[Gabriel Big Bang] Luck: Chapter 3
Notes: Here is the masterpost for this fic.
Business was slow tonight, but he caught a few new faces in the crowd, and that always meant good things. One of them, a guy in a billionaire suit and an accent to match, sat right down at the bar and looked at him like he was the reason for all his problems - he got that a lot, just dealing with people.
Gabe figured it was just something they picked up off his face.
“Another one,” said the man at the end of the bar; slicked-back hair, coal eyes. He wore a tipped hat, no card in it, and had big, white hands that hadn’t seen work.
Gabe slid a glass over to him and said, “You new here?”
“Something like that,” said the man, his voice disdainful and gravel-rough. “Came here for work and found this bloody masquerade.” He eyed the glass as though checking for poison, and grunted, “And nobody serves a bloody good whiskey here, either.”
“Against the law,” Gabe said, bright as morning, “been in all the papers - but, the stuff you get here, it’s the real McCoy, buddy. I don’t do cheap moonshine.”
“Would you tell me if you did?” he asked, and knocked back his liquor in one go.
Gabriel smiled, leaned closer to rest his elbows on the bar, and said, “I promise.” Whatever was the going rate for honesty these days, he had enough to buy himself a year’s worth.
Undeterred, the stranger snorted and made a show out of disbelieving him, shaking the chunky shotglass from side to side like a dame on the dance floor. “Well, aren’t you an angel,” his voice flattened, “honest, hard-working-”
“Damn good looking,” Gabriel put in, on principle. The man rolled his eyes so hard, Gabe expected them to roll right out.
He set down the shotglass, and Gabe palmed it into a rust-bucket sink, cracked all the way around like ground in heat. The man tapped his fingers against the bar, and looked like he wanted to say something scathing. He turned on his stool, old leather and older springs squeaking, and looked around the bar for something to complain about.
Gabe kept a clean, classy place, but it wasn’t a big joint. It had just about enough room for a handful of ivory-leg tables and chairs, and space for an upright piano with splashes of paint on it. The floors were dark wood, like walking on a mirror, and the scent of flowers and perfume somehow saturated into the walls. There was a sleek L-shaped bar back from when bars were important and drinking was a sport.
A small bar just meant closer dancing, quicker pulses. More drinking.
It was good for business.
Gabe knew all that, and he knew the guy was impressed but had to struggle to come to terms with it first. Great. More money in the bank.
“Like what you see?” asked Gabriel, sweeping crumbs off the bar and tossing them away.
The man grunted, tapping two fingers onto the bar.
Gabe smirked and skated another whiskey down to him. They all came around one way or the other.
“What’s your name, fella?” asked Gabriel
The staircase squeaked, and a couple of men in rough workmen jackets came down. Bobby Singer jerked his head at him, ‘hi’ and ‘one please’ combined, and Gabriel reached under the bar for a bottle fresh off the barge. The whiskey came out gold and chilled.
A guy sat at the player piano, tipping over to one side already, and he scrabbed fast and hard at the keys, and the music started jumping, bouncing off the double-thick walls, pulling people to the three-step empty space between the tables to dance.
“Crowley,” said his stranger, his eyes going to the dancers.
Bobby took a seat at the bar, and Gabe passed him his regular. Bobby glared at it for a second, but a second was too long in Singerese, and then he raised the glass up, still didn’t drink. Way he was acting, Gabe scanned his face for any signs of bad news - dead relative, interminable illness, he saw all kinds in this work, learned to recognize the wrinkles and twitches of that sort of stuff.
Bobby’d made drinking a sport since he’d been old enough to work, so that didn’t help him a good damn.
“What’s wrong, Bobby?” Gabe tucked the wash rag into his waistband, “Somethin’ bothering you?”
“One’a my idiot boys,” grunted Bobby, “pokin’ his nose around some bad stuff.”
Gabriel chose his words. “Didn’t know you had kids,” he said, bottle in hand in case Bobby didn’t want to open up - and he never did, it was just his nature, “thought you were an only guy.”
Bobby grunted.
If he listened to the music with most of his attention elsewhere, they weren’t half bad.
“They ain’t my kids,” said Bobby, gruff and lying through his teeth, “but they’re just damn kids. Someone’s gotta look after ‘em.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” he said. “You don’t raise no fools, right?”
Bobby glared at him, then he slumped.
“They’re damn smart kids,” said Bobby, his voice warming up, “but they get thoughts in their head’n don’t think about the big picture.”
Gabriel topped off his glass, edging it closer with the lip of the bottle. “Maybe they do, and they just don’t show it.”
“He better hope so.” Bobby raised his head, eyeing the clock above the bar. “You ever gonna fix that thing?”
“Nobody needs to keep time in here,” said Gabe, “don’t see the point.”
And Bobby said, “Bring it down, let me take a look.”
He got Benny off from guard duty to climb up and get the clock for him, and while Bobby was busy with his springs and little coils, he turned to Crowley. Benny clumped back to the door.
“So,” he said, and Crowley jolted like coming awake, “what d’you do here, fella?”
“Sales,” said Crowley. The guy needed to work on his silver tongue if he spoke to all his clients that way, “requisitions.”
“Mmh,” said Gabriel.
A man came down the stairs.
Last time he’d seen him was about four years back, and, Gabriel remembered more muscle on him, more colour, more life. The bones that rolled into his bar now had Castiel looking too big and too jagged, too hard-edged and too hungry. Leaving him on that barge, that hadn’t been pleasant. Getting around alone, not great, either, not the way he’d been.
He’d managed, saw a wire he could dance on. Castiel hadn’t.
“You okay, boy?” asked Bobby, looking up from the dissected clock, “look like you’re about to faint.”
“Whaddaya take me for?” Gabriel cleared his throat, voice hoarse, Just - hey, you, play something with kick, this place is dead-Castiel?”
Castiel moved, had always moved, coiled and slow. Thought about every movement, never wasted energy. He turned, and God, it took ten thousand years for him to turn and see him, and Castiel wasn’t sloppy enough to jerk and whiten the way he had, but he stared at him for a damn long time.
Gabriel rubbed his damp palms on his thighs as Cas came to sit and said, “What’ll ya have?”
“…Anything,” Cas folded his arms on the bar - too thin, shadows underneath his eyes. Looked starved. In the gold-white light of the bar, every scar and wrinkle on his face had a spotlight.
“You look, uh…” Gabriel slid a glass over to him, “… hungry. Everything okay, Castiel?”
“Yes,” said Castiel. He paused. “I’m not.”
“Gathered that, “ said Gabriel, leaning against the bar.
Castiel flickered a smile at him, and it didn’t reach anywhere close to his eyes. The way the soldier looked, that he knew how to smile was a surprise; but Castiel was resilient, had always been resilient.
Balthazar had been too, but Gabe didn’t think of him these days..
“So,” he said, “what’re you doin’ here, Cas? When did you get here?”
Castiel looked up, and underneath the overhead lights, his eyes were damn near blinding. “A while back,” he said, “I’ve been… working odd jobs. Moving around a lot.”
Bobby swore, and two springs scattered wide.
Gabriel braced his elbows on the bar, winced as the pianist thumped two notes wrong, “You need a job?” he asked, “place to stay, what-”
Castiel smiled again. It didn’t look content. “No,” he said, “could use another one of these.”
Gabe poured him one more, on the house.
Castiel wrapped his hands around it, murmured, “thanks”. Cas said, “You look well,” like it was a question.
“I am well,” Gabriel answered, and spread his arms wide to show off the bar, show off what he’d made. “It isn’t exactly Broadway, but I’m comfortable here. Make enough to get by, and it’s interesting work. You meet a lot of interesting people.” He’d heard that signing up, meet people. It soured on his tongue like pennies.
Light dripped into his hair and stretched out his shadow like a snake, and Castiel sipped his whiskey with one hand at his waist and one eye on the door. The hand at his waist twitched every now and then, flexing on an invisible trigger.
He got a lot of people like Cas come trailing in with the shadows; the ones who had seen the dead piled into craters like puddles, a huge lake of blown off legs and heads and arms. They heard bombs whistling in their sleep, and twice, now, he’d had to cancel music because one loud noise too far’d bring on the shaking, the memories, the knowledge that there was an edge somewhere in humanity and they’d seen it overwhelmed and turn to blood lust and animal cruelty.
He knew why Cas watched the door, and he knew why he pretended to be armed.
For the first few months here, that shaking and that jumping’d gotten the better of him. Everyone’d had their vice, and that was just something else he’d had to deal with. Cas didn’t look like he’d been as lucky. The man was wired up like a wet cat, twitching and jerking, wincing at the music.
Cas might not want a job, but he had one.
“So, I need a guy for some stuff,” said Gabriel, “pays well, you get to pick what to do and how to do it, and the only thing I need from you is your word - you be loyal to me, nobody else.”
Cas looked up, his face grave. “I don’t need a job,” he said, “I have a job. Selling newspapers.”
Gabriel waved his hand. “I know,” he said, “but I’m offering anyway.”
Castiel left without saying yes or no to his job-offer, two drinks and a small fight after he’d came in. Gabriel called after him, think about it, he turned on the staircase as though he’d reconsidered leaving, and then shrugged, and went on up.
The joint was emptying out by then, and the last people left in it were Bobby and the piano player, unconscious on the floor underneath his stool. He wiped off the bar and went out from the back to straighten out chairs and pick up glasses left lying around.
“It’s done,” said Bobby and he held up the clock, which - truth be told - Gabe had forgotten about.
“Oh,” said Gabriel, “great, copacetic. Leave it there, I’ll hang it up when I go.”
Bobby shuffled out last, bundled up in a coat thick as a blanket and a grubby hat pulled low over his face. The dull thump of his footsteps kept Gabe company as he swept crumpled tissues and scraps of cigarettes and cigars into a paper bag and piled glasses into the sink for later.
Empty of everyone else, Gabriel’s wasn’t impressive.
Gabe slung the washcloth over his shoulder and left the glasses to soak in the sink, and thumbed a notepad from the waistband of his slacks as he unlocked the door to the money room. The boxes of shiny-bottled, stacked-up liquor took up all three of the walls, prime hooch from every running boat he’d ever heard of; scotch, gin, whiskey, rum, all of it real, grade-A level stuff. In his mind, paying for something meant you ought to get the best in return, and it made better business sense to sell the real McCoy than bother with the cheap stuff made at home.
This stuff, though, this walked out the door.
As he looked over his inventory of what they’d used up that night, he saw that walking was going to get him into some mighty trouble unless he could advance his operation. Hire a couple of other runners. He chewed on the end of the pencil and went around the room, poking into boxes and writing down what was left. They’d run out of the rum and the imported European whiskey..
“I didn’t think you’d work this kind of place,” said Castiel out of nowhere, and Gabe’s lungs stopped working for a couple of seconds.
“You don’t know me very well, do you?” he said, scratching out half his stock of Scottish whiskey - they’d leaned pretty hard on that stuff tonight, more so than usual. He’d have to get in touch with his men tonight, maybe send them out to bring in another shipment.
Castiel came into the room, snow melting on his shoulders and into his hair.
Sometimes, it’d been so cold back then that they’d burned crumpled up papers in bully beef tins to warm up. That little flame, flickering away inside a tin, eating up mentions of the war, had always brought out the great, sloping bones of Cas’ face.
When he’d popped into the bar, Gabe hadn’t known what to say.
But, hey, under the circumstances, it hadn’t been all that bad. Could’ve gone worse.
Castiel sat down on an upturned box and put his hands together, fingers linked. “… I used to. Know you.” He said, and fidgeted his thumbs together, looking like a turkey on Thanksgiving, “Used to know you pretty well. Never figured you’d … turn to this.”
Gabe sat down on a box opposite him.
Remove the boxes, the walls, and it’d almost be like France again. His eyes lingered on the tags swinging loose around Cas’ neck, and he touched his own throat, as if, somehow, that’d make his appear.
He didn’t know where he’d stashed the things.
“Things have changed,” said Gabriel, forcing his hand down, “you wanna get ahead and survive, you gotta do some nasty stuff, Cas. Thought you’d have learned that after all this time.”
Something flickered in Cas’ eyes, and the soldier’s mouth drew into a stiff, thin line. He didn’t say anything, just looked at him, those blue eyes the same colour as church glass, the rest of his white face bleached and lifeless around them.
Goddamnit, he didn’t have to feel guilty about this.
“You here to lecture me,” said Gabe, “or you here to talk about somethin’? ‘Cause I’ve heard all the lectures, and it’s been a long day, Cas, so all I wanna do here is drag my ass to bed and sleep.”
Cas recoiled. “Of course,” he said, with rigid politeness, “sorry I’m … taking up so much of your time. I was merely wondering… what you meant when you offered me a job.”
“It’s pretty standard,” said Gabe, not looking at him; he had his eyes on his notebook, and visions of the river dancing in his head. “You sure you wanna work for a guy like me, Cassie?”
“My name is Castiel,” said Cas, irritated, “and I suppose I must, since it is apparently necessary for survival.”
“Atta boy.” Gabe set his notebook aside, looking up at him.
Cas sure as hell didn’t look pleased about it.
“I’m a fun guy to work with,” he said, “no rules. Well, some rules. A few rules, like you don’t double-cross me, you do what I say - those kind of rules. But, hey, you get the days off, and most of what we do’s all but legal anyway. You get to travel. You need to know how to shoot. That’s a prerequisite.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” said Castiel, and the curve of his mouth was like something wicked that lived in tall grass and went after injured antelope. “I am still a very good shot. I prefer a blade, however.”
“Blade’s messy,” said Gabe, “gun’s all but standard; if I gotta have someone butchered, I promise, you’ll be first in line.”
Cas’ smile slipped right off.
“That’s a joke, Cassie,” said Gabe, “I don’t need people butchered most of the time. I just sell booze, you know? People start muscling in on my territory, it’s easy enough to get rid of them. Flick of the wrist, and it’s like my place’s never existed. Haven’t even been busted once.” His voice lit up with pride, and Gabe grinned, resting his cheek against his hands, “and that’s hard to do in this town. Got a lot of competition and a lot of cops on their payroll - but it helps to be sneaky and smart.”
Castiel narrowed his eyes, and said, “so you lie and swindle?”
“When you find something that works,” said Gabe, and he held out his hands, “you stick to it. That’s rule one, okay. Find a way that works for you, we’ll both be happy. So, what is it you wanna do? Guard the place? Run for me? You wanna be my professional enforcer? Hell, I bet I could swing you a bartender job and focus on other stuff while you’re running the place.”
The other man braced his arms against his knees. “… I don’t know,” he admitted, “I’m not … sure what those things are.”
Getting to bed turned into a pipe dream before his eyes.
“Okay,” said Gabe, “guarding the place is easy. You stay outside, you let in people who have a pin or who know the pass in - we change it every week, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you. Still got that poker-hand memory of yours?”
Cas grunted, unsociable prick.
Moving on, Gabe said, “Running’s fun, but you gotta be quick on your feet and you gotta know how to haggle. You push for the best deal and you get there before the other chumps do. I got a couple of deals going with some, uh… importers in the area, I’ll let you know if you decide that’s what you wanna do. Can you drive?”
“Army tanks,” said Cas, which was a problem, but they could work with it. Gabe put it away for now, wasn’t important for now.
“Bartending’s the easiest thing,” he said. “You listen to people talk. Pour ‘em drinks. Sometimes, they’re gonna start a fight, and you get up and clear ‘em out, and make sure they stay out.” He shrugged. “That’s all, Cas. So-what, you got any idea what you’d like to do?”
Cas said nothing, so he got up and picked up his notebook and went back to checking the inventory - fuck, they’d sold a lot of damn stuff tonight, and at this rate, he’d have to figure out where he could get another shipment in before the next day or face having to run a bar going as dry as the law, but-
“You look worried,” observed Castiel, “is there something the matter, Gabriel?”
“Uh,” Gabe hesitated, looking up at him, “… well, we need more stock. This stuff sells out quick. I got a couple ideas where we can get more from, but it’s… a two man job, at least. Maybe three.” He paused. “What’s your stand on breakin’, enterin’ and stealin’?”
Business was slow tonight, but he caught a few new faces in the crowd, and that always meant good things. One of them, a guy in a billionaire suit and an accent to match, sat right down at the bar and looked at him like he was the reason for all his problems - he got that a lot, just dealing with people.
Gabe figured it was just something they picked up off his face.
“Another one,” said the man at the end of the bar; slicked-back hair, coal eyes. He wore a tipped hat, no card in it, and had big, white hands that hadn’t seen work.
Gabe slid a glass over to him and said, “You new here?”
“Something like that,” said the man, his voice disdainful and gravel-rough. “Came here for work and found this bloody masquerade.” He eyed the glass as though checking for poison, and grunted, “And nobody serves a bloody good whiskey here, either.”
“Against the law,” Gabe said, bright as morning, “been in all the papers - but, the stuff you get here, it’s the real McCoy, buddy. I don’t do cheap moonshine.”
“Would you tell me if you did?” he asked, and knocked back his liquor in one go.
Gabriel smiled, leaned closer to rest his elbows on the bar, and said, “I promise.” Whatever was the going rate for honesty these days, he had enough to buy himself a year’s worth.
Undeterred, the stranger snorted and made a show out of disbelieving him, shaking the chunky shotglass from side to side like a dame on the dance floor. “Well, aren’t you an angel,” his voice flattened, “honest, hard-working-”
“Damn good looking,” Gabriel put in, on principle. The man rolled his eyes so hard, Gabe expected them to roll right out.
He set down the shotglass, and Gabe palmed it into a rust-bucket sink, cracked all the way around like ground in heat. The man tapped his fingers against the bar, and looked like he wanted to say something scathing. He turned on his stool, old leather and older springs squeaking, and looked around the bar for something to complain about.
Gabe kept a clean, classy place, but it wasn’t a big joint. It had just about enough room for a handful of ivory-leg tables and chairs, and space for an upright piano with splashes of paint on it. The floors were dark wood, like walking on a mirror, and the scent of flowers and perfume somehow saturated into the walls. There was a sleek L-shaped bar back from when bars were important and drinking was a sport.
A small bar just meant closer dancing, quicker pulses. More drinking.
It was good for business.
Gabe knew all that, and he knew the guy was impressed but had to struggle to come to terms with it first. Great. More money in the bank.
“Like what you see?” asked Gabriel, sweeping crumbs off the bar and tossing them away.
The man grunted, tapping two fingers onto the bar.
Gabe smirked and skated another whiskey down to him. They all came around one way or the other.
“What’s your name, fella?” asked Gabriel
The staircase squeaked, and a couple of men in rough workmen jackets came down. Bobby Singer jerked his head at him, ‘hi’ and ‘one please’ combined, and Gabriel reached under the bar for a bottle fresh off the barge. The whiskey came out gold and chilled.
A guy sat at the player piano, tipping over to one side already, and he scrabbed fast and hard at the keys, and the music started jumping, bouncing off the double-thick walls, pulling people to the three-step empty space between the tables to dance.
“Crowley,” said his stranger, his eyes going to the dancers.
Bobby took a seat at the bar, and Gabe passed him his regular. Bobby glared at it for a second, but a second was too long in Singerese, and then he raised the glass up, still didn’t drink. Way he was acting, Gabe scanned his face for any signs of bad news - dead relative, interminable illness, he saw all kinds in this work, learned to recognize the wrinkles and twitches of that sort of stuff.
Bobby’d made drinking a sport since he’d been old enough to work, so that didn’t help him a good damn.
“What’s wrong, Bobby?” Gabe tucked the wash rag into his waistband, “Somethin’ bothering you?”
“One’a my idiot boys,” grunted Bobby, “pokin’ his nose around some bad stuff.”
Gabriel chose his words. “Didn’t know you had kids,” he said, bottle in hand in case Bobby didn’t want to open up - and he never did, it was just his nature, “thought you were an only guy.”
Bobby grunted.
If he listened to the music with most of his attention elsewhere, they weren’t half bad.
“They ain’t my kids,” said Bobby, gruff and lying through his teeth, “but they’re just damn kids. Someone’s gotta look after ‘em.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” he said. “You don’t raise no fools, right?”
Bobby glared at him, then he slumped.
“They’re damn smart kids,” said Bobby, his voice warming up, “but they get thoughts in their head’n don’t think about the big picture.”
Gabriel topped off his glass, edging it closer with the lip of the bottle. “Maybe they do, and they just don’t show it.”
“He better hope so.” Bobby raised his head, eyeing the clock above the bar. “You ever gonna fix that thing?”
“Nobody needs to keep time in here,” said Gabe, “don’t see the point.”
And Bobby said, “Bring it down, let me take a look.”
He got Benny off from guard duty to climb up and get the clock for him, and while Bobby was busy with his springs and little coils, he turned to Crowley. Benny clumped back to the door.
“So,” he said, and Crowley jolted like coming awake, “what d’you do here, fella?”
“Sales,” said Crowley. The guy needed to work on his silver tongue if he spoke to all his clients that way, “requisitions.”
“Mmh,” said Gabriel.
A man came down the stairs.
Last time he’d seen him was about four years back, and, Gabriel remembered more muscle on him, more colour, more life. The bones that rolled into his bar now had Castiel looking too big and too jagged, too hard-edged and too hungry. Leaving him on that barge, that hadn’t been pleasant. Getting around alone, not great, either, not the way he’d been.
He’d managed, saw a wire he could dance on. Castiel hadn’t.
“You okay, boy?” asked Bobby, looking up from the dissected clock, “look like you’re about to faint.”
“Whaddaya take me for?” Gabriel cleared his throat, voice hoarse, Just - hey, you, play something with kick, this place is dead-Castiel?”
Castiel moved, had always moved, coiled and slow. Thought about every movement, never wasted energy. He turned, and God, it took ten thousand years for him to turn and see him, and Castiel wasn’t sloppy enough to jerk and whiten the way he had, but he stared at him for a damn long time.
Gabriel rubbed his damp palms on his thighs as Cas came to sit and said, “What’ll ya have?”
“…Anything,” Cas folded his arms on the bar - too thin, shadows underneath his eyes. Looked starved. In the gold-white light of the bar, every scar and wrinkle on his face had a spotlight.
“You look, uh…” Gabriel slid a glass over to him, “… hungry. Everything okay, Castiel?”
“Yes,” said Castiel. He paused. “I’m not.”
“Gathered that, “ said Gabriel, leaning against the bar.
Castiel flickered a smile at him, and it didn’t reach anywhere close to his eyes. The way the soldier looked, that he knew how to smile was a surprise; but Castiel was resilient, had always been resilient.
Balthazar had been too, but Gabe didn’t think of him these days..
“So,” he said, “what’re you doin’ here, Cas? When did you get here?”
Castiel looked up, and underneath the overhead lights, his eyes were damn near blinding. “A while back,” he said, “I’ve been… working odd jobs. Moving around a lot.”
Bobby swore, and two springs scattered wide.
Gabriel braced his elbows on the bar, winced as the pianist thumped two notes wrong, “You need a job?” he asked, “place to stay, what-”
Castiel smiled again. It didn’t look content. “No,” he said, “could use another one of these.”
Gabe poured him one more, on the house.
Castiel wrapped his hands around it, murmured, “thanks”. Cas said, “You look well,” like it was a question.
“I am well,” Gabriel answered, and spread his arms wide to show off the bar, show off what he’d made. “It isn’t exactly Broadway, but I’m comfortable here. Make enough to get by, and it’s interesting work. You meet a lot of interesting people.” He’d heard that signing up, meet people. It soured on his tongue like pennies.
Light dripped into his hair and stretched out his shadow like a snake, and Castiel sipped his whiskey with one hand at his waist and one eye on the door. The hand at his waist twitched every now and then, flexing on an invisible trigger.
He got a lot of people like Cas come trailing in with the shadows; the ones who had seen the dead piled into craters like puddles, a huge lake of blown off legs and heads and arms. They heard bombs whistling in their sleep, and twice, now, he’d had to cancel music because one loud noise too far’d bring on the shaking, the memories, the knowledge that there was an edge somewhere in humanity and they’d seen it overwhelmed and turn to blood lust and animal cruelty.
He knew why Cas watched the door, and he knew why he pretended to be armed.
For the first few months here, that shaking and that jumping’d gotten the better of him. Everyone’d had their vice, and that was just something else he’d had to deal with. Cas didn’t look like he’d been as lucky. The man was wired up like a wet cat, twitching and jerking, wincing at the music.
Cas might not want a job, but he had one.
“So, I need a guy for some stuff,” said Gabriel, “pays well, you get to pick what to do and how to do it, and the only thing I need from you is your word - you be loyal to me, nobody else.”
Cas looked up, his face grave. “I don’t need a job,” he said, “I have a job. Selling newspapers.”
Gabriel waved his hand. “I know,” he said, “but I’m offering anyway.”
Castiel left without saying yes or no to his job-offer, two drinks and a small fight after he’d came in. Gabriel called after him, think about it, he turned on the staircase as though he’d reconsidered leaving, and then shrugged, and went on up.
The joint was emptying out by then, and the last people left in it were Bobby and the piano player, unconscious on the floor underneath his stool. He wiped off the bar and went out from the back to straighten out chairs and pick up glasses left lying around.
“It’s done,” said Bobby and he held up the clock, which - truth be told - Gabe had forgotten about.
“Oh,” said Gabriel, “great, copacetic. Leave it there, I’ll hang it up when I go.”
Bobby shuffled out last, bundled up in a coat thick as a blanket and a grubby hat pulled low over his face. The dull thump of his footsteps kept Gabe company as he swept crumpled tissues and scraps of cigarettes and cigars into a paper bag and piled glasses into the sink for later.
Empty of everyone else, Gabriel’s wasn’t impressive.
Gabe slung the washcloth over his shoulder and left the glasses to soak in the sink, and thumbed a notepad from the waistband of his slacks as he unlocked the door to the money room. The boxes of shiny-bottled, stacked-up liquor took up all three of the walls, prime hooch from every running boat he’d ever heard of; scotch, gin, whiskey, rum, all of it real, grade-A level stuff. In his mind, paying for something meant you ought to get the best in return, and it made better business sense to sell the real McCoy than bother with the cheap stuff made at home.
This stuff, though, this walked out the door.
As he looked over his inventory of what they’d used up that night, he saw that walking was going to get him into some mighty trouble unless he could advance his operation. Hire a couple of other runners. He chewed on the end of the pencil and went around the room, poking into boxes and writing down what was left. They’d run out of the rum and the imported European whiskey..
“I didn’t think you’d work this kind of place,” said Castiel out of nowhere, and Gabe’s lungs stopped working for a couple of seconds.
“You don’t know me very well, do you?” he said, scratching out half his stock of Scottish whiskey - they’d leaned pretty hard on that stuff tonight, more so than usual. He’d have to get in touch with his men tonight, maybe send them out to bring in another shipment.
Castiel came into the room, snow melting on his shoulders and into his hair.
Sometimes, it’d been so cold back then that they’d burned crumpled up papers in bully beef tins to warm up. That little flame, flickering away inside a tin, eating up mentions of the war, had always brought out the great, sloping bones of Cas’ face.
When he’d popped into the bar, Gabe hadn’t known what to say.
But, hey, under the circumstances, it hadn’t been all that bad. Could’ve gone worse.
Castiel sat down on an upturned box and put his hands together, fingers linked. “… I used to. Know you.” He said, and fidgeted his thumbs together, looking like a turkey on Thanksgiving, “Used to know you pretty well. Never figured you’d … turn to this.”
Gabe sat down on a box opposite him.
Remove the boxes, the walls, and it’d almost be like France again. His eyes lingered on the tags swinging loose around Cas’ neck, and he touched his own throat, as if, somehow, that’d make his appear.
He didn’t know where he’d stashed the things.
“Things have changed,” said Gabriel, forcing his hand down, “you wanna get ahead and survive, you gotta do some nasty stuff, Cas. Thought you’d have learned that after all this time.”
Something flickered in Cas’ eyes, and the soldier’s mouth drew into a stiff, thin line. He didn’t say anything, just looked at him, those blue eyes the same colour as church glass, the rest of his white face bleached and lifeless around them.
Goddamnit, he didn’t have to feel guilty about this.
“You here to lecture me,” said Gabe, “or you here to talk about somethin’? ‘Cause I’ve heard all the lectures, and it’s been a long day, Cas, so all I wanna do here is drag my ass to bed and sleep.”
Cas recoiled. “Of course,” he said, with rigid politeness, “sorry I’m … taking up so much of your time. I was merely wondering… what you meant when you offered me a job.”
“It’s pretty standard,” said Gabe, not looking at him; he had his eyes on his notebook, and visions of the river dancing in his head. “You sure you wanna work for a guy like me, Cassie?”
“My name is Castiel,” said Cas, irritated, “and I suppose I must, since it is apparently necessary for survival.”
“Atta boy.” Gabe set his notebook aside, looking up at him.
Cas sure as hell didn’t look pleased about it.
“I’m a fun guy to work with,” he said, “no rules. Well, some rules. A few rules, like you don’t double-cross me, you do what I say - those kind of rules. But, hey, you get the days off, and most of what we do’s all but legal anyway. You get to travel. You need to know how to shoot. That’s a prerequisite.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” said Castiel, and the curve of his mouth was like something wicked that lived in tall grass and went after injured antelope. “I am still a very good shot. I prefer a blade, however.”
“Blade’s messy,” said Gabe, “gun’s all but standard; if I gotta have someone butchered, I promise, you’ll be first in line.”
Cas’ smile slipped right off.
“That’s a joke, Cassie,” said Gabe, “I don’t need people butchered most of the time. I just sell booze, you know? People start muscling in on my territory, it’s easy enough to get rid of them. Flick of the wrist, and it’s like my place’s never existed. Haven’t even been busted once.” His voice lit up with pride, and Gabe grinned, resting his cheek against his hands, “and that’s hard to do in this town. Got a lot of competition and a lot of cops on their payroll - but it helps to be sneaky and smart.”
Castiel narrowed his eyes, and said, “so you lie and swindle?”
“When you find something that works,” said Gabe, and he held out his hands, “you stick to it. That’s rule one, okay. Find a way that works for you, we’ll both be happy. So, what is it you wanna do? Guard the place? Run for me? You wanna be my professional enforcer? Hell, I bet I could swing you a bartender job and focus on other stuff while you’re running the place.”
The other man braced his arms against his knees. “… I don’t know,” he admitted, “I’m not … sure what those things are.”
Getting to bed turned into a pipe dream before his eyes.
“Okay,” said Gabe, “guarding the place is easy. You stay outside, you let in people who have a pin or who know the pass in - we change it every week, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you. Still got that poker-hand memory of yours?”
Cas grunted, unsociable prick.
Moving on, Gabe said, “Running’s fun, but you gotta be quick on your feet and you gotta know how to haggle. You push for the best deal and you get there before the other chumps do. I got a couple of deals going with some, uh… importers in the area, I’ll let you know if you decide that’s what you wanna do. Can you drive?”
“Army tanks,” said Cas, which was a problem, but they could work with it. Gabe put it away for now, wasn’t important for now.
“Bartending’s the easiest thing,” he said. “You listen to people talk. Pour ‘em drinks. Sometimes, they’re gonna start a fight, and you get up and clear ‘em out, and make sure they stay out.” He shrugged. “That’s all, Cas. So-what, you got any idea what you’d like to do?”
Cas said nothing, so he got up and picked up his notebook and went back to checking the inventory - fuck, they’d sold a lot of damn stuff tonight, and at this rate, he’d have to figure out where he could get another shipment in before the next day or face having to run a bar going as dry as the law, but-
“You look worried,” observed Castiel, “is there something the matter, Gabriel?”
“Uh,” Gabe hesitated, looking up at him, “… well, we need more stock. This stuff sells out quick. I got a couple ideas where we can get more from, but it’s… a two man job, at least. Maybe three.” He paused. “What’s your stand on breakin’, enterin’ and stealin’?”