Note: This story is finished, and I'll post the next few chapters this week. Enjoy!


The cell phone alarm clock went off at 5:30, like it always, did, and Cas grabbed it sleepily and turned the sound off. It was amazing how much sleep a human body needed—the five or six hours he got on the floor of the stock room never seemed to be enough.

Today, on top of feeling the usual exhaustion that seemed to come with being human, Cas was sore. Once the phone had stopped blaring at him he rolled back, pulling the sleeping bag around him again, ignoring the hardness of the concrete against his back. His encounter with Ephram had left him badly bruised, and his wrist in particular was swollen and stiff, with a long discoloration tracking up the side, which made it more difficult to work the smoothie machine—he'd made three mistakes yesterday. He had no desire to move, let alone to make himself presentable and spend the day tending to the little store. He was simply too tired, and every part of him ached.

Normally, he felt more enthusiasm about the Gas-N-Sip. Not only did providing food and services to his fellow humans seem an honorable thing to do, the work allowed him to eat every day and (if you counted the stock room) even gave him a place to spend the night. It had taken nearly all of his ingenuity to learn how to look for a job, and to put together all of the pieces he needed to acquire this one—the false information for the application, the clothes for the interview, understanding what exactly happened at an interview, and enough knowledge of retail and food service to convince Nora that he would be worth hiring. He'd even felt a little bit of pride that he'd managed to do so while sleeping in the park and subsisting, mainly, on the meager and often questionable food other humans had discarded.

But Dean's words had stung. You're better than this. The truth was, he wasn't better than this. This was the best he could do. It was just that until Dean had come, he hadn't realized that he was supposed to be better than this.

Cas dragged himself to his feet and rolled up the sleeping bag carefully, stowing it out of the way, wincing as his stiff wrist moved. He brushed his teeth and washed himself and shaved in the store bathroom. He put on his vest and buttoned it carefully with one hand, then looked at himself in the mirror for a few moments, and he did every morning. He reminded himself that he had dealt with solitude for billions of years and it had never bothered him; he had found a place in the human world and learned many things and he was proud of it; and Dean had seen how he lived and he had looked down on Cas and then he'd left him again. He blinked at his reflection, feeling like his throat was tight and his eyes were burning.

He spun around on his heel and walked out into the store. There was no sense dwelling on what Dean had thought. He still needed to procure enough money to survive, and to provide food and services to the Gas-N-Sip customers. It was silent and empty, and everything was off, almost like the store itself was still sleeping.

He engrossed in powering up the smoothie machine (carefully, carefully, because he couldn't afford to make another mess though his wrist throbbed when he twisted the necessary knobs) when he became aware—through a sort of visceral, prickling sensation as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up—that he wasn't alone.

He spun around and found himself face to face with three black-eyed men.

"I'm sorry, we're not open yet," Cas said, for lack of any better way to greet a group of hostile-looking demons. Plus, there was always the chance that they had stopped for some sort of snack before going on with their evil demonic business.

The demons strode forward and one grabbed each of his arms roughly. Or perhaps not.

"Where are you taking me?" Cas asked, looking between them. Had he been an angel he could have attempted to fight them, but now their strength far outmatched his, and all he could do was try to reason his way out. And for that he needed information. "Do you work for Crowley? Do you—" He finished his question in a dingy warehouse, where the demons had just teleported him. "—want something from me?"

The demon in a large, male, vessel that currently had his right arm in a vice grip chuckled. "Not from you."

Before he could answer the demons manhandled him to a set of chains that had been strung up to a pipe on the ceiling and locked his wrists into heavy manacles. Cas gritted his teeth as the heavy metal tugged on his sore wrist, and found himself thinking, I'm going to miss my shift. I may lose my lob. Nora was very strict about missed shifts.

Of course, that would only be a problem if he survived. He gasped in pain and the demons hauled on the other end of the chain, pulling him up so that he was suspended by his wrists. The wrist that had been simply stiff and throbbing dully for days began blazing with pain as soon as his weight was suspended from it, and he gasped at the sudden severity of it. He'd always been aware that humans were fragile, but being trapped in a human body like this, where a limb mildly injured days ago could cause him so much pain now, was unbearably frustrating.

"What do you want?" he demanded. They didn't answer.

The third demon, in the vessel of a tall woman, had produced a small object, which Cas recognized a few seconds later as his own cell phone. Usually, he unplugged it from where it charged in the stockroom overnight and brought it into the store with him (because maybe Dean would call, one of these days, and invite him back to live in the bunker with him), but since Dean's visit he'd hardly seen the point. Dean had only come to see him because Cas had told him there was a case, and had left as soon as there wasn't one.

The demon poked at his phone, then held it up to Cas's cheek. He could hear it ringing softly.

"Get Dean Winchester back here," the demon said. "Don't tell him about us."

Cas waited as the phone rang, torn between two options. On the one hand, he wanted Dean to know there were demons plotting against him. On the other hand, he didn't want Dean to walk into a trap. As the phone rang, and rang, he decided—Dean should stay as far away as he could. If the demons failed here, they would have to come to Dean, and Dean would likely be more than capable of handling them on his own terms. He wasn't at all surprised when Dean didn't pick up, and the phone went straight to voicemail.

"Hello, Dean," he said haltingly, aware the demons were poised to hurt him as soon as he said something not to their liking. "It was…good to see you. It would be…I would like to see you again. If you wouldn't mind."

The demon pulled the phone away, and ended the message, and Cas tried not to smile triumphantly. The demons didn't know that Dean would never come just because Cas wanted him to. They had probably found him back tracking Dean to the Gas-N-Sip, and assumed that Dean visited often. They'd have no way of knowing that Dean hadn't really even come to see him at all.

The triumphant feeling was beginning to slide into the familiar crushing loneliness, and Cas closed his eyes for a moment.

"Going to sleep on us?" the demon asked, giving Cas a shove. It movement tugged sharply on his damaged wrist and Cas gave an involuntary cry, eyes flying open. He watched the demons warily, his breathing still shaky.

"He startles easy," the big demon snorted, prodding at him again. This time, Cas was ready, and bit down on his exclamation of pain. He tried to maneuver so that his weight was mostly hanging on his other wrist, but his feet barely touched the ground and it was nearly impossible.

"Go on, have some fun with him," the female demon said. "Just make sure there's enough of him left that he can call the Winchester again in a few days, if need be." Then she turned around and left Cas with the others.

Cas glared at them, feeling utterly, and disturbingly, vulnerable. At least Dean will be safe, he reminded himself, but that thought was only chased by the harsher truth, because Dean doesn't care at all about me. He'd tried to avoid thinking about this too much, over the long months he'd spent scrambling to survive on his own, particularly in the difficult weeks before he'd acquired the Gas-N-Sip job. If Dean cared about him, he wouldn't have left him alone to scavenge from dumpsters and shiver through long nights alone in the park. He wouldn't have sent him away without any of the things the Winchesters used for money or identification, their credit cards and fake IDs. Sometimes, Cas even allowed himself to imagine what it might've been like if Dean had helped him find a motel room of his own, using one of his own credit cards to pay for it. Cas would have paid him back, of course, as soon as he acquired money. In fact, he'd've looked forward to it—returning a favor by a friend seemed a very human thing to do.

His stream of thought was interrupted by the big demon grinning and dragging a knife down Cas's chest. He found himself oddly more concerned about the damage to the shirt—which had cost him nearly five dollars at the thrift store—than about the blazing trail of pain the knife had left behind, though it did make him grit his teeth and squirm in a way that only jarred his injured wrist again and made him grunt in an effort to keep from making a more piteous noise.

Dean is safe, he reminded himself, needing something to think about beside the undoubtedly uncomfortable times ahead. Clearly, it had been stupid of the demons to use him as bait for an unsuspecting Dean, when it was clear that Dean didn't care about Cas's well-being at all. Dean wouldn't come to see him. He wasn't even sure Dean would come to save him, if he knew what was truly going on. It occurred to him that Dean only liked to help him when he could be useful, which as an injured and captured human he certainly wasn't. As the demon dragged the knife down again, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus on the only thing that mattered, repeating the words over and over in his mind. Dean is safe. Dean is safe. Dean is safe, because I'm useless and Dean doesn't care about me.