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When Castiel was younger, Christmas was a magical time when the veil between the real world and his imagination was especially thin. Ephemeral though it was, the twinkle of lights wrapped around every surface, the hush of snow dampening ambient noise, the sparkle of it glinting in the moonlight all aided the illusion that anything could happen.
As he walks, hunched over to protect himself from the wind and nosy neighbors, there is an anticipation in the air, expectation that is shared by everyone on the streets.
Not only them, but those families already tucked away warmly in their homes. Every house he passes offers a peek into their lives through too thin or absent curtains. The McMannis family, plus several guests, are still idling around their dining table, laughing at tall tales and getting progressively louder to be heard over the boozy loss of inhibitions. The Fitzpatricks are snuggled onto their couch, children in their footy pajamas, the spastic light of the television flickering over faces filled with fond nostalgia.
Castiel feels the ache of his own memories, still wondering how his parents, who professed to love God, could throw him out because of the way his creator made him. After being the center of their world for eighteen years, one difference was enough to put him out of their orbit altogether. Years later, he wonders if they ever think of him, ever regret their rash decision. He could walk the six blocks to his childhood home and ask, but he’s invited too much disillusion into his life. He’d like to just imagine that it would be a fond reunion and leave it at that.
Tonight is the most bittersweet day of the year to him, and it has been since that day. So many of his milestones have happened on the night before Christmas. He was kicked out of his house, he met his future boss, and he even got engaged. Of course, Devin left him two months later to be a backup singer for some folk band, but still. It mattered at the time.
He could have spent the holiday with his college friends who lived in Boston. Enough of them had migrated north from New York after graduation that they still have large gatherings. He could have taken any one of several offers to join the families of his coworkers. He could have knocked on the door across the hall from his apartment and hang out with his friend, Meg. He just couldn’t do it. Not again. Not this year.
He doesn’t want someone to make room for him so that he isn’t alone. He can’t deal with being the third, fourth, or eleventh wheel again. He refuses to tag along with other people’s lives. He wants to live his own.
What Cas wants is to find a companion. Someone who sees him as a priority, as family. That’s all he wants. It shouldn’t be so damn hard.
Aimlessly, he walks through the neighborhood that he’s known since he was old enough to pedal his bike. He grew up in a time when kids disappeared together in the morning, and weren’t seen again until they were called in for supper. They were rambunctious, gangly geese on pedaled wings, always trying to lead the rest of the flock towards adventure.
And they did find it. They played in the streams that trickled down into the bay, threw rocks at abandoned factory windows, stole strawberries from Bibber Market’s garden, and found treasure along the sandy shore. The old gang didn’t make it all the way to graduation. Most of their families moved, like the Lafittes, the Harvelles, and the Winchesters. He smiles sadly to think of his childhood friends, who he had at one time pledged his eternal devotion and protection.
The only one that he graduated with was Garth, whose mother was kind enough to take him in so that he could graduate on time and not lose his substantial scholarship to Rutgers. Not for the first time, he wonders how his life would have been different if he had stayed in New York and taken the job with the Philharmonic. New York City let him be anonymous. It also didn’t possess so many ghosts.
A good mile or more from where he lives, Cas finally feels ready to be around the teeming humanity of a bar. He’ll probably get a drink, wallow in self-pity when he sees everyone around him paired up or in comfortable groups, and then he’ll walk back home alone. It’s a safe prediction because it won’t be the first time it’s come to pass. It is the first time in this particular bar, though.
It’s a little nicer than the one in his more rundown part of town. The wood of the bar is polished, the neon is glowing brightly, and it doesn’t reek of ashtrays and stale beer. The music is rat pack, Christmas edition, which suits him just fine. Finding a seat in the middle of the bar, he sits and brushes clinging, melting snowflakes off his arms.
“What can I get for ya, hon?” A gruff local asks from her perch behind the bar. She has to be in her sixties, with weather-beaten skin and a lifetime smoker’s voice.
“Jameson, double. Neat.”
She nods and stretches to reach for the green bottle on the shelf with the red lid. As she pours, he reaches for his wallet and she waves him off. “I’ll run a tab for ya.”
“Uh, thanks.” He wonders if he looks like he might be drinking for a while. Honestly, he’s alone in a bar on Christmas Eve. He’s the epitome of ‘going to be here a while’.
Looking around the bar now that his eyes have adjusted to the deep shadows and contrasting glow of the neon signs, he takes in the other solitary figures that have gathered together to ignore each other. Such a bizarre human thing to do, and he smirks at the irony of it.
When he tips his glass up, he catches someone coming towards the bar from the back, and pulling up a chair two down from his. He looks away quickly, his heart picking up. Chastising himself immediately, he reiterates the fact that he is not here to pick up some guy in a bar, no matter how lonely he is. No matter how much his inner voice warns him not to, his eyes flick up to look at the man again in the mirrored bar. Damn. He is the kind of gorgeous that almost hurts to look at.
Cas smirks into his glass again and takes a larger gulp. The bartender was wise to keep his tab open. He gets her attention with a raise of a hand and signals for another double. She pours it, thawing to him now that he’s sticking around. “You new in town?”
“No, I live just off of Newberry.”
“Yeah? Local boy?”
Cas nods. “Except for a few years in New York, I’ve lived here my whole life.”
When he meets her eye, he can see that the gorgeous man beside him is engrossed in their conversation. His face is turned toward them, his body rigid.
The bartender smiles and pats his hand. “Well then, I’d better see you around here more often.”
“Of...course.” Cas furrows his brow and tilts his head. He isn’t quite sure why he agreed to come back, but it felt right to say.
Cas keeps his eye on the other man using the mirror only. He doesn’t dare turn his head.
“Excuse me,” a growling, deep rumble of a voice makes Cas suck in a breath. Double damn. “You grew up here?”
He has to turn and look him in the eye. It would be rude not to answer, after all. He’s not prepared for looking at him head on. The man is rugged, built, and still absolutely beautiful: wide eyes with long lashes, a sharp jaw, and perfect cupid bow lips.
“Yeah, I lived on Seaport.”
“No shit,” the other man grins and Cas feels his knees turn to jelly. “I lived on Lawrence.”
Cas raises his brow in surprise. “That’s right around the corner from my old house.”
“I know. One of my best friends lived on Seaport. I was there all the time when I was a kid.”
Cas turns his body and leans over in interest. “What was his name? I probably know him.”
The gorgeous stranger shrugs, his face turning sad. “He doesn’t live there anymore. I checked when I moved back. His name was Castiel.”
Cas’s jaw drops. No. It can’t be. He only had one friend on Lawrence St. “Dean?”
Cas watches the possibilities and conclusion race across his old friend’s face before he attempts to ask, “Cas? Is it really you?”
Nodding in shock, Cas covers his mouth with a hand. He hasn’t thought about Dean in years. Then he suddenly waxes poetic about his childhood friends and he appears an hour later? What are the odds?
Dean gets up out of his seat and moves into the one right next to his. Up close, and now that he’s looking for it, Cas can see the resemblance to his old buddy. “Holy shit. Dean Winchester.”
“And Castiel Novak. All grown up.” Dean’s features soften as he says it, eyes raking over him with what appears to be appreciation. Surely Cas is imagining that the look is more significant than it is. It’s fondness, nostalgia, plain and simple.
“How long has it been? Twelve years?”
“Yeah, just about that,” Dean agrees.
“What have you been up to?” Cas questions, followed by, “Where did you move? When did you move back?”
Dean chuckles which halts Cas’s babbling. “You may look a hell of a lot different, but some things never change.”
Cas huffs and smiles. His curiosity has been tamed since he was in middle school, but apparently not regarding Dean.
“We moved to Kansas, but I came back here for college. I went to BU. What about you?”
“Columbia.”
“Impressive, but you were always going to go Ivy League. It was obvious even to a punk kid like me.”
Cas blushes at the compliment and then diverts Dean’s attention. “What made you choose BU?”
“Hockey scholarship.” Dean gives him a lopsided, shit-eating grin when he sees the blatant interest on Cas’s face. “Yeah, you always did have a thing for hockey players.”
Cas clears his throat and grins. “Was I that obvious?”
“To me you were. We knew each other pretty well back then.”
Leaning his chin on his hand, Cas hums in agreement. “I was just thinking about our old group, wondering what they were doing now.”
“I found Jo Harvelle. We’re Facebook friends.” Dean pulls his phone out of his back pocket and scrolls to pull up her profile.
“That’s Jo?” Cas is amazed. “That little tomboy turned out gorgeous.”
“I know, right? She’s still the same little spitfire, too. She moved out to Oregon and lives off the land with her boyfriend. Zack or Zeke...something.”
Dean seems so proud of their common friend, and Cas is so charmed by this adult version of his friend; he can’t fathom how any of this can be real. His circuit board is overloaded at all of the details he wants to ask, all of the years he wants to relive with Dean so that they don’t have to live with the awkwardness of being strangers.
“You’re feeling the same ‘holy shit’ moment I am, right?” Dean wonders bashfully.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Cas agrees. “This is the most bizarre experience of my life.”
Dean’s face drops and he turns to stare into his drink. Cas rests a hand on his forearm to get his attention back. “In the very best of ways, Dean. Good things like this rarely happen, in my experience.”
“It is good, isn’t it?” Dean takes a sip of his drink and his mood shifts toward caution.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Cas?”
“Of course. What do you want to know?”
“It’s about when I came back for college. I wasn’t kidding. I went looking for you, the only place I knew how to get in touch with you.”
Cas sits back on his stool, letting his hand drop from Dean’s arm. He knows where this is heading, and he really doesn’t want to lose Dean now that they’ve found each other again. Maybe he won’t. Maybe Dean isn’t going to be uncomfortable with his sexual orientation. He waits for the inevitable questions.
“Why did your parents kick you out? What could you have possibly done to make them so angry? They wouldn’t even talk to me.”
Cas worries his lip before deciding to be as open with Dean about coming out as he has been with everyone else in his life. He’s proud of who he is.
“I came out to them. They didn’t approve.” He shrugs like it is the simplest thing in the world, and maybe there is some artifice there, but he still holds his head high.
“That’s it? They disowned you and wouldn’t even speak your name, Cas. Are you kidding me?”
A brief zing of relief flashes along his nerves at Dean’s reaction.
“Yes, that’s all it took to become nothing to them apparently.”
Dean’s brow furrows, his face a mask of pain. “Jesus, Cas. I wish I had been here for you.”
His body has turned fully towards Cas, their knees bumping and slotting together as he leans in. Dean’s hand hovers over his where it sits on the bar, drops a couple of times, and then finally covers it. His hand is warm and soothing, even if it is just touching him supportively.
“Especially since my experience was so different.”
“Your what?” Cas tilts his head.
“Coming out. My parents hardly even reacted.”
Cas can’t help that his jaw drops open. Dean was always his litmus test for what a straight boy would think or do. “You’re...”
“Bisexual.”
Cas blinks through the racing questions, the glimpses of their childhood. Nothing he remembers could have predicted that Dean had a queer bone in his body. Yet.
Dean grins, “Close your mouth, Cas. It’s not quite that big of a shock.”
“For you, maybe. I’m a little taken aback.”
Even the way Dean laughs is a throaty, masculine chuckle. Cas is in deep.
“I didn’t have the guts to admit it until after I finished college, though.” Dean’s face holds some regret, as if he wrestled with it for a long time before finally taking the step.
“Was it because you were an athlete?”
Dean nods as he adds, “In a very macho sport. I didn’t want to be the poster boy for being a gay athlete, which I suppose makes me a bit of a coward.”
“Not at all, Dean. You can’t do it until you’re ready.”
“I suppose.”
“When did you know?” Cas asks, wondering if they had similar triggers or experiences.
“Ah, I kind of always knew my interest in boys was different than the rest of the guys I hung out with. I think that’s one of the reasons I gravitated to you. You were the only one who didn’t seem to judge my reactions. I never once heard you call something gay or call someone a fag, even though it was pretty prevalent speech back then.”
“I’ve been different from most of my peers since before I can remember. If it wasn’t my lack of interest in sports, spending hours a day practicing violin or piano, or my ravenous interest in reading, it would be something, so I just assumed that everyone would ignore me and move on. So, what was one more way to be different?
“Are you seeing someone?” Dean asks, and Cas wants so desperately to hear interest in his voice, that when he does hear it, he doesn’t trust himself.
“No, no one. I had a relationship end...oh, last Christmas Eve, as a matter of fact.”
“You’re kidding!” Dean looks appalled. “You got dumped on Christmas Eve?”
“By my fiance, yes.”
Now it’s Dean’s turn to gape and stare in amazement. “What a dick!”
Cas smiles. “Well, I was apparently standing in the way of Devin’s life long dream of being a backup singer for a folk band that does the county fair circuit through the Midwest.”
“Ouch.”
“Yes. Very.”
They both ponder the horrid story while they take contemplative sips of their dwindling drinks. This time Dean calls the bartender over for another round.
“Thank you, Patty,” Dean winks at her and she rolls her eyes.
“Why don’t you save some of that charm for the one you actually have a shot at, Winchester?”
She pointedly glances at Cas and then back at Dean before walking away. Cas catches Dean’s wide-eyed blush, but doesn’t comment. He doesn’t dare. He’s been trying not to think of Dean in any sexual way since he’d admitted that he is bisexual, but he’s been failing spectacularly.
Dean is Cas’s ideal; masculine and strong with beautiful features. Most importantly, he is kind, wickedly smart, funny, and adventurous. Granted, he knows these things about the 15 year old version of Dean, but he can’t have changed that much, right? That’s another thing; they already have a shared past. He knows, and adores, Dean’s family. They are-
Cas takes a cleansing breath. He has got to get this runaway crush under control.
“I’m sorry about her,” Dean says as he clears his throat. “Can’t take the old bat anywhere.”
He just barely stops himself from saying that she isn’t wrong. Barely. “It’s fine. I like her.”
Dean sighs good-naturedly and admits, “Lord help me, I do, too. It’s why I keep coming back here.”
“Do you live down here again?”
“Yeah, I moved off of Glenmore and Liberty.”
“Ah, you’re one of the gentrifiers.” Cas teases.
“No. Hell, no,” Dean swears. “It’s close to my shop and close to the highways. That’s all.”
Cas lifts a brow.
Dean wobbles and says, “Okay. Having all of the excellent restaurants and shops in walking distance is really cool.”
Cas bites his lips to keep in his thoughts. Young Dean was cute, but Adult Dean is fucking adorable. He doesn’t know how he’s going to contain himself. It’s even harder when he watches Dean’s eyes dip down to his mouth and back up.
“You said your shop. What do you do?”
“I’m a contractor. I do home and commercial renovations mostly.”
Cas grins. “So, you make old rundown things fresh and new.”
“Exactly.”
“But you’re definitely not a gentrifier.”
Dean scowls at him. “Alright, smart ass. What do you do for a living?”
“Guess.”
Dean leans his elbow on the bar, contemplating. “You’ve got to be a musician of some sort.”
Cas preens over the fact that Dean knows him so well. He still has to ask, “What makes you say that?”
“I have very fond memories of laying on the floor of your living room and drawing or reading while you practiced. Hours and hours every week, and you never complained because you obviously loved it. Even in my adult life, I’ve never heard someone who plays with the emotion that you did when you were just a kid. There’s no way you didn’t pursue music.”
He wasn’t expecting the beautiful honesty to flow from Dean’s lips so easily. Cas remembers feelings being difficult for Dean when they were boys.
“Yes,” Cas sighs. “You’re right. I play for the Boston Symphony.”
Dean nods with a beatific smile, like he won a wonderful bet. “Good. That’s real good.”
Cas leans closer, “I had no idea you enjoyed my practicing. I always thought you just tolerated it.”
“If I didn’t want to be there, I would have just gone home.” Dean lifts a brow this time, challenging Cas and his assumptions. He concedes with a nod of his head and then stares down into his glass. The next question that he asks Dean pops out without thinking it through. “Are you seeing anyone?”
A slow grin eases onto Dean’s face. He shakes his head no without taking his eyes from Cas.
“No sob story to go with it?” Cas jokes nervously.
“No. I’ve never let anyone get close enough to create a story of any kind, actually.”
He feels simultaneous pangs of dismay and gratitude, and then guilt for being grateful Dean isn’t involved or pining for someone. He wants to tack on the word ‘else’ to that thought, but fights himself on it.
“I’m sorry, Dean. You deserve to have a story. A really amazing story.”
“Maybe I will,” he agrees as he brushes an unruly lock of Cas’s hair back into place. “Maybe mine will begin tonight.”
*****
It does start that night. It starts with Dean and Cas talking on Patty’s stoop until the cold forces them to part, first exchanging numbers and a warm embrace. They meet at Patty’s bar again on the night after Christmas, and this time they exchange tender looks and glancing touches. After that, they meet there at least one a week, even though they spend much more time together at one or the other of their homes.
Cas sometimes brings food for Patty since he knows she can’t get away on week nights, and Dean helps her renovate her bathroom when her husband tears a ligament in his knee and can’t stand in their tub.
They drift away from the bar over the next several months, but not from each other, and definitely not on Christmas Eve. The first year, they are so caught up in each other that they don’t even hear their friends’ obnoxious comments about how sickening they are. It makes Patty smile.
On the next Christmas Eve, they show up together with shiny new rings on their left hands and dark tans that make them stand out. They tell Patty all about their extended trip to Thailand and how beautiful the simple beach ceremony was, which makes her tear up.
For over a decade, Cas and Dean visit Patty on Christmas Eve, until she retires and leaves the bar to her son. Now she receives photos and a long letter every year in a horrific and ridiculous Christmas card.
This year, though, she’s making the trip to the bar. Cas has been given an invitation to work with the touring symphony for the Moscow ballet. They will travel the world, giving performances all over Europe, Asia, and South America. Dean is taking a hiatus to go with them. She will miss her boys, but she sheds tears of happiness to see them living their dreams together.