Frozen in the place I hide
Not afraid to paint my sky with
Some who say I've lost my mind
Brother try and hope to find
You were always so far away
I know that pain so don't you run away
Like you used to do
- "Brother," Alice in Chains
It's a measure of how much time he's spent with Dean in this garage over the past weeks that Castiel recognizes that the car pulling into the open bay downstairs isn't Dean and Sam returned. He knows the rumble of the Impala's engine too well to mistake it.
Which is not to say his time with Dean working in the garage has turned him into anything remotely like a mechanic. He still knows next to nothing about cars, considering he's been a pedestrian his entire adult life and has never had a car of his own that wasn't simply part of his family's collection.
But after careful study in the garage, he knows the shine of Dean's skin when he has to pull his t-shirt up to mop at a face covered in sweat and engine grease. He knows the songs Dean can't help but sing off-key as he works. He knows how his mate's brow creases as he diagnoses an automobile the way Castiel once did patients, and then how he can fall into an almost Zen state as he loses himself in fixing them. He knows the boyish smirk and roguish glint of Dean's eyes when he asks for a hand, the look that means whatever help Castiel is going to be coached into offering will be interrupted with deliberate body contact that will end with them both off task. He knows that means that somehow even at his corner desk squinting at John's paperwork and organizing the business's finances and records, he's distracted Dean the way Dean distracts him.
No, it's fairly safe to say when he's working down in the garage with Dean, he learns a great deal more about Dean Winchester than he does about vehicle maintenance and repair. But he can fill out an Auto Body form, and a Repair Work Order, and a Customer Information Sheet, and there are not enough customers coming through the garage for him to want to turn any away merely because Dean is gone. Dean will come back and give the estimate, but he can do something to secure their income, to help in some small way to put groceries on the table through the trial.
Dean teases him, but Castiel flinches every time he ruins a meal; he knows just how tight finances are, keeping John Winchester's business open and electricity on and their own incidentals and meals. Some part of him that he desperately tries to silence, knowing how much it would bother Dean to hear it, dislikes that he can't provide for his mate right now. Castiel has never cared about money before; either he was rich and he had it, or he was poor and he owned nothing, or earning money and sending everything he could space back to care for his niece, but he's never shared his life like this with someone else. He's never had someone else to worry about.
So he hastens to shut John Winchester's incomplete financial records again as the car cuts off below, tucking between the pages the slip of paper he has been fixated on since he found it two days ago. He steps into Dean's work boots, too hurried to bother tying them, tugging a shirt on over the old camouflage uniform pants he favors in the garage. He is going to secure and keep this customer. He can be personable. He will be convincing enough to encourage this person to wait for Dean.
Castiel's first thought as he stops midway on the steps down to the garage from the apartment above is yellow.
There is no second thought. The man climbing out of the obnoxiously lemon-colored, obviously entirely functional car, manages to derail Castiel's train of thought entirely. He grins at Castiel's blank stare in obvious amusement, rocking on his heels and shoving his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.
"Hey, bro. Long time no see."
Gabriel's grin only grows as Castiel flounders in confusion.
xXx
Dean doesn't demand an explanation. He doesn't open up with an interrogation the second he's on the open road, and he doesn't ask about Sam's feelings or thoughts: Sam knows damn well that Dean's pissed, and Dean doesn't see the need to call Sam's attention to that fact with dramatics. It's not his style. Hands tight on the steering wheel, he scowls at the broken line of highway and sea of glowing red brake lights once they're past the toll and on the way to Kansas City International.
He's going to wait until he has the words that don't make it sound like he's just prissily shoving Sam away from a fledgling relationship like a whining brat, or until Sam just owns up to whatever the hell he and Cas are up to.
The radio is silent.
Dean is silent.
Sam can't handle that. Hell, he knows Dean, knows how he can stew in a temper for days without making it anyone's problem but his own; he'll bury himself in a car or a sink into a bottle. Oh, he'll respond to anything posed to him, but he's not going to be the one to start them actually talking. He could probably make it the whole way there and back in his own head, and leave Sam to twist because he's the one that talks feelings. He's the one that feels compelled to talk about any of their problems.
If Sam leaves this be, though, it's going to screw things up. Dean's trust issues will build up, wondering what the hell his little brother and his boyfriend are deciding for him, without him, and it will ruin that easy affection and camaraderie that Sam bore witness to in the kitchen between Cas and Dean. He figured out Cas was in love on his first trip here, and now he's gotten a glimpse of what it looks like when Dean is in love. He never thought he'd see that, not after the hell Dean went through.
He wishes that he wasn't nervous now about that relationship. Because whether they're calling it what it is or not, even Sam can tell that Dean went and got himself mated to Castiel. He's tied his life and happiness inextricably to a man who comes across like a mild-mannered decent guy who just so happens to be about two bad days from murdering someone if he feels he's justified in it . . . and Sam's his defense attorney and thinks that right now.
But at the heart of this entire mess is something else, something even more damaging, because the damage has already been done.
"Crowley's trying to get Alastair on the stand."
Dean's been half expecting Sam's voice for a while now with Sammy fidgeting in the passenger seat, but he wasn't expecting that. His eyes snap to his brother, surprised, and after a moment the car hits the rumble strip on the shoulder of the road, tires whining of his inattentiveness until he corrects their bearings and fixes his eyes back on the highway.
"Shit." The invective is low and emphatic, punched out of the elder Winchester.
"Yeah." Dean's pale but stoic, and Sam doesn't know how to read him. If he murdered Alastair, he's playing it close to the vest, and he looks pretty damn shaken anyway. Sam frowns at his brother until Dean finds words again.
"How long were you planning to wait to tell me? Until he was in the room with me?" There's a growl to Dean's words, and Sam knows that voice. He knows his brother well enough to pick up on the prickling of fear coming off of Dean that makes the air in the car too thick to breathe, and the anger he's burying it under, visible in the flex of his jaw, in the corded muscles of his arms as he grips the wheel too tightly. "Just going to decide when I needed to fucking know things like that?"
Dean didn't kill Alastair.
So where is he?
"Shit." Sam unconsciously echoes his brother's earlier sentiment, pressing the heels of his palms over his eyes, trying not to feel is brother's worried stare. "That's. . . that's not good."
He didn't even realize how much he had been hoping that Dean had murdered Alastair, not just worrying about it, until after that hope was dashed. It's not that he wanted Dean to be a murderer. . . he just wanted to believe that the world was just that little bit safer for Dean.
"You fucking think, Sam? I don't want to be anywhere friggin' near him. I don't know how. . ." He doesn't know how he'll react. He's in a cold sweat at the idea of it, at having to look at Alastair's dead eyes and sneer and face his complete conviction in his ownership of Dean. That he'll have to square down against that broken fucked up part of himself that believed it, that still believes it even now with the drugs long gone from his system. The broken Omega mess that Cas is struggling to heal with gentle hands, hoarse reassurances, a saint's patience and his willingness to let Dean set the parameters, to hold his own instincts at bay and let Dean take the lead sometimes.
He doesn't want the Alphas in a room together. He's waiting for the moment Cas realizes how fucked up he really is, and opening up that entire part of his history will be hard enough if Crowley tries to do it with him on the stand, without the living, breathing proof of those four months mocking his relationship with Castiel from feet away.
The pheromones Dean puts off may never appeal to Sam the way they do to other Alphas, but he knows Dean better than anyone in the world and he's still programmed to receive. However even his breath, however focused he seems to be on driving, however much he leashes it and turns it into anger, into that straight-backed stubbornness that Dean has turned into an art-form, Sam felt his brother's sudden, momentary spike of anxiety prickling across his skin uncomfortably.
He's not faking this. He couldn't if he wanted to.
Sam swears under his breath again, and drags his hands up over his brow, tangling them into his hair. "We need to talk, Dean."
xXx
Castiel half expects the slap to the back of his head that he gets a few minutes after settling beside his brother on the retaining wall overlooking the river, but he grimaces nonetheless, turning his head slightly to glower at Gabriel.
"Eight fucking years, Castiel. Eight years."
"You ran away first." Even to Castiel the answer sounds vaguely juvenile, and he holds a hand up to stop Gabriel's probably entirely deserved tirade at that sullen response. "You kept in better contact, I know. I'm. . . I don't have an excuse." He sighs, tipping his head back to stare up at the blue Kansas sky.
"Yeah, you do." Gabriel cuts him off. "You've got a damned good excuse. And if you'd just been gone a few months after Jimmy. . ."
"I don't want to talk about him, Gabriel." Castiel rumbles forebodingly. If it were anyone but his brother, that warning and the edge of danger would be enough; Gabriel has never taken his family's shit, though, and he's not going to start now with his baby brother.
"Tough shit, kiddo, because we're going to. Because the med school thing, that I can understand after how things happened. We all did, and we left you alone. But you go across country to become a neurologist and end up in bumfuck Kansas instead . . ."
"I was trying to. . ."
Gabriel has never been particularly adept at letting other people finish their sentences. It's with a familiar exasperation that Castiel snaps his mouth shut again at Gabriel's interruption. "You were 'trying' to ditch your entire family because Jimmy dying hurt, and being around us was pretty much a daily reminder. When you know Manny. . ."
"He hates that nickname." Castiel sighs, aware that his brother will fold the second-hand objection on behalf of his twin into his words without pausing.
". . . has the same problem, Cassie." Castiel makes a face at the old moniker, and Gabriel smirks triumphantly at the expression, his point proved about how much he cares about preferred names after eight years of barely any contact. "But he stuck around. We all got past it. All of us but you."
"Did you really?" Castiel's eyes slide towards his brother, lips tightened into a straight line, and his words are less a question than an quiet, level accusation. "You know it wasn't just that. How long has it been since you have been in a room with Lucifer, Gabriel? How often do you visit Michael at 'home' when it's not a family holiday? I joined the chaplaincy years before Jimmy. . ." He still can't say it, and he can't face the naked empathy on his older brother's face—he looks back to the river rather than at Gabriel. They don't understand: it's that pity he can't handle, what he fled from after the funeral. "You ran away to escape that house and their fighting. Once you were gone Balthazar moved to England. Emmanuel and Daphne went on missionary trips while I was overseas. Jimmy and Amelia moved to Pontiac. And I was deployed. Half of us ran in some way, Gabriel, long before the funeral."
"Yeah, but we actually kept in touch, Castiel." Gabriel rebukes him, tawny eyes sharp and clear and challenging. "There's a difference between moving on, or even getting away from the pricks, and a self-imposed exile. You're not the only black sheep in the fam, bro, and we rejects should have stuck together. I haven't seen your sullen squint-eyed frowning face in eight years."
Castiel smiles faintly to himself. His brother's idea of affection is a strange, sarcastic thing, but he's missed it in the twelve years since he first deployed, since the last time their little flock of the family's black sleep was whole and gathered together in celebration of Emmanuel and Daphne's marriage.
"You and your mail-forwarding box makes for a crappy pen pal, and you never answer your email unless you can make it about us and avoid talking about yourself. You tell more to Claire in your letters than any of your brothers. I'm supposedly still down as your 'next of kin' on all your paperwork, and I didn't even know about this until your lawyer's office called."
Castiel looks down at his hands resting on his knees, and sighs quietly. Of course; Gabriel's here for the trial. Just as he was after Castiel's dishonorable discharge. Just as he was on the day of Jimmy's death, driving him home from the hospital helping Balthazar deal with the inconsolable pair of twins in the back seat; Emmanuel crying silently and Castiel numb and blank and broken, twisting his removed clerical collar between his hands, bereft and faithless after losing his brother. Gabriel may be the brashest of his family, may not be the most responsible, but Castiel has never doubted that he cares. Enough to hunt him down by the name listed alongside his on the criminal charges.
"We had to find out you had a friggin' mate from Lucifer, and you know what that douchebag's like when he knows something we don't."
He does. Castiel flashes an appropriately apologetic glance at his brother. "Huh. So that part was true?" The speech, it seems, is over. Castiel is appropriately chastised in Gabriel's point of view, and his brother never did have the attention span for lectures or sermons. Mischief and curiosity look more natural on his pointed features, and Castiel resists the urge to edge away from the inherent danger that spells out for him.
"I am not going to like whatever you just schemed up." Castiel's words are slow and wary, and Gabriel winks, his grin almost wicked.
"Always said you were the smart one of us. You know, I haven't seen you since you stopped being a priest . . . "
xXx
"I didn't kill Alastair."
Dean's words are flat at the end of Sam's long confession, and Sam can't tell what's behind it, because Dean has successfully taken whatever he's feeling and shoved it down as deeply as he's capable. This could be hope that Alastair is really gone; it could be regret that he didn't pull the trigger himself; it could be anger that his brother has spent the last five years thinking him a murderer.
Sam has no clue.
For all that he's biologically supposed to be an open book, for all that he sometimes is despite himself, Dean's poker face when he really sets his mind to it is one of the best Sam's ever seen. And Sam deals with criminals trying feed him a line and win his impassioned defense as his professional career. Emotionally lock-boxed or not, though, Sam believes him.
He just wishes that made things better.
"Dean, I'm sorry. I thought. . ."
"I know what you thought, Sammy." Dean's shutting the line of discussion down as best he can; he may have been the one to trap Sam in the car to force him to spill, but he wasn't expecting this. He's piecing together every response from his brother in the past five years, trying to see what this has colored, because it's easier than the game of false hope and the gut-churning feeling of trying to think about Alastair. "Is that part of why kept Jess away from me, until the funeral?"
Of course it was.
He can hear the planes overhead, the steadily deepening whine of one coming in for landing, and he follows the line of cars towards the terminals, trying to wrap his head around how he feels about this. His brother's words, apologies and concerns, blur together for the time being, just like the buzz of text messages from Castiel; acknowledged but brushed aside until he can get a handle on this.
"Just. . . Go pick up your Gal Friday at the gate. I'm going to the cellphone waiting area so I don't have to pay out the nose for parking again. Call me when you're at the pickup zone."
Sam is giving him puppy dog eyes, and he's not ready to just put this aside as a big misunderstanding yet, no matter how much his brother knows how to play his sympathies. He needs a few minutes to get a lid on this, to get himself squared away to the point of being able to play nice and civil with Sam's assistant. Once Sam is out of the car and the Impala eased into a space in the lot, he rests his forehead against the steering wheel, eyes closed, breathing slowly.
Alastair is either dead and buried, or just. . . lurking. Dean has always figured he was just out there, a looming threat that follows him wherever he might be. He can't let himself hope until he knows more, because it'd screw him up royally if he strolled into the courtroom after everything and Dean wasn't expecting it.
He's got to be able to face this, because if he screws this up, if he breaks on the stand because of it, Cas pays the price.
His phone buzzes again, a text reminder, and he fumbles it out of his pocket without raising his head, squinting at the small screen below him and its multiple messages from his boyfriend.
Gabriel is here. Going out. I don't want to bring a guest in without you.
At the Roadhouse.
My brother and your family are trying to convince me to talk about our relationship.
I think they are planning to get me drunk.
We need a rescue text code.
Despite himself, Dean scoffs wryly at the final message, straightening in his seat and responding at last to the string of texts.
The Alpha's asking an Omega to save him. Cute.
Castiel's response is slow to arrive, and it leaves Dean with visions of Jo and Ellen lining up shots for him, though he knows it's unlikely. He doesn't know what to expect from this Gabriel guy, but at least it isn't going like the last reunion Castiel had with his family, if he's willingly out somewhere with him.
Asking by boyfriend to recur me from his family
Castiel is apparently an auto-correct victim already; either Gabriel showed up right after they left and started feeding Cas booze immediately, or (much more likely) he's trying to type without the others noticing. Dean is fairly amused by the image of Castiel's entirely valid fear of the Harvelle women setting him to texting below the edge of the bar. The nauseated feeling his conversation with Sam left him with is slowly receding as his thumbs fly across the illuminated screen of his phone.
And YOUR family. I'm still in KC. You're going to have to hold you own for at least an hour. And try not to get too drunk. It's not even lunch time you lush.
He's considering a text message to Jo to tell her to play nice, when a sharp knock sounds on the trunk. He can see Sam at the back of the car, juggling two bags and gesturing at him, so he shoves the phone back into his pocket and slides out of the car to unlock the trunk.
"I'd have driven up, Sammy." Dean grumbles, because he figures the only excuse Sam had for walking over was to have more time talking to his assistant about him. The assistant who is apparently moving in, by the number of bags with her. Shouldering her laptop case, a petite redhead grins at him from behind Sam's back and speaks before the man who is, in name at least, her boss.
"He was being stubborn and decided to carry everything, like I didn't make it all by myself through the airport in San Francisco. It's kind of sweet. Y'know. . . dumb, but sweet I guess. Hi. I'm Charlie. You're Dean. He never lets me call him Sammy."
Somewhere in there might have been a pause for breath. Dean didn't hear it. He blinks at the unexpected rush of words, and it's clear at once that Charlie has heard about him. . . and is nervous. A nervous talker, offering a hand for him to shake. "Uh. . . yeah, that's me."
It clicks, what his sense are saying versus what he's seeing, right before he can return the gesture.
Alpha.
Sam gives him a grade A, well-rehearsed, 'we may be fighting, but don't be a dick, Dean' bitchface without letting Charlie see it, like Dean would even think about it. Charlie's expressive face slips slightly at his momentary hesitation when he realizes her designation, and Dean uses that to pull his thoughts back together, conceal his surprise, and flashes her his winning smile, pushing aside the itch of recognition and shaking her offered hand. "And he never lets anyone call him Sammy. I get away with it because I've got a lifetime of blackmail material on him."
It's not that he has a problem with female Alphas. . . hell, he'd be a hypocrite if he did. He's spent a long time flipping off society for telling him he's not what he's supposed to be; the obedient little sex-crazed fuck-toy of the world. Alpha Females, they try to pretend don't exist; he's not sure if erasure is any better than objectification.
Neither of them fit in the stupid idealized world. Omegas are perfect subservient Stepford women they're shown as in the movies, and Alphas are the strapping macho men they all wish they were, and Betas are 'normal.' The only way they fit is if he's ass-up strapped to a table in a farm, and she's leather-clad and starring in a fetish flick.
After a moment, Charlie's smile settles into something a little more natural, self-amused and aware of her own social awkwardness on meeting new people, but she remains animated and friendly. "Sorry. I don't get out much. This is the first time he's dragged me out of my dungeon for a case and, y'know. The boss's brother. No pressure! So, I brought the dungeon with me. Hence your brother being a pack mule."
"Yeah, well, he's good at mulishness." Sam shoots a glare without any heat behind it as he closes the trunk over the luggage, and Dean smugly grins back at him, a point earned. They're not okay, yet. Dean knows it. Sam knows it. But they've been putting aside family drama in public for a long, long time. Charlie insists Sam takes the front seat, so Dean adjusts the rearview so he can see her as he eases them back into traffic.
"So, if you're usually doing this from the office, why're you down in the trenches this time? Can't just be because it's me."
Sam and Charlie exchange a look; the kind of look that says he's on to something there, but not something they necessarily want to divulge right away. Sam takes point on the question—probably means he can get the real answer out of Charlie later. "Charlie's my tech and research guru; I'm the lawyer but she's really the brains behind our operation. We're dealing with two unknown attorneys here and three court cases. Plus, you may be off the hook for the jail time, but I need to look at it as two different clients, too. She's going to be my stand-in when I need her. She's good, Dean. She knows her stuff."
"He's Obi-Wan, out in the field doing the Knight thing, but I'm Yoda." Charlie confirms, and Sam rolls his eyes but doesn't argue the analogy. "One-woman Jedi Council. I may not get out much, but I kick ass when I do. Or. . . I guess I do. I'll try to."
"That was reassuring right up until that last part." Dean drawls easily. "Do, or do not. There is no try."
Charlie's grin blossoms, a traveler in a foreign land who finds someone speaking her language. Sam groans and tips back his head to stare at the headliner of the car. "I don't know which one of you to tell not to encourage the other."
"Too late, boss. Now it's going to be a constant test of which references the other gets, and you're stuck with it. Them's the breaks, Winchester." Charlie's complete lack of reverence for his little brother, no matter their relative positions, for some reason soothes away an unacknowledged worry. Sam brought a friend, he didn't just tag in a lackey from his firm like they were that sunk without professional backup.
As she falls into chatter about jury candidate questionnaires and response matrixes, passing slightly battered manila folders up to Sam to study while they're on the road so he'll be ready after lunch for the jury selection, Dean reminds himself that they're going to win this.
xXx
Castiel's eyes snap to the door just as Dean's opening it, as if he's managed to tune himself to the Omega so closely that he can sense his mate coming. It would be a little unsettling if it weren't for the fact that he can't quite help relaxing in his seat when Dean acknowledges him with a wink on his way through the Roadhouse, cat-calling Jo teasingly and ducking Ellen's swat as he steals a beer from behind the bar, by all signs in a pleasant mood.
Castiel has his doubts. The Dean he sees in public and the Dean he knows in private often times don't match. Either way Castiel feels better already for having him here, ambling in his bow-legged fashion towards them, fully aware of Castiel's eyes on him as he moves.
"Sam and his assistant?"
"Dropped them off, and Sam took the rental. They're setting up at the hotel and then heading over to the courthouse to pick out the jury." He offers his hand in front of Castiel, extending it to Gabriel to shake. "Dean Winchester. You must be Gabriel. He hasn't told me crap about you, but from how he's been texting me I was expecting you to have a funnel between his teeth pouring booze into him."
The way Dean straddles the mismatched bar stool beside him like he's mounting a horse makes Castiel swallow heavily and wash that vision down with a too-long pull from his drink. He's still mostly sober, that's just distracting. Dean settles in beside him and drops an arm possessively around Cas's shoulders, and that's when Castiel realizes he has no idea what he was saying to Gabriel before Dean walked in. When he turns back, his brother is smirking at him with the most insufferably knowing look he has ever faced. Even Ellen looks highly entertained.
Gabriel whistles, low and long. "You're hopeless, Castiel. Seriously, it's a little pathetic." Dean bristles slightly at his side, but Castiel rests a hand on his thigh to reassure him that this is just. . . Gabriel. "So, I hear I have you to thank for my brother finally losing his V-Card."
Burying his face against his hand, Castiel pushes the mug of beer slowly back across the bar to an obviously eavesdropping Jo.
"I think I am going to need something stronger."
He doesn't get much stronger of a drink than that, in the end: as Dean had mentioned, it is early, and despite being out of practice he's relatively certain he can withstand one of his brothers teasing, even if it is Gabriel.
Gabriel twirls his keys around his finger repeatedly on his way out of the door of the bar as Castiel escorts him to his car; he's got a hotel room to check into and phone calls to make, now that he's confirmed that Castiel is alive, well, and not (upon first glance) being taken in by a psychotic Omega prostitute, as Castiel is nearly certain Lucifer had claimed. He knows his family well enough to know that the word of that accusation had spread to Gabriel, prompted him to travel across country to check on Castiel's wellbeing for himself.
It's why he had chosen to bring Gabriel to the Roadhouse specifically, to introduce Gabriel to Dean's family before he met Dean himself. To give him a sense of the man his brother had fallen in love with as a human being, not a creature of Lucifer's accusations and the courthouse drama that would be unfolding within days. He even deliberately chose to subject himself to the teasing and questions from both his family and his mate's, because it feels like family, and that rapport is not something that would hold with Lucifer's version of events.
He missed Gabriel. He misses Emmanuel, and Balthazar, and even Inias and Uriel at times. He will always miss Jimmy. He doesn't miss the subtle machinations that formed the undercurrent of most every interaction with his family, however. That doesn't mean he's forgotten how to stay afloat among them.
As Gabriel's car pulls away, Dean joins him outside of the bar, shoulder to shoulder where Castiel leans back against the clapboard façade far from the door with his eyes closed, lost in thought.
"You good?"
Castiel shrugs, the motion moving Dean with him, close as they are. "Yes. It was. . . surprising. But not unwelcome." Opening his eyes, he looks out across the parking lot for a long moment, giving Dean the same courtesy of not staring at him for his own question. "Are you?"
He knows that Sam and Dean spoke. He doesn't know what came of it. There's a moment where he can tell that Dean is prepared to lie. To say he's fine. He's not certain how he knows, but he does. But he knows when that urge passes, as Dean breathes out once raggedly, his shoulders slumping as he does.
"I didn't kill him, Cas."
He should be relieved. Sam was relieved. Instead, Castiel turns his head without moving away from the wall, blue eyes unguarded. "I'm sorry, Dean. I had hoped. . ." As warped as it sounds to admit it, he had hoped Dean had killed Alastair. Hoped he'd gotten that closure, even if just for himself. The law has let Dean down twice already; by allowing the rapists they will be facing in the courtroom come Monday to walk free in the first place, and by releasing Alastair.
Shaking his head slightly, Castiel glances at the closed door of the bar behind Dean, and pushes away from the wall.
These aren't discussions they should be having in public. He waits until they're in the car, the keys in the ignition and the Impala's familiar, comforting rumbling engine purring around them, before he finishes his thought.
"Crowley offered me a deal."