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Entry tags:
- angels among us,
- dean,
- fic,
- fob,
- patd,
- ryan ross,
- ryan/brendon/pete,
- slash,
- spn,
- tyv
FIC: Angels Among Us 2: Apocalypse Now - R - 1/2
Written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
unnat_bandom, this is the sequel to Angels Among Us which should probably be read first.
Here there be Angels and Demons and the Supernatural boys back for another spin. I guess the third time is the charm. I scrapped half this story twice before this version finally gelled. I am incredibly pleased with the final product even if the Supernatural stuff has been subsequently Jossed.
TITLE: Angel’s Among Us 2: Apocalypse Now
AUTHOR: Melanie
RATING: R – For language
SUMMARY: The apocalypse is coming; it brings with it Angels, Demons, Lucifer and a disappearing act as performed by one Ryan Ross.
SPOILERS: Up to and including Season 5 Supernatural, just with added bandom and some minor detail changes.
WARNINGS: For religious themes
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own anything, not the bandom boys or SPN or their boys. I’m merely borrowing with no intent to harm. Also, if you recognize your name or the name of one of your bandmates you need to back away right now. I’ll wait.
Angels Among Us 2: Apocalypse Now
He’s just settled down to watch TV; they’ve got separate rooms, which is more the norm then a freak occurrence as of late.
Dean doesn’t want to think about why Sam needs a separate room, if he thinks about it, then he’ll think about the fact that Sam is probably in there with Ruby and then he’ll think about the fact that there’s very few things they can be getting up to in there that don’t begin and end with sex.
He doesn’t want to think about Sam fucking Ruby, that way lies madness and insanity and lecturing his baby brother about his fucking awful taste in partners.
Instead he’s taking advantage of having the room to himself to watch TV, Dr. Sexy MD is just beginning, he’s normally only able to catch it in repeats, very rarely catches it in primetime viewing, they don’t keep to the kind of schedule that is conducive to following a show in primetime.
He doesn’t even want to think of what Sam would say if he found out Dean watched it.
He’s got chips on one side, beer on the other, four pillows propped behind his head and back. He’s all set.
The opening credits start and that’s when Ryan appears next to him.
Dean doesn’t jump, Ryan appearing out of thin air is almost normal by now.
“You could have called,” Dean says. Back when Ryan threw his hissy fit and heaven grudgingly sent him back Ryan had given him the number to a special-super-duper-top-secret-only-to-be-used-in-angel-emergencies cell phone.
He’s used it twice.
When Castiel yanked him out of hell (Ross got him out of the original deal, but he still ended up there after a particularly nasty battle with a mated pair of werewolves, the female was a real bitch) he called because he’d seen Ross in action, knew he was an angel even if he didn’t actually believe in the whole concept of heaven and hell and angels from above. If anyone would know if Castiel was another real thing or not it would be Ross.
Ryan had confirmed that yes Castiel was the real deal, yes Dean should try to listen to him, and if he ever got himself killed again Ryan would bring him back for the sole purpose of killing him again.
The other time he used it because Ross’ band was touring and Dean had to call and make fun of their wardrobe choices. It was practically required by law. And Ryan wouldn’t have answered the other phone if he knew (and he always did) that Dean was calling to pick on him.
Dean can’t do that anymore, because Ryan’s band isn’t together and any time that Dean brings it up Ryan gets a tone to his voice that tells Dean that even though the split had been partially Ryan’s idea that he in no way is as okay with it as he’s leading the others to believe.
Which means that it was most likely an angel-dictated idea and eventually even Jon will end up being sent away.
“What the hell are you watching?” Ryan asks, he pulls one of the pillows from under Dean’s head, folds it in half and settles against the headboard.
Dean looks over at him and he sees Ryan with his arms wrapped around himself, he’s got sleep pants and a T-shirt on, he’s digging his bare toes into the comforter and is staring at the TV like he might be tested on the episode later.
He looks tired and worn around the edges.
“You appeared out of nowhere, you don’t get to make fun,” Dean says. He doesn’t ask if Ryan is okay, he wouldn’t answer and Dean already knows that he’s not.
“Anybody know where you are?” he asks, he taps his fingers against the remote, watches a commercial for kitty litter with only half his attention.
“I left a note for Jon,” Ryan says. “He’s the only one that needs to know.”
He sounds sad, which is saying something because Ryan has got the art of speaking in monotone down to a science. If Dean can hear him sounding sad he’s almost suicidal.
He wonders if the fact that Ryan even bothered to leave a note means that he’s going to be staying a while.
**********************************************************
Dean wakes up and there’s heat all along his back. For a scrawny thing Ryan Ross puts off heat like a fucking furnace.
“You know there’s two beds in this room,” he grumbles, just in case Ryan had missed it.
“I’m hungry,” he hears Ryan mumble in reply.
Dean yawns and rolls onto his back, Ryan rolls away to avoid Dean rolling directly onto him.
He reaches for his cell on the nightstand and knocks a cup plus whatever else he’d had on it off.
Nothing sounds like it breaks so he counts it as a win.
He keys it awake and scowls at it.
“It’s 4:30 in the morning, how the hell are you hungry? Did you eat anything yesterday?”
“I had lunch with Alex,” Ryan says defensively, he’s on his side and when Dean looks over he’s blinking at him from wide eyes.
Dean sighs, rubs his face and turns his attention to the ceiling. There’s a big stain up there, it looks sort of like a dog humping a moon.
“You’re sure that someone knows where you are?” Dean had figured that someone would have been calling already, either Jon or this Alex he hasn’t met most likely. Zack or Spencer or Brendon or Pete are long shots because Ryan has seemingly pushed them as far away as he can without completely removing them from his life.
Though Ryan normally complains about the fact that Zack keeps tabs on him even though neither he or Jon are doing anything that requires actual security, and Jon is apparently an even bigger mother hen then Spencer was.
To have neither one of them, at least, calling...
“I left a note,” Ryan says, he rolls over on this back, joins Dean in staring at the ceiling. “Does that look like?”
“Yeah,” Dean nods. “Note?” he prompts.
“I left one, I promised that I would let people know when I left town,” Dean sighs a breath of relief; at least he won’t be getting a frantic phone call from somebody because Ryan has apparently vanished into the ether. “Jon will find it when he flies into L.A. in a couple of days.”
“Ryan?”
“Jon’s mad at me, I just,” he can feel Ryan shake his head next to him. “He’s supposed to be with Brendon and Spencer, it was selfish of me,” he says softly.
“You’re allowed to have people, friends, a life,” Dean says.
“No, I’m not. I have a mission, an assignment here that I’m supposed to be focusing on. I was…”
“Someone yelled at you.”
“Someone reminded me that I’m not human, that I won’t be human and that pretending to be human is only going to hurt people that I don’t want to hurt and never meant to hurt.”
**********************************************************
Sam and Ruby are already at a table in the diner when Dean arrives with Ryan on his heels. There’d been a bag that Dean hadn’t noticed sitting on the floor and it apparently contained Ryan’s toiletries and clothing.
They’ve had a busy morning, there have already been showers and an argument over whether Ryan will be staying or going.
Dean had wanted to send him back to California before someone noticed that he was missing and Dean had to deal with pissed off musicians again; Ryan had insisted that he was staying and that nothing Dean said was going to change his mind.
“Ryan,” Sam looks up and spots them, he shoots a questioning look at Dean and Dean shakes his head. Sam winces like he can still feel the punch that Pete threw when Ryan had vanished and they’d thought him gone forever.
Dean lets Ryan slide into the booth and then sits beside him. Watches while Ryan straightens the silverware on his napkin and takes a sip of the water glass sitting there.
“Sam,” Ryan says finally, he looks over at Ruby and his eyes narrow. Dean looks at her as well; she has wide eyes and is attempting to look sweet and innocent.
She’s not pulling it off very well in the face of an actual angel sitting across the table from her.
He knows that angels can be douches and assholes and mean and uncaring to those that they consider under them (like the majority of the human race), there’s still almost an air of purity that surrounds them despite that.
“And who is this?” Ryan asks. His voice is bland and uncaring though his eyes are boring holes into Ruby like he can see right directly into her, Dean would almost feel sorry for her, but then he remembers that she’s a demon and Sam is apparently fucking her, and he doesn’t trust her anyway.
“This is Ruby,” Sam says, he lays an arm over the back of the booth and Ruby leans back enough so that her head is touching his arm. Dean clenches a hand into a fist under the table. “She’s on our side.”
“Is she,” Ryan says. He’s still staring at Ruby, Ruby attempts a smile, it looks fake and insincere and Dean wishes that Sam could see it.
Could see Ruby for who she really is and not for who she purports herself to be.
“Yeah, I am,” Ruby says, she tilts her head to one side and narrows her eyes at Ryan. “And you are?”
“Ryan,” he says, the waitress chooses that moment to appear at the end of their table and she almost drops her pad and pencil on the table when she catches sight of Ryan there.
“Aren’t you?” she asks, wide eyes, Dean can see her hands shaking. They’re not going to need to worry about anyone finding Ryan’s note, this is going to be all over the Internet by the time their waitress gets their order placed.
“No,” Ryan says. Dean can tell she doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t press the issue.
“Can I take your order?” she asks, her voice is breathless and she’s staring at Ryan.
“Eggs over easy, hashbrowns, bacon, wheat toast, with butter,” Ryan slides the menu he hadn’t even opened down the table. “And coffee, the largest coffee you have and an orange juice.”
The waitress stares at him, the point of her pencil is pressed to her pad but it hasn’t moved.
“Aren’t you going to write that down?” Ryan asks.
She stares at him and Ryan sighs, glances over at Dean, doesn’t look at where Sam is disguising the fact that he’s laughing by coughing softly into his napkin. Ruby is patting him on the back but still studying Ryan.
“He’ll have the same thing,” Ryan says. The waitress nods and Ryan finally makes a shooing motion with his hand. She stumbles away and Dean rolls his eyes as he looks over at him.
“How long are you planning on staying again?”
**********************************************************
Their eggs are completely wrong and the toast is white not wheat, at least it’s food though. Ruby leaves while they’re eating, her business with Sam apparently finished, either that or she just didn’t want to deal with Ryan staring at her with barely disguised disdain.
“She is on our side,” Sam says while Ryan nibbles on the end of a piece of toast, for being hungry he’s not eating a lot.
Ryan rolls his eyes.
“You have horrible taste in companions, present company excluded of course,” Ryan says. He puts the toast down, picks up his coffee and makes a face while he’s sipping at it. “It’s a good thing I’ll be hanging out for a while.”
Sam looks at Dean and Dean shrugs as he shovels hash browns into his mouth.
Ryan will either tell them what’s going on or not (Dean’s money is on not), he’s really trying not to think about all the probably reasons why Ryan would decide that now is a good time to travel with them.
None of them are good and all of them end in Apocalypse Now.
**********************************************************
Zack is late, Zack has never been late before and Spencer is trying to decide if it’ll make him look like more of a worrier then people already think he is if he picks up his phone and calls him again.
He’s left four messages already.
He’s on a first name basis with the majority of the companies that Ryan’s bills come out through, just because Ryan is successfully trying to cut them out of his life doesn’t mean that Spencer wants him to freeze to death or starve to death or be evicted from his home.
All the split had meant for Spencer was that he got to take a short break from his Ryan-tending duties, he’d handed all pertinent information over to Jon and hoped Jon could handle them and Ryan while he tried to keep Brendon from falling completely apart.
Handing over those duties subsequently meant that almost all of his updates on Ryan came from Ryan himself on Twitter because Jon had lasted a month and a half before he decided he needed a break; he’s been in Chicago for the last month instead of making sure that Ryan is eating and sleeping like a normal person.
Spencer’s been thinking through possible scenarios, but there doesn’t seem to be any easy way that he can see for him to insinuate himself back into Ryan’s life.
Especially since everyone seems to blame Ryan for the split, regardless of how many interviews they give where they say that it was a mutual decision.
Especially with Ryan turning avoiding anyone connected in any way with Ramen or FBR into an art form.
“Maybe he died,” Brendon says. His leg is going a mile a minute, he keeps looking at the clock on the microwave, like it’ll make Zack arrive that much faster.
“Someone would have called us,” Spencer says sensibly.
The door opens and they both turn to look, Brendon launches himself at Zack the millisecond that he sees him.
Zack catches him with ease of someone used to dealing with Brendon Urie and pats him on the head when Brendon backs off a little.
Of course then Brendon sees Jon following Zack through the door and Brendon flings himself at Jon instead, Spencer watches the door but Ryan doesn’t follow and Jon closes the door when he manages to extricate himself from Brendon’s grip.
“Was there an accident, a murder; did you save a kitten from a tree?” Brendon asks. Zack rolls his eyes at him.
“Jon called me about 1:30 this morning, said that he’d just flown in and got to the house and found that Ryan left a note and has apparently skipped town,” Zack says.
Spencer looks over at where Jon is bent over the coffee pot, he’s carefully putting together things to make coffee, he doesn’t look back.
“Do we know where he went?” Spencer asks. Even though he’s pretty sure that he knows the answer. There’s really only one place that Ryan would go now that Brendon and Spencer and Pete aren’t an option in his mind.
“Couple of fans posted crappy cell phone pictures from a diner a couple of days ago, he’s apparently with Dean and Sam Winchester,” Zack says.
Fans are good for a lot of things, keeping tabs on errant, runaway band members is one of them.
They’re also good for making a mountain out of a molehill; none of them had though the split was a bad thing until the fans had started taking the interviews apart and focused on all the things that Ryan had said, coupled with what he hadn’t said and all of a sudden they hadn’t talked in months (even though Ryan had been sharing a bed with Brendon and Pete right up to the end) and at each others throats (even though Ryan had spent a week with Spencer and his parents right before they made the decision).
Spencer rubs at a spot dead center on his forehead, it’s throbbing now and a glance at Brendon shows him leaning into Jon’s side.
Everyone’s miserable; the split was supposed to make everyone happy, let everyone work on the music that they wanted to work on in the hopes that maybe when those albums came out they would be ready to be a band again.
They’re working on the music but Spencer doesn’t think that anyone is even close to as happy as they lead others into thinking they are.
“We should go,” Brendon says. “Before we’re late and Pete worries.”
Spencer nods and Zack heads towards the door, probably to get the car. Jon is still fiddling with the coffee maker.
“Brendon…” Spencer starts.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Brendon says, he sounds tired. And as much as he professes to be pissed off at Ryan right now, Spencer knows that he and Pete would welcome him back with open arms, then possibly tie him to a bed.
**********************************************************
Dean wakes up and even with the curtains drawn he can still see that it’s dark out. He doesn’t know what woke him, can’t figure it out until he turns his head to the left and sees that Ryan’s awake.
His eyes are pointed in Dean’s direction, Dean’s pretty sure that Ryan isn’t seeing him though.
“I think that Brendon and Spencer are sleeping together,” Ryan says. His voice sounds hollow.
“Do you really believe that?” Dean asks. The last time that he’d seen them all interact Brendon and Pete had seemed pretty devoted to Ryan, if not a little confused about the whole angel thing.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Ryan says. “I wouldn’t blame them if they were.”
He rubs at his eyes with one hand. He looks exhausted and Dean wonders if he’s even sleeping when they go to bed or if he just lays there and thinks up things that his boyfriends are doing without him, thinks of all the ways that his best friends might be betraying him.
Dean’s sleeping; he’s never felt so well-rested.
“Ryan…”
“I have a mission,” Ryan says softly. “It’s critically important and someone reminded me of that fact.”
“Someone’s a douche then, you’re allowed to have a life,” Dean says.
“No, I’m not, that’s not what I’m here for, people will forget all about Ryan Ross eventually, he’ll start to fade and people won’t even remember that there was a boy that was named that, Panic will always have had only three members, Brendon and Pete will always have been just Brendon and Pete.”
“You’re not going anywhere Ross, and I think those friends of yours are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure they get you back.”
Ryan sighs and ignores him. “Zachariah wasn’t wrong about anything. He just reminded me that I have priorities here that don’t include the humans that I’ve been dallying with.”
“I was right, complete douche. Zachariah your boss?”
Ryan laughs, a quick one that sounds like it was shocked out of him, it sounds amused nevertheless.
“No,” Ryan says.
He doesn’t elaborate.
“You know, I’ve been getting the rooms with two beds for a reason, Sam walks in and finds out that you’re not sleeping in it he’s going to make fun forever.”
**********************************************************
Castiel arrives one morning, three days after Ryan has joined them.
Ryan is a quiet entity in the back seat of the car, when Dean looks in the rearview mirror sometimes he’s surprised to see Ryan sitting there, like he’s forgotten that he’s back there.
It’s those times that the words that Ryan had spoke, how people would maybe start to forget him, makes him wonder if Ryan is ceasing to exist and in his place is the angel that has been playing the role for however long Ryan Ross has known that he’s not exactly human.
Dean wonders what they should be calling him; he has a feeling that ‘Ryan’ isn’t the name that he used prior to falling and becoming human.
They’ve stopped for the night, Sam has made the run for food and Dean has the laptop fired up.
Six unexplained deaths. Six nineteen year old males, no bruises, no marks, no sign of how they died other then the fact that they’re dead.
Ryan is cross-legged in the middle of the bed, he has a book open on his legs, Dean doesn’t think that he’s actually reading it.
They have one room because that’s all the motel had available. Sam has already made that face that says that he’s going to argue against having to share with anyone, Dean will let him win (though he’ll make him work for it) but only because he’s almost used to have Ryan pushed up alongside his back.
Ryan has absolutely no concept of personal space.
Castiel appears while Dean is browsing through newspaper articles, looking for some glimmer of information. Right now they’re completely blind.
Castiel makes a noise that sounds a little bit like shock, when Dean turns around Ryan and Castiel are staring at each other.
He doesn’t think that he’s ever seen Castiel rattled.
“I’m assuming you two know each other already,” Dean says. “Considering Ryan vouched for you and all.”
Castiel blinks at him; Dean has no clue what to call the expression on Castiel’s face.
“R-Ryan vouched for me?” Castiel asks, he stumbles over Ryan’s name like he’s not using to saying it and it lends a little more credence to a niggling of an idea that he’s had that the angels don’t know Ryan as Ryan.
He wonders if he asks, nicely, if Ryan would tell him what they should really be calling him.
**********************************************************
“He likes you,” Castiel says, Dean huffs out a breath. He’d been alone in the motel; Sam had dragged Ryan out behind him to get food insisting in that way that Sam has (with big puppy dog eyes and down-turned sad lips) that Ryan needed to see some sunlight or something because Sam was starting to worry that he’d turned into a vampire while they weren’t looking.
“What?”
“He likes you,” Castiel repeats, he sounds bewildered by the fact, like he doesn’t understand how Ryan can like him.
“That surprises you?” Dean asks. “I’m a likable guy.”
They’ve still got no leads on the mystery death thing, Sam’s getting frustrated and Dean knows there’s something going on here but he just can’t find that one clue that would put all the pieces into context.
He’s got a headache that aspirin isn’t cutting it for anymore; he almost wants to see if Sammy will punch him so he can at least have ten minutes of ringing in his head instead of throbbing pain.
“He is,” Castiel cuts himself off, and stares at the ugly painting on the wall above Dean’s head. “We are not allowed to get attached, but he has attachments to you, and those others that he was with.”
“You mean those others that your buddy Zachariah made him cut out of his life, because of his assignment?” Dean wonders if he sounds as pissed about that as he feels. Ryan’s only like one fifth of a person right now and Dean can tell that he misses Brendon and Pete and Spencer and Jon like a part of himself has been cut out.
“Zachariah could not have made him do anything that he did not want to do, that he did not believe to be the right thing to do,” Dean raises an eyebrow at him, because the Ryan they’re currently traveling with had most definitely not wanted to cut his friends loose.
“Who is he Cas? I mean, you don’t sound like you want to be calling him Ryan, you sound like you want to be calling him something else. What’s his real name?”
Castiel looks at him, his eyes are a little wider then usual which Dean takes to mean that he surprised him.
“I can not tell you,” Castiel says. He sounds slightly regretful of that fact.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Either, or both. He will tell you, I am sure, when the time is right.”
“Or when it can most be used to bite us in the ass.”
**********************************************************
Ryan disappears twelve days after he starts traveling with them, Dean wakes up one morning and he doesn’t have Ryan curled up behind him and it doesn’t dawn on him that Ryan’s not in the bathroom until he really wakes up and realizes that the bathroom door is open and the light is not on.
Ryan’s bag is gone and there is no note.
Dean hopes that he went home, went to talk to the others and figure out how they can do this without Ryan looking like he’s continually bleeding out.
He knows he hasn’t.
**********************************************************
Dean runs, like if he runs fast enough he can stop this even though he knows it’s too late.
It was too late when Castiel had broken him out of his pretty prison, when they’d gone to Chuck who’d looked at them blankly and in shock and asked them how they were there.
Castiel had gathered what was left of his power to send Dean to try and stop Sam from killing Lilith (and wow he never would have thought he’d ever be trying to save the hell bitch but there you go) and he’d stayed there, in front of Chuck, to battle the Archangel that was coming to protect Chuck.
He’d never trusted Ruby, he’d wanted to because Sam had. But something about her had never sat right with him and he knows now that it was the blood and just Ruby herself. Standing there watching her crow at Sam at how much more powerful he was with her standing beside him.
How he didn’t need Dean.
By the time he gets through the doors it’s too late, he’s there to hold Ruby while Sam ends her, but they’ve still lost.
They gaze at the portal, at the black, smoky essence that is Lucifer rising from his prison and suddenly they’re gone. Out of the room and on a plane of all things.
He doesn’t even bother freaking out, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, they’re so completely fucked.
**********************************************************
Jon is frantic, Spencer has been trying for close to an hour to calm him down and make sense of what is being said.
Jon freaking out on the phone had been what got them all to make the trip to Ryan’s in the first place.
Spencer had been half-expecting to see Ryan finally returned from his sojourn with the Winchesters and either dead or unconscious on the floor; while he knows that Ryan’s ‘drug-use’ has been perpetuated to keep people from looking too closely at the other things that are different about him since Sam Winchester tried to hand him over to Hell; sometimes when it’s days (almost a month) between phone calls or he’s only able to communicate with Ryan via Twitter it’s hard to remember that.
Ryan is nowhere to be seen though, and Spencer can’t see any evidence that Ryan has even been there.
Pete is on the phone; Spencer doesn’t know with who, though Spencer thinks that if he’s not already on the phone with the men in white coats arranging to have Jon taken away, that he will be soon.
Brendon is hovering behind Spencer, he doesn’t deal well with this and the words coming out of Jon’s mouth are gibberish.
Just, “and, gone, like, and,” and lots of heavy sighing and exasperation.
Alex isn’t saying anything, just sitting on the couch that Brendon had helped him to and staring with wide eyes at nothing.
He’s been that way since they got there, Spencer doesn’t have any clue what happened but it can’t have been good. And it has to have something to do with Ryan, there’s no other reason why Alex would be catatonic on the couch and Jon would be freaking out.
Jon should have called the second that Ryan returned.
If Ryan had returned.
Spencer slaps Jon finally, it’s gentle and he doesn’t want to; but it’s the only thing he can think of to do, and it always works in the movies, when someone is in shock and babbling someone else always smacks them across the face. Jon blinks and looks at him with a betrayed expression, rubbing at his cheek, he stops babbling so Spencer counts it as a win even though he knows he’ll be buying Jon seven pairs of flip flops and a pair for himself as penance.
Jon takes a deep breath, another one; it takes five of them and Jon dragging his hands through his hair repeatedly before he looks at Spencer and seems somewhat like the Jon Walker that Spencer remembers, albeit with hair sticking up on end and wild eyes.
“Ryan,” Jon starts. Spencer can see Brendon visibly jolt, Pete’s hand drops to his side, his cell phone sliding from his hand onto the floor, Spencer hopes that he ended his call.
“Ryan was here?” Brendon asks, wide eyes and hope in his voice.
“For a second, barely a minute, I didn’t even have time to figure out where I’d put my cell phone, let alone call and let you know and then he was gone,” Jon says, Zack has his phone out before the words are even completely out of Jon’s mouth.
“He just, showed up, and he was standing there, right in front of me, and then there was a flash of, of something, I don’t know and Ryan just, he looked at me and he was, he was so sad, Spence. He said he was sorry and told me that we had to protect each other and then… he looked… he’s gone…” Jon looks stricken. Spencer pulls him into a hug. Arms tight and Jon sort of collapses against him.
He twists his head and can see Brendon clutching at Pete’s hands and he can see tears in Brendon’s eyes before he twists his head away and buries it in Pete’s shoulder.
“I don’t think he’s coming back again,” Jon says into his shoulder.
**********************************************************
Dean’s phone rings and he almost doesn’t answer it, he really doesn’t want to answer it.
He’s had the same headache going on two weeks now and every single call has been someone calling to tell him about a demon or a monster or something that he and Sam need to come and deal with right away.
He knows the world’s fucking falling apart; he’s only got a front row seat for it.
But he looks at the caller ID and it shows ‘Smith’, there’s only one Smith that he knows and there’s only one reason why Spencer Smith would be calling him.
Except Ryan’s not with him, Dean has no clue where Ryan is and he’s not answering his special-super-duper-top-secret-only-to-be-used-in-angel-emergencies cell phone either so Dean has no way to find out where he is and what they should be doing.
No Ryan, no Castiel.
Only Zachariah has popped his head in to gloat about ending the world and insisting that Dean take his rightful place, Dean hadn’t even known if he’d drawn the symbol right, he’d only seen it the one time.
Hastily sketched out in Castiel’s blood and infused with his power.
It had been enough to get him out of his pretty prison, and it was enough to zap Zachariah out of the house, which alone almost makes the fact that his hand is throbbing in pain in time with his headache worth it.
“He’s not here,” he says. Sam looks over at him and he mouths Smith at him. Sam flinches like he’s expecting Pete Wentz to reach through the phone and punch him again.
“He has that other phone,” Spencer says. “That special one that we’re not supposed to know about.” There’s a tone in his voice that tells Dean that he’s desperate for some small measure of hope and Dean wishes that he could give it to him.
“He’s not answering that one either,” Dean says, he knows this because he’s been trying it every half hour in the hopes that Ryan will pick up, or at least turn it back on to check his messages. “We can come to you if you want, maybe put our heads together, come up with something.”
They need someplace safe to stash Chuck anyway.
**********************************************************
They make good time though Dean still has to physically force himself to not gag Chuck and stash him in the trunk.
Chuck’s just rambling about everything and nothing, and not a single word coming out of his mouth can help them figure out what had happened to Castiel or where Ryan has vanished to.
What the hell they’re supposed to be doing.
You know, useful things.
The remainder of Ryan’s band is apparently holed up with Pete and Dean keeps one hand locked around Chuck’s arm as they walk to the door.
It’s not going to take long before the Angel’s come looking for their Prophet and Dean wants to have Chuck under lock and key and hidden from them before it happens.
He’s just not sure how to make that happen.
Spencer flings the door open before Dean can even raise a hand to knock, evidently they’ve been waiting for them and a look behind him shows Sam with his shoulders hunched.
“Who’s this?” Spencer asks as he leads them into the bowels of Pete’s house. Dean wonders if he should have asked for breadcrumbs to leave a trail to the door.
“This is Chuck, we need somewhere to stash him for a while,” Dean says.
The room that Spencer leads them into is brightly lit, Brendon and Pete are sitting side by side on the couch, they look small and scared. Jon is sitting in front of Brendon on the floor and a guy that Dean doesn’t know is sitting semi-catatonic in a chair.
Zack is pacing in front of a window, cell phone pressed to his ear.
“He’s trying to track down Ryan,” Spencer says.
“Pretty sure Ryan is off the grid,” Dean says, he glances at Chuck and Chuck grins at him, nods.
“So far off the grid that off the grid is probably a misnomer,” Chuck agrees.
“Hmm, and here I thought you were a Prophet,” comes Zachariah’s voice from behind them. Dean whirls, pushes Chuck behind him and Sam already has his gun out.
“What do you want?” Dean snarls, he wants to throw a punch, if anyone deserves to get knocked down a peg or fifteen it’s Zachariah.
Starting an apocalypse, Jesus this guy isn’t the brightest tool in the shed and he hopes that Zachariah isn’t an indication of how intelligent the other Angels they’ll be dealing with are.
Ryan had always seemed fairly intelligent, Castiel as well, Anna from what he’d seen didn’t lack in the brains department either.
“What do I want, what do I want, so glad that you asked that of me,” Zachariah walks the room and Dean keeps him in his sights while Sam keeps the two that came with him in his.
“Then why don’t you answer the question,” Spencer snaps. Dean wants to tell him to not draw attention to himself. Pete and Brendon and Jon seem to be doing a fantastic job of attempting to disappear into the couch.
Zack is by the window and for a big guy he’s managing to blend into the curtains with ease.
“Snippy,” Zachariah stands in front of Spencer and beams at him. “I can see why he likes you.”
“Hey asshole that thought freeing Lucifer from hell was a good idea, over here,” Dean snaps his fingers and glares at Spencer. Spencer seems to take the hint and goes to sit on the couch next to Brendon. Jon wraps a hand around his ankle, Brendon leans into his side.
“Now Dean,” Zachariah says. He’s got that ‘we’re all friends’ look on his face; Dean isn’t buying what he’s selling. Not this time.
“What. Do. You. Want?”
“You know what I want, Dean Winchester. No need to hash that out again,” Zachariah grins at him and Dean snarls.
“And I already told you to shove it up your ass,” except not in so many words, he thinks that Castiel growing the start of a back bone and helping Dean get out of there pretty much said the same thing.
“You’ll do it,” Zachariah says, he sounds so certain, so sure. Dean wants to ask him how he can have so much certainty, but then he remembers that Zachariah is a fucking whack job that worked to free Lucifer in the first place. “You have no choice, it’s fate, destiny, its your fate, your destiny.”
“It’s my fucking choice, free will,” Dean says. “All us lowly humans, we have it; I’m not doing a goddamn thing that I don’t want to.”
Zachariah’s lips curl into a smirk of sorts.
“You’ll do it,” Zachariah says again. He stops in front of him, leans close and stares at him like he’s decided that Dean’s a puzzle that needs solving. “I don’t know why he likes you so much; you’re nothing but a nuisance, if we didn’t need you alive for the time being…”
“You’d what, kill me yourself?” Dean stutters a laugh, “you didn’t have Castiel drag me out of hell just to shove me right back in.”
“That, wasn’t my call, that was the last assignment handed out before our Father went silent on us,” Zachariah says.
“Besides you apparently need me to kill off Lucifer before you can try.”
“Actually we don’t need you to do anything but be willing.”
Dean exchanges a confused glance with Sam. “What?”
“You didn’t think you were actually going to kill Lucifer? Did you?” Zachariah laughs, like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “You’re just a vessel; you’re Michael’s vessel, his sword to wield against Lucifer.”
“And he needs me willing, Michael needs me to say the all important, yeah, sure,” Dean says slowly. “Is that what Ryan’s mission was, protect me, keep me safe, so that Michael can walk around in my fucking skin?”
He’s pissed at the thought, that Ryan had only been hanging around so that he could protect him until an Angel could get access to his body.
He’d thought Ryan had actually liked him, he hadn’t thought that Ryan had been using him just like Ruby had been using Sam.
A means to an end.
Zachariah smirks at him, it’s cocky and Dean has an insane urge to punch him.
“You weren’t Ryan’s mission,” Zachariah says his name with derision, like Dean’s not important enough to be Ryan’s assignment and that he loathes having to utter that plebian name.
Dean is important enough, even if only in his own head and Ryan has never told him what his true name is, so unless someone else wants to spill the beans they’re all going to have to suck it up and use it.
“You weren’t his mission, but he made you a part of it,” Zachariah says.
“You don’t know what his assignment was at all, do you?” it’s Dean’s turn to laugh, and he does so with a gleeful edge.
Zachariah narrows his eyes at him and opens his mouth.
He doesn’t get a chance to say anything, because there’s a blink and miss it moment where Castiel wasn’t there and then suddenly is.
He looks good, alive; Dean almost breathes a sigh of relief.
Zachariah doesn’t feel the same sense of relief Dean thinks, not if the way his goons descend on Castiel is any indication. Castiel makes short work of them, bright lights and two Angels gone. Zachariah looks to be ready to say something but obviously chooses survival over death and vanishes.
Dean thinks that was probably the smartest thing that Zachariah has done since Dean had the misfortune of meeting him, because Castiel is showing emotions on his face and the most prevalent one is infuriated.
“Good to see you in one piece,” Dean says.
“You can not stay here,” Castiel says.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Dean says. “Just needed someplace to stash Chuck.”
“Chuck is not in any danger, but if you keep him under the roof with you, he will put you in danger, they’ll be able to track him and we need to make them unable to track you,” Castiel says.
He touches Dean’s shoulder with one hand, Sam’s with the other and the pain is like nothing he’s ever felt. It hurts to breathe for a minute, off to his side he can see Sam struggling to take shallow breaths, hands on his knees.
Castiel’s hands drop to his side and he looks at Dean with something akin to awe.
“What?” Dean asks, he presses a hand to his chest.
Castiel shakes his head, “Nothing, for a moment I thought… but I must have been mistaken,” he sounds troubled but Dean doesn’t call him on it.
Not yet.
**********************************************************
Jon is pretty sure he has to be dreaming.
He knows this because there is no way that Ryan is sitting on the edge of his bed. Not when everyone and their brother is searching for him.
Ryan must have ruled at hide and seek when he was a kid.
Jon likes to think he’s pretty important to Ryan, but there are at least three other people that he knows are more important then him, and that’s not counting the one that Ryan had decided was important enough that he’d travel with him and his brother for almost two weeks just prior to his disappearing act.
Two of those four are three doors down and would make room for Ryan between them because that’s his place.
Ryan smiles at him, like he knows what he’s thinking and touches his shoulder.
“I’m here for you Jon,” he says.
Definitely a dream, Ryan is an Angel, not a psychic, he can’t read minds and…
“Everyone’s looking for you,” Jon says. “That angel, Castiel? He’s worried and I think Dean and Spencer are going to use up all their minutes trying to get you on your cell phone.” He curls his arm around his pillow and peers up at Ryan. It’s dark in the room, but Ryan is kind of glowing.
“I’m okay, I’m just, things happened so fast, too fast, I wasn’t prepared,” Ryan says, he bites his lip and looks at the door longingly. “And I’m not staying for long, just… I have something I need to do, something that I didn’t have time for when the final seal broke.”
Jon reaches out a hand and links his fingers with Ryan’s. Squeezes.
“You could go see them,” Jon says. “I won’t tell anyone,” he promises. “They’ll probably think it’s the best dream ever.”
Ryan laughs a little, his eyes look sad and older then Jon remembers them being.
“Just being here long enough to do this, it puts all of you at risk, I can’t…” Ryan shakes his head. “I just want you all to be safe, so that when this is all over…”
Ryan’s eyes are wet and he’s not looking at Jon anymore.
“You’ll always be able to come home,” Jon says. “We’ll, all of us, will welcome you home with open arms.”
**********************************************************
Spencer and Jon are the best ones with the guns. Dean teaches them how to shoot, how to protect themselves and they all hole up at Pete’s.
It takes Bobby six days to get to them, but that’s probably mostly due to the fact that he kept stopping to fight shit. The three of them spend a couple of days trying to figure out their next plan of attack.
Because they need a game plan, so they can be doing something other then fighting the seemingly never-ending fires that keep popping up.
Bobby finally leaves, goes back to his own home and becomes a communication center for all of them. Sending the Hunters they have left off to fight the things that crawled out of Hell when the barrier holding them back fell; he feeds Dean and Sam information whenever he finds something of interest.
It’s not as often as Dean would like. Sometimes it feels like they’re cut off from everyone else, holed up in this house with the former companions of an Angel; hunted by Angels and Demons themselves.
Castiel appears and disappears at random times. He spends one afternoon peering at Pete’s back through the window in the kitchen; Pete is running around in the backyard with no shirt on, playing with Hemmy, it’s not an uncommon sight.
“You looking for something? You keep staring at Pete like that Brendon’s going to take exception,” Dean asks. Not to mention what Ryan would do if he found it.
“Ryan has removed their protection sigils,” Castiel says quietly.
Dean moves to stand next to him and looks out at where Pete is kneeling, Hemmy is licking his face, Pete is rubbing hands down his back and Brendon is a short distance away lounging on the grass.
“Why would he…?” Dean shakes his head. These are Ryan’s most important people, to remove the protection that he’d put in place for whatever reasons just don’t make any sense.
“I only looked because I was not sure if he had the time before Lucifer rose to do so,” there’s a tone to his voice that sounds like Castiel is troubled by this. “If they were there I thought to hide them, to cloak them like I’ve cloaked you and Sam...”
Dean looks out the window, he’d said one word before, had uttered it just to prove a hunch, and it had worked over phone lines, he utters the word now and nothing happens.
“If he had left them in place they would have been a beacon, a shining light for anyone who knew how to activate the sigils to locate them. ‘Here are humans protected by an angel of the Lord’. They would have been a target, if only to attempt to draw him out of hiding.”
“So he’s protecting them,” Dean scratches his forehead, he’s getting frustrated with the headache and Sam has started giving him looks when he tosses back the aspirin now. “By not protecting them?”
Castiel turns away from the window and Dean turns as well, starts slightly when he sees Spencer and Jon standing in the doorway, Sam is leaning against the refrigerator.
He hadn’t even heard any of them enter the room.
“When did he remove them?” Spencer asks softly, he’s got one arm wrapped around himself like he’s cold; the other is latched onto Jon’s arm.
“Yours, theirs,” Castiel gestures towards the backyard with one of his hands. “They were removed some time ago, they have almost completely faded into obscurity, if you do not know what to look for you would not be able to tell that they were even there once. Yours,” he looks directly at Jon, “were removed just days ago, a week at the most, as were the ones that were on the young man who does not speak.”
“We haven’t heard a whisper from Ryan in almost a month,” Dean says. “How did he remove them without…”
“He has been here, in this house, he would have had to lay hands on both of them in order to remove them,” Castiel sounds almost hurt, that Ryan had been in the house and not sought him out… hell Dean is feeling the same way. He’d kind of thought of the kid as a friend of sorts.
Of course there’s also the fact that Ryan has seemingly made himself invisible, like Castiel has made Sam and Dean invisible; both sides are searching for him, Zachariah with more of an intent to find then Lucifer.
Lucifer seems split between poking at Sam and finding Ryan.
Whoever Ryan is supposed to be, he’s pretty important to both sides. Dean thinks the day is coming up, probably sooner then either side would like, that someone is going to have to tell them why.
“I had a dream,” Jon says slowly. “I thought it was a dream, because he’s in hiding and why would he…”
Spencer makes a sound.
“He was really there? I wasn’t dreaming?” Jon asks, Castiel nods slowly; Jon bites his lip and exchanges a look with Spencer. “Don’t tell them,” he says finally. “They don’t need to know.”
**********************************************************
The unmasking of the Trickster as the Archangel Gabriel doesn’t come as so much of a shock as the fact that once they know who he really is they can’t seem to get rid of him.
Gabriel won’t even explicitly side with them, just smirks at them and tells them that he prefers to keep all his options open.
Then he’ll throw a Frisbee for Hemmy or mutter about Pete’s seeming ban of sugar in his house (Brendon hopped up on sugar and Red Bull is not a fun experience, Dean agrees with Pete’s ban in theory if not practice.)
It’s just frustrating to walk downstairs and see him sharing a cup of coffee with Jon or watching TV with Pete and Brendon when he won’t admit that he’s allied with them. The draw for him seems to be Ryan’s family and Dean can’t figure out exactly why though he’s sure it has to be an Angel thing.
“They are his only link to who he was right now, and he has been far removed from our brethren for a lengthy period of time,” Castiel says one afternoon, Dean has been working out in Pete’s gym. Dean isn’t sure why Pete has a gym; nobody appears to ever use it besides him and Sam.
Of course Pete had seemed almost surprised that he even had one so it might have just come with the house.
“Ryan’s not talking to him?” Dean asks, he doesn’t think he even really needs to; Ryan isn’t talking to anyone as far as he can see, and the fans that had before kept the others abreast of what was going with Ryan can’t see to find him either. There are rumors going around that he’s dead and that it’s being hidden by Pete and the others for a variety of different reasons; Dean would be working to dispel them but he’s not sure if it’s worth it.
Ryan will pop up when Ryan’s ready to pop up.
He’s punching a bag. He’s been doing that a lot, there are not actual pictures of Lucifer or Zachariah or even Gabriel on it, but he’s always been good at visualization exercises.
“He doesn’t know?” Gabriel asks, Dean doesn’t jump and doesn’t turn, from the sound of Gabriel’s voice it sounds like he’s sitting on the stairs watching.
“Know what?” Dean asks, he throws a vicious punch at the bag, it hurts all the way up to his shoulder and he stops and rolls his shoulders, lets his arms hang at his sides.
When he turns Gabriel is looking at Castiel not him. They’re completely focused on each other. Dean might as well not even be there.
“Who is he?” Dean asks. Gabriel tears his eyes from Castiel and stares at Dean instead.
“He’s my brother,” Gabriel says.
“Yeah, I know that,” Dean rolls his eyes, snorts. Because way to tell him something he already fucking knew. “You’re all one big happy fucked up beyond all recognition family.”
“There was just the seven of us at the beginning,” Gabriel says like Dean hadn’t said anything, though his eyes spark a little with anger. “There was Father and then there was us; Michael, Raphael, Phanuel, Saraqael, Raguel, Camael and me; the others, like Castiel and Zachariah they came later and they’re still my brothers; but those six… they are my brothers, they’re the ones that I stood at the beginning of time with and there is hope that we’ll stand at the end of time together as well.”
“You’re saying that Ryan is an Archangel,” Dean says slowly, because those seven names, there’s only one thing they all have in common and there’s a niggling sense of something that says that he should have known this already. “Ryan, little Ryan, who can barely take care of himself… which one of them is he?”
“Raphael,” Castiel says. His voice is quiet, hushed. Like he doesn’t want anyone to hear him.
“Raphael,” Dean stutters a laugh, “You want me to believe that Ryan is the Archangel Raphael, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Father requested this of him. Father asked him to fall, asked him to perform a task here; it’s why he’s different then Anael, why he was not hunted for falling as she was. Anael fell without the permissions of our Father; Raphael was chosen to do this.”
“You don’t know what his mission is?”
“After my time,” Gabriel says as Castiel shakes his head.
“I was not privy to that information, Father spoke to him alone and Raphael never breathed one word of what was asked of him, not prior to falling, not after he reached enlightenment.”
“Is that why he’s so important? Why Zachariah and Lucifer are both hunting for him?”
“He is an Archangel, the only one left besides Michael that has not explicitly chosen a side,” Castiel says.
“Hey,” Gabriel says hotly.
“You may not have said the words but the fact that you remain here speaks louder then any words need to. You have chosen our side, and all other sides know this. The Archangel Gabriel is aligned with Dean Winchester.”
“So that just leaves Ryan, because from the way that Zachariah talks I’m guessing that Michael is pretty much in their pocket already,” Dean says.
“Wishful thinking on Zachy’s place,” Gabriel says. “I know Michael, he finds out that Zachariah planned this whole thing and actually allowed Lucifer to be freed… well hell hath no fury and all.”
“When can we expect Michael to start showing himself,” Dean says. He’s been wondering that for a while, since Lucifer began making his push at Sam in dreams and visions, whispering in his ear and promising Sam everything and anything.
Michael’s not done that, he’s not even begun and it’s probably all well and good that Dean can say no now, he wonders if he’ll still be able to when Michael really starts actively trying to court his permission to wear his body into a war that Dean’s not sure they can win.
Even with a couple of Archangels in their corner.
“Michael is already here,” Castiel says vaguely, Gabriel eyes him with an arched eyebrow, then looks over at Dean with a knowing expression on his face.
“Really? Was Zach wrong then? He’s going after someone else?” Dean feels oddly disappointed. He doesn’t even get the chance to say no? That hardly seems fair.
“No,” Castiel says. Dean waits but he doesn’t say anything else, just stands there with his hands linked together in front of him and watching Dean.
“Okay.”
“Well look at it this way, all the chess pieces are almost finally in play, so that means that the end is nigh folks.”
“I thought you didn’t want to fight, I thought you just wanted it to be over with.”
“I do, but it’s been a really long time since we had a good old-fashioned family brawl. It should be interesting at least to see if anyone has learned any new tricks,” Gabriel smirks at him. “I’m sure you’ll find you have.”
Dean doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t think he really wants to know either.
Part 2
unnat_bandom, this is the sequel to Angels Among Us which should probably be read first.Here there be Angels and Demons and the Supernatural boys back for another spin. I guess the third time is the charm. I scrapped half this story twice before this version finally gelled. I am incredibly pleased with the final product even if the Supernatural stuff has been subsequently Jossed.
TITLE: Angel’s Among Us 2: Apocalypse Now
AUTHOR: Melanie
RATING: R – For language
SUMMARY: The apocalypse is coming; it brings with it Angels, Demons, Lucifer and a disappearing act as performed by one Ryan Ross.
SPOILERS: Up to and including Season 5 Supernatural, just with added bandom and some minor detail changes.
WARNINGS: For religious themes
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own anything, not the bandom boys or SPN or their boys. I’m merely borrowing with no intent to harm. Also, if you recognize your name or the name of one of your bandmates you need to back away right now. I’ll wait.
Angels Among Us 2: Apocalypse Now
He’s just settled down to watch TV; they’ve got separate rooms, which is more the norm then a freak occurrence as of late.
Dean doesn’t want to think about why Sam needs a separate room, if he thinks about it, then he’ll think about the fact that Sam is probably in there with Ruby and then he’ll think about the fact that there’s very few things they can be getting up to in there that don’t begin and end with sex.
He doesn’t want to think about Sam fucking Ruby, that way lies madness and insanity and lecturing his baby brother about his fucking awful taste in partners.
Instead he’s taking advantage of having the room to himself to watch TV, Dr. Sexy MD is just beginning, he’s normally only able to catch it in repeats, very rarely catches it in primetime viewing, they don’t keep to the kind of schedule that is conducive to following a show in primetime.
He doesn’t even want to think of what Sam would say if he found out Dean watched it.
He’s got chips on one side, beer on the other, four pillows propped behind his head and back. He’s all set.
The opening credits start and that’s when Ryan appears next to him.
Dean doesn’t jump, Ryan appearing out of thin air is almost normal by now.
“You could have called,” Dean says. Back when Ryan threw his hissy fit and heaven grudgingly sent him back Ryan had given him the number to a special-super-duper-top-secret-only-to-be-used-in-angel-emergencies cell phone.
He’s used it twice.
When Castiel yanked him out of hell (Ross got him out of the original deal, but he still ended up there after a particularly nasty battle with a mated pair of werewolves, the female was a real bitch) he called because he’d seen Ross in action, knew he was an angel even if he didn’t actually believe in the whole concept of heaven and hell and angels from above. If anyone would know if Castiel was another real thing or not it would be Ross.
Ryan had confirmed that yes Castiel was the real deal, yes Dean should try to listen to him, and if he ever got himself killed again Ryan would bring him back for the sole purpose of killing him again.
The other time he used it because Ross’ band was touring and Dean had to call and make fun of their wardrobe choices. It was practically required by law. And Ryan wouldn’t have answered the other phone if he knew (and he always did) that Dean was calling to pick on him.
Dean can’t do that anymore, because Ryan’s band isn’t together and any time that Dean brings it up Ryan gets a tone to his voice that tells Dean that even though the split had been partially Ryan’s idea that he in no way is as okay with it as he’s leading the others to believe.
Which means that it was most likely an angel-dictated idea and eventually even Jon will end up being sent away.
“What the hell are you watching?” Ryan asks, he pulls one of the pillows from under Dean’s head, folds it in half and settles against the headboard.
Dean looks over at him and he sees Ryan with his arms wrapped around himself, he’s got sleep pants and a T-shirt on, he’s digging his bare toes into the comforter and is staring at the TV like he might be tested on the episode later.
He looks tired and worn around the edges.
“You appeared out of nowhere, you don’t get to make fun,” Dean says. He doesn’t ask if Ryan is okay, he wouldn’t answer and Dean already knows that he’s not.
“Anybody know where you are?” he asks, he taps his fingers against the remote, watches a commercial for kitty litter with only half his attention.
“I left a note for Jon,” Ryan says. “He’s the only one that needs to know.”
He sounds sad, which is saying something because Ryan has got the art of speaking in monotone down to a science. If Dean can hear him sounding sad he’s almost suicidal.
He wonders if the fact that Ryan even bothered to leave a note means that he’s going to be staying a while.
Dean wakes up and there’s heat all along his back. For a scrawny thing Ryan Ross puts off heat like a fucking furnace.
“You know there’s two beds in this room,” he grumbles, just in case Ryan had missed it.
“I’m hungry,” he hears Ryan mumble in reply.
Dean yawns and rolls onto his back, Ryan rolls away to avoid Dean rolling directly onto him.
He reaches for his cell on the nightstand and knocks a cup plus whatever else he’d had on it off.
Nothing sounds like it breaks so he counts it as a win.
He keys it awake and scowls at it.
“It’s 4:30 in the morning, how the hell are you hungry? Did you eat anything yesterday?”
“I had lunch with Alex,” Ryan says defensively, he’s on his side and when Dean looks over he’s blinking at him from wide eyes.
Dean sighs, rubs his face and turns his attention to the ceiling. There’s a big stain up there, it looks sort of like a dog humping a moon.
“You’re sure that someone knows where you are?” Dean had figured that someone would have been calling already, either Jon or this Alex he hasn’t met most likely. Zack or Spencer or Brendon or Pete are long shots because Ryan has seemingly pushed them as far away as he can without completely removing them from his life.
Though Ryan normally complains about the fact that Zack keeps tabs on him even though neither he or Jon are doing anything that requires actual security, and Jon is apparently an even bigger mother hen then Spencer was.
To have neither one of them, at least, calling...
“I left a note,” Ryan says, he rolls over on this back, joins Dean in staring at the ceiling. “Does that look like?”
“Yeah,” Dean nods. “Note?” he prompts.
“I left one, I promised that I would let people know when I left town,” Dean sighs a breath of relief; at least he won’t be getting a frantic phone call from somebody because Ryan has apparently vanished into the ether. “Jon will find it when he flies into L.A. in a couple of days.”
“Ryan?”
“Jon’s mad at me, I just,” he can feel Ryan shake his head next to him. “He’s supposed to be with Brendon and Spencer, it was selfish of me,” he says softly.
“You’re allowed to have people, friends, a life,” Dean says.
“No, I’m not. I have a mission, an assignment here that I’m supposed to be focusing on. I was…”
“Someone yelled at you.”
“Someone reminded me that I’m not human, that I won’t be human and that pretending to be human is only going to hurt people that I don’t want to hurt and never meant to hurt.”
Sam and Ruby are already at a table in the diner when Dean arrives with Ryan on his heels. There’d been a bag that Dean hadn’t noticed sitting on the floor and it apparently contained Ryan’s toiletries and clothing.
They’ve had a busy morning, there have already been showers and an argument over whether Ryan will be staying or going.
Dean had wanted to send him back to California before someone noticed that he was missing and Dean had to deal with pissed off musicians again; Ryan had insisted that he was staying and that nothing Dean said was going to change his mind.
“Ryan,” Sam looks up and spots them, he shoots a questioning look at Dean and Dean shakes his head. Sam winces like he can still feel the punch that Pete threw when Ryan had vanished and they’d thought him gone forever.
Dean lets Ryan slide into the booth and then sits beside him. Watches while Ryan straightens the silverware on his napkin and takes a sip of the water glass sitting there.
“Sam,” Ryan says finally, he looks over at Ruby and his eyes narrow. Dean looks at her as well; she has wide eyes and is attempting to look sweet and innocent.
She’s not pulling it off very well in the face of an actual angel sitting across the table from her.
He knows that angels can be douches and assholes and mean and uncaring to those that they consider under them (like the majority of the human race), there’s still almost an air of purity that surrounds them despite that.
“And who is this?” Ryan asks. His voice is bland and uncaring though his eyes are boring holes into Ruby like he can see right directly into her, Dean would almost feel sorry for her, but then he remembers that she’s a demon and Sam is apparently fucking her, and he doesn’t trust her anyway.
“This is Ruby,” Sam says, he lays an arm over the back of the booth and Ruby leans back enough so that her head is touching his arm. Dean clenches a hand into a fist under the table. “She’s on our side.”
“Is she,” Ryan says. He’s still staring at Ruby, Ruby attempts a smile, it looks fake and insincere and Dean wishes that Sam could see it.
Could see Ruby for who she really is and not for who she purports herself to be.
“Yeah, I am,” Ruby says, she tilts her head to one side and narrows her eyes at Ryan. “And you are?”
“Ryan,” he says, the waitress chooses that moment to appear at the end of their table and she almost drops her pad and pencil on the table when she catches sight of Ryan there.
“Aren’t you?” she asks, wide eyes, Dean can see her hands shaking. They’re not going to need to worry about anyone finding Ryan’s note, this is going to be all over the Internet by the time their waitress gets their order placed.
“No,” Ryan says. Dean can tell she doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t press the issue.
“Can I take your order?” she asks, her voice is breathless and she’s staring at Ryan.
“Eggs over easy, hashbrowns, bacon, wheat toast, with butter,” Ryan slides the menu he hadn’t even opened down the table. “And coffee, the largest coffee you have and an orange juice.”
The waitress stares at him, the point of her pencil is pressed to her pad but it hasn’t moved.
“Aren’t you going to write that down?” Ryan asks.
She stares at him and Ryan sighs, glances over at Dean, doesn’t look at where Sam is disguising the fact that he’s laughing by coughing softly into his napkin. Ruby is patting him on the back but still studying Ryan.
“He’ll have the same thing,” Ryan says. The waitress nods and Ryan finally makes a shooing motion with his hand. She stumbles away and Dean rolls his eyes as he looks over at him.
“How long are you planning on staying again?”
Their eggs are completely wrong and the toast is white not wheat, at least it’s food though. Ruby leaves while they’re eating, her business with Sam apparently finished, either that or she just didn’t want to deal with Ryan staring at her with barely disguised disdain.
“She is on our side,” Sam says while Ryan nibbles on the end of a piece of toast, for being hungry he’s not eating a lot.
Ryan rolls his eyes.
“You have horrible taste in companions, present company excluded of course,” Ryan says. He puts the toast down, picks up his coffee and makes a face while he’s sipping at it. “It’s a good thing I’ll be hanging out for a while.”
Sam looks at Dean and Dean shrugs as he shovels hash browns into his mouth.
Ryan will either tell them what’s going on or not (Dean’s money is on not), he’s really trying not to think about all the probably reasons why Ryan would decide that now is a good time to travel with them.
None of them are good and all of them end in Apocalypse Now.
Zack is late, Zack has never been late before and Spencer is trying to decide if it’ll make him look like more of a worrier then people already think he is if he picks up his phone and calls him again.
He’s left four messages already.
He’s on a first name basis with the majority of the companies that Ryan’s bills come out through, just because Ryan is successfully trying to cut them out of his life doesn’t mean that Spencer wants him to freeze to death or starve to death or be evicted from his home.
All the split had meant for Spencer was that he got to take a short break from his Ryan-tending duties, he’d handed all pertinent information over to Jon and hoped Jon could handle them and Ryan while he tried to keep Brendon from falling completely apart.
Handing over those duties subsequently meant that almost all of his updates on Ryan came from Ryan himself on Twitter because Jon had lasted a month and a half before he decided he needed a break; he’s been in Chicago for the last month instead of making sure that Ryan is eating and sleeping like a normal person.
Spencer’s been thinking through possible scenarios, but there doesn’t seem to be any easy way that he can see for him to insinuate himself back into Ryan’s life.
Especially since everyone seems to blame Ryan for the split, regardless of how many interviews they give where they say that it was a mutual decision.
Especially with Ryan turning avoiding anyone connected in any way with Ramen or FBR into an art form.
“Maybe he died,” Brendon says. His leg is going a mile a minute, he keeps looking at the clock on the microwave, like it’ll make Zack arrive that much faster.
“Someone would have called us,” Spencer says sensibly.
The door opens and they both turn to look, Brendon launches himself at Zack the millisecond that he sees him.
Zack catches him with ease of someone used to dealing with Brendon Urie and pats him on the head when Brendon backs off a little.
Of course then Brendon sees Jon following Zack through the door and Brendon flings himself at Jon instead, Spencer watches the door but Ryan doesn’t follow and Jon closes the door when he manages to extricate himself from Brendon’s grip.
“Was there an accident, a murder; did you save a kitten from a tree?” Brendon asks. Zack rolls his eyes at him.
“Jon called me about 1:30 this morning, said that he’d just flown in and got to the house and found that Ryan left a note and has apparently skipped town,” Zack says.
Spencer looks over at where Jon is bent over the coffee pot, he’s carefully putting together things to make coffee, he doesn’t look back.
“Do we know where he went?” Spencer asks. Even though he’s pretty sure that he knows the answer. There’s really only one place that Ryan would go now that Brendon and Spencer and Pete aren’t an option in his mind.
“Couple of fans posted crappy cell phone pictures from a diner a couple of days ago, he’s apparently with Dean and Sam Winchester,” Zack says.
Fans are good for a lot of things, keeping tabs on errant, runaway band members is one of them.
They’re also good for making a mountain out of a molehill; none of them had though the split was a bad thing until the fans had started taking the interviews apart and focused on all the things that Ryan had said, coupled with what he hadn’t said and all of a sudden they hadn’t talked in months (even though Ryan had been sharing a bed with Brendon and Pete right up to the end) and at each others throats (even though Ryan had spent a week with Spencer and his parents right before they made the decision).
Spencer rubs at a spot dead center on his forehead, it’s throbbing now and a glance at Brendon shows him leaning into Jon’s side.
Everyone’s miserable; the split was supposed to make everyone happy, let everyone work on the music that they wanted to work on in the hopes that maybe when those albums came out they would be ready to be a band again.
They’re working on the music but Spencer doesn’t think that anyone is even close to as happy as they lead others into thinking they are.
“We should go,” Brendon says. “Before we’re late and Pete worries.”
Spencer nods and Zack heads towards the door, probably to get the car. Jon is still fiddling with the coffee maker.
“Brendon…” Spencer starts.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Brendon says, he sounds tired. And as much as he professes to be pissed off at Ryan right now, Spencer knows that he and Pete would welcome him back with open arms, then possibly tie him to a bed.
Dean wakes up and even with the curtains drawn he can still see that it’s dark out. He doesn’t know what woke him, can’t figure it out until he turns his head to the left and sees that Ryan’s awake.
His eyes are pointed in Dean’s direction, Dean’s pretty sure that Ryan isn’t seeing him though.
“I think that Brendon and Spencer are sleeping together,” Ryan says. His voice sounds hollow.
“Do you really believe that?” Dean asks. The last time that he’d seen them all interact Brendon and Pete had seemed pretty devoted to Ryan, if not a little confused about the whole angel thing.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Ryan says. “I wouldn’t blame them if they were.”
He rubs at his eyes with one hand. He looks exhausted and Dean wonders if he’s even sleeping when they go to bed or if he just lays there and thinks up things that his boyfriends are doing without him, thinks of all the ways that his best friends might be betraying him.
Dean’s sleeping; he’s never felt so well-rested.
“Ryan…”
“I have a mission,” Ryan says softly. “It’s critically important and someone reminded me of that fact.”
“Someone’s a douche then, you’re allowed to have a life,” Dean says.
“No, I’m not, that’s not what I’m here for, people will forget all about Ryan Ross eventually, he’ll start to fade and people won’t even remember that there was a boy that was named that, Panic will always have had only three members, Brendon and Pete will always have been just Brendon and Pete.”
“You’re not going anywhere Ross, and I think those friends of yours are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure they get you back.”
Ryan sighs and ignores him. “Zachariah wasn’t wrong about anything. He just reminded me that I have priorities here that don’t include the humans that I’ve been dallying with.”
“I was right, complete douche. Zachariah your boss?”
Ryan laughs, a quick one that sounds like it was shocked out of him, it sounds amused nevertheless.
“No,” Ryan says.
He doesn’t elaborate.
“You know, I’ve been getting the rooms with two beds for a reason, Sam walks in and finds out that you’re not sleeping in it he’s going to make fun forever.”
Castiel arrives one morning, three days after Ryan has joined them.
Ryan is a quiet entity in the back seat of the car, when Dean looks in the rearview mirror sometimes he’s surprised to see Ryan sitting there, like he’s forgotten that he’s back there.
It’s those times that the words that Ryan had spoke, how people would maybe start to forget him, makes him wonder if Ryan is ceasing to exist and in his place is the angel that has been playing the role for however long Ryan Ross has known that he’s not exactly human.
Dean wonders what they should be calling him; he has a feeling that ‘Ryan’ isn’t the name that he used prior to falling and becoming human.
They’ve stopped for the night, Sam has made the run for food and Dean has the laptop fired up.
Six unexplained deaths. Six nineteen year old males, no bruises, no marks, no sign of how they died other then the fact that they’re dead.
Ryan is cross-legged in the middle of the bed, he has a book open on his legs, Dean doesn’t think that he’s actually reading it.
They have one room because that’s all the motel had available. Sam has already made that face that says that he’s going to argue against having to share with anyone, Dean will let him win (though he’ll make him work for it) but only because he’s almost used to have Ryan pushed up alongside his back.
Ryan has absolutely no concept of personal space.
Castiel appears while Dean is browsing through newspaper articles, looking for some glimmer of information. Right now they’re completely blind.
Castiel makes a noise that sounds a little bit like shock, when Dean turns around Ryan and Castiel are staring at each other.
He doesn’t think that he’s ever seen Castiel rattled.
“I’m assuming you two know each other already,” Dean says. “Considering Ryan vouched for you and all.”
Castiel blinks at him; Dean has no clue what to call the expression on Castiel’s face.
“R-Ryan vouched for me?” Castiel asks, he stumbles over Ryan’s name like he’s not using to saying it and it lends a little more credence to a niggling of an idea that he’s had that the angels don’t know Ryan as Ryan.
He wonders if he asks, nicely, if Ryan would tell him what they should really be calling him.
“He likes you,” Castiel says, Dean huffs out a breath. He’d been alone in the motel; Sam had dragged Ryan out behind him to get food insisting in that way that Sam has (with big puppy dog eyes and down-turned sad lips) that Ryan needed to see some sunlight or something because Sam was starting to worry that he’d turned into a vampire while they weren’t looking.
“What?”
“He likes you,” Castiel repeats, he sounds bewildered by the fact, like he doesn’t understand how Ryan can like him.
“That surprises you?” Dean asks. “I’m a likable guy.”
They’ve still got no leads on the mystery death thing, Sam’s getting frustrated and Dean knows there’s something going on here but he just can’t find that one clue that would put all the pieces into context.
He’s got a headache that aspirin isn’t cutting it for anymore; he almost wants to see if Sammy will punch him so he can at least have ten minutes of ringing in his head instead of throbbing pain.
“He is,” Castiel cuts himself off, and stares at the ugly painting on the wall above Dean’s head. “We are not allowed to get attached, but he has attachments to you, and those others that he was with.”
“You mean those others that your buddy Zachariah made him cut out of his life, because of his assignment?” Dean wonders if he sounds as pissed about that as he feels. Ryan’s only like one fifth of a person right now and Dean can tell that he misses Brendon and Pete and Spencer and Jon like a part of himself has been cut out.
“Zachariah could not have made him do anything that he did not want to do, that he did not believe to be the right thing to do,” Dean raises an eyebrow at him, because the Ryan they’re currently traveling with had most definitely not wanted to cut his friends loose.
“Who is he Cas? I mean, you don’t sound like you want to be calling him Ryan, you sound like you want to be calling him something else. What’s his real name?”
Castiel looks at him, his eyes are a little wider then usual which Dean takes to mean that he surprised him.
“I can not tell you,” Castiel says. He sounds slightly regretful of that fact.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Either, or both. He will tell you, I am sure, when the time is right.”
“Or when it can most be used to bite us in the ass.”
Ryan disappears twelve days after he starts traveling with them, Dean wakes up one morning and he doesn’t have Ryan curled up behind him and it doesn’t dawn on him that Ryan’s not in the bathroom until he really wakes up and realizes that the bathroom door is open and the light is not on.
Ryan’s bag is gone and there is no note.
Dean hopes that he went home, went to talk to the others and figure out how they can do this without Ryan looking like he’s continually bleeding out.
He knows he hasn’t.
Dean runs, like if he runs fast enough he can stop this even though he knows it’s too late.
It was too late when Castiel had broken him out of his pretty prison, when they’d gone to Chuck who’d looked at them blankly and in shock and asked them how they were there.
Castiel had gathered what was left of his power to send Dean to try and stop Sam from killing Lilith (and wow he never would have thought he’d ever be trying to save the hell bitch but there you go) and he’d stayed there, in front of Chuck, to battle the Archangel that was coming to protect Chuck.
He’d never trusted Ruby, he’d wanted to because Sam had. But something about her had never sat right with him and he knows now that it was the blood and just Ruby herself. Standing there watching her crow at Sam at how much more powerful he was with her standing beside him.
How he didn’t need Dean.
By the time he gets through the doors it’s too late, he’s there to hold Ruby while Sam ends her, but they’ve still lost.
They gaze at the portal, at the black, smoky essence that is Lucifer rising from his prison and suddenly they’re gone. Out of the room and on a plane of all things.
He doesn’t even bother freaking out, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, they’re so completely fucked.
Jon is frantic, Spencer has been trying for close to an hour to calm him down and make sense of what is being said.
Jon freaking out on the phone had been what got them all to make the trip to Ryan’s in the first place.
Spencer had been half-expecting to see Ryan finally returned from his sojourn with the Winchesters and either dead or unconscious on the floor; while he knows that Ryan’s ‘drug-use’ has been perpetuated to keep people from looking too closely at the other things that are different about him since Sam Winchester tried to hand him over to Hell; sometimes when it’s days (almost a month) between phone calls or he’s only able to communicate with Ryan via Twitter it’s hard to remember that.
Ryan is nowhere to be seen though, and Spencer can’t see any evidence that Ryan has even been there.
Pete is on the phone; Spencer doesn’t know with who, though Spencer thinks that if he’s not already on the phone with the men in white coats arranging to have Jon taken away, that he will be soon.
Brendon is hovering behind Spencer, he doesn’t deal well with this and the words coming out of Jon’s mouth are gibberish.
Just, “and, gone, like, and,” and lots of heavy sighing and exasperation.
Alex isn’t saying anything, just sitting on the couch that Brendon had helped him to and staring with wide eyes at nothing.
He’s been that way since they got there, Spencer doesn’t have any clue what happened but it can’t have been good. And it has to have something to do with Ryan, there’s no other reason why Alex would be catatonic on the couch and Jon would be freaking out.
Jon should have called the second that Ryan returned.
If Ryan had returned.
Spencer slaps Jon finally, it’s gentle and he doesn’t want to; but it’s the only thing he can think of to do, and it always works in the movies, when someone is in shock and babbling someone else always smacks them across the face. Jon blinks and looks at him with a betrayed expression, rubbing at his cheek, he stops babbling so Spencer counts it as a win even though he knows he’ll be buying Jon seven pairs of flip flops and a pair for himself as penance.
Jon takes a deep breath, another one; it takes five of them and Jon dragging his hands through his hair repeatedly before he looks at Spencer and seems somewhat like the Jon Walker that Spencer remembers, albeit with hair sticking up on end and wild eyes.
“Ryan,” Jon starts. Spencer can see Brendon visibly jolt, Pete’s hand drops to his side, his cell phone sliding from his hand onto the floor, Spencer hopes that he ended his call.
“Ryan was here?” Brendon asks, wide eyes and hope in his voice.
“For a second, barely a minute, I didn’t even have time to figure out where I’d put my cell phone, let alone call and let you know and then he was gone,” Jon says, Zack has his phone out before the words are even completely out of Jon’s mouth.
“He just, showed up, and he was standing there, right in front of me, and then there was a flash of, of something, I don’t know and Ryan just, he looked at me and he was, he was so sad, Spence. He said he was sorry and told me that we had to protect each other and then… he looked… he’s gone…” Jon looks stricken. Spencer pulls him into a hug. Arms tight and Jon sort of collapses against him.
He twists his head and can see Brendon clutching at Pete’s hands and he can see tears in Brendon’s eyes before he twists his head away and buries it in Pete’s shoulder.
“I don’t think he’s coming back again,” Jon says into his shoulder.
Dean’s phone rings and he almost doesn’t answer it, he really doesn’t want to answer it.
He’s had the same headache going on two weeks now and every single call has been someone calling to tell him about a demon or a monster or something that he and Sam need to come and deal with right away.
He knows the world’s fucking falling apart; he’s only got a front row seat for it.
But he looks at the caller ID and it shows ‘Smith’, there’s only one Smith that he knows and there’s only one reason why Spencer Smith would be calling him.
Except Ryan’s not with him, Dean has no clue where Ryan is and he’s not answering his special-super-duper-top-secret-only-to-be-used-in-angel-emergencies cell phone either so Dean has no way to find out where he is and what they should be doing.
No Ryan, no Castiel.
Only Zachariah has popped his head in to gloat about ending the world and insisting that Dean take his rightful place, Dean hadn’t even known if he’d drawn the symbol right, he’d only seen it the one time.
Hastily sketched out in Castiel’s blood and infused with his power.
It had been enough to get him out of his pretty prison, and it was enough to zap Zachariah out of the house, which alone almost makes the fact that his hand is throbbing in pain in time with his headache worth it.
“He’s not here,” he says. Sam looks over at him and he mouths Smith at him. Sam flinches like he’s expecting Pete Wentz to reach through the phone and punch him again.
“He has that other phone,” Spencer says. “That special one that we’re not supposed to know about.” There’s a tone in his voice that tells Dean that he’s desperate for some small measure of hope and Dean wishes that he could give it to him.
“He’s not answering that one either,” Dean says, he knows this because he’s been trying it every half hour in the hopes that Ryan will pick up, or at least turn it back on to check his messages. “We can come to you if you want, maybe put our heads together, come up with something.”
They need someplace safe to stash Chuck anyway.
They make good time though Dean still has to physically force himself to not gag Chuck and stash him in the trunk.
Chuck’s just rambling about everything and nothing, and not a single word coming out of his mouth can help them figure out what had happened to Castiel or where Ryan has vanished to.
What the hell they’re supposed to be doing.
You know, useful things.
The remainder of Ryan’s band is apparently holed up with Pete and Dean keeps one hand locked around Chuck’s arm as they walk to the door.
It’s not going to take long before the Angel’s come looking for their Prophet and Dean wants to have Chuck under lock and key and hidden from them before it happens.
He’s just not sure how to make that happen.
Spencer flings the door open before Dean can even raise a hand to knock, evidently they’ve been waiting for them and a look behind him shows Sam with his shoulders hunched.
“Who’s this?” Spencer asks as he leads them into the bowels of Pete’s house. Dean wonders if he should have asked for breadcrumbs to leave a trail to the door.
“This is Chuck, we need somewhere to stash him for a while,” Dean says.
The room that Spencer leads them into is brightly lit, Brendon and Pete are sitting side by side on the couch, they look small and scared. Jon is sitting in front of Brendon on the floor and a guy that Dean doesn’t know is sitting semi-catatonic in a chair.
Zack is pacing in front of a window, cell phone pressed to his ear.
“He’s trying to track down Ryan,” Spencer says.
“Pretty sure Ryan is off the grid,” Dean says, he glances at Chuck and Chuck grins at him, nods.
“So far off the grid that off the grid is probably a misnomer,” Chuck agrees.
“Hmm, and here I thought you were a Prophet,” comes Zachariah’s voice from behind them. Dean whirls, pushes Chuck behind him and Sam already has his gun out.
“What do you want?” Dean snarls, he wants to throw a punch, if anyone deserves to get knocked down a peg or fifteen it’s Zachariah.
Starting an apocalypse, Jesus this guy isn’t the brightest tool in the shed and he hopes that Zachariah isn’t an indication of how intelligent the other Angels they’ll be dealing with are.
Ryan had always seemed fairly intelligent, Castiel as well, Anna from what he’d seen didn’t lack in the brains department either.
“What do I want, what do I want, so glad that you asked that of me,” Zachariah walks the room and Dean keeps him in his sights while Sam keeps the two that came with him in his.
“Then why don’t you answer the question,” Spencer snaps. Dean wants to tell him to not draw attention to himself. Pete and Brendon and Jon seem to be doing a fantastic job of attempting to disappear into the couch.
Zack is by the window and for a big guy he’s managing to blend into the curtains with ease.
“Snippy,” Zachariah stands in front of Spencer and beams at him. “I can see why he likes you.”
“Hey asshole that thought freeing Lucifer from hell was a good idea, over here,” Dean snaps his fingers and glares at Spencer. Spencer seems to take the hint and goes to sit on the couch next to Brendon. Jon wraps a hand around his ankle, Brendon leans into his side.
“Now Dean,” Zachariah says. He’s got that ‘we’re all friends’ look on his face; Dean isn’t buying what he’s selling. Not this time.
“What. Do. You. Want?”
“You know what I want, Dean Winchester. No need to hash that out again,” Zachariah grins at him and Dean snarls.
“And I already told you to shove it up your ass,” except not in so many words, he thinks that Castiel growing the start of a back bone and helping Dean get out of there pretty much said the same thing.
“You’ll do it,” Zachariah says, he sounds so certain, so sure. Dean wants to ask him how he can have so much certainty, but then he remembers that Zachariah is a fucking whack job that worked to free Lucifer in the first place. “You have no choice, it’s fate, destiny, its your fate, your destiny.”
“It’s my fucking choice, free will,” Dean says. “All us lowly humans, we have it; I’m not doing a goddamn thing that I don’t want to.”
Zachariah’s lips curl into a smirk of sorts.
“You’ll do it,” Zachariah says again. He stops in front of him, leans close and stares at him like he’s decided that Dean’s a puzzle that needs solving. “I don’t know why he likes you so much; you’re nothing but a nuisance, if we didn’t need you alive for the time being…”
“You’d what, kill me yourself?” Dean stutters a laugh, “you didn’t have Castiel drag me out of hell just to shove me right back in.”
“That, wasn’t my call, that was the last assignment handed out before our Father went silent on us,” Zachariah says.
“Besides you apparently need me to kill off Lucifer before you can try.”
“Actually we don’t need you to do anything but be willing.”
Dean exchanges a confused glance with Sam. “What?”
“You didn’t think you were actually going to kill Lucifer? Did you?” Zachariah laughs, like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “You’re just a vessel; you’re Michael’s vessel, his sword to wield against Lucifer.”
“And he needs me willing, Michael needs me to say the all important, yeah, sure,” Dean says slowly. “Is that what Ryan’s mission was, protect me, keep me safe, so that Michael can walk around in my fucking skin?”
He’s pissed at the thought, that Ryan had only been hanging around so that he could protect him until an Angel could get access to his body.
He’d thought Ryan had actually liked him, he hadn’t thought that Ryan had been using him just like Ruby had been using Sam.
A means to an end.
Zachariah smirks at him, it’s cocky and Dean has an insane urge to punch him.
“You weren’t Ryan’s mission,” Zachariah says his name with derision, like Dean’s not important enough to be Ryan’s assignment and that he loathes having to utter that plebian name.
Dean is important enough, even if only in his own head and Ryan has never told him what his true name is, so unless someone else wants to spill the beans they’re all going to have to suck it up and use it.
“You weren’t his mission, but he made you a part of it,” Zachariah says.
“You don’t know what his assignment was at all, do you?” it’s Dean’s turn to laugh, and he does so with a gleeful edge.
Zachariah narrows his eyes at him and opens his mouth.
He doesn’t get a chance to say anything, because there’s a blink and miss it moment where Castiel wasn’t there and then suddenly is.
He looks good, alive; Dean almost breathes a sigh of relief.
Zachariah doesn’t feel the same sense of relief Dean thinks, not if the way his goons descend on Castiel is any indication. Castiel makes short work of them, bright lights and two Angels gone. Zachariah looks to be ready to say something but obviously chooses survival over death and vanishes.
Dean thinks that was probably the smartest thing that Zachariah has done since Dean had the misfortune of meeting him, because Castiel is showing emotions on his face and the most prevalent one is infuriated.
“Good to see you in one piece,” Dean says.
“You can not stay here,” Castiel says.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Dean says. “Just needed someplace to stash Chuck.”
“Chuck is not in any danger, but if you keep him under the roof with you, he will put you in danger, they’ll be able to track him and we need to make them unable to track you,” Castiel says.
He touches Dean’s shoulder with one hand, Sam’s with the other and the pain is like nothing he’s ever felt. It hurts to breathe for a minute, off to his side he can see Sam struggling to take shallow breaths, hands on his knees.
Castiel’s hands drop to his side and he looks at Dean with something akin to awe.
“What?” Dean asks, he presses a hand to his chest.
Castiel shakes his head, “Nothing, for a moment I thought… but I must have been mistaken,” he sounds troubled but Dean doesn’t call him on it.
Not yet.
Jon is pretty sure he has to be dreaming.
He knows this because there is no way that Ryan is sitting on the edge of his bed. Not when everyone and their brother is searching for him.
Ryan must have ruled at hide and seek when he was a kid.
Jon likes to think he’s pretty important to Ryan, but there are at least three other people that he knows are more important then him, and that’s not counting the one that Ryan had decided was important enough that he’d travel with him and his brother for almost two weeks just prior to his disappearing act.
Two of those four are three doors down and would make room for Ryan between them because that’s his place.
Ryan smiles at him, like he knows what he’s thinking and touches his shoulder.
“I’m here for you Jon,” he says.
Definitely a dream, Ryan is an Angel, not a psychic, he can’t read minds and…
“Everyone’s looking for you,” Jon says. “That angel, Castiel? He’s worried and I think Dean and Spencer are going to use up all their minutes trying to get you on your cell phone.” He curls his arm around his pillow and peers up at Ryan. It’s dark in the room, but Ryan is kind of glowing.
“I’m okay, I’m just, things happened so fast, too fast, I wasn’t prepared,” Ryan says, he bites his lip and looks at the door longingly. “And I’m not staying for long, just… I have something I need to do, something that I didn’t have time for when the final seal broke.”
Jon reaches out a hand and links his fingers with Ryan’s. Squeezes.
“You could go see them,” Jon says. “I won’t tell anyone,” he promises. “They’ll probably think it’s the best dream ever.”
Ryan laughs a little, his eyes look sad and older then Jon remembers them being.
“Just being here long enough to do this, it puts all of you at risk, I can’t…” Ryan shakes his head. “I just want you all to be safe, so that when this is all over…”
Ryan’s eyes are wet and he’s not looking at Jon anymore.
“You’ll always be able to come home,” Jon says. “We’ll, all of us, will welcome you home with open arms.”
Spencer and Jon are the best ones with the guns. Dean teaches them how to shoot, how to protect themselves and they all hole up at Pete’s.
It takes Bobby six days to get to them, but that’s probably mostly due to the fact that he kept stopping to fight shit. The three of them spend a couple of days trying to figure out their next plan of attack.
Because they need a game plan, so they can be doing something other then fighting the seemingly never-ending fires that keep popping up.
Bobby finally leaves, goes back to his own home and becomes a communication center for all of them. Sending the Hunters they have left off to fight the things that crawled out of Hell when the barrier holding them back fell; he feeds Dean and Sam information whenever he finds something of interest.
It’s not as often as Dean would like. Sometimes it feels like they’re cut off from everyone else, holed up in this house with the former companions of an Angel; hunted by Angels and Demons themselves.
Castiel appears and disappears at random times. He spends one afternoon peering at Pete’s back through the window in the kitchen; Pete is running around in the backyard with no shirt on, playing with Hemmy, it’s not an uncommon sight.
“You looking for something? You keep staring at Pete like that Brendon’s going to take exception,” Dean asks. Not to mention what Ryan would do if he found it.
“Ryan has removed their protection sigils,” Castiel says quietly.
Dean moves to stand next to him and looks out at where Pete is kneeling, Hemmy is licking his face, Pete is rubbing hands down his back and Brendon is a short distance away lounging on the grass.
“Why would he…?” Dean shakes his head. These are Ryan’s most important people, to remove the protection that he’d put in place for whatever reasons just don’t make any sense.
“I only looked because I was not sure if he had the time before Lucifer rose to do so,” there’s a tone to his voice that sounds like Castiel is troubled by this. “If they were there I thought to hide them, to cloak them like I’ve cloaked you and Sam...”
Dean looks out the window, he’d said one word before, had uttered it just to prove a hunch, and it had worked over phone lines, he utters the word now and nothing happens.
“If he had left them in place they would have been a beacon, a shining light for anyone who knew how to activate the sigils to locate them. ‘Here are humans protected by an angel of the Lord’. They would have been a target, if only to attempt to draw him out of hiding.”
“So he’s protecting them,” Dean scratches his forehead, he’s getting frustrated with the headache and Sam has started giving him looks when he tosses back the aspirin now. “By not protecting them?”
Castiel turns away from the window and Dean turns as well, starts slightly when he sees Spencer and Jon standing in the doorway, Sam is leaning against the refrigerator.
He hadn’t even heard any of them enter the room.
“When did he remove them?” Spencer asks softly, he’s got one arm wrapped around himself like he’s cold; the other is latched onto Jon’s arm.
“Yours, theirs,” Castiel gestures towards the backyard with one of his hands. “They were removed some time ago, they have almost completely faded into obscurity, if you do not know what to look for you would not be able to tell that they were even there once. Yours,” he looks directly at Jon, “were removed just days ago, a week at the most, as were the ones that were on the young man who does not speak.”
“We haven’t heard a whisper from Ryan in almost a month,” Dean says. “How did he remove them without…”
“He has been here, in this house, he would have had to lay hands on both of them in order to remove them,” Castiel sounds almost hurt, that Ryan had been in the house and not sought him out… hell Dean is feeling the same way. He’d kind of thought of the kid as a friend of sorts.
Of course there’s also the fact that Ryan has seemingly made himself invisible, like Castiel has made Sam and Dean invisible; both sides are searching for him, Zachariah with more of an intent to find then Lucifer.
Lucifer seems split between poking at Sam and finding Ryan.
Whoever Ryan is supposed to be, he’s pretty important to both sides. Dean thinks the day is coming up, probably sooner then either side would like, that someone is going to have to tell them why.
“I had a dream,” Jon says slowly. “I thought it was a dream, because he’s in hiding and why would he…”
Spencer makes a sound.
“He was really there? I wasn’t dreaming?” Jon asks, Castiel nods slowly; Jon bites his lip and exchanges a look with Spencer. “Don’t tell them,” he says finally. “They don’t need to know.”
The unmasking of the Trickster as the Archangel Gabriel doesn’t come as so much of a shock as the fact that once they know who he really is they can’t seem to get rid of him.
Gabriel won’t even explicitly side with them, just smirks at them and tells them that he prefers to keep all his options open.
Then he’ll throw a Frisbee for Hemmy or mutter about Pete’s seeming ban of sugar in his house (Brendon hopped up on sugar and Red Bull is not a fun experience, Dean agrees with Pete’s ban in theory if not practice.)
It’s just frustrating to walk downstairs and see him sharing a cup of coffee with Jon or watching TV with Pete and Brendon when he won’t admit that he’s allied with them. The draw for him seems to be Ryan’s family and Dean can’t figure out exactly why though he’s sure it has to be an Angel thing.
“They are his only link to who he was right now, and he has been far removed from our brethren for a lengthy period of time,” Castiel says one afternoon, Dean has been working out in Pete’s gym. Dean isn’t sure why Pete has a gym; nobody appears to ever use it besides him and Sam.
Of course Pete had seemed almost surprised that he even had one so it might have just come with the house.
“Ryan’s not talking to him?” Dean asks, he doesn’t think he even really needs to; Ryan isn’t talking to anyone as far as he can see, and the fans that had before kept the others abreast of what was going with Ryan can’t see to find him either. There are rumors going around that he’s dead and that it’s being hidden by Pete and the others for a variety of different reasons; Dean would be working to dispel them but he’s not sure if it’s worth it.
Ryan will pop up when Ryan’s ready to pop up.
He’s punching a bag. He’s been doing that a lot, there are not actual pictures of Lucifer or Zachariah or even Gabriel on it, but he’s always been good at visualization exercises.
“He doesn’t know?” Gabriel asks, Dean doesn’t jump and doesn’t turn, from the sound of Gabriel’s voice it sounds like he’s sitting on the stairs watching.
“Know what?” Dean asks, he throws a vicious punch at the bag, it hurts all the way up to his shoulder and he stops and rolls his shoulders, lets his arms hang at his sides.
When he turns Gabriel is looking at Castiel not him. They’re completely focused on each other. Dean might as well not even be there.
“Who is he?” Dean asks. Gabriel tears his eyes from Castiel and stares at Dean instead.
“He’s my brother,” Gabriel says.
“Yeah, I know that,” Dean rolls his eyes, snorts. Because way to tell him something he already fucking knew. “You’re all one big happy fucked up beyond all recognition family.”
“There was just the seven of us at the beginning,” Gabriel says like Dean hadn’t said anything, though his eyes spark a little with anger. “There was Father and then there was us; Michael, Raphael, Phanuel, Saraqael, Raguel, Camael and me; the others, like Castiel and Zachariah they came later and they’re still my brothers; but those six… they are my brothers, they’re the ones that I stood at the beginning of time with and there is hope that we’ll stand at the end of time together as well.”
“You’re saying that Ryan is an Archangel,” Dean says slowly, because those seven names, there’s only one thing they all have in common and there’s a niggling sense of something that says that he should have known this already. “Ryan, little Ryan, who can barely take care of himself… which one of them is he?”
“Raphael,” Castiel says. His voice is quiet, hushed. Like he doesn’t want anyone to hear him.
“Raphael,” Dean stutters a laugh, “You want me to believe that Ryan is the Archangel Raphael, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Father requested this of him. Father asked him to fall, asked him to perform a task here; it’s why he’s different then Anael, why he was not hunted for falling as she was. Anael fell without the permissions of our Father; Raphael was chosen to do this.”
“You don’t know what his mission is?”
“After my time,” Gabriel says as Castiel shakes his head.
“I was not privy to that information, Father spoke to him alone and Raphael never breathed one word of what was asked of him, not prior to falling, not after he reached enlightenment.”
“Is that why he’s so important? Why Zachariah and Lucifer are both hunting for him?”
“He is an Archangel, the only one left besides Michael that has not explicitly chosen a side,” Castiel says.
“Hey,” Gabriel says hotly.
“You may not have said the words but the fact that you remain here speaks louder then any words need to. You have chosen our side, and all other sides know this. The Archangel Gabriel is aligned with Dean Winchester.”
“So that just leaves Ryan, because from the way that Zachariah talks I’m guessing that Michael is pretty much in their pocket already,” Dean says.
“Wishful thinking on Zachy’s place,” Gabriel says. “I know Michael, he finds out that Zachariah planned this whole thing and actually allowed Lucifer to be freed… well hell hath no fury and all.”
“When can we expect Michael to start showing himself,” Dean says. He’s been wondering that for a while, since Lucifer began making his push at Sam in dreams and visions, whispering in his ear and promising Sam everything and anything.
Michael’s not done that, he’s not even begun and it’s probably all well and good that Dean can say no now, he wonders if he’ll still be able to when Michael really starts actively trying to court his permission to wear his body into a war that Dean’s not sure they can win.
Even with a couple of Archangels in their corner.
“Michael is already here,” Castiel says vaguely, Gabriel eyes him with an arched eyebrow, then looks over at Dean with a knowing expression on his face.
“Really? Was Zach wrong then? He’s going after someone else?” Dean feels oddly disappointed. He doesn’t even get the chance to say no? That hardly seems fair.
“No,” Castiel says. Dean waits but he doesn’t say anything else, just stands there with his hands linked together in front of him and watching Dean.
“Okay.”
“Well look at it this way, all the chess pieces are almost finally in play, so that means that the end is nigh folks.”
“I thought you didn’t want to fight, I thought you just wanted it to be over with.”
“I do, but it’s been a really long time since we had a good old-fashioned family brawl. It should be interesting at least to see if anyone has learned any new tricks,” Gabriel smirks at him. “I’m sure you’ll find you have.”
Dean doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t think he really wants to know either.
Part 2