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Sam, in his opinion, felt like he was doing a remarkable job keeping it together. Sure, he hadn’t quite been able to catch his breath since the smoke had cleared and the amulet in Dean’s pocket had started glowing. And maybe Sam hadn’t felt in control of his own body walking down the street, and maybe his vision clouded over when Chuck had turned around to face them, sheepish smile familiar on his face from the last time Sam had seen him six years ago like he’d only just closed the motel door behind him. But all in all, Sam considered one extended-but-controlled panic attack a pretty good record for himself, given that it’s not every day you find out the friend-with-benefits who ghosted you after you went to literal Hell with the literal Devil is, you know. Literally God. Capital-G God, Christian and Catholic God, the creator with ambiguous benevolency depending on who you ask. It’s not every day you find out the guy who made his entire living by profiting off the pain of your tragic, ugly little life was the guy who came up with all the details in the first place, and on top of that, he had the nerve to look at you directly and say, “We should probably talk,” like that wasn’t the understatement of the entire fucking Gregorian calendar and the Julian one too, for that matter.
Okay, so maybe Sam wasn’t keeping it quite as together as he thought. Maybe he was angrier than he’d thought he was when they’d all made it to the bunker and sat themselves around Chuck like he was some smarmy college professor and the Winchesters were his brown-nosing TAs. Dean was certainly not amused with this turn of events, but he was casting concerned glances Sam’s way that made it clear Sam had visibly passed the line of ‘normal reaction to finding out a friend is God,’ whatever that was. Maybe it was the fact that every muscle in his body had braced, making him a human tension line. Maybe it was his inability to keep still, one foot bouncing off the floor like he’d just downed a five hour energy. Maybe Dean just knew him well enough to know something was off, but there was a lot of stuff that Dean didn’t know about him. Case in point, Sam thought, as Chuck took a steadying breath and started talking.
“So, you probably have some questions,” Chuck said, and Sam knew the patronizing tone in his voice was about to set Dean off, so he jumped in first.
“Where were you?” he asked, and the force of his own voice made himself jump. Chuck and Dean wore matching taken-aback looks, and Sam would’ve laughed about it if he didn’t feel so crazy. “We- we stopped the apocalypse, we beat the devil, and I put- I put him in the cage, where were you? I was in Hell for,” Sam stopped, swallowed hard, and fast-forwarded his brain past the end of that sentence, past thinking about how long he was down there, and who he was down there with, and what they did to him. “Why didn’t you do anything?”
Chuck nodded, mouth set in a serious little line, eyebrows drawn up in a parody of concern. “You surprised me, Sam,” he said, and Sam’s name in his mouth made Sam flinch. “I didn’t think you could do it. In all the stories I had told, all the endings I wrote… you lost. You lost and the Apocalypse happened. And I was being… I’ve been pretty hands-off for the past few centuries,” Chuck spread his hands out, like mea culpa. “I thought you two in particular might be sick of the will of Heaven interfering in your lives, rendering your decisions pointless. So. Hands off,” Chuck finished with a shrug.
Heat shot through Sam like it had been injected into his veins. “Hands off?” he repeated, incredulous, and for the first time Chuck’s eyes flashed to his with a spark of guilt, or shame, or maybe just awareness. It was all the same to Sam. “I seem to remember you being pretty fucking hands on,” Sam hissed through his teeth.
“Those books?” Dean interjected, and Sam looked over at him, surprised. “Writing those pulpy little dime novels about every shitty thing we ever went through? Where did you get off with that?”
Which wasn’t what Sam had been implying, but now that he thought about it, yeah, that too. Chuck grimaced, dropping his eyes from Sam’s sheepishly before turning his full attention to Dean to say something about being a writer, being an actor, getting into the part, but Sam wasn’t listening. Sam had just made God balk. His lips twitched before he even realized he was about to start laughing, and he swallowed it down before any sound could escape. Sam had just made God uncomfortable. Sam, he was realizing with the sort of hysteria that only comes after trauma, had made God feel quite a lot of things he’d never expected himself to be able to do, and that was pretty fucking funny in the cosmically tragic way that everything in Sam’s life had been funny so far.
Sam was hit suddenly with the memories, the visuals he’d been trying to stave off since the amulet shone too bright to look at in his brother’s hand standing in front of Chuck in the street and he’d made the connection. He remembered how easy it had been to lift Chuck up, the breathless way he’d laughed when Sam slammed him a bit too roughly against the back of the motel door. He remembered how small Chuck had felt in his lap, head thrown back while he moved, graceful in a way Sam had been surprised by. He remembered looking up at Chuck in some dingy shower in a different motel, kneeling on the cold porcelain with Chuck’s hands stroking through his hair, Chuck looking at him reverently like - at the time, Sam had thought Chuck was looking at him like he was something holy, something divine, and it had made him laugh even then, even when Chuck was just a prophet. Just a prophet, just a conduit for the word of God, which had felt insane enough in 2010. Chuck had said, “Hey, man, come on, don’t- laughing is not a confidence booster,” and he had laughed too. Sam remembered him and Chuck laughing a lot, like whenever Sam breathed out a harsh “oh, god,” in his ear, and Sam had thought at the time they were laughing at the same joke. Sam wasn’t in on the joke, as it turns out. He was the joke. One big, cosmic joke. Why don’t you tell it again.
It hadn’t been— romantic. Sam hadn’t deluded himself into thinking it was anything it wasn’t. Their work took them all over middle America, and Chuck was always tapped in to their general location. The first time he’d called Sam, suggested in a level of forced-casualness that he could drive out to the motel and keep him company while Dean went out on the prowl, Sam hadn’t been all that surprised. He supposed Chuck knew a lot about Sam that didn’t make it into the books, and he also figured Chuck knew Sam had privately thought he was pretty cute, and god knows he needed a little bit of tension relief. God knew, Sam corrected himself, literally. It was convenient, and it was fun, and even if Sam knew they weren’t chasing a happily ever after together he at least assumed they’d had the friends part of friends with benefits down well enough. Their pillowtalk avoided much discussion of the apocalypse, but they talked a lot about their fears, their concerns, their life goals once Sam and Dean managed to somehow save the world. It was — nice. It was comforting to have a friend who seemed to be on his side in an uncomplicated way.
Well. So much for that.
When Sam didn’t hear from Chuck after the Cage, well, he hadn’t exactly been in the mental state to be curious. Soulless he hadn’t cared at all, not wanting to involve a prophet who knew Dean in anything he was doing, and then by the time he’d gotten his soul back, Kevin had activated. There hadn’t been much time to wonder about what that meant for Chuck, which at the time Sam had felt a little guilty about, but now he’s glad he didn’t waste his energy on mourning.
(many scenes and quite a bit of time would go here)
“You think you’re special, Sam?” Chuck asks, his eyes on Sam gone cold and calculating. “There’s been thousands of you. Literally. When I’m done wiping you off the map, I can go make a new Sam without breaking a sweat.”
Sam swallows tightly. “Then that Sam will learn the truth about you too. He’ll stop you.”
Chuck laughs, a brittle sound that makes Sam flinch. “Oh, baby. You really are stupid, aren’t you? The only reason you care is because I let you. The only reason you’re here, twisted up on the inside about how much you love me? Because I let you.” He takes a step towards Sam, and he might be smaller, but Sam feels dwarfed in a way he hasn’t felt since the Cage. He wants to run. He wants to drop to his knees. He wants to find the combination of words, of prayers, of hail marys and rosary beads to count, to make this stop.
But he stands his ground.
Chuck tilts his head. “All the suffering you’ve ever done is because I let it happen. And all the suffering you’re about to go through?” He put one hand on Sam’s shoulder, over the still-open bullet wound. “It’s because I want it to happen. Remember that.” His grip tightens, and he pushes his arm forward with the strength that belies his form, and agony rips through Sam as he can only assume his shoulder’s been dislocated from its socket.
And despite it all, Sam still finds himself filled with unbidden gratitude for the proof that he’s been touched by God.