The latest installment for you… only a couple or three to go now. Again, thanks so much to everyone who takes a few moments [or more] to leave feedback: reviews are the only reward we get for this, and every single one is cherished. ;-)

If anyone is interested, there is a crack version of part of this chapter posted as a separate story under my profile: it's called Spoken For.

Warnings Foul language, blasphemy up the wazoo and back again, S5 spoilers

The Devil Deals the Cards

Sam can hear his breath rattling out through his mouth, and it feels like it's stuffed full of cotton in there, that gauzy stuff they pack inside soft toys. His eyes are at half-mast, and his vision is so blurred with blood and gritty floaters it's like someone hung lace curtains across his eyes, but he can just make out a figure leaning against the wall beside the door. Generic demon guard, he supposes, not that he's going anywhere fast ever again, but what the hell, he'll keep his eyes peeled for a chance to get out even if he is dying.

His back is pressed up against something hard, wall?, his arms and legs flopped out in front of him like he's a dog napping in the shade of a hot day south of the border. When he breathes in he can't get to the top of the inhale any more, and each breath is a labored pant of effort, shallow, fast, then faster, then slow, so slow he thinks it might not even be worth the effort of doing it again.

Lucifer paces, gestures wildly and spits tacks. "That's what you get, Sam," he seethes. "For trusting a Horseman. They knew, they knew. I made it crystal clear to those douchebags that Michael was off limits, that he was mine." He pauses, leans into his hands, roars out apoplectic, incoherent anger that rises in pitch to a hoarse wail of fury.

And then it cuts off abruptly and Lucifer stands stock still for a moment before he rolls his shoulders, spins around and lowers himself to the floor next to Sam. He puts a friendly hand on Sam's shoulder and pats him there, and Sam feels a slow chill of icy horror prickle across the surface of his skin. He tracks the hand as Lucifer raises it up to examine his knuckles, split on Sam's jaw, but perfectly healed now, and the angel devil? pulls a face, tilts his head at Sam in a disturbing approximation of the amused-puzzled-fond nothing else matters but you look Castiel so often wears on his face when he's going eye to eye and nose to nose with Dean. Before, Sam thinks abstractly. Now Castiel just looks careworn and worried, like they all do.

"You aren't looking too well, Sam," Lucifer offers sympathetically. "Not that it means that much any more." He clenches his fist, and Sam hears his knuckles pop. "You know, there's a lot to be said for the rush of the bare knuckle fight," he muses. "I wonder how it'll feel to sink this fist into our brother's pretty, pretty face, see it split and break. I wonder how it'll feel to smash his bones one by one before I smite him to nothing but ashes blowing in the wind." His face forms a joyful smile and he stares down at Sam with Dean's eyes. "I'm calling that plan B."

He flips over onto his belly then, lies flat out down there with Sam, steeples his fingers and rests his chin on them, and he's bursting with glee, and his voice is conspiratorial. "Want to know what plan A is?" He frowns briefly. "Sam! Pay attention." He smiles again as Sam drags his wandering pupils back to fix on him.

"I wasn't lying when I said I didn't want to kill our brother, Sam," he confides earnestly. "And if he bows down before me with his face on my boots and his ass in the air, well. I can live with that as long as he can. That's plan A. And if he can't…" He shakes his head, regretful, lowers his face so his brow rests on his hands now and all Sam can see is tufted dishwater blond hair. And then Lucifer laughs. "You know, Sam, it's funny how things work out," he says, and he looks up again. "All those years, all that effort to get you to right here and now. And I really held out for you, I gave it my best shot. But all along there was a spare. It's just so damned ironic that there I was thinking I was going to have to go all-out for the designer meatsuit when the store brand fits all my curves snugly. And works just as well, especially if Michael isn't firing on all cylinders."

He smirks. "So, Singer Salvage, Sioux Falls. Guess I'll drop by, pay our brother and his grunt a visit. I wonder which one of them I'll break first…" He ponders, licks his lips. "What do you think, Sam? I mean, Castiel can be a sanctimonious little prig at times, can't he? And he'll be so easy to hurt now he's vermin. Shall I rip his arms and legs out of their sockets while our brother begs me to show mercy? Or tear Michael to shreds while his pet screams his name?"

He pushes up abruptly. "Decisions, decisions," he remarks thoughtfully. "I must say that plan B sounds better all the time."

Sam follows him with his eyes as he walks over to the door, and he glances back over his shoulder.

"Does my butt look big in this?" he asks. And then he winks, and he's gone.

Sam stares at the space where Lucifer was, and he feels vague worry, vague because everything is dull in his brain and he's tired, feels apathetic even though the atmosphere is charged and expectant, like the world is somehow aware of its own impending doom and is holding its breath in anticipation. And then he hears footsteps, the click of heels, and he's being heaved up and leaned against the wall. His head is swimming and he whimpers out dazedly, but he summons up some degree of numb concentration as he stares at the face in front of him, and his addled brain speaks her name even if his lips are having trouble doing it. Meg.

"Is Michael really damaged?" she clips out sharply. She frowns, waves a hand across his field of vision, blows a sharp puff of air at him when that doesn't get a response. "Sam. Come on, snap out of it. Is Michael really damaged?" She huffs out in irritation, reaches behind her, produces a knife, and she must see his fear flare in his eyes. "Don't panic," she sneers. "Just a little pick me up…"

He doesn't see her cut herself but suddenly her wrist is pressed up close to his mouth and he can feel it burning his lips, sizzling on his tongue. He shakes his head, no, as frantically as he can manage, don't want, purses his lips closed, but he can still feel it thrill its way to every part of him, lighting up his nerve endings, can feel his body rejoice and start pumping out adrenaline to meet it. And he jerks his hand up and grips her arm, pulls it tight to his mouth and sucks it down, mashing his lips against the wound until she pulls it away and he gasps out his need.

She cackles wryly. "You aren't drinking me dry, Sammy," she taunts, as her eyes flash black at him for an instant before they swim back to navy. "Just enough to get you lucid, kiddo. You aren't going postal on me the way you did Famine's people." She grips his jaw with her hand, forces his face up to look at her. "Now. Is Michael really damaged?"

Sam studies her for a second, and her shoulders are rigid with tension under her sleek leather jacket, and her face is tight with anxiety under its perfect cosmetic mask. Her eyes are stark with worry as she blinks artfully curled lashes, and in the corners of his eyes he can see expertly manicured glitter-pink fingernails. Demon living the dream, he thinks suddenly. Like Ruby did. Terrified demon living a dream that's about to turn into a nightmare. And he remembers Carthage, remembers what Castiel said afterwards, about Lucifer's hordes not realizing their master would throw them into the flames first. "You know Crowley," he lisps out dryly, past his broken teeth and raw lips.

Her eyes narrow, and she cocks her head. "And?" she says skeptically.

He stares her out even though he wants to let his eyes drift closed so he can sleep forever. "I know what Castiel told you in Carthage," he whispers. "I know you know Crowley. Crowley doesn't want Armageddon…"

He lets it hang there for a moment, makes his play. "Neither do you. You like the world, Meg." He curls his lips up in a painful, false smile, slurs it out. "So. Let's make a deal."

He can feel the metal clutched in his fist before he even comes round properly, feels it hum slightly, like it's charged with electricity. It's hot too, and he thinks that when he unfolds his fingers he might see its shape branded into his palm like a stigmata. Its heat radiates outwards, in through his chest, where his hand lies, and the warmth curls and settles and burns in his belly, until it overflows and seeps tributaries that trickle and itch down his limbs, power, sharp and precise, resonating through his whole body.

He stretches luxuriantly. He doesn't hurt anymore. He cracks an eye, glances around him, unfamiliar surroundings, motel? He looks to his left, and Bobby is sitting there gazing at nothing in particular, eyes locked front and center, on guard, a bottle of Jack propped on his gut. He's miles away, doesn't notice as Dean pushes up onto his elbows and gives his voice a try.

"Bobby."

The old man doesn't jump, just turns his head around slow, as if it hurts him to move it, and he stares with dark, vacant, red-rimmed eyes, until his brow creases in confusion and wonder. "Gabriel said you were dying," he says. He raises a hand, scrubs at his beard. "And that the world would end soon."

"Don't believe everything you hear," Dean replies. "Especially when it's Gabriel telling you. Where are we?"

"Motel," Bobby says. "Castiel didn't want to stay at the lot in case your brother showed up. He wanted you to die in peace."

"I'm not dying," Dean says softly.

Bobby doesn't seem to hear him, and his gaze drifts back to focus on the middle distance. "It's started already," he says, and his voice is whiskey-harsh. "Massive quake in San Francisco. Smack bang in the middle of the morning rush hour, the Golden Gate and Bay bridges collapsed. It's chaos. And a hurricane, Florida… they're estimating category eight, if Saffir-Simpson even went that high. Thousands of people are dead… the Keys and Miami are submerged."

Storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, destruction, death, and Dean can hear the Horseman's doleful voice reverberating inside his head. "We aren't walking into the flames," he says. "Look at me, Bobby. I promise you. We aren't going to burn."

The old man swivels his face to stare at him again, his eyes at once shocked, overwhelmed. "I'm sitting here in a fuckin' Super Eight, watching you die," Bobby whispers. "And the end of the world is happening, far away. And soon it'll get here. And it doesn't mean anything anymore. I ain't even really thinking about it, to be honest. I'm just waiting for it to get here."

Dean hauls himself upright, presses his socked feet to the floor. "I'm not dying, Bobby," he reiterates. "And the end of the world isn't coming here, not if I can help it."

"There's reports coming out of New York and Boston," Bobby replies lethargically. "People getting sick. The CDC hasn't a clue what it is. The news is saying it's like swine flu but worse. Crowley was here. He said it was Croatoan. They must have shipped a few batches out before we burned Nivaeus."

It's like a kick in the teeth that slams him forward in time to 2014, but Dean takes a deep breath in, and sighs it out slow and calm. He holds out his hand, and it shimmers there, the ring. "I said we aren't walking into the flames. The end of the world isn't coming here."

Bobby squints at it, looks up at him, realization dawning, brows tented. "I don't get it. I thought you said Sam had the ring."

Dean smiles, makes his eyes flash bright and hopeful for the old man. "Not the same ring. I had a rendezvous with Death. It seems the grim reaper can dreamwalk too. And he isn't too happy with my brother." He pauses, considers. "Lucifer, I mean. Anyhoo. We had a pow-wow. Came to an agreement, you might say."

A flicker of alarm ripples across Bobby's features. "Did you deal? Did you deal with Death?" There's a sharp note in Bobby's voice now, and his stare is penetrating. "Did you make another deal?"

Dean doesn't blink either. "Look into my eyes, Bobby, and know that I would operate on my own brain stem with a Black and Decker drill before I ever deal again, no matter what's at stake."

Bobby looks away, shakes his head, unscrews the cap of the whiskey bottle with awkward fingers. "It doesn't matter anyway," he mutters, and he takes a swig of the liquor, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Even if Sam shows up here in the next ten minutes with nothing more than a fuckin' headache, we don't have the other two rings. They're in my safe back at the lot."

And that's typical, Dean thinks, and he leans into his hand, hears himself make a low, irritated growl. "Of course they are. Goddammit, Bobby."

"Well, what was the fuckin' point?" Bobby snaps then. "You were in no shape to use the damn things. And did you suddenly forget Sam says yes in Detroit? Did you suddenly forget what you really saw in your little trip to the future? What you left out of the Cliffs Notes version?" He knocks back another draught of the liquor, and it dribbles out the side of his mouth and trickles down into his beard. "Lucifer has his true vessel," he continues heatedly. "And you said it'd be way harder to do this ring thing if he's wearing Sam. Assuming he handed us the other ring. Which I doubt he will." He fixes Dean with blurry, critical eyes, and his voice goes hoarse. "Why the fuck didn't you tell us about Detroit, what happened there? Was it a Michael thing? Was it Michael following his orders and making sure Sam would be right there where he was supposed to be?"

Dean swallows back his own distress at hearing his nightmare spoken out loud, feels his eyes spark with something hard and dangerous. "No. It was not a Michael thing," he snaps. He rides the angry silence for a moment, until his heart slows and his irritation troughs, knows how it must be tearing at the old man inside, because it's tearing at him too. "I tried to, I don't know – give him a hint," he says then. It's stilted, unconvincing, he knows. "When you had me on lockdown before Van Nuys. I told him I thought they'd get to him somehow."

Bobby stares back at him with a sort of exhausted sorrow for a second or two, before his eyes fall away. "You should have told us," he says dully. "I would have locked your brother in the damn panic room, stopped him from going, no matter if he wanted to ride to the fuckin' rescue."

Dean scrubs at the back of his head, wonders if he can even put it into words, the need to shield his brother from what he saw in that future, protect him from the knowledge that he followed through on what he set in motion when he broke the last seal, his own need to believe that he could keep Sam human, to prop up what little faith he had left in his brother by shoring up Sam's faith in himself. "How could I do that, Bobby?" he says, softer now. "How could I tell him that it happens, kill his hope like that? I needed him to come up fighting, I needed him thinking there was no fuckin' way. Team Free Will, remember? Knowing he said yes is hardly an incentive to say no… what the fuck would be the point of holding out as long as he could if he knew he'd give in eventually?"

Bobby sets his jaw. "So you do think he's said yes by now," he replies, and his voice cracks.

Dean thinks back to what the Horseman said, it's too late for Sam Winchester, and he sighs out through gritted teeth, feels tension spike behind his eyes, and even if he wants to hope he knows his own tone is verging on apathy when he replies. "I don't know. He might still be holding out." He grabs hold of the thought for a moment, clings on tight to it. "And if he is, I want him knowing that I'm looking for him, Bobby. Not thinking that I've given up already because I know he says yes in Detroit. So we need to start looking for signs, omens, figure out where he might be. So we can get him back if he's okay."

"Or deal with Lucifer as necessary," Bobby says morosely.

Dean doesn't break eye contact. "Or deal with Lucifer as necessary," he confirms. He leans down for a boot, starts pushing his foot in, glances up and around the room. "Where is Gabriel, anyway?"

Bobby snorts. "Bailed. Castiel tore him a new one when he couldn't fix you, and then he said he wasn't hanging around to be turned into Satan's splatter pattern."

"And Castiel?" Dean glances over his shoulder at the other bed, still neatly made, Bobby's duffel parked there. "Is he in another room? He should be in this one with us, in case he has a flashback…" He trails off into silence at the old man's shifty gaze as Bobby slants his eyes down and gazes studiously at the floor.

"Bobby?"

"He was already pretty broken up about you," the old man mutters. "Seemed like Crowley's news about the virus was the last straw."

"And?"

Bobby's eyes wander over to the nightstand, to an empty quart bottle parked there. "As soon as we got you moved, he got into the booze," he says. "Steamed off out of here a couple of hours ago with Crowley. Bar crawl, Crowley said." He stops, waits, flicks his gaze up, watches Dean for a long moment. "You… uh… seem to be taking it calmer than I thought you would."

Dean glares balefully back. "That's because I'm saying my mantra, Bobby," he replies frostily. "Underneath my poised exterior, I'm making a gargantuan fuckin' effort to stay calm. As opposed to shooting lightning bolts at you from my eyes as I smite you with extreme prejudice."

Bobby shuffles his boots on the floor. "And how's that workin' for you?" The old man's voice is dubious now. "That mantra?"

"Barely," Dean seethes. "I don't have time for this, and I can damn well do without his hangover." He flits his eyes pointedly to the other whiskey bottle, where it rests on Bobby's thigh. "Is this, like, a pattern with you?" he scrapes out roughly. "You left me in Cold Oak, you let Sam walk out of here into Ruby's arms, and you let Cas go off God knows where with a demon? Crowley could do anything to him. Dammit, Bobby. Goddammit." He buries his face in his hands for a moment as he breathes out his anxiety, and when he glances up, Bobby's face is crestfallen. "That was unfair," he concedes tensely. "A lot's been going on."

The old man shrugs. "No. It wasn't, not really. You're right. I knew he was messed up. I shouldn't have let him go. I wasn't thinking."

Dean pauses a beat, searches for words, concludes that the truth is the only explanation that will work. "In my little trip to the future, Castiel was a junkie," he announces bleakly, nods in confirmation as Bobby's eyes widen. "Drunk most of the time, stoned the rest. Grieving what he lost."

He stops, exhales sharply, shakes his head as he kneads at his jaw. "I don't want that for him, Bobby," he continues then. "And if Sam is gone and anything happens to me, well – you're all he'll have, because he isn't Jimmy and he can't go back to Jimmy's life." He fixes his gaze on the old man's eyes. "Listen to me," he breathes. "He pulled me out of there. You know what I did down there, what I became. He saved me from that, and you damn well know what that means to me, what he means to me. I'm here because of him, and he's like this because of me. Now, I know you have your issues with him. But you need to see past that because I need to know you'll look out for him after this is over, not let him walk out of here and get himself in trouble or hurt because he's alone and you're busy drowning your own sorrows."

The old man stares back. "You sound like you don't expect to be here at the end of all this," he says carefully.

Dean ignores him, leans down again, retrieves his other boot from under the bed, pulls it on. "No more liquor for him, Bobby," he says finally, somberly. "I don't care if you have to lock him in the panic room and slide his food under the door for the rest of his natural life. No liquor. And you'll need to hide the meds too."

"I'll look out for him, Dean," Bobby says quietly. "I promise."

Dean nods slowly. "Okay." He pushes up to stand. "You'll get the rings?"

The old man nods. "I'll get the rings."

"The colt too. We might need it." Dean worries his bottom lip with his teeth as he thinks for a minute. "Crowley might come in useful," he muses. "Maybe he can brace some of his demon pals, find out where Sam might be."

"Assuming he's still Sam," Bobby murmurs.

Dean sighs. "Assuming he's still Sam."

Demon chicks seem to habitually drive tiny cars, Sam thinks dazedly, from his folded up spot on the back seat, and it's oddly familiar to be staring at the top of a head of dark hair as they rocket down route ninety so fast he thinks she might be about to make the jump into light speed. It makes him think of his first efforts at smoking out demons with Ruby, how he couldn't quite get it up for the first few weeks and he'd wake up in exactly this position after some black-eyed bastard knocked the shit out of him before his evil hand could do its work.

He still feels tight and agonized in his chest, and his body is numb below the waist because Lucifer hurled him into the door, and the handle smashed into the small of his back as he bounced off it. His hands are resting on his belly and it feels rock hard there. Ruptured spleen, he guesses, because he's seen enough episodes of ER to diagnose that one without a medical degree. His ears still throb and his vision is still hazy. He wants to hear his brother's voice, feel his competent, practiced hands easing his hurts, and he groans out his discomfort.

Meg casts a quick look behind her. "There's a bottle of water beside you," she offers neutrally. "I loosened the cap."

He flails about for it, levers off the cap, and he can't move his head from where it's wedged into the corner, so he has to lift the bottle and drip the liquid down into his mouth. The cold water shocks his smashed teeth, sends pain screeching up through the exposed nerves, and he winces. He can sense the car weaving precariously on the road, and the movement sends water splashing up into his eyes, and they flare painfully. He screws his eyes closed, can vaguely overhear her speaking low into her cellphone.

"Pick up Crowley, you bastard," she mutters. "Only five hundred miles to go, Sammy," she throws back then.

"D'you call Dean?" he croaks back at her.

"It went to his voicemail," she raps out tersely. "Don't you fucking die on me, Sam."

And Sam is torn between thinking that isn't such a good idea and thinking it might be the smartest thing he ever did, and his vision is tunneling, and he sinks into peaceful blackness.

"Pick up, you fuckin' assbutt," Dean mutters into the cool night breeze, Bobby's cellphone clamped to his ear. And abruptly there's a cacophony of noise blaring though the receiver, and a voice slurring somewhere in there.

"Castiel, where the fuck are you?" he barks savagely, and he scowls at the graveled out nonsense that feeds back to him. "On a bar crawl with Crowley, yeah, Bobby said. But where? Jesus fuckin' Christ. Put him on. I don't give a shit, put him on. Now."

Mike. You're up. How are the wings?

"Crowley, I don't have time for this. He's hammered. What the fuck is that about?"

He was arseing around the motel room and going apeshit every time the old geezer went anywhere near you. He needed loosening up.

Dean battens down his irritation, barely. "The end of the world is nigh, and you're saying he needs loosening up?"

We're getting tanked precisely because the end of the world is nigh. And you'd be proud of him. He's got hollow legs, and he's fleecing them at the pool tables.

Dean goggles despite himself. "He is?"

Yeah, he's a natural. And the local mingers are begging for him, I reckon he might even score. Hang on a minute… Cas! Cas! Ask if they've got crisps…

Dean claws at the air with his free hand. "Where the fuck are you, Crowley?"

No idea, mate. Shall I ask the barkeep?

"Please do," he scathes out.

Just a sec… Oy, John-barkeep, where are we? Where? Mike, you there? We're in some armpit called Merle's Pour House. Uncommon fun served up with a slice of paradise. So the sign over the bar says. It's off west forty-ninth. Hang on a sec… what, mate? Cheers. Mike, you there still? It's behind the Tastee-Deelite Drive-Thru.

"I'm there," he snarls. "And if you've laid one cloven fuckin' hoof on him, I will cut your dick off with a plastic spoon and feed it to you whole. And I've had practice, believe me."

Is that a threat or a promise?

"I don't need this right now, Crowley, so don't even fuckin' go there with me. If you've done anything—"

Does that include the laying on of hands?

"Die."

He clicks the phone closed, walks over to the truck where Bobby is waiting. "Stay frosty, huh?" he warns, as he hands the phone back to the old man.

And in the whisper of a breeze he's right where he needs to be, pushing through the doorway past a couple of lurching twenty-somethings who reel towards him with puckered, lipstick-claggy mouths as he zips adroitly out of reach and winds his way into the smoky nether reaches of the bar. And he can hear it as he walks, the tribal hoot background track to a drunken smackdown and he doesn't even have to wonder who's getting schooled because it's just how their luck is going these days. He senses, rather than sees, a short, stocky body being propelled through the air about five feet from the ground, leans gracefully to the side along with the rest of the crowd as it streaks by and crashes into a table.

Crowley picks himself up, nods as he uses his thumb to wipe blood from his nose, takes off his coat and lays it carefully over the back of a chair. "You should know this isn't my fault, Mike," he offers diplomatically, as he starts rolling up his sleeves, and then he furrows his brow. "I mean, technically you might think it is, being as it was my idea to take him clubbing but this…" He pauses, waves a hand. "Right here and now, this particular scenario, isn't my fault." He grimaces. "He's a mouthy little terrier, your boyfriend, like one of those snappy little rat dogs that grabs you by the ankle, and you have to give it a good hard kicking to—"

"I need some intel on where my brother might be, and you're tagged," Dean cuts in tersely. "Get on it right the fuck now."

Crowley's indignant chatter fades into the background as he strides in the direction the demon emerged from. He finds himself on the edge of a cleared space around the pool tables, takes it all in and folds his arms as goes through the drill, scoping the joint, scanning for the nearest exit, a spot in the crowd that isn't so thickly populated, the escape route, projectiles, possible weapons, big rough-looking guys in the crowd who can be counted on to join in and dogpile him when the shit hits the fan.

Then he turns his gaze back to the center of the space. The guy he's looking at is built like something from the Eastern European fuck-you school of architecture. He has mean, beady eyes, a pleased smile on his doughy face, and a raised fist as he poses for the hushed crowd, and they're straining forwards in anticipation, camera phones held on high and clicking away faintly. Architecture guy's other hand is around Castiel's throat, and Castiel is flopping half on and half off the pool table, gazing up like he's hypnotized, one of his eyes puffed closed and his nose bleeding.

Dean rolls his eyes, nudges the guy next to him, leans into his space slightly. "What did he do?" he murmurs softly. "The little guy, I mean."

The stranger makes a face. "Nothin', really. Him and his buddy were just having a good time, gettin' drunk, singin' hymns, playin' pool."

Dean furrows his brow. "Singing hymns?"

"Yeah. Michael Row the Boat Ashore. On a loop. He gave Vern some lip when Vern asked him to can it. Used all sorts of big, fancy words. Vern got pissy about it, and the little guy twitched him."

Jesus, Dean thinks, it can and does get worse. "Excuse me? Twitched him?"

"Yeah, you know. Like you do with a horse."

"With a horse?" And man, he doesn't even want to know.

"Yeah, and then Vern just blew up." The man snorts. "Vern's got a fuckin' temper on him, that's for sure."

Dean looks from Castiel up to Vern's face, and the big man has this expression in his eyes, a sort of dumb, enthusiastic bloodlust mixed with the satisfaction of beating someone considerably smaller into a pulp. And Dean hasn't looked really carefully at the people since Van Nuys, fuck it, he hasn't even really seen any people but his brothers and Bobby, but in just that split second he can see right into this bastard's heart, can see everything he's done in his forty-four years of life, and he's scum.

He skates his eyes across the crowd again, and that guy there is screwing his teenage daughter most nights, and that middle-aged woman over there smothered her mom with a pillow when the old lady caught her sneaking into her life savings. There's a nice looking youngster with a protective arm around his sweetie-pie, who's hiding bruises and cigarette burns under her sweater, and the pretty girl who's helping tend bar is dealing crystal meth to schoolkids. And it suddenly hits him that some of these sonsofbitches don't deserve to be saved, that maybe they're causes of sin, and evildoers, and that he should just throw them into the furnace of fire, to weep and gnash their teeth, like Death suggested. And fuck it, he doesn't have time for this fight but he wants it, wants to do some damage, hurt one of these vermin who aren't chosen, the wicked, the ones who were slated to take the express elevator ride down to the basement on judgment day.

He clears his throat loudly, and his voice grates out into the quiet. "Friend. That's my brother you have spread out on that pool table."

The man's fist has started its journey down but it screeches to a halt, mid-air, and he flicks an insolent eye over, looks Dean up and down. "And what are you gonna do about it, pretty boy?" he snarls.

Dean tents his eyebrows. "Extreme violence springs to mind," he replies mildly.

Vern smiles widely, hoiks a spitball down at his victim, wipes the back of his hand across his nose. He removes the hand he's using to pin Castiel to the green baize, and the smaller man slides gracelessly down to the floor and slumps against the leg of the pool table.

Castiel regards Dean carefully through his one good eye, and for a second it's that melancholy, dreamy look he gets every now and then, when he stares at Dean like he firmly believes Dean hung the moon. And then an inebriated smile of joy brightens his features, until he cocks his head, gulps, and vomits prodigiously over architecture guy's boots.

The atmosphere suddenly goes thin and oxygen-starved, as every patron clustered around the tableau breathes in sharply, and Vern looks down as Castiel looks up.

"Oops," Castiel says dryly.

And there it is, the adrenaline surge that telegraphs the imminent explosion, as the big man barks out a stream of expletives, furrows his brow so hard it corrugates, and goes puce with rage while he reaches down and picks Castiel up by the neck, shaking him like he's a rag doll.

Dean is right there, has the bastard's wrist in an iron grip. "Put my brother down," he suggests politely, and just in case Vern doesn't compute that it's an order, he squeezes. He can feel bones grind in the man's arm, and Vern yelps, drops Castiel, and comes back swinging.

His fist slams into Dean's jaw, and there's a split second when his eyes widen in awe before the pain hits and he shrieks, clutching his hand. And Dean stares up at him and mentally runs through the soft spots he has to choose from, face, kidneys, jewels, windpipe, because he's totally going for asocial violence here, wants to hurt this fuckin' idiot even if he does know how damned annoying Castiel can be, how he buzzes around like a skeeter that damn well needs swatting at times, and the little nerd probably had it coming. Him and his big fuckin' words.

Jewels it is, he thinks, and he steps back and buries his boot in the other man's crotch like he's kicking a field goal. Vern hollers out a strangled wail, doubles over, and Dean grasps a generous handful of his mullet, hauls him up and deals him a swift uppercut to the jaw, angling his body slightly so his full weight is behind his fist as it thrusts up from low down by his belly, hammering his knuckles into the bone, economical, efficient, smooth. The old-fashioned way.

Vern reels on his feet and stares at him for a long moment, before his eyes spin backwards in their sockets and he crashes to earth like a felled oak tree. Dean fancies the place shakes with the impact, and he studies the guy for a moment, doing the star position there on the floor. Then he becomes aware of the crowd murmuring behind him. He glances back over his shoulder, and they're closing in, big guys built like Iowa barns, with low-slung gussets and their foreheads pulled low over their eyes.

He smiles. "Problem?"

And they pile in, and in the split second before the mob hits him he catches a glimpse of Crowley, off to the side and laughing wildly as he shadow boxes energetically along to the action.

When the first blow ricochets harmlessly off his jaw Dean thinks, you poor bastards, and then he floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

Bobby pockets the rings, tosses the colt in onto the front seat of his truck, feeds his dog, and spends five minutes in the kitchen rustling up a bologna and cheese sandwich before heading out. He's shuffling down towards the back door, swallowing down a mouthful, when he hears a noise. He swings around, sees the figure standing at the top end of the hallway, and he feels a thrill of hope. He squints.

"Sam?"

The man steps out of the shadows, smiles. "No, Bobby," he says simply. "Not Sam."

And Bobby smiles, starts walking forward. "Adam. Jesus. We thought you'd—"

Adam raises a finger, brings Bobby to a halt with the gesture, shakes his head.

"Sorry, Bobby," he says sympathetically. "Not Adam either."

TBC

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