The Best of Kansas

Hold On

"So, are you gonna stand there all night, or do you plan on saying something eventually?" Dean didn't bother to look over his shoulder before speaking. He knew it was Castiel, and even if it wasn't, his statement stood.

"Maybe I didn't intend to talk. Maybe I only came out here because I don't trust you not to run off and find Michael." Yeah. It was definitely Castiel, and by the not-even-remotely-veiled anger in his voice, he was still miffed about the whole 'Whore of Babylon' incident and everything that came immediately after it.

"Right." Dean tilted his bottle and let the beer wash down his throat. Not that it would help; the four that came before it certainly hadn't. "You know, you're lucky Poindexter showed up when he did."

"And why is that?" Castiel's voice teetered on the edge of a sigh, patronizing.

"I was gonna escape. It wouldn't have been hard." Dean let a smirk curl his lips, and he brought the brew to his lips again. He stopped—because it really wasn't helping—and set the bottle down on the porch railing, uttering a sigh of his own. "But you got lucky."

"How? It isn't as if you've changed your mind." Castiel spoke with a fervor in his voice Dean hadn't heard in a while, white-hot anger burning beneath the smooth, rich tones. "You're still set on submitting to Michael, on letting him use you to tear the world apart."

Dean smirked again, snorting out a bitter laugh, and he shook his head. "Yeah, that's the goal here." Sarcastic. Dismissive. Familiar.

Safe, in its own, twisted way.

So what if Dean pushed his best friend away? It was down to the wire, and the more Dean disappointed his family, the easier it would be for them to let him go.

Dean startled when he was grabbed by the shoulders, a rush of color flooding his field of vision before he found himself looking at Castiel. Dean kept his lips twisted into a faint smirk, bitter amusement tainting his own features as he examined the sharp lines and jarring shades of blue in Castiel's.

"I rebelled for this? So you could turn around and submit to them?" Castiel grabbed Dean by the shirt and pressed him back against the railing, fists shaking, eyes blazing. "I gave everything for you, and this is what you give to me?"

Dean smirked some more, a cynical curl of his lips, and nodded a few times. "Right. Right, because... after everything you did, I still owe you. Right." He snorted and shook his head. "We wouldn't even be in this mess if it weren't for you and your brothers. And you shouldn't have rebelled for me, you should have rebelled because you were standing up for what was right."

Castiel didn't respond right away, but the flare in his temper was clear in his eyes. "You, on the other hand, get to do what you want, regardless of right and wrong."

Dean smacked Castiel's hands away from his shirt, which Castiel thankfully allowed him to do. "Look, man, it's like I said to Sam. He's gonna say yes to Lucifer, and when he does, someone has to be there to stop him. How is that not right?"

"You don't know that Sam will say yes," Castiel countered.

A hard laugh punched its way out of Dean's throat, misty eyes rolling skyward as he turned back around to lean on the porch railing. "Yeah, I do." He exhaled slowly. "I mean, for a while there, I thought he was just in a bad place, but after our field trip to Heaven..." He shrugged, pretending his eyes hadn't begun to burn. "I don't know if he was ever who I thought he was."

"You're blaming Sam for this?" Castiel's voice came from directly behind Dean, his tone sharp and angry. "You're going to give in to Michael and let two archangels turn the world to dust because Sam let you down?"