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Dean’s phone begins to ring as he and Cas are driving through upstate New York. More accurately, the device starts declaring “Nerd alert!” in Austin Powers’ distinctive voice—Sammy’s ringtone, and a choice Dean is particularly proud of. He rolls his eyes that his little brother would still call after Dean had already texted that he’ll check in later, when they stop for the night, but that’s Sam for you. Dean sighs, swipes the green "accept" button, and puts the Moose on speakerphone, letting the phone lie on the bench seat between him and Cas.

“You’re on speaker, Sammy. What’s up?”

A short huff comes through the line, but these days his brother has mostly given up on trying to get Dean to stop infantilizing him. “How’s the hunt going?”

“Fine, wrapped up actually. Turned out to be a gremlin , of all things,” Dean says with a chuckle. “Who knew those British flyboys were actually on to something back then?”

He and Cas had finished their latest hunt just the night before, at a historical aviation museum in Vermont. Something had been wreaking havoc on the museum displays, even going so far as to sabotage a flight demonstration event during a local festival. Sam and his eagle eye had spotted a post about it online, and had deployed his brother and their resident angel to go check it out. Thankfully, it had turned out to be about as cut and dried as a case could be; not a salt-and-burn, but its cousin the point-and-shoot. Little bastard hadn’t even needed special bullets to die.

“With all those stories, I guess something was bound to be true about them,” Sam comments absently. “So look, I was actually calling because I saw another article today, about something hinky going on in Pennsylvania. I figured, it’s on your way back here, maybe you guys could check it out.”

Dean and Cas share a bemused glance— hinky? —before Dean replies. “Yeah dude, send me the info and we’ll make a pit stop.” 

Sam agrees and they end the call. Not two minutes later, Dean’s phone is pinging with a text full of the promised info. Still watching the road, Dean takes a hand off the wheel to grab the device.  He intends to hand it over to Cas so Cas can be his eyes, but instead of the cool plastic of his phone’s case, his fingers meet the warm, slightly rough skin of Castiel’s knuckles. 

Dean freezes. His breath, even his heart stops in his chest for what he’s sure is approximately five millennia, until his brain reboots enough for him to yank his hand back into his own lap. “Sorry, Ca—”

“Sorry, I—” Cas says at the same time, their overlapping voices drowning out the Metallica playing on Baby’s tape deck.

The smooth, unbothered laugh Dean attempts comes out a little too much like a nervous titter for his liking. “Go ahead, Cas. I was gonna ask you to, anyway,” he says after clearing his throat, restoring his voice to its normal pitch.

Cas looks at Dean for a long moment, his face annoyingly unreadable, before he finally picks up Dean’s phone. He taps into Sam’s text, opening the linked article and skimming through it.

“Apparently this isn’t the first time something strange has happened in this town,” he comments, his eyes still darting back and forth in the glow of the screen. “In fact, forty years ago this year, this says the town was nearly overrun by—” 

Cas’ speech cuts off abruptly, and Dean glances over in time to see his brow furrow. “By what?” he prompts.

Cas looks up and over at him, his confusion clear on his face. Dean shifts a little in his seat when he thinks he spies a little worry there, too. “By gremlins.”

Dean barks a laugh loud enough that it echoes inside the Impala’s cab. “Again? What are the odds of that?”

Cas’ face screws up in thought for a moment. “Approximately one in eighty millio—slim,” he amends when Dean’s eyes start to glaze over. “Very slim, to say the least.”

“Well, let’s go check it out, and if it is gremlins again, at least we know how to kill ‘em,” Dean says with a cheeky grin. 

Maybe he’s still riding the high of a textbook successful hunt, or maybe it’s the opening riffs of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” starting to emanate from the speakers, but suddenly Dean is swamped by a giddy elation he can’t quite contain. He presses his foot down on Baby’s gas pedal, taking her from purr to roar in the space of a breath. He catches Cas’ eye, and the fond amusement there turns his grin to laughter as they’re thrown back against the bench seat, Baby carrying them off into the moonless night.

*

“So whaddaya think, should we have ‘Agents Mosley and Moscone’ pay a little visit to the local PD? See what we can get out of ‘em?” Dean asks, brushing invisible lint off the shoulders of his suit where it’s hung up in pride of place on the closet door, before turning to Cas.

Castiel is seated at the edge of one of the beds in their double motel room, hunched over his knees as he holds one hand in front of his face. He’s frowning down at it as he twists it back and forth at the wrist, seemingly examining it from every angle. He glances up at Dean long enough to shrug, muttering a distracted “I guess” before returning to his inspection.

Dean tries very hard to ignore what feels like a pang of hurt spiking in his gut, letting it morph into the smooth comfort of irritation. “Dude, you’re like a puppy that just discovered his own tail. What gives?”

“Hm?” Castiel looks up again, brows still drawn for a moment until his face softens in comprehension. “Oh. It appears I cut my finger on something as we were checking in. It hasn’t healed yet, and I find the pain quite… distracting.” Castiel holds up his right hand, index finger extended to reveal a thin, red line marring the skin just past the third knuckle. 

Dean’s scowl melts into an amused smirk, and he strides from the closet to Castiel’s position on the bed. He stops just shy of Cas’ knees, stooping to scoop Cas’ hand into his own for a closer look. “Not even bleeding anymore—probably just a papercut. They hurt like a bitch, but I think you’ll live.” At Castiel’s responding hangdog expression, Dean rolls his eyes fondly. “Alright, ya big baby, we can clean it up and slap a band-aid on it. C’mere.”

Dean keeps hold of Castiel’s hand, tugging the angel to his feet. As they make their way into the cramped bathroom, he pretends not to notice how Cas’ fingers have curled around his. He’s so busy not noticing, in fact, that he nearly runs right into the bathroom door frame. He jerks back in the nick of time, but the movement only throws him from frying pan into fire—the fire of Cas’ very wide, very solid chest. He rapidly rights himself, coughing and muttering an apology before continuing into the bathroom.

He still hasn’t let go of Cas’ hand.

It’s not until he steers Cas to sit down on the closed toilet lid that Dean finally extricates his fingers, busying himself with digging into his toiletry case for the tiny, basic first aid kit he keeps there. He can feel Castiel’s eyes on him as he pulls out the supplies he needs, and he fights back a flush as he lines the items up on the counter like orderly soldiers. 

As soon as he feels the heat in his cheeks fade, Dean turns to Castiel and holds out his hand, looking expectantly at the angel. Castiel extends the injured digit again, and Dean cradles it carefully, noting despite his best efforts the soft rasp of their palms skimming together. He grits his teeth, determined to make quick work of his medic duties so he can put some distance between them again. Even with diminished powers thanks to Cas’ direct line to heaven being cut off, the angel’s presence is an enticing pull on each of his senses, and he needs to keep his head clear for this case. 

A swipe of the alcohol pad—with accompanying hiss through Castiel’s teeth—a dab of ointment, and one bland, beige bandage later, and Cas is as good as new. Now that the “quick work” is done, though, Dean finds himself hesitating to release the hand that doesn’t belong to him. An instinct wells up inside him and, before he can overthink it, he leans in, pressing a small, swift kiss just over the band-aid. Cheeks burning for the second time in less than ten minutes, he drops the attended hand, clearing his throat as he turns away to tidy up his toiletries.

Castiel is still sitting there on the closed toilet when Dean is done, staring down at his bandaged finger with a quizzical tilt to his head. He squints up at Dean and asks, “What was that for?”

Dean plays the ace he keeps tucked up his sleeve for whenever he needs to wiggle out of a chick flick moment: he feigns utter and complete cluelessness. “Hm?” he asks, with eyebrows raised to precisely the angle of innocence.

Castiel immediately calls his bluff. “You kissed me,” he responds, the affected digit twitching upward. “Is that a… a normal step in the first aid process? Why haven’t I ever seen you and Sam do that when you bandage each other after hunts?”

Dean bites back a laugh, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. “Well, actually, I used to do that for Sammy when he was a kid, and skinned his knee falling out of a tree, or off his bike, or whatever. It’s like a – a thing you do to help a kid feel better, I guess.”

“I’m not a kid,” Castiel very helpfully points out.

Dean throws his hands up, discomfort growing to exasperation that threatens to bloom into full-blown panic if he can’t wiggle his way out of this self-inflicted pickle. “I dunno, man, it just felt right at the time! Now, can we suit up and get over to the station already, or do you need to interrogate me some more?”

Castiel simply looks at him for just a moment longer, solemn and far too insightful, before nodding his acquiescence.

“Great.” Dean stalks out of the bathroom to grab his suit on its padded hanger. “Now clear out so I can change.” He stands to the side of the doorway as Castiel exits, still looking down at his bandaged finger. Dean shoulders past him and into the bathroom, determinedly not looking back as he closes the door.

When he reemerges some minutes later, Dean feels like a new man. He smooths his palms down the fine wool of his double-breasted suit jacket before tucking his hands into the pockets of his high waisted, pleat-front slacks, putting just a touch of a swagger in his step as he grins in Cas’ direction. “Whatcha think?”

Castiel looks up, and Dean doesn’t miss the slight widening of his eyes as they skate down, then back up, the length of Dean’s body. “You changed your hair.”

Dean’s shoulders sag, and he rolls his eyes before casting a baleful look at the infuriating angel. “Yeah, I changed my hair. This is a classic suit; it needed a classic ‘do. Problem?” he asks, trying very hard not to let an undercurrent of insecurity creep into his challenging tone. The suit is new to him, a hidden gem he’d spotted in a thrift store on the hunt before last, and he’d been beside himself to find that it fit him almost perfectly. He feels like a million bucks in it, and he isn’t quite sure why, but Cas not responding accordingly is rubbing him the wrong way.

Castiel shakes his head, slow and thoughtful. “No problem.”

“Great. Then let’s go.”

*

Their drive from the motel to the Sheriff’s office reveals a town so quaint, so picturesque, that Dean halfway expects to find it featured in one of those “rural paradise” calendars he always sees for sale at roadside gas stations. Townspeople bustle down sidewalks and across the main avenue, and for a moment Dean wishes he could have their kind of life. Picket fences, apple pies, and no matter more pressing than making it to the bank before they close for the weekend. It would be nice. Quiet. 

Apart from these supposed gremlins, anyway , he thinks to himself with a dubious chuckle.

“Hm?” Castiel hums quizzically, his head swiveling around to pin Dean with a questioning stare.

“Oh, nothin’,” Dean says dismissively. “Just daydreaming.”

His response is met only with a tilt of Castiel’s head, intensifying his questioning.

Dean sighs. “Just… y’know. Imagining what it’d be like to live this kind of life,” he says, taking a hand off Baby’s steering wheel to gesture vaguely out the front windshield. He leaves the instead unspoken. Cas hasn’t been around for very long, but Dean’s sure he already understands.

Castiel nods, turning his gaze to follow Dean’s gesture out over the hood of the Impala. Dean skates a peek across the empty gap between them, catching on the way Cas’ lips thin as he presses them together in thought. It makes Dean want to pull them back to fullness with his thumb.

“What would you do, if not hunt?” Castiel asks after a moment.

“Oh, I dunno, maybe see if the town mechanic is ready to retire,” Dean responds with a chuckle before his face, unbeknownst to him, softens into longing. “Or I’ve always kinda had this idea in the back of my head that it could be fun to open up a sandwich shop, and really do it right, y’know? Roast and slice the meat in-house, partner with farms in the area for the cheese, and the veggie toppings so Sam’ll stay off my back… anyway,” Dean shrugs off the fantasy with a slight shake of his head, glancing over to find Castiel watching him again, another enigmatic look on his face. It steals the breath from his chest, and he swallows thickly past the lump that has suddenly announced its presence in his throat.

“Gotta get you juiced back up first, though, right?” Dean continues with a grin he doesn’t quite feel. “So you can go off and live your best angel life once we get Michael and Lucifer to fuck off with this apocalypse bullshit.” His cheeks ache with the pull of false cheer.

Castiel blinks slowly, brow pulling in over the eyes that haven’t stopped boring into what feels like Dean’s very core. “Right,” he says, after just a beat too long. 

Dean waits, but after a few awkward seconds it becomes clear that no other words are forthcoming from the angel. Luckily for him, at that very moment he spots an empty parking spot at the curb, easing Baby into it before throwing her into park and cutting the engine. 

They disembark from the Impala with twin creaks of her heavy steel doors. Both men scan the facade of the Sheriff’s office and any passers-by, an old force of habit that’s long since been instilled, deep down past conscious choice. Dean does it while swinging around the front bumper to catch up to Castiel standing on the curb, clicking his tongue in dismay when he sees the disheveled state of Cas’ suit. 

“Dude, we gotta clean you up before we go inside, or they’re never gonna buy that we’re feds. C’mere,” Dean gently chides, reaching out to pull Cas closer by the lapels of his ever-present trench coat.

Cas doesn’t resist, just quietly accepts the invitation into Dean’s personal space, allowing Dean to snug his tie back into place at his throat and smooth out his shirt collar. Dean’s fingertips tingle when they inadvertently brush over the ends of Cas’ hair where it just barely curls over the starched cotton at his nape. 

Dean glances away, self-conscious as his hands drop to the front of Cas’ suit jacket to do up the buttons there. Instead, his eyes alight on a kindly-looking old woman who smiles at him as she walks past. He gives her a smile back, although it feels somewhat strained around the edges. The tension he always seems to feel around Cas only ratchets up when he gets this close, making every movement an awkwardly conscious effort. She continues on her way, though, and Dean finishes up his buttoning, punctuating it with a final brush of the fabric over Castiel’s shoulders before stepping back to admire his handiwork.

The first thing he sees isn’t the line of Cas’ tie now falling neatly over his shirt buttons, nor is it the slight gap at the jacket’s lapels where it struggles to contain the angel’s broad chest and shoulders. Instead, what he sees first is the darkened glint of Castiel’s eyes, followed immediately by the angle to which they have dropped: in perfect trajectory to align his gaze with Dean’s mouth.

Dean’s lips part, but no air passes in or out. His eyes burn, but they’re stuck wide, unable (unwilling?) to blink, lest the moment disappear in a split second’s sightlessness. His surroundings fade, not to black but blue—perfect, endless, stormy-sea blue swallowing him down to uncharted depths. Without a conscious thought, he feels himself succumbing to the riptide wrapping itself velvety-tight around him, pulling him closer… closer…

A dog barks down the block, shattering the blown glass-fragile bubble that surrounds them. Man and angel jump in tandem, rocking back on their heels until the distance between them has been reestablished. Dean blinks rapidly, suddenly a little dizzy as his pulse pounds frenetically in each of his extremities. It takes a few seconds and some deep breaths, but finally his vision stops glimmering at the edges.

Dean can still feel his cheeks burning, though, and he quickly turns away, clearing his throat as he makes strides toward the Sheriff’s office door. “C’mon,” he says in a voice markedly rougher than it was just a moment ago, “we’re burnin’ daylight.”

The interior of the Sheriff’s headquarters is dim, drab, and dreary, painfully out of place with the rest of the town’s cheerful demeanor. Two middle-aged, jowly men in uniform lounge behind the main counter, while a third, dressed in laborers’ coveralls, drags a mop back and forth over the dingy linoleum in the far corner. 

Dean approaches the counter just ahead of Castiel, drawing the apathetic gazes of the seated men. “Help you?” one drawls, clearly disinclined to do so.

“Sure hope so, gentlemen,” Dean replies, simultaneously freeing his most charming smile and his forged FBI credentials. “I’m Agent Mosley, this here is my partner Agent Moscone. We were sent in to investigate some… unusual recent events and their possible connection to a local crime spree from forty years ago.”

“Forty years ago, eh?” one of the men replies, crossing his arms just under a nametag that reads ‘Sheriff Frye.’ “Why’re the feds interested in a small town cold case, anyway?”

“Well, between you ‘n’ me,” Dean starts, leaning in conspiratorially, “they think there might be a copycat. But the perp’s believed to have crossed state lines, so…” he trails off, shrugging with upturned palms as if to say, Here we are, Uncle Sam’s errand boys .

“Huh,” chimes in the other uniform, tagged ‘Deputy Reilly.’ He exchanges a glance with the Sheriff, then leans forward with a groan when the Sheriff nods reluctantly. “Guess we can help y’out. Gimme a sec.” Castiel and Dean nod in unison, and Dean throws in an agreeable smile on top.

The man levers himself up out of his chair and lumbers off toward a door at the back of the room. Just before he leaves, he calls out to the man mopping, “Hey Pete! You missed a spot!” He doesn’t wait for a reply, merely cackles as he shoulders through the door, while the janitor glares wordlessly at him from the corner.

Dean half-turns to Castiel behind him, popping his brows to express his incredulity. The dynamic in the room isn’t hard to read: it’s clear these three men have known each other a while—likely grew up together. The lawmen are buddies, and the “joke” at the janitor’s expense smacks of childhood bullying that they never grew out of. He can’t say he ever had much respect for law enforcement—hard to, in his line of work—but these two really take the damn cake. He already can’t wait to never step foot in this grubby little office again.

Deputy Reilly comes back a few minutes later with a manila folder clutched in his hands. He slaps it on top of the counter in front of him before he sits back down in his chair, leaning back with the satisfied air of someone who’s likely done the only real work he’ll have to do that day. 

Dean flips the file open, mostly to make sure there’s even anything in there at all, and scans through the papers that are, thankfully, actually present. He pretends to be surprised when the word “gremlins” jumps out at him from the report, looking up at the officers with a bemused smirk. “Gremlins, huh?”

The Sheriff rolls his eyes. “Yeah, with the help of the damned Easter Bunny.” The deputy beside him snickers into his fist. “Look—don’t let any of the old folks around here get in your head too much. They’ll tell you the town was almost swarmed by little monsters forty years ago. That’s just their cockamamie excuse for a mass hallucination caused by, I dunno, some bug in the water supply or, hell, someone passing around laced dope for all I know. But I do know that whatever it was killed my dad—and Reilly’s—that night, and I won’t hear their memories disgraced by some goddamned fairytale,” the Sheriff finishes with a huff. 

Dean blinks, stunned speechless for a brief moment. The Sheriff and his deputy had, up until now, been so unbothered that this outburst feels like it came out of nowhere. He shakes it off, flipping the file closed with his most agreeable smile. “Understood,” he says. “What can you tell me about the more recent events? The papers said something about ‘unusual vandalism.’” He leaves out the part where eyewitnesses also reported seeing strange creatures moving around in some old drainage tunnels. The Sheriff had already made his opinion clear on that.

The man scoffs. “It’s nothin’ but a few break-ins at the outskirts of town. Couple of ransacked kitchens and some stolen blankets, is all. Likely just kids screwing around. Doesn’t seem that connected to forty years ago, and certainly doesn’t seem worth the government’s dime,” he finishes with a pointed look in Dean and Castiel’s direction.

Dean pastes on his most sympathetic smile. “Yeah, you’re probably right, but we gotta go where they point us, y’know how it goes. Appreciate the info, just the same. You have a nice day, gentlemen.” 

With a casual salute and Cas close behind him, Dean turns to walk out of the Sheriff’s office, hopefully forever. As he pulls the door open, he catches sight of the janitor still standing in his corner, mopping forgotten as he watches them go with apprehensive eyes. Something in them almost makes Dean pause and go back in to grill the guy, but ultimately he decides against it. The man isn’t likely to divulge anything in the presence of the bullies in uniform anyway, and truth be told, he really doesn’t want to spend more time around them than he already has, himself. 

Dean squints as he steps out into the late afternoon sunlight, looking up and down the street to get his bearings after what feels like an eternity in the Sheriff’s office. He takes a deep inhale through his nose, releasing it on a gratified hum as he contemplates the evening’s possibilities.

“Those men weren’t very pleasant,” Castiel comments offhandedly as he steps up beside Dean. He, too, is squinting in the bright day, and Dean has to tear his eyes away from the delicate shadows cast by Cas’ lashes as they fan out over his cheekbones. The creases beside his eyes, too; Dean wonders when they started getting so deep. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Dean laughs out, forever amused by Castiel’s blunt honesty. “Clearly just a couple-a schoolyard bullies who found a way to keep up their power trip after graduation. Assholes.”

Castiel hums, a dry agreement. “So what now?”

“Well, we should probably look this over,” Dean says, waving the file folder he holds, “but maybe tonight we can find the local watering hole, see what other folks have to say. I for one ain’t buyin’ the whole ‘mass hallucination’ thing. Sounds a little too convenient to me, y’know?”

Castiel nods. “It does that. Back to the motel, then? I could do with a nap.”

Dean blinks, twitching his head to and fro as if to shake off the surprise of Castiel’s declaration. “You? Nap?”

The look Castiel casts sideways at him is baleful. “Yes, Dean. I’m not at full power since Heaven cut me off. I get tired now,” he grumbles.

“Well alright, Sleeping Beauty, welcome to the club with us mere mortals,” Dean says with his shittiest grin. “Let’s get you back before I have to carry your ass into the room.”

Castiel doesn’t dignify this with a reply, merely rolls his eyes with enough force that the rest of his body is carried along the momentum. Together they climb back into the Impala, and let her carry them off back the way they came.

*

The term ‘watering hole’ turns out to be very correct, in the sense that the one bar in town, Dorry’s Tavern, is little more than a hole in the wall set along the town’s main drag. When Dean and Castiel go inside, the bar doesn’t go silent like in the movies, but the hum of conversation definitely dips as just about every pair of eyes in the place turns to them. Dean gives the room a modest smile, while beside him, Castiel merely looks back, solemn eyes scanning the locals scattered across barstools and wobbly tables.

“C’mon in, boys, have a seat wherever,” calls a sturdy, middle-aged woman stationed behind the bar. 

Dean gives the woman a nod of thanks and heads to an empty table in the far corner, plopping down in a chair positioned so he can look out over the rest of the room. Castiel slides into the seat opposite, turning so he can do the same. 

The bartender bustles over not a minute later, bubblegum popping between her lips as she gives them a friendly, but no-nonsense, smile. “What can I get you boys?”

“I’ll take a draft of whatever light beer you got that isn’t an IPA,” Dean says with a good-humored grimace.

“Same,” Castiel echoes quietly, glancing up at the woman.

“You got it,” she says, striding off with an efficient roll of her ample hips.

While they wait for their drinks, Dean resumes his survey of the room. It’s busy but not packed, and most of the patrons are middle aged or older, hunched or sprawled comfortably in their seats with the air of long-time regulars. Around and between the tables and their occupants, Dean notices several spots in the red brick wall that look to have been shot or blasted out, the resulting pits jagged and grisly in the glow of mounted neon signs. His eyebrows pop up, and he gestures for Cas to have a look too. 

Cas’ brows furrow as he studies one nearby crater more closely. “Looks like something happened here, although it’s hard to tell if these were caused forty years ago,” he finally comments. 

"With my grace so low, I can't even say for sure if these are bullet holes."

“Only one way to find out,” Dean replies as the bartender comes back with full, foamy pint glasses. Grinning up at her, he asks, “So, you Dorry?”

The woman chuckles wryly. “Daughter of Dorry. Name’s Darcy. …Yeah, I know. Dad thought he was real funny. What brings you boys to town?”

“Oh, we’re just passing through, decided to stop off for a couple days of R&R,” Dean says with a nonchalant shrug, playing up an air of innocence. Then, reluctant to waste more time, he veers into directness. “Say, what happened to your walls? This used to be an old mob joint, or something?” 

“Heh, no, nothing like that,” Darcy says, shaking her head so her long brown waves swish across her shoulders. “Just some trouble that was dealt with a long time ago.”

“Oh yeah? What happened?” Dean leans in conspiratorially, doing his best to give off the vibes of a nosy tourist.

“Ahh, you wouldn’t believe me if I told ya,” Darcy waves him off, glancing around the room as though to make sure no one else is trying to get a drink at that moment.

“Try me,” Dean says with his highest-wattage grin.

Darcy glances around again before crouching down beside their table, bracing her elbow on its surface. “Gremlins,” she says in the dramatic undertone of a tall tale teller. Still, there’s a serious glint in her eyes that belies her theatrics. 

“Gremlins? You’re joking, right?” Castiel cuts in, the rumble of his voice taking on a skeptical tilt. He flicks his eyes up to Dean for the barest fraction of a second, the corners of his mouth ticking up minutely. Dean gets the message— two can play this game —and bites back a grin.

Darcy shakes her head again, her eyes widening in earnest. “I’m not! It was forty years ago, this year in fact. I was just a kid, but my dad would tell me stories. And I saw the bar afterward, before Dad fixed it up. It was trashed . And there were a few…” she pauses, waving her hand in front of her as she searches for her next words, “...puddles. On the floor. This greenish slime, like nothing I’d ever seen before, or since.”

“Slime? What kind of slime?” Dean asks, leaning closer like he’s entirely riveted. He doesn’t even really have to pretend at it, if he’s honest. This is turning out to be easily one of the more captivating cases they’ve been on in a while.

“Couldn’t tell you,” Darcy replies. “But one of Dad’s old employees told me that’s what happened when the things died; they dissolved into goo. And that’s what I saw.”

“Huh,” Castiel says pensively, rubbing his chin back and forth in the vee of his thumb and forefinger. Dean tries not to follow the shifting angle of the angel’s jawline as Cas’ stubble rasps against the skin of his fingers. “That sounds… pretty incredible.”

Darcy’s eyes have just begun to narrow his way when the old woman who’d smiled at Dean earlier that day steps up behind her, placing a slender, wrinkled hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright, Darcy. Why don’t you let me chat with these two young men? I think Pete over there wants a drink, anyway.”

Darcy rises to her feet with only a hint of a stifled groan. With one last pointed look over her shoulder at them, she makes her way back to the bar, grabbing a pint glass for the man Dean recognizes as the janitor from the Sheriff’s office.

When Dean shifts his gaze back to the old woman, he finds her warm hazel eyes smiling down at him, although there’s a sharpness to them that tells him she hasn’t fallen for the tactic he and Cas used on Darcy. He swallows, then tacks on his best “good son” smile. “Hi, ma’am. Saw you earlier today, didn’t I?”

Her smile widens, accompanied by a playful quirk of her eyebrow: she isn’t fooled by Dean’s charm in the slightest. “That you did. Would you boys be up for a little chat at my home? I think I might be of a bit more help to you than the Sheriff and his deputy likely were.”

Dean slides his eyes over to Castiel across from him, and is met with only a slight tilt of the angel’s head paired with a shrug of the corresponding shoulder. He figures Cas would let him know, somehow, if the woman were bad news, so he agrees, and they follow her out the front door of the bar. Dean makes sure to leave a good tip on the table for Darcy; it may be effective, but he never feels entirely great about using the “skeptical asshole” tactic to get people to talk. Even if Cas does make it look so damn good.

When he catches up to them outside, Cas is standing on the sidewalk next to the old woman, who is making no move toward any of the cars parked along the curb nearby. Dean walks up, rubbing his hands together against the barest hint of chill hanging in the nighttime air. “So uh, should we follow you, or…?”

“Oh, no,” she replies calmly, “I walked in this evening, but I’ll be happy to direct you on our drive back. I’m Lynn, by the way.”

Dean exchanges a glance with Castiel over the top of the woman’s—Lynn’s—head, but Castiel looks too busy holding in laughter to come to Dean’s aid. Dean rolls his eyes, then turns his attention back to the elderly spitfire. “I’m Dean, and that’s Cas. And, uh… well, this is us,” he says, gesturing to the Impala sitting pretty, parked behind a beat-up old hatchback.

“Ah, the Impala from earlier is yours,” Lynn remarks as she approaches the front passenger door. “It’s lovely.”

Dean feels a familiar rush of pride as he swings around to the driver’s side. “Ah! You know classics, then?”

Lynn affixes him with a wry look over Baby’s roof. “I was around when these were rolling new off the line, young man. I don’t need to know classics to remember my youth.”

Dean gulps, feeling the beginnings of a sweaty flush prickle along his hairline. “Uh, right. Sorry,” he mutters before pulling open the driver’s door and quickly ducking inside.

From there he watches, with growing embarrassment, as Castiel steps up to the passenger door and opens it for Lynn. Cas waits patiently while she situates herself in the shotgun seat, then eases the door shut at her side. Adding insult to injury, he takes the briefest moment to lean in and shoot a look at Dean through the window, quirking his eyebrow just so before easing into the backseat and buckling himself into the middle. 

As Dean turns the key in the ignition, his eyes flick to the rearview mirror. Cas is already there in the reflection, as though anticipating Dean’s look, and that damned eyebrow is jumping again. The corners of his mouth twitch, and Dean can practically hear Cas laughing at him inside his head. His eyes narrow at Cas in the mirror, but he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep a grin from forming. To help distract himself—they have a job to do, anyway—he throws Baby into gear and pulls away from the curb. As he drives off, he gives her a little rev of the engine, just to feel the comfort of her rumbling vibrations beneath his feet. (And if a few heads turn from the folks loitering outside the bar, well, they’re only right to give Baby her due.)

With Lynn’s directions, it’s the work of only a few minutes until they’re parked in front of her house. It’s a cozy thing: two stories, painted grey-green with white trim, featuring a porch Dean could see himself sitting on in the evenings. He’d be nursing a beer, talking about everything and nothing with Cas…

Dean shakes himself, banishing that thought from his mind. Of course Cas won’t be there. He’ll have better things to do, important angel business to take care of, or whatever. Regardless, a house like this, and the kind of apple pie life it represents, ain’t in the cards for Dean Winchester. No, he’ll be lucky to hole up in some bunker somewhere, and only see the light of day when he leaves to go kill another monster. 

They all exit the car, and Lynn leads them inside. The interior seems a little dated, but it’s warm, and welcoming. As Lynn putters around turning on various lamps, the golden light creates a cozy, homey atmosphere that makes Dean want to sink into the couch and never leave. 

Lynn tells Dean and Castiel to make themselves comfortable in the living room while she goes to the kitchen to put the kettle on. As she goes, she calls out, “Gizmo, I’m home!” Dean is puzzled at first—Gizmo seems like a dog’s name, but he can’t hear any of the telltale sounds of a happy dog rushing in to welcome its human home. Then, as he seats himself at one end of the couch, he hears the patter of tiny feet on the staircase and relaxes, realizing Gizmo must instead be a cat. Funny name for a cat, but he supposes he’s heard worse. Hell, Rhonda’d had a cat named Fat Bastard. He smiles to himself, a little crooked, as he recalls his brief interlude with that eye-opener of a woman and her magnificent feline.

He’s pulled from his memories by Cas’ voice, murmuring his name low and urgent from his position on the loveseat across from Dean’s claimed couch. He looks up to find Cas staring at him, or rather, staring over his shoulder, brow furrowed low over eyes gone almost comically wide. Dean can only sit and blink at him for a moment, because he’s never seen Cas’ face look quite like that. It finally dawns on him that Cas is looking at something, so he twists in his seat to see for himself.

He’s not in any way prepared for what’s standing in the doorway. It’s not a cat, that much is for certain. The thing almost looks like a… a… a Furby , if Furbies were slightly larger, living creatures that could gaze intelligently back at their audience. It even raises a hand—paw?—and waves at them, trilling a tone that almost sounds like hello . 

Lynn walks up behind the creature just then, hands full of a tray laden with various items for making tea. Before Dean can warn her to get away from it, she smiles serenely and says, “Ah, I see you boys have met Gizmo. Gizmo, this is Dean, and Cas. They’re friends or, at least, I’m pretty sure they are,” she amends, cutting a sharp eye at the seated men.

The creature—Gizmo—makes an agreeable sort of chime, waddling over to clamber up onto the loveseat cushion beside Castiel. It looks up at the angel, warbling a questioning sort of tune as its large, batlike ears flicker back and forth curiously. Castiel smiles, apparently understanding the thing, and opens his mouth to respond. Dean watches the exchange, something unnamable softening inside his ribcage as he watches Cas and creature converse. God, his angel’s amazing. Wait. His? Nope. Not going there.

Lynn sits down on the couch next to him just then, easing the heavy tray onto the coffee table in front of them before she sits back and looks at him with assessing eyes. “He’s harmless, you know. Not something you hunters need worry about.”

Dean starts, head whipping around to stare searchingly at her. “Wha—how—?”

She chuckles. “You think we didn’t have hunters coming through here in a steady stream after the attacks forty years ago? It’s been a while since I last saw one of you, but not so long that I’ve forgotten how to spot you.”

Dean breathes out a heavy sigh, letting his cheeks puff out as the air escapes his lungs. “Right, well. I guess I had that coming.”

Castiel leans in just then, curiosity writ large on his face. “He does seem harmless, I’ll admit. If that’s the case, though, how did this town end up back in the papers for ‘unusual vandalism’ and strange creatures spotted in drainage tunnel ?”

Dean resists the urge to drop his head into his hands and laugh helplessly. Cas had broken out the air quotes on ‘unusual vandalism,’ a gesture Dean had dismissed as the height of out-of-touch nerdery at first. Now, though, something about it seems so… so… so perfectly Cas . That soft spot behind his ribs is a goddamned puddle of melted chocolate, at this point.

Lynn shifts forward to perch at the edge of her couch cushion, busying her hands with pouring tea into four china cups. “Like I said, Gizmo is harmless. But I suspect—as do a few other folks who were here the first time around—that there may have been a survivor from forty years ago, and that it, or its offspring, is the one causing trouble now. Most of our kids and grandkids think we’re crazy, of course,” she rolls her eyes, though it’s half-hearted at best, “but you don’t forget events like those. And you don’t just ignore it when the signs start showing up again.”

Lynn is watching the tea tray resolutely as she arranges the gently steaming cups on their saucers, but Dean doesn’t miss the slight rattle of ceramic as her hands tremble. The woman is frightened, despite her tough exterior. “What did happen forty years ago?” he asks quietly.

Her eyes flick up to him with a wry twist of her mouth. “I’m sure you’ve read the articles, and whatever you managed to get out of the Sheriff.”

“Sure, but none of those articles mentioned you, or that any of these… things… survived. So the fact that I’m looking at one sitting pretty in your house means maybe I oughta hear your account of what happened.”

“Well, first things first, they’re not things ,” Lynn counters. “They’re mogwai. I don’t know their entire history, but the word means ‘devil’ in Cantonese, so I would guess they hail from that part of the world. Gizmo was the first in our lives—actually, he was given to my son, Billy, as a present from his father, my late husband.”

“Helluva present,” Dean snickers.

Lynn shrugs. “It was lovely, at first. An adjustment, sure, but Gizmo fit right in with our family. But something happened, one day—an accident when one of Billy’s friends, Pete, was over. See, when Rand brought Gizmo home, he warned Billy there were three rules to his care. Don’t expose the mogwai to bright lights, don’t feed them after midnight, and never, ever get them wet.”

“And Gizmo got wet,” Dean guesses.

“Right in one,” Lynn confirms. “We learned that day that getting them wet forces them to reproduce via some sort of… goodness, how to even describe it… almost a mitosis? And none of Gizmo’s offspring were quite so sweet as he is. They figured out a trick to get food after midnight.”

“So what happens when they eat after midnight? Must be worse than your average heartburn,” Dean jokes, patting his stomach like he speaks from experience.

“Much worse,” Lynn replies with a slight shudder. “I guess you could say that’s when they really earn their ‘devil’ moniker. They go from that ,” she nods to where Gizmo is chirping animatedly at a rapt Castiel on the other sofa, “to these vicious, ugly little.. little..”

“Gremlins?” Dean supplies.

“Yes! Gremlins. Old Mr Futterman wasn’t far off, calling them that,” she agrees. 

“D’you know how to kill ‘em?”

“The same way you kill just about anything else.” Lynn chuckles. “I even ended up microwaving one, although I can’t say I recommend that route. It was dreadful to clean up.”

Dean grins lazily, feeling surprisingly relaxed, all things considered. He blames it on the tea that he slurped down—just to be polite, of course. “Eh, I’m more inclined to shooting, myself. So that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Speaking of cleaning up, young man, would you be so kind as to help me…?” Lynn trails off, gesturing at the tray where lie the remnants of their impromptu tea party. 

“Oh! Of course, ma’am,” Dean replies, earning himself a huff and a not-displeased eye roll from their host. 

He hoists himself off the couch and scoops up the tray, giving Cas a slight shake of his head and a don’t-worry-about-it smile when the angel looks at him in question. He follows Lynn into the kitchen and deposits the tray onto the counter next to her, expecting that they would then leave the kitchen and return to where Castiel is busily conversing with the Furby come to life. She touches his wrist, though, stopping him in his tracks. Dean looks at her, confused, but she only fixes him with a searching, all too knowing look.

“That man out there? Cas? He’s your partner, yes?”

Dean gapes, his brow furrowing slightly. “Uh… I mean… yes? We’re hunting partners, yeah.”

Lynn huffs again, looking at him like he can’t possibly be this dense. “I do not mean hunting partners, young man. The way you two look at each other, well… the last time I saw that look was my son Billy and his now-wife of almost thirty years. And before that, it was my own dear Mr Peltzer. So don’t you sit there and tell me you’re just hunting partners, Dean. I know bullshit when I smell it.”

Dean feels stuck to the spot he’s standing in, as surely as if Sam had pranked him with glue on the bottoms of his shoes again. He can feel how wide his eyes are, the muscles of his eye sockets straining as he stares down at this elderly force of nature. He opens his mouth to refute her argument, closes it, opens it again. Nothing comes out, and the silence stretches between them, punctuated only by the ticking of the old-fashioned pendulum clock hanging just outside the kitchen.

Lynn’s glare pierces him for a moment longer before her gaze abruptly softens into pitying lines, her hazel eyes going big and liquid. “Oh, Dean,” she murmurs, patting his arm consolingly. 

Perhaps most horrifying of all, Dean suddenly feels heat pricking at the backs of his eyes, at the same time as his throat goes thick. He clears it roughly, looking away and blinking rapidly as he’s finally able to move. Fire and ice flood his body simultaneously, making sweat bead all around his hairline even while he fights to suppress a shiver in the cozy atmosphere of Lynn’s home. 

He’s a goddamned idiot, is what he is. Too friggin’ self-absorbed and clueless to see what was right in front of face—hell, right in his own damned head —this whole time, and it only took a little old lady barely five minutes to figure it out. But even then, they say knowing is only half the battle, right? How does he bring up something like this to Cas? What good would it even do? This lady may have been able to clock Dean’s heart-eyes, but there’s no way for her to know that Cas is an angel of the freaking Lord, who’s no more likely to feel romantically about Dean than Dean would feel about a stray dog he was told to pick up off the street. It’s hopeless. It’s useless , feeling this way.

“I should, uh…” he rasps out, gesturing vaguely back in the direction of the living room. 

Lynn nods, gentler than she’s been the whole evening. “Talk to him, Dean,” she urges as he turns to stride out of the room. 

He doesn’t respond.

When he reaches the living room doorway again, he pauses to take in the scene before him. Castiel and the not-darksided gremlin are still on the loveseat, deep in conversation. Gizmo is standing on his tiptoes on the couch cushion, craning his face up to trill and chortle directly into Cas’ ear. Cas, for his part, is turned sideways on the couch and leaned in close, his tie falling outward to drape over his ankle where his leg is bent flat on the same cushion where stands the little furball. He’s unblinking as he takes in the critter’s “words,” looking almost shell-shocked as he listens.

Dean has to keep himself from chuckling at the cartoonish scene, but he must make some sound because Cas’ head whips around to lock eyes with him. Dean freezes for the second time that night, all the breath sucked from his lungs in the sudden vacuum of the room. Cas’ lips part, and they are so pink in the warm glow of the room, they—

Gizmo turns back to Castiel and chimes one last “sentence” while the two men stare at one another. If Dean didn’t know any better, he’d swear the cadence of it sounds like when Lynn told him to “just talk to” Cas, but that’s just silly. The odds of him and Castiel having the same conversation with different people—well, person and creature—in different rooms of the same house seem… unlikely, at best. Dean blinks, shaking himself loose from this somewhat hysterical line of thought. Get it together, Winchester .

“Gettin’ late,” he says to Cas, mustering every ounce of nonchalance he can inject into those words. “You ready to head out?”

Castiel gazes at him a moment longer before blinking and seeming to come back to himself. “Y-yes,” he replies, voice unsteady. He turns back to the mogwai on the sofa beside him. “Thank you for the, ah, illuminating conversation, young Gizmo.” 

Gizmo chuckles and watches Cas stand from the couch, waving cheerfully as Cas crosses the room to join Dean in the foyer. Lynn has walked in from the kitchen as well, and she smiles at the two of them as they ready themselves to leave, though there’s a solemn depth to her eyes.

“You boys be careful out there,” she says. “You seem capable, but the gremlins are not to be underestimated.” Gizmo whistles a strident agreement. 

“Thanks,” Dean replies. His eyes flick up to her from where they’d been trained on his boots ever since Castiel had come near. “For, uh. For everything.”

She winks, her hazel eyes twinkling in the glow of the porch light when she pulls her front door open for them. “Of course. Good night.”

Dean and Castiel shuffle out onto the porch one after the other, Cas standing there awkwardly while Dean fishes his keys out of one of his many pockets. He twirls them around a finger when he finally locates and extracts them, and they set off into the streetlighted night towards the dormant Impala. The silence between them feels weighted, and the undulant song of crickets around them is almost oppressive in its rhythmic ebb and flow. Dean nearly sighs with relief when they both climb into the car and shut their doors after them, cutting off all sound except the rush of his blood and breath inside his body. That he can deal with. 

*

[Hello! If you are seeing this work anywhere but on Archive Of Our Own, it has been scraped without my knowledge or consent. Please report it as stolen to the website from where you got it, if you’re able, and find me @incandescentumbrage on AO3 to read my works ethically and for free!]

The weight between them on the drive back to their motel is… well, there’s really no better way to describe it than pregnant . Dean tries to keep his eyes fixed forward on the road, but he can’t help that the angular outline of Cas’ silhouette looms inescapably large in his peripheral vision. Each streetlight they pass beneath throws a pale light across his face, flashing like flirting sunlight over each defined ridge and valley. He sneaks a glance out of the corner of his eye and finds the angel turned fully toward him on Baby’s bench seat, looking wide-eyed at him like he just found out Dean has a secret second head. Dean can practically feel Cas’ stare boring into him, and he shifts a little, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

When they park at the motel and get out of the car, Castiel pauses instead of following Dean inside their room. “I think I’m going to, ah. Go for a walk.”

Dean frowns, looking back over his shoulder at the angel. “O… kay? Suit yourself, buddy,” he says dismissively, trying valiantly to quash the hurt stabbing through his chest. He shoulders through the motel room door, closing it behind himself without looking back.

He takes a moment to lean back against the door once he’s securely inside, thunking his head against its surface with a blustering sigh. “Why couldn’t this have been just another run-of-the-mill monster hunt, huh?” he mutters into the quiet. Then, still grumbling with disgust at himself and the rising tide of his feelings , he shoves off the door, intent on drowning his thoughts under the hottest shower the motel’s measly water heater can produce.

‘Hot’ is certainly a stretch, but Dean does feel somewhat better when he steps out of the humid bathroom twenty minutes later. The main room is still missing one recalcitrant angel, but Dean resolutely ignores that fact as he goes to rifle through his duffel for a clean pair of underwear. Cas will come back when he comes back, and if not, Dean will carry on like he always has. He survived just fine without a divine sidekick before—he can do it again.

He’s so consumed with his self-pep talk that he nearly misses the rattle of the doorknob as it twists open. He catches it and looks up just in time to see a tan-jacketed arm push into the room, followed by dark slacks, broad shoulders, disheveled hair, and a pair of blue eyes still wide and haunted. There’s a determined slant to Cas’ mouth, though, as he closes the door behind himself. He stands, arms hanging awkwardly at his sides as he regards Dean standing by the bed. His gaze darkens as it skates down Dean’s bare, gleaming-damp chest to the far-too-small towel just barely tucked around Dean’s hips. His eyes take their time on the climb back up, causing Dean to shift from foot to foot as he struggles not to feel devoured. (As he struggles not to want to feel devoured.)

“Cas, I—”

“Dean, I—”

The gravel of their respective voices slip-slides one over the other, a landslide building between them as each tries to hold their words back from tumbling out and over the cliffs of their lips.

“Sorry. You go,” Dean offers, embarrassedly rubbing the back of his neck. His other hand drops to where the ends of the towel overlap against his hip, subtly grasping the fabric as he feels it threaten to to fall away and take the scraps of his dignity with it.

“I—well. Um. I was speaking with Gizmo, earlier. And, um. He told me a bit more about the mogwai. They do come from China, as Lynn Peltzer told us. They were made by their gods of creation, allegedly as a test of humanity’s inherent goodness.”

Dean laughs a little, though it’s quiet, little more than a huff of air through his nose. “‘Humanity’s inherent goodness;’ sounds like your kinda debate.”

Castiel says nothing, though one corner of his mouth ticks up a little in acknowledgment.

“That all he say to you?” Dean asks. Suddenly, it’s not the towel that’s making him feel uncomfortably vulnerable. 

Cas just shrugs, his hands lifting from his sides only to fall back against his thighs with a muffled smack. 

“That— Cas, that can’t be what had you staring at me like a deer caught in the headlights earlier, on the way back here. What the hell is it? Are these gremlins harbingers of the freakin’ apocalypse, or something?”

Cas shoves a hand back through his hair, launching the spikes to outrageous heights. His eyes dart around the room, landing everywhere except on Dean. “No, that’s not it.”

“Then what?! ” Dean cries, hands flying up as he loses all patience. Then, his heart stops as he realizes what’s he’s done, just a split second before the consequences come crashing down.

He feels it happening in slow motion. The ends of his towel come loose, and it skates down his lower body, dropping with a barely-discernible ‘whuff’ to the floor at his feet. His heart drops with it, and he closes his eyes against Castiel’s reaction. The blood rushes fiercely in his ears, overwhelming even the lead-heavy silence between them. His face, ears, neck, hell, even his shoulders are burning, letting him know that he’s blushing harder than he ever has in his life. Belatedly, he remembers to bring his hands down to cup himself, though mogwai gods know his dignity has long fled the building.

Total stillness and silence reigns supreme for interminable seconds, save for the meager drip of a leaky faucet in the bathroom. Dean still hasn’t opened his eyes, preferring the kaleidoscopic darkness of the backs of his eyelids to whatever must be crossing Cas’ face right this moment. 

Thus blinded, he hears Cas’ footsteps start up before he sees them. His eyes pop open, expecting to see Cas making a hasty retreat through the room’s door, but instead he finds Castiel beginning to crowd his field of vision as he nears. More than nears. As he closes the distance between them in quick, purposeful strides, eyes dark and intent on Dean’s face. 

Cas doesn’t stop when his body collides with Dean’s. His big, square hands come up to frame Dean’s face as their mouths, chests, and hips crash together, propelling Dean back a few steps until the backs of his knees hit the side of the second bed. His legs buckle, sending him plopping to his ass on the mattress, and Cas follows, bending to keep their lips pressed insistently together.

Dean’s mind goes utterly blank but for the blaring sound of a klaxon between his ears. Nothing about what he’s currently seeing, feeling, or tasting is computing in his brain. Then Castiel groans, a short, hungry sound from deep in his throat, and tilts his head to slant his lips more fully over Dean’s. In response, Dean’s eyes flutter shut, one hand raising to fist in the lapel of the angel’s ridiculous trench coat as he finally begins to return the kiss in earnest.

Dean has kissed men before. Not many, and he’s certainly not as loud and proud about it as he probably could be, but he’s no stranger to what it feels like.

This, though. This is somehow familiar, and entirely foreign, all at once. Underneath the rough rasp of Cas’ chapped skin, his lips are pillowy soft, and so pliant as Dean presses up into him. Cas’ ever-present stubble is a tickling scrape over his chin and jaw, and Dean is struck with the urge to nuzzle into it like an affectionate cat. Dean’s other hand entirely forgets its job covering his groin and lifts away, plunging curious, questing fingers into the spiky mess of Cas’ hair. He grips the strands in an urgent fist, tugging Cas closer into him.

Cas braces a knee on the edge of the mattress, looming far enough over Dean that Dean gives in to the momentum and falls back onto the bed, pulling Cas on top of him. Cas pushes in close, molding their bodies together with a rumbling, gratified grunt. Dean can already feel a distinct hardness bulging from within Cas’ slacks, and he gasps into Castiel’s mouth as the feeling of Cas’ growing cock saturates him with a mindless need , subsuming any and all lingering inhibitions.

It’s then that Cas’ tongue delves past Dean’s parted lips, licking into the hungry cavern of his mouth and humming in appreciation, as though savoring the taste he finds there. If asked later, Dean would vehemently deny that he whined at the feeling of his mouth being so thoroughly plundered by Castiel. In this moment, though, he’s all giddy relief and writhing want, and he gives no second thought to the greedy keening emanating from high in his throat. Every sound is avidly consumed by Castiel’s lips, teeth, and tongue.

All at once and very distinctly, Dean can no longer stand the feel of Cas’ clothes against his bare skin. He wants—no, needs —to know what it feels like for their bodies to be molded together from chest to thigh with no barriers rudely between. He needs to feel the coarse tickle of Cas’ body hair against him, to feel the slick glide of their cocks notched together, hips rolling as they rut into one another.

He growls when Cas’ trench coat gets caught on the breadth of his shoulders, his hunger gone dark and demanding and refusing to be further delayed. Cas chuckles into his mouth and shrugs off the offending garment without breaking their kiss, leaving Dean to try to unbutton his shirt with trembling fingers. The tie is left where it is, hanging between them and tickling Dean’s breastbone, because he cannot abide the thought of not kissing Cas even for a second. It’s barely been five minutes, and he’s already addicted, hopeless, a goner.

He groans with relief when, finally, finally , Cas’ clothes are off and the angel has lowered himself onto Dean’s upturned, awaiting body. Cas’ skin is radiating heat, and Dean soaks it up like a sponge, hooking a leg around Cas’ hip to keep him close. Castiel abandons Dean’s mouth, which would’ve drawn a protest from him but for the fact that Cas is now nuzzling up under his jaw, soothing sharp nibbles with lingering, open-mouthed, tongue-tipped kisses. Dean closes his eyes, surrendering to the wash of pleasure. His hands come up and around Cas’ shoulders, relishing the press of fingertip into muscle before moving palms down his back in slow, savoring strokes.

Cas stills with a gasp and a shudder when Dean’s fingers trail over his shoulderblades. He pulls up and off of Dean’s body abruptly, propping himself on one elbow to stare back down at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “D-do that again,” he urges, voice already wrecked.

Dean obeys readily, grazing blunt fingernails over Cas’ skin on the next pass. Cas’ eyes fall shut, a shivering breath escaping his lips as another tremor wracks his body. 

Dean’s eyebrows draw together in concern. “You okay?” 

Cas nods shortly, eyes blinking open after a moment to regard Dean with an awestruck expression. “I never considered it before, but… my wings. Even though they exist on another plane, it seems that I can still feel it when the location of their attachment to my physical form is… is touched.”

A delighted grin spreads slowly across Dean’s face, lighting him up like sunrise through gold-flecked forest. “So you’re learning you like your wings fingered, is that it?”

Castiel rolls his eyes, shooting a half-hearted glare down at Dean. “That is an incredibly crude way of putting it, but…” he winces a little, before, “...yes, I suppose you could say that.”

“Well c’mere then, Angel,” Dean entreats with an easy smile, using his flat palms to press Cas back down onto him. 

Cas follows willingly, lips meeting Dean’s with a novel kind of reverence. His free hand smooths down Dean’s side, and Dean arches up into it, purring into Cas’ mouth as his hands begin their journey across Cas’ back once more. 

What starts out sweet doesn’t stay there for long. Every pass of Dean’s hands over the points where Castiel’s wings meld with his body elicits deeper and more broken groans from the angel; his kisses grow heated, toothier. The gentle rock of his hips into Dean’s becomes a voracious rutting, their moans growing more desperately guttural with each catch and slide of their cocks against the other’s.

Dean tears his mouth away on a fervent cry the first time Cas’ cockhead notches against his hole. Cas looks back just as wild-eyed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulps, fighting the urge to bury himself past that tight ring of muscle. He’s hungry for it—ravenous, even—but he knows better, even now, and eases back to sit on his heels between Dean’s outflung knees. 

“Cas, what the hell?” Dean pants, reaching out in an attempt to drag Cas back over him. 

Cas shakes his head, smiling slightly as he easily resists Dean’s attempts to move him. “Dean, even I know enough about human sex to know that it’s a bad idea to penetrate you dry,” he comments wryly.

“Not a good enough reason to use the word ‘penetrate,’” Dean mutters as he hoists himself up on an elbow. He’s already looking thoroughly debauched, lips pink and swollen and the hair on his crown sticking up in every nearly-fucked direction. “You can’t just, I dunno… magic me open or something?”

Cas throws Dean a flat look that conveys very clearly how unimpressed he is with Dean’s suggestion. “First of all, grace isn’t magic . Second of all…” he pauses to lean forward and brace himself on his hands over Dean’s supine form, delighting in the way his pupils blow wide as he watches Cas loom close, “maybe I want to feel you open around my fingers and tongue, hmm?”

Dean’s mouth falls open, a soft gasp whispering from between his parted lips. “Jesus, Cas. Uh. Um. Lu-lube’s in my bag,” he stammers, waving vaguely in the direction of his duffel sitting atop the other bed.

Castiel bends his elbows, lowering his upper half enough to press a chaste kiss to Dean’s mouth. “Good boy,” he murmurs against Dean’s lips before levering himself off the bed to dig through the bag. 

Dean’s entire body is wracked with a shudder at Cas’ words, powerful enough to make the cheap metal bed frame creak in sympathy. He blinks rapidly where he’s still splayed across the mattress, his brain producing a sound between his ears not unlike that of a printer jammed with one stubborn sheet of paper refusing to feed through. His dick throbs where it’s snugged up against his low belly, coaxing out a generous drip of precome that smears across his skin.

Cas finds him like that when he turns back a moment later, triumphantly holding aloft the travel-sized bottle of lube. His face immediately falls into concerned lines as he rushes to Dean’s side, brushing sweaty spikes of hair away from his forehead. “Dean? Are you okay?” 

Dean chuckles—definitely doesn’t giggle —at the juxtaposition of Cas’ already sex-wrecked voice asking him questions more along the lines of a mother hen than a lusty lover. “Yeah, Cas. M’fine. Just— c’mere,” he says, reaching up to bury his hand in Cas’ hair and drag him down, crashing their mouths together once more.

Cas is tense with surprise and concern at first, but quickly relaxes into the kiss, shifting so he’s again kneeling between Dean’s invitingly curved-open legs. He snicks the lube bottle open with his thumb, pouring some into his hand and working it over his fingers to distribute and warm it. The back of his palm skates up the inside of Dean’s thigh, then—

Dean’s eyes fly open and he shouts hoarsely into Cas’ mouth at the first brush of Cas’ wet fingertips over his rim. His hips buck into the contact, and Cas has to quickly pull his hand away to avoid sinking his fingers in before he’s—or Dean is, for that matter—good and ready. Dean whines when Cas sits back up, punctuating their makeout with a final, firm kiss. 

Cas smirks as he brushes his thumb in slow, teasing circles around Dean’s hole, making the skin there gleam dully in the wan light as the lube transfers. His other hand has moved to Dean’s hip, splaying wide across the flesh there to pin him in place. “So eager, Dean. I would never have guessed,” he murmurs in a voice far too sinful to be of angelic ilk.

A flush spreads from Dean’s cheekbones down his neck and across his chest, making beacons of every freckle. He squirms, his hips fighting, in tiny aborted rolls, to defy Cas’ gravity. “Yeah well,” he mutters, “not exactly a thing I go around advertising.”

Cas’ head tilts, birdlike in curiosity. “Not even to me?”

Dean groans in frustration, throwing his head back against the thin covers beneath him. “ Especially not to you,” he grumbles.

The tilt only deepens, accompanied by a quizzical frown. Cas’ thumb, the hellish tease, has spiraled in to stroke softly and directly over the pucker of Dean’s flesh, heedless of the way the rippled skin pulses, trying in vain to draw in the digit. “Why not?”

“ Jesus , Cas, I— because I—” Dean’s words falter, and he throws Cas a wide-eyed, beseeching look. Is Cas really gonna make him say it?

Cas leans in close, his voice dropped down to somewhere near the lake of the treacherous, only warmer, exquisitely more heated — “Do you want me, Dean? Do you want this?”

Dean nods, the rhythm of the movement almost frantic in his need. “Y-yeah, Cas. Want this. Want you,” he rasps, gone beyond all instinct of self-preservation he’s built up over the hard years of his life.

Castiel smiles, a softer revelation of shining ocean eyes that steals Dean’s breath with all its hints of something far more profound lying in wait beneath the surface. The wide, long-fingered hand pinning Dean down eases up, shifting around his hip to slide underneath and hoist him into a more favorable angle. Cas’ thumb ceases its delicious torment, the blunt tip notching into place just shy of easing into Dean’s hole.

“Then take what you want, Dean.”

Dean moans, long and guttural, as his hips move almost of their own accord, pushing eagerly down to swallow Cas’ slick thumb inside him. 

Their eyes flutter closed simultaneously, only to spring open again and stare at one another as though seeing him for the first time. Dean gasps as his rim stretches around the meaty base of Cas’ thumb, and his hips begin a gentle rolling motion, spearing himself open again and again on the thick girth of the digit.

It’s only a minute or two before Dean is gasping out, “M-more, Cas, more. ” 

Cas is breathless despite hardly having done more than match the rhythm of his nudging thumb to that of Dean’s chasing hips. He’s panting, open-mouthed, his gleaming tongue just barely peeking out from behind parted teeth. He bends low over Dean’s body, worshipfully kissing the twin peaks of Dean’s hipbones as he gradually withdraws his thumb. Then, slowly, achingly slowly, he eases his first two fingertips past the tight ring of muscle and, licking a long, wet stripe up the underside of Dean’s cock, sinks the fingers inside.

Dean’s shoulders dig into the bed as he arches up into the layered touches, his strangled cry emitting from a throat gone tight. His hands scrabble for purchase in the slippery blanket, yanking up handfuls of bunched polyester as though they’ll keep him anchored to this plane while his soul exits his body. 

Castiel doesn’t stop there. When his tongue meets the head of Dean’s cock, he opens wide and swallows it down just as his fingers seat themselves inside Dean’s ass. It earns him a choked almost-garbling from Dean as he writhes beneath Cas on the bed. Cas’ fingers twitch upward slightly against the fleshy bundle he can feel beneath his fingertips, and Dean wails . It’s loud enough that Cas might feel bad for any neighbors, if he cared to spare a single thought for anything outside the all-encompassing orbit of Dean everywhere around him—finally, finally .

Cas has just about lost himself in a steady head bobbing, finger twitching rhythm when Dean suddenly clutches at his hair. “Cas, s-stop, man, you gotta stop,” he gasps out.

Cas stills his fingers and slides off Dean’s cock with an obscene pop, blinking owlishly up the lean length of Dean’s torso to his flushed, already-glistening face. “Is everything okay?”

Dean wheezes a chuckle as he catches his breath. “Yeah. Yeah, a little too okay, if y’know what I mean.”

The corner of Cas’ mouth twitches up in a smirk. It’s redolent of smug satisfaction, and really shouldn’t make Dean feel as warm and fuzzy as it does. “Should I stop?”

“ No! Uhm. No. Just… ease up on the come button a little?” Dean’s grin is simultaneously shy and sweet and so, so wantful. 

Cas snorts a laugh into the crease of Dean’s thigh, where he’d been idly nuzzling. “You know, I’ve been observing humankind for millennia. If someone has used the term ‘come button’ before, this is the first I’m hearing it. You are… really something else, Dean.”

Dean’s blushing again, though whether it’s from the unusual praise, or from the fact that he’s already begun moving his hips on Cas’ stationary fingers, is difficult to say with certainty. Neither man is much interested in figuring it out, though, as Cas begins to move with Dean, spreading and working his fingers inside to make room for what’s to come.

It isn’t long before Dean is reduced to shuddering gasps and bitten-off keening as he bucks against Cas’ fingers. “Cas,” he begs, “please, Cas, please , I’m ready, n-need you, I need—”

Castiel surges up and molds his lips to Dean’s, devouring his pleas with the voracity of a man at his last meal. He withdraws his slick fingers from Dean’s ass, the movement a breathtakingly tender contrast to his ardent mouth. Then, with less tenderness and more efficiency, he smooths lube over his weeping cock until it drips, heavy drops of combined lube and precome falling to trickle over Dean’s shaft and balls.

On his knees, Cas shuffles in close to the join of Dean’s thighs, hoisting a blond-furred leg against his shoulder as he lines himself up. He keeps his eyes on Dean’s as he gradually, almost tentatively, pushes in past that first ring of muscle—relaxed, yes, but still so, so tight . Because he’s watching, he sees the moment Dean’s eyes widen, peridot stark against scleral white, before fluttering closed on a moan. If Cas didn’t know any better, he’d think it sounded almost relieved. 

When Cas is at last seated all the way inside Dean’s body, he sags under the magnitude of sheer deliverance that washes over him, his head dropping until chin rests against chest. He can feel the rumble of his own answering groan buzzing up through his jaw, and all of it in combination makes his head spin, light as the feathers that once adorned his form. When he raises his head again, he finds Dean looking up at him, eyes shining, lips parted on the hint of a smile. He returns it in the form of an adoring kiss placed to the knob of the ankle resting so temptingly near his lips.

The two begin to move together in increments, as the surf returns to demurely greet the shore at tide’s turn. The haggard room around them fills with the sounds of skin on skin as their hips meet, then fall into a colliding rhythm that quickly grows in volume and vehemence. They move with increasing urgency, each chasing the other's release. The air around and between them grows warm, and humid with exultant exhalations. Skin shines with the salty dew of sweat, mingling where lips and palms brush and stroke and savor.

It’s Dean who goes under first. His leg has slipped from shoulder to angelic waist, bowed curvature hugging the planes of Cas’ side to draw him deeper into Dean’s body on every thrust. Suddenly the leg is locked, holding Cas buried within as Dean’s head is thrown back from the force of the wave cresting over him. He arches high, seeking every last millimeter of contact with the hard length spearing him open, then sobs Cas’ name as the levee breaks, sweeping him away.

Castiel had long ago decided he would follow Dean wherever the man goes. He had rebelled against heaven and angelkind alike, just for the promise contained within the heart of this man so bruised yet unbroken, so rough-hewn and yet, at the radiant core of him, righteous almost to a fault. With Dean, there is nowhere he won’t go.

Thus, when the many muscles dancing along Cas’ cock seize in unison and begin shuddering around him, inviting him to plunge down to the depths to which Dean has already slipped, Castiel doesn’t fight it. He leans in close, nestles his forehead into the perfectly welcoming curve of the crook of Dean’s shoulder, and he falls. Trembling, he empties himself into Dean’s body with the only prayer he should ever need again—a ragged cry of the man’s name. Amen.

*

It’s early morning. Early enough that, when someone starts urgently knocking on the door of their motel room, Dean raises his sleepy head and can see no sunlight peeking around the curtains mounted on the front window. He lets his head fall back to his pillow, hoping the person will realize they have the wrong room and go away.

They don’t. The knocking comes again, more urgent this time, and he groans, batting at the covers to make his way out from under them. There’s a struggle for a moment as Castiel, who has fully octopussed himself around Dean from behind, only holds tighter, grouching unintelligibly into the back of Dean’s shoulder. Eventually he lets go, snuggling deeper into his pillow and grumbling something that sounds suspiciously like, “Make them go away.”

Dean only chuckles as he pulls on a pair of boxer briefs from his duffel, and Castiel’s discarded shirt from the floor. Angels apparently don’t need to sleep—although he wonders how much that’s changed now that Cas is cut off from heaven—but that sure doesn’t seem to stop this one from enjoying the comfortable warmth of a blanket nest, even if it is on an unforgiving motel mattress.

He opens the door just enough to peek through, frowning when he recognizes the janitor from the Sheriff’s office. Up close, the man looks even more careworn, his sallow-pale skin stretched tight over prominent cheekbones and a square jaw, but sagging precariously under troubled eyes. His brow is straight, and strong, and there’s something to its set that speaks of a past propensity for wicked twitching. Now it just sits heavy and listless over his eyes, weighing them down until even his crow’s feet cry for help. 

Dean knows the look. He’s seen it many times, on damn near every hunter lucky(?) enough to make it to middle age. Just like them, there’s something of a stubborn fire still lying deep within those world-weary eyes, banked but ready to roar back to life.

“Uh.. hi,” Dean says, cautious. “Help you?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” the man replies. “I take it Mrs Peltzer told you about the mogwai?”

Ten minutes later, Dean and Castiel are stationed in the far booth of a run-down diner not far from their motel. Pete (as Dean now recalls) is sat across from them, his weathered hands clasped tightly around a steaming mug of jet-fuel diner coffee. He stares into it as though he can divine his future from its near-black surface.

“Okay,” Castiel begins, “what do you know about the mogwai?” He pitches his voice low so that only the three of them can hear.

Pete still looks up sharply, his eyes darting around as he checks to reassure himself that no one is eavesdropping. Only when he is satisfied does he look back at Castiel, and Dean beside him.

“I was friends with Billy Peltzer, back in the day,” he begins, launching into his tale without preamble. “I was there when Gizmo first showed up. Billy showed him to me. I… I was there when he first got wet. Spawned.” Pete stops, shuddering at the recollection.

The waitress walks up at that moment, dropping a single, loaded plate onto the table in front of Dean. He tosses her a quick smile in thanks before enthusiastically tucking in to his classic egg-bacon-hash brown breakfast, famished after his and Castiel’s active night. He looks up just as the angel shoots him a sidelong glance, the corner of his mouth closest to Dean ticking up in tucked-away amusement. Dean smiles back, his cheeks puffed out like a human chipmunk. What? Sue him. The food is good.

Pete continues once the waitress has walked away, still too busy scrying in his coffee to notice the exchange taking place across from him. “All hell broke loose. Damn things nearly destroyed the entire town center. I don’t… I don’t know exactly how they did it, but Billy and Kate managed to kill ‘em first. Blew up the whole damn movie theater. Then something with the ringleader in the department store… I never saw it, but afterward, I heard some folks whispering about a massive puddle of goo in the garden section. Something to do with sunlight.” He shrugs, finally looking up at the two hunters to gauge their reaction.

“Sure, Mrs Peltzer told us about that. Don’t get ‘em wet, don’t feed ‘em after midnight, no bright lights,” Dean recites around a mouthful of bacon. “So, what, you also think what’s happening now is gremlins again?”

“I, uh. Well. I don’t think . I know,” comes the halting reply. Pete’s fingers clench even harder around his coffee cup, and Dean winces, wondering if the guy is about to shatter the ceramic.

“What do you mean?” Castiel chimes in, his brow furrowed over suspicious eyes. Dean feels a throb down low in his gut and tries his best not to squirm in his seat, knowing all too well the power of that directed gaze.

“I… I…” Pete trails off, squinting at the tabletop as he appears to weigh his options. Finally, he blows out a long, resigned sigh before squaring his shoulders and looking resolutely at Dean and Cas. “I should probably just show you.”

Pete’s house is more than run-down. It’s dilapidated, with paint peeling away like sunburnt skin, and panels falling loose from the siding. The upstairs front window is boarded up behind the jagged remains of a windowpane, and the porch light flickers ominously. Dean shivers as he and Castiel walk up with Pete, feeling distinctly like he’s about to enter a slasher flick. Monsters are one thing, but he’d really rather not meet any sick, twisted humans in boiler suits or hockey masks, thank you very much.

Pete leads them inside, then immediately goes to open the nearby door leading down to the basement. Dean and Castiel exchange dubious glances. Wouldn’t that just be a bitch, to have survived this long only to be taken out by a middle-aged janitor in a dingy cellar? Dean quickly steps to the side of the doorway and gestures inside, inclining his head as he says, “After you.” One of his more brilliant maneuvers, he thinks.

The basement, thankfully, is mostly unremarkable. No rusty torture devices hanging from the ceiling, and no suspicious stains on any surface that Dean can see. It’s just the standard affair of a dank, unfinished room with various shelves, workbenches, and pieces of old furniture arranged against the walls, sparsely lit by a couple of bare bulbs mounted to the exposed beams overhead. The normalcy of it all is what draws Dean’s eye to the one outlier in the room: a large wire cage sitting atop a workbench in the far corner, its door hanging by a single, mangled hinge. A padlock lies on the table next to it, looking chewed open rather than unlocked. A sick hunch takes root in the pit of his stomach.

Pete walks up to the workbench and picks up the padlock, turning it over in his hands, seemingly deep in thought. When he speaks, his voice is almost too quiet to hear, even in the damp hush of the underground room. “I had one.”

Dean had suspected, but his eyebrows still shoot up to his hairline upon hearing Pete confess to it. When he looks over at Castiel, the angel looks back with a similar expression. “You had—what, you were keeping a gremlin down here?”

Pete nods. “I was doing maintenance on some drainage tunnels at the edge of town a little while ago, and found one. I guess it got separated from the rest during the first invasion. I don’t know why it stayed out of sight for so long, but it was pretty weak when I found it, so maybe it was injured or sick back then, and never got better? Either way, I came back the next day and got it into a trap. Brought it back here.”

“Fuckin’...” Dean blows out a breath, raking his hand through his hair, leaving it standing up even spikier. He paces tensely away, then back to face the janitor. “You brought it home? If these things are so destructive, why the hell didn’t you shoot it?”

When Pete looks up at him, Dean is caught off guard by the immeasurable sadness radiating from the dark depths of his eyes. “I… I guess I thought maybe I could tame it. Turn it back into the Gizmo kind, somehow. I even tried calling Billy, you know, to get his advice, but he never called back. Guess he’s too busy out there in the big city,” he mutters with a dour twist of his mouth. 

Dean frowns. “Doesn’t Mrs P—?”

He’s cut off when Castiel interjects, just a tad too loudly. “So where is it now?” he asks, tilting his head toward the distinctly gremlin-less cage.

Pete sighs, the deeply weary sigh of a man who’s been through hell and back (and Dean would know). “There’s a bathroom just upstairs,” he says, his eyes flicking up to the corresponding spot on the ceiling. “I had an issue with a leaking toilet. Water soaked through the floor, must’ve dripped down onto the cage. The spawn, they—they’re small enough to fit through the bars of the cage, at first. By the time I got home from work that night, the cage was like this, and they were all gone.”

Dean immediately looks around, scanning the shadowy corners of the basement for any rogue critters that may be lurking. He sees nothing, but it doesn’t stop the skin between his shoulderblades from crawling, and he does his best to suppress a shudder. 

“Do you have any idea where they went?” Castiel asks in the meantime.

Pete shrugs, his shoulders falling into a defeated slump. “Maybe back to the tunnels where I found the first one? I don’t know. They could be anywhere.”

Suddenly, a hissing chatter fills the air. All three men look around, trying to pinpoint its source, but it’s Dean who spots the thing first—a split second before it leaps at his face from the dark recesses of old shelving set against the wall. He ducks, half-turning to protect his eyes and throat, so the gremlin latches onto his shoulders instead. It wraps spindly arms around his neck and begins to squeeze, cackling and growling into his ear. Its speech is incomprehensible, but the threat is clear.

Cas has launched himself into the fray, grabbing at the creature that’s latched itself onto Dean’s back, but the little thing is freakishly strong and holds fast. It twists, gnashing its wickedly sharp teeth at Castiel, and only the angel’s quick reflexes keep him from getting bit. 

Hearing the click of those teeth so close to his head gives Dean an idea. Before he can think about it too much, he ducks his chin and sinks his teeth into one of the thing’s arms, biting down until he feels skin split between his teeth. It shrieks—a cry that sounds remarkably like “ow!”—and loosens its grip, allowing Castiel to grab it and throw it to the ground.

Pete had been frozen up until this point, eyes and mouth both open wide as he watched the two hunters try to subdue the gremlin. He seems to snap out of it when the creature smacks onto the cement flooring, and lunges toward the nearest workbench. He snatches up a hammer lying on its surface, then darts in behind Dean, bending to swing the hammer down on the gremlin where Castiel has caught it and pinned it to the floor. 

The hammer connects with the thing’s face in a sickening crunch. It screams, but the shriek turns into a gurgle as its mouth fills with blood. Another swing, and the sound cuts off altogether. The three men are left in silence, broken only by the whoosh of Dean’s and Pete’s heavy breathing, and the quiet, sluggish burble of a final few air bubbles escaping through the blood pooled in the dead gremlin’s mouth.

Dean grunts in disgust, spitting and swiping at his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. He stares at the green streak left behind on the material. “Ugh—green blood? Nasty ,” he mutters, before turning to look at the remains of the gremlin on the floor. He can certainly see the resemblance to Gizmo, although this thing looks like Gizmo mated with a demonic lizard, all scaly green skin, slitted pupils, and far too many dagger-like teeth. He grimaces at the sight of bright green blood trickling out the sides of its slack mouth.

“This the one you found?” he asks, looking up at Pete.

Pete shakes his head as he studies the dead gremlin. He still holds the hammer, though it’s loose at his side now. Dean sees it quiver slightly as Pete’s hand trembles. “No, this must’ve been one of the spawn. But the others are probably nearby. The drainage tunnel isn’t far from here.”

Dean looks over at Castiel, who somehow managed to get a smear of green blood on his cheek in the scuffle with the gremlin spawn. It’s disgusting, but somehow it only serves to make Cas’ eyes glow even more luminous in the dim light of the bare-bulbed basement. It draws Dean in like a beacon, and he has to consciously shake himself to refocus on the task at hand. Feelings later, Winchester . 

“Sounds like it’s time we go after ‘em,” he remarks. Castiel nods in agreement.

“Do… do you think you could bring mine back?” Pete asks haltingly, his face almost puppylike in its pleading hope. 

Both Castiel and Dean stare at him incredulously, brows drawn together over wide eyes. 

“Dude, no!” Dean exclaims. “What happens next time it escapes? I’m not comin’ back here to bail your ass out!”

Pete deflates, his eyes downcast. “Right,” he says in a small voice. “Sorry.”

“Maybe try a dog,” Dean offers, clapping the guy on the shoulder as he and Castiel make their way toward the stairs up to the main floor. “And hey, thanks. For saving my ass back there.”

Pete’s forlorn nod is the last Dean sees of him before he and Cas make their escape.

*

The sun hangs brightly cheerful in the sky as Dean eases the Impala down the dirt track that serves as an access road to the drainage tunnels just outside town. He winces as he hears pebbles pinging against Baby’s undercarriage, and pats her steering wheel, silently promising her a spa day fit for a princess when they’re done with this case. It’s the least he can do.

“At least the sun should keep them contained to the tunnels,” Castiel remarks as he peers through the windshield at the sun dappling its way through the tree canopy overhead. 

“Yeah,” Dean scoffs, “and who knows how many miles of those there are.” 

“We’ll find them, Dean.”

Castiel’s voice is soft, and earnest enough to give Dean pause. He glances over, and though Cas’ face is sober as he looks back at him, the tiniest upturn of the corner of that plush mouth is all the encouragement Dean needs. He shifts his grip on the steering wheel to his left hand, tentatively sliding his right across the bench seat between them.

He doesn’t see it, because his eyes are pulled back to the road when Baby bumps and jumps over several nasty potholes, but he feels it when Castiel’s fingers make contact with his. The touch is light at first, just the barest suggestion of warmth, but Castiel is emboldened by Dean’s lack of withdrawal. Soon, their fingers are tangled shamelessly together on Baby’s black vinyl. Dean doesn’t even mind the slight pinch of Castiel’s thick fingers slotted between his own.

A couple minutes more and Dean sees the flash of a low concrete structure through the trees—they’ve arrived. He eases Baby to a stop with another silent prayer of thanks, but can’t quite bring himself to exit the car just yet. Cas’ hand feels too good in his, and he isn’t ready to let it go.

Cas seems to sense it, because he pops his seatbelt and slides across the seat until their thighs touch. Their intertwined hands rest on his thigh, and Dean’s cheeks heat a little when he feels the subtle play of muscle under fabric and skin. He peeks up through his lashes to find Cas still looking at him with that tiny, quirked smile. It only stokes the flames lingering beneath his skin, and he ducks his head again, still shy about letting Cas see the effect he has on him.

“Are you alright?” Cas asks him, voice still feather-soft.

Dean nods, flopping back against the seat with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, yeah. Just…” he pauses, lifting their joined hands in front of them. “S’all so new, I guess. Are we—?” Dean stops abruptly, shaking his head and swallowing down his next words.

“Are we what, Dean?” Castiel prompts, squeezing Dean’s hand in reassurance.

Dean takes his time raising his head to look at Castiel again. When he does, his eyes are jade-pale in the daylight, and glistening with a myriad of emotions battling for real estate within gold-flecked irises. His lips part, and stay silently parted for a long minute before words issue forth. “Are we… still gonna… you ‘n’ me? When we get back?”

Castiel raises his chin, his gaze swooping down the straight ridge of his nose as he considers Dean’s words. Just as Dean’s about to shrug and take it all back, Castiel parts his lips. “I rebelled for this, Dean. I gave everything for you . I don’t think I quite understood why, at the time, but now…” Cas pauses, raising their joined hands to his mouth and brushing a kiss over the scarred topography of Dean’s knuckles. “Yes, Dean. We’re ‘still gonna.’”

Dean’s eyes drift closed, and he smiles, relief written in the dancing slant of sunshine over his face. “Cool. So, uh, should we go kick some gremlin ass?”

Castiel breathes out a quiet chuckle. “Yes, we should.”

They exit their respective sides of the car in tandem. Castiel stands up at the front of the Impala, squinting in the direction of the tunnel entrance, while Dean swoops around to the trunk, popping the lid and digging through its contents. A metallic slam and a bounce of the car on her shocks announces the completion of his search, and he meets Cas at the front fender with full hands.

“Knew I had a combo UV light in there somewhere,” he says, showing Castiel the mid-size, sleek black metal flashlight he holds in one hand. “Came in real handy for that one vamp nest in Arizona—for the suckers and checking for scorpions, heh.”

With his other hand, he offers Castiel an unassuming 9mm pistol, grip first. “Since your angel juice ain’t workin’ so great these days, figured maybe you’d want this.” He doesn’t mention that it would also make him feel better, knowing Cas has the gun. If he does that, then he’d have to acknowledge his fears surrounding what it could mean if Cas gets hurt, and he’s nowhere near ready to hit those slippery slopes just yet. If ever.

Castiel thanks him as he takes the gun and slips it into a coat pocket. 

Together they trudge through the layer of decaying leaves and plant matter covering the forest floor, approaching the dark maw of the drainage tunnel. Apart from birdsong and the slight trickle of water from within the tunnel, all is quiet, but Dean can’t relax. The back of his neck prickles, like it does when he’s being watched. He peers hard into the shadowy circle of the tunnel entrance, but nothing moves, nothing jumps out at him. It only puts him more on edge.

He and Cas are maybe twenty feet into the tunnel when Cas reaches out from behind him, halting him with a hand on his shoulder. Dean stops, looking back at Cas in question.

“I heard something,” Castiel whispers, eyes trained on the shadows ahead of Dean. 

Dean whips back around, straining hard to hear anything over the echo of water off the rounded walls surrounding them. He’s just about to give up when he hears it: a scrape of something sharp across the concrete, and a faint chitter. He firms his grip on his own gun, keeping it trained ahead of him as he inches forward on the too-small ledge only scant inches above the stream.

The two men pause when the main tunnel they’ve entered through branches off into a T intersection. Dean glances over his shoulder at Castiel, who listens for a moment before jerking his head silently to the right. Dean nods, making the turn and proceeding into the looming darkness. 

Once they turn the corner, the last of the sunlight that had been weakly filtering in abandons them entirely. Dean clicks on his flashlight to the non-UV setting, raising it so the hand holding his gun can rest on that wrist in a tactical grip. The light isn’t big enough to penetrate the shadows the way he’d prefer, but it’s better than nothing, and his footsteps grow a little bolder as they continue on.

For all their caution, Dean’s still surprised when they stumble on the gremlins. The water had gotten a little deeper as they went further into the branched-off tunnel, its flow a little faster, and it’s now loud enough to obscure every noise except the rush of his blood in his own ears. Even Castiel’s normally-superpowered hearing seems to struggle, because no warning comes before Dean peeks his head into a niche in the tunnel wall and finds a whole nest of them.

He jumps back with a startled cry, and nearly topples into the drainage stream. He would have, if not for Castiel throwing out a hand to grip his flannel sleeve and haul him back upright. A chorus of hisses and garbled cries emanates from the niche as Dean and Castiel hustle back far enough to take defensive stances with their guns. Though it’s awkward on the cramped ledge, Dean drops to a knee, giving Castiel a clearer line of sight to fire above his head. 

The gremlins pour out from the niche onto the ledge ahead of them, and Dean’s eyes widen as they come and keep on coming. There’s easily a dozen of them, if not more—the little fuckers must’ve spawned more than once, likely using the water just bare inches from them to do it. 

He and Castiel fire several times into the miniature horde as they skitter, crawl, and clamber closer. They manage to hit a few, but there are just too many, and it’s too dark even with the flashlight to get a good bead on the creatures as they dart back and forth. They prove to be far more agile on the ledge than the larger humans (and human-shaped entities) could ever hope to be.

The flashlight . Dean would smack himself if his hands weren’t full. Working fast, he clicks the light over to UV mode and sweeps it in an arc in front of him, aiming the beam at each of the approaching creatures in turn. 

The light stops the little hellions in their tracks the way the guns could never hope to do. They shriek and flinch away from the purplish light, clawing at one another as they fight to retreat back along the ledge. Dean’s eardrums cringe at the sound of their cries bouncing off the concrete around them, but he’s emboldened by the change in the gremlins’ temperament, and stands to chase after them. With the ultraviolet rays blinding the creatures and causing them to fall writhing to the ground, he and Castiel make quick work of dispatching the rest of the group, bullets finishing what the flashlight started.

Dean grins and turns to Castiel, ready to vent his soaring sense of triumph with a brilliant joke, when he hears it: the squeak and clang of metal on metal, and the angry, rasping yowl of yet another gremlin. He and Castiel exchange a foreboding look— are they ever going to be able to finish this job and get out of here? —before breaking into a run toward the sound, which had echoed in from back the way they entered.

They practically skid around the corner to the main tunnel. It’s immediately evident that someone else is here with them, because a human form is silhouetted against the sunlight reaching in from the entrance. Dean squints, but he can’t make out who it is until he hears Castiel’s low rumble from behind him.

“ Pete .”

Dean’s eyes widen as the shadowy form resolves into recognition. The janitor had snuck in after them and, from the looks of it, had managed to live trap one of the gremlins that wasn’t with the group in the nest. He’s crouched over, preparing to hoist the occupied trap in his hands, when Dean calls out.

“Pete, man, you don’t wanna do this,” he says, making a show of holstering his gun as he slowly approaches. He keeps the flashlight tucked in one hand, surreptitiously clicking it off so as not to arouse suspicion.

“You don’t know what I want,” Pete replies, his voice shaky but resolute. “You two have each other, that’s plain as day to see. I have no one. My old man died, my one friend moved on to a life that doesn’t include me, and the rest of the town thinks I’m crazy. I’m not crazy, and Gadget here is going to help me prove it.”

Dean rubs a hand down his face to stave off his growing frustration. Of course the guy went and named the little monster like it was a fucking pet. Of course . “Okay, but what happens when it gets loose again, and wreaks havoc on this town? You think they’ll just forgive and forget, after what happened last time?”

Dean’s close enough now to see Pete’s jaw clench. “I won’t let that happen,” the janitor says through gritted teeth. 

Dean sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s up to you, Pete. I’m sorry, but—” 

Dean rapidly brings the flashlight up to point at the trapped gremlin, clicking it on and over to the UV function. The gremlin wails as the light beam hits him. His skin bubbles under the ultraviolet onslaught, but Pete reacts quickly. He turns away from Dean and Castiel, shielding the trap with his body as he breaks into a trot toward the tunnel entrance. 

Dean growls, his patience with the forlorn man at its absolute, frayed end. He braces, preparing to spring after him, but is stilled by Castiel’s hand on his wrist. 

“Dean. Raise the flashlight.”

Dean merely looks at him, brow furrowed in confusion.

“Just do it. Trust me.”

Dean swallows, nodding. When Castiel first appeared before him in that barn barely a year ago, the concept of trusting the supercharged entity calling itself an angel was as foreign to him as the idea of liking pop music. Somewhere along the way, though, that had changed. Cas had gone from stranger to ally to… well, whatever they were now. Tee bee dee on that. Whatever it turns out to be, though, Dean knows one thing for certain: he trusts his angel. So he raises the insufficient flashlight, extending his arm to aim it squarely at Pete’s retreating back, and starts following him along the ledge. Castiel, still gripping his wrist, follows.

It starts as a buzzing warmth ringing Dean’s wrist beneath Castiel’s fingers. The resonant heat spreads to his hand, then trickles into the flashlight gripped therein. Dean watches as the beam glows brighter, then squints as the light starts to flood the tunnel around them, turning everything purplish-white under its luminous power. Finally, he has to close his eyes entirely, turning away as the light grows too strong for his eyes to bear. 

Just behind him, he hears Castiel shout a single syllable in Enochian. Dean’s entire arm vibrates from the force of it, and his face grows warm; the insides of his eyelids glow red as the flashlight gets almost too hot to handle. He grits his teeth and maintains his hold on it, keeping his arm extended out in front of him toward where he last saw Pete attempting his escape. From several feet away, he hears the gremlin shriek, the sound growing more pained and desperate before it dies off into a bubbling gurgle. There’s a clang of metal on concrete, and a man’s dismayed cry, before all goes quiet. The glow fades from Dean’s eyelids, leaving pulsing sunspots in its wake. Distantly, he feels Castiel’s hand slide from his wrist.

Dean cracks only one eye open first, to make sure it’s safe. It’s pitch black around him, so he opens the other and waits until his eyes adjust back to the gloom of the tunnel, before turning to Castiel. He finds the angel still standing, but slumped against the curved tunnel wall, head resting on one shoulder as he looks tiredly back at Dean. “I’m fine,” he rasps. “Go check on him.”

Dean lingers for a moment, his worry overriding his good hunter sense, until Castiel arches an eyebrow at him. “ Go.”

Dean backs away, holding his hands up in mock surrender before turning and making his way up to Pete.

The man is kneeling on the ledge, several feet away. The trap sits in front of his knees, empty save for a spreading puddle of green goo. Pete is crying openly, repeating Gadget’s name in a broken voice as he tries to scoop the goo back into the cage. He doesn’t seem to notice when Dean places a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, man,” Dean says quietly. “But we couldn’t let it live.”

Pete says nothing, ignoring him as he sobs over the remains of his ill-fated pet. Eventually, Dean sighs and lets go of his shoulder, returning to Castiel. He loops the angel’s arm over his shoulders, helping support his weight as they make their way past Pete and out of the tunnel. Dean squints when the sunlight first hits his face, his eyes a little oversensitive after Castiel had amped up the UV light in the tunnel, but they make it to the Impala without much trouble. Dean eases Castiel into the passenger seat, then crouches down so they’re on eye level.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks, his concern evident in the upturned scrunch of his brow. 

Castiel smiles tiredly. “Yes, Dean, I’ll be fine. I just need rest. Expenditures of grace like that don’t come as easy without a direct connection to Heaven.”

Dean nods. “Okay. Let’s get you back to the motel, then, for a little R&R before we hit the road.”

He eases the door shut at Castiel’s side, then makes his way around the front bumper. He pauses when he sees Pete has also made his way out of the drainage tunnel, tears still staining his face as he carries the slime-bedecked cage in one hand. His eyes are resigned as he watches Dean approach.

“Look, um,” Dean starts awkwardly. “Maybe you should give Mrs Peltzer a visit sometime.”

Pete says nothing, but his brows draw together, confusion clear on his face. 

“Call it a hunch.” Dean doesn’t want to give away all of the old woman’s secrets, but something tells him it could help this man to reconnect with her.

“Okay,” Pete whispers at last, his voice rough with emotion.

Dean pauses a moment longer, then nods before he turns to leave.

Sliding into Baby’s front seat is almost as good as the first time he slid into a real bed after being pulled from Hell. It doesn’t hurt, either, that there’s a frankly gorgeous, blue eyed angel smiling that half-hidden little smile at him as he buckles in. Baby purrs as he turns over her engine, and responds readily under his hands as he wheels her around to get them the hell out of there.

“Guess Sammy was right,” Dean comments offhandedly as they finally, blessedly, turn from dirt track back onto asphalt. 

“Hmm?” Castiel hums, not bothering to open his eyes or lift his head from where it’s resting on the top edge of the seat back.

“Something hinky really was going on in Pennsylvania,” Dean finishes with a self-congratulatory grin.

Castiel snorts. “Hey Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“You look quite fetching with a sunburn.”

Dean frowns, glancing into the rearview mirror to find his face transformed. His skin is bright red from chin to hairline, ear to ear; it’s slightly worse on one side, but still a full-fledged sunburn over the entirety of his face that he’ll no doubt be feeling for days. The freckles dusted across his nose and cheekbones stand out sharply in contrast, giving him a boyish look he hasn’t seen on himself in years. He suddenly remembers how warm his face felt when the UV light was being amped up by Cas’ grace, even though he’d been half-turned away, and he flushes hot under the already existing heat of the sunburn.

“Son of a bitch!”

Castiel simply laughs.