The Bodyguard (is the Omega)

6.

The guest pass swung around his neck as Castiel walked through the foyer. The front desk staff had changed since he was last here but the coffee in the cafeteria was just how he remembered it. Bitter, sour, watered down but somehow nourishing to his soul at the same time. He saw a couple of familiar faces entering and exiting the building. In their line of work of course they noticed him too. There were a few waves but Castiel didn't have time to play catch up. Two agents stood at the bottom of the lift, drinking tepid coffee and talking. Castiel offered Senior Agent Mills' his hand but she clasped him into a tight hug instead.

"This is Field Agent Hanscum," she introduced her colleague. "Donna, this is Castiel Novak."

Donna smiled brightly, her face frozen in a grimace of awe. Mills poked her elbow into Hanscum's side.

"Ouch," the blonde flicked her hair over her shoulder. "I'm being cool Jody!"

"She's a little star struck."

"Dean is a very popular artist I'm told, thank you for lending us your expertise."

Mills raised her eyebrows. "Oh, it's not Dean Winchester our officer here has a crush on."

Castiel narrowed his eyes. Hanscum stepped forward, hitting the elevator button repeatedly and talking a hundred miles an hour.

"Dean Winchester is an important figure for the non-subservience allies and his voice is like liquid sex," Hanscum said. "Don'tchya think?"

"I can't comment. I haven't heard him sing," Castiel said honestly.

Hanscum kept talking despite Mills' warning look.

"Shoot, you really do keep your distance from clients huh? So the stories are true. You're a rolling stone of personal security, I heard the last administration handpicked you for chief of security but you turned it down. I mean how hard can it be to not get too close to a politician. No one really likes them. I mean look at the one we've got now ..."

"We're non-partisan," Mills interjected.

"That's what we say when we're guarding a real piece of ..." The elevator arrived and Mills ushered Castiel in.

"Donna is the agent working the case, I oversee her," Mills said.

"I'm impressed they've actually assigned someone to deal with this. Someone high up must be interested," Castiel said appraisingly.

"Oh, it needs it's own case worker," Hanscum fumbled around her desk.

The office was a bit of a mess by Castiel's standards, clutteed with not just weapons, evidence and paperwork. There were personal artefacts strung in between the grizzly crime photos and analyst reports. There was a photo of Hanscum and Mills fishing. Another of them singing karaoke, pinned up next to a photocopy of some particularly creative drawing of Dean as a demon. Castiel could see Mills' foster kids in the photos. He guessed the two agents were friends outside of work, not a notion Castiel was personally very comfortable with. Though he supposed him and Sam were close to that level of friendship before their careers took off in different directions.

"Dean and Sam are good guys," Mills said. "One of my daughters, Claire, was fostered by them for a while."

Castiel raised his eyebrows, he hadn't known of the personal connection there. He and Mills worked some pretty intense cases together back in the day and of course she was acquainted with Sam.