A Butterfly in the Winter Woods

“You really don’t think I love you?” Dean asked.

Something in Cas’ expression shifted. The anger bottled up and poured out as fresh tears. He had to have been expecting Dean to say it— after everything— but the words still wrapped him tight. Bloomed new color in his cheeks even as that flinch of emotion drew him thinner. So Dean said it again. Repeated it as much for himself as for Cas. 

“Of course I love you, you idiot. It sure as hell can’t be anything else.” 

The Fic

Lucifer knocking over the entire house of cards - but he used glue.

Eric Kripke was aiming for an audience of Eric Kripkes–the kind of whiny pseudo-intellectual nerdbro who finds men like s1 Dean threatening in real life, thinks being rejected romantically by a woman is comparable to real hardship, views any unfamiliar form of intimacy with some base level of suspicion, and expresses disgust at other men’s promiscuity not because he has more “respect” for women (and don’t get me started on the puritanism of equating sex with disrespect automatically), but because he resents that he can’t do the same.

We’re the ones who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.

To the power of a group of people unapologetically loving something silly and taking control of the stories that matter to them.

To the power of saving your favorite characters as a form of saving yourself.

To positive and healthy expressions of queer love, shared art, and making something beautiful together.

To the realization that “canon” merely indicates the version of the story preferred by the copyright holders - often corporations - and the rest is just fan fiction fodder, baby!

To fan fiction as an outlet for majority queer and female creators, perpetually blowing paid male writers out of the water.

To better fucking representation on every front moving forward.  

To blackout poetry, its own form of rebellion.

To family.

To found family.

To asserting that we, too, can live to see our own happy endings.

And,

of course,

to Fergus Crowley,

And you slowly start to realize that no, they aren’t familiar because they’re predictable, they’re familiar because they’re you. And it hits you, it’s hit you before but it hits you that you’ve never seen your story told, not really, not like this. Until now. Maybe.

You see them being strong in ways you never thought you could be. You see them grow in ways you never got to, in ways you’re waiting to. You see them being loved.

And their story becomes the thing you think about sometimes, when you’re bored. And then you find yourself thinking about it when you’re sad, too, because somehow it makes you feel just a little bit better. You’re thinking about it when you need a friend, you’re thinking about it when you need to feel strong or distracted or just to relax.

And it starts to get complicated, the way it’s becoming part of your life, the way it’s connecting to the things that are inextricable from what makes you you. You find hope in their love, that hell and mistakes and flaws and fears can’t keep people apart if they choose each other. You find strength in their queerness, in the way they weren’t meant to be but so powerfully were. You see your history in the quiet moments, in the way they move through empty spaces, the way they’re always there even when no one wants to look. You find comfort in their family, in the love they built around themselves despite a world that would rather take it. 

It starts to become about your identity, about making history, about sending a message that you’re here and you’re intense and you’re gentle and your story is actually one of the most beautiful things anyone could get to see. You find inspiration, friendship, support in the people you meet along the way and the boundless creativity that suddenly surrounds you. It becomes so much more than just you. Yet through it all it’s still about this thing that you reach for when you’re sad, or happy, or bored, or scared. It’s about this familiar thing that lets you escape, but it’s an escape to you. It becomes a way for you to be kind to yourself. It becomes a way for you to see a world that could be kind to you, if only people could see you through it.

So you have this story that’s not a story, because no story is. It’s you and it’s the world, like all stories it’s the way we see ourselves and the people around us, it’s the way we know each other and treat each other and shape the path of our culture and future. You have this story that’s not a story, and you’re watching and waiting and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it’s finally going to happen. That the only thing left is the thing you’ve finally let yourself hope for, you’ve finally let yourself want, because everything is telling you it’s safe. At long last, it is time.

You’ve spent your life fighting, fighting yourself and fighting the quiet, fighting what a lifetime of fighting has done to you. But it was worth it. This story that’s not a story, these characters who have brought you comfort, fulfillment, and love through it all– who have saved you because you saved yourself– are about to receive the same in return. Their story is free.