#amirosebooks

(ask me my top 5 anything spn)

1. When he and Dean go after those Gog and Magog guys (I think that’s what they’re called??) in 13x14 and Dean says maybe he got the words wrong in his native language and also won’t stop cracking jokes in this very serious situation.

2. Any time he interacted with Crowley in season 6, both because Crowley is very difficult to deal with but also for more serious reasons of guilt and shame.

3. On that note, when Dean confronts him in 6x20 and begs him to tell him he’s not working with Crowley oh boy this is getting serious, I wanna go back to the jokey examples.

4. When they’re meeting Ishim in that diner in 12x10 and Cas tells Sam and Dean to wait outside and of course they disobey him immediately. You can tell Cas is seriously considering whether it’s possible to divorce to someone he ain’t even married to there.

Hi hi! I hope you’re holding up well :)

The ask box it’s too bad, actually. Typical bucklemming >.>

I’m not entirely sure what the cosmic entity warding boost would do. I don’t think it would work on Billie. I mean, reapers can get anywhere. Otherwise people inside the bunker would be effectively immortal. Ooh... the bunker would be like a Faerie Mound... inside humans would be untouched by death, but the moment they ventured outside again... so yeah, I don’t think they can truly bar Death that way.

We were told the warding boost was temporary, but we weren’t told how long it would be for. A day? A month? The rest of the season until the critical moment they dramatically fail? We have to assume they were still active if Cas asked Jack to use his power.

We also know, per Billie in addition to the fact they witnessed the destruction of AU!Sam and Dean’s universe in the opening scene, that Chuck is world-hopping-and-popping at the moment, and not actively focused on *this* universe. We don’t even know if Chuck realized an alternate Sam and Dean slipped out of their world. And the fact they were “trapped between worlds” in the bunker before they used Cas’s grace to open a rift into that between place to pull them out kinda makes me think Chuck missed them...

In the episode, Jack even brought up the point that Chuck isn’t actively paying attention to the still-- after Cas’s escapades in the empty. If anything, I think Chuck would’ve noticed Jack using the Occultum, you know? That... was quite the magical blast (it blew away a couple of Hellhounds in a blast of power). I also think the instant Chuck is done with the other universes, Billie will be on the spot to warn them that Chuck has returned, too.

The show has given us plausible reason for Chuck not keeping a close eye on this universe, for Jack being able to use a minor magical power-- especially one directly connected to the Empty, which is also a dimension we have been told Chuck has no power over, and especially within the cosmically warded bunker (since we have no evidence that that warding has stopped working). And especially when it was Cas’s life force being affected/manipulated, since we know Chuck (and pretty much all the other cosmic entities outside of the Empty) don’t seem to notice Cas at all... He’s our wild card, and the show keeps hammering on that point.

Chuck can look in on the bunker, but I’m not sure he actually is. We’ve seen how he goes all one-track mind once he’s made a plan for himself. Gosh he’s really like Sam this way, isn’t he? He’s decided those other universes don’t spark joy, and is dismantling them one by one. He’s put all his attention into that project, not even realizing the Winchesters (and Jack!) are setting up a plan to use against him yet.

In a lot of ways, what we witnessed in this episode was TFW actively working within the limited number of choices they have available to them. All of their options have potential downfalls, but they also have a priority mission to help Jack prepare to face Chuck. Billie keeps pushing the importance of Jack being ready, the urgency to complete this mission to find the Occultum in this case.

Sam: Let’s go then!Jack: Wait, what if Chuck checks in on us, sees what we’re doing? Isn’t it... pretty much... over?Sam: Yeah, it would be.Dean: Uh, I have a dumb idea... If Chuck comes back to check in on us, he’s gonna look for us here, in the bunker.Sam: We don’t know that.Dean: Well, we don’t not know that.

And yeah, it’s a bit silly, and contrived, but it doesn’t blatantly defy anything that’s already been established. And we know TFW MUST find a way to get the Occultum, which even Billie can’t see the location of. The only person in existence, alive or dead, who even knew the location was apparently Ruby. Why didn’t Cas ask Billie to travel to the Empty and ask Ruby herself? We just don’t know. See... a bit silly and contrived... but thematically still on point in every other way:

Cas and his belief that he must be “useful” at all cost-- which was highlighted with that “I got the info, am I still an idiot?” scene, with Dean frustrated and telling him he sure was... because that’s their core character issue between them and has been all season. It feels like a progression toward understanding between them. But in this case, risking himself to go to the singular place where he personally was most at risk in order to get the information they needed was the choice he made for himself.

Acting on that choice also brought him in direct confrontation with the Empty Entity, confirming that his deal with the empty is still in force, and reminding us of the conditions of the deal-- Cas’s happiness being the trigger

The direct parallel between Cas’s current lack of perfect happiness despite Jack even getting his soul back in this episode-- and Jack finally experiencing the profound suffering of truly feeling what he’d done, the emotional hurt he’d caused the people he cared about most-- but also echoing what Cas once told Sam (lol also in a bucklemming episode, 10.03-- they’re a bit ott and contrived, but heck they’re thematically consistent), that only humans can experience true joy or such profound sadness, and it took Jack having his soul restored to actually feel it, after trying to work through what he was supposed to feel on an intellectual level with Cas earlier in the episode.

The fact that Chuck doesn’t know what’s written in his own book in Billie’s library, the fact that Sam, Dean, and Jack are tied to his fate and Cas still feels like the wild card-- pointed out by the Empty that he’s not part of the plan and yet he keeps coming through with these sorts of things that literally nobody else could’ve chosen to do-- and yet Cas seems to be outside of Chuck’s personal observational radar... Cas was in nearly every image in 15.12 while Chuck went on and on about “Sam and Dean,” and yet didn’t even rate a mention by Chuck, as if Chuck couldn’t even see him sitting there. And I think this is gonna prove to be critical by the end, whether Chuck is simply dismissing Cas as relevant or important, or if he legitimately can’t even see Cas sitting there for some reason. Either way, I think that was the point here. Even when delivered in slightly stumbly bucklemming fashion compared to the subtlety of bobo or meredith or dabb... they are still trying to convey the same advancement of the themes...

Lol, this is why I am willing to backflip through bucklemming canon. If we can get past the moments of wtf, there is actual substance and continuity to be found. I mean, I hate the fact we have to shovel our way through stuff to find the continuity like this, but it is there. Their problem isn’t in the core themes, but in the execution.

I am watching it right now and it's definitely quite dark and definitely anti!superhero. It's interesting so far

amirosebooks replied to your post “I actually have no idea what’s the plot of The Boys is, but if it’s...”

It’s super good but definitely check trigger warnings before you dive in

st-eve-barnes replied to your post “I actually have no idea what’s the plot of The Boys is, but if it’s...”

Absolutely loved it! Such a great and different take on the superhero genre, it was quite satisfying to watch after my disappointment with Marvel last year. And Karl Urban as Billy Butcher is everything! :)

👍🏽

Specifically the scene on the stairs where Dean is having a nightmare and Cas is trying to get to him but... mom.

y e a h that scene was SO vivid in my head so i’m glad it got stuck in your head, too. and... you’re a GENIUS... i didn’t even think of the kitchen that way. but it’s the heart of the home for them because dean made it that way. dang. you’re smarter than i am. :p

#84 - “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

Cas finds Dean in the garage, his footsteps following the beat of the music currently blasting from the wireless speakers Dean installed a few months ago.

He’s bent in half when Cas rounds the corner, his upper body deep in the trunk of the car. Cas is so busy staring at the strip of Dean’s skin where the back of his shirt has ridden up—and trying his absolute hardest to not let his gaze travel further—that it takes him a moment to figure out what’s wrong with this picture.

“Is that my car?”

Dean smacks his head on the trunk, a string of curses falling from his mouth. “Dammit, Cas. What did I say about creeping up on people?”

Cas wants to say that Dean was too busy shaking his ass and singing his heart out to have heard him whether he’d bothered to announce himself or not. But of course—

“My apologies, Dean. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Dean waves a hand at him, turning to dig in the toolbox on the bench next to him.

“What are you doing?” Cas asks, the picture of Dean covered in grease, wearing shorts, and bopping his head to the music filtering throughout the room, one that he’s finding hard to process. Dean is in his element here, and Cas almost regrets disturbing him, the happiness radiating off the man both foreign and yet entirely, wholesomely overdue.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re doing your best Danny Zuko impression.”

Dean’s laughter echoes around the garage, and it’s the best thing Cas has heard since he fell.

“Cas, I know I’ve said this before—but don’t ever change.”

Cas rolls his eyes, walking further up to the Continental so he can rest his hip against the door. “I’ll try my hardest not to.”

“Good.”

The word is wrapped in a layer of smug satisfaction that makes Cas’ stomach flip. Shaking it off, he leans down to look at what Dean is doing.

“Is that—”

“You bet your ass it is,” Dean cuts in, glancing up and grinning at him.

Cas stares down at the custom weapons deck Dean is currently installing into the trunk of the Continental. It’s not dissimilar to the one in the Impala, and Cas can already see a hollow that would be perfect for his angel blade. He’d discovered fairly quickly that hiding things up the sleeve of his trenchcoat didn’t work as well as it did back when he still had his Grace. He smiles fondly at the memory—Dean had laughed then, too. But something about Dean’s laughter always fills him with warmth, and somehow he knows that even when Dean is laughing at him, he’s not really laughing at him.  

“Why are you doing this?” Cas asks, and Dean blushes, looking away.

“You’re human now, Cas. You can’t rely on your Grace as a weapon anymore. I know Sammy’s been teaching you how to shoot a gun.”

Dean’s hedging, and truthfully, for all his skills as a hunter, and for all the masks he can wear and the lies he can tell, Cas has always been able to tell when he’s keeping something back.

“So why can’t I just keep my gun in the Impala?”

“Because.” Dean sighs, reaching for his phone so he can lower the volume of the music. “You’re a hunter, you’re gonna be hunting with us now.” There’s a pause as Dean looks up at Cas, question in his eyes, and Cas nods hurriedly, baffled that Dean could think for a moment that he would rather be doing anything else. “Right. So. Any hunter worth his weight knows you gotta have a good weapons store hidden in the trunk.”

“Dean, I don’t understand…”

Dean huffs, shutting the trunk with a snap and turning so he can lean back on it. Cas stares at his profile, admiring the lean length of it propped up against his car. Yes, he thinks, soaking it in. This is good.  

“I figured since things have calmed down now, what with most of the fallen angels being rounded up, we could take a little road trip. Go find your Grace.” Dean looks hesitant, and Cas aches to reach for him, to tell him how fast his heart is beating at the implication of those words.

“And you’d leave Sam the Impala?” Cas says it like it’s just a small thing, but it’s not, and they both know it.

Dean looks torn, but only for a second, shrugging it off as though he’s already had this conversation with himself at least a few times. “Yeah,” he nods once, sharply, before relaxing into a fond smile. “The damn Moose is way too big for anything the Men of Letters have got stashed in here, anyway.”

Cas lets that sink in for a while, watching as Dean picks up a wrench and starts turning it over in his hands. Evidently the silence is too much for Dean.

“Look. The world isn’t ending—

“For the moment.” Cas cuts in, eyebrow raised and a small smile tugging at his lips.

“—there isn’t some big bad evil after us right now—”

“That we know of.”

“—and yeah, okay, you lost your Grace, but we’ll get it back—”  

“So you keep saying.”

“—and—wait, what is that supposed to mean?” Dean whirls to face him, but Cas is too busy biting his lip to hold back his laughter to answer. Apparently Dean’s happiness has been wearing off on him.

Dean chuckles, shaking his head and pointing the wrench at him. “You know, you’re lucky you’re cute, Cas.”

Cas beams.

“You think I’m cute?”

Dean rolls his eyes and pops the trunk back open—weird, meaningful, unexpected conversation apparently over.

“Get outta here, asshole.” Cas turns to leave, making it halfway across the garage with butterflies trembling so hard in his stomach he’s practically bursting with it, this foreign sense of giddiness taking over him. “Oh and Cas?” Cas stops and looks back over his shoulder at Dean leaning with his palms braced on the back of the Lincoln. They stare at each for a moment, Dean’s eyes searching Cas’ face. Whatever he’s looking for, he apparently finds. “You know maybe, maybe we only need to get one room while we’re away.”

Cas’ breath catches in his throat, and he reminds himself that he does actually have to keep breathing now. Dean looks hesitant again, but this time, he keeps Cas’ gaze, a steely determination shining in his eyes.

“I’d like that, Dean.” Cas replies eventually, the words quiet, far quieter than the pounding of his heart, far quieter than the words that are banging against the walls of his head. “I’d like that a lot.”

Dean nods, satisfied. “Good.”

Cas stares at Dean a while longer, wanting to immortalise this moment, praying to a God he lost faith in long ago that Dean will get to continue being this happy. And then, realising that now he can be the one responsible for Dean’s happiness, he turns and leaves the room.

[AO3]

“Aw, sweetheart.” Dean moaned. “God damn, you’re beautiful. I would be lucky to even have a chance with you.”

“Dean,” said Sam. “Stop fondling the glass and let’s go.”

“I am not—”

“You were,” Cas said.

“Wha—No I wasn’t!” Dean gave a tattering huff as Sam and Cas walked away. “Guys, come on!”

Dean wistfully looked back at the beautiful figure of a jukebox displayed at the front of the store, searing her image into his eyes for just a little longer before he hurried to catch up with them.