Dean's foot slammed down hard on the passenger side of the car. Luckily, Castiel was driving. Otherwise there would have been at least a two-car pile up. And as miffed as present Dean was, there was no need to bring full Dean wrath upon his own head.

"Care to repeat that?"

"I don't think I have to." Castiel stated quietly.

"But I don't...."

Castiel shook his head. "No, you don't. You were more than clear it was because it was just us in the middle of nowhere."

Dean watches Cas' lip begin to tremble. "Is that when everything started going to shit?"

"You know, you might want to open your mind a little more, Dean. Nothing is that simple."

The growl in Dean's voice is evident, even more than normal. "Oh, you can bet I disagree."

"I know, that was always the trouble with you. You never followed the rules and all of us in your little entourage just bent to that. Never had the slightest inclination to stand up to you."

"Cas, we argued constantly at the start of this thing five...however many years ago." Dean was beginning to understand.

"I didn't always argue because I thought you were wrong."

"Cas, are you telling me..."

"We'll just drop it, okay? Now hand me my flask please."

"I told you no."

"Zacharias would be mighty pissed at me if I crashed the car. Well, he would have been I guess...."

"You're not gonna crash the car."

Cas nodded absentmindedly, his eyes concentrating on the road. "You're right, as always."

More damnable silence. There was nothing to see in the advancing mists of the morning. Just fires of torn down cities and hollowed out rest stops.

"Cas, was it the night Sammy said yes?"

Castiel's turn of the head, sharpness on the edges of his dulled-out eyes told the story for him.

"Cas, I'm..."

"Don't say you're sorry, I'm not. The angels went back to heaven that night as well. I would have been stuck alone and mortal if not for you."

"I used you, just like Zacharias did to me and Ruby did to Sam."

"Gotta disagree with you there, Sam. And I really think we should drop this."

More silence, advancing into daylight. Dean notices the crows feet and the haunted bags just under the sheen of drug sweat on Castiel's skin.

Dean tried, failing, to lighten the mood. "So, I must've not been any good if you're having three or four girls at once now."

Castiel merely shakes his head in response and sighs.

"Just don't crash the car or anything."

"You're probably gonna wish by the end of the day that I had."

"You were always pretty astute, Cas."

Castiel talked absentmindedly to no one. "Yeah. That and a box of mallomars cure the munchies."

Dean could see something working behind Castiel's eyes. Something dark and yet so familiar. Castiel hadn't thought about that night in year, he hadn't had to. He had pumped himself with drugs and women enough to forget most of the fragments of the way it had been. Like sand leaving his fingertips, the power had been. But that had been nothing like Dean, stumbling in with strong and heaving breaths.

Castiel had been the only thing to intercept the rage and he had just laid there, quietly. Dean's fist colliding with pillows, throwing them to the ground. Dean's tears, rivers moving over his own like manic coughs of a scared and dying man. The scent of blood finally trickling from his knuckles, matching the scraped skin under Dean's nails when the mirror broke in a violent fit.

Being the warm body and the kiss, always soaked with alcohol. It wasn't a clean kiss. It was a kiss that shook the bed, sliced him down to the very core. There hadn't been enough time to breathe, Dean ripping clothes apart in every direction until there was nothing left but groans and indecent exposure. The sounds of springs giving way, the crunch of elbow falling into the floor.

Castiel can still see it in the moonlight. The confusion and despair slashed across Dean's eyes and his own heart. The feeling of never-ending punishment riding into ever pore and orifice available. Letting Dean take him, receiving and helping in the only way he could or want to. That final exhausted moment when power and pleasure were dispensed.

Those haunting sobs, the deep and shaking breaths cocooned and held together in a blanket.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Dean's voice breaks into the memory. "What are you thinking about?"

"Bad memories. You could just let me..."

"No, Cas." Its that same dark, commanding voice.

A thought trips a wire in the back of Castiel's mind. Is that the same voice he uses on the demons to reassure him? Is it the same voice that caressed Castiel and held him until the morning? He couldn't remember what the other voice sounded, wasn't sure he could ever remember how until this Dean had stumbled into the future.

"Why not? What have we got to lose?"

"You want an answer or an apology?"

"Neither, Dean. I've lost the will to accept them anyways."