"CASTIEL JAMES NOVAK!" Chuck bellowed, his voice rattling the house as Cas's siblings ducked in fear. They knew that voice. That was Chuck's angry voice. 

It was basically the only voice Lucifer and Gabriel knew. Balthazar and Anna were also very familiar with it. Hannah was more experienced with his disappointed voice, but she knew the wrath of the angry voice too. Michael was perfect so he had no experience with either voice, but Castiel....

Castiel, up until right now, had also been a perfect golden child. What the hell had he done to invoke the angry voice right off the bat?

"Yes?" Cas asked, gingerly stepping into the room as Chuck scowled.

"Were you EVER going to tell me that you and Dean said you loved each other or WAS I JUST SUPPOSED TO HEAR THAT FROM MARY FREAKIN WINCHESTER?" Cas's eyes widened.

"Uh-"

"WELL?"

"I would've told you! It just never came up!"

"Never came-" Chuck let out a frustrated screech. "Call me overly invested in your love lives all you want, but THIS IS THE KIND OF STUFF I WANT TO KNOW, CASSIE. I DON'T CARE IF TANYA PUSHED YOU ON THE PLAYGROUND, I WANT TO KNOW WHO SHE MADE OUT WITH IN THE BOYS BATHROOM LAST WEEK."

"Dad lives for the tea," Hannah commented.

"I DO!" 

"Soooo you're not mad?" Cas asked.

"Oh no," Chuck said, glaring at him. "I'm very mad. I'm beyond mad. I'm insulted. I am your father, and yet I am also the LAST person in the entirety of Lawrence to know that you and Dean Winchester are in a serious committed relationship. I'm devastated, Castiel. DEVASTATED."

"I'm sorry?"

"You should be. I'm punishing you for this."

"WHAT!"

"I am."

"But that's ridiculous!"

"I really don't care. Your punishment is to clean the house while the rest of us go to Hannah's Debate meet." All of the kids immediately started protesting.

"The WHOLE HOUSE?" Cas asked in shock. 

"Wait so Cassie's punishment is to MISS the single most boring event EVER?" Gabriel demanded. "That's so unfair!"

"The whole house." Chuck repeated. "And you're going to support your sister, Gabriel."

"Why doesn't Cassie have to support her???"

"Because I know Cassie loves me," Hannah insisted. "And I want a clean house too."

"Then it's settled," Chuck decided. Cas sighed, but he knew he'd clean the house. He didn't really mind cleaning, and anything would be better than sitting through another one of Hannah's debates, no matter how fun it was to watch her go on a rant and put people in their place.

So while the rest of his family piled into the car bound for Debate town, Cas grabbed a broom.

He cleaned the living room and the kitchen, mopping and dusting and futilely scrubbing at the cabinet's pink stains. And since Chuck had said the whole house, he also straightened up his room, his sisters' room, and Michael's room, which was really a dangerous game as it was a fine line between cleaning and snooping, and Michael would inevitably kill him if he moved anything somewhere where Mike wouldn't be able to find it later.

Lucifer's room had been especially scary to clean. He had thought about skipping the den of Hell altogether, but curiosity got the best of him. Satan NEVER let anyone look through his things, so naturally Cas had to snoop a little. What kind of brother would he be if he didn't?

Unfortunately for him, Lucifer's stuff was overall pretty boring. Some knives, occult books, pictures of his siblings and Chloe, a bottle of something that looked suspiciously like blood but also could've been really thick kool aid...

The only interesting thing was that the drawer to Luci's nightstand was locked, a problem Cas quickly solved by finding the key under Satan's bed, because his brother may have been the King of Hell, but that doesn't mean he wasn't also predictable.

"Let's see what we've got here," Cas muttered, pawing through the items in the drawer.

Some money, duh, that was to be expected.

A box of condoms, ew, but also expected.

Was that a pair of Chloe's underwear? GROSS, LUCI. 

A journal labelled "BLACKMAIL AGAINST GOD AND SIBLINGS"....He'd come back to that later, that could definitely have some useful information.

But then Cas reached further back into the drawer and pulled out a small box, his eyes widening at the sight of it.

"NO WAY," He shouted, silently begging for it to be what he thought it was. He cracked open the box and screamed.

Inside was a ring. A very fancy looking ruby ring, which, of course, meant only one thing. 

Cas quickly put the box and the rest of the nightstand's contents back before relocking the drawer. He hastily made Lucifer's bed and then ran up stairs so he could go freak out in the living room.

SATAN WAS GONNA PROPOSE AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

AND NOBODY ELSE KNEW!

Fuck.

Nobody else knew.

And Lucifer would gut him if he found out he'd snooped through his room, let alone found out about his plans to propose to Chloe.

So Cas had to keep the secret to himself, now that's just WASN'T FAIR.

WHO WAS HE SUPPOSED TO FANGIRL WITH???

Cas screeched. He'd have to tell someone who wouldn't spread the news to the rest of the world, so AKA... No one in his family. Oh well. He'd figure it out later. For now he skipped up the stairs to Chuck's room, ready to finish cleaning. Maybe Chuck's idea of a punishment hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

He was in the middle of wiping down Chuck's desk when he accidentally knocked a picture of the family off the top, the frame falling back into the crack between the back of Chuck's desk and the wall, a dark foreboding crevice to which many things had likely been lost. 

But Chuck would be upset if he knew his picture was forever lost to a black hole, so Cas sighed and, with great difficulty, shoved the desk aside far enough that he could reach back and grab the picture.

Only the picture he pulled out wasn't of him and his siblings.

Instead, staring back at him was portrait of a stern looking woman holding a baby. She had red hair and familiar blue eyes and she...

She looked just like Anna. 

Cas's breath caught in his throat as he turned the picture over to see what was scribbled on the back.

Naomi and Balthazar, October 19th

Naomi. Then his suspicions had been correct. This was a picture, albeit an old one, of his mother. 

It hadn't occurred to him that there might be pictures of her at all, let alone still in the house. He had never seen one before. Michael had said that Amara went through the photo albums shortly after she'd left, and she had probably taken all the pictures of Naomi she could find so that Chuck wouldn't have to see them.

Cas stared at the photo, tracing his mother's face. She wasn't smiling in the picture, but she didn't look particularly unhappy either. Balthazar was looking smug as ever, but that was to be expected, even if he was only a baby when the photo was taken. It was strange, he thought, the way he could pick out his siblings' features in this stranger's face, and even some of his own. Anna was the spitting image of her, just with different eyes, because hers weren't blue like Naomi's. No, Anna had Chuck's eyes, but Cas, Michael and Hannah...their eyes had come from Naomi.

The longer he looked the more he saw some of Gabriel's features, and some of Michael and Lucifer's too. It wasn't much, but Cas couldn't help thinking about it. Seeing her picture just made Naomi that much more real. 

He still had her address, a picture on his phone from an envelope she'd sent to Chuck. She lived in Bismarck, and he hadn't known what to do with the address when he took it, but now that he saw her face....

He wanted to meet her, Cas decided. He wanted to talk to Naomi. What he wanted to say or how the hell he'd get to Bismarck without any of his siblings on board with the idea of seeing her was another story, but he'd figure it out.

His mother was a mystery, but she was one that Cas was going to solve, whether anyone else liked it or not.

A/N: So I'm on vacation rn and I came across this and felt the need to share

I WAS ON AMARA LANE LMAO
And then there's this

All I know is this screams Balthazar and it needed to be shared ok