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Dean’s passing the mattress store on his way home with his windows rolled down, which is how he ends up hearing the screaming.
It’s Apocalypse Guy, still yelling about warriors of God and fire in the sky and the end of the world. And it’s a sad sound - a slow, miserable, heartbreak of a sound. Dean rolls his windows up, but he can’t stop hearing him, even when he’s blocks and blocks away. The screaming echoes in his head, in the solid empty space of the seat next to him, loud and inhuman and terrified of a God cruel enough to burn his own children to the ground.
He knows it’s bullshit, for the most part. Still, he can’t help but Google the meteor shower when he gets home, figuring they must have some details by now.
"Meteor Shower Mystifies Scientists Across Midwest", is the first link that shows up. Dean glances over it, clicks on a different one.
He can’t find anything new, so he drums his fingers on the tabletop and thinks. He thinks so long and he is so tired from his day and his week and his world that he falls asleep, for a minute.
He does not dream; he never dreams. He has not dreamed since there was a fire and the charred, skeletal ruins of an old house two blocks from the park with the swing that had the loose seat. The day the house had died, and taken people with it. The house was never alive, but it did die, that day. It left a skeleton, it went to ashes. Like any other death. He is the only person to remember that, now. He’s written it down many times with different pens in different places, so that he doesn’t forget. It is not good to forget terrible things, even if they carry ghosts. But Dean is not afraid of ghosts. Dean has never been afraid of ghosts; he speaks to them, and they float through his walls and short out the lights when he makes jokes about them not being able to eat anymore.
Dean is startled awake by the sound of his doorbell, which is not so much a doorbell as it is a short, harsh buzz. He scrambles up and opens the door, hastily patting down his hair where he can feel it sticking out on the sides.
It’s Ruby, his neighbor across the hall. Her jaw is set. “Hi,” she says.
"Uh, hi?"
"I need your help."
"With what?"
She exhales, slowly. “My girlfriend,” she tells him. “She needs our help. It’s kind of a long story.”
Dean glances behind him, at the clock in the kitchen. He can just barely make it out from where he’s standing. “I’ve got time.” He shrugs, because he doesn’t usually get along with Ruby, but if she needs help, she needs help. Plus, her girlfriend is pretty cool.
"Good," Ruby says, briskly, and pushes past him to go sit down at his kitchen table. "Here’s the deal: her brother is in trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"You know that meteor shower?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, he was one of those meteors. Except, surprise: they weren’t meteors. They were angels. Taking, like, I don’t know. A field trip."
Dean blinks, and tries to process that. “Wait. Angels?”
"Yeah, short bus. Angels. You know. Wings, halos, the whole deal. Only a lot more terrifying. Pretty lethal.” She smirks. “And I would know. I’m dating one.”
There’s a pause. “Did you just - I’m sorry, short bus?”
"Oh my God," Ruby groans, and then she starts explaining.