question about why he shouldn’t be dating Hannah. The crew backstage heard Dean’s answer, but the audience didn’t hear a damn thing.

Even now, Chuck’s team is working frantically on a “transcript” of what the audience missed — something about how Dean thinks Hannah isn’t right for Cas and he could do better.

Another sob shakes through Charlie. Her rage is starting to burn itself out, leaving behind nothing but a hollow, aching helplessness.

Dean needs to get out. He needs out more than ever, and Charlie doesn’t have the power to make it happen. Not alone. Not in her current position.

Okay. Think, Bradbury. Think.

Of all things, an image of her favorite professor at UCLA, Professor Redfield, swims to the top of her mind. Due to his age, people — including his own students — always underestimated his skills as a programmer. Charlie never made that mistake.

In fact, on days where she felt hopeless and discouraged about her job prospects in a cutthroat industry with a shrinking number of job openings, Professor Redfield always had a kind word to say. There’s one thing in particular he told her, just a few weeks before graduation, that Charlie has tucked away and held close to her chest ever since.

What very few people will tell you, he said to her, is that once you get a foot in the door somewhere, it’s very easy to keep it there. All you have to do is make yourself indispensable to the right person.

The right person at The Dean Show is Chuck. Always. There are others with a degree of power — those who work in the control room with him, those who help with casting or with crafting storylines — but it all comes back to Chuck.

What does Chuck need right now?

He needs to convince the audience, without a doubt, that the version of events he’s trying to sell them is true.

The thing is, you don’t spend years as a tech-obsessed teen and young adult without learning some very neat tricks. Charlie breathes out, and in again. She rolls her shoulders and wipes away the tear tracks on her cheeks. She puts her headset back on and leaves the stall. At the sink, she wets a paper towel and presses it to her eyes, trying to make the swelling go down faster.

Here’s something else very few people will tell you: to do the right thing, sometimes you have to do the wrong thing first.

***

“Once again, we apologize for the sound glitch that disrupted the broadcast earlier,” Chuck says on-screen. “But we are now able to air the scene again, with the audio fully restored. Thank you for your patience and your ongoing support of Dean and our little show.”

Castiel is sitting cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, spellbound.

He was furious when he came backstage to find that the control room cut the sound on Dean’s declaration of his feelings for Castiel. For quite some time, he stalked around in a towering mood, trying to locate Charlie so they could find a safe place to vent. But Charlie was nowhere to be seen.

And so, Castiel made his way home with the intention of getting extremely, stupidly drunk. He may technically be underage, but the fake ID he bought from his downstairs neighbor tells a different story.

Because he’s a glutton for punishment, he turned on the TV as soon as he walked in the door, wanting to see how Dean was doing; whether Dean was still looking for him. He’d never had any chance of finding Castiel, of course. Castiel had been ordered backstage immediately by the voice in his ear and had hightailed it to the nearest checkout point, in an empty building just on the other side of the parking lot. At least, once he got there, everyone had been too busy with damage control to chew him out for letting Dean confess his feelings without stopping him.

Feelings. Dean has feelings for him. He'd already suspected, but actually hearing it... well, it was different. So very different.

Castiel shakes the thought out of his head, focusing back on the screen. It would seem that Chuck has thought better of depriving the audience of Dean’s confession. It seems impossible, ludicrous even. But apparently, good things do happen, because the first thing Castiel saw when the TV screen flickered to life was the beginning of Chuck’s announcement.

On TV, Chuck fades out, replaced by the feed of Dean and Castiel in the parking lot outside the tavern.

The footage being aired must have been captured by a camera hidden somehow inside one of the cars in the lot. It’s a few feet away from them, but even at that distance, it’s obvious that Dean and Castiel are very close together. Castiel’s position on the banister puts his face exactly at Dean’s height.

He shudders as he remembers what that moment felt like: Dean’s breath on his face. Dean’s eyes dark with intent and yearning that mirrored Castiel’s own. It would have been so easy to fall into a kiss.

“I don’t think you should be with Hannah,” Dean says.

Castiel holds his breath; his heart is pounding. Watching a moment from his own memories play out again in front of him feels beyond odd. He shivers, clutching at his coat for comfort. He never even took it off when he walked into his apartment, too intent on reestablishing his connection with Dean the only way he could: through a TV screen.

“Why not?” the Castiel on the screen asks.

“I’ll only say this once, and then I’ll never bring it up again if you don’t want me to," Dean answers. "I lied when I said I like her, man. I guess I was scared because… I don’t like her. I don’t. She’s not a good friend. But if you want it… I mean, I’d be open to giving her a chance. I would.”

Castiel gapes at the screen. Horror crawls through his veins. It’s… it’s Dean’s voice. It sounds just like him.

For one awful moment, he actually considers that he might have misremembered what Dean told him; that wishful thinking caused by his own growing feelings has caused him to hallucinate a confession of feelings where none existed.

But no. No, his memory of that moment is crystal-clear. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget the gorgeous vulnerability of Dean’s voice as he told him, “I like you a lot. As more than a friend.”

Moreover, what Dean is saying here doesn’t make any sense. If he were really concerned about Hannah, he would elaborate as to his reasons. And Castiel certainly wouldn’t look as stripped bare as he does on screen now, mumbling disconnectedly and staggering away from Dean, who looks after him as though his heart is breaking.

Just before Dean takes a step to follow Castiel, the feed cuts off and switches back to live footage of Dean at home, having dinner with his mother.

Castiel can’t seem to move. He can’t seem to do anything but feel the rage and grief churning so violently inside him that he’s afraid he’ll be sick all over his living room carpet.

Someone, somehow, has stolen this moment from him. From both of them. They papered over it with some kind of trick. Castiel doesn’t know much about technology, but it must be possible to edit together other things Dean has said and match them up to the camera footage. Whoever did this is very, very good at their job, and Castiel wishes he knew their name so he could confront them.

“They had no right,” Castiel whispers to an empty room. “They had no f*cking right.”

He does move then. He picks up the closest thing to him, which happens to be the copy of Catching Fire he’s been re-reading, and he launches it at the wall. But it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough. He picks up the lamp that sits on the rickety side table beside the couch and yanks at the cord until it comes free. Its base shatters against the wall, spraying shards of white onto the gray carpet.

“They had no f*cking right,” he whispers again, but there is no one around to hear.

He spends the rest of the weekend mostly in bed, clutching a bottle of whiskey. He’d hoped the whiskey would make him hazy and numb, but all it does is give him a great, awful clarity. Somewhere between that first day, when Dean smiled at him in homeroom, and that evening in the tavern’s parking lot, when Dean made himself vulnerable for him… Castiel fell in love.

And it isn’t going to do him a damn bit of good.

Crowley calls five times, leaving increasingly dire voice messages about how Castiel is this close to being fired from the show.

Castiel doesn’t call him back because it doesn’t actually matter anymore. There’s only one thing Castiel has left to do, now that he knows he can never have the one thing he wants.

He has to tell Dean the truth.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

TMZ.com, article posted Oct. 5, 2008

Dean Show Shocker: Former PA Claims Dean Confessed Love for Best Friend, Was Censored

In a shocking twist, a former production assistant on TV’s longest-running snoozefest, Chuck Shurley’s The Dean Show, contacted TMZ to reveal behind-the-scenes drama regarding star Dean Smith’s sexuality.

“It’s an open secret behind the scenes that Dean is bisexual and has feelings for his best friend Cas,” says Aaron Bass, who quit the show earlier this week. “In the scene where the audio mysteriously cut off, Dean confessed those feelings. But Chuck Shurley doesn’t want a bisexual hero, so he made the decision to dub over the scene.”

Aaron also tells TMZ that the incident was the reason he left his job. “As a bisexual man myself, I believe it’s wrong to suppress someone’s right to be who they are. I couldn’t in good conscience keep working there.”

Asked who was responsible for the cover-up, Aaron blamed Chuck Shurley himself and a former colleague he refers to as “a rogue PA.”

A close review of the footage in question by TMZ staff confirms that the lines in Dean’s audio don’t match up exactly to the shape of his mouth in several instances. We also found some odd, disjointed cuts in the parts of the scene that show best friend Castiel Novak’s reaction.

EDITED TO ADD: After this item was published, Chuck Shurley Productions contacted us with the following statement: “Aaron Bass is a disgruntled former employee who was dismissed for severe performance issues. We recommend not giving credence to his delusional claims and advise other employers in the television and film industry to give him a wide berth. We would also like to remind viewers that Dean himself told Castiel Novak on screen that he isn’t ‘like that.’ That alone ought to put the matter of Dean Smith’s sexuality to rest.”

***

Dean barely sleeps all weekend. He can’t stop thinking about how he laid his heart on the line for Cas and had it handed back to him with a thanks, but no thanks.

Except there’s apparently something very, very wrong with him, because he also can’t seem to give up hope. The more he thinks about their conversation, the more he realizes that Cas never actually rejected him. He didn’t say “no,” he said…

Don’t do this, Dean. Please don’t. They’ll make me—

Maybe he meant “don’t do this,” in the sense of “don’t mess up a perfectly good friendship with your unwelcome feelings.” But somehow, Dean doesn’t think that’s it. Cas didn’t look annoyed or disgusted, he looked… well, heartbroken.

And who the f*ck are “they”? His parents?

Once that thought takes hold of Dean, it won’t let go. Is Cas really that terrified of his parents’ disapproval? Are they… are they hurting him? Maybe that’s the real reason why Cas never wanted him to meet them.

Maybe the two of them need to have a different conversation altogether before the subject of feelings comes up again.

He kind of wishes he could talk to Mom about this stuff. One time, he almost brings it up. It’s Sunday afternoon and Mom is out on the porch, reading a novel she told him is “Corinna Hopper’s latest addictive romance.” Whatever that means.

Dean settles down next to her on the porch swing, looking out at the quiet street surrounding them. Though it’s a nice day, the storm of two days ago nothing but a distant memory, none of their neighbors are out in their yards.

“Hey Mom?” Dean says quietly, nudging her with his arm.

Mom marks her place in the book and looks up at him with a smile. That perfect smile of hers, all white teeth and a hint of sparkle in her blue eyes. Dean sometimes wonders where the green in his own eyes came from — one of the grandparents he never got to meet maybe.

“What’s up, sweetheart?” she asks.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” Dean leans forward and clasps his hands between his thighs, trying to disguise the way they’re trying to shake and fidget.

Maybe he doesn’t have to tell Mom about himself and what he’s figured out. He can just keep this about Cas and his parents, at least for now.

“It’s about Cas,” he says.

“Oh.” Mom’s smile widens, but it’s the weirdest thing: when Dean meets her eyes, there’s something wild there, like he caught her off guard. “Cas is a nice kid. You’re welcome to invite him over again sometime.”

“That’s great, Mom, but I wanted to tell you—”

That’s as far as Dean gets before Mom jumps up off the porch swing with a swoosh of her dress. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be fine. You kids are almost grown — you don’t need advice from an old fogey like me. Anyway, I’m going to get started on dinner now.”

With that, Mom disappears into the house, leaving nothing but a cloud of the new perfume she’s started using lately. Dean stares at the spot where she sat a moment ago, unbalanced by the abrupt end to the conversation.

He’s still feeling unbalanced on Monday morning when he gets off the bus and crosses the parking lot towards the school entrance. Lisa tries to stop and talk to him by the billboard — it’s advertising the novel Mom was reading yesterday — but Dean shakes her off with a smile and a “later, Lis.” He needs to find Cas.

But in the end, Cas is the one who finds him.

Dean’s just set down his backpack and started pulling on his locker to get it unstuck when someone grips the sleeve of his jacket and tugs on it with irresistible force.

“Hey, what…” Dean looks up to see Cas. Cas is smiling, but his smile is worse than Mom’s when he asked her that question yesterday. It’s thin as tissue paper, covering obvious panic.

“I need you to come with me,” Cas says. “Right now. Leave your stuff.”

“Okay?” Dean says slowly, but he lets Cas tow him along to the nearest exit, which is the one that opens onto the football field. “Where are we going, Cas?” Dean asks as they bust through the doors and make a beeline for the field.

“An open space,” Cas says, which is really no kind of answer at all.

Still, this is Cas, and Dean realizes at that exact moment that he would follow Cas anywhere at all — to the ends of the earth, if that’s what it takes.

But it turns out that the only place he has to follow Cas is to the center of the football field. As soon as they get there, Cas lets go of Dean.

If Dean had tried to place bets on what Cas would do next, he wouldn’t have had a prayer of winning, because what Cas does is this: he starts unbuttoning his shirt, revealing a white t-shirt beneath it.

Dean stares at him, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. A pulse of heat spikes deep in his gut as he watches Cas shrug out of the shirt and dump it on the ground next to him.

Confusion replaces heat when Cas removes something small and flesh-colored from his ear, dumps it on the ground and stomps down with the heel of his sneaker.

“Okay,” Cas says, his voice shaky. “Okay. This is as much privacy as I can get us. Listen.” He takes hold of Dean’s hands. His own are cold and clammy. “We don’t have much time. As soon as they realize what I’m doing, they’ll send someone to grab me, and after that, I’ll never be allowed to see you again.”

Dean stares at Cas, not processing a thing. All he can focus on is the feeling of Cas’ hands, holding his own, and the abject fear in Cas’ eyes.

“This won’t make much sense, Dean, but I need you to believe me on this: everything around you — Seahaven, your parents, your friends, everything about your life — none of it is real.”

Cas’ eyes are wet and all Dean wants is to comfort him, but his head is spinning and Cas isn’t making any sense.

"What are you talking about, man?” He barely recognizes the rough and broken thing that’s supposed to be his own voice.

Their eyes are locked on each other and Cas opens his mouth, but he’s cut off by the sound of squealing tires and the roar of an engine. A small, nondescript sedan is speeding up toward them, barreling straight onto the football field, tearing through the turf.

Cas tugs on Dean’s hands, dragging his attention back to just the two of them. “Whatever they’re about to tell you, don’t believe a word, do you hear me? You and me — we’re the only thing that’s real.”

A few feet away, the car has come to a sudden halt. A tall, burly man in an all-black suit has jumped out of it and he’s sprinting towards them. Cas lets go of one of Dean’s hands to cup his face and force Dean to look at him once more. Cas’ tears have spilled over, a single one of them making a track down his cheek. Dean wants to wipe it away, but he’s frozen in the face of Cas’ tear-stained smile. “Goodbye, Dean. I love you.”

There’s no time to react: the man has caught up to them. He’s smiling at Dean, and of all the smiles he’s seen lately, this is the most awful one — a frozen grimace with a threat of darkness behind it.

“I’m so sorry we had to meet under these circ*mstances, Dean,” the man says, even as he takes hold of Cas’ arm in a tight, painful-looking grip. “I’m Castiel’s father. I’m afraid that Castiel is a very sick boy. He suffers from delusions. Hallucinations.”

The man starts to drag Cas towards the car. Cas lets himself be manhandled, his touch falling away from Dean’s hand and face. His eyes stay locked on Dean’s though, filled with infinite sadness. Dean wants to hold on to him, but he can’t seem to make his feet move.

“He hasn’t been taking his medication lately,” the man continues, yanking the rear door open and pushing Cas inside, “so I’m afraid we’re going to have him sent away for a while, for his own safety. Again, very sorry about this.”

As the man climbs into the driver’s seat, Cas slaps his palms against the window. He’s saying something, something about “lies” and “find me,” but Dean can’t hear him through the glass and over the roar of the starting engine.

Finally, Dean regains control over his own body. He staggers across the few feet separating him from the car, eyes glued to where Cas’ palms are still pressed against the window. He collides with the side of the car, his palm touching Cas’, and he thinks he’s calling Cas’ name, but before he can so much as try the door, the car starts moving.

“Don’t,” he yells, even as he leaps away from the car to keep from getting run over. “Don’t hurt him! Don’t send him away. I’ll— I’ll stay away from him, just please don’t—”

As soon as the car is clear, he starts running, running harder than he ever has in his life — across the football field, through the school parking lot, eyes fixed on the taillights as they speed away.

He loses sight of them when the car rounds the corner onto Maple Street. By the time he gets to that corner, wheezing for breath and aching all over, the car is nowhere to be seen.

He sinks to his knees on the sidewalk, trying to get his lungs to fill. His cheek still tingles from Cas’ touch.

***

Castiel’s “father” doesn’t let go of him until he’s been walked unceremoniously out of the studio dome and into the parking lot. He doesn’t even know the man’s name, though he does recognize him as a member of the security staff.

“You can consider yourself fired,” the man says coolly as he pushes Castiel out the door, sending him stumbling. “Your things will be delivered to your home address. And Mr. Shurley would like you to know that he’s going to make damn sure you never work in this town again.”

Castiel tucks away all his pain, confining it to the place in his chest that feels torn open and raw. He doesn’t let it show on his face. Let Chuck Shurley and his minions know that he isn’t weak and he isn’t cowed.

“What’s happening to Dean is wrong and deeply immoral,” he says through gritted teeth. “And I think, deep down, you know that. You all know that.”

The man — Malachi, Castiel remembers now — sneers at him. “All I know is who signs my paychecks.”

With that, he closes the door in Castiel’s face.

Castiel climbs into his car. Knowing he can’t linger in the studio’s parking lot, he pulls out and heads down Centennial, driving and driving until he hits a scenic overlook. He doesn’t spare a single glance for the view; doesn’t even get out of the car.

Instead, he sits with his grief and loss until evening closes in around him, painting pink and purple watercolors against the sky.

When he finally returns to his lonely, crappy apartment long after nightfall, he almost stumbles over a box that contains the few things he’d left in his locker at the studio: a jacket, a paperback and a few other odds and ends. The only item he doesn’t recognize is a small, folded piece of paper covered in messy handwriting.

He unfolds it with a vague sense of apprehension, but all it says is Call me, followed by a phone number.

Castiel unlocks his door and pushes the box inside with his foot, wondering what he’s meant to do with the rest of his life.

***

Dean doesn’t go back to school, not even to grab his backpack. Instead, he heads straight for the police station.

When he gets there, he only finds a single uniformed cop behind the front desk, looking wearily up at him from whatever paperwork he’s filling out.

Well, the only way out is through.

“My friend’s been abducted,” he says.

The cop’s expression doesn’t change markedly, unless you count a convulsive motion of his jaw that suggests he’s chewing gum and trying to hide it. With a weary sigh, the cop leans back in his chair and says, “Alright, son. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“Great. Good. Okay.” Dean casts his mind back to what went down on that football field, swallowing hard against the memory of Cas’ eyes swimming with tears. “My friend Cas and I, we were out in the football field behind the high school and Cas was telling me—” Dean breaks off. Some of the stuff Cas was telling him didn’t make any damn sense, and he’s hardly about to share with this cop that Cas said… what he said about his own feelings. “Well, doesn’t matter, but anyway, we were just talking and suddenly this guy comes speeding up, claiming he’s Cas’ dad and dragging him into his car.”

“So what you’re telling me,” the cop says, looking completely unimpressed, “is that your friend’s dad came and picked him up from school.”

“No!” Dean snaps, frustration digging into his skin like a hundred tiny thorns. The cop straightens up, crossing his arms and curling his lips dismissively underneath his stupid mustache, so Dean takes a deep breath and makes an effort to keep calm. “No,” he says, quieter, “that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying some guy claimed he was Cas’ dad and forced him into a car.”

“Do you know for a fact the man wasn’t your friend’s father?” the cop asks. He still hasn’t uncrossed his arms.

“I… no, I guess I don’t,” Dean admits. “But listen, my friend’s been having trouble with his parents and I’m worried that they’ll hurt him or something.” He hesitates, wondering if he should say more about the nature of Cas’ trouble, but Cas’ sexuality isn’t his secret to tell. And anyway, it doesn’t feel like something that would sway this guy.

That impression is confirmed when the cop snorts and shakes his head, like Dean’s the most ridiculous thing he’s seen all week. “You’re gonna have to make up your mind, son. Are you reporting an abduction or child abuse?”

“I don’t know — either! Both!” Dean’s voice is rising again, and the cop’s eyes drop disapprovingly to Dean’s hands, which are tapping convulsively on top of the desk. With effort, Dean quiets his fingers and takes a step back. “Look, couldn’t you at least… I don’t know, send someone by his house? Make sure he’s okay?”

The cop shrugs. “Yeah, sure.” Dean blinks, disoriented by the quick and easy agreement. “I’ll have one of our patrol cars stop by. What’d you say the address was?”

“I didn’t,” Dean says, and gives it. The cop doesn’t write it down.

“Alright,” he says instead, rising up off his chair and clapping his hands together. “We’ll give you a call if anything comes up. Now why don’t you go on home, son, before I call your mom to have her abduct you from this police station.”

“Whatever,” Dean mutters, and turns on his heel before he can give in to the temptation of punching something (or someone).

Halfway home, it occurs to him that he never even left his number with the officer, so how the hell is the guy going to call him? He doubles back, but when he gets to the police station, he finds the interior dark and the door locked.

What the f*ck? Aren’t they supposed to have someone on duty at all times? What if there’s an emergency?

His head spinning, Dean staggers back the way he came. He doesn’t remember much of the walk, but his feet must’ve steered him right, because next thing he knows, he’s walking up the front yard to his house. Mom is right there on the porch swing, reading her novel and waiting for him.

She rises to her feet as Dean stumbles up the porch steps. “Hi, honey,” she says, sweet and softly concerned. “The police just called.”

Dean’s heart gives a painful lurch in his chest. “What? What’d they say?”

“They said they spoke to both Cas and his father.” Mom reaches up to ruffle through Dean’s hair, just like she used to when he was small. “I’m afraid Castiel is a very sick boy. He’s agreed to spend some time away until he’s better. His parents are both going with him, so I’m afraid you won’t be seeing them around Seahaven for quite some time.”

Dean swallows around the sob stuck in his throat. “I don’t understand, Mom,” he croaks. “Cas never seemed sick to me.”

There are so many questions swirling around his head — how did the police know to call here? Where is this place Cas is going? Why are his parents going there too? He can’t seem to pin down his own thoughts long enough to figure out which one he should be asking.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I liked him too,” Mom says. “You just never can tell what’s going on in a person’s head, can you?”

She pulls him into a hug, and Dean does the only thing he can think to do: he lets himself be held. Mom smells like her new perfume and the sunlit days of his childhood, when Dad was still alive and he’d never heard the name Castiel.

***

“Well, I guess congratulations are in order.”

Charlie pauses midway through considering what posters she should tack up on the walls of her new office. Dorothy is looming in the doorway, glaring at her.

“Thanks?” Charlie says, her voice tipping up at the end, because last time she saw Dorothy, just a couple of hours ago, they were both staggering out of a backstage closet after an extremely distracting makeout session. Dorothy was anything but mad at her then, but she definitely looks it now.

“So was it all just bullsh*t?” Dorothy demands in a carrying whisper, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. It’s late enough that only the skeleton crew for the overnight shift is still in place, but Dorothy has always been cautious about having any kind of meaningful conversation where someone else might overhear.

More confused than ever, Charlie asks, “Was what just bullsh*t?”

“All those times you pretended like you cared about Dean and Cas,” Dorothy says coolly. She’s standing less than five feet from Charlie in the blank slate of the new office, but with how unapproachable she looks in her anger, she might as well be a thousand miles away. “Were you feeling me out? Trying to figure out who’s a good corporate soldier and who needs to be let go? ‘Cause let me tell you, I’m damn good at my job and I don’t intend to leave without a fight.”

Charlie shakes her head, still fighting to catch up to what conversation they're even having. “What are you talking about?”

Dorothy’s expression softens a tiny amount. “Is it… not true?” she asks. She seems to like that idea more and more, hope sparking in her eyes as her lips curve up into a tentative smile. “If you tell me it’s not true, I’ll believe you.”

“What’s not true?” Charlie asks, although she’s starting to have some idea. But how could Dorothy know? The whole thing was super-secret — on a need-to-know basis only, as far as Chuck was concerned (and, selfishly, Charlie too).

“Just something I heard through the grapevine,” Dorothy says, wariness creeping back into her posture. “I was told you were the one who edited Dean’s audio for that scene to make it sound like he wasn’t confessing his feelings.”

Charlie pulls her bottom lip through her teeth. It’s one of her oldest tells; she’s had it since she was a little kid and she was trying to figure out how to make her parents believe that she didn’t break the antique cookie jar she wasn’t even supposed to be touching.

“f*cking hell,” Dorothy whispers. Apparently, that tell is still just as much of a giveaway as it was back then.

I did it for the right reasons, Charlie wants to say. I have a plan. I’m making myself indispensable. I’m putting myself in a position where I can actually do something about all this. Instead of watching Chuck torture Dean, I’m going to get him out.

But what if Dorothy can’t be trusted? What if this show of anger is just that… a show? Charlie has already made a deal with the devil; she’s given too much of herself to take risks now. If she fails, this will all have been for nothing.

Correctly interpreting Charlie’s silence as a confession, Dorothy nods firmly, like she’s seen all she needs to see. “Well,” she says tonelessly. “In case it wasn’t already obvious, our date this weekend is off.”

“Yeah,” Charlie says quietly, flinching as Dorothy slams the door. “I figured.”

She collapses into the swivel chair behind her empty desk.

Some indeterminate time later, her phone buzzes and she almost fumbles it in her haste to get it out of her jacket pocket. Maybe it’s Cas. She volunteered to drop off his things at his apartment earlier today so she could sneak him her number — because if there’s anyone who’d make a great ally in the long game she’s playing, it’s the guy who just confessed his love for the boy at the center of it all.

But when she picks up the call, it’s some computer-voiced message trying to sell her an upgraded cable subscription. Apparently, even the telemarketers don’t feel like talking to her anymore.

Charlie leans back, her desk chair creaking, and surveys the spoils of her clandestine rebellion: a windowless office and a broken relationship.

***

As soon as he walks in through the door after school, Sam can tell what kind of day it’s going to be.

On good days, the lights are on and there’s music coming from somewhere, Mom humming or singing along to it in the kitchen. If it’s a really good day, she’ll be making Winchester Surprise instead of a boxed meal from the Piggly Wiggly.

On bad days, the lights are off and Mom’s sitting in the living room, lost to the world with her eyes glued to the screen. On bad days, sometimes Mom forgets to go to work.

Today, the TV isn’t even on, but Mom’s still in the living room, staring at the opposite wall with red-rimmed eyes. A really bad day then.

Setting down his backpack in the nearest corner, Sam approaches her carefully. “Mom?”

Mom doesn’t move from her spot on the couch or otherwise acknowledge him, even when Sam sits down next to her. But a moment later, she begins to speak.

“I never knew it would be like this,” she whispers. “They said they’d keep him safe. He’d always be taken care of and never lack for anything. But this… what they’re doing… he fell in love.” Her voice has taken on a sudden, unexpected harshness. “I can tell, a mother can always tell. But they took… They’re making him think…”

Mom’s face crumples into a mask of grief. She curls in on herself, painful-looking sobs shaking her chest.

“Mom,” Sam whispers. “You’re scaring me.” Mom only sobs harder. Sam’s hands hover helplessly at his sides, unsure of whether touching her would make it worse.

“Mom, I need you to look at me,” he tries. “I need you to look at me and see me.”

Somehow, it works. With a shuddering sigh, Mom straightens up slowly and meets Sam’s eyes. Her right hand unclenches to reveal a balled-up tissue. She uses it to dab at her face.

“I’m going to tell you something, Sammy,” she says, taking Sam’s hand. Her skin feels ice-cold and Sam wonders how long it’s been since she moved. “And I want you to know that I’m not telling you so you’ll forgive me. I know I don’t deserve that. I’m telling you because you deserve to know.”

Sam nods, unsure of what other response to make. He’s never seen Mom this bad, not once, so he’ll listen to whatever she thinks she needs to tell him. Even if it turns out to be bullsh*t.

“You know I was very young when I married your father,” Mom begins, dabbing once more at her blotchy, tear-stained cheeks with the hand not cradling Sam’s. “Only twenty-one years old. And we didn’t last too long. Just long enough for him to give me a gift.” She smiles at him in a way Sam understands to mean, That gift was you.

Sam nods shakily. He does know all this. His father was someone who had trouble staying in one place, Mom always used to tell him. He was always on the road, chasing the next drink and the next woman. Mom thought marriage would change him, but in the end, it didn’t. He left her shortly after Sam’s birth and never came back. Two years ago, they got news that he died in a drunken brawl somewhere in Nebraska.

Some father.

“But what you don’t know,” Mom continues, “is this.” Her grip on Sam’s hand tightens almost to the point of pain, but Sam suppresses his wince. He can tell that whatever Mom is trying to say, it’s desperately important to her. “The first time I met your father, I was barely eighteen. He…” She inhales a trembling breath. “He got me pregnant that time too. Left town before I could tell him. My parents wanted me to get rid of it, but I was young and stupid and in love. I said I’d keep it and we’d raise it together. But John never came back; not then. The day after the baby was born, someone came to my hospital room. They said they were interested in adopting my baby. They were offering good money, and I know I shouldn’t have taken it, but my parents weren’t willing to support me and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Sam’s insides feel hollow. There’s so much new information here, but only one thing that really seems to matter. “Mom, are you saying I’ve got…”

Mary nods through a fresh wave of tears spilling out of her eyes, clumping in her lashes. “You have a big brother, Sammy. He was born January 24, 1991. Four years before you.”

She wipes at her eyes again, smearing makeup in a black streak across her cheek.

“His name,” she says, “is Dean.”

***

END OF PART I

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

Part II: 2012 (4 Years Later)

Variety, July 6, 2012

Dean Show Creator Shurley Comments on Dropping Ratings: ‘We’re Not Going Anywhere’

The Dean Show, once among television’s highest-rated programs, has lately been struggling — particularly at the younger end of the key 18-49 demographic. Even recent dramatic events, such as a near-fatal accident suffered by star Dean Smith’s on-screen mother, failed to bring in as large an audience as the show used to gather at its peak.

Anti-Dean Show activists, who have grown more vocal in recent years, say the explanation is to be found in what they consider showrunner Chuck Shurley’s overly conservative attitude.

“Young viewers, and particularly queer viewers, haven’t forgotten or forgiven the way Castiel Novak was silenced during his time on the show,” said LGBTQ+ community activist Kaia Nieves, who is also a frequent speaker at rallies held by the so-called Dean Was Always Bi movement.

Nieves referred to Novak’s dramatic departure from the show, which was only seen by viewers from a distance and without audio, as Novak had apparently destroyed audiovisual equipment usually hidden about his person. She also mentioned an incident often referred to as “Dubgate,” wherein some viewers believe Smith’s confession of love towards Novak was dubbed over. However, Dean Show representatives have always insisted the audio is authentic as aired.

Reached for comment, Shurley dismissed Nieves’ claims. “The show is doing fine, and we’re not going anywhere,” he said. “In fact, we’ve got some really exciting plot points planned for the near future. We think Dean is going to propose to his girlfriend Lisa any day now. If you don’t tune in, you might miss it!”

Lisa is portrayed by actress Lisa Braeden, whose recent real-life marriage to Hollywood plastic surgeon Dr. Matt Oz made waves in the tabloids.

As for Novak, his fortunes declined considerably after his stint on the show. A now-infamous image from 2009 showed a young homeless man who appeared to be Novak rooting through a dumpster on Skid Row.

The Dean Show airs on the American Broadcast Network and select local affiliates.

***

Mary is no stranger to turmoil. Growing up in the home of a heavy-handed authoritarian father and a mother who was no match for him, she chafed against everything. Rebellion was a near-constant state of mind, expressing itself in everything from drinking whiskey to smoking weed and shooting guns in Caleb Johnson’s backyard.

John was another of her rebellions. She insisted their love was real, screaming red-faced in her father’s face about it until he showed her the door and she found herself not just pregnant but alone in the world at the age of eighteen.

No wonder she’d gone back to John when he finally returned to her, three years after Dean’s birth. He was the only remaining constant in an unsettled life. By that point, she hadn’t spoken to her parents in years.

When Sam was born, she promised herself she’d do better by him than her own parents had done by her. And she wouldn’t give him away like she had Dean. She’d raise him right.

But as so often with best-laid plans, things haven't quite worked out. The four years since she told Sam the truth about his brother have played out to the tune of slammed doors and raised voices. She and Sam still talk, but they so rarely see eye to eye that Mary wonders sometimes how it all went so wrong.

To put it bluntly, Sam has been struggling with discovering the existence of his brother — and with the horrible truth of what that existence looks like. But with no change of Dean’s situation in sight, Mary has been at a loss as to how to help him.

Unless it’s with small peace offerings and feeble attempts at connection. It’s with this kind of peace offering in mind that she climbs the steps to the second floor on this particular Friday night.

Her first knock on Sam’s door prompts a curse and some muttering, the second a suspicious shuffling, followed by the distinctive clatter of a phone being dropped onto a hard surface.

With any other teenage boy, Mary would suspect she’s caught her son in the middle of… well, the kind of activity teenage boys are infamous for doing whenever they get the chance. But this is Sam. It’s not that he wouldn’t or doesn’t do the usual teenage activities — it’s just far more likely that he’s keeping secrets about something to do with Dean.

Again.

Her third knock finally gets a harried “Come in!”

Bracing herself for the usual smell of unwashed socks and stale snack food, Mary steps in through the door. Sam is sitting at his desk, slouched into an apparently casual position, a document open on his laptop. He looks for all the world like someone in the middle of doing his homework.

Except one of his desk drawers is gaping open and Mary can see the edge of Sam’s phone through the gap, the screen still lit up.

She could let it go and let Sam deal with things his own way — no doubt, that would be the easier route to take. But the easy route almost got Sam sent to a juvenile facility last year.

After that, Mary made a promise, to herself and to Sam, not to let these things go anymore. Better to alienate Sam by being overly paranoid than to lose another son. He’s already away from home too often, spending the night with Jess or with Brady. Brady has been teaching him how to sail — something Sam had never shown any interest in before. Mary suspects the change of heart has something to do with how Dean grew up sailing on the water surrounding Seahaven.

With a heavy sigh, she drops onto Sam’s bed, wincing when she lands on a textbook buried in the covers. She relocates it and arranges her face in her best I’m your mother and I’m worried look. “Who were you on the phone with, Sam?”

“Nobody,” Sam answers, much too quickly.

“Sam.”

“I swear,” Sam insists. “I was trying to call Jess, but she didn’t pick up.”

He’s not displaying any obvious tells, but then again, he’s seventeen now. He’s had four whole teenage years to get better at lying to his mother.

Just prod one more time, and then you can leave him alone.

“Sam, I swear, if this has anything to do with Dean again—”

Unfortunately, this final attempt hits pay dirt. Sam jolts upright in his chair, glowering at her with all the considerable rage a seventeen-year-old is capable of.

“So what if it does, huh? You tell me I’ve got a brother who’s basically being held prisoner by a corporation and you expect me to… what? Just sit at home with my thumbs up my ass?”

“Sam!” Mary snaps. “Language!”

“Oh, whatever.” Sam slumps back in his seat, and Mary can tell he’s on the verge of shutting her out.

“Sam,” she says, keeping her voice deliberately even and controlled this time. “You were lucky Chuck Shurley dropped the charges last time.”

Sam’s face twists into a grimace. He doesn’t like to be reminded, and Mary doesn’t exactly blame him, but apparently he needs the reminder.

A year ago, Sam ran away from home. Mary was frantic until, about a week later, she received a call from Shurley Productions: Sam had applied for a job as an extra, using fake papers. But someone in casting had spotted the fakes and made inquiries; Sam hadn’t even made it into the studio dome.

While Chuck did agree to drop the charges, it was only in exchange for Mary giving up the rest of the payments she was still owed under the contract with Shurley Productions. Not that she really wanted Chuck Shurley’s dirty money anymore, but it’s taken a lot more hours at Walmart to make ends meet since then.

But there’s reminding Sam of his mistakes and there’s dwelling on them until she loses him.

“You know I don’t mean to be a hardass,” Mary says, ducking her head with a little smile, trying to catch Sam’s eye.

Sam scowls back at her, but there’s the tiniest upward tick in one corner of his mouth. “Mom,” he says. “Language.”

“Whatever, man,” Mary drawls, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated version of teenage melodrama. “You wanna order pizza for dinner and watch a movie together?”

Making that suggestion was what brought her up to Sam’s room in the first place. It’s Friday after all, and even if money is tight, they deserve to treat themselves every once in a while. They deserve to snatch a moment of peace.

“Only if I get to pick the movie,” Sam says, crossing his arms.

“Fine, but I’m not watching Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer again. You’ve made me watch the darn thing three times already.”

“Silence of the Lambs? ” Sam asks hopefully, eyes widening in the puppy-dog look he’s been using to get what he wants since he was two years old.

Unfortunately, Mary is a sucker for the only son she has left. “Ugh. Fine.”

***

Dean pulls off his hard hat, wiping at the sweat that’s gathered under the headband and now pearls down his forehead. The weather today was a little hotter than usual, and putting up drywall all day is sweaty work.

A heavy clap on his shoulder, given in passing, almost knocks the wind out of him. He turns to find Gunnar, his foreman, grinning at him. “Good work today, Smith. Have a good weekend. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Thanks, Gunnar. I’ll try not to get into any bar brawls.”

Gunnar snorts, appreciating the joke at his expense. Despite being a decent foreman, he’s well known for starting fights at Chuck’s Tavern at the slightest provocation. “I said don’t do anything I wouldn’t. Now git.”

Dean doesn’t need to be told twice. Raising his hand at Gunnar in farewell, he continues on his way off the job site — another single-family house along Hazelnut Street. Seems like all they ever do is build more houses along that street, and yet, most of the ones already standing don’t seem to be occupied. Sometimes, he can’t help wondering how he ended up here — still in Seahaven, working at Charles Construction. He was going to get out. He was going to see the world.

But after Cas left, it was like the air went out of all his plans. He couldn’t see the point to much of anything after that. Sticking with what he knew just seemed easier.

“Hey, Smith!”

Dean clenches his jaw at the familiar voice of Gordon — the closest thing he’s got to a friend these days. They’ve been working together for a couple of years now. Gordon’s a little crass sometimes, but he’s not bad people. It’s just that today, Dean has places to be.

He reaches deep to summon a smile before he turns around, walking backwards so he’s at least still headed in the direction of his car.

“Hey, man,” he says. “You off for the day too?”

“Yup,” Gordon answers, approaching with lazy, loping strides. “You’re not headed home yet, are you? It’s Friday night, buddy.”

“Yeah, I know.” Dean keeps his voice easy and casual, trying not to let on how impatient he is to get away. Fridays are when the newsstand in the square gets new magazines. Usually, Dean goes in the mornings, but he overslept today and didn’t have a chance to stop by. Desperate for an out that Gordon will respect, Dean allows his grin to morph into a leer. “But I got a lady waiting at home.”

Gordon makes a deeply felt sound of approval. “Damn. Some people got it made.”

Dean shrugs, like he can’t argue with that. He’s reached the side of his pickup truck and slows to a stop, digging in the pocket of his dusty jeans for his keys.

“When’re you gonna put a ring on that, man?” Gordon asks, leaning against the side of Dean’s flatbed. “‘Cause if you don’t, I will.”

“Swear you’re in league with my mom, man,” Dean says, finally locating his keys and unlocking the doors. “I’m twenty-one. I’m not in a hurry.”

“Don’t they always say that when you know, you know?” Gordon asks, pushing off the flatbed to keep Dean in view as he climbs into the cab. “And you wouldn’t want anybody else to snap up a fine woman like that. They don’t grow on trees, man.”

“You’re right about that,” Dean says — an easy, non-committal answer. “Have a good weekend, man.” With that, he slams the door, not giving Gordon another chance to keep him.

It’s only a three-minute drive to the square from the job site. This time of day, a lot of people have already started home from work, so the parking lot beside the square has plenty of spaces available.

Dean pulls into the nearest one and keeps his steps measured as he heads across to the newsstand. Old Joshua is there as always, reading today’s Seahaven Herald. Seahaven Voted Planet’s Top Town, it says. That headline stirs something in Dean’s memory, almost like he’s seen it before. But then again, every story in the Herald is much like all the others. No wonder he’s getting deja vu.

“Hello, Dean,” Joshua says kindly, lowering his paper and peering up at Dean over his reading glasses.

“Hey, Joshua,” Dean says, nodding a greeting at the old man. “Got some new magazines?”

“A few,” Joshua answers. He folds up the Herald and rises up off the stool where he spends most of his day sitting. “But it seems like you haven’t found many you like lately.”

It’s true. It’s been weeks since Dean actually bought any of the magazines Joshua sells. He doesn’t offer many, and not always the same ones either, but the specific magazine doesn’t matter so much anyway. What Dean’s looking for could theoretically be found in any of them. And yet, none of what he’s seen so far has been quite right.

“True,” Dean says, eyes already trailing over the racks. “But I got a feeling today’s my lucky day.”

“Hope you’re right,” Joshua answers, and resumes his seat and his reading.

To his credit, Joshua never pushes, no matter how long it takes Dean to leaf through every one of the magazines. The first one he picks up today is a women’s lifestyle magazine — he might get that one for Lisa if he can’t find anything else to buy — and, unsurprisingly, there’s nothing in there. The second one is a home and garden magazine — also a long shot.

But the third magazine Dean picks up is called Hunter’s Monthly. As soon as Dean picks it up, it falls open on a picture of a big, burly guy dressed in flannel, cradling a shotgun.

Dean’s breath catches. This is it. He’s finally found them. They’re exactly right.

“Got something?” Joshua asks, apparently more interested in Dean’s progress than in his own reading.

“Yeah.” Dean is still staring down at the page; he can’t tear his eyes away. “Yeah, I really did.”

He pays for the magazine with a big, stupid grin on his face and buys Lisa the other magazine too. Might as well splurge.

He’s been waiting for this a long damn time.

***

Castiel’s truck rattles, suspension squeaking as he makes his slow way down the gravel drive. He misses his old Continental sometimes, but never on this particular driveway. The truck might squeak, but at least it won’t get stuck, no matter how rough and muddy the terrain leading up to the house.

He has a theory that the driveway is in the shape it’s in because its owner wants it that way. It certainly discourages strangers, as do the rusted-out husks of discarded vehicles that line it on either side and the barbed-wire fence that surrounds the entire property.

Even the house itself is rather forbidding, with its faded paint and rickety porch that looks one stiff breeze away from falling down. In fact, if Castiel hadn’t already known Bobby quite well the first time he came here, he probably would have run for the hills.

As it is, there’s comfort in the rundown familiarity of the house. Castiel knows just where to pull up so he won’t get stuck in the mud if it rains overnight, and he knows just which porch step to avoid if he doesn’t want to fall straight through the wood and break a leg. He knows exactly how to jiggle the key to make sure the lock opens under his touch.

In the foyer, he’s greeted by the muffled sound of Bobby’s voice, apparently talking to someone on the phone.

“I’m home,” Castiel calls out, feeling absurdly like a housewife from a 1950s sitcom. Toeing off his sneakers, he moves further into the house. Bobby is in the kitchen, scowling down at his cell phone before discarding it on the counter with a huff.

“Who called?” Castiel asks as he steps into the kitchen, falling into the usual rhythm of their bachelor household: he lays the table while Bobby fixes dinner. It’s burgers tonight, judging by the raw patties waiting on the counter next to the frying pan.

“That Winchester kid again,” Bobby says, lighting the gas and picking up a spatula off the counter. “Hung up midway through telling me about his latest harebrained scheme. You ask me, his mom caught him making phone calls he wasn’t supposed to.”

Castiel makes a noise of weary acknowledgement. He’s never talked to Sam himself, but Bobby speaks to him fairly regularly. The first three times Sam called, claiming to be Dean’s brother, Bobby hung up on him. But then an email landed in Bobby’s inbox, with a scan of Dean’s birth certificate attached. Bobby started taking the calls more seriously after that.

As Bobby tells it, Sam is full of plans for getting Dean off the show — none of them practical or even remotely plausible with their current resources (or lack thereof). Still, Sam seems to need a friend, so Bobby indulges him.

As for Castiel, he gave up his hopes of a rescue years ago.

“How was work?” Bobby asks, once he’s transferred all the patties and they’ve begun to sizzle, filling the kitchen with the appetizing scent of cooking meat.

Castiel shrugs. “It was work. People bought beef jerky and menthol cigarettes. I took their money. The slushee machine broke again. I fixed it.”

Working in sales, dealing with other people all day, was the last thing Castiel ever thought he would be doing. Unfortunately, his lack of post-secondary training or education doesn’t qualify him for much else.

He probably could have found acting jobs outside LA and Chuck Shurley’s sphere of influence. Once upon a time, acting brought him joy. But every time he so much as considers it now, his final glimpse of Dean’s shocked and heartbroken face stops him in his tracks.

He can’t undo the damage he’s wrought, but he can at least do penance. He will not parlay his time with Dean into a career he doesn’t deserve.

Bobby clicks his tongue as he flips the patties. “Ain’t it the life?”

They don’t say anything else as Bobby finishes cooking and Castiel changes out of his Gas-n-Sip vest and into one of Bobby’s old flannel shirts. (Bobby’s castoffs form much of his wardrobe these days.)

Silence isn’t unusual for them. Neither he nor Bobby are very talkative people as a rule — perhaps that’s why they make such good roommates. But tonight, as Bobby takes desultory bites of what is a truly excellent burger, Castiel can tell there’s something on his mind that he’s trying to work up to.

“How was your day?” Castiel asks tentatively, in a break between bites.

Bobby answers him with a flat look. “What are you, my wife?”

A sharp response hovers on the tip of Castiel’s tongue: No. Your wife is still on TV, playing mother to a man who actually believes he’s her son.

But that wouldn’t be fair; especially considering it was Bobby’s affection for Dean that spelled the end of his marriage.

Oh. That must be what it is then. Dean is the only subject that sets Bobby so ill at ease. Unlike Castiel, Bobby can still stand to watch the show. In fact, Castiel sometimes suspects that Bobby watches so Castiel doesn’t have to.

Castiel swallows hard. He needs to ask the question if he wants to be able to sleep tonight. If he doesn’t, he’ll spend hours tossing and turning, wondering what Bobby knows.

He clears his throat. “How is he today?”

Bobby doesn’t ask Castiel to clarify; they both know who he’s talking about.

Smiling bitterly down at his half-eaten burger, Bobby says, “Kinda wish you hadn’t asked me that.”

Castiel’s stomach plummets. “Is he alright? Did something—”

Bobby waves him off. “Nah. Nah, he’s fine. But… something did happen, and I’m of two minds as to whether you ought to know about it.” He sighs; a weary, weight-of-the-world sort of sound. “Chances are, you’ll find out sooner rather than later. Apparently, the fans are making a big deal out of it.”

Just like that, Castiel is no longer hungry. He sits back in his chair, staring at his half-eaten burger but not really seeing it. “He proposed to Lisa, didn’t he?”

He can’t help picturing it: Dean on his knees, looking up at Lisa with the kind of hope and love he once showed Castiel.

“No. No, it ain’t that. Maybe you had better see for yourself.”

They head through to Bobby’s study, where his geriatric computer is set up. Bobby pulls up the browser, which is already open to a tab of search results. Castiel glimpses his own name in multiple places before Bobby clicks on a link that takes them to a video.

As soon as Bobby clicks the play button, there is Dean. As always, the sight of his beloved face makes Castiel a little weak in the knees. Dean has grown a few years older since Castiel last saw him in person, and those years have made him if anything more beautiful: they've sharpened his jaw and deepened the color of his hair.

While Castiel tries to stay away from the show for his own mental health, he still knows enough to recognize that Dean is in the basem*nt of the small house he shares with Lisa. He’s sitting on the carpeted floor next to a magazine, a pair of scissors and a shoebox.

“What…” Castiel begins, but Bobby hushes him.

“Watch.”

So Castiel watches. He watches as Dean picks up the magazine and pages through it.

Dean stops when he reaches the picture of a man who appears to be cradling a shotgun. He picks up the scissors and, with infinite care, cuts the page out of the magazine. This accomplished, he turns the page and makes two more cuts across it, until he’s left with just a strip of paper.

When he’s done, the camera angle changes. Where before they were seeing Dean’s front, now he's being filmed from somewhere over his shoulder. This new angle reveals that the strip of paper Dean has cut out shows only the man’s piercing blue eyes.

“Alright,” Dean murmurs to himself. “This is our finest hour, Captain Smith. Let’s see what we’re really made of.”

Against Castiel’s will, a fond smile tugs at the corners of his lips. He forgot that Dean used to talk to himself like this, spinning elaborate scenarios that involve his father as the captain of an indomitable warship. A quick sideways glance shows Bobby blinking suspiciously quickly.

On screen, Dean pulls the shoebox closer and lifts the lid. As far as Castiel can see from this angle, there’s only one thing in the box. Dean handles it gingerly as he lifts it out. It’s a piece of paper, and glued to that piece of paper is a collage. It’s incredibly intricate, consisting of hundreds of bits of magazine cutouts just like the one Dean made today. Together, they add up to… Castiel squints at the screen to bring the image into better focus. Yes, his first impression was correct: the collage is of a man’s face.

The man has dark hair, plump lips and sharp cheekbones, but where his eyes would be, there is only a large blank space that shows the white of the paper beneath the collage.

Dean turns away from the image to look for something — presumably the cut-out he’s just made. When he doesn’t find it right away, the search turns frantic, his hands skittering across the floor like startled animals. Castiel’s fingers twitch with the desire to hold Dean’s restless hands and quiet them.

Finally, Dean’s fingers close around the cutout and he lets out a clearly audible sigh of relief.

“Alright,” he whispers. “Okay. Alright.”

His hands are trembling now as he sets down the eyes, placing them exactly into the blank space at the center of the collage.

A small, wet laugh escapes Dean as he looks down at what he’s made. “Wow. Okay. Yeah. Hey. There you are.”

The camera view zooms in on the collage. From the flickering screen of Bobby’s old computer, Castiel’s own face stares back at him.

***

It’s late. Charlie’s eyes are aching from too many hours spent staring at monitors, but she can’t seem to get herself to leave today.

There’s nothing for her to do, really — Ash, the night technician who’s in the control room with her, is monitoring the camera feed to make sure Dean isn’t about to wake up and start something with Lisa. Sex and toilet use are the only things Dean always gets privacy for, Charlie has learned. It’s kind of reassuring that a line exists even for Chuck. (Though she suspects it has more to do with not wanting to offend moral sensibilities than with genuine concern for Dean’s modesty.)

As for tomorrow, everything’s in place for that plan. Everything’s been checked and double-checked, including the fact that no one will be able to trace any of it back to Charlie — or to anyone else, for that matter. It’ll look like a genuine accident.

The only person who will find it suspicious — will hopefully find it suspicious — is Dean.

Still, despite all that, Charlie can’t seem to make herself go home. Instead, she’s been lingering in front of her work station in the control room — a perk she got in addition to her own office two years ago, when she was promoted to senior tech officer — and staring over and over again at the footage of Dean finishing his collage.

It’s not the first time that collage has shown up on screen, and fandom rumors about Cas being its subject have run rampant for months. But now that the truth is undeniable, staring everyone in the face with ice-chip eyes, social media is blowing up. The Dean Show hasn’t been this hot in years, and it’s all thanks to the resurgence of the Destiel hashtag.

Chuck, of course, was furious. He’s been in his apartment all day — strategizing, as he would call it. Charlie would call it “sulking.”

Along with the steadily declining ratings in recent years, it’s just the latest piece of proof that silencing Dean’s confession was a major mistake. If it hadn’t been for that, Cas probably wouldn’t have tried to tell Dean the truth — at least, not right away. He could’ve stayed on the show, maybe even long enough for Charlie to craft an exit strategy for Cas that included Dean.

The night Cas was kicked off the show, he did eventually call her. Charlie told him they were on the same side, and that they’d work together to figure out a way to get Dean free.

Except it didn’t turn out to be as easy as all that. Even with the promotion from PA to tech, Charlie didn’t have a whole lot of clout. She needed to work slowly and carefully to identify the right allies — Corbett in set design, Tracy in lighting, Jo in casting, a relatively new PA named Ambriel — so she wouldn’t end up tanking the plan before she could get it properly started. And even though her job in tech earned her a place in the control room, it didn’t earn her the right to provide creative input on storylines. That right belonged only to a select few, and even then, only in name. Chuck had final say on everything.

At first, Cas understood, or so Charlie thought. He didn’t push for her to call more often and he seemed quietly resigned when Charlie asked him to be patient while she figured things out.

But over time, all that changed.

Chuck, true to his promise, had made sure Cas couldn’t find another acting job, and as the months passed, he seemed to be struggling to hold down any kind of job at all. Worse, there didn’t seem to be anybody checking up on him. Charlie should’ve taken that responsibility on herself, but she was terrified someone might follow her to Cas’ apartment and discover they’d been in touch.

Maybe part of her was also terrified that Cas would figure out she’d been the one to dub over Dean’s confession.

But even though Cas never did, it seemed like he grew more impatient and belligerent every time they talked.

“You’re not doing anything!” he snapped at her, the last time they ever talked on the phone. He was slurring his words a little, as he had been more than once in their recent calls. “You’re just like the rest of them, cashing your f*cking paychecks on Dean’s back. For all I know, Chuck’s paying you to spy on me!”

“Of course he’s not!” Charlie told him, an edge of desperation in her voice. “I’m your friend, Cas. You know that, right?”

“Do I?” Cas told her bitterly, and disconnected the call.

Charlie decided to call again the next day. But when she dialed the number as soon as she’d come home from work, it had been disconnected.

A few days later, she drove to Cas’ apartment, taking three times as long as necessary because she kept doubling back, trying to make sure none of the other cars on the road were trailing her.

By the time she finally arrived, all she found was Cas’ landlord, who informed her that Cas had failed to pay rent for the past three months and had been kicked out.

The next thing Charlie heard or saw of Cas was the same thing everyone else did: the photo of a pale, emaciated young man in an alley on Skid Row, digging through a dumpster for food.

It took her a couple of weeks to screw up her courage and head down there looking for him, wracked with guilt that she’d let things get so bad.

She asked around at the local shelters and in some of the tent settlements. Mostly, she was greeted with suspicion — a lot of reporters had been nosing around, wanting to interview the kid who’d been famous and was now homeless. Finally, a woman who’d set up her tent near the alley where Cas had been photographed took pity on her.

“There was an older guy. Beard and a trucker hat. Said his name was Bobby,” she told Charlie. “He was looking for your boy too. I recognized him off the show, so I figured it was okay to tell him where Cas was. Thought they might know each other, you know?”

Charlie nodded avidly. Finally, she was getting somewhere. She’d never met Bobby Singer herself, but she was obviously aware of him: the first man to rebel because he loved Dean too much to keep lying to him.

“So did Bobby find Cas?” she asked.

The woman chuckled roughly. “Yeah. Stuck to him like a fly to ointment for damn near a week. Annoyed Cas so much that he agreed to go with him in the end. Not sure where though.” Sudden concern flashed across her face. “You don’t think he’s a pervert, do you?”

“No,” Charlie told her, hoping it was true. “I don’t think he is.”

Nobody else knew anything about Cas, but it took Charlie less than an hour to find Bobby Singer, and only a few hours more to locate security footage from a Gas-n-Sip in Sioux Falls, South Dakota showing a sales associate whose name tag read “Steve” but who looked an awful lot like a certain Castiel Novak.

She could’ve reached out again then, and maybe she should have. But Cas was alive and starting a new life and Charlie still couldn’t tell him when or how she’d manage to get Dean free.

In the end, it seemed like Cas was better off moving on, just like Dean seemed to have done after a frantic few months where he passed by Cas’ house almost every day, peering through the windows.

Dean never seemed happy, exactly, and he stopped trying to make friends after Cas. But he finished high school and started an apprenticeship with the fake construction business Chuck used to build sets in Seahaven. He went on more dates with Lisa, and eventually moved in with her.

He made a life — the kind of life Chuck had always planned for him to have. But Charlie just knew, in her heart of hearts, that he was still pining for Cas.

And now this: the collage. An obvious, undeniable sign that despite how Dean’s followed the path Chuck planned for him, his spirit hasn’t been crushed completely.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers as she watches Dean put the finishing touches on Cas’ face yet again. “I’ll try harder.”

Starting with what she's got planned for tomorrow.

Charlie is just about to finally shut down her monitor and head home when the click of an opening door grabs her attention. She’s spent enough time in the control room by now to be well familiar with the sound of the door to Chuck’s private quarters.

Hurriedly, she closes out of the window showing the footage of the collage.

Chuck’s hair is a mess and he’s wearing a robe, cradling a mug that Charlie suspects — based on Chuck’s bloodshot eyes and slightly unsteady gait — holds something other than coffee.

“Charlie,” Chuck says, with the affability of the very drunk. “Ash. How are my tech geniuses today?”

Ash, who’d gotten comfortable with his ratty sneakers on top of his desk, scrambles upright. “Evening, boss,” he says, sketching a salute. “All good here.”

“Same,” Charlie says, forcing a grin. “I was just about to head home. Ash’s got things well in hand here.”

“Good. Good. Great,” Chuck says. But to Charlie’s consternation, he weaves over to her desk and settles himself unsteadily on the corner. “But listen, I wanted to get your opinion on something.”

Resigned to her fate, Charlie swivels her chair to better face Chuck. “Sure. What is it?”

“You’re a woman, right?” Chuck asks, swirling a finger vaguely at Charlie’s face.

“Um… last time I checked, yeah.”

“D’you have a boyfriend?”

Charlie’s instinct is to snap that it’s none of Chuck’s business, or maybe that she has never had and will never have a boyfriend, but Chuck’s moods can turn on a dime and she can’t afford to alienate him.

“I don’t,” she says sweetly.

Chuck waves her off. “Well, for the sake of argument, let’s say you did. Now, if you find out that that boyfriend of yours was pining after somebody else, somebody from his past, how would you react?”

Charlie is beginning to see where this is going, but figures it’s better to play dumb. “Well, I guess my feelings would be pretty hurt.”

“Right, exactly!” Chuck points a triumphant finger at Charlie’s face, misjudging the distance and almost poking her in the nose. “So here’s what I think. Dean’s been waffling on this Lisa thing for ages now. You know it and I know it. It’s time for him to commit himself and propose to her. And how do you think we’re gonna make that happen?”

Charlie’s thoughts are racing, trying to figure out the safest route to take. She settles on answering a question with a question. “Something to do with the collage?”

“Damn right,” Chuck says, grinning blearily at her. “Great minds, huh? Anyway, here’s how I figure it’ll go down.” He sets down his mug so he can raise both hands in a let me paint you a picture kind of gesture. Charlie moves the mug just a little further from the edge of the desk. “Lisa ‘finds’ the collage and confronts Dean about it. She accuses Dean of caring more about Cas than about her; he denies it. Lisa forgives him, they have enthusiastic makeup sex. After, Lisa brings up the topic of marriage to get Dean’s thoughts running in the right direction, and boom, we’re finally on track. Huh?”

He looks at Charlie with an expectant expression that reminds her of nothing so much as when her cat Frodo brings her dead mice for inspection and approval.

The truth is that it sounds like an awful idea — the kind of plan a drunk person would come up with and convince themselves is the best thing ever. The problem with Chuck’s drunk plans is that, unlike most other drunks, he doesn’t discard them the next day. If anything, he clings to them harder than ever. Charlie suspects it’s part of how he convinces himself that he has his drinking under control.

Bottom line, telling Chuck the truth isn’t even remotely an option. He’d dismiss her input at best and fire her at worst. “Sounds great,” she says, with as much enthusiasm as she can muster, which isn’t much. She ignores the quiet snort from the direction of Ash’s workstation. “Hope it works out.”

“Well, I’ve got a good feeling about it,” Chuck says happily, as if he hasn’t engineered half a dozen romantic situations for Dean and Lisa lately that all fizzled out without a proposal.

Chuck reaches for his mug, but once again misjudges the distance, sending it wobbling. Charlie steadies it and hands it to him.

Instead of thanking her, Chuck ambles wordlessly away from her desk and up to the big screen, where the current live feed shows Dean’s peacefully sleeping face.

“Yeah,” Chuck says softly. He’s looking at the screen, but Charlie can still see his expression in profile. He looks… fond. “Yeah, it’ll work out, kiddo. You’ll be just fine.”

Charlie should really pick up her things and go, but she lingers for just another minute, watching Chuck watch Dean. Of all the things she’s thought about Chuck and his show over the past few years, there’s one that somehow never occurred to her.

That, in his own bizarre way, Chuck might actually care about Dean.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

Dean’s Bar, Hibbing, Minnesota

Jody is exhausted. In the five years since she and Donna have taken over the bar, they’ve had some busy days, but rarely one as bad as today.

The place has finally quieted now. There’s only Jody herself, Donna, and the crumpled-up napkins and spilled beer of the raucous crowd they were trying to stay on top of earlier that night.

“Oofda,” Donna says, slumping into a chair at one of the tables. Her palm slaps the tabletop, but she lifts it again immediately, grimacing at whatever gunk it’s landed in. “You wanna just save the cleanup for tomorrow?”

“Sounds good to me.” Jody tosses the rag she’d only just picked up and instead joins Donna at her table, sprawling out on one of the other chairs.

“What in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was that all about?” Donna asks, surveying the devastation that surrounds them. They’ll have to get an early start tomorrow if they want to finish cleanup before it’s time to open. Might have to pay that kid Kevin to come in for a couple of extra hours and help out.

“Haven’t you been checking Twitter?”

Donna squints at her. “No, and since when do you?”

Jody shrugs. “Figured it was a good idea to keep up with the news about the show that we’re, you know, basing our livelihood on.”

Donna’s squint deepens. “Don’t get clever with me, missy.”

“Anyway…” Jody reaches across the table to take Donna’s hand. It’s sticky, and so is the table, but they were both going to have to shower before bed anyway. “That’s how I knew to put in some bigger orders than usual earlier this week. Seemed like the weekend would get crazy ‘cause the hashtag’s been blowing up for days now.”

“The Destiel one?” Donna asks.

“That too, but there’s a new one — #bringbackCas. And apparently, people have been inundating the studio with mail. Envelopes and boxes full of blue eyes cut out of magazines.”

“Huh.” They sit in exhausted silence for a minute or two before Donna asks, “I wish they would bring him back. You think they will?”

“Honestly?” Jody sighs wearily around a suddenly heavy heart. “I doubt it. People’s attention spans are short. That collage thing’ll blow over in a week or so.”

“You’re probably right.” With a final squeeze to Jody’s hand, Donna clambers to her feet. “Let’s go to bed, huh?”

“Yeah. Be right up.”

As Donna’s footsteps recede to the backroom and up the stairs that lead to their apartment, Jody casts one final look around the place. Her attention snags on a fan-made poster they put up a few years ago, right after Cas left the show — a screenshot of Dean and Cas’ faces, hovering close together that day outside the tavern. Above them, in rainbow-colored script, hover the words You Are Not Alone.

They’d meant it back then as a sign that queer couples were and always would be welcome at Dean’s Bar. But some days, it feels like nothing but a cruel joke at Dean and Cas' expense.

***

It happens approximately ten seconds after Dean’s kissed Lisa goodbye and walked out of the house to his truck.

The only warning he gets is the sense of something large and dark falling in the periphery of his vision, and then there’s an almighty crash.

Dean startles so hard that he drops the keys to his truck. He bends down to retrieve them before taking a few careful steps toward the place where the sound came from.

In the middle of the road, maybe fifteen feet away, is a twisted hunk of… something. It’s black and cylindrical, with some sort of glass lens at one end. The glass has shattered, sprayed across the pavement in tiny shards.

Puzzled, Dean looks up at the sky. He finds it perfect and blue as always; no sign of anything amiss.

He squats down to inspect the fallen object more closely. He hasn’t seen a lot of theater performances in his life, but he’s seen enough to recognize a spotlight. That’s what this is. And now that Dean’s looking, he can see some writing on the light too, scrawled in black sharpie on top of a label made of duct tape. It reads Merak (Ursa Major).

“What the f*ck?” he mutters.

Dean remembers enough of his astronomy phase to know that Ursa Major is a constellation. The big bear. Maybe whatever theater set this came from included a night sky.

Which still doesn’t explain what a spotlight is doing in the middle of Walnut Avenue in the first place, or how it got here.

Dean puzzles over that mystery for another minute or so, but finding no satisfying explanation, he gets back on his feet. Wherever this thing came from, the broken glass is a hazard that’ll blow out somebody’s tires if he doesn’t get it out of the road.

As he passes the front door on his way to the shed where he keeps the outdoor broom and his shovels, Lisa steps out onto the porch.

“Hey, hon,” she calls, waving to him. “You’ll never guess what I just heard on the radio. They said there’s a plane passing over town that’s losing debris. Pretty wild, huh?”

“Yeah, pretty wild,” Dean agrees, and keeps walking. He meant to tell Lisa about the spotlight, but now, something stops him: a vague twist of unease in his gut whose source he can’t quite pin down.

Maybe it’s the fact that he’s never known a plane to pass over Seahaven all his life, least of all one carrying theater equipment. Or maybe it’s the fact that when he looked up at the sky, there wasn’t a damn thing in sight.

***

Backstage is a mess all morning. The entire lighting crew and everybody in maintenance is summoned and dressed down by Chuck himself. He takes care of that at the office inside his apartment, but nobody in the control room has any trouble hearing him whatsoever.

After a while, Charlie's nerves give out. She retreats from her control room station to her private office, which is safely out of earshot of Chuck's rant. Halfheartedly, she works on troubleshooting some ongoing glitches in the programming that handles wind speeds and temperature regulation. As a result of that glitch, they’ve actually had some ninety-degree days in Seahaven lately, which is practically unheard of.

She sort of wishes she could still talk to Dorothy. Dorothy is head of security these days, and she’ll be part of any future conversations about what happened. That would be valuable intel to have. But the two of them haven’t shared more than clipped, professional exchanges in years.

Sometimes, Charlie misses her for reasons that have nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with her rare smiles and dry sense of humor.

Charlie doesn’t breathe easy until she gets a text on her burner around nine-thirty, from Tracy in lighting: All good. He doesn’t know who did it.

Charlie bites her lip to stifle a smile. The first act of sabotage she and her merry band of rebels have committed, and they’re getting away with it. The trick now is not to get overconfident. Let a couple of days pass before they move on to the next step.

But when she passes Corbett from set dressing later that morning, she can’t resist pulling him in to whisper in his ear, “Let’s do it on Thursday.”

Corbett doesn’t respond, but as he walks away, he shoots her a thumbs up. For the rest of the day, Charlie walks with a spring in her step.

***

Some days, Castiel barely sees Bobby at all. He often works long hours at the Gas-n-Sip, and Bobby has his salvage business to take care of. But even when both of them are home, they’re often no more than ships passing in the night, usually meeting only in the vicinity of the coffee pot. Caffeine has become Castiel’s drug of choice ever since he stopped drinking; something else he has in common with Bobby.

Today, Castiel hasn’t laid eyes on Bobby in hours; not since Bobby disappeared in the direction of his woodworking shed early this morning. Castiel has been feeling restless lately, like he’s waiting for something but hasn’t discovered yet what it is. Perhaps Bobby feels the same and chooses to deal with it by working out his frustration on chunks of wood.

Castiel has yet to discover something that quiets his mind the way woodworking seems to do for Bobby, and he isn’t scheduled to work today, so he has no recourse left to him but to pace the house, trying to rid himself of the itch beneath his skin.

On his tenth or eleventh circuit of Bobby’s study, cradling his fourth cup of coffee of the day, his eyes fall on the creaky staircase that leads upstairs to the bedrooms. He lets his restless feet carry him up onto the landing, with a vague thought of grabbing his wallet from his room and going out somewhere.

Instead, his attention is caught by one of the other bedrooms at the far end of the hall.

There are four bedrooms up here — far more than Bobby needs really — and one of them has now become Castiel’s. One, of course, is Bobby’s and one is empty, but the fourth…

Bobby has never told Castiel that the fourth room is off limits. In fact, he’s never spoken about it at all; Castiel discovered it once on a solitary exploration of the house, and he hasn’t been in it since. The room feels too haunted, the very air inside it soaked with memories and regrets.

Today, Castiel’s restlessness drives him up to the door and through it.

There’s a bed at the center, its sheets sufficiently fresh to suggest that Bobby changes them regularly. Along one wall are a few framed photos showing Dean at various ages — sometimes with Bobby, sometimes with Eleanor, other times with various friends he had growing up and who were eventually written off the show: Victor. Benny. Lee.

There’s a bookshelf in one corner that’s stuffed to bursting with books of adventure, exploration and dystopia. The first time Castiel came to this room, he was puzzled at first, wondering what the books shared in common. Eventually, he realized: they’re the kinds of books Bobby thinks Dean would like, if he were allowed to read them.

Two other shelves are devoted to Bobby’s woodworking. There are ships, paying homage to all the times Bobby and Dean used to pretend to be battleship captains. There are fantastical creatures — ones that Bobby and Dean invented together, on nights when Bobby told stories to help Dean fall asleep. There are also perfectly regular animals. Castiel settles down on the floor in front of one of the shelves and crosses his legs. Tentatively, he reaches for an exact replica of the kangaroo he found in Dean’s room, what seems like a lifetime ago now.

Just as he did then, Castiel sets the kangaroo’s ramp on the floor and places it at the top, watching as it hops down to the bottom before toppling onto its side.

A sob echoes startlingly in the silent room, surprising even Castiel himself. He hadn’t realized he was crying. The ache of missing Dean has become such a constant companion to him over the years that he barely notices it most of the time. And yet, other times, the force of it can still knock him off his feet.

Setting the kangaroo back on its perch, Castiel wipes at his face and climbs stiffly to his feet. He sighs to find his coffee mug empty when he picks it up. Maybe it would be alright to have just one more cup.

Castiel’s steps are heavy as he crosses to the door. Somehow, leaving the room behind feels like a small betrayal; like an echo of the day he was forced to say goodbye to the boy, now the man, who should be occupying this room.

These maudlin thoughts are interrupted by the shrill ringing of the phone in Bobby’s office. Since Bobby is outside, Castiel is the only one available to answer the call. He considers letting it go to voicemail, but it’s not as though he has anything else to do.

In the end, he hurries downstairs. He’s slightly out of breath by the time he manages to pick up the receiver. “Hello? Bobby Singer’s residence?”

There is a long pause, broken by nothing but a startled intake of breath at the other end of the line.

“Hello?” Castiel says again.

“Um… is this Castiel?”

The answer to that question is rather complicated. Technically, Castiel prefers to go by “Steve” in public these days. But the voice at the other end sounds young; like a boy. Somehow, Castiel doesn’t think he’s speaking to a reporter.

“It is,” he confirms. “Who’s this?”

“It’s, um… Sam. Sam Winchester.”

Oh. Castiel’s mind immediately goes blank. Dean’s little brother. He’s speaking to Dean’s little brother. “Hello,” he says, before remembering that he’s already covered that. “Did you… should I go get Bobby?”

A slightly awkward chuckle. “No, it’s alright. I was actually hoping I’d get to talk to you one of these days.”

Castiel isn’t entirely sure what to say to this. Other than those few weeks before and after he was on the show, no strangers have ever been particularly interested in talking to him. He’s hardly the world’s most sparkling conversationalist, after all. “What about?” he asks.

“Dean, mostly.” The admission sounds a little sheepish. “It’s just still so wild to me that I have this brother I’ve never even met. You seemed like you were really close to him, so I guess… I dunno, I was hoping you could tell me a bit about him.”

Castiel could argue that all Sam needs to do to learn about Dean is to turn on his television and watch him in his unguarded moments, but that seems far too dismissive. Sam is trying to know his brother, and if Castiel’s useless, painful memories can help him do that, how can he refuse?

He settles himself in Bobby’s creaky office chair, staring at the wallpaper opposite without really seeing it. “Your brother is… he’s kind. He approached me immediately on my first day of school and invited me to have lunch with him. He gave me rides whenever I needed them. I didn’t even have to ask.” An image flashes through his mind’s eye, of Dean laying himself bare that stormy day by the sea. “I think he… feels things more acutely than anyone I’ve ever known.” Castiel can hear the way a fond smile warms his voice. Even now, he can’t speak of Dean with anything approaching neutrality. “I miss him every day.”

On the other end of the line, Sam sighs shakily. “Huh. You really do care about him.”

“I really do,” Castiel agrees.

They sit in silence for a few moments, but in that silence, Castiel feels as though some unspoken camaraderie is being established.

“So,” Sam says eventually, “that was a hell of a Hail Mary you pulled, trying to tell him the truth before you went out.”

Castiel is startled into a laugh. “Yes, it really was.”

After that, conversation flows easily between them — Sam asking questions and Castiel doing his best to answer them. In doing so, he remembers things he hasn’t thought of in years: Dean’s terrible table manners, for one, and his tendency to fidget constantly — bouncing his leg, chewing on pens.

When their conversation finally ends, Castiel is reasonably sure that, for the first time since Bobby picked him off Skid Row and gave him a home, he’s made a new friend.

***

It’s been hotter than usual in Seahaven lately — in the high eighties, according to the display in Dean’s truck. Sweat pearls on the back of Dean’s neck as he pulls into the driveway at home, and it takes effort to peel himself off the vinyl seat.

Even so, the atmosphere when he steps inside his and Lisa’s house has a distinct chill to it. There’s no smell of dinner, and most of the lights are off, with the exception of the one over the dining room table. Lisa sits there, her hands folded on the tabletop, and in front of her is…

Oh no.

“Hey, Lis,” Dean says carefully, dropping his toolbelt and safety gear in the corner by the door and approaching the table like he would a loaded gun. “How was your day?”

Lisa looks up at him, her face drawn into a smile as taut as a rubber band. “I decided to do some cleaning in the basem*nt, and I found… well, this.” She picks up the collage of Cas and flings it across the table to where Dean is standing.

There’s a crease in the paper where Lisa wasn’t careful picking it up. Dean can’t seem to look away from it. It took him months to make that collage. Months of going through hundreds and hundreds of magazines, painstakingly poring over the pages in search of the perfect lips, the perfect jaw, the perfect eyes. And here’s Lisa, handling it like a piece of trash.

Maybe he should feel guilty for still being so hung up on Cas that he couldn’t rest until he had the closest thing he could get to a picture. But mostly, what he feels is angry.

“Who asked you to clean up down there?” he snaps. “Or to go through my stuff?”

Lisa’s lips part in surprise. Maybe she was expecting him to apologize. But the moment of weakness only lasts a few seconds before her expression hardens into anger to match Dean’s own. “It’s our stuff,” she says. “Because we live together, remember?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean asks. He should probably sit down so they can talk this out properly, but his anger keeps him on his feet. “Of course I know we live together. I come home every night, don’t I?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Lisa’s voice is cool and curt — nothing like her usual pleasant, smiley tone. “This is obviously a collage of Cas. Did you make it?”

There’s really no point denying that, so Dean nods. “Yeah. So what?”

“So what?” Lisa repeats, almost like she’s mocking him, and it only makes Dean angrier. “Dean, this is like… I don’t even know. You knew this guy for a couple of weeks years ago, and here you are, making him… what, a shrine? This must’ve taken ages to put together.”

“What do you want me to say?” Dean demands. Maybe he should stop, should apologize for his outburst, but his anger keeps him talking. “I cared about Cas. He was…” He trails off, sudden pressure in his throat choking off his words. He swallows past it. “He was… so important to me. I still miss him. If you don’t—”

Lisa doesn’t even let him finish. She jumps to her feet, sending her chair clattering to the floor. “What about me, huh? Am I not important?” Before Dean can muster a response, she advances on him, facing him down with righteous anger in her eyes. “I’ve been so patient, Dean. For months now, I’ve been waiting for you to propose. I keep thinking you’re going to do it — that night at the pier, our date at the diner, the barbecue in my parents’ backyard. You had so many chances.”

Somewhere inside, deeper than the anger still boiling under Dean’s skin, Lisa’s words strike a chord. Their relationship has always been pretty low-key because Dean liked it that way. He gave in when Lisa asked him to move in together, but other than that, he’s stuck to a domestic routine where they have dinner after work, but don’t go out much.

Except lately, Lisa keeps pushing to do more things together. She dragged him to the waterfront, where there was a sudden power outage that left them with nothing but the moonlight illuminating their silhouettes on the pier. Then there was the diner date where they were served complimentary champagne and desserts. And the barbecue where Lisa’s parents kept making excuses to leave the two of them alone. Not to mention, all the pestering he’s endured from his mom; hell, even from Gordon.

It’s like the entire universe is conspiring to get him to propose marriage to Lisa, and he’s suddenly so very tired of it.

Lisa steps right up to him, crowding him, her brown eyes sparking, and she asks him, “Are you ever going to marry me, Dean?”

Dean looks at her; really looks. She’s very pretty — he’s always thought so. And angry as she is with him right now, she’s actually kind of incredible. But still, deep inside, Dean is all at once incontrovertibly certain of one thing: he doesn’t want her. He couldn’t even begin to say why they’re together in the first place, other than the fact that Lisa was always around.

She was around and Cas wasn’t.

“Actually,” he says calmly, his anger subsumed by sudden clarity, “I don’t think I will.”

With that, he picks up the collage off the table, gathers his work things, and walks back out the front door.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Heard @margiekugel-beer dropped as a sponsor. We’re here if @thedeanshow needs someone else to bring the good times. #deanwasalwaysbi #bringbackcas

- @astroglide, August 6, 2012

How much longer can Chuck Shurley refuse to bring back Dean’s actual love interest? Stop silencing Dean and stop pretending the queer fandom doesn’t exist! #deanwasalwaysbi #bringbackcas

- @nieveskaia, August 7, 2012

We dare you to go 72 hours without shipping #destiel. Impossible, right? #deanwasalwaysbi #bringbackcas

- @primevideo, August 8, 2012

***

If Charlie thought Chuck’s mood suffered after the collage reveal, it’s so much worse after Dean breaks up with Lisa. The next day, Chuck doesn’t leave his private quarters all morning, refusing to see anyone but Naomi, who looks increasingly harried every time she emerges from Chuck’s sanctum with more orders for the poor PAs scurrying to find hangover cures, greasy takeout and whatever else Chuck happens to demand.

Halfway through the afternoon, the news breaks that The Dean Show’s longest-running sponsor has dropped over declining ratings. Via Naomi, Chuck issues his orders from behind the locked door of his apartment: no one is to mention Margiekugel ever again. Within the universe of the show, the very fact of its existence is to be erased.

It seems stupid and petty, but Charlie isn’t about to complain. Maybe, if Chuck’s temper lasts, he’ll sabotage the show hard enough that Charlie won’t even have to lift a finger anymore.

Chuck isn’t the only one in a bad mood. Eleanor was none too happy when she was called into work unexpectedly last night to welcome Dean "home." She’d been using her reduced hours on the show after Dean moved in with Lisa to pursue other roles, and everyone on set was treated to a rant about how many auditions she was missing by being back at the studio dome. Her scowl didn't melt until someone asked her to take over the “get ready for the show with me” videos Lisa had been filming lately. (The idea being that if the actors drive more engagement on social media, it'll help the ratings. So far, it hasn't.)

All this chaos suits Charlie just fine. If Chuck isn’t around to pay attention to what’s happening on set, and everyone else is focused on the drama, it makes Corbett’s job that much easier.

On the big screen in the control room, the live feed shows that Dean is at work, so the set decorators are taking this opportunity to swoop in and clean up some of the rough edges of Eleanor’s house. Nobody was expecting Dean to go back and live with her, so the set has been neglected — dust accumulating on furniture, props being removed to fill other, more frequently used sets. Luckily, Dean was exhausted and upset when he arrived there last night, so any irregularities seem to have escaped his attention. But by the time he comes home this afternoon, everything needs to be in perfect shape.

The camera feeds on the smaller monitors — which show footage that’s being captured but isn’t currently being broadcast live — provide a glimpse of frantic activity in every room of Eleanor's house as things are added, arranged and rearranged. Corbett is in the bathroom, scrubbing the sink clean of dust and grime. A glance at Charlie’s watch tells her it’s almost time for him to make his move.

Which means it’s time for Charlie to create a brief distraction.

Jeff is the one watching the feed right now — another lucky break because Jeff has made it clear more than once that he thinks Charlie is dreamy. Not something Charlie would encourage normally (being a lesbian and all), but in this case, the ends justify the means.

“Heyyyy,” she says, sauntering up to Jeff with a sway of her hips and a smile that she desperately hopes looks flirty rather than terrifying.

She takes up a position behind Jeff’s chair, giving herself a view of the feed and forcing Jeff to turn away from the monitors if he wants to talk to her.

“Hey, Charlie,” Jeff says, beaming at her with all the joy of an overgrown puppy. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Yeah. Awesome.” Charlie bounces on the balls of her feet, hoping her very real nerves are going to read as nerves about talking to Jeff. For just a split-second, she allows her eyes to dart to the screen, where Corbett is now picking up the cup that holds Dean’s toothbrush. “Crazy day we’re having, huh?”

She twirls her hair a bit. That's a thing flirty girls do, she's pretty sure.

“Yeah, man,” Jeff agrees, bobbing his head eagerly. “I got a bet going with Ash. He figures Chuck won’t be coming out at all today. I bet him a tenner that he’ll be out this afternoon trying to chat up Becky from casting.”

Charlie snorts. A snort is not exactly flirty behavior, but it’s all good as long as Jeff doesn’t turn around and watch the monitors, one of which now shows Corbett slipping a piece of paper into the toothbrush cup before putting it back onto the vanity.

“You’ll lose that bet,” she says. “Naomi’s got too tight of a leash on him to let him try that again after the last time Becky shot him down. She’s not gonna let him get sued for harassment.”

Jeff glances around the control room platform before leaning in to mutter conspiratorially, “You ever think Naomi might have a thing for Chuck?”

It’s hardly the first time Charlie’s heard that question. Rumors about Naomi and Chuck have been making the rounds of the set for years, considering how much time they spend together and how often Naomi stays late to, presumably, tuck Chuck into bed when he’s too drunk to do it himself.

Charlie, though, has never really subscribed to that theory. Naomi doesn't seem starry-eyed about Chuck as a person — if anything, she has the grim, detached devotion of someone who thinks they’re going to ride the coattails of a troubled genius to greater professional heights.

“Nah. I’m pretty sure Naomi has better taste than that,” Charlie whispers conspiratorially, leaning closer as if she’s trying extra hard not to be overheard. The new position allows her another glance at the screen, where Corbett is now leaving the bathroom, his mission accomplished. Charlie’s stomach gives a triumphant little lurch.

Jeff chuckles, obviously delighted that they’re sharing secrets. “Maybe you’re right. Ash figures she’s a lesbian anyway. Hey, you wanna bet on it?”

“Maybe some other time.” Charlie straightens up and steps away. Now that the mission’s been accomplished, it’s probably better to make herself scarce. “I’ll see you later, Jeff.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, sure.” Jeff’s face falls, and Charlie feels like the worst person in the world for leading him on even a little bit. “Later, Charlie.”

With a wave, Charlie turns away and starts walking across the platform to the stairs that lead down to the main backstage floor.

Halfway there, she stops dead.

Standing right at the top of the landing, studying her with a thoughtful expression, is Dorothy. As always, her security uniform makes her look way too much like all of Charlie’s wet dreams about Lara Croft, but Charlie isn’t going to notice that. She isn’t allowed to notice that anymore.

“Excuse me,” Charlie snaps. “Trying to get down there.”

“Right. Don’t let me stop you.” Dorothy’s response is curt and cool, but she steps aside to let Charlie pass.

Charlie takes a deep breath and holds it, removing the temptation to inhale deeply as she approaches Dorothy. Dorothy is still watching her, the weight of those pretty brown eyes making Charlie’s skin itch with the desire to reach out.

Somewhere underneath that desire, there’s fear: did Dorothy see anything? Was she able to tell that Charlie’s conversation with Jeff was meant to be a distraction?

It’s a lot to feel all at once. Then again, Dorothy's always had this talent for making Charlie feel too many things, until she couldn’t have put words to any of them if she tried.

Charlie has finally reached the landing, and Dorothy is less than five feet away, close enough to touch if Charlie cared to reach out. She still hasn’t looked away.

“What?” Charlie asks irritably, hovering at the top of the landing.

Dorothy’s lips part, like maybe she wants to say something, and there’s a vulnerability in her eyes that Charlie never thought she’d get to see again. They both hover, suspended in this moment of possibility that stretches like a self-indulgent director’s cut.

Off to Charlie’s right, someone yells for a PA, and the moment breaks.

“Nothing,” Dorothy says, and her expression slams shut. “Have a good day.”

With no other options, Charlie steps off the platform, mourning the possibilities of what could have been.

***

When Dean left Lisa’s place, he didn’t really think about what it’d be like to move back home. Home is supposed to be the place where you’re always welcome, right? A safe spot to land when adult life doesn’t pan out the way you wanted it to.

Except Mom didn’t look exactly thrilled when Dean showed up on her doorstep in the middle of the night, and it’s only gotten worse since then. She’s never been the most approachable mother, but Dean always figured they did okay together. Maybe better than okay in the aftermath of Mom’s accident a couple of months ago. He didn’t see the accident happen, but he got the call after — Mom had been hit by a car and was in a coma. He sat with her every day for the two weeks it took her to wake up, holding her hand and trying to find some semblance of Eleanor Smith under the thick bandages wrapped around her head.

The day the bandages came off, he promised her that he wouldn’t let anything like that happen to her ever again. She cupped his face and called him her “sweet boy,” making a pathetic, eager warmth surge up inside him.

But now… it doesn’t even feel right to say that Mom’s been cold and distant. If anything, “indifferent” or even “annoyed” feels like the right word. Like she thought she was done with this, done with raising Dean, and now he’s forced her to pick it back up again.

As a result, it’s become a habit to retreat to his room right after dinner. There’s not much to do there either, other than read through his old textbooks — the ones with beautiful pictures of places other than Seahaven — look at photo albums and run gentle hands over the toys Dad made him. It sort of feels like time’s been rewound and he’s back in this funhouse version of a life he thought he'd left behind.

He still has the mantis shrimp comic Cas printed for him too. He knows it by heart, but he takes it out and touches it sometimes, just for the pleasure of knowing that Cas’ fingers touched it too.

The collage of Cas’ face is tucked into the top drawer of his desk, out of sight. Mom doesn’t come to his room often, but he doesn’t want her to see it when she does. Not because he’s ashamed, but because it’s his and he doesn’t think he could stand for anybody to touch it without reverence again.

On his second night back at home, it's only a little after nine when he gives up on trying to stay awake. There’s nothing to do other than linger in this pointless childhood throwback he’s found himself in, so he might as well sleep.

His limbs feel heavy as he drags himself to the bathroom. He makes it to the mirror, but when he gets there, he stops, staring at himself. Green eyes and freckles. Mom and Dad both have blue eyes. Dad was pale and Mom has a nice tan at all times, but neither of them have freckles. Sometimes, Dean wonders if he might be a changeling, like in the fairy tales he and Dad used to invent together.

“Stupid,” he mutters, shaking his head at himself as he reaches for his toothbrush.

As he lifts it out of the cup, there’s a small sound, like paper crinkling. Dean peers into the cup and does find a piece of folded paper, with writing scrawled across it. What the hell?

He retrieves the paper from the cup and peers down at it. The writing says, For Dean. Read me while on the toilet.

Dean snorts. What the hell kind of prank is this? Did Gordon or one of the other guys from the crew somehow manage to sneak in here and leave this for him?

Ignoring the instruction, Dean unfolds the paper. Inside, it reads, Tomorrow morning, take Chestnut instead of Elm on the way to work. Park along the curb on Chestnut for at least 10 minutes.

It doesn’t make any damn sense, but the prank theory seems more likely than ever.

Knock knock knock.

Dean startles out of his contemplation of the confusing piece of paper.

“Dean!” Mom’s voice sounds a little breathless even through the door. There’s an urgency to it that Dean can’t remember hearing anytime recently.

He unlocks the door and finds Mom right on the other side, hand already raised to knock again. “Yeah, Mom?”

“Oh good. You found my paper.” Mom reaches forward and plucks the piece of paper out of Dean’s hand.

“Your paper?” Dean asks, wondering at the tight lines of tension on Mom’s face.

“Yes,” Mom says, and she smiles at him, but the smile only seems to carve the tension deeper. “Just a joke. Nothing you need to worry about.”

She crumples the paper and leaves him standing there, the words But it was addressed to me on the tip of his tongue.

***

When Charlie started to put her little plans of sabotage into motion, she knew not all of them were going to succeed. But watching all the set decorators get pulled into a meeting with Chuck still leaves a bitter taste on her tongue. They’re going to be interrogated for hours, and it was all for nothing.

She’d really liked this plan too.

In Seahaven, the amount and nature of traffic on every single street is carefully planned out and coordinated. The greatest amount of traffic is on the routes Dean takes to and from work. But on other roads, such as Chestnut, there are repeating patterns that quickly become obvious if you linger there. So if Dean had followed the instructions on the paper — if he’d read it during a moment of privacy and then parked on Chestnut the following morning — he would have noticed that only two vehicles ever pass along it. A Jeep and a Corolla, driving past every five minutes or so during daytime hours.

Dean does in fact park on Chestnut that morning. But thanks to the early warning, the control room has been able to reroute vehicles to the area. So Dean sits there for nearly twenty minutes, drumming his fingers on his truck’s steering wheel and seeing nothing unusual at all.

***

Since there’s nothing but another awkward evening with Mom waiting for Dean at home, he takes Gordon up on his invitation to go for beers after work. On this particular night, the tavern is as busy as it ever gets, which is to say not very, but the chatter around him is just loud enough to drown out the constant drone of Dean’s thoughts.

He’s had a lot of those lately, between the breakup with Lisa and all the weird stuff that’s been happening: the spotlight. The note in his toothbrush cup. The unusual heat.

“You alright, man?” Gordon asks, from the barstool next to him. “You seem kinda quiet.”

“Fine,” Dean mutters, noticing the way his leg is bouncing underneath the bar, but he can’t be bothered to stop. He’s felt even more restless and distracted than usual, his brain running a mile a minute.

The light. The note. The heat.

Dean lifts his bottle of El Sol and takes a sip, grimacing at the watery taste. “Yeugh. This stuff is nasty. You sure they didn’t have any Margiekugel?”

“Any what?”

Dean spins around on his stool to find Gordon frowning at him.

“Margiekugel,” Dean repeats. “The stuff we always drink?”

Gordon doesn’t answer right away, chewing thoughtfully on a handful of peanuts from the bowl at his elbow. Finally, he says, “Got no idea what you’re talking about.”

Under the bar, Dean’s leg comes to a standstill. What the hell is wrong with people lately?

“Are you f*cking kidding me?”

Gordon winces like Dean insulted his firstborn. “Don’t swear, man.”

“Whatever.” Dean pivots back to the bar, waving to the guy who’s pouring drinks there. His name might be Walt, but the bartenders at the tavern switch over so often that it’s hard to be sure. “Hey!” Dean calls. “Over here!”

Maybe-Walt waves a lazy hand to show he heard, but still takes his sweet time coming over. “What can I get you?” he asks, eyeing the El Sol in Dean’s hand that is still mostly full.

“A Margiekugel,” Dean says, pronouncing the name slowly and clearly. “This El Sol sh*t tastes like piss.”

Next to him, Gordon actually flinches at this new bout of swearing. Some rebellious, resentful part of Dean purrs its approval.

“Never heard of it,” the bartender says. “We only serve El Sol.”

“f*ck this.” Dean slides off his barstool, ignoring Gordon’s latest wince and leaving both the bartender and his crappy beer in the dust where they belong. There’s an itch beneath his skin that feels like irritation mostly, but for some reason Dean can’t explain to himself just yet, fear is starting to creep in at the edges.

He scans the bar for familiar faces and finally spots Gunnar over by the dart board, chatting with a small group of guys.

“Gunnar,” he calls as he hurries over.

“Smith,” Gunnar says, giving him a lazy salute with his own bottle of El Sol. Now that Dean’s looking, there’s an El Sol ad right next to Gunnar too, showing a black-haired beauty sprawled on a tropical beach.

“Listen, I need your help setting Gordon straight on something,” Dean says. “He’s trying to tell me he never heard of Margiekugel.”

Gunnar swallows his sip of beer, taking his sweet damn time. “I never heard of it either. What is it, some teen thing?”

The itch under Dean’s skin flares. It feels like the floor is tilting under his feet, as unsteady all of a sudden as the deck of a boat, everyone else looming up around him like waves out at sea.

He can’t breathe. He can't f*cking breathe.

He needs to get out.

Outside, the air is barely cooler than inside the bar, and by the time Dean stumbles up to his truck in the parking lot, a trickle of sweat runs down his back, gathering above his waistband.

He hardly had any beer at all, so he doesn’t think twice about turning the key in the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot, eyes carefully averted from the spot by the banisters where he told Cas how he felt.

God, what he wouldn’t give for Cas to be here.

But Cas isn’t here — it’s just Dean and his too-loud thoughts and the heat and the itch under his skin.

Before he quite knows he’s going to do it, Dean pulls off the route home and makes a left onto Chestnut. He pulls up next to the sidewalk and leans back against the driver’s seat, breathing in the artificial cold from the air vents.

The street is deserted on either side of him, except for a single Jeep that drives past slowly. When it’s out of sight, Dean closes his eyes, counting his breaths.

When he gets to five, his heartbeat feels a little calmer and the itch doesn’t seem quite so bad. Outside, another car passes: a Corolla.

Dean stretches across the cab to pop the glove box open. He reaches inside, his fingers closing around the well-worn edges of the photograph he always keeps there.

It’s of him when he was about four, his hair lighter than it is now and trimmed in an awful, unflattering bowl cut. Dad is in the picture too, his arms around Dean and a smile on his face. It’s Dean’s favorite picture of the two of them together.

His eyes roam the image eagerly, tracing every detail of Dad’s happy smile, every line of his own face looking so carefree.

Except…

Dean loses all the breath in his lungs as he stares at the bottom right corner of the image. Somehow, he’d forgotten this particular detail, filed it away in his subconscious as irrelevant. But it jumps out at him now, loud and startling like someone screaming in his ear.

Just to Dad’s right, on the little table next to him, is a bottle of Margiekugel.

Holy sh*t.

“I knew it,” Dean mutters. “I f*cking knew it.” In a moment of insanity, he pictures Cas in the passenger seat next to him, nodding along avidly to Dean’s moment of revelation. “Didn’t I know it, Cas?” he asks.

Imaginary Cas beams at him, so proud of Dean for being right all this time.

“But if I was right,” Dean asks him, “then why the hell did everybody else tell me I was wrong?”

Imaginary Cas doesn’t seem to have an answer to that.

Outside, another Jeep passes.

No. No, wait just a goddamn minute. Dean swivels so hard in his seat that his neck makes an ominous popping sound.

That’s the same Jeep.

Isn’t it?

It might not be. He might be seeing patterns where there aren’t any. Or even if it is the same Jeep, it could be that the owner lives on this street and had to double back for something.

But then why were they driving the same direction as before?

Dean still hasn’t found an answer to that question when the Corolla passes again.

The itch under Dean’s skin is back and worse than ever, and it’s definitely more fear than irritation now. Something is very, very wrong, and Dean can’t begin to figure out what it is.

A memory flashes across his mind’s eye — one he tries to tuck deep, deep down at all times. It’s of Cas’ face, desperate and tear-streaked, his eyes blazing with the urgency of something he needed Dean to hear and understand.

Dean didn’t, at the time, and he’s tried not to think about it since.

Everything around you — Seahaven, your parents, your friends, everything about your life — none of it is real. You and me — we’re the only thing that’s real.

A shiver works its way down Dean’s spine. It has nothing to do with the cool air blowing at him from the vents and everything to do with the Jeep that is once again passing on the street outside.

Dean clutches the picture of his dad and the memory of Cas like a pair of lifelines. Then he settles in and starts counting the seconds until the Corolla reappears.

***

Castiel can’t tear his eyes away. He should be working the late shift right now, supplying the night owls of Sioux Falls with menthol cigarettes and snack foods. Instead, he’s sitting on Bobby’s living room rug with his legs crossed, staring avidly at the screen.

After his time on the show, Castiel spent almost a year dreaming about what it would be like if Dean started to see the strings holding his artificial world together. If it ever became obvious that Dean was getting wise to the truth of his existence, Castiel thought back then, Chuck would have to let him go free.

Selfishly, he’d hoped that his own words would be the thing to help Dean see. But after Castiel had been yanked unceremoniously off the set, Dean became singularly focused on trying to find out what had happened to him, without once considering what it was that Castiel had been trying to tell him.

But now, something has changed.

After the incident with the collage, Castiel couldn’t help but start to watch the show again. For far too long, he’d fooled himself that if he only stayed away, he would eventually get over Dean and move on — even though part of him, deep down, always knew there would be no peace for him until The Dean Show was done.

With the proof that Dean still cares about him too arranged painstakingly atop a piece of paper for everyone to see, Castiel knew he had a solemn duty to at least bear witness to Dean’s imprisonment. If he couldn’t be next to Dean, holding him, he could at least share his existence in the only way available to him.

Bobby worries, of course. He doesn’t like that Castiel once again spends hours in front of the TV, attention rapt on the screen while Dean goes about another mundane day in Seahaven.

Today, though? Today, Castiel’s decision has been vindicated, because it’s been anything but a mundane day. Someone left that note in Dean’s toothbrush cup. And maybe, just maybe, that same someone was responsible for the spotlight coming down a few days before.

Castiel thinks he has a very good idea of who that someone is.

“I knew it,” Dean says as he sits in the cab of his truck, staring down at the photograph in his hand. “I f*cking knew it.”

The camera angle, which shows Dean in profile, suggests there’s a hidden camera somewhere in the passenger-side door. Like this, Castiel can’t see what’s in the photograph Dean is looking at, or why it seems so important to Dean.

Dean turns and looks right at the camera as he says, “Didn’t I know it, Cas?”

Castiel makes a noise of distress, low in his throat. Dean can’t know about the camera, or the fact that Castiel is right here, watching him. He couldn’t possibly. But somehow, despite all that, he’s reaching out, speaking to Castiel across the unfathomable distance that separates them.

Now it’s up to Castiel to answer.

Trembling all over, Castiel turns off the TV and goes to retrieve his cell phone. A quick check of the time tells him that it’s getting close to midnight. Bobby must’ve gone to bed already. Castiel didn’t even notice.

In California, it’s two hours earlier than here. A perfectly reasonable time to call an old friend, then.

The cell phone Castiel uses now isn’t the one he used to own before his life went sideways, so he doesn’t have Charlie’s number saved in it. But Charlie encouraged him to call her from public phones as often as possible, just in case someone on the show got the bright idea to check what kinds of incoming calls employees were receiving. As a result, Castiel still has the number memorized.

He types it in now, getting it wrong three times because he’s still trembling all over.

The line rings twice before Charlie’s voice sounds through the speaker.

“Hey, who’s this?”

“Hello, Charlie,” Castiel says, amazed at how steady his voice sounds. Now that he has Charlie’s voice in his ear, it seems he’s moved beyond nerves and to a new place of calm. “Can we talk?”

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

Dean’s Bar, Hibbing, Minnesota

Some days, Donna could swear Mom’s spirit haunts the bar, gathering in the corners along with the dust and shadows.

Today is one of those days. As Donna rushes around the place, serving drinks and taking people’s credit cards to settle their bills, the atmosphere is one of excited speculation and controversy. But underneath it all, there’s a watchfulness, like the world is holding its breath.

“They’re f*cking gaslighting him with this beer thing,” someone snaps at the table to Donna’s right as she passes. It’s Krissy, who started coming in a few weeks ago. “I mean, what the hell are they thinking?”

“They’ve always been gaslighting him,” says Rachel, one of their regulars. “Ever since he was born.”

“So how the hell can you support that? We should all be boycotting the show,” says a woman whose voice Donna doesn’t recognize. They’ve gotten a lot of new customers lately — not all of them supportive of the show, but many of them wearing shirts that depict Cas, or Dean and Cas together.

If Rachel replies, Donna is already too far away to hear it, on her way back to deposit the empties she’s carrying behind the bar. But she’s heard many conversations like it recently. It feels like popular opinion surrounding the show has been shifting.

It’s always seemed as though there were two sides to the Dean Show fandom: a smaller one that mulishly insists there’s nothing morally wrong with the show — after all, Dean is fed, clothed and has a perfect, largely conflict-free world created just for him.Then there’s another, larger one that acknowledges keeping Dean in the dark is wrong, yet doesn’t seem interested in confronting the implications of that.

But lately, an emerging third group of fans has become increasingly vocal: those who want to see Dean discover the truth and make his own choices about his life.

As Donna rounds the final table that stands between her and the bar, she catches another snatch of conversation.

“You think he’s starting to figure it out?” someone asks.

“I feel like he’s at least getting suspicious that something’s going on,” the person next to them agrees.

In the corner, the ghost of Donna’s mother stares at her, a thing made of dust and shadows posing the question: what about me?

If Dean discovers the truth and chooses to leave the bubble that’s been created for him… what happens to the legacy Donna’s worked so hard to carry on for her mother? And what happens to all the people who have found a community here?

It seems selfish to be concerned about all that when a person’s freedom is at stake. But as Donna smiles distractedly at Jody, who’s busy pouring drinks, she can’t help but wonder anyway.

***

“Can we talk?”

Charlie straightens up from where she’d been slouching on the couch, gripping her phone tight. The caller’s voice is one she hasn’t heard in years, but it’s as familiar and unforgettable as the Imperial March. “Oh my god… Cas?”

The line crackles as Cas lets out a slightly shaky breath. “Yes. It’s been a while.”

“Understatement of the century,” Charlie says weakly. “How, um. How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” Cas says, in the dismissive tone of someone who’d rather not get into it. Which, after everything, is fair enough. “I’m calling because I need to know if you’re behind some of the recent… you know.”

Charlie considers pretending she doesn’t know what Cas is talking about. But that would be disingenuous, and Cas has spent enough time waiting for straight answers from her.

“Call me back on this other number,” she says, rattling off the digits for her latest burner. She’s reasonably sure no one at Shurley Productions would think to tap her phone, given her impeccable employment record. But she’s worked too long and hard at this not to be as careful as possible.

“Okay,” Cas says, and hangs up.

Charlie goes to grab her burner from the kitchen counter and settles back on the couch, chewing on her nails as she waits. What if Cas doesn’t call back? What if this was her only chance to start communicating with him again and she’s already blown it?

Before that spiral can escalate any further, the burner buzzes in her hand. Charlie doesn’t even bother with a greeting.

“Yeah,” she says, as soon as she’s picked up the call. “I have a couple of allies, but I’m the one in charge.”

A moment of weighted silence, and then, “Good. How can I help?”

Charlie hesitates. It’s tempting to take the easy way out — accept Cas’ offer of help and find a way to weave him into the plan, without ever telling him the part she played in his exit from the show; in silencing Dean and Cas' voices when they most needed to speak.

But The Dean Show is built on lies, which means it’s going to take the truth to bring it down. Even if the truth is, in this case, extremely uncomfortable.

Charlie takes a deep breath, wondering if she’s about to be hung up on. “Before I answer that… there’s something you should know.” She lets out the air she’s been holding, closing her eyes to center herself. You can do this. “I was the one who dubbed over Dean’s confession. I did it to get myself promoted so I’d have a better chance of getting him out. But that’s not really an excuse. It was a sh*tty thing to do. I’m sorry I did that to you. To both of you.”

The silence on the line drags on for long enough that Charlie squints at the phone, trying to see if the call’s been dropped. But the call time is still ticking up, second by second.

“Cas? Say something.”

When Cas finally speaks, he sounds deeply exhausted. “I guess I’m glad you told me. But if you told me so I can… absolve you from your guilt, I don’t think I can do that. We're all guilty, for participating in the show. For perpetuating it. There's no way around that."

Charlie opens her mouth to answer, unsure of what she’s actually going to say, but it turns out to be a moot point because apparently, Cas isn’t done yet.

"All I can tell you is that I understand. And that I wish none of us were in this situation to begin with.” A heavy sigh crackles across the line. “I wish Dean and I could actually have met at school somewhere. I wish we could’ve gotten to know each other without the cameras and the lies. I wish we could’ve just… dated and tried things out together, like you’re supposed to do in high school. But we didn’t get that, and I’m… I suppose what I’m trying to do is move on instead of dwelling on regrets. I want to focus on what we can still have.” Cas falls silent again, but this time, Charlie waits, sensing an unfinished thought struggling to be completed. “So whatever you need from me, count me in.”

Charlie exhales a small laugh and flops back against the couch, smiling up at the ceiling. “Okay. Awesome. Let’s talk this through.”

***

By the time Castiel hangs up the phone with Charlie, he’s buzzing with excitement. He spent years waiting for Charlie’s vague promises to crystallize into an actual plan, and it seems the time has finally come.

They agreed that the most helpful thing for Castiel to do at this point is to go public. It won’t be comfortable, because he’s technically still bound by the show’s NDA. But what can Chuck take from him? He’s already been blacklisted in Hollywood, and he has a grand total of fifteen dollars to his name.

It also won’t be easy, trying to emerge from the obscure, quiet existence Castiel has managed to establish for himself. But Charlie’s view is that, between the “Dean Was Always Bi” movement, the #bringbackCas hashtag and Dean’s apparent growing awareness due to Charlie’s sabotage, momentum for change is building. And an interview where Castiel pleads for Dean’s release might just be the straw that breaks Chuck’s back.

However, they’ll need to move quickly. Since the incident with the beer and the subsequent hours spent sitting in his truck on Chestnut Avenue, Dean has been quiet, going about his routine as usual. Knowing Dean’s stubbornness, Castiel is sure he hasn’t given up — perhaps he’s simply taking a few days to work through things in his head.

But the discussion of “Beergate,” as it’s been termed on social media, is already waning, so Charlie insists they need to “strike while the fires of Mount Doom are hot.”

That argument makes sense to Castiel. Bobby, unfortunately, proves a little harder to convince.

“I think you’re a goddamn idjit to get back into all that,” he growls, slamming the pan onto the stove with unnecessary force when Castiel breaks the news to him the morning after his phone call with Charlie. “Maybe you don’t remember the rough shape you were in when I scraped you off the ground in that alley on Skid Row, but I sure as hell do. It took you months, months to get back to a normal weight and lay off the booze.”

Castiel’s irritation flares instantly, because of course he remembers — remembers the seemingly never-ending darkness and hopelessness that engulfed him back then. He felt alone and desperately young, cut off from the person he loved most in the world, left without money or any prospects for improvement.

But he doesn’t snap at Bobby, the way he would have years ago. He struggles with himself until he’s calm enough to respond rationally, because Bobby’s concern at least shows that Castiel now has someone other than Dean who cares whether he lives or dies.

“I need to do something, Bobby,” he insists, positioning himself with his back against the counter so he can see Bobby’s face while he pleads for his support. “If there’s even a small chance that we can save him, I have to take it.”

Halfway through ripping open a packet of bacon, Bobby goes still and sighs, his shoulders slumping. “Goddammit,” he mutters. “I told myself I’d stop hoping for something like this. That way lies madness, boy. And that’s not something I want for you.”

“Maybe madness. Or maybe hope,” Castiel says quietly, keeping his eyes on Bobby, waiting for him to look up.

When he finally does, he looks years older than Castiel has ever seen him, his face carved with deep lines of weariness and disappointment. “Sometimes,” he says, “they’re the same damn thing.”

***

“I think we should do it, Mom.”

Mary eyes her youngest dubiously across the two couch sections that separate them. To some extent, she’s grateful: at least Sam has decided to include her in his latest scheme for undermining Chuck Shurley and his show. But on the other hand, she’s always valued the protection that her anonymity provides. She’s under no illusions that the public will be kind to a woman who decided to give away her baby, no matter how desperate her circ*mstances might have been at the time.

“I’m not sure you understand what going public with this story is going to mean for us, Sam,” she says. “Once we put ourselves out there, we can never go back.”

At the mere thought, Mary’s hands wrap more tightly around the mug of black coffee she’s cradling. She didn’t sleep too well last night, and eight in the morning is awfully early to be bombarded with one of Sam’s schemes. Except in this case, according to Sam, the scheme was hatched by someone named Charlie, who apparently works for the show and feels that there’s an actual chance they might be able to get Dean free if they exert enough pressure.

“I know the risks, Mom,” Sam says. He looks and sounds almost painfully earnest. His eyes are bigger and more puppy-like than Mary can recall seeing them since he was six years old. “But if Jess was the one to write the article, we can be sure that we get asked the right questions and that the article won’t make you out to be some kind of villain.”

Mary freezes halfway through taking a sip of coffee. “Jess? As in your girlfriend Jess?”

Sam nods eagerly. “She writes for our school paper.”

Unexpected laughter bursts out of Mary at the thought: a scoop that national publications would kill to get, handed over to a high school paper. There’s something kind of nice about that thought.

But Sam, in typical teenage fashion, chooses to take offense at her reaction. “She’s a good writer, you know,” he says, glaring at her.

“I don’t doubt that,” Mary says placatingly. “But what about the NDA I signed back in the day? Have you thought about that? We could be on the hook for a lot of money if Chuck decides to sue me for breaking it. Not to mention, he could decide to press charges against you for trying to get on the show that time.”

“Charlie doesn’t think that’s going to happen,” Sam says, as if the word of this unknown Charlie should be taken as gospel. “Once we go public, the story’s out there. And from Chuck’s perspective, there’s a real risk we’d keep giving interviews about anything he does to retaliate against us. Ratings for the show are dropping already, and he won’t want the bad press.”

Mary stalls by taking another sip of her coffee. Chances are, she’s going to give in — no other outcome seems realistic when Sam clearly wants this so much. But she did promise herself to push harder with Sam and not let things slide.

“Have you actually talked to this Charlie?” she asks.

“I haven’t,” Sam admits, grimacing. “But I’ve talked to Cas, and he thinks she can be trusted.”

Cas. For years now, Mary has been curious about the young man who loved her son enough to try to tell him the truth. Maybe this madcap scheme could at least be a chance to finally get to know him.

“I’m not saying yes,” she says, quelling Sam’s excited grin with a stern glare. Getting the message, he nods and arranges his face into a more neutral expression. “But… I’d like to meet them both before I agree to anything. This Charlie and… and Cas.”

Sam loses the battle against his grin. It brightens his face, making him look just like the little boy Mary remembers. “Thanks, Mom,” he says.

“Yeah, sure,” Mary answers, half-heartedly returning Sam’s grin and hoping desperately that she isn’t making a huge mistake.

***

Dean’s been keeping his head down. It’s the only thing he can do that won’t make him feel like the ground is tilting under his feet with every step he takes.

Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect system. No matter how often he tells his thoughts to quiet down enough to let him think, they insist on racing ahead of him to discover new things that he should be questioning. Like, why does everyone in Seahaven pretend there’s no better place in the world and anyone who wants to leave is basically insane? Yet, at the same time, Mom has all these photos of going on family vacations to other places when Dean was little.

There are lots of questions and contradictions swirling around Dean’s brain these days, but that one in particular won’t leave him alone. So one night after work finds him sitting on his bed, cradling their old family photo album in his lap.

Out of the thirty or so pages of snapshots from his childhood, about half a dozen are from places that are clearly not Seahaven. There’s one that shows him with Mom and Dad in what must be New York because the Statue of Liberty appears in the background. He looks about four in that one. In another one, the three of them stand on the left side of the frame, while the spectacular vista of the Grand Canyon stretches behind them. The sky is a bright, vivid blue, with only a single, wispy cloud. In this picture, Dean looks six or seven.

Shouldn’t he be able to remember this? Kids start to form long-term memories by that age, right? For example, he does remember making up stories with Dad at bedtime and going to the library with Mom when he was in the first and second grade. And yet, no matter how hard he tries to cast his mind back, he can’t remember ever looking out at that view. The only reason he can even identify the location is because there’s a picture a lot like this one in his geography textbook.

An awful lot like this one.

It couldn’t be… could it?

That itch under Dean’s skin is back again, anger and fear and the sense that he’s about to lose his balance.

He makes his way across to his bookshelf and pulls out the well-worn textbook. It’s one of the few books he has that talk about places other than Seahaven and aren’t fiction, so he’s read it more times than he can count. As a result, it doesn’t take him long to find the page he’s looking for.

The image of the Grand Canyon is massive, stretching across the top of two pages. Dean carefully removes the photograph of his family from the album and holds it up for comparison. The view of the canyon looks identical, but that’s not all. In the textbook image, the perfect blue of the sky above is broken up only by a single, wispy cloud.

It’s the exact same cloud.

Now that he’s looking closer, there are a few other things about the photograph of him and his parents that just don’t add up. For one: even though it’s a bright, sunny day, none of them seem to be casting any shadows.

Dean sits there and tries to remind himself how to breathe.

When he thinks he’s more or less got the hang of it again, he turns back to the image of the Statue of Liberty. He peers down at it, squinting his eyes to take in every little detail. No shadows here either, and something seems weird about the light on his and his parents’ faces. The background showing the statue is a bit dim, like it was taken on a cloudy day, but Dean, Mom and Dad look brighter, like they’re standing in direct sunlight.

***

“sh*t. He’s looking for flaws in the pictures. What the f*ck do we do? How do we distract him?” Jeff spins around in his swivel chair, eyes scanning everyone in the control room in a frantic search for answers.

“I could run the thunderstorm program,” Ash suggests, unruffled by the chaos erupting all around him.

All heads swivel to Charlie. Chuck and Naomi have gone on a mysterious trip out of town, so technically, Charlie is currently the senior staff member in the control room.

“Sure. Let’s have a thunderstorm,” Charlie agrees, though she doubts even a lightning strike right next to Dean’s head could scare him off his hyperfixation on the photographs right now. But if she plays her cards right, she could give Dean the space to make some major discoveries here.

“Someone needs to call Chuck.” Charlie spins around to find Dorothy standing at the edge of the control room platform, staring spellbound up at the giant screen that shows Dean paging frantically through textbooks and photo albums. “He’ll be livid if we don’t consult him on this.”

Charlie allows herself exactly two seconds to glare murderously at Dorothy before she adopts a more professional expression. The look Dorothy gives her in return is so unreadable that a Vulcan would be proud of it.

“Okay,” Jeff says shakily. “Okay.” Then, after a slightly awkward pause where no one steps forward to volunteer, “Who’s going to do it?”

It becomes very quickly apparent that no one wants to actually speak to Chuck if they can help it. Ash appears incredibly interested in a line of code on his screen, and Jeff examines some dirt stuck under one of his nails.

“You’re all cowards,” Dorothy says, striding over to the phone line on Charlie’s desk.

As she bends low to dial the number, she whispers in Charlie’s ear, “There’s taking risks and then there’s being reckless. This is a big deal. Chuck would’ve fired you for not calling him immediately.”

Charlie blinks up at her, confused, still trying to read Dorothy’s impeccable poker face. But Dorothy has already picked up the phone and dialed the number, and Charlie is left to do nothing but wonder why Dorothy cares.

When Dorothy hangs up the phone five minutes later, it’s with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. “He wants us to call in Lisa.”

***

Dean spends an indeterminate amount of time sitting on the floor, surrounded by photographs and textbooks, finding more and more discrepancies. After a little while, there’s the sound of thunder outside, but Dean barely notices. He’s on the verge of something big here, and he can’t afford to be distracted.

Not all the photo backgrounds are also in his textbooks, but every image seems to have something wrong with it. There’s the one of his family at Niagara Falls, which has just a little bit of a black line next to Dad’s hand that doesn’t fit into the background. There’s the photograph taken by the ocean, where a very small bit of Mom’s elbow seems to be missing.

What finally pulls him back to reality is the sound of Mom’s voice, calling his name from downstairs. He looks up to answer, and is surprised to find how dark it is in the room. Outside, the storm is still raging, pelting the window with thick drops of rain.

“What is it, Mom?” he calls. His voice sounds more or less like it always does, which doesn’t seem right. Something about his life is incredibly wrong, the very foundation it’s built on shifting underneath him. Seems like his voice, his appearance, everything about him ought to reflect that change in some way.

“Come down! You have a visitor!” comes Mom’s answer.

For one moment, Dean is seized by a wild, improbable hope: What if it’s Cas?

There’s no reason why it would be, but so many weird things have been happening lately, so what’s one more to add to the pile? And maybe part of him needs to believe that with everything going so wrong in such confusing ways, the only person who still makes sense to him is going to come save him somehow.

Propelled by sudden urgency, Dean scrambles to his feet and rushes out into the hallway, taking the steps downstairs two at a time. He tells himself to see reason, to accept that it’s unlikely to be Cas, but there’s still this awful, giddy bubble of hope filling his chest as he rounds the corner into the living room.

“Oh, there you are,” Mom says, and her smile is almost bright enough to dispel the gloomy gray of the storm outside. She’s standing in the middle of the room with her arm around Lisa.

They both look like they’ve just been hovering there, waiting for Dean to arrive. The tableau they make is so jarring and so unlike what he wanted that it knocks the breath from Dean’s lungs.

“Lisa came to see you,” Mom continues, stepping back and giving Lisa an encouraging push forward at the same time. “Isn’t that nice?”

“Hey, Dean. It’s good to see you.” Lisa is smiling too, even brighter than Mom, but Dean can’t find it in himself to return the gesture.

He knew it couldn’t actually be Cas, or he should have known. And yet, there’s a deep, achy emptiness inside him where hope lived a moment ago.

“I was hoping we could talk,” Lisa says now, apparently unfazed by Dean’s lack of response. Her statement is punctuated by a particularly loud thunderclap.

Dean needs to say something. He’s just standing there, staring at two smiling women who all of a sudden feel like strangers. He can’t figure out what they’re thinking. Why does Lisa want to be with him so much? Why does Mom want them to get married so badly?

“I, um,” he starts. It’s not promising as beginnings go, and while Lisa’s smile doesn’t falter, the warmth in her eyes cools a degree. “Sorry, Lis. I don’t think so.”

Another thunderclap sounds outside, this one loud enough that it seems to shake the foundations of the house.

“Please, Dean?” Lisa asks, taking a tentative step towards him. “I can’t drive home in this storm anyway. We might as well have a chat.”

That’s true enough, but now that the hope of seeing Cas has been snatched away, Dean’s thoughts are loud again, clamoring for him to address the damning evidence he found upstairs.

“Why don’t you wait out the storm down here,” he suggests. “Watch some TV.” Turning to Mom, he says, “I wanted to talk to you, actually. Alone.”

Mom’s sun-bright smile slips as she looks back and forth between him and Lisa. “Dean, you’re being rude to Lisa. She came all this way to talk, so I think the least you can do is hear what she has to say.”

And yeah, maybe Dean is being rude. But after everything that’s gone down over the past week or so, he thinks he’s entitled to a bit of rudeness. Not to mention some answers.

“Maybe she can tell you whatever the hell is so important,” Dean snaps. “I’m sure you’ll give me the gist. I’ll be upstairs, whenever you’re ready.”

He walks out, the sound of Mom’s and Lisa’s vaguely outraged noises following him up the stairs. By the time he gets back to his room, the storm has already passed, giving way to the standard Seahaven clear skies.

Eventually, Dean hears the sound of the front door slamming.

It takes Mom long enough to come upstairs that he’s almost convinced himself she’ll just ignore his request. But finally, there is a creak of wooden boards, and then the thick, flowery scent of the perfume that Mom’s been using lately wafts into the room ahead of her. It's called Fleur de Lis, and Dean hates that he knows that because Mom keeps mentioning it. It's like all she ever wants to talk about are things that don't matter worth a damn.

“Lisa is gone,” is the first thing Mom says to him.

“Good,” Dean answers, not bothering to look up from the textbooks and photo albums still scattered on the floor around him. “I’m not interested in getting back with Lisa.”

“Why ever not? She’s such a lovely girl and she cares about you a great deal.” Mom approaches at his left and sinks to her knees beside him with a small groan. Dean forgets sometimes that Mom isn’t that young anymore. It’s almost enough to make him feel guilty for summoning her up to his room like this.

Almost.

Instead of answering the question, he points to the image of Mom, Dad and himself at the Grand Canyon. “Tell me about that trip,” he demands, his eyes on Mom’s face, watching like a hawk for her reaction.

That’s how he notices the instant of uncertainty that flashes across Mom’s face before she smiles at him.

“What do you want to know?” she asks pleasantly, like they’re really just reminiscing about good times from Dean’s childhood. Like Dean isn’t constantly hovering on the edge of a panic attack these days.

Dean takes a deep breath. “How old was I? Where did we stay? How long was the trip? What was your favorite part?”

Mom’s smile doesn’t falter. “You were five. We stayed at this small motel in Williams, Arizona. We were there for a week. My favorite part was watching you giggle at the magic fingers.” She breathes a fond little laugh. “We must have spent half our vacation budget on them. Your dad kept having to go back to the change machine to get more quarters.”

It sounds so real. In his mind’s eye, Dean can see himself stretched out on a vibrating motel bed, grinning so hard his little cheeks hurt, while Mom and Dad look on with affectionate smiles. He can picture it so clearly. Does that mean it actually happened?

His next breath is a struggle against too-tight lungs. The cloud, he reminds himself. It’s exactly the same.

“While we were there,” he says slowly, “did we by any chance take some pictures for my school textbooks too?”

He turns the photo album and the textbook so they’re facing Mom, side by side, the identical clouds on prominent display. Mom looks down at the pictures, then up at him, blinking just a little too quickly.

“What do you mean, honey?” she asks.

“You really don’t see it?” Dean jabs a finger at the cloud in the textbook, then at the identical cloud in the photo album. “It’s the same picture, Mom!”

Mom’s expression freezes for just a moment, but she looks attentive, like she’s listening for something Dean can’t hear. Like she’s communicating with someone. A shiver works its way down his spine.

That odd, frozen look only lasts a few seconds, and then Mom’s fond smile is back in place. “How could it be the same picture, Dean?” she asks, the soul of patience. “One of them has our family in it and the other one doesn’t.”

Maybe someone added us to the picture after the fact, Dean wants to say, but he has no idea how that would work. He’s never heard of any kind of technology that would make something like this possible.

“Okay, so what about this one?” Dean can hear the desperation in his own voice, the way he’s starting to sound just a little crazy. Still, he flips the page of the photo album to the picture in front of the Statue of Liberty. “You see that? You see how the light on our faces isn’t the same as the light in the background?”

Mom’s smile is indulgent now, as if she’s calming a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. “I suspect we were standing directly under a cloud, Dean.” She reaches for him, her hand curved as if she’s going to touch his cheek or smooth his hair.

Dean flinches back.

Mom looks concerned now, and a little hurt. Guilt squirms uncomfortably in Dean’s stomach.

“What’s going on with you, Dean?” she asks quietly. “You haven’t been yourself lately. Are you feeling sick?”

It’s so tempting to tell Mom everything — to pour his heart out and ask for comfort. But he knows Mom would have an answer prepared for every single one of his worries, and it would be an answer that makes perfect sense on the face of it. If he asks her why they stopped leaving Seahaven, she’ll tell him that money was too tight after they lost Dad’s income. If he asks her why no one else seems to remember the beer Dad used to drink, she’ll tell him it was a stupid prank the guys at the bar played on him.

And that? That feels more wrong than anything else so far. All through Dean’s life, whenever he’s had questions or doubts, there’s been a perfectly reasonable answer that stopped him asking. For the first time, it occurs to him that maybe life isn’t supposed to work like that. Maybe, in life, there aren’t always supposed to be perfect answers.

It’s time to stop asking questions and start doing something.

“I’m getting out of Seahaven for a while,” he says. “I’m gonna ask for time off from work tomorrow.”

He’s still watching Mom’s face carefully, and he could swear there’s a trace of real fear on it before she smoothes it into a more subdued expression of concern. “Dean, you’d have to cross the water to leave Seahaven,” she says, so very gently. “You know you can’t do that.”

She’s not wrong — the mere idea of getting on the water again makes Dean’s heart stutter and sweat prickle on the back of his neck. But he also wants out, with a visceral, painful intensity that goes even deeper than fear.

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s time I got over that,” he says, squaring his shoulders in anticipation of all the completely reasonable objections he’s about to hear.

What he doesn’t expect is for Mom’s expression to crumple. She brings her hands up to her face, but she doesn’t manage to stifle the rough, ugly sobs shaking her shoulders.

“Mom?” Dean whispers, shocked. The squirm of guilt in his stomach kicks up several notches, shouldering its way past fear, anger and unease to become the dominant emotion. “Mom, don’t cry. Mom, I’m sorry.”

Dean shuffles closer to her on his knees and pulls her against his chest, cradling her as she shakes. They sit like this for a long time; until Dean’s shoulder starts to ache from holding up Mom’s weight and his shirt is wet from her tears.

Finally, Mom sits up, wiping at her face with both palms and smearing black eyeliner across her cheeks. “I’m sorry, honey, I just… I lost your father already. I can’t stand it if you leave me too.”

Dean’s heart cracks in two. He hasn’t seen Mom so emotional in ages — not even when she finally woke up after her accident. Not since Dad died, all those years ago.

“I know, Mom,” he croaks. Tears are burning at the back of his eyes too, clogging his throat. “I’m sorry. I... I won’t leave.”

Mom rewards him with a watery smile and a kiss on his cheek. She hasn’t touched him this much in ages. “I know, honey. That’s because you’re my good boy.”

She gives him a deeply fond look, and Dean can’t help preening a little at being the center of so much attention. It settles some of the unease that's been his constant companion for the past few days.

“And won’t you think about giving Lisa another chance?" Mom asks gently. "I don’t know what happened between you two, but I thought you were happy.”

Dean considers it; he really does. There must have been times when they were happy, or at least content. But all he can see now when he thinks of Lisa is her handling Cas’ picture like it was trash.

Still, he’s having a moment with Mom and he won’t screw it up by arguing with her.

“I’ll think about it,” he promises.

She heaves a deep, contented sigh, as if to say the subject is now closed. “Why don’t we go to bed? I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”

“Sure,” Dean says. He still feels a little raw and unsteady, so maybe sleep is exactly what he needs. “Night, Mom.”

“Goodnight, honey,” Mom says softly. With another groan, she scrambles onto her feet. Dean darts out a hand to help her, and Mom takes it gratefully, resting her weight on him as she straightens up.

Mom has just stepped across the threshold and into the hallway with a final, warm look back at him when Dean notices something on the floor: one of Mom’s hair pins. It must’ve come loose while they were hugging.

Dean picks it up and heads out into the hallway, intending to leave the pin in the bathroom for Mom to find tomorrow.

As he passes her bedroom, the sound of her voice reaches him through the thin wood paneling of the door. She doesn’t sound weak or tearful at all now. If anything, there’s a note of bitterness in her voice.

“I deserve a f*cking award for that performance.”

Dean freezes in place, knowing that if he takes a single step, the ground will tilt beneath his feet and he’ll feel like he won’t be able to breathe. His hand tightens around the pin in his hand until its point stabs painfully into the soft flesh of his palm.

Performance?

He ignores the pain and stands completely still, reminding himself to keep filling his lungs with air. And wondering, for the second time tonight, if he really knows his own mother at all.

***

It’s rare for people to come to Bobby’s after business hours. All told, he’s a bit of a hermit, as is Castiel these days — it’s part of why they don’t mind each other’s company. They both know how to give someone space.

So when the sound of a car struggling down the pothole-pitted drive interrupts them halfway through dinner, followed by the flare of headlights outside the kitchen window, Castiel sits up and pays attention.

Bobby’s expression instantly tightens into suspicion as he jumps up off his chair and peers out into the front yard. “f*cking hell,” he says at whatever he sees there, and strides out of the room, Castiel at his heels.

“Bobby? What’s going on?”

In lieu of an answer, Bobby storms into his office, unlocks the gun cabinet and pulls out his shotgun. Instinctively, Castiel steps out of the way as Bobby makes a beeline for the front door and yanks it open.

Castiel hears the sound of the gun being co*cked as he steps across the threshold. Bobby has the twin barrels aimed squarely at the head of the person who’s just emerged from the passenger seat of a black sedan.

The very, very familiar person. A surge of hatred rises up inside Castiel, locking up his muscles and making him feel as if, for the first time in his life, he’d like to throw a punch.

“Get the f*ck off my property, Shurley,” Bobby growls, “or I can’t be held responsible for the consequences.”

“Put the gun down, Mr. Singer,” says the cool, crisp voice of Chuck’s assistant Naomi, who’s just emerged from the driver’s side. “Or I can’t be held responsible for the consequences.”

“Now now, there’s no need for all that,” Chuck says, both hands held up placatingly. Castiel thinks he’s trying to sound affable, but the fine tremor in his hands reveals the lie beneath the pleasantries. “I’m here to see Cas.”

“That’s Mr. Novak to you,” Bobby says, shotgun still unerringly trained at Chuck’s head.

Castiel finally finds his voice where it was buried underneath his rage and the shock of seeing Chuck here, in the refuge he’d made for himself. “What do you want from me?” he demands.

He waits for the answer with bated breath, wondering if this is the end of the road: if Chuck has somehow guessed that Castiel has been scheming with Charlie and the Winchesters.

Maybe today is the day any hope of freeing Dean dies forever.

“I’m here,” Chuck says, “to make you an offer.”