Chapter 26 - Tire Swing
"Don't be dumb," Dean rolls his eyes, holding an old paint can in one hand as he climbs the ladder to his and Cas's treehouse.
"I'm not being dumb," Sammy protests, following up after him as Dean hands the can to Cas through the trapdoor and clambers in. "I'm just saying that if this was a real pirate ship—"
"Sammy, you're so boring—"
"Mom said to be nice to me!—"
"Why're you such a baby?"
Not for the first time, it's Cas who breaks up the brothers' fighting.
"Hey, I think it was a good idea, Sam."
"Yeah? Well I don't," Dean grumbles, slumping down onto the floor of the treehouse and pressing his back against the wooden boards. "Why've you gotta take his side, anyway? You're my friend."
"I'm not taking sides," Castiel replies longsufferingly, not looking at Dean. He's putting on his grownup voice, the voice Dean hates, and he's probably doing it deliberately, as well. "And I'm both of your friends, remember?"
Dean makes a growling sound at the back of his throat and plays with the frayed toe of his right sneaker.
"You jealous, Dean?" Sam smirks from where he has sat, cross-legged on the floor of the treehouse, and Dean makes a move to punch him, but Cas gets in his way.
"Stop it!"
"I wasn't gonna do anything," Dean mumbles grudgingly, and shoots daggers at Sam when Castiel looks away.
"Mom said you had to be nice—"
"Yeah, and I said shut up," Dean retorts. "This is me and Cas's treehouse, not yours. You should be thankful we're letting you up here."
"Hey!" Sammy exclaims. "Dad said I could come up here, and that you had to share—"
"I'm sharing, I'm sharing! What does this look like to you?!"
"Stop talking to me like that, I'm six and a half—"
"Oh, my God," Dean groans, looking up at the ceiling and the branches that weave through it. Sam gasps.
"That's rude!"
"Says who?" Dean looks back down at Sam.
"Says everyone at church."
"I hate church," Dean grumbles, and kicks at the wooden floor. Cas, sensing Dean's discomfort, changes the subject.
"So how about adding a tire swing to the treehouse, like you said?"
Dean shrugs.
"We'd probably need dad's help…"
"Why's that a problem?" Sam asks. Dean glowers at him.
"Maybe we wouldn't," Castiel muses. "We could do it ourselves, I bet. Especially if there were three of us."
"Sammy couldn't do it," Dean shakes his head quickly.
"Dean!"
"What? You're too young! I'd be the one in trouble if you hurt yourself!"
Castiel sighs, exasperated, and sits down, too.
"You guys are impossible," He grumbles, glaring at the two brothers.
Gabriel's head popping through the trapdoor is enough to make all three of them jump and let out cries of surprise.
Immediately, Cas's older brother begins to laugh, and between his laughter, says,
"Knock knock. Didn't frighten any of you babies, did I?"
"What're you doing back from college?" Castiel asks with a frown, and Sammy, at the same time, says,
"I'm not a baby, I'm six and a half."
Gabriel smirks first at Sam, raising his hands in surrender, then turns to Castiel, arms propped up on the floor of the treehouse, only the top half of his body inside, the rest still perched on the ladder below.
"Thought I'd come and visit," He shrugs. "Only when I got home, dad said you'd all gone here to play, like, minutes before I arrived. So I took my bags upstairs and ran to catch you up, and say hello to my adorable little brother and his friends."
To emphasise this point, Gabriel takes a hold of Cas's cheek and squeezes it playfully between thumb and forefinger. Castiel scowls but doesn't make too much of a fuss, only swats his older brother off.
"That's cool," Dean says with a smile, "but do you know the password? 'Cause you can only come in if you—"
"Aw, but I'm Cassie's plus one!" Gabriel exclaims, and hoists himself up from the ladder and into the treehouse in one smooth movement. "You have to let me in!"
Dean turns to Cas and pulls a face to ask whether Cas can confirm this. The dark haired boy groans and shrugs.
"If he's home for the weekend, it'd be better if we just let him come in," He sighs. "Otherwise he'll annoy me all the time back home. And steal my food at dinner."
Gabriel grins and barks out a single-syllable laugh.
"Well there we go," His tone is triumphant. "The man knows me. Thanks, little brother. I knew being your relative would get me places."
Castiel rolls his eyes longsufferingly. Gabriel, however, doesn't notice and crosses his legs underneath him, looking more like an imp than anyone Dean has ever seen. His copper hair is all ruffled up, amber eyes sparking with thoughts of how best to cause excitement and mayhem. Sometimes this is fun, and Dean enjoys it—he's a lot more loud and boisterous than Castiel, he's realised—but sometimes, even Gabriel gets too much for Dean.
"So, you guys," Gabriel rubs his hands together, leaning forward and putting on a silly voice, "how've you been?"
"Dean says I can't help him build a tire swing because I'm too small," Sam pipes up.
Gabriel mocks a dramatic gasp and turns to Dean indignantly.
"Is that true?" He asks, voice breathy with faked exasperation.
Dean rolls his eyes.
"I only don't wait him to get hurt. That's all."
Gabriel nods solemnly.
"I thought as much. How about I help?"
"What would you do?" Dean asks.
"Well, if I help, then you aren't responsible, any more," Gabriel reasons. "I'm the oldest person in the equation, see?"
"What's an equation?" Sam asks, but Dean talks over him.
"Okay, it's a deal."
"Cool," Gabriel grins. "I needed a way to avoid doing any actual studying, and this seems kinda perfect."
Of course, with Gabriel to help, they make short work of climbing one of the longest, thickest branches of the tree, and looping two lines of rope over it—Cas insisted on two, for safety's sake, and Sammy agreed. Gabriel even managed to get an old tire for them—Dean doesn't think he wants to know how or why—so the day isn't even over by the time they've finished.
Gabriel walks home with Sammy—but Dean and Cas have brought their dinner, here, to enjoy in the treehouse together, and so sit on its floor, talking—Dean with his mouth full, most of the time—of just about everything.
And when the evening draws near, they climb back down the ladder and take turns on the new addition to their fort: the tire swing. Sometimes taking turns, sometimes swinging together and bumping heads and giggling, Dean tells Cas the cruddy jokes he's memorised that day while the dark haired boy tips his head back and laughs, hair whipping in the wind as the swing takes them back and forth, a pendulum against an orange sky.
"Is Gabriel having fun at college?" Dean asks, holding onto the rope as Cas pushes him. The blue eyed boy shrugs and looks away thoughtfully.
"I don't know," He confesses, honestly. "I think he enjoyed school more—or, at least, he'd just got used to school here. And then he had to leave, again. Which was maybe quite difficult. But he's been there a couple of years, now. Maybe he's getting used to it, all over again."
Dean hums in agreement and looks about him at the outlined, dark trees of the forest which surrounds them. If he strains his ears, he can hear the stream he and Cas always explore, looking for fish and frogs and other tiny, exciting creatures. He points this out to Castiel.
Then, he says,
"I hope I go to college with you. I'd hate to have to make a bunch of new friends, and not have anyone to rely on."
Castiel laughs gently, but it's short and wistful.
"Hm, maybe," He hums. "But you make friends very easily, Dean. And anyway, college is a long way off, yet. I'm just glad we're gonna be going to the same middle school."
"Hey, me too. D'you think our teachers are gonna be nice?"
Castiel shrugs.
"How would I know? Some of them might be awful. Michael says that when he got older, his teachers were nicer and more laid back with him. And when he got to college, he says they were all super friendly. But Gabriel said his teachers were never nice to him. Dad said that was because he was too loud, and made bad jokes, and Gabriel said that they made bad jokes, and then dad started laughing, and I didn't really know why." Castiel stops speaking and looks up at Dean, still on the swing. The blue eyed boy wrinkles his nose in confusion, and a clear line appears between his brows, nearly weaving them together. "Why're you laughing?" He asks.
"I dunno," Dean shrugs, beaming. "I just—I'm glad you're my friend."
"Well, you've never really known anything else," Castiel points out, and Dean barks out a laugh again.
"Maybe not," He concedes, "although I remember a fair bit of life from before you arrived," He says, impressively.
"I guess you like to look back on it and wonder where it all went wrong?"
"Oh, you know I do," Dean grins. "And I know where it all went wrong, too. It started out, my mom coming into my room, when I was playing with my cars—"
"Toy cars, Dean," Castiel corrects, still pushing Dean on the swing.
"Okay, toy cars," Dean concedes, "but don't interrupt. Anyway, I was playing with them, age four, and mom came in, and said something like, hey Dean, there's this dumb family that's moved in across the street, they have some loser kid about your age and he looks like he needs a friend—"
Castiel snorts loudly and pushes Dean especially hard, so that the swing ricochets and pirouettes in the air. Dean's brain rattles against his skull.
"Hey!" he exclaims, but laughs all the while.
"You deserved that," Castiel replies, somehow both indifferently and amusedly. Dean grins in retaliation and the swing's spinning and swinging begins to slow.
"Yeah, maybe," He admits. "Hey, your turn," He hops off while the tire swing is still moving, only partly to impress Castiel, and pulls it over to him. "On you get."
"I don't know if I trust you," Cas narrows his eyes. "You probably want to exact revenge, for me pushing you so hard, just then."
Dean gasps theatrically.
"I want to do nothing of the sort," He protests. "I only wanted to give my friend a go on the swing that we made together. But, I guess if he doesn't trust me—"
Cas rolls his eyes and gets on. Dean begins to push him.
"This was a good idea," The dark haired boy smiles. Dean grins in return, expression widened by the black hair he sees driven this way and that by the force of the swing.
"Glad you think so," Dean nods triumphantly. "I reckon it's gonna be awesome."
"What should we add to the tree house, next?"
"I dunno," Dean shrugs. "Maybe a pulley system? Like, a way of pulling stuff up to the top, without having to climb up by the ladder and bring it that way?"
"That's a great idea!"
Dean beams at the praise, and attempts a modest face.
"I'm sure you'd already thought of it."
"No, that was all you. That'd be so useful, though, I really like it. How would we do it?"
"Rope—a lot of it, and a basket, and something for the rope to hinge on—"
"You're so good at this, Dean," Cas beams. Dean flushes in the darkness and grins at his friend's affirmation.
"You're just buttering me up. I know when it is you want something. Alright, Cas, what do you want?"
Cas's smile is nearly splitting his face in two, yet his eyes are so sincere that the effect isn't comical, it's beautiful. His eyes flash, bright blue, like a cat's eyes would, in the growing darkness.
"To stay your friend forever," Cas decides. "That's what I want. Can you promise that?"
Dean nods, chest tight with happiness.
"I can," He confirms. "I promise."
"Best friends?"
"Best friends."
"Promise?"
"Cross my heart."