Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The church stands squat and grey in the middle of the field. Unadorned but solid, a contrast to the newer, flimsier buildings that crop up haphazardly around it, the little hangers on of human necessity clustered around it like children clutching at their mother’s skirt. Though it is older and better constructed, its pride is only in its placement, having clearly not been built with worship in mind, nor renovated with any kind of artistry in service of the divine.

Her symbol is on the door, it is all that is needed to mark the place as holy.

The pre-dawn light is muted, what little colour there is leached away by the roiling clouds overhead. Already the first droplets of the storm to come land sporadically on slanted tin rooftops, a rhythmless percussion to the soundtrack of early morning hush.

Behind the church, a figure stands at the edge of a pit, heedless of the rain. His head is shaved, and he wears a robe as plain and grey as his surroundings. There are times for ceremony and adornment, to honour Her name with symbolism and showmanship, but this, he thinks as he contemplates the knife in his hands, is not one of them.

Tonight there will be fanfare, when the last preparations are complete and the ritual begins at last.

This morning, while the rest of the congregation sleeps, or is wise enough to pretend to, is for tying up loose ends.

Behind the man, the cellar door yawns dark and open, the chain upon it cast aside, and up the steps three more come to join him in his silent vigil. Two of them, men, hard faced and strong, drag the third, a boy, limp between them. He screws his eyes up against even the meager light outside the cellar. Pale and thin, he struggles to keep his feet beneath him as his captors give no quarter to his dazzled blindness.

They come to a halt behind the man in robes, waiting, deferent, for his orders.

“You’ve kept your silence admirably, this past month.” The man does not turn, speaking lowly and casually, with anger unmistakable under his disinterest. “Would you like to see what it amounted to, in the end?”

At a gesture, the men drag the boy forward, forcing him to his knees at the edge of the pit. One hand on each shoulder to keep him still when he jerks, letting out a wounded animal noise and trying to twist away. Eyes shut against the tangle of pale limbs and blood- black in the weak morning light.

Six conspirators, six bodies. Thrown carelessly into the pit, glassy eyes and slack mouths looking up askance, as they weep soundlessly from slit throats.

The boy bends from the force of his grief, body shaken by wretched sobs, and only the rough hands that clutch at him keep him from tipping into the pit to join them prematurely.

“Did you really think it would work?” The man in the robes asks, gentle, pitying. “This is my domain, my flock, I would never let corruption take root here, not now. Not when we are so close to our goal.”

He crouches next to the weeping boy, taking him by the chin and forcing him to turn and look up.

“I am Her hand on earth, I serve Her will. There is no secret you can keep, that I won’t pluck from your soul, because there is no darkness that does not belong to Her, no hidden thing that isn’t Hers by right,” he says. “There is nothing you could have done, this is all, simply… Inevitable.”

The man in the robes rises again, keeping his gaze locked with the hopeless, despairing eyes of his captive until they fall away in shame.

He turns back to the pit.

Six bodies, six conspirators. Mostly young, curious about the world outside their home, easily swayed by the doubt sewn by their leader, but one was older, trusted. He had no intention of escaping himself, but that he would have facilitated the loss of several of their number could not be forgiven.

“Do you know what happens now?” The man asks, eyes on the wrinkled hand that splays out from beneath the body of a girl of sixteen. 

So many years of service, wasted by misguided compassion.

For a long moment the boy only heaves ragged breaths, each one almost a retch.

“The Sacrifice,” he rasps at last. The man’s lips curve into a smile.

“Yes, the Sacrifice, the culmination of all of our work, all of our Faith.” He pauses. “But not for you.”

When he turns to look at the boy this time, he looks back of his own free will, eyes wide and uncomprehending.

“Did you think you would be accepted back so easily?” The man shakes his head. “That your death would honour Her?”

“Eldest Brother-” The boy starts to protest, but at a nod from the man in robes, a hand seizes a fistful of his dirty, tangled hair and yanks, forcing his head back, and cutting off his speech with a cry pf pain.

“You are Faithless, an empty, unworthy thing. You must be cleansed before the ritual may begin, lest you taint it. Only the chosen, the dutiful, will have the honour of spilling their blood for the Mother.”

Horror dawns across the boy’s face and he begins to struggle, fresh tears welling in his eyes as he understands his sentence. Not entirely faithless then, merely a coward.

“Michael- Michael please .”

“The Mother waits at the end of all things, She who is Death, She who is Hunger, Our Lady of Consuming Rot, who sleeps beneath the Ocean of Creation and whose waking heralds the Final Destruction of Being, we are her children. She is the Abyss who grants us life through inaction, and She holds claim to all life, all light, every fleeting thing that steals momentary existence from the slumber of unbeing will one day return to Her, unmade and made whole. Everything, but you.” The man, Michael, the Eldest Brother of the Mother’s Children, spreads his arms wide, voice rising to be heard over the desperate pleas of the boy held down by two men, grim and pale. They have known the youth between them since before he could walk, but children become men, and men have duties to uphold. “You who are Faithless, you who reject the Mother’s Blessing, you are rejected in turn. I mark you Nameless, I mark you Empty, I mark you Outcast, and I condemn you to a Death Undying, to never know the peace and oblivion of the Mother’s embrace.”

He steps forward, raising the knife. The wide, blue eyes of his victim stare back at him, desperate, and for a moment, he hesitates.

“ Please .” A final desperate call for mercy, the eyes that stare into his own harden.

“You brought this on yourself.”

The knife slices across the bared throat, catching and tearing dully on the pale flesh. The noise of agony has only a moment to form before it is cut off into a ragged choke, the body jerking and burbling as blood spurts from the wound.

The Eldest Brother steps back, and the boy is pushed into the pit with the others, landing hard on a bed of dead flesh. He contemplates the knife in his hand before tossing it in as well, it’s a ceremonial blade, but one of many, and tainted as it is with unclean blood, it won’t be fit for any other use again.

“Fill it in. We need to finish the final preparations for tonight.”

Unable to make a noise, his breaths thin and wet, the boy lies, bleeding his last in a pit of death, as dirt begins to rain down from above. Laboriously, he turns on his side to stare into the face of the body next to him. A girl his own age, her blonde hair fanned around her head, and her pale dress stained red with her blood. Her unseeing eyes accuse him, he had promised her freedom, safety, a future in a world none of them would get to see.

His lips move mutely to form her name in the dark.

He can't remember his own.

The sky opens up in earnest, pelting the ground with rain as the break of day rouses the isolated community into activity. People darting to and from buildings like bustling insects over the partially cultivated fields that sprawl out around the little settlement, a vast expanse of isolation. A single winding dirt road cuts a path out and away through a strip of sickly trees that provide a barrier between the community and the world beyond. A fragile lifeline, unheeded by those that have settled in the shadow of the church.

The rain continues to fall, soaking into the freshly turned earth behind the church, seeping down, down. The soil grows dark with it, black under the roiling grey of the clouds.

Beneath the mud, something begins to move.

Chapter Text

The Impala’s wheels ate up the cracked tarmac, baking in the summer sun. Dean kept the windows rolled down, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel, and his eyes off the mileometer. He didn’t want to think about how the slow and steady tick of the numbers was counting down the miles between him and Palo Alto.

He wasn’t going to Palo Alto. He was just going to be nearby. 

Working a case.

He dropped a hand to the shape of his phone in his pocket, silent and still. He itched to check it, just in case somehow there was a call that he’d missed.

There wouldn’t be.

The sign for his exit caught his eye and he guided the Impala into the appropriate lane, feeling some of the tension drain from his shoulders as he did so. The reality of his actual destination approaching made it easier to ignore the looming presence he could almost sense just over the horizon.

Stanford. Sam. Knocking on his door. The conversation they needed to have.

The possibility they wouldn’t get the chance to have it at all if Sam just slammed the door in his face.

Only three hours and change away from his brother, it was like he couldn’t quite relax. Like if he let his guard down he’d find himself already there, having driven himself on autopilot only to wake up and find himself staring down the barrel of the rest of his life.

Easier to focus on a case. Make himself useful, that’s what he needed. Worry about the dead girl and whatever killed her first, then he could think about Sam.

Three Rivers wasn’t a big town, surrounded mostly by rolling hills in varying shades of beige and bordering a lake that was looking pretty tempting in the oppressive heat. Made less so by the fact that bodies had been washing up on shore. 

Waterlogged corpses with their guts ripped out, just the thing to take a man’s mind off family trouble.

Dean pulled into a gas station just inside town, his head thumping along in rhythm with the sun beating down on the sidewalk thanks to some combination of exhaustion, dehydration and last night’s libations. The bell over the door made a little clink-clunk rather than a tinkle and the air conditioner inside rattled in a way he could feel in his teeth, but it was marginally cooler inside than outside, and they had sustenance.

He picked up a tepid water bottle from a cooler that was trying its best and a pack of teriyaki jerky, swiping a map of the surrounding area on his way up to the til.The bored teenager at the checkout had a nose ring and a bad dye job.

“Did that hurt?” He asked, his voice coming out raspier than he expected. He cleared his throat.

The girl looked up from her phone, staring at him in silence until he gestured vaguely at his own face. “The- the nose thing.”

“I guess.” She shrugged, disinterested. She flipped her phone closed and set it down on the counter next to her, dragging his meager provisions closer so she could ring them up.

“Okay, cool,” he said, drumming his fingers on the countertop.

“Is that everything?” She asked, pointedly.

“Oh, uh yeah- hang on-” He dug his wallet out of his pocket and assessed his dwindling funds. He needed to make some more cash soon, and he wasn’t sure how long his credit cards would be good for either. He handed over a few bills. “Can you put whatever’s left on pump three for me?”

She let out a gusty sigh and took the wad of cash, picking away at buttons on the register for minutes that stretched into ages. Dean put his hands in his pockets, looking around and listening to the air conditioner wheeze.

The phone on the counter buzzed and she stopped, staring at it. Dean coughed, and she sighed again, turning back to what she was doing.

“You’re set,” she said, closing the register with a slam.

“You’re a peach.” Dean grinned at her, collecting his things. “Hey, you know a good place to stay in town?”

“Places to stay are about all we have, I'm sure some of em are good,” she replied bluntly. "But if you don't actually give a shit, the holiday lodge is cheap.”

Dean gave a weak laugh. “Thanks, I’ll check that out.”

“Sure,” she said, picking up her phone again. She flipped it open, scowled, and then closed it again, setting it aside.

Dean lingered for a moment, feeling vaguely like he was supposed to say something more, make some kind of comment that could blossom into a conversation. The check out girl slid a magazine from behind the register and flipped it open, her eyes never rising to acknowledge him: the stranger lurking in lonely silence.

The bell went clink-clunk again as he left.

—-

She was right about the holiday lodge, good wasn’t the word for it, but Dean had stayed worse places. He tossed his duffle on the bed and pulled out the article he’d followed all the way to California. Jennifer Porter, fished out of the lake last Tuesday. It was sparse on the details in a way that implied they were grizzly, and contained within was a brief reference to another death from the month before, the loss of one Caroline Davis. Dean hadn’t had a chance to find her obituary yet.

He had read plenty of speculation about an animal attack, though, so he dug out a fish and wildlife ID and ducked into the bathroom to freshen up into a more respectable looking member of society.

The man in the mirror looked pale and drawn, with hollow cheeks and bags under his eyes. Dean stopped looking. 

The motel room was dim and quiet, the bathroom lit by a bare bulb that cast harsh shadows. The only sounds came muffled through the walls, maybe from a conversation, maybe just a tv set turned up too high. A world away through the thin walls.

He turned on the TV while he changed into clothes that looked a little more respectable and a little less sweaty, letting the background noise lull something gnawing in the back of his head.

He hovered in the room once he was dressed, feeling out of step again. Like there was something he was meant to be doing. 

There wasn't.

There was nothing in the motel room for him, the only way to get anywhere on the case was to hit the pavement, and there was nothing to do but get somewhere on the case.

He picked up the remote to turn off the TV again, but he couldn’t bring himself to press the button. He’d left it on the shopping channel, a woman was chipperly trying to sell him tupperware. Call in the next ten minutes and she’d double the offer, a seventy dollar value for only nineteen ninety nine.

He left it running and locked the door behind him.

Small towns had their pros and cons for investigations. Everyone knew everyone and had plenty of gossip, but they tended to be wary of outsiders. What Three Rivers offered in terms of a limited suspect pool, it lacked in other areas, such as actually having its own police station. 

Twenty minutes back up the road, the scarcely larger community of Woodlake boasted its own Sheriff and medical examiner, which was where the most recent body was being held..

For all that it was a bustling metropolis compared to its neighbours, Woodlake wasn't exactly on the cutting edge either, and the Sheriff’s office wasn’t the kind of place that asked a lot of questions. He flashed the badge and made apologetic noises about the mix-up when the lady at reception said they didn’t get word he was coming, and that was all it really took for her to wave off his offer to call his supervisor and clear things up.

“It happens, we’ve been having some issues with the phones,” she snorted. “Well, with the people manning them, more like. Sharon probably took the call and just didn’t bother to write it down. Did your boss talk to Sharon?”

“You know,” Dean lied with a smile, “I think he might have mentioned a Sharon.”

The Sheriff seemed a little more skeptical, but not enough to do more than look Dean up and down and huff like he wasn’t satisfied with what he saw. He was an older man with a salt and pepper beard, and he handed over the files with resignation.

“I’ll be honest, I doubt it’s your kind of thing,” he said, crossing his arms as Dean flipped open the file on Jenny. 

He glanced up from his quick scan, surprised.

“I thought the word was these were animal attacks?”

“Yeah.” The Sheriff shook his head, lips pressed into a thin line. “It’s more like that’s what we’re hoping they are.” He grimaced. “Well, we were hoping.”

“Something changed?” Dean asked, letting the file fall closed.

The Sheriff hesitated, then sighed and rubbed his jaw.

“None of this is official yet,” he said, pointed.

Dean mimed zipping his lips and crossed his heart for good measure. “Mum’s the word, scout's honour.”

“Hell, there isn’t even really a reason to keep it quiet, I just… how do you tell people something like that?” He shook his head. “Caroline was in the water a long time. There were some things that didn’t fit, enough we weren’t ready to rule it an accident, but the animals got to her a long time before we did. Then Jenny…”

“Jenny?” Dean prompted carefully, knowing that pushing too hard was as likely to get the man to clam up as spill the beans.

The Sheriff drew back, but then his shoulders slumped, defeated.

“With Jenny, we were thinking animal attack just because of how much of her was missing. But then Mike- the medical examiner, he… found something.”

Dean waited, expectant.

“Carvings,” he said at length. “On her ribs.”

“What kind of carvings?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know, some symbols. Satanic voodoo crap, maybe .” The Sheriff rubbed his temple. “We don’t know anything for sure except that it’s looking like someone killed that girl, maybe both those girls, and this is way out of our league.”

“Jesus,” Dean said, aiming for sympathetic shock.

“Now I’m gonna have to figure out how to break it to people that I think we have some kind of psycho killer on the loose, and probably call in the feds, so you’re welcome to go looking for whatever animal you think did this, but it’s about to be out of both of our hands.”

“Yeah, sounds like it,” Dean said mildly, thumbing the edge of the file. “Uh, do you mind if I take a look at the body anyway? Just so I can rule it out?”

The Sheriff fixed him with a look that said he knew full well that wasn’t why Dean wanted to see the body, and he didn’t appreciate looky-loos in his station making a spectacle out of some poor dead girl. 

"Murder does end up in our jurisdiction if it happens on park land," he said apologetically, a fact he was pretty sure he remembered reading somewhere, and the Sheriff didn't immediately dispute. "We're not there yet, but you are knockin on our door out here. Higher ups'll want a comprehensive report in case we do end up getting involved."

Dean tried for a rueful smile, shrugging like it was out of his hands, and the man sighed again.

“Sure, dot your Is and cross your Ts, if it helps you sleep at night.” He snorted, like the idea was hilarious. “Janet can give you the address for the medical examiner’s office. And give Mike a call for you, see if he’s in. Those files don’t leave this office, so get what you need from them before you go.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that,” Dean called out, the Sheriff was already walking away, and only acknowledged him by a wave over his shoulder.

Left alone in some seldom used conference room, Dean tapped the file in his hands against the table before he flipped it open once again. Somewhere out of sight a desk fan whirred and rattled, covering the occasional low murmur of conversation a room away. A dead girl smiled out of the pages in front of him, preserved forever and already gone.

Janet of the front desk was just as friendly the second time around, keeping up a steady stream of upbeat patter as she rifled around for Mike the Medical Examiner’s number and handed him an address on a pink sticky note. It was a relief to be drawn into her idle gossip, and if Dean’s responses all felt a beat slow and a note off, she either didn’t notice or was polite enough not to mention it. If her smile was strained around the edges, then Dean was also polite enough not to bring up the looming reality of a probable double murder hanging over the town. Maybe he should have- receptionists and gossip hounds were potentially useful sources of information, and Janet was clearly both- but the idea of putting a crack through her cheer, however feigned, didn’t seem worth it. 

He found himself lingering anyway, listening to her talk about nothing very important long past when she’d already given him what he needed. He prompted her every time she tried to give him a polite out, every “you don’t want to hear about that” and “I shouldn’t keep you” rebuffed. It wasn’t until she was called away from her desk that the mostly one-sided conversation actually ended, and Dean was left standing stiff and hollow on a beige tiled floor, cataloging the knick knacks and tchotchkes that cluttered her desk. He put a finger on a silver framed photo of Janet and her daughter- Emily, sixteen- and contemplated waiting for her to come back.

The patheticness of that thought caught up with him a moment later, flooding him with a visceral sense of shame, and he snatched his hand back, balling it into a fist and stuffing it into his pocket. He turned and marched himself out the door. Biting the inside of his cheek hard and counting the minutes he’d wasted letting himself be talked at when he had a job to do.

He wasted five more resting his head against the sun-warmed leather of the Impala's steering wheel and getting his breathing under control. 

“Come on,” he told himself, finally starting the engine and ignoring how his vision blurred as he tried to navigate his way out of the parking lot. “Come on, just- come on.”

It was probably just the heat.

The Medical Examiner’s office looked more like a family home than an official government building, at least from the outside. The front porch overlooked a gravel lot bordered by a chain link fence rather than a garden and a lawn, and the green paint was faded and peeling, but Dean still felt a familiar pang of nostalgia for someone else’s life. When he stepped inside and found the interior of the could-have-been home had been gutted and fitted with a security desk and imposing metal double doors, altered towards a new, grim purpose, it sent a different kind of unsettling feeling creeping up his spine.

A security guard sat behind a pane of glass, his face buried in a newspaper.

“Hey I’m here to see Mike? Uh, Dr. Chapel?” He approached, tapping on the sil to catch the man’s attention. He didn’t lower the paper.

“Mhm,” he replied.

“I called ahead,” Dean added, trying for a laugh. “Or well, Janet did.”

The only response was the pointed turning of a page. Dean’s voice died in his throat, something inside him shrinking down small and ugly.

He cleared his throat, opening his mouth to try again and stalling, stalling. Why couldn’t he think of anything to say?

“He’s in his office,” the security guard said at last.

“Right,” Dean replied weakly. He glanced at the double doors, uncertain, lingering.

The security guard sighed heavily.

“Down the hall, second door on your left,” he said.

“Right,” Dean repeated himself, shuffling off with his shoulders up by his ears.

The hall on the other side of the double doors was long and lit by flickering fluorescents, dotted with doors along either side, one of which, the second on the left, sat slightly ajar, voices filtering through.

“-not sure exactly what you’re looking for, Mr…?” Dean caught the tail end of the sentence in a man’s clipped, short tone as he approached, slowing his steps automatically as he paused to listen in.

“I have reason to believe this death is connected to a case I’m investigating.” The reply came from another man, his voice a deeper rumble that stopped Dean in his tracks, his heart stuttering in his chest.

“And that case would be?” The first man pressed, sounding unimpressed.

The silence stretched, and Dean found himself being drawn forward to the door and the voice behind it.

“Right,” said the first man when apparently no answer was forthcoming. “Well I’m not sure what you’re expecting me to say. I obviously can’t share information about an ongoing investigation with you, whatever you have ‘reason to believe’.”

“I understand, however I would appreciate anything you can tell me about the nature of the death-”

Dean pushed open the door, his body moving before he could think better of it, and then stood caught as the two men snapped their attention to him at once.

“Uh, sorry.” He dropped his outstretched hand, tucking it into his pocket hastily, as though hiding evidence of a misdeed. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

The man standing behind the desk was older, brown hair dusted with gray in a widow’s peak, a thin face with sharp, challenging eyes behind narrow wire-frame glasses. He wore a white lab coat with a security badge clipped to the lapel- evidently this was Mike the Medical Examiner- and regarded Dean with naked suspicion.

“Now, who are you?” He snapped, evidently at the end of his rope.

“I’m uh- Philip Ochs, the wildlife officer? I was supposed to come down…” Dean’s eyes flicked between the two men, but couldn’t help but linger on the man standing opposite Doctor Mike. “I can come back later.”

The other man had messy dark hair and a handsome enough face, with a square jaw and butt chin, dusted with stubble, a strong nose and pink cupid’s bow lips. Actor handsome, maybe, but C-list actor handsome. If the actor in question was playing tired and bedraggled. His eyes drooped in a way that lent his face a sort of tired sorrow, even before you took into account the bags underneath them, but his gaze was heavy and penetrating as he examined Dean.

For the life of him, Dean couldn’t recall having laid eyes on him before in his life, and yet something about him was achingly familiar.

“Ah, yes. Janet called about you.” Doctor Mike’s skepticism fell away. “You can come in, we had an appointment. Now, if there’s nothing else…”

The last comment he directed pointedly at the man, across from him, who looked away from Dean and back at the doctor with a furrowed brow.

“Is there any evidence that the wounds were self-inflicted?” He asked, either oblivious to, or stubbornly ignoring the fact that he was being dismissed.

Doctor Mike balked, and even Dean’s eyebrows shot up.

“She was disemboweled ,” he replied, with gusto.

The man simply held his gaze and waited, unwavering, as though that wasn’t answer enough.

“No, the wounds weren’t self-inflicted, good lord.” The doctor shook his head, his expression a mix of disgust and anger.

The man only hummed in response, a low rumble of a sound accompanied by no particular expression or indication of agreement or disagreement. If anything, this only served to frustrate the doctor more, his mouth pressing into a thin line as he worked his jaw.

“You can see yourself out,” he told the man firmly. “And in the future if you feel you have information relevant to a case, you will pursue that through the proper channels, good day .”

For a moment, the man didn’t respond at all, and Dean wondered if he was going to end up watching him get escorted out of the building by the disinterested security guard from the front desk, but then he gave a short, sharp nod and spun on his heel without another word. His overcoat, an old beige thing he wore over an equally bedraggled suit, flared dramatically as he went.

His eyes caught on Dean’s again as he made his exit, and again Dean found himself frozen in place. The urge to say something welled up in him, pressing up against some thick blockage in his throat that left him struggling and mute.

“Hey,” he managed at last, when the man reached him where he stood by the door, unmoving despite the fact that he was blocking the exit. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

Those heavy eyes- blue, he saw now that they were up close and personal- narrowed and gave him a sharp once over, raking up and down his body so harshly it felt like his skin was being scraped raw.

“No,” he said simply, then brushed past and made his way down the corridor in long strides that echoed after him like the ringing of a bell. Dean watched him go, bracing his hand on the doorframe to keep himself from following.

As soon as the double doors swung shut behind him, Dean shook his head, feeling like he’d just come up from underwater.

“Who was that?” He asked, turning back to the doctor.

Doctor Mike sighed explosively, rubbing the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and waving broadly with the other hand.

“Some ‘detective’ apparently. Came by asking questions about the Porter girl,” he scoffed. “A crackpot, more like. I don’t know if he was a crank reporter who thought claiming to be a detective would get him access or if he was just nuts. ‘Self-inflicted’ can you believe that?”

“Yeah,” Dean laughed along to avoid grimacing. He’d never heard of anything that would make a person do that to themselves, but what he had heard of would probably give Doctor Mike a heart attack. “Total nutcase.”

“You’re here about Porter too, aren’t you.” Doctor Mike got down to business, brushing imaginary dirt off his lab coat and fixing Dean with another assessing look. “We’ve already ruled out an animal attack at this point, I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Yeah, the Sheriff mentioned,” Dean replied with a shrug. “But I gotta, y’know. Dot the Is, cross the Ts.”

“Sure,” Doctor Mike snorted. “Well since you’re here you can have a look, but I’m not interested in entertaining foolish questions or conspiratorial speculation, and I certainly will not be hearing any of the gory details repeated anywhere outside this office, are we clear?”

Dean nodded, pinching two fingers and drawing them across his lips.

Doctor Mike looked unimpressed, sighing again.

“This way.” He gestured with an arm for Dean to step out of the doorway, sweeping past him and leading the way down the hall to the second set of double doors. 

Behind them sat the autopsy room itself, intimidating metal table under harsh spotlights, trays full of grim implements laid out shiny on sterile paper, the usual beat. Dean’s eyes caught on the slab, wondering absently what it would feel like to lie on it, and stare up into those lights, knowing you were about to be cut open, excavated for answers. He felt the phantom impression of cold steel against his shoulders. But the eyes of corpses didn’t see and they didn’t feel the cut of the knife, or hear the rattling hum of the bone saw as they were hollowed out.

Doctor Mike crossed the room swiftly and pulled open one of the drawers set into the wall, revealing a black body bag. Dean caught up to him in a few strides, settling on the other side of the drawer.

“Caroline’s already been buried. Not sure how we’re going to break it to her family that we’re probably going to have to dig her back up.” Doctor Mike sighed. “Cause of death with her was head trauma, she’d been missing for two weeks by then, and the coyotes and condors had gotten to her, so I can’t prove anything was missing from her before then. The kids, they go out into the wilderness to party and get up to whatever it is they do, they think because they grew up doing it they don’t have to have respect for nature. Things like this happen when you’re drunk and stupid and out at night. We were ready to chalk it up to an unfortunate accident, but Jennifer… Well.”

He reached out and unzipped the bag. First revealing her pale, slack-jawed face, eyes glassy and unseeing as they gazed vacantly upwards. Her hair had been shorn, revealing a gash on the side of her head surrounded by mottled discoloration. The zipper continued its path downwards, revealing more gray waterlogged skin, until it all fell away beneath her ribs, her stomach opening into a gaping, jagged maw.

“Jesus,” Dean said under his breath. 

“It was pretty clear from the start this wasn’t animals,” Mike continued. “But some rookie said that to shut down questions and that became the story. The story everyone wanted me to confirm, no matter what their eyes told them.”

He snorted, shaking his head.

“Similar head trauma to Caroline, but it wasn’t the cause of death this time.”

Dean looked up sharply. “You mean she wasn’t dead when they did this to her?”

“She was alive. I hope to god she wasn’t conscious. She has defensive wounds on her arms, but that could have been from before she got hit…” Mike trailed off, and Dean looked back down at the girl, the wet red cavern of her stomach.

The empty ache inside of him panged hollowly in sympathy as his eyes traced the edges of  the wound, once again feeling the phantom sensation of being held down and carved open. The pit in him yawned, and the one in the corpse echoed the sentiment.

“You and me both, sister,” he mumbled, fingers absentmindedly brushing the thick black material of the body bag.

“What was that?”

“Said you and me both.” Dean cleared his throat, looking up again and shoving his hand in his pocket. “The Sheriff mentioned something about symbols?”

Mike gave him a side-eye, but continued anyway.

“Symbols might be exaggerating it. I can tell you the disemboweling was done with a knife, a pretty dull one, and there are some cuts on the ribs that I believe were intentional, not due to the organ removal, but if they’re supposed to represent something, they’re not exactly well formed.” He stepped away, grabbing a pair of latex gloves from a box on a nearby cart and slipping them on. Returning to the body, he pinched a loose flap of skin and pulled it back to expose more of her ribs. Dean squinted and leaned forward slightly, there were definitely markings there. Jagged lines, awkwardly starting and stopping, what could have been attempts at letters, but nothing recognizable.

“Huh.” Was all Dean said, leaning back again.

“Might just be additional mutilation of the body, might be someone trying to carve bone for the first time with a dull knife and bloody hands. Hard to say,” he said. “What I can say is that it was a person that did this, not an animal. Sorry to tell you, but you’ve wasted your time.”

And mine , was the obvious unspoken implication. Dean stepped away from the body, nodding.

“Yeah, well thanks anyway, Dr. Chapel,” he said. “Least this way I can tell my boss I-”

“Dotted your Is and crossed your Ts,” Mike snorted. “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

Dean closed his mouth with a click, rubbing his hands on his jeans, then stopping and shoving them in his pockets with a shrug. He had said it hadn’t he, it had sounded funny in the Sheriff’s mouth, but now it had a bad taste in his.

“Right.”

Doctor Mike zipped up the body bag and slammed the drawer back shut, then slipped his gloves off and balled them up. He looked up at Dean as though he was surprised he was still there.

“You can get out the way you came in,” he told him.

“Yeah,” Dean said, turning away. “Thanks for all your help.”

He pushed through the double doors, into the long hallway and out through the second set to the entrance. He waved to the security guard, whose head was still buried in the newspaper, and stepped outside into the sun.

The man in the tan overcoat was standing at the bottom of the steps, his hands in his pockets and his back to Dean.

Dean stopped in his tracks, startled.

“Oh,” he said, some tension he’d been carrying draining away into relief. “It’s you.”

The man half turned, looking at him over his shoulder.

“You’re a hunter,” he said simply.

“Yeah,” Dean shoved his hands in his pockets, sauntering down the steps casually, drawing up next to the man. “You?”

“Of a sort,” he said, eyeing Dean critically.

Dean allowed the scrutiny in silence, staring back at the man. There was something about him Dean couldn’t put his finger on, something that was somehow calming and enticing all at once.

“You should go,” the man said, turning away abruptly. “It isn’t necessary for you to get involved.”

“What?” And wasn’t that like a bucket of ice down Dean’s back. “Come on, are you serious?”

“I have this under control.” He began to walk away, and Dean hastened to follow. “I don’t need your help.”

“Territorial much?” Dean scoffed. “And by the way, if that, in there, is what you call having it handled, I think you need all the help you can get.”

The man grimaced for a moment before his face smoothed out again.

“A temporary setback,” he stated plainly. “I was only looking for confirmation of a hunch, there are other avenues I can pursue.”

“About the wounds being self-inflicted?” Dean asked. “That’s something you’ve dealt with before? People tearing their own guts out?”

The man said nothing, but there was a tightness in his shoulders and around his mouth that told Dean all he needed to know.

“What the hell kind of thing could do something like that?”

The man whirled around, drawing Dean up short as he turned to face him again, feet planted.

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” he said firmly.

Dean met his firm, unwavering gaze stare for stare, crossing his arms and jutting out his chin.

“It wasn’t, you know.” The man raised an eyebrow at him. “Self-inflicted. Doctor Mike said she was unconscious when they cut her open.”

“I see,” the man said neutrally.

“That doesn’t change anything for you,” Dean observed. “That’s funny to me, cause I hear disembowelment I think monster, but I hear self-mutilation like that I think possession, maybe some kind of curse. I wouldn’t think they’d be the same thing.”

“It might not be,” the man admitted. “I’m sure you’re familiar with false leads. That specific cause of death is only one of the signs, there are others.”

“Signs like, sigils carved into the body?” Dean asked. The man’s gaze sharpened and he knew he hit the jackpot.

“What kinds of sigils?” He took a step forward.

Dean shrugged, deliberately nonchalant. “Nothing I recognized, especially not with how sloppy they were.”

“I see.” The man nodded, brow furrowing.

Dean waited, expectant, but the man only turned away again, so abruptly that he managed a few steps before Dean even registered he was being abandoned, again .

“Oh come on!” He threw his hands up in the air. “That’s it? You’re still just gonna walk away?”

The man stopped but didn’t turn back this time, only glancing over his shoulder. “I told you-”

“Yeah I shouldn’t get involved,” Dean waved a hand dismissively. “Newsflash buddy, I’m a hunter, I’m not gonna just walk away when people are dying.”

The man said nothing, the line of his back rigid and tense.

“I’m not asking to be your best friend here,” Dean said. “I’m just saying we both want to stop whatever’s doing this, we might as well put our heads together. And frankly, I’ve had two conversations with you now man, and I can already tell you need someone to do the talking for you if you wanna get anywhere in this town.”

The man finally turned around, if only so he could scowl at Dean.

“I have successfully interrogated suspects in the past,” he said.

“Yeah?” Dean snorted. “How often has that worked out for you?”

The man kept scowling.

“I have other resources I can access,” he muttered petulantly, looking away.

“Cool, well right now I’m a 'resource you can access.'” Dean waggled his eyebrows. “So how about it, chief?”

The man stayed silent for a long moment, glowering at the ground off to his left, his hands shoved in his pockets.

Finally, he sighed. 

“Fine.”

Dean resisted the urge to pump his fist in the air, a surge of unexpected joy lighting up his chest.

As usual, these days, it was fleeting, as the pit in him opened up and sent him plummeting in a well of guilt strong enough to make him nauseous.

What the hell did he have to celebrate, the opportunity to do his goddamn job? The one thing in the world he was good for? Or just the chance to attach himself to the nearest person like a fucking leech, no matter how obviously they didn’t want him around. Jesus, if his Dad were here-

The man was looking at him oddly, and Dean realized something of his sudden shift in mood must be showing on his face. He crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat.

“Right, well. Good, we can... Work together, then.” He held out his hand. “I’m Dean, Dean Winchester.”

The man stared at his outstretched hand, and for an uncomfortably long moment Dean thought he might not take it, but then a warm broad palm, rough with callouses, slid into his and squeezed. Dean felt a shudder run through him.

Strange/

“Castiel,” the man said.

“One name like Cher, huh?” Dean laughed. His hand still felt warm when Castiel let go, the impression of his fingers glowing in his mind’s eye like a brand. “Cool.”

“Yes,” Cas said simply. “Do you have a vehicle?”

“Yeah, of course.” Dean turned and tipped his head towards the Impala, and Castiel started marching over.

“Good, you can give me a ride,” Castiel affirmed. “We can discuss the case on the way to our next destination.”

“Okay, sure- hang on,” Dean said, trailing after. “Do you not have a car?”

“I don’t drive.” Castiel rounded the vehicle and stood by the passenger door, staring at him, expectant.

“Huh.” Dean blinked at him over the roof. “Guess I’m going to be more useful than you thought.”

He grinned, unlocking the door and sliding in.

“It’s no hardship to walk,” Cas said primly as he slid in next to him.

“You’re kidding,” Dean said. “In this heat? I don’t even know how you’re managing to stand around in that get-up, you must be roasting.”

Castiel shrugged, looking out the window as they peeled out of the gravel lot. “The temperature doesn’t bother me.”

Dean scoffed, but chose not to argue the point. To his credit, the guy didn’t even look like he was sweating.

“Well Baby will get us there in style, anyway,” he said.

“Baby?” Castiel asked, turning to look at him.

Dean flushed.

“Yeah the- the car,” he explained. “She’s my Baby.”

He felt a twinge of shame. He hadn’t been taking good care of her lately. She didn’t look like anyone’s baby right now, all dusty and dinged up from too many gravel roads and not enough TLC. He reached out and put a hand on the dash absentmindedly, an apology.

“She’ll take good care of us.”

“I see,” said Castiel, and when Dean glanced over, he was contemplating him intently, his head tilted. He put both hands back on the wheel quickly, clearing his throat and trying to think of a way to play it off.

But out of the corner of his eye he saw Castiel place his own hand on the dash, just for a moment or two, mirroring Dean’s gesture with a solemn expression, like a man receiving a benediction. Warmth bloomed in Dean’s chest, unexpected and fleeting, but welcome.

“So, where to?” He asked.

“I’ve already spoken to the families of the two girls,” Cas explained.

“Yeah?” Dean grinned. “How’d that go for you?”

Cas shot him a withering look, raising his chin in the air primly.

“Well enough,” he said. “They were willing to share information about their daughters’ associates and activities when I informed them it might help with a missing persons investigation.”

“Huh, fair enough,” Dean said, letting the teasing drop. “Guess the private investigator shtick must work sometimes. Why’d you go with that, anyway?”

“Because I am a private investigator,” Cas told him simply.

“What, for real?” Dean looked over at him in surprise.

“Yes, although I’m technically not licensed in this state,” he clarified. “It seemed like a good way to acquire the skills and resources I need to do the work I do, and I can earn income when leads dry up.”

“Huh,” Dean said again, it had never occurred to him that some of the skills you picked up hunting might be transferable like that. Although the rap sheet you picked up hunting probably didn’t gel well with getting any kind of official license. “I guess a private eye could be looking into pretty much anything. Does it usually get people to open up to you?”

“It depends on the person,” Cas admitted. “Law enforcement are hesitant to share information unless they are legally required to do so or they get something in return, but the general public has a great deal of respect for figures of authority and very little understanding of how much authority an independently operating detective actually has, which is almost none.”

“Well, you learn something new every day,” Dean said. “So the parents?”

“Not much of note, neither girl had a particularly remarkable shift in behavior prior to their deaths, nor did their parents note any new relationships that were cause for concern, although Jennifer had just recently returned from her first year at university where her parents had no way of tracking her associates, and Caroline had developed a recent interest in the occult.” He paused. “Her mother found her dabbling in witchcraft to be unsettling, as she is herself a devout christian, but deemed it harmless and chose not to intervene, especially considering it was inspiring her to make friends and had a positive impact on her confidence.”

“Harmless,” Dean snorted. “Sure.”

Cas shot him a side-long glance. “Often it would be, the amount of harmless fluff involving crystals and astrology far outweighs the real and dangerous information, especially considering what a young woman would be able to access on her own with no one to initiate her.”

“I don’t know if I’d call crystals and astrology harmless,” Dean joked. “You mess around with them enough, next thing you know you’re doing yoga in the morning and eating yogurt and granola with your green smoothies.”

He shuddered dramatically.

“Do you have something against living a healthy lifestyle?” Cas asked him skeptically.

Dean shot him a horrified look.

“Don’t tell me you’re a health nut, Cas,” he said. “I don’t think I could take the heartbreak.”

Cas didn’t answer for a moment, looking at him with wide, startled eyes.

“What?” Dean asked, frowning, had he said something weird?

“Nothing,” Cas shook his head, turning back to look at the road. “I’m not a health nut, no, I just was under the impression that taking care of yourself was considered a positive thing.”

Dean let out a small, startled laugh. “A positive thing you don’t do?”

“I believe that goes without saying,” Cas said dryly.

“You and me both.” Dean grinned. The thought of the girl on the table, and the yawning pit entered his mind again. He shook his head.

“So, Caroline and Jennifer, nothing remarkable?” He asked.

“Not particularly, Jennifer was academically accomplished, she was accepted into Stanford University-” Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel, but if Cas noticed he didn’t comment. “-and was by all reports doing well, visiting home often and continuing on the path to scholastic excellence. Caroline, on the other hand, was never particularly interested in school, stayed in town and began working in a coffee shop after graduation, although her mother said she had recently brought up taking correspondence courses to pursue higher education.”

“Bupkis, basically.” Dean tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Any chance they knew each other?”

“It’s almost guaranteed, given the size of the town, everyone of similar age attended the same high school here in Woodlake, they would at least be passingly familiar with each other,” Cas said.

“Small towns, man.” Dean shook his head, biting his lip.

“Yes,” Cas agreed. “Which is why I thought it might be best to change tracks and investigate the area where the bodies were discovered. Especially given that Caroline’s mother indicated she had taken to spending time out in the wilderness before her death.”

“Yeah Doctor Mike mentioned that’s pretty common for kids out here, hey can you grab the map from- I think you’re sitting on it, actually.”

Cas shifted to the side, groping around on the seat and pulling out the slightly crumpled map Dean had picked up from the gas station. He unfolded it, spreading it over the dash.

“From what I saw at the police station, Jenny’s body was found in the lake here.” He tapped the map. “And Caroline was further up in the hills, here.”

“They aren’t particularly far apart,” Cas noted. “If they were moved to obscure the location of their deaths, it may not have been far.”

“I guess,” Dean pursed his lips. “We’d still be flying pretty blind out there, and if there’s someone or something hunting out there, it might find us before we find it.”

“And your preferred course of action?” Cas asked.

“Ask around,” Dean said. “If everybody knows everybody we could probably get a good idea who they hung around with and where just by chatting up their former classmates.”

“Alright,” Cas agreed. “You can do so, after you drop me off.”

“What? No way.” Dean turned his scowl on him, and he stared impassively back. “I’m not letting you go out there alone.

Cas continued to look at him flatly, clearly challenging him to go ahead and stop him.

“I could just not take you, you know that right?” He pointed out.

“I would walk,” Cas replied.

“That would take hours!” Dean protested.

“Yes,” Castiel agreed. “Which is why I would appreciate the ride.”

“Fine,” Dean sighed. “We’ll go tramping around in the hot sun looking for clues, you happy?”

“Not particularly,” Cas said dryly. “I’d like to point out that if you’re concerned, you’re under no obligation to accompany me.”

“Yeah, well, stow it,” Dean said. “I’m coming and that’s final.”

Cas sighed. “Yes, that seems to be the case.”

He turned back to look out the window, watching tan hills dotted with green roll by under a wide blue sky.

The trek out to the lake was as hot and miserable as Dean expected, made all the worse by the fact that Cas stalwartly refused to be affected by the heat of the late afternoon sun. On Dean’s insistence, he had left the overcoat and suit jacket in the car, and Dean had swung by the gas station again on the way back through town to pick up water for the both of them. Nose Ring Girl was still there, but Dean didn’t bother trying to make conversation this time. Cas dutifully carried the little plastic bottle of water with him, and dutifully took a sip whenever Dean prompted him, and didn’t look like he was as close to keeling over from heat exhaustion or dehydration as Dean felt, so the occasional sip must have been good enough for him . Dean, meanwhile, had nearly drained his water bottle already.

The site where they’d fished the body out of the water was still cordoned off, but there was no one stationed nearby to warn people away. Dean had his fish and wildlife excuse, along with his badge, in his back pocket, regardless. He was counting on the fact that they were knocking on the doorsteps of two national parks to allow him a little bit of leeway to poke around. 

The shore itself didn’t offer much to look at, at least, Cas must have thought so, because Dean only had the chance to pace the waterline once before he turned back to see Cas heading up into the hills without him and had to scramble to follow, calling for him to wait up.

He almost didn’t expect him to listen, but he stood in place long enough for Dean to curse and scrabble his way up the slope after him.

“Jesus, warn a guy, will you?” He panted when he managed to catch up. “What’s going on? You see something?”

Cas hummed noncommittally, looking off into the distance.

“Call it a hunch,” he said, and started forward again.

Cas led the way with determined strides, setting an unwavering pace that Dean struggled not to turn an ankle trying to match. He was beginning to understand what Doctor Mike had been talking about: the hills looked gentle and easy to climb, the vegetation relatively sparse, but the ground was treacherous and easy to lose his footing on. He kept losing sight of Cas when he ducked into the occasional groves of bushes or disappeared over the next hill, which never failed to send his heart racing.

Finally, he scrambled to the crest of a hill for what felt like the hundredth time that day and saw Cas standing halfway down, looking at a dilapidated shack. It was tucked into a valley at the end of a dirt road that petered out before it got more than a hundred yards away, eaten up by yellow grass and those short tough bushes that sprung up in the valley with a greater abundance than the hills around it.

“Found something?” Dean panted, skidding unsteadily down the hill to reach Cas’ side.

“Yes,” he replied, shaking his head as though to clear it. “I believe I have.”

The building was old and falling apart, leaning to the side as though a strong breeze could knock it over. The windows were busted out and the door hung off its hinges. Each opening loomed large and dark on the face of the building, like unseeing eyes and a large, beckoning mouth.

They picked their way to the door in silence. Dean glanced up at the sky as they approached, half expecting to see a cloud had appeared in front of the sun, despite how empty the sky had been all day. It was still empty, but somehow it seemed as though the quality of the light had changed as they approached the shack, becoming colder and dimmer.

“Hey Cas, do you…” Dean wasn’t certain how he meant to form the question, but he didn’t get the chance, because Cas plunged into the darkened doorway. “Cas!”

Dean followed quickly, already almost losing sight of the man in the gloomy interior. Across the threshold, the house seemed darker than it should have been. Maybe it was just his eyes adjusting to the sharp contrast with the blinding light of day outside. 

Maybe.

Light streamed in through the open door, and everywhere a hole had been busted in a window or a bit of the roof had fallen through, but the intact windows had been painted black, and the light that got in struggled to do more than cast a gloomy haze on the dusty space.

Although his eyes struggled to adjust, his nose was hit by a lingering scent of incense, overpowering the dusty smell of a home long abandoned, and almost masking a faint, underlying metallic odor, accompanied by a cloying hint of rot.

Sure enough, as he stepped further into the room, Dean caught sight of rust-red smears on the ground, all along a route where the dirt and dust had been wiped away. Drag marks, leading to a room on his right. Footsteps crossed and criss-crossed each other all over the floor, making impossible to follow patterns in the grime. Someone had been coming and going here quite a bit, and recently. 

And on one of those visits, they’d dragged a still-bleeding corpse out into the wilderness.

Dean followed the trail of blood, expecting Cas to have done the same. The door frame had a bloody hand-print on it, like someone had caught themself stumbling there. The room beyond was a sight, and Dean whistled through his teeth. The smell of rot was stronger here, flies buzzing away over what looked to be the remains of animals, shunted into the corners, bones and bits of fur and unidentifiable red mush. The walls were covered with scrawling symbols, pictures painted in something dark and shiny. Pools of wax melted around stubs of burnt out candles littered the floor. 

The centerpiece, though, was the massive pool of blood that had soaked into the decaying floorboards, half obscuring the scrawl of a magic circle underneath, five points of a star, each adorned with a tool of the trade: an offering bowl filled with lumpy ash, an incense holder, a dull copper coloured knife, a bundle of herbs and feathers and a black crystal.

“Guess it was a gateway drug after all,” he muttered, stepping forward and tracing the script that filled the circle with his eyes. He couldn’t identify it, but he didn’t have to be a scholar to figure out it was major bad juju.

Cas stood with his back to all of it, staring at the symbols on the wall across from the door.

“Looks like we found the right place,” Dean said wryly. “Good call, Cas.”

Cas didn’t answer, stayed facing the wall. Something about the line of his back set Dean ill at ease.

“Hey-” He took another step forward.

Something whispered in his ear.

Dean whirled, staring into the empty space behind him, his hand coming up to his neck where he could have sworn he’d felt someone’s breath.

“What the hell-” He took two steps back, away from the open door, jumping when his foot collided with the offering bowl, knocking it over with a clatter that rang loud in the silence.

No, not silence. 

There was whispering, still. 

Constant, so quiet as to be indistinct, but if Dean strained his ears he could just hear it.

“Cas?” He called out, shaky. “Do you hear…”

His voice died in his throat as he turned and caught sight of the man again, silhouetted against that strange mural, a jarring gap in the twisting symbols. 

He seemed to draw them in.

They curled towards him before Dean's eyes, writhing on the wall as the room darkened. The shadows pulled in and the whispers grew louder until he could just make out the shape of words-

Come home.

Dean’s pulse pounded in his ears, a drumbeat to accompany the chant. Come home, come home, come home to me. In front of the wall of writhing shadows, Cas started to turn, and something in Dean quailed, knowing he wasn’t prepared, wasn’t ready, but stuck in place all the same by his wanting.

Come home to the Mother.

“Dean?” Cas called, concern in his eyes as he looked at Dean over his shoulder.

All at once the air rushed back into the room, and Dean staggered, dizzy.

He blinked spots from his vision, and suddenly Cas was there, warm hand clamped tight on his shoulder to keep him from lurching back or collapsing to his knees.

“Dean.” Cas stared into his eyes, brow furrowed and lips pulling into a tight frown. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he croaked, shaking his head. “Yeah I- did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Cas asked, tilting his head.

“There were- I thought for a second…” Dean squeezed his eyes shut, bringing a hand up to rub at them and force the wavering of his vision to stop. “I don’t know.”

“You look pale,” Cas said, pressing the back of his hand to Dean’s forehead. Dean leaned into the touch before he could stop himself. “I think the heat may be affecting you. Here, have some of my water.”

“I don’t-” Dean started to protest, but Cas pressed the water bottle into his hands and he accepted it gratefully, shaken.

“It seems we’ve found where the girls were killed, at any rate,” Cas said, taking a step back. Dean missed the closeness immediately. “Although it seems it’s abandoned again for the moment.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed faintly. “How did you figure this would be here, anyway?”

“Do you still have the map?” Cas asked. Dean nodded, pulling it out and handing it over for Cas to unfold. “We should be about… here.”

He traced their route along it, stopping at a spot that sat almost directly between the two body dump sites they had marked out.

“You’re kidding,” Dean said. “What were you just banking on them being lazy?”

“Something like that,” Cas replied. “Mostly I’ve… developed a sense for where these sorts of people tend to seek shelter. I assumed our area of interest would be in a certain radius around the two points, and looked for signs I’ve found to be promising in the past.”

Dean regarded him over his water bottle, eyes narrowing. He wondered how much of that was the real truth, and if maybe the sense Cas was talking about was more literal than he was letting on. He certainly hadn’t seemed to waver or look around much on the way here, and though he’d stopped periodically as though getting his bearings before forging on in one direction or another, the changes in course were never motivated by anything Dean could see or hear.

Still, he only nodded, glancing down and taking another sip of his water.

“Huh, how about that.”

“Are you feeling any better?” Cas asked. “I don’t think we should linger here long, we’re going to start to lose the light soon and we still need to hike back to the car.”

“Yeah.” Dean capped the water bottle and handed it back. “I’m good. Let’s keep looking around.”

Cas nodded and stepped around him to head for the door, giving Dean’s shoulder a squeeze on the way by.

Dean looked back to the mural on the wall, the strange symbols that still seemed to shine like wet ink, even now that he was sure they were still. In the center, where Cas had been standing there was a figure, looming large as the centerpiece of the alien display. It was painted in broad, abstract strokes, but Dean thought it might have been a woman. Her arms were bent towards her torso, where it seemed like she held open a gaping wound that split her from neck to pelvis. A wound, or perhaps a mouth, or a birth canal. One or all of them, opening into a black void at the center of her being. What might have been hair or grasping tentacles curled out all around her, intertwining with the words and symbols that spread all along the wall.

The indecipherable tangle all led back to her, pulling everything in the room towards where she stood: open, beckoning.

Hungry.

Dean shuddered, rubbing his arms against a sudden chill, and turned away.

The rest of the shack held little else of interest. A room with a few old mattresses on the floor, stripped bare and suspiciously stained, a rusted old stove and small kitchen area in the main space that still contained an abandoned pot and a cracked mason jar. It was clear that nothing other than the ritual room had seen use in a long time, so they focused their efforts there. Dean copied down the runes from the circle on the floor as Cas picked through ash and bones and herb fragments, identifying them in a low murmur and making occasional thoughtful noises.

When he finished with the circle on the ground, Dean flipped to a new page and looked around at the walls, unsure where to start. The figure seemed like a logical place, but when he went to put pen to paper, he hesitated.

“Dean,” Cas called, and Dean looked up from his page, startled. “We should go, it’s getting late.”

Dean paused, about to protest, but then he flipped his notepad closed, shaking his head. He could always come back later.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They left the cabin and the mural behind, stepping back out into the fading light to make the long journey back to town.

By the time they rolled into the parking lot of the motel, Dean’s limbs felt heavy and he had to keep his head from nodding forward as he drove. He shut the engine off and stretched with a groan, sure that the ache in his limbs was going to carry over into hellish stiffness in the morning.

“So, we’ll meet back here in the morning and hit the town, then?” Dean asked, stifling a yawn.

“Yes,” Cas confirmed. “I’d appreciate it if you could drop me off at city hall.”

Dean blinked, straightening and coming to attention.

“Oh I thought we were going to be asking around, see what we could dig up from the locals…” He trailed off, a sinking feeling in his gut.

“You should do that,” Cas agreed. “I want to look into the history of the property we found, I have a suspicion to confirm.”

“Okay…” Dean said. “And that is?”

Cas glanced at him and then looked away again, his gaze settling on something out in the night.

“I thought we agreed that I would help you,” Dean said, clenching his fists on his thighs and hoping he didn’t sound as much like a whining child as he felt.

“You are helping,” Cas replied evenly. “We’re… Dividing and conquering.”

“Sure,” Dean said, bitter. “Whatever you say.”

They sat in silence for another moment.

“I will see you in the morning, Dean.” Castiel put his hand on the door handle, hesitating. “Have… good rest.”

He nodded, as though affirming that that was what he meant to say, and then got out, closing the door with a click and walking across the parking lot into the night.

Dean leaned forward and lay his head on the steering wheel, sighing heavily. All sense of accomplishment for the day’s work drained out of him, leaving him hollow and exhausted. He let his eyes fall closed, something welling up in him, twisting his guts until he felt his face screw up into a grimace, teeth gritted against the icy burning in his core. He pulled back and smacked his head against the steering column, hard enough to hurt, and then jolted upright with a hiss, rubbing his forehead.

“What the hell are you doing, you idiot?” He muttered. “Just go to bed.”

He pulled himself out of the car and shuffled to his room, fitting the key in the door and pausing when he heard voices inside, speaking at a low murmur. His heart thudded in his chest and he slammed the door open, lurching forward and reaching for the gun in his waistband in an effort to surprise whoever was inside.

The TV was on, the home shopping network still filling the room with friendly, impersonal background noise.

Dean watched it from the door as he waited for his heart to settle down, his gun held loose in his hand. The flickering light of the television set played over the room, illuminating the untouched bed, the single duffle sitting at its foot, dancing over unadorned beige walls and a faded carpet worn down by hundreds of boots.

He pulled the door closed and locked it again, turning away and heading down the street, to the liquor store he’d passed a block away. It was going to be a long night, but he had just enough money left in his wallet to get through it.

Dean slept fitfully, the TV on low casting shadows that looked like grasping tendrils over the walls. At one point during the night he rolled out of bed to stumble his way to the bathroom and empty his bladder, and on the way back he caught sight of something through the blinds that drew him to the window.

Outside, on the other edge of the parking lot, just outside of the circle of light cast by the nearest streetlight, stood a man in a long tan coat, staring out into the dark.

Dizzy and exhausted, Dean rubbed his eyes and turned away, pulled back to bed by the siren song of rest, and finally fell into a deep slumber. Dreaming about blackness that stretched for eternity, and a figure silhouetted against it, a part of it, beckoning.

In the morning, he didn’t remember any of it.

Dean dropped Cas off at the records hall first thing in the morning, having been brushed off when he offered to take him to breakfast first. He watched the man disappear into the building, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he contemplated his plan of action. He couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that Cas was sending him off just to keep him out of the way, but he intended to use it as an opportunity to prove himself. If the urge to impress Cas was stronger than it had any right to be… Dean didn't allow himself to dwell on it. 

There was an old TV playing in an empty motel room, and Dean had always been good at taking orders.

He shoved any thoughts of self-recrimination aside and reversed out of the parking lot.

First stop, breakfast. 

The diner had strong coffee and greasy food, which was exactly what Dean needed to kick the morning’s hangover. It also had a gossipy waitress, which was exactly what he needed to point him in the right direction. 

As an added pick-me-up, she called him sweetheart and leaned into his personal space when she set down his food, which was just what he needed because it’d been a shit morning.

He talked her ear off about the road trip he was on, the sights he’d seen and his plan to hike the national parks. He got the chance to ask in hushed tones about the recent death when she mentioned the lake, and she seemed to enjoy getting conspiratorial with him about the details. Apparently word had gotten out about the murders, so the Sheriff must have finally figured out how to break the news that morning.

Mostly, he got leads on where to look for people to talk to, which was how he found himself lake-side again. On the shore closer to town, this time, with fewer errant corpses and more kitschy ice cream stands. He struck up a conversation with a girl there, introducing himself as a friend of Jenny’s from Stanford. He came to town because he felt like he needed to just, do something, you know? Like pay his respects. Is that crazy? You don't think it's crazy do you?

They talked about how it was crazy that someone their age was dead, and Dean pretended it was as unfathomable to him as it was to her. He learned a bit about Caroline and a lot more about Jenny. Mostly that everyone knew her and everyone liked her. Caroline and the ice cream shop girl didn’t run in the same circles, though she could and did point Dean to what those circles are.

A little more poking for gossip got him the name of Caroline’s ex-boyfriend, and Dean tracked him down to a spot where the local kids went to drink. He was lucky enough to find the kid already half wasted- he'd heard the news about the murders too- so in this he didn't need much of a cover story, just a friendly listening ear and a little bit of genuine when he said he knew what it was like to lose people. 

Just not so much genuine he started thinking about it. 

His story was the mirror image of Caroline’s mother’s, where she saw the increased confidence and dismissed the witchcraft as no big deal, her boyfriend just knew she'd started hanging out with a new group of friends and all of a sudden she was acting like she was better than him or something. 

He also knew that whatever witchy stuff Caroline's mom thought was just a phase involved sneaking around at night with her new friends, lying and keeping secrets.

“I should’ve known man,” the kid sniffled, gesturing with a bottle of cheap vodka. He was a weedy guy in his early twenties, with greasy black hair and a pointed chin dusted with scraggly hair. “Something was up, I knew something was up but I was just mad . I felt like she was looking down on me, you know? She’d tell me stuff and I wouldn’t get it, and she’d just look at me like. So smug, you know? And I was like, why are you looking at me like that, I’m your boyfriend .”

“What kind of stuff? Dean asked mildly, sitting on the rock next to him with his arms crossed over his knees.

“I dunno, like she had this bitch coworker, and she’d tell me all this bad shit kept happening to her. Like her house got infested with termites but like crazy bad, the roof caved in, and she started getting sick with like, boils on her skin. I saw her in the supermarket, it was pretty gnarly. And Caroline would tell me about it and I’d be like, wow that’s pretty fucked up, and she’d like, laugh? But I could tell she was laughing at me, you know? Like I didn’t get it.” He took another sip from his bottle. “And she’d show up with new stuff and I’d be like ‘how’d you afford that?’ and she’d just say someone gave it to her, and not tell me who. That’s why I started thinking there was another guy, you know? But she wouldn’t admit it, and I told myself, Kyle-” He knocked the bottle against the rocks for emphasis. “Kyle, you deserve better than this. You’re a good guy, you go down on her when she asks, you give her free weed, if that’s not enough for her, she owes you the courtesy of saying it to your face y’know? And if she can’t do that? Gone!”

He made a cutting motion with his hand, and a swishing noise between his teeth, then slumped forward, resting his head on his knees.

“I made a mistake, man,” he moaned. “She was in trouble, and I wasn’t there for her…”

Dean reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

“That’s fucked up man, I’m sorry,” he said. “It sounds like her friends were bad news, did you know them?”

“Yeah, I mean, she didn’t really bring me around them, but we all went to high school together…”

Kyle put Dean onto the three musketeers, Samantha, Annie D. (not to be confused with Annie M. or Annie K.) and Abigail, former fourth member: Caroline. A group of burnouts and dropouts who had all experienced similar turns of fortune in the past year, until Caroline's fortunes abruptly reversed again.

“The freak squad,” one girl called them gleefully when he chatted her up in a coffee shop. “Not Caroline, obviously,” she corrected quickly, he’d introduced himself as a friend of her cousin. His buddy had come to town to support the family and had pulled him along in his wake. “She was always just kind of quiet and kept to herself, but the other three, they hung out together in high school. Mostly ‘cause no one else wanted to be around them.”

She rolled her eyes. “Abigail thought she was some kind of queen bitch, even though no one liked her, except Annie D. She was like, obsessed with her, she’s like a lesbian or something, I dunno. They were shady. If Caroline was hanging out with them, well, that’s probably why it happened, if you ask me.”

“What, no hate for Samantha?” Dean asked, a fake smile plastered over his face as the girl tittered, one manicured hand coming up to cover mouth.

“Samantha was just tacky ,” she said. “She box dyed her hair black, you could see her roots, like all the time. And now she’s got that nose ring it’s like, what are you trying to look tough? She’s such a poser, like she dresses all goth but everyone knows she threw up watching Saw.”

It turned out, Dean had already met one of Three River's own Coven. The afternoon found him back at the gas station, parked out back and watching the employee entrance, waiting on a checkout girl with box-dyed hair, a nose ring, and apparently a weak stomach.

Too weak for murder, maybe. It would explain the bags under her eyes.

She had her head down and her eyes on the flip phone in her hand when she stepped outside, a black hoodie zipped up over her work shirt.

“Hey, Samantha,” Dean called, and she jumped, looking up at him and taking a step back immediately.

“What the fuck?” She spat. “What are you doing here? Are you following me, or something?”

“My question is, what are you doing?” Dean asked, leaning back on the car with his arms crossed. “What are you and Abigail and Annie doing out in the woods at night that got two girls dead?”

Samantha went even paler, if that was possible.

“I didn’t have anything to do with that, okay?” She said, her eyes darting from side to side. “And I don’t have anything to do with them anymore either, we’re through.”

“Yeah? Well if you’re really not involved, maybe you haven’t heard what they did to Jenny yet.” She looked down, her face twisting with nausea, guilt and fear. Oh, she knew. “You think someone who could do that is going to brush it off when you tell her you’re through?”

“Well what the fuck am I supposed to do?” She snapped. “You don’t know what she’s like. The cops can’t help me, no one can help me.”

“I can,” Dean told her, stepping away from the car and catching her eye. “Talk to me, Samantha. I can help.”

“You don’t even know what you’re saying,” she laughed, bitterly.

“What, you think I’m scared of the wicked witch of the west coast?” Dean scoffed. “I’ve dealt with witches before, Abby and Annie are amateur hour.”

“You know-” Samantha started, then cut herself off, eyes wide.

“I know.” Dean nodded. “I mean it when I say I can help, Samantha.”

She looked at him for a long moment, wavering.

“Okay,” she said, finally, breathing out in a rush. “Okay, let’s talk. But not here. It smells like shit.”

Dean drummed a cheerful tune on the steering wheel as Cas climbed into the car, looking gloomy after a day trawling through property records at city hall, and sifting through back-copies of newspapers at the library across the street.

“Not much luck?” He asked brightly, holding out a cup of coffee he’d picked up on the way to the rendez-vous. Castiel eyed it, and him, oddly, but reached out to take it after a moment. “That’s alright because I have had plenty: Houston, we’ve got witches.”

“I see,” Castiel said, staring down at the disposable paper cup held in his hands. “That makes sense.”

“Yeah, well, I got details,” he continued, keeping up the drumbeat as a way to bleed off nervous energy. “Turns out we have three, well two now, teenage witches. Group of goth girls dabble in magic in high school, never get anywhere ‘cause like you said it’s all fluff and crystals on the internet, until another outcast loner shows them a weird old book that used to belong to her great aunt to impress them. Turns out, it’s the real deal. They find a creepy old shack to do their rituals in and for some reason it makes the magic stronger, so they keep doing it. Call plagues of boils on their enemies, cast some good luck charms, head into the city and Jedi mind trick some department store clerks into letting them walk out with as much as they can carry, free of charge. They’re all smelling like roses, until Caroline, the one with the book, gets in a fight with Abigail, self-styled queen bee, over who should really be in charge of the coven, it gets physical, Caroline takes a bad fall. Uh oh, goodbye Caroline! And then Abby says: we’re already here, why waste a perfectly good sacrifice?”

Cas stayed silent, and Dean found his mouth running without his permission.

“All of a sudden the magic’s a lot stronger, and you know it’s not gonna be a one time thing, not when it turns out there’s a lot more they can do if they’re willing to graduate from animals. That’s when Jenny comes back into town for summer break. Now Jenny doesn't have much to do with the witches three, except for the fact that she dated Abigail’s ex-boyfriend right after they broke up. Hell hath no fury, right?” He chuckled awkwardly. “Anyway one of the witches, Samantha, she got cold feet over going from manslaughter to murder, and she’s willing to help us to save her own skin. I figure we can lure the other two back out to the shack and take care of business.”

“The symbols on the walls don’t have anything to do with the deaths,” Cas told him abruptly.

“What?” Dean asked, blinking in surprise. “I mean, I guess that makes sense, they seemed pretty different from the runes in the circle.”

“Entirely different,” Cas confirmed. “I looked into the history of the house, it’s been abandoned for decades. It was difficult to track down information on when they first appeared, but I found an article about a group of squatters suspected of animal mutilations, and the librarian I spoke to about the incident recalled hearing about strange paintings being found on the walls when the police went to clear the property. They’re most likely the ones responsible.”

“Okay…” Dean said, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“They left town over five years ago,” Castiel informed him.

“What are you saying, Cas?” Dean asked.

“Those symbols are what I’m here for,” he said softly. “I don’t hunt witches. The trail here is already cold. I need to move on and find another lead.”

“What?” Dean demanded. “You’re just going to leave? Two girls are dead . We can stop the people who did it, how the hell do you walk away from that?”

“I have a mission,” Castiel said. “I can’t let anything get in the way of it, I’ve wasted enough time already. I’m sure you can handle things here, you’re very competent.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dean stared at him, disbelieving. “What, you try to chase me off, and then when it’s not what you thought you just lose interest? What if I had listened?”

Castiel kept his gaze straight ahead and said nothing.

“Unbelievable,” Dean spat. “So that’s it then? I help you out, and you just leave me in the lurch.”

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Castiel said neutrally, not even doing Dean the courtesy of getting frustrated with him, like he was just… completely irrelevant. He grabbed the handle of the door and popped it open. “It’s better this way. I wish you luck, Dean.”

He got out of the car, then paused and stared down at the cup of coffee in his hand. After a moment, he turned back and set it gently on the passenger seat and closed the door. 

Dean looked down at it, feeling something vicious and bitter writhe in his chest.

It bubbled up out of him as an inarticulate noise of rage. He turned the key in the ignition and yanked the car around recklessly enough that Castiel had to scramble back to avoid being hit. The Impala's tires squealed, and the coffee cup toppled over, spilling some of its contents on the seat. Dean saw red, and reached over to roll the window down, then scooped up the coffee cup and flung it out into the parking lot. It landed and burst somewhere near Casiel's feet as Dean tore away.

He watched him get smaller in the rearview mirror, his heart thudding in his chest. He gripped the steering wheel tighter.

Screw Castiel, Dean didn’t need him. He knew how to hunt on his own, and he was more than capable of dealing with Sabrina the teenage witch and her lackey, with or without his help.

He dug out his phone and flipped it open, punching in the number Samantha had slipped him earlier that day.

“Hey, it’s me.” Dean said. “Yeah, I’m going to deal with them tonight, and I think you can help me.”

“You sure about this?” He asked, a few hours later, looking down at a shack that seemed to rest in its own special pool of shadow, now that night had fallen. “I just needed you to call her and arrange a meetup, you don’t have to be here for this.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Samantha said hoarsely. “You’re gonna kill her, right?”

“Samantha-” Dean started.

“Jesus, call me Sammy, okay?” She snapped. “No one in the world calls me Samantha.”

Dean froze, something icy climbing its way up his throat as he stared at her, wide-eyed.

“What?” she asked. “Don’t go psycho on me now, man, I kind of need you for this.”

Dean opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again, shaking his head. She looked at him with growing concern and doubt.

“Right- no, I’m good.” He managed. “Sammy, then. Look, I know Abigail was your friend, but-”

“She isn’t herself anymore,” she said firmly. “I’ve known that for a while, but Annie-” she shook her head. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to talk her out of this, okay?”

Dean looked at her skeptically.

“I’ll go in, I’ll try to talk to them, as a distraction, and you can come in the back and… do your thing.” She pulled at her sleeves, shrugging. “If Annie doesn’t listen I’ll run, okay? I don’t wanna get hurt and I don’t… wanna see that.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed. “But first sign of trouble-”

“I’m gone,” Sammy promised, holding up a hand. She took a steading breath and nodded at him, then picked her way down the hill, wavering in front of the open door to the shack before heading inside. Dean moved around to the back carefully, gun in hand. He ducked low under a window into the ritual room, where he could just make out candlelight through the cracking paint over the glass.

He could hear movement inside, barely muffled, and took extra care to tread softly.

"I didn't think you'd show." An unfamiliar voice, Sammy was in position then.

"You didn't exactly give me a choice," she replied, her voice bland and sarcastic.

"Of course you had a choice.."

"Right I could come to…" The voices became too indistinct to make out when Dean made his way around the corner of the shack. The "back way in" Sammy had mentioned wasn't much of an entrance, there was a reason he hadn't noted it when he'd swept the place with Cas. Nothing more than a couple of loose boards Dean could push aside and squeeze through. He resisted the urge to swear under his breath as he sucked in his gut and wriggled his way in, splintered wood scraping along his back. 

He stepped out into the room with the abandoned mattresses, the low murmur of voices obvious from nearby, light flickering through gaps between the boards that made up the walls.

"...have to know how fucked up this is, Abby. You can't just- do whatever you want and say screw everyone else!"

"Actually I can, or did you not get the whole magic thing? I'm fucking unstoppable."

"God, do you even hear yourself? Annie, at least you have to see she's gone psycho, right?"

Dean crept closer, wincing every time his weight shifted and the floorboards creaked.

"Did you seriously show up just to bitch and moan at us?"

"No, I didn't."

Dean drew his gun as he approached the open doorway of the ritual room, hesitating. Sammy asked him for time and he meant to give it to her, but if she didn't start talking soon, Dean wasn't going to wait for things to go bad.

"Oh right, you're here to stall for your little friend, right?"

Dean swore, throwing himself into the room and bringing his gun up. He took in the scene in a brief snapshot, Sammy standing shocked by the door,  two other girls standing on the other side of the circle, a redhead and a girl whose black hair was either natural or a much better dye job than Sammy's. No time to be selective of his targets- sorry Sammy- he aimed-

Not fast enough. The girl with black hair's attention snapped to him and she threw her arm out, sending him flying across the room. He heard Sammy scream in fright as his back hit the wall, winding him.

"You seriously thought you could get one over on me?" That would be Abigail then, she kept her arm outstretched towards Dean, a crushing pressure keeping him on the ground as he struggled to breathe against it. "This is my domain, bitch."

Abigail was leaning on the goth look just as much as Sammy, but more queen of the night than mallrat. She'd shown up to the confrontation in a floor-length black gown with flowing sleeves, and made herself up with smudged dark eyeshadow and burgundy lipstick. The other girl, Annie, ended up the odd one out of the trio by virtue of looking basically normal. She was a chubby girl with short, curly red hair and freckles on her round, pale face. She watched the confrontation with glassy eyes, looking dazed and out of her depth.

"You're fucking crazy, Abby!" Sammy's voice was shrill with panic. "You're so hopped up on your own bullshit you think you can get away with anything, but it took this dude like a day to find you! You're a murderer! Even if you get out of this tonight you're gonna go down for this, and I am not letting you drag me down with you!"

"Oh don't pretend you weren't part of this," Abigail scoffed. "You wanna play the victim now but you didn't say shit about what we did to Caroline."

"Because I was scared!" Sammy protested, shifting on her feet and turning her attention away from Abigail. "And I know you were scared too, Annie. Whatever she made you do to Jenny, it wasn't your fault."

Abigail snorted and rolled her eyes, looking every inch a teenager.

"Oh like the two of you didn't benefit," she snapped. "You can say whatever you want, but all you've got is talk. I've already won."

"Not yet, you haven't." Sammy squared her feet and flung her own hand out, shouting something that sounded like gibberish to Dean's ears. There was a flash, Dean pushed himself to his feet, free to move again.

Abigail shrieked, pawing at her face, where something sparkled around her eyes.

Dean didn't intend to waste the opportunity, bringing his gun up- But Sammy darted into the line of fire, grabbing Annie's arm and trying to pull her out of the way.

"Sammy!" He snapped, unwilling to fire with her so close. She didn't listen, clinging to her friend.

"Annie, come on, we've got to go,"  she begged. "Let's just get out of here, okay? Annie, please-"

Abigail made a noise of frustration and gestured at her face, clearing away the little flashing lights and blinking open her eyes.

"Shit," Dean cursed, darting to the side to get a clear sightline, he fired. 

Abigail shouted in pain, stumbling back as the bullet hit her in the shoulder. Dean readjusted, aiming for her chest, but Abigail flung out her hand again and the gun flew out of his hands.

"Seriously?" She snarled, clutching at her shoulder. The hand on her injured arm twisted into a claw and Dean found his limbs locked again, his brief moment of freedom wasted. "Shitty little parlour tricks? That's what you've got? Annie, grab her."

Annie, who had done nothing so far but stand and stare listlessly, moved sharply to break Sammy's hold on her arms, snatching her hands and twisting them behind her back.

Sammy cried out in confusion and pain.

"Annie, what-" Sammy twisted in her hold, trying to look her in the face, and seeming to register for the first time the distant, vacant look in her eyes. She turned back to Abigail, her expression equal parts furious and horrified. "What the hell did you do to her?"

"What, did you think I was just gonna wait around and let her betray me? Like you did?" Abigail sneered. "I made sure she wouldn't be able to get any stupid ideas in her head. There's nothing in there at all now except what I put there. Annie's mine. "

"You bitch ," Sammy spat.

"Oh like she was ever actually using her brain." Abigail pouted, fluttering her eyelashes in an affectation of innocence. "Poor little orphan Annie, so innocent, just wants to fit in, so she'll do everything anyone says. Honestly? I barely even notice the difference."

"How could you-" Sammy shook her head, sick with horror. "How did you even do something like this?"

"Why? Cause it wasn't in the book?" Abigail rolled her eyes. "You think that's the only place you can learn magic? That was always your problem, no ambition ."

She stepped back, straightening, and let go of her shoulder, through the rip in her dress Dean could see the wound was already closing. She gestured broadly with her bloody hand, her dark eyes glittering as they swept over the room around them.

"Look where we are right now," she said. "How could you come here, day after day, see this, feel this, and not realize how much more there is out there? You think you're a witch just because you learned a couple of good luck spells from some dusty old bitch's diary? You haven't even scratched the surface!"

She brought up the hand she held twisted into a claw, and Dean found himself being dragged forward, his toes scraping along the ground. No matter how he strained, he couldn't overcome the force keeping him immobile. He could hear Sammy cursing under her breath, panicked, but his own mouth was sealed shut.

Abigail brought him to the center of the circle.

"I'm not like the rest of you losers, I'm not like anyone in this shitty town." The force constricting around Dean's ribcage began to tighten, and a whimper squeezed its way between his locked teeth. "I'm already so far beyond you it's not even funny, and I'm just going to get stronger. You think I'm powerful now? What do you think two more sacrifices will do for me?"

Dean's vision began to go dark around the edges, pressure increasing from all sides. His mind scrambled for an escape but he found none, his thoughts turning to static as he realized there was nothing he could do.

"You thought you were gonna kill me? I'm fucking unstoppable, and this is just the start. I'm gonna take this town, no one's gonna care about a couple of dead bodies because I won't let them care." In the narrowing tunnel of Dean's vision he could see the way her lips twisted into a manic grin. "Then I'm gonna decipher the secrets of this place, whatever powers exist here, they belong to me , and once I've figured out how to harness them, nothing will stand in my way, ever again."

Dean's ears were ringing, but he thought, distantly, he could hear Sammy sobbing.

He wished he could apologize to him. 

I should have come sooner. Sorry Sammy.

"I'm gonna be a fucking Go-"

Abigail choked.

The crushing force around Dean vanished all at once and he fell to the floor, wheezing.

He looked up to see Abigail standing rigid, her eyes wide as the tip of a knife pierced through her throat. She wavered, hands coming up to clutch blindly at it before she slumped, collapsing like a puppet with her strings cut. There was another thump, and Sammy cried out in shock, but Dean only had eyes for the man who'd appeared at Abigail's back. Stood in all of his rumpled glory, wrinkling his nose as he shook blood off his knife: Castiel.

“You came,” Dean rasped, warmth rising in his chest.

Castiel looked at him, and then away again.

“It occurred to me that I had been… hasty,” he said. “I still needed to destroy this place. And…” He shook his head and closed his mouth, simply offering Dean a hand up.

“How did you even get here?” Dean asked, taking it.

“I walked.” Castiel told him, and he laughed.

It would have taken him hours, but somehow, Dean believed he’d done it. Just picked up from the city hall parking lot and trudged his way out to the lake.

“Annie!” Sammy called, stealing their attention. She was leaning over the girl, crumpled on the floor. “There’s something wrong with her, she needs help.”

Castiel turned away and walked over to her in quick strides, crouching and putting two fingers to the girl’s neck, then examining her eyes, they were half lidded and still glassy.

“She has a pulse,” he said. “Do you know what was done to her?”

“Abigail said something about making sure she wouldn’t turn on her,” she said. “That she’d always be loyal. Will she be okay? She just collapsed.”

“There are a lot of spells that can steal someone’s will,” Castiel explained haltingly. “Some of them are temporary, others… are not. Without Abigail… Such a spell would leave her with no way to think for herself.”

“But she’ll get better, right?” Sammy asked. “You said it can be temporary.”

Castiel was silent for a long moment.

“We should get her to a hospital,” he said at last. “That’s the best thing for her, right now.”

“Right,” Sammy said, blinking away tears. “Yeah, right. We can do that.” She reached out and pushed Annie’s curls away from her forehead gently. “You’re going to be okay, Annie. You’re going to be okay.”

Castiel looked up at Dean, his lips pressed into a thin line and his eyes sad. Dean’s heart sank.

“We should get back to the car,” He said. “Get her some help.”

"Yes," Castiel said. "But there's still more to do here, as well."

Dean helped Sammy carry her friend outside, setting her down some distance away from the cabin as Castiel collected a gas can he must have abandoned before making his grand entrance.

Sammy didn't look pleased when he stepped away from her and Annie, her jaw tense, but she didn't say anything to stop him.

"You sure that's a good idea?" Dean asked, approaching Castiel as he uncapped the accelerant. "Pretty dry out here."

"It's the only way I know to cleanse a location where the influence is so deeply entrenched," Castiel explained. "I'll make sure the fire stays under control."

"Right," Dean said, shifting uncomfortably. He glanced over his shoulder at Sammy, who was staring back, her hands never leaving Annie's limp body, impatience in every line of her posture. "That uh- the witch, Abigail, I think she said something about trying to decipher the symbols."

Castiel hummed in acknowledgement, thoughtful.

"It would explain her rapid degeneration."

“What, she went nuts just from trying to read them?” Dean asked. “I’ve never heard of that.”

“There are a lot of things you haven’t heard of.” Castiel told him. “I'll make another sweep of the cabin to see if she kept any notes here and make sure they burn, but it might be prudent to visit her residence, too.”

He put the gas can back down and looked up at Dean, then glanced past him to where Sammy was waiting.

"Will you get them to safety?" He asked.

"Yeah," Dean agreed, his throat feeling oddly tight. "You got things here?"

"I do," Castiel said. "Thank you, Dean."

The hike back into town wasn't easy, stumbling in the dark with Annie's deadweight supported between him and Sammy. She began to flag quickly, Dean was really the one doing the carrying, but she wouldn't let go of her friend entirely. She clung to her as they made the long trek through the night.

Not long after they left the cabin, Dean looked back as they crested the hill and saw the flickering light of a fire behind them. They stood and watched the smoke curl up into the sky for a long moment, and then turned and continued onwards.

The sun was beginning to rise by the time he was able to leave Sammy and Annie at the hospital. The drive had been made in silence, but Sammy managed to thank him, before she left the car. Even though she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Don't mention it, kid," he said, tired. "And I mean that literally."

"Yeah," Sammy's lips pulled up slightly in a weak smile. Her voice stayed bleak and dead. "I don't think I will."

Dean couldn't go in with her, but he stayed long enough to watch her drag herself and her friend in through the emergency room doors before he pulled away.

He wasn't sure what he would find if he went back to the cabin, if there was even any point to going back. Castiel had taken care of it, there was nothing left to do.

Somehow, Dean suspected that if he went looking for him, he'd already be long gone.

It was something of a surprise then, when he spotted a familiar trenchcoated figure walking along the side of the road.

He slowed, rolling his window down. Castiel came to a stop at the sight of him.

"You goin' my way baby?" He called out. Castiel just blinked back at him, uncomprehending, and he felt his face grow hot in the night air. "I mean- uh… Hop in, man. I can give you a ride back into town."

Castiel only stood and considered him for a while, as though weighing his options, but finally he nodded, walking around to the passenger side and climbing in.

Dean tried not to take it personal.

Castiel buckled himself in, and Dean made a u-turn, heading back the way he'd come. 

Silence fell over the vehicle. 

Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Uh,” he cleared his throat. “Thanks for your help, back there.”

“No,” Castiel said. “You were right, it was the least I could do. There was an evil here that needed to be addressed.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, looking away. “Well, you know.

They lapsed into silence again.

"So what now?" Dean asked after another long moment. "Head back into town, find Abigail's place, burn whatever books she had left?"

"Yes." Dean glanced over at Castiel, he was staring out the window, the expression on his face remote and distant. "I don't imagine there will be any complications. I should be able to handle it on my own."

"Right," Dean said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his tone.

“Dean-” Castiel began, but Dean shook his head.

“I get it, man, you’re a lone wolf.” He sighed. "You gotta admit, though, we made a pretty good team back there."

If you stopped before the part where Dean had run in like an idiot and needed to get his ass rescued, then yeah, they'd worked well together. If Dean could keep himself from becoming a liability, maybe they would again.

"We did," Castiel said quietly. "It's only that I don't want to trouble you."

"It's just some books," Dean mumbled.

"Even still," Castiel said, something behind his voice communicating far more than the words themselves

They rode in silence again, until they made it back into town.

"Where did you want me to drop you?" Dean asked, an olive branch.

"The motel will be fine," Castiel said. "I can make my way from there, and you must be tired."

Dean snorted.

"Yeah, I'm the one who's tired," he said. "How much walking did you do today?"

"Less than I usually do," Castiel replied easily, and Dean barked out a laugh.

"Whatever you say, man," he said, shaking his head.

All too soon, they were rolling into the motel parking lot. Dean put the car in park, trying not to think about the last time they'd parted,only a few hours ago.

Castiel didn't get out of the car right away, turning towards him and then hesitating, like he couldn't figure out what to say.

"Dean," he decided on, eventually, and then apparently ran out of words.

"S'cool Cas- Castiel," Dean replied, letting him off the hook. "You go your way, I'll go mine. Maybe we'll see each other again someday, yeah?"

Castiel studied his face intently, and Dean looked back, shoulders hunching in like that could protect him from being seen, from Castiel’s eyes piercing him and examining the pathetic emptiness at the core of him.

“Perhaps we will,” he agreed at last. “Thank you, Dean. For everything.”

“Yeah,” Dean rasped hoarsely, looking away. “No problem.”

With that, Castiel got out of the car again, leaving Dean sitting behind the wheel for the third and final time. He waved slightly through the window, and then turned, walking across the parking lot and out of Dean’s life.

Dean sat, watching the world brighten with the grey pre-dawn light. His motel room sat a few feet away, empty, his duffel already packed in the Impala’s trunk in the anticipation of a quick getaway.

Stanford was two hundred and thirty miles away, he could be there in just under four hours.

He took his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open. There were no missed calls. There were never any missed calls.

It had been a month since he’d gotten out of the hospital, a month since he’d called Sam and left him a shaky voicemail, telling him they needed to talk about something important.

He hadn’t called back.

Dean punched in the familiar number and listened to the ringing on the other end, pretending he couldn’t hear it echoed from the glove box.

“ This is John Winchester, you know what to do. ”

Dean slammed the phone shut before the beep, his throat closing up. He wiped his eyes, and tossed his phone on the bench next to him.

Sam hadn’t called, but Dean wouldn’t be able to tell him over the phone, anyway. Stanford was just under four hours North West, Jenny had made the trip back home over and over again. Her parents probably thought it was nice, to have her so close.

Dean turned the key in the ignition, pulling out of the parking lot. His eyes were bleary and his head ached, but he couldn’t spend another night in that motel room. 

Not when Sammy was so close. 

Four hours away, waiting unknowingly for the conversation they had to have, and the news Dean carried.

He navigated to the main road, and turned East.

Three Rivers disappeared in his rearview mirror, and Palo Alto far behind it.

Chapter Text

Dean bounced his way from town to town, heading East until Palo Alto didn’t feel so heavy over his shoulder.

His phone still burned a hole in his pocket, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

He followed trails of bodies and strange happenings from place to place. The bloodless corpses in Utah were a nest of vampires, and he almost wiped himself out trying to tackle it alone. He dragged himself bloody out of the abandoned barn to pass out in Baby’s back seat and only narrowly avoided the police that swept the site the next day when someone called in the massacre. He lay low for a while across the border in Colorado, waiting for his gnawed on leg to heal and the nausea and dizziness from his concussion to fade. He watched soap operas through glazed eyes until the early hours of the morning, until the motel manager came banging on his door and told him his card had been declined and to get out. 

That sent him up to Denver, where he bummed around for a few days, filling out credit card applications for fake people who lived on empty lots around the city and scrounging for cash at poker games and pool tables. He slept in his car and woke with an aching back.

Next he turned North to Wyoming, after a case of a missing hiker in Shoshone National Forest. By the time he made it to Riverton, the news read she’d been found dehydrated with a broken leg and had been airlifted to the nearest hospital. His journey Northwards turned aimless and meandering. His skin began to itch at the enforced inactivity.

He cut East to Buffalo when he heard about electrical storms in the area. Either the demon in residence was small potatoes or Dean got lucky, because he surprised it with a recorded exorcism and ended up standing, surprised and unharmed in the warehouse he’d lured it to. 

A week later, in Montana, a vengeful spirit tossed him into a grave hard enough his left arm went concerningly numb for the rest of the night. He wore a makeshift sling for the next few days, gritting his teeth against the persistent ache.

With one arm out of commission, he was back to wandering, heading vaguely South, now. aOn a whim he swung east into South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore in person. 

It was smaller than he expected. He stared up at it for twenty minutes, waiting for the scene to inspire something in him. Eventually he headed back to the motel, presidential themed, and posted up with a six pack and day time television.

He flipped open his phone and didn’t make a call.

Three days into his stay, when he could rotate his shoulder without wincing again and the bruises along his back had faded to a mottled yellow, he picked up a paper and read about two bodies found with their internal organs missing, and he headed for Sioux City, Iowa.

He rolled into town late. Too late to make any real progress investigating for the night, and too wired and restless to be willing to hunker down for the night.

So he found himself a bar.

It was a run down dive, dimly lit and sparsely populated on a Thursday night, but Dean didn’t care about the sticky floor beneath his shoes or how the entryway smelled of stale cigarette smoke. He didn't even really care about the nightcap he'd stopped in for, because sitting at the bar was a figure that he knew instantly.

“Hey there, stranger,” he said, claiming the stool next to the man in the tan jacket, slumped over and contemplating a line of shot glasses, half of which were turned over. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Castiel looked up, surprised.

“Dean,” he said.

“Cas,” Dean replied, feeling himself smile for the first time in weeks. “Small world, right?”

“I suppose it is, considering we’re tracking down similar phenomena.” He picked up another shot and tossed it back, turning over the empty glass and placing it precisely in line with the others. “You’re here about the deaths.”

“Yeah, people turning up with their insides missing, I guess that’s kind of your thing,” Dean observed, eyeing the abundance of alcohol skeptically.

“The article was an exaggeration,” Castiel told him blandly, picking up the next shot in line and swirling it slightly, contemplating the clear liquid within. “Sensationalized out of limited details. Their hearts were missing. So, not my kind of thing.”

“Oh,” Dean said. “Signs of an animal attack?”

Cas nodded, knocking back the shot.

“Werewolf then,” Dean said. “I didn’t really think to check the dates, but I’d wager the moon was getting to be full around last week then.”

“I suppose it must have been,” Cas sighed.

“So, you planning to skip town then?” Cas froze with his next shot halfway to his lips and then slowly set it back down. Dean winced, feeling guilty. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“No,” Castiel cut him off. “That is… a fair assessment, based on our last encounter. I have been… myopic in the past, focused on my mission to the exclusion of all else.”

He looked down at the bar, his shoulders slumped.

“I don’t intend to leave while people are dying and I can do something about it,” he said, then drew a hand down his face, his eyes fluttering closed. “And I would like to feel… useful. It has been an unproductive month.”

“That why you’re in here trying to get plastered?” Dean asked. He flagged down the bartender and ordered some cheap whiskey for himself. Hey, if they were gonna get drunk.

“I have a high tolerance,” Castiel explained, knocking back the last three shots in quick succession. “I am attempting to overcome it.”

“Now that, I can get behind.” Dean grinned, and raised his whiskey in a toast. “We’ll see you stumbling home yet.”

“You weren’ kiddin’” Dean slurred, leaning heavily on Cas as he helped him out of the bar. Trying to match the man drink for drink had been a mistake. Trying to drink even half of what Cas put away was a mistake, and now the ground kept spinning on him. It didn’t like him trying to walk on it, and was trying to buck him off. “Sorry, ground.”

“I rarely kid,” Cas replied, hoisting Dean up a little higher and guiding him through another stumbling step. “Do you remember where you’re staying?”

“In the presidential suite,” Dean said, “No the- presidential motel? It had presidents… oh that was yesterday. I didn’t get a motel.”

Castiel sighed, and Dean buried his face in his shoulder, apologetic.

“I can sleep in the car, s’okay.”

“No, Dean,” he said firmly. “I’m staying at a motel just a few blocks from here. I’ll take you there. I’d appreciate it if you could remain conscious for the journey.”

“I can do that.” Dean nodded, the motion rubbing his face against Cas’ shoulder. His coat smelled like rain, Dean liked it.

Cas coached him through the walk to the motel, muttering encouragement when he started to list, Dean bobbed along, sometimes singing to himself, under his breath, often making observations about the narrow scope of the world he could perceive through the haze of alcohol. Mostly glowing patches on the ground lit up by the street lights, Cas’ solid shoulder as he leaned against it, Cas’ big warm hands that kept him upright, Cas’ deep voice that rumbled through his bones.

“I like how you sound,” Dean said, for what must have been the fifth time.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas replied, just like he had to every compliment. It made Dean feel warm in a way the alcohol didn’t.

Finally they came to a stop, and Cas shifted as he dug into his pocket for a key, opening the door to a familiar, dark little room. It looked like a thousand rooms like it that Dean had seen and entered and existed in. Dean leaned closer into Cas, shutting his eyes so he didn’t have to look inside, and let out a small hurt noise.

“It’s alright,” Cas told him, misinterpreting his anguish. “We’re almost there.”

“I don’t like it,” Dean mumbled his confession, but Cas just shushed him, shuffling him forward despite his uncooperative limbs and setting him down on the bed.

This, Dean could tolerate, despite the room being bad, because the bed was soft and he was tired, but then Cas started to move away .

“Nooo,” he whined, reaching out to tangle his fingers in Cas’ coat. “Don’t leave.”

Cas stopped, not moving away anymore, but not coming back closer.

“Don’t leave me alone.” Dean clenched his fists in the coat, trying to reel him in, his voice wavering and wet.

Cas said nothing for a long moment, but then his hand settled on the side of Dean’s head, gentle.

“It would be irresponsible to leave you in this state,” he said quietly, like he was talking to himself. “I will stay with you.”

He moved again, and Dean made a noise of protest, tugging on the coat again.

“Let me take your shoes off,” Castiel told him, settling his hands over Dean’s and gently breaking his grip. “Then I can sit with you, while you sleep.”

Dean acquiesced, grumbling, and let Cas move him this way and that, until his boots were off and he was under the covers, curled up on his side. 

Cas, true to his word, sat down on the edge of the bed, watching over him.

Dean looked up at him, his head on the pillow, and Cas gazed steadily back. Something about looking into those blue eyes for so long made Dean’s own eyes start to water, so he screwed them shut and buried his face in his pillow.

“Dean?” Cas asked, touching his shoulder lightly.

“You’re so nice to me,” Dean mumbled into the pillow, sniffling and pretending he wasn’t getting it wet.

“Am I?” Cas pulled his hand away, and Dean peaked up at him, he was still looking, his brow furrowed like he was thinking hard about something. “I’m not practiced at it.”

“You’re real nice,” Dean told him. “I like you, Cas. I don’t want you to leave me alone, I’m always alone.”

Cas looked away, his eyes were sad.

“Sometimes it’s better that way,” he said.

“It’s not,” Dean pushed himself up, clutching at his sleeve. “It isn’t ever, sometimes I think I’ll die just because no one talks to me, no one even looks at me. I can’t, Cas, I can’t-”

“Dean-” Cas started, alarmed.

“What if he sends me away again?” Dean blurted out in a rush. “What if I go, and I tell him, and he just sends me away?”

“Who?” Cas asked, putting a hand over Dean’s. “Dean, what are you talking about?”

“Sammy,” Dean confessed, his vision going blurry. “He’s the only one left, Cas, he’s the only one, and he doesn’t want me.”

His voice broke and he flung himself forward, burying himself in Cas’ chest as he started to sob.

“Okay,” Cas said, his voice rumbling all around Dean. “Okay, it’s okay.”

Tentatively, his arms came up to circle around Dean, his hands rubbing halting lines up and down his back as he cried, and cried, and cried.

He cried until he had no more tears, until his head throbbed and he was so exhausted he could barely move, his vision going fuzzy around the edges as Cas tucked him back into bed, gentle with him. His big hand settled on Dean’s head again, brushing his hair away from his blotchy, wet face.

“Sleep,” he said, and Dean did.

Dean dreamt that there was a mouth in the shape of a man sitting on the bed. It had two arms, two legs and a head, but it was an opening, not a person. Something deep and dark lay beyond it, a cavern that stretched forever in every direction, an ocean with no floor, just still dark water that went on and on. Endless, suffocating.

Peaceful.

Dean curled towards it, trying to move closer, but his limbs were heavy and useless, and no matter how close he got, he couldn’t fit himself inside.

The mouth reached out one of its many limbs and rested it on Dean’s head, halting his attempts to burrow into it.

“Sleep,” it said, in a voice that rumbled out of the depths, echoing out of the endless cavern and rattling Dean’s bones.

Dean made a noise of protest, he wanted to sleep, that’s what he was trying to do . He wanted to sleep under the ocean, to go into that dark water and let it soothe him down to rest. He knew if he went in there, the water would dissolve him, until even his bones washed away and there was finally, finally nothing left of him. Only then could he really rest.

The mouth shushed him, carding fingers through his hair, and though Dean wanted to struggle forward anyway, his body ached with weariness and the motion soothed him further down. Down into a rest that was too fleeting to ever cure the exhaustion in his bones.

Oblivion stayed just out of reach, as the mouth sat over him all night, hungry, beckoning, and yet stubbornly, cruelly, refusing to swallow him whole.

The first thing Dean became aware of as he struggled back to consciousness was his pounding head. Next came the foul taste in his mouth, then various other aches and pains started to filter through. He groaned and rolled over, burying his face in the pillow as if he could hide from the consequences his body was heaping on him from the previous night’s overindulgence.

Waking up nursing a hangover from the night before wasn’t an uncommon occurrence these past few months. Honestly, he would be hard pressed to pick out more than a handful of days when he didn’t wake up feeling like garbage. Even when he didn’t drink (much) his body had plenty to complain about. The aches, the shakes, the bleary eyes and sore throat, the sharp pain at the realization he was alone in the room, all part of waking up to greet the day.

He didn’t usually let himself get this bad when he had a case to worry about, it was just poor planning. Irresponsible. He wasn’t even sure how he’d made it back to the motel room last night.

Come to think of it, Dean’s brow furrowed, his thoughts churning sluggishly through the haze of exhaustion and the thudding of his pulse in his temples, when had he even gotten a motel room?

He’d gone to the bar last night, and then-

Dean lurched upright, and then immediately had to slam his eyes closed and brace against the wave of dizziness and the roiling in his guts, but the realization that had his heart pounding couldn’t be chased away so easily.

Cas , he had found Cas in the bar last night.

What happened next? Nothing good, probably if he’d ended up getting this smashed to cope with it.

He opened his eyes, squinting around at the motel room. Had he managed to stumble in and book a room wasted last night? He could have, but why wouldn’t he just sleep it off in his car like usual? Cas didn’t book a room for him and then leave, did he?

A quick inventory of his surroundings didn’t provide him with many signs of habitation. His duffle wasn’t at the foot of the bed, probably still in the Impala, which was hopefully still at the bar. There weren’t any take-out containers or wrappers, no clothes on the floor, either Cas was the fastidious type, or he’d dropped cash on a room just to get Dean out of his hair.

No, hold on. Dean’s eyes settled on a table in the corner by the door, absolutely covered in loose papers, a laptop sitting, closed, pride of place in the middle of the mess.

Dean pushed himself up on baby-deer-shaky legs and wandered over to the table. So maybe this was Cas’ room after all. And he’d given Dean his bed for the night…

He leaned over the table and examined the collection of research. There was a big map of the states underneath the pile, Dean shifted some papers to the side to examine the towns circled in red. A few of them seemed to have lines connecting them, turning the whole thing into a sprawling spiderweb. He picked up a packet of papers, trying to follow the lines to their point of convergence. It seemed to be a town in Illinois. Nothing to indicate what was so important about it. 

He glanced at what he held in his hands instead: newspaper articles. He flipped through, looking for a connection between them, but they were eclectic. Some mentioned deaths, with the kind of wording Dean had learned to recognize meant something gory between the lines, but others were about fringe religious groups, and a few were just obituaries and wedding announcements. There was even an article talking about record high rainfall in Michigan. He put them back down and looked at some of the other papers, gears turning sluggishly in his aching head. He fiddled with the corner of a flier for a church group. A few sentences had been underlined, but a note at the top identified it as “regular christian exploitation”.

He picked up a notebook that sat open next to the laptop, scanning the open page, it was obvious that it was Cas’ notes about the current case. Cramped handwriting in little bullet points laid out the relevant details Dean had skimmed from the article, the victim’s name, age, the location of the death. The only hint at what Cas was looking for was a line that read “possible sacrifice, at-risk demographic.” The bullet point immediately under it was a bitchy little note about “unprofessional exaggeration” and “lack of journalistic integrity” that made Dean smile.

He hesitated, the notebook in his hands, as it occurred to him that this may have been a violation of privacy. Scanning over the papers left out in the open wasn’t too nosy, but the spiral bound notebook seemed to be Cas’ answer to a hunter’s journal, and flipping through it would be something else entirely. 

Yet, his curiosity itched at him. Cas was paradoxically blatant about his own secrecy, walking around with the fact that he had things to hide blinking over his head like a neon sign, but stonewalling any question so thoroughly it didn’t matter who knew. This might be Dean’s best and only chance to learn more about him, and for whatever reason, Dean felt compelled to do so.

Taking the chance, Dean flipped the notebook to the first page, intending to do a cursory skim to satisfy the itch, but finding himself pausing immediately as he was confronted with a list of names, most of which seemed to be crossed out.

Michael, Raphael, Ezekiel, Uriel, all had lines through them, as did Muriel and Miriam, but Hannah and Bartholomew had been skipped over. He flipped to the next page, more names, some crossed out, some not: Zachariah, Josiah, Hael…

Dean heard the clatter of a key in the lock and dropped the notebook like he’d been burned, stepping back. Then he cursed, reminded himself not to be an idiot and flipped the notebook back to the page it had been open to before putting it back down where he’d left it just in time for the door to swing open.

Cas blinked at him from the open doorway, holding a coffee cup and a paper take out bag in one hand, his other still resting on the doorknob.

“Dean,” he said. “You’re up.”

He glanced briefly at the table next to Dean, his expression neutral. Dean resisted the urge to hide his hands behind his back like a guilty child.

“Uh, yeah.” He scratched the back of his head, looking away. With his feet bare and stripped down to a t-shirt and jeans, still sleep-rumpled and sick, he felt oddly vulnerable. “Hey- hey Cas.”

“I brought you coffee,” Cas said, holding up the cup in his hand, unmoving from the door. “And a… breakfast sandwich?” He studied the bag as he spoke, as if he wasn’t totally sure what was actually inside.

“Oh,” Dean said, something in his chest going warm and soft. “Thanks.”

Castiel nodded, casting his eyes down. He closed the motel door behind him and handed Dean the coffee and the bag in silence. They were both warm.

Dean took a sip of the coffee and sighed, his eyes fluttering closed. Some tension fell away from his shoulders at the familiar bitter taste, and the promised relief to the pounding in his head.

After a moment he looked up, just in time to see Cas look away, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his usually stiff body language somehow extra stilted. Dean cleared his throat, feeling a creeping dread rise up like bile to counteract the warm relief of the coffee and the unexpected kindness.

“So uh…” Dean began, awkward. “Last night, what…”

“Nothing,” Castiel said, too quickly. He winced. “We got drunk.”

“Seems like I got drunk,” Dean remarked lightly, gesturing to Castiel’s distinctly unrumpled appearance. 

Well, no more rumpled than usual.

“I have a high tolerance,” Cas replied, jogging a faint hazy memory in Dean’s mind.

“You said that, I think…” When he was at least ten shots deep, before Dean called for another round, if he remembered right. “You weren’t kidding.”

“You said that as well,” Cas’ lips twitched up in one of his faint little smiles. “I should repeat myself again then: I rarely kid.”

“You know, I get that sense from you,” Dean joked, raising his coffee cup in a toast and taking another long sip. “So we got drunk and you… brought me back to your motel room? That it?”

Cas opened his mouth, reconsidered, closed it again. Dean’s stomach twisted itself into a knot, he lowered the cup of coffee.

“What?” Dean asked. “What happened?”

Dean woke up still fully clothed, so they didn’t get up to any ill-advised hanky panky, god did Dean make a pass at him? Was Cas trying to figure out how to let him down gently in the cold light of day? Well he could skip it if so, Dean didn’t go for guys. 

Not sober, anyway.

“Nothing,” Cas said, just as reassuring as the first time. “Nothing untoward.” He amended.

“Anyone ever told you you suck at setting people at ease?” He asked, discomfort shining through the pitiful attempt at levity. Cas frowned and looked away, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Seriously, did I do something?”

“No,” Cas said. “You talked a lot about someone named Sammy, that’s all. I gathered it wasn’t the one we met in Three Rivers.”

“Oh,” Dean said, an odd mix of relieved and nauseous. “No, yeah that’s-” He cleared his throat. “That’s my brother.”

“I see,” Castiel said at length. “It seemed as though you had something you wanted to talk to him about.”

“Yeah?” Dean asked lightly, turning his attention to the breakfast sandwich Cas had brought him and unwrapping it. “Can’t think why. You get funny ideas in your head when you’re drunk. Did I say what about?”

Cas paused for another long moment, Dean took a bite of his sandwich. His throat locked up, and he worried he wouldn’t be able to swallow.

“No,” he said eventually. “It must have just been… some funny idea.”

Dean’s shoulders slumped, he swallowed the bite of egg and bread, it went down like a stone.

“This is pretty good,” he said, waving the sandwich at Cas. “You didn’t get anything?”

“Ah.” Cas blinked at him. “I ate on the way back.”

“Cool,” Dean said, stuffing another bite into his mouth. “You sticking around for a bit?”

Castiel watched him eat, his head tilting to the side slightly.

“Yes, I… thought I could help,” he said. “With the werewolf.”

“Yeah?” Dean perked up. “I uh, didn’t think this was your sort of thing.”

Cas nodded, crossing over to the table covered with notes and idly sweeping them into piles.

“I have few leads at the moment,” he admitted. “When I realized this case wasn’t what I was looking for… I just thought I could make myself useful.”

He looked up at Dean, and then cast his eyes away to the side.

“Of course now that you’re here, my assistance would probably be somewhat superfluous.”

“No!” Dean protested, too loud and too quick. He reigned himself in. “I mean, I’d be glad for the extra set of hands.”

Cas nodded once, sharp and decisive. He tapped his stack of papers against the table and set them down, turning back towards Dean.

“Then you should tell me what you know.” He lifted his chin, authoritative, and Dean’s chest flared with a warmth that threatened to send him giggly.

“You ever dealt with a werewolf before, Cas?” He asked, pulling out a chair for himself and gesturing for Cas to take the other. He did, sitting perched stiffly on it, his body angled towards Dean, like a schoolboy at rapt attention.

“No,” he said. “I’ve dealt with some creatures of that sort, when I’ve come across them pursuing my own investigation, but I don’t seek them out.”

“So you don’t hunt monsters.” Dean turned the idea over in his head. “You just deal with them if you happen to be in town.”

“If there’s no one else,” Cas said, averting his eyes.

“You were always gonna come back for those girls, weren’t you?” The warmth in Dean’s chest grew.

Cas kept his eyes on something across the room, mouth set in a thin line, like he didn’t want to admit it.

“My mission is more important.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t allow the distraction, I shouldn’t even-”

“Hey.” Dean reached across the table, laying his hand over Cas’. He looked back at him immediately, eyes round and startled. “I’m glad you came back, Cas. It’s not a crime to care about people.”

He looked conflicted, jaw tense. His eyes flicked down to Dean’s hand on his, and Dean withdrew it, clearing his throat.

“Anyway, you said you’ve got nowhere else to be right now, right?” Dean pointed out.

“No,” Cas admitted, like it pained him. “I don’t.”

“Then it’s not a distraction,” Dean said firmly, holding Cas’ eyes until he nodded. Dean leaned back in his seat then, clapping. “So, werewolves. Pretty simple to deal with, silver bullet’ll put one down. They change during the nights around the full moon, but the rest of the time, they’re just regular folk.”

He looked down at his hands, fiddling with the edge of one of the papers.

“They uh…” He cleared his throat. “They don’t actually know what they’re doing. It spreads through the bite, they go out and kill people, eat the hearts, and wake up again none-the-wiser.”

“I see,” Cas said, pensive. “You’ve dealt with them before, then.”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, throat tight. “Yeah I uh- a year or so ago me and-” He swallowed. “Well there was a case, two werewolves, we uh… we dealt with it.”

John dealt with it, really. Dean dragged his feet about the girl, he got some idea in his head they could save her, that just because she didn’t know what she was doing, that meant they could afford to risk more lives on her. He could almost feel the phantom sensation of John’s hand on the back of his neck, steadying and confining all at once. He sent Dean out after the other werewolf, the guy, while he took care of the messy work Dean was too squeamish for.

“It can be pretty ugly.” Dean remembered how the guy looked when he’d come back to himself, bleeding out in the alley, lost and confused and in pain. He’d had a hard time looking his dad in the eye, after.

“And there’s no other way?” Cas asked, studying Dean’s face.

Dean shook his head, not trusting his voice.

“Then we’ll do what we have to.” Cas nodded, all firm lines and hardened face. He reminded Dean a bit of John that way, uncompromising where Dean couldn’t help showing a soft belly, sometimes. He felt himself relax.

“Well, I defer to your expertise,” Cas said. “What should our first move be?”

Dean smiled.

“I had an idea about that.”

Cas looked good in his animal control get-up. The bewildered expression really complemented the outfit. Dean picked up convincing enough windbreakers and caps from a discount uniform outlet, and bullied Cas into a pair of thrifted jeans and a polo to help sell the look. He forgot to pick up a decent pair of boots, which means Cas was an animal control guy in smart loafers, but no one was looking at his feet anyway.

Canvassing with Cas was a delight . Dean honestly couldn’t tell if he was a help or a hindrance at first. He was terrible at lying on the spot, but he carried himself with this self-serious gravitas that people struggled to openly question. After a few false starts Dean managed to work out a system where he asked the weirder questions with a disarming smile and let everyone shoot their ‘is this guy serious?’ looks Cas’ way. The stony officious silence they got back had them stowing their discomfort and answering whatever Dean asked, no matter how dubious they looked about it. After all these years, he had a finely tuned sense for when people were hitting the limits of their skepticism. When it pinged, he'd nudge Cas in the side and call for their retreat before anyone could utter the phrase ‘so who did you say you worked for again?’

“I take back anything I ever said about your interview skills, Cas.” Dean slung an arm over Cas’ shoulder, grinning wide as they left their latest potential witness behind. The guy had gone from loudly complaining about the interruption to his day to quietly answering their questions and shuffling back inside after only a few minutes of being stared down by Cas. “You’re great at this.”

Cas turned his head to look at him, his mouth falling open into a soft little o. Dean pulled his gaze up from his lips immediately, but Cas’ eyes, round and wide and blue, didn’t do much to dispel the tingling in his gut either.

“I am?” He asked.

“Oh yeah.” Dean pulled his arm back, shoving his hands in his pockets, casual. He kept his eyes ahead and tried not to think about Cas’ expression. “Dude, you’re like if the terminator was an animal control guy, no one knows what to do with you.”

“Thank you,” Cas said. The easy, rote response pinged something in Dean’s memory. He had the vague impression of paying Cas a lot of compliments, and being increasingly delighted to hear the same polite thank you every time. His face warmed and he shook his head, banishing the memory. 

If Cas didn’t bring it up then Dean was just going to assume it wasn’t real, and that was that.

Smooth sailing or not, their door knocking approach had yielded mostly bread crumbs. The neighborhood around where the body was found wasn’t a good one, the kind of place where a fresh corpse wouldn’t really turn that many heads, if it hadn’t been for the vital bit that was missing.

One older lady in a ground floor apartment had told them at length that she knew damn well there was a rabid dog roaming around at night, and had brought them inside to show them the reinforced locks she’d installed on her windows. She’d called a dozen times, and no one had ever done a thing about it, so they’d better do their jobs and catch the damn thing so she could sleep at night.

She wasn’t much impressed by Dean’s charming smile, but Cas’ solemn promise to do whatever they could mollified her a little. 

Whatever got them out of there, her apartment smelled like cat piss and mothballs.

So either the werewolf had been hunting in the area before, or the old bat was being driven to paranoia by the sound of racoons rooting around in the trash outside. Unfortunately, if anyone else had seen or heard anything strange, they weren’t saying.

Crashes or screams in the night? Sure. People acting strange? Well yeah. Howling at night? We’ve all heard it once or twice. Anything of note or out of the ordinary? Not a thing, officer.

“It’s just that kind of neighborhood.” Seemed to be the refrain.

“You didn’t find anything to hint at other victims?” Dean asked when they got to the car, taking a moment to regroup. Cas shook his head and Dean leaned on Baby’s roof, biting his lower lip. “See, it doesn’t really make sense, if the wolf has been in the neighborhood for a while, there’d be more bodies. Hell, there probably should’ve been more than just the one body last week. They don’t just change on the night of the full moon. It’s two or three nights at least, and they hunt every night.”

“Is it possible they’re restraining themself somehow?” Cas asked.

Dean drummed his fingers over Baby’s roof, considering. He shook his head.

“From what I know, no. But maybe there’s more to it than that.” He hesitated, looking down at the shiny metal of Baby’s roof. He brushed his hand over a spot of grime. He really needed to give her some love and care. “Maybe they figured out what was happening to them. Maybe they’ve been locking themself up every night and last week…”

Cas let the idea settle between them, heavy as a stone, without breaking the silence.

“If that is the case,” he said eventually. “What are we going to do about it?”

Dean looked up at him to find him staring back placidly, his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.

“We can’t just leave it,” Dean said. “Whatever they’re doing to keep themself in check, it won’t work forever. They’ll slip up eventually, and then…”

People will die.

“They already have.” Cas’s mouth formed an even line, his shoulders didn’t bow. He looked steady as a rock. Dean looked away, stomach churning, his father’s words tasting sour in his mouth. “We can’t form any conclusions yet, this is only speculation. It may be that our suspect has a different hunting ground, and the disturbances in this area are coincidental. They could simply be new to the city, and their earlier victims are elsewhere.”

“Right,” Dean said, rolling his shoulders and trying to throw off the heavy thoughts. “We need more to go on.”

“You said that werewolves don’t have control during the change,” Cas speculated. “Are their victims random, then? Are there conclusions we can draw, from who was targeted?”

“Nah, it’s not random, it’s subconscious.” Dean brought a hand up and scratched his chin. “Last time we found the guy because he was a religious nut and he was going after prostitutes. Turned a girl he had a crush on, and she tore up her ex boyfriend. What do we know about the victim? You already talked to the coroner, right?”

“Yes,” Cas said with a scowl. “He was far too willing to talk to me as soon as money changed hands.”

“What are you complaining about?” Dean ribbed. “Makes your job easier, doesn’t it?”

Cas lifted his chin, a righteous glint in his eyes.

“I can take issue with his lack of integrity, even when it benefits me,” he huffed. “They had yet to make a positive identification, but signs indicated she was homeless. If she lived in the area, she may have simply been a victim of opportunity.”

“Which brings us back to our wolf living in the area, too.” Dean worried his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Perhaps,” Cas said, his eyes narrowing in thought. “We should see if there are resource centers nearby. A food bank or a homeless shelter. If she was targeted deliberately, then those she regularly went to for assistance are the most likely to know more about her, and if she was killed out of convenience, then we might be able to gain insight from others in a similarly vulnerable situation.”

“Huh,” Dean said. “Yeah, good call. Let’s go for a drive.”

He popped open the door, sliding into the front seat, already running through the list of potential resources in his mind. Church, community center, salvation army outreach… There’d be something nearby, you put the resources near the people who needed them if you could. People in need congregated where they could get help, too. They’d probably see the tents before anything else.

Cas climbed in next to him, a solid shape against the window, his face always half turned away, watching the world go by outside.

The soup kitchen they found was only a few streets away from where they'd been knocking on doors. It was the wrong time of day for a meal service, but there were people loitering in the parking lot, and tucked between buildings up and down the block. The draw of one promised hot meal for the day kept them from wandering far.

The kitchen entrance was closed, but there was an office around the side of the building, faded sign in the window advertising other services: clothing drives and hygiene kits, whatever donations they could divvy out. Flyers for other outreach ventures in town- counseling, shelter, crisis intervention- papered over the rest of the glass. Dean made a note of addresses, in case no one here turned up anything useful.

The door stuck when it opened partway, and Dean had to lean on it to get the gap to shudder its way wide enough he could squeeze through. The space behind was cramped and faded with age, cracked yellow linoleum floors and sickly green walls plastered with motivational posters. A fan hummed on a cluttered reception desk, the only occupant of the room. Dean wandered up, examining the pamphlets sitting in plastic organizers on either side of the counter. He looked away from a shiny cardboard card listing the number for a suicide hotline and rang the bell next to it.

“Just a second!” A woman’s voice called from down the narrow hall. Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and waited, glancing at Cas, who appeared to be intently reading a poster on the wall about alcoholism.

He looked away again, casting about for a comment to make about the space, something to break the silence other than the whir of the fan.

He opened his mouth, and closed it again when a woman rounded the corner.

“Oh!” She started when she saw him, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Hello there.”

She was somewhere in her thirties, with straight blonde hair and conservative make-up. She wore a white blouse and a pale purple pencil skirt, her feet clad in sensible beige flats. She averted her eyes from Dean’s, tugging on the hem of her shirt, chasing away imaginary wrinkles.

Dean smiled, broad and charming, pushing himself upright and offering her his hand.

“Hello yourself,” he said. Her hand was soft in his and he shook it once, firm but not overbearing. “Ian Curtis, nice to meetchya.”

“Emily,” she told him, her eyes catching on his at last and seeming to stick there, Dean smiled a little wider, leaned in a little more. “Um, Emily Lloyd.”

“Well Emily, this is my partner-”

“Castiel,” Cas interrupted, stepping back from the poster he was examining and turning to look at the two of them. Dean swallowed the alias he had picked out and tried not to let it affect his easy smile. “I’m going to see if anyone outside will be willing to talk, excuse me.”

He swept out the door without another word, leaving Dean staring after him.

“Your partner seems…” Emily trailed off, apparently at a loss for a neutral enough adjective. Dean shook his head, turning his attention back to her to keep from staring at the closed door.

“Yeah, sorry about him. It hasn’t been the most productive morning, he uh… cares a lot about the job.” He smiled again, a little dimmer this time, and offered her a wink. “Guess I’m the one that gets to talk to you then, lucky me.”

“Oh.” Emily smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear again, nervous tick. She cleared her throat. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Nothing good, I’m afraid.” He pulled back on the friendly attitude, straightening up. A little flirting could grease the wheels of conversation, but it didn’t mix so well with talking about grim realities. “I’m sure you’ve been following the news.”

“The animal attack,” she said, her expression sobering. She gestured at his windbreaker. “I probably should have guessed.”

“Well we are the ones who look into this sort of thing.” He smiled thinly. “Unfortunately there weren’t many witnesses, but we suspect the victim was homeless. If we can get an ID, maybe get an idea of her movement that night, we might be able to figure out where the critter has been hiding.”

“Um, of course.” She crossed her arms over her chest, flicking her eyes to the left and shifting her weight. “Anything I can do to help, I suppose.”

Animal control didn’t really go around conducting law enforcement investigations, he could tell she was thinking something along those lines. But she was also realizing she wasn’t really sure what animal control did do, when someone had been killed by a wild animal in the middle of a city, so she wasn’t going to question it.

“I have a description here,” Dean said, keeping his act casual to relax her into the idea of normalcy he was trying to sell. He pulled a notepad from his jacket pocket, flipping it to the page where he’d jotted down the description Cas had given him. “If you could just tell me if this sounds like someone who used your services? White female, late teens or early twenties, mid-length brown hair, green eyes, mole above her left eyebrow. Average height, somewhat underweight, wore a green rain jacket, grey hoodie, long sleeved shirt striped in blue yellow and pink, jeans and sneakers that had both been repaired with duct tape…”

Emily looked off into the distance with furrowed brows. She bit her lip.

“A lot of people come through here, it could be…” She shook her head and closed her eyes, sighing.

“That sounds like Sidney,” she said. “She’d only been coming here a few months, but we talked… She stopped showing up a week ago, I hadn’t heard anything.”

“And you didn’t think that was cause for concern?” Dean asked, lowering his notebook.

Emily gave him a shrewd look.

“Doing work like this, people come and go. Sidney isn’t even the only one who’s dropped off the map in the last week.” She shook her head. “You do what you can, and you hope when they go they’re not gone but…”

She tossed a hand in the air, helpless, and hugged herself around the middle.

“You read about a Jane Doe in the papers, you know it’s probably someone you know.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean said, sincerely. “Do you have any idea where she would have been that night?”

“Ideally, she would have been in a shelter,” Emily said, bitter. “But there’s never enough beds. If she got turned away, I know some of them camp out under Wesley parkway, by the river? I’m sorry I don’t know how much help any of this will be.”

“We’re just trying to get an idea of where to look,” Dean reassured her. “Like I said, we don’t have many witnesses, or many signs of animal activity in the area she was found. Has anyone been talking about seeing or hearing a dog in the area? Or even if they spotted something strange, that they couldn’t explain?”

“Something strange?” Emily asked, her eyes narrowing. “Like what?”

“Well if an animal is particularly sick and distressed, sometimes it can look and behave oddly, and people have a hard time identifying it for what it is.” Dean smiled, chagrined. “Dogs with mange become Chupacabra, things like that. If there’ve been any tall tales about monsters going around, it might point us in the right direction.”

Emily shook her head, mollified.

“No, not that I’ve heard,” she said. “I could try to spread the word at dinner service tonight, see if anyone has seen anything?”

“That,” Dean said, digging in his pocket for a pen. “Sounds like a great idea, Emily. I’m going to give you my number, why don’t you call me if you hear anything you think might help.”

He gave her a winning smile and got a shaky one back.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, palming the note paper with the number to one of his burners on it. “Thank you, Mr. Curtis, I think we’ll all rest a little easier without some rabid animal roaming the streets.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, pulling hard on the door to overcome its stiff hinges. “That’s the hope.”

And if it meant trading his restful nights for theirs, well, he hadn’t been sleeping easy anyway.

Stepping out into the sun and doing a quick scan of the parking lot revealed no Cas. Dean swore under his breath.

“Hey,” he called to a cluster of people huddled on the sidewalk. A group of three, two standing and one crouching, overladen backpacks and grocery bags at their feet. They looked at him with a hunted wariness, like herd animals who had spotted a predator. “You see where my partner went?”

They studied him, silent, before the one standing nearest to him, jerked his head to the left.

“That way, I think.” He gestured vaguely down the block with a cigarette between his fingers.

“Thanks, man,” Dean said, starting off after his wayward ‘partner’.

“Hey you got a dollar?” The guy called after him.

“Uh, yeah-” Dean patted his pockets, fishing out his wallet and opening it up. There was a single five dollar bill inside. The last bit of cash from the haul he’d been living on since Montana. He hesitated, staring into the almost empty wallet, then looked up at the guy, thin face, scabby arms, sunken eyes. What were the odds he was just looking to get high?

“Here,” Dean said, walking over and holding out the bill. The guy grinned at him as he took it, teeth crooked but all present.

“God bless you, man.” He saluted with the fiver, turning back to his friends.

Dean shoved his empty wallet back into his pocket.

“Yeah,” he said as he turned away. “No problem.”

Dean headed down the block, scanning up and down each side of the street in search of Cas. He didn’t see him until he was almost on top of him, tucked back into an alley next to a dingy little cafe with vines painted on its windows.

“Cas,” he called out, jogging a little to close the difference. Cas looked up, and so did the kid he was with. Eyes came up sharp with that same hunted animal look, body drawing tight and curled inwards, ready to bolt.

Dean slowed his pace, ducked his shoulders, and adjusted his approach so he wouldn’t block off the exit and leave the kid feeling cornered.

“I was looking for you,” he said at a more reasonable volume. He nodded his head at the kid. “Who’s this?”

The kid was definitely a kid, not out of the teen years yet, with hollow cheeks and a sharp chin. Eyes smeared with chunky black liner and black hair falling in choppy layers down to the shoulder. Clothes were dark enough not to show the grime, layered: black hoodie over asymmetrical black skirt over dark wash jeans. Knit fingerless gloves over hands that clutched a foil wrapped sandwich to a scrawny chest like someone might snatch it away any second.

“My name’s Miriam,” she said. Her chin jutted out stubbornly like she expected him to argue with her.

Dean blinked, nodded, kept his hands in his pockets.

“Dean,” he introduced himself honestly without even thinking about it. Cas’ eyes flickered to his face and then away again.

Miriam studied him with skepticism before she turned back to Cas.

“That whole thing about believing me, it go for him too?” She asked.

“Yes,” Cas said, in that simple and unshakably honest way of his.

Miriam snorted, apparently more immune to sincere blue eyes than Dean was.

“Sure,” she turned back to her sandwich and took a vicious bite out of it. “Whatever you say.”

“Did you see something, Miriam?” Dean asked. “Something you think we wouldn’t believe?”

She glanced at him, her mouth pursed around bread and meat in an unimpressed line.

“Something to do with Sidney, maybe?” Dean prodded, Cas looked at him askance.

“Sid was an idiot,” Miriam scoffed. Jackpot.

“Why do you say that?” Cas asked, his head tilting to the side.

“You ever been homeless?” Miriam asked, looking him up and down like she’d already guessed the answer.

“Yes,” Cas said easily. Now it was Dean’s turn to look at him askance, and even Miriam managed a flicker of surprise through her dismissive facade.

“Huh,” she studied him, reassessing, then shrugged. “Well if you lived through it for any amount of time you know that when people warn you not to do stuff, you listen. Even if it sounds stupid or crazy.”

She held Cas’ gaze as he stared impassively back at her, then looked down at her sandwich.

“I told her to make sure she got a bed when the moon was full. No matter what you have to do, if the shelter’s full, find a way to be inside.” She shrugged. “She didn’t listen.”

“Why then?” Dean asked carefully. “What’s dangerous about the full moon?”

“I dunno, werewolves?” She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t ask . I didn’t want to know.”

She clenched her jaw, shoulders up by her ears, halfway to crushing her sandwich in her grip.

“You trying to eat that thing, or does it owe you money?” Dean asked, earning himself a glare for his trouble. But she forced some of the tension out of her shoulders and took a mutinous bite.

“You said you didn’t want to know,” Cas said after a moment or two of allowing her to eat in silence. “But you do know, now. Don’t you?”

Miriam swallowed another bite of her sandwich and breathed out, shaky.

“Yeah,” she said. “Now I know. Cause Sid’s the idiot who didn’t come back to the shelter, and I’m the idiot who went out looking for her when she didn’t show.”

She shoved the last of the sandwich in her mouth, crumpling up the foil and tossing it further down the alley.

“I don’t even know why I did it, really.” She tucked her hands under her armpits now that they were free. “I didn’t even know for sure she was out, maybe she thought there’d be a better chance of getting a bed at a women’s shelter or something. But I just… I don’t know, I thought something was wrong, and I thought I could help.”

She kicked the ground, sending pebbles scattering from her foot.

“Shoulda just stayed out of it,” she said. “Didn’t do her any good.”

“What did you see, Miriam?” Dean asked, gently.

She looked at him for a long moment, then looked away again.

“Saw a guy, crouching over her on the ground,” she said, simple and straightforward. “Tried to get out of there before he saw me, but I guess I made too much noise. I ran for this warehouse on tri view cause I knew they had security, like lights always on, and a guard that actually does rounds and shit. I dunno how I made it, I thought-”

Her voice wavered, an interruption of the simple fact, fact, fact, way she layed out the story of what must have been a terrifying flight for her life. She took a deep breath and let it out again, forcing herself steady.

“I thought it was right behind me. I could feel it behind me.” She shook herself, visibly distancing herself from the memory. “I got over the fence, anyway. Turned around and didn’t see it behind me. The security guard saw me and I got booked for trespassing. Whatever, kept me from having to spend the rest of the night wondering if it was gonna find me again, anyway.”

“The guy you saw,” Dean said. “What did he look like?”

“I didn’t spend a lot of time looking, past when I saw the blood,” she informed him scathingly. “I dunno, blonde? Regular sized. A guy.”

“Anything weird about him?” Dean asked.

Miriam looked at him like she thought he was stupid.

“If you actually believe me, I think you already know.”

“Fair point,” Dean said.

“Thank you, Miriam.” Cas caught her eye, looking at her with this aching sort of sincerity. “For telling us. We’ll make sure he can’t hurt anyone else.”

“Whatever,” She cast her eyes down from his, talking to the ground. “If it’s not that, it’ll be something else. And Sid’s dead either way.”

Cas nodded, an acknowledgment of her point, and stepped back, leaving an opening for her to skirt around him.

“Hey,” Dean stopped her as she passed by. “You got an address for that warehouse?”

She shrugged.

“I dunno, between Tri View and Hamilton? It’s the one with the chain link fence that doesn’t have any holes in it.”

“We’ll find it,” Dean said. “Thanks for your help.”

“Yeah, sure,” she told him, looking away. She waved back over her shoulder at Cas. “Thanks for the sandwich.”

Dean crossed back over to the space next to Cas, who looked at him, head tilted like an owl.

“The warehouse?” He asked.

“Good security means cameras,” he explained. “Let’s go get a look at our werewolf.”

Cas nodded, his face going grim.

“Lead the way.”

Dean swung by a Dollar Tree and picked up a cheap clipboard and a padded envelope. Cas stepped in and paid when Dean hesitated over his empty wallet, even when he tried to tell him he had cards that probably wouldn't bounce. It left him red faced and uncomfortable as they exited the store, but he forced himself to shake it off.

The clipboard, he filled with whatever he could pull out of the glove box that looked official at a glance. A credit card application he’d left half filled out, a parking ticket printed on yellow paper, a post-it note he'd written a string of numbers on, stuck on top for good measure. He ditched the windbreaker and the hat in the back seat, and then grabbed Cas’ shirt and tie from where he’d tossed them in the trunk while getting him into his disguise. If he thought Cas would protest him stealing his look, he was dead wrong. He just watched him tuck the dress shirt into his jeans, a bewildered look on his face.

“I got this one,” Dean told him with a wink, tightening his borrowed tie and picking up his props from where he’d balanced them on the edge of the trunk. “How do I look?”

“You’re very handsome,” Cas said easily, like it didn’t send Dean’s face burning and have him choking on a nervous laugh. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re going to do.”

“I’m gonna be an official guy,” Dean said, closing the trunk and resolutely ignoring how the word handsome bounced around his skull. “Big companies always have an official guy. Middle manager type, he sucks to deal with so you just give him what he wants.”

Cas looked skeptical so Dean winked again.

“Watch and learn, Padawan.”

He took off at a confident too-fast stride, looking around until he spotted a guard post, practically power walking his way over.

“There you are,” he said, like he was already impatient. The guy inside, young-looking- score!- with big ears and wide brown eyes, jolted to attention. “Hey, hi, I’m here for the footage, can we get this moving?”

The kid blinked at him, lost.

“The footage?” He asked.

Dean stared at him, like he was waiting for him to realize on his own what he was talking about.

“The footage,” he repeated.

The kid stared blankly back at him.

“The footage that the police requested?” Dean raised his voice, feigning impatience. “The footage that was supposed to be ready for official pick-up so I can deliver it to them following proper chain of custody procedures? ”

He waved the padded envelope he’d bought for fifty cents emphatically. Cas had used a ten cent ruler to draw a box in red pen on the front and write Certified Official SCPD in steady uniform handwriting inside. It could pass for a stamp as long as you didn’t look too closely.

“Um.” The kid was starting to sweat. “I wasn’t told anything-”

“Of course you weren’t,” Dean scoffed. He tucked the envelope back under his arm and flipped the first two pages back from the clipboard, clicking a pen pointedly and scribbling a meaningless squiggle on the blank form underneath.

“Um,” the kid said again, his voice breaking.

“What’s your name?” Dean asked, without looking up.

“Andrew,” the kid answered. “Andrew MacDonald.”

Dean made another squiggle, Andrew swallowed audibly. Dean flipped the pages on the clipboard back down and clicked his pen again.

“Okay, Andrew ,” Dean said, drawing out his name. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that someone else was incompetent and didn’t inform you I was coming, rather than assuming you were negligent in checking for official company communications the way you’re supposed to at the start of every shift, and we’re going to skip to the part where you give me access to the footage we’ve released so we can both get on with our day, okay? Okay.”

“Um.” Andrew fell back on his favourite word, looking red in the face. “I don’t really know- what’s the procedure-”

“You don’t know the procedure,” Dean repeated, deadpan. He flipped the top pages on his clipboard over again and made a check mark.

“No- no, I mean-” Andrew waved his hands frantically. “I mean, whatever you say, I’ve just never had to… do this? Before?”

“Right,” Dean said slowly. “Well, Andrew, the procedure is that a crime has been committed nearby, and the police have requested access to our security footage from the night in question, to help solve this crime. And because we are a law abiding company that cooperates with the police, we’re going to give them whatever they need to get the job done, with me so far?”

“Yes sir,” Andrew said, nodding his head like a bobblehead.

“Great, so you’re going to take me to where your video archives are stored, we’re going to copy all the footage from-” He scanned over the papers on his clipboard as though he was jogging his memory. “-the night of the twenty-second, and then I’m going to put it in this very official envelope, and march it over to the police station, where it will be entered into evidence. Can you do that for me, Andrew? ”

“Yep- yeah- I can- I can do that, let me just-” Andrew fumbled for his radio, getting up out of his seat and moving to let Dean in. “Let me just, uh call for someone to relieve me-”

Dean marched through the gate as soon as Andrew opened it and blew right past his stumbling.

“Or I can do it on the way! Yep, yep I’ll do it on the way.” He jogged to catch up with Dean’s long impatient strides. “Hey this is Andrew at the front gate, if someone could just come relieve me real quick I just need to escort someone inside- Sir, sir wait up!”

Thirty minutes later, Dean marched back out the front gate with a skip in his step, waving happily to the skeptical glare of the young woman who must have come to replace Andrew when he’d left his post. Poor guy, he probably wasn’t getting a promotion any time soon.

He slid into the driver’s seat of the Impala, brandishing a Certified Official SCPD envelope at Cas triumphantly.

“Got our footage.” He grinned, feeling the warm glow of a job well done. “You hungry? How does burgers sound? I’m feeling burgers.”

He started the car before Cas could answer, peeling out in reverse just as an older man in a security guard’s uniform rounded the corner and waved at them to stop.

Dean waved back as they made their escape. 

Yeah, Andrew was fucked.

They stopped by the motel first, picking up Cas’ laptop so they could look through the footage Dean had conned off the warehouse’s security team while they ate. Then Dean picked a direction and drove, cruising with the window down until he spotted a greasy spoon of a diner that looked promising.

Dean slid into the squeaky vinyl booth with a contented sigh. Cas settled across from him, flipping open his laptop and inserting the disk.

“Watcha thinking?” Dean asked, after a moment of flipping through the menu.

“There’s a lot of footage to look through,” Cas answered absentmindedly. “Do you have the notes I gave you about what the coroner told me? If I had the time of death window that would narrow it down.”

“What? No, Cas,” Dean admonished, reaching out and pushing the laptop lid closed slightly. “I mean what are you gonna get?”

“Oh.” Cas blinked at him, then cast his eyes down. “I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t had anything to eat since this morning, man,” Dean pointed out.

Cas cast a quick glance at the menu next to his elbow. 

“I don’t want anything,” he said firmly, eyes on the screen.

“What can I get for you two boys today?” An older woman with thick curly hair approached their table.

“Well-” Dean glanced at her name tag. “Anne Marie, we’ll have two bacon cheese burgers, side of fries on each, and two slices of whatever pie you recommend. And two cups of coffee, if you please.”

“Great choice,” Anne Marie beamed at him with lips painted cherry red, taking the menu he offered her and scooping up Cas’ untouched by his elbow. “It’ll be out in a jiffy.”

“Hear that?” Dean grinned after she retreated behind the counter. “In a jiffy!”

Cas glowered at him over the screen of his laptop.

“What?”

“I said I didn’t want anything,” Cas muttered mutinously, casting his eyes back down to the screen.

“And I said you need to eat,” Dean shot back. “Look, you can’t go wrong with a burger in a place like this, trust me on that.”

Cas sighed, put upon, and didn’t answer. Dean neglected to continue the argument, and Anne Marie returned with two coffee cups, filling them from a carafe.

“You’re in luck.” She beamed at Dean. “It’s a fresh pot.”

Dean grinned back and tipped his cup at her, taking a long sip. It was thin and watery but he brought curled fingers to his lips and kissed them in an exaggerated motion like a chef declaring his dish perfection, and she laughed as she sauntered away again.

Dean took another sip of cheap diner coffee and considered Cas over the rim of his mug.

“So,” he started, putting the mug down with a click. “Was that true, what you told Miriam?”

Cas glanced up at him briefly.

“You may have noticed,” he said. “I’m not an adept liar.”

“You were homeless.” Dean twisted his mug between his palms, Cas’ sat neglected by his elbow just as the menu had.

“Yes,” Cas confirmed.

Dean waited for him to elaborate, but he kept his eyes on the screen, silent.

“Our house burned down,” Dean blurted out. Cas looked up, startled. “I was four. We, um, we moved around a lot after that. Motels usually, but sometimes all we had was the car.”

Dean looked down at his hands, drumming his fingers on the table.

“I guess I never thought of us as homeless, because Baby was our home.”

He looked up to find Cas watching him, his face unreadable. Cas looked away first, and Dean’s heart sank, he looked back down at his mug.

“I ran away from a foster home,” he said at last. Dean looked up sharply, but Cas didn’t look at him. “I was impatient, I felt there were things I needed to do and the systems that were meant to be in place to protect me were just holding me back.”

“What happened?” Dean asked.

Cas looked back at him.

“What Miriam said, about listening to warnings…” He paused, shook his head. “I ended up in a bad situation. I thought I knew… It wasn’t what I thought. I didn’t expect to be held captive by people who wanted my blood.”

“You ended up in a vampire nest?” Dean hissed, leaning forward. “How the hell did you survive?”

Castiel glanced to the side, shrugging.

“Luck,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared for them, but I wasn’t entirely helpless, either. Still, the experience made me realize there was more to the world than I knew. And that I had no resources and no idea what I was doing. So I went back. Allowed myself to be placed in another foster home, finished highschool.”

“I got my GED,” Dean told him, leaning forward and crossing his arms on the table.

Cas raised an eyebrow, nodding in approval.

“I had the idea that becoming a detective would let me accomplish my goals.” He shrugged, leaning back. “A guidance counselor convinced me to try for the police academy. It didn’t work out, but some of what I learned there has been useful.”

“Not cut out to be a cop?” Dean asked, grinning.

“I’ve been told I have ‘problems with authority’.” Cas brought his hands up and made air quotes, voice dripping with dry skepticism.

Dean threw his head back in a laugh, slamming his palm on the table. When he settled, Cas was watching him with that look he sometimes got, eyes wide and mouth soft.

“What?” Dean asked, still half chuckling even as self-consciousness churned in his gut.

Cas shook his head, closing his mouth, and looking down. There was a slight smile pulling at his lips.

“Nothing,” he said.

Dean cleared his throat, leaning forward again, gripping his elbows to keep himself more contained.

“So the vampires, is that how you found out about-” He waved a hand vaguely. “-all this?”

“Yes and no,” Cas replied. “I knew about the existence of otherworldly forces from a young age, but whether or not I understood them…”

He looked out the window, frowning.

“Even now, I doubt I know everything that’s out there.”

Dean shuddered, the diner seemed dimmer all of a sudden.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe not.”

He cleared his throat.

“So, you were raised in the life, huh?” He asked, picking up a spoon from the cutlery set next to him and absently rubbing his thumb over the shiny surface. “Me too.”

He looked up, meeting Cas’ eyes where he was studying him intently.

“The house fire I mentioned…” He breathed out, steadying himself. “It was a demon. It killed my mom.”

Now it was Dean’s turn to look out the window. He watched the cars speed by on the street, the people passing by.

“We traveled all over for years, trying to track down the thing that killed her.” He smiled, bittersweet. “Saving people, hunting things… the family business.”

The family business. Dean, Sam and their Dad.

Then just Dean and Dad.

And now Dean.

Last man standing.

“And did you?” Cas asked.

“Hm?” Dean looked back from the window.

“The demon that killed your mother.” Cas tilted his head, studying him. “Did you ever find it?”

Dean’s throat felt tight, he swallowed painfully.

The image of the Colt in his father’s shaking hands bloomed behind his eyes, he blinked it away.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Yeah, we got it. It’s dead.”

“And here you are,” Cas said quietly.

“Here I am,” Dean said, looking back down at the table. He shrugged. “I don’t think I know how to be anything else.”

The vinyl creaked as Cas sat back in the booth.

“In that, I think we understand each other.”

A plate clacked down next to Dean’s elbow and he looked up sharply into Anne Marie’s beaming face.

“Two bacon cheeseburgers, side of fries,” she announced. “And your pies.”

She set down two smaller plates with a wink.

“You let me know if you need anything else.” She gave Dean’s shoulder a squeeze, casual as anything. 

He smiled back at her, a weak wavering thing.

“Will do, Anne Marie, thanks.”

Dean pulled his plate closer, the burger looked thick and juicy, accompanied by thick cut fries and topped with a thin slice of pickle, speared through a toothpick buried in the top bun. Dean’s stomach growled, his hunger coming to the forefront, and he wasted no time picking up the burger and taking a luxurious bite.

He groaned as flavour exploded on his tongue, the bun was soft, the bacon was crispy and he had to swipe at his chin to keep the juices from dripping down.

He took another bite before lowering the burger, chewing merrily away. He looked up to find Cas staring at him.

“What?” He mumbled through an overstuffed mouth. “S’good.”

Cas shook his head and looked back at his laptop, Dean chewed and swallowed, watching him.

He took another bite of the burger, then had a few fries. They were a little soggy and oversalted, but not half bad.

Cas’ burger sat ignored by his elbow, along with his coffee.

Dean sighed, setting his burger down on his plate.

“Come on man,” he chided. Cas looked up, brows furrowed. Dean nodded to his plate. Cas glanced at it, then turned his attention back to his laptop.

“I told you, I’m not hungry,” he said.

“Bull,” Dean retorted. “We’ve been on our feet all day, you need some fuel.”

Cas didn’t answer, eyes on the screen. Dean reached out and nudged the plate closer.

“Just take a bite,” he prodded. “If you don’t like it we can get you something else.”

Cas sighed and sat back, finally turning his attention from his laptop to the burger. He reached out and placed one finger on the edge of the plate, spinning it slightly, then looked up at Dean with a consternated expression.

Dean nodded encouragingly and made a get-on-with-it motion with his hand.

Cas picked up the burger and examined it, his focus narrowing and his mouth falling open slightly. He glanced at Dean one more time, before finally leaning in and taking a bite.

His eyes fell closed and he made a noise of pleasure.

And then he demolished it.

Dean didn’t have time to pat himself on the back or gloat about the burger being tasty after all, because Cas tore into the thing. He watched, rapt, as Cas savaged it, taking massive bites and barely chewing. His cheeks bulged, and scraps of meat fell from his grease-smeared lips. In no time, the burger had vanished, and he reached for the fries, stuffing a handful into his face, licking the grease and salt from his fingers as he swallowed and reached for more.

Dean made a noise. Something small and high pitched. Cas’ eyes snapped up to him and he froze.

He looked down at his plate, empty but for six surviving fries and a toothpick, and seemed to come back to himself, straightening from where he’d been hunched over his plate, almost bestial in his posture.

His mouth twisted, looking vaguely queasy.

“Guess you were more hungry than you thought,” Dean joked weakly.

Cas looked up at him, tearing his eyes away from where he’d been looking at his empty plate like it pained him.

“Yes,” he said, woodenly. “I suppose I forgot.”

He grabbed a handful of napkins, wiping his hands harshly and tossing them on the plate, then turned back to the laptop.

Dean opened his mouth, feeling off kilter, unsure what to say.

“You want some of my fries?” He asked, eventually.

Cas looked at his plate, then dragged his eyes up to meet Dean’s. His expression was nakedly wanting, but at the same time he looked conflicted, almost nauseated.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Thank you.”

Dean nodded absently, even though Cas wasn’t looking at him anymore, and went back to his own food, eating at a more sedate pace.

“Oh,” Cas said, moments later, his eyes widening. “I think I have it.”

He got up, picking up his laptop, and came around the booth, sliding in next to Dean. Dean moved over to make space, surprised. Cas was pressed up against his side, their legs touching from knee to hip.

The screen showed a view of a chain link fence, and a fragment of the street beyond, a blurry figure had just entered the frame where Cas had paused it. He hit play, and the dark smear resolved itself into the vaguely familiar shape of Miriam, sprinting the last few feet to the fence and launching herself up and over. She landed hard on the other side, clearly winded.

Behind her, too close, clawed fingers nearly catching her bootheel as she made her escape, was a man.

No, not a man at all, just something that looked like one.

His hair was light on the grainy, blue-toned footage. Blonde, Miriam had said. He stayed in frame for a moment, looking at her fallen figure, before something caught his attention offscreen, and he retreated, back into the shadows where the camera couldn’t distinguish much detail, and then out of frame.

The instant before he ducked out of view, though, he looked up.

Right at the camera.

Cas tracked the video back and paused there, the clear shot of his face. His eyes were unnaturally bright, Dean filled in the sickly yellow it would be in person in his mind, the footage monochrome and blue-grey. He had a handsome face, square jaw and sharp cheekbones, windswept hair that you could mistake for a fashion choice in another context.

His hands and mouth were coated with blood.

"That's our guy," Dean muttered. "At least we won't have to worry about second guessing ourselves."

Cas looked up at him, brow furrowed.

"Full moon's not going to be for another three weeks, we're not going to be able to catch him turning again until then." He nodded at the screen. "But that's pretty unambiguous."

Cas hummed, thoughtful, studying the image on the screen.

"Is there another way to get confirmation?" He asked. "I'd rather be certain."

If they were gonna kill a man in cold blood, he meant.

"We could try exposing him to silver." He speculated. "Most stuff that's affected by it, it burns them to touch it. Then we'd know for sure."

Cas nodded, he pulled up another application to take a capture of the frame on screen, isolating the part that was just the werewolf's face.

"I guess we'll find a print shop, start showing that around, see if anyone knows him." Dean picked up his coffee and took a sip. "One person can go back and canvas the neighborhood where she was killed again, the other can hit up the soup kitchen, make the rounds of the shelters? If he knew her that'd give us a start."

"I've been wondering about that," Cas said, tilting his head. "What Miriam said has been bothering me."

"Yeah," Dean asked, turning towards him. "How so?"

Cas still hadn't moved back to his side of the booth, or even shifted away. His face was right there, pensive blue eyes that seemed to swallow up the room.

"She indicated that the danger surrounding the full moon was well known, it seemed to me that it must have been going on for a long time," he said. "But there haven't been any other bodies. We have no other indications that Sidney wasn't the first victim."

"What are you suggesting?" Dean asked, frowning.

"You said that werewolves act on subconscious desires," Cas said. "But how complex can those desires be? Is it possible for the fear of being caught to be strong enough to motivate one to cover their tracks, even in an animalistic state?"

"No," Dean shook his head. "No way, I've seen em when they're like that, Cas. They're not planning anything."

"Hm," Cas said, turning back to the photo on the screen, studying it.

"What?" He asked, crossing his arms, and leaning back, studying Cas' profile.

"If I were to ignore the supernatural element, then my theory would be that someone was targeting vulnerable people because they knew that no one would look into their disappearances," Cas suggested. "I would posit that Sidney wasn't the first victim, and start pursuing leads based on the assumption that the killer had been disposing of the bodies successfully up until now, and that the only reason we know about Sidney is because Miriam interrupted him and drew him away from his kill."

"Huh," Dean said. "Okay, I see where you're coming from, but we don't really have that much to go off of, there. Miriam said herself she didn't want to know why it wasn't safe to go out on the full moon. We don't even know when she learned that, or if it was meant to be a more general warning. It could be a superstition that just happened to be true in this case, it could have been advice from someone who'd dealt with werewolves before, but not the one in this city."

Cas nodded, his brows still furrowed in thought.

"Anyway, we can't ignore the supernatural element," Dean pointed out. "Maybe the guy's got something in the back of his mind reminding him to go after people no one will miss, even when he's wolfed out, but disposing of the bodies? There's no way he's thinking to try that, let alone pulling it off smooth."

"Could he be returning to clean up his crimes afterwards?" Cas suggested, thoughtful. "If he's become aware of his affliction, perhaps he's focused his energy on concealing his guilt, rather than preventing the attacks."

"I don't know," Dean said. "It seems like a stretch. He'd have to go back in the morning, try to track down someone he killed with maybe half a memory of where he even was, hoping he got there before someone else found them first. He'd be way more likely to implicate himself by trying than he would staying home and letting people think an actual wolf did it."

"I suppose you're right," Cas shook his head. "We'll approach this as though it was either a crime of opportunity or a personal vendetta, then."

"Sounds good to me." Dean knocked back the rest of his coffee. "Hit up a print shop, split up and plan to regroup at the motel? Oh and we should swap numbers, in case something comes up."

"Right," Cas said. "Of course."

From up close, Dean could study that strange, strained expression he sometimes got closer than ever. There was something soft that came over his mouth and eyes, but he fought it in the next instant, his brows drawing in and his mouth pressing into a firm line, like there was something behind his teeth he was determined to keep contained.

"How's everybody doing over here?"

Cas slammed his laptop closed in a darting movement that couldn't have looked more suspicious if he tried, and Dean jumped back, slamming his shoulder into the wall in an effort to put space between him and Cas.

They both looked up at Anne Marie with wide eyes.

"Everything's great!" Dean said, too loud and too bright. "Actually, you think we could get the bill? We were just about to head out."

"Sure thing," she said, smiling easily and blithely ignoring their obvious embarrassment. "You want a to-go box for the pies?"

Dean placed a hand over his heart, pretending he couldn't still feel it pounding in his chest.

"Anne Marie, that would be a god send."

She smiled at him, white teeth and red lips, and winked with a bounce of golden curls. She had crow's feet by her eyes, the sign of a life spent smiling.

"Box and a bill, coming right up!"

Dean felt an odd nostalgic ache in his chest as he watched her go, but he pushed it down.

He stuffed the last few fries off his plate into his mouth and elbowed Cas in the side.

"Move over," he said. "I gotta run to the bathroom before we go."

When he came back out, there was already cash on the table, more than enough to cover their meal, and he could see Cas through the window, standing by the Impala. He could have been a statue, hard lines and harsh shadows, his head dipped forward, pensive. There was something distantly sad about the thought.

He could be a hole in the world, Dean realized, fleetingly, as he watched passersby skirt around him, the sun on his back casting a too-black shadow over the hood of the car.

He shook his head to dispel the image, pushing out the door to join him.

They had work to do.

Dean dropped Cas off to walk the block around where Sidney's body had been found so he could knock on all the same doors again, this time armed with a photograph and a 'do you know this man'. For his part, Dean made a circuit of the addresses he'd picked out off the posters at the soup kitchen, brandishing his copy of the photo and the description they had of Sidney.

Some people recognized Sidney by name or by description, none knew the man in the photograph. All of them were overworked, overtired and didn't have much patience for his questions.

The obvious blood on the man's face in the photo wasn't really helping the general skepticism towards the ever thinning animal control ruse. Dean trotted out the possible witness, definitely injured, line over and over, but it clearly only went so far to convince people he wasn't acting far outside his wheelhouse. He didn't press, staying polite and professional to keep people from turning their suspicions into actions, and retreating when he saw their hackles go up.

He was just getting back into his car after another unsuccessful round of questioning when his phone rang.

A quick glance dashed his hopes that it was Cas. He flipped it open with unbridled disappointment.

"Hey, watcha need?" He answered without identifying himself.

"Mr. Curtis?" Emily's voice came through, uncertain.

"Oh, Ms. Lloyd!" Dean perked up. "How are you? Did you need something?"

"Oh, ah-" She sounded flustered, even over the phone. "Just Emily is fine, I- well you mentioned asking around, here, and I just thought… We're setting up for dinner service now…"

"That is wonderful timing, Emily." Dean glanced at the clock, just past five. "I was just thinking of heading your way."

"Great," Emily said brightly. "No, that's… good. I'll see you soon?"

"There in a jiffy, Emily." Dean hung up the phone, starting the car. It was good timing, he'd saved the soup kitchen for his last stop, hoping to hit it around dinner service, when there would be crowds he could canvas for information on the guy in their photo, but this was better. He could catch the volunteers first, before they were too busy to entertain his questions.

Emily met him by the office entrance, holding the door open and waving out at him.

"This way," she said. "We can get through to the kitchen through the back hallway, I thought it would be better. Sorry, the door sticks."

"I noticed," Dean grunted, yanking hard to close it behind them.

"Our maintenance budget isn't what it could be," she said, shaking her head. "Well, neither is our anything else budget, really. Come on, I can introduce you to some of the other volunteers."

She bustled him into the kitchen, keeping up a slightly nervous monologue about their facilities and staff as she went.

"My office, I share with Cindy, although she's out on maternity leave. It's been difficult without her, I'll tell you that much for free. This is the connection to the kitchen and dining area, we use the passthrough for storage, as you can see, it's a little cluttered, ah- if you just step over. And here we are-"

She waved her hands, showing off a well-maintained and clean kitchen space, already winding up for their dinner service, as volunteers milled about the space, unpacking vegetables to prep and carrying pots of water to the stove.

"Let me make introductions, lets see-"

Dean kept a pleasant smile fixed on his face as they made the rounds, filing away the names as Emily tossed them out, but the bulk of his focus was on one familiar handsome face, recognizable the second he entered the room.

"And this is Trevor," Emily said as they reached the man. He was setting up to cut onions, and he glanced up with a faded smile. "Trevor this is Mr. Curtis, he's here looking into the animal attack from the other night."

"Nice to meet you." Dean shook his hand, smiling easily.

"Yeah, back atcha," Trevor said, regarding him through narrowed eyes. Without the shift, they were a light blue. "I didn't realize animal control did investigations."

"Well I'm really just here to pass out the number for our tip line, make sure people can report any sightings," he lied easily. "Might ask around a bit, while I'm here. Figure people on the streets are more likely than anyone else to have run into the damn thing."

"A tip line?" Emily asked. "You didn't mention that."

"Oh, yeah, here." Dean dug into his pocket for his notepad, and scrawled down the number for a different burner than he'd given her earlier. "Can you make sure this gets passed around? We're just really looking for any info we can get at this point."

"You don't have a card?" Trevor asked, skeptical.

Dean glanced up with him, chagrined.

"You know, I keep meaning to print some out," he said with a laugh. "Not the most professional look, I know, but you guys aren't the only ones hurting for resources."

"Right," Trevor said. "Sure. You at least have an idea what you're looking for?"

"Rabid dog," Dean replied, smiling thinly. "Gonna have to be put down, when we find it."

Emily made a wounded noise.

"Oh, that's such a shame…" She said, shaking her head.

Dean tore his eyes away from Trevor, clearing his throat.

"It's for the best," he said, more gently. "Once an animal starts going after humans like that…"

"I know," Emily replied, hugging herself around the middle. "This whole thing is just so awful, though."

"It'll be over soon," Dean said evenly. "I think we're getting close to wrapping this up."

"I'm sure you are," Trevor said with his own narrow little smile.

"Emily, I hate to be a bother, but do you mind if I use your office to make a phone call?" Dean asked.

"Oh, of course." Emily blinked at him. "I needed to talk to Monica about inventory, anyway, do you need…?"

"I can find my way, thanks," he said, already pulling out his phone. "Thank you for introducing me around. Good to meet you, Trevor."

He made a b-line for the storage area that led back to the offices, nearly tripping over a broom as he punched in Cas' number.

"You'll never guess who I bumped into at the soup kitchen," Dean said as soon as the call connected.

"Who?" Cas asked, after a pause.

Dean blinked. 

"The guy from the security footage," he said. "Who do you think?"

"Oh," Cas said. "I could've guessed that."

"Yeah, duh."

"You said I wouldn't be able to," Cas pointed out. "I thought it would be something more shocking."

"Sure," Dean rolled his eyes, entering Emily's office and walking over to her filing cabinets. "I'm gonna try to get his address off an employee file or something, hang on."

The drawers were locked, but the kind that popped open easily with a paperclip. He rifled past purchase orders and invoices, picking out a folder labeled volunteers and flipping it open.

"Here he is, Trevor Park," he said, reading out the address on file. "You head over there now, stake the place out, I'll hang around and tail him when he leaves, capiche?"

"I capiche," Cas answered. "Stay safe."

Dean paused, caught off guard. Cas hung up.

"Yeah," Dean said into the dead phone. "You too."

He pocketed his cell, stowed the file and left the office, ready to make nice until the werewolf went home to his den.

It was late evening when Dean left the soup kitchen. He'd spent dinner service play-acting at asking his questions in the diner crowd, glancing back towards the kitchen every so often. Trevor only emerged once or twice to swap out empty pots for full ones. Evidently he liked to stick to the back of house, rather than serving.

Emily was gleeful when Dean offered to stay and help with the cleanup, only extricating himself when Trevor did.

Now Dean sat in the Impala, maintaining a three car buffer between him and the green sedan Trevor obliviously navigated home.

Dean's fingers drummed on the steering wheel. He kept turning his conversation with Trevor over in his head, thinking back to what Cas had said in the diner. He couldn't shake the feeling that the guy knew Dean was onto him, but he didn't show any wariness now. There were no signs he knew he was being followed.

The address Trevor pulled up to was the one from his volunteer paperwork, but it wasn't a house at all. 

It was a funeral home.

"I'll be damned," Dean muttered to himself. Maybe Cas' idea about tracking down leads based on body disposal opportunities would've worked out after all. 

He got out of the car, pulling his gun from his waistband. He'd sent Cas a text when they were on their way back, and received confirmation he was in position. It was time.

Trevor had gone around the side of the building, taking an exterior staircase up to an apartment above the business. Dean crept up the same path, trying the door handle.

It was unlocked.

Inside, the lights were all off.

The unease in his stomach grew.

He pushed open the door gently, stepping lightly inside.

Something slammed into him as soon as he crossed the threshold, throwing him to the ground.

"I knew I should've killed that bitch," Trevor snarled down at him. Dean scrambled to push himself upright, fighting to shake off the daze. "One slip up, after all these years, and I've got hunters knocking down my door."

Dean stared, uncomprehending. Trevor stood over him with yellow eyes, fingers splayed out and tipped with claws.

That wasn't supposed to be possible.

"You- how?" Dean asked, darting his eyes towards his gun, knocked from his hands and feet away.

"Trust me, it wasn't hard to figure you out." Dean lunged for his gun and got a kick in the ribs for his trouble. He buckled over onto his side, wheezing. "Heard you on the phone with your partner in the other room. He hiding out in here? Come out, come out if you don't want me to crush pretty boy's skull!"

He called out the last bit in a sing-song voice.

"Cas-" Dean rasped, unsure if he was asking for aid or begging him to stay hidden.

"Okay then, I guess you can watch him die if you're so-"

Trevor cut himself off with a yelp that became a snarl as he darted out of the way of Cas' lunge. He put a hand to his side, hissing as it came away wet with blood. Cas twirled the knife in his hand, standing as a solid barrier between Dean and the wolf.

"He's been cremating the bodies to dispose of the evidence," Castiel informed him casually, his eyes never leaving Trevor's. "I don't know how many, he had a box of souvenirs downstairs."

"Pretty sweet set-up, right?" The wolf smirked. "I get all the hearts I could ask for, working this job. But you know, nothing compares to fresh."

Cas' jaw tightened, and he shifted as Trevor circled, looking for an angle.

"It's a shame I'll have to pack up shop. Can't risk anyone else following your trail," he shrugged. "Oh well, I can always start over somewhere new, once I kill you two. And that freak in drag for good measure-"

Cas lunged again, and the werewolf launched himself to meet him. Dean scrambled back as they collided, diving for his gun. He fumbled to get it in his hands, sweaty palm meeting the grip as he pushed himself upright.

"Cas!" He called out, the wolf had gotten the upper hand, snarling wildly as he rolled his way on top.

Cas held one clawed hand from tearing open his face, but the wolf kept the other, holding the knife, from getting near anything vital, as he lurched for Cas' throat with his snapping teeth-

Dean fired.

The wolf howled, tearing himself off of Cas and lunging for Dean, one arm hanging limp from the bullet in his shoulder. Dean tried to bring his gun to bear for another shot, heart pounding, too close, the wolf was almost on him-

He lurched, staggered, looked down at the tip of a knife, piercing through his chest.

Trevor fell to the ground, revealing Cas behind him, still on the floor, arm outstretched from his throw.

"Nice save," Dean said.

Cas let out a breath, slumping back..

"You too," he said.

"That's two I owe you now, I think," Dean pointed out, walking over to offer Cas a hand up.

He took it, chuckling, and Dean hoisted him to his feet.

"I think we can call this one a wash," he said. He looked down at where Trevor lay slumped on the floor, walked over and pulled the knife from his back.

"Is that silver?" Dean asked, eyeing the blade. It didn't look it. The metal was an oddly dark colour, greenish. Strange shape, too, three sides that kind of spiraled their way to a hilt. It was more of a dagger than a knife, subtly ornate.

"Not exactly," Cas replied, wiping the knife clean on his jeans, the animal. "It's versatile."

"Huh," Dean said, already familiar enough with Cas when he was stone-walling to swallow down any more questions. "Still, just to be sure."

He kicked Trevor over onto his back and put a silver bullet in his heart, then another in his head.

"We should get out of here," Dean said, lowering the gun. "Cops are probably already on their way."

Cas nodded, following him out the door and down to the car, they pulled away and made it three blocks before they started to hear sirens in the distance.

"Decent response time," Dean remarked.

Cass hummed noncommittally.

"I didn't know that was possible," Dean said after a moment or two of silence. "Werewolves that think, that can change whenever they want. I'd never seen that."

"More things in heaven and earth, I suppose," Cas said.

Dean snorted.

"Okay, Hamlet." Cas shot him a small smile. "It's fucked though, to think about. He was doing all that on purpose, he planned it. And he was covering his tracks. If Miriam hadn't interrupted him when he killed her friend…"

He glanced over at Cas, saw him swallow and shake his head.

"How often do you think it shakes out like that?" Dean asked quietly. "I mean maybe he was special, for a werewolf. But most monsters, they're not rabid. They can think things through the same way he did. How many of them go after people no one would report missing? Then just, clean up after themselves, leave no one the wiser."

"I imagine the answer to that is more than either of us would like to believe," Cas said grimly.

"Jesus," Dean breathed, shaking his head. 

The problem of supernatural creatures preying on people had always been big. Insurmountable, even. But suddenly it felt a lot bigger, like a big black empty unknown was spilling out all around him, filled with who knows how many things that go bump in the night. All of them just clever enough to avoid ever drawing his attention.

They drove in silence for a while.

"I used to come here a lot, growing up," Dean said, apropos of nothing. "Not Sioux City, but uh, just North. Sioux Falls."

Cas looked over at him.

"My dad had a buddy with a place there," he explained. "He'd leave me and my brother with him sometimes, on longer hunts. Haven't seen him in years."

That wasn't quite true. Bobby had chased them off his property with a shotgun when he was sixteen, told their dad not to come back if he knew what was good for him, but John had tried his luck anyway, when they were first closing in on yellow eyes.

The salvage yard had been the same as he remembered it, rickety old porch, lazy old dog. Bobby'd had the same shotgun, too.

He didn't make good on his threat, but he'd told John in no uncertain terms that this was the last favour he'd ever do for him.

Dean hadn't really talked to him, standing behind his dad with his hands in his pockets, backing him up. Bobby'd spared him a look, though.

He'd looked disappointed.

"You could visit him," Cas pointed out. "Since you're in the area."

Dean shook his head.

"Nah," he said. "That's ancient history."

Cas hummed, not quite in agreement, but not arguing, either.

Dean kept his eyes on the road, thinking.

"We make a pretty good team, you and me," he said, not even realizing he was repeating himself until the words were out.

Cas sighed, heavy. Dean ached.

Same old conversation.

"Dean-" He started, weary, Dean jerked the wheel of the Impala, pulling over to the side of the road and putting her in park.

"What, Cas?" He demanded, turning towards him. "What are you gonna say? What's so bad that you can't even tell me about it?"

The sun had long since set and the streetlights had come on, there was one just outside the window behind Cas' head, casting his face in shadow.

He didn't answer.

"I told you, I was raised doing this," Dean said. "I know what I'm up against, I can help you."

Cas looked away from him, staring out the windshield.

"This is my mission, Dean," he said, woodenly. "I won't burden anyone else with it."

"Your mission, yeah," Dean scoffed. "You won't even tell me what it is."

Cas stayed silent.

"You really think I can't handle it?" Dean demanded. "You think you're up against something so big and bad I've never heard of it? You didn't even know what a werewolf was till today."

"More things in heaven and earth," Cas muttered, absent-minded. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter, Dean. You don't need my kind of trouble."

Dean laughed, bitter.

"Yeah cause my life's been trouble free, so far. Look at me, Cas." He spread his hands. " Look at me! "

Cas did, pulling his gaze away from the windshield.

"What do you think I've still got to lose, huh?" He asked, voice wavering.

"Your life," Cas answered easily. His eyes were large and dark in the gloom.

"Some life," Dean answered.

"Do you think it would be any better with me?" Cas snapped back, raising his voice for the first time. He shut his eyes and shook his head, turning away again.

Yes , Dean wanted to say.

"Why do you want this so badly?" Cas asked, sounding exhausted.

I don't want to be alone, I look at you and I know you, and I know my loneliness ends with you. I don't know why, but I know.

Dean's throat closed up, he stayed silent.

"You say you don't know how to be anything else," Cas said eventually. "But you could learn. My mission, it's a matter of Fate, I can't escape it. But I won't drag anyone else down with me."

Dean stared at his hands on the steering wheel, his heart in his throat.

"You might not think much of your life now," Cas said gently. "But you still have it, it could be a better life, someday. If you come with me, you'll lose that. I won't do that to you, I won't."

Cas trailed off into silence, and they sat like that, just breathing in the dark car.

Dean reached over and turned the key, starting the engine.

"I'll drop you at the motel," Dean muttered.

Cas breathed out, relieved.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't," Dean replied. "Just- don't."

The rumble of the engine was the only sound as they drove back to the motel.

"Do you need-" Cas started, when they had parked. "You can still stay the night-"

"I'll be fine," Dean said.

"Right," Cas breathed. He sat for another long moment, hesitating. Dean didn't look at him.

Finally, he opened the door, half turning to exit, before stopping again.

"You should go see him," he said. "Your… family friend. I'm sure he misses you."

"Sure," Dean said, the lie obvious even to his own ears.

Dean saw Cas reach out a hand out of the corner of his eye. It hovered, useless, in the air between them, and then dropped without making contact.

"Goodbye Dean," he said. "Take care of yourself."

Then he got out of the car, closing the door behind him, and walked out of Dean's life for the second time.

Dean pulled out of the parking lot, and went looking for a bar.

The sunlight woke Dean in the morning by stabbing its way through his closed eyelids, igniting his brain into a throbbing pit of agony. He groaned, jerking, and slammed his head against Baby's door, adding a new counterpoint to the pain. His neck and back ached from sleeping curled up in the back seat, and his mouth tasted like something had crawled into it and died.

But in his heart, there was a blazing certainty, a determination that had come to him some time in the night:

Fuck Cas and his self-sacrificial bullshit.

So he didn't think Dean could help him? Fine, Dean would just prove him wrong, and he'd keep doing it until he gave in.

He pushed himself upright, blinking muzzily at the too-bright, painful world around him. He rubbed his eyes, slapped himself lightly on each cheek to chase away the cobwebs, and then started the car.

Five minutes later he was stumbling across the gravel parking lot to Cas' motel door, slumping all his weight against it and pounding at it with one fist.

"Caaaaas," he called out. "Open up, I gotta talk to you."

There was nothing but silence from inside.

"Cas, come on out or I'm coming in," he said. "I decided I'm not leaving you and there's nothing you can do about it, so open the door."

Nothing.

"Okay, I'm coming in," he announced, fumbling for his lockpicks. 

It took him longer than it should have to open the door, and even his sluggish, aching brain began to clue in what he would find, when no one gave in and opened it for him at the sound of his feeble scratching at the lock.

The motel room was perfectly clean, empty of any sign of Cas' presence.

"Fuck," Dean swore, leaning his head against the doorframe. It was early, early enough Dean thought there was a chance to catch him, but he'd been kidding himself. Cas probably packed his things and was out the door the second Dean dropped him off.

He pulled out his phone, dialing Cas' number with shaky fingers and putting it to his ear.

He lowered it again, as his eyes caught on something on the table by the door.

A cell phone.

He walked over and picked it up, taking in the cracked screen. He tried the power button, nothing.

The sim card was probably cracked in half at the bottom of the toilet, if he had to guess.

"Guess this is you trying to drop a hint," Dean said, voice wavering. "Don't follow me, huh?"

Dean laughed, bending over to brace himself on the table, he laughed until his head pounded in time with his heaving breaths, he laughed until he cried.

He sat on the floor of the motel, afterwards, drying his eyes.

Disembowelments, self-inflicted, symbols Dean still remembered on a cabin wall. What else?

Religious groups, out of season rainstorms.

He closed his eyes, picturing the list of strange names, the maps with towns highlighted in red.

Cas might not want Dean's help, but that wasn't his call. Dean knew what Cas was looking for- some of it, anyway- and that meant he knew how to find him again.

He picked himself up off the ground, and got to work.

Chapter Text

Dean crept through the gloom of the night, gun drawn and pointed at the ground below him. He kept his footfalls soft, placing each step carefully to avoid giving himself away. At the same time, he strained his ears, trying to make out the whispered conversation up ahead.

Three figures milled about through the trees, the lights they carried casting dancing shadows through the branches.

Dean slunk closer, his eyes on the illicit gathering.

He'd been staking out the area for four days, ever since he'd interviewed the farmer who owned most of the surrounding area about the symbols that had kept springing up, again and again, on a disused barn at the edge of his property, where he hadn't developed.

He covered them up each time they appeared, but they always came back.

"- do it there, over the door- "

" Are you sure-"

" -it all comes together tonight, this is our masterwork."

"Don't move," Dean said as he stepped through the trees, gun up and ready. His voice was a low rasp. "I have questions, and you're gonna-"

Screaming. High, girlish, screaming.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god don't shoot! " Teenager the first, a scrawny guy with acne and thick-framed glasses squealed, one hand in the air.

The other hand was trying valiantly to join it, but it had been latched onto by teenager the second, a short, plump girl with raccoon eyeshadow and brown hair, dip-dyed red at the tips.

Teenager the third was on the ground, staring up at him mutely from where he'd fallen, dark skin and short curly hair, gangly limbs with too-big hands and feet splayed out helter-skelter as he shook with terror.

Dean sighed and lowered the gun.

"Okay- OKAY! " He shouted, the two that had been screaming went quiet. "What the hell is going on here?"

There was a moment of dread-filled silence.

"Please don't shoot us," said the glasses kid. One-track mind.

"I'm not gonna shoot anyone," Dean said, his tone belying the promise. "Now what are all of you doing out here?"

The three traded shifty looks, and Dean took in the cans of spray paint scattered on the ground from where they'd been thrown in a panic, the cheap, shiny fabric of their 'robes', likely scavenged from some halloween costume or another.

"We were just messing around," Girl-teen said, guilty as sin.

"We didn't mean anything by it," Glasses-teen added, nodding along like a bobblehead. "Are you gonna arrest us?"

"I don't think he's a cop," Gangly-teen said, voice tremulous, which made him the smart one.

"So what, this is your idea of a prank?" Dean asked, gesturing to the symbols painted haphazard over the barn and the dirt around it. "You think this is funny?"

The kids flinched, he'd gestured with the hand holding the gun.

They traded looks again, somewhat less guilty this time.

"We got in the paper, man," Girl-teen said, shrugging. "Yeah it was pretty funny."

Gangly-teen hissed at her to shut up. Dean groaned and dragged a hand down his face.

"Just- just get out of here." He waved at them, eyes closed, not with his gun hand this time.

There was the shuffling of feet, but no one made to leave.

"Are you gonna tell our moms?" Glasses-teen asked.

"Go before I change my mind about shooting you," Dean said.

There was a frantic scramble of feet, harsh whispers of " go go go " as they crashed through the underbrush and thundered away into the night.

Dean sighed, tipping his head back in defeat.

Another dead end.

He opened his eyes to look up at the sky. The half-moon was rising over the trees, visible through gaps in the clouds. The night wind carried a chill, the autumn air just beginning to turn biting.

It had been months since he last saw Cas.

He looked around at the "satanic symbols" painted over the barn and snorted. The farmer described them as inspiring an uncanny feeling of dread, and Dean had thought that maybe… but no, turned out the guy was just a superstitious old coot. It was just a messy hodgepodge of pentagrams, futhark runes spelling nothing of substance, and whatever convincingly occult symbols a teenager could find on the internet. The zodiac symbol for scorpio was displayed proudly above the alchemical symbol for mercury.

Dean reached into his pocket and pulled out his reference paper, unfolding it and holding it up to the moonlight.

The figure from the shack they'd found in California stared back at him, copied down from memory. He looked at it until his breathing and his heartbeat slowed, a calm sweeping over him.

There was a distant humming, somewhere just outside the range of his hearing, somewhere at the base of his skull.

He looked back at the symbols on the barn and snorted, folding up his drawing and stuffing it back into his pocket.

He turned, and began the long trek back to where he'd parked his car.

Dean trudged into the motel, exhausted.

He kicked off his boots by the door, sparing little attention to the state of the room. Over the past week in the room, he'd let himself sprawl out some. His duffle was spilling its guts at the foot of the bed, empty takeout containers filled the trash, and half-full ones hung around in the kitchenette, waiting patiently to become an ill-advised midnight snack.

His research cluttered every available surface, piled on the desk in the corner, taking up space on the bed, and in some places, pinned to the walls.

He didn't even glance at it tonight. He could sift through for new leads in the morning, right now, he was bone-tired, and he just wanted to rest.

He dumped his overshirt on the floor, and stripped down to his boxers, stepping out of his jeans and leaving them puddled where they fell.

He bent down, rifling through his pockets, and pulled out his pen drawing of the figure from the mural. 

He slipped it under his pillow, along with his colt .45, and crawled into bed.

He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Dean lay on his back in a motel bed, motionless. The room was every room he had stayed in his whole life, they layered over each other, and became one thing.

They had all always been the same room.

Dean hated that room.

Black water began to pour out from under his pillow, flowing over the sides of his bed and onto the floor. It soaked into the worn, once-vibrant rug, staining it, and then overflowing it.

Soon the floor was covered in an inch of water, two inches, a foot.

Dean stayed motionless through it all.

He didn't know if he could move, if he wanted to, there was no way to know.

He had never wanted anything less.

The water climbed and climbed, as it rose, the wallpaper peeled away from the walls, floating in the black liquid, then breaking away into mushy clumps that sank below the surface, dissolving into nothing.

The water climbed, and as it did it washed the room clean, unmaking it.

It reached the edge of the bed, the stiff, shiny blanket that was tucked over Dean's body began to float, the water coming between it and his skin.

The water was much softer, neither warm nor cool. It caressed and enveloped him, pooling in the indents where his body pressed into the lumpy mattress, soaking into his clothes.

It began to rise above the edge of the mattress, coming up the sides of Dean's body, but he didn't start to float. He stayed stuck in place, and he knew that if he didn't move the water would soon creep over his head, and he would drown.

Dean stayed.

The water came up the sides of his thighs, lapped over his chest, the hollow of his throat.

It covered his ears, muffling the silence of the empty room. With the water in his ears, he could hear something like a whisper, a distant song, a hum that rattled his bones.

He couldn't feel the mattress underneath him anymore. Perhaps it had dissolved, or maybe he was dissolving.

Maybe the water wasn't rising anymore, maybe he was finally starting to sink.

The water lapped at the edges of his lips, just another inch, and it would cover his mouth and nose, just another moment-

Dean woke up.

He yawned, stretching, and rubbed his eyes. His chest ached, a hollow sort of feeling, and he rubbed at that too, absently, as he swung his legs out of bed. 

He pulled on yesterday's jeans, then dug under his pillow for his gun and the piece of notepaper that rested there. 

He tucked the gun into his waistband, and slipped the paper in his pocket.

Then he went out in search of coffee and breakfast. He needed to plan his next move.

Dean stared down at the mess of papers laid out on the desk in the motel room and sipped his coffee. It was just the right kind of bitter, but his own discontent at being back at square one turned it sour on his tongue.

It had been over three months since he'd last seen Cas.

He'd investigated an unearthed mass grave full of gutted corpses in Connecticut, but it had turned out to be ghouls. Then there'd been that witch in New Mexico, he'd followed a report of strange symbols going up around a small town just this side of the border with Texas. The pictures he'd seen had seemed familiar enough to take the drive, but in person, he'd known instantly they weren't what he was looking for.

He stopped the guy behind it, anyway. He'd been trying to invent his own mind control spell, something powerful enough to take over a whole town.

First two tries had no effect, the third try made everyone in town bleed from the ears and pass out where they stood for a good thirty seconds. Dean didn't let him have a fourth try.

Then he'd gone to investigate out of season flooding in the Mississippi river on a whim, which turned out to be… nothing. Climate change, maybe.

It wasn't just that every lead he tried was turning up dead ends, it was that none of the dead ends had attracted Cas' attention, either. He was looking in the wrong places twice over.

The only solace he had was the progress he made by inches on his other avenues of investigation.

He pulled out the list of names he'd copied down from memory, to the best of his ability. It was hard to find commonalities between them, when half of them were only first names, and Dean couldn't be sure he'd remembered them right in the first place.

What he did find was that the crossed out names, when they turned up, turned up in obituaries. The uncrossed names tended not to turn up at all.

The biggest find, in all the articles he'd sifted through, all the wild geese he'd chased down, was a single article, twenty years old. A front page story from the Pontiac Daily Leader.

There were others, the incident had been big enough that it had had widespread coverage since, Dean had even managed to read a chapter or two covering the incident in bloated true crime books alongside discussions of Jonestown and Waco.

But the Pontiac Daily Leader article was the one that had the picture.

He'd gotten lucky, making the find. He'd gone to Pontiac because he'd laid out a map of Illinois and been seventy percent sure it was the town in red that had the most lines converging on it on Cas' map.

He hadn't even known what he was looking for, he'd gone to the library intending to spend days coming through there newspaper archives for just about anything notable that might have happened in the town's history.

It probably wouldn't have taken long for him to stumble across it organically, there was a ten year retrospective on the incident that would have made it pretty clear. Or if he'd bothered to chat up the reference librarian instead of just slinking off to paw through newspapers with his head down, she probably would've told him sooner.

As it was, he hadn't known what to ask. Then the librarian had walked by as he had sifted, eyes glazed, through the papers, had taken one look at the list of names in his open notebook, and asked why he hadn't just said he was looking for information on the Sacred Heart Massacre.

"Oh uh-" He had fumbled his words, caught off guard. "I guess I just…"

"You're in the wrong decade for that," she had pointed out. "Most of the relevant articles were published around eighty-nine, into the early nineties. Come on, over here."

She'd brought him to a different part of the archive, and had started scanning through stacks, pulling out one of the many large, bound books of newsprint when she found the correct date.

"This should be a good place to start," she'd said, bringing the book back to Dean's table and flipping through it. "Are you writing a paper about it?"

The lie would have been easy enough to go along with, but Dean had found himself shaking his head.

"No it's uh… more of a personal project."

The librarian had looked up at him shrewdly, she'd been young, but she'd dressed like she eagerly awaited the day of her final transmogrification into a crotchety old woman. Her hair had been pulled back into a severe bun, her glasses had been horn-rimmed, and her skirt had fallen around her ankles. Dean had found her deeply intimidating.

"You're not going to write another article, are you?" She'd asked. "Trust me, everything that can be said, by this point, has been said."

"No, no." Dean had shaken his head, raising his hands. "I guess I'm just… trying to make sense of it."

"Oh honey," the librarian had said, her demeanor softening all at once. "Did you lose someone?"

Dean had thought about that. Yeah, Cas was lost, out there somewhere, and Dean was going to find him.

So he'd nodded.

She'd reached out and squeezed his arm.

"Well all of this can make for a heavy read, especially if you have a personal connection, so take breaks if you need to," she'd told him sagely. "We also have a few books in our collection that touch on the topic, I'll set them aside for you at the front desk. Let me know if you need anything else."

She'd gone back to her post at the front desk, and Dean had turned to the newspaper she had picked out for him. The title, in massive print across the top of the page had proclaimed: TWENTY THREE DEAD IN CULT KILLING, SURVIVORS UNACCOUNTED FOR, WHERE HAVE THE CHILDREN OF THE SACRED HEART GONE?

Over a month later, Dean smoothed out the copy of the article he'd been able to make with the librarian's help. 

It detailed the aftermath of a gruesome massacre that took place at what was thought to be a peaceful commune outside of Pontiac in '89. Police had been alerted to the incident when the only confirmed survivor, a fifteen year old boy, had wandered into town, caked with mud and blood. He'd been recognized as one of the Children of the Sacred Heart, and police were sent out to investigate.

They'd found approximately half the congregation, including its presumed leader, torn apart in the church at the center of their compound. Six more dead were uncovered, buried behind the building, their throats slit. Later investigations uncovered more graves, bumping the total number of dead up to thirty-one. Whether those deaths could be attributed to foul play, or the congregation had simply chosen to bury their dead close to home was difficult to determine.

But the reporting at the time had been twenty-three dead: seventeen in the church, six in the ground.

An unknown number of other members in the wind.

Because there were more than just twenty four members of the Children of the Sacred Heart. Exactly how many was difficult to determine, as the community kept to itself and it was clear that not all members had contact with the nearby town, let alone regular contact. It was estimated that between twenty and thirty individuals had fled the site of the massacre, whereabouts unknown.

Dean had about thirteen of their names, written down in a little notebook.

It was undeniable that the Children of the Sacred Heart were part of Cas' mission, maybe the source of it. Not just because the name of the man who'd headed the cult was the first one crossed off on Cas' list. Or because the shocking half page spread of the scene inside the church featured the smears of symbols on the walls, just distinct enough for Dean to be certain that they were the same as the ones he'd seen in that shack in California.

No, the most damning evidence was the other photo, much smaller, towards the middle of the article. The photo of the boy who'd stumbled into town looking for help, the only survivor that had ever actually turned up.

Wrapped in a shiny foil shock blanket, wide blank eyes staring out of a filthy face, straight into the camera, like he could look out of the page and straight into your soul. Even two decades younger, in faded newsprint, Dean recognized him instantly.

The text underneath proclaimed him James Novak, but Dean knew it was Cas in that photo.

He traced his fingers over it, looking into that young, shell-shocked face.

He'd only been fifteen, suddenly and devastatingly alone. And whatever had happened in that church, Cas had made it his mission to do something about it. He'd run away, to try to confront it on his own.

Dean wasn't going to let him do that anymore.

Just as soon as he figured out how to find him.

Dean sighed, tossing the three newspapers he'd picked up on the hunt for coffee onto his bed and sitting down next to them.

Pontiac hadn't turned up any leads from this decade. As far as anyone knew, "James Novak" had got up and wandered off one day, a year after he'd wandered into town. Presumably to the same place all the other cultists ended up. 

No one looked for him too hard. 

Officially, his paper thin missing person's case had been resolved only a few months later, when he turned up in the foster care system in Vermont. They'd elected to place him within the state, rather than ship him back to the town where everyone he knew and cared about had died. He'd aged out of the system a little over a year later, and didn't turn up again until Dean managed to find business records for his P.I. office, registered to one Castiel Smith.

Dean had laughed for the first time in weeks, when he'd seen that name.

But six years ago, Castiel Smith, P. I. packed up shop and went off the grid entirely, and that was where the trail of Cas' history ended.

Knocking back the last of his coffee, Dean picked up the first of his newspapers to scan through it for cases. If he didn't find anything more local, he'd head to the library and spend an hour or two browsing the internet looking for something further out. 

He tossed the coffee cup into the garbage at the far corner of the room. He was braced for disappointment, but he didn't intend to give up yet. He didn't know why Cas had become so important to him, but he was, and he wasn't planning to give up until he found him again.

It was about a twenty hour drive from Cornville, Arizona to Seattle Washington if you pushed straight through. Dean had done drives that long in a stretch before, but not without chemical assistance. He split it into two ten hour days instead.

When he was nearing the end of the first stretch, just passing through Salt Lake City, his tired mind informed him that if he headed west, he could spend the next day's ten hours making the journey to Palo Alto, instead.

The thought rattled him, and he found himself searching for his phone, his hand settling on the shape in his pocket. He still checked to see if Sam called. He still thought about calling, himself.

He still had a way to contact Sam, at least.

He put his hand back on the steering wheel, his knuckles going white as he gripped it, keeping his eyes on the road. He could feel the possible route stretching away to the west, like an itch on his left shoulder.

He drove four hours past where he meant to stop, trying to shake the feeling, and had to spend the night sleeping on the side of the road when his eyes started to droop and the next rest stop was still hours ahead.

He woke with the vague impression that he'd sat in the car for hours, staring out at an endless, perfect blackness on all sides. Yet he felt well rested and alert, and the memory faded by the time he'd yawned his way upright.

The extra driving the night before- and waking up at the asscrack of dawn because the sunrise and his aching back had driven him from his rest- meant that he made it to Seattle just around noon, rather than later in the evening as he'd planned. He grabbed an overpriced coffee from a drive through to perk him up enough that he could start planning his first moves.

The case that brought him to Seattle seemed promising. Two disemboweled corpses found in a warehouse by the bay, with the article hinting at stranger details with an allusion to "remains from five other victims."

It was raining when he got to the city. Dean would take it as a good sign, but it was Seattle.

The nature of the case being what it was, Dean considered his approach carefully, before ultimately deciding he needed to pull out the big guns.

He dug his FBI badge out of the glove compartment. A second badge tumbled out when he grabbed it, and Dean stared at where it had landed on the floor. He picked it up, gingerly, pinching it closed, face down, before sliding it back into place.

He needed a shower, and to dig his monkey suit out of the trunk and try to beat the wrinkles out of it.

He drove until he found a motel with a vacancy sign, paid for two nights, and dropped his duffle at the end of the bed. He felt weary enough that even the lumpy, probably infested, mattress looked tempting, but the caffeine had him too wired to rest. 

And he had work to do, besides.

He pulled a beat up old police scanner out of the trunk and set it up on the nightstand before he set out to freshen up, listening to the chatter.

Fuzzy voices made up a constant background noise, and Dean kept half an ear out for important information as he shaved and watched his face. There was nothing he could do for the bags under his eyes, but that wasn't so out of place for an FBI agent. He couldn't imagine they slept much better than he did.

Monsters were one thing, people were crazy.

He stepped out of the bathroom, listening more intently as he dressed himself, eventually sitting on the bed with his shirt unbuttoned and his tie flung untied over his shoulders to take notes of what he heard. He was basically familiar with police codes, but they could vary regionally and he had to try to puzzle out some from context. He chewed on the pen in his hand as he looked over the broad sketch he was able to draw of police activity.

He'd made the drive in only a day and a half, in response to an article that was only a few hours old, and from the looks of things the information published had been fresh.

Fresher than the police would've liked, he'd bet. The news about the bodies hadn't been released through the proper channels, and the official statement in the article was "we cannot make a statement at this time."

On the scanner, it was clear they were out in force, sweeping the area around the crime scene in search of leads. Of course, no one was casually dropping the address where the bodies were found in conversation. They all already knew where the crime scene was, and life didn't make things that easy for Dean.

He could probably figure out a general area with a map and some careful attention to the street names being flung back and forth over the radio. It wouldn't be that hard to narrow down once he had a general area. He could stroll up, flash a badge and gain access, be in and out before anyone thought to call it in and ask who he was and if he was supposed to be there.

The question was if that was the play. It would get him in and out fast, get him access to the crime scene and give him a chance to confirm if this was his kind of thing. Probably he'd be able to press whatever officers were on site for a few details before he had to get out. It would be the fastest way to find out if there was even a case here.

It would also be the fastest way to burn the FBI ruse and get caught out as a suspicious character. Which would make the rest of his investigation, if there was a case here, a lot harder. With the cops on high alert, he'd have to split his attention between dodging them and chasing down leads.

On the other hand, if he went down to the precinct that had jurisdiction and conned his way into getting official access to the case, he'd have more access and a strong chance of cementing his involvement with the ongoing police investigation, but that was only if he could pull it off.

Dean fell back onto the bed, staring at the water damaged ceiling, listening to the patter of the rain on the roof. Was it leaking through? Spreading the patch of damp and mold underneath the cracking paint furthur? Or was that stain a memento of a burst pipe, not the ongoing war of attrition between a poorly maintained roof and bad weather?

He shut eyes, trying to pull his sleep-deprived brain back into gear.

The problem was the FBI ruse worked best when you had someone who could play bureaucrat on the other end of a phone. Throwing your weight around as a fake fed could buy you some time and cooperation with a small town cop who was desperate for any help, but the fact was there were actual procedures for calling the FBI in, and with a high profile, grizzly crime like this people would be on edge, suspicious. Especially considering there'd already been a probable information leak.

Cases like this made cops jittery, and that could be bad news for Dean, they'd want to move fast, and while that could mean being too caught up in the hunt to sniff out Dean's bullshit, the increased scrutiny meant pressure to do things right as much as fast.

Of course, they were cops , "right" generally meant picking up the first guy they could pin anything on just so they could put a bow on the case and move on. A shifty stranger trying to insert himself into the investigation was a dangerous thing to be, under the circumstances.

Dean opened his eyes and raised his notebook over his head, staring at the name he'd jotted down, Captain Boyd. 

The radio wasn't the place for idle chatter, but more than one person had made passing comments about the Captain, and what he would or wouldn't think about this or that. It was the same name from the article, the curt statement about being unable to comment.

The underlying anxiety was self-evident, the broad strokes of the character outlined in offhand comments during perfunctory radio exchanges. Captain Boyd ran a tight ship, Captain Boyd wanted this case wrapped up quickly, fuck this up and there'd be hell to pay with Captain Boyd.

"So you gonna work with me," Dean asked the underlined name on the note paper. "Or against me?"

Tiptaptiptaptip went the rain on the roof, Dean shifted on the bed and another piece of notepaper crinkled in his pocket.

He pulled himself upright, tying his tie and heading out to brave the weather.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Captain Boyd." The officer at the desk darted a glance up to Dean, distracted by the phone he was balancing on his shoulder. He was obviously busy, but he was also one of the few people in the hectic bustle stationary enough to corner.

"I don't know, her office, maybe?" He said, shortly, his mouth a slash of irritation. "She's probably not there and she's probably busy."

"Right," Dean said. "Well I need to talk to her, how-" 

"So does everyone," the officer snapped. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

Dean flipped open his forged badge, a thin smile on his face.

"FBI," he folded the badge closed again, pleased when the officer sat up straighter, his phone call forgotten. "And I'd like to talk to your boss, if you can spare a minute, I mean."

The officer flushed at Dean's flippant sarcasm, opening his mouth to reply.

"I didn't call you in." The voice came from over Dean's shoulder, sharp and suspicious. Dean turned with a polite smile already offered up.

"No ma'am," he said. "I've got an alert for anything that comes through our system with a certain set of characteristics. I believe the bodies you found might be related to an active case I'm pursuing." 

Captain Boyd was a woman in her fifties, heavy-set with short graying hair. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest and eyed Dean with unmistakable skepticism.

"Give me the number of your supervisor." The first words out of her mouth were exactly the ones Dean had been dreading to hear. Dean failed to conceal a wince.

"Uh, ma'am-"

"Captain," she corrected, frostily.

"Captain," Dean repeated. "Technically speaking, I might not be here in an official capacity-"

"Well then you can see yourself out," Captain Boyd informed him. "I haven't made any request for federal assistance on this case, and I don't have time to speak to you in an unofficial capacity. Lloyd, do you have anything for me, yet?"

This last, she directed to the officer and his half-abandoned phone call. He jolted at being addressed, his mouth gaping open and closed like a dying fish.

"Uh no- Captain- I was just-"

"Well then keep working those phones until you do, now where the hell-"

"Captain Boyd," Dean interrupted, stepping forward when it looked like she might leave. "Look, I'm sorry, I understand the kind of position you're in, but this case-"

Her eyes were hard and uncompromising, Dean lowered his voice, trying to meet her stoicism with sincerity, just a little bit of vulnerability.

"If this is what I think it is, it's personal, for me," he said. "That's why I'm here, I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes, I just want to help, if I can."

"This isn't about who gets the case or who gets the credit," she told him. "If you come back in here and offer me federal resources in an official capacity I will roll out the red carpet for you myself. This is about the fact that I've got seven dead bodies to account for and the media breathing down my neck to get answers. There is no cutting corners here, we're doing this one right."

She looked him up and down and snorted.

"And thank you but I don't need some wet behind the ears kid who thinks he's hot shit going off half cocked based on a wild theory or a personal grudge." She shook her head. "We've got procedures for cooperation between state and federal law enforcement, come back when you've got your paperwork in order, then we can talk."

Captain Boyd turned away, and Dean felt his window of opportunity closing. His heart picked up in his chest and he clenched his fists.

He lurched forward after her, ungainly, desperate.

"Can you just tell me-" She paused, looking back at him with clear exasperation. "The wounds- were they self-inflicted?"

Captain Boyd froze, her eyes widening a fraction.

"How the hell…" She hissed.

"They were, weren't they?" Dean asked, an inappropriate giddiness rising in his chest. This was it. "Shit, this is actually… Shit ."

Captain Boyd looked around sharply, then grabbed Dean by the elbow, not harsh but firm, and pulled him slightly away from the constant noise and movement of the open areas of the precinct.

"Tell me what you know," she ordered him firmly. "The FBI has a file on this? You've seen it before?"

Dean opened his mouth, hesitating as he considered the best play to get more information. The Captain's eyes narrowed at once, too shrewd not to pick up on it.

"You don't have a damn thing, do you?" She asked. "There's no official investigation, this is just your pet theory."

"It's a pattern I've noticed," Dean said, defensiveness not at all feigned. Less a pattern and more the scraps of someone else's investigation. "There's something there, I know it."

"But you don't have any proof." She shook her head. "So much for federal resources."

"I don't have any proof, yet ." And he would never have access to any federal resources, but Dean could help her where a real FBI agent definitely couldn't. "There's a group, a cult, I think. The disembowelments, the extreme self-harm… Strange symbols."

He was watching her for her reaction, and was rewarded when her eyes widened a fraction. She looked away, rubbing her chin with a quiet curse.

"Listen, Agent…"

"Shannon, Agent Shannon." 

"Alright-" She started with a sigh, only to be interrupted.

"Captain." A woman with strawberry blonde hair and a crisp white button up made her way over, her posture apologetic. "There's a report from the medical examiner that he wants you to see right away and a phone call in your office. And Mrs. Chandy is here again."

The Captain closed her eyes briefly, looking like she was a moment away from breakdown.

"Have one of the uniformed Officers talk to Mrs. Chandy," she ordered. "I'll deal with the rest in a minute."

"Sir," the woman said, her face twisted in discomfort. "It's the commissioner again, on the phone."

Captain Boyd swore under her breath.

"I'll be right over," she said, digging in her pockets, pulling out a pen and a business card. She scrawled something on the back. "Agent Shannon, you're going to meet me at this address. Do not approach or try to enter until I get there, you will be arrested for trespassing on an active crime scene and I won't help you. And don't flash your badge around again, until you're on this case with official say-so you're a civilian consultant and that's it."

Dean took the card from her, his eyebrows raised.

"Well?" She snapped. "Get moving!"

"Yes ma'am- sir- Captain," Dean gave a half salute and hastened to the exit, his face splitting in a grin.

Captain Boyd sighed explosively, muttering something again about wet behind the ears kids that Dean half-heard and half took exception to.

"Expect me in half an hour," she called after him, adding in a bitter mutter. "Once I'm done putting out fires."

Dean waved over his shoulder, examining the address on the piece of paper as he ducked out the door, spinning to the side to avoid another set of officers coming in in their dampened rain gear. 

He dashed to his car to avoid being soaked by the rain that was falling heavier by the hour. The sky roiled with thick grey clouds that seemed overburdened even as they unleashed their deluge on the city below. 

The city milled with life around him, people and cars carrying on in their journeys, unhampered by the miserable weather.

Ensconced safely in Baby, the rain nothing more than a gentle, familiar percussion on her roof, Dean set off after his first lead.

Dean sat in the Impala for an hour, sipping on a coffee he'd picked up on the way to the warehouse where the bodies had been found. Half because he needed the pick-me-up, and half because he anticipated the wait. He idly considered trying to get into the crime scene on his own as he watched the play of water on Baby's windshield, distorting the image of the street beyond. He bet he had better odds of pulling a fast one on the officer stationed to keep people out than Boyd gave him. He was also pretty sure if he pulled it off, the Captain's first act when she found him past the yellow tape would be to fire whoever let him in. Which would be funny enough that he seriously considered going for it, but her next act would probably be to arrest him on principle.

He'd be better off with her on his side.

Just when he was reconsidering the odds for the fiftieth time, a grey sedan pulled up, and a recognizable figure stepped out into the rain. Dean followed her example, getting out of the car and approaching in long strides.

Captain Boyd's dress uniform was covered in a smart gray raincoat, she gave him a brief once over as he approached.

"Carry an umbrella," she ordered him by way of greeting.

Dean pulled up short. "I don't have one."

She snorted. "You're in Seattle."

"You don't have one either!" Dean protested.

"I have a raincoat," she said, striding towards the warehouse. She ducked under the caution tape around the perimeter with no more than a nod to the damp, miserable officer stationed outside, and Dean followed.

The space inside was big and open, dim and dingy. Trash was scattered across the floor, fast food wrappers, broken glass and needles, as well as a few pieces of scrap metal and plywood: forgotten industrial waste. Graffiti covered the walls all the way up to the ceiling that loomed overhead, bare and unlit.

The dirt and garbage on the ground was disturbed by countless footprints from investigating officers and forensics teams, the majority centered around an area just off the western wall, where little numbered yellow tags dotted the ground.

Dean glanced at Captain Boyd before he started his cautious approach. She stood with her hands in her coat pockets, watching him placidly.

Seven tags marked out rust red stains on the cement floor, forming an irregular circle. More lay scattered haphazard in the area around the bloodstains, cataloging bloody footprints that shuffled away from the site of the massacre.

It was the center of the circle that drew Dean's attention. The black ink drawing on the ground wasn't anything he specifically recalled from that mural on the cabin wall. The central figure wasn't present, and he hadn't been able to recall any individual sigils with any certainty. Nonetheless, his heart pounded at the sight. His hand drifted to his pants pocket where his notepaper rested, but he didn't take it out.

This was it, he knew it. He could feel it.

He crouched at the edge of the circle, staring at the lines of ink, etched like cracks into the concrete. He reached out a hand, before remembering himself, leaving it hovering outstretched over the intricate weave of lines.

For a moment, he could have sworn they twisted, reaching back for him.

He blinked away the image, standing with a shake of his head.

He cleared his throat.

"The report I read said there were two bodies," he pointed out.

"We only found two bodies," Captain Boyd told him, nonchalant. "Two intact bodies."

"And the rest?" Dean asked, gesturing to the five other bloodstains.

Captain Boyd didn't answer right away, Dean turned back, looking at her over his shoulder. She kept her distance, staring at the circle with a faintly queasy expression on her face. An odd thing, on a woman as hard and sharp as she was.

"Organs," she told him. "Piles of organs, and enough blood that we know whoever they belonged to died here."

"So it wasn't two disembowelments, it was seven." Dean turned to study the bloodstains again.

"Two failed, five successful, from the looks of it." Dean glanced back at the Captain, she shrugged. "The bodies we recovered still had some of their organs attached. It might be why they were left behind, the removal wasn't successfully completed. The perpetrators may have been interrupted."

"You said the wounds were self-inflicted." Dean raised an eyebrow.

Captain Boyd huffed, looking away.

"Evidence does suggest that," she said, neutrally.

"But you don't think so?" Dean prodded. He turned back towards her fully, shivering as he put his back to the circle on the floor. Something like the promise of cool softness hovered just over his shoulders, waiting to drape down onto him.

Captain Boyd stood silent, her lips pursed. She shook her head slightly.

"Each of the victims had some of their own flesh under their fingernails," she admitted. "One lost a fingernail in her own stomach cavity. They dug into themselves and they dug deep, I can't deny that."

She fixed Dean with a piercing look.

"But I also know that they each succumbed to their injuries before they could finish what they started," she told him. "A human being can't pull out their own organs with their bare hands. They'd succumb to shock and blood loss. It's just not possible. Someone must have finished the job on the other five bodies, before they moved them."

"And the forensic evidence supports that?" Dean asked, lightly.

Captain Boyd scowled at him.

"There's no indication that any other tools were used to remove the additional sets of organs," she told him firmly. "But there's nothing to dispute that another person or persons were involved. And we know they were here, someone had to move the bodies."

She nodded to the meandering trails of bloody footprints. Dean noted a distinct absence of drag marks. He didn't bother to point it out, they'd probably already had some forensic analyst go through and recreate the comings and goings out of the pictures drawn in blood. She already knew these people hadn't left with bodies, but that didn't mean she'd accepted it.

"How many sets?" He asked instead, tracing the path of the clearest footprints with his eyes. They shuffled and meandered towards the door before fading out into occasional scuffs.

"At least three that we can positively identify," she said. "Probably more."

Definitely more. Dean wagered there were five sets exactly.

"IDs on the victims?" He glanced one last time to the circle before he moved away from the kill site, sweeping his eyes up and down for anything that may have been missed.

"On the ones that are mostly intact?" She snorted. "Just the one so far. Guy was a junkie who'd been picked up dozens of times. We recognized him, had next of kin come in to confirm. We're running fingerprints on the woman, the rest… We'll have to hope there's a hit off the DNA, for now."

"A drug addict and a Jane Doe?" Dean asked, crouching down and scanning the ground for anything out of place. Nothing in the detritus caught his eye.

"Yeah, Jane Doe with a pickled liver. Theory was they may have been on something, at first. It would explain how they could keep going through the pain." She shook her head. "Toxicology report came back clean for both of them, and there's no signs she ever used anything harder than alcohol."

"So they were sober and clear-headed," Dean mused, rising to his feet.

"Sober, maybe," Captain Boyd said, eyeing him skeptically. "So? It fit with your theory, Agent Shannon?"

"I think so," he said. "Those symbols, I've seen them before, the style at least…"

Captain Boyd glanced behind him and shuddered, then pulled a face.

"I don't know what it is," she said. "They don't sit right with me. Hell if I know why."

"Really?" Dean asked, not surprised, precisely…

He turned to look at the symbols. They had a presence, certainly, he could see how it would be unsettling. But the disquiet emerged from how they pulled you in, drew you towards them before you realized what was happening. Captain Boyd looked like she couldn't make herself go closer.

"I'm not a superstitious woman," she told him. "But this case…"

She shook herself, straightening and fixing him with a hard look, vulnerability pushed to the side.

"Now it's your turn," she informed him. "Tell me what you know, you said this was a group? A cult?"

Dean took a few steps away, casting his eyes up to the ceiling, examining the rafters as he considered his response.

How much could he reveal to her? He needed to give her something concrete if he wanted her to do anything other than chase him out of town, but every detail was something she could pick apart and reveal him as a fraud. Or worse, it might lead her down a path towards the real truth.

How would an FBI agent have started to put this together? The problem wasn't just figuring out what to say and what to leave out, it was that Dean hadn't put the pieces together. He didn't have the full picture, just scraps, all coming from and leading back to…

"Have you ever heard of James Novak?" His mouth moved before he could think better of himself, and he slammed it shut with a click, grimacing.

"No," Captain Boyd said, her expression keen with interest. "Who is he?"

Dean hesitated, weighing the risks of honesty, but it was too late now.

"He was the only survivor of a cult massacre in Illinois, about twenty years ago. The only confirmed survivor," he amended. "Twenty-three people turned up dead at a compound, the other members were all in the wind, never resurfaced. Except this kid who got left behind. Then he disappeared too, a few years later."

Captain Boyd waited quietly for him to continue.

"I think I met him," Dean admitted. "He helped me out on a case, a lot like this one. Two girls, with their guts carved out. It wasn't self-inflicted there. We caught the person responsible, but there were things that didn't add up. Symbols on the wall where the girls were killed. They predated the murders by long enough they got written off as irrelevant, but…"

Dean shook his head.

"I got this idea in my head, and I went looking, it led me back to the massacre in Illinois and that led me back to James."

"This Novak character," Captain Boyd asked, considering. "You think he's involved?"

"No!" Dean said, too quickly. He cleared his throat. "No, I think…"

Dean turned and looked back at the symbols on the ground, the way they seemed to drink in the light around them. They darkened the already dim warehouse, rendering the corners darker and the shadows longer.

"I think he went out looking for answers about what happened to him," Dean said. "I think he found something, and he's following its trail. I'm just following him."

Dean couldn't bring himself to look at the captain, drawing his shoulders in, feeling oddly vulnerable once the statement had been spoken.

Captain Boyd sighed gustily.

"So that's it," she said. "A half baked theory and one man who may not even be involved."

Dean opened his mouth to protest, but the Captain was looking at the bloodstained magic circle, her expression distant.

"The junkie," she said after a long moment. "David, his name was David. We must have picked him up a dozen times. Sent him away once or twice for possession or petty theft, but mostly just held him overnight, shuffled him along when he was being disruptive."

She paused again, shaking her head slowly before she finally looked back at him.

"We never helped him," she told him. "A drug addict and an alcoholic, turning up dead. If it weren't so bloody, if there weren't five other missing bodies, no one would care. You say this is a cult? Well cults prey on vulnerable people. Those DNA tests we're running on the organs, they're only going to turn anything up if they've been through the system. And they're going to, I know it. They're all going to be people we didn't help."

Dean bit his tongue. He didn't have any illusions about how useful or helpful the police could be on their best day. There wasn't anything to gain by pointing it out.

"Our job isn't to help people," she said bitterly. "You go into this thinking you can make a difference, but you only get ahead by playing the game, and then…"

She sighed again, closing her eyes.

"You can run your investigation, I'm not gonna stop you," she said. "Maybe you'll actually be able to get somewhere."

She turned and fixed him with a stern look.

"If this comes down on you then I didn't know a thing about it." She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, handing it over to him. "Put your number in there, I might call."

Dean did so silently, handing the phone back.

She scrutinized him for another long moment before she turned her way, shaking her head.

"Come on," she headed for the exit, jerking her head to indicate he should follow. "You've spent enough time where you shouldn't be, and I have to get back to work."

"Right," Dean said, casting one last long look at the curling, beautiful symbols on the ground before he followed her out into the rain.

They split ways without another word as soon as they crossed back over the crime scene tape. Dean walked back to the Impala, mulling over what he'd learned. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and he stood for a moment at the door of his car, watching the Captain drive away in her practical grey car.

She seemed weighed down by disillusionment, exhaustion. He wondered if that was just the result of being confronted by something she couldn't account for or understand, or if it was the ultimate culmination of the life and career she had led. What did it take to work your way up to police captain? And did any of it amount to anything good, or even decent?

Somehow, Dean doubted it.

Across the street, in a narrow alley between two solid grey buildings, Dean caught a sudden flash of movement.

He straightened, musings abandoned, and stepped away from his car. He glanced back towards the warehouse, but the cop they'd met on the way in was out of sight. Good.

Dean strode quickly across the road, his hand drifting to his gun. He assessed the narrow mouth of the alley carefully as he entered. Haphazardly strewn trash bags created irregular mounds that made the already cramped space even narrower. The rain taptaptaped away on the refuse and gathered in shiny oil-slick puddles on the concrete.

Dean continued forward, eyes scanning for anything out of place. It could have been nothing, a raccoon, a bit of trash caught by the wind, just a human looky-loo-

A shape slammed him into the wall to his left, pressing his face into the damp brickwork. He struggled, scrambling for his gun, but his wrist was taken in an iron grip, his arm twisted behind his back as his attacker leaned all their weight on him, driving the breath from his lungs.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Dean wheezed, craning his neck around in an attempt to see out of the corner of his eye. "Hello to you too, Cas."

"Why are you here?" Cas growled, his breath brushing the back of Dean's neck and raising the hair there. Dean shuddered, and Cas pressed in harder. 

Dean gasped, a pained sound, his eyes watered and he bit his lip to keep from crying out.

Cas pushed off of him with a noise of disgust and stumbled back.

"You shouldn't be here," he snapped. "You need to leave, now. "

Dean brushed himself off, straightening his tie as he turned around.

"To answer your first two questions," he said, once he caught his breath. "I found a case, and I'm working it."

"You need to-"

"Leave, I heard you," Dean interrupted. "You can keep saying it, it's not gonna make it happen."

Cas ran a hand through his hair. It was wet, clinging to his forehead, the shoulders of his trenchcoat were damp. 

Dean had never seen him so agitated, his face was flushed and his eyes were bright and sharp, his movements jerky.

"Dean, I told you last time-" He stepped in closer again, staring Dean down.

Dean reached out and shoved him back, it was like shoving a brick wall. Cas stopped with the impact, but he didn't sway back, and the hit jarred up Dean's arms, making him grunt.

"And I told you," he said. "I know what I'm doing."

"No you don't!" Cas snapped. "You have no idea what you're dealing with!"

"You sure about that?" Dean challenged. "I told you I've been doing this since I was four years old, you want to make a bet that there's something I haven't seen?"

"I don't need to bet," Cas told him darkly. "I know. "

"I've gone up against werewolves, vampires and ghosts, I've tangled with rougarous and hellhounds, shifters and zombies," Dean softened, slightly, searching Cas' face for a sign of understanding. "I've killed demons, Cas. Come on, tell me what it is you're so scared of?"

Cas watched him, his eyes hollow, he looked away, shaking his head.

"And what about a God, Dean?" He asked. "Is that something you're prepared to confront?"

"Can and have," Dean said, Cas' eyes snapped to his, sharp and intense. "There was a pagan god taking sacrifices in Indiana, my dad found it, and we killed it."

Cas barked a laugh, a harsh, painful sound. It wasn't the kind of laugh Dean wanted to hear out of him.

He looked away, the angles of his face sharp in profile. A drop of water ran from his forehead down the side of his nose, and pooled above his lips. Dean had a momentary vision of him submerged, floating. Peaceful and whole in dark water.

He blinked, the fleeting impression vanishing.

"That's not a God," Cas shook his head. "Not the kind I know."

"Cas-" Dean protested, but Cas took a step back, still shaking his head.

"No, Dean, you need to get out of town," he ordered. "I can't guarantee that they haven't noticed you yet, I don't know if they're watching. Even talking to you right now is a risk."

"Who?" Dean demanded. "Cas, who are you trying to protect me from?"

"There were two bodies in that warehouse, Dean." Cas looked at him, grim. "Where do you think the others are?"

Dean stared back, swallowing heavily. He had a guess.

Cas scoffed, turning and making a sharp gesture back to the warehouse.

"What happened in there was a ritual, Dean," he said. "It was a show of devotion. Two of them failed, the rest succeeded."

Cas' gaze weighed heavy on Dean, his eyes so dark they looked almost black.

"They did it to themselves. The police told you that, didn't they?" Cas asked. "They reached into their guts, and they tore them out. They did that to themselves. "

He took a step back, but his eyes never left Dean.

"What do you think they'll do to you?"

He turned away, his shoulders hunched.

"Cas," Dean said, finding his voice at last. "I can help ."

"Just go, Dean," he pleaded, turning his head to look back over his shoulder, just slightly. "I can't protect you."

Dean saw that his fists were clenched, his back a line of tension.

"I can't protect anyone," he said, quietly enough that Dean wasn't sure he'd been meant to hear.

He walked back down the alley, turning the corner with a swish of his coat, and was gone.

Dean stood stuck in place for a long moment afterwards, his throat locked tight. The rain, light as it was, began to soak through his jacket.

Eventually he trudged back to the car, the energy of discovery fleeing him, and leaving room for his hollow bones to be filled with leaden exhaustion.

He drove back to the motel, mind churning sluggishly and his eyes unfocused, the other cars blurs on the road. By the time he reached his motel door, it felt as though his vision had tunneled, his thoughts unable to focus on anything but bed, the promise of sleep.

Still, he paused, looking up from where he fit the key in the lock. The damp parking lot stretched around him, empty but for a handful of cars, a few passers-by who payed him no mind. He looked them each over in turn, then cast his attention out further, scanning the storefronts across the street.

Nothing but the rain, and the slow-churning but ceaseless life of the city.

Dean shook his head, his skin prickling with unease, and let himself into the relative safety of the motel room.

Cas spoke as though danger lurked around every corner, maybe it was true.

Either it hadn't found Dean yet, or he just didn't know how to spot it.

He pushed the dark thought aside, his head aching and anxiety churning in his gut. His limbs felt too heavy for the shower, so he simply stripped and dried himself off with a towel that was still somewhat damp from his earlier shower, falling into bed cold and carrying a fine film of whatever residue lurked in the Seattle rain.

Half asleep as soon as he was horizontal, he managed to roll over and cast his arm over the side of the bed, flailing until he caught the waistband of his discarded pants. He dragged them up so he could dig through the pockets, fishing out the notepaper with the figure from the mural drawn on it so he could stuff it under the pillow. 

He slept better when he kept Her close.

A pit opened up under the city. 

It started with the warehouse, concrete floor cracking and crumbling down into a bottomless chasm of pitch black nothing. The beams and supports buckled as the foundation crumbled away, and with a groan the structure collapsed and tumbled down.

But the pit wasn't satisfied, it continued to spread.

The ground cracked and gave way, the edge of the pit expanding outwards, opening up the earth and consuming everything on the surface.

Buildings creaked and tipped as the support was cut from beneath them, little suburban houses, grey concrete blocks and shining glass skyscrapers alike all breaking and collapsing as they fell and fell and fell. Cars that sped away from the hungry void couldn't overcome the way the ground pitched upwards, the once flat streets pulled into hills by some strange gravity. They rolled backwards towards the edge, momentum lost. People fared even worse, tripping on uneven cracking concrete and scrambling over rubble as the ground gave way. Though they tried to flee, they couldn't outrun the empty dark.

Dean alone walked towards the edge. 

He picked his way down the buckling incline that cracked and split down towards the pit. The edge came to meet him, pieces of concrete and asphalt falling away in big, irregular sections into the emptiness below. Dean's heart beat in even, regular, thuds as the edge came nearer. As buildings to either side of him tilted and fell.

He saw the void, heard it call for him.

Finally, he stepped out onto the last precarious shard that jutted out over the abyss, ready for it to give way beneath his feet…

But he did not fall.

The ground continued to crumble around him, the edge moving past, consuming the city, until everything had fallen away, and he stood on the lone island of concrete, stuck stubbornly unmoored above the void.

The last piece of the city sat impossibly pinned in place, and Dean's feet stayed pinned to it.

No matter what he tried, he couldn't step over the edge on his own. 

He remained stuck, floating above the nothingness, as everything else fell away.

Dean woke up in a worse mood than when he went to sleep.

Early morning found him sitting in his car brooding over McDonald's coffee and a breakfast sandwich made with rubbery eggs.

He'd made progress yesterday, but he still didn't have a clear path forward for his investigation.

Cas was here , he was on the right track, but he'd rejected Dean again. 

He would keep doing so until Dean proved himself, which meant that now Dean was racing against the clock. He couldn't just solve the case, he had to solve it before Cas, he needed to be the one to save him , for once.

Which meant he couldn't sit around idly and wait for one sympathetic police captain to come through for him, he needed to chase down his own leads.

But while yesterday's conversation had given Dean a lot of insight for developing his own theory of what had happened in that warehouse, it didn't leave him with a lot of concrete facts. Only one identified victim, and all Dean actually had on him was a first name.

He crumpled up the foil wrapper of his sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. He wondered if Captain Boyd's theory about the victims being vulnerable people would pan out. He thought about the last time he saw Cas, the werewolf who'd been attacking homeless people because he knew no one would look for them.

Hadn't there been a flier for a church group in Cas' chaotic mess of notes? Something about exploitation of vulnerable people… He tapped on the steering wheel.

If he was right and what Cas was chasing was some kind of cult, possibly even the survivors of the Children of the Sacred Heart… Maybe they selected their recruits the same way the werewolf in Sioux City selected his victims. Desperate people, people who didn't have anything else, who could be offered a hand up in exchange for loyalty, for worship. Of what? Some kind of Dark God?

Cas had scoffed at Dean's story about the Vanir. So maybe this was something older, stronger.

The symbols that Dean had encountered… They definitely held some sort of power. You could feel it, just looking at them. Whatever they represented must, too. Power to affect the world, to influence worshippers, to grant abilities to its followers.

But if it was at all like the Vanir, even if it vastly outstripped it in power, then it still needed followers to do its bidding.

Dean turned over the fledgling theory in his mind, that the five missing corpses were up and walking around. Was it possible? Cas had said "Imagine what they'll do to you" as though the people who had torn out their guts in that warehouse were still a tangible threat, but he could have been speaking more broadly. "They" might have just been other members of the cult, who hadn't decided to off themselves in the name of whatever it was they worshiped, but somehow Dean doubted it.

Maybe it had been a more traditional sacrifice, seven saps duped into giving their lives for the cause in the most messy, brutal way possible. Maybe Captain Boyd was right, and two of the bodies had been left behind because the people carrying out the ritual had been interrupted in the middle of moving them. Dean imagined it was an attractive thought for the police, if the killer or killers had been interrupted, that meant that there could be a witness out there who could break the case wide open.

Somehow, Dean doubted it.

So take the other possibility. Seven people had gone into that warehouse to complete a ritual that involved pulling out their own guts, two had failed.

The other five, successful, had got up and walked away.

Dean shivered, staring unseeing out of the windshield. It was raining again today.

If that was the case, they might not turn up as missing persons, even if there was someone to miss them. They could have left that warehouse and gone back to their regular lives. Walking around hollow and vacant, biding their time.

If that was the case, it made canvasing more vital and more dangerous. He needed to find the communities these people might have been a part of, look for people who had started behaving strangely in the past weeks or days.

At the same time there was a very real risk that anyone he talked to could be one of them, these worshippers, whatever you called them.

Maybe that was the danger Cas had been warning about, but Dean was no stranger to dealing with monsters that could pass for human.

Dean started the car, wondering if he would know them to see them. Would there be something in their eyes, their expression, that told him they were walking around hollow inside?

Probably not, he thought, his chest giving a familiar, empty ache.

No one ever looked twice at Dean.

Dean didn't bother investigating as Agent Shannon. Aside from the fact that Captain Boyd had made it very clear that his investigation only had her blessing for as long as it remained thoroughly on the down low, the people he was seeking out weren't the kind to open up easily to cops of any kind. Fancy federal agent badge or not.

For once, Dean was most likely to blend in as himself. A down on his luck drifter living out of a motel didn't really need an excuse to be accessing community outreach programs. He was part of the intended clientele.

Dean spent the morning in line at the unemployment office, making stilted conversation with other supplicants as he filled out forms with bullshit information. He went to a community center and spent a while browsing through notice boards with flyers for support groups, AA meetings, food banks and charity drives in between the advertisements for classes and sports teams.

Every once in a while when someone else lingered in the area, he picked up a pamphlet and asked "Have you been to this? Is it any good?" Mostly he got mumbled negations and awkward noncommittal answers, but some people were eager to shell out advice and rambling stories about their own experiences. The people who reached out to him with invitations and promises, he watched closely, but the majority just seemed desperate for someone to talk to, more than they seemed to want something specific from him. 

Potential targets, rather than potential suspects. 

Eventually an employee tried to approach and offer him help, and he retreated.

Outside, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and cast about for anywhere it seemed people were gathering. He didn't have to go far, tucked around the side of the building, a group of three men were smoking cigarettes. Dean nodded at them on approach, digging through his pockets and then letting his shoulders slump.

"Hey, can I bum a cigarette?" He asked the guy standing nearest him.

The man looked dubious. His beard was graying and his face drawn. Dean put his hands in his pockets again and pulled out his wallet.

"I can give you a quarter for it," he offered.

The man shrugged, pulling out a pack and making the trade. Dean thanked him and pulled his lighter out of his pocket. 

Dean didn't smoke much, but he'd indulged on enough occasions that he could avoid making a fool of himself.

"You guys hang around here a lot?" Dean asked after a few minutes.

The guy who'd sold him the cigarette shrugged again.

"We got a group in a few minutes," one of the other men, younger with shaggy brown hair, told him, grinning sharp and ragged. "This is to help us get through it."

"Yeah?" Dean asked. "What group, any good?"

"Anger management," he said. "Court ordered."

The quiet man with the beard snorted.

"Huh," said Dean, and lapsed into silence again.

"It's shit," the man with the beard said eventually.

"Yeah," said Dean. "They got groups that help with other stuff? Like alcohol and… drugs I guess."

"They're shit too," said the man with the beard.

"How do you know?" The kid with the knife-sharp smile ribbed him. "Like you've ever willingly set foot in an AA meeting. You should ask Petey, he knows all about that shit. You kicked your heroin habit yet Petey?"

"You know, as far as bad habits go, I think you running your mouth is gonna get you killed a lot faster than my smack," the last guy, Petey, said, knocking ash off the end of his cigarette.

The kid cackled, throwing his head back in a laugh.

"That'll be the day," he said. "Someone bashes my head in in the middle of the feelings circle. Do you think they'll keep coming back next week? Keep trying boys, maybe next time you'll get your temper under control."

"Jesus, kid." Petey shook his head. "Anyway, been clean for a couple months. I'm turning my life around. That's supposed to be the whole point of coming here.

"Sure," said the kid, still with that smile, joyless and smug. "There you have it, man, the services here are top notch, they pulled Petey right out of the gutter."

"Fuck you," Petey said, without much heat.

"Hey," Dean cut in, making eye contact with Petey- Peter, probably, he doubted the guy appreciated the nickname. He was solid and broad, with chin length hair and bags under his eyes. "Did you know a guy named David?"

Peter mulled it over.

"Skinny guy?" He asked. "Shit tattoos?"

"Yeah," Dean replied, although he had no idea. It might be the same David, it might not. He knew the guy probably frequented the general area if he was arrested and processed through the precinct often enough for the cops to know him on sight, but the West Precinct wasn't exactly small, either. "I knew him from a while back, he reached out a bit ago, said he was trying to get clean, but I haven't heard from him in a bit. I dunno, it's stupid."

Dean's jacket pocket crinkled with fliers he'd pulled off the notice board. Some of them seemed vague and overpromising in a way that pinged Dean's radar as suspicious, but he didn't know for sure. Maybe the cult was recruiting here, maybe it wasn't. 

"Sorry, man," Peter said. "Haven't heard from him in a while either. We were going to the same meetings for a bit, but he stopped showing."

"Oh," Dean said. He felt his frustration rise, a twisting snake of anger at himself for his aimless, haphazard investigation. He could feel time trickling away from him, he needed to move. Just as quickly, the feeling was snuffed out by exhaustion, edging on defeat.

He took another drag from his cigarette.

"Guess he fell off the wagon."

"Saw him a week ago." The bearded guy shook his head. "He got into Jesus shit, not back on drugs. Worse for you."

"He was going to church?" Dean asked, surprised.

"I guess," he shrugged. "Tried to get me to go to some meeting. Not my thing."

"Did he tell you where?" Dean prodded.

"You trying to find God, man?" The kid cut in. "I don't know if I'd recommend it, cause last I heard David's dead."

The other two men turned to look at him in surprise. Dean tried to keep the intrigue off his face. Luckily, he didn't have to be the one to press for more details.

"Shit," said Peter. "What happened?"

"What do you think?" The kid replied. "He was a junkie, he overdosed."

Dean frowned, uncertain. Was this a different David, or was it just a case of misinformation?

"Shame," grunted the bearded guy, dispassionately.

"So much for getting clean," the kid said, all bleak humour.

"So much for Jesus," the bearded guy quipped back.

"Fuck you guys," said Peter, without much heat. "You could stand to show a little respect."

"When do I ever?" Asked the kid, then he turned to Dean. "I'd say some people just can't hack it but really, who can? You wanna waste time on hope you go ahead, but we're all just spinning our wheels until we end up like David, and that's a fact."

He dropped the butt of his cigarette on the ground and ground it out under his heel.

"Jesus," Peter shook his head. "I'm going inside."

"Be a better walk away if I wasn't going that way too," the kid called after him, then turned his grin back on Dean. "Great talking to you man, really great. We should meet up sometime, talk about Jesus."

He laughed his way out of the alley, hyena sharp and raspy.

The old guy stayed and lit another cigarette.

"He always like that?" Dean asked.

"Yup," he said.

They lapsed into silence until Dean smoked his cigarette down to the filter. He stubbed it out and flicked it off onto the ground to join countless others.

"Thanks," he said.

He got another shrug for his trouble, and left to trudge back to the Impala.

Once inside Dean let his head fall back against the headrest with a sigh, his eyes falling closed. He felt heavy with exhaustion, but his bones itched with the frustration of a foiled hunt. The conversation had been as basically useless as all others today. If the David in question was one of the sacrifices, then all Dean really had was the confirmation he was meeting with somebody, somewhere.

Dragging himself back to attention, Dean pulled the collection of fliers and pamphlets he'd found most suspicious out of his jacket pockets. Only one of them was for a service that he could attend that day, a free dinner at a church, but Dean could at least check out the other two locations, first, see what he could find.

The first location, advertised in a poorly-formatted pamphlet that used so much vague, nonsense wellness jargon that Dean felt immediate suspicion, was a pretty clear and immediate bust. The little worn down office turned out to be a bland, official sort of building. Not shady so much as desperately underfunded. Dead made brief smalltalk with an elderly receptionist who beamed as she took credit for their advertising material. Dean put a fake phone number and email down on a sheet at her urging.

The next stop was another dead end. A rec center referenced in a plain typed flier that seemed deliberately light on details about the supposed "support group". A group that, according to the man at the front desk, no longer met at the center at all.

"They're not on the schedule," he told Dean with a bored shrug.

"Do you know if they've moved to a new location?" Dean asked, trying to tamp down on his frustration.

"I don't know if they're still meeting," the receptionist said. "A lot of the groups and courses we host here are for a limited number of weeks. I can give you an up to date list if you want?"

"Do you remember anything about the people who came to these meetings?" Dean pressed. "Did you notice anything strange?"

"Not really," the receptionist replied, eyeing him warily. "Is there some kind of problem? What exactly are you asking me?"

"Nothing, nevermind," Dean sighed, pulling back. It probably hadn't been anything anyway. "Thanks for your help."

Dean kicked the gravel outside the rec center, struggling to plot out his next move. An old man sat on a bench next to the entrance, while a handful of teenagers clustered by a bus stop a little further down the block. The rain had petered out sometime around noon, but clouds still roiled overhead, ready to unleash themselves at any time.

Without anything else to chase down for another few hours, Dean found himself loitering in the waiting room of a free clinic. It was crowded, and people were called up only very occasionally. Dean didn't put his name in or feign an ailment, knowing no one would really be paying him any attention. People coughed, moaned and muttered to themselves. Next to him, a teenager nursed a fabric wrapped hand, and across from him a young mother bounced a baby in her lap as he made little whimpering noises to indicate he was seriously considering bursting into tears.

Dean took them all in, trying to pluck out some picture of what a target for this group could look like, and drawing a blank. Most of them looked beaten down and miserable, none of them stood out as more vulnerable than anyone else.

The baby whined a little louder, and his mother shushed him.

"He sick?" Dean found himself asking, his voice came out a little raspy.

The mother looked up at him, smiling thinly, her eyes wary.

"It's just a cold, I think," she said, wiping her baby's runny nose with a tissue. He was a cherubic little thing- dark skin like his mom and a full head of curly hair- but his face was screwed up in distress. "But he can't sleep, which means I can't sleep."

"Yeah, I feel you." Dean smiled, his own expression weak as well. "My baby brother used to get sick all the time. Scrawny kid, never met a bug he couldn't catch. Used to keep me up all night moaning about it."

Kept him up all night worrying, really. Sam was quiet when he was sick, which meant Dean felt the need to stand over his bedside, just in case his breathing stopped in the night.

The mother laughed, awkward, and turned to angle her body slightly away. Dean took the hint, casting his gaze elsewhere. He scanned over the posters on the wall, glossy informative things that talked about sexual health and handwashing, as well as advised to patients that this was a zero tolerance zone for violence.

One caught his eye, though, a single piece of white printer paper, taped up by the door like an afterthought. Dean recognized the simple printed lines. He crossed the room to examine it.

It was the same poster from the community center, bare bones advertisement for a support group that met Wednesdays, everything identical.

Except for the address.

Dean checked the time, he still had an hour to kill before investigating the meal service. He pulled the poster off the wall and made his way out the door, standing to the side for the people just coming in.

His destination turned out to be a church across town from the one he was headed to that evening, the kind that was built like a grey concrete box and rented out their basement for community organizations.

"Oh, yes I think I recall them," A round, older church administrator told him, peering at the flier through her bifocals. "There was a support group that met here for a few Wednesdays a month or two ago, but it was incredibly short lived."

"Do you know where they meet now?" Dean asked, not particularly hopeful to receive a useful answer.

Predictably, the woman shook her head.

"No, if I'm honest I doubt they're still meeting at all, they seemed terribly disorganized." She told him. "I tried to tell the man in charge that he should book the space for a few months and establish a consistent presence, you know? People don't always show up right away, and it can take some time before they're willing to commit to coming back. Lord knows you have to let people do things in their own time. But he only booked a week or two and then stopped coming. We had to tell more than a few people wandering in Wednesday night that the time was reserved for a quilting club now. Of course, they got a few new members that way, so I suppose it all worked out."

"And why didn't he?" Dean asked, 

"Oh something about vetting people and keeping the group small." She waved her hand dismissively. "I'll tell you I think he had the wrong attitude for charitable work, it's meant for everybody. You're not building an exclusive club."

"Do you remember the man's name?"

The women squinted, pensive.

"M-something? Oh I don't know, it might be in a ledger somewhere, but I wouldn't count on it, I'm a terrible record keeper, if I'm honest," she said. "I can tell you, young man, if you're interested in talking to people who can support your self-betterment, you should look to the Church first. It's never too late to start coming to service, and we have bible study, and our own group meetings for people who are struggling. Talking about your problems is all well and good, but the first and best step is to give yourself over to a higher power."

"I'll keep that in mind, ma'am," Dean said. "Thanks for your help."

The woman looked at him over her glasses with the air of someone who knew full well her pitch had been rejected.

"Well, we'll be here when you're ready," she sniffed. "Have a good day, and God bless you."

"Yeah, sure," he said, shaking his head as he left, it was about time to check out the free dinner, and he wasn't exactly keen on hearing a lot more chatter like that.

It was a lot worse than he thought.

The price of the free meal was a sermon, one that Dean tried to force himself to pay attention to, to look for hints of anything hinky. There didn't seem to be anything in the droning speech other than the typical fire and brimstone nonsense, though, and Dean quickly found himself sinking down in his chair, eyes glazing over. What was that note Cas had written, something about typical Christian exploitation? He wondered how many terrible church groups Cas had attended, looking for leads on a predatory cult and getting tripped up by regular old Evangelism.

Across from him, a man about his age with a knit cap pulled low over his ears grinned at his expression of absolute boredom.

"Almost doesn't seem worth it, does it?" He whispered.

Dean snorted. There had been plenty of times he'd been desperate enough to do a lot of things for the chance at a hot meal, even sit through a mind numbing sermon. The fact that he planned to duck out before the actual reward of overcooked pasta was just the icing on the cake. 

He couldn't justify sticking around and taking a plate from someone who actually needed it when he still had thirty bucks in his wallet, not now that he was pretty sure he wasn't going to find anything here.

When finally they were allowed to get up and filter towards the front of the room to be served, Dean cut through the crowd to make his exit instead. Just to be thorough, he went out the back, casting disinterested eyes over storage rooms and offices, each as blandly mundane as the last.

Finally, he pushed out the back of the church, cutting through a gravel lot to make his way back to where he'd parked the Impala.

The light was fading now, the sun just peeking over the horizon, managing to paint the clouds pink and orange, transforming the abysmal gray day with a splash of colour at the very end.

As though to contradict the optimistic image, it started to drizzle again the moment Dean stepped outside. He pulled up the collar of his jacket, stuffing his hands in his pocket and trudging his way to the end of a long and fruitless day.

He rounded the corner, catching sight of Baby sitting on the side of the road.

Resting on four flat tires.

Dean swore, jogging the last few feet and crouching down, putting his fingers to the clean gash in the front tire. They'd been slashed.

Dean straightened, glancing around and catching sight of a woman standing across the street. She caught his eyes and then turned and fled.

"Hey!" He shouted, taking off after her. She ducked into an alley and he followed, reaching it just in time to see her turn a corner at the other end. He cursed again and picked up speed, rounding the corner to see another alley, empty.

He whipped his head from side to side, his mind racing to figure out where she would have gone before something slammed into his side with bruising force, sending him sprawling.

Dean gasped for breath, scrambling to get upright. He had the fleeting thought that this girl and Cas were reading from the same playbook.

"Who are you?" The girl asked, as Dean pushed himself up against the wall and faced her.

"Lady, I should be asking you that," Dean snapped. "You slashed my tires."

The woman was young, probably barely into her twenties, with brown skin and dark hair, heavy brows and a sharp chin. Her eyes glinted sharp and dark in the fading light, her lips pulled down slightly, expression solemn. She wore a simple white blouse and a pleated skirt, and one of the hands at her sides held a knife. She didn't raise it or threaten him with it, yet, just regarded him.

"You're with him," she said. "We saw you, who are you?"

"What are you talking about?" Dean asked, his hand inching towards his gun.

"The Nameless One," she said, like it explained everything. "You're with him, we saw you. He spoke to you. Are you his apostle? His servant?"

Dean watched her, mind and heart racing as she took a step closer. Cas, she had to be talking about Cas.

"Who the hell is the nameless one?" He asked, edging to the side. "Better yet, who the hell are you?"

The girl studied him, her fingers twitching on her knife.

"The Mother calls to you," she said. "I can feel it, don't you? Don't you hear her?"

Dean froze.

"What?" He croaked.

"She calls you," the girl repeated. "And you conspire with Her enemy."

The tightening of her grip on her knife was Dean's only warning before she lunged at him, that split second his only salvation as he narrowly avoided the blade. 

She was fast .

Her knife glanced off the concrete and her swing went wild. She lurched herself around to face him again as he tried to keep his footing and gain distance.

There was something wrong with the way she moved. Her limbs jerked and stuttered, and her expression stayed flat, giving nothing away.

"I will send you to her, to be judged," she intoned, solemn. "May you be cast out as he was, you do not deserve the peace she offers you."

She lunged again, and Dean lurched back, knocking a garbage can into her path to trip her, and buy himself enough time to pull his gun from his waistband. He had it up and pointed at her even as he backed away.

"Stay right there, or I'll shoot," he told her, voice hard. "You're gonna answer some questions for me."

She rose to her feet, face still impassive. Dean took another step back.

"Hey," he barked as she took a step forward to match. "I mean it! Stay back!"

Another step, two, a stuttering start to a run, as she pushed off, the distance closing.

Dean's finger twitched on the trigger.

She was so young.

The arm with the knife came up, he could see the whites of her eyes-

BANG.

She lurched forward another step, stumbled and fell. Dean took two steps back, looking at her prone form, her dark brown hair laid out around her head like a halo.

"I warned you," Dean told her, breathing hard. "I warned you."

He dropped to his knees next to her, her chest didn't rise and fall. He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her onto her back.

There was a neat hole in the center of her chest. Her blouse was torn but unstained. No blood seeped from the wound.

Her eyes flew open.

Dean failed to react in time, her hands coming up to meet his chest in a shove that sent him flying back into the wall of the alley, knocking the breath from his lungs. He cracked his head against the bricks, his vision whiting out for a moment.

He slumped forward, head spinning as he tried to push himself upright and get his breathing back. Frantic footsteps beat a retreat down the alley, and Dean looked up only to see the girl disappear back the way they'd come.

He groaned, flopping back onto the ground in defeat.

He rolled onto his back, his ribs aching, and looked up into the cloudy sky. 

The light drizzle began to pick up, coming down in heavier droplets that would soak him to the bone if he didn't get under cover.

Dean sighed, letting his eyes fall closed.

At least he hadn't been stabbed.

Dean sat on the hood of the Impala, looking up at the sky. It stretched out forever in every direction, a blanket of stars.

Slowly, as he watched, he began to realize that from moment to moment, there were less of them.

One by one, the stars were blinking out.

Dean got up from the hood of the car, walking out to the middle of the parking lot where he was parked. He craned his neck back, staring up and up and up.

Soon there were only a few pinpricks of light left, and then those too were swallowed by the vast, unbroken blackness.

Distantly, Dean felt he should be concerned, maybe even afraid, but instead he just felt calm satisfaction.

The emptiness stretched above him, endless and comforting. 

As he looked up, Dean was struck by a strange sense of vertigo, the sky- what had been the sky- stopped being above him, and instead spooled out below.

Dean's heart pounded, he felt the pull, inexorable, he knew he would fall forever into the dark.

And yet his feet remained stubbornly stuck to the ground. He was left dangling, tiny and helpless, yet unclaimed by the hungry maw below.

"Please," Dean whispered to the sky, the pit, the stomach.

Like the pupil of an eye too vast to conceive, it watched him.

Watched and watched, but did not claim him.

Dean did not fall.

Dean was woken by his phone ringing. 

He rolled over in bed, flailing his arm out until he found it and flipped it open.

"Hello?"

" Agent Shannon. " 

Dean sat upright, waking up all at once.

"Captain," he said. "What did you need?"

" We have IDs on a few more victims, but no connections between them, yet. I thought you might be able to see something we're missing. "

"Yeah, I can do that," Dean said, tossing off the covers and getting out of bed. "I'll uh… Be there soon- soonish."

He corrected himself with a wince, remembering what had happened to the Impala last night. He'd managed to get a tow, but while the shop he'd called was willing to go that far, they were closing for the night, and Dean had been lucky to get a ride home and a promise he'd be fixed up first thing in the morning.

" Soonish? "

"Just some… car trouble," Dean said, vaguely. He crossed to the window and looked out through the blinds. He'd checked over his shoulder all the way back to the motel last night, and now the sense of being watched was inescapable.

A man across the street appeared to be looking in his window, but then he turned away and kept walking. 

Was he looking at Dean, or was it just a coincidence?

"I'll sort it out and be there in an hour, hour and a half, tops."

" Well don't rush yourself ," the captain said, her voice dry. She hung up before Dean could reply. He closed his phone, turning away from the window. He needed to get dressed.

He ended up spending most of his cash on a taxi to the mechanic's, waiting an extra twenty minutes while they finished the job, and then maxing out his credit card paying for something he could've done himself if he had the tools.

All told, he arrived at the police station grumpy, tired and hungry, but only ten minutes past the hour he'd promised.

This time, when he asked to see Captain Boyd, he was ushered to her office without any trouble.

The woman in question stood leaning on her desk, her arms crossed and her expression distant and pensive. She nodded at Dean when he came in and gestured vaguely behind her at a file on her desk.

"We have some IDs," she said. "We were able to identify the other intact body as a Sandra Becher, one set of organs belonging to a Jeremy Karelin, another to a Leanne Rixon. Another belongs to someone associated with a string of B & E's a few years ago, but since we never caught the guy, it doesn't really help us."

"Well," Dean said, reaching for the file on the desk without taking his attention off the Captain. "That's something isn't it?"

Captain Boyd grunted in affirmation, and they lapsed into silence as Dean flipped through the brief profiles on the victims. He took a moment to commit Jeremy and Leanne's faces to memory. They were out there, somewhere, walking around empty. Like the girl who'd attacked him.

"Jeremy Karelin just got out of jail for aggravated assault, Leanne Rixon was picked up repeatedly for solicitation. Sandra Becher was an alcoholic whose kids were just taken away," Captain Boyd said after a moment. "What we've been able to tell so far, they all had no friends, no support network, struggled to hold down jobs."

She sighed, rubbing at her forehead.

"And the only time the law ever got involved in their lives it was to take what little they did have away," she said.

Dean looked up from the file, eying her warily.

"You feeling okay, Captain?" He asked.

"No," she chuckled. "I'm thinking about retirement, honestly."

Dean blinked at her, surprised. She shook her head and pushed herself up from the desk.

"Never mind that," she said. "Have you found anything? We've only just started looking, but from what we could tell there's no common denominator between these people."

"I might have something." Dean dug into his pocket and pulled out one of the fliers. "I found a few of these, at a community center and a free clinic downtown."

"A support group?" Captain Boyd asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, but the thing is, they each have a different address listed, and when I went to both locations they each said the group only met for a few weeks," Dean explained.

"That's not a lot to go on." She handed him back the paper, her face twisted into a frown.

"It might be nothing," Dean admitted. "But it could be how our victims got drawn in from all over. I don't know where else they may have put up fliers, and if they changed location frequently, maybe not all of them even went to the same meetings."

"Maybe," Captain Boyd said dubiously. "Karelin's parole officer claimed that he had found religion and was doing a lot better. I'm inclined to believe your theory about some group being behind this, anyway. We'll keep an eye out for more like this."

"Right," Dean said. "Captain if you find anything, where they're meeting-"

"If we find anything, we'll handle it, because we're the police and this is actually our jurisdiction." She shot him a hard look.

"Of course," Dean said, grimacing. He was probably going to need to keep an ear on the police scanner, on the off chance they did find something before him. 

Maybe it had been a mistake to be so open.

He hadn't seen any sign of Cas again, time was slipping through his fingers.

There was a rap on the door, and the same blonde who had interrupted them last time opened the door.

"Captain, sorry to interrupt-"

Captain Boyd waved her off, shaking her head.

"We were just about done here, anyway," she pointed at Dean. "That file doesn't leave this office."

She stepped out, and Dean took another moment to flip through the file, jotting down the relevant details before he closed it and left it on the desk, exiting the office into the hurried stream of chatter from the blonde woman.

"-and there's someone from the South Precinct here to see you. Oh also the tip lines, we've compiled what seems credible but we weren't clear on who should be redirected to follow those leads. And there's also Mrs. Chandy."

Captain Boyd sighed.

"Where is she?" She asked.

"In the waiting area," the blonde woman said. "Everyone's too busy to talk to her."

"Who's Mrs. Chandy?" Dean asked.

Captain Boyd looked up, surprised, then sighed again.

"Her daughter is missing," she said, with an ironic twist on the last word. "She doesn't think we're doing enough to look for her, but the fact is that her daughter is twenty years old, has a habit of going no contact with her mother, and we don't have the resources to look into it right now. We don't have the time to spare to keep reassuring her, either."

"How long has she been missing?" Dean asked.

"A few days, I think, I haven't looked at the report," Captain Boyd told him. "This isn't the first time her daughter has been 'missing'. People have been on edge since this case hit the papers, she's just more persistent than most."

"Huh," Dean said, turning to scan out over the desks. Near the entrance, a middle aged Indian woman sat patiently in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs. "I'll talk to her."

"What?" Captain Boyd asked.

Dean gave her a quick, insincere smile.

"You said she just needs reassurance, right?" He said. "I can handle that, since you're all so busy ."

Captain Boyd studied him for a moment before shrugging.

"I don't see why not," she said, turning back to the blonde woman and her more important business.

Dean strode off towards the woman at the entrance. For someone so preoccupied with regret over not helping people, Captain Boyd didn't seem all that inclined to actually change her ways.

"Mrs. Chandy," he said genially as he reached her.

She looked up at him, she had a pointed chin and heavy brows, crows feet around tired brown eyes.

She looked very much like an older version of the young woman who had attacked Dean in an alley, the night before.

"I'm Agent Shanon." He offered her his hand to shake. "I understand you're looking for your daughter?"

"They all think I'm crazy," Mrs. Chandy told him, her voice was melodious and lightly accented. "An overbearing mother, worrying about nothing."

Dean had convinced her to leave the police station, and in turn she had insisted on taking him home and feeding him. Now he was sitting at her dining table, being served spicy tea and spongy little squares of some kind of pastry.

"Tell me about your daughter." Dean spun his mug in his hands, studying the woman across from him. The apartment was small but neat and lovingly furnished, there was a colourful and well-cared for shrine in a nook by the kitchen, and family photos all over the walls. It was a well-kept, well-loved space.

And yet in some subtle way it was drained of colour, empty.

Or perhaps that was the woman across from him, exhaustion draped over her like a shawl.

"Mira is a good girl," she told him. "A good daughter. I always asked so much of her, but she never complained."

She turned in her chair and looked up at a large photo of a smiling man with a thick beard, enshrined in pride of place on the wall.

"My husband, we lost him to cancer, almost ten years ago now. It was hard, for the three of us." She looked back down at her mug. "Mira took on a lot of responsibility. I had to work long hours, she took care of the home, and looked after her little sister."

Her eyes closed in grief. Dean tried not to look too long at the photograph that stood on the shrine, surrounded by flowers. A too-young face, beaming and full of hope.

"They were very close, Mira spent all her time worrying about her sister. Being a mother to her when I should have been a mother to both of them. Our little Neha," she shook her head. "We lost her a year ago, a hit and run."

Dean swallowed around a lump in his throat, he couldn't picture the devastation, if only because when he imagined losing Sam like that, his mind went blank. Unfathomable.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said. The words felt wooden and inadequate, but Mrs. Chandy smiled at him.

"That was when my daughter changed," she said, her smile falling away. "She was angry, angry at herself, at me, at God. I should have let her be, but I was angry too, and grieving. We were both grieving, and we fought very much. We would be angry at each other, and she would go away and not answer her phone, and I would become scared that I had lost her too, and then she would come home and we would apologize, until it went wrong again."

"What makes you think this time is different?" Dean asked.

"I know I've bothered the police too much," she said, drawing into herself. "Many times I have called, hysterical and silly. But this is different, there is something wrong with my daughter, Agent Shannon."

"I believe you," Dean said, leaning forward. "I do, I wasn't trying to dismiss you. Can you tell me what changed?"

"One day she came back and she told me she was going to a group, to see people who would help her with her grief. I offered to go with her, but she didn't want me to. Things were very strained, I did not like to give her space, but I did it," she said. "In a way, things improved. Mira was less angry, but she was also distant. She looked at me, but her eyes did not see me, and she wouldn't speak to me. She would go out late at night and not come back until morning. She said she was with her new friends, that they were helping her, but I knew something was wrong."

Mrs. Chandy looked down, guilty.

"I put tracking on her phone, I found out how from the internet. I should not have done that, but I was afraid. I knew someone was stealing my daughter from me." She looked up at Dean, beseeching. "I had found out that she wasn't going to work anymore, I needed to know where she was going, I needed to know what was happening to my daughter."

She looked away again.

"I confronted her, and she was angry with me. I had invaded her privacy. She said she would go stay with a friend, because she couldn't trust me. A few days ago, she came home, but she was stranger than ever. She told me everything would be alright, but then she went to her room and wouldn't speak to me."

Mrs. Chandy's voice became strained, her hands trembled on her mug.

"The next morning she was gone again," she said. "But her phone, her wallet, she left all her things. Something has happened to my daughter, Agent Shannon, and those people, that group, they are responsible, I know it."

"I believe you, Mrs. Chandy," Dean said again. "You said you tracked her phone, did it give you an idea of where she was going? Anywhere she visited a lot, where she might be meeting these people?"

Mrs. Chandy nodded, getting up and returning with two pieces of paper. She handed him first a slip with an address written on it in slanted hand-writing.

"It's an old church, abandoned," she told him. "I told the police, and they say there is nothing there. I went to try to see myself, but it's all locked. I was afraid to trespass."

She handed him the other paper, a glossy photograph of two girls.

"This is my Mira," she said. "Please, Agent Shannon, please find my daughter."

Dean looked at the photograph, the girls in it held onto each other, radiant grins splitting their faces. One was unmistakably the smiling teenager from the shrine.

The other was the girl he had met in the alley.

"I'll do whatever I can." He met Mrs. Chandy's eyes, solemn. "I promise."

Dean's mind churned as he made his way back to the Impala, the relief of finally having a concrete lead battling with the unsettled sorrow of listening to Mrs. Chandy's story.

He shivered as he put the key in the lock, looking around as he once again had the creeping sense he was being watched. He got in the car quickly.

He had a good idea now, where the cult was meeting. Or at least where they had been meeting, recently enough that they had probably left some signs. He started the car, tempted to head straight to the church. The problem with that plan was that he had no idea how to actually do any damage to these people, whatever they were after the ritual was done. 

Mira had gotten back on her feet easily after being shot…

Dean swallowed thickly, wondering if there was a way back from what she was now, if there was any way for Dean to deliver her back to her mother alive and well, or if it was already too late.

She'd left her intestines behind in a warehouse across the city, somehow he found it hard to hold out hope.

The smart thing to do would be to research, look for a way to actually fight these things. 

The problem was Dean had no idea where to start. 

Nothing he'd looked into yet had given him any hint as to what any of this was, and nothing he'd seen so far resembled anything he'd heard of before. They must be some kind of undead, since the ritual that created them wasn't the kind of thing they could survive. Decapitation, maybe? That was usually a tried and true method when nothing else worked. Cut off the head and then salt and burn the bones.

And there was always the nuclear option, Dean thought of the gun that lay tucked away underneath the Impala's false bottom, never to be used or looked at.

Dean shook off the thought, he didn't have enough bullets anyway.

Maybe he should head back to the motel then, take stock of his supplies and make a plan of action.

Shit, the motel . 

He'd only paid for two nights, and he was fresh out of cash.

Dean checked the time, just past ten, he flicked on his turn signal and started to head in that direction. He had time to collect his things, if this lead panned out he wouldn't need to stay in town another night anyway.

The door to his motel room was hanging open when Dean pulled into the parking lot. For just a moment he wondered if he'd miscalculated when he would be kicked out, but cold dread had already begun to pool in his stomach. He pulled out his gun and got out of the car, creeping towards the door.

The room was dark when he pushed the door open all the way, and stayed dark when he went to flick on the light. He caught a glint of broken glass on the floor.

The lightbulbs had all been shattered.

The TV had taken a hit too, the face shattered by a chair leg. The sheets had been torn off the bed and the mattress tossed to the side. The contents of his duffle bag lay strewn around the room, some of his clothes torn.

On the wall there was a symbol, in that familiar too-dark ink that leeched the light from the room. In such a small space it was clear the effect wasn't just psychological, the light from outside the window didn't penetrate into the room as far as it should. Stepping through the door was like stepping into late evening, everything grey and dim.

Dean made a sweep of the room but found no one. The feeling of being watched was inescapable. He gathered his things quickly, stuffing everything back into his duffle without bothering to sort through what was still intact.

His weapons were missing, anything lethal that had been in the motel room was cleared out. That was fine, the majority was in the Impala anyway, but it did fill him with a surge of righteous anger.

He retreated, tossing his duffle into the back seat of the Impala, still scanning the parking lot for anything suspicious.

A man across the street turned to look at him.

Was it the same one from this morning? Dean couldn't remember. He froze, watching him.

The man took a step towards him.

Dean got in the car, heart pounding, starting the engine with fumbling hands and peeling away.

He watched the man in the rearview mirror, seeing him grow smaller.

This was a message. They'd been watching him the whole time he'd been in town. They knew where he'd been staying, they knew he'd been hunting them.

They probably already knew what Mrs. Chandy had told him. Or if they didn't, they would guess soon.

His hands clenched on the steering wheel, he couldn't afford to waste any more time. He needed to go to the church, preparations be damned. 

He couldn't risk losing this chance.

They thought they could scare him off? Fine, he'd take the fight to them.

Parked a few streets over from the church and staring into the Impala's empty weapons compartment, Dean felt a lot less confident.

He leaned his forehead on the open trunk, closing his eyes. Was it when they'd slashed his tires? Or had they gotten to it while it was at the mechanic's somehow?

Why hadn't he checked?

Bile rose in his throat, every last thing in the trunk had been taken, everything . He could almost hear his father berating him, carelessly losing the most powerful weapon against the supernatural they had because he'd left it tossed haphazard in the Impala-

He pushed himself off the car and shook his head hard, slamming the trunk closed.

All he had was a pistol that he knew wouldn't work, but that didn't change what he had to do. So they'd taken his weapons, fine, that just meant getting them back would be step one of the plan. He'd stealth it, first, until he found where they'd put his things, then he'd come after them with the full arsenal.

A little voice in the back of his head told him he was being reckless, that this was a suicide mission, but Dean pushed it aside. 

He'd done a lot of reckless things in the past few months, and none of them had managed to kill him yet.

The church was a dirty, tan building, reaching up half-heartedly into spires that looked like they could topple any moment. The outside was covered in graffiti and it was surrounded by a rusting chain-link fence. Dean approached from behind, itching to draw his gun, but it was the middle of the day, and while the street wasn't busy, he was still exposed.

Dean hopped the fence behind the church, landing on the gravel on the other side with a crunch. He looked around for any sign of activity, but saw nothing. The church loomed above, and Dean kept his eyes on the windows, for movement. They held that familiar unnatural darkness, obscuring whatever might lay beyond.

There was no door around the back of the church, so Dean began to creep his way around the side of the building, stepping as lightly as he could in the narrow space where the chain-link brushed up against the building next door.

There was a padlocked gray door on the side of the church. Dean checked his surroundings again before he crouched down to examine it. It was cheap garbage, the rust on it was more likely to hamper Dean's ability to open it than the lock itself. He pulled a bobby pin from his pocket and began to unfold it, fitting it into the lock for his tension as he fished for another to use as a rake.

A hand grasped his collar and yanked him back, throwing him to the ground.

Dean swore and tried to push himself up, but a weight settled on top of him, heavy and immovable.

"I told you to stay out of it," Cas grumbled, wrenching his arms behind his back.

"Cas-" Dean yelped, one part startled exclamation, one part protest.

He felt the handcuffs cinch tight around his wrists with a click, and he bucked, trying in vain to dislodge Cas from on top of him.

"This is for your own good," Cas said, hauling him up and dragging him away from the door.

"Cas, what are you doing?" Dean whisper-yelled, his feet scrabbling in the gravel. "I can help you."

Cas deposited him beneath a bush at the edge of the property, rolling him so he was partially covered. Dean struggled to get upright and Cas pushed him back down, grabbing his feet and resulting in a one-sided tussle that ended with Cas pulling off his belt and winding it around Dean's ankles. Dean stared at him in disbelief.

"I only have one pair of handcuffs," Cas said. "Stay here, I'll come back for you when it's done."

"Cas, come on, don't do this-" Dean tried to reason with him and Cas' hands went back into his pocket, pulling out a roll of duct tape. He ripped off a piece and slapped it over Dean's mouth.

Dean rolled his eyes and worked up a little saliva, wetting the adhesive and pulling his lips apart with only a mild sting.

"That only works in movies," Dean said, the duct-tape still hanging off of his face.

Cas looked mildly disappointed, but shrugged.

"Don't yell," he ordered. "Someone might come kill you. I'll be back."

With that, he got up and strode away, leaving Dean to snarl in frustration after him as he watched him approach the side door, break the lock and slip inside. He wiggled angrily, digging furrows in the gravel, rolling out from under the bush and staring up at the sky.

The rain that had held out all morning began to come down, and he resisted the urge to scream in frustration.

"Okay, come on," he told himself. "You've got this."

He turned onto his side, curling up into a ball and painstakingly wriggled his cuffed hands under his ass so he could pull his bound feet through. His shoulders strained, and the cuffs dug into his wrists, but it didn't take long before his hands were back in front of him.

From there, the belt came off easily, and he got up, making his way back to the door to scour for his abandoned bobby pins.

It wasn't the first time he'd had to slip a pair of cuffs, and it probably wouldn't be the last. The rain picked up into a torrential downpour and made everything needlessly slippery, but he held the bobby pin in his mouth and managed to jiggle the cuffs into unlatching in less than a minute.

There, maybe now Cas would stop underestimating him.

Dean tucked the unlocked cuffs in his pocket and pulled out his gun. Without wasting time to steel himself, he strode forward into the dark.

The church was dim and dusty, the floorboards creaked underfoot, and trash and broken glass littered the ground. The state of disrepair made it easy to know where to go, though, as there were clear tracks cut through the dust.

They led to a staircase, down into the basement. What meager light came through the windows died down below. The stairs descended into pitch blackness.

Sounds of fighting came up from below. Dean didn't hesitate.

He moved as quickly as he could down the stairs without making too much noise, trying not to trip over anything in the dark. His feet hit concrete, and he shuffled forward, his eyes adjusting slowly. He was in a narrow, dark hallway, and just up ahead, around the corner, he could see that the grey gloom became lighter.

Voices echoed strangely down the hall as Dean forged onwards.

"-did you think we wouldn't be ready for you? We knew you'd come, I wanted you to come-"

There was a grunt, a crash. Dean moved faster.

"Your profane existence ends tonight!"

Dean rounded the corner, his gun coming up automatically. He took in the scene in an instant, the light, cast by a fire burning in an old wood stove in the corner, and candles scattered around the room, sent strange shadows twisting on the walls. Two people lay prone on the ground, non-threats, a third was rising in the corner of the room, and a fourth stood back, his arms spread as he made his proclamations. In the center of the room, a pile of wood, a pyre, sat in an ink-black circle. Next to it, Cas grappled with a man who had his arms wrenched behind his back, as a woman approached, raising a knife.

Dean fired, this time, the bullet went through Mira's head, and she crumpled.

"What-" The man who'd hung back, the one Dean had heard shouting from the hall, whirled towards Dean, just as he brought his gun around and shot him in the shoulder, sending him stumbling back with a pained shout.

Cas took advantage of the distraction to yank himself out of the grip of the man who held him, whirling and stabbing him in the chest with his knife.

The last cultist standing, a woman, lunged at Cas with a wild shout. Dean brought his gun up, but his shot went wild. Still, she flinched, and that gave Cas the opportunity to yank his knife out of the dead man's chest and launch it into hers with a flick of his wrist.

She collapsed like a puppet with her strings cut.

Dean crept further into the room, lowering his gun slightly, but not his guard.

"You good?" He asked, glancing at Cas in between watching the people on the ground for movement.

Cas stared back at him, his expression inscrutable, then nodded sharply and looked away.

The man Dean had shot laughed, and Dean turned, training his gun on him. He was pushing himself back upright, but not trying to rise. His face was pale and clammy with pain, he had a gaunt look to him, with chin length brown hair that looked greasy and an unshaven face.

"So, you've collected your own followers, then," the man said. "I should have guessed, people followed even Lucifer."

Cas crossed the room and pulled his knife from the chest of the woman he'd felled, paying the man no attention.

"You won't defeat us, you know," the man said. "You can't. You can kill them, you can kill me, but Her children are legion, and there are more every day. The truth cannot be destroyed. She will call from the Void long after all of us are dead, She is inevitable. We are inevitable."

Dean watched Cas as he strode across the room, unaffected and certain. The man spoke of inevitability, but Dean saw it in each of Cas' steps, in the flat expression on his face.

The man must have seen it too, because he began to push himself back, to create distance even though he must have known it was futile.

"You're nothing, you're nameless," the man mumbled. "Rejected, unclean, you cannot defeat her, you'll never defeat her, never, you'll never-"

Castiel closed the final distance in a few quick strides, wrenching the man up by his injured shoulder and cutting off his speech with a cry of pain.

His other hand drove his knife through the man's throat, silent and dispassionate.

He gurgled and fell limp, the bloody knife sliding from the wound on his throat.

Dean lowered his gun.

Cas looked at the dead man for another long moment, then plunged his knife into the man's stomach and drew it downwards.

Dean bit his lip to keep from gasping, Cas withdrew the knife, staring at the ragged, bleeding wound.

"A hypocrite and a coward," he remarked, standing up and moving to the next body.

Dean watched, silent, as he repeated the procedure, slicing the man who'd grappled him from just below the ribs down to his pelvis. The flesh gave like tissue paper, and this time, it wasn't blood that flowed from the wound, but some strange black liquid, seeping out behind the knife like dark water.

"Jesus," Dean swore. Cas looked up at him. "What is that?"

"It's what keeps them alive," he said simply, returning to his task. "Something of Her. They empty themselves out to make room as an offering. It makes them virtually untouchable, but empty. Still empty."

He moved on to the next body, Mira's, and Dean made a noise of protest, starting forward. Cas paused, looking at him askance.

"I promised her mother I'd bring her home," he confessed.

"Do you think her mother would prefer a corpse she can lay to rest," Cas asked. "Or one that's still walking around?"

Dean hesitated, staring down at her face. She looked peaceful, but for the bullet hole in her forehead, but even as Dean watched, it was starting to close.

"She's already dead, Dean," Cas told him. "We should let her rest."

Dean nodded and stepped back. Cas cut her open.

A breath escaped her at the press of Cas' knife, and something left her as the strange black liquid drained away. A tension, some shadow of pain.

Without it, she looked content.

Cas cut open each of the cultists one by one, as his attention was drawn to them, Dean was unsettled by how many he recognized, and not just from the photos on the police files. Now that he saw him up close, he was certain that the man he'd seen at the motel was Jeremy Karelin. Far more unsettling though, was when Castiel rolled another of the men over, and Dean recognized the bearded face of the man he'd shared a cigarette with behind the community center.

"Guess it was his thing after all…" Dean muttered. Cas looked at him, askance, and he shook his head.

"We should go," he said, rising when his work was done. 

"Right, yeah," Dean said, his throat hoarse. "Shit, I need- they tossed my motel room, I need to find my stuff."

Castiel raised an eyebrow at him, but moved to help him in his search in silence. There wasn't much in the room, save for the make-shift pyre and lighter fluid to get it started, knives and candles for flare.

"What was the plan, here?" Dean asked idly, kicking at the pile of wood.

"To burn me alive," Cas replied. Dean stared at him in disbelief, but when Cas finally caught the look, he simply shrugged. "I didn't say it was a good plan.

A convenient one for them, they had the makings of a blaze that provided at least a chance of disposing of the bodies, although barely enough time to work with.

Dean felt a vague sense of unease as he moved Mira's body with the others. It wasn't right, her mother should at least be able to get her body back, intact, but it was what needed to happen.

On some level Dean almost hoped the fire wouldn't catch.

They found the weapons that had been taken from Dean's duffle and the Impala thrown haphazard in a corner, hucked among the other refuse in a storage room that had been invisible to Dean in the dark.

"You'd think they would've used them," Dean grumbled as he gathered them up, inspecting them for damage. "Not that I'm not glad they didn't…"

Castiel shrugged, providing no further insight.

In the midst of the pile, Dean laid his hands on an antique revolver, and he was flooded with a mix of relief and nausea. He hadn't laid eyes on the gun since… since a while, but having it out of his possession was worse than having it in front of him.

Cas helped him carry his arsenal back to its rightful place, working in silence. Dean shot him uneasy glances, waiting for him to speak. 

He didn't, disappearing back into the church the final time in order to set the fire. The few minutes it took stretched into an eternity. Dean couldn't help but expect him to vanish, leaving him waiting uselessly for him to reemerge while he slipped out the back or simply evaporated into smoke somehow.

He didn't, he came trudging back out of the church, and returned to Dean's side, stopping only briefly to retrieve a bag from underneath a bush on the edge of the property and sling it over his shoulder. 

Stashed like he stashed Dean.

Task complete, he went back to regarding Dean with that same, stony silence.

"So…" Dean cleared his throat.

"Can I have a ride?" Cas asked.

"Sure." Dean blinked at him, caught off guard.

"We should talk," Cas said, walking around to the passenger's side and yanking open the door.

"Right," Dean agreed.

But they didn't. As soon as they were inside and the doors were shut, a heavy silence descended over them. Dean started driving with no destination in mind. 

Why did they always seem to have these conversations in Baby?

"I'm sorry you got involved in this, Dean," Cas said at last.

"Don't," Dean said. "I told you, I want- I want to be involved, I want to help. This is what I do."

"Not like this," Cas said quietly.

Dean scoffed.

"Sorry, did you not see me saving your ass, back there?" He said. "I think exactly like this."

"I am thankful," Cas replied carefully. "But you said yourself, they targeted your motel room. They saw you, they knew you. They could have done much worse than taking your things."

"But they didn't," Dean pointed out.

"I don't think they knew how to handle you." Cas stared out the window. "Malachi has never been overly organized. This was a trap for me and a bid to gain power, they didn't account for you. And his disciples were fresh, uncertain. There are those who would have killed you only for speaking with me."

Dean bit his lip, choosing not to share that he'd nearly been stabbed for exactly that.

"They knew you," he said. "They called you… the Nameless One? What's that about?"

"I've been hunting them a long time Dean." Cas shook his head. "That isn't the point, I can't guarantee that knowledge of your involvement died with them. You could have a target on your back now, there is a reason I warned you away."

"You think they told someone?" Dean asked. "About me? Are there more in the city?"

"No. Maybe," Cas said. "They wouldn't have to. Knowledge isn't easily destroyed, and once they give themselves over like that… there's a connection. It's enough that you were seen by any of them."

Dean shuddered.

"What were they, Cas?" He asked. "You said they sacrificed themselves to be filled with "her essence" who is she? The Mother?"

Cas looked at him sharply, but his lips remained tightly closed.

"Seriously?" Dean smacked the steering wheel lightly, fed up. "You already said, they know me, I'm involved now. The least you could do is tell me what I'm up against."

"I said might, maybe," Cas said, frowning.

Dean shot him a hard look, and he sighed.

"She… the Mother… She is a God, or something like it. Something beyond it, maybe," he said, looking back out the window, his expression solemn and distant. "There is not much I can tell you about Her, because She is impossible to know. Older than time, more vast than existence. She is Death, not the petty death that comes at the end of one mortal life, but the Great Death, the Death of the Universe. She is the Vast Nothing that predates existence, and She is the Void that will reclaim reality when it shatters at the seams. She is the End."

Dean chuckled weakly.

"Lot of words for something you can't tell me much about," he quipped. His hands felt clammy on the steering wheel.

"Such is the burden of attempting to describe the indescribable," he sighed. "The being I'm talking about represents the end of all of reality, Dean. Think of it as though the inevitable collapse of the universe was an entity that existed alongside it, occupying the same space as the living universe, and seeping in through the cracks to alter the world as we know it."

"Okay," Dean said. "Okay, how do we deal with that?"

"We don't," Cas said simply. "She just is. But Her followers seek to call Her from Her slumber to consume the world now , and that I won't allow."

"You're kidding," Dean said. "You're talking about the end of the world, Cas."

Cas said nothing.

"You can't just… Cast a spell, or do some ritual, and end the world ," Dean protested. "It doesn't work like that."

"Maybe," said Cas. "Maybe not."

"What do you mean, maybe?" Dean demanded. "This is your life's quest or whatever, shouldn't you know?"

"Well obviously they've never succeeded," Cas shot back, dryly. "I don't know what their rituals would bring if they were allowed to be completed, Dean. I can only look at the effects that they do have. Invoking the Mother, using Her symbols, you've seen what it can do. There is a very real power here, and calling on it, even knowing about it, draws Her attention. It pulls Her further from Her slumber."

He shook his head.

"I can't take the chance. If they really wake Her, it's the end. Of everything," he said. "Do you see that now, Dean?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "I see."

They lapsed into silence.

"You see why I didn't want you involved," Cas said. "You can still move on from this."

"I'm gonna stop you right there, Cas," Dean said. "You just told me that the whole universe is on the line, and you think I'm just gonna walk away?"

"Dean-"

"You can't keep doing this on your own, Cas," Dean cut him off. "I get it, you're a badass, but your one-man army shtick can't last forever, and what happens if you get killed on your own, huh? Who's gonna stop this shit then?"

Cas was silent.

Dean took his foot off the accelerator, slowing down and pulling over to the side of the road so he could turn and face Cas fully.

"I'm in this, now," he told him. "Maybe I didn't know everything I was getting into, but I didn't go in with my eyes closed either. I want to help you, Cas. Let me?"

Cas stared into his eyes for a long moment, searching, and then looked away.

"Every time I meet you, I find it harder to say no to you," he sighed. "We should leave town."

Dean grinned, shifting the Impala back into gear.

"That I can do," he said, trying to suppress his giddiness. "You got anything we need to pick up, then? Got a motel room somewhere?"

"No," Castiel said, shaking his head. "I have everything I need."

"Yeah," Dean said. "Me too."

Chapter Text

The boy sits where they put him, the blanket around his shoulders. It’s shiny and it crinkles when he moves.

It does not make him warm.

The soft voiced woman comes back, the blanket crinkles under her hand as she places it on him. She speaks to him again, kind, coaxing.

They want to know his name.

He doesn’t want to tell them.

Beneath the blanket, he stretches out his fingers, running them along the knife that rests hidden, next to his thigh. The knife that the men in uniform took from his hands.

Yet, it is still with him.

It doesn’t feel wet beneath his fingers. It was wet, before. His hands, before they cleaned them.

They’re still streaked with dirt and mud, but another woman had made a point of rinsing away the red, before they put him in the screaming vehicle and brought him here.

An ambulance, his memory supplies, distant and impersonal.

The memories are all distant, flickering dimly in the back of his mind. The information is there when he reaches for it, but the moments of the life before are foreign and disconnected.

Crawling out of the pit is real and vivid. He can feel the wet earth on his skin, still, remember gasping for his first breath of air, still half buried in mud, and staring up into a roiling gray sky that rumbled and flashed. The rain had been vibrantly frigid against his skin, washing him clean.

He remembers the church and the chanting like he’s still there. He remembers the knife like it’s a part of him.

He remembers the slick-wet sound of it entering Brother Michael’s throat, remembers the blood like it’s still on his hands.

A woman in soft green clothes, a nurse, brings him to a room and helps him into a hard-tiled little space filled with warm rain-a shower. When he’s clean, she gives him his own soft blue clothes. He’s already been checked over for injuries, they found nothing. He touches his throat, remembering it open, in that distant impersonal way. 

The nurse gives him a cotton swab and instructs him how to scrape it on the inside of his mouth, then bags it up and takes it away. They had put ink on his fingers, as well, and taken pictures of his teeth. One of the uniformed men, police, had mentioned having trouble putting together information on the members, since the records they kept were sparse. 

The name they want is something he can’t tell them. The memory just isn’t there. Over and over again, in grainy gray scenes that play out in his mind’s eye, people open their mouths to call out the name and no sound comes out.

He has a name, he knew it as soon as he pulled himself from the grasping earth. But he doesn’t say it, keeping it safe behind his lungs.

He doesn’t know what it means.

It frightens him.

There was more than just Brother Michael in that church, many of them were dead. The men in uniforms whispered about that too. The boy hadn’t had much attention to spare for the dead, or the living ones that fled when they saw him. 

He lies in the little bed they bring him to, listening to the beeps and the shuffling steps in the hallway. The knife is in his hand again, and he brings it up from under the covers to watch how it catches the low light from the open door.

There are other compounds, he knows. He’s seen people come to speak to Brother Michael. 

He doesn’t know much about the ritual. Didn’t know. The memories are clear, most of the flock only knew the basics, and even that had been enough to inspire flight. 

Then imprisonment, exile, death.

Rebirth.

Now, he closes his eyes and he can taste the places where the ritual was anchored. Not just the church where Brother Michael sang the old words that curl in the back of his mind, but other places, far-flung, lit up in his mind like a map. Across his skin like ants he can feel the pattering of the feet of hundreds of worshipers, somewhere, waiting.

He’s not sure why the ritual failed, if it was meant to, or if the knife in Michael’s throat was all it took to keep Her from waking.

He’s not sure the ritual did fail, or if something wasn’t summoned into the dream after all.

He pulls the blankets closer around himself, the handle of his knife digging into his chest, just above his heart where he holds it close.

When he listens closely, he can still hear the sounds of the rain.

In the morning they take him to a faded home, where a faded woman lives with other children in her care. She speaks in short clipped sentences about house rules, and her mouth puckers when she’s silent. The days are strictly regimented, but the routine is comfortable, easy to follow. The boy doesn’t speak much. The soft-voiced woman comes back again and again, she says she is his case worker, she talks about emergency placements and extended family, and asks if he remembers, over and over.

After a week, she starts calling him James.

It isn’t his name.

He knows his name, it’s been on his tongue since he awoke in the pitch black suffocating earth, and his fingers curled around the knife.

The name is in the memories too, before it became his, it had been on the wall of a church, painted among the symbols and figures that curved into each other, telling the tale of the world and its end. Worshipers had knelt before it in prayer. 

There are many memories of kneeling, heart filled with doubt, looking up at the figure of the mother, sprawling and infinite.

Below her on the wall were her children, her worshipers, the many.

And Castiel.

The Emissary.

At night sometimes, he takes a paring knife from the kitchen and runs it across the palm of his hand, watching the skin split, bloodless.

Watching it close again.

He doesn’t know what it means.

Chapter Text

Dean lay in bed, staring, sleepless, at the peeling paint on the ceiling. He was in the room again, he was always in the room.

The bed was lumpy, and he was restless. The walls were too close and too far away, he rolled over onto his side.

There was another bed, next to his, and it stood empty.

It wasn't supposed to be empty, Dean knew this like a dagger to his heart. He wasn't supposed to be alone in the room.

The other bed stood a testament to this, accusatory in the absence it represented.

Dean could see the depression in the blankets, where a body was supposed to lay.

Or did he? Dean pushed himself up on his elbows, looking at the strange way the bed dipped in on itself.

He got up, and crossed the room, looking down at the bed from above.

It wasn't the impression of a body.

It was a mouth.

It split down the center of the bed, purple lips yawning wide open, revealing the wet cavern beyond.

There was no tongue, just teeth, and spit, and a passageway below that beckoned.

Dean shuffled onto the bed on his knees, leaning over the mouth. The lips closed and opened again, wider, inviting him in.

He put one hand down on the mattress where it dipped towards the mouth, and the other reached out, exploratory. He ran it across the inside of one lip, his hand coming away wet. He reached out and touched one sharp tooth, and watched the walls of the throat contract, eager.

Carefully, slowly, Dean reached in with one arm, shifting so he was lying on his stomach.

The mouth dripped, saliva pooling in anticipation.

Dean leaned in, his head passing the lips along with his shoulder. The mouth was big, big enough that he could get his torso into it without snagging himself on the teeth.

Dean stopped bracing himself with the hand on the mattress, snaking that arm into the opening too. Now his whole top half was within the mouth, and he shuffled forward as best he could. His waist was still on the bed, his legs dangling outside, exposed in the room.

Dean braced himself on the slimy black walls, shuffling forward as he pulled in his legs, preparing himself to tilt forward and fall into the darkness below.

The mouth closed around his waist.

For a moment of vibrant, elated fear, Dean thought it would slice him in half, the points of the teeth digging into his sides.

But the mouth did not bite down. The teeth only held, preventing his forward progress.

Dean squirmed, pushing harder on the walls, trying to wriggle forward, but he was stuck. The teeth cut into him when he tried, and he hissed, giving in.

He dangled in the dark, half in and half out of the mouth. His arms hung limp over the cavernous emptiness below.

"Please?" He asked the dark, the mouth. "Please?"

He felt the lips work against his waist, saliva running down his sides and dripping down his arms into the nothing below.

But it did not swallow.

Dean's tears joined the wet, dripping down his face and into the dark.

All the while Dean remained stuck, unable to follow.

Dean woke and rolled over, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The sight of the other bed, empty, gave him a strange sense of displacement, and he jolted upright, his heart hammering.

A moment later he heard the clatter of a key in the motel room door, and he relaxed, rubbing a hand over his face.

Cas was always up before him, and half the time he was already out and about.

Everything was fine. 

Dean wasn't alone.

He'd composed himself from the momentary lapse by the time the door swung open, shifting to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Good morning," Cas greeted when he saw him up. "Coffee?"

Dean chuckled despite himself, and held out his hand for the offered cup.

In the month and change they'd been traveling together, they'd started falling into easy routines. They worked well together, which made Dean glow with satisfaction. Cas was a powerhouse, focused mainly on short range combat with his knife, and while Dean was no slouch in that department either, he was much more comfortable with a gun in his hands. Cas was also a meticulous researcher, far more so than Dean, but without the developed sense for sorting fact from fiction when it came to the often muddled lore around monsters. Dean found himself typically playing skeptic to Cas' surprisingly credulous nature. After all, as Cas would argue, after everything else they've seen, why shouldn't this be true?

They complimented each other, quickly learning how to divide labour in the ways that benefitted the both of them.

Part of their routines were things like coffee. From the beginning, Cas bought it for him every morning, and seemed to seek out other opportunities to do so throughout the day.

After a week of having enough caffeine foisted on him that he was starting to get jittery in the afternoons, he'd finally stopped Cas and asked him why.

"You bought me coffee when we first met," he'd said, looking away as though embarrassed. "As a gesture of friendship."

And then he'd thrown it out the window of a moving vehicle at him when he'd been rebuffed. Dean had flushed and been unable to figure out what to say in the moment, but from then on he jockeyed with Cas over whose turn it was to provide the caffeine.

"Thanks," Dean said after the first sip. "Did you get any sleep at all last night?"

"Of course," Cas said, his eyes darting to the side in an obvious tell to his dishonesty.

Dean pressed his lips together and hummed in acknowledgment. He'd keep an eye on him today, see if he could find an opportunity to encourage him to rest.

This was another way they complemented each other, because it turned out Cas was terrible at taking care of himself. Dean was no stranger to missed rest, he considered it a good night if he got his four hours, but Cas took it to the next level. 

No matter how late they took their exhausted bones to bed, Cas was up first thing. Often he was already up and dressed by the time Dean was just starting to blink the sleep from his eyes.

And on the rare- and getting rarer- occasions when Dean woke in the middle of the night, he would often roll over to see Cas sitting upright on his bed.

Or standing by the window, looking out.

The guy had some serious insomnia issues. Dean would suspect he was supplementing the daily dose of caffeine with something stronger to stay alert if he didn't know better.

He had to be cajoled into eating too. Always insisting he wasn't hungry, only to, without fail, fall on his meal ravenously as soon as it was in front of him.

So Dean might never have been the best at taking care of himself, either, but he could drag Cas to diners and get some solid food into him, and every night that Dean booked a bed for the both of them was a night Cas didn't give in and push through, working instead of resting.

He could bring Cas places in Baby, places that weren't just the next case.

"I don't know how you're up and moving so easy after last night," Dean said, stretching. He winced at the pull in his aching back, dropping his arm to his neck and tilting it back and forth.

"Probably because a rawhead didn't toss me into a wall," Cas said. "How are you feeling, by the way?"

Dean waved him off.

"I'll live," he said. "Just a little bruised."

"You should take better care of yourself," Castiel said, taking a seat on his bed as Dean stood and began to get dressed for the day.

"Look who's talking," he muttered, pulling on a pair of pants.

"Hm?" Cas took a sip of his coffee.

"Nothin'," Dean said, shaking his head. "I'm just saying I may be the one that got thrown into the wall, but you're the one who tackled it to the ground and wrestled with it."

Wrestled with it and stabbed it, adding another tally onto the list of monsters Cas' knife could axe, and rendering Dean's taser superfluous.

"One of these days you're going to have to tell me where you got that thing," he said, continuing his thought out loud.

Cas must have caught his meaning though, because his lips twitched up into a small, secretive smile. 

He pulled his knife from inside his coat, and held it in both hands, twisting it idly back and forth so that it caught the light. The dark metal had an almost greenish hue, and the subtle spiraling of the edges leant it a hypnotic quality as it moved.

"I think you'd be unlikely to find another like it," Cas remarked lightly, his eyes on the knife. His smile faded into a quietly solemn expression.

It was times like these Dean wasn't sure if he should regret pushing, or steel himself to push more. To start prying into the secrets Cas still kept close to his chest. He knew there were things Cas didn't tell him, the guy practically radiated the fact that he was hiding something, but Dean didn't know how to pluck them out without shattering this fragile thing that was growing between them.

He cleared his throat.

"Well I'm not looking forward to the day we find out what that thing can't kill."

Cas looked up at him, then back down at the knife.

"I have a hard time imagining that will be an issue."

As Dean watched the light play over the blade, he thought of the Colt, stashed back in the trunk again, under the false bottom. All that time looking for a weapon to kill the unkillable, and now there were two kicking around a motel in Michigan. Would things have been different if they'd been able to find something like Cas' knife, like the Colt, sooner? 

He looked away.

"An issue? Nah," Dean said. "Not even, cause you know I'll have your back."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cas look up, the expression on his face was hard to name.

Something surprised, but also soft.

"So!" Dean clapped his hands to break the moment, turning back towards Cas in time to see him startle. "What have you got?"

Cas tilted his head, his brows drawing together in confusion. Dean bit his lip to keep from smiling too fondly at the sight. He nodded to the newspaper Cas had set down on the bed next to him.

"Did you find a case?"

"Oh." Cas looked down at the paper next to him as though he was surprised by its presence. "Maybe, although, if you need time to recover, perhaps we shouldn't…"

Dean scoffed.

"What? Come on, I'm fine!" He held out his hand for the paper. "Hit me."

Cas handed over the paper.

"A series of bodies in Muscle Shoals," he said. "Exsanguinated. I thought that might be 'your kind of thing.'"

Cas brought his fingers up to do air quotes as he finished his sentence, and this time Dean couldn't repress a charmed smile.

"Sounds like it," he said. "Vampire nest, maybe."

"Vampires," Cas repeated, as though he was testing out the word in his mouth. "I see."

The paper was a rag, reporting with relish on a series of bizarre murders that were far enough away to feel non-threatening, it barely skirted openly proclaiming the culprit as a supernatural force.

Which they were probably right about, but if you even hinted at that sort of thing as a quote unquote journalist, you've pretty much already flushed your credibility down the tube. Still, less than credible sources could be a hunter's best friend, if they even got the bare minimum of their facts straight.

"Five victims in two weeks?" He muttered. "That's a lot, gotta be a pretty big nest…"

He folded up the paper, tapping it on his palm as he mentally plotted out their route.

"Alabama, huh? We should be able to make that in ten, eleven hours? I don't know how far south Muscle Shoals is off the top of my head," he said. "We'll pack up, roll out, be there by the afternoon, early evening."

"Are you sure?" Cas asked, brow furrowing. "You said you were sore. If you're still injured-"

"Cas," Dean interrupted, exasperated. "I'm fine, I promise. Just a bit bruised. I'll be better in no time."

"Alright," Cas acquiesced. "I apologise I'm just not used to…"

He trailed off, leaving Dean to fill in the blank about what, exactly, he wasn't used to.

"It's cool," Dean smiled. "I look out for you, you look out for me, right?"

Cas got that look on his face again, like he was seeing the sunrise for the first time. Dean turned to start fussing with his duffle so he didn't have to look at it too long. It made his chest feel warm and floaty, like it was too tight and about to burst open at the same time. 

It kinda hurt.

"Yes," Cas said after a moment, his voice soft. "I think I like that."

Dean hummed in vague agreement, keeping his head down, and the shaky smile on his face private. Yeah, he was pretty sure he liked it too.

"If I'm going to be taking care of you, then I'll have to insist on a proper breakfast before we go," Cas said. "I'm told it's the most important meal of the day."

Dean laughed to hear his own words, spoken many times in an effort to cajole Cas into eating something, parroted back at him.

"Well what do you know," he crowed. "He's learning!"

He slapped Cas on the back on his way by, and received back a quiet, shy little smile. 

He folded it up and tucked it into his heart, where it lived along with all the others Cas had given him.

There were a couple of diners near the motel, the one Dean drove them to was called Bobby's. It was on the way, but more importantly Dean had already determined that, of the three, it served the best breakfast. 

The name was a funny little reminder. It made Dean think of the advice Cas had given him, back in Sioux City. Advice he'd ignored.

But South Dakota was a long way from Michigan, and they were only heading further away.

Maybe if they swung back around the area, Dean would think about stopping by. Sioux Falls didn't loom in his mind the way Palo Alto did, but Dean didn't really think that Bobby would be any happier to see him than Sam.

He wouldn't have to tell Bobby, but that's cause Bobby would know. A hunter as connected as him, he would've heard.

And if he'd heard and hadn't called…

Anyway, maybe Dean would see him again, some day. Bobby's Diner still made a mean omelet.

As was their routine by now, Dean ordered for Cas and prodded him until he set upon a plate of waffles piled high with strawberries and whipped cream like a rabid dog set upon a steak.

It didn't take near as much prodding as it used to, which made satisfaction settle in his gut.

That feeling sparked warm and low as he watched Cas stuff his face. Dean, also as usual, did his best to ignore it.

Still, he couldn't quite help looking.

Cas looked back at him, his cheeks bulging as he licked at his sticky fingers.

"What?" He mumbled around his full mouth.

Dean grinned, unable to stop it.

"You got a little something right there," he said, swiping a thumb over his own nose.

Cas crossed his eyes, like he was trying to see the little dollop of whipped cream there.

Dean laughed, reaching out to wipe it away. The movement carried through before he could think better of it, and it was only when he locked eyes with Cas', wide and startled, that reality came crashing in and he realized he'd crossed the line.

He pulled his hand back like he'd been burned, dropping it below the table and wiping his thumb on his jeans. The fleeting thought that he could have cleaned it off with his mouth burned through him and he crushed it as fast as he could.

Cas swallowed.

"Thank you, Dean."

"Yeah," Dean said weakly. "No problem."

He stabbed at his eggs and shoveled his own massive bite into his mouth, shooting Cas a close-lipped smile over squirrel-stuffed cheeks. He laughed, just a little, and Dean felt his heart settle.

Cas looked down at this plate, empty of anything but crumbs, and swiped his thumb over the edge to pick up some strawberry sauce. He brought it up to his lips and licked it off.

"So," he said. "Vampires?"

Dean swallowed.

"Uh, yeah." Dean cleared his throat. "You've had a run-in with them before, haven't you? You mentioned, once."

"Ah." Cas blinked at him. "Yes, you said that's what they were. They didn't exactly identify themselves to me."

"Big group, shady guys, mouth like a shark that needs some serious dental work?" Dean clacked his teeth for emphasis. Cas nodded, his mouth twitching a little at the corners. "Yeah they were vamps."

"There are other supernatural creatures that feast on blood, though?" Castiel prompted.

"Sure," Dean said. "Loads. Honestly, probably more than I even know about. But you get bodies turning up drained, it's usually gonna be vampires, djinn, or maybe chupacabra."

"Chupacabra," Cas repeated, turning the word over in his mouth. He did that often, testing out the things Dean said like he was committing them to memory.

"Right, but neither of them would work through this many victims in such a short time." He gestured to Cas with his fork. "Not alone, and they both tend to be solitary. Chupacabra sometimes come in pairs, and only hunt humans opportunistically. Djinn take one or two victims at a time and drain them slow. Vampires though, there's almost never just one, there'll be a nest. And given the amount of victims, a big one. Or maybe fast-growing."

"Growing?" Cas asked.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Vamps convert people by feeding them their blood. Newborns are hungry and have a hard time controlling themselves, might be why they need a lot of fresh blood. We should look into missing persons' reports when we get to town."

"I see," Cas said. "And how does one kill a vampire?"

"You?" Dean smirked. "Well I imagine you'll stab 'em with your special knife."

Cas huffed, rolling his eyes.

"The rest of us plebs," Dean continued, for his edification. "Decapitation, and dead man's blood. It's poison, doesn't kill them outright but can slow them down long enough that you can take their heads off."

"Dead man's blood?" Cas asked, his brows furrowing.

"Yeah, don't ask me why." Dean leaned back and shrugged. "They need to drain living victims, blood from the dead is toxic to them."

"I see," Cas said, an odd expression crossing his face. "That makes sense."

"Does it?" Dean asked. "I mean what's the difference, really?"

"They are two opposing states of being," Cas pointed out, then pursed his lips as though he'd tasted something sour.

"I dunno," Dean said. "We see a lot of stuff in this job that ain't exactly alive and ain't exactly dead."

Often Dean himself felt like he was one foot out the door.

"A fair point," Cas said, looking down at the table and fiddling with his napkin. Dean shifted on his side of the booth, feeling out of step, like he was missing half of the conversation they were having.

"It's not like anything really happens to your blood when you die," he continued, just for something to say. "Or not right away, anyway. It'd rot like anything else."

"Is a vampire's requirement for blood necessarily based in the physical?" Cas asked, the odd expression clearing from his face as he tilted his head, curious. "They are supernatural creatures, are they not?"

"Okay Kant," Dean snorted, scraping up the last of his eggs. "What kind of metaphysical change does blood go through when the person it belongs to dies?"

"All the important parts are already eaten," Cas said without hesitation.

Dean looked up at him, his forkful of eggs hovering by his open mouth. Cas closed his with a grimace, as though regretting his words.

Dean took his last bite, raising his eyebrows at Cas even as he couldn't help but smile. Cas shrugged back, unable to justify himself.

"Well I guess it doesn't matter," he said after he swallowed. "Whether a vampire drinks blood for the same reason a leach does or if they're draining your life force, you still end up dead."

Dean shifted in his seat, pushing his plate away and waving slightly when he caught the waitress' eye.

"You can be quite incurious about the nature of the world," Cas said.

"I'm a simple guy, Cas." Dean shrugged. The waitress brought them the check and Dean threw down a few bills to cover their meal. "I don't need to know why things are the way they are, I just need to know how to deal with them."

"Sometimes I think that might be a better way to be," Cas said as he followed Dean out of the diner. "When one has questions whose answers are impossible to know, how far can asking even take you? Uncertainty is paralyzing but inaction is still a choice, it seems like there is no escaping the trap of incomplete knowledge."

"You only know that you know nothing, huh Socrates?"

"For a man who claims not to think deeply about anything, you can certainly name quite a few philosophers," Cas pointed out.

Dean laughed, they had reached the Impala and he was digging in his pocket for the keys. He glanced across the road and his eyes caught on a girl sitting on a bench. The retort he was formulating died on his tongue and he frowned. She had long brown hair and a heart shaped face, her dress was white and reached her ankles. There wasn't anything in particular remarkable about her, other than he could have sworn he'd seen her before.

He took a step closer, away from the car, her eyes were on his, gazing back placidly.

"Hey Cas." He nodded to the girl. "Do you recognize her?"

"Hmm?" Cas turned to look at the girl, only for her to get up and walk away as soon as he turned his head.

Dean's brow furrowed, taking another step in her direction. She disappeared down an alleyway, the hem of her skirt fluttering as she walked.

"Dean," Cas called out to him. He shook his head, like shaking off a daze. "We need to get on the road."

"Right," he said, glancing off after the girl again. Had she been watching them? Or had she just reacted to two strange men staring at her. The second explanation was more likely.

He opened up the car door, sliding into the driver's seat.

Still, why did he feel like he knew her?

"Well," he said, his hands on the wheel, a smile on his lips as he shook off the nagging feeling. "Muscle Shoals here we come."

Driving in Baby with Cas might have been his favourite part of working together. Dean had always felt his best on the open road, but even still, Cas' quiet presence at his side seemed to answer an absence he hadn't realized was there.

He had Cas dig through his cassettes to pull out a Lynyrd Skynyrd tape and sang along to Sweet Home Alabama at the top of his lungs while Cas watched with a baffled smile on his face, bobbing his head along offbeat to the chorus and stumbling over the words when Dean prompted him to sing.

Cas had a way about him, like he gave everything you put in front of him careful consideration, even Dean's inane commentary about billboards that passed them by.

"Hey," Dean pointed out a sign, not long after they passed through Louisville. "World's largest pocket knife, think we should stop?"

Cas frowned as though he was seriously considering the question.

"Do we have time for that?" He asked.

"No, I wasn't really-" Dean huffed, shaking his head. There were occasional downsides to talking to a guy who took everything at face value. "I mean of course, we can't stop, we have somewhere to be. It was just funny."

"Oh," Cas said, "I see."

Dean drove for a few more minutes in silence, his thumb tapping on the wheel.

"It is," he said. "Funny, you know? I always wanted to stop for stuff like that, when I was a kid, and my dad- well there was just never time. And now I'm an adult and I get to pick where to stop, and it's still never a good time."

Cas hummed, a little acknowledging noise that had made Dean nervous at first, but now he knew it to be a sign that Cas was contemplating what he'd just said, not judging or ignoring him.

"Perhaps we should stop, then," he said eventually.

"What?" Dean asked, then shook his head. "No, Cas you were right, we have places to be, people to save, you know?"

"Well, that is true. But we have several hours left to drive, and we do still need to make rest stops," Cas pointed out. "Why not stop and see the… large pocket knife?"

"It's out of our way," Dean pointed out.

"Not by much," Cas replied. "And an hour or two more or less won't make much difference to the start of our investigation, we'll be arriving in the evening in desperate need of rest either way."

Dean opened his mouth to retort that that time could mean life or death, and then closed it again. Would it really? How often did he roll into town and then immediately stumble into a lead that prompted a last minute rescue? But then, if another victim did turn up, he wouldn't be able to stop himself wondering, either.

He glanced at Cas out of the corner of his eye, waiting quietly for him to decide, like he'd be content either way. 

A few months ago, he hadn't wanted to waste a second he could've been looking for leads. Now he was proposing time-wasting detours.

He's doing it for me , Dean realized, a mix of warmth and sick guilt blooming in his stomach.

"Sure," he said, quietly. "Why not?"

Plenty of reasons, but Dean could shove those aside. This, the taking care of each other thing, was what they did now. Let Cas talk him into a rest stop, maybe it could be the first step of teaching the guy to actually rest .

"We need to get lunch anyway, right?" He repeated the justification, as he navigated to the exit. The nagging sense that he was going to get caught slacking didn't disappear, but Dean did his best to ignore it. "Might as well get it at the giant pocket knife."

"It sure is a big knife," Dean said.

"Yes," Cas said. "Is it everything you imagined?"

Trying to navigate their way back to the pocket knife had been an ordeal in itself, roadside billboards did not accurate waypoints make. It had turned a fifteen minute detour into a thirty minute one, at least.

And now, here they were.

"You know Cas?" Dean said dryly. "I think it's actually exactly what I imagined."

"A big knife?"

"A big knife." Dean shook his head and laughed.

"There also appears to be a museum," Cas pointed out.

"What the hell," Dean said, grinning. "Let's learn about pocket knives."

Dean found himself warming to the kitschy little place the longer they spent there. The knife was big, someone had gone out of their way to make it like that, for no particular reason other than they could.

And, of course, to get people to stop and buy things from their store. The massive selection of quality cutting implements that Dean could wander through like a kid in a candy store went a long way to bolstering his excitement about the outing.

Cas, for his part, seemed more interested in collecting trivia than blades.

"Did you know they've discovered folding knives that date back to the Iron Age?" Castiel asked as they exited the shop, reading from a pamphlet he'd picked up on a tour of the museum. "An innovation that lasted through the ages, it seems."

"Yeah?" Dean asked, suppressing a smile. "Maybe you should upgrade."

"I find I can pocket my knife just as well without any folding," Cas said.

"Where do you keep your knife, anyway?" Dean poked him in the side, and delighted when Cas looked at him with what could only be described as betrayal, his hand coming up to his ribs as though he had been grievously wounded. "Nothing up your sleeves…"

Dean trailed off, missing Cas' response entirely, because as he looked past him, he locked eyes with a girl, brown hair, white dress, heart-shaped face.

She turned away the moment his eyes fell on her, and he swore, stepping forward to follow.

Cas reached out and caught his arm.

"Don't," he said, his expression suddenly grim.

"Cas, that girl," he said urgently. "She was at the motel earlier, she's following us."

"I know," Cas said. "Let's get to the car, we still need to get something to eat."

He started walking, and it took a moment for Dean's brain to catch up even as his feet shuffled along.

"You knew?" He hissed. "How long has this been going on?"

His eyes widened in realization.

"That's why I thought she was familiar," he said. "I've seen her before, around the motel, and I just didn't notice."

Cas nodded briskly, opening the door to the Impala, Dean caught him by the shoulder before he could slip in.

"What the hell, Cas?" He demanded. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Dean," he said, his eyes wide and pleading. Dean didn't relent, and he sighed. "This happens, sometimes, and there's little that can be done about it. I suppose I didn't want to worry you."

"Worry me?" Dean snapped. "This is the cult, isn't it? You didn't think I should be a little worried that they're stalking us?"

"I'm sorry," Cas said immediately. "I'm not used to…"

He shook his head.

"I should have told you."

"Damn right," Dean agreed. "Why'd you keep me from following her?"

"Because you wouldn't have been able to catch her," Cas told him plainly. "They have ways of moving through the world that we can't access."

"So what?" Dean asked. "We just let her keep following us?"

"In a nutshell, yes." Cas shrugged helplessly at Dean's incredulous look. "Dean, even when we can't see anyone, it's best to assume we're being observed. I'm sure you've noticed that we've had no leads on the cult in the past few months.

Dean nodded, uncertain.

"Rooting them out isn't quite like hunting monsters. The cult is… fractured, a lot of the old leadership is gone now, and there are… internal squabbles, between those that remain. But they are still connected to each other. There are ebbs and flows of activity because they regroup, plan." He gestured back towards where the girl had disappeared. "She may be a lure, or she may just be a scout. Either way, it likely means there will be movement again soon. I've been searching for the usual signs. It's possible we may be able to get ahead of them, but it's likely that the next confrontation will be at a time and place of their choosing. We'll need to be ready, but there's not much else we can do."

"It would be easier for me to be ready if I actually knew there was something to be ready for," Dean pointed out, but already his hackles were smoothing down, just seeing the guilty way Cas cast his eyes down.

"I know," he said, remorseful. "This has been my own private war for a long time, Dean. Sometimes I forget that you're my ally and not…"

Dean raised an eyebrow as Cas trailed off.

"Not what?" He prompted.

"Something to be protected," Cas finished at last.

"I can take care of myself, Cas," Dean pointed out, fighting the colour that threatened to rise in his cheeks.

"Yes," Cas said. "I know."

Dean got the feeling there was something he was keeping himself from saying, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to hear it. He stepped back, clearing his throat.

"Alright, get in the car," Dean said, rounding to the driver's side and getting in himself. "Should we be trying to shake them?"

"It wouldn't help much," Cas admitted, sliding in next to him. "As I said, it's best to assume we're always observed."

"Great," Dean said, shuddering. "You really think there's nothing we can do? Isn't that a bit defeatist?"

"I've yet to be defeated," Cas said. "We're all biding our time, at the moment. Malachi threw down an obvious gauntlet by doing nothing to conceal himself, believing he could overwhelm me with numbers. The next attack may be subtler. Or it could be that our watcher is meant to be a distraction, we don't know enough yet to plan around their moves, and we might not until they're upon us."

"Alright," Dean sighed. "So business as usual. I think I saw a drive through place on the way in. You feeling burgers?"

"I like burgers very much," Cas said, relief in his voice.

Dean snorted, but he was pleased that Cas wasn't fighting him about food, just this once. "Yeah you do."

They ate their lunch on the road in a silence that slowly shed its awkwardness and returned to their usual easy air.

Almost. Dean checked his mirrors over and over, keeping watch on every car that looked familiar as it passed them. There were too many to count.

Every once in a while, along the side of the road, he thought he caught a glimpse of white.

It kept happening all the way to Muscle Shoals.

They rolled into town not long after eight, and Dean navigated the streets until he found a promising looking dive.

"We're going drinking?" Cas asked, blinking in surprise as he got out of the car.

"No," Dean laughed. "Well, I'll probably have a beer or two. This is where we're going to start looking for information."

"Why?" Cas followed him towards the bar, his head tilting in that endearing way of his as he did.

"I haven't run into vampires much," Dean admitted, shouldering open the door. "But in my experience, they've been rowdy and big on the night life. I figure we could start by asking around, see if anyone new to town has been causing problems, maybe the pattern will hold."

"I see." Cas stuck by his side as he went up to the bar and ordered them a couple of beers. Dean handed him his drink and then ushered him into a booth with a good view of the bar. He wanted to get the lay of the land first thing.

"Why haven't you encountered many vampires before?" Cas asked, after a moment or two. He spun his beer bottle between his hands, apparently uninterested in drinking it.

"Well I actually didn't know they were around until a little while ago," Dean answered, absent-minded. "Apparently hunters thought they wiped them out a decade or two ago. But I guess there were still a couple out there, laying low. Then I guess the hunters that know about them get old and retire, or something else gets to them, and when nobody's on the lookout anymore, the bloodsuckers make a comeback."

"I suppose hunting monsters has its own ebbs and flows then," Cas remarked.

"Yeah," Dean said, considering it. He'd never really thought about whether hunting had patterns like that, broader things than just being able to identify the MO of particular monsters. Did these things change with the seasons? His dad had never mentioned anything like it, and John Winchester could always be counted on to notice patterns where no one else did.

His hand tightened on his beer bottle and he shook himself, shoving the melancholy that tried to creep up on him down.

"Well." He smacked a hand on the table lightly. "I'm going to make the rounds."

There was a woman sat by the bar, older, with dirty blond curls and heavy eye makeup. She'd been making eyes at him, and a little bit of flirting could go a long way to get someone to open up to you.

"Hey there," he said, sliding up to her, and offering his hand. "Dean."

"Paula." She took it in hers, assessing him with a shrewd, knowing look.

For some reason, Dean found himself looking back at Cas, just a glance. Cas was looking back at him, his gaze heavy and dark. He held Dean's eyes for a moment before he turned away and downed his beer in one long swallow.

"So, Dean," Paula pulled his attention back to her, she had long nails that she tapped on her glass. "You just passing through?"

Dean put on his most charming grin and leaned in, ready to get to work.

"Hey," Dean stepped out of the bar, a little wobbly on his feet, into the night air. Cas was standing against the outside of the building, staring up at the sky. "I was wondering where you went."

Cas hummed in response, drawing his eyes down to the sky.

"I was in need of some fresh air," he said. "I didn't think I would be much help, you've pointed out my deficiencies when it comes to conducting interviews."

"Hey, you're not that bad." Dean nudged him with his elbow, swallowing down the bitter feeling of panic that had welled up in him when he'd glanced over at their shared booth and found Cas gone. "When I need the fear of god put in someone, I know who to call."

Cas smiled slightly, a fleeting thing, and looked away, scanning the parking lot.

"You see anyone out here?" Dean asked, casual, leaning back against the building.

Cas shook his head.

"It's been quiet, but.."

"But that doesn't mean we're not being watched." Dean breathed out, slowly, fighting the new spike of gnawing anxiety. "Yeah."

"What did you find?" Cas asked, after a moment of letting that grim thought sink in.

"Not much," Dean admitted. "People are pretty freaked about the deaths, everyone's got their own theory, nothing with any meat, though."

"What was Paula's theory?" Cas asked, and Dean blinked at him in surprise. Odd that Cas had even caught her name, across a noisy bar.

"She wasn't so interested in talking about it, honestly," Dean admitted.

Extracting himself from her after he'd committed had been pretty difficult, too. He shivered a little, thinking about the long nails she had tapped on the countertop, the way she'd looked at him, narrow-eyed and expectant, like she'd been waiting for him to disappoint. Any other night, he probably would've followed her home.

"Hm," Cas said, and Dean examined him closely.

"You alright?" He asked.

"Just tired, I suppose," Cas sighed. 

"It's late," Dean agreed, pushing himself away from the building. "We should find some place to turn in for the night."

"Yes," Cas said. "We should do that."

Dean kept watching him, concerned by the strange tone in his voice, but Cas just strode forward, his gaze fixed ahead, his shoulders squared. Something about his silhouette in the night made Dean relax, softened him even more than the buzz of alcohol in his veins.

"Dean?" Cas prompted, standing by the passenger side door already, his hand on the handle. Dean realized he had just been standing and staring at him. He shook his head, maybe he was a bit tipsier than he thought.

"Yeah, sorry." He stepped towards the car, taking a deep breath of the cool night air in an effort to sober up. He half expected Cas to comment, threaten to take his keys away, but he slid into the passenger seat without question or complaint.

Dean had asked the bartender about places to stay on the cheap, and he followed the half-remembered directions to a squat motel a few blocks away, vacancy sign flickering out front. Reception was a little island of light, a dingy cluttered room with, oddly enough, shelves full of old fashioned ship figurines and nautical maps plastered up on the walls, all peeling corners and cracking seams. An older man in bifocals checked them in without really looking up from the book he was reading, and Dean collected their key without comment. His eyes were drooping, the exhaustion from the long day finally setting in, and he didn't have the energy to spare to comment on the odd decor.

He couldn't quite help himself when he got to the room, though.

"Okay, what the fuck?" Dean asked, taking in the distinctly oceanic theming. The bedspreads were blue and cream, the walls teal. An oppressively large wood carving of an octopus wound around an anchor dominated the wall behind the beds, and the lamp between them was shaped like a lighthouse. There was another ship in a bottle on the desk shoved in the corner. "We are nowhere near the ocean."

"There is a river," Cas pointed out, wandering around and poking at the decor. He studied a painting of a ship tossed into a storm, looking appreciative.

"Octopuses don't live in rivers," Dean pointed out. "Octopi?"

"Either is correct," Cas informed him, turning his attention to the carving.

Dean shook his head, leaving him to it as he went to the bathroom to wash up. The backsplash was printed with little anchors. He sighed, wetting his toothbrush.

"It is a rather striking piece," Cas called from the other room, after a few minutes.

Dean snorted and spat out his mouthful of toothpaste, rinsing his mouth and splashing his face with water. He didn't have the energy for a shower, resigning himself to feeling crusty in the morning.

"Yeah, if by striking you mean ugly," he remarked, exiting the bathroom and switching off the light behind him. Cas hadn't illuminated the lamps in the main room and it took a second for his eyes to adjust in the absence of the harsh fluorescents.

Cas turned to look back at him from where he stood in front of the massive carving on the wall. Seeing him silhouetted against it in the dark, Dean was abruptly thrust back into that moment months ago, during their first meeting, when he'd seen Cas standing in front of the mural, as though he was part of it. The carving was massive, and carried an ugliness that had nothing to do with a lack of skill. Frankly, it was a masterwork, writhing tentacles and beady eyes were rendered with loving detail, and it was that careful specificity that made it so grotesque. In the dark, the tentacles seemed to spread out from behind Cas' head, twisting back on themselves. The wood glistened, green-black, and they pulsed as though they were alive. Curling and stretching out from Castiel as he unfurled into the room, overtaking it.

Mother, Dean's tired mind supplied.

He rubbed his eyes, blinking them open to find Cas tilting his head at him, curious, and a carving behind him that was just a carving.

He huffed, shaking his head. 

He was more tired than he thought.

"I'm beat," Dean said, interrupting himself with a yawn that proved his point. "You planning on turning in any time soon, Cas?"

"I think I'll shower," he said. "Unless it will keep you up?"

"I don't think anything could at this point," Dean said, his eyes drifting closed. He crawled onto bed to keep from swaying on his feet. Kicking off his boots but not bothering to lose his jeans. "Just keep the tv on low if you turn it on, I guess."

"Of course," Cas replied, heading to the bathroom.

Dean hummed in acknowledgement, already drifting into a pleasant doze. His sleep had been unsettled since Seattle. His talisman, the drawing he'd copied from his memories of the mural, had been abandoned in his trashed motel room and he hadn't even registered the loss until he'd been tucking himself into bed one state over and its absence had sent a spike of anxiety through him.

He'd found himself doodling the figure again, absentmindedly, once, but Cas had reached out and stilled his pen.

"Don't," he'd said, his expression serious. Dean had put down the pen, and let Cas take the receipt he'd been drawing on and burn it. He hadn't elaborated on the problem other than to say "It isn't good for you," but Dean had obeyed, too embarrassed to admit that he'd carried a copy with him for months already. In retrospect, it was a pretty idiotic thing to do with an occult symbol of unknown effect.

He didn't really need the talisman anymore, now that he'd found Cas. It had been a statement of intent, more than anything, but it had developed some sort of placebo effect on him. Like the gun he kept under his pillow, having it close gave him a sense of safety.

He still slept deeply these days, more than was usual for him. But he woke up oddly wanting, reaching for something half-remembered and just out of reach.

Despite what he'd said to Cas, the sound of running water from the bathroom did keep him on the edge of consciousness. It didn't bother him much, though, the gentle rushing invading his waking dreams, turning the motel room into a real seashore, waves rocking his bed back and forth.

It felt like the sound of water carried on for a long time, as Dean drifted, half awake. He didn't hear when the water stopped, the sound persisting in his mind, only distantly registered when the bathroom door opened, and light briefly fell across his face.

He didn't even have time to wrinkle his nose before it shut off again.

Soft footsteps crossed the room, but they didn't make their way to the unoccupied bed. It was Dean that the gentle padding steps approached, the floor by his bedside creaking under the shifting weight, like the deck of a ship rocked by the waves.

He didn't open his eyes, but he could feel the figure hovering over him, an impression of warmth, too quiet breaths. He knew it was Cas, but his sluggish, dreaming brain filled in the space he occupied with a featureless void-person, looking down at him with a head but no face.

Cas reached out and brushed his fingers through his hair, and Dean felt the last of his tension drain away, filling his mind with pleasant static. After a moment he sighed, and pulled his hand away. Dean mourned the loss.

The bedspread Dean had wrapped himself in seemed to shift, and his skin tingled with phantom sensations. It felt as though there were many limbs creeping under the sheets, gentle and exploring, their touches feather-light like the brush of Cas' fingers through his hair.

He wanted to tell Cas that he could put his hand back, that his limbs could hold him tighter, but his body felt heavy, and he couldn't bring himself to open his eyelids. He only barely managed a noise of protest from his half open mouth.

Cas' hand returned, just a delicate brush of his knuckles over Dean's cheek, sending a burst of warmth through him.

"What am I supposed to do with you?" He whispered.

Keep me , Dean thought. Whatever you want, just keep me.

Cas pulled away again, and Dean wanted to protest, but the winding limbs that had crept around him under the blankets circled him tighter and pulled him down, down into a deeper sleep. To half-remembered dreams of twisting octopus arms that kept him suspended in the pitch black, but never held him tight enough.

The next morning saw them trying their luck at the police station. Cas went in to do his bulldog approach, and Dean slipped in after, using the distraction of the steadily escalating confrontation to get his sticky fingers on some files. 

Cas didn't make a fuss. He left that to other people, turning himself into an immovable chunk of granite and letting them break against him like waves. There was something about him that commanded attention, Dean counted four officers in the station, and while only one was actually dealing with Cas and his questions- his voice steadily rising in response as he got more frustrated- the other three were drawn into the confrontation with rapt attention. Meanwhile, Dean strolled past their turned heads, took photos of the evidence pinned up on boards, and then rooted around for the open case file on the five deaths. He slipped the sheaf of papers inside under his arm, and then slipped the file folder into a different desk, hoping that would cause enough confusion to keep them from consulting the security footage right away when they noticed they'd been robbed.

The Cas-related incident out front was escalating towards the physical by then, so Dean made his retreat. The Impala was parked a few blocks away, out of range of any cameras, and Dean waited there for Cas to catch up.

He was more rumpled than usual when he slipped into the passenger seat.

"You alright?" Dean asked as he started the car and pulled away.

"I'm fine." Cas tugged on his tie to straighten it and ended up leaving it only differently crooked. Dean resisted the urge to reach over and fix it for him.

He turned his eyes back to the road, palms itching. He ignored it, and the damn housewife fantasy that caused it. He needed to get himself under control. 

That morning, he'd woken to a feeling of wrongness when he found himself alone in bed. For half a moment on his way to wakefulness, he was convinced that Cas should be next to him, holding him tight.

It was a level of pathetic clinginess that he couldn't abide, even from his subconscious.

They returned to the hotel to go over their information, Cas took his laptop to the desk to open Dean's quick snapshots on a screen big enough they might have a chance of making out his blurry photography while Dean spread the file out on the floor and started scanning through and sorting information.

It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes before Cas called his name, pulling his attention from a profile of the third victim: a college student on a road trip passing through. Nothing in common with the other victims and no immediately apparent point of crossover either.

"What's up?" He asked.

Cas gestured to the laptop, turning it slightly towards him. Dean got up, walking over and putting a hand on his shoulder to lean down and look at the screen.

It was a blurry photo he'd taken of a map of the sites the bodies were discovered. He'd barely glanced at it in the process, trying to get in and out as quickly as possible..

The five pins on the map created a loose but unmistakable circle.

"You're kidding." Dean leaned in further. "It can't be that simple. What's in the center?"

Silently, Cas tabbed over to a satellite map of the same location.

"A farm?" Dean muttered.

"It seems to be," Cas agreed. "I find it unlikely the police missed this entirely, is there anything in the file about it?"

"Let me see," Dean pushed himself up, heading back to the ordered chaos of the file spread over the floor. "Yeah, address off Old Highway 20?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I've got a write up here, looks like they sent some officers to check out the property, and they didn't find anything."

"Should we check it out for ourselves, then?" Cas asks.

"Worth a shot," Dean said, tapping his fingers on his thigh and biting his lip, he looked around at the information he had laid out around him.

"Are vampires usually so careless?" Cas asked.

"Not in my experience," Dean admitted. Of course Cas had picked up on the same thing that was bothering him. "Maybe they're confident that they're hidden well enough no one will find them. Or maybe they were planning to move on quickly and didn't care about leaving a mess."

"You think they may already be gone?" Cas asked.

Dean shrugged. "Could be one reason the cops didn't find anything."

Dean frowned, something about this whole situation niggled in the back of his head, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Maybe we should stake out the site," he said. "See if there's any movement before we approach."

"Do you think there's cause for concern?" Cas' brow furrowed.

"Maybe, I don't know. Could be it's nothing and this turns out to be a milk run." He shrugged. "But the amount of victims, the fact they were dumped so carelessly… They might be overconfident for a reason."

"Which gives us a reason to be cautious." Cas nodded along.

In the spirit of that caution, Dean went through and checked their weapons in the trunk. Cas sharpened their machetes while Dean filled syringes with Dead Man's Blood, going over everything he knew about vampires again while Cas listened quietly.

"If they're primarily active at night, are we likely to see anything useful if we surveil the property now?" Cas asked as they loaded up the car.

"Probably not," Dean admitted. "Any ideas what to do until evening?"

Cas did have an idea, one that found them at City Hall looking for records on the property.

"No joy?" Dean put a coffee cup down next to Cas as he scowled down at the blueprint laid out in front of him.

So the coffee run may have been a way to take a break from sifting through dusty archives.

Sue him, at least he was keeping morale up.

"There's no record of any official construction on the property that might explain where a large number of vampires might hide from a police search." He picked up the coffee, the lines of his brow smoothing out as soon as he laid hands on it. He didn't take a sip, just used it to warm his hands as he sat back. "There is a storm shelter, it's possible the police overlooked it, but it doesn't seem particularly spacious, either."

"It's something to check out, anyway," Dean said. "Not much to do now but wait for nightfall, I guess."

Dean drove them back to the motel. The wise move would be to try to catch a few extra hours of sleep so they'd be more alert that night, but Dean was used to running on little sleep, and Cas made no move to tuck in for a nap, so he flipped on the television and started channel surfing.

Commercial, commercial, procedural, oh- a familiar hospital setting appeared on the screen. Dean shot a glance at Cas, watching with a curious look. Somehow he doubted Cas would judge him for watching shitty soaps. He changed the channel anyway. He'd come back to Doctor Sexy if there wasn't anything else on.

The images flicked quickly past, until something else he recognized appeared on the screen for a second. Dean went back, sitting up straight and grinning when a familiar actress entered the scene.

"Oh man, this is Hatchet Man: All Saints' Day!" Dean gestured to the screen, turning to Cas. "It's the second one. Too bad we can't start from the beginning. I love these movies."

Cas leaned forward slightly, his head tilting as he studied the television. The blonde woman on the screen looked haggard as she shoved herself into a storage room to catch her breath. Jenny, the archetypal final girl. Except the All Saints' movies loved to play with audience expectations, so this was the scene where they threw that out the window halfway through the movie. She died falling out an eighth story window after David Yaeger chased her through a nearly empty hospital in the middle of the night, help mysteriously out of reach. The way it was shot made it ambiguous whether she'd been thrown, or she'd chosen to jump herself.

"What are they about?" Cas asked.

Conveniently, he voiced the question just as the shot changed and the titular character appeared. Dean nodded at him.

"That's David Yaeger," he said. "The Hatchet Man. He was killed in a prank gone wrong, and now he's back from the grave for revenge. Back a second time, actually. Like I said, this is the sequel, so he's hunting the survivors after they thought they got rid of him in the first movie."

"Like a Revenant," Cas said, his eyes widening slightly as an axe burst through the door Jenny was leaning against just as she had relaxed, thinking he'd passed by.

"Basically," Dean said. "But the people who wrote this weren't basing it on anything real, obviously. He's not weak to silver." He paused, considering. "Then again, I'm not sure anyone ever tried it."

"Perhaps they should have consulted the lore," Cas quipped.

Dean laughed. "Yeah, we'd take care of him in no time flat."

He kept watching as Jenny rolled under a table to avoid a wild swing of the axe and scrambled her way to the shattered door.

"They kind of lose sight of the whole revenge thing the next few movies, anyway," Dean remarked. "It becomes more about the blood and gore for a bit. I mean it was always a slashfest, but they sort of take the focus off David Yaeger himself, he's just kind of a force that the characters have to prove themselves against or die, you know? Until the fifth one."

"What happens in the fifth one?" Cas asked as Jenny made it to the stairwell and started to climb up. It was an interesting moment. The actress had made the choice to stop and look down, just long enough to make you wonder. Was this a typical stupid horror movie decision? Did she hear something down there that made her think she couldn't escape that way? 

Or had she already known what she was going to do?

Whatever her reasoning, it was in the stairwell when her fate was sealed.

"Five is the search for David Yaeger, they get kind of conceptual with it," he said. "I mean these movies have always kind of been a send-up of the genre, but five really deconstructs it, takes it all back to the beginning. It's kind of weird, but good."

"And you like that better?" Cas asked.

Dean's eyes were fixed on the screen, Jenny was cornered in the room on the eighth floor where she would fall. She backed towards the window, staring at the door. The sound of an axe scraping along the wall could be heard as Hatchet Man approached. The camera cut to an over the shoulder shot of him, his axe shrieking over some lockers. Back to Jenny, the audience could see her thinking, preparing for the move she would make next. She looked determined.

"Hm? Oh my favourite is four," Dean said. "I don't know, maybe it's not as thinky, but they really had the formula down by then. Some of the best kills are in four."

"And that's what you're meant to enjoy?" Cas asked. "The killing?"

Dean didn't answer, fixated on the screen. Jenny pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall, holding it at the ready. Then, she looked over her shoulder at the window. The camera switched over her shoulder to a reverse shot, her face in profile in the foreground, David Yaeger in the background, silhouetted in the doorway. She closed her eyes.

The camera cut to the outside of the hospital, still and silent until-

Crash! Jenny fell into frame, surrounded by broken glass, the fire extinguisher falling with her. The camera followed her down, stopping just before the ground, so she fell out of frame with a horrific crunch. The shot switched to one of her body from above, twisted, her blonde hair fanned out around her head, but her face peaceful. The reverse, David Yaeger stood in the window, looking down, then stepped back into shadow.

Cas was quiet for a long moment.

"Did she jump?" He asked, his voice soft.

"People debate about that," Dean said, his voice just as quiet. "Some people think Hatchet Man got the drop on her because she let her guard down, and call it cheap because she's usually a really smart character. She's basically the whole reason anyone survived the first movie. I don't really buy that though."

Cas contemplated this in silence again.

"Why does she jump?" He asked. 

Dean looked over at him, surprised, to see him looking back.

"I don't know, I think…" He considered his words carefully. All the while, Cas watched him with wide, fathomless eyes. Waiting. "Maybe as a way to take her power back? She was out of options, she knew she couldn't escape him, but she could take her death out of her hands. Meet it on her own terms."

Cas hummed, considering. Dean looked back at the screen. It was a new scene, Jenny's friends learning about her death, this was the part of the movie where the stakes were raised. It was why people who didn't get the ambiguity of Jenny's death scene thought the movie sucked. All the tension in the second half came out of the fact that she was taken out, so if you thought her death was contrived, you were going to be rolling your eyes through the whole thing.

"You know," Dean said. "None of the other characters ever really escape Hatchet Man. The ones who survive this movie, they spend the rest of their life dealing with what happened to them. And I think… Yeah all of them make cameos in later movies, and die in them. They don't actually make it, they just run for a lot longer. From that perspective, Jenny is the only one who actually gets away."

Cas was quiet again.

"What would you do, Dean?" He asked eventually.

"Hm?" Dean asked, pulling his attention away from the movie.

"If you were cornered by the Hatchet Man, and there was no way out," Cas said. "Would you jump?"

"No," Dean said, before he'd really even thought about it.

"Why not?" Cas asked, looking at him in that curious way of his. Like Dean would never meet judgment, no matter what his answer was.

Maybe that's why when Dean opened his mouth, what came out wasn't something cool like "I'd rather go down fighting" .

Instead he simply said:

"I don't think I want it to be my choice."

Cas just nodded, like he was folding that into his understanding of Dean, slotting it in next to other facts: Dean likes burgers and pie, he takes his coffee black, he's better with a gun than a knife, sings along to classic rock off key, and doesn't want to choose to die.

"What about you?" Dean asked, looking away.

Cas thought about it for long enough that Dean wondered if he wasn't going to answer. He risked a look back, and Cas was frowning at his hands, like the question was deeply important to him.

"I don't think I could, not for my own escape," he said. "I would want to be able to earn something with my death. Perhaps if I thought I could take the Hatchet Man with me."

Dean's throat closed up. Abruptly, he remembered how the second All Saints' movie ended, with Lee, playing fill-in final girl, trapping himself and Hatchet Man in a burning building in an attempt to take him out.

Dean clicked a button on the remote, changing the channel.

Cas looked over at him in confusion.

"You don't want to watch the movie?"

"Not this time." Dean smiled thinly. He flicked back to a channel he'd passed over before. "You ever seen Doctor Sexy, Cas?"

Cas shook his head, and Dean launched into an explanation of the major plot points of the season leading up to the episode. The knot in his stomach didn't go away, but it loosened somewhat as he answered Cas' questions about character motivations, contrived drama, and whether or not certain things were acceptable medical practice.

It turned out to be a marathon, and Dean let the familiar comfort wash over him until the sun was low in the sky and it was time to go.

Dean pulled the Impala down the backroad leading up to the farm just as the sun was setting, lighting up the sky in shades of orange and pink. He tucked the car behind some bushes that would hopefully conceal it somewhat while still allowing them a clear line of sight to the buildings on the property: a run down farmhouse and a collapsing barn. 

Their approach had been cautious and roundabout, on the lookout for continued police presence in the area, but it seemed that as far as the local PD was concerned the farm was a dead end. Or at least, not worthy of active surveillance.

Dean was already beginning to wonder if they might be right. Even if the nest had been here, it would be suicidally reckless to stick around after drawing cops right to their door. 

Still, it would be just as reckless not to bother with a lead because it seemed too obvious.

They settled in for the long haul, Dean leaning back in his seat. They had a fresh round of coffee- Cas had leaned over Dean at the drive-through window to take his turn to pay- and Chinese take-out in bags and boxes, ready to tide them over until morning.

Dean had brought the bags of Chinese food back to the car with the victorious statement: "take-out for the stake out" and Cas had liked it so much that he'd repeated it under his breath no less than three times on the drive out.

It wasn't long, of course, before the mind-numbing boredom inherent to a stake-out began to set in.

"It feels odd not to have a camera," Cas remarked at one point, as Dean was picking at his chow mein.

"Yeah?" Dean asked. "You do a lot of stake outs?"

"An unfortunate amount of legitimate private investigation work involves following people at the behest of their spouses to prove they're unfaithful."

"Sounds boring," Dean said, although the higher stakes of their stake out hardly made watching the same unchanging scenery any more riveting.

"I find I don't bore easily," Cas admitted. "But no, it wasn't exactly fulfilling work."

"Why do you think people do stuff like that?" Dean asked, after a moment.

"Cheat on their partners, or mistrust them enough to spend a significant amount of money hiring a stranger to spy on them?"

"Both, I guess."

Cas sat in silence for a moment, thinking.

"People often remain in relationships that don't satisfy them because they find the prospect of being alone terrifying," he said. "As for their partners… Even in deeply flawed relationships, human beings can be very attuned to each other. Sometimes they're able to tell that their partner is holding something back, even when they can't name anything that's changed."

He turned away from where he'd been watching the stillness of the night to flick his eyes over Dean.

"Of course, often it's just their own fear that motivates them, disconnected from reality. Whether they have something they stand to lose should their partner leave them, or if it's only the loss of the companionship itself that plagues them with worry. Loneliness is a terrible beast, people flee from it with a fervour that is often to their detriment."

Dean laughed weakly, ignoring the churning in his own gut. He looked away.

"Yeah," he said. "Hey, you ever seen Tombstone?"

Cas hadn't, and he accepted the change of topic graciously. Dean launched into an explanation of the finer points of the movie, and then a discussion of his favourite westerns in general. Cas listened intently and watched him closely, like he always did, and Dean tried not to think of loneliness, and the things people did to escape it.

He didn't check his messages so often these days, his phone stayed in his pocket more than it used to. He still thought about calling, but it was easier than ever to push off for tomorrow. 

He wasn't fooling himself as to why, and he didn't think he was fooling Cas about why he'd spent so long chasing him down, either. He just didn't know what that meant, for them. Was Cas putting up with him out of pity? Did he let Dean tag along because he could tell Dean didn't have anyone or anything else?

Sometimes he felt like people could smell the desperation coming off him in waves. Dean didn't have any doubt that a guy who'd turned being observational into a career had picked up on it. The idea that Dean was just being tolerated was like a knife of ice in his guts.

Under Cas' focused open attention, though, it always seemed to melt away. Maybe the ragged hole was still there, but it filled up nice and warm with Cas' eyes on him.

Despite his best efforts and the chemical assistance of good old fashioned caffeine, Dean's eyes started to feel heavy and gritty only a few hours after midnight. He kept pulling himself back to wakefulness, but every blink felt like it took longer than the last, and between one moment and the next, he opened his eyes and found himself in early dawn light.

He jolted upright from where he'd been slumped against the door, whipping around to find Cas, upright and blinking at him with those soft baby blues.

"Did I fall asleep?" He asked.

"Only for a few hours," Cas told him. "I kept the watch."

Dean shook his head, rubbing his eyes and dragging a hand down his face.

"Should have woken me," he mumbled.

Cas shrugged, unconcerned, and Dean sighed.

"Any movement?"

"There was a family of raccoons that wandered by an hour before dawn," Cas told him. "I thought about waking you, but you needed your rest."

Dean snorted.

"So nothing, then." He stretched, tilting his head back and forth to work the crick out of his neck.

"Nothing relevant, no," Cas specified, as though it was very important for him to make clear that a family of raccoons wasn't nothing at all.

"Alright," Dean said, looking out at the barn, contemplative. "What do you say to a closer look, then?"

"If that's what you think is wise," Cas said.

"You got a reason to think it isn't?" Dean raised an eyebrow.

"No." Cas shook his head. "I'm deferring to your expertise. You advised caution, if you think the time for caution is over, I trust you."

Dean cleared his throat, trying to pretend the admission didn't warm him.

"Well. Good." He scratched his chin. "I've been thinking about it, and the way I see it the most likely scenario is that if there were vamps here, they're gone now. We should still go in slow, just to be safe, but I figure the most likely explanation for why they were being reckless is that they didn't plan to be here long. Occam's razor, right?"

"If that is the case, what can we do?" Cas asked.

"Not a whole lot." Dean grimaced. "We'll stick in town for a few days, ask around to see if we can narrow down on any suspicious characters who came to town before the murders started, look into missing person's cases like I mentioned, but if we don't find anything… Mostly it just comes down to keeping an eye on the headlines and hoping we can get there faster next time."

Cas hummed in acknowledgement, pensive.

"How often is it that something like this happens, and you aren't able to find the monster again?"

"I…" Dean hesitated. "Sometimes. I don't know about often, I guess…"

He shook his head.

"Look, things happen, nobody's perfect-"

"I didn't mean for it to be an accusation," Cas said. "I was just curious. I'm very familiar with long, fruitless searches, Dean."

"Right." Dean breathed out carefully, letting go of some tension. "Of course you are. I mean, I guess it's not quite the same for hunters, cause at least there's a chance when we fuck up, someone else might come and finish the job for us, but…"

He stared unseeing out the window, contemplating changing the subject. They had things to do, but the confession was knocking behind his teeth, and Cas was just… Present, in a way that seemed to pull Dean's secrets out of him.

"Once when I was a kid, I let this monster get away. A shtriga- it's a kind of witch-thing that feeds on children." He let out a shaky breath, closing his eyes and pushing down the memory. "It almost killed my brother, cause I wasn't watching him, and I didn't kill it when I had the chance, and it got away. Last year, me and-" Dean swallowed, his throat tight. "Me and my dad found it again, we killed it, but I don't know how many kids it fed on in the meantime, and those deaths? They're on me."

Cas took this in in silence, as was his habit. It made Dean's skin itch, waiting for judgment. Though Cas always seemed to receive all of Dean's bloated awkward confessions with an easy grace, there was always the worry that the next one would be a bridge too far.

"How old were you?"

"What?" Dean opened his eyes, turning to face Cas. He was looking back with that same quiet understanding, like always.

"When you let the shtriga escape, how old were you?" 

"I don't know," Dean said, feeling oddly skittish, turning away from Cas' implacable gaze. "It was a long time ago."

"You were a child," Cas told him.

"I didn't say that," Dean defended himself, and Cas looked unimpressed. He shut his mouth, accepting that he'd already backed himself into a corner on that. "Look, nevermind, it's not important, what I'm saying is… sometimes, hunts go wrong, and you just have to keep going and hope you get another chance, not everyone does. Hell, my dad-"

Dean's throat closed up again, and this time the words wouldn't come at all.

"Dean?" Cas prompted him. Dean looked over and met his eyes again, helpless.

He swallowed, the lock on his throat loosening, just slightly.

"I've told you how we ended up as hunters," Dean said. "My mom… it was more than twenty years of looking, Cas. Twenty years, but he did it. My dad. He found the demon and…"

Dean fell silent. He was shaking, so he balled his hands up into fists and pretended he wasn't.

"I suppose I can sympathize with that," Cas said quietly.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. Soon it would be twenty four years since his family fell apart. It had been eighteen since what had happened to Cas, back when his name was James Novak. Dean had never gotten around to asking about it, admitting just how far he'd dug to try to find Cas. He figured he'd talk about it in his own time.

Well, if ever there was a moment.

"I guess you've been at this a long time, too." Dean extended the opening tentatively.

"Yes," Cas answered simply. "It's hard to think of it as a choice I made, although I suppose it must have been. I often feel there is simply nothing else it's possible for me to do."

"Yeah," Dean said, looking out the windshield and feeling the weight of those twenty-four years heavier than usual. Neither of them had to say they were alike that way.

His stomach twisted at how unfair that thought was. Cas had been raised by a damn cult, even if he wouldn't admit it. That wasn't- that wasn't how Dean's family worked.

Dad did his best , he reminded himself, harshly. His skin felt too tight, uncomfortable.

Cas didn't say anything further, looking out at the world in his own contemplative silence.

Suddenly, Dean didn't feel like digging any further.

"Okay, enough sharing and caring," he said. "We do have work to do."

"Of course, Dean." Cas got out of the car as he did, and Dean channeled the unease under his skin into action.

His life wasn't like Cas'. He hadn't been alone or unprepared. Dad had done everything he could to prepare them. 

He raised them and he protected them, and in the end he did it. He got the yellow-eyed son of a bitch who killed mom. It had all been worth it.

It had to have been worth it.

Dean slammed the hood of the Impala, harder than he meant to. He had a Machete in one hand and syringes of Dead Man's Blood tucked into his jacket pockets. He could feel Cas' eyes on him, cool and curious, and he took a deliberate breath, pushing the noxious knot of feelings in his gut down.

"Let's go," he said, his voice coming out more even than he expected. 

Cas fell into step behind him, guarding his back. Their already-familiar rhythm stole some of the tension from Dean's shoulders, and he let it, even as part of him was disconcerted by the ease. He couldn't afford to let his emotions get the best of him.

Of course, their sweep of the property didn't cough up much worth keeping their wits about them for. The barn was one big room with holes in the roof and no sign of human habitation. They combed the stalls anyway, brushing dirt and hay off the floor to see if any secret signs lay hidden underneath. Maybe a trap door that led to a vampire hideout. 

It was a relief to leave it and head to the farmhouse, if only because every second they spent inside felt like it was asking for the remains of the roof to cave in on them. 

The house, by contrast, looked much more intact, at least from the outside. It stood at two stories, faded and beige, with the sorrowful look of a home that had stood empty for too long. They split up to walk the perimeter first, peering through windows into a barren, dusty interior lit by the rising sun. Dean saw no movement within, nodding in confirmation when he met up with Cas again by the door.

He hung back and let Cas take the lead, idly scanning the open field around them as a matter of routine.

His gaze caught on a distant figure in a white dress.

He froze, his eyes locked on her. She stood at the edge of the copse of bushes near where they'd parked the Impala, and even across the distance he could feel her looking at him.

She shook her head.

"Cas-" Dean found his voice with a ragged breath, his heart pounding in his chest as the feeling of wrongness twisted in his guts with a vengeance. "Cas wait-"

He felt as though he was moving in slow motion as he turned, Cas had stepped into the house, and he paused at Dean's warning, twisting back, brow furrowed, eyes finding Dean's, his mouth opening to ask him what was wrong-

The light inside the house vanished all at once.

Dean wasted precious moments on blind, freezing panic. The doorway became a portal to a pitch black abyss, Cas lost to the dark. For the devastating eternity of that one moment, Dean thought he was gone, just gone.

Then there was a wordless shout, a scuffle of bodies, and Dean lurched into action, diving across the threshold of blindness.

"Cas!" He shouted, barrelling forward, one hand gripped on a machete he didn't dare wield. He could hear shuffling feet and scuffling in the dark, hissed curses, but he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face.

He collided with a warm body and hands clawed at him- not Cas- he lashed out blind, hitting nothing but earning a surprised curse and breathing room to scramble back- and collide with a wall, hissing through his teeth as he bruised his shoulder in his clumsy flight.

"Dean!" He heard Cas shout, and tried to orient himself to him in the dark. 

He opened his mouth to call back, no matter how unwise it might have been to broadcast his position, when someone grabbed his arm from behind, twisting hard and forcing him to drop his machete. A kick to the back of his knees brought him down with a muffled cry. 

" Dean! " Cas called again, sounding frantic.

Dean lashed out behind him with an elbow, connecting and freeing his trapped arm as whoever held him yelped in surprise and pain. He lurched forward, trying to get his feet back under him, but hands in the dark fisted in his hair and yanked his head back down. The person behind him recovered and threw their weight on his flailing legs. He wrenched his head away from the grabbing hands and twisted to kick at the person trying to get on top of him, but the second pair of hands came back and pushed his shoulders down to the ground.

"Hold him," the person at his head snapped. The one at his legs grunted as he kicked them again. They didn't have a good grasp of grappling, but they didn't seem hampered by the darkness as Dean was.

For a second, the room lit up green, revealing the man laying on his legs and the woman trying to get his neck in a chokehold. Dean twisted, throwing his weight into the woman's stomach and winding her. He was rolling away from them when the light vanished again.

"Cas," he croaked, his eyes searching the dark frantically as he pushed himself up on all fours, hands gripped at his ankle and he kicked out viciously again, gaining distance.

Another flash, directionless eerie light, he saw a split second still frame of the scene, a dozen bodies in the room, Cas grappling with two people on either side, a third trying to get their arms around his throat from behind, and still he managed to twist an arm free and drive his knife into the gut of the person to his left.

The dark reasserted itself, but Dean saw two more turning their attention away from Cas to him and he threw himself blindly along the wall, trying to get out of their path. He stumbled, nearly fell, a hand caught his arm in a vice-like grip, and he drove his fist hard into the stomach of the person who grabbed him. As long as their hands were on him, he knew where they were, but he was outnumbered and fighting blind. 

He needed to help Cas.

Light, again, Dean cast about for his lost machete in the moments he could see, the man he'd punched in the dark had recovered, and, in his moment of distraction, paid him back with a right hook that sent him spinning. He caught himself on the wall, blinking away dizziness and ducking another grab to dive for his weapon as the lights went out again.

The room kept pulsing, light and dark, like a heartbeat, revealing snapshots of the chaotic scuffle.

Dark, someone kicked Dean in the ribs as he scrabbled blind for his weapon, and he was knocked off course. He wheezed, struggling to breathe, and a body fell on him, trying to pin his hands.

Light, Dean lurched up and headbutted the woman on top of him, causing her to reel back so he could buck her off. He reached out for his machete.

Dark, his fingers closed around the hilt. A foot came down on his wrist, and he had to twist out from under it quickly to keep from losing his grip. He lurched himself into a sitting position and lashed out wildly.

Light, the shocked look on a woman's face, his machete buried deep in her guts. He wrenched it out and she made a wounded little noise as she started to fall.

Dark, Dean pushed himself to his feet, swinging the machete in a wide arc and feeling it catch and tear just slightly. A man's voice howled in pain.

Light, Dean had gained space, his circle of enemies hanging back, he looked for Cas, and saw him on the other side of the room, wrestling a snarling man to the ground, trying to bring his knife to bear against him. A woman behind him, approaching, a gun in her hand.

Dark, Dean lunged forward, calling Cas' name in warning. Hands closed around his ankle and sent him to the ground.

Light, he kicked out blindly and pushed himself up to the knees, the woman held the gun pointed at Cas' head as he rose, pulling his knife out of the downed man's chest.

Dark. Bang .

The sound of a body hitting the floor made it through the ringing in his ears.

Dean heard the scream from his own throat like it came from a distance. He scrambled blindly forward, but was pushed to the ground, crushed under someone's weight as they wrestled to gain control of his limbs.

"Deal with him," someone said. "We need to get the Emissary to the ritual room."

Dean thrashed violently as more hands joined the ones trying to hold him down. The light didn't return.

"Cas," he croaked, a desperate, animal noise.

"Shh." A woman's voice, just by his head, a hand stroking his hair, he yanked himself away from the touch. "It will be alright. You love him, don't you? We're going to help him, you'll see."

There was a weight on his legs and hands on his arms, he felt the woman at his head lean over him, and his shirt was torn open. Someone was chanting softly, and the darkness seemed to pulse around them, pressing in close. The whispers burrowed into Dean's brain.

"Just hold still, you'll be with him again soon," she told him. "Go to the Mother and be at rest."

Dean turned his head to the side, biting down hard when his face met flesh. The woman above him shrieked and he bucked, twisting his body out from under grasping hands. Someone cursed, and a line of fire opened up on his upper arm, a knife catching on his skin as he writhed away. He groped blindly along the floor for his dropped weapon, his legs still pinned. 

He found it, blade first, slicing open his hand, but finding his way to the handle. He held it tight through the stinging pain and despite the blood slicking his grip, and threw himself against the person settled on his legs. He brought the machete down again and again, fighting wild and blind.

Someone wrapped their hands around his throat, squeezing tight and sending a kaleidoscope of colours across his vision. He threw himself backwards, kicking the crumpled weight of the person on his legs away and landing hard on top of the person strangling him. Their grip loosened, and Dean twisted on top of them, bringing the machete up, only to be yanked back by a rough grip on his hair. He toppled, reaching back to grip the wrist of the person behind him, but his head was smashed into the ground and he saw stars. He cried out in pain, his eyes screwed shut as his head was yanked back up and smashed down again. His grip on his weapon loosened as his world spun.

The person who held him yanked him up again, then stopped, gasping, and Dean opened his eyes. His vision was swimming, but he could see . He didn't waste the opportunity, spinning the machete in his hand, nearly fumbling it in his clumsy, bloodied fingers, and drove it backwards. The man holding him made a ragged noise of pain, letting go of him as he fell back. Dean pushed himself onto his hands and knees, blinking spots from his vision and fighting down nausea.

He looked up to see the woman he had bitten standing over him, she raised a knife clutched in one shaking hand, her face twisted in a grimace of fury and fear.

Then she was down, tackled to the ground as Dean watched, his brain sluggish and uncomprehending.

She choked out a quiet, helpless "no" before Cas drove his own knife into her heart.

He sat up, breathing hard. He was stripped down to his dress shirt, the buttons popped open nearly down to his navel, the white fabric grey-brown with dust and dirt, the collar stained red by the blood that covered his face.

"Cas," Dean said, a helpless broken record plea for him to be real and solid and here and not dead on the ground.

Cas looked up, pushing himself off the dead woman immediately and stumbling towards Dean like a drunkard.

"Dean," he said. "Dean-"

Dean crashed into him, clinging fiercely to him as soon as he dropped to his knees within reach. The movement sent the world spinning again, but he didn't care. He could feel Cas solid and warm against him and he buried his aching head into the crook of his neck. A wretched sob pulled itself from his throat as he clawed at the back of Cas' shirt, trying to pull him closer.

"I thought- I thought-" His breath hitched. "She shot you, I thought-"

Cas' hands came up to rest on his back, palms broad and gentle.

"She just clipped me, I'm okay," he said, simple and matter of fact. "Are you alright? Did they hurt you?"

Dean wrenched himself back, staring at Cas with wide, watery, disbelieving eyes.

"Am I okay? I thought you died! " He brought his trembling hands up to Cas' face, all marked up with blood still sticky on his skin, watching him with those big concerned eyes. "Clipped you- fuck, how are you upright? You probably have a concussion-" His shaking fingers fumbled over Cas' head, searching for signs of injury, and Cas gently took his hand in his, stilling him.

"Dean…" He said, gently, meeting his eyes with those big baby blues. Alive, intact.

"I thought-" Dean couldn't breathe. "Cas, Cas. "

He crashed their mouths together, sloppy and stupid. Cas made a surprised noise against him. His lips were chapped and tasted like blood, and their teeth knocked together in a way that rattled Dean's wobbling brain in his skull, but Cas brought one big hand up to the back of Dean's head and held him close and gentle.

Dean pulled away, keeping his eyes downcast.

"I thought- I thought-" He repeated, stuttering and stupid. He closed his mouth and shook his head.

Cas brought his hand around to caress Dean's cheek, urging his head up. He was looking at Dean with that wondering expression again. Like whatever Dean had just offered him, a two dollar coffee or a shitty close mouthed kiss, was the most amazing gift he'd ever been given.

"I'm here," he said.

Dean nodded against his hand, his eyes fluttering closed, and Cas bundled him close, tucking him back into the crook of his neck.

As much as Dean would have liked to stay there and hold Cas until the world stopped spinning, life wasn't that forgiving. The bodies needed to be dealt with, and they had no idea what kind of time limit they might be on before someone came to check up on the farm that was in the literal centre of an active murder investigation. Cas insisted on doing the bulk of the work, leaving Dean to sit against the outside of the farmhouse as he came in and out with the bodies, and arguing him down well after his dizziness had faded into a dull headache. 

It didn't seem right, Cas should've been hurt way worse than him, but he could stand without wobbling, and Dean couldn't. Apparently that counted for more in Cas' book than being a fraction away from death.

So Dean had to sit and watch. 

Every time Cas disappeared over the threshold back into the farmhouse, a fresh wave of anxiety lurched in Dean's guts.

When it got to be too much, he got a shovel out of the Impala's trunk and started digging to work off the nervous energy, no matter how Cas scowled at him. His sliced open palm ached to use, sweat stinging in the cut and mixing with blood to make his grip slip on the shovel, but the pain was grounding.

He was alive, Cas was alive, this was real.

The sun was high in the sky by the time they finished tossing a layer of dirt over the still-smouldering corpses in the pit they'd dug. They dragged their aching bodies back to the Impala.

Cas eyeing the keys in Dean's hand skeptically was where he really put his foot down.

"Do you even know how to drive?" He asked, scathing. Cas grunted in response.

"I'm sure I could figure it out." Was his less-than reassuring reply.

"Not a chance," Dean snorted, and took his place behind the wheel. If he had to sit for a second until the road stopped shaking, then that was his business. 

Silence quickly fell over the vehicle, shot through with a strange sort of tension. The pain in Dean's head was a quiet pulse that made focusing on the road just that little bit harder. He thought about the kiss, the reckless stupid chance of it, and the fact that Cas had melted into it anyway. Now it sat unacknowledged between them, and either of them could so easily disavow it, turn back and ask for it to be forgotten. Pretend it away, go back to the motel, and lay down into their separate beds.

Neither of them said a thing.

Dean unlocked the door to the motel with clumsy fingers, swinging it open to find the same dim, cramped little room they'd left, filled wall to wall with nautical kitsch. He felt his heart beating in his throat, the tension from the car only growing thicker.

It was easier to be brave when you didn't have to think about it. Dean closed his eyes and breathed out slowly through his mouth.

Then again, maybe you didn't have to be brave when it was too late to hide anything anyway.

He turned around and beckoned to Cas, watching him as usual with those big, curious eyes.

"C'mere," he said, and Cas came to him easily.

Dean reached up and ran his fingers through blood matted hair, probing gently at Cas' scalp for any signs of damage. Cas' eyes drooped, half-lidded as he leaned into the touch.

"I'm okay Dean," he said again, not a hint of irritation, even though it must have been the hundredth time those words had passed his lips, thanks to Dean's fussing.

Dean let his hand still and then fall away slow, Cas swayed a little, following the movement, wanting, before he stopped himself. He looked up at Dean's face, and whatever he found there must have been reassuring, because he reached out and took Dean's wrist, turning it over to inspect his injured palm. Dean watched him examine it, the wound wasn't too deep, but his mistreatment of it had left it ragged and smeared with drying blood. Cas clicked his tongue lightly, and Dean flushed, feeling both chided and oddly warm.

"We should get cleaned up," he said, his voice soft.

"We should?" Cas blinked at him.

"Yeah Cas," Dean said, turning his wrist to take Cas' hand in his and pulling him towards the bathroom. "We should."

"Oh," Cas said, a breathless little sound.

He followed so easy at Dean's touch, trailing him like a puppy, all big eyes and soft mouth under the blood on his face. Dean's heart fluttered in his chest.

Dean flicked on the bathroom light, it buzzed just on the edge of Dean's hearing, a subtle irritant. He got to work unbuttoning Cas' shirt, pushing it off his shoulders and revealing an expanse of tan skin and solid, practical muscle, softened by a layer of fat. He had a mole over his right nipple, and a trail of dark hair over the swell of his stomach, leading down to where his dress pants hung low on his hips.

Dean swallowed.

Cas reached out and ran his fingertips over the hem of Dean's shirt, tentative. Dean raised his arms and helped Cas pull it over his head. Once it was off, Cas held the shirt in a loose grip, forgotten, as he ran his eyes over Dean's torso. Dean shivered under the scrutiny, Cas' gaze piercing him through and making him feel more vulnerable than his partial nudity could account for.

Dean went for Cas' belt, hesitating when his hands landed on it, but Cas just watched him quietly, making no move to stop him. Dean undid it, unzipping his pants and pushing them off of Cas' hips, along with his boxers. Cas put a hand on Dean's shoulder to steady himself as he stepped out of his pants, kicking off those silly, impractical loafers as he did so. Dean looked away, finding himself unaccountably flustered by Cas' nakedness, even as he actively undressed him.

"I um," Dean addressed the line of faded anchors printed on the tiled wall. "I have boots."

"You should sit," Cas told him quietly, and Dean did, falling heavily onto the closed lid of the toilet. Cas sank to his knees in front of him, and got to work untying his laces for him as he watched, his heart in his throat. Cas slipped off one shoe, and started work on the other, Dean fisted his hands in his lap to keep them from shaking.

The second boot came off, Cas slipped the sock off after, and lifted Dean's Leg to press a kiss to the inside of his ankle. A laugh clawed its way out of his throat, high and strangled, and Cas looked up at him through his lashes, setting his foot down gently and lifting the other.

He kissed that one too. 

Dean didn't have the breath to laugh again. 

Cas rose, and Dean followed him up with his eyes, tilting his head back to look up at him as he stood close, gazing back. He took Dean's hands in his and pulled him upright, into his space. They stood, breathing each other's air.

"You're still wearing socks," Dean said, whisper-soft against Cas' lips.

"You're still wearing pants," Cas replied, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled.

Dean laughed again, unzipping his jeans and shimming them down his legs as Cas toed off his socks, they both clutched at each other for balance, nearly tipping over, and Dean found himself muffling giggles into Cas' shoulder.

"Shower," he breathed into Cas' neck, grubby and naked and relieved to be alive.

"Shower," Cas agreed.

Dean hissed when the hot water fell on him, stinging in the cuts on his forehead and arms, Cas crowded close, his hands coming up to cup his face, gentle fingers tracing the edges of the bruises forming on his there.

"I'm sorry," he said. Dean pulled him towards himself, tipping his chin up into the spray and watching the blood on his face start to wash away, the water running pink over his shoulders.

"Why are you sorry?" He asked, eventually, and Cas tipped his head back down, blinking water out of his eyes.

"I should have been able to stop it," he said.

Dean shook his head, smoothing his hands over Cas' shoulders. His right left a smear of blood and he wrinkled his nose, but it washed away quickly under the spray.

He could recognize the weight of guilt dragging Cas down, but he didn't know how to take it away, how to articulate how backwards that sentiment was.

"Let's not talk about it tonight," he said instead.

Dean reached for a washcloth to clean the last of the blood from Cas' face, falling into an almost meditative state as gently scrubbed down Cas' neck and over his shoulders, rubbing soapy circles over his chest, then lower. Cas watched him, his eyes hooded as he cleaned the soft swell of his stomach, and then sank down to his knees, drawing the washcloth over the broad, hairy expanses of Cas' thighs.

He looked up and met Cas's eyes, wide and blue, his mouth was hanging soft and open, if Dean had to pick a word for his expression, he'd call it awed . He brought the wash cloth around the back of Cas' legs, running it over the swell of his ass and down his thighs, to his calves. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the crease of Cas' thigh, right next to where his cock hung heavy in a curly thatch of hair, just to hear the gasp that fell from his lips. His cheek brushed against Cas' cock as he withdrew and he closed his eyes, trying to calm his own shaky breathing.

When he opened them again, Cas was staring down at him with naked hunger in his eyes.

Dean pushed himself off the slick tile floor, rising to his feet, and wobbled, almost losing his balance as the heat and steam sent his tender head dizzy. Cas steadied him with an arm around his waist and crowded him back against the wall of the shower. He took the washcloth from Dean's slack fingers.

Cas didn't waste time or tease, cleaning Dean with broad firm strokes of the cloth, leaving no part of him unexplored. Dean bit down on his knuckles, muffling a groan as Cas moved over his groin, efficient but thorough. Cas' chest brushed against his from how close he stood, and he pressed feather-light kisses to Dean's neck and jaw as he worked, alternating between sucking at the flesh of his neck and worrying it with his teeth.

"We should- bed," Dean gasped, his hands braced on Cas' shoulders, the washcloth had been forgotten, and the water was turning tepid. The cramped, dingy little shower stall wasn't the best venue for exploring further. 

Cas didn't seem to agree, or at least he wasn't altogether willing to separate himself from Dean long enough to change locations. He mumbled something indistinct against Dean's neck and pressed closer, the feeling of his cock pressing against the crease of Dean's thigh sent a thrill through him.

Dean pressed just a little harder on Cas' shoulders, reluctantly urging him away.

"Come on," he said. "Bed."

Cas bit down a little harder, drawing a gasp from Dean, and rolled his hips against him once before pulling away. His expression when he finally dislodged himself from Dean's neck was so blatantly grumpy that Dean couldn't help but laugh and kiss it off him.

They came together easier this time, no clashing teeth or desperation, just the soft play of mouths growing more heated, and hungrier. Dean nearly tripped getting out of the shower because Cas kept chasing his lips and drawing him back in. He caught himself with another shaky laugh, and took both of Cas' hands in his, stepping back and leading him, dripping out of the bathroom and to his bed.

Cas watched him through half-lidded eyes as he followed easily, and Dean thought that if he tried to lead him naked into the street, Cas would go just as willingly.

Dean spun them around and pushed Cas back onto the bed, he fell back onto the mattress and caught himself on his elbows, looking up at Dean with wide-eyes. His typically unruly hair was plastered to his forehead in haphazard little curls, and his bare chest glistened with moisture. 

Dean crawled onto bed over top of him, Cas' eyes trailed over his body, coming up to meet his as he settled over top of him, his hands on either side of Cas' head.

"Hi," he said, breathless.

"Hello Dean," Cas replied, his hands coming up to cup his rib cage, tentative and soft. The brief lull had returned him to hesitancy, and he waited for Dean to move first, stroking lightly over his ribs with his thumbs.

Something hot and painful surged in Dean's chest, he'd almost lost this. He channeled the feeling by surging down and claiming Cas' lips with his own.

Cas groaned into his mouth, meeting his enthusiasm and nipping at his lips. Dean screwed his eyes shut, focusing on the wet slide of lips and tongue to drown out the flashing green-tinted image behind his eyes, a woman with a gun in her hand, trailing Cas' head as he rose up-

Dean lowered his body onto Cas', their hips slotted together, and they broke the kiss momentarily to gasp into each others' mouths. Cas was hard and thick against Dean's thigh, and he rolled his hips, mufflings his moan into Cas' neck, the drag of his own dick along the wet crease of Cas' hip sending electric pleasure up his spine.

"Dean!" Cas gasped, throwing his head back against the mattress as Dean mouthed at his neck and they found their ungainly rhythm, rutting against each other like animals.

"Your hand," he protested, belated and unconvincing. His own hands clasped greedily at Dean's body, roaming his skin like they couldn't decide where to settle. He groped Dean's ass, encouraging the roll of his hips as he frantically thrust against him, stroked over his thighs, and then kneaded at his hips. They traveled up the length of his spine, clutched his biceps, fisted in his hair, desperate and needy, sending slightly too-intense shocks of pain to Dean's tender skull.

"S'fine," Dean mumbled. It was barely a scratch, and the way it still stung when he flexed it was grounding. It was probably still bleeding sluggishly, but they weren't the ones who'd have to clean the sheets in the morning.

"Your head-" Cas remembered himself, letting go of Dean's hair and cupping the back of his head, protective and apologetic. Dean leaned into the touch, closed his eyes and rolled his hips again, just to hear Cas gasp again.

"I'm fine," he repeated, and he was. A little seasick, maybe, but that wasn't important.

What was important was this: he could feel Cas against him, skin to skin. He could feel that he was warm and alive, feel his chest rising and falling, the evidence of his breathing right up close. He could feel his muscles bunch, feel him shudder and twitch in pleasure, alive alive alive.

"Dean," Cas said again, any hesitance washed away quickly. His fingers dug into Dean's skin, greedy, too needy to push Dean away.

"Fuck." Dean's throat was tight, a lock around something swelling up inside him. "I got you, sweetheart, I got you-"

He pushed himself up on an elbow and snaked his left hand between them, lining up their cocks and encircling them both. Cas cried out and thrust up into Dean's grasp, slick and wet from the shower. He surged upwards and sank his teeth into Dean's shoulder, making him muffle a shout into the mattress. Pressing his face into the bed was easier, it made everything spin less, let him focus on the sensations. 

"You're alright?" Cas rasped, even as his hand came to join Dean's on their cocks. No sign of slowing.

Dean shifted so his face was buried in Cas' neck, instead. He nodded, breathing in his clean scent, feeling his soft grunts of pleasure vibrating through his throat. He kept his eyes screwed shut and pretended the wetness there was just because of the shower. 

A keening whine built in his throat as his hips stuttered, pleasure set a fire in his gut, but something just as hot and not altogether pleasant ballooned in his chest. He felt shaken and scraped raw. The heat of Cas' body radiated into him through every reassuring point of contact, but behind his eyes he still saw the gun, imagined vividly what it would have looked like had the bullet struck true. His heart thudded in his ears, dizzying, each beat like the crack of the gunshot in the dark.

He tried to burrow into Cas, shaking with the effort of suppressing the wild and desperate feeling that was threatening to tear itself out of his throat, perhaps as a sob, perhaps as a scream. Cas seemed to understand what he needed, pulling him closer and gripping him tighter, bruising. His mouth moved greedily over any skin he could reach. Dean's skin lit up with the scrape of his teeth, feeling Cas' pleasure in the hot breaths over his skin as he picked up the pace.

Dean's orgasm took him by surprise, punched out of him with a sob that broke his tenuous grasp on the whirlwind inside him. Stars burst behind his eyes and his stomach lurched, the mix of sensations not entirely pleasant. Ugly, broken noises spilled out of him as he collapsed on top of Cas, painting their hands and stomachs with his release as Cas gasped and bucked against him, following him over the edge.

Dean lay limp on top of Cas, all shaky limbs and heaving lungs as he tried to pull himself back together, to shove the humiliating mess back down inside. He needed to lift his face up, say some cool, flirty line, and pretend he hadn't been leaking snot all over Cas' shoulder.

Too late for that, though, Cas' hands were stroking, hesitant and gentle over his shoulders.

"Dean?" He asked again, voice concerned. "Are you alright?"

Dean squeezed his eyes shut hard enough to hurt, unable to stop the tears, unable to lift his head and let Cas see what a mess he'd made of himself.

"Dean?" Cas' hand settled in the centre of his back, just below the base of his neck. His voice betrayed his growing anxiety and Dean's stomach roiled with guilt as well as nausea. "Did I… Did I do something wrong?"

Another wretched noise pulled its way out of Dean's throat, and he shook his head into the crook of Cas' neck, clinging harder, trying to show Cas with his body that it wasn't his fault, because the words wouldn't get out past the mess of emotion pouring out of him.

"Okay," Cas said, whisper-soft, his hand traveling up to rest on the back of Dean's head, comforting. "I'm sorry, I've never done this before, I don't- I don't know…"

Oh, Jesus, Dean forced himself to take a deep breath, then another, he couldn't let the vicious stab of guilt drag him deeper, couldn't keep selfishly forcing Cas to deal with his mess when Dean should have been the one comforting him through the uncertainty of his first time. He pulled his head out of the safe, warm hollow of Cas' neck, his breathing harsh but back under control. He sniffed, and winced when he caught sight of the shiny patch of snot he'd left on Cas' collarbone.

"It's not you, I'm just- I'm sorry, I'm…" Dean trailed off, blinking away fresh tears. "I don't…"

He struggled to find words to explain or justify his humiliating meltdown, and all the while Cas just looked up at him, waiting. Wide blue eyes presuming nothing.

"My Dad's dead."

The words came tumbling out of his mouth unbidden, dragging him back down into the swirl of desperate misery. He started sobbing again. Broken, tragically pathetic wretches, that he couldn't stop or slow. This time Cas was the one to reach up and pull him down, crushing him against his chest.

It occurred to Dean in a distant, hysterical thought, that they were going to need another shower. Semen was growing tacky on their stomachs, sweat was turning stale on their bodies and Dean was leaking tears and snot all over the both of them. It was disgusting, and yet Cas didn't complain, just held him and stroked him and murmured soothing nonsense as he cried in a way he hadn't since he was a child.

It was horrifically embarrassing, but when the storm passed through him and his breathing finally calmed he felt… clean, an odd sort of serenity in the wake of the violent torrent of emotions. He'd migrated down so that his head was pillowed on Cas' chest, and Cas had both arms around him, holding him tight as he stroked lightly at his hair. He was humming, a toneless, tuneless note that vibrated through Dean's cheek, soothing despite itself.

"I'm sorry," Dean mumbled into his chest when he finally felt he could speak again.

"It's okay," Cas said, wasting few words on reassurance. It was something Dean liked about Cas. With him, it felt like everything was important, but nothing was too much.

"I'm getting you all messy," Dean pointed out inanely.

"It was a joint effort," Cas replied dryly, and Dean laughed wetly.

He let himself rest for a few more moments in silence, soaking in the rhythm of Cas' gentle stroking over his head. The exhaustion that had gripped his limbs made a solid argument for staying like that, despite the myriad of little physical discomforts that were making themselves known. 

But Cas deserved more from him than that.

"It was a few months before we met," Dean told him, eyes closed, cheek pressed to his chest so that Cas could only see the top of his head. "My Dad, I mean. I- told you about the demon. The thing that killed- my mom."

Cas made a noise of acknowledgement, so Dean continued.

"It was- we didn't know for a long time. It was just this thing with yellow eyes that took everything from us. Dad figured it out, though,  and he got a lead, about how to find it and kill it for good." Dean could still remember those months, the grim determination that had settled heavy on his father, as Dean felt the anxiety of the approaching conclusion sinking its claws into him. "There was this gun. A hunter made it, two hundred years ago. It was supposed to be able to kill anything. Dad wanted to go it alone, but I convinced him to take me along, I didn't want…"

Dean closed his mouth, breathing out through his nose. Maybe he'd known even then, the direction Dad was going, that this had always been a suicide mission. Maybe he thought he'd be able to pull him back from the edge, keep him safe somehow.

Maybe he just didn't want to be left behind.

"It found us before we could corner it," he confessed softly. "Dad ended up possessed, I… he was gonna kill me, but then he… he managed to take back control…"

He could still see it, clear as Day. Looking up at Dad in that little shack, pain radiating through his body. His dad's arm had twitched, jerking with the effort it took to bring it up, to put the barrel of the Colt to the bottom of his chin.

It had taken too long for Dean's panicking, sluggish brain to register what he was doing. He'd begged, stupid and selfish. Pleaded with his dad not to do it, distracting him when it was most important.

His Dad hadn't said anything to him, his teeth gritted too tightly for last words. The expression on his face the moment before he pulled the trigger was viciously triumphant.

"He killed the demon," Dean said, his voice small and shaky. "He did it, he finally… but I…"

"He left you alone," Cas said, soft.

Dean nodded, his throat closing up again.

"I'm sorry, Dean."

Dean shrugged, the reflexive platitude rolling off of him, no matter how heartfelt. He pushed himself up and slid off of Cas' chest. He rolled onto his back next to him, looking up at the ceiling to keep from having to look Cas in the eye.

"You're the first person I've told," Dean said, half surprised to find it was true. There had been hunters he'd run into who'd already heard through the grapevine. Dean had grit his teeth through their sympathies and split off from them as soon as he could. He'd started avoiding that sort of encounter pretty quickly. John's phone had rung a few times, and Dean had silenced it and stowed it in the glove compartment, the voicemail no doubt filling up with pleas for help from people he was too cowardly to face.

It was a stupid reason to hunt alone, but Dean hadn't known how to do anything else.

"I haven't even…" He closed his eyes, ashamed. "My brother doesn't know. I called him once, and he didn't answer and I just didn't… I never…"

Cas took his confession in silence. Dean heard him shift next to him, rolling onto his side and curling in closer.

"Why haven't you?" He asked.

Dean opened his eyes, tilting his head to meet Cas' gaze, his heart in his throat.

"Because I'm worried it's the last thing I ever do," he whispered his confession into the space between them. 

Cas' expression transformed, not to pity or judgment, but to a kind of heartbroken understanding. He leaned in and kissed Dean on his forehead, drawing him in even closer.

They lay in silence, Cas offering no more attempt at comfort than his easy presence and the reassuring press of his body against Dean's. Slowly, Dean let himself relax, reassured that he would receive neither condemnation nor cloying, overwrought expressions of concern. Cas just held him.

It was enough.

The motel room, even with the curtains drawn, wasn't very dim, but the exhausting events of the day, after a long and nearly sleepless night, had Dean drifting as soon as his eyes slipped closed.

"Dean?" Cas asked quietly, rousing Dean from where he hadn't realized he was on the edge of sleep.

"Mhm?" Dean mumbled.

"I don't want you to…" Cas' arms tightened around him. "I don't want to lose you."

"I don't want to lose you either, Cas," Dean admitted. "Today, I thought… I don't want you to die."

Cas was quiet, and Dean shifted closer, clinging to consciousness.

"I'm serious Cas. I know this, your mission, it's important, but you have to promise…" He trailed off, uncertain what he was asking for.

"I promise," Cas said easily. "I won't die."

Dean laughed a little, his head fuzzy with exhaustion. That was what he was asking for, wasn't he?

"Thanks Cas," he said. It was an impossible promise to keep, but it was enough, for now, that Cas was willing to say it.

With the warmth of Cas' body next to him, and the reassuring sound of his breathing filling his ears, he was soothed down into a deep slumber.

In his sleep, Dean found himself back in that dark room, whispered chanting filled the air around him as dozens of hands held him down. This time, though, he was not afraid. He knew these hands, welcomed them, even as they carved into him, taking chunks out of his body. He let them, relaxing back and offering himself up to be consumed.

At the edge of his hearing, the chant continued, strange syllables he couldn't identify, overlapping voices, but underneath it all, his name, over and over again.

Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean….

Dean was pulled back into consciousness with a throbbing head and itchy eyes. He wrinkled his nose, wishing he could burrow back under the covers and escape the pains of waking life for a little longer. But the heavy awareness of his body wouldn't recede, and he was going to have to address the presence of the warm body next to his eventually, no matter how much he wanted to just keep basking in the closeness without ever acknowledging it.

As much as he might have wanted to curl up in shame- and then maybe desiccate and die, pillbug style- he had the crusty, sweaty aftermath of their pre-nap activities to deal with, and Cas wasn't going to stay asleep forever. He needed to clean himself up, and figure out how the hell he was going to look him in the eye when he did wake up.

Of course, he shouldn't have let the even rise and fall of Cas' chest next to him lull him into forgetting the one consistent truth of their brief few months sharing motel rooms: Cas always woke up first. Dean's fledgling plan to creep out of bed without waking him- and gain a little distance to panic in the shower- evaporated as soon as he lifted his head and was confronted with a pair of wide blue eyes, inches from his own.

The question of how he would look Cas in the eyes had its answer too: even the hot sharp lance of shame piercing through his guts didn't stop them from being impossible to look away from.

"Uh," he said. "Hi."

"Hello Dean." Cas looked as caught out as Dean felt, but he didn't look away either.

Dean blinked, his mouth moving ahead of his static-filled brain.

"Were you watching me sleep?"

"Yes," Cas said.

"Cool." Dean pushed himself up, barely registering Cas' reply because his mouth was opening in preparation for more words and Dean needed to run his own in order to prevent himself from hearing and having to deal with anything Cas might say about what had happened between them. "I need a shower, we both need to shower. Separately, I mean. Cool if I get the first shower? Thanks."

Dean was up and into the bathroom before he could somehow manage to say shower again, slamming the door behind him and preventing Cas from forming a reply. He leaned back against it, closing his eyes and trying to calm his breathing.

He was hoping that the shower would give him some time to think about how to address the… everything between him and Cas, but under the spray his thoughts chased themselves in circles, bringing him no closer to a solution when he couldn't even articulate the problem.

He scrubbed harshly at his stomach, watching dried come flake off with a vague sense of nausea. If his dad could see him now…

Dean didn't know what he'd say, but his dad had never needed words to make Dean quake in anticipation of his disapproval. 

He'd never said anything against queers. Never said anything in support, either. But he'd had plenty to say about being a man, being strong . Dean had never quite managed to measure up, even when he could swear did everything right. There was just something in him that didn't fit, made everything he tried fall short, even when he'd memorized all the steps and performed them perfectly. 

Now he knew what it was.

Maybe he'd always known, and just done his best to hide it. Maybe his dad had known too, and just done his best to ignore it.

Maybe Dean knew what his dad would say if he could see him now. Letting another man touch him was probably the least shameful thing about that whole encounter. It was the pathetic, needy little thing inside him, wailing for comfort in the big bad world, small and shivering and clingy and disgusting. That was the real problem, and it wasn't a symptom of being gay , it was a symptom of being Dean.

He knew what his dad would say.

Nothing.

He wasn't around to not say it anymore, but Dean could feel the silent judgment heavy in the air anyway. It had always been just as palpable in his absence as his presence. The finality of this latest separation didn't change that.

Dean had been waiting for months for that finality to set in, for this new existence to stop feeling like one more abandonment. The familiar deep down knowledge that it was his fault that his dad wasn't here, that he wasn't good enough and that's why he wasn't coming back. The ultimate confirmation that this was true, that he'd finally fucked up bad enough that his dad was gone for good, was still somehow not enough to quell the persistent anxious itching. The idea that if he just did everything right, kept following the steps the way dad laid them out, maybe he'd finally be the right sort of son. 

One Dad would stick around for.

That was the real selfish core of that needy thing inside of him. It didn't matter that dad had made the ultimate sacrifice to save him, that he'd finally won, after all this time. He just wanted him back, sick with anger that being the good son, the obedient son, didn't mean anything anymore. 

It couldn't make dad come home. 

It was only when the water went cold that Dean stepped out of the shower, guilty over using up all the hot water on Cas like an asshole, and no closer to knowing what to say to him.

"Shower's free," was what he ended up choosing, his voice rough and his eyes downcast as he left the bathroom, towel slung low around his hips.

Cas made no move to take him up on the offer as Dean made his way over to his duffle to dress, so he risked a glance at him. He was sitting up in bed, chest bare, blankets pooling in his lap, looking like nothing more than a kicked puppy. Big blue eyes wide and hurt and confused as he regarded Dean. He must have been just as sweaty and crusty as Dean had been, but apparently he was in no hurry to fix that. 

Dean was out of time to buy.

"Is everything… okay?" Cas asked, and Dean realized he was standing caught, a t-shirt held loose in his hand. He probably looked like a dog too, the kind that had been up on the counter making a mess and knew it was in trouble.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Of course."

"Is it because I was watching you sleep?" Cas asked. "Should I stop doing that?"

Dean blinked, his mind knocked entirely off track.

"Stop? Do you do it a lot?"

Cas grimaced, dog on the counter.

"Not all the time."

"That's kind of creepy, Cas," Dean said, but his lips were twitching, that heavy something evaporating from the air like it had never been there.

"Oh," Cas said, dropping his eyes to his lap. "I'll stop."

Dean laughed, light and disbelieving. He dropped the t-shirt and crossed over to Cas' bed, prompting him to look up with a hand on his shoulder and laying a gentle kiss on his soft, open lips.

"Nah," he said as he withdrew. "You're good."

Cas looked back at him in confusion, but his lips drew up into a tentative smile, to match the laughter caught behind Dean's teeth. He didn't know what he'd been thinking, scampering off in fear of judgment from Cas. Cas who just didn't know better. Maybe he was a little bit stupid, or maybe he was just naive. Dean didn't know what he'd been taught the first sixteen years in that cult compound, but it was pretty clear he'd spent all the time since too focused on his mission to expand his horizons very far. It'd made him into someone who could look at you, really see you , and never cast judgment, because he just didn't know that what he was looking at was wrong.

Maybe it was taking advantage, for Dean to let him keep thinking like that. 

Call Dean a selfish bastard, he didn't have it in him to give it up.

" Is everything okay?" Cas asked again, searching Dean's face.

"Yeah." Dean felt drunk on relief, barely able to keep himself from smiling like a dope. "Sorry I'm such a mess, I was just… I don't know."

"It's okay," Cas said. "I don't- I've never…"

"Me neither," Dean said quickly. "I mean I've y'know. Hooked up before, but never-"

Never with a guy, Dean bit down on the words, not yet comfortable saying it out loud.

"But I did everything correctly?" Cas asked, brow furrowed in concern.

"Yeah, Cas." Dean smiled, not even exaggerating when he said: "You rocked my world."

"Good. Thank you." Cas nodded. "What happens now?"

"Now you go take a shower," Dean said lightly. "You've gotta be feeling pretty nasty, dude."

"Dean," Cas admonished, his lips pursed.

Dean swallowed, thick, and shrugged.

"I don't know, Cas, like I said I uh… I hook up, plenty, but I don't…" He shook his head. "My longest relationship lasted two weeks, man."

"So you would like this to be… temporary?"

"No!" Too loud and too fast, Dean drew back. "No, I mean, I want… You and me, we could…"

He sighed heavily, sitting down on the bed. 

"I like you, Cas," he admitted. "I want… to. Y'know, be with you. Or something."

"I like you, too," Cas said, easy as anything. "I want you, very much. Maybe too much, sometimes. I worry about overstepping."

"Yeah?" Dean grinned, Cas looked away, almost bashful. "You sure know how to make a guy feel special, Cas. Look, why don't we just… make it up as we go along, yeah?"

"I would like that," Cas said softly. "And you'll tell me if it's too much?"

"I will if you will," Dean countered, the shadow of guilt still with him. Cas was too good, too forgiving, and Dean was gonna cling on with all his might if Cas let him.

"I don't think it's possible to have too much of you, Dean." Cas looked at him like he was trying to drink him in, it was almost enough for Dean to really believe him.

He turned away, his cheeks warm. They'd see.

"Well we'll save some cash if we settle for singles," he said. "You can watch me sleep from up close."

"I would like that," Cas said.

"You really would, wouldn't you?" Dean laughed.

"You're very… peaceful. I find it comforting."

Creepy , Dean didn't say, but even the thought was fond.

Funnily enough, it was true, Dean hadn't been having nightmares, not real ones, since Seattle, at least. Ironic since Seattle was also where he'd lost the little hand drawn charm he'd convinced himself was letting him sleep soundly. But the nightmares hadn't returned, even without his little scrawled symbol, so maybe it had never had an effect at all.

Or maybe Cas made for a better nighttime guardian.

"Glad I could entertain." Dean pushed himself up and made his way back over to his duffle, picking up the discarded t-shirt and pulling it over his head. He dropped his towel and bent over to dig through for a pair of boxers. He heard Cas' intake of breath behind him and smiled to himself.

Cas creaked his way off the bed and followed him. He stood up, half turning to see him crowding into his personal space.

"Hey," he said.

"Hello Dean," Cas replied, a second chance at their morning greeting.

He reached out and took Dean's hand, then leaned in and kissed him softly, but with a focused intent that had Dean's head swimming.

At length he pulled back, both of them breathing a little harder.

"Thank you," Cas whispered into the shared air between them.

Dean flushed and looked away.

"Yeah, well. You still need a shower, you're gross."

Cas sighed heavily, not letting go of Dean's fingers, twined in his own.

"Can you blame me for being reluctant to remove the evidence of your affections so soon?"

Dean snorted and shoved at his face.

"You can't make being covered in my crusty jizz romantic, dude, go clean yourself up."

Cas laughed from beneath Dean's hand, a rare and precious sound that made his heart throb in his chest.

There was still the lingering feeling of shame pricking under Dean's skin. No amount of traded kisses were going to heal Dean's cracked edges. He was clingy, a mess, he drank too much and got angry to avoid admitting he was scared half the time. He'd blow up again eventually, and Cas might not be so forgiving next time. There were definitely going to be more awkward conversations, like this one.

But in the fading evening light, chasing Cas into the bathroom to get him to shower, Dean was starting to think this whole thing might be worth it.

Of course, there was more to concern themselves with than afternoon naps and the implications of shared handjobs. They had a failed ambush to investigate and bodies to identify. Cas had a leg up on that, having taken the time to dig through pockets for IDs while he was disposing of the corpses that morning. Not all of them thought to bring their driver's license to their ritual sacrifice, but it gave them a start. Cas recognized a few of them too, or at least Dean assumed he did, considering he saw him crossing out names in his notebook.

Any further investigation was severely complicated by the fact that the cops had caught on to their little scheme from the day before, and now grainy security camera stills of their faces were circling around town, identifying them as "persons of interest".

They agreed it was probably better to retreat before someone found the shallow grave full of smouldering corpses they'd left behind and got really interested. They cut and run in time to avoid the uniformed officers knocking on doors at the motel, but only barely.

Dean made eye contact with a slack jawed rookie while they peeled out of the parking lot and tipped an imaginary hat at him, laughing all the way through the backstreets he took to avoid being pursued.

Even Cas had an amused light to his usually impassive face, sitting with the clunky police scanner in his lap to warn them which streets not to take. The cops managed to rally and set-up a checkpoint fifteen minutes behind them on the road, just close enough a call to make the whole thing funnier.

Still, it put a hell of a damper on their ability to actually look into the group that had jumped them.

"They probably weren't local," Cas told him, holed up in a library four hours from Muscle Shoals, taking their investigation online, for whatever that was worth. "Not all of them, at least. Malachi was using his recruitment as bait for his trap, he knew I would come and he thought he had the numbers to overwhelm me. Rachel and her followers placed themselves in our path deliberately, they were observing us, they knew we were in the area and took steps to draw us in while disguising their presence. They would have selected the location for that purpose. It's likely that access was also a factor, however. A few of them probably were from the area."

"You think Rachel was the leader?" Dean asked, leaning back in his seat. They only had the one laptop, and while accessing the internet was free, using any of the row of chunky desktops against the opposite wall required a local library card and a sign in for a maximum time of one hour. There was little point in splitting focus anyway, not until they had somewhere to start.

"She's the one I know," Cas said, non-committal. "And Kelvin, he was a recruiter, in my experience. Both of them were dedicated soldiers, but I didn't know either of them to be leaders. They may have been acting on someone else's orders, but it would have been Rachel's mission."

"How do you figure?" Dean asked, keeping his voice casual.

Cas paused, glancing up from the computer screen, Dean met his gaze evenly, his expression betraying nothing but idle curiosity.

"I've been following them a long time." He looked back down at the laptop. "I know how they work."

"Right," Dean said, hiding his disappointment. It was a long shot to think Cas would suddenly become an open book because of whatever was developing between them. At least, not when that something was less than a day old. Still, moments like these, when Cas' inside knowledge peeked through, Dean couldn't help but dwell on it. 

He wondered what Cas had been taught, growing up on that isolated compound, what he learned and what he endured. If he'd had friends, if that was something they even let you have, in a cult that worshiped an ancient death god.

That was if they'd even started out that way. Had Cas been raised believing in the Mother? Or had the Children of the Sacred Heart really been the innocent hippies they'd sounded like, until something else had overtaken them. He could picture that, easily, the belief creeping in like an infection, turning people into something unrecognizable.

And Cas, in the center of it all. Young, scared, watching his world change, and not knowing why. People around him becoming different, dangerous.

He wondered how many names on his list were people he'd cared about, once. 

He wondered how many of those names were already crossed out.

Did he have a family?

Cas had never said, and Dean hadn't asked.

Three of the people who attacked them in the farmhouse popped up as missing persons on a cursory search, a few more turned up recently active social pages that Dean found chilling in their utter normalcy. Not long into their research, Cas gave a quiet "ah" and turned the laptop around to reveal a photograph of a neat young man in a crisp police uniform. Dean recognized the face he'd seen lit up in brief flashes of vibrant green.

"That'd be our local then," Dean said. "Explains why the cops didn't find anything when they searched the property."

By mutual silent agreement, they packed up their things and kept driving until they had two state lines between them and their likely new position as the prime suspects in a cop killing.

Dean switched the Impala's plates in Jackson, then headed due South before cutting West again, settling on a hotel just outside of Lafayette to hole up in for a few days while they kept an eye on the news. The plan was to keep pushing West and North, but if their photos started circulating further out they were better off keeping their heads down where they were. Gaining distance didn't mean much if they left a trail of witnesses in their wake as they scrambled for a getaway.

The old man at the front desk looked Dean up and down with a critical eye during check-in, then looked out the window at Cas, pulling their bags out of the car. He seemed like the kind of guy who'd give their descriptions to the cops without a second thought, but more pressing on Dean's mind was the disapproving purse to his lips.

Dean asked for a double. 

Cas hesitated when he opened the door and saw the two beds.

"We're in the south," Dean blurted out immediately. "I mean, we can still… I just didn't want people giving us trouble."

"Okay," Cas replied easily, but Dean wasn't sure if he believed it as easily, or if he was just taking things as they came.

"Right," Dean said, awkwardness filling the room like a third guest they didn't have space for. 

It was early afternoon after several long days, Dean's eyes were scratchy and his skin didn't feel like it fit right, but sleep was a long way off. He was still wired from the drive, and besides, he had this creeping fear that if he lay himself down for a nap, he'd wake up to find Cas had crawled into the other bed, and the fragile new intimacy between them would wink out, just like that.

Dean claimed the laptop, making like a jilted ex and stalking facebook and myspace pages for any hint of suspicious activity, while scraping through what news articles he could find either centering on the area or mentioning any of their ambushers by name. 

Cas paced back and forth, making phone calls. Some to people who seemed to owe him favours, others to phone numbers Dean managed to dig up in relation to their latest batch of cultists.They kept the news on at a low volume, but for background noise, Dean much preferred the low rumble of Cas' conversations.

Dean pulled himself away from staring at a barren myspace page that offered him no answers and opened a new lip, searching his brain for keywords he hadn't tried yet. Cas dropped back into the seat across from him, tossing his phone down onto the table with sigh.

"No luck?" Deana asked.

"More of the same," he said. "They either went on vacation a week ago and no one has any reason to be concerned, or they went missing years ago and no one is expecting any news. I'm sure it will draw a lot of attention when their bodies are all found in one place, but there's very little to provide us a direction where to go next, they were from all over the country, and were likely to have been recruited years ago."

"Probably not the best thing to have our faces tied to," Dean mused, the idea prodding him in the back of his mind. "You been in this kind of trouble before, Cas?"

Cas shrugged. "I've largely managed to avoid notice."

"Huh." Dean tapped out his search query, scanning through the results. "No one's put together any of the piles of bodies with suspiciously similar stab wounds yet?"

"Not in a way they've linked back to me," he said. "Why? Have you run afoul of law enforcement before?"

"Couple times," Dean admitted. "Picked up for grave desecration and credit card fraud. And there was this shifter in St. Louis that attacked a girl wearing my face, but he uh… died wearing it too, so that took care of that."

That had been an odd case, Dean recalled, frowning. They'd driven halfway across the country for it based on a phone call from one of Dad's contacts, and then he'd been cagey about interviewing the main witness…

"Oh, huh." Dean sat up, clicking through to an article in the Seattle Times.

"What is it?"

"Just checking up on the last place we left a bunch of bodies," Dean explained, scanning the article. "In case we gotta worry about anything on that front."

"And do we?" Cas asked after a moment, tilting his head.

"Hmm?" Dean glanced up, distracted. "Not really, the article's mostly about a police captain stepping down."

"Ah," Cas said. "Not many leads, then."

"Seems like not," Dean said, reading further. There wasn't any mention of a mysterious FBI agent gaining illegitimate access to the case and then vanishing, so either Captain Boyd had kept that under wraps to cover her ass, or the police were investigating behind the scenes to avoid advertising their incompetence too publically.

He wondered vaguely if he should feel guilty about the downfall of her career, it wasn't like she had much hope of identifying the truth behind a case that revolved around a supernatural cult. Then again, he couldn't help but remember the exhaustion and bitterness she seemed to carry with her. Maybe this was for the best.

His eyes caught on a quote partway through the article featuring a familiar name.

"Our aunt went to the police dozens of times to report Mira missing, and they did nothing." Joseph Chandy told the times at the community vigil in honour of his late cousin's memory. "It's a miscarriage of justice, and someone needs to be held to account for it."

Dean read on as the article detailed the way family and community had rallied around Mrs. Chandy after her daughter's body had been discovered, his chest feeling constrained but somehow light all at once. He hadn't been able to get the image of her in that lonely little apartment out of his mind, not when all he'd been able to give her on the way out of town had been a phone call to tell her her body's daughter had been found, and the people responsible were dead. A cold comfort, he imagined, especially when he hadn't been able to give her any answers.

He wondered where her family had been when he had spoken to her. Had they dismissed her concerns, the way the police did, because of Mira's erratic behaviour? Were they rallying around her now to make up for not being there when it mattered? Or had they always been there, and he'd just missed the evidence of their presence in her life? He was so used to thinking of family as a tiny, insular thing, fragile. It made him wonder, as the article's words formed a rich picture in his mind, about what family could mean.

He'd never really thought about aunts and uncles and cousins himself. Sam had brought it up once, for some genealogy project in middle school, and Dad had mentioned cousins on Mom's side, but the conversation had gone south quick when Sam wouldn't stop with the accusatory questions about why, exactly, they never got to see them. 

The project had been turned in half complete, much to Sam's consternation.

Now, Dean considered it again, whether there had been a web of connections that could have become a safety net, when their life went up in flames.

"Dean?" Dean glanced up, startled, Cas was watching him, his brow furrowed.. "Is something wrong?"

"Nah," Dean said. "Just, you know, checking up on how everything turned out, no trouble."

He pushed the laptop away and leaned back in his chair, clearing his throat.

"So where does all this leave us?"

"Nowhere particularly conclusive," Cas admitted. "We can safely assume the reduction of their numbers will discourage this group from moving again anytime soon, but we know of at least one of them that didn't number among the dead, and until we encounter her again we don't have a good way to know how many more there might be."

"About that…" Dean frowned, his brow furrowing in thought. "I saw our tail again right before the ambush, but I don't think she was involved, necessarily. She seemed more like she was trying to warn me not to go in."

"Ah," Castiel said, inclining his head in acknowledgement, unsurprised.

"You don't think she's on our side, do you?" Dean asked. "Or, I don't know, the way she just appeared one minute and was gone the next… could she be a ghost?"

Cas smiled, a small twitch of the lips, that on him, betrayed a great deal of amusement.

"I would attribute it to infighting," he said, something like fondness in his voice. "A different faction, or a disagreement in how we should be handled, perhaps."

"So it's not all one unified group, then." Dean concluded. "Do you know how many there are? Or how they're organized?"

"I'm afraid part of the struggle is that they aren't," Cas admitted. "There is something of a philosophical disagreement dividing the cult, but individual groups join, separate, and recruit on their own whims."

Dean bit his lip, drumming his fingers on the table, considering.

"Is it about you?" He asked, at last.

Cas' face went blank and he shifted back, away from the table and away from Dean, closing off.

"What do you mean?"

"The guy in Seattle called you 'the Nameless One'." Dean shrugged, faux casual even as his heart beat in his throat. "These ones called you the Emissary. Seemed like a pretty different vibe, I thought it might be important."

Cas examined him carefully, brows heavy over piercing eyes. Dean waited with bated breath, he didn't know how to replicate the brand of curious, non-judgemental silence that Cas used to shatter his walls like so much glass, but he tried not to look too eager, and waited with as much patience as he could muster.

Cas opened his mouth, and closed it again, looking down.

He shook his head, Dean's heart squeezed painfully in his chest.

"It's nothing."

"Right," Dean said, more than a little bite to his voice. He closed the laptop lid with a snap. "You hungry? I'm gonna get us some food."

Cas kept his mouth shut and his eyes down, shaking his head mutely. Dean sighed, knowing he'd end up bringing back take out for two anyway.

He got up and pulled on his jacket, heading to the door.

"Dean," he stopped with his hand on the doorknob. He thought about not turning back, but he only managed to resist for a few seconds.

Cas looked back at him with wide sad eyes that cooled his temper against his will, leaving him frustrated with how hard he made it to stay frustrated.

Dean raised an eyebrow, expectant, and Cas looked down again, but before Dean could spit anything truly venomous, he pushed up from the table and crossed into Dean's space. Hesitant, he reached out and took Dean's hand in his own, looking up at him through his lashes. Dean dropped his hand from the doorknob, turning fully back to face him. The single point of contact disarming the vicious prickliness under his skin.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not as good at this as you are."

"What?" Dean blinked, thrown off. "Good at what?"

"Talking," Cas said, his eyes darting away as he grimaced. "Emotions."

Dean barked out an incredulous laugh.

"You think I'm good at this shit?"

Cas's brow crinkled, like he found the very question baffling, and he nodded hesitantly.

"You told me about your father," he pointed out, his voice soft. "You cried."

Yeah, after months of pretending it never happened , Dean didn't say, his mouth hanging too slack to cooperate. I broke down like a child and sobbed into your chest.

Except Cas said 'you cried' like it was something to be admired.

Dean closed his mouth and cleared his throat.

"I'm not as good as all that, Cas," he said. "I just, y'know, trust you and stuff."

Cas frowned at their interlocked hands.

"Do you not trust me?" Dean asked, voice small.

"It's not like that," Cas protested, weakly.

"Then what is it like?" Dean didn't mean for it to be a demand, exactly, but he would've liked if it came out less like a whine.

Cas looked away, but he squeezed Dean's hand as he did, so Dean let him have his moment to gather his thoughts.

"There are things that happened to me that I'm still trying to make sense of," he admitted quietly, his face still turned away. "How do I talk about things I don't understand?"

"Uh, I've heard, sometimes…" Dean winced. "Talking about it can like… help?"

Cas turned back to him, staring mutely with an expression of deep trepidation.

"Yeah, no I got you," Dean sighed, reaching out to pat Cas on the shoulder with his free hand. "You don't gotta say shit to me, I get it. But you know, if you want to."

"Thank you, Dean," Cas said. Dean was keen to retreat from the conversation now that it was settled, but Cas didn't seem inclined to let him go anytime soon, looking down at their hands again and running his thumb over Dean's knuckles. "I think that the… different reactions I receive from members of the cult are their own attempt to make sense of it all. Make sense of me."

"You'd think it'd be pretty straightforward on their end," Dean joked, and Cas glanced up, questioning. "I mean, you're going around killing them. Kind of figure they'd see you as their own personal Satan."

"Do you think so?" Cas asked, solemn, his thumb still playing gently over Dean's knuckles. "Am I not sending them to their God?"

Dean opened his mouth and closed it again, discomfited by the idea. Cas held him caught in his fathomless gaze.

"You have to recall, Dean, that the people we are fighting want nothing more than to usher Death into the universe. Their fanaticism derives from a deep and abiding agony. More than anything, they crave peace, rest. And that is what I bring them."

Dean swallowed, his mouth feeling oddly dry.

"You can't really know that though," he pointed out. "I mean we don't know what happens when we die."

Cas dropped his hand.

"Don't I?" He tilted his head, and for a moment his eyes seemed dark. He looked away and shook his head. "Regardless, it's what they believe. Strongly enough to alter themselves, alter reality. In many ways, they're already dead."

Dean shivered, unsettled.

"Well, we're not, so we still need grub. You want anything now that you're not pouting?" Cas opened his mouth but Dean cut him off. "And don't say you're not hungry, you're always hungry."

Cas looked at him for a long moment, the oddly oppressive atmosphere unbroken by Dean's attempt at levity.

"Yes," he said, with more solemnity than the simple admission warranted. "I suppose I am."

A news segment with their descriptions did end up airing the next evening, the low quality stills of the side of Dean's face and mostly the back of Cas' head getting about a minute of screen time. The accompanying description of Baby didn't carry much detail, but Cas wore the same distinctive coat every damn day, so Dean thought it prudent to hit up a thrift store and bully him into some casual clothes. He acted so peevish about it that Dean had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. He looked good in a T-shirt and jeans, though, soft and touchable, and when Dean finally dumped a thick hoodie in his lap, he seemed mollified, accepting the temporary replacement for his security blanket.

They stuck to the plan and stayed put, a cheap nowhere motel outside of a major city where plenty of people passed through made for a decent enough place to go to ground, but they made an effort to keep their trips outside to a minimum.

Growing up, Dad usually hadn't been so careless as to end up with cops on his tail, but there had been a few rare occasions where they'd needed to hole up in order to stay under the radar. Those times were filled with cabin fever-fueled friction and some of the more vicious fights he could remember. Even the memory had Dean's skin prickling with stress, but perhaps not so surprisingly, holing up with Cas was different. 

That may have ultimately had more to do with who Cas was as a person than the strength of their fledgling partnership. He was somehow both endlessly content to sit in passive silence, and always willing to indulge Dean's demands on his attention.

It wasn't frictionless, they bickered like it was a team sport, and whenever it truly got heated, Cas had a bad habit of narrowing his eyes and turning his back on Dean like he could exit the conversation and the room entirely without needing to take a step outside. That left Dean in the unenviable position of choosing whether to ignore him back, angrily sulking on his own side of the room, or try to bash himself on the brick wall of Cas' indifference to see if he could annoy a reaction out of him. Both tactics with mixed success rates, but only the second came with the real danger of driving Cas to lock himself in the bathroom until Dean's stubbornness was worn out by the fullness of his bladder and he had to beg Cas' forgiveness for calling his trench coat ugly or else risk pissing his pants.

A third strategy emerged only a few days into their seclusion, which was leaving Cas be for five minutes and then slipping to his knees, or kissing his neck, or simply casually shucking his clothing until Cas couldn't resist anymore and turned around to see the show.

(The one time Dean had faked it by rustling in his duffle bag and playing with the zipper on his jacket, Cas had gone straight into the bathroom and threatened never to come out. The laughter was probably worth the very close call that led to when Cas wouldn't open the door for hours afterwards.)

The close quarters gave them ample time to explore this whole "making it up as we go" thing they were trying out. There wasn't much the occasional argument could do to put a damper on the fact that Dean had Cas all to himself, willing and eager to be explored. Sinking into that heady realization did a lot to chase away the lingering tension under Dean's skin, which in turn contributed plenty to cutting down on the moments of friction between them. The stink-eye Dean got on the rare occasions he crossed paths with the judgy front desk guy all but confirmed that his thin little ruse in booking a double had long since been worn through by the racket they were making at all hours of the day, but for once Dean couldn't find it in himself to care. If the guy wanted to make something of it, he could try his luck and see how that worked out for him.

Cas was here , and occasional extended bathroom breaks aside, he was more than willing to let Dean have his way with him.

Not just in a sexual way, either. Dean found a great deal of joy in the act of introducing Cas to everything basic cable had to offer. Cas was always more than happy to be sat on a motel bed while Dean waxed lyrical to him about sitcom reruns, old cartoons, or whatever classic movie marathon they could catch. He always had questions and commentary that threatened to leave Dean in stitches, and he always listened when Dean educated him on the finer details of TV and movie appreciation. 

It made Dean feel more than a little warm and fuzzy, that Cas would allow his attention to be directed like this, even if he never seemed to quite get it like Dean did, his perspective always very uniquely Cas. Something about the exchange felt a bit like bringing Cas home to meet the family. Dean didn't have a childhood home, no old stomping grounds to guide Cas through and reminisce at him, all that had burned down years ago. They'd tried to turn it into something that they carried with them, until that fractured too.

The last real piece of his home lived like a beacon in his mind, a glowing spot on the map that he didn't know how to approach even as the compass needle in his head spun to face it no matter where he traveled. He spent November second in that dingy little motel room, his phone in his hand, not calling. Cas let him, and didn't say a thing while he did. 

Didn't call him a bad brother when he put the phone away and turned on the TV either. 

He should have. Dean was a bad brother. A good one would have talked to Sam, would have followed his True North back to family, and home.

But Sam didn't want to be family anymore, and Dean didn't want to hear him say it to his face. So that left him, and the Impala, and a fragmentary childhood played out in identical motel rooms across the country.

Maybe that's why, sitting in one more motel, introducing Cas to cartoon characters that had been his childhood friends, he felt a little like he'd found some of the pieces again.

Of course, when the TV wasn't the cure for their boredom, there were plenty of less wholesome activities to take up their time. All of Dean's strictly hypothetical previous experience with guys had fallen into the category of "drunk enough not to remember in the morning so it basically didn't happen." Which made intimacy an exercise in trial and error for the both of them. Their artless fumbling made Dean feel like an adolescent. 

It wasn't entirely an unwelcome feeling. 

Sex had never been quite so nakedly fun before. Which was something Dean wasn't interested in dwelling on, frankly.

Making out like teenagers and artlessly fumbling their hands into each other's pants was their pastime of choice, no learning curve there, and yet it still seemed to get better every time. Watching Cas toss his head back against the pillow, mouth slack with pleasure, hanging on for the ride as Cas bit into the meat of his shoulder and yanked him ruthlessly over the edge with strokes that were just on the edge of too-fast, too-tight. For an apparent virgin, Cas was a fast learner, equipped with a kind of ravenous enthusiasm that Dean could only compare to the way he demolished any food you put in front of him, and Dean was more than keen to be devoured.

Introducing mouths to the equation came with a few more hiccups. Dean may not have given a blowjob before, fuzzy half-memories of kneeling in dingy bar bathroom aside, but he'd received enough to be overconfident about his grasp of the mechanics. Cas had watched him gagging on his knees, enraptured, and the hungry fixation of his gaze had Dean chubbing up in his pants despite the ache in his throat. Cas, for his part, took to blowjobs with the same determined enthusiasm as he approached everything else, and the same instinct to approach intimacy teeth first. After enough, only slightly frantic, reminders, he stuck to biting marks into Dean's inner thighs, mostly. There was still the occasional threatening scrape of teeth when Cas enthusiastically swallowed him down to the root - a skill Dean still hadn't mastered, the show-off - but Dean was starting to find it hot by mere exposure. There was just something about Cas in the throws of passion that felt dangerous in a toe-curling way. Was sticking your dick in a bear trap sexy? Probably not, he'd stick with Cas' hungry, slightly too toothy mouth.

It was a good thing Dean was learning to love it, because Cas, as it turned out, loved sucking dick. He loved getting his mouth on Dean, especially seemed to revel in swallowing around him over and over until Dean was shooting off in his mouth, bowled over by the force of the orgasm wrenched out of him, and then keeping at it until Dean tapped out, begging for mercy. Sometimes he let Dean return the favour, others he just shoved a hand into his pants and gasped into the crease of Dean's thigh, coming in a few strokes, leaving Dean to card fingers through his hair and try to get his sea legs back.

Despite the subpar venue and the necessity of keeping an eye on the news and their heads down on every grocery run, the two weeks and change they spent in that dingy motel in Lafayette had begun to feel like a vacation. A tiny little retreat from the world, where it was just them, hands and mouths and skin, bickering over takeout and watching trash TV. Even when restlessness began to itch under his skin, Dean found himself reluctant to leave their little hideaway.

Yet when they packed up the Impala, late evening with the intent to drive all night, it didn't feel like that peaceful atmosphere evaporated in the night like he feared, rather that it settled into the backseat, intimate and cozy.

Something they could carry with them, one more little piece of home.

Baby's tires ate up the road. They crossed into Texas before sundown, and with only a handful of stops to stretch their legs and sip cheap coffee from gas stations open 24/7, left it behind by the time the sun was peeking over the horizon. Dean's eyes were itchy and he was having trouble keeping them on the road by the end of it, but the name of the game was gaining distance. He pulled over for a mid-morning nap not long past the New Mexico border, and Cas shook him awake around noon, fresh coffee and burgers in hand.

It wasn't until another half hour down the road that Cas pulled out the other treasure he brought back from his morning errand: a map of New Mexico's roadside attractions.

Heading to Roswell would take them back south, and Dean was prepared to backtrack anyway, as soon as Cas asked, but Cas didn't point to the UFO-themed attractions around the city, instead folding the pamphlet over to show Dean a picture of a little yellow car advertising the Route 66 Auto Museum.

"You like Cars," he said, simply.

Dean knew what the responsible thing was, but looking at the shiny little pamphlet and the equally shiny hopeful smile on Cas' face, he couldn't bring himself to say no.

The museum was a private collection of thirty-some classic cars in Santa Rosa, lovingly restored until they gleamed like they'd just rolled off the factory floor. Cas pulled his trenchcoat out of the trunk to dig through its many pockets until he turned up enough crumpled dollar bills to pay the five dollar admission for each of them.

Dean criss crossed over the checkerboard floor, pulled this way and that by each successive car that caught his attention. The collection spanned decades, featuring some models that exemplified their respective years, and others that were simply unique, rare or odd. Cas, for his part, seemed more enamoured with the pieces of kitsch that lined the walls. He was fascinated by a wicker model of a motorcycle, but he still trailed happily along in Dean's wake, listening to the excited information that spilled happily from Dean's lips at each new shiny, exciting vintage vehicle.

Dean looked back at him in the midst of waving his hands over the hood of a 1956 Cadillac, and almost ran out of words when his heart skipped a beat. The nakedly fond expression on Cas' face had him fighting to keep heat from rising to his own. Cas practically glowed with contentment against the backdrop of retro nostalgia, happy, so it seemed, just to make Dean happy. 

It made something small and fluttery take root in his chest, left him feeling at once breakable and lighter than air. When they left the museum, Dean parked the Impala in the first slightly sheltered spot he could find in order to drag Cas into the back seat and kiss him silly. It was less than optimal space for two grown men, and the whole endeavour ended with Dean laughing himself sick on Cas' chest after elbowing him in the stomach and smacking his head on the door handle.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt as uncomplicatedly happy.

When they piled, ruffled, back into the front seat, Dean got Cas to dig the map of roadside attractions back out of his pocket and prompted him to pick another stop. Something for himself, this time. He ended up scrutinizing the pamphlet for a long time, brow furrowed in concentration as Dean kept driving, content, beside him. Eventually, Cas asked him if they could take a detour through Golden, navigating them to a house by the side of the road with a fence made of bottles. Dean couldn't say he understood it any more than Cas probably understood his obsession with classic cars, but he waited patiently while Cas walked up and down the fence line, touching the colourful glass bottles with reverent fingers.

"It's all very human," Cas told him when he asked. "Every part of it. The effort and craftsmanship involved in making something for as simple a task as carrying water from place to place, the fact that you make such a mundane thing beautiful, and then discard it as garbage anyway. And then you take what you've decided is garbage and turn it into art again. It's all so needlessly complex, and yet, I don't think it would be as beautiful if it wasn't."

Dean poked a little bit of fun at Cas for talking like an alien, but if he squinted his eyes and tilted his head a little, he thought he could see it. Not just the way trash could become art, but the fact that even that garbage had a history that started with human effort. Of course these days, bottles weren't exactly hand blown by artisans, but whatever machines put them together on an assembly line were all made by humans too. Probably invented and refined by a dozen people for their specific purpose, then assembled in their own factory by other tools and machines that had their own decades-long history. It was all a massive collective effort, to deliver to the public Coca-Cola and El Sol in glass bottles that would probably end up discarded by the side of the road at the end of the day. Thinking of all that, recuperating them into art just felt like a more fitting end for the things.

They kept moving North at a more sedate pace, stopping in Walsenburg when the exhaustion from the long drive caught up with them. Or caught up with Dean, anyway, Cas always seemed untouched by exhaustion, if only in the sense that he always seemed just a little weary, but never so much that he couldn't keep going.

Dean picked up a few different newspapers before they turned in, and spent breakfast the next morning scanning for articles on mysterious deaths to give them their next direction. He circled a few that looked like they could lead back to the cult and handed those pages off to Cas, who discounted each of them for one reason or another. Dean, for his part, lucked into an article about a death in a historic, haunted hotel, two hours away in Victor, a tiny little once-mining town that had gone bust so long ago that it was working its way to becoming a ghost, itself.

They sprung for a room in the hotel. Rooms which were, as it turned out, primarily themed after famous murderers, which seemed to Dean to just be tempting fate. He opted for the Bela Lugosi room, because that seemed both cool as hell and a lot less portentous than, say, the H. H. Holmes room. He stuck to his guns even when the woman at the front desk pointedly informed him that that was a single king room, grinning and telling her that he and Cas would make do.

It turned out to be a good choice, because overnight, the guy staying in the Lizzie Borden room went down to an axe, although he didn't suffer forty whacks. Much like the woman who'd turned up dead in the Jack the Ripper room, the ultimate cause had been heart failure, but the axe buried in the wall above his bed was a pretty solid hint that there was more to this than just two people with coincidentally weak constitutions.

The town and the hotel both had plenty of sordid history to sift through, so most of the day was spent at the library turning up too many likely leads to be helpful.

The night was spent combing the halls with Dean's homemade emf meter, hoping for something that would point them in the right direction.

What they got was an encounter with an angry Bela Lugosi the second they stepped back into their room. He vanished under the swing of an iron bar, leaving them with a better idea of what the victims saw right before their deaths, but no closer to putting together their ghost's identity. The next morning, Cas made another fruitless trip to the library while Dean tried his luck prodding ghost stories out of the staff of the hotel. Everyone had at least one, although with the second actual, recent death hanging over the hotel in as many weeks, they were less keen than usual to openly share them. In a way, even that worked in Dean's favour, everyone liked doing things that felt a little illicit, as long as Dean kept his voice low and leaned in, people were happy to share their opinions and tall tales in furtive whispers. The main problem was sifting through for anything remotely real or relevant that amounted to more than a rumour or a trick of the light.

When Dean actually found it, he almost didn't put it together. The story came from a maid, who'd experienced nothing more than a bad feeling and a strange smell, easily dismissed as a trick of the imagination, but something about it caught in the back of Dean's mind.

"Maybe it was just on my mind, because I'd been thinking about how much he would have hated the changes the new management was making," she had said, after detailing the experience of stepping into a room and being paralyzed by an oppressive force of anger. "But I could have sworn I smelled Mr. Barnaby's cologne. That was the old caretaker, he was a very dedicated man, you know…"

It sparked enough of a suspicion that Dean called Cas and asked him to look into this Barnaby character. In a town rich with history, their ghost turned out to be a guy who died in 2005, apparently incensed by the hotel's shift in direction from historical preservation to tourist trap horror-theming in the hopes of drawing in more crowds and money to the town. The restless old bugger hadn't graduated to violence until a round of renovations had begun, at which point he'd evidently been far gone enough to decide that if his beloved hotel wasn't going to be preserved as it was, then it might as well not exist at all.

Dean wondered if the ghost was trying to get the hotel closed down, or if it just couldn't conceive of any other way to approach the problem any more. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and what's a ghost going to do but haunt?

Regardless of the stubborn old bastard's intentions, he met his second end at the end of a match easily enough, and Dean and Cas trudged their tired bodies back to the hotel just past midnight with nothing worse than a few new bruises and a fine coating of grave dirt.

They traded off in the shower, and Dean felt himself nearly drifting off as his muscles relaxed under the hot spray. Stepping out of the bathroom, running a towel through his hair to find Cas holding an incriminating little package he could have sworn he'd left shoved out of sight at the bottom of his duffle bag woke him up quick, though.

Cas glanced up at him, holding up the cardboard box clearly labeled personal lubricant with a questioning look.

"Uh," Dean said. "I picked that up a bit ago, just in case we wanted to… you know."

A bit ago was all the way back in Louisiana, on one of his limited food runs, he'd swung by a gas station to pick up lube and condoms, and then chickened out and hidden them like an ashamed teenager hiding a skinmag under his mattress. It wasn't even that long ago that he'd have had both on hand as a matter of course, but he hadn't exactly spent the last year with hookups on his mind, and now, something about buying them with the intent to use them with Cas made it so he could barely look at them head on.

"What were you doing in my duffle, anyway?" He asked, folding his arms over his chest.

"I was getting you a change of clothes," Cas said. "And I like to wear your shirts, they smell like you. Do you want to have sex?"

Dean must not have been entirely alert, before, because that woke him up the rest of the way, or maybe just woke up the rest of his body. He tried not to whistle like a tea kettle as he breathed out through a suddenly tight throat.

"When don't I?" He chuckled weakly. "But we don't have to uh… go all the way if you don't want to, I was just, uh, making like a boy scout, you get me?"

"No," said Cas simply. "But I think I would like to have you inside me, if that's alright."

"Cool," Dean wheezed, dropping his towel and making his way over to where Cas waited patiently on the edge of the bed, trailing his eyes over Dean's naked skin. He was, as a matter of fact, wearing one of Dean's Zeppelin shirts, the kind that had been worn thin and soft with age. It was a habit he'd picked up since being bullied into temporarily shelving the trench coat. Dean had chalked it up to a playful bit of spite, and did plenty of light-hearted bickering with him over it. Leave it to Cas to cut his legs out from under him with a casual admission of the truth.

Cas looked up at him, placid and easy under tousled, shower-damp hair, all soft and sleep touched, the bare broad expanse of his thighs a tempting canvas for Dean's hands and mouth. He offered up the box silently, and Dean took it from his hands.

"Lay back, sweetheart," he said. Cas went easy, his legs falling open slightly. Dean swallowed heavily, almost dizzy with the rush of seeing Cas like this. 

Most of the time, Cas carried himself like an unstoppable force and an immovable object had a baby that moved only when it wanted to and bowed to no resistance when it did, but get him in the right circumstances, and suddenly he was something soft enough you could sink into.

Dean pulled open the cardboard packaging and tossed the bottle on the bed, then crawled up after, gently pushing Cas' thighs a little further open so he could kneel between them. He stroked his hands over Cas' sides, gentle and soothing, before he fingered along the bottom edge of Cas' shirt and pulled it up. Cas cooperated quickly, propping himself up to help Dean get it off over his head. As good as Cas looked in it, he looked even more mouthwatering with his bare chest on display, Dean wanted to bite over the broad soft swell of his stomach, nose his way along the trail of hair there and investigate where it disappeared under the waistband of his underwear. 

Instead, he made the mistake of looking up and he lost himself to helpless laughter, collapsing forward and burying his face in Cas' bare shoulder.

"Dean?" He asked, tilting his head back to try to catch sight of what he'd seen. "Ah."

The massive, black and white portrait of Dracula that loomed over the headboard of the bed glowered down at them from eyes the size of their heads. It was a testament to how enchanting Dean found Cas that he'd been able to even momentarily forget the centrepiece of their gothic palace of a hotel room.

"I feel like we have an audience," he giggled into Cas' shoulder.

"I don't mind," Cas said.

"Kinky motherfucker." Dean kissed Cas' shoulder and pushed himself up, determined to get back to business, vampiric voyeur be damned.

He captured Cas' mouth in a kiss, coaxing him back down to the bed as he did, the process interrupted only slightly by the occasional, helpless giggle. He trailed a hand down Cas's chest to palm at the growing hardness in his shorts. Cas groaned into the kiss and Dean nipped at his lips as he pulled back, satisfied.

Dean toyed with the hem of Cas' boxers, wiggling his eyebrows in a deliberately comical way as he trailed his fingers lightly over Cas' inner thighs. It got him a full body eyeroll for his trouble, and he leaned down to press a kiss to Cas' chest in response. An outlet for the overwhelming, bright, fluttery feeling that swelled in his chest. He followed it up with another and another, trailing lower and lower until he was rubbing his cheek against Cas' clothed erection, eyes drifting closed in pleasure.

"Dean…" Cas said, breathless, and Dean opened his eyes, smiling helplessly.

"Up." He tapped Cas' hips and Cas obeyed instantly, lifting his ass up off the bed so Dean could pull his boxers down his legs. Pausing to press a kiss to the head of his penis as it sprang free. Cas laughed, helpfully pulling his legs in so Dean could wrestle his underwear off and toss it into the corner. 

Dean's smile broadened until he was grinning like an idiot, giddy as he shifted back and leaned down to take Cas' cock in hand and lick a stripe up the side. 

Cas tossed his head back, gasping, and Dean took the head in his mouth, pulling a groan from him as he sucked on it, then pulled back to lick at the slit. He fumbled for the lube with his free hand. He'd done this maybe a handful of times with girls, so at least he wasn't completely lost as to the mechanics, though he found himself oddly jittery with nerves. It took a couple of tries to pop the cap on the bottle of lube, and then he had to pull off Cas' dick, cursing, when he realized the damn thing had a layer of foil he had to tear through before he could actually get anything out of the bottle. Cas propped himself up on his elbows to watch him as he struggled with it, his face turning red.

"Do you need-"

"Shut up, I got it," Dean insisted, thankfully achieving victory over the foil even as he said it. He whooped in triumph, looking up in time to see Cas hide a smile behind his hand.

"Don't make fun of me," he protested petulantly.

"I'm sorry," Cas said, not even bothering to pretend he wasn't laughing behind his hand.

"Yeah?" Dean put his hands on his hips. "You gonna make it up to me?"

"Yes," Cas breathed, his eyes on Dean's cock, hanging heavy and half-hard between his legs despite the lack of contact. He shifted onto his hands and knees, narrowing in on his prize. "I can do that."

Dean had to brace a hand on Cas' shoulder to keep his balance as Cas practically pounced on him, swallowing him down before Dean could blink. He groaned, leaning over him as Cas worked him to full hardness in record time, his fingers digging hard into Cas' shoulder as he was nearly bowled over by pleasure.

"God, Cas, your mouth…" Cas moaned in agreement, or maybe just pleasure, the sound vibrating through Dean's cock and making his toes curl. He shifted his grip from Cas' shoulder to his hair, taking control and rolling his hips into Cas' mouth. Cas made another sound of pleasure, deep in his chest, relaxing into it like he always did. 

Dean would have a hard time believing that anyone could love getting their face fucked as much as Cas did if it weren't for the evidence of his own eyes, not to mention how much he was coming to love having Cas in his own mouth. He could definitely understand the appeal, if he could just get past that pesky gag reflex. Maybe even if he couldn't, they could try that one day, Cas pushing him down as he choked on it…

The image sent a jolt of heat straight to his cock, and he bucked his hips sharply twice before pulling Cas off, breathing hard as he tried to regain his composure. Cas whined, pulling slightly against Dean's grip on his hair in an attempt to get his mouth back on him.

"Easy." Dean gentled him. "We keep going like that, this is going to be over before we even get started."

Cas blinked up at him, some of the happy haze clearing from his eyes, replaced with a sharper, anticipatory hunger.

"Yes," he said, his voice even raspier than usual. "How do you want me?"

Dean shivered, arousal pulsing molten in his gut. God, this man was going to be the death of him.

"Here." He pushed Cas back, ushering him up the bed. "Lean back against the pillows and spread your legs."

"Do you think he'll have a good view?" Cas asked, looking up as he leaned back against the headboard. Dean snorted, biting his lip to keep from dissolving into another fit of laughter.

"Buddy he's got the second best view in the house," he said, trailing his eyes over Cas' body and licking his lips to emphasize the point. Cas let his legs fall open a little more, preening under the attention.

Alright, take two. Dean made himself at home in the V of Cas' legs. He kissed at his inner thigh, fumbling with the bottle of lube to much greater success this time. He squirted a generous dollop into his hand, rubbing it between his fingers to warm it up as he trailed his mouth up Cas' thigh, biting gently and prompting Cas to buck his hips, pressing into his mouth.

Dean shifted his focus back to Cas' cock, standing proud and achingly hard. Lavishing it with kisses and licks to keep Cas riled up as he brought his slippery fingers to circle his hole, earning a gasp and another aborted thrust of his hips.

"Shh," he slurred, feeling more than a little drunk on Cas' reactions. "I got you, buddy."

He added a little bit of pressure, the tip of his finger slipping easily past Cas' rim. Cas breathed out harshly, and Dean licked over his cock, working his finger in slow.

"Good?" He asked.

"Yes," Cas replied, his voice strained. Dean gave his dick another kiss, working him lazily with a hand as he started gently rocking his finger in and out. Cas moaned, his hips stuttering, thrusting back and forth between the two points of pleasure. Dean did his best to follow his erratic rhythm, crooking his fingers on each stroke until he found the spot that made Cas give a startled shout and grind back against his fingers.

"More," he demanded. "Dean, more-"

"I got you, I got you," Dean repeated, enchanted. He pulled his finger out- Cas whined desperately at the loss- to apply more lube and push back in with two. Cas pushed back into his hand, frantic, and Dean abandoned his cock to stroke soothingly and his thigh, applying just enough pressure to encourage him to keep his hips still. He picked up the pace, finding Cas' prostate again and making him gasp and writhe, his eyes wide and almost feverish with need.

"More," he croaked, all too soon, but Dean could do nothing but oblige him. He hissed in discomfort when Dean added a third finger, but still thrust wildly to meet his hand.

He gasped out wordless, animal noises of pleasure, meeting each rock of Dean's fingers with wild abandon.

"Dean, more?" He asked again, when he'd gathered himself enough to form words again. "More, please. Please, please…"

Dean laughed, leaning up to kiss Cas as he pulled his fingers out, swallowing up his wine of protest.

"You really like this, huh?" He mumbled into Cas' mouth, drunk on second hand pleasure. His own cock was aching just from watching Cas writhe on the sheets.

"Inside?" Cas sounded wrecked. "Dean please, I need- I need…"

"I'm right here, sweetheart." Dean reassured him, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. "I'm just getting ready for you- shit, I forgot the condoms, let me-"

Cas grabbed him by the shoulder, hard, halting his attempt to pull away.

" No ," he insisted.

"Cas I'm just gonna-" Dean began, but Cas shook his head insistently, pulling him back in. He buried his face in Dean's neck.

"Please," he mumbled into his skin. "I want to feel you, I want- I want -"

Dean shivered, reaching down to take himself in hand. A small part of him protested about mess and germs, but it was quickly smothered by the larger, more insistent part that thought that was a great idea.

"Okay," he rasped. "Yeah, no condoms, no problem."

Cas kept clinging to him like a limpet, which made it a little hard to get things going, but Dean stroked his cock to spread the remaining lube over himself and guided his cock in blind, pressing kisses behind Cas' ear. It took a few tries, and Cas groaned with frustration the third time that Dean's cock slid over his hole without going in, bucking his hips impatiently and helping absolutely nothing. Then Dean's dick caught on his rim, sinking in, and Dean didn't even have time to consider teasing him further because Cas was driving back against him with a high pitched noise of desperation.

Dean groaned, his hands flying to Cas' hips, slowing him despite the urge to drive into that tight, velvet heat.

"Please," Cas whispered next to his ear, the arms around him squeezing tighter. "Please, please, please."

"Don't hurt yourself," Dean admonished gently, but he pushed forward at a more sedate place, his eyes dropping closed as pleasure threatened to overwhelm him. "I'm here, I got you."

Inch by inch, he sunk in, until he bottomed out and Cas gave a whole body shudder. Dean ran a soothing hand over his side.

"You okay?" He asked.

Cas nodded mutely into his neck and bucked his hips, urging Dean to move.

He was shaking.

Dean rolled his hips gently, working up a rhythm. Cas choked on a gasp, meeting Dean's thrusts frantically, desperate, broken noises falling from his lips. His fingers dug almost painfully into Dean's back, and Dean cursed and picked up the pace, driving in harder to meet Cas' silent demands.

Cas shuddered underneath him, muffling a sob into his neck.

"Cas?" Dean stilled, concern causing him to pull back even as Cas whined in protest.

Cas didn't just look wrecked anymore, he looked wretched , his face screwed up and tears flowing freely down his cheeks.

"Shit," Dean exclaimed, his hands going to Cas' face, fluttering frantically with the desire to touch before he thought better of himself, rubbing the dirty, still slightly lube-sticky one on the sheets while he stroked the other over Cas' shoulder instead, giving him what he hoped was a comforting squeeze. "Hey, Cas hey- are you okay? Am I hurting you?"

"No." Cas shook his head, but the denial came out as a pained moan, and he had to bite down on his lip to choke back another sob. "Please, keep going? Dean, I can-"

Contrary to Cas' request, Dean pulled away, and Cas sobbed wretchedly when he slipped out of him.

"No," he whined, scrabbling at Dean's shoulders. "Please, keep- Dean, I'm empty I need- I need, please-"

"I can't, Cas, I-" Dean swallowed his panic, trying to keep his voice steady as Cas broke down entirely. He reached out and bundled him close, holding him tight to his chest. "I'm sorry, hey, I'm really sorry Cas. Let me- fuck. You know I can't- not if it's got you like this."

"I'm not, I'm not-" Cas protested incoherently, Dean rubbed a hand down his back soothingly.

"It's okay, man," Dean said again. The visceral fear at seeing Cas break down like this had pretty thoroughly killed his erection, so that put an end to that, no matter how much Cas insisted he was still game to continue. "It was too much, huh? You got overwhelmed or something?"

Cas shook his head into his shoulder, but didn't clarify, crying freely now.

"Come on, hey, what do you need, what can I do-"

"Hold me," Cas gasped into his neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, can you- can you just-"

"Yeah, course," Dean said, lowering them back down to the mattress and blanketing Cas with his body, pressing kisses to his hair as he shook. All the while his stomach churned with guilt and fear. "I got you Cas, I'm right here."

Cas made another wretched little noise and pressed his forehead into Dean's collarbone, his breathing evening out slightly into a steady, ragged rasp.

"The distance between molecules is an agonizing eternity," he mumbled into Dean's skin.

"What?"

"It's nothing," Cas pulled back, rubbing aggressively at his eyes. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been- I should be able to… It doesn't matter, I can still-" Cas made a grab for Dean's crotch, and Dean caught his wrist, bringing it up to his mouth to lay a kiss on it.

"Don't worry about it," he told him firmly, reaching up to brush the tears from Cas' face, far more gently than he had been. "I just want to know you're okay."

"I'm fine," Cas said, his eyes downcast. "I'm sorry I ruined it."

"Hey, Cas, seriously," Dean ducked down to catch his eyes. "It's okay, I'm not having fun if you're not having fun, right? You can always call things off, for any reason, you hear me?"

"I hear you," Cas agreed, grudgingly. "It's not- I liked it, I did, I just…"

He trailed off, seemingly unable to put the feelings into words, even worse, his eyes began welling up with tears again as he tried.

"Hey, sex can be overwhelming, I get it," Dean said, quickly, his hands once again absentmindedly stroking over Cas' body like one would soothe a startled horse. "Lemme get you cleaned up, I bet you'll feel better…"

"No," Cas said petulantly, tightening his arms around Dean. "I just want you to hold me. Is that… okay?"

"Yeah, Cas," Dean said, settling in on top of him. "That's okay. That's more than okay."

Exhaustion began to catch up with him as they lay together, and soon he found himself hovering on the edge of sleep. In the back of his mind, he prodded himself to stay alert so he could get up and clean them both up, see Cas washed and dried and coddled properly.

The rise and fall of Cas' chest beneath him, and even his own absent-minded stroking had an almost hypnotic, soothing quality. Distantly, he heard Cas rumbling another apology, and his mouth moved on automatic to reassure him, burrowing closer into the tight circle of Cas' arms.

Gradually, they began to pull tighter, pinning Dean with a crushing force. He squirmed, pushing back, but by the time he opened his mouth to protest, the air had been squeezed from his lungs, his torso pulled so tightly to Castiel’s his chest had no room to expand, no way to breathe.

He pushed back again, but the arms didn’t give. Solid like iron bars, they only squeezed harder, impossibly so.

The arms didn’t give, but then Cas’ chest did.

His skin split open, and Dean tipped forward, suddenly weightless, falling into the cavernous darkness underneath.

He hit the water without a sound, sinking below the surface like a stone.

There was no light to see by, and the water was warm, as warm as his skin. It felt like he drifted through nothing at all.

Yet he could feel something in the water with him, moving around him, unseen and silent.

He kicked his legs, trying to rise to the surface, but something in the dark reached out and curled around him, holding him fast.

Dean , a voice that wasn’t a voice pulsed through the water around him, vast, deep. 

Full of affection.

More limbs curled around him, tugging him downwards. The darkness did not lessen, there was no way for him to know what lay beneath him, but in his mind’s eye there was the impression of a vast shape below. He knew somehow that the cave and the water were endless, but the thing beneath them was bigger than them both.

Dean, echoed through the water, the cave. Dean , said each grasping tendril that curled around his body.

Dean, Dean, Dean.

He didn’t struggle as he sank. His skin began to dissolve, washing away in the dark water.

The distance between molecules is an agonizing eternity , he remembered Cas whispering into his neck.

He felt content, knowing the agony could finally end.

Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean.

Dean.

Dean.

“Dean?” Cas shook his shoulder, pulling him hazily towards consciousness. “I brought you coffee.”

“Wuh?” Dean reached blindly for the offered cup, pushing himself up on an elbow as he blinked blearily. His body felt heavy and soft. “Watimizit?”

“Ten thirty,” Cas told him, sitting on the edge of the bed with his own coffee. “You didn’t want to wake up.”

The statement roused him almost as much as the first sip of coffee.

“Shit, I never sleep late.” Even now he felt pleasantly groggy, unable to summon up his usual anxiety about time spent idle. There wasn’t anywhere they needed to be that couldn’t wait. “Sorry Cas.”

“It was good to see you resting.” Cas shook his head, brushing off the apology. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Dean mumbled into his coffee shop, recalling a fading impression of dark water and utter contentment. He smiled a little, letting his eyes slip half closed. “I had good dreams.”

“I’m glad,” Cas said, smiling weakly. He looked down at the cup in his hands. “About last night-”

“It’s okay Cas,” Dean cut him off, sitting up fully and leaning forward. “I’m happy with what we’ve been doing, you know? If you don’t wanna, well if you don’t wanna do anything we’re doing say the word, it’s off the table.” He made a shooing motion with his hand and then cleared his throat, casting his eyes downwards. “I just- it wasn’t something I did, was it? You said I didn’t hurt you, but…”

“No.” Cas shook his head, looking up from his coffee and reaching out one hand to settle on Dean’s knee. “You were wonderful, I just…” His face twisted as he trailed off, closing his mouth and turning his head away.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Dean said. “It’s fine.”

Cas nodded, his shoulders slumping in relief. Dean did his best not to grimace in disappointment. He wasn’t lying , Cas didn’t have to tell him, but he’d just really like him to.

He must not have done a very good job, because when Cas looked back at him his expression immediately turned guilty.

“I’m just not sure how to express it,” he mumbled.

Dean took a sip of his coffee. 

“Well, like I said before, if you want to try, I’ll listen,” he said.

Cas stayed quiet for a long moment, twisting his coffee cup back and forth between his palms.

“Have you ever been so hungry you don’t even feel it anymore?” He asked. “You might feel sick or exhausted, but you don’t really register it as hunger anymore.”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, without having to think about it. Cas’ head shot up at once and he looked concerned and upset. “Hey, you asked.”

“I wish the world had been kinder to you,” Cas said, looking at him with his eyes all big and sad like he tended to when Dean accidentally dropped a tidbit about his childhood into conversation.

“This ain’t about me right now,” Dean brushed him off, uncomfortable. “You were saying?”

“Yes.” Cas took a deep breath and let it out slow, closing his eyes. “It was like that. Like I’d forgotten I was hungry, and then I was given a handful of nuts and seeds to eat. Nothing that could satisfy me, but enough to make me feel how ravenous I was.”

Dean’s heart sank like a stone.

“You’re saying…” He swallowed. “I’m not… enough?”

“No!” Cas’ eyes flew open and he whirled on Dean, practically throwing his coffee onto the bedside table in his haste to grab Dean. He gripped his knees tightly, staring intently in his eyes, beseeching. “Dean, I’m saying I could never have enough of you.”

That sounded like it was just a little more flattering way of saying the same thing. Even if Dean’s heart swelled at the idea of Cas never getting sick of him, part of him still felt the ache of being a disappointment.

Cas held Dean’s eyes, reaching out and taking the hand that wasn’t holding his coffee. He looked down at where he held Dean’s hand in both of his, caressing it gently.

“I could eat you down to the gristle and not be satisfied,” he muttered. “But then I wouldn’t have you anymore, and where would I be?”

Dean shivered, his face feeling hot.

“We are still talking about sex, right?” He laughed weakly, the intensity of Cas’ contemplation sending heat curling up his spine.

“Ah,” Cas said, looking up, a faint tinge of embarrassment crossing his face.

“Cause I’d um…” Dean bit his lip, grinning. “I’d kind of like to know what being eaten down to the gristle would be, in that context.”

“If I figure it out, we can try it,” Cas promised, suppressing a smile. Dean shivered again at the thought.

“Well, anyway,” Dean cleared his throat. “Till then, no butt stuff?”

“I…” Cas hesitated. “I might acclimate to it in time? But…”

Dean gestured dismissively with his coffee cup, his other hand still caught between two of Cas’.

“Like I said, I’m good with what we’re doing,” he said. “I’m a simple guy, Cas. I like touching your dick, I like when you touch mine… Don’t gotta make it complicated.”

Cas smiled, leaning forward and kissing his knee over the covers.

“I like touching your dick too,” he said.

“Well if you like it so much…” Dean let his legs fall open, waggling his eyebrows.

Cas laughed and crawled into the space Dean had made for him, pressing their bodies together and leaning up to capture his lips. Dean blindly fumbled his coffee over onto the bedside table next to Cas’ where they sat together, going cold.

It was a good morning.

Chapter Text

It wasn't long after their failed attempt to "go all the way", as it were, that Cas started to become distant.

Or maybe return to being distant.

Or maybe the distance just took on a new quality.

Cas played things close to the chest, Dean knew that. It had taken what probably (definitely) qualified as stalking just to get him to accept that Dean was on his side. There was a reticence about him that wasn't easy to shake. He pulled back, pulled in, let words die on the tip of his tongue while Dean watched.

But Dean had thought that that was starting to change. Something had been bubbling up to the surface. It may not have manifested in words yet, but Dean could feel it in the way Cas looked at him, the way he held him, the desperate clutch of his hands in the dark.

Cas wanted him, maybe even needed him, and Dean wanted to be needed.

But there was a shift.

It wasn't something Dean was able to put into words, there wasn't anything specific he could point to.

Not until he started waking up alone again.

Dean wasn't under any illusions that Cas had become less of an insomniac thanks to some tender touches and mutual orgasms, but when they'd started sharing a bed, Cas had started staying.

Dean liked to imagine it resulted in more rest over all, but mostly he liked waking up with Cas next to him, even if he was usually already awake and staring at him like some kind of creeper.

Maybe he'd teased him about that a few too many times, because a month after the sex that wasn't, Dean woke up to the other side of the mattress empty and cold without Cas.

In a humiliating display of neediness, the first thing out of Dean's mouth when Cas came back to the motel room with his usual coffee offering was "are you okay?" Then, of course, he had to fumble to justify the question, because why wouldn't Cas be okay? The real question was, why was Dean so helplessly, embarrassingly bereft over not getting to see him first thing when he woke up?

He'd done his best to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

And then he'd woken up alone again the next day.

And the next.

It was enough to finally push him into saying something. Although abruptly blurting out "did I do something wrong?" probably wasn't the most tactful way of starting that conversation.

Cas had been more confused than reassuring, but he'd acquiesced easily when Dean finally managed to grit out that he wanted Cas next to him when he woke up in the morning.

It was hard enough to say, harder still not to immediately retract it under the weight of utter mortification that came with admitting it out loud. Despite how easily Cas agreed, Dean spent that night berating himself internally for being such a selfish bastard, imposing his petty little wants on Cas. So achingly insecure he needed Cas to lie with him in bed, sweaty and probably bored out of his mind when he could be up and being useful, or doing something he actually wanted to do.

He slept fitfully, but Cas was there when he woke up. Dean slipped under the covers and thanked him by using his mouth for something much more enjoyable than talking.

Everything should have been fine, Dean should have just been able to take the win.

But Cas was still distant.

Dean could make demands on his time, he could pull him closer and ply him with sex, he could cajole him into entertaining Dean's silly ideas. Dean still dragged him to roadside attractions and sat him down for movie marathons, and Cas still let himself be pushed and pulled and prodded like he couldn't bench press Dean if he wanted.

But even when Cas was there, he just wasn't really there .

His eyes would drift, unfocused. He was quieter than usual, defaulting to monosyllabic answers, preoccupied.

Sometimes Dean woke to him climbing back into bed, ready to be dutifully by his side in the morning, after spending the night who knows where.

Dean felt his desperation to keep Cas getting sharper, harsher. He knew it was on the verge of becoming the type of thing that could draw blood, but he didn't know how to stop it. He didn't know how to do anything but cling, as Cas kept pulling away.

No matter how much he tried, Dean couldn't always escape knowing himself. He knew he was too much too fast by nature, that he'd stick onto people like a barnacle if given half the chance. For most of his life, he hadn't been, his dad had dutifully scraped him off rocks and passing ships, moved him along and didn't let him cling to anything but family. 

He couldn't be the one throwing a tantrum about leaving when it was his job to corral a crying Sam into the car and onto the next town. His dad taught him there would only ever be two constants in his life, to never get attached to anyone else.

When he got older, he compensated on his own, leaning hard in the opposite direction, playing love 'em and leave 'em to keep from overwhelming and being overwhelmed.

It didn't work all the way, he still found himself carrying little bits of people around for years after he'd met them. Her smile, his laugh, her freckles. Little old lady at the bus stop who called him a nice young man, guy behind him in the checkout line who paid for the rest of his groceries when he was twenty bucks short. Little fragmentary interactions that should've been incidental, but instead carved themselves deep into his bones.

He knew he was clingy, he knew he got attached too quickly. He wouldn't blame Cas for getting sick of him after he forced his way into the guy's life.

The thing was he sort of thought that Cas liked that about him, responded to it. Like maybe he was someone who didn't know how to let his walls down, and so Dean the emotional wrecking-ball was a welcome presence for once.

Maybe that had been naive.

Dean tried, he did. Lying in bed with Cas, his head pillowed on his chest, he did his best to broach the subject.

"Hey, Cas." Dean paused in tracing designs on Cas' chest with his fingertips. "Is everything.. you know, is everything okay?"

"Of course," Cas replied immediately. "Why do you ask?"

Dean shrugged. No reason except for nebulous, swirling anxieties, and an itch in his bones that told him he was about to lose the only thing he had left.

"You know I'm happy, right?" Dean asked instead. "With how things are."

He shifted, putting his palm flat on Cas' chest, over his heart. He wanted to push himself up, to look Cas in the eye, but found he couldn't.

"Are you happy?" He asked.

"Yes," Castiel said, his hand coming up to stroke over Dean's hair. "I'm very happy."

Dean turned his face into Cas' chest, his heart sinking. It sounded like a lie. Or at least, like something only half true.

"Okay," Dean mumbled into his chest. "That's what I want, for you to be happy."

There were three words that had been hovering in the back of Dean's mind for a while, too much too fast. They threatened to creep up Dean's throat now. 

But he couldn't say them, he just… couldn't. Not now.

"That's what I want, too," Cas said, his voice a reverent whisper. "For you to be happy."

Dean nodded, his forehead rubbing against Cas' pectoral. His emotions felt too big for his body, they pricked at his eyes, flashing hot and cold in his chest. He laid a kiss by Cas' left nipple, for lack of any better way to express them.

Cas laughed, the sound rumbling through his chest and vibrating Dean's face, shaking loose some of the tension in his brow.

He let himself slip into a fitful doze, Cas stroking his hair dutifully until he nodded off.

He dreamt of an endless black cavern, closed off from him by a sheet of glass. No matter how much he pounded on it and screamed himself hoarse, he couldn't get through.

He'd been having that dream a lot, lately.

Cas was the one who suggested they take a break from cases for a week or two. Dean considered it with a fair amount of skepticism, it wasn't like they'd exactly been burning the candle at both ends. They'd been bouncing between milk-run jobs and dead-end leads on cult activity, sticking vaguely Northwest and keeping their ears to the ground for any news about those two fugitives from justice in Alabama. It had barely been two months since they'd spent weeks holed up doing nothing at all. Granted, they'd been hiding from the police, but it was still practically a vacation, and they hadn't spent the time since earning their rest. 

Maybe Dean should've been more grateful for the inactivity, but a new year had rolled in when he wasn't looking, and all the things he wasn't doing were beginning to weigh on him. He'd spent the days leading up to it in a happy fantasy world, teaching Cas about all the Christmas traditions that could be scrounged together on the move with whatever change they had in their pockets, convincing himself that they were back to normal. Then New Year's Day, he'd feigned sleep while Cas carefully crawled into bed with him, snaking chilly arms around his body carefully, like a secret. Like he didn't want Dean to know he'd been out, somewhere, away from his side.

The press of their bodies had felt like a lie.

All things considered, Dean could do with some distraction. He wanted to feel useful, to be useful, to have a problem in front of him he could solve, for once.

On the other hand, their funds and leads had both largely dried up, and the lingering threat of being wanted men remained. The same anxiety in his gut about Cas and their relationship that made him yearn for activity also made it all too easy to acquiesce. There had to be a reason Cas was pushing for another mini vacation. Maybe he felt something was wrong between them too, and this was him trying to fix it.

Or maybe he was trying to do something nice for Dean, before he let him down gently.

Either way, Dean agreed, and they set up shop in Billings, Montana.

In a rare, guilty moment of something like optimism, Dean maxed out one of his credit cards paying out the discounted monthly rate at the motel. Cas raised an eyebrow at him when he told him how long he'd set them up for.

"What?" He shrugged. "You said you wanted a break, we can still skip town if we need to, but I figured… why not?"

Cas' eyes had softened, and he'd made no argument.

There were a lot of reasons why not. Monsters didn't take vacation, people would still be dying while they cooled their heels. Dean couldn't even say that the world wouldn't end if they took some time off, because it just might.

Except the cult had been pretty quiet since the failed ambush, and Cas had flat out said that he was as confident as he could be that they didn't have anything major planned. There was an ebb and flow, he claimed. Cas would disrupt their activities, pick off a few more of their leaders, and they would go to ground, get cleverer and quieter, until they were confident enough to leave the kinds of traces that he could follow back to them again.

That, or they came to him.

The cult was quiet, but wouldn't be forever, and monsters never rested, but Dean had a restless anxiety eating at his bones and he wanted… he wanted Cas. His time, his attention, for as long as he could get it.

So, a vacation.

In Billings, Montana.

A working vacation, still, but a lot less bloody than their usual work. Their cash was running low, and that needed addressing. Dean made his usual circuit of bars, and Cas… Cas put up fliers.

The advertisements for his PI business listed a fake address in a cluster of offices downtown, but also stated plainly that appointments were made by phone call only.

"People feel it's more legitimate if there's a physical location," Cas insisted. "Whether or not they actually get to see it."

He took the occasional meeting from clients in a nearby coffee shop, and pretended the casual atmosphere was for their benefit.

Dean was worried that Cas actually working would mean more time apart, but he was open about the fact that he didn't expect to pick up meaningful work.

He did get into the habit of photographing comings and goings from the motel, which Dean had thought was just practice, maybe an advanced dubiously legal form of people watching. Until Cas came back from meeting with a client one day, riffled through his collection of photographs, and held up a headshot of a balding man next to a photo of what was clearly the same man ushering a young blonde woman into a motel room with a hand at her waist.

"What do you think?" He asked. "A match?"

Dean was too gobsmacked to provide input, but Cas didn't seem to need it, examining the photo himself with satisfaction.

"She was very rude," He said. "I'm billing her for fifty hours."

Dean laughed until he couldn't breathe.

All told, Cas didn't need to spend too much time working his Private Eye shtick, and when he did actually need to surveil somebody, there was nothing stopping him from bringing Dean along. Stakeouts in the Impala took on a new sort of levity when all they were watching for was the day to day activities of a possibly unfaithful housewife or a definitely shady business partner. Without the threat of death hanging over them, the stakes they were staking out were decidedly low. The time was filled with shared take out and conversation, jokes and stories and even simple companionable silence.

Cas' focus still drifted, he still got up in the middle of the night. Often, when they went their separate ways for a day, Dean would return to the motel to find Cas buried in research on his laptop, only for it all to be hastily put aside as soon as Dean came in.

He said he wasn't looking for a case, not their kind of case, anyway, and Dean chose not to prod. The cracks were there, and Dean didn't want to be the one to force them any wider.

Despite his anxieties, things were still mostly good, he wanted them to stay good.

They took the time to take in the sights, the way they'd been learning to, together. Dean even arranged a hike through a state park on the first mostly mild day they saw, aching feet and frozen fingers and all, because he read about a cave full of two thousand year old pictographs, and he figured Cas would like it. He wasn't disappointed, although he was tired and surly by the time they got there, and he could barely make out the damn things, squinting up at the rock walls. Some of the other hikers carried binoculars for their viewing experience, so evidently Dean hadn't done enough research.

None of that touched Cas, though. He just stared up at the faint scrawlings of human and animal figures with starry-eyed wonder.

"It's so very human," he said, words that Dean was beginning to understand were the highest form of compliment, coming from Cas.

"Painting pictures on rock?" Dean shrugged, his hands in his pockets, they were almost warm that way. "Guess so, I mean, we still do it today."

"That's true," Cas exclaimed, delighted. "It's a behaviour that spans through the ages…"

He shook his head, staring up at the cave wall, his eyes far away.

"It's amazing isn't it? Those little connecting threads? The humans that made these lived so long ago, their art has outlasted the span of their lives many times over, and yet eventually it will be washed away. Even these rocks, which seem ancient and eternal in comparison to a tiny human lifespan, are ultimately ephemeral when you consider the scale of the universe itself. In a blink of an eye, they will be dust…" He turned to look at Dean. "And yet, you can just as easily view humanity as one entity. All of those connecting threads, reaching into the past, making you one with your ancestors. The way you build and rediscover and remember, carrying knowledge forward into the future… Humanity is still very young, in the grand scheme of things, and yet… You have the potential to keep forging into the future, maybe ultimately you'll outlast the rock, in some form, your distant descendants carrying your legacy onwards."

"Sometimes, Cas," Dean said into the solemn silence. "You talk like you're not human at all."

"Sometimes I wonder if I am," Cas admitted.

Sometimes, Dean did too. In the early waking hours, when the shape of Cas next to him became something different, half-imagined in his sleeping mind…

It wasn't worth dwelling on.

"Do you really think we'll make it that far?" Dean asked. "There are days I figure we're more likely to wipe each other out, sooner or later. Maybe it would even be for the best."

"I don't know," Cas said. "But I want it to last."

"Yeah," Dean said, looking at Cas' earnest, open face. "I'd like that too."

You couldn't always get what you wanted, but they were both putting in their best effort. Maybe it would be enough.

Cas repaid Dean's selfless self-sacrifice of willingly going on a hike with more walking, but it was walking between breweries, so Dean thought he might find it in his heart to forgive him. 

"Eleven breweries, three distilleries, a cider mill and a winery," Dean read out from the map Cas had supplied him. "You trying to get me smashed, Cas?"

"The map says to drink responsibly," Cas pointed out, indicating the phrase in a little star at the corner.

"Eh." Dean waved him off. "That's more of a suggestion."

"I'm going to end up carrying you back to the motel again, aren't I?" Cas sighed.

"Aw." Dean grinned. "You'd carry me?"

"Of course," Cas affirmed, with that easy solemnity of his. "Whenever you need me too."

Dean looked away, his cheeks pink and his face splitting into a grin.

"Nah, it won't come to that," Dean said. "I'm a simple man, Cas, give me a dive and some cheap beer and I'm happy. It'll be fun to try out the tourist stuff for a day, but I'm not gonna overindulge."

"Cas, Caaaaas, Cas! You're my best friend, Cas."

"Thank you, Dean."

"You're my only friend, but you're still the best one, okay? That doesn't make it less special. You're my best friend."

"Yes, Dean."

Dean focused on his feet, leaning heavier on Cas' shoulder as he made sure to put one in front of the other. It was much more complicated than it sounded. Some of the sidewalk was slippery with slush, and that just wasn't fair. He tilted his head further to rub his cheek on Cas' coat, even though it made aiming his feet at the treaturous ground a little harder. He laughed.

"You're carrying me home again," he said.

"I am," Cas replied. His voice was so warm , it filled Dean up and made him warm too.

Dean gasped, pushing away from Cas a little, not far, just enough so he could look at him. It made him dizzy and he started to overbalance, but Cas grabbed him by the forearm and steadied him.

"You know what I realized, Cas? Cas, you know what?" Dean leaned in, and Cas didn't lean away, looking curiously into Dean's eyes and almost distracting him from his very important conclusion with how wide and beautiful and blue they were. "You're my boyfriend, too!"

Cas blinked at him.

"Am I?" He asked.

Dean's heart dropped like a stone.

"Aren't you?"

"Yes," Cas said, decisively, with a short little nod and a squeeze to Dean's arm. It settled the momentary wild panic in Dean's heart, and a moment later he forgot it had ever been there.

"That's good, because I like you a lot."

"I like you too, Dean," Cas said, but the way he said it sounded almost sad. Dean pitched forward in a sloppy attempt at a hug, hooking his arm around Cas' neck and resting his head on his shoulder. Cas' hands came up around his waist and just held him, swaying a little.

"Let's get you to bed, Dean." Cas' hands stroked up and down his side, and Dean bit his lip, muffling a snicker in Cas' coat collar. That sounded dirty, Dean wanted to make a joke about it but the words weren't coming together in his head. He couldn't say that's what she said, they were both guys.

"Cas I think I'm gay," he said instead, as Cas shifted him so they were side to side again and started shuffling him forward.

"Okay," Cas said, easy and unconcerned. Dean let his eyes slip closed, fuzzy and relaxed. That was the nice thing about Cas, he cared but he didn't care.

"I drank too much," Dean confessed when they'd taken a few more steps and the jolting up-down motion was starting to send him seasick.

"Perhaps a little, yes," Cas agreed. "You have a tendency towards excess."

"I like things that make me feel good." Dean frowned. "Drinking feels good until it feels bad. Not drinking always feels bad, though. Sucks. I liked those huckleberry lemonade things, like Tombstone."

He laughed, pitching into Cas to leave a sloppy kiss on his cheek, almost missing as Dean turned to look at him in surprise.

"I'm your huckleberry."

"What does that mean?" Cas asked him, gently shuffling him forward again.

"Mean's pick me," Dean snickered. "S'from a movie, did I show you that one yet? We should watch it, it's a classic. Val Kilmer… Oh I am gay…"

Cas hummed in agreement and Dean took this as an invitation to start recounting the plot of Tombstone in detail.

"But the thing is he doesn't actually get on the train, right? He gets his family to safety, and then he goes and goes after the bad guys, cause he doesn't care if it kills him, and Doc he follows him anywhere, even though he's half dead already-" They stopped, and Dean looked up in confusion, finding to his surprise that they were stood in front of a familiar door. Cas was digging in his pocket for the key. "Oh we're back."

"Yes," Cas said, opening the door and helping him inside. "How does the story end?"

"Hm?"

"With Val Kilmer and the cowboys, how did it end?"

"I can't tell you that," Dean protested. "It's spoilers. We'll have to watch it."

"I see," Cas said. He deposited Dean on the bed and kneeled at his feet, unlacing his boots for him. Dean watched him carefully.

"You're always real patient with me," he observed. "You're not just putting up with me, are you?"

Cas glanced up, his brow furrowed.

"No," he said. "I like listening to you. You're very honest like this, even if I don't always understand."

"That's good," Dean said. "I don't want to bother you, Cas. I want you to stay."

Cas smiled at him, a sorrowful little thing that made Dean's heart ache.

"I would like to stay with you, too."

"Why does that make you sad?" Dean asked, reaching out for him frantically. Cas came to him easily when he got his fingers on his lapels. He'd stuck with jeans and t-shirts since Dean had introduced a little variety into his wardrobe, but he'd stubbornly insisted on pulling the trenchcoat back out of the trunk once they'd gone a few weeks without any cops breathing down their necks. He looked like a doofus. Dean loved it.

"It's complicated," Cas told him, shifting onto the bed with him when Dean gave him a tug. He smoothed his hands over the tan fabric of his coat, it had a nice texture, smooth and kind of cool from the night air.

"What is?"

"Life, I suppose," Cas said, he brushed Dean's hands aside so he could help him shrug off his jacket and overshirt, then reached for his belt.

"You gonna sex me up, Cas?" Dean asked, leaning into his hands.

Cas smiled, less sad, this time.

"No, you're drunk."

"I don't really wanna, anyway," Dean confessed. "My head hurts."

Cas nodded, sympathetically.

"I wouldn't want to do anything you don't want."

"You could, though," Dean said, when Cas had pulled his jeans off, and his legs were bare.

"What?" Cas looked up sharply from where he was folding Dean's jeans, a fastidious little habit he picked up from Dean. Dean let his legs fall open under Cas' gaze, and the jeans slipped in his slackened grip.

"You can do stuff when I don't want you to," he told him. "I'd like it."

Cas' hands spasmed and he swallowed hard. Like he wanted to touch and taste.

"I don't understand."

"I like to make people feel good, even when it's not good for me, you know?" He said. "Feels weird how much I like it with you, sometimes. It's too good, I didn't earn it. But if it was just for you, that'd be better, wouldn't have to worry then."

Cas' gaze was heavy on him, it made him shiver. He looked away and went back to folding Dean's clothes for him.

"We should discuss that later."

"Okay," Dean agreed, reaching out his arms. "Hold me?"

Cas huffed a laugh, shucking off his outer layers so he could crawl into bed next to Dean. His clothes, he left carelessly on the floor, only Dean's demanded special treatment.

Dean lay on his side, making a space for Cas to slot into his arms. It let him look at Cas up close, their faces right next to each other on the thin motel pillows.

"Hi Cas," he said.

"Hello Dean," Cas replied.

"Will you tell me?" Dean asked, Cas closed his eyes, breathing out deep.

"I do want to stay with you Dean," Cas told him. "I just worry I won't be able to."

Dean closed his eyes too, leaning in so that his forehead rested against Cas' and he could feel his breath stirring the air between them.

"Sometimes it feels like you're already gone."

"I'm sorry," Cas whispered. "I don't mean to be."

"I don't mean to make you sad."

"You don't," Cas said, pulling back. Dean opened his eyes to watch him. "Not like that."

"Then like what?"

Cas turned away slightly, staring up at the ceiling, but he reached out to take Dean's hand in his at the same time, holding tight.

"For a long time I didn't let myself want anything," he said softly. "I did what I thought was necessary, out of duty or spite perhaps, and I did it by rote. But then there was you, and you… awakened in me things I had refused to let myself feel. I think it's helped me to understand, but it… frightens me sometimes."

"Wanting things is hard," Dean mumbled.

"Yes."

"But you have me, you know? I'm right here."

"Exactly," Cas breathed out, turning back towards him, his eyes big and wild. "You're all the way over there, outside of me, separate from me. It's awful, it hurts, I hate it. I don't just want you with me, I want you to be inside me, part of me. I want there to be no difference between us, for us to dissolve, together, into one thing eternally bound and entirely known to each other."

Dean swallowed, his heart pounding in his throat and his mouth dry. Cas was so beautiful, hair askew, lips pink as they moved with the frantic passion of his words. He pictured it, the dissolution of his being, imagined himself as something small, resting peacefully in Cas' vast, dark stomach.

"Sounds nice," he rasped.

"But we'd be alone ." Cas' voice broke.

Dean made a noise of concern, and moved closer, pulling Cas' head to his clavicle.

"No- I mean, we'd be together, that's… that's the point."

"But there wouldn't be an us anymore, Dean." Cas whispered, pressing into him. "There would be no you if you were part of me. That's the point, the… the trap. Separation is intolerable, but unity is eternal loneliness. You need to exist outside of me so that I can touch you, and kiss you, and talk to you. I hate it, but it's also the most beautiful thing in existence. It's not you that makes me sad, Dean. It's the fundamental nature of reality."

"Okay." Dean ran his fingers through Cas' hair. "I don't… I don't know if I get it, but…"

"It's okay, you don't have to."

"I still think it would be good if you ate me," Dean admitted, and Cas groaned, digging his teeth into his collarbone and making Dean gasp. "But I guess that's the problem, you can't have your Dean and eat him too."

Cas released him, pushing himself up and staring at him as though he'd just revealed the secrets of the universe.

"That's exactly it," he said. "'I want it, but if I take it, it won't exist anymore' that's how it works, that's the dilemma. It wouldn't be half the problem it is if you didn't want to be eaten so badly."

"Sorry?" Dean said.

"No, no I-" Cas shook his head. "You've helped me so much Dean. I've never been sure, until now, if I was doing the right thing. I just didn't know what else to do , but it brought me to you, and I… I have to believe I'm on the right path, because of that. I can see it through, even if it costs me…"

"What do you mean?" A flash of guilt crossed Cas' face and Dean jolted up, his hands scrabbling at Cas' shirt, clutching desperately at the fabric. "Cas- No, no you can't- Please don't die don't- you can't do this to me-"

"Shh, Dean." Cas reached out and took Dean's hands in his, pressing him down into the mattress. "It will be okay, I promise. It won't come to that, not yet. I still have work to do."

"But it will, you think you're going to-" Dean choked, unable to get air properly. He shook his head frantically, trying to buck Cas off. "You promised, Cas, you promised you wouldn't- I can't- I won't let you-"

"Last time you were this intoxicated, you forgot everything the next morning."

" Fuck you , no! Cas-"

"It will be alright, Dean, just sleep." Cas reached out with one of his hands, and stroked Dean's hair, laying all his weight on him to still his squirming, an immovable weight. "I still don't know if this is Her will, but… I think I have the power to defy it, even if it isn't."

"Cas, Cas, get off! " Dean thrashed, to no effect, panic and anger sobering him. "I'm not gonna just ignore this-"

Cas shushed him again, leaning down and kissing him on the forehead.

"Sleep, Dean," he said, and Dean went limp, his head swimming as a sudden exhaustion dragged him down.

"And forget ."

The world went dark.

Dean screamed and thrashed in the clinging, molasses-thick darkness, but his voice didn't make a sound. His throat ached from the force of his screaming, but nothing reached his ears. The Dark wrapped tight around his limbs and rushed into his open mouth, soothing the pain even as it spread him wide and slithered down and in, expanding as it forced its way through him. He felt it in his chest, squeezing outwards against the agony inside him until it popped -

Dean blinked, feeling sleepy and scoured through as the darkness moved through him like a permeable thing. He made a noise, and found it was swallowed by the shadow-thing in his throat. He felt an echo of its contentment and shuddered then relaxed. Allowing himself to be buoyed up by something he couldn't see, wrapped thick around him and inside him.

She had him.

He was safe.

Dean woke hazily, slowly swimming his way to consciousness as the familiar aches and pains of the morning after a night of over-indulgence came to him one by one. He groaned, rolling over, his arm flung out next to him meeting empty sheets. His fingers fisted in the fabric, cool and untouched, and a spike of panic had him lurching upright, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

The room was dim, the blinds drawn, and empty , Cas was- Cas was…

He took a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head, trying to think past the steady throb of pain.

When he tried to reach for the source of his panic, it slipped through his fingers. There was a pit of dread in his stomach, like Cas being gone meant Cas was gone , but when he opened his eyes, he could see his laptop sitting open on the table, the duffle Dean got him tucked out of the way in the corner, a pair of his jeans abandoned on the floor.

Dean slipped out of bed, stumbling a little to get his feet under him. He scratched his head, blinking blearily around him. Cas' coat was gone, but the rest of his stuff was here, he probably just… stepped out for a second. Dean felt a pang about waking up alone again, but he tried to push it down. Cas had been good about it, since Dean had brought it up, but he couldn't expect him to be there every time, unless he was just going to… what? Lie motionless in bed even when he couldn't sleep? Yeah, even Dean knew that was a big ask.

Still, he couldn't help the anxiety it inspired in him. When he tried to dredge up memories of the night before, he came up empty. So he'd had more than a few too many. Had he said something to upset Cas? Was that why he wasn't here?

Dean wandered over to the table, looking over the scattered notes there, just in case they held a clue. He reached out and bumped the trackpad, waking the computer from its sleep. The screen lit up on the log-in page, not password secured, because Cas was only tech literate in exactly the ways he needed to fulfill his one purpose in life. Dean hesitated, Cas had been cagier about his research lately. Dismissive, when Dean asked about it. If there was something he didn't want to share… But it wasn't like the laptop was off limits, either. Dean used it all the time, it wasn't like he was snooping.

He hit enter before he could think better of it.

A woman smiled out at him from a picture at the centre of the screen. She had shoulder length brown hair, blue eyes, a strong chin and high cheekbones. She wore a grey coat that spread out around her where she kneeled on the grounds, surrounded by piles of canned food and produce. The caption read " Caroline Johnson, pictured among the donations from her latest food drive. "

Dean scrolled up the page, his brow furrowed. Skimming the article, it seemed like nothing more than a puff piece about a woman's charitable works in… the Miles City Star. Miles City was only an hour or two away… Was Cas just… checking on local news for fun? He switched to the next tab. It was a website for the charitable organization mentioned in the article. Caroline Johnson's place of employment. The knot of unease in Dean's stomach grew tighter.

Dean glanced down at the notebook, next to the computer. It was open to the list of names he'd noted when he'd first flipped through it. There weren't very many left.

He heard the scrape of a key in the lock and slammed the laptop closed, taking two steps back from the table, and hoping he didn't look as suspicious as he felt when the door swung open.

"Oh," said Cas. "I'm sorry Dean, I didn't think you would be awake yet. I brought you supplies."

He lifted his arm to show off the plastic bag hooked on his elbow, one hand occupied with his keys, and the other holding a tray with two take out cups of coffee in it.

"Hey man," Dean said, his throat feeling dry. "Morning."

Cas bustled into the room, kicking the door shut behind him.

"I meant to be back before you woke up, I know you don't like that."

"It's fine." Dean walked over to the bed where Cas was unpacking his provisions, including a clamshell take-away box, a water bottle and some pain killers. "Thanks for the grub."

"I learned about hangovers." Cas smiled at him, pointing to the items in turn. "Greasy breakfast food, water, painkillers, and coffee. You will feel better in no time."

"Yeah, I uh… Definitely had a few too many last night," Dean chuckled weakly. "I can't remember a thing."

Cas stilled in the process of freeing their coffees from the tray, before he turned to hand Dean's over with a smile on his face. Dean's heart lurched.

"I didn't… I didn't say anything to you, did I?"

Cas tilted his head.

"What do you mean?"

"Just… I don't know, I didn't upset you?" He asked. "Or say something embarrassing? I don't know…"

Cas' expression softened.

"No, of course not." He stepped forward and squeezed Dean's forearm. "Truthfully, you are a very affectionate drunk. Certainly no hardship to be around."

"So I got sappy all over you," Dean groaned. Hopefully, he'd just been clingy and hadn't said anything stupid, like three words too many. Apparently Cas was keen to move past it, if he had. "Sorry, Cas."

"As I said." Cas smiled. "No hardship."

Dean grunted, turning away to sip at his coffee. His anxiety hadn't left him, but he drummed his fingers on his coffee cup and tried to push it down.

"So, what's on the docket for today?"

"Last night you told me about a movie that seemed to excite you," Cas said. "I thought we could find a way to watch it. We do have a VHS player."

Dean blinked, surprised. Their motel room did come equipped with a VHS player, Dean had crowed nostalgically about it when he'd noticed.

"Sure, we could look for a rental place. If they only have it on DVD, we could watch it on your laptop," he said. "What was the movie?"

"Ah." Cas blinked, like that had never occurred to him. It probably hadn't. The laptop was a tool to him, he didn't know it had solitaire on it until Dean showed him. The reminder made Dean's stomach clench. "It was called Tombstone."

Dean narrowed his eyes. 

"I've definitely told you about Tombstone before." Cas shrugged, his eyes darting to the side and his lips curling up slightly. "Caaas, did you let me tell you the whole plot of a movie even though you already knew it?"

"Not the whole plot," Cas protested,  although he dipped his head in acknowledgement. "You were adamant that you shouldn't spoil the ending. That's why I thought we should watch it together.

Dean laughed, covering his too-warm face in his hands. Like this, it was easy to push the darker thoughts from his mind.

"You were very passionate," Cas said.

"Well, it is a classic." Dean conceded, looking up with an embarrassed grin. "I think I've been neglecting your western education, Cas. Heck, there are way more I can show you…"

They did find a video rental place, and came back with a bounty of DVDs Dean carefully selected for Cas' Western education, and one bizarre foreign film Cas dug out of who knows where and he thought looked interesting. Dean couldn't really tell you what it was about, just that it made him feel dizzy and vaguely unwell when Cas insisted on putting it on after Tombstone. He was watching the screen with rapt attention, though, so Dean sucked it up and closed his eyes whenever the director went crazy with the rapid cuts and flashing lights. Afterwards he gratefully switched back to his curated marathon, and they spent the rest of the day curled up in bed, watching movies on the small screen. 

Dean pushed down his unease until it almost vanished entirely. Just a lingering undercurrent that probably meant nothing. Dean getting in his own way again, ruining a good thing. He just needed to let it go.

And he tried. For three days.

Then it all fell apart.

Dean,

There is something I need to handle on my own.

I will be back in a few days, I am not in danger.

Do not worry about me.

I will see you soon.

Castiel

Dean paced the length of the motel room, picked up the note, read it again, put it down, and went back to pacing. Cas was gone. Cas was doing something potentially dangerous, without him.

Because he didn't trust him.

Still.

Dean clenched and unclenched his fists, his heart beat painfully in his chest. He couldn't tell if he was furious or terrified, but whatever the emotion was, he was shaking with it.

He looked over the note again, almost hopeful to find some secret code where Cas revealed he was writing it at gunpoint and had secretly been kidnapped instead of abandoning him .

Again .

He crumpled up the note and threw it across the room.

Anger it was.

Caroline Johnson, it had to be. There was something in that article that Dean couldn't see, but Cas could. Something he was trying to protect Dean from, because he still didn't get that they were in this together.

Dean sat heavy on the bed, where he'd woken to find the sheets cold, again , and foolishly convinced himself Cas was just out . Until he'd seen the note.

The question now was what he should do about it.

He could wait, have faith that Cas was coming back, and yeah, maybe he would. He probably meant to, but Dean didn't believe for a second that line about not being in danger. Right, like Cas was gonna go out of his way to leave Dean out of what… running errands? Doing his Christmas shopping eleven months early? The guy had a bigger martyr complex than most hunters Dean had met, there was no way going off alone didn't spell trouble..

The image of a woman in the dark, pointing a gun at Cas' head flashed across Dean's mind, and he slammed his eyes shut.

No, he wasn't going to just sit back and let that happen. He needed to find Cas, make sure he got out of whatever he was getting himself into alive, and then scream at him until he promised not to pull anything like this again.

He had a solid lead, but he had no idea how long ago Cas had left. Considering how little the guy slept, Dean would put money on him taking off as soon as he thought Dean was down for the count. Cas had plenty of time to get a head start, and if Caroline Johnson turned out to be a red herring, Dean would lose even more time looking in the wrong direction.

Dean's eyes flew open and he fumbled in his pocket for his phone. If Cas was being honest in his note, then he wasn't going off the grid this time, which meant-

He put the phone to his ear and listened to it ring, once, twice, thrice- and sent to voicemail.

So Cas had his phone on him, and didn't even have the good sense to turn it off or let it ring.

Dean hung up and went to the computer to look up the number he would need, punching it in.

"Hi, yeah I seem to have lost my phone, and I was hoping you could help? The number is…"

Miles City wasn't much of a city by Dean's standards, the kinda place that was a destination to the smaller communities surrounding it, but a blip on the map to people passing through.

Cas was in town somewhere, the radius of Dean's search sketched out by the phone company in the middle of blocks of idyllic cookie-cutter houses far from the city's less than bustling downtown. They couldn't get him any closer than a general area, though, so it was up to Dean to narrow it down. His first stop when he rolled into town mid-morning was the church that hosted Caroline's food drive.

His anxiously half-formed plan to get an address by asking around inside tumbled down around him when out of a lilac-grey car in the parking lot stepped the woman herself. Dean watched her enter the church from across the street, his hands clenched on the steering wheel.

Should he approach her? No, he had no idea what Cas wanted with her, whether she was a potential victim or some sleeper agent member of the cult, and how dangerous that made her. Revealing himself might blow whatever it was Cas had planned, and he couldn't afford that.

Doing a stake out under the circumstances was torturous. Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, feeling every second that trickled away from him, while Cas did who knew what, potentially in danger, potentially getting farther away. Maybe he wasn't even at Caroline's house, maybe he was there, and she was the bait for another ambush, and Dean was wasting his time while Cas was fighting for his life.

The restless energy drove him out of the Impala and across the parking lot to investigate Caroline's vehicle. A quick check for any witnesses and he was popping the lock and sliding in.

Too much to expect that she'd have a GPS with a helpfully programmed in home address, unfortunately. Nothing else in the car stood out either. It was neat and tidy, no obvious ominous secrets left out in the open. There was a pair of sunglasses tucked into the visor, and a CD organizer tucked into the footwell that seemed to feature primarily country music. The centre console was full of useful odds and ends: gum, chapstick, a flashlight, one of those combined window breaker seatbelt cutter tools, a notepad with a grocery list on the only marked page. Dean pulled open the glovebox and found the user manual, some receipts and the vehicle registration. He unfolded it and memorized the address, also making note of the second name on the paper. One Joe Johnson, presumably her husband.

Dean tucked everything back where he'd found it and exited the vehicle, hustling back across the parking lot. Two steps from the Impala Dean glanced back across the parking lot to see Caroline exiting the church.

Not a work day, then, just an errand. Dean got into the car and started it up. Caroline glanced up at him briefly as he pulled away, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye as her head turned to follow him for a moment or two before she looked back down at her purse to keep fishing for her keys. Good.

He went two blocks before taking a turn and pulling over, idling on the side of the road with his eyes on the rearview mirror. A few minutes later Caroline's car drove by and he counted to twenty before he pulled out behind her.

Much as he loved Baby, the loud purr of her engine and her distinctiveness on a road full of more modern vehicles made her less than ideal for a pursuit, but he kept back, let people turn into the space between them, and prayed for obliviousness. Nothing about her behaviour changed to indicate she'd noticed she was being followed, and Dean cruised along behind her.

He suspected she wasn't heading home, and that left him with a decision to make when she pulled into a grocery store parking lot. He could find the address he'd pulled off the registration, and maybe find Cas there as well and have a chance to ask him what the hell was going on, but he was loath to take his eyes off his best lead. If there was something sinister lurking under the surface with this woman, she might not be hiding it at home where anyone could stumble across it.

Ultimately he pulled into a liquor store parking lot across the street to wait impatiently for her to re-emerge.

Forty minutes later, the low-speed chase resumed.

As they left the city centre for the residential neighbourhoods, traffic thinned out, until Dean lost his buffer between him and his target. He fell further back and kept his eyes trained on her for her reaction. Was that a bit of tension in her shoulders? Was she glancing in the rear-view more than usual? Finally, she turned onto the street he recognized from her address, and Dean kept driving by, taking the next turn and circling the block, turning back onto the street to search for her address, hopefully far enough behind her that she wouldn't notice him again.

The house he came to a stop in front of looked just like the ones on either side of it. Dean killed the engine, searching for any sign of Cas, and wondering what his next move should be. He still didn't think it was wise to approach her, and if she looked out the window and recognized his car, or a nosy neighbour came snooping-

Inside the house, a woman screamed.

Dean moved before he even fully registered what he was hearing, out of the car and across the street, gun in hand. The door was unlocked, the entrance way empty but for pictures on the wall and shoes on the floor. Dean forged onwards, checking the open doorways, gun pointed at the ground in front of him.

The first thing he registered was the can of green beans, rolled across the room and almost out the doorway, then Caroline, bracing herself against the kitchen island, her eyes round and horrified, a bag of groceries smashed at her feet. Then the familiar, tan trenchcoated expanse of Cas' back.

Caroline's wide, frightened eyes flicked to Dean, and Cas turned to follow her gaze.

"Dean." His expression was some mix of guilt and disappointment. "You shouldn't be here."

"Yeah, well, I shouldn't be a lot of things," Dean said. "But here I am, Cas, so deal."

Cas's eyes slipped closed and he turned away again.

"You should go, Dean."

"I'm not leaving you, Cas," Dean said, his eyes on the line of tension in Cas' shoulders. "You should know that, by now."

"I don't want you to see this." Cas' knife hung loose from his fingers, like an afterthought.

"Well maybe you shouldn't do it then." Dean looked from the blade to Caroline, watching the exchange with wary eyes. A woman in a cleancut suburban house, with a husband and a job getting food to the hungry, who Dean suspected was exactly as she appeared to be. "Cause I ain't moving."

"Dean-"

"It's alright." Caroline stepped forward, steel in her spine, even as Dean could see a faint tremor in her hands. "I knew you'd come, one day. I don't have the right to ask for mercy, not from you."

"This isn't about mercy, Hannah," Cas said, his voice low and sombre. "It's just what has to be done."

Caroline- Hannah- nodded, and Cas stepped forward, but so did Dean, catching him by the arm.

"Cas, think about this," he begged. "Look at her, she's an innocent woman-"

"Is she?" Cas asked, his eyes dark as he looked steadily back at Dean. "You know who I am, Dean. You know what I'm hunting."

"So she was in the cult, fine, is she still?" He nodded his head towards her. "Is she a threat? Or just another name from your list?"

"I left that life behind me," Hannah said softly. "I've built something here, I've tried to do penance…"

Cas looked away, Dean pressed forward.

"Cas, please. You don't have to do this."

"You don't understand," Cas said, his face hard and remote as stone.

"You think I don't? You think I don't know revenge?" Dean rubbed his hand up Cas' arm in a way that he hoped was soothing. "You know about my mom. About- about my dad, what he did to himself, to get the thing that killed her. I watched it happen, please don't make me watch it happen to you."

Cas was silent, unmoving. Dean took a deep breath.

"James."

Cas looked at him sharply.

"I know, okay? I looked you up when we met the first few times," Dean confessed. "I know you used to be one of them, that something happened to you. I don't know what, but Cas- James- whatever she did, it ain't worth your soul."

"I betrayed him," Hannah said. "I- we were supposed to escape. I was the one who gave them up, I was afraid and I… I'm to blame for what happened to them. I'm so sorry, Jimmy."

Cas wrenched himself out of Dean's hand, leaving his palm tingling in the absence of his warmth. He took two steps away, his knife clenched tight in his fist and his spine rigid.

"That is not my name," he said. "And this isn't about revenge."

Dean opened his mouth, and closed it again at a quelling look from Cas.

"I've told you, Dean, invoking the Mother, it has effects on the world. Even knowledge of Her serves as an anchor." He turned to Hannah, something like regret on his face. "It isn't my place to forgive you, or otherwise, but you were marked by that ritual. The Knowledge is within you, as long as you exist, the threat remains."

"I understand," she said. "For what it's worth, I am sorry."

"For what it's worth," Cas echoed. "I'm sorry, too."

"Cas, wait-" Dean couldn't help but reach out a hand for him, even as he stopped short of touching him again. "Please, there's gotta be another way."

"Dean…" Cas looked pained. Dean closed the distance between them, careful, lest he pull away again.

"What about you, huh? Every member of the cult has to die, for the world to be safe?" Dean clutched at Cas' sleeve, unable to keep his hands to himself entirely. "Please, please tell me you're not planning to die."

Cas wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Cas…" Dean's voice broke.

"James wasn't a part of the ritual," Hannah said softly.

"That is true," Cas said, something flitting across his downturned face. "But I am not James anymore."

Finally he looked back up at Dean, his face softening. He placed his hand over Dean's on his sleeve, squeezing reassuringly before gently dislodging him.

"Maybe there is something I can do for you," he said, turning back to Hannah.

Hannah studied him, her brows drawing together.

"Cas," she said, as though she was puzzling something together. "Castiel?"

"Yes," said Cas, stepping forward.

Hannah went pale, her knees hit the ground.

"The Emissary," she whispered.

Dean started, looking at Cas for answers, but Cas didn't look back at him, his eyes trained on the kneeling woman.

"So you do still have Faith," he said.

"I'm sorry." She stared up at him, reverent and afraid.

Cas reached out and gently cupped her face.

"Hannah," he intoned. "You have trespassed, and there must be recompense."

"Yes," she breathed.

"The Mother, She who is Death, She who is Hunger, the Lady of Consuming Rot, who sleeps beneath the Ocean of Creation and whose waking heralds the Final Destruction of being, you are her child. She waits at the end of your life, as She waits at the end of all things. She is the Abyss which grants being through inaction, and She holds claim to all light, all life, every fleeting thing that steals momentary existence from the slumber of unbeing will one day return to Her, unmade and made whole. And I give to Her your name, your life, your memories." Sunlight streamed in through the windows, but the room began to feel darker as Cas spoke, each word falling weighty from his lips. Hannah stared, fixated, at his face as he spoke, her eyes going distant and glassy. "I make you Nameless, and I Name you: Caroline Johnson. All connection to your former self, to the Mother, is severed. The life you lived in service to Her belongs to Her, never to be reclaimed until you rejoin Her in Death."

"Thank you," Hannah- Caroline breathed, before the dull haze settled completely over her features.

Cas withdrew his hand. Caroline stayed kneeling.

Dean swallowed, his throat dry and his heart hammering in his chest.

"What-" he croaked. "What was that?"

"We should go." Cas stepped back, his eyes still on- on Caroline.

"Cas," Dean said. "What are you?"

Cas looked back at him, his face twisted into a pained, guilty expression.

"Later," he said, sweeping past him. "We need to leave, now."

Dean stayed staring at the woman kneeling on the floor. She swayed, slightly, like she was caught in an invisible current.

"Dean," Cas called from the door.

Dean shivered, but he took a step backwards, then another. He turned and followed Cas out of the house.

"Oh," he heard, from behind him. "I must have dropped the groceries…"

Outside, it had started to rain.

Dean drove.

White knuckled on the steering wheel, Cas beside him staring out the window at the scenery whipping by, blurred by the steadily increasing rainfall outside. It could almost be any other day between them, driving in pursuit of their next lead in comfortable silence.

The silence wasn't comfortable now.

The thumping of the windshield wipers was the only thing that broke it, each pass ratcheting Dean's tension higher.

Even Cas' presence next to him felt wrong, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The scene kept replaying in his mind, Caroline- Hannah?- Caroline, glassy-eyed and compliant. The way Cas seemed to swell beneath his skin, something expanding out of him to fill the room.

Dean had tasted saltwater on his tongue. It felt familiar.

It was only a few minutes before they left the cookie-cutter houses behind, and with the open road spilling out in front of them, Dean couldn't take the silence anymore. He jerked the wheel harshly and veered to the side of the road. The Impala lurched to a bumpy stop on the shoulder, gravel crunching under her wheels.

Dean sat in the stillness for another moment, rain pattering over the roof, splashing against the windshield in front of him.

Cas was looking at him again.

He got out of the car.

Five steps away he heard the passenger side door open and close again. He stopped, standing in place as the rain soaked his skin and pretended he wasn't shaking.

Gravel crunched behind him, two steps.

"Dean."

Dean closed his eyes.

"What the hell was that." His voice came out raspy and flat, hardly a question at all.

"Dean…" Two more steps.

Dean whirled around.

"No!" Cas stopped where he was, pain flashing across his face briefly, a face that was streaked by unnatural rain. "No, you tell me what the fuck that was, Cas- what- what the hell-"

Dean's voice broke, he rubbed at his mouth fighting the urge to look away again.

Cas regarded him warily.

"I don't know," he said.

Dean laughed.

"Sure," he scoffed. "You don't know, okay. You fucked with her mind , Cas."

"Dean," Cas said, starting forward.

"Don't- don't just fucking-" Dean didn't even realize he was stumbling back until Cas stopped in place, looking stricken. He steeled himself, holding his ground, and spread his arms wide. "Look around you, Cas! What is this? Is this you?"

Cas looked up at the clouds rolling overhead, his face drawn, shoulders tense. The rain had slicked his hair down by now, and was beginning to darken the fabric of his coat. Distantly, thunder rumbled.

"I…" he started, and then shut his mouth, shaking his head. Not a denial, just helpless.

Dean felt a familiar painful twist in his chest at Cas' silence, his inability to just talk to him , but now the feeling made him sick. Maybe it had never been a question of getting Cas to trust him, maybe all this time Dean had been the one who couldn't trust Cas.

"What are you?" Dean asked.

Cas stared back at him, all big morose eyes like a dog asking to be forgiven for the mess it had made.

"I don't know," he said, barely audible under the sound of the rain.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Dean demanded, throwing his arms out again in frustration.

"I mean I don't know! " Cas snapped back. For a moment Dean thought he might continue, actually give Dean some answers for once, but he bit down on the words and looked away.

Fear and uncertainty churned in his gut, mixing hot and bright to become anger. It seemed like it was up to him to drag the truth out of him, like always.

"You took her memories," Dean said, establishing the facts.

"Yes." Cas' jaw worked, like he was chewing over the word, trying to find a way to turn it into a denial.

"Have you done that before?"

Silence, already hitting a wall. Dean could scream in frustration, but Cas looked back at him then and the expression on his face was unmistakably guilt.

A bolt of panic shot through him. No.

"Have you done that to me ?" He asked, voice shaking.

Cas cast his eyes downwards, ashamed.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, quiet.

"How can you not be sure?" Dean demanded, his voice pitching up, almost hysterical.

Cas looked back up at him, still hangdog, apologetic, but the sympathy that pulled at Dean's heart was twisting with fear and anger, into something that could only be called revulsion.

"I told you to go to sleep, and forget," he admitted, finally. "And you did. But you were drunk, I don't- I'm not sure…"

He stumbled over his attempts at equivocating, wanting Dean to dismiss the incident as he obviously had, but certainty settled in his gut like a stone.

"What did you take?"

Cas' shoulders slumped.

"You realized I didn't intend to survive this mission," he admitted. "It upset you. I didn't want that. I don't want to hurt you, Dean."

"Little late for that," Dean laughed, bitter, even as he felt like his heart was being torn in two. It wasn't a hard conclusion to come to, the way Cas talked sometimes. Confronting Caroline apparently hadn't been the first time he'd voiced it and had his fears confirmed. Hell, maybe it wasn't even the second. "So what was your plan, then? Just keep erasing my memory so I'd follow you around like a loyal puppy, not knowing how it was going to end? Because everyone who even knows about the cult has to die, right? That include me, Cas?"

"No!" Cas stepped forward again before catching himself, unwilling to cross the distance Dean had put between them. "Dean, I wouldn't, I'd never- you have to believe I wouldn't hurt you-"

"Like you didn't hurt- hurt-" Dean stopped, stuttering. "Her name isn't Caroline, I know it isn't Caroline how come I can't remember it?"

"I don't know."

"I don't know, I don't know!" Dean threw his hands in the air, mocking. "Is that all you can say?"

Cas kept his mouth shut, his lips pressed into a thin line. Dean dropped his arms, breathing hard.

"Were you gonna do that to me, Cas?" He asked. "Is that what not hurting me looks like? Giving me a magical lobotomy so I'll let you walk to your death?"

"I told you, I didn't even know I could, until today." Cas didn't look him in the eye when he denied it, the guilt flashing across his features undeniable. Maybe it wasn't the plan, but the thought had at least occurred to him.

"Right," Dean said, his voice wooden. "Sure."

"Dean…" Cas started again, trailing off, apparently at a loss for words.

Out of excuses.

"See Cas," Dean said. He could feel himself shaking, and did his best to force himself still. Just the chill. The rain may have been unseasonably warm, but there was still snow on the ground. That's all it was. "I don't know if I can trust you, cause right now I don't even know if I can trust myself. I don't know who my mind belongs to."

"Dean," Cas protested, hurt plain as day on his face. It was a struggle not to take the words back. "I wouldn't, you know I wouldn't."

"Do I?" Dean asked, frantic. "All this time I've felt this connection to you, this pull, I just- I let myself ignore it, cause it felt good to be around you. Ignored all the weirdness, the dreams-"

Cas looked up sharply.

"What dreams?"

"Don't change the subject," Dean snapped, pulling back.

"You're the one who brought them up!" Cas stepped forward, intense. "Dean, what dreams?"

"I don't know!" Dean threw his arms up, helpless."I can barely remember when I wake up, okay? Just- feelings, impressions. Fuck, Cas that's not the point."

"Isn't it?" Cas asked, his voice bleak. "You're accusing me of exerting some mental pull on you. Evidently because you've been experiencing symptoms this whole time, and saying nothing."

"Don't turn this around on me!" Dean snarled. "You are the last person who gets to fucking talk about hiding things ."

Cas' eyes flashed, indignant.

"And what was I supposed to tell you? What truth were you looking for? What could I say that wouldn't end up with us exactly here?"

"If you have to lie to someone to keep them, that's a sign it ain't meant to be," Dean bit out, vicious.

Cas took a step back, shock and hurt flashing across his face before he clenched his jaw and looked away. Dean's heart lurched in time, but he crossed his arms, refusing to reach out.

"I've already told you that I don't know what I am or why I can do the things I can do," Cas said, his voice tight. "I'm not sure what questions you think I can answer."

"How bout you start with telling me what you do know, and we can go from there." His voice was cold, like he was interrogating a suspect.

He hated it.

Cas stared back at him a long moment, his expression set in stone.

"The dreams," he said at last. It took a moment for Dean to realize it wasn't an answer, but a demand.

"Oh no way," Dean said. "After all this time giving me the runaround? You first."

Cas tilted his chin up and said nothing. 

Dean held out for another long stretch of silence, gritting his teeth, before he finally threw his hands up.

"Fine! Fine, you stubborn bastard!" He ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know, okay? I barely remember them, they're just…"

He closed his eyes, trying to cast his mind back to the moments between sleep and waking, when the shape of them lingered in his mind.

"It's dark, and I'm safe, and there's… something there," he said. "Something massive, that feels…"

Unfathomable, alluring, safe.

Loving.

"The Mother," Cas said, his voice soft and grim. Dean opened his eyes, Cas was studying him, his eyes dark. For the first time since they'd met, his regard made Dean's skin crawl. "That's Her influence, gaining a foothold in your mind, Dean-"

"Yeah, I wonder how she got in," Dean said, bitterly sarcastic, drawing his arms around himself, like that could protect him from Cas studying him like an insect. Cas flinched, then straightened, all steel and pride. "All those times you warned me about how dangerous this stuff is, somehow you missed mentioning the real thing I needed to be wary about was you."

For a moment, the look on Cas' face was pure heartbreak, but then it shut down, cold.

"You're right," he said, woodenly. "I should have been more clear."

Dean's heart thudded in his chest. Cas took a step back.

"This was a mistake," he said. Not to Dean, not really. He looked like he was talking to himself.

Like he'd already dismissed him.

"What?" Dean's voice came out raspy. Weak. He cleared his throat and set his jaw.

"You're a distraction," Cas said, distant and impassive. Each word hit Dean like a blow. "A vulnerability. Look at what I've been doing all of these months, wasting my time with you when I should've been…"

"Should've been what?" Dean sneered. "Following your mission? Killing innocent women like- like Caroline? Tell me Cas, all the other shit you don't know, how about this one: Do you even know what you're doing?"

Cas didn't answer, just turned away.

"We are not done here," Dean snarled.

"Yes," Cas said, final. "We are.

"You aren't going anywhere until you've answered my questions." Cas kept walking.

Dean felt his pulse pounding in his ears. He reached into his waistband and pulled out his gun.

"I said stay where you are!" Dean ordered, the gun aimed steady at Cas' back. Cas glanced at him over his shoulder and froze.

The moment stretched between them, each holding their position, the yards between them feeling like miles. Slowly, laboriously, Cas turned back. Like he thought Dean might shoot if he moved too suddenly.

Funny thought, that.

"Why'd you stop?" Dean asked, when Cas was facing him. He blinked, his brow furrowing.

"You have a gun on me," he pointed out.

"Yeah?" Dean's voice was light, but it cracked like ice underneath. "And if I shot you in the chest right now, would you even flinch?"

Cas' eyes went wide, then darted to the side. Not afraid.

Caught.

Dean remembered running fingers through his hair in the shower, that first night they'd fallen into each other, searching for a wound that wasn't there.

She just clipped me , Cas had said, but she'd been aiming for his head. Dean had seen it, the image seared into his eyelids, he'd been so sure. And there'd been no dizziness or pain, no sign  of head trauma at all. No wound that would have explained the blood all over his face.

Dean had been too relieved to even think of it, that night.

It hadn't seemed important.

"Thought not," Dean said, dropping the arm that held the gun. They were standing wet and shivering in a rainstorm Cas had summoned when he reached into a woman and ripped out her past. A bullet wouldn't do it.

He took a step backwards, then another, loose and casual, he made his way back to the Impala without taking his eyes off Cas. 

Cas kept his gaze the whole time. Waiting, wary.

Dean popped the Impala's trunk with one hand. Only when it was open did he turn away to lift the false bottom. What he was looking for was buried, shoved to the back where he wouldn't have to think about it. He stared at the gun when he uncovered it where it lay. Neglected, accusatory.

He put his hand on the grip and pulled the Colt out of the trunk.

He didn't even remember how many bullets were left in the chamber.

Cas was watching him still when he turned back, the antique revolver pointed at the ground. Dean lifted it slightly, a little gesture to draw Cas' eyes to the barrel.

"Remember that story I told you," he asked. "About a gun that can kill anything?"

Cas said nothing.

"What do you think?" Dean gestured with the Colt again, still not raising it. "Would it be enough?"

He couldn't bring himself to.

"I don't know," Cas said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Me neither."

The rain fell around them, Dean blinked water out of his eyes.

"You gonna talk to me?" He asked.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Cas replied, his voice toneless.

"I'm sure you'll think of something."

Cas kept looking at him with those piercing, studying eyes. Dean was learning to hate it.

"I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish," he said.

"What I'm trying to accomplish ," Dean parrotted, mocking. "Is you've been jerking me around for months and I want answers."

You're leaving me , he gritted his teeth, gripped the gun tighter.

Kept it pointed at the ground.

Cas looked away, putting his hands in his pockets, his posture deceptively casual.

"It's difficult to know how to talk about it," Cas said. Dean snorted. "I don't know how much of it was me."

"You wanna elaborate on that?" Dean asked, scathing, when the silence stretched longer. Cas turned back to look at him, his eyes flashing with anger, and he shut his mouth.

"I remember what happened," he said. "I remember it like the pages of a book. It feels like something that happened to someone else, and I don't know what that says about who or what I am."

Dean opened his mouth, to offer comfort or admonishment, he couldn't decide. He closed it again, choosing neither. Cas watched him, huffing a breath and looking away. 

It hurt.

"I remember the plan to escape. We knew there was something coming, something big, but no one knew what. We were afraid, I think." Cas kept his gaze on some point in the distance, his face betraying nothing but faint confusion. "And we wanted more than what life on the compound could offer. We'd only had glimpses of the outside world, but they were tantalizing. To be able to exist in it was a beautiful fantasy."

"It was my idea to try to make it real," Cas closed his eyes. "There was a girl. Amelia. I think… I was in love with her."

He opened his eyes and shook his head.

"I don't remember what that felt like. Or-" He shut his mouth, grimacing, then forced his face smooth again.

"Or what?" Dean asked, sharp.

Cas gave him a long, solemn look, and he bit his tongue.

He wouldn't say it.

"The plan failed," he continued with the story. 

"Caroline," Dean said. "She gave you up."

"Hannah," Cas corrected.

"Han-" The name was gone again. Dean shuddered, his stomach roiling at the reminder.

"I was dragged down into a basement room." Cas moved on as though nothing had happened. "Kept in the dark, for over a month. I could hear rats, scuttling around the room with me. Sometimes crawling over me. Over time, I began to view this as companionship. Soon, I began to hear other things in the dark, whispers."

The wind picked up. Dramatic, much? Dean snarked at it in his head to keep from shuddering.

"They fed me enough to keep me alive, and every time they came down to bring me food, they asked me for the names of my co-conspirators. I didn't tell them."

Dean swallowed, his heart in his throat.

"Then, one day, they dragged me back up into the light," Cas said, his voice distant. "And showed me a pit full of the bodies of my friends."

"It was all for nothing," he said, his eyes on some faraway point, unseeing.

Then he shook himself, and looked back at Dean, returning to the present.

"The words I used to take away Hannah's past, I know them because they were said to me. But I wasn't given a new identity. I was made nameless, and told I was rejected by the Mother, that I would suffer a 'death undying' and would never return to her. Then my throat was slit and I was thrown into the pit."

Dean shook his head, disbelieving. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Cas watched him the whole time, impassive.

"How did you survive?" Dean croaked, already knowing what the answer would be.

"I didn't," Cas said. "I died in the pit, and then I woke up, and it had all happened to someone else."

He shrugged, looking away, like none of it mattered.

"So now you know. Maybe this is Michael's curse. Maybe I am so hated by She Who is The Last Death that I cannot die. Maybe this mission is my vengeance on Her followers, and I'm the only one who can stop them because I'm the only one She can't touch." When he turned his gaze back to Dean his eyes were dark, fathomless, alien. "Or maybe Jimmy Novak died that night, and I am what crawled into his empty corpse. A servant of the Mother, incapable of defying Her will. I don't know. I can't know."

He breathed deep, closing his eyes.

"All I know, is that I crawled out of the grave that night and stabbed Brother Michael in the throat, disrupting the Sacrifice that was meant to wake the Mother," he said. "I've been hunting down the survivors ever since."

"Just like that?" Dean asked. "Jesus Christ, you just…"

Cas shrugged again.

"What else could I do?" he asked. "All of the cult is my enemy, but the people in that church that night are my real targets. They were marked, somehow, as sacrifices. They tie Her here. I have to destroy them."

"But- for fuck's sake, Cas-" Dean closed his eyes, running a hand through his hair. "You just said you don't know what you're doing, if this is what the Mother wants…"

He opened his eyes, pleading. Cas looked back, impassive.

"They're sacrifices , Cas," he said. "How do you know that killing them isn't what opens the door?"

Cas didn't say anything, but Dean had his answer.

"Fuck." He turned away, fisting his hand in his hair. "Fuck. How can you- Jesus Christ."

"I can't afford to be indecisive."

"Indecisive?" Dean demanded. "If you go through with this, the world might end!"

"And if I don't, and they succeed at completing the ritual, it might anyway," Cas replies, even. "Maybe Caroline will be a bulwark against the worst happening, either way."

"Maybe, maybe, maybe," Dean parroted, disbelieving. "How can you do this when you don't know?"

Cas looked away. Unbidden, a noise of disgust fell from Dean's throat, and he saw Cas' shoulders tense.

"Maybe it was up in the air before," he said. "But after what I saw in there? You can't pretend anymore, and you know it. You're a monster, Cas."

Cas stood rigid and tense, his face turned away, until slowly he let his shoulders drop.

"I suppose that makes sense," he said coolly, turning his head slowly back to face Dean. "You've said yourself how strongly you were drawn to me."

"What?" Dean asked. He felt as though there were iron bands squeezing tight around his chest.

"Given how feverishly you court your own self-destruction, I'm not sure what else you expected me to be." For the first time since he'd met him, Cas looked at him with something like disdain. "Do you still want to die on my altar, Dean, or are you going to grow up and call your brother?"

Rage whited out Dean's senses, and when he came back to himself, the Colt was pointed squarely at Cas' chest.

"Fuck you," he spat.

Cas stared impassively back, but there was a tightness around his eyes that betrayed hurt, maybe fear.

Thunder rumbled again, closer. It made a compliment to the blood rushing in Dean's ears, muffling the world around them. Cas was soaked through, his hair clinging to his face, but his teeth weren't chattering like Dean's were starting to, he didn't shake in the cold. The wind ruffled his clothes, but it didn't sway him.

"You think I can't tell when someone's saying shit just to drive me away?" Dean's voice shook, not from the chill. "You want to leave so bad? Stop being a bitch and just go."

Cas wasn't human, was probably a monster, maybe the thing that would end the world, whether he meant to or not.

Dean couldn't even put his finger on the trigger.

Cas didn't move, his expression wavered. Regret, maybe. Dean didn't want to see it. He swayed back, but his feet brought him forward.

Dean's face twisted into a snarl, he lifted the Colt higher.

"I said- "

Between one blink and the next, Cas vanished.

"Go…" He let his arm fall to his side, numb.

He stood by the side of the road, alone, staring into the absence. The rain continued to fall, soaking his clothes and gradually flooding the asphalt around him.

Slowly, Dean walked back to the Impala, each step marked by the crunch of gravel. He got behind the wheel and started the car, pulling back onto the street and driving away. 

Much longer and the roads would get dangerous. He needed to move if he wanted to beat the rain.

Chapter Text

Dean didn't dream anymore.

Maybe it was because of the alcohol, maybe it was because of Cas' absence. His nights are fitful, but they were empty. He passed out with a bottle in hand more often than not. It was the only way he could get more than four hours, but it wasn't rest.

When he'd made it back to the motel in Billings, it had been stripped. Any evidence of Cas' presence vanished into thin air like the man himself.

No, not a man.

A creature, a thing .

Dean didn't even have the luxury of pretending to be entirely naive, taken in by Cas' human act. Cas' human act sucked.

Dean just hadn't cared.

He still didn't, not really, but repeating the fact was a balm to the gaping hole in his chest. Papering it over with anger and duty.

If it ain't human, it dies.

Funny, Cas looked pretty alive when he left.

He'd made the drive back on autopilot, rain coming down heavier and heavier, and then clearing when he'd crossed some invisible line. The sudden assault of sunlight had washed over him like the dawn, but he hadn't felt any warmer.

The Colt had ridden in the passenger seat the entire way, taking up Cas' place, glinting in the corner of his eye like a constant distraction.

A fly that recognized a venus flytrap for what it was might land anyway if the nectar was sweet enough. As long as it thought it could get out before the jaws snapped shut.

Dean hadn't cared about the risk, but it hadn't been about the nectar either.

He hadn't wanted out at all.

And yet here he was, flying free.

He had sat with the gun in that empty motel room, still damp from the rain. The Impala had been damp too, he'd dripped all over her seats. He should have found a towel to clean her up, first thing, take care of the leather. He'd needed a shower too, needed to get warm, to change into dry clothes.

He'd stared at the gun instead. 

Dean did a lot of stupid things, knowing they might kill him. Being around Cas just also happened to feel good.

That probably should've been its own clue.

There had been six bullets when they'd liberated the Colt from the nest of vampires that had killed Daniel Elkins. Dean had wasted two. The third had ended up in his dad's brain.

Dean didn't get to feel good, he didn't trust things that felt good. But somewhere along the way feeling good had gone from being one more bad sign to ignore, to being the reason he'd kept his head buried in the sand.

He didn't know when he let himself get that soft.

Lie, he'd always been that soft. Pathetic and needy, terrible at hiding it.

People could smell it on him. 

Maybe Cas had, had scooped him up for some nefarious purpose because of it.

Sure, like Cas wanted anything from him that Dean didn't force on him first.

He thought about Cas calling him a vulnerability . Sounded a lot like liability .

The Colt was a strange thing to hold. It always felt too heavy in his hands, the weight subtly more than it should have been, with only three bullets in the chamber. It was eye-catching, too. Of the carvings that decorated it, only the pentagram scratched into the grip had any recognizable occult significance, at least to Dean. He wondered sometimes if they lent it any special power, or if they were just decoration, like on any other gun.

He'd run his thumb over them, that night, dripping on the motel sheets. Wondering again.

What did being shot by a bullet that could kill anything do to a man? Where did you go when you died, if anything happened at all?

Did you go somewhere different, shot by the colt? 

Or did you just stop?

It wasn't something Dean liked thinking about. 

Cas might know.

Probably not. He didn't seem to know much of anything, no matter how confident he acted.

Made him a lot like everyone else.

There weren't any answers, and they didn't matter anyway.

The problem with being gone wasn't where you went, it was that you weren't here.

The Colt ended up back in the trunk of the Impala. Out of sight, but not out of mind. The rest of that night was a bit of a blur. 

Dean had found a bar.

If he wracked his mind he could get bits and pieces of what followed, but his next clear memory was waking up in the backseat of the Impala, the early morning sunlight drilling holes in his aching head.

He'd dragged his weary body to the front seat, sitting in the early morning silence. He'd ended up with his aching head resting on the steering wheel. Scattered pedestrians walking by spared him curious glances. He hadn't even known where he was parked.

The motel was paid up through the end of the month, but Dean left town without going back. He must have made the decision sometime the night before, because everything he needed had been packed into the trunk, the only things missing the already familiar half-shared possessions that had really belonged to Cas, glaring in their absence.

Even that was better than facing the emptiness of the motel room again.

Easier to put the whole thing behind him.

Out of the fly trap and back into the fire.

No, not the fire.

At least that would be warm.

Dean slid back into the old routine like slipping on a cheap suit. It fit him same as ever, which may not have been all that well, but it made a lie of the idea that he'd grown. The familiar discomfort was almost soothing.

From Billings, he drove aimlessly west, picking up newspapers at rest stops until he found a promising lead on a case and turned south and then back east, making a wide loop to end up just over the border in Wyoming, kicking around a ski resort town in the off season.

It was the rare case where people actually recognized the problem, even if they were clueless as to the true nature of the threat. The newspaper reported the deaths as being caused by an ice pick to the brain, and the locals were frantic about the idea of a serial killer in their midst.

The FBI beat Dean to town, helpfully cutting off his access to any police resources before he could even scrape together a ruse that might have given him a glimpse at the bodies.

As a result, he spent most of his time in one of the town's many bars, more tipsy than he should have been while on a case, digging for gossip and idly wondering if the cops were actually right on this one.

A week into his stay, one of the agents turned up in the bar, frustrated after beating her head against the case for too long with nothing to show for it. Dean managed to catch her sullenly drinking alone and strike up a conversation despite the chip on her shoulder.

She was sharp and self-possessed, with long brown hair and killer legs. Exactly the type of woman Dean would have tried to charm more than information out of, not too long ago.

Now, he barely had it in him to strike up a conversation. 

Paradoxically, the lack of charm offensive seemed to get her walls down faster. They were drinking and commiserating before Dean really knew what had happened.

She told him about the stresses of her job, the dead ends they kept running into on the case, the pressure she felt to out-perform her coworkers, and how she had to fight to get her ideas taken seriously.

Dean's own troubles caught in his throat. He couldn't get Cas' name past his lips. He told her he felt directionless, not really knowing where he was coming from or where he should be going and pretended it was just a story to gain her sympathy.

Later on in the night, she ducked her head close to his, her hair spilling over her shoulder, and confessed to him that their own bootleg Ice Pick Killer actually didn't use an ice pick at all. The Feds were stumped as to what the weapon actually was. All they had was some chemical analysis on residue left in the wounds indicating it was organic.

"That's not even the weirdest part," she told him, having drifted into his space over the course of the evening.

"What's the weirdest part?" Dean could smell her shampoo when she shifted, it was overly flowery, but he didn't feel any real desire to shift away.

"I can't tell you that," she snorted, swirling her drink in her glass. "I shouldn't have even told you as much as I have."

"Can I guess?" Dean asked, looser with alcohol, everything pleasantly fuzzy and distant.

"Knock yourself out," she said, knocking back another glass.

"Something about… the brain," Dean said, his tone falling flat of being teasing. "Less of it than there should be."

The agent gave him a sharp look.

"Why do you say that?"

Dean shrugged, nonchalant, leaning forward, crossing his arms on the bar.

"Just a guess," he said.

The lights in the bar were low, and there were only a few other patrons. The alcohol in his veins made him feel loose and reckless, his skin buzzing.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot," the agent told him. Her eyes traveled over him, a little more awake and alert.

"Say tomorrow, or the next day, I dunno…" Dean plopped his head on his hand, smiling slow. "Say you find some guy, dead in the street, and he's got spines in his wrists that are a perfect match for those wounds in the victims' skulls. What happens then? You guys got like a special department for that? Does the case get closed, or do you putter around here for another month trying to figure out what happened?"

The agent blinked at him, perturbed, before a wry smile split her lips and she barked a laugh.

"What do you think this is, X-files?"

Dean snorted his own derisive laugh, lifting his glass to his lips.

"I wish," he said.

He knocked back his drink and pushed himself away from the bar.

"You heading out?" The agent asked, surprised.

"Yeah," Dean said. "I got stuff I gotta do in the morning. Uh, good talking to you, though."

"Huh," the agent said, looking him over again like she was considering him from another angle. "Okay, have a good night."

"Yeah, you too."

The cool night air hit his skin as he stepped outside, smelling just slightly of stale cigarettes. Dean shook his head, trying to clear some of the cotton from his brain, and made his way to where he'd left the Impala.

He dug into the trunk, pulling out a silver dagger and tucking it into his belt. He switched out the ammunition in his side arm for silver bullets.

Then he started to walk.

Wraith had already been Dean's guess, but it was good to get confirmation, even if that was all he'd really got. The last week of playing barfly had given him an idea of the area the victims had been grabbed from, but his nightly wanderings hadn't resulted in any bites so far. The Fed hadn't been open enough to give him any new leads on that front, but he had his own pet theory that had been forming in the back of his brain.

He let himself stumble as he meandered through the empty streets. Most people were keeping themselves in doors after dark ever since bodies started showing up.

The whiskey sloshed in his gut, his chest warm and his hands loose. He found himself humming under his breath as he wandered, a meandering tune that jumped from song fragment to song fragment.

His foot came down on a discarded bottle and he stumbled for real, careening off course, He tried to correct himself and fetched up against the wall, catching himself against it hard and staying there. He breathed deep, trying to get steady.

He might have been drunker than he thought.

He leaned his head against the cool, damp bricks, closing his eyes.

Behind him, there was the scuff of a shoe against the pavement. He kept his muscles loose and stayed right where he was.

The approaching footfalls were light enough they might've gone unnoticed if Dean was as out of it as he looked. Even keeping his breathing steady and straining his ears, he had trouble counting the steps.

Closer, closer, until he could feel a presence behind him in the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He kept up his drunkard act, slumping further against the wall as they- it hesitated for a moment that stretched and stretched.

The wild jab met and glanced off the bricks as Dean launched himself out of the way, his own hand snapping out to close around the wraith's forearm. Then- headrush, he overbalanced, his limbs clumsy and slow after the burst of energy, and the wraith came down on top of him. Dean's head cracked against the concrete and he saw stars, but even blind he managed to flail out with his free arm and catch the wraith's other wrist. His fingers brushed the base of the bony spur as he halted its progress towards his neck.

Blinking, his vision came back into focus, the wraith's face hovering close above him. It was gaunt, with long, greasy hair that hung down around them. Its eyes were wide and its mouth was pressed into a thin line, lips bloodless and pale as it threw its weight against Dean.

He braced his arms, muscles trembling with the strain. The wraith was scrawny, but unnaturally strong. Its feet scrabbled against the concrete as it fought for leverage. He pressed down hard on the base of the spur under his fingers, hoping for a weak point, and the thing gasped, its face losing a little more colour, but it didn't waver. It twisted its wrist in his hold, not enough to reverse the grab, but enough to brush its fingers against Dean's bare forearm.

His vision blurred again and his stomach lurched, something swelled suddenly and violently in his chest, despair or anger or maybe just nausea. His focus shattered, but the sudden overwhelmind swell of emotion made him violent. Half-blind, he felt more than saw the spur coming towards him as his grip on the wraith gave way, and he twisted with the motion, using the wraith's momentum against it, earning a burning line scored across the side of his neck for his trouble. He was screaming, he realized, not from the pain of the glancing blow, but from the twisting agony the wraith's mind-poisoning touch had summoned under his ribs.

Somehow, in his wild, violent flailing, Dean ended up on top, his free hand scrabbling at his belt to withdraw the silver dagger there, while the wraith failed to get its bearings.

His vision cleared in time to see its expression as he drove the blade into its gut.

Shock, resignation.

Relief.

Its arms fell limp and it choked on the blood that pooled at its lips and dribbled over its chin.

Dean withdrew the knife and stabbed it again, in the chest this time.

It gave one last weak, wheezing gasp before its eyes went glassy and it stopped moving at all.

A proper, clean kill.

Dean laughed, his vision going blurry again. He blamed the alcohol as he blinked until it cleared again. His hands were wet and red. He must have got some blood on his face, because it felt wet too.

He stumbled to his feet, caught himself on the wall, leaving a bloody smear there. 

He laughed again, wondering what the FBI lady would think when they found the body, exactly how he'd said they would.

Maybe he'd end up with a file. That'd be bad, wouldn't it? Right now everything just felt funny.

He should clean up the body, though. Make it at least a little harder for them.

Down at the end of the alley, he heard something clatter, and he looked up sharply.

No one there.

He pushed up the wall and strode in the direction of the noise, stumbling only slightly. He kept his knife in his hand, ready but held low and slightly back, as out of sight as he could make it without disarming himself. His eyes scanned the night ahead of him for any sign of movement, as his sluggish mind ran over the list of victims and when they died. Was it enough to sustain two wraiths? He wasn't familiar enough with their feeding habits to be sure, but it hadn't stood out as excessive. It seemed like barely enough to feed one, frankly.

A glass bottle was rocking gently back and forth next to the wall of the building on his left, like it had fetched up there and come to a stop after being kicked. He put the tip of his toe on it to stop the subtle movement.

The wraith had been thin in the face. Scrawny, like it was underfed.

He scanned the intersection at the end of the alley, took a sharp right when he thought he saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He picked up the pace, half jogging to the next intersection, finding himself back on a main street, blinking out into the night, wide open around him. Nothing moved but the wind.

He strained his ears, and heard the distant wail of a siren.

He swore, tucking away the knife and wiping his bloody hands on the inside of his flannel. He squinted around for a street sign to get his bearings, and took off at a brisk pace in the direction of his car. Too late to go back for the body now. 

Maybe what he'd heard in that alley hadn't been a horrified witness that was at that moment giving a detailed description of his face to the cops, but that still didn't make it prudent to be kneeling over a dead man while there were police within shouting distance.

The walk back to the Impala was long and tense, but by the time he made it, the adrenaline was fading and his feet were dragging, his vision going dark around the edges. He got behind the wheel, collapsing back into the seat, his body feeling heavy.

He couldn't stay in town, not with the number of stupid moves he'd pulled that night. 

That was fine, he'd got the thing.

He thought about the desperation and resignation in its face, the horribly obvious nature of its attacks, like a neon sign begging hunters to come running. Unsubtle enough even the feds were right on its trail, for all the good it would do them. Targeting depressed drunks in back alleys, didn't even touch Dean until he'd actually wandered out smashed. Like it could smell it on him, and didn't want to touch him until he was well and truly soaked in booze.

He wondered what that did to something that fed off the chemicals in your brain. Wondered about the look on its face when it stopped fighting.

Made a point not to wonder anymore.

It didn't matter. 

The thing had been alone, that much was obvious.

He started the car and rolled down the window so the night air would keep him awake.

He'd take the win. Easy case, while he got back into the swing of things. Gratitude, that's what he should feel. 

The cut on his neck throbbed sluggishly in time with his pulse, the pain dull and distant. 

Yeah, gratitude.

He drove until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, blinking himself upright to find he'd been driving over the centerline and into the other lane, thankfully empty of oncoming traffic in the late hour.

He pulled over onto the side of the road and leaned the seat back, finally allowing himself to catch a few hours of uneasy sleep as the night around him began to turn grey with the coming dawn.

He didn't dream.

Dean kept moving, kept hunting. He dealt with a ghost in Ogden, and a pair of Vetala in Mcgill.

The less said about the shapeshifter in Flagstaff the better.

He was drunk more often than not, but he didn't find it made him much less effective. He didn't collect injuries any faster than usual, anyway. Sprained wrist, bruised ribs, a long slash up the side of his calf that he stitched up with dental floss. He poured more whiskey over the wound than he drank, the pain already dull and distant.

He was fine. 

He was good at what he did, always had been. Hunting alone would get people whispering behind their hands about death wishes, would get you wary and pitying looks among people who knew. Dean was too well trained for it to catch up with him, though, and he didn't go to hunter bars anyway. Dad had never liked those kinds of places, always did all the talking when they had to meet up with a contact for whatever reason, always kept himself subtly between them and Dean, in a way he hadn't with monsters. Not for a long time, anyway. 

Dean didn't have to know his reasoning to get the memo.

There was no one he could trust to have his back, he'd let himself forget that. Desperate, stupid, lonely . But he didn't need anyone there, anyway.

He got by just fine on his own.

The Colt stayed in the trunk, he didn't look twice at it.

But sometimes he took out his phone, and let it sit in his hand with the same weight.

No missed calls.

He wasn't sure which name he wanted to see flash on the screen.

Two contacts, he could make the call himself, but for what? A voicemail greeting at the end of one line, and almost certainly a number disconnected message at the end of the other. 

How long had Cas taken to ditch his phone, once Dean drove him off? He must have, by now at least. 

He wouldn't call, there was no point.

He wondered if Sam would be more likely to pick up for his brother, or for an unknown number. Trick question really, unless Sam had forgotten everything he knew about hunting, he'd expect Dean to call from an unknown number.

He still held on to the burner he'd been using last time he and Sam had spoken in person, just in case.

In case Sam hadn't saved any number since, in case his brother ever needed anything and didn't know who else to call.

He wondered how long he'd keep this phone kicking around in the bottom of his duffle, just in case. It was the only number Cas had, after all.

Dean's life sometimes felt like a series of collections. Nothing big, nothing weighty, nothing that wouldn't fit in a go bag, in the trunk of a car when you had to skip town in a hurry.

Just cassette tapes, weapons, scars.

And phones that didn't ring.

The realization he was being watched crept up slowly, enough so he couldn't say for sure when it started. Traveling up and down the country, you could learn to see familiar faces everywhere. Cas might put it like: human beings are entirely unique, yet at the same time, not at all. People all over the place went about their lives in similar ways, with bits of local flavour and personal flair, of course. 

But the way the diner waitress tucked her pen behind her ear and popped her gum, the way the woman on the side of the road carried a too-heavy load of groceries with single minded determination, the care-worn features of old men smoking outside of bars, little old ladies sitting at bus stops, they almost repeated. Some things you saw enough times in enough ways in enough towns that they all started to feel familiar.

It made it just that bit harder to notice when the faces did begin to repeat. That one old man's care-worn face was more than passingly familiar, the kid with the backpack that watched his car go by from the bus stop was the same one he'd seen in the last town, and the town before that.

By the time the girl running the check out at the gas station had called him his full name while handing over his cheap, shitty, coffee, he hadn't really needed the confirmation.

"What the hell do you want?" He rasped, exhausted. His body ached, and he felt sweaty and cold. Hungover, more than he was angry or afraid.

"Time will tell," she said, even, possibly deliberately ominous.

Dean resisted the urge to scoff, his fingers twitched for his gun.

"That'll be a dollar sixty," she prompted, after a moment. Dean dropped some spare change on the counter without breaking eye contact. He didn't move.

"Will there be anything else, sir?" She asked, glancing up at the security camera that blinked down at them. Dean grit his teeth and stepped back, leaving the gas station with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

He pulled his car around and watched the front entrance for hours, but the girl from behind the counter never exited, and when he finally went back in again, she was gone. The sullen teenage boy who'd replaced her had been unable, or unwilling, to answer any of his questions about her.

He drove out of town that night, feeling eyes prickling on the back of his neck all the way down the highway.

Somewhere in Kansas, Dean called his dad again.

He was healthily buzzed, standing out behind a bar, in an alley that smelled of cigarette smoke and piss. He'd been drinking with a too-friendly stranger, happily basking in the easy company until the man had put a subtle hand on his knee, glancing sideways at him and tilting his head towards the bathroom at the back of the bar. He'd had soft blue eyes and cupid's bow lips, and Dean had brushed off the hand with an excuse about needing a smoke. 

He wasn't sure if he regretted it. There was no going back now, Dean knew enough to figure the guy would want to leave rather than risk Dean's rejection turning violent when he'd had the chance to think about it. He'd seen the flash of fear in his eyes, along with the surprise, when Dean knocked his hand away. Too quick, too harsh. 

Surprise, because Dean seemed like that kind of guy. It wasn't the first time someone had made that assumption, but it was the first time they'd made it since Dean had admitted to himself it was true. Maybe he could dismiss the thing with Cas as some kind of magic or manipulation. Enthrallment, yeah, that was the word. He'd certainly felt enthralled. But there had still been a twist of heat in his gut, in amongst the anxious nausea, when he'd felt that warm hand on his knee. 

He could pretend away a lot of things that happened after Cas, but he couldn't unthink all the realizations he'd had about the time before. About ways maybe he'd always been, without wanting to look right at it.

He thought about what it might have been like, to take the guy up on his implicit offer, follow him into a dingy little men's room stall, and do what? Trade handjobs? Get on his knees for a stranger? Or would he have wanted to bend Dean over? He hadn't tried that, with Cas, never got around to broaching the subject, if he might've liked it better that way. 

He shuddered to remember Cas' metaphor about hunger , even at the time it had felt too-literal, but Dean had let himself be flattered by it. Even now, as much as he tried to fight it, the feelings it summoned settled warm in his gut.

Lately Dean's skin had been prickling with the desire to be touched. He hadn't been with anyone since Cas. He'd tried, once, to go home with a woman, so blind drunk she'd ended up backing out before they'd gotten two steps out of the bar, slipping her number into his pocket and telling him to call her when he was sober. He hadn't bothered, ashamed of the fool he'd made of himself, and shaken by how relieved he'd felt to be turned down. She'd been pretty, and kind, with red hair and strong hands, and he hadn't wanted to sleep with her. 

He used to be a lot better at doing things he didn't want.

So he called his dad. just to hear the ten second voicemail clip. 

" This is John Winchester. You know what to do."

Dean didn't. He hadn't for a while.

The voicemail box was full.

Dean trudged his way back to the car to fish it out of the glove box. After months- shit almost a year now- idle, it barely held a charge, but it was enough to check the messages.

Mostly, they were requests for help, months old, too late to answer. It left guilt churning in Dean's gut. Some son he was, leaving his dad's legacy to languish, his old friends caught in the lurch, his business unfinished. Because he was too busy wallowing in his own grief, distracting himself by playing boyfriend-girlfriend with a man who might have been a monster.

They weren't all requests for help, some of them were offers.

" John, it's Ellen. Again. Look, don't be stubborn, you know I can help you. Call me. "

An unfamiliar woman, gruff and pleading all at once. Too little, too late. At least Dean wasn't the only one.

Another message, from a hunter Dean thought he remembered meeting once or twice, opened: 

" Word on the street is you're dead. I don't believe it for a second. " Dean could sympathize with that, too. Sometimes he had trouble believing it himself.

One message was for him.

" Dean, I don't know if this'll reach you, but you didn't exactly leave me your number, " the familiar, gruff voice spoke. " I heard about your daddy."

Dean leaned his head against the cool glass of the Impala's window, his eyes closed. There was a long stretch of recorded silence.

" Dammit boy, you call me, alright? Just- just call. You know you can always… "

There was a sigh, and a muffled curse, and the recording cut there. The next message began, then cut off two sentences in, when the storage had run out.

Dean put the phone back in the glovebox. He scrubbed at his face while he tried to get his breathing back under control.

Stepping out of the car, he made eye-contact with a woman across the street. They watched each other for a long moment, before she stepped around the corner and disappeared. Dean knew by now that trying to follow wasn't worth the effort, there wouldn't be anyone there.

"Fuck off," he muttered, unable to summon more than exhausted indifference.

He went back inside the bar.

The guy with blue eyes and friendly hands was gone.

Dean stayed until the bartender cut him off.

The months rolled on, sleep got harder to find. When he looked out the windows of his motel room at night, there were always people looking in. He couldn't tell if they were the same ones. He didn't think it mattered.

In Rochester, fueled mainly by a bottle of cheap tequila, he screamed at them from the open doorway of his motel room.

"He's gone, alright?" He'd screamed into the uncaring night. "He's not coming back! Leave me alone!"

He was asked to leave first thing in the morning, and did so with his tail tucked between his legs, wishing the alcohol had stolen more of his memories. He didn't want to remember the way he'd sunk to his knees and cried like a child in the doorway.

The figures in the distance were still there the next night.

Bloodless bodies were turning up in Kentucky, sporadic along the I-75. Too few to be a vampire nest, too mobile to be a djinn. Dean's going theory was a chupacabra that'd wandered farther north than usual. 

The other possibility was that the watchers standing outside his motel room couldn't think of a new type of bait for their trap.

The funny thing about that option, was there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it, either way.

Real funny.

It turned out it wasn't a trap, and it wasn't a chupacabra either.

The vampire he tracked to a shack in the middle of nowhere, plotting deaths on a map and acting on a tip from a run down little convenience store where she trekked for supplies. 

Didn't need much to drink, all by her lonesome. 

Didn't put up much resistance either.

Her nest had been wiped out in Mississippi, and she'd known she was on borrowed time ever since. 

"What's the fucking point?" She asked him, letting her arms drop, limp, unresisting. He was breathing hard from the scuffle that started when he surprised her, blade up and ready, but she'd just stopped, defeated.

There was no point rebuilding a nest that would just be taken from her again, she'd told him.

The look in her eyes, like the light had gone out of them, kept him frozen there, even as she left herself open, unwilling to put up a defence against him.

His hesitation made something spark in her, just fleetingly. Rage enough to inspire her to lunge. He struck out on instinct, his arm moving before his mind caught up. Too slow, too clumsy, he registered he'd been baited when the machete caught in the side of her neck, a wild arc she should have been fast enough to dodge.

It wasn't a clean hit. The blade caught on her spine, snagged in her neck as she went down, pulling it out of his hand.

She choked on the ground, her hands going to the wound, grasping weakly. Dean stared down at her, numb, as she looked back with wide, brown eyes. Fear and pain, and relief.

Dean wondered if vampires could heal enough to recover, if the decapitation didn't go through all the way.

He pulled the machete out of her neck, it slid through her grasping hands.

She kept looking up at him, eyes shining, as he brought the machete down again.

It buried itself an inch deep into the packed dirt floor. The only sound left in the room was his own panting breaths.

"Fuck this," he said to the severed head, still staring at him.

He kicked it away to make it stop, and left the shack.

Dean drove until he found a liquor store, and then kept on until the first motel he saw, the bottles of whiskey a temptation on the passenger seat. He cracked the first before he'd made it into the door. He took several long pulls as he stared at the walls, then set down the bottle and picked up the paint he'd pulled from the Impala's trunk. Quick-drying stuff, good for drawing wards and devil's traps. Black, because that's what he had on hand.

He hadn't seen the symbols in months, the last time he'd tried to scratch them out on a pad of paper, he couldn't remember half of them. Now, his hand flowed easily through the symbols, and he knew somehow that each one of them was exactly where it needed to be. Twisting and flowing towards the central figure, who took Her place above the bed. 

Dean found himself on his knees on the mattress, his fingers black with paint, staring up at the image of the Mother.

He reached for the bottle of whiskey on the nightstand without pulling his eyes away from his artwork, taking another long swig.

"Fuck you," he told it, when the bottle left his lips. There was no heat to the words.

The last stroke of the paintbrush had brought with it a noticeable darkness, a presence settling into the room, comforting and familiar. The tension he'd stopped noticing after months bled from his shoulders.

He lay back, limbs and lids already growing heavy, and drank himself into oblivion.

Dean was standing on water again. A vast space stretched around him that he couldn't see.

He lifted his leg to take a step, and something broke the surface of the water to wrap around his ankle. 

The surface beneath his feet disappeared.

He fell.

Down, down, down, the tendril wrapped around his ankle pulled him deeper, and each foot of depth more of those unseen limbs joined them, wrapping around Dean in soft, undulating layers.

He tasted salt on his tongue, but his wide open eyes didn't sting. He kept his mouth closed to keep the water from rushing in, but his lungs didn't burn with the need to breathe.

In and down, he was pulled, enveloped, brought closer.

Ahead, in the dark, they were approaching something. At first, Dean thought it was a trick of his eyes, straining in the blackness. But rapidly it began to grow.

True darkness, the kind you find at the bottom of caves, where no sunlight had ever reached, that was what surrounded him. And yet, the circle that began to spread across his vision was something beyond that. More than just the absence of light, a darkness, a void so deep and so ancient that Dean could do nothing but accept that it was somehow beyond that absolute.

There were no landmarks in the blackness to gauge the size of what they approached. Dean could only watch it grow, until it was larger than him, until it was larger than any building he had ever seen. Until it eclipsed the edges of his vision, and he could see nothing but a darkness that could not exist, and still they moved closer.

Eventually, the movement stopped, and Dean drifted, enveloped, at the edge of that vast impossible nothing.

He knew it to be the pupil of a giant eye, belonging to something so far beyond him it was laughable to believe it was even capable of perceiving him.

And yet.

He looked into it, and it looked back.

Dean opened his mouth, let the water enter his lungs, and screamed.

It was not a sound that left his throat. Nothing reached his ears, muffled by salt-water on all sides. It was somehow louder than that, a physical thing that tore out of him, containing all his rage and pain and confusion and fear.

He screamed for hours, for years, salt water flowed in, and the writhing spiny snakes of his guts poured out, leaving him hollow and aching.

When at last his mouth closed on the emptiness, the silence was unmoved. The eye observed him, placid, uncaring.

"If you really loved me," Dean said in words that had weight but no sound. "You wouldn't let me wake up."

A tendril snaked its way up to Dean's face to tenderly brush his cheek.

The grip on him loosened, and Dean closed his eyes, defeated, as he was let go and began to float.

Up, up and into-

Dean woke coughing up salt water. 

He rolled onto his side, closing his eyes against a wave of dizziness.

It passed quickly, and Dean opened them again, spitting out a last glob of salty saliva. 

His head didn't hurt, and his body felt loose and relaxed, fuzzy.

He pushed himself upright, and there was a clink of glass as his weight shifted on the mattress, disturbing the collection of empty bottles he shared a bed with.

Too many, he was lucky he didn't get alcohol poisoning. 

He definitely shouldn't be feeling this good.

He looked up at the figure above the head of the bed, then turned away, rubbing at his eyes.

"Jesus," he swore, swinging his feet over the side of the bed.

A quick scan of the room confirmed that he hadn't brought anything in except alcohol the night before. He made for the door without a second glance.

No sense waiting around to be stuck with the cleaning fee.

Outside, it was early morning, soft and grey, the world not yet awake.

He got in the Impala and drove.

The miles fell away beneath his wheels without him noticing. He had no destination in mind, keeping his eyes ahead as the mile markers sped by.

The sun rose the rest of the way, he passed into the kind of small roadside town that you were out of again before you could really blink. On automatic, he took the exit he needed to avoid heading towards any major cities.

He kept driving.

The sun was high overhead when he pulled over, sitting on the shoulder. He'd left the major highways behind, and the stretch of road was quiet. He didn't know precisely where he was, but it wouldn't take long to figure it out, get back to civilization.

He closed his eyes, leaning his head to rest on the steering wheel.

For a long moment, he just let himself breathe.

Then he took out his phone.

Still with his head resting on the steering wheel, he opened his eyes and stared down at it. It felt heavy in his hand.

He flipped it open.

The date stared back at him, blocky numbers in the corner of the screen.

It had been a year exactly.

The nature of being a hunter meant he had a lot of names saved in his phone, it also meant that probably half of them were aliases for the same handful of contacts, and a good chunk of the rest were probably dead or burnt.

He could have punched in the number himself, he had it memorized, but he clicked through the list of contacts one by one anyway, idly cataloging how long ago he'd spoken to each of them, how many of them were already gone.

He looked at the name on the screen for a long time.

He hit call and put the phone to his ear.

It rang twice before going to voicemail.

Dean closed his eyes again.

"Hey Sammy," he said, after the beep. "Listen, I- there's something we need to talk about, and it should probably- it should be in person. I've been…"

His throat closed up, he cleared it.

"Look it's- it's about dad, I… I should have called you sooner, I just…"

Dean sat up, breathing heavy, and wiped his eyes. Just talk, just say something .

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he said.

"I'll uh, I'll see you soon, I guess. I'm uh, kind of in Kentucky, I think, so it'll be a few days, but…"

Dean opened his eyes, staring out the windshield at the stretch of road that curved off ahead.

"Yeah, I'll see you- I'll see you soon."

He ended the call, and set the phone in his lap.

It was done. Sam would call back, or he wouldn't. Dean would see him soon, either way.

A tap on his window, Dean startled, turning his head sharply to make eye contact with a thin man in a jean jacket over a collared shirt and tie.

He waved slightly, a small concerned smile on his face, and Dean rolled down his window.

"You alright?" He asked. "You need a jump or anything? I noticed you stopped here…"

Dean stared back for a moment too long, uncomprehending.

"Uh, yeah." He cleared his throat. "No, I mean no, I'm fine I just… Uh, I got turned around."

"Yeah these backroads can be a real maze if you're not familiar," the guy smiled easily, everything from his casual geniality to his discordant fashion choices combined to make him feel alien and out of place. Like he was from another world, one Dean didn't have access to. "I can give you directions, where are you trying to go?"

"Honestly, if you could just help me get back to the highway, that'd be great," Dean said.

"Sure," the guy chirped. "You're actually on the right track, this whole road just makes a big loop. Stay on Sunset, don't take any turns, and you'll end up on the highway about a mile from where you left it."

"Huh," Dean said. "Okay, thanks."

"Alrighty then." The guy smiled, stepping back from the window, but his hand lingered on the Impala's roof. "Are you sure you're okay? You're looking a bit pale."

"Yeah," Dean said. "Yeah, I'm… I'm fine."

"Okay," the guy said. "You take care now."

"Yeah," Dean said, when he had already gone back to his car. "You too."

Dean drove late into the night, and booked into a motel just over the border into Nebraska. His eyes itched and his back ached, he hadn't taken much in the way of breaks. He couldn't summon the energy to go in search of alcohol despite being painfully sober.

He shouldn't have been. Not after the past few months, not without sweating and shaking his way through three days of potentially deadly withdrawal.

He thought he could still taste saltwater on the back of his tongue.

Not worth thinking about.

He fell into bed, exhausted, and awoke some time later to the awareness that there was something in the room with him.

It was strange, how quickly you could get used to something, even something you knew was dangerous, as long as it was constant. Nerves frayed and your edges blunted. You acclimatized to the illusion of safety, even if you should have known better.

Cas used to stare out the window at night, watching, but he hadn't warned Dean they were being watched back. Too used to it, after years, expecting a trap but knowing he wouldn't be able to react until the jaws finally closed.

Months had bred Dean for the same complacency.

Still, he was a hunter, born and raised. He slept light with a gun under his pillow, and the instant he opened his eyes to see a shadowed figure looming over the edge of the bed he was rolling off the other side, hand grasping for his weapon.

It wasn't enough.

Someone grabbed his ankle before he could clear the mattress and yanked, sending him sprawling over the edge without being able to get his feet under him. He came down hard on his shoulder, knocking his fist against the nightstand and barking out a startled exclamation. He kicked out with his free leg and connected, but just as quickly it was grasped in another pair of hands and  he was dragged a few feet from the bed.

A third set of hands grabbed the wrist that held the gun, and began to pry it from his fingers.

The bedside lamp flicked on, leaving Dean blinking in the sudden light. There were five people in the room with him, two men pinning his legs to the floor and the woman at his head, who was tossing his gun away, her grip on his wrist like iron. 

He recognized her, she'd served him shitty coffee.

He twisted, aiming a wild punch at her face in an effort to break free. She flinched, but didn't let him go, catching his other wrist when he tried to hit her again and pinning him down with strength that belied her slight frame.

Standing by the lamp, watching impassively, was another familiar woman, this one in a white dress.

"You," Dean spat, his struggles halted for the moment as he tried to catch his breath. "What, finally decided to take another shot?"

"Hello," she replied easily, not responding to his taunt. She took a seat on the edge of the bed, then looked to the fourth lackey that made up her little group. "You can tie him up now."

Dean cursed and bucked against the hands holding him down again, but it was useless. He still gave it his best, driving his head in the gut of the woman sitting at his head, and managing to sink his teeth into her arm.

He recoiled, his mouth filling with the taste of rot.

He was flipped on his stomach, his face pressed harshly into the floor and his arms wrenched behind his back to be tied tightly.

Bound, he was dragged up and thrown into the motel room's one, rickety chair.

"Good," said the woman on the bed, smoothing her skirt. She was a girl, really, round youthful face and pouting lips, wide eyes. "Hit him."

Dean tried to launch himself upwards, but he was shoved back into the chair, hands clamped down on him from behind as one of the men who'd held down his legs stood over him and brought his fist across his face.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Dean spat blood, his face throbbing as his vision swam in time. For a skinny guy, he hit like a truck.

"Let me see."

The man stepped to the side, fisting his hand in Dean's hair and yanking his head up. His face stayed impassive, unbothered. The girl on the bed remained just as distantly neutral as she studied his face.

"That should do," she said, and rose.

"Thanks," Dean groaned, forcing a grin, wide enough to hurt. It showed off the blood in his teeth. "You know if you wanted to give me one for each of your buddies I killed, you're a little short."

Pretending he could make a scratch on any of them without Cas there to back him up. No one called his bluff.

Neither did they seem overly concerned.

"I suppose they were my buddies, in a sense." She picked through the scant items scattered around the room, crouching over the jeans he'd discarded on the floor and digging through the pockets. "But we had a disagreement on how to proceed. It's why I warned you about their ambush. You're welcome."

"Yeah," Dean drawled. "I'm real grateful."

She nodded, as though his gratitude was genuine, and stood, his phone clutched in her hand. She crossed the room in a few short strides to stand over him, studying his face placidly.

"You guys are the smart guys, then?" Dean leaned forward as far as they would let him, smiling to bare his teeth. "Comin' after me when I'm all alone might've made it easier for you, but newsflash sweetheart, he ain't here cause he ain't here. He's not coming back and I don't know where he is, you're wasting your time."

"He'll come," the girl said, raising his phone and flipping it open. She snapped a picture, leaving Dean blinking from the sudden flash. "He'll go wherever we need him to, if he thinks it will save you."

She stepped back, tapping away at the phone.

"The others were impatient, and they didn't understand your value. They wanted you out of the way. It was jealousy. I felt it too, but I didn't let it blind me." She frowned at the screen. "Your camera isn't very good."

"Yeah? Sorry about that," Dean rasped.

"It's alright, it will serve." She closed the phone and looked up at him. "He loves you. It's a distraction, an anchor. That can be viewed as a problem, but it can also be an opportunity. When we cut you away, it will be exactly what he needs."

Dean swallowed.

"Cas doesn't love me."

The girl's lips curled up, a mocking little smile.

"I'm sure he does, despite your ingratitude," she said. "We're taught the Mother loves all of us."

"Right, the Mother," Dean scoffed, leaning his head back. "Cause you think he's your Messiah. Was wondering which camp you guys fell into."

Her eyes flashed, anger breaking through the placid facade for a moment.

"There is no debate or doubt, not anymore," she said. "He is what he is: the Emissary. He is the key to our Lady's entrance into the world."

Dean scoffed.

"Everything he's done to you guys, and you think he's gonna step up and be your saviour? Usher you into paradise?"

The girl stepped closer, leaning down to put her face next to his.

"After everything he's done," she hissed. "He owes it to us."

She straightened and stepped back, her calm returning as she ran a hand idly through her hair.

"I'm not a leader, Dean. It was never meant to be me. I'm only here because he killed everyone else." She dropped her hand, toying with her skirt. "But the groundwork was laid years ago, all we need to do is get the last piece into position, and he'll do what's necessary."

"Keep telling yourself that." Dean rolled his eyes, trying to hide the way his heart sank.

He wanted to say he had faith in Cas, but the truth was, he didn't know what he would do.

He didn't know a damn thing.

"I'm sure you'll be rewarded for your part in all this," she said, idle consolation. "Once it's all said and done."

"Once you kill me, you mean."

The girl looked surprised, blinking wide blue eyes at him. Dean snorted.

"Cut me away? Not the most subtle metaphor, sweetheart."

"My name is Hael," she corrected him, mildly. "That was also a point of disagreement, but we've come to an accord."

"Well don't rush to a decision on my account," Dean forced a laugh. "You can talk it over again, you know, I can wait."

"Your death was never in dispute," the guy with his hands on Dean's shoulders rumbled, his voice low. "Even if we spared you, you would perish with the rest of the world when the Mother awoke."

"The question has only ever been when," Hael clarified. "It would be very dramatic to kill you in front of him. Motivating. But you have presented a complication in the past, and we would rather not risk it. Presenting him with your corpse will do."

"Makes sense," Dean said. "Very practical."

"I thought so too," said Hael.

The phone in her hand began to ring, and she watched it with satisfaction.

"You going to get that?" Dean asked, hoarse.

"No," she said, watching the phone until the ringing stopped, then flipping it open and snapping it in half. "We need time to prepare, and he needs time to fear. We'll call him to the church when we're ready."

"It ends as it began," said the man at Dean's back.

Hael nodded, solemn.

"Take care of him," she ordered the two larger men, The woman and the scrawny guy who'd tenderized his face headed for the door by silent agreement. Hael followed, hesitating for a moment on the threshold. "It really will be alright, Dean. You're serving a greater cause. I think it will be a nobler death than the one you had planned, don't you?"

She stepped out into the night before he could retort.

Goon one and goon two grabbed him by each of his bound arms and pulled him up, dragging him towards the bathroom. 

Oh good, they were looking to avoid a mess.

Dean let himself drop, dead weight, lashing out and hooking his foot around the legs of the man on his left, trying to trip him up. He stumbled, but the other man compensated, yanking Dean up and slamming him into the wall. Dean groaned, winded, but lunged forward in the narrow space to smash his head into the man's chin. Starbursts exploded behind his eyes and the man stumbled back, cursing. Dean pressed the advantage by ducking down and driving his shoulder into the man's gut. Hands clutched at his shoulders as the man planted his feet and twisted, throwing Dean to the floor.

He rolled over immediately, trying to get up without the use of his hands, but his other captor was up and made himself known with a kick to Dean's stomach, sending him down again.

Another kick to the side, he tried to curl up in a ball, but hands fisted in his hair and dragged him up again, his flailing feet caught in one iron grasp as the other hooked around his chest and hoisted him into the air.

He writhed, but failed to dislodge either of his captors as they carried him into the bathroom. 

He fell hard into the bathtub, his head smacking against the faucet, dazing him long enough for the smaller of the two men to climb on top of him.

He blinked away the darkness at the edges of his vision to see the glint of the knife in the man's hand.

It looked just like the one Cas carried.

Dean took one breath, another, waited for the knife to rise before he launched himself upright. Ungainly, he still managed to make the man overbalance. The knife went wild as he flung his arms out to compensate, and Dean relied on the only weapons he had left to press the advantage.

This time when he dug his teeth into the man's shoulder he was ready for the foul rot that filled his mouth.

He cursed, his free hand scrabbling at Dean's hair in an attempt to pull him off, as his buddy grabbed Dean's bound arms to try to yank him back. Dean felt the muscles in the man's arm pull tight against his face, and let go to avoid the knife coming back into play, letting his sudden lack of resistance send him careening back against the man yanking at his arms. He shook off the slackened grip and rolled onto his back to kick up, connecting with the wrist of the hand that held the knife and sending it clattering into the base of the tub. The man dove for it, but Dean's next kick hit him in the face, driving him back.

He lunged for the knife himself, landing hard on his side and rolling over onto it to grasp at it with numb fingers. 

It put him in a precarious position, practically underneath the man he'd just kicked in the cramp space, soft underbelly exposed. He could only use his body as a barrier to keep them from reclaiming the knife, gritting his teeth as the tip dug into his back, trying to fumble it into a good position to cut his hands free.

The goon he'd kicked grabbed at his shoulders, trying to roll him over to get the knife back. His buddy smacked his hands away and took the space above Dean, wrapping his hands around Dean's throat.

Simpler solution, kind of made the bathtub superfluous. It was a bit cramped for three grown men, anyway.

Dean arched his back to give himself more room to work, the fingers around his throat tightened in response, cutting off his airflow entirely.

His lungs burned, his perception narrowing down to the cool metal under his fingers and the pressure around his throat.

Just a few more seconds. His hearing was muffled and the world was going dark around the edges. He bucked, convulsive, his body futilely trying to win free.

Vision narrowed to a pinprick, he brought the knife around in a wild arc as soon as his hands were free. The hands around his throat recoiled, air rushed in. 

Headrush. Dizzy and still half-blind, he flipped his grip on the knife and drove it forward, pressed this close he didn't need to see to find the heart.

Goon one was collapsing back with an unnatural, jerky, shudder, knife buried deep in his sternum. Too deep, slipped out of Dean's clumsy fingers, tingling and slick with black blood. Goon two tried to grapple with him, and Dean eeled out from under him, kicking him back into the bathtub and making for the door.

Goon one grabbed at his ankle and sent him sprawling. He kicked him off, but he was already getting back up, his other hand going to the knife jutting from his chest.

Not like Cas' then.

Dean scrambled out of the bathroom, gaining distance while they put themselves back together. He launched himself over the bed, ducking down on the other side and frantically searching for where his gun had been thrown. He put his hands on it just as goon two thundered into the room after him. He twisted and brought it up in one movement, popping up over the bed and pulling the trigger.

The bullet hole bloomed in the man's forehead and he collapsed just as goon one appeared in the doorway behind him, holding the blood-slicked knife. Dean readjusted and fired again, sending him toppling.

He panted in the stillness, trying to catch his breath.

Wasting time, he shook himself and pushed himself to his feet, staggering to the door. How long had Cas been down after he'd been shot in the head? 

Dean didn't know. An eternity, a few minutes. Not as long as they'd thought he'd be down.

He couldn't count on any length of time. He didn't bother to stop to put on his shoes, only grabbing them from where they sat by the door.

Outside, he ran for the Impala, darting glances around. No one in the parking lot. He strained his ears, but didn't hear sirens. Maybe no one had called the cops yet, but they would now that there'd been gunshots.

The key scratched against the lock on the Impala's door instead of going in. His hands were shaking. 

Stupid, he needed to focus.

He got the door open and threw himself in the front seat, tossing his boots in the passenger side. He kept his eyes on the rearview mirror, watching the open cavern of the motel room's door.

No one emerged as he pulled out of the parking lot, no immediate goal in mind but gaining distance.

His hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel as he tried to get his breathing back under control.

His throat hurt.

Five minutes down the road from the motel, he jerked the Impala to a stop, cursing. He was running scared, stupid. He needed to think .

He closed his eyes and rested his head against the backs of his hands, still gripping the steering wheel like a lifeline.

It ends where it began. That had to be Pontiac. He needed to get there, he needed to find the church.

He pulled back onto the road, no longer running scared like a frightened animal, plotting out his route in his head.

He needed to warn Cas, because he was seven hours away and the people he was racing could fucking teleport.

He didn't have a phone.

Stupid, yes he did.

He reached over and popped open the glove compartment, fumbling through the clutter there until he laid hands on his dad's phone. 

He flipped it open and watched the screen flash on briefly, before being overtaken by an empty battery symbol and winking out.

Dean swore, smashing it against the dashboard once, twice, and then reaching over and rolling down the window so he could throw the useless thing out onto the road.

There was a sharp pang in his chest, cutting through the directionless rage. 

"Sutpid," he said, out loud this time. He was going to regret that later.

He was regretting a lot of things lately.

He had other phones, he had a lot of phones. Most of which were in his duffle.

His duffle which he'd left abandoned in the motel room in his frantic scramble to get away.

Fucking stupid . His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and he grit his teeth, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

Careless mistakes, he knows better. All his life, he's been trained for this, lived only in ways that would fit in a bag he could grab and run when he needed to. But in the moment it mattered, he let himself panic.

Everything, over this whole year, careless mistakes, over and over again.

Getting involved with Cas, letting him close, getting attached.

Leaving him.

He knew what he should have done, when he finally saw what Cas was, what his dad would have done. He couldn't do it, he'd known that even before putting his hands on the colt, so he'd driven Cas away instead. Like that solved anything, like that absolved him of any responsibility.

He couldn't kill Cas, so now he had to save him.

There were six hours between him and his only guess for where the cult was going to lead Cas. Maybe he could make it in less, but not by much. He didn't know how long those preparations Hael mentioned would take. He had no way to know if it was even possible to make it in time.

And if he didn't, he didn't know who or what would be waiting for him.

"Cas," he croaked, like he could hear him somehow, if he just tried hard enough. "Cas I'm sorry, I shouldn't have- I never should have left you. I'm coming, okay? Just- hang on."

There wasn't anything to do but drive.

Dean stopped exactly once. He tore out of Omaha like a bat out of hell and let the tension that gripped him down to his bones carry him through until the morning light. He pushed past speed limits and the limits of his own questionable good sense, only barely reigning himself in when he was skirting close enough to population centres to actually risk getting caught in a speed trap.

It was three hours into the agonizing drive that he passed a bus station, glimpsing a line of payphones outside in passing, and then pulling an illegal u-turn and speeding back the way he came as soon as he registered what he saw.

Five feet from the car he winced, stepping on a sharp rock, and went back to finally actually pull on the boots that had been dirtying up the passenger seat for the past few hours, cursing all the while.

In the phone booth he fumbled with all the change he could pull out of his wallet and the various nooks and crannies around the Impala that tended to collect quarters and dimes. He punched in Cas' number and listened to it ring, nearly vibrating with tension.

Dean's heart lurched when the ringing finally cut out, his breath caught in his throat.

" This is Castiel's voicemail… make your voice… a mail. "

Dean closed his eyes, the moment of hope quashed, even as he couldn't help a fleeting rush of fondness at the stilted, awkward sound of Cas' voice.

He hung up, loaded in more change, and dialled again.

" This is Castiel's voicemail… make your voice… a mail ."

He tried again.

" This is Castiel's voicemail- "

Again.

" This is Cas-"

He slammed the receiver down, furious and afraid. He didn't want to consider what it meant that Cas wasn't answering. Not when he was still hours away.

He dragged a hand down his face, trying to get his breathing under control.

When he looked up, he caught sight of someone by the bus station entrance, made blurry by the smudged and scratched glass. All he could really see was the vibrant orange of their rain jacket, and a beige smudge where their face should be.

They looked as though they were staring straight at him.

Dean stared back at the blurry face, his heart in his throat.

It could be anything, they might just be wary of a strange, bedraggled man behaving erratically in the early morning hours. He could see the vague outline of his own reflection in the glass, and he thought there were shadows of bruises forming on his aching throat.

The fear that gripped his limbs wasn't so easy to dismiss.

Carefully, he loaded the last of his change into the phone.

" This is Castiel's voicemail… make your voice… a mail. "

"Cas," he said, his voice catching. He wasted precious seconds on silence. "It's me, I'm- I'm fine, they don't have me. Whatever they told you- I'm on my way to you, okay? Just please, please…"

He closed his eyes again, finding the words wouldn't come.

He hung up the phone.

Dean stepped out of the phone booth, keeping his head down and his hands in his pockets as he walked quickly back to the car. He could feel eyes on him the whole way.

He slipped into the car, started the engine and pulled out, his eyes on the rearview mirror.

The man in the orange jacket watched him as he pulled away.

The inevitable complication in Dean's bare-bones plane occurred to him an hour out of Pontiac, and he spent the time as the town crept closer turning it over in his head.

He didn't know where the church was.

What he could summon into his memory of the article he'd read about Cas hinted that it was somewhere out of town, maybe a long way out of town. An isolated community that everyone had been wary of but chosen not to concern themselves with.

Dean didn't doubt that he could find the information eventually, but every minute he wasted looking was time Cas might not have.

The idea of driving past the church, unknowing, where Cas might be even now wrapped up in some fucked up sacrifice, sat heavy in his gut.

A half hour out of town, he crossed into a rainstorm, and his dread grew until the breath in his lungs was thick with it. He pushed Baby harder even as the roads grew more dangerous.

Five minutes out of town, a siren started up behind him as he blew past a speed trap, his foot heavy on the accelerator and his vision narrowed to the road ahead of him.

"Fuck," he swore, weighing the pros and cons of just driving on. He didn't have time to talk his way out of a ticket, but neither could he afford the complication of a police chase. Not over something as mundane as speeding.

He flicked on his turn signal and slowed, pulling over to the shoulder of the road as the cop followed him over. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited, his eyes fixed ahead. The lights behind him shut off and he heard the slam of the car door, then the crunch of gravel underfoot. Dean rolled down his window as the officer approached.

"Something the matter?" He asked, keeping his expression pleasant, or so he hoped. It came out raspy, and Dean tried not to wince, ducking his head and raising his shoulders a little in the hopes of hiding the bruises around his throat in the collar of his shirt.

"Yeah," said the officer, very clearly not amused. "You have any idea how fast you were going?"

"Yep." Dean didn't have a clue.

The officer's expression soured further, he was wearing a poncho to keep the rain off of him, but it didn't seem to be doing him many favours. Shit luck to get stuck out in this weather, monitoring traffic.

"You wanna share with the class?"

"Don't you know?" Dean asked. "Since you pulled me over and all."

The officer blew out a breath through his nose.

"Can I see some ID sir? "

"Sure," Dean said, digging in his pants for his wallet, and handing over an ID that listed his name as Ray Davies. He was pretty sure it matched the last name on the registration papers in the glove compartment.

Hopefully.

Yeah it'd probably be better if the guy didn't ask.

The cop squinted between the license and Dean for longer than he was comfortable with.

"Look, officer," he spoke up, earning himself another narrow-eyed look. "I'm sure you don't want to be out here in the rain, yeah? I'm not gonna fight the ticker or anything, I just got somewhere I need to be."

"Yeah?" The cop asked, skeptical. "Where's that?"

Dean let out a breath, and he let it be shaky, let himself look as scared as he felt, even though it pricked at his skin.

"My mom's in the hospital, she collapsed, apparently. No one's told me anything, yet. I don't even know-" He cut himself off, swallowing down emotion that was far too real. "I just need to know she's okay."

"Hm." The officer studied him for another long moment. "Let me just get that ticket written up for you, then."

"Thanks." Dean smiled thinly as the officer turned and walked back to the car, then snorted to himself. "Cold bastard."

He watched in the rearview mirror as the officer opened the driver's side door and slid inside.

A beat passed, another.

Dean squinted into the rear view mirror.

What was he doing on the radio?

The cop looked up and caught Dean's eyes through the windshield. He put down the radio.

Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel.

The cop slid back out of the car and closed the door. As he walked back towards Dean, in a casual unconscious gesture, his hand drifted towards his gun.

Dean turned the key in the ignition and slammed on the accelerator. 

The cop shouted and darted forward, pulling his gun. Dean ducked his head and swerved as gunshots sounded behind him. Wide and wild, none of them so much as scratched Baby's paint as he tore away.

Dean kept up a constant stream of curse words, risking glancing over his shoulder to see the cop scrambling to make a pursuit, and no doubt calling all of his buddies for help, too, of course.

What had he seen? Was he with the cult? Somehow Dean didn't get that impression. His police scanner was probably buried somewhere in the trunk, but Dean could bet it he could set it up now the reports flying back and forth would be about a suspect fitting the description for that cop-killer case a few months back, or the person of interest for all those disembowelments in Seattle, or hell, that mystery stabbing that some jackass had all but confessed to an FBI agent he was about to commit.

None of it was recent or local, and that should have worked in his favour, but he'd done too much recently to raise his profile. Hell, if he actually managed to turn the Feds onto him with that bonehead stunt, they'd have all the resources they needed to tie all his disparate fuckups together and go in for a manhunt.

Whatever it was, whether the cop had something on him or just decided he looked shady enough to detain, Dean couldn't afford to get caught here.

He did his best to steady his breathing, trying to keep himself from driving a fist into the dashboard in impotent rage. Baby didn't deserve that.

His head start probably wouldn't last him, although odds were the cop wouldn't be aiming for a hot pursuit either. Dean just needed to get lost quickly before backup showed up to try to cut him off and fence him in. He got off the highway as soon as he was within city limits, slowing down by necessity and cutting a winding course through side roads in an effort to shake his tail.

Once, he had to reverse down an alley to avoid a police car rolling past on the street he'd been about to turn onto, taking the first turn he could and taking off in the other direction.

Eventually, he found a gravel lot, tucked away between two buildings and half obscured by bushes where he could stash the Impala. He pulled whatever he could carry with him out of the trunk, knives and guns he could bet on having no effect, but he'd feel naked without.

Tucked away in the back was the one thing he might actually be able to rely on to make a dent, and he wasted too long staring at the gun as the rain continued to fall, soaking his over shirt and dampening the inside of Baby's trunk.

He tucked the Colt into the back of his pants and closed the trunk.

He kept his head down and his shoulders up as he walked briskly to his destination.

The library looked almost empty, a handful of people sheltering from the rain. The windows glowed warmly into the dim grey day, a beacon of warmth. Dean walked right to the front desk, the woman there was dressed in a dark green cardigan and a floral print skirt, eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses fixed on a clunky old desktop.

"Hey," Dean said, and she looked up, her nose wrinkling slightly when she caught sight of him dripping on the floor. "I don't know if you remember, you helped me before."

She looked up from his damp jacket to squint at his face, her lips pursing.

"Yes…" She blinked at him. "Oh it must have been months ago. You were looking for information on the Children of the Sacred Heart, weren't you?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Look I don't know if you- I don't have a lot of time, can you tell me where the church- or the uh, compound I guess, actually is? Or just, point me to where I can find out, I guess."

Her expression shuttered immediately.

"Members of the public are heavily discouraged from wandering that area, and for good reason," she told him, her chin coming up proudly. "The buildings are all condemned, and it's highly-"

Dean's hand came down on the desk with a bang that rang out through the room and she flinched. The low murmur of voices throughout the library cut out briefly.

"Sorry," he said, pulling back slightly. "Sorry, I just- I told you last time that I lost a friend there."

She looked at him with wide eyes that narrowed again as she nodded, her momentary fear fading into righteous indignation. He could tell by the jut of her jaw that he was very close to being thrown back out into the rain.

"I found him again," Dean said. "And he's in trouble. I need to- I need to get to that church, and I know you know the area. If you can't help me-"

Dean swallowed his desperation, the edge of anger.

The librarian studied him, her eyes traveling over his face and down, taking him in, her eyes settled on his throat and her hand came up to cover a gasp.

"Are you alright?" She asked. "Your throat-"

Dean shook his head, leaning back in and lowering his voice. He caught her eyes again.

"Please," he said, his voice failing him after the word. There wasn't anything else to say.

She looked away, uncomfortable and overwhelmed.

"This seems like something for the police-"

"They can't help me."

"Surely they could-"

"If you won't tell me," Dean said, his voice hard again. "Then I'm wasting my time."

For another long moment, she said nothing. Dean had started to push himself away from the desk when she sighed and shook her head. She grabbed a legal pad off the desk next to her and started writing on it.

"It's not marked from the road," she said quietly. "But I can give you directions."

"Thank you," Dean said, unable to hide his relief as she passed the folded paper to him.

"It's not technically privileged information, I suppose." She shrugged, her shoulders tense. "Teenagers go exploring out there to frighten themselves all the time."

Dean stepped away from the desk, tucking the note into his pocket.

"You gonna call the cops when I leave?" He asked.

She raised her chin and stared down her nose at him.

"Give me a head start?" He took another step.

She huffed and glanced to the side.

"I'm not even entirely sure what I would report." It wasn't an agreement, but it was close enough.

"Take your time." Dean grinned at her,  just briefly, and took off back into the rain.

There were flashing blue and red lights on the block where Dean had parked the Impala.

He'd half been expecting it, it was why he'd taken off on foot, but it still sent a pang through his chest.

"I'll come back for you, Baby," he promised under his breath as he took off in the other direction. He hot-wired a truck parked behind a strip mall a few blocks away, and unfolded the yellow paper with the directions over the dash. The edges were already damp.

It was coming down hard now, and Dean's clothes were soaked through.

He pulled out of the parking lot and drove carefully out of town. No matter how badly he wanted to rush, he couldn't draw attention to himself.

Outside of town, he pressed down on the gas pedal until it hit the floor, and the old truck lurched and shuddered with the effort of getting up to speed.

The windshield wipers thumped, clearing away sheets of rain, gaining Dean brief glimpses of the wide open road. The horizon stretched away on either side. It was green on all around, occasional clusters of trees breaking up the monotony of field after field.

He almost missed the turn-off, one dirt road like any other, but he saw the old tree stump that the librarian had described just in time, and took the turn sharply, skidding his way over the grass.

The truck bounced along the poorly maintained road, tires struggling through dirt turned to mud under the torrential downpour. It was a straight shot through fields that became less and less well-maintained as he went on. Then the road began to curve through sparse copses of trees on either side. 

The rain kept coming down, and Dean thought of biblical floods, the ocean he could half-remember in his dreams. A world washed clean.

All through his desperate flight, he'd been focused on Cas, on getting to him before he was killed, or changed or lost.

The end of the world… it was too much, too big. 

He almost didn't believe it, even after everything he'd seen.

Dean began to slow, scanning along the left side of the road for the almost invisible gap between that would lead him to the compound. He was almost glad to have left Baby behind when he found it. The narrow, barely-there driveway made for a treacherous journey even in the stolen truck.

Half-way along, he came to a downed tree and had to park, making the rest of the journey on foot. 

The trees thinned out again quickly. It was only a small strip of greenery that protected the compound from the eyes of the world.

It stretched out before him, overgrown fields and half-collapsed, ramshackle little buildings.

In the centre sat the squat, concrete building that Dean knew instantly to be the church. The exterior was so covered in graffiti he couldn't make out any sigils that may have been among them, but even just looking at it, he could feel who it belonged to.

Dean pulled the Colt from his jeans as he approached, watching the open chasm of the doorway for signs of movement. 

Thunder rumbled overhead.

Dean stepped through the doorway.

The room was big, open and bare. Dark, so much so that Dean had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The floor was littered with overturned benches that had probably once been serving as pews, sitting in dark stains on the concrete. Dean crept further in, his eyes sweeping over the irregular shapes in the gloom, wary. The walls inside were just as covered in graffiti as the ones outside.

His foot nudged against something on the floor, and he looked down to see a pale arm, outstretched from a crumpled figure between two benches. 

The woman from the gas station.

He stepped over her and continued on. He could see more bodies on the floor as he looked deeper into the room, all surrounding a raised platform.

On which stood a familiar figure, his back to Dean.

His fingers tightened on the Colt, cold in his numb hands.

"Hello Dean," Cas said, his voice soft but cutting through the silence with a clarity that made Dean shiver.

Outside, another roll of thunder sounded, carrying under his words.

Dean made his way closer, his footsteps loud in the inescapable silence as he struggled to answer.

"Are you here to kill me?" Cas asked, turning slightly to look at Dean over his shoulder. Dean's breath punched out of him in a ragged gasp.

The Colt was at his side, held in fingers that felt too clumsy, grip slack. He raised it up, watching the light glint across the engraved barrel.

Cas turned the rest of the way, looking at Dean, curious and calm. He still looked like himself, but there was something in the way the shadows clung to him, something in his face. He was more than he was, and a tender part of Dean cowered and calmed all at once.

The question hung in the air between them. Cas waited patiently as Dean stared at him with a mouth slack and empty of the words he needed to say.

He swallowed, his throat clicking.

"I don't want to," he admitted, the gun lowering slowly, almost against his will. "I don't- I don't think I can."

Cas nodded, and if this admission pleased or displeased him, he didn't show it.

"I'm sorry, Cas," he whispered. He dropped the Colt, it clattered on the floor, too-loud. Dean resisted the urge to rub his hand on his jeans. It tingled.

"It's alright, Dean," Cas said. "You wouldn't have been able to, anyway."

"Right," Dean chuckled, his eyes downcast. "'Course not."

He heard Cas's footsteps echoing over the stage, coming closer.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I should have been here, I should have…"

"There's no need for despair." Cas' voice was a comforting rumble. "This was an inevitability. I was already on my way to coming into my own. These children… I can't call their intentions good, but they showed me myself. I can be grateful for that. I've been lost for a very long time, but now I know who I am."

"Cas…" Dean croaked, dragging his eyes up to look at him, pleading. Hoping his eyes could express the words he couldn't say.

Cas' attention wasn't on him, he'd turned to look at the carved wooden figure up on the dais, that same figure, holding the heart of itself open, beckoning.

"I spent so long uncertain, not knowing if I was defying Her will or following it," he huffed, not quite a laugh. "But there is no defying Her will."

"No!" Dean lurched forward, finally giving in to the gravitational pull that dragged him inexorably towards Cas. He clutched at him, wild and desperate, his hands fisting in the hem of his jacket where he stood above him. Cas looked down at him, startled. "Cas you can't- this isn't you, you have to keep fighting it. I know you're still in there I know you can beat this-"

A hand came down heavy on his head and he stilled, hope and dread warring in his chest.

"There is nothing to fight," Cas said, in that low, echoing voice. There was something layered beneath it, just at the edge of Dean's hearing that made him shudder. A whisper, a chant. "I am not what I was, and I am what I am, I can't be otherwise."

"No," Dean protested, his voice weak and shaky.

"James Novak is Dead," Cas told him, intoned, proclaimed. "He died in that pit, two decades ago. All that I am comes from the Mother, She is me and I am Her, if only a small part."

"I don't give a fuck about James Novak," Dean snarled, tearing himself back from the comforting, stifling weight of Cas' hand on his head. Startled blue eyes regarded him in an expression so familiar it ached. "I never met him, I don't know him, I don't care about him. I want Cas, my Cas. That you?"

Cas tilted his head, alien, curious, watching Dean with those fathomless eyes, drinking him all in. It was strange and inhuman, it was the same as ever.

"I am what I always have been." The words came out slow, as if chosen with great care.

"Yeah?" Dean jutted his chin out, squaring his shoulders. "Well if you're Cas, or even part of him, then you gotta listen up, because I have shit to say."

His hands were trembling and he was breathing like he'd just run a marathon. His throat threatened to close up with every word he forced out. He couldn't let it though. He needed to say it, if it wasn't too late.

Cas waited, patient as ever, as the words crawled their way up the narrow passage of his throat.

"I love you," he croaked, blinking hard against desperate tears. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed you away. Please, come back to me, Cas, I need you, I love you, please-"

His voice broke and he could say no more.

The tears spilled over and he closed his eyes, left shaking as the wretched confession tore its way out of him.

There was silence.

The creak of old wood broke it, as Cas moved closer across the stage, then a quiet thump as he dropped off it, down to Dean's level.

Dean didn't open his eyes. Couldn't. His breathing slowed and he swayed in place, waiting.

"I love you too."

There was a touch on his face, and Dean let himself look. Cas wore that same soft, wondering look he always seemed to get around Dean, familiar and warm. He said the words like they came easy to him.

Dean's breath shuddered out of him, all in one gust.

"Then don't do this," he begged.

Cas' thumb stroked across his cheekbone.

"You have nothing to be afraid of," he said.

"Cas-"

"I'm sorry." Cas continued to caress Dean's cheek, sending not entirely unpleasant shivers down his spine. "For leaving, for frightening you. The Mother has no will to defy, that's what I should have said."

"What?" Dean blinked up at him, uncomprehending.

Cas smiled, a small, fragile thing.

"The Mother is simply something that is, if She can be said to want, it is only in the way that the Sun wants to pull the earth into its core, or the ocean wants to rush into your lungs as you drown." He shook his head, his eyes going distant. "She is not something a human mind can comprehend, both too complex and too simple. I understand better now, I'm a part of Her. I am only as separate as I am so that I can have something like a human mind, because that is what a mind is. A thing that can look at the world and say "you are not me." The Mother can't do that. Everything is Her, or it will be. Do you understand?"

Dean shook his head, Cas smiled again, a little more rueful.

"I'll be more concise," he promised. "The Mother is vast, but there is only one part of Her that has a will, the ability to make choices. That part is me. It's what I'm for. And I have chosen to spare the world."

"Just like that?" Dean asked, his voice a painful rasp. Cas frowned slightly and lowered his hand to stroke over the bruises on his throat. He shuddered, resisting the urge to close his eyes.

"Yes," Cas said. "I don't want this world to end." He frowned. "No, that's not true. I do, very much. It is a vast and beautiful thing and I want every atom of it to join with my being, but I don't want it to be gone, either."

"Having your cake and eating it too," Dean said, the words tumbling from his mouth unbidden, itching like something he'd forgotten.

Cas nodded, solemn, like this was some great wisdom.

"It's a somewhat easier dilemma when all cakes return to you in the end," he admitted, reaching down to take Dean's hand in his own, intertwining their fingers. "The distance between molecules is an eternity, but eternity is such a fleeting thing. I can be patient."

Dean laughed, weakly. 

"You're terrible at being patient."

"I've had a shift in perspective," Cas replied, a flash of amusement crossing his face, then vanishing again.

Dean looked down at their intertwined hands, struggling to let that fledgling hope bloom in his chest when dread hung heavy and ready to swallow it.

"What happens now?" 

Cas sighed.

"The world is safe from me, I won't be compelled to call forth the End, but my devotees still present a danger to themselves and others." He looked contemplative. Sad, in a distant way. "For all the trouble they cause, all they truly want is to rejoin the Mother. I will call them home."

A rumble of thunder began outside the church, stronger than the others, it rose, growing louder and louder, beyond what was natural. The ground shook, and Dean clung to Cas.

Beneath the roiling noise he thought he heard something, a whisper or a song, and when he closed his eyes he could see something reaching, beckoning him.

Then all at once, it stopped.

Cas was stroking a hand over his back, where he'd pitched forward into him.

"It's done," he said.

"Did you kill them?" Dean asked, keeping his face pressed into Cas' chest.

"Yes."

Dean breathed in deeply, uncertainty and fear roiling in his gut. He pushed himself up, and made himself look Cas in the face.

"It's what they wanted," Cas told him.

"Okay," Dean said. Letting it settle him. Easier just to accept it, not to think about it.

"What do you want, Dean?" Cas asked.

"What?" Dean stepped back, pulling away fully, and Cas let him go, only slipping off the stage so they were standing on the same level.

"I know you feel the call, Dean," he admitted, looking away. "All this time, you've been drawn to me, drawn to the Mother, and I think you know why."

Dean swallowed heavily, and looked down at his feet, mute.

"Do you want to die, Dean?" Cas asked.

Dean laughed, shaking his head.

"Hell of a question, Cas." He tried to pretend his voice wasn't shaking.

"It's alright," Cas said. "I can tell you how it would be, if you like? I would take you with me, into me, into the Mother. You would dissolve. Not ceasing to be, exactly, but ceasing to be separate from everything else. We would be entirely one."

"That sounds nice," Dean said, his eyes drifting closed. "Peaceful."

"I think so." Castiel's voice was soft. "It would be like your dreams. I know they bring you comfort. I can give that to you, you wouldn't have to wake up again."

Dean let himself imagine it. The dreams were a hazy thing in his mind, shapes and feeling more than anything else, vanishing when he reached for them. Now though, he let his mind still, and the edges of them became more real. The vast ocean that flowed into him, dissolving him. The thing in the water that was the water, and wanted him desperately.

He wanted that peace, and it was so close he could taste the saltwater on his tongue.

"No," he said, reaching up to swipe away the tears that had gathered in his eyes as he looked up, smiling. "No I don't think I want that, Cas. For a long time, I did, and I couldn't even look at it… but now… I think I want to try living, see where it takes me."

Cas nodded, accepting.

"Then I suppose this is goodbye."

"What?" Ice water down Dean's spine, he snapped to attention at once. "What are you talking about?"

Cas turned away from him, looking back at the statue of the Mother, his shoulders hunched.

"I need to return to myself," he said, his voice quiet. "I am just a fragment of a larger whole, and I am tying Her here, another anchor. I've chosen not to consume the world, but I remain a threat to it."

He turned back, smiling softly.

Sadly.

"That's the thing about minds, they're prone to changing."

"What, you think one day you're gonna wake up, and decide to end the world?" Dean asked, disbelieving.

"You weren't wrong when you said I'm terrible at being patient." Cas pressed his lips together, his eyes darting to the side.

"You can't," Dean said, shaking his head helplessly. "What you just said- that applies to you too, doesn't it? You're talking about dying."

"In a way," Cas said, unconcerned. "It's different for me."

"How?" Dean demanded. "How is it different? You'll be gone. "

"Because I can feel it," Cas said, closing his eyes. "The rest of my mind, my self, is out there, I just have to-"

"No!" Dean lurched forward and grabbed Cas' arm, shaking him so that his eyes flew open, startled. "How can you say that? How can you do this to me, again? You that determined to break your promise?"

"Dean-"

"You don't get it." Dean shook his head. "It's you, man, you're the reason- When I met you I had nothing, I was just waiting to die. You're what changed that, for me. The last few months without you-"

Cas looked back at him, uncomprehending, and Dean grit his teeth breathing out through his nose.

"I called Sam, you know? Before all this, I was on my way to see him. I was ready, Cas. I figured I'd run out of things to stick around for," he confessed. "So when you ask me if I want to go, no man, I don't. Because you're right here in front of me, but if I can't have you…"

"Dean…" Cas said again, layering too much meaning into the word.

"I want to live, Cas, I want to live with you. "

Cas looked conflicted, he brought a hand up to brush at Dean's hair, like he would be tucking it behind his ear for him if it was long enough.

"You're drawn to me, I know," he said sadly. "But that's-"

"It isn't," Dean insisted. "Or- maybe it was, at first. Maybe I liked being around you because it made me feel like- like the moment before the knife comes down. Like it was already done and I didn't have to worry about it all anymore. But it's more than that, Cas. You're you , you watch Saturday morning cartoons with me and tell me why you think they're about man's pursuit of god, you buy me coffee as a gesture of friendship. You're weird and dorky and one of the kindest people I've ever met and I love you. I told you I love you, don't you believe me?"

"I do…" Cas said, his hand coming up to rest overtop of Dean's. "I'm just not sure you understand… We said things, when we parted."

Dean swallowed, looking away. "I'm sorry."

"I am too," Cas said. "I was cruel to you."

"You're not a monster," Dean said.

"I am. In every sense. You saw it then, you see it now."

The church plunged into darkness, and Dean's heart leapt into his throat. Cas wasn't in front of him anymore, but only because he was all around him. Something, many somethings, moved in the dark, sensed rather than seen. All of it was Castiel, and Dean shuddered as it- he- brushed close from every side.

"I have a human shape and a human mind, but I am not of you or your world," the voice reverberated from all around him, and now he could hear more clearly the whisper, the chant that wove through it. It thrummed all around him, and he swayed to its rhythm. "A child's Self was carved out, and the Mother poured in to claim the the Void that was Hers by right. I am a Nothing-thing, I am what your reality is not."

"You're still Cas," Deam told the dark.

"Yes," Cas said. "But do you understand what that is?"

"It's what I want," Dean affirmed, allowing no doubt to enter his mind. It was easier than it should have been.

This was Cas, the Cas something deep and instinctive at the back of his mind had always known. Something cool and smooth slithered across the floor to wind around his ankles, and Dean did his best to hold still as his skin tingled all over from the simple touch. Cas was so close, on all sides. There were no eyes he could see in the dark, but he felt watched, dissected, scrutinized.

He held himself open, welcoming it.

Slowly, the light returned, and Cas stood before him, a man again.

"It is an entity that wants to swallow you whole." Cas stepped closer, his pupils were blown wide in the dim.

"Yeah, well," Dean huffed. "It's also kind of my boyfriend, and he has a name, you know."

Cas pursed his lips, studying Dean's face. He turned aside, his expression troubled.

"So much of what I am is hunger," he said. "What I want, what I have always wanted, is to consume you. I cannot separate my love for you from that. It is love, for me. I would devour you, if you let me."

"And I will," Dean promised.

Cas froze, and Dean felt his attention sharpen, the focus of a predator so much larger than his physical body. Dean's mouth went dry.

"Then you'll come with me?" He asked, carefully restraining his eagerness. He wanted to pounce. Dean could just imagine the great mouth, dripping in anticipation.

"Not yet," Dean said, closing the last of the distance between them and pressing their bodies together. Cas' arms moved to encircle him automatically, caught. "You said eternity's nothing to you, what's fifty years? Maybe less. You think this new lease on life is gonna last me that long? Soon as I'm done, you can take me. Eat me up like you want to. But you have to stay, first."

Cas' mouth was open and he was breathing through it in soft pants, he closed it and swallowed. Dean shivered to see it, the image of a salivating maw grew stronger. Still, he remained frozen in place, giving no answer.

"Cas," Dean breathed, eyes wide and  imploring. "Please?"

Cas groaned, surging up to crash his mouth into Dean's, his hand fisted in his hair. Dean melted into the contact, letting it chase everything else away.

Cas pulled away from his mouth so he could start gnawing at his neck, already tearing at Dean's wet clothes.

"Is that a yes?" He asked, breathless.

"Selfish," Cas mumbled into his skin. "I'm being selfish. I'm dangerous, I…"

"So be selfish," Dean said, putting his hand on the back of Cas' head and pressing him closer. His skin was almost numb with cold, and Cas was so warm. "Have your cake then eat it. Just, you know, later."

"I would like to have you right here." Cas' hands roamed over Dean's back and he shivered, as much from cold as from arousal. "Are you amenable?"

"Anything you want," Dean said, and meant it.

Anything, as long as he didn't leave.

"Just promise," Dean insisted. And keep it this time, he didn't say.

"I promise," Cas said, his mouth already on Dean's neck, hot and open. "Only when you say, we'll go. It will be together. Always, we'll be together."

Dean carded a hand through Cas' hair, his eyes fluttering closed.

"That's all I ask."

The storm raged outside as Cas guided Dean to the ground, laying him out on his trench coat and stripping away his wet clothes. The church was cavernous and cold, but with Cas pressed up against him, Dean felt warm.

The graffiti on the wall moved like snakes in Dean's peripheral vision, twisting into the sigils beneath, and the darkness surged close.

Cas was around him and above him, his hands roaming his skin, desperate and hungry. His breath came in pants, right next to Dean's ear, and the air that moved around them was warm and damp, panting with him, the heaving exhalations of a great beast.

Dean blinked, and for a moment he found himself resting in a vast mouth, a black tongue beneath him, cushioning him and keeping him held up and away from the yawning darkness of the throat at his feet.

He blinked again, and he was in Cas' arms.

There was no place he would rather be.

Chapter Text

Castiel watches the early morning light play over Dean’s skin, enraptured. There’s a contentment in this, even though the emptiness yawns, stretching out within and behind him. There’s something to be found in lying next to him all night, something like satiety.

Dean shifts closer in his sleep and Cas reaches out with a thought that feels like an invisible limb, touching lightly on his dream. Dean rests on a dark shore, his head and shoulders pillowed on soft black sand, gentle waves lapping up over his waist, his legs drifting in the shallows. Up above, a light shines, distant enough not to shatter the peace of the dark.

It’s an apt metaphor.

Castiel has been thinking about eating. It’s difficult not to, with Dean resting gently in the open mouth of his being every night.

In the Dream, a sudden stronger wave rolls in, still gentle, washing up over Dean’s shoulders. He gasps, and in the physical world, Castiel’s mouth fills with saliva. He swallows, and the wave recedes.

In many ways, Castiel is a mouth that thinks. And a mouth doesn’t feel the satisfaction of a full stomach. Once it swallows, all it has is the fading echo of the flavour that had been there.

In another way…

When Castiel stretches the limits of his mind, reaches out to feel the shape of the rest of his- Her being, time takes on a new shape, and cause and effect fall away. One day Castiel will bite down and swallow, and Dean will be consumed. It will happen, so it is happening, and it has happened.

But this moment, where Dean rests in his mouth, exists too, and is savoured.

He wonders, idly, if he could make a moment an eternity. If swallowing and digesting Dean could be a process that stretches into endlessness. If the mouth and stomach could both be satisfied by making the act of consumption something that exists in perpetuity.

He wonders if that has already been done, if the world exists in a forever state of being dissolved in Her vast stomach, if She cannot be called to consume the world because She is already doing so, Her feast unending.

He Knows the answer, but lets it fall back from the waking mind into the pool of Unknowing beneath. It’s unimportant, Dean is stirring.

His eyelids flutter as he drifts back into consciousness, pulling away from the greater part of Castiel’s being. Castiel’s physical arms tighten around him in response, reminding himself there are different kinds of closeness, even as he shudders at the loss.

The grief is forgotten easily when he sees the green of Dean’s eyes, half-lidded, sleepy content and smiling.

“Mornin’,” he mumbles.

“Good morning, Dean.” Castiel reaches out to brush his fingers over Dean’s forehead, soft and reverent. “Is it time, yet?”

Dean smiles wider, shaking his head and half-nuzzling into the pillow all at once. He is radiant in this quiet early morning joy.

“Nah,” Dean says, taking Castiel’s hand in his and kissing his knuckles. “We got plans, remember?”

Castiel nods, expecting the answer. He expects to receive it for many mornings to come, yet still, he will ask. It seems to please Dean, the reminder that he is wanted.

“Yes,” Castiel says. “I look forward to meeting your brother.”

Dean’s smile slips slightly and he rolls over onto his back. Castiel regrets the words, shuffling closer to make up for the gap.

“Yeah,” Dean says, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slow. He closes his eyes.

Castiel waits. He has been learning a great deal about patience and restraint, since knowing Dean.

“Cas?” He asks, after a moment of quiet. “If things don’t go so good with Sammy, I…” He hesitates again. “Will you…”

“Anything you need,” Castiel says softly, reaching out to twine his fingers with Dean’s again. “Always.”

Dean turns his head to look at him again, studying his face. This close, Castiel can see the flecks of gold in his eyes. His mouth fills with saliva again. On a level that most beings cannot perceive, reality shivers as something older than time turns over in its half sleep. Castiel makes a deliberate effort to settle himself.

One day he will eat Dean, is eating Dean, has eaten Dean. He tries to keep most of his mind in the present moment, to keep this time of tasting, waiting, living.

But for all he has learned of patience, of savouring, he does not have the self-discipline to keep from biting down, the moment Dean gives permission.

Whatever Dean finds in his expression seems to soften him. He brings their joined hands to his chest and rolls back over, burrowing close and laying a kiss on Castiel’s collarbone.

“Thank you,” he mumbles into his chest. The bright light of his soul slips a little back into the cavernous empty of Castiel’s being, a delightful temptation. He contains his shiver to his physical body this time.

“Any time,” he says, cupping the back of Dean’s head with his free hand and kissing him on the crown. He means it. Any time at all.

One day he will eat Dean, but Castiel doubts it will be today. He doesn’t know how the conversation with Dean’s brother will go, but the idea that anyone would truly want to cast Dean out of their life seems impossible to him. Castiel had tried to, many times, thinking it was for his own good, and each time his resolve crumbled as soon as he looked into those eyes again.

It won’t be today, it won’t be tomorrow. It won’t be for many tomorrows.

Some day, every day, forever, Dean will be and is eaten.

Dean will be and is his.

Dean will be and is Hers.

And always has been.

Here and now he presses another kiss to Dean’s hair. He sighs, pulling away from Castiel, physically and spiritually. Castiel only clings a little, fingers trailing on his arm, a gentle squeeze to the light of his spirit. It flickers, just a little, and Dean gives a whole body shiver, his eyes going briefly glassy.

“Stop walking over my grave,” he gripes, but his lips pull up in a smile. He pushes himself up and stretches, pulling the long lines of his body into a beautiful arch as he groans, luxurious.

Castiel watches.

“Time to get up and greet the day,” Dean says it like it’s a chore, knuckling at his spine where it aches. Castiel knows better, and so does Dean, making the choice as he does to live every morning. He casts a glance side-long at Castiel where he watches him, still only propped up on one elbow, content to take in the view. “Join me in the shower?”

“Yes,” Castiel says, and sits up at once, hastening to throw off the covers. Dean laughs, a vibrant bell ringing in the morning. Dean tumbles his way out of bed ahead of him, so he can give chase. 

Pressed up behind Dean in the shower, tasting the vibrations of his joy through the skin of his throat, Castiel thinks it’s a good day to be told no.

May there be many more.

Not Yet