Fic: All Been Done, Supernatural, Dean/Castiel
Title: All Been Done
Author: Claire
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 3,534
Summary: All Ben ever wanted to be like Dean Winchester...
Notes/Prompt(s): Written for deancastiel's Secret Angels IV exchange. I went for the following prompt: Ben's perspective; Dean stays with Lisa as more of a roommate than as a lover to his mother and he grows up learning to be a hunter at Dean's hand, learning the stories of the legendary Winchesters. As Ben reaches adulthood, he witnesses the encounters between his surrogate father and a certain mysterious, dark haired man that visits him only in secret.
Massive thanks to Aithine for the beta.
All Been Done
The car was sitting in the drive when Ben woke up, sleek and black and sitting there like it belonged, like she belonged (because Ben remembered a lot of things from his time with Dean, the most important ones being: never go out unarmed, the 70s was the best decade for rock - although he kind of already knew that one - and the Impala was always Hey, girl).
Almost tripping in his hurry to get dressed, Ben pulled on his clothes and raced out of his bedroom. Dean and his mom were in the kitchen, the smell of breakfast and coffee surrounding them.
Ben had waited for this day ever since Dean Winchester pulled him out of a cage and took on a monster to save him. Because even though his mom said that Dean might not come back, even though she said that Ben shouldn't hope, he'd still wanted it since that week. And now Dean was there.
"Dean!"
Dean gave a soft oof as Ben barrelled into him. "Hey, kiddo. You got bigger."
"Yeah," Ben commented, "that's what happens when you don't see someone for a couple of years."
"Ben!"
But his mom's scandalised tone lost out to Dean's arm around him.
"I'm here now, though," Dean said, and all Ben could wonder was why he sounded so sad about it.
~
The thing Ben couldn't understand was why Dean hadn't just moved into his mom's room yet. He'd been expecting it since he came downstairs that first day Dean was back and saw the two of them hugging, his mom murmuring soft words Ben couldn't hear. But it never happened.
Days became weeks became months, and Dean was more of a father than Ben had ever had, but he still stayed in the spare room that slowly changed from the guest room to Dean's.
And it wasn't like Ben hadn't tried, not like he hadn't given them plenty of opportunities to be alone. He'd been to the movies and stayed over at friends' houses more times in that past few months than he had in the past few years. It hadn't been until his mom had taken him to one side and told him that she knew exactly what he was doing, and while she appreciated it, she was more than capable of arranging her own love life, thank you very much and it wasn't likely to include Dean any time in the near future.
It didn't stop him from watching them, though. Didn't stop him from wondering if he'd ever be able to call Dean Dad anywhere but in his head.
~
To give Ben his dues, he hadn't meant for it to happen. After all, it wasn't like he'd left the house that morning planning to end up in an abandoned house with some creepy ass thing breathing down his neck and about to kill him. Admittedly, that was partly because he'd never had the chance to before (even though he loved listening to Dean telling stories about his life on the road) and partly because he was more than sure his mom would ground him forever if she ever found out that what he wanted more than anything in life was to be a hunter, to be like Dean. Which meant that, when John Mason came into school with stories about the noises that had been coming from the Williams place and how no one had seen old Mr. Williams in days, Ben just couldn't help it.
In hindsight, going armed with nothing more than a flashlight and a bag of rock salt Ben had managed to steal from the Impala's trunk was a really big freakin' mistake. Especially since the thing bearing down on him with all the teeth sure as hell wasn't a ghost, and all throwing salt at it seemed to be doing was pissing it off.
It was reflex to close his eyes when he felt the breath against his cheek, rank and fetid, and he really, really wished he'd told the truth about where he was going instead of saying he was going to Jason's to play the new Halo. Wished he'd said I'm going to kill a ghost, said I love you, Mom, and most of all he really wished he'd said Hey, Dean, wanna come along?
Ben cracked open an eyelid carefully, wondering why he hadn't felt his guts spilling out onto the floor yet, fully expecting to see the thing right there, deciding which part of him to eat first.
What he didn't expect to see was a nerdy looking dude in a trenchcoat standing next to the now apparently dead thing and looking at him in the exact same way his mom did when he left wet towels on the bathroom floor.
A hundred questions went through Ben's head. What happened, where's the nearest bathroom because I think I need to change my shorts, who the hell are you? A hundred questions all begging for answers, so he went for the only thing he could say, the only thing he could ask.
"Whowauh?" It sounded more impressive in his head.
The guy continued to just look at Ben, his gaze flicking down to the rapidly decomposing (and oh man, that was disgusting. Seriously, what kind of thing did that when it died?) corpse before fixing his blue gaze back on Ben.
"Benjamin Braeden--" Oh hell, it knew his name. It was always bad when they knew names. "I don't believe you should be here."
Ben closed his eyes as the stranger stepped forward (and he had to get over that because No closing your eyes when the big, bad monster comes to eat you had to be one of the first things you learned in Hunting 101). And this was it, he knew it. Ben was going to end his career as a hunter (short though it was) not taken out by a werewolf, or going down in a blaze of glory saving some sweet looking chick from a Wendigo (what? He paid attention to Dean when he told Ben stories), but chopped up into tiny pieces by some crumpled-suit-wearing psycho.
But the only thing that happened was the world lurched (and he really needed that bathroom), followed by a slightly confused--
"Cas?"
Ben had to be dreaming, because that sounded like Dean.
"Ben? What the hell?"
Or maybe it was a nightmare, because that sounded like his mom, and she didn't sound happy.
There was silence, broken only by quiet murmuring, and Ben thought he really should open his eyes, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Because once his eyes were open then the dream of being back with his mom and Dean would be over and it'd be just him and the insane homicidal trenchcoat dude. (Because, apparently, even though he'd told his mom more than once that he'd rather face an axe-wielding maniac than her on a bad day, turned out he was wrong, wrong, wrong.)
The murmuring stopped and, for a moment, all Ben could hear was his heartbeat and the blood rushing through him. All he could hear was silence and--
"Benjamin Ian Braeden, open your eyes and tell us what the hell you thought you were doing going after a rugaru with nothing but rock salt?"
Oh, it was a rugaru. And, wow, dream-Dean was starting to sound as pissed off as his mom.
"Ben!"
Ben's eyes flew open at his mom's sharp tone, years of ingrained yes, Mom, sorry, Mom, I didn't do it, Mom overcoming the need to not look at the person about to kill him. The problem was, he was still dreaming. Because that was the only explanation for being back at home with two furious gazes aimed at him. And he may not have been Ben's actual I contributed to half of you dad, but Dean was doing a damn good impression of it right then.
"Well?" his mom asked, looking for answers Ben just couldn't give because his brain was still stuck on home (oh, thank God, home) and trenchcoat dude (who was standing rather closely to Dean) and what (because, seriously, what the hell) and--
"How?"
Some of the anger seemed to deflate out of his mom as she looked at Dean and trenchco-- Cas, Ben's mind supplied. Dean had called him Cas. Scrubbing a hand over her face, she pointed to the sofa. "Sit," she said, heading into the kitchen. "I'm going to need a drink for this."
~
"Angels?"
Dean nodded.
"There are angels--"
Dean nodded again.
"And you're in a relationship with one of them?"
There was that nod again. And for a moment, Ben wished he was old enough to drink, so he could have some of the beer his mom was nursing. He was half tempted to ask anyway.
"And you knew?" Ben turned to his mom.
"I've always known," she replied.
And maybe that explained why she always just smiled whenever Ben mentioned her and Dean getting together, why she always commented that it wasn't going to happen.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Ben asked. After all, it wasn't as thought he was a child.
Dean paused. "A lot of shit-- stuff," he amended at the Dean! from the other end of the couch, "happened these past couple of years. It's hard to explain Cas without explaining everything else."
Ben heard the unspoken words, understood that it was a story he was probably never going to hear.
"You explained it to Mom." Ben was stupidly proud of himself for not pointing out Again, not a child--
"That's different, Ben."
There was a part of Ben that wanted to argue with that, but he wasn't sure Dean was wrong.
"So, answer me one thing. Just one, and then I'll drop it."
Dean glanced at Castiel and the hand on Dean's shoulder tightened slightly, knuckles whitening for barely a moment. "Okay," Dean finally answered, his voice holding a resigned tone Ben had never heard from Dean before.
"Can I see your wings?"
As it turned out, he couldn't see the wings, but he could see their shadows, epic and black and spreading across the front room walls like they're going to surround the entire house. He kinda stared for a moment and then it hit him. Dean was dating an angel. An actual, freakin', real-life angel. Which entirely trumped the fact that Tommy Matthews' uncle was a priest. (Ben wasn't particularly bothered that Tommy Matthews' uncle was a priest, but Tommy wouldn't stop going on about it, about how it meant his entire family got automatic entry into Heaven when they died.) But Dean was dating an angel, which kinda made Ben a little like Jesus, when he thought about it. So trumping a priest. In your face, Tommy Matthews.
~
Castiel was around more after that night, like all they were waiting for was Ben to know of his existence. And slowly, Castiel moved from the nerdy dude who was dating Dean to Cas.
There were three people cheering him on at softball. (Well, two people cheering and one angel watching intently, but still.) Three people looking out for him. (Cas denied having anything to do with the pitcher who'd aimed directly at Ben's face tripping over his own shoes and knocking himself out, but Ben totally knew otherwise). Three people waiting for him when he came in from his first date with Cally Lewis. (Yes, Dean, the Impala was fine; yes, Mom, she'd loved the flowers; yes, Cas, he was seeing her again. The following Thursday, actually. Why Thursday? Good things happened to him on Thursdays. He was totally down with Thursdays.)
It wasn't even until further down the line that Ben realised he'd stopped thinking of his home life as Mom and Dean, and started thinking of it as Mom, and Dean and Cas. Wasn't until further down the line that Ben realised he was completely okay with that. (It was right around the time he'd punched out Iain Brent for his Your Mom's sleeping with two guys jibe. Punched him out with the comment that, actually, his dads were sleeping with each other and his Mom was seeing Mr. Hall, the math teacher at Ben's school after they'd met at parent-teacher conferences. And then he'd punched him again, just for the hell of it. Iain Brent had always been an annoying shit and it was absolutely worth detention.)
~
Life went on like that until Dean disappeared for a month when Ben was sixteen, and nobody seemed to want to tell him anything. And he kind of got why his mom was acting that way, like she wanted to keep him as far away from that part of Dean's life as possible, but he wasn't a kid. So he did what any self-respecting teenager would do, and hid behind doors so he could eavesdrop on his mom's conversations.
There was the occasional phone call from Dean and his mom speaking to Bobby a lot in hushed tones and clipped phrases, all Are they-- and Have they-- and Is he--, but Ben was no closer to figuring anything out than he was weeks ago. He still didn't know where Dean was, and whenever he called Bobby himself, he'd end up sidetracked into conversations about school and college and where he was planning on attending. (Bobby, he learned, is the master of redirecting a conversation when it suited him and, much to Ben's annoyance, it suited him every time Ben called.)
It was a Thursday when they finally came back. The television was on in the background, low and muted while David Caruso took off his sunglasses again, and there was a rush of air that scattered Ben's homework across the floor and left Dean and Castiel in the middle of the front room like it was nothing, except Dean was wide-eyed and shaking and being held up by Cas like he'd fall over if the angel moved away.
His mom was on her feet, directing them both to the couch and asking what they need.
"Sleep, I think," replied Cas.
"Possibly for the next week," Dean added, his voice rougher than Ben had ever heard it. "But we need to head back."
"We wanted to let you know everything's fine and we'll return soon." Castiel glanced at Dean.
"Before you go-- Did you--" Ben had heard his mom speak to a lot of people in a lot of ways, but she'd never sounded so hesitant before.
Dean grinned, his eyes lighting up as he answered. "Yeah, Lise, we did."
And with that, Ben's family increased by one, and he finally got to meet the Sam he'd heard so much about.
~
Sometimes, life really did have a strange way of showing its appreciation for all the shit he'd gone through, Ben thought, diving to the side as the Wendigo lunged at him, firing into the thick fur and cursing as the gun clicked, useless and empty.
The flamethrower was somewhere in the surrounding bushes, knocked out of Ben's hand when it'd been a choice between saving the weapon or saving the girl. He'd opted for the girl.
He'd managed to take one of the monsters out before he'd lost the flamethrower, though, and the smell of cooked Wendigo flesh permeated the air in a fainting nauseating way.
The problem was the second one. The second really fucking sneaky one that had managed to get a little too close when Ben had been cutting the barely conscious woman down from where she'd been hanging, wrists strapped to the wall and dangling like a side of beef.
His side throbbed and he was pretty sure he'd lost more blood than was recommended in situations like this, but he couldn't let this one go. It had both their scents and they'd never get out of the forest alive if it was tracking them. Also, that had been the flamethrower Mom had given him for his twenty-fifth birthday, and he was going to be seriously pissed if it was damaged.
Leaning heavily against the tree trunk behind him, Ben glared at the creature approaching him. "Come on, you bastard. It's you or me." Problem was, Ben was pretty sure it was going to be him this time.
He was sure about it right up until there was a soft gust of wind and a flash of dark hair before the Wendigo exploded, covering Ben in blood and gore and a few things he didn't even want to identify.
"Thanks," he said, coughing as he spat out what used to be an ear, and glaring at the figure walking towards him. "You couldn't have made him go boom in that direction?" Wendigo guts were a bitch to get out of clothes and he was on his last clean pair of jeans.
"You're welcome," Cas replied. "You should have called." He placed a hand on Ben's side and Ben sighed as warmth flooded through him and the edges of his skin started to knit back together. Sometimes it really was useful having an angel for a stepdad.
"Don't heal it completely." Ben pushed Castiel's hand away. "Chicks dig the scars." He grinned at the exasperated look Cas gave him.
"Blood or not," Cas commented, amusement and fondness warring in his tone, "you really are Dean Winchester's son."
Ben grinned. "He get any further arranging the party for Sam's fiftieth? Last time I talked to him, he and Aunt Sarah were still trying to decide where to have it."
Cas's face took on a pinched look. "They still haven't chosen anywhere. So far he and Sarah have decided on a big cake and loud music and very little else."
Ben smiled. Yeah, that sounded like Dean and Aunt Sarah.
"The party is a week from Saturday," Cas said, walking over to one of the bushes and pulling Ben's flamethrower out from under it. "That is, if Dean and Sarah ever get organised. Your mother's been threatening to just arrange everything and then tell them where to turn up."
And that definitely sounded like his mom. And a week from Saturday was good; he could work with that. He'd just have to ask Dana and Jenny to take the vamp nest in Oregon while he helped with the poltergeist David had called him about.
He'd be back on the road towards home within a couple of days and he'd still have time to swing through town and pick up the special edition three-disc release of the new Supernatural movie for Sam's birthday. (Mainly just to see Sam's left eye twitch, like it did every time he was confronted with anything to do with Supernatural. And then Ben would give him his real present - the first edition of Kraemer's Almanac that he'd picked up about three months and a dozen towns ago. The one Sam had inherited from Bobby's library was falling apart, with pages hanging on by a thread, so when Ben had seen the near-perfect condition copy sitting in the back of a thrift store after he'd gone in to look for a new pair of boots, he hadn't been able to resist it.)
"I'll be there."
Castiel's reply was cut off by a soft moan coming from behind them. It sounded like the Wendigo's latest victim was no longer as unconscious as she had been.
"Do you need me to take you to the hospital?" Cas asked.
"Nah, I got this one," Ben replied, waving him off. When he'd cut her down, she'd looked dirty and somewhat beaten up, but nowhere near bad enough to justify the explanation taking Angel Air would cause. Although, they were pretty deep into the forest. "Back to the truck would be good, though," he said, murmuring soft reassurances as he reached the young woman and helped her to her feet.
By the time Ben looked back at Castiel they were already standing next to the truck. "Thanks, Cas."
Cas nodded, putting the flamethrower he was still holding in the back of the truck. "A week from Saturday, at seven," he said, turning back to face Ben.
"Got it," Ben answered as he settled his passenger into the truck.
A rush of wind brushed across Ben's back as he closed the truck's door, and Cas was gone by the time Ben reached the driver's side. Getting in, he started the engine and began the drive back into town, telling the young woman next to him that no, she hadn't been imagining things and no, she really didn't want to tell the doctors what she'd seen unless she wanted an extended stay in a lovely white room.
Reaching out, Ben flicked on the radio, quiet music filling the truck as they drove.
Kill the Wendigo, save the girl, head back home for a party with an extended family that included several hunters, an angel, a math teacher, and a guy that used to house the devil. Sometimes life really didn't turn out the way it was expected to, but that was okay, Ben wouldn't change a thing.
Author: Claire
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 3,534
Summary: All Ben ever wanted to be like Dean Winchester...
Notes/Prompt(s): Written for deancastiel's Secret Angels IV exchange. I went for the following prompt: Ben's perspective; Dean stays with Lisa as more of a roommate than as a lover to his mother and he grows up learning to be a hunter at Dean's hand, learning the stories of the legendary Winchesters. As Ben reaches adulthood, he witnesses the encounters between his surrogate father and a certain mysterious, dark haired man that visits him only in secret.
Massive thanks to Aithine for the beta.
All Been Done
The car was sitting in the drive when Ben woke up, sleek and black and sitting there like it belonged, like she belonged (because Ben remembered a lot of things from his time with Dean, the most important ones being: never go out unarmed, the 70s was the best decade for rock - although he kind of already knew that one - and the Impala was always Hey, girl).
Almost tripping in his hurry to get dressed, Ben pulled on his clothes and raced out of his bedroom. Dean and his mom were in the kitchen, the smell of breakfast and coffee surrounding them.
Ben had waited for this day ever since Dean Winchester pulled him out of a cage and took on a monster to save him. Because even though his mom said that Dean might not come back, even though she said that Ben shouldn't hope, he'd still wanted it since that week. And now Dean was there.
"Dean!"
Dean gave a soft oof as Ben barrelled into him. "Hey, kiddo. You got bigger."
"Yeah," Ben commented, "that's what happens when you don't see someone for a couple of years."
"Ben!"
But his mom's scandalised tone lost out to Dean's arm around him.
"I'm here now, though," Dean said, and all Ben could wonder was why he sounded so sad about it.
~
The thing Ben couldn't understand was why Dean hadn't just moved into his mom's room yet. He'd been expecting it since he came downstairs that first day Dean was back and saw the two of them hugging, his mom murmuring soft words Ben couldn't hear. But it never happened.
Days became weeks became months, and Dean was more of a father than Ben had ever had, but he still stayed in the spare room that slowly changed from the guest room to Dean's.
And it wasn't like Ben hadn't tried, not like he hadn't given them plenty of opportunities to be alone. He'd been to the movies and stayed over at friends' houses more times in that past few months than he had in the past few years. It hadn't been until his mom had taken him to one side and told him that she knew exactly what he was doing, and while she appreciated it, she was more than capable of arranging her own love life, thank you very much and it wasn't likely to include Dean any time in the near future.
It didn't stop him from watching them, though. Didn't stop him from wondering if he'd ever be able to call Dean Dad anywhere but in his head.
~
To give Ben his dues, he hadn't meant for it to happen. After all, it wasn't like he'd left the house that morning planning to end up in an abandoned house with some creepy ass thing breathing down his neck and about to kill him. Admittedly, that was partly because he'd never had the chance to before (even though he loved listening to Dean telling stories about his life on the road) and partly because he was more than sure his mom would ground him forever if she ever found out that what he wanted more than anything in life was to be a hunter, to be like Dean. Which meant that, when John Mason came into school with stories about the noises that had been coming from the Williams place and how no one had seen old Mr. Williams in days, Ben just couldn't help it.
In hindsight, going armed with nothing more than a flashlight and a bag of rock salt Ben had managed to steal from the Impala's trunk was a really big freakin' mistake. Especially since the thing bearing down on him with all the teeth sure as hell wasn't a ghost, and all throwing salt at it seemed to be doing was pissing it off.
It was reflex to close his eyes when he felt the breath against his cheek, rank and fetid, and he really, really wished he'd told the truth about where he was going instead of saying he was going to Jason's to play the new Halo. Wished he'd said I'm going to kill a ghost, said I love you, Mom, and most of all he really wished he'd said Hey, Dean, wanna come along?
Ben cracked open an eyelid carefully, wondering why he hadn't felt his guts spilling out onto the floor yet, fully expecting to see the thing right there, deciding which part of him to eat first.
What he didn't expect to see was a nerdy looking dude in a trenchcoat standing next to the now apparently dead thing and looking at him in the exact same way his mom did when he left wet towels on the bathroom floor.
A hundred questions went through Ben's head. What happened, where's the nearest bathroom because I think I need to change my shorts, who the hell are you? A hundred questions all begging for answers, so he went for the only thing he could say, the only thing he could ask.
"Whowauh?" It sounded more impressive in his head.
The guy continued to just look at Ben, his gaze flicking down to the rapidly decomposing (and oh man, that was disgusting. Seriously, what kind of thing did that when it died?) corpse before fixing his blue gaze back on Ben.
"Benjamin Braeden--" Oh hell, it knew his name. It was always bad when they knew names. "I don't believe you should be here."
Ben closed his eyes as the stranger stepped forward (and he had to get over that because No closing your eyes when the big, bad monster comes to eat you had to be one of the first things you learned in Hunting 101). And this was it, he knew it. Ben was going to end his career as a hunter (short though it was) not taken out by a werewolf, or going down in a blaze of glory saving some sweet looking chick from a Wendigo (what? He paid attention to Dean when he told Ben stories), but chopped up into tiny pieces by some crumpled-suit-wearing psycho.
But the only thing that happened was the world lurched (and he really needed that bathroom), followed by a slightly confused--
"Cas?"
Ben had to be dreaming, because that sounded like Dean.
"Ben? What the hell?"
Or maybe it was a nightmare, because that sounded like his mom, and she didn't sound happy.
There was silence, broken only by quiet murmuring, and Ben thought he really should open his eyes, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Because once his eyes were open then the dream of being back with his mom and Dean would be over and it'd be just him and the insane homicidal trenchcoat dude. (Because, apparently, even though he'd told his mom more than once that he'd rather face an axe-wielding maniac than her on a bad day, turned out he was wrong, wrong, wrong.)
The murmuring stopped and, for a moment, all Ben could hear was his heartbeat and the blood rushing through him. All he could hear was silence and--
"Benjamin Ian Braeden, open your eyes and tell us what the hell you thought you were doing going after a rugaru with nothing but rock salt?"
Oh, it was a rugaru. And, wow, dream-Dean was starting to sound as pissed off as his mom.
"Ben!"
Ben's eyes flew open at his mom's sharp tone, years of ingrained yes, Mom, sorry, Mom, I didn't do it, Mom overcoming the need to not look at the person about to kill him. The problem was, he was still dreaming. Because that was the only explanation for being back at home with two furious gazes aimed at him. And he may not have been Ben's actual I contributed to half of you dad, but Dean was doing a damn good impression of it right then.
"Well?" his mom asked, looking for answers Ben just couldn't give because his brain was still stuck on home (oh, thank God, home) and trenchcoat dude (who was standing rather closely to Dean) and what (because, seriously, what the hell) and--
"How?"
Some of the anger seemed to deflate out of his mom as she looked at Dean and trenchco-- Cas, Ben's mind supplied. Dean had called him Cas. Scrubbing a hand over her face, she pointed to the sofa. "Sit," she said, heading into the kitchen. "I'm going to need a drink for this."
~
"Angels?"
Dean nodded.
"There are angels--"
Dean nodded again.
"And you're in a relationship with one of them?"
There was that nod again. And for a moment, Ben wished he was old enough to drink, so he could have some of the beer his mom was nursing. He was half tempted to ask anyway.
"And you knew?" Ben turned to his mom.
"I've always known," she replied.
And maybe that explained why she always just smiled whenever Ben mentioned her and Dean getting together, why she always commented that it wasn't going to happen.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Ben asked. After all, it wasn't as thought he was a child.
Dean paused. "A lot of shit-- stuff," he amended at the Dean! from the other end of the couch, "happened these past couple of years. It's hard to explain Cas without explaining everything else."
Ben heard the unspoken words, understood that it was a story he was probably never going to hear.
"You explained it to Mom." Ben was stupidly proud of himself for not pointing out Again, not a child--
"That's different, Ben."
There was a part of Ben that wanted to argue with that, but he wasn't sure Dean was wrong.
"So, answer me one thing. Just one, and then I'll drop it."
Dean glanced at Castiel and the hand on Dean's shoulder tightened slightly, knuckles whitening for barely a moment. "Okay," Dean finally answered, his voice holding a resigned tone Ben had never heard from Dean before.
"Can I see your wings?"
As it turned out, he couldn't see the wings, but he could see their shadows, epic and black and spreading across the front room walls like they're going to surround the entire house. He kinda stared for a moment and then it hit him. Dean was dating an angel. An actual, freakin', real-life angel. Which entirely trumped the fact that Tommy Matthews' uncle was a priest. (Ben wasn't particularly bothered that Tommy Matthews' uncle was a priest, but Tommy wouldn't stop going on about it, about how it meant his entire family got automatic entry into Heaven when they died.) But Dean was dating an angel, which kinda made Ben a little like Jesus, when he thought about it. So trumping a priest. In your face, Tommy Matthews.
~
Castiel was around more after that night, like all they were waiting for was Ben to know of his existence. And slowly, Castiel moved from the nerdy dude who was dating Dean to Cas.
There were three people cheering him on at softball. (Well, two people cheering and one angel watching intently, but still.) Three people looking out for him. (Cas denied having anything to do with the pitcher who'd aimed directly at Ben's face tripping over his own shoes and knocking himself out, but Ben totally knew otherwise). Three people waiting for him when he came in from his first date with Cally Lewis. (Yes, Dean, the Impala was fine; yes, Mom, she'd loved the flowers; yes, Cas, he was seeing her again. The following Thursday, actually. Why Thursday? Good things happened to him on Thursdays. He was totally down with Thursdays.)
It wasn't even until further down the line that Ben realised he'd stopped thinking of his home life as Mom and Dean, and started thinking of it as Mom, and Dean and Cas. Wasn't until further down the line that Ben realised he was completely okay with that. (It was right around the time he'd punched out Iain Brent for his Your Mom's sleeping with two guys jibe. Punched him out with the comment that, actually, his dads were sleeping with each other and his Mom was seeing Mr. Hall, the math teacher at Ben's school after they'd met at parent-teacher conferences. And then he'd punched him again, just for the hell of it. Iain Brent had always been an annoying shit and it was absolutely worth detention.)
~
Life went on like that until Dean disappeared for a month when Ben was sixteen, and nobody seemed to want to tell him anything. And he kind of got why his mom was acting that way, like she wanted to keep him as far away from that part of Dean's life as possible, but he wasn't a kid. So he did what any self-respecting teenager would do, and hid behind doors so he could eavesdrop on his mom's conversations.
There was the occasional phone call from Dean and his mom speaking to Bobby a lot in hushed tones and clipped phrases, all Are they-- and Have they-- and Is he--, but Ben was no closer to figuring anything out than he was weeks ago. He still didn't know where Dean was, and whenever he called Bobby himself, he'd end up sidetracked into conversations about school and college and where he was planning on attending. (Bobby, he learned, is the master of redirecting a conversation when it suited him and, much to Ben's annoyance, it suited him every time Ben called.)
It was a Thursday when they finally came back. The television was on in the background, low and muted while David Caruso took off his sunglasses again, and there was a rush of air that scattered Ben's homework across the floor and left Dean and Castiel in the middle of the front room like it was nothing, except Dean was wide-eyed and shaking and being held up by Cas like he'd fall over if the angel moved away.
His mom was on her feet, directing them both to the couch and asking what they need.
"Sleep, I think," replied Cas.
"Possibly for the next week," Dean added, his voice rougher than Ben had ever heard it. "But we need to head back."
"We wanted to let you know everything's fine and we'll return soon." Castiel glanced at Dean.
"Before you go-- Did you--" Ben had heard his mom speak to a lot of people in a lot of ways, but she'd never sounded so hesitant before.
Dean grinned, his eyes lighting up as he answered. "Yeah, Lise, we did."
And with that, Ben's family increased by one, and he finally got to meet the Sam he'd heard so much about.
~
Sometimes, life really did have a strange way of showing its appreciation for all the shit he'd gone through, Ben thought, diving to the side as the Wendigo lunged at him, firing into the thick fur and cursing as the gun clicked, useless and empty.
The flamethrower was somewhere in the surrounding bushes, knocked out of Ben's hand when it'd been a choice between saving the weapon or saving the girl. He'd opted for the girl.
He'd managed to take one of the monsters out before he'd lost the flamethrower, though, and the smell of cooked Wendigo flesh permeated the air in a fainting nauseating way.
The problem was the second one. The second really fucking sneaky one that had managed to get a little too close when Ben had been cutting the barely conscious woman down from where she'd been hanging, wrists strapped to the wall and dangling like a side of beef.
His side throbbed and he was pretty sure he'd lost more blood than was recommended in situations like this, but he couldn't let this one go. It had both their scents and they'd never get out of the forest alive if it was tracking them. Also, that had been the flamethrower Mom had given him for his twenty-fifth birthday, and he was going to be seriously pissed if it was damaged.
Leaning heavily against the tree trunk behind him, Ben glared at the creature approaching him. "Come on, you bastard. It's you or me." Problem was, Ben was pretty sure it was going to be him this time.
He was sure about it right up until there was a soft gust of wind and a flash of dark hair before the Wendigo exploded, covering Ben in blood and gore and a few things he didn't even want to identify.
"Thanks," he said, coughing as he spat out what used to be an ear, and glaring at the figure walking towards him. "You couldn't have made him go boom in that direction?" Wendigo guts were a bitch to get out of clothes and he was on his last clean pair of jeans.
"You're welcome," Cas replied. "You should have called." He placed a hand on Ben's side and Ben sighed as warmth flooded through him and the edges of his skin started to knit back together. Sometimes it really was useful having an angel for a stepdad.
"Don't heal it completely." Ben pushed Castiel's hand away. "Chicks dig the scars." He grinned at the exasperated look Cas gave him.
"Blood or not," Cas commented, amusement and fondness warring in his tone, "you really are Dean Winchester's son."
Ben grinned. "He get any further arranging the party for Sam's fiftieth? Last time I talked to him, he and Aunt Sarah were still trying to decide where to have it."
Cas's face took on a pinched look. "They still haven't chosen anywhere. So far he and Sarah have decided on a big cake and loud music and very little else."
Ben smiled. Yeah, that sounded like Dean and Aunt Sarah.
"The party is a week from Saturday," Cas said, walking over to one of the bushes and pulling Ben's flamethrower out from under it. "That is, if Dean and Sarah ever get organised. Your mother's been threatening to just arrange everything and then tell them where to turn up."
And that definitely sounded like his mom. And a week from Saturday was good; he could work with that. He'd just have to ask Dana and Jenny to take the vamp nest in Oregon while he helped with the poltergeist David had called him about.
He'd be back on the road towards home within a couple of days and he'd still have time to swing through town and pick up the special edition three-disc release of the new Supernatural movie for Sam's birthday. (Mainly just to see Sam's left eye twitch, like it did every time he was confronted with anything to do with Supernatural. And then Ben would give him his real present - the first edition of Kraemer's Almanac that he'd picked up about three months and a dozen towns ago. The one Sam had inherited from Bobby's library was falling apart, with pages hanging on by a thread, so when Ben had seen the near-perfect condition copy sitting in the back of a thrift store after he'd gone in to look for a new pair of boots, he hadn't been able to resist it.)
"I'll be there."
Castiel's reply was cut off by a soft moan coming from behind them. It sounded like the Wendigo's latest victim was no longer as unconscious as she had been.
"Do you need me to take you to the hospital?" Cas asked.
"Nah, I got this one," Ben replied, waving him off. When he'd cut her down, she'd looked dirty and somewhat beaten up, but nowhere near bad enough to justify the explanation taking Angel Air would cause. Although, they were pretty deep into the forest. "Back to the truck would be good, though," he said, murmuring soft reassurances as he reached the young woman and helped her to her feet.
By the time Ben looked back at Castiel they were already standing next to the truck. "Thanks, Cas."
Cas nodded, putting the flamethrower he was still holding in the back of the truck. "A week from Saturday, at seven," he said, turning back to face Ben.
"Got it," Ben answered as he settled his passenger into the truck.
A rush of wind brushed across Ben's back as he closed the truck's door, and Cas was gone by the time Ben reached the driver's side. Getting in, he started the engine and began the drive back into town, telling the young woman next to him that no, she hadn't been imagining things and no, she really didn't want to tell the doctors what she'd seen unless she wanted an extended stay in a lovely white room.
Reaching out, Ben flicked on the radio, quiet music filling the truck as they drove.
Kill the Wendigo, save the girl, head back home for a party with an extended family that included several hunters, an angel, a math teacher, and a guy that used to house the devil. Sometimes life really didn't turn out the way it was expected to, but that was okay, Ben wouldn't change a thing.