Dean groaned. He didn't think he was moving, but some part of his brain was making the world revolve around him, twisting and morphing in a bright blur. He needed somewhere to focus. His arms were near his head—and he was sprawled on his back. That was about all he could figure out. With a little twist, he assumed he'd flipped onto his left side, but there was no way of telling for a few seconds while pressure flared up behind his eyes and his stomach rocked back and forth. There still seemed to be tremors running through him, but he was able to make enough sense of his own limb positions to sit upright.

His head was still pounding, though. It was probably a good sign that nothing had attacked him yet—or returned to finish the job. In all honesty, he was struggling to remember what had knocked him off his feet in the first place.

That was when something exploded overhead.

Call it… a thunderclap erupting a few feet away instead of miles into the sky. Or a jet loaded with an atomic bomb getting set off. Or, hell, maybe the sun exploding was a better analogy. Dean's ears were already ringing fiercely by the time his hands rammed against each side of his head, out of instinct more than anything else. His first time shooting a rifle had never gotten anywhere near the reaction this new sound brought. It could have had something to do with the lasting nausea. Even so, he wanted to get out of the vicinity as soon as possible. He felt himself tip from side to side, like a canoe that came closer to capsizing with every rocking motion, but continued adjusting his weight and pulling himself backwards.

His headache burned for a second. The flash of squeezing pressure was enough to make things blank out for another second, while his fingers scrapped a rough ground, unable to find purchase when they didn't know if the ground would be up or down anymore.

Finally, the pressure began to recede. Dean shuffled a bit. His left arm was propping him up on something- something soft, a little forgiving in the way it conformed to his weight. But it was also not entirely dry, and when he opened his eyes, he was met with some mixture of tan colouring and pink fold lines, like it was some weird type of old leather. He didn't know what propelled him to turn his gaze more. But when he did, he noticed whatever he'd fallen on continued. And continued. And continued.

And it wasn't—whatever he'd thought it was. It rose up like the vastness of his other surroundings, connecting to another form that must have been ten stories high. Maybe more. Dean didn't know where to begin understanding what he was looking at—but his mind supplied the answer anyways. He was leaning on a hand. And he was looking at an arm, a torso.

His mouth moved to form a few words, if only so that Dean could have something to do while he scrambled to distance himself from it, refusing to refer to it as anything else. This wasn't normal. How would it be normal? Giant-ass limbs don't just fall out of the sky to catch him while his mind spins around the effects of a spell. He imagined Jack and the Beanstalk stories, the real ones he used to torture Sam with as kids when all Sam had wanted to do was pretend like there could be really nice, friendly giants living in the clouds and witches that didn't mean to disrupt your daily life. Well, they were stupid stories for kids. He had told Sam as much a couple of decades ago, and he was reminding himself of it now.

He needed to get away. Far away from whatever—whatever it was. The hand hadn't moved, but Dean was pretty sure there hadn't been a shadow cast over him just a few minutes prior, either. His hands and socked feet were finally able to find a bit of purchase on the floor and he half-scooted, half crab-walked in the opposite direction of the arm. There might have been anything behind him. But some part of his gut didn't care—it just wanted him so, so incredibly distant from the hulking mass in front of him.

Dean glanced around anyways, though, still pulling himself backwards. He wanted to assess his options and stop acting like an insect that ran away from whatever moved first, heedless of any traps it might be falling into.

He could only hope his gut instincts were being thrown off by the spell, too.

There came another chance to test his impulses. When the hand finally moved again, Dean was able to appreciate its speed. It covered the meagre span between them in just under two seconds. This was obviously the moment his life flashed before his eyes. Before he knew it, Dean was praying that his friend had been drawn into this fucked up reality with him, because there was no way he'd be defending himself at all now. The first coherent sound of the evening reached Dean's ears. It was the sound of his own hoarse voice, shouting out Cas' name.

The hand darted back as fast as it'd come towards him. Faster, probably. His arms stalled behind his back, lacking the pure shots of adrenaline that had pushed them up until now. He tried to steady his haphazard breathing. His chest was constricted from nervousness, but he guessed it could have been way worse if the hand had come close enough. And, speaking of which…

It had withdrawn into the distance, much like some other shapes on the edges of his surroundings that he couldn't quite see properly while they remained so vastly far away. But he couldn't exactly say the same about the hand's owner—a towering figure that would have cast a long, engulfing shadow over him if the lighting was at the right angle for it. He was able to do pretty well at making out the facial features that sat so far above him. It didn't make it any easier to fathom, though. He stared for a whole minute, and the giant just stared back. "... Cas?" he asked, looking for confirmation, his confusion overriding any other emotion. He didn't think relief was very appropriate for… this.

"Yeah." The word sounded distorted. Like it'd been run through a filter and blasted through some massive speakers. Or, like he was being spoken to by someone who was at least thirty times his size—there really wasn't any better way of describing it. Then, he watched Cas as if his life depended on it while the ex-angel said, "Are you alright?"

He tried to pry his eyes away from Cas' lips, even a few moments after they'd stopped moving. It was in Cas' (huge, fucking huge) gaze that he found what he probably should have looked for a while ago. The sad worry in his eyes wasn't being hidden in the slightest.

Then he checked himself from where he sat on the floor, glancing up at Cas in utter silence. He bit the insides of his cheeks to fight the red tint he knew would otherwise come creeping up to his cheeks. Getting a worried question like that from Cas meant that nothing from his recent scares had gotten past his friend. But, then again, that would just be Dean's usual run of luck. He searched his brain for an answer. The only thought that drove its way to his lips was, "What the fuck." He was supposed to be saving kids from witches—the usual. Not sitting on the ground, outclassed by lego figures.

Cas blinked down at him, then turned his head upwards to look at something way beyond Dean. He stole one glance upwards at the underside of the table he hadn't realized he was under. It was sooo comforting to know that Cas could move so fast and dismiss him so easily. With little more than a quick tilt of his head, Cas was already looking past Dean towards somewhere he'd never have hopes of reaching. It wasn't a revelation, really. Obviously Cas would still be able to see the tabletop from where he was crouched. But from this new perspective, it seemed so much more daunting.

He'd missed Cas' words in the meantime. Cas was back to having his eyes locked and tracking each of Dean's little moves.

Maybe there was just one upside. Cas looked just as freaked out right now as Dean felt. If an angel could get so concerned over spellwork, it made him feel a little less stupid to have his mind tied up in knots at the moment. "You didn't get hurt, did you?" It was hard to imagine Cas was whispering when his voice was still so powerfully loud. But from the slightly unsteady tone, he figured that's what Cas must have been doing. And Dean was more thankful for it than he cared to admit.

"No damage, per se. But I wouldn't call this 'good'," he tossed back. He'd been inclined to reply with some offhand comment, but it wouldn't have felt right to do that to Cas. Dean really just didn't like his present circumstances.

A beat. "You should get off the floor."

And then, without warning, Cas' whole mass shifted multiple yards closer. He didn't think Cas was dumb enough to suggest that kind of thing without an idea in mind, and he hated where this idea was going. One of his legs pushed him away from the immediate threat in a jerking movement. "Woah woah woah, I—I'm not some action figure you can just grab, Cas. Jesus." One hand was tugging his hair back before he felt the need to stop it. He glanced up to Cas again, only to see anger settling all over his face. It was enough to make his heart stop cold.

Why? Well. A pissy Cas was one thing.

This—all of this on every level was something entirely, completely, wholly different.

"Then what would you have me do, Dean?"

He couldn't find an answer. Leave me alone. Stop looking at me like that. Stop watching me. He didn't know where the thoughts kept coming from.

At length, Cas' expression relaxed back into friendly worry and he shuffled himself back a bit, away from the table. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable." The way he said this made it seem like his impatience was on the brink of spilling over a second time, but Dean would take what he could get. "I just don't want to see… anything happen. Are you able to stand?"

I don't have to answer to you.

Cas seemed relieved when Dean didn't immediately fall on his ass, even though the gravity of the room still made him dizzy to be standing up. He tried not to react when Cas' shoulder shifted, and soon enough, a hand drew closer to him. Then it stopped and Cas flipped it over to sit palm-up on the floor, unmoving.

Cas watched him expectantly, but he really had no clue what was supposed to be happening. "Uh… What are you doing?" he called up.

A self-conscious twitch before the reply, "You didn't want me to grab you, s—"

"Oh, no. No." I'm not some domestic pet. "None of this. I'm fine, really."

"Dean." There was a deep edge of impatience in Cas' voice, now. "You can't just stay there indefinitely." Whatever empathy had been rooted in Cas' gaze before was gone, replaced by a steely look.

He knew Cas wasn't the type of person to argue for the sake of arguing—and Dean didn't like wasting time, either. But he also saw no reason to have to comply with what Cas was saying—and maybe, maybe, he just wanted to test the waters. To see if Cas would really do it. "Well, you know what? Watch me."

He wrongfully assumed Cas wouldn't make good on his implied threat. Well, to phrase it better—he wrongfully assumed Cas hadn't turned into a control freak during his time as a human.

Cas' arm had pulled his hand away with a dizzying speed last time, but now it leapt toward him faster than Dean was able to get his muscles into working order. Fingers crept around behind his back and pushed, tilting so that his feet came out from under him. Dean tried to propel himself up with his elbows. He was still staring at the underside of the tabletop when another digit descended into his view, this one being deliberately firm with how it pressed into his chest. His lungs quite literally got the air pressed out of them. Cas' hand tilted backwards a bit more, and he felt the first signs of it leaving the support of the floor behind. He desperately dug his legs into finding footholds and pushed at Cas' thumb with both his arms, trying to release some of the pressure on his chest. It didn't work. He could feel his face heating up in anger and embarrassment as he was only pressed further into the softness of Cas' fingers. The motion around him messed with his equilibrium immediately, but he wasn't yet sick enough not to be able to tell that he was being pulled to a less-than-comfortable height. He gulped a couple times to prevent his ears from popping—and, probably, to prevent his heart from beating out of his chest.

At some point, he was thrust forward into Cas' thumb a bit as the hand came to a halt. The hand under him unconsciously tilted up a bit like a sickening park ride, and suddenly, the thumb against his chest had become a thing of support. He wasn't able to register whether or not it was holding him very firmly in place anymore. All he could do was prevent himself from slipping downwards by wrapping his arms around the finger. He didn't even want to try thinking about just how high up he must be now. Cas was standing, and he was nearly at eye level with Cas' collarbone.

He was also being looked over like a curious bug—but honestly, he was more worried about Cas releasing the pressure on accident and him slipping, falling, slamming into the wooden floor before his fall could be stopped. It was so distant, now. He could only catch glimpses of it from the microscopic spaces between the edge's of Cas' fingers, but it was there and it was very uniquely real nonetheless. His feet scrambled and jerked with pent up energy, seeking better purchase against Cas' lower fingers in his distress.

The drawn-out moment finally resolved itself when Cas' hand went back down in the direction of the ground. At Cas' waist height it hit a solid surface and Cas' fingers opened up from the bowl they'd been forming. The thumb's hold was released while Cas shifted his own weight back and forth, causing his hand to rock a little. Dean didn't think he'd be able to walk off of Cas' hand, even if he managed to stand from where he lay on his back, so instead he braced himself and then rolled sideways, hitting the table's wood with a little thunk. Finally, a platform that was mostly stable—save the reverberations from Cas moving around.

He stood up at the same time as Cas moved his hand again. He thought, for a split second, that Cas might be reaching for him again, but the entirety of his gigantic arm receded from the table instead. The ex-angel offered an awkward, apologetic half-smile.

He hated him. He hated his guts.

Dean refused to look back up at him or return the friendliness after what Cas had just done. It felt violating on so many levels. The hard wood of the table was uncomfortable on his ass, but was just another potent reminder to himself that he wanted to stay pissed. Stewing in such thoughts felt good, unsurprisingly. What was he supposed to do? Help? Oh no, not if Cas had anything to say about it. He was just supposed to agree that Cas could handle absolutely everything now.

But, sure enough, the table under him rocked some more as Cas came back from burning hex bags, and he felt the ex-angel's heavy gaze settle over him. It was coloured with obvious remorse; he didn't even need to turn to see it.

And God help him, because he knew Cas was only trying to do his best.