On their way out the door, the rain began to pour. Cas hugged his parents goodbye and grabbed his stuff and they ran to the car. He threw his bags in the back and they slammed their doors, locking the weather outside. Dean started it up and the headlights cut through the darkening evening. Cas watched his waving parents as they backed out of the driveway, tears gleaming in his eyes, and he rubbed his nose as they pulled away in a rumble of the Impala's engine. Dean reached over and grabbed his hand, and they drove like that through the abandoned streets, rain glistening in their hair and eyes bright with happiness and unshed tears.

"They were happy for me," Cas whispered when they turned into thick town traffic. "I thought they would be mad, I was so afraid they'd…" He trailed off, and Dean spread his hand over Castiel's on the other boy's thigh.

"You've got some folks, Cas, I'll give you that," he smiled. "That was damn impressive."

They exchanged a sympathetic look. "Yeah." Cas chuckled. "My dad said to me yesterday, when I first told them, 'If this Dean is half the man you say he is, he sounds like a perfect match for you.'"

"He called you 'Cassy.' That was something I expected from you mom, maybe, but I kinda like-"

"Don't even think about it."

Dean laughed, and shook his head. "Ok, Cas. Anything you say… anything you say." He said the last part with a sort of affection that was pretty revealing for the sarcastic façade he kept up. It susprised them both. Dean cleared his throat awkwardly, and Cas looked over at him, eyebrows raised. Dean glanced at him furtively with embarrassment. Breaking into a slow smile, the blue-eyed boy reached over and slid his fingers behind Dean's ear. His fingers sank into his fine nut brown hair, drifting along the nape of his neck. Sighing, Dean mapped out his touch. Each twitch. Each rub. When the hand slid away, the ghost of his fingertips remained, making Dean's scalp tingle with it.

The water fell in fat drops from the sky, splattering all over the windshield and the car, making Dean squint through his windshield wipers as they turned onto the last leg of road before they got to the campus. Overhead, thunder cracked and roared, making Cas press his face to the window and peer up with wonder at the sky. Dean jumped when lightning flashed, and Cas reached over and took his hand, squeezing it for comfort. While Dean muttered about the weather, his passenger huddled closer to him in his own seat. Visibility reduced to 30% as the rain began to smack them in sheets, the power of the thunder growing louder and louder in their ears. Cars slid passed, crawling, but Dean knew what he was doing. He used every sense he had to make sure they were still on the road, still safely on the way to their sanctuary.

Dean was growing anxious. The college should be here, closer than this. Maybe he was just afraid of anything happening while Cas was in the car – but he could have sworn he missed the turn off to the college. The clouds blocked out all the sun. Everything was pitch black, and it was hardly six at night. Headlights slid over them as cars drove passed them on this two-lane road. Dean swallowed, throat dry, and Cas glanced at him. Every time a car went passed his blue eyes were filled with golden light and his hair shone chocolate brown, the worried part of his lips and furrow of his brow defined. They were lost, and Cas knew it, and Dean knew it, but he hoped dearly that they weren't.

"Maybe we should pull over," Cas said, breaking the deafening silence, and Dean growled.

"We should've been there already," he rambled worriedly. "We passed it somewhere. I can't see anything in this storm."

"Just turn around. Don't worry, we'll find it," Cas's soothing words were like adding aloe to an really bad sunburn. It helped at first, but it would take a while to seep in and neutralize the rest of the hot, burning anger Dean felt over getting them lost. Headlights peeked from around a turn, and Dean glanced over to see Cas's face lit up with their glow, soft and forgiving, without an ounce of fear in it. The trust there broke his stubborn anger, and he nodded.

"All right," he conceded. "I'll-"

"DEAN!" Cas shouted so hard his voice broke, eyes fixed forward and blown wide, his face morphing in terror, and Dean's eyes snapped back to the road just in time.

All Dean saw was a flash of headlights mere feet away heading straight for them. Hot, agonizing fear filled every crevice of his body, and in one sixteenth of a second he was reacting. Faster than his brain could comprehend, he jerked the wheel, and flung the Impala off the road into a ditch, launching them out of the way of a massive tractor trailer. Dean's heart thundered in his chest. The truck narrowly missed rolling on top of them, taking off one of Dean's side view mirrors with a distinct PING as it plunged onto its side on the road, its scraping metal grinding against asphalt roaring over the torrent of rain. It was like a monster crashing out of the sky.

They, though, were out of the frying pan and into the fire. Neither of them made a sound, only braced themselves, adrenaline and fright freezing their arms and legs. Both clung on tightly – Dean to the wheel and Cas to his seatbelt – as they flew off road over rocks and mounds of wet earth, the entire car shaking back and forth like mad. Dean was braking furiously before they hit anything in front of them in the blackness he could not decipher… but it was too late. The Impala smacked into an immovable object and the force of the impact shattered the windshield. The sound of glass screaming filled their ears, and the jarring yank of their motion slammed to a stop rattled both their rag-doll bodies to the core. Glass was flying everywhere, and then rain poured in, smacking both of them in the face.

Dean's arm flew out to hold back Cas before he was hurt and his own head cracked against the steering wheel with whip-lash and a sickening sound, the clean taste of rain and the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth and his nose. It made him choke desperately as consciousness was ripped mercilessly away from him and he tumbled headlong into a soul-sucking darkness, the very last part of his waking mind screaming for his angel.