"Dean, this is insane."

"That's what they say."

"No, really. This is beyond insane."

"Hey – I like to live to extremes."

"Dean. Think about this for a second. Can we try to approach this like logical adults?"

"Who's not being logical?" Dean paused just outside the bar and cut a sharp, unreadable look at Sam, one hand cupped protectively near his chest and the other fisted in his pocket. "A kid of four could tell you this is how these things go, Sammy."

"A kid of four doesn't know any better! Can we not get kicked out of a bar tonight?" Sam ran a hand through his hair and grimaced as he dislodged some more of the sticky dried herbs that had spilled from the hex bag after Dean threw it to him and before he set it on fire. "Look, let's go back to the motel. I'll get in touch with Bobby and see if he knows anything about this kind of thing and – god, Dean it might wear off on its own. He's an angel."

"And it might not." Dean said, flapping his free hand dismissively. "You go on back to the motel if you like. I got this."

"You cannot be serious."

"I'm never serious." Dean grinned a sharp-edged grin, winked, and pushed his way into the bar before Sam could say anything else about it.

He hesitated. He'd done some really weird shit in his lifetime. Weird enough that Ripley's Believe it Or Not was tame and Stephen King would be a relaxing holiday (except for IT. He would never forgive Dean for watching that after midnight when he was ten). But this was – off the scale. Sam had a scale. It was complicated and had branches for 'Are Angels Involved', 'Is this a version of a Biblical story' and 'Are you related to whatever it is'.

Somehow, Sam had never in his wildest imaginings figured on frogs.

He stepped into the bar and made his way over to a free corner where he could call Bobby and make notes without being disturbed. On his way he passed by Dean, leaning charmingly over the bar and talking to a statuesque blonde in a low-cut blue dress.

"So – have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in a fairytale?" Dean was saying, his trademark slightly-crooked grin firmly in place.

Sam winced a little and hurried on, not sure he wanted to hear how that particular conversational opener was going to turn out. With a sigh of mixed weariness and aggravation, he dropped into a chair, leaned on the sticky table and tried to get his bearings. The coven had not been as hard to take out as it could have been. Witches were his least favorite people, though, and there was always one hex bag you missed or one demonic spell that you didn't manage to interrupt at the picture perfect moment. No one had walked away unscathed from this one.

Why were they not at the motel? They needed to get their bearings, do some first aid maybe – get some rest. They did not need to be sucking down whiskeys and hitting on women in over-crowded bars in nameless towns who wouldn't even remember their faces in the morning.

Sam pulled out his phone, blinked at it blearily and pressed speed-dial.

"Hello?"

"Bobby?"

"Sam. How'd things go in Goshen?"

"About that…"

"Never good when you start a conversation with that, Sam."

Sam sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose and watching as Dean made his way determinedly across the room towards a group of young women chatting together. "Okay – we've got a problem."

"What is it, Sam? Did you take out that Coven, or not? Don't tell me you boys got yourselves cursed."

"Hey there," Dean was saying in a more seductive tone than was quite called for. "How are you ladies tonight? Can I get you something from the bar? Another of those red and orange things you've been drinking?"

There was a positive from the red-head and a moue of distaste from the brunette, who was rolling her eyes at her friends and saying something.

"Not at all," Dean said smoothly. "I understand that beautiful women like yourselves probably get a lot of bother in a place as rowdy as this. I'm not trying to take up your time. I just wondered if maybe you could help out a friend of mine."

"Not cursed exactly, Bobby." Sam tried to cringe smaller so that he could physically hide from the conversation his brother was having. "Not us, anyway."

"For the love of Christ, Sam – spit it out!"

Across the room Dean presented a small, green, amphibian to the three young ladies and was promptly doused with the dregs of the brunette's drink. Sam groaned. They were about to be thrown out. He could feel it.

"Bobby, how can we change someone back from being turned into a frog?"

"You're fooling me." A pause. "Is Dean a frog, Sam?"

"No." Sam stood as Dean waved at him on his way out of the bar, being helped along by one very unhappy looking barman. "No – but Castiel kind of is."

Back in the Impala, Sam rested his aching head against the back of his seat and frowned. "Bobby said that it's not very common, despite what the stories say. Only a handful of people have actuall been changed into a different form – it takes too much power to do something like that, especially to someone with a soul. Might be why it worked on Castiel. He's looking into ways for us to break the curse, so can we please go back to the motel now?"

Dean hummed a little and swung the car into a sharp right. "Sure. Head on back to our rooms and do your geek thing, see what you can dig up."

"Dean…" Sam looked at the flashing neon sign hanging outside the building they were parking in front of and groaned deeply. "Dean. This isn't helping."

"Says you." Dean grinned that same sharp grin. "Run along, Sammy. Give me a call if you dig anything up."

"Come on, man…" Sam leaned over and grabbed his brother's elbow. "If you think a kiss will do it, then you kiss him. Hell, I'll kiss him!"

"For god's sake, Sammy –" Dean jerked away and rolled his eyes. "Cas doesn't swing that way. It won't work."

"Wha?" Sam blinked twice, three more times for good measure, hoping that this would wake him up and he could stop being in this insane reality where Dean was talking about the sexuality of a frog – their friend, yes but he's a cursed frog for god's sake – in the car with a goddamned serious expression on his face as though this was all some kind of cosmic battle.

"A spell wouldn't break with a kiss if it could be any kiss." Dean fished around for the small box they were using to transport Castiel in and scooped him out very delicately, letting the surprisingly small frog settle on his palm before bringing him up to his chest. "And Cas definitely digs the females of our species. I had my doubts for a while, but he did himself proud with Meg that one time so we're not gonna cut it. Now luckily I don't believe 'true love' exists, or we'd really have our work cut out for us."

"And getting a stranger to kiss a frog won't be hard work?"

"Not if I'm the one doing it, Sammy boy." With that, and a cocky wave, Dean forged ahead towards the second bar of the night. After a short pause to pray desperately for anything to come along and wake him up, apocalyptic, possessed, familial – anything – Sam followed. He had a feeling that the night was only going to get more bizarre.

"My friend here's a real prince charming once you get to know him…"

"No, Mandy, he won't give you warts. He's a frog, not a toad. And he's not even a real frog."

"This guy's an angel. Literally. He's really an angel. I mean he looks like a frog – but that's temporary."

"Hey ladies, I've gotta say I came over here to introduce you to my friend. He's a little shy at first, but.."

"I don't suppose anyone has a golden ball they want rescued, huh?"

"They say you gotta kiss a few frogs in life, ladies – why not let one of them be my buddy here?"

"I've got a friend I swear you'd be just magic with. They thing is that you gotta break a magic spell first."

"This will sound crazy, but my friend has been changed into a frog and I need your help to change him back again. I know – I know. And I know he's a little green right now, but – no, huh? Okay, well thanks."

"Would you be willing to kiss a frog in order to rescue an angel from a fate worse than death?"

"No, that wasn't a trick question."

"No, seriously, kiss this frog."

The car was very quiet. Sam rubbed his forehead and thought of sleep and Castiel in a small box with webbed feet.

"Dean – that's been seven different places."

"Yuhuh."

"Can we stop now?"

"Nope."

"We're not getting anywhere, dude. Two girls even kissed him and it didn't make any difference."

"They mustn't have been his type."

"Dude."

"Castiel wouldn't give up on us if we were turned into something like this, Sammy. I'm not gonna stop trying until he's back to normal."

Sam said nothing. Dean's face was taught and grim in the flashes of street-light flickering in through the windscreen. Generally his brother didn't feel obliged to jump in and defend Castiel. Not in the same way he felt that need to step between Sam and danger, anyway. But this time Cas had been there to help them and had been in the way to help Dean and it had gotten a little more personal than usual – a little more real. They both knew that Cas could get hurt, could even die – but it was rare to see him truly vulnerable.

"Dean, pull over."

"Maybe we could try to find a brothel. They might charge a bit extra, but we'd probably have more luck there. And Cas didn't mind brothels. He called them 'dens of iniquity' but that's almost affectionate from Cas."

"Dean – pull over."

His brother shot him a quick flash of a glance and slowly pulled the car over into a deserted alley. He drummed his fingers tensely on the steering-wheel and glared straight ahead. That was what felt so familiar and yet so strange about this. Dean would run into hell and back to save someone, ha actually done so on a few occasions. But Sam had only seen him get this obsessed, this driven over fixing something with a very few people.

With family.

"Get out of the car, Dean."

Dean raised an eyebrow, letting it say whatever snarky thing he was thinking for him.

"Go on." Sam reached for Cas's box and got out of the car, grimacing a little as he pulled his bruised back. "C'mere."

"Dude… we gotta keep moving. Sooner or later everyone will start telling the cops about the 'man with the frog' and we won't have a…"

"Shut up and listen to me."

Dean frowned. He didn't like being told to shut up. Whenever you tried to stop Dean from speaking his mind, he generally spoke it more bluntly and ten times as loud. It was something Sam kind of appreciated as much as he hated it. He could see shades of grey when he looked at a problem. Nothing was black or white, but nuanced and full of possibilities. A truth could be true when it was only half true if you told it that way because of a really good reason. Dean wasn't like that. He was right and wrong. Truth or lies. Live it how you mean it.

Despite that, when Sam really needed him to listen he often did. He did this time, shoving his hands in his pockets and frowning.

"Great. You're making this too complicated. What if it doesn't matter about attraction."

"Of course it –"

"Dude. No. It doesn't." Sam shook his head and proffered the box to his idiotic stubborn brother. "Just kiss the damn frog."

Dean looked so reluctant that it would have been comical if it wasn't a little sad. "Why wouldn't it matter if…"

"Who in their right mind would kiss a frog in the first place?"

"Right. Yeah." Dean didn't seem to think to comment on the fact that two young women had, in fact, already kissed this particular frog with no discernible effects. He took Castiel out of his box carefully, cupping him up to his face with a particular gentleness that Sam saw reflected every time he reached out to straighten that damn tie. "Sorry, Cas. Needs must, yeah?"

The kiss was brief and awkward, as first kisses so often are. Dean puckered up like a little boy of five and the frog couldn't pucker back so it looked as though Dean was trying to suck out the frog's brains or something similarly awful. Sam had a moment to appreciate the image before there was a reverse flash and Dean was lying under a very clothed angel, mouth still directly on his.

Neither of them moved for a long moment, then Castiel straightened and backed off three steps, looking at a point beyond Dean's ear.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it." Dean pushed himself off the ground with a grunt. "Dam, you're heavy."

"My mass is not relative to my form."

"I don't know what that means, Cas, but it's good to have you back."

Neither of them were quite looking at each other as they got back into the car. Dean started rambling on about the case and what had happened after Castiel had been transformed, Castiel made the odd interjection and Sam settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. Eventually he would tell Dean that attraction probably did have everything to do with it, as well as the almost sickening amount of fondness they had for each other. But that could wait until later.