Ch 27

"God damn it, babe! I've called you thirty fucking times. Call me back now!" Dean had been getting progressively more angry and withdrawn as the hours passed after Adam's funeral. He and Sam had sped out of Minnesota and stopped at a cheap motel on the border of South Dakota. Dean took another long chug from the bottle of whiskey sitting half full on the night stand and grimaced as it burned it's way down his throat. Sam glanced up from his lap top and frowned at his older brother. "Fuck this. I'm going out," Dean muttered swaying slightly as he stood and shrugged into his leather jacket, "You comin' ?"

"No, Dean's it's 1:00 am and this is a dry county, remember?" Sam sighed, " I'll check the car and see if we have anything else to drink." He got up from the table and grabbed the Impala's keys. He was going to have to hide them from Dean. He knew his older brother and if he could keep him distracted for another half hour he'd eventually pass out.

Dean cursed and sat heavily on the bed. "Fucking hate dry counties. It's un-American," he grumbled taking another drink. Sam returned with the green cooler from the backseat and handed Dean a bottle of his favorite beer. Dean twisted the bottle open and downed it in one go. "Man, I could go for some pie," Dean murmured quietly, his head slowly tilting backwards on his neck, eyes fluttering heavily. The empty beer bottle rolled gently to the floor and Dean slumped unconscious back onto the bed.

"Finally," Sam thought as he pulled out his phone and sent a quick message to Ruby. He drummed his fingers impatiently waiting for her reply and anxiously watching his brother sleep. His phone vibrated five minutes later and he almost knocked his chair over in his rush towards the motel room door. The Impala growled to life and Sam sped towards the address Ruby had provided.

Dean woke sometime late the next morning. His head pounding with a hangover and stomach growling from hunger. He smacked his dry lips and scratched the stubble on his cheeks glancing around the empty room. "Son of a bitch," he muttered noting his brothers bed completely made and not slept in. He stood and stretched his stiff muscles as he walked towards the window facing the parking lot. He pushed the thick curtains aside and scanned the parking lot, his pride and joy was glaringly absent from her parking spot and Dean cursed again. He stomped back to his bed and grabbed his phone off the night stand. He had just thumbed his brothers number when he heard the rumble of his car pull up outside. Sam entered the room a moment later balancing three huge cups of coffee and a bag of food.

"Hey, figured you'd need some caffeine and grub." Sam said setting everything down on the small formica table.

"Where the hell were you?" Dean asked annoyed pulling the lid off his steaming coffee.

"I went to get food. Obviously," Sam answered rolling his eyes.

Dean let out a long breath through his nose, his lips pressed into a thin line, "Where were you last night? Your bed is made."

Sam smiled and shook his head, "I got up early. Went for a run. Made my bed like a grown up and went to get you breakfast because you're a real bitch when you have a hangover."

"You're a bitch," Dean muttered digging through the bag of food and pulling out a foil wrapped surprise. A flutter of wings interrupted the brothers bickering as Castiel appeared in the center of their room. The Angel grunted and fell to his knees holding River's pale, unmoving form in his arms. Dean dropped his breakfast and rushed forward. "Riv, baby? Cas? What the fuck?" Dean scooped River out of Cas's arms and laid her gently on the floor. His eyes couldn't decide where to focus first, her blood streaked face, the red ragged wounds in her arm and shoulder, or the long furrows down her abdomen. Her breaths were coming in shallow little puffs and she made no indication she was conscious. "Cas! What the fuck?" Dean screamed again. The Seraphim took a painful breath and touched River's forehead with his index and middle fingers. The blood and wounds disappeared but River remained unconscious. Dean opened his mouth to yell again but froze when Castiel's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he slumped sideways to the floor joining River in unconsciousness.

"He's wounded," Sam said kneeling besides Cas. The back of the Angels trench coat was stained in dried blood. Sam worked the coat off the unconscious angel, the demon knife and Cas's angel blade fell from within the folds of the khaki fabric onto the floor, and he saw a hole in the back of the once white dress shirt under Castiel's left shoulder blade. Blood oozed from the knife wound and a faint blue light emanated from within it. "Dean, I need the first aid kit," Sam told his brother pulling the flaccid form of Cas up and trying to gently remove his shirt.

"River, come on baby. Wake up." If Dean had heard Sam he made no indication of it. He wiped River's dirty hair out of her face and patted her cheeks gently.

"Dean! I need help with Cas!" Sam yelled. Dean's green eyes flared and he glared at his younger brother. "Cas healed her, she'll wake up eventually or she won't. And she definitely won't if he dies, now help me!" Dean cast one last look at River then pulled himself to his feet.

"Let's get him on the bed. I'll stitch him up," Dean said instantly shifting back to hunter-mode. The brothers gingerly picked up the unconscious angel, his trench coat and loose suit hiding a solid muscular body. "Jeez, Cas you get a lot of down time at the gym or something." Dean muttered as they laid him on his stomach on Sam's unused bed. Dean quickly got to work closing the bleeding wound in his back. Neither brother knew if that would do anything to help the Angel, they were running off instinct and decades of training; bleeding needed to be stopped, wounds needed to be closed.

Sam went back to River where she still lay breathing shallowly on the floor. Sam picked her up, cradling her close to his chest one arm around her shoulders and the other under her knees . He straightened back up and started towards Dean's bed when Rivers blue eyes snapped open. "No! NO! NO NO NO! God, CAS! CAS!," she screamed struggling like a feral cat caught in a trap, "Help me! God, they're eating me! CAS they're eating me!" She punched and kicked at Sam, dragging her fingernails along his neck.

"Shit. Fuck. River stop it!" Sam swung his head away from her, struggling not to drop her back onto the floor. "Dean, a little help!" he made it to the bed and dropped her onto the soft mattress. She continued screaming for Castiel and lashing out at Sam.

Dean grunted and continued stitching Cas's back, "Dude you probably weigh twice as much as her, I think you can take her." Sam instantly shifted to bitchface and tried again unsuccessfully to dodge River's attack. She landed a solid blow to his jaw and he cursed in response.

"God damn it," he muttered. He finally grabbed both her wrists in one of his big hands and pinned them above her head. "River!" he shouted in her face. Her blue eyes remained unfocused and glazed, she screamed at some unseen thing next to her left shoulder and almost ripped her wrists free from Sam's grip. He reached his other massive hand back and smacked River swiftly across the cheek. She stopped screaming and blinked slowly, focusing on Sam's worried hazel eyes boring down on her.

"Ow! You big dumb jerk face what the hell was that for?" she tried to rub her stinging cheek but Sam still had her hands trapped above her head. "Sam, let me the fuck go right now or so help my I will knee you in the nuts so hard you'll choke on 'em." As if to emphasize her threat River bent her knee and pushed it into Sam's thigh. The giant hunter released her wrists and jumped back. "Your hair looks marvelous from this angle by the way," she quipped gently prodding her tender face. "How the fuck- Cas!" she sat up still dazed and saw the angel sprawled on the bed next to her. Dean having finished stitching up the stab wound in Cas's back was applying a clean dressing. She cursed to herself as she gently ran her fingers through Cas's dark auburn hair and along his face, "What happened? How'd we get here?" she asked both brothers.

"How the hell should we know? Cas popped in about an hour ago carrying you. You were a bloody fucking mess, he healed you and passed out," Dean told her, wiping his bloody hands on a motel towel. "Who stabbed him? What the hell happened to you?"

"Adhira, the demon he was supposed to capture. She must've had an angel blade or something…" River glanced at Dean. "There was supposed to be a hell gate. It was just me and him and about two dozen demons. Smitey McSmiterson here took them all. I've never seen anything like it. He was fucking amazing, it was beautiful." She whispered blinking back tears. "That demon bitch had hell hounds…I couldn't see them. I couldn't fight…" Dean's jaw tightened at the mention of hell hounds. "They were…god their teeth were so sharp; I couldn't see them, baby."

"Of course you couldn't."

"…I screamed I distracted him. One of them took a chunk out of my shoulder I could hear it chewing… He can't fucking die because of me." Dean cursed under his breath and met his brothers eyes before pulling River into a tight hug.

"He'll wake up. We just need to give him time," Dean murmured into her hair. "Go take a shower, sweetheart. I'll watch him." River sniffed and nodded pulling away from Dean.

She headed towards the bathroom and stopped turning back towards Sam, "Can you check the news? See if there was some major catastrophe in LA?"

Sam nodded at her, "Yeah I'll check." The shower started a moment later and the brothers shared another silent look before Sam turned on his laptop and Dean flipped on the TV to check the national news. Castiel remained silent and unmoving, laying on his stomach on the opposite bed where Dean had left him. The elder Winchester glanced at the angel and watched the shallow rise and fall of his back; the only indication he was breathing. River came out of the bathroom a while later, running a towel through her long damp hair and wearing one of Dean's old Stones t-shirts and a pair of sleep shorts.

"Any word on California?" she asked sitting on the bed next to Dean.

"4.7 earthquake near a place called 'Silver Lake'. Nothin' else." He answered taking a long pull from a half full bottle of whiskey.

" That was him." River nodded at Cas and looked at the bedside clock it was barely noon, she was exhausted and Dean was half drunk. "Where's Sam?"

"Got his own room," Dean said waggling his eyebrows at her. "Wanna fool around?"

"With an angel of the Lord laying not five feet from us? No."

Dean shrugged and took another drink, "He might like the show." River threw her towel at him and checked Cas's pulse, it was going too fast to count.

She shook her head, "I don't know fuck about angels or their vessels. I thought he'd wake up by now." She met Dean's red rimmed eyes and noticed the way his fingers nervously twitched around his bottle of whiskey. She took the bottle out of his hand and set it on the nightstand. "What happened?"

Dean took a shaky breath and pressed his palms into his eyes tiredly, "Adam's dead."

River cursed quietly and moved back to Dean's bed, gently pulling his hands down away from his face and holding them in her own. "How?"

"Ghouls."

"Ghouls? I thought they only eat dead things?"

"Yeah, well those two decided to start noshing on living flesh. Dad killed their father or something; so they killed Adam and his mom to get to dad. Except they got us instead…"

"Adam was already dead then. That was one them that called us," River said. Dean nodded. "Dean, I'm so sorry."

Dean shook his head and worked his jaw back and forth, "I should've known."

"Known what? Known about Adam? Yeah, John should've let you and Sam know you had a brother. Known it was a ghoul? How? You did what you could."

"Don't patronize me," he muttered angrily reaching for his bottle of liquor

"Fuck you Winchester. Don't be a fucking martyr," she replied grabbing the whiskey first. "You've had enough." She got up from the bed and took the liquor bottle with her walking across the room towards the chipped formica table.

Dean was on her in an instant, strong hands gripping her hips and hot breath on her neck, "If you're not gonna let me drink then you're gonna let me fuck you on this table." He shoved one hand down the front of her shorts and her knees almost buckled when he went to work on her clit. She moaned his name, holding on to one of his huge forearms for balance.

"Dean, wait wait Cas…Cas could wake up any…ooh…he might need help," River whispered, her body quickly losing the battle against Dean's ministrations. He knew her body, knew where to touch and kiss and bite to make her brain short circuit. She knew Dean's two coping mechanisms were alcohol and sex and he needed at least one of them now. The weight of everything, Adam, Sam and his secrets, River and hers, the Angels and their expectations was getting to be suffocating. It felt like it had been weeks since they'd had any real time alone and they still weren't fucking alone now with Cas obstinately refusing to wake up.

"If Cas wakes up he can join in for all I care." Dean reached between them and unzipped his fly groaning at the release.

"Quit talking shit, Winchester." She murmured.

"I'm not talking shit. It could be fun. Me, you, an Angel. We should ask him when he wakes up."

"Ask me what?" Castiel's confused voice echoed behind them. River let out a startled laugh and clamped her hand over her mouth as Dean cursed angrily and zipped his pants back up. River readjusted her shorts and turned around to face the angel. His signature white shirt, blue tie and trench coat were back in situ. His dark auburn hair was still disheveled and he tucked his angel blade back into the folds of his jacket.

"Ask you why you healed me instead of yourself. You could've died. What were you thinking?" River told him angrily.

"I told you I would get you back safe."

"Rule fucking three, Castiel: You don't die for me. Got it?" Cas nodded once. "What the hell happened?" River asked.

"Adhira stabbed me," he answered seriously.

River let out a long breath and looked sideways at Dean, "Yeah Cas. I figured as much. I mean with the fucking hell gate…was there even one there or were we fucking set up?"

"I…I don't know for sure." Castiel shuffled his feet.

"Bullshit, angel. Either there was a fucking hellgate or there wasn't and your buddy Haniel and your superiors set us up."

Castiel took a deep breath, "I need to return to heaven and find answers. If Haniel betrayed me I will deal with him myself."

"Cas if they tried to kill you, you can't trust any of them." Dean told him.

"Just stay with us," River reached towards him, "We'll figure something out."

"No. I'll be in touch," with a final nod he disappeared.

"Fuck!" River stomped her foot, "He's gonna get himself fucking killed."

"He'll be fine. Come to bed unless… you want me to fuck you on the table. It looks kind of wobbly though," he dragged his thumb along his lower lip and his green eyes shone mischievously. "Won't be as fun without Cas here…"

"Shut up." River laughed and punched him in the shoulder. "The table doesn't look that wobbly," she said sliding herself onto it. Dean sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and pulled his shirt off.

Sam sat on his bed in the room next door, mindlessly checking emails and news stories when he heard a loud crash from his brothers room. He jumped off the bed and was reaching for his gun when he heard Dean yell "Son of a bitch!" and River's muffled laughter.