HEY GUYS. LONG TIME NO SEEEE!

So here's the newest chapter. It should be longer than this, I know, but I literally just got over my block for this thing. Let me have a couple days to recollect and eat turkey and pretend that my ancestors didn't poison my other ancestors with yellow-fever-infested blankets and that they actually dined together.

-Mel

Disclaimer: This shit's Rick's.

Castiel was fuming.

He stepped away from the group of angels with a polite nod, signifying his understanding of their plans, and flew away with his heart pumping at two times the usual rate. His breath streamed out of his nose forcefully, and for a second, Castiel was worried that his vessel was having issues.

The piece of Jimmy Novak that still clung to the back of Castiel's consciousness muttered in dissent. You'reangry,Cas.Jimmy gave the angel the impression that this was something that was okay.

Instead, it disconcerted Castiel further than the calls he'd ignored through the entirety of the meeting he'd just attended with his kin. He was an angel, created eons before humanity. He didn't feelthings the way Jimmy did. At least, he shouldn't.

All the same, he found his teeth gnashed together and his fingers curled into fists as he flew in the direction of Bobby Singer's junkyard.

You better have a good reason for this, you son of a bitch. Cas, where are you? By now Castiel could hear Dean's voice clearly through Jimmy's ears, the timbre in his head dulling the closer he got to the human.

He landed with a scrape of shoes against gravel behind Dean, whose head still craned toward the sky, searching. "Dean. What do you want?"

It was more of a rhetorical question, really. Castiel knew exactly what Dean wanted—he had practically been yelling it in his ear for the last hour. Still, he watched the Winchester turn to him with a mutinous look on his face with some sort of raw satisfaction.

"What the hell took you?" Dean asked, voice straining. He'd been screaming at the sky for what felt like forever, it was alright for him to be hoarse, dammit. "What was so goddamn important?"

The look on Cas's face was hard and cold. "Believe it or not, Dean, there are more important things for me to deal with than you and your problems. Like, oh, I don't know, the apocalypse."

Dean was taken aback by the snark in the angel's tone, which obviously (if you knew the Winchesters at all) had to be thrown back with double the force. "Oh, really? How's that shit going? 'Cause I was pretty sure you needed us for that."

Cas stared at him, and the ice blue of his eyes was frozen solid. "But that isn't what you called me here for."

Dean deflated at that. Cas was right about that. In the midst of their argument, the Winchester had almost forgotten what he was doing here in the first place. His heart thumped sadly in his chest. "We need help finding Adam."

"I know." Dean watched as Cas's shoulders, once up by his ears in defense, started to slump southwards in defeat. A defeated looking Cas was never a good sign, especially not these days when he was working the angelic side and also helping the hunters try and stop the end of the world. "But I'm afraid I can't give you that."

Dean swallowed hard, throat still sore and maybe a little blocked up. "What? Why?" He felt anger starting to swirl again in his stomach, but couldn't seem to summon it up. The thought of looking for his youngest brother without any help from upstairs seemed extremely bleak, and the set of Cas's shoulders told him he didn't like it much either.

"I truly am sorry, Dean, but there's nothing I—"

"Nothing you can do? You're an angel of the Lord for chrissakes!" Dean felt that stirring of anger burst up without any time to stop it. "You have to do something!"

Cas stopped him with a look. "I did."

"What?"

"I did. I made sure to leave him somewhere safe." Cas looked up at Dean, and even though there was only a crappy old streetlight to shine down on the entirety of Bobby's junkyard, the angel's eyes were glowing. "You have to promise me you won't go looking for him."

"What am I gonna tell Sammy?"

Cas reached a hand out to touch Dean's left shoulder. The handprint scar tingled. "Promise me."

Dean's throat was raw. Whether it was because of the yelling, or because of the giant lie he was about to get himself into, he didn't know. "I promise."

To say Percy wanted to drown himself was maybe a little bit dramatic, but it sure as hell was accurate.

The thing was, he would never be able to. Fate's funny like that.

Ha-ha-fucking-ha.

He could deal with all the shit that happened to him before. The Minotaur, the Sea of Monsters, the Titans and the Labyrinth. That he could all conceptualize easily now. It happened, and that's it, basically.

But things aren't supposed to re-happen. It happens once and then it's over, like getting your polio vaccine or your first kiss. It doesn't seem all crappy when it's over and done with. Instead, history seemed to be repeating itself. He was getting that vaccine over and over and over again, needle jabbing into his arm so many times he couldn't feel his shoulder anymore. He was reenacting his shitty first kiss with all the slobbering and the ill-placed tongues and the awkwardness in an endless loop. And it was torture.

The thing was, Luke was supposed to be dead. It had been far easier to know that he was dead, his ashes spread to the wind and his soul kicking it in Elysium like he deserved. He'd been able to mourn and come to terms with the fact that he had kind of fallen in love with the guy along their incredibly fucked up way.

And then there was Adam; sarcastic, funny, flirting Adam, who seemed to wander here by mistake and who blushed at times that Luke wouldn't bat an eyelash at. The kid was so obviously not Luke in so many ways (except the face)—until he was.

Percy flipped over on his bunk and put his face into the pillow. Maybe he could smother himself. That might work.

His ears refused to let themselves be covered though, and they stood right at attention at the sound of a creaking floorboard. One of Percy's hands scrambled for Riptide, capped under his pillow. He didn't get a chance to pull the sword out, stopped by a voice. "Percy."

Percy's breath refused to move in and out of his lungs, paused by the sound of that oh-so-familiar voice that had been haunting him so readily for the past few weeks. A sob threatened to claw its way out of his mouth. "Please. Please don't."

"Percy, please."

He felt warm tears streaking onto his pillow. "I can't talk to you." His heart, the traitorous bitch, thrummed in his chest, begging, crying please, please, please do. It felt as if there was a black hole somewhere between his lungs that was dragging everything in, pulling at his insides and tearing them up piece by piece.

A hand threaded its fingers into the hair at the back of Percy's head. "Then don't." Luke-Adam's voice sounded like he was struggling to maintain his own composure, rough and confused as hell but mostly just irrevocably sad. "Just don't make me leave."

Percy squeezed his eyes shut. He forced his fingers to unclench their grip around Riptide and to loop around Adam's wrist underneath his jacket.

The anchor of skin on skin seemed to yank the demigod away from the black hole and back into regular desperation. Adam's arm was warm under his hand, his pulse beating hard in the veins near his hand. He didn't have to say anything. You'renotleaving.

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