A/N: My first Supernatural fanfiction ever. Can't say I like it all that much.

Rochester, Minnesota; September

The cravings came back slowly, steadily, like an infection.

Dean hadn't been expecting them. After fixing himself up with rehab, he'd been clean for nearly ten years. But then, he broke his nose during a case in Minnesota. He hadn't been paying attention and walked headlong into a telephone pole.

Feeling the flesh puff up made Dean think of the fourth grade, when Landon Walker asked him, "Does your dad smell smoke every time he fucks a lady now?"

Dean had run up to him, fists flying, and Landon landed a punch right in the center of his face that left him on the ground, on his back. He went to the office with the first broken nose of his life, but after they called John and he said that he was proud of his son, Dean refused to go to the hospital.

His nose turned into a bright red bulb, and every breeze stung like acid. He complained constantly, and once John tired of calling him a baby, he started giving Dean tabs of Vicodin just to shut him up.

It would have been so easy, to blame his father for everything (not that Dean would, for anything.) Because, while John had never lost himself to it – maybe it was the constant mist of beer – once was enough for Dean; he was completely seduced by those white little pills.

The day after swallowing down his first one, he took Landon by surprise on the playground and beat him until they both had blood in their mouths. Sam had been watching from the swings – and when Dean was finished, he'd looked at him and smiled horribly, with red teeth. And Sam, only six, started crying.

When he came home later, Dean was waiting for him at the door. He'd been suspended for three days, but it hardly mattered, because they'd be gone in another four, anyways.

He'd called Sam a pussy.

And for a while after that, Dean's life became bundled with these spectacular little episodes, where he was manic and the earth wouldn't stay still under his feet, and everything glowed – even Sam looking at him funny, even John driving away and leaving them again. The ruby red taillights of the Impala were like a blast of fire against his face. The stars were like a million bright, little eyes. The ground coming up sharply behind him as he fell could have been a feather pillow and he wouldn't have been able to tell the difference, laughing hysterically.

Around the seventh grade – after he lost his virginity – he started taking two at a time because Lola's eyes hadn't been glowing as he laid waste to her body, awkwardly making a place for himself inside of her; she'd looked away and her pupils were like bullet holes. And for the first time in two years he could feel exactly what he was supposed to feel.

"You bitch," he said, because he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. She'd just bit her lip and he hated her. He hated her stupid braces, her stupid, pimply face, the stupid cupcakes on her panties. So he hit her.

Shortly thereafter, Dean started drinking, too.

It became like clockwork: take two, usually with a long swallow of beer, every twelve hours. More if he was getting laid. Once or twice he tried to stop, but it had been like barb wires dragging under his skin, and John yelling at him to stop shaking, and Sam slamming his bedroom door upstairs, and it all sounded like it was coming through a tin can. So Dean passed Go and collected his two hundred dollars, again and again, every time.

When he wasn't thinking about getting straight, he wasn't thinking, period. The Vicodin took that from him. It took a lot of things from him. Maybe if he'd been sober enough to notice, he would have noticed how Sam never really smiled around him. How John did his best to ignore Dean every time he talked – because Dean would always, without fail, start crying. How every time he had sex, the girl below him was just like another piece of real estate.

When he was sixteen he broke somebody's nose, and it was as if things had come full circle. He robbed a woman after taking John's shotgun from the porch and two hits of Oxy he'd lifted off of Randy Amsden, the twelfth grader. From what Dean could remember, when he'd smiled crookedly and told her she was pretty, she'd called him a monster and he hit her with the butt of the gun until she blacked out.

The sad thing about that was, John probably saw the blood at the end of his shotgun when he took it with him for a job and didn't even wonder about it. Dean could have blamed his father for that, too. He could have blamed anybody for not trying to stop him – and he almost did, after his girlfriend forced him to go to rehab on their graduation night if he wanted to stay with her (he broke up with her first, anyways.)

But Dean had spent so long hating himself for those nine years – for every terrified look on Sam's face and passive one on John's, how they both hurt him in different ways – that he hadn't bothered. He'd been too tired.

As he sat on that bench in Minnesota, the bridge of his nose swelling back up for the first time in almost a decade, he hadn't even been thinking about Vicodin when it came tumbling back from his memory. Cas had seen a strange sight as he went to heal the break – Dean stiffening, eyes deadlocked in another time, and almost raising his hands to fend off something that wasn't there.

"Apologies," said Cas, touching his hand to Dean's shoulder and having the two pieces of bone seal back together. "I realize breaking bones must be –"

"No, no. I'm, uh…" Dean started sweating. "Thanks," he said, finally.

He pushed and pushed and pushed, but still couldn't shake the feeling that he was strapped back in a passenger's seat with no escape.

The night after he broke his nose, he dreamt of his hands, hitting and hitting and tipping back pills. He woke up panting, breathless, and no matter how much he drank, he could only taste blood and poison dissolving on his tongue.

Cas was awake, watching. Dean wanted to tell Cas he couldn't pull him away, not from this, not this time. But the small twist of pain in Cas' face said he already knew, and in the morning, the sheriff called to tell them every powerline in town had been ripped out overnight.

Cas looked away when Sam raised a questioning brow at him.

Lafayette, Louisiana; September

Castiel had convinced himself he understood the ugliness of mankind, up until Louisiana.

They had travelled down to Lafayette right after Minnesota; Garth said something about animals screaming in a swamp and human bodies turning up in the morning, which "reeked of skunk ape," according to Sam. And there was nothing remarkable about it: an unremarkable, sweaty city, elbow-deep in an unremarkable pit of Hell – but progress dragged slower than usual in the heat, and it kept Dean restless most nights, staying up until three or four in the morning and nursing a bottle of beer.

When two weeks had passed – two weeks of the same half-dozen news articles on Sam's laptop and about eighteen variations from eyewitnesses – Dean had moved straight past the unopened Coronas on the table one night close to eleven, to Cas' corner of the room. With every motel he'd pitted out his own space, close to the door, and he was surprised when Dean stepped right into it, right up to him.

Dean said one thing: "Strip club" and his voice, as of late, had been a thin rasp of thing, with an underlying desperation that Cas couldn't name. It almost seemed to grow when he spoke that night – and frankly, the words "strip club," didn't mean much to Cas at all, but he still let Dean drive him nearly fifty miles out, not sure what he was expecting when they rolled into a gravel parking lot, under an enormous sign beaming out "BOTTOM'S UP" in glowing blue letters.

Dean was smiling at the windowless brick building across the lot, and Cas realized how much he was coming to regret this.

Inside the building itself was a foggy, single room bathed in dizzying strobe lights and a pounding dance track. Cas was struck by the noise and remembered exactly the kind of place this was meant to be, even before he saw the trashy dancers and dollar bills hanging out of their underwear.

"Go find us a table," Dean shouted before bee-lining right for the bar tucked in the corner of the room. It was easily ten minutes before he came back, booze filling his arms like groceries, and by then Cas was already too hot and desperate to ignore the dozens of hungry stares raking over him.

"Why are we here?" he asked, as Dean threw back two straight shots of vodka in a row.

"Oh, Cas." Dean only laughed. "C'mon. I know your memories of strip clubs aren't 'memorable' but we needed this. Don't you think?"

"No," Cas tried to answer, but Dean seemed intent to get drunk as fast as possible. And it bothered Cas, how strongly Dean stank of desperation, even over the rich odor of sweat, sex, and cheap perfume that hung in the air. But he focused on his hands and held his tongue.

"This is the life, isn't it?" Dean asked, after what could have been an hour. Three empty shot glasses and two empty beer bottles were in a column across the table like a soldier line.

"Dean, I don't understand. What kind of life is this?" Over Dean's shoulder, a girl climbed into the lap of a man (married, with four kids,) while two college-age kids (midterms tomorrow, didn't study an inch) by the bar drank shots from between a girl's breasts. Cas frowned.

"Don't be a prude, Cas – it's booze and women, damnit. Consider it a godsend."

"My father never intended for you to drink," Cas said defiantly, "or for these women to take your money for a glimpse at their bodies. Dean, that one over there is only sixteen years– "

"I'll tell you what," Dean said, pouring himself a shot. "You get one of these girls to sleep with you, then trying telling me you 'don't understand.' Because you will, Cas. Look." He indicated a girl in red lingerie a few tables over, tucking a wad of bills into her G-string. She focused on Cas, but he quickly turned from her predatory stare.

Dean whistled, pressing the lip of his glass to his mouth. "Man, talk about looking – she's getting a fucking eyeful."

When she approached their table and purred in a thick accent, "My name's Amber," Cas was bitterly reminded of Chastity. But this one, she nearly blinded him with the pain glowing off of her – a tragic story written in body glitter and black tears, laid bare even in the fleeting red, blue, and green strobe.

She curled an arm around the back of his chair. Cas could see the white powder under her nose. "He a church boy?" she asked a thoroughly-grinning Dean, who nodded. "I knew he looked the type. But, honey –" she pouted at Cas. "Well, just looking at you is a sin."

Tense couldn't come close to describing what Cas was feeling, staring into her lidded eyes.

But this time, when she took one of his hands and Dean stuffed cash into the other, Cas found that he didn't resist any of. He watched her flouncing hair as she guided him to the back rooms – her movements almost depicted eagerness, but once the door to their room was locked Cas saw the glazed familiarity fall into place as she pushed him down on the bed.

"Now," she said into his ear, in what felt very rehearsed. "What name would you like me screaming tonight, baby?"

"Cas."

"Cas," she repeated in a thick voice, smiling dimly.

When she kissed him, her mouth tasted like chemicals and matte lipstick. Cas let what little memories he had of kissing guide him through the motions, latching his arms around her waist. He heard her surprise when she broke away to say, breathless, "Slow down there," but he pushed on, anyways, rolling her onto the bed behind them.

Cas touched her and pawed at her and worked her body until she was as tight as a coil, and it was an empty process with her making small, meaningless noises of encouragement in between. His mind went deceptively blank, as he shimmied Amber's panties down her hips while she chanted how ready she was; he entered her, aware of how little she felt it despite the breathy moan she uttered – and when she moved beneath him to each snap of his hips, her arcs were robotic, jagged and lost. And this close, every scar of her, every piece of her pain, roared inside his head.

(Her mother, calling her a murderer for having an abortion.)

"Baby," she moaned with forced enthusiasm, "baby, baby, oh, you're so good."

Cas covered her painted mouth in reply and turned her head away (her boyfriend, leaving her alone at that bus stop at two AM) as he drove into her brutally. He pushed as fast as he could, just as desperate to escape as she was.

"Ooh," she whined around his fingers. "Not so hard, sweetie, you'll –" But Cas clamped down tighter, until his short fingernails scraped the foundation on her cheek. Her body started to twist under him, her voice a rising hum of objection under his hand, and when her arm started to punch at him, he flattened it against the bed.

(Her sixth grade art teacher, standing too close to her.)

Her teeth sank into his palm and Cas ignored the blood (her sixth grade art teacher, running his hands across her legs.) She was bucking violently in protest now, screams muted; tears, muddy with mascara, pooled around his hand as he pushed their bodies flush together, until she could feel every stitch of the bed sheets along her back.

"Pretty blond pigtails." Her sixth grade art teacher, kissing her on the forehead, on the cheek; her father, calling her a liar and –

In a panic, Cas ripped out of her completely, falling flat on his bare ass.

"What the fuck –" she was blubbering and tugging off a stiletto to club him with as he tugged up his underwear and slacks as fast as he could. " – the fuck is wrong with you, you sick freak –"

He touched two fingers to her sweating forehead, and she fell slack against the bed.

Dean had switched to a table closer to the stage, and was sliding a five dollar bill between the breasts of a blond that crawled in front of him.

"Dean," Cas said, breathless. He steadied himself on the tabletop. "We –"

A hazy smile broke out on Dean's face. "Looks like you had a wild time there, Cas."

"Dean, listen –"

"No, no." Dean set his beer down. His eyes were glazed as they struggled to refocus on Cas. "Tell me – do you understand it now, Cas?"

Cas felt ill, but his head betrayed him by nodding. It was like a lead weight was rolling around inside his brain.

"Dean," he choked, at the precise moment a new girl was introduced to the stage and the applause from the halo of tables and chairs drowned him out. "Dean."

Dean stared straight ahead, drunk off cheap alcohol and twirling tassels, and Cas wondered if he was going to be sick, right there on the scummy floor.

Blindly he palmed for Dean's shoulder, and they were in the Impala in the next instant – where, taken by surprise, Dean spilled his beer in his lap.

"Son of a –!" he shouted, but Cas was already out on the gravel. He white-knuckled the heavy door with one hand.

"Cas, what the hell was that?" Dean demanded, ignorant to the unusual skew of Cas' body. "I know you didn't like – what, 'dens of inequity,' but what were you thinking, flying us out of there like that?"

Cas held absolutely still.

"Cas." Dean tapped his beer bottle against his thigh. "Seriously. How bad was it with Amber to make –"

And then, Cas was sick; he spit a stringy mess of bile onto the gravel, hacking until he'd almost completely bent into himself. His head throbbed and wailed, and he saw Amber's art teacher smile, his terrible smile, smiling in a way no grown man should smile at an eleven year old.

"Cas, my God." Dean finally surfaced from his drunken stupor. "Jesus Christ, what's wrong? What's the matter? Cas?"

Cas listened to Dean slurred prattle, but none of it quite reached him. He balled his fists at his thighs, breath hitched, and somewhere in the pulsing building up ahead, Amber was just coming to, not sure why she'd fallen asleep in the back during such a busy night.

The Impala's heavy door fell closed behind him as he got back inside.

It was a long while of Cas staring at the dashboard before Dean said, "Never thought I'd see you getting upset over strippers, Cas." He smiled, aiming for something lighter. When Cas looked at him, what he saw wasn't desperate, it was just Dean, and with a streetlight struck off his glassy eyes, there was an apology in the blown out pupils, somewhere – and Cas studied it, clung to it until he was nodding, ready to go.

("Pretty blond pigtails.")

It wasn't like Lucifer had said – it wasn't the ugliness of humanity.

What concerned him was, up until Louisiana, Cas hadn't understood the ugliness of himself.

Dean caved after a week. He went to the pharmacy in the back of a CVS the next town over while Sam shopped, and stayed in the bathroom too long.

At the next stop, a drive thru, he tried to order sixteen burgers – and after, after he'd nearly crashed twice, his wild fit of laughter never lifted, even when Sam made him get in the back.

Louisville, Colorado; October

A young manic depressive named Melissa Maynard hung herself one night from a wooden beam on her front porch.

Cas had watched her die from the street; her eyes were stuck wide open after she'd stopped kicking and flailing and pulling at the rope like she'd changed her mind about slipping into it. In these final moments, she'd read to him like scripture: it was a combination of depression and her cutting off her medication last year that put that noose around her neck. The entire city would later tire itself wondering what made Melissa do this, but Cas knew.

It didn't make him feel any better.

The neighbor's twelve year old son was going to be the first one to find her, and the sight of her would leave him coughing his breakfast into the gutter – Cas knew that, too, but he left her body there, anyways. He spent all night on the curb, watching her turn slowly in the noose. Melissa's entire story was a finger's touch away from unfolding in his mind, but Cas couldn't imagine brushing that close to another human being's pain, not again. He deceived himself into thinking that he knew enough about why'd she'd strug herself up.

Melissa hadn't been devout, like her mother, and would go to Hell for suffering her whole life. All because she hadn't prayed to God.

When Cas came back to the motel, Dean showed him the newspaper article on Melissa and didn't notice the clench of Cas' fists in his lap. By then Dean had changed dramatically, because while his voice was back to normal, he was talking faster about nothing, pupils wide enough to hide the green of his eyes, and when he reached for his coffee, his hip bumped the table and Cas heard the Vicodin rattle.

Sam fanned out the newspaper and moved it closer to his face, and Dean smiled with gleefulness that didn't belong. All Cas could think of, watching him, was Melissa Maynard's frozen stare.

Green.

What an ugly sight, when people thought they didn't need God.

The truth was, Dean didn't like the way the Vicodin made him feel.

He spent a lot of time at night staring at the ceiling and trying to imagine what John had seen after feeling that drop of blood on his forehead.

"It's stupid," Dean whispered one night, because he knew Cas was listening. "If the pills are supposed to be killing me, then why are they so hard to live without?"

Two weeks later, an angry ghost set a house fire in Denver.

Cas went up to the second floor and stood in the flames. He wasn't alone this time – Sam and Dean and at least a dozen others were outside, screaming for him while windows shattered and the greedy inferno grew fatter – though he could fool himself into thinking he was isolated, bathed in the roaring fire. It sank its teeth into his flesh and it caked with dark, burnt swirls, but Cas could only watch. He bent the charred fingers, the skin peeling back to bone, and rolled his head on the scorched neck, indifferent to the bite of the flame.

The trenchcoat had nearly been eaten away to only sleeves, and his hair was down to the root. It would be a few more seconds before Jimmy's entire body would be eaten by the hungry fire, but Cas gave up faster, snapping the flames out and repairing himself.

Dean had taken up cigarettes a few days earlier – and Cas hated it, because Dean only liked the way they poisoned his body. But watching the thick white smoke swell from Dean's lips made Cas wonder and wonder until he itched. The fire presenting itself that afternoon was almost like an answer to a prayer. And he couldn't even feel the heat. It clawed and tore his vessel wide open and spilled Jimmy's blood on the floor –

Down in Louisiana, a fifty nine year old man fucked Amber while her fiancé left her a note saying he was running away with her coworker.

Down in Hell, Melissa Maynard had been hung up on the rack for nearly four years now. Cas could hear her screaming almost every day.

No, the fire hadn't touched him, but he could still feel that.

"Cas!" Dean shouted, when they found him sitting in the front seat of the Impala. Dean couldn't quite run straight, clipping himself on the door. "What the hell was that?"

"Did you get stuck or something?" Sam asked. "Cas? What were you doing up there? Are you okay?"

Cas sat back and waited for them to start driving.

At the motel, it was an evening of Sam awkwardly trying to discuss the case and Dean not saying anything back and too much silence in between. Sam gave up around eleven, after knocking one of Dean's beers onto his laptop, and even past midnight Castiel was very aware of every minute Dean lay awake. He had a thousand things he wanted to say, a million things he'd never wanted to say to anybody before, and he chose none of them.

From his bed, at last Dean whispered, "I know what you were doing back there."

Silence.

"You can't go doing stupid shit like that," he went on. By some miracle, he managed to make it sound like he didn't care. "Okay?"

"I'm not a child, Dean," Cas said, because he couldn't help it.

"Yeah. I get that. Kids don't stand in fucking fires, Cas. You wanna explain that or should I take a guess? ...Is it about what happened with Amber? You wanna explain that?"

If Cas was still there, he wouldn't know it.

"The silent treatment's not doing you justice, y'know."

"It's a lot of things, Dean. It's..." But he didn't finish; his voice almost seemed to taper against his will. He cleared his throat. "Dean, you need to...understand."

"Okay. What do I need to understand?"

"About me. I didn't..." Cas cleared his throat a second time, and when that couldn't bring the words back up, he started shaking his head frantically.

"What?" Dean insisted. But Cas was staring over Dean's shoulder, at something that wasn't there. "Cas, why can't you tell me what's wrong?"

Cas started whispering something. It was a few moments before Dean could make it out: a low and panicked, "No no no no" over and over, like a dozen "Hail Mary"s.

"Cas...?" Dean sighed and got up on an elbow. "Look. The 'all my fault' thing? I get that. I'm an expert in that. And if you want to take that road, you go ahead. But I'm telling you, you're trying. That's all that matters." It fell silent almost immediately, and he took a crack at smiling, like flashing some teeth was enough to ignore how many pieces of Cas just weren't there anymore.

Dean had never bought anybody's bullshit. Especially not his own.

Eventually, when the Vicodin in Dean's system had the mercy of leading him down into sleep, Cas was forced to stare at the wall all night.

He could still smell the smoke.

to be continued.