Archive of Our Own

Galveston, Texas

Castiel fell asleep in the backseat, along to the hum of the engine. His forehead is resting against the window, and the sunlight refracts through and illuminates him at odd angles, shafts of light playing over the slope of his cheeks, the darkened lines of his growing stubble.

Forgot to shave again, Dean observes as he watches the angel through the rearview mirror.

The Impala, newly resurrected and gleaming with a fresh shine, picks up speed, and Dean glances at Sam over in the passenger seat. His brother's long arms are folded over his chest, and he shifts with each beat over Interstate 45 as they ascend the bridge that will take them to Galveston. He's wearing a shirt with a finger-sized hole in the collar; it needs a wash, and so does Sam.

The Gulf spreads out before them, and Dean enjoys the solitude of his sleeping brother beside him and his sleeping brother-in-arms in the backseat, the way a wolf shifts comfortably in the collective warmth of its litter mates. There is safety here, in this pack of theirs, and Dean feels the upwelling of pride like radiant heat. He does not think the host of Heaven ever had this, for all their righteousness; or would know how to hold it and keep it if they ever did.

Dean parks the car along Seawall Boulevard; the Impala's a beautiful mold of sharp angles and elegant lines, her black paint smooth over the hood, and her dark skin soaking in the sunlight. The brutal warmth and humidity of the coastline sends sweat trickling down the center of Dean's back, and he sheds his flannel, leaving it like a deflating sail in the front seat as he pitches the door closed.

Sam and Castiel remain with their eyes closed, and Dean doesn't dare wake them. He takes the short walk over cracked cement, where sand lines from past storms creep over the blacktop. A wood railing separates the street from the Gulf, and the salt hangs heavy in the air. Dean thinks he's been here before, but he can't pinpoint the exact time, or remember if he was by himself or tagging along with John.

His eyes lock on the gray-blue spread of the ocean, its still and too-quiet surface. In the distance he can see a hulking platform, which he suspects is the ferry dock, the next stop on their little adventure. Sharp smells tickle his nose: wet sand, and fish, and salt. He leans against the railing, drinks in the peace, and wonders what the sea has in store for them. If this is in fact something that could end the world, like Sam seems to think.

Between them, Dean and Sam have visited their fair share of places with bad or unpleasant weather, so despite the discomfort they aren't in a position to complain too bitterly about the heat, not after the South Dakotan winter they so narrowly escaped. The sun is shining so pleasantly above their heads, and the bath-warm Gulf waters lap against the side of the ferry in a soothing suck and pull. Still, Dean's shirt is stuck to his torso in approximately eighty different places, and even Castiel looks uncomfortable, fluttering the hem of his t-shirt to try and encourage air flow. Too bad there's no breeze to speak of anywhere except that generated by the moving boat.

In summer, Texas heat is unlike anyplace else on earth. It's not the dry, arid blast of a desert, nor the swampy sweat-bath of the Deep South; rather, Texas – for all it's still some parts desert and swamp both, like it couldn't pick one climate and stick with it – is at all times a soupy haze that prickles sweat on contact, everywhere, and challenges even the best of lung capacity. Thing is, it's not summer; in fact, there is only a week or so left to go before Christmas, and by all rights they should currently be experiencing temperatures in the mid-sixties, not the high-nineties. Not a single meteorological expert had a good explanation for the sudden heatwave in the middle of December, but the unspoken consensus in the car is that it more than likely has something to do with why Dean, Sam, and Castiel are here to begin with.

"Texas, huh?" Sam says as he circles around the Impala to join Dean by the guardrail of the ferry. Almost no more than that is needed to communicate Sam's thoughts on the subject, having already stripped out of his overshirt so he's just in a t-shirt and jeans like the rest of them. They're about ten minutes into the ride across the strait from Galveston to Crystal Beach, which Dean had never heard of before this. According to Sam, it's a tiny beach town that'd been devastated by Hurricane Ike a few years back and was starting to rebuild. It's also the site of a number of recent happenings they're en route to investigate. Disappearances. Strange weather patterns.

It's weird to be back on the road. It's the first hunt since…well, since just about everything. Since they lost Castiel to godhood, and since they saved Castiel only to lose him again, this time to Purgatory. It's also the first hunt since Sam had his head filled in with memories of his time in the Cage. So Dean's nervous, cautious, a little too watchful. Sam and Cas are both ticking bombs that could go off at any moment. Even so, working a case might be just what they all need to inject some normality back into their lives. Plus, Bobby's been threatening them with bodily harm if they didn't Get out of my damn house and go see what the hell is going on!

Castiel shifts closer to Dean, and Dean watches how the wind pulls at his friend's hair, blowing it wild across his face.

"So remind me again what we've got," Dean says, pulling himself away, for the time being, from watching Cas stare listlessly out at the churning waters of the strait. Sam idly mentioned they might see dolphins in the Gulf, and since they left the ferry terminal Castiel's been watching the waves for any sign of those slippery gray backs and smoothly curved fins, shifting his focus every so often to the brown pelicans swooping about on the breeze or the frigate birds that have hitched a ride on the ferry, occasionally perching on the rails or fluttering between the few parked cars.

Dean doesn't know what could possibly be so fascinating about marine life, to an angel anyway, but he's also of a mind to let Castiel do whatever he wants. If it'd bring him some measure of peace from the war that's been waging inside him, it seems, at every waking moment, Dean would almost let Castiel key affirmations across the side of the Impala. Almost. They barely finished fixing her up in time for this trip, and if Dean can be honest it's pained him a little to be away from her for more than a few minutes at a time, a little overcome by the reality that she's not just back on the road and once again in perfect running condition, detailing as sleek and gleaming as the day his dad drove her off the lot, but that he and Castiel made her that way. Together.

From his messenger bag, Sam pulls out a bundle of newspaper clippings and the notepad he's been using to scribble down theories and observations. Ever since he and Bobby started watching the global airwaves for signs of what Castiel called "powerful portents," they've had their work cut out for them. At the first sign of something unusual that didn't require crossing an ocean or more than three time zones, they knew it was their chance to investigate.

"It's the same sort of stuff we've been hearing about everywhere else," Sam says, "but the first string of incidents to fit the profile in North America. This one mostly concerns mass disappearances; over a dozen people have gone missing from Crystal Beach and Galveston in the last couple weeks alone. In communities this small, it's not the kind of thing you can just write off as a coincidence. Not in so short a time span."

"What are local authorities saying?" Dean asks.

"Typically, they have no clue. Best theory going is the missing people might have gotten lost at sea, but there's been no rough weather and no indication any of them were avid boaters. So either they decided to take a swim with a bunch of rocks in their pockets, or—"

"Or something grabbed 'em," Dean finishes for him. "Great. Because finding the Loch Ness monster in the Gulf of Mexico was something I've always wanted to cross off my bucket list."

"Good ol' Nessie," Sam chuckles, shaking his head. "But hey, there's also a local conspiracy-theory site reporting that the disappearances are linked to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. Mutant fish out for revenge, eating poor unsuspecting townsfolk."

Dean laughs, feeling it ring deep in his chest. "And we shouldn't rule out the possibility of a sharktopus," he quips, and a glance up shows that even Castiel rolls his eyes at that one, deadpanning, "It's highly unlikely a shark would breed with an octopus."

"Cas," Sam says, shifting his gaze between the angel and Dean, and smiling like he knows something no one else does. "Do you have something against interspecies matchups?"

"Not at all," Castiel says, tone gone thoughtful. "Interspecies mating has long played a role in evolution on the planet. I suspect this ocean has several whale and dolphin hybrids. I just doubt that a shark and an octopus would be given occasion to mate."

"Tell that to the Syfy network," Dean says cheekily. Castiel's eyes flash something warm in his direction, to which Dean can only blush and drop his eyes in response, not wanting to get into an epic staring contest with his brother right there. Ever since the sparring match and the world's most awkward tattoo sitting, things have been a bit on-edge between them. Not in a bad way, exactly, more just like they're on the precipice of something that's about to happen. Dean doesn't know what that is; if nothing else, he's fairly certain he doesn't want to think about what it could be, especially not within range of Sam's knowing smiles and not-so-subtle comments. Lately, he's been loudly and pointedly clearing his throat upon arriving in any room that Dean and Castiel occupy together. In more ways than one, this trip is a needed distraction for everyone.

"Whatever it is," Sam continues, thankfully oblivious to Dean's train of thought, "we're going to have to Fed up and make ourselves known to the local police before we make any effort to investigate on our own. Bobby made some calls earlier and says they've been trying to restrict access to the beach. That's kind of hard considering the whole island is a beach, but they're still making regular patrols to try and keep people out of the water."

Apparently through with watching for dolphins amidst the waves, Castiel turns and leans back against the guardrail of the ferry, shoulders back and hips out in a way Dean really, really doesn't find distracting as all hell. "What's to say we won't be ambushed by whatever it is that's disappearing these people?" Castiel asks, voice curious. "In the event of an attack it's unlikely I could do much to prevent it."

"When do we ever not get attacked by the thing we're investigating?" Dean sighs. "It's practically our number-one tactic for getting shit done."

"And Dean is such effective bait," adds Sam with a smile. "He's like monster catnip."

"Dean will not use himself as bait," Cas says with surprising force. Dean opens his mouth to respond to that, to say that he has every right to use himself as bait, but he sees the vehemence on Castiel's face and it gives him pause. For a moment he thinks not about trying to tease the angel for being a stick in the mud, but the quiet certitude in his eyes when he told Dean, You belong to me. Not for the first time, he supposes, Castiel is taking issue with Dean treating the value of his own life with such levity. Maybe that's because Castiel considers Dean his.

Dean shakes his head, swallowing against the dryness in his throat that manifests every time he thinks about that night. "Easy, Cas," he says with a soft laugh. "No one's getting used as bait."

In response, Castiel makes a sound a bit like a grunt and turns his head to look back out at the strait. Dean does not appreciate the look Sam gives him next, and thinks that if this shit keeps up, Sam tiptoeing around them like he's so clever and he knows something they don't know, they'll be obligated to have a confrontation before the week is out. Luckily Castiel doesn't seem to pick up on or understand what's had Sam so amused these days, offering up shotgun so Dean and Castiel can sit together in the car, disappearing for long walks like they really need more alone time, and Dean thinks that's probably just as well. Things have been awkward as hell the last few times he found himself alone with Cas, and since he can't make heads or tails of what's going on with them, it's best left unaddressed and unexamined.

Dean wants to move on and get Sam to recap a bit more of the information he and Bobby have gathered from their various sources – unless Dean's an active participant in the research process, he prefers to get the condensed version right before go time – but is interrupted by the other ferry passengers beginning to make their way back into their respective cars. A glance towards the front of the boat confirms they're close to reaching their destination, and with a sigh Dean gestures for Sam to start packing things up. Partly he's glad, because the sooner they're back in the car, the sooner he can turn the AC back up to full blast.

"We can talk more once we're settled at the motel," Dean suggests, wiping the back of his hand across his brow and moving to open the driver's-side door. "Something tells me we won't have to fight anyone for a room."

"Or two rooms," replies Sam, and ducks down into the passenger seat before Dean can fire a withering glare his way. It feels far less effective once he settles himself in the driver's seat and pointedly ignores Castiel's questioning gaze as he, too, gets in the vehicle. "With all these people disappearing I'm sure we can get a good rate," Sam adds smoothly, by way of explanation. "No need to cram everyone into the same room, not in this heat." Eyes twinkling, he looks at Cas in the rearview mirror. "You'll like having a bed to yourself, won't you, Cas?"

"Shared accommodations would have sufficed," comes the even reply from the backseat, and Dean narrowly avoids banging his forehead down against the edge of the steering wheel, already anticipating Sam's comeback.

"Don't even fucking say it," Dean warns him, staring him down with every inch of brotherly malice he can muster. This is how Sam works; unless it's a subject of a time-sensitive or life-threatening nature, he attempts to wear Dean down into talking about emotional shit by embarrassing him into submission. "Just don't."

"I wasn't going to say anything!" Sam protests, all innocence and puppy eyes.

"Famous last words," answers Dean, and then he's turning the key in the ignition and trying to let the reassuring purr of his baby's newly reconstructed engine ease away his annoyance.

Sam doesn't relent though. "Well," he says, voice all amusement. "Maybe you can get Cas to tell you more about those wholphins."

"Excuse me?" Dean frowns, tossing a glance at Sam before turning back to watch the vehicle in front of him begin its drive off the ferry.

"The offspring of the forbidden and tragically star-crossed interspecies mating of a whale and a dolphin," Sam says, and he's all-laughs now.

Dean has to stop himself from pulling over and throwing his annoying little brother into the Gulf of Mexico. It almost feels like old times.

Unloading all the cars off the ferry is a process that takes around five minutes, owing to the fact they're practically the only ones on the boat, and before long Dean's navigating the Impala out of the terminal and onto the main road, not that there's a whole lot of them to choose from in Crystal Beach. At first glance, the drive along the peninsula is featureless and flat, nothing more than sun-bleached grass and sparse marshland as they head east along Highway 87, bracketed by the slowly rolling waters of the bay. After a couple of miles, the beach begins to open up to sandy shores dotted with houses unique to the Gulf Coast, brightly colored and set upon stilts a good story and a half off the ground. Why anyone would want to live in a place just inviting hurricanes is beyond Dean, but as they pass an old lighthouse flanked by swaying palm trees he has to admit the place isn't lacking in picturesque charm. He can picture families spending their vacations here, running around on the beach the way he and Sam rarely did, though with the rash of recent disappearances he figures people aren't in much of a frolicking mood.

The first motel they pass – it, too, sits on stilts – is called the Paradise Oasis, and it's a painted monstrosity surrounded by one of the worst landscaping jobs Dean has ever seen. While the lawn itself is little more than dust, there are a few shrubs, palm trees, and bromeliads attempting to cling to the few patches of dying grass that seem to exist only for appearances' sake. The contrast of the blue, blue sky against the ugly pink of the motel keeps making Dean think of hospital nurseries, though it occurs to him he hasn't seen the inside of one since Lisa took him to look at all the babies through the window the day her sister gave birth.

"This place?" Sam asks as Dean pulls off the highway and into the parking lot. Even he of the garish western shirts seems offended by the color scheme, pulling a face that immediately makes Dean decide this is where they'll be staying.

"Better than nothing," Dean says. "I'm sure this town ain't exactly drowning in motel options." Sam groans at the wisecrack before Dean even has a chance to jab him in the ribs and add, Get it?

"I'll go see if the manager is willing to give us a reduced rate," Sam says with a sigh, unfolding all six and a half feet of his body from the Impala and pausing to stretch his arms over his head. The blast of heat from outside alone is enough to make Dean's skin prickle with sweat on contact. "They can't be that busy with all these disappearances going on, not even this close to Christmas."

"At least one of those rooms had better have two queens," Dean shouts after him when Sam walks away in the direction of the motel office, his shaggy head vibrating with laughter.

It's too fucking hot for Sam to be in this good a mood, Dean thinks, especially not with the end of the world – again – possibly weighing down the purpose of this whole trip. Just once, Dean wishes they could take off on a job and have it be easy; especially this close to Christmas, it'd be especially nice to enjoy the holiday and the availability of a beach at such close proximity. Not that Dean has ever been one for beaches, but he could be, maybe, if given the opportunity. Hell, even Cas could probably benefit from a few hours out in the sun – his skin is white enough to give the Edward Cullen wannabes of the world a run for their money. But from the sound of things, they'll be lucky if this job gives them any time at all to catch their breath in between shaking down the locals for information.

With a noise of disgust at how quickly his body has managed to drench itself in sweat yet again, Dean peels himself off the seat and back into the sunshine, noting from the corner of his eye that Castiel takes a moment longer to do so, looking contemplatively at their choice of lodgings with an otherwise expressionless face.

"You okay?" Dean asks, popping the trunk so he can fish out their duffle bags. There's three taking up space in the trunk now – his, Sam's, and Castiel's. Dean smiles at that, and perversely, he thinks they grossly over-packed for a trip that ought to require the least amount of clothing possible, but driving from South Dakota to Texas required they pack for two totally different climates, anticipating both cold and hot. He hands the right one off to Castiel and adds, "You've been pretty quiet for most of the drive," like the angel is otherwise a regular chatterbox.

"These disappearances have been weighing on me somewhat," Castiel admits after a pause. He meets Dean's eyes only briefly before glancing away. "I can't help thinking they must have something to do with—" Voice cracking, he looks down at his hands and then again off at the horizon, the deceptively calm waters that brought them here. "With what I did," he finishes. "Families are entering the holiday season anticipating a time of joy and togetherness, and instead they've been losing their loved ones."

Dean wants to fix Castiel with an angry glare at the suggestion, but the damn angel won't even look at him. "Hey," he tosses back, trying to keep the edge from his voice, "that's not why we're here. Right now there's nothing to say any of this has the first thing to do with the stuff Tamara was talking about or with your stint playing God for that matter, and even if it does, you're of no use to us on this job if you just mope around blaming yourself when you could be helping people."

That comes out far harsher than Dean intends, so he tries so soften it, going up to where Castiel leans against the Impala with his free hand wedged into the front pocket of his jeans. Which, Dean admits to himself, is weird. Cas is dressed casual, in dark Levis and a soft gray t-shirt. Dean reaches out to skim his fingers down Castiel's arm, and even here in the sweatiest, hottest climate around, the touch sends a little shiver through him he sees answered in the quiet breath Castiel draws in through his teeth.

"Don't you go around assuming this is on you, man," Dean says. Castiel opens his mouth to protest, but Dean is right there knowing what he's about to say. "Don't, Cas. Let's just get this job done and save the self-flagellation for later."

Hesitating, Castiel eventually nods, albeit not in a very convincing way. Dean figures that's probably as good as he's likely to get for now and releases his arm, breathing a quiet sigh of relief when he sees Sam emerge from the door to the manager's office, crossing the parking lot back to the car in less than ten long strides.

"Got us two rooms," Sam informs them cheerfully and tosses one of the keys in his hands towards Dean. It escapes no one's notice that he keeps the remaining key for himself, the matter seemingly decided who's going to be bunking down with whom. At this point Dean doesn't even have the energy to argue with him, desperate to be inside where there's – hopefully – a functioning AC unit. He could room with Attila the Hun for all he cares, though Cas is preferable by far. "They're both doubles, but the manager threw us a two-for-one deal. Said he hasn't had a single visitor since locals started vanishing and was grateful for the business. Even if he did seem to think we were crazy for being here."

Stifling a snort, Dean throws Sam's duffle bag to him. "Jury's still out on that one." Sam acknowledges the truth of this with a small smile and turns back to the motel; Dean is right behind him but pauses when he senses Castiel hanging back. "What's wrong?"

"I…think I would prefer a room to myself," he says reluctantly. "You should be with your brother."

At first Dean can only pause in response, unsure how to address that or the immediate and unexpected sting of disappointment that tightens his throat. Annoyed, he attempts to squash it down; it isn't like Castiel just rejected his fucking invitation to prom. "Why?" he asks instead, lamely, hearing the infuriating smallness of his own voice. Get a fucking grip, he tells himself, but nevertheless in the back of his mind he has to wonder what the hell happened between now and he and Castiel sharing a bed just a few weeks past, Cas saying You're mine like it was an irrefutable fact of the universe. Not that Dean is thinking about that at all, but he figured by now they were at least past having to argue about sleeping arrangements.

With a small shrug, Castiel answers, "I'd like some time to myself. And it would be good for Sam to have someone nearby, just in case…" He trails off with another weak gesture and a lift of eyebrows.

"Sam actually sleeps through the night," Dean says quietly. "And last time I checked, it was good for you to have someone around, 'just in case'." He sighs. "Are we seriously discussing this?"

"I rather not." Face troubled, Castiel holds out a hand for the room key gripped in Dean's fist. "Please, Dean, it's not…personal. You and Sam are accustomed to sharing a living space, and you and Bobby have been good to open up your home to me. But I'm also accustomed to having time to myself to meditate on things. Regroup, if you will. And there's been much for me to think about these past weeks."

Unsettled, Dean hesitates and starts to pass the key over, pausing just as Castiel's fingers close around the plastic fob. He wants to ask a million things, chief among them, Why won't you let me help? but the words get tangled up in his own feeling that he'd probably refuse help, too, if he were the one with the kind of baggage Castiel has been carrying around. Hell, he's been there. He wonders if after a certain point he's best helping Castiel by taking a step back and trusting that the angel knows what's best for himself. After all, he's trusted his friend with much more in the past; maybe not always to the best result, but they've been coming back around from that, haven't they? Learning how to lean on each other again?

"If you're having more of those damn nightmares—" he starts, and his voice catches. He has to force himself to hand the key over. "Or anything, I want you to let me know. I'm next door. And for the love of God, don't go pushing yourself to stay awake all night, you hear me? Because I'll kick your ass if you're falling asleep on the job tomorrow."

There's a gratitude in Castiel's eyes Dean doesn't expect, nor the hand, now holding the motel keys, that whips out to squeeze around his fingers. "Dean," Cas begins, and his voice breaks a little. "Thank you. Your trust means more to me than—" He trails off and looks down at their joined hands. "Just – thank you."

"Yeah, yeah." Suddenly awkward, Dean gently tries to pull away and nods in the direction of their rooms. "Get changed and meet us in our room in an hour so we can decide what to do next. And take a shower or something, you're not exactly angel-fresh."

Despite Dean's attempts to disentangle their fingers, Castiel's grip tightens once more before he lets go. "Speak for yourself," he tosses back lightly, "you reek."

With that, Castiel makes his way across the parking lot to the motel, and Dean lingers a second to pretend to lock up the car and double-check that they've got the books, fake IDs, and weapons they'll need in the trunk, though he knows for a fact he packed them all before leaving Bobby's. He can't help but breathe a small sigh of relief that the moment with Castiel is over, though of course he has no clue what just happened. At the same time, he immediately misses the pressure of Castiel's hand, the earnest thanks in his blue eyes at being given such a small amount of trust, and Dean's only attempt to explain it is that he's officially lost his marbles.

Castiel lingers for what he suspects amounts to several moments too long in the shower, turning the temperature dial down so that the spray is lukewarm, and relishing the sensation of the water sluicing away the sweat that's accumulated on his skin in the Texas heatwave. It bothers him, that he's so easily affected by something as simple as climate conditions now; it's another uncomfortable reminder of just how much he's tethered to his vessel – his body.

All the same, he supposes it would be deeply ungrateful of him to complain when he's very much aware of the fact that, by all rights, he should be dead. Or worse. He remembers, with a rush of unprecedented panic, his isolation in Purgatory, the stench of blood and burning flesh that suffused the monster encampment, the snarls and shrieks of the fanged things that hurled spells at him to keep him contained in a crude approximation of his true form. He staggers a little as the claustrophobia of it hits him square in the chest, screwing his eyes shut and breathing hard. He sets one hand against the cool tile of the shower wall, presses the fingers of the other into the vivid red mark burned into his chest.

He opens his eyes when the world stops spinning, and he's back in the luridly-painted bathroom of a motel in Texas, a million miles from that place of suffering and solitude. The water is running closer to cold now, and Castiel shuts it off, exiting the shower with some degree of reluctance. He searches through the duffle bag Dean had helped him to pack, choosing the pair of flannel sleep pants he favors and a soft white shirt, both Dean's. It's comical, in a depressing sort of way; Castiel wore Jimmy Novak's suit and trenchcoat for five years straight, barring his brief stint in a Delacroix hospital, but today he can't stand to be in the same clothes for more than a few hours thanks to a bit of heat.

The Winchesters are looking at him expectantly when he enters their unlocked room; Dean regards him with an expression of mingled concern and irritation with which Castiel feels intimately acquainted by now.

"What the hell took you?" he demands, tone even more gruff than usual. "Sam thought you'd drowned in the shower."

"I even suggested Dean go check on you," Sam says, flashing his brother a smile that Castiel can't quite decode.

"I can't drown," Castiel reminds them, the words coming out sharper than he intended. "I'm still an angel, despite my current appearance."

"We know, Cas," Sam says, and he smiles reassuringly at Castiel, so that the nasty little ball of guilt Castiel gets every time he remembers what he did to Sam tightens uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. He deserves Sam's kindness even less than he deserves Dean's, but he's still selfishly grateful to have it. That, more than anything else, is what ultimately quells his rising irritation, and he moves further into the room to perch sheepishly at the foot of the bed.

"What are we planning?" he inquires, pointedly ignoring the way Dean is still watching him too closely. Castiel is in strategizing mode now, and it's familiar and disconcerting all at once. He recalls long meetings spent hashing out strategy with his most trusted allies, plotting the best ways to defeat Raphael's followers, guerilla maneuvers to win the civil war. He thinks of Rachel and Balthazar, dead now by his own hand. He sighs and turns back to watching the brothers discuss this latest case.

Sam has launched into a detailed breakdown of the case with an enthusiasm that suggests he's been fairly desperate to get out of Bobby's house and back on the job, but the basics as Castiel understands them go something like this: the largest concentration of disappearances in a single location took place at a nearby golf club resort a little over a week ago, where sixteen people vanished all at once in broad daylight, many of them in the middle of playing a round of let's hit balls with sticks, as Dean describes it. Furthermore, there are almost no witnesses for most of the disappearances, but one local man, a Mr. Theodore Conway, swears that he watched his son get dragged into the water from their fishing boat last Tuesday.

Castiel finds himself thinking about Mr. Conway's son: what he was like as a person, what his hopes and dreams were, his ambitions for the future. Human beings are so fragile, precious, their lives fleeting. He'd found it difficult to remember that last year, when he had been so consumed by the war; at times he had thought of his Father's most loved creations as little more than walking power sources, batteries on legs.

"So I'm thinking we should split up," Sam announces, interrupting his train of thought. "I'll go talk to this Conway guy, and you two can look into things at the golf club."

"Sam," Dean huffs, glaring at his brother. Castiel has no idea why Dean should take such offense to the suggestion, and is even more mystified when Sam appears to be trying (and failing) to suppress a smirk.

"It makes the most sense," Sam insists weakly, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "No offense, but neither of you guys are exactly Captain Empathy when it comes to dealing with grieving relatives, and with any luck things will go a lot faster this way so we can get out of this heat."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, right. More to the point, are you sure you're gonna be okay on your own?"

Sam grins. "I'm a big boy, Dean. I can take care of myself."

"You know what I mean," Dean insists, and Castiel notes the sharp undertone of worry cutting into his voice now.

"Yeah, I know," Sam says quietly, all of his earlier levity abruptly gone. "Look, Dean, this is just something I gotta do, okay? On my own. I need to do this."

Dean narrows his eyes, and for a second Castiel thinks he's going to continue arguing; but then his shoulders sag as he relents. "Yeah, okay," he concedes, and that's that.

As it turns out, the Crystal Beach Golf Club Resort is only a short distance from their motel, so it makes more sense for Sam to drop them off there before continuing on his own to meet Mr. Conway in Galveston proper.

"Look after her, bitch," Dean warns as he hands the keys to the Impala over. "I only just got her roadworthy again."

Sam's only response is to stick his middle finger up at them as he drives away, and Dean turns to Castiel with a long-suffering sigh and a slightly pained smile. "Shall we?"

They make their way around the putting greens mostly in companionable silence, Dean walking with his EMF meter held out in front of him. This one isn't made out of a Walkman, Castiel notes somewhat absurdly, and thinks with a strange pang that he would like to have seen Dean's homemade device in action.

"Are you okay, dude?" Dean asks after this has gone on for a while, shattering the peace and quiet. Castiel barely refrains from rolling his eyes, biting down on his growing irritation. He knows that Dean means well, but he's grown a little sick of hearing that question after the last few weeks. Not that he has anyone to blame for that but himself.

He sighs. "I'm fine, Dean. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Dean shrugs. "Just, you seem a little out of it today, is all."

Castiel turns that over in his mind and concludes somewhat reluctantly that Dean probably has a point. "I suppose I'm just not used to being out of the house," he says slowly.

"Yeah," Dean agrees, except it sounds like maybe he doesn't agree at all. Still he manages not to comment any further, for which Castiel is infinitely grateful.

"I used to play golf for a while," Dean comments randomly after several more minutes of silence have passed between them. "Back when I lived at Lisa's."

The admission takes Castiel by surprise, and when he looks at Dean he finds the knowledge adds another layer to his perception of this strange man, a new angle by which to see him from. There's something wistful about Dean's expression, and Castiel wonders a little sadly whether Dean would be happier if circumstances were different and he had continued to live with Lisa and her son, unaware of Sam's return from Hell and everything that had followed afterwards. Probably, but it would have been a false brand of peace, like the kind Castiel had given Lisa on Dean's wishes when he'd erased her memories. A peace born of ignorance.

Would you rather have peace or freedom? he'd asked Dean once, like having one would preclude him from ever attaining the other. From what he knows of both, Castiel suspects that might just be the case. Both of their lives are testaments to that.

"I didn't know that," Castiel comments quietly.

Dean shrugs. "No reason why you would."

It's an offhanded comment, not loaded in any way, but Castiel is surprised to find that it stings nonetheless. It's ironic, really: he knows Dean's darkest secrets, has held his soul in his hands; and yet, when it comes to the minutiae of Dean's everyday life, he's shockingly ignorant in most respects.

"Well, this is a bust," Dean mutters, oblivious to Castiel's change in mood. "I'm not getting any readings off this thing."

He shakes the EMF meter, taps the readout like it might be broken. Castiel is about to respond when he senses it, something toxic in the air, the unmistakable taint of sulfur filling his nostrils and settling in the back of his throat until he wants to gag. It's a presence, a malevolence reeking of decay and rot that's instantly recognizable after all the months he spent working with Crowley, and it hits him full-force, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

"Dean, wait," he says.

Dean frowns in confusion, but stops walking. "What is it, Cas?"

"Demons."

Dean's head snaps up, looking around in alarm. "Are you sure? Where are—""

"Dean!" Castiel's shouted warning comes too late as a large, baldheaded man bigger even than Sam steps out from a thicket of trees behind Dean, swinging at him with what looks to be a section of lead piping. There's an audible thunk as metal meets skull, and Dean hits the floor.

Castiel forces down the inescapable fear and rage that come with seeing Dean unconscious and sprawled on the ground, moving seamlessly into battle mode as his millennia of combat training kicks in. He tugs on his shredded grace, willing his sword to manifest, but then out of nowhere a woman's voice – a familiar woman's voice – is reciting an incantation in Enochian as hands catch and grab at his clothing.

He has just enough time to feel a brief flare of panic as he's reminded once again of the spells used in Purgatory to keep him submissive, and then he's hurtling face-first into an endless blackness that reminds him a little too much of falling.

Sam keeps a copy of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: How to Survive the Aftermath in a Destroyed Psyche in his side pocket. The top of the book peeks out with a series of dog-eared pages, crinkled and turned gray from palm-sweat and midnights seated in Bobby's den-chair. When he first received the book, it had the fresh-print smell of a book right off the presses, as though the ink would still be wet when he cracked it open; and Sheriff Mills had inscribed the inside in a cramped scrawl.

Give it time, Sam, she wrote.

He touches the book now and feels the pages flit beneath the pad of his finger. He feels dirty and unwashed in the dry-cleaned suit, still wearing the filthy t-shirt he slept in last night underneath the suit and the tie. This must be what it's like to be a demon, he thinks, wearing another person's meatsuit. Dirty on the inside; squeaky clean to everyone else.

Inside Capital Q BBQ, the locally-praised restaurant along Galveston's Seawall Boulevard, the smells of slow-cooked pork drift over the countertop, and Sam practices breathing through his mouth, cutting down the virulent smell of burning, charred meat. This is not the worst. It smells like Hell, like his own burning flesh, but Sam knows it's not.

It's the weathered old man who sits in front of him, balancing a wool crushable Stetson on his knee and a glass of whiskey in the other. Conway has deep etchings in his face, wrinkles around his eyes like fine lattice-work, burned there in shades of gold and tan by the sun across decades spent on docks, ships, and the coast.

He fills those wrinkles with tears. They slide from his eyes, and this is what forces Sam to turn away, this is what makes the smell of burning meat seem inconsequential and unimportant. This pain reflected from one man to another; give it time, Sam. But he gave it time, and time isn't fucking enough.

That's no way to think, Sam remonstrates himself. Think positive. You can do this.

He takes a steadying breath. The book listed a series of exercises, and Jodie Mills walked him through others, efforts at biofeedback, listening to his body and quieting the increasing frantic anxiety that beats like bats caught in a church bell, desperate to break through the iron.

He counts backwards, from ten down to one, and slowly the sound of the old man, whose grown son went disappearing off the coast last week, filters back to him, through the haze of images that shuffle back and forth – Adam, Michael, Lucifer.

"I know he's dead," the man sniffs. "You get used to the idea of that, losing your life at sea. But I ain't never gettin' used to this idea that he goes missing, and that's supposed to be casual. That business just goes on and nothing stops, nothing stops for a single life. Dropped like a stone in a barrel of brine. Christ." The man moves the flat of his palm through his tear tracks, spreading them across his cheeks with no effort to make them go, only to clear the path for more tears, more grief.

I can't keep doing this, Sam thinks. Seeing them like this.

It cuts places inside that Sam doesn't like to think about; it takes him back to the Cage. When the book talks about triggers, it talks about them in the dramatic, the grandiose; it never talks about the small things. The fragility of tears, for instance, and that even archangels have them, and archangels cry, just as people do.

Especially when they're trapped in a cage.

Sam breathes in. He holds it and counts up to ten this time. He breathes out, swallows, prompts the old man gently. "You were there…" He thinks about taking the worn hand that rests against the hat, where the old man taps his fingers against the wool, in his own hand. He doesn't do it. Sam knows that the man wouldn't feel it, knows that his hands and fingers are numb, numb down to his core. Regardless of the tears flowing down his cheeks, he feels nothing at all.

"I was there," Conway confirms.

Sam nods. "Tell me what you saw. I'm here to help."

"What does the eff-bee-eye want with a drunk fisherman?" the old man rails suddenly. "Govun'ment doesn't care about us. Never has. They put their restrictions on the fisheries and kill our ocean. They let the oil companies dump enough oil into the sea to keep us treading through black for the rest of our lives. We cut open fish, and the black is in their guts. Them oil companies are bastards. Ain't had a clean catch in more than a year. And you care about my son, boy? You care for his welfare?"

Sam goes still, thinks, dirty from the inside out in his clean suit. "Yes," he whispers.

The old man squints. "I believe you."

"Tell me, Mr. Conway. I can't bring back your son. But—"

The old man squints up at Sam, interrupting with, "You gonna kill the blackness for me, then?"

Sam pauses in his effort to bring up his notebook. "The blackness?"

Conway nods emphatically. "There was a blackness in that seawater." He pauses, brings the glass to his lips and swallows the whiskey. Sam smells it on the air, just beneath the rude push of pulled-pork into his nostrils. After a moment, Conway speaks again. "I was waiting for Jack to pull in. He had a smaller boat, just an 18-footer Grady White, y'know?"

Sam doesn't know shit about boats, but he nods like he does.

"Outboards kicking up froth at the back, he was going at a good clip, and then he cut the engine so he could ease right in. And I held the rope in my hands and for a minute, I heard this noise beneath the dock, like a man at a door, tapping his fist. You know the sound the water makes beneath a dock, boy?"

"I do," Sam says with a nod.

The man nods in turn and continues. "This steady slap, slap. But this wasn't that sound. This was like someone wanted to get my attention. Like a man at a door, waiting for me to let him in. I looked away and I stomped my foot. Sometimes we get sand sharks and the like and maybe one was caught beneath the dock, knocking itself unconscious beneath the planks. Wasn't no shark. Wasn't nothing at all."

In the background, silverware clanks and clicks against plates. Meat makes its way to hungry jaws and yawning mouths, as patrons chew and kill their food with their teeth, tearing and straining.

"I look up again," Conway whispers, "and my boy. My boy was gone. And the boat was empty and rocking on the choppy waves, and I heard the tapping once more."

Conway's fingers still over the fabric of the hat. He stares at his empty glass, still seeping tears from his eyes. His collar is stained with their moisture, and Sam knows the anatomy of such grief, this endless mourning that does not stop. He does not interrupt it. He waits for Conway to find his words again and speak when he's ready.

"I came to the end of the dock," the man continues. "That's where the tapping was. I had one foot on the board and the other on the post, and I leaned down, thinking that when Jack's ship came in I didn't want nothing in the way. Maybe he was just out of sight, where I couldn't see, maybe the outboards was givin' him trouble. And I look down into the water, and there was this shadow, this blackness deep down. Dark like the oil, almost, but moving."

Conway lets loose a violent cough, but it's not a cough; it's a blind, choking sob that wends its way through his chest like a twister kicking up earth in a storm. It works through him as though it cuts through his throat all the way up and out, until his whole body is shaking, and Sam is there, drawing his bar stool close so they sit shoulder to shoulder.

Customers stare, a lady with a straw hat she bought at a tourist shop, a child with ketchup on his face, and a balding man with a french fry on its way to his mouth. Sam folds his arms over his chest and lifts his chin in a quiet gesture of come and get some, motherfuckers. Got a problem?

They don't have a problem. They shift in their seats and return to their meals, to their lives, to their clean, cookie cutter world where everything you need to fix a problem can be bought at Wal-Mart, where Dr. Phil can strip down your bullshit and make it right, and where people sleep without frown lines in their faces.

"And the blackness had my boy's face," Conway whispers. "I saw him, open-eyed and staring up from the deep. And his face… so pale. I was staring down at him like he was my own reflection, and this air bubble popped out of his mouth. It floated up and broke on the water." The old man's face is all baffled grief undercut now by astonishment, as he continues. "And when it did, I heard him. I heard his voice in that little capsule of air."

"What did you hear?" Sam asks.

After a moment the old man whispers, "I heard, Help me, Dad. And then he was sucked down into the blackness. Things moved in that blackness. They took him, hands over limbs and things I couldn't see. I didn't want to see. And when I sleep at night, I wake up twisting the sheets. I think it's the blackness, down in the deep, come to find me. It chokes me in the night. I have to catch my breath. And I don't go to the Gulf no more. I don't take the Grady out on the water ever."

The silence stretches out, and it takes Sam a moment to realize that it's total; that somewhere in these lost minutes, the customers have cleared out and even the bartender is faded and leaning against the wall in the distance, as though he is no more than a cardboard cut-out, and all that is real is the inky blackness of the deep, a benthic zone swallowing up beloved sons.

Conway lets out a shuddered breath. "Kill the blackness, boy. But you watch out for the things inside it."

Sam swallows, nodding. "We will."

The old man lifts his Stetson and sets it on the thin hair of his head, white and uncombed. "It doesn't get better, does it?" Conway whispers, and Sam's tongue unfolds inside his mouth where he has been holding it, tripping against his palate. He wants to tell him, Give it time.

But Sam did give it time.

And it's not working.

So he says nothing at all.

Dean's being doing this job for longer than he sometimes cares to think about, and during that time he's been subject to a myriad of unpleasant things, but one of his least favorite sensations will always and forever be that of regaining consciousness to find himself tied to some kind of stationary object.

A chair, in this instance, his wrists secured to the armrests with thick lengths of rope; just simple hemp, but wound tight enough to bite into his flesh and seriously hinder his circulation. Oh, he's sure he could wriggle free given an hour or so, but given the circumstances, he suspects that time is not currently on his side.

His head still aches dully thanks to the blow from his unseen attacker, but not in a way that screams concussion, so that's probably not his biggest priority right now. Pushing the pain to the back of his mind, he focuses on his surroundings: he's definitely not at the golf club anymore, but the faint salt-tang of sea air suggests that he probably hasn't been moved too far. The room he's in looks like it might have functioned as a kitchen in a past life, though it's obviously long since been abandoned, grime encrusting the floor tiles and mildew streaking up the walls.

Castiel is seated maybe ten feet from him, similarly bound; though on closer inspection Dean suspects that the rope bondage is purely for aesthetic purposes in his case, and his current state of immobility has a hell of a lot more to do with the Enochian sigils daubed on the floor around his chair in what looks disturbingly like blood. Crap. Dean gets a flash of their similarly bound positions in Purgatory and swallows against the panic filling his chest.

"Cas, you okay?" he whispers.

"I'm fine," Castiel replies tightly, sounding the very definition of not fine. Dean knows that Castiel would never voluntarily admit to or display any kind of weakness, but he also remembers his own state of mind in the months immediately following his return from Hell well enough to see straight through the angel's stoicism. Even now, the sensation of being held captive and powerless at the mercy of some unknown adversary is enough to send Dean back to the months-years-decades spent in Alastair's tender care. Bound and helpless. But he doesn't let his mind go back there. He no longer belongs to Alastair.

But Dean still understands Castiel's resurgent fear. Dean's been there, and he recognizes the signs. The minute twitch of Castiel's jaw and the repeated clench-unclench of his hands against the armrests of his chair are a dead giveaway. Dean has another flashback to that awful moment back in Purgatory when he'd first seen Castiel tethered to a stake, forced to manifest against his will, and feels a violent surge of anger on his friend's behalf.

"Just take it easy," Dean murmurs in what he hopes is something approaching a soothing tone. Castiel – ungrateful bastard that he is – merely shoots him a glare in response. Dean snorts inelegantly, but whatever he might say next is interrupted by the clatter of high-heeled boots on the tiled floor and a rasping female voice that sends his heart plummeting all the way down to his shoes.

"Now this is what I like to see," Meg chirps smugly, looking every inch like the cat who got the cream. Dean wouldn't be overly surprised if she started rubbing her hands together in villainous glee. "You boys sure look pretty when you're all tied up and helpless. Kinky."

She's flanked on either side by two massive, burly demons at least three times her size, but Dean isn't fooled; he knows who holds the real power here. I apprenticed under Alastair in Hell, she'd said the last time they met, and that doesn't just make her dangerous – it makes her lethal.

More than that, though, Meg is a loose cannon. At least Crowley's goals are always somewhat predictable, but Dean and Sam have been playing this game of cat-and-mouse with Meg for approaching seven years now, and it's still impossible to know what her ever-changing agenda will be from one appearance to the next.

"I was wondering when you'd show your face again," he sneers at her by way of greeting.

Meg tsks, tipping her head to the side in amusement. "Must be your lucky day, Deano." She moves toward him and Dean realizes that, for all her swagger, her appearance has fallen into a noticeable state of disrepair since the last time they crossed paths. Demons are an insufferably vain bunch by their very nature, he knows, and Meg is no exception when it comes to picking only the most attractive hosts to possess; but from this close Dean can tell that her dark hair is matted and tangled, her boots scuffed. There's a large tear above the left knee of her jeans, and her eyes have a wild, hunted look about them that he really doesn't like.

Still on the run from King Crowley, Dean guesses, though he keeps the observation to himself. He's so engrossed in this revelation that he doesn't notice how close Meg has gotten until she tugs his jacket open, reaches into the inside pocket and pulls out Ruby‘s knife. She studies it for a moment, turning the blade over under the dim light, before handing it off to one of her lackeys.

"So where's the third Musketeer, huh?" she asks pointedly, her gaze flicking back and forth between Dean and Castiel.

"Sam isn't here." The lie slips out automatically, even though Dean knows there's no way in hell she's ever going to believe it. Sure enough, the look she gives him in response is one of pure, scathing disbelief.

"How stupid do you think I am?" she snaps.

Dean grins. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

Meg narrows her eyes, and that's all the warning Dean gets before she slaps him hard across the face, hard enough to send his head snapping violently to the side. He thinks he hears Castiel make a muted noise of protest, but it's difficult to be sure with the ringing in his ears.

Meg crouches down in front of him, grabs a fistful of his t-shirt and yanks him forwards so that his wrists strain painfully against their bonds.

"You mind your tongue if you want to keep it in your head," she snarls. Her breath hits Dean's face as she speaks, and he tries not to gag at the fetid reek of sulfur. How Castiel could ever have kissed her is beyond him. And that's something he's definitely not thinking about right now.

Unfortunately, Meg makes it ten times more difficult for him not to think about it when she releases his shirt and rises to her feet, tossing him a suggestive wink before sauntering over to her second captive. From this angle, Dean can just about make out Meg smiling pleasantly at Castiel before dropping herself into his lap, straddling his waist and leaning in so that the distance between their faces would be measurable by centimeters.

Dean has to give the angel credit for not flinching away from her, but all the same, he finds himself suddenly seeing red. It's not quite the same indignant rage he'd felt earlier; rather, it's something a good deal more proprietary, something that has him wanting to run Meg through with the knife just for touching Castiel. He's reminded forcibly of their assault on Crowley's monster prison, and the fact that Castiel was a more than willing participant in that kiss, even if Meg was the one to initiate it; for a second, all he can see is Castiel shoving her up against the wall, his fingers twisting and tangling in her hair as he showed her exactly how educational some good old pizza-delivery porn could be.

Pushing the image away, Dean blinks and takes a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down because, seriously? First off, really not the time or place, and secondly, what the hell?

"Hey, baby," Meg croons, scraping her thumbnail across Castiel's cheek. "Did you miss me?"

"Not particularly," Castiel tells her flatly. Meg laughs, seemingly unfazed, before trailing her hand – deceptively delicate-looking – down the side of his face and wrapping it around the base of his throat; a warning. Dean gets that ugly, possessive feeling rising up within him again, and he finds himself wanting to tell her hands off, skank. This time, however, he decides to use it to his advantage, channeling all that adrenaline into working on loosening his restraints while Meg is distracted. He flexes his muscles against the rope, testing the give.

"What the hell happened to you, anyway?" Meg asks, studying Castiel like he's some interesting specimen under a microscope. "'Cause I'm willing to bet I wouldn't even need all these angel scratchings to hold you here. Did you fall, baby?"

Castiel doesn't answer; instead, he stares her down silently in a manner that Dean suspects would be highly unnerving to anybody who wasn't a raging sociopath. Since this is Meg, she just smirks that little bit wider, flattens her free hand against Castiel's sternum and tilts her head towards his chest, reminding Dean of a doctor monitoring a patient's heart rate.

"No," she concludes eventually, after what feels like hours. "There's still some angel in there, but it's buried under all that nasty trauma. Might as well be human for all the use you are right now, huh, Clarence?"

"Why don't you let me go and put that theory to the test?" Castiel suggests evenly, and Dean has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from grinning at that. Let it never be said that Cas can't still be one terrifying motherfucker when he wants to be, powers or no.

"Them's fighting words…I like!" Meg enthuses. "But you can just sit tight, big boy, because first you're going to answer a few questions for me. Now, I don't suppose you know where your business associate is?"

Suddenly she's all business, the flirtatious demeanor gone like the flipping of a switch, and it makes Dean nervous.

"You know, your little partner in crime?" she adds when Castiel doesn't answer right away. "That was a real neat trick the two of you pulled, faking his death like that. It would have almost had me convinced, if not for the fact I've been fighting off his minions for the last fucking year."

The last part of that sentence is hissed right into Castiel's face, and it becomes apparent to Dean just from her tone of voice that Meg is angrier than he's ever seen her. More than that, she's getting desperate. He waits for the inevitable stab of betrayal at the reminder of Castiel's duplicity, but it's somewhat dulled around the edges when it comes, and less painful by far than he had expected. Maybe it's because he's witnessed firsthand just how horrifically Castiel has paid for his crimes, or maybe it's just because Dean himself has done enough mending over the last few months that he's finally arrived at a place where forgiveness doesn't seem so desperately out of reach. Either way, he takes it as a positive sign; the only one to come out of this whole clusterfuck of a situation.

"I haven't seen Crowley for months," Castiel informs Meg in that same flat tone of voice.

"That's too bad," Meg tells him right before her face twists into an ugly sneer and she tightens her hand around his throat, squeezing hard enough that her knuckles turn white and watching Cas choke in apparent fascination.

"Hey!" Dean snaps, hoping to distract her. It's a stupid move, and he knows the first rule of any hostage situation is to never give your captor any kind of leverage, never let them know what your fellow hostages mean to you. He remembers vividly how those emotional ties can be exploited from Zachariah's repeated and spirited attempts to persuade him to bend over for Michael.

Stupid or not, it works. Meg relaxes her hold, the anger seeming to evaporate as that easy-going, free-spirited persona settles back over her like a glamour. That's all it is, though: an illusion, a façade. Dean knows only too well that the demon inside is nothing more than a swirling mass of rage and hatred, cultured over centuries spent being flayed alive at Alastair's loving hand.

It occurs to him – not for the first time – that this could have been him.

"I think your boyfriend's worried about you," Meg remarks, patting Castiel's cheek as he gasps and wheezes. "Don't worry, Dean, I'm not gonna kill him. Well, not yet. I'm not really here for Crowley, anyway."

"Then why are you here?" Dean demands, partly out of genuine curiosity and partly in an effort to keep her talking. "Don't tell me it's just for the weather."

Meg smiles at him. "I heard you boys were in the area, and it's been so long since we last saw each other, I thought it was about time we were due for a catch-up."

Dean rolls his eyes. "You're all heart. Now what's the real reason?" An awful suspicion hits him then. "Wait a minute. All those people are missing… was that you?"

The demon lets out a much put-upon sigh and dismounts from Castiel's lap, standing in front of them both with a distinctly self-satisfied look on her face. Dean braces himself for the punchline while trying to surreptitiously check his restraints again. He thinks there's a little more slack in them than there was before, but there's still no way he's getting free anytime soon.

"Please. Massacring fat tourists isn't really my style. Besides, this isn't just Galveston; it's a worldwide phenomenon, genius. Hawaii, Indonesia, freaking Greenland; everywhere that has a coastline. People are disappearing like the big man in the sky is pulling them up for the Rapture. So we're here to do a little investigating of our own."

Dean frowns, unsettled by Meg's revelations. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Meg throws back her head and laughs, the sound of it like nails on a chalkboard. "You really don't know what's going on do you?"

"But you know something," he accuses, a warming siren building in the back of his head. Fuck.

"I have my suspicions," Meg confirms with a toss of her hair.

"Care to share with the class exactly what those are?" Dean asks, hoping for something.

"Nope nope nope," Meg says, voice all sing-song.

"Come on Meg. Give us a little hint. We go way back you know," Dean mock pleads.

Meg seems to think on it for a long moment, and her grin widens. "It's something big, Deano," she teases. "I can tell you that. Something so big and so powerful. It's coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. And I can tell you that it's unlike anything you've seen before." She sounds like she's happy to share the news with someone, finally, but her teeth glint savage. "Crowley has something that I want, and anything that can cause destruction on this kind of scale has the power to help me get it. I want in on what's going down."

"So what you're telling me is that you're still an apocalyptic gold-digging bitch?" Dean mutters. "Hitching your ties to whatever Big Bad offers you a ride."

"A girl's gotta eat, Dean," Meg smiles. "But this time I'll be the one left in the power seat. I want to be on top. I want—"

"Hell," Castiel interrupts, staring at Meg with a newfound intensity, like she's just revealed something absolutely fascinating. "You want to overthrow Crowley and take control of Hell for yourself."

Meg smiles in a way that makes Dean think of knives and sharp teeth tearing into flesh. "Cookie for you."

"But…you hate Hell," Dean points out, because he can remember her talking about it in Sam's voice, as clear as if it was yesterday. A prison made of bone and flesh and blood and fear, she'd called it, with the kind of pain, the kind of anger, that couldn't be faked. Dean had sold his soul just a few months later, and it had been her words that rang in his ears as he'd kissed the crossroads demon and sealed his fate.

Meg sneers and paces around to the back of his chair, leaning over his shoulder so that her hair is pressed against his cheek as she speaks directly into his ear.

"Everyone hates Hell, Dean, that's why it's Hell. Doesn't make it any less my home, though, does it? There's nothing on earth like the smell of sulfur in the morning, that look in somebody's eyes right before you eviscerate them. You can't tell me you don't miss it because we're the same, you and me…it's the only place we've ever really belonged."

Dean sucks in a sharp breath, Meg's words hitting too close for comfort. He glances over to Castiel, though he's not really sure what he's looking for. Maybe some kind of reassurance that it's not true, that she's lying because that's what demons do. The angel looks like he wants to rip her apart with his bare hands, which is undeniably gratifying; but much more importantly, Dean notices that he's managed to undo the rope around both his wrists, though the flesh looks raw and bloody as a result. Castiel catches Dean's eye, giving him a significant look, and Dean trusts him enough to realize that he's waiting for the right moment.

"Face it, Dean," Meg tells him, and her voice is a low snarl in his ear. "If the God Squad hadn't come swooping in to get you out of there, you'd be exactly the same as me."

Dean doesn't say anything, because he really can't disagree.

Fortunately Castiel starts talking. "You're chasing after things that are too big for you to handle," the angel warns. "That kind of power…it'll consume you."

"Thanks for the concern, but don't assume the same rules apply to everybody," Meg bites out acidly, straightening and digging her nails into Dean's shoulder before walking back to Castiel. "You see, the thing about power is that it feeds off your insecurities. You have to be sure that you can control it, rather than letting it control you. But then, I guess you'd know all about that, wouldn't you? What was the final death toll at the end of your little killing spree, anyway?"

It's no worse than some of the thoughts Dean himself has had towards Castiel in his less charitable moments over the last few months, but somehow it all sounds horribly unfair coming from Meg. He sucks in a breath, and there's maybe a second or two where the entire room seems to freeze, time crawling to a standstill as they teeter on a precipice. Then the world rushes back in, and several things happen all at once.

Firstly, the second Meg gets within striking distance, Castiel leaps out of his chair and punches her across the face with a mean right-hook that has Dean wincing as he remembers how it feels to be on the receiving end.

Almost at the same time, a gunshot rings through the room. Dean ducks on instinct, but not before he sees one of Meg's demon lackeys light up gold inside and fall to the floor, an empty shell. He half-turns in the direction of the noise, and there, silhouetted in the doorway, is Sam, the Colt held out in front of him and his expression caught somewhere between bewildered and enraged.

Dean has maybe five seconds to reflect that he's rarely been so glad to see his brother, before the second hench-demon is barreling into Sam, disarming him in an instant.

And then all hell breaks loose.

The initial satisfaction Castiel gleans from punching Meg rapidly dissipates when he realizes just how little effect it's actually had. The sigils on the floor worked to drain what minimal amount of strength he had left, and the blow does nothing more than send the demon staggering back a few paces. Still, it provides a brief distraction, and though the timing was pure coincidence, it works out well enough when Sam chooses that moment to make his entrance, felling the largest of Meg's accomplices with a well-aimed bullet from Samuel Colt's gun.

Meg spits blood onto the floor as she regains her composure, looking positively murderous as her gaze moves between all three of them. She waves a hand, and Castiel finds himself flying across the room, his back and shoulder slamming into the opposite wall. He hears something crunch on impact, and hopes it was tile rather than bone.

"You're late to the party, Sammy," Meg simpers as her remaining comrade subdues the youngest Winchester with ease. "We already got started without you."

"Meg." Sam spits her name like a curse, and Castiel is forcibly reminded that this is the demon whose hounds killed Ellen and Jo Harvelle, who once possessed Sam himself. He's almost surprised by the depth of the anger he feels, and he reminds himself that attacking her again would be pointless in his current condition. Instead, he takes advantage of the fact that her attention seems to be focused on Sam for the moment, and makes his way over to the empty body of the demon Sam killed, searching the man's pockets for the knife.

"Cas," Dean whispers furiously, still struggling in vain to escape his bonds. Castiel ignores him.

"How's my father doing?" Meg goads from above him, presumably still talking to Sam. "I heard he's been dropping in to visit you quite regularly."

Giving up on the pockets, Castiel moves on to the dead man's boots, offering up a silent prayer of thanks as his hand closes around the hilt. He pulls it out, the Samuel Colt-forged weapon that once belonged to Ruby; the very same weapon he used to ensure his and Dean's escape from the Green Room in Van Nuys, what seems like so long ago now.

"Hate to break it to you, but your daddy's rotting in the Cage," Sam tells Meg coldly. "And the best part? It's maximum life imprisonment."

Meg lets out a snarl of fury, drawing her own blade and launching herself at Sam. There's no time for Castiel to do anything but react; he snaps his wings out as best he can and flings himself across the room, shoving Sam roughly out of the way as he thrusts Ruby's knife into the gut of the demon holding him. Unfortunately, the maneuver puts him right in the path of Meg's attack, and a second later he feels the sharp edge of her own knife slice through the soft flesh of his upper chest.

It's only a glancing blow, and even in his current weakened state his grace protects him from feeling the full force of the injury. But it's still enough to force him back a step, the wound searing hot as blood begins to flow.

Meg clucks her tongue at him, still superior even though she's breathing heavily. "That's one hell of a hero complex you got there, Clarence. I'll see you around, boys."

Castiel raises the demon-killing knife, but a second later he's left staring at mid-air as Meg disappears from right in front of him.

"Son of a bitch," Dean curses. Castiel glances in his direction and sees that he's still tied to his chair, tugging fruitlessly against the rope. Castiel suspects the picture he makes might even be comical in different circumstances.

"Hey, uh, thanks Cas," Sam mutters, picking himself up gingerly and dusting down his clothes. "I owe you one."

Castiel looks up at him, at the earnest expression on his face and remembers the way he had convulsed on the floor of Bobby's library. He remembers reaching up to touch Sam's head, aiming to disable, to bring it all tumbling down. Anything to keep Dean out of his way, and damn the consequences.

Castiel shakes his head. "You don't owe me anything."

The air in the room seems thicker, somehow, as Castiel limps over to Dean, ignoring the stinging in his chest as his injury makes itself known. His back aches too, from where he was thrown into the wall, and he winces as he imagines the spectacular bruises that must be blossoming there even now.

"Punching her in the face?" Dean asks incredulously as Castiel uses the knife to cut him free. "That was your plan?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Castiel snaps, discomfort making him irritable.

Dean rolls his wrists as the ropes fall away, breathing a sigh of relief. The delicate skin there is raw and painful-looking, and even though he knows the damage is utterly insignificant compared to what Dean has suffered before, Castiel still finds himself wishing that he were strong enough to heal the abrasions, to make Dean whole and perfect again. Meg's words echo through his mind: you might as well be human for all the use you are right now.

"Hey," Dean's voice breaks through his reverie, and Castiel feels his face heat up as he realizes he's still kneeling in front of the other man. He looks up, and sees that Dean's forehead is scrunched in a tiny frown.

"You're bleeding." Dean reaches out to gently press his fingers to Castiel's chest. They come away stained bright red with blood, and Castiel stares at it, mesmerized. The color is incongruously cheerful, almost offensive in its garishness. He's spilled so much of his vessel's blood since coming down to earth, splitting open veins to paint sigils, taking hits from angels and demons alike when he hasn't been fast enough to outmaneuver them. But seeing it now, losing it now, is almost overwhelming.

Castiel takes a breath, collecting himself. "I'm fine." He thinks he means it to be reassuring, but it comes out flat and staid.

Dean rolls his eyes. "Yeah, sure you are. Cas—"

"It's just a flesh wound," he insists, something he's heard Dean and Sam say to one another multiple times. "I'm fine, Dean."

Castiel passes the knife back to Dean and stands. Adds, "We should go."

Outside, the Impala gleams in the sun, waiting for them like a reliable old friend. Sam is used to Dean's easy tread beside him, and Castiel's fleet-footed stride, as though the intangible thing that makes him more than human also makes him several pounds lighter, but there has been something new and forming between the two that Sam can't help but notice. It's in the way that Dean's steps will fall into time with Castiel's, and Sam doesn't think Dean even recognizes it. Nor does Dean notice when Castiel's breath, always shallow and near-nonexistent, will speed up to match the rhythm of Dean's, as though even down to their atoms they are struggling to form a magic of osmosis – to become one another, to make up for all that the other one loses with time.

Sam waits as they sink into the car, their combined heavy slump rocking the vehicle back and forth, before he starts the engine with a flick of his wrist, a press of metal. It's the sound of Dean's seatbelt clicking into place that catches Sam's attention, the rough tick of metal that suggests a deeper heat festering beneath Dean's surface.

Sam glances across, sees his brother is glowering into the rearview mirror, watching Castiel. Sam steals his own look, sees that the angel is leaning against the window with his hands folded in his lap. There is fresh blood seeping into the wrinkles of his knuckles, staining them rusty. Cas is probably learning that throwing punches is nothing like watching it happen during Dean's reruns of Dr. Sexy, where eye sockets and cheekbones don't swell and bruise and punches don't break fingers when thrown on another person's jaw.

"Count to ten," Sam blurts as he eyes his brother again.

Dean visibly startles, snaps, "What?"

Sam says it again, "Count to ten. If you're angry about something. It helps with the stress."

Dean sighs, running a hand over his face. "Is that what Sheriff Mills says?"

"No," Sam says, and pulls out Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: How to Survive the Aftermath in a Destroyed Psyche. The bent pages catch on his pocket as he tosses it onto Dean's lap, where it sits as though Sam had just thrown a pie face first into his crotch. "Dr. Nock says."

"Oh. Well, Dr. Winchester thinks cocky angels should think twice before throwing themselves in the path of danger. That might help with my stress."

Dean enunciates the words with extra care, and Sam experiences a sensation he can only describe as a desire to become one with the scarred leather of the driver's seat. It's what he imagines watching his parents fighting would feel like. He cringes as he glances at the back seat. Castiel has perked up from where he was staring out the window at the scenery, his face having gone from placid to attention-sharp in a fraction of a second. Sam can almost hear the sizzle in the atmosphere as Dean and Castiel's eyes meet through the rearview mirror.

"I should think you would be grateful—" Castiel begins, his tone cool, but Dean's voice interjects, and Sam can hear the exhaustion that makes him ragged, eats at his senses, turning his brother hard and unforgiving.

"Grateful? And how grateful do you think I'll be if you get yourself shot, or…shit. You know, people die from bar brawls, Cas. Judges call it one-punch homicide. A fist can kill you. After everything we've gone through, everything we did to get you back. You're not what you used to be and there's a thousand ways for you to bite the dust—"

"I apologize," Castiel's voice breaks through Dean's tirade, and the note is frigid now, lowering the temperature even in the cloying humidity of the Crystal Beach air. "Next time, I'll provide more wood for you to nail yourself to while I'm busy saving your brother's life. I understand that of the many ways I could meet my untimely demise, crucifixion is a Winchester favorite."

The rustle of feathers is unmistakable and sharp, like a plastic garbage bag unfolded and then snapped in the wind. Dean's jaw clenches as he glares at the empty seat, and as he turns back, his eyes fall to the book in his lap. He picks it up, stares at it for a second before wedging it in under Sam's thigh as he drives. Sam notes that Dean's hand trembles as he does so.

"You have to admit, that was a good burn," Sam says with pure admiration as he turns down an avenue, tire popping an abandoned soda bottle on the side of the road.

Dean lets loose a big exhale. "Freaking angels," he gripes, still eyeballing the now-empty backseat in the rearview mirror. "I swear, Sam, they're like children. Big, winged children with hair-trigger tempers and zero social skills."

Sam suppresses a smile at that and resists the urge to point out that, ignoring the winged part, Dean could have just described himself. "He'll be fine, Dean; he'll meet us back at the motel. He probably just needs some time to cool off."

"Whatever," Dean shrugs noncommittally, and unless Sam's very much mistaken, it looks as though there's a faint tinge of pink creeping into his neck. Huh. "Hey, thanks for the rescue, by the way. How did you even know where to find us?"

Sam lifts a shoulder because in all truth, he doesn't really know. "Honestly, it was a pure fluke. One of the locals I talked to when I got back to Crystal Beach mentioned that people had been acting strangely around this old abandoned house on the edge of town, so I figured I'd go check it out. The last thing I expected to find there was you guys." He gives a wry smile, which fades quickly as he contemplates the day's unexpected turn. "So…Meg, huh?"

"Yeah. Fucking Meg." Dean runs a hand over his face, and suddenly he looks tired. Older, even; there are lines on his brother's face that Sam doesn't remember seeing there before, and not for the first time he finds himself wondering when they're ever going to catch a break. Over the past three years or so it seems as though they've just been lurching drunkenly from one world-ending catastrophe to the next, and suddenly he longs for the days when their biggest challenge was finding the right bones to salt and burn.

"So what did she want?" Sam prompts, familiar enough with his brother's moods to know that getting him to talk when he's like this makes drawing blood from a stone seem easy by comparison.

"To take over Hell, apparently. And she thinks that whatever it is that's causing all this is going to help her do that."

There's silence for a few moments while Sam lets that sink in. "What, you mean like an alliance?"

Dean blows out a stream of frustrated air. "I don't know. I don't care. I just know that I'm sick and tired of having to deal with this crap." He pauses, and the look on his face suggests that he's seriously debating whether or not to say whatever he's currently turning over in his mind.

"Dean, what is it?" Sam prods as he guides the Impala around a bend in the road.

Dean glances sideways at him, biting his lip. The silence drags on until Sam is almost sure that Dean isn't going to say anything; and of course, that's when he finally speaks. "Meg seems to think whatever this is, it's really powerful," he sighs. "Unlike anything we've seen before."

"She was probably just messing with your head," Sam mutters, although he doubts it. Through his research, he's found that all the omens point to something as dire as the end of the world. So whatever's causing global havoc can't be just some run-of-the-mill baddie.

"Maybe she was," Dean sighs reluctantly. "But, Sammy, it took losing you to stop Lucifer, and losing Cas to stop Raphael second-time round. I don't think…what will another Apocalypse cost us?"

Dean makes a passable attempt at covering over the little break in his voice there, so Sam figures the least he can do is have the decency to pretend he didn't hear it. But Sam knows what Dean is thinking. He's got more to lose now. Not just Sam and Bobby, but Cas too. The little patchwork family that Dean's struggling to hold together.

"We'll get through this Dean," Sam says, voice gone soft. "And hey, it's not as if we've never stopped an apocalypse before."

Dean snorts at that, and some of the tension seems to leave his shoulders.

"Wait a minute," Sam says, holding the wheel tighter as a thought occurs to him. "That hellhound that came after us weeks ago; you don't think Meg had anything to do with that? I mean, she's used them before, in Carthage…"

He leaves that there, because his brother is full-on glowering at him now, and Carthage is still one of those things they emphatically Do Not Talk About. After a moment or two, Dean relents, shoulders slumping visibly, the aggression seeming to drain away from him as though he simply can't be bothered with it anymore.

Dean shakes his head. "We did think about that back when it first happened. Bobby mentioned it as a possibility, but I still reckon Crowley's our best bet for it. Meg's a fugitive, remember; I can't really see the boss man letting his opposition get their hands on his attack dogs. She's basically in exile."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Sam concedes. They lapse into silence, but it's a comfortable one; more comfortable than things have been for a long time, in fact, and isn't it funny how that works out? Sam stifles a yawn, rubbing tiredly at his eyes and longing for his bed back at the motel, even though the springs dig into his back and his feet hang off the end. It's been a long day.

"Hey, so how are you holding up now, anyway? After going off 'by yourself' to do your thing?" Dean asks finally, smiling slightly.

Sam finds that he doesn't mind Dean's constant mother-henning. Dean wouldn't be Dean if he didn't worry about these things.

"I'm good, Dean. Really," he adds, not missing his brother's disbelieving look. "Putting aside the possibility that we're headed for Apocalypse: The Sequel. Today was tough, I admit. It's hard having to talk to people who've lost someone. But I needed to be out there, doing something. It felt good."

Dean still doesn't look like he totally buys it, but he doesn't push any further, and after a long moment he nods slowly. Like maybe it's what he needs to hear. "You sure you're okay with Cas riding with us?"

Sam frowns. "Why wouldn't I be?"

The look Dean gives him in response is one of pure incredulity. "Jesus, Sam, do you really need me to spell this out for you? He put you in a fucking coma, okay? He broke your wall, man."

Ah. That. Yeah, okay, maybe they do need to talk about this; make it clear once and for all where they all stand.

"Look, Dean…" Sam sighs, not entirely sure where to begin. "When I was with Ruby, just before we went after Lilith…I almost strangled you to death. Dean, I hurt you. My own brother, the guy who raised me and cleaned up my snotty nose when I was sick. I hurt you, bad. Man, there was a second there where I actually wanted to kill you, just for getting in my way. I put vengeance and the need to prove how powerful I was, how I could handle it all on my own, before everything, even you. It was like…I was so caught up in this obsession with killing Lilith that I forgot what I started fighting for in the first place, you know? And…" He doesn't get any further than that because his brother's sucked-in, distraught breath stops him.

He twists his head, sees that Dean has visibly tensed even tighter, that a muscle is jumping in his cheek and he's pale.

"Sam, I can't go back there," Dean chokes out, wide-eyed. His knuckles go white as he fists his hand tight. "I don't need to hear this. I don't need to remember it. And the situation with Cas, it's different. He hurt you."

The reaction is alarming even if it isn't really surprising, Sam thinks. They've never talked about this, Dean opting for his usual repress-deny strategy, and he himself burying it beneath unvoiced regret and apologies. "It's not that different, Dean," he continues hesitantly. "Cas hurt me. But I hurt you. And swap Ruby for Crowley, Lilith for Raphael, and it's pretty much the exact same situation. We sold our souls for the chance to defeat our enemy. And dude, I know Cas did some awful, awful things. I'm not denying that. But if I can't forgive him, how can I forgive myself for trying to strangle you? For the nurse I bled dry just so I could get hopped up on demon blood?"

At that Sam stops, voice cracking, the memories too much for him to think about. He closes his eyes, takes a steadying breath. He needs to say this to Dean, he's been needing to say it for a long time. "Nothing I do can make up for what I did. I live with it every day. And Cas has to live with the awful shit he's done. And I'm not even saying we should forgive him. But he was in over his head, and…he was in a shitty situation, and he made some even shittier choices. Which is something we both know a little about, right? So I guess if anyone can relate to him, we can. And for what it's worth, I do believe he always meant to fix me."

Dean's voice is rough as he says, "That doesn't make it okay."

Sam smiles sadly. "No, of course not. And I get that this is more difficult for you; if our positions were reversed, if he ever did anything to hurt you, I don't think I'd be able to just forgive and forget, either. But I figure: the wall was probably going to come down eventually anyway. Death said as much himself. Maybe it already was coming down…I was remembering stuff, right? When he was hopped up on souls, Cas even offered to fix me. But I said no because I wanted to get through this on my own. I needed to remember. And like I said, I'm doing better."

Dean breathes out a tired huff. "Sam…"

"Cas saved my life today, Dean," Sam points out, quietly but firmly. An end to the discussion. "You can't say he isn't trying."

"Yeah, I know," Dean admits quietly, and Sam thinks there's maybe a touch of fondness in his tone now. For the nth time in recent months – years, really, if he's being honest – he finds himself wondering just what exactly is going on between his brother and the angel, wonders when they're finally going to stop dancing around each other and admit that there's something there. Probably never, given that they're the two most emotionally-constipated people he's ever met, and Sam speculates whether he ought to give them a little push. He scratches idly at his forearm, debating the best way to broach the subject.

"It seems like you and Cas have been working through things though," is what finally tumbles out of his mouth, without him having expected it. He thinks about seeing them mid-spar in the attic and smiles to himself. Working through things. "You've been sleeping in his room all month, Dean."

Dean sucks in a breath, and now he actually looks flustered. "He has bad nightmares, man. I just. He needed someone there."

"It's good of you to be there for him," Sam says, pulling into the motel parking lot. "And I think he'd be there for you too. If you let him."

Dean makes a sound deep in his throat and nods jerkily. "He has. A lot."

Sam smiles to himself, shutting off the engine. He turns to look at his brother, cataloguing the unsure expression on his face. "Look, you're my brother, and I love you, but there's room in our world for more than us, you know? It doesn't have to be just you and me. You can let someone else into your life, and I will never begrudge you that. I want you to have more people in your life, Dean. And Cas…Cas is good for you, and I think you're good for him. I mean, you can both be absolute dicks when you want to be, especially to each other, but somehow you just…work together."

"What are you saying, Sam?" Dean asks. He seems to have gone very still, body taut again. His hand is on the door handle like he's ready to bolt. And Sam knows Dean wants to run, to hide, to pretend all this isn't happening.

"I guess," Sam begins slowly, choosing his words with great care, "what I'm saying is that if anything were to…happen there, you should know that I'd be okay with it. More than okay."

"For crying out loud, Sam, are you giving me your friggin' blessing?" Dean scoffs, his stillness turned to heightened awareness. The question's obnoxious as fuck, but Sam lets it slide because he knows that this is just how Dean deals with things that scare him, things over which he has no control.

Sam sighs tiredly. "I'm just saying. I'm not blind, Dean. I know what I saw when I walked in on you guys in Bobby's attic the other week."

"That's wasn't—" Dean stutters weakly, and he's definitely blushing now. "Sam, we're not…"

"Dean," Sam says quietly. "I know you better than anyone."

"Then please just drop it," Dean says, and his voice is low and hard.

"Okay," Sam says evenly, turning to stare at the garishly-colored motel. Castiel is likely waiting for them in there somewhere, and Sam wonders distractedly whether he's managed to sulk himself out yet.

Sam thinks the conversation is over, but Dean makes no move to get out of the car; instead, he sits rigid in his seat, jaw clenching furiously. Sam doesn't push, some lifelong instinct telling him that his brother is working up to something.

"I just – he's such a mess," Dean blurts eventually. "And I'm not much better. Truth is, some days I'm a fucking headcase, Sam."

"Okay, maybe you're both messes," Sam agrees slowly, so shocked that Dean is actually talking about this – willingly, even – that he doesn't quite know how else to respond. "But maybe that's why you both need each other."

Dean stares at him for a moment like he's just revealed some great undiscovered truth, before visibly collecting himself and snapping into motion, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the car door.

"I think maybe I'll go for a drive, clear my head," Sam announces when Dean is halfway out of the car. It's subtle as a brick to the head and he knows it, but he thinks that maybe Dean and Castiel could do with some time alone together in order to work through all of their various shit.

Dean pauses, twisting awkwardly in his seat to look back at Sam. For a second, it looks as though he's going to protest, but then his expression clears. "Yeah, okay. Just be careful."

Sam smirks. "Come on, Dean. Aren't I always?"

Dean rolls his eyes, and it's that half-affectionate, half-exasperated big-brother look that Sam's come to resent and love in equal measure.

"And Sam?" Dean says, looking back. "Thanks."

Dean stands outside the motel room door long after the sound of the engine has puttered into the distance, taking the familiar creaks of the vehicle with it and around the bend.

It's the same as any door he has ever encountered. He remembers the first motel, because it was the one after the fire, and the memory shoots out of nowhere, like a falling star, slicing through him with pain and fire. And it's been three decades since that night. But here he is, still no taller than that moment.

As a child, he feared the emptiness, that antiseptic environment of the motel and the hotel chains, watching Sammy sleep while he constructed fantastical Lego creations on a filthy bedspread. But the motel is filled now, filled with an angry angel who Dean knows damn well is stalking back and forth behind the motel room curtains because he can make out the dark form of him, slight and wiry when he turns to the side, filling out his shadow when he turns to pace once more.

Dean hesitates. He opens his hand to touch the knob, to slide the key in but then he remembers that this key is to his and Sam's room. Castiel wanted to be alone. His key trembles in his hand, and Dean closes it up in his fingers, thrusts it back into his pocket. And while Castiel paces inside, Dean counts his own steps across the broken sidewalk. A roadside weed grows up through one of the cracks, and Dean steps around it.

From time to time, he notices that Castiel's shadow pauses, observes him from within like a falcon paused in midflight, hanging on a warm updraught. The sensation is just as unnerving as being sighted by a predator on open ground, exposed, vulnerable, and at his mercy. Then Castiel's pace picks up again, the dark shadow counting out the ground from wall to wall, measuring it with his footsteps.

Dean paces outside, but while he does so, he constructs arguments, excuses, accusations. He replays their last conversation in the car, and he counts to ten under his breath, but the recitation of numbers does nothing to calm him. Instead, his frustration grows, increasing until it becomes a steady pound of pressure inside his chest, raking at the inside of his ribs like a knifepoint, up and down, side to side.

The sun is setting across Crystal Beach, and Dean hears gulls crying out in the distance. He looks up and sees them, pinheads of black against the fading gold of the sun.

Doesn't Castiel know? Dean thinks. It takes nothing. Nothing at all, to wink out like a light, to be there one second and gone the next. People do it all the time. Their hearts stop beating in their chests, and they fall down dead, even little kids at soccer practice. Even young girls crooning over a crib, pinioned and cut open and burning on a ceiling. Even half-angels who do idiot things like launch themselves into the path of danger to save someone else.

Dean is thinking about the fragility of these human matters, when he hears the motel room door crash open. He stops in his tracks, boot heels heavy as cement. Dean leans back before the breeze of the entrance as Castiel appears in the doorway, still in the tired, rumpled button-down that's been caressed by demons and wrinkled by gestures of selfless altruism, his hair pointing like a compass in every direction, the skin on the side of his neck raw where has been scratching at the stubble he misses when he shaves. His shirt is torn at the chest and the blood is like a dark reminder of everything they are.

Castiel steps out from the room in his bare feet, naked toes on the cement, and he wastes no time. Dean doesn't think Castiel's feet even touch the ground, that he just achieves lift-off with the sheer force of his building anger, because he's at the threshold one second and suddenly in Dean's face the next, leaning into him so Dean is forced to lean back. Castiel's teeth are bared as his lips peel back and he bellows, the narrow cage of his chest expanding and contracting beneath the fabric.

Dean blinks.

"Hit me!" Castiel yells.

The words don't register, and Dean blinks again, mouth parting.

"You heard me!" Castiel yells again, and Dean stumbles back a step, unable to fathom a possible response before the half-angel's unmitigated fury. "Go ahead! Take a shot! Let's find out how breakable I am, Dean. Why wait when we can find out right here, right now, how useless I can be, let's spare your tender sensibilities—"

Dean feels the heat as his face flushes red, and he can't say what exactly it is that fills him from the bottom of his spine and rushes up his skin, crawling all the way to the hairs on the top of his head. He feels electric as he takes in Castiel's temper, and how the suggestion of wings flare out behind him, just a faint edge like scratchings on worn stone, that grant the enticing suggestion of a hidden message just for him, because this is for his eyes alone.

Dean swallows. He can feel the heat of Castiel's breath raise the hairs on the back of his neck, the water-stained dotting of blood through Castiel's shirt where the wound is still fresh, untreated. How his Adam's apple bobs beneath the slide of stubbled flesh as he yells and yells and yells and what the fuck is he even yelling about anymore?

Dean leans back and slaps him.

Castiel's words stop the second Dean's fingers make the connection with his cheek, leaving bright ruby trails across his pale skin in their wake. It moves his face a fraction of an inch before he swivels back to stare levelly at Dean.

"Shouldn't have asked me to, Cas," Dean whispers, but the words come from faraway, down a tunnel where he sees from outside of himself, both of them face to face. And his voice is distant and breaks on the final note, leaving him devastated by how adolescent he sounds, how young and terrified by the specter of his inexperience. "I was Alastair's student. I know exactly what it would take to break you."

And Dean rushes him, he uses his body, all motion in the hips as he thrusts forward. He catches Castiel before he can turn, before he can resist with reason, and logic, and more passive-aggressive bullshit, and he doesn't care, doesn't fucking care anymore, and Cas wants to be broken? Dear God, he'll break him a thousand times over with his tongue, and his teeth, and his thrusting hands as he floods a hot breath into Castiel's mouth. Castiel's lips part, willing, too willing as they crash backward, flattening the roadside weed which is actually a purple flower, whose petals go spilling to the ground beneath their tread.

Castiel's arms are suddenly in the way, frustrating and arresting Dean as Castiel plucks at his wrists, stopping their forward momentum, gasping for breath as he jerks his head away, and Dean glares. He feels like a satellite rocketing back toward earth, and the reason he is out of orbit and out of sync is because of Castiel. On the descent now, he realizes he's hard as marble, and it's one more thing he doesn't care about, only the pain of it shivers down his calves with anticipation.

"What?" Dean snaps, as Castiel continues to look at him, expressionless, with Dean's wrists clamped firmly in his hands.

Castiel lets go and slaps him in return. Dean hears the rasp of his own stubble on Castiel's palm and it stings.

"What was that for?!" he shouts.

Castiel doesn't answer, he locks his hands on either side of Dean's face and drags him in for another kiss, everything raw and sandpaper, the flesh virgin-eager while housing a millennia of experience. A thousand years of desire, pent-up inside human skin, and what is that like, Dean wonders abstractly, through the taste of Castiel's insistent tongue. Castiel pulses like a sword point into him, and all the while Dean fights through the stupor of their swelling lips, and hears the distant sounds of saliva against flesh as Castiel finds the underside of Dean's jaw.

Dean pushes him back, back against the door of the motel room, and jars Castiel's body against the maroon painted steel.

Castiel groans, a small sound he swallows back, but Dean stops, pulls back, assessing Castiel like a man just awakening from a dream. His senses are ricocheting off every touch and scent, but the brief admission of agony recalls Dean to himself. He breathes hard, discovering his hands are fisted into the fabric of Castiel's bloody shirt. The cotton's bunched in his hands, drawing the shirt tight over his friend's torso.

"Cas," Dean whispers. What the fuck did we just do?

He clears his throat as he lets go, and Castiel leans back away from the door, suddenly looking guilty, sneaking glances up and down the parking lot where the sunlight is fading over vehicles parked in their stations.

Dean swallows, glancing down at himself. He has blood on his shirt now.

"It's just from the fight, earlier," Castiel explains, making a meaningless gesture with one hand to include all of his wounds.

"You should have said something," Dean mutters darkly, and then he grabs a fistful of Castiel's collar so he can kick open the door and drag Castiel through as though he were no more than a puppy, letting him go when they are safely past the door trim. The door slams shut behind them, and they are ensconced in the empty, musty room, where the air conditioner blows up flurries of dust bunnies in an attempt to give relief from the Gulf humidity.

"Sit," Dean orders, snagging the duffel bag from the floor and opening it up.

Hindsight being what it is, in retrospect Dean knows he shouldn't have left Cas to deal with his injuries on his own, since not even he can claim to have done a particularly good job stitching up sucking chest wounds in the past.

He pulls out the first aid kit with military efficiency, and he knows he looks calm, looks functional. But he can still feel his lips buzzing with the weight of Castiel's mouth, and even in this Southern heat he feels cold without the angel's lips still there.

Castiel sits atop the counter in the motel kitchenette, his body awkward and uncertain. His face is impassive, a mask as he looks up, down, away from Dean, anywhere but at Dean, and Dean thinks there is so much more than humidity thickening the air; it churns the atmosphere between them like a storm cell.

Castiel eventually turns to him, and Dean meets his eyes, feeling bold. "Ready?"

"I don't need your help," Castiel answers, peevish as ever, and Dean barely resists rolling his eyes.

"Normally I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, but right now I'm inclined to save it until after I'm sure you aren't going to bleed out on the floor." He gestures again with his open palm for his friend to stop being a stubborn bitch and just let him, stares at him until Castiel eventually sighs and nods.

"Take off your shirt," Dean says.

"Take off—"

"You heard me."

Dean flips open the first-aid kit and fishes out the economy-sized bottle of hydrogen peroxide he keeps in the duffle, spinning off the cap. He's surprised it doesn't catch on the ledge of his swollen cock. It feels huge and greedy, and he knows that if he doesn't start thinking about something else, anything else, it's going to start commanding its own gravity soon. He lets out a whistle from between his teeth as he closes his eyes, counts to ten.

He's no less hard when he finishes, but he thinks that maybe Sam's counting exercises might be good for something because he feels centered, less desperate to go tearing off Castiel's clothes so he can dry hump him into the bare, dirty motel room carpet or up against the wooden dresser with the mirror just so or the bedspread with the paisley coverlet—

"Dean?"

Dean clears his throat and turns to Castiel. His dark hair is even messier than it was earlier, but his lips are a delicious, deep pink they've never been before, revived with blood flow from insistent presses.

Goddammit, Dean thinks. What the fuck were they doing?

But Dean knows what they were doing, and staring at Castiel's bruised lips all he can think is, I did that. He takes in a sharp breath and shuffles close, approaching from an angle that he hopes doesn't suggest he's about to lose all sense of dignity and beg for it. He considers it. Just get down on his knees and beg Cas for anything, because the pain and the fury that unites at his groin feels like Mt. Saint Helen's right before eruption.

Calm the fuck down, he tells himself. If not for you, then for Cas.

When Dean has run out of all the throat clearing, chin scratching, and nervous habits he can muster, he takes a look at Castiel, seeing how the flat panes of his chest construct and build him up. Worse yet, he glances down and notices the tight ridge of a hipbone, which he swears wasn't there a month ago. And—

Oh.

There's a distinct tightening at Castiel's waistline, a bulge that knocks at his belt buckle and no sooner do Dean's eyes flick away than Castiel's cheeks turn pink, starting there and then traversing down into his neck. But there the delicate color stops and gives way to a more brutal palette; mottled bruises that hammer out the shape of his bones all across his back and up and over his shoulders where he hit the wall in his face off with Meg, the shallow wound that seeps blood above his right pec, nicks and scratches taken in battle all across his chest.

"You need to learn to do this," Dean says, hearing his voice come out surprisingly soft after everything. Everything. "If you're losing mojo, you could pick up some infection from this kind of wound."

Castiel nods, and Dean is glad he's not fighting him on this. Dean leans closer, and from this side he has a much better view of the ugly gash bisecting the right side of Castiel's chest, just narrowly missing the lines of his tattoo; perhaps it's not as severe as Dean first thought, but it still makes him wince at the thought it must be causing even Cas no small amount of pain. Batting the angel's hands away from the first-aid kit, Dean fishes around for peroxide, antiseptic wipes, and fresh gauze and turns his gaze upwards to where Castiel is staring at him.

Dean arranges himself in front of Castiel and the counter, studying how the angel's muscles flex through to his forearm, an elegant line. "This will sting."

Castiel rolls his eyes and puffs breath from his mouth. It catches at the edges of his hair and lifts the strands in the resulting breeze. Dean pours from the bottle and the peroxide froths at the wounds, whiting out the angry red slash as it burns.

Cas doesn't make a sound or a motion; he forms a fist and then releases it, staring at the wall.

Wound cleaned, Dean starts in on the stitches.

"So what you do is this." Years ago, John showed him a shortcut that Dean never quite got the hang of – it involved folding the thread between thumb and forefinger and somehow disappearing it through the eye of the needle, a sleight of hand Dean always failed to catch no matter how many times it was repeated. Castiel doesn't need to know that, though. "Are you watching?"

"Yes."

"Good. You take your needle, and you take your thread, and then—" Face impassive, Dean reaches around Cas into the little sewing pouch he keeps stashed in with the first-aid supplies. It's not a real sewing kit, at least not for fabric, but his fingers quickly snag the small metal needle-threader he keeps around for just this type of emergency. Sam mocks him for it sometimes, but the upshot is that Dean doesn't have to waste much time threading things when he could be stitching people up instead. Two seconds, and the deed is done. "Capiche?" Dean presents the threaded needle for Castiel's inspection.

Unsurprisingly, Castiel simply rolls his eyes. As Dean sees it, he can do as much of that as he likes while they go about seeing to his injuries. Aiming for gentle, he pushes Castiel further back on the kitchenette counter. "I still don't need your help," Castiel insists suddenly, voice strained. "This is something I can do myself."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, when were you planning on doing that? After you bled out?"

Castiel says nothing in turn, and somehow Dean's mind manages to stay carefully blank as he goes about closing the gash up with the needle and thread, pinching the lips of the wound together so each stitch is neat and as small as possible. Cas is mostly silent during the process, for which he's thankful, but a quick glance at his face shows an expression waxy and tight with discomfort. This is so different from when he tattooed the sigils underneath Castiel's collarbones, Dean thinks, though the angel is no less close, his skin no less warm beneath Dean's fingers. As before, he can feel Castiel's breaths ghosting across his cheek while he works.

"Almost there," Dean tells him as he's nearing the end, though he's counted no less than twenty-eight stitches in his head. If Cas were human it'd leave an impressive scar, not that he hasn't got one already. He can't resist asking, "Does it hurt more 'cause you're low on juice?"

"Yes," is the thin reply. "But I've had worse."

"And it could have been worse, it could have been much worse," Dean observes somberly. He finishes the last couple stitches – nothing like an even thirty – and ties off the thread before setting the needle down. "This is why you should take better care of yourself, why—"

"Sometimes I think you pick arguments with me because you think it's the only way to get close to me."

Dean drops the roll of thread. He mutters a distinct curse as it gets caught in the cheap carpeting. He bends to pick up it up, dumping it back in the first-aid kit before he looks up to see Castiel staring at him, blue eyes narrowed in on Dean. It's like looking down the muzzle of a Desert Eagle .50. One that shoots flame from the end.

Castiel leans forward, and Dean falls still as his friend's hand closes in that tender space between neck and shoulder, works his fingers beneath the rough fabric of his shirt collar so they settle against Dean's pulse. It beats faster. And Dean can do nothing to stop it as he swallows and wonders what the fuck he's doing, both to himself and Castiel, if he can ever repair it or make it right, or if it was ever broken to begin with.

"I love to fight with you," Castiel whispers, and his grasp tightens, draws Dean closer, and Dean feels it; the slack of his muscles as he gives up, the last of his resistance fleeing before the force of Castiel's heated words. "But you don't have to fight with me to be close with me."

Dean feels like he's falling.

He sucks in a shaky breath and forces himself out of Castiel's grip, out of his line of sight. He ignores the pointed comment, the idea of being close, something that every cell in his body is craving. "You've got another cut on your cheek," he says instead, because it's easier than addressing anything else. This time Castiel doesn't bother to argue or point out that it'll heal on its own eventually.

Dean slides firmly into the vee between Castiel's legs. Carefully keeping his thoughts at bay is significantly harder when he's right up in Castiel's personal space and dabbing rubbing alcohol along the neat arch of his friend's cheekbone. It's significantly harder when Dean knows damn well there's no way Castiel isn't thinking of the same stuff as he is, about that kiss, about being closer.

Castiel's eyes, of course, are set firmly upon his face and watching every move, lips parted slightly with the hiss of pain that comes from the antiseptic's sting. Castiel's knees close in on either side of Dean's hips, and Dean feels their jeans rub together as he drifts even closer. He catches the way Castiel's throat moves, as though he's about to say something, but instead the angel's eyes drift closed, and he lets Dean work. All that emerges is a quiet sound from his throat, a murmur that turns up at the end like a question, then his tongue creeping out to swipe at his lips. If Cas were anyone else, Dean would think the angel was doing it on purpose.

The movement stalls Dean's hand, and he sucks in another breath, finally allowing himself to reach for the thread of conversation from earlier, because he suddenly finds he can't not.

"Close with you?" he whispers.

"Close with me," Castiel growls.

And Dean falls.

He can't tell who moves next, how fast they reach for each other in the sterile light of the motel room, where faint smells of ammonia and hydrogen peroxide fill the air, and there is Castiel's smooth skin, interrupted by scratches and cuts beneath his fingers, the uptilt of his head as Dean closes over the gap of his mouth with his own. A sigh, and a moan, and then they pull apart, breathing hard, eyes locked.

Castiel says nothing, just reaches up to close his hand around Dean's where it rests against his face, squeezes his fingers in a way that has become shorthand between them for so much, for everything. Dean falls silent, and Castiel holds him there with his eyes, his eyes, Jesus. Castiel's knees tighten about Dean's hips just slightly, and he positions Dean's other hand against his thigh so they're holding on to each other, and maybe they always have been. There is the brush of Castiel's hair against Dean's forehead and the bump of noses together. Then it becomes impossible to see how there's anything easier than letting their mouths find their way back together again and again, and feeling such a surge of incredible rightness that Dean's whole chest feels tight with joy.

Castiel kisses with the kind of purpose Dean's always wanted to feel, unflinching and unwavering, giving over everything of himself until all Dean knows is the slick of his lips and the glide of his tongue, the way Castiel opens and draws him in and in and in. Dean tumbles gratefully down and loses himself in that greedy warm mouth, those steady hands that seem to keep Dean fixed right where he belongs, where he needs to be. His fingers clutch at the solidness of Castiel's thigh and tangle in his hair; stubble rasps against his palm and the sides of his mouth. They fit so naturally like this it's hard to remember how it could have ever been otherwise, the way their cracks seem to match up and fill the empty spaces between them, the way Dean has always felt they're so much stronger together than apart.

Dean, it feels—

Shhh, Cas. I know.

—and then there are no more words. And Dean never finishes fixing Castiel's battle wounds because there is no more pain; and the fragility of human skin is only outmatched by the vulnerability of an inhuman heart.

It's delicious. He could live off these kisses, like oxygen, like food, but the moment is short lived. Dean is thinking about flesh in new ways, in new perspectives, because there were times before but never like this, nothing like this. Nothing like Castiel.

But no sooner does Dean have Castiel flat on his back on the bed, bare-chested and illuminated in thin light, their hips meeting in the middle, straining through cloth, muscle to muscle, than Castiel looks up at the ceiling and goes rigid, his eyes flaring bright, a brief trip of light through the iris.

"Dean, did you hear that?"

"What, what is it, Cas?"

"Sam. Sam is calling for us. I think he's in trouble, Dean."

Sam leaves Dean standing out in front of the motel, looking haggard and withdrawn, as though he grows a year older for each foot of space that Sam puts between them as he hits the gas and leaves Dean's figure, growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror of the Impala.

The main drag in Crystal Beach branches off to the docks, and Sam takes it down with the Gulf, expansive and sultry and bathed in golden light to the side of the road. The shoulder fades to the bulkhead and the railing, but further down where Sam follows the road the shoulder opens up into a proper beach of white sand, and he passes a faded sign: Miller's Landing.

He doesn't mean to stop there. He's still wearing the suit he used to question old man Conway, and he could swear it smells of Conway's tears. Spots of blood on his cuff, maybe his, maybe not.

His hand drifts down to stroke the spine of the paperback in his pocket: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: How to Survive the Aftermath in a Destroyed Psyche. The car slows and the tires eat into soft sand over concrete as he pulls into a parking area. Beyond, he sees a park bench seated in a dune where dune grass pokes up from the drift.

For a while, he's content to watch the sun fade, and there is only a lone fisherman in the distance, whipping his line into the surf with a floppy hat decorated with lures and pins. But Sam feels the persistence itch of his anxiety, anxiety without focus or understanding.

Give it time, Sam.

I did, he thinks, as he slams the car door behind him. His shoes sink into forgiving sand, and the wind buffets against his forehead, sweeping the hair from his face. Everything is quiet but for the non-stop roar of the ocean, the screech of a seagull in the distance. He walks out onto the beach, feeling the pages of the book rasp against his sleeve as he goes, thinking of the words printed there, what they mean, and what they're for, and what the fuck is time anyway? What the fuck is he supposed to do with time, what is he supposed to wait for, for this fucking pain to end, for this frustration to just dissolve like salt in water?

He toes off his shoes and casts them into the sand, his pitching arm violent, and they flop over like dead fish. He feels a glow of satisfaction accompany the action, a relief to that never-ending panic that sits in his belly, trying to digest a millennium in Hell, and coming up short. He reaches for one sock and then the other, leaves them where they fall. Next, he tears at the buttons of his clean shirt, casting them into the sand with a flick of his wrist, as though he could skip them along the ground like stones on a river. He tears at the jacket and throws it into the sand along with his shoes, leaving just the filthy t-shirt he has been wearing for days without washing, and why should he?

What was the point, anyway? All these rituals of human life seem so desolate and trivial, who cares about shirts, and soap, and showers, and fucking time, always the fucking time, when he still can't get through a day without counting to ten?

And there it is; like a nuclear reactor that opens up a chamber in his heart, glowing bright with fission, with too much light and energy to contain – a mire of endless rage without relief. His brother is at a motel dancing around an angel and he can't help him, he can't help Cas, he can't help Conway emerge from that blackness that dogs them all.

His eyes fall on the book. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: How to Survive the Aftermath in a Destroyed Psyche. It's poking out of the pocket of his jacket where he threw it on the sand, white particles scattered over the black fabric, and Sam stoops to pick it up, opens it. The pages catch on the wind, flicking through random selections of text, and he skims through the words as he walks away from his deflated clothes, leaving them sad and abandoned. The surf pounds, beckons him beyond as he continues, barefoot.

"There's nothing in here," Sam says aloud, turning the pages faster. "There's nothing! Nothing!"

His voice rises to a shout, words breaking through the relentless pound of the surf, but there is no other place for the words to go, and if he keeps them in they will shake through his bones, burst his lungs, pulverize his ribs. And they follow, faster, one after the other, as he grips the book in his hands and begins to tear the pages, jaw clenched, teeth gritted and ready to crush diamonds between them with the pressure.

"There's no blueprint for Hell. You don't get over it, ever, ever, ever."

Give it time, Sam.

He rips through the spine of the book, and it gives with a tearing sound, like a scream, like the laughter of the seagulls, but it has the aftertaste of Lucifer's laugh, or worse yet, Michael's, and Sam drops the ripped pages into the sand as his feet cross the tide line. He feels seaweed between his toes and his thoughts are distracted, ragged things, like scuttling claws along the bottom of the sea, and he thinks he's heard that before in a T.S. Eliot poem. The lone fisherman is gone, he notices, terrified away by the crazed six-foot five-inch lunatic hollering at the sea and smashing footprints down into the wet sand. And Sam doesn't care.

He gives a cry and kneels into the wet surge of the ocean, just a shallow push of saltwater at his ankles. He smells his own sweat, bitter and rank, as he kneels down, hands clutching at his head and thrust up through his ragged hair so he can feel his scalp through his fingertips, draw out his brain through his fingernails and cast it away from him, to pull out what rots inside. He can't. He's stuck with himself.

There's no blueprint for the Cage. There's no road map out of this. There's no one who can tell him what to do or how to recover, because there's no one else who's walked down this exact path. Dean's Hell was different, no less worse, but different. This version of Hell is Sam's and Sam's alone. And all this bullshit of breathing deep and counting to ten, and these convenient self-help books – they're no fucking help at all.

"Fuck," Sam whispers. His breath wheezes out of him as he exhales. "Fuck everything."

And as bad as it all is – this empty, hollowed shell he calls his heart, this sore and aching feeling of wounds all over, within and without, this numbness that dogs him no matter how deep he sleeps – it's the best he's felt all year.

After a while, he gets up and starts to pick up the pages.

He couldn't say why. He's done with the book. He doesn't need it anymore. And now that he knows that this book can't help him, or any of the others, or even Jodie Mills, with her warm-hearted intentions and gentle, reassuring presses of hand to shoulder, he doesn't need any of it, any more. He doesn't need time, either, he thinks ruefully. Because I have all the time in the world to remember this hurt.

Sighing, he plucks a sandy-wet page from below the tide line, just as the Gulf comes skittering up the shore to meet his fingers.

There's an inky black line running across the text and staining everything from the middle down. Sam holds it up to the dying light of the golden sunset, layered in yellows and coppers, burnishing everything it touches. He puzzles over that single page, blackened as char, until his attention is caught by the strengthening wave washing over his ankles, sucking his feet deeper into the wet sand. Small things move and burrow in the shifting substrate beneath him, and he's mesmerized by it, the words swallowed up in the black.

Kill the blackness, boy. But you watch out for the things inside it.

And when the next wave comes, the tide sluices around his calves, soaks his pants and covers them in sand, until he feels the stretch of slime along his muscles, twining up his leg. When he looks down, it's not seaweed at all.

It's a hand. A hand reaching out of the black.

All Sam has time to think is that the hand looks human. Even with the faint impression of waxy blue-tinted skin, and the suggestion of scaling where the knuckles form and the nails top the fingertips, it looks humanoid from where it rises out of the salty Gulf water.

The hand tugs, fingers digging into the muscle and immobilizing it, stretched tight and straining at his Achilles tendon. The horizon swaps places as his heels pull up from the sand and go out from under him. He lands on his back with a sharp gasp of air and a splash, and he struggles to sit upright without dunking his head beneath a fresh wave of water that overlaps him.

The scaly hand is drowned out of sight below him, the fingers dug firm in his muscle. Sam slaps at his waist, a desperate pull and grab for the Colt at his belt, but there's nothing; just empty skin and his dirty shirt, and he remembers that he left the gun in the glove box. He curses. Stupid! He kicks out with his foot and feels the pain of the fist clench tighter.

"Bullshit," he hisses, and punches into the water. The tide roils around him, resisting the force of his fist as he brings it down onto the hand that grasps him. He feels the buckle and recoil of the hand, the shift of tendons as bones crunch beneath the blow—

And still, the hand doesn't let go.

The next wave crests and douses him afresh, spilling salt into his mouth, spluttering acrid brine all down his shirt front, as the hand drags him closer to the edge of the Gulf, where the waves swell with greater intensity, regurgitating shells, jellyfish, and driftwood beneath their force. And then Sam learns, with a new-found discovery that borders on delight, that there's a benefit to post-traumatic stress disorder that Sheriff Mills never mentioned, that the books didn't include in their bullet points, and that time did not give him.

You get really, really, pissed off.

He hauls up out of the water until he can feel the burn of the effort in the muscles of his abdomen, and there's no fear, no panic. The anxiety that has eaten every day at the pit of his stomach and added that deep purple tint to the hollow of his eyes is gone. There is no thousand-yard stare. He sees the ocean, feels its elemental suck. He is fully present and alive in the moment, and he imagines that for an instant he feels an approving nod from Lucifer in the Cage, fathoms and fathoms deep in Hell, as one ancient soldier regards another with level respect.

Give it time, Sam.

"I'll give you some fucking time," Sam growls, and he feels it – the slip and loosen of the hand around his calf as he reaches into the blackness of the seawater beneath the foam with brutal velocity, all decision and action, made and executed in nanoseconds. He feels the scrabble of fingertips at his leg, and then the thing beneath the water loses purchase, skittering away into the liquid dark.

"No you don't!"

Sam plunges in after it, ruthless, relentless, and as he dips his hands back into the next crashing wave, he feels the slide of scaled skin beneath his fingers. He makes a fist, catches the slippery fish-skin on his nails, raking them until he imagines blood frothing to the surface.

And then his tenuous hold is shaken loose and the thing is gone.

He gasps and stumbles backward from the water, falling once and then rising up again to get free of the surging tide.

"You better be ready for next time," he spits, turning back to face the shore, the ocean at his back.

And comes to a stop, pressing footprints into the wet mud of the sand.

There are five silhouettes paced out before him. And he recognizes the one in the center with a jarring shock as it steps forward through the sand, recognizes it from the dot-matrixed newsprint, the portrait of a boy smiling into a camera. Conway's son. Jack Conway.

But the thing leading the other silhouettes isn't Jack Conway anymore. His healthy head of blond hair has gone thin and all that remains are tattered wisps, and his eyes bulge from their sockets, putting Sam in mind of bullfrogs he and Dean used to catch at lakesides when they should have been gathering wood or setting up camp. The scales ripple up Jack Conway's neck, where the faint impression of gills formed, mottling the point of his jaw into something less than human.

Jack Conway is not in the blackness. He is become the blackness.

Sam falls into a crouch, and still there is no fear. He studies them with a strategic eye, looking for openings, weaknesses in the loose semi-circle they stitch around him as they enclose him and herd him backward into the pounding surf. He feels the sand up through his heels, gritty and raw.

As the sun dips down below the horizon, his eyes adjust and he can see them clearer. Jack Conway is the most humanoid; his eyes still glitter with dimming intelligence, while his fingers clamp and loosen on nothing but air. His friends around him all wear the tattered garb of fisherman, shirts hanging over their brittle bones and their misshapen forms. Jack Conway stands tall but the others are hunched over in various heights, their spines dictating a new form that their bodies are helpless to follow. Between their sets of gills is faint pink skin, hungry and raw. Their eyes are losing their human coloration, becoming wider and wider, like perfect circles seeking to set themselves into the farthest sides of their faces, in imitation of a flounder. Their mouths open in steady pulls of lips and tongue, like babies searching for nourishment. They close on empty air and the smell drifts from them, a mixture of corpse-flesh and stale water.

Sam has smelled worse.

It's the rows of teeth behind their lips that give him pause.

He tries to make a break for it by turning back to the ocean and pounding through the wave, but he underestimates the force of the tide, and he has to struggle to ensure he doesn't lose his balance and get swept away by the tide. The water slows him down, and the few feet he gains with which to break through their encroaching line is gone, swallowed up by the ocean.

Shit, he thinks. Dean doesn't know I'm out here.

"Castiel!" Sam thrusts the word into the air, but he's calm, bordering on euphoric. The sweep and lull of the tide as it rises to his waist is comforting. He's not afraid. And even as he says his friend's name, he knows the angel can't hear him. With the dimming of Castiel's grace, Sam's call is lost in an ocean of people's thoughts and feelings; Castiel can't filter them all.

Castiel isn't coming. Dean isn't coming.

No one can help him now.

This is it, isn't it? Sam thinks, and with the thought is a weight lifted; a sensation of liberation. He wishes his brother the best, in one final, heartfelt surge of love, and with it that Castiel should take care of him. This is where his story ends. After all this time, after Hell and everything in between, he's here in the warm seawater and he's not upset. He's not sad. He likes the ocean. He always has.

The dead fisherman in their strange, distorted humanoid forms draw closer, drive him further into the water. His shirt sticks to his chest and he reaches down for the hem, lifts it over his head and discards it into the water. It floats emptily at the surface beside a stick of driftwood.

Beyond him, further out in the water, are black shapes and shadows beneath the murk.

And he has time to think, before he feels the scaly touch of a hand on his wrist, that there are worse ways to die, and he has all the time in the world.

There's a moment when Sam feels the pressure building in his lungs, the slow mix of carbon dioxide outweighing the oxygen and burning through his center. Open up, his lungs demand. Open up to empty us and fill us with life again.

Sam opens up and fills them with seawater instead.

He sees death underwater. A Reaper.

Not the man in charge with his raven black hair; not that Death. But he knows this is a Reaper, senses it to the core of his body. Her blond hair lifts like a mermaid's through the fluid, suspended in the water with him, where he floats just beneath the scum of the ocean. The underside of the sea is like a rippling mirror. Pages from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: How to Survive the Aftermath in a Destroyed Psyche float beside him like abandoned feathers, and the Reaper shakes her head with an expression of disdain, as though this is exactly what she expects of a Winchester. She wears a pencil skirt that ends just above her knee, over the smooth rise of pantyhose with her fingers splayed out across her hip like a fan. Her modest heels dig into the underwater sand of the ocean bottom. A minnow flits by, arrowing beneath her cloak, and then stops as though it swam head first into an invisible pane of glass. It floats to the top of the water, dead and empty-eyed.

Sam waits to be taken. This is it, the moment his soul will be in a Reaper's hands once more, ferried from one distant shore to another.

But the Reaper only stands there, still in the water beside Sam's floating body. He has heard that drowning men see visions, that the experience is pleasant in one's confused dizziness. Maybe if it were something he'd like to see. He's not above a few guilty pleasures, like maybe a girl's volleyball team. That would be nice. But it's only the Reaper, who patiently withdraws a pocket watch on a chain, as though she is expecting the arrival of someone important, and they're testing her patience by making her wait.

And Sam cannot, for the life of him, or what little he has left, figure out who would be important enough, bold enough, to keep a Reaper waiting.

The Reaper glances up from the watch, where the chain floats in the water beside her, and sees Sam as though for the first time. She reaches out a hand to touch his forehead—

Sam's eyes open.

He's weightless and drifting with the rhythm of the tides. Here and now, he knows a peace he has never known since the womb, when he was warm and safe inside his mother's skin, knees tucked to his chest and filled with the heartbeat of his mother. This is what it must be like, he thinks, in the dark hour before birth.

Rise, Sam. Rise. I call you forth.

The words thrum through the water like whale song, more vibration than sound, and suddenly Sam recalls every event up until now in a rush, the strange monsters that drove him from the shore and into the water, Jack Conway, with his bulging eyes and his scaled skin. Sand between his toes.

Shit. He died.

Sam opens his mouth in blind panic, and lets loose a stream of desperate air bubbles that show him the way to the surface, and he looks up, stunned to still be underwater. His heart lurches into motion as though for the first time, and it waxes strong with each beat, steadying out his pulse and pushing lightning through his veins. He feels revived. He feels ten years younger, he feels oxygen burning through his blood and he pushes for the surface, where he can see the waves break above him.

He bursts from the ocean, into the light.

Dawn is breaking over Crystal Beach. Sam screams in a breath, half-exultation and half-astonishment, and bobs back into the water, pushing the hair back from his eyes. The horizon stretches out in every direction, sporting pink clouds above the ocean, the beach glorious and sun-bleached, and within reach. He thinks that by now Dean will have been worried, Castiel climbing the walls with him.

He takes long strokes back to land, until he can set his feet down on the broken shells that line the bottom, and he stands, ocean water streaming down the hard lines of his chest where they snake sinuously beneath the waistband of the sodden dress pants. He scratches at his tattoo through the salt water, disoriented and confused. He feels good. Vibrant. He rises out of the saltwater, and when he has finally outpaced the hungry churning of the ocean behind him, he stands, bewildered, at the tide line, where he studies the single set of footprints.

Rise, Sam. Rise. I call you forth.

He sets his own foot beside the print, studying it, to know its shape as though he could sense the owner of it. But there is nothing of what called him forth but these shapes in the sand, and he has no other choice but to abandon them.

He finds his suit jacket and button-down shirt further up the beach, and he snatches them up, shaking sand out of his sleeves as he shrugs on his destroyed clothes. The shirt's no good anymore without buttons but he feels like a porn-star with his nipples hard in the Texas wind. The shirt adds a layer of modesty without him feeling like a dirty pizza man about to make good on a delivery.

He trudges up the dunes, back to the car, and when he comes around the side and draws near, wincing as his naked feet hit the rough concrete he sees that someone has left the car door open. He tilts his head, studying the vehicle for signs and clues, but he needs no prompting to figure that whoever raised him from the ocean and snatched him from death has been sitting in the driver's side.

Doing what, exactly?

When Sam can detect nothing more from staring at the car, he slides in, and he can smell something exotic and spicy clinging to the interior. Clove? Cinnamon? It's difficult to pin down, but he finds it enticing, until he forces himself to open his eyes and snap to attention. He could eat the air if it always smelled that good. A woman's perfume? He recalls the voice, rise, its sultry, smoky notes; yes, it was female. A woman.

He reaches over and pops open the glove box. The Colt is safe, nestled in a pile of papers. He frowns and slams it shut. After a moment, he starts the car, the keys exactly where he left them, sitting in the ignition, and turns back onto the boulevard.

When he pulls into the motel lot, the headlights flash against the window in the early morning dawn, and the door bursts open, slamming against the opposite wall. Dean frames the doorway before Sam can even stop the engine, and he hears his brother's voice over the stuttering exhaust of the Impala.

"—the fuck were you! Cas said he thought he heard something—"

Sam opens his mouth, and for a moment a torrent of words threatens to break through Dean something brought me back, and it wasn't Cas, and it wasn't you, and it wasn't Death, and I don't know what the fuck it is this time, when he notices something that forces his mouth to slam shut over his teeth, breathless and surprised.

On Castiel's jaw, Sam makes out the clear imprint of stubble-burn. And Sam supposes it could be his overworked imagination, but he thinks there is something in the way Castiel purposefully steps away from Dean, as though no one will know that his feet itch to take the space beside him, how Castiel must make a fist to prevent himself from setting a hand on his brother in an expression of comfort, of love.

Something happened with them last night, Sam realizes. While Dean is spluttering and punching Sam in the arm, he sees that Castiel stands straighter, looks stronger, as though his grace is expansive and filling him throughout in the light of Dean's regard. And Dean…

…For once stops yelling, and is suddenly hugging Sam so hard he takes a gulp of air as his brother presses the breath out of his lungs. Sam attempts to remember the last time Dean hugged him, instead of just continuing to yell at him, and knows that this, this is what happens when you love someone, and sense that love returned. It opens up a space in you that calms the nervous heart, opens your arms instead of closing them. The proof of it is here, in this brother of his who never embraces, not like this.

Sam halts, traps his tongue between his teeth as Dean steps away.

"Well?" Dean asks. "What did happen to you last night?"

"Oh," Sam says, and he shifts his gaze, uncomfortable. And he tries again, thinks of how to form the words to describe it; and all he can think is that he will shatter this tenuous thing with the blackness that lives in the ocean, with the panic and terror of Sam dying beneath the water while Dean and Castiel fell in love in a comfortable motel room miles away.

And Sam cannot say the words. He cannot snatch this newfound light from his brother and the errant angel when they've only just found it.

So he swallows the words, and charms them with the truth. His words come out, lilting in time with his smile.

"Oh, you know, the usual – Death and back. Found those mutant fish men, though."

Dean stares at Sam. Castiel leans back against the door, a startling maroon against the faded gray color of one of Dean's band shirts. It hangs from his shoulders, and Castiel's face is dark, assessing, the lines of his forehead in vertical slashes.

Then Dean's face breaks out into an exuberant smile.

"You got some last night."

A beat of silence elapses, and then, for Dean's sake, Sam looks away, sliding his gaze to Castiel, who lifts his head into the clean, ocean wind. In his dark blue eyes, there is no suspicion of midnight romps with the opposite sex; but if he suspects anything, or tastes the honeyed spices that cling to Sam like a perfume, he says nothing, only looks away.

They all trundle into the motel, Dean already laughing and speculating on Sam's phantom lady lover, because when one is drunk and heady on those first delicious explorations of new flesh, new love, you see love everywhere you look. Sam meets Castiel's eyes and the stare holds, as though Castiel suspects far more than he will ever say, and Sam waits to be found out, to be exposed.

Castiel turns back to the interior, leaving Sam standing alone in the open door, without a word. The atmosphere of the moment isn't icy, or cruel, or condemning – it's the feeling of trust that Castiel extends to him, trust that whatever secret Sam is keeping to himself, he does it for a reason, and he'll share it when he is ready, not a second before.

Sam smiles then; his senses are sharp and on fire with the nervousness of his shellshock, that endless stress that never goes to sleep, but remains ever vigilant inside him. It can't be calmed; it will never breathe out and count to ten, or take the advice of doctors, counselors, or self-help gurus. But he came from the water with something more than hurt and wounds, left the endless rage behind him in the Gulf, with the blackness. The scars are sealed. And in their place is new tissue, a new chance, new life, something burning brightly inside him where there was nothing before.

He hesitates in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder. He will go inside to the laughter of his brother and Castiel's soft-spoken observations, but for now, he soaks in the coming day, as if for the first time.

Across the parking lot, beside the main boulevard, he sees, for an instant, a woman in a veil, black lace drawn over the curve of dark skin. He catches the enticing mixture of clove and cinnamon, and when he blinks, the woman in black is gone. All that remains is a deep tremor of her sadness, and he stays there, his breath stopped, waiting for her to come back. She does not.

Rise, Sam. Rise. I call you forth.

Sam answers.

"I'm here."