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Sam does not understand, fundamentally, why he is always the one getting shafted, cosmically speaking.
He’s considered it pretty carefully. He’s not exactly sure if you can get reincarnated, but every day he gets a little more certain, because clearly he did something terrible in a past life to deserve this. I mean, sure, there’s all the murdering he’s done in this life, and the lying, and he’s done more than his fair share of coveting, he guesses. But even with all the killing, he can’t have done anything bad enough to warrant this. It’s gotta have been the guy before him, fucking up his life from beyond the grave.
Grimly, Sam makes the call. As he listens to it ring, he wonders what he can do to make up for his cosmic misfortune. Plant trees, maybe. Campaign against animal cruelty? He’s definitely going to need a burger after this. The biggest burger they’ll make him. So maybe he shouldn’t be a hypocrite about the animal cruelty.
“Yeah?” Dean answers.
“Hi,” Sam says.
“What’s wrong?”
Sam, not for the first time, silently damns his father to hell for raising them on the road in a way that means Dean intrinsically knows all his tells. “Cover’s blown. We need a new plan.”
“Cover’s- what do you mean, cover’s blown?”
“I meant that the cover’s blown. So we need a new plan.”
“The fuck did you do to blow it?”
Sam bristles. “This is not my fucking fault.”
“Well, whose fault is it?”
Sam hates his life. He wonders if it’s too late to renounce hunting and go back to law school. “Did you come to see Cas while I was investigating the warehouse yesterday?”
“Yeah, he wanted an opinion on an angle on the case.”
“Did you hang out on the front porch for a while afterwards?”
The defensiveness creeps into Dean’s voice, right on schedule. “A man can’t hang out with his best friend for the first time all week, Sammy?”
Maybe killing Dean’ll get the metaphysical target off his back. It’s more murder but that’s gotta be a net win for the universe. “Were you… behaving any different? Than normal?”
“No, same as always.”
Yeah, that checks out. “Cas left to do some recon today and this, uh. This posse of the older ladies who live in the neighborhood dropped by for a talk.”
“…okay?”
“And they wanted me to know that Cas…” Christ. “Cas is having an affair.”
Silence from Dean before he lets out a squawk of laughter.
“You can’t even hold anybody down when you’re not laying any pipe,” he tells Sam. “You’re a fucking embarrassment.” Jesus God, Sam hates him. Sam opens his mouth but something changes in Dean’s tone. “Wait, an affair? Is there- did somebody-“ And there’s the jealous edge, also right on cue. “Did somebody come by to see Cas? Someone he likes more-“ Dean cuts himself off, saving the two of them the awkwardness of him finishing the sentence with than me?
“No, moron,” Sam says, because he’s about at the edge of his patience. “They think he’s cheating on me with you.”
Dead silence. Sam waits.
“No, they don’t,” Dean says finally.
Sam rolls his eyes. “They gave me a pretty detailed description, Dean, I think they must’ve had binoculars.”
“Well, how the fuck do you know they were-“
“Freckles, green eyes, tan jacket, red flannel.”
More silence.
“They said they’re gonna watch the house like a hawk in case you come back,” Sam tells him. “We can’t have them doing that. So the cover’s blown, and we need to find a new angle.”
“Cas and I don’t read like that,” Dean says.
Sam doesn’t even know where to begin with that. “Evidently you do,” he settles on. “Because they clocked you, and now we’re fucked.” Dean’s quiet again. “Dean?”
“I told you nobody was gonna buy Cas being in love with your big dumb ass,” Dean finally bursts out with. “I fucking told you this was a bad plan-“
“It was the only plan,” Sam snaps. “It was the only goddamn plan, and you refused to be the one to do it, so it was my job.” Sam’s had to watch Cas mope around about it for a week, and he is not about to entertain Dean rewriting history.
“Does Cas know?”
“Cas is out investigating, I’m gonna tell him when he gets back.” Because Sam’s life is the hardest anyone’s ever had it, and he’s including Jesus. “Drive to the rendezvous point and start thinking about a plan.”
“Why is this my job?
Sam, with some restraint, does not say because thanks to the fact that you won’t have a conversation with Cas like people do, this is your fault. He also does not say because you’re pushing fucking forty and still a stilted jackass. Finally, he does not say because you’ve been inflicting you and Cas on me for almost ten fucking years and I’m starting to think I will never know peace.
“Just is,” he says, instead of all that. “See you soon.”
Sam hangs up. Cas’ truck is pulling into the drive, and he’s anticipating that this conversation is only going to go marginally better than the Dean one did.
The absolute biggest, juiciest, fuck youiest burger, Sam thinks, and heads out to meet him.