Dean swore silently to himself that the next person who asked him if he was okay was going to get their head slammed through the nearest wall.

He was fine.

Yes, sure, he'd spent the last three months in a Cage with the Devil and a crazy Archangel who wanted to wear his skin, but, hey, at least time in the Cage seemed to move at the same rate as time in the real world. It had really only been three months. What Sam and Bobby seemed to be having a hard time with was the fact that Dean claimed they didn't hurt him. Not that he went -into details about his time in the Cage, but they seemed to think that he was lying through his teeth.

And maybe they had a right to be suspicious. After all, when he'd come back from Hell, it wasn't like he'd been entirely upfront with them about that. But still. Aside from that first incident with Michael, neither of them had laid a hand on him. To hurt him, that is. Although it wasn't like Lucifer had touched him all that casually either. Just slept next to him. Which, yeah, weird, but Dean was doing his damned best not to think about that, because every time he thought about Lucifer he got this empty pit in his stomach and the cold space at his back when he slept just got more pronounced.

Okay, maybe he wasn't fine, but Sam and Bobby didn't need to hear about how he apparently missed the goddamn devil.

He was totally fucked.

But time went on, slowly, inexorably, until they had to confront an enemy that they couldn't face alone.

His name was Dick Roman, or, at least, his vessel's name was, and apparently he was one of the nastiest creatures ever to walk on God's green earth. Instead of preventing a civil war in heaven, as Castiel had hoped, it seemed that Michael's return had only inflamed it, and Cas… well… he'd made some damn bad decisions. Now the Leviathan were loose, and Cas was possibly dead, and thanks to Michael being a celestial douche-bag, they had no way to stop them.

According to Michael, only an archangel had the power to kill the King, and, well, neither he nor his lackey Raphael seemed interested in lifting a finger to help them. Except the thing was… there was another Archangel.

"Dean, are you insane?" Sammy demanded, angry and shocked, and, well, maybe he had a right to be.

"Do you see any other options?" Dean snapped back, not in the mood to defend his admittedly dumb suggestion.

"Besides asking Crowley for a ride into Hell to visit with the Devil? Because one insane, supernatural being trying to destroy the world at one time isn't enough?"

"Michael won't help us, and if anybody knows another way to get rid of them, it's someone who helped get rid of them in the first place."

"You think Lucifer will help us?"

"Listen, Sam, believe it or not, he was the less douchey one while we were in the Cage, so, yeah, I think maybe we should give it a shot."

Sam froze, looking at Dean for a long moment. "You don't ever talk about it," he said quietly.

Dean rolled his eyes. "And I'm not planning to start. No chick-flick moments, Sam, you know that. Let's just go summon Crowley."

"You should cut Crowley some slack," Lucifer had commented with a smirk. "Ruling Hell isn't exactly a walk in the park."

Dean just looked at him. "Are you seriously defending a demon right now?"

Lucifer shrugged. "Come on, Winchester. Even you have to admit that Crowley is better than most. You should quit stabbing him in the back."

Dean shook himself from the memories and ignored Sam's grumbling. However, if he was slightly more willing to hold up his deal with the demon this time around, it wasn't like anyone else had to know. Anyway, Crowley didn't want the world destroyed any more than they did, so it was surprisingly easy to get him to cooperate.

Right up until they told him what they wanted.

"You want to want?!"

"Just talk to him," Dean tried to pacify.

"That's not how it works, Squirrel," Crowley drawled. "The Cage is impenetrable."

Dean bit back the automatic, "obviously not," that wanted to spring to his lips. "Then just… put me in there with him. Can you do that? Temporarily?"

"Dean!" Sam exclaimed, stunned.

Crowley narrowed his eyes. "There might be a way using astral projection. You wouldn't physically be down there, but then again, you never really were. Your body that fell into the Cage was destroyed. Somebody built you a new one." He sniffed. "With a touch of Grace."

Dean shifted uncomfortably. "If there's a way to do it, then let's do it. What are we waiting for?"

"Dean, this is insane!"

"Do you have any other options, Sammy?"

"Dean, you are jumping into this way too quickly. Maybe we should just-"

But analyzing their options was the last thing Dean wanted to do. He turned back to Crowley, cutting Sam off. "Right then; let's do this."

Falling into the Cage didn't really feel like last time. This time, it felt more like he was floating, gently, down into the darkness. When his feet hit the floor of the metal, he looked around, glancing at his own solid-looking arms and examining his surroundings.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Dean looked up, finding Lucifer staring at him looking somewhat irritated. "We need your help."

The Devil pursed his lips and then breathed a chuckle. "Seriously? You do remember that I'm-"

"Yeah, yeah, the Devil I know," Dean cut him off, annoyed. "But I don't think that you want the world destroyed any more than we do right now, regardless of what you were doing when you were up there before, and it's in danger, so would you tell me how to kill the Leviathan?"

Lucifer just stared at him for a beat before letting loose a string of curse words in dead languages. "Who the hell let the Leviathan out?"

"Cas," Dean admitted. "He was trying to get enough power to rival Michael and Raphael and bring peace to Heaven or some such shit." Dean hesitated. "He killed Raphael."

Lucifer snorted. "Well that was bound to happen at some point. I'm surprised Michael didn't do it himself."

Dean frowned. "What?"

Lucifer just shook his head. "It's not important. When you get back upstairs, smack Cas upside the head for me, would you?"

Dean found himself grinning crookedly and- what the hell was wrong with him? "Cas… he's-"

"Not dead," Lucifer drawled, sounding positive. "Trust me. Cas is fine. Or he will be, anyway." He shook his head fondly. "He was always his favorite."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Dead stated flatly.

"I know." Lucifer flashed a grin that quickly faded. "You can't kill the Leviathan. You're going to have to banish them, and I can tell you how. I'll give you the ritual; everything that you're going to need to put them back in Purgatory."

"Thank you," Dean breathed. He knew this was a good idea.

"But you have to do something for me."

Oh shit.

"Lucifer-"

"I'm not asking for my freedom, Dean," he sounded bemused. "I just want you to deliver a message to Michael for me. That's all." He handed Dean a letter written in Enochian, which, where he got the paper was a mystery to Dean.

"I'm not actually here, how-"

Lucifer gave him a look. "I rebuilt your body and left a note in your pocket last time you left. You really think that I can't put a letter on you when you get back?"

"Fair enough."

"So we have a deal?"

"What does the letter say?"

Lucifer huffed a sigh. "Dean. Do we have a deal?"

Dean looked at him for a long moment. "Yeah. We do."

Lucifer grinned. "Okay then."

When Dean got back to his own body, the letter was in the pocket of his jeans. He didn't mention it to Sam or Crowley, but he did make a point to thank Crowley, which he was fairly certain surprised all three of them.

Michael got the letter. He didn't seem happy about it.

The Leviathan were banished. Dean went with them.

Purgatory was all blood, primal instincts and urges, death and hunting. Sometimes, when Dean felt himself falling a little too far into the depths of it, he thought he heard a familiar voice. The rest of the time, he thought he was going crazy.

He didn't remember to smack Cas over the head until he found him in Purgatory. When he told the younger angel it was from Lucifer, Castiel got very quiet for a while.

Cas came with him from Purgatory. There were moments when he thought that maybe, just maybe, the angel was planning on staying behind, but, in the end, he stuck with Dean. Dean was grateful for that.

Saving people, hunting things, the family business. Life was back to normal. The letter still bothered him, but nothing disastrous had happened. Maybe Lucifer was just telling Michael off or something.

Dean was standing in the middle of a random cemetery in the dark having just finished a standard salt and burn. Sammy was with the damsel in distress, but he was fine now. The ghost was gone.

"Hey, Deano."

Dean froze at the sound of an all too familiar voice that he honestly thought he would never hear again. He turned around slowly, literally unable to comprehend the sight before him, much less comment on it.

The Trickster, the Archangel, the dead Archangel, smirked broadly, wiggling his eyebrows. "Time to repay our debts, kiddo. What do you say that the two of us go and rescue the Devil?"