Sorry this took so long, I didn't mean to abandon you guys. But aside from all the IRL things that kept me from writing, this chapter was a bear. The Tempest, indeed. When you read it, I think you'll understand. Hope you like it.
Happiest of Holidays,
Laota French
BOBBY'S PLACE - LATE NIGHT
Sam, Dean and Bobby still sat around the kitchen table, only now they were hard at work. Sam was pouring over an old gideon bible. Bobby was on his laptop, going through a shoebox of CDs (so that's where his books went!). Dean had Bobby's rolodex, smart phone, note pad and a pile of post-its, trying to make a call list of everyone they wanted to bring in on the hunt. Johnny Cash's "A Satisfied Mind" played on the radio.
"This thing reads like stereo instructions," Bobby grumbled. "I know a seer in Portsmouth. Don't know what time it is over there, maybe we can catch her awake. Be a damn sight better'n squinting at tiny type all night."
"Seems like Smitty's old lady saw all this coming," Dean said. "It's worth a look."
Sam shook his head - why couldn't Bobby get a large-print bible? He awkwardly read a passage allowed, "'And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.' Bad guys and teamwork, right?"
"Yeah, the Beast," Dean said. "That's what Smitty called Crowley. I mean, I think? I have trouble holding my breath where he likes to swim."
"It says the power was given unto him to continue forty and two months," Sam said. "How long has Inferno been on the air?"
"Three years," Bobby said. "But you two've been dead for three and a half. That's about forty-two months."
Castiel, who had been upstairs, came back to the kitchen with a large binder.
"I've been recording their progress," he said. He opened the binder to pages of clippings he'd made, mostly of bizarre astronomic storms. The first one, however, was a TV Guide footnote for a WTF moment. "They called for a truce between Heaven and Hell. A formal request."
"I thought that was a joke," Dean said.
"No," Bobby said. "But it sounded like one. They did it as a bit on their first show."
"No one took them seriously," Castiel said. "Not even demons. When the angels ignored them, they began attacking. They've acquired a weapon with the power to kill angels remotely. No heavenly weapon could do this kind of damage, at least not any I've ever heard of. They used it to rain destruction on Heaven." He flipped through the storm clippings, with blurry pics of something blue and grace-like breaking the atmosphere, lighting up storm clouds. "But the attacks were blind - random. They either didn't care if they hit anything, or had no way of locating targets. It was like they... just wanted to prove they could. Many angels fled, mostly to earth. It seemed like this was the safest place."
"They wanted to take over the planet," Bobby chimed in. "Why burn the haystack for a few needles?"
"We thought they had no way of tracking us once we were warded," Castiel said. "No one saw this coming." He turned to a printout from the show's website. "Through Inferno, they started an online campaign, offering prizes to any fans who could send in photos of enochian warding magic."
"Crowdsourcing a hunt like this," Bobby said. "It can't have been long before they found some poor schmucks who slipped up, painted a window with sigils. Probably tortured information out of anyone they nabbed. All for a lousy t-shirt."
"What about Raphael?" Sam asked. "Their death-ray's big enough to take out an arcangel?"
"Raphael tried to Rambo 'em a few years back," Bobby said. "And they're still alive. That's all we know."
"So,... not getting in Angel Radio anymore?" Dean asked.
Castiel shook his head, visibly troubled by the question. "I... had my fractal transducer removed," he answered quietly.
"Like ya do," Dean said sarcastically. "So what the hell is that?"
"Every angel who takes a vessel builds internal framework," Castiel explained. "This includes a clustered, fractal antenna," he put a hand to his temple, "tuned to frequency of angels, but capable of using other objects and angels like..."
"Cellphone towers?" Sam offered.
Castiel sighed and took a seat at the table between Sam and Bobby. "Basically," he said. "When the angel killings began, our frequency was flooded with the sounds of angels dying gruesome deaths. And without my powers, I couldn't shut it off."
Sam and Dean grimaced in sympathy.
"So you ripped out your antenna?" Dean asked, sorry he'd ever brought up the subject.
"I had... help," Castiel said. "From Balthazar."
"Again?" Sam said. "Wow, you guys really kept in touch."
"The sound was maddening," Castiel said. "And after a few weeks, it became crippling. I called out to the other angels, but Balthazar was the only one who answered. Now I wonder if his help wasn't a machination. It cut me off from Heaven once and for all. All my intel from that point on is... guesswork."
"Good guesswork," Sam said, flipping through the binder.
Casually, Castiel drew Sam's coffee cup to his side of the table. No big deal, maybe he thought it was his? Bobby cleared his throat and Castiel quickly set it back. Okay, maybe he didn't think it was his.
"Thought you didn't drink coffee," Bobby said.
"I don't drink coffee," Castiel said, drumming his fingers on the table. He looked guilty, like a kid caught sneaking something. So it was kinda obvious.
Due to some very funny incident Bobby was nice enough to keep to himself, Castiel's caffeine privileges were revoked.
"Anybody want chili?" Bobby asked, getting up and heading for the fridge to fetch out some iced tea.
Castiel look relieved at the change in subjects. Sam and Dean, who were in full research mode and didn't notice the domestic tension, were suddenly all ears.
"You still got that giant thing of it in the freezer?" Dean asked, laughing.
"Three," Castiel said, smiling a little smile. "It's almost a monthly occurrence. Bobby makes a twelve-quart stock pot of chili, has one bowl of it and says-."
"'But I made it fer you!'" Sam and Dean both said, in the sweet, manipulative little 'Bobby's lying about chili' voice.
The boys all had a good laugh at that. Bobby set a tumbler of iced tea in front of Castiel.
"Everyone who laughed gets vegan chili," Bobby said.
Despite the threat, or possibly because of it, Sam couldn't keep a straight face. "That five-alarm stuff used to keep me up all night."
"I thought it was that 'Pennywise in the bathroom' dream that kept you up," Dean said, smirking and being a glorious dick. "One commercial for IT comes on, and Bobby had to talk him down every night."
"Commercial my ass," Sam said. "You kept putting it on! We both had nightmares-."
"I never had nightmares," Dean said, trying to make his voice carry over Sam's. "Dude, I never had nightmares."
"It got so bad," Sam said, talking over Dean, "Bobby had to read me Hamlet every night, just to-."
Suddenly, smash! Castiel had crushed the tumbler he was holding. Iced tea, glass and a little blood was going everywhere.
"Jesus, Cas!" Dean shouted, jumping up from the table. "What happened?"
Castiel didn't answer. Bobby got a dish towel and wrapped it around Castiel's hand. Sam saved the laptop (because of course he did - priorities) and Castiel's binder.
Sam and Dean looked all freaked out. Worried. Crushing glasses with your bare hands isn't something you do when everything's fine, right? But for some reason, Bobby and Castiel weren't fazed.
"It's a nick," Bobby said, "he'll be fine. I'll clean the mess up later, you boys... go watch some cable."
Bobby led Cas off; they were headed upstairs.
"What was that about?" Sam whispered, wigged.
"I dunno," Dean said quietly. He watched them go, anxious. This whole world wasn't right. "Do you get the feeling somethin'... funny's going on with them?"
"Honestly?" Sam said. "I think they're just a bad influence on each other."
"So you're not worried?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, I'm worried," Sam said. "But it kinda doesn't feel like it's our business."
"How is it not?" Dean asked. "This is Cas and Bobby. They're our friends, right?"
"Yeah, and we've also totally gate-crashed their lives," Sam said. "How would you feel? You're on your own, living your own life for years, and then suddenly, your past just shows up and derails-."
Sam clammed up when he noticed Dean was giving him a epically pointed look: he just described the effing Pilot of Supernatural, and not in the most flattering language.
"Did Bobby say cable?" Sam asked.
Smooth.
UPSTAIRS - A BIT LATER
In the upstairs bathroom, Bobby carefully rinsed the blood and miscellaneous gross off Castiel's hand. He had a few thin cuts on his palm and one on his thumb, but that was about it.
"You wanna talk about it?" Bobby asked, drying Castiel's hand with a fresh towel.
"Nothing to talk about," Castiel said, ticked and tense, avoiding eye-contact.
"Alright. Then you feel like workin' on The Tempest some more?"
"Why don't you just read it with Sam," Castiel said, horribly bitter and pointed.
Bobby rolled his eyes, but with the nervous air of a man who just realized he screwed up. He broke out the antibiotic ointment.
"Just relax," Bobby said. "They're back from the dead, they're gonna get a little attention."
"I don't care if they're getting attention," Castiel said cooly. "Or if they take over the kitchen, or the house. Sit wherever they please, take whoever's smoothie. They drink beer in front of you-."
"I can look at beer without drinkin' it," Bobby said. But it was a tense answer.
Had Bobby quit drinking? And had Sam and Dean been drinking in front of him all damn day? Crap.
"And now they're leading an invasion?" Castiel asked. "Right now, they're downstairs making a list of all my friends, of everyone they think they can throw into this, and the plan is to what? Succeed where Raphael failed? We're not even supposed to question it."
"I know," Bobby said, bandaging the cuts. "It just happens, I can't explain it. Things just kinda revolve around 'em. Everyone else is just... supporting cast in The Sam and Dean Variety Hour. I also know that, while they've been gone, you got be the star."
Castiel got a little self-conscious at that. "This isn't about me," he said.
"Like hell," Bobby said, but in a weirdly gentle way. "I get it, you're wound-up. And I know why. But there's better ways to say so than hulkin' out and cuttin' your damn fingers off."
Castiel let a deep breath out, frustrated. "It was an accident," he said quietly.
"I know," Bobby said. He gripped Castiel at the shoulders and forced a little eye-contact. "Hey. You and me, we ain't goin' back the way it used to be, just 'cause they fell out of some time-bastard. You're still the best friend I've got. That doesn't change. You hear me?"
Bobby didn't wait for an answer. He pulled Castiel into a hug, a very nice one that seemed to really cast the sad out for both of them. There was a little more going on here than meets the eye, you see.
They didn't allude it, for fear of the merciless teasing they'd undoubtedly incur, but hugging wasn't just an "every now and then," special occasion type deal for them. It had become a part of their morning ritual, right before work. Castiel was formerly a celestial being, so expecting him to remember to wear his heavy coat in the winter of his very first year as a mortal, much less zip it up, was naivety on Bobby's part. And no one unlucky enough to live through one cold & flu season with a sick ex-angel on his hands would ever wanna roll the dice like that again. So, in the colder months, Bobby got in the habit of making sure Cas didn't leave the house without a decent coat, zipped all the way up, and maybe a scarf or a silly-looking knit cap.
But when you know there's something out there randomly killing angels, and you've already buried a couple of people you love very dearly, a morning coat check can occasionally get a little real. Goodbyes can feel wrong, hugs can happen. And, as it often is with humanity, even if you'd gotten by swimmingly without something your whole, long-ass life, if it's nice enough, if times are dark enough, and if no one's around to tease you for doing it,... you can start to need it.
That morning, they hadn't done their ritual. No zip-up, no hug. No parting words, or even a smile. Just a tense, lonely moment before Castiel left for work, and both of them had been in a funk ever since. The day wasn't horrible, per se. It was your standard pale, boring january day. But it was off in some aspect. Depressing. And all the fallout from Sam and Dean's miraculous return actually fed pretty neatly into this. As glad as they were to see the boys again, (and despite all the moodiness, they really were glad) Bobby and Castiel were still changed by their deaths, and nothing could change them back.
Bobby didn't let the hug drag on too long, though. Partly because totally manly, you guys, for serious. But mostly, he could feel his own issue coming up. The thing that had been making Bobby a furtive, murmuring grump since Sam and Dean showed up, a thing we shall save for later. And anyway, lingering hugs always made Bobby a mess. They were both in a much better mood, now; best not overstay.
"Why don't you go loaf around," Bobby said, "I'll find our book."
MEANWHILE - DOWNSTAIRS
Sam and Dean had parked themselves on the couch in front of Bobby's big screen, enjoying their first drama-free moment of the day by being as lazy as possible. Dean was apparently in charge of the remote, flipping past channels. He stopped on some ending credits scrawl.
"Crap, we missed Back to the Future," Dean said.
"Is it coming on?" Sam asked. "They never play it just once. Check the thing."
Dean checked the channel guide. It was on after Devil's Advocate.
"Not for another couple of hours," Dean said. "There's gotta be somethin' on 'til then."
"Oh, hey, go back," Sam said, trying to steal the remote. "Arsenic and Old Lace is on in a few minutes."
Dean kept it out of his reach, but flipped back to it anyway. "What's that, a snuff film?"
"It's funny," Sam said, "Cary Grant thinks his crazy brother kills people, but it's really his crazy aunts, and his other brother, who's also crazy and a Frankenstein-."
"Dude!" Dean shouted, like it wasn't the middle of the freakin' night and some people don't have real jobs.
"What?" Sam asked, with all the innocence.
"Don't act like you don't know," Dean said. "You just spoiler-ed the whole damn thing!"
Sam shook his head, tired, with just a hint of guilt. They've had this fight before. "No, I didn't," he said wearily, "just watch it."
"I don't have to now," Dean said in his pissiest/daintiest voice, "you just told me everything that happens in it. You always gotta blurt out the plot!"
It was on now. Sam was getting defensive. "Hey," he said, "we both tell each other about the stuff we've seen, okay? It's how people talk. You just don't care when it's you doing it."
Dean scoffed. "Yeah, well," and mumbled under his breath, "at least when I do it, it's an accident."
Sam gawked at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you do it on purpose," Dean said. "You love doing it."
Sam hit Dean with a buckwheat pillow. "Oh, that is such crap!" he whisper-shouted. "Why would I do it on purpose?"
Dean looked Sam in the eyes, completely serious. "Because you're sick," he said. "You get off on ruining stuff for me."
Not cool. Dumb brother fights are serious business, yo.
"You know what?" Sam said, getting up from the couch. "Up yours." He headed for the stairs.
"Fine," Dean said, "be like that. More cable for me."
Despite the arguing, Dean put Arsenic and Old Lace on anyway. A little awkward. A little guilty. Thinking maybe he went too far.
And that was when Sam doubled back. "He's adopted," Sam said with angry triumph, ruining the whole goddamn movie.
"Oh, screw you!" Dean hissed, flipping Sam off. But he didn't change the channel.
Sam started to head upstairs, just to get away from Dean: you don't drop a piranha in a kiddie pool and then stick around to watch the bubbles. But halfway up the stairs, Sam heard something that made him slow down. Something nostalgic. Bobby's voice, reading Shakespeare:
"'In few, they hurried us aboard a bark, bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared a rotten carcass of a boat, not rigged, nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats instinctively had quit it...'"
CASTIEL'S BEDROOM
Converted nicely from the old laundry room/water heater closet/yet-to-be-installed jacuzzi storage, Castiel's room was large, but very spartan. It had a military feel to it, since he'd decorated it himself. There was low-contrast wallpaper (grayish green), boots lined up against the wall, and a set of plain jane bedroom furniture. Aside from some hockey trophies on the dresser and a weird, green oil painting (by Cas) of what looked like a lamprey's mouth, it was all pretty spare. One of the kitchen chairs was usually in the corner. Castiel thought of it as "Bobby's chair".
Most nights, whenever they had a good book to read, Bobby would hang out a while and read to him. They talked about it like it was a really small book club, like they were reading together and maybe discussing the text. And sometimes they did. But mostly, Bobby would just read aloud, and Castiel just liked to listen. This was one of those nights.
Bobby sat in his chair, one foot propped up on the bed frame, reciting from The Tempest by a reading light he'd snapped to the book. Castiel sat up in bed, listening soberly, settling down from a screwed up day the best way he knew how. It wasn't some saccharine, clichéd, pajama-clad, covers up to the chin, 'bedtime story' scene - Castiel was still in his day clothes, sitting over the blanket, leaning back against the headboard, all brooding and introspective. This was Shakespeare, dammit, and they were grown-ups. Being cool.
But that was a steaming load, of course. This was another private, comforting ritual they'd come to depend on. A weird mix of company and consistency that elegantly convied a sensation one might call identical to familial affection, if one was so inclined. In short, this was a bedtime story. They were not cool. They were family, they were cute, and they were kidding no one.
"'There they hoist us'," Bobby said, unconsciously reading Prospero's lines in a booming voice, "'to cry to the sea that roared to us, to sigh to the winds whose pity, sighing back again, did us but loving wrong.'" He used a softer voice for Miranda, "'Alack, what trouble was I then to you.'" And back to the Prospero voice, "'A cherubim thou wast, that did preserve me. Thou didst smile. Infused with a fortitude from heaven, when I have decked the sea with drops full salt, under my burden groaned; which raised in me an undergoing stomach, to bear up against what should ensue...'"
DOWNSTAIRS - A LITTLE LATER
The opening credits for Arsenic and Old Lace had come and gone. The story was set up, all the exposition taken care of. Thus far, Sam's spoiler had somehow not ruined the entire movie for Dean. In fact, it was pretty good, as soon as the plot was established. Every once in a while, Dean's eyes would flick from the screen to the staircase. He could see to nearly the top of the stairs from where he was, and Sam's feet were up there, like he'd just been sitting near the top for twenty minutes. Was he sulking up there? It was a tiny, dumb thing for them to fight about. Maybe. Just maybe... Dean had been a jerk. He knew that, if he was a jerk, Sam was a way bigger jerk, but maybe Dean had been a jerk. And he felt like it.
"Hey, your movie's on," Dean called out. "You gonna pout up there all night? ...I'm not changing it, you might as well watch it... Sam?"
Sam hadn't moved.
This was a lot of crap. Dean got up and headed for the stairs. "You can't ignore me all night, I'm the only one who knows where your dopp bag is." Dean rounded the corner.
Apparently, Sam wasn't sitting at the top of the stairs to be all pissed about the fight. He was laying up there, his jacket rolled into a pillow under his head. Just like he used to, he'd fallen asleep listening to Bobby read Shakespeare. You could still kinda hear it downstairs, Bobby reading out Antonio and Sebastian's plotting. And that "Sam Face" - the troubled as hell expression Sam usually had when he slept - was gone. Replaced by the careless, dead-like smoosh face of a not-miserable sleeping dude. Dean saw the face. He didn't know why it made him anxious, not yet. But it did.