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“So, what happened to Castiel’s wife?”
Sam had been half-zoned out on the wonder that was his brother cooking—because Charlie could cook about as well as Sam, which was to say, not at all—and the question came out of nowhere. It took him several seconds of re-focusing before he could look at Charlie and make sense of her non-sequiter. “What?” Because it actually didn’t really make sense. Cas’s wife?
Charlie had also been watching Dean, with the kind of lust she didn’t usually show any male but that Sam figured was directed at the quesadillas Dean was fixing. Her smile flickered as she turned to Sam; he knew he didn’t look so hot those days. “Yeah. You know, Daphne?” She took a bite of one of the carrot sticks set out on the table and waved it at Sam. “The story said he left her to go with Dean to, you know, unbreak your brain, but he didn’t go back, and she doesn’t come up again.”
He knew Charlie had said that manuscripts from Chuck had shown up online continuing the story of their lives after the last published novel, but Sam hadn’t realized they’d gone as far as the year before. Weird, considering Kevin was the prophet now and so presumably Chuck was gone; he’d have to look into that. As well as what further secrets from their life had been spilled. He winced thinking of the past year, the Lucifer hallucinations and madness. But Castiel’s wife? He looked at Dean, eyebrow raised.
Dean, who was studiously keeping his back to them at the stove. “We, uh, sent her a note,” he said over one shoulder.
“Cas was married?” Sam sputtered.
“A note?” Charlie echoed at the same time.
Dean shrugged uncomfortably. “Don’t look at me—Cas was the one who said he couldn’t go back to her after he remembered who he was.”
Sam exchanged a glance with Charlie. And wondered how many other little bombshells those manuscripts contained.
“Hey.”
The hesitation in Charlie’s voice was unexpected. One minute they were talking about the case, the next, the passenger seat had gone suspiciously silent. Dean glanced over at her. “Yeah?”
“You, uh, you know Sam got the amulet out of the trash, right?”
He would’ve groaned if he didn’t know how concerned she was. “Yes,” he answered patiently. “He didn’t tell me, but I’ve seen it with him since.”
“Huh. Okay. But you’re not gonna—?”
“Charlie,” he warned, because some things he didn’t want to talk about even with her.
“Right, okay, zipping it.” She drummed her fingers on her laptop. “How about that Sam heard a different voicemail message? When he was going to kill Lilith? Not the one you left—you know that, right?”
“Charlie!”
“I’m sorry, I just…” She was fluttering. “He was so hurt ’cause he thought you thought he was a monster, and you were so bummed that what you said didn’t make a difference, and it’s like, it never came up again, so nobody knows if you knew you’d been played, and I wanna just hug both of you and make you just talk to each other!”
Driving or not, Dean squeezed his eyes shut a moment, trying not to remember one of the worst days of his life.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “Stupid books. They’d make you worry even if you thought they were fiction, but if you know they’re real and you two really got screwed and didn’t even—”
“Dude, breathe!” Dean snapped, and waited until it startled her into obeying. “I know, okay? Sam does, too. We cleared the air on that a while ago. Chuck told me, of all people—guess that didn’t make it into the books, huh?” Not like the books offered them much privacy. He really was gonna throttle Chuck if ever found the scruffy prophet again.
“No,” Charlie said quietly. A beat. “But I’m glad. That really sucked.”
“It really did,” Dean agreed. When had he let this tiny girl get so close, anyway? He hadn’t even talked about this stuff with Lisa.
“Oh, oh, did Sam tell you about what he went through after Castiel totaled the Great Wall of Sam?”
“Charlie!”
He’d really have to find those freakin’ manuscripts online.
“Hey, Sam.”
He rolled his head on the back of the sofa to look at her, which felt like the most he was capable of doing. The fight with the two djinn had taken more out of him than he cared to admit; Dean had been right about his not being case-ready. “Hey, Charlie.”
She sat next to him like she was afraid he’d break, which bothered him more than the deep ache in his chest. He made an effort to smile at her. Strange, he hadn’t had a friend who was a girl since…Stanford, probably. Even Amelia didn’t really count, between the sex and the need.
“Y’all right?” Dean had filled him in on Charlie letting her mom go, and she still looked fragile, too.
“Not so much.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “You?”
“Not really.”
She curled up against his side. “Great. Just making sure.”
He managed a heavy arm around her, let himself drift a little. She would be leaving soon, and he was already missing her, as he knew Dean was. When had that happened?
“Hey…You should tell Dean what it was really like after he went to Purgatory.”
He stiffened. “What’re you—?”
“He thinks you just walked away, Sam, and that sucks. Not to mention how totally OOC it was—I mean, seriously, have you seen the rants online?”
Sam blinked, trying to follow.
“I know he didn’t really ask you what happened, okay, but you weren’t exactly Chatty Cathy, either, you know? I think he’s forgiven you, but it still bothers him. ”
“Bothers me, too,” Sam finally murmured, feeling a little dazed at the ideas, the passion, the caring.
“I know.” She tucked herself a little more against him. “I thought I was messed up, but you two are, like, every angst and h/c writer’s dream.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
She sighed. “And so pretty, too.”
“Charlie!”