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“I couldn’t find you earlier.”
Sam was sitting on the couch, his legs propped up and his laptop resting on his lap. He didn’t look up when his brother interrupted his Stranger Things binge on Netflix. “Oh, yeah?” Sam muttered absently. “That sucks. Wonder why.”
“Yeah, I am wondering why,” Dean continued, crossing his arms across his chest. “Because this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”
That caught Sam’s attention. The younger finally glanced up from the laptop to see the appraising look on his brother’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you disappear sometimes,” Dean said. “You and Cas.”
Sam reluctantly paused his show. “We hang out sometimes. Is that a crime?”
“Someone’s getting defensive.”
Sam laughed in disbelief. “I am not!”
Dean raised his palms in a placating gesture. “Then tell me where you guys disappear to.”
Sam hesitated. He wasn’t sure what Dean could be talking about, except for his and Castiel’s book club. It was the only time the two of them ‘disappeared’ to a place that Dean wouldn’t be able to find. Their book club wasn’t a secret, exactly, but the elder Winchester still didn’t know about it.
When he and Cas had first started their book club, they had only been meeting in Sam’s room. It hadn’t felt like a big deal, and it wasn’t the kind of thing Sam thought Dean would be interested in knowing. Then they had gotten an official book club room, and Sam hadn’t been hiding their club from Dean; it just never came up in conversation. After a while, Sam had realized that Cas had never told Dean about the club room either, and had decided to make it a game to see how long it would take Dean to realize something was up.
It looked like the game was ending, though.
“The bunker’s a big place,” Sam said with a shrug. “We go exploring sometimes. Just the other day, we found this room that contains a detailed history on the other Men of Letters chapter houses in America, and even a biography from the founder of--”
“Sam,” Dean sighed.
The younger Winchester tried not to smile. He was lying, of course-- he and Cas hadn’t found a room like that, and they weren’t exploring at the times Dean couldn’t find them. He had figured launching into a ‘boring’ tidbit would get Dean to drop the subject, and Sam was pleased to see he had been correct.
Until Dean continued talking. “That’s such BS and you know it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said, deciding he would keep playing dumb until he could ask Cas what their next move should be.
Dean pointed an accusing finger at his brother. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll burn your fancy schmancy shampoo bottles. No more L’Oreal.”
“I don’t even use L’Oreal,” Sam pointed out with a frown.
“Not for long you don’t.”
Dean looked Sam up and down with narrowed eyes before turning away.
“Dean!” Sam called after him. “Don’t you dare touch my shampoo!”
The elder Winchester didn’t reply, and Sam looked after him nervously. There was no way Dean would actually set fire to his shampoo, right?
“Hello, Sam.”
“Hey, Cas.” The Winchester smiled when Cas opened the door to his bedroom. The angel had a large blue smudge of paint across his nose, indicating that he had been painting something before Sam had knocked. “Uh, you’ve got something on your face there.”
Castiel’s brows pinched in annoyance before he passed a glowing hand over his face, making the paint vanish. “Did I get it?”
Sam chuckled. “Yeah, you got it. Can I come in?”
Castiel stepped aside. Sam moved to sit on the bed, and Cas took the chair next to the desk.
“Dean’s onto us,” Sam said without preamble. “He just asked me why he can’t find us sometimes.”
Castiel’s lips twitched. “And what do you think we should do?”
“I’m not sure. Do you think we should just tell him? It’s been, what, four months now?”
“Four months, three weeks, and 78 hours since we made the decision to keep it a secret,” Castiel corrected.
Sam blinked. Right, Cas had that weird angelic internal clock thing. “We’ve had a good run of it, but I guess I just… I kinda like having something with you that Dean doesn’t know about.”
“It doesn’t have to change anything.” Cas tilted his head. “If you don’t want it to.”
Castiel was right, of course. “So we tell him.”
Cas nodded. “We tell him.”
The two of them left Castiel’s room, on their way to find Dean.
“You know he’s probably gonna make fun of us for it,” Sam pointed out as they made their way down one of the halls in the dormitory wing.
“Probably. But we’ve survived worse.”
Castiel stopped walking suddenly, his face scrunching up in confusion. Sam turned to angle a questioning look at him.
“Do you smell something burning?”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…”
Sam rushed toward the bathroom, hoping to stop his dumbass brother before the idiot could do irreparable damage to his lungs or, more importantly, to Sam’s shampoo. The undeniable smell of burning plastic reached his nose as the Winchester moved down the hall. On the way, Sam ran past his room and was horrified to realize that the smell got less intense the farther he moved down the hall. “Oh my god,” Sam groaned as he doubled back and stood outside his door. “The idiot actually did it.”
Castiel finally caught up and looked between Sam and the door with a sympathetic expression. “Do I even want to know?”
“He said he’d burn my shampoo if I didn’t tell him what we were up to. I didn’t think he’d really do it, let alone in my room . We’re underground. How the hell am I supposed to get the smell out? Does he even know how many toxins you release when burning plastic!?” Sam ran his hands through his hair in frustration. Dean was so dead.
“I don’t need to breathe, so I can deal with the shampoo,” Castiel said gently. “And if Dean’s still in there, I’ll knock him out so you can take whatever vengeance on him you’d like.”
“Thanks, Cas.”
The angel shot him a small smile before disappearing into Sam’s room, leaving the hunter to try to process what had just happened.
Castiel re-emerged from the room a few moments later carrying a small metal trash can. He had taken off his trenchcoat and was using it to keep his hands from being burnt. He met Sam’s eyes, looking highly annoyed at the small wisps of smoke that were still drifting out of the can and into his face, even though the actual fire had burnt out before either of them had discovered Dean’s prank. “He wasn’t in there.”
“What are you going to do with that?” Sam asked, wrinkling his nose at the molten plastic.
“Get rid of it. Unless,” Castiel paused. “Unless you think Dean would want it back.”
Sam quirked a brow at the angel. “What do you…” Sam stopped, suddenly realizing what Castiel was insinuating. The angel wasn’t smiling exactly, but the mischievous glint in his eyes was unmistakable. “Oh. No, you’re right; he put so much effort into making this little concoction, of course Dean is going to want this back.”
“We could leave it in his room for him,” Castiel cleared his throat. “If you’d like.”
“Definitely.”
Dean had a self-satisfied grin on his face when Sam and Cas found him in the war room. “Hey there, Sammy. Cas.”
“You’re insane,” Sam said flatly.
Dean just shrugged. “All’s fire in love and war, kid.”
“This isn’t funny, Dean!”
The elder Winchester cocked his head, pretending to consider that for a few seconds. “Should I have put Nair in your shampoo instead?”
“Dean, the smell is so bad I’m scared to go in my room!”
“Then use a guest bedroom for a few days until it airs out, princess.”
“We are underground!” Sam gawked, his arms gesticulating wildly to get his point across. “Do you know how long that is going to take?”
Dean paused, seeming genuinely put off by that. “Oh, shit. I didn’t think about that…”
Beside Sam, Castiel cleared his throat. “I haven’t forgotten what you did to my rug. Why is it your first instinct to set fire to things that you don’t understand?”
“First of all: Sam helped burn your rug, it wasn’t just me. Second: what you call ‘setting things on fire,’ I call ‘brightening up a room.’”
“It’s called vandalism, Dean!” Sam felt obligated to point out.
“I gave you an out!” Dean protested. “All you had to do was tell me what was going on between you and Cas, but you left me no choice.”
“ I left you no-- ” Sam had to cut himself off before he completely lost his mind. He did not have the emotional capacity to handle this. “I could have been in a courtroom right now,” the younger Winchester muttered to himself. “Being a lawyer. Doing lawyer things.”
Castiel moved his arm as though to put a sympathetic hand on Sam’s shoulder, but seemed to think better of it at the last second. “Your reaction was completely uncalled for,” Cas said, chastising the elder Winchester instead. “We weren’t even up to anything nefarious. Sam and I started a book club together.”
Dean let out an incredulous breath. “A what?”
Castiel rolled his eyes. “A book club.”
“A book club?”
Castiel got a look on his face like he was wondering if he had accidentally started talking in Enochian. “Yes, a book club.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“I’ve been told frequently that I’m not good at that,” Cas pointed out with a frown. “Mostly by you.”
Dean started grinning again. “Oh, I’ve so gotta see this.”
“Only if you apologize to your brother,” Castiel said disapprovingly.
Dean groaned, but cut himself off when Cas leveled a glare at him. “Sorry for messing with your room or whatever, bitch.”
“Jerk.”
The elder Winchester jumped out of his chair. “Alright, fellas. Take me to your leader.”
“So this is the Fortress of Geekitude,” Dean said as he walked in.
“We don’t call it that,” Sam said sorely.
“Then what do you call it?” Dean asked with a raised brow.
Sam exchanged a look with Cas, who shrugged. “I guess we don’t really call it anything.”
“Then I hereby dub thee the Fortress of Geekitude.”
Dean snickered when he saw a pair of hot pink bean bag chairs to one side of the room. “Really?”
“They’re comfy,” Cas said, tilting his head at the Winchester.
“Yeah, but hot pink? Really?”
“It was the only colour in stock at the time. Why? What’s wrong with the colour?”
Sam elbowed his brother before he could reply-- he already knew what Dean was going to say, and he didn’t need to torture Cas with any of his toxic masculinity. It wasn’t like colours had genders, anyway.
“Hey!” Dean glared.
Sam shrugged nonchalantly. “I saw a spider.”
“Liar,” the elder Winchester muttered under his breath with a pout. He broke away from Sam and Cas, walking around the room looking at the artworks adorning the walls before the bookshelf on the left-hand wall caught his attention. “ The Poisonwood Bible, Romeo and Juliet, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes… Geez, are these the books you guys have been reading? We are adding The Lord of the Rings to this the first chance we get.”
“We?” Sam questioned. “You’re joining our book club?”
“Sure, occasionally. I can’t let you completely ruin Cas’ taste in books. Besides, I think it’s pretty obvious that you want me around.”
Sam laughed at him. “We do?” Dean really believed that? After the shampoo fiasco?
Dean gave his brother a confused look before his eyes widened in apparent realization. “Oh. You don’t know.” A shit-eating grin spread over his face before he turned to Cas. “You must have done the decorating in here, didn’t you?”
Castiel’s lips twitched upward and he nodded.
Dean laughed. He moved to stand beside Cas, throwing an arm around his shoulder as he leaned his full weight into the angel. “Cas, you’re awesome, have I ever told you that?”
“I’m sorry, is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” Sam asked, feeling annoyed and oddly betrayed.
“I dunno,” Dean started. “I kinda like knowing something that you don’t for once.”
Castiel shook his head at Dean. “The chairs, Sam.”
Sam glanced over at the table and three high stool chairs in the middle of the room. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s three of them, Sammy,” Dean said slowly. “There’s only two of those bean bag chairs, but they’re not exactly your chair of choice, are they? I bet you’d get stuck if you tried sitting in them.”
Sam felt blood rise into his cheeks, and Dean’s eyes immediately rounded.
“Oh my god,” the elder Winchester said. “You actually got stuck in one?”
The younger Winchester turned accusing eyes onto Castiel. “I always assumed that the stools just came in a set of three.”
Castiel shrugged. “I always knew Dean would find out eventually, and I wanted him to have a place with us, if he so wanted.”
“Okay, that’s totally fine. But the part I don’t understand is, you must have bought those two bean bag chairs with you and Dean in mind--”
“Well, I was only going to buy one for Dean, but then I realized that he was likely to try to force me into sitting in one, so I begrudgingly got two,” Cas interrupted.
“But you must have known that I wouldn’t fit in them! And yet when I tried to sit in one, for you, you didn’t try to stop me! You just let me get stuck!”
“I thought it would be funny,” Castiel said. Then he smiled. “And I was right.”
Dean started laughing so hard that Sam was sure the guy would have fallen down if he wasn’t already leaning against Cas.
Sam ran his hands down his face, horrified as he realized that these were the two people he trusted the most in the entire world, the people whose hands he would, and often did, put his life in. What a horrible, horrible miscalculation on his part.
“Oh, come on, Sammy,” Dean said between laughs. “Lighten up.”
“Was that another goddamn fire pun?”
Dean started laughing harder, and even Castiel had a wicked-looking smirk on his face.
“I literally hate you both,” Sam said. But he quickly found himself laughing, too.
The three of them had lived through a lot of pain, suffering, and guilt. They had rebelled, died, been manipulated and tricked and tortured, and done their fair share of torturing. They had made mistakes and been to Hell itself. But everything they had been through had led them to this moment, where the biggest thing Sam had to worry about was being the butt of his brothers’ jokes.
And that was a reason to smile if Sam had ever had one.
Dean noticed the putrid smell of burnt plastic the second he entered the dormitory wing, and had to admit to himself that he hadn’t thought this particular joke through. He almost felt bad for his brother. If it smelled this bad in the hall, he didn’t want to imagine the state of Sam’s room.
Still, Dean reminded himself, he had given Sammy a chance to fess up, but the stupid moose hadn’t taken it. What had happened after could hardly be considered Dean’s fault.
He was still snickering at the idea of Sam and Cas having a book club. Where did they think they were, at a high school English class or something? How could he be related to or be friends with such dorks? ( Never mind how happy it had made him to see those three stools sitting around the table-- three, not two-- or the steadily growing list of books he was realizing he could suggest for their club, because he, unlike his brothers, was not a dork. There wasn’t a single dork bone in his body, because Vonnegut and Tolkien did not count, and neither did Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Doctor Who. Those things weren’t dorky, they were just plain badass.)
How had those two managed to go so long without Dean finding out about their little club? Was it really so easy to have a secret hideout in this place? Dean’s lips curled into a smile as he thought: ‘If they can do it, why can’t I?’
How cool would that be? He could drag in a foosball table, some posters from his favorite horror movies, some mood lighting-- and he could get a TV! No more watching Netflix from laptop screens, he could get an actual TV; and if he got a TV, of course he would have to get a recliner to sit on, probably a La-Z-Boy. And a bar. Obviously he’d have a bar, though that might take a bit more work.
Excitement zipped through him like a firework, getting ready to explode in a dazzling frenzy. He could have his own secret room in the bunker. His own Dean-cave. ‘Awesome.’
Dean was still high from the thrill of his brand new idea, so he didn’t notice that the foul smell now permeating in the Bunker was getting stronger the closer he got to his room. It wasn’t until he opened his door that he realized anything was amiss.
Right in the middle of his room, someone had grabbed every last one of his flannels from his closet and piled them into a mountain. And at the peak of that mountain was an overturned garbage can. Trails of molten plastic wound down and between his flannels, already hardening like lava turned into igneous rock. Dean stared at the sight in open-mouthed horror.
“SAM!”