A/N: Wow. I never meant for this to be so long.
This could be better, but I'm satisfied with what I did.

*This fanfiction was inspired by writingfrom221b . tumblr . com All credit for the idea goes to her. ^-^*

Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this fanfic! :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of the characters. c:

Sam sat by the wobbly wooden table in the motel room staring into the bright screen of his laptop. He scrolled through a list of recent deaths as Dean sat with his eyes closed listening to music on the dirty sheets of the bed. Sam scrolled past an article about a teen girl being attacked by a wolf in her cabin in the woods, a tourist getting locked in an empty room of a castle in Scotland and starving to death, and then came across an interesting article about a college girl who was killed by frogs being jammed down her throat.

"Dean," Sam said, but Dean didn't reply. He still had headphones on his head. Sam picked up a pen on the table and threw it at Dean, which hit him on the forehead. "Dean," he repeated, and Dean took off his headphones.

"Find one?" he asked.

"Yeah," Sam said, clicking on the link. "This college girl was sitting outside of her dorm room on a bench, when a bunch of frogs came up to her at once and started jumping down her throat." He explained, skimming through the article.

"Gross."

"Yeah. Do you think it's worth checking out?" Dean shrugged. "C'mon, Dean. Do you think frogs could possibly do that on their own?" Dean shook his head.

"Fine, but let's wait 'til morning, I'm tired."

It was 10:30 AM. "It is morning, Dean." Sam said, pointing towards the clock.

"Oh. How far away is it?"
"New York City. Four hours away."

Dean groaned. He didn't necessarily like the hustle-bustle of big cities. "Okay, but you drive."

Sam and Dean held up their FBI Badges, and a short young woman with long blonde hair led them into the morgue. She rolled out the body of Claire Woodman, the girl who had died from the frogs.

Her skin was pale and her neck was sliced open to reveal at least ten frogs jammed into her throat, not yet taken out of the body. Also, on her cheek there was a red mark that looked somewhat like the outline of a crown.

Dean looked away. "Do you know why these frogs did this?" he asked the lady, whose name was Phoebe.

"No," Phoebe replied, "nobody witnessed it while it happened, but there were a few other students that had passed by before. They said that she appeared to be talking to somebody, but there was nobody there. There aren't that many frogs around here, so who knows how a bunch of them ended up in her throat." She looked down at Claire and back up at Dean.

Sam gently rubbed the mark on Claire's cheek with his thumb. "What's this?

Phoebe shrugged. "I dunno. It was there when they found her, but she didn't have it before."

Ten minutes later Sam and Dean were driving back to their small, but expensive motel room in the heavy New York traffic when they saw police cars and an ambulance off on one of the side roads by an apartment. They stopped by and talked to one of the neighbours who watched as they wheeled a body into the ambulance.

"The poor guy was shot in the back last night while sleeping in his girlfriend's apartment. They don't know how it happened though, he was found on lying on his back and the gun under the mattress " The man explained.

"Where is his girlfriend?" Sam asked.

He pointed to a girl who was crying by the ambulance, watching as her dead boyfriend was shut behind the doors.

Sam and Dean walked over to her. "Hello," Dean said, holding up his badge, "we're with the FBI. Do you mind if we asked you a few questions?" She sniffed and nodded. "Okay. Can you tell us what happened last night?"

She nodded again. "I was working the midnight shift at my job at the clinic when Matthew called me," she took a sharp inhale and sobbed for a moment, then continued, "he said his car broke down and my apartment was closer to where he was, so I let him stay there for the night." She took a deep breath before continuing. "I keep a gun under my mattress just in case of emergencies. I don't even think he knew about it. Later that night he texted me saying he felt like he could feel something under the bed, but I don't know how he could possibly feel a gun through a mattress. When I got home at about six in the morning, he was dead on my bed. I called the police and they said there was a gun wound in his back. My gun was untouched. It was in the same exact spot I left it in but a bullet was missing. It wasn't even facing upward!" She paused again to cry, taking in shaky breaths. She put her hands on her face and turned away.

"I'm sorry about Matthew," Sam tried to comfort. He looked at Dean. "C'mon." he whispered, and they walked towards the ambulance. "Mind if we take a look before you go?" he asked the officers, holding up his badge again.

The officer looked at him. "Sorry, agents, but you have to wait until he's at the morgue. You can check out the apartment, though."

He led them up to the apartment room and into the bedroom, where a pool of dried-up blood stained the bed sheets. "He was lying on his back," the officer explained, "and the gun was wedged between the mattress and the bed frame. Five bullets on the inside but the gun was on safety lock. It's possible it could've been a suicide, but that would have been an awful lot of work."

Dean looked around the room while Sam talked to the policeman. Nothing looked out of place or strange. He checked the windowsill, doorways and closet. Nothing. He looked under the bed. Nothing. He opened the window and checked the windowsill on the outside. Sulfur.

When the officer left, Sam walked over. "Sulfur." Dean said.

Sam creased his eyebrows together. "But why would a demon…?"

"I don't know! Do you think it could be responsible for the other death?"

"Maybe. Let's check out the campus and go back to the morgue to look at Matthew tomorrow." He replied.

"It rained last night. Whatever evidence was there is probably washed away."

"Okay. We'll go to the morgue then."

In the morning, Sam and Dean drove back to the morgue and were greeted by Phoebe again. "Here to check out the new body?" she asked, and they nodded.

"Yep, we came as soon as we can." Dean replied.

They took a look at Matthew, who was turned on his back to reveal the gun wound. Next to the wound was a mark that looked just like Claire's but was in the shape of a small circle, and instead of red it was green. "It's like Claire's." Sam remarked.

"This is all very strange," Phoebe said as she entered the room, "they're like a more demented version of Grimm and Andersen's fairy tales, if that's possible."

Sam and Dean had her attention. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said, waving her hand at the mark on Matthew's back, "it's kind of like a Princess and the Pea thing, except, you know, Prince and the Gun." She chuckled at her crude humour.

Sam looked over to where the other bodies were stored, including Claire's. "And the Frog Princess."

"They must be connected somehow," Phoebe thought aloud. She inhaled and looked up at the two brothers. "Anyways, I'll leave it up to you two to figure that out. Let me know what happens, you've got me curious."

They started to walk out. "Yes, we certainly will, Phoebe," Dean said.

"See you later, Agents."

Just as they walked out the door, a high-pitched shriek came from behind the door and then a splat and a dull bonk. They bolted back into the door and saw Phoebe lying in a pool of blood, but only her body. Her head sat a few feet away with its own blood pooling up. But not just her head was cut off; her beautiful, long golden locks were as well, getting stained from the dark blood.

"Phoebe!" Dean cried as they crouched down next to her. A purple mark of a flower appeared on the forehead of her severed head. "What fairy tale is this?" he asked.

"Rapunzel?" Sam guessed, taking a closer look at the mark on her forehead. "As the story goes, Mother Gothel named her after the rampion, a wildflower cultivated as a vegetable that the king had stole from her garden."

"Also she has long blonde hair." Dean stated. He got up and checked the room, and on the windowsill outside there was sulfur, just as he guessed. "Sulfur." He called over to Sam, who was still kneeling beside the long-dead Phoebe.

Sam sighed. "I guess we'll never get to tell her about the murders."

Dean looked over at his brother, crouching over the dead woman. "No," he mumbled, "we won't."

"It must be a demon, then, doing the murders." Dean said once they were back in the privacy of their motel room.

"But why? Why take the time to plan out fairy-tale murders instead of just possessing them?" Sam inquired.

"I don't know." Dean responded, "You know, I think I'm going to go walk around a bit. Get some fresh air, well, at least as much as I can get around here." He said as he started towards the door again. "Do you wanna come?"

Sam shook his head.

"Maybe when we're done with all this, we can go see a Broadway show, or go to Central Park." Dean smirked.

"Yeah. Maybe." Sam responded as Dean waltzed out the door.

Dean walked around the crowded sidewalks of New York City, taking in the scene. For about half an hour he walked until he found himself standing at the doors of the Empire State Building. It towered up into the sky, where tourists stood at the balcony at the top looking over Manhattan. The corners of his mouth pulled up as he stared into the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun.

Dean glanced down at his watch, and then walked into the building. It couldn't hurt to spend a few minutes overlooking the city, right? The floors were shiny and clean, and at the end of the room was the Empire State Building shown in the marble walls, beautiful plaque-like art that went up to the towering ceilings of the lobby. To the right were velvet ropes leading to the large elevator where about ten people loaded in. Dean stood in line until the doors opened back up. When he turned around to watch the other people load in, he realized that there was nobody else in line to enter the elevator. The lobby was totally silent. Everyone who had been there had gotten to his or her destination in the building and nobody else had come in.

Dean held his hand by the elevator door and peeked out. Even the worker at the desk at the end of the hall had left to go somewhere else. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and clicked the button to go to the top floor. His ears popped as the elevator zoomed up the building at a speed Dean was not usually exposed to in elevators. Through the loud hum of the machine and tacky elevator music, a small ping could be heard. Something on the floor reflected the fluorescent light of the elevator ceiling onto Dean's face. He crouched down and picked up a sewing needle that had dropped onto the floor from nowhere. He certainly did not keep a sewing needle with him. Being Dean Winchester, he poked the tip of the needle with the tip of his index finger.

The doors opened back up, and finally there were people in sight again. The people who were walking in line were silent. They weren't even walking. They stood still, frozen in place.

"What the hell…" Dean murmured through a yawn. He stepped in front of an older couple that were frozen and placed and looked at them. Their eyes were closed and appeared to be slightly snoring. Dean rubbed his eyes and walked away, glancing at other frozen people as he walked by. "They're all asleep," he said to himself. As he made his way towards a more open area, he found that it became harder and harder to keep his eyes open. Without any warning, he fell face-first onto the cold, glossy floor, sleep creeping up on him quickly.

He could just vaguely make out a female security guard with chocolate brown hair and matching eyes walk up to him and smirk. "Come on, Princess. Let's go to your room."

Sam had been doing research on his computer for the past forty minutes when he realized he should probably check in with Dean. He got out his phone and dialed Dean's cell number. It rang once, then stopped, going to voicemail. Sam called again. This time it went directly to voicemail. He tried to turn the on the GPS on his phone, but it wouldn't work. When he tried again, his phone went to static, then black. A message in red appeared on his screen:

Briar Rose won't be waking up anytime soon.

Sam bit his lip. It got Dean. The demon got Dean.

Sam tried to slow his breathing and think. Dean left almost an hour ago. New York City was enormous, and he could have gotten anywhere within the hour. Sam needed to call Cas.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and calmed down. Cas. A demon got Dean. I need your help finding him. We're in New York City and he could be anywhere, but the demon did give me a clue.

Sam opened his eyes and sighed. No Cas. He would have to do this by himself. Sam inhaled deeply and stood up. He grabbed Ruby's knife and opened the door to leave, only to see Cas on the other side.

"You called?"
Sam smiled. "Yes." He walked out the door and they started walking down the sidewalk. Sam explained to Cas about the fairy-tale themed murders, and how a demon had been responsible. He showed him the message that had shown up on his phone.

"Briar Rose is the original name of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. In the Fairy Tale, the princess is in the highest tower of the castle," Sam explained to Cas, "so, assuming that Manhattan is the Castle, the highest tower would be the Empire State Building. Think you can zap us there?"

Cas nodded and placed his hand on Sam's shoulder, and when they opened their eyes they stood in the silent, empty lobby of the building.

"He's probably at the top," Sam said as he rushed to the elevator and they zoomed up to the top floor. Cas stares at the frozen, sleeping citizens, confused. "In the story, everybody in the castle is frozen in place until the Princess is woken up."

Cas nodded his head and continued searching for Dean. They kept running until there was nowhere else to go except the balcony. Sam opened the door and ran around the balcony. Sure enough, Dean was lying on the cement floor, asleep. Sam looked down at his brother. He was alive, but for how long? He got down on his knees and shook his shoulders. Nothing. Slapped him. Nothing. Licked his finger and stuck it in Dean's ear. Nothing.

A message appeared on the cement next to Dean's head. Written in blood (who knows whose blood it was) was the number ten.

"Ten?" Sam asked, "Ten what? Minutes? Hours? Days?" He looked up at Cas, who didn't say anything. When he looked back down, it was replaced with a nine. "Minutes. Okay."

Sam searched through his brain to think of what to do. Then he remembered the fairy tale. True Love's kiss. Dean never had a long-term relationship with anybody. His true love could be anywhere, if he even had one. Then he realized.

"Cas!"

"What?"
"I need you to kiss Dean."

Cas squinted at Sam. "You need me to… why?"

Sam sighed. "In the fairy tale, Briar Rose is awakened from the sleep by true love's kiss."

"And what makes you think that I'm his true love?"

Eight.

"I-I just know. Don't act like you don't either."

Cas looked down at his feet, face slightly pink. He got down onto his knees, his trench coat pooling around him, and grabbed Dean's head, pulling it up into his arms. He spoke softly, "but what if he-"

"Don't make me push your heads together." Sam interrupted.

Cas gave up on arguing and leaned down and softly pressed his lips against Dean's. He sat there for a moment, not moving at all. Suddenly he felt Dean stir in his lap. Cas pulled back as Dean's eyes fluttered open.

"Cas," Dean whispered, still sleepy. He sat up to take in his surroundings. The wind was still up on the balcony and the sun was setting in the early evening, creating beautiful oranges and purples at the horizon. The city beneath them had their lights turned on, prepared for another long Manhattan Saturday night. It was beautiful.

Sam leaned against the railing, amused at the scene he had just witnessed. Finally.

"What happened?" Dean finally asked.

"Demon got you. You were Sleeping Beauty." Sam replied, smirking.

Dean glanced at Cas, and back at Sam. "And I woke up by…"

"True love's kiss."

Dean stared into Cas' blue eyes, and he couldn't help but smile.

They heard a door close and they turned around to see Sam inside, leaving them out on the balcony.

Dean stood up and Cas followed. They leaned their elbows against the railing and looked out over the darkening city.

Dean laughed. "Out of all the messed up fairy tale murders that this demon planned out, this is the only one that had a happy ending. Even if there's not much to really look forward to." He turned his body to focus on Cas.

Cas smiled. "What is there to look forward to?" he asked, also turning towards Dean.

Dean looked down at his feet, then to Cas' feet, then back up to Cas' blue eyes. "Being with my brother, and… being with you." Dean looked back down, and Cas stepped closer. He took Dean's face in his hands and pulled him forward, crashing their lips together.

This time, they were both awake to enjoy it. Energy tingled throughout them as they closed any remaining space between their bodies. Dean snaked his arms around Cas underneath his trench coat, taking in his warmth. Nothing could be any better.

A little while later, Cas and Dean went back inside. Sam was looking at the information on the wall about the building. When he noticed them walk in he couldn't help but hide his grin. "You guys ready to go hunt down this demon?"

"It was a security guard, I think," Dean explained as they walked towards the exit, "and her hair was brown. That's all I could remember. I think she said something too, but I was asleep by then." The people who were asleep along with Dean were now unfrozen and continued walking as if nothing had happened. They passed by a security guard and Dean stopped. "Hey, do you know where the security guard is that was here earlier?"

The plump man nodded his shiny blonde head. "Diane? Her next position is down in the lobby." Dean thanked him and they continued down to the lobby, where Diane stood next to the door. When she noticed them come out of the elevator, her eyes widened a bit and she calmly slipped out the exit.

Sam and Dean started to run after her, but Cas stopped them. "Wait," he said, "we should wait until she gets to her destination – which is most likely somewhere she'll be alone – and I can take you there." They nodded and stood awkwardly in the lobby until Sam said, "How will you know when she's there?"

Cas closed his eyes and was silent for a moment, then said, "She's there." With that, he put his hands on their shoulders and they appeared in a small apartment room, where Diane sat at a table with papers scattered everywhere and a knife acting as a paperweight. She turned around with startled eyes and stood up, but Cas was already in front of her with a hand on her forehead, ready to smite.

"Wait!" Sam yelled. "We should exorcise her. We won't get away leaving an apartment with a dead body on the floor in New York City."

Dean nodded his head in agreement. Cas grabbed the demon but she tried to fight. She elbowed his stomach but he was able to grab her and hold her back. Sam took out the knife and gave it to Cas, who held it firmly against Diane's neck.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…" Sam began. Diane began to struggle but every time she tried to move Cas pushed the knife harder into her neck. Finally she started to scream and the demonic black smoke shot out of her mouth and through the air vents. Diane didn't wake up though, she had passed out.

"We should lay her down." Cas suggested, and he lifted her up and lay her down on the sofa. Dean collected the papers off the table and took the knife, removing all the evidence.

"Hopefully she was asleep the whole time."

Cas zapped them back to their motel.

Dean sighed and sat down on the bed. "Finally that's over with."

Sam sat down on his bed as well and looked at Dean, then Cas. "So, are you two…?"

Cas stepped forward. "Well, I do believe our relationship has been altered."

Dean looked down at his hands and blushed. Both sets of eyes were staring at him. "Um, yeah, I-I guess." He mumbled.

Sam read his expression and decided to get up. "Um, well, I'm going to go get something from the car." He strode to the door and left them alone.

Cas bent his head down a little bit to try to catch Dean's face. "Are you okay?"

Dean forced his head up to look at Cas. His eyes were glassy. "I don't know," he whispered.

"What's wrong?"

Dean sighed. "I could never really bring myself to love somebody without feeling like I put them in some sort of danger." He spoke slowly and carefully, as if he had spent hours choosing out the right words to say.

Cas sat down on the bed next to Dean. "If you already care about me, how will being in a relationship change the circumstances?" Dean didn't say anything.

"When I first came to Earth, I thought of love like it was desperation. It was just something that people used because they needed something so badly. But since I've spent more time on Earth, I realized that love is greater," he paused, and Dean twisted his body to look at Cas better. "It gives you a reason to fight, to keep going." Cas looked back up and whispered, "It has certainly helped me."

Dean didn't know what to say, so instead of talking he leaned in and pressed his lips on Cas'. Cas closed his eyes and kissed back, moving closer to Dean and hanging his arms over his shoulders. So much bottled up tension, feelings, and need was released. They needed each other. One was necessary to complete the other, and finally they shared that feeling openly and together.

Whenever they separated they quickly rejoined. "I love you, Cas." Dean finally whispered. He said it quickly and quietly. It was something he'd mean to say forever, but every time he wanted to blurt it out something inside stopped him. Now, it almost slipped out. No more barriers.

"I love you, too." Cas whispered in response. The words were so reassuring. Nothing else mattered except for this moment.

For the moment, everything was okay.