Fic: Final Score 1/2 (S/D & D/C, PG-13)
Title: Final Score
Author: bree_black
Artist: lookturtles, here!
Pairings: Sam/Dean, Dean/Cas
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7500
Warnings/Enticements: Sam and Dean are not siblings in this fic, thus it is incest-free. Polyamory. Wings.
Betas: lookturtles & gwendolynd <3
Notes: Written for spn_cinema, as fusion of SPN and Fast Five . Familiarity with the film is not strictly required, but knowing the Fast & the Furious films 1, 4 and 5 will greatly enhance your reading experience. I recommend them to every slash fan I know, anyway.
Summary: Sam Winchester races magically enhanced cars and heads up a crime ring. His adoptive brother Cas is - probably- an angel. Dean Campbell is the undercover police officer sent in to take them down, who ends up becoming one of the family instead. On the run and under pressure, they decide to take on one last job - a final score.
It almost feels like Dean’s entire life has been leading up to this one moment, racing through the streets with Sam, enormous bank vault chained between them. That’s a ridiculous thing to think, but there it is. It’s been a long journey, anyway, and the sound of their tires squealing before they finally build up enough power to get the thing moving is like music to Dean’s ears. What they’re about to do is, well, fucking impossible, but he and Sam have never let that stop them before. It’s almost like every other race they’ve run, every single time Dean’s lost, has been practice for this, except now they’re finally--unquestionably--on the same side.
It hadn’t been like that at first, of course. When he’d first met Sam Winchester, Dean had been working for the Angels, the nickname the police force assigned to themselves. At the time it had seemed fitting; Dean had joined up because he’d wanted to protect people from harm, because he’d wanted to do some good in the world. He’d been more than happy to go undercover and infiltrate the city’s criminal underbelly - the Demons, the cops liked to say with a chuckle - in search of a gang who’d been hijacking trucks of hoodoo salt and holy water. He’d thought that was how he’d be able to make a difference. Turns out it was total bullshit, but Dean didn’t know that then.
Anyway, he’s definitely no Angel now, dragging a vault stolen right out of police headquarters through a dimly lit parking garage, with the help of the man he’d been sent in to take down, years ago. Sam looks over at Dean and nods, letting Dean know he’s okay to speed up, to really get this thing moving. It kind of blows Dean’s mind how different his life would be if he hadn’t been assigned to the Winchester case. Not that it was just Sam who turned dependable Officer Campbell to the dark side, not by a long shot.
Sam Winchester and his rag-tag group of suspected criminals ran a supernatural garage with attached diner on the outskirts of the city, and Dean’s first order of business was to scope things out, to find his way in to the close-knit group. He got a job with one of the local magicians, just moving inventory before and after the guy did his mojo on the stuff, and he planned to eat lunch at Winchester’s Diner every day as reconnaissance. What he didn’t plan on was Cas.
Cas ran the diner pretty much single-handedly during the day, and unlike the rest of Winchester’s crew, he had a squeaky clean record. He also had blue eyes that seemed like they could stare straight into Dean’s soul, lips that made his mouth go dry, and the strange ability to never get his apron dirty.
“Let me guess…the tuna?” He asked with a smirk, on the third consecutive lunch. He leaned against the counter as he said it, and a sliver of skin was visible at his hip, between his pristine white t-shirt and faded blue jeans. Dean’s mouth watered, and it sure wasn’t because he was anticipating the food.
And so instead of the first meeting he’d carefully planned, Dean ended up coming face to face with Sam Winchester for the first time when Sam pressed him against the hood of Dean’s ’67 Impala, and warned him to stay the fuck away from his baby brother, before punching him so hard it had Dean spitting blood for days.
All in all, it wasn’t the worst way things could have started. His relationship with Sam has always been antagonistic, and Dean kind of likes it that way. He suspects Sam likes it too, if only because he’s won every single race they’ve ever run. As they take their first turn, perfectly synchronized or else they’ll bash the shit out of the fancy restaurant on the corner with ten million bucks worth of force, it kind of sends a chill down Dean’s spine. He glances over at Sam, driving parallel to Dean’s Impala in his Charger, and sees Sam grinning back. They have communication charms in their respective vehicles, but they don’t often need to use them.
Anyway, between Cas and Sam, Dean was pretty much screwed from the beginning. He wasn’t the only one, though. Sam Winchester was like gravity, he just pulled everyone to him. The people around him claimed to be a team, not a gang, but privately Dean always thought of them as family. And after one convenient - and also spontaneous - rescue, they adopted Dean as one of their own.
Of course, as the new guy he was pretty low on the totem pole. Sam was patriarch of course, and his childhood sweetheart - Jess - had him wrapped around her little finger. Dean had been startled to see them together; it was his first indication that Sam’s criminal motivation was something other than greed, was actually all about love, and loyalty, and providing for his own. It became surprisingly easy to reconcile the man who had nearly beaten another guy to death five years ago with the one who gave his girlfriend a foot massage before bed every night.
Next there was Cas, who wasn’t technically Sam’s brother, but might as well have been. Sam loved to tell the story of how his dad had found Cas on their doorstep, nestled into a basket and wrapped in pink blankets. That explained the girly name, of course. From anyone else it might have been an insult, but when Sam put his hand on Cas’ shoulder afterwards, there was no mistaking the pride there. Rounding out the crew were a half-demon named Ruby who always wore a hat to cover her horns--except when she was trying to scare the shit out of you, a nerdy kid barely out of high school named Ash who was a complete failure at social interaction but a whiz with engines and spellwork, and Gordon, who hated Dean on sight, probably because of his longstanding thing for Cas. The six of them took on the world and the Angels, and Dean made seven. A lucky number.
The cops are definitely on to them now. Dean can see their cars pulling in line behind the vault, sirens blaring. There are white chalk lines drawn hastily on the black cars, all around the golden crest with white wings that represents the Angels. They've added speed and protection charms to the cars, then. There was a time when hoodoo, spellwork and the variety of charms and potions the underground racing world uses were considered below the cops, but recently they'd decided to start fighting fire with fire.
Nobody is as good as Sam Winchester with charms, though, and Dean’s right behind him. There are twice as many white lines on the surface of Dean's Impala as on any one of the cop cars, and his are drawn with three times the precision. Not to mention the tank of holy water at his side. With the press of a button Dean can release it into his hellfire-powered engine, and that’ll cause quite the reaction. Ash, when he'd been alive, had never shut up about this particular invention.
Dean had a lot of learning to do after starting work with Winchester and his gang. The Angels had reluctantly employed witches and magicians to juice up their cars for special occasions, but the cops themselves never touched the stuff. At first Dean thought it was because over half the forces was composed of literal angels who didn't want to mess with black magic, but it became quickly apparent that most of them just didn't have the brains for magic that didn’t come to them naturally. So when he arrived Dean could drive with the best of them and take apart and reassemble an engine in a matter of hours, but he didn't know shit about hoodoo or Enochian symbology, a weakness Sam and his crew made sure to point out at every opportunity.
"I don't get it. How could you have boosted cars for so long and not even know a simple acceleration charm?" Cas asked over dinner, at this cutesy Cuban place Cas had pointedly asked Dean to take him to, instead of Gordon. "I could draw those with my eyes closed by the time I was six."
"We didn't all have your upbringing," Dean said with a grin, even as his stomach twisted with guilt over the deception. "My folks were religious."
Cas smirked at that, leaning forward to whisper conspiratorially across the table. "Oh yeah? Did they think there were angels watching over them?"
Dean stared back over the table at Cas, and tried not to shiver as a chill ran down his spine. "Something like that," he said.
"Hey Campbell, keep your eyes on the road." Sam's voice echoes through the car, emanating from the chunk of quartz fixed firmly to the Impala's dash. At the very last moment, Dean swerves out of the way of a semi-truck turning out of a fast food restaurant parking lot.
"I got it, I got it," Dean mutters. He jerks suddenly to the right, and the cop car tailing him doesn’t compensate in time, smashing into a series of metal trash cans on the curb. As it skids across the sidewalk before finally coming to a halt, Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam.
"Very impressive," Sam admits.
"If you gentleman could keep your - I know, enormous - dicks in your pants for the next five minutes, that would be great," says Cas, and Dean nearly jumps out of his skin, because that sound isn’t coming from the stone charm on his dash, that sound is right inside his head.
"Neat trick," Sam says, and Dean can hear a slight quaver in his voice that means he’s unnerved by this too.
"Thanks," Cas says lightly, "I think I'm really starting to get the hang of this. You’ve got a straight shot for two blocks, then go right.”
It was pretty obvious to anyone who spent more than five minutes with him that Cas wasn't completely human. Suspicious basket-on-the-doorstep origin story aside, his clothes were always perfectly pressed and never oil-stained, he never caught so much as a cold and he could drink all night and never be hungover the next morning. There was something about the way he looked at you that suggested he already knew all your secrets. He also had never had a fistfight with Sam Winchester, which would be an impossible feat for any normal human being, especially given how long they'd known each other, and the fact that they were raised as brothers.
The thing was, if you gave birth to an angel you were supposed to immediately turn it over the government. That Cas served cheap-ass food in a greasy diner as opposed to being enrolled in some kind of fancy police academy was actually a crime. The city's police force was as feared as it was because of this supernatural advantage; the majority of its officers were angels. Humans like Dean were brought in to do the less important work, or to go undercover, since angels could never really fully blend in. Some poor woman - rumour had it only virgins ever gave birth to angels - hadn't wanted that fate for Cas. She had left him on John Winchester's doorstep, probably after seeing him working with his own son in the garage. And John had broken the law to keep him.
Angels aren't all that different from people - until they hit puberty. They're a bit uncanny, a bit too good for their own good, and their natural cleanliness tends to set them apart from other children, in particular. But other than that, they're mostly like people until they begin their transformations in their twenties. When they first met, Cas had just turned twenty five.
Up ahead, Angels throw down road spikes, as if they think that will do anything against magically enhanced tires. Dean barely even feels it when he drives right over them, leaving a van full of frowning but perfectly pressed Angels in their dust. For the first time, Dean thinks they might actually be able to pull this off, casualty-free.
A group of Demons killed Ash over the pink slips to his piece-of-crap minivan, and Sam went on a rampage for it. Sometime before that Dean had revealed his true identity - to save Gordon, of all people - but Dean doesn't like to think about that. He doesn't like to remember the look on Sam's face, on Cas' as he'd identified himself as Officer Campbell when calling for an Angelic escort to take the mortally wounded Gordon to the hospital. He actively avoids thinking about the way Sam had turned away from him without hesitation, and how Cas had only needed to be asked once before he followed. In any case, the revenge missions became a bit of a pattern. Years later Dean was still working for the Angels when a smuggler named Azazel killed Jess.
Sam and Dean have done car chases before. Heck, it feels almost routine by now. Dean imagines he can hear Sam's thoughts sometimes, though neither of them have any magical heritage. Sam is like the car Dean's driven for years - familiar, dependable, perfectly responsive to him. They've spent most of their friendship on opposing sides of somebody's war, but they've always felt like partners. Still, there's something different about this chase. There's a new kind of thrill in the contents of the vault they're dragging behind them - ten million dollars and a few thousand captive souls in curseboxes, to boot - but there’s also something else at stake this time. Every other chase they'd had together was about revenge. They'd avenged Ash's death, and Jess'. But this time they aren't just reacting to a loss, they're actually trying to create something new. And that feels...well, pretty damn good.
Dean expected Sam to come to Jess’ funeral; he would have bet his life on it. It had been five years since they’d seen each other - since Sam had turned his back on Officer Dean Campbell - but this much Dean knew wouldn’t change. On the run or not, Dean knew Sam would get his ass to that cemetery. Still in the employ of the Angels - though on pretty much permanent probation - Dean stood a respectful distance away from the ceremony, chunk of quartz in his ear to radio back to headquarters if he caught sight of his former friend. Truth be told he wasn’t sure what he would do if he did see Sam - arrest him? warn him? hug him? - but it felt important that he be the cop to do it. Dean practically snarled at any other Angel who tried to volunteer for this mission. Mostly they just shrugged and walked away, dispassionate as always.
Dean looked across the cemetery at Cas, standing by the fresh grave, and wondered, not for the first time, whether it was nature or nurture that bred the angels on the force, whether their stoicism was an inherent part of who they are, or a consequence of the fancy police academy. Cas’ head was bowed, but his face was free of tears. No answers there.
Dean was anything but dispassionate, especially because it was his fault - indirectly - that Jess was dead. Not that Sam ever needed to know that piece of information. They had been working together to clear Sam’s record; Jess knew how dangerous being his informant was, and she signed up willingly. Dean told himself every day not to feel guilty, but he hadn’t had much success yet.
It turned out the funeral was a waste of time anyway; Sam never showed up. Dean did imagine he felt the prickle of someone’s stare against the back of his neck, but when he looked over his shoulder there was only a solitary oil rig, dark shape working away against the bright morning sky.
Two more cop cars pull out of an alley. Though he tries to dodge them, one of the cars manages to graze the side of the Impala, smearing at least one of his protection charms beyond any use. Dean feels his engine shudder.
“Fuck,” he says. “They got me. Paralyzing charm.”
“Damn it,” Sam answers, his voice ringing through the stone on the dash. “Can you shake it off?”
Dean tries, but the charm is surprisingly strong. To remove it Dean would need sage, rosemary and at least ten minutes with his hands off the steering wheel. “No can do,” he says. Though he keeps his foot on the accelerator, his car begins to slow down against his will, forcing Sam to slow down too.
“Problem?” Cas asks inside his head.
“You might say that,” Dean thinks. He wonders if there’s any way for him to detach himself from the vault, to let Sam go on without him. He tells himself he wants that because he can’t have Cas left alone.
Moments later, there is a spectacular crashing sound from behind him. Sneaking a glance in his rearview mirror, Dean sees the car that had been tailing him - the one that had cursed him - crushed under an improbably large oak tree.
“I just carved you a ten-second window,” Cas says, breathing heavily as if the display of magic has exhausted him. “Make it count.”
His Angel colleagues weren’t ready to accept that they had missed their chance at the infamous Sam Winchester, either. Which is why, when Dean returned to the office later that afternoon, Cas was sitting in one of the glass interview rooms.
Dean’s stomach sunk at the sight. Angel HQ was quite literally the worst place in the world for Cas to be; it was the reason the family worked so hard to keep him on the sidelines, where he was less likely to get arrested. Dean knew, from Jess, that Cas hadn’t hit puberty yet. No wings, no teleportation, no particularly obvious superpowers yet. But that didn’t necessarily mean the other angels wouldn’t recognize one of their own kind. Or, what if Cas suddenly sprouted wings, right there in the office? Dean was a little fuzzy on how angel puberty actually worked, but he knew Cas was pushing thirty, and due for the change any day.
Dean snagged a phone off the nearest empty desk, pushing a few numbers. “Yeah, can you tell Rachel I need her down in evidence ASAP?”
A minute later, the Angel inside Cas’ interview room glanced down at the rune on her wrist, then left the room, locking it behind her. Dean had no trouble unlocking it with his own key card.
Cas’ stare was the same, but so much else had changed since they last saw each other. His white dress shirt was wrinkled, and there was a stain on its collar. He scowled unattractively when Dean entered the room. And then he spoke.
“Why am I not surprised it’s you? I don’t know where my fucking brother is, so you and your feathery buddies can leave me the fuck alone.” As he spoke, a tiny fleck of spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on the back of Dean’s hand.
Cas was the opposite of the composed, gentle man Dean had known. Could it be that he was fully human now? Maybe in order to transform angels needed to be among their own kind. Maybe there was some kind of ritual they needed to do. By avoiding the academy, had Cas missed his chance? In trying to protect him, had Sam and Dean and the rest of the group only really held him back?
That particular group of worries was set to rest the moment Dean successfully escorted Cas outside.
“Thanks for springing me,” Cas said, voice lower than it had been inside, lower than Dean had ever heard it. He straightened his posture, and the wrinkles seemed to disappear from his shirt. Dean couldn’t find the stain on his collar anymore.
Dean exhaled a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I thought you were human,” he said.
“You’re not the only one who knows how to go undercover,” Cas answered, tiny smile playing at his lips.
“Have coffee with me,” Dean blurted out, encouraged, but Cas just shook his head.
“We play on different sides, remember?”
“You know they’re gonna capture Sam, maybe worse,” Dean said, even as Cas turned to walk away. “I don’t want you getting tangled up in this, so stay away from him.”
“That’s what you have to say to me after five years?” Cas asked, voice still eerily calm. “All of a sudden you care what happens to me. Just me.”
Dean let that last remark slide. “What I did to you was wrong,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I lied to you. I lied to Sam. That’s what I do best; that’s why the Angels recruited me.”
“Well maybe you’re lying to yourself,” Cas said, gaze boring into Dean’s soul. “Maybe you’re not the good guy pretending to be a bad guy. Maybe you’re the bad guy pretending to be the good guy. You ever think about that?”
“Every day,” Dean answered.
They make good use of the window Cas cleared for them while the Angels struggle to find a way around the massive fallen tree. Far ahead of them, Dean can see the Bridge that marks the border of the city, the line beyond which the cops lose their jurisdiction, and their authority to use magic.
“There’s a sight for sore eyes,” Sam says through the communication charm, echoing Dean’s sentiments exactly. If they can get across that bridge they may have a fighting chance to escape.
Dean is just beginning to get his hopes up when the centre panel of the bridge starts to move, rising slowly from its horizontal position to a gradual slope on each side. Dean knows what lies below: a rushing river lined by jagged rocks. Dean’s stomach sinks; the hope rising in his chest dissipates.
“Cas?” he says, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Little help?”
There’s an ominous pause, and then he answers, doing little to keep the panic rising in his own voice hidden. “I can’t,” he says. “I’m out of juice from that last one.”
So for awhile Dean tried to play both sides of the fence. He tried to help bring Jess' murderers to justice without actually breaking the law; he tried to keep Sam, Cas and his job. But ever since that first time he brought Cas into his bed, since he handed that first set of keys to Sam as the sirens approached, he had known this choice was coming. Sam decided to go on a suicide mission to avenge his dead girlfriend, and Dean, abandoning all sense of self-preservation - not to mention his police training - decided to back him up.
Cas saw through them both, of course. Came home from buying groceries to find them in the garage, tracing chalk symbols on the Impala's hood and knew instantly that they were going for it, knowing full well they probably wouldn't come back. Dean followed Cas into the kitchen and pressed him against the counter, making him drop his groceries. Cas' eyes were wet with tears, but he blinked them back before they could escape his eyelashes. Dean had never see him cry before.
"You don't need to go. I can't lose both of you," he said.
"I don't have a choice," Dean answered. Sam was like gravity, and they had always fallen together, whether Dean wanted to or not. One day Cas would have wings, so maybe gravity didn't apply to him the same way.
"I hate you," Cas gasped, losing all of his angelic grace for just a moment.
Dean just kissed him, pressing him harder against the ceramic countertop, digging his fingers into Cas' hips, under the hem of his linen shirt, struggling with the button of his jeans before shoving one hand down the front. Cas buried his face in Dean's shoulder, and it was hard to tell whether he was gasping in pleasure, or sobbing.
"Hey Campbell, take it upstairs. You can't detail a car with the hood down," Sam said from the doorway, and they both jumped. Cas pushed Dean gently away, and then caught his hand and pulled him from the room, making a beeline for the stairs. His eyes were dry.
"Mind your own business, big brother," he said. There was laughter in his voice, masking the sadness. "It's the end of the world, and we'll fuck in the kitchen if we want."
They’re not moving fast enough, burdened by the weight of the vault. By the time they reach the gap the bridge will have articulated too far; it will be too wide for them to jump.
“We’re not going to make it,” Dean says.
“You’re right, we aren’t,” Sam answers. “You are.”
Part Two
Author: bree_black
Artist: lookturtles, here!
Pairings: Sam/Dean, Dean/Cas
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7500
Warnings/Enticements: Sam and Dean are not siblings in this fic, thus it is incest-free. Polyamory. Wings.
Betas: lookturtles & gwendolynd <3
Notes: Written for spn_cinema, as fusion of SPN and Fast Five . Familiarity with the film is not strictly required, but knowing the Fast & the Furious films 1, 4 and 5 will greatly enhance your reading experience. I recommend them to every slash fan I know, anyway.
Summary: Sam Winchester races magically enhanced cars and heads up a crime ring. His adoptive brother Cas is - probably- an angel. Dean Campbell is the undercover police officer sent in to take them down, who ends up becoming one of the family instead. On the run and under pressure, they decide to take on one last job - a final score.
It almost feels like Dean’s entire life has been leading up to this one moment, racing through the streets with Sam, enormous bank vault chained between them. That’s a ridiculous thing to think, but there it is. It’s been a long journey, anyway, and the sound of their tires squealing before they finally build up enough power to get the thing moving is like music to Dean’s ears. What they’re about to do is, well, fucking impossible, but he and Sam have never let that stop them before. It’s almost like every other race they’ve run, every single time Dean’s lost, has been practice for this, except now they’re finally--unquestionably--on the same side.
It hadn’t been like that at first, of course. When he’d first met Sam Winchester, Dean had been working for the Angels, the nickname the police force assigned to themselves. At the time it had seemed fitting; Dean had joined up because he’d wanted to protect people from harm, because he’d wanted to do some good in the world. He’d been more than happy to go undercover and infiltrate the city’s criminal underbelly - the Demons, the cops liked to say with a chuckle - in search of a gang who’d been hijacking trucks of hoodoo salt and holy water. He’d thought that was how he’d be able to make a difference. Turns out it was total bullshit, but Dean didn’t know that then.
Anyway, he’s definitely no Angel now, dragging a vault stolen right out of police headquarters through a dimly lit parking garage, with the help of the man he’d been sent in to take down, years ago. Sam looks over at Dean and nods, letting Dean know he’s okay to speed up, to really get this thing moving. It kind of blows Dean’s mind how different his life would be if he hadn’t been assigned to the Winchester case. Not that it was just Sam who turned dependable Officer Campbell to the dark side, not by a long shot.
Sam Winchester and his rag-tag group of suspected criminals ran a supernatural garage with attached diner on the outskirts of the city, and Dean’s first order of business was to scope things out, to find his way in to the close-knit group. He got a job with one of the local magicians, just moving inventory before and after the guy did his mojo on the stuff, and he planned to eat lunch at Winchester’s Diner every day as reconnaissance. What he didn’t plan on was Cas.
Cas ran the diner pretty much single-handedly during the day, and unlike the rest of Winchester’s crew, he had a squeaky clean record. He also had blue eyes that seemed like they could stare straight into Dean’s soul, lips that made his mouth go dry, and the strange ability to never get his apron dirty.
“Let me guess…the tuna?” He asked with a smirk, on the third consecutive lunch. He leaned against the counter as he said it, and a sliver of skin was visible at his hip, between his pristine white t-shirt and faded blue jeans. Dean’s mouth watered, and it sure wasn’t because he was anticipating the food.
And so instead of the first meeting he’d carefully planned, Dean ended up coming face to face with Sam Winchester for the first time when Sam pressed him against the hood of Dean’s ’67 Impala, and warned him to stay the fuck away from his baby brother, before punching him so hard it had Dean spitting blood for days.
All in all, it wasn’t the worst way things could have started. His relationship with Sam has always been antagonistic, and Dean kind of likes it that way. He suspects Sam likes it too, if only because he’s won every single race they’ve ever run. As they take their first turn, perfectly synchronized or else they’ll bash the shit out of the fancy restaurant on the corner with ten million bucks worth of force, it kind of sends a chill down Dean’s spine. He glances over at Sam, driving parallel to Dean’s Impala in his Charger, and sees Sam grinning back. They have communication charms in their respective vehicles, but they don’t often need to use them.
Anyway, between Cas and Sam, Dean was pretty much screwed from the beginning. He wasn’t the only one, though. Sam Winchester was like gravity, he just pulled everyone to him. The people around him claimed to be a team, not a gang, but privately Dean always thought of them as family. And after one convenient - and also spontaneous - rescue, they adopted Dean as one of their own.
Of course, as the new guy he was pretty low on the totem pole. Sam was patriarch of course, and his childhood sweetheart - Jess - had him wrapped around her little finger. Dean had been startled to see them together; it was his first indication that Sam’s criminal motivation was something other than greed, was actually all about love, and loyalty, and providing for his own. It became surprisingly easy to reconcile the man who had nearly beaten another guy to death five years ago with the one who gave his girlfriend a foot massage before bed every night.
Next there was Cas, who wasn’t technically Sam’s brother, but might as well have been. Sam loved to tell the story of how his dad had found Cas on their doorstep, nestled into a basket and wrapped in pink blankets. That explained the girly name, of course. From anyone else it might have been an insult, but when Sam put his hand on Cas’ shoulder afterwards, there was no mistaking the pride there. Rounding out the crew were a half-demon named Ruby who always wore a hat to cover her horns--except when she was trying to scare the shit out of you, a nerdy kid barely out of high school named Ash who was a complete failure at social interaction but a whiz with engines and spellwork, and Gordon, who hated Dean on sight, probably because of his longstanding thing for Cas. The six of them took on the world and the Angels, and Dean made seven. A lucky number.
The cops are definitely on to them now. Dean can see their cars pulling in line behind the vault, sirens blaring. There are white chalk lines drawn hastily on the black cars, all around the golden crest with white wings that represents the Angels. They've added speed and protection charms to the cars, then. There was a time when hoodoo, spellwork and the variety of charms and potions the underground racing world uses were considered below the cops, but recently they'd decided to start fighting fire with fire.
Nobody is as good as Sam Winchester with charms, though, and Dean’s right behind him. There are twice as many white lines on the surface of Dean's Impala as on any one of the cop cars, and his are drawn with three times the precision. Not to mention the tank of holy water at his side. With the press of a button Dean can release it into his hellfire-powered engine, and that’ll cause quite the reaction. Ash, when he'd been alive, had never shut up about this particular invention.
Dean had a lot of learning to do after starting work with Winchester and his gang. The Angels had reluctantly employed witches and magicians to juice up their cars for special occasions, but the cops themselves never touched the stuff. At first Dean thought it was because over half the forces was composed of literal angels who didn't want to mess with black magic, but it became quickly apparent that most of them just didn't have the brains for magic that didn’t come to them naturally. So when he arrived Dean could drive with the best of them and take apart and reassemble an engine in a matter of hours, but he didn't know shit about hoodoo or Enochian symbology, a weakness Sam and his crew made sure to point out at every opportunity.
"I don't get it. How could you have boosted cars for so long and not even know a simple acceleration charm?" Cas asked over dinner, at this cutesy Cuban place Cas had pointedly asked Dean to take him to, instead of Gordon. "I could draw those with my eyes closed by the time I was six."
"We didn't all have your upbringing," Dean said with a grin, even as his stomach twisted with guilt over the deception. "My folks were religious."
Cas smirked at that, leaning forward to whisper conspiratorially across the table. "Oh yeah? Did they think there were angels watching over them?"
Dean stared back over the table at Cas, and tried not to shiver as a chill ran down his spine. "Something like that," he said.
"Hey Campbell, keep your eyes on the road." Sam's voice echoes through the car, emanating from the chunk of quartz fixed firmly to the Impala's dash. At the very last moment, Dean swerves out of the way of a semi-truck turning out of a fast food restaurant parking lot.
"I got it, I got it," Dean mutters. He jerks suddenly to the right, and the cop car tailing him doesn’t compensate in time, smashing into a series of metal trash cans on the curb. As it skids across the sidewalk before finally coming to a halt, Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam.
"Very impressive," Sam admits.
"If you gentleman could keep your - I know, enormous - dicks in your pants for the next five minutes, that would be great," says Cas, and Dean nearly jumps out of his skin, because that sound isn’t coming from the stone charm on his dash, that sound is right inside his head.
"Neat trick," Sam says, and Dean can hear a slight quaver in his voice that means he’s unnerved by this too.
"Thanks," Cas says lightly, "I think I'm really starting to get the hang of this. You’ve got a straight shot for two blocks, then go right.”
It was pretty obvious to anyone who spent more than five minutes with him that Cas wasn't completely human. Suspicious basket-on-the-doorstep origin story aside, his clothes were always perfectly pressed and never oil-stained, he never caught so much as a cold and he could drink all night and never be hungover the next morning. There was something about the way he looked at you that suggested he already knew all your secrets. He also had never had a fistfight with Sam Winchester, which would be an impossible feat for any normal human being, especially given how long they'd known each other, and the fact that they were raised as brothers.
The thing was, if you gave birth to an angel you were supposed to immediately turn it over the government. That Cas served cheap-ass food in a greasy diner as opposed to being enrolled in some kind of fancy police academy was actually a crime. The city's police force was as feared as it was because of this supernatural advantage; the majority of its officers were angels. Humans like Dean were brought in to do the less important work, or to go undercover, since angels could never really fully blend in. Some poor woman - rumour had it only virgins ever gave birth to angels - hadn't wanted that fate for Cas. She had left him on John Winchester's doorstep, probably after seeing him working with his own son in the garage. And John had broken the law to keep him.
Angels aren't all that different from people - until they hit puberty. They're a bit uncanny, a bit too good for their own good, and their natural cleanliness tends to set them apart from other children, in particular. But other than that, they're mostly like people until they begin their transformations in their twenties. When they first met, Cas had just turned twenty five.
Up ahead, Angels throw down road spikes, as if they think that will do anything against magically enhanced tires. Dean barely even feels it when he drives right over them, leaving a van full of frowning but perfectly pressed Angels in their dust. For the first time, Dean thinks they might actually be able to pull this off, casualty-free.
A group of Demons killed Ash over the pink slips to his piece-of-crap minivan, and Sam went on a rampage for it. Sometime before that Dean had revealed his true identity - to save Gordon, of all people - but Dean doesn't like to think about that. He doesn't like to remember the look on Sam's face, on Cas' as he'd identified himself as Officer Campbell when calling for an Angelic escort to take the mortally wounded Gordon to the hospital. He actively avoids thinking about the way Sam had turned away from him without hesitation, and how Cas had only needed to be asked once before he followed. In any case, the revenge missions became a bit of a pattern. Years later Dean was still working for the Angels when a smuggler named Azazel killed Jess.
Sam and Dean have done car chases before. Heck, it feels almost routine by now. Dean imagines he can hear Sam's thoughts sometimes, though neither of them have any magical heritage. Sam is like the car Dean's driven for years - familiar, dependable, perfectly responsive to him. They've spent most of their friendship on opposing sides of somebody's war, but they've always felt like partners. Still, there's something different about this chase. There's a new kind of thrill in the contents of the vault they're dragging behind them - ten million dollars and a few thousand captive souls in curseboxes, to boot - but there’s also something else at stake this time. Every other chase they'd had together was about revenge. They'd avenged Ash's death, and Jess'. But this time they aren't just reacting to a loss, they're actually trying to create something new. And that feels...well, pretty damn good.
Dean expected Sam to come to Jess’ funeral; he would have bet his life on it. It had been five years since they’d seen each other - since Sam had turned his back on Officer Dean Campbell - but this much Dean knew wouldn’t change. On the run or not, Dean knew Sam would get his ass to that cemetery. Still in the employ of the Angels - though on pretty much permanent probation - Dean stood a respectful distance away from the ceremony, chunk of quartz in his ear to radio back to headquarters if he caught sight of his former friend. Truth be told he wasn’t sure what he would do if he did see Sam - arrest him? warn him? hug him? - but it felt important that he be the cop to do it. Dean practically snarled at any other Angel who tried to volunteer for this mission. Mostly they just shrugged and walked away, dispassionate as always.
Dean looked across the cemetery at Cas, standing by the fresh grave, and wondered, not for the first time, whether it was nature or nurture that bred the angels on the force, whether their stoicism was an inherent part of who they are, or a consequence of the fancy police academy. Cas’ head was bowed, but his face was free of tears. No answers there.
Dean was anything but dispassionate, especially because it was his fault - indirectly - that Jess was dead. Not that Sam ever needed to know that piece of information. They had been working together to clear Sam’s record; Jess knew how dangerous being his informant was, and she signed up willingly. Dean told himself every day not to feel guilty, but he hadn’t had much success yet.
It turned out the funeral was a waste of time anyway; Sam never showed up. Dean did imagine he felt the prickle of someone’s stare against the back of his neck, but when he looked over his shoulder there was only a solitary oil rig, dark shape working away against the bright morning sky.
Two more cop cars pull out of an alley. Though he tries to dodge them, one of the cars manages to graze the side of the Impala, smearing at least one of his protection charms beyond any use. Dean feels his engine shudder.
“Fuck,” he says. “They got me. Paralyzing charm.”
“Damn it,” Sam answers, his voice ringing through the stone on the dash. “Can you shake it off?”
Dean tries, but the charm is surprisingly strong. To remove it Dean would need sage, rosemary and at least ten minutes with his hands off the steering wheel. “No can do,” he says. Though he keeps his foot on the accelerator, his car begins to slow down against his will, forcing Sam to slow down too.
“Problem?” Cas asks inside his head.
“You might say that,” Dean thinks. He wonders if there’s any way for him to detach himself from the vault, to let Sam go on without him. He tells himself he wants that because he can’t have Cas left alone.
Moments later, there is a spectacular crashing sound from behind him. Sneaking a glance in his rearview mirror, Dean sees the car that had been tailing him - the one that had cursed him - crushed under an improbably large oak tree.
“I just carved you a ten-second window,” Cas says, breathing heavily as if the display of magic has exhausted him. “Make it count.”
His Angel colleagues weren’t ready to accept that they had missed their chance at the infamous Sam Winchester, either. Which is why, when Dean returned to the office later that afternoon, Cas was sitting in one of the glass interview rooms.
Dean’s stomach sunk at the sight. Angel HQ was quite literally the worst place in the world for Cas to be; it was the reason the family worked so hard to keep him on the sidelines, where he was less likely to get arrested. Dean knew, from Jess, that Cas hadn’t hit puberty yet. No wings, no teleportation, no particularly obvious superpowers yet. But that didn’t necessarily mean the other angels wouldn’t recognize one of their own kind. Or, what if Cas suddenly sprouted wings, right there in the office? Dean was a little fuzzy on how angel puberty actually worked, but he knew Cas was pushing thirty, and due for the change any day.
Dean snagged a phone off the nearest empty desk, pushing a few numbers. “Yeah, can you tell Rachel I need her down in evidence ASAP?”
A minute later, the Angel inside Cas’ interview room glanced down at the rune on her wrist, then left the room, locking it behind her. Dean had no trouble unlocking it with his own key card.
Cas’ stare was the same, but so much else had changed since they last saw each other. His white dress shirt was wrinkled, and there was a stain on its collar. He scowled unattractively when Dean entered the room. And then he spoke.
“Why am I not surprised it’s you? I don’t know where my fucking brother is, so you and your feathery buddies can leave me the fuck alone.” As he spoke, a tiny fleck of spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on the back of Dean’s hand.
Cas was the opposite of the composed, gentle man Dean had known. Could it be that he was fully human now? Maybe in order to transform angels needed to be among their own kind. Maybe there was some kind of ritual they needed to do. By avoiding the academy, had Cas missed his chance? In trying to protect him, had Sam and Dean and the rest of the group only really held him back?
That particular group of worries was set to rest the moment Dean successfully escorted Cas outside.
“Thanks for springing me,” Cas said, voice lower than it had been inside, lower than Dean had ever heard it. He straightened his posture, and the wrinkles seemed to disappear from his shirt. Dean couldn’t find the stain on his collar anymore.
Dean exhaled a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I thought you were human,” he said.
“You’re not the only one who knows how to go undercover,” Cas answered, tiny smile playing at his lips.
“Have coffee with me,” Dean blurted out, encouraged, but Cas just shook his head.
“We play on different sides, remember?”
“You know they’re gonna capture Sam, maybe worse,” Dean said, even as Cas turned to walk away. “I don’t want you getting tangled up in this, so stay away from him.”
“That’s what you have to say to me after five years?” Cas asked, voice still eerily calm. “All of a sudden you care what happens to me. Just me.”
Dean let that last remark slide. “What I did to you was wrong,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I lied to you. I lied to Sam. That’s what I do best; that’s why the Angels recruited me.”
“Well maybe you’re lying to yourself,” Cas said, gaze boring into Dean’s soul. “Maybe you’re not the good guy pretending to be a bad guy. Maybe you’re the bad guy pretending to be the good guy. You ever think about that?”
“Every day,” Dean answered.
They make good use of the window Cas cleared for them while the Angels struggle to find a way around the massive fallen tree. Far ahead of them, Dean can see the Bridge that marks the border of the city, the line beyond which the cops lose their jurisdiction, and their authority to use magic.
“There’s a sight for sore eyes,” Sam says through the communication charm, echoing Dean’s sentiments exactly. If they can get across that bridge they may have a fighting chance to escape.
Dean is just beginning to get his hopes up when the centre panel of the bridge starts to move, rising slowly from its horizontal position to a gradual slope on each side. Dean knows what lies below: a rushing river lined by jagged rocks. Dean’s stomach sinks; the hope rising in his chest dissipates.
“Cas?” he says, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Little help?”
There’s an ominous pause, and then he answers, doing little to keep the panic rising in his own voice hidden. “I can’t,” he says. “I’m out of juice from that last one.”
So for awhile Dean tried to play both sides of the fence. He tried to help bring Jess' murderers to justice without actually breaking the law; he tried to keep Sam, Cas and his job. But ever since that first time he brought Cas into his bed, since he handed that first set of keys to Sam as the sirens approached, he had known this choice was coming. Sam decided to go on a suicide mission to avenge his dead girlfriend, and Dean, abandoning all sense of self-preservation - not to mention his police training - decided to back him up.
Cas saw through them both, of course. Came home from buying groceries to find them in the garage, tracing chalk symbols on the Impala's hood and knew instantly that they were going for it, knowing full well they probably wouldn't come back. Dean followed Cas into the kitchen and pressed him against the counter, making him drop his groceries. Cas' eyes were wet with tears, but he blinked them back before they could escape his eyelashes. Dean had never see him cry before.
"You don't need to go. I can't lose both of you," he said.
"I don't have a choice," Dean answered. Sam was like gravity, and they had always fallen together, whether Dean wanted to or not. One day Cas would have wings, so maybe gravity didn't apply to him the same way.
"I hate you," Cas gasped, losing all of his angelic grace for just a moment.
Dean just kissed him, pressing him harder against the ceramic countertop, digging his fingers into Cas' hips, under the hem of his linen shirt, struggling with the button of his jeans before shoving one hand down the front. Cas buried his face in Dean's shoulder, and it was hard to tell whether he was gasping in pleasure, or sobbing.
"Hey Campbell, take it upstairs. You can't detail a car with the hood down," Sam said from the doorway, and they both jumped. Cas pushed Dean gently away, and then caught his hand and pulled him from the room, making a beeline for the stairs. His eyes were dry.
"Mind your own business, big brother," he said. There was laughter in his voice, masking the sadness. "It's the end of the world, and we'll fuck in the kitchen if we want."
They’re not moving fast enough, burdened by the weight of the vault. By the time they reach the gap the bridge will have articulated too far; it will be too wide for them to jump.
“We’re not going to make it,” Dean says.
“You’re right, we aren’t,” Sam answers. “You are.”
Part Two