Unexpected Destinies Chapter 188
Title: Unexpected Destinies
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: up to and including Exile on Main St., AU from the end of season 5
Warnings: AU, slash
Word Count: 3,365
Summary: Sam finally comes to a revelation about his brother and Castiel after witnessing them in a private moment.
PRESENT
God, but it was colder than a witch's tit out there!
The moment that Sam realized that the expression had crossed his mind, he groaned. It was one that Dean had delighted in using back when his big brother had just started high school and had first heard it from some of the older kids at school. Just how Dean had convinced the seniors to let him hang with them he wasn't entirely sure, but it could quite possibly have had something to do with the Impala. His brother had been driving it at the time since Dad had been recovering from a broken leg courtesy of an enraged poltergeist. Regardless, Dean had learned the expression and taken a perverse delight in using it given their circumstances.
"You're a bad influence, Dean," Sam muttered under his breath as he shrugged off the layers of protective clothing that he'd put on to brave the freezing temperatures.
Sam said it fondly though as his big brother had been the one to get him through his childhood. He could see that now that he looked back at the time analytically instead of letting his old anger cloud his judgment. Sure, Dean had almost always followed all of Dad's orders, but his brother had done what he could, or rather take those orders literally instead of more broadly as their father had no doubt intended them. The other thing that he could now also see was that his brother had been a child too, even if Dean had never been allowed a child's freedom as he had been. Much as he'd hated hunting, he'd at least been granted eight blissful years of ignorance, Dean had not as their father had needed someone who was aware of the dangers at home while Dad was off hunting or trying to track down the demon.
Not really wanting to think about it, Sam hung up his outdoor gear and enjoyed the indoor warmth. Winter had hit hard and fast this year, abnormally so and he couldn't help but wonder if Lucifer wasn't behind it somehow. After what Crowley had told Dean, he'd be more surprised of the devil wasn't behind it. After all, now that Lucifer had found himself a vessel, why wouldn't the archangel begin wreaking havoc? It was just the kind of temper tantrum that he'd expect from the devil and given his past experiences and unfortunate temperament similarities with Lucifer, he should really know.
The wonderful smell of pine in the air told Sam that someone had started a fire in the living room and he grabbed the books that he'd managed to get before being forced to abandon the rest of his planned stops before the snow deteriorated conditions any further. He'd have to see if Castiel wouldn't mind giving him a lift to the supermarket, though he doubted the angel would refuse, not while Dean was in the house and would demand food. The thought made him smile, his brother really did have the angel wrapped around his little finger.
As Sam got closer to the living room he became aware of another scent in the air that seemed familiar to him but he couldn't quite identify it under the mix of pine, scented perfume from some of Gwen's candles and what smelled strongly of Castiel. This last distracted him as he hadn't even been aware that the angel had his own scent, much less that he knew it enough to be able to identify it. Neither of which, even if accepted, would explain why he could smell it now, when Castiel was still in another room. Part of him decided that he was probably better off not knowing no matter how curious he was on the subject. His curiosity had already earned him a need for a lifetime's supply of brain bleach as it was. But how the hell was it that he could smell Castiel all the way out here?
The question became unimportant to Sam a moment later when he got to the door of the living room and caught sight of the occupants. Unsurprisingly Dean was in the room, but that had been a given from the moment that he'd first realized that the hearth had been lit. His older brother loved putting a fire on and had always taken the opportunity to do so when they stayed somewhere with a fire place in the past. He'd always thought that it had to do with the smores that Dean always made as soon as he got a good blaze going. Now, though, he couldn't help but wonder if it hadn't also had anything to do with the fact that fires, unlike central heating, were free if you could source the wood yourself, something which had never been a problem for his brother who'd always known where the closest woods were so Dean could go do target practice whenever he wanted to. Either way, his brother had always liked fires and so with the excuse of the abnormally bad weather, it had only been a matter of time before his brother put the hearth to use.
So, no, seeing Dean in the living room before the fire was no surprise to Sam. Seeing his macho big brother snuggling, however, was. Not to mention the fact that Castiel was the one holding Dean rather than the other way around. Distantly he realized what exactly it was that he'd smelled earlier but while he was disgusted, he wasn't particularly surprised either (it was Dean, after all!) so that knowledge failed to overcome the shock of what he was witnessing.
Dean was allowing himself to be held!
His brother was essentially playing the little spoon, or would be if Dean wasn't turned towards his husband. For the first time since Sam had learned about Dean and Castiel's marriage- bonding, whatever!- he felt that he could actually believe it. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but something about seeing his big brother letting his defenses down so completely brought it all home to him in a way that nothing else ever had before. Dean just didn't do vulnerable, not even with him, so for his brother to do it with his angel told him all that he needed to know about their relationship and the word husband seemed hardly even seemed enough to describe it with Dean involved.
Strangely enough, witnessing this also gave Sam hope that they could win this Apocalypse. After all, if Castiel could perform the miracle that it would have taken to get Dean Winchester of all people to this place emotionally (and to have his brother be happy and content to be there!), then surely the archangel could perform others. And speaking of Castiel, he suddenly became aware of the fact that his brother-in-law (and God, wasn't that odd?) had noticed his presence and was watching him. Feeling like he'd been caught snooping, he gave a nervous smile even as he caught sight of the bag of marshmallows on the floor by the fire.
At least it was good to know that while somethings changed, others remained exactly the same.
Briefly the thought that he'd trespassed where he shouldn't have and that his friend was going to tell him off for doing so occurred to Sam but then the moment passed. Yes, this was something which really should have been private, but it wasn't his fault that it hadn't remained so. Dean and Castiel were the ones who'd done it in the living room instead of their bedroom and, yeah, he wasn't going to be able to go in there again without thinking of this for a while! He was only thankful that one of them'd had the foresight to grab a blanket to cover themselves with as he really didn't want to get any kind of eye full whatsoever. He'd already had more than enough of those of his big brother as it was, as for Castiel... well he was perfectly happy keeping as much of his former 'angels are incompatible with sex' belief as it was possible to maintain given the circumstances. Even just seeing his new brother-in-law's naked arms, shoulders and upper chest was jarring enough. He didn't think that he'd ever seen Castiel out his usual suit and trench coat before and his only glimpse of that meatsuit without the trench coat and suit jacket had been when Jimmy had been in control of it.
Not wanting to disturb them (more out of fear of what he'd see than anything else), Sam slowly backed away into the hall once more and elected to head up to his room. He could log into his computer up there and see if he couldn't track down some of the other ingredients needed for the scroll spell that Michael had said that the angels couldn't get their hands on.
Sam was still shaking his head over how that thought had even become part of his life, let alone his day-to-day life, at all when the light show at the end of the hall caught his eye. At first he thought that it was the sunlight reflecting off of a pool of water somewhere, but not only was there no sun out today, but the colors were all wrong as well. As soon as that occurred to him, he instantly realized what it was.
The kalsika.
Dean and Castiel's kalsika.
The memory of it made Sam's mouth go dry. The fact that it came from Eden alone would have fascinated him even if it had been as plain and boring as a rock, so the fact that it wasn't made it all but irresistible to him. Which was clearly evidenced by how he'd stepped close to touch it without even thinking about it at Dean's old apartment. Knowing what he would have felt had he done so made him glad that his brother had stopped him but it completely failed to lessen his fascination with the kalsika any.
Unable to help himself, Sam quickly dumped his stuff in his own room before heading for Dean and Castiel's room. And boy did that still sound odd even in his head. Dean and Castiel's room. Thing was, it was strange not just for the obvious reason but also because, as an angel, Castiel didn't sleep. Which left the obvious question of what his friend did all night while Dean slept. You could only hold and watch someone else sleep for so long after all. Although, on second thought, this was Castiel he was thinking about so that could actually be exactly what the angel was doing all night long. The thought made him shudder and he wasn't sure how his brother could even fall asleep knowing that his husband would be staring at him. It would be a sure fire way to keep him up all night!
The water reflection-like light shown on the wall really was amazing and Sam stopped to just marvel at it for a few moments. Doing so he couldn't help but wonder what Eden looked like, being full of kalsika. Turning around, he only hesitated briefly before entering his brother's room. Not only was the door open, but Dean of all people was the absolute last person who could complain to him about invasion of privacy in this sense, not after all of the times that his big brother had gone rummaging through his stuff over the years. Besides, it wasn't like he was going to touch anything, just look at it.
The kalsika along with what Sam assumed was the Andalyzian crystal from Michael's description of it were on the dresser across the room from the bed. In the room its light was even brighter and he couldn't help but just stare at it in awe. From what Michael had said, he knew that the natural color of an uninitiated kalsika was a yellow-white like the sun so he knew that all of the colors that he was seeing now came from either his brother or Castiel somehow. Given that he neither believed in color associations and the peculiar look that Michael had given him when he'd inquired about it, he didn't have the first clue about why these particular colors had come through on their kalsika from Dean and his brother-in-law, but they definitely were bold, strong colors that went well together.
Much like Dean and Castiel, Sam supposed. Just because he was only now starting to see the deeper, romantic connection between the two didn't mean that he'd been blind to the connection that had existed between them before. They'd always just clicked on a level that he'd (honestly) been somewhat jealous of, because not only had his brother never had a real friend before and so he was used to being the center of Dean's attention, but also because he just hadn't quite ever understood it. Though he'd never disliked Castiel per se, the angel had been so extremely alien in so many ways that he'd had some real trouble connecting with him and he still sometimes wondered if they were on the same wavelength. All of his preconceptions of what angels were like and how they behaved definitely hadn't helped matters any either, that was for sure. But now Sam couldn't help but wonder if Castiel's very non-human nature wasn't exactly why Dean had been drawn to the angel on some level in the first place. It wasn't that he thought that his brother couldn't connect with other people, but just that it hadn't escaped his notice how Dean often failed to fully relax around them. Instead his big brother always still seemed to be on edge somehow, perhaps afraid that he'd say or do something that would mark him as different somehow even if no one recognized him for the hunter that he was.
The thought made Sam wince as he thought of how hard he'd pushed to get his brother out of hunting after Stull Cemetery. He could now see that he'd been pushing his own hopes and dreams onto Dean, though it had taken a while for him to do so. A part of him would always regret the circumstances that had brought his brother into this life and to this point, but so long as Dean was happy hunting, then he supposed that he really couldn't complain. Especially now that he knew that his brother would always have reliable and capable backup with him or there at a moment's notice.
That the help would come via a call along Dean's new bond drew Sam's attention back to the shimmering kalsika. Leaning forward, he examined it close up and tried to imagine the kind of connection that it created between two people. Michael had struggled to try and describe it as the archangel only really knew of it in the abstract or from how Dean viewed it, neither of which leant itself particularly well to a verbal description. What had been made irrevocably clear between what Michael had been able to convey and what Dean had told him about it, was that it was a deep, life altering thing to experience. It terrified him more than a little in some ways, but he was pretty sure that was due to the fact that his only experience of that kind of close connection with another being was of having been Meg's host. It wasn't even remotely the same thing, he knew, but that was the only time that he'd ever been closer to another living being than the confines of his meatsuit allowed.
So, yeah, the idea of that kind of bond was not really a good one for him but Dean clearly had no regrets.
It still boggled Sam's mind even now to think of the fact that it had been his brother who had done the angelic equivalent of propose to Castiel instead of the other way around and had therefore initiated all of this. He'd seen Dean with countless women over the years and only twice had he ever even seen his big brother make any kind of true connection and that had been with Cassie and Lisa, and even those hadn't been anything like this. So to find out that Dean had gone from that commitment phobia to voluntarily and willingly initiating a connection and bond so much more serious and binding than anything that normal people could ever even dream of was shocking no matter how you looked at it.
As such Sam didn't think that it had been wrong of him to be suspicious of what had happened when he'd first learned of it, though he could now readily admit that he could have handled it far better than he had. He'd just been concerned for his brother, though, and the memory of how he'd treated Dean's own concern about Ruby made him wince. Part of him still wanted to protest that things had been different then and provide some excuse for his behavior, but he instantly suppressed it. The fact that he was currently standing in his brother's room and that said room was in the same house as his own gave him strength though, as did his improved relationship with Dean as of late. He wasn't stupid enough to think that he had unlimited chances with his big brother anymore and much as that fact still shocked him in a lot of ways, it also served to sober him and give him the strength that he needed to finally shove his own bullshit aside.
Between Samuel's death and Christian's utter stupidity, Dean and Gwen were the only family that Sam had left and he wasn't going to lose either of them if he could help it. Well, not the only family, he mused as he looked at the glowing kalsika once more. He had Castiel as well, much as he'd never expected to have a brother-in-law. And, like it or not, but Michael and Raphael were now also permanent fixtures in his life even if the thought that they were Dean's brothers on some level now made him feel vaguely ill. He'd never really had to share Dean like that before and didn't think that he could do so gracefully, not at first anyway. And the irony of that word- gracefully- wasn't lost on him in the slightest.
Sam couldn't help but wonder if it would have been easier if there was just one of them but he didn't think so. At least not to his gut reaction even if it might be easier time wise in the long run. And to add another wrench to the mix, he could already tell from the way that Dean behaved around Raziel that the archangel was someone else that he'd have to accept into the rest of his life. He couldn't tell what it was about Raziel that drew his brother in to him as he rather found the archangel a bit weird even for an angel, but he could definitely tell when Dean's protective instincts had kicked in and trying to get his brother to abandon someone when that had happened was simply impossible. He just couldn't figure out how or what had pinged Dean's protective instincts. This was an archangel after all, a fact which chilled Sam to some extent. That his brother was trying to take on something else which had hurt an angel, let alone one of the original seven archangels, was as terrifying as it was typical.
The only source of consolation which Sam got from the tight bond between Dean and both Michael and Raphael was that it meant that his headstrong and sometimes idiotically stubborn and self-sacrificing brother had two more archangels watching over him when Dean went off and pulled one of his stunts. That thought, naturally, made him think of his brother's outright challenge to Lucifer and he shook his head. There were just some things about Dean which even Castiel couldn't change.
It was at times like these where Sam couldn't help but wonder how it was that they were even related to each other.
A.N.:Okay, computer sorted, new HD installed, most files saved but damn did I have a lot of extra software on there that now all needs reacquiring. You don't realize just how much of it you have until you don't have it all!
Chapter 189
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: up to and including Exile on Main St., AU from the end of season 5
Warnings: AU, slash
Word Count: 3,365
Summary: Sam finally comes to a revelation about his brother and Castiel after witnessing them in a private moment.
PRESENT
God, but it was colder than a witch's tit out there!
The moment that Sam realized that the expression had crossed his mind, he groaned. It was one that Dean had delighted in using back when his big brother had just started high school and had first heard it from some of the older kids at school. Just how Dean had convinced the seniors to let him hang with them he wasn't entirely sure, but it could quite possibly have had something to do with the Impala. His brother had been driving it at the time since Dad had been recovering from a broken leg courtesy of an enraged poltergeist. Regardless, Dean had learned the expression and taken a perverse delight in using it given their circumstances.
"You're a bad influence, Dean," Sam muttered under his breath as he shrugged off the layers of protective clothing that he'd put on to brave the freezing temperatures.
Sam said it fondly though as his big brother had been the one to get him through his childhood. He could see that now that he looked back at the time analytically instead of letting his old anger cloud his judgment. Sure, Dean had almost always followed all of Dad's orders, but his brother had done what he could, or rather take those orders literally instead of more broadly as their father had no doubt intended them. The other thing that he could now also see was that his brother had been a child too, even if Dean had never been allowed a child's freedom as he had been. Much as he'd hated hunting, he'd at least been granted eight blissful years of ignorance, Dean had not as their father had needed someone who was aware of the dangers at home while Dad was off hunting or trying to track down the demon.
Not really wanting to think about it, Sam hung up his outdoor gear and enjoyed the indoor warmth. Winter had hit hard and fast this year, abnormally so and he couldn't help but wonder if Lucifer wasn't behind it somehow. After what Crowley had told Dean, he'd be more surprised of the devil wasn't behind it. After all, now that Lucifer had found himself a vessel, why wouldn't the archangel begin wreaking havoc? It was just the kind of temper tantrum that he'd expect from the devil and given his past experiences and unfortunate temperament similarities with Lucifer, he should really know.
The wonderful smell of pine in the air told Sam that someone had started a fire in the living room and he grabbed the books that he'd managed to get before being forced to abandon the rest of his planned stops before the snow deteriorated conditions any further. He'd have to see if Castiel wouldn't mind giving him a lift to the supermarket, though he doubted the angel would refuse, not while Dean was in the house and would demand food. The thought made him smile, his brother really did have the angel wrapped around his little finger.
As Sam got closer to the living room he became aware of another scent in the air that seemed familiar to him but he couldn't quite identify it under the mix of pine, scented perfume from some of Gwen's candles and what smelled strongly of Castiel. This last distracted him as he hadn't even been aware that the angel had his own scent, much less that he knew it enough to be able to identify it. Neither of which, even if accepted, would explain why he could smell it now, when Castiel was still in another room. Part of him decided that he was probably better off not knowing no matter how curious he was on the subject. His curiosity had already earned him a need for a lifetime's supply of brain bleach as it was. But how the hell was it that he could smell Castiel all the way out here?
The question became unimportant to Sam a moment later when he got to the door of the living room and caught sight of the occupants. Unsurprisingly Dean was in the room, but that had been a given from the moment that he'd first realized that the hearth had been lit. His older brother loved putting a fire on and had always taken the opportunity to do so when they stayed somewhere with a fire place in the past. He'd always thought that it had to do with the smores that Dean always made as soon as he got a good blaze going. Now, though, he couldn't help but wonder if it hadn't also had anything to do with the fact that fires, unlike central heating, were free if you could source the wood yourself, something which had never been a problem for his brother who'd always known where the closest woods were so Dean could go do target practice whenever he wanted to. Either way, his brother had always liked fires and so with the excuse of the abnormally bad weather, it had only been a matter of time before his brother put the hearth to use.
So, no, seeing Dean in the living room before the fire was no surprise to Sam. Seeing his macho big brother snuggling, however, was. Not to mention the fact that Castiel was the one holding Dean rather than the other way around. Distantly he realized what exactly it was that he'd smelled earlier but while he was disgusted, he wasn't particularly surprised either (it was Dean, after all!) so that knowledge failed to overcome the shock of what he was witnessing.
Dean was allowing himself to be held!
His brother was essentially playing the little spoon, or would be if Dean wasn't turned towards his husband. For the first time since Sam had learned about Dean and Castiel's marriage- bonding, whatever!- he felt that he could actually believe it. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but something about seeing his big brother letting his defenses down so completely brought it all home to him in a way that nothing else ever had before. Dean just didn't do vulnerable, not even with him, so for his brother to do it with his angel told him all that he needed to know about their relationship and the word husband seemed hardly even seemed enough to describe it with Dean involved.
Strangely enough, witnessing this also gave Sam hope that they could win this Apocalypse. After all, if Castiel could perform the miracle that it would have taken to get Dean Winchester of all people to this place emotionally (and to have his brother be happy and content to be there!), then surely the archangel could perform others. And speaking of Castiel, he suddenly became aware of the fact that his brother-in-law (and God, wasn't that odd?) had noticed his presence and was watching him. Feeling like he'd been caught snooping, he gave a nervous smile even as he caught sight of the bag of marshmallows on the floor by the fire.
At least it was good to know that while somethings changed, others remained exactly the same.
Briefly the thought that he'd trespassed where he shouldn't have and that his friend was going to tell him off for doing so occurred to Sam but then the moment passed. Yes, this was something which really should have been private, but it wasn't his fault that it hadn't remained so. Dean and Castiel were the ones who'd done it in the living room instead of their bedroom and, yeah, he wasn't going to be able to go in there again without thinking of this for a while! He was only thankful that one of them'd had the foresight to grab a blanket to cover themselves with as he really didn't want to get any kind of eye full whatsoever. He'd already had more than enough of those of his big brother as it was, as for Castiel... well he was perfectly happy keeping as much of his former 'angels are incompatible with sex' belief as it was possible to maintain given the circumstances. Even just seeing his new brother-in-law's naked arms, shoulders and upper chest was jarring enough. He didn't think that he'd ever seen Castiel out his usual suit and trench coat before and his only glimpse of that meatsuit without the trench coat and suit jacket had been when Jimmy had been in control of it.
Not wanting to disturb them (more out of fear of what he'd see than anything else), Sam slowly backed away into the hall once more and elected to head up to his room. He could log into his computer up there and see if he couldn't track down some of the other ingredients needed for the scroll spell that Michael had said that the angels couldn't get their hands on.
Sam was still shaking his head over how that thought had even become part of his life, let alone his day-to-day life, at all when the light show at the end of the hall caught his eye. At first he thought that it was the sunlight reflecting off of a pool of water somewhere, but not only was there no sun out today, but the colors were all wrong as well. As soon as that occurred to him, he instantly realized what it was.
The kalsika.
Dean and Castiel's kalsika.
The memory of it made Sam's mouth go dry. The fact that it came from Eden alone would have fascinated him even if it had been as plain and boring as a rock, so the fact that it wasn't made it all but irresistible to him. Which was clearly evidenced by how he'd stepped close to touch it without even thinking about it at Dean's old apartment. Knowing what he would have felt had he done so made him glad that his brother had stopped him but it completely failed to lessen his fascination with the kalsika any.
Unable to help himself, Sam quickly dumped his stuff in his own room before heading for Dean and Castiel's room. And boy did that still sound odd even in his head. Dean and Castiel's room. Thing was, it was strange not just for the obvious reason but also because, as an angel, Castiel didn't sleep. Which left the obvious question of what his friend did all night while Dean slept. You could only hold and watch someone else sleep for so long after all. Although, on second thought, this was Castiel he was thinking about so that could actually be exactly what the angel was doing all night long. The thought made him shudder and he wasn't sure how his brother could even fall asleep knowing that his husband would be staring at him. It would be a sure fire way to keep him up all night!
The water reflection-like light shown on the wall really was amazing and Sam stopped to just marvel at it for a few moments. Doing so he couldn't help but wonder what Eden looked like, being full of kalsika. Turning around, he only hesitated briefly before entering his brother's room. Not only was the door open, but Dean of all people was the absolute last person who could complain to him about invasion of privacy in this sense, not after all of the times that his big brother had gone rummaging through his stuff over the years. Besides, it wasn't like he was going to touch anything, just look at it.
The kalsika along with what Sam assumed was the Andalyzian crystal from Michael's description of it were on the dresser across the room from the bed. In the room its light was even brighter and he couldn't help but just stare at it in awe. From what Michael had said, he knew that the natural color of an uninitiated kalsika was a yellow-white like the sun so he knew that all of the colors that he was seeing now came from either his brother or Castiel somehow. Given that he neither believed in color associations and the peculiar look that Michael had given him when he'd inquired about it, he didn't have the first clue about why these particular colors had come through on their kalsika from Dean and his brother-in-law, but they definitely were bold, strong colors that went well together.
Much like Dean and Castiel, Sam supposed. Just because he was only now starting to see the deeper, romantic connection between the two didn't mean that he'd been blind to the connection that had existed between them before. They'd always just clicked on a level that he'd (honestly) been somewhat jealous of, because not only had his brother never had a real friend before and so he was used to being the center of Dean's attention, but also because he just hadn't quite ever understood it. Though he'd never disliked Castiel per se, the angel had been so extremely alien in so many ways that he'd had some real trouble connecting with him and he still sometimes wondered if they were on the same wavelength. All of his preconceptions of what angels were like and how they behaved definitely hadn't helped matters any either, that was for sure. But now Sam couldn't help but wonder if Castiel's very non-human nature wasn't exactly why Dean had been drawn to the angel on some level in the first place. It wasn't that he thought that his brother couldn't connect with other people, but just that it hadn't escaped his notice how Dean often failed to fully relax around them. Instead his big brother always still seemed to be on edge somehow, perhaps afraid that he'd say or do something that would mark him as different somehow even if no one recognized him for the hunter that he was.
The thought made Sam wince as he thought of how hard he'd pushed to get his brother out of hunting after Stull Cemetery. He could now see that he'd been pushing his own hopes and dreams onto Dean, though it had taken a while for him to do so. A part of him would always regret the circumstances that had brought his brother into this life and to this point, but so long as Dean was happy hunting, then he supposed that he really couldn't complain. Especially now that he knew that his brother would always have reliable and capable backup with him or there at a moment's notice.
That the help would come via a call along Dean's new bond drew Sam's attention back to the shimmering kalsika. Leaning forward, he examined it close up and tried to imagine the kind of connection that it created between two people. Michael had struggled to try and describe it as the archangel only really knew of it in the abstract or from how Dean viewed it, neither of which leant itself particularly well to a verbal description. What had been made irrevocably clear between what Michael had been able to convey and what Dean had told him about it, was that it was a deep, life altering thing to experience. It terrified him more than a little in some ways, but he was pretty sure that was due to the fact that his only experience of that kind of close connection with another being was of having been Meg's host. It wasn't even remotely the same thing, he knew, but that was the only time that he'd ever been closer to another living being than the confines of his meatsuit allowed.
So, yeah, the idea of that kind of bond was not really a good one for him but Dean clearly had no regrets.
It still boggled Sam's mind even now to think of the fact that it had been his brother who had done the angelic equivalent of propose to Castiel instead of the other way around and had therefore initiated all of this. He'd seen Dean with countless women over the years and only twice had he ever even seen his big brother make any kind of true connection and that had been with Cassie and Lisa, and even those hadn't been anything like this. So to find out that Dean had gone from that commitment phobia to voluntarily and willingly initiating a connection and bond so much more serious and binding than anything that normal people could ever even dream of was shocking no matter how you looked at it.
As such Sam didn't think that it had been wrong of him to be suspicious of what had happened when he'd first learned of it, though he could now readily admit that he could have handled it far better than he had. He'd just been concerned for his brother, though, and the memory of how he'd treated Dean's own concern about Ruby made him wince. Part of him still wanted to protest that things had been different then and provide some excuse for his behavior, but he instantly suppressed it. The fact that he was currently standing in his brother's room and that said room was in the same house as his own gave him strength though, as did his improved relationship with Dean as of late. He wasn't stupid enough to think that he had unlimited chances with his big brother anymore and much as that fact still shocked him in a lot of ways, it also served to sober him and give him the strength that he needed to finally shove his own bullshit aside.
Between Samuel's death and Christian's utter stupidity, Dean and Gwen were the only family that Sam had left and he wasn't going to lose either of them if he could help it. Well, not the only family, he mused as he looked at the glowing kalsika once more. He had Castiel as well, much as he'd never expected to have a brother-in-law. And, like it or not, but Michael and Raphael were now also permanent fixtures in his life even if the thought that they were Dean's brothers on some level now made him feel vaguely ill. He'd never really had to share Dean like that before and didn't think that he could do so gracefully, not at first anyway. And the irony of that word- gracefully- wasn't lost on him in the slightest.
Sam couldn't help but wonder if it would have been easier if there was just one of them but he didn't think so. At least not to his gut reaction even if it might be easier time wise in the long run. And to add another wrench to the mix, he could already tell from the way that Dean behaved around Raziel that the archangel was someone else that he'd have to accept into the rest of his life. He couldn't tell what it was about Raziel that drew his brother in to him as he rather found the archangel a bit weird even for an angel, but he could definitely tell when Dean's protective instincts had kicked in and trying to get his brother to abandon someone when that had happened was simply impossible. He just couldn't figure out how or what had pinged Dean's protective instincts. This was an archangel after all, a fact which chilled Sam to some extent. That his brother was trying to take on something else which had hurt an angel, let alone one of the original seven archangels, was as terrifying as it was typical.
The only source of consolation which Sam got from the tight bond between Dean and both Michael and Raphael was that it meant that his headstrong and sometimes idiotically stubborn and self-sacrificing brother had two more archangels watching over him when Dean went off and pulled one of his stunts. That thought, naturally, made him think of his brother's outright challenge to Lucifer and he shook his head. There were just some things about Dean which even Castiel couldn't change.
It was at times like these where Sam couldn't help but wonder how it was that they were even related to each other.
A.N.:Okay, computer sorted, new HD installed, most files saved but damn did I have a lot of extra software on there that now all needs reacquiring. You don't realize just how much of it you have until you don't have it all!
Chapter 189