Who: Dean Winchester, Scud, Kevin Tran (later appearance by Samandriel and Castiel) What: The armor doesn’t have to be completely functional When: 1/21 Where: Scud n’ Dean’s Garage Rating: Low but language and stuff. Status: Complete
Getting back to work was actually way easier than Dean had anticipated. Of course, Cas’ constant texts were kinda distracting. At first it was just better to know that his angel was still there than to come back to friggen Misha again. Not that Misha was awful, but he sure as shit wasn’t Cas and there was only so much fake Cas one guy could handle. Now? Now it was the most annoying damn thing in the world and Dean was about to lose it.
“Okay, I’m going to stab him,” Dean muttered as he crossed the shop to take a break at Scud. “Seriously. He just sent me like twelve messages of only my name. Dean. Dean. Dean. Fucking christ.” Working the worst of the grease on his hands off onto a rag was definitely better than punching something. Probably. Maybe. Punching something might feel better at this point.
Scud, fiddling with a fuse block with a squinty sort of expression looked up at Dean as soon as the twirl of his chair allowed him to. He reached out a hand to pause his constant circling and rose an eyebrow. He couldn't help but give a little chuckle. Dean and his husband's constant interaction was much different than how he functioned with Lo.
"Aw, man, he's prolly worried about you. You can hardly blame the dude."
Shooting off a reply to Cas, Dean waited for the next one to come in and sighed, turning his phone to Scud. “Like this. All damn day. I get like ten minutes to get stuff done before he starts blowing up my phone again. Is it just because it’s Tuesday? Shit always seems to piss me off more on Tuesdays.”
Scud tossed aside his mess of fuses, wiped his hands off on the ass of his coveralls and then took Dean's phone to read the unfortunate amount of messages. "S'pose tellin' him so wouldn't help, huh. An' no, man. It's because he didn't halfta adjust yesterday coz it was a holiday."
Of course they'd taken the day off at the shop. It only made sense, if only because Scud really did like taking lazy days.
"It'll go back to normal soon enough. Y'know. Hourly instead of every few minutes."
“Yeah,” Dean said, “and I still got a deadline on this shit and I don’t wanna know what happens if I don’t respond or my battery dies.” He sighed heavily, dragging a stool over with his foot. “Probably he’ll just show up here and glare at me. Or give me the wounded puppy look.” Used to be only Sam gave that look, but apparently Cas picked it up at some point.
"Just invite him over after he gets offa work. He can sit in his corner with a book. Problem solved." Scud, for all his nonchalance, was at least a bit of a problem solver. He pointedly plugged Dean's phone into the wall charger before crossing the room to the set of desks that weren't a mess of oil and parts and instead computers and paperwork.
"I'm nearly done with the bike I'm workin' on." He sounded bored about it all.
The phone immediately started buzzing again, and Dean was gonna pitch a fit about it when the little bell they’d rigged into the front door went off. Little bell...first chords of Smoke on the Water. Whatever.
“Well, if you wanna help me dig into the crap I’m supposed to be doing but Feather-stiltzkin won’t let me get a minute to hit a rhythm, I’d appreciate it,” he said as he walked into the main area of the shop. “What can I do ya for?” All charm and grins at the little asian kid.
Kevin eyed the man in front of him and readjusted the strap of his messenger bag. The place, for all its obvious design, still smelled like a garage, but that was somehow reassuring. “I’m Kevin. We talked online about you and your ah...partner…maybe helping me with a cosplay thing.”
“Ah, right. Giant robot thing.” Dean ducked behind the counter to grab a notebook and a clipboard before he crossed over to the door back into the work area. He kicked it just a few inches open and shouted, “Scud! Interesting shit’s here.” What? They already pretty much had the contract. No sense in trying to censor himself.
Anyway, it wasn't like they needed to censor themselves anyway. No one expected mechanics to be anything but crass. So long as their skills put out, their mouths could too.
"Fuck to the yes!" The shop was set up so that Scud could almost always sail across it in his office chair -- which he did currently, stopping himself with scuffed up combat boots against the cement before hitting anything fragile or human. "Been waiting on this. What've we got?" He offered a crooked grin to their contract and wiggled his fingers in lazy hello. "Sup, man."
“Uh...hi,” Kevin replied, a little taken aback by the other man’s appearance. “Well, I’ve never outsourced my costumes before, so this is new to me too.” He flashed a brief smile and set down his bag on the counter, pulled out his tablet. “You have wifi? I can show you some pictures of what I have in mind, see if anything seems like something you could make. You familiar with anime? Mecha? Or like, Iron Man?”
"We got wifi. Password arcwelder, one word." What? He loved his welder. Don't judge.
Standing, Scud pressed closer behind the counter until he was bumping shoulders with Dean. This was a garage and they were always in each other's personal space so it wasn't anything new, here.
"Anime?" He asked, lips quirking upward into way too amused territory. "I think I seen some porn kinds yeah. Mecha didn't last too long in it though. Iron man, fuck yeah." Crude as he was, Scud knew his shit and had a shelf of comics that didn't end just in porn. "Obviously the AI wouldn't add up the same. Ain't no one that good."
Dean rolled his eyes dramatically. Right, because bringing up cartoon porn in front of the twelve year old was totally a good idea and wouldn’t get them sued or some shit. “We could probably find someone that good,” he pointed out. There were a crapload of ultra nerds around. Pen probably knew someone who could work it up. Maybe not with the fancy british would you like tea, sir accent, but frankly the idea of butlers just creeped Dean out.
His phone went off loudly in the other room where Scud put it up to charge. “Give it less than five minutes before he calls the desk,” Dean said, giving not a single fuck for the other guy invading his space.
“Oh, it doesn’t have to work,” Kevin was quick to reassure them. “Judging is based on looks alone. Trust me. I’ve seen some pretty sketchy things go through competition before. It’s all about how it looks--and with things like anime, how realistically you’ve made something that shouldn’t exist in the real world.” He tapped the wifi password and then did a quick Google image search before handing the tablet over to Dean. “So, what do you think?”
Dean looked at what was on the tablet, zooming in on a few more pertinent details in places. “Looks doable. Pretty sure you’ll get bonus points or whatever the more awesome we can make it.” Shit that’s not supposed to exist in the real world. Right. Like their damn lives weren’t made up of shit that wasn’t supposed to exist in the real world. He handed the tablet off to Scud just so he could double check things and do whatever tech magic he needed to in order to make that shit end up in their files. He wasn’t clueless. He just had more important things to learn than iWhatever.
Speaking of shit that didn’t belong in the real world, it’d gotten to the point where angels popping in and out of his life wasn’t even something noteworthy or that startled him. The sound of wings was met with only, “Goddamnit, Cas. You’re supposed to be at work. I’m fine. Can I seriously have twenty minutes to get shit done?” He didn’t even look up until the phone at the desk went off, Cas’ number flashing up on the Caller ID.
Samandriel stared. He wasn’t often reverted to wide-eyed silence, but this had to be a very intense exception to the rule. “Kevin Tran,” he heard himself say, mind locked in a dank warehouse room, the stench of sulfur and his own blood lingering in his every pore. Even he couldn’t have stopped what came out of his mouth next. “Luigi Ponzi, Justin Hunt, Aaron Webber, Maria, Dennis Adams, Krista, and Sven.” He couldn’t bring himself to look away from the Prophet of the Lord who was really just a young man in Dean and Scud’s shop. Not a Prophet. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. That no one in the room could see his wings didn’t mean that Samandriel wasn’t bringing them tighter around himself anyway, like somehow he could shield himself from Crowley and all the things that came after it even though they were only in his head.
Kevin startled at the guy who just seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and was that wings? He glanced around to see if a bird had somehow gotten inside the shop, but no. There was just the guy who looked like he was around his own age, or maybe a little younger. “Uh...yeah. How do you know my name?” He could have sworn that it was just the three of them in the room, but maybe this was another partner of Dean’s? Or the aforementioned Cas? “Are you in my section of CSCI 104? Because classes just started, and we haven’t even met yet, technically, so….”
Scud, so strangely used to the comings and goings of angels (and demons!) in the shop, didn't even look up from the tablet where he was emailing himself picture files. Samandriel in question generally had a bit of speaking more cryptically than Castiel (who always just appeared and looked like he needed a hug, if you asked Scud).
On the fourth ring of the phone though, he reached over and grabbed it off the hook. "Aw, hey Cas. Naw, he's fine man. Alfie just popped over so-- yeah -- naw. Sure. I can -- uh huh -- yeah. I can do that." He hung up, glanced over at Dean and shrugged. "Cas says you're thinkin' too loud. But you should also answer your texts. And do you wanna meet for lunch. Apparently that's one of his texts you should answer."
In that moment, nothing else mattered but the shell-shocked looking angel in front of him. “Whoa, kid,” he said, moving to steady him, just barely catching up to the fact that Kevin’s name was one of the first things out of his mouth. And then a bunch of other names of people and none of this could be any good at all. Just to annoy the hell out of Cas (totally legit payback, in his book,) Dean actively thought louder in his very specific direction the list of names the kid had just recited.
“C’mon, snap out of it.” It was less a fingers in the face situation and more a grab a scrawny angel by the shoulders and shake him one.
It was a strategy that actually worked. Samandriel blinked several times, managing to bring Dean’s face into focus again and catch up on what the Prophet was saying to him. “Sorry,” he said softly. “I wasn’t expecting-” The angel cleared his throat. “Study hall was too quiet and I kept thinking and it seemed best to go somewhere where I was going to get the fewest strange looks possible for just showing up.”
“...did he just apparate here?” Kevin asked, sounding a little hysterical. The nonreactions of the other men weren’t helping anything. He shuddered, though he wasn’t cold. It was Southern California in January. Like someone walked over your grave, he thought, though he didn’t know why. “What do you mean Dean’s thinking too loud. Who is he? Where did he come from? And how does he know my name?” He shifted his gaze to the blond. “How do you know my name?”
"Aw, shit." Scud said with a little sigh, and then stood up in order to dig his hard pack of smokes out of his pocket. What he pulled out of that box was definitely not a cigarette though. "Alright," he said soothingly. "Time for everyone t'chill out. You smoke Kev?" He lit his joint even as he asked.
"There ain't no Harry Potter shit goin' on here. That," he said, pointing to Dean. "Is Dean. He's married to an angel who texts a lot. Don't ask." He shrugged, as if to say it was really just something he should roll with. "An' that is Alfie. He's also an angel. He's cool." Scud passed the shocked little asian his joint in a show of good will. Or whatever.
And then, because it only made sense for all of Scud's hard work to come crumbling down around him, there was another sound of wings, and an upset Castiel standing there. "Dean, why in creation are you thinking about prophets--oh." His gaze went directly onto Kevin.
“Great. Friggen angel party in the shop.” Dean left Samandriel with a huff, going to flip the closed sign. “Gabriel get his wings yet? Is he gonna pop in too?” Just because Dean was used to it didn’t mean he liked it. At all. “We know him?” He gestured vaguely at Kevin who seemed not at all the type to end up in their kind of shit life. “And what’s this prophet shit? I thought Chuck was the prophet?” There was some catching up to do that Dean really, really was not looking forward to.
Samandriel couldn’t help but look apologetically at Kevin. “Your name was Written,” was all he could say. “Is Written, I suppose.” He felt awful for all of this and was actually of the general opinion that no one but Scud was going to be actually helpful in this situation.
Kevin didn’t actually smoke, but he probably wouldn’t say no to some alcohol right about now. He handed the joint back to Scud with a brief shake of his head. “I don’t...where are all these people coming from?” he asked, his voice again having a slightly hysterical note. “What’s happening? Angels? Prophets?” He shook his head, as if to clear it, as if he could shake his world back to rights. And it worked, to some extent. Clearly, they were playing some kind of prank on him.
“Is this some kind of joke?” He huffed, feeling anger boil beneath the surface. “I should have known better than to think that someone like you would actually be interested in cosplay, but I didn’t think you’d be the kind of guy to pull this kind of crap. Just...whatever.” He snatched his tablet back and stuffed it in his bag, ready to leave. Sure, he’d been bullied in high school like anyone else, by jocks who looked like Dean and punks who looked like Scud. Apparently this was what they did when they graduated.
Hey! That was making a pretty unfair assumption that either of these two mechanics had graduated, thank you very much.
"What?" Asked Scud, completely confused, but hardly clueless. "Nah man, come back! I know they're crazy sounding an' all but I can tell you now, once it starts there ain't no avoiding it. You might as well gets some mecha while you're at it, man." It was all punctuated by another hit on his joint and a seamless pass of the thing in Dean's direction.
"Chuck is a prophet. There are more than one, although never at the same time." Castiel tilted his head at Kevin, and didn't seem particularly perturbed about whether or not the boy stayed or went. He never had been good with people, and didn't seem to be improving any at the current moment, either. "It's possibly latent currently, but as Samandriel says, eventually he'll know the Word and Will."
Fuck, Dean was only too glad to take that joint from Scud. “No one’s fucking with you,” he said, managing to glare at both of the angels without looking at either of them. Why not, right? Fuckin’ mood called for it. “Especially not about the building cool shit pro bono or whatever. I may not understand a damn word of whatever nerd-speak is going on, but I ain’t gonna fuck with you for it.” Sometimes the dreams bled so much into his waking life that he was actually surprised that people didn’t automatically just know that Dean’s younger brother was a huge ass nerd. King nerd. “Just...have a seat. Chill out. You want a beer? Cas, get the kid a beer.” Didn’t matter that Samandriel had access to the better quality stuff. The little angel (and sometimes Dean really did forget that he was just a tiny thing,) looked way more in need of liquor than Castiel did.
“They’re never actively prophets at the same time,” Samandriel clarified, finally coming out of himself enough to move. He wasn’t going to take the joint, even though Dean offered it. It wouldn’t do him any good anyway. “They still exist as people.” He turned his attention back to Kevin. “Has anyone told you about the epidemic of dreams that happen here?” It seemed the only place they could possibly start that sounded a little more reasonable than surprise the Prophet.
“I don’t…” Kevin let out a frustrated sound, because while every instinct was telling him to run, to just leave and never come back and write the whole thing off as a waste of time, there was another part that tugged sharply, telling him to stay. He eyed them all warily. “Look, I’m not religious, or whatever, so there’s no point in trying to convert me.”
Scud snorted when Castiel blinked out of the room only to appear a few seconds later with a six pack in hand -- not even gone long enough to miss a beat in the conversation. That beer, he knew, hadn't even been paid for. Sometimes he wondered if Cas even realized he was doing stuff like that - and just how much of it was his business partner's influence.
He took the joint back since half the people in the room weren't having any of it (hey, more for him) and shook his head. "It ain't about religion, just crazy dreams."
Castiel awkwardly handed beer to Scud and then Kevin before offering one to Samandriel as well (it was his lunch break, he wasn't having any. Neither was Dean, of course). He was a religious person, always had been, but that didn't mean he was the sort looking to convert and recruit. Castiel was more likely to sell you an insurance plan than talk to you about Sunday morning church plans. So he said nothing.
Samandriel waved off the beer politely. It wasn’t going to do anything but earn him disapproving looks when he got back to school and his breath smelled like hops. “No one’s trying to convert you to anything. Honestly, Kevin. I found out I was an angel and I’m still agnostic.” Which might disturb Castiel, but they had far bigger things to worry about. Like a prophet on the verge of a mental break.
He moved to give the young man some space, perching on the counter near Scud instead.
100% of Cas’ petty crime habits were Dean’s influence. There was no way anyone was ever going to be convinced otherwise. Just because heaven labelled him the Righteous Man didn’t mean he had to be a moral one all the time. He looked over at the angels (didn’t really care which one,) as he gestured at Kevin. “Seriously, guys? Seriously? You and the other winged bastards,” which was said with all possible grumpy affection, “I get. Shit, me and Sam I get. Tessa, I don’t, and don’t particularly want to, but him? He’s like...down on the end of people who should be involved with this shit with Mr. Rogers and friggen Ghandi. It’s computer crap and cartoons not...not getting dragged through the muck like us.” He looked over at Kevin. “No offense.” Hey, if the guy decided to actually stick around, he might actually realize that was Dean’s way of almost admitting he cared about other people.
“You’re not making sense,” Kevin said, exasperated. Suddenly he had a beer in his hand, and he wasn’t entirely sure where it came from. He set it down on the counter. “You don’t even know if I’m over twenty-one, and you’re offering me pot like it’s no big deal. Which, okay, I don’t judge, maybe it isn’t for you, but I don’t smoke, and I don’t drink in the middle of the afternoon, and I especially don’t do either with people I just met, so if you’re trying to put me at ease? You’re doing the opposite.” He crossed his arms over his chest, defensively and took a breath before turning to the blond who seemed to be in high school (really?). “So, let’s start over. How do you know my name?”
Again, it was the case of More for Scud. Being of a legal age didn't have much to do with anything when it came to smoking illegal substance, and he wasn't really sure why anyone might be worried about beer after that, anyway.
He shrugged, nonchalant and entirely too chill for this freak out. So he took his beer and his joint and plopped himself back down into his swivel wheely chair.
"We were starting over," Castiel pointed out, and he seemed amazingly without sympathy when it came to this young man's plight. It wasn't that he didn't understand the strange nature of everything going on here -- he just didn't care for theatrics. "You were asked if you have heard of or had any strange dreams. Whether or not you say yes to that isn't particularly the point. We have. And you happen to be in them. Or will be." He hadn't dreamt of this boy -- but the name was hardwired into his brain, regardless.
“Conversation like this isn’t one anyone should have totally sober,” Dean muttered. He shucked his fingers through his hair, letting out a slow breath. This was a fucking nightmare. All of it. Of course when he randomly decided to help some nerd out with his competitive costume contest, it wouldn’t be entirely random would it? Fuck it. The angels could handle this. He took the joint back from Scud and flopped down into his own wheelie chair instead. These were moments when he was real glad they were their own bosses.
“I know your name because I’ve met you in a completely different life,” Samandriel said, clearly getting annoyed. He was about ready to take the Castiel method of dealing with things. Screw empathy. Kevin Tran was kind of a dick with a listening comprehension problem. “Sort of. We were in the same room. You ignored me completely. I did speak with Dean, though.” He looked over at the hunter. “Not that you’ve gotten that far yet, I don’t think. Anyway, I had a brief chat with your mother as well. She’s a very...determined woman. I rather liked her.” Even if she’d made a foolish decision, at least she had her reasons.
“A different life,” Kevin repeated. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with that. Or with anything, really. None of this was making any sense. Strange dreams? Angels? And what did his mother have to do with anything? These people were looking at him like they expected him to know exactly what they were talking about, but what they were talking about was insane. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me here,” he said, exasperated and slightly desperate. “If this isn’t a prank, and you’re not a cult, then what do you want? Why are you doing this?”
"S'cool," Scud assured Dean, shifting in his seat until his legs were underneath him and the chair was spinning slowly on it's own. Not enough to be fun, but instead slightly disorienting. He liked it. "Just gotta be zen about this shit man, or else everything's all fucked."
And Scud was a zen master, thanks.
Castiel, torn between paying attention to Kevin, Samandriel and Dean, took a step away from them all and stuff his hands into the pockets of his nearly ever-present trench coat. "We don't want anything," he said finally. Because he didn't want anything, and he doubted Samandriel did either. "We were just… recognizing and greeting you." Even if he was talking to Kevin Tran, he was looking at Dean.
“We’re not the ones doing anything,” Dean said roughly, rubbing his temples. Clearly whatever the hell Kevin was had at least initially triggered some kind of messed up PTSD in the kid, but if Samandriel actually wanted something Dean knew he would’ve said so by now. He looked at his little brother-in-law. “You need to get the hell back to class. I don’t care if it’s study hall. Go. And you,” he looked pointedly at Castiel, “we’ll talk when you’re done with work. I need the rest of the day without constant texts and shit to get things done. We got armor to build for Kev over here and we’re gonna make sure it’s badass enough for him to like...win like global cosplay olympics crap.” Was that a thing? Dean didn’t know. He didn’t really care. The point was, there were too many damn angels in the shop and it was clearly freaking his client out. Without another word in either protest or confirmation, Samandriel was gone.
Kevin looked weary, and wary. The blond kid had disappeared while he was looking at him, and he could have sworn he heard something like wing beats. “Where did he go?” He shook his head. “Nevermind. I just...look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to go.” He took his tablet back and stuffed it in his bag. “I’m sorry about….” he gestured vaguely, encompassing the sudden appearance and disappearance of people, and some kind of freaky religion, and whatever else Dean and Scud wanted it to encompass.
Castiel was gone only a moment later with only an annoyed expression given as any kind of reply- clearly he did not care for being dismissed or being told to stop worrying.
Scud only laughed though, waving it all off like it was just water under some really really high bridge. "Fuck it man, they're always weird. Anyway. We'll look over yer stuff, do some sketches and then get back to you. Better get outta here before anything else weird ends up happening." Which it sometimes did.