Boy, don't you worry, you'll find yourself.
Follow your heart, and nothing else.
You can do this if you try.
All that I want for you my son, is to be satisfied.
- "Simple Man," Lynyrd Skynyrd
It's 1:52 AM and someone's banging on the frikkin' door.
Dean lurches awake, dragged out of his nightmares in a jolt, clammy and shaken and staring off into the oppressive dark of his room in the dead of night as if he's expecting the shadows to move. It takes a moment for gloom to resolve into familiar shapes, for the soft sound of Cas's breathing and the warmth of the bed to anchor him, and it takes a moment after that for the banging to repeat and clue him into what woke him up.
Dean's first thought is for Castiel and the kids, but Cas is dead to the world with exhaustion and pain medication, and the kids are securely tucked in their cribs. Dean doesn't know that anything short of ringing the doorbell would stir any of them yet. At least whatever asshole is at the door isn't leaning on the bell.
Not that someone banging on the door at nearly 2AM is a good sign either way. Dean weighs his options as he carefully slips out of the bed, standing indecisively in the middle of the room for a moment. Nothing feels safe right now. Not after Castiel nearly dying. There are arrest records and nosey news sites that tell the world where they live, there are 'traditionalist' websites calling for Dean's head and talking about him like he's some kind of abomination against God because they disagree with the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling. The pendulum swing of extremism means last he heard, there were even some assholes talking about 'retraining' people like Dean to know their place again. They don't say it, but Dean knows that means collars and rape and abuse, and while right now culture seems to be catching on, while Dean can feel the majority slowly shifting, it only takes one bigoted asshole to ruin someone's life. Hell, someone literally hired a gunman to kill them, and there's banging on his door at 2AM the day he manages to get his family home again after nearly losing everything.
He reminds himself of the old cliché as he finds his direction and prowls across the room: it's not paranoid if someone's trying to kill him.
He's halfway to the closet and pulling down the old sawed-off shotgun Bobby gave him years back from its locked case on the topmost shelf of their closet, when his phone lights up and buzzes on the nightstand. He looks back at it suspiciously as it continues to buzz, but finishes spinning the lock on the case, pulling the weapon out and loading it with shells before padding back over to the phone as it goes silent again.
With a look at the dark smudge of Castiel still sleeping, hand outflung on the bed where Dean should be, he eases out of the room before jabbing the button, hidden in the hall from all windows so the light doesn't give a target for a gunman.
Missed Call: Blocked Number – 1:48 AM
Missed Call: Blocked Number – 1:55 AM
No, that's not suspicious at all.
There's a thud against the front door again, too heavy to be a knock, and Dean pockets the phone, raising the gun and walking silently on bare feet. He can see a shadow on the front porch, someone leaning against the door, but can't get a good view of them through the frosted glass pane inset beside the door and he's not going to line himself up with the peephole just so they can take a shot at him.
John Winchester's boys were raised to have more guts than sense. It's the only excuse he has for not just calling Jody and having her send a deputy by. For not shaking Cas awake, injuries be damned. If someone's trying to kill Dean, Dean's ready to do something about it.
Gabriel literally falls inside when Dean slams the door open, eyes wide in the porch light as he hits the carpet, Dean staring down the barrel of the shotgun at him. Long sandy hair awry, hands above his head, Dean's brother-in-law blinks as if this is a complete surprise somehow.
"Whoa there, Tex, don't shoot!"
Dean bites back a sharp curse, stepping back and raising the gun to check the front porch instead out of paranoid habit, as Gabriel rolls to his side to grab a duffle bag from beside the door on the porch. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Says the guy pointing a gun at his favorite in-law!" Gabriel grumbles as he pushes himself to his feet, passing a hand over his hair to try and arrange it again neatly. "If you'd answered your phone you could have…"
"A blocked number, Gabe? Trying to knock the door down at 2AM? What the fuck…" Gabriel has the nerve to slap a hand over Dean's mouth, cutting him off, and Dean glowers down at him until Gabe steps back, holding his hands up again as if Dean's going to start shooting after all.
"Burner phone. But let's not wake Cassie up, okay? Can you close the door before the cops cruise by again…?"
Dean glares at Gabe and glances out the door again to confirm that there's no car parked in their drive, no sign that they have a visitor. Gabe either took a cab or bribed someone to drive him or walked from the bus station. The fleeting urge to drop Gabe out on his ass is petty, and frankly he wouldn't. Gabriel has grown on Dean despite himself. So he invites Gabriel in, locking the door and throwing the deadbolt again behind him, and holds up a silencing hand at Gabe before he can start talking, carefully stepping into the hall to close the door to the bedroom so they don't disturb Cas before returning to him.
"If I turn the light on is this gonna throw off your whole secret agent crap?" Gabe shrugs sheepishly in answer, the motion barely visible in the dim porch light, and Dean rolls his eyes and pads towards the back of the house in the dark instead, Gabriel falling in behind him. He draws the curtains and shades closed in the guest room that doubles as Cas's office before flicking on the lamp, secure in the notion that the blackout curtains that let Cas look at X-Rays and medical records on his screen easier will keep them from being seen from the street.
In the light, Gabriel looks terrible. Exhausted, bags under his eyes, skin pale and hair in disarray, he immediately drops the bag beside him and flops down on the guest bed, throwing an arm over his eyes. "Mind if I crash here for a few days?"
"Do I ever?" Dean counters slowly, eyes narrowing as he takes in Gabe's demeanor. Something is seriously wrong. "Mind telling me what kind of crap you're bringing down on us?" May as well cut to the chase. He's not going to kick Gabe to the curb no matter what's happening, but coming here like this makes whatever Gabe's problem is Dean's problem. Which is fine. They're probably as close as they're ever going to get after the shared crucible of Castiel's near death. They're family now, much as Bobby, Ellen or Jo are, which means Gabe's problems are Dean's problems. But he'd like to know what his brother-in-law has gotten them into.
"Nothing much. My big brother tried to have you offed, and almost got my younger brother killed, so I just torpedoed the family fortune, sold out the fam, and dumped every dirty deal I could find in the lap of that reporter I was having heckle Luci for you..." Gabriel's being deliberately blasé about this, but it doesn't stop Dean from staring at him as Gabe continues as if he's not discussing tearing apart his family, as if his family trying to murder each other was a mild inconvenience. For once, he can't sell his indifference. "...and I just got back from warning Balthazar in Europe so he could square away his own cash and figure out how to make sure they can't get into the Swiss banks and crap, and if you're down for it, I'm gonna steal your guest room until Michael or Luci figures out what I did. If you wanna pretend I've been here watching your house the past couple of days, though, I wouldn't say no to an alibi if it comes up."
An alibi? There's more to this than Gabriel is letting on.
"What did you do…?"
It's probably easy for people to underestimate Gabriel: the runt of the litter, the runaway, the smartass, the class clown. Dean stopped believing that in Kansas, when he watched Gabe deliver a sincere and terrifying threat with a smile and a quip, when he threw himself wholeheartedly into Dean's revolution despite its meaning he'd go head to head with his family. He was cracking jokes at the hospital, too, but he was furious that someone shot Cas. Dean thinks he knows his answer already. He was there when Gabriel armed himself with all the information he needed, after all, and while he noted Gabriel's disappearance the last couple of days to 'take care of a few things,' he was too preoccupied with getting Cas back on his feet to let himself wonder.
The question is, does he want to know what Gabe's done, instead of suspect?
"...Dean? Why are you awake?" Castiel blinks blearily at them from the hallway, shielding himself from the light with his hand until his eyes adjust, and then frowning at his elder brother in confusion once he can focus his gaze. "Gabriel?"
Standing in the hall with his shoulder braced against the door frame to stay upright, boxers low around his hips to keep them from irritating the surgical incision, it's probably the first time Gabriel has seen all of the damage to Castiel for himself. When the doctors came in the room to change bandages, it was only Dean who stayed because Gabe got as much blood as he could stand just keeping the pressure on until the ambulance came. He's never been confronted with all of the proof. While Gabe saw the deep lines and circles of exhaustion that ring Cas's eyes, the unkempt beard painting Cas's jaw, this is the first time he's seeing the reddened slash and dark lines that march down Castiel's skin, stark black staples holding the flesh together uncovered because Castiel is stubbornly convinced that he is his own doctor and wanted to let them 'breathe.' The puckered gunshot wounds to either side are still ringed in sickly purple and brown bruises, imperfect halos around them. They'll heal, but never fade fully: these injuries will become lines and starbursts of scar tissue, evidence that only a few of his own brothers cared if Cas lived or died, and that at least one was willing to destroy Cas to save a fortune and a reputation. Castiel being widowed or murdered would have been acceptable collateral damage, and Castiel is going to carry the evidence of that for the rest of his life, etched into his skin.
What did Gabe do?
"Nothing they didn't deserve." Gabriel replies flatly to Dean, waving them out, well hidden behind the animated mask again between one moment and the next. "Put him back in bed, he's pitiful. Don't look at me like that, Cassie, you know it's true."
"But why do you have the shotgun, and when did...?" Cas may be the undisputed genius of the three of them, but exhaustion has always made his processing speed a little sluggish, and he's still stuck on the unexpected visitor. Dean hooks his free arm around Castiel, hand pressed against his hip, a human crutch again because Cas is supposed to be on bed rest, the idiot, and nods to his brother-in-law.
"Later. Thanks for watching the house 'til we got back, Gabe." Confusing as it might be for Cas without the context, it's a promise from Dean: they'll have Gabe's back. "C'mon, grumpy, back to bed. We'll all talk in the morning."
"Afternoon." Gabriel corrects, flicking off the lamp and face-planting on the bed. "I'm not moving until at least noon."
It should bother Dean that it was Lucifer, he muses as he gives Cas a steadying hand to brace off of while lowering himself back into bed. He just can't pretend to be surprised by it. He thinks they all knew though they wouldn't say, for Cas's sake, who decided killing Dean was the key to dismantling the civil rights movement.
Dean moves to step back from the bed, ready to go lock the gun back up, when Cas stops him with a hand on his wrist. "Dean. . ." There are layers to Cas's hesitation as he makes Dean's name a question, reveals his fear and worry for his brother, and Dean catches Cas's hand briefly in return, squeezing his fingers.
Even with Ellen and Jo planning their own return to Kansas around helping get them and the twins back to South Dakota, the travel through airports yesterday left Cas pale and shaking until Ellen badgered him into just getting into the damned airline provided wheelchair and stop pushing himself, pulling the maternal voice on him until he acquiesced. Cas shouldn't be moving around so much, given he's still got a half-healed incision through his abdomen and internal organs being held together by mesh and thread. He did too much yesterday already and is still wiped: he needs to sleep, not to spend all night worrying about something he can't change.
"Whatever is going on, we'll deal with it in the morning. Okay?" Dean knows his husband better than to believe that's the end of it, and he is unsurprised to find that when he comes back from locking the gun up again Castiel's squinting at his phone, illuminated by the glow of the screen to show a furrowed brow and wounded eyes. Sighing, Dean slips into bed beside him, propping the spare pillow between them to protect Cas's stitches, anticipating Cas turning into him, tangling around him and pillowing his head on Dean's chest like they're just sitting down to watch TV together, or read. Tilting, cheek to the crown of Cas's head, Dean can just barely make out the news story he's quickly scrolling.
The hitman who nearly killed Castiel was stabbed in jail and bled out before the guards could get there. Lucifer is named in the first paragraph as the likely culprit both in hiring him to kill Dean and in trying to make sure he could never testify to that fact by paying an inmate, who flipped on his supposed benefactor to make a deal. The same photo that once was pinned to the crime wall of the garage apartment in Kansas is embedded in the story, Lucifer's icy blue eyes unaffected by his false, professional smile. Castiel freezes over the picture, as if he's trying to understand his brother from it, a man who helped raise him. After a beat, Dean carefully pulls the phone from his hand, turns it off, and sets it on the nightstand.
Even curled up like this, Cas is tense as if he's considering standing up, going to see his brother and confronting him about what they've just read. Dean's just drawn the breath to talk Cas down, when his hoarse voice rasps out in the dark.
"I have nightmares where I wasn't fast enough. I can't wake up from them, like this…" Cas scornfully sweeps a hand at himself, as if to indicate the prescription drugs meant to help his pain and keep him asleep through the night, that he feels slowing him down. "It just keeps going. I watch you die, over and over in the same dream, and I can't..."
The breath rushes out of Cas, his jaw tightening as he forces himself to silence, fingers pressing tighter into Dean's side while he evens out his breathing, and even now his self-restraint is impressive to watch.
Dean understands. Better than he wishes he did. This week marks the anniversary again of John dying in the hospital after drunk driving, the day Dean's life took a strange turn in large part thanks to the Alpha currently taking up the center of the bed and half of Dean's half of it. Because the date was looming large in his mind, Dean's nightmares have muddled hospital stays together. In his mind the hospital is John and Castiel and a dumb victimized kid. In his dreams since the Supreme Court ruling, the world is gunshots, shattered bone, screeching metal crumbling around him, the shrill alert of flat-lining, the choking scent of smoke stinging his eyes and his mother's charred flesh making him retch, the hopeless feeling of being broken and battered in a hospital ward, or strapped to a table and kept as less than human, a thing. He wakes with the bone-deep sense of loss in becoming an orphan, the self-loathing of becoming a victim, and the fresh, mind numbing terror of becoming a widower. Nightmares he knows.
Once it would have shaken him to know just how much Cas has wrapped up in him, to know that the image that haunts him in his sleep is just Dean, dead. Now they're in the same boat, though Dean's head may be a little more screwed up. He gets why it takes Cas a few moments to find the rest of his sentence, patient for now as he puts aside his own pain to focus on his brother's.
". . . but I never would've wanted Gabriel to become a murderer. Not for me."
"We don't know that he…"
"He did." Castiel cuts off Dean's objection, but it was halfhearted at best. No matter what that article says, no matter that the Winchesters haven't officially been told of Gabriel's involvement, the proof of what really happened is crashed in their guest bedroom. It's Gabriel's sense of ironic justice: using his brother's dirty money to arrange the jailhouse death of the man Lucifer hired to kill them, and making that what will ultimately ensure Lucifer lands in jail, while taking away the money he used to pay for their murder so that he can't just buy his way back out.
"We won. We could have won again in court. He didn't have to do… this."
Dean stares up into the darkness of the room, hand unconsciously rubbing Cas's shoulder, and tries to clear his head by focusing for a moment on the muffled ring of the wind chimes on the back porch. They're soothing, surprisingly deep-voiced for chimes, like church bells in miniature, because Dean's a sucker for things that make Cas smile, and he saw Castiel listening to them as he stood in the garden center of the home improvement store while Dean was getting their appliances the week they bought the house. Dean went back for them later because Cas deserves his church bells and Dean likes the stupid sentimental look he gets when he's nesting enough for both of them. Now it's another sign that they're back: Dean has him back in their room, alive, and Cas is going to grow old with him in this house, sitting on the porch listening to those chimes, grilling burger with Sam and Jess, all of them watching their kids play in the yard. Dean makes himself focus on that image as he answers slowly, calm as he can be because he knows now that as Castiel reacts to his Omega mate's emotional state more than he realizes. Was a time he'd have hated that, but it's part of them now, comfort from touch and pheromones, and he'll use it if he has to. He can't… he won't… let Castiel get as worked up as Dean is over what he has to say.
It's not the first time Dean's used this 'mate' thing they have between them to sooth Castiel, but it's the hardest he can remember having to work at it, to keep himself focused on calm and love and family, tangling Cas up in it with him to keep him safe. To keep Dean insulated, too, from what he has to explain.
"Until Gabe tells us otherwise, if he tells us otherwise, all you got's a hunch. He may never admit it, 'cause then we're on the hook same as him." That was a hard won lesson, and no matter how well he rationalizes it now it still hurts Dean that John never told him that he killed Alastair. He can see where Castiel feels he needs to know. "But even if he did do it… You didn't see how it went down, Cas…"
"You were bleeding out. Gabe and I were trying to keep pressure on, but you died. You and Gabe were there laughing one minute, you were the only person in the room who actually believed we were going to win. I was thinking how much I wanted to kiss you but there was a goddamn camera and people were everywhere… and then you were dead. I didn't even see the fucking gunman until after you were shot, and. . . ."
He doesn't have any other way to describe it: Castiel died in their arms. The doctors were able to bring him back, stitch him together, but any time he or Gabriel remembers that victory, it's going to be as the day Cas was murdered. The day they were completely useless in trying to save him. Cas may have nightmares about watching Dean die, but for Dean and Gabriel it's memories, instant-replay of Cas's death as a full-sensory experience: his life slipping between their fingers, the sound of his breath rattling to a stop as people screamed in the room, the copper tang of his blood in the air.
Gabe's never going to forget that. Dean knows he won't, either.
No matter what Castiel says, there was never any guarantee that they'd win. And there are no guarantees they'd be able to take Lucifer down without shining a light on what kind of man he is. It's not right, but their relationship was founded on the conviction that there are times when what's right and what's moral and what's legal are far from in agreement, that there are times when the wrong move is the right answer, and that there are people worth fighting, dying, and even killing for.
It's in their natures to go to extremes for the people they love. If Dean hadn't mentally and emotionally shut down in that room when Cas stopped breathing, he might have picked that gun up himself and killed the shooter before he ever made it to a jail cell. If the assassin had succeeded in putting two bullets in Dean instead, Dean's pretty sure Castiel wouldn't have needed a gun to kill the guy who shot his mate.
It's a disquieting thing to know about yourself, how quickly you could snap.
The silence isn't uncomfortable, it just is, the familiar stillness of Castiel contemplating something, turning it over in his mind and examining it from all sides as he listens to Dean's heartbeat, lulled by the warmth and the scent of him, by the longed-for familiarity of their bed. Dean can tell by the way Cas shifts in his arms when he reaches a decision, before he finds his voice again, raw and low as it gets when he's exhausted, but determined, stubborn, and ready to plead his case. "Are you alright with my brother moving in for now? I'd like to keep an eye on him. It… affects you. I don't want him to be alone."
Like Castiel was, after he watched two enemy soldiers dump the lifeless body of someone he'd sworn to protect into an unmarked grave. Like he was after he killed their captors to save the rest of his unit.
Gabriel may have done what he did for Castiel, but Cas doesn't want his brother abandoned to deal with being a killer on his own. Of all of them, Cas is the only one to know what that actually does to a person. Killing Alastair and isolating himself afterwards destroyed John, drove him farther into his hole until he drank himself to death and took two innocent people with him. Castiel shoved himself into exile and suffered for it, until Dean pulled him out of his guilt. Cas doesn't agree with what Gabriel has done, but it probably never crossed Cas's mind to turn Gabe in: he can't turn his back on his brother now. For a man with a reputation among those who don't get him for becoming an emotionless 'robot' in public, Castiel's capacity for empathy never ceases to astound Dean.
Cas just wants to save his brother. Dean can't argue with that.
Pressing a kiss to the top of Cas's head, Dean shrugs as well as he can without jostling his husband, as if he isn't stupidly in love with the way Cas's brain works sometimes, his understanding and forgiveness. "Yeah, I think we can work that out. We'll worry about it in the morning, though, Cas. Go back to sleep. The twin's'll be awake soon enough, and they've missed you."
Cas hums his agreement with the sentiment and melts back into Dean's side, the decision made and the promise of spending time with their children again in mind: how Cas ever worried he'd be anything but a doting father is completely beyond Dean. The fact that he was raised in a crèche doesn't change that he's a loveable sap underneath the stoic facade. Just putting the kids back into his head helps unknit his brow, leaves him more relaxed in Dean's arms, scruffy beard prickling against Dean's chest as he nuzzles him unconsciously. And Dean lets him be a sap, hell he encourages him, because in the privacy of their own damn house he can be a sap too, even if he's compelled to tease in order to diffuse it. "You're gonna be lucky to have a minute to yourself. Long as you have the hobo-beard, though, Mary's still gonna try pulling your chin off…"
"I'll shave in the morning." Castiel promises. Their kids have him wrapped around their little fingers.
Dean pets Cas's hair as he falls asleep, the short spurt of energy that had him up and around draining away, leaving him exhausted once more and lulled by the sense of safety and rightness he gets from Dean. Then Dean waits longer, until Cas's breathing evens out and he's snoring softly again and more likely to stay out, before carefully easing back out of the bed. He pads barefoot out of the bedroom, closing the door silently behind him to keep Castiel asleep, and makes his way through the darkened house by memory.
It's instinct to check on the twins on his way down the hall: not something born of being an Omega breeder, but because he and Cas have two tiny human beings entirely dependent on them, and goddamnit they worked hard to bring them into the world and make sure they thrived, despite Dean getting sick in the pregnancy, despite their prematurity and the related health setbacks, despite their parents' turbulent political lives. There have been too many scares already, too many nervous moments, and Dean just… he just needs to make sure, so he can sleep easier after the unsettling wake-up call.
The nursery smells like talcum powder and powdered formula, and the butter yellow glow of the bumblebee night light Castiel picked out letting Dean see the sleeping forms of his kids. Jimmy's entire fist seems to be shoved into his mouth, lips slack around his knuckles, dark tousled hair curling behind his ears the way his father's does when it's not clipped short enough. Dean ruffles that downy hair gently before checking on Mary, dragging a fingertip down her button nose, over the three barely visible freckles already adorning it, letting her curl her fingers around one of his reflexively, clutching it loosely in her fist as Dean leans over her crib to check the window latch and draw the curtains closed tighter.
Sure now that his family is safely sleeping and the baby monitor is on and ready to alert them, he closes the nursery door behind him and moves on to his intended destination.
Opening the refrigerator, Dean grabs a beer and sits down at the kitchen table across from where Gabriel has been nursing one of Dean's bottles of whisky, and is now staring sullenly at his brother-in-law for knowing he'd be there. Gabriel was damned good at selling the idea that he was going to sleep, but it takes a liar to know one. Cas may know his way around guilt, but denial and bottling your issues around a little brother is more Dean's specialty. He's spent almost all of his adult life trying to convince the people who care about him that he's fine, and then drinking alone.
"He saw the news. You gonna tell him it was you?" There's no sense beating around the bush, and to his credit Gabriel doesn't do him the disservice of pretending he doesn't know what Dean's talking about.
"I was planning on playing it by ear." Gabe shrugs, and Dean can believe that. Cas can be tough to predict sometimes, even for the people who love him most. Gabe's just destroyed any acceptance he might have been able to get with the rest of their family. Even his brothers who weren't directly part of this were relying on their family's money and prestige. Castiel's the only member of his immediate family who's broken free of it entirely, that he can count on to not turn his back because of the money: but he doesn't know if orchestrating a murder on Cas's behalf, even of a hired killer who tried to assassinate the people Cas loves, is a confession too far for the former priest.
"Don't tell him." Even in the dimness of the porch light filtering the curtains, Gabriel's flinch is obvious, face too expressive to cover it, and crap. Dean sucks at tact at the best of times, but o'dark thirty at frikkin' night on too little sleep after too long a day when he just wants to be back in bed with Cas, he really sucks at it. "No, not because he'd kick you out. He knows already and tomorrow he's still going to ask you to move in with us for a while." Gabe's head swings back up, staring at Dean in surprise, and Dean lets himself smirk, trying to relax Gabe a little. "So don't think you're hiding anything or whatever. Just don't tell him outright in case you're caught, because we both know he can't lie for shit."
Gabriel snorts softly at the truth of that, and brings the bottle to his lips. "How 'bout you…?"
"I'm damned good at lying." But that's not what Gabe's really asking. Sure Gabe can talk to Dean and Dean wouldn't spill, but chances are he won't talk to Dean and they both know it. No, what Gabe wants to know is if him being here is okay with him, too, or if it's going to be a point of contention between Dean and Cas. It's no secret that their relationship isn't exactly always smooth, even now that they're married and parents. Hell, Cas blogs about their relationship, the whole world knows they're both stubborn pains in the asses now. But even when they're at odds they're happy together, and Gabe doesn't want to screw with that by moving in and potentially pissing off his brother's mate.
"I think you're a jackass who should learn how to use a cup when he's stealing another man's liquor..." Gabriel lifts his middle finger from the bottle and drinks deeper, as if he has to prove he's still himself, though by the face he pulls after he'd probably be better off drinking something milder and sweeter than the rotgut Dean buys. "But you're family, and that may mean shit to those assholes you two grew up with, but it means something here. Stay as long as you need to get your feet back under you. Anyone asks, you're here to help out after the surgery and it was the plan all along. We probably do need help, too. May ask you to watch the twins soon for a couple days, even."
Dean doesn't get the chance to try and explain away why before Gabe waggles his eyebrows at him, the alcohol making his usual animated expressions more exaggerated, though it does nothing to make it seem less forced this time. "Try not to break my baby bro with crazy Heat sex, he's fragile." Dean's expression must give away some of his annoyance at being called on that, or Gabe must be drunker than he looks, because he cackles. "Dude, doesn't take a rocket surgeon to do the math on how long it's been since you two last disappeared, and you aren't knocked up or every Alpha in a ten block radius would know it by the smell of you without the stupid soaps you use. Don't sweat it. I'll watch the kiddos. Make myself useful while you and Cassie go horizontally tango and make more squirts to get underfoot. Just ride him gentle when…"
"Shut up, Gabriel." Dean grinds out between his teeth, pinching the bridge of his nose, and he doesn't quite regret agreeing to Gabe moving in as he does remember all the reasons why, even in a more subdued state, Gabe is a pain in the ass. Just because Gabriel is right doesn't mean he wants to talk about the fact that stress screwed his heat schedule all up because Castiel died, and has no idea when it's going to hit now. Even if he were inclined to talk about that, he wouldn't with Gabriel of all people. He figures they're more or less done if Gabe's diverting into this, and pushes himself to his feet, chucking the beer bottle towards the recycling bin.
Gabe's suddenly solemn voice snags his attention again, his mood mercurial, or maybe he's just dropping the charade again.
"I'm not going to be caught. For financial shit, maybe, but that's civil and it was my inheritance as much as theirs. But they can't pin the other stuff on me. There's nothing to link me to it. Even the money came from Luci, and the guy in jail honestly thinks it came from his lawyer, but I stiffed him the payment so he'd flip on Lucifer." Gabe pushes his hair back from his face, sharp jaw clenched, and offers a liar's smirk that belies his nonchalance while trying to prove it. "I covered my tracks, so I wouldn't bring anything down on you and Cassie. I'm not going to apologize though… I think the son of a bitch deserved it." Whether Gabriel's talking about Lucifer or the gunman is unclear, but it doesn't really matter in the end.
Lucifer has spent decades now gambling away people's lives, treating people like commodities to be traded and slaved, defending the worst of society. Those connections led him to someone who would stalk his brother's family like prey and then open fire in a crowded room. Lucifer paid for a massacre, and while Castiel stopped it, Gabriel couldn't leave loose ends like that. Even if that loose end is his family, particularly the brother who was his best friend and confidante, the one who taught him how to be underhanded, taught him how to cheat in order to win. Gabe's not drinking away his guilt, he's probably drinking away his fear and his disgust. Hell, maybe he's determined to get drunk so he doesn't think about how long he's let his family act unchecked, or maybe it's because he's on his own now. If it were Cas, Dean would know. They've gotten closer, but Dean wouldn't pretend to get everything going on in Gabe's brain.
"Also, there's cash in the duffle bag. I was going to… Shit, I don't know..." Gabe slouches back into the chair behind him, limbs sprawled under the table, bottle resting on the table in front of him like a challenge to himself to finish it. "But I'll pull my weight."
Dean watches Gabriel for a moment as the little Alpha starts to pick and peel the label off his bottle, and then ambles back to the fridge, pouring Gabe a glass of Cas's juice and taking the booze away from him, ignoring the peeved frown as he puts it on top of the fridge as if he can keep it out of Gabe's reach that way. If Gabe says he can't be linked to the jailhouse killing, Dean believes him: he's spent the past couple years now watching Lucifer's finances and predicting his moves from it, sabotaging his efforts when he tried to undermine them, all without Lucifer figuring out how it was happening well enough to stop him or prove it. Gabe is, if nothing else, a tricky bastard when he puts his mind to something. That doesn't mean he's going to be above suspicion with his family now: only four people in the world had unlimited access to their finances, and he's the only one who would have done this. He's got nowhere else to go. But Dean's not going to take money from Lucifer, any more than he did Alastair's. "You'll pull your weight, but I sure as hell ain't letting you pay our way. We get by. Put the cash towards your defense if you end up needing it, or dump it in the safe-houses if you need to stick it to the assholes more." Dean points at the glass, voice gruff, and he doesn't let himself wonder when he started acting like Gabe's big brother too despite their relative ages. "Drink up. Get some sleep. Wake me up if you hear the kids before I do."
Dean doesn't give Gabriel time to drag him back into discussion or argue about Dean and Cas keeping any of the money, but he doesn't expect he will. Clapping his brother-in-law on the shoulder, he leaves him alone with his thoughts for now, giving Gabe time to collect himself without scrutiny before facing his own overly-inquisitive, worried little brother tomorrow. He's not going to run interference for him, not against Cas, so he's going to let Gabe figure that out on his own.
Cas has moved entirely into Dean's side of the bed as if he's been chasing Dean in his sleep, and is curled around Dean's pillow, face mashed into it, when Dean slips into bed behind him. Cramming Cas's pillow under his neck, he carefully slides his arms around his husband, who sighs softly and leans back into his chest, entirely content with being the little spoon for once as long as Dean's back in the bed with him.
"Twins? Gabriel?" Cas slurs, mostly asleep and muffled with his face in Dean's pillow. Dean should have known he wouldn't get one over on Cas. He's too smart to fool and too attuned to Dean to not notice him missing. Pressing a kiss into the sensitive hollow behind his Cas's ear, Dean tucks him in closer, nudging his knees until he shifts to let Dean curl around him protectively.
"Everyone's fine for now, Cas. Get some sleep." Cas rumbles a wordless agreement and accepts Dean's assurance trustingly, fingers tangling with Dean's to pull their linked hands to his mouth, brushing a kiss over Dean's knuckles before settling their arms over the pillow clutched to his injured stomach, Cas's head rests on Dean's bicep, and his legs catch Dean's ankle, as if to anchor him there, tangled around Castiel. They're holding onto each other now and it feels like they're finally home.
Couple of years ago Dean didn't have a concept of home, not really. Not that long ago, Dean had no future, no intentions beyond survival, and even then it was just spite and stubbornness and habit that kept him going when he didn't see any possibility of happiness. Meanwhile, Castiel had no plans, no ambition beyond his own usefulness to other people, giving up having a life because he was forced to kill, and made to watch his twin brother die. They were both walking casualties of terrible circumstances, stuck in the guilt of things beyond their own control.
Life's a mess that just keeps getting messier, and even if they've put down roots it doesn't mean they've settled down. Dean's not going to pretend he's got all the answers, he just knows it's not in him to kneel and that Cas is done backing down. Even with starting a family they didn't run away, they found firm footing to stand on and made a life for themselves. It's ironic as hell to think of himself as a stable influence, but he and Cas are solid, and now they can afford to throw out a line and help other people.
Maybe it's the blind leading the blind. Maybe it's a miracle they managed to stumble their way this far. Maybe they'll fall on their faces a few more times before their story is done. Maybe things will never be simple for them. The only thing that's absolutely certain is that they gave each other a reason to get back up and keep swinging, and that they went from fighting themselves to taking on the entire damn world. No telling where that will bring them next, so Dean pulls Castiel closer, closes his eyes, and lets himself drift off to sleep.
Whatever happens, their next battle starts tomorrow. Dean plans to be ready for it.