#the only thing we have as fact is that cas loves Dean infinitely in some way or another and Dean.. well. meh.

[musclesandhammering]

Glad somebody else finally said it 😭

Yall ever argued with a heller about dean being canonically straight, and they Say some shit like

"Cas confessed he was in iove with dean"

It's like, Okay?? And?? That proves nothing about dean

[casdeans-pie]

Okay so I have this post-finale fix-it fic that lives in my head rent free and I hope to one day write it but basically

(Also I'm scribbling over the bits of canon I don't want and using the bits I do)

Jack decides that a new batch of angels can fight the war against newly rising evil supernatural creatures, instead of humans, because he's sad at seeing how hunting messes up their lives.

These new angels will be made using the souls of once-humans in heaven, given the chance to become lesser-powered angels and go down to earth to protect humans. But as the new angels are made with souls, they'll have the ability to feel and won't be as powerful as the purely grace-powered ones from before.

They'll be able to walk on earth in vessels created in the image of their previous bodies - as they were when they died.

They won't have to eat or sleep, and they can heal themselves and each other.

But the new angels will not just be soldiers fighting the war against newly emerging evil, they will be protectors and guardians - they will have the capacity for empathy and love and kindness.

Jack decides the people who will be given the chance to become the new angels are hunters who died too soon, or are unhappy with the unchanging, never ending peace in heaven.

Congratulations Dean! You're both of those!

Jack proposes the offer to Dean - be infused with grace enough to be one of these new angels and he can walk on earth again to hunt things and save people. Whilst also being able to come back to heaven to visit Sam (who Jack will leave alone and not ask) and the rest of the people he loves in heaven.

Dean considers the offer for a while, because while he is unfulfilled with his life in heaven - he drives around, he visits Bobby, he talks with Sam, he drives around some more, he drinks beer that isn't real, he visits his mom, and he tries not to dwell on his mistakes (of which there are many and heaven has infinite time to find them floating around his head)

So in the end he agrees.

(Sam thinks it's a bad idea)

Dean still hasn't spoken to Cas since coming to heaven, and wonders what his opinion would be on it...

So Jack tells Dean that his vessel will be made with the blueprint they already have, by someone who's already got the experience. And Dean's only got time to be like, Cas? before his vision whites out

And BAM! Then we get Dean, deposited back on earth into a familiar barn, looking exactly as he did when he crawled out of his grave many years ago, and Cas, who Jack gave a vessel to, looking exactly as he did when they first met.

And Cas just says, "hello, Dean."

And now that Dean is an angel, though a lower powered one, he needs help to control his powers, and he has to learn how to fly (ofc he has wings now) and how to shift between earth and heaven.

Cas is obviously his teacher

Dean has an angel blade, but the ones from the new angels are shorter. Like teeny tiny angelic murder daggers

They become a demon hunting, people saving, duo. And Dean has to navigate his feelings and Cas has to navigate his feelings but they're both very emotionally constipated and they dance around the fact that they are just, stupidly in love with each other at all times.

It's especially difficult for Dean when Cas has to get handsy to teach him how to use his powers.

The other new angels are young hunters (Jo!) or older hunters (Ellen!)

And Dean thrives in this new life.

There's the potential for angel power shenanigans - sometimes Cas will gently touch Dean's shoulder like he used to, but now whatever light bulb is nearby will pop in response to how Dean feels about it. (The first time they kiss the city they're in has a blackout.)

They heal each other when they're injured on a hunt, but the intricacies of touching each other for healing is full of so much sexual tension you could cut it with a knife.

And yeah. This is basically because I've seen a lot of fics argue over Endgame Angel!Cas vs Endgame Human!Cas and I was like, okay BUT how about Endgame Angel!Dean ????

And also we get the season 4 looking Cas and Dean destiel content we deserved

[steveyockey]

do you think that -- if they WERE planning to do gay angel press initially -- part of the reason they didn't might have been the (reactionary) bury your gays backlash from fans and non-fans? in which case. twitter rly does ruin everything. :/

I’m not tied to this but here’s a hypothetical to work through that at least provides a theory on the lack of gay angel press (probably not very different from any other theory on this website but just writing it out for continuity),

okay. pre-pandemic. the arc of the final few episodes seems to have been set and 15.18 was the last piece, pending jensen’s approval. roadhouse heaven ending was a go — presumably featuring a cas cameo among other various and sundry friends. approving 15.18 introduces a problem by way of the fact that cas has just confessed his undying love for dean and there’s an expected response. but it’s fine! you don’t actually need that, you’ve been baiting fans for a decade, you can work your magic one more time with a lil wink and nudge and never have to deal with that again. ambiguous “to each his own” ending, you talk up the gay angel on one side and the bronly-ness of the last hunt on the other; everyone walks away happy. you have successfully threaded the needle of finishing off a twelve year queerbait without “caving to the fans,” high fives all around.

15.18 gets filmed. the angel is gay gay. the footage is. we don’t know what the footage looks like. there could be anything. maybe there’s a kiss with tongue. ends up not really mattering because the pandemic happens and they have to stop shooting and stop airing. no idea how much changes in 15.19 (clearly SOME stuff considering we know the folks who got chuck snapped in the silo were supposed to be shown back in the flesh and that got cut). 15.20 has to change — so roadhouse heaven becomes three person heaven (plus the cast and crew, who were already on set so no, this is not proof they could have brought a crowd of actors anyway, it’s just. weird. I don’t like this decision. strikes me as authoritative like WE told the story not YOU. anyway). putting cas in three person heaven makes winking and nudging a lot harder to do and would make the absence of an actual substantive response to the confession uhhhh very obvious. so you have to cut cas. and then maybe you have to cut other references to cas in 15.19, maybe you cut some emotionality from dean’s side in 15.18, maybe you straight up insert the moment in 15.20 where dean tells sam to stop being an eeyore about cas’s death! we don’t know how much was changed, but there was at least the opportunity at this point to dull dean’s response to the whole thing so the absence of cas in heaven is more palatable. it’s the bronly ending, but you already gave the audience the gay angel. and the gay angel is alive and building heaven with his son! no more cashing in on the queerbait but still cashing in on canon gay.

it’s november 5th. 15.18 airs. it trends higher than the biggest election “of our lives.” holy shit! gay angel! but of course the issue is the people responding aren’t the people who have been watching the show. they don’t have context for what’s going on and “turbohell” catches on. fuck. did you kill the gay angel? of course not, he’s in heaven with his son! lisa berry can post her goodbye instagram to her character because obviously billie’s dead, she’s the villain. she’s not expected to come back. but cas is... cas is different. and he’s not dead and you won’t be taking any questions on this until we get to the end, when everyone can settle down. so you have your actors gush about the episode, you leave everyone on pins and needles so they’ll come back for two more, and then! well. 15.20. cas is “alive” technically. dean is dead, as you always planned. some people are happy, some people are middling, and some people are fucking pissed at you because apparently by not outright killing off the gay angel you promised them the gay angel was coming back. any clarification you would offer here would unspool your entire plan — gay angel on one side, brothers on the other. erasing cas isn’t the same as killing him, but you can’t say that (though misha basically did in response to the rogue translator shenanigans). killing dean wasn’t even supposed to be about cas, but now everything is about cas. you took him out of the story completely and he’s still managed to take over. and all you can say is, well, it’s always been a story about brothers.

this obviously doesn’t account for everything, such as what the fuck was uriel’s actor doing? why the fuck did the show actually give us the instructions for how to get someone out of the empty and not do it? and there’s an infinite number of things that could have happened that I would simply never guess not knowing specific onset dynamics and money decisions. whatever happened that caused this clusterfuck really does suck for everyone in that writers room who was on team gay angel because, as I have said in the past, 15.18 only works due to at least four years, if not seven or more, of consciously writing the angel as gay. I hope bobo and yockey and even misha feel personal satisfaction at a job well done, but god if a single fucking interview could at least let us indulge in the victory with them. anyway, all of this is to say, yes I do think the bury-your-gays of it all definitely plays into it (and I would say, again, linking this to it chapter 2, it’s significant muschietti and co decided to make richie gay over eddie; people who haven’t read the book might not know that eddie like. literally drinks mineral water. in the 80s. he wears gucci loafers. he marries a carbon copy of his mother. stephen king would never admit to writing a gay man but that was a gay man. but eddie dies! eddie always dies. so they had some good sense in giving the gay story to the one who lives and leaving the dead one holding all the coding). and I definitely think randos on twitter making fun of the confession did not help matters. but I also think the decision to pull press cannot be extricated from the rubble of the last two episodes and everything they promised but never delivered. literally a single second of cas in the finale would have been their golden ticket! that’s far more than what jj did for star wars! but they got played at their own game by, of all things, an international pandemic. somehow a very supernatural ending after all.

[shirtlesssammy]

4x02: Are You There God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester

Then:

Dean Winchester is saved

Now:

Olivia, a hunter, wakes to cold air and flickering lights. She runs for her shotgun just as Bobby leaves a message on her answering machine. 

Her EMF is going nuts as she patrols her house. Suddenly ghosts that she recognizes give her the one two punch and she’s a goner.

At Bobby’s, Dean is vehemently denying that he was “groped by an angel.” Bobby’s got lots of lore on angels, though. It seems they’re the only thing that could pull a human soul from Hell. 

Sam thinks it’s a good thing that Dean was saved “by one of the good guys.” And Dean wonders if there is a God. BABIES. Dean’s having a hard time believing there’s a god out there that personally believes in him. Oh, buddy, he cares just a little too much, I’d say. Dean’s self-loathing is off the charts though. And this is getting way ahead of myself here, but even though Chuck cares in the sense that Dean is a fun little puppet for him, it’s Cas that really cared all along. He believed in Dean so much, he gave up everything for this man. BIG SIGH. 

Dean demands pie before digging into the angel lore.

Sam runs off to forget get the pie, when he sees Ruby lurking. She wants to know if the angel stuff is real. Ruby’s scared for her demon life and takes off.

Sam gets back to Bobby’s in time for all three of them to take off to investigate why Olivia isn’t answering Bobby’s calls. Also, he forgot the pie.

They find Olivia disemboweled on her bedroom floor. And Bobby can’t get a hold of any nearby hunters. They check them out to find everyone dead. 

They need to get back to Bobby’s to regroup.

Sam’s getting gas for the Impala while Dean sleeps. He makes a pitstop in the gas station restroom. The room suddenly gets cold and Victor Henrickson appears!

He blames Sam for his death. He starts to attack Sam but Dean comes in with a save and a shotgun.

Bobby meanwhile is haunted by a couple giggling raggedy twin girls. Fun! 

Sam and Dean race back to Bobby’s. They can’t get a hold of him so they enter his house with shotguns ready. The boys separate and while Dean checks out the upstairs, Sam heads outside. 

Dean runs into the ghost of the woman who was once Meg Masters. 

She blames Dean for her possession...and Dean hates himself enough to actually believe it all. It wasn’t your fault, dude. Also, as much as they’ve learned about demon possession and all, if they would have met Meg at any point in the future, they would have just stabbed her with Ruby’s knife and she’d be dead anyway. Idk, saving people is good in theory, but hard in practice for these guys. I also know this is a manipulation. “Do you know what it’s like to be ridden for a month by pure evil?” HE DOES! Leave him alone! 

Meanwhile, Sam’s trying to find Bobby outside. He’s currently being held down by a couple scary ghost twins. 

Ghost of Meg continues to taunt Dean, and pins her sister’s suicide on him as well. MEG. NO.

Outside, Sam finds Bobby trapped in an old scrap car. He helps break him out and together they swing iron through the ghost girls. 

Dean drags himself away from Meg, and aims his gun at the iron chandelier up above. DAMN BOBBY that’s some fancy light fixture work! The chandelier smokes Meg out...for now. 

Back in Bobby’s living room, they realize that all the ghosts had a brand on their hands. Bobby hauls out the lore and leads the Winchesters down to...dun dun DUN...his safe room. 

We get the grand tour because this is the FIRST TIME WE’VE SEEN IT. This safe room has everything! Iron! Salt! Devil’s traps! Lore! Racy posters! Booze! Weapons! The vanished hopes and dreams of Dean Winchester! A cot complete with restraints! The Winchesters are impressed. 

Later, Dean breaks into a theological monologue while making salt bullets. My sweet sunshine! How dare you speak my love language! “If [God] doesn't exist...fine. Bad crap happens to good people. That's how it is. There's no rhyme or reason - just random, horrible, evil. I get it, okay? I can roll with that. But if he is out there, what's wrong with him? Where the hell is he while all these decent people are getting torn to shreds? How does he live with himself? You know, why doesn't he help?” (Because, sweetie, freedom is a length of rope and God LITERALLY wants you to hang yourself with it.)

Bobby finds the brand - it’s the “mark of the witness.” They’re ghosts forced to rise and destroy people. In fact, the Rising of the Witnesses is part of an ancient prophecy. A prophecy of...DOOM. It’s a sign of the apocalypse. Dean suggests coping with a series of wish-fulfillment trips including: Grand Canyon, Star Trek Experience, and the Bunny Ranch. Somebody please write me that fic. Instead of Dean’s plan, Bobby suggests running an ancient ritual to shut down the witnesses. To do so, they first have to race out of the panic room to gather ingredients before the ghosts have a chance to yank their insides outside. 

Ronald from the bank heist greets them at the stairs. Bobby blasts away Dean’s guilt ghost for him, and we cut to a montage of spell preparation. The three of them split up to fetch supplies. Ghosts appear to torment them. 

Meg appears to Sam, only she KNOWS more than she should. She knows about Sam’s fraternization with Ruby. 

In the kitchen, Victor appears to Dean. He reveals that after the Winchesters left, Lilith gruesomely tortured those left in the station for almost an hour before blowing up the place. While Dean absorbs this fun fact, Victor makes his move, plunging his hand into Dean’s chest.

Sam saves Dean just in time with a well-aimed salt round. They start the ritual, Bobby’s living room teeming with ghosts. Bobby chants while the Winchesters play shotgun whack-a-mole with the ghosts. Meg jabs a hand into Bobby’s chest. Bobby drops the bowl and Dean dives for it like it’s a football, then tosses the spell into the fire to finish the job. 

That night, Dean wakes from his slumber.

Castiel stands waiting for him (watching him sleep??) in the kitchen. He congratulates Dean on their triumph over the witnesses, and announces that he has already started doodling Mister Castiel Winchester in his notebooks! 

Dean feels a little raw about nearly dying (again) and wonders why angels are total dicks. “Read the bible,” Cas advises. “Angels are warriors of God.” Oh, and also? He’s not here to PERCH ON DEAN’S SHOULDER. Oh honey sweetie baby. 

Dean tries to read Cas the riot act and rails against God’s shitty parenting. 

Cas: The lord works…

Dean: If you say "mysterious ways" so help me, I will kick your ass

Cas warns Dean that big...no, cosmic things are afoot.

The Rising of the Witnesses is one of sixty-six seals that Lilith is busily unlocking. Each seal is a lock holding Lucifer in his cage. Dean has trouble believing that Lucifer is even REAL. Sassy Cas smiles. “Three days ago you thought there was no such thing as me.” 

Cas tells Dean that Heaven isn’t infinite. Angels have died in the battle so far, and more may be at risk. (Excuse me while I weep for the next twelve seasons. There have been 0 days since the last angel mishap.)

“You think the armies of Heaven should just follow you around?” Cas asks, telegraphing his series story arc. “You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in.” Cas flaps out.

Dean wakes up for realsies. WAS IT ALL A DREAM? He asks Sam if he believes in the Devil…

You Should Show Me Some Quotes:

All I know is I was not groped by an angel

If there is a God out there, why would he give a crap about me?

When have I ever forgotten the pie?

Where’s the pie?

I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Fluffy wings, halos -- you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks

 Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

[according-to-the-laura]

StackedNatural Day 14: 8x01

StackedNatural Masterpost: [x]

October 3, 2021

8x01: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Written by: Jeremy Carver

Directed by: Robert Singer

Original air date: October 3, 2012

Plot Synopsis:

Dean returns from Purgatory, one year after the fight with the Leviathans. After reuniting with Sam, they find out that Kevin escaped Crowley with another Word of God that may hold the key to closing the gates of Hell forever.

Features:

Benny is finally here!, Purgatory flashbacks, Sam’s first blurry uninteresting love interest, Kevin my beloved, the demon tablet, home alone style demon traps.

My Thoughts:

Okay I’m going to start with the things I do like because overall, gang, I am not a fan of this episode. Okay good things: Dean looks hot in purgatory and super pretty fresh out of purgatory. The cold open with Dean framed as something monstrous (and then again in Purgatory when he’s hunting vampires and looking for Cas). Benny and the chemistry between him and Dean. Dean’s purgatory knife. Kevin Tran whom I would die for. The beginnings of the gay purgatory shit, which is my main memory of this entire season. Some (accidental?) foreshadowing of the Mark of Cain with the placement of Benny’s soul in Dean’s arm (my notes from this part just say “releasing the inner monster etc etc). Also I think the title card for this season is cool.

I was watching with @meg3point0 and she pointed out that they gave Dean worse PTSD from one year in Purgatory than he got from 40 years in Hell. She also thinks that Mark of Cain Dean should have tried to go back to Purgatory and that would have been dope.

It is so insane trying to watch the Amelia storyline because even if you ignore the fact that Sam’s flashbacks are (deliberately or not) framed to seem unreliable and it would have made infinitely more sense for her to be a monster or a hallucination or something, she’s also just like. A Bad Vet. Why on God’s green Earth would you force the man who almost killed this dog and does not have the capacity to care for it to take it. Take it to a fucking shelter. This isn’t how pet adoption is supposed to work, Amelia. I do find it incredibly funny that the writers were too lazy to write a well-rounded woman and just decided to steal from Teen Wolf instead and call that a meet-cute.

More proof that Supernatural doesn’t know how to write women in the scene with Channing and her roommate. I know Channing was possessed but there is no excuse for the roommate’s whole deal.

Sam is so out of character in this episode. He’s always been framed as the more empathetic brother who cares more about saving people than hunting things and he didn’t even try to pass off his old phones to another hunter or something? BS. But every season opener needs a betrayal for The Drama™, so it had to happen.

Also, the pacing in this episode is whack. Felt like a mid-season one instead of an opener.

Notable/Kickass Lines:

“He was our responsibility. And you couldn't answer the damn phone.”

“Where’s the angel?”

“People will always die, Dean. Or maybe another hunter took care of it. I don't know, but the point is, for the first time, I realized that it wasn't only up to me to stop it.”

“It was bloody. Messy. 31 flavors of bottom-dwelling nasties. Hell, most days felt like 360-degree combat. But there was something about being there. It felt pure.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 5

IMdB rating: 8.3

In Conclusion: Please join me in my Siren-Amelia Truthing zone.

<< Previous Day | Next Day >>

[thebloggerbloggerfun]

Ko-Fi commision prompt: You live here?

Thanks @whelvenwings even though I specifically told you not to 

“One of the most amazing things about our universe isn’t how much we can see, but how much we can’t see.”

Castiel adjusted his lanyard and clicked his small remote so that the audience was gazing up at hundreds of swirling galaxies as the projection moved on the ceiling above them. 

“We’ve talked about the endless planets and stars and solar systems that exist out in the vast confines of space, but what most people don’t know is that ninety-six percent of our universe is made up of things that we either can’t see or easily comprehend.”

“Another fun fact,” Dean interrupted, and Castiel braced himself, “is that ninety-five percent of that is just scientists trying to wrap their brains around how handsome I am.”  

The audience beneath them tittered, though Castiel assumed it was mostly out of politeness. 

“These substances,” Castiel soldiered on, “are called dark matter or dark energy. We know these things exist because of gravitational influences, we just can’t see them.”

“We can see how handsome I am, though.”

“I’ve only heard rumors,” Castiel said, clicking his remote again. “Far, distant rumors, and none with any proper sources, I’m afraid.”  

Castiel let a small smile escape his facade as he saw Dean clutch his chest in mock-affront out of the corner of his eye. 

“Oh, hey, Cas - did you see the news article the other day about the claustrophobic astronaut?”

Castiel frowned and looked over at him in confusion. Dean went off-script all of the time to make jokes, but an actual initiated space discussion was new. 

“I didn’t. Are they alright?”

Castiel saw Dean’s thrilled expression much too late. 

“Yeah. They just needed some space.” 

The crowd below them laughed loudly and Castiel made sure his microphone picked up his long sigh. 

“Despite everything that we can’t see or explain, there’s a lot that we can still marvel over -” Castiel rushed on before Dean could interrupt again “- yes, like Dean’s excessively blinding handsomeness that we are all blessed to gaze upon.” 

This time, Castiel got a good laugh from their audience.

“Aw, Cas. Tell me how you really feel.” 

Castiel was suddenly grateful for just how dark the room was as he blushed and cleared his throat. 

“One of my favorite things to think about, is that despite how infinitely massive our universe is -” Castiel clicked his remote as the projections on the ceilings took them through a journey of the incredible galaxies and stars that existed, going from unimaginably huge, to things that were smaller, and smaller, until Earth hovered in front of them “- you live here.”

The Earth rotated serenely. 

“Millions of years of the universe creating and destroying and evolving all combined to bring you to our little planet for you to live here, right now. We all live here, and I think that’s truly incredible.”

A moment of silence passed, and Castiel let it hang as he smiled. 

“Well, we live here, but I’m pretty sure Cas is from Mars.” 

“What can I say - the weather is fantastic,” Castiel countered with a shrug. 

Dean laughed and clapped his hands together. 

“Thank you so much for coming to the planetarium, folks - we hope you had a great time without too much of an existential crisis!” 

The lights flipped on and the audience began to file out of the large, domed room, all chattering excitedly as they left.

“Still think planetarium duty is a step-up from the dinosaur duty?”

Castiel glanced over at Dean, who was leaning against their control panel with his arms crossed in front of his chest and a smile playing on his lips. 

He was, very unfortunately, correct about his level of handsomeness.

“I never said it was a step-up. I’ve enjoyed both despite your antics.”

Dean laughed. 

“Aw, come on. Groups love it when the guides have a little back-and-forth.” Dean winked. “And you’re doing great at it! I especially enjoyed the part where you called me ‘excessively handsome’.” 

Castiel ducked his head as Dean posed with his hands under his chin, blinking rapidly. 

“Well, I had to say something otherwise they would have had to hear you say it for the third time.” 

Dean shrugged and ran a hand through his hair. 

“Right, well. I’m gonna go take my lunch but, uh - I got you something from the gift shop.” Dean held out a card of some sort, face down. “Hope you like it.” 

Curiously, Castiel took the offered gift. 

“Thank -” 

Dean was already heading out the door.

“- you.”

Castiel flipped the card over. 

On the front was a picture of Earth in comparison to several other planets and stars - easily dwarfed by all of them. Three words were printed above Earth’s tiny form with an arrow pointed at it. 

The end of the sentence had been edited slightly with a pen so that instead of:

You live here.

it read,

You live here?

Castiel opened the card to see the same pen had written on the blank space inside. 

And it turns out I’m pretty into Martians. Join me for lunch?

Castiel smiled and tucked the card into his back pocket.

He had a lunch date with an excessively handsome Earthling. 

Ko-Fi commission info!

[shotgun--rider]

Daylight

 A Dean x Reader oneshot

Dean finds a letter addressed to him from Y/N, and finds a lot more in her honest words than he was expecting. 

Word count: 4100

Warnings: Brief mentions of blood, extraordinarily fluffy smut, Dean panics a lot

*Female reader, she/her pronouns used in Dean’s POV

A/N: This wouldn’t leave me alone, so here it is, and boy is it aggressively sweeter and softer than intended.

Dean tears open drawers with panicked abandon, hearing the crashing sounds of Sam doing the same to the other side of Y/N’s bedroom. There’s no time to worry about sending her research notes flying, about the haphazard pile of her underwear when he dumps her drawers on the floor. It has to be here. It has to be. 

“Dean, there’s nothing here!”

A glance over his shoulder shows Sammy’s eyes wide with the same terror that’s eating up his chest, her room looking like the aftermath of a hurricane and nothing to show for it.

“Damn it, keep looking!”

The image of Y/N doubled over the bathroom sink, choking up blood, is burned into his brain, and the knowledge that Cas is staying with her is the only thing keeping him here, instead of at her side. 

“Who the hell even got in here with a hex bag?” Sam demands, one of his arms snaking under the mattress desperately. 

“I don’t know, okay? We’ll figure it out later. After we save Y/N.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got nothing.” Sam’s hands fly up to his hair for a moment, turning a slow circle as his eyes rake the bedroom for anything they haven’t been through yet. “Dean, there’s nothing here.”

“There has to be,” Dean retorts shortly, running his hand along the upper shelf of the closet. He flat-out refuses to consider any other option in front of Sam, but his brain isn’t getting the message. It’s entirely too easy to picture her sprawled out on the tile of the bunker bathroom, blood staining her mouth with her E/C eyes staring up at nothing. And it’s not like he’s lacking in material for inspiration, having seen her in all manner of near-dead positions on hunts before, giving him a heart attack every damn time. 

But Cas has always been there to heal her, to brush his fingers against her forehead and melt away every life-threatening wound. And this time is infinitely more terrifying, because even an angel can’t just undo witches’ spells. Dean swallows hard, turning to attack the bedside table even though Sam had already dumped out the little drawer. 

“Dean!”

Dean’s head snaps up, almost tripping over himself trying to get to the doorway. “Cas? Cas, is she--”

The angel is suddenly in front of him, holding the familiar looking small brown bag. “It was in the library,” he says simply, catching it on fire with a simple flick of his hand.  His hand lands on Dean’s shoulder, then, smiling with a gentle look in his blue eyes. “She’s fine, Dean.”

Relief first, and then the familiar ache of guilt. There wouldn’t have ever been anyone coming for her if he hadn’t been the one to let her start hunting in the first place. Wordlessly, he throws his best attempt at a smile in Cas’s direction, turning back into Y/N’s bedroom. 

“Go check on her,” he tells Sam roughly, an unidentifiable catch in his throat. Y/N certainly doesn’t need him hovering around at the end of a mess he hadn’t even managed to fix. “I’m gonna clean up.”

Sam stares at him like he’d grown a second head. “You’re gonna...clean up?” he echoes. 

“What?” Dean shrugs, trying his best for an air of nonchalance. 

Sam just shakes his head, apparently giving up on his brother’s weirdness and following Cas back in the direction of the bunker’s bathroom. 

Dean clears his throat roughly, in a vain attempt to get rid of the lump that seems stuck there, and sighs. The bedroom is a complete mess, and, truthfully, cleaning it is the last thing he's interested in. Still, in the moment, it feels like a safer option than facing Y/N, so he bends forward, gathering up some of the scattered papers he’d knocked out of the closet. 

There’s a sheet of notebook paper on top of the haphazard stack when he taps it against the edge of the desk, trying to get them in some semblance of order. It’s folded in half, off-center, and would have been completely unobtrusive but for the scrawl of his name on the front, in her familiar handwriting. 

Dean pauses, setting the stack down on the desk and lifting the sheet slowly, glancing once over his shoulder out of habit before unfolding it. His face scrunches up in surprised confusion almost immediately, smoothing out into something that matches the gut-punch feeling in his chest as he continues reading. 

Dean,

I know you don’t want to hear this, but I needed to get it out of my head and put it down somewhere. I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you, anyway. It’s not like you’re going to read this. 

You break my heart, Dean Winchester. (I can hear you laughing, telling me to stop being dramatic. “It’s not a chick flick, Y/N.” Shut up.) You are strong and kind and selfless in so many ways, and you put yourself last to save everybody else and you always find some way to take the blame. But it’s not your fault, Dean. It’s not. You’re good enough, as you are, and the fact that you can’t see you the way we do breaks my heart. 

Everyone around you loves you so much, Dean--me, Sam, Cas, you’ve even grown on Meg. And you don’t have to save the world. I know experience would beg to differ, but I promise, you don’t. Not at your own expense and not by yourself, and it’s okay if the only person you can save right now is you. 

It’s okay to choose yourself. It’s okay to want someone else to choose you. And I promise you that you won’t hurt them, Dean. Seriously. You won’t. 

I hope you find something that makes you happy. And I hope I get to be there to see it. 

Love,

Y/N

Further down, the writing is  slanted and rushed, a desperate addition, an afterthought, maybe a prayer. 

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

Let it go, Dean. There’s still daylight here, let it go. 

----

You’re in the kitchen when Dean walks in, in search of a sandwich and trying in vain to fend off Cas. “There you are,” you smile brightly at him. “I thought my closet might have swallowed you. Sam said you were cleaning up, I don’t know what possessed you to even try--” You cut yourself off, annoyance creeping onto your features as you reach up to knock Cas’s fingers away from your forehead for what has to be the fourth or fifth time. “Cas, I’m fine. But I am hungry. So move,”

The angel fixes you with a concerned look in his blue eyes. “I just want to be sure--”

“Cas,” you stare hard at him, unblinking. “Go do some research or something before you drive me crazy,” 

He leaves in a flutter of wings with an expression of mixed confusion and frustration as he vanishes, and you sigh, calling a half-sarcastic, “I love you!” to the empty room before turning your attention to Dean. 

“So, to be clear, the closet did not eat you,”

Dean’s mouth twists like he’s trying to smile but it’s gotten stuck somewhere. “Nah,” he says, his voice an octave lower than you were expecting. “Are you okay?”

You shrug, letting out a quiet victory squeak when you finally find where someone has jammed the loaf of bread, all the way in the back of the fridge. “Cas burned the hex bag, I’m good.” And to you, that’s all it is. You’ve been hunting for years; a little hex bag encounter is far from the worst that’s happened to you. And once you caught your breath and wiped the blood off of your lips, it was done. 

“I wonder if there’s a hidden health benefit to puking blood,” you muse absently, debating between mayo and mustard. “Like, they say crying is actually good for your skin, so…” 

Dean is staring at you with a pained expression, and you trail off, blinking at him. “What’s up with you?”

“You almost died, Y/N,” his voice still sounds rougher than usual. 

“Yeah.” You smile at him in a way that you hope is reassuring. “Kinda. But I didn’t. This is a typical Tuesday for us, Dean, what are you...” You let the question hang in the air, unfinished, as you study his face. “Oh, and don’t go thinking it’s somehow your fault. I know you,”

“Yeah, I...kinda got that,”

“What?” 

Dean’s hand reaches into the pocket of his jeans (which, incidentally, do amazing things for his ass) and then he’s pulling out a folded up piece of lined notebook paper and oh. Oh, damn.

His tongue slides out to wet his bottom lip nervously, and you have to make an effort not to watch like a hypnotized creep, and then he flashes you that smile that he sometimes tries on the diner waitresses. The one that says I’m trying to be confident but I’m actually awkward as all hell right now. “It, uh, had my name on it,” he says after a beat, offering it to you like he thinks you’re going to want it back.

Well, it was always for him anyway. Even if part of you wanted to shrivel up and die in embarrassment now that you knew he knew. “You can keep it, Dean. It’s for you.”

He sets it down on the table anyway, leaning one hip next to it and blinking like a deer in the headlights. “Y/N, I--”

You clear your throat. “I hope it wasn’t too awful. I don’t really remember what I wrote.” That’s kind of a lie, especially when it comes to the later two additions, but oh well. 

“No, it-it was good,” Dean’s hand twitches like he’s about to reach toward you, and he curls it into a fist instead. “When did you…”

The question trails off but you know what he’s asking. Blowing out a breath, you abandon your half-made sandwich and reach for the paper on the table instead, unfolding it and sliding closer to Dean. “I wrote this the night after the case at Sonny’s,” you tell him quietly. “I was so damn mad---you were a kid, Dean, you didn’t--” you shake your head, refocusing your thoughts. “I had all these thoughts running around my head and I knew I was going to end up screaming them all at you in the middle of the library one day if I didn’t put them somewhere. I didn’t ever expect you to actually read it.”

 You suck in a breath of surprise as Dean moves to stand behind you, one arm sliding around your waist. It’s entirely unexpected and sends a shiver at the contact running though your entire body, but somehow it feels natural. It’s as if some barrier between the two of you has broken with this letter, and you can’t find it in yourself to mind. By the time his chin finds its way to the top of your head, peeking down at the letter with you, you’ve relaxed into his hold, the solid warmth of him at your back. 

You tap the sheet of paper with one short fingernail, over the words you’d scrawled on repeat, echoing the prayer in your head. Hold on. “That’s from when we were looking for you. Demon you.” You can joke about it now, sort of, so you smirk, wishing you could see his face. “Your little summer of love with Crowley?”

Dean huffs petulantly and tightens his arms around you, and you can picture his pink lips turning into a pout. “It was not,”

“Uh huh, whatever you say,” 

Dean stays silent for a moment, absorbing the information and continuing to hang onto you, and then poses one last question. “What’s the daylight thing from?”

That one’s never going to be funny, and you exhale. “The Mark, after Charlie...you wouldn’t talk to any of us and I just wanted you to know it wasn’t all darkness, you know?”

Dean shudders on a breath behind you, and suddenly you need to see his face. He lets you turn around in his arms, now with the kitchen table against your back, and some bolder part of you slides your hands up to link behind his neck. His green eyes are shining with not-quite-tears as he looks at you, biting off words before he can start speaking. Finally, he settles on familiar ground. Teasing. “So I break your heart, huh?”

You smirk back at him. “Only when you’re stupid.”

He pouts, adorably, and you resist the urge to kiss it off of his face. “When you don’t accept that you deserve good things,” you clarify, leaning closer because Dean is like a goddamn magnet and what are you doing. “That’s just not correct.” The words are spoken a hair’s breadth from his lips, your breath ghosting over them, and Dean closes the gap a heartbeat later.

It’s a hesitant press of his lips on yours, feeling you out like he’s not entirely sure he’s going to be welcome here, and it still feels like being lit up on fire. You’re fully aware that five seconds of kissing this man has turned you into a goddamned cliche, but as you push up on your toes to kiss him back harder, you can’t bring yourself to care. 

Your enthusiasm is all the encouragement Dean needs, and you squeak against his lips as his hands find your hips to boost you up onto the tabletop, parting your legs for him to stand between them as his hand comes back up to tangle into your hair. His other slides up your thigh, thumb grazing over the inside seam of your jeans, and you shiver in spite of yourself. 

Finally breaking away to breathe, Dean moves down to press open mouthed kisses in a trail down your neck, pulling a gasp out of you. “Dean,” you murmur, your fingers raking through his short hair. “Dean,”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” The words are more a vibration against your skin than anything spoken aloud.

“I don’t--mmmh--want to be having sex on the counter when your brother walks in,”

Dean pulls back to look at you, all messy hair and blown pupils, and even though it’s what you wanted, you can’t help but already miss his touch. “Good point,” he rasps out, and before you have any time to react, slides his hands under your thighs to lift you off of the table and into his arms 

“Don’t drop me,” you manage, your ankles locking automatically around his back and your hands tight on his shoulders. “Please,”

Dean chuckles, low, and catches your mouth in a messy kiss that leaves you breathless. “Wouldn’t dare,”

Somehow, you both make it to the door with the gold 11 on it without running into any walls or any of the bunker’s other occupants, which is no small miracle, all things considered. Dean wrestles the door open with his other hand still supporting your weight, dropping you onto the mattress with a hungry look that says he’s going to claim every inch of you. 

You reach your hands out to him impatiently, wanting him closer, wanting to touch. You’re certainly not complaining about the view, but you’ve been looking at him for years. An annoyed noise comes out of your throat when he doesn’t immediately comply, instead smiling down at you with an expression that’s no less passionate, but somehow more gentle than a few moments before. 

Dean comes to sit on the edge of the bed, his hand tracing an aimless path up your ankle and calf, apparently ignoring the sizeable bulge in his own jeans. “Shh, sweetheart. Let me take care of you.”

He pulls you to sit up and peels you out of your clothes almost reverently, discarding them across his bedroom floor until you’re left in just the plain underwear you’d put on that morning, and you can hear his breath catch when he looks at you. 

Every other guy you’d ever slept with got both of you naked like it was a speed competition, treating the whole thing as purely physical. Which you supposed it was, given that every other guy you’d slept with had been briefly vetted over the course of a few beers and then picked up out of whatever bar you were in that night. Hunter-style hookups. No strings attached.

But Dean is looking at you like you’re something otherworldly, and while you’re not sure you deserve it, it brings a warm feeling to your chest that has nothing to do with the sensation of him licking his way over your breasts and down to the line of your underwear. He pauses there, his fingertips sliding just under the waistband, and looks up at you with those reverent green eyes for permission. 

“Dean, just hurry up,” you tell him, impatience running through your voice. You’re already flushed and panting, probably looking like a complete wreck spread out over his sheets, and he hasn’t even done anything yet. 

Then suddenly his tongue is licking a stripe directly over your cunt without any warning and an involuntary cry escapes you at the sensation. So much for not scarring anyone else in the bunker, you think wryly, and then all rational thought flees your brain as Dean slides a finger inside you, busying his tongue with rapid little flicks over your clit. “Oh god, Dean, fuck,” 

Your hand flies down to clutch at his head as he slides a second finger in to join the first, just enough sense left to remind yourself not to mindlessly suffocate him against your cunt. The sensation is overwhelming and still somehow not enough, keeping you right on the edge without sending you over, and underneath it all there’s still an undercurrent of gentleness that takes your breath away in a whole other way. “I can’t--please, I--” you pant out, no longer sure if you’re even making sense. 

Dean hums softly, the vibration running through you, and your hips buck up involuntarily in search of more friction. His mouth moves to suck your clit between his lips, his fingers curling inside you at the same time, and you fly apart with a shout, your head falling back and your entire body tensing through what has to be the best orgasm you’ve ever had. Not that you’re going to tell him that.

“Jesus, Dean,” you breathe out when you can see straight again. “Just...Jesus.” 

Dean chuckles softly, his lips and chin still glistening with your wetness, and he seems perfectly content in spite of narrowly surviving being squeezed to death between your thighs. A few more of your brain cells come back online, and suddenly you’re staring at him in puzzlement. “Why are you still dressed?”

He takes that as his cue to climb off of the bed and strip, and all of those damn layers end up making it a teasing show for you even if that wasn’t his goal. Dean shrugs out of the flannel first, then strips off the shirt underneath and unbuckles his belt. By the time he’s left standing in just his boxers, you’re unashamedly two seconds from drooling and he’s painfully too far away from you. 

Dean drops the boxers before coming back to kneel over you, his cock rock hard against his stomach. You’d never thought about a man’s junk as “beautiful” before, but it’s the word that comes to mind as you reach out to wrap your hand around him, thumb swiping over the tip and watching him shudder in response. Instead of letting you continue, though, he pulls your hand away, lacing his fingers in both of yours and resting your linked hands above your head as he leans forward to kiss you. 

It’s sweet, unexpected but perfect, and when he finally slides inside you, leaving you both gasping at the feeling, it seems dangerously close to making love. Dean gives you a moment to adjust to the size of him filling you up, only moving after your hips have rocked up into him, urging him on. 

Somehow you’d thought that being carried through the bunker, all tangled tongues and occasionally teeth, had set the stage for something wild. Or maybe that was just you projecting your assumptions of what Dean would be like in bed. And you had no doubt he could be, but this was...soft. Slow, no matter how much you tried to urge him faster, and you lost yourself in the slide of his cock, the rhythm of his body against you, the feeling of his hands holding onto yours.

He was watching you with an expression that was half lust and half love, the slow roll of his hips hitting just right inside you, and a low groan rips out of his throat when you tighten your walls around him. “Come for me, baby,”

Dean releases one of your hands to slip between your bodies, his thumb flicking over your clit in time with a sharper snap of his hips, and it shatters you. The slow build has you flying apart screaming, clinging to Dean like he’s the only thing left holding you together as your orgasm breaks over you in waves. 

He follows you over the edge a few moments later, falling forward to press his lips to yours with an expression of pure, blissed-out pleasure on his face. For a while, neither of you move, lost in the moment and not quite capable of higher brain function. 

Eventually, Dean pulls back to look at you with a goofy grin on his lips, pulling a startled laugh out of you at the expression, and you clean up and rearrange yourselves smiling like a pair of fools, which, you suppose, you kind of are. 

Afterward, you lay curled into Dean’s side, legs tangled together and your hand resting over his heart and his anti-possession tattoo while his fingertips trace random patterns over your hip. He’s the first one to break the silence, tilting his head to look at you with warm green eyes. He’s close enough that you could probably count the freckles dashed across his face, but he’s distracting you with words instead. “You make me happy,” he says, voice low, and you’re suddenly reminded of the last wish you wrote in that letter.

“Good,” you say stoutly, warmth ballooning in your chest at the words. Dean already looks awkward and slightly red at the little confession, though, and you’re not going to drag more emotions out of him. You lean up briefly, planting a quick little peck on his lips, and snuggle back down against him, just existing in your own little world for a brief, precious moment. 

----

Dean wakes up alone. Instinctive panic is choking him as he scrambles up, his still half-asleep mind wondering automatically if she’s safe, if something has gotten to her. 

Closer inspection of his bedroom floor would have shown him that wherever she was, she was wandering around without any of her clothes, and thus probably hadn’t gotten that far, but Dean doesn’t bother thinking that through. He shoves his legs into a pair of sweats that are slung over the back of the desk chair, almost falling flat in his rush, and bursts out into the hallway. 

His green eyes are wild and his hair is still styled with the aftermath of sex and sleep, and Sam’s startled reaction to seeing him tear his way into the war room shouldn’t come as a surprise. 

“Morning,” Sam says dryly, looking over his brother from head to toe. “Dean--what?”

“Have you seen Y/N?” Dean gets out through the panic that’s suddenly thick in his chest. 

“She’s outside,” Sam gestures up the bunker stairs to the door, shrugging in a way that suggests that all of this is completely casual. “Dude, what--”

Dean’s already gone, up the bunker stairs and out the door still shirtless and barefoot, and there she is. All of the knots in his stomach are washed away in an instant, looking at her on the bunker’s concrete front step. She’s safe. She’s okay. 

She’s just wearing his flannel, the material drowning her hands and falling to her thighs, and she’s barefoot too. She turns at the sound of him opening the door, coffee mug in hand, and her eyes light up when they land on him. “Look, Dean,” she says with a sunny smile, and he can breathe again. Y/N tilts her head to the sky, hair stirring in the breeze against her borrowed flannel collar, and she’s looking at the peach and purple sunrise painting the sky when she speaks. “Daylight.”

He’s looking at her. 

[deansmom]

Just go with me here: I believe that we all have multiple soulmates that we’re supposed to meet in our lives. Not all of them are romantic, in fact some of them are just friends or even enemies who are going to find you in every life you lead, and that’s part of what makes you who you are. Some people call this the difference between soulmates and twin flames, but I just think that we all have people that we’re always going to find in the world.

I think Dean and Castiel are soulmates. And I know what you’re thinking, the whole thing about their universe being the only one where Cas rebelled against heaven and fucked the whole storyline up - but in every single version of reality we heard about, it was always Cas. It was always Cas who pulled him out of hell. And their universe is the only one where Castiel eventually falls and becomes human and, I think we can reasonably assume by the fact that it was his body exclusively by that point and he didn’t go around murdering people for kicks, in season 9, Castiel had or developed a soul.

So what if Castiel the angel wasn’t his soulmate, but human!Cas was? What if the angel Castiel was never supposed to go off script, but human!Cas was? He came off the line with a crack in his chassis, a spanner in the works, but what if he came off the line with just enough humanity that he rebelled?

I know, the idea that these two beings who were never meant for each other and fought to be together is romantic, but idk man, I think the universe did want them to be together. We assume it was Chuck that brought Cas back every time he died, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was something else entirely? We know that all the other religions exist in tandem with Chuck, we know that the Greek and Roman gods are real in canon, we know that fate herself is in canon - what was it about that universe that made Castiel rebel? We know it wasn’t Dean, because it was presumably the same basic storyline in every universe, so what was it about this universe that caused it to go off the rails?

So, listen, hear me out: I think that Dean and Castiel are soulmates, and that no matter what universe you drop them into, they’re going to find each other. Maybe they won’t like each other every time, maybe they’ll barely know each other, but in every universe, they find each other. And in this one stupid, inconsequential universe of the infinite universes Chuck created, Castiel chose Dean over heaven, for no apparent reason that Chuck could discern. He kept killing Castiel, and Castiel kept coming back. Why?

I love my son, I think he is endlessly charming in his own clumsy way, but it wasn’t Dean. It couldn’t have been Dean. Castiel was the thing that was different, Castiel was the thing that went wrong with their universe - he was the only Cas who became human. He was the only Cas who developed a soul.

✨fucking soulmates, bro✨

[isleofair]

If you want to read my sobering, mostly negative (but obviously friendly to Misha and Bobo & Co.) take on the whole "Dean doesn’t reciprocate” debacle, click the Keep reading.

If you want to stay positive, I hope you’re right and I fully support you, so you probably shouldn’t read this, even if it has positive parts. I’m writing this mostly to get it out of my brain because it’s driving me insane.

So. The script for 15x18 right after the “I love you” states in the stage directions that Dean sees Cas as “his best friend” and that Dean “can’t reciprocate”. That was frankly already terrifying, but somehow we all got over it because the story quite clearly seems to need some kind of reciprocation to fulfill itself.

Then yesterday Misha said something in his online meet&greet that has been reported in slightly different ways in various tweets, but what it seems to boil down to is: he said he doesn’t think Dean reciprocates Cas’s romantic feelings, but then he also wanted to state this was just his interpretation/speculation, and neither he nor Cas know what’s in Dean’s head (and at least Dean didn’t reject Cas, but IMHO since Cas wasn’t asking for anything, how could Dean have said no anyway?).

So my take on this (and I’m begging to be wrong here, but there you have it) is that both Bobo and Misha gave us as much as they possibly could, and then tried to keep us from getting too hurt by the fact that we won’t get Dean reciprocating (but then Misha obviously didn’t want to take away our right to still interpret Dean as having been in love with Cas). Yes, it’s quite clear the subtext for love from both Cas and Dean has indeed intentionally been woven into the show by the writers (and actors) for a while, just in case, but maybe all they could get greenlit in the end was to make Cas explicitly queer, and not Dean.

But they still thought having Cas come out and confess his love to Dean as the culmination of his character was so worth it, and Bobo, a queer man himself, wrote Cas’s gorgeous monologue with the explicitly stated premise that Cas doesn’t need Dean to reciprocate to be happy. Cas is truly happy just saying out loud who he is, and who Dean is, and that he loves Dean because of who they both are. Bobo wanted to make it clear that the whole point was just that; not getting a positive answer or getting Dean. If Cas is happy, we should be happy for him.

I am infinitely grateful to Bobo and Misha (and Richard and Jensen, and Dabb) for the confession scene. 

And if indeed we can never get Dean explicitly loving Cas back in a romantic way, it’s absolutely heartbreaking in my opinion, but what we got is still so important. Misha, Bobo, Dabb and several other people really wanted us to have this. (Jensen also explicitly approved, in case you need to hear this.)

I’m still pretty sure we will see Cas again before the end of Supernatural (they weren’t that good at hiding that Misha was back on set). I obviously hope it’s the actual Cas, not flashback Cas or the Empty with Cas’s face, or whatever. Because if that was indeed a Bury Your Gays speedrun, no matter how good Bobo’s and Misha’s and everyone’s intentions were, I’ll of course be pissed as fuck. And also heartbroken.

But. To quote Brother by The Organ, “Here’s the best part of the song, where I admit that I might be wrong”, a.k.a. things that make me still think I might be wrong and we might still get reciprocation of some kind from Dean, a.k.a. the reasons I haven’t managed to bring myself to burn my clown getup yet:

- the story itself (!!!). Although obviously this might be due to the fact that they still wanted to give us the subtext version of Dean’s side even after being told it had to stay subtext, because a. they are committed to giving us as much as they can (but does this result in a blessing or a clowning-inducing-cruelty, I ask?), and b. dialing back on it after all this time would have honestly made Dean be out of character (Cas did, after all, just give us full textual confirmation that Dean as a character is, indeed, all about love);

- the super romantic songs of the day and quotes of the day on the boards for 15x19 and especially 15x20 (The night we met by Lord Huron? Really? Really? Just shatter my heart into pieces, why won’t you);

- Jensen having had to greenlit the confession (why, if it says nothing about Dean except that he’s a wonderful person? WHY?);

- Misha might have totally fumbled his attempt to hide a spoiler, or people reporting might have misconstrued his meaning (this is where it really sucks that there’s apparently no video of that part of the meet&greet), but I have trouble believing this.

In any case, I want Cas, our Cas, to come back to the story. I want him and Dean to meet again. And I want Dean to tell Cas how important Cas is to him, and that he’s always wanted him to stay.

I’ll try to tell myself that explicitly-queer-and-in-love-with-Cas Dean would just be an amazing bonus, but it’s honestly a bonus I feel the story as it’s been told so far owes us. If we don’t get it, I’m actually extremely grateful to Misha for what he said yesterday, because if I had walked for two weeks on that amazing cloud of happiness where Cas’s “I love you” had sent me, only to suddenly crash and burn seeing the show end without them letting Dean tell Cas that he loves him back, and especially without letting them be together in some way, my heart would have never recovered. This way, I’m already holding it tight in anticipation, so maybe the pieces will stay (mostly) together.

[flowitch]

supernatural and lgbtqia+ characters

DISCLAIMER: i love these characters, which is why i watch the show. i do also have many issues with the show and the writers. this isn’t a hate post for the story or the characters, just the way the characters have been treated. do not read this if you are not caught up and do not want spoilers. this is also kinda a mess but i got very passionate about this and wrote it during classes

Dean Winchester

i’m gonna start with my boy dean!! dean is mine along with many other people’s favorite characters because of how complex he is. and one of the things that adds depth to his character is his “journey” with his sexuality.

there are many examples of dean very clearly not being straight, and he is officially headcanoned (and i guess canon now) as bisexual. you don’t even need to include dean and cas scenes for examples of his bisexuality. here is a video showing examples without any cas scenes:

https://youtu.be/rQSPmmuLJB0

now that we’ve established he is bisexual, let’s talk about the contradiction between the writing of his sexuality and character. the one i’m itching to talk about first is the confession scene in 10x16.

https://youtu.be/IqBHkwi13ic

in this scene, dean says, and i quote, if you don’t want to watch the video and don’t remember, “There's things, there's...people...feelings that I- I want to experience differently. Maybe even for the first time.” there honestly is no other way to interpret this. i’ve tried to put myself in the mind of the writers and the homophobes but i genuinely cannot interpret this another way. this is very clearly about his sexuality, being that there were no love interests at the time that this would apply to (not that this would even apply to a straight couple anyway). and not only does this confession scene occur, but sam even comments on how he was in there for a long time and he could always talk to him if he needs to!!!! they could have easily not had sam say anything about how long he spent in there, being that we as the viewers have no clue as to how long he was in there. they wrote that specifically to show that what he said in there had meaning and importance.

the writers and the crew of the show play into dean’s sexuality consistently with scenes, song of the days from the crew, etc., but then deny that destiel or dean’s bisexuality is real. i think a lot of this has to do with the fact that dean has always been considered as a “macho man” who shows very little emotion and has trouble with vulnerability. and that’s true! he absolutely is. but this show had 15 years to allow him to slowly work through his feelings and his issues with his own sexuality and self. the confession is a great example of the writers being almost there and then never speaking about it again.

even if you aren’t bisexual, you can see how much biphobia there is in the world. and as a bisexual woman i can say that bisexuality in men is so looked down upon it’s disturbing. men coming to terms with their bisexuality, especially if they are considered straight and “manly”, always makes me so happy since it’s not as accepted as female bisexuality. and this is another reason why supernatural exploring dean’s bisexuality would have been so incredible. seeing a man on television who has a lot of internal issues come to terms with something so complex and life changing would have been monumental to so many people. the writers had an infinite amount of ways to go about this because of things that THEY wrote, and instead chose to ignore his sexuality and have him not respond to castiel’s confession in 15x18. it’s very clear he was in shock in that episode so i’m not mad, but it is also clear that they wrote it that way to not fully make deancas canon.

dean winchester is bisexual, and the writers wrote him that way. nobody pulled this out of their ass, destiel didn’t become popular randomly and for no reason, they wrote him this way. this is their own writing that they have chosen to ignore and contradict for 15 seasons and it’s disappointing.

Castiel

this entire post is being written on november 6, 2020. one day after 15x18 aired. castiel is now canonically queer, and was already sent to someplace worse than hell. because he was happy. which directly connected to his love for dean. i honestly don’t even have to write cas’ section because that is enough, but i’ll write about his mistreatment anyway.

we knew the only thing that would make cas truly happy would be something with dean. well we assumed the writers would make up some other bullshit, but we hoped that it had something to do with dean. and sure enough, it was his love confession. and what i loved about this was cas starts it off by saying two beautiful things. one, that he knows he can never have what he really wants (dean), but he’s just as happy telling dean he loves him. he doesn’t need to have him to be happy with where they end their story, as long as dean knows. and the other thing he starts off by saying is that he knows how dean sees himself. he lists off all of these extremely kind things about dean and how dean is what made cas care about the world. he is the reason castiel went from an emotionless soldier to a fallen angel that feels deep love for people.

this confession scene although tainted by the fact that he died right after, which we’ll talk about, and the fact that it took this damn long, really means a lot to me. it was so incredible seeing cas be unapologetically open, honest, in love, and himself. he was for the first time since we’ve known him, completely and totally content. he told the man he loves how incredible he thinks he is and how he loves him, and knew he was saving him from billie by doing it. we’ve never seen him that happy. and it’s heartbreaking. 

misha summed it up perfectly i think: “Tonight, watching Cas talk to Dean, I got lost in the story and forgot for a moment that I’m the one who plays that angel and I thought, “He’s how I want to be. He’s openhearted and he’s selfless and he’s true.”

this was the first time we saw cas living his whole truth, and he immediately died. in terms of just bad taste, sending someone who just came out to angel hell is very disturbing, but it’s just further proof of the writers not caring about their lgbtqia+ characters. it’s like they gave us what we wanted, but there just had to be a catch, right? these writers very clearly do not care about their queer characters or fans, and what they did to cas here shows that plain as day.

obviously i really do want dean to save cas from the empty to parallel cas saving him from hell, but do i think it’ll happen in these last two episodes? no. first off i just don’t think misha filmed for the last two episodes, but also, the writers have made it clear that they do not care about cas in general, nevermind their now love story. it just does not sit right with me that he got sent to the empty for eternity because he was finally his whole self and happy.

Charlie Bradbury (our world + au)

we have seen charlie bradbury die twice, both times for no reason at all. the first time we saw her die, it was by the hands of a NAZI, and her body was THROWN INTO A BATHTUB. like i said before with cas, that was explanation enough i mean come ON. the second time we witnessed charlie die was in 15x18, (along with the whole world i know bare with me), which we did NOT need to see. 

let’s start with the fact that for all of these characters, supernatural creates and writes them wonderfully for the most part. we fall in love with these characters because of the way they were written, acted, and the dynamic with other characters. unfortunately in supernatural, if you are queer or a woman or god forbid both, that dynamic with other characters will be the death of you. 

i’m gonna talk about each other her deaths individually. so her first death. the only reason for her death was to further sam and dean’s (mostly dean’s) man pain. although i eat up the reactions of other characters when another dies, this just felt completely unnecessary to me. the writers wrote a fan-favorite character, and decided that the best course of action was to brutally murder her to further dean’s mark of cain storyline. and i loved that storyline! i loved the scene of dean getting revenge for charlie! but it did not need to happen. the only thing the fans wanted was for her to be alive and well, get more screentime and possibly have a girlfriend. 

when directly asked why they thought killing charlie was a good idea, jeremy carver said: 

“That’s an excellent question, and it, it’s tough just because...any time you have a favorite character on a show...People die on the show. And, and, and...and, unfortunately...So...there’s so many ways to answer that. And I feel, I, I...it’s tough for me to answer. She’s an absolutely beloved character, beloved on the show...And when we’re in the writer’s room...we have to go where the story takes us. And we try and do it without, um...(insert fans booing and the cast laughing at him)...this is the world day of my life. And I’d like to thank everyone up here for the support.” (they were not helping).

not only did he not have a clue on how to answer a question that should have an understandable answer, but then the best thing that he could come up with is “we have to go where the story takes us.” but why would that possibly be where the story takes you? if supernatural had more diversity than straight white males and possibly one woman that dies or is evil, then fine kill off whoever you want even if i don’t like it. but it becomes a gender and sexuality issue when she is not only the only recurring female character at the time, but also the only recurring lgbtqia+ character at the time (minus cas). 

now the second time she’s died. mind you this isn’t our world’s charlie. they brought her back for the fans and for the cast/crew that love her and felicia. we’ve established that she’s here living her life someplace. we haven’t heard anything about her for a hot minute, and then they decide to bring her back for 15x18. i was thrilled! i could not wait to see her, and was even more excited when she showed up on my television. and then, even better, we found out she has a girlfriend who she lives with and is clearly happy/comfortable with. and then what happens, may you ask? her girlfriend, stevie, a queer woman of color, vanishes. boom another unnecessary lgbtqia+ and woman death that could have been avoided if they just wrote in sam and dean calling her for help. 

later on in the episode, everyone on earth excluding dean, sam, and jack are gone- completely vanished where they stood. charlie of course is among those people. bare with me here, i know everyone vanished and it’s not the same as the first one. but here’s my issue with it: she did not have to come back. i would have rather had donna say “jodie, the girls, charlie, they’re ready to go when you need them”, and then they all vanish off screen. but instead they went through the trouble of bringing her back, showing her happy, having her experience a painful loss, and then disappear anyway. what was the point in having her in the episode?

like i mentioned earlier with dean being representation for bisexual men, charlie was just that for lesbians!! the amount of posts i’ve seen on multiple platforms talking about how much they resonated with charlie or how heartbroken they were no longer having representation on their favorite show is awful. there was a kickass nerdy, kind, strong, loving lesbian on your show not once but twice (au charlie), and you blew it. 

Claire + Kaia (Dreamhunter)

this part isn’t going to be long because there are some exceptions: wayward sisters failed spinoff (i’m still heartbroken i want it so bad), kathryn newton’s new status and inability to be in the show, etc.. so i guess this will just be a short thing about wayward sisters and what that could mean for claire and kaia. 

they had already established in supernatural that kaia was claire’s first love. we had gotten some really cute scenes with them, and then wayward sisters was finally a possibility. if the show had gone through, which i’m not sure why it didn’t, claire and kaia’s relationship could have been a goldmine. young girls could see themselves represented by characters already adored by supernatural fans. it would’ve shown a beautiful wlw relationship between two young girls who are also kickass and can keep up with their elders/male counterparts. 

i can’t pin this on the writers sadly (lmao), but i am still upset that we didn’t get wayward sisters. it would’ve meant a lot to women and to the lgbtqia+ community. 

My thoughts

like i said in the disclaimer, i love these characters and the story of supernatural. i always will. but i can’t lie about how frustrating it is seeing women, lgbts and people of color get constantly disregarded and mistreated. the writers had 15 years to get with the times, and the growth of society. stuff that i saw in season one and wasn’t surprised by should not still be happening in season 15. having writers that are all straight white males/women is not enough anymore. it never was. there has to be something for everyone in a show as big as this. it’s not about meeting diversity requirements, it’s about actually having diversity because it’s real. there are no diversity requirements for people in society. these are just people of different races, ethnicities, sexualities, genders, etc. who want to see someone like them represented on the things that they watch. it’s a lonely feeling not being validated by a show that you love.  

i might make another post specifically for the women mistreatment and queerbaiting on this show but that’s all for my essay on why supernatural sucks at not mistreating their queer characters :)

[lifblogs]

So I started this story maybe a little less than a year ago, and I meant to continue it, and I still might want to, but this is all I have right now, and the only thing I feel is eternal suffering.

Warnings for gore, and angsty sexy times.

3753 words

This was the last time Castiel would ever kiss Dean. It had to be. Both of them were getting too distracted with each other. In fact, he had no memory of Sam and Jack in this little pocket of time. It was all just Dean.

 Castiel, with his dark hair and blue eyes and nearly too-pink lips, breathed in Dean’s scent, inhaling deep, as he slammed him up against the wall in his bedroom. Dean’s green eyes were warm with lust, brown hair already mussed from Castiel’s handling of it, and his muscled body was up against his. Lust was a thing that Castiel now recognized in him, and even found comforting. Dean’s cupid’s bow lips were parted, tongue playing over his bottom one. There was a playful glint in his eyes, but his body was slack against Castiel’s. It was amazing how he became so malleable beneath him, even though they were separated by what Castiel considered too much clothing. Dean was in a T-shirt, flannel, and jeans, and Castiel was in his regular suit. At least his overcoat was off, and his tie had been undone, but there wasn’t nearly enough skin showing for him, not for this act that he wanted. He wanted it because he wanted Dean, wholly, in his heart. And he wanted to please him. Castiel loved when Dean was happy.

His lover tilted his chin up, mouth close to Castiel’s. “Come on, angel. You know you want to kiss me.”

Castiel did, but would he be able to stop if he did? The desires in him were urging him on, telling him that yes, you need Dean, but part of him was saying this had to be it. This had to be the last time.

But touching him would make it too hard to stop.

Dean was irresistible.

While Castiel still thought all this over, he argued, “Maybe I just thought you belonged against the wall.” He raised an eyebrow, making it look like he was staring down at him even though Dean was an inch taller.

Dean laughed, grinning, and he was gyrating up against Castiel. Cas’ knees grew jiggly, weak, and he just about fell into him. This made Dean laugh with even more vigor. Damn, this really wasn’t going to be their last time. Maybe it would last for eternity.

“I do, you know,” Dean told him. “Against the wall, against a counter, on the floor, on the bed...”

He tried to reach Castiel with his lips now, voice having grown softer as he’d spoken. Castiel pulled back.

Something was wrong.

~~~

“Dean! Look out!” Sam called.

Dean barely had time to dodge the stool that was getting thrown at him. Thanks to Sam’s warning, it went over his head as he ducked and crouched down, but it almost got him. He could feel the air of it passing overhead.

God damn it, that was too close.

The demon attacking him apparently hadn’t even truly been aiming to hit him with the stool. It’d successfully distracted Dean, and when he got lunged at and slammed against the bar, he didn’t know whether to blame himself or not.

Dean’s head was slammed back, body bent at a painful angle, but he managed to throw a punch.

Blame the demon, he told himself.

Yeah, he liked that option.

~~~

“What is it?” Dean asked, obviously noticing the frown on Castiel’s face.

His heart had been beating too fast for just a few seconds, blood pumping through him in a way that was almost painful. Anxiety tugged at his gut.

But now, it was all gone.

He looked back at Dean, and ease settled over him.

“Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

He grabbed Dean, hands on his belt, and started pulling him over to the bed. They toppled over onto it, Dean on top of Castiel. Now he let their lips meet.

It was like everything he’d ever wanted. Each kiss with Dean was comforting bliss. And it was something he knew so well now. He knew the shape of those warm, soft lips, not just in his vision, but against his own mouth, against his skin. He even knew what the inside of that mouth felt like. Thinking about it didn’t necessarily make Castiel hard, but Dean straddling him and grinding over his cock certainly did. And their mouths hardly left each other, kisses strong, desperate. Too much saliva was getting in the mix and it dripped down from Dean’s mouth onto Castiel’s face.

Maybe another person would’ve apologized, but this was Dean, and he was with Castiel. They were used to each other. Dean let out a playful growl, and leaned down, licking up the bit of saliva from Castiel’s chin.

“That was your fault,” Castiel told him.

Dean got off to start taking off his clothes.

“I know.”

~~~

Sam was tussling with two demons. There had been another, but Dean had taken them out already. The only reason Sam seemed to be having so much difficulty was because these two were angry. Apparently they’d known some people he’d drunk dry about a decade ago.

Wow, they really knew how to hold a grudge.

But Dean wasn’t fighting for grudges.

He was fighting for something much more valuable than that.

Dean screamed as he grabbed the demon, and slammed them against the bar. He leapt over it, reached back and grabbed a bottle of scotch and broke it over their head. Glass stuck in their hair, and blood flowed freely.

The demon growled, getting up, but Dean let out another fierce cry and grabbed them, whacking them repeatedly against the counter. There were crunches as the cartilage in their nose broke, and blood flew.

Dean got a glimpse of Sam, who was in the corner, having felled one demon, and now trying to get the other off his back.

Dean found a pool ball that had rolled behind the counter with all the fighting, picked it up, and threw it at the demon clinging to Sam. It hit it solidly in the eye, surely breaking the socket.

The demon fell.

No longer getting strangled or having his arms thrown back, Sam stabbed the demon.

It sparked out in a burst of orange light.

They’d stupidly gone into this with only the demon-killing knife. They should’ve had angel blades, maybe even Jody as back-up. But no, Dean had wanted to do this himself.

This was their problem.

It was for their family.

Sam tossed him the knife, and just as the final demon grabbed Dean by the shirt and started hauling him up onto the bar, he stabbed them up through their chin.

The demon fell on him as they died.

Blood spurted into Dean’s mouth.

~~~

When Dean got his belt undone, Castiel rushed up, and he got on his knees before him. Tasting Dean was different from tasting food. It wasn’t like the boring, bland molecules of a peanut butter sandwich. It was more than that.

Dean breathed out, “Oh my god,” and Castiel started undoing the button and zipper on his jeans. He pulled them down, and quickly learned that Dean hadn’t been wearing anything else underneath. What was that called? Dean had taught the word to him, but for now it was trapped behind a wall of unimportance. What was important was the flesh that was laid bare before him. “Cas, you don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

Castiel took Dean’s semi-erect cock in one hand, and started pumping him — it was a gesture he hadn’t known could bring pleasure, not before Dean, but now he always did his best with it.

“God, you can squeeze harder,” Dean breathed.

Castiel joked, “Please stop saying my father’s name.”

Dean’s cheeks, which were already heated from arousal, flooded even more with that excellent wash of color. Freckles stood out against the red.

To distract him from his embarrassment, Castiel opened his mouth, and leaned forward, taking the fleshy head into him. And he tasted him. He tasted not just the particles, not just the bacteria that humans were symbiotic with, but his sentience, and the space between the atoms and molecules that created him. In that space lay creation, the cosmos: infinite, and unparalleled. The same spaces lay inside Castiel, connecting him and Dean, even though they were different beings. At heart, they were both creations of God. Castiel was an angel. Dean was the Righteous Man. And Castiel was doing as God had commanded: loving man.

Dean hissed in a breath, hands going into Castiel’s hair. One of his thumbs brushed over his ear, sending a tingle down his neck, and through his torso. Cas moaned at it, and took him in further.

Dean’s inhales were shallow, his exhales hard.

“Oh, Cas…”

Castiel sucked him, bobbing his head back and forth, making him fully harden. When Dean was hot and hard in his mouth, Castiel pulled back and started pumping him again, working the saliva against his skin. He looked up at Dean, who had his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth open in bliss. Small, but low, noises came from him.

Castiel stiffened in his pants from it all, an ache starting to build up in his pelvis.

When he put Dean in his mouth again, the bedroom disappeared.

It was just black. Nothingness.

~~~

Dean came up, spluttering, shoving the demon away. He hopped down from the stool.

“You know, maybe we should’ve left one alive,” Dean said.

“You did,” a voice called from behind Sam.

Sam turned, hitting them with a powerful uppercut, and then grabbed him by the throat. Dean went over to help, and Sam got him on the floor, a foot on his chest to keep him down. He was snarling at the demon, who in turn, snarled back.

Dean crouched down, and held the blade of the demon-killing knife just underneath the demon’s right eye.

“We heard you know where the Baetylus is,” Sam said.

“Yeah, we were gonna be all nice asking you about it,” Dean began, “then you and your guys attacked us.”

Sam grinned, pressing down hard with his foot. His head twisted slightly, looking menacing.

“Not a smart move.”

“So we’re gonna give you only a couple chances — where is it?”

The demon, who was large, greasy-haired, and just one ugly son of a bitch, asked, “Why do you need it?”

“Strike one,” Dean said.

He dug the knife into his eye, not even flinching as he thrashed and screamed. The demon reached up, trying to fight Dean, but Dean knelt onto his wrist, and Sam stomped down on him for a quick second, breaking the other one.

The demon screamed and flailed.

Dean dug till part of the eye popped out, goopy-white and bloody.

“Where is it?” Sam asked.

“Bite me.”

Sam: “Oh, you don’t want me to.”

Dean shuddered at the quick reminder that his brother used to do that to demons (he was getting too many reminders of it today), but then he was focused on his enemy again.

“Look, don’t be a smartass,” Dean said. “We have the Liber Incatationum, and it has enough information in there for us to know that after it got stolen from the Greeks, it found its way to Hell. The stories say it was guarded by Oruch, and I’m guessing he’s your pal dead on the counter over there. So tell us where it is. We ain’t stupid.”

“Says the boy who’s too pretty to be a hunter.”

Dean set his lips in a stern line, and clenched his jaw. He dug the blade just a smidge into the demon’s cheek, and then looked up at his brother.

“Sam?”

Sam had his foot come down hard on his chest. There was a multitude of cracks, and the demon wheezed.

“I don’t think he felt that. Maybe one more time,” Dean said.

Sam did it once more.

~~~

Shocked, Castiel pulled back, getting to his feet.

“What? What is it?” Dean asked.

Castiel looked around, stunned.

Dean grabbed his face and had him look at him.

The room was back.

Castiel had just had an episode of some sort. Nothing was wrong, except with him. He was here, with Dean.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

Castiel swallowed roughly, but then he nodded his acquiesence.

Dean lightly tapped his cheek with his palm.

“All right, then we’re all good.”

Cas leaned into him, breathing deep, and their mouths met. Dean moaned against him, and he started undoing Castiel’s belt. Cas groaned, putting a hand to the back of Dean’s neck, pulling him close and tilting him back so he could deepen the kiss.

His existence was all Dean.

It was all he needed.

~~~

The demon coughed, and gagged, even sounded like he was choking. Blood came up on his lips.

“Alright!” he screamed out, voice harsh and rough, as Sam raised his leg again, ready to deal another blow. “Alright. Oruch… Oruch didn’t feel it was safe in Hell. So he hid it here.”

Yeah, ‘cause Earth sure is safe, Dean thought sarcastically as he grabbed the demon by the shirt, pulling him close. Now he put the demon-killing knife beneath his neck.

“Where?” he asked desperately, so desperate in fact that spit flew from his lips.

The demon couldn’t raise any hand to point, but he nodded over to the bar.

“Behind there. Under the floorboards. Safe.”

“Give us the combination,” Dean demanded.

“I’m gonna spit on your grave.”

“Fun,” Dean growled. “But there’s gonna be a line.”

He started slicing shallowly into the demon’s neck.

A wet, rattling cry left him.

Sam was whistling nonchalantly, and crouched down, thumb pressing into the demon’s other eye.

Okay, that was enough to make Dean wince.

He was using his actual hand for that?

Ugh!

“When you get downstairs, they’ll put out your eyes!”

“Fascinating,” Sam commented, withdrawing his thumb.

Dean almost gagged as he saw the goop on it.

“Lovely.”

Sam wiped his hand off on Dean’s jacket, and he glared.

“Is this all you can do?” the demon laughed out. “Is this all you got? You want to save your boyfriend, Dean Winchester? You’ll never—”

Having heard enough, vision going red, Dean sliced into his throat, blood spraying both him and Sam.

~~~

Dean was handling Cas with both hands now, having slipped his pants partially off. Castiel found himself thrusting up into him, and Dean pulled away, a smirk on his kiss-swollen lips.

“I really know how to get you going,” Dean commented.

“You always have,” Castiel admitted. “Even that night in the barn.”

Dean grinned, captured his lips for a second, and then said, “Ha, I knew you wanted to fuck me then.”

“But then you stabbed me.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t into that.”

Castiel grabbed Dean’s hands, pulling them away from him, and he turned so he could slam him down on the bed. He got one leg up over him, and his breath came in pants as he stared at Dean below him. Dean no longer looked so smug. He seemed weak with arousal.

“I’m more into doing the stabbing,” Castiel told him.

It had taken him a few years, but he finally understood how to dirty talk. He didn’t do it much, but when he did it was purely for Dean’s benefit.

Dean looked like he wanted to say something, his mouth hanging open, but instead he started kicking his pants off, and he gripped hard at Castiel’s clothing.

“Clothes off. Now,” Dean ordered.

Castiel did just that, and helped Dean out of his clothes. When they came together again, their bare flesh touched as much as possible. Their kiss turned less heated, and Castiel pulled back, nuzzling his nose against Dean’s.

Dean ran a hand through his hair.

“So what happened earlier?” he asked him.

“I don’t know. It was like… It was like we weren’t here,” Castiel told him, not sure how else to explain.

“Cas, we are here. We’re together. This is us, here, right now. That’s all there ever will be.”

Castiel didn’t question the fervent light in Dean’s eyes and let himself be drawn back to his mouth.

~~~

“Dude!” Sam exclaimed. “We needed him to tell us the combination.”

Dean wiped the blade off on the demon’s jeans and then stood.

“You’re smart. You’ll crack it.”

Sam was muttering under his breath at him, and Dean went to the Impala to go grab salt and oil from the trunk. He put the knife away in a sheath he’d made that was strapped to his thigh. More work had to be done. A lot of demons’ vessels came back as vengeful spirits. They couldn’t have that. It’d be just another problem on their hands.

Plus, Dean needed to get out of the bar, clear his head.

He was all hot, covered in sweat and blood. And there was a dull pounding deep in him. It wasn’t from the numerous hits and punches he’d taken, but something else that hurt inside of him that had made him kill the demon.

Tears pricked at his eyes as he grabbed the oil canister, other hand already holding the salt.

Dean got back inside the bar and set to work. Sam was working in the back. Based on the rubble he could see, his brother had already gotten the floorboards up.

“Dean, I need you,” Sam called.

Dean went over.

“Phone,” Sam said, staring hard at the padlock of a small safe.

“What? Why?”

“Just get it out,” Sam told him. Dean tried to hand it to him, but his brother pushed it away.

Dean looked on in confusion.

“Okay, write this number down for me,” Sam started, hands on the lock. “Fourteen.”

Dean did so, tapping into the Notes app on his phone.

“Now add five.”

“Dude, you think this is math class or something?”

“Add five!”

Dean added five.

His brother was wincing as he turned the padlock counter-clockwise, probably worried he’d make a mistake. Dean couldn’t see or hear what was going on with the lock since he wasn’t up close enough, but he thought Sam might’ve done one full rotation.

He gave him another number and had him add five to that as well.

Dean wanted to roll his eyes. He didn’t see what the point of all this math was.

But, he had told Sammy to crack the safe, and that’s what it looked like he was doing.

Sam stepped aside, took the phone from Dean, and then shoved him towards the safe.

“What?” Dean asked, just a tad outraged.

“You’re the reason we don’t have a combination. You’re gonna open it.”

“But—”

“Already got the first two numbers,” Sam huffed, standing to his full height, arms crossed.

“Fucking brothers,” Dean muttered under his breath. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Try every number. Tug after each one.”

Dean started to do as Sam said, while complaining, “Oh yeah, tugging, ‘cause that’ll get shit done.”

Sam’s foot lightly thumped against his back. Dean grit his teeth.

It took over twenty tries, but he finally got the lock open ��� though he knew for a fact Sam had done most of the work. There was a click as he pulled on the latch, and swung the door open.

~~~

When he spread Dean’s legs, the feel of him beneath him was suddenly gone. He collapsed to the bed.

Cas opened his eyes, searching around for Dean. He wasn’t there. Not even the scent of him had stayed in the air.

Castiel’s clothes were on him again, like maybe they’d never been taken off, like none of this was real.

“Dean? Dean!”

He whirled around the room — which seemed to be growing darker and darker — looking for his lover.

Nothing.

“Dean!”

His world faded from existence. Black emptiness took over.

~~~

Only one thing sat inside: a dark stone shaped like an oval. Cracks where luminescence shone through were laced through it. Dean picked it up, feeling the cold of it. He turned, holding it up to Sam. After all, Sam was the one who had read the Liber Incatationum, not Dean.

Sam took it, and then stared.

Dean was startled as his brother, letting out a yell, suddenly threw the stone, and it soared across the room before smacking a dent right into the wall. It clattered to the floor.

“Dude!” Dean cried, getting to his feet.

“It’s not the Baetylus. It’s fucking useless!”

Dean wanted to be the one to tell Sam to calm down, but he couldn’t. Suddenly his vision was tunneling, his world darkening. Every breath hurt.

Oh god.

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

Dean sunk against the counter, head in his hands. There were shards of glass out of the corner of his eye, and he considered taking one and jabbing it into his skull. Maybe that would get something useful done, at least.

Their wild goose chase had led to nothing.

As Dean stood there, all of him weak, the ache in his chest taking over tenfold, Sam was the one who took over salting and burning the bodies.

By the time some of them were set on fire (the building having to go with them because of all the evidence police could find and hold against them), Dean could see straight, but it didn’t matter.

Sam put a hand on his shoulder.

“Come on.”

Dean shrugged his hand off, and straightened. He and Sam walked out of the bar, Dean numbly questioning, “What’s the point?”

“The point?” Sam asked. “We’re trying to save Cas.”

~~~

Clapping sounded in Castiel’s ears.

~~~

Dean was unlocking the Impala now, opening his door. He rested his arms on the roof. Sam was looking at him, wan but forcefully hopeful.

~~~

The voice that spoke to him was Meg’s, but he knew that thing wasn’t Meg.

~~~

“Yeah, and how’s that going for us?” Dean barked. “Face it, Sammy. We’re not gonna save him if we’re just stuck chasing our tails. And what if there isn’t a way? What if none of this works?”

~~~

“Well done, Castiel. Really getting me going there with that show.”

~~~

“It will work,” Sam said. “We can’t give up on him.”

Dean sighed heavily, and then sunk down into his seat.

“Maybe we should,” he said. “He’s gone, Sammy. Gone for good. You and I both know…

~~~

Castiel turned, facing the Empty, the realization of his death sinking upon him once more.

“So, ready to take a million-year nap yet?”

~~~

“...Cas is dead.”

[erule]

Heaven can wait (15x20 rewrite)

Title: Heaven Can Wait (15x20 rewrite)

Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Sam/Eileen

Word Count: 4870

Warnings: none.

Summary: this takes place after 15x19. Castiel is in the Empty. The boys have defeated Chuck. Jack is the new God. Oh, Cas is becoming human again.

A/N: Hello hello! This is my rewrite of 15x20, because I didn’t like the finale AT ALL. I didn’t put a lot of things in the summary on purpose, because I want you to enjoy this story like you’d enjoy an actual episode. I hope you like it. Feedback is always appreciated! You can also find me on AO3 and Wattpad. Enjoy!

Story under the cut!

There was so much noise.

The Empty just wanted to sleep, that's all. Since Jack exploded, the demons and the angels were talking so much. It had to stop, one way or another. So that's why the Empty quickly stood up from the throne.

«This has to stop.»

There were some angels and demons standing in a circle around something. They were murmuring something like "How's possibile? or “He can't be...", but the Empty didn't hear so well their words. Ruby noticed it and made a sign to the others.

«Don't talk» she said.

«What's happening?» the Empty asked. Uriel tried to cover that something, but the Empty was angry, so angry. They had to be quiet again, somehow. «Nothing» Uriel answered, but it was a damn lie. The Empty slowly moved them away to find that something over them.

But what the Empty found out almost ruined all the knowledge, the experience, the years of the kingdom. It was something the Empty hadn't seen before, like, ever. That something was someone. That something didn't not have the angel's Grace like it should have had.

«Castiel... What's happening to you?» the Empty asked, astonished. Castiel looked at Meg, or at least, at her face, looking for some empathy, but without finding any. He was all alone there, without Sam, Jack and most importantly, Dean. He didn't know what to do and it was terrifying. He looked at the Empty with fear, his blue eyes so dark, the Empty asked itself how he could even see. He seemed so lost. His hands were trembling, barely covered by the trench coat. It was like all the light he had came off him. «My powers... I'm losing them.»

And so the Empty thought: "If he's losing his powers, it means... Oh no, no, it can't happen! Nobody can know it! I just want to go back to sleep”. But it was happening in the kingdom, so it was under its responsibility.

«We'll fix you» that's all the Empty said.

«What's happening to him?» Uriel asked, truly worried about Castiel.

«He's just sick.»

«I thought we were already dead.»

«You're angels, angels get constantly changings.»

«You're lying.»

The Empty just grabbed Castiel, taking him away from them.

«Am I sick?»

«If being dumb is a disease, then yes, you are.»

Castiel didn't already understand what was happening to him, but the Empty knew it so well. It had to hide him or God would have found that there was something weird. Someone who was not supposed to be there. Yeah, that was not his place anymore. Castiel tried to escape from the Empty's grip, but he was tired, like he hadn't the energy anymore to do something.

«What's happening to me? Just tell me! I can handle it! It can't happen something worse to me anymore» he said, with sadness in his voice. Thinking about Dean. About all the things he didn't tell him. His biggest regrets. Ruby was right: that was a really terrible place to spend the eternity in.

«You really wanna know? Well then, I'll explain it to you: you don't belong here anymore» the Empty said.

Castiel was surprised.

«W-why?» he asked, his heart beating faster. He still had it, it seemed.

«Because...» the Empty began to say, enjoying that moment, «you're turning into a human». Castiel looked at it with blank eyes.

«No...»

He was getting human again.

In the meantime, Dean was staring at the screen of his laptop. He had decided with Sam that they had left the hunting life. It hadn't been as easy as Sam had made it seem, because life without hunting was boring enough, but he much preferred it to the risky one he had before. He stroked Miracle, that was rubbing the head against his leg while he was looking for something to do. They could have gone to the Pie Fest, but then something else caught his attention. And no, it was not a case.

«What are you doing?» Sam asked, coming out of nowhere.

Dean quickly pulled down the laptop screen, shaking his head.

«Nothing» he hastened to reply.

Sam gave him an eloquent look.

«Dean, I've caught you watching porn before, I'm not shocked anymore.»

«I wasn't… I wasn't watching porn!» Dean exclaimed, his cheeks slightly red and Sam chuckled.

«Yes, of course, jerk» he joked.

«Bitch» Dean answered back. Sam frowned.

«Look, I need to talk to you about something important» Sam said, sitting down at the table across from him. Dean nodded. «Dean, me and Eileen...»

«Expect a baby! I knew it. Sam, I've always told you to use a cond...»

«No, no!» Sam exclaimed, looking scandalized. «She’s not pregnant. This is not what I want to talk to you about.»

«All right, then shoot.»

«Listen... we... we thought we were going to live together.»

Dean smiled at him happily.

«Of course, here is all the space you need! You choose the room for her and then...»

Sam swallowed.

«No Dean, we thought… to move in together, somewhere else, you know» Sam interrupted him.

Dean seemed to freeze, as if he had turned to ice. He was paralyzed. He only managed to part his lips in an “Oh” as Sam felt more and more guilty.

«Dean, please…»

«No Sam, you're right. It’s great! Soon you will start a family, it seems right that you go and live together. Alone. You deserve it» Dean said, with his usual fleeting glance. That's why Sam realized that he was upset.

«Dean...» Sam tried to say, but Dean raised a hand as if to tell him that everything was fine. The conversation was over. He picked up the laptop and headed to his room with Miracle at his heels.

He sat down on the bed, exhausted. He was out of energy lately. Indeed, for a month now. Time seemed to pass much slower. Since he was gone.

He shook his head. He opened the laptop and looked at the screen again, where the list of jobs he could apply for was prominently displayed. Maybe he would be alone in that bunker, maybe for all of his life, but at least he would have something to spend the time with.

Miracle reminded him of his presence by licking his cheek. Dean chuckled in a guttural voice, stroking his ear.

«Well, maybe I won't be completely alone in the end.»

Castiel felt it all amplified now. Everything hurt a lot more. Memories, or better to say, the regrets, were like pins that pricked his flesh. The Empty felt more like a place of torture than something else. It wasn't all that different from Hell, after all.

He opened his eyes, which he didn't even remember closing, but he always saw everything black around him. It was a nightmare. He felt like he was trapped and he was out of breath. It was like drowning in his own thoughts, falling more and more towards the deepest abyss of an infinite ocean. This is how Dean would have felt if he had been buried with Michael in his head along the bottom of the sea.

Dean.

That name was enough for him to remember everything. Who he was. His human nature. In fact, he no longer felt the power running through his veins, much less the Grace. It felt like empty. Just like when he became human a few years earlier. He looked at his fingertips, from which golden steam slowly emerged. He was losing pieces. This situation was one of the worst he'd ever found himself in, worse than the time he'd tried to stop Jack when he'd woken Dean. That man was like a bear.

A smile came to his face at the memory. He missed Dean so much. If she thought about it hard, his absence felt like a grip in the stomach. It hurt in places he didn't even think he had, such as the joints or the epidermis in the back of his knees. It was a dull ache that prevented him from walking.

I heard your prayer.

Another regret thundered in his head like a cannon shot. Why hadn't he made Dean speak, in Purgatory? Maybe Dean wanted to tell him something, but he hadn't given him time to do it. And now he would never know. He spent years feeling something for Dean, he even rebelled because of him, using his free will, as Chuck said, for nothing. He didn’t blame Dean, of course, but himself. He should have let him talk or he should have confessed his feeling to him very early, just to see what it looked like. He would have seen Dean’s soul changing like a painting that slowly come out, while the painter fills the empty spaces with colours.

The first time he saw Dean’s soul, he was amazed by it. It was completely white. Usually, those were the colours of children’s souls, that why Castiel felt like something was wrong. But then, he got to know him better day after day and because of that, Dean’s sould finally opened up to him. It changed slowly, like it was hiding from him. It was like seeing the waves of the sea coming near to your feet when you’re at the beach. The white and the blue mixed together. His soul revealed the blue parts, the dark ones, in which he was scared of his Dad or scared of himself. When he had got the Mark of Cain, it was completely black. But usually, the white parts were the larger ones. They were the memories with Sam, the memories with his Mom, the love he shared for the world, the faith, the weaknesses. Sometimes, Cas could even spot some of his memories with him and it made him feel warm inside. It was like his imaginary grey soul could merge with Dean’s and from that, their colours could become one. One big ocean.

That’s why he felt so lonely without Dean. Loneliness would have eaten him alive. Meg had hidden it very well, because he no longer saw anyone around, neither awake nor asleep. Maybe everything was back to normal and he was awake only because he was partly human. This was no place for him, but he figured Meg didn't want him out, that's why she had to keep it hidden from Chuck, even though he doubted God cared about him. But he had to go. He had to go back to Dean. Before things were different, he was at peace with the fact that he had been able to save him by sacrificing himself, but now that he could actually see him again and live a normal life with him, he wanted to return to Earth at all costs.

"Live a normal life". He had never really thought about it before. Perhaps because the time he had been human had lasted too short or because he had always thought he would remain an angel forever, but now he could no longer think of living without Dean. It would have been alright to just be able to be his friend forever, just to be close to him, even if he didn't return his feelings. On the other hand, loving another person means wishing them happiness, right? Dean had taught him that himself.

He got up from the ground, thinking of a plan, before yet another regret hit him again and he could no longer think clearly. In the past he would have prayed to Chuck, but now it seemed useless.

Then, a sudden revelation hit him. What if Sam and Dean were already dead? Maybe Chuck had won. Perhaps the Winchesters and Jack had already been erased from existence. A lump rose in his throat. No, it couldn't be. They couldn't be dead. Meg would have told him, to make him suffer.

He looked around. Even though he couldn't feel Dean's presence, it was like he was there. His thought gave him strength. He decided to walk. He did like the Jews in the desert. He would walk until he saw someone. Or maybe he would have made a little noise, just to annoy Meg. After all, he was a human and if he stayed there, he would die. Meg would not have appreciated having him around, neither dead nor alive. That's why he started calling Uriel and Ruby, meanwhile. Sooner or later, someone would answer him.

He would have walked even more than fourty days and fourty nights, just to get back to Dean.

Dean sent the job apply with shaking fingers. He really hoped to be able to become a mechanic. Then maybe in the future, after saving up some money, he would open his own bar. There was time after all. Finally he had it. And he also had the freedom to do it. He smiled sadly at the laptop as he heard Sam and Eileen talking in the kitchen. He left his room and looked out the door. He saw them laughing as Eileen smeared Sam's nose with flour, while he had his arms around her hips. It was a very sweet scene, but also an intimate one, so he left them alone to cook.

Castiel's absence hit him in the chest like a boulder. He hadn't told Sam about Cas’ confession, but he kept reliving that words every night. He saw his face, his eyes flooded with tears, his smile as he walked away peacefully. And it hurt like a knife. He hadn't even had time to process what he had told him. He had not been able to answer him, because he was too paralyzed by his words. That was his biggest regret. He should have told him how he felt about him a long time ago, but he wasn't ready yet. He still didn't understand what he wanted from life, but now it was clear to him. He wanted him, just him. But now he would have only his memory forever.

Castiel's throat was parched. His legs ached, but he kept walking. He didn't know how much time had passed, but it seemed like an eternity. The fingers no longer gave off even a golden spark. Perhaps he had become fully human or nearly so. Either way, he felt like a prisoner. A prisoner enclosed in the dark. It was awful. There wasn't even a drop of light in there, except the memory of Dean. That was the only rope of hope he had left.

He went on, one step at a time, until he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground. He felt defeated to the bone. He was desperate. He was afraid and did not know where to turn for help. He would stay in there and then die. What happens to humans who die in the Empty? Was such an end possible? It seemed like a worse conclusion than death. A warrior who died without even remembering his name, who he was. He was alone.

«Castiel?»

Cas looked up and saw in front of him someone who shouldn't have been there. Someone who was still alive on Earth, for as long as he knew. One moment: if he was there, then what the hell had happened to Sam and Dean?

«Michael?»

Dean cleared the table. Sam noticed this strange behavior of his, as he usually holed up in his room as a teenager, but he said nothing, mostly because Eileen motioned for him to stay there while she followed him. She went with him into the kitchen, standing in the door behind him. When Dean turned and saw her, a plate nearly slipped from his hands.

«Eileen, hey… Don't worry, I'll take it out tonight, since you've cooked. The cake was really good, anyway.»

«Thanks. Dean, I know that Sam...»

«Yes, he told me. And believe me, I'm happy for you» he said, smiling at her. But Eileen had learned to know him, to decipher his non-verbal language above all. And from his dimples, given by a forced smile, she understood that he was not sincere.

«What's wrong?»

«Nothing» Dean replied, but Eileen gave him a eloquent look. «Okay, listen, I'm just worried, that's all. I'm happy for you, but I'll be here alone with Miracle and you know… if Cas had been here, this wouldn't have weighed on me that much.»

Eileen smiled at him, finally understanding the root of the problem.

«You miss Cas.»

Dean clenched his jaw. He couldn't answer her verbally, so he just shrugged, while a lump in his throat prevented him from speaking. He wanted to tell her "Sometimes" but he knew it was a lie. He missed him constantly, but tried not to show it. In short, so as not to worry Sam. Or so it was said, at least.

«Don't tell Sam» was all that came out of his mouth, like a prayer. Oh, if he had known that Castiel could hear him, he would have prayed to him every day.

«Don't tell me what?» Sam asked, entering the kitchen.

«That I sent a resume!» Dean exclaimed.

«Thing?» Sam asked, amazed. «Dean, that's great!»

Dean smiled at him.

«Yes, well, I sent some of them actually. I hope they will take me to a workshop. After all, the Stanford student here is you and not me» he said, referring to Sam being back to study.

«You know you are so much more than you think, Dean» Sam told him before hugging him. «I'm really happy for you, man.»

Yes, Dean knew now, because Castiel had told him. And he would have spent every day of his life proving to him that he had heard him.

«What are you doing here? Castiel asked, deeply frightened. «What happened on Earth? What happened to Sam and Dean?»

«Calm down, okay? Sam and Dean had a plan to defeat God and they succeeded. They beat him. And now Jack has become the new God.»

A wave of heat filled Castiel's chest. He was proud of Jack. He could not believe he had raised what one day would become the new God. A better God, perhaps even more naive, but more valid than the previous one.

But then he wondered what happened to Sam and Dean and fear returns to take possession of his body.

«Why are you here?»

«Oh, Dad killed me because I tried to help them in the beginning. That's why I'm happy they beat him in the end. I heard everything from Meg» he explained.

«Oh.»

«I may also have overheard that you are becoming a human. Is it true?» he asked with strange interest, as if he were plotting something, but he certainly couldn't hide it from him.

«Yeah.»

«Then let me help you.»

«No, not…»

«Trust me. I have nothing more to lose now» Michael told him. Castiel sighed, unsure, then nodded. He needed someone on his side.

«What do you want me to do?»

«There is only one way you can hope to get out of here, since Meg is keeping you hidden. You have to pray to Jack. The others and I will make noise as a distraction, so Meg won't notice. You know everything in here.»

Castiel swallowed. He was afraid that the plan would not come true, but if that was the only chance to return to Dean, then he would try. Maybe Jack would have heard it.

«Hurry, though. You must do this while you are still an angel and have a connection with him. Otherwise, as a human, he won't hear you» Michael said, while Castiel no longer felt his fingers itch from the Grace that ran through his veins.

And Castiel also felt the last bit of hope disappear along with his words.

Dean went to bed after saying goodnight to Sam and Eileen. He rolled over and over in bed, unable to sleep. He looked at the clock several times, but it always seemed to mark the same time. He looked around and saw everything dark. He wondered if he shared Castiel's vision. A small consolation in that nightmare. God, how much he missed him. He pulled the jacket with Castiel’s bloody handprint on it closer to him, as if it were his best friend and closed his eyes. A warm tear rolled down his cheek.

God, I miss you so much.

Michael had already left him alone. He ran to Uriel, Ruby and the others to explain the plan to them. He should have let them out as he had promised Ruby to repay them perhaps, but he didn't have time to think about it, because they had already started to mess. The noise woke Meg - who may not even be sleeping -, who ran to check the situation. His eyes were bloodshot. She didn't notice him as he told the others to be quiet. Castiel was short on time, so he braced himself and used every ounce of energy left to him to call Jack. He prayed intensely, but he could not understand if he had heard it or not, so he did it aloud.

«Jack, it's Castiel. I am in the Empty, I am becoming human. Please get me out of here. Jack, please...»

«YOU!» Meg yelled, before joining him in anger. Michael tried to stop her, but he couldn't.

Castiel took a step back, but tripped and fell to the ground. Panic took hold of him. He was scared to death. He tried to use his powers to protect himself, but not a spark came from his fingers. It was over. He would have died in there.

«You will never see the sunlight again!» Meg yelled. «And neither your stupid boyfriend for sure!»

A flash of understanding passed into Michael's eyes, who was surprised. Castiel felt betrayed, betrayed by his own feelings. Vulnerable. Emotions so human, as to make him understand that the transformation had taken place completely. He was human again. Meg was right: he would never see the sunlight again. We might as well give up.

Then, he heard a beating of wings. The beating of a heart, his. And the forgotten voice of a person who had meant a lot to him before.

«Castiel?»

Cas turned, tears burning in the corners of his eyes.

«Jack.»

Jack smiled at him.

«Come with me, I'll take you away from here.»

Dean suddenly woke up, sweat running down his spine. It was too dark in that room. He tried to turn on the light, but it wasn't there. Then, the bunker went into alarm. It looked like there was someone inside.

He got up quickly, took the gun from the drawer and prepared himself for any eventuality. Red lights danced on the walls like flames.

«Dean! What is happening?» Sam yelled, joining him in the hallway with bare feet.

«I do not know. There is no light. Maybe some demon is trying to enter, I don't...»

«Sam! Dean!» Eileen shouted.

The Winchesters rushed into the living room at once. Dean loaded the gun, ready to fire, but there was no demon in front of him. His arm slid along his side as he stared astonished at the two people in front of him. An angel and a Nephilim.

«Hello, Dean.»

Dean was completely stunned. He stood there with his feet anchored to the cold floor watching Sam hug Jack, while his eyes remained fixed on Castiel. He had the same trenchcoat, the same incredibly blue eyes, the same tie on, yet he looked completely different. He wondered if the fact that he had remained all that time in the Empty had not changed him. He wondered how long the days in there would last, if he were tortured like him in Hell. He wondered if he remembered heis gaze, Dean's, the night he died, he remembered perfectly his eyes burning from tears.

«Cas...» his name finally slipped from his lips, each letter sliding on his tongue like an avalanche.

Castiel took a step forward to get closer to him. Time seemed to have stopped around them. He had walked a long way to get back to Dean and now that he saw him in front of himself, he couldn't believe it.

«Dean, it's me. I'm here.»

Dean reached out to him and Castiel came over to be touched. Dean stroked his cheek and Castiel felt a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach, as if they were butterflies flying all over the place. He found himself closing his eyes for an infinitely long second in which there was only the consistency of Dean's fingertips along his jaw.

«You're real?»

The laugh that went up Castiel's throat, Dean could hear along the skin. What a nice noise it made.

«Yes I am.»

It was all too fast. It was quick the way Dean pulled him to him and hugged him, it was quick the way Jack patted him on the shoulder and disappeared, it was quick the glance that Sam and Eileen exchanged as they stood looking at them aside. But he distinctly felt the warmth of Dean’s breath Dean on himself, along his left ear and his hands gripping his trenchcoat.

Every part of himself screamed, as if Dean had touched his exposed nerves, one by one, every single fiber of his body, every cell of his skin. He was burning as if he had had a fever. As if Hell had dragged him into his deepest mouth. And he thought he would have chosen Hell a thousand more times if it meant saving Dean. Every single time.

That night lasted a long time. The celebrations lasted for hours, until Sam and Eileen decided, at dawn at seven in the morning, that maybe it was time to go to sleep. Castiel and Dean remained at the table, an empty beer bottle in the hands of Dean and Castiel with their hands in their laps, facing each other.

«So, what's it like to feel the flavors again?» Dean asked him, alluding to the fact that Castiel was back to being a human like a few years before.

«Strange» he replied and Dean smiled, eyes cast down, fixed on the empty bottle.

«You know, when Lucifer came back here... he tricked me into having the door to the bunker open» Dean began, looking up at him. Castiel felt a thousand electric shocks running down his arms. «He called me and on my phone screen appeared... your name.»

«What?» Cas asked, confused.

«Yes, and then he pretended to be you. He spoke to me in your voice and made me believe you were out here, hurt. I ran upstairs and let him in.»

«Dean, you don't have to feel guilty about...»

«No, Cas, let me finish this. Please» Dean said. Cas was silent. Dean took a deep breath, then continued, «I'm not telling you this because I feel guilty. If there was even the slightest chance that you had been out there, I would have opened that door anyway» he said. Every word was forced out of his mouth. Saying his feelings out loud costed him very much... it was something he hadn't even managed to confess to Sam, even though the weight was becoming so important that sooner or later he would have surely done it. «Cas, I would have liked to tell you everything in Purgatory. Damn, I wanted to tell you something even before Billie opened that door, but we’ve always run out of time. Or maybe that's what I kept repeating to myself to suppress all my feelings lower and lower, as if that could serve to make them disappear. But then you said those words to me and I... I couldn't pretend anymore, do you understand?»

Castiel frowned.

«I'm afraid I don't understand you, Dean.»

«Do you remember what you told me when the Empty took you away?»

«Every word?»

«No, Cas» Dean said, rolling his eyes. «The last thing you told me.»

«Goodbye? I think I've said goodbye to you, I'm pretty sure.»

«You told me "I love you ", okay? You told me you loved me.»

«Oh. Well of course and I still do» Castiel said and Dean felt his heart begin to beat faster in his chest.

«Are you sure? Because you know, maybe angels feel things differently than people...»

«Dean, you taught me what love is. I'm not sure I know what to feel in these cases, but it's something quite profound.»

Dean swallowed, looking him straight in the eye.

«You're human forever now, Cas. Do you realize it? You will grow old, you will get sick, you will die... like me.»

«I realize that, Dean. But you know, humans fascinate me. And I always thought you were the best among them.»

Dean felt his eyes get glossy. He wasn't sure where that was going, but he had decided that this time he would have played it well. He no longer had time to pretend he felt nothing for Castiel.

«Would you like to do all of this with me?»

Castiel smiled at him, a smile soft and bright at the same time. It warmed his heart.

«Yes, I'd love to, Dean.»

[dothwrites]

15x02 coda--be like wool

“Come now, let us settle the matter,” said the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” --Isaiah 1:18

Forgiveness is weakness. 

That thought was beaten into his brain long ago, by his father, by other hunters, by life itself. By God, it turns out. Every time Dean tries to turn the other cheek, every single time, he only gets slapped again, except harder. And that’s if he’s lucky. If he’s not lucky, then he gets punched. Maybe even shot. 

Anyone who hurt you would do again, if given the right set of circumstances. It’s why Dad always said that once a monster killed, they had to be put down. Like a dog that tasted blood--you had to put it down, otherwise the flock was never safe afterward. 

Dean doesn’t forgive. And he doesn’t forget. So when Cas, fucking Castiel, shows his face, he can’t stop the instinctive surge of anger that’s tied to Mom, tied to Jack, tied to betrayal, and how many times is Cas going to lie to him before Dean wises up and realizes that no matter how many beers he drinks, no matter how many idioms he masters, Cas is always going to be an angel? He’s never going to understand human emotions, certainly never going to feel them. 

Cas doesn’t understand the howling chasm of rage and loss that swirls in the pit of Dean’s stomach. The continuous torrent makes him sick. Every time Dean manages to catch a few minutes of sleep, he wakes angry, with his eyes narrowed to a laser focus and his mouth tasting like bile. 

Jack was his--no, he was theirs, there was never a moment when Jack was purely his--Jack was their son. Jack killed Mom. Chuck killed Jack.  

Chuck broke the world, and for no other reason than he didn’t approve of improv. 

Cas...just complicates everything further. 

With his apologies and his He was ours, and his dreams of family, and his We are...Dean can’t look at Cas without seeing Mom, without feeling the weight of her body in his arms, without scenting her shampoo. 

And now she’s gone, just when he’d gotten her back, and Dean can’t...He can’t...

So he focuses on the mission, on the problem directly in front of him, on the fact that the world is splitting apart at the seams. He puts band-aids on disasters as they arise, and all the while he swallows that kernel of hatred and anger and lets it rot inside him. Because worse than the grief, worse than the loss, worse than knowing that his entire life was scripted for him by a deadbeat writer trying for a daytime Emmy...worse than all of that is the need that boils inside him. 

He needs Cas with him. Sam on one side, Cas on the other, and that’s how they get through things. That’s how they survive, that’s how they win. He needs Cas’ infinite compassion, his endurance, his intelligence...He needs Cas. He has for a long time. 

He’s like a magnet caught in a never-ending cycle of attraction and repellence, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before he explodes. He just hopes that he can manage to put some of these damn ghosts to rest before it happens. 

He finds Cas outside the school, sitting on one of the benches. His hands are folded, as if he’s in prayer. For all Dean knows, the poor stupid son of a bitch might be. He hates that about Cas, the need to believe in something greater than himself, the unwavering devotion to serve. He loves that Cas still has a nugget of faith somewhere in him. 

“It’s getting cold,” Dean greets. Cas’ head jerks towards him, surprise evident in his eyes. Dean allows himself the human emotion of amusement: it’s not that often that you sneak up on an angel. He sees Cas getting ready to respond. Years of experience have taught him to anticipate Cas’ response. “Yeah, I know, you don’t feel the cold. Good for you.” 

Cas regards him steadily, but his eyes are a fucking warzone. Once Cas discovered the wide world of human emotions, he’s always worn his heart on his sleeve. His struggle is writ clear in the irises of his baby blues: the naked misery over losing Jack, the lingering resentment that Dean hasn’t told Belphagor to go back to Hell yet, the same fear that he feels--Are they enough? Will they be enough? Is there any way that any of them make it out of this alive? There’s the longing, which Dean pretends like he doesn’t see. 

So Cas is conflicted. Join the fucking club pal. 

“Was there a reason you came here?” Cas’ voice is stiff. Aloofness doesn’t fit him well, and he’s still stretching to fill the crevices. 

Rage rises in him, by now an obedient dog coming willingly, if not eagerly, to its master’s call. How dare--How dare Cas, after everything he did, after everything that happened...But then he remembers the particular way that Cas’ face broke after Dean pushed past him, the strength in his voice as he said We Are. 

Even after everything, Cas is still fighting for him. For them. 

“I’m tired.” The confession slips out of him like smoke, gone before Dean can even think about yanking it back. “I’m just...I’m so fucking tired Cas.” 

Cas doesn’t even blink, doesn’t waver. “So rest,” he says, as if it were that easy. Maybe it is. 

Bonelessly, Dean slips onto the bench. The night air closes around him, nips at his neck and wrists and threatens to slip underneath the fabric of his jacket, but when he sits closer to Cas, the cold disappears. His forehead finds its way onto Cas’ shoulder and Dean breathes in the scent of him, grass after a rainstorm, sharp hint of ozone. It’s Cas, and Dean falls into him. 

“I’m so tired,” he repeats, until the words slur together in a never-ending mantra. “Cas, Cas, I’m so tired.” 

Cas’ fingers thread through his hair and rub at his scalp. Dean hates him, purely and viciously. In a way, he’s hated Cas for years. 

“So rest,” Cas murmurs. It might be Dean’s imagination, but he thinks he feels the brush of lips over his forehead. He feels Cas’ breath ruffle through his hair, feels Cas’ fingers settle at the nape of his neck. Dean needs him, Dean loves him, so fiercely that he can’t breathe around the pain of it. “So rest Dean.” 

It’s not anything close to forgiveness. It might never be. But Dean doesn’t need forgiveness. What he needs is right here, as steady as the earth and unknowable as the unwritten page. 

“So watch yourselves. “If your brothers and sisters sin against you, rebuke them, and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day, and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent’, you must forgive them.” --Luke 17:3-4

[neven-ebrez]

1/2 Hello, always thank you for the reasonable posts! I just wanted to ask though if you also think that Dean and Cas are 'both' at faults and they 'both' need to be better? Cause I personally don't see what Cas has done wrong. Dean and Sam both knew about Jack's states, Sam stated that to Dean himself. And I also see opinions about how Cas is going behind the brothers back by not telling them about the empty deal he made and I feel like I missed something

½ cause it’s cas’s choice and has nothing to do with the brothers. Could you share your thoughts?

—

Hi there! Fair warning but this is long. Because apparently I’m just frustrated and angry enough about the comprehension fail of some fans here and I love Cas enough to go on this rant. With Dean and Cas I’m not talking about doing wrong necessarily in the moral sense but more in the narrative (drama creating) sense. It’s about an interesting story, yeah? 

In that one previous post with Dean and Cas’ issues I was not talking specifically about 14B til now. I’m talking about the history of how they interact with one another going all the way back to Cas refusing to tell Dean about everything with Raphael in S6 (the show revisits the Leviathan mistake in 15x03 with Belphegor trying to take in Hell souls to transform into God so this isn’t something the show has forgotten either since Chuck is still mentioning Leviathan as recently as two episodes ago) and recently emphasized by Dean not explaining to Cas in S13 what Cas’ death did to him. These two keep secrets from one another, perpetually. The biggest of which are heart secrets. The moment where Dean was raking leaves (fuck my whole life), Cas was right there, he could have figured things out with Dean, but instead Cas turned and went the other way in an effort to give Dean peace.

Cas serves Dean, from the moment he rebelled Cas started treated Dean like his new God. As an angel he’s quite literally built to serve “God”, both as a warrior and guardian, so much of that is in his “programming”. And angels aren’t meant to focus that devotion on one human, to filter that devotion in a human way while staying on Earth. As Dean laments in S6, it breaks them (and Dean’s ultimately wrong here, but his mindset here is important, even as S12 sees it start to change). 12x10 touches on this extensively as well with Ishim when we see his obsession with Lily and how it destroyed both of their lives. It’s learning to love PROPERLY without children suffering for it but I’M GETTING THERE! We see this issue displayed predominantly in Jack, product of a human and angel, as we are meant to question whether such a union is possible and, in fact, best. All this is more Destiel-ish but I don’t think you can talk about this subject without Destiel at this point. So here we are: Cas’ “MISTAKES”.

Back in 6x20 we see the root of the relationship’s communication problem. We see it develop and stagnate as the show faces infinite renewal. And it all boils down to Cas wanting to stay with Dean (“Most of the time I’d rather be here” and all), but feeling like if he does then he’ll be bringing all of Heaven’s/God’s problems with him to Dean. He sees Dean’s fated involvement (past and present) as unfair and so he tries to bring Dean peace and to keep all that stuff away from him as much as possible. But back then Cas didn’t know Dean as well as he does now. Cas liked an idea of Dean. That’s why he got so angry in 5x18 and beat the shit out of him in that alleyway. Cas does know Dean now tho. Things are very different, but somewhat the same as far as devotion goes. It’s faith and it’s love. Cas has always acted with Dean’s best interests at heart rather than maybe a situation’s best interest. Even solving Heaven’s problems later in S9 just became, for Cas, simply a way to make up for his actions in S6 and to STILL get angels in a place where he could again try and stay with Dean. If Cas is alive he’ll always try to both stay with Dean and to make up for the situation he feels he caused trying to do this the first time in S6.

That’s what all this has been about. Cas finding a way to stay beside Dean, but not at the expense it caused in S6. Somewhere along the way in S8 in Purgatory the guilt over how he burned everything he’s ever known for this slowly began to eat away at him, make him depressed to the point where he’s instead just happy now to die making Dean happy. Cas decided to sentence himself to his own personal Hell when he let go of Dean’s hand at the purgatory portal. How could he be allowed to be happy with Dean when so many of his kind, so many others, had to die for it? And the solution eluded Cas until… Jack. Cas’ “mistakes” against others (the biggest being the slaughter of most of his kind by his own hand) are rooted in his frustrations over being unable to simply stay with Dean (helping Dean vs helping others). And now we speed up to Jack era and S14/S15. Cas now sees Jack as his new God. He’s sees Jack as the way to make him staying with Dean happen without the cost Cas has previously paid. Cas thinks Jack will lead the Winchesters and humanity to a better world. Jack is literally the solution to all Cas’ problems in Cas’ mind. He sees the path with Jack as a union of the two things that have systematically driven his depression: choosing Dean’s happiness/life or the happiness/lives of others. Because given the choice Cas will choose Dean’s happiness over the world but with Jack Cas feels he doesn’t have to choose anymore. So Cas no longer sees Dean as his God to serve. Dean no longer creates the “problem” as well as functions as the “solution”. That gets to be Jack. But Cas still wants to be with him, wants Dean happy. This is plain when Cas puts himself between Dean and Jack in 14x20.

I think there’s a lesson here, in how you are not suppose to treat your children as something for yourself. John didn’t learn that. Chuck hasn’t learned that. Neither have Dean and Cas. Just look at the parents of Billy in 15x04. You can’t use your kids like that. It’s a hard lesson. It’s one of S15’s ultimate lesson tho I believe. It’s how Chuck will let go of the Winchesters (his children), in time. So yes. This is Cas’ biggest mistake with Jack. It’s what he’s ultimately “done wrong”. I’m off topic tho. I know. You’ve asked me about Dean and Cas’ recent issues and how they need to communicate better essentially. I can’t not talk about one without talking about the history here tho.

The Dean stans mad at Cas over what he’s done in the name of Dean’s own happiness just don’t care about seeing any of this, none of their complicated history together, as 4x22 and Cas’ decision to rebel for Dean specifically literally led to all this, everything that follows. This is what Sam’s S15 visions reveal (the importance of Cas reveling, being with them both), though not yet clearly defined in so many words (likely eventually by Sam). It’s like Dean stans and Cas haters see Dean and Cas in competition for a narrative arc or Sam’s place or something. This is the problem when you can’t value what the show values: found family. Family don’t end in blood. Maybe it needs to be put on some more merchandise or something because FUCKING HELL.

*takes a calming breath*

Dean and Cas are essentially the same damn person. They were raised under the same crappy absent father and fight their respective “programming” in order to find who they both are underneath when given a choice. And who they both are is in conflict against what God has decided they should both be (though God’s focus is more on Dean rather than Cas, with God having written off all the angels awhile ago). And so S15 brings us exactly here, to the nature of how Dean and Cas function to one another, want one another in the other’s lives and how they both need to explain this to one another clearly without bringing in anyone else (Sam or Jack) into their words to one another. And moreso, how it’s not just Dean and Cas together that produces a new world, but how Sam is also essential to this. 5x04 showed us what happens if Sam doesn’t stay. Remove Sam, Dean or Cas from one another and it all (a happy ending) falls apart. Jack is different because of Cas’ mistake in how he views him as glue to Dean (which isn’t Cas’ whole view but irrelevant). Removing Jack, and pulling Sam into a place of understanding concerning Dean and Cas, the shows forces Dean and Cas to ask themselves what they want from one another without the both of them there. Not that they have to live in a world like that necessarily, obviously, but it’s asking them to consider what their little world together would be like. Cas doesn’t see how he can stay under the baggage of his mistakes without the future Jack promises. Like in S8, he leaves Dean. This is where they will be forced to “do better” and express this desire to stay with each other without dragging poor Jack (or Sam) into the mix, without dragging anything else into the mix.

Dean and Cas refusing to admit why they want to stay with each other has lead to so many conflicts with other things, namely Heaven with Cas and what Dean did in 9x01 with Sam. In Carver era this is how the show begins to craft itself, showing how these three lives are forever connected, producing great misery when communication completely fails. Dean does drastic things to Sam to keep him with him whenever Cas leaves him. It used to be Dean only needed Sam and did drastic things to keep Sam with him because of John’s conditioning. Carver era changed that, structurally. Now, in Cas, it’s framed so that Dean has found a kindred spirit, one which would theoretically allow him to let Sam go if only Cas stayed with him. Because that was the ending Carver era was seemingly going for, or at least seriously considered. The child must be let go. Instead of Sam now, it feels like it is Jack (because Sam’s “call to action” in S15 is being framed more as he is an essential part of Dean and Cas reconciling). Both Jack and Sam have been in the child role to both Dean and Cas respectively at different points. And SPN has churned out 9 more seasons of drama based on these dynamics, this goal (sacrificing Sam) and lack of clear communication since S6. Having ran through as much as they feasibly could before Jack, Jack was created, essentially, to sustain these problems until we reached the end with the ultimate lesson that open communication literally solves everything. And also… he creates a situation where Sam doesn’t need to be sacrificed (but still could).

Not discussing the show structurally, and instead in a more character based psychological way, concerning Jack specifically TFW all knew his power and how living with him was always a risk. They each claimed Jack and undertook the risk, because they all saw themselves in Jack in some way and so decided since they all turned out okay then so would Jack. Because choices matter, the desire to be better, to fight for better, matters. Jack came into their lives and they rolled with it. All of TFW made that “mistake” taking in Jack. It’s not just on Cas and Sam spells that out to Dean and the audience quite clearly. Comprehension fails such as hating Cas on other fan’s part is something I feel S15 is trying very hard to point out. S15 discusses the narrative’s literal elements. It forces comprehension in a way that puts these fans that hate whatever character out of TFW in the wrong. You like Dean and Cas but want Sam gone? You’re in the wrong according to the show. Same thing for fans that want Sam and Dean together and for Cas to stay dead. With S15 the show is telling you to GET FUCKED but like… politely and for now, only visually, lol.

As far as the Empty deal goes (are Dean stans seriously mad Cas hasn’t told Dean?), the show IMO couldn’t outline Cas’ depression even harder if it fucking tried. But apparently for them they need to try harder? I just can’t with this. What an insult to writers which have handled this particular storyline with the utmost care. OH BOY. Part of outlining the EXACT problem here is that part of the solution is with it so instead they’ve just gone as far as they can instead. 13x04 was as far as they could fucking go with TIPTOEING around (the tulips with) this thing between Dean and Cas that is keeping Cas miserable and wishing for death in service of some other happiness for Dean (as if it ACTUALLY exists without Cas, it doesn’t). Cas has made peace with never telling Dean he’s in love with him. Before he was given a choice Cas was happy to simply remove himself from the equation (14x08) and leave Jack to bring Dean happiness without him. Because AGAIN! Communication! Cas getting taken by the Empty isn’t going to cause anything horrible to happen to the world (on a global scale). He’s just gonna be gone. Are Dean stans really saying, essentially, “How dare Cas not try to stay as tool for Dean”?? Like… what??? I honestly stopped reading people with this level of reading comprehension fail a long time ago and just started ignoring them for the lost causes they are. Telling Dean about the Empty deal would force Dean to reveal himself one way or another. And as I’ve just said, in perpetuity this is the storyline conflict that has kept SPN going for many years now. It’s something Cas wants to avoid as long as possible because he’s so in love that he’ll keep himself miserable and in suspense because being miserable with Dean is still him physically with Dean. Once Dean knows they’d have to face the truth together, whatever that is. That’s the only thing not telling Dean about the deal prevents. Some people just see it as Cas keeping more secrets but it’s not like what secrets were like in S6. The only one Cas would be effecting (to HIM, in HIS MIND) is himself. And what he can do for Dean versus what Cas sees Jack being able to accomplish for Dean? Well to Cas that’s no contest. Because he’s long made peace with being Dean’s tool because he doesn’t think he could ever be someone Dean chooses to love and keep for no reason other than Dean wants him with him. Cas being able to stop seeing him and Jack as tools is essential to whatever comes next. It’s an explanation, a comprehension problem left to Dean then later, concerning how Cas sees Jack, to Cas.

[shirtlesssammy]

9x22: Stairway to Heaven

Then:

Metatron!!!!

Now:

Dixon, MIssouri

A very particular mom orders ice cream for herself and then asks her son what he would like. He points to a girl eating a Ziggy Piggy all alone and wants that! She goes over to the girl to berate her not for eating something with a symbol of racism as decoration but for eating diabetes in a bowl. The girl says she’s an angel though and can do as she pleases. A man walks into the store--and pulls out an angel blade. The girl tells the woman to run as her eyes flash blue. Too late, the place disintegrates in a flash of white. 

Sam WInchester sleeps with his gun under his pillow in his own room. That breaks me a little. Dean, the Mark of Cain in full jerk mode, wakes him and even though they’ve only slept for two hours, wants to get going. 

Sam joins Dean in the library and Dean tells him that he talked to Cas and there’s something happening in Missouri. He couldn’t give details over the phone because (And mind you, Dean says this while looking wistfully upwards) “He’s a weird, dorky little guy.” smh. 

Dean grabs the First Blade and Sam questions whether it’s necessary. Dean insists they need it with them all the time if they’re going to take down Metatron. Sam thinks he should leave it in the bunker for this trip. Dean agrees. 

Once at the ice cream shop, the brothers learn their FBI covers are Agents Spears and Agulera. #BlessAndrewDabb. (Sidenote: I just LOVE Dean’s little plaid tie.) Cas is already inside. They meet up and Cas shows them a victim, eyes burned out. He doesn’t know what happened but six people died and one angel. Whatever Metatron is doing is abhorrent. 

Cut to Metatron trying on a trench coat in his headquarters. Someone knocks at the door and he quickly scrambles to take the coat off. 

Gadreel walks in. He wants to talk about their plans. Cas’s side of the war is winning. Metatron doesn’t understand why angels are choosing Cas over him when he can get them home. The Metatron admits THE TRUTH: He’s cute and he’s got charm. He counters that he --Metatron-- is lovable and funny, which gets an eyebrow lift from Gadreel. Oh Metatron, you’re the worst. Gadreel tells Metatron that they’re meeting with the last large faction of angels left. Metatron isn’t stressed, he has a plan! (It’s not the trench coat, no, nope)

At Trench Coat Headquarters, Cas introduces Dean and Sam to Hannah. There’s some light ‘he likes me better’ banter between Dean and Hannah. 

Hannah tells Cas an angel is missing. Josiah was a mole and now he’s gone. Dean and Sam set to tracking him. (Hannah’s little unimpressed attitude towards Dean is entertaining.) Two seconds later, Sam finds that his credit card was used at a Gas ‘n Sip in Colorado. Dean turns to Hannah and gets his ruler out to measure. 

Another angel has video of the ice cream shop attack. Just before the megasmiting, the angel, Orin, announced, “I do this for Castiel!” and stabs himself in the chest. Dean wants answers but Cas has no clue what that was. “I’m going to be sick.” Oh, bby. (Also, how is this not a reaction gif for fandom wank all the time?) In any event, Dean doesn’t seem to want to believe Cas, accusing him of running a cult and dredging up his little attempt at playing God back in the day. 

For I know Dean is Mad but This Sure Makes a Pretty Shot Science:

Interrupting Moose uses his powers for good and drags them into a private room to continue the conversation. 

Cas explains the Enochian sigil on the angel’s torso was something to draw energy and the stabbing unleashed that energy, atomizing the other angel. Dean tells Cas that he needs to stay back while the brothers investigate. Cas responds with a flat, defiant “No.” And let us never forget this dorky little guy is a BAMF. That prompts the plan of Cas and Sam heading to Colorado to find Josiah. 

On the road, Sam fills Cas in on what’s really been happening this season because Dean and Cas apparently only whisper sweet nothings and giggle on the phone.

Sam and Cas talk about how the Mark is changing Dean. Cas’s admission that Dean is “always a little angry” breaks me a little. 

Metatron is busy wooing angels at a bowling alley. They don’t want to go back to heaven. Life’s too good on earth. The smell of the bowling alley is enough to keep them here. (OMG and LOL) 

Metatron pulls out his blade. The angel laughs and tells him that if he dies, all his angels will side with Castiel. He’ll talk if Metatron out bowls him though. 

On the road, Sam and Cas have a lead on Josiah. 

Dean interviews other angels that knew Orin. One decides to poke the bear a bit, telling Dean that he doesn’t save lives. He forces her at the end of an angel blade to name names. One of them is Tessa. Yep, the reaper Tessa. 

Cas and Sam track Josiah’s car to a place that Cas can sense is radiating power. They try entering a door to a warehouse but Sam’s lock picking skills fail. Cas, ancient angel of infinite strength informs Sam that he’s “got this.” He slams the door a couple of times and tries the door, to no avail. “I don’t got this.” <Insert jensen with camera you’re doing amazing pic> 

Dean tracks down Tessa. And we learn that Dean Winchester likes Fiddler on the Roof. But really he’s wants to know what she thinks she’s doing. She tries walking away from him when he grabs her and sees something carved on her chest. He handcuffs her and demands she tell him where the other rogue angel, Constantine, is. 

Cut to the bowling alley, as Metatron huffs away from losing his game of bowling, an angel calls his name. It’s Constantine. “I do this for Castiel,” he announces and stabs himself. The world goes white. 

It’s now night and Sam and Cas are still trying to get into the warehouse. Cas reveals there’s a riddle in Enochian warding the place.

“Why is 6 afraid of 7? I assume because 7 is a prime number and prime numbers can be intimidating.” “It’s because 7 ate (8) 9,” Sam corrects, and the door opens. GOLD. Even more GOLD: Cas references Lord of the Rings. Yeah, Cas knows a thing about things now. 

Cas and Sam finally enter the building, walking through a shadowy concrete tunnel. Sam happens upon a message inscribed on the wall: “Only the penitent man shall pass.” Holy Indiana Jones, Batman! He shouts a warning to Cas, but Cas has already crouched below the whirling blades. (Thank god he’s pop culture saavy now. Pop culture saved his life! #Relatable)

Dean interrogates Tessa with Hannah lurking in the background. Tessa is adamant that she turned herself into a suicide bomber for Castiel - he assigned her that task, personally. Hannah is SHOOK.

Hannah wants to fight and Dean shoos her out the door to get her in line. They agree that Tessa believes what she’s saying. Yikes.

In the Raiders of the Lost Heaven, Cas strides towards a lit door at the end of the hallway and something in him seems to lighten and lift as he approaches it. It’s the door to Heaven! It’s calling him in. Cas approaches, ready to seize control of the door to Heaven. He opens the door and--

Soft music and valentine-hued rotating lights play across poor Castiel’s astonished face. The room is a total joke, set up like a party with little paper cupids and angels strung up alongside balloons and gold streamers. Fred Astaire croons “Cheek to Cheek” in the otherwise empty room. Sam finds a card addressed to Cas that reads: "Welcome to your own personal heaven, Castiel. Good luck finding the real one."

They discover a terribly burned body lying on the floor - an angel burned by holy oil. Sam looks up and spots a Home-Alone-style door mounted flame torch. Suddenly the body jumps and grabs Cas. He’s not dead yet! He says that Metatron promised that he could return home. But he’s not going with Cas now. He looks at Cas, and he doesn’t see an angel anymore. (Cas bby!)

Dean heads back in to talk to Tessa. He begs her for a reason for her actions. “I guess I just can’t take the screaming,” she says at last, her voice breaking. There are tons of lost souls wandering the Earth now who can’t get into Heaven since it’s been closed. She hears all of their torment and suffers, to the point where death is preferable. But now that Cas gave her a reason to die…

Dean, bless him (finally!) doesn’t believe her - not fully. It doesn’t sound like the Cas he knows. Tessa counters with the fact that he also didn’t know that Cas leading a super secret army and….fair, I suppose. Dean asks for names and then threatens her, pulling out the first blade. Tessa immediately freaks out over it. “What have you done?” she asks. “What I had to,” he responds. Dean. Bean. She grips him then and pulls herself onto the first blade, dying in his arms. 

Dean falls into a kind of lull after the kill, just barely snapping out of it as Hannah and another angel rushes in. 

Cut to Dean, handcuffed to a chair and his mouth duct-taped. “He put up a fight,” Hannah says testily as Cas and Sam rush in to him. Sam immediately lays into Dean about bringing the first blade. 

Cas interrupts their squabble, only to be interrupted by Hannah. Metatron’s calling…

On screen, Metatron talks about Castiel’s henchman’s attack in the bowling alley. Poor dead Titus’ followers have all joined Metatron’s team in retaliation. Cas protests that he sent nobody to kill Metatron. 

Metatron laughs at him, and then delivers his elevator speech. He’s only doing what’s best for the angels. 

Metatron delivers his offer: amnesty to any angel crossing to his side. Angels need to follow someone - so they might as well follow him. He tells them that Cas isn’t the bold leader they think. He’s sending angels out to die AND he’s sporting stolen grace that is fading quickly. (Some half truths and a lie!) 

Metatron goes a step further: Cas only cares about himself and the Winchesters. Cas tries for some damage control with a pissed off host of angels. He admits to the stolen grace and they assume the worst based on that. Cas’s defense is going...poorly. 

Hannah asks for proof. Cas has to punish Dean for killing Tessa. “You gave us order, Castiel, and we gave you our trust. Don't lose it over one man.” She holds up on angel blade while angels hold Dean and Sam fast.

Cas takes the blade, contemplating his choices, his army. He looks at Dean...and then looks down. “No, I can’t,” he says. He lets the blade fall to his side and just like that, his army leaves. Cas, Dean, and Sam watch them file out of the room. (Don’t mind me while I gabble on about all that wasted infrastructure they’re leaving behind.) 

In Heaven, Metatron gleefully chats on the phone to the first defector from Castiel’s army before chortling to Gadreel about how his plan is working. Gadreel is pissed, though. The “elite unit” (Tessa, etcetera) he helped recruit for Metatron’s team weren’t supposed to blow themselves up - but Metatron brainwashed them as soon as they came over. Metatron’s dismissive of Gadreel’s ire. “You start by building up a seemingly unbeatable enemy, like the death star, or a rival angel with a bigger army. That way, I look like the underdog. But then, oh, no! The competition gets greedy. He starts pushing things too much. With the help of my combustible double agents. And then, after a rousing speech, his true weakness is revealed. He's in love...with humanity.”

Boris and I are going to take a moment to burn in the fires of that last sentence. We’re FINE. 

Gadreel asks after Josiah and Metatron blithely describes him as a loose end, cleaned up by his booby-traps. 

Driving back, the Impala is silent. Cas sits in the back seat stoically and HOW symbolic is THAT? When they get back to the bunker, Sam confronts Dean again about the first blade. Dean snaps a little bit and says he’s the only one who can kill Metatron, armed with the blade. He’s in charge now. (UGH I really do dislike Mark of Cain Dean.) Sam heads off in a huff and Dean corners Cas, asking about his grace. Cas tries to deflect but Dean’s done with bullshit. He asks how long Cas has to live. “Long enough to destroy Metatron, I hope.” Cas bby ;_;

Cas asks again if Dean believes he would have ordered those angels to kill themselves. Dean finally, unequivocally says that he believes Cas would never do that - he just gave up his “whole army for one guy,” after all. 

Cas wonders if the three of them can prevail. Dean believes in Team Free Will. And then... Gadreel walks in. He tells them that Metatron is a problem and he’s willing to work with them. Gadreel begs for them to give him a chance. For a moment, everybody’s chill and I think...hey they’re gonna sit down, have a nice cup of tea, come up with a civilized battle plan. 

Instead, Dean approaches Gadreel slowly. Holds out his hand. And...hauls up the first blade to slice him across the chest. Dean snarls like a raging beast at Gadreel and the episode fades away.

______________________________

In Love with Quote-manity:

“They like to hear me say their names.” “I know a couple women like that.”

Yeah, I heard he had a real explosive personality.

Honey, there ain’t no other men like me.

I’m very pop culture savvy now.

He’s a weird, dorky little guy

I've noticed your aliases are usually the names of popular musicians

You’re such an...angel sometimes

I don’t got this

Why is six afraid of seven?" Now, I assume it's because seven is a prime number, and prime numbers can be intimidating

You’re Mother Theresa with neckbeard!

______________________________

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[angelkurenai]

A supernatural marvel - Dean Winchester x Reader x Steve Rogers

Title: A supernatural Marvel

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader, Steve Rogers x Reader

Warnings: Set in season 13 and Post Avengers: Infinity War, No Infinity War spoilers 

Word Count: 7,111

Summary: Imagine being transported in the Supernatural universe, with no memory of your life, where you become a hunter and fall in love with Dean. Only for a very important person from your past to come looking for you and change it all.

“This is a whole new of weird, that's all I can say.”

“We'll find something. There must be a connection.” the younger Winchester sighed.

“Still, doesn't explain any of it, Sam. Demons after an orange glowing rock? For what reason to begin with?” the older Winchester scoffed, flipping through another page that he wasn't really paying attention to but pretended to read for the heck of it.

“I don't know Dean, honestly I don't know. We've been through almost every book in the bunker. If there is a solution then it should be in one of these books at least.” he shrugged, motioning to the books around them and taking a large sip of his own coffee as Dean shook his head with a groan.

“Days like this I really start to miss Crowley.” he mumbled “How's it going over there kid?” he asked, looking at Jack who just looked like he had all the energy in the world to go through all of the books in the bunker from the beginning.

“Great!” the nephilim perked up “I never knew just how many different realities can be out there, it's amazing! And all the ways to accessing them, you could never believe that! There is this one, a man of letters has been there, and he wrote it all in his journal. It was back, during World War II. There he joined a group of scientists and he witnessed the discovery of-of the Tesseract. He described it as a cube of great power, “Infinite power”-” the Winchesters shared a look.

And Jack continued “Infinite power, so big that it could wipe out the planet, glowing with a power never seen by man before and he didn't think it was from Earth either. He didn't speak about other universes though so I am suspecting space? Something- something about it was familiar to uh gama radiation? I don't know what that means, but he points out it emitted a low amount that they could barely trace. However, he mentionsthat it fell into the wrong hands, meant to be used as a weapon, an organization called-”

“Jack?” Dean raised a hand to stop the rambling boy “Look, that's good and exciting and all, but we're looking for something more important here, kid, so if you could focus on that it would be... nice?”

“Oh, oh... yes of course. I- I understand. I'm sorry, I just...” he trailed off, looking down at the page in front of him “Captain America did so many amazing and brave things in that time, it is very inspiring.” a small smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“Captain who?” Sam frowned and the grin returned on the young boy's face.

“Captain America.” he said with such pride it light up his entire face “He lived during World War II, when the Tesseract was first seen by the man of letters I spoke about. In fact, he had met Steve Rogers in person - that is his real name - during a fight in-”

“Alright, yeah I get it.” Dean cut him off gently “You got yourself a man-crush, that's great but uh Jack how about you take a break huh buddy? Think all these books might have done a number on you. Go contact Cas in case he has any news?”

“I- I'll- Yeah of course.” he seemed reluctant to let go of the journal he had been reading but did so inevitably and picked a phone to call the other angel.

With a sigh Dean picked up the journal, taking the look on the first page at th photo of the man that it belonged to, flipping through the pages and with a simple look at the drawing next to the text he rolled his eyes and closed it “Heros and shields with stars on them. These men of letters had more imagination than I thought.” and he put it back in pile with the rest of the books they'd read.

“Yeah, well to some people, monsters are just as much of fiction as those can be to us.” Sam mumbled, not looking up from his book.

“Yeah, wish these books really were just a nightmare right now and I'd wake up any minute.” Dean grumbled “I mean for all we know, it could not be our kind of thing in the first place.”

“Demons killing innocent people to get to a, I remind you Castiel's words, unparalleled source of power. Yes, Dean of course it isn't, how stupid of me to think something like that!” he gave his brother a bitch face that only earned another groan and soon a pout as Dean rested his chin on his hand. If there was one big thing he could gladly change about hunting was the researching part, especially when they had a whole bunker full of books to go through.

“Whatever, you know what I mean.” he muttered, both of them knowing he was just looking for an excuse out of all of it. And maybe he found it.

“Mornin'.” you mumbled with a small yawn, rubbing your eyes sleepily with an adorably beautiful smile – at least to him – as you walked in the map room.

“Morning, sweetheart.” he grinned, leaning back in his chair as he admired, for longer than appropriate, the way his slightly unbuttoned flannel fell over your shoulder “How did ya sleep?”

“Great” you breathed out with a cute smile, padding bare foot towards him “Think I might be actually addicted to you and your bed, D. I have never slept for this many hours before, or this good.” you gave him a shy smile but he only felt his cheeks hurt from how widely he was smiling.

“Can't say it's not nice to hear you say it, princess.” he winked.

“All good in Dean's bed then?” Sam asked softly, grinning mostly because of the glare he got from the older Winchester.

Sure, it had been a relief to say at least to Sam how he felt for you when he's been on the brink of losing you but now he really regretted it. Because, and he should have seen this coming, the younger Winchester did his best to push Dean into confessing the truth about his feeling for you to you. But that didn't mean Dean was anywhere near ready, despite how easy Sam insisted it was. It wasn't as if he forgot how to breathe whenever you looked at him with those big (y/e/c) eyes that made his heart skip a beat but... yeah he totally forgot how to breathe. He still remembered the first, and only, time he had tried to ask you out; because of how he had choked on thin air and rambled nonsense he still didn't remember before practically running away from you. The only good thing coming out of that was your adorable giggle when you comforted him about it, although you didn't understand it.

“No weird dreams or nightmares this time, it feels like it's been forever.” you breathed out, bringing him back to reality “So hell yeah, it's amazing. And all of that thanks to Dean.”

“'M glad to hear.” he breathed out, completely ignoring the raised eyebrow he got from his brother.

“Good to know, because you ain't getting rid of me anytime soon. Especially with how much I love my new pillow.” you grinned, leaning down to kiss his cheek and he squeezed your hand that had sneaked on his chest.

“Your pillow is certainly not complaining.” he smirked, kissing your cheek almost in a reflex and without realizing it. It had become a habit anymore but as he let go of you and looked at his brother he realized it when he got that knowing smirk.

“But how could you possibly know that?” Jack's voice was heard as he came back, a frown planted on his face and a tilt of his head there too “Pillows are... they do not speak, they're objects, how could you know it is not complaining?”

“Yeah, how could she know that Dean?” Sam snickered as with a huff, Dean grabbed a light book at least and threw it at his brother, who effectively dodged it.

“You know what, Sam?” he glared at his brother, but your soft laugh managed to calm him down.

“I'm speaking metaphorically, Jack. Dean was my pillow last night, his chest to be more specific, that is all.” you explained to the young man.

“But... but why would you sleep together? I know so far that couples do that.” he blinked, approaching you to take his previous seat “Unless...” he trailed, eyes narrowing until he broke a grin when he looked at Sam “Did Dean finally admit how he feel-” he started but got cut off by Dean's loud coughing, good timing with drinking his coffee, as Sam snickered and you raised an eyebrow in curiosity.

“No, uh Jack no-” Sam tried to clear his throat, glancing at his brother “Not... really.”

Your lips parted, ready to question him but decided against it and patted Dean on the back “You'll live?” you asked softly and he gave you a forced smile.

“Oh yeah, I definitely will.” he cleared his throat, looking between his brother and the nephilim “Someone else might not, though. If he doesn't keep his mouth shut.” he glared at them as Jack shifted nervously in his seat.

“Shut about what?” you asked with a small smirk and he blinked, looking up at you with a frown.

“Uh nothing to worry yourself about, sweetheart.” he said with the most casual smirk he could master and a wink just to distract you. And oh did it work.

You hummed, stealing his mug from his hand and taking a large sip “You're so lucky I'm sleepy.”

You yawned, rubbing your eyes again before sitting on his lap. Dean didn't blink, merely smiled to himself because of how much at home it felt for him to have you close to him and because this was a new habit for the two of you that others had not seen yet. He didn't even miss a split second to open his arms and let you cuddle on his chest, helping you bring your legs up and rest your head on the crook of his neck and making sure to send a warning look to his brother before he had the chance to question it.

“Is that... something friends do too?” Jack leaned in closer to Sam to whisper but it wasn't as low as he'd expect.

“Yes, yes they do.” Dean said in a rough voice, giving him a look that made him nod weakly and scoot back in his seat “Did you make that call?”

“I... yes, but he didn't answer so I left a message.” he replied.

“Maybe we should try mom?” Sam suggested and Dean gave him a slow nod, although truth was that his mind was more focused on you sleepily drinking his coffee – he couldn't bring himself to ask back for it – all cuddly and all around beautiful in his eyes with your messy hair and even more his flannel that he couldn't bring himself to fix.

“What are ya guys up to?” you asked, a little more awake this time “And what are all these books for?”

“Uh yeah we didn't inform you about it, but we got a lead on that case with the demons and we're trying to find a connection now.” Sam said and you hummed, handing Dean his coffee back but he shook his head because – and as bad he needed it – he simply couldn't take it when he saw how much you wanted it too.

“And who's our lead?” you placed the mug on the table, a small giggle slipped past your lips when Dean held your sides for support, the moment you reached out for one of the books out of the pile. What none of you noticed was that it just happened to be the journal Jack was holding in his hands minutes ago.

“Ticklish much?” he smirked, raising an eyebrow and you hit his chest giving him a look.

“Don't you even think about it.” you warned, although you knew very well he already had and would gladly use it to his advantage. And would you both love the hell out of it, even if you wouldn't admit it.

“What.” Sam corrected, gaining your attention “Uh a stone, a gem of sorts. Orange, glowing, great power although we don't know about what exactly. They used it to gather all those souls from heaven which Cas said went missing two days ago. My best guess is that it could be something similar to the Seal of Solomon that we have, but we're jut looking.”

“Orange glowing stones huh? What's next, men flying in suits of armor?” you scoffed, shaking your head with a smile as you skipped through the pages without reading a word, only paying attention to the drawings or designs here and there “So, what do we have so far? Anything on what it could be or at least where from?”

“Hard to tell.” Dean mumbled, practically forcing himself to focus on the book in his one hand and not the girl on his lap. All he wanted to do was wrap his arms completely around you and smother you with love... but that would probably earn a couple of looks from his brother for sure.

“Hm” you hummed, stopping for a moment when you took notice of a sketch. It probably shouldn't have struck so much to you, because what was so special about a geometric cube in a journal of a scientist and all kinds of scientific data below? Yet there was something that made you stop. And despite the fact that it was only a couple lines, for a moment your eyes could see it in front of you, glowing an icy blue that made goosebumps form on your skin and for a moment you actually felt so cold as you traced your fingers over the lines of the cube floating in the air, not paying attention to the darkness enveloping everything else around you until-

“Sorry, sweetheart.” Dean said when you jumped at the loud sound the book he threw to the side made.

“'S ok.” you blinked, being brought back to reality and you rubbed your eyes tiredly “So-” you cleared your throat “Not even an idea, judging from what you've read, at least?”

“Well, we were really thinking-” Sam started mumbling, eyes focused on the book in his hands.

“Space!” Jack cut him off before he could complete his sentence and all three of you looked up from your books at him.

“Space?” you asked with a giggle and the young man nodded his head eagerly.

“Yes, space, like the Tesseract! Like he described it to be!” he pointed at the journal you were holding “The Men of letters were very smart men, and he was one of the brightest scientists of his era. If he said that it was from space, then he's probably right!”

“Alright, first-” Dean spoke up “He implied, not said. And he said it about a glowing cube, not our magical stone. And second; Jack, the Men of letters are always a fucked up situation. Most of them were smart but also pretty off their rockers. We can't trust a- a diary of- of a dude that liked to draw rainbows anywhere he liked to.”

“You know him?” Sam raised an eyebrow and Dean took a look at the inside of the cover of the journal and nodded his head.

“Spotted a couple of his books around here, don't know where I threw them away. Look, point is he had clearly lost it after that trip to the other universe, if that ever happened, so we need to trust facts and not-”

“You're a man of letters, though.” you pointed out with a smirk, getting up from his lap.

“I'm-” he narrowed his eyes at you as you laughed with a shrug “And you're a woman of letters, ok?” he retorted and Sam only rolled his eyes at your childish behavior.

“Yeah, but all the women of letters I've read about were badass as hell!” you shrugged, handing Jack the journal as he eagerly started flipping through the pages.

“Like Peggy Carter!” he said with a boyish grin and you nodded your head with a proud smile, hands on your hips.

“Exactly, like Peggy- Wait, who's Peggy? I haven't read about her.” you frowned.

“Oh she was in this other universe I was talking about. He met her there, she wasn't really a woman of letters because I don't think there was such an organization, but he refered to her as that many times. He gave her that title because of how brave she had been!” he said, looking between you and the journal in his hands and constantly flipping pages looking for something you didn't know “And of course, for the way she too fought alongside Captain America.”

“...Who?” this time the words came breathlessly from your lips as you felt all air get knocked out of your lungs. Your heart made a painful leap to your throat and your heart twisted nervously. Your blood almost ran cold yet there was a familiar kind of warmth spreading through your chest, one you felt only with Dean, that confused you and made you more dizzy than you had been all these days whatsoever. But, even despite the shivers that ran down your spine, you felt more scared because you didn't know why you felt all of these oddly familiar emotions at the mere mention of-

“Steve Rogers.” Dean spoke, making your eyes snap to him “Yeah, yeah we get it. But kid, we have no proof that he was real and even if he was, what kind of connection would a dead guy have to our story? Because he'd have to be a good over 90 now.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, Dean's probably right.” Sam shrugged “The glowing, “Infinite” power thing could be a connection but we're looking at things belonging in totally different universes here. And it's all far too big even for us, or those demons. Why not stay more focused, yeah?”

“Exactly. Plus, the colors don't match to begin with.” Dean said with a smirk.

“I'm-” your breathing had become shallow and heavy, as if your lungs actually struggled to breathe “I'll...” you tried to swallow the lump in your throat “I better go change, in case we need to jump into action very soon.” you forced a smile that was barely visible before with shaky legs you left the boys frowning in worry as they watched you leave in a hurry for a couple seconds.

“Did she really... not have any nightmares this time?” Sam asked softly and Dean pursed his lips, sighing heavily.

“No, Sammy. No she didn't. And I barely slept myself to make sure she didn't. She hasn't had any dreams for a couple days... at least that's what she's told me.”

“And... are you sure she has been honest?” Jack asked with a frown and Dean clenched his jaw, looking down at his hands.

“There was a time I would never doubt her honesty but now... I think there is something about these dreams that she doesn't want to talk about. And I'm scared she doesn't know why even herself.” he shook his head, pushing his chair back “I'll be right back.”

He got a nod from his brother who, much like Jack looked down at his books in quiecy until... a grin spread on Jack's lips when he finally found what he was looking for and breathed out “They do match.”

~*~

A soft knock on the door made you jump in your place, blink rapidly as if you were brought back from a hazy dream and look up from the small paper in your hands. Your heart leapt to your throat and you rushed to fold it and put it along with the rest of them inside your journal before hiding it underneath your clothes in a drawer. Before you even had the chance to speak up the door was slightly pushed open.

“Hey, it's me.” Dean's soft smile was the first thing you noticed but you only gave him a nervous one in response.

“H-hey” you breathed out, you tried to give him a smirk to not let him notice how nervous you were “I didn't say you could come in though, did I? I could be naked for all you know.” you placed your hands on your hips, feeling successful when a chuckle left his lips.

“Yeah but you're not. Shame, if you ask me, 'cause I was kinda hopin' I would be lucky today.” he winked at you, striding casually towards you and a soft laugh escaped your lips.

“Right, because the last time you nearly walked in on me wasn't enough of a sneak peek for you, huh Winchester?” you raised an eyebrow.

“But I saw nothing! You threw a freaking book at me that was over a thousand pages big, and I had to dodge it in order toprotect my life!” he exclaimed and you laughed at the fond memory.

“And that is a reminder as to why you should never startle me, D!” you actually felt the weight that had been resting on your chest, lift and you to feel more at ease.

“Damn” he breathed out, biting his lower lip to keep himself from smiling but he just ended up giving you a boyish grin that made him look so much younger “I love it when you call me that.”

“Really?” you whispered, ignoring how your cheeks were burning “You never told me that.” your heart skipped a beat when he shrugged with a nervous chuckle.

“Didn't get the chance to, before.” he started “Especially when you're threatening my life with the stuff you read. But, speaking about chances-” he cleared his throat, getting a little more serious “We didn't get the opportunity to talk about your dreams lately, especially last night.”

“There's not really something to talk about there, Dean.” you shook your head, but avoided eye-contact.

“Are you sure about that? 'Cause, princess, I ain't that convinced with the way you acted five minutes ago, you know.”

“That was just a blink, Dean. Nothing you should-” you turned around, ready to walk away from him but he took hold of your arm to stop you before you could avoid him. And turning your head to face him you felt yourself going weak.

“It just did something.” you confessed in a low voice, eyes casting down “The things Jack said, somehow, for some reason and in some way they- they did something to me that I can't explain. I've been feeling things I couldn't explain a-and it scares me because I just don't know where they're all coming from.”

“Feelings?” he moved to stand in front of you, eyes intense “But no more recent dreams?”

“I... No. No there haven't been any, not that if I'd had any they would make any sense. Things have been getting very confusing lately.” you huffed, sitting down on your bed and he didn't miss a beat to do the same while keeping a close proximity “Sometimes there are headaches when I wake up, strong ones.”

“You didn't have headaches when they first started.” he noted with a deep frown and you nodded your head slowly.

“No, no I didn't. I've had them ever since I could remember myself and- and I've always tried to justify them.” you shrugged softly “My dreams have never happened often, and they were confusing as most dreams are. I shouldn't have a reason to worry, especially in this life. We deal with all tons of crap, it should make sense...”

“But they don't. Not anymore huh?” he clenched his jaw, frowning in worry.

“Dean, last week I... I could remember some things the times I had a headache. Much more than usual.” you breathed out the small confession “Again, not that they made sense but I remember and... feel. It seems like a blur when I think aboutit sometimes, there was a fight. A big one but- but I couldn't understand where. There was green, lots of it, somewhere a forest too that it looked like Earth but the weapons they used... it just doesn't click. It felt like it was something out of science fiction and the enemy... or at least it seemed like it was the enemy, remember- remember that movie we saw two days ago? Aliens? Yeah, well, even worse. I- I can't explain it but I get cold spots whenever I think about it and I just can't-” you choked on a sob, your eyes fluttering shut as Dean's arms instantly found you.

“Hey” his voice was rough yet very gentle as he let you rest your head on his shoulder “Don't stress yourself out, okay? If-if it makes you feel uncomfortable or scared then that's alright, it happens to everyone when they have nightmares, but even if it's not like that then... know everything will be alright, know that I'm here for you anytime it happens again.”

“It just makes me feel so empty... so scared, in a way as if there's something missing.” you whimpered softly, your breathing uneven “I don't know what's going on but I know they are not just dreams, D.”

“Then we'll figure it out, sweetheart. Together.” he kissed the top of your head, squeezing your hand as he played with your fingers to calm you down, nearly lacing them with his.

“Together.” you whispered, without letting the truth slip from your lips once more.

Without saying who was fighting against the monsters of your dreams and who you were fighting alongside.

~*~

“Are you sure this is the right place, guys?” you asked softly, exiting the car and looking around nervously.

“That's what mom's text says.” Sam mumbled, looking around with a frown himself.

“And I ask again, are we sure this is our kind of thing?” Dean asked, gaining an eye-roll from his brother “Come on, man, since when do demons hang out in empty train stations?” he threw his arms in he air before getting his gun out.

“I don't know but we're about to figure it out.” Sam muttered.

“Even if there are no people around, this is a public place. Doesn't seem like somewhere you'd find a bunch of demons playing around with a glowing stone and quite honestly I...” you trailed off, getting a concerned look from Dean that made you confess “I've got a bad feeling about this.” you ended up whispering, wrapping your hands tightly around your gun.

“Stay close and stay behind.” Dean motioned, giving you a firm yet comforting look and you nodded weakly, standing next to Jack. You weren't really in good shape these days, anyway.

“It's going to be alright, don't worry. I feel like everything will work out the way it should.” the younger man said with a hopeful smile “Captain America was one time on top of a train that was going miles per hour and on top of that, it was somewhere in the mountains, it was snowing so heavily and that alone could make things much harder. He was with his best friend, Bucky they called him, and they were after-”

“Hey you-” Dean turned around, pointing the flashlight you didn't even realize he was holding straight in your faces “Fanboying time's over. We've got work to do, focus. You can talk about Captain douchebag later, got it?”

“Oh right. Sorry.” Jack nodded his head softly.

“You know...” you started in a small whisper, glancing occasionally at Dean to make sure you didn't have his attention again “When we're over with this, maybe you could get to tell me more about... Captain America... everything you know about Steve Rogers.” the name felt strange coming from your lips, but not because it was the first time. It felt sweet and with a hint of pain, that came out without you even realizing it, without you even being able to control it. And it felt so strange because of the uneasiness you felt at how... familiar it felt, at how comforting it was and how it warmed your heart to say it. And that scared you even more. How could a stranger, a man from another universe and even more one you didn't even know if he existed or not, make you feel this way? It spiked your curiosity, it made you nervous, but above all it made you want to know more. Not about your feelings. But about him.

“Sure, I could-” Jack started but he got cut off by a loud crushing sound followed by grunting, but they got on their feet as the demons appeared.

“Well, if it isn't the Winchesters sticking their nose in our business. Color me fucking impressed.” one of them said with a roll of his eyes “What is it boys? You getting more involved with things from other realities lately, or something? Are you planning for Apocalypse take 3 this time? Sorry, someone already beat you at it.”

“Nah we're just taking pleasure in kicking your asses and ruining your plans is all.” you said with an annoyed smirk, gaining his attention and making a bigger grin form on his lips.

“Ah yes, (Y/n). Of course you'd be here too, always finding your way back to it, don't you? It's truly amazing, such connection cannot be described by words it's simply... beautiful!” he grinned but you could only frown at the scary feeling that rose up your chest.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean growled, taking a protective step to stand in front of you.

“Oh you'd like to know, wouldn't you? Would you be able to take the whole truth is the important question here, though, Dean. You're so used to fighting monsters like us you don't see... how much worse there is out there, far away yet so close. You'll get your answer soon, not in the good way and not from me of course.”

“I'm not so sure about that.” Dean said with a smirk of his own, glancing at Jack and gave him a nod before the nephilimtook a step forward, his eyes glowing the familiar, and lately very comforting for you, yellow.It all was familiar. It all was almost a routine anymore.

It all seemed simple... Yet it wasn't. You thought this would end like any other case and you'd end up killing the monster with Jack's help, easy and fast. But this was nothing like any other case.

A gasp left your lips when you saw a sharp object, silver and weird-looking, appear right through his chest. And even if you knew it couldn't hurt him you got scared when a small groan left his lips and he stumbled, his knees going weak; maybe affecting him more than he realized. He looked down in confusion, frowning as he got lifted off his feet slightly by the person holding the weapon.

“Jack!” you screamed as the young man got thrown to the side.

“What the... hell?” Dean breathed out with wide eyes as all three of you were frozen in your place. As much as you wanted to rush to Jack's side you were stuck in your place in fear at what stood before you. A monster you had never seen before in all your time of hunting and research. It looked almost out of this world, towering above the three of you. Its features were something you could barely find the words to describe, but one thing was for sure: the way it looked at you, the way it snarled and growled at you made fear set deep inside within you... for more reasons than you could explain. It took a swing at you, making you all jump to dodge it. It walked towards you and despite you crawling back, you couldn't get far away. When it lifted its weapon to stab you, your eyes widened and you braced yourself for the inevitable but it never came because Jack used his powers to throw him away from you, Dean and Sam quickly getting on their feet to fight that thing back as long as they had the advantage.

“Stay close to Jack!” you heard Dean yell as they passed by you; and despite everything feeling like it happened in a blur, you did as told but not for your own safety. Jack's breathing had become heavier and you feared that it might have had a bigger impact on him than you initially expected. So as much as you wanted to be able to help Sam and Dean, you couldn't... and not just because you were trying to help Jack.

“Now this time, I will be sure to not make the same mistakes.” was what sounded like a female voice but what came to stand before you was by no means human. You looked up at her with wide eyes, her as well brining no similarity to the monsters you'd faced and as much of an alien but with some human features two. She was different, with two horns standing out, and red eyes that made you hold your breath. You gripped an angel blade tighter in your hands and braced yourself with each step she took closer to you until... she didn't anymore.

She paused, looking away from you with a frown setting on her features. You looked behind you, Jack doing the same, only seeing the blur of the train passing by and feeling the slight breeze until it left and... a shadow stood in the background, a shadow that wasn't there before. She clenched her jaw, throwing her spear at her enemy who effectively caught it before it could get at them. You frowned for a second until the person decided to step out of the shadows and you felt your heart jump to your throat.

Broad shoulders, chest and big, firm arms. Tall figure, covered in what looked like a very worn out suit. Long hair, not very much so, longer than Dean's but definitely shorter than Sam's, a dirty blonde color and pushed back to leave his beautiful features at display, or at least most of them. Deep frown on his face and baby blue eyes that you were sure could make any woman's heart skip a beat. A beard that covered most of his face, simply looking perfect on him, and full lips pursed as he glared in a deadly way at the female that had just threatened you. You squinted, trying to see more of him because the distance and dim lighting wasn't helping; confusing even yourself when you couldn't find some sort of excuse for this newfound curiosity and attraction especially in such a situation.

Before you could even realize it a fight went down, everything getting worse without you being able to do a thing... mostly because you weren't needed to. It only felt like you saw a flash of blonde when you heard's Dean groan loudly, soon followed by something that you could swear was a someone, flying surprisingly so. It was only when you heard his voice that you realized he was human “How many times do we have to kill these guys?!” before he kicked her away from you, sending her crashing into a shop's window nearby, and following afterwards.

“Just make sure this is the last one!” then you heard his voice and if you weren't feeling weird enough already, the emotions that rose up in your chest made you so much more confused. So despite everything around you looking like a warzone, despite all the fighting and things being broken your eyes were glued on the man that had taken your breath away. You tried to see as much of him as possible, including his skills.

It was only until the woman of the team got kicked hard and thrown across the room, laying only a few feet away from you that you tore your eyes away from the man and looked at her; taking your flannel to press it on Jack's chest and whispering hastily to him “Keep the pressure on, I'll be right back, ok?”

“Hey, hey easy. That angle on your leg doesn't seem normal.” you could swear you said in a soft and as gentle as possible voice but she jumped in her place as if electricity had shot through her. She turned around faster than you could even comprehend and crawled backwards in utter cold shock. Her eyes widened and you could swear you saw them get glossy, but you didn't have the time to question her when-

“Natasha watch out!” you heard a voice yell and you saw the female alien hovering over you for a second, raising her spear and making your heart stop, before an angel blade pierced through her head, making her freeze and inevitably fall down dead just like her friend who was laying dead a few feet away.

“Well, that's just gross.” you breathed out with a small laugh of relief when you watched the blue blood drip from her head. But when you looked at the blonde woman, you were only met with red-rimmed eyes and a pale face as if she'd just seen a ghost, in a way that made you worry “H-Hey are you ok? I'm- I'm not with them, I promise, I just wanna help.” your eyes bore into hers but she just seemed frozen in place.

But she didn't have the chance to speak up because the man who was flying before, landed next to her “Nat, what the hell happened?” he helped her up on her feet and she put most of her weight on him “How did you-” but he too stopped mid-sentence when he followed her line of sight and spotted you and you noticed a gasp left his lips before he whispered in denial a weak “No”

“Is everything alright?” you whispered with a frown, their behavior but above all your headache getting stronger in your head putting you more on edge.

“You are-”

“(Y/n)?” Dean's frantic voice cut him off and the next thing you saw was his eyes directly in front of you, inspecting you for injuries, as his hands cradled your face in them. Sam rushed to Jack's aid but the third man – the one that still remained a mystery to you – walked more slowly towards the rest of you.

“Should we do something?” Sam asked in a hoarse voice and Natasha glanced at you, even with a blurry vision, and shook her head.

“We don't have time for that... He will have to face her. He will see her.”

“Nat, he- he can't see her. He can't- It's gonna break him. It will crush him, worse than-” but he stopped himself, shaking his head as he looked back at you with Dean.

“I'm ok, I'm ok. Don't worry.” you said softly, but the frown on your face did say otherwise. You could barely make out his features because of how blurry your vision was getting “Just my head... it's hurting a little bit, that's all.” you mumbled.

With a short nod he kissed your forehead and whispered “It's alright, it's alright now. You can rest.”

“You guys did great with them, it was- it was really astounding.” Sam breathed out, helping Jack back on his feet as they both came to stand next to you and Dean.

“We may have ganged countless monsters over the years but this was a whole new kind of crazy.” Dean looked at the aliens for a second, trying to swallow the lump in his throat over.

“Ye-yeah, no problem with that.” the man with the wings said in a somewhat hoarse voice,unable to take his eyes from you for a moment just like the woman next to him “I'm Sam, by the way, Sam Wilson and this is Natasha.”

“Natasha Romanoff.” she said, a soft subtle accent there too, her eyes watching you curiously – probably for some reaction – but as much as it intrigued you, you had someone else in mind.

“And... your friend there?” you asked softly, hesitation and curiosity slipping in your voice, as you watched merely a shadow of the other man as he inspected the aliens they had just fought before he decided to approach you all again.

“Oh that's-” Sam started, clearing his throat “That's actually...”

“Captain America.” it was Jack's voice that completed Sam's sentence, so much awe and admiration in both his voice and face as a wide grin slowly formed on his lips. Sam and Dean looked at him in confusion, giving him weird looks, but you couldn't tear your eyes away from said man who slowly stepped into the light, the close proximity this time allowing you to take in more of his features. Features that made your heart start beating faster inside your chest, in a way only Dean could make you feel, but you couldn't describe exactly why. The man's steps slowed down when he locked eyes with you and his frown was slowly replaced by a look of pure shock, eyebrows raising and lips falling apart. You couldn't understand why but you couldn't bring yourself to look away from him, watching as his eyes moved back and forth, trying to take in as much of you as possible.

“What are you talking about, Jack?” Dean asked the nephilim with a funny look.

“Look!” he pointed at the man “He even has the star, I mean... it's ripped out but the star should be there!” he said all excited, and even if you didn't look away you heard closely “It's him, Captain America! Steve Rogers.”

The name actual ringed in your ears, like an echo, making the headache even worse. Your head was spinning, your vision was getting blurry but you still found yourself able to focus on him and take a step closer to him and away from Dean. You didn't even know how your legs could still support you, but you sure heard him.

“(Y/n)?” he asked in a gruff voice and you felt shivers run down your spine and spread throughout your entire body, like small shots of electricity, before you spoke in a weak voice.

“I'm sorry, do I know you?”

~~~

Chapter 2