So that was how Dean spent the summer – the first half of it, at least. Simply miserable, working or otherwise. The dives that he went to offered him relief for a few hours, but he could never get any further than that. Breathing things just didn't seem to hold his attention any more than a blade of grass; he was immune to conversation, personal connection on all fronts, and anything more or less stimulating than a bottle of half-decent moonshine was avoided, including a handful of half-empty glass vials locked far away in one of his trunks – an unspoken promise to his brother that he wouldn't go there again. Once, twice, after Guy acknowledged it in the unsafe world of the reality that was not a basement bar, he relinquished it, stopped it from becoming another comfort. He was still breaking the law, still killing himself as the days went by, but at least he wouldn't have pock marks running up and down his veins, and he wouldn't have to face his problems in the form of scars every time he stripped down for restless sleep.

It was later now, in the day of the month and in the hour of night, and Dean was finished for the weekend; two days of reprieve and drinking himself into an amnesiac state, wondering when Sam's next letter would come, if it would come at all. All he had to do now was drop of the car.

Night came slowly in July, blue navy slowly eating up the clouds and rich sunset, dimming for hours before getting dark. Dean's car – Crowley's car, all black and tight, felt like a hearse, but Dean liked it by default – liked the machinery thrumming under his body, his mind unfocused and aimless, hands steady at the wheel. It was a genuine comfort, a genuine pleasure. Maybe in a few years he'd have a bug of his own – driving down the golden roads, his family in the open seats with a static filled radio bursting out voices and symphonies as they went.

Dean went over a particularly harsh bump in the road and startled, glancing at where his unconscious had taken him.

He wasn't in Coney Island, or near the private lot, that was for sure. Looking around, he recognized the dark, stout buildings as home stores; brick walls with white faces.

He inched forward, working through the addresses more by memory than house number.

The tailor shop stood, unspectacular and nigh identical to every other shab building on the street, but Dean knew it immediately, using something a little more than the basic sense of sight.

The lights were off, but it was late, anyway. He could have kept driving west, he knew, come back another day, but he wasn't sure he would return if he was honest with himself. Castiel and his family and their store had been passing images while in the frenzy of wedding plans, and afterwards he was too busy being drunk on his own guilt; he meant to come back, but it had been nearly three months by this point; what was the meaning in that? All Dean felt was a burning, roiling shame in his gut, knowing that perhaps there was a reason why he never bothered to find someone else to warm his bed except for that one woman, face forgotten, name never learned, and even then the memory of her presence seared him, calling from the past.

I shouldn't be here, he thought.

But in the darkness, alone by himself and in the cover of shadows, things seemed much simpler; easier to do, and would it really be so bad to see him? He wondered as well. Dean slowly turned onto the side of the road, lights flowing into the alley next to the shop.

At the edge of the darkness, he could make out some figures, huddled into the wall. Dean guessed if it were a group of drunks, or a bunch of friends, sharing secrets like Castiel said – maybe Castiel was out there too, who knew? He found himself longing for the man, just to talk with, to search out his calming presence, even if he'd get rejected and sent away on sight.

The door slammed and Dean worked his way onto the street, hands in his pockets.

"Winchester," a voice cut from the alley, warm as blood. "Right on time."

Dean knew that voice – it came to him in his nightmares, along with the white, bloody faces of his jobs and the staunch dead bodies of his parents, and the future visions of an estranged brother and grave dirt and dread that came up like bile to choke him.

The man's name was Alastair, and he was half the reason why the Brownsville neighborhood up North was referred to as 'Murder Inc.'

Dean knew firsthand the kind of reputation Alastair had viciously carved out for himself.

Across the street, a room's light turned on and drifted down in a hazy orange design. It was just enough to let color lazily flow into their concrete corner, Alastair's gray eyes reflected the pale illumination; shining a powdery white that read like decomposition and poison to him.

Dean swallowed; drawing in closer, eyeing the man sprawled all over the ground – the thing the other men had been surrounding. He saw black hair matted with grit and sweat, wrapped in a bloody trench coat – it was all he could make out through the grime and slouched position.

It was enough. He forced himself to look back at Alastair – the odd light was gone, but Dean still felt like he was staring down a demon, come up from Hell for his soul. Or the tailor's. He bit down on his molars, and nodded to Castiel's form. "What'd he do to you?" Alastair chuckled, his throat raspier than the last time Dean had been with him.

"The usual thing," Alastair said, nudging one of Castiel's legs with the toe of his shoe, prodding him. "Wrong place at the wrong time." Dean nodded, absently, trying to keep his gaze steady, not on Castiel's body. He knew this game. The other men had shifted into the background; they weren't about to do anything more than look menacing. Alastair never did fight fair, but he had too much pride to not let himself win his own battles.

"Could say the same for you, Al." The other man narrowed his eyes, trying to perceive a hidden meaning behind the words. If there was one decent thing to come from being subjugated to Alastair's demented form of training, it was that he had learned the ways of the guy – maybe even enough to help Castiel. Dean decided not to let the other question him, he dived right in; "Hear about me and Crowley?" he asked.

Alastair's gaze drifted to the borrowed car. "Something about a new chew toy, yes. How is the man, anyway?"

"Fine enough. Shrewd as usual." Dean made a few casual steps, feet crunching on the gravel. "Thinking of… expanding his horizons, that sort of thing." He wormed his way closer to the group of men, and Castiel by extension. "And you're unfortunately treading on marked territory, here."

"Here? Of all places? Dean, tell me what a… 'shrewd' man like Crowley would want with a shoddy bay-side county crawling with communists?"

"Oh, he has that scholarly look; reminds the people around here of Lenin." There was a ripple of snickering from the grunts behind Alastair; as his scowl twisted further on his face, Dean found a smug smile planting itself on his. He swiveled in his stance a bit, acting casual. "I'll admit, it's kind of my fault."

"What isn't Dean Winchester's fault?" Dean had enough control to laugh along with the thugs.

"Cute." He smacked a hand against the brick of the Novak's tailor shop. He was nearly upon Castiel now, and he strained his ears to hear breathing, groaning, the shuffling of his arms – something. "But I mean that I've been a customer of this place for some time now. Decent quality," he managed to look down at Castiel's broken body with an upturned lip, his eyes acidic and mean. "For a bunch of Russian bastards, at least. I guess I was never one for high quality stuff anyway. But I'm sure you understand that, don't you?"

Alastair silently gauged Dean's expression, then hazarded a guess; "The Family force you out?"

"Spite kept me away. Crowley, charitable fellow, figured he'd promote the circuit around here, get traffic going. This shit place makes for good meetings, and none of these guys are in gangs, they're poor merchants off the boat who managed to stay out of the gutter by whoring out for the guy with the fattest wallet." He shot a weighted glance at Alastair, and when their eyes met he tried to subdue the queasy feeling in his stomach. "You coming in here and beating those happy customers to hell? Not good for Crowley's business. And by extension, not too great for you and your friends."

Alastair glared, he even snarled a bit, feral and wild. "So," he reeled himself in on immediate notice. "The new boss wants to protect your personal playground and, hum," he paused as Castiel moaned on the ground, probably slowly gaining consciousness again, waking up to the pain. "Boy toy, I suppose." Another ripple of laughter, and Dean had to force himself to stay rooted to the ground; not leap forward and claw at Alastair's throat. Because that was the only way the bastard deserved to go down. The quick mercy of a bullet was too forgiving; he deserved to suffer, be ripped apart and torn wide open. One day, Dean had promised himself, not long after being taken under the man's sadistic employment, one day he'd end the man the way he deserved to go, and it wouldn't be quiet, that was for sure.

But now was not that time. Instead he said, "I can use the son of a bitch any way I want; Crowley owns him, I just get in on the fun. Now, do yourself a favor Al, and walk away. I'm just the messenger; trust me – all the teenagers you rake in, and all the stolen guns you have aren't a match for what Crowley can pull outta his sleeve; you and I both know it, so just cut your damn losses and run." He gave a light kick to Castiel's thigh, and the man grunted. "This kid'll be seeing you in his nightmares; I think you and your buddies can drink to that."

The two men stared each other down in the darkness. There was nothing more to say, and Dean had already pushed as much as he could with sweet talking anyway, made it sound like he was helping the other guy out, not being the threat, that sort of thing. It made it easier for Alastair to turn tail and run, and when his former boss finally dismissed his men, and stomped on right past Dean like it was all part of a Grand Plan, Dean and Alastair both knew who had won that little game.

A few burly men shoved Dean aside with their shoulders, cast him sour glances, but Dean didn't really react; he was looking out, where the gang used to be, where he could see another wide street coming out from between the two buildings, the same path Castiel had taken him to the park that spring.

He stood there, unmoving for, god, minutes and minutes and minutes. Just to be sure that he was truly alone. The things he had said about Castiel weren't that different from insults he had aimed at other people, but he wanted so badly to lean down and tell Castiel that it was all stage play, and he hadn't meant what he said, not a single word. Crowley was just a ploy he needed for the moment, and it wasn't like Alastair would actually check into that fact; besides, for all Dean knew, Crowley had set up some sort of deals in the area – he could've owned the street he was standing on, for Christ's sake, and Dean wouldn't know it.

Down below him, Castiel made some more noise. Immediately Dean was dropping down onto his knees, trying to make everything better. "Hey, Cas," he whispered, reaching around the other's abdomen, trying to pull him up. "Are you okay?"

"Does it look like I'm okay?" he hissed out. Once Dean moved him up enough he leaned back against the wall of the building, his eyes cracked open and he squinted. "Is that really you?"

Dean stared down at Castiel's clothes; he didn't know how bad Castiel was hurt. He could see blood on his collar, the front of his shirt, his hands, but he couldn't do anything in the dark. "Funny these coincidences, huh?" he said. "What happened?"

"I went out for a smoke," Castiel said, looking up at the sky. There were no stars, not in the city, just a black hole above their heads. "They saw me, and – "

He paused. Shut his eyes. Dean shook him. "And what, Cas? What did they do? Castiel,"

His eyes opened again. "And they beat me to Hell, damnit, what do you want me to say?" he sat silently again. "It's painful to talk."

"Is anything broken, you think?"

"My head hurts, my neck, my – everything, actually." He sighed. "I don't know. Maybe some ribs, but I think I got out lucky this time."

"Lucky,"

Avoiding the deadpan, Castiel went; "You worked for Alastair before?" his eyes slipped closed again. He didn't open them when Dean hesitated in answer.

"We need to get you inside." Dean said finally. "Anna, Gabriel, is anyone still up?"

"Maybe. You need a key to get into the shop."

"Where – "

"Left pocket." Dean shoved his hand into the trench coat, having to lean over a bit to make it to the bottom of the deep pockets. He could feel the puff of Castiel's strained, exhausted breaths; feel a gaze that was there at least spiritually, even if the man's eyelids were shut. He was hot all over, and when Dean pushed aside a matchbook and cigarette holder, clenched his fingers around a small ring with two sharp metal things dangling from it, he pulled them out and leaned back in relief. He let the teeth of the keys bite into his palm as he curled it into a fist. "Can you walk?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Castiel scrabbled against the dirty ground and fell back. "Can't get up, though."

"Shit," Dean muttered, because that was a good way to describe the entire trip over to Castiel's home. He had expected a bitter reunion, not a broken man on the ground too hurt to even sit up right. He wished he hadn't come, but then again, what would have happened if he hadn't been around? He sighed, looped an arm across Castiel's shoulders. "If it hurts, try to bear with it, okay?" he said into Castiel's ear, a gentle edge to his voice. He eased them up, bit by bit, until Dean's knees creaked with the forced delicacy and slowness of the situation and Castiel could half support himself without wincing. Moving was still an unconquered skill, however.

It was about a thirty foot walk from the spot Castiel and Dean stood to the front door of the shop, but by the time Dean was pressing the thickest key into the store's lock and pushing it open, he felt like it had been a three mile run. They were both sweating, bumping half their bodies with each step, and for Castiel, with painful side effects, but they made it. Castiel was even able to lean on the wall without falling while Dean locked up again. There was blood on the handle, Castiel's, which had drifted onto Dean's fingers sometime in their walk. He shuttered, grabbed Castiel again, and tried to move as quickly as they could to the back room, up the staircase that was too high and too narrow, which left Dean cursing under his breath and feeling as if he was about to slip and die at least five times during their uphill trek. "Please tell me this door ain't locked," he said, this time with his mouth in Castiel's hair, sweaty and smelling like the dirt of the street for obvious reasons.

"It shouldn't be." Dean reached out his hand, tried the knob, and mercifully, it turned, swung open, and bided them inside.

"Thank God," Dean said, stumbling through the doorway. The kitchen's lights were still on, and its bright glow burned Dean's eyes, made them water. He let Castiel stumble into a chair, and before the man could even settle in properly Dean was pulling at his over coat and slipping off his tie, desperate to take in the damage. "You're gonna be just fine Cas-" His ears pricked at something all of a sudden, and he turned around, hands on Castiel's chest still. Gabriel and Anna had been woken by the noise, and had appeared out of thin air, staring at the two of them.

Dean rapidly searched his mind in order to find a response to Castiel's family that wouldn't frame him as a monster.

The results weren't helpful.

Gabriel stepped forwards. "What do you think you – "

"I'm sorry." The words burst out of his mouth. He could feel Castiel shift and swallow under his hands. Dean coughed, continuing; "I found him outside, swear it."

Gabriel glared, tilting his head. He had never really held much a conversation with either Novak, and all his smooth-talking charm had been rubbed away by seeing a face from an old nightmare. He was exhausted, but he couldn't just walk out now, not when they thought Castiel's state was his fault.

It was Anna who spoke first, unsticking her mouth from a thin, ugly line. "That's an awful twist of fate, don't you think?"

"I'm only trying to help – "

"Maybe we didn't want your help." Her eyes flicked down to her brother, her face betraying the deep distrust of the man who brought him in. Gabriel, too, was suspicious. He didn't blame them. Hell, a good hunk of his conscience was blaming him right along with the rest of the family. The only person who seemed to have any amount of good will towards Dean at the moment was probably Castiel; sitting shut up and slumped in the wooden seat. Dean stood up and turned around, facing the pair properly. He was taller than both of them, had one of those dangerous airs around him that made it easy for people like him to be intimidating, but neither of them budged an inch, and their stares were just as trapping and penetrating as Castiel's, which he also felt, glued to his back. "Look here," he said heavily; meeting their mistrustful glowers. "Just ask him yourselves: I was heading home, half asleep, got here. I figured I'd stop by, and I found him being kicked around by Alastair and his pals."

Those were the magic words, it appeared, for Gabriel looked in wide amazement over Dean's shoulder, to his relative. "Anna," he whispered. She glanced at him, as if weighing his expression and what she needed to do in response to it; the sort of gesture good married couples could do like a hat trick.

"I'll get some ice," she muttered, moving like an apparition past the men, further into the apartment.

Gabriel sucked in a breath, his eyes on Dean again. "You know Alastair?"

"Know him? Worked for him for four of the most miserable months of my life. Hell. Complete and utter hell. Made going to Lucifer like going to a monastery. And Crowley's a vacation from that, even." He turned around in time to see Anna walk back with a few cloths and bandages, a full ice bag cutting into the skin under her arm and some ethanol in a small glass bottle, tinted brown. She had covered her nightgown up with a robe in some cold show of modesty, not that Dean would bother looking now, not with his heart rattling like a radiator with a loose screw in his ears – not with Castiel staring all bloody and broken at him like a dying fish, or a man to a god. Anna hesitantly gave him a towel, damp and reeking of the spirits and he squatted, delicately wiping blood and dirt from the tailor's face. He could see cuts appearing, and sometimes Castiel would make these great inhaling breaths to steel himself against the sting, and Dean would pause, lift up the cloth, let the other collect himself before moving again.

"I know…" Dean began, not sure if it was a message to Gabriel and Anna or Castiel or an internal admission voiced all on his own, but: "I know we aren't allowed to be friends. I know that I'm not allowed to care, or be civil. I came to your store because I had nowhere else to go, then, months ago, and I left in a bad way. But I'll be damned if I just went on by while that godforsaken son of a bitch beat an innocent man to death." Castiel took another shuttering breath, sounding as unstable as Dean felt. Dean tried to smile, for the man's sake.

Behind him Gabriel said:

"You think he's innocent? Our family?"

Dean tried not to still his hands as he swiped down Castiel's collar, popping a few buttons to clear off more of the blood, turning sticky and dark, an odd mixture of scarlet and brown and black. It was a hue never used in paintings, it didn't have a name, perhaps couldn't even be recreated – blood had that unusually individualistic appearance, anyway. Castiel had shut his eyes again, conscious but unwilling to make a comment, perhaps in a living dream.

Perhaps unresponsive after being bashed into the wall so many times.

"It's not my business if you don't wanna share, but nothing could be worse than the things Alastair's done. And Castiel – I don't believe you. He wouldn't wish harm on anyone."

"Well of course he would. Just not on you," Gabriel countered. Dean had moved to cleaning Castiel's bloody knuckles. Turning a palm over, he had to pause, temporarily taken over by rage, catching sight of the gray pockmarks on the pads of Castiel's fingers – cigarette burns; ones he'd feel for at least two weeks. "What scummy bastard would do something like this?" he put the ice bag on Castiel's lap, making his fingers curl around it in the hope to soothe some of the pain.

"A few of our… friends," Gabriel gravely supplied, "managed to go off and kill one of Alastair's colleagues. Azazel, I think." Oh yes, Az; old yellow eyes. They said he had tinted irises from too much moonshine; half blind and vicious. Dad had been convinced – so sure that he had been one of the murderers…

Dean shook his head; it was all in the past now. "So what's the point of slaughtering a tailor in the middle of the night?"

"Tailors don't have guns." Anna said simply. "There's some bad blood between the hit men by Coney Island and up in Brownsville, do you think they care who they kill, as long as they're the right race?"

"And not even that. Fucking dirty cowards. The lot of them." Dean stood up. He leveled his gaze at the two of them once more. "I really am sorry about this."

Anna considered Dean's earnest, frank expression; she had the idea that for everything Dean was, he wasn't in fact lying, not about this. "At least you're doing something about it," she replied. She moved around the table and grabbed Gabriel's arm. "And we're… thankful, really. We'll have to tell a few of the neighbors to watch their backs. Soon, if not now. If it's not too much trouble…" Anna gestured towards her brother, and Dean nodded.

"You don't have to," Gabriel interjected, but Dean was already clutching Castiel's side, using his right arm as a hook around his neck and driving slack legs to the bedroom. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anna whispering to Gabriel, but it was a far off concern.

He laid Castiel out on his thin mattress, bloody shirt half open. He looked too small in a bed that was already miniscule. This new visit to Castiel's room lacked the hopefulness of the first, the pleasant conversation and pale spring leaking through the window. Now everything was darker and crueler. Shadows and blood and bullets.

Just like Dean's life. As if in the five months since he had first brought himself to Castiel – first walked into his shop, into his life, whatever he did – his own time as a gangster had managed to bleed in on Castiel's preciously fragile little existence.

He believed it.

He reached over to Castiel's chest, pulling at the shirt. The sleeves slid off his shoulders and Castiel grasped Dean's arm; caught in an awkward embrace where they kept too much distance.

Dean's arms were more or less kept in place, holding the edges of the stained shirt. Castiel had his eyes wide open, and they were a bit glazed, but they focused on Dean's, so he had a clear head, at the very least.

"How are you?" Dean asked. He should have asked for a drought, something to help Castiel sleep it off. Everything off. He would wake up without the memory of last night, and Dean would never return, never bring a dark stain into Castiel's home again. And the man would never be distracted by green eyes and a freckled nose, and would marry, perhaps, just like his sister and brother-in-law, to another immigrant in the neighborhood, not an Italian multiple generation mutt who was holding guns since he could walk. It seemed like an incredibly good fantasy in Dean's mind, until Castiel had the audacity to open his mouth and speak, with a voice just as scratched up and used as his body:

"I thought I'd never see you again."

Dean could feel the man's fingers, digging into the skin of his arms. "You wanted me back?"

"I don't come on to every man I meet, Dean Winchester. In fact I'd have to say you're the first – in public at least, second elsewhere. But that was an admittedly long time ago."

"Oh," Dean said. "I didn't, I thought – God, Cas, I just ran away. I'm not exactly high-standard material but even I think that's a pretty bad way to treat a guy." He let out a breath. "Especially you."

"…You were busy," Castiel ventured. "I'm told that weddings can take up a lot of time, especially if you have money to spend them on."

"You knew?"

"It was in the paper; of course I knew."

Dean reminded himself of their proximity. He was sent to put Castiel to bed; amends, if he were so lucky, could come later. "Can you take this off?" he pulled at the shirt, still hanging on by a handful of buttons. "Did they get you anywhere else?"

Castiel ducked his head, looking down at his chest; there was still crusted blood, but the cuts they actually had to worry about were the ones on his face. The rest were mostly bruises, harmless, if a large amount of scrapes, and cuts that didn't quite make through enough clothing to be a threat. He was beaten and bloody and bruised and exhausted, but he was not, in fact dying.

"I can," Castiel said, quickly unbuttoning the soiled shirt and throwing it onto the ground. He reached down, pulling off his shoes, unbuckling his trousers and letting them fall off his bed before pulling up a few blankets, draping them around his chest. His head fell back on his pillow and he winced.

Dean had been trying his best to observe the room while Castiel undressed, but still he pressed, "What hurts?"

"They, ah, they got me in the head pretty well." He rubbed a patch of dark hair, settled in again. "I'm not a child," Castiel ventured, even when, looking like he did on the bed; Dean had to bite his lips to keep from countering. "I've been through worse things; I know what it feels like when things are breaking."

"You got lucky with Alastair," Dean muttered, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"He wasn't finished."

There was nothing. No words to say to that. Dean was choked on something, the same burst that he felt when Sam's train pulled away, his brother's face stuck out the window, getting smaller and smaller as it ran away on its track. After that he had felt many things, but they were always muted, and he was only half awake.

He reached a cautious hand over, brushing the dark strands of hair from Castiel's face, carding his fingers through it gently, over and over.

Castiel sighed, wrinkles smoothing out as his muscles twitched and fell to a relaxed state. Dean could admit to himself that Castiel looked beautiful like this; even with the cuts on his face and the dirt in his hair. And suddenly he spoke to the man on the bed, hushed and excited, feeling like he had woken up for the first time in a while. "I'll come back, Cas." He promised. And even then he thought that wasn't good enough. "Tomorrow, as soon as I'm off I'll come here. It might be late, but I'll show, alright? You can pull through a day – less than a day, probably. Just a few hours – "

"Dean." Castiel was looking at him again. Dean's fingers stilled, he pulled away, and Castiel sighed, perhaps from the loss. "You don't have to come back if you don't want to."

Dean leaned down, closer to Castiel's face. "What would you like, Castiel?"

Castiel seemed surprised at the question, as if no one had ever asked him that, before. His eyes flickered in thought. "The things I want…" he licked his lips. Hesitating. "If you would like to return on your own will, I would always love to have you, Dean."

Dean nodded, bringing his head down further, taking the hand that touched Castiel's hair and sliding it to cup his jaw with the slightest of touches. "Then we're in luck."

"We are?" Castiel was starting to get the impression that both of them must have been on the wrong side of God's wrath.

"We both want the same thing," he said to Castiel, and Dean dipped down those last precious inches and kissed him.