Guess I saw it coming right from the start
I can't bring myself to break your heart
When I do it's gonna tear me apart
I know I can't keep running
I know you've taken enough
I know I can't keep running
And I know you don't want someone
Running in and out of your life

- "Can't Keep Running," Gregg Allman

There is a smear of blood across Jimmy Novak's picture, Castiel's thumb absently running over the broken glass of the silver frame clenched in his hand and leaving small cuts behind each motion. He hasn't noticed it yet. As level-headed as Castiel seems for the most part, right now there is a sense of very deliberate control, barely controlled fury written in every line of his frame even if it doesn't bleed through into his voice or responses to the police officer standing in the middle of his living room taking the report.

The entire apartment looks as if a localized tornado tore through the small space, upended furniture and ripped everything out of its rightful place. A crack runs through the television, a blade had been taken to the couch they'd curled up on the morning before leaving this space, and everything has found its way into piles on the floor, making it nearly impossible to determine what is missing.

The neighbor's statement is useless. He focuses on the fact that since Dean moved in with Castiel he's learned to 'ignore the racket,' and he sneers as he says it. He just assumed Castiel and Dean were having more loud, acrobatic, furniture moving sex. Castiel's expression is stony, jaw tensed and muscles corded in his neck, but when he turns to his neighbor and levels a stare at him, the guy takes two steps back and shuts up speculating about his neighbor's sex life to the cops. It's easy to forget that Castiel can be scary until you're the one having to meet his unblinking stare. Of course, the neighbor then manages to screw them over more: after all, he didn't know to suspect anything, he claims, when people have been going into and out of Castiel's apartment all the time since Dean came. There's a measure of truth to that, Lucifer's unsanctioned entrance, Jo letting herself in with the key once and breaking in the second time, Dean banging on the doors and peeking in windows . . .

The apartment manager has insurance come out to take pictures and tabulate the damage to the leased furniture, and she loudly announces damage to their property while essentially wading carelessly through the broken glass and torn pages of everything Castiel owns. The first time Castiel visibly flinches when someone kicks aside the crayon-colored papers on the floor of his bedroom, Dean makes himself useful and gathers them up, weaving through apartment workers and the cop with Cas to rest them on the kitchen counter instead.

He feels like shit. He feels guilty as hell. And standing here watching Castiel take it on the chin again is making it worse every passing second.

It becomes quickly clear that Castiel is now entirely homeless, his 'activities' including the assault charges and Dean's inclusion in his life, everything coming down the pipeline to bring trouble into this apartment complex, are entirely unwelcome. Lifestyle choices. The phrase is flung around regularly, like Cas is a frikkin' drug dealer bringing a 'bad element' into their bullshit little utopia. The truth is, though, they mean Dean. Cas could have gone on living here like this forever until Dean pulled him neck deep into his shit.

Every new development winds the tension tighter, but when Dean touches a hand to his elbow and prepares to say something Cas shakes his head tersely, brushing off comfort before Dean can start. He needs to be angry right now to get through this.

Dean gets that. Hell, he's pretty pissed off himself. More than that, though, he's standing in the ruins of Castiel's quiet, normal life and feeling pretty damned responsible for it. Cas has been flying under the radar for a long time, since he got out of the army and out of the clergy, and now he's in the middle of a whole new frying pan. The officer is telling Cas that this looks personal, like a grudge, and whether or not it was personal or related to the case, it's personal now. That shattered picture frames, the torn books and upended dresser drawers, they make it personal.

The police officer leaves them a report number, and it's only when he's going to leave that Dean recognizes the guy he dubbed "Officer Uncle" when they were arrested, working his normal beat and shift, the same one that put him in the right place and time to arrest the two of them days before. The cop tips his head slightly at Dean as the apartment manager descends upon Cas with eviction paperwork next, pulling him to the side and lowering his voice. "Keep an eye on him. It's not going to help your case any if he flies off the handle. Can't prove anything by it, but I'd bet that's part of the point. Things are getting pretty high profile by now; couple of the guys you roughed up, their families have been here forever. You two got someplace to stay?"

Dean frowns, leaning against the wall beside the gaping door. "My place, I guess."

The officer frowns and shakes his head slightly. "Winchesters' Auto, right, at the city limits?" At Dean's wary nod, the officer writes a note to himself. "I'm gonna get my buddy who's on that side of town to do a quick drive-by, make sure there are no obvious signs that they did this to the both of you."

"Place is a fortress, trust me. Have to be a pretty determined crook with power tools and a lot of time to burn." John Winchester, if nothing else, was damned good at building a defendable base. It wouldn't be . . . comfortable, however. Not merely in the furnishing, but in being back home again after all this time. The cop seems determined to check it out, though, clapping Dean on the shoulder and releasing him after a few quick questions back to Cas as the pinch-faced insurance guy and apartment manager leave.

This time when Dean approaches, Castiel looks to him with eyes dark as midnight and angry, but his voice is finally showing the strain of keeping his unbroken demeanor. "I'm to vacate the premises. They're sending the property security to keep an eye on us as I clear out. Regardless of the fact that 'property security' entirely failed to secure my property. I don't have anywhere. . ."

"You're moving in with me." Dean interrupts, firm and unyielding, irritated that it was even a question in Cas's head. There's a split second after that where his gut twists, where he's afraid that's the last damn thing Castiel wants after Dean tore his world apart like this, but he finds himself annoyed at the look of surprise and gratitude he gets instead. Of course Castiel's welcome to move in. The fact that Dean all but moved in with him the second they met made questions of where ludicrous. "C'mon, Cas. Let's get your stuff before the assholes come to stare at us more."

"Anything I leave they're going to sell to recoup the cost of the damages." Castiel sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes, and now that he doesn't have a hostile audience his shoulders are beginning to sloop again. His anger is still there, simmering, but undirected it's becoming grief instead. "I have renter's insurance, it should handle it overall, but. . . I don't have much that I need. Just a few things of sentimental value." Like the photograph, blood smeared across the glass, and when Castiel raises his hand and notices it he frowns and the reality of it all seems to hit him at once.

"Then lets get your stuff into the car, Cas. I can get the obvious stuff, you figure out what you can salvage?"

It's with a faint grimace, brow knitted and eyes flashing in pain and anger, that Castiel begins picking through the former contents of his bookshelf while Dean carries armloads of clothing from the bedroom floor down to the trunk of the Impala, dumping them there. It is sad how little of Cas is actually in this place: leased furniture and professional books and attire. If Dean took the time to fold the clothes, he's pretty sure he could have gotten Cas entirely packed up in a couple duffle bags.

It's with a sense of foreboding that he notices that the photograph, letters and paperwork he replaced in Castiel's closet don't seem to be among the mess. He picks up a few last drawings and letters from Claire Novak, but everything else is gone. He frowns at the twisted bedding on the floor, kicking it aside to check beneath it one last time before going out to find Castiel crouching among books and broken glass, holding the ripped remains of a Bible.

The leather is weather-beaten and stained by handling, but recognizable from the photograph Dean spied before they left the apartment. This Bible went through a war with Castiel, and its pages are now scattered across the apartment's carpet, deliberately ripped in half straight down the spine. Castiel's fingers rifle through the destroyed books around him, distracted from any other task as he attempts to hunt down the individual pages of the Bible and tuck them in his hands, a battered and destroyed symbol of his personal philosophy and faith. Standing surrounded by torn books, Castiel's stoic demeanor has finally slipped entirely. Fiction, nonfiction, medicine, history, science, literature, these books were his friends; symbols of classes taken, personal achievements met, quiet moments with his own thoughts and imagined worlds, the only things he had to get him through some of the darkest moments of his life, and he can't save any of them. But he can't lose this one. Dean's feet shuffle on the carpet as he joins him, and Castiel breaks out of his own thoughts to look up at Dean, a pitiful pile of scripture in his hands and an agonized expression on his face.

"Jimmy gave this to me as a gift when I was deployed." There is deep grief in his quiet explanation of this behavior that he knows must seem completely absurd. "Emmanuel's Rosary broke while we were over there, and they took the flask Gabriel gave me and the 'Holy Playing Cards' Bathlazar gifted me as a joke, but this Bible saved my life. Held it in my hands to demonstrate that I wasn't a combatant, to show who I was. And then I used it to try and keep their faith, and mine." Not that it worked. Four years. He knew priests who lived a lifetime devoted, believing, and he couldn't make it through four years of war. "Most of them were just children, Dean. Nineteen or twenty. On our side and theirs. I was such an old man to them and I wasn't quite out of my twenties myself, looking for answers in the pages and I couldn't. . ." He couldn't wait on God to deliver them any longer. He can't finish the thought. With a shuddering sigh, he looks down at these paper corpses at his feet and eventually gathers the broken photos and his few military mementos and carefully lays them with his torn bible into his pile 'to keep' on the kitchen counter.

Dean joins him where he stands with hands braced on the kitchen counter to support his weight, head bowed as he stares at the torn pages. As Dean rests a hand to Cas's shoulder, offering silent support, Castiel nods to the ripped cover, turned up to an inscriptions hand-written there by his brother years before.

"Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able

to stand against the wiles of the Devil."

– Ephesians 6:11

God Is Your Shield, brother, and I know He will see you home from this.

Try to stay safe and make it a little easier on Him, though?

We're all proud of you, Castiel.

– Jimmy

"A play on the meaning of my name. I was the priest, but I think in many ways Jimmy had so much more faith than I ever did." Castiel shakes his head, quietly mournful, and drags a hand down his jaw and the dark stubble he hasn't dealt with since quitting at the hospital. Dean wants to touch him, wants to wrap an arm around him and hug him, but he doesn't know if it would be welcome, doesn't know if Cas is ready to accept comfort. "I don't care about most of these things, Dean. They're just. . . things. Possessions with little meaning. But this, I cared about."

"The uh. . . the papers in your closet. I knocked them down when I got your uniform pants out. They're gone now." Dean tells him abruptly as if ripping off a bandage, another blow to Castiel's few personal possessions, and it draws a thoughtful frown from the doctor.

"Further evidence that this was not simply the undirected revenge work of the men at the hospital. Tell Sam as much. This is related, I'm certain. . . I haven't become involved in anything else recently that would. . ."

"I'm sorry, Cas … " Dean interrupts, and Castiel blinks and raises his head as he realizes where Dean was taking that comment. He was taking it as blame, as a sign that Castiel should have stayed well out of his life. Turning to lean against the counter beside him now, shaking his head tersely, Castiel's shoulder leaned against Dean's as if they are bolstering each other upright, though he's not prepared for an embrace or emotional outpouring. He is keeping it together. He has to keep it together.

"No. I am not putting this on you, Dean. You are not responsible. Assuming guilt in this is unnecessary weight on your shoulders. The best thing that we can do is ensure the trial ends with those men in prison. This is . . ." He blows a controlled breath out, and the anger is still there, the pain, but the control is more solid now. Dean's starting to get it: Castiel isn't dangerous because he could lose control, as the officer believed. He chooses when to throw down, and that is perhaps more frightening overall.

Blue eyes sweeping over the destruction of this space that has been his home and safe haven since coming to Lawrence, Castiel pushes off of the counter and stares at his few mementos. He is homeless. Jobless. Quickly becoming penniless. Besieged by criminal charges. But perhaps not entirely faithless. As bad as things are, the torn Bible was a reminder that they have been worse. That they have been worse in his life. He trusts Dean and he believes they can pull through this, that Dean's stubborn determination to win this for Castiel will see them through. Once he would have been able to make a sermon from this, craft it into something else, and perhaps there is still . . .

The paper is so worn that it is nearly translucent with its ink fading from handling, but he selects the page carefully and folds it neatly before placing it in Dean's hands, cupping his palms over Dean's fingers and meeting his confused expression with a sudden look of conviction and determination. This is something that they can avenge only by not letting it drag them off course, either with the case or with each other, and Castiel's faith in God may have been damaged, and his faith in mankind may have suffered, but he can still believe in some things. "This is something we are going to win, Dean."

And with that, he deliberately turns his back on the last tether he had to Kansas, memories of his life before that gathered in his hands, and he leaves Dean staring at his back in bewilderment.

Sometimes he gets a glimpse of aspects of Cas that he's never going to get a handle on, and this. . .? This ranks right up there with coming to Dean's rescue in the first place or drinking in churches for inscrutable actions. Dean glances at the page in his hand, this ripped piece of Castiel's most precious possession chosen for him, and commits the words to memory before folding it again and tucking it into his pocket, unsure what else to do with it.

Do not lurk like a thief near the house of the just; do not plunder his resting place. For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.

He frowns at the mess around them, gives up on fully trying to understand Castiel's motivations, and then follows in the former priest's footsteps down to the Impala.

Damn right they're going to win this.

xXx

Fast-food burgers and John Winchester's battered kitchen table. A match made in Heaven, or at very least so long ago in Dean's memory that it just seems damned fitting that the first meal he'll have in this place is grease burgers and beer. If he's going to be home again, it might as well feel as much like home as it ever did.

"We need to figure out from Sam how long this trial's going to take. I may need to start taking in business again, get some cars through the garage." Dean remarks idly as he cracks open a beer and passes it to Castiel, looking down at his baby parked in the garage below, all the doors drawn down and locked up again. They're actually doing this, living together in this crappy place, and that means they're going to need food on the table and ways to replace the shit broken at Cas's, and cash for gas. There's no way in hell Dean's becoming a bus rider too, and this far from city center it's practically a drive just to get to a bus stop.

"I can help?" Castiel offers, and then immediately grimaces as he realizes just how tentative that sounds. He has no car experience. He has no experience manning phones or setting appointments. He has never sold anything, or held anything but a white-collar professional career in his life, discounting the military where he was still first and foremost a priest. He wouldn't know where to begin. "As long as I am here living off of you, I would like to help, somehow . . . I enjoy numbers. I could keep the books for you, do accounting?"

"Dude, no one enjoys numbers." Dean snorts, and shifts so that his knee rests against Castiel's under the table as he sprawls in his chair, hand wrapped around his beer. Cas seems to be leaning towards him unconsciously anyway, still shaken by what happened at his apartment, and perhaps a little closer to admitting as much. "You don't have to 'earn your keep' or anything here, Cas. I started pretty much handling all the business to come through here when I was fifteen. My place is your place, you can just. . ."

"Dean, I want to help. Please, let me." From the day as a teenager he decided he was dedicating his life to the God, he hasn't had a time period where he didn't have a goal, a mission of some sort: be it seminary or chaplain work or medical school or the hospital, he has always had something to drive him and he needs that now. He needs to be useful. He needs a distraction. And he needs to be nearby, to watch over Dean if not for Dean's safety than for Castiel's own peace of mind.

Dean can't handle the silent plea in Castiel's eyes. Just his dumb fucking luck, he managed to end up with someone who could give Sam a run for his money in that department. "Yeah, okay Cas. You can help with the books when we start getting business. And uh. . . help me make this place livable while you're at it? If we gotta stay here, we might as well make it less of a hell hole before I figure out how I'm selling it."

Castiel leans back in his chair, the chair he'd kissed and petted and screwed Dean in less than a week ago, and offers Dean a strained smile. "I can do that."

It's not until later, until dinner has been consumed and cleaned up after that Dean decides to try and figure out what the hell they're doing. Since dinner was put away, Castiel finally sank into his side on the crappy mattress they spent the night on before, the rattle and hum of the air conditioner the only thing until then to break a silence that, if not exactly comfortable, was at least companionable in that both men realized they were in their own heads, wrapping their thoughts around the mess they're floundering in. Dean knows Castiel's apartment is bothering him more than he lets on, and strokes his hand up and down Cas's spine idly, and it should be weird that the guy's curled up against him and they didn't even have sex first.

It's weird because it isn't weird. And that brings Dean to what's bothering him.

He clears his throat, finds the words, loses them, and Castiel raises his head from Dean's chest to fix a questioning look on him before noticing his expression. God, he sucks at this. Sex, he's got. Short of apparently breaking down into tears or ending up in the wrong place and time in his head, he can handle that. He sucks at this emotional crap, though, at relationship stuff. He's just not built right for it.

Castiel rolls onto his side, head propped on his fist, and leaves his other hand splayed over Dean's stomach, waiting for him to figure out what he wants to say, eyes tight and red-rimmed with today's new blows against them. It's that tightly reigned grief and worry that finally gives Dean his start. "Look, Cas. We just met, and. . ."

"'And' we learned more about each other in the first three days than most people would after months of 'dating.'" Castiel interjects, as if he has to defend them from conventional thinking. Dean glares at him until he falls silent, stops interrupting, and they've got to be pretty fucked up people because that makes Castiel bite back one of his faint smiles and nod for Dean to continue.

". . . and, I get that we're moving fast. But I . . . look, Cas, you're not homeless or 'living off me,' okay? You've got a place as long as you want it." Dean closes his eyes, so he doesn't have to watch the flickers of expression chasing their way across Castiel's face and risk seeing something he doesn't like. "And I mean, after the trial even. It's not exactly paradise, but I know some people in Sioux Falls. The sheriff there's a friend of mine, and she's got to know a lot of people at the hospital there who might. . ."

Dean has never been happier to be interrupted than when Castiel kisses him to silence, love and gratitude and a million other feelings and emotions that Dean doesn't deserve left unspoken.