#isola cass & dean's infinite playlist

[isolavirtuosa]

Cass & Dean's Infinite and Beyond Playlist 21-26

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda / Sequel to Cass & Dean's Infinite Playlist

The one where Cass makes a Daddy Issues playlist.

Referenced songs playlist on Spotify.

Parts 21-26/26 under the cut. Previous parts here.

- 21 -

I was stone-cold sober the first time Castiel casually suggested, “I know you are still wary of a penis, but how about a finger?” and immediately regretted my new teetotaling path, especially when he added, “or a tongue?” with nothing more than a casual head tilt.

My angel was filthy sometimes.

He’d been deeply irritated to find out that he was not in fact the first person to stick a finger in there during a hummer, and that he probably could have been doing it all along if he’d asked sooner.

Maybe we all were a little irritated by that.

Anyway, we’d finally gotten there, and the prostate was a magical thing.

It was just that sometimes when we were making out, as we were currently doing on my couch, with me straddling Cass and grinding on him like a bitch in heat, that I started wanting… more.

And I couldn’t put into words what that more was, but I could definitely feel it right now, hot and hard and pushing into me without actually pushing into me, and I just wanted.

“Dean,” Cass murmured into my jaw, kissing me gently.  “What do you need?”

I made a noise that one might describe as a helpless whine but I preferred to call a manly protestation.

“It’s okay,” he said, rubbing my back soothingly even as his hips were continuing that very sinful undulation.

I made that noise again, and I hated it, I wanted to speak clearly and tell Cass what I needed, but every time I grasped for the words, nothing came out but that damn noise.

“It’s okay,” he repeated, dragging kisses up to my temple.  “Dean, it’s okay to want what you want.”

I whimpered, letting go of the back of the couch that I’d been using for leverage and throwing my arms around Cass, hiding my face in his neck.

He held me tightly, still rocking his hips up, and I was a mess.  “Do you want me to take care of you?” he asked gently.

“Yes!” I cried, feeling desperate.  “Please.  Please.”

“Of course I’ll take care of you, Dean.”

“Please,” I repeated.  “PleasePleasepleasepleaseplease.”

“Shhh, of course,” he murmured, taking over completely as he laid me on my back, undressing me in showers of kisses before turning his mouth to Other Purposes.

I was really and truly a mess now, but I’d already made Cass practice saying ‘Dean Winchester never cries during sex’ until he was convincing, so it was okay if a few tears slipped out.  It was all okay, because this was just between me and Cass, but even then, even knowing that, I still couldn’t say it, I couldn’t tell him what I wanted.

He knew, obviously, but he never pushed, especially not when we were already in flagrante and all the blood that was supposed to be going to my brain to help me make good decisions was being diverted down south.

Maybe I needed him to push, though, because I didn’t know if I could ever actually say it out loud.

But the more Cass’s mouth worked, the quieter that desperate voice in my head got, and slowly the frustration ebbed away until everything was just… awesome.

“You’re okay?” he asked when he finally came up for air.

“Better than okay, darlin’,” I slurred at him, running my fingers through his hair.

His face was still all pinched with worry.

“None of that,” I scolded him.  “C’mere.”

He scrambled up to meet me, lips touching mine reverently.

“You’re too good to me, sweetheart,” I told him, wrapping my fingers around his flagging erection and bringing it back to life.  “So, so good.”

Cass sat up and pulled me back into his lap, letting me take him to to the finish line with some expert wrist action.

I would have liked to do more for him, but I was all sated and sleepy, and for some reason I couldn’t stop kissing Cass’s mouth long enough to put my mouth to Other Purposes.

He didn’t seem to have any complaints about it, sighing his contentment into his kisses.  “That was wonderful, Dean, thank you.”

“It was just a handy,” I mumbled, because this angel of mine friggin’ thanked me for handjobs like I’d just saved the world from the next apocalypse.

“The pleasure you give me is immeasurable within the fabric of space and time.”

“Jesus.”

He studied my face, that wrinkle appearing again.

I reached up to smooth it out.

“Dean, are you unsatisfied?” he asked, sounding self-conscious.

“Do I look unsatisfied?” I asked with a snort.

He paused, his head tilting to the side before a smile slowly appeared.  “No, you look like… like the ‘cat’ that got the ‘cream’.”

“Mm hm,” I agreed, licking his nose just to watch him wrinkle it.

“Okay,” he said, but there was still uncertainty in his voice.

“Are you unsatisfied?” I asked, feeling my orgasm high starting to fade.

“No, of course not,” he said, touching my cheek gently.

“I mean, I shoulda gone down on you, I know, but I just-”

“Sex is not transactional, Dean,” he said firmly, because we’d had this conversation more than once.

“Yeah, but-”

“Stop,” he said with a frown.

I bit my lip.

“I know what you want, Dean.”

My eyes darted to the side.

“And I feel… inadequate when I cannot make you feel comfortable enough to ask for what you want.”

“It’s not you, man.”

“I know that, much as you know that you do not need to fellate me because I have just fellated you, that you do not need to make sure I ejaculate first to be allowed to ejaculate yourself, or any of the other rules you have tried to impose on our sexual relations.”

“Just say ‘blow job’, Cass.”

He leveled me with a very unimpressed look.

I grinned at him.

“You’re trying to change the subject.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Blow job,” he said in a complete monotone.

I sputtered out a laugh.

“There is not always blowing, so fellatio is a much more accurate des-”

“How do you make talking about blow jobs unsexy?” I complained.

“It’s a skill,” he deadpanned, then grabbed my ass for emphasis.

I made some kind of noise that I’d rather not repeat, and allowed Cass to lure me in for another extended make out session.

Somehow we ended up on the floor, Cass on his back and me with my cheek resting against his chest while he stroked my hair.

I sighed into his skin, that little voice starting to niggle at me again.  “I’m gonna get super drunk,” I decided.

“Um… why?”

“’Cause when I’m all wasted I’m gonna tell you what I want and then we’re gonna do it,” I declared.

“I don’t want that,” Cass replied flatly.

“Yeah, but-”

“I don’t want that,” he repeated firmly.  “If you can’t talk about it when you’re sober, then we’re not ready.”

I groaned, pinching his nipple just because it was there and was sure to irritate him.

“Don’t be a brat,” he complained at me, but his eyes had gone all lidded.

He looked really good like that, a little annoyed but kinda turned on, and not for the first time I imagined pushing my way between those gorgeous thighs of his and goin’ in balls deep and I needed to stop right there because there really wasn’t any reason that we couldn’t be doing that.  No logical reason, anyway.  It was just that if we did it that way, then I’d never…

This was idiotic.

I was Dean Winchester, the most sex positive as-long-as-everyone-is-safe-and-happy-anything-goes person on the planet, and so what if Cass was in a male body and I was in a male body and we were doing the naked horizontal tango together?  Everyone was safe and fucking happy, and I just needed to get over my issues.

Easy as that.

- 22 -

I decided to start with Charlie.

She was mixing up some punch before our usual D&D session, so I joined her in the kitchen, leaving the din of nerds behind in the living room.

“Handmaiden, pass me that o.j.,” she commanded me as soon as I’d stepped into the room.

“Of course, my queen,” I said, rolling my eyes as I passed by the counter and picked up the carton of orange juice.  I handed it to her with an exaggerated bow.

“Sweet, this punch is gonna be off the hook,” she decided with a definitive nod as she dumped the juice into her concoction.  She started stirring it vigorously with the ladle, then grabbed a cup and filled it up, shoving it into my hands.

I took a sip, wrinkling my nose.  “It’s sweet alright.”

Charlie poured herself a cup and took a long drink.  “Aw, yeah, that’s the good stuff.”

I opened my mouth to speak and then shut it.

She raised an eyebrow at me.  “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing,” I said in what was definitely not a squeak.

“Dean-y,” she said, waving her cup at me.  “I know when something’s on your mind.”

“Amazing, you’re like a mind-reader,” I fake marveled at her.

“Do I sense sarcasm?” she asked, squinting at me.

‘Me?’ I mouthed at her as I pointed to myself and batted my eyes innocently.

“Oh, whatever you’re about to say is gonna be a doozy, isn’t it?” she reasoned.  “I mean, you’ve already got the defense mechanisms up to an 11.”

I looked away from her and stared at the floor because tile was fascinating.  “It’s nothing.  I just wanted to… talk about my character.”

“You wanted to talk about Blargh the Destroyer?” Charlie asked, looking for confirmation.

I nodded my head.

“Always down for a little creative time,” she said.  “You got something cooking for his backstory?”

“I, uh, not really a backstory, just uh… a new development in his uh personality,” I said, still staring at the tile.  It was very square and white.

“Lay it on me.”

“Yeah, um, okay, so you know how Blargh loves the ladies…”

“He and the Queen are always competing for the same women.”

“They do have similar taste.”

“Can’t fault them for that.”

“Hot chicks are hot chicks.”

“Absolutely.”

“And Blargh loves hot chicks,” I said, trying to get things on track.  “But lately he uh… you know, he lov- uh he goes for hot dudes, too.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, taking a breath.  Here it was.  “He’s b-… he’s b-… he’s b-b-bisexual.”

“Cool,” Charlie said, like I hadn’t just made a complete fool of myself.

“I…”

She reached over and patted my shoulder.  “I’ll make sure there’s a few hot bartenders in the next campaign along with the barmaids.  Now carry this punch to the living room.”

“Why do I have to-”

“Just do it!” my queen commanded, so I did it, feeling a little better about finally getting the word out even if it hadn’t been my smoothest line.

It was time for the next step.

I needed the right set up, and TV time with Cass seemed ideal.  While I was in charge of picking movies, Cass was in charge of picking our binge shows, and he never failed to pick something gay.

We watched Schitt’s Creek, which, okay, was kinda funny sometimes I guess.

We watched Shameless, which, okay was kinda relatable in a doing anything to survive kinda way.

We watched friggin’ Rupaul’s Drag Race, which no one ever needed to know about, but okay, fine, Bob the Drag Queen was hilarious.

We were currently watching Oz, which I wouldn’t have characterized as a gay show if Cass hadn’t picked it, but he did, so somehow we were always discussing the romantic relationship between Beecher and Keller over all the murder and mayhem.

“I’m not gay or anything…” I started.

Cass snorted from behind me as we spooned on the couch.

I barreled forward, “…but if Keller cornered me in a secluded storage room, I wouldn’t say no.”

“Dean, he literally just murdered the last person he cornered in a secluded storage room…”

“Yeah, but he like betrayed him.  Chris wouldn’t kill me, I’m too good a lay.”

“You have a lot of confidence for a man who declares himself not to be gay and then proceeds to make incredibly gay statements in the next breath.”

“I’m not gay, I’m b-” I started and fumbled.  “B-bisexual,” I concluded with a wince, wishing I could have said it without stuttering.

Cass had been stroking my arm throughout our conversation, but his hand paused for a moment, before resuming the soothing motion.  “I’m not giving you a hall pass to have sex with a rapist-murderer.”

“You do know he’s a fictional character, right?” I asked, forcing the sarcasm as hard as possible so I could ignore the way my heart was hammering in my chest.

“I know that, but do you?” he countered.

“I’m just saying...” I trailed off.

“I prefer your crush on Patrick Swayze,” Cass complained.

“I prefer my crush on you,” I said, twisting my neck around so I could waggle my eyebrows at him.

He shook his head at me, but he was smiling.

I gave him a quick smooch before turning back to the TV.

Cass nuzzled his face in next to mine, rubbing our cheeks together like an affectionate cat.  “Thank you, Dean.”

“Huh?”

“For coming out to me,” he said, kissing my cheek.  “Me, your boyfriend.  Who you engage in sexual activity with on a regular basis.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” I grumbled at him.

“Oh, I thought that was what you were into,” he hummed.

“Shut up,” I groaned, pushing at his arm.

“Deaaaan,” he protested, holding on tighter.

I gave in and let him snuggle me to his heart’s content, because it still hadn’t gone how I’d wanted it to, but we were almost there.

Next I invited Sam over for steaks.

We spent a lot less time together in heaven, and a lot of the time when we actually were together we were surrounded by our significant others or family or friends, but today I wanted it to be just the two of us.

“Your yard is looking good,” Sam commented as he took a sip of his Coke.

“Cass does most of it,” I said, eyes lasered on the steaks as I poked and prodded them with my tongs.  “He loves planting crap.”

“Poetic,” he commented.

“I planted all the herbs and stuff, though,” I added, nodding my head towards the herb garden.

“My brother, the green thumb,” Sam marveled.

“Hey, Sammy?”

“Mm?” he asked, eyes meeting mine over the grill.

“I’m bisexual,” I stated loudly and clearly.

He made one of his Faces, eyes squinting and mouth grimacing.  “I know?”

“Good,” I said, turning my eyes back to the steaks.  “How do you want yours done?”

“Medium well.”

I scoffed at that.  “That’s not how you eat a steak.”

“You asked.”

“You’ll have it medium rare.”

“Okay then, big brother,” he said, rolling his eyes.  “Why even bother asking?”

“To remind us all what dumb ideas you have.”

“Excuse you.”

“You’re excused.”

“Jerk.”

“I know you are but what am I?”

“Really?  Peewee?”

“He’s a classic for a reason.”

“He jerked off in an adult movie theater.”

“Who hasn’t jerked off in an adult movie theater?!”

“Too much information, Dean.”

“Or just the right amount.”

Sam started laughing, shaking his head.  “How are we related?”

“Do you need me to give you The Talk again?”

“Just shut up and cook the damn steaks.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, grinning.

I was pretty sure I was happy.

- 23 -

I was blasting the Yardbirds as I coasted down the highway, drumming my hands on the steering wheel.  “For your love!  For your love!”

Cass was suddenly next to me, slouching in his seat.

“Hey, sweetheart,” I said, giving him a quick peck before focusing my eyes back on the road.

“Hello,” he said glumly.

“Was the kiss that bad?”

“What?” he asked, his face scrunching up.  “No, of course not.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, deciding to go for the more direct approach if I actually wanted an answer.

“It’s…” he trailed off.  “Jack and I had a disagreement.”

“Really?” I asked, unable to hide my surprise.  “You’re usually two peas in a friggin’ pod.”

“Yes, well, we can’t agree on everything,” Cass said, sounding uncharacteristically bitter.

“You wanna talk about it?” I offered.

“No,” he said shortly.

I took my right hand off the steering wheel and rested it on his knee.

Cass covered my hand with his, sighing dramatically.  “Who is this?” he finally asked.

“Hm?”

“I’m not familiar with this artist.”

“You don’t know the Yardbirds?” I asked incredulously.

“I… do not…” Cass said slowly, tilting his head to the side.

“Dude, this is a serious lapse in your education,” I lamented.  “Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Friggin’ Page…”

“I am familiar with all of these artists,” he said, his squint intensifying.

“Of course you are, they’re three of the greatest guitarists of all time, and they all got their start with the Yardbirds, man.”

“What an influential band…” he mused.

“Yeah, I’ll lend you some tapes.”

“Thank you.”

I glanced over at him.  “Hey.”

He’d been looking out the window, but he turned to meet my gaze.  “Yes?”

“That thing with Jack’s really bothering you, huh?”

A frown tugged at his lips.  “He can be very stubborn sometimes.  I understand that he can see all things, but that does not mean that he knows all things.”

“Uh… huh…”

He sighed loudly.

“Can’t you guys, ya know, talk it out?” I suggested.

“He won’t listen.”

“Will you?”

“Are you ‘Dr.’ ‘Phil’ing me?”

“Possibly.”

“I am always willing to listen.”

“Okay, then leave it to me, angel,” I said, glancing up towards the ceiling.  “Hey, Jack, get your ass down here.”

“Dean, I hardly-”

“Hello.”

We both looked into the backseat where Jack sat, waving.

“Hey, kiddo, good to see you,” I said, turning back to the road.

Cass was silent.

“Yes, it’s been a while,” Jack said, holding up a little box of tapes.  “I have finished these.”

“Ready for the next batch?”

“I am,” he affirmed.

“Cool, I’ll get them to you as soon as you and Cass talk out your issues like grownups instead of ignoring each other,” I said cheerfully.

“Dean,” Cass growled, giving me a warning look.

“What, you two haven’t said a damn word to each other since Jack got here,” I pointed out.

“I hadn’t gotten around to it,” he tried to protest.

“I felt awkward addressing Castiel directly because he is upset with me,” Jack offered honestly.

Cass stiffened at that, then slowly turned around to face the back again.  “Jack, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me.  I know we are having a disagreement, but…” he hesitated, then shook his head.  “I’m sorry, I should have spoken with you right away instead of…  I was being childish.  I truly apologize.”

I slapped him on the shoulder encouragingly.  “Atta boy.”

Jack tilted his head to the side, sizing Cass up.  “I would like it if we could… find common ground.”

“I would like that as well,” Cass agreed.

“You two ‘fight’ like you’re on an episode of of Downton Abbey,” I muttered.  “Okay, so we’re gonna go back to our place, and I’m gonna fix us all some lunch-”

“Will you make your PB&J?” Jack asked hopefully.

“I will make Dean’s Famous PB&J,” I agreed, “and in the meantime you two will figure this shit out so we can have a nice family meal together.”

Neither of them seemed particularly convinced, but when we got back to the house I made a beeline for the kitchen and left them to sort their shit.

Making PB&J didn’t actually take that long, even if it was Dean’s Famous PB&J, so I decided to bake a pie first (classic apple, obviously).  I was going all out, flour on my nose and all, when Jack peered into the kitchen.

“Do you need any help?” he asked.

“I think I got it covered,” I said, rubbing my nose absently.

“Oh.”

I looked at his kicked puppy face and sighed.  He learned that one from his dad.  “You wanna learn how to do a lattice?”

His eyes lit up as he nodded enthusiastically.

“Okay, get over here,” I said, nodding my head towards the kitchen island where I was working.  “I’m cutting the dough in even strips,” I explained, gesturing to the parts I’d already cut.  “Think you can finish up?”

He nodded, picking up the knife and starting in.

“You and Cass talked?”

“Yeah, we… we haven’t reached an agreement, but I think we understand each other better now,” he said, his tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on what he was doing.

I patted his arm, and he shot me a grin.  “So next we’re gonna lay some strips over the pie,” I explained, nodding toward the pie plate.

We were full on weaving the pie crust when Cass joined us.

“You good, angel?” I asked, leaving the pie to Jack so I could pull Cass into a hug and sneak in a grope of his ass.

“Dean, not in front of-” Cass started, glancing towards Jack.

“You know, I’m not a child anymore,” Jack pointed out, not looking up from his work.

“I know,” Cass said, and it sounded like this was all part of their earlier discussion.  “So if I…” he trailed off, then took me by surprise by grabbing me back by the ass.

I did not shriek.

“Completely fine,” Jack assured him, eyes flicking to my panic-stricken ones.  “I have finished the weaving, Dean.”

“Uh-huh, great job there, buddy,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that Cass was still groping me in front of our son.  “So we gotta uh, you know, cut and crimp…”

Jack looked up at me expectantly.

I tried to nudge Cass away, but somehow he ended up molded to my back, arms wrapped securely around my waist while I showed Jack how to cut the extra dough off with the kitchen scissors.

“You’re such a good dad,” Cass told me later when we were cleaning up the kitchen.

I snorted at that.  “I’m no such thing.”  I’d long since given up on denying paternity to the kid, but taking credit for being a good father after all the shit I put him through when I was alive?  All the baked pies and afternoons fixing cars together were never gonna make up for those mistakes.

“You are,” he insisted.  “You get through to that human part of Jack that I can’t reach sometimes.”

“I think he’s humoring me when he pretends to be interested in what I have to teach him, seeing as he’s all omnipotent and crap,” I pointed out.

“He enjoys spending time with you.”

“’Cause I’m the fun dad,” I said with a wink.

“You are,” Cass agreed, smiling all bright and sunny.  “After you finally learned to stop being such a hardass.”

“Is that the technical term, ‘hardass’?” I asked.

“Mm,” he agreed, suddenly delivering a sharp spank to my ass.

“You are out of control,” I complained, trying to not blush and knowing that I was failing miserably.

“Am I?” Cass asked, crowding me against the kitchen counter.

I chewed on my bottom lip, flustered.  “Yeah,” I finally managed to get out, hand latching onto his tie like a safety blanket.

He leaned in close like he was going to kiss me, but then diverted his lips to my ear.  “Sometimes it can feel good to let go of control.”

“Jesus,” I whimpered, hand gripping onto him more tightly.

“Castiel,” he corrected me, and I simultaneously wanted to laugh and cum in my pants.

“How do you go from dorky dad to bossy dom, like 0 to 60?” I complained, but I sounded kinda breathless.

“Am I bossy?” he asked as he pulled back, looking perplexed.  Then his head made a hard tilt to the right.  “Am I a… ‘dom’?”

“You’re not gonna deny the dorky dad part?”

“No, I am self-aware enough to acknowledge the validity of that assessment.”

“Nerd,” I said, shaking my head.

“Yes,” he agreed, suddenly hefting me up onto the counter.  “But also ‘the boss’.”

“Nuh-uh, no way, Angela,” I pretended to protest, even as my traitorous legs were wrapping around his waist.  The voice in the back of my head that usually yelled and screamed about stuff like that was strangely quiet, so I let my legs stay where they were, enjoying the closeness.

“Yes way,” he informed me, finally, finally leaning in to touch his lips to mine, the softest of brushes.

“You’re bein’ a tease, Cass,” I complained when he pulled away.

“Well, I have to get back to work.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me.”

“I shit you not,” he said, shaking his head solemnly.  “After Jack and I spoke, while we did not reach an agreement, I came to understand what I need to do next.”

“You’re not gonna do anything stupid, right?” I asked, squinting at him.

“Never,” he said, then took in my raised eyebrow and added, “again.”

“That’s my angel,” I said with a grin.  I tugged on his tie, and he took the hint, cupping my face in his hands and kissing me like I was precious.

“I’ll be home soon,” he assured me, pulling away slowly like he wasn’t quite ready to go.

“Don’t take too long,” I said, letting the material of his tie slide out from between my fingers.  “You know bossin’ me around gets me all hot and bothered.”

“I know,” he agreed.

“Did you just ‘I know’ me?” I asked, squinting at him.

“I was simply confirming your insinuation,” he said.  “And Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Be wearing the red ones when I come back.”

I didn’t need to ask ‘what red ones?’, and that just increased the color creeping to my cheeks.

“Dean?  Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Good,” he said, and then he was gone.

I was embarrassed, but I found myself hopping down from the counter, eager to do what I was told.

Because in the end, it was okay to want what I wanted.

- 24 -

After a round of Sorry almost erupted into violence, Sam decided that the perfect solution to save game night was to play Twister.

“Dude, who wants to play Twister with their brother?” I protested.

“So you admit you’re gonna lose?” he asked with a smirk.

“Uh, yeah right, ganglezilla,” I scoffed.  “The issue here is that Twister is not a game of skill, it’s a game of horny preteens tryin’ to rub up against their crush.”

“That is not in the rules,” Cass said, not looking up from the rule sheet that he was scrutinizing.

I rolled my eyes.  “You don’t put it in the rules, it’s just something everyone knows.”

“It’s true,” Eileen said, nodding her agreement.

“Uh, no, it’s not,” Sam said.  “I played with my friends in junior high all the time.”

Eileen and I exchanged a Look.

“Listen, Sammy, I dunno how to break this to you-” I started to say.

“So help me god if you tell me my friends were all trying to cop a feel-”

“Your friends were trying to cop a feel,” Eileen said confidently.

“Just because you two are perverts-”

“Just because you’re a prude-” I interrupted him.

“I’d like to play,” Cass decided, setting the rule sheet down.

“Sweetheart, you can cop a feel of me in the privacy of our bedroom anytime you’d like,” I pointed out.

“I would rather put my right hand on red and test my dexterity as the game progresses.”

“Thank you,” Sam said, nodding like he’d been exonerated.

“Then you two horndogs play, and me and Eileen’ll do the spinner,” I said.

“No, we all have to play,” he insisted.

“If we all play, who’s gonna do the spinner?” I pointed out.

“I can use my grace,” Cass offered.

I raised an eyebrow at him.  He always got mad at me for asking him to use his grace for ‘frivolous things’.

“I want to play this game, Dean,” he stated firmly, with a little hint of that bossy bedroom voice of his that somehow always got me to do what he wanted.

I stopped protesting.

Eileen gave me a betrayed look, but then Cass started eyeing her up and she started eyeing him back, and suddenly Twister was yet another battleground for them in their very bizarre rivalry.

“This is much more fun when played with other people,” Cass declared as we all struggled to get our left feet on green when our right feet were on red.

“I’m not sure we have the same idea of fun,” I grunted.

“Right hand green!” he chirped.

“Oh my god, are you really spinning that thing properly or are you just stopping on whatever’s the most friggin’ difficult to do?!” I demanded.

“The latter,” he said cheerfully.

I gaped at my devious boyfriend.

“I don’t see the problem,” Eileen said breezily, twisting her arm under herself and settling on red.

“What are you, woman, a freaking octopus?!” I cried, still struggling to get into position.  “I mean, congrats, Sammy, but do we really need to be able to, ya know, literally tie ourselves in knots?”

“Dean, you could do to gain a little more flexibility,” Cass said.  “Left foot blue.”

“Hey, darlin’, I think I bend in all the right places,” I protested as I moved my foot.

“Dude, you can’t even do downward dog,” Sam said with a snort.

“Right hand red.”

“Is that really something you take pride in, Samantha?”

“Dean,” came a chorus of groans.

“Oh my god, I get it already,” I complained.  “Sorry, Sammy, do you really take pride in being able to do something called ‘downward dog’?”

“If you got it, you wouldn’t keep doing it,” Cass pointed out.  “Right foot blue.”

I sighed with relief as we finally shifted into a comfortable position.  I didn’t get the same aches and pains I did when I was alive, but okay, yeah, I wasn’t the most flexible guy in certain areas, like performing splits across Twister boards.

“Left foot green.”

“Sonovabitch.”

“Do you surrender?” Eileen asked, returning to a position where she could see my face and resume taunting me.

“I can do it,” I growled.

“You better not lose this for us,” Cass complained.

“You’re the one who wanted to be on my team!”

“Because I thought Sam’s excessively long limbs would be a hindrance to his flexibility and movement,” he said with a sigh.  “He’s usually so clumsy…”

“I’m not…” Sam tried to protest but then just gave up because facts were facts.

“Left hand red,” Cass said, and suddenly his arm was sliding under mine as he occupied the red circle between my two hands, the brush of his arm against mine almost shy.

“What are you doing?” I asked, shaking my head but grinning.

“I thought that rubbing against my crush would enhance the gameplay.”

I snorted at that, leaning in and giving him a quick kiss.  “Whaddya think?” I asked, smirking at him.

“It does add… ‘excitement’ to the game,” he concluded.  “Though you were correct in your assertion that it would probably be more practical to do this in the privacy of our bedroom.”  He paused.  “Naked,” he decided.

I threw my head back and laughed, while Sam sputtered incoherently, his delicate sensibilities thoroughly offended.

“Right hand yellow,” Cass said, completely unperturbed.

There was a crash behind me, and Sam was down for the count.

“Unbelievable,” Eileen groaned.

“Hey, you win some, you lose some,” Cass said with a shrug, rising to his feet.

“This ain’t over,” she said.  “We fight this out fair and square, no dead weight.”

“All right,” Cass agreed.  “Dean, take the spinner.”

“I am not drunk enough for this,” I said, stretching my abused spine.

“Yeah, ’cause you said you were good with cola,” Sam said, sitting down on the couch and picking up the spinner.  “Left foot green.”

Cass and Eileen both stamped their feet down on green.

“Ya know, they used to put cocaine in this,” I said, raising my can of Coke to Sam in a mock cheers and taking a long drink.

“Yeah, okay, but they don’t anymore?” he said, passing the spinner to me.

“Right hand blue,” I announced.

“So you doin’ the steps, gonna make amends next?”

“I’m not an alcoholic,” I grumbled at him.

“Ha,” came the peanut gallery’s reply from the Twister board.

“Left hand blue,” Sam said.  “No, really, man, so you’re…”

“I’m just takin’ a temporary break from alcohol,” I said, rolling my eyes.  “Lookin’ at shit with clear eyes.”

“Less brotherly bonding, more spinning,” Eileen commanded.

I flicked the spinner around and grinned.  “Red right hand,” I sang, doing my best Nick Cave impression.

Sam gave me a weird look.

“We’re watching Peaky Blinders,” I explained.

“Dean wants to have intercourse with Cillian Murphy,” Cass offered.

“I do not,” I protested, spinning the spinner harder than it really needed to be spun.

“It’s okay, Dean,” he said.  “He’s your type.”

“Dark hair, dreamy blue eyes?” Eileen offered, shooting me a smirk from her twisted up position on the floor.

“I don’t have a type,” I protested.

“Not an alcoholic, don’t have a type, got it,” Sam said.

“Left foot yellow,” I growled.

“Dean doesn’t like discussing his ‘man’ crushes’,” Cass explained.

“Left foot green,” Sam said.  “Yeah, apparently, ’cause I had to hear in explicit detail all the things he was gonna do to Daisy Duke growing up.”

“Catherine Bach or Jessica Simpson?” Eileen asked.

“I mean, initially Bach, but eventually there was a ménage à trois thing going on,” Sam explained.

“Hell yeah,” I said, nodding with a great feeling of satisfaction.

Cass rolled his eyes at me.

“So you’re proud of that, but you can’t admit that a dude has pretty eyes?” Sam asked, passing me the spinner.

“Okay, Jesus, fine, yeah, Cillian Murphy is… ya know, fuckable,” I admitted.  And it felt… fine?  “Left foot yellow.”

“It is already on yellow,” Cass said with a frown

I spun it again.  “Right hand blue.”

“Did you see 28 Days Later?” Eileen asked as she slid her hand onto the space Cass was going for, trying to edge him off the board.  “I’d go through an apocalypse with Jim.”

“Yeah, I was kinda closeted when I saw it, but it might be worth a rewatch,” I mused.

“So you can swoon as you gaze deep into Cillian’s eyes?” Sam teased me.

I felt something switch on inside me.  “Aw, yeah, Sammy, can you imagine those fucking eyes looking up at you while those lips wrap around your dick?”

He made a gagging face.

It wasn’t because I was talking about gay stuff.  It was because Sam was a prude and hated it when I talked about sex at all.

My grin took over my entire face as I mimed giving a blowjob.

“Dude,” Sam complained.

“Mm, those gorgeous DSL,” I said, feeling myself go far away picturing them.

“Digital Subscriber Line?  Internet… porn?” Sam asked, looking confused.

I snorted.  “This guy thinks DSL is internet porn.”

“Huh?” he said, looking completely confused.

‘Dick sucking lips,’ Eileen mouthed at him.

I cracked up at Sam’s horrified face.

“And they are,” she said, nodding her agreement, “but also CSL.”

“What… does the ‘C’ stand… for…?” Sam sputtered out hesitantly, like he knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I’m sorry, but why are you with this man?” I asked, shaking my head at Eileen.  “He can’t even find the clitoris.”

Eileen laughed at that, then mouthed at me, ‘freak in the sheets.’

“Nice,” I said, then gave Sam an approving pat on the back.

“Huh?” he said, completely lost in the conversation.

“Just playing the lady in the streets, lil’ bro, amirite?” I declared.  I gave him a big thumbs up.

His sheer confusion had me and Eileen howling.

“I would like to finish this game sometime tonight,” Cass commented, sounding exasperated.

“It’s a kid’s game, Cass,” I pointed out.

“And Eileen and I are having a wonderful time playing it.”

“You two look like you’re about to murder each other.”

“Maybe murdering each other is how we have a wonderful time.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, left foot red.”

The game went on for what seemed like most of the night, but I was having a good time passing the spinner between me and Sammy, regaling him with the details of explicit sex dreams I’d had about Patrick Swayze while he tried to cover his virgin ears and pretend it wasn’t happening.

I felt like me.

- 25 -

Cass had his arms around me protectively, cooing nonsense while I tried to sniffle away my tears.

“You’re okay, Dean,” he said gently.  “I’ve got you.”

“I know, fuck,” I groaned, sniffing long and loud and hoping that my eyes would stop dripping.

“Just let it out,” he murmured, kissing my temple.

“Already let it out,” I complained.  “Want it to stop.”

“Clearly there’s still something wanting to come out,” he pointed out.

“No, I can’t friggin’ cry anymore, man,” I sniffed.  Then I sniffed some more.  And then I just cried into his chest like some big baby.

“It’s okay,” Cass hummed into my hair.  “I love you.”

It took a while for the sobs to stop.

He held me and stroked my hair until I was quiet, then tilted my chin up to look me in the eye.  “Was the sex that bad?” he asked drily.

I couldn’t help the little laugh that bubbled out of me.  “No, sweetheart, of course not.  It was…” I started, but just thinking about it made my throat start to tighten up again.

“It was what you wanted?” he asked uncertainly.

I nodded and swallowed.

“It was what you needed?”

My nod increased in intensity.

“Okay,” he said, pressing his nose into my hair, his lips into my skin.  Barely above a whisper, he added, “I needed it, too.”  His grip tightened, and I felt his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed.

I kissed the skin under my lips.  ‘Love you,’ I mouthed into the warmth of his chest.  ‘Love you, love you, love you.’

This was all embarrassingly sappy, but I didn’t see how else anything that started with ‘Cass, I want you inside of me’ could have ended up.

Fuck, my life was a Harlequin Romance.

Even as I had the thought, though, I realized it didn’t actually bother me.  Who the fuck cared if my boyfriend tenderly made love to me while I cried?  I was exhausted, but I felt awesome.

I felt…

“I feel really close to you right now,” Cass said softly, “as if there were no longer any walls between us.”

“I feel the same,” I whispered back.  Then I realized I didn’t have to whisper anymore.  “I feel free,” I stated loudly.

Cass nudged at me insistently until our noses could touch, rubbing them together in an Eskimo kiss.

“They’re called Inuits,” he informed me.

“Huh?”

“The inhabitants of the arctic, they are called Inuits.”

“Are you reading my goddamn mind again?”

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly.  “No walls.”

“S’fine,” I decided, continuing to… Inuit kiss him.  “Just for now.”

“I will st-” Cass started, but I decided to kiss him French-style next.

When we pulled apart, he was smiling so damn much I thought his face might break in half.  “You happy, angel?”

“Very, very happy,” he said, nodding enthusiastically.

“Good,” I said.  I kissed his nose.  “You deserve to be happy.  I wanna make you happy.”

“You do,” he assured me, his eyes all crinkly.

“I don’t always,” I admitted, thumbing over the scruff on his chin, “but I’m gonna do better.”

Cass mirrored my touch, stroking along my jaw and gazing into my eyes with that huge smile still on his face.

“Enough sap,” I groaned, but I had to kiss him one more time.  “Come on, we are disgusting and we need a shower.”

He sighed, still holding me to his chest.

“C’mon, man, I don’t wanna be covered in jizz anymore,” I protested, though I really could have just laid there all day, jizz and all.

“Squeeze me, babe,” he crooned at me, hand wandering lower to give my ass a grab, “’till the juice runs down my leg.”

“I can’t even be mad at you if you’re gonna sing Zepp,” I said, trying not to laugh while simultaneously trying not to squirm when his fingers started tracing along my rim, catching the cum dripping out.

“Sometimes I like it when you’re mad at me,” he admitted.

I couldn’t keep the laugh in.

“I was going to sing Sexual Healing next,” he added, and proceeded to do so.

I was fully cracking up when Cass finally let me get up and drag him off to the shower.

“Dean?” he asked me thoughtfully as the water ran over his head.

“Mm-hm?” I hummed, working shampoo into his hair.

“Does this mean that you will be willing to penetrate me next?”

I snorted, carefully tipping his head back to keep the shampoo from going into his eyes as I rinsed it out.  “Maybe.”

“Why only ‘maybe’?” he complained, sounding like a petulant child.

“’Cause I might need you to do me again first,” I explained, waggling my eyebrows at him.

“Oh,” he said, his gaze turning thoughtful.  “Yes, okay, either proposition is acceptable.”

“That’s what I aim for our sex life to be,” I commented, “‘acceptable’.”

“I apologize, did I not properly convey my enthusiasm for both propositions through encomium?”

“Honey, I don’t even know what that word means,” I informed him, giving him a kiss and spinning us around so I could be under the spray.

Cass gave me a squint.  “In case I was not clear, I wish to partake in sexual intercourse with you at every possible opportunity from now until eternity.”

“You sure know how to make a boy blush.”

He did his best to waggle his eyebrows at me.

I cracked up.

“Why do you always laugh at me when I’m being sexy?” he complained.

I was crying again, but I didn’t care.  “Jesus.”

“That is not my name.”

“What should I call you then?” I asked, resting my arms around his neck while he rinsed shampoo from my hair.

“Daddy.”

I threw my head back in a laugh, water getting into my eyes and up my nose.  “Oh, god.”

“Again, not my name.”

“Cass, you gotta stop watching whatever porn it is you’re watching.”

“You told me it would enhance our sex life.”

“Yeah, okay, porn is awesome,” I agreed.  “But maybe you should stick to more, ya know, vanilla stuff.”

“Why?” he asked, looking at me like I was the weird one.

“Forget it,” I said, shaking my head.  “Watch whatever you want.”

“Thank you, I will.”

That sounded ominous to me.  Also vaguely intriguing.

We finished washing up and got out of the shower all squeaky clean.

Cass started humming absently to himself as he patted down his body.

“Castiel.”

“Yes?”

“You’re not funny.”

He batted those big eyes of his at me and dared to say, “I am hilarious, Dean, though not always intentionally.”

I chewed on my lip, not wanting to laugh.  “Madonna, really?”

“It seemed appropriate,” he said with a shrug, moving out of the bathroom.  “For your deflowering.”

I tried to hold my laugh in and failed.

“Like a virgin, hey!  Touched for the very first time!”

I followed his out of tune singing into the bedroom.  “So what song am I gonna deflower you to?”

“Hm…” he trailed off, looking thoughtful as he stood in the middle of the room with nothing on  “Maybe Only the Good Die Young?”

“You Catholic school girls start much too late,” I sang with a laugh, showing him how proper eyebrow waggling was done.

Cass approached me with the softest expression on his face, which really didn’t match the conversation.  “You’re laughing so much,” he said reverently.  He reached up a hand to touch my cheek.  “Am I in fact hilarious or… are you just happy?”

“Little bit of column A, little bit of column b, sweetheart.”

“They say there’s a heaven for those who will wait,” he rumble-sang at me.

I had a sudden concerning thought.  “Oh, shit, have I become a Stepford Bitch?” “Never,” Cass said, letting out an amused huff.  “You always break the mould, Dean.”

“Hell yeah I do,” I agreed.  The matter was settled in my mind.  I was happy because I was happy, and that was an awesome thing to be.

- 26 -

Cass held the casserole in both hands, while Jack held the flowers.  I rang the doorbell.

We waited.

“So are you ready to be 50 shades freed?” Cass asked conversationally.

I turned to him with a stern look.  “What did I tell you about those BDSM references?”

“That I should compile a list of what I was interested in trying and then-”

“The other thing, Cass, the other friggin’ thing.”

“Oh, uh,” he paused, clearing his throat.  “The ‘don’t talk about erotica for ladies in front of…’” he paused again, then continued with an apologetic look towards Jack, “‘the’ ‘kid’ thing.”

“Yes, Cass,” I said, exasperated.  “That thing.”

“I’ve seen all the movies,” Jack said with a shrug.  “I found them… confusing.”

“The kid is watching confusing erotica for ladies when he could be watching actual porn,” I said, and that’s when my mom opened the door, covered in spaghetti sauce.

She squinted at me.

“This is a casserole,” Cass explained, thrusting it towards her.

“Thanks, Castiel, this is going to save the disaster in the kitchen,” she said, relieved.

“Hi, Mom,” I greeted her, giving her a kiss on the cheek as I moved into the house.

“Hey, sweetie,” she greeted me, before turning her attention to her inexplicable favorite, seeing as how he murdered her and all.  “Jack!  You’re here!”

“Hello,” he said, accepting her hug.

“I thought you were… where was it, the nebula…?”

“Yes, I’ve been passing my days quietly contemplating in the Crab Nebula,” Jack explained.  “These flowers are for you.”

“Thank you, how thoughtful.”

“Where’s Dad?” I called over my shoulder.

“Guess,” Mom replied.

“Garage?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, don’t wait for us to get started.”

I moved towards the living room where the door to the garage was.

“He’s going to do it now?” I could hear Mom whispering.

“Yes, he’s quite determined,” Cass said, and that was all I wanted to hear of that as I opened the garage door and stepped inside.

“Dad?”

He slid out from under the Camaro, covered in grease.  “Hey, son.  That time already?”

“Nah, we got here a little early.”

“Saving us all from Mary’s cooking?”

“Yeah, I got us covered,” I said, shifting from one leg to the other.

“I’ve just got to-” Dad started, but I cut him off.

“Can we talk?”

He sat up, wiping his hands on his jumpsuit.  “Alright.”

I pulled over a toolbox to him and sat down on it.  “Dad, I’m bisexual.”

He scoffed at that.  “I know, Dean.”

“No, I don’t think that you do,” I said, shaking my head.  I clasped my hands together to hide their shaking.  “Cass isn’t a fluke.  I’ve probably always been attracted to men and women.”

“Dean, I don’t see why that matters.”

I took in a breath and let it out slowly.  “It matters to me, and I need you to listen to me right now.”

“I am listening,” he said, his brow furrowing.

“I need you to just listen,” I tried to explain, grasping for words.  “Just listen, okay?”

“I am,” he repeated.  His tone was getting colder.

“I need you not to talk,” I blurted out, then took in another breath and let it out slowly.

“Dean-”

“Don’t talk,” I repeated, because it was stupid to be a grown man afraid of getting a smack from his father.  “Don’t talk and just listen.”

His look darkened.

“Please,” I said, because Cass said asking politely was better than being ordered around.  We could agree to disagree, but in this instance he was probably right.

Dad gestured for me to continue, not looking happy but not saying anything.

So I looked him in the eye, and I said, “I never became the man I was supposed to be because of you.”

“What is-”

“Just listen.”

“Now look here, son-”

“Just listen, John,” I said flatly, finding a strange sense of calm in his anger.

He opened his mouth to speak.

“I’m bi,” I repeated, “but no son of yours could ever be out.”

“That’s not fair-”

“Just listen to me, dammit,” I growled, not looking away from his steely gaze.  “You got to talk, talk, talk for all those years, and now it’s my turn, okay?  It’s my turn to talk, not yours.”

He hefted out a loud sigh.  “Fine,” he gave in, because he probably knew that if he didn’t, this conversation would be over and so would any chance we had at a relationship.

“Thank you,” I said in a tone that was probably more hostile than polite, but I was at least attempting to mind my Ps and Qs.  The thing was, this wasn’t on me.  He could listen or not, but once it was all out there, I’d have done my part.

He gestured for me to continue, like he was still in charge of this.

I stared him.

He waited.

I waited.

He opened his mouth.

I narrowed my eyes.

He didn’t speak.

“I was a kid,” I finally said.  “I was a little kid, and you took that away from me.  I was… I was sensitive and… kind and… you took that away.  You tried to make me into your version of a man, talking about ‘real men’, calling people ‘gay’ like it was something derogatory, treating women like objects…  You ingrained all that shit into me until it was the only truth I could believe in, and it was all bullshit, it was all a grieving man in pain, fighting a one-man vendetta against a, against a friggin’… I don’t know, but it was like you wanted to honor Mom while you were tryin’ to… tryin’ to tear every last part of her outta me,” I got out, choking on the last word as tears warmed my eyes.

“Dean,” he said, and this time he wasn’t angry but I didn’t want to hear it.

“It wasn’t fair,” I pushed forward.  “It wasn’t fucking fair.  I loved her, too, and she was a part of me, but you ripped that part of me away and made me ashamed of it.  I would flinch whenever someone told me I looked like Mom, that I was… pretty, because men weren’t ‘pretty’ and that meant I wasn’t a man, and… it was all so fucking stupid.  You made me ashamed of who I was, ashamed of… being like Mom, even if I didn’t realize it at the time, because my memories just kept fading and fading and you never wanted to talk about her, just when you were drunk, just those same stories over and over, but you didn’t even tell me, you didn’t tell me that Mom loved bacon and pie and that she rocked harder than you, you didn’t tell me, and I didn’t… I didn’t know that she was… with me, with me every step of the way in these stupid tiny everyday things, because you hoarded all your memories of her and you wouldn’t… and… and…”  It was getting harder to talk.

“I didn’t realize-” he tried to say.

“And the thing of it was, you were the one who wasn’t there,” I ground out.  “I was the man of the house.  I took care of Sammy.  I made sure his lunch was packed before he left for school.  I made sure he got on the bus.  I picked him up after school and helped him with his homework ’til the damn kid got smarter than me.  I made sure there was some kind of food on the table for dinner, even if there wasn’t enough for two.  I laid in shitty motel beds with him while he cried ’cause there was a clown painting on the wall or he was hungry or he wanted his dad for some friggin’ reason, whatever it was, I was there raising that kid while you were off chasing ghosts and getting drunk.”

“Dean.”

“I ain’t finished, old man.”

He looked like I’d punched him in the face.

My tears were dry now.  “I’m not good with words and I don’t like making big speeches, so I’m leaving you with this.  You took something away from me.  You made me less of a man.  And despite that, despite all of that, I was still ten times the man you ever were, and I’m becoming a better man every day.  I’m becoming the person I was supposed to be.  The person I would have been if you hadn’t raised me.”

The garage was completely silent.

I stood up.  “So if you want to come to dinner, come to dinner.  But know that me and Sammy, and even Mom, aren’t gonna put of with any of your macho shit anymore.  If you want to fix your relationship with me, then try shutting up and listening sometimes, and then maybe I might actually be able to forgive you and move on.”  I left the garage.

The dining room was empty, but I could hear voices in the kitchen.

My eyes sought out Cass’s from where he was putting lettuce in a bowl at the kitchen island.

“Dean, Sam and Eileen have just arrived,” he informed me, smiling warmly.

“Hey,” Sam greeted me, bumping his shoulder into mine.  “Mom said that you were gonna finally give Dad The Talk.”

I nodded.

“You did it?” he asked, sounding surprised.

I nodded again, moving across the kitchen to anchor myself with Cass.  I threw my arms around him, tucking my head under his chin.

His hands were wet from the lettuce, but he held me close anyway, stroking the hairs at the back of my neck soothingly.  “How do you feel?” he whispered into my hair.

I closed my eyes, breathing him in.  “Free.”

“Good,” he said, kissing the top of my head before going back to preparing the salad.

We had already started eating when Dad came in from the garage.

He grunted out a greeting before taking his seat.

I met his gaze with my hand firmly placed on Cass’s knee.  “You want some casserole, Dad?” I asked, holding up the pan towards him.

“Yes, please,” he replied, taking the dish from me.

It was a start.

- Hidden Bonus Track -

The tinkling ukulele of Elvis’s Blue Hawaii filled the air, competing with the sounds of the waves washing up on the shore.

“This is the life,” I declared, taking a long drink from whatever fruity concoction was in this giant glass I was drinking from.

“I would like it better if it wasn’t for all the… sand,” Cass said, like it was a disdainful word.

“It’s part of the experience, man,” I protested.

“Hey, are you two just gonna sit here the whole time?” Sam asked as he approached our beach chairs, toweling himself off from his swim.

“If we are very lucky,” I said, stirring my drink with the little umbrella.  “Perfect view of the stage.”

“So you mean perfect view of attractive women dancing in skimpy clothing,” Sam said with a roll of his eyes.

“Uh, they are dancing professionals, Samuel,” I said, clucking my tongue at him.  “Why are you objectifying them like that?”

He started sputtering.

“I think you broke Sam,” Cass pointed out helpfully.

“Ha,” I said.  “Man, that dancer on the left is gorgeous.”

“Her breasts are very full,” Cass agreed.

“Heh heh, hell yeah,” I said, holding up my hand for a high five.

Cass slapped my hand with his.

Sam looked like he was going to have a conniption.  “I thought you were supposed to be becoming a better man, less of a… you.”

“I’m a work in progress, Sammy, what can I say?”

Sam groaned, flopping down into the chair next to mine.

I looked to Sam on my left and Cass to my right, all of us with our toes in the sand wearing matching Hawaiian shirts while we sipped our drinks and watched the waves crash onto the beach, accompanied by the lovely dancing of the hula girls.  “We made it, boys.”

“Cheers to that,” Sam said, holding up his glass.

We all clinked our glasses together and watched the sky explode into colors as the sun set over Hawaii.

“Dream come true in Blue Hawaii,” Cass crooned.

Sam covered his ears, I rolled my eyes with a laugh, and all was right with the world.

[isolavirtuosa]

Cass & Dean's Infinite and Beyond Playlist 16-20

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda / Sequel to Cass & Dean's Infinite Playlist

The one where Cass makes a Daddy Issues playlist.

Referenced songs playlist on Spotify.

Parts 16-20/26 under the cut. Previous parts here.

- 16 -

Judy Collins was blasting from the living room when I got home from Bobby’s.  I peaked my head through the doorway, surprised to see my mom and Cass on the floor, surrounded by records.

Mom was laughing and she looked young with long blonde curls framing her face, but when her eyes met mine she was suddenly the short-haired woman I’d known as an adult again.  “Hey, sweetie.”

“Hey, Mom,” I greeted her, patting her shoulder and leaning down to kiss the top of her head.

She grinned up at me.  “Hope you don’t mind us commandeering your living room.”

“Mi casa is su casa,” I said, eyes flicking over to Cass.  “Hi.”

“Hello,” he said, looking up at me expectantly.

I looked between him and my mom, both staring at me.  I swallowed, then shifted over to Cass and kissed the top of his head.

Cass’s whole face scrunched up in a smile.

Mom smiled, too, and went back to looking at records.

I slid down between them, feeling a little embarrassed but pleased.  My mom had had a similar reaction to my announcement as everyone else; I’d asked her, “hey, you know that Cass and me are… you know?” and she’d nodded and said, “I know.”

But then she’d gone and changed the script a little, saying, “I’m so glad you two finally found each other.”

Like she’d always known.

I settled my hand on Cass’s knee, picking up a record.  Carole King.  “These new?”

“Mary’s contributions to our collection,” he said, and I didn’t miss the our.

“Chick music?” I questioned before I could stop myself.

Mom made a dismissive noise.  “I taught you to respect the greats better than that.”

Cass was looking at me like I was an idiot.  “You and Mary have exactly the same taste in music, irregardless of your gender.”

“We don’t have the exact same taste,” I tried to protest, but just hearing this stupid Judy Collins song was tightening up something in my chest, something nostalgic and familiar and well-loved.

“Have you ever ridden in the car with your mother?” Cass asked, squinting at me.  “Dean, I put your body together atom by atom-”

“Jesus, Cass, in front of Mom?”

He stopped at that, looking confused.  “I simply mean that I know you on the deepest levels.”

I wanted to make a dirty joke about that, but as I’d pointed out myself, Mom really was sitting right across from us, so instead I gestured magnanimously for him to continue.

He frowned at me, but continued, “…and as the person who knows you on the deepest levels, I can assure you that there is little discernible difference between the musical selections of Mary Winchester and the musical selections of Dean Winchester played at obscene volumes during long drives.”

‘Obscene,’ Mom mouthed at me, amusement crinkling around her eyes.

I snorted.

“Including female singer-songwriters,” Cass added, giving us both a frown for our cheekiness.

“I don’t-” I tried to protest, and then just let the lie die off my lips.  “Whatever,” I grumbled instead.

Fine, Cass had converted me; I liked chick music.  That didn’t mean I had to admit it out loud.  The two people in this room could read it on my face without me having to say it, anyway.

“Sooo,” Mom said, still amused from my admission before her face suddenly went serious.  “Family dinner.”

“What about it?” I asked.

“I told Sam he could bring Eileen,” she said slowly.

“Cool,” I said with a shrug.

Mom and Cass were both giving me A Look again.

“What?”

“I thought it’d be nice if you brought Castiel, too,” Mom said casually.

I didn’t mean to laugh.

Mom gave me a tired look, while Cass did his broody pout thing.

“What?” I protested.  “He doesn’t eat,” I tried, taking my hand off of Cass’s knee and flailing it in his direction.

“You do not occupy a physical body and therefore do not require sustenance, either,” Cass said, wrinkling his nose at me.  “If you do not wish for me to come, then simply say so.”

“Cass, come on, man,” I said in a tone that definitely wasn’t a whine.  “You know how hard…” I trailed off, eyes nervously flitting to Mom before deciding to just push forward, “…how hard it’s been for me and Dad to… you know… and then if you’re there, I mean you two aren’t exactly…”

“John Winchester and I have spoken,” Cass said, bringing my rambling to a screeching halt.

“What?  When?” I asked, then thought about the important stuff.  “Spoken about what?”

“I apologized about my previous abruptness with him, but he understood and respected that I had been protecting you.”

“Protecting me?” I repeated.

Cass leaned in closer, gaze catching mine.  “He makes you upset, Dean,” he said, reaching up to cup my cheek gently.  “You are in heaven, and yet speaking with your father makes you upset, and I cannot abide that.”

“I’m a grown man, Cass, it’s okay,” I said, rolling my eyes and trying to break that hypnotic gaze but not quite succeeding.

“It is not okay, but John Winchester and I have agreed to ‘start’ ‘fresh’.”

“Wish I could ‘start fresh’ with him,” I muttered.

“He’d like that, Dean,” Mom cut in softly.

“I know, Jesus,” I complained with a frustrated sigh.  “I’d like that, too, but it’s not that friggin’ easy.”

“It’s not,” she agreed, reaching over and patting my knee.  “It took a long time for me and your dad, and we still have our arguments, but… it’s like the edges have softened?” she mused.  “When you finally let go, it just…” she trailed off, searching for the right words, then seemed to give up with a shrug.  “I’m happy, and I want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy, Mom,” I told her, and it was more or less true.

She squeezed my knee gently, eyes meeting mine steadily before she retreated back to the pile of records.

I felt a little brave.  “Cass makes me happy,” I said, my voice coming out stronger than I expected.

Mom breathed out, her lips curling upwards, though she kept at her task without looking at me.

“Dean, that’s…” Cass trailed off, staring up at me like I created the universe in seven days.

“Don’t start,” I told him, squishing his face.

“Try and stop me,” he said, his words muffled by his squishy fish face.

I grinned and kissed him without a thought.

It was just Mom, and she’d always known, anyway.

- 17 -

“Why haven’t we done this before?” Cass marveled at me like he’d just discovered the secret of the universe.

“Because we are two fully grown men smushed together in a very small space?” I attempted to complain, when really I had no complaints at all about driving to a scenic lookout and proceeding to make out in the backseat of my Baby like a couple of teenagers.

“I think it’s… cozy,” he decided.

I shook my head, cupping his jaw and pulling him back down into a kiss.  Only Cass would think that steaming up the windows of the Impala was ‘cozy’.  “You’re like a horny teenage grandpa,” I mumbled against his mouth.

“The logistics of becoming a grandfather during the teenage years-”

“Nope,” I cut him off, moving my mouth down his neck.  “Less talky, more kissy.”

“Dean,” he complained at me.

I shifted, letting our eyes meet.

“We can both talk and kiss,” he informed me gravely.

“Cass, man, come on,” I groaned.

“I enjoy talking to you,” he persisted.

“I enjoy talking to you, too, sweetheart,” I told him, earning myself a toothy smile.  “But make out conversations should be more, ya know, dirty talk and stuff.”

“Oh,” he mused with a thoughtful frown.  “I don’t think you would be able to handle my ‘dirty talk’ in this confined space, Dean.”

I snorted at that.  “Yeah, okay, I’ll try and keep it together from your ridiculous idea of dirty talk.”

“You always say it’s ridiculous, but it sure seems to… ‘get the job done’,” he pointed out.

“Well aren’t you a cocky sonuvabitch.”

“Is it cockiness if it’s true?”

“Yes,” I said, then thought about it.  “Maybe?  Whatever, you’re bad at dirty talk even if it turns me on.  Everything turns me on, so it’s hardly an accomplishment.”

He looked crestfallen.

I groaned, resting my head back against the door.  “Look, the windows are already unfogging…”

Cass pushed out his bottom lip in a pout.

I reached up to push an errant hair behind his ear, then left my hand there, cupping his cheek.

He leaned into the touch, eyes still staring into mine intently.

“C’mere,” I said softly.

He leaned in until his forehead rested against mine.

“The way you talk is weird,” I informed him.

Cass worked himself up to a thoroughly exasperated look.

“But it’s kinda sexy when your voice gets all… growly and stuff, so it doesn’t really matter what you say.”

“Oh, I see,” he said, and he was using that low, growly voice just to spite me.

“I just…” I trailed off, trying to make good words and failing.  “I like it.  I like you,” I finally said, which I didn’t think was what I’d been trying to say, what with how junior-high-school-crush it sounded.

“I like you, too, Dean,” Cass said, smiling all sunnily.  At least I’d uncrammed my foot from my mouth a little, even if what was coming out of my mouth was still stupid.

“I just… I mean… you know?”

He squinted at me.

I flushed, feeling stupid and tongue-tied.

“I know,” he finally said, letting me off the hook.

We went back to steaming up the windows.

I rocked my hips up lazily between his thighs, with no real intent behind the motion, reveling in the way Cass kissed me in that joyful way of his, like he was being given a gift.

Then he started joyfully licking my nose.

“You’re not a dog!” I protested, trying to push him away.

“I have often been referred to as such,” he said with a shrug, then went back to planting kisses all over my face before licking my nose again.

“Cass!” I may or may not have shrieked before bursting out laughing as he friggin’ persisted in his nonsense.  “What are you doing, you’re so weird,” I gasped out.

“I’m showing you my affections,” he declared with a grin that said he knew he was being a weirdo and didn’t care.

“Enough,” I tried to groan, even though I was still laughing.  I pushed us up into a sitting position, one hand guarding Cass’s head from bumping into Baby’s roof while the other settled comfortably on his ass.

“You’ve done that before,” he observed, settling his arms around my neck.

“Me and Baby have been around the block a time or two,” I said with a wink.

Cass rolled his eyes.

“Hey, you appreciate me and my experience,” I said, giving his ass a squeeze.

He squirmed a little at that, but then his look went deadpan.  “Yes, your vast experience in seducing women in your car to the soundtrack of Bad Company-”

“Dude, Bad Company rocks,” I interrupted him before he could get any more hits in.

“Well, I’m certainly going to associate this album with your sweet lips for the rest of my existence,” Cass said, looking a little dreamy.

‘Sweet lips?’ I mouthed at him incredulously.

He winked at me.

I threw my head back, laughing.  “You are simultaneously the dorkiest and suavest person I’ve ever met.”

“You think I’m suave?” he asked, pleased.

“You did just get me to make out with you for like three hours,” I pointed out.  “With no happy ending.”

“I think it ended pretty happi-” Cass started, then frowned.  “Oh.  You were making a lewd reference to a hand job after a massage.”

“I was making a lewd reference to a hand job after a massage.”

“I can do that, too.”

“Wasn’t asking,” I said with a snort.  “Wouldn’t say no, but wasn’t asking.”

“When we get home,” he promised, and I felt my cheeks heat up.  Cass squinted at me for a long while, then said, “I love you, Dean.”

“Back atcha, buddy,” I mumbled, tucking my face into his neck.

“I think you may have actually come up with something more offensive than ‘I know’,” he grumbled at me.

“How is that offensive?” I complained, still not looking up at him.

“I dunno, ‘buddy’, whaddyu think?”

I snorted at his impression of me, and attempted to not sound sarcastic when I replied, “I’m sorry, darling, I love you, too.”

“Thank you,” he said, kissing the top of my head.  “It’s nice to hear.”

“I know,” I said quietly, hugging him more tightly.

We held each other for a while, then I decided it was time to end our little romcom scene and head home.

Cass settled a hand on my shoulder as I drove, and I cast a questioning glance over at him.

“You seem more relaxed,” he said.

“More relaxed than what?” I asked before I could stop myself.

He leveled me with a knowing look.

I sighed, focusing on the road ahead.  “I’m fine.”

“You are anxious about me attending family dinner with you tomorrow.”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re fine, it’s fine, everything is just fine, fine, fine,” Cass grumbled at me.

“Don’t need Sassy Cass right now,” I complained.

“And yet you’ve got him.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

His hand slipped from my shoulder to cover mine on the steering wheel.  “It’s okay to feel what you feel, Dean.  To acknowledge it, to talk about it.”

“Yeah, sure, if I was, you know, a girl.”

“Dean,” Cass said in his most disappointed tone.

“Yeah, yeah, girls can be emotionally stunted, too.”

He paused at that, before letting out a startled laugh.

I felt myself grinning.

“You are so…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“That’s what they say,” I agreed.

We sank back into silence, until I pulled up to the house.

“I just wish you’d express yourself,” he said into the quiet of the car.

“I don’t know how,” I replied honestly.

Cass nodded, squeezing my hand before getting out of the car.

I came up beside him as he moved along the walkway, sliding my arm around his shoulder.  “It’s just dinner.  I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“It will be fine,” Cass echoed, trying to be optimistic even if he didn’t sound convinced.

- 18 -

Family dinner was fine.

When we got there, Dad was in the garage working on his car, so I left Cass with Sam and Eileen in the living room, while Mom and I headed to the kitchen to try and sort out whatever mess she’d made this time.

“Ya know, for how much you two are the same exact person, Dean sure is a good cook,” Sam commented as he passed through the kitchen to steal some carrots off of the cutting board.

“Stop with the rabbit food,” I said, smacking his hand away.

“I could have learned to cook,” Mom said with a frown.  “If I had the opportunity.”

Neither Sam nor I could stop the disbelieving looks we both gave her.

“What?” she protested.  “I totally could have.  When I first moved into the bunker Dean was just starting to really cook.  If he could get that good that fast-”

“Mom, I love you,” Sam said solemnly, “but please stop trying to cook.”

“It’s for your own good,” I agreed.

She made an offended noise, but then just shrugged.  “Alright, well then I guess you two have got everything covered in here,” she declared, walking out of the kitchen.

“I don’t have anything covered,” Sam tried to protest.

“Shut up and make the salad, bitch,” I commanded him.

“I am not your salad bitch.”

“Oh, you are definitely the most bitchy of all the salad bitches,” I said as I carefully flipped the burgers in the frying pan.

Sam muttered something under his breath and I ignored him since he wasn’t man enough to say it out loud.  Somehow we managed to put something halfway decent together from the mess Mom started, and then we were serving the food and everyone was coming to the table to eat.

“Hey, boys,” Dad said, passing through the kitchen, covered in grease.  “Gimme a sec and I’ll join you.”

When he had disappeared into the bathroom, I breathed out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“Dude,” Sam said, shaking his head.

“Dude,” I replied, shaking mine back at him.

He gave me A Look, taking the platter with the hamburgers from my hand and walking out to the dining room.

Mom sat at the end of the table, Eileen to one side of her and Cass to the other.

I let my hand drag across Cass’s shoulder as I passed him, the touch anchoring me as I took my seat next to him.

He gave me one of his puppy dog faces, so I leaned in to give him a quick kiss.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly, his nose still brushing against mine.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I assured him, kissing him one more time for luck before pulling away.

“Young love,” Eileen commented, rolling her eyes.

“Sorry your love is so old and crusty,” I replied flippantly.

“Crusty?” she asked incredulously, making some kind of sign that I didn’t understand.

Sam snorted.

I was opening my mouth to make another jab when my dad walked into the room.  I yanked my hand away from Cass’s knee where it had been resting under the table, whacking it against the table in my haste to do so.  I cleared my throat, straightening up.

Cass seemed resigned to my behavior, but Eileen looked shocked.

‘Dean?’ she finger signed at me.

‘OK,’ I signed back at her, just about the only coherent response I could manage in sign language.

“Is it just me, or did it suddenly get real quiet in here?” Dad joked, taking his seat across from Mom.

“It is not your imagination,” Cass stated gravely.

The two of them exchanged an unreadable look and the sweat on my palms increased about 20 percent.

“Burgers look great,” Mom commented, taking one off the platter and passing them to Cass.

“So they kicked you out of the kitchen?” Dad concluded, shooting her a shit-eating grin.

“Don’t you start, too,” she growled with a mock-glare.

This was all Typical Family Dinner Fun in the tradition of the one and only family dinner we ever had all together, alive and aware, back in Lebanon.  It involved sticking to light topics like Mom’s terrible cooking, then pleasantly dispersing at the end of the meal, feeling like we were a passable family.

Usually I was good at playing my role, but there was something off this time.

I glanced over at Cass as he passed me the burgers.

He gave me a reassuring smile, acting completely nonplussed about how I’d just pulled away from him like he was on fire.

We’d discussed it before we came.  Cass understood.  He always understood.

That was a convenient excuse.

I picked at my food, barely listening to the conversation going on around me.

Cass watched me carefully, but kept his distance.

I glanced over at Dad as he and Eileen talked animatedly about ghoul-killing techniques.

Dad adored Eileen.  She was exactly the kind of woman he wanted his sons to marry.

Her hand was on Sammy’s knee under the table.

It pissed me off.

“Dean.”

His voice was so quiet over the din of conversation that I almost didn’t hear him.  Meeting Cass’s gaze, the sympathetic puppy look had ratcheted up to full power, and I felt my hand twitch, moving involuntarily towards him before I quickly snatched it back.

“Dean,” he repeated, giving me a sympathetic look.

“What?” I growled, but it came out a lot higher than I expected.  Also, I had to flick my gaze up to meet his.  “Sonuvabitch,” I muttered, because of course I had to revert to my teenage self in this stupid situation.

So then everyone stopped talking and stared at me.

“I’m gonna check on the…” I trailed off even as I was already moving to the kitchen, unable to come up with a proper excuse but running away anyway.

I expected Sammy or Cass to come drag me back to the dinner table, but instead it was Eileen who followed me into the kitchen.  “Dean?”

“It’s fine,” I said, hands on the counter as I stared out the window.

“Dean?” she repeated.

“Look, I don’t want to-”

“I can’t read your lips,” she spoke over me.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” I said, whirling around to face her.

Eileen grinned at me.

“This why they sent you in here?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.  “So I hafta look you in the eye?”

“Devious masterminds, your brother and your boyfriend.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Goddamn, you are adorable,” she marveled at me.

“Huh?”

She gestured up and down my teenage frame.  “If we all met when we were teenagers, forget Sam...”

I snorted at that.  “You’re really sounding like a pedo here.”

She shook her head at me, slowly letting her own projected body de-age back to adolescence.

“Hey, you might be on to something with this whole ‘forget Sam’ thing…” I said, giving her a leer and a wink.

Eileen just laughed, hopping up to sit on the counter next to where I was standing.  “Less flirting, more talking.”

“That’s just against my nature, darlin’,” I protested.

“Dean,” she said, shaking her head at me.

“Whaddya want me to say?” I asked, starting to look away again before catching myself.  I didn’t want to be a dick to Eileen, but it was also a dick move sending her in after me when I clearly just needed a minute to clear my head.

“Why’d you freak out?” Eileen asked, not willing to give me that minute.

“I didn’t ‘freak’ ‘out’,” I said, realizing as the words were tumbling out of my mouth that I was using Cass’s air quotes.  That was embarrassing.

Her eyebrows shot up, like she didn’t believe me.

“I just-” I started and stopped.  I wasn’t going to be tricked by those big brown eyes.  “I think Sam is negatively influencing you.”

“What?” she asked, letting out a surprised laugh.

“Come on, Eileen, you’re not the touchy feely type who always wants to talk about feelings.”

“Too loo rye ay,” she said with a shrug.

It took me a minute, and then it was my turn to laugh in surprise.  “Never expected you to quote song lyrics at me.”

“I’m Irish, my name is Eileen, and I look like this,” she said, gesturing up and down her body.  “Teenage boys are not as clever with their pickup lines as they think.”

“Got that one a lot?”

She made a face at me and I laughed again.

“I definitely woulda tried that ‘you in that dress’ bit on you in my younger days,” I confessed.

“In your younger days?” she asked with a snort.  “I’ve heard you try ‘come here often?’ and ‘this coffee is hot’ in your definitely not younger days.”

“Listen, the classics are classics for a reason.”

“Hey, I’m not going to argue with your success rate,” she said, holding her hands up in deference.

“Damn straight.”

Eileen continued to look at me expectantly.

“What, you think we’ve had enough friendly banter now so I should break down and bare my naked soul to you?”

She wrinkled her nose.  “You don’t have to do all that,” she said.  “Just want to know what’s wrong.”

I sighed, climbing up onto the counter next to her.

She bumped her shoulder into mine.

“It just sucks,” I said, hoping I could leave it at that.

But of course I couldn’t.  “What sucks?”

I took in a deep breath and heaved it out loudly.  “I’m a grown ass man, but I can’t…” I hesitated, then realized that Eileen could still read my lips if I closed my eyes.  “I’m afraid.  To touch Cass.  To be with Cass.”

Even when I wasn’t looking into her eyes, I could feel her confusion.

“Infrontofmydad,” I rushed to finish.

The bump of her shoulder against mine became a more solid touch.

I didn’t want to put it into any more words than that.

That’s not how a man walks.

Cut your hair, boy, you look like a fag.

You’re not a sissy, you don’t cry over a little blood.

I remembered defiantly throwing my arm around Cass’s shoulder in front of him that one time at his house, feeling so empowered.

But that was before we were together.

That was before I proved every homophobic word that ever came out of my dad’s mouth about me to be true.

“Cass deserves better than that,” I finally said into the silence, keeping the darker things inside.

“Yeah, he does,” Eileen agreed.  “But you’re not the one taking that away from him.”

I swallowed, still not wanting to open my eyes.  “But I am,” I said quietly.  “I’m the one who’s too weak to stand up for myself, to stand up for him, to…”

“So you’re going to run away?”

The challenge in her voice had my eyes flying open.

She smirked at me.

“You play dirty, Leahy,” I complained.

“Yep,” she agreed, sliding off the counter and back onto the tile.  “Dean?”

“Yeah?” I said, then realized her back was to me.

“Sometimes… we have these ideas in our head of how things are supposed to be,” she said.  “And we try to force those ideas into being, even when they don’t fit with reality.”

This was going a little over my head, but I couldn’t convey that to her back.

“I think I’ve dreamed my entire life of being with my parents and the three of us being a family.  But when I got to heaven... I realized that we didn’t… we didn’t know each other.  So… we wanted to be a family, but we were strangers, and when we tried to force it…  We had to change our idea of what we wanted.  And that made things easier, and maybe now we’re really starting to be a family, but it looks a lot different from how I pictured it when I was still alive.  And that’s not a bad thing, just… different,” she concluded, turning around to meet my gaze again.

Sometimes I forgot how alike Eileen and I were, and other times it kicked me in the face.

I held my hand out to her, and she took it.  I squeezed gently, then let go and hopped off the counter.  “Let’s bring out dessert.”

She helped me get the bowls and spoons out, then we carried them along with the ice cream from the freezer back into the dining room, and we all endured the rest of yet another perfectly fine Winchester Family Dinner.

- 19 -

I was agreeing to spare the Pie Fairy as long as she kept my oven well-stocked when a crash startled me awake.  I squinted into the dark of the room at Cass in the middle of the floor, frantically putting tapes into a big cardboard box.  “You comin’ or goin’?” I managed to gravel out.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, giving me a sheepish look, before adding, “and coming.”

“Thought you had to work,” I mumbled, rubbing my hand over my face.  He’d told me before I went to sleep that he had Heaven Crap to do.

“I delegated,” he said, fishing the last tape out from under the bed and putting the box back in the middle of the floor.

“Maybe if you put that somewhere else, you wouldn’t trip over it?” I suggested.

“I didn’t trip,” Cass protested, sounding annoyed.  “I simply… forgot it was there.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, rolling my eyes.  “Too damn early for this shit, Cass.  Come to bed.”

He leveled me with A Look as he pulled off his trench coat and settled it over the back of my desk chair.

“Oh, am I getting a show?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows at him.

Cass paused in undoing his tie.  “Will I receive a… ‘tip’?”

“Not just the tip, baby,” I said with a snort.

He raised an eyebrow at me.

I flushed but kept grinning.

He shook his head and carefully undid the buttons of his shirt before folding it and placing it on the chair.

“This show would be a lot more interesting if I didn’t know that the big reveal was a pair of giant white granny panties,” I sighed.

“They are neither panties nor for grannies,” he explained, pulling his pants over his feet, then folding them neatly and piling them on top of his shirt.  “I would wear something else, but I don’t want you to snap at me for wearing your clothes.”

“I already apologized for that,” I complained.  “You know I was stressed out about dinner with my dad.”

“Yes,” he said, standing in the middle of the room in just his giant white boxers and his sensible socks.

“I already admitted I was an ass.”

“Yes.”

“I won’t do it again?”

Cass gave me a head tilt and a squint that said he didn’t agree.

“I don’t want to do it again,” I reassessed.

“I know,” he agreed, his expression softening.

“I like when you wear my clothes,” I tried.

“Just not in front of your father.”

“He doesn’t… understand…”

“I understand.”

“Caaaaass,” I said in a tone that probably wasn’t a whine, but I was groggy and it was still dark and we could be cuddling if he wasn’t halfway across the room.  “Pleeeeeease wear my clothes.”

He shrugged at me and started going through my bureau.  “Your boxer shorts are the same size as mine, so I really do not know what you are carrying on about with your ‘granny’ ‘panties’ comments.”

“Yeah, but mine are black,” I pointed out, propping my chin up on my arm and watching him.

“And mine are white,” he stated.

“Everyone knows black is sexy.”

“I think white is very dapper.”

“Dapper isn’t gonna get you laid, man.”

“But Scooby Doo will?” he questioned me, holding up my Scooby Doo boxers.

“Hell yeah he will.”

“I think we have very different ideas about what is… sexually appealing.”

“I’m not gonna take fashion advice from the holy tax accountant.”

“That’s your prerogative,” he said, his voice muffled as he pulled his favorite AC/DC shirt over his head.  He held his hands out, displaying the shirt and the pair of sweats he’d pulled on.  “What do you think?”

“You look… comfy,” I concluded, pulling up the corner of the blanket and holding it open for him.  “C’mere.”

Cass’s face lit up as he clambered into my waiting arms.

I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to that sight.  “Hey, gorgeous,” I greeted him, brushing a lock of hair away from his forehead.

He looked even more pleased.

“You like that one?” I asked, letting my fingers linger in his hair.

He nodded.  “You do not usually compliment this vessel so openly.”

“Dude, just call it a body like a normal person.”

“Sorry, dude,” he said, rolling his eyes at me.

“Mm-hm,” I hummed, pulling him into a brief kiss.

Cass was smiling again as he tucked his head under my chin, snuggling into my chest.

“You are gorgeous,” I said softly, nudging my nose into his hair.

“That’s a nice compliment, thank you.”

I breathed him in, feeling myself start to drift.

Cass hummed to himself, the sound reverberating in my chest as I fell back asleep.

- 20 -

Jody and I sat on the edge of the pier, drinking beers and watching the sun set.  Her kid and her husband were swimming in the lake with Alex and Donna, splashing each other and laughing loudly.

“This ain’t bad,” I decided, kicking my bare feet lazily along the surface of the water.

“It’s not,” Jody agreed, looking more relaxed than I’d probably ever seen her.

“Thanks for inviting us,” I said, nodding my head back towards her cabin.

“You’re family, kiddo,” she said, knocking her shoulder into mine.

I knocked mine back into hers and enjoyed the quiet.

“Heard you really killed at karaoke last night,” Jody commented.

“Uh, hell yeah, I did,” I agreed.  “Belted out some Eye of the Tiger, House of the Rising Sun…”

“Aerosmith’s Angel,” she contributed.

I couldn’t stop my whole face from going red.  “Hey, what happens at karaoke, stays at karaoke,” I muttered.

“Yeah, not when you go to karaoke with Claire and she has a camera.”

“There are pictures?” I asked, mortified.

“And videos,” Jody added agreeably.

“I thought this was supposed to be heaven,” I groaned.

“If it helps, I mean besides your terrible singing, the video is really cute.”

“That does not help at all,” I said, finally facing her with an appalled look.

She held up a screen to me, pushing play.

I was drunk as hell, caterwauling, “you’re my aaaaaangeeeel,” and boy was that fucking embarrassing.  “Jesus Christ, Jody.”

“He certainly has nothing to do with it,” she said, flinching as I hit a particularly off-key note.  “Works better on mute,” she decided, hitting the mute button and saving us both.

Because then the camera shifted from me to Cass, who just looked completely smitten, face glowing with pure joy.

I bit my lip, a little moved seeing that raw emotion captured on film.  And also it was embarrassing as hell.  “Shut that off,” I complained, even though my eyes were still riveted to Cass’s laughing, smiling face.

“But you two are so adoooorable,” she fake-crooned.

I gave her the look of disgust that she deserved.

She grinned and turned the video off.  “Maybe you should lay off the sauce,” she suggested, nodding her chin towards the beer in my hand.

“I have laid off the sauce, which is how I got so wasted in the first place,” I grumbled.  “Gotta build my tolerance back up.”

Jody shook her head, but she was still grinning.

“Bombs away!”

Kaia and Claire streaked past us, jumping off the pier and canon-balling into the water.

Jody looked very unimpressed as the water splashed her.  “Was that really necessary?”

“Love ya, Joooodyyyy,” Claire cooed as the two swam away.

I was suddenly in shadow, so I leaned my head back to see who was blocking the sun.

A person that I hoped to be Cass loomed over me.

There’d been this whole thing where maybe I’d accidentally grabbed Jimmy’s ass, so now I tried not to assume when Claire was around.

“Hello, Dean,” he rumbled at me.  “Jody.”

“Hey, Cass, enjoy your walk?” she greeted him.

“It was… informative,” he decided.

“What could those two possibly be informing you about?” I scoffed.

“Music,” he said cheerfully.

I groaned.  “Please don’t tell me…”

Cass pulled a mixtape from the pocket of his/my jeans.  “We can listen to it on the drive home.”

“Oh, god,” I complained, dreading the grungy vocal stylings of Taylor Momsen that I was going to be subjected to.

“We also talked about ‘boys’,” he continued.

“What do the lesbians even know about boys?”

“A lot,” Cass told me with a very serious face.

“Really, Dean?  ‘The lesbians’?” Jody repeated, shaking her head.

“It’s a descriptive term,” I said defensively.

“Should I start calling you and Cass ‘the gays’?” she asked with a snort.

“I’m not gay,” I put in irritably.  “I’m b-” I started and immediately stopped, lifting my beer to my lips and taking a very long drink.  I could feel two sets of eyes staring at me, but I looked out at the water resolutely and decided to pretend that the last thirty seconds had not happened.

I wasn’t sure if my acute embarrassment was because of what I’d almost said, or because I hadn’t been able to say it.

The quiet grated on me, so finally I snipped at Cass, “are you gonna stand there all day like a weirdo or are you gonna sit your ass down?”

“How is standing weird?” he complained, even has he was already lowering himself onto the pier, one jean-covered leg going over the edge towards the water.

“Stop, stop, stop!” I cried, grabbing his leg.

Cass kept his leg hovering over the water, looking at me like I was the weird one.

“You gotta roll your pants up, man,” I explained, rolling my eyes.

“Why?” he asked, unmoved.

“Because they’ll get all wet,” I said, exasperated.

“Then I will dry them.”

“Just roll them up so you don’t have to dry them in the first place!”

“If you insist,” he said, seeming very put out as he started mechanically rolling the jeans up to his knees.

“I insist,” I said with a huff, rolling up the other leg for him.  “See?  Much better.”

Cass gingerly lowered his legs into the water, letting it lap at his shins.  “I really don’t see the difference.”

“Dude,” I groaned.

“Sorry, dude,” he replied in that extremely sarcastic way that he’d picked up recently.

“Sweetheart,” I corrected myself, getting a smile out of him.  “You are so damn weird.”

“You like it,” he said with a shrug.

I rolled my eyes and passed him my beer.

He raised an eyebrow at me.

I looked out at the water.

Cass accepted the beer and took a sip, probably trying to analyze what pleasure humans derived from drinking lukewarm hops by the water and absolutely coming no closer to an explanation beyond ‘humans like molecules’.

Jody was giving us a sappy look, but I ignored her to help preserve her dignity.

She didn’t want people to start thinking she’d gone soft.

[isolavirtuosa]

Cass & Dean's Infinite and Beyond Playlist 11-15

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda / Sequel to Cass & Dean's Infinite Playlist

The one where Cass makes a Daddy Issues playlist.

Referenced songs playlist on Spotify.

Parts 11-15/26 under the cut. Previous parts here.

- 11 -

“Hey.”

I glanced up from the jukebox to see Jo sidling up beside me.

“Hey,” I said.

Her eyes met mine, searching.

“You wanna put something on?” I asked, stepping aside.

“Sure,” she said, stepping closer and pressing the button to flip through the records.  “Dean, I’m… I’m really happy for you.”

“Uh, okay?”

“You and Castiel,” she explained.  “I mean, it’s not a secret, is it?”

“Not supposed to be,” I said, slouching against the wall.  “I just… I’m not good at telling people.”

“No shit,” she said with a laugh.  “I had to find out by accidentally infringing on Cass’s territory.”

“What…?”

“Earlier, at the pool table.”

“What about it?”

Jo flicked her eyes towards me, grinning.  “Did you not see that look he gave you when he asked if we were done flirting?  Couldn’t have said ‘Property of Castiel’ any more clearly.”

“That’s how he always looks at me,” I scoffed at her.

“Damn,” she whistled.  “And it took you two how many years to get together?”

“It’s not like that,” I protested.  “I mean, Cass is just weird, he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“Uh, he definitely means something by it,” she said, shaking her head with amusement.  “It’s nice, though,” she added softly.  “You two look happy together.”

I was quiet for a moment before saying, “we are.”

“Good,” Jo said, pressing the button to select her song.  “Then quit trying to run away from it.”

“I’m not running…” I complained.

Jo looked over her shoulder to where Cass was, and then made an exaggerated motion of her head to look in my direction.

“We needed some tunes,” I protested.

“You are so lame,” Jo said with that easy laugh of hers that always filled up the room.  “We’re all dead, Dean.  We’re in heaven.  Nobody cares that you’re dating a guy.”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered, then quickly added, “not that I do care.”

Jo laughed harder.  “This song you picked is really on the nose, huh?  Beautiful loooseeeer,” she sang at me.

“Don’t mess with Seger,” I warned her.

“Never take it aallllll,” she continued warbling.  “’Cause it’s easier, faster when you fall!”

“You’re killing me here,” I said, shaking my head.

“I’m a great singer,” she protested with another laugh.

“Pretty sure that’s a voice only a mother could love.”

“Like you’re any better.”

Jo’s selection was filling the bar now, so I turned to her with a point and sang, “Do you wanna touch, do you wanna touch, do you wanna touch me there, where?”

“I did not expect you to know the words,” she marveled.  “I mean, you do know that Joan Jett is a woman, right?”

“Yeah, figured that out on my own,” I said, rolling my eyes.  “Cass is really into this album, he was playing it nonstop for a while.”

“Bad Reputation wouldn’t be my first guess for Castiel’s top albums,” Jo said, looking amused.

I tried not to roll my eyes again and probably failed miserably.  “He goes through… phases.  So Joan Jett and the Blackhearts was his female-rockers-of-the-70s-and-80s phase.”

“I can get behind that phase.”

“Yeah, it was one of his better ones,” I agreed.  “He’s just getting over his Jesus phase…”

“His Jesus phase?” Jo repeated like she was speaking a foreign language.

“If I have to hear that friggin’ Mary Mary song one more time I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“What is a Mary Mary?” Jo asked, sounding mystified yet intrigued.

“Don’t ask.”

“Well at least he wasn’t blasting Creed or something.”

“Of course he was blasting fucking Creed, Jo.”

“Poor thing,” she said, wiping at the corners of her eye as she tried not to laugh.

“Now Sam’s been getting him into his douchey alt-rock,” I said, rubbing my hand over my face and feeling long-suffering.  “A man can only take so much.”

“Looks like you can take plenty.”

My hand slid down from my face so I could fix a glare on her.  “What’s that ’sposed ta mean?”

“That you clearly love Cass so much that you would even listen to Creed for him?”

“…oh.”

“What did you think I meant?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled, shifting my gaze back to our table where Ellen was now pouring Cass shots while Sam looked mortified and Eileen was laughing.

“I’d tell you to quit being so damn defensive, but old dog, new tricks and all.”

“I’m trying,” I muttered.

“Okay, but it’s me, Dean,” she said, stepping into my line of vision.  “Why are you being defensive with me?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t know how else to be.”

“Jesus you need therapy,” she sighed.  “Come on, we’ve been over here long enough.”

I followed her back to the table, feeling awkward.

“You two are falling behind,” Ellen greeted us, passing over shot glasses.

I took the shot, then made a face.  “What is that…?”

“Golden Grain,” she said, cheerfully pouring out more shots for Cass.

“Yeah, I’ll stick to beer,” I said, reclaiming my seat.

“It’s just molecules,” Cass said with a loose shrug.

I patted him on the knee.  “You feelin’ anything, buddy?”

“I’m feeling the warmth of your hand,” he said agreeably.

“Okay then,” I said, watching him down those horrible shots while rubbing his knee idly.  “Still not dance-on-tables wasted?”

“It is a long and arduous journey,” Cass affirmed.

I offered him a smile that was maybe a little tired around the edges.

He immediately squinted at me in concern.

I wished it was just the two of us.  Things were always easy when it was just the two of us.  I felt less need to… hide things.

“We can-” Cass started to say, but I shook my head, so he concluded, “-have another shot.”

It got to a point where everyone was a bit wasted besides the slightly tipsy Cass, and Jo finally brought out the promised rubbing alcohol that was 99% alcohol.

“This is terrible for disinfecting,” Cass said with a frown.  “70% is much more effective.”

“Shut up and drink,” Jo scolded him, so he did.

Castiel, Angel of the Lord, drank an entire bottle of isopropyl alcohol.  That’s when things started to take a turn.

- 12 -

“Cass?” I mumbled sleepily to the body that was smothering me.

I received a growl in response.

“You hungover?”

That got me a whine.

“You wanna take something?”

“I wanna take you,” he mumbled, pressing his hips very suggestively into the behind that he was spooning.

My already tired brain short-circuited a little.  “Wha?”

Cass just growled again.

“I don’t speak grumpy angel,” I said, rolling over so I could look him in the eye.

He had both eyes closed.  His hair was sticking up in every direction.  And he was decidedly naked.

“You look like you had a good night,” I said, grinning.

“I believe that is a correct assessment,” he agreed, still not opening his eyes.

I thumbed over his scruff affectionately.  “I’m pretty sure I did, too.”

“Dean?”

“Mm-hm?”

“Did I dance on a table?”

“Yeah, that I remember.”

Cass cracked one eye open and flinched a little.  “Why is there so much… light in here?”

“I’m sorry, are the blackout curtains not enough for my princess?” I teased him.

That one eye turned into a glare.  “You did this to me.”

“Okay, yeah, sorry,” I said, giving him a pacifying kiss on the forehead.  “Lemme get you some aspirin.”

“No, I want snuggles,” he whined at me.

I snorted, pulling him closer so he could lay his head on my chest.  “I think the aspirin would be more effective, sweetheart.”

“Alcohol is poison,” he groaned.  His fingers tightened around the material of my t-shirt, clutching it like a lifeline.

“Fun, though.”

“Deaaaaaaan.”

I smiled into his hair, kissing the top of his head and remembering when he looked into my eyes at the Roadhouse and declared, “Dean, I have achieved full intoxication.”

“Yeah?”

“That is the only logical explanation for why my head feels so… squishy.”

“Is that a technical term?”

“No, it is incredibly imprecise, and is further proof of the level of my intoxication,” he said with a shake of his head.  “I’m drunk.”

“Congrats, sweetheart.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Baby, you know exactly what you gotta do.”

Cass squinted at me for a long while before giving me a vigorous nod and suddenly climbing onto our table.

“Woah, Cass, hey!” I protested, trying to steady him as he stood up so quickly.

“What is happening?” Eileen asked, rescuing her beer from being kicked over with a laugh.

“Dean,” Cass said, looking down at me very seriously.  “Despite our numerous car dance parties, I don’t know how to dance.”

“Don’t look at me, I sure as hell ain’t the dancing type,” I protested.

“What do I do?” he asked desperately.

“Sammy went to Stanford, he must have danced at some college parties or somethin’,” I offered.

“Huh?” Sam said, startling awake in his seat as Cass tugged on his arm.

“We have to dance on the table,” Cass urged him, pulling him up onto the table with him.

Eileen bit her lip, and I knew she was about to lose it.

“But I don’t know how to dance,” Sam said, drunk and bewildered.

“You know the Macarena,” Eileen chimed in, and that got me to break before her, throwing my head back and laughing.

“I do know the Macarena,” Sam declared, suddenly filled with confidence.  He started doing a series of very stupid-looking arm movements.

Cass stared at him, laser-focused, then carefully copied the motions.

“Got ya covered!” Jo called from over at the jukebox.

The opening strains of Macarena filled the Roadhouse for what was probably the first time in history.

Sammy was completely into it, shaking his hips, while Cass moved mechanically like a robot, a serious yet vaguely confused expression on his face.

I laughed until I cried, Eileen leaning into me and doing the same.

When it was over, the entire bar gave them a standing ovation.

“Get down here,” Eileen said, still grinning as she helped Sam down.

Sam turned to offer his hand to Cass, but Cass shook his head.

“Dean will catch me,” he said confidently.

“Wha-?” I started to say, but he was already jumping off the table.  I let out a yelp as I was assaulted by one-hundred-seventy-some-odd pounds of angel.

“See,” he said happily, legs wrapped around my waist and forehead pressed to mine.

“Jesus,” I gasped.

“I knew you’d catch me,” he affirmed.

“You are living your best drunk girl fantasy,” I tried to complain, but I was hugging him tightly.

“Yes, I’m enjoying this part,” he said agreeably.

I spun him around once, and he actually honest-to-God laughed before I set him back down on his chair.  “Okay, Coyote Ugly, time to take a breather.”

“Dean, the coyote is a majestic creature,” Cass said with a frown, then took a long drink from his bottle of absinthe.

I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Why do you look so amused?” Cass complained, squinting up at me.

“Just remembering your drunken antics.”

“Well you better cherish those memories, because I am never drinking again.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I’m not.”

“We did have fun, though.”

“Some fun was had,” he conceded.  “I was glad to experience it once.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much my entire life,” I mused, running my fingers through his hair affectionately.

“I love when you laugh.”

I huffed out a smile.  “You make me laugh, you friggin’ weirdo.”

“Good,” he graveled at me.  Then he paused, lifting his head slightly to squint up at me.  “You like that I am a ‘friggin’ weirdo’?”

“I do,” I affirmed.

He beamed at me.

“Friggin’ weirdo,” I muttered, looking away from all that.

He pressed a very wet smooch to my cheek before curling back up against me.  I thought he might have gone back to sleep, when he suddenly declared, “by the way, I made you a playlist before I passed out.”

- 13 -

“Dean’s Daddy Issues?” I sputtered, looking up from the iPod to glare at Cass.

He smiled at me like the little shit he was, taking a sip of his coffee.  “I was drunk.”

I’d made the coffee for once, and I’d even gotten him a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water, and this was the thanks I got.  “Lindsay Lohan, really?”

“Made me think of you,” he said, and if anything he was smiling even more like a little shit.

“Man, you are not getting laid for like a week.”

“Then I guess you’re not getting laid for a week either,” he said with a casual shrug.

“Shit, how do chicks pull that one off?” I complained.

“The threat only works if you’re willing to go through with it,” Cass pointed out.

“Shit,” I repeated.  “Fine, your terrible taste in music gets a pass.  You may continue to be laid.”

“How magnanimous of you,” he said drily.

“I know, right?” I agreed.

Cass just rolled his eyes.

“And I don’t have daddy issues!” I declared after a long pause.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t,” I asserted.

He shrugged.

I scowled into my coffee.  “Like you could go a week without sex…” I muttered.

“Dean, I am hungover and incapable of dealing with your fits of illogicality.”

“Excuse me?”

He gave me a tired look over his coffee cup.

“Look, I’m just saying, between the two of us, you’re the horndog,” I stated.

“How… am I…?” Cass trailed off, looking around the room from side-to-side like someone would appear and give him an answer.  “Dean, I didn’t have sex for literal millennia.”

“And you’ve been makin’ up for lost time.”

“Well, I do enjoy taking you apart and putting you back together,” he said casually, like that was a normal thing to say.

I may have let out a very small, definitely manly whimper.

“But I think you enjoy it just as much as I do,” he continued, his gaze lingering on me.  “I don’t see how that makes me a ‘horn’ ‘dog’.”

“I dunno, maybe it’s your obsession with wanting to stick your dick in me when we agreed to… wait…” I trailed off, realizing I hadn’t meant to say any of that out loud.

Cass froze for a moment, then his expression crumbled.  “Dean, I apologize.  You are absolutely right.  I’m so sorry, it just keeps…  We agreed, and I need to control myself better.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said with a shrug.

He hesitated, trying to catch my gaze.

Of course he knew that I wasn’t being completely honest, but he also knew that acknowledging that would piss me off.  It was the Catch-22 of Dean Winchester.

“Dean…” he said slowly.

“You wanna eat something?” I asked, standing up and shuffling over to the refrigerator.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, pulling out some eggs and bacon.  I could feel Cass pouting from across the room, but I concentrated on cooking.

Eventually he started hovering behind me with his sad little “Deaaaan”s, forcing me to turn around and face him.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, all sad and pathetic.

“Jesus, Cass, I’m not mad,” I sighed, grabbing a handful of my Zepp t-shirt that he was wearing and pulling him closer.

“But I-”

“Shush,” I told him, giving him a quick kiss before letting go and turning back to the stove.

Arms circled around my waist and a forehead planted between my shoulder blades.

I pushed the food around the pan, then turned off the heat.  “Cass.”

A chin suddenly appeared on my shoulder.

I bumped my nose into his.  “This is a me thing, not a you thing.”

His lower lip slid out, blue eyes staring up at me.  “We should talk about it.”

“No, we should not talk about it,” I said, rolling my eyes and looking away.  I reached over for a plate and put my eggs and bacon on it, ready to chow down and forget any of this ever happened.

“So you can bottle it up until it explodes out at an inappropriate time?”

“Exactly,” I said, nudging him aside so I could go back to the table.

Cass followed, taking the chair next to me and pulling his coffee over to him from across the table.

I set to eating, not surprised when Cass’s hand settled on the table between us in invitation.  I laced our fingers together, continuing to eat with my other hand while he used his free hand to bring his coffee to his lips.

“I’m not a one-night stand,” Cass said suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence in the weirdest way possible.

“Oh, is that why I can’t get rid of you?” I muttered sarcastically around a mouthful of eggs.

“I’m just saying that you have a lot of complicated rules for sex that are perhaps not necessary when two people are in a committed relationship,” he reasoned.

“Dude, it’s not complicated,” I said, watching as a little bit of egg went flying across the table.  I wiped the corner of my mouth with my thumb and swallowed.  “You get yours and I get mine.  You don’t get yours, then I don’t get mine.”

“Yes, but what is this ‘yours’ and ‘mine’, Dean?” he asked, putting down his coffee and thumbing at the corner of my mouth that I’d just wiped because apparently I’d missed a spot.  “Our lovemaking is about enjoying intimacy together and mutually achieving climax.  It is not a… sports match in which one needs to keep score.”

“I think ‘sports match’ is a better descriptor than ‘lovemaking’, Jesus, Cass.”

“Do I not make love to you?” he asked with a frown.

I snorted at that.  “Oh, yeah, darlin’, you make love with the best of ’em.”

“Your sarcasm is not appreciated,” he stated flatly.

“It’s a little appreciated,” I hummed, leaning in and kissing the corner of his mouth.

“There is still egg residue,” he said, scrunching up his nose.

“And you appreciate that, too,” I said, winking at him.

He looked completely put out as he pulled me back in and kissed me thoroughly.

“See?” I said as I pulled away, unable to contain my smirk.

“You are an irrepressible rogue,” Cass complained.  “Cease in trying to distract me.”

“I shall not cease,” I teased him, tracing his lips with my thumb.

He growled at me.

I bit my lip, trying not to be ridiculously turned on.

“We’re having a serious conversation,” he informed me, taking my hand and setting it back on the table.  He was still holding my other hand.  “I think you should penetrate me.”

“Jesus fuck, Cass.”

“I wish you would stop mentioning his name…”

“I wish you would stop talking about penetrating things.”

“Well, technically you would be the penetrator.”

“Caaaaassssss.”

“If you didn’t have all your rules, you’d already be penetrating me.”

I tried to speak and failed.  He had finally rendered me speechless.

“Do you disagree?” he asked, eyes staring into mine with an earnestness that did not match the question asked.

“Whaddya want from me, Cass?” I finally managed to get out.

“I think I was abundantly clear-”

“What I mean,” I interrupted him, “is that we have discussed this before, and you know it’s hard for me to…  I… I need us to be… equal?  Ya know?  It ain’t like… it ain’t like I don’t want to pen- fuck I cannot with you and your words.  I want to fuck you, Cass, okay?”

“And I would like to be ‘fucked’ by you,” he told me sincerely.

“You are killing me here,” I groaned, having to look away from that earnest expression.  “I know it’s not completely logical, alright?  But I just feel like askin’ you to… to… you know, be the… the one who gets fucked, it isn’t fair of me if I’m not willing to do it, too.”

Cass sighed.  “I know that’s how you feel, Dean, but it’s not how I feel.”

“Says the guy who can’t wait to stick it in me,” I grumbled at him.

“Dean, I simply want to share intimacy with you, in whatever form that might take,” he said, getting back up in my personal space.  “But sometimes this body…” he hesitated, turning different phrases over in his head, “… this ‘body’ has a ‘mind’ of its ‘own’.”

Our noses were almost touching at this point, but I decided to focus on more important things.  “So Jimmy wants to do me?”

“What?” Cass asked, his squint intensifying.  “Jimmy does not occupy this vessel.”

“Yeah, but you said that your body… never mind,” I decided.

Cass’s nose wrinkled in thought and I wanted to smooth it out.  “I was referring more to the biological imperative of this body to procreate.”

I started choking on nothing, coughing loudly.

He patted my back sharply.

“Baby, you know I don’t have the right parts for procreating with you, right?” I asked, holding in a laugh.

“I am fairly certain that I know more about your biological structure than you do, yes,” he told me irritably.

“Oh, well that’s good then,” I said, looking away from that intense stare that was right in front of my face.

“I’m going back to bed,” he growled at me.

“You don’t sleep,” I pointed out.

“I have a headache and you are making me cranky,” he said, standing up abruptly.  “We will discuss intercourse further after you listen to your playlist.”

“I am not listening to this,” I protested, throwing a glare at the vile little iPod still sitting on the table.

“You will listen to it,” he said, but it was more of a command really.

I wanted to protest further, but that tone always got me tongue-tied.

Cass waved his hand in my general direction, disappearing out of the kitchen and leaving me alone with his iPod.

- 14 - (songs from Dean's Daddy Issues Playlist can be found in the main playlist or separately here)

My angel was kind of a dick sometimes.

“Daddy issues,” I muttered under my breath as I put my headphones on.  “Only chicks have daddy issues.”

“People of any gender can experience paternal abandonment,” Cass called from the bedroom.

“I thought you were sleeping!” I yelled back.

“I don’t sleep,” he replied.

I dropped my face in my hands, not sure if I wanted to laugh or lament that this was my life.

Once the peanut gallery had ceased its commentary, I started the playlist, wondering what the hell Cass had in store for me this time.

“Years ago, I knew a boy, he was his daddy's pride and joy.”

“When you comin’ home, Dad?  I don't know when, but we'll get together then,

you know we'll have a good time then.”

“I wait for the good Lord to make me feel better, and I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders.  A family in crisis that only grows older.”

“Father of mine, take me back to the day when I was still your golden boy, back before you went away.”

“Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean.  My fist got hard and my wits got keen.  I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.”

“Daddy made me fight.  It wasn't always right.”

“I’m tired of being what you want me to be.”

“You were never there for me to express how I felt, I just stuffed it down.  Now I'm older and I feel like I could let some of this anger fade, but it seems the surface I am scratching is the bed that I have made.”

“I know my mother loves me, but does my father even care if I'm sad or angry?  You were never ever there when I needed you.  I hope you regret what you did.  I think I know the truth.  Your father did the same to you.”

“You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past.”

“Papa was a rolling stone.  Wherever he laid his hat was his home.  And when he died, all he left us was alone.”

“Just cause he's gone, it doesn't change the fact... he was a bastard in life thus a bastard in death.”

“I’m not forgivin’ for you, man, I’m forgivin’ for me.  And sometimes I hate you.  Sometimes I love you, sometimes I hate you.  Always, I love you, I hate you.”

“Mama don't go.  Daddy come home.”

“Can we work it out?  Can we be a family?  I promise I'll be better.”

“Don't look at the past again.  The first and last has made everything new, and you are too, so lift your head and let your story be told.  Life on Earth will end for all conceived and prove to be only a breath, a mist, a womb for what's to come.  How soon forever arrives.”

“Piece by piece, he collected me up off the ground, where you abandoned things.  Yeah, piece by piece, he filled the holes that you burned in me at six years old and you know he never walks away.  He never asks for money.  He takes care of me.  He loves me.”

I pulled off my headphones, wondering why I had just wasted the last hour of my non-life.  “Cass?” I called, stomping over to the bedroom.

He squinted up at me from his burrow of blankets, looking like some hibernating animal.

“Dude,” I said.

“Dude,” he agreed.

“You’re not getting out of this by being cute.”

“Dean, I’m adorable,” he rumbled at me, and fuck me if he wasn’t absolutely correct.

“That’s not the point,” I growled.  I didn’t miss his pleased smile, and I blustered on.  “This is judgy as fuck, and I do not appreciate it.”

“Where is the judgement, Dean?” Cass asked, squinting all innocently at me.

“Um, first of all, my dad did not lea-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” he cut me off, his voice like ice.

“But-”

“Dean.”

It was that goddamn tone again, and I found myself falling silent.

Cass waited.

“The Jesus music and the Kelly Clarkson were a little heavy-handed at the end there, doncha think?” I finally said, trying for a lighter mood.

“My intoxication was overtaking me by that point, and perhaps I become a bit hubristic when I drink,” he conceded.  “But it was how I felt.”

“Yeah?  You put me back together, sweetheart?” I asked, climbing onto the bed and sitting on Cass’s stomach.

“Oof,” he grunted.

“You don’t need to breathe, as you love pointing out.”

“That does not change the fact that you’re heavy.”

“Excuse you.”

“I didn’t say that you were fat…” he said, batting his innocent eyes up at me.

I glared at him, which only made him grin and finally emerge from his blanket fort to roll me on my back.  “You all better from your hangover?” I asked, squishing his face between my hands.

“Yes, that bottle of aspirin was very efficient in easing the side effects of our excessive libations,” he said, giving me a peck before worming out of my grasp and tucking his head under my chin.

I allowed his stealth cuddling, running my hand absently up and down his back.  “Cass?”

“Yes?”

“Do you…” I hesitated.  “Do you hate my dad?”

“What?” he said, sounding surprised as he tilted his head up to look at me.  “Of course not.”

“Oh,” I said.  “It’s just…” I trailed off uncertainly.

“Your father was a complicated man,” he said slowly, weighing his words.

“He did the best he could,” I said, trying to keep the defensiveness out of my voice and probably failing.

“He did,” Cass agreed.

“He loved us,” I said firmly.

“He did,” Cass agreed again.

“He did,” I echoed.

“Of course he did, Dean,” he said gently.  “No one would ever question that.”

I let out a little bark of laughter at that.  Plenty of people had questioned it.

“Dean…”

“I thought you wanted to discuss intercourse,” I said, doing my usual unsubtle changing of the subject.

“Well, I did, but you hardly seem to be in the right state of mind for that conversation,” Cass said, looking up at me with his cheek still resting against my chest.

“Hey, I am always in the right state of mind for intercourse,” I protested.

“Discussing it and having it are two different things,” he pointed out, though he couldn’t stop his fond smile.

My angel got fond over discussing intercourse.  “Yeah, yeah, so whaddya wanna do today?”

“This,” he said softly.

“This?” I repeated.

“Mm,” he agreed.

“Me, too,” I said, kissing the top of his head.

My racing mind needed a rest.

- 15 -

Cass and I were watching movies on the couch with our usual setup: the popcorn bowl in my lap, my arm over the back of the couch, and Cass’s head resting on my shoulder.

My eyes were fixed on the screen, one hand occupied with stuffing popcorn in my face, the other rubbing absent circles around Cass’s shoulder.

On screen, Ponyboy, Soda, and Darry were reuniting with a brotherly hug.

“I’m not gay or anything,” I said, and I could feel Cass’s eyeroll without having to see it, “but Patrick Swayze always gets a pass.”  I nodded with self-satisfaction at the declaration and returned to stuffing my face.

“What does that even mean?” Cass complained.

“Shhh, watch the movie, man.”

He groaned, and I could feel his eyes fixing on me instead of watching the movie.

I sighed, grabbing the remote and hitting the pause button.

“What is ‘a pass’?” he asked, squinting up at me.  “‘A pass’ for what?”

“Ya know, a…” I trailed off, gesturing towards the TV.  “A pass.”

“Is it like a hall pass?” Cass asked.

I couldn’t stop my bark of laughter.  “What the hell do you even know about a hall pass?” I asked, still laughing.

“We watched a film of the same name, so I am well versed in the topic,” he informed me with a frown.

“You givin’ me a hall pass, baby?” I teased him with a grin.

“Well I’m certainly not the one who wishes to have sexual relations with Patrick Swayze,” he stated flatly.

“I don’t-” I tried to protest.

“Am I not enough for you?” he complained.

“Baby, you’re more than enough,” I said, taking leave from my popcorn to touch his cheek with a smirk and a wink.

“I am not your car, and you will not address me as such,” he informed me, eyes flashing with angelic power.

I bit my lip.

“Do you understand?” he growled at me, even though he could see perfectly well for himself that I’d understood.  Cass knew what he was doing with that tone and that body language as he glared up at me.

“I understand,” I said, trying not to squeak and mostly succeeding.  “Cass,” I added for good measure.  “Sweetheart,” I added for better measure.

“Very well then,” he said, cuddling back into me with his head on my shoulder.  “You may unpause the film.”

“You’re gonna rile me all up like that and then just go back to the movie?” I complained.

“Oh, it wasn’t Patrick Swayze riling you up?” Cass muttered.

“I don’t have a thing for Patrick Swayze…”

“Ha ha,” he said, with the fakest, most monotone laugh I’d ever heard in my life.

“I don’t,” I complained.  “I just… look up to him, ya know?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Just watch the damn movie,” I muttered, unpausing it.

And if my eyes lingered a little during the scene where Darry was getting ready for the rumble, shirtless with unbuttoned jeans, it was just… you know, curiosity.  About what the guy looked like.  And maybe I was a little envious.  He was in great shape, no spare tire in sight.

Cass chose not to comment, and that was alright by me.

When the credits started to roll, I set the empty bowl of popcorn on the floor.  “What’d you think?”

Cass mulled it over before deciding, “I truly enjoyed it.  The theme of family resonated with me.”

“I like that part, too,” I agreed.  “Even if there aren’t enough action scenes.”

He rolled his eyes at me for probably the twentieth time that evening.

“Enough from the peanut gallery,” I complained, squishing his face in my hand.

Cass stared up at me with his big blue eyes and his fish face, and he was 100% still giving me attitude.

“Who was your favorite character?” I asked, deciding the redirect the conversation.

He blinked once, then immediately responded, “Sodapop.”

“Yeah?” I asked, letting go of his face.

He nodded.

“Huh,” I said.  “Woulda thought you’d say Johnny.”

“Oh, I liked Johnny, too,” he said with a nod.  “‘Stay gold,’” he graveled at me, imitating Ralph Macchio’s famous line.

“So why Soda, then?”

“You asked for my favorite,” he said with a shrug.

“You into Rob Lowe or somethin’?” I teased him.

“He is objectively the best-looking greaser.”

“Dude, Darry is definitely the best-looking.”

“Then we must agree to disagree, as we do not have the same taste in men,” Cass said with a shake of his head.

“It’s not about t-taste,” I sputtered.  “It’s about… objectivity…”

“And Rob Lowe is objectively more attractive than Patrick Swayze,” he reiterated. “Based on what?!” I demanded.

“The bedroom walls of countless teenage girls adorned with Tiger Beat posters of Rob Lowe.”

“How do you even know what Tiger Beat is…?” I trailed off incredulously.

“I know many things.”

“Like the hearts of teeny bopper girls?”

“Like the hearts of teeny bopper girls.”

“Whatever, man.”

“I’m not saying that Patrick Swayze is without charm,” he said.  “But I don’t see why you are questioning my attraction to the beautiful mechanic, Dean.  I have a type.”

“You… have a type…” I repeated slowly.

He raised an eyebrow at me.

I could feel the color creeping up my neck.  “He your hall pass?” I asked, trying to sound glib but probably coming off sulky.

“I do not require a hall pass, Dean.”

“Hey, never say never, man.”

He pulled me in by the back of my neck until our foreheads touched.  “Never,” he breathed at me.

“O-okay,” I stammered like an idiot.

Cass nodded in satisfaction, letting me go and turning back to the TV.  “What are we watching next?”

[isolavirtuosa]

Cass & Dean's Infinite and Beyond Playlist 6-10

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda / Sequel to Cass & Dean's Infinite Playlist

The one where Cass makes a Daddy Issues playlist.

Referenced songs playlist on Spotify.

Parts 6-10/26 under the cut. Previous parts here.

- 6 -

Sam and I had a tendency to end up at the other’s front door with a six-pack at fairly regular intervals.  This afternoon it happened to be Sam knocking on my door, and I was glad to have him.

“Where ya been, dickwad?” I asked, giving him a friendly slap on the back.

“Uh, down the street from you where I live?” he said, moving into the kitchen to get the brews on ice.

“Thanks for the geography lesson, Copernicus.”

Sam rolled his eyes at me, slouching against the kitchen counter.

“You want something to eat?” I asked.

“You cooking?”

“I could make some chili,” I offered.

Sam grinned and nodded enthusiastically.

“Okay, big brother will whip you up some chow,” I said, moving around the kitchen and gathering up the ingredients.

Sam cracked open a beer for each of us and set mine by the chopping board as I set to work.  “You’ve gotten so domesticated,” he mused at me.

“I’ve always cooked for you,” I said, waving it off.

“Yeah, but you didn’t always do it well,” he pointed out.

“Unappreciative much?” I grumbled.

“You know what I mean,” he said, not caring at all that he was wounding my very manly pride.  “I mean, once we were in the bunker you really came into your own, but this,” he said, gesturing to the extensive spice rack and the drying herbs hanging from the ceiling.  “You’ve gone all Julia Childs in here.”

“I would consider myself more of an Anthony Bourdain,” I commented, putting some olive oil in the pan and turning on the burner.

“Of course you would.”

“Shut up, bitch, I’m making you chili.”

Sam shrugged and took a swig of his beer.  “Appreciate it, jerk.”

“Go put a record on or something,” I said, my back to him as I worked my kitchen magic.

Sam disappeared into the living room.

I found myself humming Bad Moon Rising, until I was oh-so-rudely interrupted by Soul Meets Body blasting out of the living room.  “Dammit, Sam!”

“It was in your collection!” he shot back.

“Because of your bad influence!” I snapped, smacking my pan with the ladle harder than really necessary.  I was pretty sure there was no worse sound on this earth than Deathcab for Cutie.

“Hey, is it my fault that your angel got tired of all your mullet rock?”

“My angel loves mullet rock!”

He didn’t respond to that, but I could feel his smugness permeating the air.

I stomped over to the living, crossing my arms over my chest.

Sam was on the floor, surrounded by records as he sorted through them.

“Just so you know, every time Cass listens to this album he looks completely confused and keeps muttering to himself about how your taste in music friggin’ sucks,” I informed him smugly.

“Oh, yeah, that sounds like Cass,” Sam said, rolling his eyes.

“Okay, so maybe he says it in a more Cass-ish way, but the meaning is clear enough,” I relented.

“What does he say exactly, Dean?”

“He says, ‘does Sam not find this whinging tone grating on the eardrums?’” I said, doing my best eye squint and head tilt.

“Oh, kinda sounds like when he’s listening to metal and says, ‘how does Dean tolerate this affront to sound?’” Sam said, doing his own eye squint and head tilt.

I huffed at that.

Sam snorted.  “I mean, do we need to be taking criticism from a guy who listens to Britney Spears unironically?” he asked, holding up a Britney album.

That gave me pause for a moment, and then I felt my cheeks heating up for some inexplicable reason.  Maybe it was all the car dance parties Cass and I had been having lately.

My brother gave me a funny look, then tucked some of his Disney princess hair behind his ear and went back to flipping through albums.

I went back to my chili, grumbling about pussy emo music.

Dinner carried on with the same kind of relaxed bickering.  I finally got Sam to change the record, though how we ended up agreeing on listening to one of Bobby’s Kenny Rogers records, I didn’t know.

I was pleasantly buzzed.  We were talking about taking a drive up the coast, maybe with Eileen and Junior if they wanted to come.

“You should invite Cass, too,” Sam said casually.

And suddenly I just needed to know.  “How did you know?”

“How did I know what?” he asked, taking a pull from his beer.

I tried not to turn red and felt myself failing.  “About… me.”

Sam was now looking at me like I was crazy, which wasn’t really a new thing, but I hated that look when I was trying to actually be open with him.

“About me and Cass,” I sputtered out.

“What about you?��� he asked, looking almost amused now.

“You don’t have to be a jackass,” I muttered, staring down at the table.

“Dean, I’m not…” he trailed off.  “What do you want to know?”

“I just said it,” I grumbled.

“How I knew about you and Cass?  What about you two?”

He wasn’t really going to make me say it.  “You just… you just looked at me and you knew.  And Charlie did the same thing.  And even Bobby.  And I don’t…” I trailed off, feeling shame start to coil in my belly even as I tried to fight it off.  “I mean, it’s not like anything really changed…  Just we’re… you know, and…”

“You’re in love,” Sam supplied softly.

“I… yeah,” I said, not minding that wording so much.  “But I’ve always loved him, ya know?  He’s Cass.  So nothing really changed, it just… shifted?  But you assholes all keep giving me these knowing looks like I… I don’t know, like the whole damn universe got flipped upside down…”

“Dean.”

I stopped and looked up at him.

“That night you came over, I looked at you, and it was like… some kind of tension had been released,” he explained.  “You looked… lighter.  Happier.  It was a good thing.”

“And why did you just assume that it was all due to Cass?”

“I didn’t,” he said.  “It wasn’t really about Cass.  It was about you, letting go.”

“Oh, okay, Elsa.”

Sam groaned.  “Dean, man, come on.  You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Please enlighten me.”

“Okay, then,” he said, like he was about to school me.  “You’ve always had this idea of what it means to be a man-”

“Samuel,” I growled.

“You asked a question, Dean.”

I sighed, stabbing my chili with my spoon.  “Yeah, all right.  Do your Dr. Phil thing.”

“Oh, like I can tell the great Dean Winchester anything.”

“Sammy.”

We exchanged some non-verbal communication, and Sam finally seemed to accept that I wasn’t trying to be a complete ass and was ready to at least attempt to listen.  “Look, the way Dad raised you was fucked up.”

“The way he raised us.”

“No, Dean,” Sam said with a shake of his head and rueful smile.  “You raised me.”

I flushed at that, feeling my own mouth twitch into a small answering smile.  “That why you’re such a damn hippie?  ’Cause I’m pretty sure I told ya a million friggin’ times to cut your hair.”

Sam just kept smiling at me, his eyes conveying all the shit that definitely never needed to be said out loud.

“Was there a point to all this?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “there was.”

I waited.

“I think there are a lot of things that held you back from being happy when you were alive,” he said, “and a big one was trying to live up to Dad’s stupid standards.”

“Dad wasn’t-”

“Dean.”

Even now there was always a defense of my father lingering at the tip of my tongue.  I let it die.

“You’re really… kind,” Sam said slowly.

I snorted at that.

“Yeah, dude, I know, it sounds crazy,” he said, giving me a lopsided grin.  “But… you are.  You… were.  When we were little.  You… you always…” he trailed off, his expression losing its lightness.  “I didn’t have a mother, Dean, but you… you always held my hand when we crossed the street, and read stories to me after you tucked me into bed, and kissed my friggin’ knees when I skinned them and…”

“Yeah, yeah, I was Mother Fuckin’ Teresa,” I muttered, wishing he wasn’t staring at me with those big doe eyes of his, all watery.

“You were,” he said, the sincerity in his voice making me want to sink under the table.  “You were so… kind, so gentle, so… sweet with me.  Not with anyone else, because you already knew…  It’s like Dad beat the kindness out of you, Dean.  He sharpened you into the hunter that you needed to be, but he… he took something away from you.  Something important.  And when I was still little you could… like be yourself for a few minutes while you were taking care of me.  You were so… soft, Dean, you were…”

“Jesus, Sammy,” I groaned, because if I wasn’t already dead this conversation would literally be killing me.

“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I need to say it,” he said stubbornly.  “I was the only person you could be yourself with, and then I turned into a moody adolescent and you stopped holding my hand, you stopped hugging me, you stopped… everything, because I wasn’t a little kid who needed your affection anymore, but you…

“So help me god if you say I was the one who needed the affection.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at me.

I rubbed my face with my hand, feeling exhausted just listening to him talk.  “So all this has to do with how you knew that Cass and I are fucking, why?”

“Dude!” Sam cried, giving me a mortified look

It took me a moment to rewind what I’d said.  Shoulda stuck with ‘boyfriends’, but I’d dug this hole for myself and I was going to own it.  I looked Sam dead in the eye, pushed my tongue against my cheek rhythmically, and mimed giving a blow job.

The sheer horror in my baby brother’s eyes made it all worth it.  “You are sick.”

“Are you gay-bashing me?” I asked innocently.

He kicked me under the table.

I kicked him back harder.

“You’re not getting out of this by being you!” Sam snapped at me, emphasizing his point with another kick.

“Eat your chili, Sam.”

“Not until I tell you what a kind, sweet, lovable person you are,” he growled at me.

I laughed at that and picked up my spoon, shoveling food into my mouth.  It was easier when he wasn’t being sincere.

Sam started eating again, too, but then he put his spoon down suddenly.  “I saw that in your eyes.  When you were sitting on the couch with Cass.  That person you’ve always hidden away.  The one who loves so deeply and doesn’t care what anyone, especially John Winchester, thinks about it.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I muttered, and refused to look at him until all the chili was eaten and we were back to the mundane topics of our regularly scheduled sibling banter.

- 7 -

Cass was a cuddler, and his dedication to it was almost pathological.  He would climb into my bed in the dead of night, throwing the sheets aside and forcing my arms around him so he could lay his head on my chest and wrap himself around me.

The first time he did it, I woke up as soon as he touched the sheets, ready to fight.

“Hello, Dean, we are cuddling,” he informed me, snuggling into me.

“You don’t just… stealth cuddle someone, Jesus,” I complained, pulling my hand away from the gun that lucky for Cass wasn’t under my pillow anymore.  “Give a guy some warning, would ya?”

“But you looked so peaceful sleeping…”

“Do I seem peaceful now?” I growled at him, still half-asleep.

He just leaned up to kiss my cheek and then burrowed back into my chest like that was that.

And that was that.

I didn’t even wake up anymore when he came clamoring in.  After years of sleeping on a hair trigger, I could finally just sleep for as long as I wanted, as much as I wanted, as deep as I wanted, without always having to be ready to defend myself on a moment’s notice.

So it wasn’t a surprise when I went to bed by myself and woke up the next morning with an armful of Cass.

“Morning, angel,” I mumbled, aiming a kiss at the top of his head.

“Good morning, Charlie,” he deadpanned at me.

It took me a moment to wake up enough to understand the reference, then I cracked up.  “You Lucy Liu or Cameron Diaz?”

“Definitely Drew Barrymore,” he said.

I laughed harder.

Cass grinned up at me, looking all mussed and rumpled even though he hadn’t actually been sleeping.

“Love you,” I said sleepily, still laughing a little as I pecked him on the lips.

“I love you,” he replied, brimming with sincerity.  He always said it back, but never as a reflex.

“You stickin’ around for a while?”

“Yes, as long as John Bonham does not need my assistance in carrying out his duties today,” he said.

I’d stopped asking ‘the musician or the angel?’ after about the fiftieth time Cass mentioned some famous rock musician that he had business with, because it was always a damn angel that Jack had created and named.  It was my own fault, so I couldn’t really complain.  “Good,” I mumbled instead, closing my eyes and attempting to go back to sleep.

Cass’s stare was almost heavier than the physical weight of him lying on top of me.

I cracked an eye open, meeting his gaze.  “Could you… tone it down?”

His nose scrunched up in confusion.

“Haven’t you got better things to do than creep on me while I sleep?” I tried.

“No,” he replied, continuing to stare.

I rolled my eyes and pretended to be put out.

Cass just smiled at me.  “I like the way the morning light illuminates your features.”

“You are so corny,” I groaned.

“Says the corn-fed Kansas boy.”

I snorted at that.  “Yeah, Cass?  That what you’re into?”

“Corn-fed Kansas boys?” he asked, squinting at me.

I waggled my eyebrows at him.

“Well, there’s one I’d certainly like to get into,” he said, staring into my eyes pointedly.

All the air pushed out of my lungs and I had to look away from that unwavering gaze.

There were some things Cass and I didn’t do.

He laid his head back on my chest, one hand tracing up and down my forearm in a soothing repetitive motion.  “Do you want coffee?” he asked suddenly.

“Hm?” I said, realizing I’d been drifting back to sleep.  “Nah, not yet.”

“You want more snuggle time?” he asked, scratching his five o’clock shadow against my neck.

I was supposed to tell him that men did not ‘snuggle’, but instead I snorted and rubbed my cheek against his hair.  “Yeah, darlin’, that’d be alright.”

“Good, I also desire more snuggle time,” he informed me, rubbing that beard more insistently into me and peppering in a few kisses.

I couldn’t stop my fond smile.  I kissed the top of his head and cradled him closer.

Sam had it all wrong when he said I was ‘kind’, but I could kinda see how I was a bit… indulgent with Cass.  Making him a little happy after all the shit I’d put him through seemed like the least I could do.  So Dean Winchester indulged in a little morning cuddling.  And if Cass stared at me a little too long from a little too close, so be it.  I wasn’t gonna make an issue out of his weird pastimes.

He seemed perfectly content now, staring up at me and occasionally peppering my skin with kinda sexy kisses that didn’t have any intent behind them but still made me shiver.

I shifted a little, feeling his weight pinning me down.  “You’re like a weighted blanket,” I murmured sleepily.

A frown tugged at his lips.  “You hate weighted blankets.”

“Oh, Jesus, do you remember when Sam thought one would be nice gift for me?” I asked, snorting at the memory.  “I woke up in such a panic I shot a hole in the wall.”

“Yes, Dean, I recall the time you almost killed us all because of a weighted blanket.”

“It’s like someone holding you down, man, it’s super freaky.”

Cass rolled his eyes up at me.

“This would have never happened while I was alive, would it?” I mused, cupping his jaw.

“You allowing me to function as your weighted blanket?” he grumbled at me.

“Me liking the weight of you holding me down?” I countered, and then immediately flushed, biting my lip.

Cass’s expression relaxed and he pressed a small kiss to my thumb as it brushed by his lips.  “I’m glad that those fears no longer control you.”

I guided his face closer, needing a quick kiss to settle the weird tension in my belly.

Cass pressed his forehead to mine, gazing at me gently.  “Would you like your coffee now?”

I thought about it for a moment and then nodded.

“Okay,” he said, still lingering, still weighting me down.

I squeezed him tighter, then finally let go, feeling level.

“This time I am definitely going to make the coffee correctly,” he declared as he got up.

“Big words.”

Cass just flashed me a grin before wandering off towards the kitchen, inexplicably humming You’re the Inspiration.

I groaned, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and trying not to smile.

- 8 -

“I wanna see you completely drunk,” I decided, glaring at Cass over my whiskey glass.

“I don’t get completely drunk, Dean,” he replied from across the kitchen table, looking bored.

“That’s not true,” I said, squinting at him.  “Remember that time back in Blue Earth?”

Cass gave me a very unimpressed look.  “Oh, yes, the time we killed the Whore of Babylon after I realized my father had abandoned us so I proceeded to drink a liquor store.  What a nice memory to reminisce about.”

“The way you said ‘whore’,” I said, cracking up.

“Do I amuse you, Dean?” he asked with a glare, but there was no edge to it.

“Yep.”

“I do not intend to.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said with a grin, reaching across the table to loop our fingers together.

“Most of the things I say that you laugh at were not meant to be jokes.”

“Yeah, but you know what you’re doing.”

Cass got this strange, secretive smile on his face, and started tracing along my fingers.  “I actually haven’t seen you drink in a while.”

“Yeah,” I said, kinda mesmerized by the feel of his skin against mine.  “Just… feelin’ nostalgic or some shit.”

“Or some shit,” Cass repeated with a sage nod.  He continued tracing along my fingers, dipping between each one with such a feather-light touch that it was doing funny things to my stomach.

I took another sip of my whiskey, looking away from him.  “Hey, so on game night-”

“We do not talk about game night, Dean.”

I snorted.  “Okay, well then remember when you were human?  You went from the greatest of all time to a one beer queer.”

“Dean,” he said with that reprimanding tone of voice.

“What?” I asked.  “It’s true.”

“Dean,” he repeated, and now he straight up sounded disappointed.

“What?” I repeated in a tone that was definitely not a whine.  Without really wanting to, I let my eyes meet his again.

“We’ve talked about this,” he told me in his disappointed dad voice.

I gave him a blank look, because I honestly had no idea where we were going here.

“The homophobic language, Dean,” he said with a long-suffering sigh.

“Homo… hey, now, I didn’t-”

“Dean.”

“It’s a saying!”

“Dean.”

“It is,” I said in a tone that was definitely not sulky.

“That’s not the point.”

“Well how can I be homophobic when we’re…” I trailed off, gesturing between us.

Cass proceeded to give me the most patented ‘bitch, please’ look I had ever witnessed in my life, and it left me struggling for words.

“I’m not homophobic!” I finally snapped, irritated.

“I know that,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Okay, then what’s the problem?”

“Did you mean it in a complimentary way?” he asked, still dragging his thumb along the shape of my fingers.

“Huh?” I said.

“When you called me a… ‘one’ ‘beer’ ‘queer’… was it complimentary?”

“Obviously not, it means you suck at drinking.”

“So you used that word to belittle me.”

I stayed quiet, not meeting his gaze.

“Dean?”

“I got it, Cass.”

He picked my hand up off of the table, pressing his lips to the back.

“Sorry,” I finally mumbled.

“It’s okay,” he said, setting my hand back on the table and curling our fingers together.

“I don’t mean anything by it.”

“I know.”

“It’s just… how I’ve always talked.”

“I know.”

“I don’t…” I floundered, before finally repeating, “I don’t mean anything by it.”

“I understand,” Cass said gently.  “I know your heart, Dean, I know how good and pure it is.  But you can’t continue to use the excuse of ignorance when you’ve been educated.”

“Sam’s lectures are not an education,” I muttered.

Cass rolled his eyes at me.

I taught him that, so I couldn’t be too mad.

In the living room, the record player started crackling.

Cass looked into my eyes for a moment, then carefully pulled his fingers away from mine with a lingering brush before going to re-set the record.

The opening strains of Hot Blooded filled the air, and then he was back, taking my hand in his again like he’d never left.

We both looked at each for what was probably too long.

“This song is highly inappropriate,” Cass finally said, breaking up the intensity of the moment.

“Dude.”

“‘Are you old enough?’” he asked, wrinkling his nose.

“It’s a legitimate question.”

“That a grown man would even consider sexual liaisons with a teenage female is so distasteful.”

“Not into age differences, Cass?”

He picked up on what I was implying immediately, leveling me with a glare.  “No,” he said, sounding more petulant than he probably intended.  “What I am saying is that a being that is fully developed mentally and sexually should be interested in other beings that are fully developed mentally and sexually.”

“Whatever you say, cradle robber,” I said with a shrug.

He looked flabbergasted, and it was hilarious.

“I mean, you’re getting all holier-than-thou over like a what, a twenty year age difference?” I asked.  “Our, you know, several millennia age difference didn’t seem like a problem for you when you took me to bed, huh?”

“That’s different,” he protested, turning an interesting shade of red.  “You are fully developed.”

“Really?” I asked.  “‘Dean, you’re behaving like a child,’” I mimicked him.

Cass squinted at me.  “So you’re saying you’re… ‘not’ ‘fully’ ‘developed’?”

“Yep,” I said, doubling down.  “Pedo,” I added for good measure.

He flat-out pouted at me, his bottom lip making a big showy display of sticking out.

“Baby, I’m just teasing you,” I laughed.

“Oh, so I’m the baby here?” he grumbled at me.

“Yeah, definitely,” I said.  “Just call me Daddy.”

“Okay, Daddy,” he deadpanned at me.

It took me a minute, and then I was laughing so hard my entire body was shaking with it.  “Jesus,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes with my unoccupied hand.  “You know exactly what you’re doing,” I accused him between wheezing laughs, recalling our earlier conversation.

Cass just shrugged, but I could see the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I love you so much,” I said, shaking my head and smiling.

Cass’s entire face lit up.  “I love you, too, Dean.”

Just a few simple words out of my mouth could make him so happy, and yet I was always denying that happiness to him.

Instead of dwelling on that thought, I picked up my whiskey and finished it off.  “Hey, remember that time Ellen and Jo tried to get you drunk?”

“‘Tried’ being the operative word.”

“We should go to Harvelle’s,” I said, getting enthusiastic about the idea.

“I highly doubt there is enough alcohol at the Roadhouse to fully intoxicate an angelic being.”

“You clearly have not been there recently.”

“If you believe there will be sufficient quantities to achieve what you are searching for, then I’m not opposed to giving it a try,” Cass said with a shrug.  “It would be nice to see Jo and Ellen.”

“Alright, it’s a date,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.

He looked perplexed but pleased, and that was all I needed.

- 9 -

Somehow our date turned into a double date with Sam and Eileen riding in the back of Baby while the sounds of Cass’s carefully curated Songs That Will Be Played in the Car mixtape filled the speakers.

“I feel like you took the theme a little too damn literally,” I muttered as both Sam and Cass enthusiastically sang along to Fine Young Cannibals.

“She drives me crazy!” Sam warbled.

“Oh oh,” Cass replied, completely out of tune.

Eileen and I exchanged long-suffering looks through the mirror.

‘At least you can’t hear them,’ I mouthed at her, and maybe it was in poor taste to be jealous of Eileen’s deafness, but she smirked at me, so I was pretty sure she agreed.

“Oh thank god,” I muttered when the song changed to Queen’s I’m In Love With My Car.

“Dean’s theme song,” Sam said, cracking up.

“Shut up,” I said, giving him a glare in the mirror.

“Yes, that’s why I picked it,” Cass explained cheerfully.

“Don’t contribute to this,” I grumbled, giving him a half-hearted smack in the arm.

Cass gave me the most innocent look he could muster up, which was pretty damn angelic, but I was on to his game by now.

“I’m in love with my car!” Sam sang enthusiastically.  “Got a feel for my automobile!”

“Such a beautiful love song,” Eileen put in.

I shot her a look.

She winked at me.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure Roger Taylor fucked his car, yeah?” Sam mused.

“Sammy, how much did you pre-game before getting into my car?” I asked.

“Just a coupla beers…”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or…” he trailed off, squinting at his fingers as though he were trying to count to a high number.

Eileen shook her head, touching Sam’s arm to get his attention and then signing something to him.

I still sucked at sign language, but the soft smile he gave her assured me whatever she was saying wasn’t for me.

“How does one have sexual relations with a car?” Cass mused.

“Dunno, ask Dean!” Sam declared, breaking away from his lovey-dovey gaze with Eileen to give me a shit-eating grin.

“Dude, like I would defile Baby like that,” I scoffed at him.

“So you do know how the mechanics of it work?” Cass asked, squinting at me.

“You can’t fuck a car, Cass,” I explained patiently.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Eileen commented.

Sam nodded his agreement.

“What the hell is wrong with all of you?” I asked incredulously.

“Dean called me ‘Baby’ the previous evening,” Cass put in out of nowhere.  “Do you think that I should read something into it?”

Sam sucked his teeth.  “Yeah, shit, Cass, man, that’s no good if he can no longer differentiate between his car and his boyfriend.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, squinting at him through the mirror.  “And also, why are you telling them our personal business?” I chided Cass.

“It’s just Sam and Eileen,” Cass said with a shrug, like it was no big deal.

The obnoxious twosome in the backseat were snickering at our little telenovela, and I realized it really wasn’t a big deal.  So I took one hand off the wheel to flip them off, then rested it between the seats and wiggled my fingers until Cass took the hint and laced his fingers with mine.

“Aw,” Eileen couldn’t help but utter.

I winked at her.

She gave me a soft, knowing smile.

I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling, too.

Then Prince’s Little Red Corvette came on, and my stupid tipsy brother and my annoying angel boyfriend started singing as loudly as they could, and it just felt like the Impala was filled with… joy.

I held Cass’s hand tighter, and maybe I sang along, too.

- 10 -

The lights were all blazing when we pulled up to the Roadhouse.

“Full house,” Sam commented as he pushed his way out of the backseat.

I hesitated.

Cass gave me a head tilt.

“You ready to get drunk?” I asked, forcing a smile.

He stared at me.

“Come on,” I said, letting go of his hand and opening the door.

He followed me inside.

Sam and Eileen were already filling a couple of pitchers of beer at the bar.  The Roadhouse tended to be self-serve, as Ellen and Bill’s idea of heaven apparently wasn’t serving a bunch of old hunters drinks for the rest of eternity.

I looked around for the Harvelles, spotting them holding court at a corner table.

“Dean,” Bill said, sticking his hand out towards me.

“Bill,” I said, shaking it.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Ellen hummed, getting up from her seat to wrap me in a hug.

“Hi, Ellen.”

“Haven’t seen ya in a while.”

“Yeah, been kinda busy at home,” I said with a shrug.

Ellen arched an eyebrow at me, then turned to Cass, wrapping him in a hug.

Cass had gotten very good at returning hugs.  “It’s good to see you, Ellen,” he said warmly.

“So what brings the Winchesters here tonight?” she asked.

“We’re gonna get Cass drunk,” I informed her.

“Good luck with that,” Ellen said with a snort.  “Pretty sure there isn’t enough booze in heaven to get that one drunk.”

“Your previous attempt was valiant,” Cass offered.  “Dean wishes to re-create it, but slightly more effectively.”

“Well, Jo’s got some hard stuff stashed away in the back if you can drag her away from her game,” she said, nodding her head towards the back of the bar where the pool table was.

“I will keep you updated,” I said, and Ellen grinned at me as I took my leave.

Jo was lining up a shot, bent over the table with one eye closed.

“Don’t miss!” I yelled cheerfully as she moved the cue.

The cue ball clacked into the 5 ball, sending it rolling into the pocket.

“I never do,” she said, standing up slowly and flipping her long hair over her shoulder.

Had Jo always looked so…

I shook it off, offering her an easy smile.  “Wanna put your money where your mouth is?”

“Busy,” she replied, nodding her head towards the little fanclub of hunters who were waiting by the pool table to have their asses handed to them.

“Busy, sure.”

Jo scoffed at me and lined up her next shot, sinking it easily.  “If you just came over here to annoy me…”

“We’re gonna get Cass smashed,” I explained.

“Oh?” she asked, looking intrigued.  “Is that even possible?”

“Well, this one time at game night-” I began.

Cass shot a glare at me, making me grin.

“I’ve got some 190-proof Everclear in the back,” Jo said, waggling her eyebrows.

“So it’ll be like a shitty 90’s house party…” I reminisced.

“You are so old.”

I gaped at her, offended.

“Are you two done flirting?” Cass asked, squinting at me.

“We’re not-” we both started and stopped at the same time.

“I am going to join Sam now,” he stated, taking his leave.

Jo straightened up, looking between me and Cass’s retreating back.  “I’ll bring some shots over after I finish this game.”

I gave her a little nod of acknowledgement, already following after Cass.

“Dean Winchester!”

Apparently we were at Cheers.

“Hey, you old son of a bitch,” I said, pausing to exchange pleasantries with Caleb, followed by several other hunters who called out to me before finally making my way over to the table where Sam and Cass were sitting.

“You’re popular,” Sam commented, handing me a beer.

“Not as popular as your wife,” I said, nodding over to the bar where Eileen was surrounded by other hunters.

“Yeah,” Sam said, smiling fondly.

I rolled my eyes.

Cass rested his hand on my knee as he leaned into the arm I’d settled around his chair.

I startled, having not even realized I’d put it there.

He turned to me with a frown.  “Is this… okay?” he asked, quietly enough so only I could hear him over the din of the bar.

I hesitated, but then forced a smile.  “Yeah, of course.”

“Dean.”

“Of course,” I repeated with more sincerity.  “I’m just… it’s new.”

“You don’t have to push yourself.”

“I wanna push myself.”

Cass huffed out a smile, his eyes crinkling and his nose scrunching up.

I felt myself smiling, too, briefly reaching up to cradle his cheek in my hand before going back to my beer.

Sam was giving me a look, so I chose to ignore him.

“You boys are in luck,” Jo said, bustling over to the table with a stack of glasses and some bottles tucked under her arm.  She lined up the shot glasses on the table, then started pouring from one of the bottles.  “This is the warm-up.”

“Jack Daniels?” I asked, picking up a shot and giving it a whiff.

“Coy Hill High Proof,” she said, pushing a shot to Sam, taking one for herself, and leaving the other five for Cass.  “About 140 proof, give or take.”

“Awesome,” I said.  “Down the hatch.”

Sam, Jo, and I all downed our shots.

Cass eyed us like he was cataloging something in his weird angel brain.

“Ya gotta drink ’em to get drunk,” I explained.

Cass gave me his patented ‘bitch, please’ look and proceeded to down the five shots in rapid succession.

We all cheered.

“Feeling anything?” Jo asked as she refilled the glasses.

“I am feeling like whiskey tastes like watery grain molecules and wondering why humans subject themselves to this nonsense,” Cass said with a shrug before downing the next five shots.

Jo cracked up and filled the glasses up again.

Eventually Eileen wandered back over to the table and we somehow ended up playing Quarters, everyone making Cass take a shot of Everclear every time they got the quarter in the cup.

This was all fine and good until it was Cass’s turn.  He never missed.

“Cass ish dishqualified,” Sam declared after one penalty drink too many.

“For what reason?” Cass asked, wrinkling his nose.

“For cheating,” he said solemnly.

“I am no cheater.”

“Using your angel mojo is totally cheating,” I said, grinning at him.

“How is that cheating?  It is a part of me.”

“Cheater,” Eileen put in.

“Dirty, dirty cheater,” Jo agreed.

“Filthy,” I smirked at him.

Cass glared at me, ignoring the rest of the rabble-rousers.  “I do not cheat.”

“Drink!” Eileen declared, pushing the bottle of Everclear over to him.

“Why do I have to drink?” Cass asked incredulously, finally looking away from me and over at Eileen.

“Drink!” she repeated.

“Drink!  Drink!  Drink!” Jo and Sam chanted.

“These are not the rules that we agreed to,” Cass grumbled, sullenly snatching the bottle and chugging.

We all erupted into cheers.

Cass finished the bottle and slammed it on the table.  “You are all behaving like children.”

I leaned in closer, letting my lips brush against his ear.  “Sorry, daddy, we’ll be good.”

Cass breathed out slowly, radiating pissed-off energy, but when he turned to meet my gaze, his look was pure sex.

I bit my lip, grinning at him and trying not to turn completely red.

He turned his face a bit more towards me so Eileen couldn’t read his lips as he mouthed, ‘the things I am going to do to you when we get home.’

The trying not to turn completely red thing went out the window, but it wasn’t so bad, being the recipient of the pure desire burning in Cass’s eyes.  “Babe, I think you might be a little drunk,” I pointed out, trying to laugh it off.

“No,” he said dismissively.  “You might be a little drunk.”

“I’m not… okay, yeah, maybe a little,” I agreed after a little self-reflection.  I was feeling loose and warm in a way that alcohol hadn’t really made me feel in years.

“Alright, new game,” Jo said, passing Cass an unopened bottle of absinthe.  “And if you don’t start dancing on the tables after this, I’m getting the rubbing alcohol from the first aid kit.”

“Is that… safe?” Sam asked, looking perplexed.

“I am an angel of the Lord, Sam, your disinfectant products cannot harm me,” Cass explained.

“Oh, well then, bring on the isoproperr uh isopropro… rubbing alcohol,” he finally decided.

“After this game,” Jo said.  “So let’s play Never Have I Ever, and I’ll start.  Never have I ever… uh… had wings.”

“Am I expected to drink now?” Cass asked.

“Well, if you’ve ever had wings, then yep,” Jo said.

“Does it count if an angel was possessing your body?” Sam asked, scratching his head.

Jo turned to Eileen.

“Absolutely,” Eileen said.

Sam and I both gave her a look and took a drink from our beers.

“You’re next, Eileen,” Jo said, nodding towards her.

“Never have I ever been to Purgatory,” she said.

“We’re trying to get Cass drunk here,” I complained, taking a drink along with Sam and Cass.

“We can’t help it if you two do a lot of stupid things,” Jo pointed out.

“How is being possessed by an angel or going to purgatory us doing stupid things?” I demanded.

“Knowing you two, bad choices,” Jo said.

“Co-dependency,” Eileen added.

“Fuck you both very much,” I grumbled.  “Sammy, show them how it’s done.”

Sam grinned, his eyes drooping like he was about to fall asleep.  “Never have I ever been a girl.”

Eileen and Jo rolled their eyes and took a drink, followed by Cass.

Jo’s look turned to intrigued.

“I have occupied female vessels,” he explained to her.

“Wait, wait,” she said suddenly.  “Sam was totally possessed by Meg, so wouldn’t that make him a girl?”

“I was still in my body,” Sam protested.

“Yeah, but there was a girl in your body.”

“I would hardly call Meg a ‘girl’,” Cass mused.

“Okay, this is hurting my brain,” I complained.  “Though, yes, Samantha definitely-”

Cass stopped me from continuing by covering my mouth with his hand.

“Thank you, Castiel,” Jo said with a sigh.

“What?” I protested when I was free to speak again.

“No one wants to hear your misogynistic nonsense,” she said.

“How am I-”

Cass covered my mouth again.

I glared at him.

“Trust me, Dean, I’m helping you,” he informed me.  “Now, it is your turn.”

I made a face at him and then thought about it for a while.  “Never have I ever willingly dressed like a tax accountant for years.”

“Define ‘tax accountant’,” Cass said, gazing steadily into my eyes.

“Just drink, already, J.P. Morgan,” I replied, smirking.

He looked very unimpressed with my cleverness as he took a long swig of absinthe.  He set the bottle down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and declared, “it appears to be my turn.”

“Oh, this should be good,” I said, rolling my eyes.  Cass never understood how these things worked.

Except when he did.

“Never have I ever worn women’s pink satin panties,” he said, toying with the bottle in his hand and not even looking at me.

“You son of a bitch.”

Jo stopped with her beer halfway to her lips and burst out laughing.

Sam was looking at me like I was an alien.

Eileen eyed me up and down in a way that was very confusing.

“Dean?” Cass prodded.  “Aren’t you going to take a drink?”

“Goddamn traitorous fucking angels,” I muttered before taking a long drink and refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

Cass squeezed my knee gently under the table.

I could suddenly sense how insecure he felt, afraid that he’d gone too far.

Lucky for him, I was buzzed enough not to actually be angry about him revealing one of my deepest, darkest secrets.

“Nicely played, angel,” I conceded, letting my arm slide from the back of the chair to around his shoulders, pulling him a little closer.

The tension eased from him immediately, and he turned to give me a small, pleased smile.

“You’re gonna pay for that later, though,” I threatened.

“Oh?” he asked, his head tilting to the side but oozing smugness.

“Little shit,” I grumbled at him, then leaned in close to press a quick kiss to his mouth.

“Never have I ever…” Jo’s voice suddenly cut in to our little moment.  “…made a complete and utter spectacle of myself at the Roadhouse being all lovey-dovey with my boyfriend.”

Sam snorted.

I was mortified, pulling away from Cass.  Maybe I’d kinda sorta forgotten that we were in public.

Cass for his part just rolled his eyes and drank the rest of his bottle.

“You gotta drink, Dean,” Eileen pointed out.

I gave her a very sullen look and drank my beer, setting it down on the table with a little more force than necessary.  “We need some good music,” I decided, standing up abruptly and moving off towards the jukebox.

It felt like everyone in the bar was staring at me as I went.

After flipping through all the songs, Beautiful Loser seemed like the correct choice.

[isolavirtuosa]

Cass & Dean’s Infinite and Beyond Playlist 1-5

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda / Sequel to Cass & Dean's Infinite Playlist

The one where Cass makes a Daddy Issues playlist.

Referenced songs playlist on Spotify.

Parts 1-5/26 under the cut.

- 1 -

I felt my eyes drifting open, and the fingers running through my hair slowed.

Blue eyes warmed as they met mine.  “Good morning, Dean.”

“Cass, we’ve talked about this,” I grumbled at him, trying not to get sucked into that sunny smile.

“We have?” he asked, his nose scrunching up in confusion.  He was lying on his side, his hand propped under his chin as he gazed down at me, a position he had probably been in all night as he ‘watched over me’.

“Yes, you know the rules,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“No dogs in the car?” he asked innocently, but now I knew he was definitely fucking with me.

“No pop divas before I’ve had my coffee!” I snapped at him.

“Ohhh,” he said with a nod.  “But Dean.  You do make me feel like a teenage dream.”

“Castiel,” I said warningly.

“A little absent humming hardly warrants the full name treatment,” he said, his fingers moving through my hair again.

“We have rules for a reason,” I tried to complain, but that felt really good and I found my eyes sliding shut in contentment.

“Of course,” Cass agreed reasonably.  “My apologies.”

I started drifting lazily between wakefulness and sleep.

He didn’t last five minutes before he was at it again.

“Sonuvabitch,” I growled, forcing my eyes back open.

Cass was still smiling at me like I could shoot rainbows outta my ass or something.

“You enjoy this,” I complained.

“Lying in bed with the love of my life every morning?  Yes, definitely,” he said, completely sincere.

“While singing freaking Katy Perry?” I growled.  The fact that I even knew who the singer was only added to my shame, though it really couldn’t be helped since Cass had been singing the same damn song all week.

“But, Dean, you do think I’m pretty without any makeup on,” he reasoned, suddenly rolling me on my back and pinning me down with a sparkling smile that didn’t jive with the aggression of his actions.

“When have you ever even worn makeup?” I muttered, trying to keep my breathing steady.

“Exactly,” Cass said, leaning in closer until his nose nudged against mine.

My lips parted of their own volition.

Cass grinned and kissed me obligingly.

It was still new, and we were still figuring things out, but we were definitely awesome at making out like teenagers.

Which was probably why Cass was currently humming, “you make me feel like I’m livin’ a teenage dream,” into my neck.

“Cass,” I groaned, trying to sound annoyed and not turned on.  Because I was the former and definitely not the latter.  Obviously.  “If you’re not gonna follow the rules…”

He paused with his mouth hovering over my collarbone, his breath warm against the wet hickies he’d marked into my skin.  “Will I be… punished?” he asked, his head tilting as he squinted up at me.

My dick throbbed in my boxers.  “Jesus.”

Cass shrugged and went back to sucking on my collarbone like he hadn’t just… Jesus fuck.  And then the little shit whispered, “let’s go all the way tonight.  No regrets, just l-”

I flipped him on his back, glaring down at him.  “You have to choose, Cass.  Either we continue to do unspeakable things to each other in this bed, sans pop princess soundtrack, or you get your ass up and go make my damn coffee.”

“So it’s Sophie’s choice,” he said with a long sigh.

I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up out of me.

Cass’s expression softened, and he reached up to stroke the back of his hand along my cheek.  “That’s a nice sound,” he said, sounding all sentimental.

I just rolled my eyes and laid down beside him.  “Make your choice already, Sophie.”

He got that grumpy look on his face again like I was putting him out, then leaned in towards me so his mouth was close to my ear.  “The things I would have done to you were not unspeakable.  In fact, I would be happy to elaborate for you now, before I go and get your coffee.”

I found myself chewing on my bottom lip.  Cass was terrible at dirty talk.  Seriously awful.  And yet every time he did it, I inexplicably hung on his every word.

“First,” he declared, lips brushing my ear, “I would have divested you of your clothing in order to erotically pleasure you with my touch.”

“Erotically pleasure me, huh?” I hummed, barely holding in a laugh.

“Oh, Dean, the pleasure would have been intensely erotic,” he assured me with a solemn nod.  “I know how sensitive you are to skin-on-skin contact.”  To illustrate the point, one of his warm hands snuck under my t-shirt, skimming up my side in a feather-light touch.

My skin erupted in goosebumps.  “Very erotic,” I agreed, trying to sound more amused than breathy.

“It would have been,” he said with an over-dramatic sigh.  “And you know what else, Dean?”

“Hm?” I asked, thoroughly distracted by the fingers tracing along my skin.

“While I exploited every millimeter of your exposed flesh, I would remain fully dressed.”

“Oh?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.  I didn’t know where this was going, but it was kinda hot.

“Oh yes,” Cass said, confidently running his blunt nails up my back and making me involuntarily shiver.  “Because when the time was right, Dean, when you were a shuddering, quivering mess…”

I was getting very interested.

“I’d let you put your hands on me in my skin-tight jeans…”

My brow started to furrow.

“…be your teenage dream to-”

“Stop, stop, no, hell no, stop,” I growled, pushing him away.

Cass sat up on the bed, looking ridiculously pleased with himself.

“Out!” I snapped.  “Get out now!”

His nose scrunched up as he let out a loud laugh.

“I can’t stand you,” I muttered, trying not to reflect on how it really was a nice sound and I was just as damn sappy as the pop-song-singing angel.

“We both know that’s not true,” he said, still grinning as he got off the bed. “Maybe,” I relented, making a blanket cocoon and huddling in it to wait for my coffee.

Cass flashed me a grin over his shoulder and disappeared out the bedroom door.

I turned my face away so he couldn’t see the sappy grin I gave him in return, and instead yelled to his retreating back, “and when the hell have you ever even worn skin-tight jeans?!”

- 2 -

“But I do not understand under what circumstances Godzilla would encounter a Leviathan,” Cass mused as he got into the car.

“I dunno, man, he accidentally ports to Purgatory or something,” I said, starting the engine.

“One does not ‘accidentally’ ‘teleport’ to Purgatory,” Cass reasoned, pushing a cassette into the tape deck.

“It’s not that serious,” I groaned.  “You don’t have to think of all the details, just say who you think would win in a fight.”

“But if I do not think about the details, then how can I properly assess the fighting capabilities of each contender?” he asked, his brow all scrunched up.

I rolled my eyes, guiding the Impala out onto the wooded lane.  “I think Godzilla would totally rip those black goo bastards a new one.”

“But with their regenerative abilities, how could he hope to prevail?” Cass asked, his squint intensifying.  “Godzilla would hardly have on hand a Bone of a Righteous Mortal Washed in Three Bloods of the Fallen.”

“Yeah, but he could smash their stupid heads off their stupid bodies,” I reasoned.

“Oh, well if their heads are stupid…” he commented, rolling his eyes now.

I took my eyes off the road to glare at him.  “They are stupid,” I said.  “And Godzilla would eat them for goddamn breakfast.”

“Is there only one Leviathan in this scenario, or are there multiple ones?” Cass asked.  “Because if there were multiple ones I do think they would be able to work in tandem in order to consume the sea monster’s flesh, but I do believe if there was only one that a singular Leviathan would fail in that endeavor and in fact would have their ‘stupid’ head smashed off.”

I leaned back in my seat, mulling it over.  I was about to reach my decision when something that had been niggling at the back of my mind since we’d gotten in the car finally reached out and slapped me across the face.  “Cass?” I said, my voice dropping dangerously.

“Hm?” he asked, turning to me.

“What the hell are we listening to?” I asked in a careful, measured tone.

“NKOTB,” he said with a pleased smile.

“I’m sorry, the what now?”

“NKOTB, the New Kids on the Block,” he extrapolated.  “They were very popular during your youth.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, ejecting the tape and proceeding to throw it out the window.

Cass audibly gasped.  “Dean!” “No!” I barked at him.  “I have to draw the line somewhere.  The pop princesses were one thing…”

“But you like the pop princesses,” Cass said, squinting at me.

“No, I do not,” I said incredulously.

“You were singing Mariah Carey in the shower this morning.”

“Because you keep playing her incessantly!”

“You’ve been playing Metallica incessantly lately, but you don’t hear me singing Some Kind of Monster.”

“Well maybe you should,” I said, because I didn’t really have anything else to say.

“Dean, you threw my tape out the window.”

“Yes.”

“That is not okay.”

“What’s not okay is playing goddamn boy bands in my Baby!” I snapped.

“You play Led Zeppelin in here all the time.”

“I’m sorry, what…?”

“I mean, they are boys and they are in a band…”

“How dare you.” “What is the diff-”

“First of all, they are men.”

“Robert Plant was 19 when he joined the band.”

I gave him a disgusted look.  “Second of all, they play their own instruments.”

“Hanson played their own instruments and are known as one of the quintessential boy bands from your timeline.”

“Stop knowing stuff about music,” I groaned.

“I will not,” he said haughtily.  “Facts are facts, even if you find them to be inconvenient to your narrative.”

My eyes could not roll any harder without me going blind.  “Your privileges are revoked.”

“My… privileges…?” he said slowly, losing some of his previous bravado.

“Driver picks the music, and the angel with no taste whatsoever shuts his cakehole,” I declared.

“Dean.”

I reached across him, fishing through the glove box until I found what I was looking for.

“Dean,” he repeated, sounding unhappy.

“That doesn’t sound like a shut cakehole,” I said, pushing in my cassette and hitting the fast forward button, counting the time in my head.

The glare I received was comical in its intensity.

I ignored the cranky angel, releasing the button and sighing in relief as the familiar piano intro began playing.  I started bobbing my head, pointing my finger out towards the great beyond.  “Just take those old records off the shelf, I’ll sit and listen to ’em by myself.  Today’s music ain’t got the same soul, I like that old time rock and roll!”

  Cass angled himself towards the window and ignored me the rest of the drive.

- 3 -

I stumbled out of bed, led to the kitchen by the smell of coffee.  There was a fresh pot in the coffee maker, so I poured myself a cup and took a long sip.  I was on my second cup before I realized that coffee didn’t make itself.

“Cass?” I called.

“In here.”

I topped up my coffee and moved to the living room, where Cass was sitting on the couch in my AC/DC shirt, walkman in hand and headphones over his ears.

He glanced up at me as I approached, his expression flat.  “Hello, Dean.”

“Morning,” I said, sliding onto the couch beside him.  “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”

“You were sleeping.”

“Okay, but you coulda woken me up,” I pointed out, arm settling around his shoulders.

“Didn’t seem necessary.”

“I like waking up with you.”

“I see.”

“Cass?”

“Yes?”

“…are you still mad at me…?” I asked slowly.

“Why would I be mad at you, Dean?”  He met my gaze steadily as he spoke.

“’Cause I threw your crap cassette out the window and wouldn’t go back to get it?” I suggested.

“Oh, you mean your complete and blatant disregard for me and my feelings,” he said with a nod.

“If that’s how you wanna phrase it…”

“It is.”

I wanted to say something snarky, but I suddenly realized that my stomach was tying itself in knots every time Cass spoke in that distant tone, and now all the witty comebacks were stuck in my throat, slowly choking me to death.

Cass squinted at me, then something in his expression changed.  “Dean.”

I still couldn’t say anything.

“You are a jackass,” he informed me.

I didn’t mean to flinch.

“And you piss me off frequently.”

I didn’t mean to make myself smaller.

“But I love and tolerate you.”

A laugh that sounded slightly on the wrong side of hysterical bubbled up out of me.  “You tolerate me?”

“Yes, I tolerate you and your terrible behavior,” he confirmed.

“Gee, thanks, buddy,” I said, wondering if I could pull away from him and go bury myself in the backyard.

“Dean,” he repeated, starting to sound frustrated.  “That was not an invitation to self-recrimination.”

“I’m not-”

“I am allowed to be angry with you for the rude and obnoxious things that you do,” he said.  “You should ‘take it like a man’.”

That threw cold water on my pity party like no other, causing me to sputter incoherently.

Cass looked pleased.

I grumbled at him, taking another long drink of my coffee.

Cass just smiled and tucked his head under my chin.

It was so foreign and yet the most natural thing in the world as I kissed the top of his head and felt stupid.

Which is why I found myself driving down the lane again, retracing our previous drive before getting out of the car and wading through the bushes.

It took a lot longer to find the stupid tape than I thought it would.

I dumped it on the nightstand on my way to the shower, and forgot about it.

Cass came and went depending on work, so it was a couple of weeks before I found myself being woken up by a pair of lips pressing up my spine.

I looked over my shoulder, smiling sleepily at him.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” he said, eyes crinkling.  “I missed you.”

“Sap,” I said, rolling my eyes but leaning in for a quick morning peck.

Cass was not interested in a quick morning peck, pushing his tongue into my mouth and trying to map out my tonsils.

“Where’s the fire?” I asked, a little dazed.

“In my pants,” he replied solemnly.

I burst out laughing.

Cass looked pleased at first, but when I kept laughing he started to get annoyed.  “Dean?”

“Yuh-huh?” I managed to get out, rubbing at the tears pricking my eyelids.

“Enough,” he stated firmly, and my mouth went dry.

Cass being bossy was… something.

I found myself being pulled on top of him, two hands settling rather definitively over my ass and a tongue once again jamming down my throat.

For all his lack in finesse, Cass was actually an excellent kisser, and I was immediately drowning.

He took full advantage.

I came up for air with a gasp, trying to push a little space between our now rolling hips and failing miserably, what with Cass’s iron grip holding me against him.  “Ca-” I tried, but he swallowed up anything else I had to say, and then we were both drowning.

Cass whined into the kiss, hips moving insistently, always wanting more.

I tried to keep up, tried to give as good as I got, but Cass was a force of nature and sometimes it was just too damn much.  “Slow down,” I whispered when I could finally catch a quick breath.

“I can’t,” he whined, coming undone.

“Yes, you can,” I murmured, pressing my hand over his as he worked us both over.  “Nice and slow, baby.”

“Dean,” was all he could say, sounding distraught.

I took control of the pace, feeling more like myself and less like… whatever I became when Cass was running the show.  Rather not think too much about that in general.  I focused on Cass now, watching the way his face scrunched up, knowing he was close.

“Dean,” he pleaded.

“Okay,” I said, finally giving him permission.  My hand slid from his, going to hold his waist.

He was suddenly sitting us up, mouth pushing against mine frantically as his hand moved between us.

I murmured soft encouragements in his ear, though I was starting to stutter a little.

Cass probably wasn’t listening that closely anyway, the way he kept repeating my name like a mantra.

“Fuck,” I whispered, fingers digging into him.  “Fuck… yeah… just like that, sweetheart…”

He came apart completely, pulling me with him, and then we both just flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

“What was that all about?” I finally asked, smacking my hand to his chest and then just kinda leaving it there because my limbs felt loose and relaxed and like they didn’t really have anywhere in particular to be.

“Dean, when a man and another man love each other very much-”

I made the herculean effort to lift my hand, just so I could smack him again.  “I meant that usually you let me wake up before you’re tryin’ to take things to Bonetown.”

“Oh…” he trailed off thoughtfully.  “I may have been a little more amorous than usual, yes.”

I waited.

He turned his face towards me, his whole expression going soft, damn near reverent.  “Dean.”

“Yeah?” I said, trying not to go soft and probably failing.

“Dean, you…” he trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards the nightstand.

I eyed the supersized bottle of lube sitting there, and figured that wasn’t what was making Cass look at me like I hung the damn stars for him.  Then I remembered.

“You’re turning very red, Dean.”

“No I’m not,” I said, pointedly looking away from him.

Cass inched closer, nuzzling his face in my neck.  “Thank you.”

If I said, ‘for what?’, then we would have to actually talk about how I hiked through the woods to find his stupid boy band tape, so instead I offered him a, “yeah, whatever, it’s nothing.”

“It’s something,” he said, kissing my neck, and I couldn’t really deny that.

- 4 -

I was drumming on the steering wheel, headbanging to Slayer as best I could while still keeping my eyes on the road, when Cass let out the most overdramatic sigh in the history of overdramatic sighs.

“Something wrong?” I yelled to him over the music.

He leveled me with a glare before looking out the window, turning his entire back to me.

I turned the music up louder.

Cass crossed his arms over his chest.

I started to sing along.

He shifted so he could glare at me again.

I winked at him.

He said something.

“Huh?” I said, holding my hand up to my ear.

He repeated it.

I shrugged at him.

His hand suddenly shot out, ejecting the tape.  “You are infuriating!” he snapped at me.

“Hey, now,” I said, pointing sharply at the handwritten sign I’d stuck to the dashboard that proudly proclaimed ‘driver picks the music cuz Cass has terrible taste’.  “You know the rules.”

“Fuck your rules.”

I was scandalized.  “One does not simply ‘fuck’ the rules.”

“Well I just did,” he said, cocking his head to the side and daring me to prove him wrong.

I accepted his challenge and slowly pushed the cassette back in.

“Angel of death, monarch to the kingdom of the dead,” blasted out of the speakers.

“Goddammit, Dean!” Cass yelled loud enough for me to hear, ejecting the tape and tossing it in the backseat.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“It’s not the same,” he muttered, but the way he was looking down at his lap and not at me was pretty telling.

“I’m sorry, did you just throw my tape in the backseat?” I asked him incredulously.

“At least I didn’t throw it out the window,” he grumbled at me.

“Oh, okay, well I guess that means that you’re considerate for an asshole.”

Cass huffed out an irritated breath.  “You weren’t enjoying the music, either.”

“Uh, yes I was.”

“No, you were not,” he said, giving me a snotty look.  “You were only singing along to annoy me.”

“That was an added bonus,” I said, flashing him a grin.

“I know what you look like when you’re enjoying yourself,” he said, frowning at my grin.  “And I know what you look like when you’re just doing something to piss someone, usually Sam, off.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“I put your body together atom by atom-”

I mouthed ‘atom by atom’ along with him, which earned me an exasperated huff.

“Does making light of our profound bond help you to feel good about yourself?” he whined at me.

“No, but it’s hilarious.”

“I think you have confused the definition of ‘hilarious’ with the definition of ‘obnoxious’.”

“Ooooh, sweet burn,” I said with a snort.  “Really got me there, Encyclopedia Brown.”

“Your facetiousness is not appreciated right now.”

“It’s real cute how you’re trying to play the victim when you’re the one in the wrong.”

“I am in the wrong?” he asked, and the sheer look of incredulity on his face was hysterical.

“You threw my tape in the backseat!”

“You threw my tape out the window!”

“And we had great makeup sex because of it.”

“…are you trying to get more makeup sex?” he asked, squinting at me.

“Are you…?” I asked, squinting back at him.

“…no….” he said shiftily.

“Then why are you over here, throwing my tapes all over the place?”

“That song is about Nazis,” Cass declared with a frown.

“Uh, okay?”

“You hate Nazis.”

“I do hate Nazis.”

“You killed Hitler.”

“Hell yeah I killed Hitler!” I declared emphatically, reveling in a brief moment of smug satisfaction.

“Then why do you want to listen to songs about Josef Mengele?!”

“Dude, Angel of Death is like one of the greatest speed metal songs of all time.”

“But do you actually like it?”

I opened my mouth to answer and then thought about it for a while.  “I uh…”

“Put on some Motörhead,” he said, pulling out the box of tapes.

“Not too loud for you, princess?” I scoffed at him.

“We can lower the volume,” he said, pushing Ace of Spades into my hand.

I looked at the tape in my hand.

Cass went back to looking out the window.

“I’ll give you a pass on your little mutiny since Motörhead rocks,” I decided, magnanimously pushing in the tape and lowering the volume.  “But this does not in any way, shape, or form mean that your privileges have been restored.”

“I understand, Dean,” he said, but now he seemed like the smug one.

“I’m serious, Cass.”

“Of course you are.”

I didn’t feel like he was taking me seriously at all, but Motörhead did rock, and I found myself drumming on the steering wheel again before throwing my head back and singing loudly, “the Ace of Spades, the Ace of Spades!”

Cass’s smile went soft, and he started tapping his fingers on the door in time to the music, this new weird habit that he’d started lately.

I sang louder, throwing myself completely into the song, and the louder I sang, the wider Cass’s smile grew.

- 5 -

I was in the kitchen making breakfast while Cass was going through the records in the living room, trying to find something to play, when there was a knock at the door.

“Don’t pick something shitty!” I called to Cass as I moved towards the door, expecting to see Sam.

It was Bobby.

“Hey, kid, I’ve got a ’73 Trans-Am that won’t run,” he said as way of a greeting.

“Oh?” I asked, pulling the screen door open.

“Wanna take a look?”

“Hell yeah.”

Styx suddenly started blasting from inside the house.

“You got company?” Bobby asked.

“It’s just Cass,” I said, waving it off.  “I was making breakfast, so when I finish up with that I’ll come by your place.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said agreeably, sauntering off.

Cass was in the living room, squinting at the record player like that would somehow help him hear the music better.

“Good choice,” I said, kissing the top of his head.  “I’m gonna eat breakfast and then head off to Bobby’s.”

“Oh,” he said, turning his gaze to me.  “What are you doing there?”

“Car stuff.”

“Oh,” he said, looking less interested.

“You don’t wanna watch me work my magic on a Trans-Am?” I asked, wiggling my fingers at him.

“No.”

I stuck my lower lip out.

“You’re very manly and… virile,” Cass assured me, cupping my face and thumbing over my lip.

“Uh… thank you?” I said, completely confused and fairly distracted by the warmth of his hand.

“Well I assumed you were displaying your knowledge of motor vehicles in order to flaunt your sexual viability,” he explained, which didn’t explain anything at all.  “Like a peacock,” he added unhelpfully.

“Dude,” I said, shaking my head.

“I was incorrect?”

“It’s too early in the morning for whatever it is you’re saying,” I informed him, giving his behind a sharp spank and moving to the kitchen to eat my breakfast.

Cass took the chair next to me with a squinty-eyed glare, but became vaguely pacified when I gave him a bowl of maple syrup.  “I enjoy this texture,” he informed me, sticking his finger into the bowl and then sucking the syrup off of it.

“I know, buddy, I know,” I said, trying not to grin too stupidly at my weird, weird angel.

After breakfast, Cass saw me off at the door and I headed to Bobby’s.

I was ass-deep in a fuel pump repair when I heard Bobby talking to someone.  I slid out from under the car, watching as Bobby retreated into the house before flicking my eyes to Cass.

He looked back at me, a wrench awkwardly held in his hand.

“Heya, Cass, whacha doin’?” I asked, nodding my head towards the wrench.

“Bobby asked me to hold this,” he said, looking perplexed.

“And you are doing a bang-up job of it, sweetheart,” I said, wiping my greasy hands on my jeans and crowding into his space.  “Couldn’t resist seeing me in action, huh?”

“I came to borrow records from Bobby,” he said, but there was a small smile curling at the corners of his lips.

“Mm-hm,” I hummed, pulling him in closer by the belt loops of his borrowed jeans.

“He has all of Joni Mitchell’s albums on vinyl.”

“’Cause you don’t have every song of hers ever recorded,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Not on vinyl,” he said solemnly.

I was going all soft around the edges when Bobby’s gruff voice suddenly sounded behind me.  “You two love birds gonna carry on all day or are we gonna fix this jalopy already?”

So the thing was, for all that everything had completely changed between me and Cass, those changes were private, only-seen-in-the-confines-of-my-bedroom kind of changes.  Maybe we flirted a little more in public, but the whole standing-too-close-and-staring-into-each-other’s-eyes thing was nothing new for us.

And since nothing had really changed, I hadn’t exactly gone around advertising that Cass and I were… whatever we were.  Obviously Sam had figured it out without me saying anything, because he was Sam, and he knew when I so much as took a shit sideways (“you need more fiber in your diet, Dean”).  He took one look at me and Cass sitting on the couch bickering about the correct way to assemble a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,and just broke into the stupidest grin (“you two look good together”).

Charlie seemed to have the same psychic powers as Sam, looking between me and Cass at her D&D group sitting on completely opposite sides of the table and suddenly squealing with delight (“you did it, you did it, you finally did it, OMG!”).

Now here was Bobby, either teasing us for our stupid staring routine, or being the third person to see completely through this charade, and since I had no idea which one it was, I did what any normal person would do and jumped fifty feet away from Cass like I’d just been caught doing something bad.

Cass and Bobby both gave me a look, like I was somehow the crazy one, then turned back to each other.

“I was able to successfully hold onto your wrench,” Cass said, handing the wrench back to Bobby.

“Amazing job, Cass,” Bobby said, taking the wrench and passing Cass a stack of records.  “Have some real music as a reward for a job well done.”

“Real music?” I scoffed.

“None of Dean’s hair band crap,” he explained.

“Excuse me?” I said, thoroughly insulted.

“You are excused Dean,” Cass said absently as he flipped through the records.

I was making an incredibly shocked and offended face, but no one looked at me.

“I have heard of this man, Johnny Cash,” Cass said, giving Bobby a solemn nod.  “He is the Man in Black, much like the film with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.”

That snapped me out of my funk and I immediately cracked up.

“Pretty sure he didn’t hunt any aliens, but sure,” Bobby said, trying to keep a straight face but not quite succeeding.

Cass ignored us both, continuing to flip through his records.  Finally he gave a contented nod.  “I will enjoy listening to these, thank you.”

“Any time,” Bobby said easily.

“I’m going to listen to them now, so please continue your manly bonding over vehicular repair,” he said, preparing to take his leave.  “Goodbye, Bobby.”

Bobby gave him a nod.

“Dean,” he said, giving me a look.

“Yeah, uh, bye,” I said, trying to communicate with a look of vast confusion that I had no idea what he was trying to convey to me.

I knew exactly what he was trying to convey to me.

Bobby glanced between me and Cass’s retreating back, then handed me the wrench.  “How’s the fuel pump looking?”

“Uh…” I said.

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

“I uh got it back in place, but I still gotta…” I trailed off.  “Look, Bobby, you know that Cass and I… you know?  I mean you know.  So… yeah.”

“Son, if you’re going to tell me something I already know, at least try using actual words to do it.”

I flushed, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.  This wasn’t supposed to be a big deal.  “We’re...” I started to say, words like best friends and naked horizontal tango partners floating around in my head, all seeming inadequate.  “We’re boyfriends!” I blurted out, and then I wanted to kick myself in the face, because that was definitely not the word I’d been looking for.

“Boyfriends, huh?” Bobby said with a snort.

“Boyfriends,” I ground out, doubling down.

“All right then,” he said, and that was that.

It reminded me of that time when Sammy and I were kids, tossing a baseball around the salvage yard, and Sammy accidentally sent the ball sailing through one of the junker’s windows.  Of course I took the blame, ready to take an ass-whooping for my little brother, but Bobby wasn’t Dad, and he just shrugged and said, “all right then,” and took me through the entire process of repairing the window with him.  When we finished, he patted me on the shoulder and said, “not bad, kid.”

I slid back under the car, ready to get back to work.

“Can’t say I ever saw it coming back on earth,” Bobby said, and it was easier now that we weren’t looking at each other.  “But it just seemed kinda inevitable since you got to heaven.”

I felt vaguely embarrassed, but I just worked on the car, and eventually I found myself smiling.

Bobby’s approval always meant something to me.

[isolavirtuosa]

Cass & Dean's Infinite Playlist 6-10

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda

The one where Dean makes a lot of mixtapes.

Parts 6-10/26 under the cut.  Previous parts here. Referenced songs playlist on Spotify.

- 6 -

“Hey, Cass, you wanna go for a drive-”

“Yes,” he said agreeably, appearing out of thin air.  Then his nose wrinkled.  “Motörhead?”

“What’s wrong with Motörhead?”

“Nothing, it’s just… loud,” Cass said, loosening his tie.

“You say that a lot,” I said, “but you know that we could just turn down the volume?”

“No, not loud like that,” he said, shaking his head.  “It is… difficult-to-have-a-conversation loud.”

“I don’t really see the difference, but okay, what do you want to listen to?” I asked.

Cass seemed to freeze.  “…me…?”

“Yes, Castiel, Angel of the Lord, what do you want to listen to?” I asked, nodding my head towards the cassette collection.

“I can… choose?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“Yeah, sure,” I said with a shrug.

“But I am… the passenger,” he said, baffled.

“So you want to listen to Iggy Pop?”

“No, I… I mean, the passenger is to shut his cakehole, is he not?”

“Generally, yes,” I agreed.  “But just this once.”

Cass seemed flustered.

I had just said it offhandedly.  It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal.

The way Cass was reverently flipping through the tapes seemed like A Big Deal.

“I get final veto power,” I mumbled, trying to regain some semblance of my authority.

Cass hummed his assent, then pulled out a tape.

I held my hand out to him and he placed it into my waiting hand.  I felt the warmth of his fingertips, then held up the tape for inspection.  “You really like Bowie, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said, ejecting Motörhead and putting in The Man Who Sold the World.

Cass rolled down his window, letting the wind blow against his face as he watched the passing scenery.

Our conversations always meandered, about Cass’s work, about what was going on in my little patch heaven, about the past.  I felt relaxed, listening to Cass’s low voice talk about organizing angel tree planters floating over heavy guitar and a cacophony of drums.

He paused when the title track came on, his mouth tilting into a little smile.  “I like this song.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, it’s hard to put my finger on it, but… it makes me think of you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.

“Did I sell the world?”

“You might have.”

“Huh.”

“I like the Nirvana cover, too.”

“Really, Cass?  Grunge?” I scoffed.

“Kurt Cobain was an exceptional poet,” he informed me.

“Oh, man, are you trying to recommend music to me now?” I asked, amused.

“You know Dean, they did not stop making music after the 1980s.”

“Might as well have.”

Cass exhaled a little laugh, turning to look out the window again.  He started singing quietly to the chorus, “who knows?  Not me.  We never lost control.  You’re face to face with the man who sold the world.”

I liked listening to my tone-deaf angel sing, joining him in the final lines.

When the tape finished, I ejected it, then nodded my head to the cassettes again.  “What’s next?”

“I can choose again?” Cass asked, surprised.

“Pick something good.”

He grinned happily as he started going through all the tapes.

- 7 -

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, rocking out to Van Halen.

Cass held out the bag of donuts he’d brought for our drive and I took one, taking a bite and continuing to mouth the words.

“I like sprinkles,” he decided, staring very hard at the strawberry donut he was eating.  “They do not seem like they add anything of value, and yet without them, the donut is lesser.”

“Rainbow sprinkles for Cass, check,” I said, going back to singing.  “I can barely see the road from the heat comin' off of it.  Ah, I reach down between my legs.  Ease the seat back.”

“Apparently there are many people who think this song is called Animal,” Cass put in.

“But it is actually called…?”

“Panama,” he said, beaming at me.

“Look at our little Cassie, all grown up,” I said, reaching over and patting him on the shoulder.

“The younger angels all come to me to learn about the ancient music of the 1970s and 80s,” he said proudly.

“Ancient?” I repeated.

“Quite,” he agreed.

“Anciently awesome,” I muttered.

“Are songs about strippers… anciently awesome?” Cass asked, his tone implying that they might not be.

“Strippers are awesome,” I declared.

Cass snorted at that.  “Dean, your performative masculinity is unnecessary.”

“Performative… what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I growled at him.

He shrugged, a bizarrely human gesture on him.  “If your idea of a good time is watching scantily clad women struggling to pay their bills while dealing with issues of paternal abandonment-”

“-which I do-”

“-then you should spend your time in heaven doing that instead of driving around in your Impala with me.”

“I can do both,” I protested.

“When have you…” Cass trailed off, squinting at me.  “Dean, I think you need feminism.”

“You sound like Sam,” I groaned.

“No, our tones are significantly different.”

I just rolled my eyes.

“I am going to make you a mixtape,” Cass decided.

“Oh?”

“Yes.  Of only female artists.”

Something inside of me rebelled against the idea of it.  But another part of me thought about that catchy Taylor Swift song that I couldn’t quite get out of my head.  “I don’t need weepy chick music,” I said dismissively.

“Deaaaaan,” he sighed heavily, like my name was ten syllables long.

“Do you even know how to make a mixtape?”

“I am very good at figuring things out.”

We all knew that wasn’t true, but I didn’t say anything more, and the next time Cass appeared in my car, he was proudly waving a cassette at me that read in very tiny lettering, ‘A Mixtape of Various Female Artists Made by Castiel for Dean as a Means of Edification'.

I shook my head at him.

He just grinned.

“You gonna put it in?” I asked.

“No,” he said, adding the tape to my collection.  “You should listen to it alone.”

“That sounds ominous,” I said with a snort.

“I just mean that your reaction will be more authentic.”

“Okay,” I said, squinting at him.  Like I was performative.

“Can we listen to Led Zeppelin today?” he asked.

“Um, we can always listen to Led Zeppelin,” I said.  “Whaddya wanna hear?”

“We could start at Led Zeppelin and proceed chronologically?” he suggested.

“I like the way you think,” I said, feeling around for the tape and then pushing it into the deck.

After Cass had left, I could feel his mixtape sitting there, staring at me.

I glared at it.

What had Cass said?  That I needed feminism?

This was going to be so annoying.

I pulled the tape out and pushed it into the deck.

The guitar that greeted my ears was familiar.

“Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train.  When I was feeling nearly faded as my jeans.  Bobby thumbed a diesel down, just before it rained.”

I felt a little smile tugging at my lips.  I could respect some Janis Joplin, and the fact that Cass had chosen to open up his mixtape with Me and Bobby McGee actually had me a little impressed with his mixtape-making skills.

Then the song ended, and I could hear Cass’s faraway-sounding voice in the back of the recording.  “Did it record the song?”

I cracked up, listening to him struggle to figure out how to stop the recording before putting on the next song.  I had no idea what kind of equipment he’d decided to use for this, but the sound quality was a little scratchy, suggesting he might have just been holding up a microphone to a tape player.

Then the twangy guitar of Fleetwood Mac suddenly filled the speakers.

I listened to the tape from start to finish.  There were some random moments of Cass mumbling to himself, trying to figure out what he was doing.  There was also a very loud crash in the middle of Patti Smith, followed by some cursing that had me laughing so hard I had tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.

And at the end of it all, I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell Cass had known enough to pick out each of those songs.  Sure, Metatron had braindumped him with a bunch of pop culture references, but there was a depth to his choices.  It was obvious he was mostly trying to choose songs he thought that I would like, with rockers like Suzi Quatro and Heart.  But then there was Joni Mitchell, which was just so Cass to me.

“I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling.  Looking for something, what can it be?”

It was kind of beautiful, and I found myself rewinding it and listening again.

[Listen to Castiel's full C46 mixtape 'A Mixtape of Various Female Artists Made by Castiel for Dean as a Means of Edification' on Spotify.]

- 8 -

Me and Cass sat on the hood of the Impala, drinking beers while Black Sabbath blasted through the speakers.

Cass suddenly leaned back, staring up at the sky.  “The stars are beautiful here,” he observed.

“Yeah, no ambient light in heaven,” I said, laying back beside him.

“Shooting star,” Cass pointed out happily.

I was looking at him instead of the sky.  I looked back up, but it was already gone.  “Haven’t you seen a million of them?”

“And I hope to see a million more.”

“How can you be like that?” I asked, shaking my head.  I sat up again and took a pull from my beer.

“Like what?” he asked.

“I dunno,” I said.  “Hopeful?”

“Is it hopeful to enjoy the beauty of my father’s creation?”

“I got no idea.”

“What’s on your mind, Dean?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“You just seem like you want to talk about something,” he said, sitting up next to me.

“Not really,” I said with a shrug.

He stared at me for a long moment, then looked away with his own shrug.  “Don’t tell me, then.”

“Don’t be like that,” I complained, nudging him with my elbow.

“Then talk to me,” he said with a scowl.

“Hey, Cass,” I said.  “How you doin’?”

“Crappy,” he responded, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Don’t be like that,” I repeated, nudging him harder.  That of course did nothing because he was an immovable lump of celestial intent.

“I am just being myself.”

“A grumpy-ass angel?”

“A grumpy-ass angel,” he agreed sarcastically.

“I like when you’re a happy, non-grumpy-ass angel,” I said, looking him in the eye.

“I am very happy, Dean,” he said, staring back unbothered.

“Why?” I asked before I could help it.

His expression took on a more thoughtful countenance.  “Well, to be happy is to be ‘characterized by well-being and contentment’,” he said, like he was reading from the dictionary.  “Heaven is still a work in progress, but it has been greatly transformed by Jack, and I am able to be a part of that.  I derive great satisfaction from my work.”

“And that’s enough?” I asked.

“No, it’s not enough,” he said, shaking his head.  “Work is just one part of life.”

I found myself chewing on my bottom lip.

“I have my friends and my family,” he continued, leaning in a little closer and trying to maintain eye contact.  “When my work is finished, I can visit with them, go for drives with my best friend.”

“And that’s… good enough?” I asked.

Cass gave me a scrutinizing look.  “Are we talking about me…?”

“Yes, we’re talking about you, who else would we be talking about?” I grumbled, feeling annoyed for some reason.

“Dean.”

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I looked away.

“I find great satisfaction in my personal life,” he finally said.  “And I am enjoying my new hobby immensely.”

“Hobby?”

“Earth music,” he explained, his expression softening into a smile.  “I want to listen to it all.”

“Yeah?” I said.  “That’s a lotta music, Cass.”

He nodded happily.

“So me makin’ you mixtapes… that makes you happy?” I asked, weighing the words out before I spoke.

“Yes, Dean, so very much,” he said sincerely.  “It’s like you’re giving me a piece of your soul with every song.”

“Um, I don’t think it’s quite that deep.”

“Music is truly powerful.”

“Not that powerful.”

“And yet…”

I let him have the last word, shaking my head and taking a drink.

“Dean, are you happy?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah, sure,” I said with a shrug.  “Ya know, for a dead guy.”

Cass sighed very loudly.

I gave him my most charming grin.

“You are in heaven,” he said to me.  “You are supposed to be experiencing the ultimate form of contentment.”

“I am,” I said, knocking our shoulders together.  I realized he was starting to get upset, and I didn’t want that.  I liked Happy Cass, as unsettling and foreign as he was.  “I am experiencing many forms of contentment right now.”

He looked at me.

I let my hand drop to his knee, resting there.  “I’ve got my baby, I’ve got my beer, I’ve got my tunes, and I’ve got my angel.”

That got him to half-smile.

I squeezed his knee.  “I’m okay, Cass.”

“I wish that you were more than okay,” he told me.

“How much more okay do I need to be?” I asked, rolling my eyes and reclaiming my hand as I took a drink.

He just looked at me.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Can we listen to something else?” he asked abruptly.

“Too loud?”

“Yes.”

“Put in whatever you want,” I said, nodding my head back towards the car.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tape, smiling at me hopefully.

“What’s that?” I asked, holding out my hand.

He passed it to me.

“Joni Mitchell?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Blue is a masterpiece,” he informed me.

I looked at him.

“You said whatever I want.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, handing it back to him.

Cass looked pleased as he slid down off the hood and headed back into the car.

Ozzy Osbourne’s voice cut out, and suddenly the night was quiet.  It was only a moment, and then Joni Mitchell’s acoustic guitar kicked in.

“I really like this song,” he told me as he climbed back up on the hood.

“It’s alright,” I said.  “For chick music,” I couldn’t help but add.

“Dean, there is no such thing as chick music.”

“Uh, it’s music made by chicks.”

“So music made by men is dick music?”

I spit out my beer.

Cass shrugged, playing it off like he was just making an observation.  Like he didn’t know exactly what to say to make me laugh.  “I might like chick better than dick,” he decided.

I was dying.

Cass smiled a happy, pleased smile.

I slung my arm around his shoulder and drank my beer, contentedly listening to the haunting sound of Joni Mitchell’s voice.

- 9 -

“This album is a revelation,” Cass informed me.

“Really, Cass?” I asked incredulously.  “Beyoncé?”

“Queen Bey, yes,” he said with a sincere nod.

“Oh, is this a monarchy?” I asked.

Cass sighed loudly.  “Be quiet and listen.”

I was quiet, but I couldn’t guarantee that I was listening.  “What is the point of sampling?” I grumbled.  “Come up with your own music.”

“Sampling is like a storyteller passing down the oral history of one generation down to the next,” Cass explained, using that voice that sounded like he was talking to a child but usually meant he was talking to me.  “It is actually incredibly intricate and beautiful when done well.”

“I don’t know, Cass, I don’t think Andy Williams reggae is for me.”

“Listen to the words,” he growled at me.

I tried.  “I’m just not into jilted lover chick music.”

Cass straight up scowled at me.

I groaned.  This was going to be a long ride.

Then something caught my ear.

“…is that Zepp?!”

Cass gave me a haughty look.  “Funny how excited you get at hearing a lowly ‘sample’.”

“Zepp rules,” I said with a shrug.

“You should try being more open-minded, Dean.”

“I’m very open-minded,” I said incredulously.

“Because you like that one Taylor Swift song?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

Cass ignored me and started singing along.

I decided to ignore him, too.

We got through a few more tracks that had me really thinking this wasn’t an album for a middle-aged white guy, but then out of nowhere there was a country song blasting through the speakers and Cass had gone quiet, touching my arm.  “Listen,” was all he said.

“Came into this world daddy's little girl.”

“So relatable,” I mumbled, and Cass pinched me.  “Ow!”

“And daddy made a soldier out of me.”

That gave me pause.

“Daddy made me dance and daddy held my hand.”

Losing me again…

“And daddy liked his whisky with his tea and we rode motorcycles.  Blackjack, classic vinyl.  Tough girl is what I had to be.”

I swallowed.

“He said take care of your mother, watch out for your sister.”

‘Watch out for Sammy,’ Dad’s voice echoed in my ears.

“Oh, my daddy said shoot.”

‘All right, if somethin' tries to bust in?’ Dad asked.

‘Shoot first, ask questions later,’ I found myself answering.

Cass didn’t say anything for the rest of the song.

I hit the ‘stop’ button.

His head tilted as he gazed at me, waiting.

“The fuck was that?” I finally ground out.

He blinked at me.

“I didn’t like it,” I said abruptly.

A frown tugged at Cass’s mouth.  “I’m sorry, Dean.  I did not mean to upset you.”

“Who’s upset?” I growled, speeding up.

“You are,” he said, like he was pointing out the obvious.

“Whatever.”

I almost jumped out of my skin when Cass put his hand on my arm again.

“Sorry,” he said softly.  “I didn’t know that things between you and John were still so… unresolved.”

“Dad and I are fine,” I lied, and no one believed me.

Cass left his hand on my arm, and after a while he reclaimed his Beyoncé tape and put in some Metallica.

- 10 -

Cass left the damn tape mixed in with my collection.

I kept rewinding it, listening again and again.

“Oh, my daddy said shoot.  Oh, my daddy said shoot.”

Cass caught me, appearing in my passenger seat out of nowhere without the customary invitation.

I hit ‘eject’, and neither of us said anything about it.  “What do you want to listen to?” I asked.

“Driver picks the music,” Cass said.

I shrugged.  “Fish out some Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

He did so, pushing in their debut album.

I started singing along to I Ain’t the One.

This was what we did.  Except, usually I called Cass.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked.

“Hm?” he said, looking away from the window to face me.  “Oh, I just wanted to see you.  I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course,” I said.  “You don’t need an invitation.”

“You have said that before, so I thought… I thought I might take you up on it.”

“Good.”

Cass leaned back more comfortably in his seat, rolling up his sleeves to his elbows.  He’d been taking off the trench coat and the suit jacket more and more often lately.  “Sam said the same thing, but I didn’t know that kitchens were a place for sexual intercourse.”

I slow blinked.  “I’m sorry, what?”

“Sam told me to stop by any time,” he said.  “Then he told me to knock first.”

“Wait, wait, so Sammy was hitting it on the kitchen table?”

“He wasn’t hitting anything,” Cass said, squinting at me.

“Cass, come on, you mean to tell me that you still haven’t figured out the art of the sexual innuendo?”

“Sam and Eileen were… in a compromising situation on the kitchen counter,” he explained.

“Nice,” I said agreeably.  “Good for Sammy.”

“Sam was not quite as enthusiastic about the situation,” Cass said, shaking his head.  “At least Eileen thought it was funny.”

I leaned back against my headrest, chuckling.  “Eileen is so cool, how did she ever end up with my dorky brother?”

“Opposites attract?” Cass suggested.

“Apparently,” I said.  “So you got a real eyeful?”

“I saw more of Sam than I ever wanted to, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said.

I cracked up.  “Gross, man.”

“Indeed.”

“Pick up any new techniques?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows at him.  “Knowing Sammy, probably not…”

“Sex techniques?” he asked, making a face at me.

“Yeah, man,” I said.  “Never know when some lovely lady- or uh… dude, uh… might, ya know, walk into your life.”

“I am not interested in having sex.”

“Dude, come on,” I said.  “You don’t ever get the urge…?”

“No.”

“Cass, you’re killing me here.”

“I don’t know why it bothers you so much,” he said with a shrug.  “Your sexual activity decreased significantly after the whole Mark of Cain skulduggery.”

I was scandalized.  “I did not-” and then I thought about it.  “How would you know?” I blustered, deciding to take a different tack.

“It is very obvious when you’ve had sex, Dean,” he said, like he was talking about the weather.  “Elevation in mood, increased winking and eyebrow waggling, excessive cockiness…”

“How is that-”

“Also, the smell.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The pheromone smell,” Cass said, nodding his head.  “Very distinct.”

I sniffed the air around me self-consciously.

“There’s also the ritual,” he said, gazing ahead thoughtfully.  “Primping yourself-”

“Hey, now, I do not primp-”

“Fixing your hair, making sure your clothing lies just right…” he explained.  “Then it is off to the bar, a few drinks, a few well-placed aw-shucks country boy smiles-”

“I do not-”

“Find a willing partner and take her to where it is convenient to fornicate-”

“Dude, really?”

“All I am saying is that you stopped having a strong interest in such superficial acts, so I do not know why I should have to be interested in them.”

“I am still very interested in those superficial acts,” I grumbled.  “I just… there was always so much going on, ya know?  And I just… well, okay, maybe I didn’t just want to pick up some random girl at a bar and take her home.  I…” I trailed off, at a loss to explain.

“I understand,” Cass said.  “I wonder if I would be more interested if sex with the person I love was possible, but since it is not, it all seems rather frivolous.”

“You can’t just dismiss it like that when you’ve barely even tried,” I said, shaking my head.  “Look-” I started and froze, the synapses in my brain finally firing.  “Wait, I’m the person you love.”

“Yes,” Cass agreed.

“Wait, wait, wait.”

He waited.

“So… you would want to have sex if it was with… me?” I asked slowly.

“Yes, I think so,” he said, nodding.

“And I’m not… interested… so, you’re just gonna be celibate…?”

“Correct,” he agreed.

“Cass, man, I can’t be the reason for you not getting laid.”

“You’re not,” he said, giving me an amused look.

“You just said…”

“Dean, I have experimented with human sexuality, and I do not find it fulfilling without a ‘connection’,” he said, making air quotes.  “Maybe someday I will make a ‘connection’ with another being who returns my feelings, but for now I am content without sexual contact.”

“But-”

“Perhaps you should worry more about your own sex life than mine,” he said.

I glared at him.

He held his hands up.  “I just mean that if sex makes you happy, then why aren’t you having it?”

“Oh, you watch,” I muttered.

“Are you inviting me for some sort of voyeuristic experience?” he asked, looking perplexed.

“No!” I cried, but then I couldn’t help but laugh.

Cass was quiet, but he had a little smile on his face.

“Is this really enough for you?” I asked softly.

“What?” he asked, eyes flicking to mine as he studied my expression.  “You and I?”

I nodded.

His smile went soft.  “Of course it is, Dean.”

“Okay,” I said, because when he looked at me like that I had to believe him, as improbable as it seemed.  “Cass, I…”

“Yes?”

I struggled for the words and finally gave up.  “You can drop by whenever you like.  You don’t even have to knock.”

“Thank you, Dean,” he said, looking pleased.

“Yeah,” I said with a shrug.  And that was all there was to say.

[isolavirtuosa]

Cass & Dean’s Infinite Playlist 1-5

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda

The one where Dean makes a lot of mixtapes.

Parts 1-5/26 under the cut.  Referenced songs playlist on Spotify.

- 1 -

  As the last strains of High Voltage faded out, I reached over to the cassette player and hit ‘eject’, ready for something different.  I eased Baby into the shoulder out of habit, and started rifling through my cassette collection.  Something out of place caught my eye, and I pulled the tape out, squinting at it.

Deans top 13 Zepp TRAXX

I ran my thumb over the lettering, the prayer escaping my lips before I was even aware of what I was doing.  “Cass…”

He was just suddenly there beside me.  “Hello, Dean,” he said, his expression… soft?  Was he actually… smiling?

“Cass?” I repeated, completely thrown off.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“You’re… here.”

“Yes.”

I stared at him.

He stared back, still smiling.

“Where the hell have you been?” I finally mumbled, looking away.  The last time I’d seen him was in the storage room of the bunker after he pushed me away and disappeared into the Empty.

“I’m sorry, Dean, I was waiting for your prayer.  I didn’t want to intrude.”

There was a lot to unpack in that.  “It’s not an intrusion,” I grumbled, elbowing him.  “And I prayed to you every night on earth after you…  I prayed every night.”

“I know,” he said, his tone taking on a regretful tinge.  “I would have come to you if I could have.”

I shrugged, fingers still running over the mixtape.

“I couldn’t hear your prayers in the Empty,” he explained, head tilted as he tried to peer up at me.

“Kinda figured that,” I said, avoiding his gaze.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?” I asked, letting my gaze flick to him.

Blue eyes sucked me in.  “You’re being avoidant,” he said.  “Anyway, when Jack pulled me out of the Empty, my vessel was destroyed-”

“Uhh,” I said, looking his trench-coated frame up and down.

“It was a whole thing, Dean.”

“A whole thing?” I repeated with a snort.

“Yes, the entire universe almost ceased to exist, but anyway, Jack was finally able to recreate my vessel,” he explained without actually explaining anything.  “Unfortunately, you were already gone by that time.”

“Gone, right,” I said, huffing out a laugh.

The light seemed to go out of Cass’s eyes, and he reached his hand out, resting it heavily on my shoulder.  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” he said quietly.  “I reached out to you when I could, and I thought you felt me, but…”

I thought of all those nights I stumbled into my bed, not quite drunk so I wouldn’t worry Sammy, hugging Miracle to my chest and mumbling stupid prayers into his fur, saying things like, “Cass, if you’re out there, please…?”

And sometimes I would hear a sound that made me think of the fluttering of wings, and I would feel a warmth like the hand currently pressed to my shoulder.  Those nights I would fall right to sleep, no tossing and turning, no nightmares, and I would wake up feeling… okay.

“Yeah, I…” I trailed off, then shrugged his hand away as I moved to press the tape I’d been holding into the cassette deck.  The familiar sound of Jimmy Page’s guitar filled the car.

Cass seemed like he wanted to say something.

“I wanna drive,” I told him, moving to put the car back in gear.

“We are in a car,” he said slowly, like he was puzzling out a riddle.

“Perfect,” I said, pulling back onto the road.

What was it Cass had said before?

You’re being avoidant.

I fixed my eyes on the road, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.

We were usually good at comfortable silence, but there was something lying between us unspoken, straining the silence into something awkward.

So I started singing.

The tension seemed to drain, and I could feel Cass smiling again.  Then he shocked the hell out of me and started to sing along with me.

Anyone who had ever talked about someone having the ‘voice of an angel’ had clearly never heard an actual angel sing.  Cass was mostly tone deaf, though he could occasionally find the melody.

That didn’t really matter to me, though.  We sang as loudly as we wanted, smiling and laughing, and I knew I had my best friend back, like nothing had changed.

Like I wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t the leader of heaven, and he hadn’t said all those things that he said before he went away.

Nothing had changed.

It was my car, and I could be as avoidant as I wanted to.

We were on our second rendition of Immigrant Song when Cass’s voice faded out and he tilted his head, eyes squinted in concentration.

“Dean, I have to go,” he finally said.

“Duty calls,” I said with a shrug.

“Yes,” he agreed.  “But if you find yourself in need of a passenger again, you know how to reach me.”

And then he was gone, before I could get a word out, much less give him his tape back.  So I left it in the deck and sang by myself.

 - 2 -

  Cass didn’t always come immediately when I called.  Sometimes he would appear hours later, looking disheveled.

“Work,” he would explain.

“Tough bein’ the boss,” I’d agree, then I’d go back to driving.

Today we were listening to Metallica.

“It’s a little… loud…” Cass decided.

“Yeah, man, that’s what metal is,” I said, nodding my head to the music.

“But I can’t really hear the words…”

“You a lyrics guy, Cass?”

“Yes, definitely,” he said with a nod.  “I’ve always appreciated the work of poets.”

“Well James Hetfield is a hell of a poet,” I informed him.

Cass squinted, like that would help him hear the music better.

“You wanna borrow a tape?” I offered.  “Listen to it with your headphones?”

“Will that make it less loud?” he asked.

I laughed, shaking my head.  “You sound like an old grandpa.”

“Well, Jack has created many angels, so I would say technically-”

“Uh-uh, no way, that doesn’t count,” I protested, mostly because I didn’t want to be a grandpa, either.

“Could you…?” he started to say, then hesitated.

“What?” I asked, smacking his arm.  “Speak up.”

“Could you… maybe… make me another mixed tape?” he asked, almost shyly.

“Sure,” I said agreeably.

“It’s not too much trouble?”

“Oh, well, you know, I’ll try and fit it into my busy schedule of doing nothing all day.”

“I am being serious, you don’t have to go out of your way-”

“I want to, Cass,” I interrupted him.

“Oh,” he said.  “Thank you.”

“You like mixtapes that much?”

“Well I only have the one,” he said.  “But I treasure it.”

“Is that why you left it in my car?” I teased him.

“Dean, you know why I left it in your car.”

“Do I?” I hummed.

“Dean,” he said, in that way of his that somehow imbued deep yet unfathomable meaning into a single syllable as he stared right inside of me like I was made of glass.

“Yeah, yeah, you wanted me to call,” I said, waving it off.  “You know, you could have just come here yourself directly instead of playing phone tag.”

“I didn’t want to-”

“-intrude, yeah, you said that,” I interrupted him, rolling my eyes.  “Cass, you’re not an intrusion, you’re family.”

His head tilted and his lips parted.  He hesitated.  “I wasn’t sure if that was still true?”

I took my eyes off the road and looked him fully in the eye.  “Don’t be stupid,” I said, then fixed my eyes forward again.

Cass breathed out a little huff of a laugh.  “Okay, Dean, I will try not to be.”

“Family’s family,” I grumbled at him.

“I know,” he said softly.  “It was just… a very long time before you called.”

We were both quiet, the sound of Cliff Burton’s Orion bass line filling the Impala.

“How long have I been dead?” I asked suddenly.

“Years,” Cass replied, a slight catch to his voice.

“Just feels like a few weeks to me,” I said.  “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t realize…”

“I know,” he said again, and he did know.  “I just got… impatient.”

I grinned at that, taking a hand off the wheel to squeeze his shoulder.  “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

Cass breathed in sharply at the touch, and it was like a jolt of electricity passed between us.

I patted his arm as a means to quickly reclaim my hand without seeming like I was quickly reclaiming my hand.  I placed it firmly back on the wheel.  “So, what do you want on your mixtape?”

He looked at me for a long while.  You’re being avoidant, his eyes informed me.

“Your favorite Metallica songs,” he finally said.  “Like on the Zepp Traxx mixed tape.  I can feel your soul clearly through each song.”

“My soul?” I snorted.

“Music is very powerful,” he stated seriously.

“Really, Cass, my soul?”

“Yes, really,” he said, his nose scrunching up like I was offending him with my disbelief.  “Every song told a story about you and your history, about your parents, about Sam…”

“Uh, they’re just songs,” I said, wondering how it was that dead guys could blush.  “Really friggin’ awesome songs, but just songs.”

“No, a mixed tape is definitely the sacred sharing of your soul,” he said with a shake of his head.

“I’m sorry, do you keep saying ‘mixed tape’?” I asked, desperate for a subject change.

“Yes.”

“Okay, but it’s just mix, Cass,” I informed him.  “Mixtape.”

“That’s what I said.  Mixed tape.”

“Mixtape.”

“Dean,” he growled at me, and I didn’t know if he was annoyed at me for pointing out his mistake, his inability to understand his mistake, his understanding that I was trying to distract him so we didn’t have to talk about real things, or a combination of all three.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.  “One soulful mixtape coming up.”

It took a while to curate the right songs.  A mixtape couldn’t be rushed.

Okay, so maybe Cass wasn’t so completely off with his chick flick mumbo jumbo.

I tried to have a new tape for him every time he appeared in my passenger seat.

His smile always took over his face as he reached out to accept the latest one, teeth flashing and eyes crinkling in a way that just made it seem like all was right with the world.

 - 3 -

  “This is not your car.”

“Correct,” I said, glancing up from the TV and grinning at Cass.  “You’re just in time.”

“Hey, Cass,” Sam said, giving him a pained look.

“Sam,” he said, smiling warmly at my brother.

“Get out while you can,” Sam whispered.

Cass’s head tilted to the side.

“Come on, Sammy, you love Clint Eastwood.”

“No, Dean, that’s you.”

“Everyone loves Clint Eastwood.”

“Is some kind of romantic entanglement happening?” Cass asked, looking thoroughly confused.

“We’re watching a movie,” I explained, patting the empty couch cushion between me and Sam.

Cass sat down gingerly, like he thought the couch might explode.

“We’ve already watched two,” Sam said, making a face.

“And now Cass is here, so we’re all gonna watch another one.”

“Oh my god, you are so uncool with your old ass cowboy movies,” Sam groaned.

“Uh, that’s not true,” I said, looking at him incredulously.  “I am extremely cool, I have excellent taste, and you like Titanic.”

“Who ever said that I like Titanic?!” Sam demanded.

I just stared at him knowingly.

“Dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” he grumbled, looking away and fixing his eyes back on the TV.  “You’re the one who likes Winslet’s rack.”

“I don’t know what either of you are talking about,” Cass offered in a weirdly upbeat voice.

“Have some popcorn,” I suggested, taking the bowl off the side table and passing it to him.

“I do not mind if I do,” he said, accepting it.

“Okay, everyone ready?” I asked, getting excited.

Sam groaned like a drama queen, and Cass started stuffing his mouth with popcorn, so I took that for a ‘yes’ and started up The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

I immediately got lost in the story, mouthing along with the words.

Sometimes I would catch Cass watching me instead of the screen, an amused look on his face.  I would elbow him sharply and redirect him to the very important action happening on the screen.

Sam fell asleep.

As the credits started to roll, I gave Cass a devious smile and nodded my head towards my sleeping brother.

He squinted at me.

I got up and snuck over to the fridge, pulling out some whipped cream.  Sam had his right arm sprawled out at his side, his hand palm up in such an inviting and welcoming gesture.

Cass tilted his head to the side.

I flashed him a grin, then sprayed the whipped cream into Sam’s open palm.

“What are you-?” he tried to ask, but I silenced him with a finger to my lips.

“Tickle his nose,” I whispered.

“…what?”

“Tickle.  His.  Nose.”

“Dean, I-”

“Do it,” I coaxed him.

So he did.

Sam immediately reached up to scratch his nose, smearing whipped cream all over his face and waking up with a start.

I doubled over laughing.

“What…?” Sam mumbled confused.

I laughed harder.

“Dean, that was very childish,” Cass said, shaking his head but with a fond smile.

“Did you…?” Sam groaned, starting to come fully awake.

I grinned at him, waving the can of whipped cream.

There was no hesitation as Sam suddenly leapt up from the couch and tackled me to the ground.

The air knocked out of me momentarily before I remembered that I didn’t actually have lungs, and then I was struggling to keep my face away from his whipped cream-covered hand, holding his forearm desperately with both hands.

“Come on, Dean, you know you want some,” Sam taunted me as he hulked over me.

“Nah, Sammy, that’s all for you,” I grunted, watching as his hand got closer and closer.

It was a futile effort, and Sam gleefully smeared my face with whipped cream.

I groaned, flopping back on the ground in defeat.  There was whipped cream in my eyelashes.

Sam sat up, laughing triumphantly.

“You know, Cass is the one who scratched your nose,” I pointed out, glaring at the whipped cream-free angel hovering over us.

“I’m sure he didn’t know what you were up to,” Sam said, but he glanced towards Cass.

“Actually, Sam, I did have an inkling of what Dean was up to,” Cass answered honestly.

Sam looked at me.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

Sam glanced at Cass again, but this time his sight line was lower.

I nodded.

We both moved at the same instant, Sam grabbing Cass’s legs, and me scooping up the can of whipped cream from the floor and spraying it all over his face.

Cass looked incredulous.

I reached over and scooped some whipped cream from his nose with my finger, taking a taste.  “We got ourselves some angel pie.”

Sam snorted, letting go of Cass’s legs and standing up beside me.

Slowly Cass’s incredulous look melted away, his nose scrunching up and his eyes crinkling in a full-out laugh.

I found myself staring.

“You both are children,” Cass decided, still smiling happily.

And suddenly I was a teenager, and Sam was a pre-teen, and that was weird.

Cass snapped his fingers, clean and put together again.  “I have to get back to work, but this has been mildly amusing,” he said.  “Stay out of trouble, you two,” he said, laughing like that was a funny joke.

Sam and I exchanged baffled looks.  I had to admit, though, that I liked looking down on my shrimpy brother.

Then Cass was gone, and I found myself shifting back to my usual form of 30-something Dean, with Sam towering over me.

“He is such a weird little man,” I said, spraying some whipped cream in my mouth.

“Says the biggest weirdo of them all,” Sam muttered, wiping his face off on his shirt.

“How am I weird?!” I cried.

Sam just gave me one of his Sam Looks, and I rolled my eyes.

I started cleaning up the living room, occasionally taking another hit from the whipped cream.

“So was there a special reason for this movie marathon torture session?” Sam asked, straightening up the throw pillows.

“Uh, does there need to be a special reason to watch the greatest movie trilogy of all time?”

“Dean, you’ve made me watch them a million times.”

“So what’s a million times more?” I asked with a shrug.  “Besides, I wanted Cass to watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

“Okay, so why did I have to be here for that?”

“No reason,” I said, making a big deal of picking up the spilled popcorn from the floor.

“Oh, no, Dean, you’re not being cagey at all.”

“‘Cagey’?” I repeated, throwing my hands up at the ridiculousness of the accusation.  “Who’s being cagey?”

He gave me another Sam Look.  “Do you not want to be alone with Cass for some reason?”

“What?” I said, like that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.  “We’re alone in my car all the time.”

Sam shrugged, but he was still giving me that fucking look.

I decided to ignore him and finished cleaning up.

 - 4 -

  “Ah, we’re back to your car.”

“Just wanted to hit the road,” I said, eyes fixed forward.  “Figured you might not mind co-piloting.”

“Yes, that supposition was correct,” Cass said, leaning back more comfortably into the passenger seat and loosening his tie.  He’d been doing weird things like that lately; acting more human.

I cleared my throat.

Those warm eyes flicked to me.  “How are you, Dean?  It’s been a while.”

“Same old, same old,” I said.  “Hey, I’ve got something for you in the glove box,” I continued, already reaching over and pulling it open.  My fingers settled around the tape, and I passed it to Cass.

“Thank you,” he said, his touch lingering as he took the tape from me.  “I’ve been enjoying the Creedence Clearwater Revival Ultimate Mixx very much.  Fortunate Son, it’s very… interesting.”

“Yeah, I noticed you liked that one,” I said, remembering the way his brow furrowed with confusion as he asked, ‘who exactly is this ‘fortunate’ ‘son’?’, misusing air quotes like usual.

“Bowie?” Cass asked, squinting at the tape.

“David Bowie,” I explained.

“Oh, yes, the star man,” he mused, still looking at the tape.

I reached over again to close the glove box, only to have a couple of tapes come flying out.

Cass leaned over to pick them up.  “Dean and Sam’s Awesome Road Trip?” he read.  “Wayward Son, Ocean Daughter…”

“Yeah, uh, I kinda… those are for Sam and my mom,” I said.

“You made them mixtapes?”

“Mm, you… inspired me, you know?” I said, keeping my eyes fixed forward.  “I mean, I know mixtapes are kinda our thing, but…”

“I think that’s lovely,” Cass said, carefully returning the tapes to the glove box.  His hand hesitated for a moment.  “So they’re not just one band…?”

“Nah, it’s more… songs that make me think of them?  Or like songs we have memories about?”

Cass was still hesitating.  “Could we… could we listen to the Sam tape?  If it’s not too intrusive, I mean.”

“What is with you and worrying about being intrusive?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“It just seems like a very personal thing, Dean, and I don’t want to overstep,” he said, already taking his hand away from the tape.

“It’s fine, Cass,” I said, reaching over and pulling out the tape.  This time I shut the glove box properly.

“You don’t mind?”

“I don’t mind,” I said, pushing the tape into the cassette deck.  “You’re family, Cass.”  I was glad he didn’t ask to listen to my mom’s tape, though.  Mom and I had gotten thirty seconds into Simple Man and both done this very awkward ‘crying but not crying’ thing with tears streaming down our faces.  By the time we got to Hey, Jude I had to pull the car over.

Sam’s mix was not that kind of tape.

“I never meant to be so bad to you.  One thing I said that I would never do.  A look from you and I would fall from grace.  And it would wipe the smile right from my face,” came the opening lines from Asia.

“It was the heaaaaat of the mooomeeent!” I sang along cheerfully.

“This song reminds you of Sam?” Cass asked, genuinely confused.

I turned to him, grinning.  “He gets so angry every time he hears it.”

“So you thought you would include it on tape that you listen to together?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“That does sound like you.”

I laughed.  “I guess this is the song that played every morning when Gabe trapped us in the Mystery Spot where I kept dying and Sam had to keep reliving the day over and over.”

“Dean, that sounds very traumatic for Sam.”

“Nah, it’s hilarious.”

“Okay, well, please do not put songs that make me think of you dying on my mixtapes.”

“Do you even have songs like that?” I asked.  I didn’t really know what he listened to when I wasn’t around that would take him in that direction.

“I… I don’t know,” he said, sounding thoughtful.  “I guess sometimes the poets’ lyrics make me think of you, and I… I don’t like those kinds of songs.”

“You don’t like songs that make you think of me?”

“I don’t like songs that make me think of you dying.”

“Well I am dead, Cass.”

His unhappiness was radiating off of him in waves.

I kept my eyes on the road, but I reached over my hand, letting it rest at the back of his neck.  “Hey, man, come on.  You know we all need a little gallows humor sometimes.”

“We most certainly do not.”

I let him sulk for a while, rubbing the back of his neck until he finally started to relax.

“I thought you did not like these kinds of hair bands,” he finally commented.

“I like them occasionally,” I said, taking my hand back and turning the volume up.  “On a steeeeel horse I riiiide,” I sang along to Bon Jovi.

“…Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Are there songs that make you think of me?” he asked.

I thought about it.  “I dunno, I mean, we just started this whole carpool karaoke thing in heaven, so most of the songs I associate with you are from that.”

“What about the lyrics?”

“You mean like a song that has lyrics that make me think of you?”

“Yes.”

I thought about it, and without thinking enough to put a filter between my brain and my mouth, I said, “I’ll Be There.”

“I’ll Be There?” Cass repeated.

I wondered if I just didn’t answer if we could drop the whole subject.

“Who sings it?”

“No one.”

“Oh, is it an instrumental song?”

I didn’t answer.

“Dean, you are making this very mysterious,” he said.  “Do you have it on one of your tapes?  Maybe we could listen-”

“No.”

I was pretty sure Cass was pouting, but I definitely wasn’t going to look to check.

“Then I’ll pop down to Earth-”

“No.”

“Am I not allowed to listen to it?”

“Correct.”

“But-”

“Forget I said anything.”

“How am I supposed to forget something so important?”

“It’s not important at all!”

“It’s important to me.”

“No.”

“You are being infuriating.”

“Good.”

“It is certainly not good, Dean.”

I shrugged, slouching more comfortably in my seat and returning to my mixtape.  “I was a little too tall, could've used a few pounds.  Tight pants, points hardly renowned…”

“Your singing has lost its charm,” Cass told me moodily.

“She was a black haired beauty with big dark eyes,” I continued to sing.  “And points all her own, sitting way up high.”

He frowned at me, but by the time I hit the chorus he was rolling his eyes and letting a little half-smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

 - 5 -

  I thought I made it out of that one, but the next time Cass appeared in my passenger seat, he was grinning from ear to ear.

“You get laid or something?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What?” he asked, his nose scrunching up.  “No, of course not.”

I shrugged.  “What did you think of Bowie?”

“Oh, Dean, I really enjoyed him,” he said, nodding enthusiastically.  “The one with the space explorer, it was just… I didn’t really understand it, but I could feel it.”

Space explorer… astronaut… Major Tom?  I always had to do mental gymnastics to figure out what the hell Cass was talking about.  “Space Oddity?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, that was the name,” he said.  “It really told a story, didn’t it?”

“It’s a classic,” I agreed.

“Speaking of classics,” he said, going back to that dopily happy smile of his.  “The Jackson 5.”

I took my eyes off of the road to glare at him.

“Pretty classic, right?” he said, and he looked so fucking happy that I couldn’t even continue being a dick to him.

“Yep,” I said, pointedly looking away.

“I really connected with the words the prepubescent boy was singing,” he said, practically glowing as he spoke.  “You… Dean, you know me so well.  That song.  It’s exactly how I feel.”

“Come on, man, it wasn’t that deep,” I said, shifting uncomfortably.  “It’s just a cheesy bubblegum kiddie song.”

“Not to me,” Cass said, shaking his head.  “Not to us.”

“Cass, don’t get all sappy on me,” I grumbled.  “I thought you were starting to develop pretty good taste in music.”

“You’re the one who recommended the song.”

“I didn’t recommend it!  I just said it…” I trailed off and mumbled, “…makes me think of you.”

“You know if you call my name, I will be there,” he pointed out to me.

“Well, you are an angel, so it’s kind of your job to answer prayers and all that,” I muttered, wishing he would just drop the subject.

“I do not personally answer most prayers addressed to me,” he said.  “Unless they are yours.”

“You answer Sam sometimes.”

“Yes, well, he’s family, so sometimes I feel obligated,” Cass agreed, “but if you both prayed to me at the same time, I would definitely ignore him and answer you.”

I turned to look at him, and he gave me a surprisingly shit-eating grin.

“Don’t ignore my brother,” I told him, trying not to smile back.

“But I don’t like him as much as I like you,” he said, giving me a nose-crinkling smile.

“You’re an angel, Cass, you’re not supposed to play favorites,” I scolded him, looking away quickly.

“Too late for that,” he said cheerfully.  “Unless you think I should confess my love to Sam next?”

I swallowed.

“Dean.”

My mouth felt dry.

“I was joking.”

I still didn’t know what to say.

“Dean, are we still not talking about it?” Cass asked, and he sounded weary.

“…talking about what…?” I finally spoke.

I could feel him glaring at me.  “It is insulting when you do that, you know.”

“Do what?” I complained.

“You know exactly what we are talking about Dean, and pretending that you do not belittles my feelings.”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair.  “I’m not trying to… I mean it’s not like…” I trailed off uncertainly.

“I love you, Dean,” he said, soft but assured.

“I know,” I answered quietly.

“Good.  That’s all I ask.”

“…you don’t mind that you just got Han Solo’d?” I asked, trying to make things light again.

“It’s kind of nice, actually.”

“You are so weird…”

“You realize this is the first time you’ve directly acknowledged my feelings?” he pointed out.

“It’s… not…” I tried to protest, but of course he was right.

We didn’t talk about feelings.

“Do not make me hide how I feel, Dean,” he said quietly.  “That is all I am asking.”

“You don’t have to hide, Cass,” I said.  “That’s my M.O.”

“I wish you would not hide, either.”

“Can’t get everything you want.”

“No, you cannot,” he agreed.

I turned up the volume and kept driving.