Standing Together

Chapter 71

The Super Bowl wasn't very entertaining, but that's to be expected from someone who doesn't like sports. Castiel spent more time watching Dean than he did actually watching the game. Of the many things Dean muttered under his breath, Castiel's personal favorites are, "How the fuck did he make it to the Super Bowl without ever learning to throw a fucking ball," "I could run faster than him, and I broke my damn leg," and the 37 times he said, "Dammit, Ketch!" And yes, it really was 37. Castiel counted.

The game went into overtime, and Castiel can safely say that he's never been as stressed as Dean looked as the scheduled game was coming to a close and the Patriots were still behind by quite a bit. They barely caught up in time, and he was sure Dean was going to go down to the field and yell at his teammates himself during overtime, with as many passive aggressive things he muttered under his breath.

The applause at the end of the game was nice. It meant no one could hear Dean's loud, "Fuck everything!" when the Patriots lost. He's sure Patrick's kids wouldn't appreciate it if they did.

Fortunately, the loss doesn't seem to put him in a very bad mood, as Castiel discovers on the car ride back to the hotel, with Dean acting like his normal self again.

"We've still got a week 'til the Grammys," Dean says. "The drive to California will take three days, tops. Can we stay in Texas for a few days? I haven't been here in, god, 14 years. I want to see what's changed."

Castiel hesitates, then says a reluctant, "I guess," just because Dean seems so excited about it.

"Unless you don't want to?" Dean says uncertainly.

"No, no, it's fine," Castiel says. "I guess there's not really anywhere else I'd rather be."

"I'm not buying it," Dean says. "Why don't you want to hang out in Texas?"

"It's not that I don't want to," Castiel says, even though it really is that he doesn't want to. "It's just, isn't Texas a little too homophobic for a famous gay couple to just hang around?"

"What? No!" Dean says. "I mean, yeah, people can be pretty homophobic, but it's usually just passive homophobia, not, like..."

"Car-wrecking homophobia?" Castiel substitutes.

"Exactly," Dean says. "And, for the record, if I ever find out who fucked up my car, I will beat them to death with their own severed arm."

Castiel stares at him with wide eyes. "You're going to what?"

"You heard me," Dean says with a smug smile.

Castiel just gapes at him for the rest of the car ride, because how the hell do you respond to that? Especially because that's actually something Dean would do?

~~

Flash forward a day, and Dean and Castiel are just driving around the city. Every now and then, Dean will point something out, and the smile on his face is so cute that Castiel can't even bring himself to mention how boring this is.

"Ooh, that right there!" Dean points out the passenger side window. "That's where we used to live. Wait, hold up, I'm gonna go back and check it out."

He makes a U-turn and drives back the other way, then pulls into the apartment complex by the side of the road. He slowly drives around for a minute or so, eyes scanning the building, then quickly pulls into a parking space.

"That one," Dean says, pointing straight ahead of them. "Apartment 136."

It doesn't look very big from the outside, though it's hard to judge the depth of the building from here. It's not very fancy, just a brick building with numbers on the outside, places above the screen doors leading inside.