inonebasket | (no subject)

"C'mon. I know a good place." He takes Cas' elbow, leading him through the complicated maze of streets.

Dean's 'good place' turns out to be a strip joint set a little bit away from the bustle of the rest of the city. This doesn't, however, make it any less loud, seeing as the DJ has the bass turned up high enough to rattle bones. But Dean seems to like it, flirting openly with the topless waitress who seems torn between flirting back and slapping him.

Cas stares around like the clueless thing he is, not quite understanding the rules of a place like this. He sees men tucking money into the strings of a dancing woman's thong underwear and tilts his head, puzzled. What are they paying her for?

"Dean," Cas shouts over the music, "I fail to understand the purpose of this entertainment." See, he gets the brothel, he gets it; that one is about the carnal act of copulation and the euphoria-inducing hormonal bursts that come along with the stimuli. Here, though, the only stimulus is visual, yet the viewers are still paying the dancers.

Is it art? Cas never gets art.

"What?" Sorry, Cas, he couldn't hear for a second. "Just enjoy it! We're here to get drunk and have fun!"

Dean's idea of fun is terrible. Really terrible. But hey, he's paying for the drinks and lots of them, intent on enjoying the hell out of getting sloshed.

Huh.

Okay.

Cas decides to just do what everyone else is doing, so he flips through the bills they have and chooses one. It's a hundred. When the dancer sashays her way down along the bar Castiel holds up the bill for her to take, because apparently she also has many expenses to cover and Castiel feels the need to even out his karma since he won all of this cash by gambling.

The girl spots the larger bill amongst the smaller tens and fives and reaches right down to snatch it. She says something coy that Cas can't quite hear above the thrum of the bass speakers, fists her hand in the hair at the back of his head and yanks him up into a kiss.

Apparently that's permitted, despite it being forbidden for the patrons to initiate close physical contact with the dancers. Cas really does not get the rules of this place.

That was way too big a bill for Cas to wave up there, but damned if it didn't get the dancer's attention. In a big way. Dean sticks his fingers into his mouth and wolf-whistles his approval, as do a handful of other men near the stage. Because, hey, he's happy for Cas, he really is. Even nerdy little angels deserve to get a kiss from a hot chick now and again, right? Yes, Dean certainly didn't have a moment of panic when the dancer grabbed Cas. Of course not. Dean Winchester does not panic.

Cas seems to have this automatic thing that makes him go for the hair, because when the dancer grabs him and lays one on him he grabs her hair back and just lays it right back, and it's a good fifteen seconds before she lets go and pushes him back down into his seat. She even looks a little flustered as she saunters back further down the bar, sending Castiel a wink.

Cas sits for a moment, eyes on the table before he turns to Dean and asks, "Did I do that correctly?"

Dean shakes his head, still grinning a bit. "Damn, Cas. I knew you had it in you, but damn. You keep that up, they'll invite you back to the champagne room."

"Hmm. She wasn't as good as you are, however." Yeah, Cas is apparently a kiss expert now, having locked lips with three different people now.

...Thanks Cas. Thanks so much. Just the thing Dean wanted the people around him to hear. Cas would manage to shout that just as there's a brief lull between the end of one song and the beginning of the next.

Dean hides his face in his hands for a second before he grabs Cas by the arm. Time to go.

Yeah the silence was pretty uncomfortable with more than a couple whispers and stares as they make their departure, and for a moment Cas isn't quite sure what went wrong.

Then it occurs to him, oh right, he's a dude and two dudes making out is apparently not cool with everyone. Which is still just about the dumbest thing Cas has ever heard, because the human soul is all that matters and souls don't have genders anyway but mortals just identify so much with their bodies. They even keep their genders when they go to heaven or hell. So weird.

"My apologies," says Cas once they're back on the street, because it seems like the right thing to do.

Dean rubs his face, massaging his temples. That was great for his ego. Just great. With a little luck, people will just assume Cas was drunk. Hopefully.

"No, Cas, it's...it's fine." Dean just should have known that something would go wrong, that's all. But in the grand scale of things...this is a pretty good thing to go wrong. Better than pretty much all the alternatives. "Why don't we head back, huh? Pick up some beer or something on the way." Because Dean is doing better than he has in weeks, but he's still an alcoholic in training.

"Whatever you'd like." Castiel hands their money back to Dean, slipping a hand into the pocket of his jacket. Vegas is very bright and lively and noisy, and an interesting place to watch people but not really Castiel's scene. He's more of a nature kind of angel-man-hybrid thing.

Dean, on the other hand, loves the bustle. Or he says he loves the bustle. Given that his favorite dream involves fishing on a quiet lake and the happiest he'd been in a long time was raking leaves in Lisa's back yard, it's entirely likely that he's lying. Which he probably is. He lies a lot, after all.

He shoves the money into his pocket and leads Cas to a liquor store, where he buys large quantities of alcohol. In his defense, he was running low. This is just...restocking! And then it's back to their motel in a slightly seedy area of town, where Dean promptly cracks open a can of beer and drinks half of it before doing anything else. Man, he is really on his way to liver failure.

"I mean it, Cas, dancers don't usually do that. You are something special, that's for sure."

If Dean's liver fails, Cas will just fix it for him.

"I'm an angel of the Lord." Like that explains his ability to attract hot chicks. In all likelihood it was probably that hundred he was waving around, and the potential of having more.

"Yeah, well I'm pretty sure most angels of the Lord don't have mouths like yours."

Because come on. Dean's straight, but even he isn't blind enough to miss that.

"I didn't choose Jimmy for his mouth." Cas says this very honestly, like he really does think that Dean believes he chose Jimmy for the attractiveness of his mouth.

Dean chokes on his mouthful of beer.

"Apparently Jimmy is considered attractive. I may have chosen an improper representation for myself." Castiel continues undeterred. "In regards to my true form, I'm considered extremely average amongst the Host. Far from the most beautiful, which of course was Lucifer before he fell."

dammit Cas shut up this is not helping Dean not choke

"Cas--Cas, I don't need to know that. I don't care what your true form looks like, okay?" He doesn't mean that physical attractiveness isn't important to him, but dear god, it'd be easy to take it that way.

"No, I imagine you wouldn't." It's hard to care about what something looks like when just a glimpse of it would burn your eyes out of your skull.

A pause.

"Thank you. For the compliment about my mouth." See, he's learning!

Dean looks momentarily startled, opening his mouth to say something, stopping, shutting it...and looking away.

He'll just...finish his beer now.

Castiel takes another one, cracks it open and sets it down on the table in front of Dean.

Dean appreciates Castiel's devotion to the rapid destruction of Dean's liver.

He chugs that beer, too. And a third.

Actually, by the time he's done, between the whiskey at the club and the beer at the motel, Dean is fast approaching intoxicated. It's not too bad. He could still drive. Maybe. If he had to. But he's definitely approaching the threshold of drunk.

He gestures to Cas, crooking his fingers in a beckoning motion. "C'mere."

Cas thinks he recognizes that tone of voice and tries not to look too eager as he rises and walks around the table. His heart beats just a bit harder in his chest. "Yes?"

Dean fists his hand in Castiel's shirt and pulls him down to eye level.

"I don't care about your true form. I can't see it." Somehow, Dean manages to shrug with his eyebrows. "But sometimes? I wish I could. Because it's probably pretty freaking amazing. Chrysler building. Wings." His eyes slide away from Cas for a second, leaving him staring into space. "We've gotta get your wings back."