In His Image: Kinsen ayen Kithinge
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In which both not-quite-angels exist primarily inside Sam and Dean’s respective heads, until they don’t; Crowley is impatient; and the nurse is even more suspicious.
Dean, Sam, Castiel, Crowley, Bobby, Gabriel.
kinsen [v] (Middle English): to wince, shy away, kick.
ayen [prep] (Middle English): against.
kithinge [n] (Middle English): guidance; recognition; friends / acquaintances.
It was Dean who ended up ringing Bobby back, while Sam had indignant conniptions over the sanctity of his phone or something. It had been twenty minutes of arguing, and Sam using his extra-reasonable voice that meant he was extra-pissed, and telling Dean how he wasn’t taking this seriously enough. Which was a lie. Dean was taking it perfectly seriously. He just also thought it was kind of hilarious the way all Sam’s carefully tactical texts had kept getting longer and longer and more elaborate and logical, and his hair was all over his face because he kept huffing and pushing at it, and he still hadn’t got any reply after the three in the first two minutes:
1001101101: herpexia, sam. zachariah w/a tire iron. 30 rabid squirrles.
1001101101: oh come on, wasn’t exactly being subtle
and,
1001101101: the whole death shtick didn’t take :) hey, you guys know what’s awesome? ancient roman fast food. will spill some 4 u!
Because, seriously. How could that be anyone but Gabriel? If it hadn’t been for the whole being dead thing they would have worked it out on day one. And it wasn’t exactly as if they held the monopoly on suddenly not being dead anymore. Dean was pretty sure Sam was just holding out so he could keep being pissed.
(“Come on, man, you’ve gotta admit, it kind of does sound like him. We don’t even know that he really died.” “Yeah, actually Dean, we do.” “Since when? Maybe Lucifer only de-angeled him, or something.” “… He’s just yanking our chains again, like always.” “So it is him, then?” “Dean! Would you focus?” “Hey, I’m not the one swinging around six ways from Sunday, princess.”)
Sam wouldn’t even explain about the tyre iron and the squirrels.
Bobby grunted. “Gabriel, huh?”
The Impala creaked welcomingly as Dean relaxed back against her bonnet. “Going by the way he’s pulling Sam’s pigtails, I’d say yes.” He smirked around the phone at the squawk from inside the car.
“So are we trusting him, or what? Seem to recall you weren’t so happy with him last year.”
Dean shrugged. “Sam thinks he’s just screwing with us again.”
“Yeah?” There was a clink of glass and the sound of liquid being poured at Bobby’s end. “And what do you think?”
Dean hesitated. Bobby relying on his opinions was still kind of weird, although it had been happening more often over the last year or so. Made sense here, really - Bobby had only caught a glimpse of the Trickster four years back, definitely wouldn’t be able to make a call on Gabriel. And Dean was pretty sure he himself had Gabriel’s number. Zachariah’s eyes got all hard and petty and self-righteous when he was angry, but Gabriel’s went bright and full and ridiculously expressive. He felt things deeply, in a way Dean could relate to, and he did a pretty crappy job of hiding it. So once he’d made up his mind to be in, he’d be in. He wouldn’t be able to keep himself out.
He met Sam’s eyes through the windshield, and spoke more seriously. “Guy’s a dick, but he’s on our side. Not gonna bet you won’t wake up with pink hair or something, but I think he’s in it too far to back out now.”
Sam pulled a face, and stared unhappily at his phone.
Bobby sounded less than convinced. “Yeah? So why the backseat driving? Why not just pop on over to Pestilence and grab the ring himself?”
… Which was actually a good point. He’d already thrown down and declared himself, which had to have sent up a “hey, Gabriel’s alive!” flag the size of Chernobyl, so why the subtlety now?
“Maybe he just doesn’t want to get stabbed again. I guess if we’re still going with the rings thing it makes sense not to tip the big guy off.”
Bobby made a dubious grumbling noise. “I’ll crack the books. Soon as you pick up Cas you boys are driving your asses right back up here to help me, y’hear?”
“Got it, Bobby.”
“And if I wake up being probed by aliens I’m blaming you, boy.”
“Alien probing, my fault. Check.”
He closed the phone and looked up Sam, who was looking kind of small and pissed and hurt, for some reason. Dean grinned at him brightly. Clearly he needed someone to point out the pretty damn obvious silver lining here. Lucky he had an awesome brother.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think this calls for a drink.” He grabbed two beers from the cooler in the trunk, handed one over, then clinked them together. Sam’s face changed to that special kind of tolerant expression reserved for mad people. “To friends suddenly not being dead anymore.”
“Hardly a-”
Dean cut him off with a you-will-enjoy-yourself glare and pointed the neck of his bottle at him. Because tense muscles and a crumpled forehead really didn’t suit his baby brother. “Two in twenty-four hours. Drink the damn beer, Sam.”
Sam huffed. “Fine. Fine!” He unfolded himself from the passenger seat and came to perch on the hood with Dean. Then he obeyed, head tipped back and all that ridiculous hair flopping out of the way over his shoulders. The muscles bobbed rhythmically in the long column of his throat as he gulped down half the bottle at a go. “Not being dead anymore.” He eyed the bottle for a moment, then his eyes slid sideways to Dean with a soft little half-smile that made Dean’s heart jump. “Yeah, I guess.”
Dean leaned back and sipped, rolling the cool familiar liquid around in his mouth, taking a moment just to enjoy that look on Sam’s face and that he’d put it there. “And hey.” A whole truck of old books full of history stuff, and an archangel who could just hop back to the years they came from any time he liked? If that wasn’t geek heaven, he didn’t know what was. “Time-travelling archangel as a study buddy, Sammy. Almost makes you believe someone’s watching up there after all, right?”
It wasn’t until Sam blinked at him, mouth half-open and eyes considering, that Dean realised the implications of that. He took a hasty swig to cover up, and looked down at where his boot was scuffing the mud. “Just kidding, man.”
Sam just took another swig and said nothing, staring at the floor with his face closed off in thought, the bottle swinging loosely from thumb and forefinger between his knees.
---
It felt weird, falling asleep without being shit-faced. He blamed his restlessness and the jitters in his stomach on that.
Of course, it also didn’t help that the faint glow of Sam’s cell and the soft, almost inaudible press of thumbs on its keys kept dragging him back to hover on the edge of wakefulness. It was hours later that he was woken properly by the beep of a received message.
Dean grumbled and rolled over to bury his face in his jacket. “Dude, enough. Sext the archangel in the morning.”
Sam sighed, all loud and annoyed and breathy. “Really not sexting, Dean. I asked him why he didn’t just drop by if he had info for us, and he asked why he’d want to ‘tie himself down to you two yahoos’ when he can go anywhere.”
Dean made a sleepy rude noise into the warm, familiar leather. “Guy’s got a point. I wouldn’t either. Go to sleep.”
There was silence for a while, then: “Dean? If there is someone upstairs… I don’t think it’s… whatever Cas and Gabriel and the rest knew as their father.”
Dean waggled his fingers blindly in Sam’s direction. “No theology after two AM. New car rule.”
---
When they started driving again, Sam’s voice and face were perfectly normal as he tried to work out the best angle and time to enter downtown New Orleans to avoid peak hour. And he was almost breaking the zip on his laptop bag, jerking it like that.
Dean threw a sock at him.
“We already knew the guy’s a jerk who’s allergic to full disclosure, Sam. Just play nice and thank him for the damn books already.”
Fourteen hours to New Orleans.
---
There were so many little, everyday things Dean didn’t know about Castiel, because he had never stuck around that long. Things he’d known about Sam as long as he could remember. Whether he turned the pages of books from the top corner or the bottom corner. How he slept (on his back or his side?), how he breathed when he was dreaming (did angels dream?). What music he’d choose for the Impala, if Dean let him.
Dean thought that he might.
Well. So long as it wasn’t some weird modern-classical shit.
His little brother dozed in the passenger seat beside him, fumbling into awareness occasionally to murmur a few words or send a text message to an archangel. Dean drove on through the early hours of the morning, and the gradual Apocalypse.
He’d closed his mind so thoroughly, over the last three weeks, to the word Castiel. The thrumming resonance of the name; the deep scrape of his voice; the little confused half-frown, the warmth of his hands and the way they touched all delicate and remote and reverent (except when he was angry, and that was a very different thought); the strange stillness and the precise weight he could bring to a stare and a silence - Dean had scrubbed them all from his memory, thrown up roadblocks on each of the many, many winding ways in his head that wanted to pull him in there to lose himself. He’d done it well: there had been very few cracks.
Now they were gone. Just that little toast before they’d gone to sleep, an acknowledgement and a breath drawn in a moment of shuddering relief, and the blocks had dissolved into the ground like they’d never been there. Maybe they’d been dams instead, because Dean’s mind was flooded now, tingling and oversensitive. Everything he saw and thought shone with that name.
Castiel.
God, he was such a teenage girl.
---
There was a nervous rattle in the back passenger-side door, probably from where a demon had thrown Sam into it three days back. Dean had meant to fix that, but they’d hared off so fast after Sam did his weird ritual dream thing that he hadn’t had the chance.
He’d have to do it as soon as they stopped. Couldn’t have Cas trying to grab some shut-eye against a rattly door. Especially if he had a bad back. Hell. An angel with a bad back.
---
They drove through a national park, all gentle slopes and the sharp tang of pine on the air. If they came back this way, they should stop in here for the night. Castiel had said once that he liked the smell of pine, with a faint line between his eyebrows, as if it were a perplexing and slightly shameful confession to make.
---
Sam changed his shirt on a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, like he always did when they’d gone all night in the car, long limbs and muscle tangling with plaid in practised contortions.
They’d have to get him clothes. He’d need a few changes of jeans and things, some shirts, a tough jacket or two, shoes that wouldn’t fall apart now that he couldn’t use his angel mojo to freeze-dry everything on him, and shit, what kind of underwear did Jimmy wear? Boxers or briefs? Would Cas just want to stick with whatever Jimmy had? If he’d been wearing the same shirt all this time it made sense he would have been wearing the same pair of underpants, which was kind of creepy, even though it shouldn’t be.
Now Dean was thinking about Castiel’s underpants. How had that happened?
An image of Castiel wearing jeans and clothes that actually fit slid treacherously into Dean’s head and made itself at home. No tie, maybe a soft blue shirt open at the neck, weirdly decadent. The sharp angle of his hips under denim, emphasised by the strong dark line of a belt. Maybe boots, firm around his ankles, giving his footsteps weight and sound, anchoring him to the ground and reality and the rules of human life.
Dean shifted uncomfortably in his chair and glanced at the clock for the third time in twenty minutes. Ten hours to New Orleans.
---
A hawk balanced on the air above the road, wings tilting and sliding through the little tugs and flutters of the wind.
… Castiel wouldn’t be able to fly away.
That moment in every argument, every uncomfortable silence, every time the conversation got awkward, or when all the essential information had been imparted, Dean, there is no reason for me to remain, and anyone else would settle down for all those essential non-essentials of everyday life, of friendship, of taking a freaking break - that moment that was always suddenly soft heavy wings on the edge of hearing and a modest Cas-shaped hole in the conversation and the room. That moment. That wouldn’t happen anymore. Castiel would have to stay and shoulder his way through, raw and messy, like all of them. Get his hands grubby.
Dean wasn’t sure whether he liked that thought or not.
Beside him, Sam let out a soft breath, considering and dubious. He was staring at his phone and whatever that latest beep had brought him.
Dean made an absent questioning noise.
It would be good for Cas, though. Teach him a bit more about the world, about his body, about the way people worked.
“Kali,” Sam said. He was already thumbing in a reply - sceptical, probably, given his voice. “Gabriel says Kali brought him back.”
“Huh. Guess that old blood magic was good for something, then.”
Sam cut him a disapproving sideways look. “That’s it?”
Dean shrugged.
They’d have to go easy on him. Hell of a culture shock, even after two years down here.
Beep.
Sam snorted, his involuntary half-muffled noise that meant he hadn’t expected to be amused and was going to pretend it had never happened.
“What?”
Sam smirked. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” He shot back an answer, then started keying in another, more slowly.
Great, now his little brother was making private jokes with a trickster.
Sam’s thumb hovered over send, then pressed down. “So, he says he’s kind of… reduced. Apparently an Indian god can’t really remake an archangel. Which is why he isn’t just flying around like before.”
Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Except over to Dark Ages England to steal books.”
“Apparently,” Sam agreed drily, and typed something else. “And the sixteenth century is hardly the Dark Ages, Dean.”
Beep.
Sam’s mouth tugged down at the corners, all impatient. “Now he’s just being sarcastic.”
“Poor little Sammy.”
“Screw you.”
Which bits would they have to teach him? Which bits of humanity, like languages and history, would Castiel already know, and which bits would be completely incomprehensible to him because they weren’t important enough for the angel tourist guidebook?
---
He’d have to teach Castiel to shoot.
Dean’s fingers curled tighter around the wheel as that image spun slowly in his head. Castiel holding a gun, that little frown of absolute focus on his face as he loaded it, something so fucking gorgeous and powerful about the curve of his fingers on the barrel, the strong steady line from the barrel right back up into his shoulder, but sliding and slick and wrong too, like a loose bright sick grin and a rattle of a pill bottle.
That rattle in the door made it sound like it had the uneasy jitters.
(Seven hours.)
---
Beep.
“Seriously?”
Sam’s voice curled between amusement, incredulity, and a hefty dose of pissed-off.
“He says he gets motion sickness, Dean.”
Dean’s mouth curved of its own accord. “Sounds like just deserts to me.”
Beep.
Beep.
The trouble was, every time he thought of trying to talk to Castiel, all reasonable and gentle, it turned into “see, I didn’t do it, I shoved it right back in their faces, you should have trusted me” in his head. Or sometimes, “what the hell did you think you were doing to yourself, you suicidal idiot?”.
Beep.
Sam shoved a hand through his hair and huffed. Again. Then his fingers flew, jabbing down hard enough on the keys that Dean could hear them over the rumble of the Impala under his thighs. Sounded like someone who wasn’t Dean was getting the full force of Sam’s patented I-am-disappointed-in-you ranting.
… Yeah, better hope Gabriel was telling the truth about being down on juice. Or that he wouldn’t want to really smite his brother’s vessel.
No beeps followed.
Shit, did Jimmy have any food allergies?
It’d probably be a bit tactless to ring his wife and ask.
---
Was Castiel still angry?
Worse. Had he just stopped caring?
He hadn’t tried to call.
Castiel would probably be pleased when he heard that Dean had put down Zachariah.
The thought of that smarmy dick wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been. It wormed its way into the bright little image of Castiel in a casual button-down, opened the neck of the shirt a little further and exposed soured, weeping cuts. The tight ugly lump of guilt in Dean’s stomach curdled.
Okay, so it had been Sammy holding the knife. Castiel standing there all distant and unflinching and telling him what to do. But it had been Dean who’d let Cas down.
Dean was less sure of what Castiel would think about having Gabriel onside. But if anyone could tell them how far to trust him, it’d be Castiel.
They’d have to find him a good solid long knife. He’d be best with that, at least at first. Maybe a machete. Or hell, they could even find him a proper sword. All warrior of God and vengeance. It’d look good on him. But Jimmy Novak probably didn’t have the right muscles for a heavy blade of any kind. How much of Castiel’s own strength would he have left? Would he have to eat? And… well, digest?
Was a little remote cloud-hopping voyeurism enough to teach an angel how to use the toilet? How to listen to the body’s grumblings and know when to start looking for a restroom along the road? how to work all the right muscles just enough when you got there?
And what was up with Sam and Gabriel anyway? Usually it was only Dean who could push Sammy’s buttons like that. Maybe that whole eternal time-looped Tuesday thing had left a sore spot.
(Five hours.)
This mental countdown was getting really freaking annoying.
Maybe they could wheedle Gabriel into hopping back to the Crusades and lifting a sword off some knight.
… Or Dean could remember what he’d carefully hidden away in the trunk after Van Nuys.
---
It was just after half three in the afternoon (three and a half hours to go) when Crowley invited himself into the back seat of Dean’s sulphur-free baby.
Sam had good reflexes. Dean hadn’t even known he’d had that knife on him.
Dean’s own reflexes were all caught up with stopping the Impala without crashing her. Crowley’s, apparently, were busy making him vanish. Though not far enough for comfort.
“Did you get him?”
A knock on Dean’s window.
“Fancy a fag and a chat?”
Sam was out and stalking around the car after Crowley before Dean had unbuckled his seatbelt. Demons should really know better than to pop in on his little brother when he’d had a cagey archangel winding him up all day.
Crowley backed away, grinning his smoky salesman’s grin, hands raised in an “easy, big boy” gesture. “You’re upset. We should discuss it.”
Dean closed his door and leaned against it, letting Sam have at it. Hey, if he was in the mood to stab something, Dean was hardly going to get in his way.
“You want to talk? After what you did to us?”
Bastard’s shoes were scratched and his suit was rumpled, but he was smooth as cream in the face of Sam’s growl, like he still held every card in the pack and some you didn’t know about. “Yes, I hear the Colt didn’t work. Sorry about that, by the way. Honest mistake. Should have asked your angel to get a second opinion first.”
Sam lunged. The demon vanished and reappeared on the other side of Dean. “Call off your dog, please.”
Dean just cocked the Colt and levelled it between Crowley’s eyes. “Give me one good reason.”
“I can give you Pestilence’s gameplan.”
… Okay then. That could be a good reason. “What do you know about Pestilence?”
Crowley tipped his head to one side and smiled the smile of one to whom cruelty came easy, right up the barrel of the gun that he’d handed them. “I know what he’s up to and how to get him.” Something he must have seen in Dean’s face turned his drawl into smugness. “Aah. That’s got your interest, hasn’t it?”
Sam stopped just out of reach, an indignant tower of growl and fury. “Are you actually listening to this?”
“Sam -”
“Are you nuts? What is it with you and trusting everyone today?”
Dean didn’t take his eyes or sights off the demon. “Just shut up for a second, Sam.”
“Shut up, the both of you!” What did you know, that smart, civilised mask was worn thin.
Dean interrupted him before he could get started. “Yeah, I don’t think you get to be calling the shots here, big boy. We’re on a schedule.” He gestured with the Colt at the scruff of Crowley’s hair and clothes, sleek gone shabby. “And you don’t look like you’re going to be rushing off to an important business meeting anytime soon.”
Crowley snarled, impatience and the taste of blood and claws underneath. “They ate my tailor! Two months under a rock like a bloody salamander! Every demon on hell and earth’s got his eyes out for me, lads, and here I am wasting my precious hiding time on Sam and Dean bloody Winchester!”
“Yeah. And why is that, exactly?” Sam was a looming promise of scepticism and sudden death, but he was helping. Sort of.
“Your old pal Brady.” Crowley drew out each word like taffy, slow and dark and kind of sticky. “Remember him, Sam? Those sweet college years? Demon. Sorry. Not just any demon. Horsemen’s own tour manager. And currently VP of distribution, Niveus Pharmaceuticals.” He slipped a newspaper from his pocket and held it out to Sam, as if he didn’t really care either way whether Sam took it or the world turned into a pile of steaming crap. “You might want to head that off at the pass.”
Sam hesitated for a moment, his jaw tight the way it went when he had decided not to think about something unpleasant. Then he took the newspaper and skimmed the article Crowley had pointed out. “Niveus Pharmaceuticals is rushing delivery of its new swine-flu vaccine to ‘stem the tide of the unprecedented outbreak.’” His eyes flickered down, and he made that little noise of pieces slotting into place in his giant brain. “Huh. Shipments leave in three days.”
Dean’s stomach was doing a slow, unpleasant roll. He lowered the gun. “So, Pestilence…”
Sam was all foreboding under the flop of his hair. “Was spreading swine flu. And this vaccine…”
Crowley finished for him, obscenely cheerful. “Chock-full of grade A, farm-fresh Croatoan.”
Dean cut him a dirty look. Glaring at Crowley was better than paying attention to the post-Apocalyptic cityscapes and vicious hordes of former humans replaying themselves in his head.
Sam shook his head. “Simultaneous, countrywide distribution. It’s quite a plan.”
“So!” Crowley clapped his hands brightly. “I suggest you waltz into their warehouse for a little domestic terrorism. Chop chop. Now you’ve got your pet archangel back even you boys should be able to fumble your way through it.”
The Colt very nearly came up into Crowley’s face again, but that would have been too strong a tell. “What do you know about him?”
The curl of Crowley’s smirk was downright filthy. “So much more than your smug little heterosexual brain could swallow, Winchester.” He shoved his hands in his tattered pockets, every inch the vicious little smartass he’d been in his own house. “I heard you two talking a few days ago - never mind how for now, darlings - and decided everyone’s favourite Trickster wasn’t as dead as we’d been led to believe. So I paid him a little visit. Gave him the smartphone he’s using to chat with you. Don’t bother thanking me. Interesting state he’s in, by the way. Not a whiff of angel anywhere, the naughty little god bits taste all wrong, and someone needs to teach him what a razor’s all about.”
Sam’s face looked like the bastard child of a thunderstorm and a really annoyed cat. Crowley looked straight into it and smiled like a jaguar. “Do get a move on, there’s duckies, or this time next week we’ll all be living in zombie land. And that’s just hell on the wardrobe.”
Dean lifted an eyebrow that completely failed to be sympathetic.
“Literally,” Crowley added. “Toodle-oo!”
---
Sam rang Bobby, who cursed them all out for being too far away to pick him up and promised to find the location of the warehouse. Then came about twenty minutes of indignant key-smashing on Sam’s part and occasional mocking beeps from his phone. Dean kept an eye on him out of the corner of his eye, because going by the set of Sam’s jaw and the weight of his breathing, he was rounding the corner of “annoyed” and hurtling straight on toward “really seriously angry.” And Lucifer had hardly been the first to notice that Sam had anger issues that made the Hulk look like the kind of guy you’d trust with your best bone china tea cups.
If Castiel’s lower back was damaged, maybe a weapon that needed a hefty swing behind it wasn’t such a hot plan, especially for a melee situation. Then again, it was going to be all-out fighting either way. They were all going to come out of it pretty damned messy.
Less than three hours until New Orleans.
“Alright, tiger, take it easy. Has he said anything useful?”
Sam made a little noise like he had a cranky bear in his throat. “Says they’re not working together. Just that Crowley helped him. I think. Cash and the phone.”
“Why?”
Sam typed something brief and hit send, then rubbed his free hand over his forehead as if he was trying to smooth it out. “Makes sense, if Crowley’s really on the run. Even powered down, Gabriel’s got to be an important game piece.”
Dean hummed thoughtfully. “So it comes down to, out of a couple of twisty bastards, who’re probably both playing each other and us, are we going to trust any info they give us enough to get Lucifer back in the cage?”
Apocalypses. Hours of brain-twisting fun for the whole family.
Beep.
Sam glanced at the latest message, then set the phone aside. He was silent for a minute, then: “See Dean, here’s the thing. He sounds… kind of defensive. Grouchy. Maybe even hurt.” He sucked in his bottom lip and chewed it for a moment, quiet and tense like a disappointed gazelle. “And I really don’t think he’s that good an actor.”
Dean looked at him for a minute, at the weird protective hunch of his shoulders and the stubborn twist of his mouth. There was something else going on here that Dean wasn’t at all sure about, and sort of doubted Sam had even noticed. Something sharp and deep, like when Sam had been telling him about seeing Gabriel in the panic room.
He took a breath, then let it out and turned back to the road. “Okay then.”
This was him, trusting Sam to deal with his own shit. Like a grown-up.
After a while, Sam slowly reached for his phone again.
---
The road arced high around the banks of a still lake, calm as a dream, circling around it like flying in slow motion.
Did Castiel know how to swim?
(One hour.)
---
Of course, because Dean was useless at this sort of being sensitive crap, what he actually found himself wanting to blurt out when he walked into the hospital room was, “Jesus, you’re tiny without that trench coat.”
It wasn’t just that. Castiel looked like an invalid.
The lights in the room made him look all washed-out and pale against the sheets, and his eyes looked way too big (shocked wide and flickering, then carefully illegible). Dean found his eyes caught on the peak of one knee drawn up under the blanket, the most incongruous little detail, like he hadn’t ever realised that Castiel had knees before. It looked weird on him.
“Hey.” He cleared his throat and tried again, going for a grin. “Hey. You’re really rocking that whole consumptive Orphan Annie look, man. Suits you.” Christ, what did he say that for? Smooth, Winchester, smooth.
“Dean.”
And there was that rasp of the voice, the head tilt, but they didn’t feel as familiar as they should have. They felt more like they had a year ago, when it was still some ethereal, alien thing behind them, incomprehensible and uncomprehending. Flat acknowledgement. Dean’s grin withered and died a pathetic little death. He realised he was lounging in the door like an idiot.
“So, uh.” He rubbed his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Good to see you, man. We thought you were dead.” Whoops. Had that come out like an accusation? He hadn’t meant it to. Mostly. “So they said downstairs that you’re good to go. I guess that means you can walk.” It started as a joke and ended as a question.
Castiel just nodded, and didn’t take his eyes off him, all solemnity and that far-away little frown. The hard angles of the bones in his wrist and collar were pressing against the skin, stretching it out fragile and thin.
The curl of his fingers on top of the bedclothes looked like brittle winter twigs.
Dean cleared his throat again. What had he been about to say?
Fuck. If they ever had a staring event in the Olympics, Cas would be winning hands down before he even got there.
Castiel’s hands closed slowly, as if they felt his gaze, and folded over each other into a careful little ball in his lap. Fucking angelic remoteness. He was going to make Dean work for it, wasn’t he?
“Okay then.” Dean moved forward, too abruptly, and dropped the thrift store bag on the bed. Castiel’s leg flinched away under the bedclothes like a reflex, a startled little jerk of motion that stopped Dean in his tracks. “Shit, sorry - did I hurt you?”
Castiel hesitated for a moment.
“You have not… hurt me, Dean.”
There was a strange emphasis there, currents of disappointment and something else underneath that Dean didn’t know how to begin understanding. And no. Castiel’s voice and eyes weren’t what they’d been a year ago. There had been a weight and a resonance in his voice and every movement back then, making the room buzz with the authority of millennia. Now there was just a small, fragile man lying in a bed.
Dean focussed on the sharp jut of the bone in Castiel’s hip under the sheets, and tried to soften his voice. “Right. Good. Okay, so. Sam’s getting us a motel for the night, because we have to go pretty damn early tomorrow but we could all do with getting horizontal first,” (though Castiel was probably bored with it, if angels could get bored, and seeing him horizontal was still just weird), “then we have to go blow up a warehouse.”
Another nod. Okay, so he’d never been talkative, but seriously… Castiel’s stare was a palpable weight, and Dean couldn’t read him. He’d thought he’d been getting pretty good at translating Castiel’s many silences and half-expressions into real-person speak, but now he wasn’t getting a thing.
“Oh, and Crowley’s back, by the way.” He tried to grin with that one, to give the eyeroll of “can you believe we’re going to have to deal with that douchebag again?”, but all he got back was the patient, faintly disapproving stare.
He cocked an eyebrow expectantly, a clear “your turn now, buddy.” Castiel just looked slightly puzzled.
Dean groaned. Some heartfelt reunion this was. “Come on, man. Would you just - say something, please?”
Castiel broke the stare and looked down at his hands. His dry, pale lips parted for a moment, like they needed to hold a pow-wow with the air first about what words to let out. Then, quiet and rough, he murmured, “You look smaller than I remember you.”
… Okay. No, not okay. What? “Smaller? Smaller how?”
“My vision is… limited.” His eyes flickered up towards Dean then down, just a flash of blue under dark lashes without that strange little extra brilliance that should have been there. “I find it disconcerting.”
Shit. Yeah, okay, that was kind of big. Having the whole world looking suddenly different would throw anyone. And the stupid stubborn son of a bitch had decided to just hang around here among strangers rather than letting Dean help.
“Seriously, man, you couldn’t even pick up the phone?”
It was meant to be gentle, but Dean’s throat was scratchy and it ended up as something gruff and hurt. Castiel’s mouth twitched a little, that thing he did sometimes when he was being all irritated at Dean’s blatant humanity, or finding something amusing that he thought he shouldn’t, or just wasn’t sure what he was meant to do in a particular situation. Dean hadn’t a clue how to call it.
Except that Castiel was also staring from under his lashes at Dean’s right hand, which was - huh. Curled over that sharp-looking cut of the hipbone under the sheet, pressing gently, one thumb rubbing back and forth over it as if to hide it or soothe it back under the skin and soften the harsh edges.
Dean froze. He hadn’t even realised he was standing that close to the bed.
The little half-confused furrow between Castiel’s eyebrows deepened.
Well, it was a stupid-looking hip anyway. Castiel was too skinny. He needed feeding up. Dean shoved both hands deep into his pockets and backed toward the door. “So if you want to just get dressed… there’s clothes in there. And a toothbrush and shit. If you need it.”
Castiel’s tongue darted out to lick his lips, a flicker of that odd little uncertainty, and he reached for the bag.
“Just yell if you need a hand, okay?” Dean escaped out the door before Castiel could throw off the sheets, because, well, hospital gown. And knees. Didn’t need to see it.
He wasn’t fretting. Even if Cas had looked kind of fragile. And wobbly. And probably didn’t know how shoelaces worked.
He made it five whole minutes before knocking. “You good in there, dude?”
There was no reply, just a thud and a soft thump like a stumble. Dean was back inside before he thought about it, so it was lucky that Castiel had apparently figured out the jeans. More or less.
Dean blamed the fact that he burst out laughing on the relief, and the really weird day. Also on the incongruity of a bare-footed angel with mussed-up hair, second-hand jeans that he apparently couldn’t fasten, serious bedhead, a perplexed frown, and a shirt with two buttons done up in the wrong holes.
“Cas, you child.”
That got him a glare, a proper one, heavy and impatient. “Whoa.” He held up his hands, chuckling and coaxing, because after all they always teased Cas like that and he never minded, so he was just being snippish or something. “Come on, man. Buttons?”
“And how long did it take you to master them, Dean? As a child?” Castiel practically snapped, and okay, there was something else happening here that Dean hadn’t a clue about. And was Castiel actually flushing?
He reached out and tried a smile, awkwardly. “Yeah, okay. Just come here, would you?”
Castiel’s shoulders stiffened defensively, and his hands went down to wrestle with the button on his jeans. His glare changed to I-am-a-creature-of-aeons-and-infinite-wisdom-and-I-don’t-have-to-put-up-with-your-Winchester-shit, which Dean so wasn’t buying right now. He moved into Castiel’s space and raised his hands to the dishevelled shirt, murmuring cajolingly, “Okay, so I’m a dick, yeah? You already knew that.” Why did Castiel feel so strange and unfamiliar now, like they hadn’t spent almost two years prodding each other into new shapes?
Maybe it was the change of clothes.
Castiel didn’t push him away. The shape of his collarbone against his throat was even sharper and more delicate up close. Dean fastened the top two buttons over it with careful fingers.
His heart was thumping like it had forgotten the whole depowered thing and thought he was in imminent danger of a smiting.
His heart could bite him.
“Yeah, there we go,” he breathed, not sure why he was sort of whispering, but it wasn’t as if he had to talk loudly for Castiel to hear him like this. He flicked the two misplaced buttons out of their holes and smoothed down the grey-green wings of the shirt front so that they fell properly over his chest. Christ, he was skinny under there.
He could hear Castiel breathing, soft and careful. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard that before. It was tickling his eyelashes, and the hair just over his forehead. Well, Cas had always been able to coax him into being all girly about this sort of thing. And it wasn’t as if the guy knew anything about personal boundaries anyway. Might as well just go with it.
One by one, he pushed the buttons into place, moving down Castiel’s chest from his throat. Just over his heart, Dean’s fingers fumbled. He was suddenly very glad that the tee had apparently not been too difficult to figure out. Because there was something written under there that he really didn’t want to have to read right now.
As he fastened the last button, he murmured, “There, just like that,” and gave it a soothing sort of a pat, as if they were comfortable, as if Dean’s stomach wasn’t lurching. And, good, Castiel seemed to have managed to fumble the button of his jeans into place, because that would have been awkward.
He raised his eyes. Castiel was looking at him like he was a new, illegible thing.
Dean cleared his throat again, and gestured to Castiel’s chest. “How’s…”
Castiel’s head tilted to one side, very slowly, as if he was trying to bring Dean into focus like one of those magic eye things. “It is… healing.”
“Good. Good.” Dean eyed the shirt balefully and tried to swallow down the hard ball of guilt and anger. Honestly, the first time he’d seen the skin underneath it and it had to involve his little brother cutting it up into some kind of kamikaze angel-bomb? Just to make some stupid point about how Dean wasn’t good enough for special angel-attention? “Because seriously, Cas…”
“Mr Novak, sir?”
Dean was abruptly aware that he and Castiel were standing way too close. And wow, the nurse who’d just appeared in the doorway had quite the impressive “who the hell are you” stinkeye.
In a voice so neutral that it was really, really pointed, she observed, “You have a visitor.”
Okay. Dean supposed that when a guy turned up in hospital with some strange cultish markings carved into his chest and no coherent story about who he was or how they’d got there it wasn’t a huge leap of logic to work out that he had some pretty shady people in his life. Also, the way he had moved without thinking to stand between Castiel and the voice at the door probably looked weird to civilians. He put on his patented “I am the good guy here” friendly face, for use on mothers and cops.
“Gemma.” Castiel’s voice behind Dean’s shoulder was distant and gentle, as if he were the nurse. “This is Dean. I am leaving now.”
The nurse narrowed her eyes, and she repeated the name as if it confirmed all her darkest suspicions. Dean blinked at her perplexedly, but she spoke over him. “Mr Novak, after everything that’s happened, isn’t there anything you think you should reconsider?”
“I have already reconsidered.”
Her eyes flicked meaningfully from Dean back to Castiel. “Don’t you think it would be saf- better for you to go back to your wife now?”
Okay, weird emphasis there. Dean flashed her his most charming smile. “Lady, believe me, his wife don’t need her life screwed up any worse than it already is.”
“The welfare of Mrs Novak is not my concern, sir.”
Ouch. Usually people only spoke to him with that kind of acidity after he’d completely trashed their living room getting a poltergeist out of the walls. Yeah, there was definitely a whole other conversation going on here that no one had filled him in on.
Castiel, unperturbed by glowers, moved past Dean to take the nurse’s hands in both of his. “I appreciate your concern, Gemma. If Dean will have me back, I will go with him.”
“If?” Dean couldn’t let that pass. He punched Castiel on the shoulder, gently, trying to look all supportive. “Hey, we were hardly going to leave you here, were we? You’re one of us, dude.” That only earned him a confused look from Castiel, and an even harder one from the nurse.
Oh. Right. “One of us,” and she was thinking twisted cult. Great.
“Would you excuse us, sir? If Mr Novak wants to be discharged, I’ve a few things to go through with him first.”
“What? Oh, fine.” Dean was pretty sure most discharge procedures didn’t require total privacy, but hey, if it made her feel better to give Cas the “you know dangerous kinky cults are dangerous and kinky, right?” speech, he could wait. It couldn’t take more than a few minutes.
He closed the door behind him and glared at it. And hey, it was only the Apocalypse. No rush.
He leaned against the wall outside some more, and did not jiggle his foot impatiently, because if she was a demon she’d had plenty of opportunities to take Castiel out and hadn’t yet. And he was pretty sure Cas could hold her off long enough for Dean to hear a struggle and burst in on them. Just hypothetically speaking, of course.
It was almost ten minutes before the door opened, just in time for him to hear, “Please remember, Mr Novak: you don’t deserve to be hurt. No one should make choices for you except you.” The “I’ve got your number, big boy” glare that the nurse shot at Dean as she emerged in front of Castiel said that she’d totally meant him to hear that.
Dean winked at her.
“Thank you, Gemma.” Her stare of death was broken when Castiel took her hands and leaned in to kiss her cheek, a grave and solemn gesture that looked like some old-world courtesy thing, and when the hell had he learned to do that?
The nurse looked hardly less surprised than Dean felt, but the concern in her voice was tempered with warmth when she warned, “I don’t want to see you in here again.”
Castiel blinked at her, slow and alien. “I don’t expect you will.”
Dean cleared his throat and grabbed the trench coat and bag from the arm nearest him. “Give me those, you big weakling.”
It fell flat, but hey, most jokes did around Castiel anyway. That was normal, more or less. Okay, so the silence after was usually comfortable rather than stiff and cool, but it wasn’t as if Castiel needed to carry his own bag when Dean was right there and not just out of a hospital bed.
Dean broke it when they got into the lift, nodding at the bulging pocket of Castiel’s shirt. “What did she give you?”
Castiel’s elegant fingers drew two small pill bottles, and a card with a phone number on it. He turned the latter over between his fingertips, looking at it like something mildly unexpected that had turned up in his breakfast cereal. “She said to call this number if I ever felt… unsafe or controlled.”
“Oh, man.” Dean grimaced and ran his hand down over his face, trying not to laugh openly. Okay, so it was kind of awkward, and brainwashing kidnapping cults probably weren’t all that funny, and he could see how it could have looked like that even if Castiel seemed to be completely oblivious. But hey, end of the world. You had to take your laughs where you could get them. “Let me see the drugs?”
Castiel handed the bottles over silently as the lift doors opened. His fingers were cool where they brushed against Dean’s. Dean swallowed the urge to take his hand and warm it in his pocket or something, because that thing with the hip had been enough weird touchy-feely crap for one day, and peered at the label. It was hand-written, not issued formally by the hospital pharmacy.
He whistled, and peered sideways at Castiel’s stiff gait. “This is some pretty strong stuff they’ve got you on. Are you sure you’re okay walking?”
Castiel cut him a sharp look. “Dean. I realise you consider me laughably incapable of performing the simplest of human tasks, but I did learn to walk many millennia before you.”
“Jesus. Grumpy Macgrumpyson.” And he hadn’t even been teasing him that time. His cell rang, and he tossed the bottles back with unexpected relief at the interruption.
“Sam. We’re just leaving.” He listened for a moment, then turned to Castiel. “You eating now, man? What do you like?” Castiel’s mouth turned into a thin, unhappy line, and he nodded, but didn’t say anything. Dean decided to interpret that as “hospital food makes me doubt whether humanity was worth saving after all.” “Get him a nice juicy burger, Sammy.”
Whatever Sam said in response, Dean missed it, because Castiel was looking just a bit paler than before, and had turned his face ever so slightly away.
Dean abruptly felt like a callous idiot.
“… Second thoughts, Sammy, hold the burger. In fact, let’s just steer well clear of red meat altogether, yeah?”
Sam’s incredulous exhale said “my brother is such a jerk” far more effectively than words. “I’ll be at the motel in ten.”
“You’ll beat us there, then.” Dean hung up, and let the silence waver in the air as they made it out the side door and crossed the car park. He tossed Castiel’s bag and ubiquitous, now-patched trench coat into the back seat, then settled in to his seat. Castiel slid in more slowly, careful with his body, working out how to move his weight as he went. As he finally sank back into the welcoming leather seat, he gave a soft sigh that sounded almost like relief. Dean was struck for a moment by how right he looked there, riding shotgun beside him. Treating the Impala like home.
Which was wrong. Castiel was only there because he wasn’t strong enough just now to zap himself from place to place. And that seat was Sammy’s anyway.
As he pulled out he asked, soft and neutral because Castiel was being all unpredictable, “That Famine thing stuck, huh?”
Castiel said nothing for a minute, and Dean stole a glance at him. He was doing the remote angelic face again, but the line of his jaw was too scruffy and there was a tired slump to his shoulders that made him look depressingly human.
Castiel moistened his lips, hesitated a moment, then spoke. “Everything sticks.” His voice scraped low and harsh through Dean’s gut.
Dean swallowed and turned his eyes back to front, wordless.
---
Because Sam always made everything look easy (the dick), the moment Castiel set foot into their motel room he was swept up into a big manly bear-hug, with Sam’s huge hand almost engulfing one of his shoulders. “Cas! We missed you, man. How’s your back? I got you lentil and vegetable soup, I figure that’s bland enough if your stomach’s all wonky from hospital food or whatever.” And Castiel actually relaxed into it, leaning against Sam’s bulk like he was almost dead on his feet and Sam’s touch kept him together.
Dean closed the door, and didn’t scowl. Anything that made Castiel happier had to be good.
He didn’t miss the quiet “Thank you, Samuel,” or the way Sam’s eyes lit up with relief. So he mussed up Sam’s hair on his way past, and threw in a cheeky “Yeah, thanks Samuel” of his own.
Sam made a bitchface at him, but he got it.
---
Because Sam was also annoyingly observant, he noticed that Dean was sulking before Dean did. It wasn’t like Dean had thought there’d be some big hug-it-out reunion or anything, and it wasn’t like his hilarious (no matter what Sam said) crash course in the proper uses of deodorant and toothbrushes had gone badly exactly, but he hadn’t expected Castiel to shut himself in the bathroom to apply the lesson without so much as one of his reluctant little half-smiles.
“You want to talk sulking over angels all day, Sammy? You really want to go there?”
Sam looked annoyingly triumphant, shuffled around on the floor with one foot until he found a sock, then bent down to pick it up. Then he threw it at Dean.
“Hey!”
“He already knows you’re a jerk who’s allergic to emotions, man. Just play nice and give him a damn hug already.”
“What? No! What?”
Sam just smirked.
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