Supernatural and its associated characters belong to Eric Kripke (lucky duck!)
Author's Note: If any of you are wondering why I'm posting this second chapter so close to my first one (I know, it's only been a day!), it's because I have been working on this fic longer than I care to admit and have it planned out AT LEAST three chapters in advance. Hope more of you find this and enjoy it.
Oh, and the story title was taken from the end of a fic by HeavenlyBodies, which I cut and pasted into my email signature and recycled for my own purposes. So...recommendation and we're off! Enjoy!
Bobby sits in the rough plaid armchair and stares blankly, accusingly at the kitchen floor, where Sam and Castiel unpacked and organized all of Dean's worldly possessions. There isn't much, just some threadbare shirts and his favorite gun and a cashless wallet stuffed with faded pictures and a crayon sketch, and Bobby can't help but wonder...is this it? Is Dean Winchester's life completely summed up in scraps of cloth and paper and steel? He sees the question of the deep lines of an Angel's forehead, in the turn of a little brother's mouth as he fields a call from Jake in Seattle who'd just seen the craziest thing, and maybe it's on him somewhere too
"Knock knock," Ellen murmurs from the doorway, her pale face like a moon in the thick-set shadows around the door. The question curls like smoke around the sockets of her eyes and resounds in the click of Jo's cowboy boots, and they all look at each other with ghost faces and try not to talk anymore.
The ladies busy themselves putting away the groceries (they'd had to get out, do something, and Bobby couldn't blame them for that) and cleaning up his house, tossing empty cans and bottles and food scraps into big black trash bags. It's a double-edged errand; they're checking for secret stories of booze and silver-framed pictures of Dean too, full-well remembering the other months without him. It's been a little over a year, dammit, not enough time.
"Hey," Jo says delicately, and Bobby sees she's finally circled 'round to Cas, who's playing idly with a dog-eared copy of the Bible. "It's Cas, isn't it? Castiel?"
"Yes." The Angel's reply is soft, heavy, and Bobby can't shake the image of an angel sprawled on his carpet, wings spread out and bile and tears and Dean's blood covering his shirt out of his head.
"Can you help me box these things up, Castiel?" It takes Bobby a moment to realize what things she's referring to, and then Castiel shouts "NO!" in two voices and every glass in the kitchen shatters.
"Hey!" Sam hangs up on Jake and half-sprints towards the Angel, whose face is ashen and whose eyes are glowing like a perfectly lit Bunsen burner, frighteningly blue. "Calm down. Cas, you need to calm down, man."
"Sam Winchester," Castiel whispers and yet his true voice is screaming and Jo gasps as blood drips over her neck. "I don't feel well.
He throws up his dinner--hamburgers and water--on Sam's sock feet while Robert Singer watches the scene unfold from the safety of a rough plaid armchair.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam passes the washcloth over Castiel's face, wiping away the sticky mix of his vomit and spit while the Angel looks up at him with the eyes of a child who's never been sick before; apologetic and grateful.
"I'm sorry about your socks."
"It's not a big deal."
"Something is wrong with my vessel."
"Hold still." He covers Cas' mouth with the cloth, because he can't deal with Dean's possession and angelic viruses at the same time. He just can't. "Can you tell me next time you don't feel right?
"I did," Cas says.
"Alright. Just, uh...get to a bathroom if you feel funny." God, it's like talking to a kid. "Go to bed, Cas."
He smacks the Angel's shoulder, catching the tip in the palm of his hand to lessen the impact because it's what Dean would have done, what Dean had done when Sam was hanging over a toilet all those times in their youth. And he's glad Cas doesn't waste time with an "angels do not require sleep" or a "you do not command me" speech, and he's pissed with Jo standing in the hall watching Cas leave and Bobby who sat statue-still in his chair and didn't keep her away from Cas.
"Sam, I--"
"What the hell, Jo?" Sam rinses off the washcloth, nearly snaps the faucet off when he abruptly switches the temperature. Cold is best for getting out blood and vomit stains; better for blood, but his fingers are already red and tender from dealing with hot water (which is better for wiping up somebody's face) and he doesn't want to burn himself any more. "Why would you try to make him do it? When I can't even...that's Dean's--"
"I'm sorry! I just thought it wouldn't mean as much to him." Tears swim in her eyes and voice, and Sam wrings out the cloth with a final sigh, listens to Ellen talking to Cas somehwere in the house and thinks Dean should be here.
Dean would've loved to have seen Jo and Ellen again, delighted in the tension between his little brother and surrogate sister, cleaned up Cas' face when he couldn't hold his liquor. He would've had Bobby up and moving, infused with Dean's own restless energy (transferable by proximity, an airborne contagion) and whatever was in those weird-ass beers he was always drinking. And when they were sprawled across sofas and blankets and chairs, he would've whispered colorful jokes and stories to the ceiling and they wouldn't have been able to sleep...
"Cas was his friend. He's not--" Sam swallows on dry, salty tears. "None of us are handling it very well."
"Sam." Jo's fine little hand touches his elbow. "It's not your fault."
"But it is," he says, and that's as far as he can go without crying like a pansy-ass girl but he keeps going, squeezes himself into the tiny circle of her arms and tells her a story about blood, a monster called Lucifer, and a boy named Sam.
Thus ends Chapter Two...
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