March-Stalkers Mighty: 5/22
Passus III: Pes dexter.
Dean sighed. “What is it with you girls and shotguns? Seriously?”
“I’m not sure,” Gwen said pleasantly, from the corner of the stableyard. “I think it’s a men thing. So hard to get a man to take you seriously unless yours is bigger than his. Why would that be, do you think?”
As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness.
“My God, what’s that, Watson?”
“I don’t know. It’s a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before.”
It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came.
“Watson,” said the baronet, “it was the cry of a hound.”
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902. (Chapter 9.)
Dean wasn’t exactly surprised that he couldn’t sleep much. Not that he’d been sleeping that well lately anyway, but it was one thing to be having all this sort of theoretical mess in your head. It was something else to have consequences.
Sam crept into Dean’s bed around two in the morning, which he hadn’t done since he was a whole lot smaller than this. Dean didn’t say anything, just lifted the sheet for him and kept his eyes closed. If he didn’t turn over, he could almost pretend the heavy warmth at his back was the right shape, and the heavy head using his heart as a pillow (although pretty much anywhere else on his torso would be more comfortable) was just Sam’s ginormous hand. And, well, Dean’s bed usually smelled like dog anyway, because Chevy was sneaky in the middle of the night.
Three big bodies on the bed made it even harder to get comfy, though. And apparently Sam still sprawled, no matter what shape he was in. And Dean’s brain wouldn’t shut up.
He woke abruptly from an uneasy doze a while later, somewhere in those interminable hours before dawn, with just four words jarring through his brain. Bobby’s voice, and four words he hadn’t really noticed at the time.
That angel we winged.
Shit.
“Sam.”
He had to shove two big grumbling furballs out of his way to get at his clothes. “Sam.”
Sam lifted his head and blinked grouchily, and hey, at least that hadn’t changed.
“Cas, Sam. Was Cas there?” But Sam would’ve mentioned it if Cas had been hurt, right?
Sam just blinked muzzily, then shrugged. At least, that’s what Dean assumed that was - it looked kind of funny with a dog’s slopey shoulders instead of Sam’s big square ones.
“Hold on. Would you even know him if you saw him? Did you actually see the angels?” Dean hopped his way into his pants. “Were there any there with dark wings? Did you see the one Bobby said they winged? How bad was it?”
Sam rolled his eyes and put his head on his paws, looking impatient and kind of pissy.
“Uh. Right. Yes and no. Um. D’you know if Cas - if an angel with dark wings - was there?”
Sam shook his head.
“You don’t know, or he wasn’t there?”
Sam grumbled, and shrugged.
“Okay. You don’t know. And you didn’t see the angel who got winged?”
Another headshake.
“Right. But. If I know him, he wouldn’t’ve let something like that go down without being in on the thing.” He pulled on a shirt, reached for his jacket, then stopped, watching Sam slide reluctantly off the bed. Chevy was only just blinking and raising her head, but the jacket got her attention. “Sam. You think you can follow a scent?”
Sam winced, but he thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. Which kind of made sense, really. After all, it took a few years for even the pups with the best noses to learn to find one scent and keep it in a world full of smells, and Sam was probably still figuring out how to make the whole four feet thing work.
(I’m not talking just like a kid learning to walk, muscles and control and instinct…)
(Great, now Gabriel was getting inside his head.)
“Okay, so.” Boots, belt, buckle, guns, knives in silver and iron and stag-bone and one quenched in dog’s blood. Bandages. Water and sutures. “We’ll need Chevy. And the horses - um, one horse. And one of the bloodhounds. Mustang. He’s got a good nose but he’s gentle enough that we won’t have to worry about them getting all revved up and making a nuisance of themselves. Only two dogs, though, or they’ll get too excited, and I want to keep the rein tight on this one.”
Because. If it was Cas, if Cas was lying out there hurt and vulnerable in the marches at night...
Well. If Cas was some clever new angel leader now then... he had to stop doing that. Dean would just have to... get him to call them off, or leave, or something. And if it wasn’t Cas, well...
He’d work that out when he got there.
Dean had screwed this up. Dean had to do something to fix it. Even just a little bit. Because all his people had to be able to rely on him.
Mustang thought Sam was odd.
Which was fair enough, of course. It wasn’t that often that they got completely new dogs around the place. And Dean didn’t know what breed Sam was meant to be (which, hello, add that to the weird thoughts for the day) but it sure wasn’t anything Mustang would have come across before. It was kind of hilarious to see poor Mustang all polite and diffident and just stiff-legged enough to not be a complete push-over, trying to introduce himself to this great big new male who was flat-out ignoring him. Who was, in fact, eyeing Dean belligerently like it was all his fault that dogs thought he was a dog.
“Just let him sniff your butt, dude,” was another thing Dean had never really thought he’d say to his little brother; but the glare he got, like Sam was considering working out what teeth were for just for him? Totally worth it. Dean cackled all the way to the stables.
... Okay, so maybe he was a bit crazy with tiredness.
It took about ten minutes to saddle up Dean’s gelding and double-check that he had everything they might need on him, and by that time pale grey light was starting to creep in through the high windows. Once or twice, as he worked, he thought he heard a faint murmur of voices somewhere outside, so he worked faster: best to have as few people as possible ask questions about where he was going, or about Sammy.
As he rounded the corner of the stableyard, a shotgun cocked in the shadows. It echoed very clear and pointed around the stone walls.
So much for sneaking out.
Dean sighed. “What is it with you girls and shotguns? Seriously?”
“I’m not sure,” Gwen said pleasantly, from the corner of the stableyard. “I think it’s a men thing. So hard to get a man to take you seriously unless yours is bigger than his. Why would that be, do you think?”
Cousins. Honestly.
“Bobby put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“You wish, Winchester. This is just Mark and me. Where are you off to?”
Dean squinted into the shadows and made out her shape. She was perched on the crossbars of the plough propped up in that corner, legs swinging loose under her, with the shotgun over her lap (pointed at the sky, not at Dean, because she wasn’t stupid). There were three other horses saddled and ready to go beside her.
“Looking for Sam,” he hedged. “You and Mark were just lying around out here on the off chance that I decided to go for a walk?”
Gwen shrugged and looked away past him in the direction of the dog sheds, mouth settling into its usual hard twist that Dean could never quite pin down as impatience or cynicism or unhappiness. “Not you. Jo.”
Jo.
Of course. He should have thought of that. Even when she was just pissed off the last thing she ever wanted to do was sit it out quietly indoors. Something like this, her dad killed? She’d want to run, to ride, to hunt. To kill.
Might get herself killed while she was at it.
“Shit,” he muttered. “She would, too.”
“Yep.” Gwen slid down off the crossbar, put the gun down and wrapped her coat tighter around her, shivering a bit. “You’re looking pretty flaky yourself.”
Dean blinked, then scowled. “I’m fine.”
“Good, then you can come with us.” Where did women learn that thou-shalt-not-argue-with-me tone?
“Like hell!” Dean tried to protest, because, no. For so many reasons, no. “Jo shouldn’t be out there like that.”
Gwen cocked her head at the sound of footsteps and the patter of paws, and began unknotting the horses’ reins from the bridle rings in the wall. “No, she really shouldn’t,” she hissed at him, keeping it low, “but she will. There’s a downed angel out there and she wants her knife in its throat. You want to explain to Ellen that you let her go out alone?”
Women. Fuck. Dean would never understand them.
(Christian claimed he did, and had been swaggering about like he knew everything since he and Arlene had got hitched last year, but only when she wasn’t around. When she was he went all quiet and agreed with everything she said. Dean wasn’t sure that qualified him to give expert advice.)
Jo’s face was a too-pale blob as she and Mark loomed up in the grey pre-dawn.
“Jo, hey,” he offered lamely, because she hated sympathy but he wasn’t really sure what else to say anyway.
She relaxed a bit when she saw it was him, bumped against his shoulder as she passed like an accident. “Just save it, okay?” she muttered, with a croak in her voice like she’d worn it out.
Mark just raised a couple of fingers in greeting, because he never said anything if he could help it.
Dean gave Jo a tight nod, kind of relieved. He’d always got Jo a lot better than any of the other girls. She almost made sense.
Then he saw all the dogs they’d got.
Great.
It took some arguing, and a lot of throwing around his weight as The One Who Knew All About The Dogs, but he managed to talk them down from nine angel hounds (seriously?), two bloodhounds, and three wolfhounds for close quarters, to just two angel hounds and two wolfhounds, plus Chevy and Mustang (and Sam, who had the build of a fighting dog).
Still too many, dammit. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to do it. And Sam was a wildcard, the way he kept turning his shoulder to all the other dogs’ introductions, making the other dogs edgy. A pack that didn’t already know how to work together was volatile.
But if Jo and the Campbells were riding out anyway, the last thing he was going to chance was letting them get there first.
Not that Dean knew what he was going to do when he got there.
It was about a two-hour ride to where the ambush had happened.
Mark took point first, because his eyes were good in the half-light. The rest of them strung out behind him, single file. The dogs (the real ones) trotted brisk and purposeful around and in front and behind, noses up to catch the wind and down to check the ground, tails high and quivering. Sam just loped grimly along behind Mark’s horse, holding his head awkwardly high so that he could see. Not exactly used to being short, was Sammy. All the usual landmarks probably looked really weird from down there.
This was just so wrong.
Dean found himself hoping (suddenly, intensely) that the angels had found their wounded comrade, whoever it was, and got him far away. Though, honestly, the logistics of that? An injured angel had to be kind of bulky. Not very aerodynamic.
The sun rolled slowly higher, stretching pale fingers over the tumbled grey and red rocks on the ridges, jagged old backbones of the land with the flesh all worn away. It touched the bracken and the gorse and the tough scrawny shrubs falling away in rags on either side, the deceptively smooth flanks of the rises and moors that could hide anything in hollows you wouldn’t see until you were on top of them, the dark slashes of ravines where the light couldn’t reach yet, the rough dark shadows of the woods, the sickly green stains of bogs.
Get outside of it, get on top of it, ride along the paths that curved across the top of the ridges, and you’d think you could see it all. It looked mappable and finite, like you could see anything coming or pin down anything. You’d be wrong. Then you’d be dead.
Charming country, the marches.
Gwen kneed her horse up beside him and kicked her foot out of the stirrup so that she could reach over and tap her toe to Dean’s shin. (Why did she insist on doing that? Everyone knew Dean hated people touching him. People who weren’t Sam, anyway.)
“Hey,” she said, because apparently girl-law said it was fine to just go about blurting out people’s feelings. “Sam’ll be fine.”
“Uh.” Dean blinked, and felt his eyes skittering forward to Sam’s tawny haunches in a panic. Then he stared at her.
What?
She gave him a look like he was a particularly slow (but possibly kind of cute) baby owl or something that she’d found orphaned on the farms and taken in, because girls did sentimental shit like that. “He’s probably found and finished this thing already and just bunkered down in one of the cabins for the night.”
... Oh. Right. That was the story. “Sure. Course he has. I know that.”
“Course you do,” she agreed sweetly. “That’s why you were going out looking for him before the sun was up.”
Dean was too tired for this crap. And he had people to protect. And sure, yes, Gwen was one of those, but she would have been a hell of a lot easier to protect if she’d just stayed at home, dammit.
Gwen took in his expression, and her voice went a bit harder. “Hey. If I’m not letting Jo go off on her own, I’m not letting you do it either. Not without Sam about.”
Dean growled. “Why does everyone think I can’t button my own pants as soon as Sam’s out of the picture?”
His cousin gave him a ghost of her usual I am surrounded by idiots face. “Because you two are like Bertilak and the Green Knight.”
Where the hell did that come from?
“They were two halves of the same person, Gwen,” he pointed out carefully.
“You think, dumbass?” Gwen smirked faintly at him, worried and fond.
All those hours and hours reading to Sam when he was little, because it was the only way he’d go to sleep, then the only way he’d calm down when he was upset. The chivalric romances, and the epics, and the chansons de gestes, and the fairy tales. And Sam had loved that story, with the monster who wasn’t quite, who could ride into Camelot and stun the whole hall into silence, who could pick up his severed head from the floor and ride away, whose body was that of a fashionable knight and a grotesque forest giant all at once, who was never quite explained. The enemy who wasn’t.
Dean nudged Leapfrog forward, away from her, and cantered up to relieve Mark. Letting anyone take point for more than an hour wasn’t smart. Eyes started playing tricks: started seeing things that weren’t there, missing things that were.
Besides. Gwen shouldn’t be getting distracted by going all mother-hen on Dean. Jo was the one she should be keeping an eye out for.
Dean glowered at the sheltered little hollow, with the grass all flattened and blood-stained. The dogs were milling and shoving excitedly, filling their noses with the scent.
It was still warm. Apparently the angels hadn’t come back for... whoever this was. Must’ve just left, just heard the dogs. They were hot on his trail, with an excited pack that included dogs who were bred and trained to go for the kill, not just make a lot of noise, and hunters who knew what they were doing and were out for blood.
Great. Just great. Because even if it wasn’t Cas...
... No. If it wasn’t Cas, this was damned dangerous. A wounded angel, turning at bay, at least one wing working enough to pack a nasty swipe, sword and strength and voice and whatever other angel magics this one might have up its sleeve, with at least one hunter not really in her right mind here, and the dogs worked up already (worse with the wolfhounds there, who’d want to close with it, and the others would follow) and only Dean to keep them under control. Someone could get seriously hurt here, Gwen or Jo or Mark, or any of the dogs, and they were already running low on viable breeding pairs for the wolfhounds and angel hounds (and damn, now Gabriel was out of the picture, how the hell were they going to keep that studbook healthy?).
He wasn’t thinking about what this might look like if it was Cas. But he knew he had to get there before the others.
He kept his eye on Mustang, the one really reliable nose, the cheerful black and white and tan and the high white-tipped tail in the middle of the grizzled black and grey-brown of the other dogs. Kept his eye there as the droopy tan eyebrows quivered and crumpled with concentration, watched the thoughts flickering across the dog’s face, saw the electric moment in which he just got it, locked on to the scent. Dean jerked his head at Sam, and together they wheeled away and down the hill even as Mustang lifted his voice. The bloodhound bayed, deep and resonant and joyous, followed by the higher tones of the angel hounds and the low gruff barks of the wolfhounds, and the whole pack banked and turned in a flash of noses and haunches and excitement, to follow the trail.
But all Dean needed to know was the direction right now. The dogs could tell him that, could tell him where the angel had started for, and after that Dean knew how to think like something that was small and scared and running.
All he had to do was think like Cas. Think back to those days when they had played exactly this game, before Cas could fly properly, when Cas had giggled and fluttered up off a rock and zoomed around a tree to throw Dean off before crash-landing and tearing off on foot in the other direction. Hadn’t known what they’d been rehearsing for, but damn did he know what that kid would do.
Over this boulder, around this corner, down and through the shelter of these scraggly little firs, nice clear trail, then feint sharp to the right (throw the dogs off for half a minute, maybe a little more if he took nice long strides and could half-glide through them) and back up across the slope at an angle, over the rocks that didn’t hold scent so well. Thud of hooves and thunder of paws around him, and the bellowing harmony of the hounds. The other three horses were well behind him, hadn’t taken off so quick and couldn’t predict the turn so fast, and he pressed that advantage like a hunted thing, barrelled over the crest of the hill and turned like Cas would through the dissembling line of gorse and up and back over again, almost hidden by the shrubs and the barely discernable rise of the land. Up and over this little side-ridge, not obvious and therefore too obvious, and Mustang was bellowing deep and thrilling beside him with all the other dogs determined to prove that they smelled the same thing (and perhaps some did), when suddenly Dean was reining in hard at the edge of a sharp boulder. Below him the land fell away sharply to the edge of the ravine, the abyss, and beyond that...
Jo pulled up beside him, panting and narrow-eyed.
“You think its wings are working after all?”
Dean eyed the gulf. It’d be a good tactic. Getting across that? The humans would have to go the long way around, at least half an hour’s work on this terrain, and the pack would be discouraged and confused by turning away from the scent under their noses and being forced to go a different way. A good tactic.
Too good, something hissed inside him. Too obvious.
“Might be,” he dragged out, brain ticking over. “Look.”
There was a tree right on the edge of the crevasse, convenient and dramatic, and one branch was broken as if something had just collided with it, clumsy in their take-off. Something that had left blood and two feathers at the base of it.
Two dark feathers that Dean recognised.
“... Could glide,” he gritted out. “From here? It’s got a good twenty yard of height on the far side. All it’d have to do would be hold both wings stiff, and momentum and the updraft would do the rest.”
But even better, even more like Cas, would be to use that very fact as a decoy.
That was what Dean would do.
Jo looked up and down the ravine as Mark and Gwen pulled up alongside, and Dean whistled sharply to call the over-excited dogs back from the crumbling edge.
The ravine cut northeast to southwest. And the shortest way across, by hoof and paw, was by far the one to the northeast.
Cas would have gone southwest.
Jo turned her face towards the northeast, eyes like sharpened steel down the length of the abyss. “This way.”
Dean nodded, heart pounding, and edged Leapfrog the other way. “Take the pack and cut around there. I’m going to go the long way around, in case it doubles back from you. See if I can spot Sam on the way.”
Sam raised his head at the sound of his name, and Dean whistled and jerked his head. Sam gave him a dirty look, but fell in at Dean’s heels anyway.
“Hey.” Mark frowned. “Look out for yourself, Winchester.”
“Promise not to get gutted,” Dean aimed his best roguish grin at them and kneed Leapfrog away, back up the slope. “Don’t die, okay?”
Because, if he were Cas. If his wing was broken, but still able to glide just a bit. Colliding with that tree (and making it look accidental) would be the best way to turn around and get momentum to glide back the other way without leaving a scent trail. Back the last way anyone (but Dean) would expect, back up the slope, to the southwest, and to - yes. That line of fir trees, stretching back away from the ravine.
Angels didn’t climb. They flew. Everyone knew that. But Dean had taught Cas that it wasn’t fair for one of them to climb and one to fly, so Cas had worked on it, had worked out how to tuck his wings in real close and just cling with hands and feet to the strongest branches, until he could go almost as fast as Dean through the boughs. And fir trees were the best for that. And no one would expect to have to look for an angel’s scent trail above ground.
Leapfrog thundered back up away from the ravine, under the dark whispering arms of the firs, and Dean just trusted him not to miss a step and kept his own eyes trained up, on the boughs above.
If this wasn’t Cas, if it was another angel with feathers like his, Dean was so screwed.
Hell, he’d risk it.
The fir trees ended in a mess of rocks flung all over the place, like some giant had had a temper tantrum and smashed up a tor (and hey, maybe it had, those giants were damned scary). Okay, so. What would Cas do.
Dean reined in, eyed the last tree narrowly. Sam, not quite so fast as Leapfrog, cantered up beside him and sniffed the air hard, then pawed at his nose and sneezed.
“Yeah, thanks,” Dean mumbled to him.
Sam huffed, stalked over to the tree, and stood up on his hind legs against it to snuffle at the last and strongest bough. Dean decided he probably shouldn’t be surprised that Sam was stupidly tall for a dog when he did that.
“Anything?”
Sam dropped back to all fours, wrinkled up his enormous forehead (well, that hadn’t changed) and nosed at a few dark drops on the leaf litter at the foot of the tree.
Great.
Dean swung down from Leapfrog’s back, looped the reins around the saddle-horn (not like he was going to wander, and if things got hairy Dean would rather he be able to dodge) and drew out his gun. The ones with the bullets quenched in hound’s blood.
“Okay.” Scattered leaves, where someone had jumped down out of the tree (clumsy, they’d gone wide with their left leg). Sam snorted, sending leaves flying, and nodded, then jerked his head toward the faint trail of disturbed leaf litter leading up and to their right, toward the rocks. Yes. Definitely dragging the left leg.
Up and over the first boulder, and the trail continued on the far side, nice and clear, pointing them in a direct line to a long line of rocks, almost unbroken, that would lead up to the ridge and down the other side.
Which meant that this was where Cas would have turned off, sharply, one way or the other. Especially if he was that badly hurt, because he’d need to hole up as soon as possible.
Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam, gestured the question. This way, or that way?
Sam’s forehead crumpled uncertainly, and he lowered his head to wuffle gingerly at the rock.
Dean left him to it and stood up tall to look around, to see where, if he were Cas and standing here, he’d go to hide.
And, there. That innocuous-looking slab, slammed into the ground at a painful-looking angle, all grown over and nearly invisible under the bracken. And only just visible if you stepped aside and squinted, the faint line of shadow that hinted at a hollow underneath.
He clicked his fingers softly and tapped his fingers meaningfully against his thigh. Sam looked up, followed his gaze, and nodded.
Dean stepped very quietly, keeping his boots muffled on the patches of brown-red lichen, until he was right on top of the slab. Yes. Deep, narrow crack between it and the earth, probably kept hollow by foxes and badgers and who knew what else that was less natural than them.
If Cas was in there. Hurt and scared. Best to let him know they were coming instead of just sticking their heads in.
If it wasn’t Cas...?
Then it deserved a chance. And maybe the best way to suggest it might get one with him and Sam was to ask...
“Castiel?”
Nice and gentle.
“Cas? You there?”
There was quiet for a moment, even a lull in the whish of the wind and the distant squabbling of the rooks. Then a scrape, a faint movement under Dean’s feet.
Dean was on his knees the next moment, stones stabbing in hard through his pants, feeling his face split into what felt like the first honest beam in days as he reached one hand into the dark under the rock.
“Cas! Come on out, man, it’s just Sam and me.”
Long, cold fingers closed around his wrist, and Dean had just a moment to think shit, hold on, what if it isn’t, what else would be up here and all the other weapons are on the horse before blue eyes in a pale, grubby face were blinking warily up at him and that tired, gritty voice rumbled, “Hello, Dean.”
Relief scattered in a hot, tingling rush through Dean’s body, right to his fingertips.
“Hey.” Dean heard his voice go gentle, pouring out meaningless words to reach out and touch. “It’s okay, I gotcha. I sent the others around to the other side of the ravine. Good work there, dude, you bought us time. How bad is it? Get out here.”
Cas’ eyes pulled tight and narrow, and skidded sideways to where Sam was crowding in against Dean’s arm. Dean blinked, looked at Sam, saw an enormous scary-looking dog, and - yeah, okay, fair enough.
“No, no man, that’s just Sam. He -”
He what? Ran into one of your curses?
Dean felt his mouth go hard, and heard his voice go a bit more clipped. “He’s not feeling himself today. Sam, Cas; Cas, Sam. Been a while.”
Sam wrinkled his nose and looked embarrassed at Cas. The angel eyed him narrowly from his little safe space.
“Yep, that’s Sammy,” Dean confirmed, more lightly. “You remember him - if there’s trouble around he has to go and stumble right into the middle of it. Kinda like you, huh?”
There. Bitchfaces from both little brothers at once. Much better.
Only, Cas wasn’t his little brother. Dean didn’t get to be that anymore. He’d killed Cas’ real brother.
Cas seemed to reach a decision then, because he tightened his grip on Dean’s wrist and used it to haul himself forward to the opening, right wing trailing pathetically behind. Dean sat back on his haunches as, torso clear, the angel let go of his wrist and set both his hands to the ground. Shoulders bunched and flexed, arm muscles corded, took all the weight of his flagging body as he pushed himself forward and out, and hey, Dean noticed, those were some pretty awesome shoulder muscles. Which was kind of logical, really, what with the whole wing thing.
Cas’ right wing was bloodied, all messed up in the middle, and it snagged on the rock as he pulled in his knees to sit up, making him hiss and lurch to one side. Dean had one arm around his chest before he could think about it. He just kept it there, held him nice and steady, felt the ragged pull and release of breath under his arm, until Cas could gather the awkward dragging thing gingerly in against his side.
“Okay?” he murmured into Cas’ shoulder, kind of gentle, and felt the tug and jump of the angel’s throat as he swallowed, the jerk of his chin as he nodded. So, completely on impulse, he snagged his arm all the way around Cas, under the soft foreign weight of feathers, and drew him in for a rough hug. Cas went all stiff and spiky, about as cuddly as a firedog; then, just as Dean was about to let him go and brush it off with a hard joke, he melted into it, loose and soft as anything, folded both arms around Dean’s waist and leant in against his body.
Dean let out a shaking breath that he didn’t know had been in him and just buried his face in Cas’ shoulder, in the barely remembered scent of him like childhood and cloves and summer. Cas’ breath was skipping hot over the curve of his neck, and there was hair in his mouth and gentle feathers brushing against his forehead, and Dean just wished sudden and savage that none of this had happened, that everything since had been a dream. Just him, and Cas, and Sam, before all this stupid growing-up business had happened. They’d wake up soon after a lazy afternoon to the smell of oaks and summer grass, all piled in a tangled heap and using each other as pillows, and Cas could come home with them and Dean would look after them all. Cook for them all. Show Cas how to use a trowel, and a spatula, and a bookmark. No swords. No guns, no knives.
Cas’ fingers traced carefully, questioningly, up the long line of Dean’s backbone. Made him shiver.
He took a deep breath, drew it in to the depths of him, and groped out blindly with one arm until he found Sam’s broad shaggy neck. Then he tugged that in too. Because that was how things had to be.
Cas flinched a bit at that, though. Which was probably fair, because. Dogs. Probably no fun for him. And being a dog, no fun for Sam. Reality. Awesome.
Dean unlocked reluctant fingers, one at a time, and pulled back.
Sam was giving him a funny look. He flipped Sam off.
He was a bit relieved to find that Cas’ eyes were fixed on Sam, like Sam was a problem to be solved.
Cas raised one hand and curled the fingers carefully under Sam’s chin. Sam’s eyes jerked back to him.
“Samuel?” Cas asked, serious and almost gentle.
Sam’s eyes startled wide, then skittered away, almost like shame. Cas didn’t flinch or frown, just considered him for a moment, looking at him with those piercing angel eyes that saw so much Dean didn’t really understand. Dean could feel the heat of him, one long living line against Dean’s arm and hip.
Then Cas leaned forward, with a solemn little crease tucked between his eyebrows, and pressed his lips to Sam’s furry forehead.
Huh.
Damn but Dean wanted them. Wanted deep and achingly fierce to keep them both, safe and together and close and happy.
Sam pulled back his head to stare with big confused brown eyes, kind of like a deer fascinated by a too-bright torch at night. The skin at the corner of Cas’ eyes crinkled a bit, almost a smile, but soft and remote.
Dean... had no idea what was going on, but he thought he liked it.
Except.
“Come on, guys, we don’t have that much time. Let’s get a move on before midsummer, okay?” It sounded cocky in his head, but came out kind of rough.
The fragile warmth vanished from Cas’ face all at once, and there was the steel warrior of the moonlit barn again. His “What did you have in mind?” was practically a debrief.
Dean ached at the change, just a bit, and stood up to whistle to Leapfrog.
Dean sighed. “What is it with you girls and shotguns? Seriously?”
“I’m not sure,” Gwen said pleasantly, from the corner of the stableyard. “I think it’s a men thing. So hard to get a man to take you seriously unless yours is bigger than his. Why would that be, do you think?”
As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness.
“My God, what’s that, Watson?”
“I don’t know. It’s a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before.”
It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came.
“Watson,” said the baronet, “it was the cry of a hound.”
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902. (Chapter 9.)
Dean wasn’t exactly surprised that he couldn’t sleep much. Not that he’d been sleeping that well lately anyway, but it was one thing to be having all this sort of theoretical mess in your head. It was something else to have consequences.
Sam crept into Dean’s bed around two in the morning, which he hadn’t done since he was a whole lot smaller than this. Dean didn’t say anything, just lifted the sheet for him and kept his eyes closed. If he didn’t turn over, he could almost pretend the heavy warmth at his back was the right shape, and the heavy head using his heart as a pillow (although pretty much anywhere else on his torso would be more comfortable) was just Sam’s ginormous hand. And, well, Dean’s bed usually smelled like dog anyway, because Chevy was sneaky in the middle of the night.
Three big bodies on the bed made it even harder to get comfy, though. And apparently Sam still sprawled, no matter what shape he was in. And Dean’s brain wouldn’t shut up.
He woke abruptly from an uneasy doze a while later, somewhere in those interminable hours before dawn, with just four words jarring through his brain. Bobby’s voice, and four words he hadn’t really noticed at the time.
That angel we winged.
Shit.
“Sam.”
He had to shove two big grumbling furballs out of his way to get at his clothes. “Sam.”
Sam lifted his head and blinked grouchily, and hey, at least that hadn’t changed.
“Cas, Sam. Was Cas there?” But Sam would’ve mentioned it if Cas had been hurt, right?
Sam just blinked muzzily, then shrugged. At least, that’s what Dean assumed that was - it looked kind of funny with a dog’s slopey shoulders instead of Sam’s big square ones.
“Hold on. Would you even know him if you saw him? Did you actually see the angels?” Dean hopped his way into his pants. “Were there any there with dark wings? Did you see the one Bobby said they winged? How bad was it?”
Sam rolled his eyes and put his head on his paws, looking impatient and kind of pissy.
“Uh. Right. Yes and no. Um. D’you know if Cas - if an angel with dark wings - was there?”
Sam shook his head.
“You don’t know, or he wasn’t there?”
Sam grumbled, and shrugged.
“Okay. You don’t know. And you didn’t see the angel who got winged?”
Another headshake.
“Right. But. If I know him, he wouldn’t’ve let something like that go down without being in on the thing.” He pulled on a shirt, reached for his jacket, then stopped, watching Sam slide reluctantly off the bed. Chevy was only just blinking and raising her head, but the jacket got her attention. “Sam. You think you can follow a scent?”
Sam winced, but he thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. Which kind of made sense, really. After all, it took a few years for even the pups with the best noses to learn to find one scent and keep it in a world full of smells, and Sam was probably still figuring out how to make the whole four feet thing work.
(I’m not talking just like a kid learning to walk, muscles and control and instinct…)
(Great, now Gabriel was getting inside his head.)
“Okay, so.” Boots, belt, buckle, guns, knives in silver and iron and stag-bone and one quenched in dog’s blood. Bandages. Water and sutures. “We’ll need Chevy. And the horses - um, one horse. And one of the bloodhounds. Mustang. He’s got a good nose but he’s gentle enough that we won’t have to worry about them getting all revved up and making a nuisance of themselves. Only two dogs, though, or they’ll get too excited, and I want to keep the rein tight on this one.”
Because. If it was Cas, if Cas was lying out there hurt and vulnerable in the marches at night...
Well. If Cas was some clever new angel leader now then... he had to stop doing that. Dean would just have to... get him to call them off, or leave, or something. And if it wasn’t Cas, well...
He’d work that out when he got there.
Dean had screwed this up. Dean had to do something to fix it. Even just a little bit. Because all his people had to be able to rely on him.
Mustang thought Sam was odd.
Which was fair enough, of course. It wasn’t that often that they got completely new dogs around the place. And Dean didn’t know what breed Sam was meant to be (which, hello, add that to the weird thoughts for the day) but it sure wasn’t anything Mustang would have come across before. It was kind of hilarious to see poor Mustang all polite and diffident and just stiff-legged enough to not be a complete push-over, trying to introduce himself to this great big new male who was flat-out ignoring him. Who was, in fact, eyeing Dean belligerently like it was all his fault that dogs thought he was a dog.
“Just let him sniff your butt, dude,” was another thing Dean had never really thought he’d say to his little brother; but the glare he got, like Sam was considering working out what teeth were for just for him? Totally worth it. Dean cackled all the way to the stables.
... Okay, so maybe he was a bit crazy with tiredness.
It took about ten minutes to saddle up Dean’s gelding and double-check that he had everything they might need on him, and by that time pale grey light was starting to creep in through the high windows. Once or twice, as he worked, he thought he heard a faint murmur of voices somewhere outside, so he worked faster: best to have as few people as possible ask questions about where he was going, or about Sammy.
As he rounded the corner of the stableyard, a shotgun cocked in the shadows. It echoed very clear and pointed around the stone walls.
So much for sneaking out.
Dean sighed. “What is it with you girls and shotguns? Seriously?”
“I’m not sure,” Gwen said pleasantly, from the corner of the stableyard. “I think it’s a men thing. So hard to get a man to take you seriously unless yours is bigger than his. Why would that be, do you think?”
Cousins. Honestly.
“Bobby put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“You wish, Winchester. This is just Mark and me. Where are you off to?”
Dean squinted into the shadows and made out her shape. She was perched on the crossbars of the plough propped up in that corner, legs swinging loose under her, with the shotgun over her lap (pointed at the sky, not at Dean, because she wasn’t stupid). There were three other horses saddled and ready to go beside her.
“Looking for Sam,” he hedged. “You and Mark were just lying around out here on the off chance that I decided to go for a walk?”
Gwen shrugged and looked away past him in the direction of the dog sheds, mouth settling into its usual hard twist that Dean could never quite pin down as impatience or cynicism or unhappiness. “Not you. Jo.”
Jo.
Of course. He should have thought of that. Even when she was just pissed off the last thing she ever wanted to do was sit it out quietly indoors. Something like this, her dad killed? She’d want to run, to ride, to hunt. To kill.
Might get herself killed while she was at it.
“Shit,” he muttered. “She would, too.”
“Yep.” Gwen slid down off the crossbar, put the gun down and wrapped her coat tighter around her, shivering a bit. “You’re looking pretty flaky yourself.”
Dean blinked, then scowled. “I’m fine.”
“Good, then you can come with us.” Where did women learn that thou-shalt-not-argue-with-me tone?
“Like hell!” Dean tried to protest, because, no. For so many reasons, no. “Jo shouldn’t be out there like that.”
Gwen cocked her head at the sound of footsteps and the patter of paws, and began unknotting the horses’ reins from the bridle rings in the wall. “No, she really shouldn’t,” she hissed at him, keeping it low, “but she will. There’s a downed angel out there and she wants her knife in its throat. You want to explain to Ellen that you let her go out alone?”
Women. Fuck. Dean would never understand them.
(Christian claimed he did, and had been swaggering about like he knew everything since he and Arlene had got hitched last year, but only when she wasn’t around. When she was he went all quiet and agreed with everything she said. Dean wasn’t sure that qualified him to give expert advice.)
Jo’s face was a too-pale blob as she and Mark loomed up in the grey pre-dawn.
“Jo, hey,” he offered lamely, because she hated sympathy but he wasn’t really sure what else to say anyway.
She relaxed a bit when she saw it was him, bumped against his shoulder as she passed like an accident. “Just save it, okay?” she muttered, with a croak in her voice like she’d worn it out.
Mark just raised a couple of fingers in greeting, because he never said anything if he could help it.
Dean gave Jo a tight nod, kind of relieved. He’d always got Jo a lot better than any of the other girls. She almost made sense.
Then he saw all the dogs they’d got.
Great.
It took some arguing, and a lot of throwing around his weight as The One Who Knew All About The Dogs, but he managed to talk them down from nine angel hounds (seriously?), two bloodhounds, and three wolfhounds for close quarters, to just two angel hounds and two wolfhounds, plus Chevy and Mustang (and Sam, who had the build of a fighting dog).
Still too many, dammit. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to do it. And Sam was a wildcard, the way he kept turning his shoulder to all the other dogs’ introductions, making the other dogs edgy. A pack that didn’t already know how to work together was volatile.
But if Jo and the Campbells were riding out anyway, the last thing he was going to chance was letting them get there first.
Not that Dean knew what he was going to do when he got there.
It was about a two-hour ride to where the ambush had happened.
Mark took point first, because his eyes were good in the half-light. The rest of them strung out behind him, single file. The dogs (the real ones) trotted brisk and purposeful around and in front and behind, noses up to catch the wind and down to check the ground, tails high and quivering. Sam just loped grimly along behind Mark’s horse, holding his head awkwardly high so that he could see. Not exactly used to being short, was Sammy. All the usual landmarks probably looked really weird from down there.
This was just so wrong.
Dean found himself hoping (suddenly, intensely) that the angels had found their wounded comrade, whoever it was, and got him far away. Though, honestly, the logistics of that? An injured angel had to be kind of bulky. Not very aerodynamic.
The sun rolled slowly higher, stretching pale fingers over the tumbled grey and red rocks on the ridges, jagged old backbones of the land with the flesh all worn away. It touched the bracken and the gorse and the tough scrawny shrubs falling away in rags on either side, the deceptively smooth flanks of the rises and moors that could hide anything in hollows you wouldn’t see until you were on top of them, the dark slashes of ravines where the light couldn’t reach yet, the rough dark shadows of the woods, the sickly green stains of bogs.
Get outside of it, get on top of it, ride along the paths that curved across the top of the ridges, and you’d think you could see it all. It looked mappable and finite, like you could see anything coming or pin down anything. You’d be wrong. Then you’d be dead.
Charming country, the marches.
Gwen kneed her horse up beside him and kicked her foot out of the stirrup so that she could reach over and tap her toe to Dean’s shin. (Why did she insist on doing that? Everyone knew Dean hated people touching him. People who weren’t Sam, anyway.)
“Hey,” she said, because apparently girl-law said it was fine to just go about blurting out people’s feelings. “Sam’ll be fine.”
“Uh.” Dean blinked, and felt his eyes skittering forward to Sam’s tawny haunches in a panic. Then he stared at her.
What?
She gave him a look like he was a particularly slow (but possibly kind of cute) baby owl or something that she’d found orphaned on the farms and taken in, because girls did sentimental shit like that. “He’s probably found and finished this thing already and just bunkered down in one of the cabins for the night.”
... Oh. Right. That was the story. “Sure. Course he has. I know that.”
“Course you do,” she agreed sweetly. “That’s why you were going out looking for him before the sun was up.”
Dean was too tired for this crap. And he had people to protect. And sure, yes, Gwen was one of those, but she would have been a hell of a lot easier to protect if she’d just stayed at home, dammit.
Gwen took in his expression, and her voice went a bit harder. “Hey. If I’m not letting Jo go off on her own, I’m not letting you do it either. Not without Sam about.”
Dean growled. “Why does everyone think I can’t button my own pants as soon as Sam’s out of the picture?”
His cousin gave him a ghost of her usual I am surrounded by idiots face. “Because you two are like Bertilak and the Green Knight.”
Where the hell did that come from?
“They were two halves of the same person, Gwen,” he pointed out carefully.
“You think, dumbass?” Gwen smirked faintly at him, worried and fond.
All those hours and hours reading to Sam when he was little, because it was the only way he’d go to sleep, then the only way he’d calm down when he was upset. The chivalric romances, and the epics, and the chansons de gestes, and the fairy tales. And Sam had loved that story, with the monster who wasn’t quite, who could ride into Camelot and stun the whole hall into silence, who could pick up his severed head from the floor and ride away, whose body was that of a fashionable knight and a grotesque forest giant all at once, who was never quite explained. The enemy who wasn’t.
Dean nudged Leapfrog forward, away from her, and cantered up to relieve Mark. Letting anyone take point for more than an hour wasn’t smart. Eyes started playing tricks: started seeing things that weren’t there, missing things that were.
Besides. Gwen shouldn’t be getting distracted by going all mother-hen on Dean. Jo was the one she should be keeping an eye out for.
Dean glowered at the sheltered little hollow, with the grass all flattened and blood-stained. The dogs were milling and shoving excitedly, filling their noses with the scent.
It was still warm. Apparently the angels hadn’t come back for... whoever this was. Must’ve just left, just heard the dogs. They were hot on his trail, with an excited pack that included dogs who were bred and trained to go for the kill, not just make a lot of noise, and hunters who knew what they were doing and were out for blood.
Great. Just great. Because even if it wasn’t Cas...
... No. If it wasn’t Cas, this was damned dangerous. A wounded angel, turning at bay, at least one wing working enough to pack a nasty swipe, sword and strength and voice and whatever other angel magics this one might have up its sleeve, with at least one hunter not really in her right mind here, and the dogs worked up already (worse with the wolfhounds there, who’d want to close with it, and the others would follow) and only Dean to keep them under control. Someone could get seriously hurt here, Gwen or Jo or Mark, or any of the dogs, and they were already running low on viable breeding pairs for the wolfhounds and angel hounds (and damn, now Gabriel was out of the picture, how the hell were they going to keep that studbook healthy?).
He wasn’t thinking about what this might look like if it was Cas. But he knew he had to get there before the others.
He kept his eye on Mustang, the one really reliable nose, the cheerful black and white and tan and the high white-tipped tail in the middle of the grizzled black and grey-brown of the other dogs. Kept his eye there as the droopy tan eyebrows quivered and crumpled with concentration, watched the thoughts flickering across the dog’s face, saw the electric moment in which he just got it, locked on to the scent. Dean jerked his head at Sam, and together they wheeled away and down the hill even as Mustang lifted his voice. The bloodhound bayed, deep and resonant and joyous, followed by the higher tones of the angel hounds and the low gruff barks of the wolfhounds, and the whole pack banked and turned in a flash of noses and haunches and excitement, to follow the trail.
But all Dean needed to know was the direction right now. The dogs could tell him that, could tell him where the angel had started for, and after that Dean knew how to think like something that was small and scared and running.
All he had to do was think like Cas. Think back to those days when they had played exactly this game, before Cas could fly properly, when Cas had giggled and fluttered up off a rock and zoomed around a tree to throw Dean off before crash-landing and tearing off on foot in the other direction. Hadn’t known what they’d been rehearsing for, but damn did he know what that kid would do.
Over this boulder, around this corner, down and through the shelter of these scraggly little firs, nice clear trail, then feint sharp to the right (throw the dogs off for half a minute, maybe a little more if he took nice long strides and could half-glide through them) and back up across the slope at an angle, over the rocks that didn’t hold scent so well. Thud of hooves and thunder of paws around him, and the bellowing harmony of the hounds. The other three horses were well behind him, hadn’t taken off so quick and couldn’t predict the turn so fast, and he pressed that advantage like a hunted thing, barrelled over the crest of the hill and turned like Cas would through the dissembling line of gorse and up and back over again, almost hidden by the shrubs and the barely discernable rise of the land. Up and over this little side-ridge, not obvious and therefore too obvious, and Mustang was bellowing deep and thrilling beside him with all the other dogs determined to prove that they smelled the same thing (and perhaps some did), when suddenly Dean was reining in hard at the edge of a sharp boulder. Below him the land fell away sharply to the edge of the ravine, the abyss, and beyond that...
Jo pulled up beside him, panting and narrow-eyed.
“You think its wings are working after all?”
Dean eyed the gulf. It’d be a good tactic. Getting across that? The humans would have to go the long way around, at least half an hour’s work on this terrain, and the pack would be discouraged and confused by turning away from the scent under their noses and being forced to go a different way. A good tactic.
Too good, something hissed inside him. Too obvious.
“Might be,” he dragged out, brain ticking over. “Look.”
There was a tree right on the edge of the crevasse, convenient and dramatic, and one branch was broken as if something had just collided with it, clumsy in their take-off. Something that had left blood and two feathers at the base of it.
Two dark feathers that Dean recognised.
“... Could glide,” he gritted out. “From here? It’s got a good twenty yard of height on the far side. All it’d have to do would be hold both wings stiff, and momentum and the updraft would do the rest.”
But even better, even more like Cas, would be to use that very fact as a decoy.
That was what Dean would do.
Jo looked up and down the ravine as Mark and Gwen pulled up alongside, and Dean whistled sharply to call the over-excited dogs back from the crumbling edge.
The ravine cut northeast to southwest. And the shortest way across, by hoof and paw, was by far the one to the northeast.
Cas would have gone southwest.
Jo turned her face towards the northeast, eyes like sharpened steel down the length of the abyss. “This way.”
Dean nodded, heart pounding, and edged Leapfrog the other way. “Take the pack and cut around there. I’m going to go the long way around, in case it doubles back from you. See if I can spot Sam on the way.”
Sam raised his head at the sound of his name, and Dean whistled and jerked his head. Sam gave him a dirty look, but fell in at Dean’s heels anyway.
“Hey.” Mark frowned. “Look out for yourself, Winchester.”
“Promise not to get gutted,” Dean aimed his best roguish grin at them and kneed Leapfrog away, back up the slope. “Don’t die, okay?”
Because, if he were Cas. If his wing was broken, but still able to glide just a bit. Colliding with that tree (and making it look accidental) would be the best way to turn around and get momentum to glide back the other way without leaving a scent trail. Back the last way anyone (but Dean) would expect, back up the slope, to the southwest, and to - yes. That line of fir trees, stretching back away from the ravine.
Angels didn’t climb. They flew. Everyone knew that. But Dean had taught Cas that it wasn’t fair for one of them to climb and one to fly, so Cas had worked on it, had worked out how to tuck his wings in real close and just cling with hands and feet to the strongest branches, until he could go almost as fast as Dean through the boughs. And fir trees were the best for that. And no one would expect to have to look for an angel’s scent trail above ground.
Leapfrog thundered back up away from the ravine, under the dark whispering arms of the firs, and Dean just trusted him not to miss a step and kept his own eyes trained up, on the boughs above.
If this wasn’t Cas, if it was another angel with feathers like his, Dean was so screwed.
Hell, he’d risk it.
The fir trees ended in a mess of rocks flung all over the place, like some giant had had a temper tantrum and smashed up a tor (and hey, maybe it had, those giants were damned scary). Okay, so. What would Cas do.
Dean reined in, eyed the last tree narrowly. Sam, not quite so fast as Leapfrog, cantered up beside him and sniffed the air hard, then pawed at his nose and sneezed.
“Yeah, thanks,” Dean mumbled to him.
Sam huffed, stalked over to the tree, and stood up on his hind legs against it to snuffle at the last and strongest bough. Dean decided he probably shouldn’t be surprised that Sam was stupidly tall for a dog when he did that.
“Anything?”
Sam dropped back to all fours, wrinkled up his enormous forehead (well, that hadn’t changed) and nosed at a few dark drops on the leaf litter at the foot of the tree.
Great.
Dean swung down from Leapfrog’s back, looped the reins around the saddle-horn (not like he was going to wander, and if things got hairy Dean would rather he be able to dodge) and drew out his gun. The ones with the bullets quenched in hound’s blood.
“Okay.” Scattered leaves, where someone had jumped down out of the tree (clumsy, they’d gone wide with their left leg). Sam snorted, sending leaves flying, and nodded, then jerked his head toward the faint trail of disturbed leaf litter leading up and to their right, toward the rocks. Yes. Definitely dragging the left leg.
Up and over the first boulder, and the trail continued on the far side, nice and clear, pointing them in a direct line to a long line of rocks, almost unbroken, that would lead up to the ridge and down the other side.
Which meant that this was where Cas would have turned off, sharply, one way or the other. Especially if he was that badly hurt, because he’d need to hole up as soon as possible.
Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam, gestured the question. This way, or that way?
Sam’s forehead crumpled uncertainly, and he lowered his head to wuffle gingerly at the rock.
Dean left him to it and stood up tall to look around, to see where, if he were Cas and standing here, he’d go to hide.
And, there. That innocuous-looking slab, slammed into the ground at a painful-looking angle, all grown over and nearly invisible under the bracken. And only just visible if you stepped aside and squinted, the faint line of shadow that hinted at a hollow underneath.
He clicked his fingers softly and tapped his fingers meaningfully against his thigh. Sam looked up, followed his gaze, and nodded.
Dean stepped very quietly, keeping his boots muffled on the patches of brown-red lichen, until he was right on top of the slab. Yes. Deep, narrow crack between it and the earth, probably kept hollow by foxes and badgers and who knew what else that was less natural than them.
If Cas was in there. Hurt and scared. Best to let him know they were coming instead of just sticking their heads in.
If it wasn’t Cas...?
Then it deserved a chance. And maybe the best way to suggest it might get one with him and Sam was to ask...
“Castiel?”
Nice and gentle.
“Cas? You there?”
There was quiet for a moment, even a lull in the whish of the wind and the distant squabbling of the rooks. Then a scrape, a faint movement under Dean’s feet.
Dean was on his knees the next moment, stones stabbing in hard through his pants, feeling his face split into what felt like the first honest beam in days as he reached one hand into the dark under the rock.
“Cas! Come on out, man, it’s just Sam and me.”
Long, cold fingers closed around his wrist, and Dean had just a moment to think shit, hold on, what if it isn’t, what else would be up here and all the other weapons are on the horse before blue eyes in a pale, grubby face were blinking warily up at him and that tired, gritty voice rumbled, “Hello, Dean.”
Relief scattered in a hot, tingling rush through Dean’s body, right to his fingertips.
“Hey.” Dean heard his voice go gentle, pouring out meaningless words to reach out and touch. “It’s okay, I gotcha. I sent the others around to the other side of the ravine. Good work there, dude, you bought us time. How bad is it? Get out here.”
Cas’ eyes pulled tight and narrow, and skidded sideways to where Sam was crowding in against Dean’s arm. Dean blinked, looked at Sam, saw an enormous scary-looking dog, and - yeah, okay, fair enough.
“No, no man, that’s just Sam. He -”
He what? Ran into one of your curses?
Dean felt his mouth go hard, and heard his voice go a bit more clipped. “He’s not feeling himself today. Sam, Cas; Cas, Sam. Been a while.”
Sam wrinkled his nose and looked embarrassed at Cas. The angel eyed him narrowly from his little safe space.
“Yep, that’s Sammy,” Dean confirmed, more lightly. “You remember him - if there’s trouble around he has to go and stumble right into the middle of it. Kinda like you, huh?”
There. Bitchfaces from both little brothers at once. Much better.
Only, Cas wasn’t his little brother. Dean didn’t get to be that anymore. He’d killed Cas’ real brother.
Cas seemed to reach a decision then, because he tightened his grip on Dean’s wrist and used it to haul himself forward to the opening, right wing trailing pathetically behind. Dean sat back on his haunches as, torso clear, the angel let go of his wrist and set both his hands to the ground. Shoulders bunched and flexed, arm muscles corded, took all the weight of his flagging body as he pushed himself forward and out, and hey, Dean noticed, those were some pretty awesome shoulder muscles. Which was kind of logical, really, what with the whole wing thing.
Cas’ right wing was bloodied, all messed up in the middle, and it snagged on the rock as he pulled in his knees to sit up, making him hiss and lurch to one side. Dean had one arm around his chest before he could think about it. He just kept it there, held him nice and steady, felt the ragged pull and release of breath under his arm, until Cas could gather the awkward dragging thing gingerly in against his side.
“Okay?” he murmured into Cas’ shoulder, kind of gentle, and felt the tug and jump of the angel’s throat as he swallowed, the jerk of his chin as he nodded. So, completely on impulse, he snagged his arm all the way around Cas, under the soft foreign weight of feathers, and drew him in for a rough hug. Cas went all stiff and spiky, about as cuddly as a firedog; then, just as Dean was about to let him go and brush it off with a hard joke, he melted into it, loose and soft as anything, folded both arms around Dean’s waist and leant in against his body.
Dean let out a shaking breath that he didn’t know had been in him and just buried his face in Cas’ shoulder, in the barely remembered scent of him like childhood and cloves and summer. Cas’ breath was skipping hot over the curve of his neck, and there was hair in his mouth and gentle feathers brushing against his forehead, and Dean just wished sudden and savage that none of this had happened, that everything since had been a dream. Just him, and Cas, and Sam, before all this stupid growing-up business had happened. They’d wake up soon after a lazy afternoon to the smell of oaks and summer grass, all piled in a tangled heap and using each other as pillows, and Cas could come home with them and Dean would look after them all. Cook for them all. Show Cas how to use a trowel, and a spatula, and a bookmark. No swords. No guns, no knives.
Cas’ fingers traced carefully, questioningly, up the long line of Dean’s backbone. Made him shiver.
He took a deep breath, drew it in to the depths of him, and groped out blindly with one arm until he found Sam’s broad shaggy neck. Then he tugged that in too. Because that was how things had to be.
Cas flinched a bit at that, though. Which was probably fair, because. Dogs. Probably no fun for him. And being a dog, no fun for Sam. Reality. Awesome.
Dean unlocked reluctant fingers, one at a time, and pulled back.
Sam was giving him a funny look. He flipped Sam off.
He was a bit relieved to find that Cas’ eyes were fixed on Sam, like Sam was a problem to be solved.
Cas raised one hand and curled the fingers carefully under Sam’s chin. Sam’s eyes jerked back to him.
“Samuel?” Cas asked, serious and almost gentle.
Sam’s eyes startled wide, then skittered away, almost like shame. Cas didn’t flinch or frown, just considered him for a moment, looking at him with those piercing angel eyes that saw so much Dean didn’t really understand. Dean could feel the heat of him, one long living line against Dean’s arm and hip.
Then Cas leaned forward, with a solemn little crease tucked between his eyebrows, and pressed his lips to Sam’s furry forehead.
Huh.
Damn but Dean wanted them. Wanted deep and achingly fierce to keep them both, safe and together and close and happy.
Sam pulled back his head to stare with big confused brown eyes, kind of like a deer fascinated by a too-bright torch at night. The skin at the corner of Cas’ eyes crinkled a bit, almost a smile, but soft and remote.
Dean... had no idea what was going on, but he thought he liked it.
Except.
“Come on, guys, we don’t have that much time. Let’s get a move on before midsummer, okay?” It sounded cocky in his head, but came out kind of rough.
The fragile warmth vanished from Cas’ face all at once, and there was the steel warrior of the moonlit barn again. His “What did you have in mind?” was practically a debrief.
Dean ached at the change, just a bit, and stood up to whistle to Leapfrog.