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"Bobby's liver is in surprisingly good condition," Cas remarked, having checked for that and a number of other issues when he resurrected the man (or would. Whatever.) "But some of his coronary arteries could use some attention."

He snickered quietly at the 'junior,' knocking back another one and then leaning on his cue to watch Dean try his luck. He hadn't worked up a full-blown buzz--not yet--but he was getting there, and quicker than expected.

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"Yeah, we'll see about the Tom.." He snarked, teasing Bobby about the main character from Rain Man, whom he couldn't remember the character's name but he knew had been played by Tom Cruise so that worked just as well "Depends if you taught Rain Man good enough."

Dean stepped up once Bobby was done and his first three shots sank with out a problem, the next one went wide and his stick nearly skipped off the felt of the table "Crap.." He chuckled obviously not bothered by it at all as he knocked back another shot and looked at his brother "Y'know, I don't think I want to even know how Cas knows about Bobby's liver, too much information."

The hunter stepped back from the table to give Cas some room to take his next shot. He was feeling warm and a little more than buzzed as he drained the last of his beer.

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junkyard-hunter.livejournal.com

There was more pool, more drinking, and a significant amount of shots shared between the hunters. Soon it wasn't clear who was winning, but they didn't really care. When it became a little too tricky to aim the pool cue, the hunters retired to a table where the beer and even a few more shots continued to flow as easily as the stories, jokes and cracks at each other.

Bobby sat in one of the comfortable leather chairs, head tilted back, snoring. His liver might be in decent shape according to Cas, but he wasn't exactly a kid anymore.

"Bobby," Sam looked over the table and the vast number of empties stacked there and nudged him. "Go to bed, man."

The old hunter sat up with a start before nodding somewhat blearily at the remaining boys. "Right. 'night boys."

He got to his feet, somewhat unsteadily and clapped a hand on Cas's shoulder. "S's a good lady Cas. Figured she'd like purple. Don't know what the hell John was thinkin with blue.." he muttered before wandering towards the door.

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"Thank you, Bobby," Cas said, smiling hazily at the old hunter. Who was almost to the door by the time the implications of his statement penetrated the angel's befuddled mind. "Wait...what?" But Bobby had already gone.

He shrugged, slammed yet another shot and kept on smiling, somewhat aimlessly. If any of them were in any condition to notice (which they weren't,) he was oddly further along in sloshedness than previous experience suggested he should be at this point. If anything, he might just be drunker than his human friends, though whether that was a function of downing about three times as much as any of them had or of the unfamiliar Hogwartsian whiskey (or both) was difficult to say.

"She is a good lady," he slurred, slouching comfortably in his chair and spinning an empty shotglass idly on the table. "I am very...very fortunate to have such a lady. And blessed in the friends that I have found."

The smile faded slowly as his thoughts meandered back over the incredible series of events that had brought them to this point. "I never would have guessed, with everything that happened, that one day we would all find ourselves in such a place as this," he said distantly.

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Dean was a good bit past drunk, feet propped up on the table in front of him the hunter wore a large happy grin. Considering they had continued to take shots after sitting down it was a wonder any of them remained upright and when Bobby snored Dean laughed hard enough he nearly fell out of his chair.

It got better and the hunter's chair thunked to the floor as Bobby made his slurred confession and the drink of beer he had just taken sprayed out of his mouth "Old perverts, that was Dad and Bobby? I didn't think they had it in them." Dean cracked a grin over at his brother, then he heard Cas and the hunter cocked his head. "Yeah, you know, I would love to kick the guys ass that let Sam out the panic room. We had him stopped...."

And to Dean from that point on Fate was unavoidable, even if he didn't believe in it and had fought it every step of the way and forged his own path. The end results had been far from perfect and he had to wonder, how different things would have been if Sam had never gotten out of there that day to free Lucifer.

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Sam snorted at his brother’s chuckle. He had a pretty pleasant drunk going on. It had been a good night, he and Cas had each found someone, they were all there and whole and safe. Death’s promised intervention also meant that while he wasn’t looking forward to his inevitable departure from the school, he at least wasn’t facing it with such dread. He finished his beer and reached automatically for another, completely disregarding the fact that he was going to regret overdoing it come morning.

“She is Cas,” he said in agreement, throwing back another shot before washing it down with a beer. “Gonna keep me outta the Cage,” he slurred.

He blinked at his brother, confused. “Panic room? ‘m not goin back in there am I?” It took a moment for his scattered thoughts to piece together what Dean meant. “Oh. Right. I don’t remember, Dean. I didn’t see anyone. Always figured it was Ruby or.. or someone.” He took another long drink and slouched down further in his chair, his good mood dampened.

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Castiel went very still at their exchange, wondering if some agent of fate had arranged for that topic to finally come up at this particular moment. If he couldn't admit to what he had done right now, thoroughly plastered with a gut full of enchanted courage, he'd have no hope of ever confessing when he was sober. So it had better be now. He'd be damned if he would take it to his grave a third time.

Meticulously peeling the label from his beer bottle, he said in an undertone so low it hardly carried to their ears, enunciating each word with elaborate care, "I know who did that."

He swallowed, struggling to just bring it out and have done, but the simplest words somehow eluded him. I did it. It was me. I let him out. So he resorted to a more oblique reference that he knew without a doubt Dean would understand, and threw in another painful admission while he was at it; one he knew they'd already heard, but not from him, and not the full story. "The same spineless, soulless son of a bitch who turned Anna in when she came to berate him for it."

Edited Date: 2011-03-12 08:09 pm (UTC)

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"Hell no, damn Sammy, you think I'd..." Then Dean stopped, he heard the first undertone from Cas. The angel knew who did it and hadn't told him "What the hell Cas, you should have told.." And for the second time in as many seconds he was cut off.

Baffled was one to describe his expression, then hurt, betrayed, which in Dean Winchester took only seconds to manifest itself in to anger, because that was one emotion he was good at expressing. "You..." it was low at first, of every one he had possibly thought it could be, Dean had never considered it being Cas, not once had he suspected the angel.

"You did it?! You let him out, why cause your bosses told you to? Huh? How long, Cas, how long did you plan on dickin' me around and hidin' that from me?" He was out of his chair, unsteady on his feet so that when he rose the chair crashed to the ground and the beer bottle near his hand was sent to crash to the floor "Of every one...I never thought it would be you."

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Sam turned at Cas’s quiet words, his surprise cutting through the haze. Cas? But he was their friend. Granted while he was under the influence of his addition to demon blood, Sam hadn’t earned the right to call anyone friend; but he really thought Cas had been on their side that summer. He turned to the angel with wide and somewhat confused eyes. “You? But .. Cas.. why? It started the Apocalypse..”

There was some kind of connection he needed to be making, but his alcohol infused brain stubbornly refused to cooperate. He was still sitting there, staring at Castiel in open confusion when Dean wobbled to his feet. The chair hitting the ground sounded like a gunshot and Sam was on his feet a second later, looking between his angry brother and Castiel, who hadn’t moved.

Sam knew firsthand how Dean’s anger tended to flare up before eventually petering out and he wasn’t sure how much of that Cas was prepared for. The angel was drunk and probably more than a little vulnerable to what Dean might say. He angled himself between the two, ready to intervene if need be.

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Castiel flinched in the face of Dean's anger, and set the bottle down on the table with a quiet thunk. "I was under orders, yes. I hadn't yet...been shamed into disobeying."

He couldn't look at either of them. "The ways that Heaven has of inflicting pain...there are no words in any human language," he said tonelessly. "Zachariah never scrupled at employing any of them. But that wasn't what..." He rubbed at his face, wishing he could erase these memories so he'd neither have to relive nor recount them. He'd returned from that 're-education' broken in more than one sense, and nothing that had followed had made things any easier.

"It wasn't how he--broke me. I'd already decided to cast my lot with you and he knew it. So he--he held Jimmy and his family over my head." His mouth thinned into a bitter line. "Made me listen as the man begged me to keep my promise. To protect the people he loved. Zachariah wouldn't free me to answer. He would have left them all to the demons if I hadn't sworn to obey."

Dean had broken the first seal, and Sam the last, with no clear idea what they were really doing. Cas had understood all too well the consequences of his actions, and he'd not only withheld an important truth from them, he'd allowed them both to believe all this time that their culpability for Lucifer's release was greater than it was. He was just as much to blame.

"I preserved my vessel and his family and kept my word, in exchange for...everything else. Maybe it wasn't technically a Seal, but for practical purposes, it might just as well have been number sixty-five and a half." The sixty-sixth could not have been broken if not for his act of treachery.

They both had every good reason to be angry. He wasn't even trying to defend himself; only to give them the whole truth at last, so he could stop feeling that he'd been taken into their family under false pretenses.

"I've wanted to tell you for a long time. I was ashamed, and afraid," he concluded, voice hollow. The thought of what Dean would say to all this was terrifying, but there was also a certain relief. Whatever happened now, at least his conscience was finally clear. "I need a bigger word than 'sorry' and...I haven't got one."

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Dean listened, they weren't excuses and he knew that and even from the moment his anger started he knew he was going to forgive Cas, family was earned and Castiel had more than earned his place and the forgiveness that came with it. But like any family, they could down right piss you off, they weren't made to always make you happy, they could make you down right miserable. So Dean reacted with the first emotion, the betrayal and anger, not the understanding that was underneath it all.

"Damn right sorry ain't gonna cut. " Dean drunkenly shoved Sam aside "Move it." He lunged for Cas, tackling the angel and sending both to the ground as his feet hit the table and upended it, causing the lunging Sam to be knocked backwards on to his behind before he could stop his brother who had every intention of landing a solid one to the angel's jaw, even if it was only going to hurt his hand.

Unfortunately alcohol and football tackles do not go hand in hand for a reason and Dean soon learned as he and Cas rolled and the hunter's head cracked in to the angel's "Son of a bitch" Dean groaned as he rolled off the angel and flopped on to his back on the ground. That had backfired in more ways than one as Dean lay there with the world spinning from the knock to the head, the firewhiskey in his system just amplifying the effect.

"You got a hard head you bastard."

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Well that sure explained why Jimmy hated them so much.

Sam felt vaguely sick and he was sure that it didn’t have as much to do with his overdoing it as it did with what Castiel just confessed to them both. He saw what Dean intended to do, and if his reflexes hadn’t been dulled by a night of heavy boozing, he might have been able to prevent what happened next. Dean’s shove sent him wildly off balance and he crashed to the floor. The upended table sent bottles raining everywhere, the empty ones shattering all around him.

He struggled to his feet, glass in his hair and a few small shards stuck in his palms, but he ignored the sting. This shouldn’t be happening. They were family for God’s sake. “Dean!”

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Anger he had expected, maybe even some sort of physical attack, but not a full-fledged body tackle. Ordinarily Cas would see such a move coming a mile away and either dodge or set himself up to roll with it so that Dean wouldn't be hurt. Surprise and impaired reflexes prevented it this time, and they collided hard enough that it actually hurt him slightly as well.

"I'm sorry," he said automatically, staggering upright to brace himself against a nearby wall. "I--" He bent slightly, grimacing and involuntarily bringing a hand to his head. Too much dubious liquor and an inherently sickening conversation, thoroughly shaken up by the tumble and the head-crack, caught up with him suddenly and violently, and his stomach made known its displeasure in no uncertain terms.

"Dean, I'm sorry," he repeated miserably, and winked out to the nearest lavatory before all that firewhiskey came right back up onto the glass-strewn floor.

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Dean rolled over with a groan, on his hands and knees the hunter looked as if he was about to hurl. The world was spinning, Cas had a hard head and all the liquor, mixed with his regular diet of greasy foods was enough to make his stomach roll more than once.

"Sorry...you..." The hunter turned his head, shock on his face "Damn it Cas! Don't you run off." He staggered to his feet and took one step forward to go look for the angel. Partly in anger, the other part in concern, neither of them melding very well in his drunken state.

As his foot hit the ground, Dean's body followed suit and the hunter ended up face flat on the ground, he was barely holding dinner down "I'm gonna... oh crap."

Dean didn't have zapping powers and the hunter just barely snagged a nearby potted plant and got rid of every thing in his stomach in a few seconds.

"Son of a bitch...." he turned, slumped, defeated as an arm draped over his upraised knees and his head hung.

"Cas...just never thought it would be Cas."

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