Brilliant Light of Morning

A/N: Hey, a short one, sorry, guys, my muse abandoned me for awhile, but he's come back with full force, so hopefully I'll be cranking out the last few chapters soon.


4-18: The Monster At The End Of This Book

Dean waited in the recliner at Chuck's place. His ribs ached, and he could feel bruises forming on his back. All in all, he was not a happy camper. Add to that the creepy way Chuck was predicting the future, and Dean was ready to fillet himself some author. When Chuck walked in, carrying a conspicuously shaped paper bag, Dean said, "Hello, Chuck."

Chuck jumped, and Dean took perverse pleasure in it. It was nice to be intimidating sometimes. "I didn't write about it, I swear," were the first tremulous words out of Chuck's mouth, and all thoughts of intimidation were replaced by confusion.

Dean stood. "Huh?"

"I never - I never wrote it down, and I haven't told Sam or anything, I... I never...", Chuck trailed off. He pulled the bottle of scotch from the paper bag, opened it with shaking fingers and downed two, three, four gulps without taking a breath.

"Never wrote what down, Chuck?" Dean moved closer, backing Chuck into the wall.

"I.. I never -"

"What?!"

"I never wrote about you and Cas!" Chuck cried, eyes closed, clutching the bottle to his body like a shield. Dean was stunned, too much so to speak, but it didn't matter, because Chuck just kept babbling. "I saw the two of you, saw how close you were getting, I heard your thoughts about each other - and Castiel's thoughts aren't nearly as pure as he'd like you to believe - but I never wrote it down, I was afraid... I don't know, I guess I thought it would make you look worse, the idea that you're sullying an angel, leading him away from God... but I don't think that's the way it's going, I don't think that's what's happening, I think there's more to it, I -"

Dean needed Chuck to stop talking, like, yesterday. "Chuck enough. Chuck, stop!" Dean grabbed Chuck by his shirt front.

"Dean, let him go." Dean closed his eyes, that rough voice cutting through him like a knife. "This man is to be protected."

Dean tried to arrange his face into a mask of annoyance, tried not to show how the angel's sudden appearance had affected him. "Why?" he asked, when he finally turned around.

"He's a prophet of the Lord."

*************
Castiel heard Dean's prayer, and took a moment to bask in the feel of it, to let the grace of Dean flow over him. Then, he appeared, because Dean asked him to.

But Dean, being Dean, set an impossible task before him, and watched Castiel wallow in his indecision. He wanted nothing more than to grip Samuel Winchester and rip him from this town, to dump him at Robert Singer's, to watch Dean's eyes light up with gratefulness and... affection. To know that he had granted Dean's desire, that he had made him happy, even for a short while. But he said "No", because if he went up against an archangel, he would lose, and if he lost, he would never again know the feel of Dean's skin against his own, never know the taste of that hot tongue again. Castiel, for the first time, did something out of pure selfishness.

And it nearly cost him everything.

And when the loophole occurred to him, it was like a bolt from the sky, and he didn't mind how needy he sounded when he said, "Dean", because something told him that this was Divine, that he'd been given this idea because it was meant to be. He and Dean were just, and right.

And he knew that wasn't true, knew that Dean was a sinner, and that he was an angel, and that for him to want what he wanted was a short ride to long fall, but Castiel was also learning the human trait of lying to oneself, of deceiving one's own eyes and mind, of believing the impossible.

And so Castiel believed in Dean's divinity, because he had nothing else to hold onto.