Author's Note: For those who read my other stuff, I am not stopping my other stories. Also, you'll note that this isn't entirely my style. I'm co-writing with another writer on : Touta Matsuda. This is another of our stories (just like New Weapons, New problems just in a different format) So please enjoy :)

Dean Winchester was walking down the street back to where he had parked the Impala. It was one of the few things that his father had left him before passing away, and it was also one of the few things that he would never sell for money to get out of his life situation. It had been a couple years since things started going downhill; Sam went off to college straight out of high school with a student bursary that would make your head spin. When he left, no one heard from him again. Sam had never liked being part of a small, blue collar family. He always aspired to bigger and better things. Dad's old military style was just a stifling thing for Sammy, an old fashioned way of thinking that needed to be done away with. Dean respected his old man's life philosophies, but that didn't help him now.

It was just after three a.m., and Dean had finished his shift at the local bar. Bartending was a lot of fun, especially when you doubled as security. Dean was in it for the money, he could do the work, and the tips were nice. The problem was he never saw much of those tips, or any of the rest of his income, for that matter. Every cent he had went to Jake. Back when Dean still owned his Dad's repair shop it wasn't so bad, keeping up with Jake's "expenses." But the deeper he got into the stuff, the worse the troubles and the bigger the bills. It took a lot of convincing –not all of it civil – to get Dean to sell the shop to pay off Jake's loan shark. With his debts clear, Dean had begged him to quit with all of it, but that just earned him a black eye and a broken rib.

Dean reminisced about the time he met Jake while he climbed into his car, a nice guy from the military reserves. Dean supposed he saw some of his father in Jake. The guy was built and strong, he carried an air of authority with him. No one messed with Jake, not to mention he had the nicest car. Before they started going out Dean loved to work on Jake's car when he brought it into the shop. Dean hadn't known at the time the reasons why no one messed with Jake. Jake's aggression and confidence was a real turn on for Dean, and when they got into a bit of a fight over a repair bill, it ended in a passionate outbreak of rough sex on top of the car. It was only later that Dean learned about the steroids and the cocaine. Back then their relationship revolved around sex, spontaneity, and a good time.

Things were different now and everyday was the same, Dean knew when he got home it would be another fight.

Dean pulled up to their ghetto looking house downtown and parked the Impala on the street –the drive was for Jake's car only. Collecting his tip money and counting it on his walk up to the front door, Dean cringed at the total: $325. That was not good enough, not for Jake. Dean remembered when he started putting some of the tip money aside as an escape fund, that maybe he could get out of this vicious cycle. That had been a bad idea. Ever since then Jake suspected Dean of skimping on the money, and even when Dean was honest and handed it over, it wasn't good enough. It never would be.

"Here," Dean dropped to envelope on the coffee table next to Jake on the couch. "I'm going to have a shower."

"How much is it?" Jake asked, not even bothering to pick it up and count it.

"It's three twenty five, it was a slow night." Dean hung his jacket on the back of a chair in the kitchen and started down the hall to the bedroom.

"A slow night?" Jake asked sceptically, getting up off the couch.

"Yeah, it was-"

"Bullshit!" Jake punched Dean in the stomach hard, catching him off guard. "There ain't no such thing as a slow Friday night. What'd you do with the rest of it?"

Dean dropped to the floor and held his stomach, "There is no 'rest of it' Jake, that's it. I swear it." Dean started pulling himself back up when Jake punched him in the back of the head and dropped him again.

"Dean baby, you know better than to lie to me."

"I'm not lying," Dean grit his teeth, debating on his next course of action. He was still sore from last night, and fighting back now would just get ugly.

But Jake was not giving up without a fight. He pulled Dean back up to his feet and pushed him up against the wall. "Well then if the rest of it just magically disappeared, than I suppose you'll have to work off the difference then won't you? You little whore." With a bit of rough manoeuvring, Jake had Dean's clothes on the floor and Dean chest down on the table.

"Jake don't," Dean's voice was going on pleading. He liked it rough once in a while, sure, but this was far different, and unfortunately it was becoming far more common as of late.

"I didn't hear a 'please,' you thieving bitch," Jake proceeded to enter Dean's unprepared anus dry and hard. His motions were relentless and self-satisfying, and all the begging in the world wouldn't get him off. Dean knew, he tried.

Jake wasn't interested in prolonged activities with Dean, not today anyway. He got what he wanted and left him on the kitchen floor before returning to the living room. Dean pulled himself together, physically shaking from the pain, anger, and fear. Grabbing his discarded clothes, he walked to the bathroom and ran a hot bath for himself. The hot water stung when he slipped into the tub. He closed his eyes and tried to forget his life.

The front door slammed and Dean woke up with a start. When had he fallen asleep? Did Jake have someone over or was he going out? Dean pulled himself out of the tub and pulled the plug. Drying off, he pulled on a bath robe and peered out of the bathroom down the hall. The house sounded quiet. Dean walked to their bedroom and collapsed on the bed. He pulled out his phone and started scrolling through his contact list. Dad's cell number was still in there, even though it had been long disconnected. Dean neared the bottom of the list and left the highlight on Sam's name. That number must be three years old by now, what were the chances he even kept it.

Dean hit the talk button in a moment of sad desperation and listened to two rings before realizing it was past 4 am. He quickly hung up.

Sam had been in college for a while now; he hadn't kept in contact with his family, namely Dean, at all. He had been doing great, straight A's, full rides, nothing seemed to be in his way anymore. At least, aside from the nagging piece in his brain that screamed at him to go back. But that was alright, he had bound and gagged that bit of brain and tossed it to the side. He hadn't thought of his brother in forever, once in a while there were signs that Dean was doing poorly but he chose to ignore them.

Sam had been up studying for his final exam, the last one of his college career. He leaned back; a long and tired sigh escaped him as he stretched his arms. He'd been in this chair all day, he was sure of it. The pages in front of him started to blur together, he wasn't even sure there were really words on them anymore.

The tall man dragged himself from his work chair and desk; he could feel kinks in his shoulders and neck from being hunched over for too long. Continuing to stretch, he walked to his bed and flopped onto his face. The pillow was so inviting, he could hardly keep himself from falling into one of those deep sleeps. He knew that he didn't have time for a full night's rest; his exam was tomorrow in the afternoon, something he was very grateful for. However, he wasn't entirely comfortable with his knowledge of the material.

A nagging feeling hauled his tired ass out of bed again, this time he dragged himself back to the desk. He looked at the clock next to the pile of papers and saw that it had already been two hours since he'd dropped himself into his bed. His eyes squinted in confusion, picking up his cell phone to see if maybe his desk clock had been lying to him.

Sure enough, it was now four am, and he had just missed a call. Sam checked the display and saw Dean's name there, a name he hadn't expected to see, a name he hadn't seen in years. "Dean?" He mumbled to no one but himself, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

The student behind his skull overpowered everything else at that moment; Dean could wait, whatever it was. There's an upcoming exam, an important one, which needs to be studied for. He put the phone away from his sight and started studying again, he would check on Dean tomorrow, after his exam.

"I can't stay here," Dean said aloud to the empty room. He painfully dragged himself off the bed and got dressed. Grabbing his jacket from the kitchen, he walked out the door and climbed into the Impala. He sat there for a good ten minutes, not sure where to go. It was almost five am, where the hell could he go? He laughed at the thought of an old 50s diner late at night, a stranger rolling through town grabbing a bite to eat or a detective looking for leads on a case.

Thinking about the diner lead to one conclusion: Dean needed a burger. He started the car and went to the 24 hour diner on the north side of town called Charlie's. He parked outside the front doors of the retro looking restaurant and climbed out. Inside the restaurant was a bar with a bunch of stools lining it, and some old looking dining booths along the front windows.

Dean tentatively sat down on one of the stools, being careful of how he was distributing his weight. Everything hurt, but at least he'd get that burger. "One bacon cheeseburger, please," then he added, "oh, and a slice of apple pie, if you have."

It had been a long night, Castiel had been on the move since early that morning already and it was almost 5am now, which meant he'd been up for about 24 hours without sleep, again. The new project they had him working on was starting to become a pain in the ass. He thought back about horror movies and the way they always ended up saying 'the government experimented on blah blah blah...' and realized that it wasn't just a cliché, it really did happen.

He had been finishing up his duties at the army's temporary base in this region and really stopped to consider what they were doing. Most people would say it was wrong, inhumane, crazy and even evil. The question he had to ask himself was what did he think of it? Sure, a lot of people disagreed with genetic mutations and experiments on them, but he wasn't sure if he was one of them. Just following orders, something he was good at. At what point did he need to stop listening to the commands coming from above him and start making his own decisions about this? From what he'd seen that day he already saw a landslide of shit coming their way, no doubt about it. And of course the superiors had called the military in as a precaution.

Precaution, what a load of crap that was. A precaution for something like this would be to correct the mistakes you make immediately, not let them fester and grow into the monstrosities they had locked up in cages. Not to mention the toxic gases those things made, it was enough to make a man lose his mind if his body didn't carry a natural immunity to it. No, the army wasn't a precaution; they were the government's first line of defence.

It was five in the morning and he'd been working his ass off all day long, it was time for something to eat. He pulled up to a small diner named Charlie's, figuring that if it was open it was good enough for him. As he hopped out of his old pickup truck he decided it was probably better to not walk in wearing all of his gear. He took off the unneeded layers and placed in the passenger seat, tossing the keys in his pocket and locking the doors. Stepping back from it he couldn't help but laugh at himself, he drove an ocean blue, 1963 Chevy pickup, was he trying to spend a fortune in gas? Probably. But it was just such a damn pretty truck.

His eyes shifted to the Impala and he gave a low whistle, "Someone here has nice taste," he smirked and headed inside. Cas flinched at the sound his boots made on now obviously old wooden floor. Part of him wondered how secure it was as he passed over it.

His eyes scanned the nearly dead restaurant, one person behind the counter, he guessed one person was in the kitchen, and one guy was sitting at the counter. Considering where the car was parked, he guessed the beauty outside belonged to the leather wearing man there. Cas shrugged and dropped himself on the stool next to Dean and looked up at the server, "I don't know what he's having, but I'll take one of those too."

He looked at Dean and grinned, "Hope you don't mind my copying you, I saw your car parked outside and figured you had good taste."