Howveryheathers - Cora

Love at first bite 🦇

dean is hungry. he's always hungry. these days, if he isn't hungry then that means he's sick. so the pain is good. it keeps him awake, keeps him sharp, lets him know he's okay.

sammy is asleep, mouth open around snores. face down on the tiny, cramped single bed they're sharing, he's just slightly quieter than the tv. bleeding body heat against dean's hip and leg, a little sweaty and taking up too much space. alive, safe. splayed out across the mattress.

that's okay, though. dean can't lay down. he's not allowed to sleep until his dad gets home. he's got to stay awake, to watch out for sammy.

the tv flashes, spilling light over the mountains of his knees. this motel room is disgusting. everything reeks of cigarette smoke, staining the walls and sheets and making dean slightly nauseous. that could be the hunger, though.

sometimes when he's really, really hungry like he is now, he feels sick. like his stomach is a hole, swallowing up his insides.

he watches the quiet tv screen— some spanish movie is playing. the subtitles are moving too fast for his eyes to keep up, so he focuses on the colors, watches the shadows rise and swell over his knees.

yesterday was his birthday. dad didn't say a word, just dropped a twenty on the table and left for the bar and didn't come home until after four in the morning. there isn't a case in this town that they've found so far, but apparently the whiskey is good because they've been here for days.

he and sam had breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the first time in months. dean has perfected the art of making a cent stretch. he's eleven years old, now. they even had a pie. it was a little stale, and a stupid splurge. but sammy begged, and dean was helpless to say no because he wanted it just as much.

he doesn't feel any older. sometimes he feels ancient. right now he feels small and paper thin.

he's sort of desperately missing the sandwiches they had for dinner yesterday. there are no leftovers. no food waiting in the cabinets, but that's okay. dad fell asleep and dean stole ten dollars from his wallet.

he won't miss it. sammy will have breakfast. dean can wait a few more hours

it doesn't matter if he's starving.

_

"like this. use the spatula to pull them in from the edges so all the uncooked egg spills out. makes them fluffier. that, and the milk."

dean demonstrates. jack watches like a hawk even though he can't even see over the edge of the stove standing on his own, two little fists gripping the collar of cas's shirt like a lifeline to keep him steady as he leans over.

they're all pressed up together to fit in front of the stove, jack perched on cas's hip, and like this, side-by-side, dean can compare their nearly identical facial expressions. blonde hair and dark brown, the same cleft chin and bright blue eyes.

cas makes an identical face watching dean cook scrambled eggs to the one he does while focused on a hunt, channeling all of his angelic skill and strength for something as trivial as food or as important as measuring spell ingredients. jack is mirroring it almost uncannily.

dean isn't ashamed to admit that he finds it adorable.

he finishes up the eggs under the two careful sets of eyes and turns off the stove, letting cas hand him jack's plate first. a tiny pancake with a chocolate chip smile, two slices of sam's shoeleather bacon, and a small spoonful of eggs. there's already a bowl of fruit waiting for him on the table. jack is very particular about what he eats.

cas sets him down gently and dean hands him his plate, trusting the toddler to make it to the table because jack is always very careful.

"breakfast!" dean leans back to shout down the hall, tugging off his apron. cas's hand is huge and warm in the small of his back as he makes their plate, heaping on a pile of real bacon that won't leave the faint taste of burnt plastic in his mouth when he's finished eating it.

sam comes in first, followed shortly by eileen. his hair is still wet from his morning shower and together, they've been slowly reorganizing the library into something efficient.

they all make their plates and settle down to eat. it's a little crowded around the table, but they make do.

cas doesn't eat much. what he does comes off dean's plate, which was made up specifically in mind of that. .

sam piles so much fruit onto his that it spills over into his eggs and he makes a face, freeing a blueberry only to sentence it to being crushed between his molars.

eileen loves pancakes with fruit. specifically strawberries. dean made her's special, and when she sees that she lights up. it makes him smile, wide and happy, as they sign back and forth over the table, conversing silently.

he's still a little clumsy. cas helps him practice. he's getting better every day.

dean isn't full, yet. but, he isn't starving. he hasn't been in years. he won't ever be again.

jack smears his eggs everywhere, babbles on and on in a mismatch of both english and asl. cas watches him with huge, beautiful eyes. jack is telling them a largely exaggerated tale about a lady at the grocery store yesterday with a service dog whose tail and ears had been dyed rainbow. they've all heard about it twice, now. jack had been absolutely fascinated by the colors and the dog until he got distracted by the cereal aisle.

dean feels so young, for the first time in his entire life. he's home. he's happy. he's safe.

dean always acts like a suave flirter but the second he tries to flirt with cas he’s this stuttering stumbling dork who gets all tongue tied and flustered around cas

dean and cas having an argument about something in the middle of a case and cas warns dean he needs to move and dean stubbornly crosses his arms and glares at cas, muttering, “not fuckin’ happening.” cas moves forward and snags dean by the waist, hoisting dean up in one smooth motion that happens so fast dean doesn’t even see it coming until he’s manhandled and caught up in cas’ arms. dean wants to argue and get defensive, yet all that happens is a soft shaky gasp falls from his lips and his hand wraps around cas’ bicep, and all dean’s mind can do is think ‘oh god oh god oh god, he’s so strong’

I was inspired by some mood boards on Pinterest featuring abandoned places which made me imagine Dean and Castiel spending the night in a derelict house💙💚🌱🌿

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I think it would've been funny if Mary was on a solo hunt and met Claire, with her curly blonde hair and big blue eyes and tough attitude and wearing a shirt she stole from dean that dean stole from john, and Mary's like 'oh. interesting. I'm a grandmother. nightmare scenario.' and this is post the bmol reveal so Dean is fully not talking to her and she thinks he didn't tell her he has a daughter because he didn't trust her so she decides to get in Claire's good graces. 1) because her granddaughter seems to have the impulse control of an irritated bull and she definitely shouldn't be hunting alone and 2) she gave Claire a fake last name so she wouldn't figure out their relation so by the time Dean figures out they've met Claire can help sweeten him up so Mary can fix things with him. Claire meanwhile is annoyed that this random woman keeps following her around but she's already resigned to the fact she attracts parental figures like a magnet.

so they're a VERY chaotic hunting team for awhile. Mary also keeps trying to needle out details about Claire's life- she figures she might blow her cover if she asks too much about her father, so she asks a lot about Claire's mother but she's very cagey about the topic. then one day Claire let's Mary use her phone for something and she notices the background is a pic of her and Cas and Claire doesn't wanna get into the whole angel thing with this woman who won't get out of her car so she's like 'oh yeah that's my dad'. and Mary's IMMEDIATELY just like oh God oh fuck I almost got my son in law killed no wonder Dean hates me. she's fully spiralling about her kids not trusting her so much they're hiding an entire family from her. even BEFORE they knew about the brits Dean didn't tell her?? she spends all night on google taking like those dumb 'am I homophobic??' quizzes to see if she said or did anything to make him uncomfortable and she literally goes to a library and prints out articles about how to support your gay child. turns into one of those hardcore gay rights moms over night. Claire just thinks Mary's doing this because she's figured out Claire's a lesbian and she finds it sweet.

Dean eventually starts responding to Mary's texts again and Mary just wants to tell Dean she knows everything so they can Properly make up and move forward but all the parenting books she's been reading insist that she needs to let him come to her with this. she starts dropping hints though, like 'oh I'm working with this hunter named Claire', thinking he'll take the bait and tell her he's Claire's father but he's just like 'tell that criminal she has 32 hours to return my ivory grip gun or else I'm actually filing a police report against her' and Mary's not in any place to critique parenting styles but she's like 😬 and tells Claire who's like 'tell him they'll never take me alive' and Mary ends up in the middle of dumb banter between these two while Claire's driving but neither of them will admit they're father and daughter and it's driving her INSANE. she just wants to be trusted!!

skdhdj Claire has a p.o. box and one day they stopped by and there was a head of a stuffed unicorn in there as a godfather parody, and Claire calls Dean like 'THAT WAS ALEX'S!!' and Mary hears him cursing over the other line and after they hang up she asks who Alex is and Claire's like 'oh my sister' and Mary's like. YOUR WHAT.

then all the shit with the brainwashing and apocalypse world goes down and by the time she's back in the bunker she's SO over waiting she just wants as normal a family dynamic as she can possibly get so she makes a big show of like getting Dean alone and she has a whole apology speech AND a gay rights speech that she had kids from a local lgbt community group proof read and edit for her. and Dean king of the closet is like thanks! but what the Fuck. and people are fully walking into the library now Sam has popcorn and Mary's like listen sweetheart I know I haven't given you a lot of reasons to trust me but at the very least you could have mentioned I'm a grandmother, I mean the resemblance is uncanny- and Dean's like 'shit you met Ben? is he okay?' and she's like. WHO?? WHAT? HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE YOU HIDING. And he's like well Emma's dead ('WHAT') so who else could you POSSIBLY be talking about?? And Mary's like 'Claire!! obviously Claire!!' and Claire, who's on the other side of the room yells 'EW?!' in a put on offended tone and Dean's like 'no she's Cas' brat?!' and Mary's like. 'well she's not a nephilim like Jack! I know you and Cas are together Dean-' and Dean and Cas are like. um. what drew you to that conclusion. pay no attention to the fact we're blushing and now refusing to make eye contact with each other we Swear we are only simply platonic friends we are NOT in a romantic relationship. and then Jack and Claire are both like 'WHAT YOU AREN'T?!?!' and the night is lost to many many confusing confrontations. this post got away from me.

girl power runs in the family

men (dean winchester) will just wear another man's (castiel's) trenchcoat and sit on his lap and

The whole idea of “if you love something, set it free” as shown in Buffy is troubling to me. Buffy doesn’t want Angel to leave. She even doesn’t want Riley to leave for some inexplicable reason. She doesn’t want Spike to leave. (Or Giles. Or her mom.)

And yet the show keeps isolating her, the people she loves keep leaving her. And they say it’s for her own good (ie they are letting her free before they love her) but what they are really doing is abandoning her. They aren’t selflessly improving her life, they are causing her pain. Joyce and to a lesser extent Spike obviously did not willingly abandon Buffy, but the effect on her is the same. And while Spike’s sacrifice does free her of the shackles of the Hellmouth, you can’t convince me she wouldn’t rather be holding a blanket over his head on that bus rather than staring at the crater that becomes his tomb.

It is not better or more worthy or make Buffy stronger to be left alone. She is strong in spite of her suffering; not because of it. And I just can’t see any of this as good. Angel and Giles self-congratulate themselves as they walk away leaving her bleeding on the floor behind them.

I’ve barely been drawing anything that isn’t for work in recent months but I still have nothing but Spike/Buffy brain so here’s some no-reference and no-erase quick sketches loosely based on early S6 🪦🫀