The Apocrypha of Chuck: Part 4/5
Title: The Apocrypha of Chuck (Part 4/5)
Characters: Chuck, Castiel/Dean, Bobby, Sam
Ratings/Warnings: R for smut and duck facts/Takes place just after S4 finale
Word Count: 7200
Summary: Chuck retreats into his newly romancified happy-verse when things get difficult. The happy-verse gets happy in the pants. Real life comes knocking, and Chuck makes a snap decision.
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)
After the night of drunken confessions, Chuck felt that he and Castiel had come to understand each other a little better. Fully opening himself up to the fallen angel would mean revealing his potentially stay-at-Bobby’s-ending secret about his prophet days being over, so he kept that much to himself, but Castiel still looked at him every so often like they had some sort of secret club. The Club of Castiel Sprung Sam From Rehab, maybe, or the Dumb Pop Culture References Club. Either way, Chuck was grateful for it. It was the first time he’d felt like he belonged in this situation since…well. He actually couldn’t think of a time he’d felt like he belonged in this situation, before now.
Castiel tried to involve Chuck in the activities of the hunters. This usually meant circular discussions about angels and lots of stern looks passed around, and Chuck declined when he could get out of it, retreating to his writing desk instead. He could get more done there.
But other times Castiel just involved Chuck in general, regardless of what he was doing - if Bobby asked him to fetch something from the garage, he’d call Chuck up from the basement to do it together. If dishes needed cleaning, he’d ask if Chuck wanted to split the work. If he was going out to sit on the porch, he’d pass Chuck a look that said, “Interested?” and Chuck would shrug and go along.
It was beginning to annoy Dean. Chuck could tell, and he wasn’t sorry. He considered it payback for Dean shoving him against a wall that one time. Giant Dean-chicken, always clucking after Castiel, trailed along behind the two of them when these sorts of things happened, making awkward noises and occasionally trying to steer the subject toward Castiel’s well-being. You’d think he never got to spend any time alone with the angel, the amount of time he spent wearing Sam’s hand-me-down bitchface. But really, he got primary custody while Chuck still spent most of his time in the panic room. Maybe he was jealous that every night the guy he was trying to assuage his guilt about could be heard actually talking downstairs with the interloping writer.
“You two’re a couple of regular roommies,” Dean observed a few days after the drinking session. “What do you even do down there after we go to bed?”
“We stay up late swapping manly stories,” Castiel replied with his patented head tilt, and it took all of Chuck’s willpower not to burst out laughing until Dean had left the room.
Neither of them told anyone about the two waning bottles of liquor stashed in the bottom drawer of Chuck’s desk.
Chuck was beginning to feel like he’d moved into that desk. It certainly had the classic elements of his home: bottom drawer, alcohol; middle drawer, Carver Edlund’s series stacked neatly out of sight; top drawer, his current project. All it needed was action figures posed around the decades-old lamp and it could’ve been home.
More so than the desk, though, he felt like he’d made a home for himself in the story. Whenever he began to feel like an unwelcome guest at Bobby’s table or the Invisible Man in the midst of Sam and Dean’s important conversations, his mind drifted back to the happy-verse, plucking plot strings and organizing events in a neat outline. It was oddly calming, like having one of those miniature zen rock gardens to arrange. Sitting down to work on it made his shoulders slacken and the tension in his skull let up a little. He began to associate the musty attic and iron smell of the panic room with relief. In just a few days, he had a near-complete working outline of the story. By the time Sam held another angel blood drive to redo the sigil on the living room wall, Chuck had filled his entire notebook and stolen an empty canvas-bound journal from Bobby’s stash of hunting supplies to continue his work.
Romance made the story easy. Formulaic. Chuck didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. And Castiel with Dean? That made it even easier! He didn’t even have to come up with major plot complications - they were already built into the characters. Angel falls for hunter (literally). Angel confesses feelings for hunter. Manly heteronormative hunter has to tell manly hunter family about his gay love. Angel has to face further fall from grace in the eyes of his former family. Hunter and angel struggle to reconcile the warring worlds from whence they came. It was like Romeo and Juliet, but with two guys instead of whiney teenagers and no idiot falling on a sword to lead the mess into tragedy. Also not destined for a brilliant Reduced Shakespeare Company parody, but Chuck never expected anything he wrote to be popular enough to be parodied, anyway.
***
Sam had dug too deep with the knife, and the new stitches prickled like a line of barbed wire across Castiel’s forearm. Chuck couldn’t keep his eyes off it, even though he was supposed to be watching the TV. Castiel had invited him up from his “self-induced seclusion” in the basement to watch a movie with himself and Dean, and all Chuck could think about was how that sort of knife slip-up wouldn’t have happened in his story. Pain didn’t happen for no reason in the happy-verse.
Also, in the happy-verse, he was pretty sure Bobby’s movie collection wasn’t this limited. They’d watched The Edge six times now. Six. Times. Chuck liked movies about man-eating bears just as much as the next guy, but there were only so many times you could watch the “I’m going to kill the bear!” speech before it stopped being an inspiring triumph of the human spirit and started just being Anthony Hopkins yelling about bears.
There were no man-eating bears in happy-verse, Chuck decided. Canon effective immediately.
Castiel reached for his water glass, found it empty, and pushed himself up off the couch. As soon as his feet were flat on the rug, his eyelids fluttered and his face washed pale.
“Woah, hey, Cas?” Dean said beside him.
Castiel swayed slightly, not answering, and then collapsed. Dean only barely caught him before he hit the coffee table, swearing under his breath and hauling the limp fallen angel back onto the couch. Chuck rose to help, but Dean already had the guy’s head on a pillow and his legs aligned on the battered cushions.
“C’mon, Cas,” Dean said, smacking his cheek lightly. “Show me those big spooky blues.”
The fallen angel opened his eyes slowly. “Dean…”
This was exactly the sort of interchange that could actually happen in the the romantic plotline of the happy-verse. Chuck mentally bookmarked the scene for future reference and then swallowed the rush of guilt that came with it. His friend was hurt - maybe, knowing this stupid world, secretly dying of some fallen angel brain disease. Chuck should be doting. “Is he okay?” he asked.
Dean frowned at Castiel’s arm. “Too much blood loss.”
“I’m fine,” Castiel said, his voice almost as un-fine as when he’d woken up in Chuck’s house.
“You’re not fine. Human body’s not meant to be an art supply wholesaler.”
“It’s necessary-” the fallen angel started, and Dean silenced him with a yell out into the rest of the house.
“FAMILY MEETING!”
Chuck could just about smell the cloud of book dust that followed Bobby and Sam into the room. They stood around the coffee table opposite Dean, and sitting in the worn armchair, Chuck felt like he’d suddenly apparated in a forest of scuffed jeans and flannel.
“What’s the matter?” Bobby asked.
“This,” Dean said, pointing to the angel half-conscious on the couch. “And that,” he added, aiming his finger at the sigil on the wall. “Look, I’m cool with laying low for a while, but somebody’s gotta say it: this isn’t a long-term solution. What the hell are we gonna do?”
Bobby and Sam traded uncertain looks, and Chuck pressed himself deeper into the chair.
“Well,” Sam started, “we’re up against angels, and only angels can kill other angels, so it’s a little complicated.”
“Complicated,” Dean huffed. “Even my damn laundry’s complicated these days. We’ve got an angel on our side, sort of.”
“I’m not-” Castiel started, and pursed his lips as he tried to push himself upright.
“Down, Dick Blick,” Dean ordered, pointing, and Castiel sighed, sinking back into the couch. “Okay,” he said, folding his arms and looking the other hunters in the eyes. “So we need to start coming up with a defensive plan here.”
“Against who?” Bobby said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re stuck between a rock and another, equally immortal rock.”
“Let’s start with the one who’s actively tried to kill us so far,” Dean said, glancing between his brother and his angel.
His angel. Chuck didn’t know why he’d started putting it that way in his head. It was kind of gay.
“We take out Zachariah,” Castiel said, the syllables harsh in his throat. The hunters nodded in somber, ponderous way that reminded Chuck of the Council of Elrond. “You have my sword,” Sam would say, stepping up to the throne/couch, and then Bobby, all gruff and dwarf-like, would announce, “And my axe!” Dean could be the Sam to Castiel’s Frodo, if they weren’t so freaking tall.
Who did that make him, Chuck wondered - Elrond? No, he was too silent for Elrond. He was probably Background Elf #3. Or maybe the pack mule.
“Okay,” Dean announced. “Inventory. What do we got that might be useful against a massive bureaucratic prick of an angel?”
“The usual ammunition,” Bobby said. “Depending on who he’s got for underlings, might be useful.”
“Blood,” Sam said, and drew back slightly at the glance he got off Bobby for being the one to suggest it. “And creativity. The angels don’t seem big on that.” He passed Castiel an apologetic shrug, but Castiel didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
“And we’ve got the prophet,” Dean said, glancing at Chuck. “Probably the most important piece in the game at this point. Whoever’s got the score ahead of time wins the game.”
Chuck frowned. He didn’t appreciate being the golden snitch in some cosmic Quidditch match. “You guys, I’m all for the good guys winning, but-”
“But his visions aren’t giving us anything useful,” Bobby said over him. “What do we do in the meantime?”
“Misdirection?” Sam suggested.
“Yeah,” Dean said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s it. We could feed misinformation through Chuck to Zach and company, trick ‘em into positioning themselves where we want ‘em.”
“Uh-” Chuck started, raising a finger.
“We could only do that once, maybe twice before they figured out what’s going on, though,” Sam said. “We’d have to make it count.”
“Excuse me-”
“Cas,” Dean said, wheeling around. “Do you still count toward that ‘only angels can kill angels’ rule, even without your wings?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel said, shaking his head. “Maybe. I’ve never heard of it being done.”
“I’ll look into it,” Bobby said.
“Hey guys-”
“So we’ve got our own firepower, anti-angel mojo, the prophet, a fallen angel on our shoulder, and our own mud monkey smarts,” Dean said, nodding proudly. “I think we’ve got the makings of a plan.”
“HEY,” Chuck shouted, leaning forward in his chair and clutching the cushion beneath him. That got their attention. He shrank turtle-style into the folded up hood of his borrowed hoodie. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Don’t want to what?” Dean said, giving him a confused look.
“Play Sydney Bristow for you,” Chuck said, and then he had to shake his head to erase the mental image of himself in a blue wig and black mesh and PVC Goth clothes. “I’m not that person. I’m-I’m just a writer.”
“This is important, son,” Bobby said, as if it needed to be said again.
“I know, but I-I can’t.” Chuck got up from his chair, keeping his eyes trained on the floor. “I just-I don’t want to. I can’t do it. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Are you serious?” Dean started, his voice rising so sharply Chuck wondered why it didn’t shake the windows. “You’re the best weapon we’ve got, and you’re just gonna back out because you’re having a bad self-esteem day? Listen, you-”
“Stop it,” Castiel growled, and Chuck glanced up to see the fallen angel halfway upright and gripping Dean’s wrist, his fingernails turning the skin beneath them white. He caught and held Dean’s gaze. “Don’t talk to him like that.”
If Castiel still had his grace, Chuck imagined this would be the sort of scene where the air would crackle with static, the stained glass lamp on the end table would flicker and short out, and the TV would do an impression of a snow globe. He could feel the tension physically, even without those signs - it wound something tight in his chest and made his head feel two sizes too small. Taking the opportunity to make his exit, Chuck clomped down the basement stairs and into the panic room. Closing the door after himself, he leaned against it, straining to catch his breath. Dean’s words pitched through his head, louder with every repeat. Telling them to shut up didn’t stop them. Gulping down air didn’t stop them. The only thing that helped was easing himself down onto the floor under his desk with his happy-verse manuscript.
It was okay, he wrote shakily, not caring what scene he was writing in because it was true of all of them. It would be okay.
***
“It’s you, Dean,” the fallen angel said, his eyes alight with hope. In the dark of the garage, he caressed the man’s cheek and drew one of the hunter’s hands up under his own shirt, leading the broad fingertips to the edge of his injury. “It’s healing because of you.”
“Me?” Dean said, brushing his lips across the man’s forehead. “I keep telling you, Cas, there’s nothing special about me.”
“I rebuilt your body using my grace. That energy still lingers within you, like a coal taken from an inferno. My proximity to you has been drawing it to me, healing me.”
Dean pressed his hand against the injury under Castiel’s t-shirt, feeling the way the hollow was filling in. Then he pressed their noses together and said, breath to breath with his companion, “Then let’s get you some more of that proximity.”
He closed his fingers in the fabric of Castiel’s collar and pulled him in to-
“Hey, Chuck?”
“Augh!” Chuck answered, slapping his notebook closed. He wheeled around.
Sam stood in the doorway, both eyebrows now hidden in his bangs and a hand resting cautiously on the
panic room door. Chuck hadn’t even heard the door open. “You busy?” Sam said.
“What? No, of course not. I was just…cleaning.”
Sam glanced around the blank room. “Uh…huh. Hey, could I talk to you for a second?”
Chuck’s knuckles were turning white against the cover of his notebook. He unclenched his hand and pushed the notebook far back on the desk, putting on a smile. “Sure, Sam. What’s up?”
“Um,” Sam said, swallowing. “Somewhere else?”
“O-okay, sure,” Chuck said, and got up to follow Sam out into the basement.
They stopped in the storage area, Sam looming amidst shelves of ammunition and lawn furniture and Chuck feeling like he’d stepped into a bad Honey, We Shrunk the Kids sequel. Sam’s adam’s apple bobbed helplessly for a minute as he scanned the room, clearly searching for words, and Chuck silently prayed that this wasn’t going to be one of those heartfelt moments that ended in crying, because he was already flashing back to that scene with the rain and the mud slide, and “Died drowning in gigantic manly tears” was not something he wanted on his headstone.
“Is this about this afternoon?” he asked, pressing himself up against a shelf full of curse boxes in case that set off the waterworks.
“What?” Sam said, and shook his head. “No, no. I’m not gonna get on your case about that. I was, uh, wondering-” He cleared his throat, and the way it echoed in the small basement nook, it was like a roll of thunder. “I was wondering if you’d seen anything about me.”
“Oh,” Chuck said, his shoulders relaxing slightly.
“Because I know you said before that you weren’t having any visions of significant stuff, but I was thinking maybe you just saw something really awful going down and wanted to spare us the news. Maybe something about me.” Sam took a deep breath and stepped back, motioning to his chest. “And I wanted to let you know that, if that’s the case, I want to hear it. I really do. I think I can handle it now.”
“You…can…handle it?” Chuck drew his lower lip across his teeth, parsing the words.
“Yeah,” Sam said, and actually he seemed pretty confident. “It’s sorta something I’ve realized, being stuck here with you guys and my brother and Bobby. Remember how, back when I asked you what the story looked like for me, you said it seemed like it all rested on my shoulders?” Sam laughed and raised his arms. “Well, that’s crap. I’ve got family. I’ve got tons of shoulders!”
“Yes, a lot of shoulders,” Chuck nodded, flinching away from the display of arm span.
“Point is, I can take it. So if you’re trying to spare my feelings or something, just let me have it. I’m ready.”
Chuck looked up at him with his mouth slightly agape. Sam seemed so proud of himself, Chuck almost wanted to make something terrible up just to let him take the news gracefully. Almost. “I haven’t been,” he said, lowering his head. “I’m sorry, Sam. I haven’t seen anything about you. I wish I had.”
Sam surveyed his face for a minute, and then his shoulders drooped back to a semi-human width. “Okay,” he said, sounding a little suspicious. “Let me know when you do.” When he walked up the stairs, his footfalls sent dust raining down into the storage area.
Chuck stood in the dark by himself for a bit, trying to figure out what had just happened. Sam had lumped him and Castiel in together as “you guys.” Apparently there was some sort of idea floating around that Chuck was holding things back from everyone - and not what he was actually holding back.
Chuck knew he should be worried, but all he could think of was how he wished he could face his own future with open arms like that.
***
That night, Chuck drank the last of the liquor himself. It wasn’t like Castiel was going to, what with the missing blood and all, so hey, why not? Behind the closed door of the panic room, he got good and wasted and threw himself a ticker tape parade with pages he tore out of No Rest For The Wicked. He’d always hated that book a little bit. It had given him the meanest headaches coming out, and he didn’t even have a decent profit to show for it - instead of getting the laptop he’d been planning on, he’d followed one of his beta readers’ advice and “invested” the measly advance on the stock market just before it crashed.
When Castiel came in, this time in boxers and a Mötley Crüe t-shirt, the floor was strewn with shreds of rushed narration and Chuck was stretched out across his cot, both hands pressed hard against his eyes, watching the colors swirl behind his eyelids.
“Prophet?” Castiel asked quietly, closing the door.
Chuck sighed, peeling his hands away. The dome of the panic room swam with gray-green whorls of light. “I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
Castiel sat down carefully on his own cot and deposited his day clothes in the grocery crate where he kept his laundry. “I won’t, then.”
Chuck’s head lolled sideways, and he watched the horizontal image of Castiel sitting cross-legged in borrowed clothes, one hand idly resting on his chest. A stab of remorse went through his own chest in the same spot. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, Cas. If it was up to me, if I was the one doing it-”
“You weren’t.”
“I’d fix it. If I could, I’d make it better.”
“It isn’t your job to fix things.”
Chuck snuffed. “Of course not. I’m just a writer.”
“Chuck?”
“Yeah?”
Castiel waited to catch his eyes, and then he raised his eyebrows and asked, “Are you okay?”
Chuck pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, trying to will back…something, he wasn’t sure what. When he opened his eyes, he saw the dome of the panic room and felt the weariness in the coils of muscles in his neck. If he were a character in his happy-verse, he wouldn’t have sore neck muscles. But he wasn’t a character there, and his life wasn’t a revisable universe. “No,” he said, and heard his voice come out tight. “I don’t think so, not really.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
Chuck wanted to laugh at the question - literary symmetry invading his own pulp fiction life - but his head was starting to ache already and he was pretty sure laughing was a bad idea. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you want?”
“Cas…”
“If you’re unsure, I have an educational exercise on the subject.”
Chuck smiled a little, turning his head back to his friend. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath. “I want TV - real TV, not this five fuzzy channels crap Bobby’s got. I miss cable so much I can’t breathe sometimes when I think about all the shows my Tivo’s deleting. I want to fall asleep in my own bed and pull on my own bathrobe the next morning and not have to ‘rock-paper-scissors’ anybody for the bathroom.” He flung his arms in the air. “I want to eat something from an air-sealed bag that isn’t Funyuns! What is it with hunters and Funyuns? Funyuns and self-sacrifice, that’s all they ever want!” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“The self-sacrificing. Dean bats his eyes at you, and you fall to give him a hand. The bunch of us need help, and in an instant you’re ready to die a slow bloodletting death just to give us a little extra time. I mean, you’d been a holy being since probably the fire and ooze stage of the world, and you were willing to throw it all away to help a handful of humans you’d known for less than a year. Who does that?” Chuck settled his arms back around his head. “You’re too good, Castiel. And they are, too, whether they believe it or not. A whole commune of heroes.”
Castiel tilted his head at Chuck, his eyes narrowing and his lips pursing. “You don’t think you’re good.”
Chuck sat up abruptly, sending the room spinning slightly, and pressed his hands to his collar bone. “Have you seen me? I don’t communicate well with other people, I’m practically a hermit, I make pop culture references constantly - I know it’s annoying-”
“It doesn’t annoy me.”
“-I forget to brush my teeth for three, four days at a time, I always take seconds even if I’m not really hungry, I steal, I lie-” Chuck was counting on his fingers. “-and I’d rather write slash fiction than deal with real life!”
Castiel blew a long breath out his nose. “What’s slash fiction?”
Chuck shook his head. “Ask Sam to explain it to you sometime.”
The fallen angel nodded, then returned his attention to the matter. “Chuck, you’re not a bad person.”
“You really need to ask Sam about slash fiction before you make that call,” Chuck said, biting his thumbnail.
“You dressed my wound,” Castiel said. “You dragged me into your car to get me to safety, bought me clothes, introduced me to so many new things to try to help me.”
“I also introduced you to Ace of Base,” Chuck said quietly. “For which I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be. That sing-along was excellent.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Chuck frowned deeply.
Castiel smiled. “You’re a good man, Chuck. And a good friend. I promise you I’m right - I’ve had a lot of experience recently picking out the good men from the bad.”
Chuck didn’t feel the words connect to anything inside him, but he smiled anyway, for Castiel. “Thanks for sticking up for me today.”
“No need for thanks,” The angel replied. “You would’ve done the same for me.”
That did register. It was true - he would’ve. “That’s right,” he said. “‘Cause I’ve got your back.”
“Good night, Chuck,” Castiel said, burying his face in the pillow.
“G’night, Mr. Stark,” Chuck mumbled.
He sat in his cot for awhile after Castiel went to sleep, thinking about how Sam had lumped him and Castiel together as “you guys” and the heroes upstairs and across the room from him, and briefly ruminating on how much he despised Funyuns. The liquor was starting to wear off - he could tell because he was starting to feel a little bit of remorse for the book he’d ruined. He turned his thoughts to his happy-verse and the mostly-finished outline in his head.
It needed something. He knew this. Every story needed a proper climax, even ones that nobody would read. In a regular romance, it would’ve been easy - the romantic leads getting together - but he’d already brought Castiel and Dean together a third of the way into the book. They’d had their angst moments and pushed through them. Hell, the last scene he’d written was the two of them having the big “Is this a relationship?” talk, and while fully warm fuzzy-inducing, it wasn’t exactly building action. So unless he wanted to leave that the lackluster peak of the story, he’d have to find-
Oh. Ohhhhh crap.
Chuck’s gut jerked as the realization struck, and he covered his face with his hands, pushing his fingertips up into his messy hair. “Aw, Christ,” he muttered.
He knew what his story needed. With the tensions he’d been setting up between characters, the way the weight of the conflict had settled - really, when he thought about it, there was only one way for his happy-verse story to end.
Castiel and Dean had to get it on.
***
All the next day, Chuck wrote. And scratched out. And wrote again. He started the scene so many times he was beginning to think he’d been thrown into a trickster time loop of softcore gay porn. Around mid-afternoon, while everyone else was upstairs strategizing, Chuck finally decided to scrap everything he had in mind and just start in media res, drawing scene elements from a tiny envelope in his head like cards in Clue: Dean on Castiel, in the back of the VW van in the scrap yard, with a blowjob. GO.
Castiel gazed at Dean with a look of dire longing. “For most of my existence, ‘want’ has been an abstract concept, something to feel only by proxy while closely observing a human. Even before they took my grace, you made wanting a tangible thing to me. I wanted to be near you before I knew to identify the urge.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Dean said, kissing him deeply. His hands explored the hem of Castiel’s borrowed shirt, straying into the lines of soft skin and taut muscles beneath it. “Don’t tell anyone,” he breathed into the angel’s neck, nipping at it, “but I got half a hard-on when you threatened my life in Bobby’s kitchen.”
“Dean,” Castiel groaned low in his throat, pressing hard against him.
Okay, so this? This was awkward. Like really, really awkward.
Chuck had written sex scenes before - hell, he’d published them under a pseudonym and proudly cashed the check! He’d even taken a two-week email correspondence course on Writing The Love Scene before his foray into romance novels - but that was before he’d known his characters personally.
Dean lowered his head to the angel’s smooth chest, tasting the soft flesh where his collar bones met. He tasted like anyone, the hunter was a little surprised to discover - no special flavor that indicated the power this body had held, no crackle of electricity. Dean worked his way downward slowly, and as his lips brushed the top edge of Castiel’s injury, the angel’s muscles stiffened.
“Dean,” he said, high in his throat.
Chuck paused, cursing his repetition. “Dean” again? Half of this Castiel’s dialogue was “Dean.” It was like happy-verse Castiel was so lost for angst and exposition that he filled the void with his favorite syllable. Chuck sighed. It wasn’t like anyone was going to read it, anyway. And like Anne Lamott advised, everything was just a shitty first draft before revision.
There was still an edge of bandage in the way - a mostly pointless square of gauze and medical tape that only served to cover the new skin beneath. The hole from which Castiel’s grace had been torn was nearly invisible now - a slight divot in his chest and nothing more. Dean peeled away the bandage with his broad, nimble fingers, enjoying the fact that his love had helped to heal it. “God,” he breathed huskily, drawing his fingers down across the scar, “this is amazing.”
“It’s-” the angel started, and pressed his lips together hard. “It’s a mark of sin.”
Dean only grinned up at him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a fan of sin.” And then he kissed and teased a trail down the front of the angel, his lips raking across the new skin just like any other part. It was slick and pink, but only skin. And like the rest of the angel, it ripped small unintelligible noises from him when touched.
Symbolism. He had to push on the symbolism, otherwise this was just gratuitous.
“Does it hurt?” Dean asked, drawing his lips away from the scar to gaze up into Castiel’s waiting eyes.
“Not with you,” the man replied, beginning to smile.
Bingo! Symbolism achieved. Chuck shifted in his chair, eyeing the panic room door.
Dean undid Castiel’s jeans and slipped them down along his slender hips, his fingers brushing against the soft flesh there. Castiel’s proud manhood-
No.
Castiel’s quivering member-
Yeah, no.
Castiel’s vulnerable man-reaction-
Um, definitely not.
Chuck scowled at the page, crossing out phrase after phrase until he finally gave up and settled on the most scene-appropriate one. Then he decided he’d spent entirely too much time thinking about fallen angel penis names and moved on.
Dean’s mouth closed around him, drawing louder and louder sounds of ecstacy from his once-holy lips. The song of Castiel’s pleasure filled the back of the van, and Dean worried momentarily that maybe his brother or father figure might overhear, having ventured out into the scrap yard to look for them. But then Castiel moaned his name and he decided he didn’t care if the world and all of Heaven and Hell knew. Dragging his fingers down the length of Castiel’s body as he worked, he felt the muscles tense and sweat begin to trail down his sides like rain on the window of the Impala.
Fingers dug into his hair, and he felt the taut body beneath his own, newly mortal and aching for a glimpse of true human passion, begin to-
“Chuck?”
“AUGH!” Chuck replied, turning around and covering his notebook with one arm in the same motion.
Castiel stood in the doorway, giving him the curious look he normally reserved for when Chuck accidentally referenced Sex and the City. “It’s time for dinner.”
“Right. Coming.” Chuck blinked hard, cursing himself internally. “I’m coming-to dinner. Yes. That.”
He slipped the notebook into the top drawer casually and joined Castiel at the stairs.
“Are you all right?” Castiel asked him cautiously.
“I’m totally normal and great, thanks for asking. How’s your day been, buddy?”
That seemed to change the topic.
The truth was, Chuck was not totally normal and great. At the dinner table, he couldn’t stop noticing stupid little subtextual things that were probably not actually subtext between Dean and Castiel. Like when Castiel nicked his finger on the steak knife and Dean immediately reached to wrap the injured digit in a napkin, or when Castiel stared “eye sex” style at Dean while he was talking. And he couldn’t stop thinking about the two of them in the scene he’d just written, stripped down and tasting each other. It was just-jarring was probably the word. He’d never written a sex scene where he had to have dinner with its subjects afterwards. He’d actually…never written a sex scene between two guys before. Which made it slightly more awkward and difficult to stop thinking about.
So much so that ten minutes into the meal, he accidentally asked Dean, “Could you pass the penis?” When everyone’s attention landed on him, he amended, “Peas. Pass the peas.” That didn’t much change the situation, except for getting a bowl of peas tossed in front of him, so he made a show of smacking his forehead and said, “Sorry, I was thinking about this article I read this afternoon about duck penises.” And then he proceeded to inform the table’s occupants for the next five minutes about how ducks were one of few bird species that actually had penises, that they actually had the second largest penis to body size ratio of all animals, they used their giant corkscrew-shaped penises to sword fight other duck’s penises sometimes to get to female ducks, and hey, wasn’t that actually kind of fascinating?
Bobby left the table after just a few sentences, clearly losing all faith in humanity. Castiel listened raptly, Sam with a slightly baffled but nonetheless entertained expression. And Dean, when Chuck was done, screwed up his eyebrows and said simply, “Duck penises?”
“National Geographic, Dean,” Chuck said, putting on his most pretentious writer tone. “You should check it out sometime. You might learn something.”
***
The novel - and it was a novel now, he’d decided, a little short and disorganized but totally fixable in revision - was nearly complete. Chuck huddled over his desk, drawing out the denouement as much as he could. First they’d had sex in the van. And the garage. And Bobby’s guest bedroom. Now, it was time to drop the smut for a bit and get back to the plot.
Castiel clutched the towel to his waist as he ran, still dripping from the interrupted shower, his feet pounding out a thunderstorm on the porch boards.
Bobby careened out the door after him, a shotgun in his fist and his voice raised in a bellow. “Get back here! I know you angel-whammied him, you sneaky bastard!”
“I didn’t do anything to him!”
“You did plenty to me!” Dean yelled from the doorway, clearly enjoying the show.
“You’re not helping!”
Bobby stopped on the edge of the steps and took aim. His shot nicked the ground at Castiel’s feet, and the fallen angel managed to dance with a yelp and shoot Dean a glare at once. “Where d’you think you’re runnin’?” Bobby hollered. “There’s only so much yard, and you don’t have your wings! Just get back here and take the whammy off the boy so I can kill you proper!”
“Bobby, cool it,” Dean said, stepping out to set a hand on the man’s shoulder. His other hand held a hand towel to his crotch. “There’s no whammy. Look, I’m sorry you had to find out like that-” His smirk said otherwise “-but me and Cas, we’ve kind of got a thing going on.”
Castiel stopped to catch his breath, leaning against a fence post. “Would it help if I told you I love him?”
Bobby made an indistinguishable sound in his throat, looking between the man and the angel. “Marginally,” he answered, cradling the shotgun against -
The lamp on Chuck’s writing desk began to shake. He paused, sitting back as he felt the vibrations moving through his chair. A moment later, the iron walls of the panic room began to groan, and all the furniture took a plunge to the left.
Chuck didn’t even have time to yell as he hurtled to the ground. Everything free standing in the room lurched and jumped, and outside he heard a cacophony that could only be boxes of ammunition and amulets raining to the cement floor.
An earthquake? In South Dakota? He decided to take a dive under the bed instead of puzzling it out. It was the end times, after all. Behind him, he heard his notebook slap to the floor.
The rumbling and groaning pierced Chuck’s ears like a screech, and he pressed his hands against his head to drown it out. So he felt but didn’t hear it when the earthquake stopped. He peeled one hand away from his ear hesitantly, then finding only a faint clatter of things moving upstairs, removed his other hand and crawled out from under the bed.
The basement stairs were intact, though the railing had cracked in two places. Chuck ventured upstairs, calling, “Guys? Everybody all right?”
A cough and a barrage of swearing replied. Bobby, at least, was okay.
Chuck padded through the house, making his way across the debris field. He found Sam in the kitchen, clutching a bowl of cookie dough he’d been mixing with a carton of eggs rained down his front, and Dean by the front door, beneath a bookcase that had made an A shape against the wall. Both of them were fine.
“Castiel?” Chuck called, and behind him, rolling his bruised shoulder, Dean called, “Cas?”
Castiel didn’t answer. He was occupied in the living room, standing in the center of the mess with his eyes fixed on the window beside the sigil. A crack split the anti-angel sigil through the center, so clean it looked intentional.
Outside the window, about thirty feet from the house, a trio of figures in suits stood in the driveway.
“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred!” called Zachariah’s nasal voice, and he raised his hands toward the house. “Oh, will you look at that? Found you already! You really should work on your hiding.”
Chuck’s center went cold. He reached out for Castiel’s arm, but Castiel didn’t respond. He did, however, start out the door, his eyes fixed on the spot where Zachariah and his angel posse stood. They were burly angels, a woman and a man, both in dark suits, and as he walked behind Castiel, Chuck found himself thinking of them as stunt angels.
No one said anything. They just followed, blankly, because-well, Chuck preferred to think it was because the two wussiest members of the group were striding out to meet the enemy and the hunters didn’t want to compromise their manhood by staying behind, but in truth it was probably because there was nothing else to do. Castiel, their only guard against the angels, was already down the porch steps. Dean followed shortly behind, with Chuck, and Sam and Bobby brought up the rear, Bobby gripping the cuff of Sam’s shirt like the boy might disappear if he didn’t.
Zachariah clapped his hands together as the entire Winchester company walked out into the driveway after Castiel. “Is it my turn to hide now?” he sneered.
“You’ll wish you had,” Castiel growled.
And hey, great, bravado! Chuck’s stomach shriveled within him. He took a step forward so he was shoulder to shoulder with Castiel. The fallen angel glanced over at him and straightened up.
“Yeah,” Chuck spat at Zachariah, trying to add a note of solidarity.
Zachariah tilted his head and pouted his lips. “Aw. That’s just precious.”
“What do you want?” Dean asked, coming up on Castiel’s other side.
“So many things,” Zachariah said, sounding wistful. “World peace. The end of disease. A fashionable bracelet made from Castiel’s shiny human teeth. Oh,” he added, looking straight at Chuck, “and the prophet, if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry,” Castiel said, the edge of his lip rising dangerously, “we’re not selling teeth or prophets today. Check the flea market two towns over.”
Dammit, Dean looked downright proud of him. Chuck smiled, then looked forward and saw Zachariah staring at him again with those creepy eyes. It was like if the Cheshire Cat dressed up as a shady salesman for Halloween, and somehow the thought made Chuck even more terrified.
Zachariah chuckled. “Shame about your face,” he said to Castiel.
Don’t take the bait, Chuck thought. Don’t do it. Please don’t.
“What about my face?” Castiel said.
Aw, crap. Crap crap crap crap.
Zachariah dropped his voice slightly and reached behind him, where in a blink, Stunt Angel #2 provided him a long, gleaming sword. “It’s going to get so filthy lying in the dirt.”
Chuck saw it coming. He’d written moments like this with these characters so many times that he could probably predict the very second of a gunshot with his eyes closed. He saw the arc of Zachariah’s arm starting toward Castiel, and the momentary widening of his companion’s eyes as he realized what was happening and that he couldn’t just fly out of the path.
For an instant, Chuck saw his own life with the kind of critical clarity he usually reserved for revisions. He saw his archangel-demolished house in a city he’d never had much use for, his cupboards filled with only alcohol and bread, his career papered with pseudonyms. He saw his one box of significant achievements stuffed unceremoniously into a desk drawer in Bobby’s panic room. The only important thing he’d ever written, and it didn’t even have his name on it. Hell, it wasn’t even his - it belonged to whatever power handed out the visions. He saw his happy-verse, too - just one more in a long line of attempts to make something right in this stupid, cruel, denouement-less world. It wasn’t a fair world - Castiel had been absolutely right on that point. Castiel, his friend, who’d called him a good man.
He wanted Castiel to be right about that, too.
Chuck shoved himself sideways, knocking Castiel to the ground. As Zachariah’s sword tore into his chest, the ground began to shake once again, a blinding light roaring across the scrapyard.
Chuck didn’t feel the pain until he hit the ground, and even then it was only a hot prickle beneath the well of blood spreading across the front of him. When his head rolled to the side, his cheek stuck in a pool of it. Castiel, both hands pressed to the dirt, stared back at him.
Someone yelled.
The archangel’s light washed the scrapyard white, forcing everyone - including Castiel - to cover their ears. For once, Chuck didn’t. He heard Zachariah scream, a sound shriller than Castiel’s scream in his living room, and knew the archangel was ripping the holy hell out of him.
Chuck’s second to last thought was: He killed me with a sword. How weird is that?
His last thought was that Castiel would have appreciated the reference.
Part 5
Characters: Chuck, Castiel/Dean, Bobby, Sam
Ratings/Warnings: R for smut and duck facts/Takes place just after S4 finale
Word Count: 7200
Summary: Chuck retreats into his newly romancified happy-verse when things get difficult. The happy-verse gets happy in the pants. Real life comes knocking, and Chuck makes a snap decision.
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)
After the night of drunken confessions, Chuck felt that he and Castiel had come to understand each other a little better. Fully opening himself up to the fallen angel would mean revealing his potentially stay-at-Bobby’s-ending secret about his prophet days being over, so he kept that much to himself, but Castiel still looked at him every so often like they had some sort of secret club. The Club of Castiel Sprung Sam From Rehab, maybe, or the Dumb Pop Culture References Club. Either way, Chuck was grateful for it. It was the first time he’d felt like he belonged in this situation since…well. He actually couldn’t think of a time he’d felt like he belonged in this situation, before now.
Castiel tried to involve Chuck in the activities of the hunters. This usually meant circular discussions about angels and lots of stern looks passed around, and Chuck declined when he could get out of it, retreating to his writing desk instead. He could get more done there.
But other times Castiel just involved Chuck in general, regardless of what he was doing - if Bobby asked him to fetch something from the garage, he’d call Chuck up from the basement to do it together. If dishes needed cleaning, he’d ask if Chuck wanted to split the work. If he was going out to sit on the porch, he’d pass Chuck a look that said, “Interested?” and Chuck would shrug and go along.
It was beginning to annoy Dean. Chuck could tell, and he wasn’t sorry. He considered it payback for Dean shoving him against a wall that one time. Giant Dean-chicken, always clucking after Castiel, trailed along behind the two of them when these sorts of things happened, making awkward noises and occasionally trying to steer the subject toward Castiel’s well-being. You’d think he never got to spend any time alone with the angel, the amount of time he spent wearing Sam’s hand-me-down bitchface. But really, he got primary custody while Chuck still spent most of his time in the panic room. Maybe he was jealous that every night the guy he was trying to assuage his guilt about could be heard actually talking downstairs with the interloping writer.
“You two’re a couple of regular roommies,” Dean observed a few days after the drinking session. “What do you even do down there after we go to bed?”
“We stay up late swapping manly stories,” Castiel replied with his patented head tilt, and it took all of Chuck’s willpower not to burst out laughing until Dean had left the room.
Neither of them told anyone about the two waning bottles of liquor stashed in the bottom drawer of Chuck’s desk.
Chuck was beginning to feel like he’d moved into that desk. It certainly had the classic elements of his home: bottom drawer, alcohol; middle drawer, Carver Edlund’s series stacked neatly out of sight; top drawer, his current project. All it needed was action figures posed around the decades-old lamp and it could’ve been home.
More so than the desk, though, he felt like he’d made a home for himself in the story. Whenever he began to feel like an unwelcome guest at Bobby’s table or the Invisible Man in the midst of Sam and Dean’s important conversations, his mind drifted back to the happy-verse, plucking plot strings and organizing events in a neat outline. It was oddly calming, like having one of those miniature zen rock gardens to arrange. Sitting down to work on it made his shoulders slacken and the tension in his skull let up a little. He began to associate the musty attic and iron smell of the panic room with relief. In just a few days, he had a near-complete working outline of the story. By the time Sam held another angel blood drive to redo the sigil on the living room wall, Chuck had filled his entire notebook and stolen an empty canvas-bound journal from Bobby’s stash of hunting supplies to continue his work.
Romance made the story easy. Formulaic. Chuck didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. And Castiel with Dean? That made it even easier! He didn’t even have to come up with major plot complications - they were already built into the characters. Angel falls for hunter (literally). Angel confesses feelings for hunter. Manly heteronormative hunter has to tell manly hunter family about his gay love. Angel has to face further fall from grace in the eyes of his former family. Hunter and angel struggle to reconcile the warring worlds from whence they came. It was like Romeo and Juliet, but with two guys instead of whiney teenagers and no idiot falling on a sword to lead the mess into tragedy. Also not destined for a brilliant Reduced Shakespeare Company parody, but Chuck never expected anything he wrote to be popular enough to be parodied, anyway.
***
Sam had dug too deep with the knife, and the new stitches prickled like a line of barbed wire across Castiel’s forearm. Chuck couldn’t keep his eyes off it, even though he was supposed to be watching the TV. Castiel had invited him up from his “self-induced seclusion” in the basement to watch a movie with himself and Dean, and all Chuck could think about was how that sort of knife slip-up wouldn’t have happened in his story. Pain didn’t happen for no reason in the happy-verse.
Also, in the happy-verse, he was pretty sure Bobby’s movie collection wasn’t this limited. They’d watched The Edge six times now. Six. Times. Chuck liked movies about man-eating bears just as much as the next guy, but there were only so many times you could watch the “I’m going to kill the bear!” speech before it stopped being an inspiring triumph of the human spirit and started just being Anthony Hopkins yelling about bears.
There were no man-eating bears in happy-verse, Chuck decided. Canon effective immediately.
Castiel reached for his water glass, found it empty, and pushed himself up off the couch. As soon as his feet were flat on the rug, his eyelids fluttered and his face washed pale.
“Woah, hey, Cas?” Dean said beside him.
Castiel swayed slightly, not answering, and then collapsed. Dean only barely caught him before he hit the coffee table, swearing under his breath and hauling the limp fallen angel back onto the couch. Chuck rose to help, but Dean already had the guy’s head on a pillow and his legs aligned on the battered cushions.
“C’mon, Cas,” Dean said, smacking his cheek lightly. “Show me those big spooky blues.”
The fallen angel opened his eyes slowly. “Dean…”
This was exactly the sort of interchange that could actually happen in the the romantic plotline of the happy-verse. Chuck mentally bookmarked the scene for future reference and then swallowed the rush of guilt that came with it. His friend was hurt - maybe, knowing this stupid world, secretly dying of some fallen angel brain disease. Chuck should be doting. “Is he okay?” he asked.
Dean frowned at Castiel’s arm. “Too much blood loss.”
“I’m fine,” Castiel said, his voice almost as un-fine as when he’d woken up in Chuck’s house.
“You’re not fine. Human body’s not meant to be an art supply wholesaler.”
“It’s necessary-” the fallen angel started, and Dean silenced him with a yell out into the rest of the house.
“FAMILY MEETING!”
Chuck could just about smell the cloud of book dust that followed Bobby and Sam into the room. They stood around the coffee table opposite Dean, and sitting in the worn armchair, Chuck felt like he’d suddenly apparated in a forest of scuffed jeans and flannel.
“What’s the matter?” Bobby asked.
“This,” Dean said, pointing to the angel half-conscious on the couch. “And that,” he added, aiming his finger at the sigil on the wall. “Look, I’m cool with laying low for a while, but somebody’s gotta say it: this isn’t a long-term solution. What the hell are we gonna do?”
Bobby and Sam traded uncertain looks, and Chuck pressed himself deeper into the chair.
“Well,” Sam started, “we’re up against angels, and only angels can kill other angels, so it’s a little complicated.”
“Complicated,” Dean huffed. “Even my damn laundry’s complicated these days. We’ve got an angel on our side, sort of.”
“I’m not-” Castiel started, and pursed his lips as he tried to push himself upright.
“Down, Dick Blick,” Dean ordered, pointing, and Castiel sighed, sinking back into the couch. “Okay,” he said, folding his arms and looking the other hunters in the eyes. “So we need to start coming up with a defensive plan here.”
“Against who?” Bobby said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re stuck between a rock and another, equally immortal rock.”
“Let’s start with the one who’s actively tried to kill us so far,” Dean said, glancing between his brother and his angel.
His angel. Chuck didn’t know why he’d started putting it that way in his head. It was kind of gay.
“We take out Zachariah,” Castiel said, the syllables harsh in his throat. The hunters nodded in somber, ponderous way that reminded Chuck of the Council of Elrond. “You have my sword,” Sam would say, stepping up to the throne/couch, and then Bobby, all gruff and dwarf-like, would announce, “And my axe!” Dean could be the Sam to Castiel’s Frodo, if they weren’t so freaking tall.
Who did that make him, Chuck wondered - Elrond? No, he was too silent for Elrond. He was probably Background Elf #3. Or maybe the pack mule.
“Okay,” Dean announced. “Inventory. What do we got that might be useful against a massive bureaucratic prick of an angel?”
“The usual ammunition,” Bobby said. “Depending on who he’s got for underlings, might be useful.”
“Blood,” Sam said, and drew back slightly at the glance he got off Bobby for being the one to suggest it. “And creativity. The angels don’t seem big on that.” He passed Castiel an apologetic shrug, but Castiel didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
“And we’ve got the prophet,” Dean said, glancing at Chuck. “Probably the most important piece in the game at this point. Whoever’s got the score ahead of time wins the game.”
Chuck frowned. He didn’t appreciate being the golden snitch in some cosmic Quidditch match. “You guys, I’m all for the good guys winning, but-”
“But his visions aren’t giving us anything useful,” Bobby said over him. “What do we do in the meantime?”
“Misdirection?” Sam suggested.
“Yeah,” Dean said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s it. We could feed misinformation through Chuck to Zach and company, trick ‘em into positioning themselves where we want ‘em.”
“Uh-” Chuck started, raising a finger.
“We could only do that once, maybe twice before they figured out what’s going on, though,” Sam said. “We’d have to make it count.”
“Excuse me-”
“Cas,” Dean said, wheeling around. “Do you still count toward that ‘only angels can kill angels’ rule, even without your wings?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel said, shaking his head. “Maybe. I’ve never heard of it being done.”
“I’ll look into it,” Bobby said.
“Hey guys-”
“So we’ve got our own firepower, anti-angel mojo, the prophet, a fallen angel on our shoulder, and our own mud monkey smarts,” Dean said, nodding proudly. “I think we’ve got the makings of a plan.”
“HEY,” Chuck shouted, leaning forward in his chair and clutching the cushion beneath him. That got their attention. He shrank turtle-style into the folded up hood of his borrowed hoodie. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Don’t want to what?” Dean said, giving him a confused look.
“Play Sydney Bristow for you,” Chuck said, and then he had to shake his head to erase the mental image of himself in a blue wig and black mesh and PVC Goth clothes. “I’m not that person. I’m-I’m just a writer.”
“This is important, son,” Bobby said, as if it needed to be said again.
“I know, but I-I can’t.” Chuck got up from his chair, keeping his eyes trained on the floor. “I just-I don’t want to. I can’t do it. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Are you serious?” Dean started, his voice rising so sharply Chuck wondered why it didn’t shake the windows. “You’re the best weapon we’ve got, and you’re just gonna back out because you’re having a bad self-esteem day? Listen, you-”
“Stop it,” Castiel growled, and Chuck glanced up to see the fallen angel halfway upright and gripping Dean’s wrist, his fingernails turning the skin beneath them white. He caught and held Dean’s gaze. “Don’t talk to him like that.”
If Castiel still had his grace, Chuck imagined this would be the sort of scene where the air would crackle with static, the stained glass lamp on the end table would flicker and short out, and the TV would do an impression of a snow globe. He could feel the tension physically, even without those signs - it wound something tight in his chest and made his head feel two sizes too small. Taking the opportunity to make his exit, Chuck clomped down the basement stairs and into the panic room. Closing the door after himself, he leaned against it, straining to catch his breath. Dean’s words pitched through his head, louder with every repeat. Telling them to shut up didn’t stop them. Gulping down air didn’t stop them. The only thing that helped was easing himself down onto the floor under his desk with his happy-verse manuscript.
It was okay, he wrote shakily, not caring what scene he was writing in because it was true of all of them. It would be okay.
***
“It’s you, Dean,” the fallen angel said, his eyes alight with hope. In the dark of the garage, he caressed the man’s cheek and drew one of the hunter’s hands up under his own shirt, leading the broad fingertips to the edge of his injury. “It’s healing because of you.”
“Me?” Dean said, brushing his lips across the man’s forehead. “I keep telling you, Cas, there’s nothing special about me.”
“I rebuilt your body using my grace. That energy still lingers within you, like a coal taken from an inferno. My proximity to you has been drawing it to me, healing me.”
Dean pressed his hand against the injury under Castiel’s t-shirt, feeling the way the hollow was filling in. Then he pressed their noses together and said, breath to breath with his companion, “Then let’s get you some more of that proximity.”
He closed his fingers in the fabric of Castiel’s collar and pulled him in to-
“Hey, Chuck?”
“Augh!” Chuck answered, slapping his notebook closed. He wheeled around.
Sam stood in the doorway, both eyebrows now hidden in his bangs and a hand resting cautiously on the
panic room door. Chuck hadn’t even heard the door open. “You busy?” Sam said.
“What? No, of course not. I was just…cleaning.”
Sam glanced around the blank room. “Uh…huh. Hey, could I talk to you for a second?”
Chuck’s knuckles were turning white against the cover of his notebook. He unclenched his hand and pushed the notebook far back on the desk, putting on a smile. “Sure, Sam. What’s up?”
“Um,” Sam said, swallowing. “Somewhere else?”
“O-okay, sure,” Chuck said, and got up to follow Sam out into the basement.
They stopped in the storage area, Sam looming amidst shelves of ammunition and lawn furniture and Chuck feeling like he’d stepped into a bad Honey, We Shrunk the Kids sequel. Sam’s adam’s apple bobbed helplessly for a minute as he scanned the room, clearly searching for words, and Chuck silently prayed that this wasn’t going to be one of those heartfelt moments that ended in crying, because he was already flashing back to that scene with the rain and the mud slide, and “Died drowning in gigantic manly tears” was not something he wanted on his headstone.
“Is this about this afternoon?” he asked, pressing himself up against a shelf full of curse boxes in case that set off the waterworks.
“What?” Sam said, and shook his head. “No, no. I’m not gonna get on your case about that. I was, uh, wondering-” He cleared his throat, and the way it echoed in the small basement nook, it was like a roll of thunder. “I was wondering if you’d seen anything about me.”
“Oh,” Chuck said, his shoulders relaxing slightly.
“Because I know you said before that you weren’t having any visions of significant stuff, but I was thinking maybe you just saw something really awful going down and wanted to spare us the news. Maybe something about me.” Sam took a deep breath and stepped back, motioning to his chest. “And I wanted to let you know that, if that’s the case, I want to hear it. I really do. I think I can handle it now.”
“You…can…handle it?” Chuck drew his lower lip across his teeth, parsing the words.
“Yeah,” Sam said, and actually he seemed pretty confident. “It’s sorta something I’ve realized, being stuck here with you guys and my brother and Bobby. Remember how, back when I asked you what the story looked like for me, you said it seemed like it all rested on my shoulders?” Sam laughed and raised his arms. “Well, that’s crap. I’ve got family. I’ve got tons of shoulders!”
“Yes, a lot of shoulders,” Chuck nodded, flinching away from the display of arm span.
“Point is, I can take it. So if you’re trying to spare my feelings or something, just let me have it. I’m ready.”
Chuck looked up at him with his mouth slightly agape. Sam seemed so proud of himself, Chuck almost wanted to make something terrible up just to let him take the news gracefully. Almost. “I haven’t been,” he said, lowering his head. “I’m sorry, Sam. I haven’t seen anything about you. I wish I had.”
Sam surveyed his face for a minute, and then his shoulders drooped back to a semi-human width. “Okay,” he said, sounding a little suspicious. “Let me know when you do.” When he walked up the stairs, his footfalls sent dust raining down into the storage area.
Chuck stood in the dark by himself for a bit, trying to figure out what had just happened. Sam had lumped him and Castiel in together as “you guys.” Apparently there was some sort of idea floating around that Chuck was holding things back from everyone - and not what he was actually holding back.
Chuck knew he should be worried, but all he could think of was how he wished he could face his own future with open arms like that.
***
That night, Chuck drank the last of the liquor himself. It wasn’t like Castiel was going to, what with the missing blood and all, so hey, why not? Behind the closed door of the panic room, he got good and wasted and threw himself a ticker tape parade with pages he tore out of No Rest For The Wicked. He’d always hated that book a little bit. It had given him the meanest headaches coming out, and he didn’t even have a decent profit to show for it - instead of getting the laptop he’d been planning on, he’d followed one of his beta readers’ advice and “invested” the measly advance on the stock market just before it crashed.
When Castiel came in, this time in boxers and a Mötley Crüe t-shirt, the floor was strewn with shreds of rushed narration and Chuck was stretched out across his cot, both hands pressed hard against his eyes, watching the colors swirl behind his eyelids.
“Prophet?” Castiel asked quietly, closing the door.
Chuck sighed, peeling his hands away. The dome of the panic room swam with gray-green whorls of light. “I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
Castiel sat down carefully on his own cot and deposited his day clothes in the grocery crate where he kept his laundry. “I won’t, then.”
Chuck’s head lolled sideways, and he watched the horizontal image of Castiel sitting cross-legged in borrowed clothes, one hand idly resting on his chest. A stab of remorse went through his own chest in the same spot. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, Cas. If it was up to me, if I was the one doing it-”
“You weren’t.”
“I’d fix it. If I could, I’d make it better.”
“It isn’t your job to fix things.”
Chuck snuffed. “Of course not. I’m just a writer.”
“Chuck?”
“Yeah?”
Castiel waited to catch his eyes, and then he raised his eyebrows and asked, “Are you okay?”
Chuck pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, trying to will back…something, he wasn’t sure what. When he opened his eyes, he saw the dome of the panic room and felt the weariness in the coils of muscles in his neck. If he were a character in his happy-verse, he wouldn’t have sore neck muscles. But he wasn’t a character there, and his life wasn’t a revisable universe. “No,” he said, and heard his voice come out tight. “I don’t think so, not really.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
Chuck wanted to laugh at the question - literary symmetry invading his own pulp fiction life - but his head was starting to ache already and he was pretty sure laughing was a bad idea. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you want?”
“Cas…”
“If you’re unsure, I have an educational exercise on the subject.”
Chuck smiled a little, turning his head back to his friend. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath. “I want TV - real TV, not this five fuzzy channels crap Bobby’s got. I miss cable so much I can’t breathe sometimes when I think about all the shows my Tivo’s deleting. I want to fall asleep in my own bed and pull on my own bathrobe the next morning and not have to ‘rock-paper-scissors’ anybody for the bathroom.” He flung his arms in the air. “I want to eat something from an air-sealed bag that isn’t Funyuns! What is it with hunters and Funyuns? Funyuns and self-sacrifice, that’s all they ever want!” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“The self-sacrificing. Dean bats his eyes at you, and you fall to give him a hand. The bunch of us need help, and in an instant you’re ready to die a slow bloodletting death just to give us a little extra time. I mean, you’d been a holy being since probably the fire and ooze stage of the world, and you were willing to throw it all away to help a handful of humans you’d known for less than a year. Who does that?” Chuck settled his arms back around his head. “You’re too good, Castiel. And they are, too, whether they believe it or not. A whole commune of heroes.”
Castiel tilted his head at Chuck, his eyes narrowing and his lips pursing. “You don’t think you’re good.”
Chuck sat up abruptly, sending the room spinning slightly, and pressed his hands to his collar bone. “Have you seen me? I don’t communicate well with other people, I’m practically a hermit, I make pop culture references constantly - I know it’s annoying-”
“It doesn’t annoy me.”
“-I forget to brush my teeth for three, four days at a time, I always take seconds even if I’m not really hungry, I steal, I lie-” Chuck was counting on his fingers. “-and I’d rather write slash fiction than deal with real life!”
Castiel blew a long breath out his nose. “What’s slash fiction?”
Chuck shook his head. “Ask Sam to explain it to you sometime.”
The fallen angel nodded, then returned his attention to the matter. “Chuck, you’re not a bad person.”
“You really need to ask Sam about slash fiction before you make that call,” Chuck said, biting his thumbnail.
“You dressed my wound,” Castiel said. “You dragged me into your car to get me to safety, bought me clothes, introduced me to so many new things to try to help me.”
“I also introduced you to Ace of Base,” Chuck said quietly. “For which I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be. That sing-along was excellent.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Chuck frowned deeply.
Castiel smiled. “You’re a good man, Chuck. And a good friend. I promise you I’m right - I’ve had a lot of experience recently picking out the good men from the bad.”
Chuck didn’t feel the words connect to anything inside him, but he smiled anyway, for Castiel. “Thanks for sticking up for me today.”
“No need for thanks,” The angel replied. “You would’ve done the same for me.”
That did register. It was true - he would’ve. “That’s right,” he said. “‘Cause I’ve got your back.”
“Good night, Chuck,” Castiel said, burying his face in the pillow.
“G’night, Mr. Stark,” Chuck mumbled.
He sat in his cot for awhile after Castiel went to sleep, thinking about how Sam had lumped him and Castiel together as “you guys” and the heroes upstairs and across the room from him, and briefly ruminating on how much he despised Funyuns. The liquor was starting to wear off - he could tell because he was starting to feel a little bit of remorse for the book he’d ruined. He turned his thoughts to his happy-verse and the mostly-finished outline in his head.
It needed something. He knew this. Every story needed a proper climax, even ones that nobody would read. In a regular romance, it would’ve been easy - the romantic leads getting together - but he’d already brought Castiel and Dean together a third of the way into the book. They’d had their angst moments and pushed through them. Hell, the last scene he’d written was the two of them having the big “Is this a relationship?” talk, and while fully warm fuzzy-inducing, it wasn’t exactly building action. So unless he wanted to leave that the lackluster peak of the story, he’d have to find-
Oh. Ohhhhh crap.
Chuck’s gut jerked as the realization struck, and he covered his face with his hands, pushing his fingertips up into his messy hair. “Aw, Christ,” he muttered.
He knew what his story needed. With the tensions he’d been setting up between characters, the way the weight of the conflict had settled - really, when he thought about it, there was only one way for his happy-verse story to end.
Castiel and Dean had to get it on.
***
All the next day, Chuck wrote. And scratched out. And wrote again. He started the scene so many times he was beginning to think he’d been thrown into a trickster time loop of softcore gay porn. Around mid-afternoon, while everyone else was upstairs strategizing, Chuck finally decided to scrap everything he had in mind and just start in media res, drawing scene elements from a tiny envelope in his head like cards in Clue: Dean on Castiel, in the back of the VW van in the scrap yard, with a blowjob. GO.
Castiel gazed at Dean with a look of dire longing. “For most of my existence, ‘want’ has been an abstract concept, something to feel only by proxy while closely observing a human. Even before they took my grace, you made wanting a tangible thing to me. I wanted to be near you before I knew to identify the urge.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Dean said, kissing him deeply. His hands explored the hem of Castiel’s borrowed shirt, straying into the lines of soft skin and taut muscles beneath it. “Don’t tell anyone,” he breathed into the angel’s neck, nipping at it, “but I got half a hard-on when you threatened my life in Bobby’s kitchen.”
“Dean,” Castiel groaned low in his throat, pressing hard against him.
Okay, so this? This was awkward. Like really, really awkward.
Chuck had written sex scenes before - hell, he’d published them under a pseudonym and proudly cashed the check! He’d even taken a two-week email correspondence course on Writing The Love Scene before his foray into romance novels - but that was before he’d known his characters personally.
Dean lowered his head to the angel’s smooth chest, tasting the soft flesh where his collar bones met. He tasted like anyone, the hunter was a little surprised to discover - no special flavor that indicated the power this body had held, no crackle of electricity. Dean worked his way downward slowly, and as his lips brushed the top edge of Castiel’s injury, the angel’s muscles stiffened.
“Dean,” he said, high in his throat.
Chuck paused, cursing his repetition. “Dean” again? Half of this Castiel’s dialogue was “Dean.” It was like happy-verse Castiel was so lost for angst and exposition that he filled the void with his favorite syllable. Chuck sighed. It wasn’t like anyone was going to read it, anyway. And like Anne Lamott advised, everything was just a shitty first draft before revision.
There was still an edge of bandage in the way - a mostly pointless square of gauze and medical tape that only served to cover the new skin beneath. The hole from which Castiel’s grace had been torn was nearly invisible now - a slight divot in his chest and nothing more. Dean peeled away the bandage with his broad, nimble fingers, enjoying the fact that his love had helped to heal it. “God,” he breathed huskily, drawing his fingers down across the scar, “this is amazing.”
“It’s-” the angel started, and pressed his lips together hard. “It’s a mark of sin.”
Dean only grinned up at him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a fan of sin.” And then he kissed and teased a trail down the front of the angel, his lips raking across the new skin just like any other part. It was slick and pink, but only skin. And like the rest of the angel, it ripped small unintelligible noises from him when touched.
Symbolism. He had to push on the symbolism, otherwise this was just gratuitous.
“Does it hurt?” Dean asked, drawing his lips away from the scar to gaze up into Castiel’s waiting eyes.
“Not with you,” the man replied, beginning to smile.
Bingo! Symbolism achieved. Chuck shifted in his chair, eyeing the panic room door.
Dean undid Castiel’s jeans and slipped them down along his slender hips, his fingers brushing against the soft flesh there. Castiel’s proud manhood-
No.
Castiel’s quivering member-
Yeah, no.
Castiel’s vulnerable man-reaction-
Um, definitely not.
Chuck scowled at the page, crossing out phrase after phrase until he finally gave up and settled on the most scene-appropriate one. Then he decided he’d spent entirely too much time thinking about fallen angel penis names and moved on.
Dean’s mouth closed around him, drawing louder and louder sounds of ecstacy from his once-holy lips. The song of Castiel’s pleasure filled the back of the van, and Dean worried momentarily that maybe his brother or father figure might overhear, having ventured out into the scrap yard to look for them. But then Castiel moaned his name and he decided he didn’t care if the world and all of Heaven and Hell knew. Dragging his fingers down the length of Castiel’s body as he worked, he felt the muscles tense and sweat begin to trail down his sides like rain on the window of the Impala.
Fingers dug into his hair, and he felt the taut body beneath his own, newly mortal and aching for a glimpse of true human passion, begin to-
“Chuck?”
“AUGH!” Chuck replied, turning around and covering his notebook with one arm in the same motion.
Castiel stood in the doorway, giving him the curious look he normally reserved for when Chuck accidentally referenced Sex and the City. “It’s time for dinner.”
“Right. Coming.” Chuck blinked hard, cursing himself internally. “I’m coming-to dinner. Yes. That.”
He slipped the notebook into the top drawer casually and joined Castiel at the stairs.
“Are you all right?” Castiel asked him cautiously.
“I’m totally normal and great, thanks for asking. How’s your day been, buddy?”
That seemed to change the topic.
The truth was, Chuck was not totally normal and great. At the dinner table, he couldn’t stop noticing stupid little subtextual things that were probably not actually subtext between Dean and Castiel. Like when Castiel nicked his finger on the steak knife and Dean immediately reached to wrap the injured digit in a napkin, or when Castiel stared “eye sex” style at Dean while he was talking. And he couldn’t stop thinking about the two of them in the scene he’d just written, stripped down and tasting each other. It was just-jarring was probably the word. He’d never written a sex scene where he had to have dinner with its subjects afterwards. He’d actually…never written a sex scene between two guys before. Which made it slightly more awkward and difficult to stop thinking about.
So much so that ten minutes into the meal, he accidentally asked Dean, “Could you pass the penis?” When everyone’s attention landed on him, he amended, “Peas. Pass the peas.” That didn’t much change the situation, except for getting a bowl of peas tossed in front of him, so he made a show of smacking his forehead and said, “Sorry, I was thinking about this article I read this afternoon about duck penises.” And then he proceeded to inform the table’s occupants for the next five minutes about how ducks were one of few bird species that actually had penises, that they actually had the second largest penis to body size ratio of all animals, they used their giant corkscrew-shaped penises to sword fight other duck’s penises sometimes to get to female ducks, and hey, wasn’t that actually kind of fascinating?
Bobby left the table after just a few sentences, clearly losing all faith in humanity. Castiel listened raptly, Sam with a slightly baffled but nonetheless entertained expression. And Dean, when Chuck was done, screwed up his eyebrows and said simply, “Duck penises?”
“National Geographic, Dean,” Chuck said, putting on his most pretentious writer tone. “You should check it out sometime. You might learn something.”
***
The novel - and it was a novel now, he’d decided, a little short and disorganized but totally fixable in revision - was nearly complete. Chuck huddled over his desk, drawing out the denouement as much as he could. First they’d had sex in the van. And the garage. And Bobby’s guest bedroom. Now, it was time to drop the smut for a bit and get back to the plot.
Castiel clutched the towel to his waist as he ran, still dripping from the interrupted shower, his feet pounding out a thunderstorm on the porch boards.
Bobby careened out the door after him, a shotgun in his fist and his voice raised in a bellow. “Get back here! I know you angel-whammied him, you sneaky bastard!”
“I didn’t do anything to him!”
“You did plenty to me!” Dean yelled from the doorway, clearly enjoying the show.
“You’re not helping!”
Bobby stopped on the edge of the steps and took aim. His shot nicked the ground at Castiel’s feet, and the fallen angel managed to dance with a yelp and shoot Dean a glare at once. “Where d’you think you’re runnin’?” Bobby hollered. “There’s only so much yard, and you don’t have your wings! Just get back here and take the whammy off the boy so I can kill you proper!”
“Bobby, cool it,” Dean said, stepping out to set a hand on the man’s shoulder. His other hand held a hand towel to his crotch. “There’s no whammy. Look, I’m sorry you had to find out like that-” His smirk said otherwise “-but me and Cas, we’ve kind of got a thing going on.”
Castiel stopped to catch his breath, leaning against a fence post. “Would it help if I told you I love him?”
Bobby made an indistinguishable sound in his throat, looking between the man and the angel. “Marginally,” he answered, cradling the shotgun against -
The lamp on Chuck’s writing desk began to shake. He paused, sitting back as he felt the vibrations moving through his chair. A moment later, the iron walls of the panic room began to groan, and all the furniture took a plunge to the left.
Chuck didn’t even have time to yell as he hurtled to the ground. Everything free standing in the room lurched and jumped, and outside he heard a cacophony that could only be boxes of ammunition and amulets raining to the cement floor.
An earthquake? In South Dakota? He decided to take a dive under the bed instead of puzzling it out. It was the end times, after all. Behind him, he heard his notebook slap to the floor.
The rumbling and groaning pierced Chuck’s ears like a screech, and he pressed his hands against his head to drown it out. So he felt but didn’t hear it when the earthquake stopped. He peeled one hand away from his ear hesitantly, then finding only a faint clatter of things moving upstairs, removed his other hand and crawled out from under the bed.
The basement stairs were intact, though the railing had cracked in two places. Chuck ventured upstairs, calling, “Guys? Everybody all right?”
A cough and a barrage of swearing replied. Bobby, at least, was okay.
Chuck padded through the house, making his way across the debris field. He found Sam in the kitchen, clutching a bowl of cookie dough he’d been mixing with a carton of eggs rained down his front, and Dean by the front door, beneath a bookcase that had made an A shape against the wall. Both of them were fine.
“Castiel?” Chuck called, and behind him, rolling his bruised shoulder, Dean called, “Cas?”
Castiel didn’t answer. He was occupied in the living room, standing in the center of the mess with his eyes fixed on the window beside the sigil. A crack split the anti-angel sigil through the center, so clean it looked intentional.
Outside the window, about thirty feet from the house, a trio of figures in suits stood in the driveway.
“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred!” called Zachariah’s nasal voice, and he raised his hands toward the house. “Oh, will you look at that? Found you already! You really should work on your hiding.”
Chuck’s center went cold. He reached out for Castiel’s arm, but Castiel didn’t respond. He did, however, start out the door, his eyes fixed on the spot where Zachariah and his angel posse stood. They were burly angels, a woman and a man, both in dark suits, and as he walked behind Castiel, Chuck found himself thinking of them as stunt angels.
No one said anything. They just followed, blankly, because-well, Chuck preferred to think it was because the two wussiest members of the group were striding out to meet the enemy and the hunters didn’t want to compromise their manhood by staying behind, but in truth it was probably because there was nothing else to do. Castiel, their only guard against the angels, was already down the porch steps. Dean followed shortly behind, with Chuck, and Sam and Bobby brought up the rear, Bobby gripping the cuff of Sam’s shirt like the boy might disappear if he didn’t.
Zachariah clapped his hands together as the entire Winchester company walked out into the driveway after Castiel. “Is it my turn to hide now?” he sneered.
“You’ll wish you had,” Castiel growled.
And hey, great, bravado! Chuck’s stomach shriveled within him. He took a step forward so he was shoulder to shoulder with Castiel. The fallen angel glanced over at him and straightened up.
“Yeah,” Chuck spat at Zachariah, trying to add a note of solidarity.
Zachariah tilted his head and pouted his lips. “Aw. That’s just precious.”
“What do you want?” Dean asked, coming up on Castiel’s other side.
“So many things,” Zachariah said, sounding wistful. “World peace. The end of disease. A fashionable bracelet made from Castiel’s shiny human teeth. Oh,” he added, looking straight at Chuck, “and the prophet, if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry,” Castiel said, the edge of his lip rising dangerously, “we’re not selling teeth or prophets today. Check the flea market two towns over.”
Dammit, Dean looked downright proud of him. Chuck smiled, then looked forward and saw Zachariah staring at him again with those creepy eyes. It was like if the Cheshire Cat dressed up as a shady salesman for Halloween, and somehow the thought made Chuck even more terrified.
Zachariah chuckled. “Shame about your face,” he said to Castiel.
Don’t take the bait, Chuck thought. Don’t do it. Please don’t.
“What about my face?” Castiel said.
Aw, crap. Crap crap crap crap.
Zachariah dropped his voice slightly and reached behind him, where in a blink, Stunt Angel #2 provided him a long, gleaming sword. “It’s going to get so filthy lying in the dirt.”
Chuck saw it coming. He’d written moments like this with these characters so many times that he could probably predict the very second of a gunshot with his eyes closed. He saw the arc of Zachariah’s arm starting toward Castiel, and the momentary widening of his companion’s eyes as he realized what was happening and that he couldn’t just fly out of the path.
For an instant, Chuck saw his own life with the kind of critical clarity he usually reserved for revisions. He saw his archangel-demolished house in a city he’d never had much use for, his cupboards filled with only alcohol and bread, his career papered with pseudonyms. He saw his one box of significant achievements stuffed unceremoniously into a desk drawer in Bobby’s panic room. The only important thing he’d ever written, and it didn’t even have his name on it. Hell, it wasn’t even his - it belonged to whatever power handed out the visions. He saw his happy-verse, too - just one more in a long line of attempts to make something right in this stupid, cruel, denouement-less world. It wasn’t a fair world - Castiel had been absolutely right on that point. Castiel, his friend, who’d called him a good man.
He wanted Castiel to be right about that, too.
Chuck shoved himself sideways, knocking Castiel to the ground. As Zachariah’s sword tore into his chest, the ground began to shake once again, a blinding light roaring across the scrapyard.
Chuck didn’t feel the pain until he hit the ground, and even then it was only a hot prickle beneath the well of blood spreading across the front of him. When his head rolled to the side, his cheek stuck in a pool of it. Castiel, both hands pressed to the dirt, stared back at him.
Someone yelled.
The archangel’s light washed the scrapyard white, forcing everyone - including Castiel - to cover their ears. For once, Chuck didn’t. He heard Zachariah scream, a sound shriller than Castiel’s scream in his living room, and knew the archangel was ripping the holy hell out of him.
Chuck’s second to last thought was: He killed me with a sword. How weird is that?
His last thought was that Castiel would have appreciated the reference.
Part 5