Alastair Is Yammering Away Like He Has Been All Night In Dean’s Head But Joke’s On Fucking Him, Words

Alastair is yammering away like he has been all night in Dean’s head but joke’s on fucking him, words don’t make any sense right now. He was singing the birthday song for a while but it’s just sound now. Dean is the type of drunk where you start losin track of the meaning of words. People say shit to you and they sound like a cartoon playing backwards. Colors are upside down. The floor is moving. He always panics when he gets here. He’s got blacking out on purpose down to a science, but sometimes he takes one shot too much. A step too far. It’s a balance, yeah? You wanna be senseless but not spinning. He’s sitting on the floor in his motel room, back against the wall and both hands pressed to the gross carpet. Maybe his body can explain to his brain that he’s sitting still.

Suddenly, with a slap of blinding electricity, he’s sober. Cas is standing in front of him and Dean is too disoriented to stand up or do anything but sit there like a dumbass.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. What’re you doin here?”

“You were praying to me.”

“No, I was fucking not.”

“I heard my name once. After that, it was just wordless panic.”

“Oh. Just drank too much. Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Wait. Don’t zap away. Sit down.”

Cas stares at him, face unreadable, for an endless moment. Something stops Dean from saying anything. He could look at Cas’ face forever, now that he’s letting himself. He cranes his neck back, watching the weird, sharp shapes of Cas’ face get even weirder and sharper in the moonlight, get even weirder and sharper from this angle. And then Cas sits down on the floor, criss-cross-applesauce. Huh. Must be Jimmy Novak’s muscle memory. Dean can see a strip of his calves at the top of his dress socks. He has to resist the urge to reach out and touch.

“It’s my birthday.” Stupid.

“I know.”

“You’re supposed to say happy birthday.”

Cas tilts his head in that way that Dean is starting to get fond of. “Is it?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing human beings say.”

“You misunderstand me. Is it happy?”

Dean laughs. “Nah, it’s really not. Tried to drink myself to sleep but it didn’t work.”

“I can put you to sleep. I can make sure you don’t dream. My gift to you, as I believe is customary.”

“Uh, yeah. I’ll take you up on that, but first… Um. Do you wanna watch a movie or something?” He doesn’t wanna be alone. Dean feels himself blush. Fuck. “Unless you have angel shit to do.”

“I don’t have… Angel shit to do at this moment.”

Dean spends his thirtieth birthday watching Boondocks Saints with an angel in a dirty motel room. He asks Cas one question about Catholicism and triggers a monologue about the Protestant schism and how Martin Luther was “the most irritating and pedantic man that has ever walked the Earth, including Slavoj Zizek.” Dean laughs himself into a side stitch and Cas smiles back, not confused like you’d think. He was trying to make Dean laugh.

When Dean can breathe again and asks who the hell Slavoj Zizek is, Cas puts on an insane accent: “There is never a ‘right moment’ for the revolutionary act—the act is always, by definition, ‘premature.’” This sets Dean off again, and Cas laughs a little too. Dean hopes it’s his first laugh. He wants that bragging right.

Thirteen years later and one year sober, they watch it again in their living room. Jack sits on the floor working on a Hello Kitty jigsaw puzzle as he watches and Sam definitely isn’t paying attention, texting Eileen in the big armchair. Cas is falling asleep on Dean’s shoulder. Half asleep, he pulls out the Zizek impression again: “The paradox of love is that it is a free choice, but a choice which never arrives in the present—it is always already made.”