Chapter Text
"That's the fourth time this week..."
Dean cranked his office window open and leaned on the sill. The street below was shiny-wet from last night's rain, and the air smelled wonderfully rich. But when he stuck his head out, the gutter dripped on him. He swore at it.
"Hey Dean, could you give me a hand with this?"
"Be right there."
Dean was a programmer: he wrote, debugged, and maintained software, and generally tinkered with computers. He was good at it, and he liked his job, even if it was a little tedious sometimes. He figured he'd written enough C and JavaScript code to last him several lifetimes, and drunk enough coffee to power a small city. Currently, he and his office-mate Charlie were writing the program for a new piece of software, but the code was tricky and it wasn't going well. Bugs were popping up at every turn. Most were small and relatively easy to deal with, but one in particular was really giving them trouble: it was big and it seemed to come out of nowhere, taking random chunks of code with it when it disappeared back into the ether. They called it the Demon Bug.
"What's up?" Dean plopped himself down at his desk. Charlie sat at the adjacent desk, scowling at her computer. Lines of code blinked on the screen.
"The Demon strikes again." she sighed.
"Uh-oh. What'd it do this time?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out. The code won't even execute, so SOMETHING'S missing, I just can't tell what it is." she took a sip from her can of Redbull.
"Mind if I take a look?"
Charlie made a grand sweeping gesture toward the computer and scooted away. "Be my guest. I could use a demon hunter right about now." Dean rolled his chair over to her desk to peer at the screen. Silence descended on the little office. Charlie took another sip of energy drink and gazed absently across at the open window. At last she spoke again. "What's the fourth time this week?"
"Hm?" Dean barely glanced up from his work.
"When you opened the window. You said "that's the fourth time this week"."
"Oh. Uh..." Dean shook his head and looked away from the screen; trying to hold a conversation while he was programming was like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. "There's a guy I keep seeing at the park across the street. I've seen him around town once or twice before, but he's been at that park every day this week."
"Huh." Charlie made a vague little noise. "What does he do?"
"I dunno. Just hangs out, I think. Maybe he's an art student or something." suddenly Dean punched triumphantly at the air. "Ah-HA! Gotcha." his fingers flew across the keyboard. Charlie scooted in to look over his shoulder.
"You got it??"
"Yeah. Sonofabitch took your printf statement; the whole format string is gone."
Charlie swore under her breath, although she still looked as triumphant as Dean. She extended her free hand. "Nice one, Buffy."
Dean brought their hands together in a resounding hi-five. "All in a day's work." he said loftily. Then he turned and spun away back to his own desk, and their day resumed.
-
The man in the park was there again the next day, and the day after that. When two months passed and he kept showing up, he became less of a mystery and more of an everyday thing. Dean even found that he missed the guy on the rare occasions that he didn't show up. He was extremely curious. He wanted a closer look, so he made a point of going by the park one day on his way to work. Sure enough, there was his mystery man, and he didn't disappoint: up close, he was pretty handsome. He had a round face with stubble along the jaw, tousled brown hair, an aqualine nose, an almost feminine mouth, and the prettiest, most ridiculously-blue eyes Dean had ever seen. From then on, the park became a part of Dean's daily route. The guy was almost always there; sometimes they waved to each other in passing, but they never spoke, and that was okay.
But then one day Dean slept through his alarm. He barrelled down the streets to his office, darting through crosswalks and weaving around bikes. Maybe if he got there before 10:00, he thought, his boss wouldn't kill him. Maybe. There was the park ahead of him; almost there. He swerved, narrowly avoiding a young woman with a stroller, and was turning to apologize mid-step when he suddenly collided with something large and very solid. He went down like a sack of doorknobs- and whatever he'd hit went down with him. Once his brain finally caught up with his body enough to tell that he was horizontal (and also that his head hurt), he gingerly sat up to see what had cushioned his fall. When he saw what it was he blushed from ears to chin and scrambled upright: it was the guy from the park. "Oh god. Oh my god- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, are you okay??" Dean offered his hand and pulled the guy to his feet. "Are you okay?" he repeated. To his suprise, the guy chuckled. It was a pleasantly gravelly sound that made him blush even harder.
"I am unhurt." the guy said, brushing dirt off his trenchchoat- which, Dean noticed, was already a little grimy. His voice was just as deep and gravelly as his laugh. "A little flatter than before, but unhurt." he turned his blue eyes on Dean. "You seem to be bleeding."
Dean put a hand to his forehead; his fingers came away red and sticky. His eyes widened. "Son of a bitch- I mean, shoot. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to- I...I should stop talking." god, he was hopeless...his mouth was running faster than his brain. The guy waved a dismissive hand.
"No harm done. Here." he offered Dean a paper napkin from his pocket. Dean clamped it to his forehead. People streamed around them while they stood in silence. He'd been on dates that were less awkward.
"I should go." he said eventually.
"Yes." the guy agreed.
Dean stepped around him. "Again, I'm- I'm sorry." he walked a few steps, then turned around and extended his hand. "I'm Dean, by the way. Dean Winchester."
The guy hesitated for a moment before shaking his hand. "My name is Castiel."
~** ○□○ **~