as soulmates, sam and dean's souls look the same and cas has a hard time telling them apart.
dean's snapped at him about squinting at him a lot, but cas can't help it. both of their souls are very...bright, and cas really has to focus if he wants to parse them apart.
he asked for sam's help the other day, and when dean walked over, cas said, "no, i need sam's help."
dean froze, and looked over at sam.
"um" sam's voice said, "i am sam."
cas paused. he squinted. ah, yes, just there.
"ah. yes. my mistake." he said, awkwardly. smiling. humans smiled bashfully when they made an error, right? cas isn't quite sure what "bashful" is, but they move on from his mistake easily enough.
a little shamefully, when cas wards their ribs, he puts in a slightly sharper curve to sam's fourth rib enochian symbols to use if he needs to tell them apart in a pinch.
before they're "on the same team," as it were, he doesn't correct uriel when he gets them wrong. it's not his place to correct superiors, but he does find it mildly amusing when uriel calls dean "the boy king that never was."
if anything, getting to know them makes it worse. at first, cas is only familiar with dean's soul, since he had to painstakingly separate tendrils of it from the rack, his soul holding onto the only refuge it had known in a place of pain, even as the torturer.
the second he sees sam for the first time, he's a little dimmer, but as he's detoxed from demon blood, they're almost indistinguishable.
cas treats them similarly because if he makes a joke and one of them laughs, he counts it as a mark in both of their columns. if one of them helps him out, he counts it as a favour he owes to both of them. it's hard to tell in the moment, unless cas can squint past their glow into the ribs to see which is which.
he knows that sam curls around his grace hungrily when cas heals him, little tickling wisps of soul around his fingers. dean always shrinks from his healing hands, his soul compressing like the core of a star whenever cas's grace flows across his skin. he often doesn't realize who is hurt or who he's healing until their souls react to it. cas finds it ironic, that a blessed vessel reviles holy grace, and the infernal vessel craves it.
when his grace is stripped away, he starts to understand why they look at him so strangely. they really don't look much alike at all. they have the same set to their shoulders. the same shape of face, maybe. but physically, very different.
for one thing, sam is taller, which cas isn't expecting. sam is big, too. wide.
"did you know you're quite large?" is the first thing cas says to sam, stupidly. sam recoils slightly, before huffing a small laugh.
"yeah, cas." he says, patting him on the shoulder. "i noticed."
"have you been this big the entire time?" cas asks, because the last time he saw sam's body away from his soul was the cage. and it was...significantly smaller, then.
"tell me about it," dean huffs, shaking his head. sam laughs like it's a joke, so cas smiles, too.
dean's shorter, but his grin is sharper. it's rewarding to know what his friends' smiles look like, so cas takes it in stride.
"have you considered cutting your hair?" cas asks sam one afternoon, while sam makes them lunch--cas loves lunch; a meal in the middle of the day? genius.--and dean whoops in delight. cas isn't quite sure why.
it's weird that they look so different--it feels...wrong. sam looks like he should have shorter hair. dean looks like he should be taller. but who is cas to judge god's design? (seriously, even their eyebrows are different. do all humans look so different?)
when cas gets his grace back, he's a little better at telling them apart. it's just like telling apart twins, cas has realized, since he was a human. there are small, infinitesimal details in the shapes of their souls. small things, but cas is better at it.
dean's soul hums when he's happy, a low, major note that swells when he laughs like the roar of an engine. it sours into a minor key when he's upset, it's more musical when he's content, and it flares gleefully whenever sam's in the room. it sparks whenever sam laughs.
sam's soul trills, almost. whenever he's excited, or he's discovered something new, it flutters like a hummingbird against his ribs. it's a constantly moving thing, vibrant and alive whenever he's happy. as he gets older, it smooths instead of jolts, swelling and ebbing like the tide when he feels strong emotion. but he still jumps whenever dean teases him, still flickers excitedly whenever dean gets closer.
cas has learned to catalogue these things about his friends.
jack struggles when he arrives.
"dean," he asks, while he's trying to figure out how to close one of dean's porn tabs. ah. classic dilemma. jack looks over the top of the laptop. "how do i close out of a--" he reads the screen "--hot twunk stepbrother trapped in washing machine."
"ah, ah, ah." cas corrects, pointing. "that's sam. see how he's sharper at the edges?"
jack looks up, squints. cas points at dean.
"dean's sharper in the middle, see?"
jack's face splits into a grin. "ooooh." he says. he looks up at cas gratefully. "that makes so much more sense." he turns back to dean. "hey dean, what's a hot twunk stepbrother?"
cas pats him on the back. he's getting really good at this dad thing.
I really like the idea of Derek being a lot more kind and tender than what we often see in fics. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the rough, emotionally constipated, crowding up against walls thing, but it gets old after a while. And I think, that after all he’s been through and taking into account that Stiles is human, he would be extremely careful and uncharacteristically kind when facing his feelings towards the teen. I feel like he would treat the situation with a softness rather than harshness.
Only for fun.
Young Stiles meeting Derek, when he was a teenager, in a comic and book store. Derek is trying to act like a cool teen, helping Stiles to get a comic, wrong move Derek.
Sorry for my terrible english!
"Reyna is an emotionless robot-" Let me stop you right there. Reyna canonically broke down when she saw her dad's ghost. She cried over the death of Scipio(her pegasus). The possibility of Hylla dying made her feel like her heart was breaking in two.
She was so surprised when she heard Percy(and co) faced off Kronos she almost tripped on her toga. She had a heart to heart with Nico. Yes, Reyna is good at hiding her emotions(and doesn't show them very often) but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel them.
I get if sns isn't ur thing but disrespecting the founders of yaoi by saying ur ship is better when they haven't even kissed in canon nor has that kiss been used as a special moment the characters look back on fondly is craaaaazy
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