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Dean yawns around the back of his hand, blinking as he tries to clear his eyes. The air’s chill around his calves and from the smell of it there’s no coffee on. It can be hard to tell the time in most parts of the Bunker, but it doesn’t feel like morning. There’s that texture to things that makes him think it’s still so early it counts as late.
Which begs the question why Cas and Charlie are sitting at the table, staring at laptops. Laptops, plural. When Charlie reappeared, no explanation given, the first thing she did was go out and buy a bunch of tech, including a laptop and a backup laptop.
Alright. Not the first thing. The first thing was pass out in her bed at the Bunker for two days straight. The second thing was drink a small ocean of coffee and devour every item of food Dean put in front of her. But after that, and after the hugs (which seemed to surprise Cas less this time if the way he hugged back was any indication), she went out and bought tech.
Right now, the light from the screen washes her hair, makes her skin paler and more luminous. She looks washed out, and so alive. There are bags under her eyes and splatters of mud on her shirt from running out into the rain earlier and she’s alive and she’s real and she’s here. Dean takes a moment to let that sink in again, the same way he has so many times over Sam and over Cas.
Maybe Charlie really is his little sister, by whatever process the universe, or Chuck, decides these things, and like Sam and like Cas she’s attached to Dean somehow, always coming back. It’s a pleasant thought, as long as he doesn’t look at it too closely.
Cas mutters something and Charlie laughs, rocking sideways to knock their shoulders together. Cas smiles, the one where his lip curls up enough to show a flash of white teeth.
Dean’s not over being grateful to see that, either.
Of course, he shouldn’t be seeing it right now, because right now he should be in bed. If anything, he should be seeing that smile from the pillow beside him as he pulls Cas in for some nighttime fun.
“Hey,” he says. “What are you still doing up? Thought you were coming to bed hours ago.”
Charlie grins at him, and he colors slightly. Screw it. He’ll get used to it. Him and Cas is even newer than Charlie being back. In fact, they finally pulled their heads out of their asses as Charlie lay sleeping those two days, and the second set of hugs was when she’d worked that out.
“You wanting some action with your hot boyfriend?” she asks.
Cas doesn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. He just turns his head and glances at Dean. Briefly.
“Dean,” he says.
That seems to be it.
“What are you doing?” Dean asks, crossing the space and resting his hands on Cas’ shoulders as he leans in to look. “Is that… Cas, are you gambling?”
“Yes,” Cas says.
“Not sure it counts as gambling when you just keep winning,” Charlie says. “Your man here is wicked smart at this. He’s up by five thousand already. I only showed him the site a few hours ago, and most of that he spent watching me.”
“You gamble?” Dean asks.
Charlie rolls her eyes.
“Relax. I never spend more than I can afford to. And a girl’s got to eat. Sometimes, when I’ve had to move on and not got a job yet, I’ve just…borrowed a bit of money from the rich dicks and run it through these sites. Pays the bills. I always put the money back.”
“Back?” Dean raises an eyebrow.
Charlie shrugs.
“Well, I always put it in an account. So what if it was a charity and not the guy I took it from? Not like I ever targeted people who didn’t deserve it. Hell, Trump’s donated millions to LGBT support groups. And just an hour ago he gave fifty thousand to a clinic run by a doctor from Mexico. What can I say? He’s a giver.”
She smirks and presses her hand to her chest, almost crossing her eyes in her dewy-eyed sincerity.
“Yeah. He’s great,” Dean says, because despite looking he hasn’t yet found evidence Trump is a monster they can go kill, though he has come up with more than one plan to throw Borax at the guy. Couldn’t hurt. “But why get Cas onto it?”
As he asks, Cas’ screen lights up and the numbers on his screen go up.
“He’s enjoying it. Aren’t you, Cas?”
“It’s very soothing,” Cas says, as a riot of colors dances across the screen and a buzzer goes off.
“Right,” Dean says. “Do you think you can come and be soothed in bed, now? It’s late, man.”
“I’m fine here,” Cas says.
Charlie snorts and reaches over, shutting the laptop’s lid. She makes shooing gestures when Cas turns and glares at her.
“Go on. Be dragged to bed by your lover. You can win loads more money in the morning and then we’ll go shopping like we said.”
Dean doesn’t even ask what they’ll be going shopping for. He just takes his chance and pulls Cas up by his arm, towing him along to the bedroom despite the angel grumbling that he was on a streak.
Once in the bedroom, Dean shuts him up by peeling Cas out of his clothes and kissing all down his body.For now he’s distracted by Dean’s mouth and Dean’s hands. With any luck, Cas will have moved on to another interest by morning.
************************************
Cas is at the laptop when Dean comes back from the kitchen with coffee.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Dean says.
Cas doesn’t respond.
From further down the table, where she’s now created crenelations of books around the laptop she’s using, Charlie looks up and waves a hand in a gesture that tells Dean nothing.
“He’s got enough to buy us all a house,” she says. “Not a house to share. A house each. I’ve had to make him different identities so he doesn’t get in trouble for winning so much.”
Dean takes that as a way of telling him to leave Cas to it, and he has guns to clean and research to do and a couple of cars could do with a tune-up, so Dean rolls his eyes and lets Cas do as he pleases. Cas is kind of like a cat in some ways, anyway. Letting him do as he pleases is just easier. Also, it turns out he likes his belly stroked, but that’s not something Dean’s desperate to share with the class.
He is a bit disappointed that Cas doesn’t even say goodbye when Dean leaves the room.
***********************************
Three days later, Dean and Sam take off on a hunt. It’s just a nest of vampires and Donna’s meeting them there, so they tell Cas and Charlie to hang back and rest up. Charlie’s still sleeping more than she used to and Cas is starting to make Dean think he should read up on addictive personalities.
Still, they now have more than enough for a house each, an expensive car each and a round the world luxury trip. Which would be great, if Dean wanted any of those things.
He tells Cas to keep an eye on Charlie, and tells Charlie the same thing about Cas. They both nod, solemn and sincere, and Dean resolves to ring them every hour to check they’re both still alive and in the Bunker.
Hell, he nearly calls Jodi to ask her to come and babysit, but it’s not like she’s free and clear of her own charges, and at least one of them doesn’t want anything to do with the supernatural, so moving in with an angel for a few days might not go down well.
Dean calls every hour for the first six hours, but after that he’s busy hunting and there’s a trip to the local hospital when one vamp knocks him over a banister.
When he does call, Cas insists on having Charlie wire money to pay the bills, and perhaps it is nice to know this time it’s not really fraud that’s paying.
***********************************
The library’s quiet when Dean gets back, and distinctly lacking a Charlie or a Cas.
“Where the Hell have they got to?” he asks, turning to see Sam take the last step, duffel over his shoulder. “You think they’ve run away to Vegas?”
“Yes, Dean,” Sam says, and he doesn’t even have the decency to pretend he’s taking this seriously. “I think your boyfriend and our adopted little sister have run off to Vegas together. Right now, they’re probably drunk off their asses and getting hitched.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Dean says, but he finds himself saying it to Sam’s back.
Turns out they’re still in the Bunker, but in one of the bedrooms they haven’t set up yet. And now they might never do that, because the bed-frame is gone and a sturdy table is in it’s place, two laptops lined up on each side and light spilling from stand-lamps around the room.
Charlie waves at him as he stares in at them, but Cas is back to being too focused on the screen to react.
“Hey. Good hunt?” Charlie asks.
“Don’t tell me,” Dean says, “we can afford our own island.”
Charlie laughs and shakes her head.
“Cas is giving most of it away. That’s my job, finding good places to send the money. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got an account set up for each of us, too.”
Also not what Dean was worrying about, but he just nods.
“Great. That’s…that’s great.”
He only gets a grunt from Cas when he suggests making meatballs, and Charlie rolling her eyes and joking about the spark fading already is not what Dean needs.
He needs his boyfriend back.
**********************
Sam snorts into his beer, something far too close to glee sparkling in his eyes.
“Shut up!” Dean says, shaping the seasoned mince into balls with a little more force than necessary. “Don’t see what’s so funny about it.”
“Oh, come on,” Sam says. “You spend years circling the guy and now you’ve lost him to on-line gambling in a few weeks? I’m starting to doubt all those stories you told me about your prowess in bed.”
Dean’s hands freeze as the rest of him tries to work out where he went wrong with his life.
“I never…! Those… That…”
Spluttering isn’t an attractive quality, but it’s not like Cas is here to see it.
“You shouldn’t have tried to freak me out by bragging,” Sam says, and from the corner of his eye Dean sees his brother shrug. “You don’t get a choice what I do with that information now. And I’m just saying, seems a bit of a waste, all that, um, practice, and Cas would rather stare at a screen. Maybe you should have picked up a self-help book, or- Hey!”
Sam’s yelp of surprise is almost worth wasting one of the meatballs. He doesn’t look quite so smug with raw meat sliding down from his eyebrow.
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” Dean says, and he hears the dull tone in his own words.
He thinks he preferred Sam laughing at him to the sympathy in his brother’s eyes, now. Another meatball takes care of that.
**************************
Three days later, and three nights of sleeping alone, Dean takes his laptop into his room and searches for anything on addictive personalities. Problem is, every article and help-page is written about humans, and angels are a focused bunch at the best of times. Dean has no way of knowing how much of Cas latching onto this gambling is because some part of his angel-brain has decided it’s a new mission, and he’s had plenty of experience dealing with that. Angels don’t abandon their missions.
Dean thought he was Cas’ mission, in a way, but maybe hooking up signaled the end of that one. Perhaps Cas has moved on.
*************************
Sam looks at him the way he looks at Dean’s food discoveries, the ones that include donuts and burgers in the same meal.
“You kidding me?” he asks. “Cas hasn’t gone off you. You really think he’s the kind of guy who’d go for one roll in the hay and call it quits?”
“Was more than just one,” Dean says. Mutters, really, and more out of some reflex than because he really wants Sam to know.
Sam’s eyebrows climb up his face.
“I swear to Chuck, if you go into details, I am moving out. I do not need to know positions or times.”
“Just because you couldn’t keep up,” Dean says, because his brain isn’t really catching on to the topic, here, and how that makes this different.
“Dean!” Sam says, and looks faintly sick. “This is not the Sex Olympics. I do not want to know. Ever. You need to combination brag about how flexible either of you are and mope about your poor little feelings, go find Charlie. She’ll high-five you and get ice-cream.”
She might, at that, if she wasn’t still deep into keeping up with Cas’ gambling winnings.
“Yeah. No,” Dean says, getting up to leave. “I’ll deal with it myself.”
“I don’t want to know that, either!” Sam shouts after him. “We need to talk about boundaries again!”
************************
Dean waits until Charlie heads to the kitchen for coffee and gets in between her and the door.
“Has Cas said anything about me?” he asks, and winces at how that makes him sound. “Shut up. I know this isn’t High School. Just… Has he?”
Charlie’s smile fades into something softer, and she steps right up close, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Dean, he’s just found a new hobby. Thought you said he needed other interests.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“But not ones that mean he ignores you for days? Yeah, I get that. I never liked it when Dorothy went into battle-leader mode. But it’s better than going off on a quest, right? Look, if he’s still this into it by next week, I’ll cut him off for a bit. You can take him on a date. Okay? Something nice. Get him flowers.”
“Flowers?” Dean asks.
“Or not.” Charlie shrugs. “Whatever he’s in to. I think he’s just relaxing after all the crap over the last… Wait. I guess for him it’s been thousands of years, at least. Give him a bit of time to get over it.”
And she sounds so reasonable that Dean finds himself agreeing. Doesn’t make the bed any warmer that night. And he does end up dealing with that himself, but it isn’t as fun as it used to be.
***************************
Sam kicks Dean’s calf, and Dean growls over his shoulder.
“What? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“I can see you’re tweaking that engine for the fifth time this week. And you weren’t paying attention. I asked if you want to come on this hunt with me and Jodi?”
“I heard you,” Dean says. “Sounds like a milk-run. The two of you can handle it.”
“Well, three,” Sam says. “Claire’s coming. Don’t argue. She’s old enough. And I was hoping you’d break the news to Cas. Jodi says Claire’s a bit worried how he’ll react.”
Dean’s not touching that conversation. What Cas and Claire are to each other has yet to be firmly established, and Dean needs to work on this engine. He does.
“You tell him,” he says.
“For fucks’ sake,” Sam says. “I’m taking Charlie with me. She wants to meet Jodi and Claire. Use the time to do something unspeakable with Cas and then never tell me about it. I can’t put up with any more of your grouching.”
Dean straightens up in time to see Sam’s back vanishing out of the garage, and he raises his voice.
“Oh, you bet I’ll be telling you!” he shouts. “I’ll draw diagrams!”
He doesn’t need a reply from Sam to tell him he’s losing it.
********************
He waits until the others have been gone a couple of hours before he goes looking for Cas. Just in case this turns into an argument, he wants them out of the way with no danger of turning back for some forgotten socks or anything.
The laptops are abandoned. The room’s completely empty of Cas.
He checks his room, and Cas’ room, and the library, and the kitchen. No Cas.
Great. Cas has given up with the gambling only to wander off. Dean should have known that Cas staying around wasn’t going to last. Hell, it’s only a surprise he’s been here this many weeks when he’s not actively suffering from some spell or-
Dean hits something solid as he rounds a corner and rebounds. He doesn’t land on his ass, but that’s only because something grabs him and pulls him back upright.
“Cas?”
“I want you to see something,” Cas says, like he hasn’t just spent days and days more or less blanking Dean completely, and he turns, pulling Dean along the corridor.
“I don’t want to see which site you’re winning on now,” Dean says, but he lets himself be tugged.
“I’m done with that for now,” Cas says. “At least, unless I need more money. It’s really easy. I don’t get why more people don’t do it.”
“Most people lose money on that crap, Cas,” Dean says, but he says it without any heat.
His mind’s circling Cas’ comment that he’s done with it.
“What do mean, need money? You were doing it because you needed money? How much fucking money do you need?”
Cas stops and turns, letting Dean bump into him again. He has a pinched line between his eyebrows.
“I got carried away, didn’t I?” he asks. “I’m sorry, Dean. It…can be hard to work out what’s an appropriate level of interest.”
Now that Dean’s the one getting all that focus, he finds it hard to agree Cas’ settings are wrong in any way, but he manages something after a few moments.
“Well, I guess you do swing from nothing to cranked up high. You ever tried just being mildly into something?”
“Not really,” Cas says, deadpan. “No.”
Dean’s mouth is dry.
“Okay.”
Apparently satisfied with this part of their conversation, Cas sets off again, and they end up outside. It’s bright, with a light breeze ruffling Dean’s slightly longer than normal hair, and he takes a moment to drink in the calm.
The next moment, he spots the Impala parked out front. Huh. Sam must have taken a different car.
“We going for a drive, Cas?” he asks.
“A road-trip,” Cas says. “I saved up. Sam said now would be a good time, with nothing really happening and Charlie around to help with research. And Sam and Charlie are going to meet us so we can go to Hawaii.”
“So we can what now?”
Dean must have fallen asleep at some point, maybe after taking a bunch of drugs.
“Hawaii,” Cas says, as though it’s something they’ve ever discussed. “You deserve a proper holiday. And I want to road-trip with you. And I ended up with all this money, and Charlie said it’d be okay to spend some on us, so she’s going to arrange tickets for when we’re ready to go, and they’ll meet us. Do you think I should ask Claire to join us? Maybe Jodi? Do you want any of your other friends to come with us.”
Dean gets hold of Cas’ shoulders and squeezes.
“Whoa. Okay, just slow down. You’re rambling, Cas.”
Cas clamps his mouth shut and stares back at Dean, a faint edge of worry clear in his eyes.
“You were saving up for a road-trip? I thought Charlie said you had thousands, like, after a few hours.”
“Well, yeah,” Cas says, as though Dean’s missing something obvious. “But then it occurred to me that I could give money to people who needed it, and then it never felt like quite enough, so I needed more.”
Ah. That…that sounds more like Cas than just gambling. Dean feels something in his chest soften, and he shifts his hands up to Cas’ face, because he gets to do that now even when Cas isn’t mortally wounded.
“You want us to go on a road-trip, huh?” he asks. “We don’t need a bunch of money for that.”
“We do it we’re going to stay in decent hotels,” Cas says. “We can stay in some motels, for, um, authenticity, but I want to try some with sheets which don’t make my skin crawl.”
He says it with fervor, and Dean has an odd swelling of pride. Cas is feeling freer to express actual opinions on actual human things. The thought’s chased up by a hint of guilt. After all, Dean could have given Cas money to stay someplace decent back when Gadreel pulled the Sam or Cas bit, but Cas isn’t looking angry or hurt. He’s just looking really firm in his opinions about sheets.
“Okay,” Dean says. “We can try some fancy places. But no way am I getting dressed up in a monkey suit to eat dinner, you understand me?”
“Well…” Cas pulls a face that means he thinks he’s being clever or coy or some shit, and moves out of Dean’s hold over to the trunk of the car.
When he opens it, Dean sees it’s packed with luggage, none of it anything he recognizes. There are at least four suit-bags.
“You bought me a suit?” he asks, feeling a bit dizzy.
Cas nods, and the smile playing around his lips now is satisfied, like he’s looking forward to something and is sure it’s going to be good.
“I bought us new everything,” he says. “I packed some of your old things, as well, but Charlie said a new start meant a new wardrobe, so we went shopping.”
This is starting to feel like setting off on Honeymoon, except for the lack of people throwing rice, and Dean has no idea what’s going on.
“We’re all ready to go right now, then?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Cas says. “If, I mean, if you want to.”
A few days ago Dean was thinking he didn’t want a round the world trip, and he still doesn’t. But the idea of road-tripping with Cas is growing on him, new suit or no new suit, and if Cas wants to try out some of the finer things, well, they’ve got the money. Apparently.
“Hell, yeah, I want to,” Dean says.
They can discuss Hawaii later. Right now, Dean needs to lock up the Bunker and get driving.