The Apocrypha of Chuck: Part 5/5
Title: The Apocrypha of Chuck (Part 5/5)
Characters: Chuck, Castiel/Dean, Bobby, Sam
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13/Takes place just after S4 finale
Word Count: 3000
Summary: A sort of Epilogue.
Author's Note: No spoilers in the comments, please.
(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)(Part 5)
It was 11:30 on a Tuesday morning. The laptop screen said so, in big white screensaver letters.
Chuck blinked. His eyelids made a slow sticky noise. He turned his head, and the rest of the room wavered into focus.
A can of Coke on the bedside table, beside the laptop.
The remains of a ticker tape parade still collected around the feet of the cot across the room.
A pair of knit slippers attached to a pair of legs in jeans, attached to the top half of Castiel on the cot. Sam beside him, pointing and saying something quietly about the book spread out in his lap.
Chuck’s morning mouth suddenly hit him, and he rolled toward the edge of the cot, cringing and making a “Blegh” sound in the back of his mouth.
The two men looked up, Sam cutting himself off mid-sentence to move to Chuck’s side. He lowered himself to his knees beside the cot and steadied Chuck’s shoulder before he could fall off the edge. “Hey,” he said, his smile broad. “Morning, Chuck. How’re you feeling?”
“Like I ate a leftover ass sandwich,” Chuck said, pushing himself upright. Sam kept his gigantic hands on Chuck’s shoulders, shooting him the Brow Ridge Of Moderate Concern, and Chuck was just beginning to wonder what the hell was this guy’s problem and what he of all people was doing reading in the panic room when he remembered.
The sword. The archangel.
“I-I died,” Chuck said, suddenly fully awake. His eyes did a circuit of the panic room and landed back on Castiel, who was standing at the other cot. “Tell me this isn’t Heaven. If Heaven is Bobby’s panic room, that’s like a Matrix: Reloaded level letdown. Hey, let go of me!” he added to Sam, who was still leaning in too close and apparently giving him some sort of visual inspection. Sam removed his hands and stood up, still focusing on him more than was probably healthy.
“It’s not Heaven,” Castiel said, smiling, and shrugged. “It’s just Bobby’s panic room.”
“Bobby’s panic room in Limbo?” Chuck guessed, and watched the fallen angel shake his head. He swallowed, shrinking slightly. “Bobby’s panic room in Hell?”
“Just Bobby’s panic room,” Castiel repeated.
“I think you’re failing to grasp the whole ‘I died’ thing.”
“Does this really look like Hell to you?” Sam asked, giving him a look like maybe he’d clonked his head on something.
“It tastes like Hell,” Chuck said, smacking his lips, and paused. He tested the texture of the sheets with his fingers and brought one foot down to feel out the slick surface of the floor. The place smelled like old books and iron. It felt like-it couldn’t be- He reached a hand behind him and pulled a mostly empty bottle of whiskey out from the gap between the cot and the wall.
It was.
Chuck patted down his chest in search of gashes. “But I-I died! I know I did - I was there!”
“Yeah, welcome to the club,” Sam said, shrugging.
Before he could ask another question, Castiel said, “The archangel.” He smirked. “They can rebuild you. They have the technology. They can make you better, stronger, faster…”
Sam shook his head. “You nerds enjoy yourselves - I’m gonna go let Dean and Bobby know he’s up.”
Chuck sat back against the wall as Sam left, feeling like the logic of the universe had been knocked clear out of it. When he trailed a hand up under his shirt - or rather, one of Sam’s Stanford t-shirts - he didn’t feel so much as a line of scar tissue where the sword had hit.
Dickface. He remembered Zachariah warning him about something like this, months ago. “We’ll only bring you back to life,” he murmured.
“You’re an asset,” Castiel said. “Heaven won’t let you die, whether you’re on their side or not.”
“Good to know.” Chuck examined his hands, then did a quick visual once-over of his head, feet, and the contents of his pajama pants. As he confirmed that everything was in place, a weight descended on him. “I died.” He sat back against the wall with a whump. “Holy crap, what a day.”
“More like a week,” Castiel said, stepping closer.“You were out for a long time.”
“And Sam - Sam was in here, without having a panic reaction?”
“He had to be. He took it upon himself to play nurse.”
Chuck’s imagination immediately leapt in to prove it hadn’t atrophied, painting Sam in a gigantic set of fantasy nurse scrubs. He blinked hard, trying to force out the image, and settled his attention on Castiel instead.
Castiel had a couple days’ scruff of beard collected and wore a rumpled shirt that looked like it may have been slept in. His hands were bunched in front of him like he didn’t quite know what to do with them, and when he eased himself down onto the cot to sit next to Chuck, it was with a slow, deliberate motion like he was debating his sitting options. Chuck imagined it as a multiple choice quiz. Option A: hands in lap; option B: sit on hands; option C: hands between knees; option D: all of the above, on a rotating basis. Castiel seemed to be leaning toward D.
“So, where’s the gleaming robes and the wash of white light?” Chuck glanced around the panic room. “Feels like coming back from the dead oughtta have more pomp and circumstance.”
“That’s what everyone says. You should’ve heard Lazarus complain.”
Chuck looked over at Castiel. The guy’s face was set hard, and his lips made a sharp line across his face, like they were trapping something inside - or maybe swallowed a bug. “How’re you doing?”
Castiel furrowed his brow, not looking at him. “I got you a Coke,” he said quietly. “And I thought you might like to stream some TV shows on Sam’s laptop when you woke up.”
“A Coke?” Chuck repeated.
“You gave your life for me.” Castiel’s eyes widened as they turned on him, and he realized they were wet. “I’m trying to be grateful, but these gifts seem insufficient.”
Chuck grabbed the Coke can and turned it over in his hands. It was lukewarm, left out for too long, and the side was dented. He smiled. “No, Cas, it’s perfect.”
Castiel stared at him like he had absolutely no idea what to do next. He took a shaky breath, and tears started down his cheeks. Chuck, half laughing and half choking up himself, hugged him.
Castiel pressed his face into Chuck’s collar and held onto him tightly, his shoulders shaking and a small, startled noise slipping out of him. So the real Castiel could surprise himself with emotion just like his happy-verse counterpart. Chuck smiled. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, patting his friend’s back. “It’s okay.”
And in an uninformed, just back from the dead sort of way, he felt like that was true.
***
There were new sigils on the walls and doors - wards that Bobby and Sam had dug up in the wake of the archangel to protect the place. Dean had a whole wall of the kitchen reserved for game plan notes for the apocalypse, and much of the furniture still lay cracked or broken from the earthquake. If it hadn’t looked like crazy people lived there before, it did now.
Chuck got a pat on the shoulder from Sam when he showed up for lunch, and a one-armed muttering hug from Dean. He hadn’t expected to ever get a hug from Dean, especially after their silent custody battle over Castiel, but the one that really surprised him was Bobby.
Bobby, who had made a hobby of avoiding him, saw him wandering into the kitchen and wiped the barbecue sauce off his hands specifically to shake Chuck’s hand. It wasn’t a warm handshake by any means, but it was a handshake from Bobby, and it lasted a good five seconds, ending with a slap on the shoulder. Chuck figured, knowing Bobby, that meant he was practically family now.
Lunch was a business affair. They talked shop about the apocalypse between bites. Chuck was surprised at how little it bothered him. When he sat back and listened, he could see past the stressful doom and destruction phrases and into the heart of the matter. Sam, Dean, Bobby, and Castiel were looking to fix the world. He could get behind that. Maybe he could even help.
After all, he’d played the self-sacrifice game now and come out unscathed on the other side. He’d saved a life - intentionally, even! As much as he wanted to object to the idea, every rational and referential molecule in his brain said that sacrificing yourself for somebody generally fell into the “heroic deeds” category. Being welcomed in on the world-saving conversation over hot wings added more weight to the idea.
Chuck Shurley: Prophet. Writer. Hero.
Well, not so much with that first part, but it’d still look great on business cards.
***
The night after he came back from the dead, Chuck made himself a plate of fries in the toaster oven underneath Dean’s Wall of Exposition and snuck them downstairs to eat while he finished writing his happy-verse. The room was his for the evening - Sam had stopped hovering around him waiting to save him from spontaneous combustion or whatever ailments a recently un-deceased person might suffer, and Castiel had taken a walk with Dean.
Writing the happy-verse felt good. The knots remaining inside Chuck loosened as he tied up the ending. There was the Keeping Castiel’s Secrets knot, which went as soon as Bobby came to terms with Castiel and Dean’s budding relationship, and the Not Really A Prophet Anymore knot, which was eased by the shmoopy kiss on the last page. The happy-verse couldn’t really do much for the Holy Crap I Died knot, but he expected that one would work itself out in time. He penned the last line, wrote “The End” at the bottom of the page, and stared at the notebooks, feeling like something was still missing.
A throat cleared behind him. Chuck jumped, glancing up.
Dean stood in the middle of the room, crossing his arms. “Getting some good writing time in?”
“Yeah,” Chuck said, frowning as he bit into a handful of fries. Something wasn’t right here, and when Dean spoke again he knew why instantly.
“So, you’ve been writing angel porn, huh, Chuck?”
Chuck nearly choked. “I-” he started. “You-but-porn?” Swallowing a hard lump of fry, he tried to compose himself. “I mean, what? Angel porn? Pfft, I don’t write angel porn. That’d be…weird. And blaspheming. And weird.”
Dean cracked a smirk. “You mean to tell me that somebody else broke into Bobby’s to write about ‘Castiel’s sinful endowment’ in your handwriting?”
Chuck couldn’t be sure what shade of pink he turned, but Crayola would probably give it a name like “Pomegranate Sunset.” Okay, time to make a retreat. He got up from his chair. “You’re not-you’re not supposed to read that! Nobody’s supposed to read that! I wouldn’t even let my beta reader read that - assuming he hasn’t been smited in the whole heavenly war thing, I guess.” He backed toward the doorway, raising a finger. “Is smited the right past tense? How do you even say that? Y’know, maybe I should go find a dictionary-”
“It’s smote,” Castiel said over his shoulder, making him jump. “And there is nothing inherently sinful about my ‘endowment.’”
“Aw, god,” Chuck muttered, curling his hands up to his head. “I’m gonna get smote. I knew it! Even before I met you guys, I just had a feeling I’d die by some kind of smiting!”
“Nobody’s gonna get smote,” Dean said, and frowned as if re-evaluating the wording. “Anyway, you were sorta dead, and we wanted to know what you’d seen coming next. Don’t worry,” he added when Chuck groaned, “Sam and Bobby haven’t read it. Just us.”
“A fascinating text,” Castiel noted, leaning against the door of the panic room.
“It’s not prophecies, though,” Chuck said, shrugging against the wall. “I mean, I-I haven’t gotten a vision since before Lucifer. It’s basically just fan fiction, fueled by panic and sleep deprivation.”
Dean and Castiel exchanged what could only be described as soulful looks.
“Some of it is indeed apocrypha,” Castiel said, trailing his eyes over to Chuck.
“Not to mention really, really weird,” Dean added, shaking his head. “Especially the focus of the story.”
“Not for the written word of the Lord,” Castiel replied, tipping his head toward the hunter. “Even across cultures, religious texts tend to concentrate on the relationship between man and the divine - in any incarnation that relationship takes. The Olympians and their human lovers, for example. Even the angels threatened with physical knowledge at Sodom and Gamorrah-”
“Dude, you know I don’t speak Bible.”
“It’s a well-known story, Dean. The cities were rife with sin, so the Lord sent down two angels-”
“Hold on a second,” Chuck said, his head spinning a little. “Are you two actually-I mean-” He rested his palms on the sides of his forehead, looking between the two men. “Wait, was I-was I right?”
“As I said,” Castiel intoned seriously, “it is not all apocrypha.”
“But if you print that in your gospel and my brother reads it,” Dean said, “I’ll kill you six ways from Sunday.”
Chuck groped for a chair. “I need to sit down.”
“Completely true or not, I still admire your work,” Castiel said. “The Winchesters hugging and sharing their feelings was my favorite fictional touch.”
“So,” Chuck said, “you’re saying all this time, I’ve still been having visions - just mixing them in with the fake stuff?”
“Essentially,” the angel answered.
“But how? I haven’t been getting the headaches that always came with my visions! I haven’t been passing out and waking up with images in my head!”
“Your process is evolving,” Castiel said. “It happens. The holy word becomes integrated with your waking mind once you accept your role for what it is. You are no longer Carver Edlund; you are the prophet Chuck. The moment you offered me a hand in the face of the archangel, you accepted this as your destiny.”
It hit Chuck, and he grimaced. “So, you mean, I’ve been writing people I know actually-with the-in the-”
“Throes of fiery sacreligious passion?” Dean offered, smirking. “Yeah, sorry, dude.”
For a brief moment, Chuck considered the idea that maybe he was in Hell after all, and this was just a special kind of Hell where the driving force of punishment was social awkwardness and the willies.
Then he saw Castiel’s face. The guy was blushing slightly and holding back a grin, looking for all the world like a schoolboy with his first crush. And y’know, it was like thirty-one flavors of weird, but anything that made Castiel smile like that couldn’t be a bad thing - not entirely.
Chuck propped an arm up on the back of his chair and dropped his chin onto his hand. “So, I’m never gonna get out of this prophet thing, am I?”
“No,” Castiel said. “But it does have its benefits.”
“Free mental porn of my friends?” Chuck said miserably.
“Magician-like resurrection abilities,” Dean said. “And an archangel ready to kick ass blindly to defend your honor, when it’s not busy trying to take down your friends.”
“Also, your visions ought to make for entertaining party tricks,” Castiel added.
Chuck drew a hand down his face. “I think I’m gonna need a lot more booze.”
“So, uh,” Dean started, looming slightly over the writing desk, “how’s this story end?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Well, I’m a little concerned Bobby might shoot one of us.”
Chuck sighed, flipping his notebook open to the proper page. “All right,” he said, handing it over to the hunter, “take a look.”
***
“Does your novel have a name?” Castiel asked.
They were sitting on the hood of the Impala, gazing down the driveway. In the deep distance, across the South Dakota plains, a patch of clouds were illuminated red - fire, probably apocalypse-related. Sam and Bobby were researching it now. Dean was probably flattening his face against the living room window having an aneurism because somebody’s butts besides his and Sam’s were pressing into his car. But Chuck didn’t care. He’d written Sam and Dean’s bi-weekly beer and exposition sessions countless times and had always wanted to try it himself.
Chuck leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I was sorta thinking ‘A Perfect World.’”
Castiel snorted, raising his PBR to his lips. “Fitting.”
“Revision’s gonna be a bitch. Especially knowing what actually happened.” Chuck took a swig, thought about it again, then took another swig to help the first one go down. “I’m gonna have to get rid of the hugging and pie.”
“Promise me something,” Castiel said.
“What?”
“Promise me you’ll write yourself into the story this time.” Castiel gave him the sort of look he usually reserved for imparting direly important information. Combined with the AC/DC t-shirt and the PBR, it was almost comical. “Your role is vital to the course of these events. Like it or not, Chuck, this is your story now, too.”
Yeah, he was beginning to get that. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give myself a cameo.”
“Main cast.”
“Recurring guest star.”
“Deal.” Castiel looked out across the landscape serenely. “So, what now?”
“Well, I was thinking,” Chuck said, giving his beer a considering look, “maybe we could kill some evil sons of bitches and raise a little hell?”
“Sounds good to me,” Castiel said, raising his PBR.
The prophet and the fallen angel clinked their bottles together and drank.
The end.
...sort of. This fic works as a stand-alone, but the story also continues with The Code of Chuck.
Characters: Chuck, Castiel/Dean, Bobby, Sam
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13/Takes place just after S4 finale
Word Count: 3000
Summary: A sort of Epilogue.
Author's Note: No spoilers in the comments, please.
(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)(Part 5)
It was 11:30 on a Tuesday morning. The laptop screen said so, in big white screensaver letters.
Chuck blinked. His eyelids made a slow sticky noise. He turned his head, and the rest of the room wavered into focus.
A can of Coke on the bedside table, beside the laptop.
The remains of a ticker tape parade still collected around the feet of the cot across the room.
A pair of knit slippers attached to a pair of legs in jeans, attached to the top half of Castiel on the cot. Sam beside him, pointing and saying something quietly about the book spread out in his lap.
Chuck’s morning mouth suddenly hit him, and he rolled toward the edge of the cot, cringing and making a “Blegh” sound in the back of his mouth.
The two men looked up, Sam cutting himself off mid-sentence to move to Chuck’s side. He lowered himself to his knees beside the cot and steadied Chuck’s shoulder before he could fall off the edge. “Hey,” he said, his smile broad. “Morning, Chuck. How’re you feeling?”
“Like I ate a leftover ass sandwich,” Chuck said, pushing himself upright. Sam kept his gigantic hands on Chuck’s shoulders, shooting him the Brow Ridge Of Moderate Concern, and Chuck was just beginning to wonder what the hell was this guy’s problem and what he of all people was doing reading in the panic room when he remembered.
The sword. The archangel.
“I-I died,” Chuck said, suddenly fully awake. His eyes did a circuit of the panic room and landed back on Castiel, who was standing at the other cot. “Tell me this isn’t Heaven. If Heaven is Bobby’s panic room, that’s like a Matrix: Reloaded level letdown. Hey, let go of me!” he added to Sam, who was still leaning in too close and apparently giving him some sort of visual inspection. Sam removed his hands and stood up, still focusing on him more than was probably healthy.
“It’s not Heaven,” Castiel said, smiling, and shrugged. “It’s just Bobby’s panic room.”
“Bobby’s panic room in Limbo?” Chuck guessed, and watched the fallen angel shake his head. He swallowed, shrinking slightly. “Bobby’s panic room in Hell?”
“Just Bobby’s panic room,” Castiel repeated.
“I think you’re failing to grasp the whole ‘I died’ thing.”
“Does this really look like Hell to you?” Sam asked, giving him a look like maybe he’d clonked his head on something.
“It tastes like Hell,” Chuck said, smacking his lips, and paused. He tested the texture of the sheets with his fingers and brought one foot down to feel out the slick surface of the floor. The place smelled like old books and iron. It felt like-it couldn’t be- He reached a hand behind him and pulled a mostly empty bottle of whiskey out from the gap between the cot and the wall.
It was.
Chuck patted down his chest in search of gashes. “But I-I died! I know I did - I was there!”
“Yeah, welcome to the club,” Sam said, shrugging.
Before he could ask another question, Castiel said, “The archangel.” He smirked. “They can rebuild you. They have the technology. They can make you better, stronger, faster…”
Sam shook his head. “You nerds enjoy yourselves - I’m gonna go let Dean and Bobby know he’s up.”
Chuck sat back against the wall as Sam left, feeling like the logic of the universe had been knocked clear out of it. When he trailed a hand up under his shirt - or rather, one of Sam’s Stanford t-shirts - he didn’t feel so much as a line of scar tissue where the sword had hit.
Dickface. He remembered Zachariah warning him about something like this, months ago. “We’ll only bring you back to life,” he murmured.
“You’re an asset,” Castiel said. “Heaven won’t let you die, whether you’re on their side or not.”
“Good to know.” Chuck examined his hands, then did a quick visual once-over of his head, feet, and the contents of his pajama pants. As he confirmed that everything was in place, a weight descended on him. “I died.” He sat back against the wall with a whump. “Holy crap, what a day.”
“More like a week,” Castiel said, stepping closer.“You were out for a long time.”
“And Sam - Sam was in here, without having a panic reaction?”
“He had to be. He took it upon himself to play nurse.”
Chuck’s imagination immediately leapt in to prove it hadn’t atrophied, painting Sam in a gigantic set of fantasy nurse scrubs. He blinked hard, trying to force out the image, and settled his attention on Castiel instead.
Castiel had a couple days’ scruff of beard collected and wore a rumpled shirt that looked like it may have been slept in. His hands were bunched in front of him like he didn’t quite know what to do with them, and when he eased himself down onto the cot to sit next to Chuck, it was with a slow, deliberate motion like he was debating his sitting options. Chuck imagined it as a multiple choice quiz. Option A: hands in lap; option B: sit on hands; option C: hands between knees; option D: all of the above, on a rotating basis. Castiel seemed to be leaning toward D.
“So, where’s the gleaming robes and the wash of white light?” Chuck glanced around the panic room. “Feels like coming back from the dead oughtta have more pomp and circumstance.”
“That’s what everyone says. You should’ve heard Lazarus complain.”
Chuck looked over at Castiel. The guy’s face was set hard, and his lips made a sharp line across his face, like they were trapping something inside - or maybe swallowed a bug. “How’re you doing?”
Castiel furrowed his brow, not looking at him. “I got you a Coke,” he said quietly. “And I thought you might like to stream some TV shows on Sam’s laptop when you woke up.”
“A Coke?” Chuck repeated.
“You gave your life for me.” Castiel’s eyes widened as they turned on him, and he realized they were wet. “I’m trying to be grateful, but these gifts seem insufficient.”
Chuck grabbed the Coke can and turned it over in his hands. It was lukewarm, left out for too long, and the side was dented. He smiled. “No, Cas, it’s perfect.”
Castiel stared at him like he had absolutely no idea what to do next. He took a shaky breath, and tears started down his cheeks. Chuck, half laughing and half choking up himself, hugged him.
Castiel pressed his face into Chuck’s collar and held onto him tightly, his shoulders shaking and a small, startled noise slipping out of him. So the real Castiel could surprise himself with emotion just like his happy-verse counterpart. Chuck smiled. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, patting his friend’s back. “It’s okay.”
And in an uninformed, just back from the dead sort of way, he felt like that was true.
***
There were new sigils on the walls and doors - wards that Bobby and Sam had dug up in the wake of the archangel to protect the place. Dean had a whole wall of the kitchen reserved for game plan notes for the apocalypse, and much of the furniture still lay cracked or broken from the earthquake. If it hadn’t looked like crazy people lived there before, it did now.
Chuck got a pat on the shoulder from Sam when he showed up for lunch, and a one-armed muttering hug from Dean. He hadn’t expected to ever get a hug from Dean, especially after their silent custody battle over Castiel, but the one that really surprised him was Bobby.
Bobby, who had made a hobby of avoiding him, saw him wandering into the kitchen and wiped the barbecue sauce off his hands specifically to shake Chuck’s hand. It wasn’t a warm handshake by any means, but it was a handshake from Bobby, and it lasted a good five seconds, ending with a slap on the shoulder. Chuck figured, knowing Bobby, that meant he was practically family now.
Lunch was a business affair. They talked shop about the apocalypse between bites. Chuck was surprised at how little it bothered him. When he sat back and listened, he could see past the stressful doom and destruction phrases and into the heart of the matter. Sam, Dean, Bobby, and Castiel were looking to fix the world. He could get behind that. Maybe he could even help.
After all, he’d played the self-sacrifice game now and come out unscathed on the other side. He’d saved a life - intentionally, even! As much as he wanted to object to the idea, every rational and referential molecule in his brain said that sacrificing yourself for somebody generally fell into the “heroic deeds” category. Being welcomed in on the world-saving conversation over hot wings added more weight to the idea.
Chuck Shurley: Prophet. Writer. Hero.
Well, not so much with that first part, but it’d still look great on business cards.
***
The night after he came back from the dead, Chuck made himself a plate of fries in the toaster oven underneath Dean’s Wall of Exposition and snuck them downstairs to eat while he finished writing his happy-verse. The room was his for the evening - Sam had stopped hovering around him waiting to save him from spontaneous combustion or whatever ailments a recently un-deceased person might suffer, and Castiel had taken a walk with Dean.
Writing the happy-verse felt good. The knots remaining inside Chuck loosened as he tied up the ending. There was the Keeping Castiel’s Secrets knot, which went as soon as Bobby came to terms with Castiel and Dean’s budding relationship, and the Not Really A Prophet Anymore knot, which was eased by the shmoopy kiss on the last page. The happy-verse couldn’t really do much for the Holy Crap I Died knot, but he expected that one would work itself out in time. He penned the last line, wrote “The End” at the bottom of the page, and stared at the notebooks, feeling like something was still missing.
A throat cleared behind him. Chuck jumped, glancing up.
Dean stood in the middle of the room, crossing his arms. “Getting some good writing time in?”
“Yeah,” Chuck said, frowning as he bit into a handful of fries. Something wasn’t right here, and when Dean spoke again he knew why instantly.
“So, you’ve been writing angel porn, huh, Chuck?”
Chuck nearly choked. “I-” he started. “You-but-porn?” Swallowing a hard lump of fry, he tried to compose himself. “I mean, what? Angel porn? Pfft, I don’t write angel porn. That’d be…weird. And blaspheming. And weird.”
Dean cracked a smirk. “You mean to tell me that somebody else broke into Bobby’s to write about ‘Castiel’s sinful endowment’ in your handwriting?”
Chuck couldn’t be sure what shade of pink he turned, but Crayola would probably give it a name like “Pomegranate Sunset.” Okay, time to make a retreat. He got up from his chair. “You’re not-you’re not supposed to read that! Nobody’s supposed to read that! I wouldn’t even let my beta reader read that - assuming he hasn’t been smited in the whole heavenly war thing, I guess.” He backed toward the doorway, raising a finger. “Is smited the right past tense? How do you even say that? Y’know, maybe I should go find a dictionary-”
“It’s smote,” Castiel said over his shoulder, making him jump. “And there is nothing inherently sinful about my ‘endowment.’”
“Aw, god,” Chuck muttered, curling his hands up to his head. “I’m gonna get smote. I knew it! Even before I met you guys, I just had a feeling I’d die by some kind of smiting!”
“Nobody’s gonna get smote,” Dean said, and frowned as if re-evaluating the wording. “Anyway, you were sorta dead, and we wanted to know what you’d seen coming next. Don’t worry,” he added when Chuck groaned, “Sam and Bobby haven’t read it. Just us.”
“A fascinating text,” Castiel noted, leaning against the door of the panic room.
“It’s not prophecies, though,” Chuck said, shrugging against the wall. “I mean, I-I haven’t gotten a vision since before Lucifer. It’s basically just fan fiction, fueled by panic and sleep deprivation.”
Dean and Castiel exchanged what could only be described as soulful looks.
“Some of it is indeed apocrypha,” Castiel said, trailing his eyes over to Chuck.
“Not to mention really, really weird,” Dean added, shaking his head. “Especially the focus of the story.”
“Not for the written word of the Lord,” Castiel replied, tipping his head toward the hunter. “Even across cultures, religious texts tend to concentrate on the relationship between man and the divine - in any incarnation that relationship takes. The Olympians and their human lovers, for example. Even the angels threatened with physical knowledge at Sodom and Gamorrah-”
“Dude, you know I don’t speak Bible.”
“It’s a well-known story, Dean. The cities were rife with sin, so the Lord sent down two angels-”
“Hold on a second,” Chuck said, his head spinning a little. “Are you two actually-I mean-” He rested his palms on the sides of his forehead, looking between the two men. “Wait, was I-was I right?”
“As I said,” Castiel intoned seriously, “it is not all apocrypha.”
“But if you print that in your gospel and my brother reads it,” Dean said, “I’ll kill you six ways from Sunday.”
Chuck groped for a chair. “I need to sit down.”
“Completely true or not, I still admire your work,” Castiel said. “The Winchesters hugging and sharing their feelings was my favorite fictional touch.”
“So,” Chuck said, “you’re saying all this time, I’ve still been having visions - just mixing them in with the fake stuff?”
“Essentially,” the angel answered.
“But how? I haven’t been getting the headaches that always came with my visions! I haven’t been passing out and waking up with images in my head!”
“Your process is evolving,” Castiel said. “It happens. The holy word becomes integrated with your waking mind once you accept your role for what it is. You are no longer Carver Edlund; you are the prophet Chuck. The moment you offered me a hand in the face of the archangel, you accepted this as your destiny.”
It hit Chuck, and he grimaced. “So, you mean, I’ve been writing people I know actually-with the-in the-”
“Throes of fiery sacreligious passion?” Dean offered, smirking. “Yeah, sorry, dude.”
For a brief moment, Chuck considered the idea that maybe he was in Hell after all, and this was just a special kind of Hell where the driving force of punishment was social awkwardness and the willies.
Then he saw Castiel’s face. The guy was blushing slightly and holding back a grin, looking for all the world like a schoolboy with his first crush. And y’know, it was like thirty-one flavors of weird, but anything that made Castiel smile like that couldn’t be a bad thing - not entirely.
Chuck propped an arm up on the back of his chair and dropped his chin onto his hand. “So, I’m never gonna get out of this prophet thing, am I?”
“No,” Castiel said. “But it does have its benefits.”
“Free mental porn of my friends?” Chuck said miserably.
“Magician-like resurrection abilities,” Dean said. “And an archangel ready to kick ass blindly to defend your honor, when it’s not busy trying to take down your friends.”
“Also, your visions ought to make for entertaining party tricks,” Castiel added.
Chuck drew a hand down his face. “I think I’m gonna need a lot more booze.”
“So, uh,” Dean started, looming slightly over the writing desk, “how’s this story end?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Well, I’m a little concerned Bobby might shoot one of us.”
Chuck sighed, flipping his notebook open to the proper page. “All right,” he said, handing it over to the hunter, “take a look.”
***
“Does your novel have a name?” Castiel asked.
They were sitting on the hood of the Impala, gazing down the driveway. In the deep distance, across the South Dakota plains, a patch of clouds were illuminated red - fire, probably apocalypse-related. Sam and Bobby were researching it now. Dean was probably flattening his face against the living room window having an aneurism because somebody’s butts besides his and Sam’s were pressing into his car. But Chuck didn’t care. He’d written Sam and Dean’s bi-weekly beer and exposition sessions countless times and had always wanted to try it himself.
Chuck leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I was sorta thinking ‘A Perfect World.’”
Castiel snorted, raising his PBR to his lips. “Fitting.”
“Revision’s gonna be a bitch. Especially knowing what actually happened.” Chuck took a swig, thought about it again, then took another swig to help the first one go down. “I’m gonna have to get rid of the hugging and pie.”
“Promise me something,” Castiel said.
“What?”
“Promise me you’ll write yourself into the story this time.” Castiel gave him the sort of look he usually reserved for imparting direly important information. Combined with the AC/DC t-shirt and the PBR, it was almost comical. “Your role is vital to the course of these events. Like it or not, Chuck, this is your story now, too.”
Yeah, he was beginning to get that. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give myself a cameo.”
“Main cast.”
“Recurring guest star.”
“Deal.” Castiel looked out across the landscape serenely. “So, what now?”
“Well, I was thinking,” Chuck said, giving his beer a considering look, “maybe we could kill some evil sons of bitches and raise a little hell?”
“Sounds good to me,” Castiel said, raising his PBR.
The prophet and the fallen angel clinked their bottles together and drank.
The end.
...sort of. This fic works as a stand-alone, but the story also continues with The Code of Chuck.