fic, SPN: it's a badass afterlife (Castiel/Dean, Ash, Gabriel, Jo, Ellen etc), PG13
Title: it's a badass afterlife
Characters/Pairings: Castiel, Ash, Jo, Ellen, Gabriel + others; Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG13
Word count: 6177
Warnings/Spoilers: slightly crack-ish, but I think it's the only warning I can give. Spoilers up until 5x22, and especially for 5x16, 5x10 and said 5x22. It goes slightly AU from the ending though.
Summary: the one where when the new boss in Heaven walks inside Ash's bar with plans. Reunions happen, matchmaking happens, hacking angel radio happens and it's generally an awesome afterlife, all things considered.
A/N: written for polyonymous for castielfest; there will be another one coming as soon as I have it beta-ed, but for now have this. ;) The prompt was: Castiel takes to loitering at Heaven's Roadhouse with Ellen, Jo, Ash, and company. Bonus points for Gabriel. This is slightly crack-ish. But I had fun with it. I hope it fits the bill! :D Thanks to pnr for looking it over before I posted it.
Ash hasn’t even had time to process the news that apparently there just was some huge change in Heaven’s management, when that management walks into his bar.
Or, well, Ash wouldn’t peg the guy with dark hair, blue eyes and the Humphrey Bogart trench coat for management just by looking at him, but Ash has been here long enough and he isn’t an idiot. He can recognize an archangel when one is standing right in front of him, and he won’t be the one to point out that crooked ties aren’t exactly what people would consider proper archangel attire.
Anyway. The management, or the archangel, is at his counter just a blink after he appears on his doorstep, and Ash figures that if he’s here to just smite the fuck out of him because the whole thing with Enochian and string theory was kind of forbidden… well, he’ll see to it and he’ll at least be obliterated with dignity. So he looks straight in the archangel’s eyes, and almost gasps when he realizes that the archangel/management is looking at him like he’s actually impressed.
“Are you Mr. Badass?” the archangel asks deadpan, his voice low and deep and totally serious, and Ash almost starts laughing in his face.
Almost.
He’s still in front of an archangel, as socially impaired as the latter seems to be.
“Dude, excuse me?” Ash blurts back, but the archangel doesn’t even blink.
“I was assured your name was Dr. Badass. Isn’t that correct?”
Well. That’s called being literal. Ash fights the urge to roll his eyes and just shakes his head.
“Yeah, but… that’s a nickname, man. Ash will do, really. And… er, what can I do for you?”
“My name is Castiel, and as you probably know by now…”
“Wait. Wait. Aren’t you the one who was with Dean and Sam? The one they told me about when they were here? You are the new boss?”
Castiel’s lips curl up in a hint of a smile and then he nods. “Dean put it in a more… colorful way, but yes. I am the new boss. And I’m seeking your help.”
For a second, Ash wonders if he isn’t having some kind of afterlife trip.
“Wait. You, an archangel, want my help? For what?”
Castiel lets his elbows move forward on the counter, looking exactly like he belongs in a bar. Which, if you ask Ash, is goddamn fucking weird for an archangel.
“You see, since I am in charge now, and since I learned a lot while I was… stationed on Earth, I decided that it’s time for some change. A… huge change. There is a reason why we’ve ended up completely failing our Father’s wishes, and I believe that part of it is also because of the way we’ve been handling things here until now.”
“And… er, does everyone agree with you?”
Castiel’s little smile becomes downright devilish. “I will deal with it if they don’t. So, coming to what exactly I would like your help for… I have been told that you have come up with some device to… let’s say, make corners of Heaven communicate. Am I right?”
Ash could deny that, but hey, the… management doesn’t seem that dangerous. Not in his regards, anyway. And if Dean and Sam were the ones telling Castiel about his little project, which he suspects, then lying would be just pointless.
“Yeah. It took some time to learn Enochian and some physics knowledge, but…”
“Very well. I want you to… do it on a bigger scale. I think it’s the right expression, isn’t it?”
Ash is currently wondering if he heard fucking right.
“Wait. Wait. Fucking wait a second. You want me to… just, make a whole big Heaven out of all the separate corners? Am I getting it right?”
Castiel nods and looks down at the counter, tracing over wood with a finger, before looking back up at him again.
“I don’t believe that separating people from each other and force them to just relive happy memories is the right thing to do. It has worked until now, but for us, because it was easier to… keep track of things. But after what happened last time… I came to believe it’s unfair. To all of you here. And to us, too. And if we just changed that, maybe we could start fixing everything else that doesn’t work.”
Castiel pauses, then looks back up at Ash, blue eyes determined and that small smile still on his lips.
“I could do it myself, but it would take me a lot of time and knowing that you already have a system to obtain the same result which just needs to be enhanced… you will realize why I decided I would ask you before searching for other options.”
“So… you, archangel of the motherfucking Lord, are asking me for help?”
“You seem stuck on this notion that you’re way beneath me. I would just like to state that if I learned something, while on Earth and while I was falling and when I was stripped of my Grace, was that I’m not higher than most humans. And if we ended up having to… clean up our own mess, as Dean would have put it, it’s also because we were arrogant. And it’s not a mistake I intend to repeat. So, will you help me or not?”
Ash, before answering, can’t help thinking that this would be exactly the angel that would get along with Dean. Jesus Christ almighty.
“Dude, of course I’ll help you. My nickname is Dr. Badass for a motherfucking reason. And that said, I’ll get a drink to toast to the new Heaven order, and then you can… er, help me enhance?”
“That sounds like an excellent plan. But… I would appreciate a drink, too.”
The motherfucking archangel of the Lord looks serious about this.
“Since when angels drink?”
Castiel full-on smirks. “There are perks with humanity. I am of the opinion that alcohol is one of them, unless… you exaggerate.”
He talks like he has a lot of experience with that, but Ash shakes his head, decides not to inquire and hands Castiel a beer before pouring one for himself.
“Then, if that’s how things are… I think this might be the beginning of a fucking great friendship,” he says as they clink their glasses together, and then Castiel takes a sip and looks at him like he’s… perplexed.
“This beer is excellent,” he says, “but… what you said before… that was some kind of reference, wasn’t it?”
“Er, yes?” Ash asks, blinking.
“Oh.” Castiel looks mildly disappointed in himself. “Then I don’t think I understood it.”
And then he takes a way larger drink from the glass.
Ash thinks that if this is the new boss, things can’t possibly get worse. Then he wonders if he can illegally download Casablanca from here. He’ll have to try.
--
Anyway, before he can think about being a net pirate again, they need to fix things in Heaven, or sort of, and so he shows Castiel how the whole thing works. Which, really, isn’t that hard.
Castiel is also the first person Ash has met who doesn’t need string theory explained in bullet points, which is awesome because they don’t have time to waste with explanations.
“This is indeed an achievement,” Castiel says when Ash is done explaining how the whole rigging-angels-from-a-computer thing works, and Ash wonders when the fuck his afterlife became so weird.
“And what would you need in order to… connect everything?” Castiel asks, and Ash shrugs.
“Well, that’s a laptop, and not that powerful. Well, it is made to work on a laptop, but if you need me to connect all of Heaven, then… I need something more than that.”
“What, exactly?” Castiel asks, totally serious, and Ash just writes everything down on a piece of paper he takes from the top of the counter. Castiel just reads the sheet, nods and snaps his fingers.
Nothing happens.
“Er, what…”
“I suggest taking a look in your storage room,” Castiel says calmly, and Ash does, and fuck it. His storage room has just become the dream of any serious hacker to ever exist. It looks like one of those systems you see in action movies, and Ash thinks that he might get close to drooling when he realizes how powerful the new processor is, not to mention when he notices the five screens at his disposition. Then Castiel is right next to him.
“Does that suit your needs?”
“Fuck, yes. Just gimme an hour to transfer the whole system from the laptop into this beauty and you’ll see exactly what I can do.”
“I have faith in your abilities,” Castiel answers, his hand going towards the tie and crooking it even more than it is, and Ash decides that it’s time to have some fun.
--
Exactly sixty minutes later, Ash is done fixing everything and Castiel just stands behind and watches without making a sound.
“Well, well, I think I’m pretty much done. Man, you want the honor?”
“I beg your pardon?” Castiel asks as he moves closer, and Ash just looks down at the keyboard.
“If my math is correct, it’s all ready. Just press this key here and we’re set. But since it was your idea and all I figured you’d want to do it. Also, you’re the motherfucking boss, aren’t you?”
Castiel just smiles his little, pleased smile and then leans down. “Then I am very pleased to have the honor,” he says, and then he presses the enter key.
Suddenly, everything around them goes white for ten seconds.
--
Ash blinks when it goes away, and then looks up at Castiel.
“Man, did that work? I, uh, that was…”
“Kind of overwhelming, wasn’t it?” Castiel asks, like he knows it all already. “But yes, I think it did work.” Then he smiles again, looking pleased, after a brief pause. “Actually, I think you might find the proof in the bar.”
“The fuck?” Ash asks, and then he moves away from the storage room and when he opens the door he freezes on the spot.
“What the… Ellen? Jo?” He almost screams when he sees the both of them just walking through the door. Ellen is exactly as he remembered her and Jo… no, Jo is most definitely older and more curvy and with shorter hair and just gorgeous and it hurts to think that if she’s here then she’s dead. But before he can elaborate further, they look at him and the next thing he knows is Jo hugging the goddamn afterlife out of him.
And that he’s hugging her back for all it’s worth, but that’s not the point.
Then Ellen is right there next to them and she’s smiling at him knowingly, and Ash doesn’t even know what the fuck he should say.
“Well,” he blurts out, “now that was some fucking long time no see, huh?”
“You could say that,” Ellen answers, her eyes lightening up.
“This most definitely confirms my ideas,” comes from the storage room’s entrance.
Oops. Ash had totally forgotten that Castiel was still there, except that…
What the fuck?, he thinks when instead of freaking out Ellen just goes towards him and…
Fucking hugs the archangel.
Also the archangel fucking hugs her back, even if it’s kind of awkward on his part. Then he relaxes and starts getting the hang of it.
“I heard you had gone a long way,” Ellen says then, “but I didn’t want to believe you really arrived here.”
Castiel just shakes his head and puts a hand on her shoulder as soon as she releases him.
“It paid off. Even though… I am sorry about Carthage, truly. I walked into a trap and…”
“Oh, shut up, with the life we lead it’s not like we weren’t expecting it. Fuck off. Hey, Jo, you wanna have a piece, too?”
Then Jo decides she does, and she practically tackle-hugs the archangel to death. Ash settles for just embracing Ellen instead, but when they part he has to ask the question.
“How the hell do you know him?”
“How do you think I do?”
“Dean and Sam?”
“Yep. We followed ‘em to kill the devil, and he spent the ride playing I spy with us in the car. Also, he totally has to thank me if he knows how to distinguish good alcohol from bad alcohol.”
Ash doesn’t know if he wants to know how and when that happened, and so he just settles on pouring some fucking good whiskey for everyone in the room before Castiel vanishes to check how things are going after his little coup d’état.
Ellen and Jo ask if they can stay and Ash punches the both of them in the sides for even asking.
--
So they spend the next… week or so catching up, before the door opens and a guy in a trench coat walks in.
The guy also looks like Castiel, his motherfucking twin, but Ash isn’t mistaken for more than a second. It’s most definitely a soul, not an angel, and he looks too miserable to be Castiel. The only two times he showed up since Ellen and Jo arrived, he looked positively glowing, so… yeah. Not Castiel.
Ash is cleaning glasses with Jo while Ellen sits at the table when the man walks into the bar and reaches the counter. But Ash leaves the glasses with Jo in favor of sitting in front of his new guest.
“Dude, you don’t look like you’re in Heaven. If you forgive the pun.”
He lets out a bitter laugh and shakes his head. “No. Well, it’s just… I kinda hated my Heaven. It was… all memories of my wife and my kid, but I knew they weren’t real. And my kid was never older than the last time I saw her. I thought I’d go insane in there. Then it was gone. And it was great, but… well, apparently they’re still alive. And I couldn’t find anyone else. And I heard you knew Sam and Dean Winchester, so…”
“Wait, and how do you know them?”
“Because I was the boss’s vessel,” the guy says, his voice cracking, and he sounds close to crying. “Jimmy Novak, by the way.”
“Dude, how does he not know that you’re here?”
“He couldn’t. He didn’t even know what his superiors were planning when he asked me to say yes. And considering that I’ve been here since he got us exploded in a prophet’s kitchen, he might have figured I was at peace. Listen, can I… can I have a drink? Really. I need one. A strong one.”
Ash nods at Jo who fills a glass with some bourbon which Ash knows is damn good, and she hands it over.
“Thanks,” Jimmy says after downing half of it in one go. “At least this whole thing isn’t as fake as it was before.”
“Listen, do you want to wait for… your… er, angel, to show up? He kind of does, from time to time. This whole thing was his idea. Quitting with separate Heavens, I mean.”
An imperceptible smile forms on Jimmy’s lips as he nurses the rest of his drink. “Figures that it’d be his. I… I don’t even know. It’d be… sort of not exactly a nice meeting, I fear.”
“And what the fuck is this?” a fifth person asks, appearing in the room from fucking nowhere.
Since Castiel walked into his bar, Ash’s life definitely became more interesting, Ash thinks as he moves towards the new arrival, who is sitting at a table and looking very surprised of being there.
Also, just as he knew that Castiel was an archangel when he walked into his bar, he knows that this one is, too. He’s shorter than Castiel is, though, with brown hair, brown eyes, a totally shocked face and wearing just jeans and a plaid shirt. Ash wonders what would happen if everyone down on Earth who pictures archangels with armors and flaming swords knew how they really look.
“Well, I don’t have a motherfucking idea. My name’s Ash, this is Heaven and this is my bar, sort of. And you?”
“Nice to fucking meet you, my name is Gabriel and I was dead until exactly thirty seconds ago. And since when an angel dies it’s just nothing, you don’t know how happy I am that whoever brought me back saw fit to find me a bar. Can I have some Baileys?”
Jo looks pretty much shocked, but she complies and Gabriel (seriously, the archangel Gabriel swears and is in his bar? Ash’s afterlife is motherfucking weird, indeed) moves to the counter. But before he can take his glass, he notices Jimmy, who hasn’t moved an inch.
“What the… hey. You’re not Cas. You’re the poor bastard he decided to possess, right?” he asks, and Jimmy downs the rest of his whiskey.
“Thanks for reminding me of that,” he mutters, and then Gabriel slaps a hand to his forehead and looks up.
“This is a fucking test, isn’t it?” he shouts before shaking his head and looking at Jimmy again. Poor guy looks fucking confused, and who can blame him for that?
“What the hell do you mean?” Ash asks, and Gabriel shrugs.
“It’s called goddamn deduction. I was dead, now I’m alive, considering that there’s just one being in the world that can bring something like me back to life I assume that it’s our missing Father, and that He’s doing it for some reason of His which of course He won’t share. But casually I show up just where the soul of my brother’s vessel ends up. Ain’t that just a coincidence?”
“And what was this test you were talking about?” Ellen asks suspiciously, and Ash wants to thank her for asking that.
Gabriel rolls his eyes. “I think I know. Hey, kid?” he asks, looking at Jimmy.
“Yes?”
“Cas will probably end up talking to you soon. To say sorry and shit. Your choice if you accept it or no. And have a good fucking life,” he says, and then he touches Jimmy’s forehead and he’s gone.
“Where did you send him?” Ellen almost shouts, and Gabriel rolls his eyes again.
“To his goddamn wife and kid, or back to life, or whatever. And now can I have my Baileys?”
Jo hands the glass to him and Gabriel downs it in one motherfucking go, and then the door opens and Castiel gets in.
“Gabriel?” he almost shouts, and Gabriel hands over the glass for a refill before turning back to Castiel and waving like they just saw each other last week.
“Hi there, little brother. I see that you got an upgrade while I was in the void, huh?”
If you told Ash that one day, in his afterlife, he’d have seen two archangels hugging in his bar, he’d have told you that you were completely, utterly, absolutely motherfucking insane.
Well, he’ll have to take that back.
--
So, it takes about two months in Heaven time before everything is settled; and while people just wander from Heaven to Heaven, the last complainers (for instance: Raphael) finally shut up, according to Cas.
Meanwhile, Gabriel is practically living in Ash’s bar (man, why the hell should I even leave? I’d come back for drinks anyway and I’m not dying to see Raphael at the moment), Castiel hangs out here a lot of time and by now everyone calls him Cas. Thanks to Ellen and Jo starting it, but whatever.
Point is, when things finally settle down, Castiel becomes fucking depressed or something, if the way he nurses his drinks for hours before actually drinking them says something.
Also, if Gabriel tells him that he has to fucking lighten up, well, it means that something is really wrong. And one can’t just let that go.
“Man,” Ash asks one day, “what the hell’s wrong with you? Is the management life eating your soul? Fuck, since you took over Heaven is a much better place and you know that.”
“Amen to that!” this guy named Hendricksen who showed up here this morning claiming to have known the Winchesters, too, shouts from his table where he’s sitting with Pamela. She has decided to pay a visit because after all the time she has spent at concerts made her ache for one day sitting somewhere.
“I failed them,” Cas says. And then doesn’t add anything else. Ellen rolls her eyes while Jo brings beers over to the other two.
“That isn’t much of an explanation, Cas. You failed who?”
“Sam and Dean, clearly,” Gabriel snorts as he leans back on the counter. “Or am I wrong?”
Cas stares at him like he’d like to kill him just by doing that.
“And how exactly would you have failed them?” Ash asks, not exactly getting it. From what he knows, Castiel couldn’t really have helped anything that had happened.
“Sam is in Hell. Still. And he doesn’t deserve it, but I cannot do anything about it. At least not until they stop fighting each other to decide who’s going to take Lucifer’s place,” he adds, sounding downright cynical, and Ash can get that. They’ve been hearing stories about how much things in Hell are a mess because they don’t have anyone ruling over there anymore, but he tries not to dwell on that.
“And Dean… Dean is unhappy. I know he is. And every time he thinks about me it’s with contempt,” Cas says, his voice low, sounding deeply, deeply disturbed by the fact. Ash raises an eyebrow.
“Wasn’t he with this girl he…”
“He’s unhappy,” Cas states, interrupting him. “I have been watching over him when I had time. And he thinks he can’t fit. Also, he misses Sam too much to let himself have a nice life.”
“And what, anytime he thinks about you it’s because he resents you? Why the hell would he?” Jo asks, sitting next to him and putting a hand on Cas’s wrist.
Gabriel shakes his head and says that this whole sharing and caring thing is too girly and he needs another drink. Ellen gives him some Baileys and doesn’t comment.
“Er,” Ash adds, suddenly having an epiphany. He wants to think he knows Dean enough to guess a bit, here. “Just, how exactly did you two part?”
Cas tells him and suddenly the entire bar falls silent.
Cas blinks and glances around at everyone.
There isn’t one person in the entire place not staring at him like they just can’t fucking believe that, and Ash is pretty sure he’s in the group, too.
“Oh, Christ, bro,” Gabriel says, breaking the silence, “alright, you haven’t been on Earth much, in comparison to me anyway, but didn’t you ever learn a bit of fucking manners?”
“… manners?”
“Dude,” Ash interrupts, “he means that… well, leaving like you did… that isn’t exactly what we’d call etiquette.”
“But… it was not…” Cas still looks utterly baffled. “If not on Earth, we’d have seen each other in Heaven. I don’t see why…”
Jo is full-on laughing by this point, and Ellen most definitely chuckling, and Ash figures that he has to do the pep talk.
Dr. Badass: joint owner, Enochian expert, computer genius; and he gives archangels pep-talks, too. He’s so putting that on his business card, next time he decides he wants one.
“Dude. It’s common courtesy, between humans, to just tell someone where you’re going especially if you won’t see them for a long time. Disappearing out of the blue it’s kind of rude. Not to mention… man. Seriously. Dean? We’re talking about Dean! Or, an epitome for fucking abandonment issues. He probably thinks you left because you were done with him and he wasn’t useful to you anymore and now that it was over you’d just get back here and forget about him.”
“What he said,” Gabriel echoes, and Jo stops laughing at that.
“Pretty much it in a nutshell,” Ellen says.
“I’d be inclined to agree,” Hendricksen chimes in, coming closer to the counter, along with Pamela.
Suddenly, Cas’s face literally crumples down as soon as he realizes that he had it completely, honestly wrong.
“… I’m… oh, I’m…”
“… a motherfucking idiot,” Gabriel ends the sentence for him. And then he claps him on the shoulder so hard that Cas totally starts coughing.
“What…”
“Oh, just stop with this whole act. It’s nothing you can’t fucking fix. But anyway, since you do have a point about the poor younger Winchester, I think I’ll go taking care of it. I owe him one, anyway.”
“What… what are you doing?” Ellen asks, blinking, and Gabriel just shrugs.
“Hey, he is the boss. I’m not. And if he can’t fucking barge in Hell without permit because he has a position and stuff, well, who says that I can’t? Sayonara, everyone! When I’m back, I want something good waiting for me.”
And then he’s gone, just like that.
--
“Okay,” Jo says, “let’s just ignore that for the moment. Now. Do you have someone that can look after things for you?”
Cas blinks and nods. “Yes. I think I do.”
“Good,” Ash chimes in. “Then you tell them to start working, then you get back on Earth and get Dean alone and you tell him that. I’m pretty sure that he won’t think about you with… contempt if you’re quick. Also because, you know, when you got friends, you actually talk to ‘em once in a while. You know. Give them a call. Drop by. Send them a goddamn text.”
“Oh.” Cas looks so not threatening that Ash almost forgets that he’s a goddamn bamf archangel of the Lord, not to mention the management, for one second.
“Hey, ain’t your fault if you didn’t learn manners, considering who you got for an example,” Ellen encourages him, patting him on the back lightly. “Just get down on Earth and don’t do the disappearing act on him again, okay?”
Cas thanks them and then disappears.
“Well, now let’s just hope he learned the lesson,” Jo says. “I just wish I could see it happening.”
Ash, at that, just leans close to her, and he thinks that he’s looking outright smooth.
“Honey, what do you think I’m a genius for?” he says, and then leads everyone into the storage room.
Where, on one of the five monitors that Cas installed that first day… you can totally see the porch of Lisa Braeden’s house where Dean is sitting, nursing a beer and looking utterly devastated.
“What the fuck is this?” Pamela gasps, and Ash just smiles.
“I cracked angel radio using Enochian and made all of Heaven connect basing it on string theory, and you think I can’t come up with a system that allows me to look down on Earth?”
“Ash, you’re fucking badass,” Jo says slapping his shoulder, and he rolls his eyes.
“Not any news, people. And now let’s just see. I’m sure this will be lots of fucking fun.”
--
On cue, Castiel appears just in front of Dean exactly a second later.
Dean lets the beer bottle fall from on the ground and it breaks, the amber liquid spreading on grass, and he blinks once. Then twice. Then he stands up and before Castiel can even talk, he punches him. Hard.
“Well, he deserved that,” Jo mutters, and Ellen elbows her and hisses to shut up.
“Why the fuck are you showing up now? And fuck, I should’ve remembered not to punch you,” Dean shouts, and his fingers are shaking and curled into fists. Not to mention that he’s clutching his hand to his chest. Yeah. Maybe considering that Cas didn’t even move, punching him wasn’t that great of an idea.
“I am… I am sorry,” Castiel says, his voice impossibly low. “I realized I made a huge mistake.”
“Oh, really. And what exactly?”
“I… when I left, I just… I assumed that if we didn’t meet again during your life, we would after your death. I hadn’t even thought you might perceive it as a definitive goodbye. The thought didn’t even cross my mind. I realized that just lately and I had not realized you might have taken it the wrong way.”
Dean now looks completely baffled. And still utterly pissed, which Ash can’t really fault him for. Especially because of how Cas is phrasing it.
He seriously has no clue about fucking human customs.
“You hadn’t thought that I might take it the wrong way? What the fuck, Cas? I thought you had bailed for good!” Dean shouts in Cas’s face, zero personal space between them, looking like he’s just seconds from a nervous breakdown. “Sam is in Hell, you just poof away without even a fucking see you soon, I stay here just because I don’t have any fucking where to go and even Lisa understood that after the second week, and you tell me I took you the wrong way?”
“Next time he’s up here, we need to sit him down and explain him what it means not to be blunt,” Jo mutters. Ash is inclined to agree.
Meanwhile, Castiel just shakes his head and his hands reach up, gripping Dean’s shoulders, and Dean suddenly stands still, even if his hands are still shaking.
“I didn’t mean that,” Cas mutters, obviously feeling frustrated. “Your… words fail me. I didn’t want it to sound like it was your fault. It was mine.”
“And now what, you have free time from being the fucking sheriff and you’re paying a visit, and then you’ll just fly away again and who even fucking knows?”
“This is ridiculous,” Hendricksen says, bringing a hand to his forehead.
“Seriously,” Ellen agrees, “why are they so impaired? Can’t they just fucking hug?”
“Now that’d be a sight,” Pamela says then, smirking, and then Ash smirks back.
“Ash…?” Jo asks, “What…”
“Why do you think I ever made the effort to learn Enochian?” Ash asks before turning towards another computer screen.
Then he starts typing.
“The fuck are you doing?” Ellen asks.
“Oh, I’m just hacking angel radio.”
“Are you seriously telling Cas to…” Jo starts, but then Ash presses the enter key and leans back in his chair.
A second later, Cas’s eyes widen. Just slightly.
“The fuck, Cas, don’t space out, I’m talking to you here, if…” Dean starts, and then Cas moves forward and hugs him.
Seriously hugs him. Like, the crushing-the-other-person-to-your-chest kind of hug. His right hand buries itself in Dean’s hair and brings his head down to rest in the crook of Cas’s neck and the other closes around Dean’s waist.
After a second of freezing, Dean’s body just relaxes on cue. His hands reach Cas’s shoulders and then it’s just very, very hard to distinguish them: they’re melting against each other, and it’s pretty much literal, and from the way Dean’s shoulders shake in relief… that was exactly what they needed.
“What did you exactly tell him?” Hendricksen says then, looking at Ash with just mere curiosity.
“The Enochian for hug him, for fuck’s sake.”
Jo actually high-fives him, and then they all turn back to the screen because they did part, just slightly, and they’re totally staring at each other.
“Christ, Cas, I…” Dean starts, but Cas just shakes his head.
“It’s fine. And I am sorry. I should have told you.”
“Now what, you’re going to fly off again?”
“I would be glad to visit more often, if you wished me to,” Cas whispers, barely audible.
Dean swallows and oh, seriously, his eyes fucking light up. Ash thinks that for hating chick-flicks that much, Dean is having a lot of moments today.
“Of course, you goddamn… ah, let that go. Yeah, sure. That’d be nice. If you don’t have something more important to attend to, ‘course.”
“No, I… why would you think that you are not important to me?”
“Can’t they just fucking kiss?” Pamela says, sounding pretty much exasperated. “I mean, look at them. That just looks like some goddamn rom-com gone bad.”
Hendricksen just stares at the screen, but then he nods back. “For some reason that doesn’t sound too crazy. Considering who we’re talking about.”
“Okay, fine, fine,” Ash says, and then turns to the other computer, again.
He types a short sentence, then presses enter again.
“What did you hack angel radio with, now?” Ellen asks.
“Kiss him, stupid.”
Jo rolls her eyes. “You do realize that movie references are totally lost on him, right?”
“Yeah, well, it’s still fun.”
“Hey, shut up. Maybe we’re getting some action here,” Pamela says, and…
Yeah. Cas spaces out for a second and then he blinks, moves forward and kisses Dean.
For real. With tongue.
And Dean totally kisses back. Like he was just waiting for that.
“Now, that’s delicious. I wonder if they'd accept a third person,” Pamela mutters at that, and Hendricksen just looks at her with a very skeptical face.
“Didn’t he blind you? Castiel, I mean.”
“That was a long time ago and a lot of water under the bridge, sport. And hey, that’s hot.”
Hendricksen doesn’t look that convinced, and then they clearly hear rustling from the screen. Yeah, Ash’s speakers are awesome, too.
“But look at that! Now that’s called a heartfelt reunion.”
“Jesus, couldn’t we have waited until, like, they were done?”
“… Sam?” Dean whispers, and then he turns towards the porch where Gabriel appeared with Sam in tow (and Sam is with a ripped shirt and a sort-of-matching-to-Dean’s handprint showing on a shoulder), and Sam looks halfway between mortified, embarrassed and the happiest person alive, and then it’s kind of a hug fest or something.
Except that Gabriel is suddenly behind them in the room, looking pretty much smug and pleased with himself.
“So, boss, have I earned my Baileys? With some cake, possibly.”
Ash just shakes his head and stands up from the seat, leaving everyone else to watch the rest and heading towards the counter.
“Yeah, I think you earned that for life.”
--
So, Cas spends half of the time up here. Then half down there. Dean and Sam go to Bobby’s, regroup for a while and then start hunting again.
When Cas is up here, he’s at the bar all the time and he actually directs things from the place. He says it’s too comfortable and the company is better. And then a bunch of people who knew Dean and Sam show up, Ellen’s husband shows up, too, and there’s always company around.
The only thing Ash is curious about, is who the fuck keeps things under control when Cas isn’t around.
Then one day, when Cas is on Earth, John Winchester walks into the bar.
“Well, now this is a nice place,” he says, and everyone gapes, more or less.
“John?” Bill and Ellen say at the same time, and John just cocks his head, smiles and goes towards the both of them.
“The one and only. Bill, sorry again about…”
“Hey, that’s said and done. And it wasn’t your fault,” Bill answers, and then Ash has to ask.
“Why are you showing up here so late? In comparison to everyone else I mean.”
“Well, because your angel friend found me out a while after you fixed things and asked me if I could keep an eye over the whole… hey, why are you all looking at me like that?”
“You are Heaven’s vice-sheriff while the boss is downstairs making out with your son?” Gabriel spits out before starting to laugh like there’s no tomorrow.
“Yeah, I’m… what did you say he’s doing with my son?”
By then Ash has utterly lost it.
When he’s done crying from laughter, he sees Ellen with an arm around John’s shoulders, probably trying to explain the whole shebang.
Ash goes to the storage room and hooks his computer to angel radio again.
Cas, didn’t you see fit to actually tell John Winchester that you and Dean are an item?
The answers he gets is sort of sheepish and he opts out of checking what’s happening on the monitor. He’d rather not know.
Then he just shakes his head, moves to the fourth screen and decides that it’s high time to see if he can download movies illegally from here, too. If Dean is too busy screwing Cas senseless to worry about him not getting a reference when he hears one, Ash is more than happy to do it, instead.
He’s sure they’re going to have a lot of fun in a short while, anyway. In a short while, meaning when Cas shows up again and finds John in the bar, but that won’t happen just now.
Well, Ash thinks as he searches for at least Casablanca and Kiss me, stupid, his afterlife is most definitely not annoying, and most definitely a badass one. And he gets to give archangels pep talks and pop culture lessons. He really doesn’t have anything to complain about.
End.
Characters/Pairings: Castiel, Ash, Jo, Ellen, Gabriel + others; Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG13
Word count: 6177
Warnings/Spoilers: slightly crack-ish, but I think it's the only warning I can give. Spoilers up until 5x22, and especially for 5x16, 5x10 and said 5x22. It goes slightly AU from the ending though.
Summary: the one where when the new boss in Heaven walks inside Ash's bar with plans. Reunions happen, matchmaking happens, hacking angel radio happens and it's generally an awesome afterlife, all things considered.
A/N: written for polyonymous for castielfest; there will be another one coming as soon as I have it beta-ed, but for now have this. ;) The prompt was: Castiel takes to loitering at Heaven's Roadhouse with Ellen, Jo, Ash, and company. Bonus points for Gabriel. This is slightly crack-ish. But I had fun with it. I hope it fits the bill! :D Thanks to pnr for looking it over before I posted it.
Ash hasn’t even had time to process the news that apparently there just was some huge change in Heaven’s management, when that management walks into his bar.
Or, well, Ash wouldn’t peg the guy with dark hair, blue eyes and the Humphrey Bogart trench coat for management just by looking at him, but Ash has been here long enough and he isn’t an idiot. He can recognize an archangel when one is standing right in front of him, and he won’t be the one to point out that crooked ties aren’t exactly what people would consider proper archangel attire.
Anyway. The management, or the archangel, is at his counter just a blink after he appears on his doorstep, and Ash figures that if he’s here to just smite the fuck out of him because the whole thing with Enochian and string theory was kind of forbidden… well, he’ll see to it and he’ll at least be obliterated with dignity. So he looks straight in the archangel’s eyes, and almost gasps when he realizes that the archangel/management is looking at him like he’s actually impressed.
“Are you Mr. Badass?” the archangel asks deadpan, his voice low and deep and totally serious, and Ash almost starts laughing in his face.
Almost.
He’s still in front of an archangel, as socially impaired as the latter seems to be.
“Dude, excuse me?” Ash blurts back, but the archangel doesn’t even blink.
“I was assured your name was Dr. Badass. Isn’t that correct?”
Well. That’s called being literal. Ash fights the urge to roll his eyes and just shakes his head.
“Yeah, but… that’s a nickname, man. Ash will do, really. And… er, what can I do for you?”
“My name is Castiel, and as you probably know by now…”
“Wait. Wait. Aren’t you the one who was with Dean and Sam? The one they told me about when they were here? You are the new boss?”
Castiel’s lips curl up in a hint of a smile and then he nods. “Dean put it in a more… colorful way, but yes. I am the new boss. And I’m seeking your help.”
For a second, Ash wonders if he isn’t having some kind of afterlife trip.
“Wait. You, an archangel, want my help? For what?”
Castiel lets his elbows move forward on the counter, looking exactly like he belongs in a bar. Which, if you ask Ash, is goddamn fucking weird for an archangel.
“You see, since I am in charge now, and since I learned a lot while I was… stationed on Earth, I decided that it’s time for some change. A… huge change. There is a reason why we’ve ended up completely failing our Father’s wishes, and I believe that part of it is also because of the way we’ve been handling things here until now.”
“And… er, does everyone agree with you?”
Castiel’s little smile becomes downright devilish. “I will deal with it if they don’t. So, coming to what exactly I would like your help for… I have been told that you have come up with some device to… let’s say, make corners of Heaven communicate. Am I right?”
Ash could deny that, but hey, the… management doesn’t seem that dangerous. Not in his regards, anyway. And if Dean and Sam were the ones telling Castiel about his little project, which he suspects, then lying would be just pointless.
“Yeah. It took some time to learn Enochian and some physics knowledge, but…”
“Very well. I want you to… do it on a bigger scale. I think it’s the right expression, isn’t it?”
Ash is currently wondering if he heard fucking right.
“Wait. Wait. Fucking wait a second. You want me to… just, make a whole big Heaven out of all the separate corners? Am I getting it right?”
Castiel nods and looks down at the counter, tracing over wood with a finger, before looking back up at him again.
“I don’t believe that separating people from each other and force them to just relive happy memories is the right thing to do. It has worked until now, but for us, because it was easier to… keep track of things. But after what happened last time… I came to believe it’s unfair. To all of you here. And to us, too. And if we just changed that, maybe we could start fixing everything else that doesn’t work.”
Castiel pauses, then looks back up at Ash, blue eyes determined and that small smile still on his lips.
“I could do it myself, but it would take me a lot of time and knowing that you already have a system to obtain the same result which just needs to be enhanced… you will realize why I decided I would ask you before searching for other options.”
“So… you, archangel of the motherfucking Lord, are asking me for help?”
“You seem stuck on this notion that you’re way beneath me. I would just like to state that if I learned something, while on Earth and while I was falling and when I was stripped of my Grace, was that I’m not higher than most humans. And if we ended up having to… clean up our own mess, as Dean would have put it, it’s also because we were arrogant. And it’s not a mistake I intend to repeat. So, will you help me or not?”
Ash, before answering, can’t help thinking that this would be exactly the angel that would get along with Dean. Jesus Christ almighty.
“Dude, of course I’ll help you. My nickname is Dr. Badass for a motherfucking reason. And that said, I’ll get a drink to toast to the new Heaven order, and then you can… er, help me enhance?”
“That sounds like an excellent plan. But… I would appreciate a drink, too.”
The motherfucking archangel of the Lord looks serious about this.
“Since when angels drink?”
Castiel full-on smirks. “There are perks with humanity. I am of the opinion that alcohol is one of them, unless… you exaggerate.”
He talks like he has a lot of experience with that, but Ash shakes his head, decides not to inquire and hands Castiel a beer before pouring one for himself.
“Then, if that’s how things are… I think this might be the beginning of a fucking great friendship,” he says as they clink their glasses together, and then Castiel takes a sip and looks at him like he’s… perplexed.
“This beer is excellent,” he says, “but… what you said before… that was some kind of reference, wasn’t it?”
“Er, yes?” Ash asks, blinking.
“Oh.” Castiel looks mildly disappointed in himself. “Then I don’t think I understood it.”
And then he takes a way larger drink from the glass.
Ash thinks that if this is the new boss, things can’t possibly get worse. Then he wonders if he can illegally download Casablanca from here. He’ll have to try.
--
Anyway, before he can think about being a net pirate again, they need to fix things in Heaven, or sort of, and so he shows Castiel how the whole thing works. Which, really, isn’t that hard.
Castiel is also the first person Ash has met who doesn’t need string theory explained in bullet points, which is awesome because they don’t have time to waste with explanations.
“This is indeed an achievement,” Castiel says when Ash is done explaining how the whole rigging-angels-from-a-computer thing works, and Ash wonders when the fuck his afterlife became so weird.
“And what would you need in order to… connect everything?” Castiel asks, and Ash shrugs.
“Well, that’s a laptop, and not that powerful. Well, it is made to work on a laptop, but if you need me to connect all of Heaven, then… I need something more than that.”
“What, exactly?” Castiel asks, totally serious, and Ash just writes everything down on a piece of paper he takes from the top of the counter. Castiel just reads the sheet, nods and snaps his fingers.
Nothing happens.
“Er, what…”
“I suggest taking a look in your storage room,” Castiel says calmly, and Ash does, and fuck it. His storage room has just become the dream of any serious hacker to ever exist. It looks like one of those systems you see in action movies, and Ash thinks that he might get close to drooling when he realizes how powerful the new processor is, not to mention when he notices the five screens at his disposition. Then Castiel is right next to him.
“Does that suit your needs?”
“Fuck, yes. Just gimme an hour to transfer the whole system from the laptop into this beauty and you’ll see exactly what I can do.”
“I have faith in your abilities,” Castiel answers, his hand going towards the tie and crooking it even more than it is, and Ash decides that it’s time to have some fun.
--
Exactly sixty minutes later, Ash is done fixing everything and Castiel just stands behind and watches without making a sound.
“Well, well, I think I’m pretty much done. Man, you want the honor?”
“I beg your pardon?” Castiel asks as he moves closer, and Ash just looks down at the keyboard.
“If my math is correct, it’s all ready. Just press this key here and we’re set. But since it was your idea and all I figured you’d want to do it. Also, you’re the motherfucking boss, aren’t you?”
Castiel just smiles his little, pleased smile and then leans down. “Then I am very pleased to have the honor,” he says, and then he presses the enter key.
Suddenly, everything around them goes white for ten seconds.
--
Ash blinks when it goes away, and then looks up at Castiel.
“Man, did that work? I, uh, that was…”
“Kind of overwhelming, wasn’t it?” Castiel asks, like he knows it all already. “But yes, I think it did work.” Then he smiles again, looking pleased, after a brief pause. “Actually, I think you might find the proof in the bar.”
“The fuck?” Ash asks, and then he moves away from the storage room and when he opens the door he freezes on the spot.
“What the… Ellen? Jo?” He almost screams when he sees the both of them just walking through the door. Ellen is exactly as he remembered her and Jo… no, Jo is most definitely older and more curvy and with shorter hair and just gorgeous and it hurts to think that if she’s here then she’s dead. But before he can elaborate further, they look at him and the next thing he knows is Jo hugging the goddamn afterlife out of him.
And that he’s hugging her back for all it’s worth, but that’s not the point.
Then Ellen is right there next to them and she’s smiling at him knowingly, and Ash doesn’t even know what the fuck he should say.
“Well,” he blurts out, “now that was some fucking long time no see, huh?”
“You could say that,” Ellen answers, her eyes lightening up.
“This most definitely confirms my ideas,” comes from the storage room’s entrance.
Oops. Ash had totally forgotten that Castiel was still there, except that…
What the fuck?, he thinks when instead of freaking out Ellen just goes towards him and…
Fucking hugs the archangel.
Also the archangel fucking hugs her back, even if it’s kind of awkward on his part. Then he relaxes and starts getting the hang of it.
“I heard you had gone a long way,” Ellen says then, “but I didn’t want to believe you really arrived here.”
Castiel just shakes his head and puts a hand on her shoulder as soon as she releases him.
“It paid off. Even though… I am sorry about Carthage, truly. I walked into a trap and…”
“Oh, shut up, with the life we lead it’s not like we weren’t expecting it. Fuck off. Hey, Jo, you wanna have a piece, too?”
Then Jo decides she does, and she practically tackle-hugs the archangel to death. Ash settles for just embracing Ellen instead, but when they part he has to ask the question.
“How the hell do you know him?”
“How do you think I do?”
“Dean and Sam?”
“Yep. We followed ‘em to kill the devil, and he spent the ride playing I spy with us in the car. Also, he totally has to thank me if he knows how to distinguish good alcohol from bad alcohol.”
Ash doesn’t know if he wants to know how and when that happened, and so he just settles on pouring some fucking good whiskey for everyone in the room before Castiel vanishes to check how things are going after his little coup d’état.
Ellen and Jo ask if they can stay and Ash punches the both of them in the sides for even asking.
--
So they spend the next… week or so catching up, before the door opens and a guy in a trench coat walks in.
The guy also looks like Castiel, his motherfucking twin, but Ash isn’t mistaken for more than a second. It’s most definitely a soul, not an angel, and he looks too miserable to be Castiel. The only two times he showed up since Ellen and Jo arrived, he looked positively glowing, so… yeah. Not Castiel.
Ash is cleaning glasses with Jo while Ellen sits at the table when the man walks into the bar and reaches the counter. But Ash leaves the glasses with Jo in favor of sitting in front of his new guest.
“Dude, you don’t look like you’re in Heaven. If you forgive the pun.”
He lets out a bitter laugh and shakes his head. “No. Well, it’s just… I kinda hated my Heaven. It was… all memories of my wife and my kid, but I knew they weren’t real. And my kid was never older than the last time I saw her. I thought I’d go insane in there. Then it was gone. And it was great, but… well, apparently they’re still alive. And I couldn’t find anyone else. And I heard you knew Sam and Dean Winchester, so…”
“Wait, and how do you know them?”
“Because I was the boss’s vessel,” the guy says, his voice cracking, and he sounds close to crying. “Jimmy Novak, by the way.”
“Dude, how does he not know that you’re here?”
“He couldn’t. He didn’t even know what his superiors were planning when he asked me to say yes. And considering that I’ve been here since he got us exploded in a prophet’s kitchen, he might have figured I was at peace. Listen, can I… can I have a drink? Really. I need one. A strong one.”
Ash nods at Jo who fills a glass with some bourbon which Ash knows is damn good, and she hands it over.
“Thanks,” Jimmy says after downing half of it in one go. “At least this whole thing isn’t as fake as it was before.”
“Listen, do you want to wait for… your… er, angel, to show up? He kind of does, from time to time. This whole thing was his idea. Quitting with separate Heavens, I mean.”
An imperceptible smile forms on Jimmy’s lips as he nurses the rest of his drink. “Figures that it’d be his. I… I don’t even know. It’d be… sort of not exactly a nice meeting, I fear.”
“And what the fuck is this?” a fifth person asks, appearing in the room from fucking nowhere.
Since Castiel walked into his bar, Ash’s life definitely became more interesting, Ash thinks as he moves towards the new arrival, who is sitting at a table and looking very surprised of being there.
Also, just as he knew that Castiel was an archangel when he walked into his bar, he knows that this one is, too. He’s shorter than Castiel is, though, with brown hair, brown eyes, a totally shocked face and wearing just jeans and a plaid shirt. Ash wonders what would happen if everyone down on Earth who pictures archangels with armors and flaming swords knew how they really look.
“Well, I don’t have a motherfucking idea. My name’s Ash, this is Heaven and this is my bar, sort of. And you?”
“Nice to fucking meet you, my name is Gabriel and I was dead until exactly thirty seconds ago. And since when an angel dies it’s just nothing, you don’t know how happy I am that whoever brought me back saw fit to find me a bar. Can I have some Baileys?”
Jo looks pretty much shocked, but she complies and Gabriel (seriously, the archangel Gabriel swears and is in his bar? Ash’s afterlife is motherfucking weird, indeed) moves to the counter. But before he can take his glass, he notices Jimmy, who hasn’t moved an inch.
“What the… hey. You’re not Cas. You’re the poor bastard he decided to possess, right?” he asks, and Jimmy downs the rest of his whiskey.
“Thanks for reminding me of that,” he mutters, and then Gabriel slaps a hand to his forehead and looks up.
“This is a fucking test, isn’t it?” he shouts before shaking his head and looking at Jimmy again. Poor guy looks fucking confused, and who can blame him for that?
“What the hell do you mean?” Ash asks, and Gabriel shrugs.
“It’s called goddamn deduction. I was dead, now I’m alive, considering that there’s just one being in the world that can bring something like me back to life I assume that it’s our missing Father, and that He’s doing it for some reason of His which of course He won’t share. But casually I show up just where the soul of my brother’s vessel ends up. Ain’t that just a coincidence?”
“And what was this test you were talking about?” Ellen asks suspiciously, and Ash wants to thank her for asking that.
Gabriel rolls his eyes. “I think I know. Hey, kid?” he asks, looking at Jimmy.
“Yes?”
“Cas will probably end up talking to you soon. To say sorry and shit. Your choice if you accept it or no. And have a good fucking life,” he says, and then he touches Jimmy’s forehead and he’s gone.
“Where did you send him?” Ellen almost shouts, and Gabriel rolls his eyes again.
“To his goddamn wife and kid, or back to life, or whatever. And now can I have my Baileys?”
Jo hands the glass to him and Gabriel downs it in one motherfucking go, and then the door opens and Castiel gets in.
“Gabriel?” he almost shouts, and Gabriel hands over the glass for a refill before turning back to Castiel and waving like they just saw each other last week.
“Hi there, little brother. I see that you got an upgrade while I was in the void, huh?”
If you told Ash that one day, in his afterlife, he’d have seen two archangels hugging in his bar, he’d have told you that you were completely, utterly, absolutely motherfucking insane.
Well, he’ll have to take that back.
--
So, it takes about two months in Heaven time before everything is settled; and while people just wander from Heaven to Heaven, the last complainers (for instance: Raphael) finally shut up, according to Cas.
Meanwhile, Gabriel is practically living in Ash’s bar (man, why the hell should I even leave? I’d come back for drinks anyway and I’m not dying to see Raphael at the moment), Castiel hangs out here a lot of time and by now everyone calls him Cas. Thanks to Ellen and Jo starting it, but whatever.
Point is, when things finally settle down, Castiel becomes fucking depressed or something, if the way he nurses his drinks for hours before actually drinking them says something.
Also, if Gabriel tells him that he has to fucking lighten up, well, it means that something is really wrong. And one can’t just let that go.
“Man,” Ash asks one day, “what the hell’s wrong with you? Is the management life eating your soul? Fuck, since you took over Heaven is a much better place and you know that.”
“Amen to that!” this guy named Hendricksen who showed up here this morning claiming to have known the Winchesters, too, shouts from his table where he’s sitting with Pamela. She has decided to pay a visit because after all the time she has spent at concerts made her ache for one day sitting somewhere.
“I failed them,” Cas says. And then doesn’t add anything else. Ellen rolls her eyes while Jo brings beers over to the other two.
“That isn’t much of an explanation, Cas. You failed who?”
“Sam and Dean, clearly,” Gabriel snorts as he leans back on the counter. “Or am I wrong?”
Cas stares at him like he’d like to kill him just by doing that.
“And how exactly would you have failed them?” Ash asks, not exactly getting it. From what he knows, Castiel couldn’t really have helped anything that had happened.
“Sam is in Hell. Still. And he doesn’t deserve it, but I cannot do anything about it. At least not until they stop fighting each other to decide who’s going to take Lucifer’s place,” he adds, sounding downright cynical, and Ash can get that. They’ve been hearing stories about how much things in Hell are a mess because they don’t have anyone ruling over there anymore, but he tries not to dwell on that.
“And Dean… Dean is unhappy. I know he is. And every time he thinks about me it’s with contempt,” Cas says, his voice low, sounding deeply, deeply disturbed by the fact. Ash raises an eyebrow.
“Wasn’t he with this girl he…”
“He’s unhappy,” Cas states, interrupting him. “I have been watching over him when I had time. And he thinks he can’t fit. Also, he misses Sam too much to let himself have a nice life.”
“And what, anytime he thinks about you it’s because he resents you? Why the hell would he?” Jo asks, sitting next to him and putting a hand on Cas’s wrist.
Gabriel shakes his head and says that this whole sharing and caring thing is too girly and he needs another drink. Ellen gives him some Baileys and doesn’t comment.
“Er,” Ash adds, suddenly having an epiphany. He wants to think he knows Dean enough to guess a bit, here. “Just, how exactly did you two part?”
Cas tells him and suddenly the entire bar falls silent.
Cas blinks and glances around at everyone.
There isn’t one person in the entire place not staring at him like they just can’t fucking believe that, and Ash is pretty sure he’s in the group, too.
“Oh, Christ, bro,” Gabriel says, breaking the silence, “alright, you haven’t been on Earth much, in comparison to me anyway, but didn’t you ever learn a bit of fucking manners?”
“… manners?”
“Dude,” Ash interrupts, “he means that… well, leaving like you did… that isn’t exactly what we’d call etiquette.”
“But… it was not…” Cas still looks utterly baffled. “If not on Earth, we’d have seen each other in Heaven. I don’t see why…”
Jo is full-on laughing by this point, and Ellen most definitely chuckling, and Ash figures that he has to do the pep talk.
Dr. Badass: joint owner, Enochian expert, computer genius; and he gives archangels pep-talks, too. He’s so putting that on his business card, next time he decides he wants one.
“Dude. It’s common courtesy, between humans, to just tell someone where you’re going especially if you won’t see them for a long time. Disappearing out of the blue it’s kind of rude. Not to mention… man. Seriously. Dean? We’re talking about Dean! Or, an epitome for fucking abandonment issues. He probably thinks you left because you were done with him and he wasn’t useful to you anymore and now that it was over you’d just get back here and forget about him.”
“What he said,” Gabriel echoes, and Jo stops laughing at that.
“Pretty much it in a nutshell,” Ellen says.
“I’d be inclined to agree,” Hendricksen chimes in, coming closer to the counter, along with Pamela.
Suddenly, Cas’s face literally crumples down as soon as he realizes that he had it completely, honestly wrong.
“… I’m… oh, I’m…”
“… a motherfucking idiot,” Gabriel ends the sentence for him. And then he claps him on the shoulder so hard that Cas totally starts coughing.
“What…”
“Oh, just stop with this whole act. It’s nothing you can’t fucking fix. But anyway, since you do have a point about the poor younger Winchester, I think I’ll go taking care of it. I owe him one, anyway.”
“What… what are you doing?” Ellen asks, blinking, and Gabriel just shrugs.
“Hey, he is the boss. I’m not. And if he can’t fucking barge in Hell without permit because he has a position and stuff, well, who says that I can’t? Sayonara, everyone! When I’m back, I want something good waiting for me.”
And then he’s gone, just like that.
--
“Okay,” Jo says, “let’s just ignore that for the moment. Now. Do you have someone that can look after things for you?”
Cas blinks and nods. “Yes. I think I do.”
“Good,” Ash chimes in. “Then you tell them to start working, then you get back on Earth and get Dean alone and you tell him that. I’m pretty sure that he won’t think about you with… contempt if you’re quick. Also because, you know, when you got friends, you actually talk to ‘em once in a while. You know. Give them a call. Drop by. Send them a goddamn text.”
“Oh.” Cas looks so not threatening that Ash almost forgets that he’s a goddamn bamf archangel of the Lord, not to mention the management, for one second.
“Hey, ain’t your fault if you didn’t learn manners, considering who you got for an example,” Ellen encourages him, patting him on the back lightly. “Just get down on Earth and don’t do the disappearing act on him again, okay?”
Cas thanks them and then disappears.
“Well, now let’s just hope he learned the lesson,” Jo says. “I just wish I could see it happening.”
Ash, at that, just leans close to her, and he thinks that he’s looking outright smooth.
“Honey, what do you think I’m a genius for?” he says, and then leads everyone into the storage room.
Where, on one of the five monitors that Cas installed that first day… you can totally see the porch of Lisa Braeden’s house where Dean is sitting, nursing a beer and looking utterly devastated.
“What the fuck is this?” Pamela gasps, and Ash just smiles.
“I cracked angel radio using Enochian and made all of Heaven connect basing it on string theory, and you think I can’t come up with a system that allows me to look down on Earth?”
“Ash, you’re fucking badass,” Jo says slapping his shoulder, and he rolls his eyes.
“Not any news, people. And now let’s just see. I’m sure this will be lots of fucking fun.”
--
On cue, Castiel appears just in front of Dean exactly a second later.
Dean lets the beer bottle fall from on the ground and it breaks, the amber liquid spreading on grass, and he blinks once. Then twice. Then he stands up and before Castiel can even talk, he punches him. Hard.
“Well, he deserved that,” Jo mutters, and Ellen elbows her and hisses to shut up.
“Why the fuck are you showing up now? And fuck, I should’ve remembered not to punch you,” Dean shouts, and his fingers are shaking and curled into fists. Not to mention that he’s clutching his hand to his chest. Yeah. Maybe considering that Cas didn’t even move, punching him wasn’t that great of an idea.
“I am… I am sorry,” Castiel says, his voice impossibly low. “I realized I made a huge mistake.”
“Oh, really. And what exactly?”
“I… when I left, I just… I assumed that if we didn’t meet again during your life, we would after your death. I hadn’t even thought you might perceive it as a definitive goodbye. The thought didn’t even cross my mind. I realized that just lately and I had not realized you might have taken it the wrong way.”
Dean now looks completely baffled. And still utterly pissed, which Ash can’t really fault him for. Especially because of how Cas is phrasing it.
He seriously has no clue about fucking human customs.
“You hadn’t thought that I might take it the wrong way? What the fuck, Cas? I thought you had bailed for good!” Dean shouts in Cas’s face, zero personal space between them, looking like he’s just seconds from a nervous breakdown. “Sam is in Hell, you just poof away without even a fucking see you soon, I stay here just because I don’t have any fucking where to go and even Lisa understood that after the second week, and you tell me I took you the wrong way?”
“Next time he’s up here, we need to sit him down and explain him what it means not to be blunt,” Jo mutters. Ash is inclined to agree.
Meanwhile, Castiel just shakes his head and his hands reach up, gripping Dean’s shoulders, and Dean suddenly stands still, even if his hands are still shaking.
“I didn’t mean that,” Cas mutters, obviously feeling frustrated. “Your… words fail me. I didn’t want it to sound like it was your fault. It was mine.”
“And now what, you have free time from being the fucking sheriff and you’re paying a visit, and then you’ll just fly away again and who even fucking knows?”
“This is ridiculous,” Hendricksen says, bringing a hand to his forehead.
“Seriously,” Ellen agrees, “why are they so impaired? Can’t they just fucking hug?”
“Now that’d be a sight,” Pamela says then, smirking, and then Ash smirks back.
“Ash…?” Jo asks, “What…”
“Why do you think I ever made the effort to learn Enochian?” Ash asks before turning towards another computer screen.
Then he starts typing.
“The fuck are you doing?” Ellen asks.
“Oh, I’m just hacking angel radio.”
“Are you seriously telling Cas to…” Jo starts, but then Ash presses the enter key and leans back in his chair.
A second later, Cas’s eyes widen. Just slightly.
“The fuck, Cas, don’t space out, I’m talking to you here, if…” Dean starts, and then Cas moves forward and hugs him.
Seriously hugs him. Like, the crushing-the-other-person-to-your-chest kind of hug. His right hand buries itself in Dean’s hair and brings his head down to rest in the crook of Cas’s neck and the other closes around Dean’s waist.
After a second of freezing, Dean’s body just relaxes on cue. His hands reach Cas’s shoulders and then it’s just very, very hard to distinguish them: they’re melting against each other, and it’s pretty much literal, and from the way Dean’s shoulders shake in relief… that was exactly what they needed.
“What did you exactly tell him?” Hendricksen says then, looking at Ash with just mere curiosity.
“The Enochian for hug him, for fuck’s sake.”
Jo actually high-fives him, and then they all turn back to the screen because they did part, just slightly, and they’re totally staring at each other.
“Christ, Cas, I…” Dean starts, but Cas just shakes his head.
“It’s fine. And I am sorry. I should have told you.”
“Now what, you’re going to fly off again?”
“I would be glad to visit more often, if you wished me to,” Cas whispers, barely audible.
Dean swallows and oh, seriously, his eyes fucking light up. Ash thinks that for hating chick-flicks that much, Dean is having a lot of moments today.
“Of course, you goddamn… ah, let that go. Yeah, sure. That’d be nice. If you don’t have something more important to attend to, ‘course.”
“No, I… why would you think that you are not important to me?”
“Can’t they just fucking kiss?” Pamela says, sounding pretty much exasperated. “I mean, look at them. That just looks like some goddamn rom-com gone bad.”
Hendricksen just stares at the screen, but then he nods back. “For some reason that doesn’t sound too crazy. Considering who we’re talking about.”
“Okay, fine, fine,” Ash says, and then turns to the other computer, again.
He types a short sentence, then presses enter again.
“What did you hack angel radio with, now?” Ellen asks.
“Kiss him, stupid.”
Jo rolls her eyes. “You do realize that movie references are totally lost on him, right?”
“Yeah, well, it’s still fun.”
“Hey, shut up. Maybe we’re getting some action here,” Pamela says, and…
Yeah. Cas spaces out for a second and then he blinks, moves forward and kisses Dean.
For real. With tongue.
And Dean totally kisses back. Like he was just waiting for that.
“Now, that’s delicious. I wonder if they'd accept a third person,” Pamela mutters at that, and Hendricksen just looks at her with a very skeptical face.
“Didn’t he blind you? Castiel, I mean.”
“That was a long time ago and a lot of water under the bridge, sport. And hey, that’s hot.”
Hendricksen doesn’t look that convinced, and then they clearly hear rustling from the screen. Yeah, Ash’s speakers are awesome, too.
“But look at that! Now that’s called a heartfelt reunion.”
“Jesus, couldn’t we have waited until, like, they were done?”
“… Sam?” Dean whispers, and then he turns towards the porch where Gabriel appeared with Sam in tow (and Sam is with a ripped shirt and a sort-of-matching-to-Dean’s handprint showing on a shoulder), and Sam looks halfway between mortified, embarrassed and the happiest person alive, and then it’s kind of a hug fest or something.
Except that Gabriel is suddenly behind them in the room, looking pretty much smug and pleased with himself.
“So, boss, have I earned my Baileys? With some cake, possibly.”
Ash just shakes his head and stands up from the seat, leaving everyone else to watch the rest and heading towards the counter.
“Yeah, I think you earned that for life.”
--
So, Cas spends half of the time up here. Then half down there. Dean and Sam go to Bobby’s, regroup for a while and then start hunting again.
When Cas is up here, he’s at the bar all the time and he actually directs things from the place. He says it’s too comfortable and the company is better. And then a bunch of people who knew Dean and Sam show up, Ellen’s husband shows up, too, and there’s always company around.
The only thing Ash is curious about, is who the fuck keeps things under control when Cas isn’t around.
Then one day, when Cas is on Earth, John Winchester walks into the bar.
“Well, now this is a nice place,” he says, and everyone gapes, more or less.
“John?” Bill and Ellen say at the same time, and John just cocks his head, smiles and goes towards the both of them.
“The one and only. Bill, sorry again about…”
“Hey, that’s said and done. And it wasn’t your fault,” Bill answers, and then Ash has to ask.
“Why are you showing up here so late? In comparison to everyone else I mean.”
“Well, because your angel friend found me out a while after you fixed things and asked me if I could keep an eye over the whole… hey, why are you all looking at me like that?”
“You are Heaven’s vice-sheriff while the boss is downstairs making out with your son?” Gabriel spits out before starting to laugh like there’s no tomorrow.
“Yeah, I’m… what did you say he’s doing with my son?”
By then Ash has utterly lost it.
When he’s done crying from laughter, he sees Ellen with an arm around John’s shoulders, probably trying to explain the whole shebang.
Ash goes to the storage room and hooks his computer to angel radio again.
Cas, didn’t you see fit to actually tell John Winchester that you and Dean are an item?
The answers he gets is sort of sheepish and he opts out of checking what’s happening on the monitor. He’d rather not know.
Then he just shakes his head, moves to the fourth screen and decides that it’s high time to see if he can download movies illegally from here, too. If Dean is too busy screwing Cas senseless to worry about him not getting a reference when he hears one, Ash is more than happy to do it, instead.
He’s sure they’re going to have a lot of fun in a short while, anyway. In a short while, meaning when Cas shows up again and finds John in the bar, but that won’t happen just now.
Well, Ash thinks as he searches for at least Casablanca and Kiss me, stupid, his afterlife is most definitely not annoying, and most definitely a badass one. And he gets to give archangels pep talks and pop culture lessons. He really doesn’t have anything to complain about.
End.