#that is Sam baring his SOUL and saying the awful shit Dean has said to him this season (and let’s be real ever since like s4) hurt him A LO

[bloodfreak-boyking]

when people get on here and say with their whole chest that Sam’s speech in Sacrifice (specifically the part where he says “Who are you gonna turn to next time instead of me? Another angel? Another vampire?”) is homophobic, another media literacy angel has its wings violently ripped off and is cast to hell

[impala-in-gotham]

This Destiel/finale fix-it ficlet I wrote...

This is my first attempt at writing fic so be gentle haha but I had a dream close to this and kinda tweaked it from there but it’s basically a finale fix-it in which I’ve decided Dean’s still alive. He lost consciousness a few sentences into his speech and imagined the rest, which is what we saw. There’s just too much about “heaven” that has been used before as a façade. So here goes…

“Okay. P-Please. I'm fading pretty quick, so...there's a few things that I-...” before he can even start the next words Dean’s head lolls to the side and his eyes fall closed.

Sam feels like everything is moving in slow motion as the nightmare of losing his brother plays out in front of his eyes.

“Dean??”

Sam holds Dean in place the best he can and his dread drains away slightly as he hears Dean’s shallow breaths despite his sudden loss of consciousness.

Sam's thoughts start racing, time-induced panic ticking away. Nothing they haven’t dealt with before but this isn’t Chuck’s tale of heroes anymore. It’s just them now.

"Shit, shit, shit...the nearest hospital is still too far...I can't...there's too many bodies to even try to explain...I can't even let Dean go to hide them...shit. Shit...Jack!"

"Hang on, Dean. Just hang on as long as you can. I'll fix this."

Sam prays loudly into the empty barn, "Jack?? Jack, I know you can see this, I hope you can do something, please. It can't end like this. It wasn't supposed to end like this. Not after everything we've been through, everything Dean's survived, he doesn't deserve this. You know he doesn't. Please, Jack. He's not gone yet, he can still be saved. I'm not asking for resurrection here, just...just heal him, please, he deserves to be saved."

As if on cue, the barn roof starts to rattle, a few bulbs burst overhead and Cas walks through the barn doors, rushing to their side while Sam's eyes widen in shock.

"Cas?!? but...", Sam stammers out with only a little bit of shock and a lot more relief.

Cas darts his eyes straight at him and it feels like he's looking straight at his soul.

"Sam, I need you to hold him steady, I'll start healing, but I need you to slowly pull him forward as I heal, alright?... Sam?!...Ok?!"

"Yeah...Yes...Ok, I'm ready.", Sam’s words stumble out as he refocuses onto Dean's weight in his arms.

The familiar golden glow pours from Cas steadier than it did the last time Sam watched him heal Dean's hand. So easily that Sam is holding all of Dean's weight mere seconds later. Cas helps him lay Dean down. Dean's breathing has evened out, but his face is still clammy and pale.

Cas holds Dean's head in his lap for a few moments, as he pulls off his trench coat and folds it up as a makeshift pillow, easing his head onto it. The care and intimacy of the moment, it feels like Sam needs to look away, but then Cas stands and looks up at the relief and tears on Sam's face.

"He'll be alright, Sam. He lost a fair amount of blood so he just nee-".

Sam practically slams his entire body into Cas as he crushes him into a hug, "Cas, I can't believe you're here. Of course, you're here. You saved him. You always save him. Thank you, Cas. I didn't know what to do. Jack said he'd be hands-off but it's Dean."

"Of course. Jack sent me as soon as he heard you. We’re lucky we made it in time.", Cas looks around at the lifeless bodies and their lost heads strewn about, "I'll help you clean this up but first, I'll get those boys home."

As Sam piles up the bodies a familiar but long since heard sound of wings flutter near Dean and Cas is back. He's looking down at Dean with such adoration but with his matter-of-fact tone states, "They're back with their mother, who was thankful to you both...and to have her tongue healed back. I took the liberty of altering their memories. They shouldn't have to live with that trauma." His eyes still lost to watching Dean’s chest rise and fall.

"You got your wings back," Sam says without realizing he thought it aloud.

Cas smiles coyly and looks back at Sam, visibly spreading them out, while Sam watches in awe as their shadows encompass the barn behind him. "Along with a few other powers I've missed now that Jack has restored heaven to what it should be."

Sam sighs, "Yeah, about that..."

While cleaning up the barn, Sam and Cas catch each other up on what happened since they last saw each other. Sam talks about defeating Chuck, Jack bringing everyone back, and how mundane the past months of freedom have been. Cas tells Sam how Jack rescued him from the Empty as well as other angels like Michael (with Adam), Gabriel, Hannah, Samandriel, and Balthazar to name a few.

Sam throws his lighter into the pile of vamps and looks over at Cas, "It's great to have you back, Cas. Dean didn't...well more like couldn't I guess. He couldn't talk about you much after... all he told us was you made a deal and you summoned the Empty to save him from Billie...but after that, he could barely say your name. Didn't stop him from asking Chuck to bring you back", he says with a small smirk, then presses his lips together and sighs, "but it was like a part of him had shut down or just broke. He wouldn't tell me and if you don't want to, I won't push it but you're my best friend, Cas and I...I still don’t know...Can you tell me what happened?"

Cas looks into Sam's puppy dog eyes, now glistening either from the fire or the topic, and then over at Dean still peacefully asleep a few feet away. He reaches out his grace and maybe Dean's soul recognizes it because he is sleeping soundly as if he hasn't in months. Cas guesses that's probably true. Contemplating how much of the story is his to tell and how much Dean would allow him to say since Sam and Cas both know it's not that he won't, he can't.

Cas reaches out and squeezes Sam's shoulder. "I'm sorry for any pain I caused you, I didn't have a choice. I knew it was the only way to beat Chuck. That only you and Dean could find a way. I made the deal to save Jack when he was dying, the Shadow agreed to take me instead but not until I had experienced true happiness. With Chuck in charge, any happiness seemed impossible, but I thought proving to Dean that he is worth saving, that all he's ever done was driven by love, not anger, prove to him why I love him." His voice betrays him by cracking on the last words. Still new to his mouth and his ears.

Cas searches Sam's face for any sort of shock or surprise but finds none. Instead, there’s a kind understanding that only Sam would have.

Sam sighs and says, "That's why." he continues as Cas' head tilts, "When we faced Chuck, he called Dean the ultimate killer but Dean just walked past him, no anger or malice, and just said 'that's not who I am'. It was because of you. He must have finally started to see himself the way you see him. How we all see him."

Cas brightens at that, looking back over at Dean, "Then it worked. The only thing I ever wanted was for Dean to love himself. I didn't ever think I'd be enough. That how I feel about him was enough after everything...after every time I tried to prove it. It was never enough before."

Sam smiles warmly, "You were enough, Cas. I've been trying almost our whole lives to get Dean to believe he wasn't a killer, that his life was worth more. I think we all tried, but you got through to him. He tried so hard after you...he tried but I could tell he was forcing it. Tonight, before you got here, it sounded like he'd given up. It sounded like the last time we lost you.” Sam shakes his head, trying to push away the image of Dean plunging a syringe into his heart, “Cas…every time we lost you it's been hard. For me too, but for Dean... it's different, each time it was different. He’d close himself off. He’d lose all faith. He’d give up. He’d want to die. I think...I think that he loves you more than he lets on. He's better when you're back. He's only happy when you're back."

Cas looks back over at Sam, a trace of a smile, "I know. I always felt it, just... well", he huffs, "We both know he's not one for words. But I know how he feels. I think his fear was more so in having something to lose. We’ve lost each other too many times."

The fire is dying down with the bodies not quite recognizable. Sam collects their gear into Baby's trunk. Cas walks out of the barn carrying Dean as if he's as light as a feather. Sam offers to drive Baby back to the bunker if Cas wants to fly Dean back instead. Cas nods and another flutter of wings echoes in the space left behind. Sam climbs into Baby, places his hands tightly on the wheel, closes his eyes, and prays to Jack.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later, Dean wakes up. He slowly realizes he's back in the bunker, he's in his room, there's no pain in his back, and his hand is being held. He looks over to meet gleaming blue eyes he thought he’d never see again and can barely get anything out. “Cas... but how... you...?” and just pulls him into an awkwardly angled hug but holds on so tightly. It's just them. He doesn't have a time limit.

Dean feels as Cas inhales to explain but Dean cuts him off with “It doesn’t matter how. Is this real? Are you really back? For good."

Cas smiles as if his true happiness reaches a new level and simply says, “Hello, Dean." tightening his embrace, "Yes, Jack brought me back-- new and improved”.

Dean holds him and breathes in that familiar ozone smell, feels the pulse of grace within him stronger than before, something only he seems to be able to feel. "I thought I lost you forever. I thought you...wait," he pulls back to look at Cas again, "Didn't I die? I was in heaven, but it felt...wrong, you were there but you didn't come to see me, Bobby was there but he didn't even hug me after... what? 8 years?! No one else showed up. I just drove to a bridge…Tell me you didn't make a deal or -" his face freezes and his entire body goes tense, "Where's Sam?"

"No, you didn't die. Sam prayed to Jack and I came straight to you. You're healed but the blood loss left you pretty lethargic; though, I think that was your own exhaustion. Sam’s fine, he took the Impala. Should be here soon. You’re safe, it was just a dream. Those boys are back with their mother. I healed her. Altered their memories. Everyone's safe now. Sam told me everything that happened since...I...," a brief sadness flashes in his eyes before he brightens and smiles at Dean, "I knew you would save the world."

“I’ve been trying to find a way into the Empty for months, Cas. I…I read everything I could find but there was barely anything. I tried to use your blood from the sigil to summon you like what Nick tried to do but I guess I didn’t get the ingredients right or I don’t know…nothing worked. Jack never answered any of my prayers but I kept asking him to bring you back. I tried--…”

“Dean.” The tone over that one syllable calmed Dean the same way only Cas has always managed to be able to do.

Cas continued, “I’m back. Jack only recently was able to get me back but he heard your prayers. It took a lot of time and bargaining to get me and as many angels as we could save back out. The Shadow’s asleep again. I’m back and I’m not going anywhere. This is my home. I’m home.”

Dean sits processing this. Shaking off the fake heaven and submerging himself in Cas being alive and here. Now. In his grasp. He doesn't know how he gets to have a second...or seventh? chance but all that matters is everyone he loves, everyone he cares about is safe.

Dean meets Cas’s eyes and stares into the bright, deep blue he's fallen in love with so many times, eyes that have seen every part of who he is, good and bad, and says, “I love you too, Cas.”

Cas smiles very much like he did before the Empty was summoned but without tears because the one thing he wants is right in front of him. Looking at him like he is the most important being in every possible alternate universe. Still so beautiful.

Dean's eyes drift to Cas's lips as they have many times before, asking the same question Cas has yet to answer. Cas places a hand behind the base of Dean's neck, his fingers warm and strong as they pull Dean closer. Finally, their lips come together and it feels like no other kiss either of them has ever had. It feels like swirling grace entangling into his soul; it feels like being healed. It feels like every jagged piece of each other is clicking into place, completing and filling what was empty and longing before. It feels like being saved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam parks in the garage and leaves everything as-is to deal with later. He heads down the hallway to check on Dean when suddenly the overhead lights flicker but before he can run for iron or salt, the bulbs burst. First the one over Dean's door, then a few more heading his direction, then nothing. Sam relaxes and sighs deeply, “Finally!”

[herstarburststories]

He didn’t make it to 42

Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader

Summary: it’s Dean’s birthday, you go to visit him with some news and things that need to be said.

A/N: Happy bday, De.

Warnings: so much angst, mentions of sex, hopeful/happy ending (?)

Dean’s dead. It’s Dean’s birthday and he’s dead. You can’t argue much.

Sam denied the demon blood inside him, and that didn’t stop its evil nature from growing and gasping for his fresh air to the point he was almost shocked alive. Dean denied his dad’s destructive methods’ results for the longest time, and that didn’t stop the cicatrixes in every emotion he had ever shown. You denied the absence of Dean and that didn’t stop the bricks cracking in your soul. There’s only so far you can go with your eyes closed.

So here you are. Standing in front of an empty grave. You are bigger than the dull tombstone, yet you can’t help but not to feel tall, at all. How can you even start to talk? Talking to Dean used to be easy even when it got hard and now you’re feeling like a lost kid in a supermarket. Your snide thinking spells out his name with venom, saying it isn’t easy for you to open your barmy mouth and spill out contrarian shit because this isn’t Dean, just another meaningless symbolism that Sam promises that will help. The real Dean died almost a year ago, he was burned in a hunter’s funeral, the flames dancing over his body as the smell of burnt meat invaded your nostrils. Whenever you try to remember his fragrance, that manly aroma which you loved to scent each morning, all your brain can come up with is the odor of his skin and guts burning. The smell lingers like bad perfume, it doesn’t matter how many times you wash yourself with his soap-- that only broke your heart worse.

But today is Dean’s birthday. He deserves a visit, even if it’s not him. Then you go and attempt to deal with the desolation, push it away just a little, and pick up something from the enormous pile of things you wish to tell Dean. You glance at the cold tombstone: Dean Winchester. 1979 - 2020. Beloved son, big brother, and husband. Hunter. A hero. Simple definitions that can never make it up for who he was and what he meant. You purse your lips and cough a little, a gentle wind touches your cheek so tenderly. If you were still a believer, you’d think this is some sort of sign, Dean’s presence or some other pious hoax. All you do now is to remain in quietude, a deep breath. Ultimately, your voice comes:

‘’You didn’t make it to forty two, huh?’’ You scoff humorless, reminiscing to the multiple days that Dean said he wouldn’t go past 35. He did live each year like it was the last--- you aren’t sure if it's such a good thing. If you carry on like your days are outnumbered, you are silently entertaining yourself until death's knock on your door. ‘’I always hated when you were right. Let’s be honest, you had the words of a pessimist and the wants of an optimist. Still, if you were to be right about something, it would be about a bad situation. A nest with too many vampires, how crappy the motel’s bedroom would be, or how that third glass of wine would make me tipsy. So yeah, I always hated when you were right. And look at you now! You aren’t right, you aren’t wrong. You are dead! And I’m the crazy girl screaming at an empty tombstone.’’

You let out a laugh empty of joy. That’s how a hunter’s life is: you die and people stop talking about you because it’s too sad or too long gone to hold any pity, meanwhile the ones who recall about you go loud with all the spirits in their heads. You put your hand in the pockets of the heavy leather jacket that once belonged to a green eyed man who would be turning 42 today, some strange force causing you to speak again.

‘’Wow.’’ You shake your head to the blue way you paint the scene until you notice that you never greeted him. ‘’Hey.’’ The simple word adds a comical insult to injury. ‘’Guess the dead don’t care about manners, huh?’’ You arch your eyebrows with a grin that demonstrates anything but happiness. ‘’Miracle died. Sam digged a hole next to the bunker and buried him there. He isn’t the same since you died, you know? Not the deceased dog-- Well, he wasn’t the same either. Always whining and scratching your door like a fucking cat, and sniffing your old boots. He made me company in your bed and I whined as much as he did when you didn’t come back home that day. He stood by the door most days, waiting for you to appear. I can’t judge him, I did the same.’’ You shrug, not caring about how risible that confession may look. It's true. You became as irrational as a loyal dog at some point in this sorrow. ‘’And Sam, your baby brother… I think he died with you right there, Dean. He didn’t try to bring you back as he promised, but I shouted and screamed so much. I said I would burn the bunker and throw Baby over a cliff if he didn’t-- if he didn’t let me try. I lived up to the mad woman title.’’

You are crestfallen, pacing on top of where the eldest Winchester - Sam’s brand new nomination -  supposedly was buried. You know your boots barely touch an infected land, there's no deceased man under your steps. The dead thing is in you.

‘’I spent days dragging your body everywhere and nowhere, anywhere I could catch a crumb of relief in hope to bring you back. But I couldn’t. Jack could, but that ungrateful idiot doesn’t wanna follow his grandpa steps and get too attached to mere humans, the creation or whatever. As if we are just some skin and bone to him, as if you are just another human.’’

You sit down on the tombstone, some tender solace in being close to a thing that's supposed to represent him, like sleeping hugged to a pillow or waking up to a photograph of his. Your nails sink against the gelid concrete at the thought of screaming into the sky for the new God that seemed as deaf as the last one. His calm answer to your burning pain. How he dared to tell you he knew what he was doing— as if he was the original lord and not a three years old. You can't make him do it, so you hold on the fury of some overthrown nation.

‘’Anyway, I couldn’t bring you back. Your body, well, you know how human anatomy works. Your body started to smell like death. We tried to stop with human and magic ways, and it wouldn’t work because you were dead. You should’ve seen the doctor’s face when we got you in that fancy hospital tha night. I think we traumatized the doctor with so much violence and trauma. She didn’t even give us a false hope or anything, you know? She just asked about organ donation of what was left. She just wanted to take every little thing out of you, as if you were just another accident on a Tuesday night.’’ Your shake your head as the memories and your points start to mix, it's hard to discern things and keep a straight line when you have an open wound in your insides. ‘’Well, they couldn’t bring you back to life, and neither could Rowena or whatever I looked for. Don’t be mad because I tried, Winchester. You know I’m too stubborn for my own good. I had to try.’’ you refuse to apologize, yet adds the playful words in his eulogy. ‘’But then your body started to stink and God, how could I continue to be so violent to your corpse? That was when I decided to listen to you for the first time and to Sam, so I let you go. I hate you for asking that.’’ What an ambiguous, contradictory truth to bare. You are glimpses of a person for months because of Dean Winchester, still have the energy to argue his selfless logic, just to love him even more. He's got your devotion, but man you can hate him sometimes. ‘’I hate you for going on that stupid hunt. I hate you for being dead, you giant idiot that I love so much.’’ You can't bring your mouth to say loved. "I was always telling you to let the past go and now I’m in love with a dead thing. What a comic way to end our history. I told you that Miracle died, right? I don’t know if dogs go to heaven, but I hope he’s in there with you. I wonder what your heaven is like. I bet it has Whiskey.''

Your dry chuckle makes your notice the tears in your eyes, glistening your orbs as they go like a waterfall to be absorbed by the thirsty land after leaving your cheeks.

"Sam and I-- We tried to make some sense out of this cruelty, but we can’t. You are dead and I can’t seem to put it past me. I still sleep in your bed, and I can still taste your body burning on the roof of my mouth in the quiet nights. I cried this morning because someone asked for a burger, can you believe that? It was so stupid since I used to shake my head and argue with you about cholesterol. Suddenly I was crying at lunch in a restaurant because some stupid kid asked for a burger with extra bacon. They sang Happy birthday to this dumbass child, and I interrupted with my awful crying, and wished that you were celebrating your birthday and not that kid. I guess you could say I wish death upon an innocent child with a problematic eating routine.’’ That was a whole new level of low, as if you are the one wrapped with the sentiment of laying six feet under.

‘’Everyone tells you about how grief is singular and particular with similar emotions that bring people who went through this together. They even have that crap stages thing and all that. You know what they don’t tell you?’’ Your mouth shuts for a moment, like you are waiting some response. You nod as if whatever you were expecting is handed to you. ‘’Grief can be fucking ridiculous. Who cries because of a burger full of oil and cardiac diseases? Who cries because they found a grocery store recipe under her dead boyfriend’s bed? Who falls on the ground screaming in the middle of the mall because they saw a flannel? Who? Those things are so stupid.’’ You smile like there's no tomorrow and the laugh leaving your lips is a treacherous tone. Perhaps you just aren't build up to express joy anymore. ‘’You see it in the movies and in the books and you think, you know, you think to yourself that grieving is being sad on special dates and randomly remembering the loved ones because of some screaming memory, like a flannel or their perfume. Thing is, it’s not just that. All your body seems so small, so tight for all the ache and agony inside it. Your senses go wild, you are not just one person in one place. You’re just the pain everywhere, like being pulled apart and you beg to jump in the fucking grave with them. At least you would be together, at least you would feel like one person and not suffering edges of a broken earthy thing. And--And you start remembering things you didn’t even know you had mesmerized. I look at the ceiling and remember you saying you’d paint it someday. I look at the kitchen and remember me screaming at you for giving Miracle the rest of the food. I smell Sam’s clothes and started crying because hey, they don’t smell like alcohol. You don’t iron them while drinking anymore, so of course they don’t smell like cheap beer.’’ You are chuckling through the tears and it only makes it more monstrous. ‘’Everything is you now that you are gone. Every man has something similar to you, every garden is green as your eyes, and each step sounds like you are coming home. They didn’t prepare me, not for this.’’ You said breathless. A soft single follows. The knife cuts both ways; the empty breeze and the words hurt. Where's the middle term? Where's the limbo? Where's the only safe place for you to rest your weary head?

Out of nowhere, you blurt out, ‘’I can’t masturbate,’’ I know it’s something stupid and even selfish to say, but I think you’d like to know. I can’t masturbate. That’s a part of the whole losing someone process that people are too ashamed to discuss, or maybe they don’t have the urge to be touched anymore because after someone you love dies, after someone-- the hands who touched are dead and cold, you become a haunted object. That’s how I feel most days, like I’m a haunted house because you touched me and now you’re dead and some days I believe I am too.’’ You look around the places. It's beautiful. It's lonely. It has trees and flowers and green. Not as green as Dean's eyes, but it doesn't matter anymore. He doesn't even have eyes at this point. ‘’Well, I can’t masturbate. I can’t touch myself. And I can’t ask someone else either. I tried and ended up punching the guy, Dean. I swear. I panicked when he was between my legs and just punched his nose. You’d have liked it, you were always the jealous kind. I won’t admit that, but I thought it was kinda hot. Especially when you got possessive in sex.’’ A dirty grin appeared on your lips, the echoes of luxury lasting in your eyes for a brief moment. ‘’I don’t think I can be cared for anymore, honestly. Sam tried to hug me when Miracle died and I… It was like I wasn't there. I got frozen in time, and I live in my sleep. In my nightmares you are alive. I  dream about the day you died every week and I used to wake up screaming, but now those nightmares are the only proof you were alive now that you’re as dead as the police report says this time. It was the most painful, calamitous moment for you and I swear it was a nightmare for me, but then I realized that at least I had you there, egoistical or not, I made my nightmare into a dream.’’ You aren't sure which opinion Dean would have on that. Would he understand? Would he shake his head? You wish you can ask him just this one more thing, just beg him to write it down for you on how to be without him here.

You raise on your feet, glaring at the name craved in the concrete. The tears go by still, although they're as usual as the blood in glir veins at this point. ‘’Death is so silly. What it takes, anyway?" Each word conquers more inches of pure wrath. ''People die because they stumbled on their own feet and hit their head somewhere, or they drove their car too close and too fast to the cliff, or because they were giving birth, or because they dated the wrong person, or because they were hunting a fucking vampire and got impaled. What are the chances? How stupid, and idiotic is death? Always creeping and waiting to bite and chew a piece of you-- Taking every scrap of you from me like that’s its right.’’ You are screaming, starting to kick and punch the tombstone with any piece of straight you have. Your limbs hurt and the blood is visible, but you keep going. ‘’YOUR STUPID DOG DIED, DEAN! AND YOU DIED! AND I DIED! SAMMY DIED! YEAH, IS SAID SAMMY! GO AHEAD, TELL ME ONLY YOU CAN CALL HIM THAT.’’ Another punch, your knuckles are ripped. Another kick, your boot as a hole. ‘’DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.’’ Kick. ‘’SAMMY, SAMMY, SAMMY!’’ A punch to each name. Anything to get a reaction, to get comfort. Anything. ‘’YOU CAN’T BECAUSE YOU ARE DEAD.’’ Gasping for something you don't need anymore, sweet oxygen, your eyes are on the tombstone again. And the definitions. And the trees. Your body is sore and aching. It is the kind and coercion no person wants which you needed; the freedom of feeling outside the exact pain that was inside. ‘’You can’t because you are dead. I’ve been playing some sick games in my mind, you know? Sam stopped hunting and had his closure. He was always better at letting go than you and I, but he’s still hurting. I never saw him hurting so much. I think he knows you won’t come back this time, how could you make us promise something like that?  Well, my twisted game is a bunch of misleading what ifs. What if you hadn’t gone after John? What if you hadn’t gone on that last hunt? What if you had stayed with Lisa? At first I didn’t like her much. Jealous, I admit that. But she grew on me. She gave you something I couldn’t back then and I’ll always be thankful for that. And even though it would rip me apart, I’d rather you to die at sixth after living your suburban dream with her. Have another kid besides Ben, maybe a girl this time, and just have that apple pie life. You and Sam would live close and your kids would always play. They’d be as close as brothers. Maybe I’d get a guy and bring my own kids and we could’ve a barbecue and everyone would be happy. But we don’t get soft epilogues here. It ends how it starts, right? Bloody and desperate. I thought maybe, maybe Lisa could understand what’s going through my head now. I drove to her new address and parked close to her house. I must have spent hours there, thinking if I should come in or not, If she somehow remembered after Castiel died or if I could make her brain work again if I told her the truth. But then I just drove back home and fell asleep wrapped in that stupid lumberjack flannel of yours. The one I always mocked, yeah? She may understand me, but I know you wouldn’t want that. You want her, you want me and Sam to be happy. I don’t know if I can do that, Dean. It’s like myt brittle soul shrewd and my body is just waiting to collapse.’’ You signed, overwhelmed by the battle without an anthem. The victory with no triumph. Is it still a win when you don't have someone to come home too? ‘’Your dog died, it’s the first birthday you didn’t live to see, and I bought all the things you told Mrs Butters you wanted for your birthday because it’s your birthday. I just don’t know how to celebrate it with you dead. People stop counting after they die, right? They just say he’d have been 42 or he died at 41. They give melancholy smiles when they wake up and check the day on their phones and a woe atmosphere swallows them for the rest of the day. Then they get better the next day. I think everyday is your birthday.’’ You attempt to wipe away your tears, which only causes your pulsating hand to stain your face red. ‘’Dean, for the first time, what died stayed dead! Congrats.’’ Once again, a hysterical laugh. ‘’I wish but no. What died didn’t stay dead, you are alive, so alive in my head. I swear you are there some days. I wake and watch the door, so sure you’ll come back. Sam says I’m living in delusion and I have to wake up and keep going since that's what you would want. That's enough to make him keep going, but it only makes me angry. Everyone we know and some strangers looks at me like I'm a house on fire and no longer a warm home, like I'm a car accident. They think I don't notice but I do.’’ You look at your boots, the whole is rolling out blood like your hands. You feel closer to Dean. How sick.

‘’Help, I’m still right where you left me." You plea, his love lingering like a bruise. ''I think gravity is overwhelming and it keeps me here. Sometimes it’s like I’m one of those dusted books Sam used to read. Or those Bukowski ones that you hid, so we wouldn’t see how smart you’re. You tried so hard to hide your intelligence because you didn’t think you were entitled to it. You saw yourself as the protector and never the valuable one for protection. You, the man who made an EMF out of an old radio, who rebuilt the Impala from the ground multiple times, and who knew patterns better than any detective. The man who showed me I could rely on someone other than myself. The dude with a lopsided grin, tough hands and a heart of gold. I miss you so much. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing all those classic rock songs and Taylor Swift pop hits, while I drove here. I would think you were home, smelling like guts because you wanted to eat before taking a shower after a hunt. I would think that you are in the Deancave, waiting for me to curl up on your lap to watch Scooby Doo or Doctor Sexy MD until we aren’t watching anymore. If I didn’t know better I would think no death could take you from me. There would be no tear us apart in our vows.’’ The only thing that keeps your organism working is that Dean died knowing how much you loved him. You never let this talk for later or never. No tomorrow is promised. That's a nice comfort, maybe that's what will help you to let go in the future. ‘’But yesterday your stupid, skink dog died and I lost the last living thing that I had from you. You know what’s more angerting? I cried and Sam cried and I noticed we were the living things you left behind and all we have is each other. All your closets of backlogged dreams were left for us-- so yeah. Sam is done hunting and he’s met a lovely girl, and they are moving in like in your domestic dreams. I’m taking care of the family business like your other contradictory dream and making sure Sam is safe enough to be normal. Because I have to, we have too. Stupidly enough, I still wait for the day you’ll burst out the door and tell us to hit the road again. I still watch every episode of your dumb tv shows to make sure I’ll know everything that happened when you ask. I still drive around in your car and close my eyes when the street is calm, only picturing you driving as Baby’s engineers go wild but those are my hands on the steering wheel. If I didn't know better, I’d think you are still around. But I know better. I still feel you all around. I love you.’’

Your monologuing ends as astutely as it stated. You get up, press a kiss to your ruined for the next weeks hands and place it on the rock with writings. You turn around and walk back to the car that you parked near, only in case of Dean wanting to see Baby. How knows? You and your clandestine faith. You lick your lip and get in the car.

You swear you the AC/DC cassette wasn't there before, but when you turn on the car and the radio it starts playing. It's the first true smile that comes to your mouth, it's bloodstained and you look like a shameless woman. With that you can deal.

It hurts a bearable hurt for now. You didn't think it was possible. Maybe someday.

The end.

(she takes a little longer to arive in heaven than sammy. his baby brother says that women are most likely to live around six years more than men. it doesn't ease him up, though. dean waited sam for too long, his platonic soulmate. and now he has to wait his romantic one too? the eldest Winchester considers it the best earthly present when the he sense you around, that smell of orange and apples. it's you, he knows before even turning around. he can't wait to love you again. your name rolls off your tongue so naturally, as if you had seen each other just yesterday: ‘’hey, y/n.’’)

But then again, nothing ever really ends, does it?

REBLOG AND COMMENT. Feedback is magic and helps me!

Starburst's footnote: It just didn't feel right to make an author's note on the top. I wanted it all only to be an arrow to the story. So, this is my side note: it's six am and I'm up writing this after inspiration kissed me with a bruise in the middle of the night. Or more like grabbed my throat. Anyway, I had to write and finish this one to post today, even pushing sleep aside. Hey, we are writers, that's what we do! I've been watching the show since I was eleven and I cried like a baby with the finale. This series was just so important and crucial to molde aspects of relationships for me. The song marjorie by Taylor Swift was used here, and so was the line "you got my devotion/ but man, I can hate you sometimes" by Harry Styles. I told you guys I would use it somewhere! A special thanks to @msmarvelouswinchester​ who helped me with her encouraging and opinon. You are the best! And with all of this I wanna say: Happy bday, Dean Winchester!

REBLOG AND COMMENT! Feedback is magic! Especially about this fic, I’d like to know your opinion. Tags in the reblog! Send an ask or dm to get in the taglist.

[zmediaoutlet]

in support of Texas relief, @wincest-endgame donated $25, and requested Sam & the amulet through the years. Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts)

(read on AO3)

Dean pushes Sam into the bathroom, after what feels like a day of questioning and caution and Dean being withholding—he's so bad at it, Sam doesn't know why he even tries—and Bobby avoiding Sam's eyes—and Sam'll figure that out, eventually—but it's really only four in the afternoon, and he's got food in his belly for the first time in what feels like a week but he's assured is a year, and he's had a beer and a cup of coffee and Dean's squeezed his arm, on his bicep just above the bend of his elbow, and looked into his eyes for a full heart-rich moment when Bobby was on the phone in the kitchen and couldn't see—and they didn't do anything, of course they didn't, not in Bobby's house, but Sam closed the door behind himself with that look thick in his head, the knowing that Dean was safe and okay and that Lucifer didn't hurt him—that everyone was okay, that what he'd done by jumping into the cage had worked when he hadn't been sure, not at all, that it would—and he still doesn't really know how he got out but he'll get that out of Dean eventually—and he turns on the shower and smiles at the rickety jump of the hot water because, holy shit, he's alive to suffer Bobby's godawful shower—and he pulls the shirt off over his head, and unbuttons his jeans, and fishes in his pocket for his phone and his wallet like he always does—and finds a new phone that he doesn't recognize, which makes him frown, a wallet that he does, and—the amulet.

The air goes out of him. The shower's guttering down, getting warm at last. He hears Dean's voice through the door, saying something to Bobby although Sam doesn't know what. Sam twines the leather cord around his fingers and crushes the little metal head in his palm, standing there in his socks and boxers. He didn't lose it. Somehow he—hadn't thought about it, until now, but now that he has he just—assumed it'd be gone. He's not in the same clothes he was wearing before he fell, so—did Dean—? He doesn't know and in this second doesn't care. He brings his closed fist up to his mouth, the cord thin and worn against his lips. He breathes in, slow.

The last time he held it in his hand was—Detroit. Milkjugs of blood sitting in the trunk. Dean—somewhere, talking to Cas maybe, and Sam alone, and Sam was alone a lot then. It feels like yesterday. He'd felt distant somehow. Even if Dean had forgiven him, or at least had been willing to try to forgive him. Ever since the second he'd made the decision to say yes, and decided to make Dean agree, it was like he'd been one step outside his life, looking in. Watching Dean try to accept it and knowing Dean never would. Watching Dean, with his hands in his pockets, and his hand curled so hard around the amulet that the horned edge had actually cut into his palm and he'd bled, inside his jeans. Not minding that and squeezing it tighter. Reminding himself why what he was doing mattered so he wouldn't falter. He wasn't going to falter.

Lucifer had healed that little wound without even acknowledging it. Sam remembers that if nothing else. He opens his hand and he's made sore white marks where the edges of the demon-head have cut into his palm. The shower hisses, next to him, and there's a thump of the side of a fist against the door—"Hey, princess, don't take forever on the primping," Dean says, muffled, the idiot—christ, Sam loves him.

He looks up at the door, startled. Creak of floorboards outside, like Dean's just standing there. Sam blinks at the peeled paint, and calls back, "Dude, it's my first shower in a year, hold your horses," and Dean says, "Yeah, yeah," and Sam closes his hand around the amulet again, his chest—thick. He can't take a full breath. He stoops, and loops the amulet cord around itself three times, four, and tucks it back down into the deepest corner of the pocket of his jeans. He crouches there for a second, feeling—feeling. The steam in the air curls against his skin. He has to stand up. Take the shower, get into fresh clothes, get back out into the house, figure things out. Figure where the world is, after a year without him in it. He crouches there, instead, taking in air. There's a little spot on his jeans, he realizes. Worn, nearly white, where something's made a space for itself. You wouldn't notice the difference, if you saw it every day, but with a jump of time between the last time he wore these jeans and now—it's obvious.

*

Of course it was longer than a year. Of course there were things Dean didn't tell him. Soulless, Sam thinks, trying the word out by himself, when Castiel's left and Sam's waiting for Dean to get back with the sword. Soulless. Not—a good thing to be. He's pretty sure.

Things that are described as soulless: corporations, governments. His comparative philosophy professor in junior year. Soulless due to lack of consideration, due to lacking character, due to—what? Indifference. Cruelty.

When they got to Portland, Dean picked the motel by turning into a random parking lot off the highway, and Sam hauled most of their bags in because he could tell Dean was tired after all the driving, and he'd barely made it through blinking at the one king bed before the door slammed behind Dean and Dean hauled him around by the jacket and gripped his shirt and said low and fervent, Sammy, if you don't want to you're gonna have to knock me out, and Sam dropped the bags right there in the entrance and got his hand on Dean's face and dragged his thumb soft over Dean's pretty lower lip and felt how Dean tensed, and then how the tension spilled out of him like water.

He doesn't get it. He walked around, he was told, without a soul, for a year. More than a year. Castiel was very precise about it. He'd left Dean with Lisa and found his grandfather, instead—his grandfather!—and he'd hunted. When they came to Dean it was by accident, Castiel said, and then when Dean had started hunting with Sam it had seemed to be for convenience, rather than something that meant—anything. Shifters, alphas. Vampires. Castiel knew all of it and told Sam earnestly, not judging. Sam had tried to kill Bobby but it was all right, Castiel said, because Dean had gotten so fearful and sick that he'd let himself die, to speak to Death, to make Sam right. He would have died, if Sam hadn't gotten right. It had been worth that. It had been that bad.

There's a text, from Dean. Sorta got the sword. Back in 8 hrs. Want any sourdough?

Sorta? Sam chews his lip. Just the dragon-killing magic weapon, thanks, he texts back, and Dean texts him a :) and Sam puts down his phone and stands up from the table and wants to vomit. Jesus christ. Soulless, he thinks, again, and pulls the amulet out of his pocket, winding the cord around his knuckles, staring at it.

He kept it. Somehow, some way. A year and more. From however he got spit out of the cage, from looking at Dean and choosing to turn away from him, to having Dean back and treating him like—he shudders. His indifferent callous body, carving an efficient line through the world. Sam wants to remember and doesn't. He does want to know what the exact moment was like, when he stuck his hand in his pocket standing on a street under a flickering lamp, watching Dean through a window like a damn pervert, and felt the amulet skin-warmed and heavy against his skin, and thought—what?

He puts it back in his pocket. Eight hours, until Dean gets back. Sam drags his hand over his mouth. When he shifts he can feel it—a little, nagging weight, pressed against his thigh. A year and a half of that with no reason to keep it. With all the reason in the fucking world to keep it. He blows out air until his chest is empty. Eight hours. He'd better have something to show for it. He gets to work.

*

He remembers, of course, later. Fractured, incomplete. Three selves' memories colliding and sleepless nights with a monster whispering in his ear. He curls on his side in a too-warm bed and watches Dean, curled beside him, sleeping. Frowning in his sleep. Lucifer says, though Sam ignores him, "Imagine how much easier he'd have had it at Lisa's, right? Bet she wore sweet little nightgowns, too. Where's yours, Sammy?"

In the cage he hadn't worn the amulet around his neck, not like he had in the year of Dean's absence. Lucifer didn't allow that. Sometimes he would crouch alone in the dark while Lucifer and Michael fought and he'd get space to breathe although breathing there always felt like the coldest depth of a North Dakota January. Shards of ice in his throat. The air thin. The air, of course, not real, but no matter how much Sam's conscious brain tries to rationalize when he has a moment to think, the cage isn't a place for rationality. Lucifer throttles him and Sam knows distantly that his lungs aren't real but he chokes anyway. He chokes. The air whittled thin in his throat and the edges of his vision vignetting to black, to sparkle-shot oxygenless, uncertain—

He turns his head, gasps deep. "Aw, thought I had you there," he hears, and turns fully onto his back, and they didn't bother undressing tonight before Dean crashed miserably into the mattress so he's still got his jeans on, and he shoves his hand into his pocket and wraps his hand around the amulet and squeezes so hard the horned heavy edges tear into his thin unhealed skin and the pain—god, the pain, piercing, cleansing.

It hurts. The room's quiet, except for the rattle of the heater under the window. Dean's breath, at his side. Not quite a snore. Sam's bleeding. He can feel the bandage getting wet. He curls his hand tighter and fumbles in the dark. A hitch—Dean's baby snore, interrupted—and Sam goes shh, as soft as he physically can, and Dean huffs and turns over and puts his face on Sam's shoulder, and Sam squeezes his hip through his jeans very gently, settling down. Lucifer will be back, he knows. When it's worst. When he thinks he's nearly fallen asleep. When Dean wakes up, in the pre-dawn because he has to piss, and he leans in first and kisses Sam's jaw, rough and sleepy with his breath rank, when Sam loves him just—the absolute most—Lucifer will ruin it. Even if Sam knows it isn't real it's as predictable as it is gutting.

He pulls his fist out of his pocket, amulet included. Dean won't wake for—what time is it?—hours. He turns his head toward Dean's, presses his lips against the warmth of his hair. He settles his fist on his chest. If the blood spills—well, it won't be the first time Sam's lost a shirt to blood.

*

Taking the amulet out of the trash wasn't a decision, when he did it. When animals are cornered their lashing out is survival, nothing else. He kept it because—he had to keep it. It wasn't possible that it be left where it was. An indifferent housekeeper dumping it into the mixed refuse of a half-dozen rooms; a trip to a dumpster, and then a dump, to be lost. No.

They had—

Sam knew it didn't matter in the face of what came later but he still felt it. That day. Vermont, autumn. The leaves dark red in the setting sun, or red just because they were. Immaterial, with Dean's back against the tree and his face tipped up to Sam's. Shocked. Sam's fingers on his jaw and then trailing down his throat, hooking into the cord of the amulet and pulling, down, to the demon-head, and Dean letting that tiny insignificant weight tip him forward so he met Sam's mouth when Sam offered it. The bodywarm of it against Sam's thumb when Dean's lips touched his, and how his hand closed into a fist on instinct, shocked too.

Whatever betrayals had come later. Whatever misunderstandings and miseries. There was still that day, and all the days before. This solid thing that had marked Dean as Sam's brother, for all the months and years marching all the way back to that stupid, shitty Christmas morning, five a.m. cold and disappointing, and Sam making the first decision that was really his own that he'd ever made. Handing over the shitty little packet of a gift he hadn't picked, and Dean looking at him with this—rare, uncertain happiness. Not willing to take it, in case it'd be snatched away like everything else had been.

Maybe that hadn't been a decision either, in retrospect. It was Sam's first day, in a hunted life that wasn't one he'd chosen, and maybe that was just instinct. Looping something around Dean's throat and saying, please. Dean had taken it. Said yes. Tossing it in the trash, later—well, Sam didn't blame him, but and he understood if the yes was retracted, but—Sam couldn't let it go. Even if he was the only one who remembered. Even if, ever after, even if they hurt each other and found each other again and circled each other like twin stars in an uncertain orbit—even if they met, in a dark room, and Dean said to him soft and sorry, Sammy, I swear, and Sam dragged Dean's body over the top of his and took the weight and feel of him like a payment, due—even then. He kept the damn thing, quiet, and his.

It didn't even register, after a while. It transferred from jeans to duffle to backpack to jacket. Part of the morning pat-check, unthinking unless something was missing: phone wallet amulet keys. Amelia never asked about it. Gadreel never interfered with it. When Dean was a demon Sam got up every morning in an empty bed and took a shower and carefully lifted his sling over his head and being ready for the day meant sling wallet keys amulet phone list of contacts he hadn't burned through yet and it just—felt like part of him. He thought about it as much as he thought about his lung.

On the day that Dean almost killed him Sam got dressed without thinking because there were more important things than thinking, and he put on jeans and he put on his boots and he put on shirt, shirt, jacket, and he dragged his hand through his hair instead of combing it, and he put in his pockets keys phone amulet wallet and he stood there, then, in the total quiet of the bunker, and took the amulet back out of his pocket. He looked at it in his palm. Small, heavy. The cord looping back over his knuckles. Dean had had to get new ones, he remembered. The leather ones kept wearing through, because Dean wore it every second: sleeping, waking, in the shower. When they were in bed, and Sam folded Dean in close against his chest, and Dean's lips brushed his jaw, and Sam slipped careful fingers under the cord, worrying at it. If only he'd known, then, the things he had to worry about.

He put the amulet back in his pocket. He went to Dean's room, in the bunker, and found the pictures Dean didn't keep very well hidden, and flicked past the ones of them together until he found the one of their mother. That, maybe. That would work. It wasn't fair, that day, to try to pretend anything else would, and as far as what mattered more to Sam—that was his problem, he thought, and nothing that needed to bother Dean. It was important, he thought, to be realistic.

*

"Give us a minute," Dean says.

"Dean," Sam says, appalled.

Chuck—Chuck? Jesus christ—jesus christ! Sam thinks. Chuck looks entertained, standing there in his sneakers—his Chucks! Jesus christ!—and his jeans and his simple short body and how he's—he's—

"Dude, seriously," Dean says, impatient, and Chuck raises his hands like surrender and says, "Hey, no, I get it! You've got stuff to talk about! Just say my name when you're ready, we've got all the time in the world, I'm sure my sister isn't planning the imminent destruction of all creation," and he winks, and then—disappears, jesus christ because Chuck is GOD—

"Sammy," Dean says, firm.

"Dean," Sam says back, immediately, "what are you doing—holy shit, do you realize—"

"Sam," Dean says, in a different tone, and Sam's gut jolts, hooked. Diverted.

The bunker, quiet around them. They're in the map room and the lights are all on full, bright and warm. Dean's looking at him and Sam—they've been good, it's been good, for months and months—the best it's ever been, even better than those first heady days when they were learning each other, young and reckless—and even with all that, Sam's nervous, somehow.

"How you doing, Sammy," Dean says, eyes narrow.

Sam lets out a sharp breath.

Dean seems surprised at the lack of answer and his chin tips up. He looks at Sam steadily. Sam doesn't know what he's supposed to say and so stays silent, and Dean keeps looking at him and then slides his hand into his pocket, and pulls out—of course.

He holds it low, in front of himself, dangling from two fingers. The heavy pendulum sway. Dean's eyes are low, fixed on it, but Sam's watching Dean's face.

There are obvious things to say that Dean doesn't say and Sam's grateful for it. "You took the other one," is what Dean says, and he doesn't look up to see Sam frown confusion but he must sense it, somehow, because he continues: "From that—jesus, Sam. From that play, that the girls put on. When I came out to the car the next morning it was gone. Doesn't seem fair. You got the prop and the real thing, both."

"Sorry," Sam says, and Dean says, "Christ," and takes the three long steps across the room to where Sam's got his back to a pillar and kisses him. Sam takes it, breathing in. Not soft, not that giving sweet that Dean can be, but it's Dean's mouth and therefore it's a miracle, every time.

Dean pulls back. His brow rolls against Sam's, brief, and then he sets down from where he lifted up on his toes, and he looks at Sam from six inches, their hips pressed together. The amulet swings against Sam's stomach, from where Dean's hands are fisted on his sternum.

"Sammy," Dean says, and Sam takes a deep breath and says, "I didn't mean to keep it—secret."

It's a lie and a bad one. He doesn't know why he said it that way but he doesn't know a truer one. He didn't—make a decision about it. It was just that…

Dean doesn't call him on it. "You said," he starts, and then his cheek sucks in on one side. Sam notices for the first time how tired his eyes are. It was a long day. The fog and the people they couldn't save. He folds one hand over one of Dean's, pressed against his chest, and Dean's eyes dip, and maybe that makes it easy enough because Dean says, "Sam, I wouldn't choose her."

Sam takes a deep breath. Their hands rise, all knotted together. Dean says, "It kills me, Sammy. That you think I'd—but I wouldn't. If it were any choice, if I could—make it how I wanted it to be. I wouldn't, not fuckin' once," and Sam says, "I know," just to stop Dean from talking, with his voice thickening up that way.

God's somewhere, waiting in the wings. Sam doesn't give a shit, anymore. Dean's mouth turns up at one corner but it's not happy, and Sam slides his free hand up Dean's side, gripping through his jacket, trying. However he knows how to try. "I know," he says, again, because—christ, he does. That nasty awful fog doesn't get to take this from him. "Dean, I told you before. Whatever she makes you—think, or do. I got it. I can handle it."

Dean bites his lips between his teeth and he looks down. His thumb catches the swinging cord of the amulet. "You know," Dean says, echoing. A question, buried down in it.

He hasn’t said it, specifically, out loud or internally or even when he prayed, back when he thought that praying was something that mattered, but: Sam hates Amara. Hates every aspect of her, baby to adult to imagined vision to physical manifestation to the haunted look, in Dean's eye, when he thinks Sam isn't looking. Hates how she makes Dean doubt. Hates how she makes Dean afraid. Hates every fragment of her that draws Dean's attention away, makes him look into the shadows of the room, makes him weak and afraid of his own weakness. In their bed at night Dean lays awake and Sam is awake with him and he thinks—how can he prove it? How can he show Dean how much he wants to take this burden away—to make it so the darkness is nothing that could come between them?

"Sam," Dean says. "You're…"

Nothing goes there. What could? Sam slides his hand from Dean's side up to the back of Dean's neck, cupping his skull, holding. He ducks his head. His temple against Dean's temple, Dean's breath against his throat. He closes his eyes and reaches and finds the amulet, dangling, on his first try. Luck. He gathers it into his palm and knocks Dean's fist open and closes their hands together, fisted around the sharp little weight of it. Any other day Dean would make a crack about holding hands.

Sam says, "I kept it because I wanted you. It wasn't your fault that things went bad. Or, I don't know. Half yours and half mine. Or maybe it was destiny's fault—fate, or something. It doesn't matter. What mattered was—how you stuck with me. How we—figured it out, every time. No matter how crappy it got, or how much we didn't trust each other, or… Because it's us, right? Every time. It's us, no matter what. I knew that on days I didn't know anything else. Nothing's going to take that away. Not the Darkness. Not God."

True. Dean's temple tips, against his. Their stubble drags together. "Not even the big guy, huh?" he says. Frail. "Seem pretty sure of yourself, there."

"I am," Sam says, not joking, and hears the breath Dean takes in. He squeezes their hands together, squeezes the back of Dean's neck.

"Shit," Dean says, and lets out a fraction of a laugh. "I wish I..."

He shakes his head, tipping away from Sam. Sam looks at his profile. The sweep of his eyelashes. His nose, with the little broken tilt. His jaw, squared. Sam bites the inside of his cheek and then lets go of Dean's neck, and folds their hands together all in a square—Dean's hand over Sam's over Dean's over Sam's—and when he unfolds them the amulet's caught in Dean's palm, and Sam folds his fingers over Dean's fist and pushes it, down, tucking it neat into Dean's jacket pocket. Dean blinks at him.

"I don't need a reminder," Sam says. Echo of something that feels like forever ago, surprisingly—now—true. "I'll be right here. No matter what. I swear."

He lets go of Dean's fist and slides up his arm, holding his shoulder instead. Dean looks back and forth between his eyes. "Thank you, Sam," he says, serious.

Sam nods. Dean looks up into his eyes, and then at his mouth, and when he leans for the kiss Sam responds simply, holding him and trying to say—everything there is to say. There could never be enough time, to say all there is to say.

Dean pulls back, after a few seconds. Not nearly enough. Their noses brush together and Dean's hands are on his chest, heavy. The amulet in his pocket. Where it belongs, Sam thinks, but it doesn't—matter, the same way it did before. It's not tying Dean to him; it's not a relic of a promise, broken and then kept. He touches Dean's jaw, with his thumb, and Dean sighs against him.

"Guess we should call him back," Dean says. "You think he knows we totally made out just now?"

Sam groans, and pushes Dean away, and catches him smiling. "You're totally going to hell," he says, and Dean winks at him, and turns away, and calls out, "Yo, Chuck!" like he's calling the literal creator for a dinner of hot wings, and Sam would despair but Dean's hand is in his pocket, and—well, they're okay, so. It's okay.

[athenamikaelson]

So I've been on tiktok like ya do and I found myself in grave cleaning tiktok and I think this sounds so good for a spn fic. Would you be able to write something for reader being a normal civilian and taking on the hobby of cleaning up old graves from overgrown grass and moss and making the stones readable again? The ghosts in the graveyard take a liking to reader and when they see someone being rude towards reader, they terrorize them, leading Sam and Dean to show up on the case. Reader has no idea how she's connected and the ghosts obviously don't like the Winchesters. You can end it how you like! If you don't want to write it that's totally fine!

Sam and Dean Winchester x Reader

Request- So I've been on tiktok like ya do and I found myself in grave cleaning tik tok and I think this sounds so good for a spn fic. Would you be able to write something for a reader being a normal civilian and taking on the hobby of cleaning up old graves from overgrown grass and moss and making the stones readable again? The ghosts in the graveyard take a liking to the reader and when they see someone being rude towards the reader, they terrorize them, leading Sam and Dean to show up on the case. Reader has no idea how she's connected and the ghosts obviously don't like the Winchesters. You can end it how you like! If you don't want to write it that's totally fine!

Warnings- Swearing, Dean and Sam being helpless dorks, An ass named Alec, assault

Word Count- 1877

“Well that should do it Earl.” Rinsing off the last of the grime on Earl Danberry’s grave I start to pack up my grave cleaning kit. A lot of the people in town think I’m weird for cleaning the graves but I really don’t care. Just because these people don’t see a reason doesn’t mean I don’t. One day when I pass and get a gravestone of my own, I hope somebody will do for me what I’m doing now. And I just find it nice to clean them for the souls of the people that inhabit them. 

Packing up the rest of my supplies I start to walk to my car as I feel a cold chill brush against me.

“Thanks again kid.” Earl looks at the girl. Patting her on the shoulder. 

“Earl you do know she can’t hear you right?” Another ghost says behind him from a group of ghosts who come to visit you whenever you come to clean another grave.

“I know but the kids good. She deserves a little thanks. Even if she doesn’t hear it.” A few sounds of agreement come from the group. 

“Ya she is.”

As I’m placing the last of my stuff into the trunk I feel a presence behind me. Whipping around I come face to face with the gravedigger Alec. His stench of B.O and the dirty wife beater he’s wearing are the first things I notice. The second is the grim smirk on his face. It would’ve made me possibly less uncomfortable if there was anyone around us and the sun wasn’t fading but because she things weren’t a chill runs down my spine, but not from the cold.

“Heya darling, cleanen them stupid graves again I see?” Alec’s gruff voice comes out as if he just smoked 2 packs of cigarettes before talking to me. 

“Well I don’t think they’re stupid. They represent these people’s past lives. I would think someone who works here would understand that.” He takes a step closer which instantly makes me step back, hitting the edge of the trunk.

Little do you know the spirits were standing off the the side watching the whole encounter.

“He better not try anything.”

“I’ve always hated him.”

“I’m dead and still have better manners than that ass.”

“If he touches Y/N he’ll regret it.”

“Agreed.”

The spirits all agree as they watch the encounter.

“Well surgah I only do this for the check. Mans got to make a living somehow.” His eyes roam up and down my body as I try to make as much space between us.

“Um, ya sure. Well sorry sir but I really have got to get going, cat to feed and all.” As I’m turning around I feel his hand grab my wrist tightly and pull me towards him. Only now able to smell the wrecking smell of alcohol coming from him. 

 “Not so fast sweetheart. We’re having a nice little chat, no reason to be a bitch and leave now.” I try to pull away but he grabs my hair with his other hand and brings my to him. 

I quickly think and bring my knee up to the place no man wants to get hit and quickly run to my car to get in and lock it once I’m inside. Alec comes up to my window and starts pounding his fists on it slurring out swears as I quickly slam on the gas and leave.

The fuming group of spirits all came to an unsaid agreement. He wasn’t going to get away with that. 

“Let’s get to work.”

Sam’s POV

“So Mr. Benjamin,” looking over to the gravedigger who clearly looks like he needs to take a shower, “can you please tell us what happened?”

The gravedigger looks at Dean and I as if he has someplace better to be. 

“I already told the other cops.”

I was about to open my mouth, but was interrupted by Dean. 

“Well Alec, we’re not the other cops are we?” Den raises a brow at the man who looks at Dean in disgust before rolling his eyes and muttering a “fine”.

“Well I was just at home by myself, which isn’t a usual thing you know,” Dean raises another brow at the guy, already annoyed, “and all of a sudden my cabinets are being flung open and all my dishes are being thrown on the ground, chairs and moving by themselves and then it all stopped.”

“Is that all?” I ask him which earns a look as if I’m the crazy one.

“No.” He lifts the edge of his shirt where the scar of a knife wound is evident. 

“After it stopped a knife just flew up to me, stopped mid-air and threw itself into my side!”

Dean and I share a glance. 

“Do you have any idea who would do this to you? Any enemies in town?” Alec looked down at his feet for a moment as if deciding if he wanted to speak.

 “Mr. Benjamin, anything helps.” 

“Fine. This girl who comes and cleans the graves every now and then  and I got into a disagreement the very day it happened. She’s a witch I tell you. A freak. Who comes in their freetime to clean old dusty graves?!”

“Wait she cleans them just because?”

“What was the argument about?” Dean and I question at the same time. Mine the ladder. 

“Yes she does. And um,” he stops and thinks about his next answer which alerts a red flag to me, “She’s just crazy you know?”

“Ok, can you give us her name please?”

“Y/F/N Y/L/N”

Dean’s POV

Walking up to the house of the Y/L/N girl I look over to Sam.

“Witch?” A confused look crosses both our faces because of the exterior of the house, bright and full of life and color. Not something most witches would live in. 

“Let’s just talk to her first and then decide what to do.”

I walk up to the door and knock expecting an old bag to open the door but am surprised when my eyes meet a youthful Y/E/C.

A look of question in them as I can’t seem to form a question as I stare down at her and take in everything about her. Her Y/H/C that he’d love to run his hands through and your luscious red lips that he couldn’t help but imagine them on- 

“I’m sorry, um could I help you gentlemen?” 

Sam’s POV

A melodic voice enters my ears as I peer to Dean who looks like he’s lost in thought, just staring at the poor girl.

“Yes. Ms. Y/L/N?” The girl sends me an award winning smile that almost makes my knees give out. I can see why Dean can’t speak. But one of us has to.

“Yes we’re with the FBI,” I flash my fake badge and wait for Dean to show his and when I notice he’s still looking at the girl in awe I hit him with my elbow knocking him back into reality.

He quickly straightens up, showing his badge.  

A look of confusion and fear passes the girl's features and at that moment I just want to assure her everything will be ok. Oh shit. Witch Right. 

“Is something wrong? Is someone hurt? Oh, please come in.” She moves out of the way and we make our way to her living room as she leads us. 

“Do you both want anything to drink?” She sends a warm but weary smile our way.

I was about to object, as she might be a witch and all but am quickly interrupted by Dean agreeing quickly. 

As she gets up I send a glare to him which only earns my a sly smile and shrug.

Your POV

After handing the FBI men their teas I quickly sit in my seat putting my hands underneath my legs to keep them from shaking in nervousness at the men,

“What happened?” I ask the taller handsome one. The shorter handsome one has barely said 2 words so I thought I’d have a better chance of getting a response from the tall one. 

“Well a Mr. Alec Benjamin was attacked the other day and he had said that you both had gotten into an argument. We are here to follow up on that. Can you tell us what it was about?” I quickly shift in my seat uncomfortable with the question.

I take a deep breath before I try my best to answer the question. 

“I had just finished cleaning one of the graves when ALec had stopped me by my car. He started talking to me oddly and I smelt the alcohol on him which made me uncomfortable so I tried to walk away but he grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I hit him and I loosen his hold enough for me to get to my car and drive off. I haven’t seen him since.” I let out a shaky breath before leaning back in my seat avoiding the men’s gazes.

Dean’s POV

Oh I’m going to beat the shit out of that motherfuc-

Sam’s POV

I can feel my hand grip tightly onto the side of the chair. That ass should be thankful I didn’t know this when I saw him or I would’ve-

“Is there anything else?” Her small voice makes me relax somehow.

“Um, did you notice anything weird beforehand? Cold spots, static, sulfur?” A look of confusion crosses her face before she bites her lips. Instantly drawing my attention. Please don’t be a witch.

“Sometimes when I’m there I feel coldspots, before I was leaving I felt one. But I hadn’t thought anything of it. Why?”

I send her a small smile. Understanding now what must’ve happened.

“Nothing for you to worry about. I think that’s all the questions we have for today. Thank you for your time.” As we get up I see Dean hand her a piece of paper. 

“Please call me if you ever have any questions.” He sends her a smirk which hides the gleeful look in his eyes. 

“Of course.” She brings us to the door and waves us goodbye as we leave. As soon as she shuts the door I hit Dean in the stomach. 

“Did you just give her your number?”

“Don’t act like you don’t act like you didn’t have the same idea.”

We make it to the hotel room and once I open the door Dean and I stare in disbelief.

The place looks like it just got robbed, sheets thrown everywhere glasses broken. But nothing is missing.

“What the hell happened!” Dean’s gruff voice yells. The same question runs through my head before a chill washes over the room.

“Stay away from Y/N!” Voices boom through the room and Dean and I turn around to face a group of ghosts glaring at us. I’m about to grab a rock salt gun, but when I turn around they’re already gone.

“Please tell me she doesn’t have a bunch of angry spirits as her fairy godmother’s?” I look over to Dean before a small smirk crosses his face.

“That’s cool as fuck.”

Taglist- @akshi8278

[tearsofgrace]

Thrown Back In Time

Dean started as if from a dream, and the walls of the barn came into focus all around him. Sigils painted everywhere, and the metallic smell of paint still clinging to the air. He ran a hand slowly through his hair, trying to process what had happened. One minute, he’d been in the bunker, researching ways to take down Chuck, and the next he was here. He knew exactly where he was, he wouldn’t soon forget this place. But why? And how? And most importantly--

“You alright, boy?” He turned his head and saw Bobby standing in the corner, touching up one of the symbols on the wall.

“Yeah, just, uh--”

“Dean, we’re going to figure this out. Whatever evil son of a bitch did this to you, he’s gonna die.”

Dean nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The only way this could have happened was Chuck. Chuck messing with his little toys again, playing his stupid game. And the one thing they knew for sure about Chuck was that he wanted his happy ending. He wanted the boys to play their part, to play along. So, if he was getting out of this, then he had to play along. 

Bobby did the ritual and they waited. Dean remembered saying something, mouthing off to Bobby last time, the first time. But there was no need. He knew he did the ritual right. He knew the angel of Thursday was coming. 

The barn overhead started shaking and he glanced at Bobby to make sure he was alright. This place, this moment, he thought about it more than he cared to admit. The first time he was here, he was so lost. Scared, confused, alone. But not willing to admit any of it. He didn’t want to be like that Dean. The Dean that locked up his emotions and pushed away his family. Was that what Chuck was trying to show him? How weak he’d become?

Sparks flew as the lights exploded and the barn doors were flung open to reveal Castiel. But not his Castiel. He struggled to focus on that thought. This Castiel was a soldier. An angel who followed orders and would slaughter him without a second thought. This Castiel did not care about Dean. 

As the angel walked toward them, he saw Bobby raise his shotgun, and he hurried to do the same, knowing that it wouldn’t do anything. Appearances had to be maintained. 

Bobby cast a nervous look at Dean when Castiel kept walking, unbothered by the storm of lead. Dean set his shotgun aside and picked up the demon knife.

“Who are you?” he asked, even though he knew. He knew better than anyone else.

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.” Dean had to fight to keep the smile off his face. Cas had been such a tightass. 

“Yeah, well, thanks for that.” He lunged forward and plunged the knife into Castiel’s chest. And it hurt. Even though he knew it would do nothing, he still stabbed his best friend.

And maybe it was the shock that broke the dam repressing his feeling, but the next words out of his mouth were not him playing a part. 

“Damn, that’s still hot.” The angel peered at him and tilted his head, and Dean knew he had screwed up whatever plan Chuck had. But there was something too familiar in the tilt of his head, something soft in his eyes that Dean was just seeing. None of that had been there before they met, before they developed their “profound bond” or whatever you want to call it.

“Dean?”

“Cas?”

“Why-- how are you--” Cas trailed off, and then looked at Dean with an accusing glare.

“You stabbed me!” 

“Uh, yeah, sorry about that.”

“Why did you stab me if you’re you you?”

“What was I supposed to do? I thought we were supposed to play our parts or whatever. Why did you do the whole thunder and lightning show?” Cas rolled his eyes but let his lips fall into a smile. 

“Dean, what the hell is going on? Do you know him?” Bobby was standing there, shotgun still fixed on Castiel’s chest, staring at Dean in bewilderment. 

“That’s a long story, um, he’s, uh, an ex?” 

He ignored Cas’ pointed stare, along with the muttered, “I’m gonna send your ass back to hell,” that went with it. 

Before Bobby could respond, Cas reached his arm out and put two fingers on his forehead, sending him straight to sleep.

“An ex?”

“Whatever, Cas, I was scrambling.”

They looked at each other and shrugged, and Dean couldn’t stop his eyes from drifting to Cas’ hair. It was as messy and beautiful as it had been the first time they met. 

“So, we’re back,” Cas said, trying to meet Dean’s eyes unsuccessfully. 

“Yeah, what do you want to change?”

“Change?”

“Chuck must have some reason for sending us back here, right? Maybe we’re supposed to change something.”

“Oh, right.”

“So, let’s go find him. Kick his ass.” Cas rolled his eyes fondly. 

“Yes, because I’m sure he didn’t predict we would do that. He sent us back Dean, he’s off limits. Why don’t we go take care of Ruby?”

“Ruby? Oh, shit, Ruby. Yeah, okay.”

They walked together out of the barn, leaving Bobby lying there (Dean had protested but Cas insisted he would be sleeping for over a week, and besides, he had placed protection over the barn and it was covered with enough sigils to protect New York City) and made their way to the Impala. 

“Hi, Baby, you miss me?” Dean said, happily running his hand over her hood. 

“Dean, you drove her yesterday.”

“Right.”

They drove together in silence, neither one quite sure what to say in such a situation. It wasn’t uncomfortable, though. They always found solace in one another’s company. 

They reached the motel Sam had been staying at (thank Chuck Cas had a vice-like memory, Dean would never have remembered) and stood outside his room. 

“What are we even gonna say?” Cas tilted his head, considering for a moment. 

“It’s Ruby we’re after. We don’t need to say anything to Sam.” Dean nodded before knocking twice on the door. But instead of his oversized, incredibly dumb baby brother, he was greated by a short man with a scruffy beard. An impossibly infuriating man, who wasn’t actually a man at all. 

“Hey guys! Cas, looking great. Dean, good to see you. Come on in!”

“Chuck,” Dean growled, going for his gun. 

“Nope, none of that, Dean,” Chuck said, and with a wave of his hand sent the gun flying away. With another wave of a hand, Dean and Cas were sitting in chairs opposite each other, both unable to move. 

“What the hell is this?” Dean said. Cas just sat there, silently glaring daggers at the father he had once placed so much faith in. 

“The best part of my story.” 

“What?” Dean’s confusion was mounting by the second. Chuck had never made sense, but even for him, this was a little out there.

“It was never supposed to happen, actually. My design was always about the brothers. Sam and Dean, saving the world. I mean Cas was going to be part of it. But not like this.”

“Cut the bullshit.” Dean looked at Cas appraisingly. Never thought he’d hear those words out of his guardian angel’s mouth. 

“Aw, Cas, you shock me. You and Dean. It was never supposed to happen. But I don’t control my characters feelings, not entirely anyway. But now that it has happened, it could be the perfect addition. The epic love story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. But you two are the most stubborn characters I’ve ever worked with and if I didn’t intervene you would keep swallowing your feelings until even I ceased to exist.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean tried to keep his voice steady but his ears were tinged pink. Of course Chuck knew he had fallen for Cas. He was God. But Cas didn’t know, and now their friendship was going to come crumbling down. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, desperate to not look at the angel he had fallen for. Desperate to avoid the disgust he knew would be on his face. 

“So, I brought you back here,” Chuck went on, ignoring the interruption. “Where it all started. Hoping that would spark a conversation. And you decide to go after the demon chick? She barely mattered to the story anyway! But, I have you here now, so, who wants to go first?”

Cas didn’t speak, and Dean was determined to keep his mouth shut too. His gaze was still fixed on the floor, and he was sure his entire face was bright red by now. 

“Castiel, why don’t you go first?” Chuck snapped his fingers. “Don’t worry, just a little truth spell to help you along. Castiel, are you in love with Dean?”

It was a whisper, spoken in shame. So low Dean could barely hear it, but he did. And it set his heart pounding. “Yes.”

Chuck laughed. A cruel, condescending, laugh. “And Dean, are you in love with Cas?”

He could feel the words being torn from his throat. He struggled to keep his voice low, but it came out as a shout. “Yes.”

“Good. Now that we have that taken care of, you can go back to trying to defeat me. You can’t win, Dean Winchester. You see, I always get my way. The perfect story. Even when you think you can win, can develop something like this that I never saw coming. I control it all in the end.”

They were whisked back to the bunker, Dean’s head still spinning. It finally hit him that Cas had said yes. He had said he was in love with Dean. But it must have been Chuck, forcing a lie out of him. 

They both awoke, sitting at the table. Sam was gone, and Jack was too. Dean made eye contact with Cas for the first time since they’d run into Chuck. He felt like he was in a lightning storm, peering into that blue, but he also felt safe. It was so clear, so bright. He couldn’t stop the blood rushing to his cheeks. 

“Dean. Did you mean it?” The angel’s voice was hurt and timid, and Dean finally let his mind open to the possibility that this wasn’t one of Chuck’s schemes. 

“Yes,” he said simply, his heart threatening to pound out of his chest.

And then Cas was standing, pulling him up into an embrace. Their arms stayed wrapped firmly around each other as their lips pressed together. The world spun and happiness filled Dean’s whole soul. His hands lifted to Cas’ cheeks and he gently cupped the angel’s face.

“I love you Castiel,” he said, pressing their foreheads together. 

“I love you too.”

Inspired by this post (x)

people who said they wanted someone to write it tagged below :)

@illbewithhimlikeishouldbe @idabbleincrazy​ @franthehorsegir @belabee @super-powerful-queen-slayyna @starlightcastiel @jhoomwrites

[themanicgalaxy]

SPN 7X4 Defending Your Life

I'm making an exception today, because I've figured out QUITE a bit about my own stress response

oh right the monster Dean killed

also to recap: my period has every sign of starting(including cramps) but nothing, I've been horribly nauseous all day, I feel a hunger response when I'm DEFINITELY not hungry(stress eating and it's the only thing that makes the nausea subside) and headache(altho that could be the lack of sleep). Also emotions all over the place(Crying, happy, very on the hat etc)

and the WORST part is I can NEVER tell until I have physical reactions. I can NEVER TELL WHAT MY EMOTIONS ARE WHAT DOES THAT MEAN I THOUGHT I WAS PERFECTLY OK OR NOT FEELING ANYTHING

ooo chase scene

gHOST CAR

ooo good segway into intro

that cut coping mechanism does NOT seem like it's healthy

mONSTER OF THE WEEK

oh COME ON HERE's THE LYING

the visuals are cool

"license to kill"

no come on sam that was a good one.

"dead and sober, dead and crappy" no Dean, please, you need to figure that out

ah yes tortured soul

FL OW ER SH O P

that was suspicious

oh

it's just because she's dead and dead at 10

oh

the CAr

"makes you wonder if the guy who was drunk ran her over" *drinks beer*

O H H H H H HSIDOFAHPAS

GHOST RIDER

at least I know they're nerds, whoever wrote this

is it manifesting their guilty conscience

aw but the dog is so fluffy

*lies down, bounces back up again* lmaooo

Dean is Tired

didn't they DEAL With a ghost car?

it's people that kept going?

DEAN IS RUNNING ON SO MUCH EMPTY AHAHAHA

A H CUZ HE DIDN'T SLEEP BECAUSE THE GIRL HE KILLED

that took me as second

"If I ate apples" DEAN

also they're really doing license plate shots above how Cool the Impala is shots now, lil thing

"you won't even believe me" ahaha

...courtroom?

fUCKING NEAL'S TAVERNNNN

we kind of specialize in crazy ahaaha

"except that's complete crap"

"everyone judges all day long"

He just..takes punishment?

ahahah N O P E GREY AREA

no this is way more watchable

SA M SOUNDS SO TIRED AHAHA

*whispers* "stay put"

he DOES look good though

ok fine just gonna tune out the flirting

they ARE both pretty

is it that guy

the creepy guy in the shadows

how much is in scotch I have no idea

ah the red, what people were clawing

THAT'S NOT HOW OSIRIS WORKS but fine ok let's go

THAT'S NOT

ok fine

"it hones in on people who feel guilty, N OW WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE TO YOU" oh boy literally both of them got it that was hilarious

this does seem like he's talking himself into a role

the salt...might not work for osiris

shit she really is pretty

AH RED SAND ok ok yeah I see it ok

a h egyptian shit

ALL YOU NOTICED WERE THE SYMBOLS LMAOOO

THAT DOOR SLIDE WAS SO FUNNY

He's cool though, I like the pagan shit

"Sam, you're not a lawyer" "yes I was pre law" "pre"

"good one" "I saw that on the good wife"

THIS IS HILARIOUS

J O

oh no

the mining itself sucks but this concept is good

took his breathing away?

It reads a bit as excusing them for everything

She backs them up at least?

I miss her

see here's the thing, it kinda reads like they're out of ideas, but like...it's a good concept

ah so the stuff at the beginning was them showing their guilt

I like how he just says "them's the breaks"

yeah like Dean is ever gonna believe he's innocent

"dog food" oh they so desperately wanna say dog shit

"they want to be judged" echoes Dean

SAM IS TALKING COMPLETELY OUT OF HIS ASS

HE'S GETTING HIM OUT OF HIS GUILT COMPLEX OH THANK GOD FINALLY

"that it just...blows"

no one, including Dean, ever questions it, so the grief stews

oh

he does actually have some way with words

Dean please tell the truth

mate I get the impulse but still

dammit

ahaha Temporary but Long Temporary

"make sure it's a sharp piece" lmaoo

man I miss Jo

ah here we go

sam: u h

JOOOO

"you deserve better" on both ends

Dean Eldest Daughter Syndrome

"hunters are never kids, I never was"

he does Internalize things

that's why we kin

90% crap

"i get rid of that what then" "you really wanna die not knowing" HOLY SHIT

HOLYSHIT OH MY GOD OH MYGOD

ah the gas stove

"he's making me do this" oH NO

"just kind of faded...maybe a little bit happier"

hell was Sam's slate? huh

"I kind of feel good, Dean" I am glad he's happy, I don't know if I agree with the message

1. SAMMM. Dean was acting off the shits, so he had to step up and exasperatedly handle everything, and piece stuff together. Like mans is actually quite smart and quite resourceful when he has to be, and it's nice seeing that. It's also fun FINALLY seeing him lighthearted again, even if I don't like how.

2. Dean's guilt complex. Man internalizes a lot of things, and while they BARELY make sense(thin veneer, easily cracked) he hides it enough so that no one asks(and he represses so he certainly doesn't), and he can continue feeling guilty. Now here's the thing. He feels guilty, Sam doesn't, the middle ground is where they should be(taking responsibility) and they like...never do it.

3. monster of the week. No but having monsters switch to grey instead of black and white, and having Dean comment on it is SO good, because he's like...that Masculine Parody/Ideal depending on who's writing him, and like he was written to be the hero. any gray was always overridden by that. But with kripke gone, they start actually doing grey, and there's nothing simple anymore. Like I like with how off the shits it got, they still kept the theme of "it's more grey now" but like kinda for real(where Dean and Osiris said the same thing). ALSO, I think it would be useful as a scale back. I know they'll not do it because EVEN BIGGER DBZ LAZER is fun, but I think having more monsters of the week by choice and not "oh god we have runtime" would be really good, because that's where this storyline SHINES! it's got a lot of characters, a lot of lore, and a lot of issues to pick through, a monster of the week is WAY more effective than a longer story, and would help the scaling back issue.

4. pontificating about the season/why it's easier to watch. Like is this season as good/vibey? probably not really, but honestly I can actually stand watching it. Like it's very cringe in places but also, it doesn't hurt me or make me feel uncomfortable as kripke stuff does. It matches the vibe of "after work/school show" perfectly for what it is.

5. the vibes/Osiris. I like the idea of osiris and going to the bars, and the courtroom and the RED! SAND!! I got that one. But I'd also like to say that Dean saying the SAME thing that osiris said was like...he's not villainized, but I think they're trying to make him slowly grow as a character. It's like sympathy/he sucks kinda/we like him for him a sa character and I think that was really neat.

also barkeep lady pretty holy hell

6. it felt a little bit like excusing tho. Like if Sam is the good one, then it felt like excusing them of the harm they cause people. I want them to change their behavior! not beat themselves up over it or think it's fine cuz he went to hell because of it!

I'm so glad Sam is happy again but N O

7. J O. the "no autonomy, he's making me do this," the being able to see through things(and no longer hungering for something that she doesn't really know) (like...she wants SOMETHING, has it crawling under her skin but doesn't know what, and that's gone when she's dead) and that whole thing where she asked Dean if he wanted to die as a persona. Oh my god.

8. Dean persona. Yeah the whole thing where he had to convince himself to be a womanizer, the "I"m 90% crap line" OH MY GODD THAT HIT. That man is also a persona. maybe a commentary on american masculinity in general, maybe not. Also, eldest daughter syndrome, he internalizes everything and everything is his responsibility("I didn't get a childhood")

I feel like you can also make an argument how trauma makes you the extreme of something(uncaring for smol sam, internalizing for Eldest Dean), and it breaks your ability to do what you need to(empathetically do your fucking job and not be pieces of shit).

I see why this show was so popular amongst mentally ill people(myself included) holy christ

[myblackeyedfire]

15x18, hurting something awful but the story’s not over for Cas and Dean

Spoilers ahead. 

I feel for the fans who left in earlier seasons due to queerbaiting or fridging or other shit in years prior who are seeing their feeds confirm that is what happened in this week’s episode and it’s frustrating feeling like the reverse of the boy who cried wolf, so I want to write out my thoughts on it because I want to believe TPTB learned from past mistakes and are going in a different direction for the conclusion. Here’s why.  

1. The story itself. We get deliberate parallels to romantic couples in Charlie and Stevie, and Sam and Eileen. The losses are of people in love, mutually. Whatever stage of their relationship they’re at, from amazing scrambled eggs together or dates and photos of the other as the lock screen, the connection is that it’s a romantic relationship. Sam is devastated when he sees Eileen’s phone but he presses on then and there because it needs to be done, and to keep from losing it (see: Dean at the end of this ep). 

Bobo Berens is deliberate and subtle. He crafted Claire and Kaia’s Dreamhunter dynamic with such care that I’m taking a reasoned leap of faith for the remaining two episodes. I’m thinking of how he wrote Rowena in The Rupture, the dignity and self determination in her deciding on closing the rift with Sam’s help to fulfil the prophesy. The music, the slow turn, she is the captain of her soul, steering it by choice. Rowena isn’t forgotten after that. She’s mentioned in in all but one of the subsequent episodes and we learn she’s taken over in Hell, so this strongly implies it is not a final goodbye.

The writer who gave one character’s dignified sacrifice a way to carry on is the same one who depicted Cas’ sacrifice as fully freely chosen and on his terms as much as it can be, to be taken to a place Cas got out of before and that Jack can enter. There’s as big a doorway to lead Cas out potentially as there was out of Billie’s library - assuming they can trick or overpower or persuade The Empty once they get there. 

2. The Doylist logistics of creating the show as a story. Aside from the way we’ve seen how Castiel’s death leaves Dean looking hollow-eyed and unable to cope, we know there are two episodes left. See Dean here giving Cas a hunter’s funeral?

This is the face of a man who says “we’ve lost everything.” Chuck didn’t answer then and if he won’t now (hah, good luck with that!) Dean should be the one “to bring him back.” Because Cas staying gone is not a toes in the sand ending. There’s no peace when they are done if he stays gone. Sam is also devastated but Dean’s just hollowed out completely. 

The shattered gaze here? Been there, done that. We’ve seen callbacks and parallels aplenty but at no point has this show committed itself to pantomime or exact replication. They’ve had the ending where everyone they love is gone, too, which is why I think we’ll see everyone who Chuck poofed reinstated. There was too much care taken to clarify that he didn’t kill them. They’re just *waving vaguely* not here at the moment. So here’s to bringing back Charlie and Stevie, Bobby, Donna, Becky, and everyone else. The quiet sobs as he sits and ignores Sam’s call remind me of Dean’s barely controlled breathing as he begins preparations for the funeral and starts walking around Cas’ shrouded body laid to rest. It’s already happened. 

So, this repetition. Jensen played Dean as a grieving widower until he got Cas back (see above) and TPTB already indicated they’re not going for an ending befitting the first 5 seasons or GoT, so it makes no sense to leave things there as the end to Dean’s story. We already established that Chuck’s view of them and the ending he wants is the wrong one given how Becky reacts, so it has to be subverted from the names on tombstones doom and gloom. 

Likewise, leaving The Empty, Chuck/Amara, Jack, Sam and Dean as the only pieces left on the chess board reminds me of Sam and Dean cut off from everything as the Leviathans take over. Andrew Dabb’s been instrumental in helping Sam and Dean adjust their relationship, too, to one of brotherhood instead of parenting and codependency, so leaving just them left with all their friends and allies and loved ones gone is too great a loss. It would be a regression. It would mean Chuck gets his ending. 

Remember also how Chuck confirmed that Cas hasn’t followed orders since the very beginning of meeting Dean. That’s immense. It means everything he’s ever done was because he decided on it, not because it was a beat in Chuck’s story arcs. 

Here is the first time the shot shows Dean since Chuck starts ranting. He’s listening intently, body language like a cat with an arched back before a brawl, but he heard what Chuck just revealed. 

We’ve had layers already peeled back about angel and human relationships, most recently with Adam and before that with Isham. We’ve seen the Cas/Colette parallels, too. It’s all there. And with the enormous work Dean’s been doing on accepting himself more, of rebalancing his relationship with Sam to one of more even footing, he is doing the work on himself to be more open and able to express his emotions. Poor boy is still not great at it as a lifetime of running on coffee, questionable drugs, minimal sleep, and fear-soaked adrenaline within a hunter culture and the ever disapproving shadow of John Winchester doesn’t leave much room for processing. 

So back to 15x18. Dean hasn't even had time to consider the confirmation/revelation from 15x17 by Chuck that Cas was never operating under his control and what it means for the magnitude of Cas' actions, the very opposite of the centuries in the making soulmates that Mary and John Winchester were from heavenly machination. He's been angrily panicking all season up to now that nothing in his life is real, that choice is an illusion, that he's a rat trapped in a deadly maze all his life but Castiel is the undoing of that. What he told Dean earlier in the season when he was questioning what’s real, that they are, is amplified magnificently. Their connection is real. Castiel’s love for Dean is real. 

Let’s take a breath and see how they explore the nature of Destiel in Act Two. With any luck there’ll be robots, a trip to the moon, and a story about love and love. Dean getting to experience things, people differently or maybe for the first time, y’know? Otherwise there was no point setting up any of those parallels, the meeting with the hunter husbands, the car conversation with Sam about settling down with a hunter, someone who knows the life. Dean’s heard Cas say he loves them, and now him in particular. It’s not a satisfying story to leave it at that and we’ve seen it already. In 11x17 Michelle says “They said I could leave an hour ago. But where am I even supposed to go? After everything we survived together... I watched the man I love die. There's no normal after that.” I don’t think what we’re getting is a repeat of this so here’s hoping Dean gets how in love Cas is, gets Cas back, and chooses him, too. I want them to continue making it up as they go. Dean rescuing Cas as a parallel for Cas raising him from Hell is a far better story than Dean going on without him, wouldn’t you say? So I have hope.  

[mattzerella-sticks]

Acutely (coda to 15x13 ‘Destiny’s Child’, Dean/Cas, 2.5k)

ao3 link

Jack said he's sorry, after getting his soul back.

Jack said he's sorry, and he's looking at Dean. They're all looking at Dean.

Jack said he's sorry, and Dean can't take it. It's too much. Like a frog thrown into a boiling pot he hops out, jumping out from the room towards safety. Doing his best not to succumb to the pain.

He can't hide forever, let the wounds fester. It's too much to deal with on his own, though. Can someone help him through it?

           It’s no secret, where he hides. Where he ran away to after Jack broke down in an apology. Overwhelmed by the sorrow in the younger boy’s voice; his remorse for actions Dean hadn’t mentioned in so long. Dean barely made it before his knees buckled, collapsing on his bed instead of the floor. Face pressed against the pillow Dean counted his breaths while ignoring the heavy lump sitting in his throat.

           He loses track after seventy-five, mumbling ‘one… two… three… four… five…’ over and over until he felt like his feet were farther from the edge than they had been. As he lifts his head, Dean takes stock of himself. Grimaces at how sweat dampens both his shirts, dark fabric clinging annoyingly underneath oppressive denim. And as the knot unwound in his stomach, Dean realizes he hadn’t eaten yet. Hunger gnaws at his awareness, begging for attention. Thinking about food, though, guides his paths towards the kitchen and – ultimately – Jack, again.

           There’s not much of an appetite left after that.

           Instead he blindly throws off his outer layer, then his undershirt. Bends, clawing at his laces and when they unravel, he yanks them and his socks off, too. Discards his jeans by flinging them into some far corner. Red boxer-briefs are all that remain, for the moment. In the next second Dean reaches for a set of pajamas. Picks the set at the top of the pile. Cowboys riding bucking broncos on the pants while lasso script spells out ‘Save a Horse’ on the shirt. As he pulls it overhead, he hears something shift nearby. Turning, Dean finds Cas watching him from the hallway.

           “Crap,” he hisses, tugging the shirt down. Cheeks burning under Cas’s intense gaze, “Ever hear of knocking?” Instincts say he should cover himself, but midway through wrapping arms around his midsection Dean realizes what a ridiculous notion that is. Actions aborted Dean’s fingers twitch before they retake his shirt’s hem. Twisting it as the awkward silence continues. “Cas?”

           This breaks Cas from whatever trance he fell under. Cas steps into his room, “Sorry, Dean, you left your door open.”

           “Right…” If his hands weren’t busy strangling fabric one would be rubbing a hole into the back of his neck. “I – uh, must’ve forgotten.” Dean finally fights back the static drowning his mind, releasing his shirt hem. “What uh… what’re you doing here?”

           “I came to check on you.”

           Sweet, but totally despicable. Cas’s earnest tone easily overpowers his crumbling defenses, making the flush across his skin deepen. Lips pursed, Dean dips his eyes so he won’t fall prey to the deadliest of his angel’s weapons. Angel blades have nothing on those baby blues. “Thanks,” he coughs, shrugging, “but I wasn’t the one having a full breakdown five feet from the cookie cereal…” He sits down once more, at the foot of his bed, squeezing his knees. “How is Jack, by the way?”

           “He’s calmed, somewhat,” Cas tells him, slowly pacing Dean’s room. Picks up Dean’s stray button-down, loosely folding it while he talks. “Sam had a brilliant idea of taking him for a drive.”

           “A drive? Is that allowed?”

           “Well, Billie didn’t appear and tell us no….” He sets the shirt on Dean’s dresser, claiming the nearby chair for his own. “They left awhile ago. Not sure when they’ll be back.”

           “Awhile, huh?” Dean snorts, arching a stern brow. “And you’re only visiting me now?”

           Cas stiffens, “Yes. You see – um…” Stuttering, Cas stalls for time as he thinks up an answer.

           Tension leaks out of Dean’s shoulders watching him, seeing his angel go through human motions. Dragging a hand through his hair and pulling at his tie, both alight a familiar warmth in his heart. He snuffs that flame a second later, knowing how dangerous it would be if he let it keep. “Kidding,” Dean sighs, smiling, “I’m glad you waited. Probably wouldn’t have been this… chatty?”

           “Of course…” Cas says, nodding, “I figured you’d need some time alone… to – to sort through things.”

           He’s being generous. Dean used all his strength to not remember the pain stricken across Jack’s face. The wound is still so fresh, Jack ripping off the scabs with a frenzy caused by his soul’s return. Mary’s death hurting like it happened yesterday. “Maybe you should’ve given me five or ten more minutes, then,” he chuckles, tapping at his temple, “still a mess up here.”

           “Hmm…”

           “Hmm what?”

           “Oh, nothing –“

           “Bullshit, Cas,” Dean leans forward, a more devilish expression on his face, “C’mon. Tell me what’s going on in your mind.”

           “Nothing you probably don’t already know,” Cas says, “I’m… trying to wrap my head around this whole day. Jack getting his soul back… it’s remarkable. But also, troubling. How could that even be possible and – and will it last?”

           “Don’t think about it too much, man,” he says, “what happened with Jack it’s… it’s a gift. Probably one of the few we’ve ever gotten that’s come with no strings attached. A win.”

           “Have we ever gotten a win like that?”

           It’d be so simple. Unfortunately, Dean chomps off the head of his one-word confession. Swallows the three-letters alongside all his other feelings. By the time the corpse of it decomposes in his stomach, Dean realizes it’s been too long since he last spoke. Cas waiting, staring at him. An awkward chuckle bubbles forth, his breath reeking of ashen sincerity. “Bout time we got one, then, don’t you think?”

           He concedes, mouth thinning in a cunning smile. “I suppose we are… but enough about what I think.” Dean’s lips pinch tight. “I think we’ve delayed the inevitable conversation. Don’t you?”

           “No,” he says, “we can delay it some more. Like… what was up with those bootleg versions of us?” Dean scoffs, “I bet that other me doesn’t even know what pie tastes like… too busy cramming caviar down his throat.”

           “You might enjoy caviar. I hear it’s very popular?”

           “Caviar’s only popular because it’s expensive,” Dean tells him, “and all those rich dudes spent too much money on it to hate it, so they lie and convince others it’s good and it’s an awful, self-servicing cycle.”

           “I didn’t know you had such strong opinions on caviar?”

           “I’ve got strong opinions on just about everything…” Dean makes the mistake of glancing up, catching sight of Cas’s judgmental bend of his brow. “But you don’t wanna hear any of those…”

           “Not right now, no…” Cas stands, drifting towards his door. “I guess you were right, you do need more time by yourself. Perhaps in the morning –“

           “Shit, Cas, I’m sorry,” he says, rising, grabbing his elbow. The touch sears even through the jackets and shirt; Dean’s grasp on it firms, savoring it. “Y’know how… how tough this has got to be for me, right?” His throat cracks on the last word, eyes glistening. He feels the tears brimming behind them, pooling, waiting for release.

           Cas sighs, dropping any pretense of exiting. “I do,” he says, hand hovering over Dean’s briefly. Considering if he should. A short argument, as it gently embraces his hand; the one chaining Cas to him. “That’s why I want you to speak. Free yourself of the burden… let me help carry it with you.”

           “You don’t have to, Cas,” Dean says, “You’ve got your own things, worries t’deal with –“

           “That won’t stop me.”

           Stubborn. A double-edged sword that makes up the arsenal of Cas’s traits, all weapons Dean would gladly throw himself on.

           Cas quiets, then, waiting for Dean and his response. Words were unneeded. Dean can decipher all he thinks by looking into his angel’s eyes. Captivating, whether in the harsh fluorescents of his bedroom or the soft moonlight of an abandoned church. They always make his head dizzy, thoughts unspooling like Dean drank half a bottle of whiskey or smoked three joints. The more he stays the course, the worse it gets. He nearly forgot hellhounds were baring down on them, Sam their last defense against the creatures, because Cas’s eyes hold a magic that quells any fear or worry gnawing at Dean’s senses.

           “Dean?”

           “It hurt being around him,” Dean whispers his admittance, inching closer. Chests almost pressed together. Noses dangerously close. His toes practically climbing atop Cas’s dress shoe. “I hate that that’s true but… it is. Because as glad as I was to see the kid still kicking it… I’m just reminded of her.” Cas’s thumb rubs a comforting circle into his knuckles, Dean dropping his gaze there. “Reminded of what he did. How he just didn’t… didn’t get it, y’know. Couldn’t tell that it was bad. He – there was still this… this disconnect. And after he came back I could tell he’d look at me and try to find the words t’apologize but they were never there. And without them, we’d never move past it. He’d still be hurting, and so would I… Which sucks because – because I know you think of him as your son, but y’know… I think of him as mine, too –“

           “I like to think of him as ours, Dean.”

           “Yes, well…” he clears his throat, tongue wetting his lips as he recovers. Dean chooses tactical evasion, ignoring Cas’s comment and moving on. “He’s like… my second chance. He is a second chance. A second coming, really – sorta like Jesus –“ He pauses, gaze darting towards Cas’s face. “That doesn’t matter. I just… I wanted to make things right with Jack, but he didn’t know how – and I sure didn’t know how. So we were circling each other, doing nothing. I could feel things festering. The happiness that came after Jack’s return began fading; instead of relief there’d be dread whenever he walked into a room. Got it into my head that things’d never get any better, and there was no way of fixing this rift between us.”

           “But with his soul, he finally understands,” Cas says, “he’s apologized. That’s what you wanted?”

           “It is. I… yeah,” Dean shudders, neck suddenly weak. It bends, Dean’s chin saved from touching his neck by Cas’s forehead supporting his. There noses are beside one another, lips a breath apart. “I know it’s for the best but… seeing him cry, all I wanted to do was hug him. Let him know it’d be all right. Except I ran I… I couldn’t say anything. He was hurting and that – that made me hurt even worse. And then I felt glad he could feel hurt… it sorta spiraled from there.”

           Cas hums, Dean’s mouth vibrating with the note. “You were overwhelmed,” Cas says, “there’s no reason for you to be ashamed.”

           “Yes, there is.” Dean scowls, “I’m middle-aged, can gank a monster twice my size without blinking, but the second a situation gets too touchy-feely I stomp on the gas and speed through all the red lights.” While Dean talked about Jack, a highlight reel of all his shortcomings playing on a giant screen in his mind. Times where Dean’s emotions short-circuited. Fried his circuits, caused him more pain than necessary. Many of those scenes feature a recurring character, shaped like a man in a trench coat. It flickers out, leaving Dean with a blank slate. That fades, too, and Cas’s face is there.

           “It’s not fear, Dean. Not at all,” he says. Protest swells, but with a sharp look from Cas it wanes. “Trust me, as someone who knows you… knows your soul, you – you are not afraid of feelings. Not at all.” He smiles, Dean leaning back for the full effect. Blessed by heavenly light. “On the contrary,” Cas continues, “You embrace your emotions. Unfortunately… sometimes you feel too much and that – that can be particularly difficult to manage. I remember when I was human, sometimes the smallest of ripples in my heart caused me great pains. Something modest like being cold or hungry… or in pain, were too much for me to express. Your capacity for feelings, your intelligence and understanding it’s… fantastic. But there are limits. We all have them. You feel too much sometimes that you cannot express yourself or even deal with them.”

           Dean’s tears prick at the corners of his eyes, dangling. Still unshed. “It does feel like that,” he says, “Sometimes it’s… like there’s a highway, and it’s rush hour. Traffic on – on all sides. No one’s moving, and I’m behind the wheel and I want to go but I can’t and I… I get so angry that I can’t.” He lets go of Cas, slipping from his loose grip. “S’what I’m feeling right now.”

           Cas accepts Dean’s need for distance, hands retreating into his pockets. “And what I’m here, to tell you, is this. You might be behind the wheel, but you’re hardly alone in that car. Sam’s there. Jack’s there. And I am most certainly there.”

           Dean nods, wiping a hand down his face. “Thank you, Cas. I… needed this.”

           “I’m glad to be of service, then.” Cas’s tone fell, a discordant pluck of the harp that triggered Dean’s worry. Before he could ask about it, his angel floats away. “I should let you get your rest. Today was exhausting…”

           Halfway out the door, Dean stops him. “Cas, wait!”

           “Yes?”

           Standing there, framed by his doorway, waiting for Dean to continue with shining eyes, Dean thinks his angel never looked more gorgeous. And he wants to tell him. Despite how the words stick in his throat, the sweat dripping from his forehead, and how his feelings might be received, he wants to tell him. He wants to tell him everything. Finally.

            That flame from earlier, snuffed out, relights. Burns hotter than Baby’s engine gunning down the highway. Ballooning, spreading through his veins and disorienting him. The room spins, his vision blurs, but Cas stays clear and firm. It’s right there, on the tip of his tongue –

           “Yes, Dean?”

           He’s cold. Doused by an untimely thought that quells any of his passionate desires, leaving him charred, ashen, and helpless.

           Dean notices the frown lines around his mouth. The way his eyes drooped in a way they’ve never done. Shadows stretch across his body, slithering, hiding most of his expression from Dean. But he senses a tiredness there that, on Cas, seems foreign.

           The moment passes. It wouldn’t feel right, anyway.

           “Just…” his face hurts from the tight grin he forces, “I go both ways.” Blushing, he amends his statement. “I mean, I don’t have to give you all my baggage – I can… I can also help you carry some of yours, if you’d like?”

           Cas tilts his head, light revealing a gentle smile. “I’d like that. Night, Dean.”

           “Night Cas…”

           A closing door never felt more ominous.

           Dean stares at it, chewing on his lip. Chest aching, heart beating against it with the force of a storm wreaking havoc. He walks towards the switch, flipping it off. Bathing the room in shadows. Making it easier. “Cas,” he says aloud, looking ahead into the endless darkness. “I love you. After this is all over, and we don’t have any more fights heading our way… I’d like for you to stay. With me. And we can have the life we both deserve. I just… I want you to know what I’m fighting for. It’s not the world. It’s you. It’s us.”

           He slips under the covers. Talking to empty air didn’t make the feelings disappear, or easier in dealing with. But it’s a start.

           Maybe he’ll do better in the morning.

[touchstarvedsam]

Read on AO3 or read the fic under the cut.

Sam’s been spending less time in the bunker since curing Dean of being a demon. After unchaining him, he left the dungeon with a look on his face Dean never wants to see again. Dean’s seen Sam cry, he’s seen Sam completely broken and hurt. But he has never seen this look on Sam’s face before. Complete and total hopelessness, terror, and heartbreak. Not even after Jessica burned up on that ceiling did Sam look like that.

And Dean put that look there.

Dean broke Sam so totally and completely beyond repair.

He remembers the things he said, as a demon, because he remembers meaning them. But he doesn’t mean them now and he doesn’t know how to fix this.

Castiel had brought him food from the local diner after he was cured, said Sam placed the order and picked it up but couldn’t bring it to Dean himself. He’d told Cas he just needed time, and Dean will give him that, as much as it hurts having his little brother hide from him.

Sam ordered him a cheeseburger extra onion and double French fries, just like he likes, with two slices of apple pie for dessert. Even sad and scared, Sam will always think about Dean above himself.

He’d asked Cas if Sam got himself a salad like the health nerd he is. Cas just gave him a pitying smile, which told Dean everything he needed to know.

Now, almost a week since he was cured, Dean knows Sam hasn’t been eating enough, and that Sam spends a lot of time at the local bar outside Lebanon. It’s a couple steps down from a dive, but it has its share of rowdy drunks, a pool table for some good hustlin’, and bartenders that aren’t scared to kick you out on your ass. Dean would know.

And Sam has been there at least four nights this week.

It’s the fifth night that he hears the creak of the door open and slam shut that alerts Dean to Sam leaving again. It’s just after nine. Dean weighs his options and decides to follow Sam there but remain hidden; he’s gotten good at hiding since he got the mark of Cain.

He gives him an hour head start before heading over, driving through the lot to locate the car that Sam seems to take whenever he goes off alone, then parks in the back so Sam can’t find Baby and know that Dean came.

The bartender knows him, lets Dean take up a shadowed corner with a couple’a beers and hunker down to watch the show.

Sam seems to be two or three beers in; he’s swaying on his feet, cheeks flushed and hair a mess like he ran his fingers through it several times in frustration.

And he appears to be hustling, except the little shit is drunk and not just faking it to play the guys he’s hustling. If Sam does this every night without backup, Dean is going to kill him.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” one of the guys slurs, leaning too close to Sam for Dean’s liking. Dean never was fond of anyone touching Sam or calling him pet names. That’s Dean’s baby brother and Dean doesn’t play nice when it comes to Sammy. He watches as Sam visibly tenses – knows what’s making his brother uncomfortable – and steps back. “Oh, don’t be like that, pretty, you know you can’t win this, don’t ya? I’m givin’ you an out. Your arm’s broken, ain’t it?”

“No,” Sam replies, bumping the pool table in his haste to put more distance between them, grunting in pain at the contact. “Already told you… I lose an’ you take me for all the money I got, or you lose, and I take you for all the money you got – no more no less. I can beat you, sprained elbow or not.”

Dean smirks with pride. His brother may be drunk but he’s not stupid. Sam can play pool left handed or right handed. They trained themselves over the years how to use both hands in case their dominant hand becomes incapacitated somehow in the middle of a hunt. Always need a contingency plan when your life’s on the line.

“We’ll see about that,” the man growls, leering at Sam, eyes roaming his body up and down. That kind of scrutiny would have Dean wanting to shower and scrub himself raw; he can’t imagine how Sammy feels. “It’s prudes like you that beg for cock when it’s presented to them.”

That has Dean half standing, anticipating. He’s furious that anyone would say that to Sam. It has Dean’s skin crawling and the mark on his arm burning, begging for bloodshed. Dean wants to slit this man’s throat for even thinking of Sam that way. He wants to torture him and make him beg for Sam’s forgiveness.

He wants to bash his face in.

Sam shoves the guy’s shoulder and says, “Just play pool, man,” and Dean sits back down. The game resumes and Dean keeps a watchful eye as Sam fumbles his way through the game, drunk off his ass. Sam accepts drink after drink and Dean knows his little brother isn’t going to win this game with that much alcohol in his system, but he’s waiting until Sam actually needs help to step in.

“You’ve been alone for awhile, sugar. You waitin’ for someone?” a smooth woman’s voice says from his left. He looks up just as she’s sliding into the seat across from him and blocking his view of Sam and the guys he’s hustling. He needs to get her out of here fast.

“I’m just enjoying some time alone,” he replies, not trying to sound rude but wanting her gone.

Her smile is predatory when she asks, “Would you like some company?”

“I’m sorry, darlin’,” he tries to sound remorseful but misses by a mile as he leans slightly to the right to try to get an eye on Sam.

She must notice he’s distracted because she turns her body slightly to the left and cranes her neck to see what Dean is looking at before turning back to him. “That tall glass of water, huh? It’s always the gorgeous ones,” she says wistfully with a shake of her head and winks at him as she gets up from her chair. “If you strike out, I’ll be at the bar, sugar.”

It had to be less than a minute between the time she looked at Sam and then left the table, but by the time Dean’s view cleared, Sam and the guys at the pool table were gone. Dean almost knocked over his chair in his haste to get up and find Sam. It was barely 11, and the past week Sam hadn’t been coming home until well after midnight. Last call was 1:30 but Sam has always been the type to leave well before last call to avoid being “one of those people,” he’d say. His little brother was such a nerd.

Sam’s a grown man. 32 years old and 6’4”, he shouldn’t need Dean’s protection, but that will never stop the big brother side of Dean from protecting his little brother. And now, with this mark burning into his arm, Dean’s more protective than usual. More agitated, angry. He’s itching to make someone hurt, someone bleed, and if tonight it happens to be some guys Sam beat at pool then so be it.

He bypasses the pool table they were hanging at -- the  drink Sam had been drinking rests on the edge of the table, condensation leaving a ring on the lacquered wood finish -- and heads for the hall leading to the bathroom. He stops at the sound of voices in the middle of an argument.

“I told you, nothing more nothing less,” Sam’s voice carries down the hallway and Dean waits, wanting to give Sam the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t see how many of the guys followed but even inebriated he knows Sam can hold his own. It’s just the protective part inside him that wants to beat this guy’s face in for thinking he can get something from Sam.

“I might’a let you go if you didn’t hustle me an’ my boys for all we got,” the man replies huskily. There’s a thud and Sam grunts. It sets Dean’s teeth on edge and makes his hand twitch for a blade. He peers around the corner and sees that Sam’s pressed against the wall by the man he was playing when Dean got to the bar, the other two that had been hanging around the pool table watching them play were flanking the two of them. Dean could only make out Sam’s shaggy head of hair. “Now we’re gonna take it out on your ass for all we lost.”

Sam tries to shove at the guy’s shoulders, says, “Just because I can outplay you in pool with my arm in a sling doesn’t mean I cheated. You just lack skill.”

It’s Sam’s smart mouth that Dean both loves and hates. His baby brother can be a huge pain in the ass with his book intelligence, but sometimes he lacks severe street intelligence. He wonders how often this has happened before; he’s going to have to have a talk with Sammy after he saves his ass, literally.

He has half a mind to let these guys fuck with Sam a little bit to teach him a lesson; give himself a better excuse to beat them half to death for touching his brother.

He wants to be Sam’s savior and then punish him accordingly, both for running away from him and for putting himself in deliberate danger.

He’s going to punish Sam regardless.

“Get off’a me!” Sam shouts, trying to shove harder, but he’s outnumbered and while Sam is tall and strong, these guys have more muscle mass on him and they just laugh as Sam struggles against them, his arm in the sling cradled against his chest. He can’t use all his strength because of the damn sling and his hurt elbow.

Being bitten by a vampire while Sam watches crosses his mind and he feels less inclined to jump in just yet, wanting to see how this plays out. Sam had no soul, he reminds himself, but at the same time… Dean feels like he doesn’t have a soul right now, too. Just dark thoughts swirling around in his head about his little brother and pain.

“Aw, come on, pretty boy,” another one of the men taunts, gripping Sam’s chin and turning him to face him. “Don’t be a prude. You look like you’re desperate to get fucked. Just turn around and we’ll make you feel good, baby.”

“No!”

Hearing this sleazeball call Sammy “baby” is enough for Dean. He steps away from hiding just as they’re turning Sam to face the wall, fiddling with Sam’s belt buckle as his little brother squirms in their grip.

“Let him go,” Dean growls.

“Mind ya own business, pal.”

“I said,” Dean speaks slow, as if talking to a child who broke the rules, “Let,” he steps closer, “Him go.”

“Dean,” Sam says, voice quivering both in fear of the men trying to have their way with him and possibly at Dean himself. Sam hasn’t looked Dean in the eye since Dean was cured; he’s been ducking out of the bunker before Dean can emerge from his bedroom, or the bathroom. Dean had been longing to catch Sam in the library again, reading a book, happy and comfortable like he used to be. But as far as he knows, Sam stays in his room, or leaves the bunker altogether to run away from Dean.

That stops now.

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean says, “I’m here.”

“Listen, buddy,” the man that Sam beat speaks up again, “Find your own bitch, this one’s ours.”

Despite the burning of the mark, begging for Dean to slit the throats of these men, Dean actually laughs out loud. “You’re right,” he shrugs, a smirk growing on his face as he steps closer. “He is a bitch, but he’s my bitch, and I’m not going to let scumbags like you taint him.” He grabs the hair of the one who had grabbed Sam’s chin and yanks him away roughly. “If you don’t want to die today, let him go.”

“Alright, asshole--” The first guy releases Sam and lunges at Dean, who slams the guy he has by the hair face first into the wooden wall of the hallway next to the bathroom. He whirls around before the guy reaches him to throw a right hook into his chin, sending him flying back. The third guy releases Sam completely with a shout and lunges, too, but Sam sticks a foot back and trips him so he falls face first.

“Like I said,” Dean says with finality.

“Dean,” Sam repeats his name, looking at him fully. He still has fear showing in his face but Dean is just glad to hear his voice. “You--”

“Sammy,” he says softly, stepping over the man he knocked out with a right hook and pressing Sam back against the wall. He almost backs away when Sam’s beautiful hazel eyes flash with fear -- the last time he had Sam against a wall, he had a hammer and was going to kill Sam and Sam had a knife to his throat that Dean knew he wouldn’t use on him -- but he doesn’t. He holds his ground. “Sammy,” he repeats, raising a hand to caress his little brother’s alcohol flushed cheek. “I don’t want you doing this anymore.”

“Dean, I- I just needed time and--”

He doesn’t know why he does it -- actually, that’s a lie because he knows why he does it, he’s always wanted to do it -- but he leans in and kisses Sam, effectively quieting him. Sam gasps against his lips and accidentally grants access to Dean’s tongue. Dean holds Sam’s chin with one hand while the other trails downward and grips Sam’s hip to press it tightly to the wall, keeping him still. His hips follow soon after and press against Sam’s. He’s careful where they press together so he doesn’t put pressure on Sam’s hurt arm as he deepens the kiss.

Sam doesn’t fight. His free arm lifts up and he wraps his thin fingers into the collar of Dean’s shirt and pulls him closer. Dean smiles into the kiss before pulling away, says softly, “Come back home, Sammy,” and gives him another chaste kiss.

Sam goes home with him, riding shotgun in the Impala as he should. They’ll get the car Sam drove tomorrow. Tonight he’s going to punish Sam for running away, and then claim him like he should have done all those years ago.

[amwritingmeta]

15x08: The Family Thing

I don’t think I have a least favourite scene of the midseason finale, because it was so gorgeously structured, so instead let’s focus on all the good and the exchange between Sam and Dean is definitely top five goodness. Hot. Damn.

Not only because of what it means for the codependency, laying the bones bare, as it were, or what it says about Sam and Dean’s individual arcs, but there’s the Dean and Cas of it all to contend with as well. 

Oh, yeah. I mean, there’s really no way around Sam and Eileen being used as an effective mirror for Dean and Cas. Either Sam and Eileen are underlining what’s missing between Dean and Cas (like when Eileen was a literal ghost and she couldn’t touch Sam) (visual narrative subtext much?) (in an episode where Cas was literally ghosting Sam and it was purely because of Dean’s actions) (actions that all began in Dean stating “You’re dead to me”) (yah), or Sam and Eileen act as a highlighter for what a balanced relationship should look like, as in this episode, for very obvious reasons. You know, because right now Dean and Cas need fixing. *the mind delights*

So, my loves. Spades out. Dig-a-dig-dig.

We start with Dean -->

--> and I love how he’s clearly had this on his mind for some time and he’s like “Is this the right moment?” and he just goes for it, knowing that it’s a little awkward for him to bring it up, knowing that Sam will most likely deflect, but needing to have it said, because he wants Sam to know that it’s okay, and more importantly, that he’ll be okay. 

He’ll be okay without Sam there. Protect Sammy isn’t the begin all, end all anymore. Sam being happy, truly happy, in himself, is taking precedence and, through that, Dean being happy, truly happy, in himself comes chugging along like a glorious reward for Dean growing out of old patterns and embracing new ones. *so fucking pretty*

This has been coming since 13x20 and their final exchange in that episode, where Dean not only stated that he’s never really cared about himself or felt he matters, but where he refused to apologise for worrying about Sam or for protecting him, and all that speech did was end in Sam saying he didn’t take very kindly to be treated as a kid, demanded not to be kept in the dark (because oh does Sam know what it means to be overprotected by his loved ones), and insisted that they do what they do together and if they die, they’ll do that together too. 

And that, finally, made it all sink in, properly, and Dean realised that all his protecting Sam had made Sam as protective of him. Sam had grown up in Dean’s image, following Dean’s lead, and adopting Dean’s self-destructive tendencies without pause because of it. 

So Dean realised then that something needed to change, but how and what? Especially when Sam has had trouble letting Dean go, because Dean has noticed and we’ve all been made as aware of it.

Like with the whole Mal’Akh box situation and Sam confronting Dean, pushing him to fight, while Dean told Sam that Sam (and Cas) would have to let him go, if there was no saving him. This was the codependency at a breaking point, just as it is now, but way back around the midseason finale of S14, Dean had no way to gently push Sam into gaining the same perspective Dean’s had for a while now, because Dean gained that perspective through realising what holding onto old patterns meant for Sam. *external influence*

Dean became painfully aware of how Protect Sammy has become the toxic ingredient that could, most likely, end up in getting Sammy killed.

And Dean saw no healthy way of highlighting this to his brother without breaking his heart, yeah? Mostly because Dean felt Sam needing him, and the old pattern was difficult to let go of when Sam clearly was still relying on that pattern in order to know his place in the world.

But now. Oh, man, now. Now here comes a healthy highlighter. *Eileen you beautiful soul you!!*

Now for Sam’s reaction to Dean’s simple recognition of “Eileen did good” -->

--> which is immediate self-consciousness and looking like he’s wondering where this is going exactly, a touch of defensiveness there right away, because this whole situation worries him and he knows what he wants, but he also knows what he thinks he shouldn’t have, and here comes Dean, most likely about to confirm that he shouldn’t have it. (hence Sam’s “Oh SHIT” face when the bunker door opened last ep and Sam thought it was Dean) (because he does not expect Dean to be okay with it) 

And then we get this gold -->

Dean: She doing okay? Sam: I guess. Dean: You guess?

So simple and yet so damn complex. 

Firstly, Dean prods oh so gently. The “She doing okay?” really being a question of how close Sam and Eileen have actually gotten: how intimate is their relationship at this point, how much does Sam care for her and how much is she letting him care, is she confiding in him, is she leaning on him, is she letting him in, is Sam taking up space, does he want to?

And Sam deflects. 

Because his reply of “I guess” is him not feeling comfortable talking about it, still unsure of where this is going exactly, and Dean calls him out on it, slightly amused by it, because he’s not stupid and he has eyes and he knows that, obviously, these two share a *cough* bond. Dean knows, yeah? But he also knows that Sam doesn’t know that Dean’s okay with it, which, again, is why this exchange is taking place. So Dean calls Sam out, deepening the prodding for an actual answer, and Sam gets properly defensive -->

Sam: If she needs something from me, she’ll tell me. We have an agreement.

Dean’s reaction to this statement is amazing, because Sam’s choice of words immediately focuses him. 

He’s a laser, yeah? He knows his brother inside and out and I would say Dean reads between the lines without even having to pause, because this is getting at the heart of what he wanted this chat to get at: how Sam and Eileen are relating themselves to each other. 

An agreement means communication, and communication about someone needing something from the other and being encouraged to ask for it, and feeling comfortable enough to promise to ask for it, means that they’re seeing eye-to-eye. That there’s caring there, for sure. And mutual caring at that. Which is why his delivery of his response is so laced with undertones, because Dean wants Sam to understand that Dean sees through this half-assed covering up of how meaningful this all actually is to Sam.

Dean: An agreement?

And Sam’s reaction face is epic-->

--> because he looks like he’s thinking oh here we go and you’re one to talk Dean like you’re gonna question me and my choices when it comes to Eileen when you and Cas aren’t even talking BUT this whole train of thought gets halted in its tracks by Dean’s next statement, yeah? Aw yes.

Because Dean looks like this -->

--> and says “That’s adorable” and Sam’s defensiveness is gone in a blink and we get the most gorgeous, wonderfully self-conscious smile of agreement that I ever did see because it is bloody adorable of them to have an “agreement” and Sam soaks it up that Dean sees all of the attached implications and is saying as much, relaxing at the fact that Dean is teasing him rather than lecturing him.

Gahhh. It’s so gorgeous!! Look at that smiiiiile!

And Dean’s enjoying seeing that expression on Sam’s face like -->

So happy for him.

*I cry you cry we all cry*

And then Dean goes serious, admitting that he was in too bad a place to talk about it, and yeah sure Chuck and Lilith and how do we fight God is all a dialogue-stated part of that, but also, obviously, there’s also Cas Cas Cas, I mean, Dean says that he didn’t want to talk to Sam about any possible romance between his brother and Eileen because he didn’t want to jinx it. 

Like he was in such a bad place it made him actually believe he’d jinx things if he acknowledged them as viable, yeah? 

Look at his... face. :/

(I remember a certain someone who once told dean that he didn’t see himself as good luck) (and this then gave dean the chance to tell him that he’d rather have him - cursed or not) (like get over this low self-worth bullshit already and realise that you are loved for who you are Dean Winchester) (because you love people for who they are so why shouldn’t they do the same for you??) (GAH!)

Anyway, now Dean’s out of that bad place of believing he’d jinx things, he’s in a better place, so now it seems finally he believes that him acknowledging a budding romance doesn’t mean him immediately bringing bad luck and wrecking that good thing. 

Actually, this better place might actually mean that Dean can see how not acknowledging it would be worse for everyone, because he’s picked up on the egg-shell-walking done by his brother around the subject. Dean’s inability to speak frankly has made Sam afraid to even think about possibly pursuing something with Eileen, yeah?

Alright, fair enough, that’s conjecture aka headcanoning, but still. And shall we say it together? 

What Beautiful Possible Exposition For Dean’s Reasons For Distancing Himself From Cas. 

Dean keeping himself away from Cas, on the deepest levels, has everything to do with fear and worry and Dean still believing that the very touch of him corrupts. Yeah? He’s moving away from that now. Hopefully 09 will be the episode where he properly crosses that threshold from constantly thinking himself unworthy, to truly feeling he deserves to have good things happen to him without the ever-present conviction he’ll lose it all.

And then Dean goes in for the very final push, the very thing I believe he’s felt needs to be said for a while now: he ties Eileen right back to trying “the family thing”, because what Dean wants is a chance to clarify that he can see how what Sam has got going with Eileen is different.

And when Sam’s first reaction to trying The Family Thing is a “Yeah, me too. That’s not for us.” it’s kinda clear that Dean needs to clarify not only that he can see the difference, but that there truly is one, because Sam is really the one who needs to hear it, and acknowledge it, and believe it. 

Sam making this statement is to let us know, and let Dean know, that yes, Sam is still holding onto the codependency. 

What’s glorious to me, from a Dean perspective, is that he agrees with Sam’s assessment of their experience of the family thing not being for them with his response: “Not really.”

It’s glorious because the family thing was so wrong for him and it’s good to have him acknowledge this properly, letting us know he’s let that thought of “When I imagine myself happy, it’s with you and the kid” go (and of course I believe he did let it go a good while ago now but to have it in dialogue!) and then we get one of several heavy-duty callbacks this episode, when Dean reminds Sam about what Sam tentatively brought up years ago, asking Dean if he never wanted to find someone, maybe not to get married and settle down, but find someone who gets the life -->

Dean: But I’m just saying, if it was to work... Eileen. You know, she gets it, she gets us, she gets the life. ...She’s hot.

It’s delightfully ironic to me that Dean is the one who swoops in with the wide-eyed observations of how Sam should open himself up to the idea of a relationship progressing with Eileen, but on the other hand it’s completely understandable to me, because Dean isn’t in denial about his feelings for Cas. 

Dean is extremely clear on his feelings for Cas, and that’s exactly why he’s staying away from him. 

It’s not that Dean doesn’t know love or can’t recognise it when it’s right in front of his face. It’s that, right now, he’s shutting it out. 

Because Good Things Don’t Last. 

And the terror at losing Cas again, and being responsible, is overshadowing everything else, or so I’d like to think. 

Losing Mary hammered this deeply rooted belief home once more: Dean can’t have good things. So all that gently building contentment Dean felt after 14x06 at having Cas around on a more permanent basis genuinely would set the alarm bells ringing, because clearly something would have to happen to shake things up, to cause more grief, to take it all away. 

Losing Mary made Dean believe, more than ever, that it’s only a matter of time before he loses Cas. Again. And he can’t go through that. Again. 

So rather inevitably, Dean’s fear of losing Cas has pushed Dean to push Cas away and it’s actually forced him to carry on without him, no matter how much it’s hurt him, Dean masking the pain with anger and defensiveness, and in a beautifully roundabout way managing to teach him the lesson of how he doesn’t actually need Cas in his life in order to be okay, but allowing him the insight of how he wants Cas in his life, because Cas brings the type of meaning to events that no one else and nothing else really does. *headcanon but still*

What’s clear to me in this exchange with Sam is that Dean has come so far in his progression that everything he’s saying to Sam he might as well be saying to himself. Truly. 

And, again, we get the Sam and Eileen as Dean and Cas mirrors because, of course, the undercurrent of this scene is tied directly to this mirroring and Dean and Cas’ inability, especially in this ep, to even look each other in the eye properly. God, there was a lot of that. *splendidness* By having Sam and Eileen stand in as the Healthy Relationship Representatives, we get an idea of exactly how far away from this Dean and Cas are currently in the narrative and, more than anything else, it plants the idea in our heads of where we should want them to end up. 

Moreover, this exchange outlines how Dean knows what makes for a healthy, balanced, equal relationship and, to me, exposes how much he wants that for himself, though he needs to cross that threshold and finally accept the truth that he deserves it, encouraging Sammy to go for that person who gets it, gets the life, the same way that Sam was trying to gently make Dean admit to wanting someone like that in S11. 

Anyway, back to the scene and Sam is still deflecting, still not quite there, no matter how self-consciously smile-y talking about Eileen might make him. Sam is afraid of letting go of the codependency, Sam still clings to old patterns, telling himself it’s because Dean needs him, that this is what’s best for “them”, when Dean, now, is gently pushing for Sam to think in terms of what’s best for himself first, and them as a team second.

Sam rubs his forehead and is about to make a protest to this idea -->

--> when Dean stops him, because there’s nothing more to discuss, is there? Dean knows. Sam knows he knows. 

Dean: All I’m saying is that you could do worse. And she could certainly do better. So much better.

Again, this feels like something Dean could just as well be saying to himself, right? And he keeps it light, but it’s still so telling. Not that he devalues Sam, because of course he’s joking about that, but if looking at that undercurrent, it’s like Dean’s lack of self-worth is unconsciously pushing him to put words to that feeling, pushing him to gain that perspective, so that he can knock it down once and for all and know that he matters, that he’s allowed to matter, that he allows himself to matter. 

And the first step -->

 Dean: I’m happy for you, Sammy.

--> is encouraging his brother to feel that way about himself. 

Because letting go of the codependent behavioural pattern between them is key, for both of them, to live long and happy lives. 

I find it lovely that Dean interrupts Sam’s second attempt at deflection, seeing through Sam’s own possible worries and concerns - brought on by fears that are so similar to Dean’s and are rooted in mistrust of himself and lack of self-worth rooted in that mistrust - to the heart of it, which is that Sam has been falling in love with Eileen pretty much since the day they met, and Dean’s not going to be the one to stand in the way of that, and he’s certainly not going to let Sam’s fears and worries, allowing for the codependency to continue, to stand in the way of it.

Dean’s final line of being happy for his brother (the use of Sammy instead of Sam is like a dagger to the heart it’s so gorgeous) turns Dean’s gentle prodding into a cattle rod, brokering no argument and rather meaning to serve as a push for Sam to make a move already. What’s he waiting for? Clearly Eileen feels the same way. Clearly.

It’s all subtle and breathtaking and so, so pretty. It makes me curious to see what we’ll get in 09, what will bring about that prayer (I honestly would love for them to end up in an argument that’s loud and full of sudden truths that they’ve kept bottled up for ten years) (without a love confession) (we could get a hundred callbacks that could lead into clarifications) (and that apology) (which the prayer is bound to be) and what the rest of this final stretch will give us. 

As always, there’s so much to find in the subtext that it creates the most amazing part of this amazing narrative. Goddamnit. I do so love this show.

[holylulusworld]

Trust – Part 5

Summary: You trust Dean with your life, he doesn’t even trust you with his car. All choices in life have consequences - Dean’s have much worse...

Pairing: Dean x Reader, Sam Winchester, Castiel, Crowley, Jo Harvelle, Ellen Harvelle, mentioned: Bobby Singer, Ash

Warnings: angst, mentions of torture (physically and mentally), violence, mentions of drugging someone, mentions of rape (nothing graphic), a hint of fluff

Set in Season 9 and 12. Jo and Ellen never died in Season 5. Bobby is still alive and kicking

Trust Masterlist

“Y/N, calm down. We don’t know she is behind all this for sure.” Dean tries but you keep on cackling. “Seriously, Dean? She distracted you from picking me up that day. Then I get kidnapped and she calls my phone and answers the call of the demons. You fucked her after she drugged you and Sammy. Ash saw her with your phone, but you keep on protecting that whore? I bet she made a deal with these monsters or rather she is a monster.”

“Please, let us talk to her first, Y/N. Castiel and Crowley are on their way back to tell us about your deal and the demon holding your contract. Let’s calm down and plan our next steps wisely…please. I know you do not trust Dean, but please trust me.” Sam tries and for a moment you just stand there, looking at your friend.

“I’m sorry, Sammy. I know you want to do the right thing, save everyone but…you can’t save me Sam and you know it. Look at me. I’m broken. Only my demonic half keeps me upright. The pain, the memories are back, and I can’t…I just can’t. Every time I close my eyes I see my friends hurting, violating me in the cruelest way possible. I’m scared to the bone only looking at you…Dean is even worse…I will kill her and then…you can end me.” You say before you run toward the garage. “We need to stop her,” Dean yells running after you but the moment he reaches his car he sees you smiling at him. A smile he has not seen for years. “Goodbye, Dean. I hope you and Sam have a long and fulfilled life. I forgive you as this is the end once for all.” You whisper before vanishing. “Son of a bitch, Sammy!” ---- “Jo…Jo…Jo…it’s been a while. How have you been?” You chuckle as the blonde woman is staring at you with wide eyes. Sliding your knife over the bar counter you smirk at her. “Did the cat got your tongue? I asked you a question.” “Fine…I’m fine, Y/N…and you?” Jo asks nervously biting her lip. “I was not ‘fine’. Getting kidnapped, tortured and mentally raped by demons is no fun I can tell. The best thing was…they used my friend's faces.”

“I’m sorry…” Jo lies, and you chuckle. “Why are you here?” “Hmm…why…am…I…here?” You cackle wielding the knife in front of Jo’s face. “I’m here as Ash over there. Ash are you with us?” You ask looking at the unconscious and to a chair bond man. “Damn he’s such a party crasher…” “Please…don’t hurt me.” Jo gasps. “Oh…you know what? I begged these demons too. Every…single…day. They never stopped hurting me for months, Jojo…for months. I always asked myself why they did not let me go or just killed me after they got to know Dean won’t come to save me.” “Dean …” “Yeah…Good, old Dean Winchester. Hero. Asshole. Son of a bitch but still sexy as hell, Dean Winchester. Do you know why they did not let me go, Jojo?” You ask now sliding the dull side off your knife over Ellen’s arm. “I don’t know, Y/N.” Jo stammers. “Odd. You made a deal with these guys and do not know? Don’t play stupid blonde chick with me, Jo. We both know better. Ash over there heard you called the demons and he saw you answering the phone. After that, you fucked Dean while he was drugged. Poor little Jo. Didn’t he got hard without drugging him?” You tease.

Knife only inches from Ellen’s face you smirk at the older woman. Her eyes are wide, and she stares at her beloved daughter in disbelief. “Jo…is what she says true?” Ellen gasps. “Fine, you’ve got me, bitch! Even after I managed to drive a wedge between you and Dean he never stopped talking about you. He was yearning for you, your friendship and more. I hated it…I had to get rid of you but also I wanted to have some fun…” Jo chuckles and you smile at her. “Fun…interesting. So you made a deal with a bunch of demons and drugged Dean to rape him?” “I did not rape him! I just gave him something to get more…” “Get hard and horny? To make him want you? Pitiful little Jo. Not able to get a man hard the natural way so you make deals and rape him?” “I did not!” “Shut up, blonde bitch. Here’s the deal. Dean and Sammy are on their way, but I have plenty of time. I want the name of the demon you made your deal with and I want to know why they wanted to break me.” “I suggested hurting you to break you. I wanted you to become a demon, so Dean got no other choice than killing you. I did not expect him to become one himself and before I knew years passed…” Jo says, and you start cackling. “You thought Dean would kill me? God, you are too stupid. Even now he tries to save me, tries to make it up to me. Dean is ripping himself into pieces before he kills me, stupid child. The guilt is eating him alive and this is your fault. Did you believe he would marry you, give you hot sweaty sex every night? We are talking about Dean Winchester.” “I thought…” “No, you didn’t think, bitch. I was in your way and you wanted me to suffer. Now I will make you suffer.” Your hand wraps around Ellen’s throat and you can see no emotion in Jo’s eyes. “Ellen…does your daughter love you?” You whisper and Ellen looks at you. Tears are streaming down her face, but she nods. “When was the last time she was warm and friendly?” “Before that night…before she and Dean…” Ellen whispers as you lean closer to her. “We’ve got a problem, Ellen. I think Jo made a hell of a deal and she’s like Sam back then, soulless…only worse. I will open your bindings now and you will take the knife, help Ash and get out of here.” You whisper and Ellen’s eyes widen. “Now…” ---- “Ellen, where is Y/N?” Sam pants running after Dean who is storming into Ellen’s bar. “She said Jo is soulless like you years ago. Y/N believes Jo made a deal or something, drugged Dean to…” “I got it. Stay outside with Ash. Castiel will help you. Crowley, come with me.” Sam orders and the King of hell rolls his eyes. “Find out who has her contract. Help us getting faster to Ellen’s Bar…come with me. We need to talk about your abilities in making conversation, Moose.” Crowley snickers and Sam glares at the much smaller man. “We’ve got no time for this shit. If Y/N kills Jo, there’s no turning back…” “Blah…blah…let her kill the crazy chick. She deserves catching hell for sure…” ---- “Y/N, Y/N…do you believe you can kill me? If you do so…Dean will end you once for all.” Jo snickers. Her whole posture changed, and she smirks at you. “That’s the goal, bitch. I’ll kill you and Dean will end me.” You chuckle and her smile fades. “You don’t have to kill me. Be smart and let me help you. It feels so good being free of your soul. I know you remember the feeling, don’t you?” Jo says slowly walking toward you. Her hips sway and she smiles at you but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “I was never soulless, only a sexy demon. I was still in control…just without all the painful memories.” You whisper. “Perfect! Wasn’t it, prefect? The stillness of heart, mind, and soul. Only pure unadulterated power. Doing what you want to do. No more, sad little girl! No more he only sees me as a sister! No more he only loves Y/N! Free, powerful…and thoughtfully fucked in his backseat.” Jo snickers and you slam your fist into her face. The next punch hits her stomach, followed by a kick to her shin. Huntress or not, soulless or not she can’t stand against a trained huntress with demonic powers. Your eyes flash black and you punch her face again, and again. Memories come back, memories of the pain and desperation so you get your gun out of your waistband and motion her to get up. “Any last wishes?” You ask. “Dean…” Jo chuckles. “I don’t think he wants you if he gets to know you drugged and raped him…” “I did not! I just made him more complying…” Jo gasp as you unlock your gun and press your finger to the trigger. “Y/N, don’t do this,” Dean calls for you. Distracted you look at him. His eyes widen and you watch him aiming his gun, you barely register the gunshot before the bullet hits Jo’s body. Looking at her falling to the ground you see the weapon in her hand. She would’ve killed you… “It was her…it was all her to get you…” You whisper before darkness consumes you. ---- “What does that mean for her, Castiel?” Sam asks. “We got her contract and the demon is dead. Crowley released her and she should be back to normal soon. At least her demonic half should fade away…the rest…” Castiel sighs looking at your unconscious form in the backseat of the Impala. “Only time can tell. She will need help. Without her powers and demonic half of her suppressing the memories and the pain…” “I got it, Castiel. Y/N will need her friends.” “How’s Ellen?” Dean asks. “She can’t believe her daughter did all these awful things. Drugging you and letting Y/N getting kidnapped…she did this before she sold her soul, Dean. It was all Jo, not her soulless self.” Sam explains. “I never thought…” “According to Ellen, her daughter was jealous. She heard you talking about Y/N and how much you miss her. That you want to try to find and make it up to her. This was the moment Jo decided Y/N has to go…” “Dammit!” Dean curses. “Will Jo survive?” “Likely…I don’t know what to do with her if she survives. Her soul was in hell for a long time and I got no clue if getting it back would make things worse or not. It was her hurting Y/N and…abusing you…” “Don’t remind me, Sammy. I felt guilty for all this time. I always saw Jo as a younger sister, nothing more. I never thought she’s into me, Sam. How could I not see she’s crazy?” “Let’s drive back home. Good thing Bobby got here in time with your car or Crowley would mutter even more.” “We owe him one.” Dean sighs glancing at the demon looking at you in the backseat. He’s tapping your forehead and a smile crosses his face. “Hands off, Crowley!” Dean barks and the demon shrugs. “Just gave her a pleasant dream. I’m suppressing the bad memories at least in her dreams so she can sleep peacefully. I like her. Hell of a woman, Winchester. You better watch over her or I’ll do so.” Vanishing Crowley leaves a stunned Dean behind. “Every man seems to fall for Y/N.” Sam chuckles and his brother glares at him. ---- “How do you feel?” Dean asks sitting next to you on his bed. “Like a freight train rammed me and a car hit me next. My head hurts and I hate seeing your face, otherwise, everything is fine.” You mutter. “Is she dead?” “In a hospital. Ellen is with her, along with Cas and Crowley. It was her…I’m so sorry you became a victim as she wanted me.” Dean whispers taking your hand in his. “At least you had some fun…I got the shitty part of the deal, I guess.” You tease. “She drugged me and Sammy. I would’ve never…I swear. I felt guilty after I had sex with Jo. She was like a sister to me and I thought I ‘used’ her that night.” “It was the other way around. Damn, Dean. Did no one taught you to not accept drinks from strangers?” You cough as you try to sit up. “Lie down, Y/N. You need to rest. I remember how I felt after I turned back into  human. I made you a bowl of soup and a hot chocolate if you want to eat and drink something.” “I should hit the road soon. I’ve got unfinished business …” “I know, Y/N. We still need to find the demon offering Jo her deal and giving her the drugs. We will find him and rip him apart. For now,…rest.” “Yes, mommy!” You grunt. “Sleep, Y/N. Please for once in your life, listen to me. Trust me…” “Dean…” “Please…trust me…” “I can try…”

Trust Tags

@greenarrowhead​​​, @justanotherwinchester​​, @marvelouslysherlockedhunter​​, @lazygrizzlybee2​​

Forever Tags

@donnaintx​, @screechingartisancashbailiff​, @fallen-wolf22​, @sister-winchesters99​, @mogaruke​, @the-is13​, @helloitsmeamie203​, @strayrosesbloom​, @thewinchesterco​, @hobby27​, @kittycatlover18, @gh0stgurl​, @marvelfansworld​ , @sandlee44​, @hawaiianohana31​, @unlikelysamwinchesteronahunt​, @katpatrova17​, @notyourtypicalrose​ , @heyitscam99​, @onethingthatkeepsmealive, @natura1phenomenon​, @flamencodiva​, @echoesofpassion​, @cocklesbelli​, @voltage-my2dlove​, @fandom-princess-forevermore​, @thenamelesschibi​, @lauravic​, @fandomsrourlives​, @wittysunflower​, @drakelover78​, @lemondropirwin​, @lonewolf471​, @wronglanemendes​, @electraphygelectraphyng , @spnhollis​, @void-imaginations​, @jay-and-dean​, @shatteredabby​ , @juniorhuntersam​​​, @helpmeluci​​​, @neii3n​​, @goodgodimaweirdperson​​, @alltimesamantha​, @chonisberonica​, @supernaturalonice​ @stuckys-whore​​, @shadowkat-83​, @officialmarvelwhore​, ​@certaindeanwinchesterforcastiel, @wecantgiggleitsafandom​​, @meganywinchester​​, @shikshinkwon​​, @idioticsky, @miraclesoflove​, @yolobloggers​,@guardian-tn, @lu-sullivan​​, @maniacproffesor​​, @hollymac79​, @straycuties9​, @destieladdict-221b​​, @kayla-2000​, @ilovefanfic86​, @gracefultrenchcoat494​

If your name is crossed out Tumblr won’t let me tag you for some reason. Sorry.

Dean/Jensen Forever Tags     

@spnfamily-j2​​, @supernatural-bellawinchester​​, @butifulsoul125​​, @lyinginthegingerlocks​​, @deans-baby-momma​​, @hawaiianohana31​​, @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester​​​, @20gayneen​​​, @janicho88​​​, @thefaithfulwriter​​​, @dreaminemz​​​, @negans-lucille-tblr​​​ @sadwaywardkid​​​, @akshi8278​​​, @hhiggs​​​, @midnightsilver16830​​​, @mrspeacem1nusone​​​, @ria132love​​​, @caligraphee​​​, @the-witch-in-silence​​​, @multisuperfandom​​, @deansgirl-1968​​, @justanotherwinchester​​, @jadesupernatural​

[zmediaoutlet]

in support of Black Lives Matter, @nigeltde-fic donated $25, and requested Sam & Dean & amnesia. Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts)

The gorgon hits Dean in the head and Sam panics because he always panics, when Dean’s bleeding and not responding, but that’s not the worst part. Dean’s bleeding and he won’t wake up, and Sam drives as fast as he can possibly drive--faster--and Sam carries him from the car to the bed and he still won’t wake up, and that’s not the worst part. Sam touches his face and the panic’s become this solid untouchable thing that fuzzes everything else in the world out to weird impossible static, and Dean flinches under his touch and seizes and he’s still bleeding because it’s a head wound, and head wounds bleed like a bitch but Sam remembers Dean telling him when he was fourteen and trying not to cry it’s not that bad, Sammy, it always looks worse than it is, it’s just blood, it’s okay--only it is bad, and it’s worse than it looks. Michael drains out of Dean’s body with the blood like a cracked bottle of whiskey spilling all over the floor, and Michael takes Rowena, and Michael kills all the refugees who were Sam’s responsibility, and Jack then kills Michael--kills Michael, the monster haunting Dean’s eyes and Sam’s dreams gone in a flash--but that’s something Sam can’t look at, right now--because Dean sits up in the infirmary, shocked and blinking and scared, and he says to Sam, “Sam?” but he looks around too and says, “What is this place?” and he says, “Sam? Sam, what happened? Where are we?” and Sam closes his eyes and thinks, no. No.

It’s a week, of taking care of the bodies. Trying to contact any friends they had, who might’ve known them from that other world, who might want to come and stand witness to their burning. Dean helps, because he has two hands and no matter what it seems that an essential part of him wants to be useful, but he doesn’t feel it. Not really. Sam chops wood and sets Dean to building, and Dean does, and sneaks uncertain looks at the strangers who sit miserable in their home, stands just behind Sam’s shoulder during the funerals, says constantly: who are they? what happened? Sam? Sam?

Sam doesn’t know what happened. Cas has examined Dean (Jack wanted to but they didn’t let him, uncertain of his raw golden-grace power), and Sam’s been as gentle as he can with his questions, and they called back Rowena, even, from her terrified flight, and none of them have an answer. Dean knows Sam, and nothing else. Not Castiel, not the bunker, not hunting. Not their mother, and Mary’s mouth trembled as she smiled at Dean, told him that it was okay, that she was sure he’d remember one day. She left again, that night, and Dean sat in Sam’s room and said, “Why can’t I remember,” with his head in his hands, and Sam didn’t have an answer to that, either.

The funerals over and Sam can’t seem to ditch the smell of ash. Burning flesh. Like pork, singed on a barbecue, and it makes him nauseous in the middle of the night, makes him stand over his sink with his gut heaving but he doesn’t puke. He breathes, eyes closed, mouth filling up with spit, and walks the empty corridors of the bunker alone. Mom’s gone and Cas is making himself scarce, looking for some kind of solution, and Jack’s odd and quiet in his room, and the scorch-marks on the concrete floors have long been cleaned up, and Dean--

Dean remembers him. Dean watches him, his eyes pinned to Sam the second they’re in the same room. Dean has his own bed but he doesn’t like it, finds it strange. Too warm, too soft. “Sammy,” Dean says, miserable when Sam leaves him there, but Sam can’t take advantage and he doesn’t know what to do, with this brother who knows him and nothing else.

It wasn’t like this, before. The knowing drained out of Dean slow, little trickles. Words, processes. Forgetting a lamp, surprised by a cartoon. Forgetting his animosities and his histories and his training until he was just--blank. Sweet. Brutal, because he was forgetting himself and Sam at the same time, and even if Sam managed to save himself at the last second with Dean knowing what brother meant--what it meant to them both--it was torture to see it slip away, piece by piece.

It’s gone entirely, now. Sam sits with Dean in the library and puts the tape recorder on, takes notes. “What do you remember?” he asks, putting his miseries aside, and Dean says, “You,” sad, like that’s all that counts. Sam closes his eyes and Dean’s hand closes around his wrist, holding on. His hand is just as calloused as it always was even without the memory that proves the callouses were earned.

“Tell me anyway,” Sam says, trying to smile, and Dean licks his lips, seems like he’s really trying to think.

“We’re from--Kansas,” he says, uncertain, and Sam nods, encouraging. “We--we grew up together.”

“Yeah, we did,” Sam says. He lets Dean keep his wrist. The touch of his skin is--the same. Somehow feels the same. “You remember where?”

Flicker of worry, across Dean’s face. “There was a car,” he says, uncertain still even though Sam brought him to the Impala on the second day when he realized what was happening, and Sam folds over the table, wants to cry.

“Sammy,” Dean says, tender, and touches his hair. He cards through it soft, his hands gentle and knowing, and Sam shudders. He misses his brother so badly he could just crumple into the floor. Could sell his soul. Could just die, miserable here, and hope that when--if--he got to heaven, his real brother would be there, waiting, would say to him crap, dude, took you long enough, and Sam could grab him in tight and hold him and it would mean everything it was supposed to mean, when Dean’s nose brushed his neck, when his hand cupped the back of Dean’s skull.

“I remember you,” Dean says, and Sam pushes away--dinner to take care of, and watching Dean eat and barely picking at his own meal, and the bunker empty, empty, empty. Everything Sam had worked for disappeared, and his one stalwart, his one anchor--

Midnight and his door shoves open, startles him where he’s laying on his back, staring up into nothing. Dean, backlit--but the light white, not red--and Sam reins in his gasp and sits up and says, “What’s the matter?” and Dean comes in and goes to his knees in front of Sam’s feet and says, “Sammy, I remember you.”

He’s staring up, earnest. His eyes clear, green as green even in the dark in here, his focus entirely and utterly on Sam. “I know you do,” Sam says, sore, but Dean grips his arms, shakes his head.

“You don’t,” he says, urgent as a little kid, and it twists in Sam’s belly, makes him look away, but Dean holds him tighter, doesn’t let him get away--says--

“You were so smart, and you were so fuckin’ stubborn--my little brother but I wasn’t in charge of dick, because you’d just get your way no matter what, even if it came a way I didn’t expect it. You and me didn’t get along all the time but we had some stuff--movies we watched, and music we both listened to--and you can’t sing for shit but when you’re drunk you give it a try, and you sound awful but it just makes me happy every time I think about it because it’s when you were happy and I know that’s about the best thing that can happen to me. When you’re happy. I know I--fuck up a lot, and I say crap I shouldn’t say, and I don’t know what it’s about but I remember the times you started to look--shit, like you do now, and it feels like crap but I don’t know how to make it right. Sammy, I don’t know how to make it right.”

Sam feels like crying. Dean’s hand grips his shoulder, touches his chest. “Sam, I remember you,” he says, thick and true, and Sam reaches out and gets a hand on the back of his skull, his fingers sinking into the thick soft buzz-short hair, the warmth that feels right even if nothing else does. “Sam.”

“What else do you remember?” Sam says, aching, and Dean says, “I remember when you came back, but I don’t know from where, and it was like--it was like the friggin’ continents were all upside down and then got turned right side up, and you were pissed as hell at me and I figured probably I deserved it but I didn’t care, it didn’t matter because Sam was here, and I know--Sam, I know I’m not right, I know things might be bad, and I’m gonna try to get right because I know I’m supposed to be your partner or whatever, but I--man, I’m going nuts, because I’m here, and you’re not.”

His hand hurts, gripping so hard on Sam’s shoulder. Sam breathes. “I’m here, Dean,” he says, and Dean says, touching his jaw, sad and clear, “You’re not, you’re not,” and he leans up and kisses Sam then, soft and on-target in the near-dark. His mouth, and his smell--Sam cups him closer, grips his t-shirt and hauls him up, closer, his body warm and familiar and right up against Sam’s, his hands rough and firm, his breathing the thing Sam wants to sync his body to, every morning. Dean kisses him short and quick and soft, pulls back and breathes and does it again, and again, and then shoves at Sam’s shoulders and makes him fall back to the bed and then crawls up, covers Sam’s body, cups Sam’s face in his hands, kisses him melting and sure and with his lip catching chapped against Sam’s lip, and Sam holds him so tight he’s sure it hurts and then pushes him back, a handful of inches to breathe, to think.

Dean looks at him, brow furrowed, close. The light from the hall rims his ear in clear golden light. “The only thing that matters is you, Sammy,” he says, quiet.

Sam feels like his body’s collapsing, in some essential way. Infrastructure, demolished, a cold and dusty ruin left behind. He runs his finger along the back of Dean’s ear, traces the warmth down to the steady, certain beat of Dean’s heart. “Us,” Sam says--corrects--gives up, and Dean slides his hand into Sam’s hair, smiles, and it’s not right, and it’s not the same. Sam closes his eyes and draws Dean in anyway. He’s not here, but he can fake it, for the brother he’s lost--the bloody history that made him Sam’s--for the hope that maybe one day he’ll be here again, pained and grim and inextricable from the blood and meat that’s made up Sam’s life. Dean pulls back after a while, sweet and hopeful. Unfamiliar. Sam smiles at him, and kisses Dean dishonest.

[themoonandotherslikeit]

What the Rain Can’t Wash Away- Chapter 8

*FINAL PIECE IN THE LOOK IN HER EYES TRILOGY*

Sixteen years after Lucifer rose, and Dean lost his wife he finds himself with a teenager, a Nephilim, an angel, and his brother living out a Full House rerun with some seriously dark undertones. How will he be able to raise his daughter, fight monsters, and deal with the loss of the love of his life? Sometimes moving on is the hardest part, but with the Winchester’s there’s always something harder around the corner. Isn’t there?

Chapter Eight, You’re the One

Ella 

Seeing my mother standing in front of me, living and breathing was keeping me awake. I rolled over in bed to stare at the ceiling. "You're restless," Claire said with a yawn. "Turn out the light, babe." She reached over and ran her finger along the bridge of my nose.

"I can't."

"What's on your mind?"

"Other than the obvious?" I laughed dryly.

"More like, what’s on your mind specifically."

Clementine groaned in her sleep between us, and I reached down and scratched between her ears. She purred happily in response and cuddled closer to me. "More specifically... I have so many things bouncing around inside of my head." I rolled onto my side to look at Claire in the darkness. Her blue eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. "My Mom is back."

"She is."

"It's all I've wanted my whole life. I've wanted to know her."

"Now you get the chance,” she said quietly, pushing my hair behind my ear. "So what's really bothering you?"

"Things are never easy for us, Claire. Never. We don't get to just have happy endings. Micheal is still inside of Dad, and honestly, I don't know anything about Mom. What if she's a nightmare? You remember what it was like when Grandma Mary came back... How disappointed Dad was."

"You're worried she won't live up?"

"Kind of. Or that I won't live up won't live up to what she expected me to be."

"You're the best person I know, Ella. You don't need to worry about that."

"But I do," I said quietly, my voice breaking. "This has been my birthday wish my whole life. To see my Dad happy. To have a Mom, and fuck... what if it doesn't fix everything?"

"She's just a person, El. You can't put that much pressure on her. She probably won't fix everything, but that doesn't mean that you can't have the things you want. Plus, I know she will love you. If not, she's probably missing her soul."

"You're a pretty big softie, for a badass hunter."

"Yeah, yeah. You do that to people." She smiled widely. "It's hard not to be all gooey around Eleanor Winchester."

"Gross don't say my full name. I feel like I'm in trouble."

"Oh, sweetie, you are in trouble." Claire grinned, wrapping her arms around me. She pulled me to her, taking my lips against hers in an urgent kiss. She was warm, and soft. She was present. It was hard to feel like anything could be wrong in the world when I was this close to Claire. Her lips were still minty from brushing her teeth, and I breathed her in. My fingers tangled in her curls as I ran my tongue along her bottom lip.

"Mmmm. Punish me then."

"I wonder if this is what your parents are doing," Claire mumbled against my mouth, causing me to yank away from her.

"What? Gross! I can't believe you. Just said that!"

She busted up into laughter. "What did you expect to happen, Nel? You thought they were just going to hold hands? I'm sure that's why they're locked in that bedroom. What did you think they were doing?"

"Honestly? I don't know... talking. Figuring their shit out. God, you think they just jumped into bed?" I didn't know why the thought was so disturbing to me. Claire was right, it was what I wanted. I wanted my Dad to be happy, but more than anything I wanted him to have the love of his life back. I wanted him to have what I had with Claire. I just hadn't considered sex, not really.

"I don't know," she admitted, opening her arms back. "Don't think too hard about it."

"It's all I'm going to think about now," I complained. "You planted a seed."

"Aw, stop, you little perv." She smiled and wiggled her fingers in a come here way.

I rolled my eyes and cuddled back into her arms, back where I felt safe. "God, I can't believe you brought up my parents having sex."

Claire shrugged. "I don't know. I think it's kind of sweet."

"Maybe, but still really fucking gross."

  Dean

I wanted to kiss her. Fuck. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to take her into my arms like she never left, and memorize her body all over again. I wanted to kiss her, but it wasn't about what I wanted. The playing field wasn't level. It was like we were meeting for the first time all over again. She was Ava. She was a fucking angel, beautiful, perfect, and I was a fuck up. I was some old guy that'd been through his fair share of shit storms in the last decade and a half. She deserved to know it all before she was back back.

"I...I've missed you, Ave. More than I thought I could ever miss another person, but I think you deserve all of the facts before you decide."

"Decide? What is there to decide?"

"If this is what you want. If I...fuck, I'm not the same Dean Winchester you left. I don't even know that guy anymore," I admitted through clenched teeth. "I just don't want you to feel obligated. To me, I mean. You have to see Nel... she's a fucking gift. Best thing I've ever done, Ave. You're gonna love her."

"So, what? You're going to lay out all the cards and then we just decide if we are going to stay married or get a divorce?"

"We've both been legally dead a few times over, Sweetheart, I don't think a divorce will be necessary."

"What do you want, Dean?" She asked me seriously.

"It doesn't matter."

She smiled slightly and rolled her eyes. "You say you're different, but you seem the same to me." She took my hand in hers. "It matters. If I want to stay and you don't want me to then I won't. You're not obligated to me, either."

My eyes met hers. A sea of blue. An endless sky. Looking at her was a fucking summer's day at the lake with Nel. Sammy teaching her to catch fish while I finish of a twelve pack by myself. It was s'mores in the night and stories dancing around the fire. Castiel telling us about the creation of the fucking world. Her eyes were home.

"I'm not obligated to you, Ava, I'm in love with you."

"After all this time?"

"What time?" I reached forward and brushed her cheek. "Time stopped when I lost you."

"It didn't stop, Dean. No time has passed for me," she murmured, her lips barely moving. "But for you... you've had an entire life without me. I want to know all about it."

"Okay." I ran my thumb across her cheekbone. "Fuck I don't even know where to start."

I caught a tear as it escaped her eye. "Start with Nel."

I smiled widely. "That's a pretty damn good place to start." I pressed my forehead to hers. "Come to my room?"

"Dean Winchester, are you trying to seduce me?"

"Actually, no." I smiled a bit. "I just have some things I think you'd like to see."

"Okay," she murmured, putting her hand in mine. I lead her through the hallway and opened my bedroom door.

"Welcome to my humble abode."

"It's..." She ran her fingers along my plain red comforter. "It needs a woman's touch." She turned and smiled at me. "Its very Dean."

"Thank you?" I raised an eyebrow.

She lowered herself onto my bed in a seated position. "What did you want to show me?"

I crouched down in front of the book shelf against the back wall and pulled out the baby books. "I tried my hand at scrapbooking," I explained with a dry laugh. "I sucked, but Cas was weirdly good at it. So... well we got this." I handed her one of the books and sat down next to her.

 Ava

I couldn't say the words out loud. It was like I blinked. I blinked into another world. There I was, running my fingers over the front of a scrapbook that Dean Winchester put together. I wondered if the monsters knew that he cut letters out of patterned paper. I opened the book and sucked in my breath. "Oh, Dean."

Photos of me and Sam the day Eleanor was born.

Every page tore at my heart a little more. Hand written scribbles next to photographs of Dean holding a toddler Eleanor with teeth poking through her pink gums. Tiny pigtails and perfect braids. Bows in her hair.

"Is this the bunker?" I asked, looking at a picture of Eleanor sitting on Sam's shoulders with her arms in the air in front of a weird building that was half under ground.

"Yeah," he said quietly, his thigh brushing mine. "It's weird, but it's home."

"How did you find it?"

"It's a weird story, actually." He laughed dryly. "We came across a demon... a Knight of Hell actually and along with her came my Grandfather. Like through a portal." He raised an eyebrow.

"Weird, but not that weird for us. Go on."

He nodded. "Apparently back in the day there was a group of guys called The Men of Letters, kind of like hunters, but instead they read a lot of books. Kind of like Sammy."

"And this was, what? Their headquarters?"

"Basically."

"So you thought you'd move in?"

Dean shrugged. "Seems like as good of a place as any. It's safe, full of lore, in a good school district." He offered a bright smile.

He looked so good.

"What else?" I smiled, peeling my eyes away from him and back to the book. I flipped the pages. Stickers of angel babies, ketchup stains, Eleanor's kindergarten graduation. "What do the pictures not say?"

"She has a girlfriend."

I raised my eyebrows and met his bright eyes. "A... girlfriend?"

"Yeah. Cute little blonde."

"Huh. Is she nice?"

"She's great. Strong. A little edgy. She's a hunter."

"Dean Winchester!" I gasped, hitting his arm with an open palm. "You let her date a hunter? Are you fucking bananas?"

"No? Ow. Ave, she is your daughter. I can't stop her from doing anything. She's stubborn."

"She's a Winchester," I agreed with a sigh. "She would always be stubborn."

We looked at each other. There were years worth of pain behind his eyes. Pain that I wasn't sure I could heal. "Our girl is all grown up."

"She's amazing," he said quietly.

I pressed my lips together, trying to find the words. "Lacey was a demon, and I trusted her. It's all my fault that she got that demon blood, Dean. Has it..."

"Yeah. Yeah it has. Just manifested, actually. She's sort of... psychic, I guess. She can read minds sometimes. She pulled me out when I was stuck in a delusion."

"So she isn't..."

"Dark side?" He shook his head. "The exact opposite. She is the light, Ave. She's all light."

I covered my mouth to let out a sob that had been bubbling up inside of me. She's okay.

"Hey, shh." He pulled me against his chest, and I let it all go. Snot and all. "Ave, what's wrong?"

"She's okay... She's healthy, smart, happy. I'm so happy." I was heartbroken for missing her childhood, but Dean was a good father. He was everything I knew he could be. "I'm so glad she has you."

He kissed my hair gently, like he used to. "I was glad to have her. I think I would've lost it if I didn't have her to take care of."

"I know the feeling," I admitted, looking up at him. "You keep saying you've changed. That you aren't the same man I knew, but... But I know you, Dean. You're the same."

"I've just been through some shit, Ave."

"What shit?"

He let go of me and looked away. I could see the muscles in his back tense under his shirt. He was struggling. I reached forward and touched his shoulder, he flinched in response. "You can tell me," I murmured. I already knew what he did in Hell, what could be worse than that?

"The short version? I started the apocalypse, let Lucifer out of his cage, let him posses Sammy... Sam tossed himself into Hell to protect the world from Lucifer. He came back, with his soul gone. Fucking gone, Ave. He wasn't Sammy anymore. Cas went looney tunes a time and again. There were all of these Leviathan creatures that we had to take out. When we cut off the head, metaphorically, Cas and I got blown to Purgatory."

My head was spinning. "The Purgatory?"

"It was awful. I was there for a year, and Sam was here, playing Dad to Nel. That's probably the most normal her life ever was, but she was still pretty young."

I swallowed hard. "Are you okay?"

"It's been awhile,” he said with a smile that told me, no. He was not okay. "Then... then uh..."

There's more?

I tried to hold it together, and wait for him to gather his thoughts. "I got the Mark of Cain. Which made me this horrible killing machine..." His hands curled into fists as he tired to level his breathing. "I did it to kill Abaddon. The demon that came in with my Granadad?"

I nodded slowly and reached my hand out to him.

He took it willingly, and gave it a squeeze. "And then... then I died." His eyes flickered to mine. I didn't move. I remained emotionless. He died, but he was in front of me.

"What was the catch?"

"The catch... I woke up as a demon." He winced.

"You're not... now right?"

"No. Sammy cured me."

"A cure? For demons?"

"That's what you're stuck on?" He laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Yeah, theres a cure for a lot of shit that we didn't know about before."

"Okay, we can come back to that later." I exhaled a shaky breath. "Is that... it?"

"No. I got rid of the Mark of Cain, and it let out darkness... which is Gods sister. Oh shit, Ave. You remember Chuck?"

"The guy who wrote the Supernatural books?"

"Yeah, him. Well... funny story... he's God."

I couldn't control my face anymore. "Like God God. The God?"

"Yup."

"What the actual fuck?"

"Yup."

"He was ridiculous! He was wearing a bathrobe when we met him."

"Sure was."

"You weren't kidding." I shook my head. "Wow, So wait. God has a sister?"

"Yup. She was locked away in my arm making me fucking bananas. So when Rowena, this bad ass witch we know, got the mark off of me it sent the darkness out into the world. It was pretty touch and go for awhile, but turns out that her and Chuck just needed some sibling bonding time."

"Okay?" I raised an eyebrow, feeling like he had to be downplaying all of that.

"She had a thing for me."

"The darkness?" I asked, and he nodded with a shrug. "Of course she did."

"So she gave me something when we got her back with Chuck." I watched his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed. "She brought my mom back."

I stared at him. I tried to take in everything he was saying. His mom. "Mary?"

"Yeah." He smiled wide. "She's staying at Bobby's cabin right now, for some R and R."

"Bobby! How is he?" I asked, brightly. "I bet he's feeling older than ever after all of this..." My eyes landed on Dean's. His jaw was tight and at the mention of Bobby his eyes were red along the edges. I knew that look. "He... he died?"

"I'm so sorry, Ave. During all the Leviathan shit. It's... it's been a long time."

"But your mom is at his cabin?"

"Oh... well shit, there's more."

"More?" I felt sick to my stomach.

"Not much," he promised, quietly. His forehead was wrinkled. He could see right through my skin. Into the cracks that hide below the surface. I feared that he knew I was about to break. "Lucifer had a child. A Nephilim, is what they call them. A half human half angel."

"The antichrist?"

"That's what I thought, but no. The kid is good. He came out as a full grown teenager." He laughed dryly. "Weird little fucker, but we are trying to raise him. Nel is such a good sister to him. It's pretty incredible."

My eyes flickered to him. Another child. "How old is he?"

"Two."

"Hmm."

"When he was born it ripped a hole in our world. Into another version of earth. One that I never existed in... one where Dad died a long time ago. Before he ever met my Mom. Mom got stuck over there with Jack, the kid, and when we got them out a bunch of others came through with them. An alternate Bobby, and a few others that we lost in our world. It's kind of bonkers, but I just didn't want you to be surprised when you saw him. He's not your Bobby."

I nodded and ran my tongue along my bottom lip. "What else?"

"That's it," he said, sucking in his breath. I could tell he was waiting. Waiting for the other shoe. Waiting for me to run, but I think he forgot, after all of this time, that I am a Winchester. We don't run.

"That's a lot," I admitted slowly, my eyes trailing from his lips, nose, eyes. I locked my eyes to his. "I know what I want, Dean."

"And?"

"You. You fucking idiot. It's always been you." I grabbed his face in my hands. The scruff on his cheek scratched against my palm. "You've aged. You have scars that I don't recognize, but I'll learn them. I've memorized your body before. I've memorized your soul. I will memorize it again." I couldn't get enough of him. There was no more childishness in his face. He was a man, and fuck was he beautiful. "Thank you for staying alive. For waiting for me to find you again, because I believe that I will find always find my way back to you. Through distance, and through time. I'm here. I'm back, and nothing can keep us apart. Not anymore."

—————

Chapter Nine, Never Let Me Go

Get caught up!

Tag list:

@deans-baby-momma

@xjamiedennettx

@linki-locks11

@sonnierae26

[elizabethrobertajones]

14x08 watching notes

This episode is the Worst I had to lie to my mum when I came downstairs trembling and tear-stained to get a cup of tea to recover, and play it all off as cold symptoms, and now I feel complicit in some sort of deceit with the episode and like Meredith broke the fourth wall through sheer pain.

Good morning, I slept in until seven after they started digging up the road outside at 9pm at night, so I still kinda have a lingering headache from that, but I'm pretty sure Meredith is about to make good on the Dean n Jack murder pact or something else of that level of awfulness so... *deep breath*

-

YAY it is Lily!! I mean it was pretty obvious from the costuming because wow she's a distinct person but idk maybe some people thought it was her mom?

Anyway getting a recap just of how terribly Jack is doing and then also a reminder of Lily Sunder is just.. Good recap. *kisses fingers*

(*curls up in agony*)

In all the drama I never noticed Rowena being among those who yelled "Jack!" when he went down and to be honest she knew him five minutes and I'm crediting all that panic in her voice to his absolutely ridiculous powers of being the most adoptable creature in the cosmos. You take one look at him and you want to make sure his shoelaces are tied properly and he has a glass of milk.

Anyway he totally caught Rowena off her guard and made her express an Emotion(TM) that was not spite and a good chunk of that is new and improved Rowena of the last year or so, but also just... She bonded HARD :P

-

Ironically I left the spoon in my coffee in my haste to get up here and start watching so now I will drink it like that and possibly exit the episode also wearing an eye patch

-

I watched a second and tucked the largest, most comforting stuffed toy this family owns under my arm. Yes, not my personal stash of friends, the family heirloom squishy guy who has been with us through all the worst stuff D:

-

The framing is Sam sitting at Jack's bedside, Dad no.1 as season 13 firmly established for us, and the dad with the closest traditional relationship of father/son to Jack. Then Cas hovers nearby, struggling to be as close but still Dad no.2 with the ongoing and uncomplicated connection to Jack in the sense that both just sort of accept they're now father and son without any debate or internal wrangling, and that's always been Jack's in with the family and the way he inadvertently got Cas to vouch for him from beyond the grave when he said Castiel was his father and Sam immediately just flipped to Team Jack, not, of course, that he'd not been giving him a huge chance and trying to reach out to him already, but that was his "oh shit this is now my son because Cas is dead" moment.

Finally, Dean fills the foreground, face in shadow, the conflicted Dad no.3 who can't even face his dying son, taking it personally because this is literally the fourth smol child he's taken under his wing who he then lost, from Sam, Ben, Emma, a truly tragic collection of lost children. He resisted adopting Jack because he couldn't be a parent again, not after what Sam put him through as a parent, and yet Jack, the most adoptable boy in the cosmos, eventually wormed his way under Dean's skin too, and by the end of season 13 Dean was acting fatherly towards him and by this season Dean's been opening up the doors and letting Jack be his son. And. Whoops. As SOON as you took him on a hunt for one on one father son bonding time, look what happened.

And so Dean will lurk in the foreground, not looking at Jack, peering moodily into some dark empty box that metaphorically is his soul or his remaining ability to cope with losing children or some such nonsense. The pandora's box of parenthood. He's full on dark romantic hero brooding.

-

OH  NO  IT IS A RECORD PLAYER NOT A BOX

-

I need our family to retroactively adopt a larger, squishier friend to hug in this trying time

-

Having archived every single one of my watching notes ever between last episode and this episode, I'm more than usually pained by Dean's "not meant to be crap" line because he's been resisting it the entire frikkin time, when Sam kept, even long long long before they knew their real destinies, musing if HIS own personal angst was meant to be and Dean was like don't give me that destiny crap. I swear there's lines about this back in season 2 or 3 when Sam is musing on his powers and the grim lot fate had dealt them. This is a callback line to Dean dealing with his own sense of unravelling control and pure panic about what was happening to Sam, back when that was a thing in the very early seasons and he was having to face the kid he raised from a baby amongst all that tragedy now recklessly declaring all sorts of horrific things about not being able to resist his destiny. Oh, also, in season 2, while under a murder pact from John about killing him if he couldn't save him.

Honestly, it's barely a relationship worth mentioning if you don't have a murder pact going with Dean. Ben is literally the only one of all 4 children AND CLAIRE who hasn't had one with Dean.

-

If this episode involves Dean bringing any of his records in to play for Jack I'm gonna go out in my pyjamas and take a long walk to the sea and then keep walking once I reach it

-

Dean you did not walk nearly far enough for Jack to not hear you thump the wall outside his room

-

PS: totally figured the promo scene was an early emotional beat between Dean and Cas which utterly delights me because the earlier that came in the episode the better as it meant less and less chance it was about anything other than Dean and Cas having an intense relationship over this whole thing.

-

Jack is the absolute worst about dying. He's this saintly angelic little boy from like, no later than 1900s literature, who exists only to bravely suffer and love with his whole heart. He's snatched out of an era when kids needed morality tales about how to die politely of consumption with the least amount of fuss for their parents and 300 siblings.

How dare you fucking die selflessly. Humanity is at its Bithc This Isn't Fair stage. Throw a fit. Go walk into the sea out of protest.

-

Okay you're in Kansas I understand how that is an unrelastic option and I grew up spoiled by the immediate location of the sea should I ever need to walk into it.

-

This show has never made me cry before the title card before.

-

This is the Pippin and Gandalf scene from Return of the King with the whole Into the West thing that they wrote for a sick fan who died before the movie came out and literally Annie Lennox sings what would be Jack's THEME for this scene.

-

Sam is horrified that Jack didn't even live long enough for a LotR marathon to explain the reference that's making him bawl.

-

I LOVE that this scene with Dean n Cas is just about Dean being a wuss about watching his son die because that's so much worse than Jack having asked for a mercy kill or anything. And this all before the title card. Cas tearing Dean a new one about going in and watching your son die smiling beautifully like a little cherub who can't wait to find out what happens next.

-

Jack's gonna be dead before the title card, isn't he?

-

Oof.

-

Hey, Dean, one more reason to hate yourself :) :) :)

-

Also robbed Cas of watching him go.

-

But I think tbh they could have done this if Dean wasn't being a coward about watching Jack die that they would leave Sam to sit at this side in the last moment.

-

Ugh, my eyes are leaking too much to type. What the hell is all this wet stuff coming out of them.

-

I've never seen a TFW shot where Sam was the shortest but he is slumped over like someone cut all his strings.

-

"Your brother's in pain" AND WE'RE NOT? YOU'RE NOT? CAS ISN'T?

-

Dean stopping Cas going after Sam with just a catch of his shoulder... Ugh. The two of them are still connected through all this in a way where Cas and Dean are connected whether Dean's in the most obvious pain or Sam is.

-

Cas, pls be selfish and in the most obvious pain at some point this episode.

-

Oh please don't make me watch Dean telling his mom that Jack died

please

I beg you

-

They put a photo of Kelly next to Jack's bed D: Or has he always had that?

-

That's not even the photo that Cas had pinned to his board in 12x10 and yes I went and checked, I'm leaking tears too much to watch because Cas is standing over him and this is going to be the worst while Dean's answerphone message lays over the top.

I'm so not here to watch TFW mourn their son.

-

They had him for like a WEEK this SUCKS.

-

ALso I said "please don't make me watch" so they cut away to Cas mourning silently while Dean talks to Mary's answerphone because Meredith is an evil fairy who whimsically takes your wishes and twists them into even worse options.

-

*takes my glasses off and throws them aside angrily when Sam emerges carrying a duffel over his shoulder and wearing the fucking orange jacket he first met Jack in*

-

God, I don't even wear them for focus, just lack of headaches. Why was I bothering.

-

7x10 and this episode are probably going to be unholy companions in this show's canon

"She's come down with acute Tear Duct Blockage. The only option is head amputation or we make her cry, NOW" "Don't worry, I have just the thing."

-

Dean this answerphone message huuuurts

Also explains the Buckleming issue of not calling Mary, to just say, yeah, it escalated, rapidly.

-

Your brother is storming off and Cas is broken.

-

If I have to see Cas see a set of PB&J crusts and a glass of milk identical to what Dean saw in 9x10 I'm - well, I'm still here instead of walking off into the sea so my threats are starting to look a bit performative. BUT I'M THINKING IT.

-

Cas watches Sam go, while Dean is being dwarfed by the bunker and obfuscated by its maze of corridors.

-

*presses my hands over my eyeballs* STOP. STOP IT. GOD. You're not even sobbing or anything you're just lEAKING. This is so annoying! I'm gonna dehydrate and they'll find a shrivelled skellington here and I'll go with just a few quiet sniffs and a dumb smile on my face like fucking Jack did.

Now I'm just distraught about the first time ever in canon we see Cas drive, it's in his dumb blue car and Dean's broken and not up for driving even if Sam presumably hadn't stolen the car for his errand/driving until he finds the sea and walking off into it mission. All my myriad fantasies about Cas behind the wheel of the impala and Dean grinning at him like yeah that's my baby (which one is he talking about?), and nope we're getting Cas's little partymobile and Dean's mute expression of grief.

-

NEVER MIND THEY SHOWED ME SAM CURLED UP ON THE GROUND USING THE IMPALA AS A BELOVED FAMILY HEIRLOOM TO HUG AND I SOBBED OUT LOUD FUCK  YOU MEREDITH FUCK YOU

-

I need the tissues why were they not here in preparation for this episode

-

I need to avoid my mum all day on the ground of spoilers because my face is a walking spoiler

-

"TELL ME YOU DIDN'T  MAKE A DEAL" "wha- no, I'm trying to make a pyre"

Making a pyre doesn't usually involve curling up on the floor.

Cas is getting an accidental glimpse of 13x01's emotional landscape, not that anyone will tell him this was what it was like for Dean, that we now have Sam in the spot of. We're getting some mirror image missing moments, like we just saw Dean get the axe out but did see him begging God... in this one we see Sam go take it out on a tree.

-

Incidentally I re-read all of Terrible Coffee AU two days ago for Reasons and the scene where Sam is whaling on a tree while screaming into the sky is pretty much this. Which is fucking hilarious that 2 years ago I decided Sam taking out his feelings on the local trees was a Thing when he was depressed.

(I wrote that scene the day Eileen was murdered on the show and honestly at the time he was mostly just angry on canon!Sam's behalf and I figured I'd come up with plot reasons later.)

-

Oh, they weren't driving the party!mobile, they were driving something else. I'm not even gonna ask where they get these vehicles

-

Yeah I'm harping on Dabb vs cars because Cas is talking about Jack's story ending like this and certainty of death for angels and this is just... the worst.

-

the story line - Cas deciding how their stories go. Dean resisting the how it's supposed to be of Jack's death. TFW want to take the narrative into their own hands. We KNOW in this world deaths are stored in notebooks, potential ways to pass that you skate past until one claims you. They're free to write their own stories but the ending is always pre-written for them... It's just a matter of which one. But Cas especially... Jack was supposed to bring paradise, and maybe the emotional landscape between season 12 and 14 is a gulf of difference in their openness and bonds, largely facilitated by Jack's presence in the narrative and relentless open love for everyone who was nice to him and even those who weren't in Dean's case. He breezed through their lives, manic pixie dream girl'd them to emotional health, and mayfly'd out. But that's THEIR stories. That's not JACK's story. That's not the epic destiny something as cosmically powerful as him was due, and the potential he was shown to have... It abruptly gets into the territory of Dany having her whole Stallion That Mounts the World prophecy for the son she lost... I've not watched the TV show since it diverged so wildly I couldn't hack it any more, but the books with everyone wondering if, like, Jon Snow was this guy instead, etc, picking this that and the other guy... what if Dany's lost child WAS the only one it applied to and the prophecy just fizzled out? ASoIaF looms over Jack's narrative... He's literally been framed against an Iron Throne in the past, and his character arc for parts of season 13 was a sort of anti-Joffrey in many ways. And then in death, GRRM's unromantic look at fairytales and heroic narratives comes for him too, that maybe it doesn't always happen like the stories say...

... but of course, he also has LotR coding, and in THAT regard, Sam Gamgee has his good old speech about the heroes in the stories and how we relate to them and are inspired by them and become them. The stories that matter. And Jack's was supposed to be one of those. In a way, their lives have been so epic that Jack mostly having a personal impact rather than a cosmic one seems wrong to them. That he didn't become the great hero of his own story, but was a tragic hero who ran a dramatic but personal arc and burned out because his asshole father killed him and his asshole uncle presumably finished him off with an experiment in grace transfusion. At least if my dashboard is to be believed :P It's inconcievable to TFW, the "making it up as we go" people who tore up the script and threw away the pages, that they can't just make this happen or that Jack didn't serve some great purpose. Even men as weary of Destiny as they are, struggle. Just because that was their lives, so how could the son of all three of them not follow in all his fathers' footsteps?

-

"Jack being taken before his time... Being taken before *me*" Cas shut the fuck up.

But that is the speech from Theoden, and once again Sam is Gandalf, which is fucking hilarious that Sam's been Gandalf TWICE this episode.

Ever it's grown on the tombs of my forebears...

you have four bears???

-

God dammit that joke didn't stop me crying as they go knock their glasses together and hold Jack's lil 3 dads wake

-

3 Dads Wake is a great name for a whiskey

-

God, Cas is drinking.

-

CAS.

-

They need to give him like one bottle to every finger of whiskey they drink but dammit if they don't get Cas loaded.

-

Letting them talk privately about how aweomse Jack was and not letting us hear it is a crime

-

Listen you don't even know me if you didn't think as soon as the nougat appeared on screen I didn't hit pause and sob for a whole minute with my hands over my face

-

Officially worse than bobby and the goddamn licorice conversation

-

Cas laughing with caramel hanging out of his mouth is the worst thing the sho whas ever done and I'm suing for emotional damage

-

Imagine being one of the bitter stans who hates one or more of TFW or Jack right now watching this scene. God, are you even human. They're eating Jack's secret nougat stash they all pretended they didn't know he had.

-

I can't believe I'm now thinking that Lily showing up will probably be a lighthearted way to bring up the mood of the episode.

-

Cas is offficially wobbly! We have Cas tipsyness!!

-

Sam tapping out first. Oh no. Don't leave. Don't.

-

Fuck you Sam Winchester how dare you canonically be the most lightweight of TFW consistently for the entire show and need to go crash off the side of your bed and sleep on the floor while Dean n Cas are still drinking together.

-

Did Dean seriously outdrink Cas.

-

Well that's... something.

I am gonna cling to that like a rock in the churning sea I have walked out into.

-

Also I managed to calm myself down with walking around my room taking deep breaths so I could go downstairs pretending not to be a wreck, so I could get tea, and my mum made me finish the sudoku for her. I don't have the heart to show her this episode. She loves Jack more than anyone in this god damn fandom and maybe more than Cas does. Maybe I'll lie to her and say the show ended last episode and Jack was fine hahahahaaaa

-

OH FUCK I hit play and there was a single line of dialogue for the whole wake. Dean drunkenly slurring to Cas, I think, you know we did everything we could, right?

I'm...

*walks further out into the ocean*

-

"Here's to you Jack, wherever you are" I am not okay.

-

Oh fork you Meredith we did not need to see the boy in Heaven eating burgers.

-

Oh fork you Meredith we did not need to see the boy in Heaven eating burgers while on a case with all of his dads.

-

OH SON OF A BENCH THIS IS THE DODGE CITY CASE AKA 13x06 MEREDITH YOU DINK.

-

Oh dear, Heaven is broken. Who was the ashhole who was saying that Jack should die so that he can go to Heaven so he's well-placed to help deal with all this nonsense.

-

LOL Jack would be the sort of person who goes to Heaven and doesn't need more than a second of prompting to be  like oh wait I am dead and in Heaven, and just, like... Go open the door. Just pop his head out like cooee I wanna hang with my dads anyone here to replace the bulb in the sun so I can carry on hanging out here for eternity?

Like, seriously, I'm dead, this is when I am supposed to catch a break.

-

Let The Boy Say Fork.

-

Listen, secondary to his power to be adopted by everyone on sight, Jack is uncanny also with just walking into trouble.

-

And to try and be clam for a moment, this is Jack getting pulled back into the story, but not just by unfortunate happenstance, because he was the one with the sharpness, the cosmic awareness even on this level that Heaven just doesn't quiiiiite work for him in the way it's supposed to even if say it was at full power, that he is the one who voluntarily not just understands instantly that something is wrong, but then is fully snapped back to his old self, and chooses to open the door, and that is the moment of choosing to continue his story, at least for now.

It's like how the last time we saw Bobby chronologically was in Inside Man and Cas and Sam woke him from his repose and got the fighting spirit back into him enough to open his own door and rejoin the story for one last hurrah... And it was a choice there too, a moment of once more telling the natural order to screw itself, Bobby could step outside the proscribed ending of his narrative one last time.

Unless Jack finds him and is adopted on sight today.

-

Sam looks way too healthy.

Invigorated by having a Plan

-

Lils. Finally getting to see the Bunker filled with all her stolen research notes.

And no that wasn't canon before, but boy am I hoping she recognises her research amongst all the bunker's angel lore.

-

Men stealing fuckin everything

-

"We've never looked through Kevin's angel tablet translations"

HAVEN'T WE?

NO

WE HAVEN'T

THEY HAVE BEEN THERE

FIVE

FUCKING

YEARS

And every forking time something comes up where they might be useful I say, HEY WHAT ABOUT KEVIN'S ANGEL TABLET TRANSLATIONS?

and the show says

hey so we don't have the angel tablet but we do have the demon tablet

and I'm like I'm sure that won't have any dumb side effects that could be avoided by having the angel tablet translation just on hand in your archive

did Meredith hear me screeching

because I screeched very very loud after 13x14

13x13 sorry

that was Bucklemming handing her the wrong fucking tablet

-

this is bitter vindication but feels even better than her and Bobo remembering the grace extracting needle in 12x19

-

Glynn is a fucking gift.

-

On the other hand this episode now is pulling on 9x06 and 12x10 at once and that makes me feel woozy

I can't deal with a Glockeybo combo

-

Also waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Kevin's handwriting. I can't deal with that AND Bobby memories AND FUCKING NOUGAT DEATH

-

Which I mean I do feel instantly better about once he opened the door and let himself back into the story and I stopped crying at once and cheered up and Lily is indeed providing much needed relief, wild as that all sounds.

-

Lily trying to explain her soul magic to Sam and Dean, rubes who haven't done a single enochian calculation in their lives.

Wait, no, Sam has done one, in ... 12x19 ...

But yeah, a rube and a completely self-taught asshole who knows like one thing about it.

And she's like oh yeah just use his soul and they're like AAH WTF LILY and she's like er this is the most obvious thing in the world what is the problem here

-

where are my cas reaction shots

-

Jack wearing an eyepatch for the rest of the show would be adorable and hilarious

-

"it won't cost much... he'll never miss it" trust me his soul is enormous and boated with sweet nougat love, he can spare it, guys.

-

Dean being able to say "Jack's dead" one day later, when he couldn't say it about Cas practically until he was BACK

-

Nice trade. TECHNICALLY nothing dodgy about it at all, at least in the sense that aside from resurrection consent issues from Jack, once he's back the choice is still on him to choose to grow old and die as Lily has done, or even to stop using the magic to sustain himself and die again immediately if he is squicked out by it... Or it all comes from trading on his OWN soul power.

Definitely better than demon deals or having any favours looming over them etc

And with Heaven in the state it's in, honestly sending Lily there might be easier than they think if NO ONE IS LEFT TO RUN IT.

Er, imminent ghostpocalypse issues aside.

-

We're in ghostpocalypse territory as of a minute ago show time, btw.

-

Cas has quietly observed all this chatter and we get back to him when he says, "Don't you think Jack should decide for himself" so honestly Cas is right there with me, and I always like when me and Cas are the ones agreeing on a thing in the episode.

-

Obligatory reminder that Sam is more aware than most about soul stuff

*takes another piece of coal off the pile I was going to send Meredith for ruining christmas*

-

HEY, ANUBIS.

Don't tell him about what they did to Osiris

Unless that would amuse him

Wait never mind Meredith is literally throwing in amusing snark about 7x04 which I think when Adam Glass disowned that episode (despite how I actually think it's really good and he was too hard on it) he never expected anyone would ever want to throw in amused references about it in canon ever again.

-

"When God left - sorry, long story - " Lily is one of the few people who seems able to conceptually roll with the nonsense TFW deals in all day.

She should join the squad. Always room for a 100 year old badass with deep enochian lore knowledge.

-

I'm sorry has Jack crashed Kelly's heaven or is this a rando little girl. I immediately thought she was Kelly in the long shot and they substituted a lil girl for POV when we got closer and actually had to go back and look again and she was the little girl all along.

-

This also conceptually looks so much like Cas's eternal tuesday afternoon.. A rainy, flower-filled garden.

-

Roosevelt looks SO much like the doggie in 11x20 aside from anything else

-

IT IS KELLY

-

This is horrifying since they never ever got to meet ever until now and I'm suing Meredith

-

I mean I'm already suing her but I'm just adding this to the list of complaints. My laywers are working overtime on this episode.

-

FORK!! THEY GOT HER BACK FROM LEGENDS OF TOMORROW FOR A DAY!!!!

-

Can Kelly and Jack go on a rampage around Heaven to fix things?

-

Her hair is suspiciously darker from the back which I think is her Legends look from the gifs I've seen

-

Wait, Bobby had a forking dog called Rumsfeld, and Kelly has Roosevelt.

-

"Hi mom you're dead"

".......................................................... NOooOoOooooOOoo No no no baby no"

Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

-

Dean resisting the spell and complainging "gotta happen, no other way" is making me feel like the Heaven Drama is going to smack them right before they can get it all done and give them a LOT MORE to worry about than Jack but also give them a roundabout way to see him again and also, of course, mean Lily might be useful for an entirely other purpose while she's here...

-

Dean right now is rationalising this through the lens of that all their terrible deals have been terrible and that this is just one more step on the Winchester life and death merry-go-round, and of course that Jack is about to get the full family treatment he deserves. But that's the Winchester lens of looking at things that even when deaths are brutal and lives cut unfairly short, there's going to be a way to bring them back if they haven't finished their stories. John finished his, in 2x22 seeing Dean get the revenge he needed to be at peace, but everyone else...

Is it ethically right to put Jack on that merry-go-round when he smiled sweetly and died with as much enthusiasm as he gave pretty much everything in his life?

-

The table lamps are out in the bunker D: them being dark is so ominous

-

And Cas shows up like shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit something worse going on guys

-

They're so casual about just summoning gods into their front room these days

Of course they're doing it in the spot in front of the door with the war room behind in one direction... The opposite end of the library to where they opened the rift.

-

Sam picks his way through the wet paint but Dean stands right in the centre of this circle for SUMMONING THE GOD WHO DECIDES WHO LIVES AND DIES AND WHERE THEY GO to have this lil chat with Lil?

-

And now Dean steps out of it and corners her with the obvious question - what's wrong with your magic and why are you risking going to Hell to stop using it entirely?

-

I'm so sorry you have to look at more dead angels, Cas

I'm also so sorry they were killed by black slime because wow after season 7 that was a laugh and a half for you

-

... Can you swear in the hallways of Heaven?

-

DUMA LIVES

(probably "for now" though hopefully longer than that)

Ma'am are you aware you have a Nougat on the loose too

I'd love it if Cas is like hi what's happening also have you seen my son

-

This actress needs to come back for a 3rd time to follow Dean around in a crisis moment.

-

OH NO now Cas is coming to the heaven memory and seeing what Jack considered his best memory

-

YEAH. I knew Naomi would show up, I just didn't know when :D

(She wasn't in the credits as far as I could tell but I already sort of knew they were leaving people off? Or maybe I was thinking lol I bet Amanda Tapping is in this episode and they won't tell us... On the other hand she mAY have been in the credits but I was WEEPING MY EYES OUT so didn't clock her despite my efforts to hold myself together and see who was coming up on screen)

-

Naomi doesn't have the most dramatic entrance on the show but she sure is racking up points for good entrances one at a time each time she appears. She never just, like... toddles onto screen normally.

-

"Perhaps the angel side of him knew he was in Heaven" honestly the most tragic thing I was trying not to think about is that he knew the entire time but he was willing to play along and enjoy hanging with his dads for eternity despite that.

-

Oh man it's another dispute over who owns Jack. Is this kid never going to be allowed to just sit and eat burgers and nougat? (Hopefully not at the same time)

-

Also based on last episode where it seemed like the Empty was awakening but had Lucifer's eyes and we were all NOOO fork that!! is there some more complicated forked up aspect to what's going on or is it just itself and awake and coming for Jack?

-

I love how Naomi just casually knows how many people are in Heaven

-

"What's one nephilim boy against all that?" "But he's MY nephilim boy!!"

-

OH NO NAOMI

-

NOT LIKE THIIIIIS

-

We better get an answer on her state by the end of the episode because she's my fave villain bar Metatron on the entire show and devouring her in shadow is just... yikes.

-

"give it a sec" *POOF* Anubis is prompt, okay.

-

He probably honestly is somewhat slighted that they're 14 years into their career and he hasn't clapped eyes on them.

-

"Yeah, we've died." "A LOT."

-

I honestly, at this point, do not blame them for their lax attitude towards the permanence of death. They need a lot of counselling they're not getting and until they do they really are going to always be terrible at this.

-

A brief moment where Anubis is like, am I going to get Flirty Banter with Dean Winchester?? and he looks at him and Dean's eyes are all dead and "my son is dead" and Anubis sighs like welp not today oh well better luck next time, if I survive this...

-

Getting flirty banter with Dean is a sign of high honour and takes you to some very interesting places.

-

Into Dean if you stick with it like Crowley did

-

And Lily's been standing there this whole time like wow these boys suck up all the attention in the room and I kinda hate them

-

Oh I LOVE this abacus. Is this some nerdy ass research that meredith did to know better than most what to expect here? Even I haven't heard this one, though I haven't really revisited Egypt lore after the expected Egyptology phase as a kid...

Anyway the half white half black beads are super interesting in a wider show symbolism way.

-

Oh deeear, Lily.

-

Of course that instantly makes you fascinated about what would happen if TFW stuck their hands over it.

-

What a good line on the show's philosophy about making your own fate - it's not destiny or a choice from above or anything like that. Your individual actions get you sent to Heaven or Hell in the natural course of things and it's weighed in such a way all he can do is use his equipment to read which way you're going... Everything else is down to you. Free Will, write your own story.

Of course, if Lily did some huge sacrifice I bet she could change things.

-

CAS LAUGHED

ugh this episode should be banned.

-

If you hug Kelly I'm rioting.

-

Everyone who ever hugs Cas slaps their hands firmly on Misha's broad shoulders like it's law and digs in and I don't know if it's because Cas has this wonderful presence about him that even when you're around Misha acting him in the moment you get swept up in it, or you just want to hug Misha like that, but Cas hugs look like the most amazing hugs in the universe and everyone just GOES for it.

Also I am typing this nonsense because I literally used up my box of tissues earlier and the next option is stealing a roll of toilet paper. So I will snark and try and ward off the sobbing.

-

"I'm so sorry. I failed you." Kelly, who has spent about 5 minutes in Jack's presence and understands his nature even beyond her blind faith in him from before but now gets to see the evidence of it: "You didn't. You didn't."

Yes, please can more characters tell Cas that he did a good job even when things don't quite go to plan. Dean's drunken slurring about how they did the best they could, this...

Kelly tells Cas how wonderful Jack is like Cas doesn't know and Cas breaks up.

And you know what this looks like and I'm not going to survive typing this and can already feel my eyeballs filling up with water... 10x20 and Jimmy and Amelia talking about Claire at the end of the episode oh god I hate it take it away from me.

-

Oh good Cas telling Jack we need you alive to fix Heaven but just in a passive way where you not being dead means the Empty backs the fuck off rather than you having to DO anything

-

Ooops the Empty is here as Dumas. I suspect she's not surviving this episode but MAYBE Naomi survives.

-

I am saying with full wishful thinking after seeing her completely consumed by black goo

-

I do like the concept of "THERE ARE MAJOR STAKES TO RESURRECT THE BOY. BRING HIM BACK THIS INSTANT. LITERALLY SAVE THE UNIVERSE BY BRINGING THE NOUGAT SON BACK TO EARTH." because that makes it so much different from "hey bring me back and maybe accidentally unleash some terrible evil in the process but we'll deal with it later  because that's what we do"

-

"HE'S OUR KID" Sam snaps

I hate it, thanks

For the love of god appeal to  her more as a fellow parent.

-

Dean DIRECTLY EQUATES Jack and May

Hold me

-

Equating no soul to not being human in front of Sam aka our no soul test case. Owie. Another reminder of just how hard Dean took it in season 6 until he got Sam back, all that skin crawling feeling of being around him...

You know what? Jack reminds me of the sort of example nice ensoulled Sam stuff we saw in 6x12 when Jared was allowed to play over the top sweet and uncomplicted for a few scenes, just to be a total contrast to how he'd been acting thus far in the season. Of course, we saw him for like 3 scenes of Dean smiling in pure relief when Sam did Nice Things before it all got complicated again, and Jack's been a long-time character :P But Sam does have a sweet street that when it emerges in the rare times it can be uncomplicated, is I think the closest equivalent to where Jack's innocent sweetness is drawn from. He's the son of Sam's puppy dog eyes specifically.

But yeah I think Lily just needs to have this resistance and anger about it all to make it so much more of a flip if she were to decide to do the spell, so that it counts as an even gooder good deed to MAYBE flip her chances. By giving her a good work to do.

And hey maybe if she meets Jack for a minute she'll love him and then be changed by the experience and go out and do more good things etc etc.

-

DUMAS IS SO GOOD AT BEING CREEPY!!

-

Misha hammed the FORK out of being the Empty and now she has to live up to it and she IS.

-

CAS don't fight the Empty by trying to stab it, fight the Empty by humming this is the song that never ends.

-

*makes a disgruntled sad noise about being forced to see Jack laid out on a table in his cute lil PJs with his cute lil socks*

-

Wait, if Lily does this spell does this mean she's using up the last of her soul to do it and going to the Empty anyway?

-

ANGRY LIONESS KELLY COMING TO YELL AT THE EMPTY AND GIVE IT A PIECE OF HER MIND

I've just paused after her yelling "STOP" but whatever happens next, she leaped in when Cas was getting kicked around and that's BAD ASS.

-

Hitting Kelly is like... probably a rage button Jack didn't even know he had so I would like to see how that goes over, but we cut to them trying to resurrect him.

-

I forking love how this is 2 seasons in a row where the message seems to be that you live to spite nihilism and the bitter end of death.

-

D'aw even though Sam said they'd pray it was Dean who used prayer to reach out to Cas in Heaven to give him that heads up. Like, totally practical rather than the sort of prayer he's made before to Cas that was all emotional appeal, but, let's save our son, huh?

-

CAS NO DON'T SAY THAT

The Empty might also really want to think about that because it knows you forking suck to keep around so trading yourself for Jack is like... really? do I really want that? :P

-

"Not for years. EONS, MAYBE." Cas, bud. I love you. I want you to stay alive that long. Do you really forking think that with the life you lead you have eons left? I mean it's really heartening to hear you talk about yourself this way. But I have to ask.

-

The Empty telling Cas that it'll come for him when he finally lets himself be happy is forking hilarious. Cas hasn't been happy once in his life and he doesn't plan to start now. Eons, maybe.

Just like that, he's unlocked eternal, grumpy life. Take notes, Lily.

-

I mean on a practical level this is basically like, yeah, this is why Destiel isn't canon, because as soon as Cas allows himself to be happy, he's ALWAYS known he gets punished for it. In 4x20 he rebelled for Dean and was instantly dragged back by Naomi... This sense of another mission, never belonging, always being on the outside and not getting the emotional resolution he needs, and actively running from it at times or throwing himself in the way of danger to make Dean be happy without him... it's interesting honestly that the Empty is here as Duma and not Naomi as she's been the agent of hoiking him back from happiness enough times in canon... And that fear of losing everything as soon as you're happy? That's what first kept Dean from Jack and then as soon as he really truly fathered Jack, happened to him. Like, that's Team Free Will's entire life story, starting with Jess, to date, here with the Empty making this threat.

-

Duma survived!!

-

Cas... really could have just bought a few minutes to do the spell rather than given himself that burden >.>

But he's determined to make a more lasting sacrifice, one that ensures this won't happen again with Jack, that he can always die whenever he wants and go to Heaven and not be bothered here.

-

Oops Jack's angry now. Now he's seen a dad sacrifice for him, he's suddenly got a case of the Winchester Angsts. Dean in season 2, for starters. Not a good place to be D: Dean in season 2 is proportionately his worst season.

-

I'm not crying because I think I already died earlier in the episode, but that was... truly awful... to watch Cas tell Jack he's at peace with it and he loves him and everyone loves him and then Kelly butts in like I LOVE YOU TOO and mom him a bit with straightening his jacket and hugging him and... UGH.

-

Lily has either the start of a heart attack or loses her soul entirely in the background and wanders into a corner to die? Er.

-

OH HEY WE ALSO MANAGED TO GET THE WORST DEAN HUG SINCE 2x22 WHEN HE GRABS JACK. NEVER SEEN HIM HUG LIKE THAT BEFORE, DON'T WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN THANKS

-

Nope, she just dieded.

Let's hope she went to heaven and we get a super corny young Lily surprise Alicia Witt return moment at the end since this episode is just throwing everything at it.

-

It's Anubis' office!!!

Wow, that's a noisy annoying place to work

Still, I LOVE these visualisations of where the cosmic forces of the universe work

-

I called it super corny but I'm DYING to see Lily's fate change.

-

"Say hello to your daughter for me" DOn't make me cry about Lily please I beg you I am run dry

-

OH THANK GOD NAOMI SURVIVED. Hooooooraaaaay!!!!!!! Oh this is a wonderful ending to a perfect episode to not have to deal with her having being consumed and left dead off-screen somewhere.

-

LOL that slam as he realises what's up and even though she obviously can do what she wants, he's still protectively closing Kelly's door to put a barrier between her and Naomi.

-

"I'm here to thank you"

Oldest trope in the book, but I love when they look over their shoulder to see if "you" is someone else, and Cas, unflappable Cas, in Naomi's presence, still checks the infinite empty corridor.

-

*double checks*

"...... you're welcome?"

Wheee unlocked new plot for altrusim!

-

Ahahaaaahaaaaaaaaa Jack wrapped in a fluffy grey robe. Listen. I am

not

okay.

Jack with his burger and Dean's dead guy robe, spitefully living...

-

I bet Dean made the burger

-

WHY did I type that when I knew how likely it was to make my eyes burn.

-

I did not cry at the last scene of them all at the table so I am going to eat extra cookies at lunch as a reward.

And Jack and Cas sharing a little glance, knowing what Cas did. Father and Son's first dire family secret! :')

-

And gently roll the camera away to credits to leave them to their happy little scene.

-

Presumably with a slow fade so you can fumble for some more tissues.

Gyah.

[galaxystiel]

100 Ways To Say ‘I Love You’ #90

“You can tell me anything.”

Summary: Five times Castiel bares his scars to Dean, and one time Dean returns the favour. 9.8k

Many thanks to @envydean and @jimminovak for helping me talk through this and giving me ideas. This originally went in a completely different direction.

1.

“Great,” Officer Dean Winchester muttered as it began to rain. “This is all your fault, Benny, you know that right?”

“How’d you figure that one, brother? I ain’t exactly in charge of the weather. If I was, I’d make damn sure I’d be wealthier than I am.” His partner looked affronted.

“Oh yeah, don’t give me that ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ crap. You were all like ‘I miss Louisiana, Kansas is too dry for these old Bayou bones, I need a bit of rainfall every now and again.”

Benny folded his arms, pursing his lips at the terrible impression of his accent. “And I stand by that assessment but that don’t mean I wanted to chill my ‘Bayou bones’ to the core while I’m on duty. If anythin’ this is your fault, Mr. I-Don’t-Want-To-Leave-My-Precious-Car-On-The-Street-So-Let’s-Walk-From-Here. Now we have to trek back to the damn car in torrential downpour.”

Dean rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. He did pick up the pace though, not wanting to be caught in the rain any longer than he had to. Rounding the corner, his gaze fell on a dark shape huddled up against one of the buildings. He caught Benny’s eyes and gestured with a nod of his head.

“I’m gonna move him on, he can’t stay out here in this. He’s not even under shelter.”

Benny murmured his agreement, sympathy evident in his tone. He hung back as Dean approached the bundle of clothes, clicking on his torch.

“Sir? You can’t stay out here. C’mon, I’ll buy you a coffee and we’ll find you a shelter for tonight.”

No response. Dean’s gaze sharpened as the homeless man didn’t even acknowledge his words. He edged closer, squinting through the heavy rainfall to the unresponsive man and then shrugging back at his partner.

“Sir? Can you hear me? Is everything okay?”

Dean crouched, the light illuminating startling blue eyes that were staring flatly at the wall, tears mingling with raindrops. Against his common sense, Dean felt his heart soften for the poor soul that had found himself in such an awful position. When he’d grown up, Dean had Sam and the Impala. He’d never been truly homeless and he’d never been so alone that he’d had nobody to turn to.

It was empathy that overpowered his common sense as he reached out, grasping the man on the shoulder.

The reaction was instant and violent, and the man lashed out. Dean saw a glint of silver in the light of his torch followed by a stinging sensation in his arm.

“Fuck,” he hissed, stepping back and going for his gun. “Knife!”

Benny charged forward, his own weapon drawn, but he followed Dean’s next command not to shoot.

Before Dean could give any further commands, clarity returned to the blue eyes. He looked at the knife and at the guns and then tossed it aside quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I didn’t mean to. I… I’m sorry.”

Benny scoffed. “Sure you didn’t. Get on your knees with your hands behind your head and don’t even twitch. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” The man whispered, flinching as the handcuffs circled his wrists. “My pack…”

“I got him.” Dean assured Benny. “Search the pack. Check for contraband.”

Benny went through the pack. There was nothing of interest, no drugs or contraband. Just a few hastily packed items of clothing and a wallet. He plucked the ID from the wallet, looking at it for a moment.

“Castiel Novak. That you?”

The homeless man nodded. “Yes, that’s me.”

“This your address?”

Dean noted the immediate tension wracked through Castiel’s body and the way his jaw clenched as he shook his head. He immediately wanted to know more about who lived in that house now. “No. I don’t have an address.” He closed his mouth and refused to say anything else, refused to answer any more questions and stood stiffly through a pat down. He didn’t speak again until he was bundled into the back seat of the car.

“I really am sorry. I know that doesn’t change anything. I never meant to hurt you. I… I wasn’t even aware you were there until you touched me.”

“You don’t like to be touched?”

“No,” Castiel replied flatly. “Not any more.”

Dean let Benny drive them back to the precinct, while he cleaned out the wound on his arm, treating and dressing the wound as carefully as he could. It was shallow, not more than a scratch really. Even so, he couldn’t stop his gaze from flickering to the back seat as he kept a close eye on Castiel.

Castiel was handed off to custody once they got back to the precinct, and Dean and Benny both went to shower and change into clean clothes. Plain clothes, since they’d finished their beat and were now officially off-duty. Dean brushed off any objections Benny raised about his arm and made for his desk and soon as he was able, clutching an evidence bag containing Castiel’s ID as he looked up the address.

He read through the page silently, barely noticing when Benny dropped into the opposite chair that served as his own desk.

“It’s knockin’ off time. You know, the time I go home to my beautiful wife and you go to the hospital.” Benny told him pointedly. “Novak will spend a night in the cells and he’ll be processed in the morning. You can give your statement tomorrow.”

“I’m not pressing charges,” Dean mumbled. “He was clearly frightened out of his mind. Did you hear how much he kept apologising?”

Benny folded his arms and glared. “Well shit, that makes it all better. I must have missed the part of the academy where they taught us an apology negates a crime. I can’t even believe I’m hearing this. He had a knife, Dean. A knife! Nobody who carries a blade like that is carrying it for a good reason.”

“I don’t agree. Look at this,” Dean turned his monitor around to show Benny the screen. “I searched for the address on his driver’s licence. Seventeen times the neighbours have called 911 for suspected domestic abuse. And that’s just in the last six months. There are dozens more. The guy was freaking the hell out because he thought this asshole boyfriend or whatever was coming after him. Read it, and then come join me in the interview room.”

He paused to get two cups of coffee from the machine, walking into the interview room. There was a spark of recognition in Castiel’s eyes before he averted his gaze.

“I feel like this is a conflict of interest.”

“It would be if I were pressing charges,” Dean replied conversationally, setting the coffees down. “That one has milk, that one has sugar. I’ll take whichever you don’t.”

Castiel hesitated for a moment and then reached for the one with sugar. “Thank you.” As his hands grasped the paper cup, Dean noticed slivers of silver around his fingers.

“How’d you get those scars?”

Pausing, Castiel spent a moment lightly sweeping his thumb over one of the larger scars and then he shrugged. “I used to be a chef. Knives are sharp. It happens.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “You were a chef? Of what, your own restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to it?”

“Nothing. It’s still there.”

Dean leaned back against the chair with a sigh. It was like getting blood from a stone. “This will go a lot smoother if you just answer my questions. I’m not trying to trick you, I want to understand your circumstances before you got to where you are now.”

Castiel fixed him with a long gaze and then eventually nodded. “Very well. I handed over the reins to my sous chef indefinitely.”

“What prompted you to make that choice? It seems like something you enjoyed, you’re still touching the scars on your fingers.”

Hands stilling at being caught out, Castiel took a moment to reply. “So I could spend more time with my partner.”

“And was that your choice?”

The tension was back. Castiel’s hands clenched into fists and he struggled to fight back a reply to that. It took a moment for him to relax and his hands to unfurl. Eventually he reached for the coffee again to give his hands something to do, taking a sip and cradling the cup.

“I suppose that depends on how you look at it,” Castiel replied eventually, his voice tight. “I made the decision, but is it really a choice when it’s the only option? You must be an excellent detective, to have me all figured out so quickly.”

Ah. Dean shook his head, trying to placate the angering man in front of him. “Not at all. Like I said, I’m trying to understand your situation. Context is everything.”

“You can try to make sense of my situation all you like, Officer, but not everything fits neatly into a box.”

It was possible that Castiel would have gotten more hostile at the line of questioning, but the door opened and Benny stepped inside, interrupting anything either of them might have said. He settled down across from Castiel clutching his own cup of coffee, eyeing him suspiciously.

“You were pretty out of it when it when we found you. Checked out mentally, almost. You on any medication? Prescription or otherwise.”

“No.”

“But you are living on the streets.”

“Yes.”

“Nowhere else to go? Nobody you can turn to?”

“No.”

“Everyone has someone.”

Castiel hesitated. “Gabriel. He’s the sous chef at my restaurant. He would let me stay with him if I asked but… I can’t. It’s not a matter of pride, it’s a matter of my safety. And his.”

Benny’s eyes lost the last of their suspicion at Castiel’s words and he gave a brief nod towards Dean. “Get yourself home, brother. I’ll take care of this.” He turned to Castiel, who was clutching at his coffee cup as if it might be taken away from him. “You’re free to go.”

“Just like that?”

“You can collect your belongings from the front, minus the knife. I’ll make sure you get some bus fare and the address of a shelter somewhere in town.”

Dean lingered in the doorway of the interview room, wanting to say something. It didn’t feel right to leave it like this. Castiel was in need of help, and they were just going to send him back onto the streets. Shelter’s filled up on a first come first serve basis and it was already late. But Castiel was already on his feet, drinking the last of his coffee and Dean ducked out of the way, letting him through.

He watched Benny lead him to the custody reception and felt a sense of conflict within himself. This didn’t feel like doing his duty at all. This felt like failure.

Dean sighed and trudged back to the locker room to collect the rest of his belongings. A couple of beers and he’d feel better.

[Read the rest on AO3]

[Buy me a coffee?]

[Masterpost]