Chapter Text
When Dean first broke the news to Cas that he couldn’t get him the raise, he had simply sighed and looked away, his jaw tensing. But telling him that he was going to have the amount of the raise deposited directly into his account anyway, at least through the length of their agreement, and that Dean was going to ask at the board meeting about pay adjustments for everyone in his position perked him right up. They had a great discussion about some of the struggles that his colleagues were having and how an increase that was more commensurate with the salaries of admins in the area would benefit not only pocketbooks, but morale. Hell, Cas seemed happier about everyone else getting a raise than he did about himself getting paid from a “special account.” (The initial ten grand Dean gave him as per their agreement probably helped.) He was happy, too, to hear that Dean was going to bring up on-site daycare.
For a week, Dean worked like mad on his proposals to the board, hoping they’d agree with him and implement the raises and daycare because first, it would make him look like CEO material, and second, it was the right thing to do for the employees. (Or maybe those reasons were reversed.) Cas didn’t even mind him working from home a little bit, helping him do some research and creating graphs and pie charts for him when he wasn’t doing whatever he did on his laptop—“browsing,” he said one time, “research” another, and “gaming” another. Whatever it was, he was intense about it. It was probably porn on mute.
The proposals were hard to do. He took a lot of smoke breaks and he had plenty of cranky moments—not unlike Sunny recently, yikes; Cas said they were “out of the honeymoon phase”—but when they were finished, Dean felt something he hadn’t felt in a while: pride. They were good proposals for a good cause.
On Thursday, the day of the meeting, Dean was settling into his emails when there was a knock at the door—which was odd, as Tessa usually intercommed him first.
“Come on in.”
A familiar head peeked around the door. “Is this an acceptable time, Mr. Winchester?”
Dean rubbed his face, burning for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Jesus, Cas, you don’t have to call me that,” he muttered.
“We’re in the office, sir.” His voice was innocent, but his grin was feral.
“Shut up with that.” Having no copy paper to crumple and throw at him, Dean threw a pad of sticky notes instead.
Laughing as he closed the door behind him, Cas murmured, “Tessa was out there. Wanted to give at least an air of professionalism, yet infuse some believable couple banter.”
Right. Cas, always thinking.
“I brought you something.” He plunked a paper cup on the desk as he sat in one of the chairs across from Dean. It was from Maxine’s, Dean’s favorite café, the one that’s a nightmare to turn out of to go to the office (which was why he rarely went there).
Dean picked it up. “Is this for me?”
“If it was for me, why would I bring it to your office?”
“I dunno, to torture me?” He popped off the cover and mmmmm, hazelnut mocha.
“Damn it, I wish I’d thought of that. Oh, well. Next time. I guess you should just enjoy your coffee this time.”
“I will.” Dean blew on the surface until he could sip it without third degree burns. “Oh maaaaan, that’s so good. How did you know?”
“I had to finagle it out of Tessa in the lunchroom the other day. ‘Yeah, Dean loves that fancy coffee from, uh, what the hell’s the name of that place?’ She gave me the name, and while she was at it, dropped your usual order, too.”
Dean reclined in his seat and nodded, impressed. “That’s some fine detective work. Maybe you’re in the wrong career.”
“Not sure I’d consider this a career, but I know my shit, so it’s fine.” He paused and grimaced. “Sorry. It’s a nice place to work, it’s just… I didn’t grow up wanting to be an administrative assistant.”
Curiosity got the best of Dean. “What did you wanna be?”
“Baseball player, doctor, lawyer, and employed, in that order.”
Dean huffed a small laugh, though his gut twisted at the dreams lost. “You got one of ’em, anyway.”
“Thank God, or I’d really be in trouble.”
An odd quiet settled between them.
“Anyway,” Cas continued, “I just wanted to wish you good luck. You worked hard and I know it was frustrating, but you found your way and you’re gonna kick ass.”
Dean’s cheeks flushed with warmth again. “Thanks, man.”
“Sure. I’ll see you tonight. Make sure you eat lunch.”
“Yes, dear,” Dean said with a put-upon sigh.
Cas chuckled as he stood up. He glanced at the walls and surfaces. “Nice office. Kind of plain, though. Already packing for the penthouse?”
“Nah, I just didn’t put much up. Dove into this job head-first and got absorbed real quick. Wasn’t sure they’d keep me, either, family or not, so.”
“Well, they did, because you’ve earned it. At least you have a few pictures on your desk. That’s good.” He flipped one around and stilled. “You and Sunny.”
“Yeah. It’s cute, right?”
A soft smile creased Cas’ face. “It is.”
“Got a couple from our photo shoot, too. Figured I should, being married and all.”
Cas picked up each in turn, his smile staying in place. “Right. That was smart,” he murmured. “I did the same with the wedding photos. I should print the pottery photos, though.” Gently, he placed the family picture on the desk. “I gotta get back.”
Dean stood to see Cas out. “Thanks again.”
“No problem.”
The nerves that had disappeared during their chat reared up again, and he didn’t have time for a cigarette. He tapped his thumb against the doorknob. “Fuck, I hope I can pull this shit off, man.”
“Well, remember, whatever they say or do as a result doesn’t negate your effort, okay?”
Dean nodded, then opened his office door and walked Cas past Tessa and another couple of employees at her desk to the suite’s entrance. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome. See you at home.”
“See you then.”
Dean began walking back to his office when Cas called out, “Hey.”
He turned around. “Yeah?”
“I believe in you.” Cas winked at him before disappearing from the entryway.
Dean hung his head and closed his eyes, his mouth curling into a smile.
***
The monthly board meeting involved not only the Board of Directors, but also Dean’s grandfather and the heads of the other branches—his cousins. It was a packed room.
Usually, Dean was quiet. Sure, he gave his reports, voiced his opinions, and argued his points, but rarely did he address a problem without being asked first.
They didn’t ask him to do this.
But it was good for the employees. Good for Cas. Good for Dean and his wallet. Good for the family business, ultimately.
So when he was given the floor, he swallowed his nerves and made his presentation.
“Hi, folks. Uh, so something came to my attention recently that I think we need to fix.” He displayed a graph that Cas helped him make on the projection screen. “The living wage for a single person in California with no kids is just over twenty-one bucks an hour. Not terrible pay, right?
“But here at Winchester Winery, nearly eighty percent of our employees are partnered, have kids, or both. And for those folks, unless they’re from two-income households with no kids, they need a lot more than twenty-one an hour. And I’m here to say, we aren’t providing that.”
Murmurs circulated around the table. He knew that statement might not be popular.
Fiddling with the presentation clicker in his hands, Dean forged on, “Our lowest-paid administrative assistant gets just under a living wage for a single person with no kids. However, that person has a kid, which more than doubles the wage they need to live, and we’re not even providing them what they need for themselves. When I looked into the rates we pay all our admins, I found that we should be ashamed of ourselves, actually.” Dean advanced his slide to show the information HR had given him about their assistants. “All but two of our AAs are being underpaid in accordance with their life situation. I know we’re not supposed to even know about that stuff, never mind base pay on it, but I just thought it was wrong. When I found that out, I did some more digging, and found that the majority of our lowest-level employees in most departments aren’t making a living wage. I think, as a decent, family company, we should change that. So, that’s it for that.”
He stood as still as he could manage, rolling the clicker in his hand like a cigarette and thinking about how he wanted one more than he ever had in his life.
“How do you propose we pay for all that?” Zachariah Adler, a board member who hated Dean’s guts for some reason, asked snidely.
Dean didn’t have a great answer for that, but he tried, “Raise prices, cut costs—”
“Sure, sure, but how?” one of his twat cousins, Preston, chimed in. Before Dean could answer, Twat continued, “You can’t price yourself out of the market. People will only pay so much for a bottle of wine. And as for costs? We don’t have gold toilet seats, man. All of our costs are necessary to run the business. So unless you have actionable objectives that won’t fuck up our bottom line, maybe you should keep your childish ideas to yourself.”
His blood racing, Dean leaned toward Preston and snarled, “Oh, I have an actionable objective to cut costs. It’s called ditching your salary.”
The room erupted with urges for the men to calm down and be professional. Dean took a step back and gritted his teeth, squeezing the clicker in his palm.
Jody Mills, the president of the board, stood and clapped her hands. “Okay, folks, enough. Preston, you are here as a branch manager, not a board member, and if you cannot behave yourself, you won’t attend these meetings.” She turned to Dean. “And the same goes for you.”
Dean bowed his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And any and all board members will watch their tone with our guests.” She threw a sharp look at Zachariah before continuing, “All right. Any feedback from the board regarding Dean’s proposal?”
When none of the board members spoke up, Bobby Singer raised a finger. Bobby had been at the company going on three decades, and he was the Temecula branch manager before Dean and now was Dean’s grandfather’s right hand man. If Bobby was family, Dean was sure neither he nor anyone else would even be considered for CEO. But he wasn’t family. That’s what Dean hung onto, because the thought that his grandfather might change his mind and pass the business off to an outsider scared the piss out of him, especially an outsider as smart as Bobby Singer. Bobby might be a family friend, but he’d probably dump Dean’s dumb ass first thing.
“Budget’s already written and approved,” Bobby pointed out. “Can’t be changed this late in the game. We’re about to start the fiscal year. If you’d brought this to the board in, say, December or January, with a solid plan of execution that involved how to offset the costs of the raises and how the changes would benefit the company with morale and retention and all that, then they might’ve been able to do something.”
The board members voiced their agreement.
That was it.
Dean had failed.
“Thanks for your time,” Dean muttered, flicking the screen to black before flopping into his seat.
“Thank you, Dean. It was a good suggestion,” Jody said. “Was there something else? I thought you had two items.”
Reluctantly, he stood again. “It was about on-site daycare, but as it involves more money from the budget, I’m gonna table that one for now.”
“On-site daycare,” Bobby muttered. “There really a need for that?”
“Several of our employees have children, sir.”
“Hmph. Well, maybe next year, when the board’s lookin’ at pay, they can look at the details of the daycare—costs, options, viability of on-site versus stipend for off-site, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Congratulations on your marriage, by the way, Dean.”
“Yes,” Jody said, chiming in, “the board wants to offer you our sincerest congratulations on your recent marriage.”
Most of the group broke into applause. He acknowledged their well-wishes with a nod, not sure he could speak without lashing out or crying.
She moved on to other business, but Dean heard none of it, You’re a failure, why did you even try looping in his mind. He failed Cas, he failed his employees, and he failed himself.
Dean couldn’t even fuck away his sorrows like he ordinarily would, because if he were caught, he’d be sunk. Couldn’t inhale a pack of cigs, either—Cas would have a fit if he came home stinking of smoke. He had a feeling Cas wouldn’t approve of him crawling through the door wasted, either.
Did it even matter, though? Dean probably never had a fucking chance at being CEO anyway, and even if he did, he blew it today.
Slowly, the refrain in his mind became Fuck this.
He picked up the phone.
“Hey, Mom? Can I come work for you?”
Dean wasn’t home.
Which, given his one-word summary of the board meeting—shitty—wasn’t particularly surprising.
But if Dean was to do this married thing correctly, then he needed to get over himself, come home, and talk to his damn husband. That’s what spouses did. Presumably.
Though, honestly, Cas had bigger problems, the most pressing one being the broken air conditioner.
The unit in the living room was old, so he knew it would go eventually, but Maintenance wouldn’t look at it until it stopped working and, now that it stopped working, they were too busy to look at it.
And, joy of joys, they were at the start of a heat wave predicted to last several days.
“Hot, Buppa,” Sunny whined, draping herself over his back and planting her face against his neck. She’d been in a good mood until they came home to a virtual sauna that he couldn’t immediately address.
“Well, you can go in your room. It’ll be nice and cool there if you turn on the air conditioning.”
“Wanna see.”
“I’m just looking at the A/C to see if I can fix it, that’s all.”
It was likely he couldn’t, but he’d learned how to do a lot being on his own, out of necessity.
“Can fix?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.”
“When fix, Buppa?”
Cas huffed. “I’m not sure yet, baby girl.” He unscrewed the front panel.
“Put in!”
He caught her just as she was picking up the cord to plug the unit in. “Can’t do that while I’m trying to fix it, honey. I could get hurt. Leave it alone.”
“Put in!”
“Not when I’m fixing it.”
“I fix!”
Cas gathered up all the patience he had left, which wasn’t much after a long week of dealing with Dean’s anxiety about the meeting and Sunny’s anxiety about the upcoming end of the school year. “Sunny, listen to me. You may not plug that in. I will get hurt. You could get hurt. If you keep trying to plug it in, you will go in time out in your room. Understand?”
She pouted, but dropped the cord.
“Thank you.”
He’d barely pried the control panel off when she picked up the cord again.
“Sunny,” he growled in warning. “I said no.”
“I fix it!”
“I will not let you do something unsafe. Stop.”
“Fix!”
“Let it go.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No!”
“You have until I count to three to let go of the cord, or you will be put in time out. One.”
She didn’t move.
“Two.”
She grasped the cord tighter.
“Three.”
Sunny screeched as Cas pried the cord out of her hands, then dragged her, feet kicking, to her room, closing the door behind them and leaning against it so she couldn’t run right back out.
“Go turn on the air conditioning so you won’t be hot anymore.”
She folded her arms. “You.”
“No, I asked you to do it. We can do it together, but I’m not doing it by myself.”
“No.”
“Okay, then, be hot.”
She scowled at him with a look so defiant, he worried about her adolescent years. Still, he pressed on.
“You will stay here for five minutes, with the door closed. If you come out, the time starts over.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Want Dean.”
“Well, Dean’s not home yet, so you’re stuck with me.”
She picked up the closest stuffed animal within her reach and threw it at him. “Hate you.”
“Well, I love you, and I know you’re big mad that you can’t do what you want, but it’s not safe. My job is to keep you and me safe.”
At first, she said nothing. And then, with a dark glare, she began to scream at the top of her lungs.
Cas sighed. “Five minutes. Turn on your air conditioning,” he said, then walked out the door.
Settling back on the floor, Cas worked to the din of Sunny’s screams. His upstairs neighbor banged on the ceiling. He yelled “Sorry!” but what he really wanted to yell was “Fuck off, asshole.”
He’d barely gotten the cover off when the screaming stopped and the door opened.
“Five minutes starts over,” Cas told her without looking.
The screams started again in the doorway.
The back and forth continued for nearly half an hour, escalating into Barbies and books being hurled at Cas until he settled her down with some leftover macaroni and his tablet to watch a couple of cartoons he had downloaded (not the best way to prevent a fit in the future, he knew, but that was a problem for another time). He coaxed her to turn on her air conditioning, then smoothed the hair off her damp forehead before he went back to work.
A few minutes later, just as he was staring hopelessly at the corrosion throughout the unit, Dean walked in.
Cas glanced at his watch. Two hours later than he should’ve been home. And it was his turn to make dinner, too.
“Hey.”
“Hi,” Cas replied, not looking up.
“It’s fuckin’ hot in here.”
“Yup.”
Dean wandered to his side. “What’re you do—”
“Dean!” Sunny squealed as she threw her door open.
It hadn’t quite been five minutes, but Cas didn’t push the matter as Sunny collided into Dean’s legs.
“Hey, Sunn,” Dean answered, subdued, until he looked at her face. “You’re all sweaty. Is your air conditioning on?”
She nodded. “I did. Buppa no.”
Cas rolled his eyes and refocused on the puzzle before him, knowing full well there was no repairing the thing but desperately hoping, anyway.
“Buppa no? He wouldn’t do it? What a meanie,” Dean joked.
She giggled. “Buppa meanie.”
There was no doubt in Cas’ mind he’d hear that one screamed at him the next time she was upset. Dean didn’t know how literally she could take things, though, so Cas let it go. He knew it wasn’t malicious.
“What’s Buppa doin’, huh?” Dean asked Sunny.
“Throwing out an air conditioner,” Cas answered for her. “I can’t fix it, and Maintenance won’t be able to, either.”
“Did it shit the bed?”
“Yeah. Of all the days.”
“Man, that sucks.”
“Yup.”
“Suck,” Sunny commented to Dean with a giggle.
“I know, I know, sorry. But it does.”
“It does,” Cas agreed again. He groaned as he stood, then stooped to pick up the unit. “I’ll be right back. Going to leave this in front of the office with a note. Come on, Sunny.”
“Stay Dean,” she whined.
Cas closed his eyes. “Dean just got home and he needs to shower, plus he’s had a bad day, so you and I will go and we will see Dean in just a few minutes.”
“Noooo,” she moaned, clinging to Dean’s hand.
“Sunny, it’s not his job to—”
“I can go with you guys,” Dean offered.
Cas sighed, not wanting another battle. “Fine, sure.”
Dean did, and Cas stewed in his aggravation as Sunny chatted Dean’s ear off, pleasant as could be.
***
The living room was still sauna-like the next morning, and by the time they arrived home that night, it was even worse.
The other members of the household didn’t help things, either.
“It’s so freakin’ hot,” Dean grumbled, mopping his forehead. Cas had just barely convinced Dean not to come to the table shirtless.
“Hottttt,” Sunny moaned, imitating Dean. She laid her head on her arms.
Cas had hoped to ride out the heat wave by running the bedroom units and keeping the doors open, but they just weren’t strong enough. He reluctantly faced facts: he’d have to buy a new air conditioner. Before payday.
“Fine,” Cas grunted. “Let’s finish eating dinner, and then we’ll go to the store. Hopefully they have a few A/Cs left.”
“Yay!” Sunny cheered, and even Dean seemed pleased.
That only lasted through the first three air conditioner-less stores.
At the fourth, they found a unit that was far bigger (and far more expensive) than Cas wanted.
With Sunny overtired and no hope for a cheaper air conditioner, Cas lifted it into the cart anyway, mumbling about the cost.
“I can pay for it,” Dean told him.
“No, it’s fine.”
“Really, I don’t mind.”
“I’m sure you don’t, or you wouldn't have offered, but I can handle it.” I’ll just put off my car repair for another week.
“How about I pay a third, then? Since I live there?”
Cas began rolling the cart toward the registers, Sunny just ahead of him, touching every item on the shelves as they passed. “I can’t break a third of an A/C off for you to take when you go, so I’d have to reimburse you. Might as well just pay for the whole thing now.”
“I’m not gonna make you pay me back for that.”
Cas shrugged. “I’ve got it. Thank you anyway.”
Dean stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. “Listen, I know your…financial situation, y’know? So lemme get this.”
Hot embarrassment flooded his cheeks. He scowled. “I’ve got it, thank you anyway.” He started walking again, letting Dean’s hand slip away.
The humiliation didn’t stop there, either. The next day, Sunny had a new thing to complain about.
“Pool!” she wailed on the way back from their apartment complex’s playground. She grasped the chain link fence around the swimming pool that hadn’t been operational the entire time they lived there and wailed dramatically.
“You guys didn’t go swimming at Mrs. Sato’s today?” Dean asked. “I thought she had a pool.”
“She does, but she hasn’t been home,” Cas explained, not wanting to get into it.
“But I thought you guys went there to visit her.”
“And cut her lawn,” he reminded him—which was the primary reason for their visits, of course. “Remember she had to leave town unexpectedly? Well, she went to Japan for family stuff, and she’s had to stay longer than she thought she would, so I’m keeping up with it for her.”
“Oh. Well, you can come to my house to swim. Actually, yeah, why don’t we go do that? I’m sure she’d have a blast. I was there this morning while you guys were gone, and the water was beautiful. Good way to spend a hot Saturday.”
“Thank you, but Sunny has to deal with life as it is, including disappointments. She’ll get over it.”
“Yeah, but she’s a kid, and kids love to swim. Didn’t you love swimming in your pool when you were a kid?”
Cas bit back a sarcastic comment. “We didn’t have a pool.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh.” He paused, then continued, “Well, didn’t you love going to friends’ houses to swim when you were a kid?”
“My friends didn’t have them, either.”
“Oh. Huh. Well, now you have me and I have a pool, so why not take advantage?”
“That’s very nice of you—Sunny, come on, let’s go—but I don’t want her to think she can whine her way to whatever she wants.”
“No, I know, but it’s sweltering, man, and I really don’t mind.”
“I know you don’t, and I appreciate it, but we can't use your pool, okay?”
Sunny gasped as she arrived at Dean’s side. “Swim pool!” she cried, grabbing Dean’s hand.
Fuck, she overheard.
Dean was still focused on Cas. “Why can’t you?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Pool!”
“Sunny—”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re poor people, not pool people, Dean.”
“Swim. In. Pool!”
“Cas, you’re not poor—”
“No? You ‘know my financial situation,’ Dean, so you should know that mansions and pools aren’t really our thing. Hell, air conditioners aren’t really our thing. I should’ve bought a fucking fan.”
“Poooooooooool!”
“So, what, if someone wants to be nice to you, you gotta make it a big deal?”
“I’m not making it a big deal, you—”
“Swim! Swim! Swim!”
“I’m just trying to help!”
“And I appreciate it, but—”
“No, you don’t appreciate it! I’m trying to do something and you’re shooting me down! Just like the fucking board. Why the hell do I bother—”
“Dean! Swim!”
As if finally noticing her, Dean turned his attention to Sunny. “Sorry, kiddo, but Buppa said no.”
“Whyyyyyyy?” She fell to her knees, plump tears spilling from her eyes. “Wanna swiiiiiiiim!”
Cas squinted at Dean, who looked at him smugly. Asshole, he mouthed.
Dean shrugged. “Shoulda just gone with my idea, I guess.”
He walked away, leaving Cas to deal with the mess that he ultimately brought on himself.
Calgon, take me away! his mother used to joke.
If only bubble baths could give Cas what he truly needed.