Chapter Text
The whole morning was kind of ruined by Dean slouching into the kitchen halfway through breakfast to make himself a cup of coffee.
Usually, Sam heard his brother coming and fended him off so he and Eileen could have the kitchen to themselves, but evidently, he hadn’t been quite quick enough on the draw this time. Sue him. He’d been distracted—Eileen had taken to wearing his old purple t-shirt with the dog on it to bed.
“Morning,” Dean grunted as he waited for the machine to start gurgling.
Sam gave him a rather pointed look. Finally getting the picture, he ducked out of the kitchen soon afterwards without actually putting any sugar or cream in his drink.
A few hours later, neither of them had bothered to change out of their pajamas. They’d meant to get to work on a couple of cold cases, but the siren song of Netflix had been too powerful to ignore.
“So, I was thinking.”
Sam scrabbled for the remote and shifted Eileen in his arms so she could read his lips. She tilted her head back on to his shoulder and smiled at him. Sam had to twist his arm into a pretzel to do it, but he managed to pause the Parks and Rec episode they’d been working on.
“Yeah?”
“About renting an apartment,” she clarified. “In Wichita. It’s only about two hours away, it’s near the center of the US, so any hunts wouldn’t be that far away. And I need a cosigner.”
Sam’s heart made an absurd little leap in his chest. Instantly, though, reality set back in. Every time he’d managed to settle down with someone—Jessica, Amelia—it had gone horribly wrong. He didn’t want to do the same with Eileen.
“I just—I just don’t think that would be a good idea.”
She raised her eyebrows, touching the tips of her fingers to her forehead and then withdrawing them into a loose Y shape. It took Sam a moment to register the sign. He reached down to brush her hair out of her eyes.
“I don’t want to get you hurt.”
She shot a pointed look at her boots, sitting by the door to Sam’s room. More specifically, Sam knew, at the knife he knew was sewn the left one.
“Okay, okay. I get your point. You can handle yourself.”
“Exactly.” She reached forward and bopped him on the nose. “I know how crazy your life is. And I want all that crazy to share a living room with me.”
Sam let out a puff of air through his nose. It was really hard to say no to her when she got like this.
“What if all this crazy leaves his dirty laundry laying around?”
Eileen smiled blandly at him. “Then all this crazy gets to sleep on the couch.”
Sam could picture it so easily. Rolling over in the morning to Eileen’s smile. Making breakfast and probably burning the bacon but laughing about it anyway. Spending late nights in the library. After a life of motel rooms, of sleeping in the backseat of a too-small car, he wanted this so badly. And wasn’t it about time he got something he wanted?
He smiled at her. “You know what? Let’s do it.”
Agreeing to Eileen had been the easy part. Sam really wasn’t looking forward to telling Dean about his decision. They’d gotten a lot better at acting like normal brothers over the last few years (or, at least, there’d been significantly fewer soul-selling incidents than in the past), but they’d grown up in each other’s pockets and spent most of their adult lives, sans college and Hell, living side by side.
He deliberately left the conversation off as long as he feasibly could. Eileen raised her eyebrows at him when he walked her out to her car without even broaching the subject, but he’d all but shoved her into the front seat with a promise to deal with it and sent her on her way.
“You’re getting better at the sign language thing,” Dean commented when he strode back into the library.
“ASL, actually. There’s a ton of different versions. Like if you speak American Sign Language, you might not even be able to understand someone who’s speaking British—never mind. What makes you say that?”
Dean shrugged. “Probably the fact that she makes fun of you behind your back less often.”
Sam whacked him with part of the card catalog he was trying to build. Laughing, Dean put his hands up in surrender.
“Okay, okay. It’s nice to see you all sweet on someone like this.”
Knowing that Eileen would kill him later if she learned that he’d let a conversation starter like that one slip through his fingers, Sam steeled himself for a rough ride.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.”
He dropped into the chair across the table from Dean’s. Sam read a few lines from the book in front of him upside down. Sure enough, it wasn’t lore—it was a cookbook.
Dean shook his head. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, Sammy. Just start with the tongue and go with what feels natural.”
Sam hit him again. “That wasn’t even useful intel when I was in high school, jerk.”
“You’re only saying that because you were kissing girls on the debate team.”
He rolled his eyes. “Not my point. Eileen asked me to move in with her.”
He decided to say it like pulling off a Band-Aid, only he must have taken quite a bit of skin with it, because Dean just gaped at him for a few moments without speaking at all. Sam wasn’t sure if he should say anything else. Finally, his brother recovered.
“Where?”
“Wichita. It’s only like two hours away. An hour and fifteen if you drive like you do.” He could tell already that it wasn’t helping.
Dean tried to recover from the shock. “That’s…um. That’s great, Sam. Really. It is.”
He realized that he was digging into his palms with his nails. Dean quickly pried his hands off of themselves and forced a smile until Sam basically fled the room. He thought he’d taken the news pretty well, all things considered. He hadn’t broken anything at least.
Okay, the bar was pretty low. It was probably a good thing that Sam had left when he had. Logically, Dean knew it was about time that they actually started to figure out their lives. After all, the world wasn’t ending every other week anymore.
Still. He took to pacing up and down the library, wearing down a track that was usually the one Sam walked.
“Sam told me you were in here.”
Dean offered up a pinched sort of smile as Cas poked his head into the library. His newly human peach fuzz was starting to dominate his cheeks again. He’d have to leave a razor in Cas’s room again; he didn’t appreciate more direct hints about his appearance.
“He tell you he’s leaving?’
His stomach clenched up again at the reminder that their lives were going to change. He’d had enough change already, damn it. He deserved some time to adjust to normalcy.
“Yes.”
Dean’s fists clenched again involuntarily at his sides. What was it going to be like without Sam getting up early in the morning to run? Who was he supposed to throw dusty tomes at when the letters started swimming in his vision? How was he supposed to not worry knowing Sam was out there hunting alone? Okay. With Eileen. But still—with someone who wasn’t him.
“Why aren’t you worrying?” Dean snapped when Cas didn’t say anything else.
Cas smoothed his fingers through his peach fuzz. For the first time, it occurred to Dean that maybe he was trying it out as a style.
“It may have escaped your notice, Dean, but Sam is not a child.”
Dean bit back a snappish response. It wouldn’t do him any good to piss off his potential ally in the get-Sam-to-stay plan.
“Besides,” Cas continued, shooting Dean a sharp look, as if he could tell exactly what he’d been thinking of (which he probably could, damn him), “Eileen is more than capable of making sure he stays out of trouble. I like her.”
Cas and Eileen had gotten along really well within five minutes of meeting each other. The way her face had lit up when she realized that Cas could sign fluently in ASL had been enough to convince Dean to learn at least a few basic signs.
“I know all that. I guess it’s just—Cas, bad things happen when we try to have nice things.”
He must have been imaging in the slightly hurt look on Cas’s face, because it was gone as soon as Dean registered it.
“These last few months have been pleasant,” Cas pointed out.
Dean considered for a moment. Cas was right—aside from a few close shaves with a couple of monsters, things had been relatively calm.
“Huh. I guess so.”
Cas’s face softened. “Then it will be fine. Come help me with lunch, get your mind off of it.”