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trinityofone
Sam looked at the mess arrayed around them. “We should call Bobby.”
“Aww, come on, Sam,” Dean said. “The guy’s taking his first vacation in...I think ever. We really gonna interrupt him because we can’t build a couple of hex boxes and get rid of a few magical artifacts?”
“And a hockey jersey,” said Castiel, ever-precise.
Dean snatched it out of his hand. “I’m keeping that.” Sam shot his brother a look. “What? Next time we need money we can...sell it on eBay.”
Sam sighed. “Let’s forget about internet auction opportunities and focus on cataloguing and cleaning up this stuff before we accidentally curse ourselves.”
Dean flopped down onto one of the beds, nearly crushing what Sam was pretty sure was a priceless Bedouin charm. “Those Crossbozos had them for way longer than we’re going to.”
“Yes,” said Sam, “and seven of them are dead and one’s in jail.”
Dean waved a dismissive hand and grinned at him. “Details.”
Sam decided it would be better to ignore him. “Cas, do you want to help me out with these?”
Castiel put down the bronzed rodent skull he’d been examining and joined Sam in front of the open chest. Carefully, Sam reached in and pulled out the next object: a thin, flat stone disc with symbols carved into it. “Is that...Cuneiform?”
Castiel shook his head. “It’s a fake.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Castiel folded his arms.
Sam didn’t want to give him a hard time, but... “How do you know?”
“I know a genuine Sumerian artifact when I see one.” An edge had crept into his voice, recognizable despite its gradually rising pitch. “I thought you desired efficiency.”
“I do, but—”
Castiel reached back into the chest. When he straightened up and Sam saw what he was holding, he nearly bit through his tongue.
“Yeah, I don’t think we have to worry about those...”
Castiel flipped through the worn skin mags. “Busty Asian Beauties is your preferred title, is it not, Dean?” he asked, holding up one.
Suddenly Dean was paying attention. “Oh, hey, thanks,” he said, winking at Castiel as Cas passed it over.
“Seriously?” said Sam.
Castiel returned his attention to the other three magazines, squinting at them for a moment before offering two of them to Sam. “No, dude, really. Just throw them out.”
Castiel chucked a pair of magazines into the bin, then rolled up the third and stuck it in his back pocket. “Seriously?” Sam said again.
“I wish to read the articles,” Castiel declared, deadpan.
Over on the bed, Dean chuckled. He already had his sticky fingers all over the no doubt sticky magazine. “Dean, stop for a minute and think about where that’s been.”
“You’re a killjoy, Sammy.” He opened up the magazine to the center spread and displayed it proudly to Sam. “Do you think Keiko here likes killjoys?”
Sam rolled his eyes and turned away. Castiel was bent over the chest again. Sam leaned closer; “What’s that?” he asked.
Castiel started, a small, barely noticeable jerk. But then he shrugged and shook his head. He put the object he was holding—a wide metal band or belt of some sort—off to the side.
“Nothing of value.”
“I don’t—” Sam started. His phone blared loudly, interrupting him.
“Chuck?” he said, surprised. He turned away, for whatever reason seeking the minimal privacy one could hope for in a too-small motel room.
“Hey, Sam.” Chuck sounded nervous, which wasn’t exactly new. “Is, uh, is now an okay time?”
“Uh, you tell me,” Sam said, trying for a chuckle.
“Hm, prophet humor. Never gets old.” He heard Chuck take a breath. “I was just wondering...if you guys aren’t too busy, could you stop by soon? We could use some help.”
“Is something wrong? Are you okay?”
“No, no, we’re fine. We’re okay. We just...you know what, never mind. It’s not a big deal, I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
Sam glanced over at Dean, who had the porn mag draped over his knee, but was looking at Sam curiously. He made a ‘What is it?’ face. Sam shrugged. “Chuck,” he said, doing his best to sound sincere, “you know if you need it we’re happy to help. Just tell me—”
Sam heard what sounded like a muffled crash from the other end of the phone. “Shit. I gotta go,” said Chuck, distraction twining itself around the worry in his voice. “If you have a chance, just...” There was a thump, and then the dial tone.
Sam pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it in dismay.
“What’s up with him?” Dean asked.
“I honestly have no idea. I think he needs our help, but he seemed embarrassed about it.”
An evil look came into Dean’s eye. “Bet you five bucks Becky’s demanding a threesome.”
“Dude, gross!”
“We should probably stop and check on them,” Castiel said, rising from where he was kneeling on the floor.
“Really?” Sam said, though of course he knew they had to: in their line of work it was better safe than dead. “Yeah, no, I know.”
“They’re on the way to Dad’s lockup, aren’t they?” Dean said, swinging onto his feet. “That’s where we’re going to dump this stuff anyway.”
“We can’t just dump it. Dean, I know we just—” He waved his hands in the air, trying to encompass everything involved in stopping the apocalypse and defeating the devil and finally getting out from under the giant weight that's been on our shoulders our whole lives. “But we can’t use that as an excuse to get sloppy, now, after everything! We still have to take this stuff seriously.”
“Sure,” said Dean. “Which is why we’re seriously going to go and seriously make sure our buddy Chuck is okay. Right, Cas?”
“I’m always serious,” Castiel said, staring placidly at them both. Sam realized that that expression had come to make him kind of nervous.
Not as nervous as Becky barreling toward him down Chuck’s front walk did, though. They’d driven for nearly six hours straight, Sam had a crick in his neck, and even without those aggravating factors, Sam found Becky’s lascivious enthusiasm pretty tough to take. “Sam!” she said, stopping just short of throwing her arms around him, Sam was sure. “You came! I’m so glad to see you! Your hair looks amazing!”
Sam added Get haircut to his mental to-do list below Check on Chuck and Dispose of potentially deadly magical artifacts.
“Uh. Thanks.” Sam did his best to maneuver himself so there were a couple of Cas- and Dean-shaped buffers between him and his biggest fan. “So, uh, what’s up?”
Chuck had come out to greet them, too, though at a much more sedate pace. He was ducking his head, his hands in his pockets, but he looked good, Sam thought. Less strung-out. And he wasn’t wearing Arthur Dent’s bathrobe, which was a definite plus.
“Hey, guys.” There was a mutual exchange of nods—even Castiel attempted one. Chuck seemed to spend an extra long moment staring at him: he’d never seen the ex-angel out of his trench coat and tie, Sam supposed—not in person, anyway. The change had to be more shocking, he figured, if you hadn’t seen it happen gradually, hadn’t gotten used to it. “Why don’t you come in?”
They followed Chuck up the steps to his house, Sam all-too-aware of Becky bounding behind him like an overeager puppy. “Do you want something to drink?” Chuck asked once they were inside.
“I made lemonade!” Becky added.
“I like lemonade,” said Castiel. Everyone except Dean turned to him as if surprised to hear him express such a definitive opinion. Castiel’s expression twitched toward annoyance. Sam watched as Dean reached out and casually touched Cas on the arm.
“Me, too,” Dean said.
Becky was still looking hopefully toward Sam, but she seemed to get the message and skipped off into the kitchen. “So, what’s up?” Sam tried again. “I heard a lot of thumping on the phone. Is everything—”
Chuck blushed. “Oh, uh. Becky’s been doing some redecorating.” He gestured around the living room, which, now that he really looked, Sam had to give Becky credit for: the place had much less of a flop house vibe to it now. Sam felt he could probably sit down on the couch without spending twenty minutes inspecting it for suspicious stains. “But that’s not why...” Chuck continued. “I feel kind of bad. I’m not sure I should have—”
“Chuck.”
Chuck nodded and collected himself. “Okay, so you know my visions are coming through again, loud and angel interference-free?”
Sam had not known this. He exchanged a look with Dean and Castiel. “No,” he said. “Why would— Where are you getting the visions from? The angels have all left. It’s done. We’re done.”
Chuck shrugged and gratefully took the glass of lemonade Becky handed him. “Well, sort of. I mean,” he amended when the half-angry, half-panicked look Sam surely sent him hit home, “that part, the whole demons-angels-apocalypse storyline, that’s done for sure. That arc’s finished. But you’re not. I’m supposed to be writing the Winchester Gospels, right, Cas?” Castiel sipped his lemonade and nodded. “Well, you guys are still alive. Congratulations on that, by the way?”
“I always knew you could do it,” Becky said, attempting to push a big glass of lemonade at him. The beverage distribution had not been quite even, Sam noted. The glass Sam was now holding was tall and had a neat slice of lemon stuck on the rim. Dean’s didn’t even have ice in it.
“Or I thought you’d die beautiful, tragic deaths,” Becky continued, a faraway look entering her eyes.
“Uh, Becks?” Chuck made a little slashing motion by his throat.
Becky coughed. “Oh, right. Good job living to tell the tale!”
“Well, actually—apparently, we’re still letting Chuck tell it,” Dean said. He did not sound terribly enthused.
“Yeah, Chuck, I’m not really seeing the problem here,” Sam said. “If you’re trying to get our permission to publish again, we already told you we don’t care, okay? As long as you stop with the,” Sam shifted uncomfortably, “creepy sex scenes.”
Becky pouted.
“No, I know, thanks. It’s not that.” The ice clinked in Chuck’s glass as he gulped noisily. “It’s just...this new arc.”
Becky picked a loose stack of manuscript pages up off the desk. “Chuck’s been letting me beta!” she said proudly, shoving the papers at Sam. Juggling the glass of lemonade, he took them and glanced down. He made a face when he saw that the scene on top depicted the Trickster’s latest little prank. The purple-penned notes in the margins looked way too cheerful. Omg! WARN for MPREG! was one. A short description of Sam lifting up his shirt had also been underlined. I think you need more detail here, Becky had written.
“Great,” Sam said. “I still don’t see what the problem is, Chuck.”
“Well, you know, I’ve been writing what’s happening,” he nodded at the stack of pages in Sam’s hand. “And don’t get me wrong—it’s still good stuff. Like, Zeus, you know, that was pretty cool.”
“Greek mythology is hot right now,” Becky said with a knowing nod.
“But it’s just, in the past... In the first bunch of books, you know, everything was tied together by your search for your father. And then there were Sam’s escalating powers and the hunt for the yellow-eyed demon, and trying to stop Dean from going to Hell, and then whoa, angels!” Chuck paused to grin at Castiel, who did not grin back. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Really no,” said Dean. He coughed, then spat a seed back into his lemonade.
Chuck flapped a hand awkwardly. “I just feel like...I mean, you guys are still driving around, hunting things...and Cas is there, too, so that’s an interesting new dynamic. But still—I’m writing it, and even so I guess I’m not very sure—”
“Spit it out, Chuck.”
Chuck glanced up at the ceiling, then back at all of them. “I just...I can’t figure out what the story’s about anymore. And, uh. I was sort of hoping you could tell me.”
There was a long, profound silence. Then Dean took a step forward.
“You called us here to ask us to tell you what our lives are about?”
“I, uh, er,” said Chuck, articulately.
“Since when are you a fucking existentialist? If you have to write it, just write it! Let us worry about what it fucking means!”
“Hey!” Becky said, stepping in front of Chuck and readying herself to take the full brunt of Dean’s wrath and/or spittle. “He’s just trying to do right by you as characters! It’s very considerate! If I were a character, I’d love it if the author cared enough to really try to understand the full story and use the appropriate symbolism and stuff. And I’d let him write the sex scenes.”
“Yeah, I bet you would,” said Dean snidely.
“Yes,” Becky replied with exaggerated slowness. “That’s what I just said.”
Sam took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right, enough. Chuck, you were right: we can’t help you and you shouldn’t have called.”
Chuck sighed and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Right, well. I probably should have seen this coming.”
No one said anything.
“Prophet hum—you know what, never mind. Sorry I bothered you. Have fun with your hex boxes and stuff.”
Dean set his pulpy glass down on the coffee table. “Awesome. Glad we stopped by.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Castiel told Becky, returning his glass to her. “You make delicious lemonade.”
She preened.
Sam laughed and thumped Cas on the shoulder as they stepped out onto the porch. Castiel gave him a questioning look.
“Nothing. Just—better you than me, dude.”
“Well, that was a bust,” Dean said, shaking his head at Chuck’s closed door as he unlocked the car. “I almost wish we’d stuck to cataloguing magical objects.”
“We still have to do that, Dean,” Sam said, ignoring Castiel’s attempt to initiate rock-paper-scissors and claiming shotgun for himself. “We should just...get it over with. That motel we stayed in last time we were here wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“The one where you almost boned Lilith? Are you kidding me?”
“I didn’t almost bone Lilith!”
“I remember that motel,” Castiel interjected quietly. “I wouldn’t mind...staying there again.”
Sam was going to argue that Castiel hadn’t stayed there last time, but decided it wasn’t worth the bother. “Fine,” he said. “Dean?”
“Yeah, fine, whatever.”
Of course when they got to the motel and the clerk informed them—after they’d paid, of course—that they didn’t have any cots or rollaways, Dean got to spend the next twenty minutes looking smug because he’d been anti-“Red” Motel. “You get to share with Cas,” he said.
“Right, I’ll start safeguarding my virtue now.” Sam rolled his eyes at Dean, then took a moment to smile at Castiel so Cas would know he was kidding.
“I’m not worried for you; it’s Cas I’m feeling sorry for. Make sure he doesn’t try to get Mexican for dinner,” Dean advised Castiel.
“Already noted,” Castiel said solemnly.
Sam sighed. “Please, please, can we just get through this now?”
Castiel opened up Dean’s laptop, which he’d sort of, silently and without discussion, taken co-possession of. “I made a spreadsheet,” he said.
“Okay, forget my virtue.” Sam grinned. “I think I love you.”
After a while, Dean went out to get dinner (not Mexican), and they were pretty much finished by the time he got back. “Okay,” Sam said, checking their list against the sorted piles. There were a couple of items that he and Castiel had determined could be potentially dangerous, a few more that could possibly be useful or otherwise of import, and a bunch of stuff that was essentially crap. Sam checked it over again, just to be sure. He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were missing something, or that something was missing and—
“Food’s getting cold, dude.”
“Yeah, okay.” Sam shut the laptop and snagged a seat at the table. His eyes hurt, he was annoyed at Chuck, and he still had a crick in his neck. It was probably nothing.
“So Cas has finished warding the tricky stuff and tomorrow we’ll drive it all up to the lockup and be done with it,” Dean confirmed, catching himself up. Sam and Castiel nodded; Castiel stole some of Dean’s fries. “Excellent, we have a plan.”
“Maybe I should call Chuck,” Sam suggested. “Tell him we know exactly where the story’s going.”
“Yeah, sure,” Dean said after a moment. They finished the rest of the meal in virtual silence.
When they were done cleaning up—which mostly involved stuffing containers into the trash—Dean kicked off his boots and sprawled out on his bed. “Mmm, so much room!” He rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “Have fun braiding each other’s hair and gossiping about boys, you two.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Just don’t come crying to me when you end up an old maid.”
“Hey, speaking of maids.” Dean had retrieved Busty Asian Beauties from somewhere. “What do you think of that?”
Castiel, Sam told himself, had yet to learn better. “I didn’t think it could get dusty there,” he said, peering closer.
“Ask Sam. On him it probably is.”
“I’m taking a shower,” he announced, overly loud. He took a long one. When he came back out, some Jim Carrey movie was on TV with the sound down and Dean was asleep. He had failed, as was often the case, to get all the way under the covers and was lying curled on his side, snuffling into his pillow. Sam chucked a blanket over his legs.
Castiel was sitting on the other bed, apparently actually reading Playboy for the articles. Still, though... “No porn when we’re sharing a bed,” he pronounced, and held his hand out for the magazine.
Castiel relinquished it with the air of a sullen child. Which was pretty funny, Sam thought, considering the fact that Cas was several thousand years old and Sam, though it often seemed otherwise, was still only twenty-seven.
Sam let out a sigh that swiftly became a yawn. “Kill the TV, would you?” he said, still yawning a little around the edges of the words.
Castiel shot him a puzzled look. “Kill it?”
Sam blinked at him. “Turn it off.”
“Oh.” Cas looked away before Sam could tell if he was blushing. “Right.”
Jim Carrey vanished with a click. Sam yawned again and slid under the covers, doing his best to give Castiel plenty of room. He still had an odd relationship with sleep, Sam knew: passing out some nights like a little kid, greeting the dawn like an insomniac others. “Goodnight,” Sam told him, and tried to ignore the part of his own brain that would stay active for hours, pick pick picking away at whatever was bothering him, whatever niggling doubt that wouldn’t quite fade.
He’d had enough sleepless nights to last several lifetimes. All he needed to do now, Sam told himself, was close his eyes and forget his troubles. Yes.
Sam let his eyes flicker shut and he slept.
He opened his eyes. A plain white ceiling stared back at him, white fan blades spinning slowly. He was lying half on his side, scrunched up uncomfortably. He stretched out his legs, gazing somewhat dreamily at the body unfurling itself beneath the covers. Huh. So that was him.
His brain ran up against a sudden sharp wall as he realized he had no idea who him was.
The sleepy calm drained out of him like blood from a slashed throat. He sat up jerkily, jerking further when he realized that he was not alone in the bed. Someone with short, dark, spiky hair was burrowed under the covers. He thought for a moment, wondering what to do, before reaching out and tentatively shaking the person by the shoulder. “Hey,” he said, afraid to raise his voice above a whisper.
The other person bolted awake as if he’d screamed. The two of them exchanged a startled look, but the other man seemed oddly uninterested in him, given the circumstances. He was breathing heavily, already in a panic, and it was pretty clear that if any answers were going to be forthcoming, this would not be the source.
“This...this isn’t right,” the guy said. “What am I doing here?” He started patting himself down, the expression on his face one of greater confusion and horror than even this bizarre a situation seemed to warrant. “This isn’t right!” he repeated. “This isn’t me!”
“Hey, hey, calm down.” It seemed he was going to have to be the reasonable one. Maybe that was who he was: the reasonable one. He could live with that. “It’s okay. I don’t know what’s going on either, but we’re, you know, mostly clothed, so it can’t be that bad...”
His attempt at a chuckle was interrupted by a muffled sound from across the room: they weren’t alone. There was a third person there with them, sitting up in the other bed and giving them a befuddled look. “Who the hell are you? What the fuck is going on?”
“I shouldn’t be here,” panicky guy said. “I...” He visibly forced himself to calm down, raising his chin, taking deep breaths.
“Buddy, are you okay?” swearing guy asked. “You look a little ill. Maybe you should sit down.”
Panicky flat-out gawked at this suggestion. “Sit down?” he asked, as if confused by the very concept.
The swearer looked to him, the reasonable one, as if seeking some sort of explanation for this behavior, but all he could do was shrug. “Does anyone know who they are or where we are?”
Both of the others shook their heads. “Shit, amnesia? Are we in some shitty soap or what?”
Huh. “You remember soap operas,” he said. The foul-mouthed guy nodded, although Panicky just looked blank. “Me too. Okay, so that’s something. We’re not total clean slates.”
“Great, so I remember plots to Dr. Sexy episodes, but not who I am? Doesn’t seem like much of a tradeoff.”
He shrugged. He knew, in the same way he knew that Dr. Sexy, MD was a ridiculously awful show that no self-respecting person should admit to watching, that amnesia often resulted from a trauma. Though what could happen to traumatize three separate people so that they woke up without any memory of who they were in a fairly skeezy motel room was beyond him. Unless it was some kind of...yeah, no, ew. He did not want to pollute his fresh shiny new mind with that.
“We need to figure this out,” he said.
“Yeah, duh.” Of the other two, the foul-mouthed guy definitely appeared to be the most proactive. He’d climbed off the bed and was already rooting around amongst the stuff scattered across the room. There was a lot of stuff. He started poking around his own bed and almost immediately slipped on a copy of Playboy. Ugh. He decided—reasonably, he thought—to discount that as evidence for now.
“Hey, I found some ID!” foul-mouthed guy announced triumphantly. He dumped the leather coat he’d pulled it from on the bed and peered at it. “Okay, this picture isn’t of either of you. Is this me?” He peered into the darkened TV screen. “Hey, yeah, this is me.” He seemed inordinately pleased: so he was good-looking, so what. “My name is...John Bonham?”
“John Bonham?”
“Yeah, what do you think the odds are that I have the same name as the drummer for Led Zeppelin?”
“Uh...”
“This is fucking weird, man.”
“Maybe it’s a test.” Panicky guy looked up. The idea of a test actually seemed to relax him.
“A test?” maybe-John-Bonham said. “What, you mean like some sort of Saw kind of thing?” He gave the room a nervous once-over.
“I don’t understand that reference.”
There was a pair of jeans folded neatly on a chair; he held them up to his legs and they looked like they might fit. Even better, there was a wallet in the pocket. He flipped it open and felt elated and then swiftly dismayed when he saw the ID inside. “‘Bruce Campbell,’” he said, holding it up.
“Shit,” almost-certainly-not-John-Bonham pronounced. “What are we, con men?”
“Well, if we are, we’re probably not very good ones.” Not-John was clearly waiting for him to elaborate. “We’re three grown men sharing one crappy motel room.”
Not-John glanced back and forth between him and Panicky and let out a chuckle. “Hey, I’m not judging.”
‘Bruce’ sighed. “You’re not helping, either.”
“I have a phone,” Panicky announced, holding it up. He sounded almost triumphant. Bruce felt kind of bad for him; he was obviously handling this less well than they were.
“That’s good. What about ID? Do you have any ID? We need something to call you.”
“The IDs are obviously fake, I thought,” Panicky said.
“Yeah, but—”
Panicky pressed a button on the phone. The jeans Bruce was holding started to buzz.
“I just phoned ‘Sam,’” Panicky said. “I would therefore surmise that you are he.”
Sam—that was definitely better than Bruce—looked at the screen of his own phone. “One missed call from ‘Cas.’”
“Cas?” their still nameless companion inquired. “What kind of name is that?”
“Apparently mine,” Cas said. He’d acquired, summoned from somewhere, a sort of quiet, steady cool. Sam was glad they’d figured out his name, because the moniker he’d been using in his head certainly didn’t fit anymore.
“And you are...” He tried another button. The nightstand started blasting some tinny-sounding Led Zeppelin. “Dean,” Cas pronounced.
“I’m sensing a theme here,” the newly-christened Dean said. “Maybe we’re not con men—maybe we’re traveling dead musician and C-list movie star impersonators.”
“Do I—” Sam glanced down at himself. “Do I look like Bruce Campbell?”
“No,” Dean said, consideringly. “But Bruce Campbell played Elvis in a movie once.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Dead musicians—”
“I don’t know what either of you are talking about and I don’t care. You’re wasting time.”
Despite clearly being the shortest person in the room, Cas was somehow staring down his nose at them. “You know, I think I liked you better when you were flipping your shit,” Dean said.
“That’s unfortunate. I don’t remember feeling any fondness for you at all.”
Sam flinched a little, but not as much as Dean did. The other man took a step back, but then his eyes went hard. “I hope you weren’t looking for love,” he told Sam, twitching his head in Cas’ direction but not looking at him again. “Seems he’s more of a wham, bam, thank you, sir kind of guy.”
“I don’t understand the point of this constant sexual innuendo,” Cas said.
“Yeah,” Dean laughed without humor, “I bet you don’t.”
Hell, this was like an episode of Dr. Sexy. “Guys,” Sam said—because he was still the reasonable one, dammit. “This isn’t helping. We’re all in this together, okay? We need to figure it out.”
They turned twin glares at him; it was kind of like looking into the headlights of an oncoming semi. “Sure. Any ideas, Brainiac?”
“Maybe there are more clues?” Sam suggested, gesturing around at the mess: piles of clothes, a stack of books—and was that a treasure chest? “Or someone else we can call?”
“Yeah, but how do we know who to trust? Anyone might have done this to us!”
“Done this...?” Sam was about to protest—sudden amnesia wasn’t something you could have done to you. But that was only what people believed, he realized. Not what he knew.
“Guys,” Sam asked, tentatively. “Weird question, but...what do you think about, you know. Supernatural stuff.”
“‘Supernatural stuff’?” Dean quoted back at him.
Sam shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, like...ghosts and ghouls and demons and things. Do they exist?”
“Of course,” Cas replied, at the same time Dean said, “Unfortunately.”
“And that doesn’t...seem odd to you?” Sam pressed.
“No,” Cas said definitively.
“No,” said Dean, less sure. “But I could see how...huh.”
“There aren’t any demons on Dr. Sexy,” Sam stressed.
Dean’s brow creased. “No.” Then he brightened: “There’s a ghost, though!”
Sam grimaced. “Okay, bad example...”
“Are you just trying to say that our lives our weird?” Dean asked. “Because three guys, one motel room, no memories—I think we already covered that.”
“No,” Sam said, “no, I—” But it had already slipped away from him. Whatever point he’d been trying to make, whatever path he’d been attempting to follow.
While they argued, Cas had begun picking his way slowly around the room. He held up a cardboard box that had at one time—whoa—held 9mm rounds, and pulled out a carved stone figure on a piece of rough rope. “This is a Bedouin protection charm,” he said.
“Wow, well clearly it works great.”
Cas easily ignored Dean. “If you were implying that there must be some greater implication to the fact that we’re surrounded by so many artifacts of mystical significance, then I believe you are correct, Sam.”
Sam found himself preening a bit at this—he even shot a smirk at Dean.
Dean scowled. “Yeah, thanks, Sherlock—what a brilliant deduction. We wake up with amnesia, surrounded by magical objects. I wonder if one of them did it to us.”
Cas blinked, the protection charm spinning between his fingers. “Sherlock...Sherlock Holmes?”
“No, Sherlock Johnson.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Cas said, nodding to himself. “Holmes, I mean.”
Dean turned back to Sam. “Is he for real?”
Sam decided to ignore him too. “Okay, so if Cas is right, then we need to sort through all of this stuff very carefully, and then maybe we can figure out what did this to us?”
“Yeah, unless sorting through it is what did it to us in the first place,” Dean pointed out. “We need more information. I mean, right now, we don’t even know if this is really a motel. What if it’s...some sort of creepy, Matrix-like holding cell where we’re being kept prisoner?”
Cas nodded. “I’ll check outside,” he said.
Several seconds passed. “Uh...” Sam said finally: Cas was still looking very decisive, and still very much not moving. “What are you doing?”
It seemed to suddenly strike Cas that he was in the exact same spot as he had been a moment before. He looked between himself and the door; he swallowed. “I...” he started. “I thought...” And for a second, Panicky was back: a flash of wide blue eyes and fear, real fear, utterly unlike the confusion and annoyance and dull worry Sam himself was experiencing. This was nothing for him, Sam realized. And wasn’t that, perhaps, a bit odd, too?
“Allow me,” said Dean, striding past him. He reached the door, straightened his shoulders, and giving them both one last, significant look, turned the knob.
“Ow! Fuck!”
Sam blinked. Okay, of all the things Sam had been expecting, none of them had been that Dean would open the door smack into some scruffy guy’s face.
“Omigod, Chuck, are you okay?” Sam hadn’t been expecting the anxious blonde woman, either. He was suddenly aware that he wasn’t wearing proper pants. He swiftly tugged on the jeans he was still holding dumbly, glad that she was focused on tending to the scruffy guy’s injured nose.
“I’m fine, I’ll be fine,” the guy assured her. “Just so long as nobody makes any jokes about how I should have seen that coming.”
“Huh?” said Dean.
This was apparently enough to make the blonde girl turn on him. She thwapped him on the arm. “Nice, Dean. Typical!”
Dean turned to Sam and Cas, jaw slack and eyes pleading, it seemed, for them to assert that hitting strangers in the face was in no way typical behavior for him.
Except... “Wait, you know us?” Sam asked. He tried not to let the excitement get the best of him. “They know us!”
The woman let go of the scruffy guy—Chuck’s—arm a foot away from the chair she was leading him to. She walked toward Sam with her hands clasped tightly to her breast. “I’d know you anywhere, Sam!”
Sam took a not-entirely-voluntary step back. “Oh. Well. That’s nice.”
Dean was clearly feeling less personable. He pressed into the blonde girl’s personal space. “Do you know what’s going on? Did you do this to us?”
Sam was impressed with the fact that she didn’t back down, simply sparing Dean a look of disdain before returning her attention to Sam. “Of course not,” she said. “We only want to help.” Then her confidence cracked; she turned to Chuck. “We are allowed to help, right?” she asked in the world’s worst stage whisper.
“I don’t know, Becky.” He sounded weary, or possibly hungover. “I didn’t exactly get a manual.”
“Must we discuss everything so tiresomely?” Cas said on the tail end of a sigh. “Please tell us who we are and what you know.”
Chuck squirmed. “See, I really don’t know if I should? I mean, from a symbolic standpoint, I think you’re supposed to be on a journey of self-discovery? And if I just tell you then it—”
“Just tell us!” Sam, Dean, and Cas demanded, pretty much in unison. “For fuck’s sake,” Dean added.
“Okay, okay,” Chuck said, shrinking back. “Um. Well. You see— Twenty-seven years ago— No, wait, I mean—”
Dean took a semi-threatening step forward.
“Sorry, sorry!” Chuck held up his hands. “I haven’t had a pitch meeting in a while, I’m totally out of practice—”
“You’re hunters!” Becky declared confidently. “You travel the country in a ’67 Chevy Impala, saving people, hunting things—it’s the family business. You fight vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness to an awesome classic rock soundtrack, emerging triumphant due to your incredibly close personal bond—the only people you can rely on are each other. Sam and Dean, I mean,” she clarified, waving a finger between the two of them, throwing a shrug at Cas.
“Part of that was a line from Buffy,” Dean said, clearly not buying it.
Chuck nodded and tried to catch Dean’s eye. “That was a good show. I liked it when she wore the, the little strappy tops?” Dean started to nod, then seemed to remember that he knew more about Buffy’s cleavage than his own life, and this made him cranky. “No, but seriously it’s true,” Chuck added hastily. “Even the Buffy stuff, actually. Um. But anyway, see, you two are brothers and—”
“Noooo,” Becky hissed, the Worst Stage Whisper Ever making another appearance. “Don’t tell them. The whole point of the amnesia plot is for them not to realize they’re related so they get together and then even when they do find out they’re related they’re in love so they decide they don’t care and I read an awesome fic like that once. Don’t ruin it.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, suddenly overwhelmed by too many feelings at once. “What? What?”
“He’s my brother?” Dean asked, jerking his thumb at Sam. “Well, I guess we know who got the looks in the family.”
Sam wrinkled his nose at him. The word “Jerk” slid easily off his tongue.
Dean seemed to take great joy in replying, “Bitch.”
“Wow,” Chuck said, nonsensically: “Sometimes it just writes itself.”
“Wait, so who’s he, then?” Dean asked, nodding at Cas, who was watching the scene unfold with a look on his face of infinite patience infinitely strained. “Is he my brother’s snotty gay lover or something?”
Chuck appeared to choke on the air in his mouth. “Sam’s? You think he’s Sam’s—? Wow. That’s, um. Dramatic irony.”
“Huh?” said Dean, for possibly the forth or fifth time.
“Guess we know who got the brains in the family,” Sam muttered to himself.
“I want to know how this happened and how you knew about it,” Cas interrupted—and hey, gay lover or not (not, Sam thought; definitely not—not that there was anything wrong with that...), Sam had to give him credit for cutting to the chase.
“Chuck,” Becky announced proudly, “is a Prophet of the Lord.”
“Oh,” Cas said, for some reason hearing this strange pronouncement and looking instantly more at ease. “You’re Chuck Shirley.”
Sam turned to him in shock. “You remember him?”
Cas shook his head. “No, I simply know the names of the prophets,” he said, like one might say, I know how to count to ten or I know which letter comes after C. He leveled on Sam a look of deep concern. “You’re not familiar with them?”
“Oh, right, that’s an angel thing, isn’t it?” Becky said, nodding happily.
“Angel thing?” Dean said.
“Oh yeah.” Chuck scratched at his temple. “Probably should have mentioned that. Castiel’s an angel.”
Sam happened to be watching Cas as Chuck offered up this little revelation. The expression that washed over Cas’ face was one of such profound relief, Sam could practically feel waves of it rippling across the room.
Then Chuck said, “Well, former angel, anyway.”
Cas looked like he’d been punched. The color drained from his face and the expectant, almost arrogant set to his shoulders bled away until he slumped. It made him look much smaller: almost fragile, delicate.
“Whoa, whoa, see—this is why I didn’t want to tell you anything!” Chuck said.
“No,” Cas said in a dull voice. “I’m glad I know.”
“Wow,” said Becky. “You’re taking this pretty hard. I thought you’d like being human. You know, since angels are such dicks and all.”
“Helpful,” Sam told her. Since no one else seemed to be doing anything, he hesitantly approached Cas. “Hey, man,” he said, reaching out and then wussing out and retracting a comforting hand. “I kind of, you know, have amnesia and am therefore probably missing some of the subtleties here, but I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems. Right?” He shot Becky and Chuck a look. “Right?”
“Oh, yeah!” Becky said, finally catching on. “In fact, it was, like, totally heroic, the way you fell. You were even naked for part of it! And you said you did it, all of it, for—for the Winchesters. That’s you guys,” she clarified. “And you totally wouldn’t give up on Sam, even though you called him an abomination. Because he’s your friend.” She bounced suddenly and clapped her hands. “Oh my god, I’m totally going to ship you guys now!”
Sam, for some horrifying reason he didn’t want to contemplate, knew what that meant. He made a face.
“Well, I’m glad we’ve established that you two are besties,” Dean said. Sam glanced over: he was standing in the corner, his arms folded tense across his chest. “Whatever happened to solving this little problem of ours efficiently? Huh? Castiel?”
Cas’ shoulders stiffened. “By all means,” he said. “I would be eager to hear your suggestions.”
Dean met Cas’ withering gaze and held it. And held it. And held it. Sam started seriously waiting for one of them to shout, Ha! You blinked!
Instead, “I think we should ask our buddy Chuck,” Dean said, still staring. “You’re a prophet, right?” Dean glanced Chuck’s way while continuing to focus the majority of his attention on Cas. “You knew that this had happened. So you must know why it happened, too.”
“Well...” Chuck stared at his knees guiltily.
“You knew?” Sam demanded, wheeling on him. “What the hell was the point of this then? Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Well, it’s not very dramatic, is it?” Chuck ventured, ducking his head.
“You have got to be kidding me—”
“I know how to fix it!” Becky announced, leaping between Sam and Chuck. “All that’s needed to break the spell,” she said, looking back and forth between Sam and Cas eagerly, “is true love’s first kiss—”
“It’s the porn mag,” Chuck said loudly, before burying his face in his hands. He mumbled into them. “Look on page 47. One of the dead Crossbones doodled some stuff from that grimoire of theirs on the model’s tits. And...other parts.” He gave Becky a quick guilty glance out of the corner of his eye.
“The porn mag,” Sam repeated.
“Yeah.” He followed Dean and Cas’ line of sight to the copy of Busty Asian Beauties on the nightstand. “No, not that one,” he said, waving his hand. “The other one. Playboy.”
Blushing, Sam went around to the side of the bed he’s woken up on and retrieved the magazine. Becky let out a little gasp. “Sorry,” Sam said for some reason. “I’m, uh, guessing this is not our classiest day ever.”
Becky seemed to think about it for a moment. “Actually, you’ve had worse.” Her eyes went wide and wistful. “But I still love you, Sam,” she said breathily.
“Aww, man, really?” Chuck looked bummed.
To Sam’s surprise, she responded to this by lowering herself onto Chuck’s lap and circling her arms around his neck. “It’s totally different, baby. My love for Sam is tragic and pure. My love for you is raw and physical.”
“Is there any way I can I give myself amnesia so that I forget this?” Dean asked the room.
Cas took the magazine from Sam and flipped to page 47. “It’s a simple Merovingian Latin incantation,” he said, rolling his eyes in disgust. “It should be easy enough to break. Do either of you have a lighter?”
Dean retrieved his leather jacket from the bed and felt up the pockets until he produced a heavy-looking metal lighter. Both he and Cas started when he passed it over, as if they’d been shocked in the few seconds their fingers brushed; odd, Sam thought, and gave the carpet a frown.
“Ready?” Cas asked them. They nodded.
“Vos luo igne flammaque.” Cas held the lighter to the corner of the page, the flames licking over the slick paper. “Et memorias vestras reddo in vos.”
The magazine erupted in a sudden shower of purple and gold sparks. Sam wobbled on his feet, fighting dizziness. The carpet seemed a lot closer than it had a minute ago. That really was odd...
He blacked out. He could feel the reverberation of the thump when he woke up, and cool hands on his neck and cheek. “Sam. Sam!” Becky was saying desperately. Sam groaned and slowly sat up.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Go love Chuck physically, okay?”
“Okay!” she said brightly, leaving him to scoot back so he could lean against the side of the bed and simply...breathe.
He remembered.
He remembered everything. And ignorance wasn’t actually bliss, he thought. Mostly it was freakin’ annoying. But it was also, or at least it had been for just a little while, so much simpler.
Speaking of unusual simplicity, Dean and Cas were being awfully quiet, he realized with a start. He rolled his neck toward them—shit, they were still out. Dean had clearly—instinctively?—tried to catch Castiel as he fell, and they were slumped on the floor with Cas’ body half on top of Dean’s. Chuck stood above them, staring down at them with his brow creased. “Uh, guys?”
They came awake within seconds of each other: Dean first, Castiel following. Sam saw Dean suck in a breath, either from the force of his memories or thanks to the position he found himself in. Castiel’s eyes widened before his face stiffened into its usual mask. He rolled off of Dean, then pulled himself carefully to his feet.
Sam watched as Castiel slowly reached out a hand to help Dean up and as, even more slowly, Dean took it.
“I told you we should have catalogued everything more carefully and taken it all to the lockup right away,” Sam said as soon as his brother was back on his feet.
“Yeah, well—” Dean looked a little tongue-tied.
“If we’re making recriminations,” Castiel said, tone desert-dry, “I should point out that I was a mere three pages away from the bespelled page last night when you told me I was not allowed to peruse the magazine in bed and took it away from me. If you’d let me finish, I would have found the incantation and recognized it for what it was, and this entire incident could have been avoided.”
Dean let out a little dirty old man chuckle. “See, Sam?” he said, raising a hand to pat Castiel on the shoulder. “Score one for porn.”
At the last second he jerked his elbow, pulled back and turned away. Castiel didn’t appear to notice.
Chuck coughed nervously. “Well. I’m glad we could help. Help and totally destroy the narrative arc, but uh, still, I guess, help.”
“This was totally epic,” Becky agreed. In a move she surely thought was subtle, she took out her phone and snapped a picture.
Sam stared at her. “Did you...did you just take a picture of my bed?”
“Your bed!” She fixed Sam and Castiel with a moony grin each in turn. “It’s the first place you slept together!” She was positively trembling with glee. “Epic!”
Castiel took Becky gently by the arm—possibly too gently, Sam thought. “I am not engaged in sexual relations with Sam,” he said in his best I-will-now-provide-exposition-for-the-slow-humans voice. “I do not wish for you to be misinformed.”
“I’m not misinformed,” Becky said, patting him on the hand. “I just know more about UST than you do. And there is so much UST in this room right now, oh my god.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Castiel said, letting go of her. After a moment he added, “I think I’m okay with that.”
“Hey, Chuck,” Dean said loudly. “Don’t you have that thing?”
“Thing?”
“That very important thing that involves you quickly going somewhere other than here before I lose it?”
“Oh,” said Chuck, backing toward the door. “That thing.”
Sam waved goodbye. “Good luck with the writing, Chuck,” he said in a voice he thought probably wasn’t too transparently sarcastic.
“Bye, Sam! Bye, Cas!” Becky waved back. “I’m looking forward to you both becoming a lot less repressed!”
All three of them stared at the door long after it had closed, as if expecting it to make some sort of move.
“And would you believe it,” Dean said after a moment, “all that, and it’s only 11 a.m.”
“Too early to start drinking then,” Castiel said morosely.
“Not necessarily...”
Castiel ended up electing himself to fetch the alcohol necessary for a “let’s drink to forget our amnesia” bender. Sam looked around the disaster area of a motel room and then, wordlessly, began to clean up.
Dean didn’t seem to have anything to say either as he stooped to help. Sam watched him out of the corner of his eye: his back was held stiffly, his mouth set in a firm line. Sam couldn’t help it. “You okay?” he asked.
“Peachy.”
Sam decided to back off. He picked up an overturned box of charms. The Sumerian one—the one Castiel had said was fake—was lying on top. “Hey, what do you think we should do with this? Do you think we should just throw it away?”
Dean snorted. “Oh, now you want my opinion?”
“Um, yeah.”
“There’s a first.”
Sam set the charm back down. “Where is this coming from?”
Dean looked up at him, stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head and turned away. “Forget it. Never mind.”
“Dean...” Sam swallowed. He felt like he was up a tree, surrounded by a whole bunch of wobbly limbs to go out on. “You...you know Becky’s crazy, right?”
Dean laughed. “Don’t worry, Sammy. The secret of your big gay love for Cas is safe with me.”
Sam sighed. “Right,” he said, turning around to finish cleaning up their mess. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Episode 6x01 / Masterpost / Episode 6x03
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-03 08:57 pm (UTC)“And would you believe it,” Dean said after a moment, “all that, and it’s only 11 a.m.”
Is perfect and epic!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-04 12:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-04 12:36 am (UTC)this is absolutely wonderful and *happy-making* with all the banter and the tension underneath and everything. this is making me not worry about season 6 - if the show should end up somewhere i'm not happy with i'll just come back to this fic.
thank you so much.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-04 10:03 am (UTC)AAAH ILU.
This fic is completely delightful.
Edited for more relevant icon!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-04 05:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-04 06:27 pm (UTC)OMG I love you!!!!
AND YOU WRITE BECKY SOOOOOOO WELL!!!!
To Sam’s surprise, she responded to this by lowering herself onto Chuck’s lap and circling her arms around his neck. “It’s totally different, baby. My love for Sam is tragic and pure. My love for you is raw and physical.”
YOU ARE EPIC.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-04 10:40 pm (UTC)It's refreshing how Becky's ships and OTP preferences are dealt with a light hand here, showing that the odd thing about Becky is not that she's into slash - its that she expects these people to participate in her fandom and viewpoint. I loved her trying to get them to stay amnesiac so they could be "together together". Never change, Becks!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-08 02:31 am (UTC)And Cas is so clueless. And how much does it suck that he had to relive realizing he's fallen?
I can't help but think that Becky made everything so much worse. Cas did it all for the Winchesters? Really, Becky? Because I heard it different. From Cas. I think his exact words (to Dean) were, "And I did it all for you!" So, yea, thanks Becky, for making Dean sad. Awesome.
(Just so you know, I do love Becky, but everyone in Supernatural gets an episode where you just can't believe how big a dick they are, you know?)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-11 11:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-15 10:00 pm (UTC)“That’s unfortunate. I don’t remember feeling any fondness for you at all.”
*sigh*
Dean's gonna be silently angsting over this, isn't he?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-15 10:24 pm (UTC)“That’s unfortunate. I don’t remember feeling any fondness for you at all.”
*sigh*
Dean's gonna be silently angsting over this, isn't he?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 06:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-20 08:45 pm (UTC)Also, you have excellent taste in music :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-27 01:40 am (UTC)Becky was a breath of fresh air in the tenser moments, even if her ice breakers led to some awkward moments :).
Will Dean face his feelings, or will he continue to sulk and snap? Wait, what am I saying? This is Dean, of course he'll go for the second option! *g*
Laura.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-18 10:16 pm (UTC)I've snorted various foods and drinks up my nose at least five times while reading this! (I'm eating my supper now.) Brilliant!
And jealous!Dean is so much love!
CV
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-23 03:45 pm (UTC)Hahahaha.
Also, Becky's love for Chuck is raw and physical.
Epic.