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If Sam Winchester was still beyond the living, he probably would not be happy with his son´s job description.
Scratch that. Sam Winchester was probably yelling at him from the Heaven even right now, his brother rubbing his arms in quiet (yet amused) sympathy. At least that he would imagine his uncle to be that way, based on stories of other veteran hunters. About how close and strong the brothers were.
It was not the kid´s fault, though – at least not completely. He watched his father passing away, dutifully being by his side constantly those last years, letting him follow his beloved brother. He let his mother rely on him in her silent grief, pushing his own away, just to be strong enough for her, for carrying on like his father wanted him to. He had been studying at Stanford, as his father did, eager to follow his steps.
And then fucking vampires came, stealing his best friend, Pete, from Stanford campus.
By some sheer fucking luck, he managed to kill the vampire and safe Pete, only to be begged by his best friend to be killed, when their realized that the freaking leach managed to turn Pete in vampire, too.
That was enough trauma for the last Winchester to leave his Stanford study behind. Because how could he continue to live with suit and comfortable money when there were people out there, suffering, and he was one of the few who could help them? He took Pete´s name in his memory, after some time, tired of hunter community reactions on his surname. It started to be dangerous, to be Winchester, anyway – it turned out that the hunter community either almost worshipped his father and uncle or there was always somebody with unfinished business eager to end him. The fact that his father left him in the dark about the family business usually was just an uninteresting detail for them.
So. He was just Pete. And he was terrifyingly unexperienced in hunting, cursing his father for barely teaching him enough to manage a gun. So he was learning from other hunters and the diary he had found in their basement, probably belonging to his grandfather. Pete was making sure to create digital copy of the thing, twenty-first century and all.
Pete understood why Sam Winchester left him out of the family business, he really did. But he still blamed his dad every time he got caught unprepared, too naïve, coming too close to death or being a meatsuit for some nasty thing of that week. Hunters were telling him he needed to find a more stable hunting partner, and soon, if he wanted to survive. He was daydreaming about his best friend surviving or managing to overcome a vampire curse somehow and doing the hunting with him, instead.
If he had not been that arrogant and listened, he probably would not have got himself in a situation where hunting urban legend had to rescue his self-absorbed ass.
At least that was what Castiel told him.
*** *** ***
Surprise, surprise, hunters usually did not live long happy lives.
Not because of lack of trying – they just did not have many safety nets beside their own community – universe just was not keeping its fingers crossed for them, bothersome insect asking for the problems by annoying a living shit out of Satan itself. Yeah, supernatural community was not really keen on them, with their tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.
There was one exception. Castiel.
The guy was not one of those talking types – in fact he barely talked at all. Pete saw him rumbling word or two only when ordering himself beer in a bar. An urban legend in a hunting community, to the point you could not tell what was true and what was not about the guy.
It was said, he usually came when death was close to a hunter – you only had to pray strongly enough. It was not guarantee - he came only when he liked your soul well enough.
And you must paid him back in favours – amulets, gas, money, there was no pattern, even though his price was usually equivalent of charity. Sometimes, he asked you to contact angels, since as banished creature of Heaven, nor angel nor human, he was forbidden to. He would never enter afterlife, that was his punishment, an immortal cursed to walk the Earth forever.
And now, he had saved Pete.
Pete did not call for him.
Castiel looked pissed as Hell, with his tired face and five o clock shadow.
“Your father would not want you to do this. He had sacrificed so much for you to have a normal life.”
Pete just held his head high in defiance, as high as sitting at his ass in front of Castiel let him to.
Other man sighed, like he had too many encounters with Winchester´s kind of logic and stubbornness for a few lifetimes.
“Name?”
Pete told him. His real name. Because, you know, Castiel.
“You don´t deserve that name.”
That stunk. But okay, he liked Pete better anyway. To that, Castiel had no comment.
“Come with me.”
“What?”
“Come with me. If I had let you die like this, you father and uncle would have yelled me enough to create to create a new Biblical deluge in frustration.”
And that is how Castiel become sort of his… mentor?