#mooseley

Kate and Adam came to find John in the midst of the unpacking, and John handed Kate a blank notebook and a pen. "Adam isn't talking, not much."

"Yeah. I noticed. I'm wondering why."

"Well, you know about the angels."

"The dicks trying to bother people about their horror stories? Yeah." Kate shuddered. Bobby had filled John in on how Kate had died, and horror story was right.

"You were forced to stay near that memory?" She nodded slowly in response. She looked haunted. "I'm sorry, Kate, Adam," he looked at both in turn. "I'm sorry. I didn't protect you from monsters by not telling you about them. That had been my goal, but those ghouls—those were ghouls that killed you—I had come into town to hunt one when I met you, Kate, and his son and his wife killed you two because of it, since I was already gone. It's all my fault."

Kate sighed deeply. She handed Adam the notebook and pen. "So, what, about the angels?"

"An angel asked for permission to...use Adam's body as its vessel. Every angel needs one to show up on Earth. And when I say permission, I'm sure there was leverage. That leverage was probably you." Kate looked surprised at that, but nodded.

"Okay. So, an angel was...using Adam's body? For how long? A day or two?"

John shook his head. "No. Seems to have been about 10 years our time. He wasn't on Earth, though." John gently took Kate by the arm, pulling her toward her room so they could give Adam some space. "Kate, Adam was in Hell. He was in a little Cage there, and it doesn't mean he was a bad person. I have a bloodline that can be...inhabited by this angel, a powerful one."

"He was in Hell?" she repeated, shocked.

John nodded. "Kate, he was in Hell, and he was a vessel for an angel named Michael. An archangel, which means he was really strong, even for an angel, and angels are strong, stronger than ghouls. Michael wasn't supposed to be there, but my Sam, remember him?"

"Of course," Kate said with a little half smile of acknowledgment. She'd often wondered about Sam and Dean.

"Sam was inhabited by Lucifer."

"So, then the Devil...the Devil could do that to you?" She shivered.

John paused. He hadn't considered that. "It was probably Mary's line, not mine," he admitted, pausing to consider that, to consider his Mary, who he had always imagined in his mind as someone very innocent and without knowledge of the hunting world, as someone who knew hunting and could be possessed by Lucifer.

"Was there...something she did?"

"No," John said quickly. "I don't think it's anybody's fault who can inhabit them." He had really been harsh to Sam, come to think of it. The demon blood hadn't been his fault either, according to Crowley. And maybe that's all the evil that had been there in Sam, and John had imagined the rest when he saw himself in his son with uncomfortable frequency.

"Why was he in Hell?"

"Oh. There's a Cage in Hell, Kate, and it used to hold Lucifer. And, then, it held Lucifer and Michael."

"And Adam and Sam," Kate said, blanching.

"And Adam and Sam," John confirmed. "When we had all that shaking and weird electrical activity up here, I looked into it best I could. I couldn't leave my Heaven, though. Hadn't cracked that code. That activity came from angels falling down out of Heaven and walking around on the Earth, a lot weaker and without a lot of purpose."

"And Adam and Sam?"

"Adam and Sam, and their buddies, they came up through the ground."

"Where?"

"Where they'd gone in. Cemetery in Lawrence."

"Where you used to live," Kate said, shocked.

"Yeah. I needed to come here and talk to you about where he's been and what he's been through. Is that okay?"

Kate nodded.

"The angels weren't happy with each other. Sibling rivalry, I guess. Sam was trying to get Lucifer back in the Cage. Michael and Lucifer were supposed to fight some big fight. Sam took control, put them all in the Cage together."

"Sam did this?!"

John took a deep breath. "Kate. You're not going to blame Sam, and I'm not going to blame Sam."

Kate paused. Yeah, Sam was the one John had said he othered, that he blamed for everything. His dysfunctional family scapegoat. Adam knowing his dad had turned out to be a pretty good thing, but she didn't pity Sam or Dean's childhoods.

"He was saving the world. And now he has been working with Adam. He's the only one who knows what it was like, being there for so long with two archangels. Time feels different in Hell. I was there for 10 months and it felt like 100 years." Kate gasped. "Sam was there for 180. It wasn't his fault Adam got left behind. Adam was there about 1,000 years, give or take."

Tears streamed down from Kate's eyes. John went to the box of Kleenex on her bedside table, passing her tissues. "This is why Adam's having a hard time speaking, and having a hard time moving. He isn't used to it. He's capable, and he's working on it. Sam was working with him. He's been drawing, and he can write, but it's shaky."

"So, we have work to do with him," Kate said, sniffing.

"Yeah," John agreed. "Apparently, Michael was protective of him, at least. Kept him away from the fighting, from the pain."

"And Sam?"

John paused, shook his head. "No. They were mad at him. Everyone tells me they did everything to Sam and his soul that it was possible to do." Kate flinched. John handed her another tissue, took her used ones from her. "I've missed you," he said honestly. For some reason, there had been something about visits to Adam and Kate that had felt so removed from the pain, the grief, the mistakes of the family he had with Mary, the family he was way too close to and never stuck around for.

He'd done too much damage and it was hard to think he could ever go back.

"I've missed you too," said Kate, sniffing and blowing her nose. "Thank you, John."

***

John opted, naturally, to visit the Roadhouse again after seeing Kate and Adam. He hadn't expected Ellen to forgive him, but since he knew she had access to Bill now, it was probably time.

John knew in every fiber of him that he had to do something good for the boys. Seeing Sam was a real wake up call, as well as seeing the other hunters there who would be able to judge him in a way he should be judged but didn't want to sit still long enough to be. He'd always been running from that judgment, squirming away from the pain of having to sit and deal with how bad things had gotten and the fact he hadn't tried to stop that but had encouraged it instead. Distrust, pain, abandonment issues, trauma responses like he'd formed a personal little cult and not a family, then let that extend to how he treated others.

He knew. He knew what he'd done to the boys. He knew it was easier that they gave too much of a shit about their father because, in his fucked up reasoning, that made them safer, and in his ego, that made him bigger and cooler and as infallible as their god. His word, his notions, his whims, his time. Always on his time. He'd tried to do better with Adam instead. His Adam, Kate's Adam, hadn't been safer than Mary's two, but he'd been happier.

John made his way into Heaven through the same door he left. "Yeah, I'm ready to go back," he lied upon finding the Roadhouse immediately.

"Who's that demon Sam was with? Anyone know?" he asked Ellen.

"Oh, that's Crowley. He's Sam's boyfriend." Her mouth was a thin line.

Bobby sat himself down at the nearest stool. "Lucky Sam," he said honestly. Ellen and John stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

"He's cute, he swings that way, he's got his own integrity, and, now, he's pretty human, thanks to those Trials Sam worked on. You should give him a chance. I've had a crush on him myself. He's wily like that, but he's good to have as an ally. Better and better, it seems."

John stared at Bobby as Bobby was poured a drink and stared right back at John, never afraid of John, never too impressed. They'd never seen eye-to-eye on too much, but Bobby cared for Mary's two in ways John probably never had.

So, demons weren't just useful at times, but also good allies and romantic partners? What had happened since the Devil's Gate? John knew he had to do something heroic before everyone found out he was a sham and a dream killer, the way Bobby sort of knew, ever since he'd threatened to shoot John, and he'd been right to do it.

"I'll keep that in mind," he said to Bobby with a little smirk. He knew Bobby had some crushes on some of the guys in their circle, some celebrities. It hadn't fazed him; probably part of why Bobby hadn't shot that messy trigger.

***

The much younger Sam and much younger Dean started to talk, then quickly to fight, about, what else, but Dad's rules. Sam had been right; he'd been an obsessed bastard. Dean had had no idea, couldn't handle the idea then. He watched himself hit Sam. That was the first time, wasn't it? He saw himself hurt Sam for breaking one of Dad's rules.

The shame that washed over Dean to see what John had created, the fear, the rigidity, enough of it to have him beating on a Sam who was 12 years old and had just started hunting with them. Dean couldn't picture ever hurting a 12-year-old anymore. It looked shocking from younger him, somehow, in a way that had always seemed so obvious, like ugly wallpaper on walls he'd never seen any other way.

They're older. It's after Hell. Punch. Another punch. Breaking a lamp in a motel room after seeing Sam with Ruby, the one who, to be truthful, had been there for Sam when Dean was in Hell. It looked so much more real when viewed outside of himself, outside of that righteous anger and the angels sitting on his shoulders telling him it was fine to act on that kind of instinct.

Had he really let his father puppet him so easily? Had he really fallen for the angels' prejudices? Had he really disregarded Sam's body to such a huge extent?

Dean was holding young Sam after, soothing him. Like that was possible. But there Sam was, clinging to him, snot running down his face. He resented John, he would turn away from John's comfort. Why was he clinging to Dean like he was his savior?

"Wow. So easy, to get into my memories and use them like this. You take them from my head, or from my fucked up little Heaven?" Dean snarked, but when his air was cut off mid-laugh, he coughed, sobering, fretting inside, until Michael lazily released his hold.

"I thought you of all people would understand, Dean. So willing to throw your whole species under the bus. So ready to give up. Always ready to teach your brother the lessons he never seemed to learn."

Next, Dean can see that first time he put Sam in Bobby's poor, tainted panic room. The way Sam had been flailing around and screaming out for his brother, like Dean could have offered comfort? It stings. There had been so much resentment, then, for Sam, for what amounted to a betrayal in the way he'd been picturing their arrangement, the way his dad had prescribed what being a leader and a patriarch meant.

Dad's laws. Like God's laws, they had to be arbitrary. They'd come so, so far from angels being perfect and holy. Angels were wrong. Angels were gas station attendants, and did laundry, and wasn't that embarrassing? Didn't they hate it, the way they should? They couldn't even manage that. They had no shame.

How long had it taken Dean to see John's words as anything but carven stone tablets that had come down from a sacred mountain of hunting, to see the journal as anything but a Bible that could be trusted, a Bible that was real.

"Remember when you didn't say yes to me?" Michael asked Dean.

What did that have to do with anything? "No, I'm blanking on that time period," Dean rolled their shared eyes.

There was an unfolding expanse of nature on the side of the Heavenly room they were standing in. Dean didn't recognize the place at all. "You need to see, then," Michael said plainly. "What our Cage was like, when the four of us called it home."

The Cage was beautiful? Dean started when Lucifer and Sam appeared. Lucifer was digging his hand in Sam's abdomen. Dean cried out in shock. "Sam!" He took a step toward the figures, unable to handle what he was seeing without starting to move, without tears forming in his shared eyes. The fist palpitated. Dean took Michael and his body forward, to see Lucifer's face, hoping to see the black-and-white evil, wanting to smack it off that smug face.

Lucifer looked resigned. "You're the reason," Lucifer said quietly to the groaning, twisted face of Sam. "The reason Michael won't even look at me right now." Dean reached out to touch the shoulder of that arm, but his hand went right through. It was just a memory.

"This is your fault," Dean pushed at Michael. "He shouldn't have...done it, but this is your fault."

"You used to hurt him to satisfy your father, Dean. How is this different?" asked Michael. "You and Lucifer are so alike, so short-sighted. You can't possibly care about Sam, not if you've disregarded him. So, it stands to reason that you can't possibly care about any of them."

Time somehow sped up in the memory, and there it was, the parallel he never thought he'd see. Sam was bloody, but his stomach was together, not stitched, just scarless like it had never happened, like Dean when he came back from Hell with nothing to show for any pain he'd ever been through. And, Sam? He was clinging to Lucifer. Lucifer was touching Sam's hair, and somehow, it wasn't as creepy as Dean would have thought.

Lucifer was singing some kind of song in Enochian. Sam closed his eyes and nestled into the touch a little more. And the damning thing was, this was how he had clung to Dean. This was what he had looked like being soothed by Dean, when Dean would hum a little something from Dad's endless cassette tape soundtrack on the road.

"Why is Sam never allowed to hit, Dean? Is that why you collected so many others? For Sam to have his own kind of dominion? For Sam to hit too?"

Dean startled. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't the case for John, either. Those people were never for Dean to harm, only Sam. Sam only. And Dean had certainly taken up that mantle at 16. Old enough to drive Baby, old enough to beat on Sam. Why had it felt important? Dean feels bile rising.

"Do you want dominion over those Sam is now trying to be in charge of, Dean? Is that how it works? Do they all belong to you?"

Crowley's not the one staring. She's the one staring. Ever since she'd heated up that spaghetti to a food safe temp and somehow brought something else, whatever the connection is that they have, back up to temp too, It's been so hard to make eye contact with Crowley, but she's staring holes through the top of his head, and he probably knows it.

He's smiling. Why does he look so proud of himself for helping? How is he so gentle? Kings of Hell are not supposed to look that way, to do that.

And it's not just the look and the touch, either. Crowley smells like spell ingredients, and the slightest hint of...god. Demons don't usually smell like body odor, in an unnerving sort of way that really throws a person (Sam) off, but Crowley kind of does, apparently. It's not really off-putting, just surprising. He really is mostly human. He might not know he could use a shower soon.

Somewhere far away from Sam and her boobs and her eyes and

Sam's palms are sweating. Her arm twitches slightly for just a moment, a sudden urge to put her arm around him gently and stare into his eyes finding her and making her freeze. For all she's been avoiding his gaze since he caught her staring in the bunker library, it doesn't make any sense, does it? But Crowley is kind of...safe. In a way he'd never appeared to be for Sam before. Crowley has put himself out there again and again and finally, in a take-charge kinda way she doesn't wanna say takes her breath away, he'd told her she had to let himself stay out there cause he wasn't gonna be hiding how he felt anymore.

It was easier before, when he was hiding. But cards on the table can be viewed, and negotiated with, and she's pretty good at playing cards.

"Got what I need," he announces warmly. They lock eyes again, and she feels skinned alive again. Her instinct to freeze passes in a moment or two. He's giving Sam distance, truly, and then he's giving Sam her Carharrt hoodie. Is he...oh my god, is he offering to...to help put it on?!

"Thanks!" she practically shouts at him, grasping the material with her fingertips like it's her peeled-off skin. It would have been fun to turn around and let him help her, but the kind of fun that would kill her and lose her her fucked up little soul, again. He graciously lets go of the hoodie and says, "See you soon? With a bra, of course."

"Yeah, soundsgreat, okayseeyouthen," she spits out, fumbling embarrassingly with her hoodie, short of breath.

He has not openly stared at her chest even once, and that is something he used to do ad nauseam. He's doing so many things, and he's not doing so many others.

He's gone.

She wants him to come back, maybe. She maybe wants him to come back.

***

"You told anyone else yet?" he asks over the line. Has he always sounded like that? He's so attentive. Her every word means something to him, like Sam had hung on the angels' every word when they first met. Redemption, right? Hope? Something glittery, shiny, pretty. Is that what he sees in her?

"Thanks for calling, by the way."

The pit growing in her stomach softens a little. He noticed her effort, just like that.

"No," she scoffs in response. "I haven't. Some random demon told me I didn't have to."

"Magic pumpkin carriage awaits, then," he says carefully.

"Um. Sounds good." Quickly, she hangs up and glances at her reflection yet again. Cinderella, huh? Fairy Hellmother, he'd told Dean and told her. And they were going to the ball? Is Dean the stepmother, or the stepsister? He's not the prince, is he?

Sam had taken a selfie like Crowley had suggested to her. She keeps taking selfies, and Dean won't stop teasing her about it. He thinks it's cause of Bela; he can keep thinking that. She had never thought too much about her face, in all honesty. It wasn't always what was cited as the reason for romantic interest in her. She was nice and unthreatening and tall all at once.

Her face has been used a lot since then, since those days of being noticed for Normal reasons. Shifter, Levi, Luci, Soulless, RemembersHell. She has been all of these, faced all of these in herself, and they've left their mark on her bathroom mirror, they've left their mark on the mirrors in the Impala, her reflection on its freshly-waxed side, her selfie pile that keeps on growing.

Something does seem different with her face, maybe? If she sees some changes from HRT, maybe it'll be good for her. Maybe it'll be something she doesn't have to share with her enemies.

"Hey, Crowley," Sam says as she settles onto her bed.

Crowley has a little gift bag with him. "Morning, Mouse," he nods in greeting. She digs through white tissue paper without hesitation, the crinkling sound pleasant and still fairly novel in the history of her life. It's her new bra, the kind for sports without any cups, in fabric roughly the color of Sam's skin. She reaches out with one of her hands and finds his easily. He raises a brow at the touch.

"Thank you," she says, trying to imbue it with gravity.

He is very still and very patient. He holds her gaze and her hand and, ultimately, a little of her heart as he waits for her to continue.

"Thank you so much, for doing all kinds of things for me. No one...no one has ever made me something like this." Her free hand tightens slightly on the creation, holding it up. "I've had to keep my problems to myself, you know? Have no needs, no pain that can't be dampened with a bottle of something." There's an irony to her tone, but his eyes are looking sad for her.

"But you...offered me help without making me miserable for it, and attention too, like I...like it was important." She glances away, but she squeezes the hand that's in hers and stares at her first bra. "You told me it was okay to need this thing, and then you made it yourself. You gave it to me in a gift bag that's pink with flowers on it."

She's crying. There are two little tear tracks, one on the right followed by one on the left, making themselves known to the tailor. She's putting her cards down on the table too. She grits her teeth as she forces herself to look over at him, to be half as brave as him about all of it. The almost-human melts, his face a warm, slightly-pinkish place to hang his shy smile.

"You're welcome, Mouse."

Sam sets the bra on top of the tissue paper in the bag and starts wiping at her eyes with her plaid sleeve.

"I like how you don't mind crying," Crowley offers her. "You have always known it's just...biology." He shrugs. "It's just the way some people process all the bullshit. You don't mind when others do it. It doesn't change what you're doing, when someone cries, like they're doing something unholy, changing the script everyone supposedly agreed on. I was always a crier."

"Yeah?" she asks, relaxing a little. She hugs the bag to herself. This is him complimenting her, like they'd agreed he can do. It's not awful. He's sharing about himself with her, too. She wants him to. She wants more.

"Yeah, even as an abusive asshole, tears and snot," Crowley chuckles lowly. She quirks her lip at the sound. "Human me couldn't cut that off, though before she left, my mum would threaten to cast a spell on me to make me stop for good." Her hand reaches out again, finding his.

Sam frowns slightly as she pictures it. "Son of a witch, actually." Sam remembers the murder of Tommy, Jenny, ...

...Sarah.

She pictures a child being told that he shouldn't cry. Sam hadn't gotten that from John, actually. He didn't mind the big emotions coming out that way, as long as his kids did what they were told, as long as some of the tears were from worry about him.

"She shouldn't have said that, Crowley. That's...not fair," Sam says.

Crowley raises the hand he's holding up to his face then. She braces herself for what she thinks will be a kiss to the knuckles, that chivalry he doesn't think is dead, that romance he wants and said he wouldn't stop wanting, like she's a princess and he's there to drive her to the ball in some fancy new bra.

He doesn't do that, though. Crowley places their held hands to his cheek, eyeing her openly.

The beard tickles the bottom of her palm, especially when he speaks.

"I tried really hard to get her to love me." Sam feels another tear fall down her face, this one for Crowley, for the cruelty of receiving an order to stop crying that could have easily included an attack on his bodily autonomy. For love searched for where it could never be found.

It's overwhelming to feel for him. Things are very complicated, and they have an appointment to get ready for. She has a bra to try on. She jiggles the bag.

"I should," she says, "get ready."

It takes him another second or two to stop pressing her hand to his cheek. He seems a little shy, out-of-sorts.

She pats his shoulder on her way past him, not able to spare him a glance.

She's safe in the bathroom. After a moment too long of staring at the perfect little stitches there that only exist because of her need and his efforts, she works it over her head and somehow, awkwardly, slowly, over both arms, and, of course, down, adjusting the band under her bust. She looks at herself, turns this way and that, posing in the mirror. It's not something any of the other sharers of her face probably would have worn. Is that a victory of some kind?

Sam pushes out of the bathroom. "Well?" she demands.

Crowley raises his brows in surprise, but he hops up to walk closer. She takes half a step back from nerves, but knows he's just...being professional. "Looks right," he assures. "Feels right?" She nods curtly. "Then, it's right," he shrugs. "Get dressed again, and we'll go."

She clicks the door shut and flicks the lock again. "I like it," she calls through the door, flushing slightly. Finally, some relief from the pain. She's taken so many bras off of women or interacted with Jess's back at Stanford. She'd never thought to envy them, not til recently.

"You look good," Crowley compliments. Sam assesses it. It's friendly. It's honest, from what she can tell. It's not overpoweringly flirty. It's not manipulative.

Some relief there too.

She tucks the hoodie under her arm and faces him again. "You know I'm gonna have to bug you for more at some point, right?"

He's surprised by the ease of it. "Yeah? Well, might have to start charging."

"You don't need anything. You don't even eat."

Crowley pauses, opens his mouth for a split second, thinks better of it. Pushes forward with, "Might have to measure you again." She can tell, from his eyes, from his tone, it's a flirt.

Has he been wanting to flirt, but just holding back? Has he been wanting to see her in the bra? Like, not manipulatively, like, genuinely, like, hey, I'm not gonna ask, but I wouldn't mind seeing you wear this thing?

Sam definitely is flushing now. "Whatever," she snaps, a little twinge affecting her heart. She has never been shirtless around him before, she realizes, and she chooses to do it now, of all moments?

"Sorry," he laughs, shaking his head. "Doesn't have to be like that. You know that. Do you like color? I could bedazzle one," he laughs. "Might fuck up the plaid."

She tosses her hoodie at him, which he catches and folds up, keeping hold of it for her as they start to leave.

Dean and Sam had discussed the appointment over a breakfast spread. "You headed out?"

They nod, oddly in sync. "Back before too long," says Crowley.

"When you bring him home, I wanna bend your ear about that Abbie."

Crowley raises a brow. He turns to Sam with a questioning look, who tells Dean, "Bend it all you want, Dean, demon code, okay? You're not gonna get anything out of him."

"Yeah, we'll see. I can make him talk."

"Torture?" Sam laughs, knowing they've got to be past that.

"Cocktails."

Crowley rolls his eyes.

***

"Abbie? She's going by Abbie?" Crowley asks in the safety of the car.

"Yeah," Sam admits, feeling a little like a kid trying to explain a broken vase. "Abbie Norman, it's a reference to Young Frankenstein."

"It's like she wants to go to Hell."

"Yeah, maybe. I think she just doesn't want to hide," points out Sam. "I mean, she finally has a friend. If we can ease Dean into it, maybe...?"

Crowley stares blankly at Sam for a moment. "It's always something with you, isn't it?"

"Yeah, so?" Sam reaches into the back for the little bin they've started to put some tapes in. "You already finished the bra. Wouldn't want you to get idle hands, as the king of Hell."

"Might find somewhere to put them," Crowley agrees. He grins at Sam, then turns his attention to the windshield to set them on their way.

Sam feels oddly shocked by this forwardness, but not worried in the slightest. An old smile creeps across her face, the one she'd held when he'd flirted with her before. Who knows, maybe Crowley liked a good work wife too.

***

The check in with Brittany goes fairly well. There's been a little spike in triglycerides, but there's not a reason to reduce the dosage at the moment.

Dean greets them each with a fruity mixed drink and shows them to their seats, which are by the projector.

"How's the old ticker?" he asks.

"Good," Sam answers. "It was just a rough kick." She starts to take a sip.

"We need to put you in full armor or something," Dean mutters, and Sam chokes for a second, earning her a strange look from him.

"Yeah," she says too quickly. "Funny. Would be really heavy." She's thinking about the bra she has on.

Dean lets it slide. "You gonna join us?" he asks Crowley, who nods.

"Far be it from me to put a damper on Winchester movie night. What have we got?"

"I know you're not too fond of westerns, Sam, but that's what I got first. I'll get something better when we invite Abbie over," Dean insists.

Sam glances at Crowley, and they share a silent communication about it being a poor idea.

"I don't wanna freak her out, the big old mid-century bunker and all," points out Sam.

"Oh, of course," Dean says faintly before remembering, "C'mon, Sam, she's probably older than this place, if she's a demon. Gotta be better than Hell, right?"

"Trust me, she's late century only," Crowley shares.

"How would you know?" Dean seems suspicious.

"I know when she went to Hell, Dean."

"Oh."

"I took her off the rack," Crowley admits to his drink.

"And that's why they're friends," Sam adds.

"Why? Not out of the goodness of your heart," Dean scoffs.

"My heart didn't start to be good til I was a demon."

Sam and Dean stare at Crowley. He doesn't look at either of them. Dean starts to get the projector ready in the small silence.

"What do you mean?" Sam demands.

"Being a demon is where I learned how to trust," Crowley peeks up at Sam, then glances at Dean, who is focused on the old projector. "I didn't know how, as a human. But working with other demons made all the sense in the world."

Sam lets out a breath slowly. "You learned how to trust in Hell?"

"Yes." His eyes are so sincere. "I don't recommend going. It's no fun. But, for me, I guess I found I wasn't so alone."

Sam finds herself fielding teary eyes again, blinking the wetness away. "I guess Abbie, too," she adds softly.

"Abbie, too," Crowley smiles faintly.

The movie starts, and Dean procures a big bowl of popcorn from the kitchen he'd prepared. Sam has started to have a lot of secrets to juggle from Dean. Her gender. Her transition. Her boobs. Bela Talbot being her new best friend. She watches the shootouts and hopes nothing like that's in store for Abbie and Dean.

"I have some films," Crowley says.

"You do?"

"Of course I do. I'm very old."

"That's true," Dean says thoughtfully. "Yeah, I'm interested. Do you wanna help me set up their bunker date, too?"

"I'm not sure if that's wise."

Dean stares at Sam and Crowley in turns. "You don't trust her."

Sam starts to explain that's not the case, but Crowley says, "I don't trust anyone with the secrets in this bunker but the three of us. And sometimes Cas."

Dean narrows his eyes, but it's fair to want to keep the bunker safe. It's the whole point of the bunker.

"You know what else it's time for? It's time to go out on a hunt," Dean says after a moment. "Don't you think? Get back to our routine, Sam. We can take Crowley, too. Safety in numbers."

Sam eyes Crowley. If she asked, and if he wasn't extremely busy with his duties as king, he would say yes, no hesitation, wouldn't he? And he and Dean were already gathering heavenly weapons without murdering each other.

"Who says I want to go?"

"You want to go," Dean dismisses.

Crowley sighs. "Yeah, I want to go. I like being on your side, the two of you."

Sam eyes Crowley. They have a new ally. Her ally. Bear is her friend, Abbie is becoming her best friend, and Crowley is her ally. Not for a mission, not just for a common enemy, but because he wants her transition to go well.

When Crowley finally takes his leave, promising Dean some more films if they do all of it again sometime, Sam only hesitates a few seconds too long as she gazes at his face to tell him goodbye. His cheek had been oddly warm.

When Crowley teleports away, Dean bombards her with a big hug.

She's still sore, but not nearly as much as she'd been for the couple of braless weeks. She seems to successfully hide her pain and surprise behind just the surprise, for now. She hugs him back intensely, desperate for his comfort. "That was nice," she assures him. "Thanks for the movie and the drink." Please keep loving me and never leave me.

They sort lore together to some old records, including some classical music, only pausing for dinner, and, at the end, Dean stands up to walk her to her room, which isn't typical, but also isn't unheard of.

"Whoa." She forgot he hadn't seen the new additions to her room.

"I wanted to try something new," Sam says, acknowledging the bed with the bear and the pink bedding.

"No wonder you didn't want her over," Dean says quietly, giving a little nod of approval for that woefully hetero line of reasoning he's projecting onto Sam like he'd projected their film hours before. He always acted so allergic to certain forms of expression.

Sam laughs, heading into the bathroom to change into her pajamas. "I'm not worried about the pink. She helped me pick that stuff out."

"It's not very sexy."

"I'm not trying to be sexy here. It's a bed. It's for comfort."

"I mean, it's a little odd. And you can be as odd as you want; that's fine. But, this Abbie, she may not be into this. Demon chicks are like, you know, Meg and Ruby. Leather jackets. Insults." Like you, Dean? "They're not into this stuff."

"Abbie is. Trust me. She prefers blue, but she likes soft bedding. She likes teddy bears. Just, trust me." She steps out of the bathroom finally.

Dean gives Sam an "Okay, Sam, it's your funeral" type look. It makes her laugh.

"Crowley isn't like Azazel, right?"

"Cause he's Crowley. He's...not straight."

"Yeah, he's bi. But, he's not like any other demon guy we know. They're people. Beaten up, powerful, sometimes angry, sometimes dangerous people. But they're not all the same. Lilith wasn't like Meg and Ruby."

"True. She liked dresses," Dean had to admit.

"Yeah. Abbie likes dresses," Sam shrugs.

After slipping into bed, Sam lets Dean tuck her in with the soft, pink blanket like they're much younger. Dean's been healing, maybe? Who knows. He's been doing stuff young him would do, like it's been helping him. He's been listening, about the demons, about Abbie, and Crowley.

Maybe they really can broach the Bela thing someday. Sam looks into Bear's shining eyes to ask him what he thinks, silently. Bear really hopes so.

"Night, Sam."

"Night, De," Sam says around a heavy yawn.