Chapter Text

listen
beloved i dreamed
i thought you would have deceived
me and became a star in the kingdom
of heaven
through day and space i saw you close
your eyes and i came riding
upon a thousand crimson years arched with agony
i reined them in tottering before
the throne and as
they shied at the automaton moon from
the transplendent hand of sombre god
i picked you
as an apple is picked by the little peasants for their girls

E.E. Cummings

“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” says Dean, loudly and clearly, for what must be the third time.

“We’ve gone undercover before,” Sam points out, and, frankly, this is getting annoying.

“Not like this. Not as ourselves. I mean, I’m not pretending to be your brother,” Dean insists, and Sam looks hurt.

“Dean, this is something we must deal with.”

“Yeah, I know, thanks,” says Dean, and he makes the mistake of looking at Cas - currently sitting down at the table and moving his head a bit owlishly between the two of them as if following a ping pong game.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame Cas, though. After all, he’s the one who saved the fucking world this time around, and yeah, Dean is more than willing to give him something in return - homemade burgers, scrumptious blowjobs and that very expensive honey from their local Farmers’ Market pretty much top the list, and Dean is trying, okay - he’s gotten a solid two thirds of those items polished off, which is more than most people, so there. Hurray for productivity.

“This is a good idea,” Sam adds, after that meaningful pause he always allows whenever Dean looks at Cas - sometimes Dean expects him to actually look at the camera and say stuff like he’s in The Office and everybody knows those two dorks are going to end up together except for them.

Yes, Sam definitely does that, and Dean hates it, because things are - complicated.

“You never have good ideas,” he says, and that is extremely generous, considering what he really wants to do is punch that smug little smile off Sam’s face.

“I do too.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

And this was a mistake. Dean suddenly realizes he doesn’t want Sam thinking about it - any of it - not about Ruby or Amelia or, Hell, even Lucifer, because Sam is still not sleeping - only last night, Dean had gone to investigate the loud noises coming from the pantry at three in the morning, and he’d found Sam busy reorganizing the whole thing, a pencil between his teeth and a look of intense concentration on his face - ‘Is that a label maker?’ Dean had asked, lowering his gun, and, of course, Sam had lost that argument before it could even become an argument, because, honestly - a label maker?

“This is exactly like that time you wanted us to go at that couples’ retreat,” he says, hastily, picking something relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things. “Remember that?”

Sam looks mulish, but not like he wants to throw himself off a cliff: point.

“There were reports of strange sounds and smells,” he says, and, yeah, let’s go with that.

“Yeah. And guess who was there? In a lucky, unthinkable stroke of coincidence? That actress you like. The one from Mad Men. Funny you forgot to mention it when you insisted we check it out.”

“Peggy or Joan?” asks Cas, as if this is even relevant, and Sam blushes.

“It’s not like that,” he says, just as Dean says, “The mousey one, Cas - haven’t you ever come across Sam’s porn bookmarks? I didn’t even know ‘librarian’ was a thing.”

And, yeah, so he’s lying through his teeth here, but Sam still does his best to disappear into the floor and that is not what this is about, anyway.

“Peggy Olson is a remarkable woman, and she also has a pleasing, symmetrical figure,” says Cas, as if someone asked him anything, and now Dean is starting to get annoyed - he’s not going to sit here and listen to Cas waxing some lyrical speech about the perkiness of Peggy Olson’s breasts.

It’s not like he’s jealous - he’s not.

It’s just not a very effective use of their time, is all.

“Anyway, wasn’t the so-called haunting planned by her psycho ex?” he says, turning back to Sam.

Sam mumbles something unintelligible.

“Exactly. And remember what your plan was?”

More mumbling.

“I swear to God, Sammy - you came up to me and suggested you’d dress up as a security guard so that you could swoop in and save Ms Cute and Feminist -”

“Her name is,” Sam starts, miserably, but Dean won’t be swayed.

“- in some kind of demented Bodyguard scenario, and meanwhile me and Cas would have been stuck in some room doing couple therapy -”

“Couple therapy?” asks Cas, bewildered, and Dean gestures vaguely at his brother, as if he can’t even bear mentioning Sam’s name.

“He wanted us to sign up as some bickering couple on the brink of divorce and -”

“But we don’t bicker,” says Cas, missing the point by a mile, as freaking usual. “And we’re not divorcing.”

“Yeah, we’re not a couple either,” says Dean, way too forcefully, ignoring the flutter in his stomach. “It’s called going undercover, look it up.”

Dean makes a mistake, then, and looks at Sam, and Sam’s face is clearly saying, Yeah, like it would have been a real hardship to sit around with Cas pretending you’re newlyweds or some shit and also And anyway, no need for a marriage therapist to tell you guys to look at each other’s eyes for five minutes without speaking because it’s not like you don’t do it all the goddamn time and even And if you’d ended up in bed with Cas then I would have planned your wedding and a cute doggie could have been ring bearer and My God, Dean -

“This is not like that,” Cas says, all huffy and strangely dignified. “It is not a mistake. Zen meditation will almost certainly give us access to the Empty.”

Dean passes his hand through his hair, turns away from Sam before he can blush so deeply that he self-combusts, because that is totally a thing. The Men of Letters wrote about it, even. Somewhere.

“Almost certainly,” he echoes, “That’s a bit thin for what this is. Because if you’re wrong, Cas -”

“Dean, we’ve hunted on -”

“Don’t!” Dean growls, but it’s too late.

“- less,” Sam says, but the word now has a slightly interrogative pitch.

“Dude, come on - every damn time you say that we end up facing some Godzilla-Voldemort hybrid who feeds on souls and livers.”

Sam opens his mouth, and he’s clearly about to say Dean is hiding behind humour again, and also possibly something else which is incredibly girly, something along the lines of Dean being more than a soul and a liver (of Dean being also a heart, and a good one at that) - when Cas sits up straighter and things get worse.

“How would that work?” he asks, very seriously. “Wasn’t Godzilla a gigantic lizard?”

“Oh my God,” says Dean, because he can see how this is going to go, and yep, now Sam’s got his thinking face on, and -

“Hybrids do exist in the wizarding world, though,” he says. “Viktor Krum once used that shark spell - or Godzilla could be a Horcrux, like Nagini.”

“To confide a part of your soul to something that can think and move for itself is obviously a very risky business,” Cas quotes, obediently.

“Would the radiation influence -” starts Sam, but Dean’s had enough.

“I don’t want to hear another word from either one of you. We’re not going, and that’s final.”