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It takes you a month to get the last of the dings out of her frame.
She took a beating over the last hunt, but it’s not the worst shape she’s ever been in. At least she’s got all her parts—no doors hanging off, no rear-views lost along the roadside. Headlights can be replaced. The grill needs to be remounted, sure. But the most you’re worried about is the starter and her windows. Buying after-market will cost more than you’re worth, unless you can jack a truck either from the motor pool or from someone’s driveway and sneak into a scrapyard within a few hundred-mile radius. You opt for the safer route and choose the Thriftmaster that’s still got all her tires, parked next to a Ford CX. She starts slow, but she runs as long as you pat her dash and keep her clean. She just needs love, that’s all.
You really should’ve gone into restoration, considering how many times you’ve rebuilt Baby from scratch. It used to be easier, when you had full access to any make or model your heart desired, all at your fingertips. Now, you have to drive six hours to Sioux Falls just to break into the condemned lot you used to haunt, now derelict and swamped with overgrowth and dust. It takes a few hours, but there’s another Impala buried amongst the remnants of true American engineering, one that you haven’t scrapped for parts time and time again.
For conveniences sake, you strip her of everything she’s worth: headlights, taillights, windows, mirrors, upholstery, whatever you can get your hands on and shove into the bed of the Chevy and cover with a tarp. The last thing you need is witnesses, after what you’ve been up to. You leave the Salvage in a cloud of dust with a few tapes in a box at your side, and you make it back to Lebanon just before sunrise, the crickets chirping when you pull the sliding door open and coast inside.
It’s quiet, for the most part. No one greets you at the door, there’s no smell of bacon and waffles wafting in from the kitchen. The water heater on the other side of the garage wall boils to life, signaling the start of Castiel’s routine. Sam will follow him in a few minutes. For now, you unpack your hoard and set up everything around Baby’s battered frame and leave it for another time. For now, you sleep and ignore the sound of padded feet outside of your bedroom door, and at one point, a faint knock.
Over the next few weeks of installation and hand cleaning every surface in the car, you work mostly alone to the tune of whatever you can get to play on the Victrola, records you don’t even know the name of. But they work just as well, the garage filling with the sounds of Count Basie and Cab Calloway, Dizzy and Benny and the Duke. It’s downright festive, if you say so yourself. Sometimes Sam wanders in with food or to help with the things you can’t lift solely by yourself. Sometimes Castiel is there, purely to watch and inquire. There’s even one night in the backseat that you still think back on with amusement, and neither of you really say much about it afterwards. But you know—you both do.
Eventually, it ends up being the three of you, Sam alternating with you on the engine, Castiel always lingering over your shoulder, watching. Late at night when Sam’s asleep and you’re not far off, Castiel wanders in and offers his hand, so you teach him how to get blood out of the upholstery and pop dents out of the doors. He’s quick with his hands and a fast learner, and before long you’re able to watch him completely rewire the headlights without the fear of being electrocuted. Pride swells in your chest, just from seeing him like this. Doing something that isn’t required of him, but something he wants to do.
The three of you get the back window in first, making sure it’s sealed in place afterwards and letting it set before you do anything else. Her exterior is still caked in dried blood, but that can wait until everything is settled and you can get around to washing her, the proverbial icing on the cake. Castiel helps you with the front windshield later that night, and for the first time in a month, she’s almost as good as new. Aside from the handprints in the gathering dust and red spattered on the windows, she looks just as you saw her months ago, shiny and clean and running just the way she always has.
“She’s beautiful,” Castiel tells you a few mornings later, when you’re bent over the hood scrubbing the stains out of the paint in a pair of shorts you should’ve thrown out months ago. And at first, you’re not sure what he’s talking about until you watch him stroke a hand along her roof, wiping away dust you’ll soon clean away permanently.
You just grin and laugh, wringing out the sponge and wetting it again, suds sloshing across the paint. “Always has been,” you say. From across the room, you catch the way Castiel looks at you, giddy excitement in his eyes and a not-quite-there smile fluttering across his lips. It’s such a rare thing, so fleeting—a part of you wants to wipe it off his face.
Maybe that’s what possesses you to grab the water hose while he’s not looking and aim the spray nozzle at his head. He’s dressed down now, in a pair of sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, things you picked up at the Wal Mart in Hastings when he finally decided to stay and take up root in one of the spare bedrooms. It’s been nice, feeling him near, watching him wander around. Somehow, he’s always in your radius, always in your line of sight. Now, he’s three feet from you—and he’s staring at you like you betrayed him when you squeeze the handle and let loose the spray, soaking him to the bone.
You’re doubled over in laughter while he glares at you, his hair dripping, clothes soggy. At some point, the hose ends up on the floor and the handle in his hands, because the next moment you’re the one with water in your face and seeping into your shorts, shirt sticking to your skin.
And it’s on.
The Impala gets forgotten for a while, sitting in the background while you grapple for the water hose, his hands in your shirt, yours groping his pants. There’s nothing left to the imagination anymore—everything is soaked and slick, water pouring off onto the concrete floor and down the central drain. The bucket of soap somehow gets involved and your shirt gets discarded, and you’re aware you’re both acting like teenagers getting handsy for the first time, but you couldn't be bothered to care.
By the time you get the hose back, you’re sprawled out on the floor and Castiel is straddling your waist, soapy sponge in hand, looking every bit disheveled and pleased with himself. “That was rude of you,” Castiel chides, intentionally dragging the sponge across your chest; no amount of struggling can dismount him, and he laughs at your plight.
You just roll your eyes and tug him down by his collar, until he drops the sponge and you’re kissing, sweet as rain on the garage floor, a grin on your lips. “Don’t see you complaining,” you sneer; Castiel thumps your nose when he pulls away, mirthful. “C’mon, let me up. She’s gonna stain if we let her sit there.”
With a drawn out sigh, Castiel stands and helps to pull you up with him; your footsteps slosh when you walk, his pant legs dragging with every step, waistband hanging low on his hips, enough to where you can see the dimples of his lower back peeking out from beneath his shirt. You could touch him here—he’d probably let you, too. He’d let you do anything. “Can you show me how to wash her?” Castiel asks when you pin him up against the driver’s side door, his arms around your waist, your hands on the roof.
You kiss him again, a smile on your lips. “Sure,” you whisper and press another to his jaw. “C’mon. Meet the new Baby.”