Chapter 4: The Definition of Knocking

Castiel kept his promise and came back 4 and a half hours later. He also made his best effort to knock instead of just popping up. But his kind of knocking clearly didn't have the same definition of our knocking.

Who knows how long Cas had been standing there, but when I woke up he was standing in between mine and Dean's beds just staring at us. Dean was still asleep, with the blankets only covering below his waist and Cas was staring hard at his body.

"Cas," I said. He jerked his head in my direction.

"Good morning, Sam," He said calmly.

I looked at the clock next to my bed which read 5:00pm. It hade been exactly 5 hours since Cas put Dean to sleep, "When we say knock, we mean come carefully and try not to surprise us. It's OK to wait for us to notice, but not while we sleep. That's just… creepy." I explained.

"I will try my best."

As if on cue, Dean groaned. We both looked over at him to see that he'd woken up.

"Woah, Cas!" He said, jerking up and pulling the covers over his bare chest. "What are you doing?"

"I'm here to take you to London, to stay with Kevin Baker, while you investigate James Moriarty."

"Bobby's friend Kevin Baker?"

"Yes," Cas and I said in unison.

"Alright, well I have to get dressed," Dean said, pulling the covers further over his chest.

"Go ahead," Cas said.

"Not with you here," Dean said. I glared at him, but he was staring at Cas. I guess he had a point. I didn't really want Cas watching us while we got changed, but Dean didn't have to be so harsh about it.

"Where do I go?"

"I don't know. Go stand in the bathroom or something. Stare at yourself in the mirror," Dean said harshly.

Cas looked down in embarrassment, "Alright."

I wondered what was going on between the two of them. They had been tense for the past couple of days and I couldn't figure out what was going on. It had been since about a week ago, when Cas and Dean had gone off on their own while I stayed back to do some research. After that they haven't been the same.

I got dressed quickly in whatever smelt and looked clean. When we were ready, we called Cas out of the washroom.

"Ready?" Cas asked.

"Ready," Dean replied and I nodded in agreement. Cas put one hand on each of our shoulders and in the time it took me to blink, we were in London.

"Wow," Dean said.

I looked around, we had gone from early evening to what looked like midnight. It felt like time travel.

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness but as soon as they did I checked to see where we were. It was some street called Baker Street. It was a small street, and it looked pretty empty. Not somewhere a millionaire would live.

"Where exactly are we in London?" I asked, looking across the street to see what looked like a phone box but it was big, blue and it said "police public call box" along the top. I knew a bit about London and blue "police boxes" wasn't part of my knowledge.

"Not far from Kevin Baker's house," Cas said and started walking away from Baker Street. We followed shortly behind him.

As we turned the corner, I wasn't really paying attention to where we were going, I was just looking up at the sky. Because of that, I accidentally bumped into a tall man in a long black coat, with a blue scarf and dark, curly hair. He was walking with a shorter man whom I wasn't really paying attention to. Even in the dark, this man's cheekbones stood out like a light in the darkness.

"Sorry," I told him, and he replied the same in a deep British accent.

Once he was out of earshot, I asked Dean, "Did you see that guy's cheekbones?"

Dean replied by looking at me like I had yellow eyes, then said, "Dude, women are supposed to notice that stuff. Not… you."

I sighed and kept walking along side him. The sights were amazing. The houses weren't all that exciting but when you looked to the sky you could see the London Eye lighting up, bright in the sky compared to the darkness.

Castiel led us down a few streets before we go to Slater Road. The entire street consisted for huge houses at least 3 stories high, with huge properties and fancy, British cars.

"Follow me," Cas said, and we followed him to the third house on the left. We approached the front door and when Dean reached out to knock, Cas quickly grabbed us by one shoulder each and transported us inside the house, right in front of the door we were just behind.

Dean looked at Cas in disbelief, "Really?"

"What?" He asked.

"Cas, what did I just explain to you about knocking," I said.

"I thought you meant when I appeared-"

"No, we meant that literally too," Dean interrupted.

"Ah! Sam, Dean, Castiel!" Kevin Baker came out of the other room wearing a blue robe with red and white striped pajamas underneath. He was holding a glass of red wine in one hand and reading glasses in the other.

"Hello Kevin, I'm afraid I can't stay for long. This is Sam," Cas said, gesturing to me, "and the other one is Dean." Dean looked offended when he said that.

"Come on, Castiel, you could stay for a drink or two," Kevin said in his thick accent. But when I looked back at Cas he was gone. "Or not."

"Uh, hi," I started.

Kevin looked down at his outfit, "Sorry, boys. I was about to head to bed. Didn't realize you would be coming this late."

"Neither did we," Dean said.

"Well, I'll show you to your rooms, then in the morning I can show you around the house. It's quite big you know. Nice compared to living in the old van all the time."

"Yeah, maybe someday we can live like this," I said, sensing a rude comment from Dean coming along and saying something before he could spit it out.

"Well, come along. Your rooms are just up here," he said climbing up the stairs with us with our bags following behind him. We went down a long hallway, which was empty. Usually, in normal houses, people had pictures of family lined on the walls, but Kevin had none.

"Does anyone else live here?" I asked.

"Not permanently. Sometimes hunters will stay here for a couple of days. I mean, it's a nice house but sometimes it really doesn't have a purpose."

"Yeah. It would wouldn't it."

"Sometimes I miss the days when I was younger, when I could sleep in my van and hunt demons every other day. But now I only sleep on $1000 mattresses and I haven't had demon blood on my hands for 10 years."

I didn't respond to that. I'd always wanted a normal life. I always thought that I could settle down and have a life, with a wife, maybe kids. I never thought about what it would be like to not be hunting or if I would ever miss the life. I'd always assumed that a normal, apple pie life would be perfect.

"Alright here's room number one," Kevin said, opening the door and going into the room. He flickered on the lights to reveal a big room, slightly smaller than the size of a motel room, but much cleaner. What really stuck out to me were the bookshelves that stretched up to the ceiling, filled with books about hunting. It between books or jutting out from the top of them were old sheets of lined paper with notes on. Hunting books with real hunter references in it. I love it.

"Sammy, this is definitely going to be your room," Dean said looking at the smile on my face as my eyes wandered around the room.

"Deal," I replied.

Kevin chuckled, "And this is the next one," he said turning to the right where there was a door. He opened it up to reveal a small bathroom, "not this one don't worry."

Kevin walked through the bathroom to a door on the opposite end. When he opened that up, Dean's room was revealed. It was about the same size as mine with a huge window that covered pretty much the entire wall on one side. There was a shelf full of old records and a record player.

"Oh, I'm gunna like this visit," Dean commented.

"Well I'll leave you two to it," Kevin said, then left the room through a door that led straight to the hallway.

"Dean, is there something going on between you and Cas?" I asked once Kevin had shut the door behind him. The question had been bugging me for a while. It had been really bad lately and I wanted to know the truth.

"What?" He looked at me in shock, "nothing."

"OK, sorry, just asking."

"Why?" he asked.

"You've just been – I don't know – you just seem different with him," I explained.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dean said, turning back to the window and peeking through the curtains.

"Alright. Uh, 'night," I said, beginning to walk back to my room.

"Sammy, wait," Dean said and I jerked back around. He hesitated, then said, "goodnight."

I stared for a moment then said, "goodnight."

I went back into my room. I honestly thought that Dean would have told me, well, maybe not. But I was definitely hoping.

I collapsed onto my temporary bed and immediately checked the digital clock that sat on the bedside table beside me. It was 11pm here, but I'd just been asleep. There was no way I was going to fall asleep now. I decided to look through the books.

I hopped out of bed and glossed through all the titles. There were so many interesting titles that it seemed impossible to pick just one. Some of the more interesting ones were: Dancing with Demons (a guide on demon exorcism, full of spells I'd never heard of before), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (a guide on all kinds of different creatures, how to find them, and how to take care of them), How To Be A Demon (explains how demons think, told by a guy who was possessed for 10 years), Vampcyclopia (an encyclopedia on vampires), and the one that surprised me the most was the Harry Potter series on the bottom shelf. I always thought that wizards and Dark Lords were fictional, but apparently not.

I could see why Bobby came to this guy for information.

I went through all 4 of the guide books, and a few more. By the time I'd finished, it was 8am and I didn't feel the slightest bit tired.

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man that will get me to read a book I ain't read."

-Abraham Lincoln