The Black Album
CH 1
by: Jack Hawksmoor
They could have tried to make it to the car. They didn't. A '99 Problems' Destiel AU.
Dean had only three rounds left in the shotgun, and he'd lost the knife when they'd taken Sam. He was aware that he was rocking the post-fight shakiness too early, that his guts were churning and he was breathing too hard and that he probably ought to be ashamed of himself for pussing out like this. After all, it was just more demons on earth than he'd ever seen in his whole life. No biggie.
Dean dragged the barn door shut behind him and caught a breath, his eyes darting left and right, searching the darkness. He couldn't have more than a minute before they figured out where he was. Or at least smelled the blood leaking out of the gash in his thigh. He knew he couldn't stay and that he would need every scrap of surprise on his side that he could get if he was going to try and take the house. With three salt rounds.
Dean laughed, once, under his breath, and pushed the thought away. No time to get hysterical.
The house was where they would have Sam. That's where he'd bring Sam, if he were them. Space to work on him.
He'd never seen so many demons all together.
Dean dug his cellphone out of his pocket and looked at it. No messages. He crammed it back into his pocket without making any calls. He'd pretty much lost hope on that front, anyway.
Cas hadn't answered his phone in weeks. Not since he got the news about daddy not giving a shit. Dean had hoped he was just...dealing. When he'd left he'd looked like someone had shot his puppy. Dean had figured he'd need some time. But...
Fuck. Maybe Castiel was dead.
He edged his way over to the side door, cracked it open with shotgun ready. The yard between the barn and the house was eerily clear. It looked like the demons had retreated inside. Softly, Dean hummed a few bars of 'Suicide Solution' under his breath.
There was no one around to get pissy at him for it being in bad taste. Or to look hopelessly confused by the reference, either. He sighed, lowering the gun slightly. Dean looked at the ceiling for a minute, uncertain.
"Cas," Dean said, because at a time like this, honestly, screw formality, "I dunno what's gonna happen here but," he took a breath. "If you're out there to get this I got a sneaking suspicion Zach's going to be hunting my sweet ass in heaven pretty soon. So." He squared his shoulders, nodding to himself. "I'll hold out, long as I can, man. Do your best down here." He paused. God, that was a lame last message. "Good luck," he added, sounding even lamer.
Dean shook his head. What the hell. He wasn't a Hallmark card, damn it.
There was a crashing from behind him, the sound of metal and wood tangling up with a body.
Dean whipped around, the shotgun brought up straight and even, braced at his shoulder, finger on the trigger.
"I told you," said a familiar deep voice, dropped down even rougher and lower than normal, as if the person in question had just rolled out of bed and chugged a glass of road gravel, "not to pray to me."
Something else clanged together, and there was a muffled, strange, 'oof' noise. The sound of stumbling in a dark, hazard-filled barn.
"Cas?" Dean said, lowering the shotgun, relieved enough at the prospect that he maybe wasn't going to die that the weirdness of Cas tripping over anything didn't immediately penetrate.
He wouldn't have to face up to the thought that if he did get stuck up in heaven, this time he didn't think he was going to be able to give Zachariah's ugly douchebag face much of a fight.
"I told you," Cas repeated, but it was quieter, sort of annoyed. As if he was muttering to himself about some idiot he knew.
That was weird enough to get Dean to make a face at him, and stare.
"I'm not the only angel that can hear prayers, you know-" Cas continued, stepping closer and further into view-only to fall over something else in the dark. Whatever-it-was made a hollow noise, and a second later, an empty bucket skidded to a halt at Dean's feet.
Dean looked down at it. It declined to give him any answers. He looked up at Cas, who was picking himself up, looking annoyed. And kind of...wobbly.
Cas spread his hands, slumping under an exasperated sigh. "Why are you in a barn?" he asked, as if this was one of the mysteries of the universe. He was squinting at Dean. Like Dean was out of focus or something.
Dean gaped at him for a mute moment. "Are you drunk?" I don't freaking believe this.
Cas rubbed at his face in a distracted way that was pretty pathetically obvious. At least to somebody like Dean, who'd been almost a professional drunk several times in his adult life. "We don't have time for this," Cas said, slurring slightly as his words ran together. "We have to get out of here. My brothers could have heard you." He stopped, as if finally noticing something was wrong. "Where's Sam?" he asked, frowning.
Dean felt everything good and kind and nice run out of him. "About that," he said icily, as if it was Cas' fault. He reached over, grabbed Cas by a handful of tan trenchcoat, and dragged him over to the door. Cas tripped over his own feet a bit, and now that Dean was close enough he absolutely reeked of booze, but Dean got him there. He cracked the door open, and showed him the house.
"Demons," he said, softly. "They got Sam in there." They wouldn't kill him. They couldn't kill him. They needed his ass for Lucifer. They needed him whole, so he could say yes.
"How many?" Cas asked, his eyes narrowing. His lips tightened, and his chin jutted out a little. Dean relaxed, just a bit, recognizing the expression. Smashed or not, Cas could do tactics.
Dean lifted his eyebrows and let out a breath of something kind of like laughter. "Thirty? Maybe more."
Cas nodded in his usual morose way and let out a puff of air through his lips. "O-kay," he said, shoving ice down Dean's spine.
He'd heard that hopeless, beat-down, my-life-is-shit tone of voice out of Cas' mouth before, in a piece of crap future where everything sucked, especially Dean. But he had thought that he wouldn't ever hear it again. Hoped he wouldn't.
Not so soon...
So he was stuck for a minute, staring at Cas in some kind of hellish flash-forward freakout. And in that frozen moment, Cas did something drunk and stupid.
He touched the end of the barrel of Dean's gun, lifting it up and looking at it as if it was fascinating. At the three whole rounds inside it. "I like your plan," Cas said, in a slow, overly affectionate tone of voice Dean knew quite well from every dive bar at closing time. Then Cas reached for his forehead.
Oh, shit-
Dean did not quite duck out of the way in time. He found himself flinching into a kitchen counter, and had to work not to bash his face on it. He turned around, and saw Cas staring at him with a satisfied and slightly sleepy look on his face that was almost surreal in its utter absence of sobriety. God, this hunt was insane. Dean shot him an incredulous look, and then attempted to silently promise terrible retribution in the future with his expression alone. Demons in the house, and everything. Cas just tilted his head and stared at him.
That look always worked better on Sam, anyway. It would work on him again, once Dean had killed every black-eyed bastard in this house that had even looked at Sam funny.
Then two demons walked in through the hallway, and Cas quite calmly reached out and pulled the iron skillet off the stovetop despite the fact that he wasn't facing the hallway and hadn't even looked at them. There was a casual violence to the action that was pretty awesome.
Cas was facing him, and Dean met his eyes briefly as he rested the barrel of the shotgun on Cas' shoulder, then flicked his focus away as he fired at the closest demon. The gunshot was twice as loud as usual, in the little tiled kitchen. The barrel was two inches from Cas' ear, but he didn't blink. He didn't take his eyes off Dean, either.
There was a breath of air and that funny angelic reality hiccup that looked like the world just had a small stroke. Then Cas was beside the other demon, swinging the skillet in a wide arc that was impressive before it took the head clean off. Cas looked up, blood on his face.
There was something strange and dark and wrong in Dean, that he found that so compelling.
"They are making a call," Cas said, his eyes on something not in the room with them.
"Ri-crap," Dean finished, because he wasn't in the kitchen anymore, he was in the basement, and about a dozen demons were turning to look at him. Sammy was there, gagged and tied up right in the middle, looking sweaty and pissed and uncomfortable but otherwise intact. There was a woman on the floor in front of Sam with her throat slit. She was definitely not intact. One of the demons was holding a silver bowl that he'd seen before.
Cas stepped in front of him, sort of idly hefting the iron pan in his hand in a way that was threatening and weirdly hot. The pan was still dripping. Unfortunately, the basement was dirt, and uneven, and Cas was still drunk as hell even if he was a dangerous freaking instrument of holy wrath. He tripped. Which kinda spoiled the moment.
"Are you kidding me?" One of the demons said, scorn heavy in her voice.
Dean aimed at her first, though there were others closer. "Not really," he said, and shot her in the face.
Then Cas got his feet under him. There was a flutter, space bent for a second in a way that was slightly nauseating to look at, and then Cas was abruptly standing in the middle of them. The silver bowl went flying, the blood inside it spilling wasted on the floor. Dean racked the shotgun and took a step as the demons started screaming and cursing.
That was as far as he got before one of them waved an arm and pinned him against the wall.
He scraped a table as he went-demon powers were no joke-and banged his head good as he landed, flat and helpless, his ribs squeezing unpleasantly under the stress. Dean made an effort to struggle anyway. He always did, because fuck them. He looked down as he was squirming and almost blew it by laughing out loud.
The knife. The freaking knife. Unbelievable. Sam had been caught with it, and it was right there, right there practically in his hand on the table. They must have just set it aside, demons were so incredibly cocky-
There was a demon in front of him, smirking already at how helpless Dean was, and Dean just lost it. He tilted his head back and laughed and laughed.
The demon, some blonde guy in tweed, didn't like that, and got all up in his face about it. "And what is so funny?" He did something and suddenly being pinned to the wall was a lot more painful. Dean bared his teeth.
Amateur.
"You," he said sweetly, "demons." He laughed again. "You're so damn stupid."
The guy grabbed his jacket and the force faded so the demon could slam Dean against the wall himself. "I'm going to enjoy myself with you," he said, and then choked, and couldn't say anything else because of the hole in his lung. Dean twisted the knife in the demon's back a little, just because he could, curling his lip as the guy died three inches from his face.
He let the guy drop, stumbled a little as he caught his feet away from the wall. There was a lot of blood everywhere. Dean didn't think most of them were technically dead, but they weren't moving much any more. Not for the moment, anyway. There were two demons on Cas, so Dean took three large steps through the carnage (and right past Sam, who was spattered with blood and looking frantic) and sunk the knife into the side of the neck of one of them, wrenching him away and holding the blade there until the light show faded.
When he looked up, Cas was straightening away from the other, looking wild and bloody. His hair was up at all angles, his clothing askew, and there was blood smeared across his face. It was on his mouth. He looked like a crazed serial killer. Cas took a breath, dropping the twisted bit of...something he'd been using as a weapon. Not a skillet. He must have lost that somewhere.
"We should go," he said, in that impressively low, rough tone of voice. Cas' drinking voice. He was looking at the stairs leading to the rest of the house.
Dean stepped over to Sam just as reinforcements showed up at the top of the stairs. Cas was almost fast enough to get them out of there without a hassle. Space folded around them, and an instant later the three of them had a rough landing in the deserted parking lot of a Circle K. Dean kept his feet, but the chair Sam was tied to teetered up on two legs and crashed rather impressively to the ground. At about that precise second Dean realized they had a stowaway. One of the demons had teleported along for the ride.
She took a look at the situation, at the fact that she was the only demon who'd managed to make the trip, and threw her head back.
To be perfectly honest, Dean didn't have a second to think about what that would mean. That she could bail on her meat-suit and go get reinforcements. Tell her asshole buddies where they were. There just wasn't any time to think.
Cas had already grabbed Dean's hand, the hand that was currently holding the knife, and used it to stab her in the chest with it. He hauled Dean along as well, like he was rather large, awkward handle. Incidentally, dragging all of them to the ground as well, as she flickered out her last bit of bitch half-life.
Dean took a breath, looking at his hand on the knife, and Cas' hand over it. He lifted his eyes. Cas was staring at him. For just a spit second, Dean didn't really think about anything except how freaking awesome that move had just been. Seriously. Bad-ass. It was probably psychotic to smile at a time like this.
Then he heard Sammy give his first impatient struggle against the ropes and turned his head. "Sam," he said sharply, and scrambled toward him, distracted. He fumbled with the gag at his mouth. "You okay? Sammy?"
Sam spit and shook his head, looking flustered and upset. "I'm fine. They didn't even touch me. They wanted to keep me safe for their boss."
"Yeah, I figured," Dean nodded, stepping over him to poke at the ropes that were tied loosely around him. He walked back around to stare at Sam's face. "Dude," he said flatly, giving Sam a look.
Sam should have gotten out of these in like, thirty seconds. This wasn't exactly the time for him to start snoozing on the job.
Sam let out a sharp, exasperated breath, looking embarrassed. "They put a spell on the ropes, okay?" he said sharply. He struggled against them once, as if to illustrate, thumping the chair against the ground. He thrust out his chin, looking sullen and about five years old. "The stupid things won't budge."
Dean crouched down in front of him, twisted his mouth thoughtfully, lifted his eyebrows, and nodded. "Huh," he said. "That's a new one." He scratched his cheek, glanced briefly back at the bitch-corpse. "Hang on," He reached out and ruffled Sam's hair as he stood up, which had pissed Sam off ever since he was nine and didn't fail this time either. Sam flinched away from him with a noise of protest, but since Sam had just spent the last hour scaring the crap out of him, Dean figured his little brother could just deal with it.
In the apocalypse, you had to take the small pleasures where you could.
"Hey!" Sam called after him. "Dean, at least get me up off the ground, man..." he trailed off, grumbling. "I'm in a puddle."
Dean knelt over the demon corpse and pulled the knife out of her. He glanced back when he heard scraping, and was in time to see Cas lifting Sam (chair and all) one handed and righting him. Sam muttered his thanks, and looked surprised when Cas responded by resting a hand on Sam's shoulder, leaning on him like he might consider falling over if Sam wasn't there.
"Dude," Sam said, trying to turn his head to look back at Cas and not really succeeding, his eyebrows drawn up tight in concern, "you smell like a liquor store." He glanced over at Dean, and the silent 'what is up with this?' on his face was so loud Dean could hear it.
Dean shook his head, and did his best to try and tell Sam with his expression to just drop it.
Sam, as always, ignored him. "Cas, are you okay?"
Cas was sort of sagged over the arm he was using to brace himself on Sam's shoulder, and at this he sighed loudly. As if Sam was a moron. He rolled his head back with a loose motion until his face was pointed at the sky, but his eyes were closed. "Sam," he said, and his voice was so deep it actually cracked, "Do I look okay?"
The exasperation in his voice was thick enough that you could probably spoon it up. Add a nice whipped topping, make yourself a tasty stop-asking-me-personal-shit dessert.
Sam looked at Dean for support, looking hurt. Dean shrugged, shoving himself to his feet, and dusting off his knees. What the hell could he say? Who was all right nowadays anyway? Cas looked like a Wes Craven movie reject that hadn't slept in six months.
Dean walked around behind Sam and put a hand on Cas' shoulder. Cas moved with his grip in a back-and-forth swaying motion that made Dean think it might be a good idea to get him into a chair. Or a bed. Dean held up the knife, glanced down at Sam's ropes, and gave him a questioning look.
Cas blinked once, too slowly, taking a little too long to focus on what Dean was trying to say. Cas' eyelids seemed to be having trouble getting past half mast. Once he managed to actually look Dean in the eye, Cas took a breath, tightened his lips, then lifted his eyebrows. 'Why not?'
Give it a shot, then.
"Hey," Sam said then, craning his neck to look as Dean leaned down, "what are you doing? Are you sure about this? The spell could backfire or something."
Dean paused with the knife on the rope, glanced up at Cas. Cas looked at Sam thoughtfully, and then look a single step back from him, letting his hand drop from where it had rested on Sam's shoulder.
Well, crap.
Dean clapped Sam on the arm. "No problem, Sam." Dean said with false cheer, and started sawing with one hand, turning his face away gingerly.
The rope fell away, just like ordinary rope. Dean let out a breath he absolutely had not been holding.
Sam jumped up before he was really done, wrestling with the ropes that he was still half-tangled in, because Sam hated feeling helpless pretty much more than anything. Except being told what to do.
"Right," Sam said briskly, like he was in charge and hadn't just been trussed up and saved like a wayward princess. "So, what's with the demons?"
Dean got to his feet and let him pretend.
"Yeah, I've never seen them like that," he agreed, and looked at Cas. If anyone had answers...
Cas was leaning heavily on the chair Sam had vacated. Both hands on the back of it, his head hanging between his arms. Dean faltered.
"Cas?" he said, his voice softer. He glanced at Sam, who shrugged, looking awkward. Dean stepped closer, ran a hand up Cas' back. "Hey," he ventured, "maybe we can..."
"The demons," Cas muttered.
Dean leaned closer. "What?"
Cas sighed and pushed himself straight, as if it took a lot of effort. "They wouldn't be gathering in such large numbers unless they were planning a battle." He wiped at his face, an exhausted gesture that smeared some blood around a bit. "If the angels aren't here yet, they will be." He raised his head, looked Dean in the eye. "We need to get away before that happens."
"You want us to run?" Sam said, incredulous.
Cas gave Sam a look that said, quite clearly, 'are you kidding me'. "If you still want to avoid becoming pawns of heaven and Lucifer? Then yes, I'd say we should avoid getting between their armies."
There wasn't a hell of a lot to say to that, really.
Dean sighed. "Man, remember when we used to just kill demons?" He kicked at a rock by his foot.
"Dean, we were killing demons ten minutes ago," Cas said, deadpan.
Dean made a face at him.
"Uh," Sam said hesitantly. "Yeah. You uh..." he gestured at Cas' face, making a sweeping motion by his mouth. "You got something...right here." Sam wiped at his own mouth, looking uncomfortable.
Cas touched his mouth, which did almost nothing. Particularly since his hands were bloody, too. Funny, Dean hadn't even noticed until now.
Something else he hadn't noticed...
"Guys...I think the powwow's over," Dean said, tensing, looking past Sam. Beyond him, one of the clear glass doors of the convenience store stood open, framing a frozen, shocked face. Civilian. The guy slammed the door quick, ran back inside. At least he wasn't stupid.
"Yeah. Time to go." Sam said flatly. He looked to Dean as if expecting to share some frustration in how utterly shit the night had been so far.
Dean was looking up at the sign over their heads. He looked down at Sam, and shifted from one foot to the other, a smile hovering around his mouth.
Sam's face fell like somebody just told him salad was canceled this year. "No," he said.
"Dude," Dean replied, glancing over to where the Circle K employee had fled back inside the store. "Strange things," he began.
"No!" Sam said, much more forcefully. "That's not funny, it's never funny."
Dean smiled a tight, giddy smile. "Strange things are afoot," he said, quick and low, as if he had to get it out before somebody stopped him. Cas was looking at them like they had both lost their minds.
"I hate you," Sam replied. "Can we go now?"
An hour later they were in a motel parking lot in Wisconsin, and Dean was going through a minor freakout over the fact that he'd left his car behind, parked down the road from demon central, and screw it, angels or not he wasn't leaving his baby for any of those pricks to possibly mess with. Or...lean on her...or get her all covered in sulfur or something. He'd walk back and get her if he had to.
Sam had gone to get them a room, since at the moment he looked the least like a psycho. Though he had to chuck his jacket. Cas went to ditch the stowaway's body, since they'd been spotted (probably actually committing murder this time) and the last thing they needed right now on top of everything else was cop trouble. And Dean stood in the parking lot, cursing at the universe and his goddamn luck.
They were probably screwing in the backseat. Frigging demons. God, he was going to puke.
Then Sam came out of the office with a smug little smile and a room key, and somehow managed to bring the mood down even further in under four words.
"Hey," he said, looking around pointedly. "Where's Cas?"
Dean frowned at him, his stomach dropping. Cas had been gone a while. "Taking care of the bitch-corpse," he replied, shoving the concern that tried to rise back down.
"Nice," Sam said, making a face at him. As if he somehow lacked class.
Dean misinterpreted him deliberately, because he was classy as fuck. "What?" he demanded, "you wanted to keep her? That's a little kinky even for-"
"No! Dean-" Sam cut him off, and sighed loudly. He took a half-step back and kind of re-set his shoulders, like he was faced with a grueling ordeal. He continued with a calmer expression, and a patient tone of voice that suggested Dean might actually be retarded. "Cas can go anywhere on the planet instantaneously. He should be able to dump a body in like five seconds." Sam raised his eyebrows and spread his hands, as if inviting Dean along on the logic train.
Dean looked down at his shoes for a second, something tightening in his chest like a fist. "He's a tough guy," Dean said quietly, "I'm sure he's fine."
Sam drew his head back a little, as if surprised at Dean. "He was hammered," Sam pointed out assertively, with a note of 'and what the hell do I even do with that information' in his voice.
Dean frowned, working his jaw, unhappy.
Sam raised his eyebrows high. "Look, he drops off the map for weeks, and then, when he does show up," Sam's face tightened incredulously, and he gestured at the air. "He's..."
"Yeah," Dean agreed quietly, and pressed his lips together flat and tight. He nodded. "He's doing the full Lindsey Lohan."
Sam blinked at him, as if he'd just said something weird, but he hadn't, so Dean ignored him.
"Uh, anyway..." Sam said, giving his head a little shake, "I just think maybe, since this whole 'stuck on earth' thing is new to him..." Sam fixed him with a sad, rather pleading expression.
He hadn't even told Sam about the drunk-stoned-hopeless-Cas from the the future, much less how their Cas was starting to sound like him. If Dean hadn't already been worried and feeling like crap about this whole situation, the earnest puppy look on Sam's face would have done the job nicely. Dean dug around in his pocket for his cellphone. The call went to voicemail, but this time Dean left a message.
"Cas," he said, hunching over, staring at the ground without really seeing it, "Uh, when you get this...I really need you to come back to the motel. Tonight." He looked over at Sam, who nodded, looking distressingly sympathetic and encouraging. Dean turned away, stared out across the parking lot. "Look," he added, his voice softer. "I know tonight's not a good night for you. But this is important, okay? We're in room..." he turned to Sam, made a 'gimme' motion with his free hand. Sam fumbled for a moment in his pocket, and then tossed him the key. "Room 13A," Dean finished. "All right? I'll see you." He hesitated. "Please."
When he looked up Sam's eyes were wide.
"What?" Dean snapped, annoyed and a little embarrassed.
Sam shrugged. "I don't know about Cas, but if that was my message, I'd come running."
Dean did some quick mental translation. "Screw you, dude. I say please." He sniffed and puffed himself up a little, scoffing elaborately.
Sam tilted his head and looked down at him in a way that was viciously annoying. It was a look that said very clearly 'I have known you all my life'. Sometimes Dean got the sneaking suspicion that Sam liked to pretend that just because he was taller, he was older. Or at least wiser. Something like that. Dean would pin it on the college education making him snotty, but Sam had been doing it since he'd hit his growth spurt at 16.
"Yeah." Sam agreed soberly, (wisely) narrowing his eyes a little."That's how I know when things are serious."
Dean took both hands and scrubbed at his face with them, suddenly tired. "Sam, look at our lives," he said wearily. "When are things not serious?" When he looked up Sam had revved the sympathy and concern up to about warp factor 9, so Dean retreated as an act of pure self-preservation.
"Right. I need a shower." God save him from an attempt at a heart-to-heart with his brother now.
'God save'...they really needed to find a better way to say these kinds of things. Sam might have tried to say something to his back as he walked away, but at that point Dean really wasn't listening. He made a lot of noise opening the door to drown him out.
Anything Sam was likely to say at that point was only increasing in likelihood toward infinity of them sharing their feelings...which, honestly was more punishment than Dean could take after the night he'd just had.
Though he did bring his phone in the bathroom and set it on the counter. Just in case.
Cas didn't call.
Instead, Dean came out to Sam having a minor freakout about their 'new way of operating'. Well, at least they were taking turns losing it.
"I'm just saying, it doesn't seem right to tuck tail and run," Sam said heatedly. "I mean, is this what we do now? The big guns come rolling out and we hightail it for the hills? There had to be people who lived around there."
Dean scratched his cheek. "Well," he said, adjusting his towel, "I don't know about you, but me and Cas were doing plenty of fighting." He smiled. "I guess you were a little too tied up to notice."
Sam set his jaw and tiled his head sharply, his shoulders dropping in a silent piece of body language that screamed you suck.
"The ropes," he said slowly, sullen, "had something on them. Like I said."
Dean raised his eyebrows high. "Sure," he said sweetly.
"Dean, I'm serious," Sam said with a sigh. "We need to figure out what we're doing here-"
Dean started digging through the pile of his stuff for his underwear. "Cas said angels, dude. We're not up for Godzilla vs. Mothra part two right now."
There was a pause, then, "I don't know if you noticed, but Cas isn't exactly at his best right now,"
Dean scoffed openly. "Who is?" he demanded, straightening and spreading his arms wide. "It's the freaking apocalypse, Sam. What do you expect? Fun times? We've been trying to figure stuff out for a month and we haven't got squat. Not on the end of the world, not on Cas' deadbeat dad, and not on icing Lucifer." Dean raised his eyebrows. "Nobody is okay right now."
Sam blinked rapidly several times, like Dean had just thrown too much at him all at once. It only lasted a second, though. Even if he did look sick to his stomach afterward. For all his poking at Dean about his feelings, Sam sure as hell never seemed to like it when Dean actually let loose on him some.
"Dean," Sam said, his voice gone all quiet and shaky, "I only meant..." Sam was picking at the table. "That maybe Cas wasn't thinking straight."
Silence.
"We'll ask him tomorrow then," Dean said simply. He stared at his brother a minute. Sam continued to pick at the table, sneaking worried looks at him. Dean pulled his underwear on and threw his towel at the floor, scowling at it as if it had tricked him into spilling more than he'd wanted to.
"Hey," Sam said quietly.
Dean got up and pulled the blanket off the bed, businesslike. He could hear the lifetime moment hovering in Sam's voice.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Dean sat down on the side of the bed by the door, facing away from his brother, shutting his eyes with the force of his sigh.
"I'm going to sleep," he said.
Author's Note: Nobody kill me. To those who like what I write and are pissed I'm not finishing what I'm already in the middle of...I'll get there. Unfortunately Supernatural happened. Also Destiel. I will get back to my regularly scheduled program. I just have to get this one hot guy and an angel in the sack first.
To those who just read Supernatural and don't give a crap about me...well, first off, my condolences. You should probably skip the author's notes. Second, this story happens instead of and during '99 problems', but everything up to that is exactly the same.
Jay-Z fans may care that '99 problems' was released on 'The Black Album'.
Finally, munch thanks to XXKayTayxX, my excellent Beta.