Castiel was bleeding out of his side. The more generous the wound, the more time it needed to heal, and this wound had been granted with the utmost generosity only a hellhound could provide.

Two things in this world had the potential to inhibit the angel, and one of them was smoke. Smoke didn't inspire pain, as he was blessedly deprived of such faculties (for the most part), but even the eyes of his human vessel couldn't pierce through the airborne debris of the flaming skyscraper he had narrowly escaped being flattened by. He had turned to both watch the structure collapse and the dark spirits violently expel into the dimming sky when it lunged for him, helping itself to a generous bite of angel meat, which wasn't as sexy as it sounded.

He was shaken, slightly, when it happened, as though a strike of thunder had startled him, while the hunters nearby surveyed him in his gory glory in horror. Evidently, they had skill, but not much visual experience in battlefield carnage. He didn't feel anything but mildly exposed, glancing down at his fresh lack of self on his right side with a sort of "Hm, that's gonna leave a stain" kind of irritation, before lending his ears with the others to the sound of that very hellhound howling in anguish, protesting the blood of an angel. Eventually, but not before having to prompt the hunters with a meaningful look, they trailed the wake of his own blood that the hellhound was leaving behind and disposed of the creature themselves.

The Joelma Building of São Paulo, Brazil was no more. A loss to the community, of course, but no longer a breeding ground for spirits on the warpath. To go from such a formidable, shocking and – one could say – epic scene, to the stillness of Central Park was dramatic. And incautious, to say the least, as he was still dripping blood onto the grass like an unreliable faucet. Though it had been quite a while since the initial wounding and he was ninety-eight percent healed, the position of the wound enabled the blood to run rampant regardless.

The area of the Park he had landed in was empty, save for himself, a vagabond who had passed out in the flower hedges, and the other thing in the world that held the potential to inhibit him: Audrey.

She wasn't close by, but nor could he describe her as being faraway. With her back to him, she was sitting very still on a park bench, alone.

He wanted to see her. Really, he always wanted to see her. But – he glanced down at the side of himself he was regrowing like a starfish – he didn't want her to see that. After what felt like a minute that had been elongated by old Father Time, and he also suspected his scorching impatience only detained the speed of his recovery too, all flesh and bone became whole again. Running a hand over the fabric of his trench coat, the bloodstain vanished. Take that Tide® laundry detergent.

Moving towards her, he found her sporting a pair of Lolita sunglasses as she read a book. It took an additional step or two to realize that she wasn't reading at all.

"Hello Audrey."

Acknowledgment was not made through words; instead, she removed her purse from the bench, vacating a space and patting it with a gloved hand, an indication for him to sit. His eyes attended to her as he did, seeing very clearly that her regard fell not to her book, but straight ahead. Following her line of vision, he spotted a couple sitting on another bench in the distance. They were kissing.

He looked at Audrey. And then back at the couple, tilting his head in effort to discern what was so engrossing about it. She was staring at them. Staring. He had to remark.

"Staring is a non-verbal aspect of communication that indicates interest or curiosity." His use of her own quote made her smile, but other than that, she did not respond, so he decided to allude to her personally. "Staring, in this instance, makes you a voyeur."

There was something disturbing about the way those heart shaped lenses turned to him with such seriousness. "Yes. That I am." Then she looked away, resuming her visual espionage on the couple.

Gaze drifting south, he noted the purse she had settled at her feet. It was her camera bag.

"I gather the impression that you wish to take a photograph of them." A hint of a smile marked his lips when she broke out into a grin, trying to conceal it by pressing the brow of the book above her mouth. He reached forward, deftly drawing off her sunglasses and assuring that their eyes met. It could have been a very corny moment, but her gaze descended. She screamed. Pigeons flew away.

He glanced down, but she was swift to take the offending whatever-it-was, which happened to be his right hand, and lift it up between them like a prisoner at the bar. Blood was still fresh between his fingers and all over his palm; it was the hand that had been clutching his side for the past few hours.

"OHMYGODWHATHAPPENEDAREYOUOKAY?"

A bit harshly, he wrenched back his hand, inwardly blanching at his own imprudence. "Paper cut."

"Paper cut?" she squeaked. His hand was snatched and lifted again. "THIS? Are you a hemophiliac or something?"

Again, he took back his hand. "No," he said, frowning as he produced a tissue out of his pocket. She was also rifling around in the pockets of her own coat, but instead pulled out a card.

"You need to see my doctor about that, seriously." With clean hands, he took the card from her fingers. A calling card for a Dr. Leo Spaceman: "a fine doctor, and a pretty good dentist!" it read. He frowned at her questioningly, but she merely blinked at him as though nothing was strange. Nodding, he stowed it away, staring at her as he did so. Her gaze had become tentative, and he knew why.

"I assure you, I'm perfectly fine."

"Are you gonna call him?" she questioned, her tone not unlike a strict mother.

"Yes," he lied. She was not convinced. So she began raiding his pockets.

"Audrey!" he protested, his voice oddly strangled as she felt around in the vicinity of an interesting place. Of all the things she could have pulled out, his phone was the chosen one.

"I'm putting his contact number in here," she declared imperiously as she thumbed at the keys. "It'll be in capital letters, with loads of exclamation points, and a smiley face, so you can't resist calling."

Her spontaneity was always startling, but never unappealing. He had to smile. It was fast replaced with an expression of quiet alarm when she spoke again.

"Who's Dean?"

He froze. She must be browsing through his contacts. "A friend," he replied stiffly, "and colleague."

"Sam too?"

"Yes."

"Is it short for Samantha?"

"Dean would say so."

A moment later, he was to discover that somebody had changed his ringtone to blare his parody song from Saturday Night Live, when the phone began to ring in her hands.

Eyes flashing in alarm, he reached for the phone just as she answered it herself. "Audrey! Don't —"

"Cas, it's Dean," the voice drifted unwelcome from the phone she had set on speaker. "Bobby sprung on us a quick case in Clifton, New Jersey, and we want this wrapped up real fast, so —"

"A case?" she resounded. Her quizzical glance was lost on him as he was too busy staring intensely at the phone, investing all energy in masking the panic that was bubbling to surface.

After a beat of silence, sounds of hesitancy crackled from the back of Dean's throat. "… who's this?"

"Audrey. I'm a friend of Castiel's," she replied, her smile no doubt audible on the other end.

"Oh." There was a lull, and Castiel could imagine the look of delightful realization blooming on his face. "Ohhhhhhh," Dean slyly intoned, audibly grinning also. Even from miles away, the angel was still subjected to his persistent agonizing. Then, in an unsure voice, "What, am I on speaker phone?"

"Yes, Dean," Castiel answered, finally entering the conversation. "Is this urgent?"

"Uh, well we're not there yet," he replied awkwardly, as though distracted, "'cause we only just found out about the, um," his tone grew extremely unconfident as he tried to articulate himself with deference to Audrey, "incident this afternoon, and uh, uhh… Bobby – er, Robert from, from, from the head office —"

"Seriously?" Sam in the background.

"– has um, informed me that the events that took place are likely to occur again – you could even say reoccur," he underlined with an insightful air, "at exactly midnight, tonight." As though realizing how suspicious that sounded, he was quick to throw in, "– er, give or take a few minutes. You know. Whatever. Something to that effect."

"Thank you for forwarding that information to me," Castiel said, averting his eyes from the blinding glint of curiosity in hers. "Is there anything else?"

Boldness commanded Dean's tone once more and the angel could practically hear a smirk seize his lips. "Uh, yeah! Audrey, Cas is warm for your form —"

"Dean!"

"— see ya!"

Beep, beep, beep.

He gave her a pained look; a look that often crossed his face following the routine spectacles of Dean Winchester. Until now, he had yet to demonstrate this look to another person.

"He seems nice," she observed blithely, trailing a finger up and down his arm, him calmly watching as she did so. When their eyes met, he held out his hand and gave her a severe look, his subtext obvious. With an impish grin, she relented, and slapped the cell phone into his palm. As he pocketed it, he watched as she stared at him strangely for a few seconds, before shifting her position to kneel on the seat, eagerly facing him entirely.

"Remember last week when you propositioned me?" Bewilderment filled his face. Her next words, so light and casual, made it inflame. "Are you sure you didn't mean it?"

His mouth twitched to either speak or, oddly enough, smile. Speech won. "I… beg your pardon?"

"Are you sure you didn't want to?" she repeated, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. "I'm not asking if you actually want to, I'm asking, if, at the time, or, I don't know, maybe even now…" She paused then, registering what she'd just said and how it changed the context of her question; unable to take it back, she ended in a diffident voice, "… you want to."

He raised his chin, eyes gleaming with dark interest. "Why do you wish to know?"

"Just curious."

With a blink, the interest in his eyes became something knowing. "No. To be curious is to seek with an open mind. What you are doing now… is propositioning me."

In overt disbelief, she sputtered out a laugh. "I am not!"

"Your question of "Are you sure you didn't want to?" is merely an unfinished variant of "Are you sure you didn't want to be intimate with me?" And since you've indicated that you also wish to know in the present tense, another method of phrasing it is "Are you sure you don't want to be intimate with me?"" He paused, almost complacently, eyes glittering. "Which is it?"

"You can't ask that without the risk of having to go through with it?" she parried sassily.

"I suppose you can," he admitted. His head dipped eloquently, and somehow, his eyes seemed to darken with the move. "But how would you handle an answer of "No"?"

"Is that your answer?"

"Are you asking?"

Pause.

"No," came her stiff reply, shifting to sit properly on the bench, "I am not."

He continued to stare, eyes searching and pinning the topic she clearly wished to abandon and regretted bringing up. He didn't want to abandon it, not when it had such a compelling variety of potential conclusions. Also, he found that discomfiting Audrey was rather amusing. And he found it endearing that she was pretending to be oblivious to his eyes on her.

Slowly drawing out the words, prolonging the ordeal, he asked, "Is that the truth?"

"Yes." When she finally looked at him, she found his expression to be mutinously disbelieving, to which she had to insist against. "Yes!"

"You're smiling."

"So?"

"You're lying."

"You're the liar!"

"You blush when you lie."

"Shut up, Cas." She crossed her arms, aspiring to sulk but unable to fight her smile. "Fine, then. I will ask you point-blank." Shifting to kneel on the seat again, she looked him dead in the eye. "Do you, Castiel, want to sleep with me?"

There was a lingering pause as they searched each other's eyes. Deciding to answer as plainly as it had been asked, he adjusted to face her. She seemed to squirm in anticipation. Finally, he spoke.

"I can't answer your question if I shut up."

Her mouth quirked to laugh, but all energy was instead conducted into smacking him. Capturing her hands, he stopped her and kissed her, putting on a display for any other voyeurs in the vicinity.

"Look – at – you. I have never seen you this … least solemn!" Gabriel pulled an exaggeratedly adoring face, cocking his head to embellish. "You are so in like."

Castiel turned to him with an honest attempt to look serious, but was unable to rein in all vestiges of the small smile he had been wearing for a while now. It felt foreign, and it probably looked foreign, but it seemed he tended to act out of character when Audrey had embezzled the center stage of his thoughts. Not that he was objecting. Not at all.

"Gabriel, I brought you here for a reason," he reminded evenly. Here being an abandoned warehouse with a table, layered with various "ingredients".

"Yeah yeah," he grumbled sorely, head sinking back down to his handiwork on the table, "I'm hexing, I'm hexing."

While he worked in an indignant silence, Castiel gazed in his direction, his thoughts veering outward as they usually did of late.

He hated lying. Not only was it dishonorable in general, but it always felt uncomfortably yet reasonably foreign to him. Reasonably because he was, of course, an angel, a paragon of virtue. It once was that the only words that emerged from his lips were that of the Lord's. Now, having been refined to humanity to a degree, it meant encountering human experiences, both the good (the way Audrey's eyelashes feathered his cheek when they reached a very non-platonic proximity) and the bad (lying, lying, and lying).

Of all the lies, he hated his with Audrey the most. Nothing but honesty and affection had been presented to him, and he had responded with either an outright lie or with monstrous ambiguity, which was a lot less burdensome but was still an effort he desired to avoid entirely. Even the "paper cut" lie stung him.

"I'm not sure how much longer I can carry on this façade," he grimly murmured to his feet. In his peripheral vision, he saw Gabriel look up, so he glanced to him. "Should I tell her who I am?"

Gabriel stared at him for an interested moment. "Can I interest you in advice?"

"Of course."

"Or do you want these hex bags done?"

Castiel blinked. Then he gave him the weary, mildly supercilious look he usually reserved for Dean. "You are incapable of doing two things at once?"

"I can, but only if I want to," he grinned. Castiel sighed, resigned his difficult ways.

"What do I do?"

Gabriel smacked his lips in earnest thought. "I'm not gonna lodge any options here," he said with discretion, "but I will stress that every hour you spend with that girl, you're pulling back that blind-siding punch even further," a fist was raised and inched backwards to illustrate. "The eventual impact is gonna smart her even more when you tell her who you are."

He fidgeted internally, demurring from that ugly scenario. "I don't understand why it would."

"Then why the hesitation?"

Silence.

"You yourself told me that she has a lot of pride, and it's thin-skinned. So, how do you think she's gonna feel when she finds out that someone she's become close to has pulled the wool over her eyes, hm? What's more is that it's in regards to something she holds a fierce opinion about: religion. Existence, really. She'll feel that you've played her, as a woman, and as a mortal of the human race."

Castiel's brow lowered with guilt. "That sounds unpleasant."

Gabriel pulled a wry face, nodding. "Mhm. It's going to be. Are you prepared for that astronomical turd to hit the fan? And, to put things in perspective, you being an angel and she being a human," he grimaced, "that is one very small fan!" He began to smirk, shrugging suddenly. "But hey, you'll get over it, it's not like you're in love with her or anything."

Pause.

In the silence, Gabriel derived something unspoken from Castiel's lack of response, igniting something equally arcane in his eyes. Before he could vocalize his findings, Castiel hastily spoke.

"How do you imagine she feels?"

Whatever realization Gabriel had made lingered before his eyes for a moment, before easing it aside to see to this question.

"Like I said earlier, you two are so in like. Twenty-first century girls don't fall in love!" he snickered, as if a thought otherwise was simply outrageous. "They think they do, but then they break up when he finds another girl and she gets fat. Little Red, being a New Yorker, is, by character, already ahead in this jam. No work and all play is her mantra. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am! That sorta thing."

If this was meant to be received as something encouraging, Castiel wasn't sure. "You don't know that."

He smiled dryly. "No, I don't. I'm just generalizing. But this generalization, incidentally, is promising for you. When the turd does hit the fan, if it all turns out that she falls within that generalization, well just open up that kisser, try to quaff as much of the cocktail drink being thrown in your face, and move on!"

As Gabriel flippantly resumed his work on the hex bags, Castiel frowned down at him and his theories with distaste. He really should stop seeking advice from him. Yes, he was perceptive, but he didn't enjoy the way he diminished their relationship. He wondered, then, why it mattered. He was navigating both himself and Audrey to a dead end regardless. That was it really; she was a human, he was an angel. A reality easily forgotten, but never any less bleak at remembrance.

"I need some sodium chloride."

Yanked back to reality, Castiel peered at him. "Sodium chloride?" he echoed, as though unsure of what he'd heard.

"Yessum." Gabriel cocked an eyebrow. "Surely you know what that is?"

The pause he made contradicted the answer that followed. "… of course."

"Well," he flourished his hand zealously, "go find me some!"

His feet shifted hesitantly. "Sodium chloride?" he repeated, checking.

"Yesss?" Gabriel confirmed, slowly as though he was senile.

There was another disoriented few seconds before he nodded. "I'll try to be brief." And then he disappeared. Gabriel shook his head, smiling.

"It means salt, you chump," he snorted, chuckling mirthfully to himself. His phone rang, he answered. "The Lord here. As in, the Angel of. Brandi, baby! … What? … Who's here to see me?"

Two names were spoken into his ear, widening his eyes and his grin, and in a split second, he was gone from the room, too.

Castiel knew what sodium chloride meant.

The knowledge was just secreted far, far behind the many thoughts of Audrey he had pleasantly sitting in the foreground of his mind. She was just too soft and pretty and quirky to have to forcibly push out of the way to make room for other thinkings – the definition of sodium chloride for example, or where exactly in the world he was going to land to find this element. It wasn't until he appeared in a New York University laboratory, poring over a periodic table, that he realized how irrationally slow he had been. Salt, of course! He knew that!

Just when he was about to leave to liberate salt from someone with diabetes, he heard a door creak. Not just any natural creak, but a "I hope he didn't hear that!" creak of a door.

Oh no. He was so wrong to allow Audrey the expanse of his focus. He had neglected to take the usual measures he would do to ensure a private landing. Silently, he strode toward the initial sound of creaking, towards a closet door. There were more sounds now; a terrified shuffling of feet, and another, hastened breaths, until there was nothing but a foreboding sort of silence as his fingers touched the fringe of the partly closed door.

Slowly, he opened the door, pouring light into the closet as his own shadow stretched across a figure; short and stout and very familiar. The figure was striving desperately to disappear into the shelves behind him, away from the angel that had materialized out of thin air, right before his Clark Kent glasses that were at risk of rattling right off the bridge of his nose, due to his uncontrollable trembling.

Castiel frowned down at the man, sighing in dismay. "Hello, Professor."

Things are getting tricky again. I was getting into the groove of rushing these chapters and suddenly I get this corporate video project I have to do. Hey, it pays. On top of that, after chapter thirty-three, I have absolutely nothing written down (all chapters so far had been roughly drafted months in advance). Time, why must you move so fast.

By the way, a head's up to save confusion: I'm combining chapters six and seven, so the next chapter will technically be chapter thirty-two and this will become chapter thirty-one.

Read and review :D