Smoke poured down the hallway, drifting upwards toward the ceiling. A virtual cloud covering now engulfed the premises. Dean peeked around the corner down of one hall into the next his eyes scanning as best they could. The smoke stung them and tears ran down his face trying to cleanse his irritated eyes. He had one arm curled around his nose and mouth – the leather of his jacket doing next to nothing to filter the smoke, but as with any 'if – than' circumstance he rationalized that the protection of his arm would be better than nothing.

"Come on," Dean coughed.

He meant to yell gruffly at the two women he had been shepherding, one tucked under his free arm and the other behind him, clinging tightly to the bottom half of his jacket. He had intended to sound a lot more in control of the situation, but the acrid smoke causing his eyes to painfully itch and water had begun to singe his lungs as well. He could only imagine how the Sisters felt. He had at least had plenty of experience with dangerous life threatening situations such as this to keep a cool head.

So he pressed ahead with one nun behind him and the other tucked under his arm, as if in the safety of his wing. He dropped his arm and pressed his hand to his face. He had to do more to keep going and wheezing against his forearm would do nothing for their survival. He felt the hand gripping the back hem of his jacket go lax. Dean halted as they moved down the hall. He turned around and he could barely make out forms through the haze. He lowered to his knees and the sister to his left followed suit. She had pulled her habit around to cover her face. He smirked. The Sister behind him had not fared so well. She lay on her back coughing violently.

Dean dropped the hand from his face and pulled away from the other Sister reaching out to the nun on the floor. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her up to sitting. Moving into a crouch he pulled her toward him and hoisted her up onto his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. He turned back to the way they had been going. He could not make out the window he had previously been heading toward.

The Sister with her habit pulled tight to cover her mouth and nose, grabbed for his hand. Dean shook her off and cupped his face greedily, nodding ahead. She nodded back and together they moved forward. The fire had spread. Dean could hear it – crackling and damn near breathing in heavy gasps. He could feel the heat beating against his back. And the crackling only got louder even as they moved forward. A loud groan sounded reminding Dean of the sound of large four legged creatures yawning at the zoo – a rhino, maybe a hippo, or maybe even a really ornery mule with a bullhorn. Dean looked back and watched the wood ceiling just behind them crash down into a pile. He dropped his hand from his face and grabbed the sister's arm roughly just underneath her shoulder. He tightened his grip on the legs of the other nun that draped over his shoulder, her knees at his chest.

He could not make out anything past a foot in front of him thanks to the smoke, but Dean took off full speed, dragging the now apprehensive scared nun tightly at his side. He had a plan – albeit a bad plan, but it was the only one he had. He heard a slow building yawn and more crackling and popping of the fire attacking the wood of the historic church. He could have said a prayer or reflected on his life up until that point, but instead Dean sucked in a breath of bitter smoke and oxygen becoming in the process only a little dizzy. He had the length of the hall gauged when they had turned the corner. He had just begun to wonder where the hall ended and if it would ever end – if he had been stumbling the whole time he thought he had been running – when he lost his footing. His toe connected with something hard and unmoving. Dean plunged forward in a fall he could not break. He pulled the nun to his left with him and together they both flew forward, falling. The pain hit first before he heard any of the noise – the crash, the tinkling, the groan and the loud boom. Dean gulped in a breath of fresh air and looked up in a daze.

He had fallen through the window dragging the nun with him by the arm, the other lay half beneath him.

"Sam?" Dean called, before coughing loudly.

He tried to sit up, push himself off the poor nun lying beneath him motionless.

"Shit," he cursed looking over to the nun beside him, slowly pulling away from his hand still firmly clutching her arm.

"Sister, you okay?"

She coughed, but also nodded. He rolled off the other nun onto his back and took another gulp of air.

"Jesus Christ," he swore under his breath, turning his head and looking at the motionless Sister.

"Sam!" he yelled raising up his head slightly, looking around the courtyard of the church for his younger brother.

"Dean!"

Dean turned toward the voice shouting his name. Sam rounded the side of the church jogging and head turning as his eyes swept the surrounding area searching for his brother.

"SAM!" Dean called.

Sam's eyes scanned the grass and finally locked on Dean, lying just beyond the hedges that had surrounded the church building. Two nuns lay on either side of Dean, one coughing and sputtering as she lay curled up on the grass, the other motionless beside Dean, flat on his back, now beginning to cough as violently as the other nun. Sam broke into a run and slid down to the ground beside Dean.

"Are you okay? What the hell happened?"

Before Dean had a chance to reply, Sam glanced up at the broken frame of the stained glass window. Flames blew out shooting up at the sky. He surveyed the area finding glass littering the hedges and grass. Dean had tiny cuts all over his face and neck, a large gash scraped across the palm of his hand.

"Help her," Dean coughed out, nodding his head over at the Sister lying beside him. "She passed out inside. I-"

Another coughing fit interrupted Dean's explanation. Sam gave him an uncomfortable look, still worried for him more than anything, even if that meant a lapse in care for the nuns. He crawled over Dean's stretched out legs and pressed his fingers to the nun's neck.

"Sister Bernadette," coughed the other nun, reaching out and patting her unconscious companion on the shoulder to rouse her.

"Shit," Sam muttered, getting on the right side of Sister Bernadette.

He tilted her head back and used his thumb to nudge down her chin, opening her airway. He put his ear to her lips and listened. He sucked in a breath and pinched her nose shut, leaning in and pressing his lips to hers blowing in a puff.

Dean rolled over away from Sister Bernadette and away from Sam.

"Get up," he croaked, fighting to get on his hands and knees, feeling glass stabbing into his palms as he did.

"Get away from the window; the roof has been caving in." Dean ordered his brother, crawling forward to put more distance between him and the church.

Sam gulped and carefully slid an arm beneath Sister Bernadette's knees and the other beneath her back, lifting her up. The other nun began to crawl forward as well. Putting some distance between the building and them, Sam lay down Sister Bernadette and again began CPR.

"What happened?"

Dean turned to the small mousy voice of the younger of the two Sisters.

"Electrical fire," Dean lied, instantly calculating the different ways he'd just sinned.

"I don't understand. How can that just happen?"

"Sorry, Sister," Dean replied, "Them's the breaks,"

Sam was pumping on Bernadette's chest when suddenly she coughed and gasped. Sam rolled her onto her side and patted her back, trying to ease her into breathing.

"Fuck," Sister Bernadette swore, garnering a wide-eyed and shocked expression from Dean.

Despite having been just revived and fighting for every breath of oxygen while trying to cough out the smoke and soot that had caused her to stop breathing, she cupped her hand over her mouth in horror. Dean smiled.

"Welcome back."

"Oh my, Sister Bernadette," and the younger nun began to fawn over her middle aged companion, with concern and comfort.

Dean looked down at his bleeding palm. He coughed and hocked an enormous gob of grey spit onto the grass and looked up at Sam, towering above him, back on his feet. The sound of sirens wailing in the distance, but becoming louder as they approached filled the air.

"Let's skip the Five Oh shall we," Dean suggested, putting out his uninjured hand.

Sam grabbed hold and helped lift Dean up. A shard of blue painted glass stuck out of Dean's thigh about an inch above his knee. He hissed and reached to pick it.

"Shit, ow." He cursed yanking out the stained glass and tossing it to the ground.

He turned to look over his shoulder at the two nuns and smiled with a wink, giving them a slight wave as he hobbled along after Sam. "Sorry. Hail Mary and all that,"

"I'll drive," Sam less than offered, more demanded.

With no fight left after battling out of a burning church, Dean reached into his jeans pocket and tossed Sam the keys. He hobbled now holding his injured palm against his chest, pressing it against the fabric of his t-shirt to hold pressure and stop the bleeding. His good hand he had pressed tight against the puncture wound on his leg.

"Where the hell were you while I was roasting about to become the Lord's Supper?"

"The other side of the building to check out the chapel." Sam answered, with a patented 'stating the obvious' expression on his face, "The hell were you doing in the rectory?"

"Apparently, shepherding penguins through the flames,"

"Good work, by the way. You probably saved their lives,"

"Probably?" Dean questioned.

"Trying to give the Lord some credit for divine intervention,"

"Yeah, it was called ME,"

"You okay?" Sam asked, ignoring the prideful claim.

"I now know how a brisket truly feels and I think I may be bleeding to death. Hurry back to the motel,"

"You need a hospital. Your leg is pretty bad," Sam argued.

Dean looked down and saw that blood was pouring from all four spaces between his fingers. He sighed and gulped, a little dazed as he watched the dark red seep despite how tightly he pressed his hand. He reached for his belt and unbuckled it, sliding it from the loops in his jeans. Expertly he looped it around his thigh and jerked it tight, giving himself a tourniquet.

"Seems to help when I do that," He offered. "A few homemade stitches and I'll be great. Get to the motel."

Sam pressed his foot harder on the gas and drove while Dean covered the gash on his palm with the hem of his t-shirt and wound it around, sighing and leaning back against the seat.

"Did you find it, by the way?" he asked Sam, looking over at his brother with a weary glance to accompany the afterthought.

Sam shook his head. "I had barely covered the chapel and the rooms outside it when I smelled the smoke and saw the fire. I went looking for you,"

"Great," Dean groaned. "I was afraid of that,"

Sam shrugged and replied in a disappointed tone. "I tried,"

"I know, Sammy. Me too,"

The stitched wound on Dean's leg itched incessantly beneath the heavy denim of his dark blue jeans. He absently lowered his palm to rub the offending sting and as he had done a number of times that night and paused just before connecting skin to fabric. He knew better than to worry the injury with a scratch that could tear out the stitches. He had covered it with a bandage and gauze, but he had done similar stupid things in the past and ended with more blood stained jeans and another episode of stitching his flesh back together. The memory of having flesh torn, bound back together and ripped apart again still hung fresh in his mind – the memories of a lifetime in hell. With a haunted shudder he lifted his whiskey glass and took a healthy sip. He did not even hiss at the sting of the liquor cascading down his throat.

He sat at an anonymous bar, in an anonymous midsize city, across the street from an anonymous motel where he assumed Sam had stayed behind. Dean had stayed with his brother long enough to recover from the breaths of smoke he'd taken in, stitch his leg and palm wounds shut, super glue the assorted superficial scratches that had peppered his face and neck and get a shower in. Once he'd gotten out of the shower he'd changed his clothes and offered the explanation "Going across the street to that bar" and to his knowledge Sam had just nodded from behind the glowing screen of his lap top.

Dean turned the glass, giving the amber liquid a slosh, the two melting cubes of ice clinked against the sides of the glass. He had his jaw set causing his lips to rest in a pout. The worry lines that creased his forehead matched the squint of his eyes. He looked like a man that needed to be left alone – and he hoped that his appearance would be warning enough to anyone who thought he needed a shoulder to lean on or a friendly ear.

He could have been thinking about the church. He should have been thinking about the fire and what it could have possibly destroyed. Dean rolled the cubes around in the glass, watching one follow the other – a dog chasing its tail, around and around it goes. He gave no warning and tipped back his head and the glass followed, pouring all its contents between his lips – his teeth straining out the cubes which clinked into the empty glass, applause of sorts for finishing his beverage.

Dean set the glass onto the bar counter with a smack, signaling time for a refill. The bar tender turned at the sound, his eyes had been locked on the small TV hanging from the ceiling in a corner watching a baseball game that he had no time to care anything about. Dean slipped a ten-dollar bill next to the glass to pay in advance for his $6 double on the rocks. He had already put away two. The male bar tender sauntered over, now suddenly at Dean's service, and emptied his glass, dropping three cubes into the empty glass with a scoop and then pouring in a healthy double shot. He lifted the ten and held it midair, going through the motions of courtesy, Dean shook his head at the bar back, letting him know there would be no need to give him his four dollars in change.

"Dean,"

Dean's pulse jumped suddenly and he whipped his head in the direction of the voice. He could not help but make a mental note that he could have been killed six times over as close as Castiel stood to him. Times like these it more than just irked him to have the angel appear without warning. Dean didn't doubt he'd strolled into the bar just like any human and simply walked up to him, but Dean hadn't had any forewarning, no sixth sense tingling and certainly not heard any falling footsteps. Dean stared blankly zeroing his eyes in on Castiel's for good measure and tipped his head to the stool beside him.

"Have a seat," Dean offered, lifting the glass in salute before taking a light sip. "What brings you to my office?"

Castiel did not so much as grin at the pun. He eased onto the stool, eyes never leaving the sight of his charge – those wonderfully dark blue eyes warm when they should have been nothing but cold unfeeling stone. The kind of stone you could cast at a sinner and never feel a bit of guilt for doing so – that's what Castiel's eyes could have and should have been. Uriel had the stone cold unaffected stare down pat. Castiel could have pierced Kevlar with the way he often stared, especially when he stared at Dean. At least that is how Dean perceived it.

"You were not able to recover the statue?" Castiel asked, or rather, stated the obvious.

"Nope," Dean shrugged trying to seem indifferent but ending up looking comfortably defeated.

Castiel let out a noise somewhere between disappointment and a growl. Dean's upper lip curved into an irritating smirk and he rolled his eyes to glance over at the angel in disguise.

"That's what I said," He switched his glass to his injured hand, wrapped in a cloth bandage around the center of his palm, and brought his other hand down in an exaggerated comforting slap on Castiel's knee, "But on the upside I saved a pair of penguins batting for your team,"

With a full grin and a short laugh he retracted his hand and took a swig of his whiskey. Castiel rested his tan cloth covered elbows on the bar and looked away from Dean.

"What'ya have?" the bar tender asked on his way back from the television he had been staring at.

Dean glanced over and saw the game had gone to a commercial. He ignored the exchange between Castiel and the bar tender in favor of the depiction of pickup trucks racing through rough rock terrain – a metaphor for galloping horses that would call to every boy trapped inside a man who had played cowboys and Indians as a kid. He glanced back to Castiel and eyed the glass that had been placed down in front of the angel – a snifter. The bartender stood at the rack of bottles with his back to the pair.

"You order a double holy water on the rocks? I got bad news for ya. It's not going to be the same drink you're thinking of."

Castiel slowly turned his head and looked his eyes met Dean's, squinting slightly before turning back to the bar tender now pouring liquid from bottle into his glass. Dean cocked his head thoughtfully, reading the lettering on the label. He snickered and moved to bring the glass to his lips, but hesitated and set it down as a second thought.

"Christian Brothers Brandy, that's cute," Dean commented coolly with a spicy smile playing upon his lips. "Are you even allowed to do that?"

"Imbibe?" Castiel asked, looking down at the drink and running his hand over the curve of the glass to its stem where he rested his fingertips, allowing a small smile of his own to curve his usually impassive lips, "These beverages are aptly named spirits. And I am also a spiritual being,"

"Well, if that's how we're counting it. I'm planning to get pretty Pope-like tonight,"

Castiel shifted only his eyes over to Dean and spoke, "I sincerely hope you don't mean that,"

Dean continued to smirk and lifted his glass to his lips. He wanted very much to inquire as to whether that had been a warning not to mock the Pope or if Castiel had somehow decided to give him a cynical tidbit of Holy-gossip.

"What'd you come in here for?" Dean asked instead of pressing the Pope crack, "Not to watch me get drunk, and I'm damn positive not for a nice glass of brandy before bed,"

"The statue," Castiel answered, reminding Dean of the fire in the church and of course that he and Sam had failed to procure a very old artifact beforehand.

"Well, I'm sure the other side laid waste to it if it's as important to destroy as I would guess. That church had a lot of wooden crap in it,"

"It wouldn't matter if the statue had been destroyed in the fire and it does not appear to have been,"

Dean looked over, at Castiel, now moderately interested in the angel's cryptic statements. Castiel lifted the brandy snifter and as Dean had done with the ice cubes, swirled the liquid inside, watching it coat the sides as it swished, the trough of the wave of liquor chasing the peak.

"Dog chasing its tail," Dean muttered aloud, removing his eyes from staring at the glass in order to roll them coincidentally just as Castiel shot his patented piercing gaze straight at him.

"We searched the remains while the fire raged,"

"Nice," Dean retorted with a thickly venomous tone to his voice, "Thanks for that. I'm glad you decided to take a stroll through the fire while I almost became a crispy critter. Why did you send Sam and me after this damn statue in the first place?"

"I told you before, Dean," he bit out purposefully, "There are other battles. Our numbers are limited,"

"Yeah, yeah," Dean complained, taking a gulp from his glass, frustrated, "So you keep saying."

"And you do not believe –"

Dean cut him off before he could further misinterpret Dean's words or reasoning, "Look, I believe you. I just don't like how I risk my neck and you could have strolled on into that fire no problem - "

"Dean, I did not know there would be a fire," Castiel now interrupted. "I thought the task could be managed,"

Dean gritted his teeth and slugged back the remained her of his drink, reaching back with his favored arm to pull out his wallet. Castiel's arm shot over, catching Dean's wrist, holding him in pause.

"Stop,"

"Blow me,"

The words left Dean's mouth before he could stop them. His eyes instantly opened wider and he swallowed a nervous gulp, cautiously drawing his arm back pulling away from Castiel and draped it casually along the edge of the bar.

"You need to know this," said the angel, turning his head back so that he stared straight ahead, avoiding even looking at Dean, let alone speaking directly to him staring him right in the eyes. "That statue contains something very important,"

"Well, they got it," Dean assumed, "So, oops, another fumble for the home team. Looks like we're not making it to the playoffs,"

"This is not a game," Castiel quickly replied in an icy, serious tone.

He now turned to Dean completely, swiveling on the stool. He cocked his head to the side and glared at him through narrow eyes.

"There will be hell on this Earth, Dean. There is still a chance to regain the spear before the next seal can be broken,"

"The spear? What the hell? You told us we were searching for a statue of the Holy Mother,"

Castiel's eyes bore into Dean, becoming more intense at the sound of indignation coating Dean's voice. Dean stared back in disbelief and what could have gone undetected to a less astute being – hurt.

Dean quickly reached into his back pocket and pulled out another ten-dollar bill. He slapped it on the counter beside Castiel's untouched drink and turned on the stool sliding off. He began to stalk away from the bar, his leg awkwardly hitching with a slight limp as he moved trying not to disturb the stitches beneath the fabric and bandage.

He shoved the door to the bar open and stepped into the cool night air. The smell of burning hung in the air like a fine summer day with too many barbecues going on in suburbia. Dean knew the truth about the scent, no barbecues and at the tail end of winter, in the middle of Missouri – a Catholic Mecca. Three towns over and he could still smell the torched church. He stiffened as the door swung open behind him.

Castiel stepped to the space beside him and roughly took hold of Dean's arm. Dean's eyes widened in surprise and quickly turned to rage when Castiel yanked him to the left toward the corner of the building and away from the entrance to the bar.

"Had you known what the statue protected it would not have mattered nor would it have assisted you in the task –"

"You lied to me," Dean blurted out, "That's what matters about this. You lied to me when you took me back in time and told me I 'had to stop it'. You made me think I could fix the past and stop what happened to my parents – to my mom! So what, that you had a nice moral of the story to end with, you lied then by omission and not explaining to me what the hell was really going on! You lied about smiting that town over the raising of Samhain. But, oh, that's okay, because you were testing me under battlefield conditions. And I'm supposed to trust you when to this day you're lying to me about even little things you ask me to fetch!"

Dean's back nearly broke when Castiel grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and shoved him hard against the brick wall of the bar. Dean grunted and instinctively reached for the wrists of the angel. Castiel had a purely feral expression – the expression he had seen in the barn, seen when Castiel had single-mindedly stalked toward Alistaire to destroy him – all fury and passion. Dean quickly changed direction of his arms and lowered them, bringing them up between Castiel's wrists, spreading them to force Castiel's arms apart and to release Dean's collar.

"Fuck," he choked out when his usual hold-breaking tactics did not result in his release.

With that fierce expression still intact if not more so aroused by Dean's immediate attempt to break his hold, he cocked his head to the side and explored Dean's expression with intense blue eyes ending locked on Dean's. Dean's green eyes shone back, the fear that had lit up when he couldn't break the hold upon him faded and in it's place rose something else, again – that hurt he had just seen in the bar.

"Are you going to throw me back in?" Dean asked, his words now slightly slurring.

Castiel relented and eased his grip. His expression returned to flat and unfeeling. He let his stare linger as his eyes softened and then turned away, looking up to the sky.

"I get it," Dean added in a hushed voice just above a whisper, "Not your call to make,"

"I am a soldier," Castiel answered.

"And soldiers follow orders, yeah, I know that line,"

"Sometimes,"

Castiel's hands loosened and he lowered his chin, staring eye to eye with Dean once more.

"What?"

"You," Castiel answered, his voice eerily calm, preventing Dean from becoming angry at the cryptic utterances.

"I don't follow orders?" Dean asked, "Yeah, not when it's going to end in a bloodbath for innocent people or it means someone's going to hurt my family – my brother,"

"And when I told you to open your eyes – to see beyond what you only think is there. Did you even entertain the thought of doing so?"

"I thought you meant to open my eyes right then and when I did, of course, you'd flown the coop, literally,"

Castiel shook his head, with a gentle nod.

"You didn't tell us we were searching for a statue with a surprise inside because I didn't take heart to some metaphor you cleverly made in the night after you woke me up from a dead sleep to chit chat?" Dean growled out in disbelief.

"Telling you that a statue held inside it the spear that pierced Christ's side would not have helped you locate it. You cannot perceive the interior of objects with your mortal sight, Dean. The information had no value. And if you had located the statue and obtained it before the fire, you would have very shortly found out the true importance aside from humbling inspiration the image of a Virgin Mother has brought to those who look upon her."

Dean's mind swam and he tried to digest the words, amidst the flowery speech. He had never been one particularly impressed by the beauty of art – he enjoyed depictions of the female form, but not of a virginal mother decked head to toe in cloth. He liked his virgins depicted in a far different way. Castiel's reverent description for some odd reason irked him. His lips curved into a wicked smile as he determined that the silken words his holiest of companions had used sounded to him like the angelic equivalent to erotic narration.

"Okay, I guess we wouldn't have found it with or without knowing about the Spear, but maybe we would have tried harder,"

"You would have kept searching even into the fire," Castiel interjected.

"Probably," Dean admitted.

Castiel's hands relaxed completely and he let go of Dean. Dean shrugged off the hands leaving his collar. He looked down at his hands – one bandaged and the other bare, but his fingers ever so slightly trembling. He looked back up at Castiel. The awe inspiring figure took a step closer to Dean who let out a withheld breath smelling of whiskey – a sweet spicy smell, not at all what the angel had expected.

"Then we should rejoice that I followed my orders and kept you in the dark,"

"Yeah, well," Dean faltered losing his train of thought, trying to think of some sort of clever witty retort having to do with being in the dark.

Instead, he stood still and pressed his lips together, unsure of what his intent had been before he had tried to storm out of the bar in order to make a point that he could not be so easily toyed with. He swallowed letting the sound of his throats movements be the only sound in the still air between them. And the angel began to look at him curiously; the same look in his eyes from just moments before, searching Dean's for a clue or a hint of what passed for thoughts in Dean's mind.

"I still want to know," Dean asked quietly returning to the loose end made by their conversation, "What did you mean the other night when you told me to open my eyes?"

Though the question had been honest as he had yet to solve the riddle of Castiel's words, he felt his pulse quicken with anticipation. He held his breath as he peered into blue depths narrowing his eyes to analytically read those of Castiel in return. His pulse seemed to thicken with a deeper thudding of his heartbeat. It seemed to make more sense now with more than a few glasses of whiskey down the hatch. Dean swallowed waiting for the response when suddenly a clenching in his stomach usually reserved for the opposite sex hit him.

"I don't hold you prisoner in the dark, Dean. I bathe you in shadow in order to protect you from truths that would blind you the way my visage, although holy and pure, blinded that poor woman,"

Dean blinked and with the tension so thick between them he could feel the texture of the air he sucked in for breath. He tried to keep his breathing slow. He tried not to inhale too quickly or too eagerly. He tried to keep his face from reflecting emotion. He tried to stay calm.

"And through this shadow I have in turn learned of the many shades of gray that form the edges between black and white,"

"We're not talking color swatches are we?" Dean asked, brazenly attempting to shatter the tension.

Castiel shook his head allowing for a wounded frown to play upon his lips.

"And this has to do with Anna, doesn't it,"

Castiel stared with the same wounded frown, not even attempting to deny the inkling of emotions he had been forbidden to feel – any emotions, anything besides faith and obedience, anything uniquely human. Dean had no idea how this could be possible, maybe by way of the whiskey if nothing else, that he saw something glimmering behind the eyes of the vessel. He saw something very much not a puppet for the angel to use like the rest of the meat suit.

"And within that spectrum is the capacity to become lost in the moment and be innocent in the midst of falling – yet with her you shed the hardened shell that you use to protect yourself from even me."

Dean stood quietly, his body stiffening with each word as the thoughts of this angel unfolded before him, like the foreboding and terrifying shadow of wings had unfurled the night Dean had summoned him. Dean's stiff body went lax only for the fact his skin broken into chills beneath his warm leather jacket and beneath his thick denim jeans. He took a step forward, tentative and unsure, but willing – willingly and blindly stepping closer to the angel and the unknown a familiar feeling well up inside him.

"And you became vulnerable in your earnest need," Castiel's voice dropped to a raspy whisper, that Dean had to lean in a little closer to hear.

"For compassion and for comfort,"

Castiel took a step forward putting him toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with Dean. His charge gazed at him willing but also gazing with the ever present glimmer of hesitancy - an ember searching for a breath of doubt to fuel resentful flame.

"Open your eyes, Dean. See that I am the same one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition. I held you together as we ascended. I found the last shreds of your humanity and gave you the strength to knit them back together into the semblance of your former self. I poured you back into your broken body. And with my grace I …"

Castiel's words fell short when his forehead touched against Dean's. He felt the short gasp of breath before Dean's eyes lowered shut and he leaned tilted his head down, putting just a little more space between them.

"With my grace I could give you the breath of life,"

Dean gasped the tiniest of breaths. He did not mean to breathe with the sharp raspy intake of breath, but the heat causing his face to flush commanded him to try to calm down and cool the rest of himself. He flinched and pressed forward his lips connecting to those of the angel. Immediately he felt dizzy with too many waves cresting and then crashing within him – shame, doubt, elation, need, relief and last just a dash of flattered lust.

Castiel's lips gently brushed Dean's enough to detect the faintest trace of whiskey and the flavor unique only to his charge. He could remember the faint taste as he woke the body and the spirit while reuniting the two. He could not let Dean open his eyes and take in the sight of him. He had held him that way for an instant, but to Castiel it had felt like an eternity. Having performed his appointed task obediently he could recall tearing away from Dean as he took in his first breath back on Earth.

"In the coffin," Dean breathed against Castiel's lips, "You…"

"Gave you part of my being so that you might live,"

It felt the way skydiving must. Dean brought up his bandaged hand and grimaced with the pain as he cupped Castiel's cheek and held him still. Dean's lips crushed against those of the other and the sinful feeling passed. The spinning out of control feeling took over. The rapid beating heart in his chest took center stage. The arms circling his waist, fully enveloping him, made him feel safe and caused the most insane sense of warmth to well up inside him. This, he knew he had never felt. Dean opened his eyes and looked into the defense melting eyes of Castiel. Pulling back from Dean, Castiel returned the glance.

"Thanks?" Dean offered, not sure if for the sacrifice that had returned him to life or the exceptionally life altering kiss.

"Good things do happen,"

"You ain't shittin," Dean croaked with a smirk, looking away in amusement at his own words.

He heard the loud flapping and his smirk soured into a pained expression. His hand dropped back to his side empty and the warmth dissipated from around him. He did not dare look up. He did not dare avert his eyes and look up to double check. Eyes to the ground he took a step forward in the direction of the motel.