Morgue Files

Sam and Castiel have a running debate on whether or not it's technically accurate to call the current configuration of the world "post-apocalyptic."  Cas argues that given the fact that the actual apocalypse was deep-sixed halfway through, it's an exaggeration of circumstances; Sam says that when the entire city of Detroit is destroyed by blight, it's time to fucking wake up and smell the sulfur.  

The world after it nearly was ended and the world before are mostly the same: same people, same problems, same long ribbons of asphalt and bullshit reality TV.  Mostly these days, Sam and Cas are in the clean-up business, tearing through the remaining demons that hadn't fled when Michael's searing grace had razed the horizon, coaxing ghosts out of old houses, tackling God damn trolls under actual fucking bridges.  Spells in Enochian are orders of magnitude more powerful than Latin — that's another debate, about whether magic is watered-down by translation, by interpretation, by distance from its original tongue — and Cas's grace may have been ripped out of him, but all the words are still on his tongue.

They're sitting in a Waffle House off of 15-501, and Cas is methodically working through his hash browns, coffee, and cigarettes when Sam finally snaps:

"Seriously, smoking?"

"I'm exploring human vices," Cas answers, and takes another drag of coffee.  

"Yeah, I got that between the drinking and the gambling last month," Sam tells him.

Cas is a dangerously good poker player and a fucking tragic drunk. Dragging him out of a bar and watched him throw up, gasping, "Dean, Dean," sucked, and it hurt, and Sam never wants to do it again but he will.  Dean's summary possessions left on Earth are his car and his gun and his fallen angel, and Sam's not tossing any of those; he's holding on as tightly as he can.  

"Why are you exploring human vices?" Sam asks.

Cas closes his eyes, rubs the heel of his hand into the ridge of his brow — and it's a move that's so effortlessly and unselfconsciously human it makes Sam's stomach clench — still holding the cigarette between two fingers.  

"This is what being human is about, isn't it?" Cas says, after a long beat, the sound of cars hauling down the highway resonant through the scarred glass of the window. 

There are a lot of things Sam can say to that: his knee-jerk response that being human isn't as trite as a collection of their most commonly shared sins; that smoking is terrible for Castiel's now-mortal lungs; that cigarettes are fucking disgusting.  He could pull out his trump card, the one he hates using but will if he has to, that Dean hated smoking, the ugly taste of it on someone's mouth, that Dean wouldn't like it.  Or Sam could really be a shit and say that putting him in a position of having to wean Cas off of nicotine eventually is not why Dean agreed to die for all of humanity, but none of these things make it past his lips, sealed away behind Sam's teeth, and he just drinks his coffee and watches Cas watch the cars go by.

This is one of those moments, when the question burning under Sam's skin is so obvious he doesn't know how Cas doesn't see it — with or without his grace.  Sam thinks people at the counter can see it, that people in Kentucky can see it, how much he wants to ask Cas what he lost, the day they both lost Dean.  

"Fucking — Jesus God damn Christ, you pussies," Gabriel says, suddenly in their booth, stealing Cas's coffee, and putting out his cigarette, "suck it up already."

***

It's been a year since Dean died, since Sam wended through the rubble and shit of Detroit after Michael had locked Lucifer back into his cages in hell, and found Cas curled over Dean's body in the gutted-out skeleton of an opera house.  Sam doesn't really remember much of it, just climbing the stairs onto the stage and listening to the thunder and lighting outside, cracking, the great downpour of rain that would fall for a week, running off blood and sickness and healing up great rifts in the earth, mending the open scars across hills and valleys where demons had poured out among the population, where garrisons of angels had gathered in suicide rushes.  He knows his shadow had fallen across Castiel's back, bent over Dean's body, that Sam had fallen to his knees and seen his brother's face — eyes closed, unlined with worry, unoccupied and abandoned — and listened to the ugly, wet noises Cas was making, hands fisted in Dean's jacket.  

Sam hasn't grieved for Dean, not really.  He doesn't know how to, after he'd lost his brother once and had him come back.  It's been written into the interior of his heart, like a burn, a scar, the tissue knotted over and indelible now, and Sam doesn't know how to convince himself it's real this time, that Dean's not coming back, that there won't be another knock on the door.  It's sick and fucked up but sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and wishes he could be consumed with grief the way Cas is, that it would eat him up like a cancer or twist like a knife to the gut, because then at least he wouldn't be waiting for it, that awful realization that has to come eventually, that this is not a question faith can answer.

***

Sam's knee-jerk reaction to seeing Gabriel still tilts closer toward "stab first, ask questions later," but he manages to dial it back long enough for Cas to steal back his coffee and snarl, "What do you want?"

"Bitchy," Gabriel sighs, vast in his disapproval, and he turns to Sam before adding, "It's been a year guys, even the Victorians would have you in half-mourning — "

Cas throws his steaming-hot coffee in Gabriel's face.

It's a neat flick of his wrist, before Sam can tell Gabriel to go fuck himself, and everything else in the Waffle House just stops. The short order cooks stop cooking — the range still steaming, hissing — and the cash register stops, all the previously rowdy patrons and cigarette waving, hungover college girls falling silent, conspicuously not looking. Sam wants to feel mortified, to stand up and start apologizing, but Cas just says, voice acid and furious, "Leave."

Gabriel stares at him a long time before he wipes his face off — more or less — with a free hand, and finally the Waffle House bursts into life again, someone calls out an order, someone else breaks a mug, and Gabriel says, "I didn't know you felt so strongly about it, little brother."

Castiel just looks away, pointed, at the window once more, and Sam asks Gabriel, "Why are you here?"

Gabriel looks almost like he did back when Sam thought he was the Trickster, always on the verge of fucking someone unnecessarily, but his gaze catches the profile of Cas's face again and he sobers, the gleam in his eyes softening into something with more forgiving edges. Without looking at Sam, he says, "I'm here to deliver a message."

Sam tenses. "What kind of message?" he asks, because he's never gotten a message from heaven that hasn't ended badly, and he's tired down to his bones, barely holding on.

"Untwist your panties, sweetheart," Gabriel counsels, smirking, and tugs something out of the inside of his battered jacket. "Here," he says, tapping Cas on the shoulder with the flat side of an envelope. "It's for you guys."

"We do not want a message," Cas says to the window, stubborn, and Sam wonders about the constantly changing, the way Castiel can speak for Sam now, too.

"Really?" Gabe asks, feigning shock. "Even if it's from Dean?"

"That's not funny," Sam warns. He can hear his voice shaking.

"Despite the source," Gabriel sighs, "this is not a trick — I'm here in my other capacity."

"I wasn't aware you had a job other than designated asshole," Sam says, but it comes out flat, and he can see across the table that Cas has closed his eyes, swallowing hard, and Sam thinks Dean would ache to see it.

Gabriel grins at him. "I know, it's hard to imagine that God would see fit to heap other responsibilities upon that grave duty, but in addition to keeping everybody on their toes, I am also Heaven's messenger," he says, easy, without any offense, and he sets the letter down on the dirty formica of their Waffle House table and adds, "Anyway — Dean stalked me across the gold-paved streets of heaven for a week until I relented and said I'd bring ya'll this note."

"How is — " is as far as Sam gets before he realizes he's talking to thin air, Gabriel here and gone in the blink of an eye, and then all that's left to do is to stare at the letter left on the table, amid syrup-sticky plates and ketchup smears and years of spilt coffee, with handwriting so familiar Sam feels something well up in his throat lettering out:

To Sam and Cas. Open me already, you douchebags.

***

They don't, because for all that they fight monsters, they're both cowards when it comes to Dean. The letter — wrinkled from Gabriel's pocket, the ink smudged on the front — sits in the glovebox of the Impala, and they don't talk about it for days and days.

They don't talk about it while they're taking out a werewolf thirty miles outside of Asheville; they don't talk about it when they burn out a nest of vampires in Georgia. They don't talk about it when they swing into Sioux Falls to irritate Bobby for a week; they definitely don't talk about it when they have individual and separate meltdowns after the Impala gets rear-ended by some douchenozzle in a Hummer and they go back to Sioux Falls and lets Bobby say, "Boys — you — God damn ijits," before showing them into the house.

Sam spends most of his time at Bobby's in the library, ordering and reordering Bobby's books, and when that's done, he goes on a honey-do jag, because Bobby's house is as old and creaky and cantankerous as he is. He oils hinges, fixes knobs and handles, takes his life into his own hands and fights an epic battle against the upstair hallway wiring, and when he goes downstairs to look for alcohol — booze and electrical work being two great tastes that taste great together — he sees Bobby and Cas huddled around the Impala.

Michael, in addition to shuttering Lucifer back into hell, razing most of Detroit into the ground with the snap of his fingers, and killing Sam's brother, had taken two seconds out of the apocalypse to bring Bobby legs.

"I'd rather have Dean, you sumbitch," Bobby had gasped, because it was Michael, and it turns out when Cas had zapped them places and patched them up, he'd used a soft touch and not a hard sell, and Bobby had been sweating bullets, gritting his teeth in pain.

Michael had smirked, borrowed face mean, and he'd said, "Well, this is what you're getting instead," and left for Michigan.

So Bobby's mobile again, and leaning over the crunched-up back-end of the Impala, making clucking noises like a regretful aunt, pointing and pointing and talking to Cas. Sam can see that look on Castiel's face, part anger and part hurt, and Sam wonders what it's like to have spent the entire arc of time beyond caring only to find yourself fucked up over some twisted metal and steel. It's one of those petty human things Dean tried to explain to Cas, that Sam didn't think he'd ever need to know, that they were both exercised over nothing apparently, because it seems to be written into the flesh, burned into the body and bones.

"It looks beyond repair," Castiel says, sounding grave.