Beneath the Spotlight. A Destiel Story

"The Bartender"

“Where the hell’ve you been?” Castiel hears when he walks through the door later that evening. He frowns at his brother.
“Like it matters, Gabriel. I’m not a child.”
Castiel takes his shoes off and shrugs out of the UBC sweater Dean lent to him—since he was only in his sweatpants and t-shirt, and today was considerably cooler than yesterday. He hangs it over one of the chairs; Gabriel is sitting at the small glass kitchen table that’s placed between the couch and the breakfast bar. His brother is eating an evening snack—toast and peanut butter.
Cas leans an elbow on the breakfast bar.
“Did you even go to school today?” Gabriel asks him, taking a bite.
Castiel’s lips form a tight line. “No. I didn’t. But I’m planning on staying late tomorrow to catch up.”
Gabriel sets his crust down and rubs his hands together, getting rid of any crumbs.
“It’s not like you to miss class like this.”
Cas rolls his eyes. “It was one class, Gabriel. It’s fine.” He doesn’t know why his brother is suddenly acting so strange. “I can do what I want.”
“That’s not the point.”
He makes a face at his brother. “Then what is?”
“I don’t think Dean is a good influence on you.”
Castiel barks out a laugh of disbelief. “You were the one who thought it was the greatest idea ever to fucking text him! So you can’t just play the funny guy one day, and then play the overprotective brother the next—that’s not fair.”
Gabriel shrugs a shoulder. Cas continues.
“And I’m sorry for leaving without your consent, but I don’t need to confide in my brother when I want to make an adult decision. I’m a big boy, Gabriel.”
His brother looks up at his and gives him a deadpan expression.
“I’m just looking out for you, is all,” he replies.
“You don’t have to, Gabriel,” Castiel says softly. “I appreciate you caring about my wellbeing but seriously, this isn’t like last time.”
“You don’t know that.” Gabriel stands up and takes his plate, walking around the table and past Castiel as he puts it in the sink, throwing his crust out in the garbage. “You don’t even know him.”
Cas frowns. “Yeah, well I thought I knew Michael, and look what happened there.”
Gabriel looks down. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he replies simply. “There’s nothing we can do about what happened, but Dean makes me forget about it. He makes me feel good. So I think I’ll take what I can get.”
Gabriel nods. “Just be careful, okay?”
“When am I not?” Castiel smirks when his brother raises his eyebrows.
“Oh so smoking weed with Dean Winchester was just—”
Castiel laughs, “Fun. It was fun, Gabriel.”
Gabriel shakes his head and chuckles. “Yeah, you lucky bastard.”
They spend the rest of the evening together, hanging out and watching Netflix.

The next morning, Castiel wakes up and takes a quick shower. He decides to wear his contacts instead today, and makes his way down the hallway to make himself some breakfast. He’s only wearing his boxers because he was too lazy to decide what to wear just yet. He pours himself a bowl of fruit loops cereal and sits at the breakfast bar, scrolling through his newsfeed on Facebook. He thinks about adding Dean as a friend again, but is interrupted by Gabriel coming into the kitchen.
“Mornin’,” Gabriel mumbles, rubbing a hand over his face. He walks over to the fridge and drinks some orange juice straight from the carton. Castiel makes a face and is glad he doesn’t drink orange juice. “We’re gonna have to get some groceries soon.”
“Make a list of what you need, it’s my turn to buy things,” Castiel tells him before taking a bite of cereal.
Gabriel nods and makes himself some toast.
When Castiel is done eating, he rinses his bowl in the sink and places it in the dishwasher. He gets dressed and smiles when he grabs Dean’s sweater from the kitchen on his way out. He supposes he could wear it until he gives it back to Dean—whenever that’ll be.
He waits outside in the cool October air, his arms tucked inside the pockets of Dean’s sweater. He watches as the bus pulls into the stop and he gets on, flashing the driver his bus pass before finding the nearest empty seat. He pulls out his phone and unwinds his earphones, putting them on to listen to some music. He usually listens to calming acoustic music or classical, but the past couple of days he’s been delving into more alternative rock, and he has no idea why.
Castiel gets to his painting class on time and gets to work. Since he didn’t come to school yesterday, he’s still significantly behind the rest of the class. He doesn’t make much for conversation with anyone, and just gets started.
Today, he works on the leaves. He mixes permanent green with a little bit of phthalo green to deepen it for the darker leaves. He then mixes a separate portion of the green for the lighter parts of the leaves. He starts with the darker colour first, using a small flat tip brush to create the basic shapes. The leaves are quite large compared to the small lilac petals, and they contrast sharply against the purple hues.
Castiel lets the darker colours dry a little bit, and he’s thankful he’s not working with oils, or he’d be sitting here for a week. He places his brush in his paint water and tries to decide how he wants to paint the background. Generally, as still life paintings go, you would just paint exactly what you see. But Castiel’s instructor said that they can incorporate anything they think would make the painting stronger. He looks around the studio for any ideas and glances at the light coming through the window across the room. A window would be nice. It would put some natural light into the painting.
He grabs a pencil and starts to sketch out a window behind the vase of flowers, and draws the faint direction of the shadows underneath the vase. He lightly draws a table and some general shapes of small cups with more flowers and some shears off to the side. He takes a step back and assesses his work. It’ll take longer to do it this way but he thinks it’ll make it stronger by far.
Castiel gives the canvas a light touch after a few minutes, and the paint is dry. He grabs his brush that was sitting in the paint water, giving it a stir, and wipes it off on his apron. He takes the lighter green and goes over spots where the light is hitting the tops of the leaves. When that dries, he takes a bit of cadmium yellow and mixes it in with the rest of his green to brighten it a little bit more, placing it in a few spots on the leaves, hinting with warmer tones. He grabs a small pencil brush and takes some raw umber, mixing it with a little bit of burnt umber, and paints some small stems for the leaves. He adds a small dollop of white to add stripes of light on the stems. He then thins out the white paint with some water, using it to create delicate veins in the leaves.
It’s amazing how fast time goes by when Cas is focused on his work. He only gets through one base coat of the table in his painting, when it’s time to pack up and clean his space. He dumps his water down the sink and cleans his brushes thoroughly before putting them into his drawer and locking it. He pulls out his phone and takes a progress picture of his work and is pleased with how well it’s coming along. He’s still a little behind, but it’s due Monday, and he’s sure he’ll have enough time to finish it—even if he has to come in on the weekend.
He makes his way to his Art History class, not bothering to go to his locker to grab his sixty-seven ton textbook; he has his MacBook and that’s enough. He settles himself in his seat of the auditorium and gets his notes out on his laptop. He decides to take off Dean’s sweater and he gets a whiff of the cologne still on the collar.
His mind instantly wanders to his afternoon with Dean yesterday.
It was strangely perfect, even though they didn’t do much after their activities in the morning. Dean had folded up the blanket on the couch and put it away in the linen closet, and they sat in the basement all day. They talked, watched TV; Dean showed Castiel some of his favourite music, and in turn, Castiel showed him some of his. Dean actively avoided talking about his brother or his father, and Castiel knew better than to ask. Dean rolled a couple joints and they shared them back and forth, sometimes kissing in between, blowing out each other’s high inside another’s mouth. It was slow and sensual, but it didn’t go passed that. Well—maybe it did. They made out on the couch for a while, Dean on top of Castiel, grinding his hips down into Cas’, each of them groaning in unison. They were only interrupted by the sound of knocking on the door, and then Dean’s phone ringing; the pizza delivery guy was upstairs. Dean had to readjust himself and hide the boner he was sporting, while Castiel was a giggling mess downstairs, lying on the couch.
They ate pizza and watched Star Trek; Dean constantly commentating throughout the whole thing, talking about special effects, which actors used stunt doubles, and which didn’t. It was almost more entertaining than the movie itself, watching Dean geek out like that. Castiel smiled the entire time; Dean’s arm draped over his shoulder and their legs sprawled across the coffee table.
It was nearly 8 PM when Cas realized the time and decided to go home.
They kissed in the porch again, until Castiel’s cab showed up, and then he was back in the apartment. It was the happiest Castiel had felt in a long time. And he still doesn’t know what it all meant, or what’s to become of it, but he hopes that he can see Dean again soon.
He has a hard time concentrating in class after that.