The Code of Chuck: Part 3/4
This story has been more thoroughly Kripke'd than I had ever imagined it would be. On that subject, I have just one thing to say:
GTFO, canon. It's time for waffles, and you are not invited.
Title: The Code of Chuck (Part 3/4)
Characters: Chuck, Cas/Dean, Sam, Missouri Mosely
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13/spoilers for season 4
Word Count: 7500
Summary: Chuck and Castiel stay up late swappin' manly stories, and in the morning, Missouri makes waffles. Then, it's down to prophet business.
Chuck 'Verse starts here. The Code of Chuck is the second of three books in the series, and its chapters are here:
( Part 1)( Part 2)(Part 3)
The first night at Missouri’s, Chuck found himself staring up at a decorative ceiling sconce from the fold-out bed in the first floor den and almost wishing he was back in Bobby’s panic room. The panic room was familiar, if hard and uncomfortable. The panic room didn’t smell like lemon Endust and burned sage, which tickled his nostrils. And the panic room didn’t have any stupid sconces shaped like ceiling boobs, complete with little ceiling boob nipples, which reminded him just how long it had been since he’d seen a real boob. Or two, for that matter. No, the panic room was decorated all “You’re trapped, sorry” and “Enjoy the apocalypse,” which he was used to. The devil you know…he thought, glancing at his writing notebook on the desk across the room. Maybe he could check in on the Winchesters.
The door creaked, and Castiel’s voice called softly, “Are you awake?”
“Yeah,” Chuck answered, sitting up.
Castiel let himself into the room, his shoulders hunched and his expression unreadable in the dark. The fold-out couch groaned as he lay down on the other side of it, tucking a throw pillow under his head. When Chuck stared at him, he said, “I couldn’t sleep alone upstairs. I’ve never slept without someone else in the room.”
Chuck forgot sometimes that the entirety of Castiel’s experience as a human had been spent living out of somebody else’s pocket. “You’ll get used to it someday,” he said.
“Does that day have to be today?”
Chuck did a quick mental calculation involving his masculinity, the width of the bed, and the likelihood of accidental nighttime snuggling. “Nah, it’s okay. Just don’t spoon me in your sleep - that’d make things weird.”
“I promise to refrain from spooning you, Chuck.” The shadows on Castiel’s face shifted as he frowned. “There’s a breast on the ceiling.”
“Yep.”
“Is that intentional?”
“Probably not.”
Castiel sighed, and as if reminded by the boob-shaped sconce, he said, “I wonder where Dean is tonight.”
“Yeah,” Chuck said, his voice fading off into the dark.
The truth was, Chuck knew where Dean was. Sam and Dean were spending the night in a motel with taxidermy fish on the wall just outside La Crosse, Wisconsin. He’d written the tail end of their road trip that evening, the bickering and the soundtrack exactly the same as any other Winchester family road trip. And then, because his mind was on the KFC he’d had earlier, his “new and improved” prophet powers had seen fit to give him a half-hour sneak peek into Missouri’s neighbor’s upcoming trip to the restaurant. And while Chuck was an equal opportunity fast food connoisseur, he didn’t appreciate spending five pages of notebook paper describing elderly Mrs. Whitaker attempting to eat a Double Down.
After a few minutes, Castiel’s breath slowed and started catching in the soft snores that had become familiar nighttime white noise for Chuck in their weeks in the panic room. Chuck stared up at the boob light on the ceiling, trying to shut up his brain long enough to fall asleep. But it kept skipping through topics.
Sam and Dean. Armageddon. Bruce Willis. Yippee kayay, motherlover-man, when was the last time he’d seen that movie uncensored? It was always on TV. Still, what a great line. Would he get a great heroic line like that in this apocalypse? Or at least some badass final words? Nah, he’d probably be struck down by Lucifer while he was talking about something embarrassing. Bananaphone. Boob lights. X-Men fanfic.
And that’d be it - archangel or not, that’d be his real, permanent death. Chuck had written enough stories to know how he fit into the one he was in. He was so not important enough to live through the End Days. He was like the comic relief in a Whedon show - doomed to a sudden, barely-mourned death when stuff got serious. If he was really lucky, he’d be a Wash - he’d pull some neat trick first, and geeks at a convention someday would hold a Chuck Shurley Memorial Luau with little plastic dinosaurs and drinks with pineapple on the straws. His mind ran off into the place where the Holy Crap I Died knot had come from, straining to remember what was in that stretch of dark unknown between the moment Dickface’s sword slid out of his gut and the moment he woke up in the panic room.
Chuck swallowed. Crap, this wasn’t doing any good. He sat up and swung his legs off the sofa-bed, careful not to disturb Castiel. Grabbing his writing notebook, he retreated out into the house. He managed to hit both shins on end tables in the search for a light switch in the parlor. Curling up like a little kid in Missouri’s big wingback chair, he gave his shins a quick rub and then flattened his notebook over one leg.
Now, he thought, let’s try this concentration thing again. Putting his pen to the page, Chuck ran a mental script of SamDeanSamDeanSamDean until something pulled words from his fingertips.
Dean twirled his keyring around his pointer finger, tossed it, and caught it again. “So, what’s this cosmic phone booth look like?”
“It’s not a matter of seeing it,” said Sam, his forehead rippled with concentration lines. “See, when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven, he didn’t just get tossed down some cosmic laundry chute into Hell. It was worse than that - like falling from the top of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down, except in this case, all the branches are different planes of existence.”
Dean tossed and caught his keys again, giving Sam the sort of look he usually reserved for televangelists and Lean Pockets commercials. “Yeah, thanks, Captain Exposition, I got that part. Your point being?”
“My point being that the spot where Lucifer fell through Earth will be marked psychically, not visibly. That’s why we should be able to pass messages through it - it’ll be a spot where things fall through the fabric in space - like a miniature Bermuda Triangle.”
Dean tossed his keys with a laugh. “So we’re looking for something we can’t even-” He paused, waving his hand in the air. “Wait.”
“What?” Sam said.
“My keys,” Dean said, scanning the patch of bare dirt he’d just walked past. “I threw ‘em in the air, and then they went…somewhere.”
Sam pulled a stray stick from the ground and tossed it into the air just above that bald patch of earth. The stick vanished before their eyes. He beamed. “I think we’ve found our cosmic phone booth.”
“Hey!” Dean shouted at the spot, clenching his fists. “That cosmic phone booth ate my keys!”
“Just be glad you didn’t step in it,” Sam said, laying out his backpack on the ground and grabbing some books out of it. “Now, the ritual takes about 12 hours to complete and needs to end at midnight, so we need to prep everything for tomorrow.”
Dean just glared at the bald patch of earth. “I got that keychain for finishing the biggest burger in Arizona.”
Chuck reread the passage. A message? What the crap were they doing?
***
Chuck still had the last vision hanging hazily behind his eyelids at 8am, when Missouri woke them with a knock at the door and a call of “Morning, boys! If you want breakfast, you best disentangle yourselves soon!”
Castiel had very much not kept his promise. The former angel was sprawled across the sofa-bed, one arm making friends with Chuck’s chest and his face pressed into the back of Chuck’s neck. Chuck grumbled, shoving Castiel off him, and pulled on a pair of jeans to make himself decent for breakfast.
The moment he stepped into the kitchen, his eyes went wide. “You made waffles?”
Missouri had a whole stack of them balanced on a plate in the middle of the kitchen table, along with a bottle of what looked to be-Chuck had to bite his lip to keep from drooling all over the linoleum-real maple syrup.
“I always make waffles for guests,” she answered as she sat down beside him, adding a bowl of sliced strawberries to the spread. “I find that most people are more willing to help wash dishes when they’ve got a belly full of waffles.”
“I will wash your dishes,” Chuck said, pulling waffles onto his plate. “I will wash all your dishes. Possibly forever.” They were good waffles, too - slightly crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle, with just the right size pockets to hold the perfect amount of syrup. Chuck’s eyes about rolled back into his head with the first bite. Oh god, waffles.
Castiel sat down opposite them, looking uncomfortable, and Missouri shot him a look.
“Boy, you can take care of that problem in the shower.” At the wide-eyed glance he gave her in response, she said, “Well, go on!”
Castiel got up, looking even more uncomfortable, and fled the room.
Chuck swallowed a laugh along with a mouthful of waffles. “You’re, like, the best hostess ever.”
“I don’t abide sexual tension at my table,” Missouri replied. “Nasty sensation to share over breakfast. Sours everything.”
“So then, if I told you I’m about ready to make out with you out of waffle-related gratitude, you wouldn’t appreciate that?”
“I’d take that as a compliment,” Missouri said with a smirk, and eyed him. “Except for the part where it’s not entirely hyperbole. I’m sorry about your dry spell, Chuck, but keep it in your pants.”
“Yes’m,” he answered, nodding toward his stack of waffles.
A door creaked open down the hallway behind the kitchen, and Castiel’s voice called, “Um, excuse me-”
“Cabinet behind the door,” Missouri called back. “Help yourself.”
“Thank you.” The bathroom door shut, and a moment later, the pipes grumbled to life.
Chuck frowned. “What-”
“Towels,” Missouri said.
“Ah. Wow. You’re really, um…”
“Psychic?” she offered.
“In control,” Chuck said.
She gave him the same half pitying, half amused look his Phys Ed teacher in middle school had given him whenever he tried to play goalie in floor hockey. “Honey, I’ve been doing this for years. Believe me, I’ve been where you are. I know the uncertainty, the feeling that something’s wrong with you because you can’t see what’s ahead of you. It took me years to figure out my abilities.”
Chuck slouched over his plate, which was already looking like Jackson Pollock: The Breakfast Period. Waffles weighed heavy in his stomach. “I’ve got a week, if that.”
Missouri nodded. “Well, then, I guess we’d better start as quick as possible. Finish your breakfast.”
Chuck didn’t need to be told twice.
***
After everyone had been fed and the guys had washed all the dishes, Missouri took them back into her psychic parlor and set up a small circular table between the chairs. Castiel watched silently from the doorway, his arms crossed and a mildly curious look written on his face. Missouri didn’t invite him to have a seat at the table, and he didn’t ask.
“So, uh,” Chuck said, settling into the chair opposite Missouri’s wingback, “is this where we set up candles and sacred symbols and stuff?”
“No,” she said, taking her seat and holding out her hands across the table, “I just like having somewhere to rest my elbows. Give me your hands.”
Chuck did. Missouri’s hands were warm and soft - and embarrassingly, a little bigger than his own. His shoulders tensed at the touch and drew even closer together as he sensed something he could only describe as a prickle of psychic energy weaving up through his arms. He wondered if sensing psychic energy was a new part of his prophety repertoire or if he’d just never been around anyone with powers he could suss out before.
Missouri’s eyes closed in-was that a wince? “Oh, honey. You’ve got one powerful connection here.”
“What do you mean?” Chuck said, not sure he wanted to know the answer. “I’m just following the one story - the Winchester Gospel. That’s it. Isn’t it?”
The moment she pursed her lips, his stomach plummeted. “Put it this way: I’m a pretty damn powerful psychic. I can reach into the ether beyond the here and now surface of this world anytime I want, and I can reach in a couple different directions at once. My connection is like a phone with with a conference call feature.” She frowned outright and opened her eyes, looking at him almost apologetically. “Chuck, you’ve got the whole switchboard in front of you. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Chuck slumped back in his chair and eyed the ceiling, muttering under his breath to God or Ceiling Cat or whatever entity was up there, “Thanks a lot.”
“It’s no wonder your visions come the way they do,” Missouri went on. “You’re reaching blind into an almost unlimited pool of information.”
“How do I…not do that?”
“You train yourself to get more specific. Here.” She gripped his hands tighter and closed her eyes again. “I’ll send you some focusing energy, and you visualize the switchboard in front of you.”
Visualization exercises. Great. Just like that creative writing course he’d taken freshman year - the one where the professor had tried to get everyone to do yoga. Chuck hoped really hard that this exercise wouldn’t end with a trip to the school nurse, too. He shot Castiel a worried look, but his friend just shrugged, not looking terribly concerned. Clearly, no one had ever made him do yoga for writers.
Chuck closed his eyes and let himself imagine a switchboard. He’d never seen one in person, so it came out a brightly colored maze of cartoon levers, like something out of the space ship in Invader Zim. His brain started making stupid references to the show, and he shut it down, trying hard to concentrate on the image.
“You see it?” Missouri asked, her voice low and calming.
“Yeah.”
“I want you to narrow in on just one section of your switchboard. Picture each part clearly labeled with the name of a person or event you’re concerned with.”
The labels materialized almost without a thought, and Chuck searched through them. The “I DIED” lever was bigger than he’d expected, and labeled in all caps, Impact font. It was even bigger than the “Apocalypse” lever in the middle of the board. Next to it was a smaller lever labeled “Getting laid,” and next to that, a cluster of levers bearing the names of everyone he’d been cloistered in Bobby’s house with.
“Now,” Missouri said, “I want you to very pointedly choose the ones your interested in. Flip those switches together and let your connection show you how they intersect.”
“That’s not how a switchboard works.”
“It’s imagery, boy. Don’t sass me.”
Castiel chuckled in the doorway, and Missouri shushed him, too.
Chuck ran his mental hand across the switches, careful not to accidentally touch the “Cas/Dean” lever, and chose four: “Lucifer,” “Apocalypse,” “Castiel,” and “Heaven.” They were vague enough, but maybe together they’d give him a sense of what was going to happen to Castiel at the end of all-
Pain shot through Chuck’s mind so sharply it buckled him over against Missouri’s table, his teeth clenched and his fingertips digging into her palms. He saw images in flashes like migraine auras: Lucifer wearing a blonde man’s face, a blade jutting into pale flesh, blood coloring the corners of a pair of familiar lips, and last, Castiel crumpling to the floor of a dimly lit room like an abandoned doll.
“You really thought you could save him, Castiel? Shame they took your good sense along with your grace.”
The pain held Chuck’s body taut, as if something were being driven slowly through his gut. Dimly, he heard Missouri swear and felt her hands peel themselves away from his own. His arms curled in toward his stomach, and as the stabbing sensation intensified, he tipped sideways. It was like Dickface’s sword running through him all over again - right down to the hollow vibration of his skull as he slammed sideways into the ground. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think anything but: oh god, gonna die, gonna die, pain, oh god-
Hands landed on his shoulders, and a low, firm voice said, “Chuck. Breathe.”
He took a shallow breath.
“Good. Again.”
He did it again, deeper this time. One of the hands left his shoulder and smoothed his hair back in a slow, soothing motion. Chuck took a deep, shaking breath and opened his eyes. Castiel was crouched over him, giving him a look that reminded him entirely too much of his own resurrection day. Missouri stood behind him, holding her hands and cringing.
“Do you need a paper bag?” Castiel asked. Chuck shook his head, so he asked, “What was that? What did you see?”
Chuck’s mouth tasted like sand. “N-nothing,” he choked out. It couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. The thought of that being real-
“That didn’t look like nothing,” Castiel said, frowning.
“It was nothing,” Chuck said, his chest going tight again. “Noth-” He scrunched his eyes shut, trying to shove out the memory of the pain. There went his breathing again.
“Paper bag,” Castiel barked. “Now!”
Chuck heard the clack of Missouri’s sensible heels rushing out of the room, and then he pulled himself up into a tight little ball in his mind and tried to not hear anything.
***
His notebook had run out half an hour ago, and he was now writing in a mostly-unused day planner from 2004, which Missouri had happened to have in a drawer. That would run out, too, but he had plans now: a half-empty address book from his own glove compartment, a stack of loose sheets of scrap paper from the recycling bin in the kitchen, and an offer from Castiel to run to the store for more notebooks if those ran out.
When those ran out. Which, at this rate, would be a day or less. Chuck’s wrist hurt from all the writing. And his thighs from having writing materials pressed hard against them. And his ass, because he’d been huddled in the bathtub in the first floor bathroom for three hours now, the curtain drawn, the door locked, and his bare feet sweating against the smooth finish of the tub. A clawfoot bathtub might provide the lumbar support an ultra-private writer’s retreat needed, but cushiony it was not.
He couldn’t flip back the “Apocalypse” switch in his mental switchboard. His inner eye was laser-focused like the goddamn Eye of Sauron, except instead of peeping on hobbits, it was taking in every iota of information about the Winchester boys.
What they were thinking the moment they woke up.
Which bottles they reached for first in the shower.
The fight over which way to squeeze the toothpaste tube, which they’d had so many times in the many, many mornings they’d lived together that Chuck didn’t understand why Sam didn’t just buy his own damn toothpaste already.
Breakfast.
Post-breakfast Dean snack and post-breakfast Sam tooth flossing.
The entire. Damn. Trek. To the field.
And the entire. Damn. Ritual. It was in some ancient language that Chuck had never researched, with candles and chanting and small animal sacrifice (Dean was surprisingly merciless with the pet store guinea pig they’d picked out). Every detail of the damn ritual was documented now in Chuck’s rushed scrawl, pages and pages of it, so that what would otherwise be a plot-important and fascinating supernatural event had taken on all the narrative power of a really long to-do list. When it finally got to the good part, Chuck was so relieved he could’ve kissed the day planner.
“To any who doubt.” The words were burned into a scrap of leather Sam held in his hands.
“So, that’s it?” Dean said, eyeing them. “We just toss that into the hole, and that’s it?”
“Sort of,” Sam said, heaving a sigh. All the hours of chanting and attention to ritual had left him exhausted, the core of him tugged in different directions by the forces he’d summoned. “We need to take off our own protections first, so that they can hear us. Then we talk. Then we go to meet them.”
Dean took off his protective necklace, shivering slightly at being so exposed. Sam followed suit, and they both tossed their necklaces on the coals of the fire where the bones of the guinea pig were already half ash.
“Ladies first,” Dean said, motioning toward the bald patch of earth just outside the fire ring.
Sam didn’t even complain, his heart lodged too firmly in his throat to expend more words than necessary. He stepped forward and let the scrap of leather drop toward the ground. It disappeared just a few inches from that patch of dirt. Light flared from it, shooting up toward the clouds overhead. He swallowed. “Um, okay.” Throwing back his shoulders, he knelt beside the spot and spoke directly into it.
“To any who doubt in Hell,” he said, “I am Sam Winchester, favored child of Azazel. Your so-called god, Lucifer, has only his own interests at heart. You are the pebbles in the treads of his boots, and if he wins, he’ll make quick work of annihilating your kind. Stand with me, and we might have the power to stop him. If you wish to join me, meet me in this city, at the bar on Third in an hour.”
“Might have to be more specific than that, Sammy. It’s Wisconsin.”
“The bar with the walleye on its sign,” Sam amended, “on Third.” He stood up and motioned for Dean to take his turn.
Dean knelt beside the glowing patch of earth and said, “To any who doubt in Heaven…good for you. I’m Dean Winchester. You might know me as the chosen one. If you want to join me and fight to stop this stupid apocalypse, meet me right here in an hour.”
“That’s it?” Sam said. “That’s the message you’re going to send out to all the potential dissenting angels in Heaven, to try to get them on your side?”
“What, you want me to re-record it?”
Sam shook his head and poured water on the coals, snuffing them out in a plume of acrid yellow smoke. The light from the hole between planes cut out. “I guess we go our separate ways, then.”
“Yep.” Dean tossed him the spare keys to the Impala.
“You want me to pick you up after we’ve each assembled our Justice Leagues?”
“Nah.” Dean tapped his first two fingers to his forehead in an imitation of how Cas used to touch him to zap him place to place. “My team’s got faster-than-light travel. I’ll give you a call if I need a ride. You just make sure you don’t wreck her.”
Sam snorted a laugh at his big brother and got into the car by himself.
Fingers rapped at the bathroom door.
The pencil scraped off the edge of the day planner, and Chuck cursed under his breath.
“Chuck?” Castiel’s voice was low and worried. “Are you okay?”
“Just peachy,” Chuck answered, an octave too high and way too chipper.
“I don’t mean to criticize your wording, but I thought ‘peachy’ was good. You don’t sound good.” A pause. “And you’ve been in the bathroom for several hours.”
“Look, I’m fine,” Chuck snapped. “I just need some time alone to-”
The visions pressed at the back of his eyes, giving him flashbacks to that horrible Schwarzenegger movie where the main characters left the protective bubble of the Mars colony and their eyes started bugging out from the lack of pressure or-
His hand moved without his permission, back to work.
Sam was only at the bar for 45 minutes before the demons began to show up. The first, wearing a portly blonde woman, bowed her head to him and bought him a beer. The second, wearing what looked like a college stoner, challenged him to pool. By the time the game was well underway, the bar was crowded with demons of all shapes and ages, with one unspoken thought shining hopefully in their eyes: Lucifer had to go down.
YES, Chuck thought, even as his hand catalogued the basic descriptions of two dozen demons in the crowd. So this was the plan: get support from dissenters on both sides and raise a small army against Lucifer. It wasn’t a bad plan, assuming they could find a way to, y’know, kill Lucifer.
“Chuck?” Castiel tried at the door again.
“Not now,” Chuck said.
“It’s lunchtime.”
“I’m not hungry.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but he was much more interested in what was happening-
Across town, in the field where the cosmic phone booth lay, Dean stood fiddling with a pocketknife and wishing he’d brought a book. The meeting time had passed five minutes ago, and weren’t angels supposed to be sticklers for things like promptness? Maybe that was just if they were under orders. Castiel had taken forever to do something for himself once he’d started to doubt.
Castiel. Dean smiled out at the field. It was kind of embarrassing how excited he was to get back to the guy after this. Although he’d never admit it to Sam (or any living person), thinking of Castiel sent waves of warmth crashing together inside his chest. If Dean were the kind of guy to pay his feelings much mind - which he wasn’t - he would have assigned words like “bonded” and “love” and “unnecessary amounts of shmoopiness” to what he was feeling. Because he loved Castiel - he truly did, in his own way. Castiel ranked somewhere between the Impala and Sam in his eyes, and if he was honest with himself, he would totally have let Castiel drive the Impala. No doubt.
“Dean,” said a familiar voice behind him.
He turned and immediately felt like the air had been knocked out of him. “Anna? You’re alive?”
Anna smiled, just shy of his personal bubble. She was still wearing the same vessel she’d been so fond of before, with those big watery eyes staring back at him and the same dark coat hanging off her thin frame. “Yes. I got your message. It’s so good to see you.”
“Yeah, you too,” Dean said. “Hey, haven’t seen my keys, have you? They’re on a ring with this black rubber plaque, says ‘I survived The Beefalanche’?”
“Sorry, no.” She looked sideways, her lips pinched into a thin line. “It’s not safe here. The angel who took over for Zachariah knows where you are.”
Dean found himself glancing around the field as if any moment an army of angels would sprout from the grass. “All right, then, let’s get the hell outta here. I can give you the address we’ve gotta get to-”
“No need,” Anna said, laying two fingers on his forehead.
The world lurched, and Dean’s stomach went with it. He blinked hard, and then he blinked hard again, because he didn’t believe what was in front of him. His stomach went on moving without him.
They were in Heaven’s green room, complete with the same gallery of angelic paintings and spread of fast food and beer as Dean had been treated to the day Lucifer rose. It even smelled the same - ozone and burgers. He took a step back, and a harp prodded him in the side.
“Anna…” he said, his stomach whirling slowly toward a stop. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“I’m delivering the champion to Heaven,” Anna said, that pleasant little smile never leaving her lips. “You’re sitting in the penalty box until the big fight’s on.”
Dean’s blood ran cold. “The angel who took over for Zachariah…”
“Me,” she said. “I never would’ve been offered the position if Cas hadn’t gotten me thrown into Heaven’s bible camp. Few angels in my position would have gotten that chance to reform.” Her smile broadened, and Dean’s throat clenched like a fist. “How is Cas, anyway? I’d love to talk to him.”
“What, so you two can gab about how I am in the sack? I don’t think so.”
Anna chuckled, picking up one of the beers from the tureen of ice on the table. “You and Cas are together now? Cute.” Positioning the bottle against the lip of the table, she smacked her palm down on it and sent the cap skittering across the floor. She took a drink, then offered it to Dean. The gesture was oddly human, and it turned his stomach. “Thirsty? It’s on the house.”
“No,” he said, scowling.“How’d you find me?”
“You sent an email to the staff mailing list, Dean. I answered.”
“You…” Dean blinked hard, putting the pieces together. “You got that message?”
Anna smiled again, almost shyly. “Yes, Dean, I still doubt. Doubt doesn’t negate loyalty; it tests it. Faith that grows in spite of doubt is stronger than faith that grows blind.”
“Well, that’s lovely. You should send that one to Hallmark.”
Anna approached him, slid the beer bottle into his hand, and kissed him on the cheek. “And you,” she said in his ear, “should have kept my brother’s blood sigils. Everyone’s seen what they did to Cas. You should have known that no angel would be stupid enough to risk the same fate by joining you.”
Air whisked against Dean’s cheek, and he was alone in the room. He wheeled around, looking for his captor or an exit or-anything useful. The room was still and solid and just as maddening as the last time. He threw the beer bottle, sending it crashing into a painting of cherubs. “Son of a bitch!”
Chuck’s inner eye froze and sputtered like a web player buffering porn, and then it blacked out entirely. He stared at the words on the page in front of him, black marker scrawled over Missouri’s pencil appointment notes from April 2004. Was…was that it? Was that everything? He tested the Apocalypse switch on his mental switchboard. A hum of new scenes waited beneath it, but nothing more seemed to be trying to flush itself out onto the page at the moment.
Chuck reread the scene he’d just finished, held the day planner against his stomach, and curled over onto his knees with a whimper. His insides moved in ways he was pretty sure were against their biology, his head throbbed, and something sour rose up the back of his throat. He hadn’t felt this sick since the week after junior year finals, and that had involved Jager, Cheez Whiz, and a Ren & Stimpy marathon.
The lock on the bathroom door clicked and scraped like it was being picked - or at least, like lock-picking sounded like in his head, when he’d watched Sam and Dean do it. Chuck didn’t look up when the door opened. He heard the soft footsteps on the tile and knew by the careful landing of each heel that it was Castiel.
“Chuck?”
“Mmf.”
“You weren’t answering, and you missed lunch. Are you okay?”
“Nmmo,” Chuck said miserably into the knee of his jeans.
The rings on the shower curtain rattled as it pulled aside, and a shadow overlapped Chuck’s on the tub basin. Castiel’s hand made a long stroke down his hair, then another. It was comforting, in a juvenile sort of way, for about five seconds.
“Dude,” Chuck said, lifting his head from his knees, “I’m not a spaniel.”
“Sorry,” Castiel said, his hand retreating to his lap. “I’m not good at this.” His eyes scanned the room, taking inventory of every spot where spare pages lay. “Are these all visions?”
“Yep,” Chuck said, hugging the day planner tightly.
“And that?” Castiel said, frowning at the pages in the toilet.
“Also visions.” Chuck pulled a face. “No one deserves to read the things your boyfriend does in the bathroom after his morning coffee.”
“You’ve seen him, then?”
The question hung in the air for a very long second. Chuck swallowed. Crap. Castiel couldn’t find out about the whole heavenly abduction deal. If he knew, he’d find some way to go rushing off after Dean, and Chuck had promised Dean he’d keep a lid on Castiel’s thrilling heroics. And if he went the route of thrilling heroics-
“You really thought you could save him, Castiel?”
No. No, no, nonono. That wasn’t going to happen. Not if he could stop it.
Chuck’s stomach felt like it was doing a curly fry impersonation. He gripped the day planner so hard he felt his knuckles turning white. “They’re in Wisconsin, tracking down a lead on Lucifer.” It wasn’t a total lie.
Castiel frowned. “Why would they ditch us to do something as simple as tracking a lead?”
Chuck forced a smirk. “Because, dude, as far as they’re concerned, we’re the Zeppos.”
“Oh! ‘The Zeppo!’” Castiel said. “I was trying to remember that name earlier. It’s definitely in my top five episodes.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” Chuck said quietly. He wasn’t much in the mood for Buffy talk. To be honest, 90% of him was in the mood to curl up in a little ball next to the toilet and the remaining 10% was ready to run in a circle on the front lawn yelling, “Oh god oh god, we’re all gonna die!” He rubbed one eye, which was sore from focusing on the page in front of him for so long. “This sucks ass. I don’t want to be the damn prophet. I’ve spent four hours in here-”
“Five,” Castiel corrected gently.
“-five hours in here writing every stupid detail of every stupid scene that somebody up there-” he raised his head in the direction of the ceiling “-wants me to write, boring parts included, because my inner eye doesn’t come with a manual.” His voice rose. “All I’m doing is putting words on the page for you, you hear me? If all you want is a word processor, get an AlphaSmart! This isn’t fair!”
Ugh, yelling made his head twinge.
“Chuck,” Castiel said, catching his gaze. “What does S. Morgenstern teach us about fairness?”
Chuck sighed and dropped his head back to his knees. “That life isn’t fair, and anyone who says differently is selling something.”
Castiel patted him on the back - and okay, that was a lot better than the hair stroking thing. “Come on, let’s go make you a sandwich.”
Taking a deep breath, Chuck pushed himself upright. His body came alive with aches and complaints, but he kept his mouth shut, gathered up his pages of visions, and kept the whole bundle of it firmly in his grip as he left the room behind his friend.
***
Each day for the next week went largely the same - minus the explosion of Castiel death that had torn open his inner eye in the first place. Wake up, practice working the switchboard with Missouri (who didn’t get the Invader Zim references, sadly), then spend hours hunched and writing while whoever was calling the shots upstairs hurled scenes at him.
On the third day, Missouri got sick of her first floor bathroom being unavailable the whole afternoon and dug an old laptop out of the attic, on the promise that Chuck could use that so long as he wrote elsewhere. The machine was from 1998 and had a folder full of 80’s music midis on the desktop - her nephew’s, she claimed - but it had a wireless card hanging out of one side, and that was definitely an improvement. Chuck had been burying the most Dean-centric visions in the flower box outside the den window so Castiel wouldn’t find them, but it was a small flower box, and he was pretty sure Missouri would have his hide if he killed her tulips by moving them around too much. He didn’t even know what “have his hide” meant, exactly - just that she’d said it when Castiel had taken a cookie prematurely from the baking rack, and the words struck a deep chord of fear in him. Anyway. With the laptop, Chuck didn’t have to write on paper behind a locked door - he could shut himself in the den and write in a Google Doc, which no one had access to but him. If anyone tried to peek, all he had to do was minimize the window.
In that Google Doc, Sam talked his demon army into using 100% recycled vessels, because, as he told them as they assembled outside the bar that first night, “You do this my way or you’re on your own.” None of the demons talked back.
In that Google Doc, Sam and his demon army started the long drive toward Lawrence, Sam in the Impala taking the lead and a convoy of demons in shared cars dutifully following. (Sam was secretly pleased that they were carpooling to save the environment.)
In that Google Doc, Sam smiled to himself, his arm warming on the door of the Impala as the wind rushed by, thinking of his brother and wondering what the hell they were going to do when their two sides came together.
And in that Google Doc, Dean stewed in Heaven’s green room. He punched walls. He yelled at Anna. He yelled at Heaven. He yelled at God. He begrudgingly ate one burger, and then another, and then said “Ah, screw it,” and got totally plastered on Heaven’s beer. After passing out mid-yell, he woke up to find the tureen that had held the beer was now filled with virgin daiquiris. So he yelled at Anna some more.
And those were the highlights. This wasn’t the apocalypse that Chuck had expected to write. Maybe it was all the aimless yelling, or the 2,300 words he’d spent chronicling the process of Sam’s cadre of demons breaking into the nearest impound lot to steal some junkers, or the additional text document he’d had to open to contain the descriptions of Sam’s hair - whoever was downloading the visions into his head really had a thing for Sam’s epic mane. Whatever it was, this apocalypse lacked something. Filters, maybe. It was too much - an info dump instead of a narrative. Too much summary, not enough scene.
Chuck missed his happy-verse. Hell, at this point, he missed the Dean/Cas van scenes he’d been trying to burn out of his brain just a week ago. His fingers were tired and his mind felt hollowed out, but the moment his inner eye closed on the seventh day at Missouri’s, Chuck opened a new blank document and started writing something that didn't come from visions - something just for himself, out of his own imagination.
“I am very glad we averted the apocalypse,” Dean said happily, drinking a beer on the hood of the Impala.
“Yes,” Castiel said beside him. “I, too, am glad the world has not ended.”
“Sam!” Dean cried, because Sam was approaching. “Where have you been?”
“Working on that global warming thing,” Sam said, grabbing a beer from the cooler in the driver’s seat.
“Are you glad the world didn’t end, Sam?”
“So glad!” Sam enthused.
“I am also glad we have beds now,” Castiel announced wistfully.
“Yes, the beds are nice,” Dean agreed, grinning.
“For fornicating in,” Castiel clarified.
Sam looked very uncomfortable, but still glad the world hadn’t ended.
Chuck deleted the document, slouched forward in his seat, and quietly hit his forehead against the desk until it was time for dinner.
***
After dinner, Chuck volunteered to help with cleanup so he could have time alone with Missouri. He crowded in next to her at the sink, his already sore hands working overtime with a scrub brush while she rinsed dishes.
Missouri gave him a funny look. “Chuck, much as I appreciate the help, I’m not your momma and I do not appreciate having a grown man clinging to my apron strings.”
“I just need to ask you something one-on-one,” he said, checking over his shoulder to be sure that Castiel wasn’t in earshot. The TV in the living room crackled to life with what sounded like one of those SyFy channel original movies - all screaming and stilted dialogue. Chuck wished he could join him out there, but he needed answers first. “Can you see it?” he asked Missouri. “When I get a vision?”
Missouri pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, honey. If you’re thinking about something, I get a pretty clear picture, but you’ve got a private line running between you and whatever’s giving you those visions.”
“Of course.” Chuck laughed, an unhappy sound that got lost in his throat. “You wanna hear something really selfish?” he asked, scraping cheese off a plate.
“What?” she said, though he was sure she already knew.
“Part of me kinda wished you’d be able to see my visions as they were coming through to me. Sort of a misery loves company thing.”
Missouri laid a hand on the back of his neck, and a spot of dishwater seeped through the fabric of his t-shirt. “I don’t think that’s selfish, Chuck. Nobody wants to be alone.”
Chuck opened his mouth to correct her, but stopped. Alone. Was he alone? He’d been more social in the last few months than he’d been in years. He’d lived in such close contact with people that he could identify them by the sounds of their bare footsteps. It had been a regular Full House at Bobby’s, with him playing the part of-well, he’d like to think he was one of the hilarious uncles, but he was probably annoying little Stephanie, if he was being honest with himself. And he had Castiel, who was more of a friend to him than anyone had been in-criminy, he didn’t want to think how long it had been since he’d had such a good friend. And yet, in the midst of all these people…
Missouri dropped her hand back into the sink with a sympathetic frown. “I’m sorry you’ve gotta deal with all this. It’s not fair. If you want to share it with someone, you’re just going to have to let us know what your visions are. Talk them out. Show us your writing.”
“No,” he answered immediately.
“Why-” Missouri started, and her eyes went wide as she picked up on what Chuck was thinking about. Sam and Dean’s plan was there, laid out for her to see, and Dean’s capture, and on top of it all, Castiel’s dramatic death scene. Chuck didn’t know exactly how much Missouri would catch of it, but it was enough to make her back away from him, her hand at her collar and her eyes tearing up. “Jesus, Chuck. You’ve been keeping all that from us? Boy, you’ve gotta tell Castiel. You can’t keep him in the dark about something this big.”
“Yes, I can,” Chuck said, scrubbing hard at a grease stain on one of the pots. Just the idea of telling Castiel made his insides knot up. He glanced over his shoulder, but all he could see from here was the TV screen and his friend’s feet crossed over each other on the couch. He lowered his voice to a whisper, barely audible over the faucet. “If I tell him, he’ll run off and try to pull some thrilling heroics. I promised Dean I wouldn’t let that happen, and the more I think about it, the more I think Dean was right to ask that. Castiel isn’t used to being breakable. If I tell him Dean’s in trouble, he’s not gonna think about his own well being - he’s gonna march straight into the thick of things and get himself killed.” Chuck shook his head. “I can’t let that happen.”
“Honey, that’s fate,” Missouri said. “You can’t play games with fate.”
“Sure I can,” Chuck said, tossing a clean pot into the other side of the sink. “It’s the one perk that comes with this stupid job.”
Missouri closed her mouth sternly and drifted back to rinsing dishes. Chuck scrubbed furiously, his fingers clenching around the scrub brush. He’d gotten himself a big black mark in her mental binder of morals, he could tell. And he was quickly earning himself a title as a hack (if he hadn’t already had that), and a case of tendonitis, and the way tonight was headed, probably wrinkly prune fingers, too. But there was one thing he wasn’t going to lose.
“Chuck,” Castiel called from the living room. “This man is kicking giant piranhas as they fly at him. You need to see this movie.”
Chuck smiled to himself for the first time all day. Yeah, this was definitely the right choice.
TO BE CONTINUED!
For reference: Yes, that scene exists.
GTFO, canon. It's time for waffles, and you are not invited.
Title: The Code of Chuck (Part 3/4)
Characters: Chuck, Cas/Dean, Sam, Missouri Mosely
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13/spoilers for season 4
Word Count: 7500
Summary: Chuck and Castiel stay up late swappin' manly stories, and in the morning, Missouri makes waffles. Then, it's down to prophet business.
Chuck 'Verse starts here. The Code of Chuck is the second of three books in the series, and its chapters are here:
( Part 1)( Part 2)(Part 3)
The first night at Missouri’s, Chuck found himself staring up at a decorative ceiling sconce from the fold-out bed in the first floor den and almost wishing he was back in Bobby’s panic room. The panic room was familiar, if hard and uncomfortable. The panic room didn’t smell like lemon Endust and burned sage, which tickled his nostrils. And the panic room didn’t have any stupid sconces shaped like ceiling boobs, complete with little ceiling boob nipples, which reminded him just how long it had been since he’d seen a real boob. Or two, for that matter. No, the panic room was decorated all “You’re trapped, sorry” and “Enjoy the apocalypse,” which he was used to. The devil you know…he thought, glancing at his writing notebook on the desk across the room. Maybe he could check in on the Winchesters.
The door creaked, and Castiel’s voice called softly, “Are you awake?”
“Yeah,” Chuck answered, sitting up.
Castiel let himself into the room, his shoulders hunched and his expression unreadable in the dark. The fold-out couch groaned as he lay down on the other side of it, tucking a throw pillow under his head. When Chuck stared at him, he said, “I couldn’t sleep alone upstairs. I’ve never slept without someone else in the room.”
Chuck forgot sometimes that the entirety of Castiel’s experience as a human had been spent living out of somebody else’s pocket. “You’ll get used to it someday,” he said.
“Does that day have to be today?”
Chuck did a quick mental calculation involving his masculinity, the width of the bed, and the likelihood of accidental nighttime snuggling. “Nah, it’s okay. Just don’t spoon me in your sleep - that’d make things weird.”
“I promise to refrain from spooning you, Chuck.” The shadows on Castiel’s face shifted as he frowned. “There’s a breast on the ceiling.”
“Yep.”
“Is that intentional?”
“Probably not.”
Castiel sighed, and as if reminded by the boob-shaped sconce, he said, “I wonder where Dean is tonight.”
“Yeah,” Chuck said, his voice fading off into the dark.
The truth was, Chuck knew where Dean was. Sam and Dean were spending the night in a motel with taxidermy fish on the wall just outside La Crosse, Wisconsin. He’d written the tail end of their road trip that evening, the bickering and the soundtrack exactly the same as any other Winchester family road trip. And then, because his mind was on the KFC he’d had earlier, his “new and improved” prophet powers had seen fit to give him a half-hour sneak peek into Missouri’s neighbor’s upcoming trip to the restaurant. And while Chuck was an equal opportunity fast food connoisseur, he didn’t appreciate spending five pages of notebook paper describing elderly Mrs. Whitaker attempting to eat a Double Down.
After a few minutes, Castiel’s breath slowed and started catching in the soft snores that had become familiar nighttime white noise for Chuck in their weeks in the panic room. Chuck stared up at the boob light on the ceiling, trying to shut up his brain long enough to fall asleep. But it kept skipping through topics.
Sam and Dean. Armageddon. Bruce Willis. Yippee kayay, motherlover-man, when was the last time he’d seen that movie uncensored? It was always on TV. Still, what a great line. Would he get a great heroic line like that in this apocalypse? Or at least some badass final words? Nah, he’d probably be struck down by Lucifer while he was talking about something embarrassing. Bananaphone. Boob lights. X-Men fanfic.
And that’d be it - archangel or not, that’d be his real, permanent death. Chuck had written enough stories to know how he fit into the one he was in. He was so not important enough to live through the End Days. He was like the comic relief in a Whedon show - doomed to a sudden, barely-mourned death when stuff got serious. If he was really lucky, he’d be a Wash - he’d pull some neat trick first, and geeks at a convention someday would hold a Chuck Shurley Memorial Luau with little plastic dinosaurs and drinks with pineapple on the straws. His mind ran off into the place where the Holy Crap I Died knot had come from, straining to remember what was in that stretch of dark unknown between the moment Dickface’s sword slid out of his gut and the moment he woke up in the panic room.
Chuck swallowed. Crap, this wasn’t doing any good. He sat up and swung his legs off the sofa-bed, careful not to disturb Castiel. Grabbing his writing notebook, he retreated out into the house. He managed to hit both shins on end tables in the search for a light switch in the parlor. Curling up like a little kid in Missouri’s big wingback chair, he gave his shins a quick rub and then flattened his notebook over one leg.
Now, he thought, let’s try this concentration thing again. Putting his pen to the page, Chuck ran a mental script of SamDeanSamDeanSamDean until something pulled words from his fingertips.
Dean twirled his keyring around his pointer finger, tossed it, and caught it again. “So, what’s this cosmic phone booth look like?”
“It’s not a matter of seeing it,” said Sam, his forehead rippled with concentration lines. “See, when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven, he didn’t just get tossed down some cosmic laundry chute into Hell. It was worse than that - like falling from the top of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down, except in this case, all the branches are different planes of existence.”
Dean tossed and caught his keys again, giving Sam the sort of look he usually reserved for televangelists and Lean Pockets commercials. “Yeah, thanks, Captain Exposition, I got that part. Your point being?”
“My point being that the spot where Lucifer fell through Earth will be marked psychically, not visibly. That’s why we should be able to pass messages through it - it’ll be a spot where things fall through the fabric in space - like a miniature Bermuda Triangle.”
Dean tossed his keys with a laugh. “So we’re looking for something we can’t even-” He paused, waving his hand in the air. “Wait.”
“What?” Sam said.
“My keys,” Dean said, scanning the patch of bare dirt he’d just walked past. “I threw ‘em in the air, and then they went…somewhere.”
Sam pulled a stray stick from the ground and tossed it into the air just above that bald patch of earth. The stick vanished before their eyes. He beamed. “I think we’ve found our cosmic phone booth.”
“Hey!” Dean shouted at the spot, clenching his fists. “That cosmic phone booth ate my keys!”
“Just be glad you didn’t step in it,” Sam said, laying out his backpack on the ground and grabbing some books out of it. “Now, the ritual takes about 12 hours to complete and needs to end at midnight, so we need to prep everything for tomorrow.”
Dean just glared at the bald patch of earth. “I got that keychain for finishing the biggest burger in Arizona.”
Chuck reread the passage. A message? What the crap were they doing?
***
Chuck still had the last vision hanging hazily behind his eyelids at 8am, when Missouri woke them with a knock at the door and a call of “Morning, boys! If you want breakfast, you best disentangle yourselves soon!”
Castiel had very much not kept his promise. The former angel was sprawled across the sofa-bed, one arm making friends with Chuck’s chest and his face pressed into the back of Chuck’s neck. Chuck grumbled, shoving Castiel off him, and pulled on a pair of jeans to make himself decent for breakfast.
The moment he stepped into the kitchen, his eyes went wide. “You made waffles?”
Missouri had a whole stack of them balanced on a plate in the middle of the kitchen table, along with a bottle of what looked to be-Chuck had to bite his lip to keep from drooling all over the linoleum-real maple syrup.
“I always make waffles for guests,” she answered as she sat down beside him, adding a bowl of sliced strawberries to the spread. “I find that most people are more willing to help wash dishes when they’ve got a belly full of waffles.”
“I will wash your dishes,” Chuck said, pulling waffles onto his plate. “I will wash all your dishes. Possibly forever.” They were good waffles, too - slightly crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle, with just the right size pockets to hold the perfect amount of syrup. Chuck’s eyes about rolled back into his head with the first bite. Oh god, waffles.
Castiel sat down opposite them, looking uncomfortable, and Missouri shot him a look.
“Boy, you can take care of that problem in the shower.” At the wide-eyed glance he gave her in response, she said, “Well, go on!”
Castiel got up, looking even more uncomfortable, and fled the room.
Chuck swallowed a laugh along with a mouthful of waffles. “You’re, like, the best hostess ever.”
“I don’t abide sexual tension at my table,” Missouri replied. “Nasty sensation to share over breakfast. Sours everything.”
“So then, if I told you I’m about ready to make out with you out of waffle-related gratitude, you wouldn’t appreciate that?”
“I’d take that as a compliment,” Missouri said with a smirk, and eyed him. “Except for the part where it’s not entirely hyperbole. I’m sorry about your dry spell, Chuck, but keep it in your pants.”
“Yes’m,” he answered, nodding toward his stack of waffles.
A door creaked open down the hallway behind the kitchen, and Castiel’s voice called, “Um, excuse me-”
“Cabinet behind the door,” Missouri called back. “Help yourself.”
“Thank you.” The bathroom door shut, and a moment later, the pipes grumbled to life.
Chuck frowned. “What-”
“Towels,” Missouri said.
“Ah. Wow. You’re really, um…”
“Psychic?” she offered.
“In control,” Chuck said.
She gave him the same half pitying, half amused look his Phys Ed teacher in middle school had given him whenever he tried to play goalie in floor hockey. “Honey, I’ve been doing this for years. Believe me, I’ve been where you are. I know the uncertainty, the feeling that something’s wrong with you because you can’t see what’s ahead of you. It took me years to figure out my abilities.”
Chuck slouched over his plate, which was already looking like Jackson Pollock: The Breakfast Period. Waffles weighed heavy in his stomach. “I’ve got a week, if that.”
Missouri nodded. “Well, then, I guess we’d better start as quick as possible. Finish your breakfast.”
Chuck didn’t need to be told twice.
***
After everyone had been fed and the guys had washed all the dishes, Missouri took them back into her psychic parlor and set up a small circular table between the chairs. Castiel watched silently from the doorway, his arms crossed and a mildly curious look written on his face. Missouri didn’t invite him to have a seat at the table, and he didn’t ask.
“So, uh,” Chuck said, settling into the chair opposite Missouri’s wingback, “is this where we set up candles and sacred symbols and stuff?”
“No,” she said, taking her seat and holding out her hands across the table, “I just like having somewhere to rest my elbows. Give me your hands.”
Chuck did. Missouri’s hands were warm and soft - and embarrassingly, a little bigger than his own. His shoulders tensed at the touch and drew even closer together as he sensed something he could only describe as a prickle of psychic energy weaving up through his arms. He wondered if sensing psychic energy was a new part of his prophety repertoire or if he’d just never been around anyone with powers he could suss out before.
Missouri’s eyes closed in-was that a wince? “Oh, honey. You’ve got one powerful connection here.”
“What do you mean?” Chuck said, not sure he wanted to know the answer. “I’m just following the one story - the Winchester Gospel. That’s it. Isn’t it?”
The moment she pursed her lips, his stomach plummeted. “Put it this way: I’m a pretty damn powerful psychic. I can reach into the ether beyond the here and now surface of this world anytime I want, and I can reach in a couple different directions at once. My connection is like a phone with with a conference call feature.” She frowned outright and opened her eyes, looking at him almost apologetically. “Chuck, you’ve got the whole switchboard in front of you. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Chuck slumped back in his chair and eyed the ceiling, muttering under his breath to God or Ceiling Cat or whatever entity was up there, “Thanks a lot.”
“It’s no wonder your visions come the way they do,” Missouri went on. “You’re reaching blind into an almost unlimited pool of information.”
“How do I…not do that?”
“You train yourself to get more specific. Here.” She gripped his hands tighter and closed her eyes again. “I’ll send you some focusing energy, and you visualize the switchboard in front of you.”
Visualization exercises. Great. Just like that creative writing course he’d taken freshman year - the one where the professor had tried to get everyone to do yoga. Chuck hoped really hard that this exercise wouldn’t end with a trip to the school nurse, too. He shot Castiel a worried look, but his friend just shrugged, not looking terribly concerned. Clearly, no one had ever made him do yoga for writers.
Chuck closed his eyes and let himself imagine a switchboard. He’d never seen one in person, so it came out a brightly colored maze of cartoon levers, like something out of the space ship in Invader Zim. His brain started making stupid references to the show, and he shut it down, trying hard to concentrate on the image.
“You see it?” Missouri asked, her voice low and calming.
“Yeah.”
“I want you to narrow in on just one section of your switchboard. Picture each part clearly labeled with the name of a person or event you’re concerned with.”
The labels materialized almost without a thought, and Chuck searched through them. The “I DIED” lever was bigger than he’d expected, and labeled in all caps, Impact font. It was even bigger than the “Apocalypse” lever in the middle of the board. Next to it was a smaller lever labeled “Getting laid,” and next to that, a cluster of levers bearing the names of everyone he’d been cloistered in Bobby’s house with.
“Now,” Missouri said, “I want you to very pointedly choose the ones your interested in. Flip those switches together and let your connection show you how they intersect.”
“That’s not how a switchboard works.”
“It’s imagery, boy. Don’t sass me.”
Castiel chuckled in the doorway, and Missouri shushed him, too.
Chuck ran his mental hand across the switches, careful not to accidentally touch the “Cas/Dean” lever, and chose four: “Lucifer,” “Apocalypse,” “Castiel,” and “Heaven.” They were vague enough, but maybe together they’d give him a sense of what was going to happen to Castiel at the end of all-
Pain shot through Chuck’s mind so sharply it buckled him over against Missouri’s table, his teeth clenched and his fingertips digging into her palms. He saw images in flashes like migraine auras: Lucifer wearing a blonde man’s face, a blade jutting into pale flesh, blood coloring the corners of a pair of familiar lips, and last, Castiel crumpling to the floor of a dimly lit room like an abandoned doll.
“You really thought you could save him, Castiel? Shame they took your good sense along with your grace.”
The pain held Chuck’s body taut, as if something were being driven slowly through his gut. Dimly, he heard Missouri swear and felt her hands peel themselves away from his own. His arms curled in toward his stomach, and as the stabbing sensation intensified, he tipped sideways. It was like Dickface’s sword running through him all over again - right down to the hollow vibration of his skull as he slammed sideways into the ground. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think anything but: oh god, gonna die, gonna die, pain, oh god-
Hands landed on his shoulders, and a low, firm voice said, “Chuck. Breathe.”
He took a shallow breath.
“Good. Again.”
He did it again, deeper this time. One of the hands left his shoulder and smoothed his hair back in a slow, soothing motion. Chuck took a deep, shaking breath and opened his eyes. Castiel was crouched over him, giving him a look that reminded him entirely too much of his own resurrection day. Missouri stood behind him, holding her hands and cringing.
“Do you need a paper bag?” Castiel asked. Chuck shook his head, so he asked, “What was that? What did you see?”
Chuck’s mouth tasted like sand. “N-nothing,” he choked out. It couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. The thought of that being real-
“That didn’t look like nothing,” Castiel said, frowning.
“It was nothing,” Chuck said, his chest going tight again. “Noth-” He scrunched his eyes shut, trying to shove out the memory of the pain. There went his breathing again.
“Paper bag,” Castiel barked. “Now!”
Chuck heard the clack of Missouri’s sensible heels rushing out of the room, and then he pulled himself up into a tight little ball in his mind and tried to not hear anything.
***
His notebook had run out half an hour ago, and he was now writing in a mostly-unused day planner from 2004, which Missouri had happened to have in a drawer. That would run out, too, but he had plans now: a half-empty address book from his own glove compartment, a stack of loose sheets of scrap paper from the recycling bin in the kitchen, and an offer from Castiel to run to the store for more notebooks if those ran out.
When those ran out. Which, at this rate, would be a day or less. Chuck’s wrist hurt from all the writing. And his thighs from having writing materials pressed hard against them. And his ass, because he’d been huddled in the bathtub in the first floor bathroom for three hours now, the curtain drawn, the door locked, and his bare feet sweating against the smooth finish of the tub. A clawfoot bathtub might provide the lumbar support an ultra-private writer’s retreat needed, but cushiony it was not.
He couldn’t flip back the “Apocalypse” switch in his mental switchboard. His inner eye was laser-focused like the goddamn Eye of Sauron, except instead of peeping on hobbits, it was taking in every iota of information about the Winchester boys.
What they were thinking the moment they woke up.
Which bottles they reached for first in the shower.
The fight over which way to squeeze the toothpaste tube, which they’d had so many times in the many, many mornings they’d lived together that Chuck didn’t understand why Sam didn’t just buy his own damn toothpaste already.
Breakfast.
Post-breakfast Dean snack and post-breakfast Sam tooth flossing.
The entire. Damn. Trek. To the field.
And the entire. Damn. Ritual. It was in some ancient language that Chuck had never researched, with candles and chanting and small animal sacrifice (Dean was surprisingly merciless with the pet store guinea pig they’d picked out). Every detail of the damn ritual was documented now in Chuck’s rushed scrawl, pages and pages of it, so that what would otherwise be a plot-important and fascinating supernatural event had taken on all the narrative power of a really long to-do list. When it finally got to the good part, Chuck was so relieved he could’ve kissed the day planner.
“To any who doubt.” The words were burned into a scrap of leather Sam held in his hands.
“So, that’s it?” Dean said, eyeing them. “We just toss that into the hole, and that’s it?”
“Sort of,” Sam said, heaving a sigh. All the hours of chanting and attention to ritual had left him exhausted, the core of him tugged in different directions by the forces he’d summoned. “We need to take off our own protections first, so that they can hear us. Then we talk. Then we go to meet them.”
Dean took off his protective necklace, shivering slightly at being so exposed. Sam followed suit, and they both tossed their necklaces on the coals of the fire where the bones of the guinea pig were already half ash.
“Ladies first,” Dean said, motioning toward the bald patch of earth just outside the fire ring.
Sam didn’t even complain, his heart lodged too firmly in his throat to expend more words than necessary. He stepped forward and let the scrap of leather drop toward the ground. It disappeared just a few inches from that patch of dirt. Light flared from it, shooting up toward the clouds overhead. He swallowed. “Um, okay.” Throwing back his shoulders, he knelt beside the spot and spoke directly into it.
“To any who doubt in Hell,” he said, “I am Sam Winchester, favored child of Azazel. Your so-called god, Lucifer, has only his own interests at heart. You are the pebbles in the treads of his boots, and if he wins, he’ll make quick work of annihilating your kind. Stand with me, and we might have the power to stop him. If you wish to join me, meet me in this city, at the bar on Third in an hour.”
“Might have to be more specific than that, Sammy. It’s Wisconsin.”
“The bar with the walleye on its sign,” Sam amended, “on Third.” He stood up and motioned for Dean to take his turn.
Dean knelt beside the glowing patch of earth and said, “To any who doubt in Heaven…good for you. I’m Dean Winchester. You might know me as the chosen one. If you want to join me and fight to stop this stupid apocalypse, meet me right here in an hour.”
“That’s it?” Sam said. “That’s the message you’re going to send out to all the potential dissenting angels in Heaven, to try to get them on your side?”
“What, you want me to re-record it?”
Sam shook his head and poured water on the coals, snuffing them out in a plume of acrid yellow smoke. The light from the hole between planes cut out. “I guess we go our separate ways, then.”
“Yep.” Dean tossed him the spare keys to the Impala.
“You want me to pick you up after we’ve each assembled our Justice Leagues?”
“Nah.” Dean tapped his first two fingers to his forehead in an imitation of how Cas used to touch him to zap him place to place. “My team’s got faster-than-light travel. I’ll give you a call if I need a ride. You just make sure you don’t wreck her.”
Sam snorted a laugh at his big brother and got into the car by himself.
Fingers rapped at the bathroom door.
The pencil scraped off the edge of the day planner, and Chuck cursed under his breath.
“Chuck?” Castiel’s voice was low and worried. “Are you okay?”
“Just peachy,” Chuck answered, an octave too high and way too chipper.
“I don’t mean to criticize your wording, but I thought ‘peachy’ was good. You don’t sound good.” A pause. “And you’ve been in the bathroom for several hours.”
“Look, I’m fine,” Chuck snapped. “I just need some time alone to-”
The visions pressed at the back of his eyes, giving him flashbacks to that horrible Schwarzenegger movie where the main characters left the protective bubble of the Mars colony and their eyes started bugging out from the lack of pressure or-
His hand moved without his permission, back to work.
Sam was only at the bar for 45 minutes before the demons began to show up. The first, wearing a portly blonde woman, bowed her head to him and bought him a beer. The second, wearing what looked like a college stoner, challenged him to pool. By the time the game was well underway, the bar was crowded with demons of all shapes and ages, with one unspoken thought shining hopefully in their eyes: Lucifer had to go down.
YES, Chuck thought, even as his hand catalogued the basic descriptions of two dozen demons in the crowd. So this was the plan: get support from dissenters on both sides and raise a small army against Lucifer. It wasn’t a bad plan, assuming they could find a way to, y’know, kill Lucifer.
“Chuck?” Castiel tried at the door again.
“Not now,” Chuck said.
“It’s lunchtime.”
“I’m not hungry.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but he was much more interested in what was happening-
Across town, in the field where the cosmic phone booth lay, Dean stood fiddling with a pocketknife and wishing he’d brought a book. The meeting time had passed five minutes ago, and weren’t angels supposed to be sticklers for things like promptness? Maybe that was just if they were under orders. Castiel had taken forever to do something for himself once he’d started to doubt.
Castiel. Dean smiled out at the field. It was kind of embarrassing how excited he was to get back to the guy after this. Although he’d never admit it to Sam (or any living person), thinking of Castiel sent waves of warmth crashing together inside his chest. If Dean were the kind of guy to pay his feelings much mind - which he wasn’t - he would have assigned words like “bonded” and “love” and “unnecessary amounts of shmoopiness” to what he was feeling. Because he loved Castiel - he truly did, in his own way. Castiel ranked somewhere between the Impala and Sam in his eyes, and if he was honest with himself, he would totally have let Castiel drive the Impala. No doubt.
“Dean,” said a familiar voice behind him.
He turned and immediately felt like the air had been knocked out of him. “Anna? You’re alive?”
Anna smiled, just shy of his personal bubble. She was still wearing the same vessel she’d been so fond of before, with those big watery eyes staring back at him and the same dark coat hanging off her thin frame. “Yes. I got your message. It’s so good to see you.”
“Yeah, you too,” Dean said. “Hey, haven’t seen my keys, have you? They’re on a ring with this black rubber plaque, says ‘I survived The Beefalanche’?”
“Sorry, no.” She looked sideways, her lips pinched into a thin line. “It’s not safe here. The angel who took over for Zachariah knows where you are.”
Dean found himself glancing around the field as if any moment an army of angels would sprout from the grass. “All right, then, let’s get the hell outta here. I can give you the address we’ve gotta get to-”
“No need,” Anna said, laying two fingers on his forehead.
The world lurched, and Dean’s stomach went with it. He blinked hard, and then he blinked hard again, because he didn’t believe what was in front of him. His stomach went on moving without him.
They were in Heaven’s green room, complete with the same gallery of angelic paintings and spread of fast food and beer as Dean had been treated to the day Lucifer rose. It even smelled the same - ozone and burgers. He took a step back, and a harp prodded him in the side.
“Anna…” he said, his stomach whirling slowly toward a stop. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“I’m delivering the champion to Heaven,” Anna said, that pleasant little smile never leaving her lips. “You’re sitting in the penalty box until the big fight’s on.”
Dean’s blood ran cold. “The angel who took over for Zachariah…”
“Me,” she said. “I never would’ve been offered the position if Cas hadn’t gotten me thrown into Heaven’s bible camp. Few angels in my position would have gotten that chance to reform.” Her smile broadened, and Dean’s throat clenched like a fist. “How is Cas, anyway? I’d love to talk to him.”
“What, so you two can gab about how I am in the sack? I don’t think so.”
Anna chuckled, picking up one of the beers from the tureen of ice on the table. “You and Cas are together now? Cute.” Positioning the bottle against the lip of the table, she smacked her palm down on it and sent the cap skittering across the floor. She took a drink, then offered it to Dean. The gesture was oddly human, and it turned his stomach. “Thirsty? It’s on the house.”
“No,” he said, scowling.“How’d you find me?”
“You sent an email to the staff mailing list, Dean. I answered.”
“You…” Dean blinked hard, putting the pieces together. “You got that message?”
Anna smiled again, almost shyly. “Yes, Dean, I still doubt. Doubt doesn’t negate loyalty; it tests it. Faith that grows in spite of doubt is stronger than faith that grows blind.”
“Well, that’s lovely. You should send that one to Hallmark.”
Anna approached him, slid the beer bottle into his hand, and kissed him on the cheek. “And you,” she said in his ear, “should have kept my brother’s blood sigils. Everyone’s seen what they did to Cas. You should have known that no angel would be stupid enough to risk the same fate by joining you.”
Air whisked against Dean’s cheek, and he was alone in the room. He wheeled around, looking for his captor or an exit or-anything useful. The room was still and solid and just as maddening as the last time. He threw the beer bottle, sending it crashing into a painting of cherubs. “Son of a bitch!”
Chuck’s inner eye froze and sputtered like a web player buffering porn, and then it blacked out entirely. He stared at the words on the page in front of him, black marker scrawled over Missouri’s pencil appointment notes from April 2004. Was…was that it? Was that everything? He tested the Apocalypse switch on his mental switchboard. A hum of new scenes waited beneath it, but nothing more seemed to be trying to flush itself out onto the page at the moment.
Chuck reread the scene he’d just finished, held the day planner against his stomach, and curled over onto his knees with a whimper. His insides moved in ways he was pretty sure were against their biology, his head throbbed, and something sour rose up the back of his throat. He hadn’t felt this sick since the week after junior year finals, and that had involved Jager, Cheez Whiz, and a Ren & Stimpy marathon.
The lock on the bathroom door clicked and scraped like it was being picked - or at least, like lock-picking sounded like in his head, when he’d watched Sam and Dean do it. Chuck didn’t look up when the door opened. He heard the soft footsteps on the tile and knew by the careful landing of each heel that it was Castiel.
“Chuck?”
“Mmf.”
“You weren’t answering, and you missed lunch. Are you okay?”
“Nmmo,” Chuck said miserably into the knee of his jeans.
The rings on the shower curtain rattled as it pulled aside, and a shadow overlapped Chuck’s on the tub basin. Castiel’s hand made a long stroke down his hair, then another. It was comforting, in a juvenile sort of way, for about five seconds.
“Dude,” Chuck said, lifting his head from his knees, “I’m not a spaniel.”
“Sorry,” Castiel said, his hand retreating to his lap. “I’m not good at this.” His eyes scanned the room, taking inventory of every spot where spare pages lay. “Are these all visions?”
“Yep,” Chuck said, hugging the day planner tightly.
“And that?” Castiel said, frowning at the pages in the toilet.
“Also visions.” Chuck pulled a face. “No one deserves to read the things your boyfriend does in the bathroom after his morning coffee.”
“You’ve seen him, then?”
The question hung in the air for a very long second. Chuck swallowed. Crap. Castiel couldn’t find out about the whole heavenly abduction deal. If he knew, he’d find some way to go rushing off after Dean, and Chuck had promised Dean he’d keep a lid on Castiel’s thrilling heroics. And if he went the route of thrilling heroics-
“You really thought you could save him, Castiel?”
No. No, no, nonono. That wasn’t going to happen. Not if he could stop it.
Chuck’s stomach felt like it was doing a curly fry impersonation. He gripped the day planner so hard he felt his knuckles turning white. “They’re in Wisconsin, tracking down a lead on Lucifer.” It wasn’t a total lie.
Castiel frowned. “Why would they ditch us to do something as simple as tracking a lead?”
Chuck forced a smirk. “Because, dude, as far as they’re concerned, we’re the Zeppos.”
“Oh! ‘The Zeppo!’” Castiel said. “I was trying to remember that name earlier. It’s definitely in my top five episodes.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” Chuck said quietly. He wasn’t much in the mood for Buffy talk. To be honest, 90% of him was in the mood to curl up in a little ball next to the toilet and the remaining 10% was ready to run in a circle on the front lawn yelling, “Oh god oh god, we’re all gonna die!” He rubbed one eye, which was sore from focusing on the page in front of him for so long. “This sucks ass. I don’t want to be the damn prophet. I’ve spent four hours in here-”
“Five,” Castiel corrected gently.
“-five hours in here writing every stupid detail of every stupid scene that somebody up there-” he raised his head in the direction of the ceiling “-wants me to write, boring parts included, because my inner eye doesn’t come with a manual.” His voice rose. “All I’m doing is putting words on the page for you, you hear me? If all you want is a word processor, get an AlphaSmart! This isn’t fair!”
Ugh, yelling made his head twinge.
“Chuck,” Castiel said, catching his gaze. “What does S. Morgenstern teach us about fairness?”
Chuck sighed and dropped his head back to his knees. “That life isn’t fair, and anyone who says differently is selling something.”
Castiel patted him on the back - and okay, that was a lot better than the hair stroking thing. “Come on, let’s go make you a sandwich.”
Taking a deep breath, Chuck pushed himself upright. His body came alive with aches and complaints, but he kept his mouth shut, gathered up his pages of visions, and kept the whole bundle of it firmly in his grip as he left the room behind his friend.
***
Each day for the next week went largely the same - minus the explosion of Castiel death that had torn open his inner eye in the first place. Wake up, practice working the switchboard with Missouri (who didn’t get the Invader Zim references, sadly), then spend hours hunched and writing while whoever was calling the shots upstairs hurled scenes at him.
On the third day, Missouri got sick of her first floor bathroom being unavailable the whole afternoon and dug an old laptop out of the attic, on the promise that Chuck could use that so long as he wrote elsewhere. The machine was from 1998 and had a folder full of 80’s music midis on the desktop - her nephew’s, she claimed - but it had a wireless card hanging out of one side, and that was definitely an improvement. Chuck had been burying the most Dean-centric visions in the flower box outside the den window so Castiel wouldn’t find them, but it was a small flower box, and he was pretty sure Missouri would have his hide if he killed her tulips by moving them around too much. He didn’t even know what “have his hide” meant, exactly - just that she’d said it when Castiel had taken a cookie prematurely from the baking rack, and the words struck a deep chord of fear in him. Anyway. With the laptop, Chuck didn’t have to write on paper behind a locked door - he could shut himself in the den and write in a Google Doc, which no one had access to but him. If anyone tried to peek, all he had to do was minimize the window.
In that Google Doc, Sam talked his demon army into using 100% recycled vessels, because, as he told them as they assembled outside the bar that first night, “You do this my way or you’re on your own.” None of the demons talked back.
In that Google Doc, Sam and his demon army started the long drive toward Lawrence, Sam in the Impala taking the lead and a convoy of demons in shared cars dutifully following. (Sam was secretly pleased that they were carpooling to save the environment.)
In that Google Doc, Sam smiled to himself, his arm warming on the door of the Impala as the wind rushed by, thinking of his brother and wondering what the hell they were going to do when their two sides came together.
And in that Google Doc, Dean stewed in Heaven’s green room. He punched walls. He yelled at Anna. He yelled at Heaven. He yelled at God. He begrudgingly ate one burger, and then another, and then said “Ah, screw it,” and got totally plastered on Heaven’s beer. After passing out mid-yell, he woke up to find the tureen that had held the beer was now filled with virgin daiquiris. So he yelled at Anna some more.
And those were the highlights. This wasn’t the apocalypse that Chuck had expected to write. Maybe it was all the aimless yelling, or the 2,300 words he’d spent chronicling the process of Sam’s cadre of demons breaking into the nearest impound lot to steal some junkers, or the additional text document he’d had to open to contain the descriptions of Sam’s hair - whoever was downloading the visions into his head really had a thing for Sam’s epic mane. Whatever it was, this apocalypse lacked something. Filters, maybe. It was too much - an info dump instead of a narrative. Too much summary, not enough scene.
Chuck missed his happy-verse. Hell, at this point, he missed the Dean/Cas van scenes he’d been trying to burn out of his brain just a week ago. His fingers were tired and his mind felt hollowed out, but the moment his inner eye closed on the seventh day at Missouri’s, Chuck opened a new blank document and started writing something that didn't come from visions - something just for himself, out of his own imagination.
“I am very glad we averted the apocalypse,” Dean said happily, drinking a beer on the hood of the Impala.
“Yes,” Castiel said beside him. “I, too, am glad the world has not ended.”
“Sam!” Dean cried, because Sam was approaching. “Where have you been?”
“Working on that global warming thing,” Sam said, grabbing a beer from the cooler in the driver’s seat.
“Are you glad the world didn’t end, Sam?”
“So glad!” Sam enthused.
“I am also glad we have beds now,” Castiel announced wistfully.
“Yes, the beds are nice,” Dean agreed, grinning.
“For fornicating in,” Castiel clarified.
Sam looked very uncomfortable, but still glad the world hadn’t ended.
Chuck deleted the document, slouched forward in his seat, and quietly hit his forehead against the desk until it was time for dinner.
***
After dinner, Chuck volunteered to help with cleanup so he could have time alone with Missouri. He crowded in next to her at the sink, his already sore hands working overtime with a scrub brush while she rinsed dishes.
Missouri gave him a funny look. “Chuck, much as I appreciate the help, I’m not your momma and I do not appreciate having a grown man clinging to my apron strings.”
“I just need to ask you something one-on-one,” he said, checking over his shoulder to be sure that Castiel wasn’t in earshot. The TV in the living room crackled to life with what sounded like one of those SyFy channel original movies - all screaming and stilted dialogue. Chuck wished he could join him out there, but he needed answers first. “Can you see it?” he asked Missouri. “When I get a vision?”
Missouri pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, honey. If you’re thinking about something, I get a pretty clear picture, but you’ve got a private line running between you and whatever’s giving you those visions.”
“Of course.” Chuck laughed, an unhappy sound that got lost in his throat. “You wanna hear something really selfish?” he asked, scraping cheese off a plate.
“What?” she said, though he was sure she already knew.
“Part of me kinda wished you’d be able to see my visions as they were coming through to me. Sort of a misery loves company thing.”
Missouri laid a hand on the back of his neck, and a spot of dishwater seeped through the fabric of his t-shirt. “I don’t think that’s selfish, Chuck. Nobody wants to be alone.”
Chuck opened his mouth to correct her, but stopped. Alone. Was he alone? He’d been more social in the last few months than he’d been in years. He’d lived in such close contact with people that he could identify them by the sounds of their bare footsteps. It had been a regular Full House at Bobby’s, with him playing the part of-well, he’d like to think he was one of the hilarious uncles, but he was probably annoying little Stephanie, if he was being honest with himself. And he had Castiel, who was more of a friend to him than anyone had been in-criminy, he didn’t want to think how long it had been since he’d had such a good friend. And yet, in the midst of all these people…
Missouri dropped her hand back into the sink with a sympathetic frown. “I’m sorry you’ve gotta deal with all this. It’s not fair. If you want to share it with someone, you’re just going to have to let us know what your visions are. Talk them out. Show us your writing.”
“No,” he answered immediately.
“Why-” Missouri started, and her eyes went wide as she picked up on what Chuck was thinking about. Sam and Dean’s plan was there, laid out for her to see, and Dean’s capture, and on top of it all, Castiel’s dramatic death scene. Chuck didn’t know exactly how much Missouri would catch of it, but it was enough to make her back away from him, her hand at her collar and her eyes tearing up. “Jesus, Chuck. You’ve been keeping all that from us? Boy, you’ve gotta tell Castiel. You can’t keep him in the dark about something this big.”
“Yes, I can,” Chuck said, scrubbing hard at a grease stain on one of the pots. Just the idea of telling Castiel made his insides knot up. He glanced over his shoulder, but all he could see from here was the TV screen and his friend’s feet crossed over each other on the couch. He lowered his voice to a whisper, barely audible over the faucet. “If I tell him, he’ll run off and try to pull some thrilling heroics. I promised Dean I wouldn’t let that happen, and the more I think about it, the more I think Dean was right to ask that. Castiel isn’t used to being breakable. If I tell him Dean’s in trouble, he’s not gonna think about his own well being - he’s gonna march straight into the thick of things and get himself killed.” Chuck shook his head. “I can’t let that happen.”
“Honey, that’s fate,” Missouri said. “You can’t play games with fate.”
“Sure I can,” Chuck said, tossing a clean pot into the other side of the sink. “It’s the one perk that comes with this stupid job.”
Missouri closed her mouth sternly and drifted back to rinsing dishes. Chuck scrubbed furiously, his fingers clenching around the scrub brush. He’d gotten himself a big black mark in her mental binder of morals, he could tell. And he was quickly earning himself a title as a hack (if he hadn’t already had that), and a case of tendonitis, and the way tonight was headed, probably wrinkly prune fingers, too. But there was one thing he wasn’t going to lose.
“Chuck,” Castiel called from the living room. “This man is kicking giant piranhas as they fly at him. You need to see this movie.”
Chuck smiled to himself for the first time all day. Yeah, this was definitely the right choice.
TO BE CONTINUED!
For reference: Yes, that scene exists.