I was in the orchestra room at my school and discovered an instrument case with an awesome decal. It was a guitar or mandolin case or something. I had no idea this decal existed and I had to write about it! Anyway, it's crack!
Sam had picked out the case this time, in a small town in the middle of nowhere that had a haunting problem in the Governor's Mansion. Dean was just along for the ride, and Cas needed a break from the whole angel thing. So, there they were, driving through another town on another case. Ugh, this was so boring. He felt like he couldn't do anything to help out with the Heaven/Hell problem, so the only way to make the time pass was to aimlessly salt and burn ghosts.
Also, they had to interview a bunch of nerdy, braces-covered teenage girls. Not the hot ones. The nerd ones.
The high school was like sixty years old and it smelled strange. Sam and Dean were wearing too-hot suits and the hallways and room numbers made zero sense. Dean had barely completed high school, but he knew he could design the place better than whoever actually did. Apparently, the girl they had to interview had orchestra this period; she was one out of sixteen people in the entire school that had that class. The orchestra teacher was going to be out of a job in a few years, so he might as well quit sooner rather than later.
So, Dean was in a bad mood. No big deal. Cas tolerated him whatever mood he was in. Sam gave him the bitch-face, but Cas didn't.
The orchestra classroom was Room 53A, which made absolutely no sense. A? What the hell was the A supposed to mean? Dean knocked on the door and folded his arms, while Sam glared at him and did that thing where he simultaneously told him to be nice with his eyebrows and also prepared a smile for the person that opened the door.
"Hello, young fellows. What can we do for you?" The teacher was some old guy wearing a sweater vest.
"Hi. I'm Agent Plant, and he's my partner, Agent Tyler. We're here to speak to one of your students, a Jasmine McBride? Is she here?"
"Yes, she's tuning her violin." The man motioned for them to come inside, and Dean only did so because Sam bribed him with a gift card to the local diner. He could never resist pie.
The room was probably the smallest one in the school, even if you counted broom closets. There were maybe ten kids sitting in chairs randomly scattered throughout the place. Some of the kids had instruments that Dean could name, but the others were very out of his intellectual reach. The small one was a violin. Maybe. The big one was definitely a bass. He knew was a guitar looked like, and only one kid had one of those. Dean loved guitars. It was a crying shame the one he saw was being played by a freckled, skinny boy with bad acne.
"Here she is. Kids, these two are Agents Plant and Tyler. Say hi." They got rousing cheers from exactly no one. "Jasmine?"
A pretty, dark-skinned girl in the back raised her hand. She looked nice and not crazy, which was an improvement from the kids skipping class in the halls. "What do you guys need?"
"Can you tell us anything about the murder that seemed weird to you?" Sam asked quietly, in that calm, I'm-the-sane-one-here voice.
Jasmine thought a minute. Dean couldn't help glancing down at his watch. "The guy just looked like he slit his wrists, but Aidan would never do that. He was happy, he had lots of friends, he was about to get a football scholarship."
"Yeah, yeah, so he was cool and wouldn't kill himself. I knew it wasn't a suicide without that. Sam, can we go?"
The teacher and most of the kids looked at him in disgust, but Jasmine just looked down at her feet. "No, it's okay. I know there are days when you don't want to do your job either. If you want some Coca-Cola and to sit down for a while, you're welcome to."
Dean's face probably had some weird, twisted thing on it. "You're kidding. We just interrupted your class and you want us to sit down and have refreshments?"
Jasmine smiled. "Well, yes. Hospitality is essential to a tourist relationship."
"She's watched too much Supernatural and thinks that someday if some crime is committed, agents from wherever will show up and be Dean and Sam," the guitar kid said, giving the girl a freezing look. So the pretty one was nuts?
"What's Supernatural?" Dean asked, hoping to Heaven it was not what he thought it was.
"It started out as a book series and got turned into a TV show starring Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, and Misha Collins, who is actually a guy. They play two brothers that kill supernatural creatures for a living, and Misha plays the angel that follows them around," Jasmine explains with a smile. "The brothers' names are Dean and Sam Winchester and the angel's name is Castiel."
"Do people watch this show besides her?" Sam asked. Of course, Sammy was actually, honest-to-God curious. Which was creepy, now that Dean thought about it.
"Oh, lots of people," the boy answered. "She's just more...unstable than the rest. We're talking t-shirts, conventions, writing fanfiction about them online...stuff like that."
The girl huffed. "It's not about being unstable, it's about loving art. And I have the largest collection of merchandise anywhere. See, even on my violin case, I respect the show." She held up her case and Dean and Sam looked down to see it properly. Sammy didn't get embarrassed, oh no!
"Is that Dean's name with a pair of angel wings on either side of it?" Sam asked, a giggle forming in the back of his throat, Dean could tell. "What does it mean?"
"It represents the ship of Destiel," Jasmine replied, that smile never leaving her face. Seriously, Dean wanted out of this place ages ago.
"What is a ship?" Sam was eating this up, but Dean wanted to melt into a chair and die. Forget hunting, he was done for.
"It's a matched couple. In this case, Destiel is Dean and Castiel's names combined to form a couple name. If that became canon-" Jasmine sighed.
"Yes, we know, your ovaries would explode." The boy had obviously heard this speech a hundred times, and knew that if the people standing in the room were going to live another day, he had to shorten the spiel a little. The poor agent on the left looked horrified, while the one on the right looked smug. "Now, do you guys need anymore info for the investigation?"
"No, we're good, thanks." Sam pulled Dean up from the chair. He looked more than just horrified; catatonic was a good word for Dean's face. "Thank you, Jasmine. Maybe we'll watch that show sometime."
Jasmine smiled happily. "Anytime, gentlemen. I am disappointed that you aren't Dean and Sam, but I accept that if you carry on the wonderful Supernatural tradition."
"Will do, ma'am." Sam bowed and Jasmine giggled annoyingly. Dean was out the door as soon as they got the go-ahead.
"People ship us?" Dean asked for the eighth time, and they weren't even six blocks from the school. "And since when do we have a TV show? I thought Chuck wasn't going to do anything else with the books."
"He could have sold the rights to a producer," Sam pointed out. "He isn't exactly rolling in it."
"But people think Cas and I would be a good couple? How would that work? We aren't even the same species!" Dean wasn't angry or anything, but how stupid would you have to be to think an angel and hunter could have rollicking sex all the time? Like...what? How?
"Maybe the viewers notice all the eye-stripping you two do."
"Sammy, that'd better be a joke," Dean warned.
"Not a joke at all. You two have so much sexual tension, it makes me cringe."
Dean threw his hands in the air. "And you only think about telling me this now?! I mean sure, Cas has got a gorgeous vessel, and sure, I'm the hottest thing from here to the Pit, but that doesn't mean we would do couple-y things like hold hands and kiss and..." he shuddered, "make love."
"So, if Cas offered for the two of you to have some sexual fun in the Impala or a motel room or the bathroom or on the floor or against the wall, you'd just turn him down." Sam looked really doubtful of that, and it made Dean want to punch him.
"Of course I would say yes! I never say no to sex unless it's some creepy guy at the bar. Plus, Castiel deserves more than just sex."
"Really?" Sam asked, a smirk forming on his face. "What does Cas deserve then?"
Dean stared at the road and didn't look at his brother as he said softly, "He deserves someone that will love him and do couple-y things with him and not make fun of his complete innocence and treat him well."
"Who falls into those categories?"
"God, no one is good enough to deserve Cas. I'm not good enough for Cas, but I sure as hell am not letting anyone else near him."
"What I'm hearing is that Castiel deserves love and affection, but no one is good enough to give it to him, and you aren't giving him up to anyone. Is that about right?" Dean refused to meet Sam's gaze, and yet he could feel the smugness and holier-than-thou practically dripping off him.
"Yeah. That's right." His tone grew harder as he tried to get some of his manhood back. There was no way he was going to lose an argument to Sammy over something like his damn feelings. That wasn't going to happen today.
"So, you love him."
Dean nearly drove into a ditch. "Where the hell did you get that from?"
"All the evidence you just placed in front of me on a frickin' silver platter. You have a thing, a sexual, fluffy thing, for our resident angel!" Dean didn't say anything back, so Sam continued, "Don't lie to me, I can see it in your face! You are in love with Castiel!"
Dean couldn't look at Sam. His little brother was so much smarter than him and could see things that he couldn't, but he would never tell him that. Sam had figured it out. Damn. "Yeah. I am." Sam did a happy dance in the passenger seat. "But you can't tell him!" Dean said hastily. "It would freak him out, and I don't want him o leave for such a stupid reason as me being a dick."
"I don't see how loving me makes you a dick," a deeper voice said simply behind him. Dean didn't even look.
"He's been here the whole time, hasn't he?" Sam nodded, a big smile on his face. Dean punched him in the arm. "I'm sorry, Cas. You weren't supposed to find out like this."
"Does it matter how I found out? I just thought we could try out some of the things you were talking about. The holding hands and kissing and making love sounded very intriguing." Castiel looked so serious that Dean had to laugh.
"So, all this is okay?"
Castiel nodded. "All this is wonderful."
Dean turned to his brother. "Sammy, get out of the car."
Sam was unfortunately not far away enough to not see Dean make out with Castiel. He hurried along the street and hoped the two of them wouldn't scar any townspeople unintentionally. But, he was happy for both of them. "And to think, this started with a Destiel decal on a crazy girl's violin case."
Happy Holidays, all! Read + review!