Three weeks after Castiel moves into the bunker, Sam finally starts to look less frazzled. He’s sipping his morning coffee with his feet kicked up at the great table and casually scrolling through the news of the weird on his iPad when Dean wanders out of his room for breakfast. He only gives it a moment’s pause, while tying his robe closed, before he heads to the kitchen. He’s always happy to see when Sam actually looks relaxed in their home.
Cas is already sitting on the bench seat in the kitchen, he’s picking at a bowl of cereal with his spoon and looking slightly… pissed maybe? A little angry and a little sad.
True, it’s not his usual fare. It’s not banana bread, or eggs on toasted sourdough with tomatoes, or big fat muffins with coffee. Dean doesn’t think he’s ever seen Cas take breakfast so lightly.
“Can’t have it all, I guess,” Dean mutters.
“Well, I’ve either got a happy you or a happy Sam, lately. I can’t seem to get both at the same time.”
“Oh, yes,” Cas gripes uncharitably, “I’m sure Sam’s very happy with himself right now.”
Huh. That’s not like Cas.
Dean rubs the sleep from his eyes and moves into family counselling mode. As soon as he’s poured himself some caffeine and maybe started throwing together something to eat he can–
He opens the fridge to a flurry of color.
It’s packed, as always. They’re three big guys, they go through a lot of food.
But now there’s little post-its fluttering on almost every bag and container and bottle in the refrigerator.
They are neon orange and some of them bright blue, like Sam ran out of the first color half-way through labelling everything. It was definitely Sam who did it, that’s his scrawl across each of the post-its. Different items with SAM and DEAN and CASS stuck to the front.
There are more for Dean than anyone else. He does the shopping, after all, and is sort of self-appointed King of the Kitchen.
There are plenty for Sam and a lot of the post-its with his name are stuck to the frou-frou-tofu crap and light beers that only he would want in the first place.
The fewest are labelled for Castiel.
Dean starts yanking the ones with his name off. “Cas, you can eat any of my stuff you want. Don’t listen to him.”
Cas doesn’t comment. Dean glances over his shoulder to see that Cas is still poking at the frosted biscuits in his bowl.
The mood lightens over breakfast as Dean shares some of his waffles with Cas, but Cas gives Sam a bit of the cold-shoulder for the rest of the day.
Dean pulls his brother aside at one point and tells him that if he’s gotta pull this stupid shit, he should just put post-its on the things of his that he doesn’t want Cas or Dean to touch. Sam shrugs, agrees.
And then, a few days later, another flurry of color as Dean walks into the bathroom.
The bunker has this huge room with showers and sinks, in the style of a gym or something, so they share the space between them.
It seems Sam has been through already this morning. Unfortunately, the humidity from the showers has left most the post-its floating around, face-down on the floor, so the different shave gels and shampoos and hair products and– fuck’s sake, there’s even post-its on the different stacks of towels!
Most of the items are still anonymous since the labels didn’t stick.
Dean’s standing there rolling his eyes for a moment and adding “ban Sam from going to Office Depot” to his mental to-do list when Cas comes up behind him, curious.
He scoots by Dean and picks up a few of the papers – the last of the blue and some new bright green ones – from the floor.
His shoulders slump when he turns them over to reveal three that say DEAN and one that says SAM and one that says CASS.
“This is ridiculous,” Cas says, with real spite.
“Yeah. He’s going a little overboard with it,” he scoots close and admits in a low voice, “I think he noticed I was stealing his shampoo but it just smells really good.”
The final straw seems to come at the end of the week. Dean and Cas come home from the grocery store to find the library littered with green and pink and yellow and purple post-its.
Cas and Sam get into it immediately. It’s kind of disturbing. Cas and Sam are basically the best geek friends that the world’s ever known. They agree on a lot, if not most things, and it’s disquieting to see them chewing each other out over something they love so much.
Cas points at an area of purple post-its. “First of all, Bobby found most of these, and I found all the ones over here! You can’t possibly divide the books between us, Sam! We all need to do research!”
“There are ones I need to reference all the time and you’re always bogarting them in your friggin’ bedroom! I search high and low for ‘em and I can never find them when I need them! And then him!” Sam points at Dean, “getting potato chip grease stains inside the Bergell Charm Directory and stuffing his stupid Hunger Games books into the spell tomes like we don’t know he’s reading them!”
“Hey!” Dean shouts, defensive.
“If you need a book you can ask me where it is, Sam!” Cas yells back.
“I shouldn’t have to ask! It’s–”
They’re very silent for a sudden moment.
Cas glares daggers. “Were you gonna say it’s your library? Is that what you’re getting at Sam Winchester?” he hisses.
Woah. Okay. This is getting scary. Dean steps between them. “No, that’s not what he said. This is DEFINITELY everyone’s library and we ALL have to use it. Both of you just calm down.”
“I’ll calm down when we can find where somebody left the Eymerich Grimorie,” Sam glares through Dean like he wants to open Cas up and see if the book rattles out of him.
“I’ll calm down when Sam learns to respect the people he lives with and stops accusing me of taking his useless crap,” Cas snaps.
Sam’s spine clicks him up to his full height all of a sudden. “If it’s all so useless why do you keep taking it?!”
“Dean was the one who used up your sprouts in a sandwich! He just doesn’t want to admit to knowing what sprouts are!” Cas shouts.
“How did you know that?” Dean’s drowned out by the yelling.
“And I’m not the one who labels a pile of wet towels under some random name because they can’t be bothered to do the laundry until it smells moldy!”
“Random name?” Sam and Dean both echo.
“MY NAME IS CAS!” Cas yells in their faces. He turns and flips a book closed to reveal the last of the stack of purple post-its. “Here, I’ll spell it for you:” and he writes on the post-it in black marker, C-A-S.
He rips it off the stack, turns, and slaps it on Dean’s forehead.
“Sea-aye-ess,” Cas spells out, pointing to each letter as if Sam needs specific instruction. “One S. ONLY ONE S. I have no earthly idea where you’re getting that extra S from since there’s only a single S in C a s t i e l ,” he says, slow but loud, like he’s talking to someone who refuses to fucking learn.
“I don’t know any ‘Cass,’ he certainly doesn’t live here or I’m sure I’d have FUCKING MET HIM,” Cas snaps, throws the marker at the table so hard it skids off the other side, and marches away.
Dean crosses his eyes to look up at the post-it stuck above his nose.
Sam continues to look petulant but he knows he got his shit called out on the moldy towel situation. “Fine,” he shrugs stiffly. “One S,” he rolls his eyes like, wow, what’s the big deal.
Dean plucks the post-it off his face. “Hey, there really is only one S in Castiel, I mean, it makes sense.” He stares off in the direction Cas stomped off. “I’m actually pretty proud of him for, like, asserting his identity.”
Sam ticks a frown that would be agreement and admiration if he weren’t still being pissy.
He turns to leave the room, maybe go apologize.
But first he turns back.
“Cas labelled you for himself,” he says to Dean. And smirks. And leaves.
Dean turns around the post-it on his thumb. “Huh.”
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