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goldenraeofsun · 2 years

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Day 3: Digital

Dean should have never taken advice from Zachariah Adler, AKA the worst boss in existence. While Dean eats wheatgrass and manifests his best self (whatever the hell that actually means), Adler’s probably poaching his biggest accounts with his oily charm and smarmy grin.

It was Dean’s fault for getting too personal in smalltalk before the Marketing & Sales all-hands meeting, saying how he’d been on an improvement kick – Kubrick oversold the damn Master Cleanse by several hundred orders of magnitude – but he didn’t know what to do next.

Zachariah, of course, had the perfect solution: a digital detox retreat. Worked wonders for him a few months ago.

After everyone arrives at the campsite – if you can call it that, with its electricity, running water, and actual toilets – they go on an hour-long hike, do yoga by the lake, and in the afternoon have some weird group therapy session to discuss their “technology addiction”.

Dean spends most of his turn complaining about Sandover’s batshit promotion policy, but a couple people nod in agreement around the circle. The uncomfortable-looking guy in pristine jeans and boots that Dean would bet dollars to donuts never touched actual dirt until that morning, mumbles he works at Sandover too.

He – Castiel – goes next, saying his roommate pressed him to go on this retreat. He drops corporate buzzwords like “toxic environments” and “poor work-life balance” with a pinched, bewildered expression on his face, and Dean has a sneaking suspicion that Cas has no idea what they actually mean. The weirdo actually uses finger quotes around “hustle culture”.

Cas evidently made time for yoga, though. (Dean wasn’t entirely focused on the instructor when it came time for downward dog.) He has an ass Dean hasn’t seen outside of porn – the fancy kind, the kind you pay for.

By day four, Dean can practically feel Zachariah and the other sales sharks circling his biggest accounts.

In the evening, Dean lines up for the lone phone on the premises – a communal landline – and calls Charlie, their western sales rep and Dean’s best work-friend at Sandover. He not-so-subtly probes her, and Charlie admits she saw Zachariah having lunch with Lily Sunder of Sunder Inc.

Dean almost loses it right then and there.

But because he is a goddamn professional, he politely listens to Charlie’s dramatic retelling of last Tuesday night’s bar trivia (they lost without Dean’s pop culture powerhouse) before hanging up and stalking out of the room.

Incensed, he paces around his cabin, trying to come up with a plan. Sammy isn’t due to pick him up in the Impala until the end of the retreat in three days. But by then, it could be all over.

So, after some serious Mission Impossible shit and Ocean’s 11 levels of safe cracking, Dean is once again in possession of his phone.

Just out of sight of the campsite, probably standing in a bunch of poison ivy, knowing his luck, he turns it on. “Fuck,” he mutters, entirely unsurprised to see he has no bars out here in the ass end of nowhere.

Time to rough it.

He ducks back into his cabin to grab a flashlight, his swiss army knife, and a granola bar – all stuff he packed without knowing he was going glamping. Armed with his gear and his phone, he goes on the hunt for a signal. The hiking trail from their first day reached a decently high elevation.

About a third of the way up, a rustling in the underbrush makes him freeze.

Heart pounding, his gaze darts up from his phone screen and his hand tightens around his swiss army knife in his pocket. Are there bears in this area? Why the hell didn’t he pack bear spray?

“Dean?”

Dean exhales a quick sigh of relief. Not a bear.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says as he quickly stashes his phone in his jacket. “What the hell are you doin’ all the way out here?”

Cas blinks owlishly at him. He has a few leaves and a twig or two stuck in his hair. The fresh dirt covers the knees of his jeans, like he took a fall (or five) in the past ten minutes. After a long beat, he deadpans, “Communing with nature.”

Dean unclenches his hands from around his knife and instead crosses his arms over his chest, regarding Cas impassively. Internally, he’s beyond amused, so he can’t help but ask, “And how’s that goin’ for ya?”

Cas narrows his eyes. “Poorly,” he says sourly.

A rapid series of tinny chimes cut off Dean’s snort of laughter. He eagerly grabs his phone, scanning the barrage texts coming in. He only has one bar, but better that than nothing.

“You have service?” Cas demands, stepping closer.

“Fucking finally,” Dean breathes as he holds his phone up above his head. The signal stubbornly does not improve. Damn.

Sighing, Cas slips his own phone out of his pocket and squints despondently at the screen.

Maybe that was why Mr. Wilderness was bumbling around in the dark, halfway up a mountain. Well, Dean’s not a heartless corporate suit, no matter what Charlie calls him when he has to cancel Moondoor plans at the last-minute. “D’you wanna use mine?” Dean asks. “I’ve got almost a full charge.”

Cas looks like he could kiss Dean right then and there – and, huh, isn’t that an idea? Cas’s gaze shifts to Dean’s phone, an eager glint in his eyes like Dean might as well be holding the holy grail itself. “Thank you,” Cas breathes.

“No problem,” Dean says casually. “Mind if we go a bit higher? I think we can get a better signal.”

Cas nods, and they set off up the trails.

“So…” Dean starts, “Sandover too?”

“Unfortunately,” Cas says with an adorable grimace. “You as well?”

Dean nods. “Marketing.”

“Finance.”

Dean’s dealings with Finance are limited, mostly to the junior accountants who have nothing better to do than pull him reports that should all be entered into the dullest Excel sheet of the year awards. “Do you work with Marv?” he asks, naming the one Finance Director he worked with on the Talbot account.

A sliver of moonlight falls on Cas’s face from a break in the tree cover, or else Dean never would have caught his look of apprehension. After a beat, Cas says evenly, “I do.”

“What a dick,” Dean says, and Cas’s expression relaxes. “Has he told you about the book he’s writing?” During their last meeting, Marv spent twenty minutes droning on and on.

“Yes,” Cas says with the look of a man who was indeed up to date on the intricate politics of angel factions and the motivations of a stupidly overpowered hero. “I’m surprised he told you about it, though. He tends only to inflict his writing process on the Finance Department.”

Dean lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I guess I’m just that adorable.”

“I’d say so,” Cas says before promptly tripping over a root. He straightens, his blush all but glowing in the dark.

“You alright?” Dean says, trying and mostly failing to keep in his laughter.

“Fine,” Cas mutters. “We’d better keep going. I think there’s a plateau up ahead.”

“So why did you come out to this thing if tree hugging isn’t your deal?” Dean asks conversationally.

“My roommate said I needed to get out of the city for my own good,” Cas says glumly. “She said it was either this or Coachella.”

Dean doesn’t bother muffling his laughter this time around. Cas at Coachella? Dean can just as easily see him flying around outer space.

Once Dean’s chuckles subside, Cas asks, “So why are you here, Dean?”

Dean rubs the back of his neck. “Similar to you, I guess. I’ve been looking for a change, you know?” Way back when, he thought Sandover would be a pitstop. A way to make a decent paycheck with good dental before he figured out what he really wanted to do with his life (other than hunt ghosts and/or run around Gotham in an awesome batsuit).

But it only seemed like the blink of an eye when he looked up and realized his fifth anniversary at Sandover came and went. And he had nothing to show for it except a stellar portfolio and a dozen dead plants in an apartment he rarely saw during daylight hours.

“I guess I was hoping for a reset,” Dean says seriously. “It’s like, one day I woke up and I saw that my whole life was my work.” He shakes his head. “That’s no way to live.”

“I suppose not.” Cas smiles crookedly. “Not that I would know any differently.”

They reach the plateau, and Dean checks his phone.

Three whole bars shine brightly back at him from his phone screen.

And because he’s a gentleman when it counts, he hands it over to Cas to make the first call. He lays back against a tree, staring out as the stars as Cas talks over returns and turnovers for next quarter. Every so often, Dean picks out a recognizable name like MacLeod Pharma, Sandover’s biggest client.

Fifteen minutes later (ten more than they are allowed on the communal landline back at camp), Cas hands over the phone with a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dean says as he dials Lily’s number. He leaves her a voicemail since she’s old school, and moves on down his mental list, sending emails to Benny, Lenore, and Garth. He sends a meme to Andy, the only form of communication that has a chance of getting through to him.

That done, he finds Cas leaning against a tree, staring out at the night sky above them. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it can be under a full moon with all the stars.”

Dean nods in agreement. He’s not normally a touchy-feely guy, but he feels strangely not-himself, halfway up some random mountain in the Catskills with an almost-stranger in the dark. Not in a bad way, though. Not at all.

“Hey,” he says with far more confidence than he actually feels, “d’you wanna do something like this back home?”

Cas stares at him, his eyes impossibly wide. “Like what?”

“I dunno,” Dean hedges, the remaining bravado draining away at Cas’s lack of immediate enthusiasm, “Something just the two of us, no phones, no work.”

“I believe the whole point of this little trip was to enable phone usage and catch up on work,” Cas says dryly.

Dean nudges him with his elbow. “You know what I mean.”

Cas steals a sidelong glance his way. “Would this be like… a date?”

“If you want it to be,” Dean says, deliberately keeping his eyes trained on the moon overhead. “Or just a few hours to keep ourselves honest about what we want out of life.”

“I’d like that.”

#suptober22 #destiel fanfic #destiel #office au #businessman dean #accountant castiel #rae writes fic #fanfic #First Meetings

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