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Dean puts his shirt back on, makes sure that Tom has his current phone number, gives Tom his hotel room number, tells Tom that if his room suddenly gets cold, or if the lights start fritzing he needs to run to that room immediately.
Tom is quiet for a moment. "And if your brother answers the door, what am I supposed to tell him?"
"Tell him I know you and told you to go there."
Tom rubs at the heavy watch around his wrist. "You know that's not what I meant."
"I'll deal with whatever you tell him," Dean says with a sigh. "The important thing is that you're safe."
"But…you want me to lie," Tom finally says.
Dean sighs. He's on a case, he's trying to save people, these two worlds were never supposed to meet and he's spent too much time with Tom that should have been spent canvassing and researching.
"Yeah. I do," Dean sighs. "I just… The part of my life that you can be in is… small. And it's separate from this part of my life full of monsters and death. And I just… I know that I'm not going to make it to an old age full of omlettes and clearing snow and watching Scooby Doo. That's not the direction my life is going to go. I've made my peace with that and it's… not worth pretending that it could if I just… faced things that it's easier not to face."
Tom watches him for a for moments. "What direction is your life going to go in, Dean?"
"I have to save the world," Dean tells him heavily. When he looks up, Tom's frozen face is just starting to twitch into a smile, but stops, freezes again, then starts to droop.
"I won't tell Sam anything."
And then, to Dean's absolute shock, Tom moves forward, and hugs him tight.
It takes them too long to work the case. Too long to find the magic barriers keeping the ghosts on the sixth floor, too long to make contact with the spirit of the most recently deceased.
And too long to figure out that the only creature who could keep that many spirits in one place is a reaper.
A distraught reaper trying to summon death, or god, or anyone who might listen to thousands of cries of pain.
But the only people who hear those cries are the Winchesters.
And by the time they do hear them, by the time they do figure out the plan, the only thing they have time to do is run.
There's no time for Dean to explain why he knows that everyone is going to be at the keystone speech for the conferences opening, he just runs, with Sam behind him, and they burst into the room screaming that there's a bomb.
That always works. People always panic. It's the one threat that always seems to get into that perfect crux of what people's worst fear is and what people will actually believe is happening.
Chairs topple as people shoot to their feet. They run for the doors.
Dean sees Tom in the middle of the crowd, and his already thrumming heart cranks up to a punishing, shrieking pace when Tom runs— not out the doors with the others, not toward the exit sign at the back of the room, but straight toward Dean.
The reaper appears between them, arms outstretched toward Tom, only moments away from moving his spirit from the land of the living into a hellish nightmare. Turning him from a sweet guy who laughs at easy jokes and watches cartoons with his nieces and nephews and kisses Dean like maybe he needs someone to be gentle with him sometimes into just another screaming spirit.
Dean hurtles forward, knowing there won't be time to stop him, but running all out.
And then he sees Castiel, materializing in the reaper's path. The sudden appearance throws Tom off, he slides to the left, falling and rolling. Dean runs to him, throws himself and Tom and hurls him back toward the grind just as he hears Cas's low growl "Close your eyes!"
Dean clenches his eyes shut and slams his hand over Tom's, waiting for the burn of heavenly light to subside.
When it does, Dean looks up. Cas is facing a reaper, who looks like some skinny young man, with tears streaming down his face.
"Where are they?" The reaper screams. "Lucifer rises. War and Famine and Pestilence ride over the land. Where is Death? Where is God? Who will stop this, Angel? Who will—" but he's cut off as Cas places his hand to the reaper's forehead, and the reaper burns, and falls, dead.
And then it's just Dean, holding tight to Tom, while Sam and Castiel turn to look at him.
Tom lets out a noise that Dean's heard before. A noise that's trying like hell not to be a sob, but can't stop itself. Suddenly, Sam and Cas watching him doesn't feel important. He cups his hand around the back of Tom's head. "You're okay," he whispers as Tom lets his head fall forward into Dean's shoulder. "You're okay."
Cas looks the way Cas always looks. Too inhuman for anything happening right now to register as odd. But Sam's brow is furrowed and his jaw is tense. He's, at best, suspicious.
Dean rubs his hand over the short hair at the back of Tom's neck. "You're okay," he says again.
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