Chapter Text
He doesn’t often wonder what it’s like to be human, but when he does, he thinks about faces.
What must it be like, to look in a mirror and know there is nothing you can do to change the reflection staring back at you?
Of course, there are cosmetic options. Makeup to smooth over blemishes; surgeries to correct deficiencies in shape. Colored contact lenses.
But underneath all that, the essential truth of a human face remains unchanged. It reflects the traces of a life lived in its lines, the scars and shadows.
That can undoubtedly be a burden, but he imagines there’s comfort in it as well: the comfort of knowing who you are and what roads you’ve traveled to get there.
Otherwise, how are you meant to know who you are, when your very skin is as mutable as the seasons or the tides?
***
“I think I found us a shifter case,” Sam says, eyes fixed on the laptop screen that’s currently their only source of illumination because it’s four-freaking-thirty in the morning.
“Fuck off,” Dean mumbles into his pillow, before remembering that he’s in a no-tell motel where chances are only about fifty-fifty that somebody bothered changing the sheets after the last guests checked out. He spits out the bit of pillow that got in his mouth and flops over onto his back, resigning himself to the fact that he’s fully awake now.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Sam says, all injured pride and haughty eyebrows.
“We just finished a goddamn case,” Dean tells the suspicious stain on the ceiling. “Can’t we… I dunno, take a couple of days off?”
For one thing, he can still feel the ache in his bones from where the vengeful spirit of a murdered factory owner tossed him around the graveyard last night while Sam took his sweet, sweet time lighting up the bones.
Maybe there’s a massage parlor somewhere around? The real kind, not the kind that’s a front for something. He wouldn’t mind just passing out on a table while somebody works over the knots in his back.
“This is the gig, Dean,” Sam says, like Dean doesn’t know that. “Saving people. Hunting things. That’s what we do.”
Dean’s brain vaguely tries to grope for a saying that fits this situation to a T. Something about a lady and protesting too much. After all, Sam is the one who fucked off to Stanford for a couple of years, until he was reluctantly persuaded to join Dean on his road trip from Hell to look for Dad.
Maybe, like Dean, the aimlessness of their existence has been getting to him. Dad’s gone for good now, and so is the demon they spent their entire lives hunting — both of them dead in a fight that happened months ago. Bodies burned. Memories buried. Gates of Hell slammed shut.
So what are they supposed to do now? Pick a random town and a random girl (or possibly a random guy in Dean’s case), get married and start making grandbabies for grandparents who aren’t around anymore?
There aren’t any good or easy answers to those questions, so they’ve been doing what they always do: they’ve been hunting.
“Alright,” Dean sighs, starfishing his limbs across the bed as he submits to the inevitability of his fate. “Lay it on me.”
“So get this,” Sam says, switching tracks so quickly that he must’ve known all along Dean would be a pushover about this. Apparently he’s predictable on top of being a directionless loser. That’s just great. “A police contact from a case we worked a couple years ago let me know about this one. Thought it might be our kind of thing. A young woman was attacked in Wilmington, North Carolina. The guy broke into her apartment and tried to strangle her to death. She only got away because a neighbor intervened.”
Dean blows a heavy breath out through his lips. “So far, so depressingly normal, Sammy.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it.” Dean grins to himself at the sharp note of irritation in Sam’s voice. Maybe the point of Dean’s life is to wind up his little brother; if so, he could do worse. “The police’s only suspect is a guy named Castiel Novak. Apparently, the victim knows him and swears up and down that it was him. The only problem is that Novak has an ironclad alibi.”
“How ironclad?” Dean asks, levering himself into an upright position and regretting it immediately when the cool air of the room sends a shiver up his bare back. He should’ve put on a t-shirt before he collapsed last night.
“So ironclad that there are five different people who testified to seeing him at a bar halfway across town at the same time.”
“Shifter,” Dean says wearily. He fucking hates shifters, almost as much as he does witches. The fuckers change their faces like other people might change their underwear. (People who are not Dean and have actual laundry facilities to their name.)
“Stands to reason,” Sam agrees. “I think we should go check it out.”
And Dean? Well, Dean doesn’t have any other plans, now does he?
Two hours later, they’re on the road from Middle of Nowhere, Ohio, to the North Carolina coast.
***
Wilmington is pleasant enough. It’s the sort of place that’s got a bit of Old South about it, with Spanish moss swaying in the fall breeze and alligators lingering on the muddy banks of the swamp at the edge of town — but not so much of Old South that Dean thinks he’d be punched in the face for the bi flag pin on his leather jacket.
Least of all by Castiel Novak, who lives in a pleasant single-story bungalow on a quiet residential street and flies a Pride flag on his porch. Dean’s glad now that Sam wanted to be the one to go to the hospital and talk to the victim, leaving Dean to talk to Castiel. Not that he’s here to make friends, but he doesn’t often have a chance to meet other queer people in a context other than the back alley of some dive bar.
Dean admires Castiel’s cheerful front yard as he passes, taking in the purple bursts of mums and the skeletal lawn flamingos that add a touch of Halloween whimsy. A massive, glittering spider has been mounted to the porch railing and the wooden support beam above, its fake web easily ten feet across.
A man who knows how to keep Halloween in style is a man after Dean’s own heart.
Intrigued by the hints of Castiel’s personality, Dean forgets to pull out his fed badge before he knocks on the door. He’s still fumbling to get it out of his suit jacket when the door opens.
Turns out that Castiel is a man after Dean’s heart in more ways than one. He’s tall, almost of a height with Dean, and though he’s wearing a long-sleeved button-down and slacks, they’re cut well enough that the lines of strong, muscular thighs and shoulders are easy to make out beneath the fabric. He has great hair, the exact shade of dark brown that Dean’s always been weak for, and his eyes are a striking blue that looks almost supernatural. But not in the sense of abandoned warehouses and jumpscares in dank basements — in the sense of something that inspires awe.
“Hello?” Castiel says, his head tipped slightly to the side as he tries to puzzle out why there’s a strange man on his porch who’s struggling to pull his hand free of his own suit jacket.
Finally, Dean gets a good grip on his badge. He slips it out and lets it flip open with an air of triumph that’s probably at odds with the professional attitude he usually tries to slip into when he’s playing at being FBI.
“Agent Seger,” he says. “FBI. I’m here to talk to you about the assault.”
Castiel’s expression changes in an instant, as if someone snapped a finger and wiped every trace of warmth and emotion off him. “I’ve already spoken to the police repeatedly about this,” he says curtly. “I’ve been very cooperative. But as I’m sure you know, I couldn’t possibly have committed the assault because I was elsewhere at the time.”
Dean can’t afford to have Castiel shut down like this, or worse, shut the door in his face. So he puts on his best, most charming smile and makes his voice friendly and agreeable.
“I do know that. But we’re looking into a new possibility: that someone might be trying to frame you.”
In actual fact, Dean is here to find out if Castiel might have encountered the shifter at some point; if it might even be somebody who’s close to him. Shifters do sometimes impersonate random strangers, but more often than not, Dean’s found that they take on the faces of people they feel some kind of connection to.
If he can figure out what the connection is between Castiel and this shifter, he’s that much closer to tracking the thing down and ending this before someone actually gets killed.
A complex, troubled emotion passes across Castiel’s face. The flatness from earlier is gone, replaced by something that reads like unease. “Why would someone want to do that?” he asks.
“Maybe we can figure that out together,” Dean says, taking a cautious step forward. A suggestion that Castiel should invite him in, rather than a demand.
Taking the suggestion, Castiel steps aside and pulls the door wide, gesturing for Dean to step over the threshold.
Dean does, and his eyes go wide as soon as he takes in the interior of Castiel’s home. The front hall opens straight into the living room, which is festooned with a garland of bloody knives. Posters of classic horror movies — The Invisible Man, Alien, Dracula — adorn the walls above a cozy sofa. A life-sized Creature from the Black Lagoon looms in one of the corners, next to a DVD shelf.
“Wow,” he mutters, under his breath, though Castiel must hear him, because his expression thaws just a little.
“I would usually put him and a few more… gruesome decorations outside this time of year,” he says, “but, well. Considering the fact that I’m a person of interest in an attempted murder, it seemed in poor taste. I’m already worried about my neighbors and colleagues looking at me differently over this.” He sighs heavily. “Not that you need to know that. Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Dean says, still in reassurance mode. He steps back and gestures for Castiel to steer them wherever he’s most comfortable talking.
They end up in the kitchen, which is just to the right of the living room. The cabinets are slightly outdated and the table is small, with only two chairs, as if Castiel doesn’t often have guests. Castiel offers Dean something to drink, and Dean accepts a cup of coffee.
“So I saw in the case file that you work at a museum," Dean prompts, addressing Castiel’s back as he fills two mugs from a thermos that sits on the kitchen counter.
“The science museum on Market, yes,” Castiel says, picking up the mugs and carrying them over to the table. He sets one down in front of Dean. It’s one of those heat-activated mugs. In front of Dean’s eyes, the outline of a blue cartoon monster emerges against the plain white background.
“You’ve got a thing about monsters, huh?” he asks, thinking of the life-sized swamp creature in the living room.
“You could say they’re a preoccupation of mine,” Castiel agrees, raising his mug and pursing his plush, pretty lips to blow on the steaming liquid inside. A parade of skeletons marches around the mug's circumference. “Perhaps that’s why I became a science educator.”
Dean takes a cautious sip of his own coffee. It’s a touch too hot, but the taste is infinitely better than the gut-rotting gas station shit he usually drinks. “How does that figure?” he asks. “Didn’t think science and monster lore went together.”
If he tried to tell the average scientist that plenty of things go bump in the night, from vampires to shifters to werewolves, they’d laugh him out of the room. Somehow, he doesn’t like the idea of Cas doing that to him.
“Every monster tale carries a core of scientific truth,” Castiel says, with the ease of a well-worn argument. “More often than not, what humans have called ‘monsters’ over the years are simply… genetic aberrations. Or prehistoric creatures that exist outside our current frame of reference. Like the skeleton of a twenty-foot-tall ground sloth we have at the museum.”
Dean whistles softly between his teeth. “Twenty feet, huh? That’s some sloth.”
“It is,” Castiel agrees, with a quirk of his lips. It’s the closest he’s come to a smile yet. Dean surprises himself by wanting to see it again as soon as it’s gone. “And yet, it was an herbivore. It would have been completely harmless to humans.”
“Unless it accidentally stomped on you.”
Castiel tips his head again, conceding the point. “Unless that, yes. But forgive me for asking, Agent Seger — didn’t you come here to discuss the case?”
Fuck. The case. Dean’s been enjoying himself so much, just sitting here with Castiel and a mug of coffee, talking about giant prehistoric sloths, that he almost forgot about the goddamn case.
Eyes on the ball, Winchester.
“Right,” he agrees. “Now, is there anybody you can think of who might have a grudge against you? Anybody at all, doesn’t matter if they’re new in town or you haven’t seen them in years.”
There’s the slightest hint of something in Castiel’s expression before he says, a little too quickly, “No.”
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the day), Dean’s spent his entire life bullshitting and dealing with bullshitters. He can spot a lie from a mile away.
“You sure about that?” he asks, keeping his eyes glued to Castiel’s face for even the smallest hint that Castiel is about to crack.
But whatever hesitation was there before, Castiel has successfully locked it down. “I’m sure,” he says, with perfect conviction.
Dean lets that sit for a few long ticks of silence, but Castiel still doesn’t budge. Time to try a different approach.
Reaching back into his jacket, Dean pulls out the notebook where he jotted down a few hasty details that Sam had clued him in on before they separated. “What about the victim of the attack? Hael Phipps? From what I understand, she identified you as her attacker.” Dean leans across the table, ducking his head to keep Castiel’s eyes. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel says. He looks miserable all of a sudden. His hands, which had been folded atop the table next to his coffee, are fidgeting restlessly now, one thumb rubbing over the other. “She’s an intern at the museum. Our colleague Charlie always claimed Hael was… interested in me. But I’m not very good at picking up on that sort of thing, and in any case, she would have been much too young for me. I certainly never gave her any overt sign of interest.”
Dean notices the way Castiel has folded in on himself, sad and uncertain, and hates himself for being the cause of it. Sure, he has to wade through the muck to get to the monster sometimes, but Castiel is obviously a good guy. Dean’s got a gut instinct for these things. And yet, it’s Dean’s job to make him uncomfortable so he can get at the truth of this case.
“Could she be the one with the grudge?” he asks.
Because maybe they were wrong about the shifter angle all along. Maybe the issue here is a girl who wanted her crush’s attention. Not the most flattering assumption to make about a stranger, but somehow, Dean likes this version of events better than the one where a murderous shifter is impersonating a sweet, handsome guy who just wants to educate people about science and nerd out about monsters.
Castiel’s fidgeting hands fall quiet. He raises his head to level Dean with a surprisingly effective glare. “Are you insinuating that Hael faked the attack?”
Dean shifts in his chair. It’s seven kinds of inappropriate, but he can’t help enjoying the fire in Castiel’s eyes; can’t help wondering what it might look like in a different context. How it might change when Castiel’s pupils are blown wide, his cheeks flushed.
“Um, I… you don’t think that’s likely?” he stammers. Jesus, he really needs to get it together.
Castiel shakes his head firmly. “She’s a kind, compassionate young woman with a great mind for science. She would never.”
“Alright,” Dean says, mostly because it’d seem insulting to keep arguing with Castiel. He’ll just have to regroup with Sam later and get his take on Hael. And maybe they should take a trip down to the sewers, since that’s where a lot of shifters go to shed their skins. Like that creep in St. Louis who put on Dean’s own skin and tried to frame him for murder.
God, he fucking hates shifter cases.
“Do you have any other questions, Agent Seger?” Castiel asks. There’s an undertone that says I really fucking hope not.
Dean almost flinches at the question. He’s still got half his mug of coffee in front of him, and part of him wishes they could just go back to the easy rapport they had when they were talking about science and prehistoric monsters.
He kind of wants to say that he’s sorry, but those words are sometimes hard to push past his teeth, even when he knows they’re owed.
So instead he says, “Look, I… I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
He glances cautiously at Castiel and finds him looking back with an expression of surprise. “It’s alright, I suppose,” he says, as if he heard the apology Dean couldn’t quite bring himself to make. “I do understand that you have a job to do.”
Yeah, he does have a job to do. And most of the time, it’s a damn good job — hunting the things that need hunting and saving the people who end up in their path. But sometimes, Dean wishes he could have a different kind of life: one where he could come home to a guy like Castiel and they could cuddle up on the couch and watch monster movies together.
Much too late, he realizes that he hasn’t responded to the last thing Castiel said. He’s just been staring at the guy, picturing him soft and sleepy, head leaning on Dean’s shoulder. Maybe a blanket tucked over them both.
What the hell is wrong with him? He needs to just say something.
“Can I see you again?” is what somehow comes out of his mouth.
What? Fuck. That’s not even slightly what he meant to say. Castiel didn’t even give him any particular kinds of signals. For all Dean knows, he’s got a Pride flag on his porch because he’s just that good of an ally.
Time to backpedal.
“I mean—”
“Alright,” Castiel says, before Dean can tie himself into any further knots. Somewhat uncertain, he adds, “You… do mean for the case?”
Jesus. That’s at least the third time Dean’s forgotten he’s supposed to be working a case here. There’s bound to be a rule against FBI agents fraternizing with the people they’re investigating. So Dean should definitely say “yes” and take the easy out.
That’s not what he does though.
“No, uh, I… was kinda hoping you’d tell me more about your theories on monsters. Seemed interesting.” Well, fuck it. In for a penny. “Maybe over a cup of coffee?”
Across the table, Castiel studies him intently. Dean waits, holding his breath, to see which way the table’s going to turn. He doesn’t know why this even matters; he could easily find somebody to hook up with in town. There’s no need for this whole coffee-and-a-conversation routine. In fact, that’s not his usual MO at all. What business does somebody like him have trying to date? He’ll be out of town in a matter of days.
And yet, he wants Castiel to say yes, even if all it leads to is another nice conversation. (He can never tell Sam though. Sam would read him the Riot Act over trying to date somebody at the center of a case.)
In the end, what Castiel says isn’t “yes” and it also isn’t “no.”
His intent gaze turns into this strange little smile — a bit sad around the edges. “You’re not an FBI agent, are you?” he asks.
It’s so out of left field that it takes Dean much too long to say, “‘Course I am. I showed you my badge, remember?”
Castiel acknowledges that with a dip of his chin. “But badges can be faked. And I’m relatively certain that FBI agents don’t investigate attempted murders where the only viable suspect is a local man who is not in any way affiliated with the government or organized crime. I also don’t think most FBI agents arrive for witness interviews in beautifully maintained vintage muscle cars.”
Now, usually Dean has a cover story for this kind of thing. He just goes where the bureau tells him. He uses his own car to travel for cases. All kinds of bullshit he’s fed to suspicious witnesses over the years.
But Castiel doesn’t give him a chance to stammer his way through any of that before he says, “You’re a hunter, aren’t you?”
It may be time to just accept the fact that Dean’s brain-to-mouth connection suffers a fatal error in Castiel’s vicinity, because instead of launching into an immediate denial, he finds himself answering a question with a question.
“You know about hunters?”
“Yes.” Castiel seems to rediscover his coffee as his eyes drop to the tabletop. He picks it up for another sip, taking his time. “I’d never met one before today, though.”
Dean wonders if Castiel knows about hunting because he’s had a run-in with a monster before, and not the prehistoric kind either. But it’s too personal a question to ask on such a short acquaintance; Castiel will share if and when he wants to.
When Dean doesn’t contribute anything more to the conversation, Castiel asks, “So what is it about this case that attracted the attention of a hunter?”
Dean shrugs. “Somebody says they got attacked by a person who can prove they were in a different place at the time, it tends to get us interested.”
He figures there’s no point in scaring Castiel with talk of murderous shapeshifters impersonating him. Plenty of time for that once they’ve got definite proof of shifter involvement.
Still, he wonders if Castiel is going to push for more, or maybe even offer up some of his own backstory after all.
Instead, Castiel says, “I’ll tell you what,” and Dean leans forward in anticipation, even if he inwardly cringes at how embarrassingly eager he is for whatever crumbs of attention this near-stranger wants to offer him. “We can go for that cup of coffee if you tell me your real name.”
Dean should lie. Call himself Dean Smith or Dean Wesson or whatever else he can come up with in the next five seconds.
“Dean Winchester,” he says, and blushes like a fucking thirteen-year-old at the way Castiel’s smile suddenly turns sweet and genuine. “Nice to meet you.”
***
Sam calls almost as soon as Dean steps out of Castiel’s house, still dazed and stumbling from the fact that he has Castiel’s number in his burner and a plan to meet him at a coffee shop at two the following afternoon.
“Are you still with Castiel?” Sam asks, as soon as Dean picks up the call.
“And hello to you too, bitch.”
Sam’s eye roll is practically audible over the line. “Dean. Are you still with Castiel?”
Dean mutters something inflammatory under his breath before he answers. “I left him about five seconds ago. Why?”
“It happened again.”
Dean freezes with his hand on the Impala’s door handle. “Somebody else got attacked?”
“Yeah. Just now. I heard chatter about it on the police scanner. An older woman got jumped outside the local food bank and said her attacker looked like Castiel.”
Well. There’s the proof: this is definitely a shifter case.
“It couldn’t have been him,” Dean says, stepping out of the balmy fall air and sliding into the driver seat. The Impala’s interior is so sun-warmed that it feels damn near stifling, though of course Dean would never blame her for that. “I just left him a minute ago and we were together for at least twenty minutes. Probably closer to half an hour.”
“Then I guess we better hit the sewers tonight,” Sam says grimly. “I’ll stop by City Hall and see if I can get a look at some blueprints. Think about convenient access points and routes we should check out.”
“Yeah.” Dean sighs, running a weary hand down his face. What the fuck is he doing, asking a guy as nice as Castiel for coffee? He’s going to spend his evening climbing all over a goddamn sewer. “Should I go talk to the new vic?”
“Sure. Sounded like they were taking her to a place called New Hanover Hospital.”
***
Wilmington isn’t exactly a massive town, so it doesn’t take more than twenty minutes to get to the hospital. (Sam would say that it would’ve been quicker with GPS, but Dean maintains that honing your natural navigation instincts is an important skill. Can’t exactly pull up Google Maps when there’s a murderous ghost truck chasing you, just as an example.)
He flashes his badge at reception and is asked to wait because the patient, one Mrs. Butters, is still receiving treatment.
Sam calls again a few minutes later, having apparently gotten a few more details from his police contact. Mrs. Butters was attacked with a knife and received some defensive wounds, but she fought off her attacker in the end. Apparently managed to draw blood with his own knife. Good for her.
When Dean’s finally shown in to see her, two cups of coffee and three candy bars later, he finds himself face to face with the sort of formidable older lady who can discourage misbehavior by raising a single eyebrow. Her hair is immaculately curled on top of her head and she’s sitting upright against her pillows. In fact, she’d look completely unruffled if it weren’t for the bandage on her forearm and the fact that her leg is in a cast.
“Agent Seger, FBI,” he tells her, flashing his badge and hoping his alias holds more water with her than it did with Cas. “I apologize for bothering you at this difficult time, but I need to ask you a few questions about the attack.”
“Shameful cowardice,” Mrs. Butters says, glaring at him. “Attacking people with knives. Luckily, he didn’t expect me to know how to defend myself.”
“Yeah, he didn’t see you coming, that’s for sure,” Dean says. Good for her — not many people, especially older ones, would face down a guy with a knife with this kind of Not today, fucker attitude.
He doesn’t like to think what would’ve happened if the shifter had picked a weaker target. Twice now, the shifter’s victims have gotten lucky. It probably won’t happen a third time.
“Still, you’d damn well better catch him soon,” Mrs. Butters says, with the kind of dignified authority that only certain old ladies seem to be able to pull off.
“I’m trying, ma’am,” Dean says, grinning at her. She really is a fucking delight. “You told the officer he looked like Castiel Novak, is that right?”
Mrs. Butters nods curtly. “I did. I also told him it wasn’t actually Castiel, though he likely didn’t bother to write that down. Probably thought I was delusional. Or a borderline dementia case.”
That grabs Dean’s interest. He pulls up a chair to sit at Mrs. Butters’ bedside. “So the attacker just reminded you of him?”
Maybe they’re looking for a regular old human with a grudge after all.
“Oh no,” Mrs. Butters says, “he looked exactly like him. But it wasn’t Castiel.”
“How do you know?” Dean asks. What is it with this case and people surprising him at every turn? Maybe, in a minute, he’ll find out Mrs. Butters is actually a hunter or else some kind of creature.
“I’ve known Castiel for years. We volunteer together at the food bank once a week. He comes to my house for tea sometimes and he housesits for me when I go on my annual Caribbean cruise with the Women’s Club.” Mrs. Butters fixes him with a look so formidable that Dean instinctively straightens up in his chair. “Castiel did not do this. And the swine who did now has a knife wound on his left shoulder to identify him. I hope it hurts.”
“I do too,” Dean tells her, and for the first time since he walked into the room, Mrs. Butters actually looks pleased with him.