#miles would have survived if he'd had a cas

[hells-plaid-angel]

Dean had expected it to hurt. He'd expected it to be something cruel and invasive. He was ready for a knife-slicing skin-from-bone kind of sensation. He'd lived a life where pain was familiar. What he hadn't expected was for it to feel so painless. No. Not just painless. It felt as though he were being held by the universe. Incomprehensible.

He was getting ahead of himself. Context mattered.

His thoughts flowed in odd directions. Maybe that was the way things were going to be from now on. Were the thoughts his own? It was quiet. He hadn't expected it to be quiet.

There was no sound of breathing from the two dead bodies and no cars for miles. He'd even lost the familiar static hum that'd accompanied pure silence since he was in his mid-twenties. Blame the loud music. Blame the gunfire. Blame God. Dean had.

If he focused, he could hear the wind through the dry grass. The world hadn't stopped turning. Not yet. Something had happened.

He needed to stay on track. What the hell had happened?

Dean Winchester's life had the habit of changing in the blink of an eye. They were on a hunt in Nebraska, looking for a lady in white. Men had gone missing along the highways, only to show up hundreds of miles away dehydrated, dying and raving about a disappearing woman. Simple open-and-shut case, right?

If Sammy had been there, maybe he would have picked up that something was a miss. He'd probably tell Dean not to be so goddamn cocksure about everything. He'd have been right.

Sam wasn't there. Sam was on a hunt with Eileen, which left Cas and Dean. Hell, Cas should've known the pieces weren't adding up, but they'd both been distracted.

Dean definitely goddamn knew better.

The whole mess was his fault. Always was. Living with Dean gave you the kind of luck people got when they lost a lucky rabbit's foot. His existence was a bad omen and he kept making it Cas' problem.

They'd packed their guns full of rock salt, ready to dig up some bones and get the show on the road when they'd realised how badly they'd misjudged the situation. It wasn't a ghost. It was a goddamn witch.

She'd been using magic to puppet the local men. The poor suckers who didn't pull over to 'help' her would find themselves with the sudden urge to pull over their car and walk Interstate 80 to oblivion.

He hated witches on principle. Of all the ghosts, ghouls and creatures that went bump in the night, witches were where the Winchesters always had the most trouble. The hunt was no exception. He let her get too close. Close enough to slip a hex bag in his pocket.

His mind didn't go blank as he'd expected it might. Instead, it felt as though he'd let go of the Impala's wheel, leaned back and expected the car to drive itself.

His body moved without his permission. Cas was close. Too goddamn close. Cas always had the habit of standing too goddamn close to Dean.

He knew what his body wanted to do, but he couldn't stop it. Dean knew his destiny was to be a puppet to the will of 'God' and the angels, but it wasn't something he let himself linger on. All those in the Winchester family seemed doomed by their own brand of destiny. It didn't do well to dwell. Dean Winchester was not a fatalist.

He felt himself turn on his heels, pull Cas close and fill his chest with rock-salt bullets. Of course, it hadn't worked. Cas was made of stronger stuff than that, but when Dean felt his hand slip into Cas' coat pocket to grab his angel blade, he knew they were screwed to oblivion.

After a lifetime of hunting, Dean had honed the art of quick decision making. In the space of a heartbeat, three things became apparent. They were ambushed. If he didn't do something quickly Cas was going to die. He wouldn't survive the angels' death.

He'd known it in the primal part of his brain that knew to fear strange shadows in the dark. Cas' death, the eternal sleep, would see Dean tugging at his coattails because his death had always been a slow-acting poison to the eldest Winchester boy.

The angel always managed to return from the dead before death had its hooks in Dean, but he knew without Cas he'd last a year. He wasn't his father, who'd lived over two decades while poisoned and rotting with the loss of his mother. In the end, he'd become more rage than man. Like the ghosts they'd hunted, John had been left with nothing save the burning need for revenge.

In the safety of his own mind, Dean would admit he was made of softer stuff than his father. He wouldn't cling to life by the skin of his teeth. He'd rather bite a bullet and save everyone the trouble. But Cas wasn't dead yet. There was still time.

Dean thought quickly, his mind was struck with a startling sense of clarity and certainty he'd never before felt. He knew of a way to save Cas. After all, Dean was the perfect vessel for an archangel. Of course, he could save Cas. Maybe not the body of Jimmy Novak, though he would mourn that body in a complicated way he didn't wish to dwell on. Maybe it could be saved. Dean didn't know. The body wasn't important. Cas was what mattered.

Dean hadn't grown up with permanence. Everything in his life was transient. He'd spent his formative years being raised like the dead in haunted cemeteries, like God's son for the slaughter. He knew the one constant in his life was change.

But that wasn't entirely true. Another thing had been a constant. His body, beaten and broken as it was, had stayed the course throughout his life. It had aged and changed but Dean could count on it to hold strong. It was the one thing he could almost call his. But he couldn't stop it from moving with the witches' will. If he didn't stop it, Cas would die. Cas wouldn't stop Dean from killing him.

Dean knew Cas almost as well as he knew himself. He couldn't stop his hand, but he could clench and unclench his jaw. The witch was focused on hurting Cas. The classic rules for pickpockets and street magicians held true. If she was busy looking in one direction, that meant she'd left herself open.

If it were anyone else, he wouldn't offer it, couldn't offer it. But it was Cas. Cas was an exception to so many of Dean's rules.

"Cas," Dean choked through gritted teeth in the breath before the angel blade found a new home between his friend's ribs.

"Castiel, come in."

Dean watched as a flicker of reluctant knowing crossed Cas' face. The angel knew what Dean meant. Of course he did. Cas knew Dean better than Dean knew himself.

For the horror of a heartbeat, Dean thought Cas was going to say no. Instead, the world exploded in heat and light. It was like being engulfed by the sun, yet instead of burning alive, he felt warm, swallowed by light. It was like being held by the universe. Of course. Dean remembered what had happened.

All was silent. Both Cas' body and the witch lay slumped over the side of the road. The woman's body was riddled with witch-killing bullets. It was only then Dean's eyes shifted to the gun in his hand. He couldn't recall getting them from the trunk of the Impala. Then again, maybe he hadn't.

"Cas?" Dean breathed life into the silence.

"Hello, Dean."

The voice that replied felt as though it came from the base of Dean's skull. It was as though someone was grinding dry gravel against his eardrums. The voice was both apart from him and a part of him.

The body of Jimmy Novak lay dead and unmoving in the dirt. Yet he'd heard Cas' voice clear.

Dean watched as his left hand rested on his right forearm, unbidden.

"I'm here. I'm sorry," Cas' deep timbre rattled.

Dean was overcome with a sense of deep sorrow and regret. He felt wrong in his body, but the way the sensation hit was unfamiliar to him. They weren't Dean's emotions, they were Cas'.

If he were being honest, Dean hadn't expected to have any control of his body. He'd expected to be shoved below the surface of his consciousness for as long as Cas needed to walk around in his meat suit. He hadn't spared a thought for how the whole 'vessel of an angel of God' thing worked, considering he'd spent his life running from the possibility of it. He couldn't help but think Cas was giving him a longer leash than Micheal would.

"Don't be. I'd rather this than the alternative. Let's just get your body in the car, drive back to the bunker and work out what the hell we do from here." This was his mess. He'd clean it up.

"Dean. I believe you're being unnecessarily hard on yourself," Cas chastised, causing Dean to still. How did Cas — shit. This sharing-a-body thing was going to screw him over big time.

"Cas, do me a favour. If you're going to be playing house in my body, quit reading my mind," Dean mumbled, bending over to pick the body up from the dirt.

He was careful with the angel's old vessel, scooping it carefully into his arms and cradling it to his chest until he could prop him up in the Impala's back seat. He fixed the guy's stupid goddamn tie while he was at it and felt a twinge of... what? Fondness. It was an ache so deep Dean felt it in his marrow.

God in hell. Dean had never felt something quite like that. He'd been under the impression that Cas, along with the other angels, wasn't able to feel the same way humans did, but that odd ache made him want to drive himself off a bridge. How could Cas stand that? What the hell was that?

"I apologise. I'm trying to keep a barrier between us, but... it's difficult." Cas wasn't just feeling his emotions, he was feeling Cas' as well.

Dean needed to separate them quickly, but to do that he'd need to make sure Cas could get back to his old body. His eyes flickered to the spreading inkwell of blood seeping through the body's white shirt. That was how Dean had to think of it. It was 'the body' not Cas' body. Cas wasn't dead. Cas was with him. He felt the familiar spread of warmth in his chest. He shook thoughts of death from his mind and climbed into the driver's seat.

"As the driver, does this mean I get to choose the music?" Cas asked, rattling a laugh free from Dean's chest.

"Nice try, Cas. I'm still driving. You just sit back and look pretty."

"As I'm in your vessel, it won't be a hard task," Cas rebuked, and Dean knew in his gut the angel was entirely serious.

They were so screwed.

[soulsam]

Ask game!! For Sam and Dean both:

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

OMG HELLO TUMBLR USER SPNTRUNK???? WHAT AN HONOR

I will ramble about my samdean thoughts ANY TIME so thank you for indulging me lol

1a. for sam, I loooove when the fandom acknowledges and magnifies his obsession with dean. he's slightly quieter about it (he doesn't go around yelling YOU TOUCH MY BROTHER AND ILL KILL YOU the way dean does) but that doesn't make him any less codependent or any less freakish!!!!!! he is JUST as insane about dean as dean is about him, and I LOVE to see that explored

1b. for dean, I love fandom discussions of his experiences with romance and sex and what they mean to him. I feel like the show mostly goes "dean sleeps around lol" and leaves it at that, but sometimes you get a glimpse of something else (cassie, lisa), and I always found those parts to be extremely intriguing. because dean can be such a hopeless romantic!!! he just doesn't let himself have good things, he holds them at arms length so that when he inevitably loses them it might not hurt so much. it's so heartbreaking and I could write academic essays about it probably. (as a sidenote, this aspect of his character is part of why I love samdean so much. he and sam have their moments, they've been separated by thousands of miles and death itself and it hurts dean terribly, but they always find their way back to each other. sam is the one person who dean has never really lost, not forever. and now that they're in their shared(!!!!) heaven, he never will.)

2a. I am going to have to try so so so so so hard not to write an essay about this one. the way the wider fandom treats sam makes my blood BOIL. tossing him to the side, pretending he doesn't exist, saying dean would be better off without him, etc. I hate all of it. I hate the way he gets sidelined in his own story, and the worst part is that THE SHOW ITSELF DOES IT TOO. SO I CANT EVEN BLAME THE STUPID FANDOM ENTIRELY. but if I had to pick one thing that I hate the most about the fandom's treatment of sam...I think I would be unoriginal and choose the purgatory debacle. there are just so many reasons why he shouldn't be blamed so harshly for the way he handled that time period. like. 1. he had JUST gotten hallucifer out of his head. he was having psychotic episodes so bad he nearly DIED, he barely even knew what was real and what was a hallucination. 2. he was ALONE. bobby was dead, dean and cas were, by all accounts, dead. his whole family was GONE. I can't even imagine the grief he must have endured in that time. I wouldn't be surprised if he had been suicidal, or if he'd had another psychotic break. and 3. WHERE WAS HE SUPPOSED TO GO LOOKING? he had no reason to think that dean SURVIVED the dick-splosion, and even if he was certain he had, sam KNOWS how dangerous it is to open the door to purgatory. and he couldn't exactly ask cas about it, could he? what was he supposed to do, summon crowley? yeah I'm sure that would've gone great. plus, 4. he and dean AGREED not to look for each other. sure, they make and break those kinds of promises often, but come the fuck on. how is it fair to ask sam, hopeless and alone and barely even functional enough to stand on his own two feet, to defy the promise he and dean made in order to bring him back from the dead and probably let something else nasty out along with him? that hardly seems reasonable to me.

um. I got heated about that one. anyway everyone lay off sam about purgatory okay. including dean. I get why he was upset but man cmon.

2b. this one's going to be shorter because I'm pissed about purgatory now lol but I hate when people make dean out to be some kind of. horrific wifebeater (and sam his battered, trapped woman). like. yeah. he's got anger issues and violent tendencies. yes, he often fails to break the cycle of abuse. yes, he lashes out at sam, and that's bad. but like. sam doesnt need protection from dean??? sam doesnt need liberation from dean???? dean isn't some horrible monster who belittles his brother for shits and giggles. he's a man who's seen way too much, lost way too much. it hurts to look at the ways he's changed, but he's doing the best he fucking can. also, pet peeve!! I HATE HATE HATE when people point to the behavior he exhibited while he had the mark of cain and go "see!! see!!! it was inside him all along!!!! he's a terrible person!!!!" LIKE. UM. HES LITERALLY BEEN SADDLED WITH AN ANCIENT CURSE. I DONT THINK ITS FAIR TO PROJECT ITS EFFECTS ONTO HIS CHARACTER, ACTUALLY. it annoys me soooooo bad. like did they miss the parts where he tried everything he could to keep his urges under control? did they miss the horrified look he'd have on his face after he went on a killing spree he couldn't stop? it's willful ignorance, and I hate that shit!!! I hate it!!!!!

genuinely though. and maybe this is silly to say after all that rambling. I don't want to be negative here. I love my (our!!) little corner of this fandom and I genuinely unironically love this show with every fiber of my being. it's my favorite piece of media ever and maybe that's partly just recency bias but like. I had sworn off live action TV for weird personal reasons (if you go looking, I have a personal post saying I refused to reblog spn posts because I didn't want gifs of real people on my blog. lmao) and yet here I am. I love this show. I love the wincest fandom. I love my mutuals. and as soon as I finish the finale I'm probably just going to start the whole damn thing over again.

oh also SPNTRUNK I LOVE YOUR ART !!! WTF!!!! HI???? IM STILL KIND OF IN AWE LOL

[redemptioninterlude]

would that have changed things? here, there, with, or without. the guns make it easier to live, viciously, and perhaps it was why if the military wanted to now, they could take things over with little opposition. the odds were stacked against them, but they had to simple CLING TO A HOPE that those with, would be giving to those, without. and sookhee, well, perhaps call her pessimistic, but she didn't have the faith required to stick around within a place such as this in order to find out if her bet was made, safe and sound, or if it was simply a mistake. "maybe. or maybe you'd see more people dead. people, when they're scared... they go overboard. how many people, if they had a gun, would shoot somebody perfectly healthy in a panic? more than you think. maybe more than it would be worth."

though she'd kill to have a gun now. actually kill, which is worse because this doesn't come attached to the usual distance of things, like for survival, or for a job. no. she might just have to DO IT and live through the guilt of it some other time. needs were needs and she wanted to get the hell out of here. a gun just helped, though she imagined the prospect of finding any back up bullets would be a spare hell in itself. "oh. well..." eating each other alive. looking the same. it' all the more reason now, she thinks, a firmer set within her jaw. "fuel is more important than weapons. weapons will be something we get good at as we go. well. you, maybe. a knife is probably our best luck here - durable, it can be used over and over... i'll teach you." a little firmer, now. "you're going to be okay. and so will your grandma." someone that he loved...

it might not be on that train he'd arrived on, but it still counted for something. it was terrifying to think how many people must have died in their own attempt to ENTER THE CITY, especially given the things she used to hear near the phone boxes at the beginning. it was how she used to get her intel, similar to where she had met, and eventually teamed up with sanghwa himself. "the other cities falling out must be unexpected... and i suppose there's no telling if they're safe, or overrun by now. so for us, we should in general try to stay away from any of the heavily populated city spaces. we're better off looking for something small, maybe even something coastal... something where we can defend and escape easily."

tongue pressed. "he might have to kill us. any of them might have to. what do you do when you run out of food? make it so that it's less of a pressing concern. the bonus being it quells any conversations of REBELLION in the same breath. it'd be interesting if it weren't so diabolical. but extraordinary times call for disassociation, if that's what you've been taught." trauma begets trauma lays the foundation for a cracked generation. theirs? she thinks, was due for something as unexpectedly fucked up as this. "here. another bag. we can take them off to the hideout i have in the city and then we ca ngo settle another one, in case. anything that we don't take with us directly we should try to take at least a few miles out, to see if we can stash it somewhere where we can get it if we run out of anything. i'm thinking we need to leave to... wait. you said you came in from seoul, right? then the north might be off limits."

- @finalsurvivorgrp

“There isn’t a single thing beautiful about what happens to those people. It did make me wish that we were Americans, assuming that they would allow a gun on a train, so the people that were turned didn’t have to suffer and worry if they were going to have to attack their loved ones,” he said with a quiet sigh as he looked towards her. The transformation tended to be pretty fast. But it did seem to depend on how many bites someone had gotten and where it was. The COO had taken a long time to transform, bitten once on the ankle seemed to have caused the virus to take it’s time. That was someone he wished he had a gun for, and the man didn’t need to be infected for Sanghwa to take him out.

It’s not easy though, he doesn’t pretend that’s the case. “They look very human. I mean, they are humans, but they look like the same person that you were just running away with. I was very lucky that no one I loved was on that train,” and the last part was said to be a bit quieter. He would always remember that woman who was watching her husband being eaten alive while trying to stop her from being attacked. Sanghwa wished he could have saved her, but something had been lost in her when he had died. And she didn’t

“For the fuel, we could siphon some from a car. I’d be too hesitant to do anything with a gas station. That’s where a lot of people went,” he said, and he knew that would be the first thing in any serious situation. Just running to the nearest place to get as many supplies as possible. And as had been proven time and time again, all you needed was one infected person and it was probably going to be over.

Sanghwa gave a quick nod of his head, looking over at her. “They know the only thing between them and the rest of us are the guns. I can assure you that they are very paranoid and I’m worried that we don’t have nearly as much time as we may hope. They’ve noticed the changes, they’re also worried about the fact that no one is talking to them. They’ve lost contact with everyone, including other bases that were made in other cities,” Sanghwa said, sighing quietly to himself as he put more food items into his bag. A lot of cans seemed to be the safest long-term option. At least a few years of them being good as long as they didn’t get dented.

“The kid I was talking to is scared shitless. Someone has risen to the top of the military, and he is not confident in his abilities. From what little conversations I’ve heard from him, he’s doing his best to dehumanize us. Might be to distance himself from whenever he has to make a difficult decision. But I’m afraid he doesn’t see us as people, and that he might be pushed to act on those thoughts.”

[the-messedup-priorities-so-far]

sticker fic:

brought to you by the sticker ficcers, @xojo​ and @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover​.

the narrated version:

"Morning, Sunshine." Says Dean. "Some coffee?"

"SCREW YOU." Says Sam. His glorious hair is wet.

"How dare you!" Says Dean. His mouth's the O-shape of offense. He's also putting on the dead guy robe for some reason.

"BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!" Sam bitchfaces. In his eyes, is a glint which says, as he does - blah, blah, blah, blah. Then, he casts down his gaze. "Well, you are kinda butch."

Dean's eyes widen. His eyebrows don't rise. Instead of surprised, he looks shocked. Then he smirks, and quickly grows a stubble. With completely black eyes, he says. "I'm a demon."

Crowley appears, smirking. "Hello, boys."

"ASSBUTT." Castiel bellows. 

No one had known he was there.

"What's wrong with you?" Says Crowley, after quickly growing a stubble as well.

Castiel folds his arms. It makes the trenchcoat look fitted. You know, like a liar.

"Are you okay?" Sam asks, tucking his hair behind his ear at supersonic speed. No one knows when it happened. But he's Sam Fucking Winchester, so they know it did.

"I don't know!" Dean scratches his ear. He does not know the question was for Castiel. He makes his eyes as sad as they can be - and they can be impressively sad. One eyebrow strays up, floating on a cloud of misery. "I never was."

Sam looks alarmed in a V-neck. 

This is important information. Absolutely integral.

"Cat's out." Says Cas. He's rude, because his lips do a rude thing. And because of what he said. His eyes mock tragedy.

"Shut your face." Dean points. Pointing is rude. He does it anyway. While he does it, Sam grows bangs. "Oh god."

He lies down on the floor.

"Don't say that to me." Says Sam, with dimples of depression. He buries his face in his hands. Must feel pretty, the author conjectures.

"Come on." Dean says. He's frowning, and on a park bench. He looks closer with concentration and develops a double chin. Then he gels his hair really quickly and adds. "You look like a baby."

"SCREW YOU." Says Sam. His hair is wetter. His head is wet as well. Then he dries it with a whoosh no one notices, and looks away in disdain. He is in an open collared shirt. The author hopes you take note of these plot points carefully.

Dean shrieks.

Dean cries at a mirror.

Dean scowls, unimpressed. Ironically, his scowl is impressive. Moreover, it deages him.

Cas shrieks too. His eyes scream horrifiedness. His nostrils flare. You could see his molars, if you tried. The author tries.

Dean looks at a corner. "I don't even care anymore."

Charlie pokes her head out of a yellow car. Not enough is visible to be ugly, but readers are advised to assume it's ugly. "What's up bitches?" She's wearing a seatbelt. Gays are awesome.

"Kind of in the middle of something." Says Dean. His forehead has creases which have no right being pretty. They're pretty.

"I know. I was surprised too." Says Cas.

No one knows what he means.

Sam, suddenly lit in a green light, shows that he doesn't know what he means. He doesn't wait for an explanation, and raises his hand. "That's enough, uh yeah, thanks."

Sam is rude, beautifully.

The author is very helpful with pointing out plot points, as ever.

"You done?" Says Claire and her french braid.

Chuck is there now. He has an extremely white mug. It could have coffee inside. It could also have poison. The author does not identify as a journalist, and is not required to be unbiased.

"Do you have any bacon?" Says Chuck. He has curls. They hide the evil under.

"No." Jack says, blank faced for some reason. "You back off. Old man."

"Back off." Says Sam, in a slightly greater font size. One (1) lock of hair strays from his perfect mane, and falls on his face. It's still perfect, the author assures. Then Sam quickly gets shot, and his forehead pierced with metal rods. It's clearly for the vibe. Because Sam says, "I will destroy you." He does not say it periodlessly.

"Yeah. That's right." Says Jack. He pouts, because he's right. He can, because he's Jack.

Sam looks proud of him with a spotted blue tie and shiny, conditioned hair.

The author loves him very much.

part two, if you're the kind of person who wants it:

Rowena purses her lips, ending up with dimples of discontent.

"Balls!" Bobby cries out. Then he takes off his cap for some reason before adding, "Were you ever nice?"

"Shut up!" Dean yells over his shoulder. He fixes her with an offended stare - as if not shutting up would be offensive on her part.

"I hate to interrupt." Says Rowena, interrupting. "What the hell is this?" She looks appalled. Perhaps she's realized she just interrupted.

He's excellent at delivering backhanded insults like that. The author is proud of his newfound subtlety.

"Gun. Mouth. Now." Dean simply reaffirms Bobby's accusation - because he's awesome like that. "Shut your face." He also says, pointing at them all, to further illustrate his paternal figure's point.

Crowley plants his chin in his palm, and looks at the floor with an unreadable (the author swears she tried) glint in his eyes. "Kill me." Perhaps they're tears.

"Oh, they don't miss me." Cas lets out, matter-of-factly, as he sips from his teacup of coffee.

"I think this was just a minor misunderstanding." Sam steps in, and brings puppy bangs with him to solidify his statement.

The author tries and fails to survive staring at them.

Dean clicks his tongue, and manages to resemble a squirrel to a T. Or an S. Everyone's entitled to spell words differently, English is a weird language.

Sam looks at Dean, irritated. "Make it stop." He grits out, clenching his jaw. He's replaced the bangs with sideburns. They have more potential to seem irritated.

"Maybe." Cas pouts, inexplicably.

"What?" Dean sounds positively aghast - but it's toned down from the years of practise from being in the poetic kind of love with the only angel in the world for him - and thus, only shows up in his eyes.

"You don't understand." Cas picks up a salesboy by his collar. He's so whimsical, the author completely gets why Dean's head over heels for him. Cas keeps everyone - especially salesboys who don't get him pie - on their toes.

"You look like a baby." Dean informs him, all laugh-lines and dimples. "Okay, all right." He says next, gruff, trying to smoothen out the curve of seeming like a goner for Cas.

Cas shoots him a discouraging look. "Ouch." He bites his bottom lip, and closes his eyes - and everyone in a seven mile radius ends up pregnant.

True story.

Also, Narendra Modi shows up, namaste-ing the phenomena that is Cas.

"Shhhhit!" Cas squints. He knows a thing or two about horrible, prejudiced political leaders, from an alternate universe Cas's experiences.

"Oh god." Sam adds, regrowing bangs really quickly.

Modi whispers into his phone, eyes trepidly on everyone in the room, and a hand covering his mouth.

Dean stares, unimpressed. Or so it seems until he says, "You gotta teach me how to do that."

Modi shoots the universal gesture for OK at him.

"I will stab you in your face." Dean declares, with parted hair and an office tie. "I'm gonna get my gun." Now he's got sleep-floofed hair and the dead guy robe. Threatening Dean Winchester sure is impressive like that.

(Maybe he'd wanted to learn right away, and took Modi's OK as dismissal.)

(Meh.)

"Maybe you could be a little less... Lord-ly?" Sam cuts in, with his best lawyer impression. Nobody's sure who it's directed to - Dean, the Indian PM, Cas even? - but it doesn't matter because his eyebrows curve like parentheses of reasonability, hair tucked completely behind his ears - and everyone listens to this Sam.

"OKAY." Dean mumbles, sticking a needle in a doll. Or so, the author assumes he's doing.

Sam stares at him blankly for a beat, and then sighs into a smile. His hair's now long enough to curl magnificently at his neck. "You're too precious for the world." He strangles out, basically choking on the sentiment as he grabs Dean, and smushes him into a hug.

Cas smirks, smug.

"Oh, you." Sam pulls back enough to suddenly be in a maroon cardigan as he gazes at his brother through spectacled eyes of adoration.

Dean pulls him in then, bringing Sam down to his height - and Sam's hair escapes the ponytail grandly enough to fall over his face in perfect, messy locks.

The author's already weak heart stutters in her chest, and proceeds to give up entirely.

"Oh. No." Cas exclaims. Probably not for the author, but it's a sweet, borderline necromance-y coincidence. And then, unexplanably, he tilts his head and furrows his brow. "The whore."

Dean sighs, and facepalms. Sam changes into a grey button-up, and looks away into the distance.

The author daydreams too hard about being looked at like that, and loses it entirely.

Fin.

[ofwrxth]

Roan's lip twitches at his sister's eagerness for control of the town. Despite the years, it's good to see that she's not changed in that regard. Rin is a warrior through and through, seeking conquest and victory wherever she went. It's the Visser way. It makes him all the more proud of her for having survived despite the challenges that had arisen along the way. "Of the towns I've seen, it's the most fortified. I would very much like to have it under our control at the end of the day," he admits, "however," Roan chuckles at her expression. "It is not just the Crosses we will need to push out. The leeches and witches won't just step aside either." Roan holds up a hand, "so we will pace ourselves, Rin. Our focus will be on the rest of our pack. And only once we've found everyone we can...we will consider options." It's a delay but not a shut door. As leader, Roan knows he must be strategic. There is more than one angle to consider and it's his responsibility to take each into account.

"Because I sense there is something you are not telling me," Roan says, a smirk dancing on his lips at his sister's expense. Now, he is simply an older brother. "And I have eyes that see for miles," he adds with a laugh. Rin's business is her own when it comes to such matters, but Roan can tell there is something between her and the eldest Grimm. Or, perhaps, a gap where something has previously been. "He trained her in part on the road. She has aptitude but I believe formal instruction will do her well. And it will make this problem disappear. For now." He listens to the crash and clash of combat above, and knows if he were to go upstairs, he'd see the Jansen brothers fighting each other as fiercely as they might an enemy. "She will learn and Cas will have to accept that."

★・・・・・・★

Pride surges within her heart at the thought of their pack reclaiming its former glory. Rineike is fueled by determination, vowing to search until their numbers mirror their past greatness. Though she nods dutifully, a curious tilt of her head follows. "And the town?" Rineike asks, hungry for it to be under their possession. Their wolves have boldly asserted dominance, commandeering the schoolhouse, and now Norse echoes at every corner. "Those were my thoughts before we found you. I told Cas every day that when there is enough of us, the Crosses will be gone, Hollow Cove will become ours." However, for evident reasons, confirmation from Roan is now required.

Rineike nods about Esje, her fingers drumming a contemplative beat against the table. The plan seems to roll into motion before it even begins and a wicked, confident grin lifts at Rineike's lips. She can envision their gradual control, tightening like a chokehold around the other supernaturals as they seize supplies. Roan's statement prompts a furrow in Rineike's brows, a small scoff escaping her. "Why did you look at me like that when you said that?" she laughs, wondering if his pointed tone is directed at her. "I am focused, Roan. I have been, even when you were not here." she insists, still chuckling. "But good. If Loki has already taught her, she isn't a complete novice. It would be a shame to not have an additional Jansen. But, six is enough, I suppose." her words punctuated by the sound of smashing wood, a clang of blades and a hiss of cussing Norse from the ones above.