The Apocrypha of Chuck: Part 3/5
Title: The Apocrypha of Chuck (Part 3/5)
Characters: Chuck, Castiel/Dean, Bobby, Sam
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13/Takes place just after S4 finale
Word Count: 5000
Summary: Chuck avoids the Big Issues by playing with his food, writing his happy-verse, and getting an angel sloshed. The happy-verse takes an unexpected turn.
Author's Note: Aiming to post the complete story by the US premier date. No spoilers in the comments, please.
(Part 1) (Part 2)(Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5)
Everyone stared at Chuck over dinner, and it wasn’t because he was building a tiny castle in his mashed potatoes. If anything, the mashed potato castle was a product of the staring. Chuck didn’t cope well with that kind of focused attention. It was why he never accepted invitations to appear at conventions. Sam had brought up the Winchester Gospel while setting the table, and since then it had apparently been time for The Chuck Shurley Show. He walked his green bean king and lima bean queen across the salisbury steak drawbridge and smooshed them into the throne chamber, hoping that when he looked up there would no longer be eyes on him.
No such luck. Not only was everyone still staring at him like he was ticking, but Bobby was downright scowling and Castiel was studying the parade of bean people as if there were some sort of code written in their procession.
It was Sam who broke the silence. “Um, Chuck?”
“What?” Chuck snapped, harsher than he’d intended.
Sam’s enormous brow ridge flattened, and he cleared his throat. “Had any visions recently?”
“Not recently,” Chuck said, shrugging. His efforts to line up his bean knights were failing, since they kept falling into the gravy moat.
“Are you sure?”
Chuck gave him a weary look across the table. “Yes, Sam, I’m sure I haven’t been having any visions.”
“Sure you didn’t just miss one?” Dean chimed in, giving him a suspicious look.
“‘Miss one’? I’m not some kind of unreliable voicemail service!” Chuck felt his voice rising hard in his throat, and he tried to push it down a little. “It’s just-I mean-” He glanced around the table, and the words got caught. He wasn’t a prophet anymore. He wasn’t tuned into God Radio. He was a useless civilian wasting Bobby Singer’s mashed potatoes. Everyone here thought he was some kind of secret weapon, and if they knew that keeping him around was pointless, he didn’t know what they’d do. All of them had surprised him so much in this whole mess he didn’t know what to expect from them anymore. Sam had walked out on his brother. Dean had aligned himself with Heaven. Castiel had fallen. And Bobby-well, Bobby was still pretty much predictable, but the way he was glaring at Chuck’s mashed potato castle, Chuck wasn’t sure the guy would object to using him as a bargaining chip with Lucifer or whoever, given the chance.
“I just-” he started again. “I’m just not getting any calls lately. Nothing important, anyway.” That was cryptic enough it shouldn’t give him away.
Everyone leaned back in their seats.
“Okay,” Dean said, “so we’re running without any kind of plan here.”
“Until God starts talking to Chuck again, anyway,” Sam said.
“We can’t just wait around for that to happen,” Bobby said. “We’re probably on Lucifer’s radar, and Heaven’s, too. I mean, couldja pick a more obvious place to hide out, boys?”
The way Sam and Dean looked at each other, Chuck knew they hadn’t thought it through. This wasn’t a smart thing. It wasn’t even a “Bobby will know what to do” thing. It was an instinct thing. Whenever they were lost in one way or another, they came to Bobby. Bobby was family. Bobby was comfort.
Bobby was glaring at Chuck like he’d mulched his favorite baseball hat. “You gonna eat that, son?”
Chuck wolfed down a mouthful of turret lest he anger his host further.
“We could load up on hex bags,” Sam suggested.
“These are high level sons of bitches we’re messing with,” Dean said. “Big league angels all around. No guarantee hex bags’ll do the trick. What we really need is some extra strength Angel-B-Gone.”
“Blood sigils,” Castiel said, catching his eye. “They may still work even though I no longer have my grace.”
“That’s right, it worked for Anna when she was still human,” Chuck said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. Dean shot him a “How do you know that?” look, and Chuck pointed his fork at his face. “Prophetic visions.” He swallowed. “I saw everything.”
“Well, now that I’m all uncomfortable…” Dean said, drawing his shoulders up to his ears, and it took Chuck a moment to remember there had been car sex in that particular line of plot events.
“But isn’t that short-term mojo?” Sam said.
“Yes.” Castiel gave his half-empty plate a disappointed look. “It banishes angels from the space, but the effects only last until the blood dries.”
“And we can’t go draining you every couple hours to keep your finger paintings wet,” Dean said. “That has this nasty tendency to kill people.”
Castiel’s eyes widened at his half-eaten salisbury steak, and he paled. Chuck wondered if he was just now realizing his mortality.
“What about Anna?” Sam said. “She’s immortal now. If we could summon her, maybe she would-”
“You can’t,” Castiel interrupted, his voice higher than normal.
“Why not?” Dean said.
“Because she is-” His mouth remained open, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out.
“She’s…with the angels now,” Chuck finished. It was what he’d been told when his pet turtle died in third grade, and it seemed disturbingly accurate now.
The hunters exchanged solemn looks.
“Drain me,” Castiel said quietly.
“No,” Dean said immediately.
“I should have been destroyed when I disobeyed, Dean - this mortal life is a gift of mercy, and I could do no better than giving it for a just cause.”
“How long would that give us?” Bobby asked.
“No!” Dean repeated.
“Maybe a week or two, if we kept the sigils small,” Sam answered.
“That’s more time than we got now,” Bobby said.
“Goddammit, I said NO!” Dean pounded his fist on the table so hard it made Chuck’s one remaining turret plop into the gravy moat. “Nobody’s sacrificing anybody! Haven’t you guys been paying attention? We’ve got three things that separate us from them - three measly things! We don’t kill innocents, and we don’t buy into this ‘greater good’ bullcrap over our consciences - what part of that involves sacrificing a freshly minted human to cover our asses for a little while?”
“None of it, but-” Bobby frowned. “Wait, what’s the third thing?”
Dean smirked. “We’re not a bunch of repressed, bitter virgins.”
Castiel started to open his mouth, then shrugged and nodded. Chuck smiled a little. They did have that.
Sam suddenly sat bolt upright and declared, “Linseed oil.”
“Random noun to you too, Sammy. The hell?”
“It’s a binder in oil paint,” Sam said, gesturing so widely he made Chuck a little nervous, even from across the table. “In ancient oil paints, they used to use egg yolk as a binder, to hold the pigments in place and keep the paint wet long enough to be workable. But it had a tendency to rot and change colors when dry, so they started using linseed oil as a binder instead.” At a raised eyebrow from Bobby, he explained, “Linseed oil takes days, sometimes weeks to dry. Mix it with Castiel’s blood and we’ve got ourselves a loophole.”
“And Encyclopedia Boy’s back in the game!” Dean grinned, clapping him on the shoulder.
“We’ve just gotta get some linseed oil,” Sam said, looking slightly less excited. “How far’s the nearest art supply store?”
“Dunno,” Bobby said. “Few hours?”
Staring at Bobby’s impassive face, Chuck felt the words burst out of him before he could filter the stupid out: “Your wife!” Everyone was staring at him again, this time with mingled looks of disgust and horror. Bobby had that “you mulched my hat” face on again. “I mean,” Chuck started again, “you’ve still got her painting supplies in the attic, right?”
“Your wife was an artist?” Sam said, sounding genuinely interested in the revelation.
“Who do you think did all the landscape paintings around here?” Chuck said, feeling a little proud of himself. Then he spotted Bobby glaring at him and deflated slightly. “I-I saw you going through her things on your last anniversary. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. Could you, uh…please stop staring at me like that?”
Bobby did not stop. Bobby looked sort of determined to make it his life’s goal to make Chuck as uncomfortable as possible. Chuck didn’t really blame him. He knew how private Bobby was, and in the handful of hours since they’d met, he’d already blurted out two of his closest-held secrets.
“Bobby?” Sam said. “Linseed oil?”
“Right,” Bobby said, his eyes still on Chuck. “Attic’s through the back of the bedroom closet. Check the pine trunk.”
Sam and Dean excused themselves to go look, leaving Bobby to his staring.
Locking his attention on his plate, Chuck searched for something that might lighten the mood. He could recite a Monty Python scene, but he didn’t think Bobby would be amused. Poking two forks into lima beans and making them dance like little tap shoes probably wouldn’t work either, and he was willing to bet Bobby wouldn’t be interested in the latest Lost gossip. So he opted to freeze like a cornered animal instead.
“Bobby,” Castiel offered, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Bobby’s chair squeaked back, and he grabbed his plate and glass. “Why don’t you two do yourselves a favor?” he said, heading to the sink. “Shut up.”
***
Chuck watched from the kitchen doorway as Operation Angel Blood went down. Sam, being pretty well schooled in the places you could bleed a person without killing them, was the one to draw the knife down across Castiel’s arm. The fallen angel stared at his blood collecting in the Big Gulp cup, his brows slightly lowered and his gaze its old intense beam.
Dean took it upon himself to bandage Castiel up after they’d collected the required amount. Chuck had always known the guy had a good bedside manner, but seeing it in person was something else - this giant, hard-edged demon hunter crouching by the couch, talking softly and offering a consoling hand when the medical tape pinched the cut. Hell, he even had orange juice and a cookie ready when Castiel was all bandaged up.
“I can do that part for ya,” Bobby offered, reaching a hand toward the Big Gulp cup as Sam unscrewed the cap on the bulk sized bottle of linseed oil.
“It’s okay, Bobby, I got it.”
“You sure?”
Sam frowned into the bottle, and Chuck could just about hear the battle between guilt and self-defense churning in his head.
“Bobby,” Dean said, helping Cas sit up, “he’s not gonna drink the art project. Let him do his thing.”
Chuck was glad he didn’t have to write this scene. Writing tension between the Winchesters - especially when Bobby was involved, too - made him nauseous. He’d made best friends with his toilet while he was writing Lucifer Rising. Hell, this was making him a little nauseous even as an observer.
Especially when Sam handed the cup over to Bobby and made a silent retreat out to the porch, his head bowed to the floor to hide his brooding, guilt-wracked expression.
Chuck stuck around long enough to watch Castiel start painting the sigil on the wall, but then he made a hasty exit, too, burying his attention in his writing notebook in the panic room.
Sam sat out on the porch for a long while, staring at the passing strips of clouds on the horizon, the weight of what he'd done pressing down on him like the very hand of God. His insides bunched up as if trying to eject the memories. He drew a hand down his face, exhausted at the effort of pretending everything was okay.
“Hey,” said a familiar voice from the doorway - the voice that had brought him through every other hard patch in his life. He glanced up. Dean walked over, handing him a beer from the two cold bottles held between his fingers. “Thought you could use some company.”
“Sure I wouldn’t rather have a bottle of demon blood?” Sam retorted bitterly.
“Take the beer, you freak,” Dean said, smiling. Sam did. Dean sat down beside him and clinked their glasses together. “To our triumphant return to normalcy - whatever the hell that is.”
Sam chuckled. “Yeah.”
“Hey, Sammy.”
“Yeah?”
“It was the end of the world. We all did some stupid crap, but we’re past it now. You’re okay.”
And for the first time since Dean had gone to Hell, Sam felt like maybe that was true.
***
Sam’s plan was a good one - the sigil stayed wet. Sam made it his personal mission to keep an eye on it, waking himself up midway through the night to check on it and keeping the spare “paint” mix sealed tightly in a container in the fridge to be stirred every few hours. He was determined. This was his global warming.
Bobby went on playing the gruff host, picking up the role of angel lore researcher as well once it became clear they wouldn’t need to drain Castiel dry anytime soon.
Dean seemed to take it upon himself to become Castiel’s personal chaperone. Over the course of the first few days in the house, he kept so close to the fallen angel that it reminded Chuck of-what was the name of that awful comedy with the conjoined twins? Stuck On You, that was it. He’d watched it while baked at a friend’s house once and woke up the next morning in a haze of regret. He wondered how much it cost to get clothes custom-made for conjoined twins. Did Bobby have a sewing machine?
Anyway, Dean/Matt Damon was stuck on Castiel/Greg Kinnear, teaching him human things like firing a gun and making scrambled eggs with cheese. He assisted Castiel when Castiel wanted to assist Bobby with research. He even took responsibility over Castiel’s injuries, redressing the bandage on his chest daily so Chuck didn’t have to. The only person who could pull Dean away from his angel watching duties was Sam, but Sam was so busy watching paint dry that he didn’t do it often.
So Chuck was left without anything to do but write. Every so often someone made a subtle “Seen anything interesting lately?” noise at him, but he never had a satisfying reply, so in a rather short time, they stopped paying much attention to him. He almost missed the stares over the dinner table - then at least he’d felt like maybe someone wanted him here.
Chuck tried to lose himself in his happy-verse. It was difficult, with no plot to move the action along. He wrote about pie fights. And Bobby and Castiel bonding over research. And arguments over who got the bathroom first thing in the morning - those were culled from real life. And Sam teaching Castiel to play horseshoes in the yard.
And, because he figured his Castiel needed some healing as much as his fictional hunters, he wrote Castiel being doted on by Dean.
“There’s nothing to it,” Dean said, carefully laying down the edge of the bandage on the fallen angel’s chest. The place where his grace had been ripped out was healing nicely, new skin already pressing up from within the hole. It was impressive, really - Dean was tempted to call it a miracle. “It’s all conditioning. Your foot learns the pedals and your hands learn the wheel. The real trick is dealing with other drivers.”
“You would let me drive the Impala?”
“Of course, man. You fell trying to help me. I owe you way more than that.”
Castiel shot him a challenging look. “Would you let me drive slow on the interstate?”
Dean frowned but nodded anyway. “Whatever you want.”
“And I could tune your radio to the soft rock station with the rain sounds in the advertisements?”
Dean’s jaw clenched. “Sure.”
“Dean,” Castiel said, giving him a wry look, “I may have lost my grace for you, but that doesn’t mean you have to make sacrifices for my sake.” He smiled a little, a ray of sunlight in the evening dusk. “I won’t drive your car.”
“Oh, thank God,” Dean said, the air rushing out of him.
Castiel chuckled slightly, then his expression went pensive. “Dean…” he started.
“Yeah?”
The fallen angel stared at the scuffed kitchen tiles and shook his head. “Nothing.”
Ah, the enigmatic “Nothing,” tension-building tool of writers everywhere. Chuck would find something to fill it with eventually. He just had to get into the angel’s head. And for that, he had an idea.
***
Chuck closed the panic room door quietly behind him, using his foot to muffle the sound. On the cot across the room, Castiel raised his head. Chuck pressed a finger to his lips, the liquor bottles in his hand clinking together. Not that he was really worried - the only other person awake in the house was Sam, who was repainting the parts of the sigil that had gone tacky, and Sam wouldn’t venture in here.
“Where did you get those?” Castiel said, sitting up. He was drowning in a set of Bobby’s spare pajama pants and one of Dean’s old Zeppelin t-shirts. Both of them were drowning in borrowed clothes these days - Chuck hadn’t thought to bring more than one spare set, and Sam had generously lent him a box of clothes from his teenage years, which had been stashed in the crawl space over Bobby’s garage. Chuck had been pleased to find a He-Man t-shirt among the cast-offs, but there was no bonding over shared retro cartoon interests - Sam didn’t even remember owning it.
“Tank of the old toilet in the storage room,” Chuck answered, pulling a chair over to Castiel’s cot so he could set the bottles down. “This house is a regular Where’s Waldo book of hidden liquor, and I’ve got the mental cheat sheet.”
“The level of detail in your visions is extraordinary,” Castiel said, looking at him almost fondly. “Most prophets write in metaphor and generality. You really are a wonder of God’s work.”
Chuck swallowed, wanting to correct him. Unscrewing the cap on the first bottle, he asked instead, “Whiskey or jug wine for you, Mr. Stark?”
His companion smiled at the reference and licked his lips slightly, reading the text on the bottles. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly drunk in my existence.”
“What have you had that you liked?”
“I once had wine to celebrate a bris milah.”
“Oh, yeah? Whose?”
“The Christ child.”
Chuck’s hands paused. Castiel looked across the cot at him earnestly, a being older than the Bible wearing Bobby Singer’s stripy pajama pants. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try the jug wine.”
If Chuck had known that Castiel was a giggly drunk, he would’ve tried to get him drunk a lot sooner. Half an hour after starting on their respective bottles, they were sitting on the cot together, cross-legged, Castiel leaning way too far into Chuck’s personal bubble and trying to staunch the shrill noises coming out of himself.
“Why do-” he said between burps of giggles “-why do human bodies do this? It’s-” another round “-absurd! It’s absurd! I sound like birds!”
“Angel eyes, with your angel eyes,” Chuck sang softly, taking a swig of whiskey. The liquid burned his throat, and he coughed out, “Will you always be the-ere to hold me? Ooh, oo-oh.”
Castiel burst into another fit of giggles, holding his stomach and nearly falling off the cot. Then, composing himself, he shot Chuck a menacing look. “Do not mock my music tastes.”
Chuck snorted, and a moment later the fallen angel’s lips twitched upward and he laughed, too. “You’re funny, you know that?”
“I had been studying humor, trying to make up for the void that Uriel left.” Castiel shook his head, giving the door of the panic room a sad look. “Now all my garrison has is Zachariah, and he only thinks he’s funny.”
“Dickface,” Chuck corrected sternly. “C’mon, buddy, if you’re gonna drink with me, you gotta use the proper terminology.”
“Dickface is a tool,” Castiel agreed solemnly.
And then they were both lost to giggles for a good five minutes.
After forty-five minutes of drinking, it was apparently time to quote Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“And then she’s like ‘You had sex with Giles? On the hood of a police car? TWICE?’”
“I always appreciated Giles. His righteous wrath reminded me of Nuriel - he rains down hail, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Wouldn’t have sex with him on the hood of a police car, though. Him or Nuriel.”
After an hour of drinking, it was time for brains to splash around in the gutter.
“And I mean, the whole deal - all of these emotions churning inside me. It’s just so hard to keep it up.”
“That’s what she said!”
“Uncalled for, Mr. Stark. Uncalled for.”
And then after an hour and a half of drinking, when Chuck’s ability to sit upright without the room spinning was in question, it was finally time for drunk confessions.
Chuck leaned against the panic room wall, bolts digging slightly into the back of his head. “If you’re Tony Stark, does that make me Pepper Potts?”
“Do you want to be Pepper Potts?” Castiel asked. He’d stretched himself out width-wise across the cot, his feet hanging off the edge and his head shoved against a pillow at the wall.
“Not really.”
“Then you could be Rhodey.” Castiel punched him lightly in the arm, and the wine bottle in that hand sloshed. “You have my back.”
“I have your back,” Chuck agreed. “I do. And y’know why? It’s ‘cause I think you’re the only one in this whole place that actually likes me. Everybody else, pfft.” He waved a hand. “They only keep me around ‘cause they think I’m some key to winning a holy war.”
“Dean told me he likes you. He just thinks you’re, uh…what was it? ‘Creepier’n a bag full of gremlins,’ but he likes you.”
“Man, Gremlins scared the crap outta me.”
“He keeps following me. I don’t know what he wants.”
Chuck turned his head. “Who, Dean?”
“Yes.” Castiel narrowed his eyes at his bottle, a shade of his sober solemnity showing through. “He follows me around the house as if I might lead him somewhere. He keeps offering me things. Before, when I didn’t understand him, I could play passenger in his dreams to suss out the issue from within. Now…” He winced slightly, and one hand trailed up to his chest. “When I think of it, the absence hurts,” he whispered.
Chuck didn’t know how to address the last part, so he dealt with what he knew. “You fell helping Dean - that’s sort of an incomprehensibly big favor. And he’s sort of a mother hen, so taking care of you is how he’s showing he’s grateful.”
“Grateful?”
“Yeah, man. It’s one of those human emotions. Somebody does something nice for you, and you, grateful, do a favor for them back or give them a Coke or, I guess, follow them around clucking and dressing bandages.” Castiel laughed suddenly, and Chuck shot him a curious look. “Giant Dean-chicken?”
“Yes.”
“High five for same mental image.” Chuck raised his hand, and the fallen angel slapped it dutifully.
Chuck was having some trouble remembering why he’d initiated this exercise. Mainly he was just glad to be drunk. He'd been mostly-sober for days now, and being drunk was like coming home. He was also pretty happy with the rendition of “The Sign” they’d managed earlier, and the pleasant muffled sensation of his worries was enjoyable, but he was pretty sure neither of those were the reason for-oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Research.
“So, we’ve established what Dean wants,” Chuck said, raising his bottle thoughtfully. “What do you want, Cas? Really, I’m curious. What’s a recently fallen angel’s motivation?”
Castiel drowned a laugh in the mouth of the wine jug. “I have no clue.”
“Really? There’s nothing you want right now?”
“Chuck, I don’t-” Castiel swallowed, shaking his head. “I don’t know how to want properly. You humans want like you breathe. It comes so naturally to you. I’ve had only sparks of it, and for them I’ve been cast out of Paradise.”
“Maybe you need to learn it,” Chuck suggested.
“How would I learn it?”
“Close your eyes. Picture the world around you, but picture it better.” He waited while the angel followed his instruction. “Now, tell me what you changed.”
“The world is free of war and disease, and crops are plentiful worldwide.”
“More locally.”
Castiel frowned. “Dean is unworried. He and Sam are as they used to be. I never-” He opened his eyes and stared around at the dome of the panic room, huffing out a soft laugh. “I never released Sam from here. It was my fault - before I failed Dean in the green room, I failed Sam here.” His eyes, reddened from the cheap liquor and suddenly wet, rolled to meet Chuck’s. “Please don’t tell them.”
God, that expression just killed him. It almost made him want to cry himself - and not like the lines from the Buffy season two finale had made him want to cry earlier.
Chuck rested a hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy. I won’t.”
“Thank you,” the fallen angel whispered, and his head landed on Chuck’s shoulder.
Then it was time for the cuddly-drunk portion of the program, and hey, that was a little weird, but in the grand scheme of his life, Chuck figured falling asleep with a semi-literal angel on his shoulder in a hunter’s demon-proof panic room was one of the less weird things to have happened to him.
***
Chuck didn’t tell anyone about about Castiel letting Sam out of the panic room. The Castiel in his happy-verse, however, did.
“It’s not so bad,” Dean said, drawing his hand down the length of the injury. The fallen angel shivered under his touch, and he patted the center of the new skin lightly. “Considering how ugly it was a week ago, I think you’re gonna be ready for swimsuit season in no time.”
“You would have me display my shame in front of beachgoers?” Castiel said, furrowing his brow at the hunter.
Dean shook his head. “It’s not shame, Cas. I mean, it’s a damn shame they did this to you-” He felt his hackles raise at the thought of it, and his hands clenched, readying for a fight that would never come. “But this isn’t some black mark on you. You did what was right and got bitchslapped for it. This is a righteous battle scar - a sign you stood up for yourself. And for me.” He looked the guy in the eyes, tears prickling in his own. “I can’t even begin to thank you for that.”
“I don’t need your thanks,” Castiel said, and Dean could’ve sworn he was blushing.
“What do you need?” Dean asked.
Castiel swallowed, looking at the kitchen floor for a long time before returning his cerulean gaze to Dean. “I’m the one who let Sam out of the panic room.”
Dean sucked in his breath slightly, then shook his head. “I had my suspicions.”
“I’m so sorry, Dean. It’s my fault that-”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I knew what my actions would lead to, and I followed my orders anyway. If I hadn’t-”
“Then some other feather-brained shmuck would’ve. Cas-”
“You should be hating me!” Castiel cried, tears starting down his cheeks, and for a moment he looked shocked at his own surge of emotion. “I’ve done something terrible, Dean,” he said, softer. “Why aren’t you hating me?”
Dean lowered himself to the fallen angel’s eye level, bracing both his hands on the back of the man’s chair. “World’s a little more complex than that, Cas. ‘Sides, you’ve already punished yourself worse than anything I could do.” He sighed. “It’s in the past, and I’m too tired to do anything but forgive you. Now, you didn’t answer me. What do you need?”
The former angel and the hunter said nothing for a moment, each looking into the other’s eyes. Then, as if some unspoken vow had occurred, Dean cradled a rough hand around Castiel’s cheek and kissed him.
Well. Um. Okay. Chuck hadn’t-well, that hadn’t been in his mental outline. But it was there, on the page, and the more he reread it, the more it made sense. He took off his reading glasses, rubbing his eyes.
Somewhere in the array of paper debris plastered by blood to the floor of his house, Chuck remembered, there was a note in a yellow legal pad that said Dean was bisexual. The fact had never made it into the books because he’d thought it was irrelevant to the plot. Well, that, and the fangirls would’ve had a collective aneurism. Chuck could hardly stand to Google his pseudonym as it was, with all the porn that came up.
So this? This sort of made sense. Dean loved to be needed, and Castiel was just learning what it meant to be human - which included being loved. Chuck had written their previous angel-charge relationship as tastefully as possible in his Gospel, but his own private notes were littered with phrases like “eye sex” and “angelic booty call,” and honestly, in the darker days when all he’d been able to see was the slow collapse of the Winchester brothers’ relationship, he’d secretly hoped that Dean would finally grab himself a piece of happiness in a coat closet with that ever-staring angel.
Chuck leaned back in his seat and did a little dance, keeping his relief quiet to avoid waking his hung-over friend on the opposite cot. Of course - romance! The book could be a romance! That would center it - give it the plot and tension it lacked. And he knew how to write romance - hell, he’d been paying the bills with romance novels since Supernatural’s publisher went bankrupt. Maybe some of his usual readers would frown on that, but hey, he'd written everything from superhero comics to bodice rippers, the genre didn't matter so long as it paid.
He stared at the page, feeling like he had control of something for the first time in weeks. So he couldn’t fight to help the big damn heroes, or stand up to the Dickfaces of the world, or really, even pull himself together long enough to take in the Very Important Conversations happening upstairs - but this? This he could do.
Chuck Shurley, former prophet of the lord and current fugitive living in a panic room, put his pen back to the page and started writing again.
Part 4
Characters: Chuck, Castiel/Dean, Bobby, Sam
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13/Takes place just after S4 finale
Word Count: 5000
Summary: Chuck avoids the Big Issues by playing with his food, writing his happy-verse, and getting an angel sloshed. The happy-verse takes an unexpected turn.
Author's Note: Aiming to post the complete story by the US premier date. No spoilers in the comments, please.
(Part 1) (Part 2)(Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5)
Everyone stared at Chuck over dinner, and it wasn’t because he was building a tiny castle in his mashed potatoes. If anything, the mashed potato castle was a product of the staring. Chuck didn’t cope well with that kind of focused attention. It was why he never accepted invitations to appear at conventions. Sam had brought up the Winchester Gospel while setting the table, and since then it had apparently been time for The Chuck Shurley Show. He walked his green bean king and lima bean queen across the salisbury steak drawbridge and smooshed them into the throne chamber, hoping that when he looked up there would no longer be eyes on him.
No such luck. Not only was everyone still staring at him like he was ticking, but Bobby was downright scowling and Castiel was studying the parade of bean people as if there were some sort of code written in their procession.
It was Sam who broke the silence. “Um, Chuck?”
“What?” Chuck snapped, harsher than he’d intended.
Sam’s enormous brow ridge flattened, and he cleared his throat. “Had any visions recently?”
“Not recently,” Chuck said, shrugging. His efforts to line up his bean knights were failing, since they kept falling into the gravy moat.
“Are you sure?”
Chuck gave him a weary look across the table. “Yes, Sam, I’m sure I haven’t been having any visions.”
“Sure you didn’t just miss one?” Dean chimed in, giving him a suspicious look.
“‘Miss one’? I’m not some kind of unreliable voicemail service!” Chuck felt his voice rising hard in his throat, and he tried to push it down a little. “It’s just-I mean-” He glanced around the table, and the words got caught. He wasn’t a prophet anymore. He wasn’t tuned into God Radio. He was a useless civilian wasting Bobby Singer’s mashed potatoes. Everyone here thought he was some kind of secret weapon, and if they knew that keeping him around was pointless, he didn’t know what they’d do. All of them had surprised him so much in this whole mess he didn’t know what to expect from them anymore. Sam had walked out on his brother. Dean had aligned himself with Heaven. Castiel had fallen. And Bobby-well, Bobby was still pretty much predictable, but the way he was glaring at Chuck’s mashed potato castle, Chuck wasn’t sure the guy would object to using him as a bargaining chip with Lucifer or whoever, given the chance.
“I just-” he started again. “I’m just not getting any calls lately. Nothing important, anyway.” That was cryptic enough it shouldn’t give him away.
Everyone leaned back in their seats.
“Okay,” Dean said, “so we’re running without any kind of plan here.”
“Until God starts talking to Chuck again, anyway,” Sam said.
“We can’t just wait around for that to happen,” Bobby said. “We’re probably on Lucifer’s radar, and Heaven’s, too. I mean, couldja pick a more obvious place to hide out, boys?”
The way Sam and Dean looked at each other, Chuck knew they hadn’t thought it through. This wasn’t a smart thing. It wasn’t even a “Bobby will know what to do” thing. It was an instinct thing. Whenever they were lost in one way or another, they came to Bobby. Bobby was family. Bobby was comfort.
Bobby was glaring at Chuck like he’d mulched his favorite baseball hat. “You gonna eat that, son?”
Chuck wolfed down a mouthful of turret lest he anger his host further.
“We could load up on hex bags,” Sam suggested.
“These are high level sons of bitches we’re messing with,” Dean said. “Big league angels all around. No guarantee hex bags’ll do the trick. What we really need is some extra strength Angel-B-Gone.”
“Blood sigils,” Castiel said, catching his eye. “They may still work even though I no longer have my grace.”
“That’s right, it worked for Anna when she was still human,” Chuck said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. Dean shot him a “How do you know that?” look, and Chuck pointed his fork at his face. “Prophetic visions.” He swallowed. “I saw everything.”
“Well, now that I’m all uncomfortable…” Dean said, drawing his shoulders up to his ears, and it took Chuck a moment to remember there had been car sex in that particular line of plot events.
“But isn’t that short-term mojo?” Sam said.
“Yes.” Castiel gave his half-empty plate a disappointed look. “It banishes angels from the space, but the effects only last until the blood dries.”
“And we can’t go draining you every couple hours to keep your finger paintings wet,” Dean said. “That has this nasty tendency to kill people.”
Castiel’s eyes widened at his half-eaten salisbury steak, and he paled. Chuck wondered if he was just now realizing his mortality.
“What about Anna?” Sam said. “She’s immortal now. If we could summon her, maybe she would-”
“You can’t,” Castiel interrupted, his voice higher than normal.
“Why not?” Dean said.
“Because she is-” His mouth remained open, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out.
“She’s…with the angels now,” Chuck finished. It was what he’d been told when his pet turtle died in third grade, and it seemed disturbingly accurate now.
The hunters exchanged solemn looks.
“Drain me,” Castiel said quietly.
“No,” Dean said immediately.
“I should have been destroyed when I disobeyed, Dean - this mortal life is a gift of mercy, and I could do no better than giving it for a just cause.”
“How long would that give us?” Bobby asked.
“No!” Dean repeated.
“Maybe a week or two, if we kept the sigils small,” Sam answered.
“That’s more time than we got now,” Bobby said.
“Goddammit, I said NO!” Dean pounded his fist on the table so hard it made Chuck’s one remaining turret plop into the gravy moat. “Nobody’s sacrificing anybody! Haven’t you guys been paying attention? We’ve got three things that separate us from them - three measly things! We don’t kill innocents, and we don’t buy into this ‘greater good’ bullcrap over our consciences - what part of that involves sacrificing a freshly minted human to cover our asses for a little while?”
“None of it, but-” Bobby frowned. “Wait, what’s the third thing?”
Dean smirked. “We’re not a bunch of repressed, bitter virgins.”
Castiel started to open his mouth, then shrugged and nodded. Chuck smiled a little. They did have that.
Sam suddenly sat bolt upright and declared, “Linseed oil.”
“Random noun to you too, Sammy. The hell?”
“It’s a binder in oil paint,” Sam said, gesturing so widely he made Chuck a little nervous, even from across the table. “In ancient oil paints, they used to use egg yolk as a binder, to hold the pigments in place and keep the paint wet long enough to be workable. But it had a tendency to rot and change colors when dry, so they started using linseed oil as a binder instead.” At a raised eyebrow from Bobby, he explained, “Linseed oil takes days, sometimes weeks to dry. Mix it with Castiel’s blood and we’ve got ourselves a loophole.”
“And Encyclopedia Boy’s back in the game!” Dean grinned, clapping him on the shoulder.
“We’ve just gotta get some linseed oil,” Sam said, looking slightly less excited. “How far’s the nearest art supply store?”
“Dunno,” Bobby said. “Few hours?”
Staring at Bobby’s impassive face, Chuck felt the words burst out of him before he could filter the stupid out: “Your wife!” Everyone was staring at him again, this time with mingled looks of disgust and horror. Bobby had that “you mulched my hat” face on again. “I mean,” Chuck started again, “you’ve still got her painting supplies in the attic, right?”
“Your wife was an artist?” Sam said, sounding genuinely interested in the revelation.
“Who do you think did all the landscape paintings around here?” Chuck said, feeling a little proud of himself. Then he spotted Bobby glaring at him and deflated slightly. “I-I saw you going through her things on your last anniversary. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. Could you, uh…please stop staring at me like that?”
Bobby did not stop. Bobby looked sort of determined to make it his life’s goal to make Chuck as uncomfortable as possible. Chuck didn’t really blame him. He knew how private Bobby was, and in the handful of hours since they’d met, he’d already blurted out two of his closest-held secrets.
“Bobby?” Sam said. “Linseed oil?”
“Right,” Bobby said, his eyes still on Chuck. “Attic’s through the back of the bedroom closet. Check the pine trunk.”
Sam and Dean excused themselves to go look, leaving Bobby to his staring.
Locking his attention on his plate, Chuck searched for something that might lighten the mood. He could recite a Monty Python scene, but he didn’t think Bobby would be amused. Poking two forks into lima beans and making them dance like little tap shoes probably wouldn’t work either, and he was willing to bet Bobby wouldn’t be interested in the latest Lost gossip. So he opted to freeze like a cornered animal instead.
“Bobby,” Castiel offered, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Bobby’s chair squeaked back, and he grabbed his plate and glass. “Why don’t you two do yourselves a favor?” he said, heading to the sink. “Shut up.”
***
Chuck watched from the kitchen doorway as Operation Angel Blood went down. Sam, being pretty well schooled in the places you could bleed a person without killing them, was the one to draw the knife down across Castiel’s arm. The fallen angel stared at his blood collecting in the Big Gulp cup, his brows slightly lowered and his gaze its old intense beam.
Dean took it upon himself to bandage Castiel up after they’d collected the required amount. Chuck had always known the guy had a good bedside manner, but seeing it in person was something else - this giant, hard-edged demon hunter crouching by the couch, talking softly and offering a consoling hand when the medical tape pinched the cut. Hell, he even had orange juice and a cookie ready when Castiel was all bandaged up.
“I can do that part for ya,” Bobby offered, reaching a hand toward the Big Gulp cup as Sam unscrewed the cap on the bulk sized bottle of linseed oil.
“It’s okay, Bobby, I got it.”
“You sure?”
Sam frowned into the bottle, and Chuck could just about hear the battle between guilt and self-defense churning in his head.
“Bobby,” Dean said, helping Cas sit up, “he’s not gonna drink the art project. Let him do his thing.”
Chuck was glad he didn’t have to write this scene. Writing tension between the Winchesters - especially when Bobby was involved, too - made him nauseous. He’d made best friends with his toilet while he was writing Lucifer Rising. Hell, this was making him a little nauseous even as an observer.
Especially when Sam handed the cup over to Bobby and made a silent retreat out to the porch, his head bowed to the floor to hide his brooding, guilt-wracked expression.
Chuck stuck around long enough to watch Castiel start painting the sigil on the wall, but then he made a hasty exit, too, burying his attention in his writing notebook in the panic room.
Sam sat out on the porch for a long while, staring at the passing strips of clouds on the horizon, the weight of what he'd done pressing down on him like the very hand of God. His insides bunched up as if trying to eject the memories. He drew a hand down his face, exhausted at the effort of pretending everything was okay.
“Hey,” said a familiar voice from the doorway - the voice that had brought him through every other hard patch in his life. He glanced up. Dean walked over, handing him a beer from the two cold bottles held between his fingers. “Thought you could use some company.”
“Sure I wouldn’t rather have a bottle of demon blood?” Sam retorted bitterly.
“Take the beer, you freak,” Dean said, smiling. Sam did. Dean sat down beside him and clinked their glasses together. “To our triumphant return to normalcy - whatever the hell that is.”
Sam chuckled. “Yeah.”
“Hey, Sammy.”
“Yeah?”
“It was the end of the world. We all did some stupid crap, but we’re past it now. You’re okay.”
And for the first time since Dean had gone to Hell, Sam felt like maybe that was true.
***
Sam’s plan was a good one - the sigil stayed wet. Sam made it his personal mission to keep an eye on it, waking himself up midway through the night to check on it and keeping the spare “paint” mix sealed tightly in a container in the fridge to be stirred every few hours. He was determined. This was his global warming.
Bobby went on playing the gruff host, picking up the role of angel lore researcher as well once it became clear they wouldn’t need to drain Castiel dry anytime soon.
Dean seemed to take it upon himself to become Castiel’s personal chaperone. Over the course of the first few days in the house, he kept so close to the fallen angel that it reminded Chuck of-what was the name of that awful comedy with the conjoined twins? Stuck On You, that was it. He’d watched it while baked at a friend’s house once and woke up the next morning in a haze of regret. He wondered how much it cost to get clothes custom-made for conjoined twins. Did Bobby have a sewing machine?
Anyway, Dean/Matt Damon was stuck on Castiel/Greg Kinnear, teaching him human things like firing a gun and making scrambled eggs with cheese. He assisted Castiel when Castiel wanted to assist Bobby with research. He even took responsibility over Castiel’s injuries, redressing the bandage on his chest daily so Chuck didn’t have to. The only person who could pull Dean away from his angel watching duties was Sam, but Sam was so busy watching paint dry that he didn’t do it often.
So Chuck was left without anything to do but write. Every so often someone made a subtle “Seen anything interesting lately?” noise at him, but he never had a satisfying reply, so in a rather short time, they stopped paying much attention to him. He almost missed the stares over the dinner table - then at least he’d felt like maybe someone wanted him here.
Chuck tried to lose himself in his happy-verse. It was difficult, with no plot to move the action along. He wrote about pie fights. And Bobby and Castiel bonding over research. And arguments over who got the bathroom first thing in the morning - those were culled from real life. And Sam teaching Castiel to play horseshoes in the yard.
And, because he figured his Castiel needed some healing as much as his fictional hunters, he wrote Castiel being doted on by Dean.
“There’s nothing to it,” Dean said, carefully laying down the edge of the bandage on the fallen angel’s chest. The place where his grace had been ripped out was healing nicely, new skin already pressing up from within the hole. It was impressive, really - Dean was tempted to call it a miracle. “It’s all conditioning. Your foot learns the pedals and your hands learn the wheel. The real trick is dealing with other drivers.”
“You would let me drive the Impala?”
“Of course, man. You fell trying to help me. I owe you way more than that.”
Castiel shot him a challenging look. “Would you let me drive slow on the interstate?”
Dean frowned but nodded anyway. “Whatever you want.”
“And I could tune your radio to the soft rock station with the rain sounds in the advertisements?”
Dean’s jaw clenched. “Sure.”
“Dean,” Castiel said, giving him a wry look, “I may have lost my grace for you, but that doesn’t mean you have to make sacrifices for my sake.” He smiled a little, a ray of sunlight in the evening dusk. “I won’t drive your car.”
“Oh, thank God,” Dean said, the air rushing out of him.
Castiel chuckled slightly, then his expression went pensive. “Dean…” he started.
“Yeah?”
The fallen angel stared at the scuffed kitchen tiles and shook his head. “Nothing.”
Ah, the enigmatic “Nothing,” tension-building tool of writers everywhere. Chuck would find something to fill it with eventually. He just had to get into the angel’s head. And for that, he had an idea.
***
Chuck closed the panic room door quietly behind him, using his foot to muffle the sound. On the cot across the room, Castiel raised his head. Chuck pressed a finger to his lips, the liquor bottles in his hand clinking together. Not that he was really worried - the only other person awake in the house was Sam, who was repainting the parts of the sigil that had gone tacky, and Sam wouldn’t venture in here.
“Where did you get those?” Castiel said, sitting up. He was drowning in a set of Bobby’s spare pajama pants and one of Dean’s old Zeppelin t-shirts. Both of them were drowning in borrowed clothes these days - Chuck hadn’t thought to bring more than one spare set, and Sam had generously lent him a box of clothes from his teenage years, which had been stashed in the crawl space over Bobby’s garage. Chuck had been pleased to find a He-Man t-shirt among the cast-offs, but there was no bonding over shared retro cartoon interests - Sam didn’t even remember owning it.
“Tank of the old toilet in the storage room,” Chuck answered, pulling a chair over to Castiel’s cot so he could set the bottles down. “This house is a regular Where’s Waldo book of hidden liquor, and I’ve got the mental cheat sheet.”
“The level of detail in your visions is extraordinary,” Castiel said, looking at him almost fondly. “Most prophets write in metaphor and generality. You really are a wonder of God’s work.”
Chuck swallowed, wanting to correct him. Unscrewing the cap on the first bottle, he asked instead, “Whiskey or jug wine for you, Mr. Stark?”
His companion smiled at the reference and licked his lips slightly, reading the text on the bottles. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly drunk in my existence.”
“What have you had that you liked?”
“I once had wine to celebrate a bris milah.”
“Oh, yeah? Whose?”
“The Christ child.”
Chuck’s hands paused. Castiel looked across the cot at him earnestly, a being older than the Bible wearing Bobby Singer’s stripy pajama pants. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try the jug wine.”
If Chuck had known that Castiel was a giggly drunk, he would’ve tried to get him drunk a lot sooner. Half an hour after starting on their respective bottles, they were sitting on the cot together, cross-legged, Castiel leaning way too far into Chuck’s personal bubble and trying to staunch the shrill noises coming out of himself.
“Why do-” he said between burps of giggles “-why do human bodies do this? It’s-” another round “-absurd! It’s absurd! I sound like birds!”
“Angel eyes, with your angel eyes,” Chuck sang softly, taking a swig of whiskey. The liquid burned his throat, and he coughed out, “Will you always be the-ere to hold me? Ooh, oo-oh.”
Castiel burst into another fit of giggles, holding his stomach and nearly falling off the cot. Then, composing himself, he shot Chuck a menacing look. “Do not mock my music tastes.”
Chuck snorted, and a moment later the fallen angel’s lips twitched upward and he laughed, too. “You’re funny, you know that?”
“I had been studying humor, trying to make up for the void that Uriel left.” Castiel shook his head, giving the door of the panic room a sad look. “Now all my garrison has is Zachariah, and he only thinks he’s funny.”
“Dickface,” Chuck corrected sternly. “C’mon, buddy, if you’re gonna drink with me, you gotta use the proper terminology.”
“Dickface is a tool,” Castiel agreed solemnly.
And then they were both lost to giggles for a good five minutes.
After forty-five minutes of drinking, it was apparently time to quote Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“And then she’s like ‘You had sex with Giles? On the hood of a police car? TWICE?’”
“I always appreciated Giles. His righteous wrath reminded me of Nuriel - he rains down hail, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Wouldn’t have sex with him on the hood of a police car, though. Him or Nuriel.”
After an hour of drinking, it was time for brains to splash around in the gutter.
“And I mean, the whole deal - all of these emotions churning inside me. It’s just so hard to keep it up.”
“That’s what she said!”
“Uncalled for, Mr. Stark. Uncalled for.”
And then after an hour and a half of drinking, when Chuck’s ability to sit upright without the room spinning was in question, it was finally time for drunk confessions.
Chuck leaned against the panic room wall, bolts digging slightly into the back of his head. “If you’re Tony Stark, does that make me Pepper Potts?”
“Do you want to be Pepper Potts?” Castiel asked. He’d stretched himself out width-wise across the cot, his feet hanging off the edge and his head shoved against a pillow at the wall.
“Not really.”
“Then you could be Rhodey.” Castiel punched him lightly in the arm, and the wine bottle in that hand sloshed. “You have my back.”
“I have your back,” Chuck agreed. “I do. And y’know why? It’s ‘cause I think you’re the only one in this whole place that actually likes me. Everybody else, pfft.” He waved a hand. “They only keep me around ‘cause they think I’m some key to winning a holy war.”
“Dean told me he likes you. He just thinks you’re, uh…what was it? ‘Creepier’n a bag full of gremlins,’ but he likes you.”
“Man, Gremlins scared the crap outta me.”
“He keeps following me. I don’t know what he wants.”
Chuck turned his head. “Who, Dean?”
“Yes.” Castiel narrowed his eyes at his bottle, a shade of his sober solemnity showing through. “He follows me around the house as if I might lead him somewhere. He keeps offering me things. Before, when I didn’t understand him, I could play passenger in his dreams to suss out the issue from within. Now…” He winced slightly, and one hand trailed up to his chest. “When I think of it, the absence hurts,” he whispered.
Chuck didn’t know how to address the last part, so he dealt with what he knew. “You fell helping Dean - that’s sort of an incomprehensibly big favor. And he’s sort of a mother hen, so taking care of you is how he’s showing he’s grateful.”
“Grateful?”
“Yeah, man. It’s one of those human emotions. Somebody does something nice for you, and you, grateful, do a favor for them back or give them a Coke or, I guess, follow them around clucking and dressing bandages.” Castiel laughed suddenly, and Chuck shot him a curious look. “Giant Dean-chicken?”
“Yes.”
“High five for same mental image.” Chuck raised his hand, and the fallen angel slapped it dutifully.
Chuck was having some trouble remembering why he’d initiated this exercise. Mainly he was just glad to be drunk. He'd been mostly-sober for days now, and being drunk was like coming home. He was also pretty happy with the rendition of “The Sign” they’d managed earlier, and the pleasant muffled sensation of his worries was enjoyable, but he was pretty sure neither of those were the reason for-oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Research.
“So, we’ve established what Dean wants,” Chuck said, raising his bottle thoughtfully. “What do you want, Cas? Really, I’m curious. What’s a recently fallen angel’s motivation?”
Castiel drowned a laugh in the mouth of the wine jug. “I have no clue.”
“Really? There’s nothing you want right now?”
“Chuck, I don’t-” Castiel swallowed, shaking his head. “I don’t know how to want properly. You humans want like you breathe. It comes so naturally to you. I’ve had only sparks of it, and for them I’ve been cast out of Paradise.”
“Maybe you need to learn it,” Chuck suggested.
“How would I learn it?”
“Close your eyes. Picture the world around you, but picture it better.” He waited while the angel followed his instruction. “Now, tell me what you changed.”
“The world is free of war and disease, and crops are plentiful worldwide.”
“More locally.”
Castiel frowned. “Dean is unworried. He and Sam are as they used to be. I never-” He opened his eyes and stared around at the dome of the panic room, huffing out a soft laugh. “I never released Sam from here. It was my fault - before I failed Dean in the green room, I failed Sam here.” His eyes, reddened from the cheap liquor and suddenly wet, rolled to meet Chuck’s. “Please don’t tell them.”
God, that expression just killed him. It almost made him want to cry himself - and not like the lines from the Buffy season two finale had made him want to cry earlier.
Chuck rested a hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy. I won’t.”
“Thank you,” the fallen angel whispered, and his head landed on Chuck’s shoulder.
Then it was time for the cuddly-drunk portion of the program, and hey, that was a little weird, but in the grand scheme of his life, Chuck figured falling asleep with a semi-literal angel on his shoulder in a hunter’s demon-proof panic room was one of the less weird things to have happened to him.
***
Chuck didn’t tell anyone about about Castiel letting Sam out of the panic room. The Castiel in his happy-verse, however, did.
“It’s not so bad,” Dean said, drawing his hand down the length of the injury. The fallen angel shivered under his touch, and he patted the center of the new skin lightly. “Considering how ugly it was a week ago, I think you’re gonna be ready for swimsuit season in no time.”
“You would have me display my shame in front of beachgoers?” Castiel said, furrowing his brow at the hunter.
Dean shook his head. “It’s not shame, Cas. I mean, it’s a damn shame they did this to you-” He felt his hackles raise at the thought of it, and his hands clenched, readying for a fight that would never come. “But this isn’t some black mark on you. You did what was right and got bitchslapped for it. This is a righteous battle scar - a sign you stood up for yourself. And for me.” He looked the guy in the eyes, tears prickling in his own. “I can’t even begin to thank you for that.”
“I don’t need your thanks,” Castiel said, and Dean could’ve sworn he was blushing.
“What do you need?” Dean asked.
Castiel swallowed, looking at the kitchen floor for a long time before returning his cerulean gaze to Dean. “I’m the one who let Sam out of the panic room.”
Dean sucked in his breath slightly, then shook his head. “I had my suspicions.”
“I’m so sorry, Dean. It’s my fault that-”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I knew what my actions would lead to, and I followed my orders anyway. If I hadn’t-”
“Then some other feather-brained shmuck would’ve. Cas-”
“You should be hating me!” Castiel cried, tears starting down his cheeks, and for a moment he looked shocked at his own surge of emotion. “I’ve done something terrible, Dean,” he said, softer. “Why aren’t you hating me?”
Dean lowered himself to the fallen angel’s eye level, bracing both his hands on the back of the man’s chair. “World’s a little more complex than that, Cas. ‘Sides, you’ve already punished yourself worse than anything I could do.” He sighed. “It’s in the past, and I’m too tired to do anything but forgive you. Now, you didn’t answer me. What do you need?”
The former angel and the hunter said nothing for a moment, each looking into the other’s eyes. Then, as if some unspoken vow had occurred, Dean cradled a rough hand around Castiel’s cheek and kissed him.
Well. Um. Okay. Chuck hadn’t-well, that hadn’t been in his mental outline. But it was there, on the page, and the more he reread it, the more it made sense. He took off his reading glasses, rubbing his eyes.
Somewhere in the array of paper debris plastered by blood to the floor of his house, Chuck remembered, there was a note in a yellow legal pad that said Dean was bisexual. The fact had never made it into the books because he’d thought it was irrelevant to the plot. Well, that, and the fangirls would’ve had a collective aneurism. Chuck could hardly stand to Google his pseudonym as it was, with all the porn that came up.
So this? This sort of made sense. Dean loved to be needed, and Castiel was just learning what it meant to be human - which included being loved. Chuck had written their previous angel-charge relationship as tastefully as possible in his Gospel, but his own private notes were littered with phrases like “eye sex” and “angelic booty call,” and honestly, in the darker days when all he’d been able to see was the slow collapse of the Winchester brothers’ relationship, he’d secretly hoped that Dean would finally grab himself a piece of happiness in a coat closet with that ever-staring angel.
Chuck leaned back in his seat and did a little dance, keeping his relief quiet to avoid waking his hung-over friend on the opposite cot. Of course - romance! The book could be a romance! That would center it - give it the plot and tension it lacked. And he knew how to write romance - hell, he’d been paying the bills with romance novels since Supernatural’s publisher went bankrupt. Maybe some of his usual readers would frown on that, but hey, he'd written everything from superhero comics to bodice rippers, the genre didn't matter so long as it paid.
He stared at the page, feeling like he had control of something for the first time in weeks. So he couldn’t fight to help the big damn heroes, or stand up to the Dickfaces of the world, or really, even pull himself together long enough to take in the Very Important Conversations happening upstairs - but this? This he could do.
Chuck Shurley, former prophet of the lord and current fugitive living in a panic room, put his pen back to the page and started writing again.
Part 4