Archive of Our Own

“Ben, get them out of there!”

His heart was beating loudly and it was dark, and he shouldn’t look back but he couldn’t help it.  The scream—

Ben woke up with a jolt, his heart pounding a hundred miles a minute, his body covered in cold sweat. He tried to sit up, hit with a violent, dizzying wave of nausea that suggested he needed to find a bathroom, and fast—but then he realized that he was already sitting. The disorientation nearly had him face-planting into the aisle, but he caught himself just in time, his knuckles smacking hard against something and then his fingers grabbing hold. He blinked, trying to make sense of the bright, yellow pole that’d saved him.

“Jesus,” he cursed.

He turned his head and, through the window, got a glimpse of a moving row of houses with tidy front yards. Right, he was on the bus; he remembered, now, he was taking the bus back home because it was Blake’s day with the car. He buried his face in his hands.

“You okay, mate?”

Ben raised his head. The concern came from a guy about his age, who was leaning against the bus doors. The messy brown hair, lighter in places, and the tanned skin gave him away as someone who’d spent a lot of time outside. He was wearing jeans, tired flip-flops, and a gray t-shirt saying, ‘I support the alien invasion!’

“Uh, yeah,” Ben said, suddenly aware that he’d been staring. “’M fine. Catching up on my sleep.”

The guy nodded and got a cigarette from his jeans pocket.

“Want one?” he asked Ben.

Ben shook his head. “Don’t think you can smoke in here.”

The guy sent an amused look in the driver’s direction. Ben realized at that moment that there was no one else in the bus but them and the driver. While Ben slept it had gone from dusk to dark, night falling quickly the way it did in Southern California, like a curtain dropping over the sky. It’d been two years and Ben had yet to get used to it.

“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” the guy said, fishing a lighter from his other pocket. “I’m Jesse. And you?”

Ben watched Jesse light up his cigarette and puff out smoke.

“My name is Ben,” he said. “Ben Braeden.”

Jesse smiled brightly, like meeting Ben was honestly making his day.

“Nice to meet you, Ben Braeden.”

---

Dreams; it seemed like they made up his whole life, these days. Ben had always had pretty whacked dreams, with monsters and vampires and looming presences cloaked in shadows. His mom said he had an active imagination. The dreams, lately, had become a lot clearer and more vivid and Ben wished his active imagination would shut the fuck up.

“You look like you need some sleep, Ben.”

Ben looked up to Claire as she took another bite of her chicken sandwich.

“I would get more sleep if Blake didn’t bring his girlfriend every night to pound her through the mattress,” he grumbled.

Claire raised an eyebrow and swallowed her bite. “Did you tell him that?”

“You bet I did. I love the guy like a brother, but, goddamn it, sometimes it’s like he lives inside his own bubble.”

He saw Claire frown faintly, and, although she would never outright say it, knew that she minded his language. From what he’d gathered, she came from a religious family, although he knew she didn’t go to church here. And, after all, she was doing a Master in Religious Studies. It probably created some special bond between her and all things godly.

“Sorry,” he said, and she shrugged. “Anyway, there’s some improvement in sight because Jenny is apparently moving to her own apartment, which means no more parents and maybe, probably, they’ll start to spend more time at her place than at ours. Hurrah.”

Claire patted his forearm absentmindedly, focused on the book she’d brought with her. Claire always brought a book for lunch; Ben didn’t know if it was because she couldn’t bear to separate from her studies for that long, or because she worried she might get bored with only him for distraction.

“You know you can always come to my place,” she said, proving that, despite appearances, she was actually paying attention.

“I know.” He grinned at her, perked up by her offer. “Thanks.”

He watched her reading and eating simultaneously with the ease of long-time practice. Her blond hair glittered under the sun and the canopy above their heads drew shadows on her face. Claire Novak, his fair-headed princess. Not that he’d call her that aloud, oh no. She’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested.

“Break’s over, gotta go back,” he said, pushing his chair back.

She raised her head from her book and smiled at him, but he hadn’t even moved away from the table before she was once again engrossed in her reading. Ben snorted and started making his way between the tables to go back inside the restaurant, when he heard someone call his name, “Hey, Ben!”

He stopped, looking around for whoever had made that call, and saw that sitting at one of the tables, munching on some fries, was the guy from the bus.

“Jesse,” he said, the name coming back to him. “Hey.”

It hadn’t occurred to Ben that Jesse could be a student at CSULB. He’d certainly never seen him on campus before.

“You work here?” Jesse asked, taking in Ben’s black and yellow polo and cap.

“Yeah, I have a job at the Nugget,” Ben said, pointing a finger to the restaurant. “I’m also a student here.”

“Oh, that’s great. What’s your major?”

“History.” Jesse cocked an eyebrow. “What?” Ben said.

“No, nothing. You don’t look like a history buff, that’s all.”

Ben gave him a noncommittal shrug. “I like stories of the past. What about you? What’s your major?”

Jesse broke into a laugh. “What, me? Oh no. Fuck no.” He covered his eyes with his hand, like he couldn’t look at Ben anymore without laughing. “I’m not a student. I didn’t even go to high school.”

“Oh.” Ben went from being puzzled by Jesse’s reaction to terribly embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I don’t care.”

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Listen, I have to go back to work…”

“Yeah, of course. Didn’t mean to hold you up. See you around.”

“Yeah, sure.”

It was in the middle of getting an order from an Italian exchange student with a dreamy accent that Ben wondered what the hell Jesse was doing on campus if he wasn’t a student. He could have been an employee, but he didn’t look like he was dressed for work. Maybe he was visiting someone. It didn’t matter much anyway—chances were that Ben wouldn’t see Jesse again, so he pushed the guy to the back of his mind.

---

“So, how are things with Claire?”

Ben groaned and shot Katie a dirty look. She stuck out her tongue and he flicked a chip in her direction.

“Children,” Blake chided them as he came back with the bottle of tequila he’d found buried inside their closet. “Can’t I leave you two alone for one minute?”

“Jenny didn’t want to come?” Katie asked, stretching lazily on the couch she’d taken possession of while Blake and Ben sat on the floor. They indulged her, because her roommate was a nightmare and they could stand to spoil her a little.

“Tuesday movie nights are for us alone,” Blake said, pouring himself a drink.

There was indeed a movie on, one of the Harry Potter ones, but they mostly ignored it. Movies weren’t the point of Tuesday movie nights.

“Oh, come on, Blake. You brought her two weeks ago.” She slid her upper body off the couch and rested her chin on Blake’s shoulder. She rubbed the top of his head with her knuckles—his hair was too short to be ruffled—and giggled at his groan. “Tell your good friend Katie the truth. She didn’t wanna come? Did you two have a fight?”

“I’m tired of waiting for her to move out from her parents’, that’s all.” Blake sighed and leaned back against the couch, his cheek resting against Katie’s dark hair. “Let’s not talk about my problems. I’d rather discuss Ben’s pathetic lack of a love life.”

Katie laughed, and Ben flipped them both the finger, raising his hand high above his head so they couldn’t miss it.

“I was just asking Ben about Claire when you came back,” Katie told him mirthfully. “Tell us about it, Ben!”

“Things between me and Claire are just fine, fuck you very much.”

Katie and Blake exchanged amused looks. Ben made a show of turning to the TV and watching the movie, catching sight of a desolate landscape that, he guessed, was supposed to be the UK. He was annoyed with them, but not as much as if it had been anyone else bugging him. He’d known them pretty much forever, the only friends he still had from back when his mom and him were living in Indiana, and he’d kept in touch with them in big part thanks to the fact that his mom had also been friends with their moms. It had been so exhilarating to move to Long Beach, California with his best friends. Living the dream, baby.

“God, Ben,” Katie hauled herself back on the couch. “It can’t be healthy to have lunch almost every day with a girl you’re head over heels for.”

“She’s a friend! I see female friends all the time. I see you all the fucking time, and God knows you’re a pain in my ass.”

“There’s female friends, and female friends you wanna fuck,” Katie said.

“I fucked you,” Ben pointed out, while Blake was saying, “I wanna fuck most of my female friends.”

“We were sixteen and we didn’t know any better. Everybody can make mistakes. And…” Katie turned to Blake. “I guess I should have said: ‘There’s female friends and female friends you’re in love with.”

“Hey!” Ben protested.

Blake snickered, and Katie said to Ben, “If you’re objecting to the mistake part, I’m sure you’re a much better lay now, of course. If it’s to the ‘in love’ part… Come on, Ben.”

“Even Jenny saw it,” Blake said.

“Jenny’s never even met Claire.”

“She only had to hear you talk about her. You’re completely transparent, dude.”

“She’s not interested,” Ben said, glancing into his glass and finding it empty. He was starting to feel disturbingly sober. “I can’t force her to change her mind. It doesn’t really matter how I feel as long as she doesn’t feel the same.”

“So you’re trying to win her over with your sparkling personality?” Katie said.

“I’m not trying to do anything. I just like spending time with her. And she can’t mind spending time with me too much, or she would’ve said something. She’s not the kind of girl to stand uncomfortable situations out of pity. Also, my personality doesn’t lack sparkles, I’ll have you know.”

Katie looked at him, shaking her head. “Oh, Ben. Give him something to drink, Blake. He’s making me sad.”

“Yeah, give me something to drink, Blake. If I’m drunk enough maybe I won’t hear her yapping at me anymore.”

Someone knocked on the door—or rather, pounded on it with the insistence of someone who wouldn’t be kept waiting. Ben got on his feet just as Katie was saying, “Oh, you know you love me, you looooove me.”

Her voice followed Ben to the door, and he shushed her before he opened it. Good thing he did, because who he found behind it was no happy customer.

“Oh, uh. Hi Mr. Bennet.”

The man pinched his thin lips and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“It’s late,” Mr. Bennet said. “You’re making too much noise.”

The TV was barely audible, they hadn’t put any music on, and at no point had Katie broken into drunken singing. Ben knew better than point out those facts to his neighbor, because last time he’d tried the man had called the cops.

“We’ll be careful, Mr. Bennet,” Ben said with his best ‘I’m a good boy’ voice and face, the ones that could still sometimes fool people who weren’t his mom.

Mr. Bennet tried to have a peek at the inside of the apartment, like he thought they were maybe hiding naked girls or something in there.

“Have a good evening,” Ben said, moving to block his view. There were no naked girls, sadly, but it was a matter of principle.

Mr. Bennet glowered at him with all the malevolence of his sad little life, but Ben kept a polite-but-firm look on his face until he relented.

“Next time I’m calling the police,” the man said.

“You do that,” Ben said, and closed the door on his neighbor.

“God, what an asshole,” Katie said. “You’d think he’d get tired of harassing you.”

“No, he wouldn’t, because he doesn’t have anything better to do with his life,” Ben said, coming back to sit down by Blake’s side.

“He creeps Jenny out,” Blake said. “She saw him watching her when she was here.”

“Maybe he’s a serial killer,” Katie said, picking a peanut from her cupped hand.

“Nah, serial killers are much more polite,” Ben said.

Mr. Bennet didn’t come back that night, but the next day Ben saw him watching from behind the curtains. It was the first time that the man had ever made him feel uneasy. It looked like he was waiting for something.

---

The third time Ben saw Jesse, the guy was lying down on the grass in front of the AS building, looking at the sky. Ben was walking to his Early Modern Europe class and had merely five minutes before it started, but he couldn’t help but stop and wonder if he should go say hello. He was intrigued, he couldn’t deny it. He crossed the distance between him and Jesse without thinking about it.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Ben." Jesse looked up at him. He didn’t look at all surprised to see Ben. "Going to class?”

He pushed himself up on his elbow. He seemed as comfortable lying there as if he’d been in his own bed.

“Yeah. What about you? I mean, do you work here or something?”

Jesse sat up cross-legged, with his hands falling on his lap. Ben dropped his bag on the grass and sat down next to him.

“Or something,” Jesse said.

“But don’t you have a job?” Ben insisted, before it occurred to him that he was being rude. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that. I’m an ass.”

“No, it’s okay. I guess you could say that I’m currently unemployed. But I’m making do.”

Ben pondered that answer. He looked at Jesse, really looked at him, and noticed that Jesse was wearing the same clothes as the day they’d met. His wrists were thin, not fragile or anything, but they looked like they were more bones than flesh. His collarbone was clearly marked, showing through the collar of his t-shirt. The thought suddenly struck Ben that Jesse was probably homeless—shit, it looked just like he was living off the campus.

“If you want, I have a couch,” Ben blurted out.

“Ooo-kay,” Jesse said slowly. “Thanks, but I don’t need a couch.”

“No, I mean… you can crash at my place, if you don’t have anywhere else to go.” He shrugged. “Just an offer.”

Jesse frowned, losing some of his carefree look. “Do you often invite strangers in your home like that? For all you know I could be some kind of psycho.”

He didn’t sound like he was joking. On the contrary, he sounded like he was seriously concerned with Ben’s lack of common sense. It was a bit like being lectured by his mom, and Ben felt himself flush.

“Sometimes,” he said, shrugging, “like classmates who’ve been kicked out by their parents or landlords.”

“I’m not one of your classmates.”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

“Is that so? And you can tell I’m not dangerous?”

“Well, yeah. Would you say that you’re dangerous?”

Jesse raised his right hand, flexing the fingers with slow deliberation, like he was getting ready for a fight. He smiled mockingly at Ben.

“I’d say the jury is still out on that one.”

Ben fumbled in his bag for a scrap of paper, then scribbled his address on it, before handing it to Jesse.

“Look, I gotta go to class. If you wanna show up, then fine. If you don’t, lose the paper.”

As he turned away, getting ready to run to class, Ben heard Jesse say, “You’re crazy, Ben Braeden.”

---

Crazy was also the word Claire used when Ben told her about Jesse.

“You’re crazy, Ben. You don’t know this guy. And what will Blake say about it?”

“Blake won’t care. Really, as long as I lock up his room he won’t say anything. And anyway Jenny finally got her apartment, so he’s not at our place that much.”

“Still, be careful.”

“We don’t have a lot of stuff to steal, you know.”

Claire rubbed her eyebrow with one finger, something she did when she was particularly preoccupied with something. She closed her book on her hand to mark her page and looked at Ben very seriously.

“Getting robbed isn’t the worst that can happen to you. At least lock your room at night.”

Ben snorted. “I don’t think Jesse is gonna slit my throat during the night.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Ben couldn’t say that he had the feeling that if Jesse had wanted to hurt him, he would’ve done it the first time they met on the bus. There had been something about the way Jesse acted, about the way he didn’t care if the driver saw him smoke on the bus, that wasn’t just cockiness. Jesse could have done absolutely anything he wanted that night. But that sounded even crazier than Claire already thought he was being, so he went for a little deflection instead: “My mom raised me to help people who need it. The guy is homeless, Claire. He’s about my age and he doesn’t have a place to live.”

“Do you know that for a fact?”

“He didn’t say it, but he didn’t deny it either. He didn’t ask for anything, you know. He even called me crazy too. And chances are that he won’t come at all.”

Claire glanced at her watch and sighed. “I have to go to class.” She gathered her things and stood up. “You’re a good guy, Ben. Just don’t let it get you in trouble.”

She left with a light touch to his wrist, and the buzz Ben got from it kept him going all day. He went back home using the car Blake and him shared, an old Buick from the early 2000s’. They split all expenses for it evenly, but Ben was the one who took care of it the most. For as long as he could remember, he’d always liked getting his hands dirty under a car’s hood. He sometimes had that thought, that if he’d had a father, it would’ve been something they could have done together.

As he walked to his apartment, looking for his keys and not really watching where he was going, he barely avoided stumbling over Jesse.

“Hey, careful.”

Jesse was sitting by Ben’s door, his arms around his knees. His eyes were partly hidden by his hair.

“You came,” Ben said stupidly.

“Yeah. That still alright?” Jesse sounded unsure.

“Oh, yes, of course, let me find my key and… There it is. Okay, come in.”

Ben gave Jesse a quick tour of the apartment. “That’s the main living area, then my room, Blake’s room—”

Jesse’s whole body had a movement of recoil, like he wanted to take a step back and run away. “Who’s Blake?”

Since Ben had found him on his doorstep he’d been acting a little strange, or at least different from what Ben had seen of him so far—a little guarded. Ben thought he maybe was embarrassed about accepting charity.

“Blake’s my roommate. But don’t worry, I gave him a call and he doesn’t mind you coming. He’s at his girlfriend’s right now.”

“Okay,” Jesse said.

“And that’s your bed.”

Ben held out his hands in the direction of the couch. Jesse nodded, but he still looked a bit subdued, hands thrust in his pockets and shoulders raised like he needed shelter from the cold.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, it’s just… You don’t know me at all.”

“Then tell me about you.” Ben sat on the couch, and invited Jesse to join him with a pat of the hand. “I don’t even know your last name.”

“If I told you, then I’d have to kill you.”

“Oh, really? That must be a hell of a name.”

Jesse laughed, head thrown back. “My name is Jesse Turner. Let’s see, what else can I tell you? I’m 22. I grew up in Nebraska. I spent some time in Australia and about everywhere, really.”

“Oh, Australia—so I guess that’s where you got that ‘mate’ thing and your weird accent from.”

“Ha, yeah. Just something I picked up along the way. What else… I ran away from home when I was 11.”

“What? Why?”

Jesse had a crooked smile. “We’ll have to get to know each other better if I’m gonna tell you that story.”

There was a silence after that. Ben wasn’t sure what to say, and maybe that had been Jesse’s intention when dropping that bomb. He thought about his own mother—it hadn’t always been easy, growing up with a single parent, and sometimes, at the worst of his teenage years, Ben had entertained the idea of running away. He could never have gone through with it, though; couldn’t imagine hurting his mom that way.

“Something to drink?” Ben finally asked, wanting to break the awkwardness that had settled. “I have water, beer, orange juice, milk… And that’s it, I’m afraid.”

“Beer sounds good.” Jesse looked like he was building up the courage to say something else, so Ben, who had been about to get up, stopped mid-motion. “I’m an asshole,” Jesse said. “If we get to know each other better, you’ll realize it soon enough.”

It sounded like an apology, maybe.

“I’ve known my fair share of assholes,” Ben said with a smile. “I’m sure I can take you.”

---

Blake wasn’t around for the next few days, but Jesse was, for which Ben was secretly grateful, because as much as he had hated being privy to the sound of Blake and Jenny having sex, he liked having someone around the apartment. Ben didn’t know what Jesse did during the day, but he didn’t see him on campus again. Jesse had memorized Ben’s schedule quickly and when Ben came home, he always found Jesse waiting for him at the door.

The routine was good. For some reason, the dreams seemed to take a backseat and Ben could once again chalk them up to his brain’s weirdness. Blake came back for Tuesday movie night and Jesse was officially introduced to both him and Katie.

“Jenny isn’t coming?” Ben asked when Blake showed up with a pack of beer, a bag of chips, and no girlfriend.

“She has a night out with her friends.” Blake threw a thumb above his shoulder. “I brought that one with me though.”

“And there’s no refund,” Katie said, tugging at one of his large ears. “I’m starting to think that your girl doesn’t like us.”

“That’s all on you,” Ben said. “I’m adorable.”

Katie had been about to reply when she saw Jesse coming out of the bathroom. Ben didn’t have the time to warn him before Katie was on him, all but hanging off his arm.

“Ooooh, so you’re Ben’s new stray!” She turned to Ben. “He’s cute! I approve.”

“Sorry about her,” Blake said. “The store didn’t want to take her back. Nice to meet you, man.”

“Same. And thanks for letting me stay here, mate.”

“Ah, it’s nothing. Not like I can refuse Ben anything. He’s the man in this relationship.”

Jesse laughed, and, although Ben was happy to see his friends bond with his new picked-up-from-the-street acquaintance, he wasn’t sure he wanted it to be done at his expense. "Shut up, all of you.”

“I didn’t say anything. Much. I certainly didn’t mock you,” Katie protested.

Ben laughingly locked an arm around her neck, not easily because she was almost as tall as he was, and kissed her on the cheek.

“It’s true, darlin’. If this night was a don’t-piss-Ben-off Olympics, you’d have a good start.”

“But it’s not,” Blake said, shoving at him, “so I suggest we pick a movie and get to the drinking.”

They chose a classic, The Avengers—which, to their surprise, Jesse had never seen.

“How did that happen?” Blake exclaimed. “Did you live under a rock?”

“I remember I went to see it with my first boyfriend,” Katie said, then paused to have a mouthful of the leftover lasagna she’d dug out of the fridge. “We held hands and everything. Robert Downey Jr. was so hot.”

“I thought I was your first boyfriend,” Ben said.

“You were the first guy I had sex with, but I had boyfriends before you. But it’s cute that you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous!”

“And he’s not that cute,” Blake said. “Seriously, Jesse. Don’t you like superheroes?"

Blake sounded like it was a crime almost as dire as running over puppies or drowning kittens for fun. Jesse had an amused smile, but didn’t divert his eyes from the TV screen. Ben couldn’t read him at all, couldn't tell whether his friend’s questions and exaggerated bewilderment bothered him, but he thought back to what Jesse had told him about running away from home at 11 and suddenly felt very awkward.

“Guys,” he said, and thought he sounded a bit like his mom when she'd say, kids, give him a break. “Let’s watch the movie, okay?”

Katie and Blake looked at each other, but thankfully said nothing. The atmosphere for the rest of the night was companionable, but Ben couldn't help casting looks in Jesse's direction from time to time. He never caught Jesse looking back, but was somehow certain that he was aware of the attention.

The next day was spent suffering the hangover from hell. Ben couldn't seem to shake off the headache. Sounds were too loud, colors too bright —the red of the brick buildings on the campus, the green of the trees, and the blue of the Californian sky all seemed to conspire to hurt his eyes. The world had taken on a fuzzy quality that gave Ben the impression that he was dreaming. Maybe he was, or so Gabby—who worked at the cash register next to his—seemed to think, as she kept asking him to quit dreaming, Ben, god, pay attention to what you're doing for fuck's sake.

“Ben! Come on, Ben, wake up!”

It was Gabby again. Ben yawned so wide it brought tears to his eyes. He blinked them away.

“You have a customer!” Gabby said, in a hiss that was high-pitched enough that it made half of the people in the line look at her, then at Ben.

Ben blinked again, his vision clearing.

“Hey,” the customer said. “Can I order some food or do I have to fuck you to consciousness first?”

Ben had little to answer to that. The customer was a girl a little older than him, with dark curly hair spread over her shoulders and the complexion of a porcelain doll. She was wearing a leather jacket, a red shirt cut low and tight dark jeans. She looked ready to eat him alive and intensely amused by his confusion.

“What can I get you?” he asked, deciding to ignore her previous statement.

“I'll have a bacon cheeseburger. With the combo—seasoned fries.”

“Okay. What's your name?”

He looked up when she didn't say anything immediately and saw that she had gotten closer, enough to be able to touch him if she reached out. Her lips, painted red, curled up slowly in a delighted smile.

“Call me Meg,” she said, and smiled wider like she was savoring some kind of private joke.

He wrote down the name on the ticket. He was getting more and more uncomfortable by the minute, and she wasn't even doing anything inappropriate. She just looked like she knew a lot more about him than he knew about her. The knowing look reminded him a little of Jesse, but with a much darker edge to it.

“We'll call your name when it’s ready,” he said when she didn’t move.

He didn't have any warning before she grabbed his wrist, fast as a snake, and strong enough that he couldn't shake her off.

“Let me go!”

“There are walls in your mind, Ben Braeden, but you'll catch up soon enough.” Her words were low, meant just for him. How in hell did she know his name? “This is gonna be a fun ride, boy.”

She let go of him as suddenly as she had caught him. For a moment he couldn't move, his heart beating a wild rhythm, like it wanted to break his ribs and jump right out of his chest.

“Are you okay?” Gabby asked, leaving her cash register to hover by his side. “That girl is nuts.”

“Yeah,” Ben murmured. “Completely fucking nuts.”

“What did she tell you?”

Ben rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. His head was pounding fiercely and he felt chilled to the bone.

“Do you wanna take a short break?” Gabby asked.

“Yeah,” Ben said. The cold feeling was morphing into nausea and his head was spinning. “I'll be right back.”

He rushed to the bathroom but once he was there, leaning over the toilet with both of his hands on the porcelain, he found that he couldn't throw up. The nauseous feeling wasn't relenting, though, and he went to splash some water on his face. The lights were still too bright and one of the neon lamps above the mirrors was buzzing, like an insect trapped in a glass. The noise set Ben's teeth on edge and didn't do anything to help his headache. He rubbed his temple in a slow circular motion and blinked a few times, trying to chase the colors that had started swirling at the corner of his vision. It only got worse, until the colors became images. A sleek black car, old but shiny. A bearded man wearing a baseball cap. A black man, falling down to the floor.

His breathing came out fast and shallow and his hands gripped the edges of the sink. When he looked at himself in the mirror, for a moment it wasn't his face looking back, but the face of a man at least ten years older, with short light brown hair, hazel eyes that edged on green, and a full mouth. Ben let out a gasp and brought his hand to his face, but the blink of an eye later it was his own reflection again, the familiar dark curls and brown eyes.

He told Gabby that he was feeling sick and to cover for him, and he went home. He had barely passed the door before Jesse was there, crowding his personal space. His face was dark, making him look almost unfamiliar. His grey eyes seemed black.

“What happened?” he asked urgently. “Are you alright?”

His hand brushed against Ben's shoulder, and although Ben usually didn't mind other people's touch he found himself slapping the hand away. His skin felt sensitive, his body heavy and buzzing like a myriad of insects had taken residence inside him.

“I'm going to bed,” Ben said, and made a beeline for his room.

He heard Jesse swear, then a thud like Jesse had punched a wall. For the first time since Jesse had arrived, Ben locked himself in his bedroom.

---

After twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, Ben woke up with a clear head and only a vague memory of the incident at the Nugget. He remembered being a little short with Jesse and wanted to apologize, but Jesse acted as if nothing had happened and Ben was more than eager to leave the whole thing behind him. He'd missed lunch with Claire the day before and received a terse but worried text from her.

Unless you got run over by a truck, text me.

No truck in sight, he texted back. Was sick yesterday; sorry I didn’t warn you! Am coming today, usual time and place—see you then.

He had no class that morning, no work, so he arrived on campus at noon just to have lunch with Claire. She was already at her usual table, reading, but raised her head at his approach, uncannily aware of his presence.

“Ben.” She looked him up and down. “How are you feeling?”

He sat down across from her and folded his arms on the table. “Fine. It was nothing. I just…”

He hesitated. He’d always had the feeling that he could tell her anything, which had led to some pretty embarrassing confessions in the past, but she’d accepted every one of them unblinkingly. He leaned toward her.

“Something weird happened to me yesterday,” he said.

“Something weird?” He must have looked really serious, because she closed her book and put it away in her bag. “Tell me.”

“One of the customers at the Nugget, she—I don’t remember having ever seen her before but she knew my name. And she said—that there were walls in my mind, whatever that means, that that it was going to be ‘a fun ride’.”

It felt silly, now that he was looking back on the incident with a night of rest, to have been so fucked up over some crazy girl feeding him cryptic lines. Claire didn’t laugh or smile, or even look like she was trying not to, so he was ready to tell her about the sort-of hallucination he’d had in the bathroom, when he saw something that gave him pause.

“Ben?” Claire asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Jesse?” he murmured.

“Jesse? You mean the guy you invited to stay with you?”

She turned around to look at Jesse, who was standing at a distance, leaning against a railing. It was obvious that he’d been watching them and that he’d seen them noticing. He pushed off from the railing and strolled up to them; there was a form of unconscious grace about the way he moved that Ben found captivating, although he kept the thought to himself.

“Hi, Ben," Jesse said, and turned a blinding smile to Claire. “Hey, I’m Jesse.”

“Claire.”

“Nice to meet you, Claire.”

“Hey, Jesse, um—” Ben was surprised to see Jesse on campus again, but it wasn’t like Jesse couldn’t come and go as he pleased. “Did you need something?”

Jesse didn’t have a cell phone—maybe that was it, maybe he wanted to tell Ben something and knew that he was always having lunch with Claire at the Nugget when he could.

“No,” Jesse said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I was just passing by.” He didn’t even seem bothered by how unlikely that explanation was. “I’m glad to meet you, Claire. Ben talks a lot about you.”

Ben glared at him, but Jesse ignored him, all his attention focused on Claire. He was still smiling, but there was something a little stilted about his smile. As for Claire, now that Ben was looking at her—she was eyeing Jesse coldly, her mouth pinched in a thin line like she didn’t like what she was seeing. For the life of him, Ben couldn’t figure why; he’d known her for two years now and she was a little reserved, on her guard when she didn’t know someone, but never outright hostile, not like she was being now.

“He talks a lot about you too,” she eventually told Jesse, making it sound like it wasn’t a point in his favor. “You moved in with him recently, right?”

“Yeah. Ben’s a great guy.”

“He is,” Claire said, and Ben would’ve found it more heartwarming if she’d glanced in his direction or smiled.

“Uh, guys?” Ben said. “Did I miss something?” It seemed crazy, but he had to ask, “Do you two know each other?”

“No,” they said in unison, still staring at each other.

“Okay, weird. Jesse, do you want to have lunch with us?”

He didn’t need Claire’s sudden cutting gaze turned on him to realize that it was a bad suggestion, so it was a relief when Jesse refused. Claire’s eyes followed him as he walked away.

“I don’t like him,” she declared once Jesse was out of sight.

“Why? You’ve seen him for like, two minutes, and he hasn’t done anything outrageous that I’ve noticed.”

Claire looked away. “It’s just a feeling I have. Don’t trust him, Ben.”

That was all she had to say on the subject, and since Ben would rather keep her in a good mood, he didn’t insist.

“What did you want to tell me?” Claire asked. “Before he came—about what happened to you yesterday. You were about to tell me something else.”

“Oh, no, that was it, I was finished with my story. Just a weird customer at the Nugget—it shook me up, but it was stupid now that I think about it.”

He had no idea why he’d changed his mind about telling her and he wasn’t sure Claire believed him, but that was the end of their discussion on the incident.

----

That night was a time for impromptu visitors. Mr. Bennet came around 10 to knock on their door and complain about his mail disappearing—like Ben didn’t have anything better to do than steal his neighbor’s mail. Ben was about to get rid of his patiently suffering composure and snap at the man, when Mr. Bennet saw something inside the apartment that stopped him in his ranting. Ben turned, but there was only Jesse sprawled on the couch, watching TV.

“Mr. Bennet?” Ben asked. “Are you alright?”

Mr. Bennet seemed to snap out of it, then unfortunately remembered that he thought Ben was the lowest kind of scum there was.

“Am I alright? Of course I’m not alright! You kids will take me to an early grave.” He raised a finger, pointing it threateningly at Ben. “I’ve been patient until now, but I will watch you, so don’t think you can just grab what’s mine.”

Ben breathed a sigh of relief when he left, but he didn’t have much respite before someone knocked on the door again. Ben went to open it, ready to slam it back if it was that psycho neighbor again, but it wasn’t. It was Claire, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, her hair braided around her head like a crown. It was the first time she'd ever come here.

“Claire? What are you—come in, please.”

She walked inside, but she was looking over his shoulder—and sure enough, when Ben followed her gaze, it was Jesse she was watching; Jesse who’d stood up and was standing stiffly by the couch, looking about to run away. The TV was off.

“Christo,” Claire said.

It made so little sense that Ben couldn’t do anything but gape at her. Jesse, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes.

“You a hunter?” he asked. “I’m not what you think I am.”

“Really?” Claire said, then took a bottle from her handbag and threw something liquid at Jesse.

It caught him in the arm and Jesse hissed in pain, taking a step back. Ben’s eyes widened at the sight of the red spots that had appeared on Jesse’s skin, like he’d been burned.

“What the fuck, Claire?” he exclaimed. “What did you throw at him?”

“Holy water,” she said.

“That can’t be right—holy water is just water, how could it—”

Claire splashed him with the fluid from her bottle, and Ben flinched before he realized that it was, indeed, only water, and that it hadn’t hurt him at all. The burns on Jesse’s forearm seemed real enough, though.

Jesse, in fact, looked annoyed. He took a few steps in Claire’s direction and she yelled, “Stay back!” while raising her arm. Around her wrist a rosary was wrapped, with its cross swinging back and forth, its small mother-of-pearl beads shining with rainbow colors under the electric light.

“I’m not a demon,” Jesse said. “And you’re not a hunter, are you? A little knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge at all, you know.”

“I know enough,” Claire said, defensive.

“Then you know this—Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii— see? I’m not possessed.” He thumped a fist against his chest. “This body? All mine.”

“Then you’re something else. What are you and what do you want with Ben? I have salt,” she added, like she was threatening to take out the big guns.

“You won’t be able to hurt me.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, that’s a fact.” Jesse sighed. “I don’t want to hurt you, Claire, and I don’t wanna hurt Ben either. Actually, I’m here to watch over you two.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would Ben need watching over?”

She doesn’t think it’s weird that she would need watching over, was Ben’s nebulous thought. He felt so strangely detached from the whole scene that he couldn’t bring himself to puzzle over Jesse talking about demons and Claire throwing burning water. It had to be one of his crazy dreams; surely the world couldn’t be that nonsensical.

“Ben?” Claire calling his name almost startled him. “He didn’t do anything to you, did he?”

“What?” Ben said, while Jesse was exclaiming, “Of course not!”

“You seem a little off,” Claire said, ignoring Jesse.

“Well, my friends are sprouting crazy shit, so, yes, I might be feeling a little off. Once the both of you start making sense again I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

He crossed his arms on his chest and looked at them. Claire seemed slightly embarrassed, and Jesse had a bored look on his face that Ben was pretty sure was affected.

“Ben,” Claire said softly, “I’m sorry I barged in here like that. I was just worried about you.”

He should be happy that she worried about him, but he felt a little bit insulted. He didn’t know—didn’t understand—what she thought was happening, but obviously in her eyes he was a fragile creature in need of protection, like a baby panda or something.

“Jesse didn’t do anything to me. I’m not even pretending to know where you got that idea.”

“He’s— ” Claire cast a sideways glance in Jesse’s direction. “He’s dangerous.”

Jesse rolled his eyes, but Ben remembered that Jesse had not been far from characterizing himself as dangerous. He’d thought Ben was crazy to trust him.

“You saw what the holy water did to him,” Claire said.

“I—I don’t know what it means.”

“It means he’s something evil.”

“Hey!” Jesse protested.

Claire turned to glower at him. “Then tell me, what are you? I don’t believe this crap about you protecting us.”

“I don’t give a shit whether you believe me or not, but if it’s the truth you want, then I think the both of you better sit down.” Claire narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Come on, I won’t do anything to you.”

He stepped further away from the couch and Claire grudgingly went to sit down on it. After a moment of hesitation, Ben followed her.

“So,” Jesse started once they were settled, “question number one: what am I? Answer—” He closed his fist, and when he opened it palm up there was a small flame dancing in its center; Ben let out a yelp and Jesse smirked. “Claire thinks I’m a demon, hence the holy water. She’s only half-right—I’m a cambion.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “Does it mean you’re—”

“Yep, half-human, half-demon.”

“How is that even possible? I thought it was just a legend.”

“Don’t ask me, I hear the logistics were complicated. Anyway, it means that I have my own body, and it’s human, more or less, with a few added bonuses.”

Jesse’s tone was casual but he wasn’t looking at them, his eyes focused instead on the flame he was holding in his hand. Ben wondered if the fire was actually hot—was it real fire? He was so tempted to touch it that he could barely concentrate on what Jesse was telling them. Claire, however, didn’t divert her eyes from Jesse for a second, like she was afraid he was going to disappear if she wasn’t watching him.

“What does it have to do with us?” she asked, something cautious in her voice.

“I was in Australia—I hadn’t been back to the US in a while. I met a man, and he said you two were in danger, asked me if I could protect you.”

“And you accepted… out of the goodness of your heart?”

Jesse looked up and closed his fingers onto the flame, stifling it. “No, of course not. I didn’t know you, after all. I made a deal with that man —I protect you, and he helps me with a problem I have.”

“What problem?”

Jesse gave Claire a cold look. “That’s none of your business.”

Ben saw Claire clench her fists so tightly that her knuckles whitened, but she didn’t push the issue.

“Who was that man?”

“I didn’t know him. His name is all I have and it won’t tell you anything.”

“How did you know you could trust him with your problem? Did he tell you what kind of danger we’re in?”

“I just knew I could trust him, that’s all. He couldn’t lie to me,” Jesse said, which Ben thought was a pretty cryptic answer. “As for what’s threatening you…” For some reason, he looked straight at Ben. “Demons, of course. He said demons were going to use you as bait, to draw out people who have something they want.”

“What people?”

“Two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester. And someone else called Castiel.”

Claire had a fair complexion, but at that moment she blanched to the point that her face looked gray.

“You know them,” Jesse said.

“I may have met them, a long time ago.”

“Wait,” Ben said, making both Jesse and Claire look at him. “I don’t know any of those people. I’ve never met any demons, or, or,” he waved at Jesse, “anything like you before.”

Jesse pressed his lips together and Ben felt immediately bad, then angry because after all, he was the one who had been kept in the dark all this time, ignorant and stupid and naïve.

“I’m not part of this, whatever you two…”

He saw Claire then, the look on Claire’s face, almost hurt, like his words were condemnation of her, which wasn't his intention at all. His anger receded a little, leaving him feeling confused and bone-deep tired.

“Can we…” He rubbed a hand on his face. “Can we talk about that later? I’m not up for any more life-changing revelations right now. I don’t even know how much of it I believe at the moment.”

Neither Claire nor Jesse moved. They kept looking at him like they were waiting for something.

“What?” he asked.

“What do you want me to do?” Jesse asked.

“What do you… Oh.”

Everything he thought he knew about Jesse—which admittedly wasn’t much—had been challenged and now what? Jesse was dangerous, he could hurt him—thinking about it, he could probably hurt him even if Ben kicked him out; it wasn’t like walls or a locked door would be of any protection against someone who could make fire with the power of his mind. And to be fair, they’d lived together for more than a week and Jesse had never tried to hurt him.

“You can stay here,” Ben said. “I mean, if you want.”

“Oh. Yes, of course—if it’s not a problem…”

“Ben.” Claire grabbed Ben’s wrist, and she lowered her voice, although probably not enough that Jesse couldn’t hear her. “Are you sure? Now that you know… It’s not safe.”

“It’s not anymore unsafe than it was before.”

Claire clucked her tongue in frustration. “Okay. If you’re letting him stay here anyway… I’m giving you my holy water.” She put the bottle in his hands. “Salt might work against him. You can line up your door and your window with it and he shouldn’t be able to get into your room. I can show you some devil’s traps too.”

She drew him elaborated circles on a piece of paper, claiming they could keep Jesse away, or trap him, or maybe make him dance the rumba, who knew. All the while Jesse was pretending he could not see or hear them, looking through the window, examining the palms of his hands, then biting his thumb nail.

“Okay, I have to get going, now,” Claire said, but didn’t move, looking instead intently at Ben for a long time. He had never had the time before to notice how clear a blue her eyes were.

“Claire,” he said finally. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yes.” She turned to Jesse. “He better be fine.”

Jesse stuck out his tongue at her, causing Ben to break into a startled giggle. Like the final descent in his own emotional roller coaster, he was starting to feel some hysteria bubble inside him and he had to press a fist against his mouth to stifle his laughter. Claire finally left, after making him promise to call her if anything happened, and Ben found himself alone with Jesse. He’d felt slightly annoyed at Claire for being so worried about him, but when she was gone he had a moment of sharp, cold fear.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jesse said, and he sounded more tired than angry.

“Yeah, forgive me if I don’t trust your word on this. You lied to me.”

“Not really. I’ve never said anything to you that wasn’t true.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And what would you’ve done if I told you the truth? If I’d shown you? I needed to be able to watch over you.”

He had a point, but Ben enjoyed having the annoyance wash away his fear. He wasn’t about to let Jesse off the hook just now.

“I guess we’ll never know, now.”

He twirled in his hands the bottle Claire had given him: it was a small plastic bottle of mineral water whose label had been torn off. Ben fought to quell the faint, sadistic urge to try the water on Jesse one more time.

“What can you do, exactly?” he asked. “How—how powerful are you?”

Jesse shrugged, opened his arms wide with his palms turned to the ceiling.

“What can I do? Anything, I guess. I’ve never tested my power up to its limit. I don’t know what it would do to the world.” He had a small twisted smile. “But don’t worry, I haven’t killed anyone since I was eleven.”

When he went to bed Ben hesitated, but in the end he did line up his door and window with kitchen salt.

---

The man’s shadow was immense, cutting the wall in two with its darkness.

“Dean?”

“Ben, just stay here.” Deep voice, almost a growl.

“I thought I heard you—”

“I said 'stay back'!”

Pain, confusion, fear as he hit the wall. He tried to scream and bit his tongue, tasted metal inside his mouth. He thought he’d seen—

Ben sat up in his bed, his hand clutched to the front of his t-shirt like a lifeline, like it would enable him to somehow slow down the fast-paced beating of his heart.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered to himself, closing his eyes tightly until lights were dancing behind his eyelids.

There was a light knock on his door, a timid attempt at calling for his attention, but Ben jumped anyway and his heart leaped once more inside his chest.

“Ben? Are you okay?”

It was Jesse’s voice; weirdly enough, hearing him made Ben start to feel more in control.

“Yeah,” Ben said, and the door opened on Jesse, a dark figure wrapped in shadows. “How did you even know that something was wrong?” Ben asked. “Can you read minds or something?” That was a disquieting thought.

Jesse snorted. “You yelled. My ears work just fine, thank you. Did something happen?”

“Just a nightmare. It’s nothing.”

“Okay.”

Jesse shifted positions and his hand came out of the shadows to rest on the doorknob. Ben expected Jesse to get inside, but Jesse didn’t move.

“Um, Ben.”

For a moment, Ben couldn’t figure what was wrong, then it dawned on him. “Oh. The salt. You can’t get in.”

It was surreal, kitchen salt stopping something as powerful as Jesse, just as what was ordinary water to Ben had burned him. It gave Ben a sense of triumph, of control; if he wished, he could keep Jesse out.

Jesse rapped his fingers against the wooden door. “If I wanted it, there are ways I could disrupt the line,” he said dryly. Then his tone softened when he added, “Sorry. You don’t want me in, so I should just go back to bed.”

“No. You can come in,” Ben surprised himself by saying. “Wait.”

He got out of bed and went to break the salt line on the floor. He didn’t know what it took to let Jesse in, so he started sweeping the salt with the side of his hand until Jesse stopped him. “It’s okay, you just need to break it.”

Ben got on his feet; in the dark he had misjudged distances and he found himself standing very close to Jesse, enough that he could feel his body heat. Ben's heart skipped a beat for some reason and it was a few more seconds before he stepped aside to let Jesse walk in.

“What's the salt doing to you?” he asked, sitting on his bed with his back against the headboard. “I mean, it’s just salt.”

“Salt wards off against impure things,” Jesse said, sounding like he was reciting something out of a textbook. “At least that’s the theory. It just makes me feel weird and slow, and like I can't figure out how to step over it.”

“It’s not… hurting you, is it?” Ben asked with sudden guilt.

Jesse shook his head and sat beside Ben without waiting for an invitation. “No, don’t worry. So what was it about?”

“Huh?”

“Your nightmare. You sounded really scared.”

“Oh, you know. A nightmare. Monsters that go bump in the night; silly things.”

“Monsters do go bump in the night, you know,” Jesse said, in a voice that made a chill creep up Ben’s spine. He felt the urge to turn on a light but he didn’t want to seem frightened.

“Well, it was just a nightmare. I have them sometimes; I have an active imagination, my mom says.”

“If you say so.”

“You sound like you don’t believe me,” Ben said, irritated. “Don’t you have nightmares?”

“Of course I do. I’m just trying to figure why that guy said that there were demons after you. There has to be something special about you. You sure the names Winchester or Castiel don’t ring a bell?”

Ben was cold, faint tremors running through his whole body. He stuck his hands between his thighs to bring back heat to his fingertips and to stop them from shaking.

“No,” he said, and it came out kind of strangled. “No bells rung. And what about Claire? Aren’t you wondering about her too? We’ve only known each other for two years, and I don’t remember demons having ever been involved.”

“Oh, there’s something weird about your friend, no question there. First, she knew those names. Second… there’s just something that…”

“Something what? She knew stuff, but she’s doing a Master in Religious Studies—that must be where she picked it up.”

“I kind of doubt that, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” Jesse’s leg bounced as he was thinking; Ben had noticed before that he had trouble sitting still. “There’s something about her. I feel something, something I don’t like. She’s making my skin crawl.”

“You’re making my skin crawl, and I have concrete reasons for that,” Ben said. It wasn’t exactly true, which probably meant that he was brain-dead stupid, but he felt defensive on Claire’s behalf.

Jesse huffed a laugh. “Hey, don’t hold back, Ben, tell me what you really think. You’re letting me sit on your bed, though. You must be really brave.”

His voice was mocking, but in a friendly, intimate way, like they'd known each other for longer than they really had. It stirred up something low in Ben's gut.

“Or I’m a moron," he said in the same tone. "Seriously though, I know Claire, and she’s a little out there in some ways, but she’s not evil or anything like that.”

“Not saying that she’s evil—just… different. There are a lot of ways to be different.”

“I guess you’d know all about it.” Ben was feeling warmer now, and with warmth came sleepiness, so he leaned back against his pillows.

“You, on the other hand, you feel completely normal.”

Ben realized he’d closed his eyes when he felt Jesse’s warm hand on his knee. He tried to open them, say something, but his eyelids were heavy and his whole body felt like it was under water.

“I’ll let you get back to sleep,” he thought he heard Jesse say. The hand on his knee lingered for a moment. “Good night.”

---

Claire didn’t show up for lunch the next day. Ben texted her and didn’t get an answer; he then tried to call her, but was directed to her voicemail.

“Do you know where she lives?” Jesse asked Ben after he’d come back from school.

“Yeah, but… She must be caught up in her work, that’s all. I don’t want to bother her, it hasn’t even been a day since I’ve last seen her. It’s not like I’m her boyfriend.”

“Yeah, that’s very thoughtful of you and everything.” Jesse paused to blow out smoke through the open window. He was smoking with his elbows resting against the windowsill, watching kids play baseball on the ground across the street. “But remember that part about demons looking for you two? I wasn’t joking, you know.”

It wasn’t that Ben had forgotten about it, but he kind of wished he had. With the sun shining bright in a flawlessly blue sky, it was easy to think that the night before had only been one of his dreams. It was a bit of a shock to hear Jesse talk about it so openly. He poked at the peanut butter sandwich he’d just made himself, not feeling that hungry all of a sudden.

“You’re not seriously saying that demons did something to her?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I suggest we go to her place. There are demons in Long Beach, I’m sure of it. The other day, when you came back upset, I could smell one of them all over you.”

“What?” The bread in his hands crumbled when Ben’s fingers twitched reflexively. “You mean that—that woman?”

“It’s not really a woman. I mean, the person it’s possessing is, of course.”

“What, possession? You mean like in The Exorcist? Holy shit. How does that work? Is that woman still alive inside?”

“If she’s lucky, she isn’t. As for why the possession—demons don’t have bodies, they’re just souls—human souls, actually, that got twisted in Hell until they became something else entirely. When they come up here, they need a body. It’s a problem for them.” Ben could only see Jesse’s left profile, but he didn’t miss the bitter smile on his lips. “That’s what makes me oh so very special. But less talking, more action. Where does Claire live?”

“She lives on Ocean Boulevard, close to the Museum of Art. But Blake came this morning when you were still asleep and took the car. It’s gonna take us forever to get there by bus.”

Jesse tossed the butt of his cigarette outside and turned to Ben with a smile. “That’s not gonna be a problem, trust me.”

“What do you mean?”

Jesse walked up to him and Ben tensed when Jesse took him by the wrist, prodding him to get on his feet. They stood facing each other for a moment, Jesse’s thumb on Ben’s pulse point, probably feeling Ben’s heart race and delighting in it. He grinned and said, “Did you ever wish you could teleport?”

“Wha—”

The background behind Jesse’s face—the white wall, part of the door to Blake’s room—dissolved suddenly, and Ben couldn’t see anything at all, could only feel his stomach lurch, like trying to jump through his throat, and that floating feeling you got when you were halfway asleep, nothing tying you down to the ground anymore. Then it all came back, bam, like a wall in the face where there was no wall, and Ben could feel the ground under his feet but his legs hadn’t gotten the message and they buckled. He would have done a nose dive if Jesse hadn’t caught him by his shoulders, laughing.

“Hey there, sailor.”

Ben had his face buried in the crook of Jesse’s neck; he didn’t move for a few seconds, waiting to see if reality was about to shift again.

“What. the. hell,” he mumbled as he pulled apart from Jesse.

He looked around him and unsurprisingly, they weren’t in his apartment anymore. They were standing on a sidewalk, and Ben didn’t need to recognize the Mexican restaurant at the corner to know that they were in front of Claire’s building. A car drove past them and Ben turned away uneasily, struck by the paranoid thought that the driver had seen them and was about to—do what? Call the press? The FBI?

“Relax,” Jesse said, pressing a firm hand between his shoulder blades. “He didn’t see us.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Ben hissed, swatting his arm away.

“Because people don’t look around them that much, especially when they’re driving. And if anyone had seen us appear, they’d just find a way to rationalize it. Everyone wants the world to make sense. Trust me on that.”

“Well, next time, warn me before you pull something like that, asshole.”

Jesse laughed again. “I wanted to see your face.”

Ben elbowed him in the ribs. “It’s not fucking funny.”

“Okay, sorry. Ouch,” he moaned as Ben hit him in the stomach. “I won’t do it again, promise.”

“Good. Okay, I guess that now we’re here, we might as well see if Claire is alright.”

To get to Claire’s place they had to pass a gate, enter a small courtyard, and there was Claire’s door hidden in a corner at the back, painted a bright red—a color that, as she'd told Ben, she loathed and had not chosen at all.

Ben knocked and, at first, there was no answer. Dread was just starting to build up at the pit of his stomach when Jesse knocked in his turn and called, “Claire! It’s Ben and Jesse! Open up!”

When Claire opened the door, she blinked a few times like she had to get used to the light. “Ben?” she said; her eyes flicked from him to Jesse.

“Can we come in?” It looked dark inside. “Were you asleep?”

“Oh, uh, no.” She blushed faintly and scratched her nose. “I was up all night and I… forgot to draw the curtains open. But please, come in.”

It was uncertain whether her invite included Jesse, but she didn’t protest when he followed Ben inside. Claire’s apartment consisted in one room with a sofa bed, a table and chair, a TV, a couple of battered armchairs, and walls lined up with shelves filled with books. It led to a kitchen and a small bathroom. Her laptop was lit up on the table.

“Were you working? You didn’t come for lunch today.”

Claire’s eyes widened and she raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Ben—sorry, I didn’t realize how late it was. I just didn’t see the time fly.”

“It’s okay. I just wanted to make sure you were okay, what with…”

He looked for Jesse and saw that he had wandered away, frowning at the books piled up next to Claire’s computer. He was mouthing silently the titles, so focused he didn’t see it when Claire came from behind him and swiped the table clean, taking the books and holding them against her chest. Claire and Jesse looked at each other defiantly.

“You were looking up things about me,” Jesse said.

“I wanted to know what we were dealing with,” she said, and Ben wondered if she was being insulting on purpose.

“And what do you think of what you found?” Jesse asked, chin up.

“That you’re something that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist. How did that happen? You weren’t born by chance; you couldn’t be.”

Jesse’s fists clenched, but he kept them to his sides, his jaw working, his eyes too bright. Ben thought he was about to explode, but when he spoke again his voice was calm, if deeper than usual. “No, I wasn’t. See, about ten years ago there was a war between Heaven and Hell.”

“Yes.” Claire’s tone was flat, but she looked at Jesse so intently that Ben felt like he could vanish at any moment and it wouldn’t make a difference to them at all. “I know about that.”

“Hell needed a weapon, something that could blow the other side up—and that was me, their very own little atom bomb.”

“And did you? Blow the other side up?”

“Is the world still there or did I dream it this morning?” Anger was starting to creep into Jesse’s voice. “No, I didn’t join the demons. There must have been a glitch in their plan because I was raised by human parents, and I fucking thought I was just a normal kid until they came for me. And I bailed. I ran off in the opposite direction of anything that wanted to kill me or use me. I didn’t choose this, Claire.”

“Okay,” Claire said evenly; she stared into space for a moment, rubbing her eyebrow with the tip of her finger. “One more thing, Jesse,” she said after a few long seconds.

“What?”

Jesse folded his arms high on his chest, looking daggers at Claire. She didn’t appear to be even remotely frightened, for which Ben was privately admiring her.

“You can control people, can’t you? Make them do your bidding.”

“Uh, yeah? Kind of. I can make them see things my way and then… do stuff. I haven’t done anything to Ben, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It wasn’t something Ben had even considered and he found himself frantically thinking back to everything he’d done since he’d met Jesse. There was, it seemed to him, only one thing that Jesse could have made him do against his will, one thing that would have served his interests—and that was when Ben had invited him to stay at his place.

Jesse looked away from Claire for a second to glance at him. “Ben, no—I didn’t make you do anything, I swear.”

“I…”

“That’s why I’m mentioning it,” Claire cut them in. “I want you to use it on me. Use your power to—make me do something.”

Jesse gaped at her. “Come again?”

“Claire, that’s crazy!” Ben exclaimed. “Why would you do want him to do that to you?”

“What you make me do doesn’t matter,” Claire continued like she hadn’t been interrupted, “as long as it doesn’t hurt me or anyone else. I just want to see what it’s like.”

“I don’t understand,” Jesse said, sounding at a loss.

“I don’t need you to understand. Will you do it or not?”

“Well.” Jesse looked at Ben. “If that’s what you want. I’m not sure what you’ll get out of it, though.”

“Don’t worry about that. You can do it now, if you’re ready.”

“Hey,” Ben said, “I don’t know if I’m ready. Claire, think about it.” He came close to her, dared clasp her hand in his, forcing her to turn and look at him. “You were the one who said that he’s dangerous.”

“And you seem to think that you’re safe with him. Have you changed your mind?”

Ben was aware of Jesse’s eyes on him. “No. But—that’s different. You’ll be under his control. What if—” What if I’m wrong about him?

“It’ll be alright,” she said gently. “I know what I’m doing.”

He let her go with reluctance and stepped away, feeling awfully like that first time he’d let go of his mom’s hand in kindergarten, not knowing if he was going to see her again at the end of the day. Claire and Jesse stood a few steps apart, facing each other like in a duel. Ben almost expected them to bow to each other.

“I’m ready,” Claire said.

“Okay,” Jesse said, rubbing his hands over his mouth, then against each other. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

And then… Claire took one step forward. Ben thought at first that she was getting impatient with Jesse’s stalling, but her mouth opened like in a soundless cry and she wavered slightly. Jesse reached out to steady her.

“Is that enough?” he asked tightly.

Claire took a deep breath. “Make me do something I wouldn’t normally do.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Ben wanted to chime in and say that he was with Jesse on this one, but he recognized that glint in Claire’s eyes: she wasn’t going to be talked out of it, not when she’d gone this far already.

“Do it,” she said in a firm voice.

For a second time was on hold as Ben waited, having stopped breathing, to see what Jesse was going to do—what he was going to make Claire do. She took one more step in Jesse’s direction and Ben couldn’t tell if it was voluntary. She raised her arm slowly—deliberately Ben would say, if he didn’t know any better—and it seemed like it was a long, long time before her hand came to cup the side of Jesse’s face, her thumb resting against his cheekbone. It was a soft, uncannily tender gesture. All the while Ben’s heart was pounding, steady but loud.

Claire dropped her hand with a slight gasp and Jesse stepped back, almost stumbling.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and blinked out of existence.

Ben couldn’t do anything but stare at the spot where Jesse had been standing a few seconds ago, until Claire heaved a sigh and lurched to her sofa.

“Claire.” He hurriedly went to sit by her side; his hand hovered for a second above her shoulder before resting there.

She gave him a small smile. “I’m fine. It was just… unsettling, I guess.”

“What was it like?” Ben couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, the first time, I didn’t realize I had moved until after the fact. It was like a few seconds of my life had been stolen away from me. And the second time…” She had started to loosely braid her hair in an absent-minded way, and Ben watched her long fingers intertwine with the blond strands, her almond-shaped fingernails looking like small polished stones. “It was absolute certainty. Something so simple, raising my hand and… touching him, and it was like I’d never wanted to do anything else in my life.”

She shuddered and Ben squeezed her shoulder.

“You’re lucky that’s all he made you do. What got into you?”

She turned her gaze on him. “Now, I know what it feels like—if it happens again, I’ll be able to recognize it, and so will you. He didn’t use his power on you, did he?”

“From what you’re telling me—no, I don’t think so.”

She nodded. “I was fairly certain he hadn’t. I don’t think he’s lying to us, even if he’s maybe not telling us everything. I don’t think his intentions are bad.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“The war he was talking about. Between Hell and Heaven—it did happen.” She let her hair go and joined her hands on her lap. “If the demons had had the kind of power Jesse got, it would be Hell on Earth right now. It takes a lot of strength to turn your back on your destiny. It can only be admired.”

“How do you know about all this stuff? About the demons, about the war between Heaven and Hell?”

His hand had slid down between her back and the sofa, and he was wondering if he should take it away. It was a surprise, then, when Claire took his other hand and brushed her thumb over his knuckles.

“I’m sorry, Ben, that you got caught up in all this—I still don’t understand how that happened. As for me… You know about demon possession?”

“Yeah, Jesse told me about it. You… Were you possessed?”

“No—well, not by a demon. My mother was, but… The thing is, demons aren’t the only thing that can possess people. Ghosts can too, sometimes, and also… Angels.”

“Angels? Angels exist? Why would they possess people?”

“For the same reason demons do: because they don’t have a body they can use on Earth. The rules are a bit different for them; they need their host’s consent, and they can only possess people from certain bloodlines. I’m from one of those bloodlines. My father left our home when I was a child with an angel riding him. I was possessed by that angel once, briefly, but my father took over again, and… I haven’t seen him since.”

“That’s…” Ben had never had a father, but at least he hadn’t had to lose him. He clutched her hand in his. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She patted his hand before drawing hers back. “It’s our burden, everyone has one. But my point wasn’t to tell you my sob story; it’s relevant to what’s happening now. The angel possessing my father, his name—it’s Castiel.”

---

Ben got back to his apartment later on with the hope that Jesse would be there, but he wasn’t. Two days passed, and Jesse didn’t come back. There was no way to reach him, and it left Ben at a bit of a loss—demons, angels, and God knows what else were roaming the earth and Ben… went to class. Went to his job at the Nugget. He didn’t really know what else he could do.

On the second day, Blake came to return the car. Ben came back from school and found him drinking milk from the bottle.

“Hey, Ben. How’s it going?”

“Hey, man.” Ben clapped his friend on the back. “It’s good to see you. How’s the girlfriend?”

“Good, she’s good. Better than good, she’s awesome.”

Ben laughed. “I’m glad to hear that. When are you officially moving in?” Blake gave him a look. “Come on, you’re barely here anymore. I was starting to forget the sound of your voice.”

“Maybe I’m waiting for the end of the honeymoon period to see if she still wants me once the magic has worn off.”

“Well, if she comes to her senses I’ll take you back, don’t worry.”

Ben went to rummage in the fridge for something to eat. When he closed the door empty-handed, Blake was watching him.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“You don’t really want me to answer that, do you?” Blake sat on the corner of the kitchen table, looking uncharacteristically serious. “Where’s Jesse?”

“Uh… I don’t know. He took off a couple of days ago. I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Did you two have a fight?”

“No, he just… He just left. I don’t even know if he’s still in Long Beach.”

Or in California, or even in the US. He could be anywhere, and Ben really didn’t like that thought. Needing something to do with his hands, he started to wash the plates left in the sink.

“Too bad, he looked like a cool guy. But maybe it’s better that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was… The two of you couldn’t have stayed here on your own. I mean, the guy didn’t have a job, right? He couldn’t help you with the rent.”

“Oh.” Ben turned off the water. “That’s why you’re not moving in with Jenny, right?”

“I can’t leave until you have another roommate—one that can pay the rent.”

“Aw, man—” Ben dried up his hands on his jeans and joined Blake on the table. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Blake bumped his fist against Ben’s arm. “If I don’t, who will? Apart from you mom. Hey, I got an idea—maybe Katie could move in with you.”

“I don’t want to know how you got from my mom to Katie, but I don’t think it’ll work out. She can’t leave like this, her roommate would blow a gasket if Katie left her with the rent. I’ll find someone.”

“Maybe Jesse will come back. And maybe he’ll find a job.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

If they survived the demons and angels and whatever they wanted with them, maybe they’d win the lottery too. Ben couldn’t tell Blake about all this, couldn’t get him mixed up in that kind of problem.

“Do you want me to stay tonight?” Blake asked. “I think Jenny has a thing with some friends. We could watch TV and eat pizza and get drunk.”

Ben knew he should say no. He should push Blake away until he knew what was going on and knew his friend wasn’t going to get hurt because of him. But Blake had known him for too long, too well, and he’d immediately know that something was wrong if Ben didn’t respond the way he usually would. He would feel he had to fix it somehow and maybe, God forbid, would get Katie involved too.

“Yeah, sounds good,” he said, “but you’re buying.”

----

They got so smashed that night that Ben couldn’t make himself go to his morning classes the next day. Neither Blake nor he managed to get to their respective beds, and Blake slept on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, while Ben spent the night on the couch—where Jesse had slept—his face pressed against the cushions. It hadn’t happened to him since his first months of college, when he would get dizzy with blessed freedom and party for days in a row.

Around noon, he roused enough to send a text to Claire telling her he was sick and couldn’t come for lunch. It took him no less than an hour to get up, shower and get dressed in time for his 3 pm class.

“Hey, Blake,” he called his friend, nudging him in the ribs with his foot.

“Go ‘way,” Blake mumbled, rolling to turn his back on Ben, hiding his face into the crook of his elbow.

“I’m going to class. If you feel up for it you can take the couch.”

“Hate you.”

“I know. Don’t burn the apartment down.”

He only had two one-hour classes this afternoon, but it felt like they were three times longer. Ben couldn’t sit still, glancing nervously at the clock every five minutes, filled with an anxiety that he couldn’t quite explain. He missed his bus home by a few seconds and had to wait for more than half an hour. By the time the next bus arrived he was tired, achy, and annoyed. There were three other people inside the bus: two men and one woman, all wearing slick black suits and looking like they should own a car. When they all got off the bus at the same stop as Ben did, he felt his stomach drop. He walked down the street with quick strides, his head bowed, and his mind feverishly looking for an out. He had the holy water Claire had given him in his bag, and he was sliding his hand inside and fumbling for it when one of the men dropped a hand on his shoulder.

Ben spun around, so fast that it made his stomach lurch and his vision blur. He managed to uncap the bottle on the first try and splashed the man with its content. The man—younger than Ben had first thought, no more than a few years on him, traces of healing acne and a pointy nose—blinked slowly, but looked more puzzled than hurt. He glanced at his companions.

“I think it was holy water,” the woman said. “He believes we are demons.”

They weren’t demons, then. It meant they were either humans, or—Ben tried to take a step back, but the woman, somehow, was now standing behind him.

“You need to come with us, Ben Braeden,” she said, like there was no other possible outcome.

“I don’t think so,” Ben said, and he was proud to hear that his voice was barely trembling.

He tried to break away but the woman grabbed him by the elbow, and the older man immediately grasped his other arm. Ben struggled, but they were stronger than they looked and they were holding him so tightly that he was surely going to bruise.

“What do you want with me?” Ben shouted, fear and anger battling inside him for dominance.

“With you? Nothing,” the younger man said; he had taken a handkerchief out from somewhere and was wiping his face. “You just need to come with us. Fighting is useless.”

Ben was starting to see that, but he couldn’t stop, could only fight harder even though his arms were hurting him. His panic was building up and he could feel his breathing get out of control. Let me go, let me go, let me go, letmegoletmegoletmego.

“Let him go.”

For a split second Ben thought, Jesse—but the voice was too deep, too rough for it to be Jesse. He saw the younger man’s eyes widen. At the same time, the people holding him slumped and the young man got something out of his jacket that gleamed under the sun—a blade.

“Castiel! Don’t move!” he screamed. “I will bring you—” 

Something hit the back of Ben’s head and he fell to his knees, colored spots dancing in front of his eyes. He heard a scuffle, a yell, and fought to get up, but hands like iron bands were still around his arms. He felt dizzy and sick, feeble like after a long period of illness.

“Are you hurt?” the voice from earlier asked. The man sounded very close and Ben didn’t dare raise his head.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice raspy. “Are they—”

“They’re dead.” The man sounded weary. “Can you stand up or do you need my help?”

Ben wanted to say he didn’t need help. “Can you—make them let go of me?”

He closed his eyes and after a few seconds, he could move freely. He hoisted himself up, noting that the man didn’t offer his help again. Ben forced himself to look at him—Castiel, the young man had said, which meant that he was an angel, that he was the angel, the one who was possessing Claire’s father. The man had Claire’s blue eyes. He wore a blue tie, a dark suit, and a trench coat. He looked totally harmless, a narrow-shouldered tax accountant, but Ben didn’t need the bodies around him to know that this first impression wasn’t true. There was just something about him that made him look like he was too large for his body.

“You’re Castiel,” Ben said, when he had meant to say, thank you.

“You’re Ben Braeden,” Castiel replied.

“They’re looking for you. Demons, and—them, I guess.”

“They were angels,” Castiel said. “I know they’re looking for me. I don’t know why, not yet.” He seemed to be considering something, then added, “I will take you back to your home. What is your address?”

Ben gave it to him, and before he had the time to warily ask him what he meant by take you back, Castiel put a hand on his shoulder and sure enough, the world blurred into nothing, then morphed again into his street. Ben gave himself a moment to make sure all his organs were in their right place.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t do that again, please.”

“Ah. Dean finds it trying too. I shall remember that.”

Dean.

“Wait, who is—”

There was a sound like the flutter of wings. Ben whirled around, but the man was gone; gone the way Jesse had disappeared, without a ripple in the air. Ben scanned the area around him. There was a couple walking hand in hand on the sidewalk from the other side of the road and a black SUV drove past, but no Castiel in sight.

“Jesus Christ,” Ben murmured, hiding his face in his hands.

He sat heavily on the ground, not caring if anyone saw him. Dean. That name, that fucking name. Dean Winchester? It was like a fog danced in his mind every time he tried to think about it. There were clearer spots, random spots of colors in the grey of his memory, but when he wanted to look closer at them, they clouded over. There are walls in your mind.

“Fuck it.”

He got his phone out of his jeans pocket and called his mom. If anyone was going to remember his life better than he did, that would be her.

“Mom?”

“Hi, baby. How are you? Is anything wrong?”

Ben grimaced. Maybe he didn’t call his mom often enough. “No, nothing is wrong. How are you?”

“I’m fine. Lydia and Mary-Ann are coming for dinner tonight so I’m elbow deep in flour. That’s not why you’re calling, though, is it?” She laughed at his silence. “Don’t sweat it, Ben. I know you’re busy and don’t have much time to call your old mother.”

“You’re not old,” he protested.

“Good, I trained you well. Now can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing serious. I just—I have something to ask you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you know anyone called Dean? Dean Winchester, maybe? Or a Sam Winchester?”

There was a silence so long that Ben thought his mom had hung up on him. “Mom?”

“Dean Winchester, you said? Where did you hear that name?”

“Someone mentioned him to me. I think maybe I’ve heard this name before? But I can’t quite remember. Do you know him?”

“I—I don’t have time for this right now. Can you call me back later?”

“Mom? What’s going on? You know him, don’t you? Who is he?”

“We’ll talk about it later. Ben, I’m sorry, I have to go now.”

“Mom? Mom!”

This time she had hung up on him. Ben stared at his phone, disbelieving. What the fuck was going on? He couldn’t come to terms with the fact that the weirdness had now spread to his own mother.

“Ben? Are you okay?”

Ben’s heart jumped in his chest. That was Jesse’s voice. He scrambled to his feet and turned around, and indeed Jesse was here, looking Ben over with concerned eyes.

“What happened to you?” Jesse asked. “Are you hurt?” He took Ben by the arm and examined the angry red mark left by the angels. “Who did that to you?”

“It’s a long a story but I’m okay, really.” It was a bit embarrassing to have Jesse fuss over him, but he didn’t try to get his arm back. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“Yeah, sorry I freaked out on you. I didn’t—I didn’t like what I did to Claire.”

“She asked you to. She’s not mad at you at all. She now seems convinced that you’re a good person.”

“Does she now?” Jesse snorted. “Well, as long as she doesn’t try to exorcise me again. I just don’t like that I can do that sort of thing. That’s not an excuse, though.” He let Ben go. “I should’ve been here to protect you.”

Ben shrugged. “You’re not my babysitter. Wanna come in? Blake was there when I left earlier, but he won’t mind.”

Blake wasn’t there, but he’d left a note saying he’d gone back to his girlfriend’s. Ben threw his bag on the ground and flopped down on the couch, toeing off his shoes.

“So, care to tell me what happened now?” Jesse asked. Ben saw that he had sat down on the floor. “Was it demons?”

Ben shook his head. “It was angels. Three of them. They wanted to get me to come with them and I tried the holy water on them, but well—as you can imagine, that didn’t work out so well.”

Jesse had tensed up. “How did you get away?”

“Another angel came to my rescue. Castiel? The one you mentioned.” Jesse’s forehead was lined with worry. “What’s the matter?” Ben asked.

“Something doesn’t add up. Remember the man who asked me to protect you? He was an angel.”

“You sure?”

“I can’t feel angels as clearly as I feel demons. Demons are—how to put it? Family, I guess. But yes, I’m sure. I don’t get why he sent me to you if what the angels want is to kidnap you. And to what purpose?”

“That angel, Castiel—Claire told me he’s possessing her father. That he’d possessed her once too.”

“Claire’s father?” Jesse leaned back on his elbow and his t-shirt rode up, revealing part of his stomach. “That explains what I found odd about her—and why she didn’t like me too much, I imagine. Natural enemies and all that. And that also explains why demons would try to use her as bait.”

Ben groaned, resting his forehead on the arm of the couch. “The whole thing’s giving me a headache. I need a drink. Do you want something to drink?”

“Sure.”

Ben popped two beers open for them and turned the TV on. Jesse joined him on the couch and they drank, watched idiotic TV and did not talk about demons or angels or life-threatening mysteries. Ben felt himself unclench as the evening was progressing, forgetting his exhaustion and his aching body for a general mellow feeling that his problems weren’t that dire after all.

“What the hell's that show?” Jesse muttered, squinting at the TV. Night had fallen and the only light in the room was the glow from the screen.

“Dunno. I think the father isn’t the real father, so that means the guy isn’t actually sleeping with his sister. Except she might really be his cousin, so, you know.”

“Hey. I should watch TV more often.”

Ben chuckled and brought his beer bottle to his mouth. He found it almost empty and had to tip it upward to have the last drop of beer trickle down his throat. He heard a rustle as Jesse shifted positions on the couch.

“Do you want something to eat?” Ben asked, though truth to be told, he felt too lazy to move.

“Nah, I’m okay for now.” Jesse yawned widely, his jaw creaking; he moved again, drew his legs to him on the couch, and his shoulder bumped into Ben’s.

“Hey, where did you go the past two days?” Ben asked. “I thought you’d maybe left the US entirely.”

“No, I stayed around. Here and there. I couldn’t leave when there were demons potentially after you and Claire. I have to admit that I didn’t anticipate the angels.”

“You’re not responsible for us. We don’t know what this angel guy really wanted, so it’s not like you owe him anything.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Is it about that thing he promised to do for you? I could—I mean, I’m just a regular human being but if I can help—”

Ben rolled his head against the back of the couch to look at Jesse and saw him smile in the darkness. The bluish light from the TV was playing with the shadows on his face. Ben's chest felt too tight, barely allowing him to draw in any air.

“Thanks,” Jesse said, “but there’s not really anything you can do.”

“Okay.”

The glass bottle in Ben's hands had warmed to body temperature; he put down it on the floor. He kind of wanted another drink but he didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to shake up the warmth that had spread to his entire body. The dialogues from the characters on TV sounded remote, like echoes from the neighbors’, background noise to the sound of Jesse’s breathing. He thought he could hear Jesse’s heartbeat too, but it was probably only his own. He moved his knee, trying to spread his legs into a more comfortable position, but there wasn’t enough room and he knocked it against Jesse.

“Sorry.”

He’d been about to say something else—not sure what exactly, just something to make Jesse connect to him, reach out to him without having to spill all his secrets—when Jesse stirred again, and Ben shifted to accommodate him. Somehow, Jesse’s hand found its way between his thighs. Ben’s heart was beating too fast.

What he thought he wanted to do: move the hand away, maybe get up and finally get them some food and more beer. What he actually did: slump his hips down until his crotch hit the back of Jesse’s wrist. It felt a bit like he was dreaming, but it was a good feeling for once. The position was awkward for Jesse, half-bent over him, leaning on his hand spread flat between Ben’s legs. For a crazy, exhilarating moment, Ben had absolutely no idea of what was going to happen, and everything was possible. Then Jesse’s hand moved upward, rubbing against the length of Ben’s cock with the heel of his hand. Ben sighed and closed his eyes, feeling himself get hard. He couldn’t help but roll his hips again.

Jesse shifted his weight on one knee so he wasn’t leaning on Ben anymore, and his palm cupped Ben’s hard-on more firmly, rubbing up and down, and going down south until he was caressing his balls, rolling them between his fingers. Ben tipped his head back and stifled a moan; the slow burn had gotten to his cheeks and they felt on fire.

“More?” Jesse whispered to his ear.

“Fuck, yes.”

“Take it out.”

Jesse moved away and suddenly Ben was cold without his body heat. He fumbled with his zipper, his fingers were stiff and his dick felt constricted, sensitive. He slipped his jeans down his hips, put a hand inside his boxers and shivered in relief at the touch.

“Let me help you with that.”

Ben had not seen Jesse move, but he was now kneeling on the floor, his shoulders almost at the level of Ben’s knees. He put his hands on Ben’s jean-clad thighs and slid them up, moving Ben’s legs farther apart.

“C’mon, mate, get your dick out.”

aiest

Ben’s heart was thumping hard against his ribs and his mouth was full of spit. He had to swallow before he could speak.

“Get it yourself,” he heard himself say.

Jesse grinned. His hair was falling into his eyes, and even in the dark Ben could see the flush on his face that made the sparse freckles on his nose and cheekbones stand out. He leaned into the V of Ben’s legs, his hands still gripping his thighs, and brushed his lips over the cotton of Ben’s boxers—Ben hadn’t gotten his hand out, his fingers were curled around his cock, and he felt Jesse’s touch warm his knuckles. Jesse pressed harder against him, then stuck his tongue out, wetting the fabric, Ben’s fingers. His own fingers were digging into Ben’s legs. He moved downward to mouth at his testicles and Ben sucked in a breath.

Jesse raised his head. “Crying uncle already?”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Warned you, didn’t I? When we met.”

“Do something, for fuck’s sake.”

Jesse laughed. There was something so free, so relaxed about this laugh that Ben’s stomach did a little flip. Jesse slid a hand down Ben’s underwear and his hand came to cover Ben’s—together they got his hard dick out, past the elastic of his boxers.

“What—”

—are you gonna do, Ben almost asked, feeling unsure all of a sudden, but Jesse’s mouth was already on him, his tongue mapping his length, before he took him in his mouth and Ben’s hips jerked up. Jesse started to suck in earnest, his head bobbing up and down and his hand, the one that wasn’t spread over Ben’s stomach, was fondling his balls at the same time. Ben was panting harshly, his chest heaving, one hand gripping the arm of the couch and the other wavering uncertainly until he put it on Jesse’s head, tangling his fingers with Jesse’s hair. The heat built up in scorching waves, out of control, and Ben barely had the time to shout a warning, and Jesse to get off of him, before he came all over Jesse’s face.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry.”

Jesse chuckled and took off his t-shirt to wipe his face with it. Bare-chested, he straightened and leaned toward Ben, propped up on his hands—even though his dick had just been in Jesse’s mouth, or maybe because of it, the sudden closeness made Ben’s breath hitch. His gaze traveled down and he saw the obvious shape of Jesse’s cock tenting his jeans as Jesse gave himself a stroke. Jesse was hard—blowing Ben had gotten him hot.

“Do you want me to…”

He didn’t even know what he was offering—he was so out of his depth that he could have been seven again and learning how to swim. But Jesse, taking charge again—and Jesus, if Ben had known he’d find it so goddamn hot—got one knee on the couch, hooked his wrist at the back of Ben’s neck, and licked the lobe of Ben’s left ear, nibbled it with his teeth. Again Ben wasn’t sure where to put his hands, and finally settled on resting them on Jesse’s sides, palming his ribs—he could’ve almost counted each of them with the tip of his fingers, if he’d been in the mood for numbers.

“I’m almost there, fuck, ” Jesse groaned, panting wetly against his ear, and before Ben had the time to wonder if he was asking for something specific, wanted a hand or something, Jesse hauled the rest of his body up, straddled Ben’s thigh, and Ben could feel him, hard, humping against his hip—Jesus motherfucking Christ—and for the first time he let out an unrestricted moan.

“Gonna come?” he asked in a rough voice, moving his hand up to thumb a nipple. “Gonna come for me, Jess?”

Jesse bit him hard as he came, right where his shoulder and his neck joined, and Ben yelped. “Ow, fuck!”

Jesse rested his face against his neck for a moment, breathing heavily, then rolled away from him.

“Sorry,” he said and waved his hand in a vague twirling motion. “For the bite.”

“I’ll live. Do you need—”

“A shower? A clean pair of underwear? Probably.”

“Okay, I’ll get you—”

Jesse’s hand dropped on his knee and Ben almost startled.

“Ben, don’t fret. I’ll be okay for a bit longer. I kind of want to have a smoke, do you mind? I’ll do it at the window, of course.”

“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”

Ben tucked himself in and zipped up his jeans, before getting up to turn on the light. It blinded him for an instant, harsh and sudden, like abruptly waking up after a vivid dream. Jesse was standing by the open window, lighting up a cigarette… without a lighter. His forefinger glowed red and the tip of the cigarette burned bright.

“Wow,” Ben said, joining him. “Must be a convenient ability to have.”

“It has its perks,” Jesse said, smiling.

It was cool outside, and Ben, crashing from his post-coital high, began to shiver slightly. He wrapped his arms around himself and glanced at Jesse, who was still going without a t-shirt but seemed perfectly at ease. Looking at his naked chest, Ben noticed a mark below his collarbone—no, it was a faded scar, a weirdly shaped one. It almost looked like…

“What’s this?”

“Hmm? What’s what?”

Now that he had a closer look, Ben could see that it was actually some sort of drawing: it looked a bit like the circles Claire had drawn for him —five-pointed star, with twisty symbols in-between the points and a circle around the whole thing. All this, carved into Jesse’s fucking skin.

“Jesse!” Ben gasped. “Who the hell did that to you?”

Jesse covered the scar with his hand, turning away from Ben.

“I did,” he said.

“Why would you do that?”

“It’s binding part of my powers. It’s…” Jesse tugged on his cigarette, his hand trembling a little, and blew out smoke. “It’s bad, Ben. I’m very bad news. A bomb about to blow up anytime and wipe away the world.”

“What do you mean? Why do you need to fucking carve symbols into your own flesh? Doesn’t it hurt?”

Jesse’s snort underlined how very stupid that question was. “’Course it hurts. And I have to do it again regularly, because I heal up fast. But I need it. When I was a kid and my powers began to develop, I…” He gulped down audibly. “I killed some people.”

I haven’t killed anyone since I was eleven. That’s what was Jesse had said, and what Ben couldn’t fathom; maybe orgasms made Ben feel overly generous, but he couldn’t imagine Jesse deliberately slaughtering people.

“It had to have been an accident,” he said with conviction.

Jesse had a small, thankful smile. “I didn’t even know I was doing it. I just believed stuff my dad had told me—stupid kid stuff—and then it was real, just like that, and it killed people. Like, horribly. It wasn’t even people I knew. After I ran away from home, every time I had a bad dream I would find out that someone had got hurt. So I did some research and I found that symbol—t worked. I stopped remaking the world at random and it got a little easier to handle.”

“And there wasn’t any solution that didn’t… involve blood and a knife? Like, maybe a tattoo?”

“Hey, it isn’t like there’s a manual about this shit. I’ve never met anyone like me, so I’m pretty much winging it as I go. I’ve been told that a tattoo wouldn’t work as well—something about blood and pain, and pleasant shit like that. My control got better with time, but that wasn’t fast enough. It’s not a big deal, Ben.”

It felt like a big deal to Ben, but obviously Jesse didn’t want to expand on the subject so Ben dropped it, feeling bad for tainting Jesse’s earlier good mood with his questions. He yawned deeply; the day was catching up with him and he had trouble keeping his eyes open.

“Go to bed, mate. You had a rough day.”

Jesse ushered him gently to his room, both hands on his shoulders, and Ben let him do it, feeling half-asleep already.

---

He slept halfway through the morning. When he got up, Jesse was eating cereal in the kitchen.

“’Morning,” he said after swallowing his mouthful. “Did you sleep okay? I made some coffee.”

“Wow, thanks. I think I’ll keep you around.”

“You're too kind.”

There was something odd in his voice. Ben poured himself a mug of coffee and sat across him at the table. Jesse had his head bent over his bowl, crushing cereal with his spoon.

“You okay?” Ben asked.

“Yeah. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“About yesterday…”

Ben put his mug down on the table. Yesterday seemed to be nothing more than a dream and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet.

“Yeah?”

“I think maybe I haven’t been, like… totally fair to you. I just, you know, I needed to blow off some steam, and I didn’t—it was a spur of the moment kind of thing, and I’m not sure I… You were into it, right? I didn’t use you or anything like that?”

“Oh. Well…” Ben looked down into the dark depths of his coffee. “I have to say, it wasn’t exactly what I had planned to do with my evening. And, to be quite honest with you, it was kind of my first time with a guy; um, I mean, it was totally my first time with a guy. That’s why I was like, the clumsiest blushing virgin ever.” Jesse paled and Ben hurriedly added, “But I was into it, yeah, I liked it. It was hot.”

“You sure?”

“Jesse, I can take care of myself. If I hadn’t wanted it I would have said or done something, believe me.”

“It’s just…” Jesse started crushing his cereal again with a vengeance. “I could’ve made you think you wanted it. With my powers, you know. Unconsciously or something.”

“You can do that without realizing it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Ben thought about Claire had told him, the absolute certainty that she’d talked about. The night before hadn’t felt like that to him—it had been a mad, dizzying whirl of sensations and feelings.

“You didn’t,” he said. “I’m positive you didn’t.”

Jesse looked up hopefully at him. “Really?”

“Claire told me how it felt for her. I didn’t experience the same thing at all.”

“Okay, good. I would’ve hated doing that to you.”

Ben watched Jesse eat his breakfast for a moment, but now that the subject had been brought up his thoughts all turned around what had happened. How it’d all felt, Jesse’s mouth, his hands, to have him hard against him, to feel him come. He searched with his fingers for the spot where Jesse had bitten him and knew he’d found it when he felt some pain. He couldn’t stop himself from poking at it, though.

“Oh, does it hurt?” Jesse asked, his eyes following the movement of Ben’s hand. “I’m sorry about that. I confess that I’m an occasional biter.”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Ben self-consciously put his hand back around his mug. Jesse behaved so nonchalantly about the whole thing, and Ben—well, Ben was still trying to wrap his head about the fact that he’d had sex with a guy. Had he been attracted to guys before? He’d looked, sure, at the other guys in the changing room after PE or when he used to play basketball in high school—but didn’t everyone?

“It didn’t look like it was your first time,” he said.

“Hmm, no, for sure it wasn’t.”

“You’re gay?”

 “No, I like girls too.”

“So you’re bi, then?”

Jesse paused in his eating. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, yes, I am. It’s just not something I’ve given a lot of thought. I’ve always had way bigger problems. My very first time was with a guy, actually. I must have been fourteen or fifteen and the guy was a few years older.” He huffed a laugh. “I was pretending to be older than I was, but it didn’t work so well because I wasn’t very tall back then.”

“And you’ve dated both guys and girls?”

“Dated?” Jesse’s eyebrows shot up like he’d heard the word for the first time ever. “Oh, hell no. Can you imagine me in a relationship?”

“Uh, why not?”

“I’ve been on the run for half of my life, from demons, from angels, from hunters, and I’m the biggest freak on the planet. I can do crazy stuff that I don’t really understand myself. That’s not what people are looking for in a boyfriend; or in anyone they’d want in their life, really.”

“I guess not.”

Jesse could teleport to the other side of the world in the blink of an eye. That had to be an awfully convenient talent to have when you wanted to avoid bonding with people. Ben tried not to think about Jesse disappearing again and to focus on something that wasn’t anyone’s sex life.

“I think we should go talk to Claire today.”

Jesse stiffened. “I don’t think she’ll want to see me.”

“Dude, I told you, it’s cool. Way she talks about it, she thinks that it’s thanks to you that the world wasn’t destroyed in that war between Heaven and Hell that you two talk about.”

Jesse’s reaction to that statement was, to Ben’s surprise, a furious blush that made him look sunburn.

“I didn’t really do anything,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, but sometimes not doing anything can be as impressive as doing something. You were a kid, and you didn’t understand what was going on. I don’t know, I think that it’s awesome that you didn’t let them use you.”

Jesse shrugged. “There’s nothing awesome about it. What do you want to talk to Claire about, anyway?”

“What happened to me yesterday concerns her, don’t you think? Her father—well, the angel possessing her father saved me. Maybe she knows more about angels than we do. Also, they could try to take her too.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jesse said with a sigh. “Are we driving up there? Because… there’s always the other way.”

Ben groaned. “You mean your teleportation thing? I don’t know, Jesse, it fucking twists my insides into knots. I don’t like it.”

“Last time you weren’t prepared for it. I admit it was shitty of me to take you by surprise. You get used to it, you’ll see.”

“Now that I know what to expect I want to travel that way even less.”

“It’ll be a lot quicker and it makes it less likely that we’ll get attacked on the way.”

Not getting attacked was good. His bruised arms were enough warning that he had to watch his back. Ben gulped down the rest of his coffee, savoring the bitterness.

“Alright, you win. Let me have my breakfast and a shower, and then we’ll Harry Potter our way to Claire’s.”

Ben got ready while Jesse leafed through some books Ben had left in the living room. Ben found him squinting at the words, looking like a schoolboy at a reading lesson, but as soon as he heard Ben approach Jesse quickly closed the book he was looking at and tossed it on the couch.

“You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be. As long as I don’t lose any body parts.”

It made Jesse laugh, so Ben didn’t point out that he was mostly serious. Jesse came up to Ben and put a hand on his shoulder, his thumb on Ben’s collarbone and the rest of his fingers spread against the back of Ben’s shoulder. Ben took a deep breath in, but it wasn’t in preparation to the space jump they were about to do—just, being touched by Jesse felt pretty different now.

“Counting to three,” Jesse said, “one, two—”

Ben closed his eyes, hoping that not having to see the world distort would make the experience easier, but it actually made it worse. He thought he was going to fall and that nothing would ever stop it, and he regretted having eaten breakfast when the food did a loop inside his stomach.

“We’re here,” he heard Jesse say. “You can open your eyes.”

Ben opened his eyes. Jesse stood so close to him that at first his face was the only thing Ben could see.

“I hate it,” he said. “And I hate you.”

“Aw, it’ll grow on you. Soon you’ll beg me to take you to class that way.”

Ben glanced around and realized that they had materialized into a back alley a little farther from Claire’s place than they had last time.

“I thought you didn’t worry about people noticing us.”

“It seemed to bother you, and I live to please. Jesse took his hand off Ben’s shoulder to slip it into his pocket. “You think Claire will be home?” he asked. “Maybe we should have called first.”

Jesse was right. Ben didn’t even know how he hadn’t thought about it, it was like his brain had been turned upside down and he didn’t know how to behave like a normal person anymore.

“It’ll be fine,” he said briskly.

It was fine, as it turned out; it even looked that Claire had been expecting them, as strange as it seemed.

“Something happened yesterday, didn’t it?” was the first thing she said when she opened the door.

“Uh, hello?” Ben said, bewildered. “And yes, something did happen and that’s why we’re here. Can we…”

“Yes, come in.”

They got inside and Ben went to sit on the sofa, while Jesse hovered after him uncertainly. He had his eyes warily on Claire and kept some distance between them like he thought she was plotting a sneak attack on him and might start throwing holy water anytime.

“Jesse, you can sit down if you want,” Claire said.

“Yeah, okay.” Jesse sat down by Ben. “I’m sorry about the other day.”

“What are you talking about? I asked you to do it.”

“I shouldn’t have…”

“I asked you to make me do something I wouldn’t normally do.”

Jesse’s expression clouded over. “Yes. I just hope you don’t think I go around using people like puppets, that’s all.”

“That’s not what I think.” Claire sat down on the carpet in front of them; her feet were bare and she tucked them under herself. “Maybe I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t give any thoughts about how it’d feel on your end and I’m sorry if I upset you.”

“It’s fine,” Jesse said shortly, looking away.

Claire pinched her lower lip. “Tell me what happened,” she said. She looked at Ben and frowned. “Who did that to you?” she asked, pointing at a bruise on his right arm.

“Ah, yeah.” Ben rubbed a hand over the bruise. “I was coming back home from school and I was attacked by two men and a woman. They were angels.”

“Are you sure?” Claire asked in a low voice.

“The man who saved me told me that was what they were. That man…” He didn’t know how to soften the blow for her, and he’d gone too far in his story not to say it. “One of the attackers called him ‘Castiel’. He didn’t deny it.”

Claire kept very still for a long moment. Her fingers were digging into her knees and she looked at Ben, unblinking.

“Did he tell you anything?” she said softly. “Did you tell him that you knew me?”

“We didn’t really have the time to chat. He dropped me at my apartment, and then he vanished. He just said that he knew they were after him, but that he didn’t know why. Claire, what do you know about him?”

“Holy shit!”

Jesse’s cry made both Ben and Claire jump in surprise. Jesse, still sitting next to Ben, was twisted around to look at a picture hung above the sofa. Ben had never really looked at that picture, but now he saw that it showed a man holding a young girl of about ten by her shoulders. The girl, unsurprisingly, was Claire, and the man was her father. Ben didn’t see how it justified the look on Jesse’s face.

“Jesse? What’s wrong?”

“Is that your father, Claire?” Jesse asked.

“Uh, yes? Why are you asking?”

“Well,” Jesse passed a hand through his hair. “I think that Castiel tried to kill me when I was a kid.”

Ben and Claire spoke at the same time.

“What?” Ben said.

“You know him?” Claire asked.

“I told you, I was the other side’s secret weapon, so it’s only natural that they’d try to eliminate me.”

“Then why did you trust the angel that hired you to protect us if one of them tried to kill you?”

“That was an angel who hired you?” Claire said, her eyebrows knitting together.

“Yes. And I trusted him because he’s a goddamn angel!” Jesse’s tone clearly meant that he thought his reasons were self-evident. “They’re supposed to be the good guys, right? And I’m dangerous, there’s no denying that. Can’t blame the guys for trying to get rid of the threat.”

Ben and Claire exchanged a look, and Ben wondered how someone could be both as jaded and as naïve as Jesse was.

“It’s actually not that simple,” Claire said slowly. “They were at war—maybe they still are. They’d do anything to win. I think you might have been manipulated.”

Jesse had a self-depreciating grimace. “I’m starting to think so too. A question, Claire—do you know Sam and Dean Winchester?”

“I’ve met them. They are hunters, friends of Castiel’s—or at least they were.”

“Then I’ve met them too. There were two men with the angel who tried to kill me. They’re the ones who told me the truth about what I was. That’s when I ran away.”

Jesse sounded so matter-of-fact; Ben couldn’t bear how the thought of eleven-year old Jesse lost in a hostile world broke his heart, but adult Jesse seemed to have a handle on it and there wasn’t a thing that Ben could do to change the past.

“So you two know the guys that the angels—and the demons, I guess—are looking for,” he said. “What about me? What’s my role in all this?”

“I don’t know,” Claire said, watching him like he was a particularly hard to decipher esoteric text. “It’s been a question from the start.”

“Maybe they’re targeting him because he’s your friend,” Jesse suggested, and Claire glared at him.

He should tell them. There wasn’t much to tell, but at least he could stop them from arguing about whether it was Claire’s fault, or Jesse’s fault, or anyone’s but the fault of what was hiding in Ben’s memory.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with Claire,” Ben said.

Claire’s head tilted to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I… you know those dreams I have?”

“Oh, yes,” they both said at the same time.

“Well, in some of them, there’s a man, and I call him ‘Dean’.”

“That’s a pretty common name,” Claire said.

“But I called my mom about it, and she was all weird. I asked her if she knew someone named Dean Winchester, and she hung up on me. That’s not like her. She was hiding something. The thing is, every time I try to think about it, it’s like something is keeping me from remembering.”

“Then something tweaked your memories,” Jesse said in a definite tone. “I don’t think it was demons—they’re more the make-you-leave-a-trail-of-your-own-intestines-behind types.”

“It could have been angels, then,” Claire said. She looked thoughtful for an instant. “We should try to ask Castiel.”

“Just like that?” Jesse said in a sharp voice. “Do you have access to the angel hotline or something?”

“Something like that, although I’m not sure that it’ll work. Castiel—told me I could always ask him for help. I think it was his way of trying to make it up to me for taking my father away. I’ve never tried it.”

“How do you ask an angel for help?” Ben asked; maybe it was his unreligious upbringing, but the concept was quite mind-boggling to him.

“By praying to him, of course.”

“Uh, wait a minute,” Jesse said, holding his hands out. “Are we going to summon an angel in here? May I remind you that this one tried to kill me once?”

“That angel you talked to in Australia didn’t try to kill you,” Ben pointed out.

“It looks like Castiel and the other angels aren’t flying on the same wavelength at the moment, so who knows if he’s not going to try again? I don’t blame him for trying, but I don’t have a death wish either.”

“Why didn’t he manage to do it the first time?” Claire asked.

“I, um.” Jesse blushed faintly. “I turned him into an action figure.”

“Then you know you can stand your ground against him.”

Ben almost laughed at the conflicted look on Jesse’s face, like he was trying to figure if he’d just been complimented or dismissed.

“If you think so, then go ahead,” Jesse grumbled. “Don’t mind me.”

“Thank you.”

Claire pushed herself up, and stood there for a moment, staring straight ahead—at the picture of her and her father on the wall, Ben understood.

“Do you need something specific?” he asked. “Do you… want us to go wait in the kitchen or something?”

“No,” she said. “No, it’s alright, you can stay.” She crossed her arms, holding herself. “I’m not sure he will answer.”

“It’s okay,” Ben said gently. “If he doesn’t, then we’ll find another way to get to the truth, that’s all. No pressure.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Thanks.” She closed her eyes. “Please, Castiel, I need your help. I pray to you, please come to me.”

They waited, holding their breath. Claire stood with her eyes closed, not moving an inch. Jesse was biting his thumbnail, his leg bouncing up and down. Ben, for its part, felt mostly curious as to whether Castiel could really answer to prayers that way. After a while, though, he started to get bored. Jesse was so tense that Ben couldn’t stand it anymore, so he put his hand on Jesse’s knee and squeezed it, willing him to calm down.

Claire sighed heavily and opened her eyes. “It’s useless,” she said, and the disappointment in her voice went directly to Ben’s heart.

“Hey,” he said, standing up, “maybe he’s busy or—”

He couldn’t finish his sentence because, suddenly, there were four more people in the room with them, all suited up and grim looking.

“What—”

One of them was behind Claire and tried to grab her but she ducked, and Ben, on some crazy, suicidal impulse jumped on the man—angel, probably—and managed to make him lose balance. Together they knocked down a chair.

“Abomination!” snarled someone; Ben glanced aside and saw Jesse struggling with a tall, red-headed woman, something shiny in his hands that he was trying to press down. The woman kicked his hand, making him drop the weapon and—

Pain flared up under Ben’s skull as he violently hit the wall, stars dancing in front of him, a metallic tang in his mouth—he’d bitten his tongue. He could barely see but he flailed with his elbows until he hit something, heard a cry of pain and hit again, trying to get his legs under him to stand up.

“Will you stay. down!”

He felt a hand on the back of his neck and the floor jumped to his face. His mouth and nose were pressed against the carpet and he felt close to suffocation.

“Let me—”

His wrists were grabbed roughly and his arms locked behind his back, the strain on his shoulders sharply painful. Ben tried to kick up with his feet, but didn’t hit anything. He was trembling from adrenaline and pent-up fear, and his ears were ringing so loud he couldn't make out sounds around him, couldn't hear Claire or Jesse. Were they okay? Were they- And then, without warning, the pressure lifted up. Feeling weak and dizzy, Ben didn’t move until he heard Jesse cry out, “Claire!” and then he hurried back on his feet with uncoordinated movements.

Claire was kneeling on the floor, curled in on herself, and she was holding her arm against her chest. Blood was running down her forearm to the crook of her elbow, dripping on her thighs and staining her jeans. Ben looked up and gasped in horror when he saw the bloody symbol drawn on the wall: a circle with some sort of lightning-shaped sign in its center, and various other symbols, almost looking like letters, written all around it. Thin rivulets of blood trickled down to the floor, forming small coagulating puddles.

“Here, let me look.”

Jesse had already moved to Claire’s side, coaxing her gently into showing him her arm. Ben stumbled to them. Claire’s wound was a clean, straight line barring the inside of her forearm. Next to her there was a bloody kitchen knife, and the tips of her fingers were red. Ben and Jesse shared a look above Claire’s head.

“We need to stop the bleeding,” Jesse said, and promptly took his t-shirt off to apply pressure with it on Claire’s injury.

“Claire,” Ben called in a low voice. Claire’s eyes were tightly closed, her face white and her breathing controlled. “Claire, did you do this to yourself?”

“The sigil,” she chocked out, and Ben glanced again at the gore painting the wall. “It’s a banishing sigil—it sent them back to Heaven.”

Ben scanned the room to note that indeed, the three of them were once again alone.

“So it just—what? Poofed them away? The four of them?”

Claire opened her eyes and looked at Jesse. “The two that remained, at least.”

“What did you do to the other two?” Ben asked Jesse. “That’s you one of them called ‘abomination,’ right?”

Jesse half-smiled. “Abomination, yes, that’s my middle name—Jesse Abomination Turner. As for what I did to them, well, I’m not too sure—I just wished them away, so they could be anywhere from the North Pole to Antarctica, or who knows, maybe I’ve sent them back to Heaven too. But I could only take out one at a time. This,” he jerked his chin in direction of the wall, “is serious mojo.”

“I was possessed by an angel, once,” Claire said. “He left some things behind.”

“We need to get you to a hospital,” Ben said. “You’re probably gonna need stitches.”

“No, no hospital. They’ll see it’s self-inflicted and I won’t be able to get them off my back.”

“She has a point,” Jesse said; between his fingers the t-shirt looked soaked with blood. “We’ll have to take care of it ourselves.”

Ben didn’t like it, but he agreed to get the first-aid kit in Claire’s bathroom, and watched Jesse clean up the wound and bandage it carefully. Now that the adrenaline rush from the attack was receding a little, the back of his head had started pulsating with pain.

“Here you go,” Jesse said when he was finished.

“I’m sorry I ruined your t-shirt,” Claire said, her eyes lingering on Jesse’s naked chest.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” he said, and he smoothed out his bunched up, bloody t-shirt with the palm of his hand. When he was finished, it was like the t-shirt had never even been stained.

“Oh, that’s cool,” Ben said. He wanted to ask, is this how you got spunk off your clothes yesterday? —but managed to keep the inappropriate thought to himself.

They helped Claire get up and led her to the sofa. Ben’s head still hurt dully and he rubbed a hand at the sore spot. “Ow.”

“Ben, are you hurt?” Claire asked, sounding concerned, and her voice a little stronger than before.

“Guy slammed my head against the wall, but I’m okay.”

“Since I’m nurse of the day, let me check it,” Jesse said. He made Ben spin around with a pressure to his shoulder. Ben felt Jesse’s fingers feeling for the back of his skull and he winced at the sharp pain.

“Ouch, Jesus, be careful.”

“Stop whining,” Jesse said lightly. “There’s no blood,” he added, sounding like he was addressing Claire rather than Ben, “but he’s gonna have a bump.”

“Check his pupils,” Claire said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jesse stepped around Ben and they were face-to-face, close enough that their noses almost touched. Jesse had one hand on Ben’s shoulder, his thumb brushing against the bruise he gave Ben the day before; the first time it seemed accidental, but the second time, with the way Jesse’s eyes crinkled up, Ben knew it was deliberate.

“Cut it out,” he mouthed, and Jesse smirked, pushing away from him.

“He’ll live,” Jesse said out loud.

“Thank you, Doc,” Ben said with some bite.

Something glinted at the corner of his eye and he went to it, curious. It looked like some sort of dagger, with a thin silvery blade and a metal hilt. He bent down to pick it up.

“What’s this?” he said, showing it to Claire and Jesse.

Claire frowned pensively. “I think it’s an angel sword. The only weapon able to kill an angel. Maybe one of them lost it.”

Jesse cleared his throat. “Actually, it’s mine. Well, maybe—not mine, exactly. The angel, the one who asked me to protect you, he gave it to me. I tried to use it, but my hand-to-hand combat skills aren’t really up there.”

Ben weighted the weapon in his hand; it was very light and the blade shone into the light, immaculate.

“Where the hell—um, where did you keep it?”

Jesse snapped his fingers. “That’s magic for you, mate. I never need a suitcase.”

“My question is,” Claire said, “why did an angel give you a way to kill other angels?”

----

They stayed at Claire’s to make sure she was fine until she kicked them out, pleading for space. When, by Tuesday, there was no other attack, no sign of the angels, Ben almost felt like things were back to normal. He knew better, of course, but he didn’t have it in his heart to refuse Blake and Katie their usual Tuesday movie night.

“Where’s Jesse?” asked Katie when she arrived with Blake around 6 pm. “I like him, he’s hot. I need more hot guys in my life,” she added, sticking out her tongue at Blake, who rolled his eyes.

Ben turned away to hide his flush, wondering what Katie would say if she knew about what had transpired between Jesse and him.

“Jesse isn’t here anymore,” Blake said. “Ben told me he’s gone. Didn’t you, Ben?”

“Yeah, well.” Ben scratched his nose. “He’s not gone anymore. He’s been back since—actually, since the day after you were here.”

“Oh,” Blake said. “That’s good, I guess. Did you two talk about…”

“Ah, no. But.” Ben tore a pack of chips open and poured the chips into a large bowl. “I don’t think it’ll work out. Jesse is—only temporarily in town. He’ll leave in, I don’t know, a few weeks maybe?”

“And where is he now?”

Jesse was at Claire’s, checking on her with the speed that only his powers allowed. Except that he’d already been gone for more than an hour and Ben was starting to get concerned. Either Jesse and Claire had fought to the death, or something had happened, or—

Blake rested a hand on his shoulder. “Ben? Hey, is something wrong?”

“No, everything’s fine.” Ben turned to him with a smile. “Jesse’ll be here soon. There’s something he had to do, but he wouldn’t miss Tuesday movie nights for the world.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t,” Katie said with a giggle.

They settled with pizza and a horror movie. Ben forgot the title as soon as it was on. The plot didn’t really register with him either, and his mind kept jumping from Claire, to Jesse, to the angels—to the whole fucking mess.

“Hey, Ben.” Katie flicked a piece of popcorn at him. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?” Even to his own ears, Ben’s voice sounded off. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Ben, please. I know you like you were my own. Something happened?”

“No, nothing.” It felt weird, having to lie about anything to Blake and Katie, having to lie about many things. “I had sex with Jesse.”

There was a silence. Then Blake said, “Damn. I admit I wasn’t expecting that one. So now you and Jesse are—And what about Claire?”

“No, me and Jesse aren’t anything. Well, friends, I guess; we’re friends who had sex. Like I’m friends with Katie. And Claire—it’s still the same as before. We’re friends too.”

“So that’s what’s on your mind?” Katie asked, and he could hear the doubt in her voice. “You’re having some kind of gay—or, bisexual, I guess—freak out?”

Ben had to give it to her, she was good at spotting deflection. There had to be some other excuse he could give them for his mood. If he told them about the angels and the rest, they’d think he was crazy, and he wouldn’t blame them—he sometimes wondered if he hadn’t gone crazy.

“It’s just the dreams I have,” he said with a sigh, trying to sound like he was confessing something without giving away too much. “They’re becoming more… vivid. More specific. It’s just bothering me. It doesn’t help that my love life is a disaster, as you two are so fond of repeating.”

“What’s the matter with your dreams?” Blake asked. “Have they gotten worse since I left? Because I remember you waking me up screaming at night, and I’d hate to think that it gets worse than that.”

“They’re not any scarier, just… There’s this man in my dreams, Dean’s his name, and I don’t know who the fuck that is.”

“What, you mean Dean Winchester?”

Hearing that name, in Katie’s mouth of all people, made Ben freeze up.

“What did you say?” he breathed.

“Dean Winchester. The man who… you know.”

“No, I don’t, so tell me.”

Ben was siting between Katie and Blake, but it didn’t keep them from exchanging a long look over his head. They didn't say anything for so long that Ben thought he was going to lose it and start screaming at any moment.

“The man,” Blake said, “who saved us. When we were taken, us and a bunch of other kids from the neighborhood back when we were all living in Indiana. Come on, Ben, you can’t have forgotten about that.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”

It wasn’t exactly the truth. Something was definitely nagging at his memory: being locked up, being afraid, and… fire. Someone burning. He furiously rubbed at his eyes.

“Tell me,” he said firmly.

“It’s not like there’s much more to tell,” Blake said. “We were kidnapped… You know, after all these years, I don’t even know who did it and why. But I know that this guy, Dean Winchester, was the one who saved us.”

“It was around your eighth birthday,” Katie said. “When… when my dad died. And this Dean Winchester guy showed up at your birthday party, I remember him.”

“You sure?” Blake said with a frown. “I don’t have any memory of this.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember. He knew your mom, Ben.”

“Anyway,” Blake said, “a few years later you told us that he’d come back and that he was now living with you and your mom. By that time I had already moved out of Cicero, but I think it lasted a year or so. It was before you moved to Michigan.”

“Wait, you’re kidding, right?” None of his mom’s boyfriends had ever lived with them for that long. “I would remember that stuff.”

“I know, that’s really strange,” Katie said, “because I remember you totally worshiped the guy. I didn’t really see him very often, and he was kind of… weird. My mom said he was a drunk and a fuck-up, and that Lisa deserved better.”

What are you doing up so late, Dean? Did you have a nightmare? — No, kiddo, I just… I can’t sleep. But go to bed and I’ll be right after you.

“And then what happened?”

“I don’t know.” Katie glanced at Blake for confirmation and Blake shook his head. “You moved to Michigan and one day you just stopped talking about him. I figured that things went down ugly between him and your mom and you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“And—and that kidnapping thing? Why didn’t you ever mention it? Was it—what, like a secret?”

“Don’t be an asshole, Ben,” Blake said, with an annoyed edge to his voice. “We just don’t like talking about it. It’s not one of our best childhood memories, after all. We thought you felt the same and didn’t want to mention it either.”

It was like he didn’t know his own mind. There were images, feelings, bits and pieces of memories that spun inside his head, round and round in an endless dance of familiar and unknown, and he felt that if he could just focus, could just pin them down and get a grasp on them, then things would start making sense again.

“Ben?”

Hey, Ben. I’m Dean. Everything okay?

You were at my party.

At his party, his eighth birthday party, the one with the awesome moon bounce—the man was there, and then he was at the park, and—

Ben, get them out of there!

“I need—” He stood up; the bowl of chips that was on his lap spilled its contents on the floor. “I’ll be back.”

He dashed for the bathroom, locked himself inside and ignored Blake and Katie’s calls. He looked at himself in the mirror, but it wasn’t his reflection he was watching: he could almost see the man, the short hair, the nose, the mouth, the eyes, the unending sorrow always present there.

And also—

People with black eyes. His mother with black eyes. You know she's begging me to kill you. She says you hold her back. Never had a lick of fun since you were born. A blade pressed against his neck, cold and sharp, making it hard to swallow.

He pressed his fists against his eyes, but it wasn’t his eyes that were at work here.

Hey, Ben, want me to show you something? Come on, get your head under the hood—

Dean, there’s men in the house.

Good and bad memories blended with each other, combined, morphed into one another, and, curiously, it wasn’t the bad ones that hurt the most.

“Stop it,” he gritted out. “I don’t give a shit, stop it.”

“Ben? It’s Jesse.”

Jesse? I’m not sure what’s going on, please help me.

He didn’t know whether or not he’d spoken out loud.

“Ben, open up. I just want to make sure you’re alright. Your friends are freaking out, there.”

Ben went to unlock the door, then sat down on the edge of the bathtub, holding his head in his hands and waiting for Jesse to come in. The door opened slowly and Jesse slid inside, gently closing the door behind him.

“Ben?”

Ben looked down at the floor, his eyes following the beige and cream patterns on the mottled lino. Jesse’s shadow fell on him as he approached and his bare feet came into Ben’s field of vision.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Ben raised his head just as Jesse dropped to his knees so they’d be at eye-level.

“I remember,” Ben said hoarsely. Jesse nodded, encouraging him to go on. “About Dean Winchester. He saved us, me and Blake and Katie—and some other kids—when we were kidnapped by… God knows what. Later, he was my mom’s boyfriend. He lived with us. He was…”

Dean is… sick, Ben. Something happened to him—many things, terrible things—and he’s having a really hard time. You need to give him his space, honey.

“...messed up. And then he left. I don’t know why.” Talking on the phone with Dean, he remembered that:  how much he’d wanted the man to come back to them, despite the drinking, the brooding, the screaming nightmares, the odd behavior. He recalled—“I loved him. I wanted him to be my dad. I don’t think he was. I don’t know.”

Jesse sat on his heels, listening to him without a word, his hands laying flat on his thighs. Ben looked at those hands, their tanned color, the too-short nails, the strong fingers. He remembered how smooth they were, uncallused but very warm.

“I knew he was a hunter. That’s what you thought Claire was at first, right? Someone who hunts things. Sometimes he told me stories, but I don’t think I really understood them. They were just exciting tall tales to me.”

“Do you know who could have messed with your memories?”

Ben tried to focus, but the whirlwind of bright colors and fragmented sentences in his head only swirled harder, to the point that Ben felt like he was at the top of a sky-scraper, looking down to the emptiness beneath, frozen with vertigo.

“Hey. Calm down. You don’t have to try so hard.”

Jesse’s hand came to cup the side of his head, his palm resting against Ben’s ear and his fingers in Ben’s hair. It was only that touch that made Ben realize how fast and shallow his breathing was, and he forced himself to relax.

“I can’t remember,” he said, pouring all his will into keeping his voice even. “There’s still a lot of holes in there.” He pointed a finger at his temple, and Jesse took his hand away.

“I doesn’t matter right now,” Jesse said, his voice low and gentle. “At least we have a better understanding of the situation. It seems that they’re hoping that Dean Winchester still cares enough about you to come out of hiding.”

Ben didn’t say that if Dean Winchester had cared about him, he wouldn’t have disappeared from his life for ten years. But what did he know about it? His memory had more holes in it that a mole-infested garden.

“I know what we have to do to get the final word on that story,” he said, standing up, sending a small smile to Jesse. “I need to call my mom.”

---

It took some convincing to get Blake and Katie to leave rather than hang out all night and watch Ben with worried eyes.

“You sure you don’t want us to stay?” Katie asked once more. “I can sleep in Blake’s bed, and he can sleep on the floor.”

“Ha ha.” Blake lightly hit the back of Katie’s head. “You can sleep in the bathtub.”

“Get your hands off me, you—”

“Hey, guys,” Jesse interrupted them; he looked concerned, like he thought they’d actually start fighting. “I’ll take care of him. You don’t have to worry.”

Katie snorted. “Oh, I bet you will.”

Blake began to laugh, and Jesse cocked a puzzled eyebrow at them. Ben rolled his eyes and shoved both Blake and Katie out.

“Go home, go to bed, and quit busting my balls, both of you.” Blake opened his mouth, undoubtedly to make a dirty joke. “Oh, no, don’t say anything.” Ben closed the door on his friends with a resounding slam.

“Uh, aren’t they going to be mad that you kicked them out that way?” Jesse asked.

“They’ll get over it. We’ve been friends forever.”

“Okay, you know them better than I do. Must be cool to have friends like that.”

Ben glanced at him, but Jesse wasn’t looking in his direction, picking at a piece of pizza cooling in its box.

“You hungry?”

“Hmm, not really, I ate with Claire. Are you going to call your mom now?”

Ben looked at his watch: it wasn’t even 10 pm yet. “I guess I should,” he said with a sigh. “If I don’t do it now I don’t think I’ll have the courage to do it later.”

Jesse gave him a sympathetic look. “Do you want me to stay with you, or would you rather I go out?”

“Stay.” Ben sat heavily on the couch and got his phone out. “Alright. Now or never.”

He brought the phone to his ear and felt the couch shift with Jesse’s weight.

“Ben, is everything alright?”

The rich sound of his mother’s voice made Ben want to transport himself to Michigan—which he could, now that he thought about it, if he asked Jesse to take him—and find safety in her arms.

“Yes, mom, everything's fine.”

“Tuesday night is your night with your friends, isn’t it? Something must be wrong.”

“Actually…” Ben closed his fist, tightly enough that he felt the bite of his fingernails into his palm. “You remember when I called you the other day? I asked you about Dean Winchester.”

There was a long pause at the other end of the line. Ben couldn’t even hear her breathing.

“Mom?”

“I remember.”

“How do you know him?” He wouldn’t let her deny that she knew the man. “I remember, mom. I remember about him.”

“Everything?”

“Most of it, but that’s why I’m calling you. I want to know everything you know. How did you know him? Why did he leave? Why did we lose our memories of him?”

His mom’s sigh vibrated in his ear. “I met him when I was about nineteen or twenty. We had a weekend together. It was free, no-strings-attached sex. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”

“But he came to my eighth birthday party.”

“You remember that too, then. Yes, he came to your party. I think he wanted to hook up again, but when he saw I had a kid… Anyway, he saved you and the other kids from those… shape-shifting monsters.” Her voice shook a little on the last words and she paused for a moment. “That was the craziest thing I’d ever seen. After that, he disappeared for years.”

“And he came back again. He lived with us, didn’t he? Why did he leave us?”

“He wasn’t the same man at all. Something terrible had happened to him—it was related to his brother, although he never gave me the details.”

Ben hadn’t given much thought to the brother. “His brother—Sam Winchester?”

My brother Sam used to love that shit… Sam, my brother, he always said…

“Yes, Sam. I never really knew him, but Dean and him had this crazy intense relationship. They’d had a pretty messed up childhood, and I guess… I thought he was dead, I thought that was the reason—one of the reasons—Dean was the way he was. But Sam came back, and that changed everything. Once Dean started to… go away with him again, hunting, things became more complicated, and we couldn’t keep going like that. We had broken up for a while when… Demons came. I was possessed, and…”

Black eyes. A knife. Don’t listen to her, demons lie, help me Dean, help me mom, I’m scared, please, please.

Jesse nudged him with his knee, breaking his train of thought, and Ben nodded gratefully at him.

“I remember that, Mom. What happened after? How did we lose our memories?”

“I don’t know. I know I was hurt, and then nothing. I started to recover my memories about a year ago. I didn’t think you remembered too, and I didn’t want you to. Ben, it’s better to put this behind us. It’s all in the past. It doesn’t concern us anymore.”

If only. “Do you still have a phone number for him?”

“I have several, but… What do you want to do with his phone number?”

“Try to call him, of course.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s probably…” Ben heard her take a breath in. “I think he’s probably dead by now anyway.”

“Can you give me the numbers, please?”

“What’s going on, Ben? Are you in danger? Did you see something? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Mom, stop freaking out, please. Nothing happened, I swear.” He hated lying to her, but there was nothing she could do for him but worry to death. “I just need to speak to Dean. I need to clear this up. You understand, don’t you?”

He knew he had her when he heard her sigh again. “Fine. I’ll give you the numbers. But promise me you won’t do anything dangerous, alright? Dean is… He was a good man, but everything about his life is dangerous.”

“Mom, it’s fine.” His stomach twisted as he added, “I won’t do anything dangerous, promise.”

He must have not been completely unconvincing, because she ended up giving him three different numbers for Dean Winchester. He said goodbye to his mom, promised at least four times that he wouldn’t do anything reckless, and hung up.

“What did she say?” Jesse asked.

“She doesn’t know why we couldn’t remember anything until recently. I have three cell phone numbers for Dean Winchester, all ten years old, none probably working anymore—if the guy is even still alive.”

“Angels and demons seem to think so.”

“Yeah. And I guess they would know.”

“Are you trying the numbers now?”

Ben rolled one shoulder, then the other. “No. I can’t take any more emotional crises tonight. I need some air right now.”

He stood up, and caught the twitch of Jesse’s leg in his periphery, like Jesse wanted to follow but had thought better of it.

“I’ll be right back,” Ben said.

Outside he went to lean against the railing of the staircase, breathing in the night air. It mostly smelled like rancid frying oil from the neighbors, but he did feel a bit better after a few breaths.

He heard a door close behind him and turned around, thinking it might be Jesse, but it was Mr. Bennet, holding a trash bag and… staring at Ben.

“Good evening?” Ben said, couldn’t help the questioning inflection at the end. From the look on Mr. Bennet’s face, it wasn’t a good evening for him, and it certainly hadn’t been for Ben.

“Good evening,” Mr. Bennet said in a tight voice, but without adding any insult to wrap up the greeting, which made it all even odder.

“Now, if that’s not a sign of the apocalypse,” Ben murmured to himself.

---

The next day, Ben finished work early, and Claire invited herself to his place.

“You’re going to call Dean Winchester?” she asked.

“Yeah. Maybe. If there’s nothing good on TV.”

“I want to be here when you do it.”

She didn’t say why, and Ben didn’t want to question it, because it secretly comforted him to think of having her with him for what was probably going to be a repeat of the day she’d tried to call Castiel—minus the bloodshed and the avenging angels, hopefully.

So there they were, Claire, Jesse and him, all gathered in his apartment in hopes of summoning a voice from the past.

“What are the odds that one of these numbers still works?” Ben asked, to no one in particular.

“It’s worth a shot,” Jesse said.

The first number was out of service, as was the second one.

“In true dramatic fashion, the third one should be the charm,” Ben tried to joke, but it didn’t help with the butterflies in his stomach.

He dialed the third number, and in the brief silence that followed, his insides tied into knots.

“It’s ringing,” he said breathlessly, and Claire and Jesse, sitting on each side of him, both edged closer.

His heart beat steadily, each beat feeling like it stretched to infinity.

“Hello?” The voice was deep, male, and wary. Ben’s mouth was too dry to talk for a moment.

“Who’s this?” the man asked, his tone bordering on threatening.

“Hello,” Ben said quickly, worried that the man would hang up. “Is this Dean Winchester speaking?”

“Who’s asking?”

“It’s Ben.” One of the most common names on the planet, you moron. “Ben Braeden.”

Maybe Dean didn’t remember him. They hadn’t seen each other in almost ten years. Maybe it wasn’t Dean on the phone. Maybe it was his brother Sam, or someone else entirely. Or maybe Dean’s memories had also been messed with—

“Ben? How—Why—How did you get that number?”

“Mom gave it to me.”

“Lisa? That’s impossible.”

Ben’s stomach dropped. “You mean that’s impossible because she wasn’t supposed to remember you? Like I wasn’t supposed to remember you. Is that it?” He felt torn in two: rage burned in his chest, but his head was cold. “Well I do. It’s all just come back to me.”

“Ben, I—Why are you calling?”

“Are you Dean Winchester?”

“Yes. Yeah, it’s me. Did something happen?”

If there had been a hint of emotion in the voice before, it was now gone, and Dean Winchester sounded business-like. It helped Ben find some distance himself, and he told Dean about the demon who had come to the Nugget, the angels who had tried to take him, and Castiel. He didn’t say a word of Jesse or Claire.

“Are you at your place right now?”

“Yeah, I’m in—”

“I know where it is. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Dean hung up, leaving Ben gaping at the phone.

“So?” Jesse said. “Don’t leave us hanging. What did he say?”

“That he’s coming right away—and apparently he knows where I live, which means that all these years, while I didn’t know he even existed, he was in fact stalking me to his heart’s content.”

“Creepy. Did he say anything else?”

“He was surprised that I called. I think he’s the reason I couldn’t remember anything.”

“Maybe, but,” Jesse scratched his nose thoughtfully, “the question remains—how did he do it? He’s human, he couldn’t just have wiggled his fingers.”

“But an angel could have,” Claire said darkly, “and I know for a fact that Castiel had a lot of respect for Dean Winchester. He might have done it if asked.”

Ben thought of the man who had saved him; of the angel who had killed his fellow angels to protect him—and why? For Dean Winchester? Thinking back to the angel’s cool façade, there was no clue to decide whether or not Castiel had done anything to Ben and his mother. No recognition, no embarrassment, no remorse.

“I guess we’ll just have to ask him,” Ben said wryly. “I don’t where he is, so maybe he’ll need hours, or a day—”

Someone knocked on the door, and Ben, Jesse, and Claire looked at each other.

“Are we waiting for someone?” Jesse asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“No,” Ben said, and stood up. “But I don’t think demons or angels would knock on the door before kidnapping us, would they? What’s the worse thing it could be?”

“Jehovah Witnesses?” Jesse said behind him as Ben walked up to the door.

It wasn’t Jehovah Witnesses; it wasn’t demons or angels, for that matter.

“Ben?” said the man standing in front of him. He looked to be in his forties; his temples were greying and there were crinkles at the corner of his eyes, but Ben could never have mistaken him for someone else.

“Dean?” He hated how young he sounded. “How can you be here so fast?”

“I—kinda used my angel taxi.”

Dean stepped aside, and Ben saw that Castiel was standing next to him.

“Hello, Ben,” Castiel said. “I’m glad to find you in good health.”

Dean cleared his throat, shuffled his feet and looked down briefly. “Can we come in?”

“One question. Did you erase my and Mom’s memories of you? Or rather, did you have Castiel do it?”

Dean’s jaws ticked and he sighed, grazing his knuckles against a scar on his forehead.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I didn’t erase your memories,” Castiel intervened, and Dean sent him an acerbic look. “It would have damaged your mind too much. I merely erected a wall and manufactured a few memories to hide the juncture points. It seems that my work has weakened with time.” He sounded almost apologetic about that fact.

“Ben,” Dean started, “if I had him do that it’s because—”

“Don’t,” Ben said. “I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t matter now, and we have more pressing issues. Come on in.”

They got inside, and Dean and Castiel found themselves face to face with Claire and Jesse. Claire was standing, her hands joined in front of her like she was welcoming guests, except that her eyes were fixed on Castiel and the expression on her face was completely foreign to Ben. Jesse remained sitting, eyeing Dean and Castiel with a forced nonchalance.

“Claire,” Castiel said, and Dean’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I’m very sorry I didn’t come when you called me; I heard you but was otherwise occupied with some of my brethren.”

“Yeah, I guess they didn’t want you distracting them while they tried to take Ben and Claire,” Jesse said.

“And who are you again?” Dean asked him abruptly.

“He’s a friend,” Ben said.

“You are Jesse Turner,” Castiel said after contemplating Jesse for a few seconds, and Ben cursed the angel inwardly. “The Anti-Christ.”

“Oh, yes,” Jesse said at Ben’s puzzled glance. “I forgot to tell you about my other middle name.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Dean said. “Jimmy’s kid,” he ignored Claire’s blazing look, “and the half-demon kid, and Ben? Is there a party going on we didn’t get invited to? How did the three of you hook up?”

“Claire and I have known each other for about two years now,” Ben said. “We met at college.”

“I can explain this part,” Castiel said. “I arranged for Ben and Claire to be in the same university.” Dean frowned at him, and he added, “I thought it would make it easier to watch over the both of them.”

“Okay, that definitely ups the creepy,” Jesse commented, earning himself a glare from Dean.

“What’s the explanation for you, kid?” Dean asked, his voice low and threatening. “I remember you. Nebraska? The tooth fairy, and the itching powder, and—”

Jesse had gone deathly pale. “Stop it!” Ben snapped. “Jesse’s our friend. He’s looking out for us.”

“Do you know what he is?” Dean asked in a quiet voice.

“Yes, and it doesn’t matter to me. He’s never hurt us. He’s protecting us.”

“Why?”

Ben looked in Jesse’s direction with a silent question. “You can tell him,” Jesse said, sounding a bit shaken. “It may be important.”

Ben told Dean and Castiel about the angel in Australia, about the sword he’d given Jesse and the instructions to protect Ben and Claire.

“May I see the sword?” Castiel asked, turning to Jesse.

There was nothing in his demeanor to betray the fact that he had once thought Jesse was so dangerous that he needed to be eliminated. Claire still hadn’t said a single word, but her eyes were on Castiel, drinking the sight of him. Ben stepped to her side, offering silent support, and she smiled at him. Jesse looked up to Castiel, his mouth pursed like he was pondering his answer. Ben wondered if he was afraid, but if he was it didn’t show on his face. Jesse finally shrugged and the dagger materialized in his hand.

“Knock yourself out.”

Castiel turned the weapon over in his hands, examining it closely.

“It really is an angel blade,” he said. Then, to Ben’s surprise, he handed the sword back to Jesse.

“Why would an angel give that kind of weapon to a half-demon?” Dean asked.

“It would have to be an angel who wanted him to be able to kill other angels, I imagine,” Castiel answered.

“A traitor?” Dean said, then glanced at Castiel. “Although that’s a very relative notion, I guess. The question is—what did the angels who tried to take Ben and Claire want? And demons? Ben, you said something about demons?”

“Yeah, that girl came to me at the Nugget—that’s the restaurant on campus where I work. She talked about there being walls in my mind. I guess I know what she meant by that, now.” Dean had the good grace to look away. “She said to call her 'Meg'.”

That name might as well have been a bomb. Dean’s face twisted in fury, then hardened in a cold mask, and even Castiel tensed up.

“Meg,” Dean said in a deadly calm voice. “I’ll be damned.”

“I take it that you know her,” Claire said, and Dean looked up at her in surprise, like he hadn’t thought she could talk.

“Yes,” he said. “She’s an old, old enemy—a never-ending pain in my ass. She probably hoped that showing herself to Ben would bring me running into town.”

“Little did she know,” Ben said sarcastically.

Dean took a deep breath, and Ben thought he was about to retort—and kind of hoped that he did, as part of Ben itched for a fight—but instead Dean uncurled his fists and kept his arms still by his sides.

“She’s probably still around somewhere,” he said, and his tone had taken on this odd, business-like quality that Ben didn’t remember from before. “She tends to prefer to work alone, but something doesn’t quite add up.” He frowned, like he was trying to squint at something in the dark. “I think that Cas and me should start poking around and see what comes out. We’ll get back to you kids later.”

And then they were gone, Castiel and Dean, as suddenly as they had arrived, leaving Ben stunned in their wake.

“Well, fuck,” Jesse swore, slumping down in the couch. “That was… awkward.”

Claire sent him a half-hearted glare, but went to sit next to him. She looked worn out.

“How’re you feeling?” Ben asked her.

“He looked the same,” she said. “Exactly the same as the last time I saw him. He’s even wearing the same clothes.”  

“Is your dad still awake in there?”

“I’m not sure. I was, somewhat, when Castiel possessed me, but after all this time…”

Jesse squirmed, looking uncomfortable. “Isn’t there any way Castiel could give you your father back? I mean, it’s been more than a decade.”

“He could take me again. I asked him to do it, actually.”

“What? When?” Ben asked with alarm.

“Earlier, when you and Dean were discussing the demon Meg. I asked him in my mind; I knew he would hear me.”

“That’s completely insane,” Jesse said, the undertone of something akin to anger in his voice. “You don’t ask for something like that; being used like a puppet, not even belonging to yourself? You can’t—”

“He refused,” Claire said, interrupting his rant. “He said he promised my father.”

“Claire,” Ben said, trying to sound calmer than Jesse had, even though he felt his heart flutter with panic at the thought of Claire being taken away by an angel. “I understand that you want to free your father, but… That’s like prison, a life-sentence. You—”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” She was starting to sound annoyed. “It’s unlikely to happen if he doesn’t want me to be his vessel.”

“I know, but… What if he changes his mind? You don’t hate your life that much, do you?”

Claire crossed her arms, picking at the bandage on her forearm. “It’s not like that. And I don’t want to discuss this anymore.”

“Okay, okay.” Ben raised his hands in surrender. “Do you want to stay here tonight? You can have Blake’s bed.”

“Hey, now that’s unfair,” Jesse interjected, and Ben could tell that he was trying hard to sound light-hearted. “Why does she have the bed, but I always get the couch?”

“Because she’s prettier than you,” Ben said, and felt accomplished when it brought a smile to Claire’s lips.

“That’s the nicest compliment you’ve ever given me, Ben,” she said, and chuckled when Ben’s face heated up. “I’m too tired to go back home, so I accept your offer. I…” Her expression sobered up again. “I don’t really want to be alone tonight.”

Jesse’s hand moved from where it rested on his knee, and Ben thought he was going to offer Claire a gesture of comfort, but he didn’t. Later that night, while Claire was in the bathroom, Jesse turned to Ben, looking unusually serious.

“Did Claire and you used to date?”

“Uh, no. Why’re you asking?”

“There’s this… tension between you two. And I’m usually not good at guessing this shit so it has to be pretty thick.”

“Oh. I was joking earlier, you know,” Ben said, then felt utterly stupid. What did he even mean by that?

Jesse gave him an indulgent smile. “I’m not just talking about that. You like her, don’t you?”

Ben sighed. “Okay, yes, I do, but she doesn’t feel the same way, and please, I get enough shit about it from Blake and Katie. I know I’m pathetic, I know I—”

“Hey, no, that’s not what I think. And, mate, don’t take my word on this because like I said, I’m no good at figuring out people and relationships, but she does seem to care about you a lot.”

“Yeah, sure, as a friend.”

“Maybe. I just—I don’t want to come between you or anything. Like the other day—”

“The other day had nothing to do with Claire,” Ben said, a little curtly. The situation was strange to him—never before had he slept with someone and lived with this odd status quo afterwards, but he felt like anything could spook Jesse away, and if he didn’t know what he wanted, he knew what he didn’t want. “What happened between you and me is just between you and me. We had fun; it doesn’t have to be a thing.”

They were standing not far from each other; it often seemed like Jesse had little notion of personal space, and Ben had grown to be comfortable with that. It felt like a punch in the gut, then, when Jesse moved away and looked down.

“Yeah,” he said to his feet. “I wanted to make sure things were clear. Anyway, everything that’s happened lately is gonna bring you and Claire closer, so I don’t think you should give up hope. I’ll probably be gone soon—as soon as I know you’re both safe.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ben said, and tried to swallow through the lump in his throat. “You know you can stay as long as you want. I won’t kick you out or anything.”

“I know, thanks. It was really cool of you to—I didn’t expect you to make it that easy for me to watch over you. I thought I’d have to do a lot more creepy stalking.”

"You really were the worst spy ever."

They both laughed, but Ben felt like there was a hole in his chest getting dug deeper and deeper by a panicked rodent, like in some twisted medieval torture practice, and his own laugh must have sounded pretty hollow. Jesse looked completely oblivious to it.

Ben didn’t sleep very well that night, and his dreams were anxious and confused.

----

The first thing Ben saw when he got out of his room in the morning was Claire walking across the living room to get to the bathroom, wearing only the t-shirt Ben had given her for the night.

“Good morning,” he heard Jesse say once Claire had closed the bathroom door behind her, Ben’s eyes following her all the way.

He looked and saw Jesse lying on the couch under a blanket, the back of his head resting on his crossed arms, smirking knowingly at Ben.

“Don’t say anything,” Ben said, and showed him his middle finger when Jesse laughed.

Then Jesse pushed the cover back and threw his legs out, raising his arms above his head and yawning. Ben watched the muscles in his back and shoulders roll as he stretched, caught himself doing it, and rubbed a weary hand over his face, stifling a sigh. God, he was so screwed.

“Hey, Ben.”

“Hmm?”

Jesse was sitting on the edge of the couch, his back to Ben but his face angled toward him. “Can you, um, help me with something?”

“Sure.” Ben walked around the couch. “What’s the matter, man?”

“You remember about…” He pointed a finger at the scar under his collarbone; it looked even more faded than before, barely visible. “…about this.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“It’s almost gone. I told you about my healing too fast, and… I’m gonna need to do it again.”

“By ‘do it again’ you mean—”

“I mean carving it in my skin again—with a knife. I usually do it myself, but it’s not exactly pleasant, and I thought maybe it’d be easier to stand if someone else did it.” Ben must have looked as horrified as he felt, because Jesse shook his head and said, “Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked. Of course you don’t want to, it’s—”

“I’ll do it.”

“Oh. You sure?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, nodding as he was trying to convince himself. “I can do it, I can help you with that. I need… I’m gonna get a knife.”

Getting a knife was easier said than done. Ben went through his kitchen knives, but they looked too blunt for such a fine work as cutting a drawing into someone’s skin. Remembering a pocketknife Blake’s uncle had given him, Ben went to rummage through Blake’s room—the rumpled sheets showed the evidence of Claire’s sleeping there—and finally found it in the nightstand drawer. Ben examined the blade, pressed his thumb against it, and swore when he drew blood.

He went back to the living room, sucking on the wound.

“Here,” Jesse said, handing him a sheet of paper. “I drew the circle for you. Oh, did you hurt yourself?”

“I tested the blade for you. Verdict: it’s sharp.”

Jesse snorted. “Good —sharp is good. Okay, I’m ready when you are.”

“Okay.” Ben swallowed. Inside the bathroom, the water had stopped running. “I’m ready.”

He knelt down in front of Jesse, who was still sitting on the couch. He breathed in deeply. “Okay,” he repeated. He pressed his fingers lightly against the scar, following it with the tips. Did it matter where he cut? Would it change the efficiency of the symbol? He heard Jesse’s sharp intake of breath and took it as a prompt to get started.

“This time, for real,” he warned.

“Get on with it.” Jesse’s voice, above his head, sounded a little hoarse.

Ben bit his lip, glanced at the sheet of paper, and pressed the blade of the knife against Jesse’s skin, hard, until a drop of blood pearled at the tip. Jesse made a low sound from the back of his throat.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ben said, wincing.

“I’m okay, go on.”

The whole process was horrible, messy: blood seeped from the cuts, and Ben had to keep wiping it to see what he was doing, his fingers getting slick with it. He could feel Jesse’s heart pound under his hand, his harsh breathing blow the hair on his forehead, but Jesse didn’t make another sound.

“I’m almost done,” Ben murmured, trying to stay focused.

“Okay.” Jesse’s voice was trembling slightly.

“What are you doing?”

Ben startled at Claire’s voice and the blade went in deeper than he had intended.

“Sorry!” he exclaimed when Jesse stifled a groan.

“Ben, why are—”

“Let me finish!” Ben cut Claire off. “I’ll explain when I’m done.”

He half-expected more protests, but Claire kept silent and Ben drew the last line, finishing the star.

“Claire,” Ben said, lowering his hand, his voice calm even though his hands were shaking. “Can you get me the first aid kit from the bathroom?”

She didn’t say anything, a sure sign that she was unhappy with the situation, but Ben heard her footsteps head toward the bathroom.

“I’m fine,” Jesse said, his face colorless. “It’s gonna be healed up pretty soon anyway.”

“Jesse, I just carved symbols in your skin like a serial killer with a fetish. Indulge me.”

Ben hauled himself on his feet; his fingers were stained with blood and he kept his hands away from his body to avoid dirtying his clothes. He went to wipe the blade clean with a cloth, and washed his hands, scrubbed them raw, especially under his nails where the blood had accumulated in dark lines. Once his hands were clean he let the water run for a moment, leaning against the sink and trying not to puke from the metallic tang.

When he got back to Jesse, Claire was cleaning his wound, just as Jesse had done for her after the angels’ attack. She looked so absorbed in her task that Ben didn’t dare disturb her and preferred to watch. Claire was kneeling between Jesse’s open knees, like Ben had—like Jesse had kneeled between Ben’s knees when he’d blown him —and her hair was wet, which made it look almost as dark as Jesse’s. Her gestures were careful but precise, like she’d done it a thousand times before. She taped gauze on Jesse’s chest and rested her hands on her knees, looking up at him with serious eyes.

“So—is it some kind of mutilation kink?”

Jesse let out a startled chuckle. “God, no. I asked Ben to do it, but it’s not because I get off on it.”

“Then why? Why do you have to hurt yourself?”

“You’re the one asking me that?”

“That wasn’t the same—”

“This symbol is helping me seal off part of my powers, so I don’t lose control of them. Because I’m not totally human I heal faster than normal, so I need to keep renewing it. Ben agreed to help me.” He turned to Ben, smiling a warm smile that Ben had rarely seen on him. “Thank you, mate. That must have sucked for you.”

“I wouldn’t make it a hobby,” Ben said, “but it can’t have sucked for me as much as it did for you.”

Claire pushed herself up using her hands.

“I’d have appreciated if you’d told me about it before you did that in the living room,” she said, “because that wasn’t a fun thing to see coming out of the bathroom.”

Ben grimaced apologetically at her. “Yeah, sorry about that. But when he asked me to do it, I kinda wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. So —anyone up for breakfast? Jesse, do you need any painkillers?”

Jesse had a one-shouldered shrug. “Nah, I’ve had worse. But I’m all for breakfast.”

“Okay, I’ll cook. Claire, what do you want?”

“Hmm, can I have some scrambled eggs?”

“Sure. Jesse? One time offer, I’ll make you anything.”

“Scrambled eggs are fine, I’m not picky.”

Having to cook, even something as simple as scrambled eggs, did wonders for Ben’s nerves. From the living room he could hear the low rumble of Jesse and Claire’s conversation, and it filled his heart with a sort of giddy lightness that he didn’t want to overthink, but would rather let it uplift him from the accumulated stress of the past days. He was about to bring Claire and Jesse plates when someone knocked on the door. Ben’s mood immediately plummeted down.

“I’ll get it,” Jesse said as Ben came out of the kitchen.

Unsurprisingly, the visitors were Dean and Castiel.

“You’re here early,” Dean told Jesse by way of greetings. “Looks like you take you mission seriously.”

“I live here,” Jesse said, raising his chin at him. He eyed Castiel warily but moved aside to let the two men come inside.

Dean raised his eyebrows at Claire and her wet hair, then at Ben and his plates, but thankfully didn’t comment.

“What’s up?” Ben said, trying to sound casual while handing Claire and Jesse their breakfasts. It shouldn’t feel so much like Dean and Castiel had interrupted something, but it did and Ben couldn’t help but resent them a little.

“We found a couple of demons hanging around,” Dean said; he and Castiel were still standing awkwardly by the door, so Ben pointed the armchairs at them to indicate they could sit down, while himself sat on the arm of the couch. “Thanks. We tried to… interrogate them, but they weren’t very cooperative. They probably didn’t know much anyway. Just a pair of shit-for-brains lackeys waiting around for orders.”

“So we’re back to square one?” Jesse asked as he was coming back from the kitchen, where he’d gone to get a bottle of ketchup. “We don’t know why they’re here, or what they want.”

“We know it’s something that both angels and demons want,” Castiel said. “It has to be something that would give them an advantage in the fight between Heaven and Hell.”

“It’s still going on?” Claire asked; she seemed to flounder under Castiel’s gaze, but bravely held it.       

“It never really stopped,” Castiel said.

“So, Cas and me had an idea,” Dean said, short and sharp, like his words needed to be punched out of him. “There’s someone we can ask about it, someone who’ll know about that kind of stuff and might be willing to help. There are different factions among demons. Meg belongs to one of them; they’re… the loyalists, I guess you could call them.”

“Loyal to who?” Ben asked. He hadn’t been hungry earlier but he was now, so he stole a bit of egg from Jesse’s plate.

“To Lucifer,” Dean answered.

“But isn’t Lucifer, like, the king of demons or whatever? Aren’t they all supporting him?”

“Demon politics don’t seem any simpler than human politics, not that I’m big on the details. But, short answer? No, they’re not all loyal to him. The king of Hell certainly ain’t. We shoved Lucifer in his own special hot box a while ago, but we’re not the only ones who aim to keep him there.” Dean rubbed a hand over his mouth, eyes tight and his bitterness plain, like a man who’d gone over and over his options and didn’t like any of them. “If Lucifer’s supporters are up to something, you can bet your ass that this demon knows about it and will want to stop it. Or, at least, he’ll nudge us in the right direction and watch us do the dirty job for him.” That sounded a lot like Dean was speaking from experience.

“Um, I’m not really following you,” Jesse said; he had stopped eating. “Do you mean you want to summon this king of Hell and question him? And you’re ready to trust a demon? What is wrong with you people?” Everyone’s eyes had turned on him and he groaned. “Hey, I’m not a demon. I’ve never been to Hell, for starters, and I hear it’s a requirement.”

“Believe me, you didn’t miss anything,” Dean mumbled. “But yeah, that’s the plan: we call on Crowley—that’s his name—and ask him what he knows. He’ll help us because it’s his way—if he has a problem, he’ll want someone else to fix it for him. And, nine times out of ten, whatever Meg wants will be the direct opposite of what Crowley wants.”

Jesse looked unconvinced. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

“Good thing it’s not up for vote,” Dean said gruffly. “I just wanted to give you kids a heads-up. After all, you’re all part of this.”

“Yeah, I’ll pass,” Jesse said. “I don’t want the king of Hell to suddenly remember that he has a weapon in stock.”

“Good thinking,” Dean said.

“If you’re doing it today then I can’t either,” Claire said, picking at her food. “I have classes—classes I teach. I guess I could cancel at the last minute, but—”

“I can tell you all about it afterwards,” Ben said. “I want to be there. I’m so ready to get some answers about what’s going on.”

“Then I’ll go with Claire,” Jesse said.

“What—do you mean in class with me?”

“Yeah. Then I can watch over you while the three of them… do their thing. Don’t worry, your students won’t notice me. They won’t even see me—literally.”

“Well, in that case…” Claire shrugged. “I don’t need a babysitter, but you can come along, I don’t care. I need to stop by my apartment and get some stuff.”

Jesse wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I can take you there quickly. Ben hates it,” Ben rolled his eyes, “but I’m sure you don’t have as weak a stomach as he does.”

Claire broke into a smile. “I guess we’ll see about that.”

After Claire and Jesse were gone, Ben found himself sitting in awkward silence with Dean and Castiel.

“So,” he said once he couldn’t bear it anymore, “what do we need to do? Um, are we doing it here?”

“Ben,” Dean said, then cleared his throat. “When I said I wanted to give you kids a heads-up, I didn’t mean I wanted you there for the interview. You can’t be there.”

“Come on, Dean, don’t do this to me. I’ve been in the dark since the beginning of this thing. I need to be there.”

“I said no, Ben.” Dean was trying so hard to sound firm, like he had any kind of right.

“You’re not my father,” Ben bit out.

There was a long, terrible moment of silence. Castiel was looking at a spot on the wall, pretending he couldn’t hear the conversation, and Dean looked stricken. Ben almost felt bad for him, but not enough to let go of the argument.

“I can get Jesse to find you wherever you are,” Ben said quietly. He wasn’t sure it was true, but if Jesse didn’t know for sure about the extent of his own powers, then Dean probably didn’t either. “I’m not a kid, Dean. And you’re not my mom’s boyfriend anymore. You can’t tell me what to do. So, are we doing this here?”

“We might as well do it here,” Dean said, sounding defeated and weary. “We’ll need to draw a circle on the floor, but I can make it so it’ll be easy to erase. The demon shouldn’t be able to leave the circle.”

“If he’s the king of Hell, doesn’t he have a few tricks up his sleeve?”

“He probably does; there are several ways to ward off against him. Salt—”

“I know about salt,” Ben said, feeling stupidly proud to not be completely out of the loop.

“That’s good. Now, let’s make things clear.” Dean’s tone was steely again. “I’ll do the talking. You don’t say a word. Don’t draw attention to yourself. He’s dangerous, and you should never forget that. Demons aren’t to be trusted.”

Ben bristled, feeling like there was maybe a warning about Jesse underneath Dean’s words.

“I’m not stupid. I don’t even want to talk to him. I just wanna know what he has to say.”

“Of course I don’t think you’re stupid.” Dean sighed. “Let’s just start and get it over with.”

Dean drew the circle with the help of Castiel in the middle of the living room, moving the couch and the coffee table to make some space. He mixed smelly stuff in a cup while Ben watched, fascinated with the process. He wondered idly if that ritual would work on Jesse.

“I should wait outside,” Castiel said once they seemed ready.

Dean’s eyes flicked from the cup to Castiel. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s probably a good idea.”

“Why?” Ben asked.

“Uh, that’s a long story. Really long, and unpleasant, and not something we have the time to get into right now. It’s just better for Cas to wait outside.”

Castiel bowed his head, eyes flicking away in something like contrition or shame or both, and disappeared. Dean struck a match and raised it to his face.

“Ready?” he asked Ben, the flame making it look like his eyes were glowing from the inside.

“Um.” Ben wasn’t sure how he was supposed to know that he was ready to meet the king of fucking Hell, but Dean’s question seemed to be mostly rhetorical so he nodded, his mouth too dry to speak.

“Take a step back,” Dean recommended before he started chanting in what sounded like Latin. He dropped the match into the cup and watched as smoke poured out over the rim, the stench making Ben’s eyes water.

The whole thing was fairly anticlimactic. There was no lightning, no rolling thunder or colorful lights, and just when Ben started to think that maybe the ritual hadn’t worked—

“Hello, Dean. Always a pleasure to see you.”

Ben managed to stifle his gasp without even having to press a hand to his mouth. Suddenly, in the middle of the circle where there had been nothing before, stood a man of average height, his black hair brushed back and his suit impeccable. He was speaking with a British accent, and that fact, somehow, seemed to Ben the most absurd element in the picture.

“And who is this charming young man?” The demon raised a hand like he wanted to cut off Dean’s answer. “No, wait—let me guess. It’s him, isn’t it. The boy you were so fond of.”

Crowley looked at Ben—stared, really—like he wanted to read him to the bottom of his soul. He looked so ordinary, as harmless as Jesse did, and yet Ben felt profoundly disturbed and it was a struggle not to look away.

“Stop it, Crowley,” Dean snapped. “Stop looking at him.”

“Oh, pardon me. Am I being rude?” Crowley turned his mocking gaze on Dean. “I was merely curious. I only wanted to check if I could see the Winchester in him. I’ve always wondered about that, you know.”

“Leave him alone. That’s not why I called you. You know why I called you.”

“Ah, yes.” Crowley brushed an invisible speck of dust on his sleeve. “That disastrous business.”

“What does Meg and her gang want?”

“What they always want, of course—to try and take over the world! By which I mean, they want the return of their master.”

“Lucifer. They want to open the Cage,” Dean said in a low voice; it didn’t sound like a question.

“Yes, they do. You should be happy about it, Dean. After all, it would give you a chance to free your brother from the Cage.”

“My brother is out.”

“I meant your other brother.” Crowley’s lips formed a delighted smile, like he knew he was getting to Dean, although Dean’s face looked to Ben to be as cool as marble. “Poor Adam. All the weight of the Winchester’s curse without the prestige of the name.”

"Crowley.” Dean’s voice was a low growl, deep and powerful; it didn’t seem to faze Crowley but Ben was starting to feel unsettled.

“Oh, Dean, you know me,” Crowley said, waving a casual hand. “I can’t help but jest—aren’t we old friends at this point? What else do you want to know? I would hate to think that you went to all this trouble to call me and it was a waste.”

“They want to open the Cage—I’d figured that much. How do they want to do that? They’d need—”

“The rings, Dean, the rings. The ones you and Castiel took away. Why do you think they’ve been trying so hard to draw you out of hiding?”

“But I returned one of the rings to Death. They can’t open the Cage without it, it’s pointless.”

“They sure can try, or at least that’s what I imagine they think. In order to do that they’d merely need a source of power, a substitute for the missing ring. A raw power, laying in waste in the body and mind of a young, impressionable creature that has wandered around aimlessly since the last Apocalypse attempt—”

Ben had followed little of the conversation but those last words lit up a warning sign inside his mind, a dreadful thought, something so horrifying that it had to be true, because that was what his world had turned into.

“Jesse,” he said, almost a prayer.

“Yes,” Crowley said, something triumphant in his voice. “Yes, thank you, my lad—that’s the name. Such a shame, so much wasted power. I have never been an advocate of that awful Apocalypse matter, but I have to admit, it was a brilliant concept. Breeding a human and a demon can seem counter-intuitive but the boy’s humanity is precisely what it’s all about. It’s almost… poetic. I would very much like to meet that boy.”

“Dean!” Ben tried to ignore Crowley’s taunts and the furious surge of protectiveness they ignited inside him. I won’t let you touch him. “They want Jesse, we need to—”

“I’m sure he’s alright,” Dean said, keeping his eyes on Crowley. “What about the angels, Crowley? Do they want the same thing—to open the Cage and free Michael?”

“I wouldn’t presume to know what the angels plan to do. Although I can’t help but notice how synchronized their actions have been with Meg and her little band of insurgents. Eerie, don't you think? It would be quite amusing to watch from afar if it weren’t so annoying. There’s always a risk that they’d succeed, after all. We can’t have that, don’t you agree?”

“So you don’t have anything else to tell us?” Dean said. “I guess it’s goodbye, then.”

Crowley snorted. “Don’t be like that,” he said before he vanished.

Ben didn’t waste any time and thrust his hand into his pocket for his phone. “I need to call Jesse.” He had his phone out when he remembered why it wasn’t an option. “Fuck. Jesse doesn’t have a phone. I need to call Claire… but if she’s teaching she’ll have her phone on mute. Goddamn it!” He punched the couch in frustration.

“Don’t panic, kid,” Dean said, coming closer. “There’s no reason to think that they’re going to attack Jesse right at this—”

Ben’s phone rang, interrupting him. It was Claire.

“Claire? What’s wrong?”

“Ben! They—you need to come—and Dean and Castiel. They came from nowhere, I don’t know how—”

“Calm down, tell me what’s going on. Who came? What happened?”

“The demons. They came to the school, and they—God, Ben, they took Jesse.”

Ben’s heart dropped into his stomach. “What about you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Please, just hurry!”

“We’re coming. Hang on,” he said, and hung up.

“Call Castiel,” he told Dean. “We’re going to Cal State.”

“Is it—”

“Demons. They took Jesse. Claire sounded completely panicked. We have to leave now.”

Dean looked at him for a few seconds, then hung his head. “Alright. I’m gonna call Cas.”

Calling ‘Cas’ was apparently only a matter of bellowing, “Cas, come here!” before Castiel popped up instantly. He didn’t have any questions about what was going on. “Hold onto me,” he merely said, and Dean and Ben each grabbed one of his shoulders.

When they materialized in the middle of a copse of trees on the campus, it was immediately clear that something had happened: people were gathered in small agitated groups, a few were crying, others looked confused.

“Ben!”

It was Katie; she was running to him, her face pale but looking unharmed, and Ben ran to meet her halfway.

“Katie, what’s going on?”

She hung onto his arm. “People suddenly went crazy! A bunch of them attacked the LA1 building, like, like they wanted to besiege it or something, and then… I don’t even know. They stopped. Now some of them are hysterical.” She looked over Ben’s shoulder. “Is that Dean Winchester?” she asked, her voice low like she worried Dean might hear her. “What’s he doing here?”

“I called him after I remembered. It’s not important right now. Did you see anything else?”

Katie’s grip on his arm tightened. “I saw—Some of those people, they… Their eyes were black. Completely black, no white at all. I know it sounds crazy…”

Black eyes. His mother with black eyes. Demons. “I believe you.”

Katie’s eyes were still fixed somewhere over his shoulder. “That time, years ago,” she said slowly. “When we were kidnapped. My mom said once —she said that I’d been replaced by something. Something that looked like me but wasn’t me, you know? It sounded crazy too.” She looked at Ben straight in the eye. “Do you know what’s going on?”

Ben’s chest felt tight. “I have a pretty good idea,” he said almost inaudibly. “It’ll be okay, Katie.”

She nodded. “Okay. You’ll have to explain it all to me later.”

“It’s probably going to sound—”

“Crazy?” Katie smiled at him breezily. “I think I can handle it. I have to go now. Be careful, alright?”

“I will. Promise.”

She walked away and Ben rushed to the LA1 building, which was the main scene of the big showdown, it seemed. He found Claire talking to a couple of guys from the campus police.

“Claire!”

She turned at the sound of his voice, said something to the men, nodded at them, and walked up hurriedly to Ben. When she was close enough Ben saw that her eyes were red-rimmed, like she’d been crying.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, her voice catching.

Impulsively, Ben circled her shoulders with his arm and she leaned against his chest. They stood like that, not talking for a long moment, before Ben whispered to her ear, “Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded against his shoulder, then pulled away.

“They didn’t see me,” she said. “They barged into my classroom, my students panicked—and I thought they were coming for me, but they didn’t see me. I think Jesse did this, he hid me, and he was so busy protecting me that he didn’t—” She closed her eyes and took a deep controlled breath.

“Let’s find Dean and Castiel and go home, okay?” Ben said, stroking a hand down her back. “We’ll talk about it when we’re out of here.”

Dean and Castiel were also talking to the campus police, and Ben caught Dean flashing a badge to them. He waited until they had finished their conversation and Dean and Castiel joined them.

“Did you learn anything useful?” Ben asked.

“Not much; these guys are totally out of their depth. The students who assaulted the building claim that they can’t remember a thing, but that’s not much of a surprise.”

“I guess not. Can we go home now? Claire needs to rest. Then I guess we’ll have to… talk about what we’re gonna do.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “We aren’t gonna do anything, Ben. This is too big—you can’t get involved.”

“I’m already involved.”

“Then you don’t need to be even more involved. Now that Cas and me are here they don’t need you or Claire anymore.”

Ben clenched his teeth. “We’ll talk about it later. I want to go home.”

Dean’s mouth twisted. He obviously wanted to retort, but after a glance at Claire he shook his head. “Let’s go, Cas,” he said and looked around. “Let’s maybe find somewhere less public first.”

They found a place between two buildings that was deserted and Castiel teleported them to Ben’s apartment.

“Want to go and rest in my room?” Ben asked Claire. He’d been holding her elbow during the jump and was reluctant to let her go.

“Yes, maybe. Thank you.”

Ben cast a look in Dean and Castiel’s direction and saw that they were conspiring in whispers, maybe plotting their next move, or maybe figuring how to convince Ben to sit this one out. Let them try.

“Come on,” he said, and led Claire to his room.

She went to sit down on his bed unprompted and leaned against the headboard, closing her eyes. Ben stood in the doorway, undecided.

“I’ll let you rest,” he said after a moment. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Ben.” She opened her eyes. “Stay, please.”

“Oh. Sure.”

He sat next to her but left some room between them, not wanting her to feel crowded. She hadn’t closed her eyes again but was staring at nothing, her gaze vacant.

“He should have been able to fight them off,” she said suddenly; there was no doubt about who he was, only one person Ben couldn’t stop thinking about.

“There was nothing you could have done,” he said, trying to sound comforting.

“I know.” Her eyes found his. “That’s the thing—I was so helpless. So insignificant. I don’t think Jesse even needed to go through the trouble of making me invisible. It wasn’t me they wanted.”

“Yeah.” Ben combed his fingers through his hair. “Crowley—the demon—told us about that. They need Jesse because… they want to open some kind of Cage and they need rings Dean and Castiel have, but they can’t have one of them, so they want Jesse’s power to serve as a substitute. That’s all I could understand from the conversation.”

“The Cage? They want to free Lucifer then. And the angels want to free Michael. That makes sense.”

“How do you know all that stuff?”

She looked away. “I told you. I know things from… from the time I was possessed.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He remained silent for a moment, wondering if she wanted him to leave now, but she didn’t ask him to so he didn’t move. “It must be hard, seeing your father like that.”

“Yes.”

“And seeing Castiel. You must hate him.”

She looked down at her hands, spreading her fingers like she wanted to examine her fingernails. “I should hate him,” she said, her voice low like she was confessing something shameful. “But I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

She still wasn’t looking at him, but Ben somehow felt she was opening up to him more than ever before.

“Maybe I used to hate him. I don’t know. I miss my father, of course. I wish he could be with us. And part of me…” She cast him a sideways glance. “Part of me envies him.”

“What do you mean?” Ben asked softly, confused but wanting more than anything to understand her.

She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For everything I put you through since we met. I should have… I was selfish. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“Claire.” Ben moved a little closer. “What are you talking about? You didn’t put me through anything.”

“Yes, I did. I know how you feel about me, and I can’t… I don’t know if I can give you what you want. I’m not—complete.”

That didn’t make any sense, but he felt that at this point the only thing she needed was for him to be willing to listen, so he refrained from asking another clueless question.

“I’ve grown up being told that God was something greater and more beautiful than I could imagine,” she went on. “Everything paled in comparison to God’s greatness. That’s what my parents told me. I always wanted to get closer to Him, to… to meet Him, I guess. My parents told me that He was always here with me, in my heart, but that wasn’t enough for me when I was a kid. So when Castiel… well, that was the closest I’d ever come to being in contact with the divine.” She snorted. “Of course, I discovered then that angels are more like warriors than loving creatures. But it felt like…”

She paused for a long moment, and Ben waited patiently for her to find the right words. “It was like staring into the sun,” she said, “burning because of it but being unable to look away. And then he was gone, and nothing was ever the same again. I couldn’t make myself forget what it’d been like, to be part of something so powerful and so alien. Everything—everyone—seemed lifeless in comparison, and it was like he’d taken part of me with him when he left because now I never know how to behave with people.  I used to know. My mother, my stepfather, my friends… It’s not that I don’t love them, but that… I’m never really fully there, you know?”

She turned to him, looking helplessly at him, and he wished he could tell her that he did know, that he understood.

He covered one of her hands with his. “Thank you for explaining,” he said, the best he could give her.

“I feel like I’ve led you on all this time,” she said, her eyes looking alarmingly bright. “I didn’t want to hurt you, I wanted to keep you close but you didn’t deserve someone who couldn’t be a normal girlfriend.”

“You didn’t lead me on, Claire.” He stopped her from looking away again, pressing a hand on her cheek. “I didn’t become your friend because I hoped that I’d wear you down with time or something. I didn’t hope—I mean, yes, some part of me probably hoped—but I just like spending time with you. If you only want us to be friends, then we’ll be friends. You don’t owe me anything. Okay?”

“Yeah. I know.”

Ben’s hand was still on her cheek, his fingers tangled with her hair. He should’ve moved but he couldn’t, waiting for her to push him away instead. She didn’t. She was looking at him, almost unblinking. Ben’s heart was racing.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked, barely louder than a whisper.

She shook her head and lifted her hand to his face, stroking his cheekbone with the pad of her thumb all the way to his ear. Ben’s breathing deepened, and feeling bold he moved his own hand from where it rested on Claire’s cheek to cup the back of her neck and draw her closer. She let him do it, even when their faces were barely an inch apart, even when he kissed her. She opened up to him and Ben felt her hand against his side, sliding down to his hip then up under his t-shirt.

It was like something clicked in his brain and Ben felt suddenly free of all inhibition. His kiss became greedy, chasing Claire’s taste with his tongue, mapping the inside of her mouth. He pressed against her, feeling her breasts against his chest; ran a hand up her arm, avoiding her bandage, right to her shoulder, his thumb first teasing the swell of her breast over the fabric of her white tank top, then slipping underneath. A tiny clicking sound and Ben realized that she was unbuckling his belt.

“Damn,” he said in a breath, breaking the kiss for a moment.

“Don’t swear,” she whispered back.

Ben hoisted a knee to the bed to prop himself up, facing Claire, giving her room to unzip his pants. She lifted her legs on the bed and they both shifted toward the middle. Claire wore a denim skirt that went down to her knees, and she hitched it up to show the smooth whiteness of her thighs, opening her legs so Ben could crawl between them. They kissed again while Claire’s hand slid down Ben’s underwear and Ben’s slid up Claire’s thigh. Her hand circled his dick, small but firm, and started to pump up and down; Ben groaned inside her mouth, nibbled her lower lip, and she pumped harder. He stroked the inside of her thigh, the crease where it met her hip, flirting with the edge of her panties. She stopped kissing him to say, “Go on,” and he smiled against her lips before slipping a finger under the small piece of cotton.

She encouraged him by moving her hips and he rubbed against her clit, tested her entrance with the tip of two fingers, and, when he felt she was open and wet, pressed his fingers inside.

“Oh.” She buried her face into the crook of his neck, her breath tickling his collarbone, and her hand on his dick faltered.

At that very moment, while Ben’s fingers were buried in Claire’s heat, someone knocked on the door and they both stilled.

“Ben?” Dean’s voice called, and Ben closed his eyes tightly, cursing him inwardly with fervor.

“Yeah?” he said, his voice a little shaky.

“Can we talk?”

“Yeah, wait a sec.”

Claire and him pulled apart, and she quickly zipped his jeans up and buckled his belt. His fingers were still wet with her slick and he was holding his hand up, hesitant, until Claire grabbed his wrist and put his fingers in her mouth, licking them clean with her tongue. Ben felt himself flush to his roots.

“Come in,” he told Dean, trying to think cold and disgusting thoughts.

“We need to make a decision on…” Dean was saying as he entered, but he stopped and his eyebrows shot up.

There was a long awkward silence. Ben and Claire were still kneeling on Ben’s bed and Claire’s cheeks were two striking red spots on her pale skin. Even if Ben’s dick wasn’t hanging in the wind anymore and his hard-on had deflated, it must have been pretty obvious what they’d been up to.

“Well,” Dean said. “I’ll go… Right.” He pointed to the living room, and walked out.

Ben and Claire exchanged a look and a giggle.

“Well, that was certainly embarrassing,” Claire said, pressing the back of her hand against her flaming cheeks. She stopped smiling suddenly and her sobering expression dampened the giddiness that had filled Ben’s heart the moment before.

“What is it?” he asked.

“What do you think Dean and Castiel are going to do about Jesse?”

Ben felt a fierce bite of guilt as the memory of what had happened to Jesse, the thought of what was probably happening to him, poured over him and washed away any leftover arousal.

“What do you mean? We’re going to get Jesse back, of course. We’re going to find him and save him.” He didn’t want to envision things going any other way.

“I’m not sure Dean and Castiel see it the way we do. Jesse is… They could think that he’s too dangerous to leave alive. Or that the priority is to keep the Cage from being opened and Jesse is… secondary.”

Ben clenched his fists. “No. I’m gonna talk to Dean.” He brushed a hand against Claire’s shoulder. “I’ll be back.”

In the living room he found Dean alone, Castiel nowhere in sight.

“Hey,” Dean said, barely concealing a smirk. “You didn’t have to come out just now.”

“We need to talk about Jesse.”

It was enough to make Dean shut down. “What about him?”

“We’re going to save him, right?”

“I told you, we aren’t—”

“Don’t give me this bullshit, Dean,” Ben said, cutting him off with a harsh gesture. “We both know why I’m involved in this. You got me involved.”

“I never wanted—”

“It doesn’t matter what you wanted. I’m involved, and you don’t get to push me to the side now that I’m up to the neck in shit just ‘cause it’ll make you sleep easier at night.”

Dean let out a groan. “Jesus, you’re as stubborn as your mom.”

“Thanks, now can you answer my question? Our aim is to save Jesse, isn’t it?”

There was a long silence before Dean finally answered him. “Our aim is to keep Lucifer locked in, and we’re already in over our heads with it.”

“So, you mean that if Jesse has to die, then too bad?”

“Ben, I know this sounds harsh, but—”

“If this was someone you cared about, if it was your brother, or, or Castiel, or I don’t know, if it was someone important to you.” Ben took a step closer to Dean, looking him in the eye. Dean's face looked carved out of wood. “Wouldn’t you try everything to save him?”

“You shouldn’t make this personal. I have nothing against Jesse—kid’s life sucks and I wish things could be different, I do—but we’re talking about the end of the world here.”

“But this is personal, Dean! God, don’t you get it? That’s what I’m trying to—” Ben’s hands fluttered with the frustration of not finding the right words, then balled up into fists. “I’m in love with him.”

The words hung in the air for a moment. Ben’s ears were ringing, like he’d listened to blaring music all night long. There was something… dizzying, frightening, and oddly liberating about admitting his feelings not only to someone else, but first and foremost to himself. He knew as soon as he’d said it just how true it was.

“You—what?” Dean was looking at him like he didn’t know him at all.

“You heard me.”

“But I thought...” Dean pointed his finger at the door to Ben’s room. “What did I walk on earlier?”

“Oh.” Some of Ben’s defensiveness deflated. “That’s, well, it’s complicated. Claire… I’ve had feelings for Claire for a while now and I thought for the longest time that they were unrequited, but now…” He cut himself off, unwilling to let the conversation get away from him. He crossed his arms, stuck his chest out. Dean was taller, older, and could probably knock him out in two seconds flat, but damn it, Ben wasn’t afraid of him. Not when there was so much at stake. “Claire and I are a separate matter. Now I—”

“Does Jesse feel the same way you do?”

“For fuck’s sake, Dean!” Ben threw his hands up in the air. “It doesn’t matter, okay? It doesn’t matter if Jesse doesn’t—if once this is all over he jumps off to China or something, and I end up dating Claire—or if I don’t date Claire but that cute girl from my Medieval History Class, or I don’t know, maybe another guy. All I want is for Jesse to be safe, and maybe happy too if that’s not too much to ask. Fuck, he deserves it.”

Ben wanted to rant some more but he was out of breath, his heart beating madly like he’d just run a marathon. He couldn’t believe he was saying all this, to Dean of all people. He felt raw, exposed, like he’d just torn his chest open with his bare hands.

“You owe me that much,” he finally said, aware he was playing dirty.

The words hit Dean like a blow: he flinched hard, shoulders tense.

 “I’ll do everything I can,” he said, not looking at Ben. “You need to be ready for the worst, though. And the worst could be that your… your friend gets too out of control, too far gone for us to help him. He could become a creature that has nothing to do anymore with the boy you know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The kind of powers Jesse has, they’re terrible. You don’t know what they can do to him. They could rip his humanity away forever.”

“But you—” Ben wasn’t sure he got what Dean was saying, but more than that, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to get it. “You promise you’ll try to help him? Like he was Sam—you promise you’ll do anything just like you’d do anything to save your brother?”

There was something in Dean’s eyes at that moment, something Ben couldn’t quite decipher but that made him regret what he’d said. He was about to apologize, even if he didn’t know about what, when Dean said solemnly, “I promise.”

Ben nodded, almost thanked him, but decided he’d only do it when Jesse was safe and sound.

“I’ll go check on Claire,” he said, suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable.

“Yeah, you do that, I’ll… Mind if I have a bite? I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“No, of course. Help yourself to whatever you want.”

Ben went back to his room and found Claire curled in on herself on his bed, asleep. He sighed and looked at her peaceful, sleeping face, listened to the soft hum of her breathing. He reached out to push hair off her face but stopped himself. There wasn’t any thought of sex left in his mind, only deep fondness and even deeper weariness. Did she have feelings for him after all? Was he just a pity fuck? Could his life get any more complicated?

“What’s going on in your mind, Claire?” he asked, softly so he wouldn’t wake her up.

He’d have to ask her, but that was a question for much later, for when Jesse was safe and the world wasn’t ending. He wanted to take a nap and briefly wondered if it would be weird to lie down next to Claire—then decided that, since he’d been fingering her merely ten minutes before, sleeping by her side wasn’t crossing any lines that hadn’t been crossed already. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

----

When Ben woke up and checked the time, he saw that he hadn’t slept for more than an hour. Claire was gone, the covers barely creased on her side of the bed. Ben rolled on his back and looked at the ceiling, everything that had happened coming back to him in fragmented bits and pieces. Jesse, the demons, Claire, Dean. Jesse.

What the hell are you doing lying here like you don’t have a care in the world?

There had to be something he could do. He had to get the fuck up and make himself useful before he went crazy. He got out of bed but as he was about to push the door to the living room, a voice from the other side of it froze him on the spot.

“It’s been too long, Dean.”

Ben recognized the voice instantly —it was the girl from the Nugget, Meg. He was struck by a strange feeling, one that was familiar from his dreams: that sensation that everything around him was spinning out of control, mad beyond words, while he was standing still and cold, right in the eye of the storm.

“Meg.” There was a lot left unsaid in the way Dean pronounced the name. “What do you want?”

“Aw, no small talk, no foreplay? You’ve become a hard man, Dean Winchester.”

“You haven’t changed at all. Aren’t you tired of this body yet?”

“It hasn’t even been ten years. I’m a creature of habit, you know. I’d still be wearing little Meg Masters if you hadn’t… well, killed her.”

“Can’t you cut to the chase already? Tell me what you came here for.”

“You’ve always been so impatient, really, it’s a shame that you’ve never learned to stop and smell the roses. Aren’t we cozy here? You, me, angel girl over there—” Ben’s heart missed a beat at the mention of Claire “—and your boy listening at the door. Why don’t you come on out, Ben?”

Ben swallowed and slowly pushed the door open, his hand so sweaty it slipped a little on the doorknob. In the living room Claire was sitting on the couch, Dean standing protectively in front of her, and Meg, in a dark purple miniskirt and knee-high, black leather boots, quirked a smug little grin at him. Ben went to sit with Claire. She had her hands clutching at her knees, sitting very straight with her eyes fixed on the demon. She briefly glanced at Ben when their elbows brushed, and ghosted a smile at him.

“Now, isn’t that more comfortable?” Meg said. Ben refused to look at her and he heard her chuckle. “I can feel that you’re getting impatient, Dean, so I’ll be brief: you know what we want to do, and what we need in order to do it. Give us the rings and we’ll let the boy go.”

“You won’t let him go. You need him.”

“Heh, okay. Let’s say we’re letting him go after he’s done his job. He’ll be of no use to us then.”

“You’re talking about letting Lucifer out. You really think that boy’s life matters that much to me?”

Even knowing that Dean was bluffing—had to be bluffing—Ben couldn’t help clenching his fists, a hot surge of anger and fear coursing through his body. Claire must have had some kind of reaction too, because Meg commented, sounding delighted, “It doesn’t look like the kids agree with you. How touching, really. But even if none of you cared about the half-demon,” there was a faint undercurrent of contempt in her voice, “it wouldn’t matter. If you don’t give us the rings, we’ll still try to open the door using the boy’s power. But it’ll be a bit like using the A-bomb on a fisherman’s cabin—it’ll be messy, it’ll be ugly, and there’s no way to predict in what state the world will be left afterwards. Not that we really care either way. The hard way is just going to be longer and more annoying.”

“You’ll let Michael out too if you just blow the damn thing up,” Dean said in a tight voice.

“Oh, well, we’re not as set against letting Michael out as the angels are about letting Lucifer out. Could even be fun. We could have the big showdown we didn’t get last time.”

“Yeah, that’d be loads of fun.”

“Anyway, think about it. Give us the rings, or we set the kid off. Your choice.”

“Jesse won’t agree to do it.” Ben couldn’t believe he’d said it out loud—this was crazy, crazy. He felt Claire twitch by his side. “Stop talking about him like he’s a weapon.”

He risked a look: Meg had crossed her arms in a way that pushed her breasts up and was contemplating him like he’d suddenly become more interesting.

“That’s adorable,” she said, smirking. “Seems like you think we’re going to ask for his permission. Also, you’re wrong—he is a weapon, just one that was never used the way it was intended to be. The package is pretty, I’ll grant you that, but he’s a weapon all the same.”

Her heels clicked on the floor as she walked up to him. He watched her approach, trying to look defiant, his fists pushed into the cushions of the couch. She reached out and touched his cheek, then held his chin up between her thumb and forefinger, like a fond grandmother. She had very dark irises, almost as dark as the black ink of demon eyes.

“We’ve started working him over,” she said in a conversational tone, her eyes studying him closely. “He heals fast, a real challenge. But the pain, oh man, he can’t keep fighting it indefinitely, that’s the human in him. He hasn’t had centuries in Hell to learn to appreciate it.”

Ben gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw hurt. He could hear Claire breathing, hard and fast, and knew her well enough to interpret it as anger rather than fear. Meg smiled widely, looking satisfied, and her hand dropped to her side. She turned to Dean and gave him a mock two-finger salute. “Well, it’s been fun and all. Meet me at Stull Cemetery with the rings, tomorrow at 6am. Oh, and Dean—give my regards to Sam.”

She disappeared, leaving Dean with his face set in a mask of fury. Then Dean took a deep breath, said, “That bitch, she hasn’t changed a bit,” and that seemed to calm him down.

“What are we gonna do?” Ben asked quietly, feeling wiped out.

“What she wants us to do—we’re gonna go get the goddamn rings.” Dean frowned unhappily. “It’ll buy us some time to work out the kinks in our own strategy.”

“What strategy?” When Dean didn’t immediately answer, Ben went on with a touch of anger, “We agreed I’d be a part of this, didn’t we? And don’t even think about leaving Claire out, she deserves as much as I do to know what’s going on. So tell us what your strategy is.”

Dean passed a hand over his short hair with a long exhalation. “God, you’re a pain in my ass. The strategy is, well, more of a general idea than a full-fledged master plan at the moment.”

“Does it have something to do with the fact Castiel isn’t here right now?” Claire asked.

Dean gave her a sharp look. “You’re a clever one, aren’t you? Cas’s gone looking around for angels—one angel in particular.”

“Wait,” Ben said, “Stop me if I’m wrong, but I’d gathered from the two times they tried to kidnap me that Castiel wasn’t especially friends with the other angels? And now he’s looking for one of them?”

“There’s something Crowley said that set off some alarms in my mind.” Dean sat down on the arm of a chair. “About how strange it was that the demons and angels had started to act at the same time. To me it just sounds like there’s a traitor somewhere in one of the two camps. Our money is on the angels’.”

“Why wouldn’t the traitor be among the demons?”

“Because Lucifer is an angel too,” Claire said in a subdued voice, like she was looking inward at very old memories.

“Yeah, exactly,” Dean said. “Lucifer is an angel, and there are some angels who still feel loyal to him. We’ve met one of them before, long ago. Plus, I think it’s more likely that the idea of trying to open up the Cage initially came from the angels. Heaven made that Cage, so they’d know more about the way it works.”

“So, the rings—where are they?”

“I hid them in different spots, then gave one back to Death—long story. So Cas will drop me close to my hiding places.”

“Take me with you,” Ben said.

Dean made a face, but said, “Okay. Cas should be—”

Castiel appeared right in front of him. “—here soon,” Dean finished, rolling his eyes a bit. “Hi, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.” His eyes ran around the room, and whatever he saw made him look grim, on his guard. “What happened?”

“Meg paid us a visit,” Dean said. “I’ll give you the short version—we give them the rings or they try to use Jesse’s powers to open the door and probably destroy the world in the process. Did you find anything?”

“No. Whoever it is, is hiding their presence. I know they’re close, I can almost—” Castiel stared into nothing for a moment “—feel them, but it is diffuse. Shall I keep looking?”

“Yeah, get the son of a bitch. We could use him.”

Dean gave Castiel an address that gave Ben pause—that was the house in Cicero he’d shared with his mom… and with Dean, now that he thought about it.

“Maybe you’ll be done before I am,” Dean was saying to Castiel in a low voice that made Ben want to listen more carefully, a hand hovering above Castiel’s shoulder for a second before resting firmly on it. “When you find our guy, don’t come get us just yet. I’ll call you when I need you to pick us up.”

“As you wish. Are you ready to go or do you need a moment?” Castiel asked. “I know you don’t enjoy my mode of traveling.”

“Thanks for your concern,” Dean said with heavy sarcasm. “Ben, you ready?”

Ben wiped his sweaty hands over his jeans. “Sure, let’s go.” He smiled uncertainly at Claire. “What do you want to do while we’re gone? Are you going back to your place?”

“I’d rather stay here if you don’t mind,” she said. “If that demon comes back, or—”

“Meg will know how to find us if she wants to,” Dean said.

“Still, I feel… safer waiting here. I’ll wait until you come back.” She took Ben’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Good luck to you.”

At that moment, he wanted more than anything to kiss her, but didn’t know if it would be welcome and didn’t want Dean to watch him while he tried, so he merely squeezed her hand back.

“Okay,” he then said to Castiel. “Do your thing. Make sure we get there in one piece.”

“It is very unlikely that I could lose any of your body parts,” Castiel said a little forcefully, like he was offended that Ben could doubt him so. Ben thought of Jesse’s laughter to a similar comment—Jesse couldn’t be laughing much at the moment.

Castiel didn’t waste any more time flashing them to Indiana. The greater distance didn’t change how it felt—a dizzying, organ-melting flirt with nothingness—but it gave Ben some satisfaction to see Dean looking as green as himself surely looked.

“Won’t ever get used to it,” Dean grumbled, before nodding curtly at Castiel. “Thanks. Wait for my call.”

“I will.”

They’d appeared behind a tree, and after Castiel had gone, Ben peered around it to check out the house. It had been almost ten years since he had moved out, but it looked pretty much the same. The lawn was maybe a little more carefully mowed; there were a few new bushes under what used to be Ben’s window, and a basketball was nestled in between.

“What are we doing here?” he asked Dean, keeping his eyes on the house. “I guess we’re not out for a trip down memory lane.”

“This is our starting point. I was living here when I hid the rings. All my hiding places are within driving distance.”

“Driving distance? How are we gonna get there? Are we hitchhiking?”

He saw Dean smirk. “Not exactly.”

Ben quickly discovered the meaning of that smirk—apparently, they were stealing a car. And it didn’t look like Dean’s first. He walked down the street to one of the cars parked along the sidewalk, set his eyes on one, had a quick look around, and swiftly forced the car’s door. It was only once he started tweaking with the wires under the wheel that Ben found his voice.

“What the hell, Dean?”

Dean, rubbing the ends of two different wires together, groaned in annoyance. “How else do you propose we get where we need to be?”

“Couldn’t you ask Castiel to take us wherever?”

“Cas has other stuff to do than jump us around. And it’ll take me some time to gather the rings.” Dean humphed in satisfaction—the motor was now rumbling.

“So couldn’t we—” Ben looked nervously behind him and over the open car door. “Couldn’t we rent a car or something?”

Dean stroked a hand over the wheel and looked at Ben. “If we wanna make the meeting tomorrow morning, we need to hurry the hell up. Do you really want to waste the time it’d take us to rent a car? Knowing what your friend is going through right now?”

Ben tightened his fists reflexively, bearing the blow. “Okay,” he said, and slammed the door on Dean’s side before walking around the car to jump on the passenger’s side.

“Ben,” Dean started.

“Shut up and drive,” Ben said, twisting his neck to have a last look at his old house. “Let’s get the fucking rings and save Jesse.”

Dean sighed, and after a quick look in the rearview mirror, he pressed the gas pedal, making the motor roar and the car jump forward. They drove for a while in silence. They didn’t put any music on, even though Ben remembered that car drives with Dean used to never be without music, loud blaring rock that made the scenery come alive to Ben, like they were in a movie. He fell asleep with his right arm awkwardly crooked between him and the window, and woke up with a sore neck and a sore shoulder. He straightened up in his seat and rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand.

“We’re almost there,” Dean told him.

“Where’s there?”

There happened to be a cemetery. It was small, isolated, and didn’t look like it was very well looked after: grass and weeds had grown wildly between the graves, eating away the central alley, and the tombstones were askew, some of them broken in pieces and crumbled to the ground.

“You hid the rings inside a grave or something?” Ben asked after getting out of the car, looking around for witnesses. If they were going to dig a grave in broad daylight, they’d better make sure there wasn’t anyone to see it.

“One of the rings,” Dean said, and opened the door to the backseats to retrieve a pair of shovels.

Ben’s eyes widened. “How did you know that—”

“Nah, I’m not psychic,” Dean said with a hearty laugh. “I just stopped at a store to buy them. You were sleeping like a log.” He threw one shovel at Ben. “Let’s get digging, kid.”

They walked across the cemetery to a grave that belonged to one “Paul Schultz.”

“Does it mean something or did you pick it at random?” Ben asked, looking at the dates and calculating how old the man was when he died—twenty-four, ouch.

“Well, it’s kind of a reference to a movie.” Dean buried the end of his shovel into the ground. “I buried it above the coffin, but we should get started now. Grave digging is a long and dirty task.”

Ben didn’t waste any time, but realized right away that it wasn’t as easy as Dean made it look. Dean was digging like a robot, with powerful movements, while Ben kept getting his shovel stuck in the dirt, could never get a full shovel, and after about half-an-hour was already tired and sore and had his t-shirt soaked through. He paused to massage his shoulder with a hiss of relief.

“How do you do it?” he asked Dean, who didn’t seem to tire and was still wearing his leather jacket.

“Practice,” Dean said without a hitch in his rhythm. “Growing up hunting will hone that sort of skill.”

“Could become a gardener,” Ben said, and threw all his might into getting his shovel as deep as he could.

He did feel like he was getting better at it after the first hour, even though the pain in his shoulders, arms and back only grew more intense, until only the thought of Jesse—Jesse’s smile, Jesse’s laugh, Jesse’s hands —kept him going single-mindedly. Shovel deep in, throw the dirt aside, get even deeper the next time. Rinse, repeat. Sweat was rolling down his face and he could taste salt on his lips.

“Ben, stop—stop, I see it, I got it.”

Dean’s words pierced slowly through the fog blurring Ben’s mind. He stopped, leaning against his shovel.

“What?” he said, out of breath.

“I got the ring.”

In Dean’s hand was a small square box, made of some sort of brown imitation leather with golden edging on the top, like an engagement ring box.

“That’s it?” Ben asked, feeling oddly disappointed.

“It’s a ring.” Dean shrugged and pocketed the box. “Doesn’t look like much but it’s mighty powerful. We need to get to the second ring, now.”

Ben glanced at his watch—they’d left his apartment more than five hours ago. Castiel could be done by now. Jesse was…

Dean was already walking back to the car with one shovel in each hand. Ben shook himself and ran after him, and they took off like a shot, leaving an open grave behind them, gaping like a bleeding wound. Ben felt a bit guilty about it but in the grand scheme of things, Jesse mattered more.

---

They stopped for the second ring in an orchard and had to dig under the roots of a big apple tree. It looked almost dead, only a few leaves hanging at the end of its skeletal branches, but when they came closer Ben noticed something dark oozing from the cracks in the bark. An earthy, rotten smell came from the tree, and Ben shivered in disgust when he saw bugs creep out from under one of the roots in a black, shimmering stream.

“It’s the ring,” Dean said as he started digging. “Some of its power must have been starting to leak out. Pestilence was a disgusting son of a bitch.”

“Pestilence?” Ben missed the ground by an inch and stabbed the air with his shovel. “You mean like—”

“One of the Four Horsemen, yeah. It was the Apocalypse, remember?”

That was so mind-boggling for Ben that he couldn’t think of anything close to an adequate reply. Just thinking that Jesse and Claire had been part of all that, how close they’d come to the end of the world while Ben was living his life in blissful ignorance—he hadn’t even known at the time that anything was happening.

The new ring was in a box similar to the other one: fairly ordinary for something that contained an object powerful enough to kill a tree with a mere sliver of its full power.

“You sure it won’t hurt you?” Ben asked uneasily when Dean slipped it in his jacket to join its sister.

“It’ll be alright. It was under this tree for years before it started affecting it. I’m not going to keep it that long.”

They got back on the road. It’d been almost nine hours since they’d left Claire and Castiel and Ben was bone tired, aching all over from the long hours digging. There were ten hours left before they had to meet Meg at Stull Cemetery. He couldn’t sleep as easily as he had earlier—the clock was ticking inside his mind, the seconds falling away inexorably.

“We’ll get him back,” Dean said, his eyes on the road.

“Weren’t you saying just the opposite not so long ago?” Ben said morosely, pressing his forehead against the window and watching the miles of green-brown cornfields, the touches of pink, orange, and deep gray where lines of trees joined with the twilight sky.

“Well, I’ve changed my mind,” Dean said, and pressed harder on the gas.

“I guess everything will be fine, then,” Ben said, and the sarcasm made Dean snort.

“That’s the spirit, kid.” After a few heartbeats, he asked, “Does Jesse know how you feel?”

“Hey, well. I’ve barely figured it out myself, so probably not. I’ve never felt that way about another guy, so I’m kind of muddling my way through it.”

“So you don’t know if he, um.” Dean licked his lips, looking embarrassed. There was a certain enjoyment in watching him squirm, Ben found. “If he even likes guys that way.”

“Oh, I know he does.”

“Did he… Did he try to… You know he has the power to make you do stuff, don’t you? Maybe even feel stuff.”

“I know, and I know he’s not making me feel the way I do. And if you’re trying to warn me off having sex with him, then don’t waste your breath. The deed is done.”

“Oh. Okay, then. I… trust that you know what you’re doing. Means I won’t have to give you the sex talk, again.” Dean smiled suddenly. “You remember that I was the one to give it to you, right? Your mom asked me to. You couldn’t look me in the eye for two days after that.”

Ben hid his eyes into the crook of his elbow. “God, don’t remind me. Since I didn’t remember you I got it a second time, and this time Mom did it. And it was a lot more detailed than when you did.”

Dean chuckled. “Your mom does have a lot of knowledge on the subject.”

Ben bristled at the implication, ready to defend his mom’s honor as he’d done a hundred times before, but there was something wistful in Dean’s little crooked smile.

“Why did you leave?” Ben asked, unable to help himself. “Why couldn’t we stay the way we were?”

“It’s…” Dean’s hands tightened around the wheel. “Complicated.”

“Right.”

Ben twisted around in his seat, leaning the back of his shoulder against the door to watch Dean’s face. There was a slight frown between Dean’s eyebrows, and the line of his mouth was tight.

“Complicated is me being in love with two people,” Ben said.  “You, you’re a whole other level. But I’m not twelve anymore. If we’re gonna be stuck inside this car together for a few more hours, you can at least take the time to explain yourself to me.”

“I’d say that I don’t have to do anything,” Dean started, and Ben clenched his teeth in irritation. “But you’re right.” He sighed. “It’s kind of a long story, though, and I don’t really know how to talk about this stuff.”

“Was it because of your brother? Sam, right? Mom thought he was dead, but he came back.”

“Yeah, he did. And he needed me. He… wasn’t really himself at the time, and there was so much other crap going on.” Dean tapped his fingers on the wheel, like he was looking for his words. “Sam and me grew up hunters, and we got mixed up in a lot of complicated business. End of the world stuff. When you’re in that sort of shit, you can fool yourself into believing you’re retired for a while, but things catch up to you eventually. That’s what happened when… when you and Lisa got taken by demons.”

“I remember that,” Ben said tightly. He didn’t want to think about it again.

“Right. Then you can understand why I had to leave. I was putting you in danger. I thought that if I could put enough distance between us…”

“… we would be safe? Seems you couldn’t put enough distance between us if you went to the other end of the world, because it still caught up with me,” Ben said, but there wasn’t as much heat behind the words as he’d intended. Without Dean’s past it was unlikely that he would’ve ever met Claire or Jesse.

“I know. I kept an eye on both of you, had Cas do it too, but…” Dean shook his head.

“Was the memory thing necessary? Were you afraid that we would try to look for you?”

“I just thought…” Dean passed a hand over his mouth, and when he spoke again, his voice was so quiet that Ben could barely hear him over the rumble of the engine, “… that you would be better off having never met me.”

The words lingered between them while Ben processed them. Then he burst out into uncontrollable laughter, a hand over his eyes.

“Man,” he said between two fits of giggles, “god, you’re so fucked up.”

“Shut up,” Dean growled. “Not like I don’t know it.”

“Hey, how long before the next stop? It’s gonna be night soon.” Dean didn’t answer. “Dean? How long?”

“I’m not sure.”

There was something odd about his tone, something Ben didn’t like. “You mean you don’t remember how long it takes to get there?”

“I mean I’m not sure where the third ring is.”

“You…” Ben ran a hand over his face. “And you didn’t think to warn me?”

Dean rolled his head on his shoulders, making his neck crack; he must have been stiff from driving for so long, but Ben couldn’t find much sympathy.

“Dean? Couldn’t you fucking tell me that we were gonna waste our fucking time while—”

“I thought it would all come back to me when we were digging for the others, okay?” Dean snapped, and Ben slapped his open hand against the door—focusing on the sting in his hand was better than jump on Dean to throttle him.

“You know what? Fuck you, Dean. Fuck. you. I swear to you, if Jesse dies because—How did that even happen? How can you forget something like that?”

“I wasn’t at my best at the time, I was… a lot of the early days are kind of blurry. So I remembered where I’d hidden the others, but not this one. I’ve been thinking about it since we left but it’s not coming back to me. I’m sorry, alright?”

Ben pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to contain the venomous words he wanted to spit out.

“Okay.” He breathed out. “Let’s think this through. Did you hide all the rings in one trip or did you do one at a time?”

“I made separate trips. I didn’t want to be gone for too long, didn’t want to worry your mom.”

“Yeah.” Ben frowned. “I kinda remember that. I remember you leaving for hours at a time.”

He brought a fist to massage his temple, a headache building up there from stress and the effort to remember.

“You begged me to take you with me once,” Dean said. “Did I take you with me?” He sounded like he was talking to himself.

“I think you did.” Ben hit his left palm with his right fist. “I remember! I remember you burying something—a little box. It was on the side of a road.”

“The side of a road? It can’t be right. How are we gonna find it if it’s on the side of a goddamn road?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one who chose to hide it there. It must have had some sort of significance to you.”

“Where are we exactly?”

“I don’t know, I think we passed Evansville?”

“Evansville…” Dean hit the wheel. “Goddamn it, I should have remembered that! How far from New Harmony?”

“New Harmony, I don’t know. Let me check on my phone.”

Once they had established that they were about half-an-hour from New Harmony, Dean hit the gas, leaving the speed limit so far behind that it was just a speck on the horizon. Ben didn’t ask him if he was sure of their destination because there was a sense of urgency to the way Dean leaned over the wheel, like he could make the car go even faster, that told him that it was a pointless question. Night was dark when Dean stopped on the side of the road, right before the entrance to New Harmony. Ben, who was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt, shivered as he got out of the car.

“What now?” he asked, trying to smooth over the goose bumps on his arms by rubbing them. “How do we find where you buried it exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Dean said from the other side of the car, scanning the darkness around them.

There was no other car on the road, no lights, only tall trees obscuring both sides of the road, sucking in the faint glow from the moon in the clouded sky. Another uncontrollable shiver ran through Ben, and not just from the cold.

“Could the other rings…” The effort to keep his teeth from chattering made his jaw ache. “I don’t know, do they react in some way to each other’s presence?”

Dean shrugged. “I think there was something, yeah, when they were all together. Worth a shot, I guess.” He got the two boxes from his jacket and opened them, putting them on the car roof. Ben got on his tiptoe, curious to see what they looked like.

They looked like straightforward rings. One of them was unadorned, just a golden band, while the other one was wider, silvery, and mounted with a dark stone that didn’t reflect moonlight.

“They look kind of… normal,” Ben said.

“What did you expect? Rings of pure energy?”

Dean slammed the driver’s door shut, took a few steps with the rings in the center of his cupped palm, then stopped and prodded them with the tip of his forefinger. Ben caught up with him with a few strides.

“Doesn’t look like they’re doing much,” Ben commented, leaning over Dean’s shoulder to look at the rings.

“Nope.” Dean tossed the rings in his hand before closing his fingers over them; he looked forward with a frown. “I don’t know how far we are from the place I buried the third ring, so I say we take the shovels with us and just walk down the road.”

Ben stifled a sigh. He couldn’t feel his feet anymore, his body was one giant ache, and he was so exhausted it felt like his body was floating, unfettered to the ground. Walking in the dark, digging another hole, it all felt like effort beyond what he had in himself to do at the moment, but he didn’t protest—couldn’t protest—and went to fetch the shovels, then followed Dean along the road, holding his lit up phone in front of him so he wouldn’t stumble on anything. They walked, and didn’t talk at all. Ben thought about his bed—it was becoming an obsessive, intrusive fantasy. He imagined that the grass edging the road was as soft and welcoming as his bed, and that if he bent forward and lay down on the ground it would feel like rolling around in cotton, in big, fluffy, white balls of cotton, like lying among the clouds should feel.

“Wait,” Dean said suddenly.

Ben stopped walking. He immediately regretted it because now that he wasn’t caught up in the momentum, it was too much effort to remain standing and he had to lock his knees so they wouldn’t buckle.

“What?” he asked.

Dean’s head was bowed over the hand holding the rings. “They feel warmer, I think. Don’t move.”

Ben couldn’t have moved if he wanted to; he didn’t even have the strength to ask Dean what he was doing. Dean went a few yards back the way they came, then came back to Ben.

“Definitely warmer,” he said with the hint of a smile.

“So we’re literally getting warmer, huh? Best news of the day.”

They started walking again, with more energy now that they knew they were in the right direction. Ben felt more alert, adrenaline rushing through him, his skin vibrating with it. They stopped when Dean shouted, “Ow, fuck,” and shoved the rings back into his pocket. “Goddamn things are burning,” he explained.

“Means we’re at the right spot,” Ben said, his heart drumming with excitement.

He gave Dean a shovel and started digging immediately, so pumped up from the thought that they were almost there —almost there, Jesse, hold on, please hold on—that he could have burrowed his way to the other side of the earth.

“Hold your horses, kiddo,” Dean said, “we’re not even sure of the exact spot.”

“I don’t care, I’m getting this fucking ring if I have to dig all night.”

“Hey, hey.”

Ben felt a hand weigh on his shoulder and shoved it away, irritated.

“Digging all night is what we’re gonna do if we dig without a light and throw the ring away with the dirt,” Dean said. “One of us has to hold a phone to give the other some light.”

“It’s gonna take us forever,” Ben said, stopping and resting his forehead against the handle of the shovel.

“I’ll dig, you’ll hold the light. I’m used to it and you’re worn out.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.” Dean took the shovel from Ben’s numb fingers. “Gimme some light, come on.”

Ben fumbled for his phone, that he’d put back in his jeans pocket, took a step back to give Dean room, and almost lost his footing because of the ground’s unevenness.

“Fuck.”

“You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ben pressed the heel of his hand between his eyes and shut them tight. “I’m good, get digging.”

Dean didn’t waste time replying and went in with gusto, the pale light from Ben’s phone shining over the hole. At one point a car drove by, didn’t stop, and Ben wondered if the driver had seen anything, if he or she had puzzled over the two men by the side of the road, one of them digging—horror movie style. He chuckled tiredly.

“You finally losing it?” Dean asked, not pausing in his movements.

“No, I just… I was thinking about something Jesse told me once. About people only seeing what they wanted to see—wanting the world to make sense.”

“He’s right about that. Wanting the world to make sense is the illusion everyone falls for.”

“Yeah, I guess I can see that.” Ben realized he wasn’t watching for the ring box, and he focused on the hole once more—just in time to see a glint among the dirt in Dean’s shovel. “Dean, wait. I think you got it.”

Dean stilled, and Ben crouched to search the dirt with his fingers—and here it was, the last box with golden edging. Ben opened it. The ring looked a lot like Pestilence’s had, heavy carved silver and a matte stone.

“So this it,” Ben whispered. “We have the rings. We’re gonna make it.”

“Yeah. And it’s far from being over,” Dean said. “But we can go back now and get ready for what comes after. I’m calling Cas. Hey, Cas!”

Castiel materialized. “Do you have the rings?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t call you if we didn’t,” Dean replied, rolling his eyes. “Did you find the snitch?”

Castiel nodded stiffly. “Yes. You should see it for yourself.”

They all zapped to Ben’s apartment and there… there was Mr. Bennet, sitting on Ben’s couch like he belonged there. And Claire, standing in front of him, holding an angel blade to his throat, her eyes watching the man unwaveringly.

“What the hell is going on here?” Ben exclaimed, while at the same time his brain was connecting the dots. “Aw, fuck me. I need to sit down.” There wasn’t any chair in his vicinity so he fell down heavily on his ass. “You’re an angel? You’re the angel?”

“I take it that you know him,” Dean said.

“Yeah, he’s my neighbor.”

“Claire was the one who found him,” Castiel said, looking over at Claire with a weirdly proud expression—creepy, Ben thought, when you remembered he was wearing Claire’s father.

Claire didn’t seem to notice, too focused on her prisoner. “He was hovering by the door, and I… felt him. There was something wrong with him. So I called for Castiel.”

“Ramiel was very imprudent,” Castiel said.

Mr. Bennet—Ben couldn’t think of him as Ramiel—didn’t react to the comment. He kept staring straight ahead, seemingly unconcerned. Fucking marble-faced asshole. Just thinking that he’d been around all that time, stalking them… How long exactly? Had Ben ever known the real Mr. Bennet?

“Oh, no.” Ben scuttled back on his feet. “It was you!” he exclaimed, pointing a finger at the man—angel. “You’re the angel from Australia, the one who hired Jesse to look after us. You gave him that angel blade so he could protect himself from the other angels. Why? If you needed him, why not just kidnap him back there?”

Mr. Bennet didn’t look at him when he answered, “He was too wary, too used to running away from us, too powerful. It was better for him to be focused on something else.” He smirked then, a very un-angel-like (very un-Mr. Bennet-like too) expression. “I had not dared to hope that you would work so well as a distraction.”

The pointed comment set Ben’s cheeks aflame. How much did he know? Surely he couldn’t be aware of that.

“You fucker. Why are you even doing all this?”

“You little monkey.” Mr. Bennet said it in the same tone he used to say “you little punks” to Ben and Blake. “You couldn’t even begin to understand it if you tried. Do you have any idea of the magnificence—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Dean barked. It sounded like an order, and Castiel, on cue, went over to Mr. Bennet, putting his hands on the angel’s temples.

“Castiel,” Mr. Bennet hissed—no, Ramiel, for his voice sounded barely human. “Don’t you dare!” His head sagged, his chin falling against his chest.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean said. “You can’t engage with fanatics, they’ll keep you up all day and night with their ranting.”

“Are we killing him?” Ben asked in a low voice. He could barely breathe through all the anger he felt; his fingers were twitching with it.

“Ben,” Claire said. She still had her blade pointed at the angel, but she looked up at Ben. “If we do that, the host will die too.”

“I thought angels needed consent to take over their host. He’s not just an innocent victim here.”

“Yes, but…” Claire’s eyes wavered to Castiel. “He couldn’t know what the angel planned to do with him.”

“Anyway,” Dean cut in. “Killing him is not an option right now. We need him.”

“Need him for what?”

“Calm down, kid.”

“I’m not a kid!” That sounded very childish, actually, but Ben didn’t care. Dean raised his arm like he wanted to touch him and Ben moved away.

“Listen, Ben—I know you’re angry, I know you’re tired, and I know you’re worried about your friend—”

“Worried? Do you have any idea of what they’re doing to him right now, all because of this—”

“I have a pretty accurate idea of what they’re doing to him, yeah.” His grave tone sobered Ben right up. “And I won’t lie to you, I know you’re not a kid anymore—it’s bad, really bad. The good news is that the demons don’t want Jesse dead, not for the moment, so it buys us some time. Because there’s probably dozens of demons, maybe more, and what, four of us? We stand no chance at all. Not unless we play it smart.”

“Okay, I see your point,” Ben mumbled. “What’s your plan, o brilliant one?”

“A simple one, but one that has proved itself in the past. The situation we’re in, it’s basically Godzilla vs. Mothra.”

“What?”

Dean shot a look at Castiel. “Kids these days, they have no culture.”

“I wouldn’t understand this reference if not for you,” Castiel said.

“Well, I never pretended you were an example for the youth. My point is—” he turned back to Ben “—we have two powerful forces against us, and they don’t like each other much. In sheer power, we’re like a worm facing a big bad eagle. What do we do then?”

“We make them turn against each other,” Claire said.

“And the lady gets the prize!”

Claire’s cheeks took on a pinkish color.

“Okay, wait.” Ben massaged his forehead, hoping that his brain would stop feeling like mush anytime soon. “Explain it to me like I’m five—how do we plan to do that? They’ve been at war for, like, thousands of years I guess, but they avoided engaging with each other since they got here. So…”

“Our friend here is a double-agent,” Dean said. “We can make him feed both sides any info we want.”

“Right. I’m following you so far.”

Ben walked around the couch to face the angel and stand by Claire. She was still holding the angel’s blade—probably Castiel’s—but her hand was now hanging by her side. She smiled at him and said, “You look terrible.”

“I’ve been better.” He pointed at Mr. Bennet, aka Ramiel. “What did you do to him?” he asked Castiel.

“I locked him inside his host. It won’t hold for very long, though.”

“Yeah. The plan.” The couch was too tempting for Ben to resist sitting at the end of it, as far as he could from the rogue angel. He exhaled slowly, leaning his head against the back of the couch. “So what kind of information do you think we should make him pass along, Dean?”

“Well.” Dean approached so the four of them formed an oddly angled circle. “Simpler is better. I think we should make him tell the angels the truth.”

“What do you mean by the ‘truth’?” Ben asked.

“I’m working on the assumption that he kept a lot of what he knows to himself, so that the demons would have the advantage. So, the demons will be trying to open the Cage—if the angels know that they have Jesse and that we’re about to give them the rings, they’ll show up and then we try to use the confusion to get to Jesse and get him to safety.”

“I see,” Ben said. “Foolproof.”

“A more elaborate plan is likely to go to shit,” Dean said. “There’re too many things we don’t know and can’t control.”

“How do we convince him,” Ben waved in Ramiel’s general direction, “to do what we want him to? If he’s a fanatic like you said, I bet he won’t be eager to follow our lead.”

“Good point. Cas, any idea? You’re our angel expert.”

“Tell him we will give him to Heaven if he doesn’t help us,” Castiel said.

“You think that’ll be enough?” Dean said, his mouth twisted in a doubtful grimace.

“Heaven has very convincing ways of dealing with those who stray from their paths.” Castiel’s tone was serene, but Ben saw Claire twitch, her eyes downcast like she knew what he was talking about. She probably did—and wasn’t that a disturbing thought. “Ramiel is very familiar with their techniques, and he will do anything not to fall into their hands. I know him—he is not very brave.”

“Okay, then,” Dean said. He made a twirling motion with his hand. “Do your thing. Wake him up. We shouldn’t waste any more time.”

Castiel put his hands on Ramiel’s temples, just as Claire went back to her former posture, the blade against Ramiel’s throat. Ramiel opened his eyes. “Don’t do that again,” he said, his eyes screaming murder at Castiel.

“That’s up to you, pal,” Dean said, positioning himself right in front of the angel and looming over him with all his height. “You’re gonna do as we say, or we let your angel buddies have you, knowing what you are.”

Ramiel pinched his lips very tightly, in a way Ben had come to associate with Mr. Bennet. His right eyelid twitched, betraying his nervousness.

“And what is it exactly that you want?”

“We want you to tell the angels where to go, that the demons got Jesse and that we want to give them the rings.”

Ramiel smiled. “I’d hurry if I were you. They’ve already started.”

Dean tensed. “What do you mean? They’re trying to open the door right now?”

“They thought they should get a head start with the cambion—he’s just broken. It’s only a matter of time before he breaks down the door too.”

“Oh, that two-faced bitch,” Dean groaned. “I should have known she would do something like that.”

“She never promised that she would wait,” Castiel said.

“Thanks, Cas, that’s very helpful,” Dean said, his tone biting.

“Does Jesse actually have the power to open the Cage?” Claire asked, her eyebrows knitted together. “He uses this symbol—he carves it in his flesh—and it binds his power. It looks like some variation of a devil’s trap. What will happen if he can’t—”

She was interrupted by Ramiel’s sudden laughter; startled by the sound, she pressed the blade against his skin and blood pearled up. The angel didn’t seem to mind and kept laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Dean asked.

“That kid…” Ramiel stifled his laugh with a hand on his mouth. “It’s sweet that he would be so naïve as to believe in that symbol.”

“He told me it worked,” Ben said defensively.

“It works because he thinks it does. But he’s mad with pain and not thinking straight anymore. Anything is possible.”

“Means we need to move fast,” Dean said darkly. “Come on, tell the other angels to head for Stull Cemetery, pronto.”

Ben was about to ask if they were just going to let him go and trust him to do as he was told—and argue against it—when Ramiel closed his eyes, breathing in. He opened them again after a few long seconds. “Done,” he said, and Castiel nodded to confirm.

“I heard it too,” Claire said, her eyes huge and her face pale. “I don’t think I ever have before—not since…”

“It could be because there are two of us so close,” Castiel said, then put a hand on Claire’s shoulder, slow and deliberate in a way that suggested he wasn’t used to that kind of demonstration. The smile Claire returned him was unsure.

“I’m fine,” she said, and, as Castiel didn’t seem to recognize the cue for what it was, she gently pushed the hand away. “Shouldn’t we be going now? The angels won’t need much time to get there.”

“You’re right,” Dean said. He gave Claire and Ben an appraising look before his hand disappeared inside his jacket, reappearing with a knife. “It can kill demons,” he said, looking at Ben, handing it out to him. “Kills the host too.” He glanced in Claire’s direction. “You two should stick together, whatever happens.”

“Claire can keep my blade,” Castiel said.

“Then we’re set,” Dean said, and grimaced. “We shouldn’t make Meg wait any longer.”

“What are we gonna do if they’ve started opening up the gate?” Ben asked, holding the knife awkwardly in his hands; it had a smooth, wooden handle and there was some twisty engraving on the dented blade. “How do we stop it?”

“That’s why it’s a good thing we dug up the rings anyway. They’ll help us close the gate. Hopefully they’ll all be too busy fighting to stop us.”

“That’s a lot of hope we’re using up here. What are we doing with him?” Ben asked, jutting his chin in Ramiel’s direction while tucking the knife under his belt.

“Cas, can you do your thing again?” Dean asked. “Even if it’s temporary, by the time he can free himself it won’t make a difference.”

Ramiel jerked forward, like he wanted to jump at Castiel, and the blade Claire was holding against him pressed further, drawing a red line across the pale skin of his throat.

“You’re all insane,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s opening, he is coming back. He’ll reclaim his vessel.” The last part seemed, strangely enough, to be directed at Dean.

“Shut him up, Cas,” Dean said, his jaw working.

One touch of Castiel’s hands and Ramiel was silent again. Ben felt a twist of discomfort at the idea of leaving him in his apartment, but what was he going to do if he woke up? Trash the place? It was the least of Ben’s worries at the moment.

“So.” He fingered the handle of the knife at his side; Claire took his other hand in hers. “Are we doing this or what?”

----

Stull Cemetery was—  

Well. There wasn’t much Ben could really tell about it. The clouds were so heavy in the sky it might as well have been night, almost none of the early morning light filtering through. The scattered tombstones were just vague, pale spots dotting the grass like daisies. The surface of the cemetery was slightly bowl-shaped and they were standing on the higher part, looking down at a group of people sitting on the grass or the grave markers, lounging like a bunch of teenagers out drinking. For a split-second Ben could almost believe that was what they were—he’d done the whole get-drunk-in-a-cemetery and have a good scare before—but then he saw what they were all looking at.

“Dear God.”

The sound of Claire’s voice and the feel of her fingernails biting into the back of his hand served as an anchor for Ben, bringing in full force the reality of what he was seeing: someone stood alone a little apart from the group, a male figure planted in the middle of the cemetery—even in the dim light, it was obvious that the grass around him had been burned into a pattern. Wind twirled around the man, ruffling his hair, even though the air where Ben and the others stood was still as death. Right in front of him something was floating mid-air, a little piece of darkness winking rapidly like a hungry mouth.

“What the hell is this?” Ben breathed, even though, deep down, he already knew.

“The gate’s opening,” Dean said. “And…”

“Jesse,” Claire whispered, her grip on Ben’s hand painfully tight.

Of course it was Jesse. He had his back to them but there wasn’t anyone else it could be. He wasn’t moving, didn’t appear to be doing anything but stand there—except that he had to be the one responsible for the odd wind and the flickering mouth. Ben wanted to call out for him, to punch someone—he almost regretted them leaving Ramiel behind—but he didn’t have the time to decide on either because one of the figures sitting around watching Jesse raised and called, loud enough to be heard over the wind, “Dean!  Just in time, are you?”

“Wouldn’t have missed our rendezvous,” Dean replied, raising his voice.

The sound of Meg’s laugh carried to them. “Glad you could come.” She headed over to them, her hands buried in the pockets of her jacket. “You got the goods?”

Dean patted his chest. “Yep.”

“Good. We already got started—hope you don’t mind—but this’ll make things so much easier.”

She wiggled a beckoning finger at them. Dean had a quick glance around, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Ben knew what he was looking for, because he had an eye out for it too—how long before the angel squad showed up? Were they even coming? If they weren’t, then it would be bad: the gate would open, and, whatever Meg promised, they were all going to die. Ben had a brief thought for his mom. Mom, it got a little out of control.

“I’m losing patience, guys,” Meg said; two broad-shouldered guys in leather jackets and pants — seriously? Ben thought—came to stand at her back, staring darkly at them.

“Why don’t you come closer?” Dean shot back.

“How stupid do you think I am? Haven’t forgotten about your little demon killing knife.”

“’Scuse me if I’m not exactly bursting with trust either. There’s a dozen of you and just four of us, so I—”

That was the moment the angels chose to appear, and everything kind of went downhill from there. Ben didn’t know what he’d expected—that godly wrath would smite the demons, maybe, or that there would be talks, negotiations or something. As it were, six angels materialized at six different points in the cemetery, forming a net around the demons. Quickly enough, each of the angels had taken hold of one demon.

“Oh, Dean,” Meg said, taking in the scene with one sweeping glance. “You’re so gonna regret—”

Dean took a gun out of nowhere, fast like a Wild West gunslinger, and shot Meg. She stumbled backward, pressed her hand against her chest with a groan. The two demons beside her looked ready to jump, but Dean shot two other rounds.

“Rock salt?” Meg said. There was pain in her voice, but she looked more irritated than hurt. “Really, Dean? And here I thought you were above such child’s plays.”

The demon on Meg’s left had already recovered from the shot and launched himself at them, but Castiel was quicker. He put the palm of his hand on the demons’ forehead, fingers splayed wide, and there was a bright white light coming from the demon’s eyes and mouth, accompanied by the demon’s scream. The whole thing had happened so fast that Ben was frozen, his hand closed in a tight grip on his knife’s handle.

“Ben! Claire!” Dean yelled, shooting at Meg and the other demon, who were coming at them. He threw something in Ben’s direction. “Go for the gate!”

Ben caught the small box Dean had gathered the three rings in, then Claire grabbed his hand and they ran down the slope, right into the battleground that the cemetery had turned into. Heads down, knives out, they made their way through the fighters. Screams and blows and sudden rays of light flew all around them, it reeked of sulfur and ozone, but Ben and Claire kept running, slaloming between the graves and the angels and demons, until Ben’s foot caught on something and he stumbled and flailed. His knees hit stone, and the shock and pain surprised him enough that he opened the hand holding the rings.

“Shit!”

Looking down he saw that it wasn’t grass under him, but a gravestone that had fallen down on the ground: LOUISA, he read, WIFE OF—

“Ben, the box!” Claire shouted. She’d reflexively let go of his hand and was reaching out to the rings, straining herself desperately—but too late.

“Who are you?”

A guy bent over to pick up the box. He looked like he was about Ben’s age, long hair tied into a ponytail, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Angel or demon? No suit, so maybe—

Who the hell cares?

Ben rose painfully to his feet. Already up, Claire was jumping on the guy, her hair loose and wild. She caught him on the side, clutching at the arm holding the box. The guy growled, tried to shake her off of him, then punched her with his free arm. He was about to hit her again when Ben reached him and slashed his arm with the knife. There was a crackle and electricity sizzled along the wound.

The guy’s —demon’s—eyes widened, and Ben pressed the knife against his throat, drawing blood—human blood. Ben’s hand faltered. How old was the host? Hadn’t Ben seen that guy before, maybe on campus? While he hesitated, Claire grabbed the demon by the neck.

“Exorcizamus te,” she murmured to his ear, “omnis immundus spiritus—”

“—omnis satanica potestas,” Ben joined, old memories of Dean teaching him the exorcism brought back to the surface, “omnis incursio infernalis adversarii—”

The demon struggled against their hold, first bucking against Ben with his wounded arm, stronger than he had any right to be, then hitting him with a wave of power that knocked Ben on his ass.

“Ben!”

Ben pushed up on an elbow in time to see a woman come up from behind the demon and drop a hand on the top of his head. Light exploded out of his eyes and mouth, and the guy folded over like a puppet with its strings cut. The woman looked at Ben, then at Claire, and her eyes narrowed. Ben jumped on his feet and as one he and Claire broke into a run.

“Got the rings?” Ben shouted.

“Yes!”

“Think she’s behind us?”

“I don’t know!”

Ben wanted to turn around and check, but instead he tried to focus on running and not tripping over anything again. Pain shot through his knees every time his feet hit the ground. Finally they reached the circle where Jesse stood, the gate a shapeless, flickering void sucking in all the light.

“Jesse.”

Ben couldn’t help but say the name, but as soon as it’d left his mouth he knew it was useless. Jesse’s head hung low, his hair falling in his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to hide the terrifying blankness of those eyes, the absence of light, like there was nothing left of Jesse behind them. There was blood all over the front of his t-shirt, like he’d gutted a pig and got sprayed with it. Ben thought back to Dean’s words—maybe your friend will be too far gone to save.

“Ben, the rings—do it,” Claire said, handing over the box, even as she was staring at Jesse too.

She had Castiel’s blade out, and with her face flushed from the run and the fight, her hair flapping wildly in the unnatural wind, she looked dangerous, beautiful, alive.

“I don’t even know what to do,” Ben said, tearing his eyes away, opening the box and looking at the rings. Should he throw them in the hole? Put them on his fingers?

“They’re supposed to stick to each other, I think,” Claire said. “But with the fourth ring missing, I don’t know…”

“Aren’t the rings supposed to open the gate? I don’t wanna finish up the job for them.”

“It needs—Castiel told me there was some kinda incantation to open the gate. The rings are a key, they can close it too.”

That was some very flimsy information, but what could Ben do? Dean had told him to close the gate, had thrown the rings at him. Ben gathered them into the palm of his hand—Dean hadn’t been lying, they felt hot, uncomfortably so—and keeping his hand as flat as he could, made them touch each other. There was a faint metallic noise when the rings clung together, startling Ben a bit.

“Okay,” he murmured. “What now?”

“Hurry up, Ben!” Claire yelled. “They’re coming!”

“What, who?”

“The angels—I can hear them. They’ve figured out what we’re doing, they want to stop us!”

“Shit!”

Ben took the triangle of rings with both hands and held it in front of the gate, waving it around and hoping something would happen.

“Come on, come on.”

He heard Claire scream and he turned around. She was fighting with an angel, an old man that looked so frail that the wind should have been able to knock him down on its own. He was holding her by the shoulders, saying something to her that Ben couldn’t hear over the wind. A flash of lightning drowned the scene in harsh, cold light for a split moment. It was so bright that Ben had to close his eyes, and when he opened them Claire had her blade buried in the angel’s shoulder, and the angel looked stunned. Ben didn’t have the time to decide whether to go and help her, because he felt a pull from the rings and had to look back at the gate.

The edge of the hole was sticking to the upper side of the gathered rings, and Ben tried to pull down and close the hole. It was weird, seeing a bit of reality being drawn down like a curtain. He had to keep fighting the pull that was trying to drag him inside, and the wind was so strong he could barely stay up.

“Jesse!” he heard Claire yell, but this time he couldn’t have turned around if he tried, the pull from the gate was so hard to resist. “Jesse, help us! Come on, look at me. Look at me, close the gate, please close the gate.”

Ben gritted his teeth and put all his strength into moving the rings, but the edge of the opening kept shifting. He couldn’t hear Claire shout anymore but didn’t know if it was because she had stopped or because he couldn’t hear her over the ringing in his ears. And then suddenly the pull became even stronger, overwhelming, and it sucked the rings up. Ben had to let go of them so he wouldn’t be drawn in too, and the hole shut with a pop, leaving nothing behind. Ben stumbled forward, losing balance now that he didn’t have anything to fight against.

“What did you do! Where are the rings?”

It was the old man Claire had been fighting. He didn’t seem to care about the blood soaking his clothes, and was watching Ben with a murderous look in his eyes. Claire had fallen to her knees, and there was blood on her face but she looked whole.

“They’re gone,” Ben said hoarsely. His arms ached and his hands trembled. He took a step forward, his eyes fixed behind Claire and the angel.  He saw Jesse blink then, looking back at Ben for real, and they locked eyes for what felt like a very, very long moment. Ben opened his mouth to call his name and Jesse keeled over.

“Jesse!” Claire crawled to him on her hands and knees; Ben crossed the distance separating them in a second and dropped on his knees at Jesse’s side, not minding the pain. Above his head he could hear the old man’s angry voice, then Meg’s, then Dean’s, cutting and sarcastic, and he couldn’t have cared less about what they were fighting over. The gate was closed, the rings were gone, and Jesse… Jesse was on the ground, trying to roll over on his side and failing. He threw up blood all over himself and it brightened the dried stain already on his t-shirt.

“Jesse,” Ben murmured, “Come on, man, you gotta stop moving.”

Claire was kneeling at Jesse’s head, her hands hovering over him.

“Don’t move his head,” she mumbled. “We don’t know, we don’t know if—why is there so much blood?”

Ben ran his hands over Jesse’s body, looking for a tear, a wound, but there was nothing, and all the blood seemed to be coming from his mouth. Jesse moaned incoherently and his eyes rolled back into their sockets.

“There’s no wound,” Ben said. “It has to—there must be internal bleeding. Jesse, stop moving.”

It looked like Jesse was trying to stand, bending his legs at the knee, rolling his shoulders and moving his arms in uncoordinated little jerks. If he was bleeding internally then he shouldn’t move so much. Ben pinned him down with both hands on his shoulders.

“Don’t jostle him too much,” Claire said, one of her hands coming to rest on Jesse’s head.

“I know!”

But he didn’t know. If Jesse had internal bleeding then Ben didn’t know what the hell he should do beyond not moving him. When Jesse went limp under his hands, not struggling anymore, and even though Ben had wanted him to stop moving, he felt like he’d been plunged head-first into cold water.

“Jesse? Hey, man, look at me. Hey.” Was he still breathing? Ben put his ear near Jesse’s mouth to check: faint and hissing, it was there, but not strong enough to make Ben feel better. “Jesse, don’t do this.” He cupped Jesse’s cheek with his hand, and it was so cold to the touch that Ben’s mind emptied, leaving him with only one thought: he’s dying.

“No,” he said aloud. Claire made a small sound, as close to a sob as Ben had ever heard her. “No, no, no,” Ben repeated. “He can heal. He should heal. Why isn’t he healing? Jesse? Fuck, tell me what to do. Jesse!”

Ben wanted to shake Jesse, but didn’t want to risk making it worse. He saw Claire’s pale fingers move slowly over Jesse’s forehead, stroking strands of hair off his eyes. He couldn’t look up at her because he knew she was crying, and he couldn’t… If Claire was crying, then it meant it was really happening. It couldn’t be.

“Jesse, wake up!” Ben caught one of Jesse’s hands between his, rubbing the fingers with his palm, trying to warm them back up. “You can’t do this—you can’t. Wake up, please, wake up, please, please, please.”

His eyes were burning, so he closed them. Something weighed on his chest and his throat hurt like he’d swallowed shards of glass. His knees hurt—they hurt like fuck and he wished that hurt would take over and smother out all the rest.

“Hurting me…”

Ben opened his eyes, and saw Jesse looking back at him with half-lidded eyes.

“What?” Ben said.

“Jesse?” Claire’s voice was tentative.

“I said…” Jesse croaked, then paused to swallow. “You’re hurting m’fucking hand, mate.”

Ben hurriedly let go of his hand. Jesse pushed himself up on an elbow, wincing, then sat up all the way while Ben and Claire watched him dumbly.

“You…” Ben started, at a loss for words. “You were dying.”

“I was healing.” Jesse coughed, turned to spit in the grass then wiped his mouth with a dirty hand. “’s what I was trying to tell you, but it was kinda hard to talk through all the blood.”

“So you’re—you mean you’re okay now?” Claire asked; when he’d sat up her hand had slid down from his head to his wrist. “You’re healed?”

“Yeah, I’m—well, I’m on my way there. I just—”

Before he could finish, Ben wrapped him into his arms and hugged him as tight as he dared.

“Thank God,” he whispered against Jesse’s hair. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Don’t think God had a lot to do with it,” Jesse said, but his tone was hesitant. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Ben pulled back, rubbed a hand over his eyes; he wasn’t going to cry, there was no reason to, now. “Are you kidding me?”

“Well—umpf.”

Claire had drawn him into a hug of her own, and Ben almost laughed at Jesse’s bewildered face, wondering if it was how he’d looked when Ben had hugged him. Ben’s chest felt like it was filled with air and that he was going to lift up like a balloon, almost forgetting that he was sitting in the grass among graves, that there were demons and angels and—

“Guys,” Jesse said once Claire had let him go. “I’m fine, I swear, everything is just—”

“That’s awfully sweet, really, but the time for hugs and kisses has passed, kids.”

Meg’s voice shattered the bubble Ben had mentally erected around them, and suddenly it wasn’t so easy ignoring where they were and who was there with them. He looked up to see Meg scowling at them with her hands on her hips—her hands were bloody but Ben couldn’t see whether it was her blood or someone else’s. Dean was pointing a gun at her—she was ignoring him—and Castiel was locked into what looked like a staring contest with a big bearded man and the old man Claire had been fighting with, who still had the blade planted in his shoulder like a flag pole.

“The rings are gone,” Ben said to Meg, just as he’d said to the old man. “They got sucked up. I’m sorry,” he wasn’t, but he knew better than to admit it, “but the gate has shut down.”

“We still have your friend here,” Meg said, and Ben was close enough to Jesse to feel him tense.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Dean said, pressing the canon of his gun against the back of her head. “Party’s over, Meg.”

“You’re gonna blow my brains up with rock salt, Dean?”

“I can try.”

 “Be serious. You’re not needed here anymore, you should leave while you’re still walking and go take care of your—”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“The cambion doesn’t have enough power to do it without the rings,” the bearded man said, his hollow voice covering the bickering between Meg and Dean.

“Abdiel, darling,” Meg said, shooting a smile at him; the angel’s face screwed up in distaste. “That’s where you’re wrong. He has all the power we don’t have, he’s not limited as we are by our meatsuits. It’s his body, his turf, his fate.” She emphasized the last word with a pointed look at Jesse.

“I know the theory—” Abdiel started.

“It’s nonsense,” the old man cut in, nonchalantly plucking the blade off his shoulder. “He’s still a mixed-race bastard—demon and human.” Somehow, his voice seemed to hold more disgust at the human part. “He could have had his use, but the rings are gone. Now we have to—”

“Enough.”

Jesse’s voice made Ben startle—never had he heard Jesse sound like that, this echo of power, rattling him down to his bones. All the demons still standing visibly flinched, and the angels looked at Jesse like the dirt under the soles of their shoes had suddenly decided to stand up and start talking. Jesse got on his feet with a hand pressed down on Ben’s shoulder, and Ben stood up with him, holding him by the elbow.

The old man pinned Jesse with cold eyes. “You are still a prisoner, boy.”

“Not anymore,” Claire said.

Everyone’s eyes lowered to the ground, so Ben looked down too. The first thing he noticed was the burned pattern on the grass. It made a circle, and inside it were symbols that were starting to look familiar, now that he was up close. Devil’s trap. The second thing was that the circle was broken next to Claire, the grass torn off messily.

“Why?” said the old man, looking at Claire like she had personally betrayed him.

“I don’t want to be part of your club,” she simply said, pushing a strand of her hair back with dirty fingers.

The angel Abdiel laid a huge hand on the old man’s shoulder. “I think we are done here,” he said.

“First sensible thing I’ve heard so far,” Dean said; his gun was still pointed at Meg, but his eyes were on Jesse, looking at him with a considering air that Ben didn’t like.

“No!” the old man snapped. “If we can’t open the Cage, at least we should do what Castiel couldn’t do eleven years ago. The mere existence of that boy is sacrilege.”

“You can’t hurt me,” Jesse said in a quiet, even voice. “Castiel couldn’t when I was just a kid, and you can’t now either. I can take all of you.”

Ben was still holding his arm, and he could feel it shaking minutely. He had the feeling then that Jesse was bluffing, or at least showing more confidence than he felt. But he could see no sign of it on Jesse’s face, in the firmness of his gaze defying the angels. Meg burst out in loud, snapping laughter.

“The boy has spoken,” she said, wiping her hands clean on her jeans. “We played and lost, and now is the time to get the hell out of here. Pardon my pun,” she added with a smirk at the angels. Then she looked over her shoulder, sent a “Come on, guys” to the other demons, and they disappeared.

The old man spluttered in indignation at the empty space left by Meg. “That little—How dare she—”

“Know when you are beaten, Ansiel,” Castiel said, his voice taking on a respectful quality.

“Don’t talk to me, traitor. We’re leaving,” he said to Abdiel.

The angels vanished, leaving the five of them alone in the cemetery with bodies scattered amongst the graves. A moan came from one of them, but the others were lying still.

“Are they—” Ben said.

“Let’s check who’s dead and who’s alive,” Dean said wearily.

Ben raised his eyes to the sky. The dark clouds were drifting away, revealing the washed out sky of a new dawn. They were still alive—it was hard to fathom how close they’d come.

They checked the bodies. Among the five left, only two people had survived possession. One of them was the guy Ben had slashed with the demon-killing knife—he held his arm against himself, shaking uncontrollably, unable to string a simple sentence together. They made sure none of them were about to die, called 911, and got away before more people arrived and asked questions.

“So what now?” Ben asked once they were far enough that they wouldn’t be associated with the cemetery.

“Now, well, everyone goes home,” Dean said. “Disaster averted, we can all get some rest.”

They all looked at each other—Claire’s face was bruised, Dean’s bloodied, Jesse looked like he’d just walked out of a slaughterhouse, and Castiel’s suit was dirtied and rumpled. They made a sorry sight.

“Thank you,” Jesse blurted out. “All of you, for… Well, it was incidental to the whole angels-and-demons business, but I’m glad to be alive, and not,” he swallowed, “not in the hands of demons anymore.”

“You’re welcome,” Dean said gruffly, his eyes flickering briefly to Ben.

“I don’t know how to repay you. For that, and last time, too. For giving me a chance.”

“Oh, there’s no need—”

“There might be a way,” Castiel said.

“Cas,” Dean uttered through gritted teeth.

“He can help, Dean,” Castiel said, sounding more intense than Ben had ever heard him. “He can succeed where I failed.”

“What is it?” Jesse asked. “If I can help—”

Ben exchanged a look with Claire, who shrugged minutely. The conversation was flying miles over their heads.

“It’s about Sam Winchester,” Castiel said, avoiding looking at Dean, whose face had gone blank.

“Sam?” Jesse said. “Your brother? I remember him—he was nice to me. He was honest. What about him?”

“My brother is in a coma,” Dean said in a voice wound so tight it sounded like it could snap at any moment. “Has been for eight years. Cas put him in it to protect what’s left of his mind.”

“It was my fault,” Castiel said. “I broke down the wall protecting him from terrible memories.”

Dean sent Castiel a hard look and for the first time Ben saw resentment there, sharp resentment polished over the years. He’d noticed the harsh way Dean sometimes spoke to Castiel, but he’d thought—well, that it was just Dean’s mode of communication.

“I could never quite fix it,” Castiel continued unfazed, not noticing Dean’s look or maybe too used to it, “because I’m not as powerful as I used to be. I’m cut off from Heaven.”

“But, no, I,” Jesse stuttered, “I can’t—it’s not that I don’t want to, I’d like to help Sam, but I just—I can’t do that kind of thing. I can’t heal people.”

“I can,” Castiel said, “I know what to do, but I don’t have the power. With you, I think I could do it.”

“I—” Jesse turned to Ben and Claire, looking helpless; his face was still very pale and drawn and blood had dried on his chin, making him look like a wannabe vampire.

“Maybe this doesn’t need to be settled right now,” Ben said. “You know, we could get a little rest, all of us—but especially the guy who’s been in the hands of demons for almost 24 hours.”

“I’m fine,” Jesse mumbled, looking down to his hands. They were shaking.

“No, you’re not,” Ben said softly, holding back the urge to take Jesse’s hands and smooth them back to stillness.

“You’re right,” Castiel said, and turned to Jesse. “I apologize.”

“We could go to my place,” Dean said. “Rest there, and then…” He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck and didn’t seem to be able to look at Jesse. “Cas, can you…”

“I’m not sure I can take all of us at once,” Castiel said.

“And I kind of need some time before I got my juice back,” Jesse said, grimacing.

Castiel ended up making the trip twice, taking Claire and Jesse first, then Ben and Dean. They materialized in a living room: the sun was shining through the bay window and on the battered leather armchairs, the coffee table covered with papers, books and mugs, the dark empty fireplace, and the light-colored hardwood floor. Jesse, Claire, and Castiel were waiting for them, and Jesse gave Ben a tired smile, like they’d been separated for more than two minutes.

“It’s nice,” Ben said, looking around the room.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dean replied.

“Dean, you’re back!”

A woman came in. She looked to be in her forties, her long dark hair tingled with gray tied in a loose bun on her nape, her warm brown eyes crinkled at the corner with age and too many smiles. Her eyes widened a little when she saw how crowded the room was.

“Hi,” she said, directing a questioning smile to each of them. “I’m Holly.” Her smile froze on her face when she stopped on Jesse, who still looked like a murder victim with all the gore on his t-shirt. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

“Oh.” Jesse looked down on himself. “Yeah, I’m fine. It was just… just a nosebleed. I get them sometimes.”

“That was one hell of a nosebleed. You sure you don’t want me to have a look at you? I’m a nurse.”

“He really is fine, Holly, trust me,” Dean said. “You already know Cas—and this is Jesse, Ben, and Claire. They’re… You can go home, I’ll take over. How’s Sam?”

Her face softened. “Same as ever. I just changed his IV. Well then… Have a good day.” She picked up a handbag on one of the armchairs and left with a little wave of her hand.

“She helps me with Sam,” Dean said once she was gone, even though no one had asked him anything.

“You mean that—that your brother is here?” Jesse said, looking a little panicked at the thought.

“Yeah, I wasn’t about to let him rot in some hospital,” Dean said, sounding offended.

“Um, sorry.” Jesse fiddled with the hem of his t-shirt.

“Right. Well, you three look about to fall asleep standing.” Dean tilted his head at Claire who’d just yawned and wiped her eyes. “So you can have my bed. It’s big, you can all sleep in it. And don’t worry, this place is safe—it’s well-warded.”

“What about you?” Ben asked.

“I’m not gonna sleep right now. Me and Cas, we have some talking to do.”

He looked at Castiel, and Castiel looked back—that was probably one awkward conversation coming on, so much baggage, and Ben thought he did want to be somewhere else when it took place. He cleared his throat to draw Dean’s attention.

“So where’s your room?”

“Over there,” Dean pointed at the doorway Holly had come from. “Second door to the left.”

Dean’s room was scarcely furnished. There was one unmade bed, king-sized, and a closet with sliding doors fitted in the wall in front of it. They were all too tired to feel awkward about sleeping arrangements and they naturally fell in place on the bed, Claire and Ben on the sides and Jesse right in the middle, where they could both reach him. Ben had one brief thought about all of them in a bed together, but he didn’t have the time to finish it before sleep overcame him.

---

He woke up abruptly, feeling disoriented. He’d been dreaming but it was fading away, and it took him a moment to remember where he was. He could feel warmth at his back, and when he rolled over and saw Jesse sleeping on his belly, his face hidden in the crook of his elbow, his heartbeat slowed down and he exhaled slowly. Everything was fine. They’d gotten Jesse back and the world was still standing and everything was just fine.

He wanted to go back to sleep—his head hurt from exhaustion and his whole body felt stiff and achy, especially his knees—but he was too hot and his mind kept jumping to everything that had happened. So he slid off of the bed, on his bare feet because he’d taken off his dirty shoes and grimy socks, and padded quietly out of the room.

The hallway was dark except for a sliver of light from the door next to Dean’s room, left ajar. Ben heard Dean’s voice coming out of it and headed closer, listening in.

“He’s gotten so big—man, if you could see him. Yes, I know he’s twenty-one, so of course he doesn’t look like a little kid anymore. Just… I didn’t think I’d get to know him at that age, you know? And he’s grown up right. He’s become a good man.”

Ben wondered who Dean was talking to until he heard: “There’s maybe a way to fix you, Sammy. I don’t know. It may be dangerous, but, dude, you can’t keep up the Sleeping Beauty act forever.”

Sammy. Damn. Feeling vaguely ashamed about overhearing Dean’s conversation with his comatose brother, Ben wanted to step away, maybe go back to bed, but had the sudden feeling that he wasn’t alone anymore. He turned around slowly, holding his breath and ready for anything, but even in the semi-obscurity he was quickly able to make out Castiel’s features.

“Oh, hey, Castiel,” Ben whispered. “Um, how long have you been standing behind me?”

“Merely a minute,” Castiel said in a normal voice. He seemed to pause for thought. “I made you uncomfortable. Is it one of those personal space issues?”

“Yeah, I guess. You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

“I will try to remember that.”

“Guys,” Dean called from inside the room. “You wanna come in or keep crowding at the door?”

Dean didn’t sound irritated; he even sounded sort of amused, so Ben resisted breaking into awkward apologies and pushed the door open wider. The room was as Spartan as Dean’s room, except that there was an armchair by the bed in which Dean sat. Ben came closer, with that slight sick feeling at the bottom of his stomach that he’d had when he visited his grandfather at the hospital before he died.

The man in the bed had a longish mane of hair spread out on the pillow, but was neatly shaven, and Ben wondered whether it was the nurse or Dean who’d done it. His face seemed vaguely familiar to Ben, but in other circumstances he wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint where exactly he’d seen him before. He was hooked to an IV but there was no other medical equipment in the room that Ben could see. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought the man was asleep.

“That’s Sam,” Dean said unnecessarily.

“Yeah. I kinda recognize him.”

Ben didn’t know what else to say. He could feel Castiel standing behind him, not doing or saying anything, and the atmosphere in the room felt so heavy that Ben frantically racked his brain to find an excuse to get out.

“I think I’m gonna let you do this,” Dean said to Castiel over Ben’s shoulder. “Sam can’t stay like this anymore.”

“I’m ready,” Castiel said.

“Hey, Jesse hasn’t agreed to this yet,” Ben protested; he understood what was at stake here for Dean, and for Castiel too, but Jesse had been through hell, quite literally, and Ben couldn’t quell the protective urge mounting in him. “He’s asleep right now, and he needs more rest before he—”

“I’ll do it.”

All the eyes in the room swung to the doorway where Jesse stood, his hair mussed from sleep and his cheek red with pillow creases. Claire was at his back like a silent shadow.

“You will?”

Dean and Jesse looked at each other from across the room, and Jesse approached the bed, his hands thrust in his pockets.

“Is he—is it like he’s sleeping?” he asked, his eyes on the unconscious man.

“Not exactly,” Castiel said, coming to stand by his side. “In order to avoid his mind being at the mercy of his bad memories, I made it so his mind is dormant—but if I don’t repair the wall I destroyed, I can’t wake him up safely.”

Jesse scratched at the bloodstain on his t-shirt absentmindedly. “What do you need me to do? I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Not much. Only to allow me to use your power to do the repairs myself.”

“Okay.” Jesse nodded slowly, seemingly to himself. “One more thing. I don’t… I don’t want to sound like I’ll only do it if I get something in return…” He rocked on the balls of his feet nervously—there was a subdued, hesitant quality to him since they’d gotten him back that made Ben’s heart ache. “The angel I met in Australia, the one who started all this—he promised me something in payment for me watching out for Ben and Claire. He said he could make me a normal human being. Lock down my powers or something. Can you do that?”

“Ramiel lied to you,” Castiel said, shaking his head. “We can’t change a being’s deeper nature.”

“Oh.” Jesse’s hand closed into a fist. “I did think—figured it didn’t hurt to ask, you know?” He glanced at Dean, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. “I still want to help.”

“Thanks,” Dean said. “If you’re not ready…” he added like an afterthought.

“I don’t think I’ll get any more ready than this,” Jesse said with the pale pretense of a smile. He held a hand out for Castiel. “Should we, like, touch, or something?”

Castiel took the hand offered to him. “It will make things easier, yes.”

Ben thought to ask if they wanted for him and Claire to leave, but no one told them to, and Ben had to admit that he was curious about what was going to happen. Castiel closed his eyes and laid a hand on Sam Winchester’s forehead. Jesse sent a hesitant look in Ben and Claire’s direction, then closed his eyes too. For a long moment nothing obvious happened, except Ben had the feeling the air was getting hotter—but it could have just as easily been his imagination.

Then Jesse gasped and started shaking. “Stop!” he cried out. He pulled out of Castiel’s grip and stepped back. He opened his eyes and gave a panicked look to Dean. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry but—but I can’t do this.”

“Why?” Some frustration seeped into Dean’s voice. “It looked like it was going fine to me.”

“I…” Jesse buried his face into his hands and sucked in a breath. “It was slipping out of my control, my power—I’m sorry but if I let go of it I can destroy everything.”

“You were doing well,” Castiel said, his hand still on Sam’s head. “I can help you keep control. You just need to let me do it.”

“No.” Jesse stepped farther away from him. “No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

He was clutching the front of his t-shirt, pressing down his hand like his chest hurt, and Ben could see how hard he was trying to hold it together. Ben was about to say something, comfort Jesse before he panicked completely and zapped out to God knows where to have his breakdown, when Claire walked past him.

“Jesse, hey.” She touched his shoulder and that made him start. “It’s okay,” she said in a soothing voice.

“You don’t understand!” Jesse’s hand made an aborted motion, like he wanted to push Claire away. “It, it’s like walking on a tightrope, teetering, and I’m about to fall all the time. And right now I—I’m too out of control. It’s burning. I can’t keep it down. I have to but I can’t!”

Now it didn’t feel like it was just Ben’s imagination—it really was hotter in the room. Dean gripped the arms of his chair, elbows bent, like he was about to get up and intervene.

“You can do it,” Claire said, moving closer. She took Jesse’s hand that was gripping his t-shirt and unclenched the fingers one by one. “I know you can.”

“How do you know?”

“Because.” She raised her hand to cup his cheek, just like she’d done the day Jesse had used his powers on her, except it was of her own volition this time. “You are Jesse Turner. You were born to be a weapon for Hell but you told them to shove it.” Jesse’s lips formed a faint smile. “I know you can do it because that’s what you’ve always done, all your life. I know right now you’re tired and at the end of your rope—”

“I’m scared,” Jesse whispered.

“I know. Just relax.”

And she kissed him. Jesse seemed frozen for a moment before he started kissing back, his hand dropping to Claire’s waist. It felt like it lasted forever and Ben couldn’t look away. Dean and Castiel may as well have been gone, there was only Claire and Jesse, kissing like they thought they were alone. When they stopped, they pulled apart hurriedly and both looked at once in Ben’s direction, making Ben flush violently. His palms were sweaty but his mouth was dry.

“Feeling better now?” Dean said dryly, breaking the spell. Ben didn’t want to look at him because he was afraid there would be a pitying look on his face. It was a small comfort to think that, at least, only Dean was aware of the extent of Ben’s feelings.

“Um.” Jesse cleared his throat. “I—we can try again.”

He and Castiel locked hands again and closed their eyes. This time it didn’t take long before it felt like something was happening: the air started to feel too heavy to breathe in, then everything in the room started to shake slightly like they were under a small earthquake.

“Someone tell me this is normal…” Ben heard Dean say before the room was plunged in darkness.

Dean cursed, and Ben felt the space around him with his hand, looking for something to lean on because the floor was trembling harder and harder and he could barely stand. He found Claire, her warm back, and they pressed against each other.

“What the hell? Cas?” Dean shouted.

The darkness was torn apart by a violent ray of white light. It was so painful that Ben had to close his eyes and hide them behind his hand. Then everything stopped shaking and the stillness was almost as brutal as the rest of it had been.

“Is everyone okay?” Dean asked after a moment.

Ben removed his hand, opened his eyes, blinking away the colored spots dancing in front of him, and looked around. The room was once again filled with natural sunshine. Castiel was leaning against the headboard of the bed, his back to Ben; Jesse was sitting on the floor with a hand over his eyes.

“Sam? Sammy?”

Ben looked over to Sam’s bed—he’d almost forgotten what they’d been trying to accomplish here. Dean had stood up from his chair and now hovered by the edge of his brother’s bed. Sam was still lying down with his eyes closed, and, for a moment Ben thought it had all been for nothing.

“C’mon, Sammy, open your eyes,” Dean said, his voice trembling slightly, close to begging. “You slept long enough, you lazy ass.”

Sam made a sound, halfway between a groan and a moan. Claire clutched at Ben’s arm almost painfully.

“Sam?”

Sam opened his eyes, then closed them immediately, his face scrunching up.

“Dean?” he murmured, his voice hoarse. “Wha—”

“You’ve been asleep, bro. For a hell of a long time.”

“What?”

Sam’s eyes opened again and he struggled feebly to sit up in the bed.

“Settle down, man,” Dean said, pushing his brother down. “What do you remember?”

Sam frowned. It didn’t look like he was aware there were other people in the room and Ben felt like he was intruding and should go, but he also wanted to check on Jesse and couldn’t do that without drawing attention to himself.

“I remember…” Sam trailed off. “I remember the hospital.”

“You mean the mental hospital?” Dean asked. “That much, huh. Do you remember why you were there?”

“I…” Sam brought a hand to his brow, like his head hurt. “I don’t know. I think it had something to do with—”

“Let’s stop here for now,” Dean said hurriedly. “We’ll talk about it later. Why don’t you get some rest, okay?”

“You just said I’ve been sleeping for a long time.” Sam sounded stronger now. “I think I’ve had plenty of rest already.”

“Well, this wasn’t exactly a natural sleep. Hey!” Sam was trying to push himself up again and Dean caught his shoulders. “What did I tell you?”

“Cas?” Sam asked, having noticed Castiel standing by his bed.

“Hello, Sam,” Castiel said.

“I didn’t see you—Oh.”

Sam’s eyes stopped on Ben and Claire, widening. “Uh, hello?”

“Sam this is…” Dean grimaced. “People. It’s kind of a long story. Cas was the one who fixed you, with a little help from…”

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Jesse said from the floor, flapping a hand above his head. “I’ll just sit over here, waiting for the room to stop spinning.”

Ben took that as his cue to head over to him and kneel down on the floor with him. “Hey,” he said. He heard Dean repeat to his brother, ‘really long story.’ “How you feeling, man?”

Jesse peered at him from in-between his fingers. “Ben, I—”

Ben kept himself from sighing. “Let’s save it for later, okay? Are you alright?”

“I feel better already.” Jesse’s eyes rose past Ben’s head and Ben became aware of Claire standing behind him. “I’d rather just go home now. I mean, go back to your place? And then we can talk. Help me up.”

Ben gave him a hand to stand up. “How are we getting back home?” he asked. “We don’t even know where we are.”

“I can take you back,” Castiel said.

“Thanks, but—” Jesse said. “I can do it.” He looked at Sam, who’d watched the whole exchange in puzzlement. “I’m glad you’re okay now.”

“I… guess I’m supposed to thank you?” Sam’s right eyebrow twisted up. “But honestly, I don’t even know who you are.”

“Oh, we’ve met before.” Jesse caught Dean’s eyes. “But your brother will explain everything. Well, Dean, Castiel, it was a pleasure.”

“Thank you,” Dean said, rather intensely. “Thank you so much.”

“Yeah. It was, um, it was nothing.”

Jesse nodded to Ben and Claire, and they slipped out to the hallway so Jesse could teleport without shocking Sam half to death, or raise more questions than any of them was up to answering right now. They appeared in Ben’s living room and Ben closed his eyes immediately to wait for the dizziness to pass.

“What the fuck?”

----

God, what now? Ben risked squinting an eye open: Blake and Katie were sitting on the couch, looking at them all wide-eyed.

“Jesus,” Jesse mumbled next to him. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

“You can go to my room and lie down if you want,” Ben told him. He wanted very badly to touch him but resisted the urge. “I’ll take care of it.”

Claire followed Jesse to Ben’s room with an apologetic smile to Blake and Katie, who didn’t look like they would have noticed it if Claire had tried to French-kiss them.

“Well,” Ben said once Claire and Jesse had closed the door behind them. “I assume you have questions. This is…” a long story. “At least you’re already sitting.”

“Was that blood on Jesse’s t-shirt?” Katie asked in strangled voice.

“Yes. But he’s fine.”

“Fine as in ‘this is not his blood’?” Blake interjected.

“No, it is his blood, but…” Ben ruffled his own hair. “I think I need to sit down too.”

He sat on the chair angled to the left of the couch and interlaced his fingers on his lap.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Ben said, exhaustion weighing on him like lead. Despite the few hours he’d slept with Claire and Jesse, it felt like he hadn’t had any rest for weeks.

“You could start with telling us whether the weird stuff that’s been going on has been solved,” Katie said; she had to be recovering from her surprise because her tone was dry.

“You mean… oh, what happened on campus? Yeah, it’s more or less… solved, I guess. Unlikely to happen again, at least I hope so.”

“Okay, now what about the fact that you three fucking teleported into the living room?” That was from Blake.

“That was…” Ben mulled over a plausible explanation for a few seconds, then went for an abridged version of the truth. “That was Jesse. He took us with him. That’s a shitty way to travel, if you wanna know.”

“Okay, and how did Jesse do that exactly?” Blake asked.

“Jesse is…” Ben couldn’t help a smile. “Jesse’s special. He can do all sorts of crazy stuff.”

“Oh, god,” Katie said, pointing her finger at Ben. “I know that look! You love him! Oh, Ben. You’re beyond help at this point.”

“Help? What help? All you ever did was mock me—that’s how I remember it.”

“Can we get back on track, guys?” Blake said. “Not that Ben’s love life isn’t fascinating, but I’d like to know what’s up with the teleporting guy and what happened on campus and Dean Winchester! Katie told me that Dean fucking Winchester was here.”

“Yeah, he’s not here anymore. He’s gone back to… I don’t actually know where, but he’s back home. As for the rest, I’ll just say that it involved demons and angels and that I have probably saved the world or something. That’s your sneak preview. But right now I’m just too tired to explain everything in details.”

“You do look tired,” Katie said, examining him from head to toe. “And dirty—like you rolled around in the grass.” She pursed her lips. “Okay. Blake, we’re leaving.”

“Hey, I’m supposed to live here too!” Blake raised his hands in surrender at Katie’s look. “Alright, alright, I’ll go with you. Go to bed, man,” he told Ben. “You look awful. And then, you gotta tell us everything.”

Ben smiled wanly at them. “I will, I promise. You probably won’t believe me but I’ll tell you everything that happened.”

Katie gave him a hug, Blake patted his shoulder, and they were gone. Ben leaned his head back with a sigh, almost ready to fall asleep on the spot, but the door to his room opened and Claire poked her head out.

“They’re gone?” When Ben nodded she came out of the room and closed the door behind her. “I didn’t want to bother you while you were talking to your friends, but… can I take a shower? I feel disgusting.”

She sounded shy in a way she never had before, even when they’d first met. Ben tried to smile reassuringly. “Yeah, ‘course, go ahead. I think we all need a shower before we feel human again. Is Jesse sleeping?”

“No. He’s…” She took a step toward him, then stopped, joining her hands behind her back. “Ben, I wanted you to know, I never planned any of this. I never tried to—”

“We should talk about this later, once we’re all cleaned up, and we all feel better.”

She studied him, her head tipped to the side. “You have feelings for him too, don’t you?" It would accomplish nothing to deny it, so he gave her a wordless nod. "I don’t know how I missed it.” She raised a hand before he could open his mouth. “We’ll talk about it later, I know.”

You too, she had said. Well, at least if there’d been any doubts left on the subject, they were all but lifted now. Ben shut his eyes, and probably dozed off for a moment because next time he opened them it was Jesse who was getting out of the bathroom, his hair wet and his t-shirt clean of all stains.

Ben took his turn in the bathroom. There, he shed his dirty clothes on the floor, cataloguing the bruises on his body. The ones on his knees were the most noticeable of his injuries: a mix of blue and violent purple, almost as large as his hand. He should put something on them but he didn’t feel like doing anything more than showering at the moment. He stepped under the hot water and spent minutes just enjoying the uncomplicated pleasure of water running down his body, the warmth melting away his aches, the clean feeling.

When he left the bathroom only wearing his boxers and a towel around his neck, he caught sight of Claire and Jesse inside his room. They were neatly framed in the space left by the half-open door, standing out against the bright daylight from the window behind them. Ben stilled to watch them. They looked gorgeous together, sunlight making a halo of pale gold around Claire’s head, Jesse’s darker profile silhouetted against the rectangle of light formed by the window as he leaned over her, talking quietly to her ear. All Ben wanted was for them to have every good thing in the world, even if it excluded him.

They heard him enter the room and moved apart, a kind of shifty guilt in their body language like he’d caught them making out again. Jesse looked over Ben, gasped and said, “Mate, your knees.”

“Yeah, I had a falling out with a headstone,” Ben said, then exchanged a brief smile with Claire. “It’s nothing.”

“Looks painful.”

“Heh, I’ve had worse.” Before an awkward silence could settle he added, “I think we have some talking to do,” and waved at the bed for them to sit down.

They sat with a good distance between them, their backs straight like they were on a church bench. Ben looked around his room for a spot where he could sit, but his desk chair was covered in clothes and books, so he settled for the floor and sat down cross-legged in front of Claire and Jesse, looking up at them.

“Look, Ben,” Jesse started, eyes cast down on his hands. “I’m sorry that—I’m leaving as soon as I got some juice back. I need a couple hours of rest, and then—”

“God, Jesse, shut up,” Ben said, and regretted his acerbic tone when Jesse looked at him with wide, wounded eyes. He sighed deeply. “I don’t want you to go. Don’t go.”

“I—” Jesse directed a helpless look at Claire, who mouthed, that’s what I was telling you. “I don’t get it. It would be a lot simpler if I was—I don’t wanna come between you two. I don’t wanna make any problems for you.”

“There’s nothing to get, Jesse,” Ben said, frustration creeping up in his tone; he wanted to make Jesse understand but didn’t want to scare him away—but then, that always had been the issue, hadn’t it? “I just…”

On impulse he pushed himself off the floor with a hand planted on the bed next to Jesse’s hip and dropped a kiss on his lips. It was just a brief peck on the mouth, enough to make his point. Then he drew away a little, but not so much that he couldn’t feel the warmth of Jesse’s breathing, and looked into Jesse’s surprised eyes for any sign that he was about to bolt. When nothing of the kind happened he dared say again, “I don’t want you to go. I care a lot about you. There doesn’t even need to be… anything. We can just be friends.”

He could feel his heart trying to climb his throat. We can just be friends—anything but losing you. This was just what he’d said almost two years ago to Claire, minus the kiss. Remembering her presence, he glanced in her direction, and her sad half-smile told him she was thinking of that moment too.

“It’s dangerous for you if I stay,” Jesse said, but he wasn’t trying to move away and they were still a mere inch from each other. “That’s why I ran away from home—I didn’t want anything to happen to my parents. I—” his voice softened to the point of being barely audible, “I don’t want anything to happen to you two.”

“Things happen to us anyway,” Claire said. “Look at the past few days—it’s not because of you we were targets. It’s our pasts. Maybe we always will be targets.” She pulled in a deep breath. “I don’t want you to leave either.”

If that was what Jesse needed to hear to be convinced to stay, then Ben was happy that Claire was speaking up, but he couldn’t deny that he felt a small pang inside. He fell back on his ass and, feeling a bit cold, he circled his knees with his arms. His eyes met Claire’s.

“Ben,” she said, “You remember yesterday? When I… and then we…” She made a vaguely suggestive motion with her hand and Ben nodded, stealing a glance at Jesse—had it been only yesterday? “I dumped a lot of things on you during that conversation, but I don’t think I’ve made something clear.” Claire leaned forward and took Ben’s hand. “In all the confusion, all the heartache, you—you’re one of the only things that ever made sense to me.”

“Claire,” Ben said, not knowing what the appropriate reply was, if there was any.

“And you.” Claire turned to Jesse with a sudden smile. “I have absolutely no idea what to make of you.”

“Hey,” Jesse said, his face twisting into comical confusion. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“It is if you want it to be,” she replied, still smiling.

Jesse probably didn’t know Claire well enough yet to realize how unusual it was for her to smile that much, but Ben did, and it made him sad and happy all at once. That was confusing as hell.

“Can you two…” He swallowed, barely believing what he was about to ask. “Can you do something for me?”

“Sure, mate,” Jesse said easily.

“Can you kiss again?” They stared at him like he’d started sprouting off in Chinese, and his face got warm. “Forget I said anything.”

“Well, I just… Why would you want us to do that?” Jesse asked. “I thought…”

“I just kinda want to see it again. I want to check something. But if you don’t want to, that’s okay, I was just…”

He pressed a hand against his face, feeling the heat on his cheeks. God, if only they would stop looking at him like he was a weirdo.

“I’m up for it,” Claire said, and the sound of her voice had Ben take his hand off his eyes. She was angled toward Jesse, shrugging. “If you are too.”

“It’s not that I mind, but… Are you sure?” Jesse asked Ben.

“Yeah,” Ben said, even though he was less than.

Claire and Jesse both slid on the bed until their knees touched, then Jesse put a hand on Claire’s shoulder, and they had a moment of awkward stiffness before they leaned into each other and kissed. It was tentative at first, but while Ben held his breath and watched, Jesse’s hand slipped down Claire’s shoulder to her waist, drawing her closer to him. She got her own hand in Jesse’s hair, stroking down to the back of his neck, then up again, her fingers burying themselves in his hair.

And Ben watched them with his heart thumping in his chest, a complicated set of knots tying his insides up, and part of him was immersed in the vision of Claire and Jesse pressed against each other, their hands all over each other, in the wet sound of their kissing and their harsh breathing—his, too—while another part was looking at all this from above and wondering, how do I feel about this?

Claire and Jesse separated, both of their chests heaving. Claire’s cheeks were crimson and her neck was spotted with red, the color striking against her pale skin.

“Satisfied?” Jesse asked with the hint of a smirk to Ben, his eyes fixed on something lower than his face. When Ben looked down at himself, he saw that the fact that he had no pants and the way he was sitting with his knees spread did nothing to hide the bulge in his boxers.

How do I feel? Well, I guess that part of the answer is aroused as hell.

“Yeah,” he said, embarrassed but not as much as he would’ve thought, if he’d ever imagined himself in such a situation. “Thanks for the show, guys.”

“We could…” Jesse had diverted his eyes back to Claire, and his fingers were tracing patterns on the soft skin inside her forearm. “If you want to see more.”

“Oh.” Ben tried to swallow and conjure some moisture in his dry mouth. It seemed that they had taken a left turn into porn and he probably had to put his foot down at some point, right? Right? “You don’t have to,” he said. It couldn’t be what they wanted.

“What do you want us to do, Ben?” Claire asked, and she was bolder than Jesse because she said it while looking at Ben straight in the eye. Claire never did anything she didn’t want to. From the short time Ben had known Jesse, it looked like he was equally independent—he had to be, if he’d spent most of his life answering to no one but himself.

“Take off your clothes,” Ben said in a low voice.

On cue, Claire and Jesse started to pull up their tops.

“No, wait,” Ben said, and they stopped immediately. The thrill that ran through Ben then was electrifying. “No, I want you to take each other’s clothes off.”

Jesse chuckled and got a hold on the hem of Claire’s top—the one that had been white when Ben had palmed Claire’s breasts through it the day before but was now stained with brown and green marks. He pulled it off her head, and her drying hair got messy with static and she laughed, trying to flatten it down with her hand. Her bra was a simple flesh-colored affair, and Ben now could see that the red spots on her skin ran down to the crease between her breasts. Before taking off Jesse’s t-shirt she slid her hands under it, flat over his stomach, and looked at him with a smile.

“Your hands are cool,” he murmured.

He waited for her to get him rid of his t-shirt, raising his arms docilely above his head as she did so. Then he circled his arms around her torso while she raised her arms to let him do it and unhooked her bra with ease. All the while they were perfectly silent, like in a mime show, and Ben had to clutch his hands together to keep them from going inside his boxers.

“You want it?” Jesse asked Ben, holding Claire’s bra by one of its shoulder straps.

Before Ben could formulate an answer Claire slapped Jesse’s hand with a groan. “You’re a jerk,” she said, half-frowning, half-amused. “You have some clothes left to take off. Clock is ticking.”

They proceeded to take the rest of each other’s clothes off, taking their time. Even if they didn’t look in his direction and were focused on each other, Ben was acutely aware that they were putting on a show for him, and the knowledge left him aching with how turned on he was. God, and none of them had even touched him—he hadn’t touched any of them.

When only Claire’s panties and Jesse’s boxers were left on they grounded to a halt. Jesse’s hand hovered hesitantly at Claire’s hip, and he turned to Ben. “What now?”

What now? He had the both of them almost entirely naked—hell, he was a piece of clothing away from being naked himself—and it seemed obvious that there was only one direction this could go. It was another thing to be able to say it aloud, though.

“Well…” He licked his lips. For one dilated moment he was brought back to that night with Jesse—again, everything was new, exciting, and possible. “I want you to fuck her. If that’s alright with you, Claire?”

“Got a condom?” she shot back.

“I can find one,” he said, and went to rummage in the drawer from his nightstand. It’d been a while for him, so he wasn’t sure whether he had any left, but fuck, he was ready to call Blake for supply as a last recourse. Fortunately he didn’t have to, because he would never have heard the end of it.

“Here you go,” he said, but stopped himself before he handed the condom out to Jesse. “Do you mind if I…” He waved a hand in the general direction of Jesse’s crotch. “If I do it?”

“Oh. God, hell, no. I mean,” Jesse combed a hand through his hair, messing it up. “I don’t mind at all.”

“Right.”

Ben reflexively put a knee on the floor, but was reminded of why it wasn’t a good idea when the pain flared up. “Ow, shit!” he cursed, and fell back on his left hip.

“Ben?”

“It’s my knee. I’m fine.”

He sat on his heels, propped up on the balls of his feet, a hand against the edge of the bed for support.

“Get these off,” he told Jesse, pointing at his underwear.

Jesse smirked, spreading his legs wide while leaning back on his elbows. “Since we’re at undressing each other, why don’t you do it yourself?”

Claire laughed lightly and Ben glared at her. He adjusted his position so he wouldn’t lose his balance before he slid Jesse’s boxers down his hips—there Jesse helped him out by barely raising his ass off the bed—then down his legs.

“There, you lazy bastard,” Ben murmured, but his focus was mostly on Jesse’s dick, lying half-hard against his thigh. It wasn’t the first time Ben had seen another guy’s penis, but it was the first time it was this close. He was crowded between Jesse’s knees and there wasn’t anywhere he could go, and he could feel Jesse’s warmth and hear his breathing. He reached out and took it in his hand—it was warm and soft, a bit different in feel than his own, but not that much.

“God, Ben.” Jesse’s voice quivered lightly. “Don’t just… do something.”

It wasn’t really thought out on his part when Ben leaned forward and took Jesse into his mouth. It took him a second to adjust, remembering at the last moment to mind his teeth, and his position was awkward, his knees getting in the way, stuck between his chest and the bed and keeping him from bending much. When he was a kid, Blake and him and some other kids would have contests about which of them could get the most food into their mouth—it was a bit like that, trying to get as much of Jesse’s dick as he could inside. When he’d taken as much as he was comfortable with he started sucking, moving his head up and down.

Above his head he heard Jesse moan, and it suddenly was too much for Ben, he had to get a hand on himself, so he slid one inside his boxers and started stroking himself in rhythm with his sucking Jesse. A brief glance on the side to check on Claire, and Ben caught a glimpse of her hand inside her panties—good to know that he wasn’t the only one who liked to watch, he thought.

“Ben, Ben, stop.”

Ben got his mouth off Jesse immediately—Jesse’s dick was now fully hard, curving up to his stomach.

“I think I’m good to go now,” Jesse said with half a smile. “Condom?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry.”

Ben wiped the spit that had drooled down his chin, and hurriedly tore the condom package before rolling the condom down Jesse’s cock. Claire had already taken her underwear off and was stark naked, opening her legs for Jesse to crawl up between them. At first, held back by the feeling that he’d done his part, Ben remained on the floor and watched, jacked himself off and watched them kiss again and Jesse delicately stroke Claire’s bruised face, watched Jesse hook Claire’s legs over his shoulders while he went down on her, and then watched as Jesse got inside her and she grasped at his neck.

“Ben,” she said, and her breath hitched as Jesse moved out and in. “Ben, come here.”

It was a call Ben was helpless to resist, so he climbed on the bed and lay down by their sides. Claire held a hand out to him and he took it. He wasn’t sure what to do then —Jesse was huffing and puffing right next to him, so distracting, making the bed shake when Claire told him, Jesse, harder—and because his eye was caught by the sight of Claire’s breasts, the pale skin with the blue veins and the red nipples, that was where his mouth went next. He kissed the soft skin, then one of the nipples, took it into his mouth and sucked. And he could feel Jesse’s hand roaming over his shoulders, his back, his ass, so he stopped playing with Claire’s nipple for a moment to kiss Jesse, a full kiss for the first time, with tongue and a little teeth, and it was then that Jesse came, his groan lost in Ben's mouth.

Jesse and Claire separated after another kiss, and Ben went back to jerking off with urgency, wanting to finish himself off quickly.

“Ben, don’t come now,” Claire said, and Ben’s hand froze. “I want you to… I want you in me too.”

“You sure?” It was hard not to come right now, but Ben managed to starve off his orgasm. “I won’t last long, though.”

“It’s okay.” She smiled. “Me neither.”

It was a minor miracle, but Ben found another condom inside his nightstand.

“Want me to return the favor?” Jesse asked, stroking a hand up Ben’s thigh.

“Man, if you put your mouth on me now I swear I’m gonna blow my load.”

It made Jesse laugh, that free laugh that Ben could now identify as his real happy laugh, so rare Ben had only heard it a couple times. It felt like Jesse was coming back to himself, like maybe he was going to be okay after all. Jesse’s hand was still on his thigh and Ben gave it a quick squeeze, full of feelings he couldn’t voice at the moment, before putting the condom on himself.

Since he couldn’t assume the same position Jesse had, Ben laid down on his back, and let Claire straddle him and lower herself on him.

“You know,” he said, putting his hands on her hips with a deep breath, “this is the stuff most of my wet dreams have been made of for a long time.” Then, feeling Jesse’s presence by his side, he added, “Only way better.”

“Sweet talker,” Jesse said to his ear, before he started nibbling at his lobe.

“Well then,” Claire said, leaning over him with her blond hair tickling one side of his face, “enjoy.”

She moved her hips in a way that stole Ben’s breath, and there was no room for breathing or even thinking in the next moments. Claire went to and fro, slow and languid like the sea licking the shore at low tide, in stark contrast with the intense fucking between her and Jesse the moment before, and sometimes she kissed him deeply at the same time, sometimes Jesse kissed him, and sometimes Jesse and Claire kissed each other above Ben. If he had felt jealousy at one point he could honestly not remember why anymore. When he came he was breathing into Claire’s mouth, clutching at Jesse’s hand.

Afterwards they lay together on the bed, Ben snuggled between Claire and Jesse. He had his arm around Claire’s shoulders, his thumb rubbing idly along her collarbone. Jesse was breathing softly against his neck. It was warm and peaceful and content, and the craziness from the last few days was catching up with him, weighing upon his eyelids and making his limbs feel heavy as lead. Something was nagging at him, though, keeping him from falling over the edge.

“Jesse?” he called.

“Hmm?”

“Are you… are you going to be here when we wake up?”

Ben felt Claire shift against him, obviously still awake and listening.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Jesse said, running his hand up and down Ben’s arm.

“And later?”

Jesse’s sigh tickled the crook of Ben’s neck. “It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just—I’m fucking scared, mate. Always have been, all the time.”

Claire wordlessly reached out across Ben’s chest to Jesse, who took her hand and kissed her knuckles.

“It’ll be okay,” Ben said, his nose against Jesse’s cheek, and Jesse closed his eyes. “You don’t have to run anymore. It’ll all be alright.”

They fell asleep like that, all tangled with each other, Ben repeating words of reassurance until they were nothing more than a soothing background noise.

---

Ben woke up without knowing what had pulled him from the blissful dark of sleep, until he heard the muffled sound of someone knocking against the front door. He sat on his bed, looking around him. The threesome sex hadn’t been one of those scorching dreams that had him waking up hard as nails, because Claire and Jesse were here and sound asleep on both sides of him. They had rolled away in their sleep, and Claire was now on her side facing the wall and Jesse was twisted up in a bizarre position, his face buried into the pillow with one arm crooked above his head and the other hidden under his body.

The knocking started again, and Ben crawled up to the end of the bed so he wouldn’t bother Claire or Jesse, and looked quickly for a cleanish t-shirt and a pair of boxers before he went to answer the door. As he was about to open it, wondering who was behind it—Blake and Katie both had a key and generally let themselves in—and what time it was, he realized that he hadn’t been to class or work for at least two days.

“Goddamn it,” he said aloud, pulling the door open.

“Well, hello to you too.”

It was Dean, his hands in his pockets, looking at Ben with his eyebrows raised and a corner of his mouth slightly curved up.

“Dean.” Ben looked past him. “Castiel isn’t with you?”

“No, I drove here.”

“Oh, with the Impala? I remember that car. But—you drove here? How far are you exactly?”

Dean rubbed the back of his head. “Just a few hours from here.”

“You mean you’re in California? You’ve been in California all this time?”

“Since Castiel put Sammy in a coma, yeah. Can I come in?”

“Oh, uh. Sure.”

The light outside was dim, and the air was a bit chilly—apparently they’d slept through the day. Ben rubbed at the goosebumps on his arms and hurriedly closed the door behind Dean.

“Please have a seat. But we’ll need to keep our voices down ‘cause Claire and Jesse are sleeping.”

“Sleeping?” Dean’s eyes followed Ben’s to the door to his room. “You mean in there? Both of them? Damn, kid.”

Ben couldn’t help a smile as he sat with his legs crossed on the chair opposite to the one Dean had chosen for himself.

“Well, yeah,” he said.

“And now what are you… Not that I’m in a position to give any advice on relationships, mind you. It just seems a bit unconventional.”

“It probably is, and I’m not sure where we are going with this.” Again, Ben couldn’t keep his smile down. “But for now I’m happy.”

“Then I guess it’s the only thing that matters.” Dean rubbed his hands together, like he was cold. “So—I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here, right?”

“Well, I would’ve thought you’d stay with your brother now that he’s awake.”

Dean snorted. “Actually he was sleeping when I left earlier. He’s pretty tired for a guy who’s been asleep for years. And he’s the one who wanted me to come talk to you, once I told him who you were.”

“Okay,” Ben said slowly. “Did you have something to tell me?”

“I wanted—” Dean shook his head. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m probably the last person you want to see in your living room.” He put his hands on the arms of the chair like he was about to stand up.

“No, wait.” Ben raised a hand to stop him from moving. “You’ve driven all the way out here. I’m not kicking you out. And you know, I’m not as mad as I was. I mean, sure, what you did to me and Mom was fucked up.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.” Dean leaned with his elbows on his knees, his hands joined together like in a prayer. “I told you I’d done it to protect you and your mother, but the truth is, I probably tried to protect myself most of all. And Sam told me it was fucked up at the time, which is why he wanted me to come and try to make it up to you or something, since we parted a little hurriedly this morning. Because—I know it doesn’t change anything, but if it didn’t work out with your mother and you and what we had that year, it’s not because I didn’t love the both of you.”

Ben had listened to Dean with his lips pursed, fighting a surge of emotions. He swallowed through the lump in his throat.

“There’s something I always wondered about,” he said. “At least, when I didn’t have my memories hidden behind a wall in my mind or whatever the whammy Castiel put on me was. Are you my dad?”

Dean scratched the spot above his left eyebrow, not answering right away. “Your mother always said I wasn’t,” he finally said. “Said she did a test and your dad was some other dude in a leather jacket. I always figured that even if she’d been lying that time she would’ve told me the truth when we lived together.”

“She was always very vague when it came to my dad, and I thought—I guess I wanted it to be you she was talking about. I thought you were the coolest guy on earth, you know.”

Dean smiled wistfully. “There are plenty of better role models out there, but thanks anyway. If it matters, I could never have wished for a better kid than you.”

Ben lowered his head to hide the emotions probably painted all over his face. They could do a test, he thought, and settle that question once and for all, but then what would he do if the test said that Dean was his father? And what if he wasn’t? Ben wasn’t sure he was ready for any of the alternatives.

“Okay, I have to get going now,” Dean said, rising from his seat.

“What? You don’t have to go just now, you can—have a beer or something.”

“Nah, I need to get back to Sam, and you—” Dean’s eyes slid to the door to Ben’s room. “You have people to take care of. I don’t want to intrude on any post-coital ritual.”

Ben got to his feet to see Dean to the front door. “Is it the last I’ll see of you?” he asked.

Dean looked at him with a guarded expression. “That’s kind of up to you. You have my number, so you can give me a call if you ever need help or anything.”

Ben shrugged in what he hoped was a nonchalant way. “Yeah. I guess I could do that,” and that made Dean smile at him, surprisingly genuine.

Once Dean was gone, Ben went to lie down on the couch, thinking of all the ways his life had been turned upside down these past few weeks. His present, his past and his future—nothing would ever be the same. The world had taken on an entirely new face—or rather, it’d always been that strange and dangerous, it was just that Ben hadn’t remembered it.

He heard the door to his room open and he sat up, looking over the back of the couch. Claire came out, wearing Jesse’s t-shirt, and Jesse followed her, wearing not much except for a pair of boxers.

“I heard voices,” Claire said; the bruises on her face had turned purple, but she was still the loveliest thing he’d ever seen. “Were you talking to someone?”

“Yeah, Dean came by. Apparently he’s been living in California all along.”

“What did he want?”

Ben glanced in direction of the front door. “Clear the air, I guess.”

“Did it work?” Jesse asked. He looked like nothing at all had happened to him, at least physically; even the symbol Ben had carved into his skin looked months old.

“Maybe.” Ben shrugged. “Time will tell.”

Jesse gave him an odd, long look, then without warning he leaned over the back of the couch and kissed Ben. Ben closed his eyes just for a split second, savoring the press of Jesse's lips, and when he opened them he caught Claire smiling at them, that quiet smile that made her look like she was lit up from the inside.

“Does it mean you’re staying?” she asked Jesse, and Jesse, always better with gestures than with words, answered by kissing her too.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ben said, feeling himself grin like a loon.

Yes, he thought. Nothing in his life would ever be the same, but in some ways, the ones that mattered most, maybe it wasn’t so bad at all.