Well everytime that I come home nobody wants to let me be
It seems that all the friends I got just got to come interrogate me
Well, I appreciate your feelings and I don't want to pass you by
But I don't ask you about your business, don't ask me about mine

- "Don't Ask Me No Questions," Lynyrd Skynyrd

Sam's pacing doesn't work as well in the hotel 'war room' as it does in the courtroom. There it seemed like leonine prowling, here it just seems neurotic and makes the entire place feel tiny. Because it is tiny. Even for a decent sized hotel room there's still just so much space between the end of the beds and the hotel provided table, and his brother is a freakishly big guy and making everyone nervous.

"Sam, if you don't sit down I'm taking your kneecaps out."

Okay, so maybe not so much nervous in Dean's case. He's sidestepped nervous and moved on to just being pissed off with all of them. Particularly since Sam practically manhandled him into the elevator, and then staged this so that he's between Cas and Dean, like Dean needs protecting. And the circumstances that have brought them all together notwithstanding, he's done pretty damned well for himself at that.

All the times he's kicked ass whenever someone got handsy, and the only thing they see when they look at him is the couple of times he failed. So yeah. He's getting steadily more pissed the longer the posturing continues.

"You're hurt." Sam counters, all Alpha.

"Kneecaps." Dean's voice cracks like a whip in the room, a warning and command in one random threat, and he sounds so much like his father in that moment that it's like John crawled out of his grave to put the fear of God into them all. Sam drops into the chair across from Dean, and then folds his arms across his puffed out chest as if to prove he's not doing it because he was commanded to, but Dean just sees a lanky sullen hormonal Alpha teenager butting heads with the brother who raised him, instinctively railing against an Omega bossing him around.

"Yes, Cas and I fucked this morning. It was awesome. I was into it. Now do you need details about what it's like being on the other end of the mattress-pounding or can you shut the fuck up about it and accept that I'm not some stupid abused little 'Omega bitch' who can't tell when he's being abused?"

"'Pounding,' huh? Way to go, bro. Knew you had it in you." Gabriel brought his donuts with him, and he raises a slightly sticky hand toward his brother, waiting for a high-five that never comes.

Castiel is so tightly wound that it'd probably take a crowbar at this point to unfold his arms, or get him to open his mouth so he's not speaking through his teeth. Dean's pretty sure it'd also take a full excavation team a couple of weeks to pull the stick out of his ass. "I wouldn't hurt Dean."

Pissy, offended, and homicidal. That look shouldn't work for Dean, and it's not that he's doing some Omega rolling over and presenting thing in his head. He just knows their libidos well enough to figure he could redirect that into some seriously athletic wall slamming sex to burn off some of their steam. He really should stop looking when he's in a room full of people who are hardwired to know when he's liking what he sees, and how deeply fucked up is he that he'd like that anyway? Clenching his jaw, Dean keeps his eyes on Sam instead and speaks slowly and clearly for his brother's benefit, harnessing the anger that's a hell of a lot more prevalent than anything else right now, that he's always had to get him through this crap. "See? No domestic abuse going on here. We're the fucking Cleavers or whatever."

"Emphasis on 'fucking'?"

"Shut up, Gabriel." On this at least Cas, Dean and Sam are in agreement. Or at least in chorus. Gabriel smirks at his own joke, looking to Charlie at least for some sort of acknowledgement of his comedy genius.

Charlie raises her hands slightly, begging out of being dragged into it. "Dude. Lesbian. I'm like the only person in this conversation who really doesn't care how two guys get off together. I want to get back to the part where you two are apparently related to that asshole, Lucifer."

"Charlie." There's a quiet warning in Sam's voice, like he doesn't want to be too obvious about talking down their brother, but then again he also doesn't know about their research. He just knows Lucifer as head of a law firm they've apparently butted heads with. Who tried to hire Sam. That idea just compounds Dean's pissed-offedness.

"No, she's right, Luci's an asshole." Gabriel agrees easily, taking another bite of his donut, supremely unconcerned about insulting the brother closest to him in age. "Not sure why Cassie's back to murdering him, but I'm at least 90% sure he deserves it." He looks to his brother, raising an eyebrow and asking with his mouth full. "What'd he do this time?"

"Enabled a sex-slaver to drug, rape and abuse Omegas, and get away with it."

Dean thinks a pin could probably be heard dropping in the room. And it's carpeted, so that's a solid accomplishment for the realm of awkward silences. There's no question who Cas is talking about to have him sound like that.

Gabriel is staring back at Cas in flat out shock. Sam is staring at Dean in horror and comprehension. Charlie is staring at Sam worriedly. Dean is staring at the ceiling wondering when the hell he became a cause instead of a living breathing human being, and entirely certain he's sick of it. No, he was wrong. That wasn't a pin drop. That's the sound of the last straw, breaking the camel's back. His voice is deceptively quiet, tight and controlled when he speaks.

"So now that we've shared that with everyone I know in the state of Kansas, are you planning on calling everyone in South Dakota next, or would an ad in the newspaper work for you?" Dean drops his chin, spearing Castiel with a look, waiting until Cas lowers his gaze in shame, letting his breath out in a shuddering apology that Dean summarily ignores because he's on a roll.

"No, why don't all of you shut the fuck up about it for a minute." Gritting his teeth, Dean shoves himself to his feet, stalking away from his brother at the table, away from Cas and Gabriel sitting on one bed and Charlie on the other, over to lean against the wall next to the windows, arms folded, body tense. He's not taking this conversation sitting down. If Charlie and Gabriel are in the middle of this. . . well, hell, it was Sam and Cas's choice to do this crap with them in the room and make them part of it too.

"I am sick and fucking tired of having to explain this shit to people and you two. . . Sam, Cas. . . you're the people who're supposed to not need the fucking memo." Dean rakes his hands through his hair, resisting the urge to go smack both of them upside the head by keeping his hands busy. "I don't give a shit what the law says, I'm not some fucking property for either of you. I don't need you pissing around me in a circle staking a claim. I don't need you assholes making decisions for me. And if we're fucking telling everyone and anyone about my life story, I get to decide when and where. It's all going to be a matter of public record soon enough, they can just look up the fucking testimony themselves if they need to know that badly."

Sam drops his head, contrite, letting Dean focus his attention on Castiel, his words loaded and angry, aimed to cut. "If I wanted to be talked about like I'm not a person in the goddamn room with you all, there's apparently a line of knothead Alphas up for that task. God knows I got enough of that shit in my lifetime. From fucking Lucifer and Alastair to name a few."

He probably could have punched Castiel in the face and gotten less pained a look than he does for that comment. Castiel looks physically gutted by it, pale and horrified, and it's all Dean can do not to yank words back or go across the room and comfort him. Rubbing a hand over his jaw, as if he can keep himself from saying anything else stupid, Dean paces away a few steps, distance for control.

It's Charlie who breaks the silence afterwards, shifting uncomfortably on the bed, drawing Dean's gaze to her as she speaks, carefully redirecting the conversation.

"You mentioned the law. We wanted to talk to you before all the rest of this came up. Sam did." Sam takes a breath and raises his chin, squaring his shoulders. "He got your Dad's will. Technically, you're Sam's ward now. Your dad gave him guardianship if anything happened to him. . ." She speeds up before the once-again darkening expression on Dean's face has time to turn into words. ". . . And it's a stupid cruddy law. No one in this room likes that law, trust me. So. . ."

"I think you should sue the government."

Charlie sweeps her hand at Sam in a 'well, there you have it' gesture.

Dean blinks.

Castiel raises his head and stares at Sam.

"And I think I need all of you in on this to make it work. But mostly. . . Dean, it's gotta be you." Sam's got that look again, the crusading expression; an agenda, the will to follow it through, and the dogged determination to barrel past anything that gets in his way to do it. If anything, Dean's censure made him more determined. He glances to Castiel, his next words a peace offering held out between them. "And I think we can tear apart Alastair, Lucifer, and anyone else that makes those places possible, while we're at it."

Gabriel whistles low and long after a moment and puts his plate of donuts down on the nightstand beside him, wiping his hands off on his jeans.

"Man. You guys really don't do small talk, do you?"

xXx

The hotel bar sucks.

Or maybe Dean's been a little spoiled by the Roadhouse.

Either way, Dean isn't even buzzed yet. Clearly that's a failing on the part of the bar and bartender, who is definitely no Jo. Hell, she's not even an Ellen—Ellen knows how to dish out the good stuff, she just tends to be stingy with it around Dean because of some misguided belief that he's an alcoholic. Just because he'd rather have a drink in his hand when he's figuring shit out than he would prefer to be stone sober, and has since he was 13 and she first found him drunk upstairs in her bar, after his first week back at school.

Sam brought that up when he came back for John's funeral, when he thought that Dean had crashed the Impala after drinking because of their dad's death. He'd had the same look on his face that Ellen gets when he confronted him in this parking lot about it. Clearly this is a sign that they just don't get it. Jo, though, is a saint. The patron saint of drunks in Lawrence. And this chick isn't her.

He's not avoiding the idea they brought up. He just needs to be properly fortified to deal with this. He wants a few more drinks to get the look on Cas's face out of his head, too, so he can wrap his head around the other crap. But that look lingers, the one that says Dean was right to point out that he was too broken to be any good in a relationship, that he runs his mouth off and screws shit up.

Dean warned him. Tried to warn him, at least. Maybe they were too far gone for warnings already by then. Some niggling part of Dean's subconscious that paid enough attention to the trite Alpha/Omega mates romance shit on TV is trying to inform him of the sad broken Lifetime movies about tragic heroic Alphas losing or being rejected by their mate.

He's not examining that thought.

And he didn't run from the conversation, he very clearly and very concisely if a little abruptly declared his need for a drink and walked out of the hotel room.

When Sam settles down next to him at the bar, requesting a beer, Dean checks the time and downs his shot. "Thirty-two minutes, and the little brother is the winner. How long of that was you and Cas in a pissing contest about who'd get to come talk me down?"

"Less than ten, probably more than five." Sam admits, folding his arms on the bar top, thumbnail peeling at the label on his bottle. "Cas was about to walk out right after you, but after that he's not exactly saying much." Dean winces, fumbling the usually smooth flip of the glass as he lines it up neatly in front of him. "And I figure you needed the space from all of us for a little while."

Dean tips his head, admitting that Sam is not entirely wrong, and signals for his next shot. Seriously, it's not even noon. She has no other patrons at her bar. How can she be slow at this?

Couple of months ago he would have played his cards right and had her leaning over the bar chatting and flirting with him, and it wouldn't have mattered if she had other customers.

Here he's apparently a mated Omega and a sullen drinker.

Sam sighs quietly, shifts on his seat, and eventually pulls a folded piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans. He slides it in front of Dean and puts a hotel pen on top. "That's Emancipation papers. It's supposed to be for Alphas and Betas getting out of the house before they're eighteen because of conflict or to join the army or go to college. I can file it in California, put it in front of one of the judges I know there, since you're technically supposed to be under my guardianship. It's not exactly common, but I know if I push right I can force it through somehow."

"Heh." One way or another, Sam's determined for Dean's freak flag to fly in California. Sam frowns at him and his lack of an answer.

"I know you don't. . . that it was never a thing. Dad never tried to push that once you were gone to Bobby's. . ."

"Leash is still a leash, Sam. Even if it's a long one you don't ever forget it's there." And it's just bitches that get leashes. Usually metaphorical here, maybe, but from what Dean's heard literal in other parts of the world still. And god knows he was yanked around enough by a cord around his neck enough under Alastair's 'care.'

This, it just meant that anything he wanted to do with his life, anything that required any legal authority, he had to either fake an ID as a Beta, or have them send legal forms on to his father like he was a frikkin' kid. Instead, it's Bobby's name on his lease, John's name on the car, and if he ever landed in the hospital again their father he would call for permission on how to treat him.

(There's another reason he's popping his little sister's birth control pills every day, and that's fucking embarrassing enough thanks.)

"I know." No, he doesn't. But Dean isn't going to correct him this time, because he's done enough damage raging at them all. He's refusing to look at Sam's beseeching expression, either. Jesus, people are going to start thinking he's got issues looking people in the eye, and the truth is that Sam and Cas just keep yanking him around with those looks. "I don't want to be the one holding that leash. And I know Cas is your mate or. . . or boyfriend. . ." Sam respectfully corrects himself to Dean's preferred term, and that's irritating because there was never any question that Jess was his girlfriend and Sam was her boyfriend, then they were fiancées, but there's hesitation for Dean because he is what he is. ". . . but I don't think you want him having that power either. And considering what you just said to him. . ."

Cas would probably rather have his balls cut off, packaged, and handed to him than he would sign anything saying Dean belonged to him like property.

Dean hums quietly in agreement and orders a beer, slowing down the drinking. It's a sign that he's paying attention, but he's also thinking. "You've had this in mind for a while now. 'Suing the government.'"

Sam shrugs, nodding at the same time, and it's little sheepish. "I mean. . . not as a solid plan. But I've been studying civil rights since. . ." Since he returned to school after Dean disappeared, honestly. "And it has to start somewhere. It has to start with someone. Winning the court case for Cas, it doesn't really do anything for you long-run. I mean, even if we put these guys away for it. This, this could do something for anyone who's ever been put in a farm, or treated like you were. They just need someone to stand up first."

Dean snorts derisively, rolling the mouth of the bottle along his lower lip. "And I'm the worst sob story you know, or I'm just the token Omega in your life? A frikkin' assault trial is screwing with my head this bad, Sam, and your plan's to have me . . . what, turn court cases into my life for the next ten years? Poster child for a fucking 'civil rights' movement."

"Dean, you're the strongest person I know. Not. . . not the strongest Omega, the strongest person. I've told you that before, I need you to believe me. I know I get a little crazy about looking out for you, but you've always done it for me, too. It's not because I think you're weak." Sam rakes his hair back and turns to face his brother, elbow on the bar, desperately trying to get Dean to listen to him. "I can do this, Dean. We can do this. Look, I know it sounds crazy. But this is the only way things change. And it wouldn't be just you. Your name would be on the lawsuit, but we'd do it class action with as many other effected Omegas as we could find. I'd get your testimony down, and keep you out of it as much as I can until we reached the deciding court. Something like this, it'd be years before you needed to go back in. You might never have to, and if you did you wouldn't be alone. Just. . . give me a chance to tell you about it."

Dean finishes his beer with his brother at his elbow, and checks his watch again after a few more minutes before pushing out of his chair. Sam immediately pops out of his own seat and drops cash on the bar to cover them, waiting to see what his brother's going to say. "I still think you're nuts."

Drumming his fingertips against the counter as he decides, Dean snatches up the pen, uncaps it with his teeth, and scrawls his signature along the bottom of the Emancipation papers, pushing it back to Sam with his fingertips.

His tenuous largely metaphorical freedom on a piece of paper that's going to be contested the second it leaves this hotel.

"Start with that." Sighing, Dean gestures back out at the lobby. "And lead the way before Cas gets back to the idea of murdering his asshole brother as some sort of penance, and talks Gabriel into giving him a ride."

Sam's smile is a lot more than Dean deserves, and he sidesteps his brother before Sam can sweep in with a hug again.

"I didn't say yes, Sam."

But he didn't say no, either.

They're waiting for the elevator when Sam bumps his arm, watching their slightly warped and blurred reflection on the doors. "We're on your side, Dean. I think. . . you need to remember that. Everyone here, we're not trying to make this harder on you."

Dean shoves his hands into his pockets, closing his eyes, nodding. "Yeah, Sammy. I know. It's just. . ."

Everything is fucking with his head. Knowing that Crowley is there, what he's going to say about Dean, what it's going to make people think. What it makes Dean think about himself, all screwed up as he trieds to find the balance between what he is with Cas and what people are going to assume he is with Cas and where the line is if they're blurring it now. And now it's the idea of facing that nationwide, opening him up to that on a massive stage.

He's lashing out at the wrong people, and it's fucked up, and he knows it.

"I know."

xXx

Cas can't meet his eyes when he walks back into the room. Around him, there's some bustling. Gabriel's clearly gone back to his room and grabbed his wallet and keys. Charlie's zipping up her laptop bag and swept her hair back into a ponytail, and it looks like she may have taken the time to put some makeup on as well. Both of them look like they were just talking, though, unsuccessfully trying to drag Castiel into it as well.

Cas is sitting exactly where Dean left him, shoulders slumped, lips chalky, staring at the pattern of the carpet beneath his shoes. Like he shut off when Dean walked away, or when Sam drew the straw for going to get Dean himself. Cas looked pretty torn up when he realized Lucifer was involved, but this takes it to a new level. Sam looks from his brother to Cas and back, silently pleading with him to fix this for both their sakes.

The look Gabriel shoots Dean is nothing short of threatening. But he doesn't need their involvement to know he lost his temper. Cas looks like he was just dumped in front of his family. Or like someone just died.

He settles beside Cas on the bed, close enough that they're a line of loosely connected points—shoulder to knee to the sides of their shoes-resting his hand palm-up, loose and open on Cas's knee, and invitation rather than presuming he should go grabbing his hand and holding on. Seconds later Cas's fingers twine through his, and he lets out a slow, shuddering breath, leaning heavily into Dean's side.

"We going out?" The question is for the room at large, but he aims it at Cas.

"Ellen called while you were downstairs and not answering your phone. She was very. . . persuasive." Cas mutters, looking flustered as color creeps back into his face. "And insisted that if we were having any planning sessions that she was going to be involved. Charlie indicted that Ash's assistance in particular might be helpful, and. . ."

Gabriel slaps Cas on the shoulder, leaning around him to look at Dean and cut him off, his voice one of forced levity even if his eyes haven't softened in how he's glaring at Dean. "Cas folded in ten seconds because your 'mom' terrifies him."

"Pretty much exactly what happened." Charlie pipes in to confirm from farther in the room.

". . . and Red jumped all over the idea because she spent last night drooling over lil sister at the bar." Gabriel finishes, jerking his thumb at Charlie, who sticks her tongue out at him maturely, before trying to look innocently at Dean and Sam. Dean's the reason all of this feels a little strained, but everyone is trying to smooth over what happened.

". . . Jo had knives! She was cutting up fruit for my drinks, all hot and strangely violent, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was, like, my first full on girl-on-girl fantasy growing up, and Jo has . . ."

"Oversharing!" Sam cuts her off like an objection thrown out in the courtroom as he tucks the Emancipation papers into his briefcase. He really, really would prefer not to hear about Charlie's sexual fantasies now incorporating Jo.

Dean takes a breath, squeezes Cas's hand, and draws him to his feet. He has to do his part to fix this with all of them, since he's the one screwing things up.

As Charlie steps past them toward the door, Dean leans toward her and lowers his voice conspiratorially. "I always kinda thought Buffy was probably secretly an Alpha."

Charlie's sudden smile is radiant, surprised, gratified. It had been the adolescent fantasy of a lonely, out of place orphan, now validated by a friend who figured out what it probably meant to her. Why she looked to Buffy, instead of their own geeky red-headed computer geek, as her idol. "I know, right!"

"Pft. Xander was an Omega." Dean and Charlie turn towards Gabriel, where he holds the door open for them to pass, eavesdropping openly. "Everything tried to sleep with him, then eat him. It was obvious."

"Gee, thanks asshole." Dean shoots back at him, earning him a smug smirk and a wink from Gabriel. As the three others head down the hall, he can hear Charlie starting up the debates with Gabriel.

"So what's your take on Spike? I always thought he was trying to show us something with the thing with his mother, then how dependent he was on Drusilla and then Buffy..."

He grimaces as they murder pop culture, but turns back to Cas.

He tries not to be too conscious of the group just down the hall, Gabriel jabbing the button again as if it'll hurry up the doors opening, chattering to drown out their conversation, as Cas finally sighs. "I'm sorry, Dean. I didn't mean . . ."

"Yeah, I know. It wasn't... I'm being a dick, Cas." Dean interrupts, shaking his head. No, he can't just shove it all away, that won't fix it either. "You didn't mean anything by it. And I didn't mean what I said, I was just pissed and I went too far, and I..." Dean laughs, once, bitter and broken, and Castiel lifts his eyes from their linked hands, searching Dean's face. "I suck at this, Cas. Help me out here."

"Just tell me what you need." Cas's voice is low and resonate, and behind them in the hall the elevator dings like a frikkin' timer for just when to interrupt difficult conversations, drawing a frustrated groan out of Dean.

"We'll go on ahead." Sam calls, because his brother is a saint and deserves to be carved into statues and monuments. "We won't... We won't talk without you," he continues, because his brother also doesn't know how to shut up and let something go without making it more awkward.

"You could just get a room. I hear a little 'matress pounding' can do wonders." Gabriel adds with an eyebrow waggle as the elevator doors slide shut in front of him-because Cas's brother is the devil in disguise as a 5'5" pain in the ass, and Dean doesn't care who was named after what angel in their stupid pretentious family.

Just as Cas is deciding that if he does ever marry Dean how he wants to, he's not inviting Gabriel, Dean grabs Cas by the shirt collar, hauls him in, and kisses him.

(Come to think of it, he might make Gabriel his best man.)

They can't just bury this under their sexual tension, and both of them know that. It doesn't mean closing the distance between them isn't pretty much exactly what they needed.

Cas leans against the closed hotel door behind them, their hands still linked, Cas raising his free one to rest on Dean's hip, the slight pain of it over the bruise a clear reminder of their morning activities.

Dean isn't looking for that ferocity again right now, that passion, but he'd sure as hell would love to get ahold of that peace and quiet that came after. So he kisses Cas like he can soothe away that rejected, devastated expression from their memories. Like he can get them back there with the proper application of lips and tongues, fingertips to Cas's cheek.

It's sappy. And he swore he wasn't going to be the sappy one. But he never really planned to be the one would could turn a pissed-off rant into emotionally scarring comparisons, either.

This is proof that he didn't mean it, because he's just going to fuck up again if he keeps trying to say it instead.

Cas, contrary fucker that he is, is the one to bring it right back to words. He needs to hear this, needs to know what to do to fix them. He rests his forehead against Dean's, eyes closed, voice hoarse as he pulls them back to their conversation. "Tell me what you need, Dean."

"Just. . . we need to calm the fuck down and start thinking again, Cas. Because I have no idea what the hell we're getting into here, and I need you to. . ." He just needs Cas to have his head in the game, too. He needs Cas to not make it worse, not to get pissed off at the wrong things. They're feeding each other's anger and frustration, making each other worse. He needs Cas to have his back in this, whatever the hell 'this' is.

He just needs Cas in general. And that's pretty terrifying in itself, now that he realizes it.

Cas is searching his face, looking for the end of that sentence, and seems to read the rest of it in Dean's expression. He lets the tension bleed out of himself slowly, forcing himself to put aside what just happened, and get a lid on his temper. Dean presses another kiss to his forehead, and pulls him away from the door, dropping their hands so they're not wandering the halls skipping and holding hands like he's a besotted teenaged girl or something.

"C'mon. Let's go see what the rest of the Scoobies are up to."

"...What does a cartoon dog have to do with your family and mine?" Castiel's face has scrunched up in confusion, his head cocking to the side as he falls into step beside Dean.

"How the hell are you and Gabriel even related?" Cas raises and drops his shoulders in an awkward shrug, still faintly puzzled.

"Yeah. We're going to sit down and fix your TV watching habits someday soon." Neither of them has any objection to the idea of curling up in bed watching TV all day someday, feeding each other popcorn. Probably his best plan in years. For now, though, they've got something else to tackle. "So. Wanna go piss off the establishment with me?"

"I hear I'm relatively good at that." Castiel's self-deprecating deadpan is familiar, comforting, and just what Dean needed to hear. Cas is sticking with him even if he decides to go through with whatever inevitably stupid plan he and his family cook up.

They're both trying to make this work. So it's going to work.

Because stubbornness is a trait they both definitely have in common.