FIC: Dystopia Is for Lovers (Part II)
Title: Dystopia Is for Lovers
Author: blue_fjords
Summary: Ben Braeden has just moved to California to live with his scientist dad and his schoolteacher uncle after the death of his mother. Things begin to look up for him and his family when he meets the famous sci-fi author, Castiel Novak. (Told in alternating POVs by Ben, Cas, Sam and Dean.)
Continued from Part One
*** CASTIEL ***
Dean told me he'd pick me up at 6:30. I was ready at 4:00. My heart was racing at a ridiculous pace, so I tried just sitting quietly in the front drawing room.
It was a poor choice.
My older brothers had had a fantastic argument there about fifteen years ago, a few years after our parents died. I remember sitting quietly in the corner as Nick, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael systematically tore apart our family ties. When it was over, I knew that no force in heaven or hell would ever gather us in the same room again.
I miss them. It is a constant ache, like a hollow in your chest that once was filled with the assurance of love, or a silence in your head, when once you heard constant laughter. I have tried reconnecting with my cousins Uriel and Anna, but it is difficult to be around them. They are just reminders of who they are not.
I was so caught up in my foolish memories of the past that I did not hear the doorbell; indeed, I did not come back to the present until Dean was kneeling in front of me, a look of concern on his face. He was so close I could see individual freckles across his nose and cheeks, and highlights of emerald, amber and bronze in his eyes. We both moved forward at the same time.
His lips tasted like chocolate milk, maybe Ben's? Then he slid his tongue between my lips and I tasted heat and spice and wetness, if wetness were to have a taste. I think he was saying my name, and I tasted that, too. It was crisp and sweet, like an apple. He was pressed up against me, straddling my hips in my mother's refurbished antique rocking chair that I was never allowed to sit on as a child. He was so strong, it surprised me. The firmness of his chest was like an unyielding wall and I just wanted it to crush me. To absorb me and accept me.
He touched my face then, and I shamed myself by crying a little. I think he noticed, but decided not to say anything. It had just been so long since someone had touched me with their eyes open. We rutted against each other, rocking up and down on the chair, our breathing and the noises of copulation drowning out the squeak of the chair. He pushed our pants aside, holding us close together, rubbing and squeezing, and I just hung on to his shoulders and pressed my mouth to his neck, feeling him swallow, feeling the beating of his heart as blood rushed throughout his body.
Release followed soon after, for me and for him. He collapsed against me and I welcomed the weight. I welcomed the weight of all of him, his physical body, his emotional baggage, his family. Everything.
I think I fell in love with him the moment I saw him.
"I love you."
### DEAN ###
Well. That was fucking awkward.
After we fucked on a rocking chair, and Cas told me he loved me, I had to take Cas home with me to the barbeque Sam and Ben had been preparing all day. I had really been looking forward to it. It was just, Jesus, love, and the way he looked at me. Like I had slotted into place in his life, filling some sort of emptiness. We'd only known each other a few weeks. Which was a chickenshit response on my part, I know.
I didn't say anything right away. What could I possibly say? He stood really close to me when I took his hand and led him to one of his bathrooms to clean us up. He was giving me that look, the look I had wanted to get from him the first time I saw him, and I wanted to ask him if he knew how this was going to go. When you want something so bad, and then you get it? You're always thinking, well, when's the other shoe going to drop? When's he going to realize I'm a remote hog, I can be grumpy as hell, I never share my pie? When's he going to figure it out that I'm a selfish bastard and he should have nothing to do with me? When's he going to leave me?
He took my hand after he locked the front door behind us, and I let him. Maybe I shouldn't have. He looked utterly delicious, his hair mussed and his lips swollen. He was humming. Fucking humming.
The ride to my house was silent, except for that humming. I think it may have been a hymn.
Sam could smell the sex the moment we came in, I could tell. He just took Cas's coat, the oversized trench that even I could see was a fashion faux pas, and gave me The Look behind Cas's back. I went out to check on the grill instead.
We were making burgers which, it turned out, were Cas's favorites. He told Ben, in his gravelly, sexy voice, that he once ate only burgers for a month when he was younger, and I could see the shape of the Winchester menu for the next few weeks in the widening of Ben's eyes. Awesome.
Dinner conversation wasn't stilted, thanks to Sam. I don't think I did much more than grunt the whole time. As dinner wrapped up, Ben looked at Sam and I distinctly saw Sam shake his head. Ben just scowled at him, and invited Cas on a family outing to the Griffith Observatory during the upcoming weekend. Cas, of course, readily accepted.
Then it was time to drive him back to his mansion. And that's when the shit really hit the fan.
"We have leftover hamburger, Cas! Do you want to take some with you? My dad makes the best hamburgers, doesn't he?" Ben was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I want to eat one for breakfast!"
"I will eat one for breakfast with you, Ben," Cas replied, and I sprayed root beer across the table. Unfortunately for Sam, right in his face. I could see the wheels turning in Ben's head, and I had to cut him off at the pass.
"Wrap those up, Ben, I need to take Mr. Novak home now."
"But Dad-"
"Can it. I have to be at work early tomorrow. Hop to it."
Ben gave me this look like I was fucking Benedict Arnold or Bill Buckner. I could hear him sullenly bag up a couple of hamburgers for Cas while Sam washed his face and I hustled Cas towards the hall closet and his coat.
"Dean, did I-" Cas started.
"Not here," I hissed at him. Ben came shuffling out to the hall, hamburgers in hand, and I snatched them from him. "Thanks, champ. Help Sam clean up, and I'll be back soon."
"Goody," he said flatly.
Sam joined us and shook Cas's hand.
"Thanks for coming, Castiel. We'll see you on Saturday for the Observatory," he said. I guess he was more pissed at me for the root beer than I thought. Confirmed when he gave me the ultimate bitchface as Cas said goodbye to Ben.
Cas sat quietly next to me in the car for the first ten minutes of the ride. Gathering his thoughts, I supposed.
"I didn't mean to presume," he said finally.
"Yeah, well, that's what it sounded like, and in front of my kid," I snarled. I hoped we were going to get into a fight. A big, huge, messy fight so I could forget the way his eyes glistened when I touched him or the way I murmured his name like a fucking lovesick fool when I kissed him.
"Ben is not the problem here," he said.
"Leave Ben the fuck out of this," I shot back, conveniently forgetting that I was the one who dragged him into it in the first place. Cas just looked at me. He had a stare that could drop you at a thousand yards. I got antsier and antsier until he spoke. And then I wished he hadn't said anything.
"I don't understand. You made love to me this afternoon, but now you wish to have nothing to do with me. Is that correct?"
Oh, fuck, make love? Who says shit like that? Cas, that's who, the dude who tells people he loves them.
"We fucked, Cas. That's what that was. A mutual release of tension." I'd always been a smooth liar.
"I see." His voice was so fucking cold, my nuts shriveled up to raisins. "Let me out here."
"What? Dude, we're three miles from your house!"
"And I don't wish to be in your presence anymore. Let me out."
I slammed on the brakes. His fingers fumbled with the door handle, and I remembered how they had felt in my hand, just a few hours earlier. I was such an asshole. I let him get out, and I let myself drive away.
*** CASTIEL ***
I had a meeting with my agent the next day. I was in need of a distraction. My family was prone to alcoholism, and left to my own devices, I would have found a liquor store and drunk it. As it was, I was in a rather kvetchy mood when I took a cab to Venice Beach and the office of one Chuck Shurley.
Chuck is under the impression that I don't know he writes for a pornography periodical under a pseudonym. 'Carver Edlund' - I think it is a bad name for pornography and is more properly fitting for a horror compilation. On the day of our meeting, a young lady of indiscriminate morals was up in his office, giving him advice of a sexual nature. It did not improve my mood. Especially as I was quite sure that Chuck was dallying with my typist.
"Get out," I told the young lady, perhaps a trifle rudely. She left very quickly, not even bothering to pull up her G-string, and hurried back downstairs to the peep show. Chuck sat up too fast and tipped over his chair, winding up on his buttocks on the floor, spitting up a few errant hairs from the young lady's nether regions.
I hope Becky uses protection.
"Castiel!" Chuck squeaked. "To what do I owe this honor?"
"We had an appointment," I informed him. I debated sitting in one of his chairs, but I had my suspicions about the stains on those chairs, so I settled for leaning against his side table.
"Holy shit, is today Thursday?" he asked, tripping over his chair again in his anxiety. Chuck is a very anxious fellow, and I happen to know his pornography assignments are due on Thursdays.
"Of course it is Thursday," I said, "or else I would not be here."
He paused in his frantic scrambling for his appointment book, or a bottle, and looked at me.
"Um, dude?" he asked. I waited, but there was nothing more forthcoming. I do not understand this using 'dude' as a question, or an exclamation, or a warning… it means too many things.
"What is it, Chuck?" I had to ask finally.
"Are - is everything okay?" He sounded like he actually meant it. But Dean was not something I could talk about with Chuck.
"No. But I would prefer to discuss my manuscript," I said.
"Yeah, okay," he agreed. "I'm behind on it anyway since Becky dumped me."
That was news to me.
"My typist, Becky Rosen, has dumped you?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, why did you think I was, you know, with one of the girls from downstairs?" He turned a little red. "I'm not a complete cad."
"I suppose you are not, Chuck," I mused. "I had assumed she was helping you in your research to write your pornography."
He fell out of his chair again. He really was a very jumpy fellow. Dude.
"You know about that?"
"Of course."
"Shit."
"I think your pseudonym is a trifle problematic."
"This is surreal."
"Carver Edlund sounds like an axe murderer."
Chuck cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, which just messed it up even more. "Let's not talk about me. We really don't have to do that. What's… what's going on post-apocalypse? Are Sean and Dan subsisting on cockroaches or something?"
"Nut paste. Though I haven't been inspired to do much writing these past few days."
"Oh? Yeah?" Chuck was nodding his head, and I got the feeling he hadn't been paying attention, but then he surprised me. "What's going on in your life that you don't feel like writing, huh?"
I didn't have many friends. I didn't talk to my family. And I realized, as I stood there in Chuck's tiny, foul-smelling office, that I didn't want to wind up like him, drowning my heartache in cheap thrills. I needed my own advice of a sexual nature.
"What do you do when someone you're in love with tells you you didn't mean anything?" My question shocked even myself. Chuck just gaped at me.
"Uhhhhhh… I fall into a bottle?"
"I was hoping for something a bit more productive."
"Yeah, yeah, sure," Chuck mumbled. "Um. Did you - you in this hypothetical situation, of course - well, did you believe them? That you didn't mean anything, I mean?"
I frowned, running over the events of the past few days in my head.
"He paid close attention to my discourse, he invited me on outings and to his house, he was very tender when we made love-" Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Chuck flailing in his seat. "But then he acted as if I had presumed affection that did not exist. I made him stop the car and let me out."
"So, so this is a dude?" Chuck questioned. "You - you know that dudes are only after one thing, right?"
"I am not completely naïve," I snapped. "I am familiar with the sex drive."
"Okay! Okay, that's good. I mean, not that I think of you - with the sex - anyhow." He cleared his throat again. "It sounds to me like you got used. It sucks, but it happens. Happens to me a lot."
"Dean wouldn't use someone," I informed him. "He has a beautiful soul."
"Oh! Oh, um, okay?" He opened his desk drawer and fumbled around for a bottle. "So, you think there's a different explanation?"
"Couldn't there be one?" I asked. Despite what Dean had said, I refused to think ill of him. "I told him I loved him. Wouldn't that make him happy?"
I would have been very pleased if any of my brothers had ever told me they loved me. But Chuck was staring at me like I was a creature from my third book, Dark Side of the Moon.
"Well, that's not how," he stammered. "I mean, uh, I guess it's possible he was pushing you away because he's afraid of commitment."
That sounded good. It could make sense. But how does one overcome that fear? I asked Chuck that same question. Chuck snorted.
"Dude, don't ask me. That's a question for Oprah."
Oprah Winfrey was a television personality. There was no way I could ask her. Chuck drank from his bottle and avoided my gaze.
I would need to talk to Dean again. That appeared to be the only solution, though it was one I considered with a great deal of trepidation.
~~~ SAM ~~~
My brother's an idiot. It's a proven fact. I don't know how the hell he managed to screw things up with Cas, but he did. He needed to fix things, and fast, because now there was Ben to consider.
Ben got up the morning after the barbeque and started chattering about going to the Observatory with Cas, and Cas this and Cas that and Dean just snapped. I'd never seen him yell at Ben before, and from the look on Ben's face, he sure as hell hadn't been expecting it.
"Cas will not be joining us on Saturday, and that's final!" Dean roared.
"Why not?" Ben yelled back.
"Never mind, why not! I'm the dad, and I said so!"
I winced. It was Dean's standby whenever he was embarrassed in an argument, only I had always got "Because I'm the big brother, and I said so."
"That's not an excuse, and you know it," Ben said sullenly. "You're just mad because you did something stupid, and now Cas doesn't want to be your boyfriend anymore."
"We're not talking about this anymore," Dean announced, and slammed the door as he left.
Ben knows that Dean's bisexual. I explained it to him soon after he got to California. Kids need to know this stuff! They're very curious about sex. I told Ben that Dean was attracted to both men and women. Not that he needed to have sex with both at the same time! My explanation got a little garbled after that, and Dean took over. The point is, both Ben and I had seen the potential for Dean to have a real relationship with Castiel Novak, and both of us wanted to make it happen. But Dean was messing with our plans.
I let it go for one day. One day was all I could handle of the Winchester Sulk, and I was getting it from both sides. On the second day, after Dean had hauled his sulky ass to work, I pulled Ben aside and told him I was taking him to my favorite place in the LA area. It's actually not my favorite place; it was my girlfriend Jess's favorite place. She died about five years ago, in a horrible fire just like my mom. Ben thought I didn't know how he felt, as I was a baby when my mother died, but I knew more about loss than most people.
We went to Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. Jess made me go to a tea there with her once, then we went wandering through the gardens. There're desert gardens, and rose gardens, and bonsai, and many, many more. There's one specific bench by a little pond, underneath a willow tree - I was going to propose to Jess there. I led Ben right to it.
"So," I started. I'd been thinking of how to broach the subject with him for the past day, but he surprised me.
"Why's he gotta do that?" he burst out.
"Dean? I mean, your dad?"
"Yeah." He kicked at a tuft of grass and stared at the pond, though I doubt he saw anything. "Mr. Castiel Novak is his favorite author. Of all time. And he was so happy to meet him and they've been getting along so well, and I know he like-likes him. Why'd he have to be mean?"
It was a good question. One that I couldn't really answer. At least not satisfactorily.
"Well, Ben," I began. "Dean's a little emotionally stunted."
He gave me a sideways glance. "What's that even supposed to mean, anyhow?" he asked.
"Hmmmm. Okay, let me try to explain. Dean had to, well he had to grow up real fast, see? And he didn't have much of a childhood." I was getting into dangerous territory here. Ben's eyebrows were coming together. "So he acts a little immature now, because he never could then."
"So because Grandma died, Dad's mean to guys he likes? Am I gonna grow up to be like that?"
"What? Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. You have a stable influence, and Dean's a lot better father than - never mind. Plus, you have me!"
I wasn't really selling him on this idea. And dragging my dead father's name through the mud, too. Awesome. But the man wasn't at all demonstrative with his feelings, it's true. And Dean was always sharing stuff with Ben and building him up and shit. He's a much better dad; even as a four-year-old, he was a great dad.
"But my mom's dead, too."
It was the first time he had willingly mentioned Lisa to me. His eyes were a little watery. I had to swallow around a lump in my throat.
"I'm sorry, kiddo. You know she loved you, right? For eleven years, you were her number one. And I believe in Heaven. She's looking out for you even now. She made sure you got with your dad, didn't she? And he's really the best dad you could have."
I pulled a Kleenex out of my pocket and split it. We both needed to blow our noses.
"Thanks, Uncle Sam," he mumbled. He gave me his used half of the Kleenex back when he was done.
Yeah. He's a Winchester, all right.
+++ BEN +++
Okay, Uncle Sam's pretty cool, except for the whole going-to-a-garden-on-purpose thing. After we left the fancy garden place, we decided that we would have to be the ones to go visit Cas. I knew my dad would never ask him for a second chance. We'd have to do it for him.
I was a little nervous to ring Cas's doorbell again, but you got to have confidence in these situations. I saw it on an old episode of "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody."
He looked real grumpy when he answered the door, and I thought he might close it in our faces, which would have been uncool since we hadn't done anything wrong. But then he let us inside. I was thirsty, but he didn't ask if we wanted lemonade or anything. Cas wasn't the type of person to offer lemonade.
I got the ball rolling because I could tell that Uncle Sam was going to say something sensitive and caring, and then we'd be there all day, when all I really wanted to know was, "Do you want to be boyfriend and boyfriend with my dad?"
Uncle Sam had a coughing fit, but Cas tilted his head as if considering the question seriously.
"I don't believe my feelings are of any import," he said finally. "As your father has no intention of being my boyfriend."
"But what if he stopped being a jerk and told you he liked you?" I knew Dad liked him, and not just because he was the famous author Castiel Novak.
"Um, what Ben means is," Uncle Sam interrupted me, "ah, Dean can be a bit prickly, at first, but if you're willing to be patient with him," he glanced down at me, "well, you have our support."
"We like you. Not like boyfriend-boyfriend, but like Dad's boyfriend." I thought I should make that very clear, because I didn't want Cas to date Uncle Sam. Especially since Uncle Sam had a drippy crush on the art teacher, according to Dad.
"Thank you," Cas said. "I will consider your words."
And that was the best we were going to get. In movies, the friends of the hero always talk about stuff the crush has done for the hero, to try to show him that the crush really does like him, but no way was I going to do that! For starters, Dad would be super embarrassed if I told Cas how he grinned really big whenever he talked about him, and I would be super embarrassed to talk about that time I almost saw them kiss. So instead we talked about how to start a fire with just two sticks (for Cas's next book). None of us had ever done it before.
Dad stuck his head in my room that night when I was getting ready for bed. Uncle Sam and I had taken a solemn oath to not tell him about our trip to see Cas, and I still really didn't want to talk to Dad. I flopped onto my bed and opened up Stonehenge Apocalypse yet again.
"Hey, champ," he said. "May I come in?"
I flipped a page. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Uncle Sam told me once that Dad used more hair product than him, and I could believe it then, as his hair stood up in little spikes all over his head. My hair does that, too, but without gel and stuff.
"Look, I'm sorry you're upset-"
"You should be apologizing to Cas." Crap, I had meant to keep giving him the Silent Treatment.
"Ben, you know sometimes things don't work out between two adults-"
"That's bullshit!" I sat up on my bed and glared at him. "You just don't ever want to try!"
"Really? I'm getting psychoanalyzed by my own son now?"
"You should just tell him that you like him." I scowled at him and he scowled right back. His freckles really stood out when he was mad, and I bet mine did, too.
"Oh, thanks, Dear Abby, I'm sure that will be enough."
"It should be!" I yelled at him.
"Well, it wasn't enough for your mom!" he yelled back at me. I felt like he had slapped me.
"What do you mean?" I whispered. He was already retreating.
"Look, Ben, I didn't-"
"Tell me. Come on, please, Dad."
He let out a big puff of air, and I knew he wasn't angry anymore. Just sad. I scooted over so he could sit next to me on my bed, the bed he'd bought for me when he brought me back here. We got all new furniture and then I decorated the room the same exact way my room had looked in Indiana.
"I told your mom I'd like to stay in Cicero with the two of you, or bring you both out to California, when I met you three years ago."
I could have been living with Dad for the past three years? Talking about music and going fishing and working on engines?
"Why didn't you?"
He put his arm around me.
"Because liking someone doesn't mean you'll stay forever. Please don't blame your mom, Ben, but she was smart enough to know that she couldn't be with me forever. It takes more than that for it to work out."
I got a case of the sniffles, and he let me blow my nose on his sleeve and gave me a big hug.
"I'm sorry, buddy. I'm not any good at getting people to stay."
### DEAN ###
I was elbow-deep in the guts of this new engine we were trying out when Bobby stuck his head around the corner and told me I had a visitor. That wasn't all that unusual, Sam came by a lot, and Ben had come to see me a few times on his own. But my visitor wasn't either of them, of course. It was Cas.
He still looked pissed. And incredibly fuckable. But I wasn't thinking about that.
"What are you doing here?" Not my most gracious or witty of opening volleys, I'll admit.
"You create futuristic cars. I write novels about the future. I want to see the cars. You even invited me," he said calmly. Only one little line between his brows betrayed that he was mad at me. Otherwise, you'd think he was car shopping or something, the way he stood there, hands dangling loosely at his sides and his eyes roaming over the lab. Over everything except me.
"Dude. There aren't any cars in your future. Most everything technology-wise went kaput. Dystopia, remember?" His calmness was beginning to irritate me. He gave a put-upon sigh and shook his head slightly, like I was being deliberately obtuse. That didn't help matters.
"Dean. Just because it is a dystopian view of the future, it does not mean the survivors will not at least try to create a mode of transportation."
"Fine. Have it your way." I waved my arm at the engine parts and my whiteboards filled with messy sketches. "Look around. Tell me if you can't figure anything out. I'd hate to have an anachronism in one of your little stories."
I had scored a direct hit, but instead of the thought filling me with glee, I felt like the world's biggest asshole. God, he looked - God, I just wanted to take it back. He'd never look at me like I wanted him to, not anymore. He moved closer to me then, and his gravelly voice got even gruffer.
"I thought you at least respected my writing, but I see now that it was wrong of me to have faith in you." He squared his shoulders. "Please tell your brother and son that I tried. Goodbye, Dean." He turned away from me.
"What do you mean, tell Sam and Ben you tried? Have you been talking about me behind my back?" It was so much easier to get pissed at them than to react to Cas telling me he had faith in me. Well. Had being the operative word. I grabbed his bicep, and he whirled to face me.
Shit. If looks could kill, I'd have been scorched earth. I glared right back at him. Fuck, they had no right to gossip about me!
"Talking to your face achieves nothing," he enunciated carefully, strangling his anger. "Now let go of me. We've wasted enough of each other's time."
"That how you feel? I'm a waste now, Cas? Didn't seem that way earlier."
All of his anger seemed to drain out of him as he tilted his head to look at me. We were standing so damn close, I bet he could count my freckles. I could count each individual eyelash.
"I don't understand," he said in a low growl. "You have a family that loves you. Truly loves you. But I think you really do believe you're a waste."
"Don't get all Dr. Phil on my ass." He really needed to shut up. People just didn't talk like that.
"I have no idea who that is."
"A presumptuous bastard!" I snarled at him.
His eyes darkened again with anger and he got right up in my face.
"You listen to me, Dean Winchester," he said, voice like steel. "You do not get to decide how I see you. You are beautiful." He forced me back, step by step, until I could feel a workbench against my knees. "You are warm, and loyal, and good." Oh, God, he thought he meant it. I looked over his shoulder and focused on my tools spread out on the counter against the far wall.
"I'm going to mess this up, Cas. You can't - it'd be better if you left now."
"I am not leaving," he said forcefully.
"I'll make you leave," I said in my most threatening tone of voice and he barked a short, mirthless laugh. "What if I ask for something you're not willing to give?" What if I ask for you to never leave me? What if I ask you to stay forever?
"There is nothing you could ask for that I would not want to give you. The difference is that I have decided of my own free will. You don't make my choices, Dean. I say you are worth fighting for, so I will stay here and fight for you."
Stay, stay, stay. He was right up in my face then and I could feel the heat of his body through our clothes, but it was nothing compared to the heat and conviction in his gaze. I'd had dozens of lovers over the years, but no one had ever looked at me like that before. It was intoxicating and freeing and turning me on, and in that moment, I decided to believe him.
There was barely an inch of space between our faces, and I closed that space easily. I ran my hands around his waist and up under his shirt and he managed to move even closer to me, I have no idea how. He pulled his face back, just enough for me to see his eyes, and I was floored at the understanding in them. I wouldn't have to make some big declaration or get on my knees and beg him to stay. He could read it in the press of my palms to his skin, it was written by my tongue and lips along his neck and jaw. And he would answer in kind. His tongue was halfway down my throat when a loud noise startled us.
Shit, it was Bobby.
"When I said someone was here to see you, Dean, I can't say I meant for you to start making out like horny teenagers."
"Uh, yeah, sorry about that, Bobby." Cas was giving him this look like Bobby was the one at fault, and I almost laughed. "You know, it's practically 5:00-" It was 3:00. "-so Cas and I are going to take off. I'll catch you tomorrow."
He snorted and his moustache twitched, but he stood aside, and even clapped me on the back as we, rather hurriedly, made our getaway. Best. Boss. Ever.
We didn't make it out of the building before I had to push Cas into a supply closet and kiss him again. I could feel him against me and no way were we going to make it all the way to his house. It was the responsible thing to do, to go down on him amongst the mops and jugs of cleaning supplies. And I don't shirk my responsibilities! Especially when they're staring at me with the widest blue eyes imaginable and gasping my name. My knees could handle the cement floor for that, and the heavy weight of him in my mouth, the taste that made me think of the sea (holy shit, I was romanticizing a fucking blow job; I was gone, gone, gone), and that moment, right after he came, when he relied on me to catch him. His breathing was harsh and loud in the little closet, and he'd finally closed his eyes, but just for a minute. He gave me his hand and pulled me up (my knees fucking creaked, damn I was getting old) and he kissed me, sucked on my neck and fumbled at my belt buckle. As chivalry's not dead, I helped, and then finally his hand was on me. I was way too close to the edge to appreciate finesse, which was good, as Cas didn't seem interested in finesse, just in sucking my neck as hard as he could and letting me fuck his fist. I didn't last long.
He smiled at me, there in the gray light of the supply closet, hair a mess and pants partly down with bottles of Mrs. Meyer's Cleaning Day products on shelves behind his head, and something just shifted. That's not to say that I thought, "Oh, yeah, Dean, you'll never fuck this up and everything will be peachy! Ben'll have two dads, we'll have a big groom-n-groom wedding and adopt kids from every continent and Sam will get us a dog and name it some dumbass fantasy name like Frodo or Merlin." But I did think that, maybe, I loved him back.
*** CASTIEL ***
Dean drove us back to my house, keeping his hand on my knee. I liked it when he touched me. I'd been so long without touch that I think I had forgotten that very human joy that comes with the heat of contact. I held his hand as I brought him inside, up the stairs again to my bedroom.
Then I was presented with a dilemma. I wanted to make love to him, but I also wanted him to touch me absolutely everywhere. I wanted to look at him, every square inch, and tell him how beautiful each piece of him was. But what to do first?
"What are you thinking?" Dean asked me, pulling me against his body. His lips were very close to my jaw and he started nuzzling at me.
"I want to look at you and tell you how beautiful you are," I informed him. His lips stilled. "I want to be completely naked and feel you against my skin. I want to make love to you so you know how I feel about you."
He pulled back from me and stared at me. The sound of his swallow was very loud in the still room.
"Damn, Cas," he whispered finally. "You really just say it like it is."
"There's no point in saying it any other way. Why should I pretend my feelings for you are any less than they are?" I stepped closer to him again. I preferred to be able to feel his body heat.
"Okay," he said. His pupils were dilated and his breath came faster. "Okay. Clothes."
He started unbuttoning my shirt as I unbuckled his belt. It was a little awkward, the shedding of these final layers between us, and I wished I could blink my eyes and just make them disappear. Finally, though, he was completely naked, as was I, and I could push him back onto the bed and look at him.
"You are very well-proportioned," I told him, and he began to laugh. I stretched out beside him and touched his face, ran my hand down his neck and let it rest on his chest, the vibrations from his laughter traveling up my own arm. "You have a lot of muscle." He laughed harder, and I smiled. "I especially like here," I felt his right thigh, "where your muscles are stretched, long and hard." The bed shook with the force of his laughter, and I began to laugh, too.
He reached out and rolled on top of me.
"Don't ever change, Cas. Okay?" he murmured, laughter still in his voice. All I could do was nod, as every nerve ending in my body lit up with the feel of his skin against my own. His skin was rough in places, smooth and firm in others, coarse with hair along his legs and a thin sheen of sweat over everything. When he moved over me, I could feel electric sparks race through my body. I had to kiss him, and then we were sharing the same breath. I could not recall ever feeling so connected to another human being.
"Dean, I want-" I tried to say against his lips, and he nodded, as if he knew exactly what I wanted, and rolled off me and the bed to pad, naked, to his discarded jacket and pat down the pockets. I stared at the line of his back, and he looked over his shoulder at me.
"I don't usually - but, it's weird, I kind of want you to," he said.
"I have no idea what you mean," I said. He rolled his eyes and fished something out of his pocket.
"I want you to fuck me."
"You mean make love to you," I corrected.
"Have it your way," he said, but he was still smiling as he approached the bed.
"I intend to," I told him and gripped him by the waist and pulled him back down. He was solid muscle and his skin practically glowed, and little laugh lines appeared around his eyes as I wrestled with him to get the lube and condom out of his hand. He was, without a doubt, the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and he wanted me. I pushed him back against the pillows and carefully slid a cold, wet finger inside him. I watched his face as I found his prostate and stroked it with one, then two fingers.
His eyes were wide and noises were escaping from his throat. "Cas-Cas-Cas," he stuttered. It was the most powerful I had ever felt in my life and I moved closer, to kiss him and suck on his tongue as his body shook beneath me.
"Cas!" he gasped into my mouth. "How are you - God!"
"Those were just my fingers," I said, and he laughed, a kind of breathless shaking of his shoulders that continued as I gently arranged him on his side and stretched out behind him. It changed into a low moan when I pushed inside him, and at first, I thought maybe I had hurt him. But I hadn't.
We lay on our sides, facing Paradise and with our backs to Hell. I read a lot of fiction, every different genre, and I felt like a character in one of Pamela Barnes's romance novels - the kind that overcomes adversity and has wild sex in improbable places at the end. It felt good to be one of those characters for a change. I could feel Dean along every square inch of my body, even the parts that weren't actually touching him. I leaned my head on his shoulder, pressed our cheeks together, and looked down the length of his body. He was close, so close, and I had put him there.
"Cas," he moaned. "Cas." I thrust into him and saw stars. I couldn't stop touching him, couldn't stop staring. The sex act is messy and looks ridiculous, but Dean is an exception. He was completely beautiful, even spent and shaking and mumbling incoherent words as I followed him over the edge.
We didn't talk, afterwards. It would have been unnecessary. We just moved across the bed, until the sheets felt cool against our heated skin and then, even though it was only just 5:00, he held me to his chest and we slept.
I woke up a few hours later with a burning desire to write. I crawled out of his arms, grabbed a notebook from my bedside table and started a new chapter in what Chuck would eventually name Dystopia Is for Lovers:
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust," Dan said, upending his boot and watching pebbles, dirt and one dead scorpion fall out. "What I wouldn't give for a different taste in the air."
His companion stood up and stamped his feet, settling his boots on. He'd found a live spider in them that morning, and both brothers had watched in silence as it spun away.
"Next thing we know, you'll be complaining about the décor," Sean said, and waved his arm at their surroundings.
Dan grimaced and scrubbed his hands through his hair. He was getting shaggy again, and sand and dirt rained down in a soft cloud from his head to the ground. His eyes stared dully at the twisted trees and slabs of rock behind them, before he turned his back and looked towards the city.
Barbed wire and bombed-out buildings stretched ragged steel fingers towards the gray sky. Dan glanced at his older brother, checking his resolve. Sean's feet were firmly planted, his shoulders a straight line. They were going into that city no matter what. Dan sighed.
"I'm ready," he muttered, and Sean shouldered his small pack and led the way, picking a path through potholes and rubble until they reached a large hole in the fence. It was a tight fit, but they managed. They kept their eyes peeled. This was the best source for clean water within ten square miles, and clean water was the cause of hundreds of skirmishes since the Apocalypse.
Dan bumped into Sean as he stopped abruptly in front of him. Shit. He was armed with a sharpened branch, and gripped it tight as Sean edged slowly forward.
"Just one," Sean breathed to him, and he nodded, scanning the ruins to either side of their path. He finally got a glimpse of the man Sean had seen.
The man was smaller than either brother, perhaps a little older. Head bowed, he walked unseeing, alone, a dangerous way to be. He stopped suddenly and lifted his chin in their direction.
"You want this water, I'm not going to stop you," he said calmly. "Please, go around me."
Dan and Sean exchanged a glance.
"That's mighty kind of you, friend," Sean said finally. "But how do we know-"
"If it's a trap?" The man laughed, the noise tinny and hollow, unnatural in the destroyed city. "I'm completely alone. There's no one to trap you."
Sean frowned. "It's not safe for you to be out here alone," he said, and Dan's head whipped around in surprise. Surely he could not be suggesting-? "What's your name, friend?"
"Why do you call me friend when I know you not?" the man asked, tilting his head and peering intently at them.
"Sean," Sean said. "And my brother, Dan." He clapped his hand on Dan's shoulder. Dan looked at the man, taking in his bedraggled cuffs, stubble, and stained clothing. "There. We're no longer strangers to you." It should be a joint decision between him and his brother, but Dan knew he'd already lost when the man looked up at Sean from beneath dark lashes, a ghost of a smile playing across his lips.
"Jimmy," he said.
Sean stepped forward and held out his hand. Jimmy shook it hesitantly.
Just then a long, high-pitched howl reached them, followed by several smaller yipping howls. Sean's hand closed convulsively around Jimmy's. Dan nodded to himself.
"We'll have better luck warding them off as a team," he said. "Nice to meet you, Jimmy. Now, you know anyplace high and defensible around here?"
"Follow me," Jimmy whispered, nodding.
Storm clouds gathered as the three ran, together, through the desolate city, searching for higher ground.
Epilogue - Six Months Later
+++ BEN +++
I'm helping my dad build a car. A completely refurbished 1967 Chevy Impala, to be exact. It's gonna look awesome! We're putting it together in Mr. Singer's garage, as it's supposed to be a surprise, and since Cas lives with us now, he'd see if we were working on it at home. I had thought we'd move into Cas's mansion, instead, but Dad had said no, there were too many ghosts there and besides, he didn't want me switching school districts in the middle of the year. I thought it'd be cool to live with ghosts, but Uncle Sam said they weren't that kind of ghost. So we closed up the mansion in Pasadena (Cas says that one of his brothers might come forward and claim it now, but he's not holding his breath) and now we all live in our house in Torrance. And it's Cas's birthday in just a couple of weeks, and what else would my dad make for him but the best car in the world?
The Impala is sleek and dark and gorgeous, and when it's done, it will have a little bit of all us Winchester-Braedens in it to give to Cas - like a 'welcome to the family' gift. Dad and I are installing the engine, and Uncle Sam got a friend of his (someone he knows from RenFaire, and Dad said that he wished Sam hadn't told him that part) to provide leather for the seats. I can't wait to go places in the Impala. Cas will take me to the Observatory, and Uncle Sam to Jo's house for their game (Cas is a wizard now), and Dad to this little pond where they'll go fishing.
I used to think that life would always suck after my mom died. But it turns out there's still life after the end of the world, just like in Cas's book. And I'm glad.
Author: blue_fjords
Summary: Ben Braeden has just moved to California to live with his scientist dad and his schoolteacher uncle after the death of his mother. Things begin to look up for him and his family when he meets the famous sci-fi author, Castiel Novak. (Told in alternating POVs by Ben, Cas, Sam and Dean.)
Continued from Part One
*** CASTIEL ***
Dean told me he'd pick me up at 6:30. I was ready at 4:00. My heart was racing at a ridiculous pace, so I tried just sitting quietly in the front drawing room.
It was a poor choice.
My older brothers had had a fantastic argument there about fifteen years ago, a few years after our parents died. I remember sitting quietly in the corner as Nick, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael systematically tore apart our family ties. When it was over, I knew that no force in heaven or hell would ever gather us in the same room again.
I miss them. It is a constant ache, like a hollow in your chest that once was filled with the assurance of love, or a silence in your head, when once you heard constant laughter. I have tried reconnecting with my cousins Uriel and Anna, but it is difficult to be around them. They are just reminders of who they are not.
I was so caught up in my foolish memories of the past that I did not hear the doorbell; indeed, I did not come back to the present until Dean was kneeling in front of me, a look of concern on his face. He was so close I could see individual freckles across his nose and cheeks, and highlights of emerald, amber and bronze in his eyes. We both moved forward at the same time.
His lips tasted like chocolate milk, maybe Ben's? Then he slid his tongue between my lips and I tasted heat and spice and wetness, if wetness were to have a taste. I think he was saying my name, and I tasted that, too. It was crisp and sweet, like an apple. He was pressed up against me, straddling my hips in my mother's refurbished antique rocking chair that I was never allowed to sit on as a child. He was so strong, it surprised me. The firmness of his chest was like an unyielding wall and I just wanted it to crush me. To absorb me and accept me.
He touched my face then, and I shamed myself by crying a little. I think he noticed, but decided not to say anything. It had just been so long since someone had touched me with their eyes open. We rutted against each other, rocking up and down on the chair, our breathing and the noises of copulation drowning out the squeak of the chair. He pushed our pants aside, holding us close together, rubbing and squeezing, and I just hung on to his shoulders and pressed my mouth to his neck, feeling him swallow, feeling the beating of his heart as blood rushed throughout his body.
Release followed soon after, for me and for him. He collapsed against me and I welcomed the weight. I welcomed the weight of all of him, his physical body, his emotional baggage, his family. Everything.
I think I fell in love with him the moment I saw him.
"I love you."
### DEAN ###
Well. That was fucking awkward.
After we fucked on a rocking chair, and Cas told me he loved me, I had to take Cas home with me to the barbeque Sam and Ben had been preparing all day. I had really been looking forward to it. It was just, Jesus, love, and the way he looked at me. Like I had slotted into place in his life, filling some sort of emptiness. We'd only known each other a few weeks. Which was a chickenshit response on my part, I know.
I didn't say anything right away. What could I possibly say? He stood really close to me when I took his hand and led him to one of his bathrooms to clean us up. He was giving me that look, the look I had wanted to get from him the first time I saw him, and I wanted to ask him if he knew how this was going to go. When you want something so bad, and then you get it? You're always thinking, well, when's the other shoe going to drop? When's he going to realize I'm a remote hog, I can be grumpy as hell, I never share my pie? When's he going to figure it out that I'm a selfish bastard and he should have nothing to do with me? When's he going to leave me?
He took my hand after he locked the front door behind us, and I let him. Maybe I shouldn't have. He looked utterly delicious, his hair mussed and his lips swollen. He was humming. Fucking humming.
The ride to my house was silent, except for that humming. I think it may have been a hymn.
Sam could smell the sex the moment we came in, I could tell. He just took Cas's coat, the oversized trench that even I could see was a fashion faux pas, and gave me The Look behind Cas's back. I went out to check on the grill instead.
We were making burgers which, it turned out, were Cas's favorites. He told Ben, in his gravelly, sexy voice, that he once ate only burgers for a month when he was younger, and I could see the shape of the Winchester menu for the next few weeks in the widening of Ben's eyes. Awesome.
Dinner conversation wasn't stilted, thanks to Sam. I don't think I did much more than grunt the whole time. As dinner wrapped up, Ben looked at Sam and I distinctly saw Sam shake his head. Ben just scowled at him, and invited Cas on a family outing to the Griffith Observatory during the upcoming weekend. Cas, of course, readily accepted.
Then it was time to drive him back to his mansion. And that's when the shit really hit the fan.
"We have leftover hamburger, Cas! Do you want to take some with you? My dad makes the best hamburgers, doesn't he?" Ben was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I want to eat one for breakfast!"
"I will eat one for breakfast with you, Ben," Cas replied, and I sprayed root beer across the table. Unfortunately for Sam, right in his face. I could see the wheels turning in Ben's head, and I had to cut him off at the pass.
"Wrap those up, Ben, I need to take Mr. Novak home now."
"But Dad-"
"Can it. I have to be at work early tomorrow. Hop to it."
Ben gave me this look like I was fucking Benedict Arnold or Bill Buckner. I could hear him sullenly bag up a couple of hamburgers for Cas while Sam washed his face and I hustled Cas towards the hall closet and his coat.
"Dean, did I-" Cas started.
"Not here," I hissed at him. Ben came shuffling out to the hall, hamburgers in hand, and I snatched them from him. "Thanks, champ. Help Sam clean up, and I'll be back soon."
"Goody," he said flatly.
Sam joined us and shook Cas's hand.
"Thanks for coming, Castiel. We'll see you on Saturday for the Observatory," he said. I guess he was more pissed at me for the root beer than I thought. Confirmed when he gave me the ultimate bitchface as Cas said goodbye to Ben.
Cas sat quietly next to me in the car for the first ten minutes of the ride. Gathering his thoughts, I supposed.
"I didn't mean to presume," he said finally.
"Yeah, well, that's what it sounded like, and in front of my kid," I snarled. I hoped we were going to get into a fight. A big, huge, messy fight so I could forget the way his eyes glistened when I touched him or the way I murmured his name like a fucking lovesick fool when I kissed him.
"Ben is not the problem here," he said.
"Leave Ben the fuck out of this," I shot back, conveniently forgetting that I was the one who dragged him into it in the first place. Cas just looked at me. He had a stare that could drop you at a thousand yards. I got antsier and antsier until he spoke. And then I wished he hadn't said anything.
"I don't understand. You made love to me this afternoon, but now you wish to have nothing to do with me. Is that correct?"
Oh, fuck, make love? Who says shit like that? Cas, that's who, the dude who tells people he loves them.
"We fucked, Cas. That's what that was. A mutual release of tension." I'd always been a smooth liar.
"I see." His voice was so fucking cold, my nuts shriveled up to raisins. "Let me out here."
"What? Dude, we're three miles from your house!"
"And I don't wish to be in your presence anymore. Let me out."
I slammed on the brakes. His fingers fumbled with the door handle, and I remembered how they had felt in my hand, just a few hours earlier. I was such an asshole. I let him get out, and I let myself drive away.
*** CASTIEL ***
I had a meeting with my agent the next day. I was in need of a distraction. My family was prone to alcoholism, and left to my own devices, I would have found a liquor store and drunk it. As it was, I was in a rather kvetchy mood when I took a cab to Venice Beach and the office of one Chuck Shurley.
Chuck is under the impression that I don't know he writes for a pornography periodical under a pseudonym. 'Carver Edlund' - I think it is a bad name for pornography and is more properly fitting for a horror compilation. On the day of our meeting, a young lady of indiscriminate morals was up in his office, giving him advice of a sexual nature. It did not improve my mood. Especially as I was quite sure that Chuck was dallying with my typist.
"Get out," I told the young lady, perhaps a trifle rudely. She left very quickly, not even bothering to pull up her G-string, and hurried back downstairs to the peep show. Chuck sat up too fast and tipped over his chair, winding up on his buttocks on the floor, spitting up a few errant hairs from the young lady's nether regions.
I hope Becky uses protection.
"Castiel!" Chuck squeaked. "To what do I owe this honor?"
"We had an appointment," I informed him. I debated sitting in one of his chairs, but I had my suspicions about the stains on those chairs, so I settled for leaning against his side table.
"Holy shit, is today Thursday?" he asked, tripping over his chair again in his anxiety. Chuck is a very anxious fellow, and I happen to know his pornography assignments are due on Thursdays.
"Of course it is Thursday," I said, "or else I would not be here."
He paused in his frantic scrambling for his appointment book, or a bottle, and looked at me.
"Um, dude?" he asked. I waited, but there was nothing more forthcoming. I do not understand this using 'dude' as a question, or an exclamation, or a warning… it means too many things.
"What is it, Chuck?" I had to ask finally.
"Are - is everything okay?" He sounded like he actually meant it. But Dean was not something I could talk about with Chuck.
"No. But I would prefer to discuss my manuscript," I said.
"Yeah, okay," he agreed. "I'm behind on it anyway since Becky dumped me."
That was news to me.
"My typist, Becky Rosen, has dumped you?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, why did you think I was, you know, with one of the girls from downstairs?" He turned a little red. "I'm not a complete cad."
"I suppose you are not, Chuck," I mused. "I had assumed she was helping you in your research to write your pornography."
He fell out of his chair again. He really was a very jumpy fellow. Dude.
"You know about that?"
"Of course."
"Shit."
"I think your pseudonym is a trifle problematic."
"This is surreal."
"Carver Edlund sounds like an axe murderer."
Chuck cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, which just messed it up even more. "Let's not talk about me. We really don't have to do that. What's… what's going on post-apocalypse? Are Sean and Dan subsisting on cockroaches or something?"
"Nut paste. Though I haven't been inspired to do much writing these past few days."
"Oh? Yeah?" Chuck was nodding his head, and I got the feeling he hadn't been paying attention, but then he surprised me. "What's going on in your life that you don't feel like writing, huh?"
I didn't have many friends. I didn't talk to my family. And I realized, as I stood there in Chuck's tiny, foul-smelling office, that I didn't want to wind up like him, drowning my heartache in cheap thrills. I needed my own advice of a sexual nature.
"What do you do when someone you're in love with tells you you didn't mean anything?" My question shocked even myself. Chuck just gaped at me.
"Uhhhhhh… I fall into a bottle?"
"I was hoping for something a bit more productive."
"Yeah, yeah, sure," Chuck mumbled. "Um. Did you - you in this hypothetical situation, of course - well, did you believe them? That you didn't mean anything, I mean?"
I frowned, running over the events of the past few days in my head.
"He paid close attention to my discourse, he invited me on outings and to his house, he was very tender when we made love-" Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Chuck flailing in his seat. "But then he acted as if I had presumed affection that did not exist. I made him stop the car and let me out."
"So, so this is a dude?" Chuck questioned. "You - you know that dudes are only after one thing, right?"
"I am not completely naïve," I snapped. "I am familiar with the sex drive."
"Okay! Okay, that's good. I mean, not that I think of you - with the sex - anyhow." He cleared his throat again. "It sounds to me like you got used. It sucks, but it happens. Happens to me a lot."
"Dean wouldn't use someone," I informed him. "He has a beautiful soul."
"Oh! Oh, um, okay?" He opened his desk drawer and fumbled around for a bottle. "So, you think there's a different explanation?"
"Couldn't there be one?" I asked. Despite what Dean had said, I refused to think ill of him. "I told him I loved him. Wouldn't that make him happy?"
I would have been very pleased if any of my brothers had ever told me they loved me. But Chuck was staring at me like I was a creature from my third book, Dark Side of the Moon.
"Well, that's not how," he stammered. "I mean, uh, I guess it's possible he was pushing you away because he's afraid of commitment."
That sounded good. It could make sense. But how does one overcome that fear? I asked Chuck that same question. Chuck snorted.
"Dude, don't ask me. That's a question for Oprah."
Oprah Winfrey was a television personality. There was no way I could ask her. Chuck drank from his bottle and avoided my gaze.
I would need to talk to Dean again. That appeared to be the only solution, though it was one I considered with a great deal of trepidation.
~~~ SAM ~~~
My brother's an idiot. It's a proven fact. I don't know how the hell he managed to screw things up with Cas, but he did. He needed to fix things, and fast, because now there was Ben to consider.
Ben got up the morning after the barbeque and started chattering about going to the Observatory with Cas, and Cas this and Cas that and Dean just snapped. I'd never seen him yell at Ben before, and from the look on Ben's face, he sure as hell hadn't been expecting it.
"Cas will not be joining us on Saturday, and that's final!" Dean roared.
"Why not?" Ben yelled back.
"Never mind, why not! I'm the dad, and I said so!"
I winced. It was Dean's standby whenever he was embarrassed in an argument, only I had always got "Because I'm the big brother, and I said so."
"That's not an excuse, and you know it," Ben said sullenly. "You're just mad because you did something stupid, and now Cas doesn't want to be your boyfriend anymore."
"We're not talking about this anymore," Dean announced, and slammed the door as he left.
Ben knows that Dean's bisexual. I explained it to him soon after he got to California. Kids need to know this stuff! They're very curious about sex. I told Ben that Dean was attracted to both men and women. Not that he needed to have sex with both at the same time! My explanation got a little garbled after that, and Dean took over. The point is, both Ben and I had seen the potential for Dean to have a real relationship with Castiel Novak, and both of us wanted to make it happen. But Dean was messing with our plans.
I let it go for one day. One day was all I could handle of the Winchester Sulk, and I was getting it from both sides. On the second day, after Dean had hauled his sulky ass to work, I pulled Ben aside and told him I was taking him to my favorite place in the LA area. It's actually not my favorite place; it was my girlfriend Jess's favorite place. She died about five years ago, in a horrible fire just like my mom. Ben thought I didn't know how he felt, as I was a baby when my mother died, but I knew more about loss than most people.
We went to Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. Jess made me go to a tea there with her once, then we went wandering through the gardens. There're desert gardens, and rose gardens, and bonsai, and many, many more. There's one specific bench by a little pond, underneath a willow tree - I was going to propose to Jess there. I led Ben right to it.
"So," I started. I'd been thinking of how to broach the subject with him for the past day, but he surprised me.
"Why's he gotta do that?" he burst out.
"Dean? I mean, your dad?"
"Yeah." He kicked at a tuft of grass and stared at the pond, though I doubt he saw anything. "Mr. Castiel Novak is his favorite author. Of all time. And he was so happy to meet him and they've been getting along so well, and I know he like-likes him. Why'd he have to be mean?"
It was a good question. One that I couldn't really answer. At least not satisfactorily.
"Well, Ben," I began. "Dean's a little emotionally stunted."
He gave me a sideways glance. "What's that even supposed to mean, anyhow?" he asked.
"Hmmmm. Okay, let me try to explain. Dean had to, well he had to grow up real fast, see? And he didn't have much of a childhood." I was getting into dangerous territory here. Ben's eyebrows were coming together. "So he acts a little immature now, because he never could then."
"So because Grandma died, Dad's mean to guys he likes? Am I gonna grow up to be like that?"
"What? Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. You have a stable influence, and Dean's a lot better father than - never mind. Plus, you have me!"
I wasn't really selling him on this idea. And dragging my dead father's name through the mud, too. Awesome. But the man wasn't at all demonstrative with his feelings, it's true. And Dean was always sharing stuff with Ben and building him up and shit. He's a much better dad; even as a four-year-old, he was a great dad.
"But my mom's dead, too."
It was the first time he had willingly mentioned Lisa to me. His eyes were a little watery. I had to swallow around a lump in my throat.
"I'm sorry, kiddo. You know she loved you, right? For eleven years, you were her number one. And I believe in Heaven. She's looking out for you even now. She made sure you got with your dad, didn't she? And he's really the best dad you could have."
I pulled a Kleenex out of my pocket and split it. We both needed to blow our noses.
"Thanks, Uncle Sam," he mumbled. He gave me his used half of the Kleenex back when he was done.
Yeah. He's a Winchester, all right.
+++ BEN +++
Okay, Uncle Sam's pretty cool, except for the whole going-to-a-garden-on-purpose thing. After we left the fancy garden place, we decided that we would have to be the ones to go visit Cas. I knew my dad would never ask him for a second chance. We'd have to do it for him.
I was a little nervous to ring Cas's doorbell again, but you got to have confidence in these situations. I saw it on an old episode of "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody."
He looked real grumpy when he answered the door, and I thought he might close it in our faces, which would have been uncool since we hadn't done anything wrong. But then he let us inside. I was thirsty, but he didn't ask if we wanted lemonade or anything. Cas wasn't the type of person to offer lemonade.
I got the ball rolling because I could tell that Uncle Sam was going to say something sensitive and caring, and then we'd be there all day, when all I really wanted to know was, "Do you want to be boyfriend and boyfriend with my dad?"
Uncle Sam had a coughing fit, but Cas tilted his head as if considering the question seriously.
"I don't believe my feelings are of any import," he said finally. "As your father has no intention of being my boyfriend."
"But what if he stopped being a jerk and told you he liked you?" I knew Dad liked him, and not just because he was the famous author Castiel Novak.
"Um, what Ben means is," Uncle Sam interrupted me, "ah, Dean can be a bit prickly, at first, but if you're willing to be patient with him," he glanced down at me, "well, you have our support."
"We like you. Not like boyfriend-boyfriend, but like Dad's boyfriend." I thought I should make that very clear, because I didn't want Cas to date Uncle Sam. Especially since Uncle Sam had a drippy crush on the art teacher, according to Dad.
"Thank you," Cas said. "I will consider your words."
And that was the best we were going to get. In movies, the friends of the hero always talk about stuff the crush has done for the hero, to try to show him that the crush really does like him, but no way was I going to do that! For starters, Dad would be super embarrassed if I told Cas how he grinned really big whenever he talked about him, and I would be super embarrassed to talk about that time I almost saw them kiss. So instead we talked about how to start a fire with just two sticks (for Cas's next book). None of us had ever done it before.
Dad stuck his head in my room that night when I was getting ready for bed. Uncle Sam and I had taken a solemn oath to not tell him about our trip to see Cas, and I still really didn't want to talk to Dad. I flopped onto my bed and opened up Stonehenge Apocalypse yet again.
"Hey, champ," he said. "May I come in?"
I flipped a page. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Uncle Sam told me once that Dad used more hair product than him, and I could believe it then, as his hair stood up in little spikes all over his head. My hair does that, too, but without gel and stuff.
"Look, I'm sorry you're upset-"
"You should be apologizing to Cas." Crap, I had meant to keep giving him the Silent Treatment.
"Ben, you know sometimes things don't work out between two adults-"
"That's bullshit!" I sat up on my bed and glared at him. "You just don't ever want to try!"
"Really? I'm getting psychoanalyzed by my own son now?"
"You should just tell him that you like him." I scowled at him and he scowled right back. His freckles really stood out when he was mad, and I bet mine did, too.
"Oh, thanks, Dear Abby, I'm sure that will be enough."
"It should be!" I yelled at him.
"Well, it wasn't enough for your mom!" he yelled back at me. I felt like he had slapped me.
"What do you mean?" I whispered. He was already retreating.
"Look, Ben, I didn't-"
"Tell me. Come on, please, Dad."
He let out a big puff of air, and I knew he wasn't angry anymore. Just sad. I scooted over so he could sit next to me on my bed, the bed he'd bought for me when he brought me back here. We got all new furniture and then I decorated the room the same exact way my room had looked in Indiana.
"I told your mom I'd like to stay in Cicero with the two of you, or bring you both out to California, when I met you three years ago."
I could have been living with Dad for the past three years? Talking about music and going fishing and working on engines?
"Why didn't you?"
He put his arm around me.
"Because liking someone doesn't mean you'll stay forever. Please don't blame your mom, Ben, but she was smart enough to know that she couldn't be with me forever. It takes more than that for it to work out."
I got a case of the sniffles, and he let me blow my nose on his sleeve and gave me a big hug.
"I'm sorry, buddy. I'm not any good at getting people to stay."
### DEAN ###
I was elbow-deep in the guts of this new engine we were trying out when Bobby stuck his head around the corner and told me I had a visitor. That wasn't all that unusual, Sam came by a lot, and Ben had come to see me a few times on his own. But my visitor wasn't either of them, of course. It was Cas.
He still looked pissed. And incredibly fuckable. But I wasn't thinking about that.
"What are you doing here?" Not my most gracious or witty of opening volleys, I'll admit.
"You create futuristic cars. I write novels about the future. I want to see the cars. You even invited me," he said calmly. Only one little line between his brows betrayed that he was mad at me. Otherwise, you'd think he was car shopping or something, the way he stood there, hands dangling loosely at his sides and his eyes roaming over the lab. Over everything except me.
"Dude. There aren't any cars in your future. Most everything technology-wise went kaput. Dystopia, remember?" His calmness was beginning to irritate me. He gave a put-upon sigh and shook his head slightly, like I was being deliberately obtuse. That didn't help matters.
"Dean. Just because it is a dystopian view of the future, it does not mean the survivors will not at least try to create a mode of transportation."
"Fine. Have it your way." I waved my arm at the engine parts and my whiteboards filled with messy sketches. "Look around. Tell me if you can't figure anything out. I'd hate to have an anachronism in one of your little stories."
I had scored a direct hit, but instead of the thought filling me with glee, I felt like the world's biggest asshole. God, he looked - God, I just wanted to take it back. He'd never look at me like I wanted him to, not anymore. He moved closer to me then, and his gravelly voice got even gruffer.
"I thought you at least respected my writing, but I see now that it was wrong of me to have faith in you." He squared his shoulders. "Please tell your brother and son that I tried. Goodbye, Dean." He turned away from me.
"What do you mean, tell Sam and Ben you tried? Have you been talking about me behind my back?" It was so much easier to get pissed at them than to react to Cas telling me he had faith in me. Well. Had being the operative word. I grabbed his bicep, and he whirled to face me.
Shit. If looks could kill, I'd have been scorched earth. I glared right back at him. Fuck, they had no right to gossip about me!
"Talking to your face achieves nothing," he enunciated carefully, strangling his anger. "Now let go of me. We've wasted enough of each other's time."
"That how you feel? I'm a waste now, Cas? Didn't seem that way earlier."
All of his anger seemed to drain out of him as he tilted his head to look at me. We were standing so damn close, I bet he could count my freckles. I could count each individual eyelash.
"I don't understand," he said in a low growl. "You have a family that loves you. Truly loves you. But I think you really do believe you're a waste."
"Don't get all Dr. Phil on my ass." He really needed to shut up. People just didn't talk like that.
"I have no idea who that is."
"A presumptuous bastard!" I snarled at him.
His eyes darkened again with anger and he got right up in my face.
"You listen to me, Dean Winchester," he said, voice like steel. "You do not get to decide how I see you. You are beautiful." He forced me back, step by step, until I could feel a workbench against my knees. "You are warm, and loyal, and good." Oh, God, he thought he meant it. I looked over his shoulder and focused on my tools spread out on the counter against the far wall.
"I'm going to mess this up, Cas. You can't - it'd be better if you left now."
"I am not leaving," he said forcefully.
"I'll make you leave," I said in my most threatening tone of voice and he barked a short, mirthless laugh. "What if I ask for something you're not willing to give?" What if I ask for you to never leave me? What if I ask you to stay forever?
"There is nothing you could ask for that I would not want to give you. The difference is that I have decided of my own free will. You don't make my choices, Dean. I say you are worth fighting for, so I will stay here and fight for you."
Stay, stay, stay. He was right up in my face then and I could feel the heat of his body through our clothes, but it was nothing compared to the heat and conviction in his gaze. I'd had dozens of lovers over the years, but no one had ever looked at me like that before. It was intoxicating and freeing and turning me on, and in that moment, I decided to believe him.
There was barely an inch of space between our faces, and I closed that space easily. I ran my hands around his waist and up under his shirt and he managed to move even closer to me, I have no idea how. He pulled his face back, just enough for me to see his eyes, and I was floored at the understanding in them. I wouldn't have to make some big declaration or get on my knees and beg him to stay. He could read it in the press of my palms to his skin, it was written by my tongue and lips along his neck and jaw. And he would answer in kind. His tongue was halfway down my throat when a loud noise startled us.
Shit, it was Bobby.
"When I said someone was here to see you, Dean, I can't say I meant for you to start making out like horny teenagers."
"Uh, yeah, sorry about that, Bobby." Cas was giving him this look like Bobby was the one at fault, and I almost laughed. "You know, it's practically 5:00-" It was 3:00. "-so Cas and I are going to take off. I'll catch you tomorrow."
He snorted and his moustache twitched, but he stood aside, and even clapped me on the back as we, rather hurriedly, made our getaway. Best. Boss. Ever.
We didn't make it out of the building before I had to push Cas into a supply closet and kiss him again. I could feel him against me and no way were we going to make it all the way to his house. It was the responsible thing to do, to go down on him amongst the mops and jugs of cleaning supplies. And I don't shirk my responsibilities! Especially when they're staring at me with the widest blue eyes imaginable and gasping my name. My knees could handle the cement floor for that, and the heavy weight of him in my mouth, the taste that made me think of the sea (holy shit, I was romanticizing a fucking blow job; I was gone, gone, gone), and that moment, right after he came, when he relied on me to catch him. His breathing was harsh and loud in the little closet, and he'd finally closed his eyes, but just for a minute. He gave me his hand and pulled me up (my knees fucking creaked, damn I was getting old) and he kissed me, sucked on my neck and fumbled at my belt buckle. As chivalry's not dead, I helped, and then finally his hand was on me. I was way too close to the edge to appreciate finesse, which was good, as Cas didn't seem interested in finesse, just in sucking my neck as hard as he could and letting me fuck his fist. I didn't last long.
He smiled at me, there in the gray light of the supply closet, hair a mess and pants partly down with bottles of Mrs. Meyer's Cleaning Day products on shelves behind his head, and something just shifted. That's not to say that I thought, "Oh, yeah, Dean, you'll never fuck this up and everything will be peachy! Ben'll have two dads, we'll have a big groom-n-groom wedding and adopt kids from every continent and Sam will get us a dog and name it some dumbass fantasy name like Frodo or Merlin." But I did think that, maybe, I loved him back.
*** CASTIEL ***
Dean drove us back to my house, keeping his hand on my knee. I liked it when he touched me. I'd been so long without touch that I think I had forgotten that very human joy that comes with the heat of contact. I held his hand as I brought him inside, up the stairs again to my bedroom.
Then I was presented with a dilemma. I wanted to make love to him, but I also wanted him to touch me absolutely everywhere. I wanted to look at him, every square inch, and tell him how beautiful each piece of him was. But what to do first?
"What are you thinking?" Dean asked me, pulling me against his body. His lips were very close to my jaw and he started nuzzling at me.
"I want to look at you and tell you how beautiful you are," I informed him. His lips stilled. "I want to be completely naked and feel you against my skin. I want to make love to you so you know how I feel about you."
He pulled back from me and stared at me. The sound of his swallow was very loud in the still room.
"Damn, Cas," he whispered finally. "You really just say it like it is."
"There's no point in saying it any other way. Why should I pretend my feelings for you are any less than they are?" I stepped closer to him again. I preferred to be able to feel his body heat.
"Okay," he said. His pupils were dilated and his breath came faster. "Okay. Clothes."
He started unbuttoning my shirt as I unbuckled his belt. It was a little awkward, the shedding of these final layers between us, and I wished I could blink my eyes and just make them disappear. Finally, though, he was completely naked, as was I, and I could push him back onto the bed and look at him.
"You are very well-proportioned," I told him, and he began to laugh. I stretched out beside him and touched his face, ran my hand down his neck and let it rest on his chest, the vibrations from his laughter traveling up my own arm. "You have a lot of muscle." He laughed harder, and I smiled. "I especially like here," I felt his right thigh, "where your muscles are stretched, long and hard." The bed shook with the force of his laughter, and I began to laugh, too.
He reached out and rolled on top of me.
"Don't ever change, Cas. Okay?" he murmured, laughter still in his voice. All I could do was nod, as every nerve ending in my body lit up with the feel of his skin against my own. His skin was rough in places, smooth and firm in others, coarse with hair along his legs and a thin sheen of sweat over everything. When he moved over me, I could feel electric sparks race through my body. I had to kiss him, and then we were sharing the same breath. I could not recall ever feeling so connected to another human being.
"Dean, I want-" I tried to say against his lips, and he nodded, as if he knew exactly what I wanted, and rolled off me and the bed to pad, naked, to his discarded jacket and pat down the pockets. I stared at the line of his back, and he looked over his shoulder at me.
"I don't usually - but, it's weird, I kind of want you to," he said.
"I have no idea what you mean," I said. He rolled his eyes and fished something out of his pocket.
"I want you to fuck me."
"You mean make love to you," I corrected.
"Have it your way," he said, but he was still smiling as he approached the bed.
"I intend to," I told him and gripped him by the waist and pulled him back down. He was solid muscle and his skin practically glowed, and little laugh lines appeared around his eyes as I wrestled with him to get the lube and condom out of his hand. He was, without a doubt, the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and he wanted me. I pushed him back against the pillows and carefully slid a cold, wet finger inside him. I watched his face as I found his prostate and stroked it with one, then two fingers.
His eyes were wide and noises were escaping from his throat. "Cas-Cas-Cas," he stuttered. It was the most powerful I had ever felt in my life and I moved closer, to kiss him and suck on his tongue as his body shook beneath me.
"Cas!" he gasped into my mouth. "How are you - God!"
"Those were just my fingers," I said, and he laughed, a kind of breathless shaking of his shoulders that continued as I gently arranged him on his side and stretched out behind him. It changed into a low moan when I pushed inside him, and at first, I thought maybe I had hurt him. But I hadn't.
We lay on our sides, facing Paradise and with our backs to Hell. I read a lot of fiction, every different genre, and I felt like a character in one of Pamela Barnes's romance novels - the kind that overcomes adversity and has wild sex in improbable places at the end. It felt good to be one of those characters for a change. I could feel Dean along every square inch of my body, even the parts that weren't actually touching him. I leaned my head on his shoulder, pressed our cheeks together, and looked down the length of his body. He was close, so close, and I had put him there.
"Cas," he moaned. "Cas." I thrust into him and saw stars. I couldn't stop touching him, couldn't stop staring. The sex act is messy and looks ridiculous, but Dean is an exception. He was completely beautiful, even spent and shaking and mumbling incoherent words as I followed him over the edge.
We didn't talk, afterwards. It would have been unnecessary. We just moved across the bed, until the sheets felt cool against our heated skin and then, even though it was only just 5:00, he held me to his chest and we slept.
I woke up a few hours later with a burning desire to write. I crawled out of his arms, grabbed a notebook from my bedside table and started a new chapter in what Chuck would eventually name Dystopia Is for Lovers:
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust," Dan said, upending his boot and watching pebbles, dirt and one dead scorpion fall out. "What I wouldn't give for a different taste in the air."
His companion stood up and stamped his feet, settling his boots on. He'd found a live spider in them that morning, and both brothers had watched in silence as it spun away.
"Next thing we know, you'll be complaining about the décor," Sean said, and waved his arm at their surroundings.
Dan grimaced and scrubbed his hands through his hair. He was getting shaggy again, and sand and dirt rained down in a soft cloud from his head to the ground. His eyes stared dully at the twisted trees and slabs of rock behind them, before he turned his back and looked towards the city.
Barbed wire and bombed-out buildings stretched ragged steel fingers towards the gray sky. Dan glanced at his older brother, checking his resolve. Sean's feet were firmly planted, his shoulders a straight line. They were going into that city no matter what. Dan sighed.
"I'm ready," he muttered, and Sean shouldered his small pack and led the way, picking a path through potholes and rubble until they reached a large hole in the fence. It was a tight fit, but they managed. They kept their eyes peeled. This was the best source for clean water within ten square miles, and clean water was the cause of hundreds of skirmishes since the Apocalypse.
Dan bumped into Sean as he stopped abruptly in front of him. Shit. He was armed with a sharpened branch, and gripped it tight as Sean edged slowly forward.
"Just one," Sean breathed to him, and he nodded, scanning the ruins to either side of their path. He finally got a glimpse of the man Sean had seen.
The man was smaller than either brother, perhaps a little older. Head bowed, he walked unseeing, alone, a dangerous way to be. He stopped suddenly and lifted his chin in their direction.
"You want this water, I'm not going to stop you," he said calmly. "Please, go around me."
Dan and Sean exchanged a glance.
"That's mighty kind of you, friend," Sean said finally. "But how do we know-"
"If it's a trap?" The man laughed, the noise tinny and hollow, unnatural in the destroyed city. "I'm completely alone. There's no one to trap you."
Sean frowned. "It's not safe for you to be out here alone," he said, and Dan's head whipped around in surprise. Surely he could not be suggesting-? "What's your name, friend?"
"Why do you call me friend when I know you not?" the man asked, tilting his head and peering intently at them.
"Sean," Sean said. "And my brother, Dan." He clapped his hand on Dan's shoulder. Dan looked at the man, taking in his bedraggled cuffs, stubble, and stained clothing. "There. We're no longer strangers to you." It should be a joint decision between him and his brother, but Dan knew he'd already lost when the man looked up at Sean from beneath dark lashes, a ghost of a smile playing across his lips.
"Jimmy," he said.
Sean stepped forward and held out his hand. Jimmy shook it hesitantly.
Just then a long, high-pitched howl reached them, followed by several smaller yipping howls. Sean's hand closed convulsively around Jimmy's. Dan nodded to himself.
"We'll have better luck warding them off as a team," he said. "Nice to meet you, Jimmy. Now, you know anyplace high and defensible around here?"
"Follow me," Jimmy whispered, nodding.
Storm clouds gathered as the three ran, together, through the desolate city, searching for higher ground.
Epilogue - Six Months Later
+++ BEN +++
I'm helping my dad build a car. A completely refurbished 1967 Chevy Impala, to be exact. It's gonna look awesome! We're putting it together in Mr. Singer's garage, as it's supposed to be a surprise, and since Cas lives with us now, he'd see if we were working on it at home. I had thought we'd move into Cas's mansion, instead, but Dad had said no, there were too many ghosts there and besides, he didn't want me switching school districts in the middle of the year. I thought it'd be cool to live with ghosts, but Uncle Sam said they weren't that kind of ghost. So we closed up the mansion in Pasadena (Cas says that one of his brothers might come forward and claim it now, but he's not holding his breath) and now we all live in our house in Torrance. And it's Cas's birthday in just a couple of weeks, and what else would my dad make for him but the best car in the world?
The Impala is sleek and dark and gorgeous, and when it's done, it will have a little bit of all us Winchester-Braedens in it to give to Cas - like a 'welcome to the family' gift. Dad and I are installing the engine, and Uncle Sam got a friend of his (someone he knows from RenFaire, and Dad said that he wished Sam hadn't told him that part) to provide leather for the seats. I can't wait to go places in the Impala. Cas will take me to the Observatory, and Uncle Sam to Jo's house for their game (Cas is a wizard now), and Dad to this little pond where they'll go fishing.
I used to think that life would always suck after my mom died. But it turns out there's still life after the end of the world, just like in Cas's book. And I'm glad.