Pairing: Destiel, romance will be gradual so please bear with me.
Warning: I got tricked onto the Destiel ship and it decided to buck into autopilot; so be warned, I'm not controlling this rodeo. Mature language, eventual slash, Wing!kink.
Setting: twist on the season 7 finale.
Note: guys. Guys. I'm having some sort of writer-crisis here. I've only ever written hetero fics, so this is my first foray into the bushy and prick-y tangles of man-love forest. It's like my writing genre is just discovering its fairy wings – BUT IT'S ONLY EVER BEEN FOR DEAN AND CAS, M'KAY? CUZ THEY'RE ADORABLE AND NEED TO HASH OUT ISSUES IN (sex) THERAPY. I'm just chasing the rainbow-farting unicorn through the wilderness now.
This chapter is just to peg down the foundation. More adventures and sexy times to come!
Prologue: Purgatory For Dummies
Dean.
Dean, I must act quickly.
A thin, tinny whistle flossed between his ears, accompanied by deep, bass reverberations. It took him a minute to interpret them correctly as speech, and in that minute realised that he was pinned down in a piercing white light. He thought he'd heard someone call his name.
"-end of the bloody world and you come up short once again, Puft. Your generation is so easily distracted by explosions and sparkly things. Personally, I'd blame the media if I didn't already own it-"
"He was just here. How do I know that you and your minions didn't-"
"Well if I'm lucky, they did. And if I'm still lucky, the levis did and my army of minions are plundering and pillaging as we speak, so either way, your loss. And very soon, my gain."
He knew those voices.
Dean blinked, and realized that the only thing that was pinning him down like a bug was gravity, and the white light was coming from the fluorescent lights from the ceiling of the sterile white laboratory. His head throbbed as he pulled himself up to a sitting position by using the desk and shelving unit he was jumbled between, fingers slipping on the black, acrid ooze splattered liberally on them. He blinked again, realizing that it was fucking everywhere. Oddly, he was ooze-free.
"Sam?" he croaked.
There was a pregnant pause, then heavy footsteps echoing, and he could actually feel his gargantuan brother galloping towards him. A familiar knot loosened behind his sternum; Sammy. Sammy's okay.
Sam's alert and slightly buggy-eyed face swung into view, pale in the harsh fluorescent lighting, his signature chick-hair swinging behind him. "Dean! You- you're alive! You're still here!"
Dean squicked a finger into his ear, trying to dig out the angry kettle as he unsteadily got to his feet with his brother's aid and automatically stood by him defensively. "Still here, relatively unmolested," he answered, mustering some of his sarcasm as he tried to focus. The disorientation and slight deafening were making it hard to string two thoughts together.
"And here I was, hoping you'd gone boom with Dick and Cas," drawled Crowley, casually standing by the doors. His voice was effortlessly wry and dry, but his dark eyes were hard, intense with something like satisfaction.
Cas.
Dean whipped around, ignoring the slight wave of nausea as he focused on the biggest splatter of inky ectoplasm on the white tile floor. Ground zero was suspiciously absent of a Dick and a broken angel. Dean's memory snapped back into place – The Plan – Cas bluffed, took the throw, Dean distracted, Cas yanked Dick's head back, and Dean boned him through the throat. Then Dick had started throbbing energy, vibrating, faster and faster while Dean had just watched like a friggin' idiot until Dick had exploded – presumably the blast had flung Dean into the wall and kicked his mind out for recess.
"Where are they?" Dean snapped, balling his fists. Mentally he was taking inventory of his body: nothing seemed to be broken, some throbbing but that only meant bruises. Need to keep Crowley talking, might be here to finish us off; Ruby's knife still in my belt, Sam can hold him off while I attack, grab Cas and Kevin-
"That bone has a bit of a kick," Crowley replied gently, a smirk tucked into a corner of his thin lips. "God's weapons often do. Should've put a warning on the box."
"This is exactly what you wanted," Sam realized aloud, accusatory as he glowered down at the smaller man. "Dick out of the way, and revenge on Cas."
Dean froze, muscles locking down.
Crowley smiled and shrugged, brushing Sam off as he turned to look at Dean. "Cut off the head, and the body will flounder, after all. If you had just one king since before the first sunrise you'd be in a kerfuffle too."
"And Cas?" Dean snarled.
The shorter man cocked his head and raised a derisive brow. "If he's lucky, he's ceased to exist. But I'm guessing the signature Winchester charm has rubbed off on him, and he's wandering around Purgatory for you as we speak."
A cold blade slowly scraped down each individual vertebrae of Dean's spine. "For me?" he echoed dumbly.
"Dean," Sam murmured softly, shooting him an apologetic look from the side of his eyes. "I saw him push you out of the way just as Dick exploded."
Time splintered as fragments of memories raced through Dean's numb mind, and his eyes vacantly swung to the ooze-free spot he'd woken up in, picturing that flapping trench coat as his own words echoing mutely in his head.
"You've been chosen. And it sucks, believe me. There's no use asking 'why me?' cuz the angels – they don't care. I think they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it breaks them apart."
Hester, leader of the surviving members of the garrison snarling at him through a contorted mask of betrayal: "The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell he was lost!"
That hesitant, wry and warm smile tugging at Cas's lips when the brothers had looked to him for help - just like in the old days. "Well, you know me. I'm always happy to bleed for the Winchesters."
He'd been wrong.
"Consider Cas's vacation in Purgatory on me. I did owe him one," Crowley gloated, the manic gleam in his eyes burning. "And without a master plan, the levis are just another monster. Hard to stomp, sure. But then, you love a challenge. Your job is to keep them from organizing."
"Not until-"
"Bring him back."
Sam and Crowley eyed Dean as the muscles in his jaw flexed, recognizing the building pressure in the hunter. "Bring him back now, you son of a bitch," Dean bit out.
Crowley huffed a laugh. "Did you actually forget the consequences already? I thought Cas had demonstrated well enough that opening the door to Monster Land isn't the smartest idea." The smile dropped from his lips as he turned a burning glare at Dean, all façade of humour vanished. "I'm sure this will zip in one ear and out the other, being a Winchester and all, but do. Not. Open that door. No more sacrificing, deals, or trading places, at least not for your feathered boy toy. If, by some miracle, a human like you is able to open the portal, you'd be pulped by the hordes of monsters spewing out from the bowels of Purgatory into this reality, and it'll be the end of the world. For sure. Because a human like you doesn't have the juice to stay alive against the monsters, keep them at bay, and close the portal from either side."
Hope and wild plans tumbled through Dean's head as he stubbornly replied, "but demons – or Death –"
"No demon has ever willingly crossed into Purgatory since the birth of time," Crowley snapped, "reapers and even Death himself do not go closer to that hole than to kick the freaks into it. That is where their kind go to prey upon each other for the rest of eternity without ever dying, ergo no need for Death to get his shoes dirty."
It was possible then to see a shift behind Crowley's eyes, to almost palpably feel the hulking shadow of the Devil talking through the short British puppet. His black coat seemed to flicker inhumanly at the edges, doubling the idea that the Devil was looming just behind a thin slice of Old English ham.
And it was the sincerity from the king of Hell and liars that convinced him.
Crowley carefully watched Dean, rocked back away from them, shrugging into a more casually human stance again. "I see we understand each other. Now, that's enough Purgatory For Dummies. You have, oh," he mimed checking his imaginary wristwatch, "five minutes to get out of here before I set this candy factory on fire."
He was gone with a snap of his fingers.
"Dean, let's go," Sam said urgently, heading to the door.
Dean was already following him when he paused, "where's the – uh – Advanced guy – Kevin?"
Sam's shoulders tensed and his fingers curled in the way Dean knew meant that he was internalizing blame. "I don't know," he admitted, "I shielded him from Dick. I looked to see what had happened, but when I turned around again, he was gone."
They took a right into an emergency stairwell, their hurried footsteps echoing back at them. "So Crowley has him."
"He said he didn't yet," Sam replied between huffs, "but his minions probably got him already."
Dean gritted his teeth from interrogating his brother further, remembering the conversation he'd woken up to. They'd been talking about Kevin being taken by Crowley's demons, not him. Mission Impossible: Kevin Tran had failed. He kept an eye on his brother, vowing to get the screechy prophet back if only for Sam to redeem himself.
He walled up the guilt to deal with later as they ran into a corridor, eyes darting around for enemies. They'd saved the world from the end, again. The faces of Kevin, Meg, Bobby, and Cas flashed through his mind as they dodged a cluster of leviathans slipping around sculptural hills of bubbles, fighting for their lives against demons, and he shoved the familiar, bittersweet blend of roiling guilt and relief down to concentrate on guarding their backs as they fled down the soap-and-blood-scented hall.