Chapter Text
Happy Hour(s) (because you’ll be happy for more than one hour!) does karaoke three times a week, and three times a week, an elderly man in a suit reminiscent of Elvis performs the greatest hits of German music from the seventies. His name is Lukas, and if anyone thinks it’s a little odd that he’s crooning a tune called Griechischer Wein in a karaoke bar in the middle of Kansas, they don’t say a thing. Lukas is practically a fixture at Happy Hour(s), but then again, so is Cas.
Cas Milton, twenty-six, standing behind the bar right now with a glass in one hand and a bottle of tequila, pouring spout affixed, in the other. He’s got on the standard uniform of a black Happy Hour(s) t-shirt, ill-fitting jeans (although that’s not a standard, that’s just Cas), dirty navy-blue Converse, and wire-rimmed glasses that have decided to take up residence roughly halfway down his nose. The tequila is for a Tequila Sunrise and the glasses are allegedly for helping Cas see.
Another typical Thursday night at Happy Hour(s) is unfolding, and it’s unfolding just the way Cas likes it: typically. Lukas is singing the songs he always sings, and he’s got the white suit on tonight. If Cas knows Frank, the DJ (and he does, in fact, know Frank), there’s a group of already-drunk girls here for a birthday party cued up next, and there’s a ninety-four percent chance they’re singing either Katy Perry, Britney Spears, or the Spice Girls. He finishes Tequila Sunrise and hands it to one of the regulars, Norman, taking a wrinkly ten dollar bill in exchange, before he starts on the next drink, a round of tap beers for the guys who refuse to sing now but will be belting Celine Dion after a round of shots in an hour.
The thing about karaoke, Cas thinks, is that it strips people down. He often finds people difficult to understand, perplexing. They obfuscate their intentions, conceal what they actually want, but once you pour a few drinks in someone and throw them onstage with a cheesy love song, a microphone, and those they would consider their closest friends (or newest acquaintances), a new layer gets peeled back, and you see inside. He likes that part, the seeing inside. It’s easier than seeing outside.
“Uh, can I order a drink here?”
Cas jerks his gaze up from the beers towards the voice. The origin is a man, about his age if Cas had to guess, with green eyes and freckles and a markedly confused expression.
“It’s the bar,” Cas replies. “And I’m the bartender. So, yes.”
“Nice joke.” The man pulls out his wallet.
Cas tilts his head. “I wasn’t joking. That’s factual information.”
“Right.” The man narrows his eyes, but not mean. Instead, more confusion. “What do you recommend?”
Cas decides to play the card he does with his regulars sometimes. “Depends on what you’re here for. A birthday party, I would say a Long Island Iced Tea. Gets you drunk quick, and you only have to pay for one drink. A night out with the guys, a beer or two.”
“What about a blind date?”
“Rum and coke for you and then a drink the same color as something your date is wearing.”
“Pink dress.”
“Alright, Sex on the Beach.”
“I’ll trust you on that one.” The man leans his elbows on the bar while Cas starts making the drinks. “I know this is a cliche, people talking to bartenders about their problems, but…”
“Not loving the blind date?” Cas asks. This is his favorite part of being a bartender. People supply the conversation, and he just has to smile and nod. Usually a bit of light affirmation and the right drink will go a long way. The regulars like him–a couple months ago, one of them, a British guy named Tom, even came to him for advice on a break-up (not that Cas had much to offer).
“I mean, she seems nice enough, but I’m not sure a blind date is what I need. I wanted to make friends here in Lawrence, not hook up.”
“You’re new?” Cas asks with interest. He overpours the rum a little bit–there’s something about this guy he likes.
“Kinda. I grew up here, but moved away when I was eighteen. College, New York City, creative writing degree. Things haven’t really panned out, though.” The man sighs.
Now, this is a story Cas has heard before, and one he knows well. He was studying biology before–
Before–
Well, he used to study biology.
At least bartending also starts with a “B.”
“Most of my friends from high school have moved away at this point, which doesn’t help,” the man continues.
“Wait, where’d you go to high school?” It occurs to Cas in a split-second that he’s from Lawrence, too, has lived here his whole life.
“Lawrence High.”
“Oh, I was at Free State.” The other high school in Lawrence, Lawrence Free State High School, is known to be less popular.
“Really? I knew a couple people who went there.” The man shrugs as Cas starts mixing the Sex on the Beach. “Anyways, it’s just been an interesting first few weeks back.”
“It may get more interesting.” The transition music between karaoke songs starts playing, and sure enough, Frank calls the group of girls. “Karaoke has a way of making things like that.” He hands the man the drinks. “That’s nineteen.”
“Make it twenty.” The man slides a crisp bill across the counter. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Cas.” Cas knows his name tag says Castiel, but that’s Jo’s fault.
“I’m Dean.” Dean smiles. “Nice to meet you, Cas.”
*************
Nice to meet you, Cas.
The thing is, Cas isn’t in the business of meeting people. He can count his friends on one hand: his siblings–rowdy Gabe, practical Anna, and droll Jimmy–his fellow bartender Jo, and his one remaining college friend, Charlie. The regulars at the bar like him, of course, but they’re not his friends. They only exist in each others’ worlds on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
The set-up is odd, but it has its perks. One of them is that there’s a lot of quiet, when he’s not at the karaoke bar, and it’s easy for things to stay quiet when he’s there, too. People provide him with the information. He had to do barely any prodding for this Dean to reveal why he was at Happy Hour(s) and in Lawrence. Who knew what–
“Earth to Cas,” Anna says, snapping her fingers in front of Cas’s face.
Right.
He’s at the grocery store with his sister, standing in front of the cabbages.
“Sorry,” Cas replies. “What were you saying?”
“I’m inviting you and Jimmy over on Friday for fish tacos. It’s been too long since we’ve had a sibling meeting.”
“Gabe’s out of town.”
“Gabe doesn’t live here, Starman.” That’s Anna’s nickname for him, because according to her, Cas is always on another planet.
“I knew that. I just–”
“Nope, you’re not getting out of participating in society this time. And Happy Hour(s) doesn’t count.”
“There are people there!”
“Right.” Anna hands him two cabbages, one purple and one green. “Don’t drop these.”
“We could get a cart,” Cas suggests.
“And then have to figure out how to put it back? No thanks.”
Cas dutifully follows Anna through the store, soon holding more than just two cabbages (and enough to merit a cart, despite the minefield that the parking lot is). They often go grocery shopping together, because Anna says that otherwise Cas will just stay holed up in his apartment.
She’s not wrong.
*************
“It’s like you’ve forgotten everything I taught you, boy.” Bobby Singer leans back on his heels and wipes his forehead with a greasy hand before fixing his gaze on Dean.
“It’s not my fault, I didn’t have a reason to work on cars in New York.” It doesn’t help Dean’s case that it’s hotter than hot, the garage’s roof the only thing protecting him from the blazing Kansas sun. And it’s not doing a great job–the sweltering heat combined with full-body coveralls is making him feel like he’s sixteen again and working at Bobby’s after school.
“Well, you’re gonna have to pull your weight around here, New York City or not.” Bobby sighs. “I’m not trying to be hard on you, Dean. I know things have been difficult enough the past few years. But if you wanna stick around Lawrence, you’re gonna have to do what you did in New York: work hard.”
Bobby’s right, and Dean knows it, but he wishes he didn’t. His hard work in New York didn’t really pay off. Sure, he ended up with a publishing deal, but interest in his work petered off fast once he wasn’t at the City College of New York. He tried working in a bookstore, but instead he got a complete lack of creative energy and an influx of debt.
(New York City is, needless to say, expensive. Dean’s bank account will attest.)
It’s like Bobby can read Dean’s mind, because he tosses the wrench he was holding onto the concrete garage floor and stands up, grunting. “How about a break for lunch?”
“Sure.” Dean follows Bobby into the back office, stopping at the tiny bathroom, with the same cracked sink that’s been there since he was a kid, to wash his hands.
“Your brother tells me,” Bobby says a few minutes later, already halfway through his sandwich, “That you went on a blind date yesterday. Coming in kinda hot, huh?”
“It didn’t go well.” Dean swallows a bite of his sandwich–peanut butter banana, because protein–and thinks about his night at Happy Hour(s). His date wasn’t memorable, and hadn’t wanted to sing at all, so instead they drank their drinks, watched everyone else, and left. Dean tried to catch the eye of that bartender with the fancy name again on the way out and then declined an invitation to return to the woman’s apartment, instead returning to his childhood bedroom at his mom’s house (his residence until he finds an apartment). “Might go back to the bar, though, it was pretty interesting.”
“Happy Hour(s)? Yeah, interesting sounds about right.” Bobby laughs. “You gotta meet the regulars. I’ve known Lukas for years, and he always sings the weirdest songs. Never quite adjusted to not being in Germany. And Emmaline? She’s your age, but looks twelve. Showed up here at the shop one time wearing pink coveralls and covered in oil after some maintenance on her truck didn’t go quite right.”
“That does sound interesting.” And the bartender had seemed interesting, too, although Dean wasn’t going to admit that out loud. He’d already dumped thousands of dollars into ill-fated ventures, he wasn’t about to dump his heart into one, too.
“There are a lot of stories to be found in Lawrence, if you know where to look.”
“Bobby, I grew up here.”
“But you didn’t do much looking, did you? Always dreaming of the future, never living in the moment.” Bobby fixes Dean with another stare, a heavier one this time. “I know it feels like you’ve failed and you’re slinking back to Kansas with your tail between your legs, but maybe this is the universe giving you a chance to finally just be where you are, to see what you didn’t have a chance to see before. Slow down a little.”
Like you have, Dean wants to retort, thinking of the way that Bobby had never, ever slowed down, not in Dean’s entire life. Sure, Bobby is older now, and he likes to frequent his favorite dive bars and diners, but he never hasn’t spent at least half of the day at the auto shop, and Dean’s mom has always mentioned that Bobby’s been like this since his wife died.
Bobby doesn’t talk about that kind of thing, though.
“Finish that sandwich,” Bobby says, “This suspension isn’t gonna fix itself.”
Dean sighs, but obliges. It seems right now that the “thing he’s going to see” in Lawrence is going to be the underbelly of a car.
*************
Dean makes it to Happy Hour(s) the next night a little bit earlier than he had with his date (what he did learn about her was that her name was Melanie and she was a third-grade teacher). He’d made sure to look up online when they actually did karaoke, although he wasn’t sure he could see himself singing a song just yet. He’d lived through the embarrassment of book readings and poetry slam nights enough to not want to be on stage again for a bit. The karaoke hasn’t started yet, though, and right now there’s just some pumped-up pop music he recognizes from the radio blaring from the bar’s speakers. Here and there, pockets of patrons sit. Maybe they’re the regulars, or maybe they’re new like him.
Dean’s trying not to treat Lawrence as temporary, and his mom, the ever-wise Mary Winchester, had told him not to. She’d done it just that morning, in fact, while he stumbled through the kitchen sleepily making cereal despite the fact that she was already on her second cup of coffee.
(Sam had inherited her morning person genes. Dean had not.)
It’s difficult, though, because Bobby was right–ever since Dean could conceptualize that he wanted to be a writer, he’d been trying to get out of Lawrence. No one became well-known in the middle of Kansas, surrounded by corn and endless summer heat and even more endless winter snowstorms, although as it turned out, people named Dean Michael Winchester couldn’t make it in New York City, either. Dean’s looking for his next move–although, as his mother kept helpfully reminding him, his current next move is to find a place to live that wasn’t in her house.
“Not that it’s not nice to have you around, Dean-o, but I’ve gotten used to an empty house, and I’m sure you’ve gotten used to living on your own, too,” she’d said. What Dean didn’t tell her was that, near the end, he didn’t actually have an apartment, he slept on a friend’s floor until he’d overstayed his welcome, been seen too many times by said friend’s landlord, and had been forced to call Bobby and his mom. His carefully-fabricated excuse had been something about wanting a “slower life” and “more time to work on his next book.”
(Considering what a comical disaster the first book had turned out to be, though, Dean probably shouldn’t write the next one–)
“Are you going to order anything?” A voice asks, and Dean finally clues in that he’s been standing at the bar for this entire thought-map, and that the bartender with the nice name, Cas-whose-name tag-says-Castiel, is staring at him.
Well, staring at him is the wrong word. It looks like Cas is studying him, trying to learn something. He’s even squinting slightly. It’s a little bit odd, but not necessarily off-putting.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, just went off into my own world for a minute.”
Cas nods. “My sister says I do that all the time.”
“You have a sister?” Dean studies the chalkboard menu on the wall behind Cas’s head.
“I can tell you’re from here, you’re friendly.” Cas smiles, slightly lopsided. “I have a sister and thr– two brothers. Anna, Gabe, and Jimmy.”
“I’ve got one brother. Sam.” A Lynchburg Lemonade sounds nice–it’s warm in the bar.
“One-syllable names. Nice.”
“Well, his name is actually Samuel, but when we were kids, I liked to call him Samantha. He hated that.” Dean can’t help but chuckle at the memory. He hasn’t seen Sam for about a year, but they talk as often as they can, what with Sam being in law school now and everything.
“Gabe is actually–” Cas stops himself. “Anna says I have a habit of oversharing, so I’ll stop. What do you want to drink?”
“Lynchburg Lemonade.”
“Good choice.” Cas grabs the bottle of Jack Daniels. “Emmaline always gets one, and if she can convince Tom, he does too. But sometimes he gets a Zombie.”
“...Are those some of the regulars?” Dean asks.
“Oh, yeah. Do you want to meet them?” Cas finishes pouring the whiskey. “Well, not for real. Have me introduce them.”
“Uh, sure.”
“So we’ve got what I like to call the Oldies, the Standards, and the Crew,” Cas says. “Jo, the other bartender, and I came up with the names, they don’t call themselves that.” He points to the table where a man in a purple suit with a green tie is sitting with another old man that’s dressed like off-brand Bruce Springsteen. “That’s Lukas and Walter. Best friends, they always come together. They don’t come on Saturdays and they leave at eleven, sharp. Lukas' German and always singing ballads, whereas Walter likes to work the crowd. Either way, they’re everyone’s favorites.”
Dean remembers Bobby mentioning Lukas the day before, guessing that he was right in his estimation that the elderly man had never adjusted to being in another country.
“Then there’s the Standards. They always do the same songs, these guys. Norman and Robert are the most regular, but their rotating group of friends sticks around. Most of the time, they don’t rap, they sing.”
“Right.” Dean has a feeling he’s not going to remember anyone’s name but Cas’s.
“And then there’s the Crew, the youngest of our regulars.” Cas points to their table. “The girl with the long hair and glasses? That’s Emmaline, the Lynchburg Lemonade girl. Unless you give her a Long Island Iced Tea, she’s the responsible one of the group, and she videotapes all their performances. If she does a song, it’s usually with Tom.” Cas gestures to the guy sitting next to her in jeans and a Blondie t-shirt. “They specialize in seventies and eighties hits. Tom is British and complains about being in Kansas constantly, we’re not really sure how or why he’s here. Tom can usually be goaded into doing crazy songs by Franklin.” Cas moves his attention towards a young man with his arm wrapped around another girl with a sleek ponytail. “He and Cora, the other girl, are sort-of an item. It’s hard to tell, we’re always taking bets, and we hear their friends complaining about it. It’s been years of them acting like that, apparently. And then there’s Greg, who usually just hangs out unless there’s an opportunity to down a beer in one go or sing Country Roads by John Denver. Oh, and once he did Wannabe by the Spice Girls because Franklin made him. Emmaline told me last week that they lost Greg on the bus on the way home.”
“Does that happen a lot?” Dean asks.
“More than it should, probably. Emmaline’s a microbiologist, spends her days in a lab, Tom’s a journalist, Franklin and Greg are foreign language teachers, and Cora’s working on a master’s degree in Italian. Their other friend, Edward, isn’t here tonight.”
“Am I missing out?”
“Oh yeah. You’ve gotta come on Saturdays,” Cas says. “That’s when Edward comes, and he always sings Depeche Mode songs and wears the most bizarre outfits. He’s a teacher, too, although no one can quite work out what he teaches.”
“...How do you know all this stuff?”
Cas shrugs. “People talk, I listen. It’s not hard to get them going.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s kind of perfect for me, honestly. Anna says I’ve always had trouble connecting with people, and a job where people just…openly talk is great for me socially.”
“Anna seems to say a lot of things.”
“She looks out for me.” Cas turns back to Dean’s drink. “The Crew loves getting to know and support new people at the bar, so don’t hesitate to say hi. It’ll probably be a kind of odd experience, depending on what drinks everyone’s having, but they’re nice enough.”
“I think I’ll save that experience for another night.”
“That’s reasonable.” Cas hands Dean his finished drink. “Ten dollars.”
Right. This is a business transaction. Somehow, Dean’d forgotten that, in the midst of their conversation. He fumbles with his wallet, past the picture of his car (which is the one thing he didn’t sell when things went south back in the Empire State) and his ill-used credit card to a wrinkly ten-dollar bill. If he wants to keep coming here, he’s going to have to start minding his money.
“Have fun,” Cas says, taking the bill, that same lopsided smile on his face.
Dean smiles back. He think there’s a possibility that he just might have a little fun.