Archive of Our Own

Dean Winchester is not the last son of a dying planet. He was not bitten by a radioactive anything (to his knowledge), nor does he possess the ability to communicate with any particular kind of animal. Ants are out. Fish don’t care one way or another what he has to say. He didn’t build a cool iron suit, nobody experimented on him, he didn’t get exposed to any gamma radiation. He’s not the god of anything. He’s just a guy who is really hard to beat up.

The vigilante justice thing though. That he’s got.

Plus he looks really fucking badass in black leather.

Every kid dreams of becoming a superhero. Like, every last one. It’s one of those universal things. Some kids just wish they could fly, and Superman can do that so sure, lets be Superman. Batman’s got money and gadgets and a cool car. There’s a huge appeal in superheroes and Dean has always understood that. But unlike pretty much every kid out there, Dean actually did grow up to become a superhero, and he’s got first hand knowledge of the fact that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

This morning, for instance, his alarm clock goes off at six thirty, a reasonable time for a productive member of society to be getting out of bed on a lovely sunny morning, and Dean reaches over to turn the thing off but ends up smashing it beyond repair. Just wrecked. Absolutely destroyed. He’d be picking shards of plastic out of the heel of his hand if his skin weren’t almost entirely immune to that kind of thing. He throws the misshapen remains of his clock into the garbage, makes a mental note to pick up another replacement on his way home, and staggers to the shower to get ready for his day job.

Yeah. Day job. He’s gotta pull the whole Clark Kent thing (no stupid nerd glasses though, Dean always thought that was the worst disguise).

Saving the world doesn’t exactly come with a 401K and biweekly salary.

~*~

“You coming out to the Roadhouse after work tonight?”

He’s standing in the break room pouring coffee into a Styrofoam cup when Cas comes up behind him. Dean’s gotten pretty good at pretending he doesn’t hear people coming a mile away in normal social situations at this point, but it still takes effort most of the time. Cas though, he’s light on his feet. Dean doesn’t have to try as hard with him as he does with other people. Not that he could actually sneak up on Dean, but at least it’s easier to act like a normal person.

“No can do,” Dean tells him, turning to offer Cas the cup he just poured and grabbing a fresh one for himself. “You know I need my beauty sleep.”

“How much beauty sleep can one guy even need?” Cas asks, rolling his eyes. “You can’t come out for one beer? It’s Ash’s birthday!”

Not for the first time, Dean wonders what would happen if Cas knew his secret. It would be so much easier if he didn’t have to lie through his teeth, at least to one person in his life. But he knows it’s a terrible idea. Secret identities are secret for a reason. Also, he basically can’t say no to Cas as it is, and that’s not really leverage he wants a person to have. Especially when that person is the friend he’s been crushing on for years.

“Fine,” Dean capitulates. “One beer.”

“You used to be fun,” Cas says. He doesn’t pout, but he might as well.

“No, I didn’t.”

Dean did used to be fun though. It would be a lie to say otherwise. He used to be a lot of fun. He used to go out for a lot more than one beer, he used to be the life of the party, and he definitely didn’t used to wear a shirt and tie eight hours a day. Dean used to hustle pool. Sometimes he ran credit card scams. He used to party. He used to get laid.

He’d like to say he’s got a neat origin story, but probably nobody would buy his comic book because it’s bland as hell. Boils down to, actually, about the same thing that happened this particular morning. Woke up, smashed alarm clock. Only that time, there was a whole lot more confusion because that sure hadn’t ever happened before, and he’d kinda liked that alarm clock.

He figured out the rest of it pretty much by accident too. Broke a glass in the kitchen one morning and should have cut himself cleaning up the pieces but that didn’t happen. Figured out how strong he was when he slammed a door and ripped the thing clean off its hinges. There’s probably some really valid scientific explanation for how all this came to be, Dean figures, but that would involve shadowy government types and that just seems really unpleasant all around. He doesn’t want to be someone’s guinea pig, has no desire to let doctors draw vial after vial of his blood to see what makes him special. They’d probably try to weaponize him. That’s what happened to Deadpool, he’s pretty sure. Or maybe that was Wolverine.

“How are we even sure it’s Ash’s birthday?” Dean counters. “I mean I’m not gonna begrudge a guy his secrets but I’m pretty sure 90 percent of his personnel file is redacted. The only thing I know for sure is that Ash isn’t short for Ashley and that Johnson absolutely is not his real last name.”

Cas cocks his head to the side, staring at Dean like he’s speaking in tongues. “It isn’t?”

“Yeah dude. I’m not even sure how he managed to get hired here except that he’s the best IT guy under the sun, but like, the man’s a mystery. So yeah, I highly doubt he gave human resources his real date of birth. It’s probably just his cover story’s birthday. I bet he’s got a different alias in every state.”

“You read too many comic books,” Cas tells him. He’s probably right.

Cas is probably the only person in the world that Dean’s considered telling his secret to, ill advised as it would be. He thinks about it often. He’s certainly the hardest person to keep in the dark. Sometimes, Dean thinks he might be starting to suspect something, and then he pulls back for a while under the guise of being really busy, or sick, or really working on his car. You know. Bullshit.

Classic catch-22 though. He can’t get as close to Cas as he’d like to, because every comic book ever has made it super clear that nobody can successfully keep a secret identity from their significant other, and if Dean had his way then Cas would be very significantly his other. But even if he decided he wanted to take that plunge, get close, and tell Cas his secret, comic books also tell him that the significant others of people who run around at night wearing masks and punching villains tend to meet with disasters of their own. Lois Lane had some problems; the way Dean remembers it. Everyone Bruce Wayne ever dated was either already a superhero and therefore subject to their own dangers, or hell, a supervillain (can’t blame him, Selina Kyle was always worth the risk), but that lawyer friend of his definitely got the rough side of the Joker’s temper. And Wonder Woman’s boy Steve, well, Dean remembers how that movie ended.

Point is, Dean’s got it bad, and he’s going to keep it that way, because the alternatives aren’t pretty. Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier though. He sees Cas every day at work, and Cas is the majority of his social life too. Has been for years. Dean is perfectly capable of making friends, he’s a natural charmer, but he made a decision a long time ago to keep things quiet and simple. Easier to keep people from finding out your secrets if there are no people. Cas managed to worm his way in though. They connected so easily. And now Cas is the person he tells everything to. Well, almost everything. Everything except the two biggest secrets a guy could have. He’s a masked vigilante who runs around beating up bad guys by moonlight, and he’s in love with his best friend.

~*~

The Roadhouse is exactly the kind of bar you’d expect Ash to hang out in, if you knew anything about Ash. Dean knows him about as well as anyone else in the company does, which isn’t saying much, but the first time he walked into the Roadhouse, he understood. It wasn’t a pretty bar. It wasn’t so much decorated as it was…in existence. Most everything was made of wood, most of the lighting was bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. But the owner, Ellen, was tougher than a bucket of nails and she’d taken a shine to Ash, the food was way better than you’d expect, and the beer was always cold.

When Dean and Cas walk into the bar, Ash is somehow already there even thought they all left from the same office at presumably the same time. Dean doesn’t question stuff like this anymore when it comes to Ash. For all Dean knows, he’s got some sort of crazy superpower too. If it could happen to Dean, it could happen to anyone. He waves them over just as Ellen is coming by with his drink order.

“Boys,” Ellen greets them. “Beers all around?”

“Yes ma’am,” Dean confirms.

“What took you so long, fellas?” Ash asks teasingly. “Getting slow in your old age?”

“Something like that,” Dean says. He’s learned to just go along with it at this point. Besides, he’s not really sure how old Ash is, so for all he knows Ash is actually significantly his junior.

“I’ll make sure not to drink you boys too far under the table, then. I know Captain Kansas is out there walking little old ladies across the street but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of him helping out surly old men.”

Et tu, Ash?

Even when he’s around people who have no idea that he’s the city’s masked vigilante, he can’t escape that goddamned name.

“I’m pretty sure someone who swings around on a grappling hook fighting crime has more important things to do with their time than assisting the elderly, regardless of their gender,” Cas interjects solemnly, like it’s a very serious subject to be discussing.

“If the boy could fly, maybe he’d have time for both,” Ash suggests helpfully. Ellen arrives with their beers, temporarily giving Dean’s companions a distraction from roasting his alter-ego. Just like always, the beer is ice cold, poured with just the perfect amount of head. Sometimes he thinks Ellen’s tap lines are magical. He can’t think of any other way to explain how every single pint of draught is absolutely flawless. Even a really good bartender screws that up from time to time, and there’s no doubting that she’s got the skills, but man is it uncanny.

Or maybe it’s just the skills. It’s a weird town. Doesn’t mean everything weird is automatically, you know, weird.

“Nachos?” Dean asks, hoping to keep the conversation diverted.

“And pool,” Ash agrees. Dean grimaces. He’s never once beaten Ash at pool, and he doubts tonight will be any different.

~*~

Dean probably could have done without that second beer. His reflexes are fine; even before he got all supercharged it would take more than 2 beers to get him drunk. But it means he lingered and almost got talked into a third beer, and he cannot afford to run late tonight. It’s too important.

Tonight, he’s gonna bag the big one. His arch nemesis. The whole reason he put on this stupid mask in the first place.

Dean didn’t jump into fighting crime the moment he found himself with an abundance of strength. He feels guilty about it sometimes, that it took something big to make him jump into action. It’s what his favorite heroes would do. As soon as they got the means to do so, they’d step up to the plate. But for the most part Dean was just so freaked out by the whole inexplicable thing that he didn’t think of much except keep it a secret.

You know, until the universe slapped him in the face and reminded him what every single Spiderman origin movie he’d ever seen (and there were a lot of them) had said in a heart-string tugging melodramatic voiceover from the late, great Uncle Ben.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Seems a bit heavy handed, but Spiderman’s uncle had a point.

The guy is scum. But he’s scum with connections. They call him Crowley, when they talk about him at all, because they are all really quite terrified of him. He keeps his hands clean but that doesn’t mean no blood is spilled on his account, and he’s really good at never being where the cops think he’s going to be. The guy is basically made of smoke. Dean’s only seen him with his own two eyes twice. The first time he was just in the right place at the wrong time. Turned left when he should have turned right and found himself staring down an alley as Crowley watched his hired muscle beat the crap out of some poor sap who owed him money. Crowley laughed, a hideous noise, left the guy in the alley in a pool of his own blood, and walked back to his sleek black towncar like it was another day at the office. Dean barely managed to stay out of sight until they were in the car and driving off, but it kept him close enough that he heard their conversation before the door closed.

They beat that man near to death over three hundred bucks. Pocket change to a guy like Crowley.

The principle of it, apparently.

Dean nearly broke his phone calling an ambulance. He wished he could have stuck around until they picked him up, but that would result in a statement, and his name on record, and the charges would never stick to this slimeball anyway. Dean couldn’t tell the cops anything the guy in the ambulance couldn’t. Probably less, honestly. There were better ways he could help in that situation, and that was all the motivation he needed to stop being a selfish prick, as he saw it.

The second time he saw Crowley, it took every ounce of restraint he had not to snap his neck with his bare hands. He’d been out for drinks with Cas one Friday night, just unwinding after work, and when he walked into the restroom, Crowley was walking out. He was that close. It would have taken nothing at all. But at least fifty people would have seen it, and there’s no telling who else would get hurt in the process. He had to let Crowley walk away, and it left him seething.

Tonight, he’d fix that.

Sometimes, Dean wishes he had a guy. You know. The guy in the chair. The smart one with the computers who tracks GPS units and stops traffic lights and hacks things. A Ned. A Felicity Smoak. He might have had an easier time finding Crowley if he didn’t have to do the detective work the old-fashioned way. Dean didn’t exactly know anyone with those skills, and he sure didn’t have the money to hire one, and how would that job posting go, anyway?

Unhinged masked vigilante with super strength seeks highly qualified hacker to break laws, infiltrate private computers, and cause general mayhem. Discretion required. Pay is negligible, hours are shit, chance of getting killed in the line of duty is an uncontrolled variable. Interested parties should shine some kind of a floodlight into the night sky because I’m not giving out my personal phone number.

Yeah. The kind of job people dream of.

He’d probably have caught Crowley years ago if he’d had access to that kind of a setup, but he doesn’t, so he had to do things the old-fashioned way. The beating up criminals way. It’s a great stress reliever, but honestly at this point he’s running out of clever ways to request information he knows they’re not going to give up without a fight.  So maybe he got a little creative and put a little tracking device on the last guy he interrogated. Nothing fancy, he ordered it off Amazon, but it was enough for him to follow the guy once he picked himself up off the ground, and that didn’t lead him right to Crowley, but it got him way closer.

The thing that made Crowley so difficult to catch, both for Dean and for the cops, is that he was incredibly secretive about where he was going to be and when. He didn’t have usual haunts or anything like that, no clubs he liked to do business in, and wherever he lived it was buried in so many shell corporations nobody had ever been able to link a property to him. He had money and means, but he had no paper trails they could use, so he was pretty much in the wind. If you were going to catch him, and Dean was going to catch him, then you needed the inside scoop on where he was going to be in time to get there before he left, and you had to make sure he didn’t know you were coming.

Which is why Dean is waiting on a rooftop with his grappling hook ready to go, ready to make his move the second Crowley’s towncar pulls up and take him down before he can set one foot inside the warehouse. Dean doesn’t know what kind of deal is going down tonight. He doesn’t even care. Deal isn’t happening.

He steadies himself as he sees the car coming up the street. Its’ the only car that’s come this way for nearly an hour. He’s certain it’s Crowley’s car, despite it still being too far away to see who is inside. But before he can spring into action, he catches sight of movement out of the corner of his eye and turns to see a streak of blue in the dark.

That fucker again.

Dean tries to forget that he’s not the only thing lurking in the shadows these days. It’s not the old cowboy thing, this town ain’t big enough for the two of us bullshit. It’s just. This guy is such an asshole. First of all, what self respecting superhero wears actual spandex by choice? Dean will grant that his ass looks great in it, he’s man enough to admit that, but really is it necessary? Dean goes for function and comfort, which means motorcycle leather. And secondly, the first time Dean ran into this douchebag he invited Dean to come tag along with him. Tag along! Dean is not a sidekick. He’s his own superhero.

Dean would be lying if he said a good portion of it wasn’t jealousy over the fact that the dude can fly, though. He just wishes the flying wasn’t done in blue spandex, while Dean is trying to take down the biggest crook in the state.

In the time it takes Dean to acknowledge he’s got company, he’s missed his window. Crowley’s men spot the idiot flying through the air and start firing at him, missing, of course, because he’s a moving target and they are also idiots. Desperate to make something of a bad situation, Dean finds an anchor point for his grappling hook and gets himself down to street level. He’s basically bulletproof unless they’re armour piercing rounds he has learned, which these hopefully aren’t, so he charges into the fray with an eye to getting his hands on his target. One of Crowley’s guards turns his gun and fires at Dean, bullets ricocheting off his chest like he’s throwing confetti. When Dean gets close enough, he plants a boot in the middle of the guy’s chest and sends him flying, probably not hard enough to break a rib but eh, that’s not his main concern right now. It clears a path to the car.

The anticipation is palpable as Dean approaches. He’s waited years to bring this guy to justice. He’s going to drop him off at the police station with a big red bow tied around him, like Christmas, and if he has to personally stand guard on the precinct, he will stand trial. His fist closes on the door handle and he rips it open to finally lay his eyes on…

Nothing.

The car is empty.

“FUCK!” Dean bellows, ripping the door off its hinges. He hurls it at the nearest henchman, sending him flying to land in a heap near some garbage cans. The idiot in the spandex is somewhere off to his right dispatching one of the other guys and Dean turns his attention on the last one, still firing bullets like he thinks they’re going to save him at this point. Dean storms up to him and hauls him off the ground by his shirt, letting the menacing effect of his mask’s permanently scowling eyebrows make him seem even more frightening than he already is, which is pretty frightening as far as Dean is concerned.

“Where Is he?”  Dean snarls. The man’s eyes are wide with fear. He is absolutely not cut out for this line of work and he knows it.

“I don’t know!” he cries. Dean thinks he might actually, you know, cry. It doesn’t make him feel any better. He throws the guy to the ground and watches him scamper off with his tail between his legs, then rounds on his least favourite flying superdouche.

“What the fuck?” Dean yells, eyes zeroing in on the prick as he lands almost silently amid the spent shells littering the ground. “I’ve been tracking Crowley for months and you ruined everything! Do you have any idea how much harder he’s going to be to track down now? He’s gonna go to ground He’s not gonna show his face for weeks! Meanwhile his whole operation is gonna go on like nothing happened and innocent people are going to keep getting hurt, all because you, you fucking flashy asshole, had to swoop in and show off!”

And he just stands there, staring at Dean. At least Dean thinks he’s staring. He can’t really see the details of his face, because his eyes are glowing such a vibrant blue that kinda just makes his face look like a streetlamp. But it definitely feels like he’s being stared at, and that makes him even angrier.

“Seriously? You just let Crowley get away and you have nothing to say for yourself, flyboy?” Dean wants to hit him. But he doesn’t hit the good guys, even if they are incompetent assholes.

“Do you know what’s in that warehouse?” He asks. Dean had forgotten how deep his voice is, like he gargles whiskey. He’s speaking softly, but it doesn’t diminish the intensity.

“I don’t care about the warehouse,” Dean spits. “I care about catching Crowley.”

“Go inside,” he presses. “I’m sure the lock won’t be a problem for you.”

Dean narrows his eyes. “After you, flyboy.”

“Whatever you say, Captain Kansas,” he replies with no shortage of spite.

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

“It’s what they call you in the newspapers,” the flyboy replies. “I wasn’t aware of you having another moniker.” He walks up to the door and rips the padlock off like it’s made of paper, and great, not only can he fly but he’s as strong as Dean is. This night just could not get any better.

“I don’t,” Dean snaps back. “Just don’t call me Captain Kansas. It’s a stupid name.”

“What should I call you then?” Dean shrugs, but then remembers that he’s bringing up the rear so his reply can’t be seen.

“Don’t see why you have to call me anything.”

“Well if we’re going to work together to bring Crowley down, I’m going to need something other than ‘hey you’ to get your attention.”

Dean stops in his tracks. “Don’t recall saying I needed help,” he says coldly.

“Really? Is that why you’ve been so effective at bringing him in on your own so far? Because you don’t need help?”

“What I need is for you not to get in my way, asshole. Big difference between that and needing your help.”

“Whatever you say, Captain Kansas,” is the only reply he receives.

“Stop calling me that!!” Dean bellows.

The guy turns around then, slow and controlled, and his glowing blue face looms in the darkness. “Then stop calling me asshole.”

“It’s not a name, it’s an insult, and anyway, I don’t know who the fuck you are. What am I supposed to call you? Steve?” Dean can’t say for sure how he knows, because blue glowing face, but if he had to describe it, he’d say the jerk manages to look pensive. He tilts his head to the side like he’s pondering, then turns back around to walk the rest of the way into the warehouse.

“You may call me Archangel.”

Dean nearly laughs. That’s about as stupid as Captain Kansas.

When he first started this superhero thing, he spent a lot of time trying to come up with a good name for himself. Not that he had anyone to bounce ideas off of, but nothing he thought of seemed quite right. He called himself The Righteous Man for a bit, but like, in his head, where nobody else could hear it, and after a while he got real glad he never said it out loud. Not that he ever, you know, talked to people about this thing. But maybe if he ever came up with a name for himself that he actually wanted to be called he could tell thugs. Give ‘em a name to take back to their bosses before he punches their lights out. Something that would strike fear into the hearts of his enemies and inspire the people to stand up against injustice. Nothing fancy, just regular superhero stuff.

None of the superhero stuff is anywhere near as cool in real life as it is in the comics. Names are just another addition to that list.

He can’t be the Punisher, because that’s already trademarked by Marvel, and Frank Castle is a little too trigger happy for Dean’s taste. He doesn’t have Batman’s rule against killing a bad guy who really needs killing, but overall, he would prefer not to. And everything else that sounds cool is already the name of someone in a comic book or a movie or a Saturday morning cartoon, or hell, all three.

Whatever. Names aren’t important. As long as this Archangel guy stops calling him Captain Kansas, it’ll be fine.

When the Archangel stops, Dean nearly runs into him, but he steps to the side at the last second. Out of the hallway and into the cavernous warehouse, the blue light from Archangel’s face fails to illuminate enough of the room to let Dean see what Crowley was coming here for. Dean sighs and reaches into the holster on his left leg for a flashlight (shut up, Batman had a utility belt, he can carry a damn flashlight if he wants to) and shines it a few feet in front of him before moving forward.

Dean’s breath catches in his throat. Why do they always stack their drugs in a pyramid in the middle of an otherwise empty warehouse?

“Fuck me,” he growls.

“Charming,” the Archangel murmurs. “We should call in an anonymous tip. We can’t let this much meth hit the streets.”

“I agree,” Dean replies. “Which is why we need to destroy it.” He can practically hear the Archangel roll his eyes, and he hates it.

“Have you got any idea how to go about that without blowing up the building? Do you know how long it takes abandoned meth labs to be rendered inhabitable again? This isn’t a problem you can punch your way out of, Captain.”

At least he only used half the name. Dean still hates it.

“And what do you propose we do, genius? Leave it here for Crowley and his band of loyal idiots to retrieve?”

If the Archangel had features, Dean would say he was grinning. “Of course not. We leave it in the police evidence locker for them to retrieve. This much of an investment, Crowley won’t let a little thing like law enforcement get in the way of getting it back. And we make sure that we’re there to greet them. Crowley may not show up himself, but if we help the cops get enough of his men behind bars, I bet he’ll be a lot easier to pin down.”

It’s…not the worst plan Dean’s ever heard.

“Fine.” Dean scowls, but he can’t deny that it has a chance of working. Of course, there’s still the matter of actually finding Crowley once they set the trap, but this is a start. Dean pulls out his phone, the disposable one, powers it up, and makes the call. He’s not worried about being identified. The phone’s a burner, he never powers it up anywhere near anywhere his daytime identity would go so it would never have pinged those towers, and if they track the GPS all they’re going to find is the building he’s trying to help them find anyway.

“So how did you even find this place?” Dean asks when he’s off the phone.

“Oh, I know a guy,” he says cryptically.

Great. He can fly and he’s got the support team Dean doesn’t.

“You should go,” the Archangel says. “I’ll stay here until the police arrive, just in case anyone comes back. Give me your burner phone.”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

“So that I can give you a number to reach me at. We did say we would be waiting for Crowley’s men when they try to retrieve their drugs. Surely you realize that means coordinating in some way.” Dean glares, but hands over his burner anyway, watches while the Archangel’s long fingers tap away at the keys. “I sent myself a message, so I’ve got your number now. You’d better hope you don’t need to destroy that phone before we catch him. I will call you when I’ve got information on their movements.”

Dean just stares at him.

“I told you. I know a guy.”

“Fine, whatever,” Dean replies half-heartedly. The adrenaline from the fight is wearing off and now instead of the explosive anger over Crowley getting away he’s just smouldering, a slow burning fire that he needs to extinguish before it gets stoked back into flames. He turns to walk away, rolling his eyes.

“Good night, Captain Kansas,” the Archangel rumbles. Dean pulls one hand out of the pocket of his jacket and flips him the bird.

Normally, he’d wait until he got home to take the mask off. It’s not so much a rule as a routine, but he sticks to it pretty closely anyway. He leaves the patio door of his apartment unlocked when he’s doing his night job, uses a grappling hook to get him onto what passes for a balcony in the apartment he can afford, and changes back into his daytime identity where nobody can see the transition. Tonight, he feels like making the five-block trek on foot, and that means not attracting attention. The mask goes into a pocket on his jacket as soon as he’s around the corner and out of sight of the Archangel, and the jacket comes off, slung over his arm even though it’s probably a little too chilly to be out in just a t-shirt. If he’s not walking through densely populated areas, nobody will be close enough to smell the gunpowder mixed in with his sweat or see the fire in his eyes. It’ll be good enough.

The night is quiet, but not so quiet that it doesn’t cover up the sound of footsteps trailing a fair distance behind him.

~*~

 Dean would be lying if he said he wasn’t on tenterhooks waiting for his burner to ring. It’s stupid, honestly. He doesn’t want a partner, even a temporary one, and generally speaking he does not keep the burner phone turned on ever. He’s not even sure he knows what it sounds like when it rings. But if that’s what it takes to get Crowley off the streets, then he will wait by the phone like a lovelorn teenager.

He keeps it in his pocket at work, on vibrate. He’s hoping nothing goes down during the day, but he also doesn’t want to miss the call. And he keeps the ringer on while he’s at home. And outside of that, he plans to spend as little time out of the apartment as possible, apart from patrolling the streets looking for leads on Crowley, so he’s ready to spring into action on a moment’s notice.

Unsurprisingly, Cas notices something is off. He always notices things like that. It’s really fucking endearing, except when it means that Dean has to lie to his face.

“You sure you’re okay?” Cas asks on Wednesday, an entire weekend and three workdays on high alert after the bust that came up bust.

“M’fine,” Dean assures him. It isn’t very reassuring.

“Really? Cause your tie is backwards again, and you misspelled your own name on that report you asked me to bring Adler this morning, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you ignore a sandwich that vehemently.”

“It’s nothing,” Dean lies. “I’m just not sleeping well. I’ll get over it soon probably.” Okay so not entirely a lie. He is sleeping poorly, but mostly because he’s spending more time on rooftops and in alleys lately, and he will likely get over it soon but if and only if his damn burner phone throws him a bone sometime this century.

“Have you tried meditating?” Cas asks, only half kidding. He’s much calmer than Dean, and he can actually do that kind of stuff without rolling his eyes. Dean takes a bite of his sandwich and suddenly remembers how hungry he is.

“Hard no,” he says with his mouth full, ignoring the grimace Cas gives him. “I don’t need to find inner peace I just need another coffee.”

“Stimulants probably aren’t helping you sleep, either.”

“It’s noon,” Dean sighs, exasperated. “Half life of caffeine is between 6-8 hours. This here cup of coffee has nothing to do with my lack of sleep.” There. That one was entirely true.

“Did you hear about the drug bust they made over the weekend?” Cas asks. Dean’s head snaps up from his sandwich. “Not too far from your place, actually.”

Dean shrugs, false nonchalance. “I don’t pay much attention to the news. What happened.”

“Someone called in an anonymous tip apparently. The police aren’t saying much except it was a ‘significant’ seizure. I wonder if Captain Kansas had anything to do with it?”

“Don’t call him that,” Dean says with a sneer.

Cas squints at him. “Huh?”

“What?”

“Sorry just. Never mind. That’s what everyone calls him.”

“Yeah well it’s a stupid name,” Dean grumbles.

“I didn’t know he was such a sore spot for you,” Cas says with a laugh.

“He’s not.”

Cas rolls his eyes. “Of course not. Well. I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes, so I’m going to take off, but if you ever decide you’re done with your self-imposed exile let me know. We were supposed to do an Avengers marathon one of these weekends.”

Dean watches Cas walk out of the room, wishing he could take him up on the offer, that he could just take the time for himself and have a movie marathon with his best friend and forget about responsibilities and justice and vengeance. “Captain America never had to deal with this crap,” he mutters under his breath. Then again, Captain America spent 70 years as the world’s most patriotic popsicle, so Dean still probably comes out ahead.

~*~

It’s an entire week after the failed attempt at nabbing his nemesis when Dean’s burner phone finally rings. He’s sitting on the couch in his pajamas, eating frozen pizza and staring at (not watching) a Friends rerun, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when it goes off. The excitement is short lived though, because all he’s got is a text message.

--We haven’t found anything yet. It’s all quiet. Too quiet, honestly. I think Crowley may have gone to ground. The police don’t seem like they’re going to relocate the drugs out of the evidence locker any time soon though, so it may still bring him out of hiding. I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”

Dean takes a slow, deep breath, lets it out through his nose, and fights with every fibre of his being not to smash the phone against the wall in frustration.

It’s that damn Archangel’s fault. He could have had Crowley behind bars by now. If he’d just kept his smug blue absence of a face out of Dean’s business, everything would have been fine. Crowley would be in jail and those drugs would be off the streets and decent people could live their lives without fear. But instead, Dean’s sitting at home in his pajamas waiting for some flyboy asshole to point him in the direction of a fight. Like some…

Like some kind of a sidekick.

Fuck.

Suddenly, the walls of his apartment seem far too close, and the solitude is far too much to bear. He needs to get dressed and go hit something. Or someone. Punch his way through anyone who might have answers for him, or something to answer for. He’s fury. He’s rage. He’s a hunter who has caught the scent of his quarry and wills stop at nothing until he brings it down.

Dean storms around his apartment, gathering parts of his costume, dressing piece by piece. He’s nearly ready to walk out the door when he remembers that first of all, he doesn’t leave out the door dressed like this and secondly, he left the burner phone on the coffee table. It’s not that he thinks it’ll ring again tonight, not really, but he’s always the guy calling in an anonymous tip or getting an ambulance for someone who needs help. He needs that phone. It’s part of how he does this thing. So, whether or not the Archangel fucked all of that and relegated him to back bench third string sidekick superhero, he’s taking the phone with him, and he’s going to do something useful.

He’s still so full of fury when the phone rings that he shouts his answer. “What now?” he hollers, seething.

“Dean?”

“Cas?” Dean replies, incredibly confused. He looks down at the phone in his hand and realizes it’s not the superhero burner, it’s his own phone. The one people who know him call on.

“Sorry I—is everything okay? You sound rather distressed.”

Dean thinks fast. “Just hung up on a telemarketer,” he explains. “Thought they were calling back. Sorry. Didn’t mean to blow up at you like that.”

“It’s okay,” Cas assures him. “You just sounded so…I’m not used to hearing you that angry.” Which makes sense, because Cas doesn’t ever get to hear Dean put on his villain-intimidating voice, so of course it would be unsettling. “I thought maybe you’d wanna grab a drink. I know you’ve been keeping yourself on lockdown for a while, but I bet you’d sleep better if you broke the cycle a little. We can grab a beer, watch a movie, and maybe you’ll actually relax. I bet you’ll sleep like a baby.”

Dean opens his mouth to decline but changes his mind at the last minute. “That sounds awesome,” he says, but not for the reason Cas suggested it. He’s put his everything on hold just because the Archangel told him to wait for a phone call, and not just the punching thugs part. He’s neglected the people who care about him, namely, Cas, and also probably himself, and none of that is going to make Crowley any less in the wind. He will sleep better if he does something other than worry for a change.

“I’m glad you think so.” Dean can practically hear Cas smiling through the phone. “Meet me at Rocky’s Bar in half an hour?”

It’s not the evening Dean anticipated, or even the one he hoped for, but at least it will be one he can enjoy.

Once again, Dean almost walks out the door in his leather, remembering a bit later than he would have liked that he doesn’t leave through the front door dressed like this. He makes himself slow down, change into his own clothes, his real clothes, before leaving the apartment. When he locks the door behind him, the leather and the mask are safely hidden in his closet, where Cas would never have occasion to look. Not that Cas ever goes into his bedroom anyway, and not that Dean’s going to step up and suggest that change, but a guy can dream.

Thirty minutes after he hangs up the phone, he’s walking into Rocky’s with just a little bit of a bounce in his step. Nothing has changed, not in his night life, but at least it’s a bit of a reprieve from the stress and the waiting. And it is beer. And it is Cas.

Cas is already there, sitting at a table along the back wall, and he waves Dean over.

“I’m glad you came,” Cas says. Dean can tell he means it, which kinda warms that cold dead thing he keeps where his heart used to be.

“I’m glad you called,” Dean replies, and he means that too. “Even if I did kinda bite your head off when I picked up.”

“Hey, all’s fair in telemarketing and war. I think that’s how the saying goes.”

“I feel like it’s not,” Dean says. “But I’ll let it slide. Do you know what they have on tap here?” Cas passes him the beer list. It’s mostly run of the mill domestics, the mass-produced stuff you see everywhere, and Dean is not picky so he’s about to order a Budweiser when he notices the local craft brewed selections. “They have a Captain Kansas beer? Since when?”

“Since about a week ago,” says the waitress he didn’t notice approaching from behind them. “It’s been pretty damn popular. You want a pint of that?”

“Sure, why not,” Dean says with a shrug. There is a beer named after him! Well, kinda. There’s a beer named after that thing he doesn’t want anyone to call him. Still. It’s cool.

“I thought you hated that guy,” Cas says.

“I never said that! I just don’t like the name. He’s pretty cool, I guess. Beating up crooks and whatever. That seems like a thing that should get a beer named after you.” At least if Dean himself can’t take credit for anything he’s been doing to keep his city safe, the guy they’re attributing it to is getting some love. That’s some kind of validating, right?

“I’m glad you’re feeling a bit better,” Cas says when the waitress walks away. “You really haven’t seemed like yourself lately. I’ve been worried.”

“I’m alright,” Dean assures him sheepishly. “Just a lot of stress lately. I’m working on it.”

“Just remember that you don’t have to deal with all your stress alone. You have friends, you know.” Cas doesn’t know how antithetical that is to Dean’s actual problem, but he’s not wrong. Dean does have friends. It’s just that Captain Kansas or whatever his name is doesn’t. “You should come to a yoga class with me sometime.”

“You never give up with that, do you?” Dean laughs.

“Nope. Not until you try it at least once.”

~*~

Dean unlocks the door to his apartment and lets Cas in, closing the door behind him. Cas has been here before but he’s always so polite, waiting for Dean to invite him in, taking his shoes off at the door. Dean grabs two beers out of the six pack and puts the rest in the fridge. The plan is beer and a Marvel marathon, although considering how much time Dean spends running around at night, he doesn’t imagine he’ll be able to stay awake for more than a single film.

“Is it still a marathon if we watch one movie tonight and continue on with it another day?” he calls out. “Asking for a friend.”

“I think that’s just watching a movie,” Cas says from the entryway.

Dean doesn’t bother flicking on the light in the kitchen. He knows his home like the back of his hand. Instead, he takes the two beers and walks into the living room, reaching over to tap the light switch there. As it comes to life and bathes the room in light, Dean hears a voice that makes his skin crawl and his stomach churn.

“Do you know what I love about traps?” says Crowley, spinning himself around in Dean’s Lazy-boy like some sort of a low rent Bond villain. His fingers are steepled in front of his face, and he smiles but it is the least welcoming smile Dean has seen in his entire life. “Once you know they’ve been set you can actually use them to your advantage quite well. If a certain someone, an enterprising superhero for example, thinks your attention is focused on, oh, lets say a stash of confiscated narcotics in the police station evidence lock up, they tend to be somewhat less attentive to all the other places you could be, and if they’re rather stupid, they might even let their guard down a bit. And sometimes, if you are very, very lucky, you can use that to learn a bit about what makes them tick.”

Dean lets the beer cans drop to the floor unopened. They bounce on the carpet. Neither Dean nor Crowley spares them a glance.

“Dean!” Cas yells.

Everything moves so fast.

For the first time since he launched this vendetta, something supersedes Dean’s desire to take Crowley down. He can’t let Cas get hurt in the crossfire. It’s too important. Suddenly it doesn’t matter if Cas learns his secret.

Dean is in motion before he sees Crowley pull the weapon out from behind the chair. He doesn’t get a clear look at it but it’s big, too big to be firing inside an apartment like this. Aim won’t matter. It’s going to make a mess. He tries to get in close, inside Crowley’s reach where he can hopefully knock the thing out of his arms, break his trigger hand, anything. As he’s moving, Crowley swings the thing, not towards Cas, but away, and the change in angle means Dean doesn’t get there fast enough to disarm him. Crowley fires, something hits Dean in the chest, and then he’s falling.

With the pavement rushing up behind him, he’s got a great view of the blown out side of his apartment. Bazooka? RPG? Dean doesn’t fucking know, and he doesn’t have time to figure it out. Doesn’t have time for much, honestly. He’s never fallen from a ten-storey apartment building before, but he’s not betting on being able to walk away from it too easily. He’s strong, but he doubts he’s that strong.

And he still failed. Because Crowley is in there, scot free, and Cas probably looks a whole lot like a loose end right now.

Dean thinks the explosion must have done something to his head, given him a concussion or something. Why else would he be seeing a blue streak flashing through the sky?

Unless.

Dean is snatched out of the air at basically the last possible second by a pair of strong arms and finds himself being carried bridal style back in the direction he fell from.

“What the f—” Dean starts, then cuts off as he realizes who is doing the flying. He was expecting that arrogant douchebag the Archangel, but he’s looking up into Cas’ very worried eyes instead of a void of blue light.

“Sorry,” Cas blurts out. “This is my fault. He was there for me. I never should have put you in danger like that.”

“There for you? Why would he be in my apartment for you? He was there for..”

“Oh,” Cas says suddenly.

“Oh,” Dean agrees.

“We have a lot to talk about.”

~*~

Dean’s apartment is uninhabitable. There will be questions. Cops will show up. They need to not be around for that. Cas sets him down in the middle of what was once his living room and waits while he grabs his costume and a few other things.

“You can stay at my place while we sort this out,” Cas promises.

Fuck it, Dean decides. He kisses Cas.

This is not how he imagined their first kiss, and he imagined it a lot of times. He imagined something, you know, normal. A date. Or maybe they’d get drunk and forget not to act on feelings. Or maybe Cas would make a move. But standing in the smouldering ruins of his apartment after the city’s public enemy number one fires an absurdly large weapon at them, leading to the revelation that their superhero alter egos, a) exist and b) hate each other? Yeah. That wasn’t a thing Dean predicted.

There isn’t time for a proper kiss. It’s quick and dirty. Dean wants to grab him close and make a moment of it, but it’ll have to do.

“What was that for?” Cas asks, more breathless than the little kiss accounts for.

“Because you’re not Lois Lane.”

It’s the dumbest possible explanation Dean could have given in the moment, but Cas just looks at him with thoughtful eyes, smiles, and kisses him back. This one is better. They still don’t have time for it, not with sirens already sounding in the distance, but apparently, they both need it. Cas kisses him like he needs it to breathe, like Dean is everything he’s ever wanted, and as much as Dean wants it to continue, he knows they can’t stay.

“We need to go,” Dean implores, pulling away.

Cas grins. “Whatever you say,” he says. He winks at Dean, and then something shifts, and he’s not Cas anymore, he’s clad in spandex and his face is a mass of blue light. Dean watched it happen and he still couldn’t really say what happened, just that it was unsettling to watch.

“Dude, what the fuck was that?”

“Rude, for one thing,” Cas replies, and now that Dean knows it was Cas in there all along, he can pick up familiar notes in his voice. It’s Cas but deeper, rougher, more aggressive. It’s Cas but not. He’d never have picked up on it, if he didn’t have it laid out in front of him like this, but he’d never miss it now. “It’s still me under here, I’m just hiding. Just like you do with the mask, Captain Kansas.”

“I told you to stop calling me that,” Dean growls.

“And I told you, I’m gonna need something better to call you if we’re going to be working together.” Cas pulls him back in close, not to kiss him, but to carry him out the side of the room, where the wall once stood. Its unsettling being this high above the ground without his grappling hook and a cable to rely on, but he trusts Cas. He must, but he would even if it weren’t necessary right now. The Archangel was a stranger to him, an obnoxious, arrogant douchebag in blue spandex, but this is Cas, also in blue spandex, and that’s a partner he can work with.

~*~

As Dean stands in the shower at Cas’ place, washing the dust and soot of the explosion from his hair, he ponders the gravity of his impulsive actions. He doesn’t regret it. Quite the contrary. It’s something he’s dreamed of for a long time, being able to recall with perfect certainty what Cas’ lips feel like pressed against his own. But there’s a terrifying newness settling over the evening, and it’s impossible to deny that when the sun rises tomorrow, everything will be different.

In the space of five minutes, he went from having precisely zero people who knew his secret identity to having both his best friend and his worst enemy know the truth, and that’s a hard one to reconcile himself with. Cas he can deal with, although he loathes the way the truth came out, but Crowley is going to be a problem. Even if he gets arrested, even if he spends the rest of his life in prison and never sees the sky again except through a chain link fence, the problem is that he knows. He knows who Dean is. He knows where he lives, or at least where he lived. Dean doesn’t imagine he’s going to be sleeping in his own bed again any time soon. He doesn’t doubt that Crowley’s managed to use that information and his connections to figure out pretty much everything else about Dean by now. Where he works. Who he cares about. He might only know Cas’ face, or he might have seen enough of the daring rescue to put two and two together, but he knows enough to be dangerous. Dean doesn’t like the idea of taking a life, and he certainly doesn’t think himself impartial enough to serve as judge, jury and executioner, but he also doesn’t see any way forward where Crowley draws breath and Dean gets to keep saving lives. There are no easy answers.

Add to all that the fact that Dean’s secret crush is no longer a secret, and he pretty much doesn’t know which way is up anymore.

When he steps out of the bathroom, clad in sweatpants borrowed from Cas, there’s a pizza on the table. Cas is sitting there staring out the window like he’s also wrestling with some pretty big truths. He doesn’t look up when Dean enters but somehow Dean is sure Cas knows he’s there. Dean pulls out a chair across from him and stares out the window too.

“What are we going to do?” Cas asks after a moment, his voice soft.

“Get new, even more secret secret identities? I mean, we can’t stop doing what we’re doing. It’s too important. But it does kinda throw the day job thing into a tailspin.” Dean’s tone is glib, but it does nothing to disguise how worried he actually is.

“I meant about us.”

Oh. Well that’s unexpected.

“I kinda figured the Crowley thing was the priority,” Dean replies. He grabs a slice of pizza, still hot, so it must have been delivered just before he got out of the shower. Cas’ apartment is bigger than his, more comfortable. The furniture is stylish. Even without the gaping hole in the side of Dean’s place, there’s no question about whose home is better.

“We need to wait until we have more information to do something about Crowley. Nothing we can do tonight. I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I’m sleeping with this looming over us.”

“Looming is a pretty ominous word. You saying you’ve got regrets?” Dean regrets asking that question, that’s for sure. If Cas doesn’t want to make it into a thing that’s fine, but Dean would rather not know if there’s regret. That would be worse than the torch he’s been carrying.

“I regret waiting,” Cas admits. “I was afraid you’d find out who I was if I let you get too close, and I thought that would put you in danger. I knew it would. Thinking that Crowley had killed you to get to me, that was—I couldn’t handle it.”

“There’s always going to be danger. That’s kinda who we are. And I don’t really see myself hanging up the mask any time soon. I can’t let people like Crowley keep terrorizing my city when there’s something I can do to stop it.”

Cas turns to look at him. “I thought we were talking about us.”

“I am. I just mean. I get your logic, ‘cause I’ve been there. But I can take care of myself and so can you. And if this dynamic duo thing we’re currently doing is something we’re going to keep doing, the danger is there whether we do anything about the us part or not. I don’t think I ever would have said anything if I hadn’t found out you had a secret identity too, but cards on the table, I don’t want to go back to pretending it’s not there.” Dean immediately takes a huge bite of pizza to prevent himself from saying anything further, because that’s about all the emotional honesty he can manage for one night. He feels vulnerable, and not just because this is the first time since he got his powers that he’s come close to serious injury. What Cas says next could shatter him or shore him up against a million oncoming storms.

Cas doesn’t say anything for long minutes, staring out the window into the clear night sky. Countless stars sparkle against the dark. Any one of them could hold the answers they’re looking for, if only they knew the questions to ask. Dean empties his beer in one long pull, setting the can down on the table almost silently, and when he looks back up Cas is standing in front of him, his chair vacated in perfect stealth. He holds out a hand and Dean takes it, letting himself be pulled up to standing.

When their lips meet, Dean feels like he’s standing on solid ground for the first time since his apartment exploded. He feels real, whole, secure. There’s no urgency to it, just exploration, but to Dean it is perfect. Cas is finally in his arms.

“We should go to bed,” Cas whispers softly when they break apart.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t be able to sleep?” Dean replies curiously.

“Not sleep,” Cas replies, leading Dean behind him towards the bedroom.

“Oh,” Dean says. “Oh yeah. Of course.” Because what else is there to do when you’re two superheroes in love and your world has just come crashing down around you, besides working out some tension? Dean follows willingly, his hand slipping from Cas’ as they enter the darkened room and Cas goes to pull his shirt off. There is a remarkable lack of scarring on his skin. Someday, Dean will ask how his powers came to be, if he was born to them or what, but it feels like the wrong time. Instead he takes off his shirt, the one Cas lent him, since the only clothes he managed to rescue from his apartment were the leathers he hunts in.

“Come here,” Cas says, his tone commanding. Dean can’t help but obey.

He’s tried not to imagine what it would be like to sleep with Cas. It never seemed like something with even the slightest chance of becoming real, and Dean didn’t relish the idea of torturing himself with things that could never be. If he had imagined it though, if he’d bothered to daydream or fantasize, he’s not sure it would have been as good as the real thing. He doesn’t think he could have imagined the way he feels both helpless and protected in Cas’ arms. Doesn’t think he could ever have dreamed up the way Cas touches him; the way Cas feels under his own touch. Dreams could never have touched on it.

Cas lays him out on the bed and kisses him reverently, touches him like he’s precious, and when he finally sinks into Dean, bringing their bodies as close together as physically possible, it feels like fireworks going off under Dean’s skin. They move together, perfectly in sync, climbing higher with each thrust. Dean doesn’t remember the last time something made him feel this good.

And that’s all well and good, but Dean could really do without the drywall dust and wood splinters. He opens his eyes and looks up to see his hands clenched on Cas’ headboard so hard he’s torn it to pieces, and the headboard itself has made the beginnings of a very sizeable hole in the wall. Dean grins sheepishly at Cas.

“That’s…unexpected,” Cas says with a laugh. “Guess neither of us knows our own strength. Here, lets try this.” He makes his way down to the mattress and gathers Dean into his lap, and they start to move again. Dean likes being on top. Loves looking down and seeing the look of pleasure spread across Cas’ face. He’s getting into a good rhythm, figuring out how to make Cas feel good, learning how to move together. That familiar coil of heat is starting to build in his core, the one that lets him know he’s getting close and he chases it, seeking more pleasure. Then, with one particularly solid thrust of his hips, he hears a sharp crack. Everything moves. Dean falls off the bed.

Disoriented, he looks up to see the mattress listing at an odd angle, Cas sitting up to stare quizzically at it.

“I think we broke your bed,” Dean announces.

“Well that’s certainly never happened before.”

“Hell,” Dean replies. “Now what?” Cas stares at him for a moment, pondering the secrets of the universe. Finally, his face splits into a broad grin.

“You’ve never accidentally punched through bricks, have you?”

“Nah,” Dean assures him. “I mean, I don’t usually take to punching bricks at all, but that seems just a bit outside of my weight class.”

And that’s how Dean finds himself backed up against the brick on the outside wall of Cas’ bedroom, legs wrapped around Cas’ waist, getting absolutely plowed. Nobody but Cas could hold him up like this and have enough strength left to move, but then again, he wouldn’t want anyone but Cas to try. He tries not to think about what might happen if they’re wrong about the strength of the wall, but then again Cas has already snatched him out of the air midfall once tonight, so he could probably do it again.

Dean’s not entirely sure because when he comes, his vision nearly whites out, but it kinda seems like Cas’ eyes flash brilliant blue for a moment. Just a flash, none of that invisible face stuff he does when he’s in his spandex, but Dean chooses to believe it’s because Cas is so into him that he can’t keep a handle on it.

Cas lifts him away from the wall, lets him put feet on the floor again, and they spare only the briefest of glances for the ruined bed. For now, the couch will have to do.

The afterglow softens everything; the bright lights of the city shining in through the window, the looming threats, the gravity of their situation. All the uncertainty is still there but Dean isn’t wallowing in it now. It doesn’t encompass him. It just is.

Time stands still while they wait for something to happen. Even without the question of their burgeoning relationship to overthink, there’s no way they’d be able to sleep right now. Dean eats three slices of pizza. Cas passes him a beer. It could almost be a normal evening hanging out with his best friend except for the fact that they just had sex, and the thing where his apartment got exploded.

It’s Cas’ phone ringing that breaks the silence, finally. He looks at it hesitantly before answering. “What have you found?” The voice on the other end is too faint for Dean to make out, but Cas nods as he listens. In the end, he hangs up without another word. “My guy found something. Feel like taking a bit of a trip?

~*~

It’s going to take a long, long time before Dean is comfortable flying around the city like this. He’d much prefer his grappling hooks or hell, a car, but Cas makes an excellent point.

“You’re used to being the hunter. Right now you’re the prey. Until we have a better idea of what Crowley knows, we need to assume he’s got eyes on us. That means moving quickly and staying out of sight as much as possible.”

Grudgingly, Dean concedes that he’s correct, so as soon as his mask is donned and his jacket zipped up, he wraps his arms around Cas and feels his feet leave the floor. It’s uncanny, an unsettling feeling. It’s not quite like falling, but it carries the same kind of oddness to it. It’s a type of movement his body is not accustomed to. But as they fly through the city, he understands at least some of the appeal. There’s freedom in this kind of travel even if he’s not the one behind the wheel. Dean’s not sure it will ever become his preferred method of transportation, but he’ll allow it.

Cas sets them down in the back yard of a very small house and motions him to be quiet. He’s clad in his spandex, though Dean is starting to wonder if it even is spandex, because he doesn’t so much put it on as will it into being, and the sweat pants he was wearing didn’t end up on the floor afterwards. The blue glow of his face fades slowly and is replaced by his face, and he strides to the back door with determination, leaving Dean to follow. Cas opens the door and steps inside, and honestly, with the night Dean’s having, he’s not even the least bit surprised about the person that greets them.

“Cas, buddy!” cries Ash, turning around in his chair. He’s sitting at the most behemoth Frankenstein creation of a computer Dean’s ever seen, with at least five monitors, countless towers strapped together and connected by such a web of cables Dean is sure at least half of them must be decorative. There are fans strewn about the floor in all directions pointed at the thing. Dean is in awe.

“Ash,” Cas replies stoically. “I told you I was bringing a companion.” He gestures to Dean with an outstretched hand.

“That you did, my friend. Well, let me see. What do we got here, Captain Kansas in the flesh!” Ash wipes his palm on his jeans and reaches out to shake Dean’s hand.

Dean sighs. “Dude, don’t call me that.” Instead of shaking Ash’s hand, he reaches up to remove the mask and reveal his face. “I hate that name.”

Ash just laughs. “I don’t know what to tell you buddy. Most heroes don’t really get to choose their own names. Hate it all you want, but this one stuck. Be pretty hard to change the tide on that now. You should have put out word when you started this whole thing if you had a name in mind.”

“I didn’t really think about it.”

“Branding,” Ash informs him. “It’s very important.”

“I’ll remember that. Man, I gotta tell you, when Cas told me we were going to see his ‘guy’, I did not expect it to be you.”

“Can’t say the same for you, I’m afraid. Cas said he had an ally needing a bit of help and I said to myself, Ash, you’re finally gonna find out if your suspicions about Dean are correct.” He spins back around in his chair and starts doing…something, Dean isn’t sure what, with one of his many keyboards. Dean puts his mask back on.

“There’s no way you had me figured out,” Dean protests.

“Nooooo,” Ash tells him. “But I thought something was up, and secret superhero was the most fun explanation I could come up with, so I kept it going. It’s just nice to be proven right. Anyway, enough chit chat, I hear you boys are looking for a line on the big fish.”

Cas nods. “We need to find Crowley. As I told you, he figured out that Dean is Captain…” he cuts himself off with a glance at Dean. “He figured out who Dean is. And we’re reasonably sure he knows who I am too. Our safety is compromised, and we think he might do something reckless trying to get to us. We need to stop that from happening. He already blew a hole in Dean’s apartment building. Next time the collateral damage will extend beyond property.”

Ash lets out a low whistle. “You couldn’t have picked an easier criminal to go toe to toe with? Crowley’s a hard man to pin down.”

“Cas said you had something though?” Dean replies hopefully.

“Sure do,” Ash confirms. “Hard, but not impossible. Everything leaves a trail, if you know where to look, and if you’re as smart as I am. You see this? The bank across the street from your apartment has cameras that pick up the entrance to the building through the window.” He slides his chair to the side and points at one of his screens. “This is you, leaving to go meet Cas for beer. Watch that grey car.” Dean watches the screen with rapt attention. The hazy figure that does definitely look like him comes out the front door, turns right, and ambles off down the street. Less than a minute after he leaves the frame, a door on the grey sedan opens and a short man in a dark trench coat gets out, walks up to the door, and into Dean’s building.

“Crowley,” Dean grumbles. “But we already know he was in my place.”

“Correctuamundo,” Ash tells him. “But that wasn’t the prestige, my friend, that was just the setup.” He hits a bunch of keystrokes and the video reverses. Dean watches himself walk backwards into the apartment, then eventually the car reverses away. Ash stops the video, inches it forward, and sits back to let them admire his handiwork.

“Ash, please tell me you were able to get something useful off that licence plate?” Cas inquires hopefully.

“Do bears shit in the woods?” Ash is cocky, but Dean will gladly grant him leave to be that way because he earns it, and also, it’s amusing. “Check this beauty out. It’s registered to a holding company, which is parented by a shell corporation, which is yadda yadda yadda you get the picture, but long story long, the only actual human person I can find tied to any of that shit on any level is on the title of a very posh penthouse in this,” he brings up another security feed with a flourish of keystrokes, “building. Now this is about an hour ago, but I believe you’ll recognize the not so gentle-man walking up the front steps.”

Dean stares in disbelief.

They’ve got him.

“Ash?” Cas asks slowly. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen him come out of the building since then have you?”

“No sir.”

This is nearly too good to be true. After all these years, he knows where to find Crowley. And with two sets of eyes, or, well, Dean’s eyes and whatever Cas uses to see when he’s got that blue glow for a face, they might actually stand a chance of taking him down. Or in. Or whatever.

“What’s the plan?” Dean asks. “I mean, we can’t just fly in there and ask him to go quietly.”

“I wanna do a fly by, get an idea of how many people are in there with him, what kind of layout. I’ll bring you up to enter somewhere you won’t be seen, I’ll come in from the front and you surprise him from the rear. Subdue anyone else in the suite quietly, and then we bring him in.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Dean says with grim determination.

~*~

Cas leaves Dean on the roof while he does his fly-by. Less chance of being seen up there. The air is crisp and cool, the wind so much more noticeable far above the ground. He takes the opportunity to steel himself for what lies ahead. He’s been waiting for this for too long. Since that fateful night when he turned down the wrong alley.

Dean’s kept tabs on the guy Crowley had his boys kick the shit out of that night. He never made contact, that would be too weird, but he needed to know. He lived, thank god, but every time Dean thinks of how long he was in hospital it makes him cringe, imagining how much different things would have been if he was just a few minutes, a few seconds later. If he hadn’t turned that way. If he hadn’t been out walking at that moment. That man would have died in that alley. Hell, he could have died even with Dean’s help. His injuries were severe. All that blood is on Crowley’s hands just as surely as if he’d thrown every punch himself, if it were his wing tips breaking the man’s ribs.

And he’ll finally be brought to justice for that.

Dean doesn’t know what’s going to happen to Crowley once he’s in jail. He has no idea how the cops are going to make charges stick. That’s their job, not his. But maybe Ash can send something prosecutable their way. He’s certainly good enough to find Crowley’s address when the cops can’t. Maybe he can get them evidence too. Dean will have to ask him about that later. But right now, the most important thing is to get him behind bars where he belongs.

“You ready?” Cas lands on the rooftop beside him, light on his feet. He lets the blue haze drop to look into Dean’s eyes.

“Let’s get it done,” Dean replies. He kisses Cas then, just once. Soft and slow. A promise of things to come. Their feet leave the ground.

As soon as Cas sets him down inside the empty bedroom, he’s on high alert. The penthouse takes up the entire top floor of the building, and Cas was only able to spot Crowley and three of his men, but Dean assumes there could be more that weren’t visible from the windows. Every move is calculated for stealth. They can’t afford to let Crowley get away.

Out in the hallway he comes up behind a guard in a black suit. The man is not paying anywhere near enough attention, thinking himself safe inside the apartment nobody is supposed to know the location of. Dean sneaks up behind him and puts him in a choke hold, waiting until his body goes limp to lower him to the floor. He carefully drags him into the bedroom through which his entrance was made. He’ll come to eventually, but at least nobody will see him lying there in the meantime.

He doesn’t see the other two guards before he reaches the room Cas saw Crowley in. It’s a large sitting room, ornately appointed and far too spacious for one person. Dean can see Crowley sitting in an armchair near the fireplace, sipping whiskey from a crystal tumbler. The sight of him fills Dean with rage, but this isn’t about Dean’s anger, this is about justice, so he is slow and careful and methodical.

Cas throws open the double doors of Crowley’s balcony, swooping into the room with maybe a little more drama than is entirely necessary. He’s graceful and intimidating all at once and Dean wonders how he ever thought he was a hotshot show-off douchebag, but then he remembers that he didn’t used to know it was the guy he was in love with hidden behind that mask of blue. One of these days he’s going to have to ask Cas how he does that.

“So nice of you join me,” Crowley intones. “But I really do wish you’d called ahead. I really wasn’t prepared for company this evening.”

“Well I figured I owed you,” Dean says, sliding up to drop a heavy hand on his shoulder. Crowley goes stiff under the touch. “What with the whole blowing up my apartment thing. You’re not an easy man to schedule a dinner date with. Didn’t want to pass up the opportunity when it presented itself.”

“Sod off, Captain Kiss-ass,” Crowley spits, jerking his shoulder away from Dean’s hand, or at least trying to. He’s not nearly strong enough.

“Ha ha ha, you’re hilarious,” Dean says with mock-humour, squeezing Crowley’s shoulder just hard enough to leave an impression of what he’s up against. “Feel like going for a ride?”

“Tempting, but I have a lovely 30-year-old bottle of Craig here that seems like much better company than you lot, and I think the accommodations are much nicer here than wherever you’re planning to take me.”

Without a word, Cas stalks over and snatches up the bottle off the table beside Crowley’s chair. He uncorks it, and, while doing what Dean presumes is staring Crowley directly in the eye, pours the entire thing onto the carpet, then shatters the empty bottle in his firm grip. The shards fall to the floor, clinking dully as they land on the wet carpet. Crowley makes a horrible sound of protest, like the waste of his liquor is the worst part of this confrontation. Dean is just about to grab a pair of cuffs off his belt and end the banter when a sound from behind catches his attention.

Dean spins, catching site of the guard he left in the bedroom pointing a gun at them. It suddenly dawns on him that he has no idea whether Cas would take a bullet wound like a normal person or not. He didn’t get hit by any of them last time they fought Crowley’s guys because he dodged them mid air, but that won’t be a factor inside. And it fills him with terror.

“What are you waiting for?!” Crowley bellows. “Shoot them you idiot!”

The guard hesitates, finger on the trigger, looking back and forth between his boss and the two of them with wildness and confusion in his eyes. He’s groggy from the time he spent unconscious, but Dean is pretty sure that doesn’t explain the hesitation.

“What part of that command was unclear, you blithering fool? Point the gun at either the idiot in leather or the moron in tights and pull the fucking trigger! That is what I pay you for, is it not?”

Snapping out of his hesitation, the guard fires. They’re clustered so close together that Dean can’t make a solid bet on which one of them he’s aiming at, but there’s no time for second guessing. Though he’s loathe to let go of his death grip on Crowley’s shoulder, he can’t begin to fathom the cost if he doesn’t act. Sending up a silent prayer to whatever gave him these powers to begin with, Dean hopes they’re not armour piercing bullets, and throws himself in front of Cas.

Everything moves in slow motion. The bullet cuts a clear path through the air and hits Dean’s chest harmlessly, bouncing off his impervious skin like it’s nothing. It falls to the floor. The whole thing took only fractions of a second, but before Dean can process that yes, the bullet was going for Cas and no, it wasn’t armour piercing and yes, everyone is alive, Crowley is out of his seat. Cas is already moving to subdue the gunman, so it looks like that’s up to Dean. Crowley makes it as far as the gun under his chair before Dean is on him, grappling for the weapon. He’s stronger, but Crowley is wily, and he fights like a man who has nothing left to lose. Even pinned under Dean’s larger, stronger frame he squirms and holds tight to the pistol. Dean is so focused on the weapon that he loses the upper hand, making the mistake of letting Crowley roll him over. There’s a spark of vicious delight in his eyes as the little man thinks he’s won, but it is short lived. Dean redoubles his efforts, rolling to trap Crowley beneath him again. As he takes the high ground again, Crowley freezes, the delight on his face shifting to shock. His grip on the gun goes lax, and in a matter of moments he stops fighting.

Dean hadn’t intended to roll them over onto the broken glass, hadn’t wanted this fight to end with blood on his hands, but the pool of whiskey in the carpet is quickly being subsumed by the dark red arterial flow, brought forth by a shard of glass in Crowley’s neck. It takes only a glance for Dean to know he’d bleed out before they could get him close to a hospital. First aid isn’t even really a factor here.

Shaky, Dean stands, letting the gun fall to the floor beside its owner. Cas, unscathed, has just finished putting a pair of handcuffs on the guard, who is now sporting a rather impressive black eye and a fat lip.

“I was just trying to get his gun,” Dean says quietly.

“Of course, you were,” Cas replies, unfazed. “I’d never think otherwise. Is he…?”

Dean just nods.

“Don’t let it weigh you down too much. It’s not what we set out to do, but you’re still saving lives this way.”

Instead of answering, Dean pulls out his burner phone, dials 9-1-1. “Crowley’s dead,” he informs the operator. “You’ll find the body at 1641 Riviera Place, in the penthouse.” She asks for more information; his name, how he knows this. Dean just hangs up. As Cas side-eyes him, Dean crushes the burner phone in his fist, letting the pieces clatter to the floor.

They do another quick walk through the place to make sure there’s nobody else who needs to be encouraged to remain on site until the cops arrive, but everyone else is gone. Dean unlocks the front door, the least he can do for the cops that are gonna have to clean this mess up, then meets Cas back by the balcony to make their escape.

“You know that bullet wouldn’t have hurt me, right?” Cas tells him, wrapping him up in strong arms to fly out into the night.

Dean laughs, the sound carried away by the wind that rushes past. “I do now. Didn’t really have time to think about it. Just knew I didn’t wanna lose you if I was wrong.”

Cas grins at him. “My hero.”

~*~

It’s all over the news the next morning. Nobody is quite sure of the details, but one thing all the news outlets can agree on is that Crowley is dead. Some of them say he was killed by his guards because he was a terrible boss, which is at least a half-truth in that he was probably the least pleasant employer in town. Some say there was a shootout with a rival, which, again, not totally true but not entirely false either. A couple of them say Captain Kansas killed him, but nobody is listening to them, though it’s harder for Dean to pretend he doesn’t take those to heart than he’d really like. Truth is a bit hazier than any of those answers, but Dean wishes he didn’t carry the guilt with him. Crowley wasn’t worth saving, not even a little. He’s not a killer though, he’s a hero, and he’ll always feel like he should have done more to make sure he stood trial. Maybe first aid until they could get an ambulance on site to do something about the blood. Maybe they could have called the cops instead of playing vigilante. Doesn’t matter now though. Crowley’s dead and he can’t hurt anyone, ever again.

Dean sits at Cas’ kitchen table sipping coffee and eating the last of the cold pizza, digging through new sites and crime-buff blogs and superhero conspiracy theory sites. He’s not sure what he’s looking for, really, since he’s one of only three people who actually know the truth, but he can’t help it. Most of the official news stories are nearly identical, but he reads them all in case there’s any discrepancies. It could mean something, he tells himself. No idea what, but it could. He reads the blogs in case anyone has a detail that wasn’t in the news, and that one at least he can explain. There were more than a few of Crowley’s goons on site when they arrived that weren’t there when they left, and any one of them could have seen something that the police didn’t. At the heart of it, Dean’s worried that someone credible will eventually point a finger at his vigilante self, and then he’ll go from a novelty to a person of interest. If that happened, everything could crash down around him faster than he could blink.

A nearly imperceptible sound behind him alerts Dean to Cas’ presence. He turns to throw a smile over his shoulder. “You weren’t there when I woke up,” Cas says softly.

“Antsy,” Dean says. It doesn’t nearly encompass everything he’s feeling, but it’s the best word he’s got.

“Is there more coffee?”

“I made a full pot. There’s plenty.” Dean’s grateful Cas didn’t ask more questions. His face probably says everything, but he’s not really interested in talking too much about his worries, his regrets.

“We need to find out if you can get things from your apartment,” Cas says instead. “You’re not visibly injured from the blast, which is good, because it makes it easier to tell the police you weren’t there when it happened, but it’s still going to be a crime scene I’m sure. You need clothes, in any case, so if we can’t get them from your place, we’ll have to get you new ones.”

“Can’t I just keep borrowing yours?” Dean asks with a grin.

Cas gives him an indulgent smile. “While I love the look of you in my sweatpants, you are going to have to go back to the office at some point and there’s a dress code to contend with. My suits won’t fit you.”

“Ugh fine,” Dean replies with mock disgust. “But I want it on record that I’m doing this under protest. I think we should just tell HR that I’m traumatized by the fact that my apartment got blown up. Maybe they’ll give me a paid sabbatical or something. I might not have to wear a suit for weeks! I could just stay here while you go to work and uh…. cook for you or something.”

“No offense Dean, but I don’t think there’s a provision in the employee handbook for ‘I need time off work because a crime boss tried to kill my vigilante secret identity and blew up my house’, so you’re probably gonna have to use sick days for any time you need off.”

“This never would have happened to Superman,” Dean grouses.

“Yes, yes,” Cas says with a roll of his eyes. “And Doctor Strange never got sued for medical malpractice either but he’s still a jackass.”

 “Did you just call me a jackass?”

“I called Steven Strange a jackass. If you’re drawing a connection there, that’s totally on you.”

“That feels like a trap,” Dean replies. “How about this – I agree to the totally unnecessary clothes shopping if we go out for breakfast first.”

“You just ate pizza!” Cas says, incredulous. “How are you even hungry?”

“Oh man, just you wait. The rate I metabolize food since I got these powers? That’s my secret. I’m always hungry.”

“Don’t misquote the Hulk at me,” Cas says with another roll of his eyes. “Fine. Breakfast. But you have to try on the clothes I pick.”

“Deal,” Dean replies. Worth it.

~*~

After a truly startling amount of food at Denny’s, Cas just stares across the table, dumbfounded.

“How?!”

Dean just shrugs.

“I’ve known you for years and I’ve never seen you eat like that. Do you eat in secret after I leave?”

“I mean, basically,” Dean replies. “I drink a lot of protein shakes. I’m guessing nothing like that goes along with your flying thing or you wouldn’t be so surprised.”

Cas shakes his head. “Your grocery bills must be astronomical,” he says, ever the pragmatist.

“Why do you think I live in such a shitty apartment? My salary only goes so far.”

“Hey, at least that’s something you have in common with Superman. But you know, that apartment probably isn’t going to be inhabitable for quite some time. Have you thought about what you might want to do about that?”

Mind reading was never one of Dean’s powers, but he doesn’t need it to guess where Cas is going with this. The careful way he’s avoiding eye contact tells a story.

“Uh, not really? I didn’t even think about owning pants until you brought it up.”

“You know you can stay with me, right?” Cas says, sipping coffee almost as if to stop himself from saying too much at once.

“Aren’t I already?” Dean replies.

“I mean long term, you asshole. I know it’s kinda fast, but we already work together at our day job and our night job. It’d free up a bit more money for that absurd appetite of yours.”

“I don’t know,” Dean says, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a crooked smile. “Your bed’s kinda crappy. I think I got a splinter. We’ll probably have to do something about that.”

“Is that your only condition?” Cas asks wryly. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“You gonna eat that?” Dean says instead of answering, swiping the last piece of bacon from Cas’ plate?

~*~

Later that night, when they head out to patrol the city, things are eerily quiet. There’s uncertainty in the city. Nobody is quite sure if someone is going to step up to take the helm of Crowley’s operations, and none of the other lowlifes are ready to start moving in on his territory yet. It seems like things are going to be a little bit quiet at least for a while, but Dean knows it won’t last.

But when things get dark again, he’ll be ready, and he’ll have a partner (not a side-kick, a partner) and a tech guy this time. When his city needs him, he’ll be ready.