A/N: This was meant to be a light story that ended up with a fair amount of heart in it, too. A friend and I took a trip to Las Vegas, and afterward she commissioned this story: a saga in six parts, following the Winchesters and Castiel on one night's trip through Las Vegas.

This story has recently been substantially edited so that it fits into the mild AU series I've been working on, the Other Guardian 'verse. In chronology it goes after One Step Closer and before Darkness Rising.

There is a more detailed note about the 'verse in my profile, but in brief: after Dean is raised from Hell by Castiel, an entire year passes before the Lilith rises and the seals start to break. During that time, Castiel is assigned to watch over the Winchesters, and finds himself growing closer and closer to Sam

Cas and Sam centric, pre-slash, with plenty of Dean thrown in as well. Some swearing. Set during an alternate Season 4.

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Looking for Love in Las Vegas

Part I: Afternoon

Las Vegas was one of those places that, having seen it once, Sam really felt no need to see again.

He always forgot to mention this before his and Dean's annual pilgrimage to Vegas.

Halfway between the Luxor and the Bellagio and flanked on both sides by palm trees bright with the afternoon sun, Dean revved the engine as the Impala idled at a stoplight, whipping off his sunglasses and sending Sam a grin that was all teeth.

"Final destination."

Sam did his best to smile back. Castiel leaned forward from the back seat with a slight frown on his face. "Our location has not changed," the angel informed their driver as he rested one hand against the back of Sam's seat. Sam glanced over his shoulder, and Castiel met his eyes grimly. "We are still in the car," he said.

Sam had decided, after a fair amount of time trapped in the Impala with the heavenly being, that this was Castiel's version of Are we there yet? Cas had never really gotten used to the car.

From the driver's seat, Dean raised one hand in a gesture that Sam decided could be taken as shut up, in its politest form. "You know what, Cas? Those who join road trips uninvited halfway there don't get to complain about spending time in the car. Longest six hours of my life, listening to you two geeks gossip about who said what two thousand years ago. Like anyone cares."

"Sam cares," Castiel replied.

Sam just rolled his eyes and wished that Dean hadn't started this argument with the angel twice already. Soon, Sam promised himself, he would pull Cas aside and explain to him what being baited was, and why his brother was an expert at chumming the waters.

The light finally changed, and Dean gunned it through the intersection, switching lanes with a swerve as their hotel rose like an enormous golden tombstone on the left side of the road. "All right, kids—the second we hit the hotel lobby, shit's gonna get crazy, so let's just lay down the ground rules for the weekend right now." Sam raised an eyebrow and Castiel turned away to stare out his window as Dean lifted one finger into the air, performing for himself. "Rule number one: no one gets to tell me it's time to stop drinking. That time will never come." Sam shook his head half-heartedly. Dean raised another finger. "Rule number two: I get a bed to myself. I mean it, Sam—if Cas wants to party crash this vacation, he can share your bed."

"No one wants to share with you anyway," Sam found himself muttering, wondering whether it was cruising down the Vegas Strip or two days in a car with his older brother without a hunt to break up the monotony that made him revert to the maturity of an eight-year-old.

Dean scoffed and aimed a fake gun at Sam, like he was challenging him to a duel. "Hey—a hundred bucks says I get more people in my bed this weekend than you do, even counting Cas." Sam looked at him funny, and Dean screwed up his face, as if replaying the words in his head. "Okay. So admittedly that… came out kind of weird." Sam rolled his eyes; Dean was stupid and talking to him made Sam stupid, too. Dean jerked forward into the turn lane, and then settled back against his seat, waving the conversation away. "Whatever. What I'm trying to get to is rule number three—this is the big one. If you take a girl upstairs, please, for the sake of all that's holy, put up the frickin' Do Not Disturb sign, all right? No one needs to see that. Hey—I'm talking to you, Cas."

Sam glanced at the angel in the rearview mirror. He didn't appear to be listening. Instead Castiel was staring out the window with rapt attention, studying the larger-than-life picture slapped across the side of the truck idling next to them.

"Cas?" Dean prompted.

"Hot babes direct to you," Castiel read aloud, his expression as blank as if he'd been perusing a McDonald's drive-thru menu. He turned back to face the brothers in the front seat, his eyes slightly narrowed in indulgent confusion. "What does that mean, Sam?"

Sam choked on his tongue, feeling his cheeks heat up all the way through his ears. "Um," he managed.

Dean laughed so hard the back of his head slapped against the crown of the bench seat. "You know what? You just might be lucky enough to find out, you awkward bastard," Dean told him.

"Dean," Sam admonished, feeling a prickle of equal parts frustration and irritation, and maybe the tiniest sliver of something like jealousy.

Dean just shrugged. "What? If there's one place anyone can find love, it's Vegas. Maybe even you'll finally get laid, Sam."

"Dean," Sam said again, a warning in his voice. Dean's leery look was the one he usually reserved for watching Girls Gone Wild and other bottom-of-the-beer-can hotel trash porn, but the image Sam's mind had flashed was less drunk blondes and more…flawless art of Rome. Sam's eyes started to drift to the backseat. Dean smacked his arm, giving him a look.

"Don't Dean me. I know you prefer emotionally screwed-up monsters, but God knows you'd be easier to live with if you'd get some lovin' once in a while, Sammy."

"Don't call me that," Sam said as he pressed a hand to his forehead. Dean's continual laundry list of Sam's failures in love stung, probably more than his brother intended—or maybe it was just the reminder that a track record like that meant he had little to no shot of aiming higher. Especially not as high as his daydreams had been heading lately.

Castiel just blinked at the two of them. Then he glanced back at the truck outside—and if Sam didn't already know that Cas automatically remembered everything he read on sight, he'd have sworn the angel was memorizing that phone number.

Maybe this was a test, Sam thought as Dean drummed against the steering wheel, gearing up to belt out "Eye of the Tiger"—or on second thought, maybe some kind of punishment.

.x.

Dean led the way into the elevator down from the 33rd floor, jamming his thumb against the Close Door button as soon as Sam and Castiel had stepped inside. "All right—let's get this party started!" Dean declared, nodding as he pounded out a few beats on an air drum set Sam was beginning to worry would be with them for the entire weekend. The tall hunter couldn't help but roll his eyes at the ceiling.

"You did grab the room keys, right, Dean?" he asked, doing his best to keep his tone right around can we focus please instead of slipping all the way into you're a complete moron territory. Sam couldn't remember the exact age when Vegas had changed for him, but somewhere between being snuck into the back of bars and cooed over in the lobbies of hotels, and puking his guts out and dragging Dean off the streets when the cops came by, he had gone from reveler to designated drink-light-enough-to-be-the-babysitter.

"Oh, yeah." Dean dug one hand down into his coat pocket, producing two slim plastic keys. He slid one back into the depths of his green jacket and held the other one out to his brother, flicking it in front of Sam's face. "Here you go. Don't lose it, okay?"

Sam plucked the key from Dean's fingers and shoved it down into the front pocket of his jeans, giving his older brother a flat look. "Yeah. Because that was me that lost the room keys when he went skinny-dipping in the Bellagio fountain and some vagrants stole his pants."

Dean sniffed and glanced up at the descending numbers. "Eh. Details."

Castiel regarded Sam in passing with a deeply searching look, reminding Sam suddenly exactly how little their favorite angel still understood about sarcasm—but then Castiel's eyes shifted to Dean, and he held out one hand, staring at the older Winchester expectantly. "I didn't get one," Castiel said, his expression mild.

"You don't get one," Dean told him, rocking back on the heels of his boots and leaning into the elevator wall. "Two per customer. So you and Sam are on the buddy system, all right? You stick together, stay within shouting distance… hold hands so you don't get lost," Dean finished, his trademark grin playing at the corners of his lips, and Sam thought about smacking his brother, he really did, but the idea of Cas's hand in his teased through his mind, and he licked his lips, watching the angel and waiting.

Castiel stared at Dean for a long moment without saying anything, his arm slowly falling back to his side. Then he glanced at Sam and held out one hand. Sam's heart jumped into his throat, but he swallowed it back down. He wasn't going to take advantage of the fact that his brother wasn't able to speak without jerking the angel around.

"Dean's just being a dick, Cas," Sam assured him quickly, stuffing his hands down into his pockets. Castiel's fingers retreated to his side once more.

The elevator slowed to a halt and dinged as the doors opened on the 30th floor. A woman with bouncing curls of red hair stepped into the elevator and smiled at them in passing, turning her back to them with polite disregard as she hit the button for the hotel's spa. Sam couldn't help noticing that she glanced at them over her shoulder a moment later, though, when Dean suddenly pushed himself up from the wall and straightened to his full height again, rummaging in his pockets.

"Oh, yeah—one more thing. Hold out your arm, Cas."

Castiel frowned a little at the command, but he reluctantly did as he was told, lifting his arm once more and holding his hand out flat in the space between Dean and himself. Dean's hand emerged from his pocket clutching a Sharpie, and almost before Sam processed what he intended to do with it Dean had yanked Castiel's sleeve back a few inches and was pressing the uncapped Sharpie to the angel's skin, writing five numbers in permanent black ink. Castiel watched him with a vaguely offended expression.

"There," Dean announced around the pen cap clenched in his teeth, releasing Castiel's arm after a long moment and returning the closed Sharpie to his pocket. He shook his head at Castiel, who was staring at the numbers on his arm as though they were written in a language he'd never seen before. "It's our room number," Dean explained. "First two numbers are the floor, then the room. In case you get separated or whatever—I don't want to have to come get you from the front desk because you couldn't find your way back upstairs."

"Dean, he's not five," Sam said, sending his older brother a pointed look. He was amazed sometimes at the liberties Dean took with the angel.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Dean muttered. Castiel just stared at his arm as though he was considering exorcising his new temporary tattoo from his skin.

Suddenly the redhead spoke up from the other side of the elevator, making Sam jump a little as she whipped around to face the three of them with an overly friendly smile bursting across her sunny features. "I did the same thing to my cousin," she proclaimed, directing the comment half to Dean and half to Castiel with a flirtatious little shrug that Sam was positive went right over the angel's head. Eight months after coming down for the first time, Cas still hadn't learned anything about human signals, or seemed to have any interest in learning, as far as Sam could tell—he wasn't even sure the angel was capable of understanding them. The girl had gone on without noticing: "In case she got too drunk and couldn't remember where we were staying. Except I wrote our room number on her ass, so that if she did forget, she'd have to get somebody to look at it for her. That'd be memorable, right?"

Dean sent Sam a shit-eating grin. "Welcome to Vegas," he said.

.x.

Castiel was the first to go missing.

Sam shouldered his way through the flashing lights and ringing bells that sounded across the casino floor, scanning the afternoon crowd for a familiar figure in an unmistakable tan trench coat. He and Dean had misplaced their tagalong angel somewhere between the elevators and the swimming pool, though Sam hadn't noticed until Dean did a cannonball into the deep end of the enormous kidney-shaped pool fully clothed (and slightly drunk) and Sam had turned to share a flat look with Castiel. Cas was nowhere in sight.

Dean's position, dripping wet as he leaned disinterested elbows on the edge of the pool, was that Cas was an adult and could handle himself—but Sam had a feeling only one of those things was true, and he knew Vegas could be a pretty confusing place even for people who'd had the benefit of growing up firmly on Planet Earth. So he'd set off to search for the missing angel, hoping on the one hand that Dean wouldn't drown before he got back and on the other that Castiel hadn't gotten himself into too much trouble walking around unsupervised.

Sam really didn't want to have to do a lost child announcement over the intercom, or fish Dean out of the drunk tank…or a first-aid station. Not on the first day.

He was doubling back through the endless rows of electronic slot machines near the martini bar when a hand seized his sleeve.

"Sam."

Sam whirled around, ripping his sleeve out of the unexpected hold before he realized the hand belonged to a surprised Castiel. But he couldn't be half as surprised as Sam was to find his errant angel seated in front of one of the slot machines, his trench coat spilling over the red vinyl stool, his other hand folded in his lap.

Sam let out a heavy sigh, equal parts relief and concern, and ran a hand through his hair. "Jeez, Cas—there you are. I was looking everywhere for you."

Castiel held his gaze with serious blue eyes, the usual mosaic of solemnity and cluelessness mastering his expression, and drawing the tall hunter imperceptibly closer. "Sam," the angel repeated in that hypnotic voice. "I need a dollar."

Sam blinked at Castiel, taking a step back. "What? Why?" Then his thoughts caught up with him, and he amended, "What happened to the twenty bucks Dean gave you before we left the hotel room?"

Castiel just looked up at Sam for a long moment. Then his eyes slid to the mismatched bars and sevens on the electronic reels in front of him.

Sam winced. He took a deep breath and tried to remind himself that although Dean had gotten hold of all their cash, even the emergency fund under the back seat of the Impala, Sam had all the credit cards, which at least meant that Dean, and apparently Cas, couldn't spend any more than every cent they had. Then he took hold of Castiel's shoulder and urged him up from the stool, leading his reluctant friend away from the blinking machine.

"Yeah. Hey, um—you know what, Cas? Let's, um—let's go find Dean. He's not totally sober right now and I think he might be filling up with water at the deep end of the pool."

Castiel's eyebrows drew together at this, and he let Sam lead him down one of the circuitous hallways, no longer dragging his feet. But all the same he couldn't help a backward glance over Sam's shoulder, his gaze settling after a moment on his companion's face.

"I could win, Sam."

Sam found a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips at the earnestness of the statement. The urge to take the angel's hand was there again, but Sam contented himself with just meeting expressive blue eyes. "You could, Cas. But somehow, I don't think you ever would."

.x.

Sam had never been a huge fan of walking the Strip before dark—or after, really. The lights were nice, once they came out, but they were a little less entrancing when you had to look at them through a constant crowd of belligerently drunk people, all of whom talked too loud and smelled like they'd dumped their drinks down their shirts. Somehow that didn't change the fact that walking the Strip when they came to Vegas had become Sam's thing, in Dean's words—the thing they supposedly did for Sam's enjoyment in between all the things Dean would rather be doing, most of which involved beer or women without their clothes on.

Sam had never really found the words to explain to his brother that the reason he insisted on walking the Strip a couple times a night was because it was the only time he and Dean weren't in either a bar or a strip club, or some combination of the two, and because it was the only way he could get his own belligerent drunk, who talked too loud and smelled like his drink, to take a few minutes' break from knocking them back and put a little oxygen back in his bloodstream. So he just kept quiet and let Dean make his assertions about the boring-ass things Sam liked to do in Vegas and followed his brother out of their hotel and onto the crowded sidewalk, resisting what had apparently become Sam's own new personal obsession: taking the angel's hand. But Dean's blatant mouthing off about the Buddy System didn't make it seem like an especially good idea

Cas didn't always understand when he was being treated like a child, but when he did pick up on it, it tended to irritate him—sometimes enough so that the angel disappeared in the space between Dean's dick joke and his own dick laughter, which inevitably followed before Sam got a word in edgewise.

The sun was just beginning to set. Crisscrossed in the orange light and long shadows, Sam bobbed his head in perpetual apology as he fought his way through a crosswalk, pedestrians streaming in both directions and swimming against each other like antagonistic salmon. He was trying to keep one eye on Dean, ranging ahead of him through the crowd, and the other on Castiel, who insisted on walking on the right side of the chaotic traffic flow and kept getting left behind—so he was startled when he finally hit the curb and a man stepped out in front of him, blocking Sam's path and slapping his hands together.

"Hey," the man said, trying to shove a small paper card into Sam's hand. Sam glanced down long enough to verify that it was what he thought it was and then pulled his hands up, palms out, so that he couldn't grab anything on accident.

"No thanks," Sam told him. He stepped to the side and glanced into the crowd again, seeking the back of Dean's carelessly disappearing head—but he didn't look back in time to stop Castiel from reaching automatically for the card he was being offered, his unsuspecting hand open in front of him.

"Here," the man on the corner grunted, crushing the paper into the angel's palm. Castiel stared down at it with a blank expression.

Sam pushed back to his side through the sea of people and clapped a hand onto the angel's shoulder, fighting down that same heat that tried to creep up his neck. "Whoa, Cas. Let's just… put that back," he tried, removing the graphic advertisement for a stripper named Candi from Castiel's hand and holding it out to the man once more. The man just stared at him with less than friendly eyes, so after a moment Sam had no choice but to drop the card and let it flutter to the pavement, which was practically carpeted with the things. Then he gave Castiel a gentle push and propelled him into the crowd, bending toward the angel's ear as they walked so that he could be heard over the blare of car horns and cranked stereos. "We don't want those, Cas," he explained, letting his hand linger on the shoulder of the angel's trench coat. Questions flitted through his mind about Castiel, and if the angel felt anything human at all behind those sharp, observing eyes. In the end, Sam just squeezed the other man's shoulder before letting go. "If anybody tries to hand you stuff like that, just… don't take it, okay?"

Castiel looked up at him, his expression somewhere between normal confusion and a considering frown. "Aren't you looking for love, Sam?" he asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

Sam tripped over his own feet and kicked a scatter of stripper ads into the road. For one moment he thought maybe he had been found out, that after successfully pining for the angel in secret for so long he had somehow given himself away—but Cas's blue eyes were fixed on the cheap cards at their feet.

Dean was a whole street ahead of them now, but he had finally noticed they weren't keeping up—he stood on the opposite street corner and stared at Sam with his hands up in a what the fuck? sort of gesture as the cars roared between them. Sam shrugged in return. Then he looked back to find that Castiel had lifted his gaze to Sam, apparently waiting for an answer. He took a deep breath, trying to trap all the scattered thoughts that had briefly escaped.

"Well, um… look, Cas," Sam started, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. There was the truth, and then there was the truth. Sam licked his lips and turned away. "That's not love, okay? Not really. That's… honestly, probably as far from love as you can get."

Castiel tipped his head to one side. "That isn't what Dean said."

Sam closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to strangle his stupid brother. Maybe because he seemed to make everything harder whether he was there or not, or maybe just because he had somehow had this conversation with Cas. "Yeah, I know. And it can be—complicated. But just take my word for it… anything they're handing out flyers for on a street corner in Las Vegas, that's not love. All right?"

Cas studied him for a long moment without speaking, leaving Sam with the impression that the angel could probably see right through him to the feelings Sam had been so desperately trying to keep to himself. A moment later, though, the angel was leaning to the side, staring around Sam toward the other side of the street.

"Dean is killing himself," Castiel announced.

Sam turned back to see that the walk signal had come up and his ever-impatient brother was motioning them across with one annoyed hand, the other held up to his temple like a fake pistol. Sam rolled his eyes. He was slightly annoyed at the interruption, but mostly glad, because he had a feeling he wasn't ready to know the answers to all his questions about the angel, at least not just yet. A genuine smile slipped onto Sam's face as he brushed his fingers against the sleeve of Cas's coat

"Come on—let's catch up before he throws a fit."

Sam was never sure how much Castiel listened to him in the first place. It was hard to tell when the angel was taking in someone's words and when he had tuned them out, shutting off his ears as effectively as if he'd zapped himself somewhere else entirely. Maybe it was different for Dean, but Sam was really only positive he had the angel's undivided attention about forty percent of the time. Still, despite all his awkward fumbling toward the end of his explanation, he was gratified to see Castiel turn away from the man on the next street corner, shunning the explicit advertisement. Sam shook his head. Some days maybe the best he could hope for was to counter just the outer edges of Dean's influence on their resident angel…

"Dude, look!" Dean declared when they reached him, waving a fan of six stripper cards in their faces and sporting a demonic grin. "It's like baseball cards."

Sam seriously considered beating his head against the wall of Caesar's Palace.

.x.

Sam was tall for a human. This wasn't something of which Castiel was always aware—most of the time he felt infinitely larger than the Winchesters even in his vessel, so he was only really conscious of Sam's unusual height when he observed him in the company of other humans, when he towered over the majority of them even though he tended to stand with his shoulders slumped. It was only in the company of other people that Castiel understood that Dean wasn't short after all—he was just shorter than Sam.

Castiel didn't know whether Sam enjoyed being tall or not; it had never occurred to him to ask. It seemed like an advantageous attribute sometimes, when the younger Winchester needed to pull himself into high windows or retrieve something from a very high shelf. It seemed disadvantageous when he had to squeeze himself into the Impala—a distinctly small car, Castiel had decided, even for someone of a more usual height. But whatever Sam's general opinion of being so tall, Castiel had a feeling he was not pleased to be standing out above the crowd tonight.

With an impact that made his beer splash in its glass, Dean dropped onto the seat of their rounded booth and leaned conspiratorially over the table toward his brother, a morbidly wide grin on his face. "Good news, Sammy. That brunette at the bar? She's totally interested in you."

The Winchesters and Castiel had been at this particular establishment for almost an hour, seated at a circular booth surrounded by a bench seat in one corner of the bar. Castiel was seated between the brothers, unable at most moments to slide out from behind the table if he desired to; he wasn't certain whether that was coincidence or whether he had been sequestered. Sam, sitting to his right, had been half-slumped over the table, guarding his three-quarters-full bottle of beer with one arm in case Dean tried to replace it with a full one and keeping his eyes fixed either on Castiel or the small bowl of unshelled peanuts resting on the waxed tabletop. Now, though, he rolled his eyes and cast his gaze out across the room—trying to identify which brunette at the bar Dean was talking about, Castiel supposed. The angel wasn't sure whether Sam bothered to find her before he turned back to his brother and shook his head.

"Dean—just lay off, all right? I'm not gonna do this."

Dean's level of drunkenness was escalating. Castiel knew this in part because he could sense the increasing damage to the older hunter's liver with every subsequent drink; more simply, though, he had learned that the more impaired Dean got, the more determined he became to arrange Sam's evening with a woman chosen at random, until he eventually careened over the precipice of limited awareness and could only be concerned with finding a date for himself. Dean hadn't reached that point yet. Castiel assumed this was why he got a sharply stubborn look on his face at Sam's brush-off and leaned farther over the table, planting his elbows on the polished wood.

"What is wrong with you, man? She's all the way across the room and she's practically throwing herself at you already." Castiel followed Dean's pointing finger toward the bar, but couldn't pick out one woman more than the others who seemed likely to fling herself at their table. Human expressions like desire were difficult for him to identify sometimes. Dean took a swig of his beer and dropped his voice as if to whisper—but Dean had been talking abnormally loudly all afternoon, so the words were about average in decibel. "Look, I know you're a little out of practice, Sammy, but trust me—this is a walk in the park. She made it very clear to me that she's a sucker for really tall guys." Dean sat back and slapped the tabletop as if he'd made some kind of a joke. "Her words, not mine."

Sam shook his head a few times, the way Castiel had seen him do when Dean said something particularly mindless, as if the younger Winchester wanted to get the echoes out of his ears as quickly as possible. Then he squinted across the table at his brother, a few wrinkles settling over his forehead. "Tall?" he repeated, his chin dipping with the inquiry.

Dean raised his eyebrows, the corners of his lips turning down to try and contain his smile. "Yeah, you know—tall. As in big. You reading me here?"

Sam stared at his older brother for a long moment before he shook his head again, tipping his head to one side in a way that asked a question without Sam having to voice anything. Dean shrugged and lifted his eyebrows twice in quick succession. There was a lot of this manner of communication between the Winchesters, and Castiel didn't understand most of it—the small gestures honed to particular expression, he imagined, through years of nonverbal interaction. Usually Castiel didn't care to know what they were talking about, choosing to believe that their silent conversations were either none of his business or not of any interest in the first place. But tonight, he found he was slightly annoyed at not being able to follow along. Perhaps it was simply because he was quickly tiring of being trapped between them, irked by the pounding atmosphere and the dim lighting as the red sky outside began to dull. Or perhaps it was the edge of strain showing on Sam's face, just the shadow of some emotion Castiel couldn't read brushing his features as the younger Winchester glanced at him and then back at his brother, slumping forward and propping his chin up on one fatigued hand.

"What do you care, Dean? I'm fine—I swear. Just focus on your own entertainment, all right?"

Dean frowned and banged his beer glass down onto the table. "I care because I just spent ten minutes doing the wingman thing and setting you up for a perfect bases-loaded home run—"

"Telling her I was tall," Sam confirmed, his eyes narrowed in exasperation.

"No one can deny that you're tall, Sam," Dean shot back, his voice rising to a borderline shout once more.

At last Castiel felt there was an opening in their conversation, though not a particularly meaningful one. He pulled the dish of peanuts toward himself and snapped one open. "It's true, Sam," the angel interrupted them, shifting slightly in his seat so that he faced Sam more completely. "You are very tall. It would be impossible to deny that."

Both brothers turned to look at him, silent for a moment as his words hung between the pulsing music and the stamp of graceless feet. Dean's frown said there was a good possibility he'd forgotten Castiel was even present, which wasn't particularly surprising—Dean often forgot where Castiel was if he hadn't called the angel for something he needed specifically. Sam just looked sympathetic and a little drawn, like there was so much he'd have liked to explain to Castiel if time were not a factor. Castiel felt Sam looked at him that way an inordinate amount of the time.

At last Sam sighed under his breath and let his eyes slide back to Dean, pursing his lips into a vague frown. "Look, Dean, I'm just not interested, okay? And I'm not going to just take off right now to sleep with someone I don't know."

"Why not?" Dean demanded.

Sam glanced surreptitiously to his left, his gaze catching Castiel's for the briefest of moments before descending into his beer. Castiel frowned, his suspicion that he was somehow implicitly a part of this conversation deepening as Dean glanced at him too and then returned to his brother, shrugging dismissive shoulders.

"So? He's a big boy, Sam. He can watch himself for—what's it going to take you, eight minutes?"

Sam rolled back in his seat and pushed his beer into the middle of the table. "I am not having this conversation with you."

"Don't have it with me. Have it with her!" Dean growled.

Castiel frowned at the older hunter, his hand stilling over his small pile of peanut shells. Dean and Sam knew each other well enough that there was a great deal they left out when they talked, especially when they fought, and Castiel most often found himself hopelessly lost trying to follow their disagreements. But Sam was starting to get upset now, and Dean could be a sharp-tongued drunk, Castiel knew from experience. The angel braced his hands on the tabletop and leaned forward until he was partially between them. Castiel let out a short, irritated breath. "Dean—"

"Um, excuse me?"

The voice was unfamiliar to all three of them; Castiel looked up to see a short caramel-skinned woman in a black leather outfit that did not actually conceal much of her standing beside their table and twining a strand of deep black hair around her finger. She was at least partially intoxicated, Castiel could tell from her anxious giggles, and she was staring at Sam with a smile that was some combination of self-conscious and hysterical. A few tables farther into the room, a group of women of similar ages and manner of dress were watching her from behind their cocktails, most of them doing their best not to laugh.

Castiel turned to fix Dean with a puzzled look. "You said she was brunette."

Dean sent him an equally puzzled look back. "What?"

"I'm sorry," the woman broke in, tugging on one of the fishnet gloves that wrapped through her fidgeting fingers. "I'm not trying to bother you, and I know this is a really weird question, but…" Her eyes returned to Sam's face, nervous but excited as she shifted her feet. "My friends and I just saw a Chippendales show like, an hour ago, and… I was just wondering, were you the really tall fireman?"

Castiel didn't know what Chippendales was. Which was to say, he'd noted a video screen advertising that establishment during their earlier city walk, which seemed to depict a number of men standing on a stage and not overly clothed, but he didn't truly understand it as an abstract concept. The fact that Dean had choked on his mouthful of beer and Sam had gone pale confirmed his assumption that it wasn't a positive thing.

"Um…" Sam stumbled over his words, blinking a little too fast as he stared up at the strange woman and worked his tongue against the backs of his teeth. "No. Definitely not. I don't work there." He seemed to wince on the last word, that small expression conveying to Castiel that Sam would never have worked there, and was either bemused or a little offended to be asked. But the woman did not retreat.

"Oh, no, I'm sorry—I'm not trying to embarrass you or anything," she said, holding up both hands as if to pacify him. "It's just it was a really good show, and… you were really good." She sighed as she said the last, shifting half a step closer to Sam's side of the booth. There was something about the increased proximity that Castiel did not entirely like, but he was not sure why.

Sam smiled a little, his disbelieving smile, and leaned back into the black vinyl cushions. "I'm sorry, but you really have me confused with someone else. I'm not—"

"No, it was totally you!" the woman interrupted, nodding so fast that her round earrings swung like pendulums past her chin. "I know it was. And I just wanted to say, it was… really hot when you tore your shirt off. You looked so passionate. I mean—wow." The woman broke off and pushed one hand up into her hair, holding the curling strands back from her face. "I just wanted you to know that you were the best fireman up there. Not that all of you performers weren't hot—just—you were the best. You really lit my fire, if you know what I mean."

Dean was sniggering into his beer, his shoulders shaking so hard Castiel wondered for a moment if he was aspirating. Sam blinked up at the disruptive woman as his cheeks slowly turned red—embarrassed, Castiel theorized, as much for the woman as for himself. The angel had begun to notice Sam's face flushing sometimes, and he had decided that there was something pleasant about that expression, when it was accompanied with a smile. But the expression on Sam's face now was very different somehow; it reminded him more of the way Sam looked when he was about to be violently ill.

"Um… look…" Sam tried again, wetting his lips with his uncertain tongue. "I'm really—"

"I was just wondering if I could get a picture with you!" the woman blurted out breathlessly, holding up a camera that was bound to her wrist and crowding forward until she was right up against the table. "It'll just take a sec. Please?"

Sam turned to stare at his companions, his wide eyes begging for some kind of assistance. Dean was far too busy choking on the condensation in his drink, but Castiel straightened in his seat, his eyes slightly narrowed.

"Sam does not tear off his shirt in public," he announced conclusively, looking up from the desecrated bowl of peanuts to pin the woman's dark gaze with his own piercing blue. "He is a highly decent person and would not engage in behaviors such as this for money. He is also…" The angel paused, recalling Sam's words carefully. "…not going to just take off to sleep with someone he doesn't know."

Sam was staring at Castiel with his mouth partway open—the angel wasn't certain whether to categorize his expression as surprised or horrified. Dean was pounding on his own chest and coughing into the edge of the table like he needed lifesaving procedures. The woman stared at him in silence for a long moment without moving, apparently shocked; Castiel returned her stare, idly inspecting her frail human features. Her nose had been broken once, he could tell, though it had healed well and only a small bump remained at the bridge to evoke the image of a childhood accident, a passing spatter of blood. Then the woman took a step back, and Castiel's impressions of her faded, her essence blurring into the vague backdrop of all the human souls to which he paid no particular attention.

"Oh my God, I'm… I'm so sorry," she stammered, mortification and alcohol climbing into a flush on her cheeks. The woman lifted her hands but let them drop before the gesture could take on any meaning. "I was just so sure… you probably get that all the time," she finished, addressing the last to Sam.

Sam gave her what Castiel could only call a pained smile. "No. First time," he said.

"Oh," the woman replied, looking, if possible, even more embarrassed. "Okay. Well, I'm gonna… sorry…" With this last stumbled apology, she turned and fled into the center of the bar, reappearing a moment later at the women's table across the room slapping the shoulders of a laughing blonde.

At their own table, everything was quiet for a minute as Sam turned to look at Castiel with an expression the angel couldn't begin to decipher and Dean gradually choked his way back to breathing, hacking a few drops of amber beer out onto the tabletop. When he was finally able to inhale and exhale normally once more, Dean looked up at his companions and wiped the back of his hand against the corners of his eyes, which were wet, Castiel noticed.

"Dude, Sammy, that was…" Dean broke off and grinned at his brother, shaking his head emphatically. "You know what? I can't even make fun of you properly until I have a full beer to enjoy it with. Hold that thought." With a laugh that bordered on a cackle, Dean stood up from the booth and made his way across the bar at a casual strut, winking as he passed the women's table. The caramel-skinned woman hid behind her Moscato.

Sam and Castiel were left alone at the table, and the silence stayed with them, only deepening as Sam locked his fingers together and dropped his head down to rest against his hands. Castiel was concerned for a moment that he had upset him—it was hard to know, always, with Sam, what would help him and what would make him miserable. His was a complex mind. But at last the angel noticed a smile lifting the corners of his lips, and Sam turned his head far enough to catch Castiel's gaze, his hazel eyes bemused in the dim light of the lamps.

"Cas, you are…" Sam laughed, straightening in his seat and then dropping back against the cushioned wall of the booth. "Something else," he concluded, his expression relaxing into a soft smile. "I mean, it'd be nice if the earth would rise up and swallow me before Dean gets back to the table, but…"

Castiel watched him with perceptive eyes. "This is not where you would have wanted to spend the evening," he decided.

Sam sunk back into the vinyl. "Not really," he replied, his lips quirked ruefully upward.

Castiel nodded. "I feel that way as well," he agreed. Then he paused, holding the words in his mind for a moment before enunciating them carefully. "Maybe this just isn't our kind of thing," Castiel said, meeting Sam's eyes with his sincere gaze.

The words earned him a genuine smile, just a hint of Sam's dimples showing through as the young man shook his head. "You know what, Cas?" he said, reaching for a peanut. "You're totally right."