When Lisa came to, the first thing that she noticed was that someone had bound her wrists. After that, she noticed that Becky was sitting to her left (she could tell from the wordless whining noises), and that Gabriel was to her right. Then, she gleaned that the three of them and some fourth person had been bound around a pole, in the middle of some cemetery that looked like it had lately been the victim of a nuclear bomb... and finally, Lisa took note of the ring of fire that surrounded them. She sighed and looked down at Gabriel; the distraught frown seemed so out of place on him, it might as well have been transplanted there from someone else.

"So I'm guessing that, whatever this is, you can't use your angel powers to do anything about it?" she asked, her voice dry and even.

"Bingo," he replied. "Holy oil is such a bitch move — seriously. And it's not that I can't believe it, but—"

"Oh, do go on, precious," drawled the fourth member of their group. He sounded British, and whoever he was, he wanted Gabriel to shut up as much as Lisa did, and that fact endeared him to her immediately. "I know your pride must be smarting something awful, but we have more pressing issues to deal with, at the moment."

"Just... can you ever keep your opinion to yourself, Crowley?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I can — but I scarcely see the point when you insist on making this rubbish harder for the rest of us than it already is."

Lisa smirked when Gabriel turned his gaze to the ground between his legs. Maybe watching him sulk like a dejected four-year-old wasn't helping anybody, but Lisa didn't mind, not really. Getting called out on his self-serving shenanigans had probably been a long time coming for the archangel. After a moment of silence, she piped up again, "So, Crowley."

She couldn't see it, but his smile was pleasant in a way uncommon for demons. "Ms Lisa Braeden?"

"You're a demon, right? I mean... Becky's told me some about you, and I know you helped out Sam and Dean, and that demons used to be humans once, but I haven't read the books, so..."

"Ah, yes, Becky..." Crowley paused, and turned his head so he could give Becky a peck on the cheek; she giggled, and flushed bright pink. Ostensibly trying to hide from the chance that Crowley might decide to judge her, she put her head on Lisa's shoulder. "Couldn't have gotten the Winchesters' attentions without your stunning attention to detail. You're a peach, love. You truly are."

"So, do you get your name from Aleister Crowley, then?" Lisa asked, leaning her cheek onto the top of Becky's head.

"Oh, no, not as such. On the other hand, little Aleister was my..." He wrinkled his nose, apparently doing some fairly thorough mental mathematics. "Some-odd number of greats-grandson. Most of the extended family's off in County Cork, Ireland, but our branch of it wound up in England, starting with a delightful, lengthy tryst I'd had with a nun. And I cropped up, well... I was about ten when Joseph's brothers sold him , Lilith got her claws in me when I was twenty-one. There's about a hundred-twenty years in Hell, and I first got out top-side when William of Normandy showed up in Hastings... she took Alastair out of tempting people and inciting clan warfare in Scotland, made him her torture-master shortly thereafter... So. I'd been around the block a few times when my grandson decided that he was an occultist."

Lisa hummed pensively. "So the accent...?"

Crowley shrugged. "I was in Britain for a good three, four hundred years, and I like it there. These things tend to hang around."

"Right. ...And I don't suppose there's anything you can do to get us out of here, is there?"

"Alas, my dear, there isn't. Belial might be a careless little trollop with her Hell-hounds, but she has a regrettable amount of foresight when it comes to painting devil's traps."

Lisa sighed. "Of course." It just figured that they'd be taken hostage by some demon who actually had a functioning brain.

The group went silent, and they might have stayed that way... but after twenty minutes, Becky got bored. "Gaaaabriel?" she said. Once he acknowledged her, she asked: "Truth or dare?"

He snapped, "...You know it's kind of impossible for me to do a dare right now, I hope?"

"Oh yes," Becky agreed. "But I still wanted to offer you the choice."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. Truth."

"So, how much do you want to have sex with Sam?"

Gabriel groaned, and utterly failed to hide the scarlet blush that rose to his cheeks. If he got out of here alive, he was going to get out all of this frustration by giving Sam Winchester the best blow-job he'd ever had in his life.

Dean sighed and slumped against the Impala's hood — and underestimated the distance between the windshield and his shoulders just enough that, when the back of his head thumped on it, he found it worthy of a grunt and a grimace. Since Barnes and Damien had called with the news of what had happened to Gabriel, Lisa, and Becky, Dean had looked for just about anything he could smack his head on, and this was the first time that Castiel hadn't bothered stopping him. Back in the trunk, Sam and Bobby went over the various weapons they had, trying to prep everything for leading a charge. The only thing that they lacked, as Sam was more than comfortable pointing out until Dean was ready to slug the son of a bitch, was a plan.

"Well," Dean sighed, crossing his arms over his chest, "I say we wait for Dumb and Dumber to show up and then go right in and save the day from evil bitches. How's that for a freaking plan?"

"It won't be that easy," Castiel pointed out. For want of anything better to do, he paced around the car. Jeans, he thought, were considerably more comfortable than his suit had been, even though he didn't quite fit this pair as well as he would've fit some of his own. For all Dean was closer to his size than Sam and Bobby were, Castiel had still needed to tightly fasten a belt and cuff the bottoms of his borrowed pants. The only thing that dragged the angel back out of pondering how he'd need to get a pair or two of these for himself was Dean demanding to know why it wouldn't be that easy. Bobby started to say something, but Castiel interrupted him: "I'd think this would be obvious to you, Dean. You've fought with Belial before."

"Yeah, and every time, you know what happened? We got out fine — well. Except for the one time where she kidnapped Dad and then Meg the girl wound up dead, but that was mostly not fine because we got hit by a fucking truck."

"I am aware of what happened leading up to your father making his Deal, Dean." Castiel tried to keep himself from rolling his eyes, but... this situation frustrated him too much for restraint. "The Heavenly Host had tabs kept on you and Sam long before your births — and, besides... you were in trouble."

"What do you mean I was in trouble? I was having an out-of-body experience, Cas, there's kind of a difference between—"

"No, no, I mean..." Castiel paused in front of Dean and didn't realize that he was mimicking the position of his charge's arms until it occurred to him that he'd been silent for too long while trying to properly articulate himself. As he spoke, he closed the distance between himself and Dean, and one of his hands dropped onto Dean's arm. "It's history, and not especially relevant to our mission against Belial, but... I was watching over you that night. To see if you made the right choice — which you did. If you hadn't kept Tessa at bay for so long, you would have—"

"Are you two idjits done having When Harry Met Sally time over there," Bobby called, "or do I have to come and smack the two of you upside the head?" Without waiting for a response, he cocked a shotgun and fired a test round into the night.

"They're never going to be done, Bobby," Sam sighed. "I couldn't even cut through their sexual tension with Ruby's knife."

In unison, Dean and Castiel snapped, "Shut up, Sam!"

All parties involved wished for this to be the end of the discussion, with everyone attempting to handle separate things without devolving into snarking at each other over the littlest things... but instead of things going according to plan, a series of popping noises took everyone by surprise. Castiel startled, whipping around to see who had come to join them; had he not slipped on a patch of ice and collapsed into Dean's chest, the effect would have been sufficiently dramatic. However, as it went, he found himself face-to-face with Barachiel and four of their brothers who served in Israfel's garrison, with Dean's arms around his waist.

"Aww, Cas, you shouldn't be scared of little old Cupid," Dean taunted, resting his chin on Castiel's shoulder. The angel flushed bright red. "I mean, I know he's naked and everything, but he doesn't bite." Snickering, Dean gave Castiel a squeeze. "But don't worry. I'll protect you."

"Don't be ridiculous. He doesn't terrify me." Not that Castiel particularly objected to being held like this. He outright didn't mind it, even, and with a sigh, he just leaned back and let Dean have his fun, pretending to be the big, tough man. "What are you doing here, Barachiel?"

"And what's up with the shitty Nirvana cover band you brought?" Dean snickered, because this was, he thought, supremely witty.

Cupid scrunched up his face, looking like Dean and Castiel had just mortally offended him, and then killed his favorite puppy. "...I brought the cavalry! Well, the Heavenly Chorus, anyway, but they serve the same function as a cavalry... if by cavalry, you mean that you don't mind them providing suitable background music for any situation you might find yourselves in. ...You're fighting Belial tomorrow, right? I just... I wanted to help. It wouldn't be a proper battle for the sake of—"

"Just... go home, Barachiel," Castiel ordered with a sigh. Cupid shook his head and invoked his Castiel-given right to question directives that he didn't agree with; Castiel rolled his eyes. "There's no reason for you to be here. We have two more hunters coming with us—"

"They are sorta incompetent sons of bitches, though," Bobby pointed out. "I mean, let's at least be honest here: whatever they do to help us 's gonna be more in the way of providin' a distraction than actually bein' useful."

"Hey, man, they saved an entire convention full of people when me and Sam got stuck inside."

"They're guided by the inspired word," Castiel said. "They don't have all of it available to them yet, but Rebecca has done an admirable job of instructing them in the later gospels — as much as she could in a few days' time, anyway. That alone makes them soldiers of Heaven, and that should make them useful enough."

Cupid pouted, and appeared on the verge of tears. His eyes darted from Sam to Dean to Castiel to Bobby, and then in various orders thereof, and finally, he exploded: "But I just wanted to help, and then Gabriel got taken, and we were supposed to be working together to make you..." He gesticulated wildly in Dean and Castiel's direction, but didn't specifically point to one or the other of them, "to see the light and stop being so difficult — and speaking of, I'm so happy you two are back together, you just make such a sweet couple, and I told Gabriel that the kiss you had in the motel was True Love's own, but he didn't want to listen, which was totally fair because I realized just a little while ago? ...You guys needed a chorus like the one I have here to make the moment right, but anyway, Gabriel... he just thought he'd go get Lisa and Becky to stage a... romantic intervention for you, but well... you know how Gabriel gets when he sets his mind to something, and—"

"Wait... what was that last part?" Dean interrupted.

"What, you mean about the... about you and Castiel having True Love's Kiss, or—"

Dean's grip on Castiel's waist started got tight enough that the angel made a noise of discomfort; however, Dean ignored it and snapped: "The part about Gabriel, genius!"

Shrugging, Cupid said: "Oh, well, that wasn't anything really, just that we've been trying to get you and Castiel back together again — it was so sweet of you to try with Lisa, you know, but... well, there's true love on the one hand, and then you've got Gabriel just being blatantly self-interested and not listening to my ideas, but—" This time what cut off Cupid's ramblings was not Dean's voice, but Castiel being shoved into him. They stumbled backwards and fell into a snowbank, and even so, Cupid smiled up at his big brother. "Don't worry, Cas. I've got you."

Castiel attempted to struggle away, but instead, wound up with the hug that, he supposed, had been his belated 'hello.' He didn't even manage to turn around and look Dean in the eye when he barked: "You junk-less. son of a bitch—"

"We've been over this, Dean—"

"Oh! Excuse me, we've been over this — I must've missed the part where you've apparently been stringing me along, for God only knows what reason—"

"My Father isn't involved in this!" Castiel's shock cut through the air like a slap to the face. Apparently, Cupid sensed and took issue with this emotion, and decided that it needed a tighter squeeze around the chest. "I swear — I have no idea what he's talking about—"

"Yeah, well, bite me."

Castiel heard Dean stalk off, with the clarification that he was just taking a walk, dammit. He heard Bobby sigh and go off after Dean — and finally, he heard Sam pipe up, "...You know, Barachiel? We might be able to put you and your chorus here to use after all."