Word count: 200-ish
Genre: humour
Rating: worksafe
Prompt: Firefighter!Dean maybe saving Librarian!Cas from the library he works at which has caught on fire (bonus points for purgatory parallels).
This is it, he thought, as he reached out to grab onto the man's wrist and haul him onto the lift. This is the last of them. They're all safe. No one dies today.
But before the tendrils of relief had managed to completely latch onto his heart, the man tore his hand out of Dean's grip, shocking him enough so that he almost fell forward off the lift. Before he realised what he was doing, the man had leaned across the gap between the window and the lift and pushed something into Dean's arms.
"Go, save them! I can't carry them all!"
"What the—"
But the man had already disappeared back into the smoking inferno. Dean blinked against the heat and light of the fire, looking down at his armful of…several books with singed covers.
Before he'd managed to register fully what had happened, the man was climbing out the window of his own accord, manoeuvring himself onto the lift without the help of his hands, since those were occupied with another load of old books. Dean stared at the man's sooty, sweaty face and dishevelled hair, as he coughed slightly and raised his eyebrows at him.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Are we getting out of here or not?"