Chapter 7: Hit the Road
December 18, 2015
(Sam Winchester POV)
"Hey, babe, wake up. We have to get going in a few hours," I say to Annabella, kissing her cheek and pulling her closer.
"Oh, come on, Sam… It's too early to do anything," she said to me as she rolled over and put the blanket over her head.
"Well, that's not what you said last night," I joked at her and chuckled rolling her face back towards me. She smirked and laughed, her brown eyes smiling and her blonde hair pulled out of the braids they were in earlier.
"Well that was a completely different situation, Sam. And since I'm already awake now, I may as well get up and at 'em," she said while pulling the covers off of the bed and stepping onto the floor. She was a little wobbly while standing, no doubtedly from last night. She pulled her hair out of the braids as she walked over to the bathroom, and turned around to say, "What do you think your brother is going to say about last night, Sam?" with a smile and a chuckle before ducking into the bathroom.
"He's going to wish he was as lucky as me!" I yelled at her over the sound of the running water and I heard a roar of laughter erupt from behind the door. I jumped up and pulled a shirt and some pants on, and began to search for the rest of my clothes that had been scattered across the room last night. I smiled in nostalgia, remembering how she and I had joked about how Dean and Cas were always so close and how we even mocked their glances at each other. After finding all my clothes, I remembered that Annabella only had one set of clothes, and that she would probably need some more. I went to my closet and found a flannel that she could wear, along with an old pair of basketball shorts that she could roll up. As I searched through the clothes that she and I had washed yesterday, I found one of Dean's t-shirts, the ACDC one, had been put with my things. I shrugged, and threw it onto the pile of clothes that she was going to wear. A few minutes later, she poked her head out of the bathroom and said, "Can I have some clothes? I've already worn these other ones for too long," I grabbed the pile of clothes I had set out for her and pulled her bra and underwear off the ground and handed them to her. She grabbed them and stuck her head back in the door and shut it.
As I waited for her to change, I brushed my hair out and pulled on my shoes and socks. I was just lacing up my last shoe as she walked out of the bathroom brushing her wet hair. I looked at her, the flannel hung past her fingertips and shorts, the t-shirt tucked into the shorts and swallowed her up, and the shorts were rolled up many times and barely peeking out from under the flannel. She leaned over and found her shoes and socks, and sat on the bed next to me to put them on. First, she pulled the black socks on, and fed them through the shackles. Then, she slid on her Converse and tied them tightly, and adjusted the shackles over the folds so that they would be resting on her ankles. She looked to me and I stood up, held out a hand, and she took it and I pulled her up. We walked out the door, hand in hand, down the hall to the kitchen where Dean and Cas probably were.
We were smiling and cozied up to each other when we walked into the kitchen. Cas and Dean looked at us with disgusted faces and Dean scanned us up and down, shook his head, and looked back to the waffle maker he was previously focused on. Dean interjected and said, "Sam! Get over here. NOW." I walked over to him and said, "What's up, Dean?"
"What's up? WHAT"S UP? You wanna what's up?" he said with an awkward laugh and an eye roll, "What's up is that you and your girlfriend kept me up last night, with all that noise you were making! And not to mention that she's wearing my shirt!"
I looked over to Annabella, and she looked down at her shirt and frowned. She sat down next to Cas, and he just looked at her and scooted a few inches away from her, which elicited a scoff from Anabella's mouth, and a haughty eye roll. She said to him, "Whatever, Castiel! Just remember, honey," she said with a smile and a hand on Cas' arm, "that you were my first and I was yours. You'll always hold a special place in my heart." Annabella kissed his cheek in a seemingly sisterly and chaste way, and at that, Cas blushed, and smiled, and Dean and I started to make sounds of discontent and disgust. The two laughed, and Annabella crossed her arms and leaned back into her chair as Dean brought the plate of waffles and some fruit to the table. He frowned and stuck out his tongue at the sight of her and Cas laughing. I joined them at the table and sat next to Annabella. As always, she didn't eat, and just watched Dean, Cas, and I eat with intent, studying our movements with squinted eyes and wonder, much like Cas did when he first joined us. At one point, she got uncomfortably close to Dean while he was trying to swallow to inspect how his "facial muscles moved when he took food down his esophagus" as she had described it.
Cas and Annabella cleared our food from the table and cleaned up the dishes while Dean and I packed up stuff for the road trip. It was ten when we left the bunker, our bags, guns, supplies, and coolers in hand, and piled them into the trunk. Cas opened the back door to the car, and gestured for Annabella to get in. She got into the car and he followed behind her. I got into the shotgun seat while Dean sat in the driver's seat, and I turned around to see Annabella and Cas curled up into each other in the backseat. Jokingly, I said, "Don't get too crazy, you guys," with a laugh and a smile.
Most of the drive was silent. Very silent. The only noise you could hear was the low volume of Dean's playlist, the one I hated. The backseat where Cas and Annabella were laying in was in complete silence. Cas was sprawled out, his arms wrapped loosely around Annabella's middle. She was laying down, taking up the whole backseat; her head was on Cas' chest, her hands resting on Cas' slightly bent knees. Both of their eyes were closed, and their breathing was steady. Perhaps they were having a conversation together in their heads like they did often. It was a bit uncomfortable seeing her small form wrapped up in Cas, my friend's, arms. To break the hours-long silence, I interjected and said, "So Annabella, what is God like? He a nice guy? What does he look like?" She and Cas jumped up and opened their eyes, rubbing the sleep from them. Even Dean slightly jumped at my sudden interjection, and almost swerved into the next lane. He pressed a hand to his heart and took a deep breath while looking over at me and saying, "Don't scare us all like that, Sammy! God, you could've given me a heart attack!" We all laughed as Dean rolled his eyes. "But Annabella, answer my question. You seemed to be closer to him than Cas here," I said as I gestured to him.
"My father? He was a decent man. Very angry with humanity in the beginning at first. Felt as if he had made a mistake in creating them. But then Jesus was born, and yaddah yaddah yaddah. You know the rest. He doesn't look like much. Very scrawny, with a scruffy beard and glasses. I believe he's got auburn hair now? Sometimes, he wears this tuxedo around Heaven and he looks really stupid in it," Annabella said matter-of-factly.
"Wait. What? No white beard, flowing robes?! I've been lied to all this time?!" Dean said in a shocked voice. You could almost see the disappointment in his eyes and at that, Annabella giggled.
"We've upgraded. He came down to Earth many years ago under the name of Chuck Shurley, or Carver Edlund, or whoever it was. He was a writer. I remember that. Books were pretty famous, too," she said. When Dean, Cas, and I had heard this, our eyes widened and we looked at each other and then to Annabella who just laughed and said, "What? I don't see what is so shocking."
"So we've already met God, like five times?" I said with a shocked voice. She nodded and laid her head back on Cas' chest, smirking. Dean turned up the volume on the radio and the car was filled with the notes of stairway to Heaven. Soon after, we had all drifted off. We finally got to a motel near Santa Fe. We had eaten and Dean and I decided to go to a bar we saw a few miles back.
"We'll be back in a few hours, you guys. Hang tight, and don't do anything crazy, like knock out the power of the entire continent," Dean said as we left the motel. I kissed Annabella on the cheek and followed my brother out the door.
(Annabella's POV)
"We should get out of here," I say to Cas with the all-too familiar gleam in my eye and wide smile that I know he remembers. He looks at me with a smile and a rebellious glint in his eyes and says, "Let's do it." We joined hands and concentrated on a place with our being.
"Oh, we're in our favorite Earth place, Annabella. The humans call it the Yosemite backwoods now. It's even more beautiful than I remember," Cas says with wonder in his voice as we look around us, at the trees and grass and mountains. I smile and lay down to look at the stars. He joins me on the ground and we position ourselves to look at the sky.
"Cas, do you see that one? Over there, by the tree?"
"Yeah. What's it called?" I know he knows what it's called. He's just doing this to make me happy.
"Hydrus. And over there, that one's Big Dipper," I said to Cas with a little smile. He rolled over on his side to look at me, and I did the same. We stared at each other, lost in the moment, and like all those years ago, we neared each other, and he placed a tentative kiss on my lips, almost unsure if he should do it, but I kissed him back fiercely. I ran my hands through his dark hair, ruffling it and messing it up. Then out of the blue, he flipped me onto my back, pinning me down with his weight and straddling me while I looked up at him coyly, with large, innocent eyes (the ones I knew he loved) as he stared down on me with his lust-blown ones, huge and black with thin rings of sapphire around them. He pressed his abdomen into mine, and I felt the hardness of his member press against me, and when I rolled my hips up to meet his, he threw his head back and a groan fell from his mouth. His heavy breathing and predatory gaze made me shudder; and the only thing I could say to him was, "Take off your clothes," in a lust-laced voice while eying his body, wondering what was hiding behind the seemingly endless layers of clothing.
Cas only smiled, and he whipped off his trench coat and suit coat. I pulled him down to me by his dark blue tie, and arched my neck to allow him to kiss it. His large hands ripped off the flannel and t-shirt I was wearing, revealing my chest to him; he ran the back of his hand across my chest, admiring my body the way he had all those times before, and he pulled away to undo his tie and shirt, and when they were off, he towered over me with his huge, brick house shoulders and muscled chest that was begging for me to run my hands over it. I stared at him, and then reached out to run my hand across his chest, and kissed the tattoo on his abdomen, running my tongue along the words and sucking a bruise on it, eliciting a low groan from him. In that moment, his wings flashed, huge and black in his moment of pleasure to show he was ready to mate, and then to show my answer, I allowed my wings to be shown, gold and grey (and larger than his, but I didn't want to tell him that), and he dipped down to my collarbone and placed a suckling kiss there, leaving a slight bruise. He continued to kiss down my chest and then he moved his hands down to my hips to shimmy down my shorts, leaving small kisses in their wake. He's a lot gentler and less needy than Sam is. Oh wait. Shit.
"Stop. Sam," I say with urgency as I shoot straight up and inch away from him. He moves away instantly, backing away like I'm a wild animal.
"I swear on my father, I did not mean to do this, I'm so sorry, I should have remembered Sam," Cas says as he hands me my shirts and I pull them on, and tug the shorts back up. He backs away from me and I smooth out my hair and he buttons his shirt again, and pulls on the jacket and coat, and we're both sitting away from each other and apologizing over and over again.
"I am so, so sorry Annabella. I shouldn't have come on to you like that, I am so sorry," Cas says to me, and I can truly see in his eyes that he means it with all his grace and soul. His grace burns with forgiveness and understanding.
"I should have been thinking, I never should have responded to the kiss. Oh my gosh, Castiel, I am so sorry, I should have remembered Dean also," I say back to Castiel. He looks at me with wide eyes, and then suddenly I remembered, he doesn't know about it. He queries me, "What about Dean?" I scoot closer to him and take his hand in mine, holding it and resting it in my lap. With a smile, I say, "Dean Winchester. How do I begin to explain the Righteous Man," and I can't help but giggle at Castiel's blushing face when I say that and I continue with, "the two of you are meant to be together. You were destined to be with him, and he was destined to be with you. Haven't you realized this all this time, brother?"
He looks at me with doe eyes, his vessel's sapphire irises lighting up, and the corner of his mouth turning up into a smile. His left eye started to leak a tear, and I brought my hand up to wipe it away. My eyes started to water as well, in happiness for him. I smiled and brought him into my arms as he sobbed into my shoulder.
"Thank you, sister. I don't know how to repay you," Castiel says to me as he wipes away his tears.
"Let's just… enjoy ourselves tonight. Let's look at the stars," I say. We lay back down and he pulls me in his arms. I cozy up to him and he kisses my forehead. We lay there for a while and just look at the sky. Suddenly, he turns me over and says, "The boys."
We shoot straight up and then we brushed off our clothes. We joined our hands like before and concentrated on the motel. In a second, we were in the motel room again. We heard the doorknob turn, and we jumped onto the bed and turned on the TV.
The door opened and Sam and Dean walked in to see us sitting on the bed pretending to laugh at the shitty TV show that was playing. Dean looked at us and shook his head in disbelief and flopped onto his bed while a very drunk Sam walked over to me and hugged me for a long time. No words spoken. I pat my hand on his back and got up, motioning to Castiel to get off the bed and help me with Sam. We laid him on the bed and after Cas had sat down in a chair, I curled up in the bed next to Sam, kissed the tip of his nose, and whispered into his ear, "I'll watch over you," before I closed my eyes and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
