Adam & Michael (iamagoodson) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-02-11 19:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | dean winchester, michael |
Who: Dean Winchester & Michael
What: Cars and angels and getting high
When: A few days after this and before this
Where: Scud and Dean’s garage
Rating: Lowish
Status: Complete
Dean really, really didn’t like talking on the phone and he particularly didn’t want to hear Michael’s voice first thing in the morning. So he sent the guy a text under the assumption he’d get it when he got it and set to work. There was no possible way that ‘hey, come get your car,’ could be interpreted as anything other than what it was. Still, he wouldn’t put it past Michael to somehow make it something else. A new opportunity to fuck with Dean, right? Hell, any opportunity to fuck with Dean.
He cranked the stereo and flipped the switch that would flash lights back in the work room whenever someone walked through the door (because no matter how much glass there was, music that loud made it hard to notice anything else.) His coveralls were more grease stains and bits of oil than they were fabric by the time the lights did go off. Wheeling out from under the car he was working on, Dean pulled his gloves off and shoved the top half of things down around his waist, sleeves smacking against his legs as he and his black-tshirt walked through the door into the main area. “You know, I wasn’t expecting a British girl to be as much fun as she was.”
At least Dean had decent taste in music, though it still sent colors vibrating and wobbling through the air, not all of them pleasant for Michael but not bad enough that it made his headache worse. He felt quite lucky actually, with everything that had been going on lately the possibility of a less-intense-than-it-could-be headache was actually rather nice. It didn’t take away his desire to strangle Dean of course, that wasn’t going to go away even if he ever did manage to get his hands on that throat.
And he did blame Dean for all of this to some extent. He may have seen Samandriel’s wings before he dropped off his car but he was the one who had brought up angels and spoke about his brothers in law and had essentially told him to leave the little one alone. Everything had started with him, as far as Michael was concerned. He was why Michael was having a tiny bit of an identity crisis. And yet somehow he didn’t snap at him when he came in, his self-discipline had won out again, but his tone was still rather flat. “She’s a good girl. Not so repressed when you get the hood open.”
Dean punched a few buttons on the computer to turn down the music. He grabbed the clipboard off the hook under the counter and set it for Michael to look at. If the guy was willing to ignore the substantially underpriced work that was done (and there was a lot of it,) then Dean saw no reason to actually bring it up. He’d done way more work than he thought he’d have to. It was one of those things that happened when you were already taking a machine apart and reconstructing it to have a wiring set up that was efficient and made damn sense...and worked. The working part was the big thing.
“Well with the amount of work she’s had done now, I’m pretty sure she qualifies as American.” He wiped his hands off unnecessarily on a rag just for something to do. He looked critically at Michael, trying to figure out if he’d seriously managed to piss the guy off with a text that only involved his car. It was hard to tell with Michael and his temper. There were only a few things holding him back from starting an actual fight and none of them had anything to do with the fact that he was spoiling for one.
“So you add a few things and it changes her identity entirely? She may have had some broken parts but that didn’t mean she wasn’t content with what she was. You didn have to-” he brought a hand up to cover his eyes, fingers and thumb on both his temples as he realized what he was saying. He blamed Gabe for ruining that impulse control he had when it came to his mouth and the first thing that popped into his head.
He took a deep breath to steady himself, he and Dean really didn’t need to get into anything here. Though that was mostly because he was pretty sure Dean had more than a few weapons stashed around the shop. “Fuck you and your angels, Winchester. How much is this going to end up costing me?”
Dean just stared at Michael for a long moment. “I was making a plastic surgery joke,” he said flatly. There absolutely were weapons in the shop, but only because there was also super expensive equipment in the shop. That didn’t mean he was going to use any of them on Michael, asshole or not. He grabbed the clipboard he’d set down for Michael to look at, flipping back through the couple pages of itemized lists and deductions that probably made no sense to anyone who didn’t understand Dean’s shorthand (and unless you worked directly under Dean, you never understood his shorthand.)
“Little over nine hundred,” he said, letting the board drop again dramatically. “I can uncut you a few deals if you keep being an ass at me, though.” Dean cleared his throat. “Unless you’re not talking about monetarily in which case.” He pulled open the long drawer under the desk and grabbed one of Scud’s expertly rolled joints. “Angels are dicks. Welcome to the club. I don’t wanna know shit I don’t already know and where those winged bastards come in, that ends with your boy,” he made a vague gesture at Michael’s medallion, “apparently wanting to wear me to prom.” He lit the joint and passed it to Michael. Fuck this shit. They both needed it.
Michael had seen Dean’s shorthand more than a few times but had given up after the first month when it came to base paperwork. His XO, Addams, or Weasel as he was called around the base for pretty obvious reasons came to him often enough with documents from the motor pool covered in Dean’s shorthand and had demanded that Michael speak to Winchester about it. He never did, whatever feelings he may have had about Dean he trusted him to do his job. He ended up rubber stamping most of the req forms and everything else himself, it simply made his life easier at the time to let Dean do what he knew he need to do and not bog him down in red tape.
He gladly took the joint, taking a deep drag before handing it back. One of his doctors had suggested medical marijuana for his headaches and pain management and he had even gotten the proper cards and authorizations for Kansas. He thought he wouldn’t need it in California, but if he was going to be dealing with all this angel nonsense he was beginning to think getting a card here wasn’t a bad idea. He finally breathed out, giving Dean a smirk that didn’t touch his eyes. “You want to know something funny, Dean? That particular dick,” he tapped his medal. “According to your brother-in-law, is me. He says I’m the arch-fucking-angel Michael.”
Dean took the joint back, and was real glad he hadn’t gone for another hit off of it when Michael started talking. “Goddamnit, Samandriel!” Dean said loudly, taking another pull of it angrily as he walked over to the door to put on the blinds and make everything look as closed as possible. Fuck this. They were hotboxing the damn reception area. “I fucking told the kid last time this happened. You don’t go telling people they’re damn angels. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You just don’t do it. Last time he did it I ended up with fucking Gabriel in my kitchen screwing around with my tools.” It didn’t matter that they were kitchen tools. Tools were tools and you didn’t touch another man’s tools without his permission.
He passed off the joint again and flopped onto one of the couches heavily, practically vibrating his displeasure at the situation. “Shoulda fucking known,” he grunted. “Guy comes in I haven’t seen in years and is all I can see angel wings. You know, I can’t even see them? Married to one and sometimes screwing two others and I just...can’t see shit but shadows on the wall.” It was a rant that was less aimed at Michael in particular and more at the fucked upness that he would be thrown into a mess like this and couldn’t even appreciate all of his husband. He let out a heavy breath through his nostrils. “Guess there was a bigger reason for you riding my ass all those years.” There. If they could make this vaguely sexual, that might somehow make things better...or easier to cope with.
“Oh yeah,” he said, taking the joint as he sat down next to Dean but far enough away that it wasn’t awkward. “Apparently I was always meant to be inside you.” the idea of the archangel needing Dean’s body made no sense to Michael as it was but there was so much he didn’t understand and know about it all as it was. If Dean said Michael wanted to wear him like a suit he believed him, even if he didn’t understand it. He took another drag though he didn’t hold this one in as long.
He shook his head and passed it back to Dean. “But it wasn’t the little one. Samandriel doesn’t even know that I know yet, I’ve been holding off telling him. Little bastard would fix those big blue eyes on me and then I couldn’t enjoy occasional denial anymore. No, it was Gabriel, and he only told me because I asked him to. I really am an idiot sometimes.”
“I’m gonna shoot that bastard again,” Dean muttered as he took the joint back. “You’re not getting inside me. Literally or angelically.” He took a deep pull, holding it in as long as he dared before letting it out again. He couldn’t deny that Michael was an attractive man, but shit there was just that one wrong angle and the guy looked too much like his dad and nothing killed Dean’s boner faster than thoughts of his dad.
“Thought I told you to stay away from the kid,” he said, handing the joint off to Michael again. “Not that he can’t handle himself but...fuck he’s seen some shit and you ain’t exactly known for your understanding and empathic nature.” None of them were. Birds of a goddamn feather except for that bright eyed little fuck. “You better tell him you know now. He’s shit at staying away and he’ll read that off you in a heartbeat.” Better to just tell that brilliant, beautiful bag of dicks than have him find out any other way. He’d been through it with angels. It was way better to just be upfront with them.
“Oh no, how will I ever go on?” he asked in a dry, sarcastic tone before taking a hit off the joint and holding out for Dean to take. “He had me pet his wings then whispered into my ear all the dirty things he wanted me to do with him and I obliged, if that’s not understanding and empathetic I’d like to see a better definition.” He glanced over at Dean genuinely smirking, thanks mostly in part to the smoke. “He’s a devious little shit, you think my trying to keep it a once only thing was going to last if he didn’t want it to?”
But there Dean was, being all annoyingly sensible. “I know. I was just hoping to hold out until I needed to call him again. He’s all frightened I’m going to hate him or look at him differently or just be different when I start dreaming. He nearly cried at me over it, I need a little fortification if I’m going to have to face that again.”
Dean waved off the rest of the joint. He’d had enough and he was gonna need to go back to work at some point. “That’s horny and willing to fuck someone pretty,” he pointed out. “He is a devious little shit, though. I’ll grant you that.” He wasn’t going to go into his personal life in front of Michael, how the kid had manage to turn Dean’s threats if he so much as looked at Cas the wrong way again into a messed up sexual arrangement that worked for all four of them.
He looked down at the arms of his coveralls, the top of the blue fabric all bunched at his waist. “You might,” he pointed out. “And...look, that kid just singlehandedly prevented the apocalypse a few weeks ago and only like half a dozen people know about it. He’s allowed to be terrified about what you showing up here means or...whatever the fuck goes on in his head.”
Michael was more than happy to take it all, it was doing wonders for his headache. Not as good as Samandriel’s healing or whatever it was, but good enough to last him for a few hours at least. “Oh I know he’s entitled. He told me about his relationship with Lucifer, and even if he isn’t the literal Devil I can understand why he would be apprehensive for Michael to show up. I’m familiar with Revelation, I know about what might have to happen. And even if I don’t have to slay the dragon I’m indebted to him enough where I can understand his fears about a personality shift. He’s a good little angel, I don’t want to hurt him.”
He leaned his head back and blew a smoke ring simply because he knew how and that was the sort of thing that happened when Michael relaxed. “Fuck this place. And the angels. And Michael. I thought civilian life was supposed to be peaceful.”
Dean snorted, sliding down on the couch to relax into a slouch that nobody could have possibly thought look comfortable but suited Dean. “Whoever told you that is a damn liar. We were fucked the minute we signed up. If it wasn’t gonna be messed up dreams of lives we didn’t live, then it was just going to be the same shit we saw over there. Things might not actually be blowing up at us, but...that doesn’t make any of this peaceful. It just makes us liars. Trying to pretend like we’re home and okay when really...we can’t remember what okay feels like and are damn sure it’s never gonna happen again for us.”
Maybe that wasn’t what it was like for everyone who’d served, but for most of the guys Dean knew, the ones he sent to the kid...that was exactly what it was. Demons that just followed you from one place to the next all locked up nice and neat in your head forever. “You actually care about him?” he asked, giving Michael as much of the side-eye as he could without moving at all. Tone had to suffice here. He’d found a comfy spot and like hell was he moving out of it.
“It was the officers at the Academy. Especially the combat and command guys. Tried to keep everyone pumped, said that civilian life was boring and peaceful and that we were too young and had too much potential to settle for peaceful. Potential. I sent teenagers off to die, probably killed a few too, I don’t remember any ID checks before combat started, did you?” He sighed. “It made more sense than life does here at least. Routine, order, structure, certainty. Only bad dreams you had were the ones associated with what you had done, not some other life shit.”
He turned his head to glance at Dean, “What? Do you mean have I picked out curtains for the treehouse I’m going to build him and bought a nice family car for us and our ten adopted Chinese kids? Don’t be silly, Winchester. I don’t do relationships and domesticity like you do. I sure as hell don’t have any interest in getting myself branded like you did.”
Dean rolled his eyes though it seemed to actually just end with his head thunking lightly against the wall. “I didn’t have any interest in getting myself branded,” he pointed out. “This,” he gestured somewhere near the handprint under his shirt, “is what happens when someone pulls your damn soul out of hell and jams it back into your body. It’s just where Cas grabbed me on the way out.” He closed his eyes, trying to sort out all the feelings swimming around in him.
“Pretty sure the kid wouldn’t want you to do relationships and domesticity either. If you ain’t seen him around Lucifer yet...fuck, man. Nobody touches that kinda love. The kid...he loves hard and once he’s decided he loves someone he doesn’t go back from it, but you watch him with Lucifer and it’s just…” He tried to gesture, to figure out how to articulate it properly. “Cas looks at me like I’m the absolute center of his universe like somehow everything revolves around and comes down to me, even when we’re with the kid and Lucifer.” Even when Cas was balls deep in the kid and begging to be allowed to come more like it. “Complete and total devotion no matter what. The kid and Lucifer? Doesn’t matter that one of them is way more powerful than the other. There’s just this fuckin’ trust and equality between them that doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”
He cleared his throat, because he really didn’t need it getting back to anybody how much he paid attention. He’d spent too much time in combat zones. He’d had to pay attention to tiny little details to keep his boys alive. “Didn’t ask if you were thinking about white picket fences and a dog and a yard. I asked if you cared about him. You ain’t getting a white picket fence with a treehouse and station wagon out of him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not gonna do something stupid like put himself out there for you to hurt him anyway. You’re both family and I gotta know how not in the middle of this I’m getting before he ends up all PTSD under my bed or some shit.”
“Hey, I might be a soon-to-be member of the flying dick squad but it doesn’t mean I’m a dick in all areas of my life. I am generally very kind to the people I sleep with, even the ones I end up forgetting. I don’t get my jollies by hurting people, well, maybe not emotionally anyway.” That was close to a joke. A lot of Michael’s time in the marines had been spent trying to find ways to avoid casualties. “The kid is like an over-grown cuddly little puppy, I don’t have the heart to go around kicking puppies just because I can.”
He closed his eyes a moment, enjoying the feeling of his head not pounding. “Sure I care about him. He’s been good to me, he fixes my head for a little while and we spend time together while he tells me he loves me and hits that level of being adorably clingy that I find very sweet. Says I’m under his protection and gave me a hickey, I haven’t had a hickey since high school. I was worried it was gonna stay like your handprint, like he had claimed me and that the mark was going to ward off all the other angels.”
Dean snorted. “He’s not just saying those things,” he said quietly. “Neither of pair of them lie. They don’t need to.” Cas did sometimes, but so far it hadn’t ever been very good. He was pretty sure that enough time around Dean and he’d actually start showing that Winchester bad influence. “He says you’re under his protection and that he loves you? Then you’re under his damn protection and he loves you.” That was possibly a message meant for Dean. Don’t shoot this one. He’s mine. “He just gets...enthusiastic. Shit went down between him and Lucifer a while back and then again pretty recently and it’s complicated and fucked up, but…” Dean trailed off, remembering that other Samandriel and the stories the kid had about the other Lucifer, the way he’d flinched away from Lucifer’s touch more than once.
“You need to talk to him about that,” Dean finally decided on. “Ask him about the fallen angel and Satan. If you’re gonna sign on with him at least a little bit and he’s gonna get all angel privy to the damage done to you, you need to know the shit that broke him.” The implication there was so that maybe Michael didn’t do it too. “And don’t go knocking treehouses,” he said abruptly. “Cas fuckin’ loves his.”
“Sign on with him? What is he some kind of Admiral or something I have to go enlist with?” He opened a single eye and raised his eyebrows at Dean. “Look, I’ve been fucking guys a lot longer than you have, and not a one have I damaged mentally or physically, even the ones with PTSD or that are more fucked up than I am. I don’t intend to go changing that, especially with someone who has done better by me than I ever deserved. And also, if who I am radically changes with these dreams or whatever he’ll still be the kid who tried to help me understand and I guess my brother too. That’s what they call each other, right? Brothers?”
Michael really didn’t want to force Samandriel to bring up anything painful, he’d seen plenty of PTSD in the marines and in the VA hospitals, he could even see it written all over Dean though the bastard likely wouldn’t admit to having it. His policy for just about everyone other than Dean was not to trigger them, it may not have fixed anything but it didn’t hurt anyone either.
“Cas loves his treehouse.” he found himself chuckling, both eyes coming open. “I’m sure he does. Hey Dean, your husband has wings right? Likes his house in a tree. You pretty much married a bird.”
“You don’t know shit about how long I’ve been fucking guys,” Dean said lowly, glaring at Michael like the guy seriously crossed a line by assuming he knew a damn thing about what Dean’d done with his life between now and when he got out. “You and him are gonna be brothers as much as you and I are.” That was how Dean understood that working. You fight with a guy, you were family. There wasn’t a way around it.
“The treehouse is his safespace. Alright. We don’t fuck around making jokes about it.” For as much as Dean tended to ignore his own mental health needs, he got downright vicious when it came to anyone trying to mess with Cas’.
“See, this is why we were never going to be together. You might have gorgeous pouty lips but oh my fucking God are you a pain in the ass.” he shook his head in disapproval. “That and you’re enlisted, I’d be worried about catching something.” Michael had to add that in. That had always been the joke, the difference between officers who had risen through the ranks and earned their commission in battle and those that had earned it in the classroom was how they treated the enlisted. The latter, like Michael, were ‘snobs’. It wasn’t true of course but he and his men had enjoyed playing with that stereotype.
“Dean. As fun as you are to upset, I don’t have any intentions of hurting Samandriel or your weird little family unit. I’m even making friends with Gabriel and it isn’t all just based around his giving me chocolate and explaining pop cultural references. If I met your husband and or Lucifer I wouldn’t be anything other than decent. I might be a dick, but I’m not a bad guy.” He sighed. “I don’t even go around shooting people.”
“That was one time!” Dean said, frustrated. “And he knew it was gonna happen.” He got up and went to go get something to eat. Fuckin’ pot. Fuckin’ munchies. “Fuckin’ archangels,” he grumbled. “That’s exactly why he wasn’t invited to the orgy.” There wasn’t really an orgy and that wasn’t only the reason Gabriel hadn’t been invited. The whole being biologically related to Cas put a damper on things. “You know how good a shot I am, if I’d wanted to do more than keep my word, I’d’ve actually done damage.”
Pie. There was pie in the fridge. Dean was so going to eat it.
“You had an orgy?” that was far more interesting to Michael than Gabriel getting shot, after all he had wanted to shoot him. He imagined a lot of people wanted to shoot Gabe, that was what tended to happen when you were that friendly and had a mouth like that. “What the hell is going on around here? Everybody is having orgies and open relationships and fucking absolutely everybody and everything they can. I… I can’t believe I’m the only person around here with some sort of sense of self-restraint.”
It was like back in the Academy, or a weekend officer’s meeting stretched into a whole state. Not that he cared what anyone else was doing, but if he was going to live somewhere where there was the constant possibility of sex breaking out he at least wanted to know about it.
Dean snorted, too preoccupied with his pie to care if Michael was going to judge him. “Figurative orgy,” he pointed out. “Trust me. Not an orgy.” He and Cas were way too high at that point for it to be more than a slightly erotic cuddle pile. He took a large bite of his pie. “Look, you wanna sign for your car and run your card or not...or like...call the kid for a lift home or some shit.” Neither of them was clearly in a state to be driving anywhere or even really operating the credit card doohicky.
“Oh I see how you are,” Michael turned, stretching out across the couch. “You get a man high and then you try to give him his car back even though you’re like,” Michael made his voice as gravelly as he could to mimic Dean’s voice. “Don’t drive it, you fucking idiot, and if you break anything on it I’m gonna shove my boot so far up your ass you’ll be tasting my boot for a month, buttercup.”
Michael had to stop and cough, unable to keep that up without doing serious harm to himself. “Holy shit, man, how do you do that? You’ve gotta gargle with like thumbtacks or some other shit to get your voice like that. That ain’t healthy.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’d never call you buttercup, sparkle bottom,” Dean teased, shoving another mouthful of pie into his face. He really wish he’d known if it was him or Scud who picked up this pie. Not that pie wasn’t always fair game in the shop, but he wanted more of whatever that berry flavor was. It was probably Gabe or Deryn who brought it. One of those two would know what the hell kind of deliciousness he was eating. It was definitely the flakiest of crusts though.
“I’ve got scarring on my throat from eating too much sand,” he said, gesturing with the fork in a sort of circle in front of his throat. Not literally eating too much sand of course, but it was the desert. Shit happened. Sometimes exactly in your face when you had to be barking orders at green idiots who complained more than they worked. In retrospect, maybe spitting blood and working through the pain hadn’t been the best of plans. Whatever. Too late now. That was kinda low on the list of things that Dean considered bad ideas worth regretting.
“This is also exactly why you were never officer material,” he rested his hands behind his head and closed his eyes again. “The first thing on the ATSB test in the mechanical section is a question about proper radio maintenance and use. You should have requisitioned a bull horn, I would have given it to you, especially if you had called me sparkle bottom to my face.” He may have missed the service but never the sand and the heat of Iraq or Afghanistan, he hadn’t even been down to the beach yet because he was ‘over’ sand.
Damn Dean and his pie, Michael decided that once he was able to drive he was going to find one of his own, perhaps even call up Gabriel and ask him for one. He was feeling good enough to handle Gabe now. “Your angel husband, aside from the wings he manages a close to normal life right? He deals with his angelicness, handles it?”
Dean chucked a chunk of his pie in Michael’s general direction, hoping to nail him somewhere on his face. “We had a bullhorn. Shit, we had three of them. You were never mechanic material because you didn’t know how to tear those things apart and turn them into functional radio parts for the rigs that were going out and getting shot at. I took care of the men, sparkle bottom. Getting any kind of actual commission woulda made it that much harder to and everyone needed me exactly where I was. So I sound like Batman. It’s not the worst thing that I came back with.” He flopped back down on the couch by Michael, offering up some pie.
It was a wonder how much dealing with the mutual bullshit of war, dreams and some really damn good pot helped open Dean up. “Yeah,” he said, forcing his voice extra rough just to fuck with Michael for the one word. Even he couldn’t really sustain that. “I mean...there’s some points when he gets like new powers and crap that he can’t handle and needs time off. Like when he started being able to hear prayers? Spent like four days curled up in a ball on the floor in the bathroom. I mean I couldn’t do shit about it because all he was doin’ was hearing me above anyone else. But he handles it. I wouldn’t say he leads a close to normal life. I mean...he fuckin’ married me, and god help anyone who tries to manage the shit show I am.” Dean cleared his throat again. “Only angel I ever met who isn’t living a normal life is the kid, but...shit he’s… High School ain’t easy no matter who you are. It doesn’t get any easier when you’re suddenly dealing with the tail end of puberty and then becoming a completely different species.”
“What’s his name? Cas, something?” He had heard it only recently too, but like a lot of things it slipped through his brain without staying long enough to leave a mark. And of course he took pie when Dean offered it, he knew how the man felt about pie and that it wasn’t an offer to be made again anytime soon. “I’ve never heard of him. I even looked. Looked up the little one, and Gabriel and Lucifer… And me, I guess. But I didn’t see him. So he’s not being directly prayed to, like any of the rest of us are, and yet he was still down for four days? That’s really shitty.”
After a bite he glanced back to Dean, “Part of my brain painted a wall in some tiny Iraqi alley in some tiny little Iraqi town that nobody has ever heard of, in a country a lot of kids today couldn’t find on a labeled map of the Middle East. You’d think I’d be thrilled to find out that I was an angel of the Lord and maybe could be fixed, but no. I spend enough time on the floor, I don’t want to have to deal with prayers in my head.”
Dean stayed quiet for a long, long moment and then another one while he thought about all this. He was pretty sure he and Michael weren’t gonna be able to talk like they were now once the guy was all juiced up on heaven, but there was something to be said for the moment they were in. “Castiel,” he said softly, “angel of sadness, solitude and Thursday.” He looked down at the pie, deciding that Michael could just have the rest of it.
“Talk to the kid,” Dean answered again. “He’s been through this already. Just...just talk to him, alright? Let him babble all emotionally at you or whatever if you can stand it and it makes him feel better. Hell, fuck him into next Tuesday, just talk to him. I can’t give you shit for advice when it comes to angels. Cas is gonna suck at it just as much and Gabriel and Lucifer? One of ‘em will turn your furniture into candy and the other one’s probably just gonna arch a brow about it. Don’t be a Winchester about this, Michael. You need help? Ask for it from the people who can actually do shit to help you.”
“You would end up with the angel of sadness, you depressing asshole.” it might have sounded angry and abusive to anyone who didn’t know Michael or Dean or any other of men they had served with. It was just how they were, it was how they had bonded and kept each other going, no matter if bullets were flying at them or if they were sitting around a mess table having to deal with the ‘quiet moments’. In the end, it was those quiet moments when you needed your brothers to call you a fuck up, or an asshole, or told you to fuck off, that really did save your life.
Michael left the pie and got to his feet, heading over to where he would have to sign for his car and hand over his credit card. “Dammit, man, you may have some good shit but you are annoying as fuck to get high with. Let’s get this done.”
“Shut the fuck up you avoidant bastard,” Dean said, hauling himself up to go take care of actual business. “I’m better to get high with when you’re not asking me dumbass angel questions and I’m not stuck with the damn image of the kid bouncing on your dick in my head. You need to put a warning label on that crap. I’d rather go see some surprise fireworks.” He was kidding. Mostly. Though really if he went and saw some surprise fireworks, there’d probably be some expected ducking, covering and maybe gunfire.
“Alright so I redid her entire electrical system, pretty much gutted her to manage it, but if you end up taking her to anyone else at least it’ll make some fuckin’ sense. The hose array on your heating system was getting all corroded and gross and you got the standard general check up on things. Coolant flush, new oil. All that crap. You should be good to go for another ten thousand miles or so. Ish.” It really was a good thing he’d gotten Michael kinda high. There was less of a chance of him noticing or saying anything about the markdowns Dean’d given him.
There were a lot of mechanical terms there, terms that Michael had probably understood at one point but now held no meaning for him. He did trust Dean though, he could remember how hard the man worked and how amazing his work was. There was also the fact that he genuinely had a love for what he worked on, wouldn’t hurt a car just because the owner was an asshat, or worse, his old CO. It was why Michael had felt comfortable leaving his car with him in the first place. He was happy to have it back, and probably better than ever, driving gave him a sense of control and control was something he had felt in desperate need of since discovering that he was destined to be one of the angels.
“Not avoidant, just done talking to you about it.” he muttered to himself as he signed where Dean asked. “Why would I take her anywhere else?” that had slipped out but he was quick to clear his throat and carry on as he dug out his credit card. “Do you know how hard it is to get normal mechanics to snap to attention when I walk into a room? There’s a lot of shouting involved, I try to avoid shouting so much, don’t want to sound like you.”
Dean snorted. “Ain’t never been a secret how you felt about me.” He took Michael’s card and ran it. “It’s hard to get normal anyone to snap to when you walk in a room. You’re short and only barely intimidating when you want to be.” The mechanic turned the little signature box around for Michael to handle that annoying bit of business.
“I am not short.” he shot Dean a look. “And you’re damn lucky I’m too buzzed to be reminding you why they needed someone like me to be your CO. And it wasn’t just because I’m pretty.” Michael was a little more confident with signing the box than he was most things, he really didn’t have to try very hard to make it legible because it simply never would be. He was also happy he didn’t have to attempt to drag out the ‘major’ voice, he likely couldn’t have handled it at the moment. He would have either cracked or descended into a fit of laughter.
“You’re short,” Dean said again, smirking. “And not at all a hardass. I dealt with worse before you came on. How the fuck did you think I came up with a nearly indecipherable code in the first place?” Nearly to the people just above him who had to sign off on things. The way higher ups could probably get someone to crack it easily, but reading Dean’s handwriting was a big issue and ultimately everyone else had better things to do. He printed out a copy of the receipt for Michael and tore off the top sheet of the invoice, stapling them together before he handed them off to him with his keys. “Get the fuck out of my shop, sir.”
“I’m not short, Winchester, fuck off.” Michael gave him an as annoyed look as he could but was only able to smile through it. “And I was never a hardass, that was the point. Needed somebody flexible to deal with you and your mountain of shit.” Michael couldn’t resist the urge to salute, he was okay to drive but he was still feeling a little silly, silly enough to mess with Dean. “Dismissed, Winchester, get that sweet ass of yours back to work.”