Chapter Text
Ass.
Castiel taped over another box with a kind of ferocious inefficiency. He was bad at taping boxes. He was bad at packing up. He was bad at keeping his mouth shut and he was bad at keeping his job as a lawyer and those two things were definitely related. He was bad at house-hunting with no money. He was bad at putting on a brave face when it was just him, alone, with no one watching.
Ass. Ass. Ass.
The mantra in his head was almost helping.
For a second, he lowered his roll of tape, and breathed out. He pressed his lips together, hard, and let his eyes sweep the mess that was his living room. Books lay scattered across the floor, dry law textbooks on top of dusty old fantasy novels he’d been meaning to get rid of but had never quite got around to donating. Clothes were in a heap by the door, waiting to be shoved into his suitcase. A ladle was inexplicably hanging over the arm of the sofa, looking silver and sorrowful upside-down. A cup of coffee was on the stained end-table, and when he saw it, Castiel blinked.
He was bad at remembering to drink coffee when he made it.
Somehow, it was the puddle of cold coffee sitting meek and milky in its chipped Trust Me, I’m a Lawyer mug that pitched Castiel over the edge. His expression didn’t change, but with sudden fury, he launched the roll of tape hard at the nearest wall.
It bounced off and rolled away undramatically. Castiel stared after it.
Embarrassing. Embarrassing to be alone and so angry. Embarrassing to have lost his job. Embarrassing to be himself, right now, to be the person having to tuck his tail between his legs and run away from the city that had been his home for almost a decade. He needed to go and fetch the tape, but somehow doing so felt like losing.
His phone hummed in his pocket.
Castiel scrambled for it. He allowed himself a whole shining golden moment to believe that maybe, just maybe, it was Bartholomew calling to tell him the whole thing was just a big company-wide prank, and of course he wasn’t fired from Angelus & Sons, and he could have his company car back and his office and a new secretary, and Bartholomew himself was going to take him out to the Cheesecake Factory just to thank him for being such a good sport, and –
Best Human Ever read his phone screen, when he looked at it. Castiel let out a breath, and closed his eyes for a second before answering the call.
“Gabriel,” he said.
“You could sound happier about it,” said his brother.
“Sorry.”
“What’s up?”
Bleakly, Castiel looked around his apartment. He could see himself reflected in the upside-down ladle, head comically large on a little tiny body.
“Not much,” he said.
“Uh-huh. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Anything new at the job you want to tell me about, any, uh, news, or -”
Castiel let out a long breath.
“Who told you?”
“I never reveal my sources.”
“Was it Hester?”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said at once. “I mean, seriously, she cannot keep a lid on it.”
“It’s a problem,” Castiel said.
“Is there a self-help book called How to Keep a Company Secret? She literally told me what you had for lunch on the day it happened. Seriously, I hope you got the chance to tell the people at your firm not to trust her with anything important, before they – you know…”
“Fired me,” Castiel said.
“Yeah.” There was a moment of dead air. “Hey, look, if you want me to put in a good word for you here with Balthazar… he’s always had a soft spot for you. And you’ve been saying for years now that you should make the move over to us… Celeste and Celeste is a great firm.”
“I’m never going to work as a lawyer again,” Castiel said, his voice flat. “C and C would never hire me. No one would. Not after what happened on Monday.”
“Castiel, listen. We’ve got a huge new job, up in Maine. Logging company wants permission to start work in a forest, they’ve got to involve the Forest Service, it’s a mess. Whole load of paperwork just came through. It’s the perfect time to apply, they’re desperate, the interns are having to take the brunt of it and none of them know the law like you do…”
“Gabriel, my legal specialty isn’t… forests. Besides. Like I said.” Castiel swallowed. “There’s no way I’m getting hired.”
“But Balthazar…”
“... Is a businessman,” Castiel finished for him. “He runs a law firm, not a charity. None of his partners would trust me. They’d use me against him. He might lose his shot at having his name on the door. It wouldn’t be worth it to him to hire me. And I’m not going to call him up and ask him, and make him tell me that.”
“But you -”
“I’m not going to do it,” Castiel said wearily, sinking down onto his sofa. The ladle, dislodged, clattered to the floor. “Drop it, Gabriel.”
“I was just going to say,” Gabriel said, “that you love being a lawyer.”
Castiel closed his eyes.
Yes, he wanted to say. Yes. I loved being a lawyer. I really did. I loved the strategies. I loved the tactics. I loved the battles that became wars with our rival firms. I loved helping clients who needed it. I loved giving a voice to a cause and speaking out on behalf of people who couldn’t, I loved it.
He swallowed.
“That was the problem,” he said. “I shouldn’t have loved it. I should have just done my job. If it had only been a job and not my whole - maybe this wouldn’t have -”
He broke off. He couldn’t say it.
“Anyway,” Gabriel said bracingly. “There are plenty more job fish in the sea, right?”
“Yes,” Castiel managed.
“How’s Sarah taking it?”
“Oh.” Castiel blinked. “Sarah. She’s…” Castiel looked around his empty living room. “Well, she’s here with me. She’s upset.”
“Say hi from me, would you?”
“Right. Um.” Castiel lifted the phone away from his ear. “Gabriel says hi,” he told thin air. After a moment, he said into his phone, “She says hi back.”
“One day you’re gonna actually let me meet her. It’s like she might as well not even exist.”
Castiel swallowed, and managed a low,
“Mm.”
“You guys still have her income, right? So you can keep the apartment?”
“Um. Well. Actually, she…” Castiel bit his lip. Maybe this was the perfect time to end a charade that had gone on far too long. “We’re cutting ties.”
Gabriel went silent. Castiel stared at the wall opposite his sofa, watching the second hand on the clock tick desultorily onward.
“You two are breaking up? And she’s right there with you?”
“... Yes,” Castiel said. “To get her things.” His eyes were falling out of focus on the clock, but he didn’t bother to zone back in.
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said.
“It’s alright.” The loss of a fake girlfriend was the last of his problems, but he tried to make himself sound sincerely sad.
“But you’ve got savings, though,” Gabriel said. “So you’re good for a while, long enough to find work.”
Castiel was quiet. He thought about the figure in his bank account, and how far it had shrunk in the last two weeks.
“Oh,” said Gabriel after a few seconds. “So… you can’t keep the apartment?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do? You know, I have… well, I mean, you know my place is being renovated so I’m in this crappy three-room place for the next couple weeks so it’s just an airbed and the only space I have for it is the kitchen floor, but you know you can always crash with me. If you don’t mind me kicking you in the head on the way to get my coffee every morning.”
“Thanks,” Castiel said. “But I already have somewhere.”
“You’re renting again?”
“No, I actually… I bought it.”
“You bought a place?”
Castiel didn’t say anything. He had no idea how to justify the rush of adrenaline-fuelled certainty that had struck him at three o’clock on Tuesday morning, when he’d been browsing for places and had come upon a listing for an absurdly cheap house in the middle of nowhere. Among all the overpriced or undersized offerings on every website he’d checked, that one house alone had seemed palatable.
And yes, maybe his fixation on the house had been mostly due to staring for eight hours beforehand at pictures of one-room apartments that clearly had mould and probably had rats. But when he’d called up to enquire about the house, the person he’d spoken to had been so helpful, and one thing had led to another, and then somehow he’d just… bought it. With a sizable chunk of his savings.
“Where is it?” Gabriel asked, after a few seconds. “Still in Tribeca?”
“No.”
“Oh. But still in Manhattan?”
“... No,” Castiel said.
“Jesus. Okay. Where is it then?”
“Maine.”
“What?”
“In one of the forests up there.”
“You’re joking with me.”
“No,” Castiel said simply. “I’m not.”
“But... but...”
Castiel waited for Gabriel to gather his thoughts, but he seemed to be lost for words.
“If I get work,” Castiel said eventually, “it’ll be in a sandwich shop. Or a grocery store. It won’t be Manhattan money. It was going to be a big change anyway. And I thought maybe out there, I could find some work to keep me going. Enough to get by. And rethink… everything… for a while.”
“Some work to keep you going?”
“You know…” Castiel swallowed. “Forest… things.”
“Wow. Wow. Okay, look, maybe you think you’re going to be able to tempt Sarah into staying with you by painting images of splitting logs topless in the middle of a forest -”
“This isn’t about anything like that.”
“You can still get out of it, though, right?”
“I don’t want to,” said Castiel.
“You can’t seriously think it’s going to be a good plan. This is a drunk at four in the morning plan.”
“Three in the morning,” Castiel said. “And sober.”
“I know you. You couldn’t make it two days in a forest.”
“You don’t know what I can do,” Castiel said, indignation starting to edge his tone. “I used to go camping all the time.”
“That was years ago. Castiel, you take a bath every day. You know what pomade is. You own Versace underwear.”
Castiel could feel the gentle press of soft material against his skin, murmuring an elegant agreement. He frowned.
“Well,” he said, with haughtiness to hide his doubt, “maybe I want something different now.”
“What, to become a lumberjack? You’re a lawyer. Who are you going to debate out there, the bears? The squirrels?”
“Gabriel, it’s already done.”
There was a beat of quiet.
“You’ve put pen to paper? Already?”
“The realtors have an office in the city. I went, I signed.” Castiel closed his eyes. “It’s done.”
Another pause, and then Gabriel said,
“You never were one to do the thing that makes sense.” All that stopped Castiel from snapping back was the barely-there note of pride in his voice.
“What would you have done?” Castiel asked.
“Not got fired in the first place,” Gabriel said.
“Helpful.”
“Do you need a ride down to your new house, then? I’m free this weekend.”
“I’ve got a ride,” Castiel said. “But thank you.”
“Sarah?”
“Um,” Castiel shifted uncomfortably, “no. Ishim, from work. He owed me a favour before I left. So he’s lending me his car and driver for the day tomorrow.”
“All your things are going to fit into that Porsche convertible of his?”
“He has a new Rolls Royce.”
“Not the Cullinan?”
“The Cullinan,” Castiel said. His eyes started wandering over the rest of his things, his hands itching to get back to packing, get it all finished.
“Damn. How does a junior partner afford that? Were the Angelus bonuses off the charts last year, or something? I’ve been looking at a Maserati but I think it’s about a quarter of the price of the Cullinan. Not everyone will know that, obviously, but for those who do know… they’ll be comparing… you know, maybe if I looked at a few of my options, I could get the Cullinan. Maybe even give it a paint job. Something flashy. Red, maybe.”
Castiel thought about the pictures he’d seen of his house in the forest. Even a kind angle hadn’t managed to conceal the way the paint had been cracking over the wood of the outside walls.
“Sounds good,” he said.
“Yeah. Anyway…” Gabriel cleared his throat. “Call me when you get up to, uh. Maine.” Castiel could hear the amusement battling with concern in his voice.
“I will,” Castiel said.
“I know that tone. Whatever. I’ll call you. And you’d better pick up.”
Castiel pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I will,” he said.
When he rang off the phone, he sat on his sofa quietly for a few seconds - but his apartment was too silent and sitting still gave him too much time to think. He reached for his phone and put on a podcast just so the chatter would fill his mind. No space to worry. No hush to fill with thoughts that snagged and tore.
He went and picked up the roll of tape, like a dog playing fetch with its tail between its legs.