Archive of Our Own

Sam jerks awake, clammy face sticking for a moment to the surface of the map table. He’s fallen asleep in the middle of research again, that bullet wound he shares with Chuck continuing to sap his strength as it refuses to heal. He doesn’t think it’s killing him, but man is it a pain in the ass. And the dreams, visions, glimpses, whatever they are, yeah Sam’s pretty over those too.

“Y’alright there Sammy?” Dean asks from his spot across the table.

“Mmm.” Sam wipes a hand across his chin, smooths back hair that’s fallen into his face.

“Have another, uh…” Dean doesn’t say it. Doesn’t say “vision.” He thought they were done with this 12, 13 years ago when Yellow Eyes died, then again when Cas sucked Lucifer clean out of Sam’s skull, then again when Lucifer stuck himself back in from inside his cracked, broken cage. Dean does not need to deal with season number four of this show.

Sam nods, squints and twitches as he tries to figure out what he’s seen, how to put it into words for Dean. “This one seemed… different I guess. It was definitely another version of, ya know,” Sam waves his hands around. “But it was, I don’t know.”

“Well what happened?”

“Nothing really, that’s what’s so odd. You were in the kitchen making pancakes and Cas walked in. You said hey, he called you something -- uh, ‘omega’ I think? And then you guys ate.”

“That’s it?” Dean screws up his face. “Not very impressive, Chuck.” 

“Yeah, not really complaining though. Nice break from the greatest hits of all the worst ways Chuck’s thought about killing us.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, just takes a swig of beer and leans back in his chair looking all manner of unimpressed with God.

“Dude, it’s eleven in the morning.”

“So.”

“So don’t you think maybe it’s a little early for that?” Sam gestures at the bottle.

“Chuck ever show me dying of liver failure?”

“No.”

“Alright then.” Dean makes a show of downing the rest of the beer and smacking the bottle a little too hard on the tabletop, dares Sam to say anything else. He doesn’t.

--------------------------

The next time Sam has a vision it’s back to the typical doom and gloom of Chuck’s usual work; Sam and Dean die in a fire, not a monster or angel or demon in sight. It’s bleak and it’s unsatisfying and it’s just very, very Chuck. Or at least, very this new Chuck.

Dean would be the first to remind him that Chuck’s been fucking with them their entire lives, even when he was just a prophet in a bathrobe, but Sam’s having a hard time reconciling that guy with this one. There was purpose to what Chuck wrote back then, and as shitty as some of the events had been to live through they always made Sam and Dean stronger, fuller versions of themselves afterward. But now-Chuck? Now-Chuck is just petty and spiteful and while Sam isn’t as openly over Chuck’s bullshit as Dean is, he’s just as done.

The vision after that, though, is another weird one. Or, well, an extremely mundane one, which is exactly what makes it weird. Sam’s a lawyer, Dean’s a mechanic, Castiel owns a coffee shop, and they all live in a town that’s somehow simultaneously Sioux Falls and Lawrence.

“I don’t get it,” Dean says as he navigates Baby onto the highway. “So we weren’t hunters?”

“Right. Actually, I don’t think there was any supernatural at all. Or if there was we didn’t know about it.”

“Okay but, then how’s Cas Cas. Dude’s an angel, in case you hadn’t noticed. How’s he him if he’s not himself? Shouldn’t he just be Jimmy Novak?”

Sam shrugs at his brother from the passenger seat. “I don’t know but he was just… Cas.”

“Were we doing anything?”

“What do you mean?” Sam chokes a bit on the question but thankfully Dean doesn’t seem to notice.

“Like, how were our lives? What was goin’ on?”

“Uh… nothing,” Sam rubs a nervous hand on the back of his neck. “Just, we all went about our lives and that was it. You, you seemed happy.”

The two of them are quiet, lost in thought for the next 30 miles, until Sam hears Dean mutter under his breath “Why would Cas own a coffee shop?”

--------------------------

Okay, Sam can’t keep this from Dean anymore. Whatever the hell is going on in Chuck’s drafts folder, this third time makes it a theme. Dean’s gonna flip, and honestly Sam gets it, the problems he’s having with the subversion of his free will and all that. But at the same time Chuck has clearly started seeing the same things between Dean and Cas that Sam has for the last ten or so years...

But before he can get out to the garage where Dean’s communing with his Baby and have the most awkward conversation of their lives, Sam gets a text from Cas. Cas who hasn’t been around for several weeks. Cas who walked out on Dean after Dean flipped out and tore the angel a new one instead of dealing with whatever shit he’d piled high onto his own plate.

May I call you, Sam? I believe something strange is going on.

Sam calls Cas straight back. “Hey Cas. Uh, is everything…”

“Yes, everything is… everything.” Sam is dying to know some details about what the hell’s going on between his brother and the angel but he’s not about to ask. “Something is happening in heaven, Sam.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. That’s what’s so strange.”

Sam waits for Cas to elaborate; when it’s clear he isn’t going to, Sam rolls his eyes. “You’re gonna need to give me a little more to work with here.”

“Heaven’s been falling apart for years now, fewer and fewer angels alive to keep it running, but it just seems to have… repaired itself.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Theoretically it could be Chuck’s doing, but…”

“Sounds a little too nice for him.”

“Exactly.”

“I think something else is going on here. This isn’t the only unexpectedly uh, friendly thing Chuck -- or whoever it is if it’s not Chuck -- has done lately. How far out are you from the bunker?”

“27 minutes.”

Sam chuckles at the precision. “Alright, I’ll fill you in when you get here.”

“Am I welcome at the bunker?”

“Yes. Of course. You’re always welcome.”

“Except for the times I was explicitly told otherwise.” The edge in Cas’ voice is clear as a bell even over the crappy rural Kansas connection.

“Well, that wasn’t me, and my dumbass of a brother isn’t the only one who writes the guest list.”

It takes very little consideration for Sam to decide he ought to tell Dean about his hypothesis ahead of explaining it to Cas. It’s a little unfair because this involves the both of them, but Sam’s pretty sure Dean’s gonna freak (and that the angel’s gonna very much not), and giving him some extra time and space to process what’s likely to be some pretty volatile embarrassment seems like a wise move. 

When Sam finally makes his way into the garage he finds Dean entirely focused on a far too thorough shine job on Baby’s front bumper, the chrome unable to get any shinier than it’s probably already been for the last five minutes. He clears his throat. “Hey Dean, uh.”

Dean grunts and somehow gets even more intent on his work. Sam can tell he’s deep in thought and doesn’t want to be bothered, but it’s now or later and yeah, no, it’s got to be now.

“Dean, I need to talk to you.”

Dean rolls his eyes, a complaint balanced on the tip of his tongue, but as soon as he sees the look on Sam’s face it’s replaced by a sincere, concerned “This is about another dream.”

“Yeah, and I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

Dean shoulders the rag, bumper forgotten, and walks over to his brother. “I already don’t like them. What’s going on, Sam.”

“Well I think, I think I’m starting to see a pattern to what Chuck’s showing me.”

“What, like his game plan? The fuckin’ life story he’s been writing about us?” Dean’s eyes darken and his shoulders tense and Sam can tell he’s gonna lose his brother to some pretty intense brooding if he doesn’t explain himself soon.

“No not really, more like he has…” Sam sighs. “There’s a plot point. That he uh, that he’s really focused on.”

“Okay?”

“He keeps repeating it over and over but in different ways and, well, it’s about you, Dean. And Cas.”

“Yeah, we keep finding ways to fight with each other. That’s not new, you know.”

“No, you’re uh, heh, you’re doing something else.”

Dean pauses, eyebrows pulled down, chin jutted, his entire demeanor radiating just how sick he is of thinking about how and why Chuck wants to micromanage every waking moment of his life. When he figures it out, though, his “Wait, you’re having sex dreams about me? Chuck -- God -- is beaming Casa Erotica pay-per-view directly into your brain? About me?!” is a lot more confused than Sam was expecting, and a lot less horrified.

“And Cas, which…” Sam squints over at his brother, questions -- so many questions -- flashing through his mind, but he pushes them aside for now because actually maybe Cas should be here for this.

“What.” Dean asks defiantly.

“Nothing, uh…”

Dean holds Sam’s gaze while he wipes his hands on the shop rag with more menace than anyone really ought to be able to wring out of such a simple gesture. Moment of silence over, Dean shifts back into investigation mode. “What was going on in this dream?”

“Thought we weren’t talkin’ about that.”

“You know what I mean. The other dreams have had something off about them. Different. Coffee shops and whatever.”

“Well, you were an angel.”

“No thanks, I’ve done that one already. Hoping to try something new, Chuck.”

“No, I don’t mean Michael. I mean you -- Dean Winchester -- were an angel.”

Dean thinks for a moment. “Do angels have last names?”

“What? No. That’s not -- I don’t know. The point is, you were an angel. And Cas was human -- like, always had been -- and a hunter.”

“Huh.” Dean chews on that scenario for a minute before finally shaking his head. “No, doesn’t really work flipped around like that.”

“Yeah I thought the same thing. Still, it’s weird though.”

They putter around the garage a bit more, Dean cleaning up the stuff from before and running a cloth along Baby’s sleek lines to pick up dust that isn’t there. Sam stays with him, scrolling through his phone but not really paying attention to it, lost in thought trying to figure out what the hell these dreams are supposed to mean and who might be responsible for them if not Chuck.

“So,” Dean breaks the silence when he’s finished up with the car. “Is this better or worse than when Lucifer was riding shotgun? As far as traumatizing imagery goes.”

“‘Bout equal,” Sam says with a snort. “And remember all that writhing around in debilitating pain and witnessing peoples’ horrible violent deaths I had going on? That was definitely better.”

“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”

“I dunno Dean, some of these dreams are pretty...” Sam grimaces, the most efficient way to get out of having to finish that sentence.

But Dean isn’t even looking at Sam anymore, probably didn’t hear half of what he said, because what he did hear was the loud clank of the bunker’s vault door closing. He brushes past Sam, readied pistol seemingly conjured out of thin air and into his hand, stalking stiff-legged and tense out of the garage and into the map room. Dean is clearly planning to greet what he thinks is an intruder with at least the barrel of a gun and maybe even a bullet or two if he’s in a giving mood.

Sam follows quickly behind, ready to defuse the situation, but finds that that’s not going to be necessary. Cas is standing at the top of the stairs just like he has a million times before, but this time he stays up there, clearly awaiting an invitation to further enter the Winchesters’ home. Dean had lowered the gun the moment he’d seen that trench coat edge into his vision, and now the two of them are just staring at one another. Sam can’t decide if the two men are about to start shouting or weeping at each other, and honestly Sam’s not really in the mood for either. 

Clearing his throat, Sam waves Cas down and starts filling the men in on what each of them has missed. Cas is even more taciturn than usual, only speaking up to correct a detail about heaven having fixed itself, and even then only when the detail is especially important. For his part, Dean shifts into ‘case mode’ and whatever happened between them is set aside. For now.

"This doesn't make sense.” Dean shuts the mini-fridge -- they’ve made just a single modern addition to the bunker’s main space, and of course it’s a booze thing -- and hands a beer to Sam before popping the cap off his own. If Cas had been hoping for a beer as well he doesn’t show it. “Why would Chuck suddenly decide to give us good lives? Or, just not the end of the world?" 

"He likes us though, right? Said we were his favorite show?"

"Yeah but, I don't think he likes us. He likes making us jump through hoops. He likes us entertaining him."

"And stuff I'm seeing now, it's really more about us being happy than him getting his power trip on. Or whoever."

Dean hesitates, bottle hovering for a moment before he takes a swallow. "What do you mean 'whoever?'"

"I’ve been wondering, what if it's not Chuck?"

"Who else would it be? Amara?"

"Do you think? I mean she did give us Mom and she’s definitely got the juice."

Dean frowns. “N’yeah I’m not convinced. Who knows what the hell she’s spending her life on but I don’t think it’s us. I don’t know, maybe.”

"Metatron?"

"Is he even still alive?"

"No, I don't, actually I'm not sure.” Sam turns to Cas, who’s been standing quietly while the brothers work their way through the list of likely suspects. Sam’s sure Castiel could have contributed to the conversation, putting one possibility or another to bed with the kind of definitive information only he can provide, but his silence isn’t stubbornness, it’s reluctance.

“Oh,” Cas starts to speak, clears his throat. He looks uncomfortable just being in the bunker and, honestly, just being near Dean. For the twentieth time since their big blowout Sam wonders what exactly went down between the two of them. “Yes, Metatron is dead, and even if he were not he would be human and likely spending his mortality on something only moderately dangerous, like eating waffles.”

“What?” Dean asks, surprise making him forget he’s supposed to be giving the angel the silent treatment.

“You don’t want to know.”

It’s amazing how easily Cas slips back into his call and response with Dean, even if only for a moment. The two of them just fit, Sam thinks, even when they wish they didn’t. “Uh okay well, so Metatron’s out.”

The three of them lapse into thought, each trying to scrounge up some far-flung, increasingly unlikely explanation for what’s going on. Going by body language it looks like Sam’s in the lead, and when he mumbles “Metatron” under his breath for the third time Dean finally gives up his fruitless searching and asks what’s up.

“I dunno Dean, he said something way back when we first met him. Like the very first time we met him."

"Okay."

"He, what was it. He said writers are gods of their own stories, something like that."

"Lots of people have written all kinds of things, doesn't mean they're coming true. Anyway, you were pretty loopy that day, if I remember correctly."

"Right okay, but how many of those stories have a cult following and repeatedly mention tulpas?”

"No. No." Dean groans.

"Maybe. Remember those forums we came across back when we first found out about the Supernatural books?”

“I don’t understand,” Cas says quietly, seeming to not want to interrupt the conversation but also unable to piece together what’s going on.

“‘There are Sam girls and Dean girls,’” Dean quotes himself, talking over Cas with a faraway look in his eyes.

“Yeah exactly. So Cas, the first time we met Chuck he was an author. An actual author, not a… god-author I guess. Anyway...”

“Yes Sam, I am well aware that Chuck was masquerading as a prophet. In fact, I believe I was the one who foolishly insisted he be protected at all costs.”

“Right, well, we did what we always do when we’re trying to find someone. We looked him up online. Or, his books anyway.”

“What did you find?”

“Stories, Cas,” Dean answers flatly. “I guess the stuff Chuck wrote just wasn’t enough.”

“Oh.” It’s clear Cas doesn’t see the significance of all this, and Dean doesn’t look too convinced either.

“So think about that happening way back then, and then think about the Supernatural musical we stumbled onto what, seven eight years later.” The more Sam talks about this, the surer he is that he’s onto something. He grabs the laptop sitting at the other end of the table and pulls it over to himself, settling in for what could be the most important and bizarre research session of his life.

“Okay, I’m still not following,” Dean says.

“It’s still a thing, people thinking and writing about our lives. If there were already Sam girls and Dean girls way back then, what do you think’s out there now?”

“...Cas girls?” Dean smiles, an appreciative thing that has Sam scrunching up his face. It doesn’t last long, though, as Dean quickly remembers that he’s mad at the angel and forces himself to look serious. Instead, he mostly just looks tired. Cas, for his part, simply stares at the back of Dean’s head through this entire display looking a bit sad and a bit endeared. Sam is the most put-upon man in the universe and it has nothing to do with having spent almost two centuries in hell.

“No Dean. Well, actually yeah probably. But what I mean is, maybe that’s what I’m seeing.”

“What the hell. Why would you be seeing visions of what random people are writing about us on the internet? That doesn’t make any sense, it’s not real.”

“This wouldn’t be the first time a bunch of people on the internet made something real because they wrote about it too much. Like I said, tulpas.”

Dean groans again, turns to his bottle for comfort, realizes it’s empty, grabs Sam’s untouched one, and takes a deep drink. “Alright, let’s say it is. Why would you be seeing it? Seeing Chuck’s ‘writing’ I get, kind of, I mean you’re connected or whatever, but it’s not like you shot the internet.”

“Still figuring that one out.” Sam’s been furiously typing away during this exchange, but suddenly his hands still and he sits back a bit. “Alright,” Sam reads, “Ayy Oh--- 'archive of our own.' This is, wow, there are… Holy crap, there are a quarter of a million stories here based on Chuck’s books. And yep, tulpas.” Sam continues to click around. “And uh,” Sam huffs, grins up at his brother, “a lot, a lot of people have written about you and Cas being, ya know…”

Dean chooses to ignore the fact that Sam is now giggling slightly. “So, what does that actually mean, for us? Me and Cas us, you and me us, the whole world us.”

“I can’t say for sure because I haven’t read this stuff -- and I’m not gonna, there’s literally a hundred thousand works about you and Cas getting together and uh wow, a lot of them are pretty raunchy or just… weird. Weirdly creative.”

“What, like tentacles?”

“Actually yeah.”

“Hmm,” Dean looks suddenly interested, bobbing his head around and grabbing at the computer to try and turn it around.

“Stay on topic.” Sam swats Dean’s hand away.

“Alright so is there gonna be a coffee shop at the end of all this with Cas’ name on it or what?”

“You’re really focused on that coffee shop thing, Dean, but no and that’s kinda my point. There’s so much variety in everything here that there’s no single version of the universe for ours to change into. But the one constant, well the thing that’s most consistent, is that the world is no longer about to end. That there isn’t a steady stream of big bads we have to fight. That we can breathe and relax and, and do what we want. So if Cas wants to open a coffee shop, the apocalypse or God’s sister or God himself isn’t going to come along and stop him.”

“I don’t want to open a coffee shop, but a break from the constant catastrophes would be welcomed.” 

Dean thinks about this for a few minutes. “Alright, wait a minute. This is all great, you know, not having to save the entire freakin’ world every five minutes, but I got a few questions.”

“You and me both.”

“Are all the monsters and shit gonna disappear? Are we not gonna be hunters? I’ve been there man, with the djinn, and it wasn’t good. We weren’t good.”

Sam spends some time clicking and filtering and running searches before answering. “It looks like most of this stuff still takes place in some version of our world, so yeah I think you can still kill shit.”

“Good.”

“But, it looks like things are less intense. Like more milk runs, less, ya know, God’s entire immediate family.”

“Like the early days, after Stanford.”

“Exactly. And lots more of us hanging out with friends -- as in, we actually have friends who aren’t, you know, dead -- and eating burgers and you learning how to bake like ten kinds of pie.”

“Man, I’m likin’ this, I gotta say.”

“This must be the reason heaven’s unraveling has been corrected. It’s a reprieve, a way to make sure we have the time and space to eat pie. How kind of all these people to give us that.”

Dean rolls his eyes but it’s a toothless gesture. Cas is right that this is probably much nicer than they -- than he -- deserves. “So uh, am I gonna be turning into an angel or a mechanic or an… angel mechanic? How’s this gonna work with us? Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful to live in a world that wants to kill me just a little bit less, but I have had it up to here with being a character that someone else writes.”

“I don’t think it’s changing us, just everything around us, like our universe is becoming an averaged out version of everything these people have written. I mean, I don’t feel any different, do you? Think about it, Dean. What’s the one thing all these people -- people who seem to want us to be happy, or at least to have the potential to be happy -- could give you to make that happen?”

Dean’s eyes flick to Cas for the briefest of moments before he answers “Free will. So what, this tulpa comes with an escape clause?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“No, not really.”

“Alright well, what I want to know is how this is affecting Chuck.”

“It’s an interesting question,” Cas comments. “Is he an individual, a being with personhood upon whom free will would presumably be bestowed, or is he an embodiment of the universe which is being changed and thus will he himself be changed, and how? The metaphysical nature of g---”

“Cas.” Dean thunks his head on the tabletop.

Castiel finally finds it within himself to express something other than awkward remorse and shoots some weapons-grade stink eye over at Dean. Instead of finishing up whatever Dean had cut short, he mulls it over silently and looks satisfied with his conclusion when he speaks up again. “Sam, I would like to try healing your bullet wound once more. May I?”

“Uh, sure Cas. What are you thinking?”

“Well, short of summoning Chuck and asking him directly---”

“No!”

“Thank you Dean, I completely agree. As I was saying, short of asking Chuck directly if he’s feeling any less antagonistic towards us, your wound is the best indicator of the level of connection between him and you. I believe it may also serve as an adequate thermometer---”

“Barometer,” Dean says.

“Excuse me?”

“You got the… Never mind.” Dean waves his hands for Cas to continue.

“...An adequate measure of how benevolent the universe is feeling toward us.”

“English, man.”

Cas huffs and Sam has to work to keep the smile off his face. If they’re back to bickering like an old married couple, they’re going to be okay. “If I am able to heal your brother then I believe Chuck has been written out of his own story.”

“Fuck, this would give even Vonnegut a headache.”

Sam pulls his shirt collar to the side, exposing the angry bullet wound that’s been lingering for weeks now. Sam is intimately familiar with the sensation of Cas’ healing, but is surprised when the usual feeling of water that is somehow both cold and hot flowing across his skin is all he feels. He was expecting something more, given the divine nature of the wound and the fact that it had previously resisted Castiel’s attempts at healing it. Instead it’s… extremely mundane. And extremely healed.

“Holy crap, Cas!” Sam rubs a palm across his unblemished skin and looks over at his brother who, for the first time, looks like he’s actually buying that this whole universal rewrite thing might be legit. There’s real, naked relief on Dean’s face that Sam hasn’t seen since that night he killed Yellow Eyes a lifetime ago.

“We, we’re…” Dean’s mouth flaps a couple times, he’s clearly overwhelmed by the enormity of what this means. “Are we sure? That this is over? That...” Dean looks up at Cas with eyes full of desperation and longing and affection and sadness, and it jogs something loose in Sam as his own relief washes through him.

“I gotta call Eileen!” Sam announces as he rushes out of the room, phone in hand.

Cas sits, and he and Dean exist in a silence that would have been awkward before the events of the past few minutes, but that now is charged with potential. 

“So,” Dean says. Cas laughs his quiet laugh, the one Dean hasn’t heard in weeks, the one he’s missed so much but hasn’t let himself admit. “If we…” Dean continues. “Would it be real now? You know that’s why I, what I couldn’t handle.”

“I wish you’d asked me to stay.” Cas sounds raw, the hurt as fresh as the day he’d left.

“I couldn’t--- I didn’t know if it would be me saying it.”

“It was always you, Dean.”

“How can you say that? How can you know that anything that happened, anything we did, was because we wanted it? We were puppets, man. How do you not see that?”

“The first time the universe told you -- I told you -- that God had plans for you, you rejected with such ferocity the notion of being a man whose very existence was foretold by fate, was bound to a certain destiny. Why is this so different?”

Dean says nothing, just turns his gaze down and away from Cas.

“You’re scared.”

“Yeah. Yes.” Dean makes himself meet Cas’ gaze.

“Don’t be.”

Dean’s voice is just a whisper. “I needed you so much, Cas, but I didn’t know if I could trust it. I didn’t know if it was real.”

“It was, Dean. No one else -- no one but you -- could make me feel what I feel.”

Dean studies Cas, working through a decision he thought he’d already made, years ago, but now he’s wondering if, holy fuck, if this -- right now, today -- is the first decision he’s ever really truly made. It’s too much to think about right now, he feels himself getting overwhelmed by doubt, tries his best to wave it away like smoke. “You think you can do that for both of us?”

“Have faith?”

“No, have certainty.”

Cas smiles.

“Then please Cas, stay.”

--------------------------

The rest of the day is spent in alternating bouts of bone-deep exhaustion and carefree excitement. This shit is going to take a while to work through. They all know they’ve got a ton of phone calls to make and a lot of investigating to do to find out exactly what’s what in this brave new world of theirs, but other than Sam’s call to Eileen they’ve decided all that can wait for a day or two. Thanks to a heavy foot she’ll be at the bunker by morning.

It’s late now, and Cas is sitting on Dean’s bed, comfies on and phone in hand, browsing through the site Sam had pulled up earlier. He looks up when Dean enters, towel around his waist, hair wet from the shower, and a surge of warmth blooms in his chest. Cas had thought he might never have this again, had tried so hard to make himself stop missing it; the mirror shine in Dean’s eyes tells Cas he’d tried that too.

Dean throws on some sleep clothes and climbs into bed, guiding Cas down next to him and wiggling them both around until they’re nestled in and comfortable. At least Chuck had good taste in mattresses, Dean thinks bitterly. Nope, shit, stop thinking like that. Man this is going to take some time...

“What’s that?” Dean distracts himself, reading over Cas' shoulder. “‘Team Free Will.’”

“That’s us.”

Dean smiles. “And ‘Idiots in Love’?”

“That's us too."

“Hey, we’re not---”

“Yes Dean, we are.”

"Idiots?"

"Well, that too."