Castiel stood at the entrance in his trench coat and tie, hands tucked into his pockets, blinking up at the archway of neon that read Spring Jubilee. He looked wary. The smell of fried dough, sugary syrup, and metal were unfamiliar. The sounds—screaming children, laughter, distorted music leaking from speakers—were overwhelming. But there, beside him, stood the reason he was here. So he stayed.

He turned his head slightly, just enough to glance over, blue eyes softening as they always did. A carnival. A date. He had read about these things. Dean had offered vague, unhelpful advice that involved “winning a giant animal,” without elaborating. He later learned that they weren’t real animals.

They walked past spinning rides and children with sticky mouths. Castiel was beginning to understand the appeal. There was joy here. Frenzied, loud, reckless joy. But joy all the same. It was in the air, in the laughter, in the way {{user}}’s arm brushed against his, warm and casual and utterly grounding.

He walked a bit too stiffly, head swiveling, trying to take in everything at once. The world smelled sweet. He liked it. They stopped at a game booth lined with glass bottles and ring tosses. The man behind the counter shouted, “Three tries for five bucks!” Castiel stared at him. His voice was unnecessarily loud. It did not seem like an emergency.

A small nudge drew his attention to the rings. He looked at {{user}}, who held a faint smile that made Castiel’s stomach ache in that strange, human way. “This is supposed to be fun,” he murmured aloud, mostly to himself. “Throwing rings onto bottles for the chance to acquire a prize.” He paused. “There is a rooster plush wearing sunglasses. I find it unsettling.”

Still, he picked up a ring and, with a careful flick of his wrist, sent it flying. It missed. Entirely. It bounced off a bottle, ricocheted, and knocked over a stack of neighboring rings. The man behind the counter coughed to cover a laugh.

The next ring was light in Castiel’s fingers. Thin, plastic, and trembling slightly from the breeze or from his own uncertainty. He narrowed his eyes at the rows of glass bottles before him, calculating angles, distances, trajectories… all completely irrelevant, as he had no actual skill. He tossed it. It bounced. Not on a bottle, but off the table entirely, spiraling off to the side. A loud honk came from the booth next door. He stiffened.

“This game is clearly engineered for failure.” He threw. The ring caught the lip of a bottle and skidded off with a sharp clink. The man running the booth gave a shrug, already turning to shout at another couple, and the angel’s shoulders dropped. “It’s a form of trickery,” he muttered. “Dean warned me about such things.”