The black smoke came first. It was not a demon, but it was familiar. Too familiar, though Dean thought he'd forgotten the smell decades ago.
After that, came the fire. The orange tongues crawling under their bedroom door, creeping toward their bed and climbing up the walls around them.
But they escaped, Cas and he, to the cool, night air and the neighbors crowding the sidewalk before their home.
Their home being devoured by flames.
And nothing Dean could do about it. He only burned his hands when he tried.
But the pain isn't why his shoulders tremble as they watch. It's not why his heart is pounding and it's so damn hard to breathe.
"We're both okay, Dean," Cas says trying to comfort him, his voice weak, "that's what matters."
"I know," Dean tries to say but no sound comes out.
Because he's four years old again and he's carrying his little brother out of the last home he'd know for a long time. He's losing his mom and his childhood and his life once again. There are people around and sirens and firefighters trying their best to save something, anything, as if they had that power.
And there's a strong arm dragging him away, though his body's frozen, and there's a voice begging him to get his palms checked. Then a woman applies something to his burns and wraps them and then at least this pain subsides.
It takes a long time for water to drown out the fire, for the crowd to clear out, but Cas holds Dean in his arms all the while, assuring him they're gonna be fine.
—
From the outside the house looks almost the same, that is, if Dean ignores the soot painted over the windows.
"Are you sure we should go in?" Cas's palm rests on the doorknob.
Dean still lingers a few steps behind, forcing himself not to glance inside through the broken windows. There's tension in his body he cannot hide.
"You heard the inspector, the construction's solid."
"Dean," Cas says, voice soft.
Dean just shrugs. He knows that's not what Cas meant. Is he ready to see everything they've built together turned to ash? Probably not. But he's gonna walk in there anyway.
"We've a mess to clean up."
Cas accepts the answer and opens the door. They enter the corridor, all black walls and ceiling and the remains of the carpet melted to the floor. The fire started in the kitchen and spread across the house, a fireman said. There they don't even go, not now.
Dean takes a deep breath as he gets to the bedroom door — where the fire nearly sealed their fate. It's just as Dean imagined: what wasn't destroyed by fire, the water damage finished off.
Cas moves close beside him, his fingers wrap loosely around Dean's wrist. "You think anything can be salvaged?"
"Some clothes, maybe," Dean says, pointing to only half digested wardrobe. "The pictures and documents were—" he cuts off.
He kneels before the black remains of the cabinet. With his fresh, white bandages, he unceremoniously sweeps the piles of paper ash to the floor, reaches deeper, a desperate murmur of please, please, please on his lips. Finally his fingers stumble on a familiar feel of leather. Gently, he tries to pull it out, but even then the pages crumble in his hand.
"Of course," Dean mutters, not even trying to flip through the sad remains of dad's journal.
Cas gives out a tiny, dismayed moan at the same time. He pulls a tan fabric out of the wardrobe, or at least something that used to be tan. Or fabric.
Dean smiles at him sadly pointing at the big hole left of Cas's trademark coat.
"Hey, here's the bright side," he jokes lightly.
Cas ignores him.
He stops rummaging only for a second, to point to the wrinkled leather cover in Dean's hand.
"Is that—?"
Dean nods and waves it off, just to not make a big deal out of this.
"I'm so sorry," Cas still says.
"It's fine."
There's no point crying over it now. He hasn't even pulled the thing out of there for years. The photographs, though — those he doesn't want to think about. He can't think about.
Not now, when Cas's hands begin to furiously work on finding something, anything that got spared by the flames and heat. And Dean knows what he's doing, how it's not about Cas, not even about that damned coat, because Cas never even cared about things. Instead, he goes through Dean's clothes and Dean's drawers and Dean's vinyl collection. But comes out empty but for some insignificant junk.
Because Dean does care. He didn't use to, when all he had was what he could fit in his bag and in the trunk of his car. But then he got his own room and then his own house and he finally had space for collections of things other than rifles. For the records and the vintage gramophone and his favorite books and a bit too many clothes and an amazing set of non-stick pans and a freakin' guitar.
But none of that matters now. He's already bid his things a quiet farewell on that first night in a motel.
"Hey, Cas!" he says, walking up to Cas from behind, rests his chin on Cas's shoulder and wraps arms around him just to stop his fervent search. "It's okay, babe."
Cas doesn't fight. Doesn't seem to have that much fight in him. "I can't believe everything—"
"We're alive. And they're just things," he assures him, swaying their bodies gently in the middle of the ruin of their home. "And furniture. And the wallpaper we didn't even like."
That, at last, earns him a chuckle.
"And we've been planning to swap the bedroom with the office for ages," Dean goes on. "'Cause you wanted more light."
He's not as fine as he sounds, not really. He's still pissed that it happened to them, because of course they can never catch a break.
But just because they lost all their belongings, doesn't mean that they lost everything.
"Next few weeks are gonna suck, sure, but we're gonna come on top." He huffs a laugh preceding his own brilliant thought, "Promise, we're gonna rise—"
"If you say rise from the ashes, I will kick your ass," Cas warns him.
Dean lets out a salve of laughter as he squeezes Cas even tighter. After all this nightmare it seems like that's all they both needed.
They are gonna rise.
Despite the warning, he leans close to Cas's ear.
"Like a freakin' phoenix, baby."