Chapter Text
Playing the drums made Dean feel whole. Sometimes, they were the only thing that did.
Except Cas, of course. As he banged the drums in front of him so hard he worked up a sweat, Dean tried not to think about that in too much detail beyond that Cas was his best friend. Cas was an artistic, socially-stunted misfit like Dean himself, they spent most of their free time together, and that was the important part. Drumming was when Dean let all the painful, shitty parts of life go. He spent enough time thinking about Cas as it was.
Thinking of Cas now, though, made Dean realize it was time to meet him at the repair shop.
---
Cas worked his short shift at the repair shop, and then started the walk home. His route took him through the train yard not too far from his house. One engine was slowly pulling out of the yard and, as he so often did, he decided to play chicken with the slow-moving machine. He won, ignoring the blare of the horn as the engineer freaked out the way they always did, then slapped his hand against the handles going past him.
He’d been working on a painting before he left school, so his hands had been stained before he even got to work. They usually were, either from paint or from engine grease and he couldn’t find it in him to care. He wasn’t sure he’d know himself without it.
Just past the trains, he had to pass Meg’s house. He’d only recently started paying attention to her, primarily since she started dating Dick Roman. Dick was arguably the richest, most popular, and most evil student at their high school. Meg Masters, on the other hand, lived as Cas and Dean did—on the literal wrong side of the tracks.
At first he’d told himself he was only curious about why Dick was coming around. It was strange to see them together. Then when it became obvious at school that they were an item, though, he kept looking. Meg was quite beautiful. He could see what Dick saw in her.
When he got into the house, the smaller of his two younger siblings, Charlie, was playing with her sticker collection, making them fight each other to the death. He smiled at her, wiggling his fingers under her chin, then continued on his way.
His mom, Becky, greeted him and then asked when he was going to get his hair cut.
“I got it cut, Mom,” he lied.
Before she could respond, Charlie made a smart-assed remark that turned his mother’s exasperation onto her youngest child and away from him, giving him time to escape. He managed three steps on the stairs when his father’s voice called his name from the living room.
Cas sighed and stepped back down. “Yeah, Dad?”
“There’s a bunch more of these college brochures that came in. We need to look through ‘em. Look,” his dad—Chuck—said, smiling. “Co-ed phys-ed!”
Cas gave him a vague smile. “That’s great, um, can we do this later?”
Chuck frowned. “Cas, I’m not trying to be a hardass here. It’s just you have the chance to be the first man in this family not to have to wash his hands after a day’s work!”
Cas, who had been lightly holding the doorway, held out one grease-stained hand, eyebrows raised. His father sighed and Cas continued up the stairs. “Co-ed phys-ed,” he heard his father say as he did so. He rolled his eyes.
Naturally, given the way his day was going, when he finally made it to his room, his little brother Gabriel was sitting on the floor, going through his very expensive and extensive album collection.
“Hi! I’m looking for that song about that guy who wants to be his mom because his dad’s turned him into a drag queen? Do you know what song I’m talking about?”
“Gabriel, get the hell out of my room.”
“Bro!” Gabriel said, mock affronted.
“Get the hell out of my room!” Cas said, grabbing Gabriel’s arm and trying to yank him off the floor.
“Is this a side effect of being a social pariah or what?” Gabe gasped out as Cas attempted to drag him out the door.
“Mom!” Gabriel howled, pretending pain.
Cas shoved him through the door, but Gabe popped back through. “If I get a black and blue mark, you dick, you’re dead!” Then he slammed the door on his way out.
Cas rolled his eyes, collapsing on his bed with a sigh. How nice it would be to have a peaceful family to come home to—or better yet, no family. He immediately felt guilty at that thought, as he realized that Dean probably wished he had parents and siblings who paid too much attention to him... instead of too little.
***
When Dean got to the garage, he realized almost immediately that Cas wasn’t working. He tried to just shake it off, but he was a little worried. Not that Cas wasn’t at work—he didn’t work everyday, though he did most days—just the fact that this was the second time recently when Cas had forgotten to tell Dean he wasn’t working.
Dean always came up to the station when Cas was working. It was an unwritten rule they had. Now Dean had made two trips to the gas station without Cas being there when he showed up. It wasn’t like Cas not to keep Dean updated. Dean didn’t know what was going on, but he was almost sure something was.
When he got back home, he immediately grabbed the phone and lay back on his bed in the corner, to stare at the mural Cas had painted of them a few years ago. As Cas’s number rang, a small smile played on Dean’s face at the sight of the two of them depicted in the painting.
“Hello?” It was Cas’s dad.
“Oh, hi, Mr. S. Is Cas around?”
“Let me go and see. How you doing, Dean? You got your college plans all figured out?” Chuck asked. Dean could tell he was climbing the stairs by the change in the noise level.
“Sure do,” Dean said, neglecting to mention that the plan was, he wasn’t going.
“Good! Maybe you can talk some sense into Cas here,” he said.
“Hello?” Cas said in momentary confusion as his father handed him the phone.
“Hey, man, it’s me,” Dean said, keeping emotion out of his voice.
“Hey—oh, shit! Dean. I’m so sorry. You went to the gas station, didn’t you? Fuck, I had to trade with Garth and I totally forgot to tell you.”
Dean relaxed tension he hadn’t realized he’d had in his neck and shoulders.
“Yeah, man, what the hell?” he teased. “That’s twice this month. You getting senile already, old man?”
“Dean, I’m eight months younger than you.”
Dean scoffed. “Whatever, dude. I’ll always be younger and cooler than you.”
“You’re—”
Dean never got to find out what he was because he could hear Gabriel bellowing at Cas from the hallway.
“That the dinner bell?”
“Yes. Sorry. I’ll call you after, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
Dean hung up, resolving to get Cas to tell him what was up. First, he needed some food. Cas usually ordered in at the garage. Looked like Dean would have to scrounge something on his own tonight.
***
Cas watched in incredulous distaste as his brother tried to convince his mother that he had a bruise.
“Moooom! I can’t even feel my arm!”
“That suggests a problem with your circulation,” Charlie said. “Perhaps a high fiber diet and less time on the phone would help.”
Gabriel glared at Charlie, but knew he’d earn his father’s wrath by going after his sister. “Thank you, Charlie. That’s... helpful,” he said with a fake smile.
When their mother insisted she couldn’t see anything, Gabriel got angry.
“Well, then you need some glasses!” Gabriel snapped. He huffed, knowing which target he could go after. “You and Dad act like everything revolves around Cas and I’m sick of it! You have no idea what it’s like to be related to the weirdest guy in a huge school! You guys think he’s the good little soldier, but he’s a freak!”
“Excuse me,” Cas said softly, knowing Gabriel’s words were at least partially the truth. He stood up, throwing down his napkin and leaving before more could be said.
He ran to the stairs, grabbing the cordless phone on his through the den. His thumb was dialing Dean’s number by memory before he was even halfway up the steps to his room. It rang twice before it was picked up and there was a shout on the other end. The person wasn’t yelling into the phone, but rather to the other people of the house, telling them to “Shut the fuck up!” Cas chuckled and shook his head.
“Hey, Cas. Some dipshit took the phone out of my room and I had to enter no man’s land.”
It was what Dean called their living room and the familiarity made Cas smile. “It’s okay, Dean. I just left dinner because Gabriel was telling mom and dad how he had no feeling left in his arm because the little fucker broke into my room and was going through my records when I got home.”
“No respect in these kids today, man, I’m telling you,” Dean said, but Cas heard the mocking in his tone.
“Yeah, yeah. You let your brothers in to play with your drums?” Cas asked, knowing the answer.
“Fuck no! Only if they wanna die. These drums are my baby.”
“I thought your car was your baby?” Cas asked, lying back on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Yeah, well, I’m a polyamorous kinda guy when it comes to inanimate objects, Cas.”
Cas could hear the grin and it made him grin too. “The third grade was good to me.”
“Yeah, yeah, ya sap. Good thing you were so chivalrous to that little girl or we never would have met.”
“Well, that assbutt shouldn’t have knocked her down,” Cas said, still somewhat annoyed on the little girl’s behalf—though he suddenly realized she was now a teenager just like them. Weird.
They reminisced only briefly before Dean moved the subject onto his latest drum project. Cas listened with half an ear. Try as he might, he could never absorb all the musical knowledge Dean had tried to impart to him. Instead, his mind wandered to Meg.
He wasn’t sure why he had become so fascinated by her. He supposed most people would think it was because she was beautiful, but he really felt he was much less shallow than that. He hoped he was, at any rate.
Really, Cas thought it was partially the idea that someone from their side of town—from his and Dean’s side of town—deserved better than Dick Roman. Someone who, like them—though, if he was honest, Dean much more so than himself—had struggled and done without and didn’t have the same advantages that rich, lazy shitheads like Dick had... it wasn’t fair for them to get stuck in the web of evil that Dick spun wherever he went.
“—new felts for my hi-hat and the snare needs a new batter head, but other than that, the set’s almost perfect now,” Dean was saying.
“I need to come hear you play soon. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, man, where you been lately?”
Cas thought about the drawings of Meg he’d done over the past week, but what he said was, “Family stuff. You know.”
For Dean, fortunately, that was a good enough answer and they talked of other things until Cas couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.