From the Heavens

In the beginning, before God created the heavens and the earth, before God even, there was the Balance, which held everything—hope and despair, existence and nothingness, darkness and light. The Balance was not a being; it was neither alive nor dead. It was called the Balance, but it had no name, no shape, and was everything and nothing. It was fullness and void, possibility and stasis, it was and it was not. God had been stealing when he called himself "I Am," but by that time he had forgotten about this other being, forgotten that he was not the first creature.

Everything was in Harmony in the Balance, and it was good.

But with Harmony came Discord, and because the Balance was good, it became Unbalanced. To resolve this, the Balance split, neatly, into two halves. The first Entity resembled the Balance. It held the Possibility and the Stasis together in perfect Harmony. It was change and sameness, difference and homogeneity, movement and stillness alltogether and good. The second Entity warred with itself. It was life and death, creation and destruction, the beginning and the end.

The Balance had been restored. But the two Entities were in fact linked to each other, what one did the other must mirror. And as the second grew more angry and full of hate, the first fell more deeply into love. Eventually, the second entity gained its greatest desire, separation. The first Entity was also split though it longed to remain together. All four of them were cast adrift into a sea of nothingness.

It was then that God created.

Lisa heard Ben and Dean get up. Dean always dropped his feet to the floor like he didn't want to do any more work than he had to. And Ben sprung out of bed just to make the springs groan. She shook her head at their silliness and stirred the eggs. "Breakfast is ready!"

They both stampeded down the stairs. "Think she made pancakes?"

"Smells like eggs to me."

And then they were both in the kitchen, stretching and scratching like two fine samples of the male species.

Lisa dropped a quick kiss on Ben's head as he passed by. Dean slid onto a stool at the peninsula. "What about my good morning kiss?" he pleaded.

For a second Lisa froze at the stove. They had talked about that, about Dean's need for physical comfort and normalcy, about how it meant something different to him than it did to her, about how she didn't want to force Dean to make a commitment to her before he was emotionally ready.

And then Ben saved the moment. "Ewwww! That's my mom!"

"One day you'll understand." Dean ruffled Ben's hair affectionately.

"In a long, long time." Lisa countered as she scooped eggs onto plates for them. Dean smiled up at her. It was the slightly broken smile that told her he was still on the mend but not quite there yet.

Not that she regretted inviting him into her house that night, or giving him the beer, or inviting him up to her room after Ben had fallen asleep. Even though Dean caused all kinds of problems, like confusing her intentions or not knowing what his were. Problems like the time he had the nightmare, and because it was the middle of the afternoon and he was on the couch she'd woken him up and he'd drawn a knife on her. It had been a long and sometimes daunting challenge to make him leave the house to get a job or even just to run to the store for some milk.

He made the neighbors twitchy too.

No, she didn't regret it at all. It was the conversations late at night. Lisa held his hand and he whispered all of those terrible stories about creatures that could steal your appearance or make you do terrible things or just plain wanted to eat you. His voice was so quiet that Lisa just knew he had never told another person some of those stories. It made her feel special.

He hadn't told her exactly what had brought him to her doorstep, only that Sam was gone. The way he said it, in that complete monotone, made her think that he wished he had died. (And, as uncharitable a thought as it was, sometimes Lisa wondered why he hadn't yet.) It wasn't until they had that roaring row about him getting a job and Lisa had laid down an ultimatum (get one or get out) that Dean had confessed that he had promised Sam to live, and to live a normal life.

It was really the only thing she knew about what happened, that and somehow, all of that trauma was tied up with the car and Dean just couldn't stand to face that every day. She knew it the moment Dean went out and bought another car, a 2005 Toyota Corolla. The Impala sat out in the garage behind the house collecting dust day after day.

And Ben loved Dean. It was funny though, the way he looked at Dean, the way he never complained about Dean taking him to the park even though he was almost eleven, almost like he knew that Dean wouldn't be around long. But Lisa knew that too.

So Lisa didn't say anything about it. Mostly she was just glad he had moved on and bought another car. And got a job. And started moving on. Lisa gave Dean a smile. Yes, he was getting better, even if it was very slowly.

The phone rang, and she left the boys to finish their eggs, secretly pleased by the way Dean was flicking butter at Ben even though she frowned at both of them before leaving the table. "Hello."

"Hello, my name's Bobby Singer. I know you don't know me, but—" and somehow Lisa just knew he was going to ask about Dean. Her stomach clenched, and the color drained from her face.

She heard herself say weakly into the phone, quietly so as not to interrupt the mood at the table, "Please, I don't know what happened, but please, can't you just leave him alone?"

"It's kinda important," Bobby said. "And it's related to what happened."

Lisa didn't answer right away. She looked back at the happy faces of her Boys and thought that she just might lie down and die before interrupting that. "I'm very sorry." And she hung up the phone.

When Dean glanced up at her she put on her most reassuring smile, the one that always convinced Ben she wasn't lying. Dean smiled back at her, the soft broken one that told Lisa he still wasn't the man he used to be but that he was getting better. It was that smile that she loved, that made her want to curl up around him and whisper little nothings in his ear until he fell asleep in her arms.

Too bad they'd already talked about that.

And anyway, he had a shift out at the garage.

Dean was restless. Lisa hadn't noticed it at breakfast what with the phone call and then having to clean butter off of everything. But now she saw it as she watched him prowl around the guest bedroom from the doorway. He picked up his work shirt and then threw it on the bed. His hands ran through his hair, and then he reached towards his lower back. He used to keep a knife back there, Lisa knew. Dean still reached for it occasionally, even though he hadn't carried it since he'd moved in with her.

"Have another one of those odd dreams?" Lisa asked.

Dean paused in his pacing. "Yes."

"Do you want to talk about it?" She crossed her arms to keep from reaching out.

Dean turned towards the window and shrugged on the shirt. Lisa saw him lick his lips in his reflection in the window. "No." He didn't turn to face her.

"Okay." Lisa nodded. "Just—just be safe, on your way to work."

That was another fight they'd had. When Dean got restless like that, he kind of exploded into this mass of energy that he had to burn off. It was all crazy sex or drunken fights or suicidal stunts. She didn't nag about his lack of helmet or the traffic, and Dean limited his insanity to the damage that could be done with a rusty ten-sped bicycle.

Lisa thought that maybe he was suffering from withdrawal. The kind of life he led before, it had to come with an adrenaline addiction. She thought that maybe he needed the occasional rush to settle into normalcy. Maybe that was why he never wore a helmet…

Maybe it was the helmet hair.

Dean tried not to think about the dream on his ride into work. But the wind in his ears and on his face made that a little difficult. There was something about the way that he was moving, about the smooth turns that just brought it all straight to the front of his mind.

The dream had been about a planet or maybe it was a sun or maybe a galaxy, he couldn't quite remember now, but it had definitely been one of those big things that orbits around something else out in space. He wasn't sure how he knew this, since he'd never studied astronomy, it wasn't required on the GED. But there was a very distinct feeling of hot gas that had nothing to do with the burrito he'd had for dinner the night before. Also in the dream, he had been doing very complex physics equations that had to do with orbit and rotation and the possibility of reaching a certain destination. Not that he could remember what that destination was; the equations alone had been enough to boggle his mind.

It had been an extremely strange dream.

Replacing the brake pads on a much abused Chevy Venture van helped Dean shake off the oddness of the dream. Someone was doing a very poor job teaching their child to drive. Cars made everything better for Dean. They were simple; they made sense. And when one got broken, even if it was in some horrific accident with a demon driving a semi, it was possible to put everything back together again like new. One just needed to have the right parts. Dean patted his hand on the hood.

Maybe Dean was waiting for someone to show up with all the right parts to fix him. A skin graft here, a new knee cap there, oh, and don't forget that brand spanking new heart to replace the one that had been ripped out, stamped on, and sent to Hell.

Okay, so maybe the oddness of the dream hadn't completely left after all.

Or maybe it was just that today was the four month anniversary of the Day Sammy Went to Hell, and Dean just couldn't shake that feeling of something important being gone. He liked his life with Lisa and Ben. In a lot of ways it was way less complicated than his life before. There were no people to save, no one to kill, no laws to break, and mostly, no apocalypse to stop. But there was this overwhelming loneliness that Dean couldn't seem to erase. And those few moments he'd had with Lisa, before she'd put an end to them, had at least made the edges a little smoother. But she was right when she said they meant something different to him than they did to her. Still, despite those annoying complications, Dean didn't want to leave her.

Or Ben.

Besides, today he and Ben had plans. After his shift ended (it was a short one, ten to four, why the Boss had bought an automatic scheduler Dean had no idea), Dean ran home to get Ben for baseball practice which ran from five to six. He liked being there for Ben in a way his dad hadn't been there for Dean. He liked watching Ben pitch and hearing the coach talk about strategy for the game next Saturday. And he liked seeing the other parents doing exactly the same thing.

"Hey, Dean! Did you see that?" Ben came running, swinging his bat and glove.

"I sure did." Dean grinned and ruffled his hair. "It was awesome."

"I know right!" Ben jumped a little as he walked. "Think there's gonna be pie at dinner?"

"Don't know." Dean shrugged.

Lisa had dinner waiting for them on the table (beef stew with carrots and green beans and strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert, yum). Dean watched Ben shovel everything on his plate into his mouth in about three bites and then ask (and spray food all over the table) if they could watch the Princess Bride after dinner. And, because Ben was almost eleven and wanted to be Inigo Montoya when he grew up, Dean shot Lisa puppy eyes until she said yes.

After the movie, they all tramped up the stairs to tuck Ben into bed, and Lisa stood in the doorway while Dean told the story of Jo, the amazing Huntress who had once taken down a whole pack of demons by herself. It was a lie, but Dean liked the idea of some kid dreaming about Jo. It made the world a little brighter to pretend that she hadn't died horribly, eaten by Hellhounds.

Lisa slipped her hand in his and they went back downstairs to watch the local news or some stupid made- for-TV movie. Dean wasn't paying attention; he was focused on the way it felt to be curved around Lisa, to hold her closer, and to not worry about what might be sneaking in through the window. It wasn't often anymore that she let him hold her like this, and he was intent on soaking it all up. It was only in these quiet moments that Dean felt the hole inside of him get a little smaller.

He was half asleep when the doorbell rang. Lisa was completely asleep, so Dean slowly detangled himself from her. She rolled into the warm spot where his body had been lying, and Dean watched her until the doorbell rang again.

He opened the door and slammed it back shut, mostly in shock.

"Damnit, Boy!" Bobby shouted loudly enough for Dean to hear him through the door. "I drove all this way and you ain't gonna let me in?"

Very slowly, Dean opened the door again, but only enough to see Bobby through a crack. He frowned at the angry and somewhat frantic look on Bobby's face and pushed the door open all the way. "What do you want, Bobby?"

Bobby's eyes focused somewhere just off to the left of Dean's shoulder. "It's Cas."

"Oh? And what has the Lord's Newest Archangel done this time?" Dean rolled his eyes.

"Well, for one thing, he stole your car."

Dean stood in shock for the .3 seconds it took for that information to sink in all the way and then bolted for the backdoor, shoving past Lisa who was still rubbing the sleep off of her face. Lisa pulled her hand away from her face and stared at Bobby. It took her a moment to make the connection between Dean's reaction and the phone call from that morning. "You're Bobby Singer. You called this morning."

"Yeah." Bobby stared at her.

Lisa nodded, her mind still catching up on the half heard conversation. "And who's Cas?"

"Cas is—" Bobby stopped. A friend, an ally—an angel? All, none. It wasn't exactly something that could be summed up in a word, or even a few sentences. "Cas is complicated." And they continued to stare at each other in a sort of awkward I-don't-like-you and I-know-you-don't-like-me kind of way, until, eventually, Lisa signed and walked off towards the kitchen leaving the door open. "Coffee?"

"Thanks." Bobby trailed awkwardly after her.

She leaned against the peninsula as the coffee pot burbled in the corner. "Explain."

"What do you know?"

"Nothing. It's not exactly something we talk about."

Bobby remembered the way that Dean looked, after Sam—no, Lucifer—had thrown him up against the windshield of the car. He remembered the way that Dean looked after it was all over, with the rings in his hand. No, it wasn't exactly something Dean would talk about. "He saved the world. Every one of us." Bobby glanced at the backdoor for any sign of Dean. "Except Sam."

Lisa clapped her hands over her mouth. She'd known it had been bad, that Sam was the most important person to Dean, but she thought that it had to have been an accident. A creature-that-ate-you kind of accident. "I—" but she didn't have any words for that, didn't know what to say, what to do, except now that need to hold Dean close and keep him safe from the world was about ten times greater than before.

The backdoor slammed open. "Son of a bitch," Dean shouted and moved straight for Bobby. "What else do you know?"

"He's been looking for a way to yank Sam out of the Pit. Said he was looking for ingredients." Bobby looked down and away, the way Ben did when he had done something stupid. Lisa gripped the counter tight. "Raphael and Joshua came to see me."

"Son of a bitch," Dean cursed quietly.

The room was silent when the coffee pot went off, and Lisa jumped. She looked at Dean a little guiltily, although exactly what for she wasn't sure. "I thought it might be better if we all had some coffee."

Dean sighed and looked away. "Probably."

Lisa handed everyone a cup, and they all sat down at the dining room table.

Dean waited until Bobby had a chance to take a sip of his coffee before demanding, "What do the Dicks want this time?"

This time Bobby looked guilty, because he'd talked to them, because he'd actually listened to what they said and agreed. How many times did one man have to save the world after all before he got to live the good life? But here Bobby was, sitting in Lisa's clean kitchen about to ask Dean to do it all over again. Those Angels really were Dicks.

"The world's messed up."

"Again?"

"Not in the apocalypse way." Bobby scowled and rolled his eyes. "In the Eternal-Balance-has-been-upset-and-someone-needs-to-go-out-there-and-fix-it way."

"So, why doesn't Raphael get off his ass and do it? He's an archangel."

"Yeah, but he's not number one, not the guy with the authority to recognize this imbalance and correct it. That's Cas, and nobody's seen him since he dropped the Impala at my place."

Dean leaned forward. "So they sent you to come convince me to go find their wayward little archangel. I did my job, Bobby. I saved the world. They can't ask me to do it again. I've got nothing left to give." Dean pounded his hand on the table and his still full cup spilled a little. "You can see yourself out," he said in the coldest voice and left the room.

Lisa walked Bobby to the front door in silence. He turned at the door to face her and said, "It ain't fair for me to ask what I did. But it's a little hard to say no to an archangel. I just ain't as strong as him." Lisa nodded like she understood.

And in a way, she did. She'd been to church; she'd heard all of those stories about Angels and how the people were always afraid. She could kind of understand why Bobby had come, even if she didn't like it.

Lisa stood in the doorway and watched Bobby drive away. There wasn't anything she could do about any of this, so Lisa went back inside and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen until all that nervousness had worked its way out of her system. There wasn't anything she could do, except support Dean, so that's what she would do.

Upstairs, she found Dean lurking in Ben's doorway, watching him sleep. "I hate the way I was raised. Hate that I had to sacrifice everything all the time. I gave up everything, and I don't want to make Ben give up anything." He said it so straightforwardly that it was heart breaking. "It's not fair."

She knew that Dean had said it, but it sounded so much like Ben that she had to bite back her usual response, 'life isn't fair.' This wasn't like not being allowed to have a second cookie or stay up past 9:30 on a week night. And yet…

Lisa wrapped her arms around Dean's waist and buried her head between his shoulders. "We would never give you up," she said into his shirt. "But sometimes you have to share."

Dean stiffened in her arms, and Lisa drew back but didn't let go. "I'm not saying that you should go," she added quickly. "But, if you think you need to, Ben and I, we'd understand." This was another one of those defining moments in their relationship where Lisa thought he might be a little bit more able to handle the world.

They stood that way in awkward silence, which finally Lisa broke by asking, "Will you come to bed with me?" She hadn't meant to say that, but she didn't want to take it back either.

"In a bit." Dean smiled down at her, that same broken smile. "I just need to think for a minute."

"Alright." She smiled back at him and went into the bedroom.

Dean never came to bed.

He pulled into Bobby's scrap yard that evening; it hadn't been a good drive. First there was too much silence, even with the radio on, and then there was construction almost the whole way. Add on top of that the fact that Dean never liked the Corolla (it got good gas mileage and had high safety ratings, but seriously lacked character). He might just have called it the worst drive he'd ever made. (That was probably an exaggeration, but at the time, sitting in the middle of fourteen miles of construction and waiting for an accident to get cleaned up, he couldn't remember a worse drive.) And there, sitting at the back of the yard, looking no worse for wear (and actually as if someone had just given her a loving wash) was the Impala.

He parked the Corolla and got out to see his Baby. Dean ran his hands from trunk to hood, lingering over the door handles and the middle of the hood above the engine. No denying, she was a beauty, and he had missed her. Dean opened the hood just to stare at the engine, perfect condition. She might actually be in better shape than Dean had left her. Which meant that Cas had laid hands on her. just how did he feel about an Angel getting friendly with his baby? Dean stared at the engine a little longer before deciding he needed to sit behind the wheel. But when he opened the door, he sat in the passenger seat.

"Oy!" Bobby shouted from the porch. "Get outta the car, ya little shit!"

"It's my car, old man!" Dean stuck his head out the window and shouted at Bobby.

"Well it's on my property, so you can get your ass in here."

"Fine!" Dean slammed the door angrily, but he was grinning. It felt a bit like coming home. But only a bit. "What's going on, Bobby?" Dean asked when he got inside.

They sat down at the table, and Bobby handed Dean a beer. "Well, near as I can figure, after you went off to Lisa, Cas went back to Heaven to do whatever it is that archangels do. Next thing I know, he's parking the Impala in the back of my yard and telling me he needs me to keep an eye on it while he gathers the rest of the ingredients. Then he ran off, and Joshua and Raphael showed up asking what I knew."

"Wait, an angel came to you for information?"

"I guess. 'Course, I was the last one to see the guy."

"Well that's just great." Dean played with the beer bottle. "What exactly do they think I can do?"

"You are the guy who prevented the apocalypse; maybe you've got some radar on things going wrong. Maybe Cas will actually come if you call. Maybe you can stop all this shit from happened. I don't know. They aren't exactly the sharing kind of guys."

"So what, they want you to convince me to go wander the globe looking for Cas in some poorly defined mission to save the world?" He drained the bottle "I am done with that. I am done." Dean

Bobby hesitated. "They did say that something was going on in Mineral, California."

"Where?"

"Mineral, California."

"Yeah, I heard you the first time Bobby. That doesn't help."

"It's a rinky-dink town with 143 people according to the census of 2000."

"Thanks, Sam." Dean rolled his eyes and then his gut clenched painfully. Sam.

"Yeah, well, I think it's worth checking out," Bobby ground out. He hadn't expected Dean to be so difficult, not when it had been his choice to drive all the way out here. If he wasn't going to do it, why come at all?

"Fine." Dean snapped and sat down in front of Bobby's laptop. The thing had seen better days, but the internet ran just fine, as long as you weren't looking for porn. Dean googled Mineral California and was surprised to have a newspaper site come up in the results. The headline read "Mineral Loses A Day." The article went on to say that Friday night, all of the residents had gone to bed and when they woke up it was suddenly Sunday morning. "Just what causes an entire town to sleep through a whole day?"

"Witch's spell?" Bobby suggested.

"I hate witches," Dean grumbled.

Dean drove to California by himself. Bobby said he was getting too old to be driving cross country, and Dean didn't want the company. He drove into town and stopped at the only traffic light. There was a diner and a gas station on one corner and a row of houses was across the street. At least three of the owners were out mowing the lawn. He thought it was a little odd to see so many people mowing since the town was only a hundred and forty people (smaller than the number of people living in the average suburb), but then the grass was pretty tall. The light changed, and Dean turned into the diner.

It was a small but really clean place, and Dean liked the instant familiarity that came with small town restaurants. He'd always liked them, liked how they had crayons to play with and steal when he was still young enough to want to draw on walls, and liked how the waitresses were always willing to flirt when he discovered girls. Sure, there were a lot of memories of Dad and Sam, of flicking butter across the table and leaving a giant mess, of arguing over burgers and salads, but somehow in the florescent lights and smell of grease, they stayed memories and didn't burst into full blown longing.

He sat down in a booth and smiled at the waitress. She was an older woman, maybe in her early forties, a little overweight with a few too many laughter lines on her face. There was something wonderful about how she bustled over with a menu and left it with the picture of apple pie up.

"Thanks." Dean flipped it over and read through the whole menu. He ordered the fried chicken and a slice of apple pie.

"What brings you into these parts, honey?" the waitress asked as she brought out his food.

"I heard that the whole town slept through a whole day," Dean replied. "I help run a website that investigates strange phenomena." The lies slipped out smoothly. Four months of normalcy couldn't erase a lifetime of lies.

"Like that Hellhounds site?" The lady frowned, and she dropped the fried chicken and green beans onto the table. "Because we've already met them."

Dean got the distinct impression that she had not been impressed with the weedy and dweeby guys who ran Hellhounds. "No ma'am, our site actually looks to the truth of a situation, not a fabricated bunch of ghost stories. No chance that anything was slipped into the water, that this might have been an elaborate prank?" Dean was hoping she'd be a little more receptive to conspiracy theories.

"I suppose it's possible, but the sheriff already spoke with all the kids in town. Seems pretty unlikely that any of them were involved." She put down some flatware

"Ah." Dean pulled out a little notebook. The props came just as easily as the lies. "Did you notice anything unusual that Friday afternoon?"

"Other than the stranger that came through town, nope."

"Just one stranger?"

"He was a sort of odd person, but not in any real way I can explain."

"Could you describe him to me?"

"Well, he was young, cute—like you. But he had this sort of distracted expression, even as he ate his cherry pie. Sat in the same booth, actually."

"Did you notice anything else, any cold spots, strange smells, did he have an odd accent?"

"No," the lady said. "But he did ask if anyone around here had an old box of crayons. I thought that was pretty odd."

"Did anyone have what he was looking for?"

"Yeah, us. I gave him the box, but he only took the blue one."

"That's very odd," Dean said, mostly just to confirm her suspicions not because he thought it had any relevance to the missing day. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, Hun." She smiled and left the plate of pie on the table.

Dean took a bite of his pie and his phone rang. "You can forget about Mineral." Bobby didn't even bother to say hello. "I found another town that lost time: Oxford, Ohio."

"Bobby, that's the other side of the country. By the time I get there, whatever's going on will be done."

"It's just started so if you hurry up then the trail won't get cold."

"Do I even wanna know how you know about this?"

"Just hung up on a friend of mine. Apparently, everything in St. Mary's Catholic Church has completely stopped."

Oxford was seven miles from the Indiana border, Dean knew. He'd been to the university there before (for the infamous Green Beer Day and had gotten drunk enough with a group of sorority girls that it actually seemed like a good idea to walk to Indiana. It wasn't).

Those seven miles should have been the shortest part of his trip, except, apparently, the eye-blindingly orange Ohio state flower had been allowed to grow rampant and unchecked across highways and interstates, leaving no highway untouched by the orange barrel. And to make matters worse, it seemed like everything in those seven miles around Oxford had come to a standstill: traffic, roadwork, even the breeze.

So, instead of taking highway 27 straight into Oxford, he was forced to drive back up to Richmond and take Interstate 70 to highway 127 to 73, which was an hour out of his way. If he'd had a passenger to help him navigate, Dean might have been brave enough to try county lane 44 to 177 to highway 732, but those roads looked twisty and uncertain even on the map, and the threat of the orange barrel was still weighing heavily on him.

By the time Dean arrived in Oxford, things were slow but moving back towards normal. It was the strangest thing to see people walking around, going to class, or getting food and moving in slow motion. It was just like watching a slow motion scene in a movie, except nobody was dodging bullets or getting thrown into walls. They didn't seem to notice that Dean was moving in hyperspeed, but the one time Dean glanced behind him the people seemed to be moving a little quicker. Maybe that was just his imagination though

And that wasn't even the weirdest thing. When Dean walked into St. Mary's, the people weren't moving at all, and Cas was standing in front of the altar with his hands spread out to the side. It looked like he was in the middle of doing something stupid like seeking Revelation (because really, didn't God just speak to Joshua, and wasn't Cas head Angel, so who was he seeking Revelation from?).

It had been awhile since Dean had seen Cas. He'd forgotten the awesomeness, rather like the awesomeness he imagined an ant felt right before being squished by a very large shoe. And he'd forgotten the way that Cas stood as if he wasn't quite sure how to stand and was merely trying to mimic everyone around him and failing just a little bit. There was a sort of rush that came from standing in front of him, a bit like adrenaline but more along the lines of how Dean was connected to something that beyond reality. And he let that high rush over him.

"Hello, Dean." Cas lowered his hands but didn't turn around.

"What are you doing here, Cas?" It was obvious who Dean was talking to since no one else in the room was moving, but he kinda just liked saying Cas's name, because he was the one who gave it to him.

He did turn around then. "I am looking for a book."

"In church?"

"No." Cas walked a few steps closer to Dean. "I was asking for help in finding it." He glanced away. "It is proving to be—difficult."

"Well, it is a college campus. I'm sure they have more than a few books here. Maybe we should just pop on over to the library."

"I've already been there."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure there are a few books that aren't there," Dean quipped. It was a weak and pathetic one, but then it wasn't just the CasRush that Dean was suffering from. There was also that whole you-work-for-the-ass-who-sent-my-brother-to-hell thing going on too. The quips just weren't gonna be there. "Which one are you looking for?"

"Between Facts and Norms, as translated by William Rehg," Cas replied promptly.

"And what exactly do you need this book for?"

"Did Bobby not tell you that I was looking for a way to free Sam from Hell?"

"Yeah." Dean scratched at the back of his neck. "But, I didn't think—" Dean wasn't sure exactly what it was that he hadn't thought, but then he did spend an awful lot of time not thinking about Sam and how he was probably being tortured in Hell right this minute and how it was his fault for not preventing the apocalypse from beginning by being stronger and saving the world. "So this book contains some spell you need?"

"No." Castiel explained, patiently. "It is a book about democracy and the law and the postindustrial age."

And Cas said it just like that, like the human concepts of democracy, law, and the postindustrial age were not all-encompassing concepts as would be described using a capital letter. Not that it really mattered all that much because Dean had only a hazy idea about what Democracy meant and no idea at all as to what the Postindustrial Age was. (Although, he was wondering if it had something to do with machines and the post office.) At the same time, Dean did know that this book had nothing to do with spells or summons or anything that might get Sam out of Hell. "And what do you need that for?"

"First I must See into Hell in order to ascertain Sam's condition. In order to do that, I must first collect an accurate representation of Sam's life. I have already collected a crayon from a box that he lost as a child, blue, his favorite color. And now, I am collecting this book."

"Uh-huh." Dean nodded like he understood.

It didn't matter that he didn't understand though because every part of Dean ached to help Cas do this, wanted to say to hell with Bobby and the Dicks, wanted it almost more than he did the night he drove to Lisa's. And, as Dean stood there staring at Cas, he thought that since it was his job to find Cas and then to convince Cas to save the world, then helping Cas finish this project would mean getting to the other one much more quickly. Also, it wasn't like they were going to pull Sam out of Hell; it was only a sneak peek. Dean wouldn't be breaking his promise. "Did you try asking the librarian for some help?"

Cas looked at Dean as if this were a foreign concept that he was just now coming into contact with. "I haven't had much success in that."

Dean once again noticed the way that Castiel never seemed to fit in right, even when he wasn't doing something weird and Angel-y. "Would've guessed." He shook his head and then smiled brightly at Cas. "Watch the Master at work."

Dean entered the library and oozed that cheap charm that had never failed him yet. He gave the lobby a quick glance (an old habit). Some students were milling around and talking (back to moving normally), a little loudly for a library. There was your usual set up, a few chairs, two printers side-by-side, and a row of computers. There was an absurdly tall guy at the first computer, and Dean glanced back at him. Could it—no. The guy at the computer was not Sam—could not be Sam—but Dean had already taken several steps forward.

"Dean." Cas said, and Dean automatically turned back.

"Right." He put that charm back on and made straight for the check out desk.

Cas trailed awkwardly just to the left and behind Dean with a sort of forlorn and depressed look on his face as they approached the counter. The girl perched on the stool was extremely tiny, maybe ninety pounds, but she had this presence that made her seem much more solid and difficult than her weight suggested. Dean approached the counter and gave her a winning smile. He opened with the completely brilliant line of "Hey."

She glanced quickly between the two of them and then broke into a wide smile that looked nothing like Becky's but somehow still managed to remind Dean of her. If he had been Sam instead of Dean, he probably would have taken a step back for fear of being suddenly groped. "What can I do for you gentlemen?" There was an unheard squeal at the end of that question, and Dean was forced to wonder if she also read the Supernatural books.

"My friend here," and Dean yanked Cas up to the counter, no reason not to share the spotlight, "is looking for a book. He's a slacker and didn't bother to check it out earlier and he really needs it for this project."

She glanced between them again, or more specifically at the distinct lack of space between them, and then one giggle escaped. "What's the book?" she asked Cas, who was staring off over her shoulder.

Dean elbowed him. "Oh, Between Facts and Norms, as translated by William Rehg," Cas said emotionlessly which actually just made him sound more pathetic.

She typed the title into the computer, all the while smiling. But then, just as quickly, she frowned. "Oh, I'm sorry. It's checked out right now."

Cas shrugged, but it looked more like he was folding into himself pitifully. For a moment Dean wondered if Cas did that on purpose, and then Dean sighed and looked back at the girl. "Can you tell us who has the book? He or she might let him borrow it long enough to get the information that he needs."

"I'm really not supposed to do that," she said slowly and then leaned all the way across the counter. "His name's Matthew Brenton." She winked.

"Thanks," Dean said, unsure of just what she meant with the wink.

"My name's Courtney! You boys should come back sometime," she called after them as Dean tried to hurry Cas out of the library.

"Alright, so now we just—" Dean started to say once they'd left the library, but Cas was already gone. "Thanks for the warning." Dean wandered over to one of the stone benches and sat down to wait. It wasn't like he could do anything until Cas came back. He decided to not think about Cas and what he was doing in the room with Matthew Bentley. And then when that didn't work, he decided to not think about what Cas had been doing for the last four months, and if he had spent all of them searching for a way to save Sam. And then Dean decided it was best not to think about why Cas looking to save Sam caused a funny little tingle in his stomach. There was something just a little odd about the way Cas made him feel. Period. And then Dean realized he had been spending too much time thinking about Cas.

When Cas finally did pop back in, it was just over five minutes later. "What took so long?"

Cas had the book tucked under his arm, which looked a little funny. "Matthew Bentley was in his room when I appeared."

They started back towards the downtown area. "What did you say?" Dean asked.

"I told him not to be afraid, that I was an Angel of the Lord."

"Seriously?" Dean stopped midway up the Slantwalk.

"Yes. Then he threw his shoe at me. I told him I required his book to do the Lord's Work."

They started back down the sidewalk. "That must have gone over well," Dean said sarcastically.

"Not really. He threw a grilled cheese sandwich at me as I grabbed the book."

Dean noticed that Cas was getting some attention from a group of girls walking by. He laughed a little and clapped Cas on the arm. "Dude, you have got to learn how to lie." They moved from the campus and into the town. Dean had seen a lot of small towns before, but this one was like half-campus, half town. It was weird.

"I am uncomfortable with that concept."

"You are never going to be President."

"Is that a bad thing?"

Dean just laughed as they both walked up to the Impala. "So, where to now?"

"Bobby's." Cas sat down awkwardly in the passenger seat. "The last item is there."

Dean started the car. "You only need three?"

Cas did not answer for a long minute. "It might be best if you went back to Lisa's."

Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Why is that?"

"I do not know if this is going to work."

"That's a stupid reason."

"You might not like what we see."

"I need to know, Cas."

"I do not wish for you to bear any more hardships."

Well, there was nothing Dean could say to that. "There's another job," Dean said after a while. "Apparently, the world is out of balance, and since you're Head Angel, Raphael and Joshua think you're the only one who can fix it."

Cas sank back into the seat, crossed his arms, and did not speak for the duration of the drive. Dean turned the music on and tried very hard not to think, not about Sam because that just made him want to die, not about Lisa because she was just a poor substitute for Sam, and not about Cas.

Dean really didn't like thinking about Castiel for more reasons than he could really list. A lot of them had to do with Sam, and some with the apocalypse, and there were even a few that had to do with the fact that he was an angel. Those were the sorts of issues that that Dean could list. Then there was the reason that Dean didn't want to be thinking about Cas.

It might have been classified under things to do with Sam, except that it wasn't really about Sam. It was the way Cas sat in the passenger seat, looking out the side window and Dean didn't feel the need to make conversation or play music (even though he was) or feel awkward. He could just sit with Cas, the way he could sit with Sam.

But it wasn't like sitting with Sam, he and Sam—well, it wasn't like Sam had ever instilled this feeling of peace in Dean. Dean's whole life had been chaos and change and fear, but he had this one memory, one moment. He thought for a long time that it was impossible, a hallucination, a dream… anything but reality. But it had happened, in Hell, Dean had been filled with a feeling of peace and rightness, as if he had finally come home.

And every time he was with Cas, a shadow of that feeling came back. Dean never felt that way with Sam. But he felt like he should.

They got to Bobby's house late that night. Bobby was asleep in his recliner with the TV on; they could see him reflected in the glow of the TV through the window. Cas offered to pop in and wake Bobby, but Dean said he really didn't want Cas getting shot even thought it wouldn't do anything. Instead, Dean decided to show Cas how to pick a lock, just because it was bound to make a lot of noise. And Cas did his part to ask completely ridiculous questions like, "Why can't I just move the pins so that the lock opens?" in a relatively quiet voice that could still be heard inside. Dean replied in a hushed-but-not-quite-irritated tone, "That would be cheating."

Bobby met them at the door looking sleepy but with two beers in hand. "What are you ijits doin' here in the middle of the night?"

Dean sort of pushed his way past Bobby and into the house. "We need one of your knives."

"You figure out what's causin' the imbalance?"

"This is—something else." Dean made straight for the weapon's chest.

"What is it?" Bobby stared at Dean who refused to pull his head out of the chest. Bobby didn't like seeing all of his knives and guns spread across the floor.

Castiel came up behind him as Dean pulled out a curved, silver blade. "That one. John, Bobby, and you have all slain with that knife." Dean remembered holding it before; it had felt heavy in his hand then too, like it was weighted down with all the lives it had taken.

"Whoa!" Bobby snatched the knife from Dean's hand. "What is this for?"

"We are going to peer into the depths of Hell in order to spy out Sam's soul."

Dean snatched the knife back while Bobby was still in stuck in his shock and staring at Castiel. "Where we doing this, Cas?"

"Outside. I do not think Bobby would like the Impala in his living room." Cas looked out the front window. "Now is a good time."

"Wait a minute!" Bobby called. He stopped when he saw the angry desperation stretched across Dean's face. "I'm coming."

They all went outside and watched Cas draw a pentagram on the ground with the crayon, one point ending at the Impala. He dropped the remains of the crayon at another. The book, Cas opened to a random page and placed it at the point closest to Dean. "Dean, if you would stand there." Cas pointed to the next one, and Dean nodded once. "When I tell you, hold your hand, palm down, over the pentagram." Dean looked into his eyes, and for the briefest moment was caught in the blue, an endless sea of tranquility that stretched out over a millennia. Dean wanted to jump in and drown. "Sorry," Cas whispered.

Dean looked down at the blood spilling out into his hand. He hadn't even felt the sting. Cas dropped the knife, blood still on the blade, on the last point. "Now, Dean." Dean flipped his hand over and the blood dripped into the pentagram.

"Sam," Cas called. "Come."

The blood bubbled up once and then stretched out to fill the pentagram. It went shiny silver to a clear image—of the back of Dean's head. Dean didn't recognize his head at first, but Cas knew instantly. They saw the Impala and part of the pentagram (which was odd…they were watching themselves watch themselves…). And then the view shifted slightly so that they could see all three of them and the house in the background.

And then Dean realized it was his head.

"This is your fault!" Dean pointed an accusatory finger at Cas.

Cas knew that Dean was going to be upset when he realized that the spell had not revealed Sam, but he did not suspect the sinking sort of desolation that slid through his whole being. And when Dean turned and looked at him with those angry eyes, Cas felt as if he might fold in on himself a little.

When Dean flipped back around and stormed off towards the house, Bobby and Cas followed, although Bobby more quickly. Cas trailed, uncertain as to what he should do, except that it seemed like a bad idea to leave Dean alone.

Inside the house, Dean picked up one of the beers that Bobby had met them at the door with and hurled it at the wall. Bobby cringed at the sound. Cas thought about how difficult it was to pull together the pieces of shattered glass and to replace the spilled beer. Not difficult at all. So what made repairing a human and returning its soul to that same pre-broken condition so completely impossible?

"Why are you still here?" Dean shouted. "Always showing up where you don't belong! What is it with you Angels, always thinking you know best. The right thing to do. Well, you don't!" He raged on, and Cas felt a strange urge to empty his stomach even though there was nothing in it. "Just leave! Get out!" He grabbed a picture frame and Bobby grabbed his arm.

"That's my wife you're about to throw at him." Bobby yanked the picture out of his hand.

"I'm going to bed." Dean glared at both Bobby and Cas.

Castiel waited until Dean was out of earshot and until the churning in his stomach had slowed down. "He does not sleep well at night. It is not advisable to wake him should he have a nightmare." He walked over to the door

"Then what should I do?" Bobby asked.

Cas paused with his hand on the door knob. "Cuddle him."

Bobby sputtered and his brain stalled on the image of him curled up in bed with Dean. He visibly shuddered. "What?"

Cas went back outside and looked at the Impala. He was not ready to go back to Heaven. He had been glad to see Dean in that church, glad because he hadn't been sure what to do, and Dean was good at making him think. But now, he wondered if trying to help Dean, if these emotions that he couldn't seem to get rid of were just causing Dean more pain. It was simpler not to have emotions at all. Why couldn't he back to that?

Because he couldn't.

Ever since he had gone to Hell—Cas shook his head. It hadn't been since Hell, he'd been to Hell before. No, it was Dean. The moment, when he had seen Dean standing before the rack, the blade in his hand, everything had changed. For the first time in Castiel's existence, the world changed when he laid eyes on Dean Winchester, and it had never gone back.

He shook his head a little and tried to empty his mind of thoughts of Dean, never the easiest of tasks. Cas looked up at the night sky. Most Angels looked up to the Heavens when seeking revelation. He felt a familiar pang of need curl in the depths of his stomach. He'd had the same feeling for his entire existence, but it was only since taking a vessel that it seemed to stem from his stomach. It was also because of Jimmy Novak's body that Cas even realized that it was a feeling of need, like hunger or sleep. It also resembled pain, but not that kind that came with being injured, more like hunger pangs. Which might have something to do with the fact that he felt it in his stomach.

But hunger pangs went away, Cas reminded himself. It was a contraction of an empty stomach; it was a pain that could be solved with food. This pain was not. Cas had tried.

Even though it was the night sky that caused these pangs, Cas loved looking at it. If he could look long enough, focus every fiber of his being on the motions of the planets and stars, and not think, then, sometimes, Cas would feel this completeness that erased the pangs. He used to think that he found God up in the Heavens, that finding Revelation was like that for everyone.

But then he pulled Dean from Hell, and the feeling of completeness he felt at touching his soul—didn't even compare to the night sky. And now, just being in Dean's presence was enough to bring about the same glimmer he used to find among the stars. He had a very circular way of thinking now—think about Dean, seek Revelation in an attempt to not think about Dean, and end up thinking about Dean again.

Cas looked up at the window that belonged to the room Dean was sleeping in. It was odd to be at Bobby's house and know that Dean was sleeping in a bed. So often he slept on the floor or passed out in a chair, head on the musty pages of an old book. Cas had actually wondered whether Dean felt comfortable sleeping on something hard and slightly musty, until he saw Dean sleeping next to Lisa on a plush bed.

It was as he was standing there, contemplating Dean's various sleeping habits, that Cas caught the first signs of a nightmare. He waited a moment more to see if Bobby would wake, but while the lock picking lesson had been enough to roust him from the depths of sleep, the quiet thrashing of sheets was not. Cas hesitated. Lisa had responded well to his prompting of her, but he had the distinct impression that should he nudge Bobby towards comforting Dean, the response would be "You go cuddle him."

So Cas went up to the room. It was dark, and only the pale light from the window shone in the room, not that Cas needed it. He could feel Dean's presence. He sat on the edge of the double bed and stretched his hand out over Dean's shoulder, just a breath from actual contact. Dean's hand snapped out and grabbed on to Cas's arm. Dean yanked Cas down towards him until Cas chest nearly brushed against his own. Somehow, Cas recognized that fact that Dean had stripped off his shirt, and Cas felt that strange awkwardness at not knowing what to do in a human situation. Dean growled, pushed Cas to the side, and then rolled over on top of him. "What are you doing here?" His breath ghosted over Cas's lips, and Cas's tongue darted out to lick them.

Dean's eyes tracked the movement, and then he repeated the gesture.

"I was—" concerned, Cas started to say, but he was cut off by the crush of Dean's mouth against his own. It was the straw that broke the dam, or the drop that broke the camel, or both. All Cas knew was that he was thirsty and Dean was the only water around. When Dean started to pull back from that first kiss, Cas locked his hands behind Dean's head and drew him back down for another long drink. His hands tangled in the short hairs that lined the back of Dean's neck.

And then Dean let out a brief snarl, and it seemed impossible to Cas, but somehow he managed to press himself more firmly down into Cas. He felt heat of them both burn through their clothes, but Cas didn't care. He ran his hands down Dean's back, down as far as they would go, kneading, grasping, smoothing the whole way.

"Clothes. Now." Dean growled again and angrily pushed away from Cas. Cas sat up, unwilling to lose contact with Dean, but then Dean's hands were pushing at the shoulders of his trench coat and fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. And then his hands were running along the skin of Cas's stomach, and all Cas could think was more and now.

He pushed back at Dean and ran his hands across Dean's chest, across the flat planes and hard muscles, along the delicate, fine hairs that trailed down. And Dean was gasping and shoving back at Cas, this time pulling at the button on Cas's pants and muttering again about clothes. Cas tried to reach up and grab for Dean's neck again, to kiss him.

"Stop it!" Dean hissed and pinned Cas's hands above them. He suddenly wasn't sure when they had started to slide down the bed, or when the covers had fallen to the floor, or what happened to the pillows, and that made him pause and think. "What are we doing, Cas?" he asked, voice as quiet as anything.

Cas stopped wiggling and looked up at Dean with those endless blue eyes. "Need you," he answered softly, and felt that overwhelming feeling of need and love and contentment all at once. It was what he felt right before he gripped Dean tight in Hell.

Dean leaned down gently and kissed Cas on the forehead. "Me too." He sighed and very carefully loosened his grip on Cas's wrists. "But first, you have to get out of these clothes."

After that, it was all gentle touches and lingering caresses as Dean pulled on the sleeves of Cas's coat and then shirt. He gently ran his hands and fingers across of inches of smooth skin, which Cas then repeated. Dean was so careful that Cas thought he might break with the beauty of it. And in turn, he touched Dean as if handling the finest of porcelain, no, the softness of starlight. No. He held on to Dean with every feeling that had ever been bottled up inside. He reached out and ran his hand along Dean's jaw, and Dean paused in kissing his way down Cas's chest. They looked at each other and then Dean was lunging up. And it was all passion and need and a frenzied tangle of arms and legs. The moment seemed to last forever, and Cas didn't want Dean to ever leave him. It was pure joy, utter completeness. It was the simplest and most wonderful thing that Cas had ever felt, and there were no words for it.

All was right in the world.

Dean smiled at Cas, a slow drawling sort of smile that crept up and spoke of utter satisfaction. "That…" he started to say and then sighed loudly and leaned his head down on Cas's chest. Cas brought his hand up and smoothed Dean's hair. "Yes," Dean breathed, and he drifted asleep.

Cas had been ignoring the angels talking for quite a while; it gave him a lot of practice for lying in bed and holding Dean. He simply focused on the way that Dean felt in his arms, how Dean shifted ever so slightly closer, how his legs tangled with Cas's. Raphael was, unfortunately, overly persistent, and so Cas wasn't at all surprised to feel him enter the room.

He didn't roll over or sit up or do anything to acknowledge Raphael's presence.

"Have you been fornicating with a human?" Raphael demanded in a horrified tone.

Cas's hand paused in his efforts to pet Dean. "Did our Father not command us to love humanity?"

"I don't think sex is what He intended with that particular edict."

Cas did sit up at that, just so he could glare at Raphael. "Do you presume to know the mind of our Father?"

"We are simply concerned that your attachment to the Winchesters may cause you to lose sight of your responsibilities to all of humanity." Joshua appeared in the room.

"I have not forgotten," Cas replied. He looked over his shoulder at Dean.

"Then will you come with us and help us to understand the nature of the Imbalance and the best solution for the problem?"

Cas looked from the gentle reprimand on Joshua's face to the wrathful scowl on Raphael's and then decided that it was a very good thing that Joshua had shown up, since Cas still harbored a deep resentment against Raphael. Things might have gotten a little out of hand otherwise. He looked at Dean again and sighed. "Yes, I will go with you."

No one heard the quiet curse from someone out in the yard.

Although he had been slow to come to the conclusion, Sam actually agreed with Dean that Angels were dicks, usually with a capital D. But he hadn't thought they were stupid. Sure, a lot of the things they did were, but he'd always attributed that to upper management being bigger Dicks. But now, he was seeing upper management undo everything he had worked for four months to accomplish. Did they really think that Dean was going to be amenable to the whole "we need you to save the world" speech, again? For a third time? Which they might not even figure out that they needed to give for another couple of years, and by then Dean would be too set in whatever life he was living to change. Sam knew his brother. No. This problem had to be fixed now, while he was still trying to figure out how to live without Sam.

So while Sam waited to correct the problem, he didn't wait very long. Just long enough to be sure that Dean would be out of the house for a few hours. He'd also picked a time when Ben was gone, although that was due more to a welcome coincidence than to any real planning. He rang Lisa's doorbell. She opened the door and looked at him confused, like she thought she knew him but wasn't entirely sure. Sam suddenly felt very bad for her. He had been watching their relationship.

"Hello." She held the door mostly shut so that he could only really see her through a crack.

Sam had spent a lot of time thinking about what to say to her, how she might react (because if this were Dean or Bobby it would have come down to a fist fight), and he had come to the decision that honesty, no matter how brutal, was the best policy. "Hello, my name is Sam, and I'm Dean's brother."

She looked at him critically for a moment, and Sam wondered if it still might come to blows. "Just a minute." Then she shut the door. Sam waited patiently for her to come back, which she did with a box of salt, a silver knife, and a glass of water.

"I guess Dean's been telling you a few things."

"Yeah." She quickly drew a line of salt along the floor and handed him the knife. "Here, if you're really Sam you know what to do with this." Sam took the knife and cut a line into his arm, and then without even asking grabbed the glass of water and drank it. "Alright," she said, still uncertain. "Now step over the salt."

Sam did and gave her a smile. "That's really not a bad test."

"Aren't—aren't you supposed to be in Hell?" She asked very quietly.

"Yeah." Sam licked his lips; this was the beginning. "To be honest? I'm not really sure why I'm not down there. All I know is that I jumped, Adam—Michael jumped after me, and then I woke up next to Adam in some grassy field somewhere in the middle of Montana."

Lisa crossed her arms and tried not to look at Sam. "Why are you here, now?" She stared at the space just to the right of his head, and Sam thought he might have seen her lip quibble just a little on that 'why.'

He took a deep breath and launched into the prepared portion of his speech. "I know Bobby was here, talking about the Imbalance and Cas and asking Dean to go find him, and I know you know about Dean saving the world and everything and how it's all crazy that Dean should have to do it again," Lisa huffed, but let Sam continue. "But Dean is the only one who can. It's difficult to believe, especially since we've heard that before and it's been a lie. But Dean is the only one who can correct this Imbalance."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Could we, maybe, sit down? This might take a while to explain."

"Lisa brushed hair off her face and then tapped her fingers on her hips. "Okay, but I want to know why you're here now. Why didn't you come four months ago?"

"It's Dean." Sam followed her into the living room.

Lisa sat down. "I know that."

Sam fidgeted. "It's complicated. I know Dean, know him better than anyone else, and if I am here then he won't see anything past me." Sam paused and looked up for a moment. "When I was—when Lucifer possessed me, he has a lot of knowledge, things that God told him, things that nobody knows or remembers or cares to talk about, and these things include the fact that there are two entities that are older than God. They don't really have names, but for the sake of the conversation, let's call them Stasis and Possibility. They move around the universe causing rapid change or causing nothing to change, except when they are together. When they are together, the world is in balance."

"Why are you telling me this?" Lisa asked, knowing that she wouldn't like it.

Sam confirmed her thoughts by saying, "Dean's restless since he got back from his trip, isn't he? Not sleeping at night, having strange dreams, a little extra moody?" When Lisa nodded, Sam continued. "That's because he found Stasis and isn't going to adjust well to having to live without him."

"What am I supposed to do about that?" she asked quietly.

"I'm sorry," Sam said suddenly. "It isn't right to ask these things from you, but you are the only one he might listen to, they both might listen to. Dean hasn't ever been able to see past me, if he knew I was here…"

"He'd be consumed with you." Lisa wasn't stupid; she'd seen how messed up Dean was four months ago. She'd read the Twilight Series, and Dean and Sam were way more codependent than Edward and Bella (if his lack of coping was anything to go by). "But what do you want me to do?"

"You might have noticed, but Dean doesn't talk about his emotions. I don't think even he knows how he feels about Cas. You have to get him to realize that he needs Cas."

"Why me?" Lisa demanded, a little bit horrified.

"Because you have the best chance of success. Because Dean is Possibility and Cas is Stasis. Because if someone doesn't convince him, then the world will be thrown into Chaos and insanity." That last part, Sam had thought up months ago when he'd considered telling someone he was okay and before he'd launched into this quest to help Dean.

"And how do you suggest I do that?

Sam leaned forward to answer, but at that moment they both heard the garage door open and a car pull into the driveway. "He's home." Sam jumped up. "You have to get him to realize that he wants Cas." And then he was running out the door, leaving Lisa alone, uncertain and feeling as if it were all up to her to save the world.

She spent the evening watching Dean and Ben play Monopoly while she baked cookies for some party Ben's class was having. There was a restlessness in the way that Dean shifted in his seat, in the way that his eyes darted towards the doors and windows in the room. She caught his eye once and Dean flashed her a smile, but it was quickly replaced with unease.

"Alright." She wiped her hands on her apron. "Time for bed, Ben."

"But the game's not over yet!" Ben whined.

Lisa shook her head and smiled a little. "It's Monopoly; you'll be playing the same game for the next three weeks."

"Alright," he moaned. "But don't move any of my houses!" Ben tramped up the stairs.

"And you, sir," Lisa pointed at Dean, "stop stealing hundreds out of the bank when he's not looking, otherwise this game really will take three weeks."

"Alright." Dean held up his hands. "You caught me." He wrapped his arms around her and inhaled the scent of fresh snickerdoodles. "He just looks so happy when we play, I don't want it to be over too fast for him." Just a few days ago, before he'd left, Dean had held onto Lisa as if he couldn't get her close enough, and now there were whole inches between them. She had noticed it before, but she hadn't quite wondered why until now.

Lisa turned in his arms. "Tell me about Cas."

A series of emotions flickered across Dean's face too quickly for Lisa to catalogue and he let go of her and walked back to the table. "Who's been talking to you about him?"

"It doesn't matter." She untied her apron. "Will you tell me about him?"

Dean sighed loudly. "He's an Angel."

"That's not enough," she said quietly.

"What more is there to know?" Dean demanded. "He's a dick who—" He licked his lips and flexed his hand.

Lisa pushed. "What else?"

"What else? What else could there possible be? Angels are Dicks who decided the apocalypse would be a grand old time, completely screwing over our whole world for their pathetic Family Feud. And—and—"

Lisa put her hand on his arm and said gently, "And?"

Dean began to pace across the floor. "I don't know." He glared at the Monopoly game.

"Tell me about him. What is he like?"

"He's—He gave up everything so that I could have a chance to stop Sam from letting Lucifer out. He—" Dean bit his lip. "He betrayed his family, killed, and nearly Fell, all so…" He trailed off into nothing and Lisa let go of his arm.

"That isn't everything," she said. "You've been different since you got back from Bobby's. I didn't know why, but something happened, something between you and Cas. You—you don't touch me like you used to."

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"I just want for you to be okay!" Lisa shouted back at him, finally losing patience with this stupid game. "And if this Cas—if he can help you—"

"They don't help! They make a lot of promises, and then they just leave!"

"Did you ask him why he left? Because someone who gives up everything doesn't just leave!" Lisa pushed right up into his space.

"You don't know anything about Angels!" Dean stalked towards the corner.

"No. But the only time you get this angry and defensive is when you're afraid. Maybe you thought I didn't notice with all the shouting. You were afraid of getting a job, and you're afraid of the Impala, and you are afraid of this!" Her voice got softer. "What is there to be so afraid of?"

"They all leave! Alright! In the end, everyone I love leaves."

Lisa hadn't expected that confession. "You love him?" It wasn't really a question. Dean looked so stricken when she said it that Lisa reached out again. "Tell him. It's okay to love."

"I need some air," Dean muttered as he brushed past her and stomped into the backyard.

Dean looked up at the sky and wiped his hand across his face. "Cas," he called once without really meaning it.

Almost instantly, Raphael appeared. "He is preoccupied at the moment."

That kind of settled everything for Dean; Cas wasn't the only one holding a grudge against him. "You're a dick." Dean scowled. "Cas!"

"He won't come. He has more important things to do than to baby-sit you."

"You were the one who called him from Bobby's house."

"He does not need to be distracted."

Dean glared and shouted louder this time, "Cas!"

The grass was starting to grow. It shot up a noticeable two inches while Dean continued to shout for Cas. He was screaming as loud as he could now, and the neighbors were bound to start noticing any time. Raphael looked down and saw that the grass was dead brown in the patches that surrounded him and a vibrant green in the patches surrounding Dean. But as he watched those patches darkened and died while the other places grew bright. And still Dean continued to shout, oblivious to his effect on the lawn.

And then Castiel was there and the mad growing cycle stopped, went right back to normal. "Dean." He turned his head and glared at Raphael. "Raphael."

There was an awkward silent moment, which Dean broke by saying, "Can't you make him go away now?"

Raphael looked at the grass, looked at Dean and Castiel, and then looked back at the grass. "I believe I will go seek Revelation." And then he was gone.

Dean looked at Cas, and was suddenly very unsure of what to say. He wanted to ask about who Raphael was seeking Revelation from, but he also recognized that as the delaying tactic it was. "I—" he coughed. "I'm really bad at this."

Cas stepped forward. "I am sorry I had to leave you that morning. Raphael and Joshua were quite insistent."

"They're Dicks." Dean replied, unable to look Cas in the eye.

"Is something wrong?" Cas stepped closer.

"I—yes. Everything, and I don't know how to fix it, except—" Dean turned around and faced the back of the house. "Except things are a little better with you."

"I don't understand."

Dean flipped back around. "It's—it's like this, Dad's gone, Sam's gone. You and Bobby were all I had left. And then you left. Like everyone. Is there something wrong with me?"

"You misunderstand." Cas stepped forward. "It was not by choice that I left that morning."

"Yeah, saving the world, I get it."

"I do not. I do not understand this Imbalance they speak about. I think that it is something they have invented to prevent me from watching over you."

"You've been watching over me?"

"Yes. I was concerned."

"What do you mean concerned?"

"I find myself wondering how you are, what you are doing, what you might think, and then I come down to Earth and I see you having a nightmare. It—bothers me."

"Bothers? That's the word you pick?"

"What do you want me to say, Dean? What do you want to hear? I do not understand these feelings, except that—that there is pain in my stomach when you do not sleep, that when you ride in to traffic I feel my chest constrict, and when you lie in bed with Lisa there is a burning sensation that runs through my whole being. And I do not know what it means! Tell me Dean. Tell me what you want!"

He was standing right in front of Dean, and it was a repeat of what happened in that room at Bobby's. Dean suddenly crushed his mouth to Cas's. It was that rush of need and want and home that was all rolled up and confused.

"I want you," Dean whispered against Cas's lips.

Cas reached out and pulled the front of Dean's shirt until they were flush against each other. And Dean didn't care that they were in Lisa's backyard making out like high schoolers, and Dean really didn't care about the neighbors, or the fact that Lisa was inside and it would probably be bad manners to get it on with Cas in the guest bedroom.

Because Cas was here and touchable and all his.