Fic: In the Light of Day (Or: Part Four - Fanboy Sam Has to Deal With Some Changes)
Title: In the Light of Day (Or: Part Four - Fanboy Sam Has to Deal With Some Changes)
Author: tawg
Word count: ~4,300
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Sam&Castiel (crushing and bromance), Balthazar/Castiel. Mentions of past Sam/Balthazar and aSam/Cas/Zaza cuddle pile.
Notes: Part four of the Fallen 'verse. Thanks to everyone who has been commenting so far :)
Summary: Sam gets into a new situation at work, and maybe the locked-in-an-office confessions didn't fix anything, but they've certainly set some changes in motion. Which is great. Change is what Sam wanted. Isn't it?
It wasn’t intentional, the way the three of them avoided one another. The last episode before the filming break had been intense, with anything and everything going wrong. Props broke, sets came apart, locations fell through, Balthazar cut his hand open and suddenly filming the episode’s fight scenes became problematic. Sam spent the week chained to his computer, ready to rewrite at a moment’s notice. His tension wasn’t helped at all by the way Chuck kept coming up to him and just watching, staring balefully at him for long moments.
“Don’t worry,” Bobby said to Sam one day after noticing that Sam was actively trying to escape Chuck’s gaze. “It’s how he shows that he likes you.”
“How do I make it stop?” Sam asked grumpily, picking at a wholegrain sandwich. He was crouched behind a chaise that had just been used as set decoration, and despite one of his feet going numb he was loath to move.
“Defect to House of El, or friend his mother on that faceplace thing.” Bobby gave Sam a stern look. “Don’t you go defecting. I ain’t got time to train up a new typesetter.” (Sam had learned very quickly that there were places that you just didn’t go on the lot, times when you did not move a single inch, no matter how urgent it was to get new pages to an actor. Sam had once held his breath when Bobby called ‘action’, and the director had been fond of him ever since.)
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sam said firmly, and couldn’t help the little happy feeling that bubbled inside when Bobby nodded approvingly and patted him on the shoulder.
And then it was the filming break - two weeks in which Sam didn’t have to deal with night shoots and 3am starts and wearing eighteen layers because, Canada man, seriously. Two weeks to get his apartment clean and do his laundry and buy actual food to go in his fridge because he didn’t have craft services feeding him throughout the day. Two weeks, with one little blip on that first Friday (right when Jo was refereeing at the cast pool tournament being hosted at her dad’s bar). Sam had been invited to a writers’ workshop and, not really knowing what that meant, he’d accepted. It was only when he told Dean and Gabriel over pizza, beers, and a pro wrestling DVD about it that he got a sense of the importance of the event.
“Dude,” Dean said, slapping Sam on the shoulder. “It was nice knowing you.”
“What?”
“You’re about to become one of them.”
“Who?”
Gabriel had looked contentedly amused, sprawled out on Dean’s couch. “Last writer’s workshop? They hammered out the finale.”
Sam felt his smile freeze on his face. “Chuck wrote the season one finale.”
“But the plot and stuff all came out of that workshop. He went in with six writers and a vague concept, made them throw ideas at him until some stuck, and came out with a script.”
“Careful, Sammy, you could end up on the writing team and then we’d never get to hang out.”
Sam pulled a face at Dean. “However would I cope?”
“Or you could end up fired,” Gabriel contributed with a careless shrug. “That’s what happened to Zeddmore.”
“Pah,” Dean said around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. “He was a dick anyway. But pro-tip, Sam: don’t tell the head writer and show creator that he’s ‘doing it wrong’.”
Sam had one knee pulled up to his chest, resting his chin on it. “What am I going to do?” he asked a little forlornly. “I can’t go in that room. Do you have any idea who’s going to be in that room?”
Gabriel looked at Sam uncomprehendingly. “Well, yeah. We work with them. I dinged Cassie’s car once.”
Dean rounded on Gabriel. “Wait, that was you? She totally came after me with a chair! Did you tell her it was me?”
“No! I mean, I did put some black paint on the scratch, but that’s hardly passing the blame directly onto you. That’s just... covering my tracks.”
Dean gaped at Gabriel for a long, awkward moment. “How could you do that?” he finally asked, scandalised.
“Hellooo, props master? It’s my job to make things look like something else entirely.”
“It didn’t occur to you to, I don’t know, make it look like no one had hit her car?”
“Oh, it occurred to me.”
Sam smiled as his brother and their friend bickered and argued, and finally edged towards the line of small warfare. It didn’t help him with the problem of how he was going to handle the mess he’d gotten himself into with the writing team, and him apparently being in the exact same place as them. Maybe Chuck just needed someone to get them all coffee and donuts? Sam could hope. He gnawed gently at the denim stretched over his kneecap (a bad habit that led to him getting holes in his jeans. Jess had gotten him out of it for a while but, well...) and stared absently at Gabriel’s television. That was probably it. He was probably going to sit in a corner and run out to get new pens or something. Nothing to worry about.
He was very, very wrong.
He was seated at a long table in a plain room. He’d brought a notepad and pen with him, and felt ridiculous surrounded by people with tablets and smartphones and styluses. Chuck sat at the head of the table, one big sheet of butchers’ paper laid out in front of him and some coloured markers resting to one side. Cassie and Becky sat on either side, with Sam beside Cassie and Andy across from him. There was also a girl about Sam’s age called Lily, and a guy called Scott who was maybe a few years older. From what Sam could make out, Lily and Scott had both submitted scripts that, after Chuck’s usual rewrites and continuity correction, had been used earlier in the second season.
“I think we should kill someone,” Lily said with an intense, if distracted manner. “Go out on something big.”
“Something gory,” Scott added.
“Or you could have a cliff-hanger, you know?” Lily continued. “Like, throw something crazy at the angels and see what they can live through.”
“Electrocution,” Scott said. “Struck by lightning. God’s favourite way of smiting, right?”
“I like it,” Lily threw back with a smile. Sam had the urge to edge his chair away from them.
“Um, okay,” Chuck said from the head of the table. “Those are certainly ideas. But maybe some other ideas?”
“It’s your standard story ep,” Cassie said, slouched back in her chair.
Sam was bewildered by the term. “What?”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “You have a framework that enables characters to tell stories to one another, or to tell two sides of the same story. Chuckie tells us they’re on a train. That means a journey, and that means they talk. It’s simple. It’s the whole point of the episode. So it won’t the season finale, right?” Chuck made a non-committal noise. “Just something near the end.”
“Oh,” Sam said, looking down at his notepad. He’d written ‘angels on a train’ in the middle, and drawn spokes out from the idea. What Cassie said made sense - Sam knew episodes like that from most of his favourite shows. Characters tell campfire stories, characters talk about their nights over breakfast the next day. Generally speaking, he liked to formula. But he still frowned, and wrote a neat, simple word against one of the spokes. And then he put both elbows on the table and let the people who knew what they were doing toss ideas around.
Becky and Cassie got into an argument about whether Michael would tell Lucifer stories about heaven. Andy suggested that Lucifer would talk a lot about sex, Lily called him on being sexist and Andy returned that he’d never said that Lucifer would be having sex with women.
“He’s a fallen angel. Come on, why shouldn’t he be sticking it to everyone and everything?”
“But he’s not like that,” Sam protested, and had to deal with six pairs of eyes falling on him. “He’s enthusiastic and curious, but he’s not shallow-”
“So everyone who has a one night stand is shallow?” Andy retorted with an eye roll.
“I didn’t say that. I meant that he wouldn’t be shallow about it. It would always mean something to him, because he’s all about humanity, right? And he always refers to these lasting moments, of having a life rather than an experience.” Sam risked a glance at Chuck, who was (thankfully) nodding. “So maybe Lucifer has had a lot of sex. I mean, he’s been on Earth long enough. But they’re not like notches on his belt or something. Every time there would be an attempt to learn something new.”
Becky was looking at Sam with shining eyes. “He’s looking for love.”
“No. Well, yes. Kind of. I think he wants connection. That’s why he was so keen to pair up with Michael. Pre-series, he was alone. No other angels on Earth he could talk to. He seems to have cut himself off from the supes. And angels are meant to love humans, so I think that’s what he was trying to do.” Sam hesitated, but everyone was staring at him and he may as well dig the hole all the way to the bottom. “I think that, after he turned his back on God, he probably spent a lot of time trying to find someone to love him.”
“Well,” Lily said, after a moment of silence. “That makes him seem less badass.”
“I’m still liking the lightning,” Scott added.
“Maybe Lucifer tried to be a new god?” Andy suggested. “And it bit him in the ass, and is coming back to haunt him?”
“Did he smite anyone?”
“What does a devil-god have to do with a freaking train ride?” Becky snapped. “I think Sam was onto something good-”
“Big surprise,” Andy muttered.
“-And we should focus on the stories. The emotional stories they could be telling.”
Cassie sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “You and your scripts full of mooning about and talking.”
Becky narrowed her eyes. “Well we need something to break up all of those dull fights scenes you keep writing in.” Becky’s voice took on a particularly catty tone when she added, “Don’t have enough plot to fill a whole episode?”
Cassie snorted. “Cut out the ‘meaningful staring’ and your scripts would run twenty minutes short.”
“That’s not true!”
“I still don’t think Michael would talk about heaven,” Andy said idly. “Not in any candid sense. He only ever talks about it like a home base.”
“Michael has been fighting wars since Lucifer left though,” Sam replied. “He must have war stories or something. Maybe just passing on news about the angels they both knew.”
Andy frowned, looking at Chuck. “There’ve been wars all this time?”
“Uh, Cas said it in an interview,” Sam explained. “I can’t remember the exact quote, but he said that Michael was a soldier and that was why he seems so quick to violence when compared with Lucifer, because he’s been fighting all this time.”
Chuck nodded again, but Andy made a face. “Wars? All this time? How come no one has noticed down here? If there are battles going on, why is he down here wandering around and learning how to order coffee?”
“That’s a good point, Andy,” Sam replied sarcastically. “Maybe they should make a plot of it or something. Oh wait, they did. It was called ‘season one’.”
“Hey, don’t go giving me shit just because none of that stuff ever made any sense,” Andy shot back.
“What do you mean ‘trash’?” Becky was crying. “Those scenes are fan favourites.”
“So, do you think lightning could explode someone?” Scott asked ponderously.
“It could if it were supernatural lightning,” Lily replied.
“That would be cool.”
“You know what would be cooler? Invisible lightning. Like, you can’t see it or hear it, and it still kills you.”
“Okay, firstly,” Cassie said, breaking away from her argument from Becky, “Lightning doesn’t kill people all that often. It’s something like one in twenty lightning strikes to normal, healthy people that are fatal.”
“You’re making that up.”
“And secondly, if you can’t see or hear it then it is not actually lightning. Because that’s how lightning works.”
“Right,” Scott threw back. “Because you’re the ‘expert’ on supernatural lightning now.”
And with sudden clarity, Sam realised that every single conversation happening at the table was completely ridiculous. He actually pushed his chair back a little, trying to get some distance from the spittle and the misguided passion. “Wow,” he said quietly.
“They’re usually like this,” Chuck said over the infighting. “That’s why I only ever have two of these a season.” Becky threw a pen at Andy, and Chuck cringed.
“This is getting kinda heavy,” Sam said awkwardly. “And I’ve never been at a writers’ table before. Could I go and get some air?”
“Yeah,” Chuck said with a sigh. “Go enjoy places that aren’t here.”
Sam smiled awkwardly, aware that his expression probably looked a lot more like a grimace. “Thanks,” he said, and then he got the hell out of that room.
Sam wandered around the lot, around the big warehouse-style building that held most of the sets and a handful of offices, around the garage for the numerous cars that were rented for the show, into the maze of gravel and trailers that filled the Eastern side of the lot. Sam still got a little disoriented around the guest trailers (and he’d been warned that come next season, when then trailers got reorganised, he could expect to be completely lost for the first few weeks) and for once he was happy to lose himself among the white sides, the various trucks and machines that were angled into the empty spaces, and the little rabbit paths that ran between.
And then he heard music. He followed the sound around a bulldozer and down between a row of trailers. He traced it to a vaguely familiar trailer, the door of which was wide open. As far as Sam knew, none of the actors were meant to be on set today. Not even the crew were around, as the few who had tasks to be doing had taken the day off and were probably getting thoroughly hustled by Dean. Sam hesitated for a moment, and then poked his head through the doorway. Castiel was sitting on a coffee table with his hands clasped in front of his mouth, and he looked back at Sam with surprised curiosity.
“Sorry,” Sam said. “I heard music and I was just passing and I, uh, didn’t think anyone would be here. So,” Sam made a vague gesture, trying to communicate a sense of ‘and then it was now’. Castiel kept staring at him, his hands still clasped together, obscuring the lower half of his face. It gave him a tired but patient air. Sam waved at the general surroundings outside the trailer. “I’ll just-”
“You’re here for the workshop?” Castiel asked, though it came out flat, like a statement.
Sam sagged against the doorframe. “Yeah.”
“Has it made you question your life choices?” Castiel asked seriously. But then, Castiel always sounded serious. Sam thought that he could see a twinkle in Castiel’s dark eyes.
“Yeah,” he replied with a laugh. “I, just... It’s not what I expected it would be.”
“Most of life seems to be like that, in my limited experience.” Castiel dropped his hands from his face then, turned away from Sam and glanced around the inside of his trailer. “Did you want to come in?”
Sam raised his eyebrows. He’d never been inside Castiel’s trailer before, or anyone else’s for that matter. (Cas usually sat outside his trailer on a milk crate, or in the doorway. It made it easy to find Castiel’s trailer - it was usually the one with a Castiel hanging around it and a pile of novels and crossword books by the door.) “Sure. If you don’t mind?”
Castiel gave his head a single shake, and Sam climbed up the steep steps. The wall opposite was plain, painted cream with a little window that seemed to give a beautiful view of the back of the next trailer over. The tailer was broken into two rooms - a little lounge area with kitchenette qualities, and then a divider separating off a bathroom and a bed that was neatly made. On the whole, it was pretty sparse, a jacket hung on a peg by a cupboard and a radio playing on a bench were the only signs that the trailer was inhabited (aside from the Castiel happily seated on the coffee table in front of a caramel coloured couch). And then Sam turned to face the last wall, the one Castiel had been staring at when Sam found him, and he stopped, stunned.
“It’s my wall of Michael,” Castiel explained.
Nearly the whole wall was covered. Notes, sketches. Sam could spot some script pages up there with lines highlighted and key words circled. There was a photo inventory from costuming of Michael’s clothes, little post-it notes with cramped and slanting handwriting extrapolating some detail. There were pictures torn out of magazines - birds, dinosaurs, medieval knights with swords and armour. Artwork of angels, carefully photocopied pages of some archaic alphabet and occult symbols. And woven throughout were sheets of yellow lined paper and blue note cards, covered with what Sam could only assume was Castiel’s scrawl. A hundred notes and comments and thoughts. And it was all splayed out like a scrapbook that had exploded and then refused to have its pages fall politely to the ground.
“Wow,” Sam said. It felt like an understatement. “Did you collect all of this stuff yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Wow,” Sam breathed again, stepping closer to the wall. He peered at the post-it stuck to a photograph of what Sam knew was Michael’s watch. It said ‘time stopped? Or time in another Place?’. A note stuck to a photograph of Michael’s shoes read ‘don’t let them clean’. Sam shifted, looking at a different section of wall. There were bible verses. ‘At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been-’, the end of which was obscured by a postcard of a painting of the angel Michael slaying someone. ‘Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back.’ Castiel had printed ‘endpoint?’ after that quotation and underlined it.
“You really took this seriously,” Sam said, reaching out to touch the soft edges of a particularly weathered piece of paper.
“I still do,” Castiel replied. He stood up, twisting to one side to stretch his back, and then moved to stand beside Sam. His shoulder brushed against Sam’s bicep, and Sam stomped down on the urge to back away. (Dean had warned him about this; “Once you’re in with Cas, you can say goodbye to personal space.”)
“Do you ever get annoyed?” Sam asked. “With what the writers give you?”
“Chuck knows what he’s doing,” Castiel replied, something that was clearly a fact in his mind. Sam tried to reconcile that belief with the Chuck he knew - the scruffy guy who turned up to the set in his pyjamas on occasion and generally looked like he had just realised that the world was a little bit bigger than he was comfortable with.
“Do you like working on the show?” he asked. It was a strange question, because of course Castiel had said that he loved the show, of course there were plenty of interviews with phrases like ‘unique experience’ and ‘very lucky’ and ‘feel privileged, really’. But Sam wondered what it would feel like to sign up for a show and realise you’d signed up to three years (minimum) of dealing with your ex. Sam wouldn’t have been able to handle it.
“Yes,” Castiel replied plainly. “Very much.” His eyes were trailing over the wall, perhaps looking for something specific though there was no urgency to his gaze. “I-” He paused, frowned slightly, weighing up whether he should continue. “I have heard people say that I’m not acting very hard.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. Castiel had a wounded look to him, had pulled away from Sam slightly. Castiel had very sad eyes, Sam realised, had a mouth that seemed perfectly suited to frown. He was a very composed person, very controlled. He was honestly the perfect choice to play Michael, an angel who was remote and unfeeling on the outside. There were moments when he seemed entirely alien, though other scenes implied that this was just the exterior, the armour he wore. Castiel, Sam was sure, played the role well because he could identify with it.
“I think those people don’t know you very well,” Sam replied, returning his gaze to the wall.
“I think there are very few people who know me,” Castiel returned quietly. Sam stole a glance, but Castiel no longer looked hurt, just resigned.
“I want to know you,” Sam said quietly. Castiel’s shoulder brushed against his own again, and Sam felt a warm surge of relief. He licked his lips. “Balthazar. He wants to know you again.”
Castiel didn’t shift away, but an unnatural stillness settled about him for a moment. “We’re seeing each other,” Castiel said at last. “Tonight.”
“Oh,” Sam said, the word sounding hollow. “Well, that’s good, right?”
“He says that he wants us to try a relationship again.” There was no inflection to Castiel’s voice, no sense of hope or foreboding.
“Is that what you want?” Sam asked. He thought about Cas and Bal breaking up again, going right back to that horrible awkwardness that Sam had first stumbled into.
Castiel reached out and touched his fingers to a piece of paper in the centre of the wall, the shape of his hand obscuring the block letters printed on it. “I don’t know,” Castiel replied absently but then his eyes focused. “No, that’s not true.” He frowned, his eyebrows furrowing as he sorted through his thoughts. “I think I’m afraid of what I want.”
Sam swallowed, and nodded. “New things are usually scary.”
Cas huffed, and flashed his teeth in a smile, though it wasn’t a happy laugh. “This isn’t something new,” he said, looking down at his feet.
“Yes it is,” Sam replied. “You might be building on the foundations of something old, but you are not the person you were, what, five years ago? And neither is he. And the...” Sam stuttered, unable to say the word. “And whatever you get into now, it’s not going to be the same thing you had before.”
Castiel nodded, as if this did make some abstract sense to him. He lifted his gaze to the wall again, his eyes travelling over all of the work he had put into his character. Sam wondered if Castiel put the same effort into everything in his life, if he just sat down and thought about things until he found a way to make sense of them. “I don’t trust him,” he said at last. There was no sigh, no gravelly regret. Just Cas and his oddly endearing, if brutal, honesty. “I don’t think this will end well.”
Sam had no idea how to comfort Castiel, had no experience with taking a broken thing and trying to fix it. Sam had a lot more history with breaking things quite thoroughly and then eventually running away from the mess. But he could feel the heat of Castiel’s hand now hanging beside his own, so he brushed his knuckles against the back of Castiel’s wrist. “Most things don’t,” Sam replied. “But it’s not the ending that matters, it’s the journey to that ending, right?”
“No,” Castiel replied, still staring at that one piece of paper. “The ending is everything.”
Sam’s mobile rang then, making him jump. Castiel shifted away uneasily, giving Sam a little privacy to take his call. Sam fished his mobile out of his pocket, faced the open doorway and the cool air outside as he thumbed the green ‘accept call’ button.
“Please tell me you’re coming back,” Chuck said. “They’re arguing about halo colours and whether Lucifer has feathers.”
“Uh, sure,” Sam replied, turning back to look at Castiel who was pulling a picture of a mosaic in some cathedral down and studying it. A whole wall of notes about a character, it blew Sam away. And then he spotted the card Cas had been staring at, the little slip of blue cardboard right in the middle of everything that made up Michael. It had ‘Lucifer’ printed on it in thick, careful letters, and when Sam stared at it, all he could think was ‘Of course. Of course that’s how it is’.
“Listen,” he said to Chuck. “I just had a brainwave, I’ll be right back.” He hung up and gave Cas a lopsided grin that he didn’t exactly feel.
“Good luck,” Castiel said, returning the picture to its place. He looked oddly small against the sprawling nature of his research.
“Yeah,” Sam said, backing towards the door. “You too.”
Some things are destined to happen, Sam told himself as he stalked back to the writers’ room. He tried to push Castiel out of his mind, the way he smiled when frowns weren’t enough, the way his hand had pressed into the gentle caress of Sam’s knuckles. The way Balthazar kissed and the way he had a million different smiles that were all about deflecting attention. The way the three of them had woken up together, warm and cosy and relaxed.
Some characters are meant to be together, always circling one another until the pattern shifts just right and they can collide. It was the nature of Fallen and it was the nature of its actors. Everything tied up together with themes of second chances and fuck if it wasn’t a beautiful story.
It wasn’t Sam’s story. And he had no place forgetting that.
Author: tawg
Word count: ~4,300
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Sam&Castiel (crushing and bromance), Balthazar/Castiel. Mentions of past Sam/Balthazar and aSam/Cas/Zaza cuddle pile.
Notes: Part four of the Fallen 'verse. Thanks to everyone who has been commenting so far :)
Summary: Sam gets into a new situation at work, and maybe the locked-in-an-office confessions didn't fix anything, but they've certainly set some changes in motion. Which is great. Change is what Sam wanted. Isn't it?
It wasn’t intentional, the way the three of them avoided one another. The last episode before the filming break had been intense, with anything and everything going wrong. Props broke, sets came apart, locations fell through, Balthazar cut his hand open and suddenly filming the episode’s fight scenes became problematic. Sam spent the week chained to his computer, ready to rewrite at a moment’s notice. His tension wasn’t helped at all by the way Chuck kept coming up to him and just watching, staring balefully at him for long moments.
“Don’t worry,” Bobby said to Sam one day after noticing that Sam was actively trying to escape Chuck’s gaze. “It’s how he shows that he likes you.”
“How do I make it stop?” Sam asked grumpily, picking at a wholegrain sandwich. He was crouched behind a chaise that had just been used as set decoration, and despite one of his feet going numb he was loath to move.
“Defect to House of El, or friend his mother on that faceplace thing.” Bobby gave Sam a stern look. “Don’t you go defecting. I ain’t got time to train up a new typesetter.” (Sam had learned very quickly that there were places that you just didn’t go on the lot, times when you did not move a single inch, no matter how urgent it was to get new pages to an actor. Sam had once held his breath when Bobby called ‘action’, and the director had been fond of him ever since.)
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sam said firmly, and couldn’t help the little happy feeling that bubbled inside when Bobby nodded approvingly and patted him on the shoulder.
And then it was the filming break - two weeks in which Sam didn’t have to deal with night shoots and 3am starts and wearing eighteen layers because, Canada man, seriously. Two weeks to get his apartment clean and do his laundry and buy actual food to go in his fridge because he didn’t have craft services feeding him throughout the day. Two weeks, with one little blip on that first Friday (right when Jo was refereeing at the cast pool tournament being hosted at her dad’s bar). Sam had been invited to a writers’ workshop and, not really knowing what that meant, he’d accepted. It was only when he told Dean and Gabriel over pizza, beers, and a pro wrestling DVD about it that he got a sense of the importance of the event.
“Dude,” Dean said, slapping Sam on the shoulder. “It was nice knowing you.”
“What?”
“You’re about to become one of them.”
“Who?”
Gabriel had looked contentedly amused, sprawled out on Dean’s couch. “Last writer’s workshop? They hammered out the finale.”
Sam felt his smile freeze on his face. “Chuck wrote the season one finale.”
“But the plot and stuff all came out of that workshop. He went in with six writers and a vague concept, made them throw ideas at him until some stuck, and came out with a script.”
“Careful, Sammy, you could end up on the writing team and then we’d never get to hang out.”
Sam pulled a face at Dean. “However would I cope?”
“Or you could end up fired,” Gabriel contributed with a careless shrug. “That’s what happened to Zeddmore.”
“Pah,” Dean said around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. “He was a dick anyway. But pro-tip, Sam: don’t tell the head writer and show creator that he’s ‘doing it wrong’.”
Sam had one knee pulled up to his chest, resting his chin on it. “What am I going to do?” he asked a little forlornly. “I can’t go in that room. Do you have any idea who’s going to be in that room?”
Gabriel looked at Sam uncomprehendingly. “Well, yeah. We work with them. I dinged Cassie’s car once.”
Dean rounded on Gabriel. “Wait, that was you? She totally came after me with a chair! Did you tell her it was me?”
“No! I mean, I did put some black paint on the scratch, but that’s hardly passing the blame directly onto you. That’s just... covering my tracks.”
Dean gaped at Gabriel for a long, awkward moment. “How could you do that?” he finally asked, scandalised.
“Hellooo, props master? It’s my job to make things look like something else entirely.”
“It didn’t occur to you to, I don’t know, make it look like no one had hit her car?”
“Oh, it occurred to me.”
Sam smiled as his brother and their friend bickered and argued, and finally edged towards the line of small warfare. It didn’t help him with the problem of how he was going to handle the mess he’d gotten himself into with the writing team, and him apparently being in the exact same place as them. Maybe Chuck just needed someone to get them all coffee and donuts? Sam could hope. He gnawed gently at the denim stretched over his kneecap (a bad habit that led to him getting holes in his jeans. Jess had gotten him out of it for a while but, well...) and stared absently at Gabriel’s television. That was probably it. He was probably going to sit in a corner and run out to get new pens or something. Nothing to worry about.
He was very, very wrong.
He was seated at a long table in a plain room. He’d brought a notepad and pen with him, and felt ridiculous surrounded by people with tablets and smartphones and styluses. Chuck sat at the head of the table, one big sheet of butchers’ paper laid out in front of him and some coloured markers resting to one side. Cassie and Becky sat on either side, with Sam beside Cassie and Andy across from him. There was also a girl about Sam’s age called Lily, and a guy called Scott who was maybe a few years older. From what Sam could make out, Lily and Scott had both submitted scripts that, after Chuck’s usual rewrites and continuity correction, had been used earlier in the second season.
“I think we should kill someone,” Lily said with an intense, if distracted manner. “Go out on something big.”
“Something gory,” Scott added.
“Or you could have a cliff-hanger, you know?” Lily continued. “Like, throw something crazy at the angels and see what they can live through.”
“Electrocution,” Scott said. “Struck by lightning. God’s favourite way of smiting, right?”
“I like it,” Lily threw back with a smile. Sam had the urge to edge his chair away from them.
“Um, okay,” Chuck said from the head of the table. “Those are certainly ideas. But maybe some other ideas?”
“It’s your standard story ep,” Cassie said, slouched back in her chair.
Sam was bewildered by the term. “What?”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “You have a framework that enables characters to tell stories to one another, or to tell two sides of the same story. Chuckie tells us they’re on a train. That means a journey, and that means they talk. It’s simple. It’s the whole point of the episode. So it won’t the season finale, right?” Chuck made a non-committal noise. “Just something near the end.”
“Oh,” Sam said, looking down at his notepad. He’d written ‘angels on a train’ in the middle, and drawn spokes out from the idea. What Cassie said made sense - Sam knew episodes like that from most of his favourite shows. Characters tell campfire stories, characters talk about their nights over breakfast the next day. Generally speaking, he liked to formula. But he still frowned, and wrote a neat, simple word against one of the spokes. And then he put both elbows on the table and let the people who knew what they were doing toss ideas around.
Becky and Cassie got into an argument about whether Michael would tell Lucifer stories about heaven. Andy suggested that Lucifer would talk a lot about sex, Lily called him on being sexist and Andy returned that he’d never said that Lucifer would be having sex with women.
“He’s a fallen angel. Come on, why shouldn’t he be sticking it to everyone and everything?”
“But he’s not like that,” Sam protested, and had to deal with six pairs of eyes falling on him. “He’s enthusiastic and curious, but he’s not shallow-”
“So everyone who has a one night stand is shallow?” Andy retorted with an eye roll.
“I didn’t say that. I meant that he wouldn’t be shallow about it. It would always mean something to him, because he’s all about humanity, right? And he always refers to these lasting moments, of having a life rather than an experience.” Sam risked a glance at Chuck, who was (thankfully) nodding. “So maybe Lucifer has had a lot of sex. I mean, he’s been on Earth long enough. But they’re not like notches on his belt or something. Every time there would be an attempt to learn something new.”
Becky was looking at Sam with shining eyes. “He’s looking for love.”
“No. Well, yes. Kind of. I think he wants connection. That’s why he was so keen to pair up with Michael. Pre-series, he was alone. No other angels on Earth he could talk to. He seems to have cut himself off from the supes. And angels are meant to love humans, so I think that’s what he was trying to do.” Sam hesitated, but everyone was staring at him and he may as well dig the hole all the way to the bottom. “I think that, after he turned his back on God, he probably spent a lot of time trying to find someone to love him.”
“Well,” Lily said, after a moment of silence. “That makes him seem less badass.”
“I’m still liking the lightning,” Scott added.
“Maybe Lucifer tried to be a new god?” Andy suggested. “And it bit him in the ass, and is coming back to haunt him?”
“Did he smite anyone?”
“What does a devil-god have to do with a freaking train ride?” Becky snapped. “I think Sam was onto something good-”
“Big surprise,” Andy muttered.
“-And we should focus on the stories. The emotional stories they could be telling.”
Cassie sighed and stared up at the ceiling. “You and your scripts full of mooning about and talking.”
Becky narrowed her eyes. “Well we need something to break up all of those dull fights scenes you keep writing in.” Becky’s voice took on a particularly catty tone when she added, “Don’t have enough plot to fill a whole episode?”
Cassie snorted. “Cut out the ‘meaningful staring’ and your scripts would run twenty minutes short.”
“That’s not true!”
“I still don’t think Michael would talk about heaven,” Andy said idly. “Not in any candid sense. He only ever talks about it like a home base.”
“Michael has been fighting wars since Lucifer left though,” Sam replied. “He must have war stories or something. Maybe just passing on news about the angels they both knew.”
Andy frowned, looking at Chuck. “There’ve been wars all this time?”
“Uh, Cas said it in an interview,” Sam explained. “I can’t remember the exact quote, but he said that Michael was a soldier and that was why he seems so quick to violence when compared with Lucifer, because he’s been fighting all this time.”
Chuck nodded again, but Andy made a face. “Wars? All this time? How come no one has noticed down here? If there are battles going on, why is he down here wandering around and learning how to order coffee?”
“That’s a good point, Andy,” Sam replied sarcastically. “Maybe they should make a plot of it or something. Oh wait, they did. It was called ‘season one’.”
“Hey, don’t go giving me shit just because none of that stuff ever made any sense,” Andy shot back.
“What do you mean ‘trash’?” Becky was crying. “Those scenes are fan favourites.”
“So, do you think lightning could explode someone?” Scott asked ponderously.
“It could if it were supernatural lightning,” Lily replied.
“That would be cool.”
“You know what would be cooler? Invisible lightning. Like, you can’t see it or hear it, and it still kills you.”
“Okay, firstly,” Cassie said, breaking away from her argument from Becky, “Lightning doesn’t kill people all that often. It’s something like one in twenty lightning strikes to normal, healthy people that are fatal.”
“You’re making that up.”
“And secondly, if you can’t see or hear it then it is not actually lightning. Because that’s how lightning works.”
“Right,” Scott threw back. “Because you’re the ‘expert’ on supernatural lightning now.”
And with sudden clarity, Sam realised that every single conversation happening at the table was completely ridiculous. He actually pushed his chair back a little, trying to get some distance from the spittle and the misguided passion. “Wow,” he said quietly.
“They’re usually like this,” Chuck said over the infighting. “That’s why I only ever have two of these a season.” Becky threw a pen at Andy, and Chuck cringed.
“This is getting kinda heavy,” Sam said awkwardly. “And I’ve never been at a writers’ table before. Could I go and get some air?”
“Yeah,” Chuck said with a sigh. “Go enjoy places that aren’t here.”
Sam smiled awkwardly, aware that his expression probably looked a lot more like a grimace. “Thanks,” he said, and then he got the hell out of that room.
Sam wandered around the lot, around the big warehouse-style building that held most of the sets and a handful of offices, around the garage for the numerous cars that were rented for the show, into the maze of gravel and trailers that filled the Eastern side of the lot. Sam still got a little disoriented around the guest trailers (and he’d been warned that come next season, when then trailers got reorganised, he could expect to be completely lost for the first few weeks) and for once he was happy to lose himself among the white sides, the various trucks and machines that were angled into the empty spaces, and the little rabbit paths that ran between.
And then he heard music. He followed the sound around a bulldozer and down between a row of trailers. He traced it to a vaguely familiar trailer, the door of which was wide open. As far as Sam knew, none of the actors were meant to be on set today. Not even the crew were around, as the few who had tasks to be doing had taken the day off and were probably getting thoroughly hustled by Dean. Sam hesitated for a moment, and then poked his head through the doorway. Castiel was sitting on a coffee table with his hands clasped in front of his mouth, and he looked back at Sam with surprised curiosity.
“Sorry,” Sam said. “I heard music and I was just passing and I, uh, didn’t think anyone would be here. So,” Sam made a vague gesture, trying to communicate a sense of ‘and then it was now’. Castiel kept staring at him, his hands still clasped together, obscuring the lower half of his face. It gave him a tired but patient air. Sam waved at the general surroundings outside the trailer. “I’ll just-”
“You’re here for the workshop?” Castiel asked, though it came out flat, like a statement.
Sam sagged against the doorframe. “Yeah.”
“Has it made you question your life choices?” Castiel asked seriously. But then, Castiel always sounded serious. Sam thought that he could see a twinkle in Castiel’s dark eyes.
“Yeah,” he replied with a laugh. “I, just... It’s not what I expected it would be.”
“Most of life seems to be like that, in my limited experience.” Castiel dropped his hands from his face then, turned away from Sam and glanced around the inside of his trailer. “Did you want to come in?”
Sam raised his eyebrows. He’d never been inside Castiel’s trailer before, or anyone else’s for that matter. (Cas usually sat outside his trailer on a milk crate, or in the doorway. It made it easy to find Castiel’s trailer - it was usually the one with a Castiel hanging around it and a pile of novels and crossword books by the door.) “Sure. If you don’t mind?”
Castiel gave his head a single shake, and Sam climbed up the steep steps. The wall opposite was plain, painted cream with a little window that seemed to give a beautiful view of the back of the next trailer over. The tailer was broken into two rooms - a little lounge area with kitchenette qualities, and then a divider separating off a bathroom and a bed that was neatly made. On the whole, it was pretty sparse, a jacket hung on a peg by a cupboard and a radio playing on a bench were the only signs that the trailer was inhabited (aside from the Castiel happily seated on the coffee table in front of a caramel coloured couch). And then Sam turned to face the last wall, the one Castiel had been staring at when Sam found him, and he stopped, stunned.
“It’s my wall of Michael,” Castiel explained.
Nearly the whole wall was covered. Notes, sketches. Sam could spot some script pages up there with lines highlighted and key words circled. There was a photo inventory from costuming of Michael’s clothes, little post-it notes with cramped and slanting handwriting extrapolating some detail. There were pictures torn out of magazines - birds, dinosaurs, medieval knights with swords and armour. Artwork of angels, carefully photocopied pages of some archaic alphabet and occult symbols. And woven throughout were sheets of yellow lined paper and blue note cards, covered with what Sam could only assume was Castiel’s scrawl. A hundred notes and comments and thoughts. And it was all splayed out like a scrapbook that had exploded and then refused to have its pages fall politely to the ground.
“Wow,” Sam said. It felt like an understatement. “Did you collect all of this stuff yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Wow,” Sam breathed again, stepping closer to the wall. He peered at the post-it stuck to a photograph of what Sam knew was Michael’s watch. It said ‘time stopped? Or time in another Place?’. A note stuck to a photograph of Michael’s shoes read ‘don’t let them clean’. Sam shifted, looking at a different section of wall. There were bible verses. ‘At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been-’, the end of which was obscured by a postcard of a painting of the angel Michael slaying someone. ‘Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back.’ Castiel had printed ‘endpoint?’ after that quotation and underlined it.
“You really took this seriously,” Sam said, reaching out to touch the soft edges of a particularly weathered piece of paper.
“I still do,” Castiel replied. He stood up, twisting to one side to stretch his back, and then moved to stand beside Sam. His shoulder brushed against Sam’s bicep, and Sam stomped down on the urge to back away. (Dean had warned him about this; “Once you’re in with Cas, you can say goodbye to personal space.”)
“Do you ever get annoyed?” Sam asked. “With what the writers give you?”
“Chuck knows what he’s doing,” Castiel replied, something that was clearly a fact in his mind. Sam tried to reconcile that belief with the Chuck he knew - the scruffy guy who turned up to the set in his pyjamas on occasion and generally looked like he had just realised that the world was a little bit bigger than he was comfortable with.
“Do you like working on the show?” he asked. It was a strange question, because of course Castiel had said that he loved the show, of course there were plenty of interviews with phrases like ‘unique experience’ and ‘very lucky’ and ‘feel privileged, really’. But Sam wondered what it would feel like to sign up for a show and realise you’d signed up to three years (minimum) of dealing with your ex. Sam wouldn’t have been able to handle it.
“Yes,” Castiel replied plainly. “Very much.” His eyes were trailing over the wall, perhaps looking for something specific though there was no urgency to his gaze. “I-” He paused, frowned slightly, weighing up whether he should continue. “I have heard people say that I’m not acting very hard.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. Castiel had a wounded look to him, had pulled away from Sam slightly. Castiel had very sad eyes, Sam realised, had a mouth that seemed perfectly suited to frown. He was a very composed person, very controlled. He was honestly the perfect choice to play Michael, an angel who was remote and unfeeling on the outside. There were moments when he seemed entirely alien, though other scenes implied that this was just the exterior, the armour he wore. Castiel, Sam was sure, played the role well because he could identify with it.
“I think those people don’t know you very well,” Sam replied, returning his gaze to the wall.
“I think there are very few people who know me,” Castiel returned quietly. Sam stole a glance, but Castiel no longer looked hurt, just resigned.
“I want to know you,” Sam said quietly. Castiel’s shoulder brushed against his own again, and Sam felt a warm surge of relief. He licked his lips. “Balthazar. He wants to know you again.”
Castiel didn’t shift away, but an unnatural stillness settled about him for a moment. “We’re seeing each other,” Castiel said at last. “Tonight.”
“Oh,” Sam said, the word sounding hollow. “Well, that’s good, right?”
“He says that he wants us to try a relationship again.” There was no inflection to Castiel’s voice, no sense of hope or foreboding.
“Is that what you want?” Sam asked. He thought about Cas and Bal breaking up again, going right back to that horrible awkwardness that Sam had first stumbled into.
Castiel reached out and touched his fingers to a piece of paper in the centre of the wall, the shape of his hand obscuring the block letters printed on it. “I don’t know,” Castiel replied absently but then his eyes focused. “No, that’s not true.” He frowned, his eyebrows furrowing as he sorted through his thoughts. “I think I’m afraid of what I want.”
Sam swallowed, and nodded. “New things are usually scary.”
Cas huffed, and flashed his teeth in a smile, though it wasn’t a happy laugh. “This isn’t something new,” he said, looking down at his feet.
“Yes it is,” Sam replied. “You might be building on the foundations of something old, but you are not the person you were, what, five years ago? And neither is he. And the...” Sam stuttered, unable to say the word. “And whatever you get into now, it’s not going to be the same thing you had before.”
Castiel nodded, as if this did make some abstract sense to him. He lifted his gaze to the wall again, his eyes travelling over all of the work he had put into his character. Sam wondered if Castiel put the same effort into everything in his life, if he just sat down and thought about things until he found a way to make sense of them. “I don’t trust him,” he said at last. There was no sigh, no gravelly regret. Just Cas and his oddly endearing, if brutal, honesty. “I don’t think this will end well.”
Sam had no idea how to comfort Castiel, had no experience with taking a broken thing and trying to fix it. Sam had a lot more history with breaking things quite thoroughly and then eventually running away from the mess. But he could feel the heat of Castiel’s hand now hanging beside his own, so he brushed his knuckles against the back of Castiel’s wrist. “Most things don’t,” Sam replied. “But it’s not the ending that matters, it’s the journey to that ending, right?”
“No,” Castiel replied, still staring at that one piece of paper. “The ending is everything.”
Sam’s mobile rang then, making him jump. Castiel shifted away uneasily, giving Sam a little privacy to take his call. Sam fished his mobile out of his pocket, faced the open doorway and the cool air outside as he thumbed the green ‘accept call’ button.
“Please tell me you’re coming back,” Chuck said. “They’re arguing about halo colours and whether Lucifer has feathers.”
“Uh, sure,” Sam replied, turning back to look at Castiel who was pulling a picture of a mosaic in some cathedral down and studying it. A whole wall of notes about a character, it blew Sam away. And then he spotted the card Cas had been staring at, the little slip of blue cardboard right in the middle of everything that made up Michael. It had ‘Lucifer’ printed on it in thick, careful letters, and when Sam stared at it, all he could think was ‘Of course. Of course that’s how it is’.
“Listen,” he said to Chuck. “I just had a brainwave, I’ll be right back.” He hung up and gave Cas a lopsided grin that he didn’t exactly feel.
“Good luck,” Castiel said, returning the picture to its place. He looked oddly small against the sprawling nature of his research.
“Yeah,” Sam said, backing towards the door. “You too.”
Some things are destined to happen, Sam told himself as he stalked back to the writers’ room. He tried to push Castiel out of his mind, the way he smiled when frowns weren’t enough, the way his hand had pressed into the gentle caress of Sam’s knuckles. The way Balthazar kissed and the way he had a million different smiles that were all about deflecting attention. The way the three of them had woken up together, warm and cosy and relaxed.
Some characters are meant to be together, always circling one another until the pattern shifts just right and they can collide. It was the nature of Fallen and it was the nature of its actors. Everything tied up together with themes of second chances and fuck if it wasn’t a beautiful story.
It wasn’t Sam’s story. And he had no place forgetting that.