The kitchen was disturbingly empty when Castiel Novak came downstairs for his morning coffee and bagel. Usually his wife was there, pouring cereal for their six-year-old daughter and bobbing her head to Christian pop on the radio. Music was her morning ritual to get psyched up for he day. They were past the point in their marriage when she'd kiss him on the cheek when he walked into breakfast, frankly he was lucky to get a nod, but usually she'd put his bagel in next to her cinnamon raisin toast without needing to be asked. Generally he would sit quietly, sipping his coffee while the female members of his family kept up a cheerful conversation about school and television and any other little topic that they could think of.
Today though the kitchen was dim and cold. The tile counter still had the ketchup smudge he had left there from his microwaved dinner the night before, encountered by no being other than himself. He took the bag of bagels from the freezer and unwrapped them miserably, placing the frost bitten thing in the toaster. The coffee machine ran with a low gurgle, filling a whole pot that he wouldn't be able to finish alone.
On the kitchen table sat an unopened off-white envelope, the stationary recognizable from the thank you cards he and his wife had chosen last year. Castiel avoided looking at the offensive thing, but he could feel its presence glaring through the back of his head while the ice crystals melted off of his breakfast.
He had to read it. He was going to read it, obviously. Just not yet.
Last night he had walked into his home at about 9:30 pm, after a pretty dismal and overlong day of work. He hadn't heard the normal background noise of whatever game show Amelia felt like watching that night, stepping into a silent, empty house. There were no rambling, pointless stories told by his sweet blonde daughter. Nothing but cleared out shelves and a very loud envelope.
An envelope that had sat on the table for over 12 hours now, untouched.
The toaster dinged at long last and Castiel's bagel popped up. Unthinkingly he reached to grab it right away and hissed as the too-hot bagel burned his fingers. Amelia had a wooden fork thingie she used to take the damn things out of the toaster but he had no idea where she kept it.
He turned and put his plate on the table, going to get cream cheese and trying not to think about anything but his impending work day.
But the envelope was taking up all of the space on the kitchen table. He couldn't sit and enjoy his breakfast without staring at the damned thing.
Amelia had left it for him, obviously. It probably had explanations in it. He took a crunchy bite of his food, staring darkly at the little piece of folded paper.
Eventually he opened it.
"Castiel." It read. "I've taken Claire to my mother's. I'm sorry that I had to, but you know why. I want a divorce. I'm sorry for everything, and I wish this could work out, but I promise you it's for the best. –Amelia."
Castiel wondered silently at how concise Amelia could be. He imagined Claire sleeping peacefully in her room at her grandmother's, thinking that it was just a nice visit. It was best that way. It might be a little while before he saw her again. He took another bite of his cream cheese bagel.
Work.
Castiel worked as a customer service representative for a fairly large electronics corporation. Every day he would respond to phone calls and emails from people who felt that they had received bad service or bought a faulty product and wanted to shout at someone for it. He would take the call, proceed to be bitched at for however long the customer could handle, apologize for the problem that could not have been his fault, and decide whether the complaint was valid enough to transfer over to somebody who could solve it.
No other representative had lasted for more than three years in his job, and he was going on year eight.
His cubicle was, like most cubicles, dismal. It had that kind of gray, faintly fuzzy texture that made up cubicle walls, brightened here and there by a few pictures of his wife and child. As he sunk down into his chair he found himself staring at his family's Christmas photo from last year. Amelia had been cranky that day, he remembered, if you really looked you could almost make out the irritation in her forced smile.
"Castiel." A smallish man who looked like a well dressed but evil teddy bear peeked over the top of Castiel's cubicle. He was just barely tall enough to look over it though, so he quickly shifted to the entrance to the cubicle where he could pose ominously in all of his black suited glory. Castiel looked over at one of his numerous bosses, an English man named Crowley. His superior's eyebrow raised inquisitively at Castiel's apparent unease. He continued. "A favor."
"Yes?" Castiel said. The last time he had paid a favor to Crowley he had worked harder than he had in his life in order to get a presentation ready on time. He hadn't been able to come home for two days straight, sleeping on a couch in Michael's office for one cramped and anxiety-ridden night. Amelia had been irritated with him for being such a pushover about it, but Crowley had promised him a good bonus, and saints be praised at the end of the week had a few thousand more dollars in his bank account than had previously been there.
"There's a meeting over at Hamilton County today, but I have to deal with something here. Don't worry, all you'll have to do is walk in, nod at everyone, and record the meeting with this thing." Crowley held out a tiny little audio recorder that was no bigger than a pen. "It's quite important that I understand what happens at this meeting, but it's less important than every single other bloody thing I have to deal with today. You can take the company car if you want."
Castiel stared at Crowley for a few moments, blankly; processing what had just been said.
"Yes? Good Morning? Castiel?" Crowley leaned over Castiel's desk ominously. "Wake up mate, you're on duty now."
"I… yes." Castiel nodded matter of factly. "Yes. I can do that."
"Of course you can, a ruddy squirrel could do what I just asked you." Crowley responded snarkily.
"I… of course I will." Castiel said, sitting up slightly more rigid in his chair and flicking his gaze to and from family photographs. "I can head out right away."
"Get a coffee or something first, you're more spacey than usual." Crowley tossed the company car keys in Castiel's general direction dismissively and swept off.
Castiel sighed and knelt to pick up the car keys off of his office floor. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before standing back up. By the time he snatched his overcoat purposefully off its hook you almost couldn't tell how wrecked he was. Almost.
Dean Winchester had had three cups of coffee that morning and had still managed to fall asleep behind the desk of Bobby Singer's Car Care. He was sprawled out in an old torn up pleather chair, head lolled slightly back and drooling just the tiniest of bits. The sight of an unconscious, ridiculously good-looking man had attracted the attention of a group of teenage girls who happened to be skipping school that day. They peered through the glass window, gawking and giggling amongst themselves. One of them had almost worked up enough courage to rap against the glass window when Bobby made a surly entrance, glaring right back at them. The overdressed teens were forced to retreat, casting a few more longing glances back at the hottest mechanic outside of gay porn they had ever seen.
Bobby rolled his eyes at the schoolgirls and smacked his employee across the back of the head.
"CHRIST!" Dean muttered, jerking up in his seat inelegantly and blinking at his surroundings in confusion. Ah yes. He was getting paid right now. He glanced up at his boss somewhat sheepishly. "C'mon Bobby, no one was even here!"
Bobbly glowered pointedly.
"They show up Dean. That's what it's like with customers. They aren't here one second, and then they show up. Life's funny that way."
Before Dean could stutter out a defense for himself their phone rang and he answered it with a flourish, as a means of retreat.
"Bobby's Car Care, Dean speaking, how may I help you?" Dean answered the phone with a great big customer service smile on his face. For once he used the little spiel that Bobby told him he ought to use whenever he answered the phone, as an attempt to earn back some "please don't fire me" points.
Bobby rolled his eyes.
"Oh, where?" Dean asked, smile fading immediately. His brow furrowed and Bobby could tell that it was going to be one of those mornings. "Intersection of Jefferson and Wayne?" Dean grabbed for some paper and began writing addresses down. "Ok. Any injuries?" He scribbled some words down on a notebook and held it up for Bobby to read. It said, "tow job – accident – station wagon and a Subaru". This time when Bobby sighed it was less exasperation and more resignation.
Dean slammed the phone down.
"Doesn't sound too bad, and it's pretty close by. You want me to head over?" Dean asked, looking very businesslike all of a sudden. He had kind of a bad history with car accidents, but somehow that had made him better at dealing with other people's.
"Git on out there. Anybody hurt?" Bobby asked.
Dean sort of shrugged, "Some dude might be concussed but they said nothing too bad." Dean pulled on the first jacket he saw off of the coatrack by the door and opened the entrance with a bang. "See you later!" he called out as he jogged over to the tow truck.
The first thing that Dean saw when he pulled up to the accident was the police re-routing traffic around the two vehicles. The Subaru's right side was smashed to hell, with the windshield shattered. The Honda station wagon looked like it was in pretty good shape; maybe they'd be able to piece it together. Depending of course on who was insured.
On each side of the road there were grassy hills. Clusters of paramedics and cops surrounded two figures hunched over on opposite sides. Police tend to try to keep accident victims away from one another. It minimizes the shouting and fighting that tends to happen after something like this.
Dean didn't try to look too closely at the people hunched over on each side of the road. Watching a person who's just been in a car accident is like meeting somebody who's completely naked while you're fully clothed. They are just utterly and completely vulnerable. He pulled over as close as he could get to where the cars were wrecked and stepped out to go through all the bureaucratic nonsense.
Dean had done this enough times to know that cops had the best grasp of who needed to fill out what form and give it to whom. But before he could sort out who was in charge, he heard a female voice call out to him.
"DEAN WINCHESTER!" The voice yelled, and there was a hysterical edge to it.
"What the…" Dean looked over to see, of all people, Ellen Harvelle, seated on the grassy side of the road. She was wearing a blanket and was surrounded by a group of flustered paramedics who were trying to get her to stop waving frantically.
"Dean Winchester if you charge me one fucking CENT for towing that car I'm going over to Bobby's and popping his head off like a dandelion." Ellen shouted.
"Hold on, sorry…" Dean extricated himself from a police officer who had started trying to speak with him, "I… I know her!" Dean explained.
He dodged across the road in a way that was probably unsafe and jogged over to where his good friend and favorite bartender had finally been restrained by the medical team.
"Ellen! Are you ok? What happened?" Dean asked, crouching next to Ellen protectively. He hovered awkwardly for a moment deciding whether to hug her or not, and ended up choosing to awkwardly pat her shoulder. His little brother Sam would have been better in this situation in all honestly.
"We need to move to a bigger town huh? You've definitely been someplace too long when you know the guy towing your car after a crash." Ellen spoke with a shaky smile, and for all her sass her eyes looked like they were pretty close to spilling over with tears at any second.
"You ok?" He repeated.
"I'm fine, that guy over there just turned in front of me out of nowhere." She pointed a shaky finger over at the man at the other side of the road. He was sitting on the grassy hill, with his head between his knees and his hands behind his neck, perfectly still. Dean stretched to get a look at him. The guy who'd smashed into Ellen was youngish, mid thirties maybe, with a messy shock of brown hair. He was dressed like an office schlub with a tan overcoat that had some bloodstains visible on it's shoulder.
Some cops were standing around him awkwardly trying to balance the needs of a man having a nervous breakdown with their own need to get this paperwork sorted out as fast as possible.
"He looks like a dick." Dean noted. Ellen didn't respond, distracted by the cops around her that had finally got her attention back. Every single one of them needed her to repeat her name and date of birth apparently, before justice could be served. Dean glanced over at the two dented up vehicles in the middle of the road, remembering his primary reason for being here was to remove them. As he started to walk over to his tow truck he called out over his shoulder, "You called Jo yet?"
"No, Dean sweetie, could you?" Ellen asked from around an ambulance person, "I'm still kinda shook up and I don't want to scare her."
"I… uh… sure?" He committed half-heartedly.
"And don't you dare charge me." She growled.
"Ellen babe, for you?" Dean grinned charmingly and jogged back over to his tow truck. Various public officers surrounded him. Unlike Ellen though, Dean had gone through this song and dance before. He was signing forms and hooking up cars and assessing damage in as quick and professional a manner as he was capable. Poor Ellen. He knew she didn't have the greatest insurance. He looked over at the dick who had hit her.
The man was still sitting there at the side of the road, rubbing his forehead and staring down at the ground. It looked like he was finally starting to talk to the cops and paramedics around him, so he couldn't be too hurt. Once Dean had both cars hooked up to the back of his truck safely he jogged over to where the guy was sitting, pulling a card out of his pocket.
"Hey, sir? You need anything out of your car before we tow it?" Dean asked. It wasn't necessarily his job to do this but he wanted to get a closer look at the guy.
"What?" The man sitting on the ground looked up at Dean, eyebrows knit in worry. His face was covered in blood, apparently his airbag had socked him in the face and given him a nosebleed. He was absently playing with a wedding ring on his left hand.
Something about the drying blood smeared all over the guy's face really brought out the crisp blue clearness of his eyes. Which was a weird thing to notice honestly. Dean pulled himself together.
"Your car, do you need anything out of it? Wallet? Suitcase? Purse?" Dean joked, realizing as he said it that perhaps this was not the moment for levity.
"It's not, not my car it's… It's my boss… it's the company's…" The sorry little businessman trailed off, rubbing his forehead anxiously, like he was just too overwhelmed to deal with this. The man had a deep voice, raspy and shaky, although the waver may have just been a side affect of almost dying. Before Dean could point out that his question had not exactly been answered, he noticed the guy's wallet and briefcase were lying in the grass next to him. He put on a smile that was almost trying to be comforting.
"You know what, we can get all that sorted out later. You got your phone and stuff though?"
"Yes, yes all of my personal belongings are with me." The man sighed. He looked over at Ellen, who had finally allowed the paramedics to put her in a neck brace and was griping about it loudly. "Is she hurt?" He asked, looking up at Dean with wide, anxious eyes and raising a shaky hand to indicate the woman on the other side of the street.
"Ellen?" Dean asked, looking across the road. He shrugged. "She seemed ok. Scared a little."
"You know her?" The man's voice perked up in sudden interest. "The woman I hit?"
"Yeah, she's a great lady." Dean said, not sure what to think of this douchebag. Maybe you should look both ways next time so you don't almost kill any more of my friends.
"I'll pay for everything, her car, the hospital… it was my fault, my fault completely." The man spoke quickly and earnestly. In all likelihood he was in shock or concussed or something, but he looked very determined. He grabbed his wallet and started flipping through it, pulling out a business card. "Here, give her this, this is my information, will you tell her I'll pay for everything?"
"Sure man, I'll tell her." Dean looked at the business card. "Castiel Novak" it read in cheap little letters on a flimsy backing. "Customer Service." There was a little watermark at the bottom so you could tell it was from one of those websites that send you free cards. Dean looked over at the cops, who seemed very interested in the man taking all of the blame for the accident. He handed Novak his own information. "Um, here's my card. I mean, it's the card for the Car Care. Where your car will be. So you can pick it up."
"Oh." Novak looked at the little piece of paper, expression falling again. Dean didn't blame him. The guy crashed a car that wasn't his? He was about to be buried under eight miles of paperwork. "I guess I'll call tomorrow." He said, glumly.
"Hey." Dean sort of patted the guy's shoulder, setting his face into an expression that might be mistaken for comforting. "You never know man, I'll see what I can do. Maybe it won't be so bad. I've fixed up worse than this."
Castiel looked up, and Dean was actually stunned by his expression of utter and complete misery.
"Thank you." Castiel looked down quickly at the card in his hand. "Dean. But I doubt it."
It wasn't until around 4:30 that Dean remembered he was supposed to call Jo and tell her what had happened. It had been a long day; he'd been hauling his ass around the workshop non-stop since lunch. Elbow deep in engine grease on a 1998 Honda Accord, he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket.
"Shit." He muttered, dragging himself out from below the station wagon and fumbling for his super out of date flip phone. His caller ID read "SAMMY"
"Sam!" He said, answering the phone cheerfully. "What's up bro?"
"Ellen called. She said she had a message for you." Sam said.
"What?" Dean asked, wiping some sweat off his forehead and leaving a streak of grease.
"Wait, I've got to remember her exact phrasing. I'm pretty sure it was 'YOU'RE A DUMBASS'." Sam said, audibly smiling.
"Sounds like her." Dean admitted, crossing his arms and leaning against Bobby's ancient and broken soda machine. "She pissed I forgot to call Jo?"
"I just got a call from Jessica who said that Jo was freaking out because her mom was in a car accident and nobody told her so then I called Ellen who told me to tell you that…"
"God you biddie hens are annoying." Dean muttered as Sam rambled on.
"Anyway you're a dumbass. Call Jo. Aren't you guys dating or something?"
"BIDDIE HENS." Dean repeated pointedly. "ANNOYING."
"Whatever man" Sam was laughing though, good that Ellen's near death experience gave him such amusement. "You gonna be home for dinner tonight? Because I was going to make Jessica some salmon and I know you don't really like fish."
"The fact that you refer to sex as salmon tells me you're not ready." Dean teased.
"Ugh. Dean." Sam sighed over the phone and Dean just knew that he was rolling his eyes. "Just don't come home tonight ok?"
"Understood little bro." Dean said. "See you." He snapped his phone shut and looked up at the clock. He was still supposed to be working for 20 more minutes before he could shut the place down. The still unfinished Honda Accord stared at him accusingly from the center of the messy garage. "Shut up, dude. " Dean told it, and started the process of closing up.
Castiel Novak stepped into the dark foyer of his home. Amelia had an expensive habit of forgetting to turn off the lights, even after Castiel had explained to her that their power bill was monstrous and that she single handedly was destroying the planet. Walking into a pitch-dark home for the first time, though, Castiel began to see the advantage of a little bit of surplus energy usage.
He flicked a switch and put down his briefcase with a groan. His neck and back were still sore from where he'd stiffened up in the accident. One of the little plastic wristbands they put on you in the hospital was still around his wrist. He could still smell the burnt rubber and gasoline on his clothes. After a few hours of tests to make sure he wasn't concussed and had no internal bleeding his doctor had handed him a terrifying stack of papers, told him to stop by the police station so that the cop could hand him his ticket, and to get a nice night's sleep.
Crowley had sent him a text message while he was lying in a neck brace in an ambulance. "Great job Novak, didn't even make it on to the interstate. Come see me when you've stopped crying."
He rubbed his bruised arm uncomfortably, leaning against the doorframe. His bed was upstairs, unmade since he hadn't made it that morning, cold, and unwelcoming. The computer in his study was probably still on, Castiel hadn't been near it since he'd first seen the foreboding envelope on the kitchen table yesterday. He could send people emails, letting them know what happened. Get a start on the red tape. But instead of walking into his study and taking care of some badly needed internet correspondence, Castiel dragged his feet into the living room, slumped onto his cheap pleather couch, flipped on the television, and started watching a procedural crime drama.
In his study his computer remained on, browser history opened where his wife had left it.
Meanwhile, Dean Winchester sat at the corner stool of The ABC Taproom, behind a somewhat embarrassingly tall beer. He hadn't realized when he'd asked for the Yuengling on tap that it would come in a vessel that could comfortably hold a bouquet of flowers. A basketball game was clearly visible on a mounted TV behind the bar, so all the alcoholics could distract themselves from how depressing drinking alone was.
Dean found himself enthralled in a friggin' Celtics game, sipping away at his awkwardly huge beer. When his phone beeped he picked it up conspicuously, eyeing the other creepy bastards around him to make sure they all saw his social interaction. He might be drinking alone at 6:30pm, but he wasn't one of them yet damn it. He wasn't a regular.
It was a text from Jo. "I'm staying in with mom tonight, duh."
Dean pursed his lips, then promptly unpursed them when he realized what he was doing in a public place.
"Laaaaame." He wrote, but before he pressed "send" a memory struck him from that afternoon. Man, he was just totally incompetent today. He quickly erased his typed whiny response and wrote "The dude who hit yr mom says he'll pay for everything, I got his card."
The next response came much more quickly than the previous one.
"Send me that shit. And if you need to tell Sam that you and I hung out go ahead ;)"
The winky face mocked Dean as he read and re-read the text. He looked around the bar at the men who were beginning to fill it up. The ABC Taproom was filled with all the usual wood paneling and random bad wildlife paintings that usually signified your everyday dive bar. And from time to time straight dudes did mistakenly stumble in, fooled by the dingy atmosphere and sport television into thinking this was a place where they could enjoy a drink in a heteronormative locale.
They'd be wrong though.
A youngish man with dark hair and very pale skin took a seat at the bar just a few seats down from where Dean was enjoying his beverage. He stretched, showing off some pretty nicely toned arms, and then gave Dean a small but impossible to ignore smile. Dean tapped the side of his beer glass nervously and ran his eyes up and down the newcomer. He was wearing well fitting jeans, a striped button down shirt that was only partially buttoned, and thin suspenders. Celtics game forgotten, Dean took a deep breath and gave the handsome guy an upwards nod and a raised eyebrow. That was all it took. The nicely proportioned young man slid off of his seat and made his way over to the stool directly next to Dean.
"That's some beer." The young guy observed, sticking his hands in his pockets and posing attractively. "Looks like I have some catching up to do." Dean took a long swig from his friggin' chalice, just starting to feel the first tingle of tipsy enthusiasm.
"What'll you have?" He asked.
"I dunno." The guy said, biting his bottom lip and smiling like he was posing for an underwear ad. "Surprise me."
And it didn't look like Dean would need a place to stay that night after all.