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luchiaWho doesn't love Ellen, seriously? She should come back.
Title: She Taught Every Angel To Rearrange The Sky
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Ellen, Anna. Possible Anna/Ellen if you really want it.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Both crack and seriousness, boys kissing, girls kissing (sorta), blasphemy, The Weather Girls, a small cultural lesson about the Hindu caste system, some profanity, and lots of liquor. Spoilers for 4x16.
Summary: Ellen Harvelle's bar gets some angelic visitors, mostly because the angelic visitors need some help dealing with non-angelic people.And advice for hitting on Dean.
She Taught Every Angel To Rearrange The Sky
The new bar wasn’t The Roadhouse by any means, but considering it was in the middle of a backwater town with plenty of non-players to keep it in business, it was safe. After the things Ellen Harvelle had seen in her life, quiet sounded refreshing. Peaceful. Easy. And, for about a year and a half, it was.
It was a quiet afternoon, sun skidding over the glass front of the building as noon shrank away, when she turned away from wiping down the ever-sticky bar to put a bottle back in its place and spotted a lone customer, standing frozen in front of the door.
The bell over the door hadn’t rung.
Ellen was a Hunter and definitely wasn’t stupid. The bar was surrounded with iron, salt was ground into the windows and in grooves under the doors, and that bell was there for a damned good reason. But, as she was also a bartender, it wasn’t a difficult decision to do her job. Arms spread at a comfortable distance on the bar – a habit of long nights running grooves into the floor and taking as much of a break as she could manage – she gave the man a smile. “We opened up just seven minutes ago,” Ellen said, sounding as impressed as she could. “Never heard someone come in so early. You feeling alright?”
The man looked at her strangely, brow creased and blue eyes seeing something deeper inside Ellen than she ever liked to think of a person getting. “Ellen Harvelle,” he stated. “You know the Winchesters.”
One hand slipped down to the shotgun behind the bar, but her smile didn’t move at all. “Who would they be?”
The man walked forward, coming closer with a stride that spoke both warrior and caution to her, for both parties involved. “They would be Sam and Dean,” he said, and stopped in front of the bar, head tilting slightly. “I am Castiel, and angel of the Lord, and I need your help.”
Ellen gave him the most dubious look she owned, which was pretty damn dubious. “Bobby said angels were real, but-”
“Dean is difficult to speak with,” Castiel said, ignoring any doubts or complaints she may have had. “As the closest figure to them which would be socially acceptable to speak with-”
“Just hold on for a second,” Ellen said, holding out a hand as a silent plea for him to actually listen to her. When Castiel remained silent, she took a deep breath and put both hands back on the bar, shotgun untended. “The first thing you need to know? Dean doesn’t listen to anyone but his daddy when it comes to orders, and John Winchester is dead. You can’t do anything to make him listen.” She huffed. “Boy has a brain thick as concrete.”
Castiel frowned at her. “He’s very intelligent.”
“Not if he doesn’t want to be,” Ellen said dryly, and the angel looked so hopelessly confused that she let out a sigh and grabbed one of the glasses beneath the bar, setting it in front of a stool. “Sit down, honey. Sounds like this may take a while.”
“I have no money,” Castiel stated, looking almost embarrassed about the fact.
Ellen smiled at him and poured him a finger of whiskey. “Consider it a thank you for dragging Dean out of hell.”
“It was the Lord’s command. I merely obeyed,” he said, and after a considering look took a sip of whiskey. After a wide-eyed look, he managed to spit the drink back into the glass in the most polite way Ellen thought she’d ever see.
“Then we’ll just find you something else to drink,” Ellen said, cutting him off before the angel could apologize or tell her liquor was some sort of incredibly minor sin. She dumped it into the sink and considered the bottles behind her. “Now, what do you need help communicating?”
There was a very, very long pause, and Ellen heard a quiet, “Everything.”
It brought a small smile to her face. She pulled out the orange juice and vodka; Screwdrivers were more or less mild enough drinks. “How long have you guys been walking around Earth again? Two, three months?”
“Most of that time is spent in battle as well,” Castiel added, sounding almost disappointed by the fact. She wasn’t sure if he was disappointed it wasn’t all the time or less, and apparently angels were fairly good mind-readers. “I’d like more time to try and help Dean and his brother find their destinies as easily as possible. It seems impossible to even compliment him.”
“He was raised strange,” Ellen said, grumbling slightly. “Strange morals and ideas, but his heart’s in the right place, you know?”
“I know,” he said quietly, his eyes trained on the bar with a pensive expression, and Ellen knew too.
She thanked God for already having dealt with a teenager, had a lurking suspicion this was why she had one, and took a deep breath. She slid the screwdriver into his incredibly limited line of sight (or so she assumed) and walked around the bar to sit next to him.
Castiel looked up at her with a guilty, resigned look. All Ellen could do was give him a hopefully reassuring smile. “What is it you really want to communicate to that blockhead?”
The angel took a sip of the screwdriver. It stayed in his mouth longer, but ended up politely spit back into the glass just like the whiskey.
“Don’t worry, honey,” she said, and leaned over the bar to put that in the sink. “We’ll work on that, too.”
---
It was hard to hear over the jukebox and the crowd and the constant swarm of requests for alcohol, but Ellen could still hear Castiel clear as glass. Now situated on the back bar, particularly by the non-alcoholic beer since he’d have to shift a lot less, they kept talking, the angel sipping at the pink umbrella-and-pineapple-decked glass. “Do you know if he’s ever-”
“Here you are,” Ellen said, handing over three beers to the waiting and possibly under-aged kid in front of her, and turned to Castiel. “I don’t know anything about that boy’s sex life and I’m not sure I want to.”
Castiel frowned slightly. “I meant to ask if he’d ever been in a serious relationship.”
Ellen raised an eyebrow. “You really think a Hunter could manage something like that?” She shook her head. “Here’s what you need to remember about Hunters – they’re wanderers. May have a home base, but they wander, eyes and hands included.”
“You don’t think he would be faithful?”
Ellen let out a sigh. “Honey, you can fly. Wherever that boy wanders, you could follow. That’d help a hell of a lot.”
“You weren’t always with Bill, and he was never unfaithful,” Castiel said. When Ellen froze mid-pour, shaking slightly, the angel moved just enough to touch her shoulder. “He loves you down to his soul, Ellen. He’s at peace.”
She watched the perspiration on a nearby glass slide down onto the bar, and turned to Castiel. “Alright. How drunk are you?”
“I feel fine,” he said, looking confused. Ellen planted a fist on her hip and looked at him. “I’m not drunk, Ellen. I’d know if I was drunk.”
“You’ve been sipping liquor since noon and you’re on your second Chi Chi. Angel or not, you’re definitely not sober.”
He lifted his chin just enough to look at her imperiously. “I know I’m not sober. I said I’m not drunk,” he stated. After a considering look, Castiel took another sip of his drink, the paper umbrella pushing against his nose. “Angels don’t lie.”
“You’re good at dodging the truth, though, aren’t you,” Ellen muttered, and went back to doing her job, Castiel drinking and people-watching over her shoulder.
---
Last call had come and gone. Castiel hadn’t.
He was back on a barstool, arms splayed on the bar as his blurry eyes still managed to follow Ellen’s efficient work. “You’ve really dealt with this before?”
Ellen let out a short laugh, throwing an amused look at him before turning back to the sink. “My daughter had a crush on Dean. I don’t know how to deal with the angel part, though, although you sure seem to be acting like a teenage girl.”
“Joanna was a very mature teenage girl in many ways,” Castiel stated. “And not in many others.”
Ellen let out a sigh. “It’s a little unnerving when you talk about my family history when I’ve never met you and I’m pretty damn sure you weren’t actually there.”
Castiel propped his head on an arm, giving Ellen a small smile. “I like Hunters. Hunters are some of the most dedicated, moral, and unwavering humans in the world.” He looked down at the bar. “In India, there’s a sect of priests and kshatriyas that manage to keep a large area of Southeast Asia more or less ghost-free. Mongolia has tribes that devote themselves to keeping Siberia, Mongolia, and China safe from anything that eats humans. Africa is full of-“
“What’s a kshatriya?”
“The Hindu warrior class. They have a large government basis, too-”
Ellen stared at him. “My god,” she said. “You’re a nerdy angel.”
Castiel let out a sigh. Ellen noted that Castiel didn’t deny being a nerd. “My point is that most places, hunting the supernatural is a duty passed through families and generations in most parts of the world. They’re born to it. In North America, Hunters are called to it. It’s a choice. It’s a difficult choice, and you humans separate yourselves from everything you know and qualify as normal and go out to save the world one life at a time, never getting a reward but doing it anyway.”
Ellen smiled at him. “You’re drunk, aren’t you.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true,” Castiel said a bit darkly, and seemed to slump against his will. “I’ve never been drunk before.”
“I’ve never seen an angel drunk before, if it helps any.”
Castiel almost laughed. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. “My brother murdered seven of our siblings, tried to destroy me, and was killed in front of me.”
Ellen stopped scrubbing, simply watching the angel. When he didn’t say anything else, she frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”
His eyes opened just enough for her to see almost all the intensity in his eyes had faded away. “I heard that bartenders were good at giving advice.”
“We’re good at telling people what they ought to already know,” she said, and rounded the bar to take a seat next to him. “You don’t need any advice on this one, do you.”
“I don’t,” Castiel stated, head falling all the way to the wood. “I know betrayal.”
Ellen simply sat next to him, watched him fall asleep in silence.
She didn’t need to ask. She’d read the bible.
---
In all of Ellen Harvelle’s life, she had never thought she’d have to deal with the moral dilemma of whether or not to move a sleeping angel off her bar, let alone what to do with one later. Last night she’d moved him onto one of the bench seats and put a blanket over him, coat and all. As she unlocked the door and walked in, she hadn’t quite been sure what to expect.
Absolutely nothing being different had never been on that list.
The blanket was folded neatly and back in the closet exactly as it had been before she’d pulled it out, skewed corner and all. There wasn’t a single thing out of place. The lock on the door hadn’t been unlocked for him to get out. The paper umbrella that had been in his drink was clean and back in the same glass she kept the others in.
When she found herself trying to see if the pineapple piece was back, Ellen laughed at herself, rolling her eyes and turning away. After all, she had work to do.
---
Two days later, a redheaded girl was smiling at her from the other side of the bar. It was late enough for most people to have trickled out, only the devoted drinkers still hanging around, but Ellen still couldn’t remember seeing her come in. Ellen gave her a smile. “Can I help you?”
“You’ve already helped,” the girl said. “Thank you, Ellen, for helping him really see humanity.”
Ellen frowned, setting a hand on the bar to get a good look at the girl. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m going to need to see some ID if you’re going to be staying in here much longer.”
She seemed to actually amuse the girl. “You’re carding me.”
“I’m carding you,” Ellen agreed with an expectant look.
The girl reached down, only to blink and blush slightly. “I…I’ll return later,” she said, mumbling the last words, and vanished.
Ellen lurched backwards, hand going for the silver knife velcroed to the bottom of the sink, but there wasn’t anything different. The girl had been there, and now she was gone. That was all.
She took a deep breath, mouth pressing into a thin, irritated line. “Damn angels,” she muttered, and went back to working.
---
“I don’t want your help, Anna,” was the first thing Ellen heard when she walked into the bar two days later. The first thing she really noticed was a very irritated-looking Castiel standing next to the bar, the redheaded girl sitting on a barstool behind him. “Leave.”
“I just want to help you. Both of you.” She paused for a moment. “Pride is a sin, Cas.”
“This isn’t pride,” Castiel said, words practically on top of hers. “Although I am nearing wrath.”
“Is there a reason you decided to come argue in my bar and not some cloud?” Ellen asked, finally shutting the door behind her and walking straight for the bar. The redhead – Anna – stood up as soon as she got within throwing distance, a smile back on her face. It was surprising enough that Ellen stopped to glance from the younger angel to Castiel. “Who’s this?”
“Anna,” Castiel stated. “She was one of my sisters.” He hesitated, and then seemed to grudgingly add, “One of my older sisters.”
“I Fell and got my Grace back,” Anna contributed. “Before I Fell, I was Cas’ boss.”
“Good for you,” Ellen said, walked past, and ignored what sounded quite a bit like siblings bickering very efficiently. She got about ten minutes of restocking the bar without interruption before Anna turned towards her.
“He won’t let me try to advise him,” Anna said. Castiel’s jaw was locked shut behind her, almost glaring at the back of his big sister’s head. Ellen sent a meaningful glance at Castiel. Anna’s eyes followed. When she looked back, Anna swallowed.
“I’m guessing there’s a reason he’s looking at you like that,” she said wryly.
Anna took a deep breath. “I slept with Dean the last night I was human.”
Ellen had to shift backwards after that revelation.
“I was human,” Anna continued, sounding like she was appealing to a higher power. “It doesn’t count if I was human. I just want to help him-”
Ellen held up a hand, which was enough to make the angel shut her mouth. She poured herself a small shot of whiskey and tossed it back. She’d have to be tipsy to deal with a situation like this with humans, let alone what were supposed to be agents of God. She snapped the glass back onto the bar. “You had a one-night-stand with the human your little brother’s apparently in love with, and you want to give him relationship advice.”
Anna shifted just enough to make her look even more awkward than if she hadn’t. “I have good intentions. I want to help them both be happy.”
“Great,” Ellen muttered, and poured herself another drink.
---
The bar didn’t open that night, considering it was Ellen who ended up drunk before six. Angels weren’t known for their mercy, but Castiel and Anna were glorious manifestations of heaven when Anna politely escorted the few customers out and Castiel placed two fingers on her forehead. She dropped to sleep easily, dreaming of Bill and Jo in green meadows that stretched for miles.
---
Miraculously, there was no hangover. Since it was miraculous, Ellen didn’t have to think very hard to know it was thanks to the bickering angel siblings sitting at a table near the jukebox. Their voices were courteously hushed, even though Castiel looked ready to either tear his hair out or wrap his hands around Anna’s slender throat and start to squeeze.
“My opinion isn’t going to change, Anna,” Castiel stated. “And I’m still supposed to kill you.”
“We’ve lost enough siblings already,” Anna replied quietly. “I know you think it’s a bad idea, but maybe if you tried it-”
“No. Even the thought is degrading,” he said. “Dean Winchester isn’t some-”
“Do I want to know?” Ellen asked, already wondering if she needed to head for the alcohol again.
Castiel glared at Anna for a moment before turning to Ellen. “She continues to suggest I ‘jump’ him.”
Ellen sighed, long and hard. “Subtle isn’t going to get you very far,” she said. “You need to hit that boy with a two-by-four of truth before he’ll get it. And…jumping him would do that, sure, but he might be kind of pissed at you if you just latch onto his mouth without any warning.”
Castiel tilted his head to the side just enough for Ellen to know he was thinking, possibly plotting. “You’re suggesting I outright proposition him.”
“Not proposition,” Ellen snapped. “Look him in the eye and tell him how you feel.”
“He’d stab me,” Castiel stated.
“Then you’d have your answer, wouldn’t you?” Ellen retorted, and headed for the bar, rubbing at the grime stuck to her poor bar hard enough to start ripping the cloth.
When she looked up, Castiel was gone and Anna was sitting in front of her, smiling.
“You’re not going to go watch?” Ellen asked dryly.
“I wanted to thank you,” Anna said. “And possibly help you.”
Ellen eyed her suspiciously, but the angel just sat there contentedly, just a tad bit expectant. With a short ironic prayer for God to save her from the angels, she grabbed the broom from under the bar and handed it over. “Get to work then.”
Anna’s smile only widened as her feet slid back onto the floor and she started sweeping.
---
Fifty minutes later, Castiel reappeared. There was a knife in his chest, and for a moment Ellen felt like she’d been stabbed, too. The moment was short, though, considering Castiel had a wistful, confused expression on his face.
“Well?” Ellen asked.
Castiel frowned, idly pulled the knife out, and was polite enough to wash the blood off of it in the back room, although he wasn’t polite enough to answer the question. He handed the knife to Anna, who took it without comment, slipping it into her own jacket.
“May I have another Chi Chi?” Castiel asked politely.
Ellen crossed her arms over her chest. “If you tell me what happened, yes.”
“I told him how I felt, he stabbed me to make sure my vessel wasn’t possessed by a demon, and then asked for time to think,” he said, and paused. “I told you he’d stab me.”
Ellen let out a breath and pulled out a glass and a wedge of pineapple, Castiel following and situating himself on his usual barstool, Anna not far behind. She tilted her head to the side slightly, entire body radiating interest. “I’ve never heard of a Chi Chi before.”
Rolling her eyes, Ellen pulled down a second glass.
---
“DEAN?” Ellen shouted into the phone.
“Ellen? Man, I can barely hear you. You okay?”
Ellen grit her teeth, covering her ear as best she could while keeping the phone as far away from the very, very loud jukebox. “DEAN WINCHESTER, COME AND PICK UP YOUR DRUNK ANGELS OR I SWEAR TO GOD I’M GOING TO KILL YOUALL OVER AGAIN.”
”What? What do you mean MY angels, and. Wait, did you say drunk?”
“YES I SAID DRUNK.” Ellen grit her teeth. “THEY GOT IN A DRINKING CONTEST AND THEY’RE NOT FIT FOR FLYING.” A table crashed down to the sound of laughter and applause from the patrons they hadn’t scared out yet. “THEY’RE NOT FIT FOR SPEAKING.”
There was a chorus of hallelujah! from the bar.
“…please tell me I’m not hearing that.”
Ellen’s teeth were going to crack at this rate. “IT’S THE ONLY SONG ON THE JUKEBOX WITH ‘HALLELUJAH’ IN THE LYRICS.”
“It’s Raining Men has hallelujah in the lyrics?”
“DO YOU WANT ME TO PUT THE PHONE IN THE AIR SO YOU CAN HEAR IT?” Ellen shouted, and could practically hear Dean flinch back.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Listen, we’re kind of working a job right now-”
“Hallelujah!” chorused the bar.
“YOU COULD BE GIVING BIRTH AND I WOULD STILL DRAG YOUR ASS DOWN HERE,” Ellen snapped. “THEY’RE YOUR ANGELS, YOU DEAL WITH THEM. GET HERE. NOW.”
“They’re not my ange-”
Ellen hung up, groaned, and started looking for something to help her headache.
---
By the time Dean finally showed up, graveyard dirt still clinging to his shoes, the angels were singing the whole song by heart and not even bothering to look like they were putting money in the jukebox. Luckily, Ellen was pretty damn sure the humans in the bar were too drunk to even remember that in the morning. She’d certainly never seen a sober sixty-year-old dancing like Mr. Esther was, and she was sure she never wanted to see anyone, regardless of age, dancing like that again.
She watched Dean stare at the crowd for a moment and then hustle over to where she leaned against the bar and looked as pleased as she was with the situation.
“What the hell happened here?” Dean hissed out.
Ellen sighed. “Anna challenged Castiel to a drinking contest. They were twirling a quarter with their angel powers or something, and when they couldn’t twirl them anymore they asked me what they could use the quarters for, and I told them two quarters could get you a song from the jukebox.” She grimaced. “They picked the one with ‘hallelujah’ and ‘amen’ in it.”
“So I hear,” Dean said, and it took a lot of willpower to do nothing more than glare at him. He held up his hands. “Alright, alright, sorry. So what, you think I can drag them out of there?”
“Well, you’re going to at least try,” Ellen said, eyes already crazy enough that Dean had to know she was at the end of her rope. “I’m not here to babysit your angels for you.”
“Why do you keep saying they’re mine?!” Dean shouted.
“Well, Dean, why do you keep saying they aren’t?” Ellen snapped back, and that seemed to be enough to make the boy stop and actually think for a moment. She could see the epiphany grow on his face, and she let out a breath as he turned to look at the cheerful crowd dancing merrily near the jukebox. It barely took a shove in the shoulder to get him walking towards the group.
Ellen couldn’t hear anything not in a twenty-foot radius of her, so she didn’t know what Dean said to Anna that made her smile and head right over to a barstool in front of Ellen, the jukebox flicking off when she planted herself in Ellen’s line of sight. Even without the jukebox on, she couldn’t hear what he was saying to coerce Castiel back towards the bar, or what Castiel himself was saying in return, smiling and wobbling enough that Dean was half carrying him to a stool, which then had to be turned into a table when he started to fall backwards with a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Why aren’t you falling over?” Ellen asked Anna.
Anna snickered, looking at the wobbling, chuckling Castiel. “He’s a wimp, that’s why. Nerdy little Cas. If we’d had a childhood, I’d have called him that.”
“He’s practically twice your size right now,” Ellen said disbelievingly.
“It’s the order that counts,” Anna said, and winked at Ellen downright suggestively.
“You okay there, Cas?” Dean asked from where he was kneeling in front of the angel.
Castiel shrugged hard enough to nearly fall down. “I feel fine, Dean,” he said as Dean righted him again and turned a pleading look at Ellen.
“I’m too old for your charms, Winchester,” Ellen stated, only to hesitate and lean back. “Well, I’ll take Anna off your hands. She looks less likely to vomit in your car.”
“Ah, gross,” Dean complained.
“Your angels, your responsibility,” Ellen said.
Anna frowned at her. “I’m not his, Castiel is.”
“It’s true,” Castiel said solemnly, nodding with a very big sweep of his head. “But Dean doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“Aaaanyone,” Anna agreed.
Castiel nodded again, and turned to give the man in front of him an excited look. “Did you know Mother Nature’s a single woman, Dean?”
“She’s going to teach every angel to rearrange the sky,” Anna added. “And then help all the women find the perfect guy.”
“Let me guess,” Dean said dryly. “It’s raining men.”
“Hallelujah,” Ellen finished, sent a considering look Castiel’s way, and relented. “He’s not going to be good for any car trips. I’ll take care of-”
Anna gave her an absolutely heartbroken look, leaning forward just enough to whisper out a broken, “You’re one of the reasons I Fell.”
And really, after that there was no way she could swap angels with Dean. Anna’s head fell slowly onto the top of the bar, hair spreading over the top like a pair of red wings. Ellen ran a hand through her own hair and looked up at Dean. “I’ll pay to clean up your car if he throws up all over it. It’s mostly their own fault.”
“Mostly?” Dean muttered, but did nothing more than shake his head before slowly helping Castiel to his feet. He hesitated when Castiel was standing on his own with minimal wobbling but a very glazed look in his eye. “You want me to help get rid of the other drunken idiots in here?”
Ellen smiled at him. “I can handle them, but thank you.”
“You’re a good person, Dean,” Castiel said.
“Glad you think so,” Dean replied easily and took a hold of Castiel’s shoulder with a strange look on his face, herding him softly out the door.
When Ellen nudged her own angel, all she got was a slight shift in the shoulders. She looked intently at Anna, trying to figure out what to make of the angel that she’d apparently been partially responsible for making Fall. Seeing that Anna wasn’t going to be losing control of levitating quarters any time soon, she shifted away from the bar and headed for the people still under the impression it would be raining men at half past ten, music or not, and helped them get back home.
---
Ellen didn’t leave the bar that night, choosing to set up the cot in the back room and set Anna up on it while she herself slept on the same bench seat she’d put Castiel on. When she woke up, Anna was sitting uncomfortably on the other side of the table. Her mouth was set to smiling as soon as Ellen’s eyes opened, though.
“Do you remember what I told you last night?” Anna asked.
“I helped you Fall,” Ellen said quietly.
Anna shook her head, leaning over the table to get a better look at Ellen. “You didn’t help me Fall, you were one of the reasons I chose to.” She paused, small turning into something softer. “I Fell on your first wedding anniversary. I saw so many happy, loving, emotional things happening that day, so many lives being lived as well as they all could, saw so many things I couldn’t do. Angels have always had a small fascination with Hunters, and there you were, making a family of Hunters, being so strong and in love, and I wanted to…” She shrugged, uncomfortable. “I was hoping to have a mother.”
Ellen stared at her. “Are you telling me you wanted to be Jo?”
“We have a Father,” Anna said. “A distant, possibly nonexistent Father with every being in heaven and earth as his children. I wanted to know what a real father would be like, a real mother, a real life.” She smiled. “And I did get that.”
“But you still wanted to be smiting demons,” Ellen said, finally understanding. “That’s why you wanted a Hunter family.”
“I should have known I couldn’t have the best of both worlds,” Anna said calmly, smile fading. “But I’m content with what I had.”
Ellen nodded, not quite sure what she could say to that – to any of that – but it seemed to be enough. Anna finally leaned all the way over the table and placed a soft, serene kiss on Ellen’s forehead.
“If I could bless you without damning you at the same time, I would,” Anna said quietly.
Ellen smiled at her. “I feel plenty blessed already.”
“Thank you, Ellen,” Anna said, and with one last smile, vanished.
---
Afterwards, she spent most of the morning on the cot Anna had vacated. Ellen knew she hadn’t been blessed, since angels couldn’t lie, but there was still a lingering serenity that seemed to tingle down every nerve, emanating from her forehead. Her short nap felt like a whole eight hours in the most comfortable bed known to mankind. Everything just seemed…easier.
Which was probably why, when Dean marched through the door with a slightly frantic look, Ellen didn’t do much more than smile at him and ask what the trouble was.
“What’s the trouble?” he hissed out as he looked around, even up at the ceiling, and gave her a harried look. “I deflowered a drunk angel, that’s the trouble! He’s going to wake up and apocalypse or not he’s going to kill me and send me back to hell or send me to the great depression and leave me there or trap me in some kind of chalk circle of doom and-”
Ellen put a hand over his mouth with a dubious look. “You do remember he told you he loved you, right?”
Dean was at least distracted enough to look unsure, so Ellen removed her hand. “Well, yeah, but he told me.” He hesitated. “Well, after Halloween he told me some things that would lead me to believe it was in more of a ‘Jesus loves you’ sort of way-”
“It was an I’m in love with you, Dean,” Castiel said quietly from where he stood three feet away from Dean. Dean jumped, staring at the angel for a moment, and then another moment, until there was nothing but silence and seeing.
Ellen cleared her throat. “In the absence of Anna here,” she said, moving away from the mostly hypnotized Dean, “It’s left to me to say ‘Cas, jump him.’”
“What do…” Dean began, only to trail off when Castiel shifted forward, hesitating long enough for Dean to lick his lips and swallow as Castiel’s fingers reached out to run up his cheek and settle in his hair.
“You just have to say no,” Castiel said simply, lips hovering a breath over Dean’s. “One word, and I’ll stop.”
Instead of a no, Dean breathed out Cas, and their mouths were immediately against each other, hands moving to feel fabrics and the skin beneath, to touch each other as much as possible as they kissed in a way that managed to make hard seem almost sweet. When Dean’s hand began to slide the tan trenchcoat off Castiel’s shoulders, Ellen politely shifted them in the direction of the waiting cot in the back room. Since they were both smart men, they even locked the door behind them.
Shaking her head, Ellen returned to her bar. She set chairs where they were meant to go, wiped off the gunk she’d missed in the confusion of last night, and tended to her work.
When she turned on the jukebox, jazz twirled through the air.
With a smile, Ellen took a seat, set her washcloth down, and listened.
----
(The Chi Chi; clearly any angel's drink of choice.)
Title: She Taught Every Angel To Rearrange The Sky
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Ellen, Anna. Possible Anna/Ellen if you really want it.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Both crack and seriousness, boys kissing, girls kissing (sorta), blasphemy, The Weather Girls, a small cultural lesson about the Hindu caste system, some profanity, and lots of liquor. Spoilers for 4x16.
Summary: Ellen Harvelle's bar gets some angelic visitors, mostly because the angelic visitors need some help dealing with non-angelic people.
The new bar wasn’t The Roadhouse by any means, but considering it was in the middle of a backwater town with plenty of non-players to keep it in business, it was safe. After the things Ellen Harvelle had seen in her life, quiet sounded refreshing. Peaceful. Easy. And, for about a year and a half, it was.
It was a quiet afternoon, sun skidding over the glass front of the building as noon shrank away, when she turned away from wiping down the ever-sticky bar to put a bottle back in its place and spotted a lone customer, standing frozen in front of the door.
The bell over the door hadn’t rung.
Ellen was a Hunter and definitely wasn’t stupid. The bar was surrounded with iron, salt was ground into the windows and in grooves under the doors, and that bell was there for a damned good reason. But, as she was also a bartender, it wasn’t a difficult decision to do her job. Arms spread at a comfortable distance on the bar – a habit of long nights running grooves into the floor and taking as much of a break as she could manage – she gave the man a smile. “We opened up just seven minutes ago,” Ellen said, sounding as impressed as she could. “Never heard someone come in so early. You feeling alright?”
The man looked at her strangely, brow creased and blue eyes seeing something deeper inside Ellen than she ever liked to think of a person getting. “Ellen Harvelle,” he stated. “You know the Winchesters.”
One hand slipped down to the shotgun behind the bar, but her smile didn’t move at all. “Who would they be?”
The man walked forward, coming closer with a stride that spoke both warrior and caution to her, for both parties involved. “They would be Sam and Dean,” he said, and stopped in front of the bar, head tilting slightly. “I am Castiel, and angel of the Lord, and I need your help.”
Ellen gave him the most dubious look she owned, which was pretty damn dubious. “Bobby said angels were real, but-”
“Dean is difficult to speak with,” Castiel said, ignoring any doubts or complaints she may have had. “As the closest figure to them which would be socially acceptable to speak with-”
“Just hold on for a second,” Ellen said, holding out a hand as a silent plea for him to actually listen to her. When Castiel remained silent, she took a deep breath and put both hands back on the bar, shotgun untended. “The first thing you need to know? Dean doesn’t listen to anyone but his daddy when it comes to orders, and John Winchester is dead. You can’t do anything to make him listen.” She huffed. “Boy has a brain thick as concrete.”
Castiel frowned at her. “He’s very intelligent.”
“Not if he doesn’t want to be,” Ellen said dryly, and the angel looked so hopelessly confused that she let out a sigh and grabbed one of the glasses beneath the bar, setting it in front of a stool. “Sit down, honey. Sounds like this may take a while.”
“I have no money,” Castiel stated, looking almost embarrassed about the fact.
Ellen smiled at him and poured him a finger of whiskey. “Consider it a thank you for dragging Dean out of hell.”
“It was the Lord’s command. I merely obeyed,” he said, and after a considering look took a sip of whiskey. After a wide-eyed look, he managed to spit the drink back into the glass in the most polite way Ellen thought she’d ever see.
“Then we’ll just find you something else to drink,” Ellen said, cutting him off before the angel could apologize or tell her liquor was some sort of incredibly minor sin. She dumped it into the sink and considered the bottles behind her. “Now, what do you need help communicating?”
There was a very, very long pause, and Ellen heard a quiet, “Everything.”
It brought a small smile to her face. She pulled out the orange juice and vodka; Screwdrivers were more or less mild enough drinks. “How long have you guys been walking around Earth again? Two, three months?”
“Most of that time is spent in battle as well,” Castiel added, sounding almost disappointed by the fact. She wasn’t sure if he was disappointed it wasn’t all the time or less, and apparently angels were fairly good mind-readers. “I’d like more time to try and help Dean and his brother find their destinies as easily as possible. It seems impossible to even compliment him.”
“He was raised strange,” Ellen said, grumbling slightly. “Strange morals and ideas, but his heart’s in the right place, you know?”
“I know,” he said quietly, his eyes trained on the bar with a pensive expression, and Ellen knew too.
She thanked God for already having dealt with a teenager, had a lurking suspicion this was why she had one, and took a deep breath. She slid the screwdriver into his incredibly limited line of sight (or so she assumed) and walked around the bar to sit next to him.
Castiel looked up at her with a guilty, resigned look. All Ellen could do was give him a hopefully reassuring smile. “What is it you really want to communicate to that blockhead?”
The angel took a sip of the screwdriver. It stayed in his mouth longer, but ended up politely spit back into the glass just like the whiskey.
“Don’t worry, honey,” she said, and leaned over the bar to put that in the sink. “We’ll work on that, too.”
---
It was hard to hear over the jukebox and the crowd and the constant swarm of requests for alcohol, but Ellen could still hear Castiel clear as glass. Now situated on the back bar, particularly by the non-alcoholic beer since he’d have to shift a lot less, they kept talking, the angel sipping at the pink umbrella-and-pineapple-decked glass. “Do you know if he’s ever-”
“Here you are,” Ellen said, handing over three beers to the waiting and possibly under-aged kid in front of her, and turned to Castiel. “I don’t know anything about that boy’s sex life and I’m not sure I want to.”
Castiel frowned slightly. “I meant to ask if he’d ever been in a serious relationship.”
Ellen raised an eyebrow. “You really think a Hunter could manage something like that?” She shook her head. “Here’s what you need to remember about Hunters – they’re wanderers. May have a home base, but they wander, eyes and hands included.”
“You don’t think he would be faithful?”
Ellen let out a sigh. “Honey, you can fly. Wherever that boy wanders, you could follow. That’d help a hell of a lot.”
“You weren’t always with Bill, and he was never unfaithful,” Castiel said. When Ellen froze mid-pour, shaking slightly, the angel moved just enough to touch her shoulder. “He loves you down to his soul, Ellen. He’s at peace.”
She watched the perspiration on a nearby glass slide down onto the bar, and turned to Castiel. “Alright. How drunk are you?”
“I feel fine,” he said, looking confused. Ellen planted a fist on her hip and looked at him. “I’m not drunk, Ellen. I’d know if I was drunk.”
“You’ve been sipping liquor since noon and you’re on your second Chi Chi. Angel or not, you’re definitely not sober.”
He lifted his chin just enough to look at her imperiously. “I know I’m not sober. I said I’m not drunk,” he stated. After a considering look, Castiel took another sip of his drink, the paper umbrella pushing against his nose. “Angels don’t lie.”
“You’re good at dodging the truth, though, aren’t you,” Ellen muttered, and went back to doing her job, Castiel drinking and people-watching over her shoulder.
---
Last call had come and gone. Castiel hadn’t.
He was back on a barstool, arms splayed on the bar as his blurry eyes still managed to follow Ellen’s efficient work. “You’ve really dealt with this before?”
Ellen let out a short laugh, throwing an amused look at him before turning back to the sink. “My daughter had a crush on Dean. I don’t know how to deal with the angel part, though, although you sure seem to be acting like a teenage girl.”
“Joanna was a very mature teenage girl in many ways,” Castiel stated. “And not in many others.”
Ellen let out a sigh. “It’s a little unnerving when you talk about my family history when I’ve never met you and I’m pretty damn sure you weren’t actually there.”
Castiel propped his head on an arm, giving Ellen a small smile. “I like Hunters. Hunters are some of the most dedicated, moral, and unwavering humans in the world.” He looked down at the bar. “In India, there’s a sect of priests and kshatriyas that manage to keep a large area of Southeast Asia more or less ghost-free. Mongolia has tribes that devote themselves to keeping Siberia, Mongolia, and China safe from anything that eats humans. Africa is full of-“
“What’s a kshatriya?”
“The Hindu warrior class. They have a large government basis, too-”
Ellen stared at him. “My god,” she said. “You’re a nerdy angel.”
Castiel let out a sigh. Ellen noted that Castiel didn’t deny being a nerd. “My point is that most places, hunting the supernatural is a duty passed through families and generations in most parts of the world. They’re born to it. In North America, Hunters are called to it. It’s a choice. It’s a difficult choice, and you humans separate yourselves from everything you know and qualify as normal and go out to save the world one life at a time, never getting a reward but doing it anyway.”
Ellen smiled at him. “You’re drunk, aren’t you.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true,” Castiel said a bit darkly, and seemed to slump against his will. “I’ve never been drunk before.”
“I’ve never seen an angel drunk before, if it helps any.”
Castiel almost laughed. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. “My brother murdered seven of our siblings, tried to destroy me, and was killed in front of me.”
Ellen stopped scrubbing, simply watching the angel. When he didn’t say anything else, she frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”
His eyes opened just enough for her to see almost all the intensity in his eyes had faded away. “I heard that bartenders were good at giving advice.”
“We’re good at telling people what they ought to already know,” she said, and rounded the bar to take a seat next to him. “You don’t need any advice on this one, do you.”
“I don’t,” Castiel stated, head falling all the way to the wood. “I know betrayal.”
Ellen simply sat next to him, watched him fall asleep in silence.
She didn’t need to ask. She’d read the bible.
---
In all of Ellen Harvelle’s life, she had never thought she’d have to deal with the moral dilemma of whether or not to move a sleeping angel off her bar, let alone what to do with one later. Last night she’d moved him onto one of the bench seats and put a blanket over him, coat and all. As she unlocked the door and walked in, she hadn’t quite been sure what to expect.
Absolutely nothing being different had never been on that list.
The blanket was folded neatly and back in the closet exactly as it had been before she’d pulled it out, skewed corner and all. There wasn’t a single thing out of place. The lock on the door hadn’t been unlocked for him to get out. The paper umbrella that had been in his drink was clean and back in the same glass she kept the others in.
When she found herself trying to see if the pineapple piece was back, Ellen laughed at herself, rolling her eyes and turning away. After all, she had work to do.
---
Two days later, a redheaded girl was smiling at her from the other side of the bar. It was late enough for most people to have trickled out, only the devoted drinkers still hanging around, but Ellen still couldn’t remember seeing her come in. Ellen gave her a smile. “Can I help you?”
“You’ve already helped,” the girl said. “Thank you, Ellen, for helping him really see humanity.”
Ellen frowned, setting a hand on the bar to get a good look at the girl. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m going to need to see some ID if you’re going to be staying in here much longer.”
She seemed to actually amuse the girl. “You’re carding me.”
“I’m carding you,” Ellen agreed with an expectant look.
The girl reached down, only to blink and blush slightly. “I…I’ll return later,” she said, mumbling the last words, and vanished.
Ellen lurched backwards, hand going for the silver knife velcroed to the bottom of the sink, but there wasn’t anything different. The girl had been there, and now she was gone. That was all.
She took a deep breath, mouth pressing into a thin, irritated line. “Damn angels,” she muttered, and went back to working.
---
“I don’t want your help, Anna,” was the first thing Ellen heard when she walked into the bar two days later. The first thing she really noticed was a very irritated-looking Castiel standing next to the bar, the redheaded girl sitting on a barstool behind him. “Leave.”
“I just want to help you. Both of you.” She paused for a moment. “Pride is a sin, Cas.”
“This isn’t pride,” Castiel said, words practically on top of hers. “Although I am nearing wrath.”
“Is there a reason you decided to come argue in my bar and not some cloud?” Ellen asked, finally shutting the door behind her and walking straight for the bar. The redhead – Anna – stood up as soon as she got within throwing distance, a smile back on her face. It was surprising enough that Ellen stopped to glance from the younger angel to Castiel. “Who’s this?”
“Anna,” Castiel stated. “She was one of my sisters.” He hesitated, and then seemed to grudgingly add, “One of my older sisters.”
“I Fell and got my Grace back,” Anna contributed. “Before I Fell, I was Cas’ boss.”
“Good for you,” Ellen said, walked past, and ignored what sounded quite a bit like siblings bickering very efficiently. She got about ten minutes of restocking the bar without interruption before Anna turned towards her.
“He won’t let me try to advise him,” Anna said. Castiel’s jaw was locked shut behind her, almost glaring at the back of his big sister’s head. Ellen sent a meaningful glance at Castiel. Anna’s eyes followed. When she looked back, Anna swallowed.
“I’m guessing there’s a reason he’s looking at you like that,” she said wryly.
Anna took a deep breath. “I slept with Dean the last night I was human.”
Ellen had to shift backwards after that revelation.
“I was human,” Anna continued, sounding like she was appealing to a higher power. “It doesn’t count if I was human. I just want to help him-”
Ellen held up a hand, which was enough to make the angel shut her mouth. She poured herself a small shot of whiskey and tossed it back. She’d have to be tipsy to deal with a situation like this with humans, let alone what were supposed to be agents of God. She snapped the glass back onto the bar. “You had a one-night-stand with the human your little brother’s apparently in love with, and you want to give him relationship advice.”
Anna shifted just enough to make her look even more awkward than if she hadn’t. “I have good intentions. I want to help them both be happy.”
“Great,” Ellen muttered, and poured herself another drink.
---
The bar didn’t open that night, considering it was Ellen who ended up drunk before six. Angels weren’t known for their mercy, but Castiel and Anna were glorious manifestations of heaven when Anna politely escorted the few customers out and Castiel placed two fingers on her forehead. She dropped to sleep easily, dreaming of Bill and Jo in green meadows that stretched for miles.
---
Miraculously, there was no hangover. Since it was miraculous, Ellen didn’t have to think very hard to know it was thanks to the bickering angel siblings sitting at a table near the jukebox. Their voices were courteously hushed, even though Castiel looked ready to either tear his hair out or wrap his hands around Anna’s slender throat and start to squeeze.
“My opinion isn’t going to change, Anna,” Castiel stated. “And I’m still supposed to kill you.”
“We’ve lost enough siblings already,” Anna replied quietly. “I know you think it’s a bad idea, but maybe if you tried it-”
“No. Even the thought is degrading,” he said. “Dean Winchester isn’t some-”
“Do I want to know?” Ellen asked, already wondering if she needed to head for the alcohol again.
Castiel glared at Anna for a moment before turning to Ellen. “She continues to suggest I ‘jump’ him.”
Ellen sighed, long and hard. “Subtle isn’t going to get you very far,” she said. “You need to hit that boy with a two-by-four of truth before he’ll get it. And…jumping him would do that, sure, but he might be kind of pissed at you if you just latch onto his mouth without any warning.”
Castiel tilted his head to the side just enough for Ellen to know he was thinking, possibly plotting. “You’re suggesting I outright proposition him.”
“Not proposition,” Ellen snapped. “Look him in the eye and tell him how you feel.”
“He’d stab me,” Castiel stated.
“Then you’d have your answer, wouldn’t you?” Ellen retorted, and headed for the bar, rubbing at the grime stuck to her poor bar hard enough to start ripping the cloth.
When she looked up, Castiel was gone and Anna was sitting in front of her, smiling.
“You’re not going to go watch?” Ellen asked dryly.
“I wanted to thank you,” Anna said. “And possibly help you.”
Ellen eyed her suspiciously, but the angel just sat there contentedly, just a tad bit expectant. With a short ironic prayer for God to save her from the angels, she grabbed the broom from under the bar and handed it over. “Get to work then.”
Anna’s smile only widened as her feet slid back onto the floor and she started sweeping.
---
Fifty minutes later, Castiel reappeared. There was a knife in his chest, and for a moment Ellen felt like she’d been stabbed, too. The moment was short, though, considering Castiel had a wistful, confused expression on his face.
“Well?” Ellen asked.
Castiel frowned, idly pulled the knife out, and was polite enough to wash the blood off of it in the back room, although he wasn’t polite enough to answer the question. He handed the knife to Anna, who took it without comment, slipping it into her own jacket.
“May I have another Chi Chi?” Castiel asked politely.
Ellen crossed her arms over her chest. “If you tell me what happened, yes.”
“I told him how I felt, he stabbed me to make sure my vessel wasn’t possessed by a demon, and then asked for time to think,” he said, and paused. “I told you he’d stab me.”
Ellen let out a breath and pulled out a glass and a wedge of pineapple, Castiel following and situating himself on his usual barstool, Anna not far behind. She tilted her head to the side slightly, entire body radiating interest. “I’ve never heard of a Chi Chi before.”
Rolling her eyes, Ellen pulled down a second glass.
---
“DEAN?” Ellen shouted into the phone.
“Ellen? Man, I can barely hear you. You okay?”
Ellen grit her teeth, covering her ear as best she could while keeping the phone as far away from the very, very loud jukebox. “DEAN WINCHESTER, COME AND PICK UP YOUR DRUNK ANGELS OR I SWEAR TO GOD I’M GOING TO KILL YOUALL OVER AGAIN.”
”What? What do you mean MY angels, and. Wait, did you say drunk?”
“YES I SAID DRUNK.” Ellen grit her teeth. “THEY GOT IN A DRINKING CONTEST AND THEY’RE NOT FIT FOR FLYING.” A table crashed down to the sound of laughter and applause from the patrons they hadn’t scared out yet. “THEY’RE NOT FIT FOR SPEAKING.”
There was a chorus of hallelujah! from the bar.
“…please tell me I’m not hearing that.”
Ellen’s teeth were going to crack at this rate. “IT’S THE ONLY SONG ON THE JUKEBOX WITH ‘HALLELUJAH’ IN THE LYRICS.”
“It’s Raining Men has hallelujah in the lyrics?”
“DO YOU WANT ME TO PUT THE PHONE IN THE AIR SO YOU CAN HEAR IT?” Ellen shouted, and could practically hear Dean flinch back.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Listen, we’re kind of working a job right now-”
“Hallelujah!” chorused the bar.
“YOU COULD BE GIVING BIRTH AND I WOULD STILL DRAG YOUR ASS DOWN HERE,” Ellen snapped. “THEY’RE YOUR ANGELS, YOU DEAL WITH THEM. GET HERE. NOW.”
“They’re not my ange-”
Ellen hung up, groaned, and started looking for something to help her headache.
---
By the time Dean finally showed up, graveyard dirt still clinging to his shoes, the angels were singing the whole song by heart and not even bothering to look like they were putting money in the jukebox. Luckily, Ellen was pretty damn sure the humans in the bar were too drunk to even remember that in the morning. She’d certainly never seen a sober sixty-year-old dancing like Mr. Esther was, and she was sure she never wanted to see anyone, regardless of age, dancing like that again.
She watched Dean stare at the crowd for a moment and then hustle over to where she leaned against the bar and looked as pleased as she was with the situation.
“What the hell happened here?” Dean hissed out.
Ellen sighed. “Anna challenged Castiel to a drinking contest. They were twirling a quarter with their angel powers or something, and when they couldn’t twirl them anymore they asked me what they could use the quarters for, and I told them two quarters could get you a song from the jukebox.” She grimaced. “They picked the one with ‘hallelujah’ and ‘amen’ in it.”
“So I hear,” Dean said, and it took a lot of willpower to do nothing more than glare at him. He held up his hands. “Alright, alright, sorry. So what, you think I can drag them out of there?”
“Well, you’re going to at least try,” Ellen said, eyes already crazy enough that Dean had to know she was at the end of her rope. “I’m not here to babysit your angels for you.”
“Why do you keep saying they’re mine?!” Dean shouted.
“Well, Dean, why do you keep saying they aren’t?” Ellen snapped back, and that seemed to be enough to make the boy stop and actually think for a moment. She could see the epiphany grow on his face, and she let out a breath as he turned to look at the cheerful crowd dancing merrily near the jukebox. It barely took a shove in the shoulder to get him walking towards the group.
Ellen couldn’t hear anything not in a twenty-foot radius of her, so she didn’t know what Dean said to Anna that made her smile and head right over to a barstool in front of Ellen, the jukebox flicking off when she planted herself in Ellen’s line of sight. Even without the jukebox on, she couldn’t hear what he was saying to coerce Castiel back towards the bar, or what Castiel himself was saying in return, smiling and wobbling enough that Dean was half carrying him to a stool, which then had to be turned into a table when he started to fall backwards with a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Why aren’t you falling over?” Ellen asked Anna.
Anna snickered, looking at the wobbling, chuckling Castiel. “He’s a wimp, that’s why. Nerdy little Cas. If we’d had a childhood, I’d have called him that.”
“He’s practically twice your size right now,” Ellen said disbelievingly.
“It’s the order that counts,” Anna said, and winked at Ellen downright suggestively.
“You okay there, Cas?” Dean asked from where he was kneeling in front of the angel.
Castiel shrugged hard enough to nearly fall down. “I feel fine, Dean,” he said as Dean righted him again and turned a pleading look at Ellen.
“I’m too old for your charms, Winchester,” Ellen stated, only to hesitate and lean back. “Well, I’ll take Anna off your hands. She looks less likely to vomit in your car.”
“Ah, gross,” Dean complained.
“Your angels, your responsibility,” Ellen said.
Anna frowned at her. “I’m not his, Castiel is.”
“It’s true,” Castiel said solemnly, nodding with a very big sweep of his head. “But Dean doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“Aaaanyone,” Anna agreed.
Castiel nodded again, and turned to give the man in front of him an excited look. “Did you know Mother Nature’s a single woman, Dean?”
“She’s going to teach every angel to rearrange the sky,” Anna added. “And then help all the women find the perfect guy.”
“Let me guess,” Dean said dryly. “It’s raining men.”
“Hallelujah,” Ellen finished, sent a considering look Castiel’s way, and relented. “He’s not going to be good for any car trips. I’ll take care of-”
Anna gave her an absolutely heartbroken look, leaning forward just enough to whisper out a broken, “You’re one of the reasons I Fell.”
And really, after that there was no way she could swap angels with Dean. Anna’s head fell slowly onto the top of the bar, hair spreading over the top like a pair of red wings. Ellen ran a hand through her own hair and looked up at Dean. “I’ll pay to clean up your car if he throws up all over it. It’s mostly their own fault.”
“Mostly?” Dean muttered, but did nothing more than shake his head before slowly helping Castiel to his feet. He hesitated when Castiel was standing on his own with minimal wobbling but a very glazed look in his eye. “You want me to help get rid of the other drunken idiots in here?”
Ellen smiled at him. “I can handle them, but thank you.”
“You’re a good person, Dean,” Castiel said.
“Glad you think so,” Dean replied easily and took a hold of Castiel’s shoulder with a strange look on his face, herding him softly out the door.
When Ellen nudged her own angel, all she got was a slight shift in the shoulders. She looked intently at Anna, trying to figure out what to make of the angel that she’d apparently been partially responsible for making Fall. Seeing that Anna wasn’t going to be losing control of levitating quarters any time soon, she shifted away from the bar and headed for the people still under the impression it would be raining men at half past ten, music or not, and helped them get back home.
---
Ellen didn’t leave the bar that night, choosing to set up the cot in the back room and set Anna up on it while she herself slept on the same bench seat she’d put Castiel on. When she woke up, Anna was sitting uncomfortably on the other side of the table. Her mouth was set to smiling as soon as Ellen’s eyes opened, though.
“Do you remember what I told you last night?” Anna asked.
“I helped you Fall,” Ellen said quietly.
Anna shook her head, leaning over the table to get a better look at Ellen. “You didn’t help me Fall, you were one of the reasons I chose to.” She paused, small turning into something softer. “I Fell on your first wedding anniversary. I saw so many happy, loving, emotional things happening that day, so many lives being lived as well as they all could, saw so many things I couldn’t do. Angels have always had a small fascination with Hunters, and there you were, making a family of Hunters, being so strong and in love, and I wanted to…” She shrugged, uncomfortable. “I was hoping to have a mother.”
Ellen stared at her. “Are you telling me you wanted to be Jo?”
“We have a Father,” Anna said. “A distant, possibly nonexistent Father with every being in heaven and earth as his children. I wanted to know what a real father would be like, a real mother, a real life.” She smiled. “And I did get that.”
“But you still wanted to be smiting demons,” Ellen said, finally understanding. “That’s why you wanted a Hunter family.”
“I should have known I couldn’t have the best of both worlds,” Anna said calmly, smile fading. “But I’m content with what I had.”
Ellen nodded, not quite sure what she could say to that – to any of that – but it seemed to be enough. Anna finally leaned all the way over the table and placed a soft, serene kiss on Ellen’s forehead.
“If I could bless you without damning you at the same time, I would,” Anna said quietly.
Ellen smiled at her. “I feel plenty blessed already.”
“Thank you, Ellen,” Anna said, and with one last smile, vanished.
---
Afterwards, she spent most of the morning on the cot Anna had vacated. Ellen knew she hadn’t been blessed, since angels couldn’t lie, but there was still a lingering serenity that seemed to tingle down every nerve, emanating from her forehead. Her short nap felt like a whole eight hours in the most comfortable bed known to mankind. Everything just seemed…easier.
Which was probably why, when Dean marched through the door with a slightly frantic look, Ellen didn’t do much more than smile at him and ask what the trouble was.
“What’s the trouble?” he hissed out as he looked around, even up at the ceiling, and gave her a harried look. “I deflowered a drunk angel, that’s the trouble! He’s going to wake up and apocalypse or not he’s going to kill me and send me back to hell or send me to the great depression and leave me there or trap me in some kind of chalk circle of doom and-”
Ellen put a hand over his mouth with a dubious look. “You do remember he told you he loved you, right?”
Dean was at least distracted enough to look unsure, so Ellen removed her hand. “Well, yeah, but he told me.” He hesitated. “Well, after Halloween he told me some things that would lead me to believe it was in more of a ‘Jesus loves you’ sort of way-”
“It was an I’m in love with you, Dean,” Castiel said quietly from where he stood three feet away from Dean. Dean jumped, staring at the angel for a moment, and then another moment, until there was nothing but silence and seeing.
Ellen cleared her throat. “In the absence of Anna here,” she said, moving away from the mostly hypnotized Dean, “It’s left to me to say ‘Cas, jump him.’”
“What do…” Dean began, only to trail off when Castiel shifted forward, hesitating long enough for Dean to lick his lips and swallow as Castiel’s fingers reached out to run up his cheek and settle in his hair.
“You just have to say no,” Castiel said simply, lips hovering a breath over Dean’s. “One word, and I’ll stop.”
Instead of a no, Dean breathed out Cas, and their mouths were immediately against each other, hands moving to feel fabrics and the skin beneath, to touch each other as much as possible as they kissed in a way that managed to make hard seem almost sweet. When Dean’s hand began to slide the tan trenchcoat off Castiel’s shoulders, Ellen politely shifted them in the direction of the waiting cot in the back room. Since they were both smart men, they even locked the door behind them.
Shaking her head, Ellen returned to her bar. She set chairs where they were meant to go, wiped off the gunk she’d missed in the confusion of last night, and tended to her work.
When she turned on the jukebox, jazz twirled through the air.
With a smile, Ellen took a seat, set her washcloth down, and listened.
(The Chi Chi; clearly any angel's drink of choice.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 01:54 pm (UTC)(Also "It's Raining Men (Hallelujah)" OMGFTW!)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 09:12 pm (UTC)Is it sad that when I heard the 'hallelujah' and 'amen' in the chorus I immediately spent a whole night writing this? *headdesk*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 02:10 pm (UTC)After a wide-eyed look, he managed to spit the drink back into the glass in the most polite way Ellen thought she’d ever see.
Haha somehow I can totally picture Cas doing this, it's so funny!
Fifty minutes later, Castiel reappeared. There was a knife in his chest
Another line that killed me.
You rock! This was awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 09:15 pm (UTC)Castiel is obviously VERY polite when it comes to 'ewww, how do humans like this' things.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 02:11 pm (UTC)I love Ellen's role as Advisor to Angels in this fic. It's cool that she's still in contact with Bobby. (As we all know, Show completely dropped the ball on one of their coolest characters with Ellen's disappearance from the boys' lives.)
This was great -- thanks for sharing it!
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Date: 2009-04-10 09:17 pm (UTC)*shakes fist at The Show* I WANT ELLEN BACK!
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Date: 2009-04-10 02:30 pm (UTC)hahahahahaha! Oh man, this was awesome.
Great fic, I love the glimpses into Ellen's life and Anna's feelings.
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Date: 2009-04-10 03:29 pm (UTC)My favorite scene was Castiel in the bar talking about why he liked Hunters. Ellen stared at him. “My god,” she said. “You’re a nerdy angel.” Best damn thing; I couldn't stop smiling.
Thanks for this!
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Date: 2009-04-10 09:46 pm (UTC)It's probably kind of pathetic that one of my VERY FIRST thoughts about Cas in Lazarus Rising was that he was absolutely nerd-tastic after he's all "This is a vessel! :D"
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Date: 2009-04-10 03:41 pm (UTC)I love Ellen and this whole thing was brilliant plus, haha, I love that song. XD
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Date: 2009-04-10 09:47 pm (UTC)I doubt you'd be surprised if I told you I've been humming It's Raining Men all day.
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Date: 2009-04-10 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 09:51 pm (UTC)And thank you so much! If you found this fic fun, I am a happy, happy fangirl.
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Date: 2009-04-11 04:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 04:27 pm (UTC)*\o/*
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Date: 2009-04-11 04:46 am (UTC)ELLEN! \o/
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Date: 2009-04-10 05:09 pm (UTC)(and poor Anna - wanting a family of Hunters... )
great fic!!! thank you so much!!!
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Date: 2009-04-11 04:48 am (UTC)I figured if Anna had been killing evil things for ~2000 years they might want to keep on doing it.
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Date: 2009-04-10 05:53 pm (UTC)I deflowered a drunk angel, that’s the trouble!
Hee! :D Oh, Dean!
Only one thing:
“Josephine was a very mature teenage girl in many ways,”
It's about Jo or am I mistaken? 'Cause "Jo" is a pet form from Joanna. Jo's full name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, not Josephine.
Anyway. Great fic!
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Date: 2009-04-11 04:50 am (UTC)Castiel is rather Sammy-ish for Anna, isn't he? XD
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Date: 2009-04-10 06:55 pm (UTC)Liked the way you combined the serious (Castiel's thoughts about the hunters) with the funny (It's Raining Man. lol).
You should write moar! :D
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Date: 2009-04-11 04:54 am (UTC)And I'm writing my ginormous Big Bang fic, so NO WORRIES IN THE WRITING MOAR DEPARTMENT lol oh god I'm gonna die.
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Date: 2009-04-10 07:32 pm (UTC)I loved Ellen, and you really had her voice down.
I loved your characterisation of the Castiel and Anna relationship, it was funny but didn't take away from the story at all and it really felt like they were siblings. And drunken angels... just brilliant. You even made me like Anna, who is NOT my favourite character.
This is going down in my memories right now.
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Date: 2009-04-11 06:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-04-11 12:36 am (UTC)I CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU HOW FUCKING MUCH I LOVE THIS STORY. You had me grinning from the get go –Castiel being a nerdy angel? A teenage girl? Sipping fucking cocktails??? LOLOLOLOLOL. Moving a sleeping angel off the bar? ZOMH BAHAHA. Is there a reason you decided to come argue in my bar and not some cloud? LULZ. Priceless. “DEAN WINCHESTER, COME AND PICK UP YOUR DRUNK ANGELS OR I SWEAR TO GOD I’M GOING TO KILL YOU ALL OVER AGAIN. THEY GOT IN A DRINKING CONTEST AND THEY’RE NOT FIT FOR FLYING.” ROFLROFLROFL BAHAAAAAAA!!!!!! But oh my god, this is nothing compared to the weather girls scene. HALLELUJAH chorused the bar. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOOOOOOOOOOOL!!! Seriously, I was roaring with laughter here at 2.30am. bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Sorry, I’m completely incoherent right now. LOLOLOL. You so totally made my night. Oh my *fans self* thank you so much for this.
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Date: 2009-04-11 07:11 am (UTC)And yes I've been awake for quite a while, why do you ask?
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Date: 2009-04-11 12:37 am (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2009-04-11 07:17 am (UTC)