Archive of Our Own

The third time that Dean gets thrown through a wall by the witch, he finds himself contemplating what it would be like to live a normal life. To have a normal office job, to wear normal work clothes like a suit and tie, to eat normal food like kale salads and acai bowls. To have a life where his main worries are about promotions and bonuses and the next holiday party. Instead of, well, bloodthirsty witches that throw him into walls and probably want to disembowel or sacrifice him.

Then he gets up, because he really doesn’t want to be disemboweled or sacrificed today.

“Is that all you got?” Dean taunts the witch. “Cuz I gotta admit, I’ve seen better stunts from Looney Tunes.”

The witch shrieks at him. It’s so shrilly that it actually hurts his ears a little, but at least it means Dean has forewarning to dodge the next blast of magic so he doesn’t get hurtled through yet another wall.

“Aw, is someone mad that I ruined their ritual?” Dean says. “Sucks to suck, sister. Next time don’t be so obvious about – hey! I’m trying to be helpful here! You should be grateful!”

The witch, of course, is the exact opposite of grateful. She throws yet another chair at him.

“Well, if that’s what I’m going to get for being nice, I guess I should give up on it,” Dean sighs. He steadies his hand and aims his gun – not for the witch, because he learned the hard way that she has some sort of magical spell that sends bullets ricocheting all over, but for the giant chandelier she’s conveniently standing under. It looks about as ancient as everything else in this old house the coven had claimed, which also means that it’s barely holding together and therefore an extreme danger to human life.

Or, in this case, a witch’s life.

Dean shoots –

And a blast of fire and wind roars into existence between Dean and the witch. It’s like as if someone had unleashed a tornado right in the middle of the room, and the room sure reacts like it. Furniture goes flying, dust soars into the air, everyone starts coughing – and Dean’s dead-center shot goes dead-center into the tornado instead of the witch.

“Seriously?!” Dean says. “Not cool, lady!”

But for the first time, the witch isn’t paying attention to him. She turns instead of the tornado and falls to her knees, babbling in some strange language, and Dean is half-convinced she’s about to bring another tornado down upon his head when the tornado instead starts doing distinctly non-tornado like things.

Like, oh, coalescing into a circle of fire and wind and glowing.

Dean sighs. “Please tell me you’re not acting like this because you tried to conjure a tornado and massively screwed up and now we’re all about to die,” he says wearily.

On the bright side, the witch does not say this.

On the not so bright side, the glowing fire and wind circle spits out a woman. A woman wearing the same sort of robes as the witch Dean’s been trying to kill for the past ten minutes.

“Huh,” Dean says thoughtfully. “You know, I had been wondering why I only found three of you in this house but all the reports said there were four women who were wearing the creepy robes and kidnapping kids. This makes a lot more sense. Hey, new witch!” he yells. “Say hello to my favorite spell!”

Then he shoots the new witch.

Or, rather, he tries to. What actually happens is that he fires at the same time that the new witch says some weird complicated sentence and he gets thrown into a tree.

“ . . . You know, I almost preferred it when you were throwing me into walls,” Dean groans as he pushes himself upright. He also pats at his shirt, because it’s sort of on fire. “You know, if you wanted me shirtless, you only had to ask!”

The two witches glare at him from the glowing circle. The new one raises both hands and Dean braces himself for another spell – and instead she gives him two middle fingers. No translation needed for that.

“Two can play at that game,” Dean calls, and raises his gun to send them a message that also needs no translation.

That is when the circle abruptly winks out of existence like a candle that’s been snuffed, taking the witches’ glaring faces with it.

Dean holds his stance for a minute longer, just in case. But the circle does not reappear, and neither do the witches. In fact, the only thing that makes a reappearance is the patches of still-smoking fire on Dean’s shirt. Cursing, he holsters his gun and starts batting at his shirt, but between the multiple collisions with walls and the fire, there’s unfortunately not much shirt left by the time he’s done.

“First you throw dust in my face, then you throw me through walls, and now you destroy my shirt,” Dean laments. “Oh, I am going to have so much fun putting bullets in you. Uh, once I track you down again. Where did you dump me, anyways?” he asks.

To absolutely no one.

“Uh, what the hell,” Dean says, because there is no crumbling, condemned house in front of him, no neat suburban neighborhood, no city with roads and lamplights.

Instead, there is a tree.

A lot of trees, actually, and bushes and rocks. It looks like some sort of nature preserve, except Dean’s pretty damn sure that there’s no nature preserve within fifty miles of the witches’ house, much less one in their backyard. He turns around, just in case, and finds more trees and bushes and rocks.

“ . . . Right,” Dean says to himself, because clearly, finding his way back to the Impala to resupply isn’t going to be as easy as crossing the street. He pulls out his phone, which luckily has not been smashed to bits, and flips it open to open an Internet search for maps –

And the cheery No Service appears in the top right corner.

Dean scowls. “I don’t have time for this,” he says. He turns it off, wastes precious moments turning it back on, and it still has no service. “Stupid thing, I don’t even know why I upgraded you. Okay, Deano,” he says, shoving his phone back into his pocket, “guess it’s time to put those ol’ stargazing lessons to work.”

He tilts his head up and squints at the sky. To his relief, there are some stars out – not a lot, but enough that he knows more will come as the sun sets. He searches for the Little Dipper, or Orion’s Belt, or, hell, any constellation from the lessons his dad drilled into him as a kid, but none of the stars seem to line up.

Also, some of the stars are definitely not colors that stars should be. One, in fact, is so luridly green it’s like it got dipped in Grinch-dye.

Dean is squinting at the Grinch star when something hisses behind his back. It is not a friendly hiss and, on top of that, doesn’t sound like any kind of creature Dean has ever met before. Slowly, Dean carefully moves his hand to his gun. Even more slowly, he pivots on his foot to face whatever is hissing at him.

The hissing creature turns out to be possibly one of the ugliest things Dean has ever seen, and that’s saying a lot. It looks vaguely like a cockroach, except it’s about the size of an overfed raccoon, has two giant lobster claws, and has a stinger arching over its back like a scorpion.

“Whoa,” Dean says. “What kind of accident of Mother Nature made a fugly thing like you?”

As if it understands him, the cockroach-lobster-scorpion snaps its claws menacingly and hisses again.

Dean looks at his gun, which has a lot less bullets in it than he’d like for a mutant hissing monster. Then he looks back at the cockroach-lobster-scorpion, which looks like it wants to eat him. He takes a step back.

“Alright, fugly, I’m going to take a step back. If you could stay right there and just – no,” Dean says sharply, when the monster takes a step forward as well. “I said stay there – hey!”

The monster hisses and snaps its claws again. Then, because that’s just Dean’s luck, it charges.

“Aw, hell,” Dean says, and unloads his clip into it.

And Dean might be rusty on stargazing, but his aim is as top notch as the day his dad deemed him good enough to carry his own gun around. The cockroach-lobster-scorpion screeches and stumbles before it collapses into a heap of legs and chitin at Dean’s feet. It twitches a few times, hisses once more for good measure, and then dies.

It does get revenge, though, because upon its death, a positively awful stench starts radiating from it.

Dean claps a hand over his nose. “Yeesh,” he says through coughs. “Oh, man, you smell worse than Sam after a burrito dinner, I didn’t even know that was possible. And I don’t even know what you are. Hey, maybe you’re a new species – guess that means I get to name you, because I discovered you. Hmm. . . How about ‘smellobster’?”

The cockroach-lobster-scorpion does not respond.

“Yeah, maybe not. Claws-and-stinger? Scorroach? Lobscoprion? No? Fine, fine, you want a cool name, I get it. How about . . . Jefferson Starship?”

A hiss is his answer to that. Dean curses and aims his gun at the monster – but it doesn’t move.

That’s when he realizes that there is another Jefferson Starship in the distance. Specifically, it’s perched on a rock and staring at him.

“Uh oh. You had friends? Because I do not want to meet . . . them,” Dean says slowly, as two and then three and then four Jefferson Starships appear from the brush to join their friend on the rock. All of whom are bristling, all of whom have their scorpion stinger tails up and ready. “I think it’s about time for Dean to exit the stage. Uh, alone.”

The Jefferson Starships all hiss.

“That’s my cue,” Dean says, and then he bolts.

Fortunately, the Jefferson Starships give up after about ten minutes. Dean doesn’t dare look behind him, but the chorus of hissing slowly begins to get quieter and quieter until all Dean can hear is his own pounding footsteps. Once he’s had a solid few minutes of only hearing himself, then and only then does Dean risk a glance over his shoulder. Upon seeing no Jefferson Starships, he allows himself to finally slow down.

By then, the sun has fully sunk below the horizon. This means that everything looks extra creepy, with trees having long arching shadows and bushes looking jaggedly menacing in the dark.

“Not a fan of that,” Dean says. “But maybe if the moon comes out, I can finally figure out which way is north.”

He looks up into the sky. After a few minutes of searching, his eyes alight upon an object that’s larger than any of the stars, even the Grinch star. It’s bright and glowing, just like the moon should be.

Unfortunately, it is also bright purple.

Dean swallows hard. Bright purple moon, Grinch green stars, cockroach-lobster-scorpions – all of those are pointing towards a conclusion Dean really, really doesn’t want to reach. But at the same time, he had found some genuinely weird remnants from the witches when he was investigating, and they had been doing spells that he’d never seen witches cast before, and he had gotten blasted through a glowing circle of fire and wind.

In conclusion: “Ruh roh, Deano,” he tells himself. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Fortunately for Dean, Not-Kansas seems to operate by similar enough rules to Earth that Dean can sort of figure out how to survive. The trees leak orange sap, but the branches Dean finds still burn when he piles them together to make a fire. The water makes odd sounds as it ripples past in little streams, but it tastes alright and doesn’t give him stomach problems. The moon and sun definitely don’t rise and fall in a twenty four hour cycle, but they do rise and fall, so Dean is able to establish some sort of rhythm of sleeping and waking.

He even manages to cobble together a weapon. It’s the most primitive thing he’s ever wielded, but a slingshot is a slingshot and being armed makes him feel somewhat better.

He also sees a lot more weird animals. Most of them are not nearly as aggressive as the Jefferson Starships, but they’re all strange amalgamations of Earth animals. The closest that he can find to an Earth animal is some kind of lizard thing – it has five legs instead of six and a furry tail instead of a scaly one, but after some tinkering with his slingshot, he’s able to have a nice meal of fire-roasted lizard meat. It doesn’t even taste that bad.

“Turns out everything does taste like chicken,” Dean muses two lizard legs in. “Even in Not-Kansas. I’d kill for some salt, though. Or pepper. Or any seasoning, really.”

The lizard, predictably, does not answer.

Dean sighs and leans back against his tree. It’s a good tree, large and sturdy, and it’s made for a good makeshift campsite, because it’s recognizable enough for Dean to find it whenever he wanders away for food or water during the day and large enough to be a good, sheltered resting spot when he sleeps at night.

He pats at the tree trunk. “Sorry, buddy, but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to impose on you again,” he tells the tree. “But if it helps, if Tree Yelp was a thing, I’d leave you a three star rating. If you had a memory foam trunk, I’d even consider bumping it up to three and a half.”

The tree branches rustle. It’s definitely the wind, which blows pretty strong at night, but Dean chooses to interpret that as an answer.

“No, no, you’re right,” he says. “I should really factor in your, uh, protection against the wind and all that. It’s definitely an amenity, after all. How about four stars, then?”

The tree branches rustle again.

“Yeah. Four stars seems right,” Dean says. “I wouldn’t stay here again, though. Not-Kansas really isn’t a good home away from home, you know? Especially with all this damn wind.” And then, as the rustling rapidly increases and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, he says, “Or maybe it’s just my wishful thinking that it’s the wind.”

It turns out to indeed be wishful thinking. Dean finds this out when a Jefferson Starship comes soaring out of the tree to land in front of him, hissing fit to raise the dead.

“Oh, come on,” Dean groans. “Why won’t you guys leave me alone to enjoy dinner in peace?”

Because this is not the first Jefferson Starship to come after him. It’s not even the fifth. He’s starting to think they have a hive mind of some sort, because every single time he runs into one, it’s already hissing like it knows he killed one of them. And frankly he’s getting kind of tired of their vendetta.

“Listen,” Dean tells it. “How about you turn around and walk that-a-way out of here and I don’t put a bullet in your carapace, capische? And we just forget this whole embarrassing encounter where you fell out of a tree? Going once? Going twice? Going – okay, you’re not going for it,” he realizes as it raises its stinger high, and then he draws his gun and pulls back the trigger and –

It clicks.

That is when Dean has the horrible realization that his last bullet is sitting in the smoking carcass of the last Jefferson Starship he killed.

“Oh f – ”

The Jefferson Starship leaps, and Dean curses and fumbles blindly for a knife and braces for death.

But death does not come.

Lightning – blinding white, explosively loud, volcano hot – flashes. Dean flinches back; the Jefferson Starship shrieks. By the time Dean looks back, blinking away spots in his vision, the Jefferson Starship is no longer a problem.

Mostly because it’s so thoroughly cooked that steam is rising from it like a boiled lobster.

Dean stares at the barbecued Jefferson Starship for a long moment. Then he looks up to the sky – but there are no clouds above, nothing that would suggest a storm came or went. The weather in Not-Kansas has never changed, as far as Dean has seen; the days are endlessly clear and so are the nights. There hasn’t been a single drop of rain or single hint of storm. He would almost suspect magic, except he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the witches since he got sent here.

Dean says, “What the hell?”

For the first time, Dean hears actual sound from Not-Kansas. Unfortunately, the sound is screeching, so painful it makes his ears throb and so high-pitched it feels like his brain is melting.

Instinctively, he drops the slingshot and grabs for his ears. But no matter how hard he presses down, the ringing screeching cuts through. And it gets louder, and louder, and louder, until he thinks he might go mad from it. He screams until he tastes blood, hoping against hope that maybe that will make the monster go away –

And just as suddenly as it had began, the screeching ends.

Over the pounding of his racing heart, Dean gulps in desperate breaths of air. His chest feels tight, as if he’s just been suffocated; his ears feel like someone’s taken a hammer to them. Perhaps many hammers to them. For a moment, he worries that his ears have ruptured, that he’s gone deaf in a strange land with no way to fix it – but when he cautiously lowers one hand, he finds no blood on it.

“What the hell,” Dean says hoarsely, and even his own voice sounds distorted and strange in the silence after that screeching.

He risks a glance outwards and finds the ground much closer than he remembers. Sometime during his screaming, he realizes, he must have hit the ground, as if it was an earthquake instead of unholy screeching. But he sees nothing near him except his campfire and his tree and the wide expanse of Not-Kansas’s plains. Nothing that could have raised such hell.

Unfortunately, this is not reassuring. Mostly because the hairs on the back of Dean’s neck are still standing up, so he’s pretty sure whoever or whatever was screeching is still here.

Slowly and carefully, he lowers his hands from his ears, making sure to put on a great show of checking them for blood or injury. Even more slowly and carefully, he pats along the ground until he comes across his slingshot, which he palms a new rock into. And most slowly and carefully of all, he starts to sit up –

And a heavy weight lands upon his chest and pushes him down.

Dean hits the ground with a thud that rattles his very bones. It’s like the time he was hit by a truck.

If the truck had been invisible and on top of him, anyways.

“Christo,” he tries, but to no avail. Except maybe the weight gets heavier faster. With what little air he still has, he wheezes out, “Whoever, whatever you are, this – this is me saying – saying no to whatever you’re doing.”

The ground shakes beneath him. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees every pebble, dust mote, and sand particle vibrating. It’s like something out of movie. Except of course that it’s the one part in this kind of movie that he does not want to play.

“Don’t you dare put anything up my – ”

Pain erupts in his chest.

Dean goes from protesting to screaming. He’s being seared by a hot stove, he’s being thrown into the fire, he’s being cooked alive. His flesh burns, and he burns with it. This is worse than the time he got hit by a truck, worse than the time he got raked by a werewolf’s claws, worse than the time that a witch cursed him.

This is the end, a small, dazed part of him realizes. This is how he’ll die: burnt alive and screaming his lungs out in Not-Kansas.

The pain ends. Not the way Dean expects – the slow end, the dark spots in his vision and his heart bursting, where he dies and leaves a lifeless corpse in a strange land. It’s a sharp, sudden end, as if someone has thrown a switch to stop the electric chair that’s been cooking him.

As if the monster has decided against eating him.

Or, perhaps, as if the monster has decided he’s cooked enough to eat.

Dean decides to worry about that later, in favor of figuring out how cooked he is. Blearily, he raises his head. To his surprise, he finds himself still in possession of both arms and legs, with all limbs surprisingly intact and unburnt. Even his jeans are still present and accounted for. The only change is his chest, which still feels raw and tender.

And that is when Dean realizes, to his horror, that the reason his chest feels raw and tender is because there is a livid-looking raw and tender mark on it. The skin of his left pec is raised and reddened, in the shape of four teardrops and one cloud. It’s almost like he’s been branded.

“What the hell,” Dean says as he prods gingerly at the mark, because it bears repeating.

A voice, clear as the purple moon and ringing like the peal of a thousand bells and way too close for Dean’s liking, replies, “Guess again.”

Instinct has Dean on his feet with slingshot in hand in two seconds flat, despite the pain of his chest and the lingering throbbing in his ear. Ever since he’s entered Not-Kansas, no words have reached Dean’s ear in except the ones he himself has spoken. Sure, some of the animals have hissed or croaked as animals might, but none of them have ever reacted to Dean with anything above average animal intelligence. Nothing has spoken.

“Who are you?” Dean calls out, readying the slingshot and wishing his gun still had bullets.

“I’m the one who just saved you from perdition.”

Dean pivots. The voice is strange – it has an echoing quality, almost, as if the speaker is standing at a great distance, but it’s far too loud for that. Not to mention that there’s nothing for the voice to echo off of. Not-Kansas is mostly empty, flat land. But Dean learnt from the best how to target by sound, and he relies upon those instincts now to find his target and take aim –

And, well. He doesn’t falter, because he learned a long time ago that faltering is how one gets torn apart by vicious monsters.

But he does blink rapidly, because although he’s seen many monsters in Not-Kansas, he’s never seen anything like this.

This is a strange amalgamation of animals: great arching wings like that of a bird of prey and giant furred paws like that of a king of the jungle. It’s kind of similar to how every other Not-Kansas animal has been. Except, of course, that this animal has more than one head.

It has three, in fact: a bull with great horns on one side, a bird with a brilliant crest on the other, and a lion with a magnificent mane in the middle.

A lion whose mouth is open, as if it has just finished speaking.

Dean squints. On the surface, this monster being made up of many animals is par for the course for Not-Kansas. Yet he can’t quite shake the nagging feeling that this monster is not a Not-Kansas one. And not just because it’s mildly glowing.

Still, there’s no harm in trying. “Yeah,” Dean says, taking careful aim with his slingshot. “Thanks for that.”

He fires the slingshot –

And the rock . . . bounces. There’s no other word for it. It hits the bull-bird-lion thing, which doesn’t even flinch, and falls away. Which is concerning on two fronts. One, because it means Dean didn’t hurt it, even though he’s killed a few lizards dead with his slingshot.

Two, because the sound the rock made as it collided was not a sound Dean’s ever heard before. It’s almost akin to if Dean had fired at an immovable rock wall instead of a living, speaking creature.

“Who are you?” Dean demands again.

The lion mouth moves again. It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen a lion’s mouth do, but the answer that comes out is clear and intelligible.

“Castiel.”

“Gesundheit,” Dean says instinctively. “Now who are you?”

This time, the bull mouth moves. “Castiel.”

Apparently, that combination of sounds had been a name. “ . . . Oh,” Dean says. “Uh, I mean, I figured that much. I meant, what are you?”

“I’m an Angel of the Lord.”

For a full solid minute, the words simply do not compute. They enter into Dean’s brain, but they just roll around in there, bumping into cells and bone without actually making sense.

Because: “Get the hell out of here,” Dean snorts. “There’s no such thing.”

One great wing twitches. The parrot’s feathery crest ruffles, just before the parrot beak opens. “This is the problem with humans,” the parrot mouth says. “You have no faith.”

“Faith in what?” Dean starts to demand.

This time, all three heads move. Those great wings arch towards the skies as all three heads look upwards. The monster rears up onto its hind legs – and another bolt of lightning falls from the sky. It strikes behind the monster with blinding light, so bright Dean instinctively throws up a hand. But even as he blinks away the spots in his vision, he cannot deny what he saw: a figure, illuminated by light, with two limbs up top like arms and two limbs below like legs and a head adorned by light like a halo.

In other words, something that looks a lot like an angel.

“Do you have faith now?” Castiel-the-angel says through the lion mouth, and if Dean wasn’t sure gambling on an angel was a cardinal sin, he’d lay money on there being smugness in that tone.

Although back-talking – back-talking, he reasons, is probably a lot lower on the list and safer to indulge in. So Dean indulges.

“Some angel you are,” Dean says. “Creeping around all invisible and freaking out poor humans like me. What’d I do to deserve the stalker mode, huh?”

“I was invisible for your sake, not mine. My true form is overwhelming to humans,” Castiel tells him. “So is my true voice. But you already knew that.”

“I do?” Dean asks blankly.

And then he remembers: the screeching, more painful than anything he’s ever felt, more unnatural than anything he’s ever experienced. Which apparently makes it holy screeching.

“You mean the screech’n’shriek show earlier?” Dean asks. And then, when the parrot head bobs up and down: “That was you talking?”

“Yes.”

Dean looks at Castiel for a long moment. Mostly because he feels the need to gather a little courage before telling an angel what to do, but also because he tries to make a point of making eye contact with all three sets of eyes. Firmly, he says, “Buddy, take it from me: next time, lower the volume.”

One furred paw scratches a furrow into the earth. If Dean weren’t sure that angels couldn’t experience emotions, he might call the motion sheepish.

“That was my mistake,” Castiel’s bull mouth says. “Certain people, special people, can perceive my true visage without the need for intervention. I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong.”

A million questions spring into existence in Dean’s mind all at once. He chooses the least offensive to ask. “Intervention?” he asks.

“Yes. Normally, I would utilize a vessel.”

Dean’s head snaps up. The word vessel has never had good implications, and he doubts the implications get better when an angel is involved, given how Castiel has behaved so far.

“Wait, a vessel? You normally possess some poor bastard?”

Castiel’s wings twitch, as if to express irritation. “My last vessel was not a ‘poor bastard,’” he says, and the way Dean can almost hear the air quotes does not at all help his mood. “He was a devout man. He actually prayed for possession, so that he might provide assistance to the Great Work.”

“ . . . Right,” Dean says. “And the Great Work involves you being in this random place to accost me because . . . ?”

“I did not accost you. I saved you.”

“Uh-huh. Also, I totally could’ve killed that Jefferson Starship myself,” Dean informs him.

“That was not a Jefferson – ”

“Not the point! The point is, I didn’t need saving. So why’d you do it?”

Castiel’s lion head blinks calmly at him. It’s a slow blink, like how a cat might show trust, except Dean’s pretty sure it’s Castiel’s way of showing that Dean is so beneath him that Castiel can’t even be bothered to think him a threat.

“Good things do happen, Dean.”

“Right,” Dean says sarcastically. “Descending from the clouds of heaven when you haven’t set foot on Earth, as far as anyone knows, for thousands of years to save little ol’ me from a Jefferson Starship, that’s totally normal for you angels to do.”

“You do not believe in miracles?”

Dean is sure that Castiel can’t know the pain that question causes. Or at least, he damn well hopes so, otherwise putting in all his effort to breathe calmly and hide the way his heart tears itself in too is for nothing. But he’s a Winchester; he takes his pain and stands tall and smiles a cocky smile, because that’s what hunters do. And because there’s no way he’s confessing to an angel of the Lord about the fire, or his mom, or his brother, or anything else.

“Not in my experience,” he says, and even he is surprised at how calmly the words come out.

The ground crunches and Dean looks up to see Castiel walking towards him. His steps are slow and deliberate, like a predator. But Dean does not feel like he’s being hunted. Instead, he rather feels like a curious little animal on exhibit, being studied by an equally curious angel.

For the first time, he wonders whether Castiel has ever spoken to a human. And if he has, how long ago it was.

“What’s the matter?” Castiel says with his lion mouth. “You don’t think you deserve to be saved?”

An immediate no rises up out of Dean’s stomach, like bile. He swallows it down, tasting acid, and changes the subject. “Why’d you do it?”

The lion head tilts. “Because you are righteous,” Castiel says.

Dean snorts. He can’t help himself. “Nice try, but I’m not buying what you’re selling. Why’d you really save me?”

“I told you,” Castiel says, and if Dean didn’t know better, he would say the parrot head frowns. He didn’t even know parrots could frown.

“Right. Sure. Righteous. Does that come with, uh, free drinks and premium snacks up in the clouds you call home?”

“I do not understand why you doubt me.”

“I can buy the angel thing cuz of your, well,” Dean says, waving a hand at Castiel’s whole winged-furry-bull-lion-parrot shape. “But righteous? Me? Do you know how many sins I’ve committed?”

“No. But I could, if I wanted to.”

“Great, that’s just – wait. What do you mean, you could if you wanted to?”

Piercing eyes – all six of them – focus on Dean. It’s extremely unnerving. And not just because none of them blink.

“I can perceive your soul,” Castiel says.

“ . . . That was way too casual for you to just drop on me,” Dean tells him. “What do you mean, you can perceive my soul?”

“As you can perceive my visage, I can perceive your soul,” Castiel says. “Why do you think I gave you my mark?”

“What mark?” Dean asks. And then, a second later, he remembers the burning pain and glances down at his chest. To his horror, the raised and reddened mark is even more livid now. It looks like more than a simple mark; it looks like a brand.

A brand, Dean belatedly realizes, that looks an awful look like a paw.

Dean looks at those great furred paws. He looks back down at his brand. He looks at the paws again. He clears his throat.

“Did you brand me?”

“I needed a way to communicate with you. Otherwise, had I continued speaking with my true voice or had I revealed my true visage to your eyes, your eyes would have burnt out of your skull and your ears would have ruptured.”

Dean opens his mouth. Dean closes his mouth.

Dean says, “There are so many messed up things in that sentence that I can’t even begin to tell you how messed up it is.”

“What’s done is done.”

“Easy for you to say,” Dean mutters. He pokes gingerly at his brand. He’s relieved to find that there is no pain, but bringing his hand up to it reveals another problem. Namely, that on top of being way too weird to pass off as a tattoo or something, the brand is almost bigger than his hand and therefore entirely too big to hide. “You planning on taking this crap off me later?”

“I assume you are referring to when we leave this place.”

“If that’s an invitation to leave and go home, you don’t have to tell me twice,” Dean says. “You have my permission to, uh, rapture me back to Earth any time now. Like, right now, preferably.”

“That is something I cannot do.”

Dean blinks. “You’re an angel. What good are those giant wings of yours for if you can’t, I don’t know, fly us home?”

“If I could, do you think I would still be here?” Castiel says.

Which is when Dean has a horrifying realization: “Wait, do you mean to tell me that you’re trapped here too?”

“Yes.”

Dean looks at Castiel – at his giant paws that laid a brand onto Dean’s chest, at his giant wings that called down heaven’s wrath in the form of lightning, at his three animal heads that glow with eyes that don’t blink – who remains pointedly here, not flying away, not going home, not teleporting back to Earth. Not doing anything, really, except staring placidly at Dean.

“Well, that’s just great,” Dean says, and flops back down against his tree. “I have an actual angel with me and I’m still stuck. Typical.”

“You . . . are used to being trapped with one of my siblings?”

“No, I meant – You really don’t get sarcasm, huh?”

“What is sarcasm?”

“ . . . This is going to be a long night, isn’t it.”

For all of his talk about being a mighty angel of the Lord, Castiel seems pretty content to just walk around, stare unblinkingly at things, and walk around some more. Dean finds this out where he leaves his tree to hunt in the morning and Castiel comes with him.

“Uh, you don’t need to follow me, you know,” Dean tells him.

“I am aware,” Castiel says.

“Especially because I’m kinda, you know, trying to find food, and you’re scaring everything off,” Dean tries again.

“The lizards you enjoy ingesting are not bothered by my presence. They know I will not ingest them.”

“Well, you know, you’re also kinda giving me performance anxiety, so . . .”

“I have not observed any troubles in your ability to perform.”

Dean sighs. Then he marks down “subtlety” next to “sarcasm” on the list of things that apparently, angels don’t understand. How Castiel can know every language in the world but not know sarcasm is beyond Dean, but then again, it’s not like God asked his opinion when he was creating the world.

“Fine, whatever,” he mutters. “Sure, let’s play Follow Along With Dean. That definitely won’t backfire at all later.”

On the bright side, when he does find a group of lizards, it seems that Castiel is correct in his statement. Dean is sure the lizards can’t have failed to miss the sight of a giant glowing beast with wings and three heads, but the lizards – apart from eyeing him – do not run. In fact, them eyeing Castiel helps a little, because when they stand still to stare, it gives Dean a great line of sight.

“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” he tells Castiel as he loads his slingshot.

“Doing what?” Castiel asks.

“Never mind,” Dean sighs.

He tilts his head, lines up his shot, breathes –

And something swoops down from the sky, making a horrible sound that’s half croak, half shriek. The lizards immediately scatter and Dean curses. Unfortunately for Dean, that means that the monster whirls on him.

“Oh wow, you’re even fuglier than the Jefferson Starships,” Dean notes. “Why is your whole face a mouth? And why are your wings are diseased looking? And why – eugh, that is way too many teeth for one mouth. Go take your fugly gross mouth away. I said, away. No, other direction. No – Fine, have it your way.”

So saying, he fires a rock into the fugly winged worm-mouth bird. The tooth-filled maw snaps shut on the rock with an alarming crunching sound.

Even more alarming, it hops even closer to Dean rather than flying away.

“Oh come on,” Dean laments.

He shoves another rock into his slingshot and fires again. This time, his rock collides with the monster’s chest. Dean would celebrate landing a center mass hit, except that the monster croak-shrieks again and flies at Dean.

For about the twentieth time, Dean wishes his gun still had bullets.

Then he drops his slingshot and grabs the biggest rock he can find. He hurls it with all his strength at the monster. The monster dodges, but not entirely; the rock slams into one of its wings. That, apparently, is the last straw for the monster. It checks itself abruptly in midair and swoops away in the other direction.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought!” Dean crows. “That’s what you get for ruining my dinner! And don’t come back!”

A soft huff sounds next to him. Dean tenses before he remembers, oh right, he has an angel following him around.

An angel who did absolutely nothing.

“Well, thanks a lot for the angelic assistance,” Dean says, brushing off the dust and dirt as he stands up. “You know, I almost got carried off by a fugly worm-harpy-thing.”

Castiel’s lion head blinks placidly at him. “But you didn’t.”

“That’s not the – I thought angels were supposed to be guardians,” Dean grumbles. “You know, fluffy wings and halos and perching on people’s shoulders.”

Castiel’s bull head swings to him, along with those wickedly curved horns. “Do you want me to ‘perch’ on your shoulder?” Castiel asks.

Dean thinks about for approximately one second. One horrifying image of a Dean-pancake later, he hastily says, “Uh, on second thought, no to that part. But still! I thought angels were meant to – to watch over people.”

“Read the Bible.”

Dean blinks. If it were a human, he would have said it was deadpan. From Castiel, it sounds . . . genuine. As if he means it. As if it’s a truth as natural as the sky being blue and the grass being green.

“What?”

Those great wings ruffle. “Angels are warriors of God,” Castiel says. “I’m a soldier.”

Dean waves a hand at the space where the monster had been. “Oh yeah? Then why didn’t you fight? Because all your hard work in ‘saving me from perdition’ would have been wasted if I’d been turned into monster chow five seconds ago.”

“You seemed to have things well in hand,” Castiel says, sounding completely unbothered. “Even if your weapon is . . . primitive.”

“Hey!” Dean says. “Newsflash, buddy: insulting someone is not how you make friends.”

“We are not friends.”

“Well, we’re gonna need to be if we’re gonna get back home in one piece.”

“I do not believe friendship is required for that. Only cooperation.”

“Only cooperation, he says,” Dean scoffs. “Second newsflash: that’s what friends do. They cooperate. They don’t insult each other.”

The bull head snorts. The lion head wrinkles its muzzle. Castiel asks, “It was not an insult. It was a statement. Do you disagree with my statement?”

“So not the point.”

“I was under the impression that friends agree on things,” Castiel informs him. “If you truly wish to attempt friendship, I would suggest you begin with agreement with correct and factual statements.”

“Nice try, smartie pants. The, uh, correct and factual thing is that I’m out of bullets, which leaves me with, oh, what now? Oh right, my slingshot and my knife. So,” Dean says pointedly, “unless you have a better suggestion, O Most Wise of Warrior Angels, I suggest you shut your cake hole.”

“Very well.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Dean mutters, because if there’s one thing he’s learned in the night and day he’s spent with Castiel, it’s that angels are chatty. Castiel has had an opinion on every single thing Dean has done or said, and he’s never once been shy about expressing that opinion. It’s like going on a road trip with the world’s most judgmental toddler, except that Sam actually shut up every once in a while when he nodded off in the backseat while angels apparently don’t need sleep.

A gust of wind ruffles his hair, which Dean takes as a sullen response to his commentary.

Or at least, he does until he turns around and finds that Castiel is gone.

“Castiel? Uhh. Castiel! Cas!”

Silence is his only answer. It’s strange how eerie the silence is, given that Dean has spent most of his time in Not-Kansas alone. He finds himself startled to realize that he almost misses having someone, anyone, to talk to. As annoying as Castiel had been, at least he’d been a guardian against Dean entirely losing his mind.

“So much for angels watching over me, huh,” Dean mutters. “Guess it’s the Solo Dean Show again.”

He pivots on his feet and looks back at where the lizards were gathered. They’re all gone now, sadly. Dean sighs and starts moving in search of new prey. He does have some food back at his tree, but he doesn’t dare get complacent. He’d rather have leftover lizard than wake up and be forced to hunt while starving.

As he walks, he finds himself wondering about where Castiel will go. Not-Kansas has proved to be an unending stretch of plains and rocks to Dean’s eye, but perhaps from the air it looks differently. Perhaps Castiel has a better resting spot. Or maybe he’s got a place that already has plenty of food. Not that Dean’s seen Castiel eat, but who knows what angels need.

Fortunately, there are a lot of lizards in Not-Kansas. Dean manages to sight a new one pretty quickly. He crouches and lines up his shot.

And a bunch of sticks land on his head.

“Ow!” Dean yelps. And then, when the lizard promptly bolts, “Jesus fricking Christ – ”

“Please do not take the name of the Son in vain.”

Dean absolutely does not yelp a second time at Castiel’s sudden reappearance. He also absolutely does not jump. And he most certainly does not almost fall over.

“What the hell, Cas?” he demands, rubbing at his head. “What was that for?”

Castiel blinks at him. “I was following your suggestion.”

“Great, well, what part of shutting your cake hole involves throwing sticks at me?”

“That was not part of the part of the suggestion I was taking.”

“Then?”

“Your weapon is primitive and bordering on useless,” Castiel says dispassionately. “After you needlessly took offense at this statement, you suggested that I come up with a better idea. I have done so.”

Dean bites back some very choice words. Mostly because he’s seen what Castiel can do with lightning and he really likes being not barbecued. Through gritted teeth, he says, “A giant stick? That’s your idea of a better weapon?”

“It will be, once you assemble it.”

“What, am I supposed to believe this stick is a Transformer or something?” Dean demands. Although he does poke the sticks – one large and the others small – with his toe, just in case.

“What is a Transformer?”

“It’s a – oh, never mind. What is your great plan for this giant stick?”

“You are a hunter, yes?”

“Who says I am?”

Castiel’s bull head swings down, until the horns point at Dean’s waist. “You carry a cross and a flask of holy water,” he notes. “You attempted to verify that I was not a demon.”

“So? Maybe I just don’t like demons.”

“And you were pursuing the witches who opened the portal here.”

“Maybe it was by accident.”

“With blessed bullets?”

“You know, I’m starting to not like this game,” Dean says. He crosses his arms. “So what if I am a hunter? What’s it to you?”

“I assume you were trained in archaic weaponry.”

“I can’t tell if that’s meant to be an insult or a question.”

Castiel pointedly ignores him. He points one furred paw at the bundle of sticks and says, “Use the larger one to make a bow. Use the smaller ones to make arrows.”

“ . . . That’s your idea of non-primitive weaponry?”

“Hunters have wielded bows for centuries. Even into this current century.”

“Yeah, but normally, they’re crossbows. Also,” Dean points out, “normally they’re already assembled.”

“Are you incapable of assembling it?”

“With what? I don’t have a bowstring or fletching or whatever. So unless you’re gonna pull it out of your butt, I don’t see how the stick is gonna help.”

One great wing flexes. It stretches, high to the sky, before it turns and extends to Dean. For a moment, Dean is afraid that it means he’s finally crossed a line. That he’s insulted Castiel for the last time and Castiel will now fly away, abandoning him to Not-Kansas. And thinking good riddance as he does it.

But instead Castiel says, “Use my feathers for fletching.”

For a long moment, the words do not translate. They flow on the wind from Castiel’s lion mouth to Dean’s ear, but they just bounce around instead of being processed. And even when they finally do process, Dean has to rub his ear a few times, because he could almost swear that he had heard –

“I’m sorry, you want me to – to pull out your feathers?” Dean splutters.

“Yes.”

“ . . . Isn’t that a sin?”

“It is not.”

“It sure feels like it. How about I just go back to my trusty slingshot and we pretend this conversation never happened – ”

“Dean Winchester,” Castiel interrupts in a severe tone. “There are other beings here besides those lizards you ingest. Bigger and stronger and much more aggressive. Many of them would be glad to taste your flesh. You need a better weapon than your slingshot.”

Normally, Dean would concede the point. Right now, though, he’s a little distracted.

“How do you know my name?” he demands. “I never told you.”

“I read it in your soul.”

“You read – You know what,” Dean says. “I no longer have a problem with committing a sin against your wings; if you’re gonna steal stuff from me, I am totally gonna steal stuff from you. Come here, fluffy.”

Castiel’s parrot mouth squawks in displeasure, but Castiel does obligingly move closer. That great white wing ends up mere inches from Dean’s nose. Closer, he is sure, than any human has been to an angel in hundreds of years.

And, well. It’s a lot easier to speak bravado than it is to carry it out when the wing is right in his face.

Dean clears his throat. “Um, are we really sure this isn’t some kind of sin? Your boss isn’t gonna, like, smite me? If your boss even exists.” And then, when all three of Castiel’s heads look confused, he clarifies, “I mean God.”

“There is a God.”

“Wait, there is? Then where the hell has he been? Why hasn’t he lifted a holy finger and helped us poor bastards stuck down here?”

“The Lord works in – ”

“If you say ‘mysterious ways’ so help me, I will pull this feather out as painfully as I can.”

“That would, perhaps, be a valid threat,” Castiel acknowledges. “If you were not now needlessly stalling to pull my feather.”

Dean swallows hard. He looks down at that great white wing. The feathers really are magnificent – long and fluffy and gently glowing, like the rest of Castiel. And, of course, white as pure snow. It makes what Dean is about to do to them seem extra blasphemous.

“Are you really sure – ”

“Dean.”

“Fine, fine, don’t get your panties in a twist. Uh. I mean. Your furry – you know what, never mind,” Dean mutters.

As carefully as he knows how, he lays one finger on a feather. When he doesn’t immediately get struck with lightning or turned to salt, he brings the rest of his fingers to close around it. The feather is unbelievably warm yet there is a strength to them – Dean can tell that they’ll be good fletching feathers. Assuming, of course, that he can actually get them off to fletch them.

He takes a deep breath. “I’m, uh, I’m gonna count from five.”

“I do not require – ”

“Five – four – threetwoone,” Dean says in a rush, and he yanks, and –

The feather does not come.

“You will need to put in more strength than that,” Castiel observes.

Dean glares. “Are you calling me weak?”

“I am suggesting that that attempt lacked motivation. Perhaps you should think of your family. Family usually motivates humans, does it not?”

Dean thinks of a burning house, and a crying baby, and a Hold onto Sam. He thinks of an unending, relentless search, one that has burnt his father to a shell of himself and burnt Sam so badly that he left. He hasn’t seen his father in weeks. He hasn’t seen Sam since Sam abandoned them for university. He wants to hate them and yet – and yet he still wants to bring the Yellow-Eyed Demon’s head to his father. He still wants to go see Sam graduate and be anything other than a hunter.

Those are things he cannot do here, in Not-Kansas.

He takes a deep breath. He plants his feet. He grasps the feather and thinks of Sam in a graduation cap with a real, genuine smile on his face that Dean hasn’t seen for years and pulls.

This time, the feather comes free.

Surprisingly easily, actually, so Dean actually ends up flailing and landing flat on his back.

“ . . . Ow.”

“You did not need to pull quite that hard.”

“Thanks for telling me that now, Cas,” Dean grumbles. He sits up and stares at the feather in his hand. Even though it’s no longer attached to Castiel, it’s still glowing, albeit a little more faintly. Dean is sure he could no more mistake it for a common bird feather than he could mistake the Impala.

“What is ‘Cas?’”

“It’s a nickname,” Dean says. “Uh, an abbreviated version of your full name. I figured you earned it, given that I was just elbows deep in your fingers.”

“Cas,” Castiel says, rolling the letters around in his three mouths like it’s a tidbit he’s never tasted before.

“Uh, do you want me to stop? Like, is it a sin or something?”

“No, it is not. You may proceed.”

“Okay, cool. I really wasn’t looking forward to getting smote.”

“Also, you will need more feathers than that,” Castiel says. He ruffles his wing once again. “So you will need to stand up again.”

“Has anyone told you that you’re really bossy? Because you’re really bossy, Cas.”

“I was the leader of my garrison,” Castiel says.

Dean pauses. It’s the first time he’s ever heard Castiel mention anything about Heaven or the other angels. And quite honestly, at this point, he’s hungry for any information he can get, given that the entry for angels in most hunters’ journals states that they do not exist.

“Garrison?” he asks. “Is that some weird angelic-speak term for family?”

“All of the angels are my family. They are my brothers and sisters. We have stood together through every battle. And we will stand together through the Last Battle.”

“ . . . I do not like the sound of that,” Dean mutters. “Uh, so, you have brothers and sisters. Haven’t they missed you by now? Why haven’t they come looking for you?”

“It is unlikely that my superiors would have ordered an investigation into my disappearance.”

Dean blinks. On one hand, his father had told him not to go after Sam. On the other hand, Dean absolutely had said yessir and then immediately gone and looked for Sam. Just to make sure he was okay.

“And your brothers and sisters would just take that order?” Dean asks incredulously.

“We are angels of the Lord. It is our mandate to obey.”

“But if you were the leader of your garrison, then – ”

“Another leader will have been appointed to replace me,” Castiel says. “It has happened before.”

“What, you have a habit of losing angels?”

“Anael was not lost. She was killed.”

Dean freezes. Even after learning a bunch of wild new information since coming into contact with Castiel, the idea of an angel being killed is just too much. Dean cannot comprehend what could kill an angel.

Unless, of course: “Was it a demon?” he asks softly, and braces to hear the worst.

“I do not know. We were not ordered to investigate her disappearance.”

“And you just. Accepted that order?”

Castiel’s lion head turns. Its eyes meet Dean’s, steady and ancient. He says, “I am an angel of the Lord. It is my mandate to obey.”

Dean holds those ancient eyes for a long moment. He thinks he detects the faintest hint of sadness in them. It is for that hint that he says, “Not gonna lie, it sounds like your life kinda sucks, Cas.”

“I cannot tell if that is meant to be an insult or a question.”

“How about you take it as a suggestion for you to live a little? See the world. Watch some fish. Smell some flowers.”

Castiel appears to mull that over. His parrot mouth says, almost wistfully, “I do enjoy bees.”

“Okay, fine, watch some bees. My point is: I think your, uh, existence could do with a little less unquestioning obedience with a side of no doubts and a little more of finding out what you want to do.”

“I am an angel. We do not want. We are as our Father made us.”

“Well, God made me too – or so you claim, anyways – and I sure as hell have doubts and questions,” Dean says. “I figure he can handle a little from you too. Now, uh, which feather should I pull out next?”

Castiel tilts his wing until Dean’s hand brushes a few feathers. “Any of these will do,” he says. “And then when you are finished, you may move onto my whiskers.”

“Sure, sure, whatever you say, bossy – wait. Your what?”

“How else are you intending to string your bow, Dean?”

One extremely traumatizing eternity of harvesting later, Dean looks down at the bounty of his Castiel harvest and winces. It doesn’t look like much – some long whiskers, a neat pile of feathers, a handful of claws – but the fact that everything is glowing means Dean cannot forget that each and every part was pulled off of Castiel.

Dean clears his throat. “That’s the last of it, yeah?”

Castiel ruffles his wings. He seems extremely unconcerned about the fact that Dean’s just raided him like a storage locker, but maybe that’s what happens when your body parts instantly regenerate. Or maybe that’s just how angels are.

“I believe so, yes. Are you able to assemble your weapon now?”

“Yeah.” Dean rubs at the back of his head. “I’m, uh. Sorry about. You know. Yanking all your feathers out.”

“It was necessary. And they will rematerialize.”

“Not the point, Cas.”

Castiel’s bull head blows out an irritable snort. “If this is another obscure reference, then I do not understand.”

“The point is that I’m trying to be a good friend and apologize for causing you pain.”

“It would take a great deal more than that to cause me pain. I am – ”

“A multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent and indomitable hammer of holy war, yes, yes, I heard. But it can’t have been pleasant, either.”

“It was necessary.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Just accept the apology, Cas.”

“ . . . I accept your apology.”

It’s the most stilted sentence Dean’s ever heard, and that’s saying something, given the kinds of fights that used to go down between Sam and his dad. But given that Dean utterly and completely failed at mediating between them, he’ll take the minor victory with Castiel.

“Good,” Dean says. “Okay, let’s make ourselves a bow now.”

The feathers, whiskers, and claws keep glowing, which is mildly distracting, but Dean eventually gets the hang of handling them. The feathers he turns into fletching; the whiskers he winds together to make a bowstring. The claws are a little tricky, since his knife loses its edge on them when he tries to shape and sharpen then. However, he’s not Dean Winchester for nothing; he eventually finds that using one claw to shave down the others works a charm.

It’s hard work and Dean cuts himself at least five times and Castiel gives unneeded commentary for every twitch Dean makes, but the end result is worth it: a bow, light and strong, and plenty of arrows.

And luckily, even though the sun is beginning to set, some of the lizards have come back within range.

The first time Dean takes up the bow, it feels strangely heavy and ungainly. A part of it is probably that it’s a ramshackle cobbled together pile of sticks and angel body parts, but as Dean draws the arrow back, he’s unable to sense the feeling of wrongness. He shoots –

“You missed,” Castiel observes.

Dean scowls. “Yeah, I know that, thanks,” he grumbles. “The bow just – It feels wrong.”

“Have you found a flaw in its construction?”

“No, it just, I don’t know. It feels wrong.”

“Surely you have used other hastily assembled weapons before.”

“Well, yeah, but none of them were literal body parts.”

Castiel tilts his head. Actually, he tilts all three. It’s weirdly funny to see everything at an angle, bull horns and parrot crest and all; Dean would laugh if he weren’t trying really hard not to drop the bow.

“The usage of my ‘body parts’ upsets you,” Castiel says.

“Way to state the obvious, Cas,” Dean says, because it’s that or admit just how perfectly Castiel has figured him out.

“If it will assuage your anxiety,” Castiel says, “I am told that friends help each other. You needed a weapon. I have helped you. It is as ‘obvious’ as that.”

Dean stares at him. Sure, Castiel has been following him around and talking to him and helping him, but he’s never once acknowledged their status as anything other than two random beings who just happened to share the same home. If anything, Dean had thought Castiel thought him more akin to an annoying little bug. Maybe even an atom, given all of Castiel’s talk of Chrysler buildings and multidimensional wavelengths.

And yet: Castiel is openly referring to friendship.

“So, I, uh. I have your full holyship’s blessing to, ah, use this?” he says, lifting the bow.

“Yes, Dean.”

Dean blows out a long breath. He scouts for a new group of lizards and then, upon sighting one, pulls out another arrow and lifts the bow.

This time, when he takes up the bow, it no longer feels quite so heavy or ungainly. This time, it feels almost too light, too perfect. There’s an overwhelming sense of peace and clarity that settles upon him as he knocks the arrow to the string; he almost feels like his eyesight and aim are better when he targets the lizard. He shoots –

“Whoo! He shoots, he scores! Put that down as a win one for the Dean!” he whoops.

“You have scared away all the remaining lizards now.”

“Oh, come on, Cas. Let me enjoy like five seconds of victory before you rain all over my parade, okay?”

“I have not caused precipitation to fall anywhere.”

“It’s a joke, Cas.”

By then, the sun has set completely. With Castiel at his side, Dean is pretty sure that nothing would dare attack him, but he doesn’t care to test that hypothesis. He retrieves his kills and arrows and retreats back to his tree. And even though it’s the same breed of lizards, these lizards taste particularly good when Dean roasts them.

“You really do enjoy those lizards,” Castiel observes.

“Yeah, cuz they’re good,” Dean says around a mouthful of meat. “You want a bite?”

“I do not require sustenance.”

“Well, will it hurt you?”

Castiel gives the roasted lizards the most scornful look a bull, parrot, and lion can. “No.”

“Theeeeeeeeeen sounds like it’s not a problem if you do,” Dean says. He waves one roasted lizard leg at Castiel. “Come on, Cas, you know you want to.”

“I am an angel. I do not want.”

But Castiel’s lion ears remain perked and upright; his parrot eyes remain fixed on the lizard leg. Even the bull head glances at the lizard leg. Dean smirks and makes a show of patting his belly, as if full, before leaving the leg on a convenient rock.

A few moments later, the leg is gone.

“Hmm,” Castiel says.

“Good, right?”

“I am not sure if ‘good’ is the word I would use.”

“Why? What’d it taste like to you?”

“Molecules.”

“Mole – Okay, you know what, as soon as we get back to Earth, I’m dragging you to the nearest diner and you are enjoying a proper meal,” Dean threatens. “I’m talking hot dogs and burgers and – and pie! Fresh pie. And you better like it, you hear me?”

“Why? Is pie a special food to humans?”

“Is pie a special – Dude, pie is sacrosanct. Pie is life. You’ll see when we get to Earth.”

“That might take some time.”

Dean shrugs. “Not like pie’s going anywhere. And I think we’d deserve a little victory meal after surviving Not-Kansas.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. You can call it the, uh, the Winchester Gospel, if it makes you feel better about listening to me about pie.”

Castiel’s wings flutter, as if a breeze had ruffled them. It’s strange, for Castiel has remained steadfastly untouched by any elements of Not-Kansas. His paws don’t even get dusty, no matter how far they walk.

But then again, from what Dean has heard, Castiel has lived his entire who-knows-how-long life doing nothing but going yessir and no sir and how high should I fly, sir. So maybe he’s just still digesting the idea of actually doing something he wants to do for once.

A human teaching an angel. It’s enough to make Dean chuckle.

“You know, in the interest of us being friends and all that,” Dean says, “I do have to admit something. And no, this isn’t about to turn into holy confession.”

Castiel, who had lifted his three heads, puts them back down again. “What are you going to admit?”

“I was, uh, pretty skeptical about your idea, but uh. Credit where credit’s due: you were right about the bow. It’s a pretty sweet frigging bow. Good call, Cas.”

“I have not made any calls to – ”

“I mean you did good, Cas.”

“Oh,” Castiel says. “Then, to give proper credit, you performed very admirably with the bow. You took down your opponent with great skill and accuracy.”

“It was lizard, Cas, not the Tet Offensive.”

“I believe this is where you would say ‘just take the damn compliment.’”

“ . . . Touché,” Dean says, because it’s that or start squirming at the praise. After all, Castiel thinks lying is stupid and never hesitates to state the obvious. He would not say such things to try and flatter Dean. If he says it, he truly means it. And somehow, it means a lot more to Dean than he imagined it could.

It also means that Dean has no good response to it, so he goes for the tried and true escape path instead. He yawns theatrically and stretches. “Well, I’ve said my piece, so. I’m going to hit the – ”

“In the interest of us being friends,” Castiel interrupts. “Can I tell you something if you promise not to tell another soul?”

“Uhhhh,” Dean says eloquently. “Okay?”

Castiel shuffles his paws against the dust. His wings flutter. In a low voice, he says, “I’m not a . . . hammer, as you say. I have questions. I have . . . doubts.”

“Thought your kind didn’t have doubts,” Dean dares to venture.

The parrot head squawks, very softly. The bull head huffs. And the lion head – it stares at Dean with those unnerving glowing blue eyes.

“Angels,” Castiel says, very slowly, “do not.”

“Oh. Well. Uh, if it’s any comfort,” Dean says awkwardly, “humans doubt all the time. And yeah, having doubts, choosing your own course of action – it’s confusing, it’s terrifying. But if God made us like that, surely he’s cool with the whole free will thing. So . . . maybe you’re just a really human-y angel, Cas.”

“You have a strange way of thinking, Dean.”

“Hey – ”

“That was a compliment.”

“Oh. Then thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

“Aaand now I really am tired,” Dean says. “So don’t mind me, but I’m just going to go hit the hay now.”

Castiel peers at him. “I do not see any hay.”

“It’s a figure of speech, Cas. I’m gonna do human stuff now.”

“Stuff? What stuff?”

“In this case? Sleep. I just need like four hours every once in a while.”

“Very well,” Castiel says. He settles his three heads on his furred paws again. The bull head and the parrot look away to the side, as if to scan for threats, which is comforting. What’s rather less comforting is the lion head, as those two eyes remain fixed on Dean. “Then I will be watching over you.”

For a moment, Dean has the most jarring experience. He hears both his mother’s voice and Castiel’s voice all at once, layered over each other, similar but not entirely the same: Angels are watching over you.

Dean says, “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. Why don’t you, uh, get some shut eye too? All six of your eyes, in fact. Don’t angels need to rest too?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re not gonna be spending the entire night staring at me.”

“I am not staring. I am watching.”

“Do I get a veto? Because I veto that whole idea.”

Castiel flicks a wing. “You do not get a veto. Go to sleep, Dean. I will be watching over you.”

Dean grumbles and rolls over. Mostly so that he doesn’t have to keep looking at the two eyes staring at him. And then he resigns himself to very long and sleepless night, because there’s nothing more unsettling to a hunter than being watched by someone at their back. Even if that someone is an angel.

Angels are watching over you.

“Dean.”

“Mmph.”

“Dean, wake up.”

“Mmmphhh.”

Something lands on Dean’s face. It’s soft, but it’s also surprisingly heavy, like a satin pillow filled with bricks. Dean stutters and flails and throws off the weight.

Only to find himself grasping at white feathers.

“Did you just hit me with your wing?” Dean demands incredulously.

“It was time for you to awaken,” Castiel says, utterly unrepentant.

Instinct makes Dean want to snap a snarky retort – but even as he open his mouth to deliver it, he pauses. There’s something strange about Castiel. His wings are shifting; his paws are digging furrows into the ground. His parrot head and bull head are constantly moving, as if he scanning the horizon. It’s like he’s looking for a threat.

It’s like he’s expecting a threat.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“Then why do you look like Lassie about to dart into the woods, huh?”

Castiel pivots on his furred paws and bares sharp teeth at Dean. It’s the biggest reaction Dean has ever gotten out of him, and he follows it up with the most irritated tone Dean’s ever heard as well when he snaps, “I don’t understand that reference.”

Dean holds up his hands. “Whoa, cowboy, I’m not trying to pull your feathers this early. I just mean, uh. What do your angel eyes see? Or sense? Or – whatever.”

“It is Thursday.”

“ . . . Okay. Does that have some special significance?”

“You do not know?”

“No, I’m asking just to be cute. Of course I don’t know, Cas.”

Castiel flicks a wing. “Time passes differently between here and Earth, but it is Thursday on Earth. And Thursday is the day the witches open the portal to come and harvest ingredients.”

“So they’re punctual witches, what does that – wait, you mean they’ll be opening a portal now?”

“Not necessarily now. The time always changes. Sometimes morning, sometimes night. But always on a Thursday.”

Excitement surges in Dean. Not-Kansas hasn’t been all bad; it’s sort of been a nice change of pace to not have to worry about what new fake credit card to use or which cops to dodge. But Dean does still miss memory foam mattresses and Baby and pie, so he still would like to get home. And now, it seems, the possibility of getting home is almost in reach.

“Okay, so that means we need a plan,” Dean says.

Castiel dips his lion head in a nod. “Hence why it was necessary for you to awaken.”

“To that, I say, maybe you should’ve led with ‘the witches always open a portal on Thursday’ yesterday, so we could plan yesterday,” Dean says pointedly. “But fine, fine, won’t be the first time I’ve worked on a time crunch. So! Witch opens the portal and what? We jump her?”

“I am not sure of what would be achieved by you jumping on her. Nor am I sure you could achieve the height required.”

Dean levels a finger at him. “First off, I totally could jump that height and don’t you doubt it. Secondly, it was a figure of speech.”

“Do you always have to use a figure of speech when talking?”

“Uh, yeah, man. Part of being human.”

“I see,” Castiel says, in a tone that says clear as day that he absolutely does not.

Dean ignores that part. “What I mean is: we take her by surprise and then go back through the portal ourselves. Easy peasy, right?”

“I doubt it. She will no doubt attempt to use magic against us.”

“Witch magic works on angels?” Dean asks in surprise.

“How do you think I ended up here?” Castiel replies.

Dean blinks. “Uh, gonna be honest, I assumed it was some kind of, I don’t know, flying to the wrong place issue,” he says weakly, because he actually hasn’t thought about it that much.

“No. They surprised me and trapped me. I believe they were planning to harvest my power. But the might of Heaven was too great for them. When they realized that, they opened a portal and cast me through as they forced me out of my vessel.”

“Huh. But you were stronger than them?”

“I am an angel of the Lord.”

“Cas.”

“Yes,” Castiel says begrudgingly. “I am less powerful without a vessel, but a seraph will always be greater than a witch, no matter how powerful the witch.”

“So that means you can overpower the witch, right? Hell, I can even distract her, if you need an opening act.”

“Yes.”

“And then we can jump through the portal and go home. Sounds easy peasy to me.”

“Dean.”

Dean sighs. “Easy peasy is a figure of speech too,” he says wearily.

“Dean, I cannot just ‘jump’ through the portal.”

“Wait, what? Why not?” Dean demands.

“The portal the witches use only allows the passage of human bodies. It will not permit an angel like me to pass through.”

“You’re an angel, you’re strong. Can you just force your way through?”

“Only if I wished to destabilize the fabric of both this universe and our own. And assuming the portal would even survive having such power poured into it instead of simply combusting.”

“Very reassuring, Cas,” Dean says with a scowl. He rubs at his forehead. “Okay, so you can’t just bum rush the portal. What do you need in order to get through the portal?”

“I told you. Only a human body may pass through.”

“So, what, you need a human body to possess?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, I don’t know about you, buddy, but I haven’t seen any human bodies here, and I sure as hell can’t make one because I am not God, so I’m gonna need another solution here. And fast. What, no fast retort from you now? Cat got your tongue?”

And that is when he turns around to find all six of Castiel’s eyes firmly fixed on him, calm and unmoving.

The penny drops.

“Oh no. Absolutely not.”

“I require a vessel,” Castiel says softly.

“Veto! Hard veto!” Dean says. “And before you take offense or something, I’ll have you know I’ve been a Hard No on being a meatsuit for my entire life! Why can’t you possess the witch? I can even knock her out for you.”

“I cannot.”

“Why not? I’ll jump her, or hit her over the head, and then you just go whoosh in her mouth and boom! Problem solved.”

“I cannot,” Castiel says, “because I am not a demon. An angel requires consent to take a vessel.”

Dean stares at him. “You require consent?” he repeats. “What is this, a college intro to sex ed?”

“It is how we were made. A demon may possess anyone they desire. An angel must have consent. And the witch – ”

“Never will,” Dean finishes.

Castiel looks at him with those glowing blue eyes. He says, “You must say yes to me, Dean. It is the only way.”

An instant no springs up in Dean’s mouth. He’s never been possessed by a demon and he has no idea what it’s like to be possessed by an angel, but he’s pretty sure he won’t enjoy either experience. Plus he’s seen what possession does to people – demons love leaving their broken, traumatized shells behind. And that’s assuming the demons even leave; some demons, he’s heard, hold onto their humans for a long, long time, taking as much joy in dealing out pain and death to people around them as they do to the person inside. Who’s to say Castiel wouldn’t just hang onto Dean forever and ever and ever without Dean ever being able to leave?

Yet at the same time, the word does not instantly leave Dean’s mouth, either. He can’t deny he’s become somewhat fond of Castiel. He kind of owes him for the bow. And to leave Castiel stranded here seems . . . wrong.

But to let Castiel in . . .

“I don’t know if I can do that, Cas,” Dean confesses.

“It is only one word. And I would not remain within you forever and ever. You are not of my lineage; were I to stay overlong, your body would begin to degrade and my grace with it.”

“Okay, you being creepy with the mindreading is really not helping here, Cas. We can talk about the – the lineage comment later,” Dean says. And then he freezes, because, well, if he doesn’t say yes, then there won’t be a later.

There’ll be no more trading sarcastic remarks back and forth over food. There’ll be no more learning about how weird angels are. There’ll be no more opportunities for Dean to see that hilarious confused look on all three of Castiel’s faces.

There’ll be nothing, because Dean will be on Earth and Castiel will be here on Not-Kansas.

Forever.

And yet, to lose control of himself, to be subsumed by an angel, to be a passenger in his own body –

Dean shakes his head. “I can’t do it, Cas. I’m sorry, but I just can’t,” he says, and waits for the imminent rage.

Which never comes.

“Very well,” Castiel says, and he sound as calm as he always does. “Then you must prepare yourself to travel home alone.”

“ . . . What?”

Castiel tilts his lion head. “You still wish to return home, do you not?”

“Well, yeah, but given the whole, uh, no thing, I was expecting you to,” Dean waves a hand, “be mad?”

“Why would I be angry?” Castiel asks. “I do understand that it is a large request to ask of you. I could not force you to say yes. And even if I could, I would not desire to. I would not hurt you like that, Dean.”

“Oh,” Dean says weakly. It’s all he can say.

Castiel turns his lion face towards the sun. “Also, it will not harm me to remain here. I shall wait for another opportunity presents itself, or until one of my siblings finds a way to bring me home.”

Dean swallows hard. There’s nothing but acceptance in Castiel’s body and voice. Yet still, it burns him.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” he says.

“I am not. I am glad to have met you, Dean.”

“Me too. So, uh. I guess this is good-bye?”

“Good-bye?” Castiel asks. “You wish to send me away now?”

“Uh, well, it seems kinda rude to make you stick around and watch me get to go home while you don’t.”

“On the contrary. I will be greatly . . . relieved to watch you go home safely. And I will assist you in every way I can to achieve that goal.”

It is help, freely given, with no expectation of return. Dean can’t remember the last time he’s ever gotten that. How strange it is now to receive it from an angel of all things, a being he would have said didn’t exist only a week ago.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean says around the lump in his throat. “I guess you really are my guardian angel, huh?”

“If I were to perch on your shoulder, I would break your clavicle, your back, and your arm,” Castiel tells him matter-of-factly. “And shortly thereafter that your ribs, your spine, your – ”

“You know, I’m starting to think you do understand humor, you just like annoying me.”

“I am an angel. I am above such petty things.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

But Castiel does come and sit by him, and he does lay one feathery wing around Dean’s back. And Dean leans into that warm, soft weight and wishes, with all his might, that he was brave enough to say yes.

“Now, Dean,” Castiel says suddenly.

Dean springs to his feet. Even now, he can see the sparks forming in the distance. That means that just as Castiel said, the witches are opening the portal. It’s time to put their plan into action.

“Be careful,” Castiel tells him, even as he prepares to take the skies. “The witches are strong and not to be underestimated.”

“Why, Cas, I would think you cared for me,” Dean teases as he nocks an arrow. “A kiss for good luck?”

“Why would I – ”

“Figure of speech, Cas,” Dean says, but he can’t stop himself from giving one last pet to those warm, soft feathers. “Good luck, Cas.”

“Good luck, Dean.”

The portal opens with a whoosh of wind and fire. As it spins, Dean squints and prays for good luck. One witch, they can handle. Two, maybe. Three – well, three will require a lot of good luck, so he’s really hoping for not that.

To his great relief, only one witch steps through the portal. She appears blissfully unconcerned.

Dean fixes that when he shoots an arrow at her.

Unfortunately, the arrow misses her heart, because she dodges and throws up some sort of spell. But fortunately, it still lands in her shoulder, because apparently even a witch spell isn’t enough to fully deter an arrow made of angelic feathers and claws.

“Who dares?” she shrieks.

Dean pops a jaunty little salute. “Hiya, witch,” he says cheerfully.

“Why you little – !”

And that’s when Castiel lands on her from above.

For the first time, Dean truly believes he is an angel, for Castiel in attack mode is a sight to behold. He’s roaring loud enough to shake the earth; his wings are beating strong enough that the wind ruffles Dean’s hair. All three of his heads are moving and glowing. It is nothing short of terrifying.

Dean doesn’t even realize he hasn’t moved until Castiel’s lion head turns towards him and yells, “Run, Dean!”

Which is when Dean remembers, oh right, he’s supposed to be running.

So he does, dodging random rocks and spells the witch throws out. It’s not that far of a sprint to the portal, but it’s far enough that Dean genuinely starts to worry if the ruckus that Castiel and the witch are raising will cause the other witches to take notice.

By some miracle, the portal is still open by the time Dean reaches it. He puts one foot through –

And looks back, just once, to see Castiel.

Castiel is still fighting with the witch. His lion mouth and bull horns are bloody, and the witch is limping, so he must have landed a blow or two. But on the other hand, the witch is limping away, and Castiel does not appear to be following her.

That’s when Dean realizes that Castiel’s roars have changed in tone. No longer are they triumphant and wrathful. Now they are edging towards angry.

And then they turn pained.

The witch laughs and raises her one good arm, and Castiel writhes. The very ground shakes as his three heads scream in unison. His giant paws rip giant furrows into the ground. His wings beat helplessly, but he is unable to achieve flight.

And suddenly, it doesn’t matter that Dean’s never wanted to be a passenger in his body. It doesn’t matter that Dean’s vowed to never become a meatsuit. All of it – it doesn’t matter.

Castiel is in danger. And saving people is the Winchester family business.

Dean opens his mouth and says, “Yes.”

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then Castiel’s entire body starts glowing. It’s brighter than the sun – hell, it’s the brightest thing he’s ever seen. Yet Dean can’t possibly look away. The lion head arches towards the sky, the great wings expand, those giant paws flex –

And then a comet of pure light is racing towards Dean, faster than a speeding bullet, faster than a soundwave, faster than the speed of light. And way faster than any of the witch’s panicked spells and shouts.

The comet slams into Dean with the force of a tidal wave. He falls flat on his back.

On Earth.

He knows it is Earth. He knows the taste of every molecule of water; he knows the sound of every molecule of stone; he knows the feel of every molecule of air. He knows that there are two witches, one to his left and one behind. He knows that this house was built one hundred years ago and has held precisely five families, none of which stayed long. He knows the exact date this city was founded; he knows exactly how many souls are breathing in it; he knows exactly the composition of his clothes.

He knows all. And he brings ruin.

Before the witches can even recognize his presence, faster than the blink of an eye, Dean has risen. The first witch dies screaming. The second dies without even knowing she has passed. And the third dies as she comes through the portal, body burnt to a crisp and the soul sent to hell. Thus is the might of Heaven.

Then: a voice, ringing like the sound of a thousand bells. It says, I must leave you now, Dean.

But Dean resists. He does not want the voice to go. He does not want to be left alone.

The voice insists: I must go.

No, Dean says. No, no, no –

“No!” Dean yells, and startles back at the sound of his own voice, echoing in the rundown house.

He looks around, panting. Around him there are three thoroughly smoking corpses. The witches, he realizes; Castiel had killed them all. It had taken him barely a moment to do what would have taken Dean hours.

And then he’d left Dean.

“Cas!” Dean calls. “Cas! Castiel!”

There is no answer. Not even the faintest twitch of air. Castiel has kept his promise. He has not held onto Dean’s body forever. And yet, Dean is shocked to realize, he wishes Castiel had kept him. He wishes he had not been left alone.

But then, that’s Dean’s life, isn’t it? Getting left alone.

And most unfortunately, he knows how to pick himself back up.

Slowly, Dean manages to push himself to his feet. His legs are wobbly and unsteady at first, but eventually he’s able to limp and shuffle out of the rundown house. When he gets to the street, he finds that it’s nighttime, which makes it easy for Dean to slowly shuffle unnoticed towards the Impala. To his relief, she’s still exactly where he parked her, although her windshield is cluttered with tickets.

A strange, wild thought crosses his mind: he wishes he could have showed the Impala to Castiel.

“Hey, man,” a passing jogger says. “Are you . . . okay?”

“I’m fine,” Dean snaps on instinct, and then he forces himself to throw away the tickets and get moving.

Three hours later, Dean is in a bar.

Officially, it’s to get some food and gather some information for his next hunt.

Unofficially, well. It’s a good place to get really drunk after having been dumped by an angel.

“Would you like some dessert with that?” the waitress asks him.

Out of instinct, Dean pastes a smile on. “Well, if it’s as good-looking as you, I couldn’t possible pass it up,” he says. “What do you recommend, sweetheart?”

She giggles. “Apple pie. Best around these parts.”

“Consider me sold,” Dean tells her.

The apple pie is indeed very good. The pastry is flaky and buttery; the apples are perfect. Yet every time Dean takes a bite, he finds his mind turning to Castiel. Whether he’s made it home safe. Whether he’s been welcomed by his brothers and sisters. Whether he too is getting to eat or drink or do whatever it is angels do after a long mission.

He’s just about to take another bite when someone slides into the seat next to him. And from the way they’re angling their body towards him, they want to talk. Unfortunately for them, Dean isn’t in any mood to talk.

He hunches a little more over his pie and shovels another bite into his mouth. Hopefully they’ll get the message and go away. If not, well. It won’t be the first time he’s driven someone away.

Then: “Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s never heard that voice from a human mouth. But he knows that tone. He knows that spark in the air. He knows Cas.

Dean looks up and says, “What the hell?”

It is not what he intends to say. He has a thousand things he intends to say: how dare you leave me and where did you go and how dare you come back. He wants to throw a chair at Castiel and he wants to hug him tight enough to bruise an angel. He wants to punch in him the face and he wants to make him make him a burger. He wants to yell at Castiel until Castiel leaves for good and he wants to lock him in the Impala and never let him out.

But none of those things come out of his mouth, mostly because when Dean looks up, he gets an eyeful of who Castiel is wearing.

The first thing Dean notices are the eyes. They’re blue as the sky, as the ocean, as a forget-me-not flower. They’re so blue he’d call them unreal if he didn’t know an angel was lurking behind them. Then there’s the messy hair, as if Castiel has just rolled out of bed, even though angels definitely do not sleep. And then there’s the clothes, which:

“Did you raid a Men’s Warehouse?” Dean demands.

Castiel stares at him unblinkingly. It’s two eyes instead of six, but it’s so exactly like when he had been in animal form that Dean can’t stop himself from cracking a grin.

“No,” Castiel says, as he sits there in his overlong trench coat and backwards tie and three piece suit. “Why do you ask?”

Dean waves a hand at him. “Because you’re way overdressed for this bar, Cas. You look like an accountant.”

“I was under the impression that an accountant is a respectable human career. Why do you speak with such derision?”

Castiel’s confusion had already been endearing in animal form, with head tilts and parrot squawks. Now, Dean finds, it’s somehow more endearing in human form, so much so that he finds himself snickering too much to even try and answer.

The waitress chooses that moment to reappear. “Would you like anything for your friend?” she asks cheerily.

Dean opens his mouth. Castiel beats him to it.

“No. I do not require sustenance.”

The waitress’s smile gets a little fixed. But to her credit, she soldiers on. She says, “I will say we have the best burgers for miles around, if that’s more your fancy than your friend’s pie.”

“I do not ‘fancy’ anything,” Castiel says.

He peers at her with those unblinking eyes, and Dean has a half a moment to worry that Castiel sees some terrible sin on her soul and is going to bust out the smiting powers right then and there.

Then Castiel does something even worse.

“It is not your fault that your father Gene ran off,” Castiel announces in a voice like he’s delivering revelation, and with his deep voice, his words carry. “It was because he hated his job at the post office.”

The waitress’s smile vanishes faster than a ghost that’s been hit with rock salt. She gapes at him, and then Dean gets treated to seeing the entire emotional seven stages of grief at once. Well, mostly the first three, to be honest, before her face goes red and she storms off.

And if there’s one thing Dean knows, it’s when it’s time to leave.

Dean shoves the last of the pie in his mouth and throws down some cash. “We should go,” he tells Castiel, tugging on his sleeve. It’s like tugging on a mountain, but he persists, because he can see the heads turning and he does not like the looks they’re getting. “Like, now.”

Castiel, as it turns out, walks a bit like a robot, or perhaps a puppet in the hands of a puppeteer who’s never seen humans walk. He walks very stiffly and strangely, and they get even more looks as they leave. But Castiel does let Dean drag him outside. And then a block down the street, just in case.

When Dean has judged they’ve gone far enough to not get chased down and beaten up in a back alley, he looks at Castiel. “The hell did you do that for?”

Castiel frowns at him. It’s very strange seeing his expressions only on one face. Dean finds himself missing the bull and the parrot and the lion. Not to mention the giant wings.

“She wanted to know. I answered her question.”

Dean stares at him. Castiel stares back. And Dean realizes: “Oh my god, you’re serious.”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, it’s all too much for Dean. The euphoria of finally making it home and the panic over losing Castiel and the joy of finding him again and the sheer nonsense that is Castiel not understanding human interactions –

Dean bends over and loses it laughing.

Castiel crowds him like a mother hen crowds a duckling. He does not touch Dean, but Dean has the strongest feeling that if he was in animal form, those giant wings would be folded around him like a protective but very confused shield.

“Cas,” Dean wheezes through laughs, “Cas – Just for – Just for future reference, just because a human wants to know something, it does not mean they want the answer.”

“Then how am I to know when a human really wants something?”

Dean bites back another round of laughter. “Easy. When a human really wants something, we lie.”

“That does not make any – ”

And that’s it, Dean’s gone into Laughter Town again. He stumbles until he finds a wall and grabs at it for balance as he laughs himself sick into the night. It’s stupid to leave himself so vulnerable, but he can’t help it; it’s too funny hearing Castiel, an angel older than humans themselves, use the same whining upset tone as Sam had used when he was a toddler.

Besides, Castiel is there and watching over him. He knows Castiel will keep him safe.

By the time Dean’s done laughing, his stomach aches. He lets his head fall back against the wall and tries to catch his breath. Fortunately, Castiel waits until he’s mostly all right again before he speaks.

“I still do not understand why this is so amusing.”

“Whoo boy, there is no way I can explain it any better,” Dean says, wiping tears from his eyes. “Oh man. Wow. It’s been a long time since I laughed that hard. It’s been more than a long time.”

Those intense blue eyes turn on Dean. “Years,” Castiel says, in that same tone of revelation he had used on the waitress.

“ . . . Yeah,” Dean realizes, after an uncomfortable moment of silence. “Years. So, uh, who’s the meatsuit?”

“This was James Novak.”

“Do I wanna know why you say ‘was?’” Dean asks suspiciously. “I thought you said angels needed consent.”

“I did. And James gave it to me. It was his final act before he passed on. He rests now in the fields of the Lord with his family.”

Dean digests this. On one hand, it’s strange to hear about a fellow human’s death in such dry, clinical tones. On the other hand, Dean can’t deny that he’s relieved about not having to worry about Castiel dragging an unwanted passenger along for the rest of his days.

So Dean does the usual thing for when he’s conflicted: he changes the subject. And conveniently, there’s something he’s wondering about that is way less emotionally charged than a dead man using his dying act to give an angel permission to take possession of his body while he went off to Heaven.

“How did you find me, by the way?” Dean asks. “Please tell me you don’t have some kind of, like, angel GPS on me since you, you know, rode me back to Earth.”

“Angels are able to find those who pray to them,” Castiel answers.

Dean snorts. “Pray? I gave up praying a long time ago, Cas,” he says, and braces himself for a lecture on the important of prayer and faith and Heaven.

Instead, to his surprise, Castiel says, “It does not have to be a formal prayer. I could pick up on a – a longing. A yearning. A wanting.”

Dean’s throat goes drier than a desert. He coughs. “Well, you might wanna have your angel-radar checked, because the only thing I’m wanting right now is a nice greasy burger and some more apple pie,” he says.

“Dean.”

“And some fries, of course.”

“Dean.”

“And hey, maybe you can get to taste a real burger for the first time – ”

“Dean.”

“What?!” Dean snaps, swinging around to face Castiel.

This, as it turns out, is a mistake. To hear Castiel put into words what Dean had been feeling was bad enough. To turn around and look at Castiel’s blue eyes as Castiel peers into the very depths of his soul is somehow a thousand times worse.

“I found you,” Castiel says, “because you wanted me.”

A whirlwind of emotions rises up inside Dean. Annoyance, at being called out so directly. Joy, to be understood so easily. But above all, sheer terror at being so seen so clearly.

Dean pastes a smile on his face and says, “Nope.” He even makes sure to pop the p in the most annoying way he can.

Unfortunately or fortunately, Castiel is far less easily deterred than the average cop.

“You did say that when a human wants something, they lie,” Castiel notes.

“So what, you think just because of that I wanna, I don’t know, kiss you or something?”

Castiel looks at him with those unblinking, too bright, too blue angel eyes. And Dean – Dean realizes he does want to hug Castiel. He does want to feed him a burger and a pie and all the good human foods.

He does want to kiss Castiel, the one being who’s actually come back.

“I would be amendable to the act of osculation,” Castiel tells him.

That’s enough to break through Dean’s brain freeze. He scowls. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Kissing.”

“Then the hell didn’t you just say kissing?!”

“I believe I just did,” Castiel says, and there’s just the faintest edge of smugness in his tone.

So Dean kisses him. He grabs Castiel and drags him forward and kisses that stupid smugness off his stupid human face.

Castiel kisses back. And wonder of wonders: he does not kiss like an emotionless robot, or an awkward puppet, or stiff meatsuit. He’s not perfect at it – the angle is a bit off, their heads bump – but he kisses like he means it. Like he wants it.

Like he wants Dean.

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel says, once they have parted for breath. Or rather, for Dean to breathe, since Castiel doesn’t need to. “I want you.”

“I thought angels didn’t want things,” Dean jokes.

“This angel does.”

It’s Castiel’s serious voice again, a tone of revelation. That revelation settles deep into Dean’s skin, just like the brand Castiel had left on Dean’s chest. He can still feel it; he thinks if he is lucky, he’ll feel it all his days. Proof, solid and irreversible and unchangeable, that once upon a time, Dean Winchester was wanted.

“And will always be wanted,” Castiel tells him.

“Is this, uh, your way of saying you won’t leave me?” Dean asks, and he only barely bites off the again from the question.

“No. I will not leave you again,” Castiel says, because he’s still a creepy mindreading angel.

“Cool. Uh. Glad we settled that,” Dean says awkwardly, because there’s no way he can put into words just how much Castiel’s promise means to him. Luckily for him, though, Castiel is a creepy mindreading angel. “You, uh, got any room in there to also want pie?”

“I would be amendable to pie.”

A smile breaks out on Dean’s face. It is probably the widest he’s ever smiled in long time. Years, even. And for the first time, it isn’t forced.

“Then let’s get you some pie,” Dean says, throwing an arm over Castiel’s shoulders as they begin to walk down the street. “I’ve got a whole universe of pie to introduce you to. But first! We are beginning with the best kind of pie ever: apple. And I don’t want to hear anything about a serpent or a Garden of Eden or anything like that, okay?”

“You would be a terrible serpent anyways.”

“Hey!”

“That was a compliment, Dean.”

“Yeah, right. Now get in here and let’s eat some pie.”

FINIS