Author's Note: I'm not going to make this match up to season 8 after all. I just miss Dean too much So we just got totally A/U.
We were digging the first hole when we got the call.
Jason was all in a panic because some guy had shown up at Rufus's cabin claiming to be Sam's brother.
And he had a vampire with him.
I don't know what kind of tap dance Dean had to do with Jason to keep his little friend alive, but it wouldn't have worked with me. I would have taken care of Benny Lafitte the minute I saw him—but by the time I got there he was already gone.
Dean was still there, as twitchy and jumpy as a live fish in a fry pan. He'd been in Purgatory, so he said, and the vamp had helped him escape.
I didn't believe a word of it, even though that was where Crowley had claimed he was. When Dean saw Sam he hugged him hard, and then never let up on him for the rest of the night.
I've never seen a guy as upset as Dean was when Sam confessed he was working with Crowley. We'd all been in the habit of trusting Sam's instincts—like I said before, he was our leader, the one who united us—and it stuck in our craw that Dean seemed ready to simply dismiss every consideration his brother had made. After all, we'd followed his brother without complaint for nearly a year. Dean hadn't been back a day and he seemed ready to start telling Sam and the rest of us what to do.
Sam didn't seem to mind. He even took the scolding like a champ. But the rest of us resented the hell out of Dean.
Dean was handsome enough—more than handsome enough—but his manners could use some work. And he may have been fast in a fight, like, scary fast, but he was damaged. He had trouble doing normal things like shopping in a crowded store. He looked around the cabin like he expected wolves to jump out from behind the furniture. He didn't sleep, either, at least not that anyone ever saw.
Sam said he had always been that way, grabbing four hours of sleep here and there where he could. It was weird, though. No matter what time of night if you woke up he would be sitting at his computer or watching TV—sometimes just staring at a half empty bottle of something as he drank his way through it.
Sam was happy to have his brother back, but he looked at Dean like he was a stranger every once and a while. I got the feeling Purgatory had changed Dean, and not in a good way.
It was a few days since Dean's return when the discussions about what we should do about Crowley and the tablets heated up into an argument.
"You said you were helping him to get me out of Purgatory. Well, I'm out, so what's your excuse now?" Dean asked.
"You know what it is. If we just leave Crowley to it we'll never be able to get the tablets away from him," Sam said.
"What we should be doing is rescuing Kevin," Dean said. "If Crowley doesn't have the prophet, it's irrelevant if he has the tablets."
"I don't think that's how the angels would see it. Why don't we ask Cas?" Sam asked.
"Let's just let angels take care of their own drama, for once. They can smite demons without thinking twice. Why should we break our necks for either angels or demons?" Dean said.
"Dean, did Cas get sent to Purgatory with you?" Sam asked.
"Yeah. And he didn't make it out. As far as I know he's dead. But you know Cas. Dead never seems to stick with him, even when you want it to," Dean said.
Sam looked shocked. "Dean, Cas was our friend. You used to call him our brother. If he needs to be rescued—"
"He doesn't need to be rescued. He doesn't want to be rescued. We should be finding Kevin Tran and rescuing him. Maybe we can find an angel willing to help us. It is their job, after all," Dean said.
Sam took a deep breath. "How could we find him? If Crowley's got him, he could be in any of a dozen places, including hell."
"I don't think he'd be in hell. Crowley likes being topside, so he'd enjoy the excuse. We need to find a place on earth that's well warded against angels," Dean said.
"How do we do that without an angel?"
"I never thought I'd say this, but maybe we should summon an angel. We've done it before. We've summoned Balthazar," Dean said.
"Balthazar's dead," Sam said.
"We do some research. Find another angel—one who might help us. Then we summon him," Dean said.
"Angels hate us, Dean. Why would they help us?"
"Have one of the KISS army summon him, then," he said, gesturing to me and the others in the room. "Or just tell him to suck it up and help because it's his stupid God that left the damned tablets all over. And it's his angel buddies that let Kevin get snatched by Crowley."
"Dean—" Sam started.
"Look, I'm not working for Crowley again. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. You're not going to find a way to get the tablets from him. Our best bet is to find Kevin and get him to safety."
"What's safety? This is the king of hell we're talking about. We probably can't protect Kevin from him, if angels couldn't," Sam said.
"It was Leviathan that took Kevin from the angels, remember? And they don't seem to be looking for him these days—so let's just stick to doing the right thing, okay?" Dean said.
"I don't want to do—Dean, just because you think it's the right thing doesn't mean it's the right thing. I don't believe that is the right thing to do," Sam said.
"So you feel all warm and fuzzy at the thought of working with Crowley. Finding God's tablets for the king of hell doesn't make your instincts just ring with a sense of how wrong it is?" Dean asked.
"Dean—no. I don't know. Maybe we should split up for a while, and you could try it your way, and we'll stick to trying to get the tablets this way," Sam said.
"I never thought I'd see the day. Am I cramping your style, here, Sam? Fine. We'll split up," Dean said.
"Okay. I'll work on this end with my people, and you can try to find Kevin on your own. Or maybe you could call up Garth or Charlie," Sam said.
"I'll work with whoever I want, Sammy, and Garth isn't first on the list. I'll see you later. And the car is mine. No negotiations on that," Dean said.
"Fine," Sam said.
Sam and Dean kept in touch for a while after that, but that was before Dean somehow let it slip that his partner was the vampire he'd brought back from Purgatory. We all voted and decided that if Dean was with Benny he didn't get to come to the cabin anymore. Vegetarian or not—we didn't want any bloodsuckers in our space.
The vote didn't seem to have any effect on Dean. He reasoned that the cabin was at least half his, so he could use it whenever he wanted. It was mostly only Jason there, and for some reason he never let us know half the time that Dean and Benny dropped by. They had some kind of deal with him, or he liked them or something.
I didn't understand it. I hated vampires. Still do. Those freaks killed my mother.
And how a hunter could see them as normal…as people…it just doesn't seem right.
Of course, a few months later, after we'd found and turned over the monster tablet to Crowley and were in the process of unearthing another, we heard some news that must have made Sam cringe.
Crowley didn't even have Kevin Tran. He'd escaped using the demon tablet, and he'd been on the run alone for months. Dean and his pet monster had found him in this little town hiding out in an abandoned church.
Now we had a tablet, the one on humans, Crowley had a tablet, Kevin had a tablet, and Dean had a prophet. And the demon tablet.
Somehow the handsome devil had managed to outsmart everyone. Because yeah, Crowley had a tablet and we had one we were hiding from him, but no one could read those damned rocks but Kevin, and he'd only read them to Dean.
Dean being the only guy who'd come after him to protect him. Kevin even trusted Benny more than he trusted Sam. A prophet of the lord who trusts a vampire to watch his back? Now you tell me there isn't something wrong with that picture. I dare you to.
But Sam had a secret weapon. He was Dean's brother, and he reckoned he could talk him into anything.
So Sam called Dean to parlay.