Fic: All I Want To Do
Title: All I Want To Do
Pairing: Sastiel
Rating: teen
Content: protective!Sam, emotional h/c, h/c, angst, self doubt
Word count: 2305
Mrs Haines is the dictionary definition of sweet old lady. She graciously shows them in, and offers them tea and freshly baked cookies, and she enquires after their health. If you didn’t know that her son had apparently committed suicide - they have their doubts, it’s looking more like ghost possession drove him to his death - then you wouldn’t.
But Sam knows, because they’re here to fix things at least as well as they can. And because her hands shake a little as she pours the tea, causing the spout to clink against the china cups. And because her eyes have that hint of red that no amount of washing or make up can really hide.
And he can tell Cas knows because there’s a sad tension running through him, confirming to Sam that he’s picking up on the waves of emotional distress the woman’s projecting.
Some days, Cas is better able to tune it out. But it has its uses, so Sam suspects he’s deliberately leaving himself open to ensure she keeps no secrets from them, and to ensure his, Sam’s, safety in case she turns out to be complicit in whatever’s going on in this town.
He takes the cup she offers for Cas and gently passes it back, lets his fingers brush the angel’s when he takes it. It’s small comfort, but all he can offer in the presence of a witness. When he looks back at Mrs Haines, there’s a delicate almost-smile there, and a fond look in her eyes.
They only stay long enough to learn that her son, like the two other victims, had crossed a local family recently, so maybe this is a curse rather than a ghost. Either way, Sam wants to leave this lady to her grieving and he wants to get Cas away and alone so he can get him centred again.
His hand goes automatically to Cas’s back, as they make their way to the door, and he doesn’t miss how Cas lightly pushes back into his touch. At the last moment, Mrs Haines calls to him.
“Agent Downey?”
Sam hesitates, but Cas nods at him and holds out his hand for the car keys. Sam passes them to him, takes advantage of it by letting their fingers touch again, hoping Cas can settle himself until Sam can join him.
“Mrs Haines?”
She looks up at him, a warm gaze. “I’m sorry if I upset him; he’s sensitive to emotions, isn’t he?”
Sam’s stalls, a little. “Well, he….”
She rests her hand on his arm. “It’s alright. My sister was the same. She could tell when a person was bothered by something, no matter how badly they tried to hide it. It’s a gift and a curse, like so many things. But I can see you’ll look after him.”
Maybe, he thinks, Mrs Haines’s sister wasn’t the only sensitive in the family. He nods, thanks her and takes his leave.
Cas is waiting in the car, and Sam knows the lady’s watching, but somehow he doesn’t think she’ll mind. He rests his hand on the back of Cas’s neck and rubs gentle circles into his skin.
“Ok,” he whispers. “Just come back to me, Cas.”
**
Somewhere in the twenty or so square miles of farmland that the McTeer and Willis families are squabbling about is a fair sized vampire nest.
Dean slides into the booth, commenting that if the idiots knew that they might not be so keen to take ownership. He picks up one of the menus, scans it like they all of them don’t know he’s going to opt for the biggest burger they’ve got.
Sam steps back and lets Cas sit down first, waiting until the angel’s moved along to sit opposite Dean before he joins him.
Dean’s smirk says it all, and Sam decides to ignore it. Nobody thinks Dean’s as amusing as Dean does, but the fact that he knows his brother’s secretly ecstatic that he and Cas finally got their act - and themselves - together takes the sting out of the ribbing.
“You going to order for him too?”
Sometimes.
**
Ketch said it himself - he does love an angel.
Those words, the look on his face - disdainful, proprietary, hateful, all in one - trouble Sam when he’s awake and when he’s asleep.
He doesn’t trust the Men Of Letters. Yes, he might have let them persuade him into working with them - or for them, is probably how they see it. And yes, he might have worked on Dean so that his brother jumped on board.
But it doesn’t mean he’ll turn his back on them, and it certainly doesn’t mean he wants them anywhere near Cas.
It’s just getting a little obvious that whenever they arrange a meet, Sam tries to find reasons for Cas to stay behind.
“I’m not afraid of them, Sam,” Cas tells him, when his latest excuse for only he and Dean go to the rendezvous is more paper thin than usual.
I am, Sam wants to say. I’m scared that they try to take you, or kill you, and I can’t keep you safe.
Which begs the question why he’s allied himself with them in the first place. If he can’t trust them, why is he fighting beside them? But he knows the answer. It’s because they have a working game plan. The Men are the equivalent of an army, to his and Dean’s militia. He doesn’t want to belittle what he and his brother, and hunters like them, have achieved over their lifetimes. Or sacrificed.
But in the past few months he’s seen the impact the Brits have had. Their methods - ok, they’ve brutal, calculating. But they’re effective. Maybe at the end of the day, it does come down to the plus and minus columns. Until the day when it won’t, because there are no more monsters, and people will finally be safe - at least from the things that hide in the dark.
Cas, though - he’s the exception. His safety is something Sam won’t compromise on, won’t trade away.
“I just want you to be safe,” he tells the angel.
In the end, though Cas is clearly unhappy about it, he stays.
**
The double headed snake monster - and Sam wishes he were kidding - was big enough so that when it popped there was plenty of blood and guts to go around.
All three of them are positively covered, and he dreads to think how hard it’s going to be to get the stains and the stink out of the car once they’ve reached the bunker.
It’s a miracle they didn’t get pulled over, but Sam suspects Cas using his mojo on the couple of police cars they passed to encourage them to not notice the bloodstained occupants of a speeding Impala.
But that, plus the battle with the creature, and healing them of bites and venom, have sapped him. He knows Cas’s Grace will eventually recover, revitalise itself - what was left after Metatron’s spell, the effect of Lucifer’s own more powerful, corrupting essence, all of it has had an effect.
In the meantime, using too much of it in quick succession leaves the angel drained. So both he and Dean forbade him to use any of his power to clean them up.
“That’s what showers are for, Cas,” Dean tells him, even as he glances forlornly at the upholstery.
Sam sees them safely locked down and then follows his angel to the bathroom off their quarters. Cas tells him he’s fine. The snake bit him, but he’s an angel, so there was no effect.
That’s what Cas tells him, anyway.
Sam wants to see for himself. So he starts the shower, and lays out some towels, and then quickly shrugs out of his clothes.
Cas is taking a little longer. Sam knows how he feels about his independence, so much as it grates he makes himself hang back and just stay close enough that he can lend support if Cas needs it.
But he sees that while Cas isn’t badly hurt, he isn’t exactly fine, either. There are three bite marks - all oozing sluggishly. One on his hip, another on his right bicep and one on his abdomen. That one looks more like a near miss - two small punctures that aren’t nearly as bad as the furrows that track from them to the opposite hip.
“Cas,” Sam protests.
Cas says nothing, just steps under the water, and ducks his head as it pounds down on him.
Sighing, Sam follows him. When he and Dean get hurt, they accept it as part of the job. Cas does too, Sam knows that. But when he sees their reaction to him getting hurt, he still interprets it as disappointment.
He’ll read other people for hunts, and to ensure their safety, but it’s a line he won’t cross with them to reassure himself that it’s concern not disapproval.
But he already knows that no amount of words will convince Cas any different, because he’s tried. Dean’s tried, but they both know who’s to blame for their lack of success. Words are something Cas has learned come easy.
They haven’t always backed them up, so who can fault him for going by their actions instead?
He leans forward to press a kiss to the back of Cas’s neck, and then grabs the soap. He isn’t surprised when Cas takes it from him and takes a stubborn step forward.
“C’mon, Cas,” he says. “Let me take care of you.”
Cas turns to face him, eyes wide, hurt. “You shouldn’t have to. I… I’ll be alright, and…”
Sam pulls him in close. It’s all he can do, but it isn’t enough. He wants to make Cas better, to heal him, in and out. To reach inside him and obliterate the pain and self loathing that are a constant dark presence. He wants to go after every single person who’s ever hurt Cas, and kill them. Rip them apart.
Which will include us, his conscience bitterly reminds him.
Sam hugs him tighter.
Finally, Cas squirms a little, and Sam lets him go. He rests his hands on his shoulders though, and looks him over. Still a little bloody from exploding snake monster, but the bites have closed over and the furrows are slowly fading.
“Can I?” The soap’s still in Cas’s hand, a little squashed now. The angel offers it meekly, with a shy smile and a blush.
Sam turns him around again, and starts in.
**
“Oh, look,” Dean says. “Reinforcements.”
There’s no mistaking the sleek SUV that glides to a stop a few yards from the Impala, with smoked out glass and a sense of entitlement big enough he’s surprised it doesn’t need a trailer.
Ketch steps out, and Sam feels his hackles rise even further. This wasn’t a hunt from them. It didn’t come from one of their leads, it was something they’d found themselves. So what is he doing here?
Moving in front of Cas is a sub-conscious thing, and he notices Dean doing exactly the same - putting himself between Ketch and his family.
“Winchesters,” Ketch says. “Halo.”
“What do you want, Ketch?” Dean demands.
“Well, I suppose we can forego the pleasantries.”
Dean snorts at that comment. Sam knows they’re allies but he still finds his hand slipping toward the gun hidden in his waistband.
“We’ve come across something of a conundrum and we were hoping for your assistance. Well, your angel’s specifically.”
When he asks, Ketch’s gaze doesn’t even land near Cas. He looks from Dean to Sam, and then back, as if it’s their decision. As if Cas is…property.
“No,” Dean says, before Sam can even speak.
“It’s a simple task,” Ketch says. “We’d require it for a day, at most. Of course, it would be returned to you in…the same condition as given to us.”
“It?” Sam snaps. “Given?”
He starts forward, and Cas’s hand comes to rest on his arm.
Dean has that dangerous grin on his face. Ketch seems to misinterpret it, because he smiles as well, right up until Dean sweeps his legs out from under him. Dean follows him down and Ketch finds the point of Dean’s knife against his throat.
“Cas? You got anything you want to say to this guy?”
Sam’s instinct is to steer Cas to the car, grab Dean and just book, but then he’s bringing Ketch’s words to life. Making them fact.
Cas has this. So he steps aside.
Cas moves to stand over Ketch. He looks down at him, tilts his head like Ketch is a particularly unpleasant problem. Or something he’s accidentally stepped in.
“My name, for the last time, is Castiel. And no - I won’t help you with anything.”
Then he grabs Dean’s arm, and eases him upright. Steps between him and the Brit, and glances once over his shoulder.
“Both of you, get in the car.”
There’s that tone in his voice, the tone that commanded a garrison, that sends a shiver straight through Sam. Wrong time, wrong place, he tells himself, but hearing it again lifts something inside him.
They don’t argue, though Dean watches Cas’s back as he follows, getting into the back, and never looking once in Ketch’s direction.
Sam watches through the rear view mirror as the bastard gets up, dusts himself off, and watches them drive away.
Then he catches Cas’s gaze, and there’s something there - a mix between anger and worry. This was what they’d feared, and it looks like it was justified.
Sam reaches back and grabs Cas’s hand.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean says. “They try one fucking thing….”
“And I’ll deal with it,” Cas says. There’s an edge to his voice, a promise.
Sam grins. Ketch might mess with other angels, but this one’s a Winchester.
Let him come try.
Pairing: Sastiel
Rating: teen
Content: protective!Sam, emotional h/c, h/c, angst, self doubt
Word count: 2305
Mrs Haines is the dictionary definition of sweet old lady. She graciously shows them in, and offers them tea and freshly baked cookies, and she enquires after their health. If you didn’t know that her son had apparently committed suicide - they have their doubts, it’s looking more like ghost possession drove him to his death - then you wouldn’t.
But Sam knows, because they’re here to fix things at least as well as they can. And because her hands shake a little as she pours the tea, causing the spout to clink against the china cups. And because her eyes have that hint of red that no amount of washing or make up can really hide.
And he can tell Cas knows because there’s a sad tension running through him, confirming to Sam that he’s picking up on the waves of emotional distress the woman’s projecting.
Some days, Cas is better able to tune it out. But it has its uses, so Sam suspects he’s deliberately leaving himself open to ensure she keeps no secrets from them, and to ensure his, Sam’s, safety in case she turns out to be complicit in whatever’s going on in this town.
He takes the cup she offers for Cas and gently passes it back, lets his fingers brush the angel’s when he takes it. It’s small comfort, but all he can offer in the presence of a witness. When he looks back at Mrs Haines, there’s a delicate almost-smile there, and a fond look in her eyes.
They only stay long enough to learn that her son, like the two other victims, had crossed a local family recently, so maybe this is a curse rather than a ghost. Either way, Sam wants to leave this lady to her grieving and he wants to get Cas away and alone so he can get him centred again.
His hand goes automatically to Cas’s back, as they make their way to the door, and he doesn’t miss how Cas lightly pushes back into his touch. At the last moment, Mrs Haines calls to him.
“Agent Downey?”
Sam hesitates, but Cas nods at him and holds out his hand for the car keys. Sam passes them to him, takes advantage of it by letting their fingers touch again, hoping Cas can settle himself until Sam can join him.
“Mrs Haines?”
She looks up at him, a warm gaze. “I’m sorry if I upset him; he’s sensitive to emotions, isn’t he?”
Sam’s stalls, a little. “Well, he….”
She rests her hand on his arm. “It’s alright. My sister was the same. She could tell when a person was bothered by something, no matter how badly they tried to hide it. It’s a gift and a curse, like so many things. But I can see you’ll look after him.”
Maybe, he thinks, Mrs Haines’s sister wasn’t the only sensitive in the family. He nods, thanks her and takes his leave.
Cas is waiting in the car, and Sam knows the lady’s watching, but somehow he doesn’t think she’ll mind. He rests his hand on the back of Cas’s neck and rubs gentle circles into his skin.
“Ok,” he whispers. “Just come back to me, Cas.”
**
Somewhere in the twenty or so square miles of farmland that the McTeer and Willis families are squabbling about is a fair sized vampire nest.
Dean slides into the booth, commenting that if the idiots knew that they might not be so keen to take ownership. He picks up one of the menus, scans it like they all of them don’t know he’s going to opt for the biggest burger they’ve got.
Sam steps back and lets Cas sit down first, waiting until the angel’s moved along to sit opposite Dean before he joins him.
Dean’s smirk says it all, and Sam decides to ignore it. Nobody thinks Dean’s as amusing as Dean does, but the fact that he knows his brother’s secretly ecstatic that he and Cas finally got their act - and themselves - together takes the sting out of the ribbing.
“You going to order for him too?”
Sometimes.
**
Ketch said it himself - he does love an angel.
Those words, the look on his face - disdainful, proprietary, hateful, all in one - trouble Sam when he’s awake and when he’s asleep.
He doesn’t trust the Men Of Letters. Yes, he might have let them persuade him into working with them - or for them, is probably how they see it. And yes, he might have worked on Dean so that his brother jumped on board.
But it doesn’t mean he’ll turn his back on them, and it certainly doesn’t mean he wants them anywhere near Cas.
It’s just getting a little obvious that whenever they arrange a meet, Sam tries to find reasons for Cas to stay behind.
“I’m not afraid of them, Sam,” Cas tells him, when his latest excuse for only he and Dean go to the rendezvous is more paper thin than usual.
I am, Sam wants to say. I’m scared that they try to take you, or kill you, and I can’t keep you safe.
Which begs the question why he’s allied himself with them in the first place. If he can’t trust them, why is he fighting beside them? But he knows the answer. It’s because they have a working game plan. The Men are the equivalent of an army, to his and Dean’s militia. He doesn’t want to belittle what he and his brother, and hunters like them, have achieved over their lifetimes. Or sacrificed.
But in the past few months he’s seen the impact the Brits have had. Their methods - ok, they’ve brutal, calculating. But they’re effective. Maybe at the end of the day, it does come down to the plus and minus columns. Until the day when it won’t, because there are no more monsters, and people will finally be safe - at least from the things that hide in the dark.
Cas, though - he’s the exception. His safety is something Sam won’t compromise on, won’t trade away.
“I just want you to be safe,” he tells the angel.
In the end, though Cas is clearly unhappy about it, he stays.
**
The double headed snake monster - and Sam wishes he were kidding - was big enough so that when it popped there was plenty of blood and guts to go around.
All three of them are positively covered, and he dreads to think how hard it’s going to be to get the stains and the stink out of the car once they’ve reached the bunker.
It’s a miracle they didn’t get pulled over, but Sam suspects Cas using his mojo on the couple of police cars they passed to encourage them to not notice the bloodstained occupants of a speeding Impala.
But that, plus the battle with the creature, and healing them of bites and venom, have sapped him. He knows Cas’s Grace will eventually recover, revitalise itself - what was left after Metatron’s spell, the effect of Lucifer’s own more powerful, corrupting essence, all of it has had an effect.
In the meantime, using too much of it in quick succession leaves the angel drained. So both he and Dean forbade him to use any of his power to clean them up.
“That’s what showers are for, Cas,” Dean tells him, even as he glances forlornly at the upholstery.
Sam sees them safely locked down and then follows his angel to the bathroom off their quarters. Cas tells him he’s fine. The snake bit him, but he’s an angel, so there was no effect.
That’s what Cas tells him, anyway.
Sam wants to see for himself. So he starts the shower, and lays out some towels, and then quickly shrugs out of his clothes.
Cas is taking a little longer. Sam knows how he feels about his independence, so much as it grates he makes himself hang back and just stay close enough that he can lend support if Cas needs it.
But he sees that while Cas isn’t badly hurt, he isn’t exactly fine, either. There are three bite marks - all oozing sluggishly. One on his hip, another on his right bicep and one on his abdomen. That one looks more like a near miss - two small punctures that aren’t nearly as bad as the furrows that track from them to the opposite hip.
“Cas,” Sam protests.
Cas says nothing, just steps under the water, and ducks his head as it pounds down on him.
Sighing, Sam follows him. When he and Dean get hurt, they accept it as part of the job. Cas does too, Sam knows that. But when he sees their reaction to him getting hurt, he still interprets it as disappointment.
He’ll read other people for hunts, and to ensure their safety, but it’s a line he won’t cross with them to reassure himself that it’s concern not disapproval.
But he already knows that no amount of words will convince Cas any different, because he’s tried. Dean’s tried, but they both know who’s to blame for their lack of success. Words are something Cas has learned come easy.
They haven’t always backed them up, so who can fault him for going by their actions instead?
He leans forward to press a kiss to the back of Cas’s neck, and then grabs the soap. He isn’t surprised when Cas takes it from him and takes a stubborn step forward.
“C’mon, Cas,” he says. “Let me take care of you.”
Cas turns to face him, eyes wide, hurt. “You shouldn’t have to. I… I’ll be alright, and…”
Sam pulls him in close. It’s all he can do, but it isn’t enough. He wants to make Cas better, to heal him, in and out. To reach inside him and obliterate the pain and self loathing that are a constant dark presence. He wants to go after every single person who’s ever hurt Cas, and kill them. Rip them apart.
Which will include us, his conscience bitterly reminds him.
Sam hugs him tighter.
Finally, Cas squirms a little, and Sam lets him go. He rests his hands on his shoulders though, and looks him over. Still a little bloody from exploding snake monster, but the bites have closed over and the furrows are slowly fading.
“Can I?” The soap’s still in Cas’s hand, a little squashed now. The angel offers it meekly, with a shy smile and a blush.
Sam turns him around again, and starts in.
**
“Oh, look,” Dean says. “Reinforcements.”
There’s no mistaking the sleek SUV that glides to a stop a few yards from the Impala, with smoked out glass and a sense of entitlement big enough he’s surprised it doesn’t need a trailer.
Ketch steps out, and Sam feels his hackles rise even further. This wasn’t a hunt from them. It didn’t come from one of their leads, it was something they’d found themselves. So what is he doing here?
Moving in front of Cas is a sub-conscious thing, and he notices Dean doing exactly the same - putting himself between Ketch and his family.
“Winchesters,” Ketch says. “Halo.”
“What do you want, Ketch?” Dean demands.
“Well, I suppose we can forego the pleasantries.”
Dean snorts at that comment. Sam knows they’re allies but he still finds his hand slipping toward the gun hidden in his waistband.
“We’ve come across something of a conundrum and we were hoping for your assistance. Well, your angel’s specifically.”
When he asks, Ketch’s gaze doesn’t even land near Cas. He looks from Dean to Sam, and then back, as if it’s their decision. As if Cas is…property.
“No,” Dean says, before Sam can even speak.
“It’s a simple task,” Ketch says. “We’d require it for a day, at most. Of course, it would be returned to you in…the same condition as given to us.”
“It?” Sam snaps. “Given?”
He starts forward, and Cas’s hand comes to rest on his arm.
Dean has that dangerous grin on his face. Ketch seems to misinterpret it, because he smiles as well, right up until Dean sweeps his legs out from under him. Dean follows him down and Ketch finds the point of Dean’s knife against his throat.
“Cas? You got anything you want to say to this guy?”
Sam’s instinct is to steer Cas to the car, grab Dean and just book, but then he’s bringing Ketch’s words to life. Making them fact.
Cas has this. So he steps aside.
Cas moves to stand over Ketch. He looks down at him, tilts his head like Ketch is a particularly unpleasant problem. Or something he’s accidentally stepped in.
“My name, for the last time, is Castiel. And no - I won’t help you with anything.”
Then he grabs Dean’s arm, and eases him upright. Steps between him and the Brit, and glances once over his shoulder.
“Both of you, get in the car.”
There’s that tone in his voice, the tone that commanded a garrison, that sends a shiver straight through Sam. Wrong time, wrong place, he tells himself, but hearing it again lifts something inside him.
They don’t argue, though Dean watches Cas’s back as he follows, getting into the back, and never looking once in Ketch’s direction.
Sam watches through the rear view mirror as the bastard gets up, dusts himself off, and watches them drive away.
Then he catches Cas’s gaze, and there’s something there - a mix between anger and worry. This was what they’d feared, and it looks like it was justified.
Sam reaches back and grabs Cas’s hand.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean says. “They try one fucking thing….”
“And I’ll deal with it,” Cas says. There’s an edge to his voice, a promise.
Sam grins. Ketch might mess with other angels, but this one’s a Winchester.
Let him come try.