Stab my heart like a stick in the mud
Cut my chest just to see the blood
Now I'm singing out the alphabet
As the tears are putting out my cigarette
We'll hit the cemetary so we can see the holiday lights
Waking up the dead and everything'll be alright
"Angel Blue" Green Day
Meg watched Lucifer pace the cramped office with the sense of something dangerous to come. He hadn't spoken much since the trench-coat guy and the Winchester slime left, but she could nearly smell the tension, hear it when he breathed,
"Sir–" she began nervously. It was time for the daily report.
"They say that every time a person dies, their entire life in judged in an instant." Lucifer paused, and folded his arms across his chest. "Imagine that, Meg darling. Imagine every moment, every wayward decision measured precisely in the smallest possible amount of time."
Meg swallowed nervously. She knew what happened when Lucifer got philosophical, and she'd heard the screams to prove it.
"Yeah, okay. Kinda weird, I guess...?" she intones. But Lucifer ignores her, face slack with a gentle smile.
"It's the most unfair of all cosmic theories, Meggy," he continued. "All that life, all that living, all that sin? Poured out and sculpted into a tiny frame of a person in one second. Bam!" He clapped his hands suddenly, and Meg jumped despite herself. "Where do all the in-betweeners go? Where? Purgatory? Or is it Heaven? Maybe Hell is just for bad, bad folks, or maybe it just holds everyone but the saints."
"Sir, I don't really see where this is–"
"And what of me, Meg? What of me? I have sinned." Lucifer looked thoughtful again. He rocked back on his heels, rubbing his palms together, cold eyes glinting with sudden tears. "I have sinned, but I have done great things, too. And what did I get in return?"
Meg sees a warehouse full of dead bodies, posters with phone numbers, a siren in the dead of night.
Lucifer sees nothing.
"I got the ungrateful scorn of my family and the sadistic oppression of Heaven."
"That's messed up, sir. You must be pissed." She wasn't great at the touchy-feely. Luckily, Lucifer seemed not to notice.
"They want a Devil, do they?" He breathed, a light chuckle that scared the shit out of Meg ghosting across his lips. "I'll give them a Devil."
He broke away from his pace to smile at Meg, his hand reaching up to stroke her cheek.
"Meg. Call Alistair. I want my brother brought home again."
...
Sam pushed his back into the wall of the motel bathroom, his eyelids already drooping. The plaster was cool and cracked under the pads of his fingertips, and the roaring headache he'd acquired was momentarily lost in the sensation of skin against chipping paint.
There was a knock on the door.
He jerked his eyes open just in time to see Cass, a toothbrush clasped in his hand and an expression of confusion plastered on his face.
"I'm sorry, Sam Winchester," he said in a dull monotone, raising an eyebrow. "I did not realize this room was occupied."
"Ah, no, it's...it's fine, Casteel." Sam forced a smile. "I'm just thinking, you can brush your teeth."
Cass quirked his head to the side, and Sam thought for a moment he looked like a rather large, feather-less bird.
"It's Castiel," he replied. "Why are 'just thinking' whilst in the bathroom?" he shuffled over to the sink, still giving Sam a curious, blue-eyed stare. Sam smirked. This guy was odd, very odd. It was...refreshing.
"'Cause Dean is watching Dr. Sexy out there and every time that show comes on a kitten dies." He jerked a thumb towards the half-open door.
Cass' eyes widened, and he held the tube of crusted Crest mid-squirt, looking terrified.
"Not for real. It was a joke, man." Sam explained hastily.
"Ah. I see. Haha." Castiel (not a girl's name, Sam told himself, not a girl's name) continued brushing. He didn't sound all too amused. Sam leaned away from the wall, making to head out to the living room again. But Cass turned, mouth full of foam, and cleared his throat.
"I am sorry, Sam Winchester," he said.
Sam frowned. Dean said Castiel didn't know anything.
"For what, man?"
Cass canted his head again, and this time it was an elegant movement, a sign of contemplation.
"For everything. You have a sad soul."
And he turned around and continued brushing his teeth, humming what appeared to be a hymn under his breath.
...
Dean didn't look up as his brother sat down on the opposite bed with a deflated sigh. He kept watching the TV, getting lost in the colored pixels. God, he needed it.
"Is Cass normal?" Sam asked after a minute or two. Dean grunted.
"Oh, yeah, real Average Joe there," he said sarcastically, taking a hearty swig of Sierra Nevada. "Sammy, he doesn't even know what porn is."
Sam collapsed on the bed. The dust and cigarette ash from years of use shifted in the thick air, and he sighed. Closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath.
Dean shot him a glance.
He didn't have to ask his little brother what he was seeing. He could see written there, on a face far too young to hold it. Any moment now Sam could break like glass, and he would have to pick up the pieces without cutting himself.
"It's gonna be okay, Sam." He said quietly, fiddling with his beer. He focused on the screen again. He wanted to be lost again, lost in a different world. "I'll make sure of that."
...
Five o' clock. The sun was sour and weak, like a bad whiskey, and the air smelled of ice and sweat in the motel parking lot.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks since Dean, caught in the rain, had met a stranger outside a seedy dive just like this.
He crossed the pavement, scraping sleep from his aching eyes with balled fists. A coffee was clutched in his hand, black, and it smelled vaguely of plastic.
"Jesus Christ," Dean mumbles as he fumbles for his car keys outside the motel room. Castiel is leaning against the railing there, red-brown dust gathering in the creases of his returned trench-coat. He looks peaceful there, Dean decides. His black hair is shifting slightly in the wind, his pale eyes nearly closed as he listens to the early-morning birds. dean could have sworn the corners of his mouth lifted in a smile, but he couldn't be sure, not now.
"No. I am Castiel."
"Pardon?"
"I am not Jesus Christ."
Dean laughed, and Cass tilted his head in that infuriating bird twist. He bit his lip.
"I do not see what is funny." He didn't move his gaze, his eyes following a greasy pigeon as it hopped over a flattened can of Coke. Dean smiled again.
"You're so fucking funny, dude," he sighed, taking a quick chug of coffee with a grimace. "Sometimes..." he paused to giggle again. "Anyway, me an' Sammy are gonna head up east to nab a shifter. You comin'?"
When Castiel finally turned, Dean was shocked to see the sudden look of happiness on his face. It wasn't much–a raise of an eyebrow, the ever-so-slight squinting of an eye–but God did it make Dean feel good.
"Yes, Dean. I think I am."
...
Sam locked the motel door. He gave himself a once-over: jacket, extra keys to the Impala, a locket given to him by Jess. He was ready to leave, already dead tired of Lawrence. He was born there, he knew, but he remembered nothing of the place save awkward, fragmented memories that came in headache form, shifting and churning.
Dean and Castiel were already in the Impala–Sam could make out Dean yelling something over his shoulder at Cass, the opening notes of an Iron Maiden song ripping muffled across the parking lot. He smirked.
"Dean made a friend," he thought to himself.
Yeah. Friend.
Nothing more.
Sam allowed himself another crooked smile, pushing back a bit of hair from his face and setting out across the parking lot. It was completely empty, save for a single man sitting on the curb.
As he passed, Sam glanced down at the figure, alone on the sidewalk. The man was tall and thin, a pock-marked face and crooked teeth bunched inward as if he had swallowed chemicals. Still, the man wore a smile that sent a snake of shivers up Sam's spine.
The figure fiddled with a pocketknife. It was dark with something.
The snip snip of the blade against his jagged nails was hauntingly loud in the empty parking lot.
"Heaven, I'm in Heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak." He was singing softly, the barest edges of a lisp slurring the words. Sam didn't recognize the song.
"And I seem to find the happiness I see. When we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek."
He tipped his head as Sam went by.
"Howdy," he called out. "Beautiful morning, ain't it?"
Sam hurried into the Impala, and when he was safely settled shotgun beside Dean, he noticed he's been clutching the keys to his palm, the indents leaving red welts in his skin. As the car pulled out, the sound of quiet singing could be heard over the sound of the morning birds.
"Dance with me, I want my arm about you. The charm about you will carry me thro' to Heaven."
...