A/N: omfg I really want to know if this is any good and whether I should continue, so please review! Merry Christmas!

Chapter One

"Nothing happens to me," Dean said to his therapist, and she frowned.

"That may be so, Mr Winchester, but I'd still like you to keep a diary."

"All that's gonna be in it is 'I hate this' repeated twenty times every day. Maybe sometimes 'I hate Dr. Harvelle', with a few 'I hate Sam's thrown in for making me come see you in the first place."

"Dean," Dr. Harvelle said, leaning forwards. She'd tried to get Dean to call her Ellen, but he wasn't gonna get comfy with her when he wanted to leave more than he wanted to breathe. "You just came back from Afghanistan. You're probably still adjusting. I really think this would help you."

"I don't even want to be here."

"I know. But you didn't have to come. And here you are." She smiled. "What does that tell you?"

"That Sam won't make any beer runs until I agreed to what he said."

"That you want to be helped. That you know you're hurting Sam and you want to get better."

Dean responded to this, frowning deeply. "I'm hurting Sam? Did he say that?"

Dr. Harvelle nodded and Dean pursed his lips. "Okay, fine. I'm gonna Bridget Jones this bitch."

Since Afghanistan, Dean had walked with a limp, due to his being shot and all. When you sign up to be an army doctor you don't think about getting hurt, just about healing. Well, there was no one who could heal Dean's leg, or his mind. Let them try.

He limped along the busy road in New York City and tried not to get pushed by people walking past. This was impossible to manage even if you had two working legs, but Dean had a look in his eye that not even he wanted to be on the other end of, a look that said, "I just got back from a war and I have seen terrible things and I'm not having a very good day," so he mostly stayed out of trouble.

They'd given him a nice pension for his service, but still, he was running out of money, and he couldn't even afford his one bedroom apartment anymore. Insult to injury – he needed a roommate. But he had no idea where to start.

"Dean!" a voice called from behind him and he turned around slowly, hoping it wasn't who he thought it was. He was out of luck. Garth Fitzgerald IV was jogging towards him, grin spilling from his face, and Dean groaned, then plastered on as much of a smile as he could manage.

"Hey, Garth. Long time, no see."

"Well I'll be damned. Dean Winchester. I haven't seen you since medical school!" He clapped Dean on the shoulder and Dean winced. "What's it been, six years?"

"Yeah, six."

"I thought you were in Afghanistan, fighting the good fight. What happened?"

Now this was one of Dean's pet peeves; metaphors for the war. So much simile and abstract language. You had to be there to know how very serious and clear the imagery really was. "Someone shot me, Garth."

Garth got that look on his face that Dean had actually missed, the one where he's just put his foot in his mouth. "Sorry, compadre. That's rough. Wanna get a beer?"

"Yeah, go on then." Dean never thought he'd say yes to something like this, but he's been lonely recently, just him alone in his apartment with the weekly visit from Sam. "Just one."

"Awesome."

They went to the place at the end of the road, a nice bar with a flatscreen and pool table. Dean settled down in the stool next to Garth, taking regular swigs from his beer.

"So Dean, what you up to at the moment?" Garth's happy ignorance is kind of relaxing.

"Oh, nothing much. Still in recovery a bit, I guess. Running out of money, though."

"Really? The army not give you much?"

"Can't complain, I should probably move to the suburbs or something, but I can't bring myself to do it. I'm gonna start looking for a roommate this afternoon."

Garth's eyes widened and he burst out with that peculiar giggle of his, and Dean frowned. "What's so funny?"

"Well, I was just talking to this guy today, he said he needs a roommate too! How about that!" He grinned and drank from his bottle and said, "Woah, I think I'm drunk."

"Who is this guy?" Dean asked, and Garth gave him a knowing wink.

"I can't tell you. I couldn't if I tried. I have to show you."

"What's that you've got there?" asked Anna, smiling politely and gesturing to the parcel on the table.

"Part of a dead person," the man in the trenchcoat answered, and walked away.

"Oh," said Anna. "Cool."

The man in the trenchcoat walked up the stairs to his favourite lab, listing the chemicals in his head. Sulfuric acid would do the trick. Now, how to extract the brain from their most recent visitor to the morgue and take it home without anyone noticing?

He got to the laboratory and took off his trenchcoat, laying it on a chair and picking up a pipette and a beaker of sulfuric acid and the blood samples from earlier. He dropped two or three drops of the acid into the sample, watched it bubble. He grinned. Yes. The man was guilty.

The door opened, and he didn't look up, too busy to bother moving; he could tell from the weight of the footsteps and the length between the strides that it was two men, and one was Garth. The other was tall, well built. New.

"Dean," Garth said, practically bursting with excitement. "This is Cas."

The man in the trenchcoat looked up at the introduction. Dean was indeed tall and well built, with broad shoulders and a handsome face and short hair. He dressed like he shopped at an army surplus store and his tan didn't extend past his hands, evident when Dean scratched his neck nervously. He had a crutch, probably due to a limp. But he wasn't asking for a chair. Psychosomatic limp. Army man. "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

Dean's eyes widened, and he turned to Garth. "You told him already?"

"Nope!" Garth cried, grinning gleefully. "Not a word!"

Dean turned back to the man in the trenchcoat and said coolly, "Afghanistan. How did you know?"

"It's not Cas, actually, that's a nickname. But I'm sure that after we've been living together for a few weeks you'll feel comfortable enough to use it."

"Woah, wait, hold on here –"

The man in the trenchcoat sighed. "I mention to Garth this morning that I need a roommate and he comes in here with a strange man who is obviously not particularly well off? Transparent."

Dean frowned. "Didn't have to put it that way..."

"Garth, can I borrow a dollar? I need a bottle of fresh water from the vending machine to clean some –"

"I don't want to know what you have to clean, man, all I know is I don't have my wallet on me. Sorry." Garth held up his hands.

"I can float you," Dean said, and the man in the trenchcoat raised his eyebrows as Dean pulled out his wallet and handed over a dollar. The man eyed Dean's hand, his fingers, his wallet.

"Thank you," the man in the trenchcoat said, taking the dollar and nodding. "The landlady said we can look at the apartment at around five tomorrow, if you'd like to come along." He walked out of the lab, coat whipping around his legs, and felt a firm hand on his shoulder. He spun around, shaking off Dean's hand as he did so.

"Hold on. I don't know who you are, I don't know where the apartment is, hell, I don't even know your name."

Dean stared defiantly into the man's eyes, refusing to back down. The man in the trenchcoat took a deep breath and smirked.

"Well, Dean Winchester, I know things about you. I can read your military history in your clothes and your hair and your tan. I can see your broken relationship with your brother and your psychosomatic limp – you can tell your therapist she's right about that – and I can see your drinking problem and suicidal thoughts and the gun you keep in your drawer. And I can see that we're going to have a very interesting relationship."

He left Dean's dumbstruck face and walked out, but not before peering round the door and saying, "The name is Castiel Novak and the address is 67 Impala Street."

Dean turned to look at Garth, his mouth hanging open.

"Yep," Garth said, "he's always like that."