Back in its glory days, 4Loko was a heady mix of caffeine, guarana and a shit ton of alcohol. Obviously anything that good couldn't last, and the FDA forced 4Loko's overlords to change the ingredients so people would stop, like, dying after drinking it and whatever. So, tragically, the 5 brightly colored cans of the beverage that Dean Winchester had downed in the past hour were nothing but sugar, water, fake ass green apple flavoring, and of course a shit ton of alcohol.

You could make up for the lack of caffeine though by downing a few 5 hour energy shots, as Dean had learned from the wise chapter leader of the Lambda Phi Epsilon frat party he was currently crashing.

About 80 drunken, sweaty undergrads were testing the capacity of the historic Lambda Phi frat house by jumping up and down in time to some shitty pop song. Dean felt hot, uncomfortably hot, and even through the fog of his drunkenness he could feel his ears ringing from the loud music. The floor below him felt pleasantly distant, and if it wasn't for the fact that everything around him was now spinning he wouldn't have known that he had lurched up off of the couch at all.

It took him four tries to open the fucking screen door to the back porch. His uncooperative hands were having trouble grasping the handle and pushing down.

Still, life was good. He staggered optimistically into the cooler night air; air that was only slightly befouled by the cigarettes of the young ladies huddled amongst each other on the steps. Dean made an attempt to nod politely at the artfully made up young women, but in so doing lost his balance. He stumbled down the steps gracelessly into the yard.

"Goddamn he is drunk as fuuuuuck." Meg Masters laughed. Dean Winchester appeared to be having trouble walking upright. He looked more like a sailor straggling across the deck of a battleship in stormy seas than a dude making his way across a perfectly stationary lawn.

"Cute though." Ruby said, tapping her fingers on the side of her big red party cup. It was filled half way up with vodka, sweetened with just a splash of Mountain Dew so you couldn't tell how cheap the booze was. Drinking it was like downing rubbing alcohol after eating a sweet tart. "Hey big guy!" She called out to the bow legged dude, currently fighting a losing battle against the fence gate. "You thirsty?"

Dean swung around to address the two chicks. He wasn't really taking in much detail at the moment, but he could tell that one of them, the one holding a cup at him, was blonde. The other one had dark curly hair. Both of them had breasts, of that he was certain.

"My mouth's dry." He responded honestly.

Meg giggled wickedly and took another drag on her cigarette, looking at Ruby to see how this was going to play out.

"This'll help that, baby." Ruby said, and with Florence Nightingale-like caretaking sweetness she pressed her slightly greasy red party cup into his hands. "Drink up."

Dean took a sip, made a face at the taste, forgot what he was doing, and turned what attention he had back to the stubborn fence gate. There was a simple latch mechanism on it that most of the raccoons in the neighborhood had figured out how to work, but it was proving too much for Dean's faculties at the moment.

"Here babe." The blonde girl flipped the latch up easily and loosed Dean Winchester on the world.

"Wanna come?" Dean asked, turning around in a wide arc and trying to focus on his helpmate. Sober Dean would have told you his type was brunettes but when one is too drunk to see straight physical appearances don't seem to matter anymore. He was past caring what gender they were, in all honesty. He took another drink that tasted like burning and was reminded why he'd stopped drinking from that cup. He forgot in another two seconds.

"No, Meg and I are gonna stay here, hon." Ruby said, smiling sweetly. From the corner of her eye she saw a cop car driving around the block for the second time. This party was about to get busted and God help you if you had an open container. "You go have fun huh?" She said, pulling out a perfectly legal cigarette and walking back to join Meg on the stairs. They could watch the fun from there. Dean was left on the sidewalk, underage, visibly drunk, and carrying a huge cup of what was pretty much pure alcohol.

"Cool… thanks?" He said, and began to wander away.

Through some miracle the cops did not stop Dean, and he was able to wander around his little college town in quiet, dizzy peace. He kept sipping his vodka and mountain dew absently and eventually he was caught up with another group of extremely drunk college students from a party a few blocks down. There's a tentative sort of camaraderie among the very drunk. It's like when two dogs out for walks meet one another on the sidewalk. They can either run around yipping with excitement at having found a fellow, or they can try to bite each other's faces off. A girl whose eye makeup had smudged all down her face grabbed Dean's arm with a big dumb smile. A huge guy with blood shot eyes started patting him on the back aggressively. He might have been the girl's boyfriend, none of them could really remember at that point. Dean smiled innocently.

"LOOK!" The drunk girl announced gleefully, attempting to point at a tent set up in an empty parking lot. "JESUS BURGERS!" She lurched forward with drunken determination, the combination of her high heels and her dampened coordination making her walk like a t-rex.

"Jesus Burgers?" Dean repeated.

Every Friday night the Campus Christian Fellowship provided free burgers from midnight to 2am for the drunk kids on campus. They called them Jesus Burgers so that even the dumbest, most inebriated college student in the world would learn to associate Jesus with something good and helpful. Also, delicious.

Dean, unwisely, finished the rest of his red plastic cup in two big gulps (the equivalent of four shots in less than ten seconds) and staggered over to the barbecue.

"Would you like a burger?" A young man wearing a red and white-checkered apron asked. Dean found he was having a hard time focusing on him, but the last thing he saw before blacking out were the prettiest pair of blue eyes he'd ever seen.

Dean woke up in the hospital.

He felt, roughly, like he'd been beaten all over his body with a meat tenderizer, that his skull had been filled with ball bearings, and that he'd thrown up at least 12 times. That last one was true, actually.

"You're awake." Someone said, and Dean turned to see some dude he'd never met sitting next to his bed. There was a red and white-checkered apron hanging on the back of his chair, inexplicably.

"Who…" Dean was going to ask who the brown haired, sallow faced guy sitting next to him was but his throat felt like he'd swallowed a bunch of tiny knives. He started to cough, and his eyes watered from the pain.

"They tried to pump your stomach last night, but you started throwing up before they could." The dude said. His expression was one of interested concern, and he was sitting strangely rigidly, like he'd been raised in a Victorian boarding school or something. His voice was deep and soothing though, and Dean found it comforting. He leaned back into his pillow shakily, closing his eyes. "Do you remember anything?" the stranger asked.

Dean shook his head slowly, a mistake as it turned out, it made him feel woozier.

"Ah. You had alcohol poisoning." The young man explained. There was no judgment or sympathy in his voice; he could have been telling him the weather. "The doctor said your blood alcohol content was 0.6."

Dean vaguely remembered a presentation during freshman orientation week where a bunch of lame upper classmen had explained that the blood alcohol limit for driving was .08. Math wasn't his strong suit but he remembered decimals enough to know that .6 was a hell of a lot higher than that. At that point a nurse opened the curtain around where Dean was lying. He realized that he was in a makeshift bed in the hallway of an extremely busy hospital.

"You're conscious!" The nurse exclaimed. She was young and heavy set, hair pulled back into a messy bun and with dark circles under her eyes. She'd been up with Dean for three hours last night, making sure he didn't lose consciousness or choke on his own vomit. It had been a bit of a grind, and he remembered none of it. "Stay awake, we need your name and address." She jogged out of sight, going to get all the paperwork that a blacked out Dean Winchester had been unable to provide for her.

When she came back in she was accompanied by a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat.

"How are you feeling?" The doctor asked, expression grim.

Dean sort of managed a groan, which still made his throat hurt.

"Mm hm." The doctor narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "Do you remember how many drinks you had last night?"

Dean didn't remember much of anything about last night, so he gave her a kind of bewildered look.

"From your blood alcohol content, you had about 20. When Castiel found you," She nodded at the brown haired guy in the seat next to Dean. "you were unconscious and turning blue on a public sidewalk. If he hadn't called 911 immediately there is a VERY high likelihood that you would have died. We've been rehydrating you as best as we can and we gave you charcoal to induce vomiting, but you are most definitely going to feel awful for the next day or so. What's your name?"

"Dean… Winchester." Dean managed to say.

"Dean Winchester, say hello to your guardian angel." His doctor said, gesturing to Castiel. The handsome man looked vaguely bashful for a second, fixing his somewhat piercing gaze guiltily back on to Dean. Dean shivered. "You owe him your life." His doctor finished.

Dean filled out the rest of his paperwork pretty much without issue, hoarsely muttering his answers and trying not to burst into flames from the condemning stares of both his nurse and his doctor. When Dean wasn't feeling spectacularly ill and exhausted he mostly just felt shame. He could hear his father's voice in his head, telling him that the time and energy these people had put into keeping his stupid, binge-drinking ass alive could have been spent helping other people out. Every second he spent in this bed on the IV was stealing resources from somebody who hadn't put themselves in the hospital out of their own stupidity. Castiel just sat by, silently and without any visible emotion while Dean tried to figure out the quagmire that is health insurance.

When he got to the line that asked for his birthdate, Dean couldn't help but pause. He was 19, and he'd just been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. Could they cite him for that? He froze in indecision.

"You won't get cited here hon." His nurse said, smiling at his moment of panic. "We'd rather have kids come here and get help than stay at home and die because they're afraid of a $500 fine."

"Thanks." Dean muttered, and after a few more scribbles handed her the completed form. He absently reached over to yank the IV out of his arm so he could leave but his nurse actually slapped his wrist.

"What the hell are you doing, Ken doll?" She asked, reproachfully. "Were you just going to rip that out of your arm? Are you an idiot?" She began the process of removing the drip in a quick, professional way.

"I…" Dean glanced back and forth between his nurse and Castiel, who was staring at him in his infuriatingly unreadable way. Dean sighed. "I'm just an idiot." He muttered, closing his eyes.

Castiel ended up driving Dean back to his dorm. Every time the car accelerated, no matter how cautiously, Dean felt a wave of nausea that felt like his brains were going to drip out of his ears. He just gritted his teeth and tried not to look too miserable though. He deserved this. This was all his own fucking fault.

"You shouldn't be too hard on yourself." Castiel said, like he could read Dean's mind. "People make mistakes."

"People do a lot of things dude." Dean said with a groan. "Thanks. By the way. For uh… saving me." His throat still felt pretty rough but he was able to speak without tearing up now, so that was an improvement.

Castiel shrugged.

"You seemed ill when you took your burger from me at the barbecue. I thought you looked as though you were in need of assistance. Particularly when you collapsed."

"You're that guy!? The Christian Coalition guy?" Dean asked, looking at his companion with new eyes. Pretty much Dean's entire life up to this point had been built on the assumption that Christians were dicks, and the kind of Christian who would actually spend their time feeding free burgers to drunk people were the actual worst.

"I am a member of the Campus Christian Fellowship." Castiel said, very seriously.

"Huh." Dean replied with an appraising look. "Do you get like, Jesus points for helping people out or whatever?"

Castiel pulled into the temporary parking lot next to Dean's dorm.

"Dean." Castiel said, as he put the car in park. "I've made it a part of my personal mission on campus this year to help students who are struggling with alcohol and drugs."

"I…" Dean wanted to protest but Castiel had fixed his cold blue gaze on him and Dean found he couldn't think of anything to say.

"I would very much like to remain in contact with you, to make sure that you continue to thrive at this university and forge healthy relationships." Dean had heard speeches like that before, from soulless campus advisors who called him Dan and kicked him out of their offices after 20 minutes.

"Healthy relationships?"

"I noticed that none of your inebriated companions knew who you were." Castiel said. "When I was trying to revive you they said they'd never met you before. I think you would benefit from coming to our Campus Christian Fellowship meetings every Wednesday."

"Oh no. No way." He managed. "I'm not, I don't believe…"

"You don't have to believe in God to come to the meetings Dean. You can come purely from curiosity." Castiel's gaze was still fixed on Dean, expression serious.

Dean tried to think of a way to protest this. There was no fucking way he was going to a Christian Fellowship meeting. He couldn't even commit to going to class every week, there was no way he was going to be organized enough for these douchebags. But before he could articulate any of this to the scruffy dude currently staring at him like a statue, he felt a surge of Winchester self-hate. Last night he'd drunk enough booze to kill himself, and the only person who cared enough to help him was somebody he'd never met before. Castiel had just spent 8 hours of his life being puked on and scared shitless over some dude he didn't even know. Dean owed him something for that. Even if it was going totally suck balls.

"Ok dude." Dean said. "I'l give it a shot."

Dean's nurse had told him that he should go back to his dorm, drink a lot of water, and rest for at least a day before he tried to do anything too strenuous. He slumped to his dorm room, praying inwardly that his roommate would be out.

Of course he wasn't.

"Hey Ash." Dean greeted the party side of a truly spectacular mullet. His skinny roommate was wearing a cutoff t-shirt and boxers and was on the edge of their futon, completely engrossed in an episode of Honey Boo Boo Child broadcast on their tiny ass television.

"Dean, check this shit out, this toddler is making me rethink my entire life philosophy." Ash said, not even bothering to give his roommate a cursory glance while Dean stepped around the piles of dirty laundry and various food wrappers that littered the floor of their 15 ft. square living space.

"Sure man." Dean muttered. It wasn't that he disliked Ash. In fact, the two of them had bonded pretty epically in the first couple weeks of school over a mutual love of video games, weed, and booze. But Ash could be something of an abrasive personality, and Dean was in a bit too delicate a state at the moment to deal with any abrasions whatever.

Finally Ash turned around to say hey, and he saw Dean in all his recently hospitalized glory.

"Dean! Man! You look like you just got keelhauled or some shit, what the fuck happened to you?"

"I uh, drank too much." Dean said, rubbing his eyes exhaustedly. "Went to the hospital. Can we like, talk about this later?"

Ash looked at him concernedly for a few seconds, but apparently something about Dean's expression sunk in and he just nodded. He even pulled the curtains and lowered the lights in consideration of Dean's hangover, but he still finished the episode of Honey Boo Boo, albeit at a lower volume.

"You got to start taking better care of yourself man." Ash said, when Dean audibly moaned as he lay down on his bed.

"Mmm." Dean responded, noncommittally.

"OH!" Ash said, "Your dad called! He said you weren't picking up your phone so he called mine."

"What'd he say?" Dean asked, not bothering to remove his arm from from its position over his face.

"He said the same thing everybody's dad says, man, he said to call him back."

"kay. Ash, can I sleep?" Dean muttered. "I feel like shit."

"If you feel as bad as you look man, I do not friggin' envy you."

"Thanks Ash." Dean said.

He had no intention of calling his father back. What would he say? "Hey Dad, I almost drank myself to death, no big?" No, he already knew every word of the severe verbal flagellation he was going to receive for that nonsense, best if he just kept it quiet. But the thought of his dad led to other unpleasant thoughts, like Sam, and the fact that at this very moment Sam was occupying a house with freaking Adam Milligan, the little brother they never knew they had. Dad, Kate, Sam, and Adam were just one big happy family now, now that Dean was out of the house and conveniently tucked away as a freshman at KU.

The thought of his family made Dean's head throb more violently than it already had been, so he tried to think of softer, nicer things so he could drift off to sleep. He ended up, drowsily, irrationally, thinking about Castiel. The last image he drew up in his mind before he fell into a deep, necessary sleep were Castiel's concerned eyes, and the strange, almost intimidating expression that had drawn him out of oblivion earlier that day.

Castiel Smith lived alone in a basement level efficiency. It was, as the name suggests, efficient, inasmuch as one could efficiently roll off of one's bed and land in the bathroom it was so freaking small. He didn't really mind though, Castiel liked living simply. He had a bed, a laptop, a kitchen large enough that you could just about open the oven door all the way, and a tiny little cube of a shower. His necessities were met, and he was able to lead an almost Franciscan lifestyle here. He slung his coat over the back of his fold up chair and lay back on his twin size bed with a sigh. He was so tired that he felt drunk (not that he'd know what that felt like, he'd never drunk more than a sip of wine in his life) but even so he couldn't go to sleep without praying. He started his prayer as he always did, thanking God for his friends and his home and his family in the familiar little hum of a prayer that he kept forgetting to be actually sincere about. The next bit of the prayer was usually more specific, the part where he felt as though he was having a friendly chat with God. He thought about his actions of the past evening and felt a rush of… what? Excitement? Surely he shouldn't be feeling excitement about being exhausted and spending the night in the hospital. But he realized with a glow what he was feeling. Purpose. Thank you God for sparing Dean Winchester, and in your name I will try to help him find his path in this life.

"Am I dressed ok for this?" Dean Winchester asked Castiel, as he stepped out the elevator of his dorm and found his "guardian angel" waiting for him in the lobby. It was Tuesday night, and Castiel had volunteered to walk with Dean from his dorm over to the Christian Fellowship meeting. Castiel looked at the young man whom he had made his own personal project appraisingly. Dean was dressed in slightly faded but respectable jeans and a striped button up top.

"You look perfectly acceptable." Castiel said, tilting his head slightly to the side. "Were you worried about your outfit being too revealing?"

"I…" Dean could not for the life of him tell if Castiel was joking, his expression looked the same as it did for anything other inexplicable thing he ever said. "Sure." He shrugged. "I don't want to look like a slut or anything for my first Christian Fellowship meeting."

Castiel narrowed his eyes.

"We don't refer to anyone as sluts, Dean. There are only people who make bad choices."

"Ok…" Dean was beginning to feel like agreeing to go to this thing had been an incredibly bad choice. "Well, let's go praise God huh? Hallelujah!"

Dean and Cas began the walk across campus to the ECM, which was the hip nickname for the office of Ecumenical Christian Ministries. Castiel walked in the same stiff, rigid way that he sat, once again giving Dean the weird feeling that he was with somebody from another time. The silence was awkward.

"This silence is awkward." Castiel said.

"Yeah, uh, um, how're you doing?" Dean asked, slightly desperately. Human interaction could be hard sometimes.

"I'm well. You seem to have recovered from your dehydration."

"I… uh… yeah. I drank a lot of water I guess." The doctor had told him to rest in his dorm for a day and Dean had tripled that, just to be safe. And, you know, he didn't really want to go to class. And he kind of wanted to finish this video game he'd been playing. But at least 80% of it had been worry over his health. Maybe.

"You look much better now." Castiel said.

"Well, I'm not puking all over you. That's gotta be a plus." Dean laughed.

"No really. You look very handsome."

"Y'know, somehow I feel like this conversation has taken a turn for the MORE awkward rather than the less. Maybe we should go back to silence."

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"Whoa dude, I'm not uncomfortable, just… uh… so… tell me about yourself! I know like, nothing about you."

Castiel walked for a few steps in silence, as though really trying not to mess this up. Dean wanted to pat him on the back, help him through this whole "social skills" thing. It wasn't like he was the best at talking to people, sure, but Castiel seemed like he was from another planet or something.

"I'm a Junior." Castiel said. "My name is Castiel Smith and I study Art History and Religious Studies."

"And in your free time you give burgers to drunk dumbasses." Dean smirked.

"I help out people who need it. Or, I guess, I try to."

"Well, I needed it." Dean was about to go on, but they had made it all the way up the steps to the ECM and he didn't want "Gushy and Thankful Dean" to be his first impression.

Castiel opened the door for him.

"Ready?" He asked.

"As I'll ever be." Dean said, and stepped inside.

The Campus Christian Fellowship had about 68 members on paper, but of those 68 maybe 12 would show up to their weekly meetings, and at most 30 for the big monthly gathering. This was a problem that the leadership had been attempting to address for years, but after phone calls and pleading emails and threats and pizza party incentives they'd all but given up. Unless they actually paid people to come, this little group was going to be the best they had. Running a campus organization is startlingly simple once you get past the initial paperwork. You recruit as many freshman as you can while they're still frightened baby deer wandering vulnerably around campus, and then you set up a circle of plastic chairs every week and talk about stuff. That's it. And it looks really freaking great on your resume.

When Castiel and Dean walked in, a pale and slim redhead was in the process of setting up the pivotal chairs.

"Hello Anna." Castiel said, and Dean could already pick up on an ever so slight hint of fondness in his tone.

"Castiel," Anna growled, separating two chairs that had stuck together with such violence that the plastic almost cracked. "Those bastards from the campus Republicans left the room a mess AGAIN you will not believe what I just had to clean up and…" She looked up and noticed Dean. "And you have a guest! So I should be nice!" Anna smiled apologetically.

"I'm Dean." Dean gave a little wave. "Need help with those chairs?"

"No, but there's a giant thing of lemonade over there I've been putting off trying to lift, so if one of you big strong boys would get that set up on the table for me I'd be forever grateful."

"No problem!" Dean said with what he knew was a cheeky grin. He had an arsenal of expressions he used on chicks, the first was "thoughtful pout", the second was "smug smirk" and the third was "cheeky grin." He saved the "Tormented soul" face for times of real need. (When he was hitting on dudes he was usually too drunk to put any of his trademark faces into action. His sexuality was something that he'd decided to just not think about and maybe it would go away.)

He turned to go lift the lemonade thing, but to his surprise Castiel was already walking away from it. Somehow he'd set it up on the table all by himself in the time it had taken Dean to smile winningly.

"Dude! You lifted that by yourself?" Dean asked, looking at the lemonade jug in shock. It had to be like, at least 10 gallons.

"Yes." Castiel responded flatly, staring at Dean as though this were no thing. Dean didn't have time to blabber in disbelief any more about it because Anna put them to work putting the chips ahoy and carrot sticks out.

Eventually, everything settled, and the 8 people who had decided to show up for the meeting took their seats in the chairs Anna had set up. Dean sat next to Cas of course, he was really starting to feel attached to the guy. To his surprise Anna took his seat on his other side.

"Aren't you running this shindig?" He whispered in her ear as she sat down. She shook her head with an expression he couldn't quite read and pointed to a young woman at the other side of the circle.

"Ladies and gentlemen." A smallish woman with straight blonde hair greeted everyone with a bright, endearingly lopsided smile. "I see some new faces, so we should start with introductions right? Well, I'm Ruby. And I'm really happy to see all of you here."