Chapter Text
There was an argument. He wasn’t sure how it started, likely because he hadn’t been there for the start. Whatever it was had been brewing for weeks, he could feel it permeating through the house in icy, resentful waves, but no matter the beginning, it carried on the way it always did, with bland comments from his father carefully designed to wind his mother up, and sharp jabs from his mother at all of his father’s soft spots until he finally began to raise his voice along with her.
Cas was caught in the middle, with no escape or older sibling to hide behind anymore, and as such, they both turned on him: his grades, his ambitions, his quiet nature, his lack of anything even resembling a social life.
He wasn’t sure what did it. It was no different than any other dinner fight, and he’d managed to sit through over twenty years of them without getting sucked in, but something about this one got under his skin in a way that none of the rest ever had.
"Not to mention you've never brought a nice young lady home—" his mother continues, and he couldn't resist.
“Maybe it’s because I’m gay,” he said, and he had the momentary satisfaction of seeing her face go completely white, like she’d choked on whatever she was about to say.
The silence lasted until his father’s fork hit his plate, and his mother’s face went abruptly from white to red, and in an instant of screaming terror he realized what he’d just done.
He stood up from the table so violently that his chair fell behind him with a bang that he could only barely hear over the rushing in his ears, and he ran, his parents only just too slow to react. He grabbed his trench coat, piled on the bench in the hall where he’d left it only a few hours ago. Perhaps that was what started the argument after all, that he never bothered to put it away like a respectful, well-raised child. He was glad, now, that he hadn’t, that he’d left his wallet and keys in the pocket, that it was so easy to grab as he ran out of the door. It was almost as if he’d known that he was going to leave.
The euphoria of leaving lasted until he’d driven straight to the town center, and realized that he had no idea where to go. Michael and Raphael were in California and Texas respectively, and they were more likely to send him right back home than they were to help. His sister was a safer bet, but she was in Vermont, working for a tiny church in a tiny town that hardly got phone reception, and had spotty internet at best.
Gabriel—and there was a thought that hadn’t crossed his mind for a long time. His parents refused to mention Gabriel, and his brothers followed suit. The last he’d heard of his youngest older brother was from Anna, who’d given him a little wink at Thanksgiving the year before and murmured, “He sends his love.”
Their erstwhile brother had made his great escape the night before he should have been shipped off to college. He was the last of Cas’s siblings to go, and they’d stayed up until the early hours of the morning, talking in the breathy way they’d perfected when they were still little, sharing a room and trying to keep their parents from hearing them whisper. As the grey light of pre-dawn spilled in through the window, Gabe leaned over and said, even quieter than he’d been before, “Can you keep a secret?”
Cas nodded. He was fifteen, he was going into sophomore year, he could keep secrets.
“You can’t tell anyone. Not even Dean,” Gabe said, looking uncommonly serious.
Cas rolled his eyes. “I know what a secret is, and I haven’t seen Dean all summer. Go on. What is it?”
“I’m not going to college.”
His chest clenched with a sudden burst of hope, even as he told himself that there was no way that his brother meant what he wanted him to mean, that he was staying home, that Cas wouldn’t be alone. “Where are you going?”
Gabe leaned back against the bed. “Somewhere far away. Where they can’t find me.”
He scoffed. He was almost disappointed in his brother for his lack of creativity. “They’ll find you. They’ll always find you. Remember when Anna ran away when she was sixteen? They found her in an afternoon.”
“No, they won’t.” Gabe’s eyes were fiery, even as he lounged boneless against Cas’s sheets. “I’ve got the paperwork, I’ve got the money, I’ve scheduled the hearing, I’m changing my name, and I’m leaving. They won’t find me.” His fists were clenched, and when he turned his head to look at Cas, he was resolute. “They’ll never find me again.”
He’d sounded fierce, but there was something unbearably sad in his voice at the same time. Cas hadn’t realized until months later that it was because when he said they’ll never find me, he also meant you’ll never find me.
He remembered that conversation, how prepared Gabe seemed, how utterly convinced he was of his chances of success. He’d been right. Their parents hadn’t found him, no matter how hard they tried. Neither had Cas. By the time he’d gone to college, Gabriel’s name was erased from the family record book, and whoever he was now, he’d managed to hide from their parents—from all of them, except maybe Anna—for nearly ten years.
He’d changed his name. He’d changed his name, and he’d disappeared, and he’d gotten out. He’d never had to go back to the house again, he’d never had to take classes with their father or listen to their mother preach, at home or from the pulpit. He’d changed his name and vanished in the aftermath and he’d only been eighteen. Cas was nearly twenty-five. Surely, Cas could do it too. Surely, Cas could do it better.
He parked a few blocks away from the district court building and slipped into his backseat, tucking his trench coat around him enough that it wasn’t obvious that there was someone sleeping in the back of the car. He’d left his phone charger in his car as well, and it was a matter of seconds to pull up the forms that he’d need to fill out. He was ready, he was prepared, and he was going to follow in one of his brothers’ footsteps—willingly—for the first time in his life.
He was not ready. He was not prepared. He had no idea what he was doing. He was a mess, and he couldn’t do anything right, and he was a fool to think that quiet, sheltered, obedient Castiel could try to copy brilliant, reckless, brave Gabriel.
“What name would you like to put down, dear?” Mrs. Mary-Ann Mays asked again politely, pen hovering over the form.
Cas stared at her, completely blank. Names. What name. What names. What on earth were names. How could he not think of a single name.
Gabriel’s voice came back to him again. “Not Smith,” he had mused with some amusement at Cas’s innocent first suggestion, “that’s too easy, too traceable, with our first names being what they are. I’m going to go bigger, you know. More unique, but harder to guess. Something good. Something really me, but also safe. It’s gotta be something safe.”
Safe. Cas latched onto the word like a drowning man reaching for a life preserve.
“Winchester,” he blurted out. “Castiel Winchester.”
He registered his words the second after they left his mouth, and would have sworn that his heart actually stopped in retroactive horror.
“Oh! That’s lovely, how is it spelled? Like that sweet young Winchester boy working at Bobby’s garage?” Mrs. Mary-Ann Mays asked, beaming at him. Before he could respond, though, her eyes grew very large behind her thick glasses frames, and she gave a little gasp. “Oh! Oh my! Is this—are you—is this a married name change?” She fluttered about her desk, nearly knocking over her cup of pens, and then ducked down to rummage in a drawer. “You’ve got the wrong form, sweetheart! You’ll want 60-1402 and your marriage license!”
Cas hovered over her, waving his hands uselessly. This was a disaster. This was a disaster of the sort he’d never even considered while lying under his coat in the back of his car the night before. “No! No! Nothing like that, I have the right form, there isn’t a marriage license!”
Mrs. Mary-Ann Mays blinked up at him, and then broke into an even wider smile, which he had not previously thought possible. “You’re doing it as a surprise? How romantic! I’ve always known your people were sweet like that, you know, I had this friend, Hector, back in my glory days, and he would just say the most beautiful things at the drop of a hat, I’ve never heard anyone in this town to beat it, but you know, most of those sort don’t spend much time in a place like Lawrence-"
As she spoke, she filled out the paperwork busily, and before he knew it he was being wished a lovely morning and waved out into the blinding sun with paperwork for a name he had absolutely no right to, leaving behind a woman who was absolutely reaching for her phone to call everyone she knew to tell them the good news about That Sweet Young Winchester Boy’s new beau.
Cas stood at the top of the stairs and panicked, in his most quiet and composed way, for five minutes, clutching his paperwork, and fighting the urge to rip it up, or vomit, or both. He was interrupted from his pit of despair by a man in a very nice suit who nearly knocked him over as he ran up the steps, and he jolted back into motion.
He walked jerkily down to where his car was waiting. He got in. He put the papers on the car seat. He did not slam his head against the steering wheel, no matter how much he wanted to, because the last thing he needed was to accidentally hit the horn and let everyone in the surrounding area know that he was having a breakdown.
After counting to ten, and then twenty, and then a hundred and ninety five, fruitlessly, he decided that there was really nothing for it other than to bite the bullet. Either he told the truth, or in an hour the gossip mill of Lawrence, Kansas would tell such an outrageous lie that he would be forced to run away and change his name again, and that was what got him into trouble in the first place.
He made for Bobby’s garage, which was at least fairly close by. He wondered morbidly which Winchester worked at the garage, and tried very hard to pretend there was a chance he was going to arrive to find the many gangly feet of Sammy Winchester earnestly attempting to fix a car. Sammy, at least, was less likely to break his heart when he laughed it off.