They get back to Lebanon around midday the next day, and Charlie opens the door with an expression like she's seriously considering violence and no longer cares who the victim is.

Dean stops abruptly on the stoop, and Sam walks right into him.

"What's with the—" Dean starts to ask, pointing at her face, and she turns to go down the stairs.

"Chuck is an ass," she announces.

Chuck, at the table in a faded blue bathrobe, his work spread out before him, pushes his glasses back on his nose and looks up at her.

"I'm sitting right here," he says, clearly wounded, and she huffs out a breath.

"Doesn't make it less true. You're lucky I know you're just stressed, or I'd probably not like you too much."

"Thanks?"

"You're welcome, you dick."

She walks right past him, headed for the TV room, and Sam raises his brow as he glances down at Chuck.

"What'd you do?"

"I may have been a little bit sexist? Maybe?"

Charlie whirls back around before she reaches the door and levels the prophet with a glare that has all three men flinching.

"Maybe?"

He raises his hands in surrender.

"Okay, so I was really sexist."

"He was text book sexist," she says angrily, "like, the first thing you'd think of as an example of sexism? He did it. Twice. And the second time was in the process of supposedly apologizing for the first time. He's lucky I didn't kick him in the nads."

Chuck instinctively crosses an arm over his crotch and angles away from her, and Sam lets out a low bark of laughter.

"Leave my nads out of it."

"Ass," she mutters, still glaring, and walks out through the door.

She's barely been gone three seconds when Chuck relaxes his posture and speaks again, too loud.

"It wasn't even that bad. She's probably just on her—" he starts, and she appears back in the doorway to cut him off before he has a chance to finish.

"Think very carefully about the rest of that sentence, Chuck Shurley," she says, somehow managing to narrow her eyes even further as she points the remote control threateningly at his head, "very. Fucking. Carefully."

Chuck clamps his mouth shut, and Sam coughs, though it sounds as though it's more related to intense discomfort than his sickness.

"Okay!" Dean says, clapping his hands together, "not that I'm not enjoying the awkward, but how about we change topics now?"

"Good plan," Sam says, heading for the kitchen, "anyone want a beer?"

The resounding yes follows him through the door, and Dean sinks down into a chair opposite Chuck. He pulls the closest stack of notes toward himself, leafing through them until Sam returns with four beers, plonking them down onto the table. Charlie picks one up, twisting off the lid with more force than neccesary.

"So," Dean says brightly, grabbing his own bottle, "how's the translation coming along? Find anything yet?"

"I think... maybe," Chuck eyes Charlie warily, evidently still a little worried about retribution, and Dean bites his lip to stop from laughing, "the tablet can't be destroyed, but it can be returned to someplace safe."

"Where?" Sam asks him, looking over the papers on the table with a frown, and Chuck points upward.

"Heaven."

"Heaven?" Dean repeats dubiously, lowering his beer, "how is anywhere in Heaven gonna be safe from angels?"

"Here, look," Chuck digs through the nearest pile of notes, pulling out a sheet and handing it over.

Dean skims over the messy scrawl, Sam and Charlie leaning in to read over his shoulder, and when he gets to the bottom he clicks his tongue a few times, nodding, before dumping the paper back on the table and drumming his knuckles over it.

"Yeah," he says, pushing it back toward Chuck, "I have no idea what any of this means."

"Ditto," says Charlie, and with a glance at Sam's impressive sturgeon face, it's clear to Dean that it's not just the two of them.

Rolling his eyes, Chuck takes the paper and turns it around.

"Okay, so this," he says, pointing at a scribbled, ink-smeared symbol near the top of the page, "means Seraphim, which is a kind of—"

"Angel, right," Dean says, waving his hand, "same kind as Cas."

"Yeah," Chuck nods, moving to point out another collection of symbols, surrounded by what appears to be a series of nonsense words, "and this is... basically, there's a place in Heaven called the superi murus which is pretty much like a wall that surrounds the Garden."

"Right..."

Chuck puts down the paper, scratching at his beard as he explains.

"It acts as a sort of barrier to prevent anyone from getting inside if they aren't of what the tablet calls pure intent. I think it's what stopped Zachariah from being able to follow you two into the Garden when you spoke with Joshua."

"So... what? The tablet can be hidden in the garden, and nobody can get to it if they want to use it?"

"Basically."

"So what's that got to do with a Seraph?"

"Um... well. I'm still working this part out, so don't... like, I could be wrong."

"Chuck."

"I think... from what I can tell... Cas won't be able to get into the Garden with the tablet by just zapping in there. Even just taking the tablet to Heaven could be catastrophic. It's got too much power."

"So what's the trick?" Charlie asks, twisting her head to look at the symbols as if she thinks she'll be able understand them from a slightly different angle.

"It says a Seraphim has to receive God's blessing to carry it through."

Dean snorts.

"Which basically puts us back to square one, because if God gave a crap he would have turned up years ago," he says, and Chuck shakes his head vigorously.

"No, no, there's a way."

Sam raises his brow; Dean is still too dubious for surprise.

"How?" Sam asks.

"I..." Chuck hesitates, his eyes darting away, "I don't know yet."

"But you've got an idea."

"Yeah. I do. But I'd rather know for sure first."

"Why?"

"I don't want to unneccesarily worry you?" he says weakly, and Dean can tell it's bad, whatever it is, "I've just got one more line to translate for context, and then I'll know for sure."

Briefly, Dean considers trying to make Chuck spit it out, but somehow he doesn't think he wants to know. Until it's real, until it's unavoidable fact, he can wait. One look at Sam and Charlie is enough to confirm they're thinking the same thing.

"I'll be done tomorrow morning at the latest," Chuck tells him, and Dean nods.

"Okay," he says, pushing back to his feet, "then I guess we'll leave you to it."

Chuck attempts a smile, but it falls so flat that Dean can't help but wonder just how bad it looks. The rest of the afternoon passes in tense silence that's only broken by Sam's increasingly frequent coughing fits and the canned laughter of a sitcom that none of them are really watching.

With his cell in his hand, Dean sits and waits, and sends more pointless text messages to Castiel than he thinks he's ever sent anyone. Castiel answers every last one. It doesn't help much, but it helps.