Fic Amnesty: SPN: Whetstones for the Mind
Apr. 19th, 2018 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caitriI came across this while looking through some old files. I'm reasonably sure I wrote it sometime in 2011. I have no idea where it was going to go, but the pieces that exist cohere fairly neatly, so I thought I would go ahead and share.
Whetstones for the Mind
It’s all Cas’s fault, is the thing.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, maybe, at this point, but Dean files it away as just another
thing he and the little former angel Need to Talk About.
“I don’t understand, Dean,” Cas says when they do discuss it that night, four hundred
miles away and in a different hotel. He pauses. “Are the books like the magazines?”
The thing is, Dean Winchester has few pleasures in his life, and they tend to be simple
ones. Driving his Baby. Porn. Bacon cheeseburgers. Freaky Japanese cartoons. Sex with
women. Watching Doctor Sexy, M.D.
And really fat epic fantasy novels.
“No, Cas,” Dean says with slow, exaggerated patience as he pulls fresh clothes out of his
backpack, eyes on them instead of Cas. He hopes that Sam can’t hear this conversation
through the wall. It’s been weird sharing a room with someone else, after all these years,
but three guys in a hotel room gets too personal too quickly, and Sam had been the one to
point out that they couldn’t leave Cas alone by himself right now, and Dean was the one
he had the “bond” with, and, well. There they were.
“I’m just saying,” he continues carefully, unsure how to word this, “it’s not something we
talk about.”
Cas’s brow furrows. “So it is like the magazines?” The magazines were the
copies of Busty Asian Beauties that lived under the driver’s seat. Castiel had
found that while rummaging for a road atlas.
That had been a fun afternoon.
Dean doesn’t know why he was fine with Cas knowing about all his personal
peccadilloes when he was an angel, but as a human it’s…weird.
“It’s not weird, Dean,” Cas says with that odd trick he has of following Dean’s thoughts
so completely (except for when he doesn’t, not at all). “You’re still trying to trust me
again. Especially now that—” And he gestures, taking in his mortality and their new
living arrangements and life in general. “It makes sense.” His lips thin in that
contemplative way he has. “I just—don’t know all the rules yet.”
Which is true enough. It took days for Cas to adjust to needing to eat and go to the
bathroom. It took even longer than that for Sam and Dean to realize that all the little
things they took for granted had to be taught to Cas, things you wouldn’t even have to
teach a small child because even children knew the unspoken rules of how things worked.
Simple things like, y’know, taking a shower.
Dean had asked Cas if he knew what showers were for, that first time, and Cas
had given him an irritated look. “Of course, Dean. Showers are part of human cleansing
rituals.” He had disappeared into the bathroom, then returned a heartbeat later. “How do
you operate the shower?”
Dean had handed him a bar of soap and pulled the handle to start the water flowing. He
hadn’t thought about it after that, had assumed that Cas would just figure out how to
modulate the temperature on its own, but it was days later after a nasty incident with a maenad when they were cleaning the wounds on his back and Sam had turned the showerhead gently on him and Cas had said, like an epiphany, “Oh! I see why you like them now! They can be warm, too!” that they had figured it out.
Both brothers had tried to be more careful since then. Sam was the one who taught Cas
about shaving—much, Dean had observed with amusement, as Dean had taught him.
Dean taught him how to drive, though hesitantly, because Baby was his baby, but it only
made sense for Cas to know how to do that, too. Sam took him on trips to procure food
and the occasional change of clothes, and both of them tried to teach him the fine art of
hustling pool to add to their income.
As it happened, Cas was a helluva shot. They made eight hundred bucks on his first
night, easy.
So that meant they had a bit more money these days than they were strictly used
to—enough to make up for the extra room and food and shit. This meant there was also
some extra bucks for entertainment, so Dean had taken to indulging in his other small
vice—the aforementioned fat fantasy novels.
His first dose had been a copy of Wizard’s First Rule. He’d picked it up in a high school library, and never returned it; that had been the year they had gone through eight schools, making Sam miserable and convincing Dean that the GED was the way to go.
He’d managed to snag copies of the other books—usually out of order, which was
annoying as hell—but he’d kept a hold of that first one for almost two years.
He got through Tolkien when the movies came out; he told Sam he liked the movies
better, except for the hot chicks, but he did like the books, too. Particularly the second
and third volumes, because he got Éomer looking out for his little sister, and the thing
with Boromir and Faramir and their Dad way more than all the crap with the friggin’ Hobbits.
He picked up A Song of Ice and Fire when the last book came out in paperback; that was when Sam was still gone at school and Dad was running a lot of his own hunts, so he didn’t feel so bad about carrying around an actual matching set for a while, and those got ditched at some point too.
But the new; book was coming out, and there was an HBO TV show now, and he had seen some of the paperbacks at a store by the hotel one night when he was making a
late run for food and booze, and that was how, one morning, Cas had been perched on his
bed with his nose in ;A Storm of Swords when Sam came in.
“You guys ready to go?” Sam had asked, and then, “Hey, Cas, what’re you reading?”
“It’s a book of Dean’s,” Cas had answered, not looking up. “It’s very interesting.” He had
finally put the book down with a frown. “I don’t understand Jaime and Brienne.”
In Dean’s defense, he hadn’t had coffee yet, so he wasn’t thinking when he said, “Look,
Cas, it’s your basic buddy cop thing, right? Minus the funny and without the actual cops.”
Sam had grinned one of those massive smiles that were almost too wide for his face.
“And you always said those were just left behind in our rooms by accident. Man,
you are so full of it!”
Dean had scowled and refused to talk for their first seventy miles that day.
“It’s not a rule, exactly,” Dean hedges that night, when he and Cas are talking about it.
“More like—” Dean grasps at the air, like it holds something physical, like he could just
show it to Cas rather than put it in words. “It’s just the way it is,” he concludes
lamely.
“Right.” Cas nods, and opens the book back up. “Books are like the magazines.”
Dean wants to argue, he really, really does, but he doesn’t know how. And Cas is soon
too absorbed to notice his consternation anyway.
Whetstones for the Mind
It’s all Cas’s fault, is the thing.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, maybe, at this point, but Dean files it away as just another
thing he and the little former angel Need to Talk About.
“I don’t understand, Dean,” Cas says when they do discuss it that night, four hundred
miles away and in a different hotel. He pauses. “Are the books like the magazines?”
The thing is, Dean Winchester has few pleasures in his life, and they tend to be simple
ones. Driving his Baby. Porn. Bacon cheeseburgers. Freaky Japanese cartoons. Sex with
women. Watching Doctor Sexy, M.D.
And really fat epic fantasy novels.
“No, Cas,” Dean says with slow, exaggerated patience as he pulls fresh clothes out of his
backpack, eyes on them instead of Cas. He hopes that Sam can’t hear this conversation
through the wall. It’s been weird sharing a room with someone else, after all these years,
but three guys in a hotel room gets too personal too quickly, and Sam had been the one to
point out that they couldn’t leave Cas alone by himself right now, and Dean was the one
he had the “bond” with, and, well. There they were.
“I’m just saying,” he continues carefully, unsure how to word this, “it’s not something we
talk about.”
Cas’s brow furrows. “So it is like the magazines?” The magazines were the
copies of Busty Asian Beauties that lived under the driver’s seat. Castiel had
found that while rummaging for a road atlas.
That had been a fun afternoon.
Dean doesn’t know why he was fine with Cas knowing about all his personal
peccadilloes when he was an angel, but as a human it’s…weird.
“It’s not weird, Dean,” Cas says with that odd trick he has of following Dean’s thoughts
so completely (except for when he doesn’t, not at all). “You’re still trying to trust me
again. Especially now that—” And he gestures, taking in his mortality and their new
living arrangements and life in general. “It makes sense.” His lips thin in that
contemplative way he has. “I just—don’t know all the rules yet.”
Which is true enough. It took days for Cas to adjust to needing to eat and go to the
bathroom. It took even longer than that for Sam and Dean to realize that all the little
things they took for granted had to be taught to Cas, things you wouldn’t even have to
teach a small child because even children knew the unspoken rules of how things worked.
Simple things like, y’know, taking a shower.
Dean had asked Cas if he knew what showers were for, that first time, and Cas
had given him an irritated look. “Of course, Dean. Showers are part of human cleansing
rituals.” He had disappeared into the bathroom, then returned a heartbeat later. “How do
you operate the shower?”
Dean had handed him a bar of soap and pulled the handle to start the water flowing. He
hadn’t thought about it after that, had assumed that Cas would just figure out how to
modulate the temperature on its own, but it was days later after a nasty incident with a maenad when they were cleaning the wounds on his back and Sam had turned the showerhead gently on him and Cas had said, like an epiphany, “Oh! I see why you like them now! They can be warm, too!” that they had figured it out.
Both brothers had tried to be more careful since then. Sam was the one who taught Cas
about shaving—much, Dean had observed with amusement, as Dean had taught him.
Dean taught him how to drive, though hesitantly, because Baby was his baby, but it only
made sense for Cas to know how to do that, too. Sam took him on trips to procure food
and the occasional change of clothes, and both of them tried to teach him the fine art of
hustling pool to add to their income.
As it happened, Cas was a helluva shot. They made eight hundred bucks on his first
night, easy.
So that meant they had a bit more money these days than they were strictly used
to—enough to make up for the extra room and food and shit. This meant there was also
some extra bucks for entertainment, so Dean had taken to indulging in his other small
vice—the aforementioned fat fantasy novels.
His first dose had been a copy of Wizard’s First Rule. He’d picked it up in a high school library, and never returned it; that had been the year they had gone through eight schools, making Sam miserable and convincing Dean that the GED was the way to go.
He’d managed to snag copies of the other books—usually out of order, which was
annoying as hell—but he’d kept a hold of that first one for almost two years.
He got through Tolkien when the movies came out; he told Sam he liked the movies
better, except for the hot chicks, but he did like the books, too. Particularly the second
and third volumes, because he got Éomer looking out for his little sister, and the thing
with Boromir and Faramir and their Dad way more than all the crap with the friggin’ Hobbits.
He picked up A Song of Ice and Fire when the last book came out in paperback; that was when Sam was still gone at school and Dad was running a lot of his own hunts, so he didn’t feel so bad about carrying around an actual matching set for a while, and those got ditched at some point too.
But the new; book was coming out, and there was an HBO TV show now, and he had seen some of the paperbacks at a store by the hotel one night when he was making a
late run for food and booze, and that was how, one morning, Cas had been perched on his
bed with his nose in ;A Storm of Swords when Sam came in.
“You guys ready to go?” Sam had asked, and then, “Hey, Cas, what’re you reading?”
“It’s a book of Dean’s,” Cas had answered, not looking up. “It’s very interesting.” He had
finally put the book down with a frown. “I don’t understand Jaime and Brienne.”
In Dean’s defense, he hadn’t had coffee yet, so he wasn’t thinking when he said, “Look,
Cas, it’s your basic buddy cop thing, right? Minus the funny and without the actual cops.”
Sam had grinned one of those massive smiles that were almost too wide for his face.
“And you always said those were just left behind in our rooms by accident. Man,
you are so full of it!”
Dean had scowled and refused to talk for their first seventy miles that day.
“It’s not a rule, exactly,” Dean hedges that night, when he and Cas are talking about it.
“More like—” Dean grasps at the air, like it holds something physical, like he could just
show it to Cas rather than put it in words. “It’s just the way it is,” he concludes
lamely.
“Right.” Cas nods, and opens the book back up. “Books are like the magazines.”
Dean wants to argue, he really, really does, but he doesn’t know how. And Cas is soon
too absorbed to notice his consternation anyway.
