Big Bang Fic: Immigrant Song (Episode 6x05)

[trinityofone]

The first thing Dean did when they got back to the motel Gabriel had snatched them from was grab his duffle off a chair and lock himself in the bathroom. He changed into his own clothes with his back to the mirror. The shoes and the soiled dress he tossed in the trash. He couldn’t say for sure what he did with the panties.

When he came back out into the main room, Sam was studying Dean’s phone, which was still plugged into the wall where Dean had left it two days ago. Sam picked it up and chucked it at him. “You’ve got a bunch of messages.”

Dean tossed the duffle back toward the chair and keyed up his voicemail. The first message, much to his surprise, was from Anna. She sounded weirdly chipper: “Hi, Dean. Just checking in. Call me when you get a chance, okay?” Dean looked at Sam, puzzled, but Sam just shot a puzzled look right back. Right, because Sam couldn’t hear the voice message just because Dean could hear it. Man, he really needed to get some sleep.

The next message was from Chuck. Dean almost deleted it without listening to it, then wished he had: “Hey, guys. Sorry to bother you again. This is probably nothing, but Becky was going over the gospel and she noticed something…weird. I dunno, I thought maybe we should talk about it. Oh, and don’t worry, Dean, I’m being really tasteful with the sex stuff-“

Delete. Delete delete delete. If only he could delete it from his brain, everything that had happened, the memory of it on his-

“Hey. Anna again. Sorry to keep calling, but I think we might have a situation here. A your-line-of-work type of situation. I could really use your help. Call me when you get a chance, okay? Thanks.”

“Shit,” Dean said, snapping the phone closed. “Anna’s in trouble.”

“She phoned you as well?”

Dean turned around. Castiel was leaning in the doorway leading to his room. He had changed his clothes and bandaged the cut on his head, but not very well. Dean had to fight the urge to go over to him, to fix it.

“Cas, you're going to want to make that tighter,” Sam said, gesturing to his own scalp.

“Thank you, Sam,” Castiel said. Dean silently thought the same thing.

“In her message, did Anna seem...odd to you?” Castiel asked, adjusting his bandages.

“She seemed worried, yeah. And kind of...” He couldn't figure out the right way to phrase it. Worried but upbeat? Carefree but concerned? The more he thought about it, the more he figured he was probably imagining stuff.

“Why don't you just call her back?” Sam said. His expression said, Duh.

“Why don't you call her back, smartass?” Dean said.

Sam looked baffled by where this conversation had gone. “Fine.” He pulled out his own phone. “She's gonna be all weird with me, though. I think it's the whole having gone back in time and tried to kill me thanks to heavenly PTSD thing...”

From the look on Sam's face, however, Anna was not weird with him-at least not weird in the usual way. “Yeah, either way, it'll be great to see you, too,” he said, looking increasingly perplexed by the time he was wrapping up the call. “We'll be there as soon as we can. Bye.

“Yeah...” Sam said, hanging up. “It's like...is she on drugs?”

Dean shrugged. “Fallen angels, man.” He couldn't look at Cas. He wished he'd kept his damn mouth shut.

Dean swallowed and tried again. “So is there really a case?”

Sam nodded. “She says people are disappearing from the school botanical garden.”

“Botanical garden?”

“Yeah.” Sam echoed his shrug.

“And she couldn't take care of that herself? She had a lot more juice left than-than you, right, Cas?”

He made himself look over. Castiel was leaning up against the TV cabinet, where just a couple days ago Gabriel had sat. “That was my understanding.”

“Maybe she just needs our, uh. Detective skills?” Sam suggested.

“All right, awesome,” Dean said, snagging the duffle by its handle again. “Let's pack up the Mystery Machine and hit the road.”

This piece of instruction was met with a long silence. “Has that become a thing?” Sam asked finally. “Because I kind of hate that that's become a thing.”

“Fucking Gabriel,” Dean muttered.

Northern California always made Dean uncomfortable. Berkeley was too close to Palo Alto, and being anywhere in the area made him want to keep an extra-close eye on Sam. Of course, keeping an eye on Sam gave him an excuse to ignore Castiel, so maybe these things worked out.

Anna had texted them the address of “our new apartment.” “Our?” Sam had said.

“Dude, I don't even know. Maybe she and Gabriel made up, then shacked up, and now they're plotting together to fuck with us.”

“Ew.” In the rear view mirror, which Dean had been checking frequently throughout this last stage of the drive, Sam wrinkled his nose. “Wouldn't that be, like...angelic incest?”

“No,” Castiel piped up. “We are not related in the same way humans are-or perhaps only in the way all humans are to each other. Nevertheless, I must second Sam's assessment. Ew.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Dean said, drumming his hands on the wheel. “Sometimes I disgust myself.”

Dean was glad when they finally found parking, because then Castiel had to stop staring at him.

Anna's apartment was toward the top of a hill. The streets surrounding it were curvy and narrow; as tightly as he managed to hug the curb, Dean felt nervous leaving his baby out on the street. Reluctantly, he followed Sam and Castiel up the walk, glancing over his shoulder while Sam rang the bell.

A few seconds later, Anna was bouncing down the stairs. Dean took one look at her face and thought, Fuck. She was grinning, an expression the likes of which Dean had never seen on her face, not even mid-orgasm. “Hey!” she said, opening the door. “Thanks for coming!” Then she grabbed Cas and swept him into a hug. Dean was torn between amusement and pain at watching him be touched: he looked unreasonably taken aback, like this was a rare human courtesy no one had ever bothered to bestow on him.

No one had, Dean realized. Dean certainly hadn't.

“It's so good to see you,” Anna told them. Or told Cas, specifically. “Come on up.”

Exchanging confused, worried looks, the three of them followed Anna up the stairs.

She lived on the third floor, in an apartment Dean realized was not terribly large, but which looked luxurious to him all the same. It had a big corner window and furnishings that didn't match, but in a comfortable, cozy-looking way. There weren't pictures of boats or dull, inoffensive landscapes on any of the walls.

A man came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his slacks. Anna took him by the hand. “This is my boyfriend, Dev. Dev, this is my big brother Cas, and his friends Sam and Dean.”

They were silent. They stared. Dev was starting to look like their awkwardness must be a reflection of something about him; his grip on Anna's hand increased. Fortunately, Sam recovered quickly. “Sorry, we just drove for like two days straight. It's really nice to meet you.” He reached out a hand, clarifying, “Sam.”

“It's nice to meet you, too,” Dev said. He had a bit of an accent, on the cool side of the cool/douchey accent scale. “I've heard a great deal about you.”

“All of it good, I hope,” Dean said, shooting Anna a look.

“You guys can relax,” Anna told them. “I've been completely honest with Dev. He knows everything, so anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of him.”

Sam's eyes widened. “You told him?” he said, pointlessly lowering his voice to a whisper. Since he clearly hadn't fit enough incredulity into that statement, he went on. “He knows?”

Dev nodded. “I know. And I should thank you. You saved Anna's life.”

“Uh,” said Dean.

“Yeah,” said Sam. “I don't know if we can really take credit for that.”

“Don't be modest,” Anna said, flashing them again with that odd, open grin. “Why don't you guys sit down, and we'll fill you in on what's been happening.”

“I'll get the cheese,” Dev said, vanishing back into the kitchen.

“We got this really good cheese at the Berkeley Bowl,” Anna told them as they shuffled awkwardly over to the couch.

This conversation was making Dean feel like how Cas must feel most of the time. “They sell cheese at a bowling alley?”

Anna laughed. Like the smile, it was fucking bizarre. Freakin' Pod Person bizarre. “It's a grocery store.”

“Oh.”

“Oh yeah,” Sam said. “I went there one year when I came up for the Big Game. Nice produce.”

Anna grinned. “Did we win that year? I bet we won.”

Sam actually pouted. “Whatever. Bears suck.”

“Cardinals suck.”

“Bears totally suck!”

Dean turned to his brother. “Is this becoming a thing? Because I hate this becoming a thing.”

Anna ignored him. “Dev, did I tell you that Sam went to Stanford?” she called toward the kitchen. “Tell him the Cardinals suck!”

Castiel leaned close to Dean's ear and whispered. “I looked this up after the incident in the Crossbones' lair. Stanford athletic teams are called the Cardinals; Berkeley athletic teams are known as the Golden Bears. They have a long-standing rivalry. Every year in November, their football teams face each other for what is known as the Big-”

Dean forced back a shiver. “Okay, Cas, I got it,” he snapped. When Dev came back with the cheese platter, Dean seized the opportunity to lean away from Cas and start making a stack of crackers.

“Cardinals suck,” Dev told Sam perfunctorily.

“This is good cheese,” said Dean with his mouth full.

“I'm curious to hear what has you so concerned,” Castiel said. He looked very businesslike and serious, even taking care to align his cheese squares with the edges of his crackers.

“There have been some disappearances at the botanical gardens.” Anna brushed her long hair off of her shoulder. “Well, maybe. A car was found parked near there with no trace of the occupants, a couple of people have been seen going in and then not coming out again. Nothing's been concretely linked to the gardens, which is why the police aren't officially investigating the area and it hasn't been shut down. But my friend Lauren works there-that's how I know about this. She told me that there's a certain area of the gardens that no one likes to work in anymore. Dev and I went up there to check it out and...yeah. I can't even-”

“Bad vibes,” Dev said seriously.

“What did you sense?” Castiel asked, leaning toward her.

She shifted a little, recrossed her legs. “Uh, like Dev said. Just...a badness? A creepiness?”

“A 'badness,'” Cas repeated. Dean imagined he was feeling the way Dean might if Sam told him their current creature feature was “an evil thingy from some legend or something.”

“Okay!” Dean said, slapping his knees and standing up. “I guess we'll just go check it out.” On second thought, he swooped down again and grabbed a couple more cheese wedges.

“Oh, good! Let me just call Lauren.” Anna fished her cell phone out of her pocket, grinning at Castiel. “She's really looking forward to meeting you, Cas. I've told her a lot about you.”

Castiel looked at Dean and Sam, begging for salvation with his eyes. Dean smirked and roughly swallowed down a cracker. Sam could only shrug.

Dev rose and gave them a courteous nod. “I'm going to change into boots. Please excuse me.”

“Wait, he's coming?” Sam asked once Dev had retreated down the hall.

“Yeah,” Anna said, plucking a coat off a hook by the door. “Why shouldn't he?”

“Because it's not a field trip?” Dean said.

“Why should I be able to come if Dev can't?”

“I don't even know where to start with that,” Sam said-kindly, Dean suspected, voicing the opinions of all three of them.

Castiel stepped forward. “Anna,” he said. “Has something else happened? I must admit I'm, I'm concerned for you-”

“You're sweet,” Anna said, reaching up and touching Cas' cheek in a manner that made his eyes go wide. “I'm fine, Cas. I'm really good, actually. Happy.”

From the look on Castiel's face, he was warring between accepting this and questioning it further. He had to be, as Dean was, automatically suspicious of declarations of happiness. Especially in this case: where had it come from? Anna had been tortured; terrorized as both a human and as an angel; killed. What happened to make that suddenly become okay? What was the secret?

Dean doubted it was as simple as a comfy couch and a boyfriend you were honest with and some really good cheese.

He was relieved when Anna and Dev elected to take their own car-a silver Prius, of course. The idea of Anna and her new boyfriend snuggling up on the very seat where she'd pushed Dean down and climbed on top of him, of the pair of them gazing out the windows that she and Dean had once steamed up-that was just not classy. Also, cramming five people into the Impala wasn't granting her the respect she deserved.

Of course, following convoy-style behind Anna and Dev also gave Dean and Sam and Cas the chance to talk about them. “There's 'badness' here all right,” Dean said. “But it isn't in the freakin' botanical gardens. Also, since when is Anna such a yuppie?”

“What makes her a 'yuppie,' Dean?” Sam seemed to object on sheer principle to his pejorative use of this term.

Dean counted off on his fingers the best he could while keeping his hands on the wheel and his eyes on this city's stupid windy roads. “Um, her car? Her apartment? Her cheese plate?”

“You ate most of that,” Sam pointed out. “And her apartment's just an apartment. A regular graduate-student apartment. I bet you she found half of that furniture dumped on the side of the road and made Dev drag it up there for her. Or, well, I guess in her case she's strong enough to drag it up there on her own...”

“Her grace is greatly reduced,” Castiel said quietly.

“Yeah, well, Gabriel said-”

Castiel shook his head, cutting Sam off. “Something's happened...” he repeated.

It was in this ominous mood that they arrived at the botanical gardens. At first glance, it didn't have much to offer in terms of appropriate atmosphere. Even though it was winter, there was plenty in bloom. The road was lined with clusters of leathery-looking green shrubs, their leaves twisted into intricate spiral patterns. Palms and spiky desert plants rustled in the soft breeze. In the distance Dean could see a greenhouse, its glass walls protecting bright purple orchids and other plants Dean had no notion of the names of.

Anna and Dev were waiting beside their yuppie car. A third person had already joined them-the infamous Lauren, no doubt. She was pretty enough, Dean supposed, in a lanky, crunchy-granola sort of way. When Cas got out of the car, Anna knocked her shoulder against Lauren's and pointed indiscreetly. Lauren smiled wide.

“Guys, this is Lauren. Lauren: Dean, Sam, and this is my brother.”

Lauren extended a hand, still grinning. “Lucas, right?”

Castiel frowned. “Cas,” he said. The awkward way he said his own “name” only added to the moment's increasing confusion.

“He goes by Cas,” Anna explained, shooting Castiel a weird look. In return, Castiel flat-out stared back.

“In high school my nickname was 'Stretch,'” Lauren confided. “Guess why.”

Castiel apparently did not care to hazard a guess.

“Maybe you should show us the area where people have been disappearing,” Sam suggested.

Lauren nodded. “It's totally spooky. Like ancient Indian burial ground spooky. The other type of Indian,” she told Dev, who made a polite noise before becoming newly fascinated with his fancy yuppie phone. “I saw this guy wander in there, and even though I was watching really intently, waiting for him to come out-because it was time to close?-he never did.”

“Did you go look for him?” Sam asked.

She nodded again. “Nothing there. Just me and the trees.” She shivered, dramatically. “I switched off the evening shift after that.”

Sam smiled politely. “Is there any way, maybe, that he could have looped around behind you and left while you were looking for him?”

Head shake. “No, 'cause my coworker Charlie stayed behind at the office and I asked him and he says he didn't see anything. It was totally deserted. Trust me.”

“You'll see,” Anna promised them. She'd always been good at portents of doom, and apparently when called upon, she still was. “When we go in there, you'll see.”

“Okay,” said Dean, gesturing toward the gate. “Let's go and see then.”

“Hang on,” said Lauren, fiddling with the pocket of her cargo capris. “Do you guys want any bug spray? I always put on bug spray before I head into the wooded sections 'cause I get bit a lot. I must taste extra sweet,” she told Cas.

They passed on the bug spray.

Lauren led them through the main gate and down a path lined with small white stones and stout and hardy desert plants. “I was reading online about the garden's various collections,” Sam said-of course he was. “Which area is the one that's been at the center of the, uh. 'Badness'?”

“The North American collection,” Lauren said.

Dean snorted. Much of their party turned to look at him. “Well, we just can't ever seem to go anywhere that doesn't look like freakin' Canada, can we?”

The portion of the garden Lauren brought them to did look like a pristine section of the pacific northwest. Some place colder and wilder than where they really were, a place full of tall, skinny trees and rich undergrowth, dark earth. That the canopy was a bit skimpy this time of year didn't detract from the feeling that they'd suddenly fallen ass over heels into the middle of the woods. Dean almost couldn't believe that they were only a couple hundred yards from the road. It was starting to seem not so entirely implausible that people had disappeared out here.

The seven of them took a moment to glance around. It was still light out but it looked a great deal darker in here than it had out on the road, or in the miniature desert they'd crossed. As they stood there, the wind picked up, a gentle gust, but chilling. The hairs on Dean's wrists stood up.

“Birds,” Anna whispered. “There should be birds. Shouldn't there?”

Dean lowered his gaze and realized they had all been standing with their heads tilted up, exposing the columns of their throats. Except Cas. He was looking at Anna, watching, it seemed, every breath, every movement of her chest, her empty hands lying loose and uncurled at her sides.

“Let me show you the weirdest thing,” Lauren said, and turned and headed up the slight rise. Anna swiveled to follow her, but Castiel said, “Wait. Anna,” and she paused. “May I talk to you for a moment?” Privately, he was clearly trying to say.

She took the hint. “I'll walk with you.” She patted Dev on the arm, inclined her head a little: motioned for him to go on ahead.

Dean gave Sam a similar look, a keep an eye on the civilians look. Sam sighed. “You'd be doing Dev a big favor,” Dean muttered. Sam shook his head but trudged off in their direction.

Dean, meanwhile, ignored whatever look Castiel was sending his way suggesting that Dean should join the others, and after a few seconds, Castiel seemed to accept Dean's presence with a sigh of his own. Anna fell into step beside them and they started walking, slowly, keeping an eye on the four figures in front of them.

After a moment, Castiel spoke. “Why did you tell Lauren my name was Lucas?”

Anna laughed-Dean found it even more eerie in this setting. “I know you don't use it, but I didn't realize it was information being carefully guarded by the NSA.”

The look on Castiel's face betrayed him. Anna stopped, touched him gently on the arm. “Cas, what-”

“What did you do?” Castiel asked. There was an edge to his voice, a rawness that Dean didn't like. “What did you do?”

“Whoa, Cas, let's not jump to conclusions.” He stepped in front of them both: it was his turn to be the calm, reasonable one for once. “Anna, don't take this the wrong way, but...have you been reading any porno mags lately?”

“What? No. Dean.” The face she pulled really did make her and Cas look related.

“Hey, you'd be surprised how often that ends up being the cause of these things.”

“What things?”

She looked genuinely confused. That was the worst of it: how genuine she was-in her confusion, in her happiness, in her blissful ignorance. Dean wondered if this was how he and Sam and Cas would have ended up if Chuck and Becky hadn't come to the rescue. Probably not. They probably would have killed each other.

“What's your earliest memory of me?” Castiel asked her, his voice barely louder than the breeze, a soft ripple through the trees.

Anna gave him an odd look, befitting such an odd question. “I don't know. You're my brother, Cas. What-”

“Just answer the question.”

Something in his voice made her comply. “You were always there, I guess,” she said, sucking in a breath. “But maybe...I don't know how old I was. Maybe two or three? There was a tornado and I remember you picking me up and carrying me down to the basement. I don't know where Mom and Dad were. Maybe at the church.” She bit her lips, her gaze going momentarily distant. When she looked up at Castiel again, her eyes were shining. “But you took me down to the basement and we sat in the corner, behind all of Mom's canning, and you told me stories while the lights flickered and the house shook. I felt so safe with you.”

She was smiling at him, the affection obvious in her eyes. She believed it. Goddammit, she believed every word.

“I'm glad,” Castiel said roughly, forcing himself, voice so low he sounded almost like he used to. Dean wanted to- He shook his head and stared at the forest floor and didn't do anything.

“Are you sure you're okay?” Anna asked. “I mean, now I'm kind of concerned. Not as freaked out as I would be if I actually thought about what you're out there doing every day...” She grinned at him. “My big dork of a brother off fighting evil-I still can't quite believe it.”

“No,” said Castiel. “Neither can I.”

“You guys!” Lauren's voice was piercing.

“Really?” Dean had to ask. It came out harsher than he meant. “Him and her. Really.”

Anna shrugged. “She's very...persistent. I told her I'd try, okay? And Cas, it's not like you're doing any better on your own...”

Dean half-expected Castiel to inform Anna that as a matter of fact, he'd had sex just the other day-ask Dean for first-hand confirmation! Fortunately-or not-he seemed to still be struggling with what they'd just learned. Whatever that was.

“Please tell Lauren that we'll be right there,” Castiel said.

“Okay.” Anna hesitated. Then she stepped forward, arms out. To Dean's surprise, Castiel lurched into the embrace. He squeezed her tight, and Dean had to turn away from the look on his face. It betrayed lies within lies: every moment of the relationship they had never had, Cas and his little sister whom he'd comforted during a tornado; the millennia in which they'd known each other honestly but never touched like this, all of it erased.

It wasn't like how it would have been if Playboy had permanently fried their brains; it was as if Dean and Sam Winchester had stayed Dean Smith and Sam Wesson forever, had never woken up. They might have been able to build a relationship with each other, a good one. But on some level it would always be a lie.

Dean watched Anna move gracefully back up the hill, lifting a hand to wave to Dev and Lauren. “You're right,” he said quietly. “This has angel stink all over it.”

“She did it to herself.” The words snapped, bone-like.

“Maybe Gabriel-”

Castiel's nose crinkled. “I'm afraid we can't blame everything on my erstwhile brother. In truth, I doubt he would have wanted this. No.” He looked down, dug his boot into the dirt. “She used the last of her grace and did this. Annihilated herself.”

Dean tried not to think about whether he'd do the same thing if he could. He'd resisted the djinn, it was true. But that was before Sam died, before Lilith, before Hell, before Ruby, before Lucifer. Things were better now, sure. But he couldn't claim that those things, those memories, hadn't changed him, shaped him, made him what he was. For better and for worse.

“Man, I can't even imagine what she thinks happened over the past two years.”

“We'll have to ask her sometime,” Castiel said, tone blacker than black.

Dean's taste for gallows humor was rare and refined. He gave a soft snort of amusement and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Come on,” he said. “Lauren's probably waiting for you.”

The dirt slid beneath their boots as they walked up the hill. “I'm not interested in Lauren,” Castiel informed him.

A casual, “What do I care?” came easily to Dean. There was significantly more space between him and Castiel by the time the reached the rest of the group.

The other five were standing in a circle of tree stumps at the center of a flat clearing, which faced a series of logs and stones set into the upper crest of the hill. The arrangement did not look remotely natural. “Lauren says they hire this space out for events,” Sam explained.

Lauren was bent over with her ass in the air. She glanced over her shoulder at them, grinning. “We get a lot of weddings.”

Dean looked around at the shivering trees and the mulch of fallen leaves beneath their feet. “Yeah, I'll be sure to book early.”

“Dean. Cas.” Sam beckoned them over with a jerk of his head. “Look at this.”

They approached, Castiel jumping a little as Lauren chose to straighten up just as he walked by, sliding against him. “Ooops. Sorry.”

“I'm sure the fault was mine,” Castiel said. Dean rolled his eyes: like being gentlemanly was helping.

He glanced down where Sam was pointing. “Is somebody having a tea party?”

A leaf had been spread out on one of the stumps. A couple of flowers-probably stolen from some other part of the garden-had been arranged on top of it, much too neatly and deliberately for them to even consider the idea that it had been an accident. Dean peered closer: the centers of several of the blossoms were heavy with liquid, half white, half amber. Milk and honey?

“It looks like an offering,” Sam said. “I've read about faerie offerings-they were described just like this.”

“There's no such thing as faeries,” Castiel said.

Dean laughed. “Dude, you just killed Tinkerbell.”

Castiel looked like he had no idea why Lauren was suddenly clapping her hands.

“Wait, how do you know what stuff's real and what stuff isn't real?” Dev asked. “Is there, like, a database?”

Sam's eyes lit up. “Wow, that's a really good idea! Instead of hunters just working off their own research and observation we could assemble it all into a carefully indexed resource, put the whole thing online...”

“Yeah, have fun trying to put that together,” Dean said. The sad thing was, he knew Sam really would.

“But how do you know there aren't faeries?” Lauren protested. “This isn't the first offering I've seen here! They keep appearing and then disappearing. What's doing that?”

“Animals? Other people?” Dean shrugged. “But trust me: if Cas says there aren't any faeries, there aren't.”

“How much bigger is this place?” Sam asked.

Lauren pointed. “It goes up the hill a ways; then there's a fence and it becomes private property. Then over that way there's the Mediterranean collection and the New World Desert over where we came in.”

“So...not very big.”

She shook her head.

Dean, Sam, and Cas all exchanged shrugs or the equivalent. “Okay,” Sam said. “I think we're going to have to do some more research.” Generously, he offered Lauren a smile. “Thanks for the tour.”

“It was my pleasure,” she told Cas.

Dean rolled his eyes.

They started back down the slope. They hadn't gone very far when suddenly Dev skidded to a halt. “Wait,” he said. “We're missing someone.”

Dean looked back over his shoulder, then turned and surveyed the group. He counted six people including himself. “Shit.”

The others were looking around too, their expressions growing increasingly frantic. “We are missing someone.” Anna touched her hand to her throat. “We have to go back!”

“I think I see someone over there!” Sam said, pointing in the other direction. He started off.

“Wait,” Dean said.

“Oh my god, someone's missing?” Lauren backed up against the trunk of a tree and sank to the ground.

“Wait,” Dean said.

“They can't have gone far,” said Castiel. “We'll find them.”

“Wait-” Dean didn't know which direction to turn, who to follow. He tried to take a step forward and a step back at approximately the same time; the loose earth slid beneath him. He grabbed a tree trunk for balance. A drop of water landed on his cheek, and for a second he thought he'd shaken it loose from the high branches. But the tree was barren of leaves and too thick to be moved. It began to rain in earnest.

“Sam,” Dean called. “Cas!” They'd all left him, vanishing in opposite directions. Dean took a deep breath and tried to think. He took a step up the hill and immediately slid back.

Someone was sobbing, somewhere. Dean tried to move toward the sound. Then all of a sudden it stopped, as if whoever had been crying had sucked in a deep breath and never let it back out again. The rain, once a slow patter, had increased in volume, was coming down in sheets. Dean peered through it: he thought he could just barely see a hunched, hazy figure, dressed in brown. Thank goodness. “Hey!” he called. “We've been looking for you!”

Thunder crashed. Dean stumbled, moving upward. The figure was in front of him, moving slowly also, but deliberately, with ease. It appeared to be dragging something. “Hey!” Dean called again. “Wait up!”

He almost walked straight into Cas. The other man caught him by the shoulders. “Dean,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised. “I can't find them. I don't know what to do.”

Dean turned him around, tugged him along. “They're up there. Come on!”

They stumbled together, gripping at each other's shoulders, holding each other up. The hill seemed much larger and steeper than it had before. It was slow-going, but no matter how much they slipped and slid, they never lost sight of the figure in front of them. It was always there.

“Where are the others?” Dean tried to ask at one point. “Have you seen Sam?”

“I don't know.”

“What about Anna? What about Dev? Hell, where's Lauren?”

“I don't know,” Castiel said. “I don't know.”

Dean caught himself as he started to fall, wet leaves rubbing against his palm, sliding against his wrist and down the sleeve of his coat. “How do seven people get lost in a space this small?”

Castiel started to shake his head. Then he said, “Seven people.”

“What?” Dean didn't see any lightning, but thunder rumbled across the sky. The trees swayed like they were caught in that tornado Cas had never rescued Anna from.

“Seven people?”

“Cas-”

“Stop,” Castiel said suddenly. “Don't move.”

He was holding Dean, his arm a bar across Dean's chest. Wide-eyed, he stared forward, and Dean followed his gaze. Ahead of them, the hunched figure in brown stopped, too. It seemed to flicker, waver in place, though that might have been the rain, disturbing his vision like static on a TV set. Then it dropped what it was carrying with a thump, heavy like the thunder.

Seven. Seven people. Oh, fuck.

Even soaking wet, Dean was quick to draw and level a gun. Castiel was only a step behind him with his knife. The figure in brown seemed to swirl, to pulse. Dean thought, Fuck this, and fired straight at its heart.

The figure exploded.

Exploded and came at them in a wave, a tsunami of tiny bodies. They swarmed like locusts, beating against Dean and Castiel's eyes and ears, bathing them both in a constant hiss of curses. Dean would have cried out when he saw Cas crumple, but he was afraid one of them would fly down his mouth.

He stumbled forward. No: he didn't stumble. He was prodded forward, pulled, pushed. The tiny wings beat against his face, razor sharp. Through the blood and the rain he saw Cas, struggling, being dragged, having his head brutally knocked against the outer ring of stumps.

Something was happening to the earth at the center of the ring.

At first he thought he was imagining it: god knew what aspects of what he was seeing were real or unreal. But he could hear it, too, a churning squelch, like batter-or cement-swirled in a mixer. The earth was moving, spinning, spiraling down. And they were hauling Cas into the vortex.

Castiel was fighting, fighting hard. He'd grabbed hold of one of the stumps and was clinging to it, trying to hold it bodily to his chest. Some of the weight of bodies lifted off of Dean and applied themselves to Cas, clearly attempting to make up the difference. It was enough that Dean was able to stumble backward a step-only to fall over the body sprawled there. Lauren, Dean realized. She was lying face up in the falling rain. Dean couldn't tell if she was breathing.

He clung to her-anything, anything for ballast.

“Cas!” he screamed.

“Dean!”

It came out choked. Dean didn't even think. He pulled himself forward, the swarm a black haze in front of his eyes. Castiel had been dragged more into the circle than not. The faeries-fuck! fuck!-weren't even needing to do most of the work now: the earth had closed over Cas' feet, over his ankles, his calves; it was pulling him down like quicksand. “Cas, hold on!” Dean said. He begged, he pled.

“Dean...” Did he sound choked now, or despairing? Dean could barely see him. He reached out, fumbled for his hand, came away with nothing but a handful of wet leaves. He tried to scoot forward again, but he'd latched onto Lauren too well: his bootlace was caught on one of the many straps dangling uselessly from her cargo capris. The faeries buzzed around him. They were pulling less fiercely now, even when he backed away from the pit to try to free himself. They seemed to know that with Castiel in peril, he wouldn't need coaxing: Dean would follow him into the abyss without any prodding at all.

He groped in the rain, running a hand up Lauren's leg in the least sexy way ever. He found where he was snagged and pulled. He found something else.

Faeries weren't supposed to exist. Dean had no idea how to kill something that even angels said weren't real, but he figured that some things were damn near close to universal. Gripping Lauren's can of bug spray in one hand and his lighter in the other, Dean rolled over onto his back and let loose.

It was a good fucking lighter. Even in the rain, the flame caught, hit the spray, burned sputtery and stinky but fierce. And the faeries shot up like gasoline.

Dean muscled forward into the swarm, watching the tiny bodies ignite and burn and crumble. It was like he was burning the rain away, too: suddenly it was a drizzle, then a mist. But by then Dean didn't care anymore. He threw himself toward the ring of stumps, reaching out, calling Cas' name. Searching, searching.

He wasn't there. The dirt was still swirling, spinning slowly to a stop, but it was just earth, just twigs and leaves and pebbles. No sign of a man. No tuft of hair, no reaching fingers. Nothing.

Dean dove in anyway. He thrust his arms into the rapidly solidifying ground. They went in deeper than was normal, but not, it seemed, nearly deep enough to contain a person-Cas, Cas, his Cas. He couldn't be gone. He couldn't. Dean dug deeper, scrambled, threw himself away from the safety of the line of stumps. Mud ran in rivulets down his face. He choked on it.

He didn't realize, at first, that he'd found something to hold on to. In truth he'd almost given up. But he touched something solid, felt a shiver race up his spine. He closed his eyes and he pulled.

Cas looked awful, emerging from the mud. Filthy, and beneath the filth, deathly pale. A far-removed part of Dean's brain wondered if he'd looked like this, when he'd crawled free of his grave; if Castiel had watched, idly, from above. Now Dean knelt on the ground beside him, both of them dirty beyond belief, and hugged Cas' body to his, wiped the mud from his nostrils and mouth. He leaned down, no hesitation, ready to perform mouth-to-mouth, but before their lips could touch, Cas sputtered, coughed. His eyes opened, impossibly blue against so much blackness.

“Cas.” Dean choked back a sob of relief, then stopped bothering. “How-”

“I held my breath,” Castiel said.

Dean was still hovering over him, ready to give him the kiss of life that had turned out not to be necessary.

Dean kissed him anyway.

He tasted like all the crap they'd just been drowning in, earthy and base, but there was a fresh rainwater taste to him too, a purity and an innocence. Despite the cold and the damp, Dean felt a warmth spread through him. He leaned forward and encouraged Castiel's muddy hand to skate along Dean's muddy neck, and their mouths to slide together, catch, glide apart. They wallowed shamelessly in each other.

“Dean! Dean!”

Only Sam's frantic cry was enough to break them apart. “Over here, Sammy!” Dean yelled back, turning his neck a little but refusing to break all contact. He helped Cas sit up but otherwise didn't, as Cas clearly expected him to, back away. Dean didn't care. He didn't care. What did he care? It seemed suddenly so stupid that he had ever cared in the first place.

To let Castiel know just how much he cared/didn't, Dean kissed him again, long and sweet and full of promise, just as Sam crested the top of the ridge.

“Uh...” said Sam. And that was the extent of his commentary.

He went to check on Lauren. Dean felt vaguely ashamed for having forgotten, but better when, under Sam's big, comforting hands, she was coaxed up to breathe shockily and then sob into Sam's shoulder. Sam took this like a professional. Dean ran a hand through Cas' hair and kissed him some more.

Even with Sam looming over her, Lauren must have caught sight of this. She broke away from Sam with a sudden push. “Dammit, Anna!”

Anna skidded down the other side of the hill. She had leaves in her hair. A lot of leaves. “What?” she asked. Then she caught sight of the way Dean and Castiel were entwined. “Oh.”

“Are you okay?” Sam asked her. “Where's Dev?”

“He's right back there,” she pointed. “He lost his phone.”

“No, it's okay!” Dev called. He appeared at the top of the rise and slowly skidded down to meet them, holding his cell triumphantly above his head. “I found it!”

“Wow,” said Dean. “Close call.”

Cas put his head down on Dean's shoulder and almost-sort-of laughed.

Dean made an executive decision.

“All right, we're leaving.” Together, he and Cas pulled themselves shakily to their feet.

“Wait,” said Sam, “hang on...”

“No, I mean we're leaving. Anna, you can entertain Sam for a while, right?”

“Well, yeah...”

“And there are motels around here.”

“Down on University...”

“Huh. I guess I do have a secret desire to go to University after all.”

Sam was staring at him like he'd grown an extra head. “But...what happened?”

“Faeries,” Dean said. He became suddenly, potently aware of several obvious jokes. He was glad Sam was the sensitive, PC brother and therefore unlikely to make them.

“I thought Cas said faeries weren't real!”

“I was wrong,” Castiel said.

Forget angelic infallibility: Dean had never missed Cas' instant angel transport powers so badly. He wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else, immediately, but instead he had to persuade Sam and the others to let them leave, convince Cas that for once he didn't care if mud got all over the Impala, drive all the way back to the center of town, find the strip of motels Anna had been talking about, and bribe the desk clerk into renting them a room despite the fact that they looked like they'd recently lost a round of mud wrestling against Swamp Thing. By the time he helped Castiel limp inside, Dean was afraid he was fighting a losing battle with exhaustion. But then he caught sight of Cas, ridiculous looking with dried mud caked into his hair and an expression on his face that seemed to be saying, Really? This is my life?

Dean had asked himself this question with some frequency over the years. For once he was satisfied with the answer. He wanted Cas to be, too.

“C'mere,” he said, and when Cas just stared at him, Dean broke all his own rules about personal space. “Let's get you out of these clothes.” He didn't even bother to make a double entendre out of it: he thought his message was very plain.

Cas let him peel off that stupid denim jacket, let him run his hands along his collar and begin unbuttoning his formerly-green cotton shirt. As long as he stayed businesslike, Cas did not object, but when Dean leaned in to taste again the sweet freshness of Castiel's mouth, his hand moved up, gripping Dean by the shoulder, stopping him. “You don't have to,” Castiel said. “Just because-”

“I want to.” Just saying it, admitting it, gave Dean a little thrill.

Castiel seemed to accept this, but Dean wanted far more than acceptance out of him. The muddied shirt hanging loose now, Dean used it to tug Cas toward the bathroom. The light came on harsh and stuttery, but the shower was big enough for two, and that was all Dean cared about. He gripped Cas by the hips, slid his hands over the dips and curves of his stomach, found the button of his fly. He told the part of himself that couldn't believe he was doing this to shut the fuck up.

Cas was starting to get with the program, shrugging his shirt the rest of the way off and pushing himself greedily into Dean's hands. Dean gave his jeans a tug, then, fighting a sudden wave of panic, left Cas to take care of the rest while he jerked off his own shirt. Cas caught the back of his neck and kissed him when the fabric cleared his head, and this, Dean decided, he could do forever. He let Castiel, sure-fingered and without shame, pull off Dean's own mud-caked jeans. Dean's cock was feeling none of his mind's occasional flashes of doubt or ambiguity; Dean had to resist the urge to mount Cas right there in the middle of the bathroom, to wrap his legs around him and cling like a monkey halfway up a tree.

Somehow one of them got the water turned on; they stumbled back over the lip of the tub and pulled the curtain mostly closed. Dean had planned to take care of Castiel, to gently wash the mud from his body, clean his hair and his lips and his ears and his eyelids. Instead they seemed unable to pull apart long enough to manage anything that coordinated. Cas slip-slided against him, soapy and wet and insistently there. There was water running into Dean's eyes and over their joined mouths; blinded, there was nothing for Dean to do but feel. He felt the fine muscles of Castiel's shoulders, the curve of his back, the more generous curve of his ass. He felt Castiel's cock, hard and heavy against Dean's thigh. And Dean didn't shy away. He wanted more, infinitely more-wanted to deepen, intensify the press of the two of them against each other. The water roared and each of Castiel's panting breaths sounded loud in Dean's ear. Dean felt his own breath hitch as he came, his release rolling through him like thunder.

They did wash each other properly after that, standing on shaky legs, kissing each other soft and suddenly hesitant, as if reassuring one another that they were each still there. Dean dried Castiel's head with one of the motel's scratchy towels and twined his fingers in the soft, damp curls. “Getting long,” he said.

Castiel seemed confused by this statement of the obvious.

“You're settling in nicely,” Dean told him, grinning so much his mouth ached. “Come on,” he coaxed when Castiel didn't immediately respond. It had worked out so very well the last time.

He sat Cas down on the bed, towel draped loosely around his hips. Dean's fatigue was definitely catching up with him, but he still wanted... It made him twitch to even think of saying it, a C-word worse than any curse. He wanted to lie in bed with his arms around Cas and fall asleep listening to Cas' heart beating human through the layers of their skin. All right? That was what he wanted. And he kind of wanted them to both put on some boxers first because naked cuddling was perhaps still just a bit too much.

He'd dumped both his and Cas' duffles by the door. He took care of his own needs quickly, then unzipped Castiel's bag and started rooting around inside. Castiel's priorities became immediately clear: the entire top layer of the bag was books. “Jesus, Cas, you're carrying a whole library around in here.” Dean dug deeper, his hand bouncing off something hard and metallic and still not a frickin' pair of underwear. It was some sort of big heavy belt, straight out of the Mr. T collection. “You're such a dork,” Dean said with fondness.

“Dean,” Cas sighed. “That's my bag...”

Dean's fingers had finally snagged on a scrap of stripy blue fabric; he stood up and spun around and presented them to Cas with pride. Castiel's expression was pure befuddlement, but he put the boxers on and let Dean tug him up the bed and under the covers. Dean settled with far too much eagerness into the crook of Castiel's shoulder. “Tell anyone about this and die,” he whispered into Cas' collarbone.

“I was planning on updating my Facebook status immediately,” Castiel huffed.

Dean pulled back a little, glanced up. “You're on Facebook?”

“No. I was being facetious.”

“Oh, well, that's all right then,” Dean said, settling back down with a yawn.

He was still a little self-conscious: conscious, that is, of every aspect of their bodies, of the two of them together, the hard places where part of him still expected softness, the rough places where he was accustomed to smooth. And yet he wanted this so much it scared him. At times Castiel still seemed to him to be vast and strange and unknowable, and Dean wanted to lose himself in that mystery. Learn what he could. Hunt down and capture the truth of this creature, this man, just like he'd been taught. Keep him for himself.

Castiel never ceased to surprise him: he did so now, saying suddenly, “I'm sorry.”

Dean blinked sleepily, eyelashes fluttering against Castiel's throat. “What for?”

“For being mistaken. In the garden. I should have known.”

Dean let out a puff of breath. “Forget it. It was kind of fun, getting to rescue you for once.” He tugged Cas' face down to his, kissed his hard mouth and his stubbled jaw. “My little damsel in distress.”

He drifted a little, happy and warm.

“You know,” he mumbled, after a while. “Maybe Anna wasn't entirely wrong. It could be nice to forget about the past, not have to worry about the future. Who cares about the bigger picture, what it all means? It might be nice to just be boring, average people for a change.”

He couldn't remember what Castiel answered, whatever he may or may not have said drowned out by the silence of sleep.

When Dean woke the next morning, Castiel was gone.

Episode 6x04 / Masterpost / Episode 6x06