The Supernatural Series
Someone buzzed the door to the Bunker. The footsteps inside the bunker drained it out, familiar voices all muffled. They sighed, with perhaps the hint of a smile, and put the parcel at the gate. Hefty cartons of books. But not of the peculiar lore that the boys read most often. They were story books. Yet far from fiction.
They walked away, noiselessly.
The Supernatural Series, all the books to 300, securely packaged, would wait until another case was tracked and the boys were off, to be found.
***
A grey evening, Dean found Cas with his nose in one of those Chuck-Shurley books they'd found on their doorstep, almost a month ago. Cas was seated at the library table, reading in the dim, but without the necessary crease in his forehead which would have been, were he reading about monsters, following a victim's death.
Cas had gotten ahead of all of them. Sam had been reading extensively too, but Cas had the advantage of night-time reading too, and when the bunker fell silent and was enveloped in sleep, he would spend hours, reading through the works of his father - reading about his friends and family, and sometimes himself.
Sam, Dean remembered, was just finishing the Dean's demon arc, and Dean - who'd not really been a part of the reading tournament, nor was interested to be - had been reading random works that piqued his interest, or Sam and Cas recommended.
When Dean walked into the library, and assumed the seat in front of Cas, he made the angel look up at him.
"This," Cas spoke, almost reverently. "This one's a good one, Dean. 'The Future'."
Dean crinkled his eyes into a smile. "God and cliched titles, am I right?"
"It's quite aptly titled." Cas replied simply, putting the book on the table, with his finger patiently on the page where he'd stopped reading, to give his attention to Dean. "Are you finished with Baby, Dean?"
He nodded.
"Why don't you start 'Regarding Dean'?" Cas smiled.
Dean rolled his eyes at the title. "I feel so special."
"Read with me, please." Cas passed the book to him - he'd kept it by him, waiting for Dean to return and their routine to begin. "It was an amusing read. I know you'll enjoy it."
***
Dean couldn't look up from the book. 'Stuck in the middle'. Had he lived all of this? It seemed like the first time, somehow.
It was difficult to imagine, he'd skipped all of these books the first time he skimmed through the series - as Cas recommended books to him - but now as Sam followed Cas's reading along, he forced Dean to read at least seven books, a week.
"They're splendid! You have to read these, Dean! I do not get why Cas passed over these!" Sam had said, handing Dean 'Goodbye Stranger', a long time back now. That day, Dean had sat reading next to Castiel, closer than usual.
He'd come to know of a lot of things.
A lot of things.
***
"You almost killed yourself, Dean!" Cas barged into Dean's room, the source of his anger in his hand, a neat and new copy of 'Lost and Found' clutched in his hand. He's furious, and it's visible in the uncharacteristic glare he throws in Dean's direction. But his anger melts in a fraction of a second.
Dean looks up at him, miserable and heartbroken, and names what has made him this pathetic, "I'm no Angel."
Cas recognizes the book instantly, and gulps as he remembers all that happened in it.
"You needed me!" Dean's voice cracked, as he got to his feet and began to heave himself towards the angel. "You've given up so much for me, and I couldn't help you the one time you needed me! I chucked you out, and I didn't even leave you money, or give you any help! I could've done something to make it better - you were homeless, you were - you didn't even have food! And I fucking made you leave the very evening you helped save our asses again! I am such a -"
He collapsed in Cas's arms, as the latter held him up resiliently, hugging him back for support. "I know it wasn't you, it was Gadreel - I don't blame you -"
As if Cas's pleas fell on deaf ears, Dean continued to berate himself, his face buried in his best friend's chest. "I am so sorry, for everything! I don't deserve you, Cas. You're too good to me, and I'm, I'm such a shitty friend - I'm sorry!"
"Its okay," Cas muttered, meaning it a million times more than he said it, until Dean stopped trembling in his arms, and crying about what a terrible friend he was. "Its okay." He repeated when Dean apologized for his breakdown, mere moments after he'd recomposed himself. "Its okay," He smiled, when Dean apologized for asking him if he could spend the night in his room so that Dean could sleep and not read anymore. He added a, "Of course, Dean."
***
Dean and Cas realized, a day and a half later, that they together have a wondrous total of things to apologize to Sam for.
The youngest hunter never held a single thing against them, never brought up any of the injustices they did to him, never even batted an eye before laying his life on the line for them all. He, at the very least, deserved an apology
"...for being a whining bitch about Purgatory, and Amelia, when you let me live with - er - Lisa and Ben, and away from the hunting life, for a year. And for beating the shit outta you when you were soulless, because I was a dumbass. For ever doubting that you had anything else in mind, but good. For killing your werewolf friend, while you let Benny live." Dean practised in front of the bathroom mirror. "For that one time, when I said that we weren't brothers if you walked out - because I'm not Dad, Sam! And I'm sorry for all the times I behaved like him..."
It was kind of a long monologue.
But when push came to shove, it ended up being cut short by Sam marching forward, and hugging his brother fiercely, when he was not even halfway through. He let Dean drag him to his height, as happened whenever they hugged, and he forbade Dean from going on about it anymore.
"Its okay." Sam swore. "You don't need to count them off your fingers. I get it. I don't think about those times, Dean. Why should you, anymore?"
And when Dean opened his mouth to protest, Sam swatted the air to quieten him. "I know I didn't make a list on an Old Yellow Legal Pad or anything, but Dean, I'm sorry too."
"Your list would be way shorter than mine." Dean muttered. "This way or that, Sammy, you ought to have reminded me, someday, if I went on about being a good brother - that I wasn't one."
"Listen here, you jerk," Sam was full-on defensive, and ready to fight. "We both had some crappy moments in the past. But that doesn't change the fact, that you're a great brother." He paused, and grinned, looking a lot younger. "True, you were a far better brother when we were kids than you've been, these last 10-12 years? But you know what? I'll take it. You're kind of the best brother I could ever have asked for." He muttered the last line, and it would've been lost, if Dean hadn't been standing right up next to him, and Cas hadn't had angel-hearing.
Sam turned to Cas, with his eyebrows raised. "What, you were here for emotional support, Cas?" He grinned.
"No, I too have actions to apologize for." Cas admitted. Sam shook his head, dismissively.
"Same goes for you, Cas," He insisted. "You're both my family. And I don't need to hear a checklist of things you've done wrong, to feel better."
Dean clicked his tongue, landing a hand on his brother's shoulder, proud and pleased.
"Nonetheless," Cas went on, a hint of a smile on his face. "I feel like I particularly need to address and apologize for my tendency to not respond to you, Sam. It was wrong, and I should've helped you more in those years."
"Huh," Sam mused. "That's something you did, ignore my prayers, didn't you?"
Cas nodded, embarrassedly. "Please believe, I'm very sorry -"
"Nah, it's cool," Sam shrugged. "The whole 'profound bond' thing you had with Dean, right? I get it."
Dean stifled a grin, while Cas hemmed and hawed for too long, earning a chuckle from Sam.
***
"What are you thinking about?" Dean nudged Cas with his elbow, because he'd caught Cas looking into the distance instead of into his book, 'Lebanon'.
"So much," Cas answered, softly. When he turned his head and continued speaking, he was only inches away from Dean. "Who gave these to us?"
Dean blinked. "I think about that all the time too."
"And," Cas went on. "Who wrote it? I mean, wasn't father - God writing the Winchester Gospel? But, he's not with us anymore. He left, with Amara, we all remember." Cas's eyes softened. "Then, who wrote it, Dean?"
"Isn't it possible that Chuck does god-stuff and cat-blogging during the day, and dishes out crap novellas with godspeed, at night?" Dean grinned, and Cas mirrored it, at such proximity.
"Not crap novellas." Cas held up his book, looking at the cover page, which had the Winchester family on it. "You know I'm old, Dean, and I've read extensively in all of my millions of years. This is one of the best stories I've ever read." He paused, as Dean sucked in a breath. "I won't say it's greatly written, for in literary style, it is dedicatedly average. But moderate prose doesn't defile the story, and the tale of you and Sam, is a spectacular one to behold."
Dean bit his lip. He didn't know what to say.
"I was also thinking of another thing," Cas kept speaking, as if his turn hadn't ended with that breathy last dialogue. "Does it happen because he writes it? Do all our lives entangle and entwined because he so wishes it? Or, does he merely write what he knows will happen?" Cas's eyes twinkled, with awe.
"Does it matter?" Dean whispered, his eyes straining not to look at Cas's lips too, even as they stare unblinking into his Angel's sky blue eyes.
"It could." Cas replied, a wise intonation in his voice. "You see, Dean, no one knows what will actually happen. Back when we angels were new on Earth and to you, we often claimed to know what would happen, didn't we? But that's the thing. It hardly ever did. Do you know why, Dean? Because its impossible to look into that which hasn't happened yet. For anyone. All we can do is know how the life of a particular individual shall unfold - but this too is entrapped in millions of probabilities and no certainty, because it's ever changing. And the fates of billions of humans like that one, need to be taken into measure, to get a glimpse of the future - and that's neither simple, nor accurate."
"So, Zachariah, or Lucifer or Michael were bullshitting us all that while?" Dean frowned.
"They were lying, in a way," Cas confessed. "Angels can predict the future, but its difficult. Humans can change it, and that's simple. Fate, in actuality, is an amalgamation of a million different futures, all strung together and changing each moment. What, at all, do we know - a man as you are, and an angel as I am - of fate, and the future? But a speck, Dean. And if," His speech held an even deeper note of poetry, even as he explained in a monotonous voice, the workings of the Universe, to a patient and keen listener. "God truly can see the future, don't you think Amara would've been dealt with better? Father was dying at the hands of his sister - wouldn't that be an event he'd have prevented if he foresaw it?"
Dean nodded, enraptured. Not just by Cas's words, or his manner of speaking - but the developing emotions on his face as he did.
Suddenly, the wave of seriousness seemed to pass, and Cas smiled - almost pleased that he'd gotten to talk to Dean about this, if nothing else. "And you, Dean? You weren't reading either. What were you thinking about?"
"Cas, I'm no you," Dean hesitated. "And I wasn't thinking of anything as grand as that."
"It won't be trivial to me, if it is of importance to you," Cas promised.
"Well," Dean shied, almost. Their eyes were still locked on each other's. "In the books, we often - uh - stare. At each other. A lot. I was just wondering if it was an exaggeration, or if we really look at each other, like that, that much?"
Cas stares back at him, and the gravity of his gaze renders Dean incapable of looking away, even if he wanted to. The warmth of the blue of Cas's eyes, had never ceased to amaze him. He could feel the feeling of Cas radiate through him, through an interlocking of mere visions. It was happy, reassuring, safe and homely. It was exciting, and cherishing, and one of sheer wonder. It was tingling, but it was familiar -
It struck Dean. "Did we just do it aga -"
Cas moved towards him at the exact same moment that Dean leaned in. They met in the middle, perfectly at ease, for all the throbbing in their chests - comfortably sliding into a kiss, with their lips fitting over the other's in a smooth harmony.
It may be their first kiss, but it feels like the most natural thing ever.
*
"Not to ruin the mood, Cas," Dean mumbled to Cas's ribs, as the angel ran his hand through Dean's hair as they lay on the bed together, Dean's head resting on Cas's chest. "But, Chuck - slash - your fucking Dad better not write about this. That'd be a whole 'nother level of crazy."
Cas smiled, and Dean could hear it in his breaths. "I don't really know what to say, Dean, because he did write in ample detail about your inte -uh, your time with Anna, in the Impala."
Dean lifted his head to frown at Cas pointedly. "You had to go there, didn't you?" Cas, still frowning, refused to react. Dean egged him on. "Though, Cas, ample details, huh? You've been paying extra attention or..?"
Cas hummed, and lifted his head from the pillow to plant a chaste kiss on Dean's smirking lips, probably as a means of not replying. But Dean couldn't mind less, and he enthusiastically replied.
*
The Author sipped from their cup of coffee, and rang for the delivery boy, with a smile. The story was on its way to the end, and a happy ending had begun to form.
*
HAPPY MISHAPOCALYPSE, CROUTONS!
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