welcome back. here, have some complications.

Who: Dean and Caleb
Where: Out of town house
When: Late evening

Things had changed round, though Dean couldn't deny he was grateful. Sophie and Oz had been busy in their absence, and then he'd been collected by his cousin at the airport that morning, he'd been told that they'd moved back to the larger house - that it was largely finished, that they'd set the house they'd been staying in off the north edge of town up as a bolt hole, as if had always been envisaged. It was supplied now, stocked up, organised.

That made things easier - that meant he and Thia didn't have to have any kind of conversation about long term sleeping arrangements, since they were no longer going to be living in a two bedroomed house, albeit one that was getting an attic conversion to slip in a third room. It also meant that they were closer into town - kind of - they were still right out by the lake, but Dean liked that. He'd missed the quiet of Marquette, something that he fully appreciated when they'd got in. Several hours had been spent with the family, with Oz and Sophie and Thia - who had, of course, got back that morning. But, after a few hours, he'd taken his leave, wanting to catch up with Caleb as well.

The guy had been around when he'd called, and had agreed to meet him up at the old house. Seemed to be best - privacy, a chance to talk where he knew nobody would overhear. And a chance to familiarise himself with the way Sophie had set up the place that he was only likely to visit in the future if things were already fucked up, or on their way to getting there. So, he'd driven up - god, he'd missed being able to get around that easily. At least, he'd missed it until he'd got halfway down the road and realised that Thia hadn't been kidding when she'd said he'd need to learn to drive again. Because, whilst they'd been gone? Winter had arrived. He took the drive up to the old house really fucking slowly, but got there in one piece and waited for Caleb inside, looking out of the living room window at the way the moonlight hit more snow than he'd ever seen in one place in his entire life.

Caleb had been happy when he'd got the call from Dean. He'd gotten the text saying that he was returning, but hadn't said when, and Caleb had figured if the timing of that was vastly important, it would have been in the message in the first place. Still, however, he was glad when Dean had said he was back, and apparently, they were going to meet back up at the place he'd stitched them up at. He'd been there twice now, and didn't have that much trouble finding the place. He wasn't necessarily an adept driver in the snow either yet, but he was also good with reflexes, and had learned really fast that you couldn't brake like you could without snow on the road. Either way, he pulled up, and headed towards the door, seeing the porch light on. As he walked up, he recognized that he was starting to feel nervous over things. He didn't know what he was going to tell Dean. He'd wanted to tell him about himself...he was going to have to wing it.

Dean stood as he saw the other car pull up outside and headed for the door, opening it, the light from behind him spilling out into the darkness. "Hey," he called, in greeting as he saw his friend heading his way.

Caleb smiled. "Hey." he greeted in return. "Long time no see. How was England?" he asked, walking up the porch steps, to get inside. When he got close enough, he had to stop, eyeing his friend. "You look like hell." he observed. "You go all...what is it, soccer hooligan on me while you were away or something?" he asked. Because Dean looked really quite a lot like shit. He was wondering if he could even see out of the one eye...that had to make driving fun.

The swelling of Dean's eye had gone down a ton, but it was still black and puffy - he had minimal sight out of it now, at least. Better than it had been, but enough to get him some really off looks during the flight. He shrugged at Caleb's comment as he shut the door behind him, keeping out the cold. "Nah, just got into a fight," he told his friend, playing it down in his usual way. "How've you been?" he asked.

"Obviously." Caleb said. "...interesting times." he answered to the question of how he'd been. "Who did you get into a fight with and why?" he asked, walking into the house proper, and dropping down onto one of the couches in the living room. The place seemed quiet, and he didn't have the feeling that Lullaby was around, though, he guessed she could have been invisible in the shadows...which was kind of a creepy thought. Fades. They could be the ultimate voyeurs if they wanted.

"Guy thought that Thia saying no, meant 'yes please go ahead'," Dean told him, sitting across from him on the other couch. "So, he needed to learn that that? Was a very bad idea." The teen spoke seriously, not joking around about that at all, telling Caleb what he'd told Oz earlier on. Oz, of course, had taken that reasoning as a perfect justification for what he'd done, which was good, all things considered. For once in his life, Dean didn't actually feel guilty about something. What he'd done to Andy? That had been justified. And she'd stopped him before it got to a point where he'd have had to consider regrets.

Caleb frowned, thinking he wouldn't have been able to guarantee that he wouldn't kill someone if he'd been in Dean's shoes. ...and then actually wondered about that. He just worded it more delicately than he might otherwise have done. "I'm assuming this is a case of 'you should have seen the other guy' then?" he asked. That, instead of 'did you send him to the morgue?' He didn't think that'd go over especially well.

"His friends picked him up off the floor and got him home," Dean said, his face still carefully blank. He assumed that they'd continue to be his friends - at least, some of them would. Some of them? The jury was out. But, that wasn't his problem now, was it? As far as he was concerned, Andy may as well be dead - he just didn't have to deal with the aftermath of that being the case. Made things simpler, but in no world would he ever again call him 'friend'. Whether what Andy had been doing went back their whole lives, or just to the other night, the result was the same. "So yeah, guess you should have seen the other guy." He smiled, very slightly, little more than an upturning of his lips. "I missed you that night," he added. "Having to explain yourself sucks sometimes."

Caleb arched a brow. "You actually had to try to?" he asked. He knew the value of being able to tell people shit and not have to answer questions on it right then. Hell. Dean did in fact know that he could make a call and get shit done, no questions asked. Caleb had stepped up at that point, really stepped up. Which brought him back to the whole idea of huge ranges of trust. ...right. He was going to have to decide what the fuck he was doing there.

"When the guy on the floor's someone you've known since your first day at school together, and the guy you're calling to make sure he gets home is the guy you met on the second day of school? Yeah, you get questions. At least, there you do. So yeah, I missed you," he told Caleb. He had, even when he really hadn't wanted to be in Marquette, he missed Caleb. Hell, he'd been the only person he'd kept in contact with, actually talked to. Sure, he'd called Sophie every day, but that he just been a five minute check-in call from force of habit.

Caleb made a bit of a face at that. "...that sounds massively fucked up." he said. "Do I even want to know how something like that happened? I know it was after you two hooked up. Though, I guess, even before then that was the story." Since he had been told kinda what was up with that. Thus his incessant encouragements towards Dean making a move. "So...yeah, that's fucked up. Can't say I wouldn't have gone a little overboard in that case."

Dean shrugged again, then forced himself to relax. They were an ocean away now. He needed to let go of some of the suppressed anger he was holding over the Andy situation. He leaned back on the couch, settling some, hoping that would help. "You remember I told you about the whole thing? About Thia and I... Me pretending to be her boyfriend and everything? That was because of this guy. Only, I underestimated - thought that her being taken would make a difference to him. Especially, y'know, coupled with her not being interested in any way. I was wrong." He paused, contemplating dropping the subject and trying to get onto something else, but he carried on anyway. "Thia thinks he did it to get at me. I... Don't know. To be honest? I don't fucking care at this stage."

Frowning again, Caleb let that sink in. "That makes it even more fucked up." he said. "If it wasn't even something to do with her. If she's right, and it was to get to you, then...I know I'm an asshole, and don't have much regard for people in general, but even I can see that that's fucked up on massive scales. To do something like that to someone when it was actually to needle someone else..." he shook his head. "I'd say that's cold but I don't think the word covers." He'd say it sounded downright demonic, but he still hadn't decided if he was going to own up to Dean on things and that wouldn't help in the slightest.

"Yeah, well, hopefully he learned his lesson. And I say the bruises are worth it." Dean still wondered what Andy thought he'd do there, faced with that. He had to have known what the reaction would be, surely? Only, possibly not - Dean wasn't known for turning on his friends, after all. If Andy knew anything about Dean, it was that he'd defend his friends to the last moment, forgive them almost anything, even blindly at times. But even that had its limits - and Andy had overstepped. Way, way overstepped.

"I hope so." Caleb said. "That kind of thing...you don't--" he stopped. He wasn't going to think about Erzulie. "You don't really get over that kind of shit." He was quiet for a moment, then moved forward. He wondered how far the guy had gotten with Lullaby. Just 'he didn't take no for an answer' type of thing could have meant anything from groping the girl to...things he didn't especially like thinking about. On any level. Turned his stomach. It was probably fucked up that that turned his stomach, but thinking about how he might get rid of a body at random in another country didn't. "So, good that you kicked the shit out of him."

Dean wondered for a moment which party Caleb was referring to as not getting over things. All of the above, possibly. "Yeah. So - how've you been?" he asked, now moving the subject on.

"Things have been interesting." Caleb said, happy to leave the subject behind. He was just going to assume that Dean had the Lullaby's recovery front covered, and be happy with that. "I told you about Nic..." he started. "That's...I mentioned the interesting, right?" he asked. "We're not necessarily together, but..."

"She gone crazy on you yet?" Dean asked with an upnod, acknowledging that he had, in fact, heard about the girl and remembered Caleb talking about her before. But he also knew about his friend's track record with women and it never seemed to take him long for them to turn crazy on him.

Caleb chuckled drily. "No, fucker." he said, shaking his head. "She hasn't yet. Pretty good track record so far. And I've even kissed her, so, if she was going to drop sanity and go for the full on straight jacket treatment, she probably would have already." he said. "I like this girl." he said, sentiment very simple, but he hoped Dean would get what he meant there. The gravity of it.

Dean had been about to crack a joke asking what was wrong with her then, when he caught the tone and dropped it. He'd cut the guy some slack - even if he did owe him weeks of payback jibes given the amount of remarks Caleb had thrown at him about Thia. "Well, that's good. Maybe you've hit the jackpot this time," he suggested, though the unsaid joke showed a little in his expression.

"Maybe." Caleb said. "There's kind of just one problem." And he did catch the joke, he even quirked a half-smirk in return to his friend. He knew he was going to be having a lot of payback shit thrown his way over things. He deserved it. He'd definitely taking almost every opportunity to make commentary to Dean about the dead not-girlfriend.

"One problem?" Dean asked, wondering what that could be. "Cos, y'know, if you have crabs, I hear you can get a cream for that..." Okay, so he couldn't hold off the jokes indefinitely - he'd tried, but... Yeah. He just couldn't.

Caleb answered that with a pillow that flew across the room to bat Dean in the head. "Oh fuck off." he said good naturedly. "It's not crabs. Or any other std's, thank you. I haven't been laid nearly enough for that to be an issue." He shook his head. "No....it's that looming blank spot about me that's doing it." he admitted. They'd talked around it together. Dean knew there was something he didn't know. "She doesn't want to solidify anything until she knows, and frankly I back her up on that."

Dean didn't duck out of the way fast enough and caught the pillow full in the face, but he batted it off easily enough. "So, not insane, and she has something of a brain, but doesn't necessarily trust easy," Dean summarised. He trusted Caleb, but, then again, Caleb had proved himself trustworthy, and continued to do that. That hadn't been the reason for the trust though - Dean was just a naturally trusting person, once you got past his initial barriers. yeah, and look where that got you, he reminded himself. After everything that happened with Andy - he knew he needed to learn to not do that anymore. But - well, Caleb was different. He could trust him. He didn't need to be worried there, Dean had decided - not realising that by deciding that he was just doing exactly what he'd always done - automatically giving anyone classed as 'freind' the benefit of the doubt, without any rationalisation of that, slipping back to exactly where he'd always been, despite his conscious decision not to do that. He just couldn't see how he worked.

"Right, she doesn't trust easily. She's kinda...antisocial, really." Caleb admitted. "She and I share outlooks on a lot of things. I wouldn't exactly call her a social bunny." he continued. "I've been thinking about that blank spot in regards to you, too." he said. "With what happened before you left...that...well, that was a lot of trust." he said, really not sure how to even go about talking about this, and he could tell already if it was happening at all, it was going to be very halting in nature.

"I never had any doubt you deserved it, mate," Dean told him. He'd not thought overly much about whatever it was that Caleb couldn't tell him. People had secrets - and he'd been promised that it wouldn't be a danger to him or his family. "And, you came though. I - I know I never thanked you for that..." he added. He'd been all too aware of that lately. He'd had a lot of time on the journey back on his own, to think things through. And that had been one of the things he'd had on his mind. That Caleb had done all of that, everything, and he'd not even acknowledged it at all.

Caleb shrugged one shoulder. "No need to, really." he said. That was one thing that he hadn't been bugged about in the slightest. He hadn't done it because he needed a thank you, he'd done it because it had needed to be done. So...he'd done it. He'd been the best person for the job. It had got done, and everything had worked out, more or less. He knew he'd been thinking about the bullet not too long ago, wondering what had happened to it. But that wasn't any of his business either. "You don't want to know what the deal is with me?" he asked.

"You asked me not to ask," Dean pointed out. "So - I'm not gonna ask. Doesn't mean I don't want to know. But I'm not going to give you any kind of ultimatum about shit, or tell you we can't be friends unless I know, anything like that, if that's what's got you concerned." He wondered if Caleb was concerned about that - if whatever proviso Nic put on things had the guy worried other people may start that as well.

He nodded, and Caleb was still not sure if he was going to say or not. He had an out here. But that wasn't what had been bothering him in the first place. it had been the trust thing. How Dean trusted him with...vastly fucking important shit, and there was still that piece of information he didn't know. It still felt like it was just...un-fucking-fair. "I know you're not pushing it." he said. "I know you haven't and I've appreciated that. I just..." he sighed and sat forward, dragging his fingers through his hair. "With the way everything went, and the way shit is going in general..." Like the random surprise restless dead wandering the fuck around now on a long term basis. "I don't know. I feel like it's unfair that you don't know. That you might need to, in some capacity."

Dean considered this, giving it thought. Caleb's 'thing' had been presented before as something he didn't need to be botherd about. Hearing it put differently shone it in a potentially new light. "Might need to how?" he asked, carefully. He'd always figured it was something pretty big. Or pretty bad. Considering what they knew between them - Caleb knew about his being a disruptor, he knew that he lived with a werewolf and had fucking cage in the basement. Hell, Caleb knew about Thia. He had to know that Dean had a pretty damn high tolerance for weird. And yet still, it had all been put on a 'don't ask' level, very firmly.

"I don't know. You've probably taken note of the fact that the world seems to have gone batshit." Caleb said. "And call me pessimistic, but I don't think this is the end of what we'll see. So...shit might get a little harder to deal with, or...who the fuck knows. I had to sit and explain to Nic that yes, there were probably hunters in the hospital on the full moon, just waiting to blow people's brains out with no preamble, just because. And I don't know, a lot of them died one day too, I think someone went and snuffed the lot of them. But..." he shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you don't need to know. I just think if you ever manage to find out, I'd rather it be from me." he said. Then he gave a humorless half smile. "And you can tell me if I need to avoid the living shit out of telling Nic, or what."

Dean hadn't heard much about the werewolves. Other than that the werewolves had happened in the first place. He knew that Oz hadn't looked great when he'd gotten home. He could tell something wasn't right there, but with everything else going on, he hadn't talked to him yet. He wanted to ask Caleb - wanted to ask for a full rundown on what he'd meant by someone had gone and killed the lot of them - whether that did, in fact, mean what he thought it meant. After he'd tried to help with passing on information, even with his being so far away. But that would be deflecting from the main conversation here, so he didn't. "Mate - if you want to tell me, I'm all ears, really. And if you think I'm gonna need to know, then I'd prefer to know before we're sure about that. Nothing good comes from avoiding stuff," he said. He'd learned that lesson the hard way, after all.

Caleb was silent for a long time. Probably a little over five minutes as he considered. "You know that there are angels." he said. And if he didn't, he knew now. "And they can fall." he added onto that. Because people automatically kind of thought of fallen angels as being a possibility. It was the other end that people kinda didn't ever considered, or just went 'bwuh?' about.

Dean raised an eyebrow, wondering if the guy in front of him was going to suddenly declare himself as a fucking fallen angel or some shit. That.... wouldn't really fit. Not that he knew shit about what would fit, but... Okay, he was saying nothing and just going with the story here. And he'd be concentrating on not laughing at the concept of Caleb Lockwood turning out to be a fluffy little cherub or something. "Go on..."

"Well, there's another side to that." Caleb said, knowing he really needed to go through this the long way, because coming out with just 'i'm a half demon' wasn't going to fly. and he was now wondering if Dean was armed. Could he ask that? Probably not. No matter what, it was going to set Dean on the automatic defensive. Either because Caleb would have to ask in the first place, or wondering why the fuck Caleb would honestly be wondering. "Demons have it too...not falling, but ascending."

Dean swallowed and the humour died away. Because whilst the idea of Caleb being an angel - even a fallen one - was funny and unbelievable, the idea of him being a demon. Was... He didn't know what it was, actually. The only thing he knew about demons was that one had attacked Thia just before he met her. That didn't make him want to automatically put them on his Christmas card list. "Ascending?" he asked, after a few, very long, moments. "What's that mean?" See him not overreacting here. This was Caleb, he trusted Caleb - he'd trusted him with, god, everything. If the guy wanted to screw around with him, he would have done it by now. Yeah, and you knew Andy for 13 years before he really twisted the knife, the little voice in the back of his head reminded him.

"Yeah, it's like falling upwards, I guess." Caleb said. "My mother was one." he said. "Which doesn't make me a demon...my dad was human. A fucked up human, albeit, but whatever. She...whatever, fell in love with him. So she ascended. Ascended demons are hunted pretty much universally. Demons hate them, angels hate them. Fallen angels probably hate them too for all I know, I haven't ever dealt with them. But I'm sure you can fill in the blank there. That makes me a half demon." And here was where he found out just how fucked he was.

The explanation wasn't a great one, as far as Dean was concerned. It didn't really tell him what he needed to know. Right now, he didn't even know what he needed to know. "What's that mean?" he asked again, before he could stop himself. There was a slight emphasis on the last word - he really didn't know. Titles, words - everything had a name, but he didn't know what the practical effect of that was. Half demon - his mother, that meant - demon genes, demon blood - that - it didn't sound good, but... He didn't know. And Thia had been created out of black magic, but that didn't make her a bad person. Dean stayed exactly where he was, not moving, waiting for Caleb to tell him more.

"I don't know, I've been trying to figure that out my entire fucking life." Caleb admitted. "My brother says that it means whatever I want it to mean. That I just...make it up as I go along or something, and whatever I want, that's it. I know it means that I don't...there's a reason I'm antisocial. It's because half the time if I even try to have a conversation with normal people, I just...I can't bring myself to care about the bullshit they do. And there was a reason that when we discussed things that I told you I could take the guy out without losing sleep over it. I could. I know I..." he paused, trying to figure out how to word it. "I think by normal human standards, I'd be considered sociopathic. It's just...different for me. I don't exactly have the same values as most people do. And I grew up with normal human society, so I know where I'm fucked up. It just doesn't...stop me from being fucked up."

Dean didn't say anything at first, trying to think things through. He wasn't generally great at that, and he knew it. He tended to go with gut reactions - which meant either going massively over the top, or completely dismissing everything. He didn't think either reaction would go down well here. The first one was a clearly bad choice. The second? He didn't think Caleb was looking for that. "...We're all fucked up. One way or another," he said, in the end, because it was really the only thing that was straight enough in his head to come out with. He didn't add on the clear 'at least you have an excuse'. That was him just playing self-pity. That had no room here and he wouldn't entertain it.

"Yeah, but probably not like I am." Caleb said. "Miswired...whatever. Or correctly wired for me, just...not everyone else. I don't know. You're..." he didn't know what. He was kind of waiting for Dean to go get something to defend himself with, or take a shot with. And he was aware that if Dean wanted him dead, all he needed was distance and the drop on him. Which he could easily get, unless Caleb took him out now, which he didn't even really want to consider. "I don't know. The only other time I've told anyone this it was Leija, and...let's just say 'she blew it off like nothing' really doesn't even cover how much she didn't care, and hey, that eventually led in to a bunch of other shit including my last breakdown, so let's not go there."

"I'm not blowing it off," Dean told him, keeping his eyes on him. He was just glad they were here alone. He didn't have to worry about things. He hated that he was even thinking that about his friend, but he was, partly. At least, he was being grateful he didn't have to think about it. He wasn't really worried on his own behalf. He rarely really worried on his own behalf. "I just don't really know... How I'm meant to react. I mean... I know lots of people who aren't strictly human," he landed on, offering that up.

Caleb sighed, and looked at the floor for a moment, then back up to Dean. "I don't know how you're meant to react either." he admitted. Because he didn't. "Just with everything else going on, and..." he shrugged. "Figured it better that you find out now, than later hear the word 'demon' and stop listening there. Because that's what most people would do. It's kind of what I expect Nic to do." He nodded. "I know you know a lot of people who aren't strictly human. This is just...different." He knew it was. It just..was. No two ways about that.

Dean winced slightly. "Have to admit, you nearly lost me at that point," he admitted, not liking that he was admitting it, but admitting it all the same. "I mean... Sorry. I just... Yeah. But, you... Might want to work on the approach a bit better, I mean... I don't know. I just - I know exactly one thing about demons and that's that one attacked Thia last summer. And right now I'm... I'm still sitting here because you're my friend. And because you've proved time and time again that you're a good guy. And because I do trust you. And I feel bad because - because if I'm honest, part of me's... Yeah. I don't know what - I mean, I keep coming back to the fact that Thia - fades, the way they're... created. Not good, but... That's different. And - I'm sorry, I mean, I. I'm gonna need some time to get my head round this, y'know? But I am still listening," he finished, not wanting Caleb to just stand up and go 'okay, well, nice knowing you but I guess that's that then' and leave.

"Well you haven't drawn down on me yet, so I'm assuming that at least you're listening." Caleb said with a sigh, sitting back again. "I almost asked you if you were armed. I just...it's not something that I can excuse, or explain well, even." he continued. "Don't be sorry. I didn't expect you to take it well." he said. "And I don't know a better approach. That's why I went in through my mom first, and...I mean, if I'd just dropped the word 'half demon' wouldn't that have been worse?" he asked honestly. "But...I don't expect you to just deal with this and be done. So...don't worry about that."

"You really think I'd just shoot you?" Dean asked, wondering if he even wanted to know the answer to that. He pulled his lips in between his teeth for a moment, then let them go. "No - I'm not armed. And if would take a shit tonne more than this to make me draw on you, mate. Seriously." He'd been dying before he pulled on Thia's father, after all.

"I think if you thought that I was a danger to you, or anyone you cared about? Yeah. You'd shoot me." Caleb said. though he didn't sound like he thought that was a bad thing, or that he blamed Dean for it. "Look, I'm something that I can't tell anyone, pretty much ever, and the majority of the time if I do tell anyone, I have to be prepared for that person to either cut and run the second they can, or try to hunt me down to keep themselves safe. And that's not even taking into account the psychological fuck that is finding out you get along with someone that's got demon blood in their system." he said. "So..." he shrugged. "I'm just...I've gone through every scenario I could think of. It's something you do when you're someone like me. It isn't a judgment on you."

"And you're of that opinion - you think that about me... And you're not armed either, are you?" Dean assessed. He could be wrong, he knew. But he didn't think he was - and that said something to him about trust. That Caleb could make that assessment of him, could know that he was likely to react in that way, and yet he'd still tell him this and do so whilst he was defenseless. Knowing that all Dean would need was one good shot.

"Depends what you mean by 'armed'." Caleb said. "I have my knife, but..." he shrugged. "Not really planning on pulling that on you, and even if I did, if you were prepared for taking me down? You'd drop me before I had a chance. That and I always carry it, it's not specific to just coming here." he said. Because yep. He'd seen that single fucking shot to the brainpan Dean had given Lullaby's dad. He didn't need more than one example to learn by.

"Exactly - but you told me before you checked," Dean repeated. "I... That says something, mate - it really does. I don't know whether you meant it that way, or what, but. Look, not many people know me. I kinda had that clearly spelled out to me recently. But - you do. Really, really do. I - This... I don't need to say. You kinda know where I stand on this as well as I do. I don't think it's going to come to that."

"I'd hoped it wouldn't." Caleb said. "I just...you trusted me with shit that you wouldn't trust other people with. I got rid of a corpse for you. didn't exactly seem fair that you put that much trust in me, and I didn't give that back. And like I said, with everything else going down? If shit keeps spiraling, that...is pretty fucking important for you not to just have dropped on you at random."

Dean couldn't disagree with that, he really couldn't. "Yeah - random would have probably been bad." The rest, that was just fact - and was heavily playing into Dean's current mindset. Caleb had gone over and above for him. Without a moment's hesitation, without a single question. And sure, now - maybe that made more sense. Why he didn't bat an eyelid at the things Dean had asked him to do, but the fact of the matter was that he'd still done them. He took a breath and slowly let it out. "I guess... I should be appreciative, really. It - it explains a lot. Maybe. I still appreciate everything you've done for me. I mean, makes me seems a whole lot more fucked up, but..."

Caleb gave a half smile that was lacking in humor. "If you weren't, or didn't have that capability to you, you'd be dead and she'd be gone, going through god knows what." he pointed out. "So...if that's what fucked up means, I'd say that it worked out in the best possible way for you. There are a lot of worse ways to be fucked up." he said. Then a shadow kind of went on behind his eyes. "....trust me on that." he said, voice slightly quieter.

Dean shrugged. "Or she wouldn't have been on that beach in the first place, but that's going through a whole lot of 'what if's that I'm trying to teach myself to shelve. And I'll take your word on that - the fucked up part."

"If she wasn't on that beach with you, her dad probably would have gotten her a hell of a lot sooner, and we're back to that whole who the fuck knows what he would have done with her thing." Caleb put in, with a conviction in his voice that had nothing to do with making Dean feel better, and everything to do with him just believing that without hesitation. "But yeah, shelve that shit, it isn't worth it. She made it, you made it, call it good." he said. Then he was quiet, sort of wondering where things were left now. He didn't necessarily feel in danger, and he at least felt like Dean hadn't blown things off, but he was thinking there'd be echoes here. Ripples through things.

He hadn't found her til then, Dean though, but yeah - shelving. It was just easier said than done. "It hadn't been meant to be that way. You know, if it hadn't - we, well - probably would have got together that night," he said, absently. Which had nothing to do with anything, considering the real topic of conversation. And instead he'd ended up killing her father. Part of him was still almost waiting for her to come to that realisation and hold it against him, explode everything. But, part of him at least was masochistic and couldn't accept good things happening to him.

"That probably would have been a much better way to spend the rest of that night." Caleb said drily. "But it worked out in the end, I guess. Asshole is dead and very, very gone, and you got the girl anyways." he said. "Which--how's that going, anyways?" he asked. "Last time I talked to you, you were distracted." Very distracted. So, he hadn't gotten to hear much on how anything was really going with Dean and Lullaby.

Dean smiled - a much softer look than he usually wore. "It's... Yeah, it's going really well." Ignoring the events of Halloween, of course. And even there, she - it hadn't impacted upon them as a couple. "...Really well." He thought of Thia and wondered what she'd say when he told... Oh. "Erm, I... You - can I tell her?" he asked, having no idea what he'd do if Caleb said no right now.

Caleb winced faintly over it, but well. If anyone could keep a secret, it was those two. "You're going to anyways, aren't you?" he asked, though it was a rhetorical question. "Just...no one else, alright? Even if you've got...whatever reasons you have for not dropping me where I stand, people don't understand this kind of thing, and it's not just me. It's my brothers. So...this is my family we're talking about here." he said, figuring that in itself would really play in with Dean's particular personality.

"No one else," Dean agreed, though he felt slightly guilty over Oz. He could keep a secret from the guy though, if he had to. He'd kept Thia from him til it got right down to it, after all. As long as he wasn't directly challenged about it, he'd be fine - and he couldn't see Oz ever in a month of Sundays coming up with the 'Caleb is a half-demon isn't he?' theory. "And... You've never tried keeping a secret from Thi," he added, with a crooked smile.

That got a little quirked half smile out of Caleb. "I haven't, I assume that it's an impossible feat?" he asked. But then he didn't know the girl very well. She'd just always seemed kind of sweet to him. Sweet and...well. There was obviously strength to her. He'd learned that when he'd been stitching them both up, and later when he'd stitched her up. He didn't know how observant she was though, or how pushy when it came to things. But then he was also of the opinion that Dean was just a little bit wrapped around her finger. Not that he'd ever say such a thing. And she didn't seem to be a manipulative whore who was going to use that, unlike, say, Janice. So, there were worse things to be.

"She has this.. Yeah, it's an impossible feat," Dean agreed, deciding not to go on in that explanation. It was a multitude of things, after all, topped off with the fact that neither of them let things go. Actually, they didn't even need that anymore. Lately they just both seemed to have mostly given up trying to hide things - the result was the same anyhow, and it just saved time and hurt feelings. "She says hi, by the way."

"Well, tell her I say hi back. ...probably before you go into the whole...my heritage thing." Caleb said. "I'm glad you're back. I hate school without you there to at least break up the monotony of the morning. Chrissy's worm food, but there's another cheerleader who decides to come talk to me. Then there's all the Nic shit that I don't really know what to do with most of the time. Rose...left town. Which...I'm worried about her, but I don't think her being here was doing her any favors. I don't think I was doing her any favors." he continued. "So...glad you're back." And that you haven't yet felt the need to ventilate my head.

"Rose left town? Well, I... Maybe that's for the best. I dunno, maybe eventually she'll find her family. It wasn't like we could help much." Or, say, had the first fucking clue where to start looking. "And the Nic shit? There more than just this? I thought you said she wasn't crazy?" Dean checked.

"She isn't." Caleb said. "I just..." he shrugged. "Sometimes I need a second opinion. Comes with the territory of knowing you're fucked in the head according to most of the human race." he said with a light touch of self-mocking. "She wants to meet you anyhow." he added. "I described you as my only other friend who doesn't suck."

Dean feigned surprise. "Wow, I mean - damn. Compliment," he quipped, sarcastically. "And sure, I mean - I gotta meet this girl who's immune to your crazy-making charms. And second opinion? Work on the background about what a half-demon is first, cos? I mean, I have a shit tonne of questions and I know you can't answer them, but... I mean, if you wanna throw me the keys to your brother's bookshop... I'm even used to authors who hate their subject..."

"There isn't going to be much. You'll find a hell of a lot about demons, but not half-demons. We're...it's like a mixed bag. In fact, let's go full on half-breed dogs. You just don't know what you're going to get. Like, my brothers, they've got some interesting edges because of the blood, but I got shit for it. All I got was on the new moon, I look the part. That's about it. Maybe a little endurance, but it's not like you can accurately measure that. The only reason I think it is because I think I probably should have died a few times but held on longer than someone else would have. So...it's just random. And while my brothers and I, I wouldn't term as evil or close to it, that doesn't mean that others don't just go with the evil or fucked up urges, because they can. So...I don't know. If you have questions I can answer what I can, but I can tell you right now, no matter what you're looking for in print, it's going to be purely subjective and specific." he said. "I mean hell...none of us even really got anything that relates to what my mother could have done before the ascension."

Dean thought about that, because he really did have a lot of thoughts floating around in his head, things he wanted answers to. That's all he seemed to have these days - thoughts and questions with no answers. Hell, it was almost becoming normal for him. "Tell me about demons," he asked. "I promise I won't freak out on you," he added, since he thought that maybe that clause was necessary.

Caleb sank a little farther back on the couch. "...what do you want to know?" he asked, voice again, quieter than it had been. "They're evil." he said. "Pure evil. And just because my mother ascended didn't really make her a shiny happy light person, either. it's just...there. They--" he broke off, looking away for a long moment. He was of course, thinking of where Math had taken him. God, he didn't want to think about that. And it always came up, and this time it was even fucking relevant, and he still didn't want to think about it.

"I want to know whatever you can tell me," Dean told him, seriously. "And then anything you can tell me about the effect of..." There really was no good way of putting this, was there? Or, if there was, Dean wasn't good enough with tact and diplomacy, so he just ploughed right on and hoped Caleb wouldn't take offence. "Diluting that with human blood. What makes demons different to humans? Do demons have to be evil? And you get evil humans, so what there? I mean - I know nada here, so... Anything you got, it's an improvement. You said demons are pure evil. So, I'm thinking that's not the case for half-demons, or we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation. Because if you were and you were, what? Just... You wouldn't be telling me this. And things wouldn't have gone down like this. So, yeah. I want to know what you know."

"Yes, demons have to be evil." Caleb said, because that was the first question he could answer with absolute certainty. "If they aren't they ascend, and no one wants that. I'm pretty sure my mother didn't either, it just happened that way." he explained. "Half-demons...my brother did something not too long ago. I was...well, it was when I had my last breakdown. When everything went down with Leija. And I just...I could feel it, y'know? Or, maybe you don't. But whatever, I could just...feel that darker part of me under the surface, and it'd be easy to fall into it and never surface. And I--that scares the shit out of me. I don't want to go there. So, I guess, there's choice in the matter with half-demons, like with humans, we can pick our own way to go, we're just...I guess built in with that blackness readily available, where as you start at zero. I guess we'd start at a negative, in that analogy. Angels would start with a positive. Let me know if none of this makes any fucking sense because I'm winging it here." he admitted. "But anyways...my brother wanted to give me perspective. I get why, I was--I shut down. Entirely. Couldn't feel anything even if I could tell I was meant to. Couldn't be bothered that I wasn't bothered. And I just...thought I was going to wind up a monster." he said, tone growing distant towards the end there, because he was getting closer to the subject he never really wanted to talk about in any capacity. "...so he showed me the real monsters." he finished. "...demons."

Dean didn't need to be able to see clouds of negative energy to know that the current subject, Caleb's answer was bothering the guy. His explanation about starting points helped a little, but it was the last comment that Dean fixed on, simply because he could see that. "But, you said your mother was... I mean, had you not - seen..." He didn't know how he wanted to end that sentence. He didn't know what the guy had experienced, and whether that was unusual or run of the mill for, well, demons. He was very much in unfamiliar country here.

"I said it didn't make her a good person, I didn't say that she was just the same as she'd been before." Caleb said. He was quiet for a few long minutes again, just...wondering what to say. If anything. But then he figured he'd started this, he should finish it. "Math took me to a bar. Or...something like a bar. Demons only. Unless you were..." A victim. "I'm not going to tell you what I saw in there. Just...know that there was enough blood around that I slipped in it. I've seen a lot of blood before, I've seen pretty brutal things, but I'd never seen that...much. And I still have nightmares about what I witnessed." he admitted. "I just...it creeps up on me sometimes, I'll just be talking to someone, or...something, and there it is, the memory of that place, and I...it's hard to shake again." He was quiet for another little stretch of moments. "You know someplace is bad when you think to yourself that the people trapped in there would be acceptable casualties, if you managed to take out at least some of the demons. That really, it'd probably be a mercy, because no one should have walked out of there. They wouldn't...that'd be too much." he shook his head. He hadn't looked at Dean the whole time he was speaking, though he did at that point. "The only reason I didn't start something when I was there was because I was aware that I never would have made it out--but my brother wouldn't have either. And I'm not going to be responsible for his death. But if he hadn't been there?" Caleb shook his head. "I would have tried. It still..." there wasn't a word. Haunted him? That might be close.

Dean listened to that and decided that that more than anything else he'd heard told him that there was a wide gulf between what a demon was, and what a half-demon was. Or maybe just what his friend was, even if that was just 'definitely not a demon'. He couldn't imagine really what Caleb had seen, even hearing that - mostly he was going off the sound of the guy's voice, and the way he was holding himself, the look in his eyes. "And your brother?" he asked. "How did he feel about the place?"

"He didn't want to be there either." Caleb said. "The only reason he went at all was to show me the differences. And he's right about one thing. I'm...I'm never going to be capable of the shit I saw in there, even if we were only there for five minutes. No matter how bad I could get? ..." he shook his head, and dragged his fingers through his hair. "I'm going to go outside for a minute." he told Dean, standing. "I just...give me a minute."

"Sure," Dean told him, giving him that - the guy was obviously not doing well with this. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hanging his head slightly, his eyes closing as he took a breath. He could stop this - he could just tell the guy that it was okay and he got it and that they didn't have to talk about it anymore. For the sake of his friend, he could just lie. Because he didn't get it, not really. He was grasping some things, but he still had questions, and if he left it he knew it would always be there, itching away at him, and it would affect things and he was done. He was done completely putting everything aside for people, done leaving everything in order to keep his friends happy. He'd been there, he'd lived his life like that. And look what it had got him. It had got him Andy. So, he lifted his head again, opening his eyes. "Take your time - I'll go see what Sophie's stocked in the way of cokes or something." He'd suggest something stronger at this point, but they were both driving and it was fucking freezing out there and he didn't intend having to spend the night here - not his first night back.

Caleb nodded, and went outside. He needed the breather, and the cold air helped a little bit. It was the opposite of the warm, humid kind of air that had been in the bar. So he went out, walked around in the snow for a few minutes and tried to clear his head a little. It didn't work so well, but he felt slightly less like bailing entirely. Which he knew right now he couldn't really do. He'd decided to do this, he had to see it through now. It was just...not something he dealt with well. If he'd dealt with it at all, and he suspected that was a big 'no'. It was almost ten minutes, when Caleb was starting to actually feel truly chilled to the bone that he went back inside. "...back." he announced unnecessarily, since he was sure Dean was listening for him in the first place.

Dean was back sitting where he had been when Caleb came back into the room, but now there were several cans of different types of soda on the coffee table, along with a variety of snack-things he'd found in the kitchen. The kitchen which was stocked full of everything they'd ever want if they were holed up - Sophie had evidently been preparing for a siege. Which, considering the events of the last few months, was definitely a good call. He looked up as caleb walked back in. "Better?" he asked, because he wasn't going to ask if the guy was okay.

"No." Caleb said honestly, sighing as he dropped back down where he'd been sitting in the first place. He picked up one of the cans, but didn't open it. Mostly he just wanted something to do with his hands. "But ready to speak again, if that's good enough. So...moving on..." he prompted, letting Dean take whatever track he wanted.

Dean left the rest of the drinks where they were - he'd got them for Caleb. He drank anything with that much fizz and sugar in it, it wasn't going to be staying down for long. "So, what we're saying here is that half-demons aren't demons - they're not capable of the things that demons do. Unless they chose that? I mean, humans can... Thia's dad was straight human, best we know at least," Dean said, after a few minutes.

"So far as I can tell, we get just as much choice in the matter as humans do, we just might be geared towards..." Caleb paused for a moment, then picked a word that described things well. "The chaotic." Which didn't mean evil. It didn't mean good either. It was just what it was. "And possibly have a morality that doesn't match up perfectly with humanity, but then, humanity's compass depends on the person too, or the society."

"Okay," Dean said, eventually, mulling this over. It was a thoughtful, accepting kind of agreement, one he could take. He fell silent for a few moments, before he began speaking again. "I know, in my life, I'm always worried about where I'm going. About the kind of person I am, about what I can do - and not abilities, just capabilities. I kinda know what it's like to know that the way you think about things? Isn't... You know - a lot of people talk. I think most guys would say that if someone laid a hand on their girlfriend, they'd kill him. But if it actually came down to it..." Dean shook his head. "Thia stopped me. The other night. I... I'd like to think I wouldn't, but..." They both knew what he was capable of. "So, that... I can get that. I know it's probably a different level for you, but - I can get that."

Caleb didn't say anything immediately, but he did nod. He did think that Dean could get it on some level, particularly with the fact that he'd dropped someone, and if he had needed to be pulled off...Caleb had been wondering if he was armed earlier, so no, it wasn't that far a stretch of the imagination to think that Dean understood on at least some levels about inner darkness and what it all meant to have it. "But you don't know for sure if you would have stopped?" Caleb suggested. He didn't sound surprised at all. Not with the way Dean twitched over the girl.

He lied to me. He tried to distract me with someone else; he made sure Thia saw that; he got her alone; he tried... Dean didn't even want to finish that thought. And then he lied to me about it; tried to turn it round on her; tried to get me on side. "I don't know," Dean said, not introducing any of that reasoning, because he'd only brought the subject up again to illustrate his point and he didn't want to stop Caleb from talking if he wasn't done. "But yeah, I... I know what I want. And that's to be a guy who wouldn't do that. The guy who wouldn't go that far. But I know that to be that guy, I've - god, I've gotta watch myself. It's kinda... Deciding who you want to be and then being that guy. And that's not always easy." But Thia had promised him she'd be there, that she wouldn't let him fall that far.

Caleb was watching Dean, and wondering what wasn't being said. But right now, he didn't even know if he wanted to ask. At least...maybe not this second. "No, it's not." Caleb said. "And for me, I don't even have a clear idea of who I want to be, just more...who I don't want to be. I just...know that I'm geared towards it, that I have the tendencies towards it, and I'm probably not going to be able to hold it all off on my own. Leija I thought was going to help me, but...she would up encouraging those aspects. Got off on them. I don't know. Think I'm getting off topic here." he said. Then he went back on what he'd decided. "What weren't you saying, there?"

Dean shrugged a shoulder. "A lot?" he suggested. "I dunno. Maybe - it's... complicated. Or really simple. I can't decide. But - it's not the point. We're not really talking about me," he pointed out. "Having someone who helps... helps," he agreed, trying to flip things back onto what Caleb had been saying. "What do your brothers do?" he asked. "I mean - they deal with the same shit, right? How do they do it?"

Shrugging, Caleb finally opened his soda, and took a drink of it before he attempted an answer. "Math...travels. I think his stay here in Marquette has been longer than anywhere he's been since he was living at home. He tends to...change the tides, I guess. Good or bad, he doesn't pick a direction, really, he just changes things where he is. Dor...Dor tried to shove himself into some normal life with the book store and everything, and put it this way. When Math and I left for our road trip, it was to go bail him out of a stupid situation he'd gotten himself into, because he broke his brain so much trying to play normal that when he exploded from it, he didn't do it small."

"So ignoring... whatever it is doesn't work then?" Dean asked. "Trying to be normal and everything. When we were in England, it was really weird - but I told you about that. Feeling like I didn't fit there. 'Normal' doesn't work. I think that's true for anyone... like us," he said, a little hesitantly.

Caleb simply watched Dean for a few moments, trying to decide if he was going to accept the idea that they were anything alike. And, then he remembered what it was like watching Melia bash the skull in to get the bullet. And decided yes. They had some things in common. They definitely had the capability to do things other people wouldn't. And they both had very effective tools to do so with. "No. Normal doesn't work for anyone like us." he agreed in the end. "It's not really something you can ignore. And I think the more you do the more you're just...denying who you are as a person and that's never going to end well. Math and I wound up having to go down and get him out of trouble with a bunch of demons. That wasn't fun. Especially when the kinds of demons we were fighting don't go down really easy. I was...pretty damn messed up by the end of that."

Dean didn't know how much he was willing to embrace the darkness he knew was inside him. He'd spent years now trying to bind it, keep it down. He wasn't about to let it free, he didn't like it, he didn't want it, but he knew he'd at least accepted it was there now. And there was no going back from that. But he didn't raise that point, and he didn't intend to. "That's where you went when you skipped town?" he asked.

"That's where I went." Caleb said. "To bail out Dorian. Kill a lot of demons, and come home." He sighed. "I don't know. I think he's kind of gone hunter on us, but...honestly I haven't really sat and talked to him in a long, long time. Dorian and I don't...get along so well." he said, which was stating it mildly. "So I stay out of his way, he stays out of mine."

Dean didn't have anything to say to that - he knew what it was not to get along with a brother. Not get along, but still be willing to risk everything for them. The two things weren't necessarily mutually exclusive. His brother was a brat, but that didn't mean Dean didn't still love him, that he wasn't family.

The silence didn't really help much with the flow of conversation, or figuring where else to take it. So, Caleb stayed silent, drank a little more soda, then leveled his gaze on Dean again. "Well...?" he prompted. "Anything else you wanted to ask about, or...?"

"Right now? I... Don't know. No? You, kinda explained it now. And - you said before that you can't actually do anything, right? Except, a new moon thing?" he asked, thinking back over everything that had been said.

"That's less something I can do, and more something that I have to put up with and not go out on that night." Caleb said. "It's not an ability. I--my physical form alters. Not a lot, just some. Enough." he explained. "So generally my brothers and I kind of hole up on that night and play poker."

"What is it with the fucking new moon," Dean muttered to himself. He'd always thought that the full moon was the weird time, but with first Thia, now Caleb being affected by the new moon. He was starting to feel like the only person around here who didn't change somehow during the lunar cycle.

Caleb had to pause at that. "...is there something else with the new moon?" he asked. He didn't know of anything else specifically, just that it wasn't the best night of the month for him. Wasn't it usually full moons people needed to watch out for?

Dean hadn't actually realised he'd said that loud enough to be heard, but - clearly he had. He was getting far too used to the main person he talked to being mostly deaf. "Thia," he told his friend. "Has a... thing on the new moon. Goes... Her mirror image isn't particularly pleasant. And, apparently, on the new moon, she looks like that as well. Which... I've been told in no uncertain terms that I'm not allowed to see her that night."

Caleb opened his mouth, then shut it again. He wanted to know what 'not particularly pleasant' meant, but didn't know how well Dean would take it if he happened to ask. But in the end, he wanted to know, so, figured the worst that could happen was he was told to fuck off. "What does she look like?" he asked.

"She looks dead," Dean told him, not sounding happy, but not sounding like he held it against Caleb for asking the question. "And not funeral-home, lying in a coffin dead. Dead dead. It's - it's not... It's not nice. I dunno, I guess it could be worse? When I first saw it, I was expecting worse. When I found her, she thought that's what she looked like - she was all cut up, thinking she looked like some thing. She was upset, got me to look so I could tell her the truth. That night, that night I thought it must be worse. But... We try and avoid mirrors. And she doesn't want me to see her when she actually looks like that. I - I'd be willing to, but... She said no."

There was really only one word for that. "Ouch." Caleb said, making a bit of a face. He took another drink of his soda, and had to wonder what he would do in that kind of situation. He had no idea, really. None whatsoever. "Can I ask a question?" he asked, then continued on just in case the answer was yes. "Would you actually want to? You said you were willing, but..." That was hardly the same thing.

Dean looked down, knowing the answer to that question, having it right there immediately. He just didn't know if he wanted to share. But, in the end, he looked up again. He was done pretending for the sake of his friends. "If you love someone, you don't get to pick and choose what parts of them you love - you love all of them," he said, simply. And if that made him sound like a sap to Caleb, then he'd just have to live with that.

"I wouldn't know...never been in love. Occasionally I wonder if I'm capable of it." Caleb said honestly. And he was quiet for a moment. "But I don't actually know what you meant by that." he added. "Could be either way, I guess. I'm sure I'm meant to understand? But..." he trailed off, figuring it was his own messed up perspective that was messing him up here.

Dean blinked - he hadn't actually thought he'd have to explain that, which left him feeling very slightly off balance. "I mean that, well - I..." Yeah, he was thrown. "I mean... You... I don't want there to be a part of her that's locked away. And I don't want there to be something that we avoid. There shouldn't be conditions on our relationship. If I love her, really love her - then I'd love all of her, no matter what. But I think she's afraid that I wouldn't. She thinks... Basically, she couldn't handle it if I freaked. So we don't get to find out." And he wasn't going to push that, but he knew he didn't like it.

"You explained that to her?" Caleb asked. He didn't know what he would do in that situation. He knew that it was messing with his head that he'd been getting up close and personal with Nic while she was dressed as a zombie for halloween. It had just...kept kinda popping up in his mind. And that was just dress up. Pretend. "Do you think you would?" he asked. "Freak, that is."

Dean shook his head. "She was really definite about it, so - I didn't push it. Maybe, eventually, I will - but I'm not going to force her to do something she's not happy with. I can deal and... That's the thing. I mean, I can't guarantee what my reaction would be, I know that. I... I know that, sometimes..." He took a breath before continuing. "It's usually only when I'm already stressed. Like - you remember a while ago, we were talking. About the worst that could happen to her? There was a thing that night - you know I didn't want to tell her what you'd said, but that didn't mean it wasn't right there, playing on my mind. And I have a fucking good imagination, mate. Anyway, I was in a bad place and she was chasing to know what was up. And I was standing by the window when she came over, and... yeah. I can't hide things from her. Not my moods, not my reactions. She literally sees my moods, if they're bad. And even if she couldn't - we know each other so well that that doesn't matter. I don't think I'd, I dunno, reject her or anything, but..."

"But you don't know, and if you can't actually hide or lie about it..." Caleb filled in for Dean. He wondered if Dean was just being masochistic with that. Because it sounded like he was nervous about his own reaction there, even while he was saying that it bothered him that he wasn't going to get to find out about it. "So if you freaked, if you reacted badly...what would that tell you?" he asked. "That you don't love all of her?" he asked, honestly curious.

Dean was silent for a moment, leaning forward, twisting the steel ring on his little finger round and round, feeling the pattern cut into it under the tips of his fingers. "I want to know," he said, quietly, not meeting Caleb's eyes. "That I wouldn't. React badly. I want to... prove that." He knew he couldn't guarantee his reaction, but in his head, that's the way it went and he'd try everything to make sure that's how it went. He just didn't have enough self-belief to be able to promise it. But he wanted it - he wanted it enough to not be able to say what the alternative would be. If he failed that test.

"Yeah, but you don't sound like you know if you would or not." Caleb said. "So, I was asking what it would mean to you if you did have a bad reaction. I mean...I can't really say that I get what you're talking about on a real level. But I think that I'd react badly no matter what to a girl I was with looking dead." And again he was reminded of Nic... "Hell it was messing with my head on Halloween because I was messing around with Nic, and she'd chosen to dress up as a zombie..."

"It's part of who she is, Caleb. And she wouldn't be dead - she'd just look it and I just... I want to be okay with it, with it all. Since this happened, it's like at every turn she's expected me to disappear, and I thought I was getting through to her finally, but..." He looked up again. "I got set up. The same night as all of this," he said, gesturing to the black eye. "He wanted me out the way, I guess, or... It was all part of it. Something. Probably that second one. Anyway, I got set up with this girl, separated out. And she was really trying it on. And.. I mean, I wasn't going for it, but... I know how maybe... Anyway, Thia saw. And with everything else, we haven't talked about it, I just - I just get the feeling that at least part of her thought... I dunno. Maybe not. Maybe it's just me reading in, or something."

"Thought what, that you were going for it?" Caleb asked. He kind of could see where Dean was coming from, but also figured if he was in the same position, he would be taking the out. Because he didn't know how it would effect things, and well. Necro-anything wasn't part of his list of turn ons. Not only that but it would be a huge reminder. But then he also thought that you could have feelings for someone and still not be perfectly cool with absolutely everything that went on with them. Dean didn't seem to be of that opinion, though.

"I just want her to get that I'm not going anywhere," Dean said, wondering if Caleb got where he was coming from at all. He doubted he was doing a very good job of explaining himself. That would be fairly typical of him. He desperately wanted to be okay with everything about her, and he wanted her to know that. He wanted her to realise that nothing about her would have him walking out that door, and he wanted to be able to prove that. And he was so, so scared that he would fail in that - but avoiding something, just because he was scared? That wasn't going to help anything, not long term.

Caleb had to check his mouth for a moment. Because his first impulse was going to be to say 'you killed a guy for the girl, what more could she possibly need for proof?' but... Well. He knew he was capable of killing someone. And probably for less than love. And it didn't mean he wouldn't bail eventually, either. So...maybe that was just the wrong kind of idea. What he did bring up was his observation when he'd been stitching them up. "...there's that devotion again." he noted. "Do you think it's a huge deal, like she's waiting every second for you to cut and run, or are you just looking for perfection?" he asked.

Dean shrugged, not knowing the answer to that one. Or, at least, not being able to put it into words. Thia kept telling him he was forever chasing perfection, holding himself to impossible standards, but that didn't mean that he could stop doing that. Yes, he wanted things to be perfect, felt that drive to make them perfect, to aim for that, but he was learning that other people weren't generally with him on that. They didn't understand.

Silent for a minute, Caleb had to ask the next question. Walking Dean through this was kind of giving him things to think about with his situation with Nic, even if they weren't even near the same levels. "Guess the real question would be...if you did react badly, and that meant to you that you didn't really love all of her, but you're looking for perfection...is it worth the risk of losing everything for something that might not even exist?" he asked. Caleb for one didn't really believe in perfection. Everything was flawed in some manner. Everything had it's weak points, it's marred surface. Everything had a crack somewhere beneath the surface, waiting to spread.

"She doesn't want it anyway - she doesn't want me to be in the same room as her, see her at all. So it doesn't matter. It's not going to happen," Dean said, not answering the question, though he tucked it away to think about another time, even as he seemingly dodged answering it.

"Yeah, but if you didn't actually think it mattered, it wouldn't be bothering you." Caleb pointed out. Because he was fine with Dean not answering shit. They weren't very easy questions and they might not have answers at all, but the whole blowing it off when he'd just said otherwise didn't fly so well.

"It just... bugs, that's all. It goes against the grain. Everything else with us - I've never been so honest with someone in my entire life. And I like that. It's all - I dunno. It makes sense in here," he told him, tapping the side of his temple. "I don't think I'm doing a very good job of explaining though. Probably, eventually, I'll bring it up with her again. But not now - I'm not going to pester her about something I know she's not comfortable with. I mean, it's like - she's uncomfortable with me seeing her that night. It bugs me she doesn't want me to. So, whichever way we go, someone's not happy. And, like you say - why risk it? I can deal with this being something that bugs, so why push something that maybe isn't dealable? That's - that's where I'm leaving it for now. And maybe she'll change her mind."

"Maybe." Caleb said. Though he knew he had no intention of letting anyone see him in his alternate form. He looked like an imp. And that was really only cool in movies, never in real life. "Good luck with that situation...sounds like it's shitty no matter what. Unless, of course, you manage to really be alright with her looking like a corpse." Which just sounded fucked up regardless. "Sorry I can't be around to distract you on that night, either."

Dean shrugged in his familiar way. "I doubt I'd be particularly good company anyhow," he offered. He'd be distracted, he knew, knowing she'd be locked in her room, being miserable, a constant reminder to herself of everything. He wanted to be there for her, to help her through that, but he couldn't be. At least, not in person, but he had a few ideas.

"Yeah, but still." Caleb said. He knew he'd want to be distracted. Out doing something, or...something. He didn't know. It was kind of a hard concept to really latch onto. "Anyways...I guess, glad to hear that things were going well in the first place though." he said, trying to shift things to a more positive bent. Particularly since most of their conversation had been focused on oh...horrible shit. "Glad you've got her now? Worth the wait and everything?"

Dean actually grinned, and relaxed back, his hands going back to playing with the ring she'd given him. "Yeah - yes. Definitely," he told his friend, not having to give that any kind of thought at all. He looked down, thoughtfully, nodding absently, then lifted his eyes to meet Caleb's. "Yeah."

"Getting laid a lot, aren't you." Caleb chuckled a little at Dean's behavior. "You're not a person who smiles a whole lot...that's got to be at least part of it..." Then he glanced at the ring, because the motion distracted him. "What's that?" he asked, since he hadn't noticed Dean wearing a ring before.

Dean reached out and, picking up the pillow Caleb had thrown at him earlier, sent it hurling back over towards the guy's head at that remark, though the smile didn't drop off at all. "...And it's a ring - Thi gave it to me," he said - the cushion being his reply to the first part.

There was something vastly unfair about Dean avoiding getting himself a girl for ages, pining away for months after one then finally getting the girl and having what was probably(at least in Caleb's head) a lot of sex, when he'd had girlfriends, and still hadn't gotten any since he'd been in Marquette. He supposed that he could have had Jamie, but still. That would have just made the crazy fucking fallout even worse the next morning. Still, he supposed if someone deserved it, it was the one who was doing that wrapped around a girl's finger thing. Least that might make being whipped worth it. "So, I'm taking that as a yes." he told Dean. Then he leaned forward to look at the ring. Rings he found terrifying. But then again, he also hadn't ever really been in love so much as obsession, and anything long-term made him twitch. Particularly with the idea that most everything he went for crashed and burned damn near immediately. "Nice." he said, because the design looked interesting, at any rate. As far as rings went, it wasn't bad.

"And steel, so I can wear it round Oz. The other one was silver - it's... a thing, really," he explained. "Long story, goes back a way. And I'm still not answering that question," he said, though he was still grinning and with his expression he really didn't need to. Just because he wasn't in the habit of 'kiss and tell', didn't mean he wouldn't stoop to 'kiss and make it blindingly bloody obvious'.

"There was another ring?" Caleb asked. "...she give you rings just as a matter of course, or is it special?" he had to ask. "And it sucks that you're not answering, I mean, it's not like I can't tell. Just a few details would be nice." he added. If he wasn't having a sex life, then... And alright, he was having a fooling around life at the moment, but still. Thinking about that made him think about the fact that he could lose her before they ever actually even got to get together, and...mess. Mess mess mess.

"Let's say I confiscated the last one. She had a ring when she came to live with us. But it was silver, and huggy girls with silver rings and werewolves don't go together. So, she gave it up," Dean said, pulling the chain out from underneath his shirt and flicking the ring that lived there. "She moved it - from here to my finger, in England. Couldn't stay there with us coming back, so, she replaced it with one I could wear. And the silver one went back on the chain. Which, really... She gave me the steel one before I said I was ready to come back. Told me that it was for me to wear when I was around Oz. Me wearing it, the silver one going back on the chain? It was kind of my way of telling her that we could come home." He tucked the chain away again. "And stop fishing for details, I'm not telling. But... She's damn near perfect," Dean allowed.

Caleb stared for a moment, smirking faintly. "You two have...really really interesting ways of communicating, don't you." he said, a tiny bit mystified, but he supposed when it came down to it, everyone had their own communication styles with everyone else. Dean and Lullaby's just happened to be kind of...animated. "And c'mon, I can't not try to. But damn near perfect...that sounds good. That an overall score there, or just in regards to what you're refusing to give up details on?"

Dean laughed, not sure whether to be grateful or kinda disappointed that Caleb had forgotten the way he'd put things in their last conversation. Probably some of both. It was amusing either way. "I give you details and you'd just have trouble looking her in the eye next time you see her," Dean told him. "So, really - I'm doing you a favour," he told his friend. "And we communicate just fine - we talk as well, you know," he joked.

"Oh, I can look people in the eye knowing all sorts of things." Caleb said good naturedly, not expecting that to actually get Dean talking. Which didn't mean he didn't still want to know, it just meant that he wasn't going to grind the subject into the ground either. "I always thought talking was overrated." he added. "Always gets me in trouble."

"Have to admit, it's a whole new experience for me - I've never been particularly good at talking to girls before. Thia's been... educating me." But, of course, that went back a whole lot longer than their still fairly new relationship. They'd done almost everything in the wrong order, but it seemed to work out for them. "For you, I guess the question is whether Nic's the kind of girl who likes trouble. Or, maybe, what kind of trouble she likes..."

"She likes trouble." Caleb said. Because that much he knew. And he almost started to talk about compatibility...and then stopped himself. Then said fuck it and did anyhow. "I feel compatible with her. And she's got that same girl bullshit tendency that pretty much every girl I've ever met has, which is that self-deprecating shit, that putting herself down thing that's fucking irritating as hell--but I went off on her once about it, and she's actually doing something about it. It was...honestly the weirdest thing, but I was actually kind of proud of her for it." he admitted, sounding as confused as he felt over that little detail.

"Feels good when someone listens when you talk, doesn't it?" Dean asked, his grin dropping away before he couldn't keep that up, but he remained looking happy in a relaxed kind of way. "When someone takes you seriously enough to actually do that?"

Caleb nodded. "Yeah. She started marking down how often a day she does it." he said. "To check herself on it all. First time anyone's ever really listened and actually tried to take action to correct something." he said. "No one else has, even if I've had that same talk with them. Though...it was less a talk and more me going off on a tangent, but still. Even less reason for her to have listened, but she did. Like I said...I like her." He paused and regarded Dean. "Lullaby listens to you I take it?"

"Yeah, she does. I mean, she doesn't always do what I say or anything, but she listens." He quirked a smile. "Usually that ends up with her arguing over why things should be done another way, but... She's stubborn. And so am I. But we generally find a middle ground. I... Never got that much before. I like it. Appreciate it. Being able to give my opinion and have someone take it on board - even if it's to argue with it. I... I don't need to be right. Just - it's nice even to have someone who'd discuss things rather than just ignoring that I had an opinion in the first place." And god, once he'd finished saying that, he really wished he hadn't - because didn't he just sound like the needy shit with that? "I'm glad you like Nic - when do I get to meet her?" he asked, deliberately changing the topic, or, amending it away from needy!Dean.

Caleb wasn't so much thinking it sounded needy as...even. Which was what he knew he needed out of a relationship, because he kept getting into fantastically unbalanced ones and it crashed and burned so fast and hard it wasn't even funny. "Whenever you want?" Caleb suggested. "When do you want to? She goes to school with us. Or we could meet up after or something. Or, if you just wanted to meet her..." he didn't know how this shit worked. He'd never had a potential girlfriend meet a friend before. Or vice versa, or...yeah. he was new here.

"Whenever you want. Sophie's already told me I'm back at school on Monday, so either at school, or sometime this weekend, or... Yeah, whenever. I'm easy," Dean said. He'd found talking to girls easier since he'd started dating Thia. It took away that layer of worry about what was or wasn't being read into his every move. It was altogether less stressful.

"This weekend's good." Caleb said. Or so he figured. He'd rather do things when there was time, and no school or other people to worry about. "I'll call her and see what she wants to do." He paused then, and eyed Dean. "So. You're dating a girl who's been dead for a while in town...what's the official story?" he asked, figuring he'd need to know that. "And what do I tell Nic, if anything?"

"The story? I have a girlfriend named Thia, but I'm not into the whole 'double dating' thing. You can say what you like to make that believable. The rest, well, shouldn't be that hard - she's not going to be looking for anything to do with Lullaby, is she?" Dean pointed out. "I take it Nic's local then?"

"No. Not entirely. She's been here a while, but didn't grow up here." Caleb answered first. "And don't worry, I haven't suddenly had a personality transplant, I'm not suggesting we double date. I just want to know what the story is. What you're going to tell anyone, so I don't say something different. It's kind of important when you don't want to arouse suspicion." he pointed out. "I'm being practical. But okay. You've got a girlfriend named Thia. check." he said, since he had wondered if Dean would have been saying he was dating anyone at all, or what.

"No - I mean, that's the story. I'm not suggesting that you'd suggest that. I'm saying that's the story for why she's not with me if I'm there," Dean explained. "And she's older than me - she's local to the UP, but didn't go to MSHS. She's graduated already, but doesn't go to college. Be vague - you've only met her a couple of times, so on and so forth. It'll be easier that way - I'll fact check with Thia before I meet Nic and we'll have a story we can stick to."

"Alright." Caleb said. Then sighed and shook his head, looking vaguely amused. "When did everything get stupidly complicated?" he asked rhetorically. He was really having a conversation about what story to tell people to cover up the fact that his friend was dating a dead girl. That was his life now. Jesus.

"Stupidly complicated? Two months ago tomorrow. But it's been generally complicated for years now. For me anyway." And he'd take two months ago tomorrow over two months ago today any day. Without a single thought.

"Two months..." Caleb started. "That when you found her?" he asked. "Or when she died?" He didn't have the day memorized. so it could be either. But he figured it was something to do with her.

"When I found her. She died on the first. I found her on the fourth." Her death hadn't been complicated. Horrifically traumatising, but not complicated. "So, this part of complicated, yeah - goes back to then for me."

"I suppose my complicated has been my whole life, I'm just...more involved with other people's complications nowadays." Caleb said. which...he didn't generally do, but apparently did now. It was like when he'd first discovered the idea that he didn't want to be without people. When it had seemed like every friend he'd made had ditched at the same time, and he hadn't liked it. One thing he was appreciating was that he thought things with he and Dean would be alright. Possibly strange and occasionally cautious, but alright.

"Well yeah - like I said, complicated for me's always been there. Kinda comes with the territory of occasionally making things explode without meaning to, y'know? Doesn't really align well with the simple life. But really, stupidly complicated. That happens when other people get involved." Dean paused and laughed a little, shaking his head. "But, I just... I've been thinking a lot about it, recently. With everything going on. Lots of thinking. And, for all that insane complications, I've never felt like I belong so much in my entire life before."

"Really?" Caleb asked, finding that interesting. "Here, with all the insanity and shit here's where you belong? I'm not saying I disagree, mind. I think in weird fucked up ways I might too. Or, at least, I probably have a higher survivability rating than anywhere else, and I actually have people who aren't blood related to me that I give a shit about. Which is new. And complicated. But...can't tell if it seems really obvious for you or like it shouldn't be that way."

"I know, it's fucked. But yeah - I - I can be me here. Which - just don't tell me what that says about me, okay. I think I'm better off not knowing," Dean said, holding up a hand.

"I don't think it says anything about you other than you're someone who's got an ability other people don't even believe in. It's not brain surgery, it doesn't say anything bad about you. This happens to be a supernatural hotspot as far as i can tell. So...it's understandable, nothing more." he said, shrugging one shoulder. He believed that, too. He didn't quite look at it as a matter of what that might say about his friend. Just that...whatever, sometimes people belonged and sometimes they didn't and here was actually alright as far as that was concerned. Caleb knew that the place felt more like...he hesitated to use the word 'home', but it was as close as he could get to the correct wording.

"Thanks," Dean said, taking that as his friend not saying anything, giving him another way of looking at things. He sat forward and looked around. "So - apparently Sophie and Oz have set this place up properly as a bolt hole. Supplied and prepared and everything. You want to have a look around, see what's here?" he asked. He'd actually talked to Oz about things earlier on and in his pocket he had a key which he'd been going to give to Caleb, in case he ever needed to run here. That had been the reason behind meeting up here, though he hadn't said as much over the phone. And, right now, Dean was leaving the key in his pocket - the jury was still out on what he was going to do there, but he figured that it was better not to mention its existence until he was certain of what he wanted to do.

Caleb glanced around the living room. He'd been here before. Visiting, and of course, stitching people up. "Thought the place didn't feel that lived in, I take it you're back at the other place then." he said. "And...yeah, I guess I could, but...why, you want pointers on what else it needs?" Caleb asked, glancing towards the windows. "Other than bars on the windows?"

"Yeah - Billy finished fixing the damage I did, so, they moved back. Which, really - I missed that place," Dean confessed. "But... I just - we could see what they've stocked with, y'know. Might need to know some time and I'd prefer to know ahead of time," he added, sidestepping really.

Caleb didn't catch it, and shrugged. "If you want me to look and shit, sure." he said. "Something tells me you guys have things fairly covered, though. And I've never prepared for an apocalypse before. Off the top of my head I'd say...dependable, need a water source, not sure if you can drink from the lake...it's nearby isn't it? a lot of food, probably...like gardening stuff in case of long-term ideas...maybe salt licks for deer so you can hunt for food in that eventuality too..." he rattled off.

"Not looking for advice, mate," Dean told him, not sure why Caleb seemed fixed on that. "Just thought you might be curious, but... Doesn't matter, I can look round on my own some other time," he shrugged, still thinking about that key in his pocket, and that maybe Caleb would have been more interested in things if he was vested in knowing, rather than simply out of idle curiosity. If it had just been about him, Dean would have said to hell with it and given him the key. After all, Caleb was his friend and the new information wasn't going to change that. But, it wasn't - it was about his family. About Thia, and Sophie, and Oz. And with that in mind, he was more cautious, though he hated the fact he even thought he had to be.

Caleb stood. "Naw, let's look." he said. "Never looked around a proper bolt hole anyhow." he said. "I know Math has a lot of them set up, but I think they're more just hiding places while heat dies down if he's stirred it up, not like...hey, let's prepare for the apocalypse type places. Which this one seems to be." he said. "Where I called you from when the spirit came out of the lake? That was one of Math's kind of fallback places." he explained. "But it didn't have anything but a lot of space around it. No neighbors."

"That makes two of us," Dean agreed as they headed into the kitchen. The cupboards were fully stocked with food, Dean knew, and there was an addition of a solid-looking cabinet on one wall that Dean had been told unlocked with the front door key, one of a few scattered throughout the house that contained the place's weaponry. "I mean, Sophie keeps home pretty well prepared, but this place it sounds is something different."

"Looks different. I mean, I've seen bars on windows before, back in New Orleans, but never here." Caleb noted, looking through some of the cupboards, before he turned to the cabinet. He tried the door to that but it was locked. "Someplace to hide the bodies, since the basement is filled with a huge ass cage?" he asked, looking back over to Dean. Which, now that he was thinking about it, he didn't know if Dean even knew he knew about that. He'd been knocked out when he'd gone to the basement with Lullaby.

Dean crossed and took the key out of his pocket, unlocking the door and pulling it back. He stared. Okay, so... Yeah. Oz had gone gun shopping. "...I don't think there's going to be room for bodies in here either," he said, after a moment or two.

A low whistle came from Caleb as he eyed the contents of the cabinet. "Jesus." he muttered. "That's...are you lot planning on taking out the whole town?" he asked. "This isn't a stock pile, it's an arsenal." And hey, that was Dean's specialty, wasn't it. Still. Good goddamn. If anything went down, he wouldn't be hurting for a weapon. Or ammunition.

Dean shrugged. "They like to be prepared." That seemed to be the long and the short of it, but even knowing that Dean wondered if this was a little excessive. Or whether they were planning for Armageddon or something. Things had been bad lately, but - surely they weren't that bad? He shut the cabinet up and locked it again. "I think... They get paranoid. Their entire town was destroyed by vampires when they were our age," Dean told Caleb - he didn't know whether the guy already knew that.

Prepared. Well, that was prepared for something, anyways. "Like the kind that came through here?" Caleb asked. He thought they were the only types who really worked like that. But then again, he wasn't exactly an expert, either. He just knew how to kill them efficiently. "That's...yeah that'll make someone paranoid. This is definitely paranoid. I guess, good, if anything happens, better safe than sorry or whatever, but...damn."

"Yeah, like the types that came through here. So, yeah..." He was with his friend on the 'damn' of it all. "It's like they've got ready for... I don't know? Anything? For us to be invaded by the ravaging hordes. I'm surprised they haven't dug a bloody moat looking at all of this," he added, leading back through to the hall and starting up the stairs towards the bedrooms. There really wasn't much house here.

Caleb followed up, still glancing around as he did so. "Well, there's the lake. So, theoretically, one side is kind of moated." he said, partially joking. "I'm wondering where the rockets, and the shack just off outside the treeline that's filled with dynamite and c-4 is now, though."

"I'm not sure whether to be really impressed - or seriously worried," Dean agreed as he realised that he wouldn't put that past his cousin - not after seeing this. He really didn't know what he'd expected from this place, but they were seriously Prepared.

"Kind of at that same place myself." Caleb admitted. "because this is either the best place to be if shit happens, or the creepiest place if nothing ever does." he said. "Not that I'm positive enough to think that the world isn't going to shit, but still. This is...well, prepared, I guess." He looked into one of the bedrooms, and noticed there weren't bars there, then pondered on if it just hadn't been done yet, or if it was left off on purpose.

Dean nodded and sat down on the bed that had been his before he left for England. "Yeah, I know - it's... They obviously think that it's needed. And I knew they were going to do it and everything, it's just, well, it's more real now. Like, talking about it, it seemed sensible. Seeing it done, it's - fucking scary, maybe? That it could happen, that we could need this," Dean said. he hadn't really thought of that before. It had seemed something of, well, a game. A laugh - but it was serious now.

"The practicality of it is daunting." Caleb supplied. He walked through a small bedroom, and looked out the window, pulling the curtain back to do so. "I guess if you were going to have a stand in case of the end of the world, this would be the place to do it." he said. "Not a lot of people around, the turn off to the house isn't that well marked, and I don't see any other houses. Any idea how far off your neighbors are here?" he asked. He was willing to bet a mile or more. "So, less danger of getting flooded with people wanting to steal what you've got. People would mostly stick to town, would only come this way if they were going through to somewhere else." he noted. Then paused and looked back at Dean. "And that's me sounding scary." he commented.

"Never seen anyone out here," Dean told him. "And I know Billy picked this place originally because he didn't want to live close to anyone, so I'd say they were far enough away. Sophie said something about building a jetty or something, so that you could get here by water as well." Which had been another thing that had just seemed fun and cool at the time and now was looking more serious and scary. He stood and joined Caleb by the window, looking out. "You think it'll ever come to this?" he asked.

Caleb didn't say anything for a few long moments. Because he was honestly giving it thought. He milled it over, and eventually sighed, leaning his back against the windowledge. "Honestly?" he asked, looking at his friend. "It might. I mean...with the shit that's been happening lately, and especially with the random surprise 'hey everyone can see ghosts now' thing? That's...major. That's a sign. And I'm not really someone who buys into that shit, because I don't believe in anything resembling a higher power, but...that means something is seriously fucked up. On a massive scale, even, not just here."

"Yeah," Dean said, thoughtfully. He shrugged and turned back from the window again. "I think I preferred it thinking it would just be here, y'know? But... Even if it's not. The way things are going, it'll hit worse here." Which was Dean's way of trying to reassure himself that, no matter what happened, his family would be safe and secure. He had enough to deal with without wondering whether he did the right thing leaving them. Of course he did, he had to believe that - they were better off without him. Better off without any connection to the supernatural at all. Where they could be safe and overlooked.

Caleb shrugged one shoulder. "So we're at ground zero." he said. "Doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't going to be bad everywhere else. 'Worse' is a sliding scale." He even had a mental comparison in his head, but he didn't share it, mostly because it was just...disturbing. "But I guess...this place could in fact, be vital when the time comes." Which was an awful thought. But not one that he really found unbelievable.

"Hey, let's be optimistic?" Dean suggested, shaking off his qualms and cocking a slight smile, which looked really unbalanced in his bruised face. "Could we at least leave it as 'if', rather than 'when'?"

"If you want to call it an 'if', go for it." Caleb said. He just didn't want to sign himself up for possible disappointment. He'd rather expect the worst, and be pleasantly surprised if slightly less awful things happened. That way at least he wasn't disappointed. He glanced around the room again, then back to Dean. "But hey--least you've got someplace to go if it's not an 'if'."

Dean wandered over to the closet and opened the door. "True," he said, as he looked inside, an then laughed a little, though there wasn't all that much humour there. He reached inside and stepped back, holding a church pillar candle in his hand and a piece of paper in the other. "Okay, so, apparently they even planned for me," he said, shaking his head at the paper, that simply read 'To Dean: prepare for all eventualities' in Sophie's neat handwriting.

Caleb arched a brow, and smirked. "Apparently so." he said. He'd never really seen much of what Dean could do, but knew about it. "And that's definitely a candle that'll last you a long time..." he added, since...yeah that was a candle meant to last for ages. Though, hopefully there was more than one, just in case, and he really should stop thinking in terms of outright apocalypse. Then had to ask the question. "Does this place have a generator, or solar power, or a windmill or anything?" he asked curiously.

"It didn't - but that doesn't mean it doesn't now," Dean told him. "Right now, I'd believe anything. Which really means I should work out how to fix one of those, whatever it turns out to be." he paused, putting the candle back in the box in the wardrobe, then explained. "I've been breaking more things recently. I... Thia kinda... She makes me stronger, but that's not necessarily a good thing." Especially not since he only ever used his abilities accidentally at the moment.

"Well, a windmill shouldn't be too hard to fix." Caleb said. Or he didn't think so anyways. He paused in thought, thinking back to the book. "Aren't you only supposed to do that when you're stressed or something? Which, granted, you've got more than enough reasons to be stressed. So, I guess, that'd be an invalid question. So...you're stressed, she makes you stronger, and things get broken more often?" he asked, to see if he had that right.

"Something like that. Only, well - might not quite be stress," Dean said, busying himself back in the closet so that he had something to do that didn't mean he was actually having to look Caleb in the eye. "Just, maybe... I mean, before, it was all when I was pissed, because there's more negative energy around, and I lost control and everything, but, well... It's like Thia is negative energy, so I don't need to be producing it myself and so... yeah," he babbled, then got hold of himself and pulled back out of the closet. "When I'm with her, especially when I'm touching her, I find it easier to do things with what I can do. But the flip side to that is that what I can do isn't always controlled. Sometimes it happens without me wanting it to. And when she's with me. When I'm touching her. That's much more likely to happen."

Caleb caught that Dean had repeated himself there. The 'when I'm touching her' bit. So, that factored into his mental imagery. Even if he wasn't sure he wanted it to. So, he paused for a good long moment, then eyed Dean for a second, light smirk appearing on his face. "...you saying what I think you're saying?" he asked.

Dean held his eyes, knowing he was blushing very slightly, but he couldn't help that, and anyway, maybe it would be covered up by the bruises. "I'm saying that it could be any physical contact - when we first tested it out, the difference was me switching a phone off when she wasn't there, and me near as damnit exploding it when she was just holding my hand," he averred, his tone innocent, but the truth was in his eyes.

Caleb again didn't answer right away, watching his friend closely. And he noted that he had a slight blush there, and there was of course, the look in his eye. Which he could put two and two together. "Then I suggest you buy stock in candles." he advised, and he couldn't help it, he was amused. He knew he probably shouldn't be, it could be a serious problem. ...like exploding phones. Could he explode other, bigger things? "Or find a room without a lot of electrical things in it..." he didn't know the actual range on things.

"Looks like Sophie already did that for me," Dean said, running his hand through his hair. "Though, I don't think she had the same thing in mind. But, you live with me, you get used to the fact that sometimes things break. She'll probably have me a toolkit around here somewhere." Dean did like to try and mend what he fucked up where possible, after all.

"Yeah, but did she buy you stock?" Caleb said. "Y'know, shares in a candle company...nevermind." he said, giving up the joke. "And from the sounds of it, you need one. The tool kit, that is." he said, starting to cross the room to look into the other bedroom. That one was bigger. Not by a lot or anything, but some. Nicer furniture. "So what else does the apocalypse require in the way of preparation?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically.

"Depends on the apocalypse, I guess," Dean suggested, following on, crumpling the note into his pocket with the key. "Have to admit - it's not something I've given a whole lot of thought to in the past." Which, right now, seemed like a major hole in his education. Yeah, things were fucked - had he just forgotten how fucked things were whilst he'd been away? or had they just got a whole lot more fucked up in the past couple of weeks?

"You're a lot more optimistic than I am." Caleb said. "For instance, I doubt you've looked at Lullaby and thought to yourself that she was going to get you killed someday." Even if it had almost happened. But, he wouldn't say that. Not to Dean. He was willing to bet his friend wouldn't take that so well. Caleb didn't want to be on the wrong end of the guy's defensive streak today. Or ever again if he could help it, but still.

Dean took a breath and let it out, audibly, slowly. "No - she'd never let that happen," he said, in the depressed tone of someone who knew just how far she'd go with that. He fell silent, trying to shake off that feeling, running a tooth over the split in his lip which had scabbed over in the past couple of days, feeling the bump there.

Caleb decided he needed to shut up sometimes. Talking got him into trouble, in one form or another. But he supposed that was true. That she wouldn't let that happen. And he wondered if it had. If she'd saved him. She'd definitely saved him the night he'd stitched them up. It wouldn't have taken that long for Dean to bleed out. But still. He wondered. "I think that about Nic." Caleb said, looking in the closet, and he clicked on the bare bulb light in the ceiling, looking at a second cache of weaponry, though this looked a little older. Older and used. Reaching out, he picked up a leather sheath that had throwing spikes in it, and slid one out. The tarnish on it had him frowning a touch. Why did a werewolf keep silver spikes? That just seemed...yeah that was just weird.

Dean bit down on the scab, feeling a bite of pain before he let it go, focusing himself. "yeah?" he asked, making an effort to be with him on that part of the conversation, to not think about her bleeding out and dying in his arms. "Why?"

"She doesn't listen." Caleb said. "Leija...for all her faults, the girl listened to me. If I told her to get out of dodge, she did. Nic...she's not going to. I told her to run, to get to the car, and she came back with the car and ran over the werewolf with it. Twice. Which worked this time, sure, but ..." he shrugged. "It's not going to every time. And she doesn't have any special abilities, and she's learning kick boxing, and plans to take up white magic, but that shit takes time, and kickboxing isn't going to cut it against bigger things. Even the nest we stirred up would still take her down fast. But I wouldn't let her just...go." he admitted. "So...eventually, I figure she's going to get me killed." he said as if that explained everything patly. "So what nerve did I touch?" he asked, putting the silver spikes back, and looking at some of the other weapons. Like a crossbow.

"I can teach her to shoot, if you want. Assuming she can't already," Dean offered. You never knew round here, after all - there were so many people who hunted, it was possible she already had that down. And not that he'd ever taught someone before, but he could give it a go, right? If it helped Caleb out, he'd give it a go. "And I could talk to Maddie about protection spells for her in the meantime. Oh, talking of - wanna see something?" he said, completely and utterly ignoring the question about touching nerves. he didn't really want to bring that up, he was just being a twitchy, depressive son of a bitch and he really should stop that. Instead, he headed over to Caleb, rolling up his right sleeve to expose his forearm and the round tattoo that lay there. "It's a protection spell - renewed by water, which is freaky - I take a shower and the bloody thing flashes blue..."

Caleb wasn't sure if he wanted Dean to teach Nic to shoot or not, and after about .2 seconds of thinking about it, he realized why. Which was an utterly stupid thing to think, but it had appeared anyways. Which was just...people got close when that kind of thing happened. And he didn't especially want Nic's attention to wander from himself. He didn't even know if it would, or if he was just being an asshole about this, but the twitch was there. Objectively speaking, he imagined Dean had a lot going on that a girl might like. He wasn't even actually dating the girl, but he had that possessive sort of kneejerk reaction. So, he didn't answer him about that, figuring Nic could make up her own mind about it, and he could just stay the hell away from it entirely. But then there was the interesting tattoo. "Seriously?" he asked. "I wondered before if there was anything like that that was possible...guess that answers that question." he said. "I'd thought more along the lines of protection runes...that looks a bit more complicated. And...it flashes blue?" he asked, laughing a touch. "So you're going to be a flashing neon strobe in the rain?"

"Oh get lost," Dean said, jokingly. "No, not like that, more like..." He licked the tip of his finger and, holding his forearm up, ran the digit across it. The symbol on his inner forearm glowed a bright blue for a moment, before fading away again. "..That. Apparently it makes me less noticeable to whatever badness is around. Which seems pretty fitting, really," he mused. He'd always been one to try his best to blend in, after all.

Caleb blinked at the light afterimages in his eyes, since he'd been looking right at it. "That's...damn interesting." he decided. "Less noticeable to badness is definitely a good thing." he said. "...not to mention, if you are, with as good of a shot as you are, that'd make things pretty easy for you to take down. Not as much risk of anything going after you, so...you could just...aim, fire." And Caleb knew Dean only needed the one shot.

"Yeah, possibly - though I doubt that 'less noticeable' is anything like 'not noticeable at all', so the moment I start shooting, whatever'd know about it. Which is fine and everything if there's only the one, but gangs? Wouldn't be that much of an advantage. I dunno whether it works if something's actively looking for me. I'm going to assume 'no' - seems safer that way." He wasn't going to be putting all his confidence into a tattoo that he didn't properly understand, though he knew he wanted to go see Maddie sometime in the future and find out exactly, completely, totally what he had here.

"Still, an advantage is an advantage." Caleb said. "And, if you could get someplace where you weren't seen while you were shooting, you could stay hidden, maybe." Since he didn't know what he was dealing with either. But it still sounded interesting. "Plus--you have a silencer, remember?" he said. "even easier for you to escape immediate notice."

"Yeah, I do," Dean said, absently. Not that he had it anywhere convenient. Both his gun and its silencer were locked in the cabinet at the orphanage and Thia had the only key. He wasn't in any rush to get them back, either. He'd decided that - he was going to leave them there, for now. Live a more normal life, or try to. Of course, the idea that he could actually do that was busily being erased the more he looked round this place and the more he talked to Caleb.

"So...looks sound to me." Caleb said. "I know who I'll be talking to if anything needs to get done in a stealthy manner." he said. Which wasn't true. He wouldn't involve Dean in anything unless he absolutely had to. "...and the design isn't bad." he added offhandly. "I've seen far worse tattoos. That one actually looks kind of neat."

Dean wasn't sure what to tell the guy to that - after everything Caleb had done for him, he could hardly come out with 'please don't ask me to do that' now, could he? Friendship worked both ways, and it had been Dean who'd pushed the boundaries of what was expected there. "Well, you know where I am," he said, after a moment or two. "And thanks, bitch, for expecting the tat to look shit," he added, more upbeat and with a hefty dose of sarcasm.

"Yeah, I know." Caleb said. Then he chuckled. "Well, who knows what spell tattoos generally look like?" he asked. "In the movies they all look like shit, or they're all over the body, not just in a neat, one shot spot on your arm. Why'd you get it there, out of curiosity? What did your parents say?" Unless the tattoo ages were different there. Which was entirely possible.

"Thia wanted it there. I chose where she got hers, she chose where I got mine. Like hers is my design and mine's... actually, Maddie designed this, Thia's not the world's best artist or anything. But, theory stands - she chose mine, I chose hers. Design and location. And mum and dad? Don't know about this. Neither do Oz and Sophie, yet - unless Maddie told them already. But my parents would freak if they knew, so it seemed simpler just not to tell them. I'm doing that kind of across the board anyway, so one more thing didn't seem that important," Dean told him, pulling his sleeve back down to cover the tattoo.

Caleb stared at Dean for a long moment, before he blinked, shook his head, and walked back into the room proper from the closet-o-weapons. "You both got something permanent on your bodies, from the other one...I...yeah. You've got to be in love." he said. Because that was insane. Though terming it like that he was guessing wouldn't be taken so well. "Out of morbid curiosity, what did hers look like, and where did you put it?"

"Yeah, we did - and it was agreed long before we started dating, so call it a friendship thing," Dean said, since the way Caleb was currently staring at him, he thought that maybe that might be easier for the guy to swallow. "And it's not like we got each others names and 'always and forever' or something fucking stupid like that done. Gimme a break here!" he protested. It wasn't like that at all. It had just been a thing. "We just got talking and she wanted one done and I liked the idea, then she found out I could draw and she'd wanted something original, so asked me if I'd design it, that's all. And it's a little angel thing, surrounded by this kind of black cloud - really, it's hard to explain. I could draw it for you, but yeah. And it's on the small of her back - she wanted it somewhere she wasn't likely to scar." And they hadn't been dating then, so he'd not been willing to even contemplate somewhere more intimate.

Caleb was hard pressed to believe it wasn't the result of someone being smitten, but he wasn't saying that. "Okay." he said, holding up his hands. "Before you were together," Even if Caleb was of the opinion that Dean's love had been present for some time, "It isn't like that." he placated. "What else does this place have?" he asked, to move them forward.

"I don't know - Billy was meant to be converting the attic, but I don't know if that actually got done. But, two bedrooms - it doesn't give a lot of room, y'know? Hell, at one point when we were all here, I almost ended up just hanging blankets over the bars of the cage downstairs and sleeping in there." but there wasn't a bed and Thia hadn't been willing to entertain the suggestion he should sleep on the sofa. Even though she'd done just that.

"Well, where's the attic?" Caleb asked. "And yeah, the place is small. Though...defensively speaking, the bigger the place, the harder it is to defend." he added offhandly. "So, if you had, say, six people here, then...you'd be pretty well defended. Probably driving each other fucking nuts, but defended." He walked into the hall, looking up to see if there was a trap door. "Why would you want to sleep in the basement?"

The trap door was at the other end of the landing and Dean grabbed a pole to hit the door and drop it down, hooking the ladder that was attached to the inside of the hatch. "Well, there's only two rooms, and there were four of us. The maths didn't add up - at least, not if I wanted to keep my sanity at the time anyhow. It wasn't really that I wanted to sleep in the basement, it was more that I wanted to be able to sleep at night and not spend all my time lying there trying not to do anything to the girl next to me. As it was, she insisted on sleeping downstairs instead."

Caleb...could definitely understand how that might have been a little bit stressful. He couldn't have promised he wouldn't do anything. Not spending the night every night next to a girl he wanted so bad he could taste it. "I still don't know how you managed to not make a move on her until after you were pretending to date her, over in England." he said, starting to climb up into the attic. "I sure as hell wouldn't have. You ever find out if you could have made a move sooner?"

"Yeah, I could have," Dean told his friend, watching until Caleb had reached the top of the ladder before following him up. "From what she's said, probably... any time from about the middle of the thing with the shadows." he reached the top of the ladder and pulled himself up into the attic.

Caleb was looking around for a light, and found it the hard way by walking his face into it. The bulb smacked his cheek, and he winced faintly, stepping back and pulling the cord. It smelled like work had been done up there recently, that kind of sawdust smell. "You should have listened to me sooner, you might have been a lot happier a guy for a while there...."

"Hey - I did listen to you," Dean protested. "What do you think we were doing on the beach that night in the first place?" He knew when he said that that he'd come a long way. It wasn't that long ago that he wouldn't even be able to bring the subject of that night up without feeling like he was going to break down some. And now he could do it in a lighthearted way. Sure, he wasn't there with the deed itself - and really, Dean hoped that he'd never be able to talk about murder in anything approaching a lighthearted manner - but he could talk about the good parts of that night, the intentions. It wasn't all mixed up together in his head anymore. He looked around the attic, noting that this place clearly wasn't entirely finished. Billy had been doing some work with boarding up and putting in more insulation to protect it from the winter, but it was hardly pretty. 'Functional' was probably the best that could be said for the room. There were supplies up here, lots of boxes, and a bed. You could use this room - as long as you didn't mind the unfinished woodwork and bits all over the place..

Caleb looked around. "...the more I see of this place the more I think it really is built for the world to end." he commented, shaking his head. "I mean...not that that's a bad thing, just weird to see all at once." he said. Which, it was. Very strange to see. Practical, most certainly, but vaguely unsettling as well. Probably because he was generally the most paranoid son of a bitch in the room, and these people were out-doing him in spades.

"Welcome to my world, I guess," Dean shrugged. "They tend to be like that - scared the hell out of me when oz took me downstairs and opened up this huge chest full of guns. or, well, it would have done had we not just heard that vampires had hit town. That kinda alters your perspective on things. But, when I had a chance to look back and think about the fact that he just handed me one and expected me to get on with it, and that he did that like it was a normal thing and everything, and he was prepared for something like a full on vampire attack... Yeah."

"...my brother and I dealt with it, but yeah...not in any way expecting or prepared for it." Caleb said. "I thought I was paranoid...but seriously, this trumps me. I can't tell if I'm impressed or...just really, really unsettled." he said honestly. "Or if I should be thinking about the same shit. Not that I have the means. Dorian's house isn't exactly apocalypse central, and even if I decided to go full on paranoid schizophrenic, it wouldn't really be worth trying to trick that place out. Too in the middle of town, not big enough, not defensible at all. I mean, it held up against the shadows, but, so long as things were barricaded it was alright, and even then I had to waste a lot of them with magic. It never really would have stood up to the vamps, if they'd picked it to raid."

Dean thought again of the key in his pocket and began worrying at the scab on his lip once more, before he made himself stop that, tasting a hint of blood in his mouth. "Well, the reason we moved up here in the first place was because I basically trashed the other house with the shadows. And the vampires decided to try and burn us out before they skipped town, so... Well, you build houses out of wood over here, they don't really stand up all that well to anything at the end of the day, do they?" he asked, before deciding to come to a half way point with himself. "But, look - if there is anything? In the future. You - you have my number. And you know where this place is, so..." There, Caleb could still have that, he just wouldn't be able to let himself in. Half way. Dean felt better for that.

Caleb looked over, and wasn't quite sure what to say. "Thank you, but..." he started, then just moved forward with his thoughts. "If anything that serious went down, I'd need to be with my brothers. Unless they bailed on me. I...I might send Nic here or something, but...shooting for pure honesty here, if shit goes that wrong, if it hits that hard that a place like this was fully necessary?" He quirked a little half smile that was a little unreadable. "If I wasn't with my brothers, I'd probably already be dead." he said.

Dean nodded. "Still - offer's there," he said, having to bite down again on the instinctive offer to widen that out to Caleb's entire family and anyone else he trusted to send up here. He couldn't do that. He hated the fact he couldn't, but he couldn't.

"Appreciated." Caleb said, honesty in his tone. "Means something." he added after about a minute of thinking it over. "Especially after..." he made a vague gesture. "...the whole half-demon thing." Since really, most people really probably wouldn't do that after hearing something like that. So, he appreciated the thought, even if he didn't think he'd ever use it. For Nic, maybe, but...yeah. He'd either be with his brothers doing god knew what, or he'd be taking things down as fast as he could, and he knew he couldn't sustain that long term. Even with the knife. Blood magic just wasn't built for that kind of shit.

Dean shrugged a shoulder. "Mate, after everything - if I can't trust you, I don't know who I can trust," he said, honestly, though it felt to him like it fell a little short, what with the key still in his pocket and everything. But - it was his family. He trusted Caleb, but he wasn't going to set that to other people.

Probably anyone else. Caleb thought, but caught himself from saying. That was the masochistic streak in him. The one that kept looking for ways to fuck everything up, even with friendships. He couldn't help it, it was there, and he didn't trust himself, so he didn't know why other people wanted to do it. Right now though wasn't the time to get into it. Dean had enough issues of his own, he didn't really need to add on other ones from friends. "I appreciate the trust, too." Caleb said, again, quirking that same little half smile that didn't quite have a specific tone to it. "Least...you know you can with the shit you wouldn't call anyone else to deal with." He was that friend. The shady one. Or something like that.

"Kinda says it all, really, doesn't it?" Dean agreed, meaning that if he could trust Caleb with that level of thing, then he could just flat out trust him. Dean's world was fairly simple when it came to things like that.

Yeah, it says that I'm the friend that makes things less messy for you. Caleb thought, though it wasn't an unkind thought. More just truthful, from his specific point of view. But then he was not in the best frame of mind at the moment. He couldn't even have said why, or why he was reacting in a really down on himself manner right then. It just...happened sometimes. He wondered if he shouldn't do like Nic was. Keep count of that shit. But then again, he wasn't really looking to better himself, and he didn't know that anything he thought wasn't true. "Yeah. does." Caleb agreed. Then that half smile was back. "Though next time you need stitching up...I'm knocking your ass out first."

"God, please," Dean agreed, without pause. He couldn't express just how much he had hated that. "Sorry - I'm clearly a pussy about pain. Bring on the oblivion, really," he said, checking in a couple of the boxes to see whether there was anything interesting in them, but there wasn't - just a lot of food and some camping-style equipment.

Caleb sat down, letting his feet dangle down through the hole in the floor. "I will." he said, kind of quietly, just a tiny bit moreso than he'd been speaking. God that had bothered him. Bothered him on levels he hadn't ever thought about and stuck with him. It played back into the demon bar, of course, and just...there was badness. He wasn't doing that again. He'd crack Dean over the head before he did that again. Then he'd stitch him up, but...no listening to him scream and beg. No not ever.

Dean looked up and over, frowning slightly, noting the change in Caleb's tone. "You okay?" he asked, putting the camping stove he'd been about to lift out and have a look at back in the box and closing the lid.

Caleb looked over. "Not really." he said. "But that's not really new, is it. I mean...before I met you I was in the psych ward, not exactly the place of the mentally shiny and clean." he said, making light of it in a way, but it didn't come off perfectly.

Dean gave him the best 'I'm not buying that' look he could with one eye mostly swollen shut. "Right. How about no, try again. I didn't mean generally, I mean you've gone all quiet on me. So, what'd I say?" because it wasn't looking like anything else had distracted his friend's attention.

"Nothing, actually." Caleb admitted. "Wasn't you. I just---" he paused then sighed, rolling his eyes at himself, and he dragged his fingers through his hair. "Ever actually caused someone pain?" he asked. "And I don't mean in a fight, where it's mutual. I mean, you, causing someone else pain. Enough so they're screaming."

Dean shook his head, then stopped, seeing where this was going. "No. This is me, isn't it? This is what happened. Mate - I'm a wuss, but - I really appreciate everything you did. You know that, right? You saved my life - I couldn't... There was no way I could have gone to the hospital with that. Thia as well. You saved both of us, really - she'd say it too if she was here. I... I'm so grateful for everything you did. It would have been a lot worse without you."

"I'm not looking for a thanks." Caleb said. "Though--you're welcome." he added. "No I just..." He had to pause again, figuring out how to word it. This was almost harder than his heritage. It bothered him on such a different level. "I've killed things. And, I can do that, and it doesn't bother me, and I've heard things scream, but usually it's right before they check out. And usually it was trying to kill me first. But I've never been a sadist. I've never...I've never done that before, in any capacity, and it just...reminded me far too much of the shit I saw at the bar. And I know it was for the greater good, and I know you needed it done, and so did she, but that doesn't take the screams away, y'know? Some things just...echo." He was quiet a moment. "I could never torture anyone." he said. Because hi, yeah, he really knew that now. If anything needed to be done in that capacity for the greater good? They would need to find someone else to do that. It wouldn't be him.

"It stays with you and sometimes, at the weirdest times, it plays on a loop in your head and you can't get rid of it, though you really, really want to?" Dean suggested. "And sometimes you think that knowing that it had to be done and that you had no choice isn't a good enough excuse, but it's the only one you've got and you've got to go with that?" He knew what that felt like, and it seemed a better answer than 'well, don't do that then'.

Caleb looked over. "That how it feels for you about killing him?" he asked. Because he figured it probably did. There was a reason that Caleb had offered to do it for him in the first place. Still wished he had, in a lot of ways. for one, it would take away that underlying fear. He wasn't necessarily afraid of Dean, he was just aware that Dean could kill him with little to no trouble, and generally speaking, he was used to being the one who could kill everything around him. And while they were comparable--all he'd need was the drop on Dean as well, still. That one shot was always going to be remembered.

Dean nodded. "Sometimes, yeah." He paused, looking at his friend. "I'm sorry I put you through that," he said, quietly. He'd done it without a second thought, relying on the belief that Caleb could handle anything and everything. A fucking selfish, blinkered view - he knew he should appreciate his friends more, not assume so much all the time, not push so much onto them. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right and now Caleb had this and it was his fault. 'Sorry' didn't seem enough. 'Sorry' didn't take away that experience.

Caleb sighed, and leaned back on his arms, looking down through to the floor below for a few long moments. "How'd you get past it?" he asked. "Or, haven't you?" Because he didn't know, honestly. They hadn't talked a whole lot since Dean had left. Checked in, but not really talked. He'd helped Dean out with a few things on the fly, but...yeah. Long talks about murder weren't great to have over the phone, either way.

"I worked through some stuff. Thia made me talk about it. A lot," he told Caleb. "Which... helped. Once I got to it. I dunno, it was all mixed up in my head and... I have a tendency to give myself a hard time anyhow. I dunno if I'm past it? I don't really know what that means, or what that would be. But I... A couple of weeks ago, I wouldn't even be able to have this conversation. I couldn't say 'Marquette' without feeling like I was going to panic. My gun's still locked away and thia's got the key and I don't know if I'm ever going to ask for it back." Unless I need it, he thought. They were standing in a house prepared for the end of the world, after all. "But yeah, I still have those times. But really, I - I'm okay with that. Because I don't want to be okay with the thought of murdering someone. Which would you prefer? To know you can't handle torturing someone - or to look at yourself in the mirror and realise that you would be just fine with that?"

"Oh, it gave me the realization. That I was never going to be like them, and on a much more up close and personal level than just knowing so deep down. I know now. That's a good thing to know. It just...doesn't really help sometimes. And the shit that happened there's still with me. Still...really close to the surface. Only it's not something I can justify. It was evil, all wrapped up in a box, and I couldn't do anything." he said, stressing the last bit, because he was truly still not past that. It still bothered him to no end. "Sometimes I think about it. Trying to find it again. After...we left, one of them followed Math and I out. Was trying to bargain for me."

"Bargain for you?" Dean asked, what else he was going to say lost as he caught onto that, and didn't really get what was meant there.

"Yeah. As in it wanted to fucking keep me, probably to take back down into the bar, to toy with until I expired." Caleb said, not looking at Dean. "Maybe to--" he stopped there. Because he'd been about to give a detail of what might have befallen him, and he wasn't going there. Wasn't sharing the nightmare. "We killed it. Or, I killed it, I don't know. Kind of...kept stabbing it after it was dead. That part's a little fuzzy. Y'know, nothing in your memory is ever fuzzy where you want it to be. I wish I could blot out being in the bar."

"I know," Dean said, agreeing with that. He could still hear the sound of that shot, watch the body fall in his mind, even the way the moonlight landed on the beach and the sound of the breakers - it was all there, crystal clear. "Did it help?" he asked, after a moment. "Killing one of them? Did that help at all?" Because Dean knew it wasn't a situation he'd been in, and he knew that his reactions and Caleb's reactions and what each of them needed - they were all different. And whilst he could parallel on a lot of things, emphasise with certain situations, he couldn't know, and he wouldn't try. Sometimes there were just things that nobody else in the world could fully appreciate.

"Not really." Caleb said, not having to think about that. "Not when I saw what I did. Not knowing there were so many of them down there, and those people...some of them were going to die quick. But some of them...." Revulsion flickered over his features. He was thinking about the poor fucker who'd been being skinned, to make wallpaper, the wounds all cauterized. So he couldn't bleed out. God.

Dean nodded slightly, not knowing what Caleb was thinking, but getting enough from that look to know he probably didn't want to either. "I asked Thia once whether sometimes it... Whether sometimes, if she took someone's injuries - whether she'd prefer to die than to suffer them. I know she comes back, but..." But sometimes the pain wasn't worth it. Sometimes it was better just to have it over with.

Caleb's gaze ticked to Dean. "What did she say?" he asked, not knowing how he would answer the question if he had the option of coming back. All he did know was if he had, he would have definitely tried to find the place again, just so he could take down as many as he could--then try again the next day. And the next. and he realized it wouldn't work out so well. He knew that. He'd just wind up being the horror story he'd thought up for what would happen if demons ever got ahold of Lullaby. But he would want to try.

"She said she wouldn't, but that... She was talking about that night. If she'd taken it all from me, she would - have died. But she said it was worth it because she didn't want to leave me alone. And - I dunno. I just... I think that sometimes maybe it isn't - worth it. I think that maybe sometimes it's better to - sometimes the suffering... Nothing would be worth that." Not for her, at least. He didn't know if he'd ever be strong enough to make that decision, to even suggest she considered it, if the worst happened.

Listening, Caleb could kind of see both sides. He could definitely understand thinking the pain wasn't worth it, especially since she came back. But he could also understand not wanting to leave in the first place, or leave people that you cared about alone. He paused for a few moments. "What happens to her when she dies?" he asked. "Do you know?"

"For her? She describes it that she just... stops. One moment she's taking her last breath, next she's taking her next and it's a day later. And she has new scars." And me. "For me? Her - her body stays until dawn the next day and then fades, and then there's nothing until she comes back the next day. She reappears in the same place she died," he told him, keeping his voice steady, but mostly blank. He'd noticed that Caleb had steered the conversation away from whether sometimes it was better to die, but he didn't try and put it back on track. From the sounds of it, it hadn't really been something Caleb wanted to talk about anyhow.

"That doesn't--" Caleb started and stopped, amending his statement. "For her, that doesn't sound so bad. Blinking and being back. No like...purgatory, or hell, or being a spirit, or....anything, just the pain stops, and she's back again. So I think in her case, I'd vote it'd be better to die, come back all new, not deal with the pain." he assessed, not actually having dropped the subject entirely, just thinking it through on different levels. "For the people there in the bar--like I said before. Acceptable casualties, because I really honestly believe that none of them should survive something like that. It would...it would ruin a person. There's no coming back from that." Hell, he felt a little ruined just for having witnessed it.

So, he hadn't changed the subject - Dean wasn't sure if he was glad about that or not. "Do you believe in those things?" he asked. "Not being a spirit, obviously, cos yeah - fact. But the rest - purgatory, or hell. Heaven," he added, putting that one on, because if you were going to talk about any of them, may as well have the whole set.

Caleb shrugged. "I don't know. I don't believe in a higher power, but I might buy that there are other planes of existence. We know there are spirits." So, there could be other things. He didn't know. He wasn't going to say either way, if he didn't have a better idea. "I'm just saying it sounds better to just blink and be back than going someplace not so nice or whatever in the mean time."

"Yeah - I kind of meant for everyone else," Dean shrugged. "Maybe it doesn't make a difference. Maybe sometimes living's the hell, I dunno. But yeah - for her, I can see how sometimes it might be better just to start over again." For her - not for him. Those twenty-four hours were the longest of his life. He never wanted to have to live through those again.

"Yeah..." Caleb agreed. "On the other hand, I doubt it's fun and games for everyone else." he said. Then he had to ask the question that occurred to him earlier. "You haven't said, but...has she died again? You said she'd never let you die...has she done that?"

Dean looked away a little, not meeting Caleb's eyes. "Not recently," he said, his voice dropping slightly. He looked down at the floor, exhaling softly and swallowing, taking a moment before he looked back up at his friend. "During the shadows." He couldn't remember if he'd told Caleb or not. He hadn't exactly wanted to talk to anyone. The only person he clearly remembered telling was Joshua.

Silent for a long moment, Caleb watched Dean. "What happened?" he asked, hoping for slightly more of a story than knowing it had happened. Mostly because he wanted to assess the both of them from that. It would probably play into how he reacted to things with them if anything went to hell. Depending on what happened, he may or may not involve them with things.

Dean ran the tip of his tongue over the scab as it crossed the inside of his lip, taking his time before answering. "It'd been fine - we had a system. I'd destroyed all the mirrors and everyone was upstairs. So, they were coming every couple of hours, but they could only get to us that one way. All it needed was someone at the top of the stairs with a gun. And that was usually me - because they weren't coming for me. So, I could just pick them off and then wait for the next wave to roll around. Until it changed - and suddenly they were coming for me as well. Six of them, straight for me. I didn't expect it - it made me sloppy. I only managed to get five of them before the sixth got me. And while I was doing that, the rest were going for everyone else," he explained, his voice hollow, an edge of self-recrimination there. "I was hurt the worst. The thing got me, right across the chest," he explained, drawing out the path of where the scars should have been on him. "There was a lot of blood - pain. I don't really remember hitting the floor. But I remember the argument. Whether they should take me to the hospital - whether they could cope without me." He paused, looking away again. "Who was more important. I didn't get a say in that. She took everyone's injuries, but she took mine last. And then she bled out on me."

Watching Dean trace where the scars should have been, Caleb automatically was thinking about damage there, his own scars, and wondering if he'd seen scars on Lullaby. Possibly, he had and just hadn't known what he was looking at. But then again, he wasn't in the habit of looking at the chests of girls that his friends were into. As Dean continued speaking though, he could imagine the scenario. He had a good imagination too. A creative mind. One that highly inappropriately thought of a drawing he could do just off of the mental imagery there. Which he would never, ever draw. "Cope without you how? Were you dying?" he asked. That was how they'd got on the subject. Though he thought it would really mess with someone's head if people were around you discussing whether or not it was practical to let you die...

Dean shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think so - they were talking about whether they could take me to the hospital. But that would take time - it would leave everyone else behind," Dean told him, not saying that at the time it felt like he was dying - that was just him being an overdramatic wuss about everything. And he knew it was because Thia had died, once she'd taken his injuries. There was that connection there, but they'd talked about it as well - she'd taken everyone elses on top. She'd told him it wasn't his fault. "I... Oz and I were the main defense we had. Thia had a shotgun, but... Maddie's magic wasn't any use against it, and Billy and Sophie - they don't really do weapons. And Oz was only of any use in wolf form, up close and personal - and that gets you hurt. I could pick them off at a distance. They never got anywhere near people with me there. Or, they shouldn't have. And they didn't, not after that. There was just - just that one time." He should have been better, he should have been paying more attention. He shouldn't have gotten cocky. He should have built that barrier earlier on. He should have - there were so many things he should have done.

"So...you probably wouldn't have died, but you would have been out of commission, and other people either were from the start, or were then." Caleb assessed, tone lightly questioning to see if he had it right. "So...she fixed it all, and bled out." He hadn't missed how Dean had worded it. Bled out on him. "Did she...did it happen fast?" he asked, kind of wondering if Dean was going to tell him to mind his own business at that point.

"It felt like forever," Dean told him, which he knew wasn't a proper answer, not a real answer, not a factual answer, but that's what it had felt like. He stared blankly at a spot on the floor. "There was so much blood." Because he'd already lost a lot when she'd started bleeding. He'd been soaked in it by the end.

Caleb knew about there being too much blood around. Knew it really well, both from more times than he cared to recount of seeing his own blood spilled around him like rain, or the bar. So, he was silent for a long moment, eyes on his friend. Giving them both a minute before he continued. "So she chose you, and died...you didn't leave her when she died." Because that was how people bled out on you. You stuck around. Which...honestly he couldn't actually imagine. Not properly. He could get the mental imagery, could picture it, but in no way could his mind begin to process the information that would give him an idea of what that would feel like.

Dean looked up at that and gave his friend a slightly confused look. "Of course I didn't leave her," he said, as though the very idea was inconceivable. And it was - how could he leave her when she was dying? How could anyone walk away from that?

Nodding, Caleb still didn't know how that could be properly dealt with. "Then I'm sorry that that happened." he said. But it highlighted that devotion thing he'd seen between them all the more. Made it make even more sense, than just Dean had been carrying a torch for a long time. If she'd deliberately decided to do something like that, especially when it probably wouldn't have killed him, and it did kill her...that rather said something. It actually kind of made the tattoos thing make more sense to Caleb as well. It just had a heavy perspective to add into the entire scenario that was kind of vital to truly understand the scope of everything else. "I can't imagine what that must have been like."

"Good. You don't want to," Dean told him, bluntly. "Some things you just don't want to know."

Caleb once again nodded. Yeah, he bought that entirely. But then again, he didn't think he'd ever be in that situation. He was far too apt to throw himself to the wolves and he didn't have a girlfriend with a reset button and the ability to make him all better. And god, did he not want one. That...fuck. NO. "Here's hoping I never have to find out, and you don't have to go through it again."

"Yeah - I... Just have to be careful with myself," he agreed, though the humour there was very dark - it would have been better if it hadn't been the truth. But he felt like maybe he was getting through to Thia a little - she hadn't tried the way she'd used to when he'd got hurt this time. He still had all his own injuries. That felt like a twisted kind of victory.

"Good reason for being a self preservationist." Caleb said. "Though kind of a messed up way of getting there. In order to keep her safe, you have to make sure you are. With Nic...I don't know how that's going to go. If she even continues speaking to me after I tell her. Which...I don't know. Can I ask you for an honest assessment there?" he asked. "I just told you everything. Did you need to know as much as I think you did? Has it just skewed everything, and fucked everything up? Is it better to be honest, or could everything be fine or better if she never finds out?"

"You can't lie to someone you care about," Dean told him. "That's not right. At all. And you'd only be hurting yourself in the end - because the person they'd like? Would be the lie you gave them and you'd have to go through it all knowing they liked the lie and always wondering if they'd even like you if you were you. And the longer you leave that, the harder it'll be to be able to decide to tell them - and the less likely that you won't get slapped and dropped like a stone just on the basis that you lied, never mind what you lied about. Until you get to a point where you can't suddenly decide to be yourself, because that would never be accepted, and you're trapped in the lie. As for whether I needed to know that much? I don't know. I think - does it make a difference that your mother ascended?" he asked.

Listening to his friend, Caleb had to wonder what the world was like in the guy's head. He spoke with conviction, about what was right and wrong, and it sounded so sure, like everything was black and white and there weren't any shades of grey. Which...that was where Caleb existed. In that grey area. Possibly the grey area that drifted towrds the black. "She knows that there's something that I haven't told her, and she knows that it's something bad, that might make her run." he said. "I couldn't not tell her that." So he wasn't living a total lie. Just living with a blank spot. Or several. When Dean asked the last question, Caleb had to think about it. "I don't know." he said. "I know it doesn't matter to me. But I was the kid my parents didn't want in the first place. My home life...let's just label it under 'neglect' and leave it there. But if you talk to my brother Math...he grew up in a loving home. Or at the very least a supportive one. It's all perspective. I think to some people they'd think that because she redeemed on some level, it matters. I just know the practicality of it isn't nearly as fluffy sounding as people would want it to be."

Dean considered this. "I meant in relation to you," he said, after a moment or two. "Because you started your story with her. That seemed to put the emphasis onto your mum, what she was. That's why I wondered whether it made a difference. Whether you would have been... I dunno. Different, maybe? If she was just a demon, rather than an ascended demon." And woah, didn't those words feel weird coming out of his mouth? That kind of hit things home a little more, saying it outloud like that. But then again, saying things aloud always gave things a solid truth.

"I would have been far more fucked in the head than I already am." Caleb said. Because that much he at least knew. Instead of being ignored, he might have grown up being tortured to some extent. Or just killed and eaten, who knows. "If she wasn't ascended...thinking about it right now, I doubt she would have bothered with me at all. She either would have terminated me at birth, if she didn't before then, or...let's just say 'worse' and not try and fill in that blank, shall we?" he said. "It's better, just...I don't know how much. She's off touring Europe with my dad after they abandoned me. And I can't say what they're doing, but it probably isn't randomly killing tourists, or setting churches on fire. They're probably just...sight seeing."

Dean didn't have a response to that, because - yeah, that wasn't something he could in any way imagine. Sightseeing aside, of course. Eventually, he knew he needed to say something. "You asked me if you told me more than I needed to know. I think maybe that's it - I get why you told me what your mother is, but... I dunno. Maybe I didn't need to know that much? Demons, ascended demons - I just... Or I could be wrong. I - I just don't see your mother being a huge part of your life. From what little you've said about her. Even if you just told me as a dry run for telling Nic, I can't really see you bringing anyone home to meet mum, y'know?"

"I didn't want you hearing another way. You're my friend, you trusted me, I wanted to trust you like you trusted me. I told you because I didn't really want you hearing it from someone else, and--" one day finding my brains splattered all over the walls. Caleb sighed. "So, you would be just fine with me saying hey, I'm a half demon, that's it, end of story?" he asked.

"I didn't say that. I just think that... You went into it more like... There are demons, then there are demons that aren't quite so bad. It settles the mind really clearly on 'demon', y'know? Kind of laying the groundwork for badness from the outset. Which, I know - there's no point sugarcoating things. But... It would be like me sitting my parents down to tell them about Thia and starting out with 'so, to create a fade, you have to murder five people'," Dean pointed out.

"So, how do you start a conversation that's inevitably going to focus on the demonic in the first place?" Caleb asked. And he was honestly asking, not frustrated with the conversation, wanting to know. "It's going there. With your example, you don't have to get into creation. You could even just dumb that down to 'magic'. But with this...half demon. Kind of says it right there in the title, and like I said, most people are going to stop listening. I guess...I felt like if I started there I'd be spending the entire rest of the time scrambling, because then everything's on me from the start, and not only on me but me being demonic."

"And everything's not on you from the start by beginning with demons flat out?" Dean asked - posing the question, rather than arguing a point. "Or are you going for 'this is as bad as it gets and I'm not that so whatever I am must be better'?" He took a breath and tried to think of an actual answer to the question. "Okay - better ways of going about it... I don't know. It's never easy I guess for any conversation that involves 'I'm not human'. But, there are lots of people who aren't that." He shook his head. "Or possibly I'm one of the few people around here that really appreciates that fact. You might want to balance it out slightly more. Yes, your mother was a demon - but your father was human, right?"

"I guess I saw it as being on her from the beginning there. And no, my father wasn't anything but a normal guy. Or...as normal as anyone can be who actually falls for a demon. Which...really should say something about my old man." Caleb said. "He's kind of...a non-entity. She's the ruler of the roost. I kind of viewed my dad as some sap that got sucked in by this woman who was amazingly out of his league, fell for her, like some little puppy, and she just happened to fall for him back, which triggered a big life change for her. And he never did anything to incur her wrath."

Dean wondered about that, wondering if it was possible for the guy just to be a sap, if he'd managed to truly attract a demon. But, he'd never met them, so he stayed quiet on that front. "But what you are - it's a bit of both, right? Human and demon. So the fact that you're half human's as important as the fact you're half demon. It's just that human's normal - from the point of view of humans anyway." God, this was a weird conversation to be having. "And that human half means you're not a demon. You said it yourself - demons have to be evil. You don't. You've got a choice. So, yeah, I'd say that your dad's important, even if it's just to stop you being that full on what you don't want to be."

Silent for a long moment, Caleb thought about all that. "My perspective's skewed." he admitted. "I know it is. It is on just about everything. I have to watch myself, which is generally why I don't exactly have a huge social circle." he said. Then quirked a humorless half smile. "Beyond my general disregard for most of humanity, and belief that most people are morons." He looked down again, then back at Dean. "I don't know how to do this." he said. "And I don't want to fuck it up."

"We all have to watch ourselves, mate - you just happen to have a reason why." Some of us poor bastards are just humans with a short fuse and a tendency to over react, Dean thought, though he knew putting it that way was probably just being nice about himself. For once in his life. "When I was going home - when I had to tell my parents about Thia, you gave me some really good advice. You told me to prepare, to think about everything ahead of time. Hell, to give them things to read on what fades are. You told me to focus on the positives. You told me to sell it to them. You need to do the same thing."

Caleb listened, remembering giving the advice. "So that worked, then?" he asked, watching Dean closely. "There's not much to write on what I am. We're all different, and there isn't any real similarities to track. What are the positives?" he asked. "I could be worse?" he continued, really wanting to know. He couldn't see them himself, so...he needed the guidance.

"Yeah, that worked. My dad got so totally caught up on the fact that her dad was a git that I think he didn't even really register the rest, he was too busy feeling sorry for her. And mum and she ended up looking through baby photos together, so that sorted out as well," Dean shrugged. "And you? The positives? That you've got free will on stuff. And that, yeah, sometimes you have a fucked point of view and ways of looking at things, but you know it's fucked. Oz has that as well - he was bitten when he was a kid and he has all these wolf instincts and he knows that sometimes his reactions are screwed, but he tries to work with that. You've got an awareness. And, for god's sake, don't jump in with 'I could kill someone and be just fine with that', okay? Because... trust me, that's screwed. I just... just don't tell her that, right? You can be honest about what you are without having to go into too much detail, okay. Skip over the top end stuff altogether. It's heritage, it's given you a shit home life and some crap drives and instincts. It means that sometimes you don't see the world in the same way as everyone else and the things that are important to some people just seem a waste of fucking time to you. Be vague about the rest, let her get used to the idea before you go into detail. Look mate, I know you - we've been through some serious shit in a really short time and I know I can trust you. I can base what you tell me off that. From what you've told me, she doesn't have that. Honestly? I really fucking hope she doesn't, because I wouldn't wish what we'd been through on anyone. But yeah."

Caleb listened to all of that, trying to take it in so he'd remember. He knew he probably wouldn't be sharing his ability to be morally screwed enough to take someone out without blinking. That was much more just something he thought he could tell Dean, since Dean had come over the one day to talk about taking someone out and all. "She's new to everything." he said. "Just found out. I kind of...showed her. Blood magic, anyways. She held my arm together for me while I stitched myself back up." he said, which was a detail that was unnecessary, but said something about Nic, which was why it was shared. "So far she's dealt alright. Froze up when faced with a rampaging werewolf, but who wouldn't be. She did alright with the ghosts." he added. But then they were less panic inducing what with the not looking to kill anyone. "But no we haven't had the kinds of experiences together that you and I have. Nothing close."

"Don't you have some nifty knife for dealing with wounds?" Dean asked, then shook his head. "Nevermind. Okay, so she knows some shit but not all of it. By the way - did you tell her that not all werewolves are rampaging monsters? Cos - would be grateful if you would if you didn't," he added in, as that occurred. "But, tell her bits, leave out the rest. if she doesn't freak entirely, you can bring up more at a later date. But - make this about you. And about what she knows about you." He paused. "You any idea how she sees you at the moment?" he asked.

"Only when I actually have something to cut that isn't me. I was just showing her, I didn't pick a fight to do it." Caleb said. "I already figured I was going to scare her, I didn't want her to be even more scared, or afraid of me. Which...I knew she could possibly be anyhow." Like with this. She could be afraid of him. And he wouldn't blame her for that. "I think I told her that, a while back." he added, trying to wrack his brain. "Why, just for the Oz angle?" he asked. "...with the way shit's gone down in town...you might want to keep that secret as close to the chest as possible..." he added. "There's been...well. Bullshit." Which, now that he was thinking about it, he had to wonder how a werewolf would take. "And how she sees me at the moment?" He couldn't help but quirk a half smile. "As someone that she's supposed to just be friends with, but we keep getting distracted by things like making out every chance we get?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "I didn't mean that. I meant, does she trust you? Does she know you as more than just some bloke she's attracted to? How far does the 'friends' thing go?" he asked. "And yeah, because of Oz. And I don't mean tell her about him, just... Look, if there's been bitten wolves running rampant, the more people who don't think that all werewolves are mindless killing machines, the better, y'know? I don't want... There's enough prejudice in this world already," he said, thinking of it that way for the first time as he said it.

"I'll reiterate." Caleb promised Dean. "And I don't know how far friends goes. I know she came back for me. When the werewolf came running up the street, I sent her back to the car. I stayed behind, because it was trying to get into a bar. The people had the door shut, but...it would have got in. So...I got it's attention, and it was coming for me. But she...well. Got my car and came back for me, and ran it over. So obviously I mean something, or that girl is a martyr." Which was also possible. "I don't know what that means."

"I'd go with you mean something," Dean advised. "So yeah - I dunno, mate, I'm out of advice. But, good luck. And I still want to meet her." He smiled slightly. "I'd say that maybe evidence that you have friends who know and aren't running for the hills would help, but I don't think I'm a shining example to put up there."

Chuckling, Caleb flashed a little bit of a smile. "C'mon, you'd be a good example." he said. No one knew Dean dropped Lullaby's dad in one shot. Just him and Lullaby. "You're all polite, and shit. Nice...it could lend towards my credibility if when I tell her I can say that you know, and you still give me the time of day." And he did still want them to meet. And he was still insecure about the idea of Dean teaching Nic to shoot, but... "...and if you did want to teach her to shoot...."

"If she wants to learn, I'd be willing. Not that I've ever taught anyone or... Anything like that. And, I'd probably be a shit teacher. Oz is good at that kind of thing - she might be better with him, but he's already teaching me, and Thia and - I'd have to ask him. But, yeah, if she wanted me, I could give that a go," Dean said, easily. "And, okay - I can possibly help you out with Nic about your secret because she doesn't know about mine. And I don't have the urge to ever share that with anyone else anyway, so we're all good?" he suggested.

Caleb winced. "Did you have to word it like that?" he asked automatically, before thinking better of it. "Keep your secret. And yeah...that's...appreciated. We're good. And...thank you. For...well. Not disowning me." or worse.

Dean blinked. "Word it like what?" he asked, genuinely not catching what he'd said. "And - look, I'll keep saying it. I trust you. I can't - I can't talk for anyone else, but I trust you." He had no idea what Thia was going to say when he got home and talked to her though.

"If she wants you." Caleb clarified. "I already know that I didn't for a second think if I'd got around to teaching Leija how to use the knife I gave her that I would be able to get through that without shoving her up against the nearest wall." he explained. He just knew how things went. And girls thought talent was sexy, and Dean...while Caleb had never seen the guy fire the shot, he'd seen the end result, so--scary good. And out of the two of them, one of them looked like a road map, the other...had just gotten a cool tattoo. And wasn't a half demon.

He blinked again. "Mate... now I know you caught the newsflash where I have a girlfriend..." he said, wondering if he was actually hearing what he thought he was hearing. "You know I didn't mean it like that." Didn't even think of meaning it like that, actually.

"Yeah, I know you didn't mean it like that." Caleb said, fully believing that, and it was in his tone. "Doesn't mean that shit doesn't happen. Or that she won't decide you're..." he paused. "better? Insanely more acceptable to both her mother, society at large, and herself?" he suggested. Then shared his initial thought process. "Between the two of us, one of us is a road map." he said, tugging his sleeve up for a moment to show the mass of scars for a few moments before he pulled it back down. "One of us is really talented with a fire arm, which is a lot less freaky than being talented with blood magic, one of us now has a cool tattoo, which I think she would appreciate, and one of us isn't half evil incarnate." he finished. "It's not brain surgery."

"And one of us is really, insanely taken, okay?" Dean said, his tone touched with exasperation. He couldn't believe that he was hearing this. Didn't want to be hearing this. "Look - I'm not going to go anywhere near your girl, okay? I'm not. And, if you're going to be like that about it... I take back the offer, okay? You feel like that about it and I'd just... Prefer not to go there." He couldn't believe that Caleb would even think that he would... "Look, Thia aside, even - I don't do that kind of thing."

"I'm not worried about you." Caleb said. "I'm worried about her wising the fuck up." he admitted. He knew Dean was pretty whipped when it came down to it. And he did know things happened, but...Dean seemed more solid than to act on anything like that. But Caleb had no real claim on Nic, and vice versa, and it didn't mean that she wouldn't develop feelings for Dean over it. "And no, just because I'm a paranoid son of a bitch doesn't mean she shouldn't learn the best ways to defend herself." he added, because he did think that would make him a lot worse of a person than he wanted to own up to being.

Dean shook his head. "No - but she's going to have to learn from someone else," he said, stubbornly. "Because I'm not fucking doing it. I had enough of this shit from Joshua - I'm not going through it again. Especially not over some girl I've never even met." And especially when there's absolutely no grounds for it. Dean had to wonder what it was that had everyone seemingly convinced he was going to turn their girlfriend's heads. And he'd never actually done it. Sure, he was with Thia now, but she hadn't even considered him like that until way after she'd split with Joshua.

Frowning, Caleb looked at Dean. "Who, then?" he asked. "I sure as hell don't know how to shoot. If I picked up a firearm I'd probably just shoot myself. I'm serious, I just--I'll get over it. Just if we're working on comparisons here...you'd be the obvious better choice. That's just logic. And I don't have any actual claim on her. It's not like I'd be giving you hell over it."

"Oz - I'll ask Oz. Unless you think she'd go for him as well," Dean said, annoyed about this whole situation. "Or maybe you should just give her the benefit of the doubt and consider that, just maybe, she likes you enough not to get her head turned by the next guy who happens to wander past. Or, or - you know what I mean. But I'm not... You're my friend. I'm not willing to risk that for something like this."

"C'mon, it's not like I said that she'd be going for any asshole who came by." Caleb said lightly. "No, you. Someone who knows what he's doing, doesn't have the truckload of issues I've got...I've gone over the other reasons." he said. "And I already said, it's not you I'd be worried about. Or that I think you'd go for it. You're the guy who wouldn't make a move on a girl you were completely head over heels for for weeks, and you even lived with her. Our friendship wouldn't be at risk." he said. "Even if she did decide to go for you, or that she liked you, that wouldn't put bearing on things between you and I." he explained. Wouldn't be Dean's fault he was better. "...never met Oz so, dunno if he's a type she'd go for...or whatever, I think you're taking this worse than you need to be." he said. "I might just be paranoid and insecure. Happens when you've had as many fucked up relationships as I've had--remember? They all go fucking batshit crazy on me? Or something else? At least if this was the reason shit imploded on me, it'd be a much better reason. I could accept that one. But seriously, what about my track record would make me want to assume this won't turn to shit on me?"

"Forgive me for not wanting to be the reason for the screwing up of the next in line of my friends girls, okay? Fuck that. And it's still a 'no'. You say it wouldn't make a difference and maybe it wouldn't to you - but it really fucking would to me, so no. You decide to get over being insecure about her? Then we can talk about this again, maybe," Dean told him.

Caleb was quiet for a moment, looking at Dean a bit quizzically. "What's got you so...whatever you are about this?" he asked, honestly not getting it.

Dean looked at him. "What? You're surprised I'm offended that my friend thinks I'm going to steal his girl? I could just blow it all off and tell you you're being insane if you like. But, of course, it's nothing to do with me, is it? Not about whether I'd actively encourage this or go with it or anything. No - I just have to be there. It's just my presence, being me, that's all it'd take - like some fucked up magnet. Even though I have no fucking track record at all with women, except my current girlfriend and a single date with an insane fucking cheerleader. That's it. In my entire life. But what do I know? It's been proved to me that I'm fucking oblivious to when a girl likes me, so maybe you're right - who knows? So excuse me if I'd prefer not to get into a situation where that could happen in the first place. Sorry if I don't want to deal with having to be friends with you when something like that gets in the way."

Opening his mouth then shutting it again, Caleb stared. "Which part of 'hey I trust you not to do anything' did you miss?" Caleb asked, again, honestly a bit mystified. "I said that I don't think you'd do anything. Hard to 'steal' someone when you won't make a move." He paused for a long moment. "....are we even still talking about the same shit here, or did I accidentally trip over issues I didn't even really know were there?" he asked, because he kind of felt like that's what he'd done. Particularly with that tirade and the tone of it.

Dean could feel a headache coming on at the back of his skull, and the bruises he had and the general aches and pains left over from the fight really didn't like this at all. "The way you're putting it, it doesn't matter whether I make a move or not though, does it? You'd still be without a girl, and that'd still be my fault, the way you have it. And I don't buy that you wouldn't hold that against me in some way. So, I'd prefer to just... Not, okay? If you think all this would come up if I taught her to shoot, then it's simple - I won't teach her. Problem solved and paranoia can be put back in its box."

Caleb just...held his tongue for a few long minutes. He kept his eyes on Dean, still thinking there were issues there somewhere that the guy wasn't saying. Maybe about what he'd kinda told him about, like what happened with Thia back in England. And he'd already mentioned Thia's ex. He thought Dean was massively overreacting, but...whatever. He didn't especially like being projected on though, either, so, after a minute, he hopped down from the attic, and walked up the hall a bit, to give himself a minute. He wasn't mad, really, just not overwhelmingly pleased, and a good amount of that was directed at himself.

Dean didn't follow him, crossing over to sit on the makeshift bed, dropping his head down into his hands. He could feel a migraine brewing and he really didn't want one. Not that he ever wanted one, but they always came on at the worst times. He was glad of a little peace for a few minutes, so he let Caleb go do... whatever it was he'd felt the need to do.

Caleb gave about ten minutes or so. He didn't go far, downstairs, and he finished the soda he'd opened in the first place, then he looked at the view for a while, before he went back upstairs. He leaned back against the ladder, and thunked his head back against one of the rungs, looking up into the attic space. "I really don't want the fact that I'm an idiot meaning she doesn't learn something that could save her life." he said finally, kinda quietly.

Dean was lying on the bed by now. He'd got up to switch off the light and was lying in the darkness, his eyes closed, but he was still awake. "And if you're not an idiot? Someone else can teach her, if she needs to learn. I'd probably be shit at it anyway. Never could talk to girls," he said, his voice equally quiet. He sounded tired.

Caleb didn't have hearing like Dean, and struggled to hear what his friend had to say, so he walked partway up the ladder, though he noticed the light was off, so felt like he shouldn't go the rest of the way up. "I didn't mean to piss you off, or...whatever I did." he said honestly. "But...I'm not Joshua. Or whatever else."

"No - Joshua wasn't a friend of mine," Dean told him. "And at least with Joshua, he had a reason. I always liked Thia, after all. Wouldn't have made any difference, but I did. It always pissed Thi off though - that he didn't trust her. But look, mate, it bothers you, so I'd rather not, okay? And anyway, you've still got to discuss the heritage thing with her," Dean pointed out, though he didn't raise his voice at all, not realising Caleb couldn't hear him properly. His voice always sounded overly loud in his skull - especially when he had a migraine fast developing.

Caleb was still struggling to hear so he stepped up farther, head just above the floor-line. "It's me that bothers me." he said. "Not you. Not her. But...okay. I'm still sorry. Will you help get her the option though? Since I don't know anyone else who even knows how to do anything like that?" he asked. "Because...seriously, I'm feeling a whole lot like shit with the idea that you'd bail on that, because of me, when it could save her life. Especially knowing she's a girl who won't just hide when shit's going down."

"Well, maybe you need to work on you then," Dean muttered. He lay there, quietly, for a moment, before exhaling. "Fine, we'll see. Maybe. She might not want to learn anyhow," he pointed out.

Caleb didn't hear what was muttered, but heard muttering in general. He opened his mouth for a moment, then shut it again. "...I'm just going to go." he said. "...see you at school or something." he finished, dropping down and heading out. Obviously he'd trod on a major nerve, he couldn't quite see why Dean was being as twitchy as he was over it, and he clearly wasn't of a mind to lighten the fuck up about it either. So, better to just ditch now, and maybe try talking to him again at a later point. If there was a later point. Part of that insecurity and paranoia kicked in on that score too, and wondered if he wouldn't just fuck off now, and use the half demon thing as an excuse to cover...whatever the fuck this was. ...he needed to go for a walk.

Again, Dean let him go, closing his eyes again and listening to the footsteps as they left, the pounding in his head getting worse. He was glad the guy had just gone - he couldn't deal with people at times like this. He didn't want to deal with people at times like this. He'd be quite happy if they all just fucked off. Though, for all of that, he knew he was going to have to get up and leave at some point. He couldn't stay here all night. But - later. He just needed some time to die first.

Caleb left quietly, and after a moment's hesitation and consideration, he locked the door behind him. If Dean was going to be up in the attic...napping or something, he didn't want anything to get the drop on him. Sure, there were weapons around, but there were weapons downstairs, too. So, with that paranoid thought, he just made it slightly harder for anyone to get one up on his friend. Then he took off, going for a drive, and eventually a walk around the island, trying to clear his head.