I'm posting this as a companion piece to my 9x10 tag despite it being from the episode prior. It picks up during Dean's second conversation with Kevin about warding the storeroom. Gadreel!Sam's not the only one who was eavesdropping.

"You told me theoretically… Dean, we just painted sigils in the storeroom. What the hell?"

Shay cleared her throat sharply, startling both Hunter and Prophet. Both men turned to look as she crossed the room, expression stony and unreadable, arms crossed over her chest. She didn't stop her approach until she was barely three inches away from Dean.

The blonde Hunter took a deep, measured breath before uttering, "You guys painted sigils in the storeroom? Sigils meant to 'hobble' an angel so you can get through to the host?"

Dean nodded once, a jerky motion of his head, tongue darting out to wet his lips. Shay's facial expression didn't shift, "it'd be illogical to bring angels here just to give their hosts a pep talk, you'd just be putting us in danger, so why…" she trailed off, watching her brother's eyes guiltily dart towards the floor.

"Kevin, can you give us a moment, please? Dean and I need to have a talk." She turned to address Kevin, who stood wide eyed and silent, sensing the swell of tension rising between the twins. He nodded and immediately made himself scarce.

Shay waited until she heard his bedroom door slam shut before turning back to Dean, "I'm going to ask you this once and if you lie to me again, so help me God…" she took a deep, stabilizing breath through her nose, "is Sam possessed by an angel?"

Dean's eyes went wide and the "no" that flew from his lips came far too quickly for it to be anything but an absolute lie. The stony expression on Shay's face crumbled, giving away to incandescent rage. Her cheeks flushed red and she jabbed a finger into her brother's chest, "I know damn well Sam would never let another angel in, not after Lucifer, so please enlighten me," she sneered, "what the hell did you do? How long has he been…?" she couldn't bring herself to say the word, throat going tight and choking it off.

"Since the angels fell." Dean murmured, a shroud of shame falling over him. He suddenly became incensed, reaching out and grabbing his sister's hands tightly, "Shay, it was either this or let him die, and you know I…"

"Oh believe me, I know," she jerked away from him angrily, "dying's fine as long you're the only one doing it. I can't believe you kept this from me for months, and I didn't even see…"

"If I told you, what the hell could you have done? Zeke told me the only way he could heal Sam was if he did it from the inside, and Sam was in a damn coma, it's not like he could've said yes in the first place so I improvised."

Shay's eyes went dark and shuttered, "what do you mean by 'improvise'?" Dean began to shake his head, but Shay held out a hand to stop him, "we're not skipping past that, what does 'improvise' mean?"

"Zeke, the angel," Dean explained begrudgingly, "helped me get into Sam's head to get 'im to say yes to letting him in. When I got to him, he was making a deal with Death so we wouldn't be able to bring him back, Shay."

The blonde Hunter couldn't deny the sharp stab of pain in her heart from that revelation but pressed on with her interrogation, "so you talked him out of taking Death's offer by telling him to say yes to... 'Zeke'?"

"No, I… I left that part out."

"So when he said yes to you he had no clue he was saying yes to a damn angel?" she looked down at the floor, unable to look her twin in the eyes, "I know you do some of the most desperate, dumb and utterly selfish shit when mine or Sam's life is on the line but this is… Dean…" she shook her head, barely able to process the gravity of what she'd just found out.

"He wasn't supposed to know, Zeke was gonna stay long enough to heal himself and Sammy and then leave, neither of you were supposed to know about him being in Sam." Dean raked both hands through his hair, eyes shining with unshed tears, "believe me, I never wanted this shit for him, but I couldn't let him die, not like that."

"But now you're painting sigils on the storeroom walls so you can get through to Sam without Zeke overhearing," Shay spoke to the floor, her voice barely a whisper, "Dean, why do you need to talk to Sam without the angel hearing you? What's wrong?"

"The fucker lied to me," Dean spoke succinctly, "he told me his name was Ezekiel, but Cas called… he'd been captured by some dickbag angels and he found out that 'Ezekiel' died in the great Heavenly swan dive."

"So the angel in Sam is an impostor. Great."

"Sammy has to give him the boot ASAP; we can't trust this douche, not anymore."

"You mean you can't," Shay corrected coolly, "I had fuck-all to do with this shit. This was all—" she paused, craning her head to listen, "someone's in the kitchen."

Dean backed away a few steps, "Just… I will fix this, I swear. This'll all work out great." He paused, staring at her imploringly. Whatever he saw in his sister's face didn't seem to fill him with much hope, judging by the way his face fell a bit more before smoothing out as he screwed a mask of casual indifference into place. The Hunter turned on his heel and made a beeline for the kitchen.

Shay stood in the archway, watching Dean's retreating back numbly. For the briefest of moments she was thankful she'd never known that Sam had been possessed. Even now, despite finding out what Dean had done just moments prior, she was wracked with second-hand guilt.

Against her better judgement, Shay let herself believe that her twin could handle setting Sam back to rights and made her way down the hall to her room. She passed Kevin, who'd cautiously emerged from his room along the way. He tried to stop her, ask her what the hell was going on with Dean, but she brushed him off and kept walking, too far in her own head to even begin to explain.

If she'd had some inkling of what would happen to him in the next disastrous five minutes, she would've told him to go back in his room and ward it within an inch of its life.

I tried not to be so hard on Dean, but to be brutally honest, what he did to Sam was Not Okay. One word: T. I feel like I wrote him a little heavily on the OOC side and the dialogue's super heavy on Shay's end. I have a habit of letting Shay run her mouth and tried to compensate accordingly. It's definitely better than it could've been in that regard. I feel pretty good about this piece despite hammering it out just a couple of hours prior to posting it. Hope you guys enjoyed it.