Supernatural- "I'm Just a Love Machine" (2/3)

[peroxide_fic]

Sherry, the college student who’d gotten troll whacked, turns out to be particularly cooperative when it comes to explaining the events of the night her friend Rhonda disappeared, mostly because, hilariously enough, she takes an instant liking to Castiel, who she feels has honest eyes. On the other side of things, she also gives Dean this absolute stink-eyed look after he smiles at her and tells her she has a pretty name, snorting at the older Winchester like she’s seen a ton of sleaze balls just like him in her twenty-two short years on this earth and has uniformly decided that she’s done with those kinds of men forever, thanks very much.

Dean tells himself it probably has more to do with the jerkoffs she’d met at the frat party that she and Rhonda had been attending right before the troll napping than it has to do with him personally. It’s psychological, or something.

Sam says, “Yeah, sure, whatever, Dean,” to that, and then promptly waves Dean over to take up a post by the door because he clearly makes the witness uncomfortable. As such, Dean is obliged to stand with the Impala while Sam plays Cas’s honest eyes-or whatever- to their fullest advantage by using them to milk Sherry for every detail she can recall about Rhonda’s kidnapping, even the weird ones.

“There,” Sam says to Sherry, once Dean has been quarantined to the doorway with the Impala, “I’m sorry if he made you feel uncomfortable, Sherry, but Agent Ehart is really a decent guy despite how he looks. And sounds.” Pause. “Most of the time.”

The young co-ed shrugs noncommittally. “He just looks kind of like one of those generic frat pledge douchebags who were hounding on me and Rhonda right before she got abducted,” she admits tearfully, while Cas and Sam sit at her hospital side and look nonthreatening and nerdy. Dean scowls in their general direction, because he can hear her, thanks, while the Impala looks indignant on his behalf. “One of those guys got super handsy with me, which is why I made Rhonda leave early with me, even though she totally wanted to stay. If I hadn’t…I mean, if I’d ignored it, maybe she wouldn’t…” Sherry breaks down into sobs.

Dean thinks maybe he’ll forgive her for the douchebag frat boy comment.

The Impala doesn’t feel as charitable. “She doesn’t know how awesome you are,” he mutters, in high dungeon over the perceived insults to Dean (which really, just makes Dean even more uncomfortable than the actual insults). “But don’t worry, you’re not a douchebag, Dean. You’re the nicest, best looking guy in the world.”

Pause. “I could tell her,” the Impala offers next, while tugging slightly at the corner of the suit he had borrowed from Sam because apparently little Winchester brothers and Chevys all run a little on the freakishly humongous side when attempting to take human shape. “Once she knows how nice you are to me, and how much you love me and take care of me, I’m sure she’d stop saying mean things about you.”

Dean scowls at him. “Stop messing with your goddamn tie,” is all he says.

Back at the girl’s bedside, Sam clears his throat and offers a sympathetic squeeze to her arm. “Right, well, Sherry, I know this might be hard, but can you uh, can you please describe to us what you saw that night? Just…whatever you remember, even if it sounds weird. Every detail counts in an investigation like this.”

“We have dealt with much stranger things than you can imagine,” Castiel adds, awkwardly but earnestly, and makes Sherry smile weakly.

“Sure. I mean…but I was pretty drunk,” she admits. “Even still, I swear, the guy was like, ten feet tall. Even taller than you,” she adds, with a look at Sam. Sam manages a small huff of laughter at her weak attempt at a joke. Buoyed, she takes a deep breath and ploughs on. “And he smelled. His breath was like… a garbage dump, or a slaughterhouse or something, it was just so rank. I can’t believe we didn’t smell him coming from a mile away. ”

Sam writes all of this down dutifully. “What did he uh, what did he look like?”

Sherry shudders visibly. “It was dark, but he had this face…god, it was like he had this nose that took up half of his face, and this long, nasty weave that looked like it’d never been washed. He also had these beady, shifty eyes.” She pauses to lower her voice a little, while glancing towards Dean in the doorway. “Kind of like Agent Ehart’s.”

Dean bristles. “I can still hear you!” he insists, gritting his teeth. Then, “My eyes are not beady,” he adds, somehow not for the first time in his life.

“You have very nice eyes, Dean,” Castiel and the Impala say at exactly the same time. Then they glare at each other.

Sam coughs. “Right. And… where did this ten foot man come from? Even drunk, it must have been hard for someone so big and smelly to just sneak up on you like that.”

Sherry runs a shaky hand through her hair. “I don’t know…I mean, we were really drunk, but I could have sworn he just appeared out of the ground, right behind Rhonda. One minute we were helping each other back to our apartment, and then the next second he just…comes out of the dirt and picks her up without a word. I tried to…I tried to fight him off, I guess, but he just whacked me and then I was out.”

Sam writes that down too. “And this frat house…where was it?”

“Right in the middle of Greek Row,” she admits. “The Beta Theta Pi house. You can’t miss it; it’s the one that’s halfway remodeled. And it’s got the biggest douchebags on the planet inside.”

Her lip starts trembling then, and even though she’s kind of got a nasty mouth on her, Dean feels his heart give a little lurch when she looks right into Cas’s eyes and asks, softly, “Do you guys think…is Rhonda going to be okay? I mean, it’s my fault she…I took her there…”

Castiel reaches out to pat the back of her shaking hand with two fingers; it’s kind of silly, and definitely not the squeeze it should have been if he’d been doing this correctly, but it seems to lend the kid some comfort anyway. Dean is downright proud of him at that moment. “We will do everything in our power to find her,” Castiel says sincerely, voice gentle but powerful. “You are not to blame for what happened.”

Sherry manages a watery smile at the strength of his conviction. “Thank you, Agent Hope.”

Cas eventually pulls back his hand, like he’s remembering Dean’s lecture about personal space suddenly, while Sam reaches into his breast pocket for a business card. “Look, Sherry, if you remember anything else, or even if you just want to talk, call me any time, okay?”

She nods, and then, with one last encouraging smile, Sam turns and ushers Cas back towards the door, where Dean and the Impala wait, looking like a pair of cheaply dressed, grumpy bodyguards.

“You hear that?” Sam asks in low tones as they head down the hallway together.

Dean nods. “Bobby was right. Definitely a troll.”

“So now what?” The Impala asks, right behind Dean and way too many inches inside of his personal space. It’s hard to believe there is someone worse out there than Cas is about this, but here they are.

Dean scowls and takes a step to his right, because his car breathing in his ear in that fluttery voice is super creepy. He ends up bumping into Cas instead when he does, but at least Cas doesn’t give him the come hither eyes when they’re standing that close.

“It means that we find a troll tunnel and gank it in its lair,” Sam continues while Dean does the dance of Impala avoidance right there in the corridor. “The last girl might still be alive, but we probably shouldn’t hold our breath on the other four at this point.”

Dean’s visage turns grim.

“How will we find this troll, exactly?” Castiel asks next, and Dean can feel the angel’s breath against the back of his neck. Seriously, this is getting kind of ridiculous. Dean turns and puts his hand on Cas’s arm, and then very carefully pulls Cas towards him so that they can switch places.

Cas and the Impala are now standing next to each other in the narrow hospital hallway while Dean is positioned comfortably behind them. Sam pauses at the head of the pack to look vaguely bemused as angel and car glare at each other.

“We’ll find it,” Dean continues, oblivious to the animosity now that he has his personal space bubble back, “by checking out the sewer maps around this Greek row place. Once we find the lair, we get it into the sun and bam, one ugly stone troll.”

“That sounds… deceptively simple,” Castiel concludes.

“Dean’s plans are awesome like that,” the Impala declares. “They always work.”

“I did not say they didn’t,” Castiel responds, looking at the Impala with distaste.

“Okay, ladies, no catfights in the hospital, okay? You’re both pretty,” Dean prompts, and urges them into the parking lot.

They naturally comply, but don’t stop glowering at each other. Dean thinks it will make the next few hours’ research super fun.

~~~~~

Later, after Sam has found blueprints to the sewer system with his magical internet navigation skills and they’ve studied them until Dean feels like his eyes are crossing, Sam and Cas finally deign to put all the information together like the nerds they are and make one of those neat push pin maps with a different colored pin marking each place that the five victims were taken from.

From there, the brothers, the car, and the grumpy angel in the trench coat manage to come to a pretty fair estimation of where a central underground location that would be ideal for troll dwellings is, given the evidence, as well as two possible entrance points that the creature hunts from. One is at Greek row on the edge of campus, and the other is in town, within easy striking distance of several low-end bars that cater to the local college students.

“So… you pick one, I pick one, we meet in the middle, see if we can catch this guy sleeping?” Dean sums up, once they’ve got a lay of the land.

Sam nods. “Looks like.”

They both turn to eye their supernatural companions.

The Impala looks hopefully at Dean.

Dean sighs. “Okay, Impala, you’re with me. Cas, you’re with Sam.”

The Impala crows victory, while Cas just nods and doesn’t argue, and for some reason, looks triumphant anyway.

Sam chalks it up to Cas not getting the whole competition thing between him in the Impala, but whatever. “We’ll take the bars,” Sam says. “Since Sherry seemed to think you’d fit in at Beta Theta Pi.”

“Eat me,” Dean grouses, but goes to throw the necessary equipage into his duffel. “C’mon, Tin Man,” he says, gesturing to the Impala. “Time to head down this yellow shit road.”

“Do you want me to carry you?” the Impala suggests, eagerly following Dean towards the door, though not without one last, incredibly smug look over his shoulder at Castiel. “I could carry you.”

“Carry the bag,” Dean gripes back, as they disappear. “Two hours, Sam! Call if there’s trouble.”

Sam shakes his head and goes to grab his own gear, while Castiel’s gaze remains fixed on Dean and his tall, handsome man-car walking off into the afternoon sunlight together. Eventually, Castiel moves to help Sam.

“Weird,” Sam says, conversationally, “I thought he would have picked you.”

“I am glad he did not,” Castiel answers cryptically, and then says nothing else.

Sam gives him an odd look as they head out of the hotel room and has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. He tells himself Cas probably just doesn’t get it.

~~~~~

After discovering that the Beta Theta Pi house’s cause for undergoing construction is a bad case of slipping foundation, it doesn’t take genius to figure that there’s probably a connection to their disappearing girl problems and the fact that the house is essentially sinking. Dean and the Impala manage to break into the basement-where it looks like some serious illegal shit is going down, by the way, but that’s not really any of their business-and before long, the pair manage to find a good sized hole behind a stack of empty kegs that is more than likely serving as the troll’s front door.

The smell kind of confirms it, because even amongst the stench of stale beer and unwashed laundry, Dean is pretty sure he can detect the familiar wafting scents of what amounts to a direct line into the sewer system.

As Dean climbs into the hole with a flashlight in his mouth and a shotgun loaded with consecrated iron bullets in his hands, he thinks it is a sad, sad thing when a man as freakishly handsome as himself has been forced to become so intimate with what a goddamned sewer smells like. How many guys as good looking as he is can say they’ve spent a whole lot of time tromping around pipes full of poo?

When he touches down at the bottom of the hole a few seconds later he frowns and shines the flashlight down a series of slimy tunnels, sending rats scurrying away from their foraging to avoid the ray of the beam.

“This is gross,” the Impala complains as he drops down onto the concrete beside Dean. Dean concurs, but it’s kind of uncool to say it out loud at a time like this.

“You’re free to go back if you want,” he tells the car. “Don’t let me keep you.”

The Impala brightens. “No way! You chose me, so I’m going to stay with you no matter what,” he says brightly. Then, shyly, “And soon you’ll see that I’m way more willing to show you how much I love you and appreciate you than that stuffy angel does.” Pause. Frown. “Why’d you even decide to go out with him anyway? You two barely touch each other.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, well, Cas’n me are understated and subtextual that way,” he mutters absently. “Now be quiet, we don’t wanna give this thing any warning.”

The Impala frowns, but Dean pulls out a copy of the map Sam had printed out for him earlier and heads down the route they’d highlighted in red pen earlier. Sam’s nerdishness is good for things sometimes. “This way. Stay close.”

The Impala happily creeps closer. And closer. And closer.

Dean sighs when he feels arms go around his waist and a chin settle on his shoulder. “Not that close,” he grits out.

The Impala sighs and lets go before taking a measured step back.

Dean keeps walking and hopes Sam appreciates the things he does for him.

~~~~~

But Sam, as per usual, is not properly appreciating the things Dean does for him at all- not at this very moment anyway-because Sam is busy dropping down a manhole behind a bar called The Blue Light Live and looking put out at the funky smells that attack him as he does.

Castiel is waiting at the bottom for him already, gazing off into the darkness with that Blue Steel expression of his. It looks like the smell doesn’t bother him, at least.

“Anything?” Sam asks, under his breath.

“It…stinks,” Castiel offers after a moment, like he’s not sure what Sam is asking when he uses the word anything. He furrows his brow again, in that humans are so imprecise, I hate it way of his.

Sam huffs and glances down the tunnel that is supposed to lead them back towards campus. “Right. You uh, you need a gun or anything? Dean said you were injured yesterday, or something.”

“If it is just a troll,” Castiel surmises, and looks down at his hands. “These should be enough.” He says it with such certainty that Sam can’t help but be impressed; Dean spends so much time joking and ribbing and coaxing Cas to eat things he has no interest in that sometimes Sam forgets how stupidly intimidating angels are supposed to be, even with theirs losing a little bit of his heavenly juice every day.

But the angel doesn’t seem particularly powerless right now, just grim and confident, and for a minute, Sam wonders if that’s why Cas is here with him instead of with Dean as per usual. He wouldn’t put it past his brother to plan for this.

Cas seems to get that too, so Sam doesn’t protest when Cas leads the way, Sam picking his way carefully down the dark tunnel while Castiel listens in that way that means he hears more than just rats and dripping water. Like he’s listening to the entire universe of the sewer, or something.

It is while they are plodding along through the darkness together like this that Sam finds himself asking, at random, “So I get why you and the Impala don’t get along now maybe, but what uh, what made you dislike each other you know, before?”

Castiel eyes Sam for a while, like he’s trying to figure out how to say this in terms Sam can appreciate. After a while, when Sam is about to give up on getting an answer, Castiel gives a sound in the back of his throat that sounds a lot like harrumph before he opens his mouth to respond. “The Impala was too young then to articulate to me the exact reasons for its dislike, but from what I was able to sense of its growing awareness, it seemed to be a…territorial issue.”

Sam blinks. “Territorial?”

“Upon my arrival I was too often transporting Dean to places via my own conveyance and leaving the car behind, I suspect.”

Sam considers this. “It was jealous you took Dean places?”

“Among other things,” Castiel murmurs dryly, like he can’t be expected to take a whelp like the Impala’s personal grievances with him seriously. Castiel is older than dirt, after all.

Sam wants to ask what other things there might be, but before he can, the angel goes dead still at a fork in the tunnels and holds up a hand for Sam to stop. “Cas?” he murmurs, under his breath.

Castiel doesn’t even blink for a good thirty seconds. Sam finds himself unconsciously holding his breath beside the angel.

And then, very abruptly, Sam yelps when Cas grabs him by the arm and throws him aside like he weighs nothing. Into a puddle. A puddle of ick. Gross.

Then, before Sam can demand “What the hell?!” properly to his brother’s angel, the wall beside them comes crashing inward.

~~~~~

For the most part the coast is clear except for the rats and the smell of poop, and as Dean warily navigates the tunnels towards the area they’d deemed as Most Likely To Be Home To Any Local Man-eating Cave Dwellers, he starts tapping the wall, looking for weaknesses or any gaps that might be missed by a casual observer. Some place for things to hide in.

Beside him, the Impala tries to mirror his movements, but after he accidentally busts a hole in the wall and ends up scratching his knuckles in the process, Dean just tells him to hang back so he won’t hurt himself (or bring the sewers down around Dean, though he doesn’t voice that part). The Impala, of course, looks touched and declares (in a whisper that might as well be a scream), “You always do hate it when I get scratched.”

Dean rolls his eyes but bites back any disparaging remarks about how he’s not so concerned with that right now when he spies a hastily erected wood and cement blockade condemning a section of the underground tunnels as dead-ended. When he looks at it, and then the map again, he feels a small smile of triumph curling at the corners of his mouth. “Bingo.”

He pockets his map and heads directly towards it. The Impala happily follows.

~~~~~

Sam feels kind of useless.

Then again, it’s not just a feeling.

But at the same time, Cas had told him to “Stay down,” just as the wall had basically imploded on top of the angel, revealing a not-quite ten foot tall troll with, as Sherry had intimated, beady eyes, thick, unwashed hair, and breath horrible enough to make Sam wish it was just good old poop down here after all.

Sam watches as Cas blocks a swipe of the troll’s giant, meaty hands and shoves, sending the creature staggering back. It blinks in surprise at the puny human’s unexpected strength, before growling and stumbling forward again with a gnashing of its large, blunt teeth.

Sam tries to aim his shotgun at the troll’s chest, but hesitates to fire because he’s not certain he can shoot without hitting the angel in the conditions of intermittent light they find themselves in. Plus, the two dueling supernatural beings are probably moving much faster than he can properly shoot. He’d just as likely hit Cas as the troll. And while he knows that won’t kill the angel, it definitely won’t help him either.

Sam winces when the troll manages to blindside Cas and send the angel flying into a bunch of pipes with a metallic crunch that means hours of poo-filled fun for the city’s water treatment maintenance workers, and while the angel winces and gets back to his feet groggily, it affords Sam the chance to take a couple of shots, one of which goes wide, but the other of which causes the troll to roar in pain. Sam isn’t sure what part of the monster he’d hit, but he figures in these conditions, a hit is a hit, and in any case, it gives Castiel the time he needs to shake himself off a little before striding forward again, looking irate.

“Enough!” Castiel booms, voice somehow drowning out the insensate cries of the troll in the dripping emptiness of the underground. He blocks a swipe of the monster’s massive hands with his forearm, whooshes right into the troll’s face, and touches two fingers to its chest with an impatient glare.

In the blink of an eye, both troll and angel disappear in a rush of feathers.

Leaving Sam alone in the sewers. He hastily staggers to his feet. “Cas?!” he cries, bewildered. He quickly makes his way back to the spot Cas had last been standing in and searches for any sign of the angel, despite knowing deep down that by now, Cas is probably hundreds of miles away. And here Dean had said he’d been injured.

“Okay then,” Sam sighs, and wonders if he should wait here for Castiel to report back or to push on towards the troll’s lair alone, in order to help Dean find a hopefully still living, if horribly frightened, Rhonda Burke.

Just as he’s resolved to head back down the path by himself, there is another rush of air and Castiel appears in front of him again, sending up a cloud of dust from the newly fallen debris before the angel stumbles slightly upon landing and Sam is obliged to catch him as best he can. “Cas?” he exhales, wide-eyed as Sam struggles to hold up the angel and keep from dropping his shotgun in the process. The angel feels alarmingly hot to the touch all of a sudden, enough to make the places where Sam is holding him up tingle unpleasantly. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Castiel rumbles, though he sounds more than weary and a little bit dazed when he does. He manages to keep his own feet though, and after a minute, shakes himself off and rolls his shoulders a little, as if they’re feeling kind of sore. After a hand-to-hand battle with a troll, Sam supposes they probably are.

“What did you do?” the younger Winchester can’t help but ask, as he looks the angel over for any obvious injuries (as Dean had taught him to do, because apparently, sometimes Castiel is bleeding and doesn’t notice it himself). “Where did you go?”

Cas blinks back at him, like he is trying to figure out why Sam is giving him such an odd look. “Dean intimated earlier that trolls turned to stone in the sun,” he answers after a beat, when Sam figures the angel’s as well off as can be told in a dark, rank smelling sewer.

Sam whistles. “Wow, so you uh… zapped him into the sunlight, huh?”

Castiel blinks at him some more. “I took him into the sun,” he corrects.

Sam’s brow furrows, because that’s what he’d said, hadn’t it?

A beat.

And then Sam whistles again, because he finally gets what the distinction is. “Wow. All the way to the sun? Really?”

Castiel seems grumpy as he too, realizes what has happened here. “If I had known that simple sunlight would suffice, I would have stopped there,” the angel mutters, before turning to head down the tunnel again. Sam tries not to be amused at the face Cas is making, the one that clearly says ugh human words. Clearly trips to the sun and back are kind of annoying when your wings are sore or whatever else is wrong with them.

Sam chuckles to himself quietly as Cas leads the way and is suddenly-not for the first time, mind-super happy that they have at least one an angel on their side.

~~~~~

The troll lair, Dean thinks, is exactly what he imagined a troll lair to be like.

It is stinky, and kind of dank, really dark, and full of rats that are busily scavenging the bones of victims 1-4.

Victim 4 is not quite finished yet. Which is gross and sad, but at the same time, a good sign, because when Dean finds what seems to be half a leg and about a third of a torso of troll-boy’s last meal, it means that Rhonda is probably still alive, strung up somewhere in here in storage for the next go around. A midnight snack or something. Midday, if trolls are nocturnal. Whatever.

The Impala crowds close behind Dean as they carefully poke around the space, Dean shining his flashlight beam in sweeping patterns and peeking into various caverns and nooks the troll seems to have dug out of the dirt and concrete, in order to store things like skulls and shiny trinkets and in one super creepy corner, teeth and hair and for some odd reason, a bunch of shoes.

It is while he is staring at this macabre collection of souvenirs that Dean hears the heavy tromping sound of approaching footsteps, and instantly wary, he motions the Impala back towards one of the darker corners, and aims his shotgun at the entrance. He shuts his flashlight off.

The footsteps stop at the mouth of the lair, and Dean can hear the creaking sound of the boards being moved, to reveal the very large hole that serves as the entrance to the troll’s cavern. Dean’s finger braces the trigger of his weapon as he keeps a steady bead on the entrance.

A hulking, inhumanely massive figure with gross hair and a pissy face ducks in.

But it is a completely familiar one.

“Dean?” Sam asks, as he pokes his head into the lair, not bothering t whisper. “You in here?”

Dean huffs a breath of relief and lowers his gun. “Yeah, Sammy. You find anything?”

“Cas ganked the troll,” Sam says simply, sounding completely at ease as he shines his own flashlight inside, in order to look around the cavernous room with its many offshoots in a mixture of horrified wonder.

Dean blinks when he hears of the troll’s demise. “What? Really? Already?” He shines his flashlight on his brother. “You okay?”

“Yeah, Dean, fine. Cas took care of it.”

Dean seems satisfied to hear that, while Cas follows Sam through the entrance a moment later, looking irate. “Cas?” Dean asks. “You okay?”

“You should be more specific about the sun and sunlight, Dean,” Cas says, by way of (fail) greeting.

That makes no sense to Dean. “Uh, what?” He wonders if Cas got troll-whacked upside the head. Those fuckers have some meat hooks on them. His angel could maybe have a concussion.

“This place is huge,” Sam murmurs randomly in the meantime, ignoring Dean’s confusion as he turns a full 360 degrees to take the lair in.

“Yeah, it’s very Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Dean agrees, while turning the beam of his flashlight away from Sam and onto Cas so that he can examine the rumpled angel warily. Fighting trolls sucks no matter who you are, and Cas is still injured or whatever from that skirmish with his brothers the other day. “Cas? You sure you’re okay?” he asks next, deliberately. “Remember that conversation we had last week about random bleeding and how you need to not do it?”

“I am fine,” Castiel intones, looking around the cavern as well and looking weary. “There is no blood.”

Dean nods and supposes he’ll have to be satisfied with that for now, though he’ll check the angel over more thoroughly later, because as far as he’s concerned, Cas is still kind of hopeless about this losing-his-grace-in-bits-and-pieces thing and sometimes forgets that as he grows weaker, he can’t just ignore things like cuts and bullets and stab wounds as readily as he might have in days of yore. Though, belatedly, a thought occurs to Dean. “How’d you gank it down here anyway? You facepalm it and set it on holy fire?”

“No,” Castiel says, but doesn’t move to elaborate.

“He flew to the sun and dropped the troll into it, Dean,” Sam explains for him. “You really should be more specific next time.” Then Sam lowers his voice. “I don’t think he was happy to make the trip.”

Dean blinks. “What? The sun? Really?” Then he frowns at Cas. “I thought we weren’t doing any taxing journey stuff with your wings while they healed.”

Sam frowns too. “Is it really that bad?”

“So that’s why he won’t go away,” the Impala realizes, and earns a glare from the angel.

“Don’t be a dick,” Dean admonishes the car, before turning to Cas again. “You didn’t fuck up your wings worse by flying into outer space, did you?”

Castiel looks vaguely sheepish. “I will be fine so long as I don’t do that again,” he says, evasively. “We should find Rhonda Burke.”

Dean feels weirdly guilty about this whole thing even though he hadn’t even been there, but tells himself he’ll work on being less vague in the future. In the meantime, Cas has a point. He focuses. “So we found leftovers of the last victim a few minutes ago; I’m hoping the fact that there were still leftovers at all means our guy hasn’t killed Rhonda yet.”

Sam huffs. “Hopefully.”

Dean doesn’t dwell on it as he peers into the massive lair. “You’n Cas take that side, me’n the Impala will take this one, call if you find anything?”

Sam nods, Castiel doesn’t say anything, and the Impala does some more of his preening, because he clearly takes Dean’s unwillingness to trade partners even now as a sign that things are going swimmingly and that Cas and Dean are going to break up at any second. Dean just wishes his car would stop skipping places. Skipping is one of those things you can never take back. Once you do it, those cool points are gone forever.

Cas rolls his shoulders, gives Dean an unreadable look in the dark, and follows quietly after Sam.

~~~~~

It just figures that on Dean’s side of things, he finds he girl. Sam thinks this is God’s way of making things fair or something (though he’s not sure if he even believes in God or fair anymore). Sam’s the tall, smart one, and Dean’s the pretty, charming one who girls are happy to see after they’ve been kidnapped and chained up like animals for a few days. Not that Sam thinks he’s ugly or anything; he just kind of has a disproportionately large forehead. Dean not-so-secretly calls it caveman brow, and brings it up whenever Sam smirks at his brother for being slightly bow-legged.

Anyway, the point of this is that even though Sam and Cas were the ones who’d come across the troll earlier, and did all the hard parts (mostly Cas), Dean is the one who gets all the good parts in the end anyway, when he finds (and saves) the girl.

Sam, on the opposite end of the cave, gets other things.

“Got her!” Dean shouts from somewhere in the distance, when he does find Rhonda. His voice echoes off the cave walls with relief. “She’s okay.” And Sam can tell from his tone that when he says okay, he means relatively.

This-of course- is the exact moment when Sam and Cas run into troll number two.

That’s right, there are two. Sam thinks he’d read an article about how sometimes trolls live in mother/son units and eat people together like a wholesome troll family. It’s all very Beowulf or something, but he hadn’t put much stock in the source because it might have been Wikipedia. He also can’t tell if this second troll is the mother or the son.

Not that it matters which one it is, because while Dean is busy saying reassuring things to a barely conscious Rhonda and the Impala is ripping the chains out of the floor that are keeping her locked up, Sam is on the other side of the lair fighting it. Or, to be more accurate, nearly getting blindsided by it, as this one is actually ten feet tall and somehow, impossibly, much angrier than the first one had been.

Maybe it knows that Sam and Cas had killed its son or mom or whichever the first one had been.

It shrieks and goes right for Sam’s head, which kind of confirms his suspicions.

He manages to duck that initial blow but drops his gun and his flashlight in the process, which, he supposes, is fine, because he has to puts his arms up to block the second punch anyway, even though he knows, just knows, the impact is probably going to shatter some bones and leave him a very unhappy Winchester for a very long time.

But it doesn’t.

Not from lack of trying, but rather, from an excess of Castiel.

An angel’s blade glints bright even in the darkness of the cave and cuts deeply into the troll’s thick arm, Castiel blocking the swipe one-handed while using his free arm to shove Sam out of the way for the second time that day. Cries from the distance signal Dean and the Impala’s hasty approach.

Sam hits the ground while the troll bellows and reaches forward with its uninjured hand, clamping it down around the angel’s throat and lifting him off the ground.

The troll throws Cas into the wall with a crunch and Sam winces because that had sounded like it hurt, and he sure hopes Cas’s wings hadn’t gotten even more fucked up than they probably already were, or something. Knowing the poor guy’s luck with Winchesters, they probably did.

Sam scrambles around on the ground like a winner, trying to find his shotgun and be a little less of the damsel in distress in this story. It doesn’t really work.

Mostly because Dean and the Impala show up right about then, an unconscious Rhonda in the car’s arms as Dean levels a shot at the bellowing troll bearing down on his brother. He wings the creature just enough to draw its attention away from Sam, giving Sam time to roll out of the way and keep from being stomped on. Sam’s shotgun though, not so lucky. Clearly he is just meant to be useless in this fight.

“Sam?!” Dean shouts, and fires again in the vicinity of the giant shadowy monster screaming a lot.

“I’m okay!” Sam hastens to say.

“Cas?!”

“Alive,” Castiel’s voice croaks from Sam’s left, as he peels himself away from the wall with Sam’s help.

The troll lumbers straight towards Dean. Who needs to reload.

There is no time, so Dean prepares to swing the shotgun like a club and hold the thing off until Cas can regain his equilibrium and dive in to save damsel-y Winchester number two. “Cas!”

But then the Impala gets in his way.

“I can handle this!” the car declares boldly, clearly irate that Cas’s name had been the first one called when Dean needs help. He squares his very broad shoulders from there and rams right into the troll head on, sending it staggering backwards. The Impala punches it in the ribs a few times in the interim, driving it back bit by bit, at least until Dean is safely out of its monstrous wingspan and can reload his weapon.

Dean could almost be grateful for the reprieve, except he knows he’d told his car to take Rhonda and watch over her. Rhonda, very clearly, is no longer with the Impala. She is in fact, propped up against a wall beside the remains of the last victim and very much alone. That’s just shoddy work right there. Amateur stuff.

“Goddammit,” Dean mutters, and hastily reloads while the Impala makes a show of taking the troll head on like he’s fucking Gaston from that Disney movie Sam was balls over when he was like ten.

“It’s not that strong, Dean!” the car calls back to him over his shoulder confidently, trying to sound cheerful as he grapples with the monster, ignoring the raw meat stench of its breath and clearly hoping that Dean can see how cool he looks from this angle. “I can take it on in my sleep! I can…”

The troll wraps its arms around the Impala in an uncomfortable looking bear hug. “Hey!”

“Fuck,” Dean says, and can’t get a bead on the troll without possibly hitting the car. As annoying as the Impala has been in the last day, it’s still his car. And you know, currently alive.

The Impala kicks and struggles admirably in the troll’s grasp while Dean looks for an opening, but pretty soon the troll is lifting the car over its head and getting ready to pitch it in a way that Dean is pretty sure won’t end well for anyone, mostly because the Impala is still essentially a giant honking piece of compacted metal.

The troll doesn’t care, it just throws the Impala. Dean’s eyes widen in horror when he sees what the troll is throwing the Impala at. “Sam, get out of the way!”

The sound of an impact and the crash of dirt and rock and cement make the entire structure shudder around them when the Impala hits, sending debris falling from the ceiling and making Dean’s heart jump into his throat in the dark.

“Sam?!” he screams, and for a moment, forgets everything, forgets the troll, the girl, the collapsing ceiling, the end of the world. “Sammy!?”

And then tinny croak of, “I’m okay, Dean!” makes Dean stagger in relief.

Meanwhile, the Impala lies in a dazed pile on the floor, the impact against the wall having been absorbed by an angel-shaped cushion that had somehow, grabbed him mid-air and managed to alter their trajectory, if not their velocity.

Incredulous, the car looks down at the bloodied angel beside him as he coughs and tries to scrabble to his feet. The Impala is perfectly unharmed.

“What are you doing?!” He demands, and sounds completely boggled by the fact that his rival is doing stupid things like saving his ass when they’re supposed to be rivals. “You aren’t supposed to save me!” It obviously makes him look really bad in Dean’s eyes when that happens. The Impala doesn’t seem to notice that Dean isn’t paying attention to him. Since, you know, there is still a troll.

The angel just gives the Impala this tired, irritated look before staggering to his feet again, managing to lean against the wall for support while, in the background, the sound of Dean’s shot finding the troll’s chest causes another earth-shaking roar that sends dirt and rock tumbling from the beleaguered ceiling.

And then, with a soft rustling of air, the angel-and the troll-are both suddenly gone.

Silence reigns in the cavern for a moment.

And then Dean’s angry, “Son of a bitch!” shatters the quiet as the Impala gets to his feet and Dean stomps over towards him and Sam and the Castiel-shaped crater in the wall that he’d thought was his splattered brother a few second ago. The Impala tries to look cool, and not like he had when he’d been a crumpled, somewhat dazed heap on the floor next to Castiel.

“I’m fine, Dean!” he insists, when the beam of Dean’s flashlight settles on him. “Don’t worry.”

Dean scowls and ignores him, swinging the beam around to his dirt-covered brother. “Sam? You okay?” It takes him two strides before he’s at his brother’s side and checking him over, leaving the Impala to stand sheepishly on the edge of everything, completely unattended.

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam huffs, and gets to his feet. “I thought I was screwed for a second there, but then Cas saved my ass,” he admits. “Again.” Sam is torn between sounding grateful and irritated with himself. Today is just not the guy’s day.

Some of the tension in Dean’s shoulders leaves when he confirms that Sam is indeed, unharmed, and he slumps forward slightly, hand still on Sam’s shoulder. “Yeah, well, remind me to buy Cas a drink when he gets back,” Dean murmurs, voice painfully fond. Then he pauses and frowns. “God, I hope that dumbass didn’t fly to the sun again,” he murmurs, and his voice goes tense with irritated worry at the thought. He runs a tired hand through his hair, before remembering the Impala.

“What about you?” he asks tersely, in afterthought.

The Impala forces a smile, but doesn’t feel any actual happiness behind Dean’s question. “Fine,” he says quickly. “Everything’s fine.”

Dean scowls. “Next time, when I tell you to freaking stay with the girl, stay with the girl,” he says, and for the first time in thirty years, the Impala feels that being the sole object of Dean’s scrutiny is strangely uncomfortable. “We don’t just leave civilians alone like that.”

Luckily, before Dean can get really angry with him, a familiar sounding puff of air signals Castiel’s return.

Castiel, who staggers and nearly hits the ground before Dean manages to catch him in his arms. “Cas!” That concern is back again, the same look on his face when he’d feared for Sam echoing in his expression as he holds the angel against his side. “Jesus, what’d you do? You didn’t fly to the sun again, did you?”

The angel, bleeding from the nose and covered in dust, somehow manages to fight through the pain enough to look grumpy at Dean. “Sunlight,” he explains to Dean, like Dean is so stupid it’s kind of precious.

Dean sighs. “You okay?”

Castiel nods. “I will be okay,” he says very specifically, and to prove it, manages to stand under the power of his own weight again. Dean watches him and Castiel watches Dean watch him, and after a minute, some of the tension loosens from around Dean’s eyes and he reaches out to squeeze the angel’s shoulder. “Thanks, Cas,” he murmurs, with a quick, sideways look at Sam, who is doing his best to stand off to the side and be unobtrusive for whatever reason.

“You’re welcome,” Castiel answers simply, not bothering to lower his voice like Dean had. The Impala fidgets and looks like he suddenly wants to do the same thing Sam is, to fade off into the background for a little bit and be comfortably invisible. He feels like he’s eavesdropping on something important maybe, like he’s somehow superfluous when the two of them stand side by side like that.

Part of the Impala-even as new and untested in the waters of humanity as he is-understands that maybe everything that had happened between him and Dean today only happened because to Dean, they didn’t matter at all.

Then Castiel breaks the spell by shaking himself off a little bit and squinting into the darkness right past the Impala. A quiet, startled groan from the depths of the cave makes the Impala jump a bit, reminding him that he’d forgotten everything Dean had told him to do just a little while ago because he’d been too determined to prove himself useful to the owner who had loved him so faithfully for so many years.

“We should return Rhonda Burke to the surface,” Castiel says. Suddenly, under the angel’s unfaltering eyes, luminous even in such a dark, dank place, the Impala feels sheepish and incredibly, impossibly young. “She is waking.”

“I’ll carry her,” the car offers after a moment, voice carefully subdued.

Dean gives him an odd look, and the Impala must appear completely miserable even in the darkness, because after a moment, Dean huffs and nods. “Yeah, okay,” he says. He lets the Impala walk up in front.

He lets Castiel follow, always just a few steps behind his and Sam’s backs.

The Impala is beginning to learn which of them is more important to Dean Winchester.

~~~~~

That afternoon, after dropping off a tearful Rhonda at the hospital and getting hold of Sherry to let her know her best friend has been recovered safely, Dean drags them all back to the hotel and sends Sam off on food duty while he demands to look at Castiel’s back and shoulders.

“I am fine, Dean,” the angel say stubbornly, though Dean manhandles him onto the bed anyway and persists in wanting to check him over himself.

“Dude, you cartoon-crushed a rock wall on impact. I can’t help you with whatever’s wrong with your wings, but I can at least save your mojo the trouble of stitching up the smaller stuff,” Dean insists.

“Just bruises and scrapes,” Castiel sighs. “If I rest, they will mend themselves.”

Dean just stares at him, chin raised stubbornly.

Castiel blinks back at him and obviously doesn’t know what that look means.

The Impala watches them, feels miserable in his clothes from the corner, and tells them that he’ll be outside. He doesn’t want to break any more of their stuff, especially since the cleaning ladies had left a note about paying for damages to the dresser earlier.

“Yeah, okay. Don’t wander off too far,” Dean throws cursorily over his shoulder at the Impala before crossing his arms and going back to trying to Winchester Menace an angel.

It must work, because after a moment, Castiel slumps a little and shrugs out of his trench coat.

The Impala closes the door behind him and thinks that neither of them even notice when he leaves.

~~~~~

A little while later, Sam finds the Impala idling in the parking lot of the motel, kicking rocks around and curiously inspecting some of the other cars from a safe distance. “Uh, everything okay?” Sam offers after a second, taking in the dejected bent of the former car’s shoulders and the way he frowns at a Dodge Charger parked in the lot like it’s his mortal enemy or something.

“Fine. Hi Sam.” The Impala does his best to appear chipper. “I was just…” he trails off and gestures vaguely to the other cars. “None of them are as well taken care of as I was.”

Sam snorts, shifting a fast food bag in one hand. “Yeah, well. Dean’s always been, uh…special about that,” the younger Winchester offers lamely. “You, uh, you wanna come in and eat? I don’t know what you or Cas like, but I got all the basics, and Dean is probably starved by now.”

The Impala looks reluctant. “Being in the same room with those two is kind of suffocating,” he admits, after a moment.

Sam grins, like he knows exactly what the Impala means. “Yeah, well, you can’t let that get to you,” he says after a second. “If I did I’d be throwing things at them, like, all the time.”

The Impala sighs. “What’s even worse is that I can’t even be mean to stupid Castiel anymore,” he gripes, crouching down on his heels and resting his elbows on his thighs. He stares at the dirt forlornly. “He hurt himself saving me. He doesn’t even like me.” The Impala runs his hands through his hair in an incredibly human gesture.

Sam coughs. “Yeah, well,” he starts, sympathetic. “If it makes you feel any better, he definitely didn’t do it for your sake.”

The words don’t have the effect that the younger Winchester had intended; the Impala’s expression gets even more wounded. “It was for yours.”

Sam huffs. “Yeah, try not to sound so broken up about that.”

The Impala looks sheepish. “No, it’s not that I wanted you to get hurt,” he insists, backpedaling quickly. “You mean a lot to me too.” Pause. “It’s just… I get it now.”

Sam’s brow furrows. “Get what?”

“Everything. I was so stupid… I was ecstatic when Dean chose to go with me instead of Castiel; I kept thinking it meant I was winning, and that he’d forget that stupid angel in the lame trench coat and come be with me.” He dredges a finger in the dirt despondently. “Now I know all it meant was he doesn’t trust me with his most important thing in the world.”

Sam flushes at the exact same time he gets it, what Cas had been talking about earlier when he’d said he was glad Dean hadn’t picked him. “Oh,” he says out loud, and isn’t sure what else to say to that.

“Yeah,” the Impala echoes, with a deep, defeated sigh.

Sam coughs. “Well, uh, I think Cas kinda likes me now too, so he might not have entirely caught you for Dean’s sake earlier.”

“Just mostly,” the Impala manages, with a small, sad smile.

Sam grins back. “Yeah, probably. Cas has a freaky obsession with doing whatever Dean needs him to, I guess.” Sam pauses then, and lowers his voice. “To be honest, I’m glad I’m not the one who has that weight on his shoulders anymore, man. Dean can be pretty demanding. You should, uh, you should look on it as a good thing.” It is lame, but the fact that Sam is even attempting does make the Impala feel a little better. Dean had barely even remembered to look at him the last few hours.

Sam shuffles a bit, adjusts the fast food bag in his arms again. “So…food?” he offers, after a moment of silence passes between them. “Dean is pretty sure no one can hate a Big Mac, so I grabbed a couple extra of those. You and Cas can make peace over the world’s worst fast food, or something.”

The Impala frowns slightly. “Peace?”

Sam falters. “Well, yeah. I mean. It’d be nice, and after everything that happened…” he trails off. “No peace?”

“We’ll see.” The Impala smiles crookedly. “But I do like Big Macs,” he adds quickly, getting to his feet again. “Sometimes you and Dean would smell like them while you rode me.”

Sam gives him a weird look. “Uh, look man,” he says, after a beat. “Now that you’re human, you probably want to be less creepy about the things you say to people.”

The Impala blinks. “Was that creepy?”

“So creepy,” Sam agrees as he pushes the hotel room door open. “C’mon.”

Buoyed, the Impala follows.

~~~~~

There isn’t peace over dinner exactly, but there is at the very least, an unspoken truce, as Dean grins and tells Cas to eat the Big Mac, become one with the Big Mac, love the Big Mac.

“I do not like the special sauce,” Castiel says, though once he’s scraped it off, enjoys the burger enough. Dean laughs, makes some inappropriate jokes involving said special sauce that Castiel obviously doesn’t get but that everyone can appreciate in their own way, if only for the way Dean grins, eyes sparkling so that the Impala is suddenly reminded of some years ago, when his master had been very young and smiles like that one had come more easily to him.

Then, after the food is done and the trash disposed of, Sam breaks off to calculate their funds versus their expenses because Dean is hopeless at that (not because he’s bad at it but because it bores him), while Dean begins the methodical task of cleaning and maintaining their weapons. John Winchester mandated a law that this is to be done religiously before and after every hunt, and at least once a week in between hunts. This includes popping the hood of the Impala and making sure everything is ready to go, but tonight Dean just eyes the car warily for a second before sighing and turning back to the impressive array of guns, knives, crossbows, and salt rounds neatly laid out on the table in front of him. The atmosphere around both brothers speaks of leaving them be to do their rituals. That, even in his short stint as a human, is something that the former car has been able to pick up on very quickly when it comes to his humans.

So, with nothing to do, the Impala excuses himself outside a little after that, citing that he would like some fresh air and a view of the stars he’s grown accustomed to falling asleep under.

No one stops him.

~~~~~

It isn’t until late that night when humans are asleep that Castiel appears in front of the loitering car again, as the Impala makes needlessly challenging gestures at a Ford without a soul and a Honda that is too new to even have any semblance of awareness yet.

“They cannot hear you,” Castiel points out to the Impala after a moment of watching this strange procedure.

The Impala whirls at the sound of his voice, manages a glare that is just as ineffective to the angel as his earlier posturing had been to the other cars.

“Shouldn’t you be inside, with Dean?” the Impala asks somewhat accusatorily, like Castiel has abandoned his post somehow, by coming out to the parking lot.

“Dean is asleep and has told me on numerous occasions that he finds it unsettling when I watch him all night,” Castiel explains after letting out a huff of irritated air. “I do not understand why he feels this way, considering I have seen every inch of his soul, but he is adamant. I thought I might come out here instead, and ask if you had sustained any injuries from our collision earlier today.”

The Impala does not bother to hide his suspicion. “Why?”

“Because while Dean is very good at determining whether you are fully functional in car form, I doubt he is so inclined to do so when you are…as you are.”

The Impala growls in frustration; it is very much in the same way Dean does when he feels irked by things Castiel has done. And just like all those times, Castiel has no idea what he has done to warrant irritation with Dean’s car this time.

“No, I mean, why do you care?” The former car clarifies, looking confused. “Why did you even care enough to do what you did earlier? You should have let that troll smash me into the wall.”

Ah. Castiel tilts his head sideways slightly, studying the Impala’s hunched over posture as he thinks about his answer. “Dean would have been very sad to see you hurt, whatever form you may be in,” Castiel reports after a moment, very matter-of-factly. “I… did not wish to see him sad, if it was in my power to prevent it.”

The Impala sighs in relief at that, like he is glad that he was not saved for his own sake. “Good,” he mutters out loud. “Because I wouldn’t want us to become friends or anything.”

“Of course not,” Castiel answers, obligingly. This earns him a slight glare. He decides he understands cars even less than he understands people. “I was simply stating that all that matters to me is Dean’s safety and his well being. If you being intact coincides with those things, then so be it. As I am now, I can only hope to be of use to him in some capacity until I can no longer be.”

Eventually, the Impala just huffs in laughter. “So what you’re saying is, if I loved him as much as you did, I’d do the same thing and do whatever it takes to be useful to him.”

Castiel blinks. “I did not say that.”

The Impala snorts. “You didn’t have to. I know what you’re getting at.”

That is when Castiel decides this conversation is pointless. He has to forcibly remind himself that he is talking to an infant, a newborn, and that a certain amount of stupidity can thus be expected in the Impala’s thought processes. He finds he has less and less patience to deal with it as his grace wanes however.

So he wordlessly turns around and goes back inside. He knows if he is quiet enough, Dean and Sam will not wake, and if he faces the wall away from Dean for the rest of the evening, perhaps he will not be so irate about being watched all night like Cas is a crazy “stalker” in the morning.

“Good talk,” the Impala tells him from over his shoulder, as he leaves. The car sounds mostly facetious, though he does pause to give the angel a searching, thoughtful sort of look as he does.

Castiel silently shuts the motel room door behind him.

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