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Dean was coming back from lunch when he saw the machine with the bright pink “New Donor” card on it in his section.
“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled to himself. New donors themselves weren’t usually all that terrible (unless they were extremely nervous or had a ton of questions or had impossible veins. Honestly, how the nurses approved some of these people he had no idea), it’s just that there’s a whole speech you have to go through, and it takes an extra few minutes, which takes away from all the other people he could be sticking.
“Just in time, brother,” Benny clapped him on the shoulder as he headed for his lunch.
“You could have at least set him up for me,” Dean called after him. Benny pretended not to hear.
Dean walked over to the man, who was sitting on his bed looking wide-eyed at Dean. Dean took a deep breath and tried to make himself look as calm and comforting as possible. It usually helps people to relax. Besides, this guy was pretty hot, and he definitely didn’t want to scare him away.
“Which arm do you think you’ll be using?” he asked the man.
“Left?” the man replied. Dean laid the armrest on that side of the bed and the man laid down. Dean smiled at him.
“Have you ever done this before?”
“No.”
Dean took a deep breath and started setting up the machine. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna put a blood pressure cuff around your arm. It’s gonna act as a tourniquet just to keep your blood pumping. Then I’m gonna put this needle in your arm. It shouldn’t hurt except for maybe a pinch when I stick you. If it hurts other than that at any time during the donation make sure you let me know. Then the blood is gonna flow through here,” he indicated the tubing, “and mix with the anticoagulant. That’s what keeps your blood from clotting in the lines. Once it does that it goes into the bowl inside the machine here,” he put the plastic bowl into the machine and closed the lid, “and spins in the centrifuge. That separates your blood from your plasma. Then, once the bowl is full, it pours your plasma into this bottle here,” he placed the bottle onto the weigher. “After it’s gotten all the plasma out of the bowl that it can it returns your red blood cells back to you. It does that about four or five times. Then once we’ve gotten all the plasma we need from you you’re gonna get a bag of saline.” He shows the bag to the man before he hangs it on the hook. “That’s pretty much it. Any questions?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. What’s your name, birth date, and last four of your social?”
The man responded with his information and Dean compared it to the chart in front of him. His name was, indeed, Castiel Milton and he was only a few years older than Dean.
Dean put the cuff around Castiel’s arm and turned it up. He pushed on the inside of his elbow and found a fantastic vein right in the middle. He thanked the phlebotomist gods. Turning the cuff off he pulled an iodine packet from the pocket of his lab coat.
“You’re not allergic to iodine, are you?” It’s supposed to be in their chart if they are, but it wasn’t always, and Dean didn’t want to have to deal with a reaction.
“No.”
Dean nodded and began swabbing Castiel’s arm, watching the clock to make sure he swirled it around for at least thirty seconds before making a bigger circle. Then he turned the cuff back on and stuck two pieces of tape to the corner of the machine..
“Ready?”
Castiel took a deep breath. “Yes.”
He opened the needle, pocketed the cap, and bent over Castiel’s arm. Then, in one quick movement he stuck the needle into the middle of the yellow circle of iodine. He got his flash of blood and was satisfied. He taped the needle down.
“Does that hurt at all?”
“I didn’t even feel it.”
Dean smiled. “Good.”
He connected the tubing to the needle and taped it down by Castiel’s wrist.
“Everything feels okay? There’s no pinching or anything?”
“Everything feels good.”
“You’re not feeling dizzy or nauseous?”
Castiel shook his head.
“Okay. Start pumping your fist open and closed. You don’t have to squeeze or anything, just keep that blood flowing. I’ve gotta go check on my other donors, but I’ll be right back. You let me know if anything doesn’t feel okay, okay?” He marked down his initials and the time in Castiel’s chart and tossed it under the machine while he waited for an answer.
“Okay, Dean.” For once, Dean’s glad he put his own name tag on.
“Okay.”
Dean made a quick round of his section of twelve donors, checking the machines, making sure everyone is pumping their hands, and saying hello to familiar faces. He came back to Castiel, who had just started his first return.
“Still feeling okay?”
“Yes.”
Dean smiled and nodded and then continued to walk around, keeping an eye on his donors. As people started to finish their donations Charlie came in to help him take people off the machines. Dean was sure to be the one to pull Castiel’s needle.
When Castiel’s machine beeped, signaling the end of his donation, Dean was ready with the sealer cart.
“Still feeling alright?” Dean asked.
“Y-yes,” Cas shivered.
Dean laughed. “The saline makes you feel cold. It’s because it’s at room temperature. You’ll warm up in a few minutes.”
“O-k-kay.”
Dean smiled and placed a stack of gauze over Castiel’s needle. Then he slid the needle into it’s sheath and peeled it off his arm, along with the tape.
“Hold your arm up so it’s above your head. That’ll get it to stop bleeding faster.”
Castiel did as he was told.
Dean finished sealing off all the tubing and pulled the soft goods out of the machine, throwing them into the biohazard and trash. He came back with a bandaid and held out his hand.
“Let’s see,” he said.
Castiel lowered his arm and Dean lifted the corner of the gauze to see if it had stopped bleeding.
“Looks good to me,” he nodded. He placed the bandaid over the small hole.
“No heavy lifting for the rest of the day and make sure you drink plenty of water, okay?”
“Okay,” said Castiel.
“Awesome. Well your money should already be on your card and you can come back as early as Wednesday. Think you’ll be back?” Dean winked.
“Definitely,” Castiel smiled. “Though probably not until Thursday. Will you be here?”
“Yup. I usually have Tuesdays and every other weekend off.”
“Great. I’ll see you on Thursday then. Thank you, Dean.”
“Just doin’ my job,” Dean smiled.
Castiel, who eventually became “Cas” to Dean, showed up dutifully every Monday and Thursday after that. He always asked for Dean to stick him and almost always got his wish. The only exception was on the rare occasion that he was placed in Crowley’s section. That guy refused to honor requests, claiming that he was just as good as anyone else in the center and there was no need to have someone come and stick someone with veins as good as Cas’, especially when they were busy.
As much as he wanted to, Dean never asked for Castiel’s phone number, nor to take him out. For one, it was unprofessional. Second, for some stupid reason, people looked down on gay people donating blood or any other bodily fluids, even though they were thoroughly tested. On the off chance that Castiel did, in fact, like to sleep with men, Dean didn’t want to out him and make him lose his right to donate. Most of the people who came in there needed the money, and no date was worth taking that away from someone.
Then, one Monday, Cas didn’t show up. It was nearly five when Dean realized he hadn’t seen him. Well, Dean waited that long before he started asking about him, anyway.
“Hey, you haven’t seen Cas at all today, have you?” he asked Charlie.
“Nope. You know I would have called you over if I had. Has he not been in today?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Dean scanned all the beds in the room.
“Maybe he was busy or something. Or sick. There’s lots of reasons people miss their days.”
“Yeah,” Dean said glumly. “Hey Crowley,” he called across the room.
“I’m busy! What?” Crowley yelled back.
“Have you seen Castiel today?”
“Who?”
“You know, dark hair, blue eyes, almost as tall as me. Always asks for me to stick him even though you tell him ‘no’ every time?”
“I haven’t noticed. Shouldn’t you be working?”
Dean waved him off. Castiel never showed up that day and Dean tried not to worry about it.
On Wednesday, when Dean came back into work he made his usual rounds, saying hello to all the people he liked and avoiding those he didn’t. He was walking past Jo’s section, where she was helping Meg learn how to stick.
“Hey, Jo, how’s training?”
Jo bit her lip. “So, you know that guy you’ve been crushing on the last couple months?”
“Uhhh…”
“Shut up, Dean. It’s obvious. Anyway, he came in yesterday.”
“Uh huh…” Dean did not like the way this was going.
“And he had such good veins, I thought, ‘there’s no way anyone could screw these up,’ you know?”
“Oh no.”
“Well I let Meg stick him.”
Dean clenched his jaw. Meg was quite possibly the worst phleb to ever work the floor in the history of phlebotomy. He had no idea how she even got the promotion over Charlie and had been so furious about it that he refused to train her.
“She, uh, went straight through. We didn’t notice until he was in a return, so he got a hematoma. Then, when she tried to adjust it-”
“Wait. I thought you said he already started to swell.”
“I thought I could fix it,” Meg piped in.
Dean glared at her.
“The needle slipped out,” Jo finished.
“How much?”
“Look, it’s not my fault-” Meg tried to interject.
“How much blood did he lose?”
“The bowl was full,” Jo admitted.
“Son of a bitch! That’s eight weeks! Eight weeks he’s out because-” Dean cut himself off. There was no sense in screaming at an employee on the floor. He’d wait til lunch.
“He probably moved his arm,” Meg said.
It looked like Dean wasn’t going to wait til lunch after all.
“Bullshit! I’ve stuck Cas dozens of times and he never so much as flinched. You just suck at sticking. You shouldn’t have touched it. You should have left it alone. It was bad enough that you blew up his arm but then you made him a cell loss too. You shouldn’t be sticking.”
“Dean,” came a gruff voice behind him. Dean sighed and turned.
“Sorry, Bobby.”
“Why don’t we go talk for a minute?”
Dean nodded and followed Bobby to the stockroom.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. Look, I didn’t want her to get the promotion either, but we don’t get to decide. The best we can do is try to teach her. And yelling at her on the floor and getting half the donors afraid of her isn’t going to help.”
“I know.”
“Alright. Just… keep your distance from her today and try to calm down.”
“Okay, Bobby.”
The next day Dean was eating his lunch at the picnic table outside when he heard his brother Sam’s voice. His brother worked in the lab, which sounds fancy but really it’s just where they pull samples from the bottles of plasma and label the test tubes. Usually they end up having lunch together and Dean was waiting for him. But the voice accompanying Sam’s was not that of someone they worked with. He turned and found Cas walking alongside his brother. Dean jumped off the bench.
“Cas!”
“Hello, Dean,” Cas smiled.
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, when they told me I wouldn’t be able to come back for eight weeks I was sad. Not because I wouldn’t be able to donate, but because I wasn’t going to see you for two months.” He smiled and shook his head. “I should have never come when I knew you weren’t working.”
Dean was blushing. “Damn right you shouldn’t have. I’m sorry about what happened.”
“That’s okay, I don’t actually need the money anyway. I just wanted to see what it was like.”
Dean noticed that Sam had disappeared. “And it took you three months to figure it out?”
“No… I had actually only planned on coming in once.”
“Then… why…?”
Cas shrugged. “I wanted to see you.”
Dean beamed. “Cas?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you like to get dinner tonight?”
“I’d love to,” Cas smiled.
That night Cas finally got his turn to stick Dean, and Dean definitely felt it.