Okay, so wow. Um. I have no idea what this is. It started off as a tattoo idea and spiralled out of control. This is seriously AU as you'll soon find out. No slash as of yet, but I'm planning on making more chapters which will be slash. Maybe pre-slash at the most. Title is from a Fuel song, "Falls on Me". Amazing song. So yeah. Read and Review people.

Castiel's father goes missing when the boy is ten. Chuck just kneels down one day and says goodbye like he always does before he's just gone like a ghost. Castiel doesn't know what it means when his father doesn't come home; he can see the hurt and worry on his mother's face and he watches it fade from worry to anger to apathy. Once the police have investigated, they abandon the case and leave their broken family alone even more fractured than before.

Gabriel doesn't say anything about their father. Not a word. He starts smoking and drinking and generally causing chaos and disorder. Castiel doesn't judge because it's the way his brother copes. Amelia tries discipline, but her husband's disappearance has left her withered and indifferent; eventually she just ignores the principal's calls and the school just stops calling.

Castiel lets it go on for two years because he has no idea how to make it better and then he finds God. Well, he finds his mother's torn up bible lying in the bookcase and he begins to pray. He prays because the devote are blessed and he figures if he believes hard enough, then God will give him his father back.

Three more years pass and now Castiel is bitter fifteen year old that hates God. He stops praying. Instead, he goes back to watching his brother destroy himself and listening to his mother crying in her room. For a month or two, he feels as though he could live with it because he's not an optimist; he's a realist and this is his life.

Everything gets worse when Zachariah knocks on their door and invites himself in. He's a distant relative of Chuck's and heard of Amelia's awful situation. Zachariah holds her hand as she weeps and Castiel makes sure to finds Gabriel's gaze and hold it. Something is not right here.

For one, it took Zachariah five years to come out of the woodwork. Plus, the way he's looking at Amelia makes Castiel think of an old pervert. Without hearing a word, Castiel knows Gabriel agrees.

But neither of them can stop Zachariah from wooing their mother into dates and movies and kisses that have no business taking place. Not even Gabriel's pranks can deter the older man. It does, however, get Gabriel a black eye and reform school in the fall.

That's when Castiel remembers it. He digs up one of his father's old notebooks on the occult and finds the passage he forgot long ago.

The crossroads demon.

It's not something Castiel wants to resort to, but with a situation this dire, he's ready to make that sacrifice. On the surface, Zachariah seems like a saint. He's a preacher and a man of God. He makes them attend Sunday service. That alone should be enough to ease Castiel's fears. But he hears shouting one day when his mother's not home and finds Zachariah and Gabriel in the basement. He can tell Gabriel's pulled another one of his harmless pranks, but it isn't the pink underwear that makes him pause. It's his brother's split lip and bloody nose.

He knows the deal. He exchanges his soul for one request and in ten years, the demon collects. Castiel's read the scripture and he's read Chuck's notes; he knows giving up his soul will give him a one way ticket to Hell, but if it can save his mom, if it can save Gabriel, then he's willing to give everything.

Finding a crossroads is easy enough. He lives about ten minutes from a four way intersection. He finds an old metal box in his mother's closet and puts a picture of himself in it. The graveyard by the church provides the dirt needed and he places the bag of it in the box as respectfully as he can. The bone from the black cat? That isn't as easy. That takes breaking into the community college, where they dissect cats for anatomy lessons. He makes sure not to seem too suspicious when he slips the bone into his pocket after his short tour.

"Where are you going?" Gabriel finds him about to sneak out the front door that Saturday night, the box in hand.

"Out." Castiel's willing to give his soul for his family, but he's not willing to explain; Gabriel would just twist the words and Castiel would be back in bed, ready to forget the entire thing.

"Out? I had no idea. I thought you were just checking to make sure the front door was locked." He looks pointedly at Castiel's day clothes and then his eyes soften. "Look, I know it sucks okay? But you don't need Zack finding out about this. If he does, I might not be able to protect you."

"He won't find out if you go back to bed, Gabriel." Castiel can feel the guilt welling up already, but he stands firm. "This is the one and only time."

"What's in the box? Drugs? Not any of mine, I hope." It's his brother's first defense. A joke. Nothing is worth joking about anymore, especially not Gabriel's recreational activities.

"Just trust me. Do it this once and I'll never ask for it again." Castiel keeps his poker face on; not even Gabriel can see through it. "I don't need you to protect me now."

"I'm your brother, kid. I'm always going to try and protect you." Gabriel smiles. "Asking me not to is like asking the sun not to shine." Then he scowls. "Or like asking Zack's toupee to look less like road kill." Castiel grins and Gabriel sticks his tongue out before turning serious again. "Just-Just be careful, okay?"

And with that, he heads back to his room, moving silently around the mismatched furniture and creaky floorboards. Castiel lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding and opens the front door. When the lights stay off, he closes it and continues down the street. The streetlights keep him from losing his way and he's glad his neighborhood is safe because he has himself and his soul in this box. He comes to the crossroads and kneels, setting the box beside him as he begins to dig.

The soil is soft and cool beneath his palms and the dirt gets wedged under his fingernails as he digs deeper and deeper. He doesn't want the box to be unearthed, doesn't want the memory to be discovered, and so once he hits two feet, he drops the box in and pushes the soil back in. Once it looks as though he was never there, Castiel stands.

He doesn't know how long this will take; his father didn't exactly test the idea before he-

"Aren't you a little young to be selling your soul, kid?" He whips around and throws up his fists in the way Gabriel taught him.

The man standing in the middle of the crossroads doesn't look like a demon.

"Are you the crossroads demon?" Castiel lowers his fists, but keeps his guard up because it is the middle of the night and even if the guy isn't a demon, it doesn't mean he's a good guy. "Because if you're not, I have no business with you."

The man steps closer and green eyes flash red; he looks between the boy and the patch of dirt he just replaced. "Dig up the box. I don't deal with kids."

This is not what Castiel was expecting. Of all the demons, he gets the one that has a conscience. "I've done everything that's required. You have no reason not to accept the deal."

"Did you not hear the last part? I. Do not. Deal. With kids. Now dig up your box and go home." The demon turns away; Castiel's tempted to scream, but throwing a tantrum won't help him here.

"You haven't even heard my request." He's all of fifteen, trying to sell his soul to a demon who won't take it. His life is fucked up. "You don't even know my name!"

"Castiel Shurley." The green eyed demon whirls on him, snarling a little as he stalks toward him. "You want me to find your father." The teen must look surprised. "I knew everything about you the second that box hit dirt, kid, and the answer stays the same. No."

"Fine. Then, I'll just go to another crossroads. You're not the only demon I can summon." But when he goes to dig the box back up-like the demon wanted-, he's yanked back up.

"Do you know what Hell is like? It's not detention or a time out! This is selling your soul and damning yourself! Stop acting like it's your only option!" The demon shakes him a little and now Castiel's angry.

"If you really knew everything about me, you'd know this is the only option! My brother's life, my mother's life, is at stake here! I will not let them suffer while I watch!" He'd already seen the light go out of Gabriel's eyes once when their father left. He can't watch it again.

Something else flashes in the demon's eyes and he lets Castiel go, but with a snap of his fingers, the box is in his hands and the boy watches as it goes up in flames.

"You're not making a deal with any demon. I'll make sure of that." The box's ashes are left to blow away in the wind and Castiel finally snaps; he runs forward and starts throwing punches.

It's like punching a wall(which he's done and regretted after he got stitches). The demon doesn't move, doesn't even flinch under Castiel's flailing. Instead, he just grabs the teen's shoulders, putting just enough pressure to leave bruises, and gently pries him away.

"You want to save your brother. It's noble. Stupid as hell seeing as he can take care of himself, but noble." He makes Castiel look at him. "Go home. Go to sleep. Forget about this stupid deal." The demon's hands haven't left him yet, but he isn't disgusted by the touch; the hands feel warm and human against his skin and Castiel welcomes the normalcy in this moment.

"That's the plan? What about my father? What about my family?" He hasn't come this far to give up now and he fixes the demon with a look that Gabriel describes as his "kicked puppy" face.

The demon finally releases his bruising grip on Castiel's shoulder, but runs a hand through the teenager's dark hair. "I'll take care of Zachariah. Just go home."

"Dean." A woman's standing beside them and if Castiel didn't feel unnaturally safe, he'd have jumped; knowing the demon's name interests him more than his lack of fear right now though and tries to catch Dean's eye. "Your brother needs you."

It doesn't work. 'Tell Sam I'm coming." The crossroads demon untangles himself and glares at Castiel once more. "I mean it, Cas. I'll take care of Zachariah."

"Throwing away a deal, Dean? What would Sammy say?" The woman smirks and Dean directs his stare at her now, but where his eyes were once green and warm, now they're red and angry.

"Sammy may be my brother, Ruby, but he's your King. I'd watch yourself, princess. Wouldn't want to get demoted, now would we?" Ruby snorts and vanishes; Dean sighs. "I'll see you around, kid."

Then, he's gone. Dean disappears just like his father, but when Castiel runs a hand over his shoulder, the bruise still lingers from the demon's hands.

He figures out what Dean meant by 'I'll take care of Zachariah'. It turns out everyone's favorite preacher had been siphoning money from the church's donation funds. He'd promptly been placed under arrest while the new preacher, one Jimmy Novak, apologizes profusely to both the congregation and to Amelia.

"Now that the darkness has passed, we can only look to a better and brighter future. God bless." Jimmy smiles upon the congregation and Castiel sees his mother's eyes warm a little when that charming grin is aimed directly at her.

Gabriel's school had been closed due to tax evasion and now he's back attending public school; he still pulls pranks and causes chaos, but now it's with a little less malice than before.

Castiel likes to bask in the glow of it, of happiness, but sometimes he'll run his fingers over the remnants of bruises in the shape of hands. He hears a gravelly voice calling him Cas as he falls asleep and every time he passes over that crossroads, he smiles. Dean is gone, just like his father, but he knows that it only takes a few ingredients to bring him back, scowling and green eyed like before.

Everything is perfect.

Gabriel wakes up in the middle of the night, coughing up blood and when they rush him to the emergency room, the doctors tell them they don't know what's wrong.

But they know that Gabriel is dying.