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fandomtherapy44 · 5 months ago

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Castiel x reader Chapter 16

Summary: SEASON 5 WHOOOO!!!!!!!! LET's GO! So I am so excited for this season so many great episodes. There are going to be a lot more Cas and Y/n scenes. And more chapters too. I do recommend that you read my first book so you get the full Y/n Winchester build-up. Okay with out further due enjoy the second book of Love War and Grace.

Paring: Castiel x reader

word count: 4.4k

Warnings: Some language, Typical Supernatural violence, Spoilers for season five of Supernatural, Guns

AN/ Hey Ya'll so I did notice that it's been a month since I've updated this series sorry for that. This is the longest I've written in a while so that's part of the reason why it took so long. Anywho hope you enjoy especially Cas's and Y/n Renion.

Chapter 16: Good God Ya'll

POV: Y/n “Alright, it looks like you can go home.” The doctor said while putting her supplies away. “Great thanks doc.” She stops and seems to peer into my soul. “You know I have never seen a heart attack like yours I mean you're twenty-four, fit, don’t smoke it just doesn’t make sense.” Yeah I know but it's not like I can tell her that Angels exist and that they all pretty much hate me. “Uh yeah crazy.” I walked to the door. “You must have a guardian Angel.” She jokily said. Oh, you have no idea.

I stepped into Bobby’s doorway to his room he was in his wheelchair just staring out the window. “Hey, what did the Doc say?” Sam asked me. “All good thanks to Cas.” Speaking of him where the Hell is he. Dean comes to us carrying an envelope. “It's been like three days now?” Sam and I both sighed. “We got to cheer him up. Maybe I'll give him a backrub.” “Dean” Again Sam and I both said. “Look...we might have to wrap our heads around the idea that Bobby might not just bounce back this time.” I mean he’s right this kind of news you don't just get drunk and forget about it.

“What's in the envelope?” I nod at the paper. “Went to radiology.” He pulls out the X-ray. “Got some glamour shots.” It was his ribs and it had Enochian engraved in his bones. “Is that why I feel like I have the worst heartburn ever.” I pointed to the picture. “Yup, curtsy of Cas apparently no demon or Angel can find us” Okay does not mean him too? Then Sam’s phone rings. “Hello? ...Castiel?” CASTIEL! “Speak of the devil.” “Ah, St. Martin's Hospital. Why? What are you—Cas?” Cas had hung up on Sam. And the Angel walks up to us. “Castiel…” I just got lost in my thoughts staring at him.

“Y/n I'm glad to see that you're doing well.” That’s it! He must have something on his mind. “Cell phone, Cas? Really? Since when do angels need to reach out and touch someone?” Dean questioned. “You're hidden from angels now—all angels. I won't be able to simply—” He tried to explain. “Enough foreplay.” Bobby announced from his chair. “Get over here and lay your damn hands on.” “I can't.” What? “Say again?” He spun in his chair.

“I'm cut off from heaven and much of heaven's power. Certain things I can do. Certain things I can't.” What about me then? “You're telling me you lost your mojo just in time to get me stuck in this trap the rest of my life?” I can see Castiel is sad that he can’t help. “I'm sorry.” “Shove it up your ass.” I feel terrible for Cas and Bobby.”At least he's talking now.” Dean commented to Sam and me. “I heard that.” “I don't have much time. We need to talk.” Cas directed to Dean. “Okay.” “Your plan to kill Lucifer.” “Yeah. You want to help?” “No. It's foolish. It can't be done.” Cas does really not have any fucks to give.

“Oh. Thanks for the support.” “But I believe I have the solution. There is someone besides Michael strong enough to take on Lucifer. Strong enough to stop the apocalypse.” We are wondering who he’s talking about. “Who's that?” “The one who resurrected me and put you on that airplane. The one who began everything. God.” Okay God right I mean why not. “I'm gonna find God.”

Dean closes the door so people don’t think we're insane. “God?” “Yes.” “God.” “Yes! He isn't in heaven. He has to be somewhere.” Cas sounded so sure. “Try New Mexico. I hear he's on a tortilla.” Dean said and poor sweet Cas did not get the joke. “No, he's not on any flatbread.” “Listen, Chuckles, even if there is a God, he is either dead—and that's the generous theory—” “He is out there, Dean.” “—or he's up and kicking and doesn't give a rat's ass about any of us.” Cas just glares.

“I mean, look around you, man. The world is in the toilet. We are literally—at the end of days here, and he's off somewhere drinking booze out of a coconut. All right?” “Enough. This is not a theological issue. It's strategic. With God's help, we can win.” he really believes. “It's a pipe dream, Cas.” Cas gets very close to Dean. “I killed two angels this week. My brothers. I'm hunted. I rebelled. And I did it, all of it, for you, and you failed. You and your brother destroyed the world—and I lost everything, for nothing. So keep your opinions to yourself.” Damn, I don't think I've ever seen Cas like that before.

“You didn't drop in just to tear us a new hole. What is it you want?” Bobby voiced. “I did come for something. An amulet.” A necklace? “An amulet? What kind?” “Very rare. Very powerful. It burns hot in God's presence. It'll help me find him.” “A God EMF?” Sam questioned. “Well, I don't know what you're talking about. I got nothing like that.” Bobby shrugged his shoulders. “I know. You don't.” Cas turns to Dean. He looks down at Dean’s necklace. “What, this?” “May I borrow it?” Cas asked politely.

“No.” “Dean. Give it to me.” Dean is silent, he looks at me and I nod my head. “All right, I guess.” He takes it off. And hestionly gives it to Cas. “Don't lose it. Great. Now I feel naked.” Cas now has the necklace. “I'll be in touch.” He goes to walk out of the room. “CAS wait up!”

He is very quick on his feet I guess having wings would help with that. I caught up to him and grabbed his wrist to pull him into a room ironically it was the chapel. We just stood staring at each other a little. I couldn't believe that he was here. I finally shake out of my trance-like state. And go to hug him tight like he would disappear in my fingers. And he does the same. “Cas were you really …. Dead?” I say right next to his ear. An answer came that I never hoped to hear.

“Yes.” A tear slips down my cheek and I squeeze him harder. We let go of each other slowly. We sat down on the pews. “So do you really think God will help us?” “I'm here aren't I” I sigh and process everything. “Ok, we will get God’s help then.” “Y/n do you really believe in this plan?” He wasn't just asking as a tactic to win this war but as my friend.

“I believe in you Cas yes God brought you back but you are the one who is fighting actively with us so no matter what remember that.” “Thank you Y/n, I must go start the search.” “Ok but now that you can’t just pop in where I am please use your phone that I gave you for that very reason” I finish with a smile. He gives me one back and files off.

When I was gone Rufus had called Bobby sounding really in trouble and something about Demons. We drove up to this bridge in Colorado and it looked like a tornado had walked through. “This is the only road in or out.” Great. “Looks like we're going to put those scout skills that we never learned to use boys. Let’s Go!” I grabbed my pack and gun and we were off.

We walked into the town slowly and lets just that tornado had walked over and full on ran through. Cars flipped over store doors open … blood in lots of places. Sprilikers on for hours. I had been in haunted places before but I have never felt a chill in my body like this. We are checking out this car when we hear a gun cuck and we turn around. It’s Ellen.

“Ellen hey!” I go to hug her but she raises the gun to my face. Dean gets in between us. “That’s far enough.” “Ellen, what the heck's going on here?” And in response, she throws holy water at Dean. I have to hold back my snicker. “We're us.” He says annoyed, whipping off his face. We walked to a church where the survivors of whatever happened held up. When Ellen knew we were safe she threw herself onto me first for a hug. When she hugged Dean and she pulled back she slapped him.

“You can't pick up a phone? What are you, allergic to giving me peace of mind the only one to call is Y/n. I got to find out that you're alive from Rufus?” Dean seems surprised by her care. “Sorry, Ellen.” “Yeah, you better be. You better put me on speed dial, kid.” “Yes, ma'am.” All of us go to the church basement and theirs a demon trap in front. “What's going on, Ellen?” I ask. “More than I can handle alone.” “How many demons are there?” Sam asks in almost bewilderment. “Pretty much the whole town, minus the dead people and these guys.” Holy shit Demons are having super bowl parties.

“So, this is it, right? End times? It's got to be.” Ellen states. “Seems like it.” Sam replies back. Ellen knocks on the door and the makeshift peephole cover gets moved. “It's me.” Someone opens the door and we're let in, the people in here look like they've been through… war. They all look normal and one of them is pregnant. Peachy just peachy.

“This is Sam and Dean, Y/n. They're hunters. Here to help.” A guy who looks like he's the most confident out at of everyone comes up to us. “You guys hip to this whole demon thing?” “We have some experience.” I answered laughing inside. There was another man in glasses sitting at the table who looked especially like he had seen something. “My wife's eyes turned black. She came at me with a brick. Kind of makes you embrace the paranormal.” Yeah, I would too.

“All right, catch us up.” Dean told Ellen. “I doubt I know much more than you. Rufus called. Said he was in town investigating omens. All of a sudden, the whole town was possessed. Me and Jo were nearby—” What? Now that’s a surprise. The last time I knew she would rather have Jo be a Barmaid than a hunter! “You're hunting with Jo?” “Yeah, for a while now. We got here, and the place—well, the place was like you see it. Couldn't find Rufus, then me and Jo got separated. I was out looking when I found you.” Well, that’s great.

“Don’t worry Ellen we’ll find her” I touched her arm in a comforting way. She gave me a small smile in return. “Either way, these people cannot just sit here” Sam said looking at everyone. Especially the pregnant woman. “We got to get them out now.” “No, it's not that easy. I've been trying. We already made a run for it once.” “So we just reverse the plan-” Ellen stopped me. “Sweetie we used to have twenty.” My eyes widened. “Well, there's four of us now—” Dean tried again.

“You don't know what it's like out there. Demons are everywhere. We won't be able to cover everybody.” “What if we get everyone guns?” Sam suggested. “Sam you want to give walking nursery over there one she won’t make it five feet without going into early labor.” I said to him hoping to slap some sense into him. “More salt we can fire at once, more demons we can keep away.” Of course, it didn’t work when did my brothers ever listen to me!? “Fine everyone but her I'll carry two guns” I could tell Sam was ashamed but he was right, unfortunately. Dean broke our tension.

“There's a sporting goods store we passed on Main on the way in. I bet they got guns.” “All right. You stay. We'll go.” Sam said to Ellen. “What about—” I pulled Ellen into a hug. “Ellen if she’s out there I promise to bring her back.” She had tears in her eyes but kept them back to be strong. “Thank you Y/n.” I squeezed her arms and followed my brothers.

We stop outside the door well Dean stopped us. “Why don't we just go?” Dean directed to Sam about him and I. “What? Just you and N/n?” Sam clapped back. “Well, yeah. Somebody's got to stay here and start giving them Shotgun 101.” “Yeah. Ellen.” Sam starts to go but Dean stops him again. “No no no. It's gonna go a lot faster if you stay and help, okay?” “While you and Y/n split up to go get guns and salt and look for Jo and Rufus? That's stupid.” “Dean We’ll be okay.” “Thanks N/n.” But Dean was stubborn. “You don't want me going out there.” Sam realized. “I didn't say that.” “Around demons.” “I didn't say that.” “Fine, then let's go.” Sam stopped upstairs and Dean gave me an uneasy look.

Dean and I had gone to go look for Guns while Sam was getting salt. “Ok come on let me have it.” Dean said to me. “I don’t know what you're talking about.” I looked at the shotguns not looking up at him. “Y/n I know you, your silence speaks louder than your words so spit it out.” “Dean, I can't tell you how to feel about this.” “But you're judging me.” “No, I'm not.” I put the bag of guns on the table and filled it. I could tell he was still thinking that.

“Dean I think you're feelings about this whole demon blood situation is right but Sam deserves our sympathy with him.” “But he!-” “I know what he did I was there. But he’s our brother and I am going to choose to believe that he can handle this and if he can’t then I'll be with him every step of the way.” I stopped to take a breath. “I hope you choose that too.” I picked up the bag and walked out.

We went to the store to check on sam and when walked in the scene was not good. Sam was bent over a body looking at the blood dripping off the blade like it was liquid drugs. “Sammy?” He drops the knife.

The basement air had grown stronger with tension more and more the longer we were stuck down here and now seeing Sammy Dean was on edge. Teaching everyone shotgunning quickly is harder than it sounds. “Miss, can you show me?” It was the pregnant woman. “Mahm what’s your name?” “Caddy.” “Caddy, do you know the gender and name?” she smiled looking down at her bump, and that right there I knew I wouldn't be able to live if I let her out there. “A girl and her name will be Andra”

“That’s a beautiful name and Andra is the reason why I can't let you go out there.” She looked shocked. “But I can fight.” “I know you can Caddy but if you got hurt then you may never know your kid and I won't allow that.” She sat down tears in her eyes. “I'll fight for you double-fisting it so don’t worry the demons will get it no matter what.” I tried to add a little humor to it. “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it.”

“I'll be back.” I overheard Ellen say. I got straight up. “Where are you going?” “I can't sit here on my ass. My daughter's out there somewhere. I'm not back in half an hour, go. Get these people out of here.” Before I can say anything Sam speaks up. “No, wait. I'll go with you.” “Whoa, hold on. Can I talk to you for a second?” My two brothers walked out. And I could hear the arguing. Suddenly the door pops open. Dean is up against the wall and Sam is holding him there. “If you actually think I—” Sam was getting emotional and they were talking about the demon blood.

With Sam and Ellen gone the pastor was reciting prayers like crazy. And Dean was thinking, walking back and forth. Someone pounds on the door Dean goes to open it and there is Ellen. “Ellen, what happened Where's Sam?” I asked, seeing her state telling me that she had taken a punch. She doesn't answer me and just sits down.

“They took him? Demons took him? Oh my god. What if they're in here? The demons?” Caddy got very worried. “Caddy don't worry they can't get past that door.” I pointed. Dean grabbed a shotgun and was going to leave. “Everybody sit tight. I got to—” He glanced back at everyone and saw their faces and knew he couldn't leave them like this. “Okay, we need to get a plan together. Tell me everything.” He sat down and tells the pastor and he gave me a nod of his head like, don’t worry.

“Guys, one of them's in Jo. We got to get it out without hurting her.” Well, now it's personal. Ellen snorts, laughing at something. “It called me a bitch.” “Ok no offense Ellen but I've been called worse because I took the last hot dog at seven eleven,” I responded. “No, that's not what I meant. It called me a black-eyed bitch.” Dean and I hear and either these demons are looking in mirrors or something fishy is going on.

“What kind of demons are these? Holy water and salt roll right off. My daughter may be an idiot, but she's not stupid. She wears an anti-possession charm. It's all kind of weird, right?” Ellen commented putting the pieces together. “The whole thing's off.” Dean finished. “What's your instinct?” Mine would be call Cas but I know he’s trying to look for God or whatever. “My instinct? My instinct is to call Bobby and ask for help. Or Sam.”

“Well, tough. All you got's me and N/n, and all we got's you. So let's figure it out.” “You know I agree with Ellen Dean.” “All right.” “Ellen do you know why Rufus came was there a specific sign or?” I asked. “He said something about water. That's all I know.” Water? “Padré, you know what she's talking about—the water?” Dean asked the pastor. “The river. Ran polluted all of a sudden. Last Wednesday. And the demon thing started up the next day.” Interesting. “Anything else anything at all?” “Maybe, but it's pretty random.” “Trust me Austin in this life nothing is random.” he takes in my own words. “Shooting star—does that count?”

The three of us look at each other in knowing. “Real big. Same night. Wednesday.” “That definitely counts.” Dean goes over to the bookshelf and grabs one of the many Bibles. And flips through the pages till he finds the right one. “"And there fell a great star from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell upon the river, and the name of the star was Wormwood. And many men died."” I leaned down on the table thinking about it.

“I don’t know about you guys but that sounds like a giant ass warning sign of the apocalypse.” “Y/n’s right.” Dean agreed with me. “And these specific omens, they're prelude to what?” “The Four Horsemen.” The pastor responded. “And which one rides the red horse?” Dean questioned. “War.” war!? War. “Dean that sweet ride that was parked on main street the red Mustang.” I pointed out and he shook his head in agreeance. “If War is a dude and he's here, maybe he's messing with our heads.” “Turning us on each other.” Ellen concluded. “You said Jo called you a black-eyed bitch. They think we're demons, we think they're demons. What if there are no demons at all and we're all just killing each other?” I asked everyone in general to everyone.

“So now you're saying that there are no demons and war is a guy.” Austin vocalized and he was right, our lives sound like they were ripped from a cheesy early two thousand TV show. “You believed crazy before.” Dean voiced back. Then there was another slamming on the door. It was Roger which is weird because I don't remember leaving. “I saw them, the demons. They know we're trying to leave. They said they're gonna pick us off one by one.” “Wait wait wait. What?” Dean proclaimed our thoughts.

“I thought you said there were no demons.” “Austin there's not, okay.” I told him. “I thought someone should go out and see what's going on!” Oh come on! If I did not know about the supernatural world I would be pissing my pants right now! “They're gonna kill us unless we kill them first!” Roger responded in panic. “Guys please hold on!” “No, we got people to protect. All right, the able-bodied go hunt some demons.” Austin said straight back at me. He grabbed the shotguns.

“Whoa whoa whoa. Slow your roll. This is not a demon thing.” Dean tried to stop him. Out of t the corner of my eye, I see Roger twist a ring on his finger. Fuck it's him. “Look at their eyes! They're demons!” He pointed at us and I'm sure we looked like demons. Caddy gasps. No no! “Caddy!-” But before I could get another word out Dean pulls me out of the room and a gunshot almost hits us.

“Okay this is plan you and Ellen get Jo and I'll get Rufus.” Dean whispered to us. We nodded and went to them.Ellen sets off the bomb. Jo walks a little close to window and Ellen grabs her and pins her to the wall. Of course she tries to fight. “Now you listen up, Joanna Beth Harvelle.” Ellen pulled the full name card. “Jo its us!” “Get off of me bitches!” “Jo if we were demons we would have disaboled you by now!” I try to reason. She listens. “N/n?” “Yes!”

Now both of them didn’t want to kill us we could talk. “We all on the same page?” Ellen asked. Rufus and Dean nod. “Good.” “Hi, Jo.” “Hey.” Ok sensing tension between these two I'll pin that for later. “Okay, we got to find War before everybody in this town kills each—” Gunshots. Everyone ducks. “Damn it! Where's Sam?” Dean yells. “Upstairs.” I let him go, I had a feeling that Caddy needed help. They have the horseman and I have the people.

Ellen and I tried to sneak out to the battlefield but it was pretty hard with bullets flying through the air. “Caddy! Caddy, you have to get out of here!” “No, you're a demon!” “Caddy if I was a demon I would want you out here!” she was going to say something else but I saw a person behind her holding a handgun.

“CADDY!” I push her out of the way and a bullet goes into my arm and I'm pushed back on the ground by the force. I don’t even have time to look at my wound before the guy gets on top of me with a knife. He’s about to stab me in the heart but I catch his wrists before he can slam down. I'm slowly losing strength and the knife is slowly going down. I’m sorry guys, Cas.

The blade is about to go in my chest when the guy stops. “What the fuck!!” He gets off. “Yeah me too dude.” I breathe deeply. “Y/n! Are you okay?” CAddy asked me. “Nothing a little dirt won’t fix.” I simled to hide my pain. “You saved me.” “It was nothing.” She pulls me into a hug. “Yes, it was.”

It feels surreal to be at such a wonderful beautiful place when the day was so ugly and stressful. I was sitting at the picnic table with my brothers twirling the ring in my hands. “So, pit stop at Mount Doom?” Dean broke the silence. “Dean—” “Sam, let's not.” “No, listen. This is important. I know you don't trust me.” Dean looks away and I nudge him to bring him back. “Just, now I realized something. I don't trust me either.” We both look at him.

“From the minute I saw that blood, only thought in my head...and I tell myself it's for the right reasons, my intentions are good, and it, it feels true, you know? But I think, underneath...I just miss the feeling. I know how messed up that sounds, which means I know how messed up I am. The thing is, the problem's not the demon blood, not really. I mean, I, what I did, I can't blame the blood or Ruby or...anything. The problem's me. How far I'll go. There's something in me that...scares the hell out of me, Dean Y/n. In the last couple of days, I caught another glimpse…” “So what are you saying?”

“I'm in no shape to be hunting. I need to step back, 'cause I'm dangerous. Maybe it's best we just...go our separate ways.” I think he's right if he needs time. “Well, I think you're right.” Dean responded and Sam and I were both surprised. “I was expecting a fight.” “Me too.” “The truth is I spend more time worrying about you than about doing the job right. And I just, I can't afford that, you know? Not now.” I feel like Dean is still avoiding his feelings but that's up to him. “I'm sorry, Dean.” “I know you are, Sam.”

“So Y/n which one of us do you want to go with. I thought for a minute and then I came back with an answer. “I think a little separation will be good for us all to sort through our own feelings without anyone else's opinion mixing in our own.” I want Dean to really think by himself. “Where will you go?” They both ask me. “With Ellen and Jo if they are okay with that.” Sam stands up and hugs me. “But you better still call me that threat could still happen.” I tease. “You too Dean.” “Yeah, I know my little sister can kick my ass.” He said as he hugged me.

Jo and Ellen are packing up a truck. “Hey, N/n came to say goodbye?” Ellen asked. “Um actually the opposite and I totally understand if you don't want to but I was wondering if you had space for an extra hunter for a while.” Ellen throws me a pack in response. “Well come on we just got word on a possible vamp nest in Texas.” Jo smiles and we get in the truck. I roll down the window and just hope that this time apart will bring us together.

AN/ Hope you all enjoyed and don't worry the siblings will be back together soon enough. See you Ya'll next time Xoxo Gossip Girl:)

#castiel x reader #castiel #castiel x y/n #spn fanfic #dean winchester #sam winchester #team free will #spnfandom #supernatural #castiel x you #Castiel x reader series masterlist #bobby singer #bobby spn #cas spn #cas x reader #cas x y/n #cas masterlist #supernatural season 5 #crowley supernatural

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destieltropecollection · 2 years ago

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DESTIEL TROPE COLLECTION 2023 | DAY 3 | S15 Fix Its

i wanna be your lover fighter | @angelwiththeblue-box

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1,056 Main Tags/Warnings: Fix-It, Major Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, AU, Happy Ending, Summary: what if dean is the one who confesses first?

There's Something About Jenny | @whichstiel

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1,965 Main Tags/Warnings: Jenny the vampire, Time travel Summary: A fix-it for the finale.

Heavenly | @sunshine-zenith

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 2,864 Main Tags/Warnings: Past Major Character Death/Set In Heaven, Post s15ep20, happy ending, humor, minor angst, Cas has some self worth issues Summary: Cas has been avoiding Dean in heaven, despite Dean's best efforts to find some information on the guy. The others made a point to bash over his head how Dean and Castiel had apparently been in love and could have been together for over a decade if he had just gotten his head out of his ass sooner (again, super unfair. It takes two to make up destiel, and it's not like Cas had been rushing to declare his undying love until just before he died for the last time. Unless you count that other time in the barn where he thought he was dying, but the angel totally chickened out when he backtracked with his “I love you all.” This wasn’t all on Dean, and he was taking that fact to the- well. Not grave. They’re all a little past that at that point). Luckily, eventually, Cas comes to him.

Sit in the Presence of the Sun | @aaronthe8thdemon

Rating: Mature Word Count: 3,125 Main Tags/Warnings: Post-Season/Series 15, Angst, Suicide Attempt, Major Character Undeath, Sad Dean Winchester, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Misunderstandings, Winged Castiel (Supernatural), Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Angel Castiel Summary: “Why wouldn’t Dean want to see you?” “When I…” Castiel very deliberately continues watching the sun instead of Sam. “I’m not comfortable discussing this with you. I’m sorry.” “Okay…?” “It’s fine. Jack has already informed me that Dean doesn’t want any of us to bother him.” Now Sam groans. “Really? No, Cas! Dean doesn’t wanna see me or Jack! I’m pretty sure he just didn’t believe Jack when we tried telling him you’re back, and he fucking - escaped from the hospital when I wasn’t there and took off for Jody’s! He never said he doesn’t want to see you!” Castiel shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter. I… when I protected him in the dungeon, there’s no way around the fact that my actions were extremely upsetting for him. He doesn’t want to see me.”

There'll be peace when you are done - are you done? | @brainfuzz

Rating: General Word Count: 3,216 Main Tags/Warnings: Fix-it fic, no warnings apply Summary: Canon compliant right to the shitty end, and then goes and explains all the gaps and why that's not the end.

These Words Are All We Have (We’ll Be Talking) | @sunshine-zenith

Rating: Mature Word Count: 3,625 Main Tags/Warnings: Injury, Blood, Hurt Cas, Crying Cas and Dean, Dean has Self Worth Issues, Human Cas (S15 fix it), Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Bittersweet Ending Summary: When the Empty comes to collect Cas, Dean doesn't let it take him. The aftermath of this leaves Cas without his Grace and with a bleeding cut across his throat, and Dean questioning his worthiness of Cas's love.

this is the only thing i’ve ever had any faith in | @watchinghimrakeleaves

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 3,760 Main Tags/Warnings: season 15 fix it, post canon, human cas, retired hunter dean winchester Summary: The world is safe, Dean and Cas own a bar on the beach, and Dean is ready to ask Cas for something he could have never imagined he was allowed to have.

Devotional | @whichstiel

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 4,034 Main Tags/Warnings: The Empty, Resurrection Summary: A devotional is a little meditative prayer centered around a story. We start with THE WORD, follow up with a story, and walk away with a little revelation to ponder. I give you Castiel’s devotionals.

Signal | @diminuel

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 7,176 Main Tags/Warnings: S15 Fix-It, Interdimensional phone calls, Resurrected Castiel (Cas is still an angel), Crack Treated Seriously, Happy Ending, Fluff, Requited Love Summary: When the Empty grabbed Castiel he was prepared for this to be the end of him. There would be no more resurrections, no more loopholes, nothing but eternal sleep. But then his phone rings, piercing through the oblivion and Cas is wide awake. Turns out he’s got cell service in the Empty.

it's not a miracle you need | @brillemos

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 7,711 Main Tags/Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mutual Pining, Love Confessions, First Kiss Summary: Jack refuses to help save Cas from the Empty. Dean has no clue how to do it and enlists Sam and Eileen's help. It turns out the answer was within Cas all along, but getting there isn't easy.

how fast the night changes (WIP) | @closetoyou1970

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 7,915 Main Tags/Warnings: Season 15 Fix-It, Dean Rescues Cas From The Empty, New Relationship, Road Trip, Retirement, Grieving and Healing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angel Cas Endgame Summary: Cas is back from the Empty, but Dean is still too traumatized by watching him die to set foot back in the bunker. With no apocalypse on the horizon and with a deathbed love confession still hanging heavy in the air between them, Dean suggests his go-to idea: that the pair of them take off together and drive around the backroads of flyover country until they figure it out. (Post-series road trip fic.)

if you ran away, just come home | @heller-castiel

Rating: No Rating Word Count: 9,172 Main Tags/Warnings: Grief/Mourning, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Woman in White Dean Winchester, Canonical Character Death, Fix-it, Angst With a Happy Ending, Human Castiel Summary: Dean wandered, after. The night that Chuck died, subsumed into Amara, he had silently climbed into his car in the dead of night, walking past Jack's room, past Sam's room. In his room, Sam laid in his bed with Eileen, and felt the air displace itself around where Dean slipped past in the hallway, instincts attuning him to movement just as they made Dean move soundlessly, without a thought to it. but Dean didn’t think of that. Dean only thought of moving, getting out, going - Going to something the bunker couldn’t be, anymore. Something he couldn’t ever go to. But he had to go.

Know And Understand | @aaronthe8thdemon

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 10,387 Main Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Episode AU: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Time Travel, Episode: s04e02 Are You There God? It's Me Dean Winchester, Grief/Mourning, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Angel Castiel Summary: The Cas that reappears in the bunker after Chuck is defeated isn't their Cas. After supposedly being taken by the Shadow, Castiel has no idea why he immediately crash-lands in Bobby Singer's wrecking yard just days after Dean was raised from Hell. Jack is just trying to fix everything and surprisingly, Gabriel turns out to be really good at damage control. In both times, Sam has no idea what the hell's going on anymore and at this point he's almost too scared to ask.

I would do anything for love... but I won't do that | @startswitheff

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 11,001 Main Tags/Warnings: Post-Canon Fix-It, Dean Winchester Uses Actual Words, Eventual Smut, Human!Castiel, Top!Castiel, Bottom!Dean Winchester Summary: When Dean pulls Castiel from the Empty, he knows he wants to be by his side for the rest of his life. But is he ready for everything that entails? Otherwise known as the “and that’s how…” fic.

Summer Blues | @deanabean

Rating: Mature Word Count: 11,193 Main Tags/Warnings: Retrospective, Dean Winchester-centric, POV Dean Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Competent Dean Winchester, yCastiel and Dean Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Canon Fix-It, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester Summary: As Dean sits here alone in the dark of this summer's night, going through some sort of an introspection journey deep down memory lane _ as he’s finding himself doing more and more for a while now _ as he tries his hardest to make sense of things. Of memories. Yes, Dean thinks; hindsight is like looking through a sharp, new set of eyes. Sometimes disorienting, yet the closest thing to crystal clear.

Status quo ante bellum | @angelinthefire

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 11,201 Main Tags/Warnings: human!Castiel, light angst, canon-typical alcohol consumption Summary: Cas is back from the Empty, human, and convinced that his relationship with Dean is unsalvagable. Can Dean get his shit together in time to prove otherwise?

Dean daily | @fellshish

Rating: Mature Word Count: 11,840 Main Tags/Warnings: Epistolatory, denial, social media, fix-it Summary: Cas has been rescued from the Empty. Dean suffers from extreme denial about being in love with him. Epistolary / social media fic with Dean POV snippets for every day.

The Council Of Charlie Bradbury | @pointyearedelvishprincling

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 13,157 Main Tags/Warnings: post 15x18, angel!cas, selective mutism, angst with a happy ending, pov Charlie Bradbury, pov dean winchester, pov castiel, emotional hurt/comfort, LOTR references Summary: It's been a few weeks since Cas got out of the Empty, and Dean can't accept that there's finally peace in the world. Watching the camera footage of the dungeon scene on repeat probably isn't helping. Cas is content to give Dean space to heal, even if the loneliness at the end of the journey is settling in. On the request of Sam, not that she needed an excuse, Charlie spends the night in the Bunker trying to figure out what's going on with these idiots, and getting more answers than she bargained for. With the help of Stevie, she comes up with a plan that might finally bring Dean and Cas together.

something you love (something you lose) | @nessarose-thropp

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 15,308 Main Tags/Warnings: Post-Episode: s14e20 Moriah, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death, Rough Sex, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Suicidal Ideation, Grief/Mourning, POV Castiel (Supernatural), Hopeful Ending, Angel Castiel Summary: “Story's over,” Chuck says, “Welcome to The End.” And with that everything goes dark and cold. The darkness and rot of souls and bodies surrounds them. He doesn’t dare touch Jack again, just stares at his lifeless body lit only by unnatural moonlight. He’s vaguely aware of the threat slowly encircling them, but none of it matters. Nothing matters anymore. Somewhere, something deep inside of him-not his earthly body but his true angel self-awakens. It’s a type of power and heat he hasn’t felt in years. It’s uncontrollable and unforgiving. Light and righteousness and fury coalescing into something terrifying. Castiel lets out a scream, an anguished cry from his human mouth and a piercing angelic shriek, and with it releases whatever it was that had been growing within him. When he feels it leave, his consciousness finally returns to the present, to the Earth and to his vessel and to Sam and Dean and to Jack and it’s light out again. The sun is shining just as it was minutes ago, and there is no sign of any dark forces around them. No ghosts, no zombies, no demons, just two men, an angel, and the body of a dead Nephilim. - Jack is gone, Chuck is in the wind, and Cas must find a way to cope.

The Little Issue with the Mission to Perdition | @amaranthhiding

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 16,460 Main Tags/Warnings: Canon Universe, Post-Ep 15x19, Jack & Amara family bonding, Jack and Amara Try Fixing Things Together but Make Everything Worse, Team Free Will 3.0, Angst with Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Castiel/Dean First Kiss, POV Alternating (Jack, Amara, Dean, Sam, Castiel) Summary: Chuck is defeated and his power now belongs to Jack and Amara. They struggle with adjusting to their newly-shared existence, and with big questions such as, how can (almost) all-powerful beings avoid becoming what Chuck was? What even is all that power good for when it doesn't allow Jack to save someone from the Empty who absolutely deserves being saved? Who thought it was a good idea to hand all that power to two beings who, together, have spent less years on Earth than the average human child? ...And why is there suddenly black goo everywhere?

In the Rolling Up of Sleeves | @the-elf-barbarian

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 20,344 Main Tags/Warnings: S15 fix it Cas is human/in heaven, Dean and Cas are dead/in heaven, Canon typical Alcohol Abuse, Canon typical reference to Child Abuse, Domestic Fic, Magical Realistic Heaven, Failure to communicate, The Unrelenting Search for Happiness, Hurt/Comfort but like... for Us Summary: When Cas arrives in heaven, sometime after sacrificing himself to the Empty - he and Jack realize just how wrong Chuck got it when he built heaven. And, just how much work they have in store to prepare heaven for the arrival of those they love. Meanwhile, in the wake of Chuck’s defeat, Dean finds a way to forge a life with this new, more free, world while grappling with the knowledge of Cas’s true feelings. When they finally meet in heaven, will they finally get the afterlife they deserve - learning and building, to make the Heaven they have spent so long fighting for - or will Cas’s fears about how he escaped from The Empty endanger it all? What was that, wayward sons, about there being peace when you were done?

to the wonder of all things | @hauntedpearl

Rating: General Word Count: 21,164 Main Tags/Warnings: Fix-It, Empty rescue, Hell rescue, Flashbacks, Angel!Cas, Love Confessions, First Kiss Summary: The Empty puts Castiel to sleep. The sound of prayer wakes him up. He follows this call echoing through the void and relives pieces of his life as he journeys towards the voice — towards freedom. Towards Dean.

One Week Later | @squirrelofcelestialintent

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 23,208 Main Tags/Warnings: Panic attacks, alcohol as a coping mechanism, bisexual dean, internalized homophobia, switching, gentle dom cas, identity crisis, graceless/human Castiel, discussions of sex work Summary: “Touch-starved”. It’s one of those terms (along with “alcoholic” and “abused child”) that Dean has worked very hard to keep on the other side of the big fat concrete wall in his brain. The one that, until now, only weakens when he’s truly, deeply shit-faced. But Cas has made a career out of breaking through Dean’s walls, it only makes sense that he’d tear this one down too, if he just died enough times. Ripped Dean’s heart out just enough so that the foundations of family and duty and sacrifice can crumble and leave Dean even more of a desperate, black hole of need than he was before. Chuck is dead, and Cas… Cas is back. And Dean is supposed to be happy. It’s time to decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life. But how can he do that, when every time he’s not physically touching Cas he starts to have a panic attack that none of this is real, and it’s all just another one of Chuck’s games? Who knows. So, he lets himself touch Cas. Constantly. It’s that or face a complete, Chernobyl-scale meltdown. At least Cas doesn’t seem to mind.

there's no cell service in the afterlife | @payphoneangel

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 27,404 Main Tags/Warnings: finale fix-it, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alcoholism, Family Dynamics, Jack Kline is Not God, Suicidal Thoughts, Empty deal, Blood and Injury, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Masturbation Summary: Castiel is resurrected from The Empty. While Dean is recovering from casting the spell that brought him back, Cas checks his voicemail. Turns out, they both just might be able to say what it is they want.

Inherit the Earth | @malicmalic

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 29,167 Main Tags/Warnings: S15 fix it, Castiel Lives, First kiss, MPreg, TopCas/Bottom Dean, comfort, Jack is God, Light angst, Fluff, Happy ending. Summary: Prompt: Cas and Dean deal with a surprise pregnancy. Or the one where the world didn't end, Jack defeated Chuck and Dean and Cas got their happily ever after.

The Blood Curse | @labgeek2002

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 32,690 Main Tags/Warnings: Angel Cas, post season 15 fix-it, internalized homophobia, time travel Summary: Castiel has been rescued from the Empty, but the spell used to retrieve him tears a hole in the dimensional wall that acts as barrier protecting Earth from the pull of everlasting darkness. As the Empty feeds off of Castiel's grace to sustain itself, driving him closer to death with every passing minute, Dean becomes desperate to save him. The only way to repair the damage is for Dean, Sam, and Cas to travel back in time to obtain a witch's stone that's in the possession of John Winchester, circa 2002. A twenty-three year old Dean Winchester will serve as their guide as they navigate the tumultuous father-son relationship that transcends time itself before the Empty draws its final curtain.

Buffer Time | @sunshine-zenith

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 42,728 Main Tags/Warnings: Referenced to past character death (minor and major), slight psychological horror, sexual humor, mental health issues, Fusion/AU Hopping, everyone needs hugs, s15 fix it, Angel Cas, Happy Ending Summary: When Dean wakes up in his town's jailcell with a disoriented Cas, he happily roles with it. Sure, he knows he'll be the laughing stock of the town for a few days -- what deputy locks himself in his own jailhouse? -- but as long as Cas is there, things are fine. Until he realizes his memory is unusually fuzzy. Until Cas starts acting strange and morose. Until he starts having brief flashes of Cas being taken from him by an inky black entity. Until Cas starts talking about plot holes and tropes. Until he wakes up by a fire in the woods, on a quests to fight a dragon --no wait, in an ambulance, late for his shift as a surgeon-- no wait- Dean's just trying to figure out why he and Cas keep waking up in different genres and why Cas seems so distant, while Sam works with Eileen, Gabriel, and a few others to do the same on the other side of a laptop. (WandaVision inspired finale fix-it)

Creatures of Light | @aishitara

Rating: Mature Word Count: 44,075 Main Tags/Warnings: Angel!Cas, temporary MCD, temporary canonical MCD, canon-typical depictions of violence, Castiel and Dean Winchester have a profound bond, angst with a happy ending, creature!Cas, trueform!Cas, surrealism, non-linear storytelling, love confessions, heavy reliance on scenes from potentially triggering episodes of season 15. Summary: Dean is in Heaven. He’s got everything he could ever want at his fingertips, a literal eternity of peace laid before him for the having, but he can’t help thinking — how can it really be his Heaven if Cas isn’t there? Then one day, Dean goes for a drive. And at the end of it he finds something he truly did not expect. Another chance, maybe, to find Cas and confront him about his parting words to Dean. To figure out what it is he wants and to take it, for once, without guilt or shame. Another chance to live free.

And Neither Do You | @withclawsandsympathy

Rating: Mature Word Count: 45,309 Main Tags/Warnings: Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, POV Dean, bi Dean, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean Winchester is Loved, Body Horror, Horror, Character Death Fix, Fox-It, Quote: Family Don’t End With Blood (Supernatural), Angel!Cas, Finale Rewrite Summary: “Come, now,” he heard Cas rasp. It wasn’t coming from the phone anymore, but from right outside the door. Dean lowered the phone and took a hesitant step forward, his bare foot sinking into the damp, rotting carpet. “Cas, what’s wrong? I don’t … You’re not making any sense.” “I have something for you,” Cas said, and this time it came as a whisper in a language Dean didn’t know, yet somehow understood. Dean froze in his tracks, his hand hovering just over the doorknob. He wanted so desperately for it to be Cas on the other side of this door, but he knew deep down that something was horribly, horrifically wrong. The rise of a new, hands-off God has unintended consequences, and the promise of free will reaches further than anyone intended. In the absence of the one who'd locked them away, and beneath the cracked and abused surface of the Midwest, an Old God stirs. Here, death is not the peace you're looking for, and there's one person left to save. Or: family don't end in blood, and neither does Dean Winchester.

Finally (WIP) | @nanianela

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 70,698 Main Tags/Warnings: Season/Series 15, Sam Winchester/Eileen Leahy, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Soul Bonds, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Post-Finale, Engaged Castiel/Dean Winchester, Magical Pregnancy Summary: Castiel manages to escape the Empty, but on borrowed time. Before he hands over his grace, he accidentally forges an angelic bond to Dean, his new life mate, and grace tainted with humanity has no place in the angel afterlife. The bond forces Dean and Cas to navigate new waters, as they can now see into each other’s minds and feel what the other feels. Grace sex between Dean’s soul and Cas’s grace becomes a new normal in the couple’s lives, until it causes something they never thought possible...

Carve a Palace From Within | @norahastuff

Rating: Mature Word Count: 75,930 Main Tags/Warnings: Background Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, mention of canon Cas/Djinn queen, 15x20 doesn't exist (except to dunk on), Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Introspection for everybody, The Power Of Love, Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx Mixtape, Billie is not a villain (this one's important to me), I will drag these idiots to the beach if it kills me, Cas is something between angel and human Summary: The world is saved, Chuck has been defeated, and with the help of Amara and Jack, they managed to rescue Cas from the Empty. It's over. It's all over. So, what now? Sam wants to continue on as a Man of Letters and help other hunters and Dean and Cas want to open up a Roadhouse-style bar, but old habits die hard, and it’s surprisingly easy to fall back into their established routine of monsters and hunting - that is until they run into trouble on a case and have to take a step back and evaluate what’s truly important. Just when it seems like things are finally falling into place, an old friend returns and they discover there's still one of Chuck’s messes they need to clean up. The cosmic forces at the top may have a plan to fix it, but it’s Dean who will have to play the pivotal role. In order to do so, he’ll have to confront his past, face up to who he really is and acknowledge just how far he's willing to go to get the job done. One thing’s for sure, though: this is their story and he refuses to let it end as a tragedy. They deserve better. They’ve earned the chance to be free.

Forget your perfect offering | @angelinthefire

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 81,785 Main Tags/Warnings: fix-it, angel!cas, top castiel/bottom dean winchester, angelic grace sex, minor homophobia, angel family, dadstiel, canon-typical alcohol use, panic attack, happy ending Summary: Cas was resurrected. Dean told Cas that he loves him, that he can have everything he wanted, but Cas has to stay with him. Cas promised that he would. The thing is, he didn’t realize how literal Dean was being. Now, Cas works on rebuilding Heaven with the angels, while he builds a new life with Dean. Neither of those things are as easy as Cas would have liked.

There Are Roads Left in Both of Our Shoes | @hawkland

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 117,878 Main Tags/Warnings: human!Cas, series fixit, road trip, nightmares, emotional hurt/comfort, switching Dean/Cas, soul bonds Summary: What happens when Cas wakes up in the Empty a second time, and rescues his own damn self? At first, it seems like the happy ending Dean thought he’d lost his chance to ever know. But as the two set out on a celebratory road trip and begin enjoying their new life together, there’s a darkness clinging to Cas that refuses to completely let go. They may need to make an altogether different kind of journey in order to put the past fully behind them. And meanwhile, where is Jack, anyway?

Beyond This Illusion | @skybird87

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 161,339 Main Tags/Warnings: Post Finale, Human Cas, Internalized Homophobia, Coming Out, Homophobic Language, Top Dean, Bottom Cas, Panic Attacks, Team as Family, Slow Burn Summary: “Are you serious, Dean? Your djinn-dream started with you dying?” Sam asks incredulously from the passenger. “Well, technically it started with us going on a hunt,” Dean points out. He licks his lips, jaw clenching. “I mean, there was Heaven, too, and that was pretty cool.” Sam stares at him. “Sorry, man, but that just sounds pretty lame.” He leans back and folds his arms. “Kinda sounds like something Chuck would cook up. Just you and me. No one else. I mean, really?” *~*~* In which some people come back, Cas learns to be human (the right way, this time), Dean Winchester finally realizes that good things do happen, and they all get their version of the post-credits, apple-pie life they deserved. AKA: Screw Chuck's narrative.

#destiel trope collection #destiel trope collection 2023 #destiel #fanfic #s15 fix its #day 2

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rosewaterandivy · 1 year ago

Text

9. part-time soulmate, full-time problem

Summary: Rumor has it, that hometown hero-turned-teacher Steve Harrington is hot for teacher. The English teacher next door to him at Hawkins High, who also happens to be his childhood friend, that is.

Pairing: Steve Harrington x chaotic!dumbass reader

Warnings: No use of y/n - reader goes by the nickname Trouble instead, cursing, sexual situations - SMUT & idolatry (my usual bullshit), we think we’re ~prank Sinatra~ to disastrous effect i.e. a fake elopement, Modern!Teacher AU, English teacher reader, History teacher Steve, slow burn, friends to lovers, romance.

A/N: hey girl, u up? lemme come thru 💦💦💦 🥵🥵🥵 *slaps roof of fic* You can fit so much reverence and smut in this bad boy. Here’s 5.1K of pure filth and debauchery, holy water can’t help me now! Poetry excerpt from Sue Zhao. 18+ mature content (minors dni). Reblogs, comments, and likes are always appreciated, please let me know what you thought; enjoy & thanks for reading! 💜

series masterlist | playlist - newly updated!

Steve's playlist for Trouble: trouble will find me

previous || next

Now, Spring Break, Joshua Tree, CA ➡️ Las Vegas, NV

“You did what?”

And it’s not a question, not by a long shot.

If Nancy Wheeler wasn’t some 1,800 miles from you, you’d be seeing the patented snarl right now. The one that says ‘you’ll be dead by my hand and my hand alone.’

There’s a very real possibility that you’ve overplayed your hand this time. What started as a prank, a harmless lark, had devolved into one screeching phone call from Steve’s mother for him and a blistering series rapid-fire of texts for you, followed by a phone call during which Nancy was going to rip you a new asshole.

She didn’t appreciate your texts as you’d hoped.

Trouble 👁️👄👁️: so BDE is not *just* an energy with Steve. got it, good to know.

Natty light 💯: She lives! We haven’t heard from you in days. Wtf did you idiots do?

Trouble 👁️👄👁️: nothing to be concerned about! on an unrelated note, before you check insta remember that i am your BESTIE and you would miss me terribly(!!!) if i died, even if it was at your own hand

Natty light 💯: … I’m going to kill you, and resurrect your dessicated corpse so I can strangle you … slowly and painfully

Trouble 👁️👄👁️: pls mother, no, i’m scared

But hey, it’s not like you woke up and decided to potentially fuck up your life today.

So, yeah. Definitely went too far with it this time, but in your defense, it’s not like anyone was there to reign you in. Steve was just as liable to go on with your half-cocked schemes, even more so now that you could sit back on your heels, all pretty smiles and wide, sweet eyes as your hands unbuckle his belt, still supplicated with chin on his knee, “You said anything...”

Folded like a house of cards the second you got your mouth on him. Shudders when you begin with your tongue first before eager lips stretch to fit him, guiding until he’s nestled in your mouth. And then you move, deliberately measured, building a lazy pace, sluicing him up with spit.

“Ah, shit…” Steve’s words are already betraying him. You smile as his cock pops out of your mouth.

“How’s that? Still wanna make that dinner reservation?” Thick lashes framing glittering doe-eyes peer up at him. Purposely coy. “Or do you want to stay here?”

He returns to himself. Dazed, he blinks at the bright lights and the glossy tiled floor. The marble countertop of the sink where he grips like a lifeline.

The restroom down the hall of the restaurant. Turn a corner and twenty people are sitting at tables, drinking cocktails and cajoling. Your mouth back on him wipes the thoughts from his brain.

Squelching when you push him back past your molars, crushing your tongue.

You slide him out, voice hoarse and breathy and it chills him to the bone the way you whisper, “C’mon baby, let’s have some fun.”

The second day in California runs a lot more smoothly, and the third day is as easy as a breeze. Granted, it’s a hot, humid, sticky type of desert breeze as you wipe a hand across your forehead in the heat of the day.

Steve hums a patient tune, leans back on both palms and you watch the sunlight drape his bare chest in a warm flare. Glowing gold and bronze as if it’s transmuted from the hue in his very eyes.

He is hard and hot when your bare skin touches his. Steve lies down on his side to face you, panting slightly as you glide your hand up and down his arm. Oh fuck, it’s been months and the first man you touch is more like something carved by a master sculptor of Renaissance than any other man. It should be illegal for someone to look this good.

Trembling, you touch the hard planes of his torso, the ridges in his abdomen, the swell of his chest taking hard breaths. You shut your eyes and imagine the way he looks right now—breathless and wild. His knee parts your legs easily and one hand descends to feel your center, saturating your underwear.

“Jesus, baby,” Steve sighs into your neck. “You’re makin’ me crazy. This–” He begins to slide his digits up and down, getting the slippery wetness all over his fingers, “Already…”

A shudder rolls through your body upon hearing his words and you arch into his touch, moaning when he rubs your clit in perfect pulsing circles. He moves forward, kissing the tops of your breasts through your bra, nipping at the soft flesh spilling from the cups.

“Steve, you’ll make me come.” You admit, a little shyly even as your hips rock consciously into his hand. You paw at his arms, squeezing the ridges of muscles.

And you’re abruptly startled awake by the sound your own moans. It’s past four in the morning when you rouse from sleep, frustrated to leave behind the pleasant escape the dream provided.

Damn it all to hell.

A creak of the wood door alerts you to his arrival. Steve is quiet when he sits on your bed, one knee pulled up to his chest while the other leg slinks down by your side, thigh brushing yours where your legs kicked off the covers. A sigh rolls through him at the early hour.

There is discomfort. His body retreats with the shift of your atmosphere. Always too itchy in your own skin. Afraid of being seen, noticed, thought about. He’s good at hearing your silence. Good at reading your language.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

He glistens like a god come to drown you in the sweetest of dreams. It makes your heart plummet to its death at the thought of his departure when you shake your head.

“Me neither.”

He lays back on your bed with a tired sigh, close enough to touch. Your own personal wonder.

“C’mere then,” you tug him to your side. Steve presses his lips to your neck, smiles into the wispy hair at the nape, nuzzles your locks aside to reveal more shoulder. Breathing soft and slow with his face against your neck, chest to your chest. He’s folded and tucked against you, all his strength and gravity nestled to your side.

“Honey—” Steve murmurs, more purposefully now, rasps your name, so soft and reverent you almost don’t hear it.

A confused noise, a second of readjustment to a new position, to his touch, and then you stir and purr.

“Hey, you.” Voice like warm fire, even with disrupted sleep from past few days.

A heavy silence falls between you.

Tell me what you’re thinking. If it was a mistake, tell me. If it wasn’t, tell me. You’ve been avoiding me and look—I want your goddamn babies, but c’mon. You gotta throw me a bone, I’m shit at reading signs.

He wants to take you to pieces, eyes roving your sleep-drowsy form, shorts rucked up on your thighs, shirt askew. Would devour you whole if you’d let him, savor your cries and moans at his capable hands. Make a ruin you only to build you right back up, unable to think of anyone else save him.

Steve arches, brushing the tip of his nose against your chin, up to your own nose, mouth hovering but not quite touching, just feeling each other’s atmosphere. You cross the distance and kiss him, grip tighter now like he could collapse right into you and god, you wish he could. Let you keep every last bit of him forever.

“Can we—”

You savor his lips, caressing the line of his cupid’s bow with your own, tongue flicking over the corners of his mouth, punctuating it chastely like a ritual. He moans, hand on the plane of your back moving, fingers scrambling at your spine before he palms your thigh and slots you flush against his torso with one leg hooked around his waist.

“God yes. Lemme just—”

He tugs at the waistband of your sleeping shorts before he changes his mind and his hands slip into the leg opening of the silk instead, keeping you right where you are. He rucks his own sweats down, just enough to spring himself free, shushing your whines, never letting you get too far, slipping upward, finding your heat.

“Eyes on me, baby.”

“Okay, Steve—ah—”

Right. So this is happening. Like, right the fuck now.

Oh god.

You’re both surprised and terrified, blinking at his urgency, and then you start scrambling, too. A beatific grin blooms on your lips before you tip forward and slowly glide yourself down his considerable size, rubbing back and forth, hips moving easily.

Steve stutters breathlessly like he might go into shock. “You’re all fucking— oh fuckin’ hell.”

You only arch into it, holding his chin between your thumb and forefinger, kissing the bristles of his jaw. You’re soft and warm and he’s utterly overcome. Little noises fall from one mouth to another. An awkward shift and your thighs slip off his, head knocking into him, but neither of you are bothered.

A half-hearted cluck of your tongue gives way to a low moan and you shuffle, flush against his chest, bare bodies warm and growing hotter now. Your palm rubs down his chest, savoring the rougher feel of his hairs there, contrasting your own skin, grasping his jutting hipbones, the strong plane of his abdomen.

Eager fingers slip between flesh. Velvet and surprisingly slick and wrapping around his digits like syrupy flower petals. “Baby girl,” Steve hums at the way you sigh. “Pretty girl.”

Shudders. You’re weak and boneless, slack and supple, pliant to his fingers and words. Little sweet-talker, you never knew he had such a clever tongue until he first slid it against yours in that fevered kiss in December. Now he’ll know all your weaknesses, know every lock and how to pick them until you’re all the way opened up for him.

It’s hard to focus when he’s like this. Perfectly warm. Perfectly adoring. Perfectly fitted. So, so bright with the faintest pink bursting over his cheeks.

You whimper with his every stroke. Every plunge. His other hand runs itself up the nape of your neck, fingertips in your scalp and you arch like a cat for more.

“So good,” Steve praises, “Nice and tight, squeezin’ around me. All wet for me, aren’t you?”

“Uh— mhm.” Inarticulate noises. Woozy and wrapped in his affection.

His eyes– pupils blown wide, half-hooded with lust and love– immobilize you, memorizing every inch of your face. He smiles. Christ, a smile that could launch a thousand ships. That could blind the whole world.

You curse quietly, blood pounding in your ears, your chest, your throat where he latches on with his perfect mouth, marking you up with his spit quickly followed by his teeth.

“Keep going—oh, don’t stop–“

“You want it like this, honey?” He sucks on your collar, on your shoulder, taking every whimper and cry as a command to continue.

They flower all over your chest. Red and purple and swollen bright for everyone to see—just like him. And the very thought of him, of you, lost to it takes you over the edge, calling his name like you’re at an altar in supplication.

“That’s it, honey. Be a good girl and come for me.”

With a tremble that vibrates all the way to into Steve’s soul, you obey. Onto his hips and abdomen, gushing a little, and with some embarrassment that it happened all so quickly.

Your lids flutter open and you see as Steve hitches himself deeper, grinding his hips, gripping your thighs, and fills you all the way up until the stars behind your eyes whites out your vision, making you stutter and keen as you continue to fall apart.

Then he stills, pulling you even closer, body slick with dew in the early morning light. The two of you lie in perfect symmetry, trembling in each other’s arms.

And because you’re a sap with too much poetry rattling around your brain, all that pops into your head is:

In my dreams I am kissing your mouth and you’re whispering ‘where have you been?’ I say, ‘I’ve been lost but I’m here now. You’re the only person who has ever been able to find me.’

You allow yourself to sink into the feeling, expecting the tight fit of something new but finding that not to be the case at all. But rather brushing against something well-worn, as if it had been waiting for you all this time.

“God, Steve—” you rasp. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

Steve laughs low, kisses the blooming bruises up and down your neck, makes you whine again, sensitive and aching. His clever tongue wonders sweetly, “How’s staying in bed all day sound?”

You laugh. He’ll learn everything you like. Know all your weaknesses. How can you say no to something like that?

It’s different, almost tender in the afternoon.

His abs clench in time with his fists, wet fingers digging into his palms, bit-back groans barely contained. You keep going, marveling at the way he’s sensitive, kissing his neck, letting him feel good. Steve begins to protest, embarrassed at the way you’re moving, at how he’s powerless against you.

“S-slow—hold on—“

“Let me do it, Stevie.” He’s so hard it hurts. “I wanna learn everything you like.”

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Steve holds himself to calm down, other hand steadying your teasing. Nothing’s happened yet, you just started back up again after a late breakfast, having slept soundly through the morning, and he might already blow his whole fucking load.

“Okay—just—will you give me a second–”

Using the position you’re already in, he pushes you up against the mattress and guides you back down, hitching your thighs around his hips, sinking a bit at a time until you’re landing on him with a gasp. He eases into you with what he hopes is restraint, letting you have it slow, feeling you shudder from inside your goddamn bones with every further inch until he takes it away and you shimmy down to the hilt.

Your eyes roll back. And you look perfect.

“Was it good?” He blurts, “With Eddie?”

He doesn’t know why it slips out; he never thinks about it, honest. It was a series of hook ups. A few times over the years—and he’s not jealous like that because you’re all adults, and it’s not like he’s a virgin or an ascetic, either. You freeze, but he really is an idiot because instead of apologizing or rectifying that outburst, he cuts you off.

“I can give it to you better.”

Because Steve wants to. He really does.

He presses onward before you can respond, taking hold of what little courage he has, making you whimper, feeling prouder as he goes. Another one and you’re meeting him with a roll of your own hips. Another one, harder now, and you’re shaking down below him, tipping back into the pillows, grinding recklessly with that exhilaration he adores.

“Baby, you feel amazing.” Tongue-tied like a schoolboy, he’s keening after your words. “Can I have you all the time?” And Jesus wept who knew you could talk so sweet and filthy.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” Steve promises, his jaw hanging open in awe, “I’m yours. You can have me as much as you want— anytime.”

You bite your lip, skin of it pulled taut and snapping back bruised, light-headed and reeling. Glistening across your collarbones with his spit, body trembling like a high note. He feels it— just a little more— god, you look incredible— he’s gotta hold out for this— and then—fuck.

It’s wet and divine when you come. Slick and tight, dragging him under as you ride out your orgasm, pulling him in like he belongs in you forever.

And he knows. He knows, he knows, he knows.

Steve could die happy seeing your face like this every day.

Two weeks prior…

“Eddie…tell me the truth,” You ask slowly, folding clothes (well, that’s a generous term— it’s more haphazardly tossing and bundling laundry into your open suitcase). “It’s good, isn’t it? Shawty, tell me what that thang do!”

You waggle your brows, make a V-shape with your fingers, and lewdly run your tongue up and down between them. Steve thinks he sees you looking at him, but he feels himself flushing at your comment and pretends like he’s enthralled with the most recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Half-keeping an eye on you to make sure you actually pack actual pajamas and pants for this trip.

“Dude. Stop it.” Eddie groans, knowing you’re all too familiar with his endowments and prowess from previous experience.

Whomever currently was getting the Eddie Munson midnight special was having a helluva time.

You lob a pair of leggings toward your suitcase, “Kobe!”

You miss.

Eddie cackles, “How’re you gonna disrespect a legend like that, and miss?!”

“Okay!” Steve yells, pushing you off the couch in the living room, “That’s enough of that. I’m going for a run.”

Landing on your shoulder with a grunt, you brush away the rough sting of the carpet and catch the last second of his shadow before he’s gone from the room.

“What?” You call, projecting your voice and hoping he hears, “What’d I do? Steve!”

The scrape of the chair legs signals Eddie standing up, too. A shake of his head and he crosses his arms over his chest.

“You know,” he starts, “For all your insight, you’re pretty dense.”

There’s nothing in your head but sawdust and thoughts about his… activities under the sheets his flavor of the month. You shake it out of your brain before it lingers too long. Eddie points sharply down the hall to where Steve’s shadow has slipped out of view and hearing-distance.

“You know he likes you, right?”

Uh? Your brain is the mac loading wheel, just spinning. “Of course he does? We’re buddies?”

Eddie cuffs you in the back of the head, “Get it together. Like is putting it lightly, too. Love is closer to the truth.”

“Now,” Eddie leans over you, menacing you with his height. “How about you go listen to the record he gave you and think about what you’ve done, hmm?”

Then, he saunters off, shaking his head all the while, leaving you to gape down the hall like a fish. Steve? In love? With you?

Flashes explode in your brain like fireworks. His jacket over your shoulders—not the first time. Sitting underneath your legs— nearly tradition. Morning errand runs even though he hates them. The banter—him, scolding your motor-mouth, you— never stopping. Circles he rubs on your knees— the laughter—damn it, so much laughter.

Steve? In love? With you? It’s more likely than you think.

Back in your bedroom and chastened, you wait until the front door closes signaling Steve’s exit. Turning to the wall dedicated to your impassioned analytical skills, you eye the various colors of yarn showing the various connections that could be drawn from the song choice and order in which they were placed.

Printed out pages of lyrics have been annotated to death, some phrases scrawled more largely than others for importance. You stare at the wall for the better part of an hour, long enough to come to the end of the playlist. Sufjan Stevens rhapsodizes on the mystery of love and fades into Matt Berninger singing how he needs his girl.

A gasp. A choke and a wail somewhere deep inside your chest as you slowly, methodically begin removing the pins and pages from your wall. Realization settling on you heavy with mood.

Clearly, this was not some bush-league bullshit.

Hesitant, but growing in the knowledge that Steve, your best friend whom you annoy to no end, is irrefutably and undeniably in love with you. You’d have seen it sooner if you weren’t such a dumbass, all the signs had been there just lying in wait. The front door opens once more, his voice calling out to Robin in the kitchen about dinner.

“Steve.” You light out of your room, tearing down the hallway. “Stevie! Steve! I’m sorry! Steve oh my god! I’m a fuckup!”

You trip on the corner of the floor runner, as he turns, slightly confused, one hand reaching out to catch you as you careen into his chest with a thunk.

You must look a wreck, hair in disarray and panting hard, him sweat-slick, bearing your weight as he sets you right on your feet.

Steve raises an eyebrow, blinks at the way the front of your shirt slides from your shoulder and takes his ear buds out, looking at you like you’re a first-rate idiot.

And well ... he’s not wrong.

The flight to Vegas is painless, though you are put out at having to leave the love nest that bloomed like a night flower in the Californian desert. A lazy, slow start to the day. Sticky and sweet like biting into a ripe peach, juices flowing down against sun-warmed skin.

His hand pulling at yours, guiding you through the crowds of the airport, looking back to you frequently, as if he can’t bring himself not to. One hour later and viva, Las Vegas!

As it turns out, it’s fairly easy to fake a Vegas elopement. Just a matter of subterfuge and a wedding chapel, which are a plenty in Clark County. Steve in a suit (“You weren’t even wearing a tie, Steven! Who gets married looking like that!?”), rotating the signet of his ring out of sight, the ‘H’ resiting against the underside of his ring finger so just the band was visible.

You in a dress, something white and off the rack from Neiman’s, your ring, courtesy of Steve, moved from your right hand to your left. Sapphire earrings as your something blue, Manolo Blahnik pumps in your favorite color, a gift from Steve, as your something new.

A well-timed call to Jonathan, he was in town for a shoot and just so happened to have a few hours to kill. An appointment at the Graceland Wedding Chapel and 250 dollars later, you have yourself a believable elopement, no marriage certificate required.

Even drove out to the Red Rock Mojave desert outside of town for a photoshoot courtesy of one Jonathan Byers, professional photographer. By the time you’d made it back to your room at the Wynn that night, he’d already done a rough edit of a few photos for you to post to the ‘gram. Piece of cake, really.

It was all well and good. Steve even let you tag him and posted his favorite images himself, miracle of miracles. The man does jack shit with social media, claims he only has the account for the groupchats and memes. Captioned it something like ‘married AF’ because he’s a dork; first photo in the carousel was a shot of your hands, showing off the new bling with the wedding chapel sign in the background.

You opted for the more truthful, ‘ew, boy. you’re, like, obsessed with me’ and selected a photo where your legs wrapped around Steve’s hips after he’d told you to ‘time to giddy-up, yeah?’ with a wink and caught you in his arms before kissing you stupid. You were quite pleased with yourself until the phones began to ring.

“Jus’ ignore it, honey.” His teeth pull against your bottom lip, bringing your attention back to him. You screw your eyes shut, hand falling to cup the nape of his neck as his lips continue their mapping of your skin. Purposefully, he plays with a lock of your hair, tucks it behind your ear, and lets his finger ghost over your neck. “Gonna kiss you now,” you murmurs, “Doin’ some of my best work here and you’re missing it.”

He pouts.

Your throat clenches, bobbing with a thick swallow and Steve thinks if this wasn’t so tender and sweet, he’d be latching onto that pulse instead. “Okay…” Your mouth parts expectantly, eyes fluttering closed, hand coming up to caress his jaw.

It’s sublime. It’s perfect. It’s the biggest relief he’s ever felt when you return his touch—parting your lips to receive the tip of his tongue against yours. Thirst. Desperation. Enthusiastic limbs scrambling to feel more of him. A bucking of your hips against his thigh and he’s soaring up into heaven with the sensation.

Except the damn phone won’t stop ringing.

“Steve,” you pant, hand reaching up to fist his hair and pull him from your the sensitive spot he’s located behind your ear. As you tangle your fingers in his mane of hair, securing your grip with a tug, he breaks contact with your slick skin with a strangled moan.

Oh.

You file that particular reaction away for further investigation and direct his attention to the loudly ringing phone on the nightstand. He rolls off of you with an exasperated noise and answers the call in a sulk. “Hi, Ma.”

His expression changes so quickly you nearly have whiplash; lazy and pouty one moment to shocked silent in the next while his mother lectures him, a mile a minute. Eyes cutting to you, he grabs your phone from the same table and holds it in font of you to unlock it via Face ID. You roll your eyes and bat him away, taking a slug of water from the glass on your bedside table.

“Shit,” Steve mutters, putting himself on mute and his mom on speaker as he scrolls through your phone. “Holy fucking shit, nonono.”

You lean over and take a peek. He’s thumbing through Facebook, pupils blown wide in shock at the sheer number of notifications on his accidental post. Because yes, Steve accidentally cross-posted the photos from Instagram to Facebook as an update, like genius.

“Are you fucking kidding me!?”

He drops your phone on the bed when it starts to ring, like it’s a venomous thing that could take him down in one strike.

Sheepishly, he looks to you and mouths ‘I’m so sorry’ as he returns to his mother’s raging diatribe.

After checking the caller ID, you answer, voice flat. “Hello.”

“You little scamp,” Eddie tuts, “Stole my idea of eloping in Vegas and everything, I hate you.”

In spite of yourself, you crack a smile. “It’s a prank, babe.” A sigh as you pull your hair up and off of your shoulders. “Not legally binding at all. Having Byers on deck really sold the idea though.”

“You are the absolute worst, Trouble.” You warm at his soft laughter, “What’d you do to get Steve to agree? Drop to you knees all nice and pretty?”

A swell of pride accompanies the rush of heat at the thought of your earlier rendezvous. “Y’know Eds, I did exactly that. How perceptive of you.”

He cackles. “It’s tried and true for a reason, babe.” Steve is nodding furiously at whatever his mother is yammering on about, bare back toward you as he sits on the edge of the bed.

A push and a slide across the rumpled sheets and you’ve wrapped around him like a vine. His thumb rubs at your ankle, pulling your leg to envelop his hip. Opposite arm dangling across his chest as you press your face into his neck, revelling in his scent—cypress, vetiver, and something slight musky tinged with salt. All warm and pliable.

“Nance may have called in some reinforcements.” Eddie says carefully. “I told her to fuck off, but she’s beyond reason at this point.”

“Whaddya mean?”

He sighs, “Just be on the lookout for an angry lesbian, alright?”

You snort, drawing Steve’s attention. He twists in your hold, phone discarded on the table finally, fingers trailing tantalizingly up and down your sides. Pushes you back against the bed, chin resting on your sternum as you talk with Eddie, head tilted as he listens.

Begging off the phone call, you say your goodbyes. “Hey,” Eddie says before you go, voice soft and warm, “You happy babe? You sound it.”

“Yeah,” you turn your head and grin at the ridiculousness of your life. Steve follows your lips, his own blazing a trail across your chest and up to meet your shoulder. “I’m really happy, Eds.”

Steve plucks the phone from your hand, “Bye Munson!” He sings before ending the call and unceremoniously dropping your phone on the floor.

And Steve never thought a person was supposed to laugh so hard during sex, or maybe that’s just your own brand of love, but he doesn’t want to find out with anyone else.

It’s the fifth time, and Steve’s dick is about to fall off—how are you still doing this—just a few thrusts in when the banging on the door frightens the both of you into your clothes.

Robin swings it open and Steve is desperately tucking himself into his pants before—please, no.

“It smells like ass in here!” She hollers, “The hell have you two been—oh my god.”

“Shut up, Rob!” You respond from the corner of the room, head ripping through the neck hole of a shirt, legs wiggling into a pair shorts. Steve is still shirtless, hoping he might spontaneously combust.

“Oh my god,” Robin whispers again, “Oh… my god.” She sputters on the verge of either eruption or death.

“You freaky little—” she hisses, before screaming, “Oh fuck no! I’m here picking your asses up. Got on a flight at ass o'clock from Indy— you're butt-ass-naked in here—” She stands ram-rod straight, hands on her hips angrily. “I’m tellin’ on you.”

“Telling on?! What are you, five!? You’re so annoying, Rob!”

“Annoying? What’s annoying is—I’m exhausted! And well— you're exhausted too, huh?”

“I hate you.”

She snickers, high-fiving herself before crossing her arms, “Now get your freaky asses outside so I can go home and drink myself into forgetting I ever saw Harrington’s dick.”

You pat her on the shoulder, “It’s nice, huh?”

Robin dry-heaves, “Uh-uh. That’s enough. Go wash your damn hands.”

A few minutes later, Steve closes the door to the now-silent hotel room, damp with sweat and the lingering aroma of musk. Robin trots on ahead, leading the pair of you through the lobby and out into the dry desert heat.

His hand pulls at yours, reassuring and warm. A small smile blooms across your face and you allow yourself to revel in it for a moment: heading home with Steve, can't even bring yourself to be all that mad at Robin's antics.

Not when he turns back to check on you, all tan skin and that devastating smile. Tugs you closer as Robin flags down the Uber, lays his lips against yours, and kisses you with a sweetness only he could bring.

Oh yeah, you think tangling your free hand in his shirt. This'll do just fine.

#steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington smut #reader insert #teacher!steve #the kids aren't alright - rosewaterandivy

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payphoneangel · 1 year ago

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Vinny's Fic Recs

I love reading it, I love writing it, I love talking about it! So, I thought I'd put a few fics here that never leave my brain so they might infect others <3.

my lead to blow by amidsizedfrog A 9x07 coda where we follow Dean's journey as he makes his first friend and joins the wrestling team. This fic is deliciously bittersweet. It rides the line of joy and fear that comes from being young, having a connection with someone, but being unsure if they're a friend... or something more.

well everybody's got a secret, sonny by luminoussbeings Short and sweet, a s1 ficlet in which Dean and Sam have an argument where they each think the other is being homophobic, only to realize they're both queer.

not with a bang but with a yelp by strange_estrangement What if the brothers used Yelp? More of a multi-media project, this is a look at some of the motels throughout the series showcased by the brothers (along with a few guests) leaving yelp reviews. It's imaginative and out-of-the-box, and features some fun tfw teasing!

iCarlynatural by Sequesters The title speaks for itself.

ad astra per aspera by jeremycarver THEE Stanford Era Dean one-shot. This fic scooped out my insides, painfully and lovingly. It's understated, atmospheric, and just brimming with heart. If you've ever wondered what it feels like to get swallowed up the the vast, aching loneliness of the US Midwest, this is it.

Until the Breaking of the Day by Dira Sudis (dsudis) A destiel fic from the classical era (2009). Intimate, electric, and theological, this fic finds Dean and Cas postulating the age-old question: If you're resurrected from the dead... do you stay circumcised?

John Dies at the End by Kalliel An exploration of an alternate season 2 timeline. This fic is psychological, intense, and heartbreaking. Here's my favorite three lines, which make up the entirety of chapter 6: "Here's a secret: Sam knows Dean's always been a little afraid of him. Sam, after all, had the power to leave him.

Dean's not even a ghost, and his absence still feels vengeful."

Go check them out! Leave a kudos! Leave a comment! Make a fic rec yourself!! Happy reading <3

#vinny types #fic recs #I left out a lot of the fics i like bc theyre super popular and I wanted to highlight some stories that i think deserve more love #thats why i only have like one destiel fic on here lmao

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steelajeeg · 2 months ago

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Statue Model Kamen Rider 1

- from Kamen Rider

- by Banpresto (ca. 1999)

This was another very cool thrift find. An early Banpresto Kamen Rider statue from the Crane King line of UFO Catcher prizes.

Missing the (honestly, rather ugly) base piece but otherwise perfectly intact and ready for display. A fun toy that isn't trying to be too much of anything special, but pulls of its meager ambitions quite well.

It's a very cool time capsule to an era before the franchise was fully resurrected and running full steam ahead. Quaint, simple, and a very cheap find. Not bad for my favorite character from the 50+ year series.

[Instagram link for this post]

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incesthemes · 7 months ago

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final thoughts: supernatural season 15

holy shit. i did it. i finished supernatural. i actually finished it a couple hours ago but i'm still having trouble processing it. i've been working at this for six months (but with a one-month break back in december) and i'm finally finished. honestly i don't think i really believed i would do it because shit this show is long, and i am not predisposed to enjoy shows like this. so this is a huge mark of pride for me, that i can finally say i did indeed sit down and watch all 327 episodes of supernatural :)

anyway all that to say i hated this season with a passion lmao, hasta la vista baby ✨

honestly i think i'll end up keeping this short because frankly most of my criticisms boil down to

how did you fuck up your own lore this badly

holy plotholes batman

this is so disrespectful and irreverent toward kripke's supernatural

nothing about this writing makes any kind of sense

well, that's convenient (in the most boring way imaginable)

so it's basically just a game of spin the wheel and see what it lands on.

the season started super weak; the concept was bad from the get-go and executed only to a mediocre standard, so i couldn't help but cringe my way through it. rowena's death was really well done, but her character was never well developed, in the same way most side characters on this show are never well developed, so while i appreciate the care that went into that scene it felt rather empty. it made me regret how poorly and inconsistently written she was. and yeah most side characters get this treatment—hell, cas gets this treatment which is why i don't care about him much—but she had such a provocative death scene that it had me lamenting that she didn't get a better foundation and better development. alas, that's just what it means to be someone other than sam and dean on supernatural.

after that was... the eileen subplot. i do really like eileen despite her being a rather flat and uninteresting character the way most women are on this show (y'know, kickass independent "girl power" women without nearly any other significant personality trait), but i really didn't appreciate the substantial pivot sam took from dean-focused to eileen-focused in this season. yes, season 12-14 did go to great efforts to make sure this wasn't The Sam And Dean Show anymore, but season 15 is so dramatically incongruous from even 12-14 that it just boggled my mind. the sam/eileen stuff was a major part of that, and it just didn't feel good because it was one more nail in the coffin with regards to how little the showrunners respected the foundation of the show (y'know, "the epic love story of sam and dean"). the only real salmondean moment in the entire season was the 7-minute incest speech in the finale—like what? i couldn't even properly enjoy that because of how poorly it was set up, thanks to the four seasons of retconning their relationship and making it less important to the series overall.

anyway all that to say, they had this massive sam/eileen subplot and then nothing even came of it. sam didn't even call to check if she was alive after jack resurrected everyone? he didn't meet up with her on screen even once? like if you're going to give him this season-long romance with someone other than dean, you could at least have the balls to commit to it. i find that just. godawful writing. eileen didn't have to be sam's blurry wife or anything, but he should have had some kind of resolution, literally anything at all, if we're meant to believe she's in any way important to him. c'mon.

more incongruous moments: dean got weirdly angry in this season. like what's with episode 17 man? there is nothing about dean in that episode that feels even remotely in character. from "jack's not family" to dean pulling a gun on sam, it all felt wildly overblown, way too melodramatic and sudden, and just not anything dean would do. yeah he's an angry guy, but???? this was too much, even for him. and the whole jack argument between sam and dean made me roll my eyes hard. because how do you expect me to believe that after all of the developments up to that point, that

dean wouldn't consider jack family. first of all that's stupid, dean drops the f-bomb on literally anyone he thinks is useful to further his goals. second of all it contradicts the bond they've formed since season 13, and it no longer fits with the parallel themes set up between sam, dean, and jack. it undermines what's been established, what's been developed, and what jack means to them on a thematic level. so so so stupid. cannot stress how dumb this move was. it just felt like the writers pulling out yet another OOC moment just so they can conveniently move the plot in the direction they wanted. so annoying.

sam and cas are equals in dean's eyes. like that's just hilarious to me. the last time cas died dean got sad for a little bit and burned his body on a pyre. the last time sam died dean committed suicide. these are not equal reactions. and sam and cas have never been equal to dean because dean always chooses sam over everyone, again evidenced in the series finale. so it was just hilarious for this one episode to pretend like sam and cas could ever be equal.

of course season 15 did really push a destiel agenda in the most unexpected and bizarre way. like wow, and i thought seasons 12-14 were a totally different show. no, season 15 is so much worse than that. i have absolutely no idea why they made the choices they did with this season, but they were not good, they routinely disrespected kripke's foundations of the show, and they ignored every theme ever laid out up until then. all for... what, exactly? so dean and cas can have a weird little non-romance together for 18 episodes only for them to slip wincest back in at the end? what's up with that? no like seriously, what were they trying to do here????

i told my friend this earlier, but i do think it's funny how cas's death speech is just straight-up factually incorrect regarding dean. i'm 100% fully willing to believe that castiel was blinded with lust by dean winchester that he simply made up some guy in his head who looked like dean. and that will be my headcanon going forth because wow it's shocking and funny as hell how much he got wrong while waxing poetic about dean. "you're the most selfless man i know" when kripke spent 5 seasons pounding it into our heads how fundamentally selfish dean (and sam, obviously, but the speech is about dean) is. girl what are you saying. dick so good he rewrote dean's basic character traits to be more convenient to him. i respect it truly i do.

anyway the finale. i hated it! to absolutely no one's surprise. a few days ago i wrote out what i thought would have been the most thematically cogent endings for supernatural. i knew what actually happens, obviously (hard to miss tbh), but my resolve on this front was only strengthened by actually watching it. yes the 7 minutes of incest were very nice and compelling, but... wow. this episode has some of the worst pacing i've ever seen in my life. dean died halfway into the episode? and the rest of that was... a sequence of short scenes that are too drawn-out to be a montage??? like there was no tension, no buildup, and no setup for what they did. it felt so lazy and underdeveloped, lacking any kind of poignancy or thematic cohesion. and then i had to watch TWENTY MINUTES of half-baked scenes of dean in heaven and sam growing old. i wouldn't have hated this ending so much if they had better pacing, i'm serious. like the outrage i feel is predominantly because of how badly it was written. the concepts aren't good, but they were par for the course. but TWENTY MINUTES OF MONTAGE. A MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH WITH NO EMOTIONAL BUILDUP, WHICH ACTIVELY CONTRADICTS THE THEMES OF THE SHOW. WHAT!!!!!!! WERE THEY THINKING!!!!!!!!!!

anyway i disliked that a little bit.

so overall i pretty much hated every part of this season and there were very, very, very few redeeming features sprinkled in. it's fine though! i'm fine. it's all over now :)

a few brief thoughts on the series overall: i regret ever speaking badly of kripke's supernatural; i didn't know how good i had it until it was gone. in hindsight, a lot of the seasons i thought were dogshit were actually not the worst things ever—i just didn't realize how bad bad could get. i know now. i will carry that knowledge with me forever.

dramatics aside, i honestly did enjoy watching the show. as much as i hated so many of the writing choices, the plotholes, the retcons, the way the writers just handwaved away anything inconvenient and rewrote characters entirely just to force them into the story they way they wanted them—it was still, like, fun. the agony was enjoyable (things masochists say). i think it helps that the fandom at large generally agrees that the writing is bad; it gives a sense of community and solidarity in the misery. there's no uneasy disconnect between myself and the rest of the fanbase, and that honestly does make all the difference. it's fun to suffer together, and i don't regret watching this show one bit :)

so with that said, here's my final ranking for every season:

season 1 (thematically strong, tight writing, incredible vision, truly foundational in its establishment of overarching themes, tone, and genre)

season 2 (such an interesting plot which builds on what was established in season 1. this is where the meat of the show is, where the heart is exposed to daylight as the chest is ripped open)

season 3 (well written, though disappointing in some areas largely due to kripke dropping the special children plot thus leaving a hole. not very noticeable due to the good writing, but still there. i'll never forgive them for killing off henricksen)

season 4 (this is the first real drop in quality imo, but it's relatively insignificant. the writing feels more meandering, and the tone shifts rather drastically away from the horror of its origin. the introduction of angels destroys a lot of the religious anxiety that formed the foundation of the show, but at the same time introduces a fantastic story about fate and doom)

season 5 (same as season 4, but with the flaws a bit more glaring. castiel's unclear motivations and underdeveloped shift in perspective are a major point of contention for me; i don't think it was handled well and could have been written better to make him a stronger character from the get-go, possibly allowing him to be a better character in later seasons instead of the conflicting mess we ended up with)

season 9 (the writing is atrocious, but the vision is so good. i still don't know how they managed that. they had such a great idea and they took kripke's supernatural and expanded on it in such a satisfying way. it drove me crazy! but holy shit the actual writing is so bad)

season 8 (i feel largely the same about 8 as i do 9, but i just think the writing was overall worse. it does get brownie points for having benny in it, though)

season 10 (boring. boring and paced so, so, so badly. the sole redeeming feature was how committed it was to its vision. it has the exact opposite problem as season 6 in that it has too little content to fill out the season. but god, the vision. you'll hear me waxing poetic about the season 8-10 vision on my death bed)

season 7 (it did a lot to pave the road for seasons 8-10 which i can't ignore. it also got itself fairly settled after the mess season 6 was and didn't try to bite off more than it could chew. i didn't love it, but it had a lot of moments that were provocative and interesting, and it provided pretty good setup for season 8. the writing was not good, but i think that goes without saying)

season 6 (introduced really interesting ideas, but tried to cram so much into one season that it failed to deliver satisfying payoffs for any of its setup. soulless sam was an interesting exception and really redeemed it for me)

season 12 (12 and 13 are about equal for me because i hate the plots, i hate the intense diversion away from The Sam And Dean Show, i hate the writing, i hate the concepts, etc etc. but they both introduce supporting characters which show off new and interesting sides to sam and dean: mary in 12 and jack in 13. it allows for focus to stay on sam and dean's relationship a little longer even though they're no longer generating any organic conflict between them, so i appreciate that at least)

season 13 (i fucking HATE the apocalypse world. that is my deciding factor between seasons 12 and 13. also i hate what they did to mary here)

season 14 (honestly an inoffensive season. i still hate the writing way more than anything else pre-12, and it doesn't have the benefits of a new character introduced to provide external conflict between sam and dean, so while it was relatively inoffensive it was also boring, lacking, and really obvious how little the writers cared about maintaining sam and dean's relationship as the emotional core of the show)

season 11 (the writing all things considered wasn't the absolute worst thing i've ever seen, if i'm being fair. on the other hand, i hated everything about this season conceptually, and i hate that it vouched for christianity as the ~one true religion~ which again undermines kripke's original series. this is me being petty and i'm okay with that)

season 15 (see above. oh but i'm honestly surprised it managed to surpass my ire toward season 11. like honestly it's impressive because i hold a massive grudge toward 11 which should have been insurmountable. a feat has certainly been achieved here!)

anyway. i said this wasn't going to be long but then i just kept on writing and writing. because that's what i do. i never learn 😔 i'll end it here then. i intend to go back and rewatch seasons 1-5 now that i'm finally finished, so i'm looking forward to that. i want to see if my rose-tinted glasses that i've been looking at kripke era with are based on reality or simply a longing to return to less terrible times :P

#liveblogging: supernatural #oh my god o h my god <3 #i did indeed rank every season from 1 to 15 in here. for funsies #spn reviews #.txt #spn15

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thegeminisage · 3 months ago

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oooh envesseled, please!!

HI wow thank you for asking, because i love talking about this, and i promise no one is obligated to read the whole answer lol. envesseled (partially, but only partially, up on ao3...) is part of cambionverse, which is a sort of spin-off about some EXTREMELY minor characters in s*pernatural that my buddy @callowyn and i have been chipping away at since 2011 or so.

for anyone with a passing familiarity with the show: we were so sure they were going to kill lisa braeden at the end of season 6 (can you blame us?), we whipped up a little scenario where her son ben was partially raised by sam, dean, and bobby instead...until sam and dean go mysteriously missing, a la john winchester, and now ben has to go and look for them the same way they once searched for their own dad.

but since supernatural has those big 3 characters (sam dean cas) and ben is our dean-character (he is sort of like a dean who broke the cycle of abuse and is also a huge lovable dork), we also needed a sam-character and a cas-character. for our sam we picked jesse (a one-episode wonder, the antichrist kid who turned cas into an action figure), and claire novak, the daughter of acstiel's vessel, who at that point was also a one-episode wonder and also had a collective total of less than 50 words of dialogue. we made her up on our own, essentially. jesse struggles with anxiety and controlling his demonic half and trusting hunters/himself after doing so has burned him in the past (or...gotten other people burned, i guess), and claire struggles with trusting anyone at all and the total emotional unavailability/other after-effects that come from being possessed by something with a thousand eyes at age 11.

in the first two "big" stories (one for jesse, one for ben, though there's a shit ton of additional content) they battle meg (my beloved, don't worry, she'll NEVER die), find the missing sam and dean, resolve various other personal traumas, be mentally ill together, and flirt ever closer to a three-person situationship that would make dean actively long for death if he ever found out about it. meanwhile cally and i kind of throw tomatoes at various things in the show proper that annoyed us, such as how much they hate women, how often they forget their own canon, or the double standard of sometimes letting monsters live when they're dangerous and sometimes killing them when they've done nothing wrong.

envesseled is the third "big" story, for claire, and it takes a significant turn because at the very beginning of it, while she and ben are in the middle of a huge argument, he dies (fridged a la MARY winchester), debatably because of something claire did, and the only way to resurrect him is to ask castiel for help. except he can't help because his various misadventures have left him broken into a thousand pieces and his current jimmy-vessel has no soul to put them back together. and so she's still dealing with this castiel trauma, and the grief/guilt over ben, and the grief /guilt over her dad she never processed, while going around collecting all the broken pieces of castiel in her own body so he can envessel HER (hence the title), bring ben back to life--except the catch is the more grace she takes into her body, the sicker she gets, so it's a question of whether or not she has enough time to finish collecting the pieces, and whether or not she can actually bear to be in castiel's presence and also say yes to him in order to allow him to do this.

as one might guess from the summary it is. an INCREDIBLY niche fanfic series with like a dozen fans worldwide, though i am proud to say pretty much everyone who's tried it has liked it, probably because it's diverged so heavily at this point it aaalmost reads like original fiction. like, i wish there were words to convey how deeply you do not need to have seen the show to read it. we are still writing "envesseled" which is why it's on the wip list (it is fighting with us SO MUCH) but we really really really hope we get it finished in time for "cambion day," which is march 29 (jesse's birthday). i tried very, very hard to find an excerpt from what we haven't posted that isn't full of giant spoilers, but i can't, so i'll post an excerpt from what we have on ao3 instead that i really like. this happens right after claire absorbs the first of many of castiel's broken pieces and is kind of a microcosm of the dynamic in general:

Castiel stands, not far enough away, watching her like a crow inspecting carrion. "How do you feel?" Claire takes a deep breath, assessing. There's no apparent difference between the new grace and the old—after all, both are pieces of the same angel—but she feels their presence more keenly, a stronger heat than the one she's been accustomed to for so many years. Apparently she's more sensitive to the powers of the Antichrist, too. "I've stopped feeling like there's a stab wound in my side, if that's what you mean." "Hm." Two fingers brush across her forehead. Claire's entire body thrums, and then she's grabbing Castiel's wrist, crushing it in her grip as she pulls his hand away. "Don't touch me." Her heartbeat is wild, squeezing the bones under her hand with all her strength, knowing she can't damage him but too angry to care. "Don't you ever touch me." Castiel holds motionless in a way no human could ever achieve, lights flickering over his head. "Let go of me, then." He could break free of her grasp with a fraction of effort, but it's still satisfying to throw his hand aside. Claire catches Jesse's eyes, and sees just a moment of ink-black there before he blinks and the light fixtures stop shaking. "Very well," says Castiel, after a long tense silence. He leaves the kitchen, giving Claire a wide berth, and moves to stand in the center of the dusty library. "Try this one."

let people send you an ask with the WIP title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!

#liz answers asks #muirmarie #ASK MEMES #liz loves writing

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lovemishjen · 1 year ago

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I have been trying to understand why I was so disappointed with the Supernatural finale. After all, being a writer myself, I wouldn’t like anyone telling me how to write the climax to my story, and therefore, I more than the average viewer should have been able to respect the freedom of the writers and showrunners to take their story to what they believed to be the right conclusion.

The problem, I realized is that every story has a structure that it has to follow to get it to make sense, even the ones that are not overtly formulaic.

So I looked at a few beloved older shows that I watched through the seasons and understand what made their endings more palatable.

The Mentalist – Like supernatural, The Mentalist is not a show about romance; it is a police procedural show, with a murder solved by the team in each episode, and more importantly it is about Jane’s obsession and quest for revenge from the serial killer Red John and finally the journey towards Jane’s catharsis. But as the characters evolved, Jane and Lisbon’s equation changed from friendship to something more, very organically I would say, and the show ends with them together and even expecting a baby – a satisfying happy ending that works thanks to not just Jane’s character growth but Lisbon’s as well.

House MD – Again, not a show about romance or even friendships. It’s a hospital show and a ‘medical procedural’, that unlike Grey’s Anatomy and similar shows, is almost fully focused on the titular character. The showrunners have spoken about how House and Wilson were inspired by Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Watson. During all the ups and downs over the seasons, their friendship remains the heart of the series, and while the pairing was wildly popular in the fandom, with slash fiction being written prolifically even now, ten years after the show ended, the showrunners chose to keep the relationship platonic. As the characters were introduced as canonically straight, the writers probably did not dare take a wild leap to sexual intimacy on the show, despite the immense popularity of the pairing. However, we see the characters falling out and getting back together, thereby strengthening their bond, and the protagonist, a self-professed selfish and ‘bastard’ character, giving up on everything that meant anything to him, and driving off into the sunset with his best friend aka the person who is most important to him, again satisfying though bittersweet.

Elementary – Yet another police procedural. Most people read Sherlock and Joan’s relationship as platonic, a change from the shipping heavy pairings. Here too, the show ends with the two friends taking steps to becoming platonic-life partners after all the turmoil and physical dangers they faced over the series.

Now, in Supernatural, the story demanded a happy or at least a bittersweet ending. Why? Because of the death, resurrection, pain, literal hellfire, loss of loved ones that Sam and Dean went through, only a happy ending makes sense, and heaven, that is canonically in the control of manipulative angels is not a happy ending at all, unlike say ‘The Good Place’.

If I were to take the story to its logical conclusion, the finale would have both brothers taking the call to be semi-retired. Sam and Eileen would probably set up a Hunters Headquarters in the Men of Letters bunker. Dean would either start a Roadhouse-style bar named after Ellen and Jo or an Auto restoration business for classic cars named after Bobby. A full blown romantic relationship between Dean and Cas wouldn’t work so late in the game. So, again a platonic life partner setup, that’s open for interpretation, with Dean, Cas and Jack buying a farm where Claire and the rest of the found family frequently visit them.

So the brothers would find stability and “the peace when you’re done” that we were promised. Dean and Cas, as both soldiers with a fair amount of PTSD, would help each other on the path to healing. Sam would never get out of hunting as he wanted at the start, but a semi-retired approach would give that to him partially, and let him indulge in research that makes sense for his academic type personality.

The final shot would be of the brothers in the backyard of dean’s farm, drinking beer, finally at peace, not just with the world, but with each other, as having their own support system in the form of found family, and their own space would let them get over the annoyance of constantly living in each other’s pockets, forever on the road, with no control over their destiny and mistrustful of each other. We were so robbed of this – a logical, meaningful bittersweet ending that made sense for these beloved characters.

#spn #spn meta #destiel #sam and dean #dean and cas #sam and eileen #destiel meta #spn finale

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ananke-xiii · 2 months ago

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"Tombstone", another crazy episode.

"The dead are rising in Dodge City, Kansas". This is what Jack says a little over-enthusiastically to Sam, Dean and Cas to prove to the latter that he's part of his father's family: "Look Dad! I can move the pencil! AND I've found a case... a hunter's case!".

Little does he know that on a certain day of many years before, Dean was also rising from the dead in Pontiac, Illinois. And the one who resurrected him was none other than his own chosen father, Castiel. Ten years later the same Castiel would also rise from the dead in a blackberry field. And the one who resurrected him was none other than Jack himself. Well, plus Dean.

When Dean met Castiel the first time he didn't believe what he saw while Sam was the one who believed without seeing. It didn't turn out particularly well for him since believing without seeing got him to resurrect Lucifer.

In "Tombstone" something different happens: Dean believes Cas the moment he spoke while Sam is confused ("No. You're – you're dead."). Again, it won't turn out well for Sam (when DO things turn out well for Sam, UUUH?!) this season cause this time he'll die and Lucifer will be the one who will resurrect him in one of the most forgotten scenes of the whole show.

Anyway. Back to Dean. This time he won't act like a total Thomas and will take on a Mary Magdalene's role, the first who turned around and saw Christ. But there's more.

The so-called "Widower's arc" interests me because it shows how symbols percolate through stories after stories and no one can stop them! Ha!

I know that "Tombstone" gives strong "Romeo+Juliet" vibes, I'm a baroque girlie I've seen most of Baz Lurhman's movies when they came out (I'm also an old girlie) so I totally see the reference. But a cross is also "just" a cross and in that scene it stands for "resurrection".

So I've been thinking about a myth, an ancient myth that has to do with brothers/gods killing another, love and resurrection and some more love and there's also gotta be a "rising sun" type of child in the mix. And what I came up with is the myth of Isis and Osiris (and Set and Horus). THEE Resurrection myth of all time. Right here in a silly TV show. Once you start looking around these symbols are everywhere. They're trying to murder me.

#more soon #stay tuned if you even care about love that's stronger than death #for my series: cas and resurrection #supernatural #nevermind the equinox #castiel #spn #sam winchester #dean winchester #jack kline #tombstone #on resurrection #lazarus rising #lucifer rising #spn s13

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thebiggerbear · 1 year ago

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you taught me the courage of stars

Summary: Chuck is tired of his toys getting ideas of their own and talking back to him. He snaps his fingers and Dean knows that's it, they're all screwed...or are they?

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Castiel

A/N: Hey all. So I started writing this about 3 years ago, basing this idea off of the promo/preview we had gotten for 15x18 after 15x17 aired. I took some guesses on Cas' confession/Empty deal (which was being heavily speculated at the time), how the bloody handprint ended up on Dean's jacket (though we knew it had to be something to do with Cas because it was thee handprint spot), Billie trying to break down the door, Cas helping Dean move, how things mentioned/that had taken place in 15x17 would play out, etc. I started writing it on the very day 15x18 was going to air and got about 80% through it before the episode premiered. Once I saw it though, I was completely blown away (what a freaking amazing episode!) and then had trouble picking this back up once I saw the finale to the series and where our beloved characters ended up. So it took literally years to get me to put in that last 20% but I wanted to complete it and put it up. ;) Hope it's okay.

Unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine.

Songs I listened to while writing: The Night We Met by Lord Huron & Saturn by Sleeping At Last

Taglist: @avada-kedavra-bitch-187; @rieleatiel

Ship Taglist: @nancymcl

You can also read on AO3

In one second, it was all over. With a snap of Chuck’s fingers, Dean came to, rapidly blinking his eyes, and trying to make sense of his surroundings.

He was in...the bunker. But there was no blood on the floor, no marks on the walls from Billie’s scythe, no wreckage from the havoc the cosmic entities had wrought upon their home in their bid for ultimate power.

He was still in Room 7B, the etchings and paint of the large devil’s trap on the floor still intact. He quickly scanned the space but he was alone. No dead Jack on the floor, no bleeding and mortally injured Sam…

“Sam?”

When no response came, he struggled to get to his feet, his side still hurting him from where Billie had thrown him against that wall. “Sammy?” He yelled out.

Still nothing.

Dean cautiously made his way to the closed door, the closed door that had been mysteriously resurrected from its destruction moments earlier, steeling himself for whatever he might find on the other side, and opened it.

The hallway was empty and again, there were no signs anywhere that an extraordinary final battle had taken place here. Confused but more worried, Dean trudged on. “Sam?”

Holding onto his side, he forced himself up one step to peer into the map room. No one was there.

“Sam?” He called once more. And again, only silence answered him.

He slowly made his way to the map table, glancing this way and that. To say he was worried didn’t quite cover it. The last time he saw his younger brother, Sam had been bleeding out on the floor after trying to save Jack and failing miserably. Where the hell had he gone? Who had taken him? And why did everything look Spic and Span all of a sudden?

Fear swam through him the longer the silence stretched on. Fear that suddenly turned into anger. “Chuck, you dick! What the hell did you do? Where’s my brother?” When no reply came, his fury grew. “Answer me, you son of a bitch!”

“Dean?”

Dean whipped around so fast it hurt. There, standing before him, was one of the very people who shouldn’t be, not after what he saw happen. “Jack?”

Jack’s eyes softened and he slowly approached the older man. “Are you…?” Not quite finishing his question, Jack warily lifted his arms to enfold Dean in a hug. When the latter didn’t pull away, too shocked to move, Jack tightened his embrace. “It is you.”

At Jack’s heartfelt whisper, Dean allowed himself to relax a tiny bit and brought an arm up to return the hug. “Hey, kid,” he ground out. When Jack’s arms tightened even further, Dean let out a pained gasp which forced the younger man to withdraw immediately in concern.

“You’re hurt.”

Dean hunched over slightly, using the back of the chair next to them to hold himself up for a moment. “It’s nothing.” His face contorted into a pained grimace that was then smoothed out in relief, and he waved a hand dismissively. “Just a leftover from that crazy bitch.” He turned his gaze onto a worried but confused looking Jack. “Kid, how are you here right now? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see you. Really glad. But...how the hell are you standing here right now, talking to me? Last I saw, you were out for the count. Permanently.”

Jack’s brows furrowed further. “I’m not...sure.” At Dean’s dubious expression, Jack thought about it some more. “I know I died when Adam’s rib caused my insides to implode. But, after that...I don’t know, I just woke up here...in my room, in my bed. I’m not sure how.” He looked to Dean for answers, answers that Dean didn’t have, that he truthfully had never had but he and Sam had tried their best to give once Jack appeared on the scene and became something more than just the next monster they would have to face off against and conquer to keep the world spinning like usual.

Dean tried to think of something to say, anything to say, but he couldn’t. He was overwhelmed, hurt, and worried as all hell about his dying brother whom he had yet to find since coming to.

“Am I dead? Am I...a ghost?”

Dean’s eyes snapped to Jack, seeing the kid’s confusion morph into sadness at the thought. This...this Dean could answer. Even if he couldn’t explain it. “You’re not a ghost, kid. If you were, you’d look dead and you look fine to me.” A small smile started to form on Jack’s young face and his eyes lightened with a trace amount of hope and gratitude. It was true, Jack looked perfectly healthy and alive . Encouraged by the reassurance making its way into the kid’s expression, Dean continued, “Besides, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be feeling this,” he inclined his head towards his aching side. “If we were.”

The right side of Jack’s mouth tipped up as he mulled over it and decided Dean was right. “Where are we then? Where’s Sam?” He glanced around, expecting his dad to pop out of somewhere like Dean had just done. “And Cas?”

Dean’s eyes shut at the mention of the angel who had been dragged away by The Empty as he watched in horror, helpless to do anything to stop it. He could still hear Chuck’s smug chuckle as it happened, his eyes bright with a giddy pleasure that Dean wishes he could watch drain away when they can work out just how to kill him. He tamped the pain back down, unable to remember Cas’ tear-filled blue eyes staring into his own as a soft smile formed on the angel’s face at the words Dean had just spoken to him, before a deep blackness started to consume his being. He forced away the image of two shining blue lights in a sea of darkness being snuffed out by a final wave of black before it all disappeared. He couldn’t think about that, not yet. Instead, he focused on Sam. Where was Sam?

“He…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words, to tell their kid that one of his fathers was gone, the angel who Dean... “I don’t know where Sam is,” Dean choked out instead. “We’ve got to find him, Jack. Sam was hurt...pretty bad.”

Jack gave a stout nod and proceeded to make his way into the library, intent on finding Sam. Dean followed a little slower than he would have liked, due to the pain he was still in, but he was grateful at Jack’s speed and persistence.

They checked everywhere: the library, the kitchen, Sam’s room, the infirmary, the shower room, the garage...he was nowhere to be found. Dean’s fear now increased to full out alarm.

Jack stopped short in the hallway, forcing Dean to come to a stop behind him, and closed his eyes.

Dean watched him for a moment. “Kid?”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “I can’t sense him. I thought I might be able to but…” He slowly opened his eyes, looking upon Dean sadly. “My powers,” He warily lifted his hands, examining them closely. “They’re not what they used to be.” His gaze snapped to Dean fearfully.

Dean swallowed down the same worry he saw staring back at him, and gave him a sorry excuse of a smile. “It’s okay, kid. We’ll find Sam and we’ll figure it out. Like we always do.”

Jack seemed unconvinced but gave a dutiful nod. Dean himself was starting to wonder if maybe he had spoken too quickly on the whole being dead thing earlier. Then again, if he and Jack were dead, and Sam wasn’t here, did that mean Sam was...alive?

Dean’s body made its loud protestation to the thought and he couldn’t help but let a pained groan escape. Jack caught him before he collapsed and wound Dean’s arm carefully around his shoulders. “Jack, I’m good,” he gruffly insisted.

“No, you’re not,” Jack determined.

Not having the energy to argue, he allowed Jack to help him back to the map room where the kid gingerly lowered him into a chair. He tried not to grumble too much, being truly appreciative of the nephilim’s assistance. He slowly lifted his shirt and as he studied his rapidly darkening skin, Jack crouched down to get a better look. “That looks bad,” Jack murmured worriedly, holding a hand above the massively bruised area that was turning sickening shades of a mixture of colors that Dean never wanted to see but was all too familiar with. “I wish I could heal you.” Jack then lowered his hand to study it, willing it to give him the answers he wanted. “Why can’t I heal you?”

Dean took one more glance at his injured side and lowered his shirt. “It’s alright. It’s just a few broken ribs. I’ve had ‘em before. It ain’t no big thing.”

Jack appeared unsure but kept his doubts to himself. He got to his feet and vanished down the hall before Dean could utter a single word to stop him.

“Hey, kid, where are you going?” He yelled once Jack disappeared. After everything that happened, Dean was determined to keep him close. They still needed to talk about what happened before Billie showed up, to set some things straight, but he’d be damned if he let the kid out of his sight again, especially after watching what happened to him and knowing he was responsible. Jack had only wanted his forgiveness and to save the world, to save his family, a family that Dean had begrudgingly welcomed him into and then excommunicated him from in the span of a single year. Dean knew better now, he had let his fear rule him, just as Chuck had wanted, and he had nearly given that bastard his ending. He was grateful that at the last second, he hadn’t, and that had been because of Sam. Sam…

Before he could think further on it, Jack reappeared with a bag of ice in his hand. Without waiting for permission, Jack crouched down, lifted Dean’s shirt, and gently applied the ice to the swollen skin, earning a loud gasp and pained hiss from Dean. “Sorry,” Jack whispered.

Dean noticed the brown bottle Jack had placed down on the table before him and gently reached for it, giving the kid a pained smile. “You’re forgiven.” Realizing his words too late, his green eyes snapped to the light blue gaze immediately on him, a sad and soft yearning there that Dean had seen far too often.

Dean looked back down at the bottle, unable to deal with that just yet. He knew they needed to, it was only fair to have that conversation especially after what Jack sacrificed for them, no matter how much Dean had wanted to avoid it in the past. He remembered how he had told Sam in the next room how Jack wasn’t family, how Jack had heard him… Dean would never forgive himself for that. Chuck’s ending or not...there was no excuse. Like Sam said, they didn’t give up on family, and he had. And he was ashamed of it. Jack deserved better from him, Sam did, Cas… Cas deserved everything… They all deserved better from him.

Forcing himself to take a swig of the familiar carbonated liquid that burned the back of his throat as it went down, made Dean feel a little more settled, as settled as he could be after everything that just occurred and in these circumstances. He clapped Jack’s shoulder and gave him a grateful nod. “Thanks, kid.”

A thin-lipped smile made its way onto Jack’s face and he moved to focus once again on Dean’s injury.

Dean debated whether or not to say the words on the tip of his tongue, the words that had wanted out the moment they figured out they were being manipulated into giving that dick Chuck his ending. He contemplated the consequences and ultimately decided the hell with them. They might not have long now, wherever they were, dead or alive, before Chuck chose to end them for good, or worse screw with them some more. Cas had insisted they were real, that they were making up their own story as they went, despite Chuck’s interference and manipulations. Dean knew what meant most to him, what he wanted desperately to be real, and it was time he took back what was his, what he knew deep in his soul that mattered to him. That he couldn’t function without.

“You are, you know,” Dean murmured.

Jack turned an inquisitive gaze on him, his brows furrowing.

Dean studied him, thinking back to that last day of Jack’s life before he had died the first time. Jack had been so happy, at peace, spending time with him. He remembered the words the kid had said when he took him fishing. That had never been Chuck. That moment...that moment was real. “You’re family.”

Jack froze and Dean could see that same emotion from earlier making its presence known once again in his eyes.

“And I’m sorry that I said otherwise. That I...” The words that had been wanting to escape now suddenly caught in his throat and caused his eyes to start burning. “I’m just sorry,” he choked out. “You’re family.” He swallowed the emotion back down and leveled his gaze at Jack, his meaning clear. “And you always have been.”

The small smile of understanding that answered his declaration, the lightening of Jack’s brow as if a portion of a heavy weight was being lifted, was enough to make Dean soften slightly...just slightly. “I know,” Jack stated, his smile widening.

Dean watched him for a moment, surprised at Jack’s acceptance of his apology and heartfelt declaration, and then gave him as much of a proud smile as he could muster. He lifted his free hand and gripped the side of Jack’s head affectionately. “You’re our kid. And nothing is going to change that. You hear me? Nothing.”

Jack slowly nodded. Dean gave him an approving smile and released him, ruffling his hair before taking another sip of beer. Jack once again focused on Dean’s broken ribs but Dean didn’t miss the happy little smile curving the kid’s lips up. While he wasn’t one for sappy moments you tend to find in movies and tv shows, and he wasn’t someone who liked to discuss his feelings all the time like freaking Dr. Phil, he was relieved and feeling a bit happier than he had since this whole thing with Chuck going darkside had begun, since even before that… As happy as he could be anyway in the wake of everything that happened: his devastation at Cas’ death, the whole cosmic battle thing, Sam’s mysterious disappearance, and now their unknown circumstances.

Dean took another sip of beer before taking the ice from Jack. “We’ve got to find Sam,” he explained at Jack’s worried and confused expression. A resolute nod answered him and Jack got to his feet. He was about to help Dean do the same when the bunker door slammed open up above.

“Dean?”

At the familiar yell, Dean and Jack both froze. Then Dean was on his feet, pain be damned. “Sam?”

A shocked and terrified Sam appeared at the top of the stairs, breathing hard, and his hair a wild mess. Relief flooded Dean, seeing his brother in one piece, the fatal injury he had no longer appeared to be afflicting him. It should have added to Dean’s suspicion that something was obviously off here, first Jack and now Sam, but he was too thankful to see his brother alive and unharmed. “Dean, what--Jack?” Sam’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened.

Jack’s grin was so wide, his white teeth were showing, and he raised a hand up in greeting. “Hello.”

Sam hurried down the stairs so fast that Dean was sure he must have skipped a couple. He certainly had the long legs to pull it off. Once he reached the bottom, he launched himself at Jack, grabbing him up in his arms and hugging him tightly. “I thought you died,” Sam choked out.

“I did,” Jack asserted, happily returning Sam’s embrace. “At least...I think I did.”

Sam pulled back, his brows drawn as he studied his son. “But if you did, then how…?”

“I’m not sure.”

Sam gripped Jack’s face. “But I saw you.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t looking so hot yourself there for a second either, Sammy.”

Sam’s eyes snapped to Dean, a tiny smile replacing his worry and concern for a moment. He patted Jack’s cheek and released him, only to pull his older brother into a hug.

Dean let out a pained curse which forced Sam to let go of him immediately, his eyes scanning Dean’s body for any injuries. “What’s wrong?”

Dean regained his breath and waved it off. ��A few broken ribs. It’s nothing.”

Sam arched a dubious brow. “That’s not nothing.” He indicated the spot where Jack was lifting Dean’s shirt and gently pressing ice with a nod.

Dean hissed when the ice made contact and grimaced. When Jack apologized again, he patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, kid. I appreciate you getting the ice.” He then glanced at Sam. “So, what the hell happened, Sam? We looked everywhere for you. Where the hell did you go?”

Sam watched worriedly as Jack tried to subtly heal Dean but couldn’t. “I, uh...I woke up in the Impala.”

“What? Why?” Dean barked out.

Sam shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” He then met Dean’s gaze head on. “I was two towns over.”

Jack’s head whipped up in surprise and Dean’s jaw dropped. “Two towns over? What the hell?”

“Yeah,” Sam scoffed and tiredly wiped a hand down his face. “Exactly. Something’s off. I would say we’re all dead but with broken ribs...”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” After a minute, Dean cleared his throat quietly and gently moved Jack’s hand away, lowering his shirt. “Well, we should put our heads together and try to figure out just what the hell is going on.”

“There’s no need for that.”

Everyone whipped around to see Amara standing there, looking pristine in her pantsuit, the same suit Dean had seen her in before everything went to hell. He should have known his brief reunion with his family wouldn’t last long. Nothing good ever did, not in his life.

Dean hobbled forward to face her, placing himself in front of Sam and Jack. He ignored Sam’s quiet call for him and glared at the woman across the room. “What the hell do you want?”

Amara’s smile slowly faded and was replaced by slight contempt. “A thank you might be nice for starters.”

Dean scoffed. “A thank you? After what you and your dick brother did? You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.”

Amara arched an eyebrow. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“You had everything to do with it!” Dean yelled furiously.

Sam stepped closer to his brother. “Dean,” he warned, trying to get his attention.

Amara tilted her head curiously, studied Dean for a moment, and then started to walk toward the three of them. Sam grabbed Jack and pushed his son behind him protectively. At the same time, he gripped Dean’s arm and urged him to move backwards. Dean allowed it but never took his eyes off of the advancing cosmic being in front of them.

Amara’s dark eyes flickered to Sam. “There’s no point in running, Sam. You’re not fast enough. Especially not with Dean in his current condition.”

Sam’s jaw tightened and he sent her a fresh glare from behind Dean’s shoulder, gripping his brother’s arm tighter. “We’ll see.”

An amused smile formed on Amara’s face as she slowly shook her head, watching them curiously. “I admire your bravery and your loyalty. Your willingness to sacrifice yourselves for each other. You choose family time and time again, even when it means your very end.”

Dean straightened up as much as he could, and turned back to Sam. “Get the kid out of here. Take Baby and keep on driving. Don’t stop until you hit the ocean.”

Sam’s eyes flickered to his and he frowned. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Dean snapped. “Take Jack and go. I’m not going to tell you again.”

Sam had been in such a tense standoff with his brother that he was caught off guard when Jack broke away and strode past them to Amara. “Jack!” Sam and Dean both yelled for him to stop but he ignored both of them.

Jack stopped a few feet away from the woman who by all intents and purposes was his great aunt. She watched him with a sliver of curiosity but said nothing. “How are you alive? How am I alive? Where’s Billie? Where’s Chuck? Why are you still here? Why can’t you just stop and leave us alone? Why can’t you let this world be? Why do you keep hurting my family?” His voice got louder and louder with each question but Amara didn’t shrink back one bit. Instead, she just continued to study him.

“Jack!” Jack’s eyes snapped over to the two brothers at Sam’s yell. They both had moved closer and Dean held out a hand, gesturing for him to join them. “It’s okay, kid. We’ll figure it all out. Just come over here.”

Jack shook his head, making both of their eyes widen in horror. “If I had my powers still, I could destroy her. I could end this. I could end Chuck. And then you would be safe. You would all be safe.”

“Jack, that’s not--”

“But you wouldn’t be,” Sam interrupted Dean. “That’s not what I want. That’s not what either of us want. That’s not what Cas wants.”

As expected, Sam’s words hit home and Jack’s eyes began to soften. Dean stared at his brother, the truth hitting deep down and causing the pain to swell up and drown him from the inside out.

The loud bangs of the door sounded throughout the room, a constant reminder that Death wanted in, that she would get in and receive everything she felt was owed to her, namely their permanent deaths.

Jack had died by imploding earlier, unfortunately not causing quite the reaction they had hoped for. Chuck and by extension, Amara, were still alive and well. Sam had tried to save Jack and he had received a scythe to the chest for the effort. It hadn’t killed him immediately despite the severity of the wound but Dean was pretty sure that Billie had intended for it to be that way. As much as she wanted them dead, Dean knew she also longed to see them suffer, especially since they had ruined her carefully planned takeover, possibly even since Cas’ angel blade had sliced into her chest. The minute they chose to avert Chuck’s ending, the second they chose to attempt to save Jack instead of sacrifice him, Billie had been on them. Chuck had simply laughed and told Billie to have at it, and then gave her a menacing smile, promising she’d see him later, before he popped out, giving them a giddy wave.

Dean had yelled for Sam when the scythe cut through his brother like butter and had rushed towards them. Billie knocked Dean back into one of the concrete walls and considering how his body had made the impact, he was now on the injured list. Cas somehow not only moved Jack’s body and Sam into Room 7B but he also helped Dean get inside before Billie could get them. They had planned for contingencies, of course, and they had warded the room in preparation for anything that came at them, before Jack and Dean had gone to see Adam. Thankfully, that prevented Death from entering right that very moment, but it would only hold so long.

Cas had turned to Dean, seeing the desolation and fear on his face as he stared down at his bloodied younger brother. “You’re hurt, let me heal you.”

Dean waved him away. “Don’t worry about me. Heal Sam.”

Cas grimaced and glanced at Sam. The man, his good friend for these past twelve years, was not long for this life. He had already tried to heal him but whether it was due to his failing grace or the power of the tool of Death being the one to cause the mortal wound, the angel couldn’t be sure, he was unable to. He had failed Sam, he had failed Jack, he had failed them all…

“I tried but I can’t heal him. I’m sorry. I truly am. Dean, your injury I can do something about. Please, let me heal you.”

Dean’s eyes slowly lifted to Cas, empty and full of a deep consuming sorrow. One tiny tear escaped and made a slow trek down his cheek. “No point. We’ll all be dead in a few minutes anyway.” He swung his head back to Sam. “We lost, Cas. Chuck won and we lost,” his voice broke at the end.

Cas gripped Dean’s shoulder and forced him to meet his gaze. “We haven’t lost yet. Not completely.”

Dean stared down at Cas’ hand for a moment, seeing Sam’s blood transferring from Cas’ hand to his jacket. He glanced back up at the angel and laid his hand on the arm that was currently keeping him from shattering to the floor in a million tiny pieces. The staccato of bangs started registering for him again, and this time they sounded shorter and deeper. “Won’t be long now. Besides, I’m not leaving him.” He spared a tearful glance down at his dying brother. He then took a breath and buried his fingers into the sleeve of Cas’ trench coat, meeting the pained blue gaze watching him. “Thank you, Cas. For getting me out of Hell, for helping us and looking out for Sammy, for being there. For all of it. You’ve been the best friend we’ve ever had and I’m damn grateful. We couldn’t have done all of this without you. You know that, right?”

Cas’ lower lip trembled slightly and he looked away to gain his bearings, contemplating a decision to do something that he wasn’t sure Dean would ever forgive him for.

“So, thank you,” Dean ground out and patted Cas’ arm before wiping his face on his sleeve and sniffling. He focused on Sam and tenderly moved a lock of wayward hair from his brother’s pale face. Another bang sounded so loudly they nearly both jumped. Dean gave Sam a sad smile and rushed out, “You should get out of here, man, if you can. She’s after us, not you. Get out of here and go find a way to bring Jack back, stop Chuck, and live your damn life.”

Cas’ hand gripped Dean’s shoulder tighter. “I’m not leaving you here to die, Dean.”

“Cas,” Dean’s eyes snapped up to meet Castiel’s, surprising him with the amount of tenderness and affection he saw there, rather than the anger and commanding authority he expected. “I’m asking you to go. Sam and I, we’re not walking away from this. But you...you still have a shot.”

Cas held his gaze a moment longer and murmured, “There is no shot without you, Dean.” As Dean’s surprise lightened his green eyes, Cas stated, “I’m not leaving.”

Both men continued to study one another, seeking answers from each other’s expressions, until Dean gently laid a hand on Cas’ arm once again. “Cas,” Dean started, his voice still rough. He licked his lips nervously and tightened his grip on him. “You didn’t let me finish before when I tried to… There’s something I need to say.”

Cas immediately knew where this was going and attempted to shut it down, like he had before. He wasn’t ready for his life to come to a screeching halt, not yet, not before he could tell Dean what he ached to tell him for the longest time now, not before he could save his life. “Dean, you don’t have to say it. I--”

“Dammit, Cas. I’m going to die in a minute. Just let me get this out,” Dean huffed out a laugh of disbelief. “Please.”

Cas warred with himself internally, seeing Dean’s eyes pleading with him, knowing this wasn’t easy for the man he had rescued from Hell all those years ago to get out, never mind admit to himself. His love and affection for the man who had his arm in a death grip, as if he was afraid he would disappear, won out. He gave Dean a somber nod to continue.

Another bang shook the room. Billie was nearly through.

“I want you to know that I… I haven’t always…” Cas patiently gave him what little time he had to find the right words. He hadn’t known just how deeply he yearned to hear them from this particular human he had been watching over and fighting side by side with for years.

Another loud bang. This time, the hinges on the door groaned. They had a matter of seconds.

Dean ran his tongue along his bottom lip and hurriedly tried again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize just how much I--”

Cas could hear Billie rearing her arm back outside the door, ready to land the final blows on the wood before her. As much as it broke his heart to do it, he had to put Dean’s safety first. He always had, even above his own. He wasn’t about to break that stride now, even if it meant his very own life would now end. He lifted his free hand and placed it against Dean’s cheek, stopping him mid-sentence and making his eyes widen. “I know,” Cas assured him. “You don’t have to say it. I know .” He saw Dean’s shock emerge as his words began to register. “Dean, I need you to listen to me...there is another way.”

Dean’s brows began to furrow. “How?”

“You won’t like it.” Cas gave him a nod and stood, helping Dean to do the same. He stepped back a few feet, putting some distance between them, and he faced the direction of the door. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I really am. But, I made a deal.”

Dean froze for a moment and then yelled out, “A deal? What the hell are you talking about, Cas?”

Cas turned a sad expression onto Dean. “Not a demon deal. With The Empty, to save Jack. When we were in Heaven, it came for him… It was the only way to save him.”

“What?” So many emotions flickered over Dean’s face that the angel had trouble keeping track of each one, even after all of these years. The final ones he could make out were anger, and more importantly, fear. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us?”

“You know why,” Cas murmured, coming close to Dean again, unable to keep away for too long. He placed his palm against Dean’s cheek once more, his eyes starting to glisten slightly. “This is what I have to do. If The Empty comes for me now, it may distract Billie long enough for you to run. From what Sam said, The Empty isn’t happy with her right now. This will buy you some time.”

“What? No. I told you, I’m not leaving Sam. I-- Dammit, Cas, no. No!”

Cas gripped him tighter, pleading with him to listen. With Cas’ sharp vision, he could see Billie through the cracks of the mostly damaged door. He was surprised it was still somehow standing but at the same time, grateful. He needed to get these last words out. “It’s the only way. You get out of here and you find a way to stop Chuck. This is real, Dean. Chuck was never in control. Not when it comes to us. Don’t lose sight of that. For all of us. For Jack, for Sam, for...for me.”

Another tear escaped onto Dean’s cheek. “No, you can’t. I just--”

Cas pulled him gently into his arms and hugged him, careful not to squeeze his injured side. “I love you,” he whispered in the softest tone imaginable into Dean’s ear. Dean stiffened in his arms and Cas knew he had been heard. It should be any second now…

“Don’t do this,” Dean choked out. “Please. I just need… We need to… It can’t end like this. Not when I… Dammit, Cas, I want you to stay alive. I need you to… Don’t you dare do this to me again, you son of a bitch.”

Cas drew back, his eyes filled with tears, and stepped a few paces away. Dean, still in shock, thankfully made no move to follow. “You and Sam...you fought for this whole world,” Cas let out in a quiet sob. “I can at least do this.”

The whole room shook as if a bomb had gone off. Both men did their best to keep their footing, glancing at the door to see if Death had finally broken through. Not quite but there was no question about it, the warding sigils around the door were lit up and fading...fast.

Dean swung back to face Cas again and saw smoky black tendrils swirling around Cas’ feet. Horrified realization dawned on him and Cas gave him a tearful but affectionate smile. “It’s going to be okay, Dean. Remember, this is real. It always has been.”

Cas watched as a new look of determination came over Dean’s features as The Empty appeared, a devious grin on its features as its arm encircled his waist. Dean took a few steps closer and his jaw set in resolve. “We’re coming for you. I don’t care what I have to do or who I have to kill, I’m going to find a way to get you out. So you be ready, you hear me? We’re coming, Cas.”

Cas’ smile grew but unfortunately so did The Empty’s. As a tear fell down Castiel’s cheek, The Empty hissed out, “Told ya,” in a voice similar to Meg’s but not quite hers. Dean attempted to rush them but the cosmic entity waved an arm, sending Dean flying into another wall, causing the man to cry out in the shock of pain and for Cas to yell his name. “Uh uh,” Pseudo Meg told Dean, “he’s mine. We had a deal after all.” Dean watched helplessly as the black snakes that were The Empty encompassed Cas’ entire body. Cas managed to choke out two words before he was gone forever, “Keep fighting.”

Cas disappeared and Dean yelled out, “Cas!” reaching a hand across the divide as if he could somehow keep the angel there with him. The Empty smirked down at him and that was when the door exploded, allowing Billie entrance into the room. Dean pushed himself back against the wall, glad he had landed near Sam.

Death’s eyes were for Dean alone until she noticed The Empty standing there, smirking at her. When neither cosmic being made a move towards the other, and The Empty gave her a nod, she then turned her full attention to the injured man below her. “He went back to where he belongs. And now,” Billie raised her scythe as she stood above Dean. “So will you.”

Dean gripped Sam’s hand tight, clenched his jaw, and waited for the killing blow. He and Sam had talked about going out in a blaze of glory, all Butch and Sundance style. He may not have a gun in his hand, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to cower in the corner. Not for anyone, but certainly not for this bitch. He would face this head on, like he always had, like he had always planned for when he finally bit it.

What happened next, Dean couldn’t be too sure of. A tendril of black grasped Billie’s wrist and twirled her to meet The Empty head on. Chuck was suddenly there, watching in glee as his creations, his toys , were about to be broken for the final time. Suddenly, his expression changed, morphed into something of sadness and...regret? And then he snapped his fingers, and that was the last thing Dean remembered.

Dean turned to face Amara and Jack, with the former still watching the latter curiously. He didn’t hear Sam’s pleas or Jack’s impassioned and determined responses. He was only focused on one particular detail.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Dean asked quietly.

All eyes snapped to him and Amara smiled slightly but stayed quiet.

“What?” Sam looked as confused as Jack.

Dean took a few steps forward, waving Sam off. “You stopped it all, didn’t you?” Still no response. “Why?”

Amara thought it over for a moment. “I told you from the beginning, Dean. I can’t hurt you anymore than you can hurt me. Though you have disappointed me, setting me up for my own death and all.”

Dean’s gaze dropped to the ground and he felt guilt trying to take hold of him. But when he glanced back up at her, Amara could see the resolve in his eyes. “It’s not something I wanted but if you and your brother were a package deal, it had to be done,” he admitted unapologetically.

Jack’s eyes volleyed back and forth between them, narrowed in confusion.

When Dean’s expression didn’t falter one bit, Amara nodded and let out a sigh. “I suppose I understand. Though I am still disappointed.”

Dean let out a gruff, “Sorry.”

Amara smirked. “No, you’re not, but I can...appreciate what you’re trying to protect. Besides, I suppose many don’t often hear that word from the great Dean Winchester now do they?”

Dean’s expression stayed the same, once again unapologetically himself.

Sam appeared next to Dean. “Wait, if you’re here, then where’s Chuck?”

Amara regarded him for a moment. “He’s here as well.” All three men tensed at the revelation and Amara rolled her eyes. “He’s not roaming the halls. He’s here, with me.” She placed a hand over her chest.

“You mean he’s a part of you, that you consumed him?” At Amara’s nod, Sam’s brows scrunched in puzzlement. “How is that even possible? I thought he consumed you.”

Amara slowly moved away from them, keeping her eye on all three, until she reached the table where Dean’s beer bottle sat. Sam grabbed Jack, and Dean watched her suspiciously. Amara sat on the table, crossed one leg over the other, and took a sip. She let out a satisfied breath and regarded them carefully. “He did.”

They waited for her to speak and when she didn’t, Dean and Sam exchanged skeptical expressions. “And?” Dean asked impatiently.

Amara took another sip and gave an uncaring shrug. “I needed time to figure him out, from the inside. He really wanted a true balance between us, with him on the more powerful side of the scales of course. But, here’s the thing, when you cage or consume a cosmic being, it can only be for so long. As you mentioned, Dean, we’re a package deal. As you already know, if one of us dies, the universe is thrown into chaos. If we both die, then no chaos. Not the kind of chaos you would expect, anyway.”

Jack stepped up to Dean’s right shoulder. “How did you get out?”

Amara gave him a soft smile and an approving nod. “He’s a lot like you, Dean. I like that.”

Dean glanced towards Jack who stared up at him sheepishly. A smug smirk lifted the corners of Dean’s mouth and he turned back to Amara. “Like the kid said, how did you get free from the dickbag?” Out of the corner of his eye, Dean noticed the small smile form on Jack’s face and the curious relief wash over Sam’s.

Amara tapped her nails against the bottle. “Do you remember what bonded us, Dean?”

Dean gave her a short nod. “The mark. What about it?”

Amara smiled and placed the bottle down. She gently moved aside her jacket and blouse to show the familiar mark still present on her skin. “This is what imprisoned me for millennia.”

Sam scoffed. “Yeah, we know that part. What does that have to do with Chuck?”

Amara narrowed her eyes angrily and Jack took a step forward, standing next to Sam. Dean watched the movement with an almost parental pride. He was once again reminded of his mistake claiming that Jack wasn’t family; Jack was a Winchester through and through.

“It has everything to do with my brother.” She waited a moment, then apparently let Sam’s interruption go, and once again settled her eyes on Dean. “It keeps me free, it’s what keeps us bonded. But for him, it has managed to keep him imprisoned…”

All of their eyes began to widen in surprise as her meaning dawned on them.

“Within me,” she finished.

Sam and Jack looked to Dean who shook his head as if to clear it. “Wait, so you’re telling me, Chuck is in a cage...in you?” Amara nodded, her smile widening as Dean let out a laugh in surprise. “How the hell is that even possible?”

She tilted her head. “I told you, I needed time to work it out. From within him.”

Dean once again shook his head, this time in bewilderment. “So you turned the mark and the cage he made for you against him.” At the lack of response, Dean laughed again. “That’s just freaking perfect. The bastard deserves nothing more.”

Amara’s eyes saddened but she nodded in agreement.

“Wait, hold up a second, Dean. Amara, you said that cosmic beings can’t be held for long. And as glad as I am to hear that he’s trapped, how long will that last?” At Amara’s annoyed expression, Sam held up his hands placatingly. “I mean, he couldn’t hold you for long. What if he does the same to you? What if he figures you out from the inside, too, or whatever?”

“Really, Sam? You couldn’t give me one moment to enjoy the idea?” Sam glanced over worriedly but saw Dean’s exasperated but amused expression staring back at him.

Sam gave his brother a sheepish shrug. “We have to know, Dean. If Chuck breaks free, this will only start all over again.”

Amara swung her foot in a slow circle as she spoke. “As for right now, the way I’ve worked it, due to the mark, that won’t be possible. At least not for a very long time.” At Sam’s disbelieving frown, she stated, “We’re talking millennia here. Look at how long it took me to get out of my cage where the mark was concerned. Chuck in his egomania never considered that the mark might not be the best thing for him when he consumed me. It will be a very long time before he can come up for air. Not unless I allow it. Perks of being a cosmic being.”

Dean studied her worriedly. “Won’t he keep trying to break out, though?” Amara’s eyes snapped to his. “When I had Michael in my head, he fought to break out all the time and it was rough. But he was just an Archangel. I can’t imagine having Chuck inside there for even a day and you’re talking years.” Just thinking about it was starting to give Dean another headache.

“We’re a little different that way, Dean.” Amara smiled warmly at him. “Besides, this gives me time to speak with him, work with him, show him the value of this world. Neither of us have to die and the world can continue on as it should.”

“You mean...now you’re God?” Jack asked.

Amara considered this carefully.

Dean arched an eyebrow. “You’ve got him trapped deep down inside of you now. Probably planning all of his little shows that he wants on some cosmic Netflix when he’s out again. Are you sure you’re up for the job?”

Amara’s smile grew bigger. “I never imagined I would...but I think I might want to stick around, maybe take more of this all in. I’ve never created anything before,” she finished in a whisper.

After a minute, Jack asked, “What about Billie? And The Empty?”

“Back where they both belong,” Amara nearly growled. “My brother was right about one thing, Death may have our death books and we may be reaped someday, but he did create space and time. The fact that they thought they could make a play for us…” Her eyes snapped to Jack’s. “Let’s just say that Billie has been demoted.”

“Demoted?” Was it possible Dean never had to worry about her coming for him or Sam? Ever again?

Amara nodded. “She’s been laid to rest in The Empty and a new Death has taken the helm.”

Sam frowned. “A new Death?”

“Yes, I believe you know her, Dean. Tessa?”

Shock and surprise colored Sam and Dean’s expressions as they exchanged glances.

“I remembered her from your memories.” At Dean’s wide eyes, she explained, “From our bond. I decided that she needed a new purpose, easing the physical suffering of those in the world the only way death can.”

Dean thought it over and then gave a little smile, nodding. “She’ll make a good one.” With that new purpose Amara talked about, after his time with Tessa during that deal with the first Death, he couldn’t imagine a better candidate.

“I agree.” Amara got to her feet and smoothed down her jacket.

“Thank you.” All eyes turned to Dean and he had a forced smile on his face but his eyes were genuine in their gratitude. “You didn’t have to help us but you did. So...thank you.”

Amara strode over to him. “I told you, Dean. You and I will always help each other.”

Nodding, Dean licked his lips nervously. “I have to ask, just one thing. If Tessa is back… Is there a way I can get into The Empty? To bring back someone who was sent there?” He ignored the question in Sam’s gaze, and the realization and sadness in Jack’s.

Amara laid a hand against his cheek, studying him. “I’m sorry, Dean. You can’t. It’s outside of space and time. There is no way. Not even I can.”

“But you just said you got Tessa out. Why can’t--”

“When I sent Billie and The Empty back there, I could only keep the door open long enough to locate the ones I needed and get them out. Any longer and it would have been too much of a risk. My brother and I truly have no power over that place.”

Dean felt the ache in his chest consume him and he gave a broken nod, dropping his eyes to the floor so she wouldn’t see the tears trying to build there.

Amara lowered her hand to hover above his chest. “There isn’t anyone there you need to bring back, Dean.”

Dean’s head snapped up and his eyes tightened in defiance of those words. “Yes, there is,” he bit out. “And if you can’t help me, I’ll find another way to break in.”

She smiled softly. “Dean, I’ve thought over our conversation from that deli quite a bit. You know why I had brought Mary back, that I tried to free you from your anger. I wanted to give you something you needed, something I thought you needed. But now I see...that what you really needed has been here all along, hasn’t it?”

Dean’s brows furrowed, wondering just where she was going with this. He swallowed the lump forming in his throat and maintained his unflinching gaze, listening.

Amara smiled though her eyes became slightly saddened. “Had you not given me what I needed back when I was bent on revenge and destruction, I would have never seen how truly precious this world is. I would have never seen the fragile beauty that surrounds this place every moment of every day. As I told you that night, I tried to free you from your anger, to help you to accept the present and to realize this beautiful reality, while sometimes tragic, is better than any idealized fantasy that you could wish for. Because this, right now, is not my brother’s ending. Dean, this is real and real is always better.” She snapped her fingers, making all three men tense.

They waited but when nothing happened, Dean turned to her with a quizzical expression. As Dean opened his mouth to ask her what the hell that had to do with getting into The Empty, a word spoken behind them made him freeze in shock.

“Dean.”

Dean whipped around in shock and there stood Cas, his trench coat and attire the same as Dean had last seen him, smiling widely, his blue eyes soft and glistening.

“Cas,” Jack nearly whispered. Sam was just as surprised as the kid. His hazel eyes immediately darted over to Dean who was still staring at Cas as if he were a mirage that he was afraid would disappear should he blink.

Dean didn’t remember commanding his feet to move. It was almost as if the moment that Cas appeared, his body felt a strong pull, tugging him in the angel’s direction, and he just had to get closer. “Cas?” He choked out in disbelief, his eyes filling the moment he was less than three steps away from what was on the end of that impossible force.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas’ timid smile widened and his gaze grew glassier.

Dean let out a sharp breath and launched himself at Cas, wrapping his arms around his friend and crushing him tightly to him. He ignored the screaming pain in his side, biting his lip until it practically bled and tears began to blur his vision. He wasn’t letting go, not for anything. Cas returned the embrace and let out a soft sob into Dean’s jacket. Dean squeezed his eyes shut in relief for a brief moment, forcing tears out which he subtly wiped away, and then pulled back enough to press a rough kiss to the side of Cas’ dark head before gripping him tightly once more.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” Dean whispered gruffly into Cas’ ear. “You hear me? I mean it, I can’t lose you again, Cas.”

Cas’ fingers dug into Dean’s shoulders and he gave a short nod.

“And…” Dean swallowed, intent on nothing stopping him from saying what he had been wanting to say ever since he realized just how much his best friend mattered to him, how much he truly needed him. “Me, too, Cas,” he whispered into the angel’s ear. “I love you, too.” Feeling Cas’s fingers dig further into his shoulders at the declaration, Dean pulled back slightly and grabbed Cas’ head in between his hands, meeting the wet blue gaze head on. “And I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”

Another tear rolled down Cas’ cheek but his smile was the brightest Dean had ever seen it, even more than the few moments he could elicit an amused chuckle or pleased grin out of him in the past, more than when Cas had declared his love for him and reached his true moment of happiness earlier. Dean realized, staring at the angel who had become the friend that knew him better than he knew himself, had joined his family, and had fought by his side for twelve long years, that this smile was his new favorite. He could stare at it for days, it was that mesmerizing. But most of all, he loved the wearer of this smile.

Jack and Sam were at their side in an instant. Dean pulled back enough to give them room, but kept his fingers buried in the back of Cas’ coat, unwilling to let go until he was convinced his best friend wouldn’t disappear. Jack eagerly threw his arms around Cas who heartily returned his embrace.

Sam laid a hand on the angel’s shoulder and squeezed which was responded to with an affectionate smile from Cas. “Glad to have you back.”

“It’s good to be back,” Cas agreed. “And I’m glad to see you’re healed and doing well.”

“You were in The Empty.” Jack’s face saddened with realization. “Because of the deal you made to save me?”

Cas nodded but smiled softly at Jack, pulling him in for another hug. “A deal I don’t regret making and I would do it again if it kept you safe.”

The corner of Jack’s lips began to tip up in the corner and he tightened his hold on Cas. “I’m happy you’re back, Cas.”

Cas’ smile grew wider and he closed his eyes, reveling in this moment with his son.

Sam’s eyes met Dean’s over the other two’s heads and they both shared a nod. Everything was back to how it should be.

When Dean saw Sam’s gaze flicker behind him and his features tense, Dean turned around to find Amara standing a few feet away, studying their group intently. The woman’s hazel eyes slowly ran over them and ended on Dean himself.

Dean exchanged quick glances with his brother, and at Sam’s nod and him moving even closer to Cas and Jack in a protective stance which caught the latter two’s attention, he stepped towards Amara and gave her his full attention. “Alright, so you brought him back. And you brought Jack back, Sam… You saved us, saved the world. So, what’s the catch?”

Amara’s brow scrunched up. “Catch?”

Dean gave her a look. “Why did you do it?”

“I told you, I—”

“That’s a load of crap,” Dean cut her off. “Nothing like that comes for free.” Realization played upon Amara’s beautiful features and her eyes sharply focused on him. “I get the whole caging Chuck thing and I’m glad you did it. The bastard deserves it after everything he did. But why did you get Cas out of The Empty? Like you said, it was no easy feat. And what’s more, why did you bring Sam back? Or Jack? Did you purposely set this up so we’d be in your debt? So you could call in a favor? So if you whistled we’d come running? Because that is not happening. So if that’s why, you’d better think again, lady.” When she didn’t answer him right away, Dean then spoke through clenched teeth. “What is it that you want?”

Amara straightened her spine and crossed her arms. “There is no catch, Dean.”

Dean scoffed. “There’s always a catch.”

She considered that for a moment but then spoke again. “Perhaps,” she agreed. “But that is not the case here.” At Dean’s disbelief, she continued. “I told you before, we’re connected. We always will be. I can’t hurt you anymore than you can hurt me and what’s more, I don’t want to hurt you. I never have. I have only ever wanted to help you.” Amara lifted a gentle hand to Dean’s cheek which made the man shrink back slightly, warily watching her as she pursued the touch until her fingers made contact with his skin. He saw a tender smile form on her face when he didn’t pull away. “I have always told you that we will help each other, and that’s true. But not in the way you’re thinking. I’m not doing this to gain a favor or keep you in my debt. I’m doing what I told you I wanted to do back in that deli.”

Dean’s brows furrowed in confusion and his eyes were shadowed by an obvious distrust that he didn’t care if Amara could see or not.

“I thought your mother was what you needed and that’s why I brought her back. To free you from your anger; to show you that the reality of her was better than some age-old fantasy you had. And like I said that day, I now know I was wrong. It turns out that you needed something entirely different.” She lowered her hand and moved her gaze past his shoulder.

Dean slowly glanced behind him to find Sam, Cas, and Jack all carefully watching them. Sam swallowed convulsively, Jack glared, and Cas watched with indifference tainted slightly by worry. He swung his eyes back to meet Amara’s.

“They’re the family that you need, Dean. I understand that now.”

Dean processed her words and found he couldn’t deny that she was right nor did he want to. He had meant what he said to his dad a while back; he had a family. One he would fight to keep together, no matter what it took. Just like his dad had, though he would…be different. Yes, he would do it all differently. Jack, Sam, Cas…they all deserved better. And better is what they would get. He wasn’t perfect by any means, but his family knew that and loved him anyway.

Cas had been right; they were real. And as Amara kept reminding him, reality was far better than any fantasy. It stunned him for a moment to let those words travel through his brain: love, real. He knew Sammy loved him, Jack even, but Cas…Cas indeed loved him. He had said it right before he got taken by The Empty. Cas could have chosen any words to say for his impromptu deathbed speech, but he had chosen those three specific ones, and for Dean alone. A warmth started to suffuse his chest when the word ‘real’ repeated itself over and over in his head. This was real and he could have it. He never thought he could, especially after Lisa and Ben, but here it was, right in front of him. Maybe not in the exact way he had fantasized about for years, but it was here all the same and it was all his . Reality was indeed better than any fantasy he could have cooked up. He wouldn’t trade his brother, his son, or his…his angel for anyone else. He didn’t need some white picket fence or a wife or PTA meetings to attend in order to make him feel like his dreams came true. He had a family, a real one, and that was a dream enough for him. He nearly smiled at the thought of it. He had a family.

In the next second though, the happy thought then dropped into a pit of all-consuming dread. If all of this with Amara wasn’t real, if this was some hallucination of his or a grand scheme of manipulation a la Chuck style, he had no idea what he’d do. This brought back the recent memories of how each of his family members appeared in the bunker one by one after she pulled the Thanos-snap with Billie.

His brows furrowed in concentration on one particular thought. “That’s why you did it.” At her confused expression, he clarified, “Sam. In the Impala two towns over. That’s why.”

Her puzzlement smoothed out into an understanding smile. “You needed time to talk to him. To tell him the truth.” Dean chanced a glance back at Jack upon her words. His son’s glare in Amara’s direction softened when his eyes met Dean’s. Dean’s gaze dropped to the floor for a moment, shaking his head slightly in disbelief at the realization that yeah, Amara did know him better than he had ever thought. Almost eerily so. His three biggest regrets when he thought he was about to die earlier had been that he hadn’t been able to save Sam, that he hadn’t confirmed to Jack that he was family, and that he hadn’t told Cas what he had been wanting to tell him this whole time. And now, within a matter of minutes, all three regrets had turned into opportunities for him to rectify them: Sam was alive (and safe was debatable but Dean would take it), he had apologized to Jack and made sure he knew that he was their kid, and he had told Cas that— Well, he was able to tell Cas how much he meant to him. And he still had his family.

“I told you, Dean.” Dean’s head whipped back around to Amara. “Reality is better than fantasy. And what you have, it’s real.” He was still overwhelmed by that realization, unable to say anything and wanting to really. Instead, he gave her a simple nod. He saw a slight sadness in her eyes that a moment later vanished only to be replaced by a light of determination. “It is time that I took my leave. I interrupted my vacation to help you boys the first time, and I am eager to get back to it. From what I hear, there’s nothing like getting a Swedish massage in the Swiss Alps.” She smirked and took a few steps back. “And before you ask, Dean, no I don’t intend on pulling the strings like my brother used to. I plan to take a much more laid back approach to it all.”

“So, basically, we’re on our own? Like we were before?” A feeling of familiar disgust began to churn in his stomach.

She studied him for a moment. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m not abandoning any of you; I’m simply in the background. Though that does remind me.” She snapped her fingers quickly, making all of the men jump slightly. Dean was beyond terrified to look behind him, afraid that she had pulled the old bait and switch on him. He was working up the nerve to turn when Amara smirked over at him. “There, that should take care of everything. Now,” She slipped sunglasses on that had appeared in her hands out of nowhere. “Jack, I’m still thinking it over but I may need your help if I decide to restructure things a little.”

“Why should I help you?” Jack bit out from behind Dean. The older man closed his eyes and let out a breath of relief. When he felt the warmth at his shoulder from Jack, he opened his eyes quickly and grabbed at his son’s wrist, attempting to pull him further behind him.

Amara didn’t flinch, literally or figuratively. “Because I would think after everything we both have been through with Chuck’s setup, you might want to have a say in redoing some things. Like Heaven for starters, for the souls in its keep as well as angel management. After the whole Lucifer fiasco and the low number trying to keep the lights on…it’s a mess. As a matter of fact,” Amara turned her gaze onto Cas. “I could also use your help in that department, Castiel. I’d appreciate a full tour and rundown of how things work up there.”

Cas squared his shoulders and approached Dean’s side that Jack was on, also standing in front of the younger man protectively while giving her a defiant glare. “My powers are not what they were.”

“Mine either!” Jack added from behind the two men.

Amara’s smirk grew. “Are you sure about that, boys?”

Dean and Cas exchanged a puzzled look as Sam approached the group near Dean’s other shoulder, standing in front. “What do you mean?”

This time, Amara lowered her glasses slightly to look at all of them. “I’m saying that both of my nephews can come off of the bench. They’ve been there long enough. So can Dean. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’d really like to get going.” She pushed her glasses back into place and a handbag appeared on her arm out of nowhere, her smirk firmly in place. “I’ll be in touch, boys. Toodles.”

Before she could vanish, Dean called out to her. “Amara.”

Her gaze snapped to his, questioning.

“Thank you,” he forced out, knowing deep down that he meant it. He was grateful for her intervention and for everything she had done for his family; he just felt like he couldn’t completely trust in it yet or her.

A full grin bloomed on her lips. “You’re welcome. And, Dean.” This was it. He tensed, waiting for the final blow, for the last rug to be pulled out from under him, the ultimate ‘Aha! Gotcha!’. “Have a little faith.” Dean’s gaze tightened and Amara beamed at him before disappearing.

His skin broke out in goosebumps and his heart started to race when Cas grabbed his jacket and gently turned him in his direction, murmuring “Come here.” Dean swallowed compulsively when the angel’s blue eyes stared into his. The man would never admit it but as much as he loved Cas, and he was grateful to have him back, he wasn’t sure that he was ready for things to ascend to the next level between them quite this quickly. Not when their son and Sam were watching.

But to Dean’s surprise and possible dismay, Cas’ eyes traveled down to his injured side instead and a shocking mix of relief and disappointment bloomed within his chest. Cas lifted his shirt slightly, intent on placing a gentle hand on his skin, when Dean’s eyes bugged out of his head. “The hell?”

Where there had been mottled and splotchy skin before, now there was only smooth skin. Jack, who had been watching along with Sam, stared at it, puzzled. Cas pressed his hand to the area and for the first time since waking up, Dean didn’t flinch. He felt absolutely no pain at all. He let out a sigh of relief. Thank God—er…whatever—that he wouldn’t need to worry about that injury. That would have been a real bitch of a time to not only wait for the broken ribs to heal, but to still get around and fight if they needed to.

“Did she heal you?” Sam asked.

Dean shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t feel anything.” He thought back to the moment she had touched his cheek. When Cas touched him to heal him, he would always feel a sort of warmth traveling through his body at the speed of light, coming to a concentrated area which was also the sight of the wound or injury. This time, he hadn’t felt a thing. And he was alright with that. He wondered if Amara kept him wounded until the last second as a sort of safeguard. Not that he could have killed her, but he would have tried like hell if she had turned out to be a threat.

“I wonder…” Cas muttered. He studied his two hands carefully and Dean watched as his eyes began to glow in a familiar electric blue.

“She gave us our powers back,” Jack stated in awe. One quick glance from Dean showed Jack’s eyes giving off a golden glow all of their own.

“Yes, she’s restored us to full strength,” Cas replied, meeting his son’s bright gaze with his own.

Sam gave his brother a dubious look. “Do you think she really meant what she said? About wanting to restructure Heaven?”

Dean couldn’t be sure, but right now, he didn’t want to waste another second thinking about her, their ordeal, or any other battles coming their way. He had his family back, all healthy and at full strength, and he’d take the win. “I don’t know, Sammy, but right now, we’re not focusing on that.”

Sam looked unsure. “Dean, if she gave them their powers back so she could use them in some way, then—”

Dean laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed. “I get it, and we’ll deal with that when the time comes. But right now, we got you back, we got Jack back, and Cas… And both of them are fully charged with angel juice. Let’s just take the freaking win, man. We’ll worry about all of that other crap later.” Sam still seemed uncertain, but at Dean’s intent gaze, he eventually sighed in capitulation.

“Okay. I still think we should make a plan, though.”

Dean gave him a smile. “We will. After.”

Sam’s brow furrowed. “After?”

Dean’s grin grew and he turned them both to face the other two members of their family who were looking at them with mirrored tilted heads in confusion. Like father, like son. “Sammy, we’re going to head to the beach and we’re going to stick our toes in the sand.”

“Why would we stick our toes in the sand?” Cas asked.

“Because it’s what we’re going to do to celebrate us defeating Chuck.”

“How does sticking our toes in sand at the beach indicate a celebration of victory in battle?” Dean glanced at Sam who gave him a smirk, completely leaving him on his own for this one.

“It just is,” Dean decided. “Trust me on this one, Cas. So, Jack and Sam, you two go start packing up.” Dean hated to let either of them out of his sight, especially after recent events, but he felt slightly better knowing that the two would be together and it would only be for a short time. “I’m going to go start packing myself. We’re leaving in ten.” He ignored Sam’s smirk getting wider and clapped his hands. “Let’s go, hustle up. The sooner we blow this place, the sooner we can get to our vacation.” And the sooner they were on the road with him behind the wheel of his beloved car, the sooner Dean would be able to breathe again, no longer holding his breath waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“One quick question.”

Dean rolled his eyes and turned to his brother. “What?”

Sam suddenly appeared nervous. “Would it be alright if… I mean, would it be okay if I invited Eileen to go with us?” He quickly stammered out.

Dean grinned and Sam rolled his eyes. He knew that his older brother would tease him for years to come over this. “That’s adorable.”

“Can I ask her or not?”

Dean clapped his shoulder, deciding to have mercy on him…at least until they got on the road and he had nowhere to run. And Eileen was going to be there so it would be double the fun. “Absolutely, little brother. I’ve told you before, I like Eileen, and I think it’d be great if she came along. We’ll pick her up wherever she’s at.”

The relief played out on Sam’s features and he relaxed slightly under Dean’s hand. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Dean nodded and slapped Sam’s shoulder again. “Alright, let’s get packed up and ready to go. If you’re not here in ten, I mean it, I will leave your asses behind, so let’s go.” He wouldn’t dare to leave them behind, never again, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud at this moment. Despite his attempt at giving them a sense of urgency, Sam slowly made his way over to Jack and ushered him out into the hallway while pulling his phone out of his pocket.

Dean watched them go and then turned to Cas who was studying him intently. He felt an unfamiliar shyness creeping up inside him and his nerves began to take over, but he cleared his throat quietly, intent on pushing past the forming anxiety. “Cas, I, uh—Do you need to pack anything? A different coat, perhaps?”

Cas gave him a look and Dean let out a nervous chuckle.

“Right.” He took a few steps towards the angel. “Listen, I…” Dean struggled to get out what he wanted to ask, and he licked his lips anxiously. Why was it so difficult to ask this? It shouldn’t be that big a deal.

“Yes, Dean, I will go with you to your room and help you pack.”

Dean’s eyes widened. How in the hell did Cas know that?

A soft, understanding smile formed on Cas’ face. “I told you, Dean. We can pick up on longing. And right now, you want me to go with you because you don’t want me out of your sight.”

Dean opened his mouth to immediately protest but found he couldn’t. It was true; he didn’t want to let Cas out of his sight in case he disappeared again. After everything, he couldn’t take that right now. Hell, he couldn’t take that ever. Never again. Instead, he cleared his throat for a second time and dropped his gaze to the floor. “Okay.”

He started to make his way towards his room, grabbing onto Cas’ sleeve and gently tugging him along. He didn’t need to look at Cas to know his best friend was sporting a huge grin, especially when a couple of Dean’s fingers tenderly brushed against his wrist. If anyone forced him to admit it, Dean would say he was trying to get a better grip on Cas’ coat or that it was an accident, but deep down, a small part of him yearned for the brief contact. That same part of him also didn’t seem to mind it so much when Cas’ fingers brushed against his hand when the latter handed him a few folded shirts to throw into a duffel bag about four minutes later.

And Dean would deny it to the ground, but he had taken two minutes of the allotted time they had been given to sit on the edge of his bed with Cas next to him, their shoulders touching at the very same site Cas had initially left his mark, and it made him sigh in relief, enjoying the brief absence of chaos and the ensuing silence. The seasoned hunter and the angel took a moment to breathe and Dean could swear it was some of the best time he had ever spent on this earth. So this is what it was like—to love someone and have them love you in return. It was new and unfamiliar but Dean found himself liking it. He had loved Lisa and Cassie, and they had loved him, but it had never felt like anything close to this. This moment of sitting together, not saying a word, staring at the wall across from them, barely touching, no more secrets between them, enjoying the peace and just being, was suddenly in his top ten moments. Sex was awesome but even that didn’t compare to this. Dean didn’t exactly believe in soul mates but he understood why some people did. The feeling he got just from having Cas there, with their kid and Sam down the hall from them, preparing to show them one of the beaches he had gone to back in the day when on a solo hunt after he and his dad split up, well, it was indescribable.

And that same feeling continued to fill him twenty minutes later as they barreled down the road in Baby, heading towards Eileen’s destination, who had enthusiastically agreed to the small vacation. Dean glanced at Sam who was grinning down at his phone like an idiot as he and Eileen presumably swapped texts. He then checked the rearview mirror to find Jack showing Cas something on his phone that he had found, most likely what to do on a beach since the former had been asking Dean repeatedly about this topic until he shut it down three minutes earlier. Not even the knowledge of Sam packing some books in the trunk of the Impala to research further into Amara’s switcheroo could lessen this newfound feeling inside of Dean. He wouldn’t say it was quite peace or happiness but he would venture it was something in between the two. Actually, he knew it was when he saw Cas’ smile as Jack played a video of baby turtles making a mad dash to the ocean after hatching.

Dean grinned and turned up the music as a familiar Led Zeppelin song came on. He hit the gas and Baby took off faster down the open road. Not quite peace or happiness but pretty damn close. Yeah, he could live with that.

A/N: The about 80% mark I got up to 3 years ago was the Dean and Cas reunion scene, right when Jack and Sam are approaching.

Please let me know if you would like to be tagged for this ship.

dividers by @firefly-graphics

banner by @cafekitsune

#destiel fanfiction #dean winchester x castiel #thebiggerbear writes #you taught me the courage of stars

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spngeorg · 8 months ago

Text

Episode 150 - 8.01 We Need to Talk About Kevin

Welcome to Carver Era! Sam hit a dog, and Dean spent a year in Purgatory. Wait, where's Cas, and why is Dean resurrecting and then hugging a vampire?Now you're all caught up! Kinda... :'D

Sometimes I think we need to talk about Kevin so we won't have to talk about any of THAT ^^ yet. But since we're here to talk about all of it, that's what we're gonna do. :)

LINKS!

The Superwiki page

My tag

A post on how I understand the purgatory portal to work

Lizbob’s Dean and Cas are In Love series (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

Why Dean’s so pissed Sam didn’t try to look for him

Vending Machine Meta

This week's notes on AO3

Listen now on Spotify, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

#spn podcasts #spn 8.01 #spiders georg of the tnt loop

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autisticandroids · 2 years ago

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Have you read Apokteino's Bone Trilogy? What did you think of it?

i have! i've actually read all four of apokteino's big four darkfics. i like bone in that it's interesting and well written, but i really wouldn't recommend it or reread it, except in certain circumstances. this is because it's just like, a super miserable read. like it's not very fun and it's SUPER depressing.

however, it's a really interesting fic to compare to the rest of the big four because it has some unique elements, so i definitely recommend reading it if you're interested in it for that reason. all of the lesser triad can really be seen in various ways as dry runs for with understanding, though of course they also have their own merit outside that context.

i'm gonna try to rewrite the big comparison essay that tumblr ate on saturday. so, the following discussing will assume familiarity with the plot of with understanding, but not with the lesser triad of major apokteino darkfics, which are: hesitation, the when series (when all is lost/when the road is as dark as my fears), and the bone trilogy (bone/scarred/unbroken).

here are some various sources to read the now-deleted fics

also, before we start i'd like to thank @astermacguffin, who i've had a lot of conversations about all these fics with, and whose various posts on apokteino and darkfic and evil deancas i might not always agree with but have absolutely influenced me and my opinions on these fics. they're worth reading as background for this post. honestly i'd really just like to dedicate this post to aster because he's gonna love it.

anyway, four thousand words of discussion below. spoilers for all four fics, and obviously, trigger warnings for discussion of rape, abuse, and general violence under the cut.

so i'll start with plot summaries of the lesser triad.

hesitation

hesitation is a canon divergence from season four. in this fic, as part of his metaphorical seduction of dean to the angels' cause, cas is ordered under pain of death to literally seduce dean in order to ensure his loyalty. cas does not want to have sex with dean and is terrified, however, dean does not know this and thinks that cas is coming onto him of his own free will. dean is sweet and kind to cas during sex and works to ensure cas' pleasure, which kind of fucks with cas' head because the sex isn't actually consensual.

canon continues as in the show up through the beginning of season five, with the addition of dean and cas' sexual relationship (which continues consensually after cas rebels). however, cas has some obvious issues and trauma that dean doesn't understand, plus he gets slutshamed by some other angels, so dean eventually figures out something is up and gets cas to talk about what's going on. when dean finds out that he has been unknowingly raping cas, he freaks out, goes into a huge guilt spiral, and they break up.

however, eventually they work through their issues and get back together. happilyish ever after.

2. when

when is a canon divergence from swan song, the only difference being that instead of being resurrected as an angel at full power, cas is resurrected in the same state that lucifer exploded him, i.e., as a human/fallen angel. dean and cas continue hunting together instead of dean going to lisa.

dean resents the fact that cas was resurrected and sam (and to a lesser extent bobby) weren't, plus the fact that cas, now human and useless, cannot resurrect them. as a result, and for some other more complex reasons i will get to in the discussion, he channels his rage and grief about sam's death into beating and raping cas, which eventually evolves into just raping cas when he feels lonely and needs comfort.

cas accepts this because he is entirely alone in the world except for dean and basically trapped with him because he is cut off from heaven and has no human connections, but also because he feels on some level like he deserves it (as a representation of the heaven that has taken everything from dean), that he's useless and that to serve dean or be used by dean is his purpose. cas develops some extreme trauma responses to dean's treatment of him, most notably he blacks out whenever dean gets violent or makes moves to start raping him. cas also prays for mercy on sam's soul.

eventually, an angel comes down from heaven and informs dean that sam is no longer in hell and his soul is in heaven, because heaven heard cas' prayer. dean freaks out but doesn't really talk about it, and the violence against cas stops completely, but they don't discuss it. they continue hunting.

like in both canon and with understanding, law enforcement believe dean to be a serial killer. like in with understanding and unlike in canon, they are extremely motivated to catch him and a credible threat to his and cas' lives and freedom. dean makes a mistake that leads them to his and cas' temporary home base and cas is captured and arrested.

initially cas is treated as dean's accomplice, but once the police? fbi? i forget who catches him, i think it's the police, but who gives a shit, notice his extreme trauma responses and the signs of physical abuse on his body, they reconsider and classify him as a brainwashed victim. a police officer comes and talks to him and tries to get him to work through some stuff.

eventually dean turns himself in out of guilt for the shit he's done to cas and to save cas. he works through some stuff with police officers and eventually they let him see cas, who he apologizes to.

cas breaks out of protective custody and rescues dean, but forces dean to promise that cas will be in charge of everything from now on, and they go on the lam together. happilyish ever after.

3. bone

bone is the most extreme canon divergence. dean stays in hell much longer than in canon and becomes a hardened torturer. instead of season four happening, the angels decide to create their own apocalypse. dean is resurrected to a world where humans and angels are in open warfare against one another and angels are losing.

dean is a torturer for the human side, and tortures angels for information. but eventually he decides to try to brainwash and stockholm syndrome an angel instead, and he happens to pick castiel. it works, and castiel breaks and is taught to serve and obey dean.

however, once cas is broken, dean starts to develop affection for him, then sympathy, and then finally guilt for what he's done. they begin a sexual relationship. due to the brainwashing and stockholm syndrome, cas is intensely traumabonded to dean, but no one, including dean, knows how to undo that, and cas is given his own free choices, but he always chooses dean anyway. also, the tragic twist is that cas is the only angel this brainwashing could have worked on, because it turns out he is the one who raised dean from hell, which changed him, making him capable of emotion in a way other angels are not.

cas and dean exist in a society with other people who know their history, including anna and gabriel who are both unequivocally on cas' side, and their relationship is very much overseen by other people. everyone thinks it's fucked up, but there really isn't anything to be done about it. cas is brainwashed to a super extreme degree, and no one knows how to fix him, so they just let him stay with dean. happilyish ever after.

okay. now discussion.

so, hesitation is kind of the odd man out here, inasmuch as... it has the same basic premise as the other three, which is essentially that cas experiences sexual trauma that bonds him irrevocably to dean, despite the fact that dean was involved in creating that trauma, but in hesitation, it's not dean's fault. dean is in fact as much a victim as cas. i think hesitation is probably sort of... the furthest flung from the other three. there's definitely some stuff you can see that's connected to with understanding, particularly cas' self-victim-blaming and complicated relationship to his own desire for dean, but i think the nature of that difference puts hesitation in a really different category than the other three. because even if the traumabond was created with dean, it's still essentially the difference between a victim remaining involved with their abuser, and a victim of abuse getting involved with someone else and having to work through that. zachariah is the perpetrator in this case, not dean. and that's not to say hesitation is unrelated to the others! i used to think of hesitation as, well, rapefic for cowards, on account of the fact that it had all of the trauma of rapefic but dean's complicity was totally sidestepped. now that i know that it was part of this greater series, i like it a lot more. i would also definitely say that hesitation is the only one of apokteino's lesser triad i would genuinely recommend outside of the context of supplementary reading for with understanding. it's just a genuinely good fic and you should check it out. i recced it, actually.

when is kind of... well, when is definitely and fairly obviously the closest to an actual dry run for with understanding. and that makes it really frustrating because like... well, when isn't very good.

when basically has three major flaws, and one big virtue which makes the flaws even more frustrating.

the first flaw is that dean's characterization is just like. it's just nothing. like the justification given for him to be horrifically beating and raping cas is like. well, okay, in the first one, which is entirely cas pov, cas speculates about his motivation. the motivations he comes up with are that either 1) dean is punishing cas as a way of lashing out against heaven, since it's heaven's fault sam is in hell, or 2) dean is actively trying to send himself to hell to be with his brother. there may be more reasons that cas postulates, i forget, but those are two big ones, and they make sense. however, in the second one, we see dean explain himself:

Dean looks away. He's not sure if Fitz is acting like he wants to be convinced – or isn't convinced, and trying to prove it – to get Dean to talk, or because he actually isn't sure. Either way, Dean needs to the be the killer, for Cas's sake. "It's more like … more like long periods, where I'm out of my head. And I do things because that's what there is. Hanging on the rack or off of it." "The rack?" Dean makes an aborted attempt to wave a hand, cuffs pulling. "Tortured or torturer." "And you chose the latter." Pretty sick that he does – did – put Cas on the rack, instead of himself. "And I guess that's what makes me evil, isn't it?" He looks at Fitz.

and like, i'm sorry, but i'm not gonna mince words: that's dumb. it's essentially a semimystical answer to a psychological question. it just doesn't make much sense. and frankly it's out of character. i hate it.

the second flaw is that it's just too short. when you read when, you gain an instant comprehension of why with understanding needed to be four hundred thousand words, because in thirty thousand, when really can't quite cut it. the characters just don't have time to develop and change and learn in the same way.

the third flaw is the ending, and it's actually a flaw that when shares with with understanding, although in with understanding it's not quite as drastic. essentially, in the end, cas is back in the exact same position as he was at the beginning, with only dean's word standing between him and a resurgence of the abuse. dean's brutalization of cas, like in with understanding and unlike in bone and hesitation, is essentially domestic abuse behavior. dean isn't engaging with cas as an enemy, and he isn't engaging with cas under the influence of false beliefs. he's engaging with cas as his friend cas when he brutalizes him. while dean is no longer under the psychological stress of believing sam is in hell, and has had an epiphany about exactly how bad he fucked cas up, that doesn't necessarily mean things will change, or remain different. old habits die hard. nothing is stopping dean, once a new psychological stressor appears, from treating cas just the same as he had before, except his moral convictions, which didn't stop him the first time. he could easily find ways to justify himself. and on cas' end, he's just as totally dependent on dean materially as he was at the beginning of the fic, and while he's worked through some stuff and might run if dean started up again, he also might not, because it's not like a few conversations are enough to really teach new habits of mind.

and then like... the big virtue of when is that in concept it's soooooo good and juicy. the heavy emphasis on outsider pov, especially the law enforcement pov which is really a treat just like in with understanding, except i like it more in when because it's about canon cas rather than fbi agent cas who is a good protagonist for wu but way too comprehensible to his colleagues at the bau. the way that dean and cas escape and hide by depending on the kindness of someone dean's saved. the idea that dean is brutalizing cas because he's actively trying to go to hell to be closer to sam, which is just so juicy i can't stand it because it simultaneously gets at the horror of the brothers' codependency and also gets at dean's tendency to not care who he's hurting as long as he hurts himself worse. the fact that cas is like if you had asked i would have given you my body willingly!! the fact that cas was already in love with dean when the violations start!! that's so crazy to me!!

a version of when that's a hundred and fifty thousand words, where dean stays in prison for months while cas recovers and goes to therapy in some kind of group home but is also unable to really integrate into human society because he is genuinely alien. more emphasis, almost hesitation style, on the idea that cas already wanted dean, and cas having to pick apart what desire remains there from the horror of being repeatedly raped. like the most unsatisfying thing about with understanding, to me, is how cas isn't really cas, and how dean and cas have no prior relationship. and like i do like some of the stuff in with understanding that comes from that, such as the fact that cas kind of becomes canon cas via trauma in some ways, and the fact that with understanding is like a dark subversion of the soulmate trope, but it does kind of make me crave a version where cas is himself and deancas are themselves you know? and when could be that. a much more complex and comprehensive outsider pov where we dig into juicy elements that when leaves on the table, such as the speculation that cas may have been in a cult (and we dig into how the outsiders are obviously wrong but maybe on some level they were right). maybe also some outsider pov from hunters and/or people dean has saved such that we actually see outsider pov on the nature of dean and cas' relationship from people who understand more of the context, and also such that when cas breaks dean out and they go on the lam, they can at least partially integrate into a community that will keep their relationship stable. or perhaps, for a tragedy, we see their relationship begin to deteriorate again once cas is dependent on dean again. make dean's motivation be about going to hell with sam, and really dig into that, explore dean's willingness to hurt other people as long as he's also hurting himself. when could be the perfect fic. it literally could. just for me.

and then bone is like... the thing about bone is that most of my thoughts about it revolve around it being a kind of counterpoint to with understanding and when. like before i talk about it i'm gonna say a couple of the things i really like about it which don't have that much to do with that.

the experiential descriptions of cas' brainwashed state are so fabulous and chilling, and that is i think the thing from bone that really made it into with understanding, although in bone it's so much clearer and more visible, which, you know, on the one hand, feels less real, but on the other it's soooooo chilling, you're really forced to think about it, to consider cas' experience, plus it draws your attention to similar moments in with understanding and makes those much more unsettling.

the side character stuff is fabulous, i especially liked ellen and anna, but really all of it is good.

the thing where angels can't feel and therefore could never have been broken like cas was, but the fact that cas had saved dean from hell, had been changed by him, on some level already loved him, and that's what made him vulnerable to dean's brutality is like such a juicy little tragedy.

but like. now let's compare.

like, i already pointed this out, but when and with understanding both start from like, a kind of domestic abuse situation that is enabled by circumstances that don't really change. bone, on the other hand, is like... dean is originally engaging with cas as an enemy combatant, and this is enabled by the fact that they are on opposite sides of a war. but these circumstances do genuinely change. bone creates a situation almost more akin to hesitation, where the main conflict and question is: you end up with a cas who has this trauma bond created by trauma which is absolutely in the past, and it can't be gotten rid of, so how do you live with it? as opposed to with understanding and when where it's more like how do you keep dean and cas from backsliding into an already established abusive dynamic. and the thing is bone dean is still culpable, and the level of like... so traumatized he's barely a person anymore that cas is on in bone is unreal. but it's more a question of: dean is not going to backslide into traumatizing cas again, but how can dean be prevented from accidentally or on purpose taking advantage of cas' traumatized state? how can cas be helped to rebuild his sense of self, is that even possible? cas wants to stay with dean, but can that desire be taken seriously if it's a result of horrific damage inflicted on cas that must be recovered from? is cas' consent meaningful? what if cas can never recover, does that change the answers to the other questions? if he can never recover, is it alright to allow him to be happy with dean? these are all super crunchy questions and they're like a really fun alternate take on the same basic premise that hesitation, with understanding, and when are all taking on.

and like the thing about. okay i'm gonna talk about with understanding for a moment. the thing about with understanding is that it rests on all of this exceptionalism and individualism and psychologizing of dean's behavior. when actually a lot of it is circumstantial? like the thing about with understanding is that with understanding dean if he was in normal circumstances would probably be a manipulative, emotionally abusive person who would be likely to pressure people into things including sex, have absolutely zero boundaries, and might even be inclined towards some light stalking, but he wouldn't be kidnapping anyone. he would probably stay in the category of "super shitty boyfriend" rather than "fbi manhunt." but the thing is his circumstances aren't normal. like, if you are dean winchester in the world of with understanding, it's almost a sane thing to do to temporarily kidnap your soulmate just so you can meet once and then let him go. it's still really awful, but it makes circumstantial sense because you KNOW that that will allow you to meet in heaven, and otherwise he would arrest you. it's really bad, but it's not as insane a move as it would be if nearly anyone else did it. it makes sense. and then once you have your soulmate kidnapped temporarily, it's not that big of a leap to just... give into temptation and not let him go. add onto that the fact that dean is just used to kidnapping and torturing people (those people are usually demons, but still), has access to all of these sometimes magical tools and weapons and equipment and a bunker in the middle of nowhere, is totally outside society and has no external observers in his life to sanity check him and no one to really hide from, and is used to being on the wrong side of the law and totally confident that that won't be a problem for him, and it's like... yeah. like the thing is if wu dean had all the same personality traits but was a car mechanic, cas would never have been in that situation. and like, the way everyone reacts to dean like they're so shocked that he treated cas "well" and that he's so capable of a certain level of basic self-awareness it's like... well of course! most people who commit crimes like the one dean has are probably way more dysfunctional than dean is in various ways, because they need to get over more barriers like "fear of being caught" and "the realization that oh my god i'm planning a kidnapping" and "having to go to work and leave their victim at home" and other such trivialities that dean's lifestyle makes irrelevant. of course every crime is made possible by circumstance, but dean's situation is particularly unique.

but that doesn't mean that because wu dean is less dysfunctional than the average kidnapper, he's easier to fix with psychotherapeutic solutions. indeed, quite the opposite! the barriers to him committing horrific acts are inherently lower due to his circumstances, which means that he could be the healthiest guy in the world and he would still be a lot more dangerous than john q. average. to pull an example from canon: one time sam has a sexual fantasy about rowena and it freaks him out so bad that he yells at her and slaps her in manacles. this is a pretty horrifying and misogynistic act, but sam is like... he's a fairly regular guy. he has some hangups about sex, but not to an abnormal degree. but he does have a set of magic manacles, and an occupation that has desensitized him to violence and chaining people up, and a pre-bottled justification (she's evil!) that says it's okay to be violent to rowena, and so this happens. you get my meaning? so fixing wu dean with therapy is like... it's kind of the last thing i'd reach for, you know? it's cathartic for cas, but it's not effective.

and like wu dean's circumstances don't really change! hell, in the end, dean and cas are ONCE AGAIN isolated together in the wilderness. and sure, cas is kind of choosing to be there, but he's also trapped by the fact that he's a wanted fugitive. it's so much more effective than the cuff because there's no more soft landing waiting for him back in normal society, only a hard prison cot.

anyway the thing about bone is that in bone the change is almost all circumstantial. like yeah dean does have like a guilt epiphany and shit, and obviously the pathology of hell trauma does affect dean's actions as a torturer. but the problem and solution are not situated in that pathology. in the end, the main thing that happens to fix things is that cas is no longer considered an enemy, and he is integrated into a society which contains people who care about and can care for, keep an eye on, and sanity check both him and dean. there will never again be circumstances in which it is easy for dean to torture and brainwash him. you know? and that really highlights what's going on in when and with understanding.

#rape tw #abuse tw #spn #asks #anonymous

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