Chapter Text
Prologue
A man sits at a shiny pine desk; a mouse wheel clicks as it rotates at the light press of the man's index finger. The glare of the screen reflects in the man's thick-framed glasses as not much more than a bright rectangle of light, but the screen, at the moment, actually displays a pale yellow background with deep red text. It's the first time he's seen this blog, sonofap1e, and at first glance, he doesn't think much to it. The theme isn't all that good, probably just a preset theme, and the sidebar picture isn't even of the owner, it's the poster for Avengers Assemble, and there's barely anything in the description and no other pages to browse through, either. But the posts... the posts are good, better than good. As Castiel scrolls through, he feels the need to like or reblog almost everything, and resists because he doesn't want sonofap1e's activity to be suspiciously filled with his name. But Castiel clicks the small plus in the top right corner of the webpage, and he smiles slightly. It's been a while since he found a new blog that he liked.
Castiel returns to his own Tumblr blog, sighing as he looks over his theme. He doesn't like it at all, but he doesn't have much time for anything fancy at the moment: he's been too preoccupied with things like his family's incessant whining that he needs to choose a college and stick with it, but as soon as he's chosen he intends to redo his theme completely. He's no expert html-coder, but he knows enough to at least slightly edit a theme, and he found a nice one on a theme blog a few days ago.
After a few minutes checking his visitors page and scrolling down his blog, he finds himself absently typing sonofap1e's url into the address bar and hitting enter. He looks again, tries adding '/about' and '/me' after the url, trying to find pages the boy may be working on that he hasn't got links on his blog to yet, but unfortunately, nothing's there. He goes back to the description and realizes all he knows about him is that he's called Dean.
* * *
A man sits on a worn couch, his boot-clad feet resting on the dented coffee table in front of him. On his straight legs rests a gray laptop, not exactly the newest model but at least it's in working condition, and the screen displays a simple white background with almost black text. It's definitely nothing that Dean usually looks for in a Tumblr blog - he's never been one for the stupid minimalist shit - yet something about it appeals to him. Maybe it's the awesome photography posts that he realises are the work of the blog owner when he rolls over a few of them. Maybe (probably), it's the picture of Tumblr user angelwingsphotography above the blog title. The picture that's almost too pretty to be real, and Dean sees no reason why he should deny that yeah, it's attractive, even if he usually bats for the other team. Hell, maybe it's just the url, that angels have always been a soft spot for Dean, ever since his mother whispered 'angels are watching over you' every night before he slept; before the fire, but whatever it is, something compels Dean to press the plus button in the top right corner of the webpage, so he does, and he smiles slightly. He hasn't followed anyone new in a while.
Dean returns to his own Tumblr blog, grimacing at his theme. It's not much short of awful and he hates it, but it's the best he can do on his own and Charlie is still away at that new theme park, Oz (the state of Kansas liked to play on The Wizard of Oz as much as possible; after all it was one of the only things going for them). When Charlie gets back he fully intends to make use of her expert technology skills and give himself a theme that he actually likes. For now, though, he'll have to put up with what he has, because he can't do it, full stop.
He goes back to angelwingsphotography, rolls over the button he stupidly missed before labeled 'hover' (Dean, seriously, how did you miss that?), and a description appears. It tells Dean and the rest of the world wide web that his name is Castiel and he's from Vancouver. Dean rolls the name over his tongue a few times; it feels foreign to start with then gets easier. Castiel. He wonders what it means, and a short trip to google tells him - it's the name of an angel. Heh. Appropriate.