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"Shipwrecked on a pleasure planet—can you even believe the luck of that, Cas'tell?"
Pursing his lips, Cas looks up from his PADD's screen, from the article on the neurological aspects of Zanthi fever, in both the Betazoid sufferers and the people their malady effects. "I would hardly call it luck, sir."
Doctor McCoy's face falls and his eyes flash like lightning storms. He huffs and folds his arms over his chest. "You know you've been signed off to take some damned shore leave, right? Scotty can't fix the ship until he gets the parts we need, either, so your boyfriend's signed off for it, too. Maybe the two of you could, you know. Go and have a nice time."
Cas shrugs. "The last time I took shore leave, I narrowly avoided being swept up into a brawl between our men and the Klingons. After having something of a fight with my boyfriend. Forgive me if I would rather stay here and read. Besides, I imagine that Dean will have a more enjoyable time if he goes ashore with Lieutenants Bradbury and Uhura. My idea of resting is… well, resting. Ceasing to use energy."
"Your sessions with Spock are rubbing off on you," McCoy tells him, half-sternly, half-gently. Considering the nature of their relationship, Cas supposes that McCoy doesn't entirely mean this as a negative—but on the other hand, Doctor McCoy is famous for criticizing Commander Spock's preference for logic.
Either way, he takes a seat on Cas's desk and slides Cas's PADD away from him. "Having known your boyfriend for a while, Cas'tell, I think I can safely say that he'd like it better if you went down to Risa with him. I'm sure he could have a lot of fun with Bradbury and Uhura, too—I'm sure he could have a lot of fun with anybody. But he'd probably rather go with you."
Cas sighs and blinks up at his CMO. "I don't suppose I could get out of this by saying that I am very nearly done with the latest draft of my paper? And that I would very much like getting the chance to work on it in silence?"
"Nope," McCoy says and claps him on the shoulder, jostles him around so easily that Cas thinks he ought to be perturbed. "That just makes me want to make it doctor's orders, sending you down there to clear your head a little. Go on, Cas. Go and have a good time. Risa's a fun place to be—trust me when I tell you that you won't regret going down there with Dean."
***
Cas has been to Risa once before, actually, but he doesn't see any reason to bother Doctor McCoy—or anyone else, for that matter—with the details of something that happened years upon years ago. One of his foster families happened to come into some extra Credits one year, the year when Cas turned fourteen, and they brought him along on the trip that his foster mother had always wanted to take.
He didn't really see the point of Risa then, and as Dean leads him off of the Enterprise and into the sunlight, Cas still doesn't see the point of this entire planet, much less its substantial tourism industry. Without its weather-control grid, Risa is a geologically unstable swamp, and the only sight in which Cas has any interest is the sight of his boyfriend outside of his uniform. Dean's shirt hugs his torso tightly, and his swimsuit shows off his bowed legs quite nicely, never mind the way it accentuates his ass. Everyone here, Cas is certain, wishes that they had Dean on their arms. They wish that they had an intelligent, handsome, witty engineer escorting them around this artificial paradise—and it would only be logical for them to wish so.
As Dean leads him to who even knows where, Cas stares at him and only at him. He knows he's staring, and he knows that other patrons of this hellhole might find that disconcerting—but at the same time, Cas isn't entirely sure he cares. As long as he doesn't have to hear anyone telling him all that is ours, is yours and as long as he can keep on looking at Dean, Cas isn't entirely sure that he cares about anything at all.
***
Ducking into the art gallery is an accident. …Well, Cas intends to duck into it, and he means to drag Dean along with him by the wrist, and he means to appreciate the gallery's collection, but everything that follows after is an accident.
They only duck into the gallery in the first place because, for a split second, Cas is certain that he sees him. Gabriel.
Running into him on Risa would make sense—unless Gabriel's changed a great deal since Cas was a member of his family, he's always been a hedonist. Dean's looking at one of the planet's vistas while Cas gets more preoccupied surveying the crowd, and in the middle of everything, Cas is sure that he picks out a flash of cold, hazel eyes. He sees a small, rosy-cheeked man with light brown hair, and then he sees that man's eyes—and before he knows what he's doing, he's clenched his gloved hand around Dean's wrist, started yanking him in the first direction Cas stumbles into.
And the art gallery seems safe enough. If the little man is Gabriel, then he'd most likely never willingly go into an art gallery, unless he wanted to steal something. Besides, the paintings are quite nice. Most of them are abstract pieces or some kind of surreal, all swirls of color and odd combinations of angles and lines. Dean doesn't say anything, nothing about the artworks and certainly nothing about why Cas pulled him in here, and as a reward for his not asking questions, Cas laces his fingers up with Dean's, gives Dean's hand a gentle squeeze. Cas couldn't answer questions right now if he tried and he has no interest in making any attempts.
Slowly, Cas's breathing returns to its normal rate. His heart and his thoughts stop racing. He stops drifting off to places that make no sense, that are illogical for him to drift to, even if the mystery of memory is one thing that neurologists and psychologists have yet to completely solve. It's illogical for Cas's muscles to tense up without anything threatening him, or for breathing to suddenly seem a Herculean endeavor—all because he thought that he saw Gabriel and remembered the time that Gabriel held his head underwater and laughed about it. It's illogical to look at a painting composed of blues and greens and actually think that he can feel the chlorine of the municipal pool stinging his eyes.
It's illogical, and yet it happens—but at least there's Dean's fingers pressing into Cas's. At least there's Dean's thumb rubbing circles along the back of Cas's hand. At least there are other paintings to look at, works that don't remind Cas of anything he has no logical business thinking about while he's supposed to be spending time with his boyfriend, enjoying himself. He looks up at Dean, and starts to say that he's grateful for Dean's presence, but—
"Cas?" Someone calls out at him—a still-familiar voice, with a musical lilt to it, like tinkling on a dusty piano. Without thinking, he turns away from Dean, snaps to attention, and there she is, all mussed red hair and pale pink skin, beaming at him in her messy, paint-stained button-up.
"Anna?" Cas wrinkles his nose—it's her, but it can't be her. He can't have stumbled into her gallery. He can't have just happened to wandered into the place where she's working now—this sort of thing just doesn't happen, except, apparently, to Cas. Why didn't he ask what section of Risa they were in before they left the Enterprise?
"Wait," Dean says. "This is Anna? Anna, the painter? Like, long lost sister Anna?"
Without a word and before Cas can tell Dean anything, she charges forward and wraps her arms around his chest in a tight hug. By reflex only, Cas lets go of Dean's hand and pats her on the back—it should content her, make her let him go, but it just makes her squeeze him harder. Which makes no sense, for all it happens.
"I didn't know you were going to be on Risa, baby brother," she says, nuzzling at his shoulder. "I would've taken some time off and shown you around. Given you the real insiders' tour of Risa, away from all the tourist-sanitized crap."
"Technically, we didn't know that we were going to be on Risa, either," Cas tells her. "We were making a delivery when something went wrong in the engine room and we needed to make an emergency landing. We're on shore leave until Commander Scott acquires the parts he needs and fixes everything."
Finally, Anna pulls back and her whole face lights up. She keeps her hands on Cas's upper arms but is careful to stay on the fabric, not to touch his skin. "So you have a few days to kill? We could spend some time together? I mean, I have my classes, but I have time after them and between them—"
Cas shakes his head. "I don't think so. I'm… working on a very important paper, right now. I need to devote most of my time to that. I might get it ready for publication while we're here."
Anna furrows her brow and frowns. "Well, we could get some coffee now, at least? I'm about to go on a break, anyway."
"I'd rather not—"
"Excuse me," Dean interjects, squeezing Cas's shoulder like a vise. "But can we have a second, Anna? Promise your brother and I'll be right back."
***
Dean pulls Cas into a dark side corridor, one that leads to a little door marked employees only. Tightening his grip on Cas's hand, he says, "Come on, Cas, it's just coffee and more importantly? She's your sister."
Cas shrugs and tries very hard not to roll his eyes. "Biologically, yes, she is my half-sister—that much is undeniable. But she hasn't been my sister in any functional capacity since I was seven, Dean. You of all people should be able to appreciate—"
"What I'm appreciating here is the fact that your sister wants to go get coffee with you and you're being kind of a dick to her."
Cas gives up. He rolls his eyes and doesn't bother trying to hide it. "She left me for a new family, and I learned to live without her. I don't see why our biological similarities should mean that we have some sort of bond. Assuming that we do is illogical—and she has done nothing to support the idea that we have a bond. Sporadic subspace transmissions are hardly enough to base a relationship on. Do you understand my perspective, Dean?"
Cas does not mention the fact that he never returns Anna's transmissions. He doesn't mention it because it isn't relevant, and because Dean might use it against him—well, building a relationship's a two-way street, he'd say, you can't just expect Anna to do all the heavy lifting, Pretty Boy. There needs to be some give and take.
Dean huffs and squeezes Cas's hand again. "What I understand is that your sister wants to have some kind of a relationship with you, and you're shutting her down like she doesn't mean anything to you at all—"
"She doesn't mean anything to me at all." What more could he possibly say to make Dean understand him? "Yes, it used to hurt that she left me. Yes, it used to upset me that she seemed to want nothing to do with me, except for sometimes and only ever on her own terms. But I've learned one simple thing about dealing with Anna, and that is not to expect anything out of her, certainly not to expect that we'll ever have any kind of a connection. We don't communicate well or often enough to have that connection, and so I feel nothing about her."
Vaguely, Cas wonders if Anna can still hear them talking. Neither he nor Dean has tried to keep his voice down, so far, and they haven't gone too far from where she's waiting. Even without any Vulcan DNA augmenting her hearing, it's quite possible that she can hear them, and Cas hopes that she can. What he's saying might be harsh, especially to someone whose modus operandi is and has always been coming and going as she pleases, but he needs to say it. And Anna most likely needs to hear it. She needs to learn that the way she treats other people—or at least, the way she has always treated Cas—isn't conducive to having actual relationships with anyone.
Vaguely, Cas pities the girlfriends Anna is supposed to have. Maybe he's never met her—and maybe Anna treats them quite differently from how she's always treated Cas—but he doesn't see the relationships lasting that long. Not with the way that Anna flits in and out of people's lives. Not even Dean's insistence that family is the most important thing can shake Cas's conviction that all of this is quite pointless because Anna's just going to leave again—it's nothing that Cas or anyone can stop, and it's nothing that hurts anymore because it's simply how she does things.
Never mind the problems with insisting that family is everything when Cas doesn't have a family.
In distressingly perfect silence, Dean gives Cas a long look, and Cas can't tell if it looks miserable or like he's pitying Cas. For both their sakes, Cas hopes that it's not the latter. "Come on," Dean says and squeezes Cas's hand again. "Let's just go get coffee with her, okay? It doesn't have to be super-involved or anything… Just catch up with her and see what happens, you know?"
Cas doesn't think he knows what Dean is talking about at all. He doesn't think that any of his experiences would lend themselves to seeing anything healing or redemptive in any of this. But when Dean pouts at him, Cas can't refuse. He sighs and wanders back into the bright lights of the gallery, back over to Anna's side. Even if he doesn't want to, he tells her that he and Dean would love to go for coffee.
***
The cafe where Anna takes them is cramped and full of knick-knacks cluttering up the walls, the shelves, the tables, absolutely everything. When they get there, an older woman shows them to a booth by a window that's apparently Anna's favorite and there's barely any room for their waitress to set down the pot of coffee, not with all the painted clay figurines and decorative cups scattered around the table. Anna seems to think that they're cute, with the way she rearranges the figurines into something that she calls a family.
She tells them about her girlfriends—Madison, a human lawyer who was raised on Risa, and Layla, a Risian who teaches sculpture at the same art academy where Anna works—and she tells them about her classes, about how talented her students are. She asks them how they met and Cas lets Dean answer for them. ("Well, we both serve aboard the Enterprise, and I kept coming down to sickbay to bother Bones—er, Doctor McCoy, that is—and Cas was the handsome doctor who caught my eye, y'know?") The conversation keeps moving with little to no intervention from Cas, a fact for which he's grateful.
But when she asks how Cas is doing himself, he doesn't have an answer for her. He has no idea where to even begin answering that question.
"I'm fine," is what he settles on telling her, even though it tastes a lie. Even though he thinks both Meg and Commander Spock would beg to differ, to say nothing of what Dean's opinion might be. "My paper is going well, and my career is proceeding at an acceptable pace. I'm healthy and I have a good relationship." As though this proves everything he's saying, Cas holds his fingers up for a Vulcan kiss from Dean. When he gets it, he sighs. "And I'm finally learning to control my telepathic abilities, which is a considerable help to me in several areas."
"Well, that's all very well," Anna says, "but it's not really what I wanted to ask? I meant, like… how are you doing, little brother? What's your life really like? You can tell me anything—you know that, right?"
He thinks, Why do you suddenly care so much, and why should I open up to you when you're just going to leave again? He thinks about throwing his coffee cup across the cafe and causing a scene; he thinks about the porcelain shattering and the coffee dripping down the off-pink walls. He thinks about all the things that Anna could've prevented, if she'd stayed with him, if she hadn't been adopted and left him behind for a better life with a nice family—something that, logically, he can't even be upset with her for because it is only logical that she would have wanted a family and parents. Especially after the way they lost their biological ones.
But all Cas does by way of responding is shrug and suppose, "I don't understand how I didn't answer that already. Nor do I understand your insistence on ascribing to me emotions that I do not experience."
He'll probably need to talk about this with Meg later, if only because she'll sense that he's upset and invite herself into his problems. If he can't manage to clear his mind, he'll have to discuss it with Commander Spock as well. At the very least, Dean is going to make Cas talk about this when they're back in his quarters, because Dean can never just let sleeping dogs lie.
But it's worth it for the sake of seeing Anna wrinkle her nose like maybe—just maybe—she finally understands why Cas never returns her transmissions anymore.