Blue Eyed Stranger [COMPLETE]

Chapter 3: Crow-Coffee

Standing in an empty lift, Dean grunts slapping the button for the 12th floor.

His frown softens when he pictures the blue eyed stranger standing on the bus, the lines fading away. Quickly they stand back on end when he thinks to the stunt just performed on the bus.

As you know, Dean cares little for small talk. Any conversation spent on anything other than work was useless in his eyes. He (was) a lawyer, his time, his conversation, was money. If he wasn't making money, what's the point in talking?

Maybe for a split second he saw a point when he saw the blue eyed stranger. But hell, that idea went as quickly as it came.

Really, Dean has only cared for one other than himself. His younger brother Sammy.

Sam Winchester — who Dean cared for most — wasn't around anymore. In his own words he needed to "escape" from Dean, his controlling and protective nature too suffocating, too much. He disappeared one night early this year with some girl, Ruby or another stone-related name — Jade, Crystal, whatever. Dean pretends that the whole ordeal leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, when really he just misses his little brother.

He pushes the thoughts aside. All that Dean knows now is that caring too much is bad, so it's better to not care at all.

The second spent caring for a stranger who rides the same bus as him everyday was simply a mistake, a fault of character or something.

Dean shakes his head as the doors open at the 12th floor. It's too much thinking to process early in the morning. It's 7.03, no time to be thinking about odd strangers or his little brother. It's time to get to work.

He enters his pin for his personal office, sliding into the leather chair that's more used than his sofa at home. He attempts to rub the fatigue from his eyes, knowing his tiredness lays deeper than that.

He looks to his right and sees the pile of paper that he left for himself last night and yawns to himself, anticipating the next pile that'll be dumped on top in an hour or so by a secretary.

Unfortunately the coffee guy doesn't start until 8, but damn, Dean really wants some coffee.

— — —

Castiel kicks at the ground as he walks, feeling like a fool. Oh, how he regrets not talking to the green eyed man.

He thinks back to their conversation and realises how rude he may have appeared, certainly smashing any good impression that the stranger may have constructed before today.

The stranger's eyes came across as caring and selfless when he spoke to Cas, and Cas can't get that out of his mind. That moment of sympathy was more than he's ever achieved from his own blood, although, that was his own fault.

His thoughts transfer from the green-eyed stranger to his family.

Castiel moved away from his family a long time ago, coming here to begin a new life. He wanted a cool job, his own flat, everything.

Everything that Cas didn't have now, many years later, hastily to add.

He moved to the city 4 years ago. Needing money, he got a part-time job at a coffee shop. Needing a home, he joined a house-share, only temporarily of course as he was just starting out. Well, that part-time job turned into a full-time job, and that temporary house-share became pretty permanent.

As life kept eating up money, he kept in tune with the same cycle. Unintentionally trapped in a loop he can't escape, defending the pride he has left by not telling his parents that actually he's just a barista in a house-share his late 20s.

Gabriel, his older brother and only family member to know the truth, also lives in the city. He's managed to stick around Cas, working at a law firm only half an hour from the coffee shop. He sees Cas regularly, checking up on him and not only offering him money but a nicer place to stay. But Cas' hurt ego always turns his older brother's handouts down.

He shouldn't be thinking about this right now.

Cas looks up at the coffee shop, reading the large sign above the door. "Crow-Coffee". He sighs, looking straight through the doors and catching eye contact with his boss.

"Castiel." Mark Crowley, his manager, bellows loud enough for Cas to hear through the door.

He gulps.