SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA 2009

An itch begins in Dean whenever he starts recording songs. It feels the same when he needs to get out on long drives with Baby or when he needs to go out and hunt things. So goes the need to put this indecipherable feeling into a tape and express himself in a way that he can't with words.

That's how he found himself needing to make that particular tape.

Dean recorded Ramble On after his brother decided to give up hunting and Cas helped him with his hunts. Besides, Ramble On felt like the theme song of his life. And because you can't have Ramble On without his other favorite song, Travelling Riverside Blues, he recorded that next. Sam rejoined them, life went on.

He remembered the next song he had chosen because they were all feeling black and reminded of how short their lives were going to be. He played In the Evening on repeat while looking through the case files on Carthage. Sam furrowed his brow followed by a single arch (Dean didn't even know why Sam bothered anymore.)

Sam looked pointedly at the radio with synthesizer played continuously followed by Plant shrilling She don't show no pity baby. Dean shrugged, it was a perfect reflection of his mood since he'd just had his last-night-on-Earth-speech rejected. Seriously, who does that?

Sam rolled his eyes and took his beer, but continued reading through the files even though they both knew it wasn't going to change much of anything. Dean allowed Sam the concession, but let the track slip through to South Bound Saurez.

Before he tried for his four hours, he went to his trusty shoebox and picked up the incomplete tape that had his two favorite songs. Cas found him fiddling with the radio on the porch, while everyone else was settling down for the night.

Dean acknowledged the angel with half a nod, his attention fully on rewinding his tape and finding the correct times. He tensed when the angel stepped closer, watching him with the radio propped up on the banister. Dean cleared his throat, "You should steal the couch or something soon. Too many people. Not a lot of sleeping space."

Cas tilted his head before he answered, "I don't sleep."

Dean snorted and pointed to a chair. "Would you just sit down already?" Cas dutifully followed the order even if he probably didn't understand the reasoning.

Which yeah… he and Cas had moved on from becoming reluctant allies to being friends. And friends got a pass when listening to music, right? Besides, Cas really needed to learn a bit of pop culture, what better introduction than Zepp?

Once the guitars and the synthesizer replaced the sounds of the crickets, Dean turned to Cas. "This song was supposed to be in the movie Lucifer Rising." Cas frowned as he took in the words before nodding slowly, listening to the beginning strains of the guitar.

"A very appropriate song then, given our circumstances," Castiel commented.

Out of the blue, Dean was laughing so hard. He laughed because otherwise he might have broken something, or worse: cried. In the Evening was the song he chose for their death dirge because he thought he was being a smart ass. It was the equivalent of spitting in the devil's eye, and no one but a fallen angel would get the black humor in it.

His laugh petered out to harsh breaths and he straightened himself out. All the while, Cas had a small not-smile on his face. If Dean could put a word to it, he'd call it fondness; he was growing on the angel.

He'd wanted this song on the tape even if he would never be given the opportunity to listen to it again. He could only play the song that night before turning in.

Once the song was complete, he stopped the tape, set it carefully back with the rest of his cassettes and brought the radio into the house, so he could bring it back to its rightful place in the library. Castiel watched him from his side of the porch, eyes boring into him.

"Dude, last night on earth shouldn't be spent staring at nothing," Dean said, opening the door in invitation. The last creaks of the house were settling over them, most of the occupants already finding their place for the night. Dean trusted that Sam saved him his usual spot.

Castiel shook his head and folded his hands together. "I'll watch over all of you. Rest, Dean, tomorrow is going to be a long day."

They didn't die in Carthage. Not all of them died in Carthage. Dean clung to the mixtape in his moments alone and recorded Stairway to Heaven. It was a bleak way to look at it, but when was the hunting life ever not bleak?

oOo

SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA, 2009

There's a song Dean plays after bad hunts, he plays it on repeat with the stereo on so loud so that he can't hear himself think as he beats himself up continuously. Good Times, Bad Times was just so aptly named for anger drinking. Hearing the bass and the drum beat over and over again was better than the self doubt and the pounding in his head. Usually he doused the entire feeling with whiskey and continued to wallow in misery with the bass. He'd picked it up after Cas beat him bloody for attempting to say "yes" to Michael.

After that awful heart-to-heart with Sam that he did not want to repeat, he played Good Times, Bad Times because he couldn't drink his anger and frustration before they set out on a rescue mission for Adam. So while they waited on Cas to get back from his recon, he paced around Bobby's panic room and let the guitar and the drums reverberate along the walls.

After he had played it twelve times (a lower count than when Dad died, but higher than that time when Sam was nabbed in Hibbing and he was going around like a headless chicken) he got his work in progress from his shoebox and recorded the song onto it.

"Another song?" Castiel asked when he appeared in the panic room, the reverberation hollowly echoing in the room.

Dean sullenly went to the tape deck and stopped the recording just as the song was ending. He could still feel the bruises where Cas'd thrown him against the chain-link fence, and the split lip was aching like a bitch, all the more seeking attention now that the person responsible for it was standing in front of him.

Cas walked up to Dean, but not in his usual too-close-for-comfort way, and he leaned in to lay a hand on his forehead. Dean turned his head away, because he didn't want it. He deserved that beating, but he wasn't sorry for it. What he said to Sam was still true: he'd say yes to Michael in a heartbeat.

Castiel closed his hand into a fist in frustration before he accepted the decision and stepped back from Dean. Dean had time to put the recording safely away before Cas looked for Sam and took them to Van Nuys.

Dean forgot about the tape, because of the apocalypse. Lucifer fell back into the cage, taking Sam along with him. Castiel left for Heaven, and Dean stopped recording songs.

He forgot about the tape, just as he covered Baby in a tarp to protect her in Lisa's garage. Covering in it, as well, his shoebox of memories.

oOo

CICERO, INDIANA 2010

Dean's life in Cicero was as normal as it was going to be given that he was a hunter and was easily spooked. He had billiards nights with the neighbors, occasional beer nights at the bar, legitimate work at a construction company and a son in Ben, who was turning out great. He even had yard work.

What he didn't have was music. Lisa was more of the Tibetan yodeling, classical music, Zen type of gal, and the harsh guitars and sexualized shouting of classic rock didn't exactly run in harmony with that.

Unfortunately for both Dean and his music preferences, all they had in the house was an iPod and their old boombox that had a CD player. Not a cassette player in sight, and it wasn't as if his songs were gonna get played on the radio.

So Dean was staring forlornly at the radio that was playing Beautiful Loser when Ben came into the garage with his stool to help with the truck. By the time Ben was set up to learn about oil changes, the pop beat of I Got a Feeling was playing on the station and Dean hit his head against the hood when the futuristic synthesizers played to glare at the radio.

Ben gave a loud belly laugh before he said, "you really hate new songs, huh?"

"No, I hate crappy songs," Dean corrected and got a rag to wipe his hands before he walked to the radio and changed stations, none of whom were playing anything remotely to his taste. "It wouldn't even be that bad if just wasn't everywhere. You stop at a store to buy nails and it's there, you get gas and it's there. It's a conspiracy of DJs."

Ben drummed his fingers on the truck as he looked at Dean getting annoyed at every station before he hopped down from the stool and tugged on Dean's arm. "You know… mom has a CD burner in the computer."

Confused, Dean closed the hood before they entered the house and Ben taught him about mp3s and iPods. Once he got a hang of it, he made a CD mix for Lisa, trying to give her a bit of 90s slow rock mixed with light rock. He included a couple of Creedence Clearwater Revival in the form of Have you Ever Seen the Rain in it, which was a happy in-between of their tastes. He finished that in an hour, and while it was faster, it left him unfulfilled.

He finally gave in and ordered a cassette player from Amazon, then remembered his unfinished tape.

He searched for it frantically, though logically he knew that it was where it had always been: in his beloved shoebox, under the front passenger's seat of the Impala.

He heaved a sigh of relief as he covered it with his hands. He ran his hand along the case before he popped the cassette out, rediscovering the project he'd left behind by touch before he played it. He spooled the tape forward and backward because it'd been awhile since he took it out, straightening the ribbon by carefully winding the hubs. He proceeded to listen to what he'd made previously, dragging a chair into the garage and using his newly bought cassette player.

He remembered recording Ramble On and Travelling Riverside Blues, but the rest of the recordings were like rediscovering an old friend. Playing the music gave him a visceral reaction to the times when he'd recorded those songs, in hope, in bitter remorse, in resentment.

It was still woefully unfinished, and as the last chords of Good Times, Bad Times hung in the air, he wondered what Cas was doing in Heaven now. Policing all the angels, just as he'd done when he'd shown Dean his wrath for his betrayal? Fulfilling the role of Heaven's sheriff?

He rooted through his old shoe box, sifting through and finally landing on Physical Graffiti, which he played in the empty garage. He leaned on the Impala, just listening to the album, the familiar melodies soothing his jangling nerves. His throat constricted when he heard the opening melody of the next song: I received a message from my brother across the water. He listened to the song about a man who dodged a military draft with a heavy heart.

Once the song was finished, he rewound the tape and then picked up his mix from the shoebox, winding that to a proper point and recorded Night Flight. Lisa found him in the garage just as the song was ending. She coaxed him to bed, but the heaviness in his heart didn't leave him.

The next day, a hunt found Dean and he was forcibly dragged away.

oOo

SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA 2011

Dean had taken to calling the mixtape his unfinished song.

While any mixtape always has a piece of the creator with it, this particular one felt like a reflection of his soul. It was raw, an offering to an unknown someone to listen to the conversation that'd been too difficult to start. It didn't have a theme. It wasn't carefully planned out, the overall composition depending on his particular mood. It was filled with Led Zeppelin and he played it in moments when he needed an escape or when he needed to remember something that he couldn't talk about.

Sometimes he didn't have a song to add to the mix, but listening to the mixtape was always a comfort. He used it to ground himself as he had to after he'd watched Cas walk out into the lake, releasing the Leviathans with his trench coat drifting ashore soon after. There'd been no sign of Cas after that. That night, with both a little bit of anger and a whole lot of unsettled feelings from the unfinished business between him and the missing angel, he went to his cassette player and recorded Your Time is Gonna Come.

He drifted off to sleep with the chorus repeating itself over and over and the cassette proceeded to record the next songs onto the track.

In the morning, Dean cursed at the tape and chucked it in the bin after he rewound it to listen to what he had done. The entire tape was just a recopy of the first Led Zeppelin album after Your Time is Gonna Come, and continued on to Communication Breakdown and I Can't Quit You Baby before it stopped because his recording ran out of time.

It took finding Emmanuel, regaining Cas only to lose him again, though this time to the mental institution, for Dean to search through his old shoe box of cassettes and look for his mix. In all honesty, it was probably the Cas with the bees that did him in. That was quite frankly hilarious, and also needed a song. Sam watched Dean's frantic search through the box before finally saying, "What are you looking for?"

"The unfinished tape," Dean grunted in frustration, aggressively flipping each tape in the box one by one and reading through the labels. Later, he regretted being short with Sam, but in that moment, he was getting tunnel vision. He was short-sighted and angry, unable to find what he was looking for.

Confusion registered on Sam's face, followed by a nose flare that was usually a herald of an impending talk, for which Dean did not have the time or energy. He needed to find that tape. He fended Sam off by asking, "have you touched this box?"

"What? No!" Sam said defensively, arms out placatingly while Dean went through the Impala from front to back five times. Sam watched with amusement, while Bobby gave them one look and disappeared inside the house with a muttered, "idjits."

Only after he interrogated Sam and went through the Impala for another round did Dean remember the fate of the mixtape. The next time they had quiet time in between cases Dean recorded everything again, from Ramble On to Night Flight.

His finger hovered over the record button when it was time to copy Your Time is Gonna Come. Whatever choice he was gonna make was interrupted by Sam slamming the library door closed. Startled, Dean scrambled up from the desk and bumped his knees against the table.

"Jumpy?" Sam asked with a raised eyebrow while he tossed Dean his order of a burrito with extra queso.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, gigantor," Dean muttered as he resisted the urge to keep recording. Your Time is Gonna Come was put in at a time when he was feeling wounded, and wanted to retaliate any way he could. Sam was beside him and this wasn't a time to square accounts, and the song shouldn't have a place in the mix. He had his brother, and it had come at a great sacrifice. It didn't feel right to gift it back with spite.

Dean settled with Tangerine which seemed like a better reflection of his current mood than Your Time is Gonna Come. It felt more like grief instead of anger and he wanted the tape to be uplifting rather than negative.

He hasn't decided yet what he was going to do with the tape once it was finished. But with a little over five songs, it was still underdone. He felt lighter when he finished Tangerine. And since Tangerine was heavy on angst, he followed it up with All my Love, just to add a lighter (but still sad) song in there and tucked the tape safely away. This had been his longest unfinished work as it had spanned several years and several ups and downs, but there didn't seem to be an ending yet.

A/N:

I cried so much in episode 300 guys. Aww that was a lovely family reunion.

Episodes referenced in this chapter:

1. S5x10 Abandon All hope
2. S5x18 Point of No return
3. S6x01 Exile on Main Street

Led Zeppelin Songs recorded in Dean's Mixtape:

1. Ramble On
2. Travelling Riverside Blues
3. In the Evening
4. Stairway to Heaven
5. Good Times, Bad Times
6. Night Flight