Chapter Text
He wakes up an hour and a half before his alarm goes off.
It takes a while for the adrenaline to wash out of his veins, but Dean is content with looking up at his water stained ceiling (which he'll gladly ignore the idea of fixing it for as long as he lives here which, sadly, looks like the rest of his life). His eyes drift around his room, settling on the desk in the corner and his half open closet and then his sort of open window, which brings in a cool breeze that has him clutching his duvet closer to his chest.
The sudden shift from dreaming to reality has left his heart thudding in his chest, echoing in his ears; it has left him unprepared for the harsh sting of real each day seems to bring. He wonders, briefly, if he should wait out his rush and then go back to sleep, or if he should just get up and start his day.
His mind is a whorl of half forgotten dreams (memories, his mind supplies, because that’s what they always are) of light blue and clouds and the euphoric feeling of wind against his face. (It's a feeling he's tried hard not to remember.) He dreams, more often than not, about flying through the clouds, though sometimes it’s just him without the familiar feeling of sitting in a cockpit. Dean’s pretty sure that he’ll always be stuck somewhere between hating flying and wanting to do nothing but fly, but sometimes it’s easier to imagine when he doesn’t have to imagine himself sitting in a plane, when he can imagine that he was born with it, born with wings that support him.
Today was a good dream, though— or, at least, not bad. There have been worse dreams (falling instead of flying), nightmares that leave his breath caught in his throat (abandoned and hungry and bloodied and bruised), where the only sense of comfort he can get is having the ground firmly under his feet (instead of the wind hitting you everywhere until you realize you don't have control of how fast it's able to pass you). He’s still unused to that, sometimes, finding comfort in the ground instead of the sky when it used to be the other way around, but so much has already happened since he was in the Navy that he's learned to adapt to it.
Mostly, Dean is too exhausted to worry about it, to think about the consequences.
About twenty minutes later (after watching his ceiling and letting thoughts of the sky overrun his mind), he slowly pushes himself out of bed, deciding there’s no harm in getting ready early. Besides— he’s finally, fucking finally, starting work again, and Dean’s been aching for this for weeks after being confined to one source for so long. The stillness of his apartment has nearly driven him insane, and any chance to be out of it is a sweet relief.
Carefully, he folds his blankets up to the edge of the bed and even wastes his effort on fluffing his pillow. Being up so early is fine for now, but that also means that he has to find a way to find something to do between now and six.
Dean spends it instead trying to focus on watching some show on TV, but it can't hold his attention, not really, so he ends up sitting there letting his imagination get ahead of him. He watches the sun turn his blue walls into light shades of pink and orange and it takes him a while, afterwards, to realize that he should probably start moving.
He takes his time in the shower, letting probably-too-hot water release the tension in his shoulders. The warmth of it lulls him in, calms the leftover adrenaline in his limbs. Lazily, he scrubs shampoo in his hair and then afterwards he rubs slowly across his skin. He's pretty sure that he lapses back into sleep for a little bit because one second he's running his palms down his arms and then next his head is snapping up, suddenly more awake than he was before.
Dean's alarm goes off when he's making breakfast, and he curses at himself internally for forgetting to turn it off, especially when he decides to leave it on in favor of not letting his eggs burn. "Okay!" he yells, once the eggs are out of the way. "I get it! I'm awake!" (He's just glad Sam's not here, because he's pretty sure he looks ridiculous waving around his spatula and arguing with an inanimate object and if Sam saw, he’d never let him live it down.)
By the time six-thirty rolls around, he's already eaten and cleaned up after himself. He’s halfway out the doorway when suddenly he stops dead in his tracks. This is what he wanted, isn’t it? To go back to work, to get out of his apartment— isn’t it? Dean tells himself he's only slightly panicking because he hasn’t really been around anyone in months, but he’s not even sure he’s convinced himself because there’s a slight tremor in his hand when he goes to lock his apartment door.
The cool air helps, a little. But now he can’t shake the feeling that something’s off, so it results in him feeling jittery and desperate for something to get the edge off. A little over half a year ago he would probably be hoping for a bottle of beer right about now (who is he kidding? There’s still a small part of him that craves it, though he's been trying), but instead he reaches inside his jacket pocket to get his pack of cigarettes. (The cigarettes aren’t a substitution for the alcohol he tries not to drink, but instead a desire of its own. He wants it like some people crave for coffee each morning, like if he smokes enough it will wake him up out of whatever state he’s in.
It never works.)
Right off the bat, he drops the cigarette on the ground.
Now Dean's not a superstitious person (or, at least, he doesn't think so), so he's not exactly expecting something to happen, but he carefully stores it in the back of his head and prepares himself for the worst.
* * *
“...You’re early.”
Jo’s squinting at him, standing next to the door with her apron dangling over her head as if she forgot she was taking if off. Smirking, Dean tells her, “You’re going to be late, if you don’t move it.”
Any suspicion she had wipes off of her face and she’s left with a glare that she uses full-force on Dean. “Haha, asshole. I was going to welcome you back, but now you’ve wasted valuable time and I’ve got to run.” Jo finishes hanging up her apron, grabs her purse, and then blows him a kiss before squeezing past him and out through the back entrance.
Humming under his breath, he reaches out for his apron and pins his name tag on it from where it had been sitting in a small plastic bin on the floor. This is simple, easy, routine. This is something he's done nearly everyday for the past year with the exception of these last few months. Dean's more appreciative to the small fact that this is nothing new then anything else in his life right now.
He makes it out of the kitchen before a camera is shoved into his face. "What?" he sputters out, and then, "Sam?!" Still out of his element, he moves to push the camera away from his face, but by the time his hand comes up, Sam has already moved it out of reach, tilting the lens towards the ground.
“Morning.” Sam grins from ear to ear, obviously far too pleased about the fact that he’s managed to startle Dean, and, as every good older brother should, he’s going to have to do something about that later. Much, much later.
Grumbling, Dean picks at the fabric of his apron before he looks back up at Sam. “Hey to you too, bitch. What’s up with the camera?”
If possible, Sam’s smile grows wider, and Dean finds he likes it less than Sam’s patented I can’t believe you’re my brother faces– especially when they’re being made at his own expense. “It’s for a class.”
“You’re going to school for law,” he kindly points out, placing his palms on the counter.
Shrugging, Sam replies, “I’m also taking theology courses, so what? I want my options open.”
Dean shakes his head, making his way towards the sink, where he can see a few already used dishes waiting to be cleaned. Sam follows after him, making sure to keep the camera pointed away from Dean. “It sounds like something that would be in a Legally Blonde movie,” he tells Sam (and he’ll forever deny that he watched that movie and that it’s, quite possibly, his favorite Reese Witherspoon movie, but hey, what Sam doesn’t know won’t hurt him).
In disbelief, Sam questions, “Do you even know what Legally Blonde is?” When there’s no immediate answer, he shakes his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Eager to switch the subject, Dean brings up the camera again. “So, uh… What exactly are you supposed to be doing with it?”
Sam moves the camera from one hand to the other as if testing its weight before pointing it back up at Dean. “I’m supposed to be making a ‘movie’ of how my daily routine would go, except my professor wants it to be filmed and edited over the course of the year.”
Dean considers it. “So it’s like a video scrapbook?”
“Sure, let’s go with that,” Sam allows.
“Whatever. Just leave that thing off of my face, got it?” And before Sam can answer, Dean heads into the kitchen, leaving Sam alone with nothing but a camera to keep him company.
* * *
Castiel gets it. Really. He does.
He's the new staff and the mechanic has been here for most of his life– or, at least, that's how Sam makes it sound the few times he talks about his past, and Gabriel doesn't exactly help with the situation, not bothering to volunteer any information. However, he also hasn't asked, but it's never been much of a concern of his, either.
Nonetheless, Castiel understands. He's the newbie in the island so, of course, there has to be at least one person who has to make him feel this way.
He knew it, too.
It was too good to be true that everyone else had been more than welcoming. Hadn't it?
So, of course, it's the person who he meets last that treats him differently, and it would work out that way, because the mechanic– he's stupidly beautiful, and it's just Castiel's luck that he is– just outright ignores him when he tries to introduce himself.
It doesn't sting, doesn't hurt, but he hadn't been expecting it– how could be have been? So how else was he supposed to respond?
"Hey, you must be Dean," stupid, of course this is Dean, what other staff member is there? "I'm Castiel. The new pilot." And yeah, okay, it sounds really stupid coming out of his lips like that but what else is he supposed to say?
He gets that the guy is doing something– dishes?– but he doesn't even turn to acknowledge Castiel, and he can't have fucked it up already, right? There's absolutely no reason for Dean to act the way he is towards him. Except he is and now Castiel isn’t sure what to do with that because nothing like this has happened to him before.
But somehow that has gotten to this, complaining to Anna hours after the fact when he should be checking the flight schedule, but it’s difficult to do so when Anna is giving him a look, and he really, really hates it when she gives him that look because it’s almost a guarantee that he’ll bend to her whims. “That mechanic is so rude. Completely ignored me,” he finds himself explaining, and he hates it, hates that it bothers him so much.
“Getting all wound up about hot pants mechanic already?” she teases, patting his chest with a smirk. But no, that's not what he meant and can't Anna just see what the big deal is? Except he isn't really even sure of what the big deal is himself. Anna just raises an eyebrow at him, a question in there that Castiel doesn't want to answer, so she just shakes her head at him before leaving him alone with his thoughts, and he thinks he hates that even more.
Castiel shuts his mouth, blocks the thought from his mind, and keeps on moving.
* * *
Later, after Dean has been tinkering around in the plane’s engines for a few hours, he finds Sam standing by Ellen’s cafe. Across the room, he spots Anna standing next to the stranger whose name he still really isn’t sure about. “That new pilot is an ass. Hasn’t said a word to me.”
“I don’t know,” Sam says looking over at the two of them and smiling, (and something about the smile sets Dean on edge), “I like him.”
* * *
At lunch Ellen gets swamped, so he pulls away from the engine he was working on to help her out. “Where do you need me?” he asks with newly washed hands, trying to tie his apron on.
“Getting some orders in would be nice,” she tells him, going back to the stove where Dean’s almost sure something is really close to burning. Dean doesn’t know where Samandriel is, which sucks because people are starting to look irritated and he can already see more trying to place an order.
In between one order and the next, he almost doesn’t notice him, and then he does and suddenly the whole world seems to stop (everything is blue blue blue). There’s the pause, and then– everything seems to speed up faster than before and Dean blinks and feels like there isn’t anything under his feet to support him. He's not ashamed to admit that he's swung both ways, but this is different because the pilot is gorgeous, and that won't do because Dean can't afford that, not when he's already decided that the pilot is an ass.
"Is grilled cheese on the menu?" he asks, and— what?
Dean fumbles, a little, with the pen and notepad he's holding, and he doesn't really trust his voice at the moment, either, so he just stands there and nods like an idiot. He's not even really sure if something as simple as grilled cheese is on the menu, but he's willing to make it himself if he has to, because a customer is a customer and whatnot (which isn't totally a lie, but Dean's not about to admit to himself that he'd do it for a pretty face) and it's not like making grilled cheese is difficult, anyway, and—
"Are you okay?" the guy questions, because apparently Dean had been staring off into space.
Almost dropping his pen, Dean begins to back up towards the kitchen, nodding again. "Yeah, I'm— I'm fine. Great, actually. I just— Is that all you wanted? Grilled cheese, I mean?"
"Yes, that's it, thank you."
A blush is starting to creep up in his cheeks, which— shit— "No problem."
Before he pushes into the kitchen, he can see the pilot smirking, and fuck, he's so fucked.
* * *
"You have to tell me his name," Dean demands, slapping his hands down on the lunch counter. The lunch rush had ended hours ago, but Anna is back from the small cargo delivery she had to make (thank God) so that means Dean can pester her about the new pilot while she tries to eat.
Anna, however, is not above making him wait, so she grabs her drink and sucks that down for what seems to be forever before asking, "Whose name?"
If they hadn't been friends for the better part of the past year, he would've reached across the counter and wrapped his hands around her throat (maybe). "C'mon, Anna. Please don't do this. Not now."
She rolls her eyes, picking up her burger. "His name is Castiel Engel."
While she bites into her food, he sits on this new information. It should be enough— all he wanted, after all, was a name (and, oh boy, he got one. It sounds a little religious, sounds a little odd, but Dean thinks it kind of fits him)— but suddenly he wants to know more, wants to know what his favorite movies are and if he drinks coffee in the mornings and what he does in his free time. He opens his mouth to ask more, but Anna beats him to the chase.
"He's twenty-six, Gabriel's little brother, and the only reason he really has this job is because he's broke as shit and Crowley gave it to him because Gabe talked him into it. I think it's a pity, though, because the guy did graduate from flight school at the top of his class, but Crowley's a cheap bastard so it's basically a wasted potential," she supplies. "But, you know, if you're looking for more personal info, he likes flying as much as Sam said you used to, from what I've seen. He also has this thing for burgers and French toast— not in the same meal, mind you— and I've seen him drink a lot more milkshakes than what should be entirely possible during an hour."
"Is that all you've got?"
Her smiles turns deadly dangerous, and she reaches out and begins to twirl a strand of hair around her finger. "You want more?"
A little suspicious, he nods and then props his elbows up on the counter, leaning forward to listen better.
"In that case," Anna tells him, "maybe you should just talk to the guy next time."
Dean isn't disappointed. He's not. Anna is cold and cruel and malicious and, honestly, he shouldn't have expected any less from her, really.
(Except he totally is disappointed, but it doesn't matter. He's not going to get close to this pilot, not if he can help it.)