LEBANON, KANSAS 2017

On one of the rare occasions that all the Winchesters and Castiel are in the bunker, Mary stumbles upon Castiel while he's rummaging in one of the Bunker's old storage rooms, moving about one contraption and the next, squinting at the old machinery. Mary clears her throat and the angel lifts his head up in acknowledgement but continues to move boxes around.

"Do you need help?" Mary offers as more machinery gives clunking protests at Castiel's manhandling. She worries over both the state of the room and the possible artifacts Castiel could be maltreating.

"I'm just trying to find something to play a tape with," Castiel says, annoyance lacing his voice as he blows out a tired breath and disturbing the dust that had settled.

Mary raises both eyebrows looking around at the room and then at the angel. "Um, I think the Men of Letters pre-dates the Walkman."

"I was afraid of that," Cas huffs with mild irritation wiping his brow from the dust that had clung to it. "It's just that, I haven't found anything to play my tape in, and my truck doesn't have anything but radio."

"You should ask Dean to help you with that," Mary suggests mildly. She inclines her head towards her room. "Come on, Dean gave me an old cassette recorder to listen to the Beatles; it's in my room. Settle down in the library and I'll meet you there."

Castiel nods his agreement before they go on their separate ways. Once in her room, Mary untangles all the cords, ejects Dean's mixtape that he'd gifted to her some time back and proceeds to the library to deposit the tape deck in front of Cas.

The angel touches the player slowly, unsure of how it works. "Where's the tape you wanted to play?" Mary prompts.

Castiel reaches inside his trenchcoat pocket and extricates a black tape, handing it over carefully to Mary. She almost drops the mix when she reads the label, momentarily stunned at the implication. Apparently, her son flirts with the angel with obscure references that the angel couldn't possibly understand.

The scrape of the chair against the wooden floor breaks her out of her inaction as Castiel sits relaxed beside her.

The opening strains of Ramble On, fill the library, which draws Sam from the kitchen, peeking into the room in curiosity. "Oh, hey, Dean finally finished that mixtape, huh? I thought he'd end up recording the entire Led Zeppelin library with the way he hoarded that tape."

Mary told herself it was unbecoming to gape, so she doesn't. She does bite her lower lip against the smile that wanted to erupt. "And he helpfully forgot that his friend didn't have any way to listen to said tape."

Sam's eyes rounded, and Mary could see the moment Sam connected the fact that Dean had given the music to Cas instead of her. She could practically see the stutter in Sam's thinking process where he had to realign his understanding of the situation before he began again with, "Dean gave you a mixtape."

Cas, who'd been listening to the tape more than he was paying attention to the two of them now focuses on Sam. "Is… there something wrong?"

"Oh, no, no, no…" Sam backpedals, shifting his gears before emphasizing, "I'm happy, really. I mean I'd hoped but I just thought he'd never—" He cleared his throat, stopping muddled explanation that was becoming more awkward as he rambled, ending with, "I'm happy you connected with it.

Unsaid was the fact that Dean had difficulty making meaningful long-term connections. In the short time that Mary had been reacquainted with her sons, that much had become apparent.

Mary smiles, she remembers that John would make her mixtapes at least every month. They had gotten together over the shared love of Beatles, so of course they had shared music between them as well. Their house had been filled with the strains of guitar, alternative and rock classics.

They'd talk about the tape while taking care of Dean, and the subsequent month, John would follow up with the next mix based on what they'd discussed. He would record old songs, but he'd bring in something new as well. It was something to look forward to as the month drew to a close. "You know, you should tell Dean which of the songs in the tape you liked best," Mary suggests.

Sam emphatically nods his head to second the statement. "Yeah, these are Dean's songs. I'm sure you could find your own songs as well."

"But I like these songs," Cas mumbles, hand reaching towards the tape recorder.

Mary thought if she bit her lip harder she was going to bleed. "Yeah. Go on and tell him that."

"It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party"
Nick Hornby
High Fidelity

A/N:

That's it for Dean's mixtape, Maybe in the future we'll write a Cas listens to the mixtape in this thing but that's it. Thank you for reading!

I wrote this because I saw a meme in FB saying: today's kids will never know how hard it was to get a mixtape. Or some such, and I remembered, one of my closest friends in college gave me a mixtape. (And like Sam I burned it into a CD) and like Cas... I don't listen to music (well I do, when I read echo, just so it's not dead time, but if no one plays it I don't really look for it, and it distracts me so much). So he must have been really frustrated. Unlike Dean though, he doesn't have feelings for me (at the time, I really really liked him) but he is gay. He gave out mixes to his really close friends as gifts. He continues to do so now and makes one every time in Spotify. When I was younger, I played one of his mixes on repeat because I thought I was gonna fail my chemistry classes, and it made me feel really really good. So I think I tried to get that feeling here.

This has been the first time I've actually stuck to a semi-regular writing schedule and I kinda like it XD Next up is the Fairytale AU PB exchange. I'm excited for that one, it'll probably be this short as well. What fairytales are your favorite? *grins* I already have a few things thought out but idea generation conversations are always great.