Chapter Text
The world has become an ill-fitting suit. It feels too large in places, the buildings looming on either side of Castiel too tall and narrow for his liking. He cannot get a good look at their top floors from sidewalk level, can’t determine if there may be a glint of sunshine off metal that would indicate an enemy position.
In other places, it feels too small, tight and cramped with people. They are all over the tenement where Castiel pays twenty dollars a month from his meager savings for the privilege of a roof and four walls. They crowd around Castiel on the sidewalk of Greenwich Avenue, boxing him in, making it impossible to determine a safe route to the nearest shelter.
His fingers itch for the familiar feel of his M1; his shoulder aches with a phantom pain in the place where the strap used to rub it raw. Or perhaps it’s the very real weight of his Army-surplus duffle, slung over his shoulder and curving his back.
This, at least, feels familiar: a burden to hold him down and keep him present in the here and now. In combat, he used to carry a good thirty pounds of supplies: his weapon, extra ammunition, canteen, first aid kit, rations, so on. These days, walking with nothing but his wallet and his hands in his pockets feels unsettling: as if his next step might launch him off the pavement and up into the clouds, never to be seen again.
His father would call him cracked and weak, for struggling to adjust back to civilian life after his years abroad. “Abroad”: his parents’ preferred euphemism for Castiel’s time at war. He went to Europe as an enlisted man — an embarrassment his parents have had a hard time forgiving. Charles Novak is a West Point graduate and expected Castiel to follow in his footsteps, but Castiel refused. Spent years drifting, picking up odd jobs.
The draft found him anyway.
When peace was declared, Castiel returned for a brief few weeks to his childhood home in Brooklyn. He endured awkward dinners with his parents that led inevitably to questions about the future he envisioned for himself. Sometimes, they would invite girls from the neighborhood who smiled too brightly and smelled too sweet for his liking.
The last straw, the thing that finally chased him out of Brooklyn and to his current abode in Greenwich Village, was a visit to Mr. Brown’s old candy store. It was one of the few perfect places in Castiel’s memory. He used to spend many happy afternoons there, spending his meager allowance on the Baffle Ball game in the back.
He found Mr. Brown still there, but the game gone.
“Mayor banned the pinball games, couple years back,” Mr. Brown told him, real regret carved into his smile. “They went around the stores to take ‘em. Like we were back in Prohibition days, it was. I read in the paper the games all got smashed up and sunk to the bottom of the Sound.”
Just one more link between Castiel and his old life, severed. No reason left to remain in Brooklyn.
Now here he is in Greenwich Village instead, living off a small bit of savings from his soldier’s wages, plus whatever he can manage to make by picking up odd jobs at the waterfront. It’s enough to afford the rent, which is at the lower end for the area, and meals, and not much more than that. His idea of an indulgence these days is visiting a music store to linger in the sound booth, listening to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie records he can’t afford to buy.
His shoulder aching, Castiel shifts, hitching his duffle higher. Two men pass him on the sidewalk. Their shirts are open at the collars and their laughter is carefree, riding a stream of cigarette smoke.
Castiel looks away. He tugs at his own collar, feeling ridiculous and overheated in his cheap suit and tie. The summer heat is oppressive, and his shirt sticks to his back with sweat, but he feels odd without a jacket and tie. Feels as if his platoon commander might stalk down Greenwich Avenue towards him at any moment and take him to task for neglecting uniform standards.
Greenwich Village is where he chose to flee in part for its Bohemian reputation. As a child, he’d heard its name whispered with dread and disgust, heard it referred to as a refuge for sinfulness and “art-loving types.”
A refuge for men like him, who spent their war smiling grimly at jokes about sucking dick and taking it up the ass, followed inevitably by indignant protestations that “I ain’t queer.”
Strange, then, that even here, the world’s suit doesn’t seem to fit him. Perhaps he came back from the war all wrong, his angles too sharp and his proportions too warped.
At last, he turns the corner onto West 11th. There, at the corner, is the place he came to visit: the Village Laundromat. He has been doing his laundry in the sink of the shared bathroom for weeks, and it’s beginning to wear on him. There isn’t enough room in his apartment to properly hang his clothes, and there is no clothesline strung outside his window. As a result, every item of clothing he’s slipped into lately has been slightly damp. He is tired of it.
A chime rings out over his head as he shoulders in through the door. The place smells of floor polish and cheap soap. All along the opposite wall, a half dozen machines stand lined up like soldiers on parade. Or like artillery, perhaps — their round, squat shape reminds him of the German Howitzers, and he half expects them to launch a shell straight through the laundromat’s windows, out onto the sidewalk to scatter the crowd.
He swallows hard against a sudden swell of nausea.
“Hello, welcome to the Village Laundromat!”
The voice is cheerful and female, drawing his attention to a small desk just to the left of the entrance. The woman who has welcomed him is about his age or perhaps a little younger. Her hair is a dark, rich red surely not found in nature. She is wearing a collared green dress patterned with daisies.
“Oh. Hello.” His voice is rough; he hasn’t been using it much. “I’m here to do a load of whites.”
The woman’s cheerful smile gains a wry edge, and she taps her finger against the side of her nose. “Gotcha. Door’s back there. The one that says ‘Staff Only.’”
Castiel looks over his shoulder at the line of washing machines. There are a few other customers using them: mostly women with a professional look about them, their stockings free of patches and immaculate heels reflecting the overhead lights in bright little starbursts.
He decides these must be the machines for colors and delicates. The machine for whites must be in the other room. It doesn’t entirely explain why the room would be labeled “Staff Only,” but he supposes there are many ways to run a business and they won’t all make sense to him.
“Thank you,” he says, and heads past the woman’s desk to the door she has pointed out to him.
The door is surprisingly heavy and opens outward, but after a short struggle, Castiel manages to make his way through it, duffle bag and all. At his back, the door falls closed.
As it turns out, there isn’t a machine for whites in this room. In fact, the room doesn’t have any laundry facilities at all.
There are no windows here, but the light is softer than in the front, cast by a small handful of ceiling fixtures reminiscent of a family sitting room. The concrete floor has been gentled by the application of several thick rugs, and there are small tables set up against the back wall. The chairs next to each table are upholstered with red cameo-patterned fabric reminiscent of the style of twenty or thirty years ago.
All along the wall to Castiel’s right, there are a dozen or so pinball games. Some are proper machines on four spindly legs; others are simply metal or wooden boxes, lying flat on top of a long table. These are the games Castiel used to favor: the ones that can be tilted and jiggled to influence the ball’s trajectory, turning a game of chance into one of skill.
“Hey, welcome. You caught us at a bit of a quiet time. Got the games all to yourself for now. We’ll get busier after dark.”
Castiel turns to his left, where tall wooden stools line an old-fashioned bar counter that wouldn’t look amiss in a cowboy movie. Behind the counter, holding a putty knife poised over a wooden box that presumably contains another pinball game, is the most beautiful boy Castiel has ever seen.
His features are a sculptor’s envy: perfectly symmetrical, with a strong jaw and clear skin despite the fact that he is likely still in his teens, or barely out of them. Pink lips have parted in a small, welcoming smile. His hair is short enough to meet military standards, but it looks soft to the touch, free from the slick glisten of pomade. He is wearing a white shirt with the front unbuttoned, revealing the undershirt beneath. The room is warm enough that the undershirt clings to his torso.
Castiel averts his eyes. The boy makes so attractive a picture as to verge on obscenity, and Bohemian neighborhood or not, it isn’t safe to advertise his attraction.
Besides, a boy of seventeen or eighteen is hardly a suitable subject of attraction for him. Castiel’s birth certificate may say that he is only twenty-two, but his time at war has aged him far beyond his years.
At least he has the mysterious pinball games to distract him from any inappropriate feelings. Between the presence of those games and the boy’s preternaturally beautiful appearance, Castiel almost wonders if, by some stroke of incredible luck, he has stepped out of New York City and into a realm of magic.
“You did come to play pinball, right?” the boy asks. Castiel reluctantly looks back at him to find that the welcoming smile has given way to vague concern. “Charlie wouldn’t have let you back here unless you gave her the code phrase.”
A code phrase: something Castiel associates with speakeasies (not that he was old enough to visit them when Prohibition was in force, but rumors spread like wildfire among schoolboys) and the one time he managed to pluck up his courage to visit a homosexual club. With a jolt, he remembers: pinball has been banned. This place is just as illegal as a speakeasy would have been, back in the day.
“To be honest,” he says, feeling profoundly awkward, “I came to do laundry. I think I must have landed on the code phrase by complete accident.”
The boy behind the bar straightens in alarm, setting down his putty knife.
“But,” Castiel hurries to add, “I wouldn’t mind trying a game. Not at all.”
The boy slumps visibly with relief. His smile makes a reappearance, brighter than ever, and something in Castiel’s chest flutters like a caged bird. “Okay, good. Phew. I told Charlie this was gonna happen. We gotta come up with something more obscure. Like… I don’t know. ‘We ride at sunrise.’”
A small sound of amusement escapes Castiel. “That would be an unusual thing to say in a laundromat, to be sure.”
“Exactly!” The boy points a triumphant finger at Castiel’s face. “You get it. I’m Dean, by the way.”
Dean wipes his hands on a half-apron tied around his waist and holds one out for Castiel to shake. Castiel takes it, feeling the calluses of skin used to hard work.
“Castiel,” he says. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“So formal.” Dean is grinning brighter than ever. In a ridiculous, high-pitched voice, he adds, “Charmed, I’m sure.” His hand lingers in Castiel’s for the span of another breath before he lets him go. Castiel’s cheeks feel hot, and he hopes very much that he isn’t blushing.
In the interest of not overheating, he sets down his duffle beside the bar and shrugs out of his suit jacket. He breathes a sigh of relief as his sweat-soaked shirt is exposed to the air.
Looking up, he finds that Dean is watching him closely. Castiel cocks his head at him, wondering if he has done something wrong; unknowingly violated some dress code he wasn’t aware of. Though how that can be possible when Dean is standing there with his shirt unbuttoned, he couldn’t say.
Dean shakes his head; clears his throat. “Sorry. Um, have you ever played before? Or you need me to show you?”
Perhaps it’s the fact that Castiel is still quite warm, or the fact that it feels strangely intimate to be in this small backroom with no one but Dean. Something must be impairing his judgment, because he finds himself saying: “I would appreciate you showing me.”
“Great.” Dean steps out from behind the bar counter with a small, pleased smile that Castiel wishes he had the talent to paint. “Let’s see. With some of these, the outcome is a crapshoot; it’s just how the ball happens to go. But there’s a couple games where skill factors in. You seem like a guy who wants to make his own luck. Am I right about that?”
Dean winks at Castiel, and Castiel knows it’s only salesmanship, but he flushes hotter anyway. He tugs at his collar to loosen it. Dean’s eyes follow the motion of his fingers.
“You are,” Castiel admits. He’s never seen the point of spending between one and five cents on a game where he can’t influence the outcome.
Dean acknowledges the information with a solemn nod and heads straight for the table where six metal or wooden game boxes rest. In the center, Castiel recognizes a game of Baffle Ball. It looks identical to the one he used to play, down to the emerald green background and the yellow baseball diamond in the center. The familiar ball pockets in the shape of tiny stadiums sit in each corner of the diamond, their point scores painted next to them. The lowest score is 100 points, for the hole closest to the ball release. The highest is 500, all the way at the bottom of the board. All over, the board is studded with nails designed to keep the ball along a certain trajectory. As a boy, at Mr. Brown’s candy shop, Castiel was the undefeated champion of using those paths to his advantage and maneuvering the ball into the 500 hole to double his overall score and win a free game. After a few months of practice, he hardly ever had to pay for a game at all.
“This one’s my favorite,” Dean says. “It’s called Baffle Ball. It ain’t fancy — all spring-based, no electricity or anything — but it’s good fun. It’s 2,000 points for a free game. Just gotta keep score manually, ‘cause again, no electricity.” He points to the coin slot at the bottom. “You put your nickel here and then you launch the ball with this thing.” He tugs gently on the ball-release plunger. “Because the game’s not mounted or plugged in, you can tilt it to influence the outcome. Like this.”
Dean digs in his pocket, coming up with a small handful of coins. Finding a nickel, he inserts it into the slot and pulls the plunger to release the first ball.
Castiel watches, spellbound, as Dean tugs his tongue between his teeth and focuses on the game. He almost forgets to pay attention to the trajectory of the ball, but refocuses on the board just in time to see Dean tilt it in a quick left-right-left sequence that has the ball missing the 300 hole by the skin of its teeth and instead rounding the corner of the ball pocket to land squarely in the 350.
Dean straightens up, triumphant. “And that’s how it’s done, Cas! Now let’s see you try.”
Somewhat dazed by the sound of his name in Dean’s mouth — abbreviated, as if they’re friends — Castiel steps up to the board. He digs in his pocket for the change he’d set aside for the washing machines and, to his relief, comes up with an ample supply of nickels. He inserts one into the slot and launches the ball.
The game comes back to him with absurd ease. He remembers the exact sequence that meant a just-about foolproof win: tilt the board first to the left, to get the ball past the 100 hole, then right to slide it along the nails and past the 200, then quickly left again before it approaches too close to the 300. Then a lightning-fast downward jiggle-and-tilt to the 400, followed by a quick left to help the ball round the corner to the ultimate goal: the 500.
The ball lands beautifully, sliding home into the 500 as if it were meant to be there.
Castiel doesn’t manage the same with all ten of his balls: sometimes, he’s too slow on a tilt, or too distracted by the way Dean is gaping at him open-mouthed. A few of the balls land in the 300 slot, some even in the 100 or the 150. But still, four of his balls reach the highest possible score, putting him well past the minimum points required for a free game.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Dean says, awed, when Castiel’s final ball slides home. “Either you’re the quickest learner ever born or you were lying to my face about how you never played before.”
Castiel grimaces. “I… yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I have played before, but it’s been years.”
“Hey, it’s alright.” Dean is eyeing him curiously now, intent on Castiel in a way that makes it difficult not to squirm. It would be impossible if Castiel didn’t have years of practice at keeping still under the scrutiny of his commanding officers. “Lot of people haven’t played much since the ban.”
“No, it isn’t that. I was… abroad,” Castiel says, and wants to bite his tongue. He could have let Dean’s assumption stand. There was no reason to bring up the war.
“Oh, huh.” Dean nods, still watching Castiel, as though he is weighing him up, considering what he might have looked like in his combats. “I can see it. You hold yourself like somebody who served. My dad did,” he adds, as an aside. “I still got a few months to go till my eighteenth birthday. Tried to slip past the recruiters anyway, but they caught me at it.” He gestures ruefully at his own face. “It’s the baby face, I guess. ‘S what my dad says anyway.”
Castiel is suddenly, fiercely grateful to the unknown recruiters who refused to send Dean to war. Not all recruitment offices were so generous, he knows: he encountered plenty of privates who looked no older than sixteen.
He doesn’t think Dean would appreciate the sentiment, so he says instead, “Yes, well, it was good to revisit something from my childhood. Thank you.”
It sounds like a goodbye. Castiel doesn’t realize it until he’s already said the words and can’t take them back, though the last thing he wants is to leave and return to his cramped room at the tenement.
Dean may be of a similar mind, judging by the slightly melancholy twist of his smile.
Then Castiel remembers: he came here to do laundry, and he hasn’t done it yet. It could take hours for his clothes to wash, then tumble in the electric dryer.
“I should actually put my whites in the wash, but then I could… come back?” Castiel asks, not entirely sure of his welcome despite the fact that Dean seemed to enjoy their time together as well.
He isn’t left in doubt long: Dean looks, there’s really no other word for it, eager.
“Yeah, sure, that sounds great. I can show you what I’m working on if you like?” He hooks his thumb over his shoulder at the game he’d been tinkering with behind the bar.
“I’d like that,” Castiel says, in what may be the understatement of the century.
***
“Have fun?” Charlie asks him when he emerges from the back with his duffle.
“I did,” Castiel answers. It seems that understatements are going to be a theme today. “I’m… going to go back, if that’s alright. Just as soon as I take care of this laundry.”
Charlie gapes at him. “Wait, you did actually come to do laundry? Damn. Guess Dean was right about the code phrase.” She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
“Well, it was all for the best,” Castiel says. “I hadn’t played—”
Charlie makes frantic shushing motions at him, eyeing the women who are reading magazines on a couple of benches nearby as they wait for their loads to finish, so Castiel course-corrects.
“I hadn’t done that in years.”
Charlie smiles at him, and her smile is almost as infectious as Dean’s. “I’m glad. That’s what we want, really: for people to get to be a kid again for a little while and have some fun.”
Castiel ponders this as he makes his way over to the machines and loads his clothes into the nearest open one. His parents would call Charlie and Dean’s enterprise an appalling waste of both money and time. What is the point, they would say, of something done only for the sake of fun?
If Castiel thought he could make them understand, he might tell them that this afternoon is the first time he’s felt like himself since he returned from the war. It’s the first time he hasn’t felt as though he is still trudging through the muddy fields of France, weighed down by thirty pounds of equipment and the constant dread of imminent death.
As soon as Castiel’s load of laundry is underway, he abandons it in favor of heading for the backroom again. Charlie looks up from the edition of Life magazine she’s reading to shoot him a wink.
Castiel finds Dean back behind the bar. He’s using the putty knife again, scraping at something inside the game box in front of him. A few curls of scraped-off paper already line the bar counter, and Castiel vaguely recognizes the designs on the paper as being circus-themed: there is a classic striped Big Top tent and a tiger captured mid-leap.
Another player has arrived in the meantime — a young man who looks to be of Italian or Mexican descent and is playing one of the electric games, watching avidly as his ball hits one obstacle after another in a succession of clangs, dings and buzzes.
“That’s just Cesar,” Dean says, looking up from his work. “Don’t mind him, he won't bite.”
“Hey, I heard that,” Cesar calls over his shoulder, before turning his attention to the game.
Dean huffs a laugh before gesturing to one of the barstools across the bar from him. “Take a seat, Cas.”
Cas. As before, the nickname wraps warmly around Castiel’s insides, making a home for itself. He wants to hear it again and again.
“So one of the tricks of running a place like this is getting new games to keep people interested, right?” Dean says, once Castiel has taken a seat. “But what with the ban and the war going on, not a whole lot of new stuff is being produced.”
Dean sets down his putty knife and reaches for a box down the bar. It’s labeled Sandover Arcade Co.
“So what do you do?” Castiel asks.
“Well…” Dean reaches into the box and withdraws a small bundle wrapped in packing paper. “Some of the companies have been selling these conversion kits instead. You can use ‘em to make old games look new and interesting.”
Dean unwraps the bundle to reveal various bells, buzzers and a new paper backing. He grimaces down at it. “Lot of them are war-themed though.”
Sure enough, the letters across the top of the paper read Victory in the Pacific! in lurid red, and the design is mainly of fighter planes — Grumman Hellcats, Castiel thinks, though he would hardly call himself an expert in these matters — swooping across a blue sky while a German U-boat lurks in the waters below. What a German U-boat is doing in the Pacific theater, Castiel couldn’t say, but he supposes factual accuracy isn’t a strict mandate when it comes to the design of a pinball game.
“A little premature for victory, isn’t it?” Castiel asks. While the Germans surrendered nearly two months ago and there have been rumors that the fighting in the East won’t last much longer, the Japanese have been clinging on.
Dean shrugs. “It’s wishful thinking, I guess.”
Castiel watches as Dean withdraws a pot of glue from beneath the counter and uses it to coat the back of the new paper.
“Hold the top corners?” he asks, and Castiel does as he’s told. Together, they flip the glue-sodden paper and lower it carefully onto the game surface. Castiel watches avidly as Dean smoothes the new artwork down with strong, capable hands.
They get to talking after that. Dean pours Castiel a beer from a tap behind the bar, and he tells him all about Charlie’s parents, who used to own the laundromat.
“They were run down by a car,” Dean says, his face tight with remembered pain. “Drunk driver.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s more than an empty sentiment: though Castiel has only just met Charlie, he’s found himself charmed by her easy, cheerful demeanor. The idea of someone causing her this kind of grief is deeply upsetting.
“Yeah. Well. She was old enough to inherit the place, but she needed help. I’d been working here part-time since I was thirteen, so I was the obvious choice. Besides, my old man can’t always hold down a job for long, so I need cash to keep my little brother fed, you know?”
Castiel nods, not trusting himself to speak. The idea that Dean has already had to take on so much responsibility in his short life doesn’t sit right with him at all. But it’s a trite observation, and he doesn’t think Dean would appreciate it being made.
“He’ll be here in a little while, probably bury his nose in a book right where you’re sitting,” Dean continues. He’s now using a screwdriver to install the various bells and buzzers that came with the conversion kit. “Maybe you’ll even get to meet him.”
“I’d like that,” Castiel says. He thinks he’d like to meet all the people who pass through Dean’s life in this little realm of magic tucked into the back of a laundromat.
When he leaves three hours later, having indeed met Dean’s floppy-haired, lanky and whip-smart little brother, he knows one thing with unshakeable certainty.
He will be back.