- cheating your vow -

"Dean. Hey, Dean. Are you in there? I lost my key."

Sam. Of course it was Sam. Who else would be knocking on their motel room at two in the morning? Dean wanted to snarl something at the door, annoyed that the noise had scared Cas away, but he was too resigned. More fuckin' mysteries, he mused.

Sam drummed his fingers on the door, reminding Dean that he had yet to let him in. "Yeah, I'm comin'," Dean griped, standing up and walking to the door. When the last lock clicked out of place, he was greeted by the smiling face of his brother and a rush of cold air. "What are you so happy about?" Dean grumbled, although the spite in his voice was mostly manufactured.

"Just happy to see my brother…?" Sam smiled. He brushed past Dean and went straight for the bed, where he pulled off his shoes, jacket, and belt, dumping them on the ground next to him.

"Yeah, right," Dean scoffed. "Where were you anyway?"

"Library." Obviously. "I dug up some research on demon deals."

"So what did you come up with?"

Sam pulled a contrite face. "Well, basically nothing."

"Basically?" After being the proverbial family man for a year, picking up on indecisive language was almost second nature.

Sam pulled a notebook out of his jacket and Dean quickly sat down on the bed next to him. "There is a local myth that sounded a little bit like what we're dealing with here," Sam started, flicking through the pages. "See, a while ago, there were some demons who didn't make deals. They stole souls instead. And there was this one demon named Arial who one night couldn't find any souls to steal, so when he returned to Hell, because he couldn't perform-"

"Oh, buddy," Dean interrupted, chuckling sympathetically.

"-he was cast back out as a mortal." Sam pulled a face. "Really, Dean?"

Dean shrugged. His brother shook his head slightly before continuing. "Anyway… he was 'reincarnated' here as a she; apparently a very attractive she."

"Oh, buddy," Dean chuckled again, this time smirking.

"Dean."

"Not sorry."

"… Sure. Anyway, um, after a few years of being a mortal, her memories of being a demon started to come back to her. And I guess she didn't want to go back to Hell, because she was aging and she knew she would die, so she tried to strike a deal with a crossroads demon. But none of the demons would come when she summoned them, so to get their attention, she started, well, taking their stuff. The souls." Dean frowned.

"I don't suppose it says how she did that?" Dean asked, already knowing the answer. Sam shook his head apologetically. "Figures. Go on."

"Well, as it turns out, that did get their attention. The next part is a little vague, and my Latin is a little rusty, so I'm not sure how accurate this is," Sam said dismissively. Dean grimaced, but Sam either didn't notice or didn't pay it any attention. "… but it looks like she brought the demons to Cerebral and felt sorry for bringing death upon the townspeople, so she played the hero and died so that they could live. Or something," he shrugged, and then tapped the page smartly to indicate that he was about to say something important. "But I looked into this 'Arial', and get this: Arial is also the name of a possible biblical angel."

That caught Dean's attention. He sat a little straighter. An angel. Could it be a coincidence? Maybe this 'Arial' did have something to do with Crowley's problem- not to mention Cas' surprise appearance only a few minutes earlier. After all, Cas had sounded worried, and if anything made Cas worry, it was his fellow angels.

He wanted to pray to Cas, or to tell Sam that Cas had been here, but something made him keep his mouth shut. Telling Sam just felt wrong. He didn't want to dig too deep into why. Still, he had to ask Sam one thing. "Anything about a rock in this Arial story?"

Sam's eyebrows knitted. "A rock? No, nothing. Why?"

Dean shrugged. "Just a hunch."

Castiel, invisible in the corner, watched as Dean retired to the shower and Sam popped open a beer in the kitchen. He wanted desperately to tell Dean that 'just a hunch' was about to become so much more, but he had made a deal, and he was going to honor it. Even if it meant endangering the lives of the souls he loved.

Guess who's baaaaaaaaaack. Did you guess? It was me. Aren't you excited? No? Okay. /crawls back to tumblr with a jar of cookie dough

(On another note, the myth described here isn't a real myth apparently, but I do remember reading it somewhere, so if anyone's heard of it before, notify me and I'll cite the source. Kthxbye.)