The Devil You Know : Chapter 6
see part 1 for disclaimers.
Chapter 6
The guy smoking on the front step is still watching them.
Dean pulls the car as close to their room as he can, but there’s still a gap with a clear sight-line down the walkway fronting the motel. The guy doesn’t move beyond raising the cigarette to his lips, taking a measured drag, and lowering it again, but Dean can feel his eyes boring steadily into him.
To hell with him. He’s either going to cause trouble or he’s not, and if he does, Dean’ll deal with it like he always does.
He gets out and flips the seat forward. “Cas, we’re here.”
The angel doesn’t respond this time. Castiel is all drawn up into a tense knot, arms folded tight to his chest, legs bent nearly double on the cramped seat. Thin streamers of blood are trailing down onto the seat, even from the sigil on his right shoulder that Dean treated; as he watches, another dark bead wells up and snakes down until it touches the shirt bunched over his chest.
“Cas, can you wake up now?”
Please let him wake up. Because it’ll be easier if he can walk, and it’ll look better to their audience if Dean’s not dragging an unconscious guy inside a motel… and because Dean needs him to. Castiel doesn’t seem to know what to do with unremitting pain that can’t be angel-ed away. It left him dazed and exhausted after the archangel when it was his choice to remain hidden rather than heal himself. And now he can’t use his angel mojo, or Grace, or whatever the hell makes it work.
“Uh, Dean…”
Sam’s behind him, shifting a little from side to side. “Go open the door and start filling the tub,” Dean says without turning around.
“I did.”
“Then just wait, okay?”
Dean can feel Sam’s pissy-face burning into his back, but he ignores him. He puts his hand on Castiel’s arm, because whenever he touched his chin it seemed to freak him out, and gives it a tentative squeeze-shake. “Cas?”
There. His eyelids crack open - no brilliant light spilling out, thank christ - and he shivers. “Dean?”
“Right here. Gonna get you inside, get this demon blood washed out of you.”
He pulls Castiel up, unbends his legs and lifts his feet out the car door. Gets his arms around the angel, under his left arm and over his bound right one, locks his hands tight behind his back. Dean heaves, backing out of the car and trying to duck both their heads. Castiel’s legs buckle the second he’s out, and he slides down Dean’s front, his face skidding past his shoulder and halfway down his chest before Dean bumps them both back against the car and can brace him there.
Sam, of course, has disappeared.
“Can you… get your arm around my neck?” Dean pants, and even though Castiel’s knees are still so loose they won’t support him, he somehow flops his left arm up and around so it lands behind Dean’s neck. “Make your knees stiff,” he says, but Castiel either can’t manage or doesn’t understand, because when Dean straightens and tries to take a step, their legs tangle, nearly throwing them both to the ground.
“Sorry,” he slurs when they’ve lurched back against the car, breathing hard.
“It’s okay. I know you’re not used to hurting like this.” Dean aims his voice toward the motel room. “Sam!” he hisses loudly. “Sam!”
His brother appears in the doorway. “Water’s ready.”
“Good. But come help me.”
Sam comes out and gets an arm around the angel’s other side and he and Dean hoist Castiel to the door, knocking into one another and stumbling when his feet get in the way and trip them up.
The guy at the end is still watching, bent into an easy squat on the step, squinting past the smoke curling from his cupped hand.
The doorsill nearly does them in-they have to step up and step over and Castiel is beyond stepping anywhere at this point. They don’t fit three abreast through the door anyway; the doorframe peels Sam off like a bad sunburn. Dean pitches through with his arms full of angel and lets momentum carry them clear across the room until they fetch up hard on the far wall. He grunts as the impact jars the sore muscles at his back and then grunts again as Castiel falls so heavily against him it forces the air from his chest in a sharp huff.
He’s trying to stand under his own power, legs buckling repeatedly and hand scrabbling for purchase on Dean’s shoulder, pushing up and back only to crash forward again. Dean can feel the suddenly panicked flutter of his breath against his neck. “Easy, easy, it’s okay. We’re good, Cas.” He slings his arm around and hoists him higher, ignoring the deep twinge between his shoulderblades. “I’ve got you.”
Castiel shakes his head, knocking it clumsily against Dean’s chin, eyes frantic. “Not good, wrong, it’s wrong…” His arm slips away, and despite Dean’s grip he sinks toward the floor.
“Goddammit! Sam!”
Sam strides through the door, the golden sword draped in a discarded bloody shirt tucked beneath his arm. He kicks the door shut and tosses the sword carelessly onto the nearest bed as he crosses the room. Dean’s slid down to the floor, Castiel’s dark head tucked beneath Dean’s chin, and when Sam reaches them, he flinches at the naked panic in his brother’s eyes.
Beneath Dean’s clenched arms, Castiel’s heartbeat stutters, throbs a hollow beat, stutters again.
“Sam, help me.”
“What d’you want to do?”
“Tub! Now!”
Dean surges upward, back braced on the wall. He jams his hands under Castiel’s armpits, and Sam catches him beneath his knees and somehow they stagger upright. Dean backs into the bathroom.
There’s a clear line to the tub-Sam’s already torn down the shower curtain, and the bathmat is crumpled in the corner. Terror lends Dean the strength to hoist Castiel’s deadweight body up and over the side of the tub. Sam’s a half-step behind, and he nearly cracks head-first into the tiled wall before he drops the angel’s blue-jeaned legs with a tremendous splash and throws out a hand to catch himself.
“Get the rosary out of the water,” Dean snarls, and Sam snatches it off the faucet, just before the water wipes to a murky grey.
Dean’s shoving Castiel down beneath the water to his chin. He’s still limp, not fighting in the slightest, but Dean grits his teeth and bears down heavily anyway. “Here it comes.”
The water erupts into frenzied bubbling, smoke billowing up in a sulphurous rush. Sam twists aside, coughing, but Dean can’t afford to turn away-Castiel’s eyes snap open and he arches nearly all the way out of the water, hand clawing wildly, heels skidding on the end of the tub.
Deep in the dark place behind Dean’s ribs, a switch flips; mercilessly he slams the angel back beneath the water. It seethes up in a violent boil across sigils and sword wounds as he wrenches against Dean’s hold. The cloth binding his right shoulder splits, allowing his arm to fly up, fist skimming Dean’s jaw.
Dean snaps his head aside. In the second it takes him to turn back, Castiel has flung his head back against the slick porcelain and light is swelling at his mouth and nose and ears, streaming out around the edges of his eyes.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Dean seizes his arm, hauls him up in a great sloshing wave, gives Castiel a hard shake that scatters light across shining tile. “Get your angel ass back here, you hear me?”
“Dean, stop!” Horrified, Sam snatches at his brother, and Castiel’s wet, blood-slicked arm slides free, dropping the angel back into the water with a heavy splash.
“Get off me!” Dean slaps Sam’s hand from his shoulder, the impact echoing off the dripping tile. When Sam recoils, he reaches down, pressing his hand over the base of Castiel’s throat. “Cas, don’t you dare let that sonuvabitch win.”
The light shimmers, just on the cusp of spilling over, and Dean freezes, afraid to blink, to move even one goddamn muscle. He can feel the sluggish thud of Castiel’s - or the vessel’s, they’re pretty much one and the same thanks to the demon blood - heart beneath the heel of his hand. He holds his breath, terrified each pulse will be the last.
The water steaming around his wrists and over the carved body slowly stills as the blood leaches out its power.
The light shivers, caught on a razor-thin edge; and then it sinks back into his eyes. Castiel arches up as it absorbs, sucking in a huge, gasping breath. Dean catches him as he starts to slide down the sloped back of the tub.
“Easy. Easy. Got you. Just breathe. You’re okay. Just breathe, okay? And don’t go anywhere.” He throws a glance over his shoulder at Sam. “Flip the drain, let the water out.” He sets his jaw. “We need to do it again.”
He holds Castiel’s head above the water until it gurgles away down the drain. After a moment, the angel drags his eyelids up-the light’s completely receded, Dean’s relieved to see, leaving only glazed, flat blue that fastens onto Dean’s face unblinkingly. Dean holds his gaze even though it makes his stomach curl with guilt. Dean clears his throat against the lump in it.
“Gotta do it again, Cas,” he says, low, and then directs his voice back to Sam. “Get something from the kitchen to rinse away some of this blood.”
He peels sodden, stained gauze off the sigils, rights the wastebin he’d kicked over in the struggle, and drops the gauze in. The shirts he’d used as bandaging have washed to the bottom of the tub; Dean fishes them out and slings them into the sink with wet slaps.
The holy water hasn’t made a dent in the sword wound; it still gapes darkly in Castiel’s chest, leaking blood in a sluggish crawl down his ribs. The sigil on his stomach doesn’t look much better, and the one on his right elbow where Dean grabbed and shook him has torn wide open, the incised lines ripped into a muddle of skin and blood.
“He needs to get out,” Sam says from the door behind them. He’s holding the plastic ice bucket, and when he lowers it beside Dean, it’s full of water.
“Yeah, okay. Get me a towel.” Dean picks up the bucket. “Just plain water, right?”
“Yeah.” Sam tosses a towel so it lands on the toilet seat.
“Sit up, Cas.” Dean tilts him forward, pours the bucket over the grey pall of blood coating his skin and watches it swirl in a murky stream down the drain.
“Little help, Sam?” Dean rises into a crouch. He gets the angel under the arms, locks his knees and hauls upward, straining to drag the weight of him up and over the side of the tub. “Holy god!” Sam ducks in and gets him beneath the knees again, but when he slings Castiel’s legs out, Dean overbalances, his feet skidding from under him, and he sits heavily on the floor with Castiel sprawled half on top of him.
“Dean, that is blasphemy,” he says softly.
Dean huffs out a short, humorless laugh. “Think that’s the least of my worries,” he says, snagging the towel and bundling it around Castiel’s shoulders. He looks at his brother. “Hurry up, Sam.”
Sam rinses more blood down the drain so it doesn’t taint the blessed water before they start, then cranks the tap open. While the tub fills, Dean presses the towel against the hole through Castiel’s shoulder; it darkens almost instantly. “This blood’s not even a little red anymore,” he mutters.
Castiel’s head rolls where it’s braced on Dean’s shoulder. “Nearly burned through,” he murmurs, calmly, as if he’s observing an interesting phenomenon outside his own body. His hand tips sideways to find Dean’s knee. “Do not blame yourself if this does not work.”
Dean’s eyes go blank and cold. “Hurry the fuck up, Sam.”
The water sizzles when Sam dips the crucifix in, sizzles low and menacing while Latin spills off his tongue and the sanctified water washes over the grey traces left in the tub. Sam trails the rosary in a final circle and the water glistens clear and pure. He looks over his shoulder at Dean. “Ready.”
They lift Castiel back into the tub. At the last second his eyes drag open and fix on Dean, and that’s almost harder than the first time, to have him watching while Dean pushes him under, water biting like acid in those glyphs. When the water roils up and he arches in agony at its touch, Dean still holds his gaze, holds it until his head slams back, eyes finally falling closed.
Castiel’s hand flies up, clawing, and Dean lets his own hand shoot out to meet it, wringing together tight enough to break bones while the water burns around the angel.
Finally it subsides again, slick grey waves lapping to stillness. Castiel slides low again, a slight groan slipping from his throat. Dean ducks to swipe his face against his wet shoulder and then tilts the angel’s chin out of the water. He looks at Sam. “Again.”
Castiel lands in a soggy heap between Dean’s sprawled knees while Sam drains the tub, rinses blood residue, re-fills it. He frowns at his brother, wrapping the towel around the angel’s shoulders again, fists pressing the rough cotton into either side of the deep gash. “Take his jeans off-they’ve soaked up so much blood I think they’re tainting the holy water too fast.”
“Sorry,” Dean mutters, reaching around to work the button loose, working drenched denim past his hips so Sam can grab the cuffs and strip the jeans down. It’s just one more indignity, but Castiel either doesn’t understand that it is or doesn’t care-his brows draw together in confusion, and then he shivers as Sam wads up the jeans and pitches them into the sink with the shirts.
“Ready,” Sam says a moment later, and Dean steels himself, gathers his legs beneath him, pushes up. Lifts Cas’ too-heavy-for-his-size weight and half-rolls him back into the tub.
He can’t get his eyes open to fix on Dean this time. But as the water erupts in froth and smoke sheets across his body, Castiel’s head tilts back. His throat works, and the air shivers.
“Cas, no angel voice. Please, no angel voice,” Dean pleads hoarsely.
He surges against Dean’s grip, reminding him all over again there’s an angel, however weakened, inhabiting that body. It’s taking all his strength to pin him down beneath the viciously sizzling water he’s trying to escape-though if he were really trying, Dean’s sure he couldn’t keep him contained.
The water settles again. Castiel’s back relaxes and Dean eases his punishing hold, slides one hand beneath his neck, and tilts his head up. His mouth’s moving in a nearly soundless whisper. Dean sags, letting his cheek rest on the cool porcelain rim for a moment.
“You’re doing good, Cas. You go right ahead and pray if it helps.” Personally, Dean doesn’t think it does, but then he’s no angel.
Castiel’s eyes slit open as Sam flips the drain open with a metallic clunk. “Apologizing. For causing you to do this.”
“Don’t. Just hold yourself together.”
Sam’s watching the whirlpool circling the drain. “Again?” he asks in a low voice.
Dean shudders. “Again.”
And again after that.
And then again.
“I’m going to kill him,” Dean whispers. He’s got Cas pulled back-to-chest against him, holding him steady while Sam, bent wearily over the faucet with the rosary dangling from his fingers, re-fills the bathtub yet again. Dean’s on his second towel, but he’s soaked anyway; water is dripping from the ends of Castiel’s hair onto Dean’s shoulder from when Dean lost his grip and Castiel slid completely under the water for a brief frenzied moment. His lips are blue and he hasn’t been able to stop shaking for two whole immersions since the hot water ran out. “I’m going to put Zachariah against a wall and run him through with that sword, right through his throat so I’m not tempted to go all rack-of-Hell on his smug, holier-than-thou ass.”
Dean lifts his hand where it’s clamped over the sword wound, and his mouth contorts at the sight of the unremitting blood. He presses the towel tight again and lowers his voice. “Even though Zach tortured you when you got pulled back, didn’t he?”
For a moment, Castiel is still; then very slightly, he nods, just barely a twitch of his head against Dean’s shoulder. Dean lets his own head sag forward. “Jesus. I knew it.”
“Dean. Blasphemy.”
“Sorry. I’ll try.” He closes his burning eyes and waits for Sam’s hoarse whispers to finish so he can push Castiel back beneath water that turns to acid the minute he touches it.
He barely fights this time-just an involuntary jump when the water burns across his torn skin. He sinks down and just lets the water boil up around him; even his hand falls away, no matter how tightly Dean tangles their fingers together.
Despair is creeping in through cracks in the cold determination Dean’s filled himself with. The holy water’s not working. Well, it’s working on the sigils-they’ve stopped streaming that foul blood when Dean hauls the angel out of the water each time. The lines are smoothing over, filling in to shallow grooves instead of raw, deep slices to the bone.
It’s the hole piercing clear through his body that’s proving impervious to the holy water.
The drain clunks open and gurgles loudly as the water drains yet again. Stains meander down the floor of the tub, black where they start out beneath Castiel’s shoulder, fading to grey as the water dilutes them. Dean watches the murky streams slither over the lip of the drain. He drops his head to the side of the tub. “Cas, I’m sorry.”
Sam leans against the wall, and then slowly slides down it, not even noticing he’s sitting in a spreading puddle. “It’s too strong, isn’t it?” He turns his hands in his lap, frowning absently at his pruney fingertips. “Want me to call Bobby again, see if he got anywhere with that fire ritual?”
Dean shakes his head. “He’d’ve called back if he did.” He pushes up, heaving himself wearily to his feet, and then stops halfway, grimacing at the hot wrench in his back.
Sam scrambles up, places one hand on his brother’s bent back and digs in. After a moment something pops beneath his fingers, and Dean groans and straightens. He swivels at his waist and stretches his arms behind him until his back pops again. “I’m good. Just help me get him out.”
Sam raises his eyebrows. “You want to try again?” he asks quietly.
“’Course I want to try again.”
Sam grabs his arm and spins Dean so his back’s to the angel slumped in the bottom of the tub. “Don’t kill yourself over this, Dean-you’ve done your best.” He frowns harder. “You’ve been saying for months angels are dicks, anyway,” he mutters.
Dean yanks away from his brother, too appalled to even try to answer him. Sam hasn’t been paying any attention at all if he hasn’t noticed the angel’s - this angel’s - earnest attempts to learn what not being a dick means. Cas tried-he went against orders, he went against programming or indoctrination, or, hell, call it what it was - torture - to help Dean. To figure out what was truly right and what was wrong and to damn well do something about it.
And Sam thinks Dean’s still back at “angels are dicks”?
Ruby distracted him, sure; but Sam chose to stay distracted.
So Dean yanks away and bends over the tub and gets his hands under Castiel’s arms again and drags at the lax, broken body. He’ll do this by himself if he has to. “I'm tired, Sam, not killing myself with exhaustion. You gonna grab his legs or what?”
Castiel slides up and over the tub and Dean sits on the floor with a jarring thump, dragging the angel close enough to jam the soggy towel into the hole in his back. It’s still fucking bleeding, a long sluggish crawl that’s turned the waistband of his shorts dark, and in the moment it takes Dean to get Castiel braced and pressure on the exit wound, the one at the front wells up and sends a spill of tainted blood down his chest and over Dean’s arm where it’s clamped across his collarbones.
Sam observes the whole procedure dispassionately, his forehead crumpled with fatigue. “Your idea’s sound, Dean-holy water’s mostly healed the sigils. It’s just not getting deep enough where the sword went in.”
Dean’s fighting with the soaked towel, trying to work the other end up over Castiel’s shoulder so he can bunch it in the entry wound. He barely hears Sam - doesn’t want to listen to Sam right this second - yeah angels are dicks, look what they did to Cas, doesn’t mean he still is one…
It’s just not getting deep enough.
Something that feels like a bolt of that smiting-angel lightning that speared and trapped Alastair slams into Dean, tightening his arms instinctively.
Wet, hacking cough. Drooping eyes rolling up, bloodied lips stretching into a loose sneer. Blood running in a place Dean never wants to revisit while an angel paces in anguish behind a steel door.
“Not getting deep enough,” slurs a taunting voice.
“Oh, hell, no.” Dean closes his eyes, screws them so tight flashes erupt behind his eyelids. “No, shit no, not that.”
“Dean?”
He feels Sam loom worriedly over him, feels his hand light briefly on his shoulder, then move to press Castiel’s throat.
Fuck no, fuck no, fuck no.
“Dean? Dean!”
Dean drags his eyes open. “Need you to do something for me, Sam.”
-----
It’s late when Sam comes back.
He lets himself into the room quietly, cracking the door just enough to slip through and drawing it closed behind him with a snick loud enough in the silence to make him wince. The room’s dark except for a dim glow from the clock radio and another suffusing the bathroom.
“You get it?” Dean asks, his indistinct shadow shifting against the low light given off by his open cell phone.
“I got it,” Sam confirms. He moves across the room with care, but has to bite back a yelp as his knee cracks into a corner of the dresser despite his caution.
“Sorry; the light was bothering him.” Dean’s voice comes from near the floor, and cloth rustles as he works his way to his feet. “Turn the lights on out there first.”
Sam fumbles across the dresser to the table lamp and clicks it on. Dean looks awful-he’s wet and blood-smeared, hollow-eyed from exhaustion and grinding worry. Sam flicks his gaze to the bathroom; Castiel is propped against the wall, one of the bedspreads bundled haphazardly over him.
He looks even worse than Dean.
Hurriedly Sam unfolds the top of the pillowcase he’s carrying, and pours it out onto the dresser. “These looked like the biggest ones-you think they’ll work?”
Dean snaps open the plastic case and pries out a large-bore hypodermic. “Yeah. This’ll work.” He gives Sam a tired look. “Anybody see you?”
Sam shakes his head. “You were right, though-there were security cameras. I took care of them. Cleared out the opiate cabinet to make the break-in look drug-related like you said. Even snagged some powerbars from the candy rack for later.”
“Thanks,” Dean says absently. Syringe in hand, he looks into the bathroom and takes a deep breath. The ice bucket rests on the toilet seat, his rosary trailing over its side. “You doin’ okay?”
“Seven hours without symptoms and counting,” Sam replies. He watches his brother’s shoulders lift in another deep breath, and as he exhales, his face wipes to that disturbing remoteness. “Dean? How’d you think of this?”
“Don’t ask me that, Sammy.”
Dean steps through the door. He crouches down at the angel’s side. “Cas?”
Castiel rolls his head sideways. “Go ahead, Dean.”
“You want him in?” Sam asks from the doorway, and Dean shakes his head.
“I can reach better from here,” he says, his voice distant. He pulls aside the folds of the bedspread and lowers Castiel to the floor. “Try… try not to scream in angel, okay?” he says. Eyes averted from the angel, he holds up the hypodermic. “Barrel’s glass-it’ll shatter.”
“I will try.”
Sam crowds into the bathroom, squeezing past Dean to kneel and press his hands to Castiel’s chest. Dean turns, dips the needle into the ice bucket, and draws up a full measure of holy water. “Put your knee on his thighs.”
What he does next will become colored red in his memory. He sees it in fragments-the needle pricking the center of the gaping wound before sinking deep - Cas’ eyes going impossibly wide - the jump of Sam’s back as he sucks in a harsh breath.
Castiel’s chest leaps; Dean doesn’t have to admonish Sam, his brother’s already shoving him flat as ruthlessly as Dean would. The plunger sinks under his implacable thumb and Castiel kicks a hole through the wall behind the door. The crash registers only as a dull thump in the back of Dean’s mind. The sizzle of holy water from deep within an angel’s body is much more immediate and horrific.
Even under the combined weight of both Dean and Sam, Castiel manages to bow off the bathroom floor in a taut arc. One hand rises, fingers bent into claws; Sam slams it back down and Dean shifts enough to kneel on his wrist.
The plunger hits bottom. Dean slides the needle out, stretches over, refills it.
He places it higher the second time, just at the edge of the collarbone. The blood that flushes out in the wake of the foaming water is as viscous as sludge, and faintly Dean hears Sam gag.
“Roll him over.”
His back is both easier and harder to do-easier because Dean doesn’t have to look down into that stricken face while he pushes the needle in… harder because after he empties two syringes into him he has to roll Cas back over and start on the front again.
Castiel’s arm gets loose and flies up, knocking the syringe from Dean’s grasp. He hears it shatter somewhere out of sight.
“I got extra,” Sam says in a weird echo, and is gone, and then is back, folding Dean’s hand around a replacement hypodermic before tucking his folded belt between Castiel’s teeth. “Bite down,” he says, and then, “He bit through his lip,” still in that weird, sound-bounce of a voice.
Dean fills the new syringe and empties it and fills it and when he rolls Castiel, the angel flops flat, limbs splaying, and doesn’t move.
“Keep going,” Sam’s bottom-of-a-cave voice insists, his long fingers dug deep under Castiel’s jaw.
And Dean keeps going.
The bucket is nearly empty when Dean reaches over yet again and Sam stills him with a hand on his wrist. “Wait. Look.”
Black blood has stopped oozing from the gash. Dean leans back; the roar in his ears subsides and he sits back on his heels as his tunnel vision widens out to let him observe. The wound still looks deep, but it’s not leaking black poison. “Sam?”
“I can barely smell it,” Sam says, his voice thinned out with tiredness. “I think you might’ve beaten it, Dean.”
It’s too soon for hope. Castiel is laid out like a dead thing on a stained bedspread crumpled across the wet tile floor. He’s cold, and he’s deeply unconscious, and he’s had a crazed man injecting what amounts to acid into his body for the last few hours.
The syringe is twisted from Dean’s cramped fingers. He looks up, startled, and Sam turns back from setting it aside and closes his hand on Dean’s shoulder, squeezing hard, rocking him slightly. “Pick him up?”
“Yeah, umm…” Dean draws a couple of quick shallow breaths, willing his heart to stop racing so chicken-shit fast. “Yeah. Pick him up.”
He’s still so god… so damn heavy. Dean nearly throws his back out clear to the next county before he gets him hoisted up. Sam catches him behind the knees and together they shuffle out of the wrecked bathroom to the bed nearest the door.
Sam lifted tape and gauze and all kinds of goodies when he raided the pharmacy in town. Dean perches on the side of the bed to tape up Castiel’s shoulder; when he’s finished, he lifts his left hand to the light, turning it side to side with a faint frown. The lines of the binding symbol are still visible beneath the split, blistered skin. “We’re going to have to watch this in case it’s not burned off enough.”
“So we’ll watch it,” Sam says, and he passes over a roll of bandage.
There’s nothing else Dean can do, and he hates the helpless feeling that leaves. He lays his fingers on the side of Castiel’s neck and yeah, there’s a pulse, and yeah, there’s the slight rise and fall of his chest, but maybe he’d like a little more, just something to show he didn’t do any permanent damage with his damned needles. “Cas?”
“Let him be, Dean. Let him rest.” Sam’s urging him up, urging him away, and Dean lets himself be drawn to the other bed. He sinks down and Sam’s saying something about lying down, getting a few hours sleep, but Dean can barely hear him over the strange rattling that’s coming from somewhere nearby. He clenches his fists and the blood in the creases of his knuckles flakes off into his lap.
“Are your teeth chattering?” Sam moves in and out of his peripheral vision, yapping about wet clothes and extra blankets and dropping a bag beside him and none of it really matters worth a damn.
“I did that to Alastair,” Dean says abruptly, and that shuts Sam up, shuts him up and freezes him in his tracks. “In Wyoming. I did other crap, too, but yeah, the needle full of holy water, that cracked him open.”
“Dean…”
“No, it did, Sam. Soon as I started filling it, I could smell his fear. Needle popped his meatsuit’s skin, and shit, did he scream. I don’t think he was humoring me, either; holy water injected into demon blood is off-the-charts agonizing.”
“Dean, you had to do it. You should be glad you thought of it.”
“Glad? Sam, I shot an angel full of liquid flame,” Dean says bitterly, “the same way I tortured a demon. I shot Cas full of holy water until I nearly killed him! It still might.”
"Stop it.” Sam sends a straight-arm punch into Dean’s shoulder, rocking him back from the blow. “You saved his life.”
“With torture. With the kind of evil filth I brought back from the Pit.” Dean starts to shake. He bends over so Sam can’t see his face.
“Dean.” All of a sudden Sam’s beside him, arm around his back, his hand spread warm across Dean’s damp t-shirt. “Listen to me; just listen, okay?” His voice has gone low and terribly intense. “You went into the Pit and came back out with knowledge that you used to save an angel. How is that a bad thing? You fought fire with fire, okay? Overturned Hell’s methods to save the life of your friend. You can’t… you can’t beat yourself up for that, Dean, you just can’t.”
Sam can probably feel the moisture dripping off Dean’s chin and onto his shirt, but Dean doesn’t actually care, not right this minute. Sam’s not acting like he’s irritated with Dean, or exasperated by the way Hell weakened him.
And he just called Cas Dean’s friend.
Maybe Sam was paying attention after all.
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On to Chapter 7