Tag: saileen

goodfemalecharacters:

A Destiel AU

Later, Sam would be hard-pressed to describe the day to someone who asked.  Luckily, he took enough notes to cobble together a piece for his editor, but it was hardly the best work of the career.  He couldn’t be bothered to improve it, though.  After so long of living shoulder to shoulder with his brother, Dean’s anxiety was transferable to Sam, even though they didn’t speak all day.

Besides that, he really did care about Jack on his own.  Thanks to Dean, he’d gotten to know the kid pretty well, and he liked him.

“Do you have food in your apartment?”

Sam jumped at the sound of a voice behind him.  Eileen laid a gentle hand on his shoulder as she turned him around so she could read his lips.

“Dean always makes sure we’ve got something, yeah.”

Sam was so utterly terrible at remembering to feed himself that Dean often left pieces of food—an apple, a box of crackers—along his path of getting ready in the morning.

“Great,” she said, forcing a cheerful smile. “You can make me dinner, then.”

Sam shot Dean a quick text to let him know there would be something (poorly) home-cooked when he got home if he wanted it.

The little read sticker didn’t appear.

As they broke into the last few rays of sunlight, it felt like a weight fell off of Sam’s shoulders.  Usually, working in the White House felt like a dream—a long, tiring, sometimes infuriating dream, sure—but these last few days had been something more of a nightmare.

“Have you even seen Dean today?” Sam asked.

Eileen shook her head as they stepped on to the metro. “No.”

(start from the beginning on ao3)

goodfemalecharacters:

A Destiel AU

Chapter Seven: The Oval Office

The day of the inauguration dawned bright and clear, despite Dean’s best mental attempts to chide the sky into storming.  It took him a full three snooze cycles (and Sam smacking his bedroom door once he realized Dean wasn’t getting up) to drag himself out of bed.

Sam eyed him drowsily over his Cheerios as he stumbled into the kitchen, still blinking gummy sleep out of his eyes.  He estimated that he’d gotten about two hours between all the tossing and turning and how long it had taken to get up the heart to leave Jack last night.

“You look like hell,” Sam observed.

Dean glared, best as he was able with his left eye still half shut against the flickering bulb of the light above them—someone really had to fix that, but that would require a free afternoon that neither he nor Sam would have for the foreseeable future.

“Nice observation.  I can see they’re teaching journalists well these days.  You’re sharper than ever.”

This was the sort of day that would normally be cause for some bacon, but Dean couldn’t find it in himself to bother.  Instead, he nabbed Sam’s Cheerios and ate them straight out of the box.  It was a testament to the day that Sam didn’t cuss him out for it.

They ate in silence.  Dean normally turned out the radio and he and Sam duked it out over Big 100 and NPR, but it didn’t seem like the right time for classic rock and it wasn’t like either of them wanted to hear the news.  Dean ducked back into his room to change and emerged, still scowling.

“Is my tie straight?”

“As you are,” Sam said without missing a beat.

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

He still attempted to straighten out his tie.

(start from the beginning on ao3)

goodfemalecharacters:

A Destiel Au

Chapter Six: Alexandria

Castiel hadn’t been in the dating pool for quite some time, so he wasn’t sure if taking someone to buy a suit constituted as flirting.

“Don’t you have to be with Jack?” he asked as they got off the metro in Alexandria.

Dean shook his head. “He headed back to school today, said he wanted to feel normal.  So I let Benny and them take care of security.  Sam said he’d kill me if I didn’t take a bit of a break.”

He took the steps up into the sunlight two at a time, so Castiel had to double his pace to follow him.  The streets were slightly less crowded here than they were in the heart of the city.  Cas took his first full breath in what felt like months.

He refocused on the conversation and nodded. “Your brother.”

“And the weirdest mother hen roommate you’ve ever met.  You’d think he was the one to raise me.”

Cas paused. “Raise?”

Instantly, he kicked himself.  This was what Meg meant when she called him socially inept, however affectionately.  He always put his foot directly in his mouth.

Dean didn’t seem bothered. “Yeah.  Mom died when I was eighteen, so I fought to get custody of Sammy.  He was a snot nosed little brat, but I wasn’t about to let somebody else take him.  Family, you know?”

Cas nodded.  Even a week ago, he wouldn’t have realized what that meant.  But thinking about Jack’s face—

“He’s only four years younger than me, so we were pretty much looking after each other, but I still tease him all the time about it.”

His face darkened slightly.  Cas tried to imagine him at eighteen, the five o’clock shadow coming in far patchier, with a kid brother by his side.  He certainly couldn’t have done the same at eighteen.  He’d been buried in college applications, worried about how he was going to survive the interview portion of his science fair entry (answer: he hadn’t).

“That’s why I worry about Jack.  I know what it feels like to just—be adrift.” Dean waved his hand vaguely. “And yeah, he won’t have to worry about money or anything, but he’s got the eyes of the world on him.  It’s going to be so hard.”

Cas tugged at his collar. “I want to help him.  I need to—to make it up to Kelly.  I mean, I want to help him, too, it’s not just because I’m guilty, but I need you to know where I’m coming from.”

The hand that brushed his wrist as Dean answered, “I know.”—was that flirting, too?  Or was it just Dean trying to seem like he understood?

Either way, it wasn’t exactly something he had the energy to dwell on right now.

(start from the beginning on ao3)

goodfemalecharacters:

A Destiel AU

Chapter Three: The Residence

Michael invited him to dinner.

Castiel’s years in med school had taught him to never pass down a free meal—Michael would certainly insist on paying as some sort of weird power move—so he accepted, as much as he didn’t want to sit across the table from a man he hadn’t spoken to properly in more than a decade and pretend that they were brothers.

He spent the few hours before dinner pacing around his hotel room, trying to get his thoughts in order.  He didn’t necessarily want the responsibility of raising a kid.  God knew didn’t manage to feed himself half the time, much less someone else.  Much less his sister’s son.  But at the same time, he knew Michael had to have an angle.

He never did anything without one.

He hadn’t brought any suit jackets.  He should have known that Michael would show up and turn literally everything into a formal situation, but he hadn’t prepared for it.  Instead, he toyed with the few ties he’d brought and eventually decided to go without.  He’d get the added bonus of the horror on Michael’s face at what he was wearing.

“You’re looking…sharp,” Michael said when Castiel walked into the restaurant.

Castiel normally ate at places with the kind of flickery fluorescent light that cast an odd blue-green glow over your food.  The warm golden candlelight seemed entirely too mellow for him.  Still.  He wasn’t about to force Michael to eat at a restaurant below his standards.

Castiel didn’t bother with the small talk as he slid into his seat.  Velvet cushions.  Really?

“What is your endgame here?”

Michael spread his napkin out over his lap and smoothed it flat, no wrinkles.

“Castiel, please.  What exactly do you think I am?”

(start from the beginning on ao3)