pages on pages

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Your captive prince ficlets breathed new life into me. any chance of more? literally anything. i just love how you write it's always so hilarious.

Just for you:

Damen as Steve Irwin

like he’s just like LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL SNAKE and Laurent is like that is a very very deadly snake

And Damen’s like DON’T YOU WANT TO LOVE MY SNAKE LAURENT and Laurent is like I’m breaking up with you for that. That’s it we’re done as soon as we leave this remote jungle I’m breaking up with you

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Brother Thief

Based an alarming amount on a conversation I actually had with my actual little brother you little brother thief how dare you. If you publish this I want it known that you stole my little brother's love and affection. 

"By the way, Cas is home." "YES!" Dean nearly swerved into the opposite lane, and shot a startled look at his little brother. Next to him in the passenger seat, Sam punched the air triumphantly while behind him Charlie clung to the oh shit handle and threw a terrified look out of the window at the oncoming traffic. She, at least, seemed to have some healthy fear for the possibility of imminent death in a fiery crash. "What the fuck, man?" he demanded. Sam turned a beatific smile on him and said rapturously, "Cas is home." Both Charlie and Dean gave him identical looks of confusion. When no further explanation was forthcoming, Charlie prompted, "And...?" Settling back into his seat with a contented look on his face, Sam said, "Cas is my best friend." Charlie snorted, and Dean said petulantly, "No, Cas is my best friend." "Well, he was my best friend first," Sam huffed. "No he wasn't," he said, feeling more than a little thrown off balance. "I'm more excited to see him, though, so he's my best friend." "No you're not-" "AM TOO." Sam was definitely pouting now. He met Charlie's eyes in the rearview mirror. She looked as confused as he felt, and gave a little shrug. "What makes you think you're more excited to see him than I am?" "You got to see him just last month, I haven't seen him all year," Sam said. "I have the anticipation factor on my side." Charlie laughed loudly and admitted, "That does actually make a lot of sense." "HA!" Sam announced. "See? Cas is my best friend." Glancing at his brother out of the corner of his eye, Dean couldn't help noticing Sam's genuinely thrilled look. He felt a sudden stab of jealousy, and he wasn't quite sure whether he felt it more because his brother was apparently attempting to steal his best friend, or because it'd been years since he'd done anything to make Sam's face light up like that. At the next light, he reached back to grab his phone out of his backpack. "Fine," he said, handing the phone to Sam. "If Cas is your best friend, why don't you call him and invite him to the movies." Sam snatched up the phone with glee, and was already dialing away before the light turned green. Under the shrieks of HI CAS emitting from the passenger's seat, Charlie leaned forward to say quietly, "He misses you too, you know." Dean kept his eyes firmly on the road. "I have no idea what you're talking about." She thumped her head gently on the back of his seat. "Cas isn't going to replace you." He stayed silent, and she let out an explosive sigh. "You're ridiculous," she informed him, and turned her attention to Sam and his phone call. Dean waited until Charlie was fully engrossed in trying to wrestle the phone out of Sam's hands to add her own pleading to the message, and then he smiled at the wheel beneath his hands. His brother was happy, his best friend was back in town, his other best friend was trying to strangle his brother in an attempt to talk to his best friend, and no one that he cared about had died in a fiery car crash. Life was good

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Lamenboi4evr

Small addition to A Playbutton or This?

You know that dedicated group of fans who've spent hours and hours piecing together the truth about Laurent and Damen's relationship, who absolutely have actual physical binders of information that they've printed out and highlighted and used a whole rainbow of color-coded sticky notes to track various dates and times and public conversations?

That group is, of course, spearheaded by Charls I thought that that went without saying, but then I realized that possibly not everyone has caught on that in any Captive Prince AU Charls is required to be the biggest fucking Lamen fanboy ever. He's probably a BNF, to the point where anyone in that section of the YouTube fandom probably has at least heard of him, and most of them has read his extensive meta on everything tangentially to do with Laurent and Damen under the sun.

He probably gets to meet them a couple times, and they probably have heard about him online just from looking at their own tumblr tags, and they don't really mind that someone is chronicling their relationship.

At one point Laurent is definitely trying to stay anonymous in a place, and someone comes up to him because someone always comes up to you when you're trying to stay anonymous, and asks his name, and he's like I'M CHARLS. YUP. MY NAME IS CHARLS. 100% K THNX BYEEE and the fan is like wait you're Charls? Because the Charls is right back there doing an impromptu meet-up with a couple of his fans and Laurent is like shit I fucked up I fucked up and Charls looks up to see what's taking this fan who said she had something she wanted him to sign and would be back in two seconds and meets Laurent's eyes and he knows, okay, he's spent years staring at those eyes in an entirely scientific analytical way, there is no one else who those eyes could belong to, and Laurent knows that he knows and prepares himself to have to sprint out of the venue clinging desperately to the tattered shreds of his dignity, and then Charls says CHARLS!!!!! LOOK EVERYBODY IT'S MY COUSIN CHARLS. WE ARE BOTH NAMED AFTER OUR GRANDFATHER, CHARLS. NOW, CHARLS, SHOULDN'T YOU BE GETTING BACK TO THE HOTEL ROOM, and after that Laurent considers Charls a very useful asset.

Damen helpfully translates that to "friend" for Charls at one point, and Charls draws himself up with righteous indignation and announces that being an asset to PrinceVere is more than enough for him. 

Charls probably receives a ticket and a reserved seat right at the front of the panel where Laurent and Damen end up dropping a massive fucking bomb on everyone, and he goes with trepidation because this is the first time Laurent and Damen have ever shown him even the slightest bit of favoritism over their other fans, apart from thanking him personally for the save nearly six months earlier, and he's suspicious, okay, he knows something's gonna go down, so the instant that the words "husband" cross Laurent's lips Charls is fuckin gone He books it out of the convention room and thanks every god he knows and also Laurent and Damen for reserving him a seat on the far side of the room, right next to the door. And then he goes on tumblr and says I WAS RIGHT and then leaves social media entirely for twenty four hours to avoid the massive fallout. It's a good day to be Charls.

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A Playbutton or This?

You remember how you said you wanted a YouTuber AU for Captive Prince. Well. I have been thinking.

I can hear the fandom declaring Laurent as a fashion vlogger, beauty guru type person, because he's got the face for it, and the holier-than-thou attitude that you might expect from a model, and to them I say what book series have you been reading. If anyone is going to be gently judging other people's clothes for a living, it's gonna be Damen. 

Therefore, I declare Damen a beauty guru who focuses primarily on clothes (though if you don't think he has Things To Say on other stuff, you should watch search through his channel for a series he calls The War of Makeups). Everyone assumes that he is, at first glance, some online fitness instructor, or at a stretch maybe a DIY person. Someone who wears a lot of flannel and films himself as he hikes around swinging axes impressively at trees.

Everyone is wrong, and Damen kind of really enjoys the double-take everyone always does when he introduces himself. Because, like, his channel name is pretty recognizable. CaptiveDamnen (he is so proud of that channel name you have no idea) is a big deal in the community, it’s just the person that no one is expecting.

Laurent, on the other hand, is definitely a sketch comedian. Probably writes and performs everything himself, very clinical, very professional. He’s a competent video editor, because he'd never enter into a project without at the very least understanding every aspect of it, but he also probably hires a film major named Jord to help him shoot and edit so that it looks perfect. Whenever he shows up to meet and greets he manages to leave without a hair out of place.

Damen spends like half a live show the night after a big YouTube event trying to answer people's questions about what products Laurent must use to be able to mingle with literally a thousand fans and still look like he's ready for a professional photo shoot.

Damen, on the other hand, is very home-grown YouTube. Not that it's shittily done, not at all, but it doesn't have the slightly unrealistic veneer that Laurent has all over his videos. He shoots and edits himself ninety nine percent of the time.

While Laurent does excel at playing every single part himself, he also has a common costar by the name of Nicaise. No one quite knows why, because while Nicaise is a good actor and quite frankly stunning to look at, he's probably the most evil person in the world in real life, and he makes absolutely no attempt to hide it. Fans have spent years trying to figure out the puzzle that is Nicaise and Laurent's relationship, ever since Nicaise appeared in one of the earliest videos as a tiny, angelic looking, extraordinarily bratty child of nine. He's not related, Laurent has never made any mention of any sort of deal between them, and Nicaise was there from the beginning so he can't possibly have been looking to ride on Laurent's coattails, because that was long before Laurent, and indeed the YouTube platform, had any pull anywhere.

Damen, on the other hand, most often collaborates with a fellow YouTuber, a-

____

Shit. Dude. Shit. Like, the sketch comedy thing makes sense because Laurent is, like, the king of wearing a different face, but I've already written an actor AU, and, like, Laurent would also totally be a gamer.

Like, he doesn't look the type at all, but he is absolutely 100% the kind of person who would adore the competitive, strategic world of online gaming and he would kill as a cool, sarcastic commentator navigating his way flawlessly through level after level of the most complicated, mind-fucky games.

He still edits everything with surgical precision, his entire setup is always crystal clear and perfect, and he still gets an obvious professional to edit the videos. Nicaise is still his incredibly bratty occasional costar who nobody can figure out the purpose of, other than to look pretty and call Laurent names and purposefully get him killed.

COMPLETE REWRITE IN MY HEAD DONE. MOVING ON.

____

Damen most often collaborates with a DIY YouTuber, Nikandros, who helps Damen out with the more crafty projects that require equipment that Damen doesn't really want to go out and buy, in exchange for Damen going through Nik's closet and finding him good date outfits while Nik stares bewilderedly at Damen's back and very clearly does not absorb a single tip Damen gives him. Their combined audiences apparently adore watching him quietly putting a pillow over his head and giving up in abject defeat while in the background Damen keeps up a light patter of information about how it's not his closet that's wrong, it's the way he's pairing his clothes.

Damen claims that he's an expert strategist, which is why he's able to work the magic that he does. He says that it's not so much an inborn "girly" knowledge of what colors suit each other as it is understanding the component parts of an outfit and how they all play together.

Damen says this at a YouTube event panel, where he and maybe fifteen other YouTubers with completely different channels have all been herded onto a stage to discuss the common links between them as members of the YouTube platform, rather than as individual creators. Nik is sitting beside him, and makes furious cutting off motions as Damen declares himself a strategist, to the amusement of the whole crowd, leaving Damen to let his sentence trail off in confusion as he looks left at his friend and doesn't notice the icy glare coming from his right from the probably rightfully proclaimed king of strategy himself, Laurent of the channel PrinceVere.

He keeps on not noticing until Laurent leans into the microphone and says, "Expert strategist?" with enough polite poison in his voice to make the entire audience go OOOooooooooooooo as one.

Damen turns around, still so incredibly confused, and says, "Yes, I am a strategist," and then, looking rather derisively at Laurent's clothing choice, "You might not think of clothing as a winnable venture, but I do."

The OOOOOOOooooooooooos get louder, and the rest of the panel leans back to exchange amused glances around the heads of the two in the middle, still duking it out with increasingly more sarcastic comments. People'd been wondering when Laurent Vere and Damen Akielos would finally meet, as it seemed strange that two YouTubers who had been on the platform around the same amount of time and achieved the same ridiculous amount of popularity hadn't met yet, particularly as they even lived in the same city. There were also more than a few bets placed on whether they would start tearing each other apart the instant that they met, or if they'd wait five minutes.

Nikandros won the pool, as it happened, both for where and for how long, though at the moment he was rather more concerned with giving Damen's shirt a sharp yank from behind the table to force his friend to remember that he was very much in public.

Laurent and Damen spent the rest of the panel, and the weekend, ignoring each other with such single-minded focus that it was immediately obvious to anyone who so much as walked into a room with the two of them. ____

The live show that turned into a Q&A about Laurent's hair products also marked the beginning of a massive movement between both of their fandoms to get them to film at least one collab. Their follower counts shot up at least a half million in the week that followed The Panel. The fans were insistent.

Laurent, in his monthly Q&As, said no. Damen, in his informal weekly liveshows, said no. Nicaise, without being asked for his opinion, said that "that boy" didn't deserve to collaborate with Laurent, because he would obviously be such a poor gamer that they would have nothing to do. Nik, when questioned at length by his own fans, pointed out that Laurent was hardly likely to let Damen root around in his closet, and quite frankly would probably burn anything that Damen actually suggested he liked. Then he put on his welding mask and took a blowtorch to an old metal bed frame.

Jord, when asked for his opinion, shrugged and said that he wasn't sure what their common ground was.

A full six months later, at another YouTube event, someone asked if Laurent had read any of the Lamen fic. At almost the exact same time, in a completely different room, Damen was asked the same question.

That marked the day of the first documented time both Damen and Laurent agreed on something. In this case, it was a highly offended judging-you face, followed by an incredulous, "Lamen?"

____

No one knew how the first collab actually happened. Neither of them were the sort of people who gave in gracefully to peer pressure, and the comments about it had actually dramatically decreased a year after the event. The fanfiction was still going strong, of course, but the really rabid requests only popped up about half of the time, rather than all of it.

A few fans, after doing some digging for a while, suspected that it had something to do with the return of Laurent's brother, Auguste, who had spent the last three years living abroad. Auguste, a casual travel vlogger who only reached modest levels of fame due to the occasional cameo by his far more popular little brother, was good friends with Nikandros, and there was a comic that got several thousand notes on Tumblr depicting Auguste and Nik tying Damen and Laurent to chairs and firmly instructing them to work out their issues, and then leaving the room arm and arm and cackling.

They played a shopping simulator on Laurent's side channel, where he occasionally played requested games that were not particularly strategy based or requiring of more than a single video to finish, but were very fun. Nicaise appeared in significantly more of those sorts of videos, and in fact could be seen in the background during the middle of their game throwing popcorn at Damen's hair and then leaving reluctantly after getting a single raised eyebrow response from Laurent.

The video was a record breaking success for both of them, and the channel CaptivePrince was born. Once a month, like clockwork, they made a video that was usually something that didn't actually fit into either of their genres. Challenge videos, amateur DIY attempts, a string of three videos in which they played a game of monopoly on camera and slowly but surely lost their minds, all had the same sarcastic banter, and the same aggressively competitive undertones that their original meeting had had, even if all they were doing were answering a tag, but now each video also had startled laughter, and arguments that ended in agreements, and completely identical I'm-sorry-what-now responses to anyone else who entered into the video, accidentally or entirely on purpose.

____

Two years after the first CaptivePrince video, they both happened to be on the same panel again, at the same event where they first met. An innocent fan asked the panel as a whole how significant others and family members dealt with being closely associated to people who were famous on one platform, but also entirely anonymous on others. When the line of answers got to Laurent, he pointed out that his brother was a YouTuber, so that was family taken care of, and then he glanced at Damen, sitting beside him, shrugged, and said, "And my husband is a YouTuber too, so that's easy."

The entire room went totally silent, as if no one could quite believe what he just said, and in that silence Damen had just enough time to grab the mic from Laurent and say, "Well, same, yeah, so that helps," before the screaming started.

Then the audience went ballistic, and the panel had to be shut down thirty minutes early because there were people literally having hysterical breakdowns in the aisle.

Nikandros, on the other side of Damen, hissed, "Thank you," to both of them as they were ushered off the stage, before wandering away to track down Auguste, and Nicaise met them in the backstage area with the biggest grin Damen had ever seen on his face.

"They're crying in there," he said cheerfully, before skipping away to watch on the monitors as security began the difficult task of clearing the room.

"Does that mean he finally approves of us?" Damen asked Laurent quietly as they were taken in a golf cart through the back ways to their hotel room in order to avoid the mess in the halls.

"I have no idea," Laurent said, beaming at him. "Isn't that great? I have no clue."

Damen grabbed his hand, and ran his thumb over the ring there as they exited the golf cart and walked into their room. "Can I finally do a closet video for you, now that we're out?"

Laurent shot him an entirely unconvincing glare and said, "We just came out of the closet, and now you want to go back in?"

Laughing, Damen fell backwards onto the bed and grinned up at him, and Laurent sighed. "Only if you agree to play a game with me."

Damen was up like a shot. "Agreed," he said, holding out his hand like they were in a business meeting.

Laurent took it, and then held it trapped. "A real game, not a shopping simulator."

"Agreed," Damen said again, looking so excited that he was nearly bouncing in his seat.

They shook.

____

Both videos, along with a video giving all of the pertinent details that their little thirty second speech didn't cover, were released at the same time, two weeks after they left the convention early for fear of what might happen if they attended the last panel together.

They were an instant success.

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Existential Train Seats

"Do you think train seats say something about a person?"

Sam looked at Cas and Dean from over the top of his book. He needn't have bothered with subtlety, Cas was staring thoughtfully out of the window while Dean stared less thoughtfully and more I-will-never-understand-you at Cas. "I don't know, Cas, what do you think train seats say about a person?"

Cas turned his thoughtful expression to Dean, and Sam noted the gentle shift as their bodies angled towards each other. He doubted very much that either of them were paying enough attention to see it, but he'd watched a whole TED talk series on body language and this was textbook.

"I prefer to sit facing the direction that the train is moving from, and other people prefer to face the direction that the train is moving towards." Cas gestured vaguely to the window and the trees whipping past. "Don't you think that that's significant?"

Dean blinked at him, and Sam raised his book slightly higher to hide his grin. "Do you mean morally?"

"Do you think I spend too much time looking towards the past, Dean?"

Dean opened his mouth, and then closed it again. "Well, hell, Cas, I don't know, do you?" He frowned. "Wait, I'm sitting facing backwards, do I?"

"You do seem to spend quite a bit of time repenting for past mistakes," Cas said. "It might be connected."

They held eye contact for long enough that Sam thought he'd probably not miss anything if he started reading again,  but he'd only gotten through half a page before- "Sam!"

He lowered his book slowly to find both of them looking at him with almost the same intensity they usually reserved for each other. "Yes?"

"Sam, we have come up with a theory that we would very much like to test," Cas announced.

They exchanged another significant glance, and Sam marked his place in his book with his ticket and prepared to be bombarded with questions about personal guilt and morality and train seats.

"We would like to switch seats with you," Cas said very seriously.

It was Sam's turn to blink incredulously. "You want to..."

"Trade seats," Dean said.

"Exactly," Cas agreed. "Unless you're particularly wedded to that seat..." He let that dangle, and both of them waited expectantly.

"I- sure? I guess?"

"Excellent." Cas and Dean looked smug and pleased, and so Sam shoved his book into his backpack and they did the awkward half-bent-over shuffle dance of seat swapping in a compartment not quite large enough for any of them to stand up in comfortably, and settled into their new seats.

Sam extricated his book from his bag and opened it, watching carefully over the top as Cas and Dean nodded to each other and turned as one to stare out of the window. He waited, not even bothering to flip pages to keep up with appearances.

After a thirty seconds and a particularly large field of sunflowers flashed by, they sat back, looking disgruntled.

"I feel the same, Dean."

"I know, Cas."

"I think train seats have nothing to do with a person's willingness to let go of the past."

"I think you might be right."

Sam snorted and, when neither of them gave even the slighted hint that they had heard him, decided to abandon his observations entirely and focus on his book. He made a mental note, however, to put this entire experience in an email to Charlie as soon as they had wifi again. Someone else needed to slam their head against this particular wall with him.

When he looked up again, Cas and Dean were slumped against each other, sleeping.

He thought seriously about waking them up just to ask what they think it says about people who fall asleep on trains, but they looked so peaceful that he just smiled down at his book and let them be. He supposed that they deserved this.

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Have a Nice Summer

Dwell momentarily on a Castiel who is a complete English nerd. Loves reading, writing, poetry, the whole nine yards. Let's say that in this particular universe, everyone goes to a school where being an English nerd wouldn’t ostracize him from the "herd." Like, sure, he's not the world's most popular kid, but people know him by sight, and like him in a general sort of way. By his senior year he's one of the head writers for the paper, so they know he's got a way with words. And so during yearbook signing, Cas is constantly in demand, because he writes such prettily poetic things on people's books, so much better than "have a nice summer" or "hope I see you again before I die." 

And then there's Dean. He's not the head of the football team popular (though do football teams have heads? Are they called captains? Whatever, irrelevant, carrying on), but he's well known and well liked by literally everyone. He's hot, he has notoriously picky taste in dates (which just makes him all the more desirable because logic hush), he drives a nice old car, and he beat up that bully Marv back in freshman year, even before he bulked up, so he's got that little edge of slightly-scary going for him too. 

Basically, he's Dean Winchester, motherfuckers. Anyway, Dean's sitting over near the bleachers with his yearbook, and he's got a constantly circulating crowd of people around him, and he's signing books and telling jokes and just generally giving off the appearance of basking in his own glow.

But the pages of his yearbook are blank. See, he didn't want to be irritating and shove his book into the nearest stranger's face, but at the same time no one he was sitting with were close enough to him to just grab the book and start writing, and so it just didn't make it into the circulation. Charlie is over with her robotics club friends and Jo is laughing it up with the little student government circle over on the opposite side of the gym, and Kevin has his AP friends and Garth's got a group of people around him in the corner where he's probably having his (in)famous sock puppet sign its yearbook photo.

(How, by the way, Mr. Fizzle ended up in the yearbook, Dean has no idea. He suspects Singer, the head of the history department, might have had something to do with it, because he's always had a bit of a soft spot for Garth, but no proof has yet been unearthed.)

(Mr. Fizzle's yearbook quote is "You are a puppet, but in the hands of the infinite, which may be your own." Antonio Porchia)

(Garth's is "If you're gonna taste my soup, you gotta blow on it first." Marmaduke.)

Benny, who would usually be sitting with Dean, isn't even in school today, as he was bitten by something nasty the night before, and is currently lying in the hospital hoping for no ill effects. 

So Dean signs his name with a flourish and writes quick little notes to every person, only a sentence or two, if that, in the yearbooks of people he barely remembers from geometry in sophomore year, and doesn't mention his own book

In a quiet moment, he even shifts slightly so it's not as visible lying next to him. Cas, by this time, is feeling quite accomplished, riding a little on the high of being momentarily overwhelmingly popular.

He's been shuffled by the people he's writing for over next to the bleachers, where the really cool kids are sitting and, a little surprised that he's even gotten this close, he gathers up his courage and the cockiness of his fifteen minutes of fame, and lets himself be sucked into that group. 

He guides the pushing and pulling of his adoring crowd a bit, though as this particular adoring crowd is centered around one sedentary figure, it's not hard to get caught up in the current. 

When he's near enough to be heard over the ridiculously loud ruckus in the gym, he takes a deep breath and focuses his attention on one person. "Hey, Dean, want me to sign your yearbook?" Dean had just gotten comfortable, really. He'd realized that everyone he actually cared about would be around later to sign his book, and their gentle teasing about the emptiness of its pages wouldn't bother him nearly as much as the embarrassment of someone in this mess finding out that no one had signed his book yet would.

Then someone says, from directly above him, "Hey, Dean, want me to sign your yearbook?"

He looks up, and blinks as a face comes into view. Black hair, blue eyes, self-assured smile, ridiculous tan trench coat that belonged somewhere far, far away from the crowded, hot school gymnasium, and yet. 

Dean knows Castiel by sight, just like most other people, but he also knows that Castiel is allergic to strawberries and has a passion for amateur magic tricks and will throw a book at someone's head if they try to dogear the page and would highly prefer to be called Cas because Castiel is a name "not even Satan would give to a child."

Dean knows this because he is a terrible creepy stalker and because Cas sometimes sits in the hallway next to Dean's french class during his lunch and his voice carries. Or. Well. It doesn’t precisely carry. But if you've got good hearing (which Dean has), and you're not paying attention in French class because you’re a person who gives absolutely no fucks about it other than that for someone with a base in Latin it's an easy A (which Dean is), and you happen to sit right next to the door (which Dean does), it might as well have been yelled. 

(Also, it might be slightly possible that Dean is less interested in playing hard-to-get with girls, and has maybe been more interested in one guy for approximately six years, ever since that one guy read the world's most beautiful story aloud, completely fearlessly, to a class of extremely judgmental sixth graders. It might, in fact, be a little possible that Dean's actually head of heels in love with that one guy, and with the way his eyes light up when he's telling a story of his very own.)

When Dean stares up at him, Cas is instantly convinced that he'd overstepped his boundaries. He doesn't know Dean well enough to be on a first-name basis, maybe, or maybe he's offended him by suggesting that Dean would want him to sign his yearbook, or maybe he should have offered his own first, tit for tat and all that, or maybe Dean knows, somehow, telepathically, that Cas has had a massive crush on him for years, and thinks that Cas is going to die in hell like some of Cas's more religious relatives. 

Then Dean smiles, and his shoulders relax, and he reaches down to grab the nearly-hidden book from underneath the bench and pass it up to Cas. Cas feels like he might faint in relief. Dean feels like he might throw up. Blinded by very very blue eyes looking so hopefully down at him, he didn't even think before handing up his sad, embarrassingly empty yearbook for Cas to write in. 

It's too late to take it back now of course, and so he watches and tries to keep his horror from showing too much as Cas carefully flips through the book to the very last page.

Cas doesn't make a comment on the barrenness, though, and instead, after considering the page for a moment, he opens a marker and moves over to sit beside Dean. He sticks his bag underneath his feet and nearly puts pen to paper before stopping, and leaning down to grab his own book from the bag. He offers it to Dean with a sheepish smile. "Sorry, almost forgot. Tit for tat and all that." 

Dean takes the book and pulls out a sharpie, but before he can write anything a hand on his arm stops him. He looks back up to Cas, who gives him another slightly embarrassed smile and says, "So how much of this do you want me to write in? I don't want to take up too much of your space." 

Dean looks from Cas's face to his blank yearbook to the masses of people swarming around them, all of whom have commenced ignoring them until they start signing yearbooks again. On a whim, he announces, "You can take a whole page, actually. I hear you're a pretty good writer, you know," he concludes with a smirk. 

Cas makes a face at him, and then goes back to the yearbook with new vigor. "Great!" Cas's "signature" goes onto the next page, which Dean notices. It's that gesture, done so happily, that prompts Dean to, rather than a vapid little "have a good summer" comment, instead write his number, and a hope that they stay in contact and, in fact, if Cas is not opposed to the idea, that they start "staying in contact" over dinner on Friday night. Cas writes Dean what amounts to an odd little love story between a prince and a dragon. Three years later, nearly done with his English degree, Cas publishes a much longer version of that story in a book, which becomes an instant hit with kids ages twelve through sixteen. 

His boyfriend of three years, who holds the original copyright to the story, thinks this is very amusing, and teases Cas about his "market" until Cas threatens to name the next prince he writes Dean, after which all is calm in the Winchester-Novak household. Ish. Calm-ish.

[interruptedfern-blog]

[interruptedfern-blog]

Marked

Based on this prompt: Every time someone falls in love, a red tally mark appears on their arm. If it’s requited it turns black. If the object of their affection dies, it scars over.

Cas, in canon, has lived for millennia

He's got to have loved and lost thousands of times

And not necessarily from some horrible thing

But just old age

And Dean

Dean doesn't really feel like he's a person who would let himself fall in love

Especially not if there was a tally system

Because that would mean that every day of his young life he would see that single scar on his dad's arm, and would be reminded of what you stood to lose if you loved at all

I would bet that Dean would have three marks

Or, no, make it six

Five scarred, and one that's just a mess because Sam's died and been brought back enough times that god knows what it looks like

Or, no, make it four

Because Ellen and Jo meant something to the boys, but I don't know if Dean would have let himself love them

He met them when he was too old

His mom makes sense

So does his dad (though that is really a can of worms I will not open at the moment, thank you very much)

Sam was inevitable

Bobby was from before he was too young to have that firm resolve

And that's it

I bet he made that decision concrete when Sam left

No love

Never

Or, no

Before that

When he had to leave the juvenile delinquent house, maybe

Because that was when he would have really, really understood that he couldn't let himself actually fall in love with someone

Not with his life

Just think

When he was lifted from Hell

No scars

I mean, he was made new, right?

So he would have had nothing

Except the handprint

And I think he would have gained them back, maybe

Bobby and Sam, at least

When do you think  he noticed the third one?

And how long do you think he spent furiously pretending it wasn't there?

And would he have understood the significance of it being black?

That it was always black?

I mean, because he's only ever had the four, right?

And they were all instantly requited, because family, right?

And it's not like he's ever lived in one place long enough to hear the stories that kids tell

And he's never exactly had the kind of parent who would sit him down and explain these things to him

I'm betting that in this universe it's like The Talk, probably happens around the same time, maybe when the kid first gets a mark that isn't black and freaks the fuck out

And Dean would never have had to have that conversation

And Sam would have figured it out in school, either at college or even before then, because the kid catches on quick, and he's always been more in tune with his feelings, anyway

And so maybe Dean has no idea

(Going along with that, what do you think Cas did with Lisa and Ben's marks when he wiped their memories?)

(Also think of how many scars Sam must have. Because you know he's someone who falls in love easy, and we know how well that works out for him)

So, think of it from Cas's perspective

Because he literally rebuilt Dean, right?

And he knows

He knows all about the tally system

Hell, he was probably there when it was instituted in the first place

And so he probably looked at Dean

Really looked

On a soul-deep level

And he would have carefully found the places where Dean was still scarred and hurting

From the deaths of his parents, mostly

And he would have, not scrubbed them clean, exactly, because the scars aren't dirt, they're not something that just goes away, they're reminders

But he heals them

Because that's what scars are supposed to do

Scarring is just one step in the healing process

And the tally system's biggest flaw is that it finishes with scarring

Cas has always thought that was unfair

So he smooths over those spots and doesn't take them away, precisely, but he lets them finish

And he leaves the other two exactly as they are

And he's an angel, so he knows exactly who they represent

(Maybe it's something that angels can just see, you know?)

And he's a little curious as to why Dean, someone with so much heart in him, has no one but his family, but he doesn't exactly stop on the flight out of hell to ask questions

And when he gets out, and he leaves Dean gently exactly where his body once was

(Loosens the dirt on top, probably, just to give him a little extra help)

And he sits, invisible, on an air current, and he waits

And while he waits, he examines the fresh red slash on his "arm", the first new one in three hundred years, when last he came to earth

Because you can't be that close to a soul as bright as Dean Winchester's without falling at least a little in love

AND JIMMY

Because Cas is borrowing the body, right?

And Jimmy's got tallies and scars of his own, of course

He's only human

But maybe, because the tally marks aren't physical, because they're literally attached to one's soul (or one's wavelength of celestial intent, whatever the case may be), they follow the soul

And the body that that soul happens to reside in

And that's the biggest difference between Jimmy and Cas

Because where Jimmy has a couple (okay, Jimmy has forty two, Jimmy has a big family and was also a bit of a player back in the day, and Jimmy learned to love with all of his heart early on, why do you think Cas chose him), Cas has thousands

And that's why he always wears the coat

And that's why, the first time the coat comes off and he's rolling up his sleeves to help out, the boys freeze

And luckily, the brilliant red marks aren't visible, because once one has loved and lost a couple hundred times, the marks start to move onto other places, because there's only so much space on a human arm

AND LUCIFER

Just think

Because Lucifer

Lucifer only has one

One big tally mark that was once black and beautiful

And then he fell

And it turned red as sin, and hasn't changed since

And that's why red is the devil's color

Because Lucifer loved God

But God didn't love him back

And that puts an entirely new spin on the mark of Cain, too

[interruptedfern-blog]

He Probably Died (He Was Fine)

Written by T because I was anxious about a 5 hour car trip with strangers. :)

"But what if I die? What if they're serial killers and they kill me?"

Only the note of genuine fear in Cas's voice kept Dean from losing it completely. He put the call on speakerphone and put it on the kitchen table, allowing himself a grin as he reached for his math work. 

"You're not gonna die, Cas," he said calmly. "They're from your art history class, they're not trying to kill you."

"They're art history majors! Of course they're trying to kill me!"

Dean resisted the urge to cover his face with his hands. "Cas, you're an art history major."

"Exactly!" Cas sounded nearly hysterical. 

"It's going to be fi-" Dean cut off abruptly as a heavy weight slammed into his chair. 

"Is that Cas? Hi Cas!" Sam called over Dean's head. "Is it true you're riding with strangers tonight? Dude, you're totally gonna die!"

Dean pushed his brother off the back of his chair and turned to glower in his general direction. Sam beamed back, and then grabbed a granola bar out of the cabinet before leaving the room. "Don't listen to Sam, Cas, he's an idiot."

Cas let out a low moan. "This was such a terrible idea. Why did I let you talk me into this. I'm going to die and it'll be all your fault."

Dean raised his eyebrow at the phone. "It was your plan, Cas. I offered to drive up to get you and you turned me down, remember?"

"You were going to take a day off of school!" Cas sounded suddenly indignant. "I couldn't let you do that! Plenty of people around here go home for the weekend, getting a ride was easy."

Smiling triumphantly, Dean said, "And it probably won't kill you?"

Cas grumbled something under his breath. 

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I said, you might have a point," Cas muttered reluctantly.

"And so...?"

"And so I'll go finish packing my bag and stop freaking out?"

Dean punched the air in victory. "Exactly."

The other end of the line was silent for a moment. "Fine."

Leaning over the phone, Dean said, "So I'll see you tonight?"

"Yes."

"Good." Dean scooped up the phone and took it off speaker, smiling down at the table fondly as he said, "I love you."

"Love you too."

"See you tonight?"

"See you."

[interruptedfern-blog]

ACTORS DAMEN AND LAURENT

Okay, so, like, hypothetically, what if they were both from two completely opposite sides of the entertainment industry. They've both got a kind of family legacy in their own way, they're really really good at what they're doing, and suddenly something happens. Treachery strikes on both sides. Laurent needed to distance himself from the empire that his family has built on the Broadway stage because he knew that his uncle was doing some really shady things to make money out of bombing shows, like maybe kind of sort of definitely abusing the actors that work under him, and raking Laurent's name through the mud to cover most of it up, while Damen's brother Kastor took control of the Emmy award winning TV show that they starred in together (let's just say it's a show about two brothers who hunt supernatural monsters that has been running for an unprecedentedly long time) and killed off Damen's character, and then his new girlfriend, Damen's on-again-off-again ex Jokaste, got a restraining order against him on false chargers so the media goes ballistic and he's suddenly pretty unemployable in Hollywood. Damen pours out his woes over a miserable Skype conversation to his old friend Auguste. Auguste who was once a rising star in the industry before Damen met him and, in the middle of an innocent class on stage sword fights, accidentally made him realize that his true passion lies in writing novels, leading him to quit acting entirely, be summarily disowned by his family, and left entirely up to his own devices. He knew a little something about building yourself into a new person. While Damen's lawyer tried to get the restraining order dropped, Auguste told him to start a new project, one entirely different from what he had been doing, so that people wouldn't be left to associate him with being a violent maniac. Whether they win their case or not, Damen needed to change his image immediately, or he'd be forever branded a criminal in the eyes of the media and the public. When Damen pointed out that his name had been blacklisted from every project in Hollywood, Auguste offeed to vouch for him to a friend, who was about to start filming a little indie project up in Canada and was looking for actors. Damen had never done a movie, he'd never even considered working with someone who doesn't know his name and his family's name forwards, backwards, and sideways, and he'd certainly never done anything like what this role would require: playing opposite another man in a soft, gentle romance focusing on Plato's concept of soulmates and something about the "limits of human consciousness," whatever that meant. Auguste said the director was good, and the writing was way less shmoopy than it sounded on paper, and that he had it from an excellent source that Damen's costar would be fantastic. More than that he refused to say, and Damen ended up on a plane to Montreal with absolutely no clue what was in store. 

____

What was in store turned out to be a stunningly beautiful blonde who had a stunningly awful personality. Damen realized early on that this could only be Auguste's infamous brother, known far and wide for his impossibly perfect standards and marked lack of any sort of interest in social scenes, which was a scandal in and of itself. He'd heard that Laurent was positively frigid, but he'd never quite been able to believe it, not when his older brother was so very warm. The bad attitude only extended into his personal life, however, and professionally, Damen was startled to learn that the rumors of absurd talent and breathtaking performances and the man of a thousand faces were apparently also true. Their first table reading was a nightmare, as Laurent had snipingly reminded Damen only minutes before they started that he was here only because /Laurent's/ brother was kind enough to take pity on such a pathetic disgrace for an actor, and then turned round to face the producer with like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth and asked if they could begin. Damen spent the weeks leading up to their first days of filming wondering completely seriously if it would be considered justifiable homicide if he pushed Laurent off of the top of the house that they were working in. Surely no one who had met him would argue. ____ Of course, because Laurent was nothing if not absurdly contrary, he had to go and not be what Damen thought he was. The fucker. During the three nights they'd had to go up a mountain and stay in a tiny little cabin to film a crucial piece, Damen suddenly realized that Laurent was not only not as bad as he once thought he was, he was actually kind of awesome, once you got to know him. In his desert-dry wit and pointed comments that could skewer a man with one deadly shot, Damen found something of a kindred spirit. ____ The first time they kissed without cameras everywhere, Laurent's thousand faces had all been left behind somewhere on set and Damen wondered a little if a real person could be this impossibly beautiful. The first time they fucked, Laurent hit him over the back of the head and cursed him out, roundly blaming him for both of them being such a goddamn cliche, the actors who fell in love while making a love story, and Damen beamed back at him, safe in the knowledge that Laurent was as real as they come. ____ Laurent forgave him for accidentally being the reason that Auguste left the business, and by extension Laurent, behind. Damen, in an attempt to earn the forgiveness that he had already received, helped and played whatever part was needed of him as Laurent used a frightening number of connections and a truly prodigious acting skill to topple the empire that his uncle had created, and was, when he really thought about it, not particularly surprised that Kastor, Jokaste, the old show, and the false restraining order all were destroyed in the fallout. ____ Auguste came to the premier with his boyfriend, and he and Nik mocked both of the stars endlessly for being such a Hollywood cliche, and then cried buckets once the movie started. "Captive" was hailed a sensation by the press, thanks entirely to the amazing amounts of chemistry between the two leads, everyone agreed. The film won a collective many Oscars, and went on to be the first in a new age of Gay Films That Don't End Fucking Sad Fuck You Fuck Them Fuck Everything (actual name of this era of film sorry I don't make the rules). Damen and Laurent were not only employable, but vigorously requested by nearly everyone to do anything requiring two men. A whole host of the first movies in the age of Gay Films That Don't End Fucking Sad Fuck You Fuck Them Fuck Everything were created simply because people wanted to write roles for Damen and Laurent, and while they were superb actors on their own, everyone knew that they worked best together. The director of "Captive," Charls, spent the rest of his life sending tearful thank you letters to Auguste for sending him a miracle. ____ Bonus #1: I don't know anything about how movies work and I have no idea what "Captive" is about In my head it looks like a Troy Sivan or Hayley Kiyoko music video, except with a happy ending. Something about soulmates It would be terribly sappy except a) they're gay and b) they're both probably sarcastic little shits who think that Plato's whole soulmate thing is bullshit. Probably something about them figuring out that it doesn't have to be bullshit, but only if you chose it. Hang on, I have a quote to describe it, maybe “I didn’t fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.” Kiersten White There That's what "Captive" is about And nobody fucking dies ____ Bonus #2: At least half of their animosity on the first day absolutely has to come from Damen looking Laurent up and down and thinking that his taste in clothes are absolutely appalling and so his personality has to match he's sorry he doesn't make the rules that's just how life works so deal and go buy a decent outfit Mr. Uncomfortable Looking Skinny Jeans And Who Needs That Many Unnecessary Laces On A Shirt I Don't Give A Fuck If It's Cutting Edge New York Fashion It's Fucking Ugly

[interruptedfern-blog]

But can't you just see Benny wandering around purgatory with Dean and blocking out the constant stream of 

-WHERE DO YOU THINK CAS IS WHAT IS HE DOING RIGHT NOW DO YOU THINK HE'S OKAY DO YOU THINK THAT THAT VAMPIRE WAS LYING HEY HEY HEY BENNY DO YOU THINK HE GREW A BEARD DO ANGELS EVEN GROW BEARDS HEY HEY HEY BENNY CAN YOU GROW A BEARD CAN I GROW A BEARD DO YOU THINK CAS LIKES BEARDS HEY HEY HEY BENNY BACK IN YOUR DAY WHAT WAS THE OLD-FASHIONED CURE FOR BEARD BURN JUST HYPOTHETICALLY YOU KNOW JUST BECAUSE COMPLETELY PLATONIC AND UN-GAY REASONS NOT THAT I THINK I HAVE A THING ABOUT BEARD HEY HEY HEY BENNY LOOK AT THAT TREE DON'T YOU THINK THAT THE BARK IS ALMOST LIKE SEVENTY PERCENT MAYBE THE COLOR OF CAS'S COAT HEY HEY HEY BENNY DO YOU THINK CAS EVER GETS CLEANED UP LIKE DO YOU THINK HE HAS TO ACTUALLY USE WATER I MEAN DOES HIS ANGEL MOJO WORK DOWN HERE HEY HEY HEY BENNY DO YOU THINK HE KNOWS HOW TO USE NORMAL PEOPLE STUFF TO WASH UP DO YOU THINK THAT SOMEONE MIGHT NEED TO EXPLAIN IT TO HIM TOTALLY IN A COMPLETELY PLATONIC WAY YOU KNOW JUST BECAUSE CAS DOESN'T GET A LOT OF HUMAN THINGS HEY HEY HEY BENNY DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT THE TIME THAT FAMINE MADE CAS EAT BURGERS HE ATE SO MANY BURGERS I WAS SO IMPRESSED…. BECAUSE THAT'S A LOT OF BURGERS NOT BECAUSE EVERYTHING CAS DOES IS IMPRESSIVE BECAUSE HE'S THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD HEY HEY HEY BENNY DO YOU THINK CAS-

And eventually Benny has to convince Dean that the trees are like the ones in the wizard of oz and they are listening and will totally attack you if you keep fucking talking so shut the fuck up… because of the trees.

[interruptedfern-blog]

Bones

I just saw a thing that said "Human bones found in Brooklyn yard after tip is called in- NYPD", and the first thing I thought was boys no, and the second thing I thought was that that would be such a perfect destiel AU

Where Cas accidentally digs up some bones while trying to plant a flower garden, and Dean and Sam are the cops called to 'investigate', and they think it's just some crackpot spewing nonsense, only this Castiel guy doesn't look crazy, and the diplomas hanging on the wall that make him Dr. Novak don't seem to be fakes, and sure enough they take the bones back to the police department and the forensic guys analyze them and they are absolutely genuine human bones, and so they have to go back with a team to investigate, and Cas can't live in an active crime scene, which sucks because he just moved in and it was so perfect for that one day before he found the bones, but Dean overhears him stressing about it all to his brother back in Iowa, and invites him to stay until the investigation is cleared up.

And while living together for those months (it was evidently the house of a former serial killer ooops), they get to be very good friends indeed, and Dean might be dragging out the investigation a liiiiiittle because he might have a tiny crush on his new roommate.

And then Cas overhears Dean and Sam arguing because Sam is saying you can't just drag this out because you want him to stay and Dean is like don't tell me what to do Sammy I can commit a federal offense and impede a police investigation for the sake of my personal life if I want to and Sam is like oh you really like him don't you and Dean is like shut up and Cas turns the corner and is like Dean are you fucking kidding me? The house was a mass grave site do you really think I'm going back there ever again? And Dean is like wait really and Cas is like yes really and by the way you like me? And Dean is like of course I like you you're my housemate and Cas is like but you like me-like me don't you (and at this point Sam throws his hands up and walks out of the apartment to go to the one next door where his nice normal girlfriend Jess is waiting, with whom he has an adult relationship with) and Dean is like maaaaaybe and Cas is like oh and Dean is like yeah and Cas is like I like you-like you too and Dean is like oh and Cas is like yeah. 

And then make outs. And Cas stays ostensibly until he finds a new apartment (but it's New York and it's so much cheaper to just share anyway and about six months after they get together Dean looks at Cas really seriously and is like do you want to move in and Cas looks at him from across their breakfast table where they're eating with his plates and deans silverware, and then looks at the living room where his books are piled on the shelves and his coat is hanging next to Dean's and says are you serious right now?) and Dean stops accidentally-on-purpose screwing with the investigation and ends up being awarded medal of valor after he catches the perpetrator, a skeevy guy named Zachariah, and they all live happily ever after the end.

[interruptedfern-blog]

Let Us Go Then, You and I

But can't you just see it?

Crotchety old Dean, who's lived alone since his wife Lisa died, being forced into a home by his son, Ben. Ben doesn't think that Dean can't take care of himself, because Dean might be fairly spry for an old guy, but Dean is falling back into his old drinking habits, now that he no longer has anyone to monitor him, and he might be in good shape, but he's not young anymore, and Ben doesn't want to bury both of his parents within the same five years. So we have a resentful Dean, who doesn't actually want to be there at all. And enter Cas, who's been living at the home for a little while now because his family thought he was unstable early on, even though he just liked having his own opinions.

He's quiet, and helps out in the library, and sits on a bench and watches the birds, and basically he's the antithesis of Dean, at least on the surface. And one day, they're seated together at lunch. And there starts something small and fragile and beautiful in a way that few things are for people of their age. Cas softens Dean, brings out the side of him that he thought died with Lisa, and Dean in turn discovers Cas's rebellious streak, and helps him sort through the pain and anger at his brothers that lies beneath the calm surface. And they're happy, and Dean moves in to Cas's apartment, because his place still doesn't really feel like he really lives there, and home is with Cas, anyway. And it's easy, in a way that it never was with Lisa. And now they both sit and watch the birds, and the residents pass their bench and nod and call them CasandDean and not just Cas and Dean. And there can't be a happy ending to this. There can't. Because one day, Dean will wake up and the sun will be shining and the birds will be singing, but none of that will matter because Cas is still and silent beside him. And it won't be fair, because Dean just learned to really live again, and now Cas has gone and taken the world with him. And no one is very surprised when Dean doesn't wake up a month later.

Maybe you can die of a broken heart.

And their bench is empty, and the birds sing and the sun shines on Ben as he reads his father's eulogy, and Dean is buried beside Cas's as-yet-unmarked grave, because Lisa's family never much liked Dean anyway, and somewhere else, far beyond the grief of the ceremony, a dark haired, blue eyed man sits on a bench, and looks up and smiles and offers space next to him to a man with green eyes and freckles and a familiar smirk set into a face that is far younger than he has ever seen it.

[interruptedfern-blog]

Positively Enchanted

Before you read this I would advise a thorough watch through of the entirety of Enchanted. Not because you particularly need to watch through it to understand what's going on here, but because it's such a great movie that everyone should take two hours out of their day to watch again

Okay, so Soon-to-be-prince Dean is about to marry Michael Well, he also just met Michael, but you know how it goes, you fall out of a tree onto a prince's horse, you gotta marry him That's just the way the world works They're meant to be It's like he was born to be Michael's perfect match Everyone says so Well The animals that he sometimes talks to say so, and that's like 98% of the people he knows, so it's gotta count for something But as he's (okay, he's late, it's his own fault, he'll admit it) rushing to get to the church on time, he runs into this old guy who suggests looking into a wishing well before he gets married. For good luck or something. And. Well. It's not like they can start the wedding without him, and strange old men that appear out of no where to lead people off of their paths are never dangerous, right? (Dean hasn't really gotten out much before this exact day.) (His enchanted chipmunk Sam who generally has all the answers isn't with him right now though so he's goin with his gut on this one, and his gut says that water is pretty) And down he goes.

Cas has spent the last seven years mostly hating his job, but he's good enough at it that he might as well stick with it, and it's not like there's ever a shortage of divorces, so he's always in business. It puts food on the table for his daughter Claire, and that's what matters. More importantly, he's about to propose to his girlfriend of five years, Meg, and he's just told his daughter about it, and she has the oddest expression on her face right now that he honestly can't read at all. Is it happiness? Is it disgust? Is it because the present he got to soften the blow was a book on geodes and not about princesses? He thought she liked stones, though. Or was that last month? See, this is why she needs a mother. He really isn't expecting the guy dressed in the weirdest medieval costume standing on a fire escape trying to open the painted door of a castle on a billboard. It's New York, though, so this isn't the strangest thing he's ever seen. Claire, with all the infinite wisdom of a seven year old, apparently believes different. Sometimes he wonders what would have happened if the taxi hadn't been stopped at that particular light. If Claire hadn't been annoyed enough at him, or hadn't been curious enough about the guy on the billboard, if she hadn't had the exact combination of emotions at that moment in time that prompted her to unbuckle her seat and jump from the car. If he had managed to catch her before she was standing underneath the billboard calling up at the crazy man to ask him if he was a lost prince. If it hadn't been raining. If Cas hadn't been there to catch him when he slipped and fell.

The man says that his name is Dean, but he also says that he's from Andalasia, wherever the hell that is, and he says that he's supposed to be going to marry the Prince and live happily ever after, and he's wearing white tights and a glittery white coat with sleeves so enormously puffy that he gets stuck in their doorway, so Cas isn't sure if he can trust anything he says. Claire loves him, though, and that's more he can say for most of the world, so he lets him share their cab, he lets him come in to dry off and use the phone, and when he falls asleep on their couch, Cas decides to let him stay the night. It has everything to do with the fact that Claire looked so distraught when he threatens to kick the guy out, and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he doesn't think he'd ever seen anyone sleeping so peacefully in his life. He also doesn't think he's ever met an adult with a smiling resting face. Where does this man come from, Mars?

Cas should have known better than to trust his seven year old about taking in strange men off of the street. In the thirty minutes since he's been up, he's found an apartment full of vermin, and a daughter that might probably be hallucinating, a mostly-still-a-stranger man in his shower being dressed, unless he's hallucinating too, by pigeons, all of which culminated in Meg walking in on him lying underneath a soaked, mostly naked, stunningly beautiful young man, pigeons flying over their head, and Claire laughing manically in the entryway, still in her pajamas. He doesn't blame Meg for taking one look at them and walking away. There are better ways to start the day.

Dean has no idea how to function in the real world. Cas thought that that might have been a product of the late hour, and maybe once Dean had had a good night's sleep and a chance to come down from whatever he was obviously on, he'd make more sense, but from tearing up the curtains to make a floral doublet to wear outside, to asking a pair of doves (where did he find doves?) to carry a heart-shaped wreath of flowers (??) to Meg's office (???????????), to bursting into tears after informing Cas's newest clients Maggie and Don that true love lasts forever, it is clear that he's never spent a day in the real world, ever. The singing in the park really takes the cake, though. Where did that song come from. Where did Dean learn to /sing/ like that. Who taught him to sound like an actual angel. Why does everyone around him know this song. He knows the answer to the last one, actually. Dean has the kind of infectious personality and the stunningly beautiful smile that makes anyone and everyone, no matter who they are, flock to him. Looking at his ridiculous shining eyes, Cas can't blame anyone for going along with the entire charade. How do you know that you love.... Well. That's a ridiculous question. You just.... know. Cas tears himself away from whoever it was who grabbed his hand and spun him into the circle of dancers and catches his breath in a sharp gasp. He feels, abruptly, foolish and absurd. The singers and dancers keep swirling around him and the song goes on and he stands still on the edges of it all and wonders what the hell he's doing. A hand taps him on the head and he starts, and looks up. "Coming, Cas?" Dean smiles down at him from a horse drawn carriage, pausing from the song that everyone else is still singing to hold a hand out to pull Cas up with him. There are flowers in his hair and more birds than should be in New York in March in the air and he keeps smiling and Cas shakes his head and laughs and lets himself get pulled along for a moment.

Meg calls him and thanks him for the doves and the flowers and says that she can't wait for the ball on Friday night and forgives him for everything and he looks at Dean's tentatively hopeful grin and wonders why he feels like something is missing.

Michael comes. Cas has heard about Prince Michael, he's heard /so much/ about Prince Michael that he was fairly certain that Prince Michael was just a figment of Dean's imagination. Of course, Dean's imagination seems to influence reality in a way that most people's can't. Cas, then, shouldn't feel surprised when a handsome prince shows up in the door in velvet and gold, with a sword and flashing blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass, come to carry Dean away into the sunset of happily ever after. Cas stands on the sidewalk outside of their apartment building and waves goodbye to Dean and Michael as they wander off hand in hand and smiles a smile that he doesn't quite mean and holds his daughter close as she cries over the loss of her new best friend. He tries not to overanalyze why he feels a bit like crying too. (He has blue eyes too, you know.)

In the end, Cas feels almost let down. He goes to work, Maggie and Don tell him that the "marvelous young man" who was here yesterday convinced them to give their marriage another try, and he is entirely unsurprised because of course. Of course he did. He comes home and Claire clumsily sticks a flower in his buttonhole and tells him that a pigeon brought it just for him and Cas believes her completely. He thanks Missouri from next door for looking after Claire for the night and heads off with Meg to dinner before the ball, and there are no sudden outbursts of song, and no one has a fabulous accident involving what should rightfully have been a completely normal event and the ordinary parts of life are just that. Ordinary. He wonders if why he thought they would be anything different. He chats with Meg and he smiles across the table at her during all of the right moments and at the ball they dance well together, he knows that, and yet he feels like something is missing. Just like Maggie and Don's newfound love and the pigeon with the flower didn't surprise him, Dean, looking dazzlingly handsome in an expertly tailored suit, standing at the top of the stairs beaming down at him doesn't either. He feels a piece of himself slide into place and not even the appearance of Michael, still looking picture perfect in his absurd puffy sleeves and tights, at Dean's side. It seems fitting that they should reach each other just as the partner swap dance is called, and he doesn't even think before holding out a hand to Dean. Beside him he registers vaguely Meg's uncharacteristic fluttering at Michael's sweeping bow, but the brunt of his attention is taken up with Dean's face and eyes and smile.

He told him not to take food from strangers, he fucking told him, and now look where they are. He's going to kill him when he wakes up. If he wakes up. Why won't he wake up. Michael's True Love's Kiss failed, and Michael is sitting ashen faced on the steps. There's a creepy looking white-haired man in a fairly ugly suit being restrained by a short blonde guy who keeps apologizing and there is a chipmunk going apeshit at the top of the railing and there's an apple with a single bite taken out of it lying on the floor and Cas doesn't care about any of it because Dean is lying on a couch and his face is white and his hands are cold and his eyes aren't opening and he's not smiling and he's barely breathing and Cas doesn't think he himself is breathing all that much either. "You're Castiel, right?" The blonde guy keeps his attention on the sword he's holding to the man's throat, but speaks loud enough for Cas to hear. "Why don't you give it a try?" Cas stares at him for a moment, and then looks back down at Dean. "Do it, Cassie." Meg's smile is sad, but resigned. She sits down at the foot of the stairs and says, "Kiss him." So Cas does.

Even with his newfound tolerance for absurdity, being abducted by a dragon was a little unexpected. Dean, newly healed from True Love's Kiss, makes an alarmingly good knight in shining armor for someone who was nearly bested by a slippery fire escape and gravity not three days ago, but Cas can't find it in him to complain overly much. The dragon falls to earth in an explosion of what looks sickeningly like glitter, which means Cas will never be able to look at Claire's art projects in the same light ever again, but he and Dean are both unharmed, and when he slips coming off of the roof of the building, Dean catches him. Leaning down to press their foreheads together, Dean says, "Quid pro quo," with a sparkle in his eye, and Cas finds himself laughing helplessly.

Back down on the ground, the blonde guy, apparently named Gabriel, who had restrained the evil white-haired man, apologizes to Cas and Dean about fifty times for trying to poison Dean, and tells them that Zachariah's trance on him was broken by the bite of a chipmunk and that he is forever in debt to that chipmunk, and then an absolutely humongous man bursts out of the crowd to cling to Dean and sob into his hair about evil spells and chipmunks and not being able to speak and Dean has to detach the arms from around his neck and push until the man stands on his own two feet and introduces himself rather sheepishly to Cas as Sam, Dean's younger brother and former pet chipmunk. Somewhere in the commotion Meg and Michael find each other, and then find Dean and Cas. Hands joined firmly with Meg's, Michael announces that he must go back to Andalasia at once to set the kingdom right after the reign of terror that his stepfather led, and that Meg is going to accompany him in order to find a better world than the one she lives in now. "It doesn't hurt that he's a prince, either," she confides to Cas as Michael makes his tearful goodbyes to his former True Love. Cas is suddenly enormously glad that he does not live in the kingdom that will now have Meg as its queen. He knows her far too well.

It isn't what Cas expected his happily ever after was going to look like, but the brilliant smile on his daughter's face when she wakes up the next morning to find Dean instead of Meg is more than enough of a sign that he did something right. Ordinary life becomes extraordinary, and after a time he begins to forget that it was ever different. He's in love and he knows because every day is an adventure. He knows because Dean's smile makes him feel like he's got wings, and because even on the worst days he can allow himself to take Dean's hand and be pulled along. And they all lived happily ever after.

I hope I got through that Meg is 100% going to take over the kingdom and rule with an iron (but smart and politically savvy) fist, because Michael is an idiot who doesn't know how to do shit and Meg can absolutely get stuff done

[interruptedfern-blog]

tiny Castiel wishes you a good day

[interruptedfern-blog]

Rickrolled

There was a rickroll post, and I came to realization that he kind of sounds like Jensen and now I want to see that. Dean as a teen pop star.

Who makes a really bad decision. The fucking trench coat.

I don't know how to make this an AU

But I want this AU

I want a rickroll fic

I mean, Dean does this when he's young, right?

Young and stupid and maybe his parents were kind of famous (as famous as one can get before the internet), or maybe he was scouted out by some people because, I mean, look at that fucker, but still, he did this thing.

And it was a one-hit-wonder deal, and he took money and left, and as he got older he blocked it more and more from his mind.

Sam brings it up occasionally.

It's a quiet family joke, but remember, this is before the internet was a thing.

And so Dean figures that it just… vanished.

And then along comes the twenty-first century.

I want fanboy Cas.

Except it's more of a former-fanboy-Cas.

He loved the thing when it first came out.

He was head over heals in love with Dean Winchester.

Like, Dean was instrumental in his sexual awakening.

You know how everyone has that one person?

That was Dean for Cas.

Enough that even like twenty years later, Cas still wears the trench coat that he bought when the video came out.

Anyway, back to the twenty-first century, and the internet, and rick rolling.

And so the meme appears.

And Dean starts becoming relevant again.

And wow, that is not what he wanted.

People keep coming into the garage and being like wait. You seem familiar.

But Dean is older and looks different, especially because right now he's wearing ripped jeans and motor oil, and it looks a lot different from the copious amounts of makeup ("I'm a painted whore, Sammy!") and terrible eighties clothes that he wore then.

And so when people think they recognize him, they're not sure, so they don't say anything.

And so Dean gets to keep his privacy, and the world gets to enjoy the real first meme.

And then enter Cas, who's car broke down on his way to…. Let's say it's on the way to a conference . Because he's a…. let's say, linguistics professor Or a translator Yes Translator of ancient languages And his car breaks down in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

And when he goes to the garage to find the only mechanic in town (which he has been pointed to about five times) (because the entire town is invested in Dean Winchester's love life, and like to point any eligible-looking boys or girls that come through to the garage specifically around two thirty, which is the time around when Dean has stripped to his undershirt and has gotten invested enough in the guts of whatever car he's working on to completely forget his surroundings and sing a little)

And Cas walks into the garage in his signature trench coat, and he can't see anyone, but he can hear something.

And for a second he thinks that someone's being rick rolled.

Because it sounds exactly like the video.

Except there's no music.

And he's confused, and he's curious, and he's Cas, so he hunts around until he finds Dean, leaning over a really beautiful old car in the back workroom, singing to himself about love while he (insert mechanic babble here)

And then Dean turns to grab something from the table behind him, and sees Cas. And Cas is frozen, because it's him. It's his childhood crush, standing a few feet in front of him, older and less put-together, but the eyes. And the fucking voice.

And Dean hasn't actually seen someone wear a trench coat, and look good in it, for like twenty years. And the guy is obviously not going to say anything, and Dean kind of wants to avoid the awkwardness that comes from random people walking in on him while singing, and so he wipes grease off with a rag, and extends a hand to Cas. "Hi, I'm Dean."

Then, of course, there’s a lot of inner fangirling and outward stoicism, because Cas doesn’t want to seem weird, but he ends up coming off as a little bit of a dick, and Dean kind of dislikes him, but his car is gorgeous and the part that it needs is going to take a few days to come in and so Dean allows Cas to leave it in the garage until it can be fixed, and Cas rents a car to take to his conference.

And once he’s come back from the conference he’s significantly less awkward, because it gave him time to adjust to the idea that his biggest celebrity crush is fixing his car, and he makes a better impression on Dean this time.

And, of course, the car part is delayed in coming in, and the one hotel in this little town is full for some sort of wedding, and Cas mentions that offhand to Dean, who cracks up and says that the wedding is his godfather’s, and no one’s quite sure who all the people in the hotel are, because up till now everyone thought that Bobby and Ellen hadn’t gone more than fifty miles away from this town their entire lives, but evidently that’s not true. And then Dean realizes that Cas isn’t just mentioning the oddness of a four hundred person town having a full hotel, but is trying to figure out where to stay for the next few days until his car is fixed, because it would be significantly cheaper than driving the rental car home and then keeping it for a week and driving it back.

And so Dean offers him his own place, because it’s got room enough for two since his brother moved out, and he’s not going to be there much over the next few days because of the wedding anyway, and he’s like fifty percent sure that Cas isn’t actually a serial killer, and that’s good enough for him.

And they politely avoid each other for a while, like you do when you’re living in a stranger’s house, and Cas does work from his computer, and Dean closes the garage and helps put up streamers and organize menus and seating plans and helps his brother and his brother’s fiance Jess settle in to their rooms at Bobby’s house, and he gets to watch as Jess and Jo become instant BFFs, and Jess gets to save the day and be the second bridesmaid after Pamela goes into labor five states away and can’t make the wedding.

And that’s great and all, but Pam was also Dean’s date to the wedding and because of the tininess of the town and the overlapping relationships, his recent ex is going to be at the wedding and he does not want to bump into Cole and his new sweetheart without someone shielding him, and in desperation he asks Cas.

And Cas is flustered, but he’s also going a little stir crazy because he’s been sitting in the same room for five days and he’s finished every piece of work that he’d put off in the past month, and he does happen to have a fairly nice suit with him, because of the conference, and so he agrees.

And they both have a startlingly good time at the wedding, and find out they have a lot in common during the reception, and then there’s an unpleasant run in with Cole, and midnight finds them both drunk and telling incredibly embarrassing stories.

And Dean points out the pretty dark haired woman dancing with a teenager in the middle of the floor, and tells Cas that her name is Lisa, and the kid is Ben, and they were engaged once upon a time, before Dean got cold feet, and then there’s Benny, the guy in the corner talking to Bobby’s best man, Rufus, and he was Dean’s best friend before Dean fell in love with him and pushed him away.

And Cas, in an attempt to lighten the mood, but also to share something similarly personal and awkward, tell Dean that he’s a big fan of his “previous work.”

And Dean’s like what.

And Cas tries to sing The Song, and is really, really bad at it, and Dean stares for a moment because Cas recognized him all this time and also he’s such a bad singer it’s hard to look away, and then Dean discovers that he doesn’t actually mind all too much that Cas knows who he is, because Cas seems like a pretty awesome guy.

And so he cracks up, and Cas stops singing to look at him in concern, and then Dean starts belting out The Song as well as he can while still laughing hysterically, and Cas starts to laugh and joins in, and everyone at the wedding stops and stares because Dean never sings The Song. Ever. And he’ll leave any place that plays it and it’s become an incredibly effective Dean-be-gone, and what is even going on who is that guy and what’s his secret?

And then five years later Cas makes a special request without telling anyone, and as Dean hears the couple of bars he stops and looks Cas dead in the eye and whispers you didn’t with such outrage that Cas bursts into laughter, and Dean joins in as they stand together and sway to their first song as husband and husband.

[interruptedfern-blog]

Bus AUs

Greyhound bus travel AUs, with a couple new additions courtesy of the trip back.

Don't give me that look, I know you're listening to Hamilton and I know the exact part you're at too, I can hear the chord progressions, so come on and tell me your opinion on Hamilton/Laurens already

You sat next to me because you thought that there was an outlet on this side and then the bus filled up and you were stuck here and now you're blaming the lack of an outlet on me even though I had no idea either

I've been on the same bus with you all day and I am 100% sure that the only thing you've eaten is a single packet of fruit snacks. Do you want a sandwich? (And yes, I do know that because I've been quietly watching you all day. It's not my fault you look stunning in the sunlight, gosh)

You nearly kicked the lever that would open the emergency exit and panicked and now you're insisting that I switch seats with you even though there are like ten open seats on this bus and I have to admit that it is kind of adorable that you don't want to leave the emergency exit seat empty even though I promise nothing will happen if you do

Stop giving me that look I know it's ridiculous that I have to stand up to reach the air conditioner valves but you don't have to be a dick about

Some idiot can't reach the air conditioner valves without standing and i'm gonna be a dick about it because they look adorable when they're pissed at the bus, the air conditioning, and me

I overheard you asking the bus driver about your next gate and we're going the same way and we've got five minutes to get there and you are absolutely going the wrong direction so don't freak out when I correct you

We've been seat mates over three different buses and I feel like we've formed a silent bond over sharing the outlets and changing the temperature to suit our combined needs

I asked rhetorically why the windows always feel like they have a wind current around them, and you answered me. Thoroughly. With diagrams drawn on the back of your papers. That actually made sense to me even though I have not a scientific bone in my liberal-arts-professor body. Are you by any chance the new physics professor at the university that I work at? And can you tell me why flies don't all get stuck in the back of cars when the car starts moving?

I was planning to walk from the station to my destination, but you are a long term resident of this town and just laughed in my face for like five minutes before telling me that you're going the same way and we can split a cab. Which. Uh. Okay, I guess?

You actually want the bus to stop every two hours? So you can what? Go to the bathroom? Are you kidding me? Travel weakling.

Okay, everyone else on this bus might think that you're studiously reading an ancient text, but I know that that's Martial's full collection of epigrams, which means you're actually reading dirtier shit than EL James could ever dream of.

I don't know you and you don't know me and I don't know how this started but we've been having a spirited debate about whether we're technically "on" or "in" the bus for the last thirty minutes and we've just now remembered that this is a late night trip and everyone around us absolutely wants us dead.

I'm trying to move down the aisle but there are people coming towards me so i'm just gonna duck into this empty row for a second to let them- oh my god I am so sorry I didn't see you- no i'm not calling you small- well i'm sorry that you're having a bad day- it's not my fault that you're short- would you stop hitting me???

There are more people coming onto the bus don't sit here don't sit here don't sit- oh my goodness you have the most adorable baby sit here sit here sit here

The bus driver left the bus and the line of people waiting in the cold to get on for ten minutes and then came back and opened the doors to let himself on and close them again in our faces and you and I are bonding over cursing that asshole out.