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justaboveyoursunrise · 5 years ago

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I wrote this little one-shot, and happened to come across it in my saved emails just this weekend. Considering the Chiefs just won the Superbowl, it felt serendipitous that I came across it. Pretty sure it was supposed to be a series I never continued. Anyway, here we go, enjoy this untitled Dean teaching newly-human Cas the joys of football (and buffalo chicken) and being bros short fic.

—————–

“Dean, I still don’t-”

“For the last time, Cas, we’re doing this. Now shut your face and sit down.”

There is a long silence. Blue and green clash in defiance of one another, the soundless war that stretches between them. They have talked about this already. More importantly, Dean Winchester has planned this day. No amount of Castiel’s self-doubt or apathy is going to change these plans. Dean, exasperated with his friend and this argument, throws his arms out with impatience, brows raised with expectation, daring the man – the man – staring back at him to try and put up another challenge. Castiel instead drops his eyes and frowns in resignation, a muttered “fine” declaring his surrender. Dean, with a roll of his eyes, disappears, taking with him the plastic bags of Styrofoam containers full of aromatics; something special, he has promised Castiel.

Castiel sits as directed, frown still etched into the corners of his mouth as he regards the muted computer screen before him. An elaborate stage sees five men sitting behind an elongated desk, polished and lit up with all manner of colored lights. Most of the men are older, a few portly, and they all seem to be doing nothing more than engaging in heated debates as images appear on the screen in small boxes superimposed below them: a blue star, a golden ram’s horn, an oddly colored dolphin – albeit the most aggressive and cartoonish dolphin that Castiel has ever seen. Certainly they don’t believe porpoises really look that way, he thinks. More symbols as the men pantomime: a crimson cardinal, a blue buffalo, a horse snout and orange mane, which he will soon learn is really meant to be a Bronco. In spite of himself, Castiel is intrigued. What are all these symbols and why do these men continue to argue over them? An eagle, a raven, a fleur de lis, a Norseman outlined in royal purple.

By the time Dean returns, Castiel finds himself brimming with far too many questions. “These experts seem unable to agree on anything,” he states, his blue eyes lighting upon Dean.

“That’s because they aren’t really experts,” Dean tells him, matter-of-fact. His hands are full with the Styrofoam containers from the bags, and as Dean sits, he sets one in front of each of them. “I hope you’re ready for this,” he says, clearly pleased, rubbing his hands together with what Castiel knows to be a sign of enthusiasm.

Pulling the top away, Castiel finds his container full of what seem to be pieces of meat covered in a bright orange sauce. Despite the questionable coloring, though, they smell like nothing Castiel has ever before known. There is a spice that reaches in through the aroma, stinging in his nose, causing an autonomic and undeniable reaction in his mouth. It is, in every literal sense of the word, watering. Each strange, alien impulse pushing through Castiel begs him to dig in, to grab a handful of these oddly shaped, oddly colored pieces of meat and simply shove them all into his mouth at once. Was this how humans felt about food all the time? Suddenly, it seemed no wonder that they enjoyed the act of dining so frequently. Even his experiments with peanut butter and jelly had never resulted in this overwhelming need to eat.

Beside him, Dean watches, green gold burning into Castiel, waiting for a reaction. There is an expectation here, a necessitation of response for the introduction of something brand new, and Castiel obliges. “This smells delicious. Though I’m afraid it does look somewhat… unappealing.”

Dean chuckles, pleasing Castiel that he has not seemed to overstep a boundary. “Looks ain’t everything, Cas.”

“So the saying seems to go,” Castiel agrees. He notices for the first time that Dean has changed since returning to the bunker with the food, shed from his jacket and plaid, opting instead now for a simple t-shirt that the angel – the human – had never seen before. It must have been red at one point, but it was threadbare now, fading almost into a pastel with age and wash. Worn. Certainly worn well by Dean. Square in the middle of Dean’s chest rests a once-proud symbol, one Castiel cannot recall passing on the silent screen earlier. An eggshell white arrowhead, lightly lined in charcoal and housing an intertwined K and C, as near-pink as the rest of the shirt. It is a relic, Castiel thinks, from another life. He returns his attention back to the odd stack of meat and bones in front of him. “So, what exactly is this?”

“You, Cas, are about to partake in the age-old American tradition of Sunday football and buffalo wi—” Dean stops cold and pales. The only color is in his dingy, timeworn shirt.

Castiel furrows a brow at Dean’s abruptly unfinished word, searching Dean’s eyes for an answer, a frown once again perching on his lips.

“Buffalo chicken.” Dean finally recovers, weakly, unconvincing. He can no longer meet Castiel’s probing, worried gaze, choosing an indiscriminate spot somewhere through the laptop’s screen to focus. He waits, on edge, for the fallout to come from Castiel, for his ageless, newly human friend to understand just what he was about to say. How callous of him, how shameful, bringing this food to their table. He has quite unceremoniously mucked a well-intentioned day of introducing Castiel to hot-blooded American life through the country’s most lucrative pastime.

“Buffalo chicken?” Castiel repeats, clearly unsure of how exactly a buffalo like the blue one that had flashed onto the screen only minutes ago could be chicken. “That’s absurd. A buffalo cannot be chicken.”

Dean exhales, a wet, warbled laugh, the knot in his stomach loosening, but only just, insulting relief returning the flow of blood to his extremities, the color to his face. “It’s chicken, it’s dropped in a fryer then it’s covered in buffalo sauce.”

Castiel nods, poking uncertainly at a drumstick, the personification of curiosity and distrust. “So, then is the sauce made of buffalo?” he asks. “I’m not sure how well that would pair together.”

Dean sighs, beginning to realize just how massive an undertaking it was going to be to introduce his friend to the normalcies of human, mortal existence. Not that Dean could truly claim knowledge of anything resembling normalcy. Or mortality, for that matter. Still, he was Castiel’s best chance at becoming passably human, if his humble opinion counted for anything.

“Cas, it’s deep-fried meat in a spicy sauce, it originated in Buffalo, New York, and if you don’t shut up and eat, I’m going to shove that plated into your face and make you. And believe me, buddy, you get that sauce in your eye, it’s going to burn for the rest of your damn life.”

Castiel thinks to ask how associating pain with a food Dean is clearly so intent on making him try would cause it to become more appealing, but Dean’s lips are pursed, the lines are showing at the corners of spring green eyes. Once more, he is daring Castiel to buck against his better wisdom - again. Castiel thinks better of it then, and reaches for the drumstick he’d been prodding earlier, studying it with some obvious trepidation, the visible bone, the warm flesh, the unnaturally bright orange coloring that unevenly covers it all.

Satisfied, Dean grabs a drumstick from his own container and bites into the meat. It elicits a moan of gratification from him and he regards the drumstick with a tender reverence he seems to reserve only for food. He chews loudly, a pleasured praise of “ohh, yeah” slipping past his greasy, sauce-covered lips.

Taking his cue, Castiel bites into his own piece of chicken with the same abandon, the flavors of oil-crisped skin and soft, tender meat exploding against his tongue. It is almost the most exquisite thing he’s ever experienced in his short time as a true-blue human, but then the spice that had caused the salty, uncontrollable salivation of his mouth sets in. He wants nothing more than to make it stop immediately and does the only thing he thinks will help; he opens his mouth and lets the meat fall back into the container, a half-chewed, stringy, mess of poultry. He sticks out his tongue, waving his hand frantically in effort to eliminate the fire a simple orange sauce has ignited on it.

Dean, mouth full with the rest of his drumstick, laughs at Castiel’s furious motions and obvious predicament. With no deliberate rush, he drops the bone he’d already sucked clean onto the lid of his own container and makes his way to the kitchen, licking his fingertips clean as he goes. There’s a half-gallon of milk in the fridge, mostly gone now, and Dean doesn’t even bother with a glass. He brings the whole bottle to Castiel, who is still engaged in his attempt to wave his tongue cool again. “Drink,” Dean tells him, holding the bottle out.

Castiel, blue eyes shining with tears he has no intention of crying over something spicy, grabs the bottle, greasy fingers fumbling at first with the cap. When he’s finally able to twist it off, he drinks as instructed. The relief is so instant that Castiel does cry, the cold white liquid extinguishing the heat and ferrying the pain away from the point of impact and disposing of it safely down his throat and into his stomach. He empties the bottle and he looks up at a bemused Dean appreciatively. “Thank you,” he says, wiping his temples against his shirt. “How did you know it would help?”

“Experience,” Dean shrugs.

Castiel nods, wiping at the cooling beads of sweat that have prickled at his hairline. “So does bovine lactation help with all burns?”

From above, Dean just gives a thin-lipped smile, swelling with affection for his friend. Here Castiel was, fallen from Heaven, Graceless, a hell Dean imagines is far worse than any Purgatory, than the former angel’s multiple trips to Hell, admiring how a simple drink of milk had saved him from the possibility of burning away the entirety of his tongue. Poor, sweet, socially-inept Cas, working through the myriad of human emotions he was unwittingly plunged into. If there was any one thing about human, that was it – no one had asked for this.

Castiel sets the empty plastic bottle on the table and reaches for a paper towel. His first (and he hoped only) experience had been enough, and he was certainly not going to follow Dean’s example again and lick his fingers clean. “I suppose this means that spicy food will not be a part of my diet.”

Dean snorts a laugh as he sits back down again, reaching for Castiel’s container and sliding it closer to his own. “You just have to get used to it. Embrace the spice, Cas. Clears your sinus and your colon. Double whammy.”

“Double whammy,” Castiel repeats, trying the new phrase on his recovering tongue, reaching for the context to imitate.

“Double whammy,” Dean agrees, going in for another win- another piece of buffalo chicken, this time dredging it through a smaller plastic container full of a thick, off-white paste dotted with what Castiel thinks must be moldy cheese. “Could you turn the volume back up?” Dean asks out of the side of his mouth.

Castiel sets the used napkin on the table beside the empty bottle of milk and hits the volume button on the keyboard until it’s loud enough for them to hear. The constantly-bickering men behind the desk have given way by this point to a green field nestled on the lowest level of a large outdoor stadium, thousands of red plastic chairs occupied by thousands of people in matching colors, red and white and gold. In the middle of the field rests the very same logo as the one on Dean’s shirt, vibrant and distinct.

“KC Spears?” Castiel ventures with no hesitation, and receives exactly the response he expects in Dean’s patient laugh.

“Kansas City Chiefs,” Dean corrects. “The logo is an arrowhead-“

“Like on weapons used by the natives of the Americas,” Castiel finishes for him.

Surprised, Dean nods slowly, the wind taken out of his sails. “I forget you’ve been around since time began.” It is Castiel who laughs now, pleased. Perhaps football would prove a more fortuitous endeavor than buffalo chicken.

“There’s no local team in Kansas,” Dean continues. “It’s a family tradition, so to speak, being a fan of the Chiefs. No one really knows why. They were the closest team by proximity, I guess. Some Sundays, if it was a good day, Dad would watch a game with Sammy and me. We’d all just sit around and eat wings and drink soda and yell at the TV.” Dean smiles from somewhere far away, soft and wistful, a single warm memory over the thousands of cold, a slice of apple pie in his dystopian world, of the Midwestern Americana that should have been his birthright. “The shirt is even Dad’s.” Dean picks, unaware, at the hem of the shirt, the team logo emblazoned on his breast all that’s left of his home. “I’m glad it has a reason to see the light of day again.”

Castiel is transfixed, noting the way the old shirt hugs the curve of Dean’s bicep, drapes snugly over his broad shoulders, curves along the length of his torso. Where earlier there had been watering and spice, only one of which had been remotely pleasing, now there was nothing. Castiel’s mouth has gone completely dry, his tongue now sandpaper as it slips over the ridged upper palette, each inhale agonizingly sharp against the back of his throat. “And I am glad that you have it,” he manages, hoarse. “For the light of day, of course.”

Dean hardly seems to have registered the straggled words, managing to stare through the computer screen again, still absently picking at the fraying hem, 13 years old in his father’s shirt, another disappointing Sunday gone by with no sign of Dad to speak of, moments away from the opening kickoff of yet another game.

“Dean?” Castiel tries, pulling Dean from his reverie and back into the present, at least some of his family with him to watch a football game for the first time in years. “Dean, I heard one of these men call someone a tight end. Was that just aesthetic commentary?” The question seems absurd, but Castiel is so genuine, his features fret with confusion. “Some of these men on the field do seem to be wearing very tight pants.”

Dean can’t help the sound that escapes him, not quite a giggle but certainly not a laugh, coaxing a wan, curious smile out of his companion. “It’s a position,” Dean explains. “Every player on a team has a position. Like, linebacker, quarterback, wide receiver, tight end.” It makes both men laugh this time, the ridiculous terminology niggling that latent immaturity still hiding Dean, and sounding simply preposterous to Castiel. “A tight end plays offense, when a team has the ball. He’s a multi-functional player. He can play like a receiver, who will catch a ball thrown by the quarterback, or he can play like a lineman and help block the other team from getting to his quarterback. Some plays, he will even do both."

Castiel nods, but in a way Dean understands to mean that his friend cannot begin to fathom the idea in practice. Never having seen a game before, of course, no one could really blame Castiel’s confusion.

“When the game starts, you’ll see,” Dean tells him, offering a reassuring pat to Castiel’s knee.

–

It has taken two and a half hours and almost 3 of the 4 fifteen-minute quarters, but Castiel think he’s beginning to understand the barbaric sport. It seems simple enough at the start - crush the opposing player with the ball. But there is far more nuance than huge, grown men simply running into one another as hard as they can and wrestling to the ground. There are running plays and passing plays, nickel defenses and empty back fields, red zones and end zones, spread offenses and read options. It is dizzying, but the action and attraction is undeniable.

There is one point when the quarterback of the team in white jerseys (the snout and mane Broncos) throws the ball, but it is caught by a defensive player in red.

“YEAH!” Dean bellows, suddenly jumping to his feet, arms raised above his head in a celebratory fashion. “I-N-T, baby!”

“Int?” Castiel asks.

“Interception,” Dean offers, and his smile is so brilliant one might be inclined to believe Dean had caught this so-called interception himself. “Get up, get up,” he urges, motioning for Castiel to stand.

Castiel does, regarding Dean curiously, wondering if he was about to be welcomed into this celebratory moment and hoping so, if only to share such a wide, careless smile for the sake of a swine hide being caught by a player on a team from a different state that Dean just so happens to like.

“Chest bump,” Dean tells Castiel, beating the palm of his hand against the arrowhead logo once, twice.

Castiel mimics the motion, unsure of why he and Dean are hitting themselves. “Dean, I’m not sure I follow.”

Dean, for all his patience in this matter of educating Castiel in the finer points of football, shakes his head. “No, Cas, like they do on the TV. You know, when two players literally bump chests.”

“Oh,” Castiel starts, then, “oh.” The chest bump seems a common form of congratulations after a meaningful play, much like the slapping of helmets and, for some reason, rear ends. Castiel equates it as football’s version of the high-five. “I see. Okay. Yes, chest bump.”

Dean seems pleased until the first attempt ends with his beer on the floor and his chin sore from having collided with Castiel’s forehead. Where Dean had jumped, Castiel had only stood, jutting his chest out as best he could.

“That was pathetic,” Dean laments, rubbing at his chin, a day’s worth of stubble scratching against the pads of his fingers. “This time, you jump, too.” Castiel, worrying at his forehead, nods in response. “All right, ready? One… two… three.”

This time, Castiel jumps, finding it much more difficult to jut his chest out in the air, but he seems to have it right. The two men collide, chest-to-chest, Kansas City crest shared between them. Arms out at their sides for balance, the two fall back to the floor and Dean whoops with a tactile joy Castiel is surprised to see. “Much better,” Dean asserts, a large hand patting Castiel’s shoulder.

“But I’m still not quite sure why we do this,” Castiel concedes, his dark features drawn as they have been since tight end, a constant state of perplexity.

Dean shrugs. “Because it was a great play that ended well for us. Well, for our team.”

“Exuberance does seem to be a defining factor of this sport.”

Dean wonders if a time will ever come when Castiel does not so consistently vex him.

–

The game turns into what the announcers coin a “real nailbiter.” The Chiefs hold on to a precarious 3-point lead, but the Broncos have the ball and are advancing down the field. Castiel has learned that a field goal, not taken after a touch down, results in 3 points when the ball is kicked between two upright posts, connected on the bottom by a horizontal post that the ball must also clear. The announcers, who haven’t proven to be anywhere near as helpful as Dean in explaining the game, make it clear that Denver, the Broncos, the team in white, is nearing their field goal kicker’s range. Another ten yards, another first down, and the Broncos have a chance to tie the game.

Castiel and Dean sit on the edge of their seats, hunched over, eyes glued to the action on the screen. The team in red, these Chiefs from Kansas City, have exhilarated Castiel, caused him concern and buoyance, incomprehension and pure elation, often doing so on consecutive plays. Now, he waits riddled with anxiety to see if the defense, their defense, can stand up to the test of Peyton Manning and his offense’s aerial attack. On the screen, Manning is calling out “Omaha, Omaha,” a signal Dean taught Castiel to mean that Manning was changing the play his team was set to run.

“Watch for the screen,” Dean warns no one in particular, because these are things Dean simply understands about the game, this terminology of play calls and penalties. Castiel has come to accept that even though the players cannot actually hear him, Dean will continue to talk, or more likely yell, at them anyway. Formation warnings, congratulations, taunts, obscenities, using player’s names, sometimes in full, as if they are old friends.

The ball is hiked. Dean and Castiel lean forward to the point of no longer sitting, breaths held as the play develops right front of them from a field in a stadium somewhere in Missouri. There is chaos at the line of scrimmage (one of many new terms Castiel has come to know), huge men shoving at one another to get to or get away from the quarterback. Receivers run their routes. Manning stutter-steps around in the pocket. A Chiefs player breaks free of his defender, prompting Dean to yell, “get after him!” but Manning deftly avoids the charging defensive end, plants his foot and releases the ball. It slices through the air, a perfect spiral, far enough now that a reception could spell disaster. The receiver reaches for the ball, juggles it off his fingertips, and into the arms of the safety defending him.

It is instantaneous. The two men jump up from their seats along with thousands of people hundreds of miles away, their respective shouts of “yeah!” bouncing off the walls and echoing through the bunker.

“I-N-T!” Castiel cheers, he and Dean requiring only one attempt now to pull off a successful chest bump that ends in a revelatory embrace.

They exist solely together in this moment, in the afterglow of an outcome they had no influence over, all smiles and flushed cheeks and adrenalin, abounding in high-fives, call-and-return “Go Chiefs!”

“So it’s over then?” Castiel asks. “There’s still time left.”

With a nod, Dean slaps Castiel’s arm, stepping back. “Not enough. The Chiefs can just kneel down for the next few plays and run the rest of the time out. They call it running out the clock.”

As they settle back into their chairs to watch the Chiefs run out the clock, finally able to relax knowing that victory is at hand, Castiel gives Dean a playful shove to the shoulder. “I do believe you’ve made a fan of me,” he says.

Dean raises his bottle of beer, tips it toward Castiel before draining the remnants, a celebration of his very own victory. Castiel returns to his beer, somehow a victor as well. A victor and a football fan. A Kansas City Chiefs fan.

“So this is what families do on Sundays then,” Castiel states, for no reason other than to seek clarification, to rid himself of the jumble of nerves the game has left him to try and deal with.

Dean smiles, all teeth and unbridled joy. “This is what our family does on Sundays.”

------------ ( @wanderingcas - ty!!)

#destiel #deancas #fic #ficlet #lee writes #human!cas #football #supernatural #spn

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