Work Text:
Dean could change a tire, okay? And he could… well, he could put gas in his Baby, too. He wasn’t completely useless with cars. He was just… not as ‘car inclined’ as his mode of transport would suggest.
Baby had been gifted to him when his father passed away and Dean had been trying to do right by his dad—he really had!—but most of the time the car had a mind of its own. It was huge and black and went too quick and guzzled fuel faster than his wallet could replace it and now there was something clunking in the front bit of the car and that was way beyond his expertise. He had been standing on the side of the road for five minutes and he still couldn’t even find the clippy thingy that held the front flap thingy down.
Another car zoomed past him, tooting merrily, and he irritably wished he had literally any other car. Motorists always saw what he was driving and assumed that he knew what he was doing. They obviously thought he was just… filling the tires up. Or something. Whatever it was that car people did when they pulled over on the side of the road.
Dean poked at the bumper with his shoe and then knocked on the top of the hood like it was some kind of door. He really hoped it would spring open like a door. He looked at it hopefully but the whole thing remained steadfastly motionless.
“I hate you,” Dean told it sullenly. Sam had opened the stupid front thing last week. Dean had seen Sam open it. This was supposed to be the easy bit.
Scrubbing his face, he leaned back into the open passenger door and popped the glovebox. His dogeared copy of the car manual was inside. Engines and axles and gear sticks were a mystery but books? Books he could do. He flipped again to the index but there was still nothing labelled “how to open the front part” or “how to stop the banging noise.” Nevertheless, he dutifully began trawling through, looking for something (anything!) that might be of use. With his other hand, he dialled work.
“Midstate Library, this is Pamela.”
“Hey, Pam, it’s Dean.”
“Uh oh, here’s trouble.”
“I know, I know. I’m going to be late. Can you cover me for an hour?”
“Hot date?”
“Har har.”
Pam sniggered. “I’ll cover you doll. But you have to babysit for me next Friday.”
Dean kicked the bumper as he talked. “Yeah, yeah. But only if you tell your kids to stop calling me Big D.”
Pam laughed harder. Dean was about to interrupt her when someone tapped him on the shoulder and he jumped, dropping the manual as he spun around.
And then he dropped the phone, too.
“You need some help, Big D?” asked the pinkest lips Dean had ever seen.
“Um,” he said, in a stunning display of wit and intelligence.
Blue eyes blinked at him and he was pretty sure he was being asked a question by the hottest guy on the planet but his brain had been momentarily shut down by a sweep of sex hair that was dark as sin and shaved on one side. Oh yes, said his brain. Oh yes we like that.
The sex hair dropped, and Dean got a top-down view as the guy knelt, which put his tangled mess of I-wonder-what-that-would-feel-like-clenched-in-my-fingers hair somewhere in the region of Dean’s crotch. Christ.
Dean didn’t have too long to enjoy and/or memorise the moment as the guy quickly stood back up, holding out Dean’s phone and the car manual.
“Oh.” Dean blinked, blinked again, and took the proffered items. A length of time that was totally an abnormal length of time passed. “Thanks,” he finally managed.
“No sweat, dude.” There was another awkward pause. Eventually the guy gestured to Dean’s hand. “Do you, uh… want to finish that?”
Dean looked down. His phone was still blinking. He put it to his ear. “Dean?” Pamela was calling. “Dean? Hello? Are you okay?”
“All good,” Dean said, his voice coming a mile away from his mouth. “See you in an hour.”
“Wait! What happened! Whose voice can I—” Dean hung up.
“Huh,” said the guy. “Girlfriend?”
Dean gaped at him. This guy—the single most attractive human being to ever grace Dean’s presence—thought that Dean had a girlfriend. As though Dean could possibly be interesting enough to have a girlfriend.
The awkward pause lasted even longer this time, until Dean’s mouth took pity on him and formed the word “No” without bothering to notify his brain.
“Oh. Okay. Well, uh. You need a hand, here?”
Oh yeah. Both of your hands, if possible. “Yeah,” Dean said on autopilot, not knowing what the guy was talking about until he turned away, and those laser-blues were finally facing somewhere other than directly into his soul.
Like a breath of fresh air, he could think clearly again.
The guy was facing Baby. Oh. Duh. Because he was offering to help Dean with the car. The car.
“It’s clunking,” Dean said, in his hundredth example of eloquence for the afternoon.
“She’s a real beauty. Mind if I take a look?”
“Please.”
The guy slid a finger beneath the hood and… there! The lid thing popped open! What had he pressed? Dean craned his neck. He had poked the exact same place, he was sure of it.
“How did you do that!”
The guy looked at him, then looked at the car, then back at him. “This isn’t your car, is it?” he finally ventured. Dean went red.
“It is!” he defended. “Well, my dad’s anyway. But it’s mine now. It’s not, like… stolen, or anything.”
The guy raised an eyebrow and turned back to the interior. “Sure thing, hot stuff. It’s Castiel, by the way.”
Dean leaned over his shoulder and tried to see anything that looked like it was called a Castiel. He didn’t remember reading anything by that name. Maybe it was a faulty part?
“Where?” he eventually asked.
“Where what?”
“Where’s the Castiel?”
The guy snorted so hard the back of his head hit the raised hood. “Oh my God. I’m Castiel. Cas. How have you… do you know anything about the car you’re driving?”
“I read like, every book we had in 629,” Dean defended.
“What’s 629?”
Dean blushed. Again. “The, uh… car section. At the library. Dewey decimal 629.”
“Dewey decimal…” The guy—Cas—looked totally stunned
“It’s an, um, a system we use to order books. You know,” Dean waved his hand. “At the library.” He congratulated himself on yet another example of his master’s degree in English.
“I know what the Dewey decimal system is,” Cas said, bemused. “I’ve just never met anyone who had it memorised."
“Comes with the territory.”
“You a librarian?”
“Yeah…”
“And why, pray tell, does a librarian need 275 horses?”
“I, uh… don’t have any horses.”
Cas stared at him. “Are you even real, dude?”
Dean had to think on that one. He had just had a five-minute conversation with the honest-to-god personification of beauty. Who was now telling him about horses. Quite possibly none of this was real.
“I guess?” he hazarded.
“Okay, well listen, stranger—”
“Dean.”
“Huh?”
“Dean Winchester.”
“Right. Well, listen, Dean, this thing here is a—” he looked at Dean, rolled his eyes, continued “—well, never mind what it’s called, but it’s kaput.” He made a slicing motion across his neck.
“I fixed it yesterday,” Dean lamented. He had been so proud of himself, too. He’d followed Sam’s instructions to the letter.
“Honestly, the idea of you going near this thing with a wrench is giving me anxiety, but for the sake of figuring out what’s wrong, do you wanna tell me what you did?”
“My brother told me to put a nut wing screw on that saucepan thing in the middle there.”
“You horrify me,” Cas deadpanned. “A nut wing. The saucepan thing. Good God. It’s an air filter, man. Please tell me you didn’t try to do anything without adult supervision.”
Dean scowled. “I did it just fine on my own, thanks.”
“Wanna show me?”
Dean bent over the car and Cas leaned over him, so their sides were touching from shoulder to knee. Dean promptly forgot what he was doing.
They stayed like that, leaning over the car, for another absurdly awkward length of time. Dean spent the entire time telling his lungs to start breathing and then, once they’d started, to stop breathing so damn fast.
“Ah,” Cas eventually ventured. “The saucepan thing?”
Since blushing seemed to be the Activity Of The Day, Dean did a bit more of that.
“Right,” he said. “Right, yeah, I, ah, I put the nut thingy right… here.” He tapped the saucepan.
Cas leaned even further, pressing Dean’s hips into Baby’s bumper. “Here?” he asked, oblivious to how Dean was busily trying to remember which way was up.
“Uh. Yeah.”
Dean watched as Cas squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Did you, by chance, use a wrench?”
“…No?”
“So you just… put the wing nut… right here?”
“Uh. Yeah? That’s exactly what my bro said to do. Put the nut on the thing.”
Cas’s face went through a range of emotions before it finally picked hilarity and he fell back, howling with laughter. “You have to screw it in Dean oh my God did you just fucking place it on the top I absolutely cannot.”
Well, now that he thought about it… yeah, actually, that made sense.
“Fuck,” he whispered. Cas fell into another fit of laughter and Dean, typically, blushed. “What do I do?” he asked, when Cas looked like he wasn’t going to get any oxygen into his lungs any time soon.
Cas wiped his eyes and tried to speak through hiccups of giggles. “You have to, have to get the, oh my god this is the best day, you have to get the nut out.”
“Huh?”
“I bet that’s what’s clunking. The nut’s just banging around inside.”
Dean looked at the jungle of wires and metal bits under Baby’s hood. He’d have better luck finding a sonnet in aisle 12. “But where?” he moaned.
“Dude, chill. It’s probably under here. Look, I’ll show you.” And with complete disregard for Dean’s imminent aneurysm, he rolled his sleeves up, grabbed Dean’s wrist, and zipped their fingers so the back of Dean’s hand was tucked into his palm. Then he dragged Dean forward and stuck their joined hands down between two metal things. Dean’s body easily curved beneath Cas’s, mirroring their hands. He desperately didn’t think about how this would feel if he was naked. Or if Cas was. “Feel it?” Cas asked, and for a moment Dean thought he meant his heart beating right out of his chest, which he absolutely could feel. But then he realised that Cas’s fingers were directing his own to feel around the edges of something hard and smooth where a little metal thing was wedged. It suddenly shifted beneath their fingers and he tried to draw away but Cas urged him forward. “Go on, dude. Grab it.”
“What if I pull out something important?”
“Like I would let you.” Alright. Okay. That seemed fair enough. Dean pinched at the little thing, and Cas squeezed their joined hands back out. “Easy, see?”
Dean was holding a little nut. The one he had put in only a few days ago. He wanted to hurl it across the road. “Screw you,” he told it.
“Preferably, yeah,” Cas said. It took Dean a moment to realise his unintentional pun. He was clearly not on his A game. Evidence was suggesting he was barely even on his B game. Cas probably thought he was some kind of thief with half a brain cell. Which, in all fairness, he kind of felt like. “Okay, give that here.” Cas swiped the wing nut and pulled a wrench out of his pocket because apparently he was the kind of guy who carried wrenches around in his pocket. Which was totally not making Dean blush hot. “It just twists on to the air filter cover.” Cas demonstrated. “The saucepan frisbee looking thing, see?”
“I see,” said Dean, who wasn’t even looking at the air frisbee whatever. Cas’s rolled sleeves had revealed a trail of tattoo feathers up his forearm, and Dean was distracted, dammit. Now that he was closer he could see that the feathers were tipped in blue and… was silver tattoo ink even possible? Some of the feathers had little devil horns on the tips.
“So then it fastens down like that, got it?”
“Yes, I’ve got it,” Dean didn’t say. “You’re an excellent demonstrator,” he also didn’t say, “and I think there’s a lot you could show me, perhaps over dinner next week?” In fact, what he actually blurted was, “I like your tattoo.”
Good one, Dean.
Cas raised an eyebrow. “Uh. Thanks?” He leaned away from the car’s interior, and there was grease on his hands and the tanned muscle of his forearms. Dean gulped, and then, in the flirtiest move he had ever pulled, he drew his shirt collar down, revealing his own tattoo.
“I, uh. Have one too.”
Cas’s other eyebrow went up to join the first. “Um? It’s cool?”
Dean looked down to make sure he was definitely showing off the tattoo. A series of symbols inside a circle of flame emblazoned just below his collarbone. When he looked back up Cas was staring at him with an expression that looked embarrassingly like concern. Because a stranger was stripping in front of him. Christ. Obviously he didn’t understand the tattoo. Dean covered it back up, but not before his blush had creeped down to stain it red, no doubt in an imitation of his face.
“It’s an, ah… a librarian in-joke, I guess,” he said, lamely. He started fantasising about Kitty Pride maybe sending him back in time to start this whole interaction over again. Cas’s face had morphed from concern into something that could have been interest but was probably apprehension. “So. Uh. Thanks. Cas. For the…” he gestured at the nut and imagined the ground opening up to swallow him whole. “What do I owe you?”
“You can drop by my shop tomorrow is what you can do.”
“Your shop?”
“Angel’s. On Tenth Avenue. Looks like your dad took good care of the car, but you need to get it serviced regularly if you’re not doing it yourself. And I’ll give you a good price if you take me to dinner first.”
Dean was already agreeing before he heard the last bit, and then his tongue turned into a piece of wood and he didn’t quite make it through the sentence. “What?” he squeaked.
Cas laughed. “Don’t worry, dude. Dinner’s optional. I’ll still give you a discount.”
Dean had exactly zero seconds to sort out his shit in time to tell Cas that yes, actually, dinner would be freaking fantastic. He had barely gotten over even being asked before Cas was laughing it off and handing him the company card. “Forget it, man. I thought you were flirting. Let’s stick with a car service, huh?”
Dean’s brain said “NO WAIT I AM VERY INTERESTED” and his mouth said “O-okay” and then Cas was walking back to his motorbike, a gleaming red monstrosity, waving over his shoulder as Dean continued to not say “You look like what a rose smells like and I want to put my tongue in your mouth and also dinner with you would be the highlight of my entire existence.”
Cas swung his leg over the bike and kicked it into gear and drove away as Dean waved stupidly from behind a fog of his own brain yelling at him. He looked down at the card.
ANGEL’S AUTOMOTIVES AND REPAIRS
Fuck.
If the med sci books were put in the biology section then Dean would be none the wiser by the end of his shift. They could have been stacked in an entirely different aisle and he still wouldn’t have realised.
“So let me get this straight. You turned down the first date invitation you’ve had in Three. Goddamn. Years.”
“Pam you didn’t see him. You would have been speechless too.”
Pam took out the Roman history book that he’d just put into the YA shelf. “I’m picturing like a Clark Kent kinda vibe.”
“No, no, no it was better.”
“Mr. Darcy?” Pam swooned dramatically against the nearest shelf.
“Yes! Except, like, replace all the awkwardness with tattoos and laughter.”
“So not like Darcy at all actually.”
“No but his hair and he fixed my car and oh my god Pam did I tell you about the tattoos?”
“Yeah I especially liked the part where you showed him your dumb-ass tatt and that somehow convinced him to ask you to dinner.”
“It’s not dumb!”
“Dean. Honey. I love you but you’re useless. Showing people your creepy witch ink is not a valid method of flirting.”
He threw a pamphlet at the back of her head. “Just coz you don’t know Enochian.”
“No one knows Enocky-whatever. It’s deader than Latin. It’s so dead it was never even alive.” She grabbed her empty mug. “You want a coffee?”
Dean slumped into the chair at the front desk and looked morosely at the half dozen people milling around. “’spose so,” he muttered.
“Don’t mope while I’m gone, doll.”
Dean set about ignoring that advice. He pulled out the business card and looked at it dejectedly. There were wings and a lop-sided halo around the name Angel’s, and when he looked closer he saw that the A had little devil horns keeping the halo up.
I bet Cas designed this card.
The phone interrupted his boo-hoo session.
What, a guy can’t get even five minutes of me-time to regret his entire existence?
“Midstate, this is Dean.”
“Well that answers that, then!”
“Hello?”
“I was just checking to make sure you got to work safely.”
Dean promptly stubbed his toe on the nearest available surface. Which was actually an achievement because he hadn’t even been walking.
“Cas?”
“Hey, Big D! No more banging from that gorgeous car I hope?”
He said the word banging oh my god.
“No,” he squeaked.
“Okay, well, uh. Good to know!”
Ask him to dinner ask him to dinner ask him to dinner ask him to suck your dick and then fuck you into next week no wait just dinner just ask him to dinner.
“So,” said Cas, “uh, I’ll see you around?”
“Food,” Dean blurted.
“Huh?”
“Beer?”
“Hey Dean I think your phone line needs fixing.”
No it’s me that needs fixing. He put his head in his hands. Come on, Dean. Just ask him to dinner.
“Dinner?”
“Are you just saying words?” Cas sounded confused and concerned which was not at all the kind of thing Dean wanted him to sound like right now.
“I like words,” he managed. And then upended the wastepaper bin and put it on his head. I like words. He was going to be the death of himself.
“You feeling alright, Dean?”
“Dinner would be nice,” he finally choked out from underneath the bin.
“Come again?”
“I would have liked to say yes to dinner earlier and I didn’t and then you drove away and dinner would be nice please.”
Cas made a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter. “You want to go to dinner with me?”
“Please.”
“Well why didn’t you say so, gorgeous?”
If Dean had any plans to construct any more fully-formed sentences, the plans went out the window at that.
“Gorgeous?” he squeaked.
“Does the library close at 5?”
“Uh.”
Someone knocked on the outside of the bin and Dean carefully removed it.
“Dean, honey?” Pam was holding a mug of coffee out to him. “You doing okay in there?”
He stared at her beseechingly.
“Dean? Is 5 okay?”
Oh god what time did the library close?
Pam took the phone from his numb fingers and replaced it with the coffee, which he didn’t even try drinking because he was pretty sure he didn’t know here his mouth was.
“Midstate library, this is Pamela.” Pam began to pick up the discarded paperwork one-handed, putting it back in the paper bin as she went. “No, this is Pam,” she said. “What? No, that’s… Oh!” She grinned at Dean. “Yes, he’s fine! We close at six! Don’t you dare be late, doll. And if you’re as sexy as Dean says you are maybe I’ll meet you outside too.”
“PAMELA!”
Pam danced out of reach as she said something else distracting and probably dirty. Dean spilled coffee on the desk as he tried to grab the phone back and then he quickly had to mop it up which meant he missed whatever she said at the end, though he couldn’t miss the saucy wink she sent him as she handed the phone back.
“He’s coming at six you lucky idiot.”
Oh my god,” Dean said weakly.
“Excuse me but do you have Fifty Shades of Grey?”
Dean left the customers to Pam and hid in the language aisle with his coffee.
Cas arrived at 6:01 which meant Dean had only been without oxygen for one he’s-not-coming-it-was-all-a-dream minute.
“Have fun,” Pam said conspiratorially as she started walking towards the parking lot. “Remember to show him how well you drive stick.”
Dean steadfastly refused to think about any entendres associated with sticks.
“Hey!” he called to Cas instead. “I’ll be down in a second.”
Cas waved and kicked his bike into park. Dean sternly forced the panic attack to go back to where it belonged way, way down deep. He took his time locking the door to get his heart rate under control but as he turned back around he was just in time to see Cas bound up the last few stairs, trip on the top one, and fall face-first at the library entrance.
“Oh my god! Are you okay?” He immediately forgot his panic as he rushed to help Cas up. Which absolutely necessitated putting a hand on Cas’s shoulder and oh god was that pure muscle under the shirt or what?
“Shit, I’m okay. Only thing injured is my pride.” Cas brushed himself off. “I’m just nervous around you, I guess.”
The panic-attack refused to resurface while Cas was so obviously flustered. Dean linked his arm through Cas’s. “Would driving my car to the restaurant help soothe the injury?” he said.
Cas clutched his chest. “Oh, sweetheart. I thought you’d never ask!”