Four
A/N: Fluff chapter. Castiel is absent from the show for the next three episodes, so I thought I'd just sorta fill in the time a bit. No plot for this chapter. Just random tidbits of stuff. The first episode where Cass is gone is the Halloween special, "Mint Condition," so it gave me the idea to do a segment about Brooke's worst fear/phobia. Was trying to think of something Brooke would ever possibly be super freaked out by, being a Hunter, and this one actually makes a lot of sense (to me, anyway)!
It had been a few nights since Jack had rescued Lora, and the bunker was pretty quiet. Everyone had gone to their rooms for the night. Brooke wasn't tired yet, so she and Castiel were sitting halfway up in bed, snuggled together, watching TV. They didn't do this very often. Normally, when they had any kind of free time like this, they were reading, or having sex, or talking quietly about things. Sometimes, though, mindless television was nice. It was fun to try and find a movie or show that Castiel wasn't at least aware of, since Metatron had dumped all those pop culture references into his head years ago.
They'd just finished watching an episode of 30 Rock and Brooke was clicking the remote over and over again, flipping through the channels, trying to find something else to watch.
"It would be easier if you just pressed the Guide button," Castiel said. "Instead of flipping blindly through all the channels."
"Yeah, but it's more fun this way," she replied, grinning. "If you find something you like, the challenge is to stop yourself from pressing the button to go past it when you've been frantically pressing the button over and over again for the past thirty seconds. Like testing your reflexes."
Images flashed on the screen as she zoomed through the channels. News. Nature documentaries. Cartoons.
"Hey, Scooby Doo!" she said, as she went past it, remembering that bizarre night trapped inside a Scooby Doo episode.
"I wonder how Scooby and Shaggy are," Castiel mused.
Brooke flipped through more channels—
Aliens.
There were aliens on the screen.
Sweat immediately broke out in Brooke's armpits, and a shock seemed to go through her body.
There were aliens surrounding a bed on the TV. There was a man laying in the bed, asleep, as they all stood around him, staring down at him. They were tall and skinny, with bulbous heads and large, dark eyes. Holes for noses and thin, horrible, lipless mouths.
A sense of absolute terror and foreboding and malevolence pervaded Brooke's mind and her senses so that she was incapable of functioning. She wanted them to go away now, but she could not stop staring, like looking at train wreck. Tears sprang from the corners of her eyes—tears that came from fear. Every hair on her body stood up so that her skin felt raw and sensitive.
A blueish-white glow appeared at her side, and she flinched away from it so hard that the bed shook and a yelp, like someone had just kicked a chihuahua, wrenched itself from her throat. But then she realized that she was looking at Castiel, whose arm was extended towards the TV, power building up in his palm. His whole body was glowing, his blue eyes gone behind a mask of radiant cyan.
The television exploded.
Billows of black smoke poured from the top of it as fire licked up the sides of its destroyed frame.
"Cass!" Brooke shrieked.
He turned to her, his eyes still glowing, his body radiating so much energy that it nearly bowled her over even as he reached for her. She had not seen him like this in a long, long time. "THEY ARE GONE NOW," he said, aloud and telepathically, so that the sound of his voice, his human voice as well as his True Voice, echoed about the room, bouncing off the walls, and filled her mind so completely that all she knew was Castiel.
He held her face in his hands, staring at her with a look so concerned and so loving and so protective and strong that all she could do was return his stare, placing her hands over the top of his. "Castiel," she whispered.
The bedroom door burst open, nearly flying off its hinges.
For one moment, Castiel was all warrior; he whipped his head around, arm extended in warning and rage…
Sam and Dean stood in the doorway, staring at them, open-mouthed.
"What the hell!" Dean shouted, gesturing at the smoking, flaming TV. He turned to Sam. "Go tell everyone else that we're fine. We just have… crazy angel living in the bunker with us."
Sam glanced over his brother's shoulder for a moment, taking in Castiel, Brooke, and the TV one last time, and then he turned and left.
"Cass, man, what—I heard the explosion from the kitchen," Dean said. "What… what?"
"The threat is passed now, Dean," Castiel said, his voice still so serious, both hands still gently holding Brooke's face. "Go back to bed."
"You gonna tell me why you destroyed a TV?"
"Nothing threatens my wife," the angel growled. "Nothing."
…
Later, when Castiel had disposed of the smoldering TV and gotten back into bed, Brooke lay against his chest, sitting halfway up, her mind spinning.
Cass, she thought, because she was too afraid of the answer to ask the question aloud, are they… real?
Aliens? he said. As far as I'm aware, no. But my knowledge of the universe only encompasses this solar system.
So, there are no aliens in this solar system?
No.
Brooke breathed an audible sigh of relief, and fell silent for a long while.
Castiel slowly stroked her hair.
"It's never come up before," she murmured, after a time. "This phobia. But… You knew about it, right? Somewhere in your head? We know everything about each other."
"The longer I've been with you the more I think that that's not necessarily true," he replied. "I think we always know each other's emotional states, and we know what the other person is thinking in the moment. But, unless I purposefully went searching through your brain for all of your memories individually…" He let the rest of the words die. His point was made: that, even after all these years, they could still surprise each other.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Hush," he replied, softly. "Phobias are not like normal fears. I understand this. You cannot simply… turn it off."
"No," she agreed. "I wish I could. I just wish I knew where it came from. But I can't remember."
Castiel paused in playing with her hair. "I could find the memory for you," he offered. "These sorts of phobias often happen at very young ages, and whatever happened was probably not so traumatic as you might think; you simply misremembered something, and then forgot it over time, but the fear remained. Or, you may have been exposed to something you should not have been at too young of an age."
Brooke laughed mirthlessly. "That was my entire life, Cass. Being exposed to traumatic shit too early. My mom was a Hunter, remember?"
Castiel said nothing, waiting to see whether she would take him up on the offer.
"You can if you want," she said, finally.
"This is not for me," he murmured. "If you don't want me to, then I won't."
She swallowed. "I… I want to know."
Castiel nodded and sat up in the bed slowly, giving Brooke time to scoot away from him. She faced him, sitting cross-legged, and he reached out and gently placed two fingers against her forehead, closing his eyes.
"Why do you need to do that if we're already mentally linked?" she asked.
"It's simply a way to focus," he explained. "Now, let me concentrate. If, at any point you wish to stop, you need only think it."
Silently, she consented, and then she, too, closed her eyes.
The reason for this phobia was, indeed, what Castiel had predicted. It came from a tangled web of early memories that included watching scary TV too young, and being exposed to the terrors of Hunting at an early age. Somewhere along the way, she had begun to believe that aliens were as real as anything her mother Hunted, but there was no lore about aliens. They were an unattainable, unknowable terror, not of this Earth. That made them more terrifying than any true monster, because true monsters could be killed. Aliens were… seemingly unkillable, and the fact that Brooke had never seen one did not make them less terrifying. That only added to their mystique.
When she was seven, she'd had a nightmare that she'd been abducted, and then blocked it from her memory. That had sealed the phobia.
Castiel pulled his fingers from her forehead, gazing at his wife in loving concern. "How do you feel now?" he asked.
"I… I don't know," she admitted, slowly. She'd been carrying this phobia for so long that even an explanation of its conception did not necessarily diminish her reaction to seeing aliens on TV. "I guess I feel better about it…" She smiled a little. "Just… Just don't destroy anymore TVs, okay?" She studied him, then. "God, you reacted so… strongly."
"May I remind you that your emotions act as orders," he said, and then reached out and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "I had never felt such absolute terror from you before. Ever. Not even for my own wellbeing, when I've been in danger. The fear coming from you was so palpable, I could smell it, and taste it on the air. I watched every hair on your body stand on end. I smelled the sweat break out on your body. At that point, I knew only one thing: that whatever was scaring you had to be destroyed at all costs."
Brooke looked down and smiled a little. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Why?"
"I just…" She sighed. "I still wonder, sometimes, whether either one of us ever has any free will when it comes to each other. My emotions feel like orders, and they're orders that you can't ignore."
"Well, I can," he said, "but it's painful."
"Exactly. I guess I'm just sorry that me being terrified of a fake alien on TV screen compelled you to destroy the TV. I mean, that doesn't seem insane to you?"
He shook his head, touching her face. "As we've said before, it's far too late to worry about the state of our relationship at this point. I love you, and I don't ever want you to be in pain, or in fear of anything. If that means I have to destroy a television, then I will."
She smiled again, leaning into his hand, and closed her eyes. "Okay," she whispered.
###
Castiel had spoken to Sam and Dean about taking Jack on a Hunting trip, as he'd promised to do. They'd been fine with the idea, as long as Cass and Brooke promised never to leave the kid alone, which, of course, they did not plan on doing.
The night before they planned on leaving, Brooke was a bit restless, from excitement or worry she couldn't tell, and decided to make dinner for herself and the boys (Castiel and Jack, though the Winchesters were invited to join in). It was a rather simple affair. She went out and bought one of those already-cooked rotisserie chickens that were kept warm in their area of the grocery store. Then she went and got some potatoes to mash and some greens for a salad.
It was rather strange to be sitting down at a table with a home-cooked meal, just the three of them (Sam and Dean had opted not to join for whatever reason). There were others in the bunker, too, the refugees from Apocalypse World, but they were busy and came and went in the background.
Jack was staring at the food on the table with a big smile on his face. "This looks really good, Brooke," he said.
She returned his smile, dishing mashed potatoes onto his plate. Castiel, of course, did not eat, but he sat beside his wife, also smiling.
"You gotta eat some green stuff, too," Brooke told the boy, giving him some salad as he cut himself pieces of chicken.
"That's okay," he replied. "I like the green stuff, unlike Dean."
She laughed.
Some time passed, in which Brooke and Jack ate their food and Castiel sat and spoke to Jack about their plans for the Hunting trip. And then Jack picked up the bowl of mashed potatoes to get a second helping, but he lost his grip on the bowl. As he attempted to regain his grip so he wouldn't drop the bowl, he then lost his grip on the spoon and a glob of potato splattered onto Brooke's front.
She gasped, staring down at herself, and then burst out laughing.
"Brooke," Jack stammered, "I—I'm so s-sorry, I—
But Brooke was still laughing. She slapped her hand down onto the table, nearly-hysterical at this point, and then she grabbed the big spoon out of the bowl of mashed potatoes and flicked some of it at Jack.
Jack blinked several times, his mouth open in surprise. And then he started laughing.
"Brooke," Castiel admonished. "That was hardly appropriate."
"Oh, you're right," she said. "I'm sorry. I forgot about you." She scooped her fingers into the bowl of potatoes and then smeared them across Castiel's face. "There!" She sat back and admired her husband's face, now half-covered in potato. "You look good like that."
Castiel stared at her with very intense eyes.
She smirked at him.
"Now you have to kiss me," he growled, suddenly, and lunged forward.
"No!" she screeched, laughing again, as he continued leaning forward, pressing his face closer to her. She squealed as he captured her head in his hands and made a show of kissing her with exaggerated motions, wiping the potato off of him and onto her.
Breathless with laughter, she sat up straight again as Castiel pulled away from her with a triumphant gleam in his blue eyes. As she righted herself in her seat, she noticed that there were several people now standing in the room, staring at her, Castiel, and Jack.
Sam and Dean were closest, staring at them like they were insane.
Brooke took one look at Dean's face and burst out laughing again. She glanced over at Jack to see how he was doing, and fell silent. He was sitting there quietly, a small smile on his face, glancing between herself and Castiel with clear joy in his eyes.
###
A/N: Sorry, but I'm skipping the actual Hunting trip because I'm terrible at writing actual… Hunts. Like, gathering evidence and talking to the police and shit. So, the next scene happens after they come back. Takes place during 14x6, "Optimism."
The Hunting trip with Jack had gone well, and Brooke was happy about that. Jack had really seemed to come alive when he was Hunting, probably because he thought he was being useful. He was still struggling with self-esteem issues now that his powers were gone, and Brooke hoped that this extended trip with herself and Castiel, giving him more experience in the field, had been good for him. By the time they made it back home, a week later, the boy was practically glowing. Aside from the coughing, which came and went, he was perfectly all right, and he was happy.
They'd only been home a few days before Jack had gone off on another Hunt, this time with Dean. Brooke had been iffy about letting the boy out of her sight, especially to go off with Dean, but Castiel had worked on her a little and she'd relented.
"He comes home hurt or dead, and I'll kill you," Brooke had told the Winchester.
"Yeah, yeah," Dean had replied, and walked away, waving her off.
He doesn't think I mean it, she'd thought to Castiel, then. But I do.
I know.
However, Jack had checked in with her and Cass that night, to tell them that he was okay, and Brooke had felt better after that.
And then, the next day, he'd called her again…
"Hey, Jack," Brooke said when she answered his call. "Everything okay?"
Castiel, who was sitting up in the bed in their room, reading, looked up with a mildly curious expression.
"Yeah, everything's great!" Jack said, a smile clear in his tone. "I just need to ask you a question."
"Shoot," Brooke said.
"I'm at a girl's apartment because Dean thought that she was a monster, but she's not. And I'm ninety-nine percent sure that she's in love with me."
Brooke blinked, and then her eyes flicked to Castiel again. He could hear Jack through the phone, of course, with his angel powers, and his brows had drawn together in confusion.
"Okay, wait," Brooke said. "Back up. You said she's not a monster? Are you sure?"
"Well, I tried holy water, and silver, so that rules out demon and a bunch of other things."
Brooke's mind was working quickly. "Where is Dean?"
"Oh, I'm sure he's nearby. He was tailing me to her apartment, but he hasn't shown up yet. Anyway, Harper. She was looking at me with these googly eyes, and then she asked me if I believed in love at first sight…"
Brooke ran a hand over her face. "Jack, if you just met this woman, even if she's not a monster, I don't think she's in love with you. She might think you're cute, but that's not love. You need to go find Dean."
"Okay," Jack replied, placatingly. "But if she is in love with me, I need to know everything about sex. Go."
Brooke blinked rapidly, several times, and glanced at Castiel, whose eyes had gone very wide. Trying not to laugh, she said, "Why are you asking me? Wouldn't you be more comfortable asking Cass, or… Dean? You know, a guy?"
"Sh-Should I be asking a guy?" Jack asked.
"Well, I mean… I can give you the talk if you want. There's no shame in it. I just want you to be comfortable." Brooke took a breath, trying to take everything in and quickly pull several facts about sex and anatomy to the forefront of her mind.
"I was going to ask Dean," the boy said, "but you're the most sexually knowledgeable person I know."
Brooke nearly choked on her spit. "Wha… um… thank you?"
"Oh, wait," Jack said. "Dean's calling me again. I gotta go!"
"Wait!" Brooke said, but Jack had already hung up. "Fuck," she muttered, and quickly sent him a text message: If ur gonna have sex, USE A CONDOM. If no condoms r available, DO NOT HAVE SEX.
Shaking her head slightly, she turned the screen of her phone off and looked up at Cass.
He leaned his head against the wall behind the bed, sighing. "I suppose when he gets back, I should… give him the talk, as you call it. It just feels strange. Technically he's hardly older than a year."
"Ugh, God," Brooke complained, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Don't make me think about that. He's… He's a Nephilim. Time is different for him. I mean, his mental age seems to be somewhere between that of a child's and a teenager's, and…" She sighed. "Anyway, yeah, someone needs to give him the talk. I don't mind doing it, and I don't think Jack understands social norms enough to be embarrassed to ask a woman questions about this stuff, but I think it'll be easier if you did it. Or Dean, or Sam. You know, a guy."
"Right," Castiel agreed.
Brooke held up two fingers. "The two most important things: consent and condoms. My main worry with Jack is that… if he gets a girl pregnant…" She glanced away.
"She'll die if she gives birth," Castiel finished for her, in a somber tone.
"Right," Brooke said. "I mean, he doesn't have his powers right now, but he's still technically a Nephilim. So. Protection."
They fell silent, each worrying about what the ramifications of Jack first sexual encounter might be. It was sort of a gross thing to think about for too long, since he was their adopted son, but his situation was unique, and it warranted thinking about.
The first thing Brooke asked the boy when he returned with Dean late that night was, "Did you have sex with that girl?"
"No," Jack told her.
Brooke put a hand to her chest, sighing in relief. "Good."
Dean, who was standing nearby, awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "Listen… I-I could… talk to him, if you want. I already offered to, anyways."
Brooke studied the Winchester for a moment, and then held up two fingers: "Consent, and condoms," she said. "I mean, other stuff too, but those are the most important."
"Right," Dean said.
Brooke nodded, and walked away.
An hour later, she was ripped from her sleep by the sound of the bedroom door slamming open. She and Castiel sat up in alarm to see Dean standing in the doorway, eerily backlit by the glow of the hallway lights.
"Dean," Castiel said. "What—
"It's Jack," the Winchester said, his voice hoarse. "He… He coughed up blood and then—and then passed out. I can't get him to wake up."
Brooke and Castiel scrambled out of the bed and followed him down the hall to find Jack lying in a heap on the floor in the library nook…