"Okay. What the hell was that?" asked Sam.
Dean had been laid out on his side on the bench opposite Castiel, and his little brother was pawing at him in an attempt to help him sit up. He batted the helping hands away impatiently. He hadn't thought he'd been gone long, but he must have been, because the Red Barn Tavern had turned into a full-blown battle zone in the interim. The ceiling had caved in from the weight of the mud on the roof, and every man, woman and child was knee-deep in muck. Water was flying everywhere – from buckets and hoses – and the folks had formed a kind of makeshift production line, passing buckets back and forth to be refilled. It reminded Dean of a movie he once saw where a bunch of farmers tried to put out a raging barn fire with tiny buckets filled from a nearby pump. It wasn't going to be enough to hold the army back, and everybody knew it. But to their credit, not a one of them was giving up.
"How long was I out?" Dean asked, slightly dazed. He was already standing and scanning the room for any glaring holes in their defences.
"Ten minutes," Sam answered grimly.
It was worse than he'd thought – if this was what it was like after only ten minutes of fighting, they didn't stand a chance of making it until morning.
"Dean, I think we're gonna have to make a run for it. There's no way we can keep this up all night," said Sam, worry etched deep into the lines of his face.
"We don't have a choice, Sammy. If we go out there we're toast, and you know it. Those things will be down our throats before we even get through the parking lot."
"Then what do you suggest we do?" asked Sam, waving his arms at the chaos surrounding them.
From the darkest corner of the bar a man screamed, but the noise was almost immediately snuffed out. Dean followed the direction the noise had come from and saw that they'd lost the young man who'd helped him rip the table out from their booth. The dirt had encased him, smothered him, and then dragged him down to the floor where it was now slowly devouring him. Dean looked away, feeling more than a little sick. From behind him a woman shrieked and ran from her position on the bucket line to the fallen man. Dean guessed she was his girlfriend. Others shouted at her to leave him, but she was past reasoning, sobbing and wailing as she fell to her hands and knees at his side. For her, the end came quickly, and in the chilled silence that followed her death, Dean made up his mind.
"I need to talk to Cas," he said, pulling Sam aside.
Sam's eyes fell on the unconscious angel, but rather than question him, he simply shrugged. "Have at it," he replied. "Just make it quick – we need all the hands we can get, here."
That was what Dean loved about his baby bro. No matter how bizarre the situation, he always managed to take it all in stride. Dean clapped him on the back and slid into the booth across from Castiel, taking the angel's hand in his own. It felt weird, and he knew Sammy was looking at him funny, but it was the only idea that sprang to mind, and Dean was going to go with it.
"Let me back in there, Cas. We're not done talking." Dean squeezed his eyes together tightly, but nothing happened. Then he thought it through and added, "Please".
It must have been the magic word, because he found himself once again in the dim dream tavern with a morose but determined-looking angel squared off against him, like he was expecting a fight.
Dean put his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture. "Hold your fire, Cas. I just came to talk."
Castiel's stance relaxed somewhat, but he continued to watch him warily. "There is no need for discussion, Dean. I was clearly wrong in my presumption, and I have already apologised for making you uncomfortable."
Dean harrumphed and took a few steps closer, proud that Castiel was stoically holding his ground. "There are people dying out there, Cas. And if you're right, and we… If we do this, and it works? I'm just saying, we owe it to those people out there to give it a go."
Grief washed over Castiel's face, leaving his blue eyes empty. "It's not that simple, Dean. We can't just go through the motions and repeat the incantation and expect God's blessing to pour forth from the pendant. This will only work if our souls were created to be joined in this way."
"But for a while there, you thought they were?" Dean's eyes trapped the angel's gaze and refused to let him look away. "Deep down, you thought it would work between us." Cas moved to turn away, but Dean grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to remain where he was.
"There were indications," Castiel muttered, "even before…before I was able to fully comprehend the emotions I've been feeling. The fact that of all the people on this planet, you were the one in possession of the pendant should have been a clue. Not to mention the fact that I was the one fated to raise you from damnation. I made you whole again. I marked you. It was because of you that I betrayed Heaven and everything that I knew, and yet despite my blasphemous behaviour, God saw fit to return me to you. But it wasn't until I lay dying in the hospital and it was your blood that saved me that I began to put the pieces together."
Dean mulled it over for a moment, nodding his head as the argument began to make a kind of warped sense to him. "Do you still think this might work? I mean, it's not like we're your typical couple – hell, we're not even the same species!"
A sad smile briefly lifted one corner of Castiel's mouth. "What I think is irrelevant. This isn't something that can be faked or forced. Either our souls were meant to be joined or they weren't. No amount of wishful thinking can change the outcome."
"So you're just gonna give up, then?" Dean rebuked. "I didn't immediately jump on board with the flowers and the Hallmark platitudes, so you just hang up your halo and call it quits?"
The look on Castiel's face was the epitome of puzzlement.
"You can't tell a guy who's lived his whole life happily pursuing the opposite sex that his entire way of life has been a sham and just expect him to go with it! It's not that easy to shift gears, if you get my drift."
A flicker of hope sparked in Castiel's eyes as he studied Dean carefully. "Then you do reciprocate my feelings?" he asked bluntly.
Dean felt a moment of rising panic as he prepared to voice something he hadn't even fully admitted to himself. "I don't know what I feel," he replied honestly. "It's not like I have anything I can compare our relationship with, you know? But I do know that when I got that call from the hospital, and I thought I might lose you..." Dean had to stop and take a breath. "I haven't felt like that since Sammy died, and I never want to feel anything like that again. It's just – I never really let myself think about it. I mean, you're an angel of the Lord; and a guy. In my world, that pretty much takes you out of the running."
Castiel nodded his head slowly and solemnly, trying to absorb and understand what Dean was telling him. After a moment's deliberation, he took a couple of steps towards him, breaching the distance between them until they stood less than a foot apart. With a determined gaze, he said, "Kiss me".
If Dean thought he was close to panic before, then clearly he needed to have his scale readjusted, because this was panic. Castiel was so close he could feel the warm huff of his breath against his throat, and damn if that didn't stir up something deep down and dirty inside him. What freaked him out most was the way Cas was looking at him – like he was daring him or something. Dean was not the kind of guy who backed down from a dare.
The impulse to bolt was incredibly strong, but it didn't hold a match to his need to see this through. If he was wrong, if there really wasn't anything between them and the whole soul mates thing was a bust, then all he'd lost was an ounce of pride and a few minutes of time on the battle field. But if Cas was right…ah, but then, what were the chances of that happening, he wondered?
Steeling himself for what he assumed was going to be a nasty experience, Dean squinched his eyes shut and leaned in, tentatively pressing their lips together. The first thought that sprang to mind was that Cas' lips were as soft as they looked, and actually, that was the last coherent thought he had, because when Cas' lips parted against his with a gentle sigh, Dean's brain melted.
Dean's hands fisted in Castiel's jacket, desperately clinging to him as his whole world turned upside-down. The sudden heat – the toe-curling lightning jolts that arced over his entire body – was unlike anything he'd experienced before, and there wasn't a whole lot that he hadn't already experienced in his life. And when their tongues touched for the first time, the sensory overload was almost too much to bear.
Dean forced himself to pull away, his mind reeling in the aftermath of what he could only describe as a life-altering experience. Cas was breathing hard, his pupils blown and his lips parted and just a little swollen from their kiss. It was the single hottest thing Dean had ever seen, and if it hadn't been for the war raging in the bar outside their secret haven, he would have indulged his urge to sink back into those lips again and stay there.
"Okay, I'm convinced," Dean rasped, nudging Castiel's nose with his own. "Now what do we do?"
The smile that spread across the angel's face was so genuinely sweet that it made Dean's chest ache to see it. "First, you'll have to find a way to wake me up," said Cas, trying and failing to douse his smile and look serious.
"How about a bucket of ice water over your head? That usually does the trick," Dean suggested.
"Dean," Castiel said in reproach.
"Okay, we'll find another way. Next?"
"We'll need witnesses, and someone to read the incantation out loud."
"That shouldn't be a problem," Dean replied. "And…?"
"And we will need to seal the deal with a kiss. If we are meant to be bonded, the pendant will release God's Grace upon us," Castiel answered.
Dean beamed at him, "Great – let's do this thing!"
Suddenly, Castiel became sombre, and he shifted his eyes away from Dean's. "You must understand that this is not a step to be taken lightly. Even if our souls are incompatible, we will still be married in the eyes of God."
"You mean the whole 'love, honour and obey, 'til death do us part' thing?" Dean asked, to which Castiel nodded gravely. Dean swallowed hard. That wasn't something he'd considered. But hell, it wasn't like he was likely to live all that long in any case, right, he thought? And anyways, if it did work, then they were going to be tied to each other for all eternity, so what was the big deal? Dean nodded firmly. "I'm in," he said, giving Cas his most winning smile.
Castiel tilted his head at him and pursed his lips, which now only made Dean want to kiss him. "This is serious, Dean. It's not something you can back out of afterwards."
"I get it, Cas," Dean assured him and gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Now let's go ride off into the sunset together."
The angel frowned at him, but it never reached his eyes, which were still smiling. Castiel reached out to Dean's forehead with two fingers and poked him back into the land of the living.
"Dude! What took you so long?" Sam barked at him over his shoulder. He was busy hosing away three mud soldiers that were intent on getting into Dean's booth.
Dean sat up on his bench, feeling disoriented. On one hand, his life was in serious jeopardy, but on the other hand, he'd never felt happier in his life. Sam was staring at him like he'd gone soft in the head, and Dean didn't get it until he realised he was smiling like a loon.
"Sammy, how would you like to be my best man?" he asked, his grin widening at the befuddled look on his brother's face.