Letting the Unicorn Roam

BAM.

Ruby and Anna broke apart with a wet smack as Castiel’s door slammed open.

Meg chased Castiel out of it, as he moved with stiff, angry purpose as far away from the room as he could get. They got all the way to the back door and slammed that before Ruby and Anna stopped watching and hopped up, with legs awkwardly tugging off laps too fast, to follow them and find out what the fuck. They were out back, in the cold, Castiel notably tense, trembling in his button down and jeans, as Meg gestured with pale hands hanging out the end of her corset top, both breathing clouds into the air: far less drunk than they’d looked about an hour earlier when they got back from the Roadhouse.

Ruby glanced at Anna, confused. They were friends, right, those two? Anna put a finger to her lips and cracked the door open quietly so the shouting was audible, and they both leaned in to listen. It’s not like Cas would be all that forthcoming later if they didn’t.

“You’ve been throwing it at me for months, Clarence! Don’t act like this came out of nowhere.” She pointed below his waist with a savage snarl, her wrist purpling in a recognizable pattern of certain familiar fingerprints.

“Meg, whatever I’ve said—done, to make you think— I’m sorry. But this isn’t what I wanted. This is not what I thought we were doing.” Castiel sounded upset—as upset as he could, notorious stone wall he was, standing at least five feet away from her with every bit of him closed off and looking almost frightened, no matter his anger.

“You told me that time we kissed at Crowley’s place was—” Castiel took a seemingly involuntary step toward Meg as she crossed her arms and glared at him, his face lined with frustration.

“A good memory, yes, in the past. Have I asked you for more? Ever given any indication I wished to repeat the experience? I can’t recall an occasion.”

Meg looked a little taken aback, her tightly held posture slackening, but she stood her ground in her high-heeled boots. “Well, you did talk about me a lot last year, Clarence…called me beautiful and whatever…” She trailed off, mildly triumphant, and Castiel stepped away from her and turned around to leave.

Anna and Ruby had to pull away from the door quickly to avoid being seen, but they could see him. And his expression was defeated, resigned.

“You don’t give a shit about our friendship, Meg. You don’t give a shit, if I don’t want you. All you’ve been doing is working me, like you did Sam freshman year, right? You don’t care. ‘Put up or shut up’, right.”

There was a soft growl inside the house, and Ruby had to catch Anna round her waist, fingers clutched in her blue cardigan, before she ran out, after Meg. Nobody ever made Cas sound as close to tears as he was sounding. Even Dean never hurt him like that, despite how prickly they both could get, despite all the pieces of himself Cas always put into that relationship. Meg was damn lucky Ruby had a hold on her girlfriend, or she’d be dust.

“Clarence, damn it, of course I—” But Castiel appeared to be quite finished, and he waved a hand, faced away from Meg and inches away from the back door.

“If you did, you wouldn’t have done it. I may not have many, but I know friends don’t do that.” Castiel reached the door and Anna and Ruby dove toward the fridge, pulling it open just as he got inside. He took one look at them, sighed heavily, and stomped back into his room.

It was less than five minutes of soft murmuring behind Cas’s door before Dean Winchester arrived, and Meg was still there, lording it on high as usual from the treehouse Gabe and Michael had built before taking off for college. Jamming his hands into the pocket of his leather jacket so sharply it must have hurt him, Dean glared hard enough at Meg for her to catch fire, and hissed at her, just as Anna opened the door to let him in, “I trusted you with him, and you did that. You did that, to Cas. I should pull you down from that damn tree, friggin’ sitting there like Queen Bitch of the World, and—”

“Dean,” Anna called—interrupting him, because shit person or not, they’d already gotten into this argument about hitting girls before and she wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. “Leave it, all right, you’re here for Cas.” She waited there for him pointedly as he stared, with eyes still narrowed into slits, up at the tree house, at a cross-legged Meg who gazed back blankly, disturbingly unrepentant.

Eventually he scoffed, a sound of blatant disgust, and stalked past Anna into the house, scuffed boots leaving a trail of mud across their nice pale kitchen floor. Meg glanced at Anna herself then, still imperious and unfazed, jean-clad legs sliding to hang off the edge of the hexagon to bang her boots against the ladder while her arms piled on the railing at chest level, and Anna set her jaw and looked away; she wasn’t positive what had happened between Meg and Cas, but she knew enough to know it was bad—to guess just how bad, and Meg could stay out there like a chastised dog all night for all she cared after this. She shut the door and left her out there, and watched through the window, but her expression and position didn’t change at all. Shaking her head, she walked back into the den, toward that warm, quiet, dark space she’d been enjoying a lot with her girl before this shit went down.

Ruby welcomed her into her arms and closed them, strong and browned, around her. The comfort was undeniable, but then she heard muffled yelling, and sobbing, and the thunk of what was probably Cas collapsing onto his best friend in the world and knocking him into the door, and it just didn’t quite work as well as it should. She could hear a low rumble, like Dean was trying to ease Cas anyway, despite his own rage, and as much as she wanted to help—ached to help her brother, nobody got to Cas like Dean did, and it was better to stick it out and wait for their bond to work its magic.

She nodded toward the doorway, asking Ruby to come with her, and got up off the couch, shutting the TV off and pulling Ruby by the hand out, up the stairs, to her room. They crawled into her big, expensive, messy bed, ankle-socked feet curling up together, and Ruby held her, as she tried to pretend like her eyes weren’t watering, as she buried her face in the musky shoulder of Ruby's old Heart sweatshirt and mumbled apologies for getting it wet.

“Hey, shut up, you cry yourself out all you want. I have a sister, I know the drill.”

They fell asleep like that, and from what she saw the next morning, when she left Ruby in her bed with a kiss to her wild, tangled hair and walked down to check on Cas, so had Dean and Castiel: Cas’s fluffy dark head pillowed on Dean’s arm where he was curled into a quotation toward his friend, Dean hanging halfway off Cas’s bed on one side, his pretty mouth lax and one foot sticking out of the covers, both of them still in their jeans (Jesus, boys) but at least without shoes or jackets this time.

Meg was gone when Anna walked into the kitchen and reached for a pan to make breakfast, huffing at the shock of cold tile against her bare feet beneath her thick cotton pajama cuffs where she'd kicked off her socks in the night. She tilted her head, looking at other angles through the lace curtains, even opened the back door to the freezing morning--rubbing her bare arms in her ribbed tank top as the cold seeped in, to make sure, and yeah, she was gone.

That was the last Anna saw or heard of her for a month and longer. Cas went out with her and Ruby, with Jo, and with Charlie and Dorothy and Gilda, went out with Sam, with Dean, with Balthazar and Inias, with cousin Hannah even, despite the strained ties he’d had for a while with that whole family—her; her mom Naomi; her baby sister Hael; after they’d started something that had gone ugly fast with Dean once at a family reunion. He never once even mentioned Meg on his own, and after the first time she had called and Cas answered the declaration with, “Tell her to go back to Hell where she came from,” Anna stopped answering the number. If Cas was angry enough to blaspheme in a way Mom and Dad would have destroyed his social life for, it was pretty much over.

---

C’mon, Clarence, I’ve seen how you look at me.

What? Meg, what? I’m a little drunk, you’ll have to—

You think I’m a queen, right. Queen of your kingdom, at least. Part of you wants to be ruled by me, kid, admit it.

You’re a good—um, Meg, you’re all right, but—

I know how bad you want this, Clarence, just chill out and—fuck! What the hell? That fucking hurt!

—

Castiel’s eyes snapped open and stared upward at his slightly spinning warm beige ceiling, when his cell phone broke him out of the deeply unfortunate daydream he’d been having as his favorite movie soundtrack played quietly in the background and he flirted with the potential of sleep. It had been a month of this at least, and every single time, it made him so sick he found himself swallowing bile. He always had known Meg was a bit overzealous with sex, had been a little and then a lot wary about setting her up with anybody he knew, but he had never guessed she’d—

He squeezed his eyes shut again, searching for peace, for forgetting, and his phone broke him out of it a second time before he could recover.

She was calling him. Of course she was. After this long, you’d think she would have given up.

Did that mean she…cared?

Dean would say no. So would Sam, and about half a dozen of his friends.

He answered it anyway.

“What do you want?”

“Long time no see, Clarence. You remember little ol’ me?”

“Don’t call me that. It’s been a month—never really know when to stop pushing, do you. I’m unsurprised.”

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that. I miss our jam sessions and that thing you do with your hands, kid. You were the only one who’d let me call you whatever and still come running, and hey, I loved that about you.”

“I should throw myself a party then, finally telling you to fuck off.”

“Maybe you should, but you know you’re not going to. You’re stuck with me, Clarence. I’ve got a pretty great gift to sweeten the deal, though.”

“Meg, I’m not going to—”

“Blind date with the greatest guy for you I’ve seen yet. No me, no us, just you and this guy. A goodbye gift, even, if you don’t like him enough to like me.”

“A what? You aren’t serious. You know how I feel about that. Dating and, and sex, and—”

“Yeah, got the bruises to prove it, doll, I know. But just, for one last time, trust me as much as you ever did?”

“That trust is gone, Meg. But…you can have one chance. One. If this person tries to extol your virtues, or something of that nature, I will personally guarantee you’ll never see me again.”

“You sound so tough, Clarence, good for you, but we both know you’re dying to meet the guy and be honest, you miss me, don’t you, just a little. You know I make everything more—”

“Goodbye, Meg.” Castiel hung up and dropped his phone onto the pillow beside him with a long exhale, melting into the maroon bedspread.

Such a fool he was, such a fool, to trust her again, even for this.