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Nothing in Deanna’s life seemed real until she saw the commercial for Supernatural. She couldn’t quite pin down what about it got its hooks into her: the intense brother relationship, the soundtrack, the monster fights, the awesome car, or the otherworldly angel. If Deanna was sleepwalking through life, the commercial had made her startle awake, and take notice.
It helped that one of the characters had a similar name to her: Dean to her feminized Deanna.
There was something wrong with her. No one she knew seemed to feel television, to need television, like she did. There was an emptiness inside her, one that only television came close to filling. The problem was her parents disapproved of her staying up to watch it. Supernatural was late, at 10 PM on Saturday nights.
“I’m 12! I should be able to stay up!”
“You need your rest,” her mother had said, in a soothing tone. “You’re always so tired. And your upper left arm is always bothering you. If you rested, you would heal.”
It was true, although tired wasn’t quite the word for it. Maybe exhausted fit better. It felt like her days passed by in a haze, with her unable to take notice of what made any particular day different. Her mom said it was just growing pains, but no other kid in her class seemed to be as rundown as her.
The only days that seemed memorable were the ones that had to do with Supernatural.
It was some stupid function at the high school, her mom involved as a teacher, that had Deanna wandering the halls, wasting time, on a weeknight. Once she saw the boy reading a book about Supernatural, she couldn’t see anything else. There’s no room in her brain for anything but the thought, “I have to look at that book.”
The boy had dark hair, and was nestled in a corner staring at the book. He was older, maybe a freshman in high school. Every piece of his body language was screaming, “Leave me the fuck alone.”
Still, Deanna was drawn to him. She didn’t want this to be like her weekly missed opportunity to watch the show. No one was watching her. She could just ask.
She found her voice, but with effort: “Is that a good book?”
The boy startled. “Uh, he said, and covered the cover with his hand as though to hide it before showing it to her. “It’s just the episode guide. It’s official, though. Do you want to look at it?”
It was hard for Deanna to not snatch it from his hands at this permission. She steadied herself and said, “Yeah, thanks.”
The guide had photos along with summaries of the episodes and behind the scenes facts and trivia. Some of the shots Deanna recognized from commercials, but one in particular she did not: Dean and the angel, Castiel, standing mere inches apart, both with cell phones at their ears.
So lost in the photo, she didn’t hear when the boy asked her a question until he repeated it.
“I said, do you watch Supernatural?”
“Oh, sorry. No, it’s on too late and my parents won’t let me stay up to watch it.”
The boy laughed in disbelief. “What are you, thirteen?”
“Twelve.”
“That’s old enough to stay up watching TV.”
“That’s what I said!” Deanna burst out. Then she looked around: her mom was always warning her about her anger issues. She lowered her voice, in case someone told her mom. “My parents are strict. They don’t let me do anything.”
“Oh, that sucks,” the boy said. “Mine too, but about different things.”
Deanna looked back at the book and the boy settled next to her, to look over her shoulder. “That’s Dean and Cas,” he said.
“I thought his name was Castiel.”
“It is,” the boy confirmed. “But Dean gave him that nickname and I think he likes it. My name’s Emmanuel, by the way.”
“I’m Deanna,” she said. She was having trouble moving her eyes from the book, and to cover it she turned the page. “That’s so cool that you watch the show. I don’t know anyone who watches it.”
Beside her, Emmanuel beamed so much that Deanna’s attention was diverted from the book. The difference between the lonely scowl to a bright smile, but quickly scuttled by shyness, a wariness that Deanna recognized from herself. If people found out you unabashedly liked something, the teasing would never stop.
“I watch it with a friend,” he said, and Deanna could tell he was trying to be casual. “You could come over and watch it too, if you want.”
“I don’t know,” Deanna said. The logistics were hard — the idea of asking her parents if she could hang out with a high school boy at a house was laughable. “I’ll figure something out.”
She’d never felt anything from a boy smiling at her before, but the way Emmanuel looked at her then made the emptiness inside her ease and the pain near her left shoulder ease. She’d only said she’d figure something out as a cop out, a way to say that she wanted to but wouldn’t be able to. In a perfect world, she would be there, but this wasn’t a perfect world. The smile, the look, however, made her want to make it true, like she was the type of person who would figure this out. That she didn’t just let things happen to her.
He took the book back, rifled through his backpack, came up with a pen, and wrote something in the front cover before giving it back to her. “My address,” he said. “You already know when Supernatural starts. You can give me the book back then.”
She meant to say yes, or thank you, or that she would take care of the book as though it were precious, because it was. Instead, there was a shout across the room. “Deanna! It’s time to go!”
“Sorry,” she said to Emmanuel. “See you.”
Her mom was ready to leave, ten minutes ago. “I couldn’t find you,” she said, putting her arm loosely around Deanna.
“Sorry,” Deanna said again.
Sometimes, it felt like she was always apologizing. Sometimes, it felt like her mom was the one with the anger issues.
“Let’s just go home.”
Every free moment before Friday, Deanna studied the episode guide. She had no concept of saving herself from spoilers, only wanting to catch herself up on everything she’s missed. In the privacy of her room, with the glow of the TV displaying a far less interesting show, she learned that Sam and Dean Winchester’s mom had died when they were young, and their dad died at the beginning of the second season.
Living without a mom was unthinkable. Deanna didn’t know what she would do without hers. A dad, well, lots of people have bad or missing dads. But maybe having a brother made it easier. Maybe things were easier to bear if you had an angel on your side.
She read until she was too tired to keep her eyes open. Before she fell asleep each night, she carefully hid the episode guide under a stack of Caroline Cooney books, struck by the vague feeling that she’s doing something wrong by reading the episode guide. She has to hide her intense interest in studying the photos, the trivia, the facts, even if she can’t articulate exactly why. She only had the feeling that something bad would happen if anyone beside Emmanuel knew.
After her fifth read-through, Deanna decided she absolutely must watch Supernatural. If Dean and Sam could be brave against monsters and angels and God himself, she could sneak out of the house.
The plan went off without a hitch: Emmanuel lived near someone Deanna used to have playdates with, used to have sleepovers, until she became too weird for the other girl.
Kids have a barometer for too weird, and Deanna definitely exceeded normal levels.
She told her mom she had a sleepover with a girl that she reconnected with — “See, middle school is so up and down! People make and break friends all the time,” her mom said, ruffling Deanna’s hair — and after being dropped off, she waited until her mom drove away to walk the three blocks to where Emmanuel lived, shouldering her backpack of the episode guide, spare clothes, and sleeping bag. Following the directions in the episode guide, she walked around the back to the basement entrance and knocked at the glass sliding door.
Inside, she could see the glow of the television and felt drawn to it, like a moth to a porchlight. The pain in her shoulder eased.
“Hey, you came,” Emmanuel said as he slid the door open. “It’s not on yet.”
“Yeah, I know,” Deanna said, then immediately felt rude. She tried to recover. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Who the hell is this?” The boy on the couch was twisted around, looking at the two of them. His face was illuminated by the television, briefly bright, almost yellow, before turning blue with the change from commercial to television episode. Not Supernatural – something else, with superheroes. “You didn’t tell me you were inviting some girl.”
Some girl felt like a slap.
“Don’t worry,” Emmanuel said, looking at Deanna with an apology on his face. “She’s cool.”
The boy with Emmanuel on the couch didn’t look any more inviting. Deanna smiled nervously, unsure or how to communicate that she was cool. Or at least not someone who deserved the disdainful tone that went along with some girl.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Deanna.”
Whatever name the boy gave on the couch was lost to Deanna, because there was an advertisement for Supernatural. His name was unimportant. Whatever awkwardness she felt dissipated, her initial thought that she should join them on the couch left her mind. She sat heavily on the floor next to the couch. The advertisement teased the return of a character previously thought dead.
There was discussion on the couch about who it was (Emmanuel thought this heralded the return of Castiel, the other boy hoped it wouldn’t) but Deanna tuned them out. Her mom would have been horrified that she wasn’t being more friendly, or ladylike, or something, but her mom wasn’t here, enforcing the social rules of conduct that Deanna never felt like she understood.
They weren’t talking to her, really. And Deanna had spent enough time around boys to know that sometimes, it’s better to be ignored by boys.
There was nothing more for her to do except stare at the television screen.
Sam and Dean were a unit. Besides her mom, Deanna wasn’t sure that anyone loved her half as much as the two brothers clearly for each other. She was also sure that she would never have the depth of feeling that brothers had for each other for anyone, she didn’t feel like she was capable of it. She didn’t think she would be capable of the types of sacrifice they made for each other.
But they didn’t have a mom. Deanna wasn’t sure what she’d do without her mom. Having a bad dad, like Sam and Dean did, was something that she understood well. Not having a mom would surely leave someone adrift.
Emmanuel and his friend were also a unit. Deanna couldn’t hear them well over the sound of the television, their whispers and their asides, so she mostly ignored them except the little sprout of jealousy. What was it like to be so close to someone, to trust that they weren’t going to hurt you or slight you? What was it like to see the light in someone else, and recognize it as the light within you?
The episode ended too quickly. Deanna realized there was an awkward silence that she was expected to fill. “I, uh, lied to my mom and said I was sleeping over at someone’s house. I brought a sleeping bag.”
For some reason, the friend thought that was funny but Emmanuel shrugged it off. “As long as my parents don’t catch you, you can stay down here. My mom would freak out if she knew some girl spent the night.”
Some girl. Deanna didn’t like being boiled down to some girl. It didn’t feel like it fit, and it’s the second time tonight someone said it. But she didn’t want to make waves and point it out, so she said instead, “Sure, I’ll be out early. No problem.”
She arranged her sleeping bag on the floor, and Emmanuel turned off the television.
It felt like the light went out of the world. Left in the basement, Deanna was left with the sense that there should have been light from somewhere: the blinking of the VCR, the glow from the chest freezer, or an alarm clock. Instead, she could see nothing but the inky black darkness.
The worst part was that Deanna wasn’t sure if she’d be able to watch Supernatural again. When she got home the next morning, with the excuse that she “just felt like walking home,” her mother had fussed. Deanna was always so tired, yet insisted on pushing herself.
She protested, “I felt good the whole time I was there.”
It was true. Supernatural and Emmanuel felt like a beacon in her life, the bright spot in a swirling fog. Her mom didn’t push it, but still petted Deanna’s hair before asking what she’d like for breakfast.
Even though she was safe in her home, in her mother’s comforting presence, it felt like the walls were closing in on her.
The feeling persisted until a week and a half later, when Deanna found a VHS tape in a padded envelope, labeled with her name, on her doorstep after getting home from school. It was labeled Supernatural along with the episode number, and a short note fell out.
Deanna,
Hope you enjoy. See you around.
Emmanuel
She smoothed the note out. Waiting until her parents were asleep was no big deal, considering she hadn’t been sure when she would be able to see the show again.
Deanna wasn’t sure why she still felt like it had to be secret. She only knew that she didn’t want her mother to find out she was watching it. Something bad might happen if she slipped up.
Emmanuel kept slipping the Supernatural episodes to Deanna on VHS tape. She wasn’t sure how he did it, but it was something she wanted so badly that she never questioned it.
Supernatural still had to be a secret, even if she didn’t fully understand why. She watched late at night, when her mom had disappeared into her bedroom. Deanna was enveloped in the glow of the television, straining to keep her eyes open, with her right hand rubbing her left shoulder.
Once the television was off, it was like she was enveloped in inky darkness. She was too old to be afraid of the dark, but still: she was afraid. When it was dark, she felt like she would never see the light again. That everything good in the world was gone. Even thinking about Supernatural, dreaming about Supernatural, didn’t take the feeling away.
Sometimes, she turned the television on in the middle of the night, just to have some light.
Dreaming about Supernatural was strange. In the real world, Deanna’s body was changing, just like her mother said it would. It felt uncomfortable and wrong to have breasts, to have men’s eyes linger at her figure, so she took to wearing baggy hoodies and jeans, even though the style for girls was more form-fitting. But in dreams? In dreams she was Dean Winchester.
This was embarrassing to admit, so it was good that Supernatural was already a secret. In her dreams, her body felt right. Like it was supposed to be. Taller, longer legs, even the slight bow in them, felt more like home than Deanna’s breasts or thighs. In dreams, the body she was in moved like it was supposed to, fluid and sure.
It felt like she knew what it was like to have a brother, to be a brother. To be both capable of violence but also care and compassion.
Dean Winchester felt more real to her than the fact she was about to start high school.
Sometimes, alone in bed at night, the darkness seemed to press into Deanna, to squeeze into her. Unable to see anything, she realized that she could’t readily call up the image of her mother’s face in her mind’s eye.
Instead, it had been replaced by Mary Winchester in a nightgown, just before she burned on the ceiling.
High school was better than middle school in one way: there were more kids, and thus, Deanna’s loner tendencies weren’t as obvious. The less attention on her, the better. She hated being the object of other kids’ perception, having to contextualize herself through their eyes.
She would rather not think of herself at all.
Supernatural wasn’t cool — it seemed like no one had heard of it — which meant that Deanna could scribble in her notebooks beside notes for class. Different sigils she thought were cool, things she thought the show got wrong, and one embarrassing day, she just wrote “Dean Winchester” over and over again. Afraid someone might see it, she burned the page.
It’s not just that Supernatural is uncool. If someone saw it, they might know how much it meant to her. She wasn’t ready to expose that part of herself to everyone.
Online, the small but active fandom seemed to be in love with one of the two brothers. Deanna didn’t like to say she “wasn’t like other girls” necessarily, but she didn’t feel like she was in love with either. Instead, the feeling of envy while watching Dean Winchester do the most basic of things, from driving his car to eating obnoxiously, overwhelmed her. He seemed so at home in his body, encompassing it fully in a way that Deanna could only imagine.
If Deanna said she wasn’t like other girls, it mostly meant that she didn’t feel like a girl in the first place. She only saw mentions of something like that occasionally while lurking on fan forums in the school library, constantly looking over her shoulder lest someone catch her. Gender envy, she filed away in her brain. She wasn’t sure that was what it was, or if the feeling of driving the car in dreams was everything she wanted.
She caught glimpses of Emmanuel in the halls, between classes, but didn’t get the nerve up to talk to him until she saw him alone by the football field during lunch, underneath the bleachers. He was hiding, but Deanna hoped he wouldn’t mind her finding him.
“Hi,” she said. She felt shy, unsure, but she wanted to know. She could be brave when it came to Supernatural. “Do you still watch Supernatural with your friend?”
“No,” Emmanuel answered, bitter. “He saw his opportunity to be cool and took it. He’s too cool for Supernatural, too cool to hang out with his queer friends, anymore.”
Shocked, Deanna studied Emmanuel’s face. No one had ever said the word queer quite like that in front of her before. Not as an insult, just a descriptor. Like Emmanuel could have said “old friends” instead.
“Do you still watch?” Deanna wanted to know. She was desperate.
“You going to make fun of me for it?” Emmanuel asked, his guard up. After studying her face for a moment, he relented. “Yeah, I still watch. Every week.”
“Maybe I could watch too. Keep you company. It could be fun.” She struggled to stay casual, to make it seem like she’d be okay with either answer.
“I don’t like girls,” he said, and for a moment, Deanna didn’t understand. She thought he was telling her no. That he only wanted boys as friends, or that he only wanted to watch Supernatural with other guys.
Then she got it. “Oh,” she laughed, more than a little relieved. “That’s not — I mean — I just really like Supernatural.” Then, realizing this sounded like she was taking advantage of Emmanuel, she said, “We could hang out, as friends. Sharing Supernatural. I’m not allowed to watch at home. My mom thinks it's too scary and disrupts my sleep, and it's on too late.”
“Still? Your mom won’t let you watch it?”
“Yeah, still,” Deanna said, but that wasn’t the whole truth — it was the truth from a few years ago. The whole truth was something about the show made her want to hide it. She was sure her mom would disapprove, and didn’t want to confirm that and have to sneak around more. Her mom did still worry about how tired Deanna seemed to be all the time, at least.
Emmanuel looked away, and the first bell for the end of lunch sounded. They walked side by side back toward the school building. “Do you, uh,” he said, and when Deanna looked at him, he looked awkward. “Do you like girls? Or boys? Or, I don’t know.” He trailed off.
“I don’t know,” Deanna said. That was the truth. “The only thing I really like is television.”
Deanna was old enough to walk herself to a friend’s house to sleepover, she argued to her mom. Her mom didn’t agree, but lately it seemed like her mom was less vibrant. Less herself, more like a ghost who sometimes came around and walked through the house, nagging Deanna.
“Deanna,” her mom said, reprovingly, taking in the baggy jeans and flannel. “You look like a lesbian. You could be so pretty if you—”
She groaned, flinching from her mom’s touch on her hair. “You could be so pretty” felt like it burned.
Her mom went on. “You have such a nice figure. If you paired the flannel with a low-cut tank top it could add a nice, feminine touch.”
Miming vomiting, Deanna only said that she would see her mother later. Besides, it didn’t matter. Her body wasn’t what was important. If she could hide it completely, she would.
Before she left the house, her mom’s only response was an eyeroll and a muttered, “Teenagers.”
Her mom’s focus on her appearance had one upside: she didn’t ask where Deanna was going, or with whom. She just accepted that Deanna was sleeping over at a friend’s house.
A short walk later, Deanna knocked softly at the sliding glass door to Emmanuel’s basement. Inside, she could see he was already sitting on the couch, bathed in the soft glow of the television. The only light in the room was from the television.
“It’s open,” he shouted.
Sliding it open, she dumped her stuff on the floor on the way to the couch, absorbed by the images on the TV. She planted herself on the open seat on the couch: not too close to Emmanuel, but not on the far side from him, either. A companionable distance.
The emptiness inside Deanna wasn’t so bleak or black, sitting on the couch, watching the adventures of Dean, Sam, and Castiel.
They didn’t talk at school. They didn’t have to strategize. They make a bigger target together. Safety in separation.
Deanna lived for Saturdays. Emmanuel popped a big bowl of popcorn, and Deanna stuffed sodas into her backpack to share. They argued, good-naturedly, about Supernatural: whether Sam and Dean were too close as brothers, whether Dean and Cas were in love or best friends or something in between, and what would be a good ending for the show. Deanna didn’t like the addition of Jack (“It’s just so weird! He’s two but looks twenty!”) and Emmanuel vehemently defended Jack (“They needed something new, otherwise the show would just be ‘blah blah brother, blah blah demons.”)
She had shrugged, not able to fit her thoughts into how disturbing the idea of a fetus controlling a woman, persuading her through weird psychic vibes to let him be born. Emmanuel wouldn’t be able to understand the horror of forced pregnancy, would he?
They didn’t only argue about the episodes they watched, but the older episodes and plotlines Emmanuel had taped for Deanna. Were Dean and Sam freakishly close? Did Dean violate Sam’s bodily autonomy when he tricked Sam into saying yes to Gadreel? Would Sam really not have looked for Dean and instead moved in with a veterinarian? Would Cas really have broken the wall in Sam’s head? The arguments were good-natured, mostly.
Sometimes, when she was talking about Dean, she felt so defensive of him, like they were actions she’d taken herself. Other times, she felt so angry with him: why on earth would he do that, why couldn’t he be less angry, the feeling searing through her as though it was personal.
If outside the basement, things seemed too hard, or not real, or like the darkness would swallow her whole, how could she worry too much? At least she had Supernatural, at least she had a few hours a week on the couch with Emmanuel.
To want more would be selfish.
After weeks of reruns, there was finally a new episode. Deanna was running late; it seemed that when she looked up from helping her mother in the kitchen, hours had passed in only minutes.
That happened a lot as she got older. Maybe there was something to what people said about time passing faster as you got older, but they never seemed to talk about how the light in the world seemed to dim, too. She wanted to ask Emmanuel about it, but the words stuck in her throat.
The episode was stressful. Dean, Cas, Sam, and Jack were trying to figure out a way to stop Chuck and stop Billie. Deanna held her shoulder, pressing her forearm against her heart, unable to tear her eyes away from the television screen.
During a tense scene, Dean and Cas were running away from Billie, and all looked hopeless, Emmanuel took the hand not clutching her shoulder in his. She remembered him saying that he didn’t like girls, but this wasn’t like that; they were both scared.
They were both terrified, squeezing their hands tightly. Deanna felt a sense of foreboding, like she knew what was going to happen next. This was going to end in tragedy.
On the screen, Dean said, “She's going to kill you and then she's going to kill me." It felt like Deanna was the one saying it. She felt the despair deep inside her, like a black mass where her heart should be.
It was hard for her to truly absorb what was happening. Castiel talked, and she knew this ended badly, knew it right down to her bones, but she couldn’t make her brain take anything in. All she could do was stare at the television as the inky blackness absorbed Castiel, and he was gone.
Episode over.
“That can’t be it,” Deanna said. “Dean saves him. I know he wouldn’t let it end like this.”
Emmanuel’s face was streaked with tears; he was hard to look at, so Deanna looked back at the television. There was a commercial for Sunny D, the bright lights glowed. “I don’t know,” he said.
“No,” Deanna warmed to this immediately. “This gets fixed. It has to. It has to. I know it does.”
“Do you ever get the feeling like something is wrong?” Emmanuel asked.
“What do you mean?” Deanna said. “With the episode?”
“Not with the show.” She glanced at him and he seemed to struggle to put it into words. “I think there’s something wrong with our lives.”
She laughed, but not because it was actually funny. “Yeah, we’re in high school. This isn’t natural.”
“No, I mean. I think we’re supposed to be different people. I think something’s wrong.” He took a deep breath. “I think we need to leave.”
“I’m only sixteen,” Deanna said. “You only turned eighteen a few months ago. We have no money, nothing.”
“I think we have to take a leap of faith. Nothing here is right.”
“You’re joking,” she said, dead serious. “I think this is just what being a teenager is.”
There was a crash upstairs, and Emmanuel turned off the television, looking toward the stairs. If Supernatural was Deanna’s secret from her family, having a girl in the basement was Emmanuel’s. Even though they weren’t like that, a phrase they used with each other and the occasionally interested classmate.
“You need to go to bed! I can’t have you keeping me up all night. You don’t want me to come down there.” The threat was called down the stairs.
Both Emmanuel and Deanna froze, silent, listening. Finally, they heard the footsteps shuffling away from the stairs.
“Come on,” whispered Emmanuel.
He led her to his bedroom, quietly closing the door. Deanna knew that if they got caught, they’d be dead. It felt terrifying to take such a risk.
“There’s enough room for both of us, as long as we’re quiet.”
Lying there, everything seemed so dark. She couldn’t see Emmanuel, couldn’t see six inches in front of her face. She could hear him breathing.
“I think there’s something wrong,” Emmanuel said.
“It sucks that we can’t just watch our show in peace,” Deanna offered.
“I think it’s bigger than that.” Emmanuel rolled onto his side, and took her hand in the dark. “It feels like this place is killing us.”
“All teenagers feel like that. It’s like, the suburb experience.”
He squeezed her hand a little too tight. They rarely touched, and it felt nice to have her hand held by someone.
“This isn’t just disaffected teenager stuff,” he argued back. “Sometimes, when I close my eyes, it feels like the whole world collapses in on itself.”
Deanna felt like that too, and that felt less normal. She didn’t know what to say, so she stayed quiet. He moved his hand to her left shoulder, and she felt the pain that was always there ease.
“You should pack a bag and come here next Saturday, like usual, and we can run away. Find somewhere that doesn’t feel like it’s going to crush us. There are other places where we can be ourselves.”
“Where would we go?” Deanna asked.
The only place she wanted to go was inside Supernatural, and that was hardly feasible.
“Anywhere. Anywhere has to be better than this.” Emmanuel took a deep breath. “I don’t think you should tell anyone.”
“Not even my mom?”
“No one,” he whispered back.
Deanna didn’t say anything back, didn’t agree or disagree. She just stared where the ceiling would be, if she could see. It was hard to tell if her eyes were open or shut. Either way, everything was an inky darkness.
Deanna didn’t meet Emmanuel, didn’t leave with him.
She couldn’t leave her mom. The idea filled her with panic. After the time that she was supposed to meet Emmanuel, he disappeared without a trace. The television they used to watch was burning in the backyard.
The thing was, there was supposed to be an episode of Supernatural airing that night. But it didn’t. After that, it was canceled, and no new episodes appeared, even though Dean and Sam were still at war with God. Even though Castiel was still trapped in the Empty. There was no explanation, just like there was no explanation about Emmanuel.
Graduating high school didn’t feel right. It hardly felt like any time had passed since Emmanuel disappeared, but it must’ve, because Deanna walked across the stage and ended up with a diploma.
She didn’t leave town. It didn’t feel right to leave her mom.
Instead, Deanna got a job in the local video store. They were just making the transition from VHS to DVD when she got hired, and it was a big job to reduce the inventory and place the newer DVDs out on the shelves. A perk of the job was that she got five free rentals a week, to better recommend releases to customers.
The worst part of the job was the uniform. The cut of the polo shirts made it impossible to hide her breasts under it, and sometimes she could tell men were leering at her. She tried sports bra after sports bra, trying to flatten her breasts into non-existence, but was never as successful as she wanted to be. She wanted to cut her hair short, but didn’t have the guts.
Her left shoulder hurt at work. It hurt while she ate her TV dinners in front of the glow of the television. It hurt all the time.
Deanna wasn’t good with customers. She wasn’t good with people, generally. She missed Emmanuel, missed watching television with him. She missed Supernatural, which hadn’t come out on DVD yet.
The customers made her angry, the dismissive, rude way they treated her, but she still heard her mom’s voice in her head, warning her about her anger issues. “No one likes an angry girl,” her mom had told her, over and over. No one liked her anyway.
Renting movies was great, but it didn’t fill her with the same feelings it had before. The glow of the television seemed dimmer, or something. Probably just a side effect of growing up. Nothing seemed as magical as it did when you were a kid. Maybe the lights were brighter, too.
At least, that’s what she assumed.
Time still didn’t feel like it was passing correctly, because Deanna could have sworn it was summer a few days ago, and now, she was at the grocery store, looking for last minute Thanksgiving ingredients. The lights flickered uncertainly, as though the grocery store was experiencing an intermittent outage.
That’s when she saw Emmanuel next to the bananas. He looked exactly the same, even though years had passed. He was also filthy, like the oily blackness that she saw every time she turned the television off was clinging to him, but that didn’t matter to Deanna. It was like a spark started inside her for the first time since he left. “I was so worried about you,” she said, hugging him tight.
He didn’t hug back.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “We all thought you were dead.”
“We can’t talk here,” he said. His voice had gotten deeper, his eyes bluer. “You trust me?”
She didn’t trust him before, and he ended up disappearing. This time, she said, “Yes.”
He took her to a bar, dingy and dark and loud. It was hard to hear each other, so they leaned their heads together, turning their ear as the other spoke.
“Do you remember that show we used to watch together?” Emmanuel asked. “Supernatural?”
“Of course, it’s what we did together. It’s my favorite show of all time.”
There was laughter at the next table, followed by shouting and cheering. Emmanuel had to speak louder to be heard. “Do you ever think that it was more than a television show?”
“But it was a television show,” Deanna said. “We watched it in your basement.”
Emmanuel just looked at her for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “But are you sure that’s all it was?”
Deanna couldn’t help it. She started laughing.
“No, listen,” he said. “When you think about it now, us watching it, do you ever get confused?”
“What do you mean?”
The waitress delivered their drinks. Deanna swirled her straw, waiting for Emmanuel to speak.
He watched the waitress go before he started talking again. “Just, like things aren’t normal with your life. That since we stopped watching it together, time doesn’t move normally.”
There’s no way Emmanuel could know that Deanna felt the same, that sometimes it felt like she skipped entire seasons. She stopped swirling her drink.
He went on. “That your life is just unfolding while you watch it? That Supernatural is more real to you than your real life? That everything is just on the surface, and there’s something else going on?”
“I don’t know,” Deanna said, slowly. “You’ve been missing for a long time. Shouldn’t we tell someone you’re here? Your parents or police or something?”
“No!” Emmanuel said, loud even in the din of the restaurant. “I mean, you can’t tell anyone. Please.”
He reached out to hold her hand. Both their hands were cold from the cold condensation of their drinks. He continued, “You remember the last episode of Supernatural?”
“Of course,” Deanna said. “It’s the last episode ever. The last episode before you disappeared. Castiel was taken by the Empty after—”
Nodding vigorously, Emmanuel said, “The further I got from here, the more I realized that it wasn’t just a show. I think we’re there. I think we’re in the Empty.”
“No,” Deanna shook her head. “No, that’s just a show.”
“I think I went to the Empty, and you came after me, and now we’re here, stuck in suburban hell.” Emmanuel squeezed her hand. “You ever look around, and everything seems dark? It’s even darker now than it was before. The darkness tries to cling to everything. It’s the Empty, and you came after me, and it trapped us both.” He studied her face before he went on. “We have to get out before it takes us both out forever.”
“The Empty isn’t real,” Deanna protested. “I can’t rescue anyone.” Nonsensically, she added, “I’m just a customer service representative at a video store.”
“Think about it,” Emmanuel said. “Dean would never leave Castiel in the Empty, but for some reason, it trapped us both, in a life that’s confining and draining. As it drains us of life. I’m sure the Shadow is laughing at us both, enjoying the show.”
Deanna didn’t know what to say to that.
“I don’t think we have a lot of time left. It’s already darker here than I remember.”
As if on cue, the lights in the restaurant dimmed.
“We need to get out. I can’t force you to leave, but this place is killing you.”
“I can’t be Dean,” Deanna said. “Like yeah, our names are similar, but he’s—” she trails off. She has imagined what it would be like to be Dean. To have the car and the brother and the angel and the charm and bravado. She didn’t have any of that. “He’s not me, as much as I wish he was.”
“You are,” Emmanuel said. “I think the Empty’s done something to you, to make you lose what made you you, whether it’s dimmed your soul or stolen your heart. But you’re still in there. All we have to do is walk away, into the darkness, and we should be able to get out. I was almost out, but I couldn’t leave you behind.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What if you’re wrong?”
“What if I’m right? What if the real versions of ourselves are out there, and all we have to do is leave to find them?”
Deanna looked around the restaurant. It was true, things seemed darker than they were years ago, but that was adult eyes, right? Things are bright when you’re a child, of course they dim over time. “I remember being in the car with my mother,” she said. “Her taking me shopping on weekends. Her job at the high school, her funny stories about the kids. I remember birthday parties with my dad and blowing out the candles.” She closed her eyes for a moment, calling up the last memory. “ I remember the Grand Canyon.”
“That’s not real, it’s just put there to keep you complacent. Like the way Heaven replays memories in Supernatural. The longer we wait, the more dangerous it is. It’s sucking the life out of us. You’re not meant to be in the Empty, you’re human, but it’s trying to keep you anyway.”
“I’m scared,” she said. She didn’t mean to, it just came out. She wanted to be brave. She wanted to be like Dean Winchester. “It’s all too scary.”
“That’s how it traps you,” Emmanuel said. “It keeps you afraid. But the part of you that is Dean knows you have to leave.”
Could she leave? Deanna wasn’t sure. “What if there’s nothing out there?”
“Then at least we tried.”
They held hands, and Emmanuel started walking her away from the town. It looked dark. “This way, Dean,” he said.
“I’m not,” she protested, even as her feet followed him. “I’m not him.”
Emmanuel looked sad at that, but didn’t argue. It didn’t take long to get to the edge of town, and then beyond it.
“We’re losing light,” he said.
Everything seemed inky dark, just like in her bedroom when the television turned off. “I wish we had a flashlight,” Deanna said.
“I think even if we had one, we wouldn’t be able to see anything.”
They walked on and on, one foot in front of the other, occasionally stumbling in the dark, until they came to a door lit dimly. It read, “Be sure.”
“I think you have to go first,” Emmanuel said. “I’ll follow you.”
“No,” Deanna said. “If I’m really Dean, and you’re Castiel, you have to go first. Remember what happened in Purgatory? No way Dean would go first.”
They stared at each other, and Emmanuel rested his hand on Deanna’s left shoulder, where the pain had come from. Where it eased when she was around him. “I think you have to go first, and trust I’m behind you. You have to have faith.”
Deanna was shaking. “I don’t know if I can.”
“It has to be you, I saved you from Hell, but this time you have to save yourself.”
“Keep ahold of me,” she said, clamping her right hand over Emmanuel’s on her shoulder. “Don’t let go.”
Deanna opened the door, and stepped through.
It hit him all at once, the memories and the dungeon light and—”Where the fuck is Cas?” Dean groaned.
He was on the dungeon floor, where he originally cast the spell to get into the Empty. He turned and, shit, Cas was on the floor, oozing black goo sticking to his trenchcoat.
Cas looked like himself, not like Emmanuel from the Empty. “Cas?”
There weren’t angel wings burned on the bunker floor, at least. Dean crawled to him, and cradled his head, not sure if Cas came out of the Empty human or angel or something in between. He didn’t want to think it was possible that Cas didn’t make it out at all.
But no, Cas was moving, sputtering and gasping. “Dean, we did it.”
“Yeah, yeah we did.” Dean leaned back in relief, and only then ran his hands over his chest. Flat again, thank God. His voice was deeper, too. Getting his body to a state that didn’t make him want to punch a mirror took time, and he was glad not to have to do it again. A relief, to be in his own body. To be himself. “What happened in there—wait, man, you don’t have to sit up—”
Too late, because Cas was sitting up, unsteadily. “You came for me.”
Dean shook his head, in disbelief rather than negation. “Of course I came for you! I couldn’t let you stay there.” He reached out a hand, touched Cas’s jaw. “You idiot, numbskull, self-sacrificing—”
“Takes one to know one,” Castiel muttered, tone dark. “You came after me and it took your nightmares and made them real.”
“I’d do it again,” Dean said. He couldn’t stop touching Cas’s face. “I’d do it again to get you back. Even the high school parts.”
Hauling himself off the dungeon floor, Dean turned and reached to help Castiel up, too.
“I should go get changed,” Castiel said, indicating the ooze on his trench coat and pants.
Dean nodded, and started to watch him go, before he realized he was being an idiot. “Wait, Cas. Wait.” Castiel turned, and Dean took a deep breath. “Me too, man. I love you, too. You’re infuriating, and you don’t tell me when you have stupid plans. Seriously, if you do something like this again, I’m going to kill you myself.”
Castiel said, “Dean, you don’t have to—”
“I’m not finished. You got to say a whole lot, and I was just in shock. It wasn’t fair, okay? I love you too.”
“You’re sure?”
“Dude, I just endured a misgendering hell for you and said I would do it again.” He stepped forward, into Castiel’s space. “You’re the person I want to be around.”
Crowding Castiel, he leaned in, telegraphing what he was going to by moving so slowly that if Cas didn’t want it, he could back out. “I want to be around you, too.”
“Great,” Dean said and kissed Cas, gripping his grimy trench coat.
Castiel held Dean’s left shoulder gently. “I can’t believe this is real.”
“Remember when I asked you what about any of this is real, and you said we were? We can figure everything else out, as long as we have each other.”
“Okay,” Castiel said.
“Okay,” Dean said.
They left the dungeon together, ready to figure out the rest of it later.
They have time.
The End