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blue_bells» Title: The Littlest Hunter (7/7)
» Fandom: Supernatural
» Warnings: De-ageing!
» Pairing(s)/Characters: wee!Castiel, Winchesters
» Summary: As punishment for disobeying, Castiel is sent back in time in the form of a young child - only to be unofficially adopted by John Winchester.
» A/N: I've concluded my job is not conducive to having a life. I'm leaving for the airport in under an hour after which I'll be in sporadic contact, so with this going up as it is, I hope it's a satisfactory ending to what's been an awesome journey. Thanks to all who've been on the ride with me!
PREVIOUS: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
In the end, Sam doesn’t remember that night with Azazel, the demon blood and the barn.
When he’s twelve, his family sits him down at a lakeside picnic table and break his condition to him like it’s a history of cancer in the family.
“Son, you’re predisposed to an addiction to demon blood. Do not drink it, okay?”
Sam just twists his face and thinks they’re all disgusting, but Castiel and his Dad are deadly serious.
Thankfully, Dean looks as grossed out and uncomfortable as he feels. They sip on their root beer until the weirdos drop the subject.
When Castiel joins their family, there are some obvious benefits Sam could have predicted, like having a tie breaker in the argument over the television show to watch through dinner.
Having a third, impartial judge when he and Dean raced the motel parking lots. Their Dad hardly ever has to step in anymore.
Having someone to play with in the backseat. Castiel was really good at cowboys and Indian toy soldiers, but totally stupid at things like marbles and pick-up sticks.
And there are things Sam didn’t expect, like having someone around who didn’t give him sneering, judgy looks when he wanted to try salad at the diner.
Someone who actually wanted to try every salad with him.
Someone who deflected Dean’s moods when he was being a jerk.
Someone Sam could pick on when Dean was being a jerk (but Sam could never keep it up for very long).
Someone to verse in spelling bees. Sam usually loses, which makes him really angry in the beginning, until Castiel offers to teach him. Once John learns of this, it takes Sam and Castiel’s joined powers to convince John they still need to attend a public school. Dean ignores them for three days after this betrayal, but Sam would have gone crazy if he never saw other kids and if he had to admit it, it was really nice occasionally being the smartest kid in the room.
On most days he forgets that one of his brothers is over a thousand years old and has an eidetic memory.
Castiel still helps Dean with his homework more than Sam thinks is fair and it’s a common point of argument that never gets old.
But Castiel is probably the coolest adopted brother ever because when it had all began, he convinced John to take them to the tattoo parlour as soon as the wound over Dean’s heart had healed.
They were the only six, seven and eleven year-olds in school with anti-possession ink, but the simple tattoos were enough to make most teachers look twice at their Dad. And to turn all the other kids green with jealousy.
It was awesome.
Castiel’s birthday becomes the day he joined their family; the day he killed Azazel.
The thing that killed their mother may be dead, but there are plenty of other things in the world hurting people.
And no matter what anyone says, they can never dissuade Castiel from his belief that the apocalypse is still coming.
It becomes the elephant in the room and for one particular fortnight during their second Christmas together, Sam worries his six-year old brother has depression. After hours of pleading and promises of pie on Christmas morning, Dean steps in. Three hours later, Sam learns the thing that will make Castiel feel better are the list of rules as long as his arm to help them mitigate the apocalypse.
This, for some reason, includes testing every girl who takes an interest in Sam with rock salt water and silver. He doesn’t get it (and he doesn’t resent it until puberty), but, whatever will keep Castiel from staring at him like the end of the world is in his face.
The list also includes a requisite ratio of time John has to be around. In the rules that become their codex over the years, John’s not allowed to go away for more than a week at a time. As they grow older, John still goes hunting and the trips grow longer, until Sam himself puts his foot down because Dean and Castiel almost burn down their motel after their Dad is away for a month and misses Dean’s thirteenth birthday.
But for the most part, the three boys manage between them. They all take turns being the responsible adult and with Castiel’s seemingly bottomless knowledge bank, John always comes back alive.
John builds a reputation through his survival record. Even on the most obscure cases, John Winchester always finds a way and gets home in time for Christmas. People ask him how he knows, where he learns, and he credits it all to research. He’s going to protect his boys and if he has his way, nobody is ever going to find out he has a former angel under his arm.
Dean takes up acoustic guitar, Sam forms a primary school debating team, and Castiel becomes the fastest sprinter in his class. He doesn’t tell anyone he used to be an angel of the Lord.
John tries to keep his boys away from scrutiny for as long as possible and once Dean hits thirteen, he takes him hunting for the first time in apology for missing his birthday.
It’s an angry ghost, it should be standard fare, but Dean comes back with burns on his shoulder and his brothers ramp up their training. John has a rule about waiting until the boys are thirteen, but Castiel won’t be left at home when Sam comes of age, so Castiel is barely into high school the first time the four of them go hunting.
Castiel is like a commander in the battlefield, the smallest and most obnoxious of them all. Sam sticks at his side, foiling the wendigo’s escape and when John and Dean take it down, it’s so clean, so easy that it’s almost frightening.
John knocks Castiel’s ego down a notch before he takes them hunting again.
“No matter how much you know, you live under my roof and you’ll stay put when you’re told! You follow my orders, understand?”
Castiel never learns to call John ‘Dad’; at least not that Sam overhears. Sam thinks there’s too much baggage there.
“… Yes, Sir.”
At the time, Sam hovers behind his Dad’s shoulder, pointing at their codex on the section of the seven sins. It’s (mostly) a joke, but Castiel skips the next day of school to make penance for his pride and Dean calls unfair play when he’s not allowed to stay back with him.
They never set down roots, as though their Dad doesn’t know what to do but chase this path he led for six years investigating the thing that killed their Mom. Castiel’s told his brothers their Dad was a soldier in the war before they were born. Castiel says he was a warrior, too, and he understands that duty – the restlessness – never leaves you once you’ve served and witnessed people suffer. Die.
Dean is eighteen when Castiel leads them to the Harvelle Roadhouse one dry, summer night.
William and John end their sour introductions by drinking each other under the table. It’s long after all the other patrons have left that the shot glass falls from John’s hand and he passes out beside William on the table.
Ellen takes pity on the three boys left at a loss for what to do that evening when there’s no hope of their Dad steering them toward a motel. While the men snore into their arms, she introduces the boys to her spare accommodation and they collapse in their first real beds in over a week.
In the morning, they meet Ellen’s daughter, Jo, over pancakes at the bar. She’s a wiry thing, with pale blond hair like her Dad and heavy dark eyes that follow them until they take their stools beside her.
Their fathers are still snoring at their table, so the boys settle in and Castiel spills half the maple syrup on his jeans. They’re all laughing by the point Sam snatches the jug to stop Castiel from scooping the syrup back in. Jo convinces Castiel to scrape the syrup onto his pancakes instead.
The Harvelle Roadhouse becomes their base for a while.
For almost two years, Jo, Sam, Dean and Castiel grow up together, in and out of each other’s lives for no more than a month at a time.
They eat together, train together, trade stories about school, and have boxing matches in the boys’ room while mounted on each other’s shoulders. It always starts with Sam and Jo versus Dean and Castiel, but by the end of the night they’ve exchanged duelling partners, at least one person’s banged their head on the bunks, and Ellen’s ordered them to bed no less than three times.
Years later, some of Sam’s fondest memories beside the rare baseball games are those late nights on each other’s shoulders or the private concerts on the Roadhouse bar to the soundtrack of the jukebox.
He thinks that’s when Jo fell in love with his brother, tearing with laughter as Dean skidded across the bench top on his knees playing air guitar. Sam can tell how pleased Dean is to make her laugh and it goes on like that for a while.
Jo and Dean smile like they share a secret, laugh too abruptly and loud at each other’s jokes and Castiel snorts when Sam nudges him in the arm. Ellen’s never far away, so Jo and Dean stay in their binary orbit for a while, always hovering, never quite touching, and though Dean never says as much, Sam knows he wants to.
But their families’ alliance started with their fathers and it ends the same way.
John and William are hunting an encroaching nest of vampires when their prey gets the drop on them. They come back, but William’s in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and John’s gun arm will never be what it was.
They’re quiet and there’s grimness in his Dad’s face that Sam hasn’t seen since he was a child, but the lines of guilt are deep and familiar. Ellen rejects his offer of help and though Jo tells them to leave, she still cries when John turns his back and leads his sons from that second home.
Sam knows people lash out when they’re hurting, but he still believes their families will get through it to pull together again, but the years go by without word from the Harvelles. Sam doesn’t know if Dean ever forgives Jo for blaming their father. They never talk about it.
It’s when Sam turns eighteen that he overhears Castiel’s quiet admission to their father that he might not be able to stop the apocalypse. Ever since they were children, Castiel had always said things like, “don’t curse the bully, or you could go to hell and start the apocalypse!” to keep them in line and, slowly, Sam’s learned of the prophecy behind his words.
About the righteous man breaking in hell and setting in line a course of events that would unleash Lucifer on the world.
Castiel was from that time. Another future, another world.
The rules changed when the angels sent Castiel back in time with all his memories intact. Gabriel set some new parameters when he slipped the archangel’s sword into his pocket.
Now that Castiel’s older, he talks more about the future: the one he came from and that they’re trying to avoid. Once every while Sam can see it still upsets him enough to keep him up at night. He’s been sharing a room with Castiel since he was six, so he knows better than any of them.
But John Winchester and his sons are not the only righteous men in the world. And if Castiel can keep his family out of hell, it will be another man who breaks the first seal.
So, they wait and train and Castiel prays to his first father, whose face he never saw, that the apocalypse never comes.
Dean is twenty-four, Sam is twenty and Castiel has just turned nineteen.
Sam and Castiel were supposed to start college four months ago, six states over.
It’s been six months since they’ve heard from their Father and Dean’s been driving them coast-to-coast on the slightest hint of a lead for John or his latest prey: the demon named Lilith.
But Sam is fucking car sick and he’s not going to be quiet about it.
“If she’s so bad, I don’t know why we can’t stab her in the face to avoid the apocalypse altogether?”
“In the face,” Dean snorts, eyes on the road and he rolls the toothpick between his teeth.
“Dad took your sword,” Sam says, “Couldn’t it work?”
Castiel is in the backseat, books and balled up burger wrappings strewn over the seat. He looks up from his tabloid magazine and the filthy look he gives Sam is completely unwarranted.
“Do you want to leave him to find out by himself?”
“You think you’re going to find the alternative solution in the weekly gossip?” Sam gives his reading material a significant look, sneering when his brother’s eyes narrow.
“We shouldn’t kill her,” Castiel says with finality and turns the page of his magazine. “If you ever remembered anything I told you, you wouldn’t need to ask.”
“We’re stopping for lunch, ladies,” Dean announces and Sam glances over his shoulder, spotting the service station the faded sign of the diner less than two kilometres away.
“If they don’t have something unprocessed, I could throw up on you,” Sam says.
Dean’s look is incredulous. “What the hell is up with you today? Is it your time of the month?”
“If I knew without doubt that the sword worked, I’d stab Lilith in the face myself,” Castiel says.
The quiet, bitter way it sounds like it’s wrangled from him catches Sam’s attention, but Castiel’s leafing through his magazine again; a lasting impression of Jo’s influence. It was his unspoken habit when trying to calm down. Sam wonders if his brother’s heard something through the grape vine.
“There’s got to be something else we can do,” Sam says, feeling nauseous and helpless.
“We’re going to find a cage that can hold her and throw away the key,” Castiel says.
Dean makes a noise of interest and he glances at Castiel in the rear-view mirror.
“Did you find something?”
Castiel shrugs. “I might have an idea.”
“Well, anytime you feel like sharing with the class,” Sam rolls his eyes and slumps back in his seat.
“Put your seatbelt on,” Castiel mutters, behind him.
Dean glances at Sam out of the corner of his eye. “Or anytime you feel like flexing your brain, we could use another one of your visions right now.”
Sam double takes and settles for gaping at their driver.
“Dude, you’re encouraging me? Last time it happened, you shoved Cas’ holy cocktail down my throat and I almost drowned! No thanks.”
“We shouldn’t encourage these visions,” Castiel says and Sam grimaces because Castiel’s leaped forward, magazine braced in the gap between his brothers in the front seat, “Sam, you wouldn’t hide your visions from us, would you? It could help us, but… the cocktails are for your own good.”
Sam tries to smile for him, “That’s real Catholic of you to say.”
“Bitch,” Castiel recoils to his back seat.
“Priest,” Sam says.
“Dudes, we’re here!” Dean announces, before Castiel can snap back, and he sounds hugely relieved as he pulls the Impala up beside the gas pump.
He inherited the car when he was eighteen, just as Castiel had promised all those years ago.
“Why doesn’t one of you grab a table at the diner?”
Sam’s out of the car before Dean’s even turned the key off in the ignition.
“If you meet any blondes, wait for us and don’t make eye contact,” Castiel calls after him, quoting rule number eighteen from the codex above the sub-sections ‘Meg’ and ‘Ruby’: initial encounters.
Sam had a thing for blondes, he couldn’t fight nature.
He shakes his head, but keeps walking, “I wouldn’t want you stabbing anyone in the face.”
The gravel crunches noisily under his boots, but he still hears Dean’s closing comment.
“You know he would!”
Sam smirks to himself, knowing Castiel will react to that in his predictable way of asking Dean who had the greatest moral fibre between them; it always degraded to a gross banter of either who had the messiest kills or sexual encounters and Sam made a point of leaving the room at both topics.
Castiel always won after that time he’d started removing Dean’s clothes and ever since, Dean had never been game enough to press past a certain point.
Sam was sort of proud of Cas for that in a disturbed sort of way and it never failed to make him laugh. They kept each other laughing, no matter what the cost, long after the joke had died.
He’d been wondering for a long time what sort of a freak he was, but in the context of his brothers, the freakishness was almost normal.
And these freaks were going to save their father; wherever he was, whether he wanted their help or not.
LE FIN
» Fandom: Supernatural
» Warnings: De-ageing!
» Pairing(s)/Characters: wee!Castiel, Winchesters
» Summary: As punishment for disobeying, Castiel is sent back in time in the form of a young child - only to be unofficially adopted by John Winchester.
» A/N: I've concluded my job is not conducive to having a life. I'm leaving for the airport in under an hour after which I'll be in sporadic contact, so with this going up as it is, I hope it's a satisfactory ending to what's been an awesome journey. Thanks to all who've been on the ride with me!
PREVIOUS: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
In the end, Sam doesn’t remember that night with Azazel, the demon blood and the barn.
When he’s twelve, his family sits him down at a lakeside picnic table and break his condition to him like it’s a history of cancer in the family.
“Son, you’re predisposed to an addiction to demon blood. Do not drink it, okay?”
Sam just twists his face and thinks they’re all disgusting, but Castiel and his Dad are deadly serious.
Thankfully, Dean looks as grossed out and uncomfortable as he feels. They sip on their root beer until the weirdos drop the subject.
When Castiel joins their family, there are some obvious benefits Sam could have predicted, like having a tie breaker in the argument over the television show to watch through dinner.
Having a third, impartial judge when he and Dean raced the motel parking lots. Their Dad hardly ever has to step in anymore.
Having someone to play with in the backseat. Castiel was really good at cowboys and Indian toy soldiers, but totally stupid at things like marbles and pick-up sticks.
And there are things Sam didn’t expect, like having someone around who didn’t give him sneering, judgy looks when he wanted to try salad at the diner.
Someone who actually wanted to try every salad with him.
Someone who deflected Dean’s moods when he was being a jerk.
Someone Sam could pick on when Dean was being a jerk (but Sam could never keep it up for very long).
Someone to verse in spelling bees. Sam usually loses, which makes him really angry in the beginning, until Castiel offers to teach him. Once John learns of this, it takes Sam and Castiel’s joined powers to convince John they still need to attend a public school. Dean ignores them for three days after this betrayal, but Sam would have gone crazy if he never saw other kids and if he had to admit it, it was really nice occasionally being the smartest kid in the room.
On most days he forgets that one of his brothers is over a thousand years old and has an eidetic memory.
Castiel still helps Dean with his homework more than Sam thinks is fair and it’s a common point of argument that never gets old.
But Castiel is probably the coolest adopted brother ever because when it had all began, he convinced John to take them to the tattoo parlour as soon as the wound over Dean’s heart had healed.
They were the only six, seven and eleven year-olds in school with anti-possession ink, but the simple tattoos were enough to make most teachers look twice at their Dad. And to turn all the other kids green with jealousy.
It was awesome.
Castiel’s birthday becomes the day he joined their family; the day he killed Azazel.
The thing that killed their mother may be dead, but there are plenty of other things in the world hurting people.
And no matter what anyone says, they can never dissuade Castiel from his belief that the apocalypse is still coming.
It becomes the elephant in the room and for one particular fortnight during their second Christmas together, Sam worries his six-year old brother has depression. After hours of pleading and promises of pie on Christmas morning, Dean steps in. Three hours later, Sam learns the thing that will make Castiel feel better are the list of rules as long as his arm to help them mitigate the apocalypse.
This, for some reason, includes testing every girl who takes an interest in Sam with rock salt water and silver. He doesn’t get it (and he doesn’t resent it until puberty), but, whatever will keep Castiel from staring at him like the end of the world is in his face.
The list also includes a requisite ratio of time John has to be around. In the rules that become their codex over the years, John’s not allowed to go away for more than a week at a time. As they grow older, John still goes hunting and the trips grow longer, until Sam himself puts his foot down because Dean and Castiel almost burn down their motel after their Dad is away for a month and misses Dean’s thirteenth birthday.
But for the most part, the three boys manage between them. They all take turns being the responsible adult and with Castiel’s seemingly bottomless knowledge bank, John always comes back alive.
John builds a reputation through his survival record. Even on the most obscure cases, John Winchester always finds a way and gets home in time for Christmas. People ask him how he knows, where he learns, and he credits it all to research. He’s going to protect his boys and if he has his way, nobody is ever going to find out he has a former angel under his arm.
Dean takes up acoustic guitar, Sam forms a primary school debating team, and Castiel becomes the fastest sprinter in his class. He doesn’t tell anyone he used to be an angel of the Lord.
John tries to keep his boys away from scrutiny for as long as possible and once Dean hits thirteen, he takes him hunting for the first time in apology for missing his birthday.
It’s an angry ghost, it should be standard fare, but Dean comes back with burns on his shoulder and his brothers ramp up their training. John has a rule about waiting until the boys are thirteen, but Castiel won’t be left at home when Sam comes of age, so Castiel is barely into high school the first time the four of them go hunting.
Castiel is like a commander in the battlefield, the smallest and most obnoxious of them all. Sam sticks at his side, foiling the wendigo’s escape and when John and Dean take it down, it’s so clean, so easy that it’s almost frightening.
John knocks Castiel’s ego down a notch before he takes them hunting again.
“No matter how much you know, you live under my roof and you’ll stay put when you’re told! You follow my orders, understand?”
Castiel never learns to call John ‘Dad’; at least not that Sam overhears. Sam thinks there’s too much baggage there.
“… Yes, Sir.”
At the time, Sam hovers behind his Dad’s shoulder, pointing at their codex on the section of the seven sins. It’s (mostly) a joke, but Castiel skips the next day of school to make penance for his pride and Dean calls unfair play when he’s not allowed to stay back with him.
They never set down roots, as though their Dad doesn’t know what to do but chase this path he led for six years investigating the thing that killed their Mom. Castiel’s told his brothers their Dad was a soldier in the war before they were born. Castiel says he was a warrior, too, and he understands that duty – the restlessness – never leaves you once you’ve served and witnessed people suffer. Die.
Dean is eighteen when Castiel leads them to the Harvelle Roadhouse one dry, summer night.
William and John end their sour introductions by drinking each other under the table. It’s long after all the other patrons have left that the shot glass falls from John’s hand and he passes out beside William on the table.
Ellen takes pity on the three boys left at a loss for what to do that evening when there’s no hope of their Dad steering them toward a motel. While the men snore into their arms, she introduces the boys to her spare accommodation and they collapse in their first real beds in over a week.
In the morning, they meet Ellen’s daughter, Jo, over pancakes at the bar. She’s a wiry thing, with pale blond hair like her Dad and heavy dark eyes that follow them until they take their stools beside her.
Their fathers are still snoring at their table, so the boys settle in and Castiel spills half the maple syrup on his jeans. They’re all laughing by the point Sam snatches the jug to stop Castiel from scooping the syrup back in. Jo convinces Castiel to scrape the syrup onto his pancakes instead.
The Harvelle Roadhouse becomes their base for a while.
For almost two years, Jo, Sam, Dean and Castiel grow up together, in and out of each other’s lives for no more than a month at a time.
They eat together, train together, trade stories about school, and have boxing matches in the boys’ room while mounted on each other’s shoulders. It always starts with Sam and Jo versus Dean and Castiel, but by the end of the night they’ve exchanged duelling partners, at least one person’s banged their head on the bunks, and Ellen’s ordered them to bed no less than three times.
Years later, some of Sam’s fondest memories beside the rare baseball games are those late nights on each other’s shoulders or the private concerts on the Roadhouse bar to the soundtrack of the jukebox.
He thinks that’s when Jo fell in love with his brother, tearing with laughter as Dean skidded across the bench top on his knees playing air guitar. Sam can tell how pleased Dean is to make her laugh and it goes on like that for a while.
Jo and Dean smile like they share a secret, laugh too abruptly and loud at each other’s jokes and Castiel snorts when Sam nudges him in the arm. Ellen’s never far away, so Jo and Dean stay in their binary orbit for a while, always hovering, never quite touching, and though Dean never says as much, Sam knows he wants to.
But their families’ alliance started with their fathers and it ends the same way.
John and William are hunting an encroaching nest of vampires when their prey gets the drop on them. They come back, but William’s in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and John’s gun arm will never be what it was.
They’re quiet and there’s grimness in his Dad’s face that Sam hasn’t seen since he was a child, but the lines of guilt are deep and familiar. Ellen rejects his offer of help and though Jo tells them to leave, she still cries when John turns his back and leads his sons from that second home.
Sam knows people lash out when they’re hurting, but he still believes their families will get through it to pull together again, but the years go by without word from the Harvelles. Sam doesn’t know if Dean ever forgives Jo for blaming their father. They never talk about it.
It’s when Sam turns eighteen that he overhears Castiel’s quiet admission to their father that he might not be able to stop the apocalypse. Ever since they were children, Castiel had always said things like, “don’t curse the bully, or you could go to hell and start the apocalypse!” to keep them in line and, slowly, Sam’s learned of the prophecy behind his words.
About the righteous man breaking in hell and setting in line a course of events that would unleash Lucifer on the world.
Castiel was from that time. Another future, another world.
The rules changed when the angels sent Castiel back in time with all his memories intact. Gabriel set some new parameters when he slipped the archangel’s sword into his pocket.
Now that Castiel’s older, he talks more about the future: the one he came from and that they’re trying to avoid. Once every while Sam can see it still upsets him enough to keep him up at night. He’s been sharing a room with Castiel since he was six, so he knows better than any of them.
But John Winchester and his sons are not the only righteous men in the world. And if Castiel can keep his family out of hell, it will be another man who breaks the first seal.
So, they wait and train and Castiel prays to his first father, whose face he never saw, that the apocalypse never comes.
Dean is twenty-four, Sam is twenty and Castiel has just turned nineteen.
Sam and Castiel were supposed to start college four months ago, six states over.
It’s been six months since they’ve heard from their Father and Dean’s been driving them coast-to-coast on the slightest hint of a lead for John or his latest prey: the demon named Lilith.
But Sam is fucking car sick and he’s not going to be quiet about it.
“If she’s so bad, I don’t know why we can’t stab her in the face to avoid the apocalypse altogether?”
“In the face,” Dean snorts, eyes on the road and he rolls the toothpick between his teeth.
“Dad took your sword,” Sam says, “Couldn’t it work?”
Castiel is in the backseat, books and balled up burger wrappings strewn over the seat. He looks up from his tabloid magazine and the filthy look he gives Sam is completely unwarranted.
“Do you want to leave him to find out by himself?”
“You think you’re going to find the alternative solution in the weekly gossip?” Sam gives his reading material a significant look, sneering when his brother’s eyes narrow.
“We shouldn’t kill her,” Castiel says with finality and turns the page of his magazine. “If you ever remembered anything I told you, you wouldn’t need to ask.”
“We’re stopping for lunch, ladies,” Dean announces and Sam glances over his shoulder, spotting the service station the faded sign of the diner less than two kilometres away.
“If they don’t have something unprocessed, I could throw up on you,” Sam says.
Dean’s look is incredulous. “What the hell is up with you today? Is it your time of the month?”
“If I knew without doubt that the sword worked, I’d stab Lilith in the face myself,” Castiel says.
The quiet, bitter way it sounds like it’s wrangled from him catches Sam’s attention, but Castiel’s leafing through his magazine again; a lasting impression of Jo’s influence. It was his unspoken habit when trying to calm down. Sam wonders if his brother’s heard something through the grape vine.
“There’s got to be something else we can do,” Sam says, feeling nauseous and helpless.
“We’re going to find a cage that can hold her and throw away the key,” Castiel says.
Dean makes a noise of interest and he glances at Castiel in the rear-view mirror.
“Did you find something?”
Castiel shrugs. “I might have an idea.”
“Well, anytime you feel like sharing with the class,” Sam rolls his eyes and slumps back in his seat.
“Put your seatbelt on,” Castiel mutters, behind him.
Dean glances at Sam out of the corner of his eye. “Or anytime you feel like flexing your brain, we could use another one of your visions right now.”
Sam double takes and settles for gaping at their driver.
“Dude, you’re encouraging me? Last time it happened, you shoved Cas’ holy cocktail down my throat and I almost drowned! No thanks.”
“We shouldn’t encourage these visions,” Castiel says and Sam grimaces because Castiel’s leaped forward, magazine braced in the gap between his brothers in the front seat, “Sam, you wouldn’t hide your visions from us, would you? It could help us, but… the cocktails are for your own good.”
Sam tries to smile for him, “That’s real Catholic of you to say.”
“Bitch,” Castiel recoils to his back seat.
“Priest,” Sam says.
“Dudes, we’re here!” Dean announces, before Castiel can snap back, and he sounds hugely relieved as he pulls the Impala up beside the gas pump.
He inherited the car when he was eighteen, just as Castiel had promised all those years ago.
“Why doesn’t one of you grab a table at the diner?”
Sam’s out of the car before Dean’s even turned the key off in the ignition.
“If you meet any blondes, wait for us and don’t make eye contact,” Castiel calls after him, quoting rule number eighteen from the codex above the sub-sections ‘Meg’ and ‘Ruby’: initial encounters.
Sam had a thing for blondes, he couldn’t fight nature.
He shakes his head, but keeps walking, “I wouldn’t want you stabbing anyone in the face.”
The gravel crunches noisily under his boots, but he still hears Dean’s closing comment.
“You know he would!”
Sam smirks to himself, knowing Castiel will react to that in his predictable way of asking Dean who had the greatest moral fibre between them; it always degraded to a gross banter of either who had the messiest kills or sexual encounters and Sam made a point of leaving the room at both topics.
Castiel always won after that time he’d started removing Dean’s clothes and ever since, Dean had never been game enough to press past a certain point.
Sam was sort of proud of Cas for that in a disturbed sort of way and it never failed to make him laugh. They kept each other laughing, no matter what the cost, long after the joke had died.
He’d been wondering for a long time what sort of a freak he was, but in the context of his brothers, the freakishness was almost normal.
And these freaks were going to save their father; wherever he was, whether he wanted their help or not.
LE FIN
