He watched from the shadows as the two figures argued on the other side of the balcony, one his target and the other the target's fiancé, a civilian, unnecessary and uninvolved. He frowned slightly at the civilian's presence; her being there would only delay his mission, but it was unavoidable. He'd been strictly informed by his contractor that no one but the target was to be taken out, not that he would've killed her anyway. He didn't want any more innocent blood on his hands than what was necessary.
He tried to consider the bright side – the couple was fighting, and that most likely meant that the girl would soon flee inside, retreating into the warm comfort and safety of her home, maybe curl up in a blanket and watch a chick-flick while eating ice-cream. For a moment he felt sorry for her, because her last moments with her loved one were going to be angry and filled with sharp words that she'd never be able to apologise for, but there was nothing he could do about that. He had his orders, and that was to kill the target tonight.
A few minutes later, the girl went back inside, just as he'd predicted leaving his target alone on the balcony (or so they thought). A feral grin threatened to cross his face, but he refused to let it out as he watched his prey – this may have been his job, his calling, but he retained enough humanity to know that it wasn't something that he should enjoy, and he shuddered internally when his memories from a far darker time threatened to break free, but he suppressed them with a practiced ease. A hunt was no time to get sentimental. That didn't change the fact that few things made him as happy as a hunt did.
Once he was certain the girl wasn't going to come back outside for a few more biting comments (the argument had been nasty, and he'd winced in sympathy for both sides), he slipped silently out of the shadows and approached the target (he always referred to his victims as 'targets' in order to dehumanise them, and even though he tried to make up for that in other ways, he knew he was still going to burn in Hell for it). And finally, finally, the target, a young man no older than his early twenties, turned around from the view, presumably to go after his fiancé now that she'd had time to cool off and found himself face to face with a Colt 1911 and a face that could've only been carved by God himself.
Dean Winchester, infamous contract killer known only to the media and police by his alias 'Hunter' and his trademark ballistics trail that linked all his kills to him smirked at his target. "Hey buddy, don't yell now," he said with enough charm to make the engaged man facing his death blush.
Said man gulped nervously. "Who are…" he started, but never finished, his voice breaking, and Dean gave him a sympathetic smile. No one ever recognised him, and he worked hard to keep it that way.
"It's nothing personal, but I do have some honour, so I like to let my targets known why they're gonna do before they do," Dean said smoothly, pointedly not answering the question (it was another of his rules – never let the target steer the conversation). "Now keep quiet, and we won't have to worry your lovely fiancé." Not that Dean would bring her into this, but it made for a good threat.
The target's eyes widened. "Don't hurt her," he pleaded, "She's innocent, she hasn't done anything wrong, ever, I swear to God." His voice cracked on the last word and Dean nodded let out a huff of breath.
"Shh, shh, buddy, she'll be fine. I believe you. Now," Dean said once the target was once again as calm as a mad with a gun in his face could be, "Apparently you accidentally overheard some information about something important that someone doesn't want to be known." He sighed. "I'm here to make sure that the information isn't let slip."
The young man gripped the railing behind him, nearly hyperventilating. "So I'm going to die because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time?" He asked. "That's kind of fucked up."
Dean nodded sympathetically. "It's a fucked up world," he agreed. "Is there anything you'd like me to say to anybody, any last words? I'll send it anonymously after your death." No one could ever say Dean wasn't an honourable man; not once had he not sent the last words of his targets to their loved ones, even if they'd contained the information he'd been paid to dispose of. After all, he was only paid to kill his targets, nothing else.
"Just… just tell Faye that she was the best risk I ever took," the target said quietly. "And that I've never once regretted our relationship, even when we fought."
Dean nodded, memorising the message. "I can do that," he said kindly, a tone at odds with his firm grip on his Colt. "Anything else?"
"That's all," the target murmured, and when he looked up Dean saw the eyes of a man who knew he was about to lose everything. It was a look he'd seen many times before, and he knew he'd see it again, but God, Dean knew that the eyes of all his victims were going to haunt him until the very end. That didn't stop him from having to see them when their life fled, had to know how they looked. It was one of those things that made him one of the best killers, and also one of the worst, because Dean kept himself human by dehumanising others, and if that wasn't an example of the twisted human condition, he didn't know what was.
"I say this to everyone, but that doesn't mean that I mean it any less," Dean said, and the target looked at him with already-dead eyes. "I truly hope there's something better than this on the other side."
She was the best risk I ever took. Dean had always heard about those phrases that got stuck in people's heads and changed their lives overnight, but never before had he come across one that affected him quite like this. He let himself into his empty apartment, the cold rooms the closest thing he'd ever had to a home and tried to shake the target's words out of his head to little avail.
"Damn it, no time for chick-flick moments," Dean muttered to himself as he wandered into his small kitchen, heading straight for his kettle and the coffee that he'd been promising himself all night.
"What was that?" A familiar voice asked, startling Dean, and he flinched, barely managing to stop himself from shooting his best friend.
"Cas," Dean said, sighing in relief that he hadn't fatally wounded the other man, "I didn't see you there. Turn the lights on next time, hey?"
"Of course Dean," Cas said in his ever-dry voice, standing up from the couch were he'd been sitting in the dark waiting for Dean and walking over to the kitchen counter as Dean turned on the kettle. "I'll turn the lights on next time and you can shoot me again like you did two months ago."
Dean frowned, guilt twisting his stomach as though it were inhabited by writhing snakes. "I'm sorry," he muttered, closing his eyes as a flash of self-loathing hit him at the memory of firing three rounds into Cas's shoulder. "I swear I didn't mean to, it was just a hard hunt that night and then there was someone in my flat and -"
Dean was abruptly cut off by a hand being placed firmly across his mouth and blue eyes that were staring straight into his soul. Dean's heart pounded; he hadn't even heard his friend move around the counter and walk up behind him. "Dean, I was joking. I'm getting the feeling that perhaps it was too soon though," Cas said and now his face was the one with guilt written all over it, and Dean found that wrong in so many ways. In his opinion Cas had the most beautiful soul in the world, and shouldn't ever feel like that, and now Dean was feeling guilty because his feeling guilt had now made Cas feel guilt and –
"We're a sad pair, aren't we," Dean said, his voice muffled slightly by Cas's hand, trying to lighten the moment and failing miserably.
"Yes," Cas murmured, taking a few steps back, and Dean instantly felt colder, although he blamed it on the fact that he still hadn't fixed the thermostat from when he broke it while wrestling with Sam the month before.
She was the best risk I ever took, echoed in his head once again, and Dean's eyes widened as a realisation began ricocheting around his brain. He hastily turned his back on Cas to fix himself a coffee and a hot chocolate for the other, and no, he didn't keep it specifically because it was Cas's favourite drink, Sam drank it as well. Occasionally. As in once a year. And only if he was very drunk.
"Did something happen," Cas asked suddenly, and Dean nearly knocked over his coffee as he stirred it.
"I'm fine, Cas," Dean said, instantly shoving his feelings further into a wardrobe and hopefully into Narnia.
"Right and you're also ugly," Cas retorted, and why did Dean teach the other man about sass again? Oh yeah, because Den was clearly an idiot, especially if he thought he could hide anything from Cas. Even when they'd first met, Cas had been able to see right through his bluster and lies. Seriously, he'd appeared like a freaking guardian angel and had taken out a rather pissed off rival of Dean's who been just about to kill him. Then he'd taken one look at Dean's bruised and broken face and said 'You don't think you deserve to be saved'.
"Cas," Dean sighed, spinning back to face the shorter man and handing him his hot chocolate. "It's just something the target said that's bothering me. I'll get over it." If Dean hoped that that would be enough to get Cas off his back, he was sorely mistaken.
Cas raised an eyebrow and Dean tried valiantly to resist the angel's aura (Dean had secretly referred to Cas as 'angel' ever since he'd mentioned that his full name, Castiel, was actually derived from the name of one). Eventually the unrelenting and piercing blue eyes dissolved some wall in Dean, and he sighed.
"Fine, just, can we sit? I've been standing all day," Dean said, delaying the now inevitable discussion about feelings and consequent chick-flick moment, and Cas nodded.
"Of course, Dean," he said softly, although his eyes glimmered with amusement. He knew full well that he had Dean wrapped around his little finger, and had no shame when it came to exploiting that fact.
"What did the target say?" Castiel prompted gently after they were both sitting opposite each other on Dean's couch, and Dean had been silent for far too long.
Dean remained silent. This could go one of two ways, he knew, and while he was desperately praying to a god that he was pretty sure went AWOL a long time ago, he was pretty sure it was going to go the other. After all, he was Dean, and nothing ever went his way, not completely.
"Dean," Cas said, and Dean realised that he still hadn't answered his friend.
"She was the best risk I ever took," Dean said. "That's what the target wanted me to tell his fiancé.
"And?" Cas asked patiently despite the confusion and frustration painted across his face, because getting Dean to drag his feelings out from wherever he shoved them was sometimes more difficult than squeezing water from a stone.
"And I can't stop thinking about it," Dean admitted. "I mean, what if I never take that risk and tell them, and then the chance is gone?" Dean slumped forwards so his elbows rested on his thighs as he hid his face in his hands.
Cas sighed and moved so that he was sitting next to Dean, somehow managing to interpret Dean's words and take meaning from them. "Ah," he said. "I would recommend that you take the risk; you never know what might come from it."
Dean huffed. "He also said that he'd never regretted loving her," he said dryly. "But this is me we're talking about, and I'm pretty sure I'd be accidentally able to start an apocalypse, so…"
"That's very true," Cas agreed, and Dean sat up in indignation.
"You're not supposed to agree," he protested, but Cas just smirked.
"I was doing you a favour," he explained, a smug look plastered on his face. "You hate chick-flick moments and our discussion was fast becoming one." Then Cas sighed. "In all seriousness, I'm probably not the best person to talk to. There's a risk that I've been wanting to take for years now, but I've never taken that final step."
Dean nodded. "I want to take the risk," he whispered, "I just don't know how."
"I know," Cas said, "Believe me, I know."
Dean took a breath. "Perhaps… perhaps we could take that final step together?" He suggested, and he twisted in his seat so he was facing his blue-eyed angel, who was looking at him with something akin to awe.
"Yes," Cas whispered, his eyes practically glowing with what the old lady who lived next to Dean probably would've called the 'grace of God'. Dean preferred 'love' but whatever, and also, now was so not the time to be thinking about old ladies and their weird sayings – total mood killer. "Yes, I believe that is a wonderful idea."
Dean smirked ever so slightly, leaning forward so that Cas was most definitely in his personal space. "Shall we jump together?"
"Of course, Dean."