Archive of Our Own ^beta

So. This is it.

Dean waits for the blow, readying himself for the too-familiar sensation of claws slashing through cloth so easily before they pierce skin and organs and leave him in a bloody, messy heap right here on Purgatory’s dirt, and he’ll be over and gone and done, just done —

That end never comes. It’s just him in the clearing, surrounded by these dark woods and those crimson eyes in the distance that move too quickly. He can’t focus on the shapes attached to the red pinpricks of light, but honestly, that’s probably a good thing.

“Cas,” he whispers out loud, again, after a little while, less plea and more prayer. “Sammy?” A whisper meant to reach across some other dimensions to find his brother. His gut churns, thinking of Sam and Kevin and maybe Meg if they’re friggin’ lucky — God, when did Meg on their side turn into good luck — armed with nothing but lettuce and oranges and oh God, Baby’s still on Earth, in a battle royale against a very pissed-off Leviathan horde that’s still got just about every advantage imaginable.

“Apologies for that,” comes Cas’ grumble from behind Dean. It’s gotta say something about how fucked up Dean’s life is that the rustle of wings and someone popping in behind him actually slows his heart rate down to manageable levels.

“Wh-where the hell did you go?” Normally, he’d pretend he wasn’t totally freaked out by Cas vanishing and didn’t yelp Cas’ name into the darkness, as clear a noise as a hammer driving a nail down into wood. But there’s not much point in pretending, not now.

Cas’ brow furrows. “To attempt to locate a beer for you,” he answers, voice completely serious. Dean sputters, because he’s honestly not sure if he’s kidding or not. Cas has a weird sense of humor lately.

(“Come and be one with the bees,” he’d told Dean, who was understandably distracted by all that fucking skin and the roaming, twitchy little bees all over it, when he’d shown up perching on the front of Dean’s crappy stolen car. “Also the butterflies. They are so beautiful.” Well, that’d explain the long yellow smears of pollen across his arms and abdomen, at least. His voice had been so deadpan, Dean couldn’t tell if what he said was supposed to be a joke. And truthfully, he wasn’t sure if Cas making jokes or being serious about that particular idea was a scarier thought.

It was only after Cas pouted at Dean, who’d been left slack-mouthed, and disappeared that Dean realized he was more relieved than anything. Even weirdo bee-obsessed pacifist Cas was still a living Cas, after all. And not with Meg, either. What? It was a safety issue.

Also, he had been pretty goddamn relieved Cas’ legs were tucked up so Dean hadn’t seen… anything too personal outside of his stomach, way too much thigh, and a flash of hipbone so sharp he could watch a bee crawl up the line of it. Not that he had been looking.

Dean can tell you this much, though: junkless is out as an insult from this point, whoo boy.)

“You didn’t — did you get a weapon or something?” If Cas doesn’t want to fight, well Dean’s not happy but he’s fine with it, but he still feels something approaching emasculated without at least an impressive machete. Cas could probably get him a revolver made of gold if he really wanted, or a fucking sword, yeah.

“You don’t need one. I was merely scouting.” He places a pretty impressive knife in Dean’s hands, anyway. Cas would still understand his weird manly need for weaponry.

“What?”

“Dean, you don’t understand,” Cas sighs, like he has already had too much of Dean’s bullshit. “I mean, I didn’t understand at first and I apologize for telling you otherwise, but it all makes sense.” His smile, with all its teeth, still kinda freaks Dean out. “There are no insects here, though. Such a shame.”

“What makes sense?” Dean fights the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake. He hates that the more adrift Cas goes, the more he wants to haul him back in, and in the worst ways. Pain will bring him back because pain was the default for all of them; it’d pop the puffed-up balloon of Castiel’s new self so easily. Only, how do you hurt an angel, anyway?

Cas’ smile goes Joker-wide. “The beasts here will not attack; they are frightened of us. We are the monsters here,” he tells Dean. “You and your brother are responsible for putting so many of the creatures that inhabit Purgatory here, and I — I…” His blue eyes go hazy, and Dean fears him fucking passing out, which just seems wrong —

“Cas!”

“I took these souls; they were all inside me,” Cas says, at last, rather glumly. He finds a log a little bit of the way out of the clearing, and sits on it, head cradled in his palms. The pose is remarkably human, and a little too vulnerable; Dean saw Cas grab Dick Roman’s head and all but rip it the fuck back, after all. “They remember.”

Normally, Dean’s pretty sure he’d make a real inappropriate joke. It’d be too easy with Cas’ comment about the souls being inside him, after all. Only, this situation’s about ten thousand paces off “normal,” thanks.

Instead, he sits next to Cas. It’s probably too close, his side is heavy and warm against Dean’s, but Purgatory’s chill is starting to seep through Dean’s jacket into his skin. He really doesn’t mind. Again, it’s pretty fucking far from normal, and even though he gave Cas a long personal space lecture a while ago, he’s kind of over it. If Dean’s being honest with himself, he and Cas haven’t ever been the definition of normal.

“Do you think there are any board games to be found in Purgatory? Probably not. I should have acquired a pack of cards before we left, somehow.”

Dean can’t help it. He laughs. There’s no joy behind it, but he laughs, even with the red-eyed sons-of-bitches still circling them and making inhuman noises from their blood-clogged animal throats.

*

“So you’re tellin’ me, me and Sammy are the ghost stories little baby revenants tell each other around the campfire?” It’s gone creepy silent in the woods around them. There aren’t even cricket noises; Cas must not have been lying when he said there were no insects in Purgatory.

“In a sense.” Funnily enough, this close, Cas smells like a fire after it’s been stomped out, but the ash still lingers in the air. It’s a clean, woodsy scent; it reminds Dean of the couple of times he went camping with Dad and Sammy and if he ignored the rings of salt Dad put down around their sleeping bags, or the glut of weapons he dragged out from the Impala, he could pretend they were just another normal family, and make Sam think it too. If Dad remembered to go to the supermarket, there were even squishy burnt marshmallows on graham crackers.

“I’m probably included as well. I don’t expect it would make you feel better if I told you that, when frightened, these monsters ran to Eve and the Leviathan to tell them too,” Cas adds.

Dean actually full-body shudders. “No,” he agrees. The big nasties that live here might be scared shitless of the two poor lost suckers, but Dean’s seen it way too often: parents gotta protect their kids.

Still. Tell him that’s not at least a little bit badass. It’s just him and a crazy-ass angel, and all the shit that goes bump in the dark is terrified of them.

*

“We should get going,” Cas says later. Minutes or days, Dean isn’t sure.

His tone puts a deep chill through Dean’s spine. It’s the same voice he used when they first found themselves in Purgatory, firm and commanding. The one that reminds Dean of I can throw you back in.

He never thought hearing Cas use the Batman voice again would be a relief, but Dean’s breath caught in his throat in gratitude when he heard Cas growl out, I remember you in front of that hospital. When Cas came out of his coma his tone was all airy, too distant, not Cas at all, but this is him again. If Dean’s got nothing else, at least there’s that.

“Uh, going where?” Dean has to ask, even as he’s standing up and moving next to Castiel.

Cas’ brow furrows. God, Dean is gonna feel like a moron with the all-knowing angel as his traveling buddy, but he figures he can deal. “To find a way out,” Cas says, as if he already found a map with an easily marked path.

Their footsteps are deafeningly loud in the forest as they walk together. There’s no map after all. It’s just the two of them, the faith they lost a long time ago that things would turn out okay in the end, and Purgatory pressing in thick and endless.

*

Cas looks at Dean and tells him he has to go and look for an exit every now and then, and Dean ignores the jackrabbit thump of his heart every time to only nod.

“I’ll return, and nothing will happen to you, you know that,” Cas tells him, and the heavy insistence of his words circles pleasantly inside Dean’s mind. Dean isn’t admitting it, but it’s everything he’s ever wanted to hear, from everyone. He nods, gruff as possible.

Cas always comes back, though, a flurry of invisible wings with a hard expression etched into his face. Dean doesn’t say anything about it, but he lets himself smile for a few seconds.

*

The landscape shifts. It’s always a forest with a heavy canopy, sure, the ground choked with dead leaves, but it doesn’t stay the same.

Sometimes, Purgatory looks like a painting, one of those styles Dean recognizes but couldn’t name exactly. Sammy was the art history dork, anyway. It’s all rapid flares of paintbrush across canvas, gooey yellow and green and red paint dripping. He looks into the distance and his breath will stick in his throat for just a second, because it’s so beautiful. Terrifying, too — if everything else is like paint, is that him, too? He wants to know who’s twisting the paintbrush with their wrist.

Then, sometimes, Purgatory escalates. It starts like fire across an oil spill, the stench of it unmistakable, before it twists itself into human guts strewn over the ground. At its worse, it’s what he saw inside himself in Hell. And yet it settles into him, like all these sensations have washed over him and settled deep in his skin from a time he can’t remember. Sometimes, Dean’s sure Purgatory knows him, that it’s chewed him up before.

Dean isn’t gonna admit it, but he needs Cas. It’s messy and fucked-up and he should really look into getting some relationships in his life that aren’t freaky co-dependent, but it’s true. He needs him to clamp a hand over his eyes and walk behind Dean, hands on his shoulders or hips to keep him steady (Dean remembers that personal space lecture from years ago, and ha, that’s gone out the window) and walking soldier-stiff, just so Dean doesn’t fall to his knees and crumble apart with all he’s seen. All he sees.

*

“You sure nothing wants to attack us here?” Dean’s asking, just to be safe, a few — it could be hours, it could be days — later. They should get up and start searching for some way out, but they haven’t moved. Cas’ side, the brush of his coat, the outline of his jaw against the darkness of everything else — they are of little comfort, but comforting nevertheless. The sky’s inky black, which hasn’t changed, and Purgatory’s mostly quiet save the rustle of the undergrowth, the snap of twigs when something steps on them, and the growls of Christ-knows-what in the woods.

Cas looks at Dean, as opposed to his hands, for the first time in a while. At this point, it’s kinda weird for Dean if he’s even not getting a freaky intense stare whenever Cas is around. “Why would I lie about that?”

“I just… thought…” Dean nudges a twig with the toe of his boot and thinks about the right way to say what he wants to say. Oh, fuck it, there isn’t really a right way. “I thought you didn’t want to fight anything any more,” he mumbles, only just loud enough for Cas to hear.

He doesn’t know what kind of response he’s expecting. Maybe a sucked-in, offended breath that Cas doesn’t need to breathe, or worse, the angel vanishing in a poof of feathers, leaving nothing behind but his weird half-ash, half-honey scent. Instead, all he gets is Cas’ eyes going wider than normal, and admitting, “I don’t want to fight. It only… ruins things. But I wouldn’t lie about this, Dean. I’d fight to keep you safe.”

Dean’s never been sure what to say to shit like that. It’s so not hearts and flowers and girly shit, which somehow only makes it worse. At least that’s like a warning sign. When Cas hissed things like I gave everything for you, Dean’s response was to beg for Cas to just end him, because he couldn’t deal with knowing he’d caused disappointment like that. He never asked for Castiel’s devotion, not like that; how could he, and how could anyone live up to that, nevertheless him?

Thankfully, Cas himself interrupts Dean’s thoughts. “Would you like some honey?” he asks, brightly, strange glint back in his eyes as he pulls the little baggy out of his coat pocket.

“Sure.” Dean laughs, even. He dips two fingers into the honey and makes a big deal of sucking them off, licking hot and wet over his fingers, because he’s hungrier than he thought. This honey’s kind of flat-tasting, but it’s still sweet and the best thing he’s had since that sandwich. Cas says nothing in response to his noises, just looks, curiosity and something deeper coloring his gaze.

*

Dean’s constantly wound up. His shoulders hunch over at the same time his back goes stiff. His arms twitch out of the need to do something. There’s a thrumming in the trees, right? He’s not just hearing shit. Sure, Cas said nothing wants to attack them here, but that doesn’t mean the guy’s always right.

Dean’s fingers curl around the pretty impressively awesome knife Cas got him, that he keeps latched to his belt. He doesn’t know where Cas got it from, probably some court in the fourteenth century or something just to show off, but it’s still so new to Dean. It hasn’t sunk into the hide of some bad guy, gotten itself soaked in blood.

“Dean,” Cas sighs. Dean realizes he snorted out loud at that last thought.

“Where’d you get the knife?” Dean asks, to break the silence.

Cas visibly brightens at that. “There was a small metalwork factory near the farm in Normandy,” he explains. “I thought you would like it.”

Dean pulls the knife out and studies it, because he hasn’t really paid it a ton of attention yet. Too busy getting distracted by — everything else. It’s halfway between knife and dagger, and he lets out a chuckle at the hilt; it’s a flared wing, feathers astutely carved.

“I do,” he says, at last. “Thanks, Cas.”

As Cas just nods, Dean realizes that the angry chatter in the underbrush, if it ever really existed, is gone. The muscles in his arms aren’t twitching any more, and restlessness doesn’t churn in his head. He breathes out, and lets Cas lead him on deeper into the endless forest.

*

“It was Bobby.” Cas stops in the middle of his pacing and says it, because he’s always doing shit like that, because he’s the biggest weirdo Dean’s ever met.

“Okay,” Dean says, even though he’s got no idea where Cas is going with this.

Cas turns to face Dean. The angel’s awfully efficient at moving through Purgatory, even if it accomplishes absolutely nothing. Even as the landscape shifts in front of him, everywhere in this place looks the same, just more and more of the most tangled forest Dean has ever been in.

He’s taken to picking up rocks and turning them over and over in his palm, like flipping it exactly thirteen times is a very important part of the formula that’ll open some portal to get them back to Earth and Sam. Some giant creature lopes by every now and then, and it actually breaks up the boredom. (Dean’s beyond glad Cas is with him, of course, but at this point, Dean knows more than he thought was possible about bees, cats, fish, tadpoles, and flamingos.)

“You had to set his soul to rest. His death was due to my mistakes, Dean.”

Ah, shit. “Not only —” Dean starts, but he stops before he can get any further. Not because he doesn’t mean it, just because Cas is staring, blue and squinty-eyed, into the distance, and he’s learned that when Cas looks like that trying to interrupt him is totally pointless.

“That’s when I knew I had to help. Not for what I did, but for what I could — stop from happening.”

Dean thinks he gets it. Anger’s something Cas can deal with, shit like Dean sweeping the Sorry! board off the table and bellowing at him that no one cared that he was broken. Hell, that was like the default state of about ninety percent of his total dick brothers and God knows Dean hasn’t been a lot better.

It’s regret and pain the guy struggles with, the shit angels were never supposed to feel. Doubt closes in on him, tight and painful like its own ring of holy fire. Loss was to be expected, sure, Cas was a soldier on a battlefield, but those losses weren’t supposed to crawl into your bones and halt you the next time around.

Once, Cas knocked Bobby out with a touch and stared blankly at his prone form on the ground. Now, he’s this, cut off from Heaven and wearing hospital scrubs, full of all this shit he was never supposed to even know about except as a warning. Half-pacifist and half-crazy, and still Cas.

“A housefly can hum in the key of F,” Cas informs, out of nowhere and rather gravely. “That’s amazing, I don’t know how to manipulate this body to hum at all.”

Dean bites back his sigh and tilts his head toward Cas. Company’s company, especially considering you could do way worse than Cas, and hey, flies aren’t bees, cats, fish, tadpoles, or flamingos.

*

Just because nothing here wants to attack them doesn’t mean it’s not awful and creepy. It doesn’t make the whole situation not really, really suck the high hard one. Dean never stops looking over his shoulder, awaiting the moment he’ll get ripped to shreds, dragged down to dissolve into Purgatory’s dirt before he turned into one of the undying monsters here.

The first time it rains — it’s gotta rain for days in the time frame he’s used to. At first it’s not so bad, almost a relief, and Cas babbles on about wind patterns and cumulonimbus clouds and Dean understands about twenty-five percent of it but still strains to find it interesting. Even if Cas complains about missing Earth, which, you know, take a number and get in line, buddy.

But then the rain doesn’t stop, and water torture is like the one kind of torture he’s not acquainted with personally but man, he gets it now. His clothes slither against him, stone-heavy with wetness. The constant tap-tap-tap on his head is gonna drive him crazy — crazier — and it starts to remind him, funnily enough, of how he could really use a drink and fuck, it hurts, something’s just missing inside him here —

“Dean,” Cas growls, rather forcefully. “I’ve been trying to get your attention. My coat is waterproof, I believe, if you want it.”

Dean has been so lost in the slow slide of water down his face and the back of his neck that he hardly even noticed Cas himself looks mostly dry. His hair’s a dark, wet mess, but that’s about it. “Uh, yeah, sure,” he sputters, and then very suddenly finds the coat dumped on top of his head.

It’s not exactly comfortable, and the smell of ash is almost overwhelming. But the endless drops of water on his head stop, at least, and the throb in his head ebbs away. He can breathe without it feeling like an ache.

Dean wraps Cas’ coat around his head, and then flops back down on the ground, wet leaves and all. “This is okay,” he gulps, voice shakier than he’d like. “I just — I can deal with it like this, yeah. Thanks.”

He’s not sure when he stops feeling the droplets of rain, but he unwraps the coat fabric from over his head and looks up. Cas is still looming over him, his body totally dry. And, heh, only now does it occur to Dean that the guy’s in head-to-toe white. Must’ve been something to see all wet.

“How long’ve you been watching?” Dean asks, interrupting his own thoughts; he’s not sure where the hell he was going with that line of thinking anyway.

“Not long.” Cas’ gaze slides over to the side, though.

“Cas.”

“A while,” he admits. “You — didn’t seem well.”

Oh, fuck no. They need to get out of here. They don’t need a heart-to-heart, or to sit around braiding each other’s hair. That won’t accomplish shit.

“Fine now,” Dean grunts, tossing the coat back at Cas. “Let’s go.”

*

“I’m not okay,” he admits. Nothing specific makes him say it; he just says it. He doesn’t know how much later it is. They could’ve walked two feet, or they could’ve been walking together, silent, for years.

It’s terrifying to admit to someone else besides himself, this thing that he’s been carrying as close to him as the amulet used to be, a soft bump against his chest with every step. He can’t remember a time when he was okay. Better at faking it, sure, but every memory was the heat of flames and his body aching and his fingers curled around the metal of a gun, Sammy’s body slumped against his own. Every moment was shot crimson with blood.

Cas doesn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes is — the softness he had outside the Impala is gone, with heaviness threaded through his brow and his lips tugged down a little. It’s a look of sympathy Cas might’ve had before he took on Sam’s funhouse memories, the expression etched onto his face the night before they met up with Lucifer and Michael in Stull Cemetery.

“Look, I don’t like talking much, and I know you’re not really one for that either. S’why you get me, probably. I’m just… I’m glad you’re here, man.”

A smile knits its way across Cas’ face. As if to prove the point about them not talking much, he stays silent. But they keep walking together, and their gait grows more relaxed. If every now and then Dean peeks over and notices the crinkles in the corners of Cas’ eyes haven’t gone away for a real long time, the angel doesn’t say anything.

*

Suddenly, they’re everywhere, like the rain summoned them. Dean’s got no idea what to call them, he just knows there are things that look half like babies, half like four-legged animals. They’re covered with — scales or shells, or something, and they don’t even have faces, just totally smooth heads.

Dean’s freaked, of fucking course Dean is freaked, there are giant scaly babies crawling through the undergrowth on all fours, crouched like they’re going to attack. They’ve been trailing them for hours now, or maybe a year; he’s tired of the time-fucks.

“These were never anything you have to worry about, Dean. They’re just creatures my Father created that weren’t fit for any other world,” Cas sighs, and if his palm presses warmly on the small of his back, well, Dean can forget about the fact that he’s pretty sure one of the freaky little fuckers just brushed up against his ankle.

Then, one day, they’re all gone. The dirt doesn’t have any of their little round footprints any more, either, like they were never there. Dean’s not sure what’s getting to him worse, the creepy motherfuckers that were trotting around, or the fact that they’ve entirely vanished as if someone snapped them out of existence.

*

The driving rain never returns, thank fuck. But that doesn’t mean Purgatory’s weird-ass weather goes away. Sometimes there’s mist that thickens out and becomes haze. It’s nearly as hard to wade through it as it would be a river, thick soup, blood up to his waist. Dean thinks of the stink that’d come out of the last one, he’s way too familiar with blood, his own and everyone else’s, and —

He is thankful when that haze clears, he’ll just say that.

Sometimes, there’s lightning, but no thunder, and no rain. Dark clouds puff up above the tree branches and darts of stringy light shoot through them. Honestly, it’s kind of pretty; it’s the only light in this place other than the glowing red eyes of every creature in here, and one of the rare times blackness isn’t set over Purgatory’s endless forest.

Suddenly, one day — night — whatever, the clouds go white like a smear. It’s all kind of like the goopy Wite-Out crap Sammy used to bug him to buy along with Dean’s chocolate bars and beef jerky at crappy gas station check-outs, since the dork used it at school all the time.

Dean, thankful for the distraction, stops thinking of Sam when the clouds throb, and suck back in. The lightning zips across once more, swooping around the expanding and contracting clouds. Honestly, it’s beyond awesome, but it reminds Dean of something that he can’t quite remember. Annoyance spikes through him, because getting frustrated is one thing and going soft is another.

Then, it hits him. “The friggin’ clouds are breathing,” Dean hisses, flailing a hand out and smacking Cas across the arm, lightly. It’s actually kind of awesome, like all of Purgatory’s been trapped in that split second when lightning streaks across the sky during a storm.

“That’s — not breathing.” Cas’ eyes are wide, and Dean’s learned from far too long in this place that the look on his face means nothing good.

The rain doesn’t return, but the clouds swirl overhead. The lightning bolts grow brighter and brighter and keep whipping across the sky, red streaking across every now and then. It’d be badass if it wasn’t fucking terrifying, not that he’s admitting that. If Dean were Sam, he might make an Eye of Sauron reference, but he’s not that big a dork. (So he’ll just think it.)

The clouds aren’t always there, and when they are Dean isn’t sure whether it’s a welcome distraction or just one more thing to worry about. Sometimes even there’s this roar from the sky, shaking the clouds until they vibrate, but Cas stands stock-still and glares and they retreat, folding in on themselves.

“Wha —?” Dean starts.

“You still see me in the form of my vessel because you are used to it. The other things here do not see me as… such.”

Dean isn’t sure if Cas’ very mild tone and his close-lipped smile are kind of awesome or just flat-out terrifying.

*

If any of the gigantic black forms with their nasty, identical red eyes were ever something Dean ganked back on Earth, well, he doesn’t recognize any of them and they’re not hunting for revenge.

They shift, too. One minute they’ll be blobs; the next, insects with snapping pincers; the next, something like a deer, but they bound off into the thick underbrush before Dean can really take stock of them.

He’s walking with Cas, when two of the beasts slink across their path and actually pause. Dean can’t describe what form they’re in, because they keep changing right in front of them, and even Cas does that thing where he tilts his head and Dean kind of wants to straighten it right back up for him. There’s a twitch in Cas’ arm, like he’s ready to throw it out in front of Dean or hold it out, palm up, to blast the things away. And that’s when the things stop in their tracks.

Dean could swear the bigger monster nods, before wrapping — shit, he doesn’t know what to call them, they’re like arms and tentacles at once, at the same time that they’re radically different and no shape or form he’s familiar with, probably not any shape Cas is familiar with, even — but he slides them around the smaller one. It’s tender and there’s love behind it, but it’s not romantic.

How the fuck Dean’s able to tell that about two freaky shapeshifter things, he’s got no idea. It’s totally possible he’s already been here way too long. He blinks, and they’re gone.

“Gordon? Abby?” Cas asks, head still stuck like that. He turns toward Dean. “They — recognized you.”

Dean feels his breath stick in his throat, because, well, shit. “I knew Gordon, yeah,” he gets out, but he hears how tight his voice is. Abby must’ve been his sister, shit. “He was another hunter. Got himself turned into a vampire. Sam cut his head right off with barbed wire. It was pretty badass.” He attempts a laugh, but it comes out hollow, and fuck, Cas is actually pouting at him.

Not like it’s not deserved. Just mentioning Sam’s name, and seeing the way Gordon stuck so close to his sister — Cas has told him he doesn’t have to eat or drink anything here, but something in his stomach cramps and it’s like an aching pit.

“Did Gordon seem happy?” Dean asks, just to get the choked sound out of his voice. “Could you tell?”

“As happy as anything can be in Purgatory, I would imagine.”

Something in Dean is relieved, even as he hurts. Gordon was the kind of hunter he never wanted to be, but he thinks of Amy, he thinks of Emma, and he knows he got there. Getting paralyzed at the idea of trusting anyone was no fucking excuse, and masking everything with sarcasm and jokes and drink after drink didn’t make him any better. But — Gordon was happy, right? Maybe Dean could be happy too, or as happy as you could get in Purgatory.

Only that makes him think of Sammy more. If the guy is lucky, he’s with Meg, and if he thinks about how much that reminds him of the Ruby situation it’ll make him vomit all over the forest floor. And he hasn’t even eaten anything in, God, he doesn’t even know when.

Yeah. That happiness shit isn’t happening, not for him.

“Dean?”

Dean is starting to like crazy Cas, the one who rambles on about how honey is the most superior food of all because it doesn’t spoil, much better than the one who gazes at him with those ridiculous eyes and looks like he wants to Talk. Not talk. Capital-T Talk.

“Let’s go,” he snaps. “Last thing I wanna do is run into more shit I’ve gotten up close and personal with.” Cas might claim everything in here is too scared to hurt them, but if he ran into Amy or Emma again, you can’t convince him they wouldn’t want sweet, sweet revenge. And they’d be fucking right to get it, too.

*

“Daphne,” Dean brings up one — day, night, you can’t fucking keep track in a place like this, and the sky is a swirling miasma. Cas keeps looking up at it in alarm, but he hasn’t had to bust out the wings or whatever, so it must be okay for now. “Uh, what was the deal there?”

“Well, I wasn’t lying,” Cas grumbles back, and Dean realizes he must’ve sounded more bitchy than he intended. “She found me, and cared for me.”

“You were married.”

At that, Cas definitely stutters in his step, a little. Dean shouldn’t feel like he’s triumphed so much when Cas does that. “It was for her health insurance, actually,” he tells Dean, and it’s so fucking weird that Dean has never been involved with any of that shit — he’s technically listed as either legally dead or an incredibly dangerous criminal, he can’t keep track of which one at this point — but Cas, of all, uh, people, would understand it now and be able to explain the intricacies of it to him, “We weren’t romantically involved. I don’t know if we were any good at hiding that fact.”

“Uh.” Dean gets out, because he can only remember the way his thoughts had circled around and around when he stood in that living room. Like, sure, he remembers Daphne’s hand skimming down his chest, but he’s pretty sure Cas mostly ignored it. “I dunno. Not like I’m the best guide to that, Cas.”

He’s pretty sure that when he went to barbeques and a couple of weekend getaways with Lisa, everyone thought they were just such a nice couple; meanwhile, he was trying not to do something idiotic like pull his gun out at the first too-loud rustle from the bushes, or throw up if anyone asked him if he had any family in the area.

“I went to her, once I left the hospital.” And Dean whirls his head toward Cas at that statement because, okay, no, poor Daphne probably has not recovered from that one. “I asked her if she wanted to join me with the butterflies.” Cas gives Dean a look, eyebrow raised and too human. “She said no, though.”

“Okay,” Dean says back, eventually, because really, how the hell do you respond to that. He’s sort of amused, and sort of horrified, which is more or less his default state when Cas starts going into crazy insect mode.

There’s a shift over Cas’ face, where the raised eyebrow drops and the smoothness between his eyes crinkles up into a furrow. “I also warned her about the dangers of the Leviathan,” he continues. “I was able to provide her with enough canned goods that were still safe, as well as vegetable seeds.” The seriousness cracks again. “She’s one tough little cookie, I know.”

Dean can only sort of goggle back for a couple of seconds. “Cas.”

“Yes, Dean.”

“It’s just weird when you say stuff like that, man.”

Cas doesn’t say anything, just smiles. The need to know what Lucifer did to him burns in Dean’s gut, almost forcing its way up through his throat. Still, the guy seems happy enough, and Dean’s not gonna fuck that up.

Not right now, anyway. Everything gets fucked up in the end, but he’s as happy as he’s been in years wandering through Purgatory with a half-crazy Castiel, missing Sammy like the thirst and hunger he doesn’t feel here, and with no idea how he’s gonna get out. He’s as happy as he’s been in a long time with Purgatory’s forest howling in his ear, loud enough to fill it up like a solid.

It doesn’t make sense, but maybe it’s the feeling that everything’s been taken away, and there’s nothing left to lose.

*

It’s always sort of a relief when the sky washes over with white instead of black. Dean's not sure what day it is if it’s even day at all, or how long they’ve been here other than too long, but he feels good enough to sing. A tiny, nagging part of his brain suggests that this is just the first part of insanity, but it feels better than the other options. Maybe he can go be one with the moths with Cas, or some shit.

“In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight,” he croons. He even gets into the loud oooh part of it, and the gummy grin that appears on Cas' face is part terrifying and part a relief.

A-wee-mo-weh, a-wee-mo-weh, Dean sings to the sky. Purgatory looks different when it isn't dark — pretty, even, with the light dappling through the trees. It’s not giant smears of paint or Hell opening up its screaming maw beneath his feet.

He wants to stop singing just thinking of it all, and he’s pretty sure he just heard the trees rumble, but he presses on. Smiling, too, thank you very fucking much.

*

A hideous creature approaches them. It looks like an enormous centipede, too many twitching legs under an oily black slip of a body, and a massive, gaping mouth with teeth streaked with gray and red. Dean is absolutely not afraid of something that comes up to his ankles, no sir, but he still backs up a step.

That’s when he recognizes the mouth on that thing. “Leviathan!”

Again, Dean is totally not grateful for Cas stepping in front of him, standing in between him and the evil little shit. Seeing Cas’ head-tilt from behind is kind of amusing. “He means well,” Cas tells him, twisting his neck to look at Dean. He’s closer than Dean thought, but maybe he should’ve figured that out by the way he feels Cas’ coat brush against his legs. It’s girly as shit, and the last thing he should be thinking of, but Dean hasn’t seen a sky as blue as Cas’ eyes in — time isn’t even a concept to him any more. The sky here is either light or dark, not blue.

“He’s a Leviathan.”

“They’re intelligent creatures, Dean. They don’t all mean harm; my Father gave them free will, as well. This one voluntarily returned to Purgatory with — the other souls.” There’s a hitch in his voice, and Dean feels the punch of shame and guilt and rage for just a second, before he’s too distracted by Cas crouching down and — the dude fucking clicks all gleefully at the Leviathan, like he’s the nerdy prof from Jurassic Park. He’s so goddamn weird.

Dean’s trying to stop himself from smiling stupidly at the hunched ball of trenchcoat and messy hair, when it turns back to him. “His name is Huexkull,” Cas informs. “He knows where there’s clean water, he tells me.” He stands up again, and turns to Dean, almost conspiratorially. “Leviathan are tuned to find water, of course.”

The Leviathan — okay, Huexkull — looks at Dean and nods, and that’s fucking weird with no eyes and that terrifying mouth that probably hungers for every-friggin’-thing in the universe. He’ll follow it, sure, but Cas can stay in between him and the ugly motherfucker.

He wasn’t lying, though. They only walk — in some direction, north or south or east or west it doesn’t matter, everything’s the fucking same and if there’s a magical exit out of here they’re not any closer to finding it — a short distance. But it’s a tricky path overrun with funny gnarled roots that the Leviathan just slides right over like liquid. Lucky little shit.

“I could probably carry you, if you want,” Cas murmurs from in front of him, and Dean whips around to see the guy actually smirking, gliding over the gnarled knot of roots almost as easily as Huexkull does.

“Dude. Is that a joke?”

“It depends.”

Part of him likes Cas’ newfound sense of humor, the grins like everything is some private joke, the light in his eyes when he babbles on about the lessons he’s learned from observing the flight patterns of moths. Part of him is terrified. It’d be easier to deal with if it wasn’t just them.

“I miss Sam,” serves as his only response. It’s what he fills uneasy air with, anyway.

The lake stretches in front of them, then, almost as if it popped in out of nowhere. Aren’t they nowhere themselves, really? Is any of this real? Dean snorts. Probably better not to think about it.

“It’s safe,” Cas informs him. And oh, great, the Leviathan’s actually curled along his shoulders now like a friggin’ scarf. Awesome. Cas’ll probably be opening up an arts-‘n’-crafts booth to make the guy a friendship bracelet next.

Still, Dean cups his hands and drinks deeply. He doesn’t need the water here, but it’s still sweet and cold in his mouth, and it only occurs to him to be embarrassed by the frankly gross slurping noises he makes when he feels Cas practically hovering over him.

“Uh, thanks, Cas,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s sure he’s just imagining the way Cas stares right at his lips, shiny and wet. He’s hallucinated way worse, and he’s kind of delirious with the water still sliding down his throat. “Tell, uh, Hooey… whatever his name was. Tell him thanks too.”

“Huexkull. He went home.”

“Home?”

“Back into the water.”

Dean sputters around some of the water that’s still in his mouth, but keeps it down.

*

Sometimes Dean looks backwards and for just a second, it’s like the tree branches are fingers attached to greedy hands, coming out to get him and pull him into Purgatory, tear him apart until the human bits are just a lost shell and he’s all demon, or vampire, or the other dark shit he’s had inside him and got too close to becoming, some time or another —

And then he looks forward at the angel with Lucifer maybe still clattering around in his skull somewhere, walking on because there is nothing else they can do, and Dean breathes because he’s gotta keep it together for more than just himself.

“You’re doing fine,” Cas assures, and Dean hopes it’s just to break the silence and not his freaky angel ESP shit again. He promised Dean once that he couldn’t actually read minds, just sense louder thoughts, as he put it, but he told Dean if he was uncomfortable, he’d try and shut that off around him and Sam.

Dean smiles anyway. The drooping branches are still there, thick and bushy and in danger of falling off the tree, and that’s all they are right now. Branches on a tree, growing out of some God-forsaken dirt and ugly in the darkness of the landscape — but only branches.

*

“Haven’t you been here before?” Dean asks, one — day, night, it’s hard to put a point on these things here. It’s always dark, except when it’s not, but even then it doesn’t feel like day any more than it feels like night when the sky’s near black.

“Here?” Castiel slashes through a massive mess of weeds. Dude looks pretty badass for a nerd, even with grass strewn across the front of his coat. “No, we have not been in this particular part of the woods before.”

“I meant, like, Purgatory itself.”

Cas’ shoulders droop. Whether it’s because of tiredness or the question, Dean isn’t sure, and he’s not gonna ask. “I don’t know, Dean. I’ve never…” He trails off. “I don’t remember. I keep coming back to existence, after all.”

“Okay. I mean, maybe you can’t answer this question, but when angels die, do they end up here? Or do you guys go somewhere else?”

He purses his lips. “I would guess dead angels come to Purgatory, yes. Occasionally I sense an echo of others. It would be good to see some of them again, especially those who fell in the first war. Mostly, though, I believe it would be wise to avoid any other angels, if we do find them.”

Dean is sorry that Cas’ big crazy angel family is full of so many dickwads, but he’s just as sorry that the guy can probably never return to them. Even losing someone like Uriel turned Cas into a morose — well, more so than usual — motherfucker for a couple of days, giving Dean his weird heavenly orders as heaviness tugged what seemed like his entire body down. Sure, Cas was usually pretty dour, but his reaction had been beyond that. Dean’s still having a hard time reconciling that guy with Cas playing God and striking down thousands of his siblings just for disagreeing with him.

That wasn’t Cas, though, not really. This Cas isn’t the same Cas either, because the Cas that tried to save him from Alastair, then sat with him in that hospital all night, certainly didn’t prattle on the entire time about nail polish and how harmful it was toward the environment and isn’t that just terrible. He’s a lot closer now, though, and getting better.

Dean’s tempted to clap him on the shoulder and say hey, thanks, man, but that doesn’t begin to approach what would be enough; besides, it’d just stop them from getting any further through the tangled branches. So he joins Cas in slashing them away, clearing the weaving path for the two of them, and enjoys the shit out of it despite the burn in his muscles.

*

“I’m so fucking tired,” Dean sighs some time later, even though he really isn’t. This place leeches all desire from him, it feels like. Yeah, sure, he’d devour a pie if you put it in front of him, but the craving doesn’t stick in the back of his throat all hot and sweet.

Cas seems to consider this for a moment. “I suppose I could use rest as well.” He actually sits down on the ground, spreading his trenchcoat out neatly under him so the dirt doesn’t get on his scrubs, but still. Dude’s sitting right on the forest floor. His legs stick out in front, and Dean realizes he doesn’t see Cas sit a whole lot.

“Can’t sleep here.”

“There’s nowhere else to sleep.”

Dean snorts at that. “There isn’t a cave here or something?”

“There is no cave,” Cas confirms.

Dean spins around a couple of times, feeling stupid as he does it. There aren’t even any big trees that he could lean against, just tangled and sprawling overgrowth. He’s not even gonna get any sleep, not unless he wants a pillow of thorns. No thanks. “Nowhere to rest, then,” he grumbles.

“I was planning on resting right here,” Cas returns snippily, like he’s being the normal one by sitting all stock-still in the creepy dirt, and Dean is just an overly picky weirdo. “If you’d like to, you can join me.”

At that, Dean wonders if maybe he’s had it wrong this whole time and it was him who ended up in the loony bin, and he’s still stuck in there. “You — what?!” he sputters, intelligently, because seriously, what else is he supposed to say to that?

“You can join me here,” Cas repeats. “Or you can wander on ahead and I will find you later.” Sure, Cas is giving him the choice, but Dean looks down at the guy and his face is set in obvious disapproval of the latter option.

So, fine. Dean cringes as he does it, but he squats then sits down on the ground. It doesn’t feel any different than other dirt, really, and that’s the strangest thing of all. “Are you my pillow?” he jokes.

“If you want,” Cas replies, completely serious.

For a few moments, Dean just goggles. He’s not gonna sleep on the angel-shaped dude, no thanks. Like, he thought Cas knew him.

But as the seconds tick on, he doesn’t feel any less awkward just sitting next to the guy, and he realizes Cas might kind of have a point. Not like there are any better options, or anyone around that’s gonna judge him. Plus, alright, Cas can be relaxing on his own at times, which is funny for a dude who’s that uptight.

“Fine,” he sighs out, because he’s still got an image to protect, even though at this point he’s pretty sure it’s only to the goddamn trees. “Don’t tell anyone about this.”

He lets his head loll against Cas’ shoulder. The warmth of him sinks right through the leather jacket; Purgatory’s cold, cold enough that Dean can feel it in his gut and sunk into his bones, and Cas’ warmth zips up his spine and tingles in his forearms and thighs and back, a sensation that Dean just flat-out forgot about. For a minute, it puts him on edge, the newness of it, until he exhales and lets it bleed deep into him.

Cas is unnaturally stiff, of course, but it’s easy to relax against him. Dean’s slept on stone floors and rotting floorboards. After that, Cas’ shoulder is nothing. It might as well be thousand-count sheets. The trenchcoat even smells like clean laundry, probably from the hospital.

Sleep’s a lot fucking better than he remembers, even though he can’t remember his dreams. Maybe he should try and find some pie next, because that’ll be even better too.

When he wakes up, the first thing he recognizes is a heavy weight propped against his thigh. He grunts a little, and puts his own hand on it, until he recognizes the shape as a human arm with a thick wrist. Blinking awake, he sees Cas’ head looming right above his, tilted in interest.

As Dean feels the sleepiness seep away from him, he realizes Cas’ arm is lying across his leg, and he’s fallen back into the guy’s lap. He would be embarrassed, if he wasn’t so blissed out from sleep. Maybe he really did need a nap.

“How long was I out for?” he mumbles, rubbing the back of his hand against his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Cas responds. “Only a few minutes and a month at once. Time doesn’t move in any way you would be used to here.”

“Of course,” Dean grunts out.

Nothing about Purgatory is what he’s used to, other than long dark nights in sketchy-ass forests. It couldn’t give him the thrill of a hunt gone well that he gets even now, or his brother’s way-too-tall form by his side, or any sort of concept of time or space he’s used to. All it gave him was a long trek, without even the burn in his legs and the sweat clinging to his forehead that gave him the feeling that this all was real, and himself sprawled out in a dude-shaped angel’s lap.

Speaking of. He practically shoves himself away from Cas; drooping against the guy’s shoulder is one thing, but being able to feel his thigh against the back of his head is a whole different can of worms, one bigger than Purgatory and smaller than the muscle that throbs in his chest all at once. “Sorry about that,” he sputters out.

“Not a problem,” Cas responds, standing up as well. There isn’t even any dirt they need to brush off their legs. “Your head fell over in sleep, and I thought it wasn’t wise to move you.”

Dean just nods. “Thanks, Cas.”

They walk on, and Dean never asks to sleep again because the urge doesn’t settle into him. But for a long time — or maybe just a few minutes, he doesn’t even know any more — he feels Cas’ warmth against his back, almost like, instead of moving Dean when he fell over like a moron, Cas sliced his back open, wove it inside, and sewed him right back up in his sleep. It’s like his leather jacket came equipped with it, now.

He doesn’t deserve it. But he’s thankful anyway.

*

“Can I talk to you about something?”

A small smile passes over his face as Cas pauses almost mid-stride. “You may talk to me about whatever you want.”

“Just not a real pleasant topic.” Dean catches up to Cas, takes a deep breath, and forces himself to ask already. “Do you — do you still see… you know.” He swallows, hard. “All that Lucifer stuff? I mean, how bad is it?”

Cas’ expression changes so quickly, it’s like a switch was flipped. The smile’s gone, replaced by a glare that’s like a steel-toed boot to the gut — and Dean knows exactly what that feels like, thanks.

It’s moments like these that Dean remembers that despite the gigantic blue eyes and constant haze of stubble across his chin and cheeks, he’s not on this fun little Purgatory adventure with another human. Castiel’s an angel, and shitty and corrupt as it was, they’re not cute fat little babies with enormous fluffy wings. If Dean ever really saw him — Cas isn’t even a him, not really — he’d be destroyed by all his glory.

“Lucifer is gone,” he absolutely snaps. Dean gets a pretty distinctive whiff of the Cas that first dragged him out of Hell and scared the shit out of him by threatening to throw him right back. This is Castiel and he wants you to know it, not Cas.

With a fury that would be comical if the situation didn’t suck so bad, Cas practically darts away from Dean, stomping through the always-dead leaves and starts growling to himself in Enochian. Dean doesn’t know a damn word of the language, but he’s like ninety-eight percent sure Cas is using some words that’d make him blush.

Get pissed was usually the advice Dean barked at anyone in trouble, because that’s how Dean dealt with it. God knows he’s told Sammy that enough times. But as he stands there and watches Cas’ back move farther and farther off, he’s forced to recognize that the way he deals with shit just sucks out loud.

*

The next time Cas fixes Dean in the eye and grunts out, “I must go,” Dean thinks, Well, this time you’ve really fuckin’ stepped in it. Still, he nods, because like he can stop an angel.

Dean doesn’t make much progress through the woods. Everything looks the same, dead leaves and sticks he keeps tripping over like a moron. That’s the only time he’s glad Cas isn’t around, because, Jesus, how embarrassing. Not that Cas would judge him, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Sammy wouldn’t judge him, either, but he’d use that to tease him, mercilessly. And fuck it, Dean gives up for — today, or whatever this is. He finds a log not too far away, and sits on it, pressing his thumbs to his temples and not thinking of anything.

When he hears the rush of wings, he’s shocked. Truthfully, he believed Cas wouldn’t return, not after that question that clearly crossed some line. And okay, he’s lost all sense of time, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t even a day. Maybe not even twelve hours.

“Did you know cats all have unique nose prints?” Cas asks, sounding downright sunny. “They work as human fingerprints do.”

Dean shrugs. Nothing in Purgatory should be a relief, especially not any sign that the angel that’s your best hope of getting out of here is more than a little off. But he can’t help it, he’s grinning at Cas looming over him and babbling about cats. “Can’t say I did, Cas.”

He’s getting used to the feeling of Cas’ hips pressed against his own, even through the thick fabric of Dean’s jeans and Cas’ coat. Dude’s got no sense of personal space, and the little nudges remind him that hey, yeah, there is a friendly face here, so Dean doesn’t mind. Not that Dean could really complain if he did; he practically flopped into the guy’s lap that one time.

A long time passes before either of them speaks. “There was initial shock, but Lucifer went away early,” Castiel sighs. “He kept — he was trying to sing. All angels do what you would consider singing, it’s one of the things your greeting cards and Christmas celebrations get right, but his songs were…”

“What?”

Cas shakes his head. “They were strange songs, Dean. One of them involved telling a girl that the reason she was beautiful was because she didn’t know she was beautiful. I find that contradictory. If she was aware she was beautiful, would it then stop her from being beautiful?”

“Uh,” Dean says, intelligently, because he’s not sure he knows any more than Cas does what Lucifer was singing about.

“So I asked him,” Cas continues, almost proudly. “And at first he just kept singing; his songs got stranger and stranger. I had to ask, and I kept asking. Many millennia in the Cage must have changed Lucifer, but I believe he grew tired of my questioning, and left.”

Dean’s laughter sounds more like a choke, because seriously, he’s pretty sure Cas just told him a story about how he fought off hallucinations of the devil because he annoyed the shit out of him by asking far too many questions about pop music.

“That’s when the others came.” Dean doesn’t ask who. “Michael was there most of the time; I suppose Sam’s memories from the Cage absorbed parts of him too.” A frightening smile quirks up the corner of Cas’ lips. “Even as head of the garrison, I hadn’t directly communicated with Michael in millennia; I forgot how merciless my oldest brother could be.”

His lip curls up, his shoulders hunch, and Dean — oh fuck it, he lets himself clap a hand over Cas’ back. It’s the smallest amount of comfort he’s got left. Cas is all shimmering warmth even through the layers of thick clothes, and Dean physically feels it up to his elbow, like plunging his arm into a sink full of warm water in the wintertime. Odd, but comforting to him too.

“Guy didn’t even bother to write you a thank-you note after — you know — me?” Dean sputters out — smooth — because after all, Michael was supposed to ride his ass until the end of time. You’d think he’d appreciate the rescue mission to the Pit, and all.

Cas only shakes his head. Ouch. “There were many other angels that appeared to me in my hallucinations, some I knew, some I didn’t. All gone. Many due to my actions.” For all that Cas looked like an archangel full of wrath before, he looks too human now. “It’s why I have little desire to see most of my siblings again. I don’t doubt they truly meant what they said.”

“It wasn’t real, Cas.” That’s all he can come up with, pathetic as it sounds. Not that Dean wants to see too many of Cas’ megadouche brothers and sisters again either, but he deserves none of this shit.

Dean remembers the ridiculous BAMF that strode into the barn, the one who threatened throwing him back into Hell without thinking twice, and as much as Dean appreciates Cas’ — it’s weird to call it friendship, that doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’ll do — he feels awful watching Cas twist himself into a too-thin string of self-loathing, no better than the rest of the other poor suckers on Earth. Cas was making himself family, a Winchester, in more ways than one.

When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost, Hester told him, and Dean wanted to hate her, but he mostly just agreed. Ninety percent crap, and he slogged too much of it over everyone else, too.

*

“Do you ever think about leaving?” Because Dean can’t leave well enough alone, like a wiggly tooth he’s just gotta poke his tongue at.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Leaving. Like, could you zap on out of here? I mean, you’re an angel. Where do you go when you disappear, anyway?”

Cas considers this question. “To scout ahead,” he responds, flatly at first like it’s so obvious. “And yes, I suspect I could leave Purgatory.” Hope and terror alike bubble inside Dean, threatening to come up through his throat. He’s grateful when Cas presses on. “But Dean, I’m half-fallen. My powers are not what they were.” There’s something terrifying in Cas’ breezy admission of that, like how Cas only smiled when they told him they needed the blood of a fallen angel.

“So…” Dean talks too much in Purgatory, it seems like. He didn’t think he’d ever be like that, but if he doesn’t talk, sometimes the place just starts hissing to him, filling the silence like dark water pouring into an empty cup.

“I couldn’t take you with me, not with my powers partially gone,” Cas says, simply. “So I’m not going to leave.”

Cas looks the way he did outside the Impala, when Dean asked him what? not so much to get an answer, but because he couldn’t understand why an angel would look at him the way Cas did, like Cas had seen pink bursts of coral in the ocean and the cold flare of every star coming into existence alike, he’d seen the whole fucking universe, but he hadn’t ever seen anything like Dean. He never could.

Here, Dean just nods. “Okay,” he responds, trying not to have his mouth curve up in too obvious a smile, even as his brain lashes out that there’s no way in fuck he deserves this. It’s harder than he thought with Cas’ eyes gone soft and so intent on him at once, and he’s pretty sure he fails, but he doesn’t even care.

*

“How you doin’?” Dean asks at one point, because the chattering’s too loud in his ears and because there was never time to ask on Earth. There was always some looming goddamn apocalypse, or Cas would start babbling about bees again.

Cas greets him with a look that’s both confused and grateful, somehow. “I’m fine,” he responds, the same expression on his face. It’s like he’s testing it out, unsure of what the correct response is to someone asking how are you.

They all probably needed to be hugged a lot more as kids.

“That’s good,” Dean responds, and this is totally the chat of two guys who wouldn’t know small talk unless it came up to them wearing claws and nasty teeth. And then they’d just shoot (or smite, in Cas’ case) it, anyway. “Is, uh. How’s Jimmy doing?” Where the hell did that question come from? It’s just Dean’s luck to get stuck in Purgatory with the one thing that wouldn’t be able to discuss crappy late-night movies or music or any of the important stuff like that.

“Jimmy is gone,” Cas tells him, with a hard blink, his nose lightly wrinkled up. Like he’d understand small talk any better. “Ever since Lucifer destroyed me at Stull and I was restored to this vessel, it has been mine alone.”

“Oh.” That’s all Dean can get out, right now. Something’s changed, though he’s not sure what. It’s not like he never thought about Jimmy Novak, that poor sucker latched to a comet in his own words, and holding on for dear life. Or worse, when Cas played God, Jimmy stuffed deep down by every other monster soul and screaming —

He really doesn’t like to think about that shit.

“He’s in Heaven. I checked on him.” Cas nods, gravely. “It’s what he deserves, I believe. Heaven has much improved since the last time you were there.” It should probably bother Dean more that he’s got the kinda life where he’s got frequent flyer miles to Heaven. “After my powers were restored, I made sure of that.”

A while passes, but eventually, Dean gets out a “Yeah,” because that’s about all he can say. Funny, he knows every detail of Jimmy’s face, saw Castiel take his form even in Purgatory and Heaven where the angel should’ve been a screaming Chrysler-sized beam of death light or whatever, but he doesn’t know the guy at all. His face, his every expression, stopped being his own a long time ago.

Another person gone, without even a grave to mark his passing. His wife and kid probably didn’t even know. Hunting used to give Dean the thrill of satisfaction, back when he could feel the way his eyes would light up when he told Sammy all about saving people, hunting things. The lines have gotten too blurred, and too many people who mattered — hell, even those who didn’t, not to him anyway — are gone. Dean sucks at even faking the smile.

“Not everything is your fault, Dean,” Cas tells him, and Dean flinches when Cas’ fingers curl around his elbow. Because even as he’s saying it, the clothes from the hospital are still hanging off Cas, all baggy and wrong. The motion reminds him too much of the way Jo palmed his cheek even under Osiris’ control, and Dean couldn’t stand leaning forward or away. In the end, though, just about everything feels like it.

*

Sometimes, he likes to pretend he smells hot cherry pie in the air, or the engine grease and wax that’d stick to him when he was working on or buffing the Impala. But the Purgatory air is too crisp, its coldness buried too deep inside his skin. There’s no pie, no Impala, and no Sammy.

There’s just Cas, Cas and his I’ll go with you, and Dean did nothing to deserve that but he’s got the angel’s hand on his back urging him on anyway.

Purgatory starts going blurry, and Dean keeps walking because he has to. Cas’ hand feels hot and real, like it could burn a new scar into his skin.

*

Nothing in Purgatory was what Dean would’ve been expecting, if he’d ever thought about it, but it’s still really weird when they find themselves on the edge of a goddamn cliff leading to — nowhere. One second they’re surrounded by most of the same underbrush, and the next, they’ve emerged from it. Only a skinny little piece of brown rocky outcropping separates them from nothing but dark beyond that.

“Whoah,” Dean gasps, feeling Cas’ fingers brush against his wrist as a caution to pull him back. “This looks — uh. Not good?”

“Probably not,” Cas agrees, as they both look out at the darkness, sinking to wait for them and floating up to meet them at once. Nothing good, yeah. “We should — going back into the forest is likely our best option.”

“Right.” But Dean doesn’t move. It’s something different, at least, and deep down Dean really, really doesn’t want to know what would happen if he fell off this cliff, but the temptation to just let that fall happen to him swells scary huge inside him.

Cas’ fingers are back against his wrist. Dean suspects Castiel is letting himself sense his silly human feelings, the deep maw inside him, and he’s trying to stop himself from diving into them. Cas is real and solid and always different, never what Dean expects.

The guy’s a relief. That’s why Dean tangles his fingers in Castiel’s, like he could serve as an anchor. This is solid, and it’s real. Dean has never asked him about pulling him out of Hell and never will, it’s not something he wants to remember, but he wonders if it was like this. Probably not. There had to have been more white-knuckling and finger-straining, from either one of them. Maybe both.

They stand like that for longer than Dean would ever admit, even though there’s the possibility it could only be a couple of seconds. It’s because at least this is something new, even if it’s terrifying, and part of Dean is expecting Sammy to crack open all that darkness and pull them both through. Part of him is expecting that same darkness to just swallow them all up, too, because everything tends to go to shit for him.

“Are we Thelma and Louise now?” Castiel asks after a while, examining their laced fingers.

Dean blinks. “That a — did you just drop a movie reference, Cas?” He’s seen and been through a lot of weird shit in Purgatory so far, but honestly, that might take the cake.

Cas blinks back, harder. “You were the one who suggested it, once.”

He can’t remember the conversation. It was probably in the days before things got so complicated, way back when — and okay, you know your life’s pretty fucked up when you look at the fucking Apocalypse as a simpler time. But they used to talk a lot, then. Sure, the conversations were weird; Cas merely stared at him when Dean made references to whatever shitty B-movie was on late night TV that night, or Cas tried to tell Dean stories from the creation of Earth only to get distracted by a vending machine. Company’s company, though.

(Dean’s still kind of mad he had to pay for the vending machine in that hotel in Delaware just because Cas kicked a hole in it when he found out they were all out of Raisinets. Totally Cas’ fault, not his. And who the fuck ruins a vending machine over Raisinets? Cas is a goddamn weirdo.)

It’s possible Thelma and Louise came up some time, anyway, is the point. Dean does love him some badass chicks, especially if they’re hot. And Brad Pitt circa 1990 was — okay, he wasn’t awful to look at, either. What?

Still. Purgatory is dark and shifting below and behind, and it’s just the two of them, hanging out on some rocky outcropping. They’re standing closer to each other than even usual, and Dean wasn’t expecting Cas’ palm against his to feel like what happens when you get too close to a light bulb that’s just been switched on, but it’s sort of comforting in the constant misty chill of Purgatory. Not that he’s saying that out loud, thank you.

“Yeah, that’s us,” Dean says, at last, and he’s actually smiling. They’re just gonna hold hands and sail off this cliff together, because it’s what they’ve been doing for a while now.

*

“Sometimes I saw you,” Cas says. His gaze is directed toward the ground, like he was going to launch into a rather exuberant discussion of topsoil, but he flicks it back to Dean now.

Dean looks back, confused. “Where?”

“After Lucifer went away. You, along with the other angels.” Oh, shit. Cas pauses. “You were different, though.”

Something weird and dark bubbles up in Dean at that. It’s… something, that Cas was seeing all the angels he knew for millions of years, and then his stupid human ass too. “Different how?”

Cas’ eyes are so sharp. “Lucifer was even crueler wearing your visage.” Dean doesn’t urge him to go on, because those words make his chest tighten and he can’t even begin to imagine what the angel’s thinking of, but Cas does anyway. “My brothers and sisters went away, and you’d come in, but only to tell me it had all been a show for Sam, and if I couldn’t help you then you hoped my Grace would rot in the hospital, without even Meg staying behind. You told me you’d hand me over to Crowley when it was convenient —”

“Cas.” Dean didn’t believe in much of anything; he didn’t believe in God, even after one of his kids had wormed his way into his life. But he kept on believing in Castiel while the angel was gone, that it wouldn’t take much more than Dean rounding a corner in one of the cities they were in on some stupid case and Cas would be right there, again. When Dean went through every scenario in his head, well, he’d be lying if one of them wasn’t punching the guy square in the jaw and hoping no angel mojo had stuck around, and then just walking the fuck away. It couldn’t begin to do a millionth of what Cas had done to Sam, but maybe —

But Dean knew that would never really happen. Anyone else and they probably wouldn’t have gotten a second thought, but Cas was different. He was close enough to be family, sure, but there wasn’t all that destiny sewn into their relationship. Cas saved him from Hell, but there was no obligation there. Dean couldn’t put words to it, and didn’t want to. “I — c’mon. You know that’s not true.”

“It may not have been you, but it’s true, Dean. It’s what I deserved.” Most of the time, Cas shows hardly any ill effects from the fact that Satan was camping out in his gourd for like a month and a half, and keeping him comatose on top of that. Like Dean’s said a few times, the guy was tough for a mega-nerd. Every now and then, though, there’s this flash of hurt in Cas’ eyes that Dean never saw before. “I broke the world, Dean. I could have destroyed all of it.”

“And you saved it, Cas. You helped, and it’s all anyone could ask for. All I could ask for.”

Funnily enough, it’s the latter that eases some of the visible tension out of Cas’ form. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on there, it could be gone by now —”

“It’s not, okay?” Dean just — he knows he’d be able to sense it if the Earth was gone, if Sam was gone. Surely he would have just fallen forward into the dirt and no amount of prodding or angel mojo from Cas would get him to move, ever again. “You know that. You do.” He slides his fingers over Cas’ wrist, not grabbing, just there to serve as a reassurance. He’s here, too, and he continues even with the look of surprise in Cas’ eyes.

“Look, Cas, you messed up, and it hurt, but I meant it when I said you were doing the best you could do at the time. I fucked up too!” Dean bellows. And there, it’s out there. “We all fucked up. Free will sucks sometimes, man! I didn’t help out —”

“You offered —”

“Not like I had a plan, Cas! There was another apocalypse hanging over our heads. I mean, your plan — Crowley of all people, I don’t get why, you could’ve come to — your plan sucked, okay, but it was a plan. You’re the reason we’re here, and not blinked out of friggin’ eternity. You stopped Raphael.”

Cas is quiet for a few minutes, as if considering this. “But I hurt you,” he continues, eventually. “I hurt Sam so badly.”

“You took on what could’ve been eternal torture for Sam to fix it, okay? He forgave you too. It’s —” He sputters over what to say. It’s not okay, it’s not water under the bridge. It was awful, but it’s forgiven. Dean got mad at Cas because he couldn’t stay mad at Cas, but it is what it is. “You did everything you could, Cas, and you saved him, too.” At the end of the day, at the end of what might’ve been his life on Earth, that’s what matters.

Now, Cas looks softer somehow, lighter around his eyes. He gets that look, too, since he left the hospital, and it makes him look creepily human sometimes. “When you said you forgave me, did you —”

“I meant it, Cas. I don’t forgive just anyone, and —” If you hurt my brother, I’ll kill you, I swear, Dean said, once, and at the time it nearly stuck in his throat with how much he meant it, but he also has the memory of Castiel telling him you’re different. And well, shit with him and Castiel has never been easy to figure out, exactly.

“I know.” Cas’ tone is hopeful and relieved at once, and it works like a very precise hammer set to chip away at something deep and rusted over inside Dean.

He sputters words out, so he doesn’t have to face that. “I — look. Not to go all friggin’ Britney Spears on you here, but my life kinda sucked without you.”

“That song’s by Kelly Clarkson.” Cas’ eyes are still soft, but he frowns deeply. “They are very different.”

Okay, what the fuck. Dean is gonna have to make sure there aren’t any other fun leftover traces of Lucifer inside that angel’s head later. “Uh, okay,” he sputters out. “I mean — Bobby dying, and Sam going crazy, that was all fucking awful, but — it all sucked before that.”

God knows how long ago it was at this point in Earth time, but Dean remembers what he told Castiel when they stood by the Impala. He rolls through the words in his head sometimes, and cringes because if Dean said them to anyone else, those words would’ve come off badly. They wouldn’t have sounded like anything but you’re my last resort.

It wasn’t that. It was the closest Dean’ll ever come to saying to anyone not related to him that, at the end of the world, he needs Cas there too. That he wants Cas there, even. Cas knew he meant that, too, and didn’t try to draw it out of him, just smiled back softly. Dean saw Cas snap the arm of one of his brother’s vessels before absolutely ramming the guy with an angel blade, and he saw his lips tilt up and eyes look down in outright shy gratitude.

Dean feels terrible for Jimmy Novak; even though he’s in Heaven now, fuck only knows what he might have seen and felt his body do. Being comatose most of the time while Cas was dragging his soul around was the best-case scenario for the guy.

But even though Castiel was literally inside Jimmy, sinking under his skin and putting his nerves alight, Dean’s sure Cas never dug into Jimmy the way he’s dug into him. He can’t have knocked Jimmy as off-center the way he’s done to Dean; Cas punches this feeling into him like Dean ran a marathon with a hellhound at his heels and sank into a big comfy chair, the type he never owned, at once. It can’t be.

“I always felt very lonely as Emmanuel,” Cas admits. “I appreciated Daphne’s company, and the gratitude of the people I helped, but something was missing.”

“Yeah, like, a couple of millennia worth of memories,” Dean snorts.

The sheer enormity of everything that’s Castiel blazes in his eyes, meeting Dean’s. No human should be expected to accept that. “I could remember… companionship,” Cas says, at last, and Dean’s happy that his voice interrupts the silence. “Some of it was familial. Some of it wasn’t.”

At Cas’ words, Dean wants to protest. Companionship isn’t the right term for what they are, after all. Friendship doesn’t say enough.

Cas is just — a supernatural thing that found his way into his life, when they were supposed to be nothing but a lowly foot soldier and an archangel’s vessel in Heaven and Hell’s ultimate, way-out-of-proportion dick-measuring contest, and Cas stayed there. Dean let him stay there. There was hurt, and pain, and betrayal behind whatever they were now, like a wound finally scabbing over, but it just made Castiel more like — family, he wants to say, and he’d told Cas he was like a brother to him, but family wasn’t the word for what they are, either.

All Dean knows is, his life is better with Cas in it, even when the guy’s pretty much the definition of a square peg in a round hole. Simple as that, maybe.

Hey, maybe there’s a word for it in Enochian. Dean smiles, and turns to ask, but Cas is gone.

“Cas?” Dean questions the darkness, and it’s reminding him too much of when he first got here and his heart wouldn’t stop thudding a tattoo he could feel through his teeth, the beat was so heavy. He turns around, and there’s no Cas anywhere to be seen, and it’s getting darker —

“Cas, please,” he asks the ink of the almost constant night here. He can’t even raise his voice to yell it; he’s shaking.

That’s when the ice slices into him, a sharp and bitter chill that grips his upper arms. A funny sensation burrows into his chest, spreading that cold through his whole upper body. He tries to scream, or thrash his legs to get out, but he stays silent and immobile except for the twitch of his hands. Whatever it is steals him away. His gut swoops, and this wouldn’t be so bad if it’d just take him, if he couldn’t feel it any more —

Warmth shoots through him once again, suddenly. He lands heavy on his back on a hard floor that he’s pretty sure isn’t even wood, but stone. All the breath is punched out of him, with no warning.

Just when he’s able to breathe again, as he’s about to get out a what the hell or absolutely fucking scream, he’s pulled up against the very broad shoulder of his gigantic little brother and practically suffocated by the guy’s hug.

*

Dean takes a mental inventory of the situation. Sam is currently hugging the life out of him, and Dean should probably tell him to stop because God knows what kind of condition his own body’s in, but all he can do is wind his arms back because at least they’re working and more importantly, it’s Sammy and the guy’s alive. Cas is already standing up, hands buried in his coat pockets, a benevolent smile across his face. A couple of people Dean thinks he actually sorta half-recognizes but can’t place right now are standing around, only, wait —

“Tessa?!” he almost yells, even though Sam’s still mostly cradling him. “Shit, are we all —”

“No.” She shakes her head, quickly. “I helped get you back, but I’m busy enough that I have to go now.” Well, that’s reassuring, that a reaper’s almost too busy to help anyone out. “Welcome back, Dean. Purgatory again, really? No one’s that lucky. Try not to run into me any time soon.”

“Will do,” he murmurs back, mostly stunned. Purgatory again? He doesn’t have time to think about that, though, because his mind’s still whirring with everything else.

Sam — oh, God, it’s really Sam, no matter how much time has passed he’s alive and he’s maybe a little older and thank God the dork got a haircut, but it’s Sam — turns, not letting his hand move off Dean’s back, and smiles at Tessa. “Thanks for having a soft spot for my brother.”

She only nods. “I’d destroy that summoning material if I were you. My boss might come poking around otherwise. And don’t think that soft spot means you’re getting out of anything if it’s your time.”

And she’s gone, practically gliding out the door of the — okay, they’re in a cabin, Dean would guess. The little crowd inside gets the fuck out of her way.

There are a few beats of silence. It’s not awkward, though, it’s anything but that. It’s like when Dean’s old crappy tapes would be skipping while they were in the Impala together, and he’d grunt and smack at the dashboard with the meat of his hand. Sam would just laugh, even if Dean didn’t actually say anything. “Sammy,” he manages to say at last, voice choked up in his throat and dry at once. “Sam, you got us out —”

“I had to.” And geez, Dean’s voice sounded wrecked, sure, but he sounded sweet as Page doing “Stairway to Heaven” when you compare him to Sam. Sam’s eyes are all watery, too, the dweeb. “I wasn’t gonna leave you there — you too, Cas —”

“It’s appreciated,” Cas chimes in, all calm like Sam told them he’d be running down to the grocery store for milk. Dean hasn’t smiled this wide in — ever, he can feel it tugging down his ears and pulling his forehead taut, it hurts and it’s good.

“And it wasn’t just me. Everyone helped me get the supplies to summon something like Tessa, who could get you out… and oh, crap, Claire was really important, you remember her?”

A college-age blonde girl wearing a red zip-up hoodie and worn jeans waves at them just once, stiff and precise. It’s not exactly friendly. Dean nods and swallows hard, because he remembers the Novaks, of course, but Claire was just a kid back then. She didn’t have the weathered look of a hunter, not like she does now. That glare’s directed at Castiel, to boot. Dean doesn’t blame her, but oh, that’s just great.

If Dean knows Sam, and he really really does, Sam is probably not actually oblivious to the tension between Claire and the angel currently wearing a suit that’s an identical twin to her dad; he’s just too happy to do anything but barrel on with his explanation. “Yeah, angels and their vessels have, like, a connection apparently?”

“Thanks for that, actually,” Claire chimes in. Her eyes are still too serious, but Dean can tell she means what she’s saying. “I was kind of — losing it — when I started to get flashes of Purgatory, and that was what led me here.” She shrugs. “Not too many safe places left, after all.”

Dean really, really wants to be unabashedly happy about being back on Earth again, but the words Claire uses are, well, worrying to say the least. “Losing it? Safe places?” He whirls around to Sam. “What — how long have I been gone?” His eyes flick to Castiel, to see if he has any idea, but he’s only looking at Dean. “What is here? Is there something I should know about?”

The ecstatic look on Sam’s face darkens. Fuck. It’s never that easy. “It’s been maybe two and a half years? It’s December 2014, and we’re all holed up in this place called Camp Chitaqua —”

At that, Dean just goes stiff. He never told Sam too many details about Zachariah’s little fucked-up guided tour in the future — the past, by now, and this is gonna hurt his brain if he thinks about it for too long — but this brings it all roaring back. It’s a momentary shock, though, because Sam is here and Cas isn’t strung-out and hopeless. It might be 2014, and they might all be stuck in a shitty world in Camp Chitaqua, but they can make it better this time. Sam looks older, but not beaten yet.

“What? Risa gave it that name, back in the beginning, she’s one of the other people who runs the camp. You’ll probably like her, Dean —”

Risa? Yeah, he already knows that he likes her, if the alternate 2014 was any indication. Dean’s gonna need one hell of an update.

*

It takes Sam a while to clear everyone out and explain.

Dick Roman — or, the head Leviathan wearing Dick Roman, whatever — was dead, but he’d left most of his horde behind. Without their leader, they could be killed now, and Dean lets one eyebrow raise up as if controlled by a string when Sam shows him the group of bright neon Super Soakers lined up neatly against one of the walls of the cabin. “Kinda badass,” Dean has to admit when Sam shows him the machetes, though. A lot of them are splattered with black blood.

Thing is, Roman might be gone, and the Leviathan scattered and unable to pull off the full-on genocide, but the corn syrup plan worked way too well. Too much of America is as good as wiped out. “Corn syrup zombies everywhere,” in Sam’s words, even if somewhere deep down there’s a little prickle of excitement inside him. Like, if they weren’t trying to fight the motherfuckers, he’d wanna study ‘em. Nerd.

“Sarah took these pictures, and this was a while ago,” Sam says, grimly now, shoving a photo album over. Almost 2015, and they’re still using these giant clunky photo albums, the edges curling and going yellow. “She likes Polaroids, I guess. Old-fashioned over some things.”

“Sarah?”

Sam totally brightens up at that, and if the moment wasn’t so serious, Dean would totally roll out the epic teasing ‘cuz Sammy likes a girl. “Sarah Blake, remember? Ran into her during that haunted painting case all those years ago.”

Funny enough, Dean does remember it, probably because he very pointedly recalls telling Sam to marry that girl. “Oh yeah,” he says, letting a little grin dare to flicker across his face.

It fades when he sees the pictures, though. Dean doesn’t even recognize some of the figures in the shots as human, at first. They’re bloated lumps of skin and ripped and ill-fitting clothing, flopped on their backs across lawns that are overgrown and choked with weeds and dead leaves. “Shit,” is all he can murmur.

“The towns are awful,” Sam explains, and it’s only because Dean knows him so well — they might’ve been separated for years, but he’s always going to know Sam better than anyone else, it’s sunk into his blood and woven into his DNA — that he notices the half-tremble in Sam’s otherwise hard tone. “You need to get your bearings back before I take you there or anything like that.”

“Anyone else there that we know?”

“Bunch of people, actually. Sarah, obviously, and you saw Claire already. Her mom’s, um, pretty gone, though. Remember Tamara, Bobby’s old friend from the case with the Seven Deadly Sins? Her, too. Jody Mills is in charge of the parts of camp that I’m not, I guess.” Dean has to smile at that; he always liked her. “Gabby cloaks us and when she’s got time she hacks all the major sites to try and warn people, but in most cases it’s already too late.”

“Gabby?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sam offers up an apologetic half-smile. “Back when you met her, she was still going by Charlie.”

“I thought she was getting away and saving her own ass. Not that I blame her.”

Sam shakes his head. “She did, for a while. But if you’re out there, and you’re not a corn syrup zombie, you either join up with the network somehow or — you’re not free for very long. Kevin made it out, too.”

“Gotta be useful to have a psychic, right?”

Sam shrugs, and God Dean had forgotten about the stupidest things he did, like the exaggerated flex of his lips when he did that. Even though he’s been dumped right back into a total shithole, gratitude twists through him. “He’s a good kid, but his psychic abilities are kinda limited. Not like he can tell us who’s gonna win in the end or anything, or if we’re all ultimately, you know, doomed.”

“Not that anyone telling you that you were doomed has stopped you in the past,” Cas chimes in, wryly.

“Cas,” Sam greets, smiling a little uneasily. “How are you? Thanks for uh, looking after Dean.”

“Can look after myself,” Dean mumbles under his breath.

Cas appears to consider this question. “I’m well,” he comes up with, eventually. “It was not an issue. Dean cared for me, too.”

Dean’s mouth is contorting itself into a weird shape trying to figure out how to respond to that, when he hears the door open and a female voice purrs, “Well isn’t that just precious. My two favorite merry wanderers!”

Dean looks up. He’s never seen this chick before, young and short with a thin face, long nose, and sharp haircut, but he sure as hell knows that wicked grin on her face and her tone. “Meg?” he asks.

“Got worried I wouldn’t see you again, Dean,” she trills, and it’s disturbing as Hell — ha, bad word choice — that she can look so different now, but have the exact same stride and quirk to her lips. “I’d gotten disturbingly attached.”

“What happened to your old body? Who the hell are you possessing now?”

She pouts. “I think hello is how people normally greet old friends. I’ll give you a free pass because it’s been a while. But while you and Clarence over there were busy playing hero and off whacking Dick, I got caught by Crowley’s men. Smoking out was the only way I escaped. Don’t worry, Allie over here was pretty much entirely doped up on corn syrup by the time I found her. Ask your brother if you doubt me.”

The whole situation reminds Dean way too much of Ruby, which makes his stomach roll even though there’s just about nothing in it, but Sam nods.

“I’m not even fighting here most of the time,” she adds. “Got my own battles in Hell to deal with. There’s a reason Crowley’s found sweet little Canada much harder to take over than he ever thought it would be.” She smirks at Dean like she’s awaiting his judgment, not that Meg of all people would give a shit what he thinks.

“God, you’re like a cockroach,” is all Dean says in return.

Meg folds her arms as her eyebrows go way up. “Real rich coming from you, Dean. At least I don’t need cute little seraphs to lend me a hand and haul me up every time I fall down. Speaking of.”

Dean’s stomach absolutely does not roll harder when Meg turns to Cas and actually beams. Her last vessel was all soft curves; this one is lean and hard, angular in her shoulders and elbows. It doesn’t make Dean feel any better.

“Heya, Cas! Bet you were lonely.”

“Dean is excellent company,” Cas responds, sounding bewildered, and if Dean has to smother a smile with the back of his hand he hopes no one notices. Ha. “I did miss my favorite lovely caretaker.” The smile absolutely does not drop off his face like someone heaved a boulder from the top of a mountain. “Some would find it funny, that I came to care for such an abomination.”

Meg glances over at Dean, pointedly. “I’d think you’d be better at your dirty talk by now, Castiel.”

“Excuse me?” At Dean’s words, Sam shuffles on his feet. Like he doesn’t want to interfere with any of this, but he will if it starts getting out of hand and all this verbal headbutting turns a bit more literal.

That doesn’t happen, though. All that does is the glance Meg is shooting Dean turns into her usual smirk. “Oh, what happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory? I get it.”

“I don’t —”

“Okay,” Sam interrupts. “Dean, I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at the idea of working with Meg, either —”

“Oh that’s the thanks I get, Sam —”

“But she’s been really, really helpful all these years.”

“Let him keep my old girlfriend’s knife and everything,” Meg adds. Old girlfriend’s — knife — and Dean has to be making an interesting face as he parses out that turn of phrase, because she snaps, “Oh, don’t look so shocked.”

Meg seems wearier than she ever did before, when that obnoxious little smile of hers was constantly spread out over her face. It’s still there, it’s just a tired smile now. And yet the kind of hostility that constantly crackled between Sam and Meg is gone. Even after all that shit with the possession years ago, Sam seems okay with her here. Dean’s just back from Purgatory; this is a lot of shit to get used to. “When’d you get so…”

“What, nice?” She spits the word out like someone stuffed rainbows and love down her throat.

Dean snorts out loud at that. “No,” he grunts. “Long-suffering. Yeah, that’s the word.”

Meg snorts right back at him. “Dean, I know you were having a good time making the next great homoerotic buddy comedy over in some other dimension —” What? Dean thinks, and Sam totally bites his lip like he’s trying not to laugh at that, the little bitch — “But for the last three years, I’ve been working to try and save your world in between fun little battles with demons I used to call my family, when I don’t even like it all that much. And, oh yeah, every day I get to hear it from people, even people I like, that they’d murder my ass in any other situation. Between Leviathans and humans, don’t get me wrong, I chose the lesser of two evils, but you guys are pretty shitty, too. At the best of times, I’m a demon. Not Miss Congeniality.”

She brushes off the front of her jeans, and more or less marches away. The door rattles on its hinges when she slams it. Okay. Point taken.

Dean’s pretty sure there was a time when he was outright terrified of Meg. Like, she sicced hellhounds on him and laughed about it. Now he’s pretty sure the only thing he fears from her at the moment is getting snarked to death. Maybe teased.

Times change. Angels fall. Demons rise up from the earth to help save humanity. Dean? He’s still here, or rather here again, and still pretty unsure of what the fuck he’s doing.

“Welcome home, guys,” Sam offers, weakly.

*

“It’s good to be here again,” Cas tells him, and ever since Lucifer crawled into his brain and got expelled through the power of too many questions about obnoxious pop music, at least he’s gotten better at smiling like a normal person. Not that Cas is in any way normal, or a person.

Dean whirls his head toward Cas. “You’re gonna stay?”

“Of course.” His facial expression doesn’t even change, like he doesn’t realize how gigantic, how terrifying, those words are. Dean has to practically wrench his gaze away.

Sam says there are some open cabins — “however many you guys need,” he adds, looking kind of sheepish, and Dean just wrinkles his brow at him and says two because, obviously — but they end up crashing at Sam’s because he’s got a spare cot.

“I can put up a curtain or something if you want,” Sam offers, but Dean shakes his head.

“Don’t need it. You okay, Cas?”

He nods. “I’m fine. I’ll rest here overnight, as well.”

Dean pauses at that. “You don’t need to sleep, do you? I mean, you’re still an angel —”

“Yes, Dean, I am still an angel,” Cas grumbles, with an expression on his face that suggests he might immediately take up smiting just to prove it. “But occasionally it’s good to… rest.”

“Occasionally, like…”

“Like when we’ve just escaped from Purgatory after several years there, Earth time, and I am not planning to return to Heaven.” And, you know, if not for the ever-present whip-crack of power in the air whenever Cas is around, Dean would be pretty sure Cas isn’t actually an angel any more, because otherwise he’d be a steaming pile of ash on the ground at Cas’ tone alone. “That’s a rather opportune time, I would think.”

Sam actually gets out half a laugh before he quickly — wisely — smothers it, the bitch. “Welcome back, Cas.”

If Sam and Dean’s beds are too close together, if Dean could roll over to the edge of the cot and stretch his arm out and touch Sam’s, Dean isn’t gonna complain. He keeps waking up a few times in the middle of the night and God, his eyes have to readjust to the darkness, they’re just not used to it, but Sam’s still there and so is the pillow against Dean’s own head.

Dean doesn’t know what time he wakes up for good, or how long he slept, but he thinks it’s early and it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours. The sky’s still dark, at least. In Sammy’s too-big pajama pants, drawstring cinched tight, and a t-shirt, he heads on outside.

It’s not quite sunrise, but Dean’s seen enough strange hours of the night to know the sky’s gonna start turning over to pink and gold sometime soon. He breathes out as he sits down, on the solid, real rock of the steps of the cabin; it’s cold under his ass, and when he breathes out he can see his breath, and he’s absolutely loving it. The sky is going to change.

Before it does, there’s a nudge at his elbow, and Cas is sitting next to him. He’s shed the coat for now, wearing his still-pristine scrubs under the olive overshirt Dean had pulled off and balled into a corner of Sam’s cabin. Dean is pretty sure he’s gonna burn all the shit he had with him in Purgatory, minus the fancy-ass knife, and the leather jacket that Cas hands over to him wordlessly.

“Sleeping’s weird right now, man,” Dean admits, not facing Cas as he shrugs into the jacket. “Time is weird.”

“I sympathize.”

They don’t say anything else, just shiver together and watch the sunrise. The cold of the morning is a welcome cold, even if it means another day out trying to kill evil black slime monsters and save the world. When Sam comes out, already in fatigues, he just nods at them, and the sky, going a brilliant orange.

The only color in Purgatory was all that red, eyes and the occasional patch of blood-soaked dirt. Everything else faded to black and white after a while, with a flash of tan. Dean wonders if he’s breathing too hard, because it feels like he’s never going to be able to take in anything like this again.

*

For a while, Dean’s gigantic bitch of a brother practically locks them in the cabin while he runs off on missions. “Minor missions, right?!” Dean barks, every time, because no way he just came back to watch some bastard Leviathan, or one of the demons that doesn’t listen to Meg, find Sammy and — and he forces the images out of his head, because he has to or he’ll fucking glue himself to Sam when he goes out there —

“Yes, Dean.” He’s gonna smack Sam for that eye-roll later.

It turns out Cas didn’t lose his love for board games, and Sam somehow got a whole shelf of ‘em. Dean shoves Sorry! in the back because he’s not quite ready for that; he pulls out Monopoly instead, grinning. “Did they have this, at…” He doesn’t finish his question by saying the hospital.

“No.” Cas looks at the box in his hands with open curiosity, before he returns his gaze to Dean’s face. When Dean puts the box on the table in front of him and opens it up, Cas grabs the money in his fists, crumples it up and lets it fall out onto the table. “I don’t understand this game.”

Dean rolls his eyes, though he tries to hide it best he can. This has gotta go better than playing Apples to Apples with the guy, at least. Probably wouldn’t even know Helen Keller always wins.

When Sam comes back, he brings food with him when he can find it. Dean didn’t realize how skinny he got until he actually puts on the clothes Sam gave him, which Dean recognizes as his own from before he got sucked into Purgatory; they’re uncomfortably baggy everywhere, now. He has to pull his belt as tight as it goes, and there’s still a gap of skin between his shirt and pants where his hipbones stick out when he stretches up.

“Dunno what’s good for you yet,” Sam says, wary, passing him a large plate. There’s whole wheat bread on it, spotted with butter here and there. “This should be okay.”

“Thanks, mom,” Dean grumbles, but he’s gotta look at the floor right away because he can’t meet anyone’s eyes after saying that.

Sarah comes by every now and then, and she’s got her hair in this efficient bob now as opposed to braids or the fancy updo but she still laughs hard, and the light hasn’t yet gone out of her eyes. “Sam told about all the stuff you guys went through, you know,” she tells Dean, one day. Dean’s not sure if she means all the stuff or, you know, all the stuff. There are many versions of the story Sam could’ve told. “I mean, you met me while you two were checking out haunted paintings and now…”

Dean just shrugs. He feels shitty whenever Sarah comes by, and then there’s a double punch of hard guilt. It’s that megawatt grin of hers. Sure, life sucks and she knows that, but she’s smart and resourceful and is gonna make the best of it; Dean hasn’t been living in this world for any time at all, really, and he’s the one talking in single syllables and constantly grumpy. Sometimes, he’ll reach out and flatten his palm against whatever part of Sammy or Cas he can reach, just to know they’re there. Neither of them blinks at it, honestly.

“I got used to it, I guess.” He doesn’t have it in him to smile.

*

The nightmares come back.

Not Hell, and thank God for the little things, though those weren’t so much nightmares as too-fucking-vivid memories. It’s Purgatory this time, and it makes no sense at all because he was in Purgatory and it was nothing like that, but he wakes up with his chest heaving and sweat matting his forehead anyway.

There are the dreams where every monster he’s ever sent to its bitter end, and some he hasn’t, creep out from behind the trees and rip him limb from limb. It doesn’t even hurt, it just feels like dissolving, but he still wakes up more wrecked than usual. His mom appears and holds out her hands to him, only she’s got claws that tangle inside his skin, and her smile is a wolf’s. He’s surrounded by demons, only they’re not attacking, and it takes him too many hours of plunging through the darkness to realize that’s because he’s one of them and just as thirsty to rip the whole goddamn place apart as they are.

“You’re going to have to choose,” Alastair tells him in another dream, twig-thin arms curled around the shoulders of Sammy and Mom. “Take one, or I’ll have my fun with both.”

Dean wakes up, and bolts to the bathroom. He spends a good half hour throwing up.

When he finally slumps back against the wall, Cas is standing there. “Uh,” Dean sputters. Fuck, his throat hurts. He forgot how brutal that shit was. “Did you — wanna use —” Stupid question, of course.

“No,” Cas returns, with a tone that suggests he knew just how very dumb that question was, but he’s not going to further damage Dean’s ego by saying it.

“Told you to stay out of my friggin’ head,” Dean half-snarls, because the way Alastair turned that snake grin first to his brother, then to his mom, then to him is still boiling hot inside him. Cas can’t see that and hope to understand.

“You need sleep,” Cas returns, tartly. “You told me that once yourself.”

Dean gets his ass up off the floor. Cas is intimidating enough when they’re both standing up, even if his vessel’s shorter. Dean grunts, “So let me get back to it,” as he brushes by him on the way out.

Whatever Cas does, the awful nightmares don’t return to him. It’s just blessed, blank sleep. When he wakes up the next day, the sun’s shining bright through the window, probably late afternoon.

“Thanks,” he tells Cas. A stiff nod is his only reply. The nightmares don’t come back.

*

Some time soon after that, Dean decides it’s time to start helping out around camp. He can’t sit on his ass eating the (rabbit, ugh) food Sam gives him and sleeping ‘til 2 PM every day; that makes him not all that different from the pictures he’s seen of the fucked-up corn syrup zombies.

“Good,” Sam says, and he looks so understanding Dean wants to throw up all over him.

Sarah helps him move into his cabin, even if all he’s got is his old bag. “Cas have his own cabin, too?” she asks, examining the space under one of Dean’s new shelves with her tongue poked out, like it’s really important she figures out whether Dean’s shitty, beat-up, old brown boots look better to the left or the right of his shitty, beat-up, old black boots.

“Yep.” Jody had taken Cas off for his grand tour. “Not like he really needs it.” Guy’s an angel; he doesn’t sleep, or have any use for anything in the bathroom. He doesn’t even own any clothes other than his trenchcoat and the hospital scrubs. Dean hopes Sam’s told the other people around camp all about Cas, because it takes a little while to get used to him.

It’s not until he totally catches Sarah’s quick smile that he realizes how that comment came across, and he mentally smacks himself across the back of his head a little bit. Doesn’t bother to correct what he said, or elaborate, though, even as he wonders what the hell Sam told Sarah about him and Castiel.

Being around camp is weird. So much of Dean was always tangled up with being the charming one, shooting big, easy grins at pretty women in bars and big scary truckers alike. Sure, he was a jackass and ninety percent crap deep down, but people liked him off the bat.

Now, he limps around like a man haunted — and really, he is, by fuckin’ everything — Sammy by his side, sometimes putting a hand on his forearm. “I’m fine,” Dean growls, shaking Sam’s hand off him. Even if the whole idea of really talking to anyone rattles him deep down.

*

Sometimes, Sam comes back from supply runs with sweat and blood clotted on his skin, mixed with black goop. Really not a good look, Dean wants to joke, but he’s too horrified by what the hell could’ve happened out there.

“Sammy, you can’t — you gotta let me go too, I can’t think that you’re out there and I’m here and you could just —”

Sam bites his lip on the other side of the picnic table, and drops a pretty heavy-duty needle down onto the table in front of Dean. Dean grumbles, but he picks the needle up and moves next to Sam. He was always better at this, anyway.

Sam stinks, of course, and Dean makes an exaggerated disgusted noise when he pretty ungracefully plops down next to his brother. It’s the sewer stink of the Leviathan, of course, the metallic sting of blood, the sharp whiskey tang so the sewing hurts like less of a son of a bitch.

Dean realizes he hasn’t been drinking since he came back to Earth. Before he went to Purgatory, clearing the empty bottles off the side table when he woke up had become second nature. Huh, go figure.

He sews in mostly silence, cringing when he pokes the needle through skin and when Sam grits his teeth and makes little half-gasps of pain. It’s on the meat of his forearm, too, the easiest part to patch up, but Dean’s heartbeat doesn’t stop thumping too fast until he stands back up, and Sam runs his finger over the new suture. The finger comes up clean, and Dean just nods to himself.

“It was bad enough when I had to pull Garth — what became of him — away, man,” Sam tells Dean, once he’s standing up. And — shit, yeah, Dean hasn’t seen Garth at all, has he? Fuck. Dean’s gaze flicks toward the ground, unable to meet Sam’s, because God knows what the hell the guy’s been dealing with these past years.

“I’ve already dragged you out to the car once before, and Bobby had to help me out.” There’s a pause, a long one, where Dean’s mouth flops open uselessly a couple of times, but no words can fill that kind of quiet. “I just got you back, Dean.”

Dean just nods. This is the kind of language he speaks, where every pause in conversation isn’t just silence but rather every loss he’s ever felt sinking into his bones and gnawing at the back of his brain until it felt solid. “Okay.” He still wants to help, to save people; that’ll never stop gnawing at the back of his brain, too, the thing that makes all his limbs go and functions tick on.

He always had to be strong for Sammy, had it drilled into his mind since he was four years old. Letting someone else be strong for him is just — it’s a new thing that has to settle in, calm the constant churning thing inside him. He’s faced down the Devil; he’s just gotta let time take its toll here.

Time, and going against what his nature’s been for his entire life.

*

So he hates it, but he stays behind while hunts happen. There are more games of Monopoly with Castiel, and Go Fish, Dean staring at Cas’ fingers shuffling the cards before he flicks his eyes up to meet Cas’ gaze. Not like there’s anywhere else to look.

The claustrophobia of it all gets itchy after a while. Dean tosses two red cards down on the table and feels himself twitch, shifting restlessly in his chair. It’s reminding him too much of them playing Sorry!, just them and the walls of the cabin with the world outside breathing down and how the fuck can Cas stay so calm? Goddamn angels. (Dean really needs to think of a better word for that.)

“Perhaps we should see if anyone else is around the camp,” Cas says, palms fitting neatly around the cards to stack them up evenly again. Dean would snap at him not to read his mind again, only he’s pretty sure that Cas didn’t have to in order to know what the hell was bothering him.

A slim man with a messy mop of hair is carrying two enormous water jugs back to a cabin. There’s no effort there, no loud grunting like Dean would do, no sheen of sweat over his skin; the muscles in his skinny arms don’t bulge. Definitely not human. Dean realizes he knows this guy a second before Castiel raises his head, offers him one of his close-mouthed but genuine smiles, and greets, “Inais.”

“Castiel,” Inais replies, and it sounds like an exhale. “Sam told me about how he was planning to get you and his brother back.” The guy’s just holding the water jugs right there, without bothering to set them down or anything. God, angels are such weirdos.

It’s even weirder when Inais nods to Dean. “I’m sorry that the last time I saw you, my garrison attempted to destroy your existence on Earth,” he says, big frown wrinkling all his features. The guy’s clearly been picking up his physical reactions from like, soap operas or some shit. “Hester always was very direct.”

“I thought you were dead,” Cas tells him, a heaviness behind his eyes.

Inais actually sighs, which is kind of hilarious because it’s so loud and huffy. Soap operas, seriously. “I sent Liwet and Micah to guard the prophet, but when I checked on them they were… gone. I was the only member of the garrison left, and I knew I wouldn’t be welcomed back in Heaven after we had all failed terribly.”

Dean looks down at the ground at only member of the garrison left. That’s their family, and it’s been ripped apart piece by piece. He’s not planning on starting an angel fan club any time soon, for the most part, but hey, he gets it. And all that loss is mostly due to his own shit, if he’s being honest.

“Well, I’m here,” Cas tells Inais. He grips his brother’s hands in his own, and Inais looks startled. “I was the cause for so much of that, it’s the least —”

“Hey, Cas, no,” Dean interrupts, mostly because he can’t stand to see Cas whittled away by so much doubt and self-loathing, enough that he starts resembling him. If he’s a teeny bit — weirded out, yeah, that’s it — by the way Cas’ hands practically envelop Inais’ much smaller ones, well he’s not telling anyone anything.

Inais doesn’t quite have the headtilt Dean sees on Cas, like if he thinks really hard whatever he’s dealing with will turn into two gigantic puzzle pieces and snap together easily, but he still crooks his neck to the side a bit to look at Dean and Castiel. Dean meets Inais’ eyes, but it’s so weird to look at an angel that’s not Cas like that.

“I’ll return to my post. It’s good to see you again, brother,” is all Inais says before he heads off. He throws them another look as he’s moving to a cabin in the distance; he’s not very subtle about it, either.

Dean doesn’t know how long passes, even if it can’t be more than a couple of minutes; his brain’s having issues wrapping around the idea of time again. It’s still dark out, at least, when Cas says, “I suppose you think you were the cause of all that.”

A few people mill around the camp, but it’s pretty late and most of them are probably trying to catch up on any sort of precious goddamn sleep. Dean’s here instead, not answering with anything but a shrug. Because ouch, but also true. “Dean, after Stull, do you remember —”

“Peace or freedom.” Of course he does. Not real easy to forget, even as the entire world went heavy with this haze of hurt and guilt and rage all around him. “Think we both took freedom, and it’s a real son of a bitch.”

“That’s one decision I wouldn’t change.”

Cas’ eyes still light up like all of Heaven’s behind them whenever someone says Paradise, an instinct he’s probably never going to shed, but Dean doesn’t doubt him for a second. He wouldn’t change that about himself, either. There’s so much darkness and destiny tied into his life; you can’t take away him sticking the middle finger to fate.

“Yeah,” he comes up with, at last, exaggerating his yawn. Too late to pry into his deepest emotional depths, clearly. (Yeah, and so’s five-thirty AM, if he’s being honest.) “I should go get some sleep.”

“I’ll keep watch here.”

Smiling still feels odd, like doing that doesn’t belong on his face, but he offers one up to Cas before he heads back to his cabin.

*

Strangely enough, Inais and Claire are as close as anyone gets here. Together, they’re constantly sitting on the steps of the big cabin she shares with some of the other younger kids who are here — God, they should all be in college, they remind Dean of Sammy at that age, bright as hell and wasting it in a world, a life, they never wanted, without even the ability to get out for a few peaceful years like Sam did — shoulders and knees bumping as they talk. Inais has the usual lack-of-personal-space thing going on that Dean’s pretty damn familiar with, and Claire just doesn’t seem to care much.

“Wouldn’t have thought you’d be BFF with angels,” he says one day, while they’re sitting at one of the picnic tables at the camp. Claire’s all excited about her salad; Dean’s, well, less so. He’ll break out of this place himself to go get some friggin’ meat to put in this thing, at least.

She shoots him a look, like she knows how totally pathetic his attempt to use BFF is and isn’t even gonna bother to comment on it, it’s so sad. “Inais is… he’s friendlier than Castiel. He didn’t…” She trails off, and takes another bite of salad. “Got along with Paschal, too, while he was here.” Dean doesn’t even know the guy, and he was probably just another asshole angel, but something inside him still twists unpleasantly at the way Claire’s voice gets a little wobbly at the end.

“So you’re like the angel whisperer or something?”

“Paschal told me and Sam some people are more like angel catnip, you know,” she offers as means of a response. Claire doesn’t talk much — maybe that’s why she gets along well with Inais, cuz angels are always brushing off silly humans and their dumb words, anyway — but she fixes Dean with another one of her looks again.

Dean sneaks out some of Sarah’s photos. Paschal’s in the oldest vessel he’s ever seen an angel occupy by far, a portly and pale man, face weighed down in wrinkles. He’s probably old enough to be Dean’s grandfather, never mind Claire’s. Still looks kinda badass, holding himself ramrod-stiff like the rest of the angels. Dean’s gotta laugh that Sarah’s got her arm slung around him, but it only means Paschal crowded his arms in closer to himself.

“What are you looking at?” It’s Cas, of course, popping into existence right behind him.

Quickly, Dean snaps the photo album shut. “Nothing much.” He doesn’t know if Paschal was in Castiel’s garrison, or whatever. Maybe he should ask, but it’d almost be worse if Paschal was a member of his little foxhole. Like, God knows there were enough other people in that photo album Dean hasn’t seen around camp, and maybe he doesn’t want to know.

Knowing means he’d have to care, and there’s too much of that spread out in his gut.

“Wanna play Monopoly? Could get Jody if you want,” he asks. He’s pretty sure Cas can see right through his bullshit faux cheeriness, and the angel even narrows his eyes at him before nodding his head, once. Cas doesn’t ask, though.

*

Dean isn’t sure how to explain to someone that you’ve met them before — only, in an alternate universe that was supposed to be everyone’s worst-case scenario, so he just nods wearily to Risa when she slides a nice big bowl of soup and dumplings across the table to him.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she says, with a tight smile. It’s not an uncomfortable one, just the way she is. Dean’s actually glad for his greediness, because his mouth is full of dumplings so he can only smile and nod back. Talking’s not involved on his part. Maybe it’s not a burger, maybe he’ll never have a burger or pie, oh God pie, ever again, but fuck he missed food. “Heard a lot about you. You’re lucky to have a brother who cares so much. A freakin’ angel, too, apparently.”

He shrugs, uncomfortably. Bringing up the people who care never stops making him uneasy. If it’s all that obvious, the people who don’t wish him as well as Risa does have to know that, too. “I am,” he tells her, anyway, because it’s not like he deserves any of what they’ve given him. “How’d you, um, end up here.”

“I’m a vegan.” She holds up the plate of scrawny broccoli, as if to demonstrate. “Leviathan never got around to putting their little death syrup in all the healthy food. Roommates weren’t so lucky.” Her fork pokes at the food. “Learned to fight the Leviathan off, at least, and Sam and Meg found me a while back. Stuck with ‘em since.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy when I found out what Meg was, either.” No-nonsense. Dean likes that. “She hasn’t led me wrong yet, though.”

Small talk seems to have become a skill that doesn’t come to Dean any more — God, it used to be so fucking easy to go to a bar and talk to whoever about the weather or anything, but you go to Purgatory and Hell and turns out all that shit goes away — so he’s glad when there’s a swoosh of wings. Risa looks up in alarm to see Castiel standing there, studying the food intently.

“Guessing you’re Castiel,” she greets, as she offers up a hand. He glances at it the same as he looked at the food. “You’re not much like Inais, are you?”

“Inais was always far more involved with matters of diplomacy and communication,” Cas says rather primly, sitting down at the long bench next to Dean. “I ran strategy in my garrison for a long time.”

Risa actually smiles at that. “We’ll probably get along fine, then.”

Dean knows Cas comes off as more than a little awkward when talking to any human that’s not him. Hell, the guy’s pretty fucking awkward talking to him, too. “If you say so,” Cas tells her, not unfriendly even if it’s still very Cas. “It’s good to meet you.”

Looking for something to talk about, Dean turns on the television nestled in the top corner between two walls. Must be a Saturday night baseball game, or something, because what used to be a baseball stadium’s on the field. Only now all the grass just outside the field of play is ridiculously overgrown, a crazy green tangle. The pitcher’s practically bursting out of his uniform, and the batter just stares blankly at the baseballs he’s lobbing toward him.

“Even I’m aware this is not how baseball is normally played,” Cas comments. No announcer’s on the game, either, and it’s creepy to watch the batter take a long, lazy swing at a pitch that lands ten feet in front of home plate.

“This is the world now, huh.” All Dean can do is boggle, helplessness sticking to him as long as he stays in his seat.

Risa’s turned away from the screen, stealing a spoonful of Dean’s soup. “We’re trying to make it better.” She doesn’t sound defeated, not yet. He’s pretty sure she’d use the same tone to order this soup in a restaurant — if any of them weren’t full of the toxic sludge they put in corn syrup these days — as she would leading a group of them into battle. He can dig it.

“Big damn heroes, huh?” Dean knows it’s a pop culture reference, but he must really be losing it if he can’t recognize it right away. “Well, hey. I get it.”

The not-really-baseball isn’t all that interesting, so they turn it off after only a little while. Dean spends a few minutes trying to get Cas to taste one of the soup dumplings, while Cas comes dangerously close to whining as he explains that it would be a waste of precious food that he can’t taste anyway. All of Risa’s smiles as she watches them squabble are so flat, but Dean’s pretty sure it doesn’t mean they’re not genuine.

*

There are only a couple of people at camp that Meg lets give her any shit. Dean suspects Risa would be one of them, but there’s too much respect there for Risa to ever give her any crap, which is so goddamn weird.

One of them is Tamara, because call Meg what you want and God knows he’s tossed some of the more colorful words in his vocabulary at her, but stupid definitely isn’t the word to describe her. (“That was like a big frat party for all of us,” Meg sighs, when Dean brings up Isaac choking down drain cleaner. “Past is past.”) Also not surprisingly, one of the others is Charlie. Or Gabby, now. Not that Gabby’s tossing out a lot of insults, really.

“I know, it’s kinda cringe-worthy,” she explains, fingers moving quickly across her keyboard. The girl doesn’t even have a cabin, just a nice wooden floor with a tent set up around it, and she’s still got all this wireless, solar-powered cloaking shit, not to mention her other computer stuff. If Dean didn’t already feel perpetually inferior, Gabby’d be good for doing that. “I’m soooo not a Gabby, I don’t think. Just, Gabriel defeats the Leviathan in the Bible, so —”

“Gabriel was a dick,” Dean says. “I mean, a helpful dick at the end. But a dick.”

“Sam told me the same thing when I explained this name to him.” Gabby laughs. Somehow she stuffed a whole bunch of bobbleheads into her tent too, and they rattle along with her laughter. “I’ve been a part of it for a while now, but man, you guys have a weird life.”

*

Weird. Yeah. Understatement.

Dean’s glad he’s with Sam the first time they run into the freaky babies, otherwise he would’ve shot ‘em full of silver and salt. Not that it would’ve done much.

They’re just black humanoid things, scaly with a completely smooth face. They’re almost like the weird scaled creatures Dean and Cas ran into in Purgatory, only they’re smaller and jet-black. Their silent, four-legged shuffle wrenches at Dean’s gut in a way that’s both scary and downright sad. “We think they came from parents who were affected by the Leviathan,” Sam explains, though his face has gone the sort of pale that suggests he’ll never get used to it. “You know, their mom ate some bad cake or something. They come by in waves.”

No one at the camp even knows what to do with ‘em at this point; everyone tosses out the processed food they do find and watch them wordlessly stare at it.

“What —” Dean has to ask, because one of these poor kids just can’t stop gazing at a stale cake they found. They don’t eat, they just stare, empty, before they trample over the food in their attempt to go elsewhere. As for Dean himself, he’s trying not to drool over the abandoned cake, and he knows it’s stale and everything, he can just feel the frosting dissolve under his tongue —

“You can’t save everyone,” Risa responded, voice hard and sad at once. “There’s work to do.” And she moves off. It’s not long before Dean does, too, Sam walking too close and casting him dark looks.

Dean looks back at him. They both need it.

*

Dean’s been through a lot of shit, both awful and just truly weird. But he’s pretty sure he’s never sat through anything like a friggin’ committee meeting to save what’s left of Earth, at a circular table with Sam on one side of him — and Meg on the other side of him — and the Alpha Vamp on the other.

(Gabby’s in a corner of the room, tapping away practically gleefully at a laptop and humming while she does it. “To cloak all of you guys? Needs some serious power. I’m talking like, Avada Kedavra power. Without, you know, the whole killing people thing,” she’d explained, and Dean had just let his eyebrow go up high. Well, at least Sammy had been laughing.)

“No hello, Winchester?” the Alpha asks. Dude actually looks kinda down on his luck, in baggy and faded army fatigues of all things.

Dean blinks. “Uh, sure. Hi. What are you doing here?”

He’s still got that same creepy-ass smile. “I’m not any more interested in that slime that thinks it rules every Petri dish it can get to poisoning my food than you are. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now.”

The only response Dean can think of is smiling back and nodding. So, they’re all holding hands around the campfire and singing Kumbaya so that they can go back to a different hell breaking loose, once they’ve solved the current hell that’s breaking loose. Fuckin’ fantastic. Smiles and body shots all around.

“Haven’t heard much about Crowley lately,” Meg pouts, at one point during the meeting. “He’s way underground. In Canada, I hear. Guess I could dangle Castiel to get his ugly hide to show up, but Precious Moments is just too useful. Can’t go risking him.”

“Meg, you totally care,” Sam tells her, elbowing her side gently. Nope, Dean’s still not used to his brother being this close with any demon, especially this one.

“Yes, it would also ruin my post-apocalyptic brand of angel-demon Hallmark cards.” The bite in her voice makes the Alpha Vamp actually wince. Honestly, Dean’s kind of impressed. “You got me, Sam.”

“Crowley’d probably be useful, too, right?” a tall blonde man with a neckbeard asks from across the table. It’s not an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it neckbeard either, just your garden variety I-am-a-goddamn-douchebag neckbeard.

“You’d think so,” Meg sighs. She’s definitely done the most talking here, and Dean’s pretty sure she’s taken charge of this meeting. Isn’t that a lovely thought. “Not like he wants the chompers messing with his plans, either.”

“If only anyone knew what his plans were.” A short, tawny-haired woman, who Dean is getting the distinct vibe of not human from. He slides his hand along his thigh and up to his belt, just to feel that the knife’s still there.

“Dean,” Sam hisses, to him, and he can only grunt because yeah, he just got totally busted. “Kayla’s fine, I promise.”

It’s just fucking bizarre. Brave new world, indeed, being BFF with things he’d rather be spraying in the face with a salt gun. Saving people, hunting things, teaming up with other things to stop the worse things. Weird shit happens when you gotta save the world.

“One tricky bastard, Crowley,” Meg sighs. Dean wonders if she ever had these little pow-wows with her brother and dad. He kinda wants to throw up at the thought of it. “Dean, stop being a brat, you’re not helping.”

He contemplates kicking one of the legs of Meg’s chair, but he’s pretty sure that’d just be proving her point. So he just crosses his arms and tries not to glare at anyone who says anything.

“I think you’ll be alright,” the Alpha Vamp practically purrs to him at the end of the goddamn committee meeting, his palm pressed flat against the back of the chair. The alpha doesn’t actually touch Dean, but he’s pretty sure he’s still gonna take a shower when they get back to their cabins.

*

Of course, Dean doesn’t get a chance to shower because Cas is playing checkers with Jody Mills on one of the rickety tables by his cabin. He’s pretty sure she’s getting her ass kicked, but she’s still grinning about it, about getting her ass kicked by an angel who’s still prone to droning on about bees and butterflies every now and then, and hasn’t changed out of his hospital scrubs and that damn trenchcoat. Dean always liked Jody, but she’s kind of a saint, to be honest.

“Didn’t feel like going to the pow-wow, huh,” he asks, fighting the urge to dig fingers into Cas’ hair to get his attention. (What? It’s there, and messy, and tempting.)

Cas offers up a half-ass attempt at a snort. “I’m not sure I would be welcome there, considering the alphas that were present.”

“BFD. How many times did you try to smite Meg?”

“Meg and I have an understanding.” Dean totally doesn’t bristle at that. “But Dean, I do — worry how helpful I can be.”

Dean sits down at the table, nodding at Jody, who doesn’t look like she minds at all. “What do you mean?”

Cas flicks his eyes to the table, then back to Dean again. So it’s gonna be like that. But Dean gets it.

“You do what you can, okay? Sam’s friggin’ babying me too, I don’t know how much he’s even gonna let us help out, but… look, the crap with the Leviathan, maybe it would’ve gone better if we’d all gone through it together. But we’re all stuck together in this shithole now, okay? So you let me know if I’m fucking up and I’ll let you know if you’re fucking up.” He nods to Jody. “Goes for you too.”

“Right.” She smiles back, but it doesn’t meet her eyes; she glances back and forth between the two of them, searching.

Dean’s gotten a lot of glances like that in his life. Mostly from strangers, just innocent bystanders, but truth be told he’d interacted with fewer and fewer of those as time went on. Or maybe he drove them away, something in the set of his shoulders and his gait that was a giant neon flashing Keep Away sign. All hunters got it after a while, he figured.

Didn’t make the looks go away, the questioning glances between him and Sam or him and Cas. It’s like they all knew there was some kind of story there, like they could tell all the shit they’d slogged through together just at a glimpse. Ha.

He’s my brother, Dean could say about Sam, even if no one but him could understand the heft of those words. Cas was — Cas, and he was even harder to define. Jody knew more than most, but it was still only a fraction.

Dean shakes the thoughts off — there isn’t time for thinking this much, not with the world the way it is these days — and offers up a smile to both Cas and Jody as he gets up and goes to wash the reek from a thousand things that’d be bloodthirsty for him in any other situation off of his body.

*

Well, they may be at the very possible end of the world here, but at least Old Navy still exists, apparently. Sam does everything other than strapping a leash on Dean as they head out, and Dean carps about it — he might be all bony and not used to the world after all the shit in Purgatory, sure, but he’s not eight years old, and he could take care of himself at eight anyway — but it’s weirdly nice that Sam’s got like three-quarters of the camp looking after his back.

Dean gets in the Impala — seriously, he has to fight the urge to drop to his knees and kiss her everywhere or something, it’s just been way too long — and drives, Sam giving him directions, Cas in the backseat.

“Stop being gross, Dean,” Sam sighs when Dean moans as he traces his hands over his baby’s steering wheel. And yeah, a lot of things change, but the more they do the more they stay the same, really.

All the half-Leviathan babies that Dean has to step over clustered outside the entrance should’ve been a clue, but the Old Navy they stop at is in an obvious state of disarray. Khakis hang off the shelves; jeans are tossed in sloppy piles on the floor. Some teenagers roam the store, but they’re like the human equivalent of the t-shirts that all droop half-off their hangers, limp and totally pathetic.

“This is so creepy,” Dean whispers, loudly, to Sam, as he plucks a t-shirt up off the floor. Not his taste at all, and there are giant black smears across the front. This is gross, not him just being a little excited to see Baby again.

“Would you believe me if I told you that you get used to it after a little while?” Sam takes the shirt from Dean, pinching it between two fingers carefully. His nose wrinkles when he notices the stain. He lets the shirt drop to the floor again, and Dean kicks it under the display case.

“Not really.”

Sam snorts, the noise that indicates one of them is totally talking out of their ass. “Good, cuz I actually haven’t.”

“This is very unpleasant,” Cas agrees, appearing out of nowhere behind them like always. His arms are heaped with clothes, the pile so high Dean can’t see his mouth and only the bridge of his nose is visible. “These are clean, however.”

“Might as well get a bunch of stuff for camp,” Dean agrees, pulling some of the stuff off the pile to carry just so Cas doesn’t look so completely ridiculous. “And some new clothes for you,” he adds as they head off together. “Can’t wear… that… forever, you know?”

Cas quirks his head, as if considering that question. “I’m keeping the trenchcoat,” he declares. Dean smothers down his smile at that.

A little while later, Dean paces outside Cas’ dressing room, hoping the guy knows how to button up shirts and put on pants properly. He’s kinda half-expecting Cas to call him in there to help out, because the guy’s got no sense of social norms at all. Honestly, he’s considering himself actually lucky that the only other people in the store are zonked-out corn syrup zombies and Sam; someone coming up to him and asking why he’s waiting outside the men’s dressing rooms would be real fuckin’ awkward.

It’s funny to think of Cas puzzling over how to undo the drawstring on the pants, and figuring out how to work his muscles to lift his shirt over his head. Dean assumes Cas was the one who physically put him back together again after Hell, even if he’s never bothered to ask, but the guy still looks baffled by the body that’s his own, now, sometimes. Dude stares at his own hands like he’s on bad acid (Dean’s not proud of it, but he’s been there too, okay).

So yeah, dude might be a BAMF, but Dean is kind of expecting Castiel to come out of the dressing room wearing pants on his head. He’s really not expecting him to be all coordinated and shit. The flimsy wooden door to the changing room swings open, though, and Dean finds himself with the sudden urge to blink a few times.

Cas is probably one of those between-sizes guys when it comes to pants, and the ones he has on are a little too big. There’s a little stripe of stomach between the sagging jeans, and not that Dean is looking but the guy’s skin is far more tan than Dean would’ve thought, what with Cas wearing about seventeen layers all the time and yeah, okay, the fact that Dean probably assumed all angels were all white as the driven snow even when they’d broken every damn assumption he’d ever had about them —

But it’s still not as surprising as seeing Cas look so, well, normal in a gray t-shirt with a blue-and-gray checkered flannel over it. Dean is lucky Cas’ hair is all askew from taking his old shirt off and putting these new ones on, and he’s got a hard furrow between his eyes while he tries to figure out the price tag, because otherwise he could be any other hunter.

God, his feet are bare. Something about that strikes Dean as incomparably weird.

“This is alright?”

Dean totally doesn’t cough right into his hand. It’s surprising, is all. In its way, this is even stranger than the time Cas perched on his car with bees all over him. This is so normal.

“Yeah, you’re fine,” he comes up with, after what’s probably way too long. “We’ll get you some more shirts in that size, maybe a belt.” He looks at Cas pointedly. “You go get some underwear you want.” God, this is embarrassing for reasons he can’t even pinpoint.

They leave Old Navy without bothering to pay for anything — there are no cashiers, anyway, and sure, a couple of the kids in the store have name tags but fuck no, they’re not bothering to deal with that — Dean dragging like three bags of Castiel’s new clothes, and a bunch of other stuff for people at the camp. He’s pretty sure he got the bag with all the shoes, and it’s hard to hoist them all up even in the short walk back to the Impala. It’s the least he can do not to bitch about it.

*

Cas gets weird allergies from the clothes. For a while, it totally freaks Dean out — not that he’s admitting it — that Cas starts sneezing. Turns out, of course, all that shit had been on the shelf for God knows how long, and had gone all dusty. They’re just lucky it wasn’t Leviathan goop.

So there’s Cas. Dude can still teleport and chatters along with Inais in Enochian, but his nostrils are all inflamed red and he scratches at spots on his arm or chest with trepidation, clearly not used to that particular movement and interplay of muscles. Dean tosses him tissues when he’s in Gabby’s tent, trying to figure out the Leviathans’ movement across America, and they both shoot him a smile. It’s freaky big, in Cas’ case.

“You didn’t think of this before?” Tamara asks Dean, both their arms full of clothes. She never means to insult, she’s just brusque. Dean appreciates it; there’s no need for bullshit in an apocalypse.

“Didn’t really think angels get allergies.”

“Point taken.”

They haven’t found any laundromats in safe areas, weirdly enough, so they wash their clothes in a river. “Still safe,” Dean declares, pulling the tester out of the water. No sign of Leviathan or the shit they put in corn syrup. He fills a few jugs to filter back at camp before he starts dunking the shirts into the water, letting himself get hypnotized by the fabric pushing back against his hands. It’s so normal, he actually barks out a laugh.

“Castiel can’t, like, purify his own damn clothes?”

Dean shrugs. “Probably could.”

Truth be told, he still doesn’t really mind. When he gets back to camp, of course freakin’ tall Sammy helps him stretch out the clothesline; Cas watches, and apparently Dean slinging some of his new flannel shirts over the rope they’ve set up is the most friggin’ fascinating thing he has ever seen.

Cas goes back to the river and gets the jugs of water, placing them at Dean’s feet. Dean didn’t even ask him to go do it, and in return he only grins.

*

Sam pokes his head into Dean’s cabin one day when Dean’s half-asleep, and tells him, “We’re going on a scouting trip.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You wanna come?” Of course, that had been the real issue. And Sam looks almost wounded, like he’s prodding skin that’ll break open and reveal the ugly, bloody redness inside, but he’s gotta do it.

“Sure,” Dean responds, throwing a smile across his face. It’s not very genuine, mostly because he’s awfully fucking tired and there have been so many other times when Sam could’ve asked, but it’s there.

A bunch of them crowd into a big SUV, of all things, and Sam dares to blast his stupid girly music like it’s as awesome as anything Dean would listen to. Tamara sits shotgun, and Dean is absolutely not sulking about crowding into the backseat with a skinny redhead in a black polo shirt and Castiel and Inais, who look absolutely miserable about stuffing themselves in a car, Inais with a big exaggerated frown and Cas totally bitchfacing.

“Hey, crankypants,” Dean says to him, cheery as possible even though he’s still kinda sleepy, tapping his fingers along the back of Cas’ head. Cas just swivels his head and half-glares in confusion, though the look’s more blunted than his usual expression.

“Flying is much more useful than this,” he grunts. “And more efficient.”

It’s only now that Dean notices that Inais has crooked his head in their direction, too, examining them as if there is an obvious answer to what’s going on there. And then he notices the way his own fingers curled into the hair at the nape of Cas’ neck, and he’s practically yanking them away.

The redhead’s looking at them too, but not the same way Inais is; her expression is open human curiosity. “You were at the hospital too,” she tells Cas, her brow knitted. “Emmanuel, the nurses said, right? Seemed out of it at the time, though. You’re… not human.”

“That was me. My name is Castiel, and I’m an angel of the Lord.”

“Okay.” She laughs, and it’s sorta shaky, like she can’t quite trust him yet. “I’m Marin.” When she holds out her hand, Cas just stares at it, and she pulls it away. “You must be Dean. Heard a lot about you.” Her smile’s wobbly, but she’s cute.

“Better’ve been all good stuff, Sammy,” Dean calls out to the front of the SUV.

Marin’s smile straightens itself out a bit. “He really missed you.” Her voice sounds tinny and high, and very far away. Dean’s learned enough in this strange new world not to ask unless people want to tell you their stories.

They drive on, and it’s disturbingly normal outside except for the fact that they never see any people, or any other cars. They’re in the kind of pretty little suburbs that Sam and Dean never got to spend any time growing up in, either, so it’s doubly weird to see the houses lined up neatly, painted yellow and off-white — only the paint’s fading and chipping away, and green slashes of ivy crawl up the front of the houses.

“Here,” Tamara tells Sam, after a while, and they stop the car. The two of them move to the back and pull out thigh harnesses equipped with guns, and water guns too, dark with the laundry detergent inside them. (It’s a weird world, man.)

It’s only when Dean notices Marin, who’s pretty fucking tiny, buckling up her own straps that he realizes he doesn’t have a gun. “Sam?” he asks, holding his hands up.

“Guess we’re one short,” he replies, but he doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes.

All Dean can do is glare, and watch Sam hitch up his own water gun after strapping the real thing into his thigh. “Did you not bring me one on purpose?”

“Yes,” Tamara butts in, before moving away.

Dean opens his mouth to sputter a complaint, when Sam interrupts him. “Dean, I… this is about the baby steps, okay.”

“I don’t need them, I’m fine,” Dean grunts, fumbling through all the crap they packed into the back of the SUV like there’s a hidden holster and gun in there for him, too.

“Look, Dean, I’m not trying to like — emasculate you or whatever —” and Sam hands over his water gun, like that’ll do anything — “I just, right now? You need someone to look after you a little. You do, Dean. It’s not a bad thing to need help.”

Dean knows it’s not, he really does, but he still wants to lash out at those words as they hang there, heavy, between himself and Sam. No one looks after him; he looks after them. It’s not just what he does, it’s what he is. If he can’t do that, it’s just all the shit inside him and nothing else.

“Let’s go,” is all he grunts out. As he turns around, Cas is right there, space between his eyebrows furrowed. Dude probably heard the whole thing. Great.

Still, Dean heads off with Sam and Cas, totally not dragging his feet the whole time. “Wouldn’t let you have a gun, either,” he says to Castiel, elbowing him in the ribs a bit.

“There would be no use for — yes.” And huh, is that tact from Castiel? At least the guy’s trying.

Cas pushes the door open on the closest house. There’s a nice entryway, all deep brown wood with the slightest layer of gray dust clinging to it. Sam stuffs a hand over his mouth, probably to stop any coughing, as they walk through to the living room. The television’s still on. Food Channel, of all things, and Dean is trying not to laugh.

“C’mon — oh,” Sam orders, as he opens the door to the kitchen. A guy’s still in there, his hand going back and forth in one constant movement from the bag of cookies he’s got open to his mouth. The entire front of his shirt is strewn with dark crumbs, and the sides of it are starting to split open at the seams. He doesn’t even seem to notice the three intruders into his kitchen, two of them with giant neon water guns and the other in badly mismatched clothes and practically radiating not human. “I’m —”

“He doesn’t notice, Sam,” Cas intones, going to the fridge, opening it up, and starting to dump whatever he finds inside into his bag. Once, Cas used to use his grim determinism to tell Sam and Dean they had to get out of a town before they destroyed the whole damn thing, and everyone in it; now, he’s glowering at jars of pickles and old deli meat as he crams it into a backpack that he can’t carry like a normal person. “Let’s go?”

Most of the other houses are the same. Some of them are unoccupied, but too many of them have the friggin’ grotesque ruins of humanity just kind of hanging out, still watching television or standing in their kitchens or at the foot of the stairs.

A few people are flopped on the floor, mouths open and eyes glassy, and Dean’s got no idea if they’re alive or not. Might as well not be, poor suckers. His fingers itch to help them, somehow, even though he knows he can’t. Still, every time his gaze lingers on them too long Sam casts a look backward at him and all Dean can do is keep walking. Bitch.

When they get back to the van, the other three are already there, still holding their water guns like they’re preparing for an attack. “Ran into a Leviathan going through one of the houses,” Marin tells them. When Dean looks closer, he sees that her black polo’s splattered with black goop, too. “Took care of it.”

“They don’t work alone, not usually,” Tamara says, jaw set hard and still looking out into the distance. “We were waiting for you three to come back so we could get the hell out of here.”

They crowd back into the car and open up all the food bags. Half of them stink to high hell, and Dean starts tossing the rancid crap out the windows despite Sam whining at him when he does it. There’s a Hershey’s bar buried in Inais’ backpack, and yeah, Dean’s eyes totally light up when he looks at it.

“Check it,” Tamara tells him, tossing the scanner into the backseat.

It’s good, apparently made before the wrecked corn syrup shit got into everything, and wouldn’t you know it, the expiration date’s only three days from now. They all split the bar into little pieces and pass them along; Dean makes some frankly gross noises when the chocolate starts dissolving under his tongue, but no one says anything. Cas even grumbles something at Inais when the other angel looks over at Dean, all wide-eyed.

Marin’s still got her holster strapped to her thigh, but Dean honestly isn’t even mad when he sees it. He’s just happy enough that everyone made it out, and they even kicked some Leviathan ass along the way. They’re gonna find a way to help everyone stuck in this awful world, ‘cuz that’s what they do.

Dean doesn’t understand this burst of optimism. Maybe it’s the chocolate. Cas holds his hand out to Dean, offering his squares to him wordlessly. His palm’s warm when Dean’s fingers scrape against it.

“I can’t enjoy it like you could,” he explains. He doesn’t look away for a while, and neither does Dean.

*

It snows a few days later, heavy. Dean tried to stick around the hotter states during the wintertime when it was just him and Sammy out on the road — last thing he needed was the weather or the ice or salt tossed on the roads fucking with the Impala — so he hasn’t seen anything like this in a while. Everything’s white and still and creepy as hell.

Cas, being Cas, stands out in the middle of the camp for a while, letting the flakes dust right off him. Secretly, Dean thinks the guy looks almost as badass as when he starts smiting shit with all the snow and wind whirling around him, the trenchcoat loud with every gust of wind, only he’s got some doofy navy-and-red striped shirt on and these lame-ass all-white sneakers he wears all the time. Plus, he’s probably out there to absorb the dynamics of the movement of cirronimbus clouds, or whatever shit he’s always going on about. Worse than Sammy with the nerd shit.

“You should make a snow angel,” Dean tells him, calling out from the porch of his cabin.

Even from here, Dean can see the deliberate blink Cas gives him in return. The snowflakes fall off his long lashes, and fuck that’s some romance novel shit to be thinking. Cas just keeps on being Cas, though, and distracts Dean by reaching down to the ground and pulling up a handful of snow. He holds out his open palm to Dean. “Is this sufficient?” he asks.

The wind’s really picking up now, and the snow’s gone icy; it’s like little needles are constantly buffeting Dean’s face, scraping it with every gust. Risa got more dumplings, and he’s cradling the bowl in his hands to stay just a little bit warm. He stays outside anyway, though, smiling even. “Yeah, sure.”

*

When the weather gets a little better, to pass the time, Dean tries to teach Cas to drive. It’s a terrible idea and he knows it, but he doesn’t stop. It’ll be useful eventually, is his excuse. Cas gets behind the wheel and huffs that there is no point to these infernal metal prisons when he could just transport them anywhere they wanted.

He makes Cas practice on some of the other mostly rusted trucks and cars because no way he trusts the guy with his baby. Plus, if Cas is going above, oh, forty miles per hour, that’s when he tends to start rambling on about ant mating habits and not paying attention to the road, and Dean’s real grateful for Cas’ angel powers; it’d suck to make it through Purgatory and this fucked-up brave new world only to die in a giant fiery wreck.

Still. Dean gets a big friggin’ kick out of it, watching Cas’ hands flutter over the steering wheel until they find just the right place to grip, and all the expressions his face goes through. It’s like he just realized, after all this time, that he’s all alone in his body without Jimmy’s soul nudging up against his Grace, and he can experiment with wrinkling his nose up or running his tongue over his lips in curiosity. Dean just hopes Cas doesn’t start watching the soap operas Inais does to learn how humans truly react, is all. The acting’s awful. (He has a lot of free time, okay?)

They’re driving in exaggerated loops around the chainlink perimeter of the camp. Dean’s laughing his ass off, basically, at the look on Cas’ face every time he works the gear shift. It helps him ignore the funny tug in his gut when he watches Cas’ fingers curl around said gear shift and stroke once, firmly. Not like Dean doesn’t like hanging out with everyone else in camp, but sometimes he needs to get away with Sammy or Cas for a couple of hours.

Speak of the devil. (Which is just a bad choice of words for anyone in Dean’s life, now that he thinks about it. Especially when you shot the guy in the head and saw him stand up again.) Sam’s standing at the entrance to the camp, this obnoxious little I know something you don’t know expression on his face when he catches a glimpse of the two of them in the car. Dean would like to not be so nervous over that, thank you, considering he has actual potential-end-of-the-world shit to worry about.

“Can’t catch us, Sammy!” is all Dean does, sticking his neck out his rolled-out window and grinning wider than he can remember in a long-ass time. He adds a woo-hoo for extra super obnoxious emphasis.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Sam calls back.

In the car, Dean taps Cas’ thigh. He’s not gonna get the guy’s attention otherwise. “Hey, stop the car,” Dean tells him. Cas is getting better at this; Dean’s head doesn’t nearly go through the window and there’s no ungodly screech with Cas’ foot jamming on the brakes, at least. Together, they walk toward Sam. “About what?” Dean asks, smiling.

At their stride, Sam’s know-it-all smile fades. Well, shit, that can’t be good. “Uh, just some mission strategy stuff?” He’s totally trying not to side-eye Cas, too, Dean can tell.

“I believe Gabby wanted my help at some point,” Cas murmurs, after a long while where the three of them just stand there very pointedly not staring at each other. Honestly, Dean wants to applaud, because the guy’s not human but he’s getting a whole lot better with this humanity thing. Before Purgatory, Cas would’ve never left, not if they’d stood there for three hours. “I’ll be seeing you later, Sam, Dean.”

“Seeya later,” they both say, at the same time, and watch Castiel’s retreating back.

When he’s fully out of earshot — well, Dean isn’t sure if angels really ever are, but Cas doesn’t strike him as the nosy type — Dean turns to Sam. “I’m guessing this isn’t about strategy stuff.”

“No.” It’s like Sam can’t meet anyone’s eyes today, and there are a few more seconds of truly awkward silence, which is fucking weird with Sam, of all people. “Okay, um, so I figured I’d give you the grace period of a couple of months and everything.” His mouth twists into a sort of dark, amused smile. “Really, it’s been a bunch of years, but, uh, Dean. What happened with you and Cas in Purgatory?”

Dean — is not sure how to react to that, but he feels the expression on his face shift to something like purposefully annoyed bafflement. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what happened.”

“Nothing,” Dean protests, but it sounds real lame even to his own ears.

Sam gives him a look that says as much. “C’mon.”

“C’mon, what?”

“I wasn’t there, but I know that’s not true, Dean.”

He’s got no clue how to answer. There’s no way to take every endlessly black day there and explain it away. Dean loves Sam more than the world itself, but Sam wouldn’t be able to understand the way the underbrush always growled, waiting for him to screw up, at the same time it was dead silent. And he definitely can’t explain all the shit that happened with Cas there. It’s like explaining fire that leaves you all twisted and burnt, but clean again, like he’s never felt it before.

Humor blunts down everything, he’s found, so he just smirks and tells Sam, “What do you want me to say, Sam? Oh, yeah, we held hands and cuddled and talked about our feelings.” It takes the words about three seconds to settle in and that’s when Dean realizes that well, yeah, they did exactly that. “And made out,” he adds, kinda feebly. Well, at least it’s part lie now. “Angel tongue tastes like apple pie.”

That last remark gets an awesomely disgusted bitchface from Sam. “Gross, Dean.”

“You asked!”

“Yeah, because I wanted answers.” Sam crosses his arms, and fuck, Dean isn’t joking his way out of this one. Or not-joking, or — whatever.

“Fine,” he grumbles. “I — a lot happened. That’s really all I can say about it, Sammy.” Dean offers Sam a half-cringing shrug, because it’s true. He can’t fold all that happened in another fuckin’ dimension into a few easy, and easily explained, words.

Judging by the giant pout on his face, like they kicked him off the chess team or some shit, Sam’s obviously not pleased by this answer. “Are you two together?”

“What?!”

“Are you together? I mean, not to make this all about me, but everyone always asks me about, you know, your brother and his weird boyfriend…”

“I’m not gay,” Dean huffs out. A little voice in his head chimes back just bisexual, but he slaps it away.

“Sexuality isn’t as easy as gay or straight, Dean!” Sam practically shouts, and Jesus, his little brother is such a dweeb.

Dean opens his mouth to tell him as much, but he falls silent. After all the shit they’ve been through, Dean all but raising Sam and going to Hell for him, through one extremely imminent end of the world into another — it’s not about Dean being gay. Who’d care at this point? Like, okay, at first Dean was a little freaked that he woke up remembering the way the dude-shaped laser beam of doom loomed over him and it gave him a hell of a boner, but that was years ago. He wouldn’t give a shit if Sam was gay, or in a relationship with a dude, or whatever, as long as he was happy.

It’s not that. It’s everything else.

“I don’t know,” he answers, truthfully.

Sam pulls Bitchface #14, Your Lies Are So Awful I Don’t Believe You At All, at him for that one. “You don’t know?”

“I don’t,” Dean admits, and Sam’s expression turns to something more sympathetic at his tone. “We’re not together, but it’s not like I can think about being with anyone else — like, Risa! I’d be all over that in any other situation, you know that,” and he winces because he remembers he was in like the ugliest way possible in the alternate future Zachariah sprung on him, “And there are so many other chicks here and it could be nothing, just stress relief I dunno, but I just can’t do it, Sam. If Cas wanted anyone, like, God knows Meg is out there —”

“I really don’t think she wants him, Dean, I think she just likes teasing the guy —”

Dean snorts, because if you can actually get him to talk feelings, don’t interrupt him with any goddamn logic. “Fine. Inais?”

“Weird hero worship. I know the angels aren’t actually brothers and sisters, but they still grew up way too close for romance to come into it. Cas was like, his overlord for ten thousand years.” Sam is chewing down a grin, Dean can tell. “The fact that you’ve noticed all this stuff though, Dean, I mean…”

“What?”

“You could talk to the guy instead of peeing in a circle around him.”

Dean wrinkles his nose. “And you call me gross,” he whines. They’re both laughing now, though, and Dean thinks that if he wanted to, he could leave this conversation right here. “Look, I don’t know. It’s complicated. You could put that down on your little Facebook page, right?”

Sam is still glaring.

“I can’t — I don’t open up easy for anyone, Sam, you know that. Cas is already as far as you’re gonna get with me. This ain’t just friendship, anyone can see that —” Dean’s not so blind, and he knows how the ridiculous drawn-out glances between himself and Castiel must come across — “I don’t need to make anything official, and if I did…”

Sam’s brow furrows. “What, Dean?”

Dean barks out a laugh, because in the end, this is what’s held him back the entire friggin’ time. “He’ll leave, right? Everyone leaves.”

He’s totally not offended by Sam’s snort in response. “No, I really don’t think Cas, of all people, would leave you. I mean — look at the situation he’s in now, Dean! He could get out if he wanted to, but you know he won’t.”

“Well, it’s not like he can go home —” and it’s stupid, but that shouldn’t make Dean’s guts clench up in sympathy.

“He could go literally anywhere else —”

“And he’s a soldier. Like us. He’s got a cause. That’s it.”

“Yeah, you,” Sam jabs back at him. “And I mean — Cas isn’t running around singing about his desire to be one with the land and the butterflies this time, or whatever, but he doesn’t really fight any more, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Dean just folds his arms. “He cares because he’s the one who brought the Leviathan to Earth. So what, he doesn’t wanna fight, he’s helping out how he can —”

“Why are you denying all this? Dean, look, I’m here for you and I always will be. You know that. But so’s Cas, and don’t pretend that’s not like, the number one thing you want. He really cares about you, Dean.”

It’s way too early in the morning — even if it’s like one PM by now — and he was having way too much fun teaching Cas how to drive like just twenty minutes ago to be having a conversation like this, corkscrewing right into his guts and brain and heart at once. “So the guy cares, we’ve been through a lot of shit, of course he does. He cares about you too, you know —”

Dean tries not to be offended when Sam bursts out laughing. “Yeah, sure, Cas cares about me at this point. He does. But not like he cares about you, Dean! And in case you haven’t noticed, the way he looks at you is kind of…”

“Kind of what?” Dean is not planning on finishing that sentence by himself, no thank you.

“Like he knows you or something. Like when he looks at you, it’s okay that he had to give up Heaven, because he’s just got the — the — gigantic beauty of your soul, or something.” He’s still laughing as he says it, but there’s a serious undercurrent to his words. “Guess angels find cheeseburgers and whiskey real pretty.”

“Bitch,” Dean responds, automatically, smiling as he does it.

Sam grins back. “Jerk. But you get what I’m saying, Dean, right?”

Dean only sighs, and shrugs. He should do some nutting up of his own, and for a while now, it feels like he’s —

When Dean was maybe twelve, they stopped at a carnival. Dad was off getting info, so Dean had to drag Sammy along through the crowds. The kid had his hand clamped over his eyes because of the stupid-ass clowns, too.

There’d been a wide funnel, where you could toss coins down and watch them zip around in circles over and over again, before they vanished into the bottom forever. Dean tossed a couple of coins in there, not all of them because otherwise Dad would yell, and followed the path of them with his head and neck. Heck, Sammy got into it too, the long and inevitable swirl of the coin into God only knows where.

That’s what he’s felt like since he met Castiel. He’s just a little coin, kicked in by some outside force, circling around and around until he tips into something deep. For his own self-preservation, he’s trying to hold on to the sides, because that last leap is a permanent thing that’s going to take his whole existence and twist it, turn it on its head.

He’s out the next day still teaching Cas to drive, though. The angel’s hands stutter over the buttons and gear shifts, and even though Cas drives nice and slow and smooth and Dean claps a hand over his shoulder when they’re done, Dean still can’t help but shake the feeling that he’s massively screwed somehow.

*

One day, they wake up and Kevin’s gone.

“What do you mean, gone?” Sam asks, like he doesn’t know every single definition of the word that appears on dictionary-dot-com. Nerd.

“I mean he wasn’t in his cabin this morning when we had checks, and he hasn’t shown up all day,” one of the guys Dean doesn’t know yet yells back.

Gabby pokes her head out from her tent. “Um, I ran some video,” she offers. “There’s nothing. No one saw him leaving, and there’s no video of him leaving the camp. There one minute, gone the next.”

“Was it demons?” Dean snaps, turning his glare to Meg.

“Oh, bite it. The other demons that didn’t high-tail it home to Hell are just trying to save it like the rest of us poor suckers.” Meg sighs, and walks away into another cabin.

“Fine. Angels? This sounds like their MO, weren’t they trying to take Kevin off somewhere to learn the Word of God all those years ago?”

Dean whirls around to see Cas, who was way closer than he was expecting. “I believe I’d be able to sense my brothers and sisters if they’d been here,” he explains. “But no — there’s no sign of them, and I can’t sense Kevin anywhere.”

“And it can’t be Leviathan, because Gabby seriously wired this place up to let us know if any chomper figured out the cloaking system and gets within the perimeters,” Sam sighs. “So basically… we’re screwed until we figure this one out.”

“Kevin’s probably the screwed one,” Tamara points out.

Everyone’s got the good sense not to argue with her, mostly because she’s right.

*

So, Dean and Sam go out on tiny little compartmentalized missions for a while. Nothing too big a deal, even if Sam always brings the guns — the real ones and the garish Super Soakers loaded up with laundry detergent too — and machetes along. Grocery stores, eerily quiet department stores, shit like that. Cas tags along a good amount of the time, and there’s normally at least one other person too, but sometimes he stays behind with Inais or Meg to try and suss out info on Crowley.

Dean’s always a lot grumpier on those hunts, for whatever reason. Although, Sam’s long, meaningful, super girly pouting looks are still better than the looks he gives him when Cas actually does come on the missions, and Dean pulls the angel aside to ask him some stupid question about whether his angel knowledge can help them out.

What a little bitch.

They find themselves in Wal-Mart, another store that rises up on the horizon with signs neon-bright, oblivious to what the fuck is going on with the world. Some people in the camp don’t wanna go with them; they say that the place would be a perfect hiding place for the Leviathan, or any nest of demons or other nasty-ass crap out there. But they’ve had good luck there. Wherever the hell they get it from, every now and then they even have real beef, fat pink and real chicken breasts. Sometimes there are even vegetables, kinda droopy and sad, but better than nothing.

“Soulless corporate Wal-Mart douchebags don’t compare much once you’ve met Zachariah and Dick Roman,” Dean points out, cheerfully, dumping a few packs of socks into one of the backpacks they brought along with them.

It’s never gonna stop being fucking weird that no matter how much they take, no matter the number of people they drag along with them from camp, and no matter how many loud conversations they have while walking down the aisles, there are people all conked out on the corn syrup that just stare at them. Sometimes they stand stock-still in the middle of an aisle, but sometimes they’re already collapsed on the floor. Creepy as hell, whatever position the poor suckers managed to find themselves in.

They’ve had better Wal-Mart runs, but they managed to pick up some spare clothes and frozen veggies, so it’s not a total loss. Sam is animatedly telling him about how Claire and Sarah helped him take out a whole mess of Leviathan when they were out looking for some weird herb to help get Dean out of Purgatory, when Dean’s gaze happens, by accident, to slide over to one of the freaking zombies propping itself up against the door.

No. Not itself. Himself. Dean steps away from Sam mid-sentence because even though this one’s got the same glassy eyes and bloated limbs and belly as the rest of the poor suckers who ate too many — no, not even that, who just happened to eat the wrong thing — this one is different. Dean knows this one. There’s even a name tag on his stupid employee smock.

“Ben,” Dean croaks out, practically stuffing his fingers in between his neck and the dip into his shoulder, to check his pulse. It’s still there, thank God, but — “Ben, I — c’mon, man.”

He grabs onto Ben’s shoulders, not sure who is steadying who here. Truth be told, he’s terrified of gripping too hard, remembering the way his hand stung doubly hard the time he slapped Ben across the face, like the shame was another razor slice into his palm — and he’s sure it wasn’t anything compared to the way Ben hurt at that, either.

Dean’s not sure how he gets out of the store; he suspects Sam drags him, with his jaw and brow set hard even if his eyes don’t match the expression. Next thing he knows he’s pulled into the passengers’ seat of his own damn car, landscape going by in a rushed, wet blur as Sam drives them back to camp.

Eventually, he stops. Neither of them makes any sort of motion to move from the car, Dean’s head tossed back against the seat and his eyes squeezed shut so the fat tears behind them don’t come spilling out. Fuck. Fuck. He can just picture Sammy’s wide-eyed, stupid-ass expression of sympathy that he doesn’t deserve one bit, too.

As if on cue, that’s when Sam does say, “It’s not your fault, Dean.” Dean opens his eyes, and he’s glad Sam doesn’t meet them; Dean knows it’s not because he’s nervous, but because if he did, Dean would just glare at him until he shut the fuck up. “Just — everything’s not your fault. For your sake.” Now Dean looks at Sam, because what does his own sake matter. “For everyone’s sake.” It’s not rude, or pushy, or gruff like it might be if Dad ever gave him this speech. There’s just this funny pleading little furrow between his eyebrows, and somehow it cuts into his voice too.

Dean doesn’t say anything in return, just doesn’t move his gaze from Sammy’s for a couple of beats before he slumps back against the seat, closes his eyes again, and swallows hard. Ben would’ve — it’s very likely the shit the Leviathan pumped into all that food would’ve gotten him anyway, sure. It doesn’t have anything to do with him.

Except in the way that the entire goddamn situation has to do with him, and thinking that the Leviathan woulda gotten him anyway is a fucking cheap-ass, hollow thought that his brain must be offering up as some sort of mental survival mode.

“I know you’re not gonna… accept anything I’m saying,” Sam tells Dean at last. Dean’s not sure how long he’s been sitting there, eyes still shut to seal him off from the rest of the world; he only knows that it wasn’t close enough to sleep, or oblivion. “But if you ever want to, or don’t even wanna accept it, just talk about it, I’m here.”

As Dean hears the passenger door open, he wants to say something with bite, that’ll take the hurt from him and throw it on someone else. But he can’t even get that out, just stays in the car with his eyes squeezed so hard he’s seeing funny white spots dance in front of his vision.

Again, he’s got no idea how much time passes, but Dean isn’t surprised when he hears the heavy rustle of wings and there’s shifting in the seat next to him. “You were gone for a long time,” Cas says. “I saw Sam return, but not you. He told me you were here.”

Dean cracks an eye open at that, just to make sure his doofus of a little brother didn’t, like, give Cas some candy hearts to take to him. But no, it’s just Cas, the weirdo who walks around camp in thermal flannel PJs and clunky slippers, and the coat.

“Why are you here, Cas?” Dean asks. Again, there’s no bite stuck there. He might’ve done it in the past — fuck, he had done it in the past. That year after Lisa’s — and he forces that name out of his mind — but before Cas went Crazy Old Testament God, they didn’t so much talk as have a never-ending string of arguments. He’s seen Cas gone crazy and done nothing but snarl to his face in return. But this isn’t that, they’re past that. It’s a real question.

“I wanted to see if you were alright.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He lets his head fall back against the seat, and it lands on a funny spot and goddamn, his skull hurts now. He doesn’t even care. “I fuck up everything. I mean, I fucked you up.” Cas’ mouth pops open, like he’s going to refute it, only — the denial never comes. Ouch.

Something else does, though. “I said something similar, once. And you said you’d rather have me with you than not.”

“And?”

“And?” Cas raises an eyebrow, and lets a slight smile pass over his face. It’s kinda freaky human, enough to make Dean’s eyes open wide and him shift over in his seat to look at Cas. “I assumed it was understood that sentiment went both ways.”

He just nods in response, because there’s nothing else to say when an angel tells you that, that you’re something he needs in his life, and he knows all the fucked-up shit you’ve done and you’re capable of doing, and he just scoffs it off and draws you closer anyway. Dean lets his eyes slip shut, face slack. In this world, he’s never really relaxed, but he’s not so much on edge at least.

(Of course, Dean remembers that night. He remembers the two of them cramped inside the Impala while Dean went over attack plans, and Cas snapped back and forth between discussing them with him, and cheerily babbling about the biology of bees.

At one point, when he was disagreeing with Dean even over some point in the plan, Cas paused so he could… look at him, like he had outside the car, awe in his eyes and something else in the tilt of his mouth. Just — happiness, is what it was. At this point, it had been weird to see.

“Stupid plan, I know,” Dean grunted, looking away because he couldn’t meet that smile.

“Not stupid.” That smile wasn’t gone, and Dean — fuck, he felt it spread over his face too, not bothering to fight it any more.

“I’m gonna let Meg drive the car,” he laughed. “Tell me that’s not a stupid plan.”

Cas took a few beats to consider this. “Reckless, maybe.”

The use of reckless made Dean freeze, because he remembered the last time he heard Cas use that. Guy had been beaten down, a shell of his former self. That Castiel smiled too, but it was a bitter smile, one with all the hope leeched out of it.

Dean realized that it wasn’t the happiness that he saw in Cas’ smile that freaked him out. The hope and the utter faith there did him in, forced him to avert his eyes.

It was hard enough to recognize it in himself, that he’d kept Castiel’s coat despite the fact that it reeked and probably had Leviathan shit and plant scum all over it, even after all the shady shit Cas did, even after all the lying and manipulation, even after the year at Lisa’s when a little bit of optimism drifted away from Dean each day — and he didn’t have much to begin with. Even after all that, Dean believed Cas would come back, somehow, and they’d make everything as okay as it could ever be between them. Together.

That’s when Dean had cupped his cheek and kissed him, because he couldn’t not. Wasn’t gonna run out the last night on earth line, but he had to have this much. Cas’ mouth was rough and lush and inhumanly warm under his own, making Dean’s skin buzz where they touched. It’s like Cas hadn’t stuffed his screaming death ray angel self into Jimmy Novak’s body, but a subwoofer instead.

“Just… thanks for everything,” was all Dean could say afterward. His own face was hot, but it must’ve been because Cas’ skin was, or leftover from the stubble just under the skin. He definitely hadn’t fucking blushed, okay.

Neither of them ever said anything about that again, not even in Purgatory, but Dean had that memory of the way Cas’ bottom lip slotted so easy against his own, the way they had clung to each other for just that second after they’d both started to pull away. He thinks that could be enough, in this world.)

When he wakes up, Cas is gone, but Dean doesn’t feel lonely or abandoned. He just gets out of the car, shrugs his jacket closer to his body, and starts walking toward Sammy’s cabin.

*

Somehow, it’s not all that surprising when Chuck shows up at the camp. The place feels like an episode of This Is Your Life way too frequently when it comes to new arrivals and visitors; there are so many hunters, and some of them Dean worked with on some case back when he was nineteen and nearly got his stupid ass killed by a fire-breathing bird on a rampage or what have you, only way more depressing.

(And it was totally weird when Dean walked into Gabby’s tent to scan the news with her, only to find Sarah chatting away rather blithely with Cassie, of all people. Turns out her and her husband have another camp a couple of states away. It’s goddamn bizarre, is what it is, that it’s been almost ten years since they met Sarah and saw Cassie for the last time, and somehow they became friends in this crazy new world of theirs.

Dean’s stomach still does a funny lurch when he sees Cassie, and he’s never going to forget the way he felt with her, but that was a lifetime ago and she’s happy now. He’s — he’s not sure if happy is for him, but sometimes he thinks he’s circling his wagons in the general vicinity, as close as he’ll get.)

It is surprising that Chuck’s all cleaned up, neat suit and all, with Kevin in tow. The two of them look awfully Zen.

Sam and Dean rush out to greet them, and find out where the hell Kevin’s been and why Chuck’s here too, but before they can, Castiel appears. “I’m so sorry,” he starts, talking to Chuck, this manic glint in his eyes. “I didn’t recognize — ever —”

“Wouldn’t worry about it, Castiel,” Chuck responds, with a big benevolent smile. “Raphael was watching over me for years and never saw it, either.”

It’s never a good thing when conversations around the camp, especially with the angels, start going like this. “Uh, hi, Chuck,” Dean greets, and the smile just gets bigger. Okay, Dean’s officially freaked out, because the only smiles he ever remembers seeing on Chuck’s face were way too nervous, more suggestions of smiles than the real thing. “Long time no see?”

“I got a little busy around the time of the apocalypse,” he half-explains, and that smile really isn’t leaving his face. Cree-eeepy.

“That’s not Chuck — well, not as you remember him,” Cas butts in, and it’s not helping the sloshing in Dean’s stomach that Chuck or not-Chuck or whoever slides his eyes from Dean to Castiel and back again and the beatific smile just gets bigger. “Remember Kevin’s Word of God, and who recorded it?”

“Sure. That Metatron guy.”

“That’s me, as it turns out,” Chuck practically trills, even if his voice is much calmer than it had been before. “I Fell a long time ago. Guess I didn’t want to deal with Heaven’s crap any more. As the Apocalypse drew closer, I regained my memories and used them to cloak myself from anything angel-related; I was done with Heaven. They haven’t bothered me in…” He whistles. “Years. Still get visions, though.”

Dean wants to glare at him, but he’s too dumbfounded. “Do you still write?”

“The documents are password protected, I can promise you that much.” It’ll do for now. “I figured Kevin wouldn’t mind hearing this from another prophet.”

Now the glare settles over his brow. “You took him away?”

Chuck, or the Metatron or whatever, just shrugs. “Better than the other angels getting to him.” Dude’s got a point, but Dean still isn’t letting him off the hook.

“So why even bring him back here?”

“Hey,” Kevin butts in, and it’s as much grumbling as Dean’s ever heard from the kid. “I said I wanted to come back.”

“You got angel buddies now, though,” Dean protests.

Kevin gives him a — okay, it’s definitely a look, and that kinda freaks him out. “Well, I like it here.” And he might’ve been chatting with the angel who recorded the Word of God, but he’s still kind of that bashful kid. “Kinda — got something for you, too.”

“You and Castiel. Purgatory wasn’t scared of you because of what you did on Earth,” Chuck cuts in, arms folded, one of those wry smiles on his face. “Anyone else would’ve been torn to shreds and reduced to one of the things that lives there almost immediately on arrival. Lucky Sam didn’t get pulled in with you guys,” he explains, with a nod. “It’s scared because it remembers.”

Dean and Cas exchange a glance, because — what the hell is he going on about?

Chuck is obviously biting back a massive grin when they turn back to him. “These are for you,” he tells them, holding out two stone tablets. They’re smaller than Kevin’s Word of God, but in the same script.

“I’m a prophet?” Dean asks, glancing at the giant hunk of rock in his hand. “You’re not taking me to the friggin’ Sahara or wherever. Kinda got other priorities. And I’m so done with the God crap, sorry but —”

“No, you’re not a prophet. You should look at them, though. Think of them as… a prequel to Lazarus Rising. Which never got published, by the way, thanks for that.”

Dean’s got no idea what the guy’s talking about, other than his books. In response, he makes a noise that is absolutely not a grunt, because that would be rude. “I don’t know Enochian.”

But he takes a peek anyway, because why the hell not. When the voice of God tells you to do something, well, okay he’s one stubborn son of a bitch but it’s probably smart to do so. Even if he’s not expecting to see much other than a tablet in a whole lot of script he can’t understand, and he’s gonna have to ask Cas to translate this for both of them.

He’s definitely not expecting the hot flare that swoops up from his stomach to his throat, and makes him gasp out loud and stagger back. He’s so not expecting the world to go blurry and blaze up in gold, before —

Dean remembers. He remembers everything.

*

Castiel has never held a soul before, and he believes he probably should have had practice before this one. It grapples and snarls and tries to claw its way out of his grip. The bites and slashes don’t hurt; the soul is too broken to cause harm to something as mighty as an angel, but Castiel does not want to drop the chaotic mass of anger and guilt and lose it to the universe. He’s been told it is important.

Hell is no place to remake any soul, obviously, particularly one that’s still half-demon and screaming to go back, and especially a soul that snapped its fingers in half clinging to a rock as Castiel heaved it out of the Pit. Heaven will be full of other, nosy angels, and Castiel suspects they will bother him too much in his attempts to rebuild this soul. Earth is a possibility, but Castiel fears making any mistake; it may rend the fabric of that universe and destroy it before any of them are given Paradise.

He takes the soul of Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man of Heaven, to the only other dimension he is aware of — Purgatory.

*

Castiel is — unsure. Even the sound of the word sounds odd resonating inside him, but he was not given further orders beyond saving Dean Winchester from Hell.

He realizes his form has become human, his true vessel on Earth, its skin gone milky compared to Purgatory’s eternal night. (Castiel’s vessel during the last time he was stationed on Earth was a wiry farmer’s wife; this one seems somewhat older, male, with the same kind of lean runner’s strength.) No beasts attack him, even as they snarl in the distance; they can recognize what he is, and all the power inside him. His wings flare high up, as a notice to the souls in Purgatory to stay away.

“Hey, fuck you,” the screaming soul inside Castiel’s arms howls out. The thing thrashes, a maelstrom inside its limiting human frame. Castiel has seen the way sharks circle around bloody chum, staining the water red, and it reminds him of this — only he is holding what holds all this fear and anger and hate, all of it directed at Castiel.

His claws rip into the flesh of Castiel’s new body. Castiel heals the injury instantly, and feels no pain, but there’s a wound on his own insides he cannot simply close. He lost so many of his brothers in the garrison in their journey through Hell, the ugly battles, and there was no proper time to mourn them. Their song merely winked out inside his Grace.

And now, he is here in Purgatory. The voices of his brothers echo inside him, but he feels alone, just him and this twisting soul with a demon taint settled deep inside it. Take me back, it heaves. The breath of the — Castiel knows so much, knows the names of every supernatural spirit he’s been fighting since the bright morning he came into existence, but he doesn’t know what to call this thing that squirms against him and kicks at him. He only knows it breathes on his nascent skin and the feel of it is so odd.

Castiel can wait. Surely, his other brothers and sisters will come to find him here. After Hell, this is a simple mission with their numbers combined.

*

An utter blast wave of creatures streams from the darkness. Castiel recognizes them all, and can even see the mark on some of them where his brothers or, in a few cases, himself, banished their souls here to fight among themselves for all eternity.

Too many of them know Dean Winchester, too. He’s sent so many things here. Many of them cower in the darkness, afraid, but others want revenge. And Castiel can tell, even as they’re little more than teeth and claws and sheer anger and adrenaline — it’s personal.

Castiel is, truthfully, more brutal than any of the things in Purgatory. He’s just as merciless. He suspects Dean is too; Castiel found him hips-deep in blood, some of it his own but most of it not. Maybe that’s why Dean was chosen, to become just one more soldier. (It seems unfair, but it’s not Castiel’s place to have an opinion on this.) Just because Castiel’s brutality is measured, just because there are battle plans, just because his cause is right, doesn’t change the word.

He takes advantage of it, now. He spreads his wings, wide, knowing many of the beasts are aware of what he is. Several of them explode into nothingness at the mere sight of his true form. The rest continue on, ragged and sore, but Castiel slashes at the air and they fall in half, crumpling over. Another long swipe of his vessel’s arms and they’re sent elsewhere in Purgatory, their wrecked forms a warning to anything else.

Dean is whole in his arms, even after the blast of holy light, and he exhales. It’s a strange sensation, the way oxygen, present even here, lights up his bloodstream. The rise and fall of his chest, knowing the way his lungs inflate and deflate — his Father was right, humans are endlessly fascinating.

Castiel wonders how Dean’s lungs will look, protected by the white bone of his ribcage. He wonders if he’ll get the privilege of placing them all back together and laying him back in his grave, breathing life back into him.

Suddenly, Dean twists in Castiel’s arms, like he’s trying to dive back in with the other creatures here. Castiel clutches his form tighter, ignoring the sparks and Dean’s hiss of pain.

*

Most of the powerful archdemons still bide their time deep in Hell, Castiel knows. They await Lucifer rising from his Cage to walk the Earth again. Only Alastair was involved in the battles in Hell, and he preferred to let his horde of ebony-eyed underlings do his dirty work. But the angels found several others, bolder and foolish enough to think they could reign havoc on Creation, and ended them, long ago.

It shouldn’t be so surprising, then, that one of their number finds Castiel and approaches him, still alone except for the rattling half-demon inside his grip. “A little living angel, how delicious,” the archdemon says. His eyes are as red and dead as any other soul in Purgatory. “I bet you’ll taste sweet.” A hideous smirk passes over his twisted wreck of a soul. “And the other thing you have with you, even better. If I don’t take him myself.”

Anna had been the one to kill Dumatria, all those millennia ago, and he still ached for her guidance deep inside his Grace. Castiel knew it would not do to express those feelings, especially not at a time like this. All he could do was something that might earn him her respect, if she was here.

Dumatria may be much more powerful, but he’s also dead, and Castiel whips his hand to the demon’s forehead and feels Heaven’s power course through him, even here in Purgatory. The light flashing from his fingers feels like the most beautiful thing he’s seen in a very long time, since he went into Hell, and Dumatria crumples to the ground like an empty pile of fabric.

Still, this is Purgatory. Nothing truly dies here, Castiel knows that. He can feel the way the darkness inside Winchester curls out toward Dumatria’s body, trying to cling to it and anchor him there. “No,” Castiel rasps out, sinking his fingers into the demon taint and tearing it away, before he disappears into another part of this eternal forest.

*

“Why’d you do that,” Dean asks, later. He’s trying to growl, but his voice sounds choked instead. The darkness still shimmers around him, all its frayed edges shifting in the breeze. “Why do you keep — you keep saving me. You saw the shit I did.”

“I had to save you.”

Dean’s not even human yet, but he twists what could be his head to the side, and definitely snorts. Again, the sensation of breath on his skin is so strange. Two thousand years away from Earth was like a human blink, but Castiel is still unused to the ways things were there. “Fuck you.”

Castiel merely glares, even as he refuses to let go. “You are important, Dean Winchester. You are saved for a reason.”

“Really fuck you. Millions of souls in that pit, and you pick one that couldn’t even hold out…”

At that, Castiel spears his hand into what serves as Dean’s hair, twisting his head so he looks right at him. “It was Hell, Dean. All souls break.”

“There are unbroken souls there, why didn’t you take one of them?!”

“I don’t know!” As soon as the words are out, Castiel regrets them, and Dean’s limbs actually cease squirming, as if they’ve been shocked by the admission that an angel does not know something. “I was told to take you, and I sensed your soul in the Pit —”

There’s a noise from the bundle of half-flesh, half-demon darkness. Castiel still can’t believe he’s holding something that’s so beautiful and awful at once, all of it meshed together. It takes him a beat to realize the noise was a snort. “My soul. Shit’s beaten down, you can’t tell? Nothing left, probably.”

“That’s not accurate.” Castiel can see it even now, how it resists the way the dark tentacles try to attach itself. The soul inside Dean’s shape flares up, forcing them back. “Your soul is intact. Damaged, but intact. Truthfully, it was hard not to notice.”

Castiel considers it a victory that there is no snort against his skin, this time, merely quiet. (He will likely be chastised by Zachariah and others for thinking his skin. It is a dangerous way of thinking.)

“Can you fix it?” Now Dean snorts, and what felt like a victory dissolves. “Sound like my friggin’ brother, hoping like this.”

“I don’t know.” Castiel does not enjoy saying the words, but it’s truth; without his brothers and sisters, he is far weaker. He may be well-liked in his garrison, and pulling the Righteous Man from Hell will prove rewarding no matter what Zachariah thinks of him, but he fears recreating Dean’s soul. For obvious reasons, he doesn’t want to destroy it.

“Yeah, well, fuckin’ figures. Goddamn angel don’t know how to put me back together, not like anyone could.”

Castiel knows this isn’t entirely Dean Winchester, that part of his soul has been marred and changed permanently by his time in Hell. He’d heard about Dean’s lack of faith, studied it even, along with his devotion to his family and his love of strange human things. (Many members of the Host were rather cynical about Dean being Heaven’s Righteous Man, even if they never spoke their doubts out loud.) Experiencing it, however, is an entirely different situation altogether.

Dean is the sort of man who would meet the angel who saved him and spit in his face. Not because he wasn’t grateful, but because he didn’t think he deserved it. Because he would’ve shoved every other soul in the Pit up to Castiel and the other angels in offering, had he known.

“I will try,” Castiel hisses, and once more the soul he’s cradling stiffens inside his vessel’s arms. “Because you are worth it.”

If asked, Castiel would tell anyone it was for Heaven’s reasons; God commanded it, so Dean must be saved. But truth be told, Castiel is fascinated by the way Dean’s soul pulses against the darkness inside it, trying to drive it back. The slow, quiet beat of it sounds like a promise that in time, it will tell him how it’s entranced Castiel so much.

*

Castiel extending his wings is enough to drive back most of the beasts in Purgatory. They’re all too frightened to approach an angel, he’s aware. Still, they creep around the periphery of his senses, waiting for any break in his guard.

It will not come. Their waiting is foolish.

Dean grunts in his arms, but does not protest out loud otherwise.

*

Two dots of light, nearly gold, swim in the distance until they approach. A body forms around them, the identity of it startling.

“Hello, Castiel,” he says, voice gone raspy, a grin Castiel never knew on him across his face.

Castiel lets a swallow move down his human throat. “Hello, Azazel.”

He recognizes the form of what had once been his brother, the demon face and dark energy stark against the angel’s wings that spread from his back. Azazel Fell so long ago, not long after Lucifer. Castiel had heard whispers that he was enjoying Hell, that he had power there, but he could not quite believe it until he witnessed Azazel gleefully setting traps for young mothers-to-be. Ten years, and I don’t even want your soul, he told them, making his smile as warm as possible.

Castiel had asked Zachariah why Michael, or God, would allow such things to happen, but he’d merely gotten a sneer in response. Once Anna Fell, Castiel stopped asking; the other angels were constantly looming over their garrison, anyway. No need to draw more attention there.

“I won’t go through the formalities, brother,” Azazel all but spits, and a too-human blast of nausea throbs through Castiel. “You’ve got the Winchester boy that put the bullet that killed me right in my forehead.” Still grinning, he holds up a bony finger to his forehead and taps a few times. There’s an ugly gash there. It fits him. “And I want revenge.”

“No.”

“I’m your brother, Castiel.”

Castiel doesn’t even respond; he just forces his wings up, until a massive gust of wind bursts out from them, to smack Azazel backwards. Lights flare up in the wind, and it’s a relief. Castiel’s not so far off from Heaven, after all. “You’re not taking Dean Winchester.” His vessel’s foot is on Azazel’s chest, now. Human sensation’s so limiting and exhilarating in its focus at once. “This is not your fight any more.”

In Heaven, Azazel had been little more powerful than Castiel himself. In Hell, he’d come to be Lucifer’s feared lieutenant. In Purgatory, right now, he knows Castiel could blink him out of here with a mere look. Azazel attempts to keep that smile on his face, but the last fact means it falters.

There’s no other choice. Castiel reaches deep down into Azazel, his beating heart — once angel, turned human, turned demon — and rips him apart. A sick sensation swoops through Castiel as he does it, his own Grace igniting as it senses his brother’s flaring out, but he scatters Azazel through Purgatory like ash.

If he ever decides to bother Castiel again, it will have to be a long time from now. Azazel was always an excellent tactician, but putting himself together again won’t be easy.

At this time, Castiel realizes he let Dean go, a heap on a bed of leaves, and he returns there. His borrowed heart jackhammers, an unpleasant sensation he doesn’t understand. Dean will have fled, Dean will be digging his way back to Hell — but no, he’s still there, shadowy hands dug into the ground to keep himself steady.

“That was Yellow-Eyes,” he sputters. “You just — you tore him apart like he was nothing.”

“He’s just a soul here,” Castiel states, gathering Dean back up beside him. “I’m an angel.”

“Why’d you do it?” He presses on, breathless and disbelieving.

“You.” The truth is, Castiel has ceased to think of Dean as a mission or a duty. He allows himself a beat of gratitude that his brothers are not here to sense his thoughts, after which a flurry of panic bursts inside him.

Maybe it’s a trick of his power still resounding through Purgatory, the flashes of Heaven’s light and rage as he tore Azazel’s form to pieces, but some of the darkness cradling Dean’s soul is flaking away, tiny bit by bit.

*

“Are the other angels even coming?” Dean asks. Maybe there’s a touch of demon sneer to his tone, the taunt none of them can resist, but it’s certainly a legitimate question. A few Leviathan skitter around the edges of Castiel’s sight; Castiel stiffens when he sees them, but they’re just ugly serpents here. They cannot harm him, not with his full powers.

“Truthfully, I’m less and less certain,” Castiel admits. The other angels would never allow him this kind of doubt; he aches for their return. Missing them must be what’s making the uncertainty twist through him, and he must resist it like Dean’s soul tries to drive the demon taint backward.

Dean stretches backward into Castiel’s grip. There’s far less thrashing these days, Castiel is sure of that much at least. “You could do it,” Dean says, in a very small voice. Castiel could choose to ignore the words, if he wanted, or at least they could go unacknowledged and it wouldn’t be considered an insult.

He tightens his grip on Dean’s forearms, instead, imagining human flesh stretched taut under his hands. Surely it is a good sign that whatever Dean has as skin now doesn’t burn away with an angel’s touch.

*

Dean saw Castiel plunge his fist — his vessel’s fist, whatever, Castiel doesn’t really have a fist or human features at all — into Azazel’s form and tear him apart, exploding him into black chunky things that dissolved to ash. So yeah, he’s a little apprehensive when Cas holds his wide, already calloused, palms out and offers to try and recreate Dean.

“Just be careful with the merchandise.” It hurts to have himself pressed against Cas all these endless days, a burst of pain when their skin rubs together. Gotta be some kind of instinctual demon reaction to an angel, and Dean wants to puke — both because it hurts for him to touch an angel because he’s become too much of a demon, and because being a demon doesn’t feel all that fucking different from what he was before. Maybe he hadn’t been down there long enough, but — fuck.

“There is no merchandise.”

At least he can still roll his eyes. “Here,” he offers, holding out his arm.

Castiel chews on his lip for a moment, then touches his pointer and middle fingers to Dean’s wrist, where the pulse would beat if he had one.

Dean feels the tick of it, and it’s a shock because he forgot what it was like. There’s warmth, like when he drapes a shirt over a radiator and shrugs it back on after cranking the heat up. And he gasps, and it makes his pulse ratchet up. Just in his wrist, but fuck it’s good.

Cas — and Dean doesn’t know why he’s calling him that, he’s seen the guy tear Yellow-Eyes to bits, he’s a badass angel who blasted back whole waves of demons to pull him out of Hell — moves his hands up around Dean’s neck. Dean winces, both because of the spark of pain and the fact that he’s got freakin’ hands around his neck.

But then there’s this flare of something, and the flare doesn’t go away because it’s warmth. It’s the pulse in his neck, back again, and he heaves out a breath.

A breath. He didn’t realize how much he was missing it until he watches it fog out and dissipate into the darkness. “Shit,” he whispers.

Cas’ fingers don’t move, and Dean tries to nudge into them. “Are you alright?” he asks.

“I’m great,” Dean answers, breathlessly, and when Castiel’s fingers trace up his jawline and cradle his cheekbones, he leans forward best he can and kisses him, because he can’t not. The wet heat of it is the best thing he’s felt in his whole fucking life. (If he thinks about it, it’s kind of the first thing he’s felt, but he’s not fucking thinking about it.)

He has to pull away when pain lances up through his chest, everywhere he’s pressed against Castiel. “Shit,” he gasps, and staggers backward so he can double over, heaving emptily into the ground.

“Was that unsatisfactory?”

Dean looks up, blinking. His hand lands right in some black, goopy shit on the forest floor. Just goddamn lovely, really. “Fuck no,” he rasps out. “Just — I’m still too much demon, I think.”

Just got his throat working properly and it’s all sour bile, of fuckin’ course. He spits onto the ground again, and Cas doesn’t flinch. “Trust me, that wasn’t the issue,” Dean pants, rolling onto his back.

Dean’s always known he’s — well, that sometimes he could go for dudes too. It was part of him he couldn’t stamp out, and it came bubbling out every now and then. So what, he was a natural flirt. That’s how he brushed it off.

Just, Christ, he wasn’t running around even looking for just sex with guys too often, not with Sam and especially Dad around. And Cas, or Cas’ vessel, whatever, was really kind of smoking hot, not that this is a real appropriate observation to have about the thing that pulled you out of Hell and gave you your pulse and breath back, but he was. Now it’s just them and the trees and Dean remembering the way mouths slot together and the warmth of a body underneath his hands.

So, yeah. Kissing wasn’t the issue here.

“Just go slow,” Dean warns him, stretching out best he can. His arms and legs are still jerky, and he’s unused to them. He trusts, trusts this supernatural thing that could break him with a thought, but won’t.

Every part of Dean’s that Castiel remakes, he presses a kiss to. Dean chuckles at it at first — angels and their benedictions, man, that’s fuckin’ weird — until it leaves his whole body feeling like a just-rung bell. Then, he’s not in any mood to do much of anything but gasp.

Cas pouts over the back of Dean’s thigh, which he has hitched up. “What?” Dean heaves out, breathless.

“It’s not… right yet.” And Cas works his fingers through the muscle, down into the nerves somehow. Dean just yowls and imagines this is how the rim of a beer bottle must feel, after you slick a finger across it and make it sing. (Bad bar trick, but hey, some people were still impressed.) It’s like he climbed up a few flights of stairs, but God, the burn feels so good. Dean barely hears the better now or senses Cas’ dry lips touching the new expanse of skin, he’s so blissed out over everything else.

But when Cas kisses the tip of his dick, yeah, Dean fuckin’ notices. He feels his cock jump and get wet at the tip, and shit, he forgot about that and it’s too good. His fingertips, still ringing with Cas’ kiss there too, can only dig into the dirt; Dean doesn’t give a shit if they get dirty, not right now.

“Oh,” Cas says. “So, that’s working.”

Dean barks out a relieved laugh. It’s not the rough snarl of a demon, not any more, not since Cas tore those old vocal chords out and spun new ones from — God, he doesn’t even know. “Dude, quit braggin’.” Fuck, it feels good to let a smile stretch over his face.

Cas just kisses over the middle of his shaft in return. He might have dry lips, but the seam of his mouth is all damp in the middle, and if Dean makes a totally embarrassing — he can’t even call it a moan, it’s more like just a noise — he knows Cas isn’t gonna tell anyone.

Cas slides up his body, spending time on not just the slope of his hips and the curve of his ass, not just making Dean moan when his lips part just a little over his nipples, but getting behind his knees too. He sucks into the soft part of Dean’s elbow, where it bends, and his cry is frankly embarrassing even if no one hears it.

His throat’s still vibrating when Cas spots kisses on his chin, his cheeks, his nose, his forehead. Dean’s already sweaty there, human and gross and probably streaked with Purgatory dirt too, and Cas doesn’t care, just wipes it off with his vessel’s elegant hands. Dean’s still coiled, but it’s not the constant hate pressing down on his own guts from inside, from when he was a demon; it’s anticipation, and he’s hard, sure, and it’s great, but it’s more that coil in his gut that he relishes.

Dean’s eyes are the last place Castiel gets to, and even with them closed he feels a dizzy spray of sparks in front of them, and then a kiss over both of them, light like Cas just brushed his own eyelashes over Dean.

Dean’s eyes open, now. Human. That darkness is still inside him, never gonna be flushed out entirely, but he’s not a demon. Looking at Cas makes him ache, but not because it hurts the way it did before, where his holy light pierced the place inside him that was forgetting sunlight and warmth and everything but the hot darkness of Hell, and the cold gloom of Purgatory.

And the thing that held him, even though it hurt both of them, even if he couldn’t stop churning and rolling in a pathetic attempt to get away. He’s still got that thing, borrowed hands on him — a thing, and he doesn’t mind.

“Cas?” he rasps out, testing his voice. Funny how you forget the way just a word hums through your whole body, how incredible the interplay of breath and sounds works out. Every fucking syllable is a miracle, and he wouldn’t have it without Castiel.

The angel crouches down to the ground, getting his knees all muddy — for Dean, it’s all for Dean, and he’s dizzy with too much that gets ratcheted up when they kiss, again, hot and purposeful this time. Guess Hell didn’t stop him from his hedonism, the need for more and more and more and too much to escape the shittiness of his life.

“Fuck,” Dean gasps, when Cas’ fingers dig into his back. At first it feels like they’re cutting in, gonna rip him apart after all, but no, it’s just more sensation. His body’s the same body he had before, used to sleeping on hard mattresses or the floor, and yet brand new at once. Touch feels so good, because it’s so overwhelming, because where Cas grips his back and bumps his thighs and keeps their lips together’s like burning. Dean forgot how warm skin was, how good it felt to be so close to someone else.

“I can stop.”

“Don’t you dare.” He grins, hitches a leg around Cas’, and tugs them both down onto the dirt. Dean almost wants to laugh when he feels the leaves brush against his thighs and the back of his neck because it’s tickling him, and he’s never calling that annoying again.

But then he has Cas, entirely a warm line all down his front, Dean’s body arching up involuntarily so they can be skin on skin, and yeah, he ain’t laughing.

Stupid as it sounds, Dean speaks the language of sex. His life made him fluent in sex and violence, and the former’s way more fun. Not really a spoken language at all, even, at least if it’s fuckin’ good, just skin on skin and closeness and for a while it doesn’t have to matter who he is, or who the other person is.

Then again, it’s been a whole new lifetime. But he feels Cas’ dick — angel dick, this is so weird — gone fat and warm and trapped between their bodies, and maybe this is just like riding a bike after all.

“Hey — you —” and Cas is rearing up over him just like Dean wanted. The body he’s using — not in it quite yet, he’d explained, just a way that Dean could perceive him without being permanently damaged — isn’t that pale, but in Purgatory’s darkness he might as well be marble, his features stark and cut in the night.

Then Cas’ moves over so their legs are trapped together. At the first bump of their cocks — shit, shit, shit, Dean should’ve thought this out better because there’s no way he can handle it, not this soon —

And then Cas slides, and Dean doesn’t know how all of Purgatory doesn’t come pouring in to tear them apart with the noise he makes. “Dean,” Cas breathes, and damn if his ears don’t ring with it. “I can stop if —”

“Gotta be kidding me,” Dean interrupts, rolling his hips for emphasis. He’s so fucking dirty already, the line of precome shiny down the front of his thigh and smeared on his stomach, dirt everywhere, rutting with an angel while every sensation is new enough to be like fire searing into his skin to take the place of all the scars Cas wiped away from him. And it’s so, so good.

Cas is looming, and maybe this should make Dean want to freeze and toss the angel off him, but no. There’s trust there; Cas dragged his hands and lips everywhere along his body, pushed those hands into his chest — he could’ve ripped Dean apart like he did Azazel — but instead clasped them together, rubbing them against the embers of his soul stomped down into tiny things by Hell, until they flared up to shock him to life again.

Normally, Dean prides himself on being good in bed, or at least that he can keep his shit together no matter how good it feels. Here, though, he’s not exactly surprised that he’s coming undone too quickly, and he doesn’t even care. “Fuck,” he rasps out, when he feels a throb on his dick and realizes it’s not his own, that he’s that close.

“Think I love you,” Dean says, voice so low he’s not sure Castiel hears it. Purgatory’s stripped him down, to the point where yeah, he’ll fuckin’ say it. His emotions feel flayed to shreds and brand new at once, and there’s a rush in the fact that he remembers how to feel after all, that he wasn’t put back like some fucked-up robot or just another soulless demon. It’d be too much if he didn’t have Cas here, hands grounding him, and the dirt itchy — not that he gives a shit — under his back.

Usually, he — saying he doesn’t rush in is the understatement of the universe. But this doesn’t feel like rushing in, not at all; Cas might as well have cradled his soul inside his Grace for a billion years. Hell, maybe he did, and Dean will come back to find the world gone, and Sammy with it. The thought makes him shudder, so he turns back to Castiel, the thing he trusts over just about anyone, the thing that gave a shit about him.

“Cas — oh —” He bites back the God, because it’s probably a bad idea to piss off the angel that just put you back together and is celebrating it by fucking into the groove of your hip with blasphemy. Not that this isn’t already pretty awesomely blasphemous, now that he thinks about it.

To cut himself off, Dean digs hands into Cas’ hair to drag his head down and kiss him, opening his mouth under Castiel’s this time. He forgot how much he missed kissing until he’s slipping his tongue forward, and it’s wet and filthy and he’s sure his mouth is gonna be a swollen mess and his body’ll look worse, but fuck it.

When it hits him, his orgasm feels like taking that last step up a hill and finally seeing the top, knowing you can start trotting down now, and the bright shock of the sun as it flares into view at once. It’s good, it’s so good, and it bubbles up inside him and crashes hard. In any other situation, he’d be embarrassed at the way he jackhammers it out, smearing it up his chest and Cas’ too, but he doesn’t care right now, too thoroughly fucked out in the best way.

The next thing he’s aware of, Cas still has that damn looming thing going on, only he’s staring down at his own erection, blood-flushed and so wet it’s glossy. Guy’s looking back and forth between that and his palm, and it’s almost cute, and Dean’s on the verge of asking if he needs any help over there when Cas must make the connection and starts pumping himself. It’s harder than Dean would like on himself, and maybe he’ll get to teach him technique, but it only takes a few fast strokes, twisting at the base, before he shudders, hard, and empties over Dean’s thigh.

He totally doesn’t mind, not even when Cas flops on top of him. They’re gonna get sealed together, probably, and now that he’s coming back to himself there are definitely some wood chips digging into his ass hard. And man, is it awesome.

“Shoulda let me take care of that.”

“Maybe.” Cas makes no move to get off him. Dean’s okay with it. “You should rest, if you want. I’ll keep watch.”

Dean kisses him, long and slow and worn-out on both their parts, but he still pours everything he can into it. Cas tastes like salt under his tongue, and there’s some hint of the darkness of the dirt under them, but he’s also weirdly clean. Angel, figures.

“Sure.” And if he lets Cas lift him, just a little, until his back feels warm and comfortable and not on the friggin’ dirt any more, well no one else is here. He doesn’t know if angels sleep, but Cas isn’t leaving him.

*

Angels don’t sleep, not normally, but Castiel knows he can put this body — not truly his, an approximation of his vessel who is still on earth in reality, but the sensations are dangerously real and intoxicatingly so — into a state of stasis and rest with Dean. Then again, this is borne of a feeling that he has done so much, and deserves the rest, and that’s too close to pride.

Castiel worries, but never gets the opportunity to decide. Because that is when Zachariah and Hamaliel approach, their boundless energy pushed into human vessels, to find his body tangled with Dean’s in a sweaty, messy heap, all the skin on their legs touching and entwined almost like a knot.

“Zachariah —” Castiel starts, alarmed, but he never has a chance to finish because Zachariah extends his vessel’s hand and slashes it through the air, and Castiel is gone in the next moment.

*

“Cover him up,” the angel Dean doesn’t know, snub-nosed and reedy and taller than even Sam, sneers at — well — Dean’s own naked ass. “I don’t want to see that.”

Zachariah’s face is twisted in disgust, too, but he moves his hand again and Dean’s usual clothing falls onto his body with a thump, heavy jeans and a t-shirt fitting across his form. “They are rather repulsive, humans,” Zachariah sighs. “I expected more from Castiel, though.”

“Why?” The other angel snorts. “He’s just an underling, and he’d been so close to Anna, too.”

“But he was in my garrison, Hamaliel.”

“Maybe your garrison is trouble.” An ugly smirk twists over Hamaliel’s face.

Zachariah shoots the other angel a look that would likely level several forests, before his mouth springs back to its usual corporate douchebag smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Let’s not fight,” he urges, all smarm. “Got very important business to take care of.”

They both hunch over Dean’s body, crowded in so tightly their bodies completely cover it. When they pull away, he’s gone. Hamaliel is dusting off his hands very deliberately.

“I removed the Winchester boy’s ability to hear us in our true forms,” Zachariah all but crows. “Perhaps it was unfortunate to do that, it could have been useful to communicate with the vessel later, but we can’t have Dean and Castiel speaking too easily now, can we?”

“But Michael —”

“We’ll find another way. We’ve got fate on our side; all will work out according to plan in the end.”

The other angel nods. “You didn’t get rid of his Hell memories, did you?”

“Of course not,” Zachariah snorts. “Just this little… Brokeback Purgatory adventure. The Hell memories, oh, those are useful, if the Winchester boy needs any… convincing.”

Dean really doesn’t like the smile that cracks over the other angel’s face. “I didn’t even consider that.”

“That’s why I’m in charge, Hamaliel.”

“Would you like to take care of Castiel, as well?”

“Of course.” Zachariah sighs, deep and exaggerated. “Memory wipes take so much out of you.”

Hamaliel casts deeply hooded eyes on Zachariah. “You do recognize that you must be very watchful over your garrison from now on. One little slip, and little Cassy gets demoted.”

Zachariah nods, even though he’s clearly disgusted with the idea of taking any sort of command. Hamaliel offers a smug nod of his own in return. In the next instant, they’re gone, and Purgatory lights up with angry red and yellow eyes, a canopy of all the rage and fury stuffed in that dimension with only Castiel and the other angels holding it back.

*

So. That — happened.

Dean doesn’t know how much time passed in camp, but it couldn’t have been long, because while maybe a couple of people are giving him weird looks, everyone’s mostly just milling around as ever. Chuck — Metatron — no, fuck it, he’s definitely still Chuck — stands there, arms crossed and smiling at the two of them.

Kevin’s off to the side, two red spots high on his cheeks and oh, God, if Chuck’s been telling him everything he’s totally heard, in detail, about him getting it on with Castiel. At least he didn’t get it in his dreams like Chuck, but Dean offers him a sympathetic grimace.

“Um,” Dean gets out after a while. He finally looks over at Cas, and shit. The guy’s intense, wouldn’t be Cas without his intensity, but those eyes are like getting drilled with an iceberg right now.

“Did you know?” Cas asks, and Dean winces at the sharpness. It’s a dart, and Dean’s had one of those accidentally hit him and they hurt like a son of a bitch.

Still, his expression hardens. “Fuck, no. I mean — don’t you think I would’ve said — wait, did you?”

“Of course not.” The glare softens by degrees. “That would have changed things, Dean.”

Dean isn’t expecting the laugh that’s expelled from him. “Would it?”

They’d still be them, and he’d still need someone to convince him he’d done enough to deserve Cas’ devotion. Cas would still be the most stubborn son of a bitch Dean ever met, and wouldn’t leave no matter what ugly-ass thing Dean did or however much he thought his ideas were clearly moronic. They’d still fight, but keep circling around each other. It’s destiny by two people who’ve flipped it off, over and over. It’s an impossibility that keeps finding a way to exist; fuck, they’re making it exist.

Other than Sammy, and God that’s weird to say, it’s the love of Dean’s life. And they only had that one kiss, quiet and dark and too chaste, too. Well — on Earth.

“Maybe we can start over,” Cas muses.

Dean looks over, alarm painting his features. “What do you mean, Cas?” Maybe he wants to tear this whole damn thing between them down, walk away. Dean wouldn’t blame him.

But no, he’s only stepping closer, to slide a hand up to Dean’s cheek and cradle it. They’re so close; their shoes kiss at the tips. Dean half-flinches, sucking in breath like he’s been slapped, before he leans into the touch. Everyone’s watching them and he doesn’t care.

Cas’ lips touch his. He hadn’t really kissed back last time. They’re dry, but soft, not too chapped or rough like Dean thought they might be — and yeah, he thought about it, shut up, you can’t spend the better part of like six years staring at someone without thinking about that a little bit. It’s all soft and chaste, but Dean still hears someone, like, actually gasping behind him.

Well. Fuck that. Dean pushes one of his hands over Cas’, effectively locking it against his cheek, and buries the other deep into his hair as he puts the kiss into high fuckin’ gear, right then and there, because it’s been long enough already and he’s not waiting any goddamn longer just because the camp is goggling over them.

What Dean wasn’t expecting was Cas to go along with it, necessarily. Like just when he’s getting used to the shapes of their mouths together, or when to ease up so the guy can breathe, that’s when Dean gets this little wet slick across the seam of his lips. Just because he wasn’t expecting it, it takes him a beat to realize that was Cas’ friggin’ tongue —

“Whoah,” Dean gasps, stumbling back. And fuck, Cas’ lips have gone a little red and puffy to go along with his hair, which is little more than a messy brown mass at this point, and it’s a good, good look on him.

Cas’ eyes narrow. Less intimidating than usual, but Dean still stiffens up — heh, not like that, he’s in public and not fifteen years old and he can control himself, thank you very much — when he sees it. “Was that not okay?” He sounds irritated, like he wants to get right back to it. Dean’s internally fist-pumping so fucking hard, even with all the eyes on him.

“No,” Dean says, in a daze, and then shit, of course, Cas’ frown just deepens. “Uh, no, shit, I mean — it was way too good, was what it was.”

“This is a very public place,” Cas notes. Tamara, of all people, takes a step back when Cas casts his look on her. Whoah.

Still dazed, Dean grins and nods and starts to move off. He doesn’t need to look behind him to see if Cas is in tow, but he moves his hand backwards until it finds Cas’ wrist anyway. “You’re right. Better in my cabin?”

Dean looks backward now, just to see the look on Castiel’s face. “Better in your cabin,” he agrees. His smiles are still all wonky and they’re never gonna be not weird, but God they’re like that first ray of orange sunlight spilling across the morning sky at the same time.

There’s a wolf-whistle behind them, sharp in what’s mostly silence. (Dean can hear a lot of muttering, but fuck that.) Couldn’t be Sammy, the guy’s probably covering his eyes with his hand still. Probably friggin’ Meg, if she’s around the camp.

Right now, though, it hardly matters. Dean’s forcing himself to be a little selfish right now, concentrating too much on his every nerve ending and inch of skin, and what’s in front of him as he pushes the door open and slams it shut, only to find himself flattened up against it. Not too hard or anything, but there are hips pressed against his own, and God he’s gasping at the stupidest things, like the way his ass rubs up against the wood of the door. All that hot friction just seems like a promise.

It’s like, one PM, and Dean’s thinking how ridiculous it is that they’re doing this now. Light shines through the windows with their sagging curtains that Sarah and Sam put up, and there’s all this activity in camp — but fuck, that’s outside, and inside it’s finally just Dean and Castiel, all they were, and all they are. All they could be.

“I’m not made to do anything halfway,” Cas growls, at one point, right into where Dean’s neck and jawline meet. No one’s clothes are off yet, and Dean still feels exposed and laid out; he’s sure that spot is a little sour with sweat, the pulse fast when Cas replaces his words with his tongue, the nip of his teeth. “I never have.”

“Maybe I’ve tried to skate by before,” Dean tells him, and if he moves a little bit away from Cas it’s not because he wants to get away, but because he wants to meet the guy in the eyes when he says it; every goddamn moment from those six months between when Cas went into the lake and Dean stumbled across him wearing that dork-ass sweater is still too vivid, painful at the same time it’s dull because he was just going through the motions most of the time. “But not with this, I swear, Cas.”

That’s why Dean didn’t start this years ago, didn’t give in to what he felt in the barn when Cas looked right at him, or in Bobby’s kitchen when Dean could feel his breath against his lips. (Though it’s nice to know there was something behind that.) He could’ve single-handedly introduced him to the wonders of non-virginity after the hooker didn’t work out. There were so many times in that year after Lisa’s when Dean knew he could’ve acted on all that tension between them.

Hell, they were alone in Purgatory, only the dark forest and some creepy-ass monster spirits around to judge them. But Dean still couldn’t do it. When he considers the fact that Cas is wearing a dude is the least complicated thing about the whole situation, Dean always knew he’d have a couple of hurdles to clear to get to this point — and he could barely even stretch and sucked at phys ed in whatever high schools he was in with Sammy.

But he always knew that when he came around, Cas would be waiting right there for his dumb, way-too-flawed, human ass. That he loved anyway.

“Good,” Cas responds, and there’s a little smile playing at his lips at the same time his voice already sounds — well — honestly, Dean’s been trying to keep himself under control so he didn’t shoot off in his goddamn pants, and it’s not good, in this case, to think that Cas sounds so fucked out, already.

He distracts himself by wriggling out of his shirt, and tries not to laugh when Cas laces his fingers in his own and tries to hoist it off of him too. “Not gonna help,” Dean murmurs into a face-ful of t-shirt; the laughter he attempted to hold back bubbles out anyway. Real fuckin’ laughter, too.

It dies away when he sees the practically starved look in Cas’ eyes, just at his chest. Not like that’s anything he hasn’t seen before, either. Still awesome for the ego. “Go ahead,” he breathes, and if his voice sounds more like a whisper than the confident swagger he was going for, well, Cas isn’t gonna tell anyone.

Cas slips a palm onto his abs, slotting his fingers into the easy dips there. And then he goes right for tweaking a nipple, which sends a hot and unexpected shock through Dean. Not fair at all.

Then Cas is dipping his head down, licking a slow, long path wherever he finds, making Dean uncomfortably aware of all his skin — it’s almost more weird than hot, but Dean doesn’t mind weird if it’s with Cas. Having an angel in a dude’s body so close your erections slot against each other through layers of jeans is already pretty goddamn weird, anyway. His fingers dig into Cas’ flannel and push it halfway down his back, and it drops to the floor with an easy soft noise.

Dean tries not to laugh when Cas struggles out of his t-shirt after that. It’s an uneasy motion, herky-jerky with his elbows twitching and fingers slipping off the sleeves. “You can’t be that unused to it by now,” Dean points out, but it’s a murmur that gets distracted at every little slip of skin that gets exposed. Cas is lean, practically pretty; his vessel’s body didn’t get bulky with a hunter’s life.

“Forgive me. I didn’t change my clothing every day for merely several million years before I found myself at Camp Chitaqua.” Good to know that Cas can look like that — hair all fucked up into a fluffy mess from Dean’s fingers and the shirt going over his head and color rising high on his cheeks, lips still slick, chest heaving in and out and Dean sees it — and it doesn’t affect the mouth on the guy.

Speaking of that mouth. Dean hooks his fingers in Cas’ belt loops and tugs him closer to kiss him again. It’s messy and their tongues tangle wet and hot; Dean likes it slower but Cas is pushy, hand spearing into Dean’s hair and slipping up his chest, and Dean’d be lying if he said he didn’t kinda dig it.

“Thought you were a virgin,” Dean pants, letting his thumbs stroke over the spurs of Castiel’s hipbones. They’d be so fuckin’ easy to trace his tongue over, too, or rub up against, even if he apparently already has, does it even count if it was Purgatory and he can rediscover the smooth line of them here —

“That doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” Cas huffs back, pulling Dean over to the bed as they kiss and kiss. He slots his hand over the front of Dean’s jeans, not even rubbing or anything, just feeling out Dean’s dick with the swipes of his fingers and well, that’s completely fucking unfair. Dean can’t help the blurt of wetness into the front of his boxers.

Shit’s already getting uncomfortable, and maybe too close from just some groping. “Cool with me,” Dean gasps, easing Cas down onto his bed. He looks too good, already, hips and shoulders leaving comfy little indents in the blanket, eyes wide and ready.

Dean thinks about going right for his dick, too, spitting on his own hand and jacking Cas hard and fast so that they can take their time for Round 2. But why bother with that when you can make Round 1 really slow and good, too?

He fits his lips over the tight little circles of Cas’ nipples, sucking carefully at first before he nibbles them harder, enjoying the stiffness of them against his tongue. “Dean,” Cas groans, both impatient and thick with pleasure.

“What?” It’s seriously fun to do that stupid little tongue-swirling move everyone’s had done to them before, only to feel Cas arch up hard under his hands because well, he’s not everyone, apparently. Older than Dean can comprehend, and brand new in his way too. Even more fun to watch Cas’ mouth flop open in response, and snap shut again, like whatever he was going to say isn’t as important as getting Dean’s mouth back on his skin.

He’s pretty fuckin’ happy to oblige. Dean’s been kind of fascinated with Cas’ neck ever since the angel had been running around in hospital gear — and yeah, that’s like a million kinds of completely inappropriate, but you don’t get around to watching all one hundred and forty-two episodes of Dr. Sexy with a major crush on the lead character without developing some kind of hospital uniform kink, embarrassingly enough — and now he gets to mark it out with his lips.

Cas’ pulse beats on, heavy, and his Adam’s apple bobs up and down a little bit like he’s swallowing. Dean feels the rise and fall of his chest under his cheek. He could be any other human — he doesn’t even taste funny, just clean and a little salty — but he’s not, and Dean knows it, and he’s got him bracketed between his thighs and fuck, he’s actually glad it’s daytime so he can see Cas’ chest practically glow in the light.

It’s a bad old trick, but Dean can bust out the old tricks with Cas in his bed, so Dean carefully walks his fingers down Cas’ flat belly until they reach the top of his jeans and stops right there, only to massage the heel of his hand lower. Doesn’t even feel like a point of no return, and Dean’s so shocked and grateful by that he almost doesn’t notice Cas’ eyes and mouth flying open, and the way his hips leave the bed to press up for more.

Almost.

He goes slow. He’ll slip the button out of its hole, and leave his fingers on the exposed skin, only to kiss and kiss and kiss, and Dean literally can’t remember the last time he took this much time in bed — when he was allowed to take this much time in bed, and it wasn’t hard and fast with hands and mouths and the other person was usually gone by the time the sun was up.

Somehow Dean’s pretty sure that’s not gonna happen this time around.

Every kiss is fireworks and big fat shiny stars behind his eyes, hot and new and shocking, and the easy slide into something that’s been there all along. It’s worn like an old comfy chair he might’ve owned in some other world, one where he wasn’t going from shitty motel to shitty motel every week, hunting crap most people didn’t know existed. He’s fairly sure the only reason they stop kissing at all is because his dick keeps bumping against Cas’ thigh, and every spark of contact makes him arch and rub, and he’s not interested in this ending far too soon.

So, ready for the really good shit, Dean hooks his thumbs under Cas’ unzipped pants, expecting to slide them under the thick band of elastic of boxers or briefs, too. He doesn’t get either of those, and confused, he pulls down the jeans and goggles at what he finds.

Cas is wearing panties. Not fancy ones, not at all, there’s a line of cheap lace at the hips but other than that they’re plain gray cotton. They’d be totally unremarkable if it wasn’t for the hot rise of Castiel’s erection inside them, barely held back in the cotton, and — fuck — the smear of wetness where the head of his dick is outlined, thick ridge and all.

Dean’s moved past goggling all the way to friggin’ gagging for it, but he still manages to find it in him to ask, “Panties?”

“When we were shopping, you told me to get underwear,” Cas grumbles, as much as he can when his voice is sunk even lower and more growly than usual. Dean lets his brain flash through fun memories like the way it feels to get shot in order to not come right there. “I bought underwear.”

“You — didn’t —” And shit, of course, Cas isn’t really a man, has no idea of societal norms. Or fuck, he’s been on Earth long enough, maybe he intentionally gave them the finger. Dean can’t really be bothered to ask right now, he just wasn’t expecting it to be so hot. One finger traces up, almost of its own accord, to play with the elastic clinging tight to Cas’ thighs. He slips it inside, just a little. The fabric’s so fucking tight when it rubs against the back of his finger, cock straining the panties out already. “You got some extra pairs of these?”

Because Dean can picture it, on a slow day, or if they survive all this and emerge out the other end. God, Cas is probably a size smaller than him too, and the panties’d be cutting into the flesh of his thighs and all that thin cotton would press up against him, a reminder he’d get with every step —

“Yes,” Cas says, wryly, like he totally went back on his promise not to read Dean’s mind.

Honestly, Dean might make an affronted huff at that, but he’s grinning the whole time. Cas really is an angel.

He lets himself get kissed, sighing into it. It’s been too long, and truthfully kissing was always one of his favorite parts of all that boom-chick-a-wow-wow stuff. Just being close enough to someone to learn the funny slide of their mouth and taste what they had for dinner, and knowing you could let out a choke of laughter if you messed up — kissing’s fuckin’ great. It was the closest he got to so many people who didn’t share his blood for years, making out ferociously in shitty bathroom stalls with his back and ass pressed up against the rickety metal walls of them.

There’s no rush this time, no charge toward an inevitable finish line — though oh yeah, Dean knows that’s coming too — but that doesn’t leech the passion from it, or the heat. He keeps one leg curled around Cas’ hip and thigh, two fingers sunk right into the waistband of his underwear. There’s nothing too interesting he can feel other than the warmth of it, but with the way his leg is wrapped around Cas, God, there’s only Dean’s normal boring underwear and Cas’ fucking awesome panties in between so much skin pressed together.

He almost doesn’t wanna, but — “Can I take these off,” he asks, voice pretty quiet and rough. Cas just lifts his hips as answer, and Dean savors the drag of fabric down his legs, almost as much as how the panties crumple into a little damp ball that he tosses away.

Dean’s seen Cas naked before, or at least his vessel’s body, and he’s — well — it sucks for Jimmy Novak, it really does, but the guy’s in a better place and it’s definitely better that he’s not present. There are just a lot fewer bees this time. (And God, Dean’s had many, many thoughts that push forward My life is so weird, but that might take the cake.)

Goddamn (time to find a new word), it’s nice to see. Dean takes his time running his fingers over all of Cas that he can reach, lazily, the rise of his cheekbones and the thrumming tendons in his neck, over his shoulders and totally not smirking when his mouth pops open a little at Dean’s fingernails brushing over his nipples.

“Worried you wouldn’t be able to feel this,” he admits, letting those fingernails brush over his stomach. It’s gone tight in anticipation, but Cas’ face has gone all woozy and dark-eyed, not like when Dean took him to that hooker.

“With my vessel’s soul gone, there’s little separation between me and any physical sensations.” He makes a sound Dean wasn’t even sure he was capable of making, something like a gasped-out gah, when Dean teases over his thighs. Fuck, he arches up into the touch, and he’s still shaking when Dean pulls his fingers away. The air feels like too much space as it slips between them, so he puts them back on Cas’ sides and crushes his chest to the angel’s as he kisses him, again.

“Physical sensation, huh,” he has to ask, licking into the little dip where jaw meets neck. “Can I try something?” He’s kinda twitchy with nerves, but Cas isn’t saying anything about it, only nodding.

Truth be told, Dean loves giving head, always has. There’s something for him about being caught between someone’s legs, their hands gripping heavy at his neck and back as he licks up, doing that dumb trick with his tongue that still gets ‘em all every time. All that contact makes his head swim too pleasantly. Still, it’s been a long time since he’s been with a dude — honestly, with anyone, but guys especially — but he remembers enough, and starts with long, hard swipes with his tongue up the underside of Cas’ erection. It’s already all wet, precome striping it.

Dean’s pretty used to Cas saying his name, even if he’s never gonna get used to the way he’ll appear out of nowhere. Dude needs a bell, or something. But Dean’s never heard Cas gasp his name in that tone before, like he’s getting tugged underwater and totally fucking thrilled with it.

Good start, at least.

Fuck it, he’s going for it. He takes as much of Cas down as he can in one long twist, and he’s grateful for the angelic restraint because Dean can feel the deep urge to thrust up send a shake through Cas’ hips, but there’s no accompanying lift. Choking all over the guy’s dick might not be the best way to set the mood, he’s pretty sure.

It’s not exactly comfortable. His jaw goes achy too easily, always has. But it’s totally fucking worth it for the noises Cas makes, where Dean feels them in his mouth. There’s even the little clink of glass starting to crack in the windows, and shit — but if anything’s worth it for that, it’s this.

And that’s not even counting the fact that Cas is warm with blood and throbbing like he’s just some other living, breathing person. Dean loves the full stiffness of his cock in his mouth, how oddly smooth it is, and all the salt-sour taste that only he knows. His hands find their way over Cas’ ribcage, and he’s sort of impressed with himself that he manages to keep them steady as he works on memorizing every groove, the rise and dip of his skin.

They’re moving in tandem, Cas fucking his lips a little bit now, nothing Dean can’t handle, while he rocks his mouth back, slow and measured and steady. Honestly, he’s really fucking impressed with himself that he’s not just slurping away, considering how much he’s actually uncomfortable with sheer want. Still got his technique, at least.

Dean rubs his tongue up the shaft, and wants to smile at the hot burst he feels against his tongue, and the pointed Dean he hears somewhere above his head. But it’s nothing compared to the way something in his chest actually swells up when there’s a crunch and glass tinkles to the floor, a few feet away.

He pulls off, just to grin. “Good?”

Dean’s known Cas for a long-ass time, now, and he’s never been so afraid of an imminent smiting. “Get on with it,” he offers up, voice all throat. Dean takes just a minute to stare down at him, hair all chaotic and chest flushed and dick fucking glossy with both their wetness, before he crouches down again.

He just wishes he had some lube to slick his fingers up with and introduce Castiel to the many wonders of the prostate while he sucked him off, make it even better, but there’s always next time. God, there’s gonna be a next time.

This time around, though, he just goes right back down on him, fast and hard and his cheeks hollowed in. He keeps his eyes open, and so are Cas’, and even though they’re hooded they’re almost as friendly as Dean’s ever seen them, and of course Cas doesn’t have the common sense to do anything but stare.

Fuck it, Dean stares back, and there’s so much fabric gone wet and tight against his dick and he almost blows it right there, until a deep throb inside his rounded lips brings him right back to Cas. He should probably do something with his hands, pump Cas until he comes, but it’s too appealing to leave them right where they are, where he can feel every breath and heartbeat. The evenness of them, even now, is a corkscrew right to his gut.

Dean gives himself permission to lose it a little. He knows he’s drooling out the sides of his mouth, getting Cas wet and messy with it, and worse than that he’s making noises, practically growls, shaking through the hot skin in front of him —

And that’s what makes Cas come, right into his mouth just like any other human would, and this isn’t Dean’s first time at the rodeo and he should’ve recognized the harshness of Cas’ breath, how every breath seemed shoved out, and the quicker thrusts of his hips and gotten both of them ready, but he doesn’t even mind. Without complaint, he swallows all of it down; he doesn’t love it, but he’s done it to dudes in sketchy alleyways before, so this is nothing.

When Dean pulls off, Cas is still all floppy legs and arms on the bed, chest swelling up and tightening back against his ribcage. His skin’s gone bright red in patches, which is freaky appealing. If Dean wasn’t too busy tugging his own pants down, sighing frankly embarrassingly deeply in relief at the loosening pressure around his erection, he’d roll his tongue over every one of those marks; Cas’d be shiny when he pulled back, and only the two of them would know about it.

“You can do what you want,” Dean gasps out as he knees his way between Cas’ legs, voice hoarse enough to be almost unrecognizable. “Or not do anything, I can —” Just Cas’ spread-out body is more than enough, the focus in his eyes and tension in his arms, as Dean works his own palm around his cock and pulling a few times. He knew he was close, but it’s still a shock just how tight his balls draw up, how he has to bite his cheek not to lose it right away.

Cas doesn’t say anything, but Dean finds himself flat on his back and caught between Cas’ knees. He thinks maybe he should complain, after all he’s the one who knows what he’s doing here, but fuck it, getting manhandled is friggin’ awesome.

Their heads dip together and before Dean can try his best to shove Cas off, because his mouth still tastes like him and that’s gross, they kiss. It tastes like sweat and heat and them, together, and it’s messy just like the sheets of his bed and hell, the entire cabin right now with shattered glass all over the floor, but it’s also just as awesome. There are hands all over him, and when Cas slides down to mouth over the pulse in his neck, lick over his chest, bite his nipples and hipbones — it still feels heated and close, a blanket that makes him absolutely buzz with anticipation.

When Cas finds his cock and swipes the head of his tongue over his slit, once, precise, Dean makes a noise that probably shatters the last of the glass clinging to the mirrors and windows. The bad luck might be worth it, if he doesn’t have to lose this.

“Don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Dean tries to say, but the end of his sentence is nearly bitten down because Cas all but throws himself into sucking Dean off. And it’s fucking everything, like yeah his mouth is warm and tight the way the Impala is kinda cool, or the Leviathan are a little bit creepy, but it’s also the nearly reverent way his eyes flutter half-shut. His mouth is slack enough — fuckin’ pretty, to be honest, just wrecked enough — to fit around his dick, and tight enough to make stars flutter behind Dean’s eyes every time the guy decides to twist his tongue, even just experimentally.

Dean’ll have to ask Cas what porn he was watching later, because it was obviously awesome. For now, all he can do is hook a leg over Cas’ shoulder, and fuck his mouth as carefully as possible. It’s not too hard, not punching into his lips like he’s done with other people, because the motion of Cas’ tongue is more curious than anything else. Still, the wide, cautious swipes are really fucking doing it for him — but it’s probably just a Cas thing, honestly.

It wasn’t gonna take much, Dean knows that, and he’s kind of impressed he lasts as long as he did watching Cas gaze up at him, all blue and wide and heated at the same time. That’s when Dean realizes it’s probably not the porn Cas was watching that was so hot and good, it was just Cas, and his foot slips in the sweat pooled between Cas’ shoulders — he’s hot and sweaty just like a human, in a way he’s so not outside this bed. Only Dean gets this, and it’s weird but exhilarating.

Speaking of exhilarating, it’s some combination of everything — not just Cas’ plush mouth and the way it goes tight and seals around his cock, but the closeness of him and the heat off his body — that makes Dean come, at last, tossing his head back and twisting his fingers in the sheets tightly. The orgasm’s a tidal rip over his body, so fast it leaves his vision blurred, and ebbs out slow. It feels like he’s been fundamentally restructured, and maybe he has. Weird shit happens when angels and humans have sex, he’d guess.

Cas slides out from under his leg and Dean absolutely doesn’t whine at the loss of it, but then Cas more or less flops against his side, boneless and relaxed. Dean feels stupidly awed when he loops a hand around his shoulder and moves them together.

“I believe I owe you an apology,” Cas — Cas is drawling his words out, lazy and slow and easy, and Dean is awesome, thank you very much.

Not that he’s much better off. He thinks he manages to get out a pretty undignified mmmph as a reply, and that’s it.

“I said once that human sexual activity was tedious,” Cas states, and Dean actually completely remembers that moment because he’d been real affronted at the time, for reasons he didn’t wanna pinpoint. “I hadn’t… experienced it.” His fingers trace Dean’s face, and all of their skin is still flushed. “It is not.”

“Yeah, I rock,” Dean jokes. Cas doesn’t whack him on the head in response, doesn’t even chuckle or eye-roll, just curls in closer to his chest.

“You smell pleasant,” Cas informs him, dry. It’s just weird enough to be Cas, but not bizarro shit that takes him out of the mood. Dean chuckles. “What?”

“Nothing, just — you rock too.” Apparently, that’ll do for now, because Cas shifts until they’re all the more tangled up in each other. Dean’s pretty sure he’s gonna wake up and have to shake out parts of his arm and leg because they’ll have fallen asleep, and he doesn’t mind a bit.

*

Dean wakes up and yep, he’s gotta shake his arm as discretely as he possibly can to get the feeling back in it. Cas grunts in return, and shoves back against him. Only it’s the easy curve of his bare ass right against Dean’s thigh, so it more wakes Dean up than annoys him. Hello.

Weird to wake up when it’s dark out, but before Dean can protest about stank sleeping breath, they’re kissing again. It’s not even bad, on Cas’ side at least.

“Wait —” Dean grunts, rolling away and over and digging through one of the little dressers, coming up with a half-used tube. It was him and his hand a lot, what could he say?

He slides back into bed, hands skimming over Cas’ hips to slide up to his chest, and he drags the lube up over his ribs and heart. “Don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, I just thought…”

Dean absolutely doesn’t gasp when one of Cas’ hands clamps down on the small of his back, the impact heavy and practically electric at once. Well, okay then.

Neither of them give a shit that the windows are broken, apparently.

*

The next time Dean wakes up, at least it’s daylight, and he’s all cleaned up and everything. God bless — heh — angel mojo. Cas is rearranging the glass in the mirror, sealing the cracks between the silver with a touch. He’s got jeans on — and only jeans, Dean can tell from the way the pants are slipping down and he can just start to see where his back dips into the sweet, round curve of his ass. Dean didn’t know he could go this caveman with a dude, but his tongue actually flicks out of his mouth while he stares at the dimples in the dip on Cas’ back.

“Hey,” Dean greets, voice sated. It’s weird.

“Hello.” He offers him half a smile, before returning to the mirror. Even though it’s cracked, Dean can see he’s still smiling in it. Genuine, too, not the creepy-ass smile he saw on the face of Cas the time Zachariah took him to the alternate 2014, or when Cas was spiraling down the path of insanity after absorbing Sam’s Hell memories. The smile’s little, poking into his cheeks, barely a smile at all, but it’s Cas. “The others in camp are probably wondering if we are still alive.”

Dean scratches the back of his head; not everyone, especially not big dumb humans, can be as easily graceful as Cas in the mornings, apparently, the easy slope of his back and the span of his shoulders making Dean’s dick perk up just a little. “Dude, I know bad ways to go, and last night wouldn’t have been one of them.”

“Yes.” Dean can’t help but dig a hand into Cas’ hair, still all messed up from being used as a goddamn handle and then getting pressed into a pillow for a few hours, as he walks by him on his way to tug some clothes back on. He honestly thinks about putting Cas’ panties on when he sees them all crumpled up in a corner, but that’s too grody even for him. He’ll just borrow some later, and the thought makes a big stupid grin crack over his face.

“I’ll be back.” And because he can, he sucks a kiss into Cas’ neck on his way out.

There isn’t, like, a crowd waiting with cameras in front of their cabin or whatever, at least. Good start.

He makes it halfway to Sam’s cabin when it turns — less good. “Good night?” Meg asks, all bony shoulders as she bumps into him. Frankly, she’s the most gleeful Dean has ever seen her, and that includes when she ambushed them with Lucifer in Carthage and she practically did a friggin’ tap-dance down the street as she let a pack of hellhounds after him. “And day.”

“Shut up, Meg,” Dean grumbles, but there’s affection behind it. He kinda loves the whole goddamn world right now, even the poor suckers stuffed with corn syrup, crawling with their fat bellies on the ground. He really loves everyone in this camp.

Meg actually smiles back, and yeah it’s half-mockingly sweet because it wouldn’t be Meg otherwise, but it’s also part genuine. “Look, from the bottom of my tar-smeared little heart that doesn’t even remember what the word means, I really am happy for you guys. I was rooting for you, believe it or not! It’s about fucking time.”

Dean snorts. It’s all good-natured today, though. “You’ve barely been around for most of it. I mean, how the hell — you showed up when I found Emmanuel years ago, and you knew everything —”

“Dean, I say this with pride, but the only things in all of creation that gossip more than angels? Are demons.” At that one, she just offers up that grin that still sorta makes Dean want to clock her. It’ll never really stop, but at least he’s got new memories of her, Meg lopping off the head of some Leviathan bearing over Dean and not even bothering to pause for his acknowledgement as she stomped off to check if the other demons that were apparently her buddies, or sometimes Sam, were okay.

It’s awfully weird to walk through camp and be aware that everyone knows what you got up to last night, especially when it was some really excellent sex. And, he has to consider, that’s still better than everyone knowing the way your eyes prickled with every thrust of it. That’s something he’s keeping tucked very close to him, thank you.

Like, even Gabby gives him a thumbs-up and a gigantic grin and everything. “Congrats on the sex!” she even calls out, which, okay, even for Gabby that’s awkward. Even for like, Inais it’d be awkward. “Oh, you don’t — Saturday Night Live reference, sorry —”

Dean just smiles at her and waves back. It’s a little embarrassing, sure, and fuck he really hopes he’s not limping at all, but he’s still too blissed out to give a shit. He just hopes Meg doesn’t actually eat Cas alive when the guy finally makes his way out of the cabin. It’d be real inconvenient, now that everyone got a big part of their shit together.

He finds himself eating lunch with Chuck — Metatron — whatever, Dean’s gonna call him Chuck, and Kevin, almost like he’s daring them to say something. They had to see everything he got up to last night in pretty damn glorious Technicolor, after all. Kevin just sort of turns away and starts picking at his noodles, which must be some kind of organic shit because they reek.

“You’re the reason he’s still here, you know,” Chuck tells him, all goddamn conversationally.

“Yeah, um,” Dean gets out, after a bit. “Kinda figured that much.” He can’t meet Chuck’s eyes, and he still doesn’t wanna own up to it — all the shit Cas went through because of him — but it’s pointless to play totally dumb at this point.

“I mean alive.” That gets Dean’s attention. “It’s not like God’s been upstairs caring about Cas all that much. I mean, c’mon. Of all people, I’ve seen who you’ve lost. And just Castiel keeps coming back?”

“Okay,” Dean says, not following.

Chuck gives him one of those freakin’ beatific smiles. “When Castiel remade you, some of his Grace was transferred to your soul. As long as you’re alive, he’ll keep coming back.”

Dean startles, and leans back in his seat like he can get away from that revelation. “I — you’re telling me I’ve got some angel inside me?” There’s a pause, the kind where no one wants to answer the question asked, and okay. He totally set himself up for that one.

“If you want to think of it that way.”

“If I die, does he die too?”

“No. But he can follow you, anywhere. And likely will.”

Just the idea of it makes Dean’s head swim, and his mind fizzle. Comprehension’s beyond him at that moment. Cas’ Grace and his soul, sewn together, knotted up. Probably all tangled and fraying in pieces, but there. Might as well be steel in the threads keeping them all together.

“You’re like his Horcrux,” Kevin says, at last, sort of uneasily like he can tell what Dean’s mind is whirring through at the moment. Probably can, and he’ll probably write it down later, for fuck’s sake. “Not like, evil or anything though.”

Dean grumbles, to cover the fact that his stomach cramps and his thoughts are still scattered everywhere. If he tried to stand up right now, his legs would probably just give out. “What’s with all the Harry Potter nerds around camp?”

“You’re the one who got the reference,” Chuck points out, and even now that he’s an angel — or remembers that he’s an angel, whatever — he’s still got that smirk.

Dean doesn’t know how the hell he’s able to laugh, but he does anyway. The sky’s blue and calm, and Dean grins up at it despite the awful sun glare.

*

As it turns out, and Dean really shouldn’t be that surprised, things don’t change all that much after that. He’d been terrified about turning his whole life upside down, but it’s like falling back on a bed (or maybe getting tossed down onto one, heh).

Sure, Dean gets some really awesome sex and orgasms out of the deal now, and any resolution to sexual frustration that doesn’t involve his hand in the cramped little showers is pretty damn A-plus. Maybe better, he gets pressed right to Cas after sex, and even though they’re sticky and sweaty and gross, their heartbeats tick together and it’s always warm. And when he and Cas get involved in those ridiculous, epic staring matches, he can actually acknowledge that it really turns him on without freaking out; in fact, tucking that knowledge away for later has proven pretty goddamn awesome.

But everything else is still the same, pretty much. They still spend way too much time with Sam, who got halfway through his girly-ass I’m really happy for you speech before Dean made a bunch of exaggerated gagging noises and shoved him away, still smiling. They still get snide comments about staring contests. They still do all kinds of mundane, daily shit, and worry just as much when either of them, or anyone else, goes out on a mission, however routine.

They still argue and fight, because there’s little nice about either of them, and even less pretty about the life they’ve lived. They’re still coming from two different worlds — and fuck, Cas was alive before the world they’re on even existed, and it’s never gonna stop being difficult having conversations with somebody like that. There are still things Dean says and immediately wishes he could bite back, and nights when Cas doesn’t join Dean in bed and Dean’s gotta punch the pillow over and over before he can actually sleep.

They’re still both too stubborn, and I’m sorry or thank you aren’t words that leave their lips often. But hey, make-up sex is pretty awesome, as it turns out, and so is the deep breath of relief when they’re actually able to talk about shit, when Cas isn’t rolling his eyes at Dean and Dean isn’t snapping at Cas and blowing him off.

They were Dean and Cas, and no one could put a name or a word to them, which says a lot when one of them speaks languages that haven’t been spoken in millions of years, on planets that winked out of existence long ago in other solar systems. They’re still Dean and Cas, and calling them boyfriends or lovers just ain’t right either. Neither is soulmates, not when one of them doesn’t have a soul, not when Dean’s pretty sure his brother is his soulmate (and that really says something about his life, doesn’t it).

They were Dean and Cas. They’re still Dean and Cas, and if Cas calls him beautiful or says some really sappy-ass shit about his soul that makes Dean instinctively want to cringe and roll his eyes and shrink away, well, he might make a smart-ass response but he doesn’t move away, because this is different in every way possible. He just lets the sensation of Cas’ skin against his own, their fingers laced together all loose and easy, remind him that it’s real.

It’s —

You saved me, over and over, even when I never thought I deserved it. You saved the world, when you would’ve gotten Paradise out of its wreckage, and yeah there was other shit that came into it too, but really you did it for me. You saved Sam.

We weren’t supposed to be anything, Cas, you were just a soldier that got lucky enough to stumble across my stupid doomed ass in Hell and pull me out and drag me to Purgatory. Two damaged-ass soldiers trying to live up to impossible standards from our dads. There were so many opportunities for a clean break, where I could’ve laughed off anything we had. Not like a human who drank too much, fucked too often, drove too fast, and lived steeped in misery could have had much with a frigid-ass angel anyway.

But we got this now. This thing that can’t be defined, other than that it’s terrifying down to his bones and that first gulp of air after Hell, seeing the stark blue streak of the sky and the grass running green and dry under his feet, and wanting to fucking sob over it, all at once.

Dean knows they can’t go back to the beginning, when he was awed and petrified of Castiel walking into that barn, sparks spitting and popping all around him like whatever had pulled Dean from Hell was powerful enough to put out light too. They can’t even go back to what they were at the end of the Apocalypse, and they never could after Dean was the one to pour the circle of holy oil in that freaky clean little shack. After Dean swore kill him now and only felt regret right after, not at the moment.

They’ve moved on — and that’s not a bad thing. They’ve moved on to something bigger and better than what they were. Dean’s still awed by Cas, in a way, but it’s because Cas has seen all of him, knows what a moron he is and everything, and he’s sticking around. Not only that, the guy keeps coming back. Like nothing Dean’s ever known, Cas gives him faith, and he doesn’t know why the hell an angel chose him and never will, but he thinks he’s giving Cas faith too. It still shakes him to his very core, and he needs those hands tracing over his body, those lips on his own, to remind him of it, but it’s there.

And if that’s a friggin’ chick flick moment, well, Dean never said it out loud, just curled closer to Castiel and totally cuddled.

*

“Did I ever tell you what happened when Zachariah took me to 2014?” Dean asks, super sated as he stretches out under the covers.

He really likes getting fucked, and sex is even better with Cas, the way he thrusts like a hot little punch every time and it jams up against that spot over and over. Cas can hold him down with just a palm on his lower back, and Dean is not admitting how fucking hot that is. And then it’s just as good to get Cas belly-up on the bed and open him up, slide into him and let himself feel greedy while he does it; Cas stares down with moon-wide eyes at where they come together, like Dean’s cock and Cas’ own puffy little hole stretched out to fit him is the most fascinating thing he’s seen in millennia.

“No.” Dean’s come to like all that ridiculous post-sex talk — not that he’s telling anybody that — if only because Cas’ voice sounds really awesome right afterwards.

He loops his arm around Cas’ shoulders. The warmth never seeps away from his body, not really, and Dean loves it. “You were a hippie. This was all messy,” he tells him, ruffling his hair. “And all strung out and uh, kinda sex-addicted…”

“You’ve said as much now,” Cas points out. It’s true, and Dean’s never dissing angel mojo again because it leads to pretty freakin’ awesome angel stamina.

“I guess that’s not the important part. You were just so — you were totally human, but not because of anything you chose other than stickin’ around and the other angels ditching you. And it made you so hopeless, man. Me, I was just — I had to see myself shoot people in the head with no warning, Cas. I was trying to keep shit under control when that’s not me. Sam had said yes to Lucifer.” He lets himself get quiet for a few beats, because what he saw there isn’t ever going to leave his head. “It blew.”

Cas is quiet for a while. “It’s not that this is an ideal situation,” he offers, finally. “But there is hope here. Zachariah was very fond of holding hopeless situations over all our heads, as well. You’re not so alone.”

“Yeah, I know.” A sleepy little smile curves over his lips.

“Not just myself, either. Sam, of course, but everyone —”

“Knew that too.” Dean still slides in a little closer to Castiel, like he’s seeking confirmation. It’s true, anyway, the way Sam’s there for him, and everyone else, the fact that he can play board games with Jody and kick back shots with Sarah and Tamara and freakin’ Meg whenever she’s around. It’s more of a home than anywhere else has ever been, minus Baby.

The world sucks, sure. He’s just carved out an okay little hole in it, and fucked up as it is, he’s the happiest he’s ever been. Kinda figures, but he’s not gonna let it bother him.

*

Sam lets him go on more and more missions and Dean teases him about it, about how he’s taking the locks on the shackles off one by one. For his part, Sam just whacks him on the shoulder, laughs, and tells him to keep walking.

Dean’s impressed at how he’s still in shape. He goes running almost every morning with Kevin or Sarah or Tamara. There was a point in his life — like, all of it before he got to Camp Chitaqua — where he would’ve laughed at the idea of this being the way he worked out, or whatever. Heck, tell him this would be his life the day before he got thrown into Purgatory, and he wouldn’t have even bothered to laugh, just stared at you in disbelief.

(Then there’s the time he went jogging with Cas. He’s pretty sure he’s never gonna do that again, both because human stamina sucks and because Cas apparently can’t resist him with rivulets of sweat dripping down his neck. Which kinda rocked, but he’s not a teenager any more and can only handle so much Cas when he gets enthusiastic, and not really after a run. Pushing himself like that is pretty awesome — when it’s like, once a month. Plus he had swamp ass the whole time and really needed a shower, even if Cas apparently didn’t mind.)

“Lots of Levis,” Gabby warned as they all headed out. “Twenty, maybe.” Finding a clump of them that large was weird; they never traveled solo, but usually, you couldn’t find them in groups of more than four. Dean’s been a hunter long enough to be suspicious of anything unusual, but they’ve got good intel with Gabby’s ridiculous hacker skills — the girl’s hooked up to Doppler radar, or what’s left of it these days — and so many others on the lookout.

They bring extra guns anyway.

It’s just an old, empty warehouse, abandoned probably long before the Leviathan unleashed their shit on the world, weeds tangled in front of it. Kinda reminds Dean of the warehouse where — shit, where they went to save Adam, only to watch him get swallowed up in screaming light and Dean wasn’t sure which was louder, Michael’s cries or his half-brother’s —

Dean’s doing better, but shit like this — you don’t have his life and get over it that easily.

“Hey.” He looks up and Sarah’s offering him a hesitant smile. “You okay? You know you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

Irrationally, Dean’s brain picks that time to note that he still doesn’t know what’s going on with his brother and Sarah. And then he laughs, because really, Sam’s got a few years before Dean has any right to start picking on him about that.

He’s laughing. Even though Sarah’s looking at him just as apprehensively, he’s laughing, because something’s genuinely funny. “Yeah, I’m great,” he sighs, because he’s got his brother totally safe and his dork-ass self by his side, and his angel boyfriend where it took forever for him to figure that shit out but it’s pretty fucking great now that he did, and a whole bunch of people who — actually give a shit about how he’s doing. Even if there’s a trail of regrets behind him long enough to circle the globe a few times — again, it’s his life — he might come out of it okay.

Together, they all head into the crumbling building. It’ll never stop being strange brandishing the absurdly cheerily-colored water gun in front while the actual gun stays tucked at his side, but strange world. Strange world.

The room overflows with swamp pond stink, and Dean makes a mental reminder to get nose plugs next time they go on a supply run, but that thought’s shoved away by the yells among him, the easy arcs of detergent launching through the air to splatter across the Leviathans’ faces, burning them black.

And goddamn, Dean is never going to get tired of Cas with a machete — because if Dean’s fighting, he’s fighting too, and they’ve never talked about it but it seems settled that way — his arm slicing through the air, fucking ending the bad guys with an exclamation point. There’s a lot of adrenaline that needs to get used up after any mission, and that image of Cas has been really goddamn good for burning it off.

It’s so fucking awesome, Cas all wrath and fury concentrated into the play of his body, that as much as he’ll never admit it, Dean has to remember not to get distracted during missions. Normally it’s not a big deal, but there have to be twenty Leviathan bearing down, even if most of them are being driven backwards at the moment. Thankfully, there’s a pretty fucking good distraction: Dean finds himself face to face with — well. Himself.

“Dean,” the Leviathan that jacked his face greets with a sick grin Dean has never had. “Thanks for the pretty suit. As humans go, you know.”

Dean’s seen a lot of weird shit, but nothing quite like his own jaw dropping off to reveal a nasty set of razor teeth. “Guess I still got the looks,” Dean throws out, water gun brandished right at this motherfucker’s heart.

“Whatever you say. I’m probably a lot less fucked in the head.” He taps his temple and laughs, throaty enough to make Dean cringe. The barrel of the gun wobbles. “Some of the shit I’ve seen in here…”

“That was years ago, douchebag,” Dean growls out, taking a step forward. Dude reeks like a goddamn swamp. “I’m working on that.”

Part of it is the bullshit bravado he’ll always throw out there, the kind that let him face apocalypse after apocalypse and make it through ‘em all. But part of it is real, and it’s not like something he decided to do. It just happened, and it’s pretty goddamn funny that it took Purgatory and the end of the world.

No point in being all fucking existential when there’s shit to kill. He pumps the gun, and watches his own flesh sizzle away, etching into the skin going black at the edges like someone had thrown acid on Dean’s own face. The howl that comes out of the Leviathan’s mouth isn’t a noise he’d ever make, nor is the stance where he stands legs splayed wide and arms flung out, shaking as black ooze trickles down his cheeks, lining his chest.

At least Dean’s used to chopping off things wearing his own head at this point. All it takes is an easy slice of his blade, and that creepy-ass imitation of himself goes toppling to the ground with a very wet splat.

“Not bad!” Dean hears Tamara cry out, before he hears the swoosh of her own blade and a couple of heads falling to the ground. Yeah, Tamara’s kind of awesome.

Powered-up Leviathan could destroy angels easily, but this scattered group isn’t much of a match for Castiel. He arcs his hand through the air and they all go crumbling to the floor, where Marin stomps an Adidas-clad foot onto their chests as she slices their heads off and drags them away from the flopped-over bodies.

“That’s all?” Dean asks. He’s exerted and sweaty, he feels it gathering around where his neck dips into his shoulder and along his back, and there’s gross-ass Leviathan splatter over the sleeve of his t-shirt, but all things considered, that wasn’t too bad.

Of course, it’s not all.

As soon as the words are out of Dean’s mouth, a fucking tidal wave of the shits pours into the building. If there were twenty before, there are fifty now. They’re all grinning, sick, and drooling black out the sides of their mouth. “Fuck,” he barks out, pumping the gun until it shoots again. The detergent spray knocks a bunch of the Leviathan back, but most of them keep shuffling forward.

Dean’s reduced to further one-syllable words when he feels how light the water gun is. He keeps pumping, but after a while, all that’s coming out is dribble and foam. The words choke out of his mouth as the rotten scent of them overwhelms him, and his whole universe is getting narrowed down to muffled screams and all that fucking stink —

He thinks he hears a “No!” in a voice he recognizes, firm but soft, without the roughness of anyone who’s spent too much time in Camp Chitaqua, before the world screams into too-bright white, then black.

*

Dean wakes up in — a hospital of all places. Huh. None of the machines are on, not even the lights, and the room’s gloomy in the midday rain. Still, he’s pretty sure the fact that he can register that it’s cold in here, and the scratchy blanket tossed over his midsection isn’t too comfortable, means he’s alive.

That’s good.

When he hears footsteps in the hallway, he tosses the blanket back over his body, because fuck. He’s hoping he can keep his breath shallow enough not to be noticed, because it’d suck out loud to get ambushed by Leviathan in bed —

“Dean?”

It’s that same voice. He shouldn’t trust anything, but he rolls the blanket down from over his face and can only goggle at the tall, willowy redhead in front of him, in a tank top and black cargo pants that are loose on her skinny hips. Not Gabby. Not Marin, either. Not anyone from camp, but not a stranger either.

“Anna?”

“It’s me.” She shrugs, small and almost apologetic. “Here —” and she pulls out a knife from her backpack to cut into her own skin. A long red rivulet drips down her pale inner arm before the wound closes itself up again. “Can’t be too careful, I know.”

Cautiously, Dean sits up and settles himself up in the bed. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re dead.”

“Obviously not.” She’s got the same smile, a bit wounded in the upturn of her lips but still there, and still genuine. “I’m sorry about the last time we saw each other, by the way.”

Dean wishes he had the right words to say to that — it’s the kind of shit where it’s not okay, but he understands — but he doesn’t, so he just nods. “Weird shit happened during the apocalypse,” he offers, weakly. It’s true enough. “How are you here, I saw —”

“Tessa and your brother put together that ritual to get you out of Purgatory, right?” Dean nods again, not sure where she’s going with this. “Everything you gathered, what Tessa did… it’s tricky to explain, and I don’t even get all of it myself, but it was meant to bring an angel and a human back from Purgatory. It did; it also brought back the one thing in Purgatory that knew what it was like to be both at once, and neither.”

Dean hasn’t been too articulate since Anna strode into his room; he only blinks and nods. “Nothing else got out?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no.”

Okay. No freaky Angels Gone Wild to take care of, along with every other friggin’ thing. “So, what have you been doing all this time?”

Anna grins, with all her teeth and everything, the same kind of smile she turned on him the first time he found her in the church. “There were a lot of things that really sucked about being an angel, for me,” she explains. “Commanding the garrison wasn’t one of them.”

As it turns out, Anna’s got her — soldiers, Dean guesses — watching over the hospital. He got out of the Leviathan fight relatively unharmed, but a lot of other people weren’t so lucky. Thankfully there were no casualties, but there were a lot of arms in slings and people walking around propped up with crutches. Without Heaven’s power behind it, the few angels on their side could only do so much.

(Watching Anna and Cas reunite was both kind of adorable — not that Dean uses that word, but whatever — and hilarious. Cas’ idea of hugging was still holding his arms straight out, stiff, and then sorta boxing them around the back of the person getting hugged. Dean wants to whack him on the side, affectionate, and say something like c’mon, man, you hold me just fine.)

There are a couple of the giant four-legged babies crawling around what had been the reception area, their pitch-black skin oily under the light. He’d be freaked, only Anna told him they were harmless, and a couple of them even stuck around her camp; the things got attached, like real children. Dean doesn’t trust easy — understatement — but there’s some sort of understanding there in what Anna said. Maybe it’s the way Cas still looks up to her, clearly, but that’s not the only thing.

She laughs. “We got out of Purgatory, Dean. Don’t think there are too many others out there like us.” And okay, that’s creepy. Before, Dean might’ve tried to run away or worse, gut her, but this world’s made everything and everyone honest.

“Weird way to make friends.”

“Weird world.” And yeah, she’s still got that same smile, the one Dean can’t help but return. Sure, he’s a little freaked by the angel ESP, but there are some forces out there where it’s good to have them on your side, and Dean doesn’t doubt that in this world, one of them is Anna.

He still has to say it. “I know about the shit they can do to you, and not just downstairs. It — I didn’t blame you. I’m glad we both got another chance.”

Her smile’s not as toothy this time, more serious, but it’s still there. Her expression’s almost impressed, something like pleasant surprise. “Me too.”

*

Inais pinches the vial between two fingers, his mouth expanding into a gummy smile. “How did you do this, sister?” Ever since Anna showed up, he’s been walking around practically glowing, and honestly, knowing angels and all their weird shit (and Dean has one in his bed every night — there’s a lot of weird shit), Dean’s expecting him to start actually emitting light any day now.

“Lots of years of old knowledge and research.” She claps a hand on his shoulder, and seriously, Dean thought Inais’ hero worship was borderline creepy with Cas; he really didn’t need to see the look on his face when Anna does that. “I’m sure you helped along the way, honestly.”

“I’m honored.” Dean bites back his laugh, because from Inais, it’s all genuine, but goddamn his huge eyes and slack lips are hilarious.

When he’s confident he’s not going to laugh, he nods at Anna and twists the beaker. “This stuff works?”

“Yep.” He has to whirl around to see where the shaky voice came from, but it’s someone he doesn’t know. Her eyes are dull, her hair hanging down to her waist, and she’s got the swollen body of the poor suckers the Leviathan’s crap got to, only she’s standing up. Wobbly, but on her own two feet. “I’m Michelle, by the way.”

“Dean. Sorry you had some, uh —”

“Bad cake.” Her laugh creeps Dean out, more of a heh heh heh than actual laughter, but it’s alive and that’s what matters.

They keep passing the vial around, swishing the black liquid inside it. “I’ve got more,” Anna explains.

“Lots more,” another voice chimes in, from a dark-skinned man who’s a little unnaturally heavy around the middle, his gut hanging down like he gained a bunch of weight very quickly, then lost it just as quickly. Anna’s got a whole crew that’s around the same size as Camp Chitaqua, popping in and out, busying themselves; until now, Dean didn’t notice how many of them have the same build as Michelle and the other guy. He’s not sure if all of them are human, either, and honestly, he doesn’t care.

Out of nowhere as usual, Cas settles into the seat next to Dean, and balances the small glass tube in his palm. “This is astounding,” he murmurs, holding it up.

“You think Tessa held out on us? All the knowledge, I mean.”

Cas shakes his head. “Anna commanded the garrison long before I did. She was more resourceful and had more connections.”

“Aw, don’t sell yourself short.” Dean likes spearing his fingers through Cas’ hair way too much, though he keeps it quick here.

“Don’t sell the others short,” Anna butts in, friendly. “Ombrinag helped out.” She jerks a thumb in the direction of a whip-thin woman with jet black hair, who grins up at them. With pointy teeth.

In his seat, Dean startles. “I understand you’re a little apprehensive,” she explains. Her voice has a tough bite behind it. “Don’t blame you. But we’re not all bad.”

“Remember Huexkull?” Cas asks Dean, leaning closer to him.

“He’s even weirder than I am.” He’s never gonna get used to that wicked smile across her mouth, more a slash than a smile even, but he still isn’t used to having actual conversations with Meg. Hell, he teases and gripes at an angel all day and then makes him come at night, stifles his cries with a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t shatter the glass again, and that’s not getting any less bizarre no matter how awesome it is.

So, Dean only nods. After a while, he grumbles out, “It can’t be this easy.” Because when you have the life he’s had, you’re suspicious of, oh, motherfucking everything, especially when it’s old mostly-friends showing up with the way to help people, really really help them.

Anna sits in front of him, cross-legged. “It isn’t. We do this big-time and we’re changing the world. For good. I mean, it’s already changed, but the people who get healed… their lives aren’t going to be normal any more. They’ve gotta get a crash-course in Purgatory’s most wanted, and everyone else too.”

“Demons and angels? All of it?” Dean wasn’t expecting to hear Claire.

“Yes.”

Claire nods at Anna, grimacing while she does it. “Well, it sounds like a good idea to me. Might say it’s about time, even.”

Dean bites back nervous laughter. He still can’t quite figure out Claire, just that she spends most of her time talking to the angels in hushed tones and glaring at anyone who tries to butt into the conversation, but he knows that he takes her awfully seriously for whatever reason. “What do you say?” he asks Sam.

There’s a definite smile on Sam’s face. It’s cautious, but there. “You in the mood for a road trip?”

Like he doesn’t know the answer to that question.

*

It’s a cold day, the sky a heavy gray sheet above their heads as Dean helps everyone else to haphazardly stuff luggage into the vans. “Too bad angel airlines doesn’t have baggage check, huh,” he asks Cas with a grin.

Cas shoots him a furrowed-brow glare in return as he hoists up four huge bags at once. Show-off. Well, at least Dean gets to see if Cas is interested in using that effortless strength later on, wherever they end up sleeping tonight. The thought of it makes him grin, and Cas’ glare softens into a questioning glance.

Dean gets distracted by a hard poke on his arm. Meg. “Ow,” he snaps, rubbing at the place where she more or less smacked him.

“I’m outie.” As much as Dean came to appreciate Meg popping into and out of camp — God, she was probably the person Dean had known the longest, outside of Sam, and isn’t that fucked-up — he knew this day was gonna come. Demons don’t exactly plan on taking joyride road trips with humans and angels and the few Leviathan Anna has on her side.

“What are you gonna do?”

Meg shrugs. Honestly, she’s kind of disturbingly normal-looking, placid expression on her face and the straps of a backpack looped around her shoulders. “Hell always runs better with a queen, is what I say,” she tells him, all off-handedly.

“Just you? Against Crowley?”

“I’ve still got connections, friend-o.”

Dean’s just gonna be real happy that she didn’t use those connections to ransack Camp Chitaqua. Then again, while he wouldn’t exactly say he trusts Meg, lying’s not really her thing. So he only nods, and considers sticking his hand out to shake hers or clapping her on the shoulder, but that’s even more awkward than doing nothing. “Good luck, then.”

“If I see you again, I hope you’re not ramming that knife down my throat. Take care of yourself.” She might make a face like she wants to expel whatever the hell bubbles around in a demon’s stomach out from her gut, but she says it. With that, she turns around and walks away, gait firm and strong in a way he’s almost never seen from anyone else before. Dean hates how much he hopes it never comes to that, too.

Next to Dean, Sam grunts as he tosses the last of their luggage into the trunk of the Impala. “I was sad to say goodbye to Meg,” he tells Dean, contemplative. “I know crazy, and man, that’s….”

“This, right? We’re crazy people.” Gabby breezes past them pretty cheerily, climbing into her own van and dumping her backpack, striped pink and powder blue, into the backseat. Tamara looks kinda ticked off about having to sit shotgun, but she’s holding the GPS like a weapon at least.

“You’re tellin’ me,” Dean grumbles. He checks to make sure all the bags are away and everyone else found their car or van, then gets into the Impala. And fuck, he can’t help but smile.

Dean’s got his brother next to him, and the knowledge that he’d do anything for him, plunge himself into Hell or walk to the ends of the Earth — and maybe even more, he knows that neither of them has to do that shit to prove their devotion any more.

He’s got the angel that brought him back to life in the backseat, and it’s funny to think of Dean’s soul and Cas’ Grace snarled together messy but tight when all Dean can see is the top of his messy brown hair in the rear view mirror. It still shocks Dean that Cas, Cas who still didn’t get eighty percent of his pop culture references and was a thing stuffed into a dude’s body, was more or less it for him.

Figures, Dean thinks. It’s kinda fucked up, but glorious too, that he got thrown into Purgatory and came back out to Camp Chitaqua, only to find himself the happiest he’s been in years. He’s had better times with Sammy and Cas than he’s had in too long, even with death and duty and the fucked-up corn syrup zombies as the Leviathans’ parting gift hanging over his head. He’s got friends, ones who aren’t dead, when he used to think he only had space for so many people in his shitty little life.

This is it. But it’s not so awful after all, as it turns out.

He honks to get Anna’s attention, and her minivan — seriously, a minivan, full of people she’s already saved and Chuck who’s also sort of the voice of God and the formula they all threw together, but a minivan — lurches to life, tires rumbling over roads that haven’t been traveled much in the last few years.

“Let’s go save the world,” Dean announces to the two other passengers in the Impala, before he goes to follow Anna’s embarrassment of a vehicle. It’s not a particularly special day, gray and gloomy and there are so many towns that stretch out in front of him full of nothing but death and worse, but right now, he can actually believe it.

“Do you know the main difference between shrimp and prawn?” Cas pipes up, from the backseat. Dean feels Cas’ weight lean forward to balance his elbows against the front seats.

He bites his lip to hide the big sunny grin. “Tell me,” he declares, and he never thought he’d find so much in a world nearly destroyed, his brother and his — Cas — chatting cheerily about friggin’ plankton now, but the world just got weirder and weirder for him. Weird wasn’t always bad, is all.

Dean stops biting back the smile and lets it spread over his face. The road’s easy under his feet, and if the radio’s all static, well, he’s got the nerd-ass conversation in the car and it’s not as bad as he might’ve thought. He travels on, wherever the hell his life plans to take him next.