SPN: every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you
every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you
Spoilers through 5x12. Sam needs to make his peace with someone, and Castiel is there.
Gen, PG; various kinds of UST-friendly. (Do we still say UST?) Thanks to
giandujakiss for beta.
“Um, Dean’s not here,” Sam said, hanging on to the doorframe with one hand and the edge of the door with the other, leaning forward to make it look a little more casual. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to invite Castiel inside so much as that he didn’t want Castiel to be inside.
Naturally, Castiel blinked out of existence. Sam straightened and turned, and, yep, there he was, standing in the middle of the floor like every lonely business traveler Sam and Dean ever saw through the windows of places like this as they headed to their own room.
“It was to you that I wished to speak, Sam,” the angel continued, as if he hadn’t just jump-cut his way into Sam’s temporary home.
“I was gonna take a shower,” Sam said, feeling like he was trying to turn down a date. Actually he’d just said, essentially, that he had to wash his hair-okay, he really needed to stop overthinking this stuff.
Castiel sat on Dean’s bed and flipped the edges of his trenchcoat over his legs, almost like he was settling his wings. “I will wait.”
Sam closed his eyes and wondered whether Dean and Castiel got along so well because of their total refusal to read normal social cues. He really, seriously hoped that Castiel wasn’t doing it like Dean would, just to fuck with him, though honestly it would be hard to blame Castiel for taking some amusement where he could find it.
There was no point in facing the angel all grimy from the evening’s digging, plus he didn’t want to listen to Dean’s bitching about how rank he smelled if he wasn’t cleaned up by the time Dean got back. Dean’s sniping was better than the silent treatment, but Dean was still overselling it, which was both annoying and painful each time Sam noticed that Dean was trying too hard, repeating familiar arguments because they were meaningless, because they didn’t require any real interaction. Point being: Sam fled to the shower.
The time alone wasn’t good for him. What could Castiel possibly want to talk to him about? If it was some admonishment not to give in, Sam was going to punch him. It was sad that “anger management” meant “planning to punch an angel” in this case, but at least Castiel was unlikely to punch back.
He scrubbed the cheap shampoo through his hair and used up most of the hard little bar of soap squeaking across his skin. Castiel would wait all night, though, and the last thing he wanted was to come out sopping and find Castiel and Dean deep in one of their intense conversations, all leaning in and staring into each other’s eyes and grabbing each other’s shoulders, and Sam was going to start suggesting that they should just kiss already, which would start a whole new dramatic episode-so anyway, no, he’d really prefer to get rid of the angel before Dean returned.
Because he’d forgotten to bring in a change of clothes, he ended up wrapping a more-than-usually-inadequate towel around his waist and heading back out.
Castiel, who’d been rigid as a mannequin on the bed, stood and examined him. It wasn’t like a guy checking out another guy, more like Dean making sure the Impala hadn’t acquired any damage on the road. “You are not eating well,” he observed.
“Stress, I get-” Sam began before remembering that he didn’t need to explain himself. “I’m up for the job.” He set his jaw.
Castiel ignored his anger, stepped closer and ran his fingertips over Sam’s skin, tracing the arc of his lowest rib. “These symbols,” he said, “they are the same on both of you. When I touch you I touch him.”
Sam sucked in a breath like he’d been racked. Castiel didn’t even look at his face.
“I gotta-” he said and gestured vaguely towards his bag.
“Wait,” Castiel cautioned.
Now Sam was really confused, and uncomfortable. Water was dripping out of his hair and down his back, and his skin tightened. He could feel himself using all his uncertainties to stoke his anger, and maybe he could’ve stopped himself but then what would he do? “I’m not your free show,” he snapped, pulling back. “You want to stare at someone, go tell Dean to strip down. I’m sure he’d be thrilled.”
A direct hit: Castiel blinked, like he’d heard everything behind what Sam had said. “Dean does not-” Castiel halted, maybe embarrassment, maybe just trying to preserve whatever privacy a fallen angel had.
Sam didn’t want to feel sorry for him, but-“Welcome to the club,” he said, only realizing what that sounded like once the words had left his mouth. “I mean-”
Castiel shook his head. “I know what you meant.” He held up his hand, absurdly dramatic and yet somehow wholly appropriate. “This is not the conversation I wish to have.”
Sam desperately needed to learn how to pull off that kind of line. Then Castiel was up close and personal again, his hand on Sam’s chest so smooth Sam barely had time to be shocked. His fingers were warm, their movements precise.
Sam didn’t understand Castiel’s next words-he could read Enochian, at least with a dictionary beside him, but he wasn’t fluent. “In truth the words should be sung, not spoken,” Castiel said, interrupting himself. His touch was still inexorable, shifting sides to find the next bone. “We sing His praises.”
“What are you doing?” Sam asked, grateful that the sentence didn’t end with a squeak. Much of a squeak.
“It comforted me to know that you were protected from other angels.”
Somehow Sam didn’t think that ‘you’ was singular. “Why don’t they burn me up from the inside?” Sam asked, because he’d been curious for a while. “I went black-eyed, I’m at least as much demon as I am human. Shouldn’t the marks hurt?”
Castiel removed his hand and looked up curiously. “Do you think your sins so much greater than Dean’s?”
Sam rocked back on his heels. “Don’t you?” he managed at last.
Castiel, without moving a muscle, gave off the sense of someone who had just shrugged.
“How can you compare us?” Sam asked. “Most of it, I can explain-but Lilith. How could I just let Ruby tell me what to think, who to blame? She never told me how Lilith was supposed to break the final seal, and I just-Lilith took Dean from me, and that was all I could see. I just didn’t think, even when Dean was telling me to be careful.”
Castiel was regarding him with the intensity usually reserved for Dean. “That is all understandable, Sam. We were withholding information, which I have observed is guaranteed to produce a rebellious reaction in … certain humans.”
Sam snorted.
Castiel leaned forward, like proximity would make him more convincing. “Because we did not explain, you did not believe. The Host deliberately provided additional incentive for you to remain convinced that your own desire for revenge was consistent with avoiding the apocalypse. You were kept in ignorance of the full consequence of satisfying your desires, though you could see the immediate harm. Dean was the same when he made the choice to pick up the blade in Hell. You both did wrong; your ignorance is mitigation, not excuse. As is mine.”
Sam chewed on that for a minute. “So, basically, you’re saying we were stupid, but not evil.”
Castiel tilted his head again, like he was hearing a translation of Sam’s words into the angelic tongue. “Not precisely. But God’s inordinate fondness is for beetles, not for intelligence.”
“Beetles?” Sam repeated, not sure if he’d heard right.
“There is a conceptual question whether the Almighty’s preference can ever be inordinate,” Castiel said, and if that wasn’t a twinkle in his eye Sam was a beetle himself. “It was a matter of debate among those of the Host so inclined to discuss such matters, in easier times.”
Sam shook his head, feeling weirdly relieved, maybe just because Castiel had let him off the hook with the change of topic. “Angels are strange.”
“You have no idea,” Castiel intoned, and now he had to be fucking with Sam, because he sounded just like Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune. Dean must have been showing him Dean’s version of “the classics” in his downtime, maybe when Sam had been-away.
That thought threatened to drag him back down, so he pushed it aside. His towel was slipping; he readjusted it.
“So, uh, what did you want to talk with me about?” He was still so far off balance. He needed to get done with Castiel so he’d have the energy to deal with Dean, who was checking Sam’s continued Sam-ness on a semi-hourly basis, which was going to end in throttling pretty soon.
Castiel nodded. “The Enochian symbols are protection against angels and the tattoo against demon possession. I had not considered the possibility of a third alternative-ouster by another human. It’s a loophole that can’t be allowed, Sam.”
No shit, it was a loophole. That demon had doubtless reported back to Lucifer by now, and what with believers on both sides set up to track them now, he could expect another attempted swap at any time. Worse, there might well be a witch out there with the skills to make the switch at a distance, without the complicated ritual that had required his presence. “What’s your plan?”
“I will bind your soul to your body. You can put on your pants first,” Castiel offered with his usual seriousness.
Sam gave him the stinkeye, but he really would feel better with jeans on, so he hurried over to his bag. He didn’t check to see whether Castiel was watching as he dropped his towel. “You’ll have to do the same to Dean,” he said, staring down at the orange paisley bedspread as he tugged his shorts on. “Lucifer wants him dead almost as much as he wants me.”
“Dean is already protected from such a transfer.”
Sam stopped with his hands on the button of his jeans and turned. “What?”
“My mark. As part of his resurrection, I considered it … advisable … to bind him then.”
That sounded more than usually ominous, and that was saying something. “Advisable?”
“He was ten years a torturer,” Castiel said, almost like he was apologizing. Sam boggled at him. He’d been afraid that Dean would, what, be a demon? And he’d still raised Dean?
Well, of course: no Michael without Dean; apparently demonic consent would suffice just as well as any other kind, just like whoever occupied Sam’s body got to decide whether Lucifer would reign. It all seemed very sloppy. Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Sometimes,” he said, letting his hands fall to his sides and flex, open and shut, “I really hate you guys.”
“Are you ready?” Castiel asked, and Sam didn’t fault him for ignoring that last statement. Kind of hard to figure out a response that didn’t involve smiting, he guessed. Sam nodded, and Castiel approached, raising his hand like he was going to cast out the demon in Sam-good luck with that-until he’d grabbed Sam’s shoulder.
Shit, Sam thought. Yet another way in which this life was making him a grim caricature of Dean, blurred carbon copy instead of partner. And then the pain hit, like being burned, spreading through his veins like acid. Sam’s head snapped up as he tried to deal, grunts escaping him as his nails cut into his palms.
His knees wobbled and gave way, Castiel’s hand pressing him down, like having his shoulder held to a blowtorch, tears streaming down his face as his mouth opened on a silent scream.
Then it was over, his nerves singing with the aftershocks. His hand automatically went to his shoulder, finding the same raised marks that marred Dean’s skin, raw and hot under his fingertips.
He went to the mirror over the dresser and examined the handprint. It looked a little smaller on him, he thought. He snuffled and wiped his hand over his face, cleaning it off some. “Is that-is that how it felt for Dean?”
In the mirror, Castiel turned a little, his face blank. “I do not know. He was very-I do not expect that he would have noticed the sensation.”
Sure, if they played the whose-pain-was-worst game, Dean probably now had an edge. So to speak. “But I’m safe from soul-swapping now, right?”
“You are proof against a similar attack, yes.”
Sam saw his reflection’s face twitch, but didn’t quite understand what he was feeling. “I’m oddly unreassured.”
Before Sam could blink, Castiel was next to him again, tugging him around so they were face to face. “I have no assurances to offer, Sam. That is why-”
Sam frowned, then figured it out. “That’s why you showed up when Dean was gone.”
Castiel chewed on his lower lip, which was so shockingly human that Sam reached out for him, awkwardly patting his arm a couple of times. “When he told me what had happened to you, he said that he was secondguessing himself so much that he’d nearly let you die. He is afraid he’ll drive you away again by intervening too much, but his failure to react to your body’s unusual behavior also led you into danger.”
Sam sighed and ducked his head. “Yeah, I know.” He was kind of mad at Dean for not noticing that he’d been replaced, but it had been a long time since Dean’s internal compass had pointed unerringly in Sam’s direction, and Sam had done his best to encourage that after Dean’s return from Hell. Knowing he’d participated in the problem didn’t make him any less mad at Dean, only more angry at himself.
“What can I do to help?”
Sam started, mostly because that wasn’t the kind of sentence that Winchesters heard. Especially not from angels. He stared at Castiel, whose expression was serious but patient, waiting for Sam’s guidance. “Wow,” he said, because that deserved some kind of response. “Uh. That’s-” And he couldn’t justify it, but suddenly the world seemed a little brighter. Like just because they weren’t entirely alone they were somehow in a better position, which objectively couldn’t be true-the marginal difference one fallen angel made against the freaking apocalypse was probably measurable in microseconds-but still, he couldn’t help but appreciate that kind of offer. “Actually, I think you just did.”
Castiel’s brows lowered, the look he gave Dean when Dean out-Deaned himself. “I don’t understand.”
Sam touched his newly marked shoulder. “It’s just-thank you. For caring.”
Castiel blinked. “I am not sure I could do otherwise. Free will in practice seems-constrained.”
Sam wondered whether he was thinking about the way Dean looked when he was hurting. Sam could imagine that would be a pretty significant constraint on Castiel’s choices. “Yeah, we humans are paradoxical that way.”
They stared at each other, Sam feeling more awkward by the moment. “Hey,” he said, before he could think better of it. “Dean’s supposed to bring back pizza. You want to stay?” Castiel opened his mouth, probably to deny that he needed to eat, and Sam shook his head. “Come on, you can make random observations while Dean’s got his mouth full, it’ll be hilarious.” Hilarious for Sam, anyway, and maybe what he and Dean needed was some way to bleed off the pressure that seemed to grow between them with every day that passed only talking to each other.
Castiel knew the truth, knew how fucked they were, and he’d still cast his lot with the Winchesters. Even if Dean’s pretty face had been a primary motivator, that was still better than they’d done with anyone else. Sam knew the angel wasn’t Ruby, wasn’t trying to rip them apart (not any more, but Sam was working on getting over that). Maybe if Sam could get along with Castiel, he’d be better able to deal with Dean, too. Kind of like how Dean always wanted him to show more respect for the Impala, not that Sam was ever going to admit the comparison to Castiel. Castiel wished Dean liked him as much as Dean loved that car.
“What do you say?” Sam asked. “I know Dean’d be happy to see you.”
Sam decided not to interpret the expression that flashed across Castiel’s face. “Yes,” Castiel said. Then, delicately, “You should finish dressing. I … do not want to listen to Dean’s speculations on the subject were he to find you shirtless with me.”
For some reason Sam flushed at that. He hurried over to his bag and pulled out the first shirt that came to hand, rough over his still-stinging shoulder. “So,” he said, trying to cover his discomfort, “what do you want to do until Dean gets back?”
“Dean says--” Castiel paused. “That is, I would like to learn how to play poker.”
Sam couldn’t suppress a chuckle. He’d say teaching Castiel poker was the worst idea ever, but he knew that wasn’t true. And, under the circumstances, maybe it was the best idea in their arsenal. “All right then,” he said, pulling a deck out of Dean’s bag, the box crumpled and dirty from being hauled across the lower forty-eight, but still holding its structure. “Let’s see if we can’t bring your game up to match ours.”
END
comments on DW
Spoilers through 5x12. Sam needs to make his peace with someone, and Castiel is there.
Gen, PG; various kinds of UST-friendly. (Do we still say UST?) Thanks to
giandujakiss for beta.
“Um, Dean’s not here,” Sam said, hanging on to the doorframe with one hand and the edge of the door with the other, leaning forward to make it look a little more casual. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to invite Castiel inside so much as that he didn’t want Castiel to be inside.
Naturally, Castiel blinked out of existence. Sam straightened and turned, and, yep, there he was, standing in the middle of the floor like every lonely business traveler Sam and Dean ever saw through the windows of places like this as they headed to their own room.
“It was to you that I wished to speak, Sam,” the angel continued, as if he hadn’t just jump-cut his way into Sam’s temporary home.
“I was gonna take a shower,” Sam said, feeling like he was trying to turn down a date. Actually he’d just said, essentially, that he had to wash his hair-okay, he really needed to stop overthinking this stuff.
Castiel sat on Dean’s bed and flipped the edges of his trenchcoat over his legs, almost like he was settling his wings. “I will wait.”
Sam closed his eyes and wondered whether Dean and Castiel got along so well because of their total refusal to read normal social cues. He really, seriously hoped that Castiel wasn’t doing it like Dean would, just to fuck with him, though honestly it would be hard to blame Castiel for taking some amusement where he could find it.
There was no point in facing the angel all grimy from the evening’s digging, plus he didn’t want to listen to Dean’s bitching about how rank he smelled if he wasn’t cleaned up by the time Dean got back. Dean’s sniping was better than the silent treatment, but Dean was still overselling it, which was both annoying and painful each time Sam noticed that Dean was trying too hard, repeating familiar arguments because they were meaningless, because they didn’t require any real interaction. Point being: Sam fled to the shower.
The time alone wasn’t good for him. What could Castiel possibly want to talk to him about? If it was some admonishment not to give in, Sam was going to punch him. It was sad that “anger management” meant “planning to punch an angel” in this case, but at least Castiel was unlikely to punch back.
He scrubbed the cheap shampoo through his hair and used up most of the hard little bar of soap squeaking across his skin. Castiel would wait all night, though, and the last thing he wanted was to come out sopping and find Castiel and Dean deep in one of their intense conversations, all leaning in and staring into each other’s eyes and grabbing each other’s shoulders, and Sam was going to start suggesting that they should just kiss already, which would start a whole new dramatic episode-so anyway, no, he’d really prefer to get rid of the angel before Dean returned.
Because he’d forgotten to bring in a change of clothes, he ended up wrapping a more-than-usually-inadequate towel around his waist and heading back out.
Castiel, who’d been rigid as a mannequin on the bed, stood and examined him. It wasn’t like a guy checking out another guy, more like Dean making sure the Impala hadn’t acquired any damage on the road. “You are not eating well,” he observed.
“Stress, I get-” Sam began before remembering that he didn’t need to explain himself. “I’m up for the job.” He set his jaw.
Castiel ignored his anger, stepped closer and ran his fingertips over Sam’s skin, tracing the arc of his lowest rib. “These symbols,” he said, “they are the same on both of you. When I touch you I touch him.”
Sam sucked in a breath like he’d been racked. Castiel didn’t even look at his face.
“I gotta-” he said and gestured vaguely towards his bag.
“Wait,” Castiel cautioned.
Now Sam was really confused, and uncomfortable. Water was dripping out of his hair and down his back, and his skin tightened. He could feel himself using all his uncertainties to stoke his anger, and maybe he could’ve stopped himself but then what would he do? “I’m not your free show,” he snapped, pulling back. “You want to stare at someone, go tell Dean to strip down. I’m sure he’d be thrilled.”
A direct hit: Castiel blinked, like he’d heard everything behind what Sam had said. “Dean does not-” Castiel halted, maybe embarrassment, maybe just trying to preserve whatever privacy a fallen angel had.
Sam didn’t want to feel sorry for him, but-“Welcome to the club,” he said, only realizing what that sounded like once the words had left his mouth. “I mean-”
Castiel shook his head. “I know what you meant.” He held up his hand, absurdly dramatic and yet somehow wholly appropriate. “This is not the conversation I wish to have.”
Sam desperately needed to learn how to pull off that kind of line. Then Castiel was up close and personal again, his hand on Sam’s chest so smooth Sam barely had time to be shocked. His fingers were warm, their movements precise.
Sam didn’t understand Castiel’s next words-he could read Enochian, at least with a dictionary beside him, but he wasn’t fluent. “In truth the words should be sung, not spoken,” Castiel said, interrupting himself. His touch was still inexorable, shifting sides to find the next bone. “We sing His praises.”
“What are you doing?” Sam asked, grateful that the sentence didn’t end with a squeak. Much of a squeak.
“It comforted me to know that you were protected from other angels.”
Somehow Sam didn’t think that ‘you’ was singular. “Why don’t they burn me up from the inside?” Sam asked, because he’d been curious for a while. “I went black-eyed, I’m at least as much demon as I am human. Shouldn’t the marks hurt?”
Castiel removed his hand and looked up curiously. “Do you think your sins so much greater than Dean’s?”
Sam rocked back on his heels. “Don’t you?” he managed at last.
Castiel, without moving a muscle, gave off the sense of someone who had just shrugged.
“How can you compare us?” Sam asked. “Most of it, I can explain-but Lilith. How could I just let Ruby tell me what to think, who to blame? She never told me how Lilith was supposed to break the final seal, and I just-Lilith took Dean from me, and that was all I could see. I just didn’t think, even when Dean was telling me to be careful.”
Castiel was regarding him with the intensity usually reserved for Dean. “That is all understandable, Sam. We were withholding information, which I have observed is guaranteed to produce a rebellious reaction in … certain humans.”
Sam snorted.
Castiel leaned forward, like proximity would make him more convincing. “Because we did not explain, you did not believe. The Host deliberately provided additional incentive for you to remain convinced that your own desire for revenge was consistent with avoiding the apocalypse. You were kept in ignorance of the full consequence of satisfying your desires, though you could see the immediate harm. Dean was the same when he made the choice to pick up the blade in Hell. You both did wrong; your ignorance is mitigation, not excuse. As is mine.”
Sam chewed on that for a minute. “So, basically, you’re saying we were stupid, but not evil.”
Castiel tilted his head again, like he was hearing a translation of Sam’s words into the angelic tongue. “Not precisely. But God’s inordinate fondness is for beetles, not for intelligence.”
“Beetles?” Sam repeated, not sure if he’d heard right.
“There is a conceptual question whether the Almighty’s preference can ever be inordinate,” Castiel said, and if that wasn’t a twinkle in his eye Sam was a beetle himself. “It was a matter of debate among those of the Host so inclined to discuss such matters, in easier times.”
Sam shook his head, feeling weirdly relieved, maybe just because Castiel had let him off the hook with the change of topic. “Angels are strange.”
“You have no idea,” Castiel intoned, and now he had to be fucking with Sam, because he sounded just like Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune. Dean must have been showing him Dean’s version of “the classics” in his downtime, maybe when Sam had been-away.
That thought threatened to drag him back down, so he pushed it aside. His towel was slipping; he readjusted it.
“So, uh, what did you want to talk with me about?” He was still so far off balance. He needed to get done with Castiel so he’d have the energy to deal with Dean, who was checking Sam’s continued Sam-ness on a semi-hourly basis, which was going to end in throttling pretty soon.
Castiel nodded. “The Enochian symbols are protection against angels and the tattoo against demon possession. I had not considered the possibility of a third alternative-ouster by another human. It’s a loophole that can’t be allowed, Sam.”
No shit, it was a loophole. That demon had doubtless reported back to Lucifer by now, and what with believers on both sides set up to track them now, he could expect another attempted swap at any time. Worse, there might well be a witch out there with the skills to make the switch at a distance, without the complicated ritual that had required his presence. “What’s your plan?”
“I will bind your soul to your body. You can put on your pants first,” Castiel offered with his usual seriousness.
Sam gave him the stinkeye, but he really would feel better with jeans on, so he hurried over to his bag. He didn’t check to see whether Castiel was watching as he dropped his towel. “You’ll have to do the same to Dean,” he said, staring down at the orange paisley bedspread as he tugged his shorts on. “Lucifer wants him dead almost as much as he wants me.”
“Dean is already protected from such a transfer.”
Sam stopped with his hands on the button of his jeans and turned. “What?”
“My mark. As part of his resurrection, I considered it … advisable … to bind him then.”
That sounded more than usually ominous, and that was saying something. “Advisable?”
“He was ten years a torturer,” Castiel said, almost like he was apologizing. Sam boggled at him. He’d been afraid that Dean would, what, be a demon? And he’d still raised Dean?
Well, of course: no Michael without Dean; apparently demonic consent would suffice just as well as any other kind, just like whoever occupied Sam’s body got to decide whether Lucifer would reign. It all seemed very sloppy. Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Sometimes,” he said, letting his hands fall to his sides and flex, open and shut, “I really hate you guys.”
“Are you ready?” Castiel asked, and Sam didn’t fault him for ignoring that last statement. Kind of hard to figure out a response that didn’t involve smiting, he guessed. Sam nodded, and Castiel approached, raising his hand like he was going to cast out the demon in Sam-good luck with that-until he’d grabbed Sam’s shoulder.
Shit, Sam thought. Yet another way in which this life was making him a grim caricature of Dean, blurred carbon copy instead of partner. And then the pain hit, like being burned, spreading through his veins like acid. Sam’s head snapped up as he tried to deal, grunts escaping him as his nails cut into his palms.
His knees wobbled and gave way, Castiel’s hand pressing him down, like having his shoulder held to a blowtorch, tears streaming down his face as his mouth opened on a silent scream.
Then it was over, his nerves singing with the aftershocks. His hand automatically went to his shoulder, finding the same raised marks that marred Dean’s skin, raw and hot under his fingertips.
He went to the mirror over the dresser and examined the handprint. It looked a little smaller on him, he thought. He snuffled and wiped his hand over his face, cleaning it off some. “Is that-is that how it felt for Dean?”
In the mirror, Castiel turned a little, his face blank. “I do not know. He was very-I do not expect that he would have noticed the sensation.”
Sure, if they played the whose-pain-was-worst game, Dean probably now had an edge. So to speak. “But I’m safe from soul-swapping now, right?”
“You are proof against a similar attack, yes.”
Sam saw his reflection’s face twitch, but didn’t quite understand what he was feeling. “I’m oddly unreassured.”
Before Sam could blink, Castiel was next to him again, tugging him around so they were face to face. “I have no assurances to offer, Sam. That is why-”
Sam frowned, then figured it out. “That’s why you showed up when Dean was gone.”
Castiel chewed on his lower lip, which was so shockingly human that Sam reached out for him, awkwardly patting his arm a couple of times. “When he told me what had happened to you, he said that he was secondguessing himself so much that he’d nearly let you die. He is afraid he’ll drive you away again by intervening too much, but his failure to react to your body’s unusual behavior also led you into danger.”
Sam sighed and ducked his head. “Yeah, I know.” He was kind of mad at Dean for not noticing that he’d been replaced, but it had been a long time since Dean’s internal compass had pointed unerringly in Sam’s direction, and Sam had done his best to encourage that after Dean’s return from Hell. Knowing he’d participated in the problem didn’t make him any less mad at Dean, only more angry at himself.
“What can I do to help?”
Sam started, mostly because that wasn’t the kind of sentence that Winchesters heard. Especially not from angels. He stared at Castiel, whose expression was serious but patient, waiting for Sam’s guidance. “Wow,” he said, because that deserved some kind of response. “Uh. That’s-” And he couldn’t justify it, but suddenly the world seemed a little brighter. Like just because they weren’t entirely alone they were somehow in a better position, which objectively couldn’t be true-the marginal difference one fallen angel made against the freaking apocalypse was probably measurable in microseconds-but still, he couldn’t help but appreciate that kind of offer. “Actually, I think you just did.”
Castiel’s brows lowered, the look he gave Dean when Dean out-Deaned himself. “I don’t understand.”
Sam touched his newly marked shoulder. “It’s just-thank you. For caring.”
Castiel blinked. “I am not sure I could do otherwise. Free will in practice seems-constrained.”
Sam wondered whether he was thinking about the way Dean looked when he was hurting. Sam could imagine that would be a pretty significant constraint on Castiel’s choices. “Yeah, we humans are paradoxical that way.”
They stared at each other, Sam feeling more awkward by the moment. “Hey,” he said, before he could think better of it. “Dean’s supposed to bring back pizza. You want to stay?” Castiel opened his mouth, probably to deny that he needed to eat, and Sam shook his head. “Come on, you can make random observations while Dean’s got his mouth full, it’ll be hilarious.” Hilarious for Sam, anyway, and maybe what he and Dean needed was some way to bleed off the pressure that seemed to grow between them with every day that passed only talking to each other.
Castiel knew the truth, knew how fucked they were, and he’d still cast his lot with the Winchesters. Even if Dean’s pretty face had been a primary motivator, that was still better than they’d done with anyone else. Sam knew the angel wasn’t Ruby, wasn’t trying to rip them apart (not any more, but Sam was working on getting over that). Maybe if Sam could get along with Castiel, he’d be better able to deal with Dean, too. Kind of like how Dean always wanted him to show more respect for the Impala, not that Sam was ever going to admit the comparison to Castiel. Castiel wished Dean liked him as much as Dean loved that car.
“What do you say?” Sam asked. “I know Dean’d be happy to see you.”
Sam decided not to interpret the expression that flashed across Castiel’s face. “Yes,” Castiel said. Then, delicately, “You should finish dressing. I … do not want to listen to Dean’s speculations on the subject were he to find you shirtless with me.”
For some reason Sam flushed at that. He hurried over to his bag and pulled out the first shirt that came to hand, rough over his still-stinging shoulder. “So,” he said, trying to cover his discomfort, “what do you want to do until Dean gets back?”
“Dean says--” Castiel paused. “That is, I would like to learn how to play poker.”
Sam couldn’t suppress a chuckle. He’d say teaching Castiel poker was the worst idea ever, but he knew that wasn’t true. And, under the circumstances, maybe it was the best idea in their arsenal. “All right then,” he said, pulling a deck out of Dean’s bag, the box crumpled and dirty from being hauled across the lower forty-eight, but still holding its structure. “Let’s see if we can’t bring your game up to match ours.”
END
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