Title: Turn Back the Clock, chapter 7
Author: lt_indigo
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG (this chapter - overall R)
Length: 1,885 words (this part)
Warning: none
Summary: In which Sam catches up with what's been going on.

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Sam was in the shower when Missouri and Ellie returned empty-handed from the store. They were both smiling expectantly as they came through the door.

“You couldn’t call and tell me?” Missouri scolded him good-naturedly. “And I’ll bet you haven’t made up the room for your brother yet.”

That was true: Dean hadn’t even thought about making up Missouri’s third and final spare room for Sam. Part of the reasoning there was that he had kind of assumed they would go right back to Bobby’s once Sam was back.

Missouri looked unimpressed. “If you think that brother of yours is going to use up all my hot water and not even say ‘hello’ before you disappear off to South Dakota, you have got another thing coming, Dean Winchester.”

Ellie was no help: she was slouched against the counter, grinning at him.

“Don’t mess with the psychic,” was all she had to offer.

“It would seem rude, after Missouri has been such a superb hostess to you,” Cas said, the traitor.

And that was how poor, fresh-out-of-Hell Sam, innocently bumbling through after washing half of Kansas off him, got ambushed in the kitchen by an archangel and two insane women.

 

.oOo.

 

As it turned out, Missouri and Ellie really did need to go to the store, because even though they had gone out on a pretense before to give Dean and Cas some privacy, they hadn’t factored feeding a giant into their grocery shopping earlier in the week. Cas, in a rare moment of subtlety, decided that something in Heaven needed his attention and popped off, but not before clasping a hand to Sam’s shoulder and then turning and kissing Dean. Which was a touch less subtle than Dean could have done with right at that moment, because he really wanted to know whether or not Sam was about to start hallucinating Lucifer, or if he was missing his soul or some other such shit. God had to have done a better job of bringing Sam back than Cas and Death, right?

Of course, after that display, Sam had other ideas about how the conversation should go:

“You and Cas, huh?” Sam had a shrewd look and a lightly teasing tone in his voice.

“Shut up.”

“I owe Bobby fifty bucks. I didn’t think you’d work it out for another couple years.”

Dean snickered into his coffee. “You and Bobby can work that out between you then.”

Sam blinked, unsurprisingly confused. “Huh?”

Dean shrugged. “Cas is from now. I’m not. Shit happened; God kicked me back two and a half years to stop it.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Did you end the world again?”

Dean kicked him under the table, because no, he wasn’t taking the blame for it, and Sam was just being a shit by suggesting it, and damn, it was good to see that Sammy had his soul (because RoboSam had never smiled like that, all warm and dimples and mixed with exasperation).

There was a moment of comfortable silence then:

“So, you met God?”

“Yep.”

“What was He like?”

Dean shrugged. “Not as much of a dick as I expected,” he admitted. “Still a dick, though. Wouldn’t let me come back before the end of the apocalypse, insisted you spent a little bit of time in Hell; something about teaching Mikey and Luci a lesson.”

Sam shifted uncomfortably as the topic they had both been avoiding inevitably came up. “Sorry I bugged you about not talking about Hell,” he mumbled.

Dean eyeballed him warily. “You okay? Not about to go gaga on me? Not seeing Lucifer or anything like that?”

Sam shook his head and kept his eyes on his mug. “No. It kind of feels like it was a dream. I can remember it, but not like it was a real thing.”

Dean sighed with relief, because that didn’t sound like Death’s wall at all. “God said he’d fix it so you didn’t come out crazy and broken. Didn’t actually believe Him until now.”

That did get Sam looking up. Dean capitalised on the opportunity to look him in the eye.

“You need to tell me right away if it stops feeling like a dream, or if you start hallucinating Lucifer.”

“Dean? How long did I spend in the Cage last time?”

It was Dean who broke the eye contact, because Sammy was always too smart for his own good. “Year and a half.”

“I didn’t come out of it too good, did I?”

Dean didn’t have to say anything. He rarely had to say anything to Sam, because the freak knew anyway, but had an irritating tendency to try and get Dean to tell him anyway because he was a giant girl.

“Nope.” He took a gulp of his coffee and hoped that Sam would drop it.

“So, you and your Cas, from your time – was that a thing too?”

Dean wanted to laugh, or downplay it or something, but Sam had that look that he normally only pulled out for the families of victims, or witnesses. Dean hated that look, but it was fucking useful, because it made people want to spill their guts. Unfortunately, because it was usually reserved for other people, Dean hadn’t developed a full immunity to it yet.

“No,” he admitted under duress. “I’d lost him.”

Sam nodded knowingly, probably piecing things together correctly inside that enormous brain of his. He didn’t say anything more, which was a blessing because it meant that maybe he could go back to repressing how Cas had been at the end and just think of Cas being vibrant and bursting with all-new superpowers; enough to gently intimidate Raphael into not being a dick but not enough to cause a breakdown and need Dean to go all Uncle Ben on him (or Gabriel, because Dean was pretty sure that she would know the line too).

“He’s better,” Sam observed, steering the conversation back into safer waters. “He, um, wasn’t looking so great last time I saw him.”

No, last time Sam had seen Cas, he had been a red splatter across Stull Cemetery. He was infinitely better now than then.

“God brought him back last time too,” Dean put in, just in case that hadn’t been clear before. “Got some kind of promotion but not enough to kick Raphael’s ass. This time round, he’s an archangel.”

Sam frowned, clearly trying to piece together a story from that. His expression was slightly pissy, as if he was wishing fervently that Dean was better at telling him stuff that might be important.

“Raphael’s the archangel that killed Cas the first time, right?”

Oh yeah, Sam hadn’t been there when Dean had first met old Raphie: that had just been the two of them. Only Dean had seen just how awesome Cas had been even when he was falling and his batteries were draining, how he had stood up to and even taunted an archangel even when he was terrified of being turned into jam (again).

“Yeah. Douchebag is still hell-bent on the apocalypse, didn’t take no for an answer last time. Cas ended up starting a civil war he couldn’t win, did something really stupid.”

Now Sam looked as if he was starting to understand, but there was something stopping him. And, being Sam, he didn’t exactly hold back on what that was: “Are you telling me you got God to turn Cas into an archangel?”

Dean grinned. “I’m just that awesome.”

“But it’s still not going so well for him, is it?”

Dean shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like it. Raph’s a stubborn bastard, still wants the script we tore up back.”

Sammy, snarky little princess that he was, rolled his eyes. “Sounds about right for an angel. So I guess we’re waiting to see what Raphael decides?”

“Yep.”

“What’s the plan until then, Future Boy? What do we need to do?”

Dean shrugged and wished, not for the first time, that he wished he had a beer rather than coffee to drink while he was thinking.

“Hunt, I guess,” he answered finally. “Go see Bobby. The usual.”

“You don’t know?”

Dean glared at Sam, but there was no heat in it. “I got out last time, just like you wanted.”

“You did?” Sam sounded incredulous, and maybe slightly awed. Dean realised that Sam had never expected him to actually do it.

“Hooked up with Ben and Lisa,” he confirmed; “got a job, and a truck: whole nine yards. And I put them in danger. Almost got them both killed, too many times, because there’s no such thing as ‘out’; not for us.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped and Dean knew he was blaming himself for everything that had happened to them in Dean’s past. And while it was true that if Sam hadn’t asked it of him specifically Dean would never have thought to go to them in the first place, it definitely wasn’t his fault.

“I could have ignored you,” Dean offered. “Didn’t have to go to them.”

Sam sighed. “No, I guess you could have ignored my dying wish. And if I’d realised you knew you swung Cas’ way, I might not have said ‘Lisa’ specifically.”

Dean definitely wanted something stronger than coffee for this conversation: the one Sam had been flirting around for a while with his questions about Cas. Except…

“What? You knew?”

Sam laughed softly and looked at Dean almost pityingly. “Who didn’t? Even if you and Cas didn’t stare longingly into each other’s eyes all the freaking time, the way you drooled over Doctor Sexy was a dead giveaway.”

“I didn’t drool!”

There was another snort of laughter. “Yeah, you kind of did.”

“And me and Cas don’t stare.”

Sam gave him A Look. It was a patronising Look; one that Sam shouldn’t be good at given he was the kid brother here. Kid brothers don’t get to pull Looks like that.

“Dean, you were so obvious that me and Bobby weren’t the only people with money in the pool. Ellen and Jo got in too.”

“But…”

Ellen and Jo had met Cas a grand total of once. One time, in one of the shittiest twenty-four hours Dean had ever had the misfortune to live through. And that included losing his Dad and Sam.

“My point exactly,” Sam said as if he could read Dean’s mind. Not that he really needed to – it was pretty obvious what Dean was thinking.

“Jo would have lost out too, by the way,” Sam added, conversationally. He took a mouthful of coffee before he continued: “She didn’t think you’d ever get past the fact he’s got a male vessel.”

Dean shrugged, mostly because he really didn’t want to be having this conversation any more; not with his little brother.

“It’s not about that.”

“I know,” Sam said gently. “Never was, with you two. How long ago were you done with this conversation?”

He had a gentle, wry smile, and Dean couldn’t help but smile back, though he had the feeling it was probably pained.

“Before you started.”

Sam nodded. “Bobby’s?”

“Tomorrow,” Dean decided. “Missouri’s an awesome cook, and she’s put up with us for a week already. Be rude not to stay at least tonight and get some rest before Bobby puts us to work.”

Sam smiled. “Sounds perfect.”

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