Chapter Text
As he stands at the pump adding some more gas to his beloved ‘67 Impala, Dean looks around at whatever town it is that he’s blown into. It’s the part of America where the trees are old, the mountains loom right on top of you, and there are signs asking “Have You Been Saved?” all down the highway. Not that that is too different from his native Kansas, but still. The mountains are new—or old, he reckons. He has a vague memory from a high school geography class that the Appalachian mountains are among the oldest in the world. That’s why they’re so worn-down and rounded-looking, not like the proud pointed peaks of the West that he’s driven through before.
If Sam were here, Dean would probably make some sort of joke about their resemblance to breasts—but Sam’s not, so he doesn’t.
Instead, he thinks about how the mountains here seem to match the people he sees going in and out of businesses in the small downtown. They look worn in, set in their ways, smoothed down by hardship and time, but welcoming all the same. At least, the man who owns the small gas station certainly is—he had already been out to say good morning and happily pointed Dean in the direction of a good diner. His stomach rumbles at the thought of pancakes and bacon—he’d left his motel somewhere outside of Nashville early that morning and hadn’t stopped until his baby needed gas as much as Dean himself needed food.
So he had stopped at the first town he came to, its cracked and weathered welcome sign declaring it to be “Shades Cove, pop. 10,955.” He likes the look of it though, a small downtown thoroughfare nestled at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains. The businesses lining the Main Street are wood and brick, with old-fashioned hand-lettered signs denoting family-run shops like “Tran’s Sandwiches,” “Kline’s Dry Cleaners,” and “Harvelle’s Diner.” It’s that last one that he parks in front of now, as suggested by the gas station owner as the “best breakfast in town.”
A small bell tinkles as he pushes open the door, and a young blonde looks up from where she’s taking orders at a booth to wave at him. Besides the older couple in the booth and a family of five at a table in the back, the only other patron at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday is a man of indeterminate age at a stool at the counter, dark-haired head looking down at his coffee and a bulky trench coat obscuring most of his form.
Dean walks into the welcoming diner and takes up a spot a few stools down from Trench Coat. Dean himself is wearing a light overcoat due to the drizzling rain that had been present throughout most of his drive, so a full trench coat in early June only strikes him as slightly odd. Makes the guy look like a down-on-his-luck P.I., bemoaning letting a lead slip through his fingers while he nurses his umpteenth cup’o’ joe. Dean snorts quietly at his own flight of fancy, then pulls a laminated menu his way.
The blonde—her name tag says “Jo,” Dean notes—comes up to him with a notepad and pen in hand.
“Hiya. What can I start you with?”
Dean gives another glance over the menu and orders the short stack with a side of bacon, as well as a black coffee. He spares a slight appreciative glance for Jo as she makes her way to the kitchen to drop off the order, but as pretty as she is, she strikes him as a bit younger, college-aged. Like Sam.
Thinking of his brother brings a slight clenching to his gut, a sour feeling in his mouth. It’s not like he can fault Sam, really, for wanting to leave. He knows, he really does, that Sam going to law school out in California has nothing to do with Dean personally. But that doesn’t keep his insecurities from coming out to play, the deep-seated fear that everyone leaves—that everyone leaves him specifically—twining around his stomach and reaching its dark tendrils into Dean’s brain.
He hadn’t realized how much John’s presence—lacking as it was—was keeping both brothers tied to Lawrence. With him now gone, it felt like the string tethering some balloons had been cut, and they were finally able to float away. The difference between Sam and Dean was that Sam’s balloon (if Dean was following his own metaphor, here) had been trying to pull away for some time. It had a purpose, knew where it wanted to float to. Dean’s balloon, he imagined, would merely bob along in one place. Until it was pushed.
After dropping off Sam in California to start his summer internship before his first semester, Dean took his time driving back to Kansas. But then, he saw the exit sign for Lawrence and instead of taking it he just… kept driving. With John dead, all Dean had to do to completely cut his ties to the Kansas town he’d lived in for over ten years was call up his landlord to stop payments on his pre-furnished apartment, and let Bobby at the salvage yard and auto garage he worked at know that he was extending his vacation.
Everything Dean owned, or near enough, was already in his car. His clothes had all been packed up for the drive to California, anyway; the much-loved paperbacks, with their spines creased and pages dog-eared, thrown into a duffle that had brought him all around the United States once before; his treasured cassette tapes already collected in a box under the dash. What else did he have to go back for?
And Bobby… well, Bobby understood. Might chew Dean’s ear off on the phone for leaving him down one mechanic on such short notice, but he’d been a part of the boys’ lives enough to know what John’s death did to them. How Dean might need to get away. So, in the end, he simply said, “lemme know when you decide to come back to work, ya idjit,” and that was that.
Dean had played it off to Sam like it was all some grand adventure, a chance to get back to the open road in his beloved Impala, windows down in the summer heat and blasting Zeppelin, but the truth is, he’s… untethered. His balloon’s been cut free, but—what was the point? He’s just out here, bobbing along… alone.
His gloomy musings are cut short by Jo’s return with his breakfast. The ceramic plates rattle on the Formica countertop as she sets them in front of him. To shake off his mood, he hits Jo with a flirtatious grin that he doesn’t quite mean. “Thanks—”
But before he can decide if he’s gonna follow up with a pet name or not, Jo cuts him off with a hard glare. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she says.
“Wouldn’t what?” Dean asks, thrown off completely.
“Flirt with me. Don’t even go there.”
“I wasn’t—“ he flounders.
“Uh-huh.” Jo is unimpressed, clearly. “You think my mom and I don’t deal with dozens of men like you a day?” She gestures her head back towards the kitchen.
“I’m not—” he says, throwing a panicked glance to the kitchen through the service window only to meet the stony glare of a woman who could only be Jo’s mom. His eyes widen as he tries to backtrack and get back in the good graces of these women. “Okay, note taken, and no offense meant, Jo. Miss… Harvelle?” he hazards in the direction of the woman behind the grill. She gives him a tight-lipped nod, so he assumes his guess was correct that the establishment is named after them.
“I promise I’m not here for any funny business, just on a road trip, passin’ through. I’ll eat my pancakes in peace.” When Mama Harvelle still looks suspicious, he shovels a bite of pancake in his mouth, not even bothering to swallow before he exaggerates a moan and an “mm, delicious!” It’s hard to grin around a mouthful of pancake, but he tries his best and adds in a thumbs-up for good measure. Mama Harvelle shakes her head but goes back to the grill, and Jo gives him another unsure glance before moving on to refill the waters of the family at the back table.
He begins to eat his pancakes at a slightly more leisurely pace—they really are delicious—and looks over at the trench-coated man a couple seats away.
The man—who Dean can now see is close to his own age—merely gives him a raised eyebrow, his blue eyes shining with amusement, having seen the whole encounter. Dean washes down his last bite of pancake with coffee and huffs out a small laugh. “They always like that?” he asks his neighbor conspiratorially.
“Yes, they are,” Trench Coat answers in a rough voice, rumbly and coarse as if he hasn’t had his morning coffee yet—though it’s almost 11 a.m. now, and Dean has already seen the man go through two cups. “Everyone knows to behave yourself in Harvelle’s if you want your bacon to stay un-burnt.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Like, metaphorically, or literally?”
Trench Coat chuckles. “Both, I suppose. Ellen—Ms. Harvelle, as you correctly pointed out—owns a good amount of hunting rifles, and knows how to use them, too, which our local populace is well aware of. She’s come in first in the gun range’s shooting competition for the past eleven years.”
Dean whistles. “That’s quite a record. Jo following in her footsteps?”
Trench Coat cants his head to the side slightly. “In a way. She’s a record-holder, too—but in knife throwing. Sharpest accuracy in the nearest three counties.”
“Damn. Don’t mess with the Harvelles, duly noted.” Moving on to his bacon—thankfully cooked to perfection and un-burnt, though he’ll have to watch out next time—he crunches down and says to Trench Coat around a mouthful, “Not that I was goin’ to, honest. Jo looks like she’s my little brother’s age, and I wouldn’t seriously hit on someone who coulda played in diapers with Sammy. It’s just… hard to turn it off, sometimes, ya know?”
The other man’s brows draw together, making his forehead look as wrinkly as an octogenarian’s. “Turn what off?”
“The charm,” Dean answers with a brilliant smile, polishing off the last of his bacon with relish.
“Oh.” The man looks down at his coffee cup again. “I wouldn’t know.”
Dean looks the man over, noting the five-o-clock shadow, messy hair, and rumpled overcoat. It was a bit of a prickly package, sure, but… “I dunno, man, I’m sure you do okay. Though maybe there’s slim pickin’s in a small town like this, right?”
The man looks up at him again, face slightly bewildered. He composes himself once more into his seemingly default look of serious contemplation to say, “I suppose. Many of the people in the area I’ve known for most of my life—or I’m related to.”
Dean laughs. “Yeah, that can put a damper on things.”
“Through marriage, though,” the man continues, “not by blood.”
“You’re married?” Dean asks, a little surprised—not that this slightly unkempt and awkward man couldn’t be married, but he didn’t give off the impression that he was. Dean finds himself a little disappointed, though he’s unsure why—maybe he thought he and this other man had a little bit in common. That they were both… lonely. Alone.
“No, not my marriage,” he answers. “My mother’s. We moved here when I was young. She’s married to Reverend Shurley.” He says the name as if it’s one Dean should recognize, but he doesn’t.
Trench Coat fiddles with his empty coffee cup and Dean looks down at his own, realizing the coffee in it had gone cold and untouched during this conversation. “Listen, man, where are my manners? I’ve been chatting your ear off and never even introduced myself.” He wipes any lingering bacon grease off on his jeans and swivels his stool towards Trench Coat, thrusting out a hand. “Dean Winchester.”
“Castiel Novak,” the other man says, joining his hand with Dean’s for a quick but firm shake.
“Novak. Not Shurley?”
Castiel shakes his head. “The Reverend is my stepfather. First, my mom was married to an ad salesman in Illinois. He died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but… I never really knew him.”
Dean nods, though he wonders what it would be like to never really know a parent before you lose them. For better or for worse, he had known both his mom and dad.
“You’re on a road trip, you said?” Castiel asks after a small pause. “Are you leaving town soon, then?”
“Yeah, yeah, I am,” Dean says distractedly, mind turning back to the thoughts that his breakfast and conversation with Castiel had pulled him out of. “But I dunno,” he says brightly, forcing himself out of that nosedive once again, “this seems like a nice place. Could be I stick around for a few days.”
He hadn’t planned on staying, but… well, he didn’t have much of a plan to begin with, anyway. And for now, staying in Shades Cove just felt right. The long days of driving aimlessly were starting to catch up to him; it had been years since the more nomadic days of his youth, and he wasn’t as used to the lifestyle as he’d once been.
“You seem to know all the tips and tricks of being a local,” he grins at Castiel. “Any suggestions for a newbie?”
Castiel smiles slightly and then looks down, formulating a response. “Well, you have to do some hikes. There are lovely waterfalls and other sights on the nearby trails.”
Dean nods, though he’s not exactly much of a hiker. Did he even pack anything besides jeans? Can you hike in jeans?
“Or there’s the shops along the Main Street,” Castiel continues, breaking off Dean’s jeans spiral of hiking- and appropriate hiking apparel-related anxiety. “Or next week we’ll be having a street fair, celebrating the town’s founding.”
“Yeah? And what do you do? For fun.”
The other man once again looks confused, like he’s baffled that anyone would bother asking him the question. “I, um. I don’t know,” he says. “I help out my family’s businesses—as an accountant. I go to weekly family dinners. And various cousins of mine are always getting married or having children or doing something that warrants a get-together. So I do… that.”
“That’s a lot of family.”
“Yes, they are,” he answers slowly. “A lot, that is.”
Dean laughs. “Wouldn’t know,” he says quietly, and is relieved when Castiel doesn’t seem to hear.
“And of course, there are the revivals,” the other man adds.
“The… revivals?”
“Yes, the—“ Castiel starts, but then his eyes catch on a clock behind the counter. “Oh,” he says, getting out of his stool hurriedly. “I didn’t realize—I have to go.” He puts a few bills next to his coffee and rushes towards the door before Dean can even react.
He’s grateful when Castiel seems to catch himself and turns around, hands in his trench coat pockets. “I am sorry. Dean, I—it was nice meeting you. If I weren’t running late… well, anyway, I do have to go. But please, if you need anything, or-or a guide,” he stutters slightly, looking down at his feet, “leave a note for me at my cousin Gabriel’s store—it’s the garish pastry shop, you can’t miss it—and let me know where you’re staying.” With a little nod and a final “goodbye,” Castiel is off.
Ellen walks up to Dean’s spot from her side of the counter, giving him another appraising look. “Dunno if I’ve ever seen him talk that much.”
“Who, Cas?”
The diner owner raises one well-manicured brow sharply. “Yeah,” she says, voice as slow and deliberate as the rag she has wiping out the inside of a mug. “Not usually much of a talker.”
Dean shrugs. “Seems like a nice guy.”
“Oh, he is,” Ellen responds, and seems to finish her appraisal of Dean, eyebrow lowering. “What’d you say your name is?”
“Dean Winchester, ma’am,” he says, shaking her hand over the counter.
“None of that ma’am stuff here, boy. You can call me Ellen.”
Dean mentally exhales, hoping that this is a good sign that any bacon he orders here in the future will come to him un-burned.
“You got a place to stay, Dean? If you’re stickin’ around, that is.”
Dean looks out the front windows and glass door where Castiel had recently disappeared through, at the unremarkable street and the homegrown businesses across the way. Something called to him here, though. So why not stay, he figures. He didn’t have anything—or anybody—waiting on him. Unless you counted Bobby.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think I might stick around.” He looks back at Ellen. “Think you could point me in the direction of a motel?”
“Sure,” she nods. “Head west on this road until you get close to the edge of town, but before the train depot, and you’ll find Whitefish Lodge. You can tell Rufus I sent ya.”
“Whitefish. Rufus. Got it,” he says distractedly, then adds in, “Hey, what’s a revival?” Once again, Ellen’s eyebrow shoots up—a lot of Ellen’s thoughts can be read in that one expressive brow, he’s learning.
“You see that in the window?” She tilts her head in the direction of the glass by the front door and the poster taped up in it that faces the main street. Dean nods. “That’s the Reverend’s whole deal. His family’s real influential in this town, and he leads the services.”
“Church services?” Dean asks. His family was never devout, but his mother used to bring them to the local Methodist church on occasion, so it’s something he’s slightly familiar with.
“Well, it is, and it ain’t,” Ellen says enigmatically. “There’s a big tent in a field off of I-26, they don’t host their services in a church or nothin’. And it’s got some… different practices.”
Dean furrows his brow, confused at Ellen’s vague language. “Okay?” he asks leadingly.
Ellen just shakes her head and goes back to wiping out mugs. “The rest of it’s better seen than explained,” she says. “Ask your new friend Cas about it.”
Dean shrugs, receives the check from Jo, and leaves payment and a healthy tip next to his plate. He gives a final wave to the Harvelle women as he exits, not sparing a second glance at the poster in the window. Cas can tell him about it later.
