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The smell of soil and plastic and chemicals assailed Castiel as he entered the warehouse. His nose wrinkled up. He thought there wasn’t a force on earth that could get him to walk into a place like this again, but he hadn’t counted on a desperate sister. He paused at the entrance and looked around, getting his bearing. Workers bustled around with hand trucks and forklifts loaded with boxes and bags of soil. A line of customers at the checkout extended back into the aisles of tall metal shelves. The Will Call line—his destination, per Hannah’s instructions—was much shorter.
He remembered coming here only a handful of times, but the sight took him right back to those childhood moments. He’d stood right here at his mother’s side and waited (impatiently) for their order to be brought out, and pretend to be interested in the rows upon rows of nursery and garden supplies. He’d always felt a little overwhelmed in this place. Too chaotic, too busy. Too many smells to stick in his nose, a strange and overpowering combination of earthy and industrial.
“Don’t got all day,” a gruff voice interrupted his reminiscence. Castiel hurried up to the counter, and suppressed a double-take—the old man even looked the same as the last time he had been here, surely more than fifteen years ago. He hadn’t thought about this place in years, but the man had a certain something that was instantly recognizable (surliness, Castiel thought wryly). He had the same bristly beard—likely a bit grayer, now—and fading sandy hair tucked under a trucker cap which may have been green and white in the far distant past. Singer’s Wholesale , it said.
“I’m here to pick up an order for my sister’s nursery,” Castiel said, and hated the questioning inflection, like he wasn’t certain of his purpose.
The man— Bobby , read the embroidery on his shirt—didn’t bat an eye and only asked for the account name. Castiel rattled off the information, memorized long ago. Bobby sifted through a stack of invoices, found what he was looking for, and told Cas to ‘sit tight’ before disappearing around the corner of the counter.
There was a distinct lack of chairs, so Castiel stood off to the side. He shuffled his weight from one foot to the other while the minutes passed, and tried to ignore the effect of the cold cement floor through the soles of his shoes. To stave off boredom, he looked at the bulletin board behind the counter. Brightly colored posters about climate zones, soil types, and pest lifecycles took up most of the space. A spread for an upcoming garden expo hyped the event to an extreme level.
And tacked up next to a daily schedule was a pinup calendar.
Castiel stared hard, certain he was seeing things. But no, there was a photo of a very nicely built (and very shirtless) man with a wheelbarrow full of what he hoped was mulch and not manure. He snorted softly and moved closer to the counter to try and get a better look. What did they think this was, a firehouse? Still, he was a handsome man, he thought; the calendar was just glossy enough Castiel couldn’t get details like hair or eye color, but the wide set of his shoulders was clearly visible and certainly pleasing enough to look at.
He pulled his attention away when a kid who couldn’t have been older than twenty came up with a cart piled with boxes and a large manilla envelope.
“What’s this?” Castiel picked up the envelope and turned it over, but the other side was blank, as well.
“Oh, um,” the kid stammered. He blushed. “It’s a complimentary packet, Mr., uh, Singer has us hand them out now—it’s got local trade shows and coupons and, umm, there’s a copy of the calendar in there too…”
Of course there would be a copy of the calendar. Castiel gave the kid a wry smile. “I’ll make sure my sister gets these, then, thank you.”
The kid followed him out with the cart and they got the car packed up in short order.
Before he made his escape, though, Castiel peeked at Mr. March one last time. Without the harsh glare of overhead fluorescent lights it was much easier to note the startling handsomeness of the man’s features. He had kind eyes and a charming, if slightly insincere, smile. He got the impression the man was sharing in some private joke. Or perhaps laughing at himself; the joke was on him, being in a nursery supplier calendar, after all. Castiel resisted the impulse to flip through the rest of the calendar. He wrestled it back inside the envelope instead. It’s a good thing he’d be delivering all of this stuff tomorrow, Castiel thought. Let Hannah deal with it, and good riddance.
A week later found Castiel sitting in his car and scowling at the unimaginatively designed edifice of Singer’s Wholesale. The view didn’t help his mood, but he might as well be honest and admit Hannah had already ruined it for him. As far as he was concerned, she still owed him from the last trip, and he had no idea how she’d inveigled him into running another errand for her. Nevertheless, she had, and here he was. On a Saturday morning, no less.
The parking lot was packed and he’d had to squeeze into a teeny-tiny spot, even by Prius standards. He opened his car door and grimaced; to further complicate matters, the weather had seen fit to dump a foot of snow on them yesterday, the remnants of which were still piled up between parking spots and crowded against the building. He steeled himself and tromped through the snow with what he knew were exaggeratedly high steps. Despite his efforts, cold seeped through his flimsy socks and bit at his toes.
The young blonde lady at the counter was able to mollify his mood somewhat. A quick glance at her shirt gave her name as Joanna. She had a friendly smile, but it didn’t entirely conceal what he suspected was a mischievous nature as she looked him over. She bit her lip and flipped through her pile of invoices, but kept glancing up at him every few moments.
“Do I have something on my face?”
“Nope, not at all!” She smiled widely (suspiciously so) as she held out the order slip for him to sign. “Someone will be right up with your order.”
She disappeared around the corner with the signed invoice, leaving Castiel to wait with rapidly numbing toes. He surreptitiously ran a hand over his mouth in case she had been lying for the sake of politeness and moved to the side of the line.
After a minute his eyes began to wander in search of something to look at. But the posters were the same as his last visit, and hadn’t been interesting to begin with. His gaze roamed along the wall behind the counter and found—naturally—the calendar. It was still March, thus the calendar showed the same man as it had last time. Castiel frowned to himself.
He hadn’t thought about the calendar or the man since his last visit, and was a little surprised (although gratified) to realize it. He was adult enough to admit he’d been very taken by Mr. March’s looks, although there had been something beyond his handsomeness that had struck Castiel; he’d made sure to give the calendar directly to Hannah rather than risk becoming enamored of a half-naked man he’d never even met. Hannah had opened the calendar randomly to August, which featured a large, barrel-chested bearded man in suspenders. She had blushed so deeply Castiel could have mistaken her for one of her heirloom tomatoes. That alone had been worth his own private embarrassment when he’d mentioned Mr. March, and she’d given him a rather knowing look. Come to think of it, Hannah had been—
Castiel blushed and stepped back from his calendar perusal as he became aware of someone standing next to him.
“Shady Valley Nursery?” the man asked.
Castiel did a double-take and glanced back at the calendar. Then (slowly, inevitably) his gaze slid back to the man in front of him, confirming half-formed spur of the moment daydreams really do come true. But, his first impression had been off: the man in the calendar—the man standing before him—was gloriously attractive, and not simply handsome.
Somewhat distantly, Castiel noticed the details he couldn’t have before, like the smattering of barely-there freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheeks, the reddish-brown stubble which only served to enhance the firm line of his jaw. A smear of dirt streaked across his left cheek, and Castiel felt his lip curl automatically. Dirt under the nails showed the man didn’t often wear the gloves tucked into the pockets of his thick Carhartt jacket. He’d been working hard, judging by the thin sheen of sweat on his face and the way his hair was mussed, which somehow wasn’t nearly enough of a turn-off as it should have been.
The man looked up from his clipboard and Castiel accidentally made eye contact. This was a grave error. He had sworn off greenery years ago, but the man’s clear, mossy green eyes made him want to wade into their depths and never resurface. They more than made up for the dirt. They also, combined with everything else, provided far too much stimulation to his delicate equilibrium. He froze, locked in an unfortunate staring contest with a man who was definitely not amused with how Castiel was wasting his time.
“Dude,” the man said. “You ‘Shady Valley Nursery’, or not?”
Castiel blinked. Yes. Yes, that was the name of the family business. Yet the words were stuck in his throat. “Um,” he said, intelligently.
The man raised his brows, then returned Castiel’s panicked once-over with a very deliberate and scathing one of his own. His gaze fell to Castiel’s clothing, which Castiel knew to be slightly casual for the office, even for overtime on the weekend. He had felt good about his appearance before, but now was very conscious of his trenchcoat (a bit optimistic of a choice, given the snow), a neatly pressed dress shirt under an eggplant-colored light sweater, fitted dark jeans and his burnished brown leather (and now wet) shoes. (He was rather overdressed for a garden center, but did they expect him to roll around in the dirt so he fit in?) The man took all this in in one long, exaggerated glance, then snorted and gave Cas a very insincere smile. It was not a kind smile, not like the one in the calendar. There was no shared joke here.
Now, Castiel considered himself fairly unflappable under most circumstances. He’d been described as stoic, self-controlled, steadfast (even ‘puffed up with his own importance’, compliments of his brother Gabriel); he knew they weren’t favorable reviews, but he’d taken them as such, anyway. It was simply how he was. There were a very few rare times where he’d been overwhelmed and frozen on the spot. Gabriel’s bachelor party had been one of these occasions. The party Gabriel threw for Hannah’s his-and-her bachelor/bachelorette party had gone very similarly: with Castiel locked in abject terror under a writhing, bored, half-naked exotic dancer. In fact, Gabriel had been responsible for the majority of these instances in his life.
And now, it appeared, this man had done the same.
It was time to get out of here. Castiel gathered himself with a deep breath.
“My car is this way,” he said, and strode to the door without waiting to see if he was being followed.
The man pushed the cart at a speed Castiel could probably match if he were kitted out for running. Since he was not, and since he was rather annoyed, he slowed his pace to a stroll and (only somewhat guiltily) watched the man’s attractive backside as he worked to push the laden cart out the bay doors. The man quickly realized what was happening and brought the cart to a screeching halt and turned baleful eyes back on Castiel.
“Don’t got all day, man,” he said, and Castiel (still not feeling very guilty) apologized. He led them in the direction of his Prius. When it became apparent to the man which car was Castiel’s, he burst into laughter.
“Is there a problem?”
“This all isn’t gonna fit in that grass-powered go-kart.”
Castiel watched dispassionately as the man doubled-over and snickered. He was calm and in control. He was not becoming upset, and he felt no ire whatsoever, despite the completely unrelated twitch developing above his left eye. This man was absolutely not getting to him. He took a deep breath.
“It most certainly will. It’s a very versatile vehicle.”
“It won’t. We can get half of it packed—”
“It will fit.”
“—but you’ll have to come back for the rest of it.”
“It. Will. Fit.” Castiel unlocked the Prius and began folding down the rear seats.
“Look, man. I’m good with spatial stuff. It’s too small for some of these—okay, sure, just shove it in—no, no, no, don’t do it that way… Dude, this is my job.”
“Then why don’t you make yourself useful and shove it in yourself?”
“ You shove— Okay, okay, move over.”
There was a brief scuffle as the man tried to wrestle a particularly bulky box out of Castiel’s hands. Castiel felt his shoes slide along the slick pavement, but just then the man’s hand brushed against his own, and every atom in his body diverted attention to the feel of the man’s warm and slightly rough skin.
This, of course, proved disastrous.
“Oh, I’ll shove it in, alright,” the man muttered, and gave a final, firm tug which wrested the box out of Castiel’s grasp.
It also succeeded in wresting Castiel’s feet from under him.
He’d always thought the way people describe accidents as happening in ‘slow motion’ to be ridiculous and overly dramatized.
And yet, that’s precisely what was happening at right this moment. He felt his balance shift, he threw his arms out and began windmilling them… and then everything sped up and he was on his backside in a pile of snow.
He blinked up at the milky grey sky. A handsome head popped into his field of vision.
“Shit, dude, you alright?”
Castiel assessed. He was cold. His skin was tingling and his butt was numb, but, he thought, it was from the snow, not the fall.
“I believe I will survive,” he said, and tried to get his elbows under him.
“Not what I asked, and here, lemme help.” The man reached down for him.
Later, when he’d had time to think about it (and think about it, and think about it, and think about it ), he couldn’t fathom what came over him. The man tried to grasp Castiel’s arm to haul him upright, but Castiel grabbed the man instead. He tugged, and the man came down.
Right on top of him.
Because Castiel wasn’t good enough at these things to realize if he wanted to avoid being fallen on, he should have rolled to the side.
So now he was cold and tingly and, yes, his butt may be slightly bruised, and he had a handsome and annoyed (and warm) man lying on top of him in the midst of a busy parking lot.
It didn’t last long. The man scrambled off of Castiel as if he’d been scalded; his boots slid in the slushy snow and he lost his balance and nearly sterilized Castiel with a misplaced hand, then he slid to the side and fell back in the snow.
Castiel closed his eyes. The heat of his embarrassment—and perhaps a smidgen of arousal—washed through him, there then gone, leaving the snow to seep through his jacket and jeans steadily.
The man rolled to his knees and put some distance between them. He got to his feet and brushed himself off. “Well, uh.” He looked away, toward the building. “That was awkward.”
Castiel grunted assent—or maybe it was a groan, echoing his soul shriveling in mortification—and used the trunk of his car to haul himself upright. Because he couldn’t make his brain form words, he settled for brushing snow off of himself.
The next few minutes passed in a blur. The man packed the offending box neatly into the trunk. The remaining boxes followed with remarkable and heretofore unseen efficiency. He watched the man work in stiff silence; every word, every action he’d taken in this man’s presence had led to disaster, so keeping his mouth shut was surely a wise decision.
To Castiel’s relief, everything fit. His insistence that it would had been entirely due to his pigheadedness, and he certainly never wanted to show his face here ever again, much less make a return trip later. Before he knew what had happened, the man had disappeared back inside the warehouse, and Castiel had already driven halfway to his office. Perhaps he was becoming ill. He normally didn’t have these lapses in memory, or such a poor perception of the movement of time.
Or, if he were honest: he’d simply never been so flustered in his life.
After the Incident, Castiel gave Hannah an ultimatum: if she needed his help, he would help at the nursery. No more trips to the wholesaler.
She accepted, no questions asked. Hannah had never been the prying type, and Castiel had never been more thankful in his life, even though his newfound gratitude explained his presence in her greenhouse one sunny and unseasonably warm weekend in April, up to his elbows in potting soil.
“Don’t you remember how to mix soil, Castiel?” Hannah teased.
He frowned at her. She looked more like a 50s housewife than a business owner, with her hair tucked back under a patterned cotton scarf. The dirt-stained smock she wore diluted the effect somewhat, but her rather delicate manner contributed more than enough to the illusion. He and Hannah had always been fairly alike, worlds apart from their other sibling, Gabriel. Yet Hannah somehow managed to take Castiel’s harsher traits and tone them down. She seemed less cynical and sarcastic, and although her sense of humor was less obvious, she did still possess one. It was probably why she had managed to get married, and he was still single.
Castiel took himself to task. He wasn’t usually this introspective, but the past couple of weeks he’d been unable to avoid taking stock and always finding himself lacking. He knew the reason, of course: he’d reached a place in his life where he thought publicly fighting over boxes and rolling round on the ground with a grown man was acceptable.
“Earth to Castiel…”
He looked up at Hannah.
“The soil needs more water.” She held out a jug, and he added it to the tub he worked from. “There, good. Now mix it up again. I’m going to bring over the rest of the seedlings from the house.”
The rich smell of the soil intensified with the added moisture, and dark clumps clung to his hands as he worked his way through the mass. He was assailed by memories of his mother teaching them how to do this back when they were young children. It had been a game to Gabriel, who didn’t mind getting dirty (or getting Castiel dirty). Hannah took it seriously, and carefully filled each pot to a uniform level. Castiel had always hated working in the greenhouse. He hated the way the dirt got under his nails and the way it itched when it got caked on his arms or, inevitably, his face. No matter how thoroughly he cleaned, he couldn’t remove all traces of it. It stained him, inside and out.
As he got older, he resented more about the family business than just how messy it was. They were all expected to help after school, and early Saturday mornings were reserved for the farmer’s market. Castiel was not very social, nor particularly athletic, but he’d taken up track in high school so he had something to keep him away from home after school. (He’d ended up enjoying running, but that’s beside the point.)
He’d considered himself lucky when he escaped to college, and had never been more shocked than when Hannah returned home to take over the business after her graduation. He’d spent his life thinking they wanted similar things, to get away from their isolated childhood, to see and experience more of the world.
Still, it had all worked out for Hannah. She was happy. She enjoyed working with plants and digging in the dirt. She’d met her husband at the farmer’s market, and he had fallen so in love with her he gave up his home in the city and moved thirty miles into the country. That kind of devotion was something Castiel could only dream about.
He huffed. Here he was, alone for two minutes and already maudlin and mopey.
At least he had the dratted calendar to keep him company.
He glared at it, posted up next to the greenhouse furnace. He’d noticed it immediately, of course, but since his sister had been in the greenhouse with him the whole morning, he’d had to pretend it didn’t exist. Hannah had forgotten to change over to April, so the handsome man of the parking lot incident still smiled down at Castiel. He wanted the friendly joking smile, he realized suddenly. He was tired of always getting the aloof pasted-on smiles he received from co-workers and cashiers and baristas.
That does it, he thought. He shook the wet soil off his hands and carefully wiped them on the kitchen apron Hannah had supplied, since she hadn’t had any clean smocks to spare.
He marched over to the offending calendar and flipped the page to April.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered when he saw the new photo.
He flipped through the other months.
There were only five people in the whole thing! It figures he’d get stuck with the same man for March and April. Castiel wasn’t sure which was worse: half-naked mulching for March, or the (only slightly more family-friendly) image of the man loading a delivery truck, bent-over in tight work pants and looking over his shoulder at the camera in surprise for April. A second man was in this one, though. He had longish hair framing his sharply handsome face, and he, too, looked over at the camera with a surprised expression.
What kind of pinup calendar was this?
Castiel flipped through the rest of the pages again, then groaned aloud at his obliviousness. Most of the shots were, in fact, candid—taken while the employees were working. Mr. March hadn’t been trying to be seductive, it had been warm out when he was mulching. The delivery truck photo from this month didn’t show him bending over seductively, either. He had just been surprised by the photographer. Castiel had been so extremely laser-focused on his attraction to the man he’d ignored all other details.
As if to mock him, the sound of a truck backing up came to Castiel’s attention.
Hannah hadn’t mentioned getting a delivery today, had she? He thought back. Or perhaps he hadn’t been listening. He’d been very mopey and distracted lately. But back to the issue at hand: he couldn’t possibly be unlucky enough to have Mr. March as the delivery man, could he?
He peeked his head outside the greenhouse door.
The truck was stopped in the driveway, but his view of the cab was blocked by a towering pallet of soil bags. Clearly visible on the rear of the truck was the Singer Wholesale logo.
Castiel retreated and softly closed the door. He fretted. He paced. He actually wrung his hands. He had just decided to escape to the house when the greenhouse door popped open, and there stood Mr. March along with the other (extremely tall) man from the calendar photo.
“Singer’s Wholesale! Where do you want the—oh.” The man’s expression dropped into something wary and reserved.
“Hel—” Castiel said. His voice didn’t work, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello.”
“Hi,” the man said. He’d shed his jacket in the warmer weather and had on the company polo. Dean was embroidered onto it, just above his heart.
They stared at each other for a beat.
“You guys know each other?” the giant asked. “Or you just being weird on principle?”
“Shut it, Sammy. Go get the forklift ready if you can’t be civil.”
“It’s Sam ,” the man muttered, but he stalked off toward the truck.
“So, uh… I never got your name,” Dean said.
“Castiel.” There was a lump in his throat which prevented him from saying anything other than one-word sentences.
They stared at each other for some few seconds again.
“Do CFOs often do the transplanting?” Dean asked.
“Huh?” came Castiel’s reply.
“You, uh, looks like you’re getting ready to do transplanting, right?”
“Yes,” Castiel said, showcasing, once again, his marked intelligence.
Dean waited for him to continue, but Castiel couldn’t find anything to say. His heart was thudding through his veins, too loud in his ears for him to think properly. It didn’t help when Dean licked his lips. Castiel was suddenly and inexplicably extremely conscious of his appearance. He was wearing sweatpants, for Heaven’s sake—
“Love at first bite, huh?” Dean said, and Castiel blinked at him like a confused owl before he followed Dean’s gaze down toward his chest.
—and he was also wearing this stupid apron.
“My brother-in-law likes to bake,” he said, as if it actually explained anything at all. But at least the spell seemed to be broken.
Dean nodded, and he cracked a small smile. A real one. It was nice. Then the smile faded, and Dean said, “By brother-in-law, you mean…”
“My sister’s husband, of course.”
“Of course. That’s just—just great. Great news. Fantastic. So, uh, this a family business then, Cas—Castiel?”
“It was my mother’s. It’s my sister’s now. I’d been avoiding it for ages, but she needed extra help this year and I got roped into it somehow.”
“That’s nice. So,” Dean repeated. He seemed nervous, the way he kept looking around the greenhouse and running his hands down the thighs of his pants. He took a couple of steps toward Castiel and peered into the soil-filled tub. “What’re you going to be transplanting?”
“I have no idea,” Castiel said. It was strange how the dynamic had so quickly shifted from their last fractious encounter, but it was pleasant having a real conversation with someone. Beneath the pleasantry, though, ran an undercurrent of tension he had difficulty placing. He didn’t want to be too hopeful about reciprocation, but on his part, he’s certain he had been staring straight into Dean’s eyes for the better portion of several minutes. He was a little dazed by the experience.
Dean took another step closer. “You have a little something…” He reached out and brushed his thumb along Castiel’s cheek, and Castiel stumbled backwards in shock. The back of his legs hit the slatted surface behind him and upended a tray of prepped pots. Soil flew everywhere and clung to him and Dean, who had gotten clumps in his hair and a dusting on his face.
“Oh…”
Dean, surprisingly, laughed. “You’re kinda clutzy, aren’t you?”
Castiel was about to reply he’d never had this problem ever before in his entire life, but Dean kept talking: “You just had soil smudged on your face, dude. Trust you to drag me right down with you again.” He laughed again, and Castiel blushed a deep Cayenne pepper red.
Dean calmed himself and dipped his head to a point behind Castiel. “I have a confession to make,” he said, and Castiel turned to follow his gaze toward the calendar.
“Yes, Dean?”
“So, ah, I saw you. At the warehouse, weeks ago. You were waiting for your pick-up and I thought you were cute. Jo was being… Jo, and she noticed and, uh. She bribed Alfie to sneak a calendar into your stuff. I was pissed, damn thing’s hardly flattering. So, uh, that might be part of why I was so rude to you the next time.”
“Oh,” Castiel replied. It was comforting to think maybe he hadn’t been the only person acting like an idiot, that he wasn’t the only one affected. “I had started to wonder if the calendar was meant for distribution to the public. It seems very…”
Dean groaned and slapped a hand to his forehead. He dragged it down across his face, turning the dusting of soil into a smear along his right cheek.
Castiel’s lips twitched.
“Yeah, heh, the short version is, few of us lost a bet. Bobby—the owner, he’s basically my uncle—and Jo—she’s like a sister to me, even though she’s annoying as fu—”
“Dean.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.” Castiel leaned forward and kissed him. Dean smelled like soil, but underneath that, fainter, was his own smell, spicy and woody. His lips were a little chapped, and he was too shocked to respond at first, but then he was kissing back and it was perfect. It was just over too soon.
“I disagree, by the way. The photos are very flattering,” Castiel said when they broke apart.
And Dean was speechless.