March-Stalkers Mighty: 7/22
Passus IV: Pes dexter.
Dean stared at Cas in sad, sad betrayal. “Pretty sure you’re not meant to be playing words that kicked it three hundred years ago, guys.”
Cas’ mouth quirked slyly. “If he can, I can.” Then he carefully played nudiustertian.
[The he-wolf] begged [the priest] not to deny to them in any way the gift and help of God, destined for their aid by divine providence. To remove all doubt he pulled all the skin off the she-wolf from the head down to the navel, folding it back with his paw as if it were a hand. And immediately the shape of an old woman, clear to be seen, appeared. At that, the priest, more through terror than reason, communicated her as she had earnestly demanded, and she then devoutly received the sacrament. Afterwards the skin which had been removed by the he-wolf resumed its former position.
When all this had taken place - more in equity than with proper procedure - the wolf showed himself to them to be a man rather than a beast. He shared the fire with them during the whole of the night, and when morning came he led them over a great distance of the wood, and showed them the surest way on their journey.
The History and Topography of Ireland, Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambriensis), 1185, trans. John O’Meara 1951. (On how common werewolves are in Ireland.)
Cas was weaker the next morning - stiff, and in pain, restless and a bit dizzy. The skin around the bullet wound was too warm, and Dean washed it again, warm water, heavy with salt. After all, it didn’t hurt angels, and it helped to clean wounds on humans, so there was no harm in trying.
It was a quiet morning, a bit subdued. Almost peaceful, though Dean did his best not to think that word, because there was no point tempting fate. He kept expecting to find himself restless, to want to get out and move and get away, and kept being surprised to find that he was still just sitting around, as the morning ticked by, still just happy to sprawl and doze on the grass in front of the cabin with the other two.
Cas had tried his tin soldier routine a bit when he’d first woken up, bleary-eyed and grouchy, but Dean kept finding that whenever he looked at the angel he couldn’t help this happy little grin that blossomed right up from the centre of his chest. There was a weird kind of contentment that hung around whenever Cas was nearby, and Dean didn’t know if it was his angel mojo or what, but it warmed Dean right through and made even this little shoddy cabin with the water heater that kept breaking feel like home. It hadn’t taken long for Cas to give up trying to keep his own mouth from softening in return.
Sam had crept into the cabin during the night and stretched out against Dean, face hidden in the side of his neck, like there wasn’t a perfectly good bunk on the other side of the cabin. Now he was sticking close, and if he was a bit huffy, he wasn’t actually pissed or anything. The sun was warm and kind, and it was easy not to think too much.
Cas spent about the better part of an hour, around mid-morning, lying on his stomach in the grass and talking to Sam, a low lazy murmur of questions and sort of getting-to-know-you, all stuff that could be answered with a nod or a headshake or a shrug, or, at a pinch, with numbers beat out with one paw, or a grimace and a shudder. Dean listened with half an ear, admiring the way Cas made an honest effort to turn the questions around so they were real questions, real conversation, not just an interrogation or something. Sometimes he pitched in, sketched in the background of whatever it was Cas was asking about, to give Sam’s answer a bit of context; but mostly he just lay and lazed, caught up on sleep and on the sound of Cas’ voice.
After a while Cas lapsed into silence and thought; then he worked himself carefully into a sitting position and asked Dean for a knife, a smooth straight stick of a certain weight and length, a few small sturdy bandages, and, if possible, a spare harness or bridle that he could take apart. An hour of careful work and delicate adjustments later, Sam had what amounted to a stylus strapped comfortable and secure to the inside of his right front leg, which he could click down into position to scratch words onto the ground, or up again to walk.
Dean celebrated by tousling their hair until they glared, and making burgers for lunch. And so what if they had slices of salted beef instead of minced meat, because of the whole no-fire thing, and slices off a loaf because buns squashed too easily in saddlebags? They were burgers if Dean damn well said they were burgers.
After lunch, because it was clearly his turn to prove that he was the most awesome big brother ever, Dean dug out a roll of paper from one of the cupboards and drew up a big grid on it for that word game Sam liked to play sometimes, with the columns numbered and the rows lettered. Then he made a whole lot of letter “tiles” with little squares of paper, shuffled them, and dealt.
Six rounds in, and his little brother and the newbie angel were handing his ass to him on a plate. Dean retired graciously (what, he did, he could do gracious, he wasn’t being a sore loser) and embarked on a successful career as a windbreak and commentator instead.
k2 down wittolry
“Come on, Sam, I’m not putting that on the board for you, that isn’t even a word.”
“Behaviour befitting a complaisant cuckold, or a simpleton. I believe it passed out of common usage about three hundred years ago.”
Dean stared at Cas in sad, sad betrayal. “Pretty sure you’re not meant to be playing words that kicked it three hundred years ago, guys.”
Cas’ mouth quirked slyly. “If he can, I can.” Then he carefully played nudiustertian.
“Holy maggots,” Dean breathed imploringly and proudly to the clouds overhead. “There are two of them.”
jerk you love it, Sam scratched into the dirt.
“Whatever, bit-” Dean stammered awkwardly to a stop, then worked it out, glared at Sam, and shoved his shoulder. “You did that on purpose.”
The look Sam shot him in return was pure mischief. Cas’ eyelashes swept down in a long, soft curve like a tease, and under them his eyes were just dancing, glittering at Dean brilliant and warm, even while his mouth was set as solemn as a dictionary.
It couldn’t last, though. Cas got worse as the day went on - got quieter and quieter, more dozy, pale but with cheeks that were far too flushed to be healthy. Fretful about something other than sickness, like there was somewhere he had to be, but he wouldn’t say what, and Dean was kind of scared to press. Five times, when the wind swung around to the north, Dean heard the music of hunting hounds, but he couldn’t tell how far away.
Sam paced, bored and frustrated. A couple of times he tried to help, scratching do you need water or food or poppy into the earth; but it was a painstaking process, and Cas had to prop himself up awkwardly on one elbow to read it, then Sam had to go and fetch Dean and point to the scratchings on the ground, at which point, honestly, Cas might just as well have called for Dean in the first place. So in the end, Sam gave up, and did nothing - just paced, and stared down any of the dogs who tried eyeballing him or Cas.
Sam hated doing nothing.
They kept talking, though, little murmurs of nothing, between Cas’ fitful dozes. Only about what wasn’t important, about what was right in front of them or all around them. It was kind of a relief, kind of childlike, as if there was nothing but them and now in all the world. An illusion, deliberately and doggedly cherished. Where they were all brothers, not enemies. Where they could smile and touch for no reason, and leave their sentences half finished. And no one was dead.
Dean took apart the water heater and laid the parts out on a sheet in front of the cabin, to frown at each of the pieces and try to work out why it was rattling and barely getting past luke-warm. It was one of those weird old things one of the other pedlars had brought through more than a dozen years ago, which worked strangely and brilliantly for the first year or so then tripped over their own ingenious complexity and ground themselves into confusion. The idea was that you wound it up with a handle that stuck out the side, and the slow release of the tension in the spring and so forth heated the water inside it. Then you did it again, and again, until it was as hot as you wanted, without needing firewood and flame and smoke. There were spells inside it too - little embedded charms that had something to do with amplification and translation of energy, or something like that - not really Dean’s kind of thing, but he could fiddle with the mechanics just fine.
One of the screws was almost stripped, which probably wasn’t helping, and the teeth of some of the cogs were all choked up with grime and mouse dirt, so he spent a while fixing those little basics first. At some point, Cas shuffled over and stretched out beside him; then he started asking questions; then Dean threw a cog and a wheel at him and told him to make himself useful; then Cas started poking curiously at the spells and how they worked with the motion of the other bits; and before Dean was quite sure how it was happening they were bickering passionately over reconstructions and improvements and tweaks, over greasy fingers and lost causes. Dean got to see what Cas looked like now when he laughed, and how he chewed his lower lip ragged when he was concentrating on his hands. And if it all felt way too easy, like they’d spent years learning to lean into each other’s silences and developing inside jokes... hey, Dean wasn’t complaining.
Possibly it wasn’t wise to let an angel in on human secrets like that, especially one who was so avidly fascinated by how things like that worked; but what was Cas going to do, steam them some beans?
The sun was beginning to redden with late afternoon when Dean came close to breaking the unspoken rules of peace.
He was folding a small blanket around Cas’ shoulders, to keep back the shivers. It was trickier than it should have been, because it had to hang very differently to how it would on a human - the wings kept Cas’ lower back and sides warm, but left the centre of his back bare, and Dean didn’t want to put any extra weight on the broken one so the blanket had to lie between them. It was the wings that were the problem, always the wings - those illogical, alien expanses of weakness and power and life. Dark and beautiful things, that made it difficult to move him, and impossible to hide; that made his body monstrous.
Dean realised, belatedly, that his hands had slowed on Cas’ chest, patting the rough wool absently where it lay.
“Cas,” he said abruptly. “Can you hide them?”
Cas blinked at him, sluggish and questioningly, like his eyelashes were heavy with soot.
“The wings,” Dean prompted, wondering vaguely why his chest was feeling too tight again. “Can’t you... you know... tuck them out of sight or something?”
He watched the puzzlement creep slowly over Cas’ face, tugging one eyebrow into a little twitch, tipping his head over to the left.
“They are too large for a cloak or blanket to disguise, Dean.”
“No, I mean...” Dean sank back onto his heels, which left his knees nudging the outside of Cas’. Maybe a bit too close to be polite, come to think of it, but Cas didn’t seem to mind. “I mean like... make them invisible. Like they’re not there at all, so you can wear human shirts and shit. It’s gotta be a hell of a lot easier explaining away some human-looking stranger than an angel, if...” If that thing happens that we’re not mentioning. If they find us and we have to play out our parts. If we have to remember what you are, and what you did. And what we did.
Cas just looked blank.
“... I thought you guys could do that,” Dean ended lamely.
Cas’ eyes sharpened into understanding, tugging faintly at the lines of exhaustion in his face. “There are stories. Myths. I have never heard of an angel who really could.”
“Huh.” Dean’s thoughts flickered uneasily over the image of Gabriel’s smooth human back and shoulders while he sponged away the sweat and dust of the road; over vast jagged wings like a sunburst framing Sam’s dangling body and Gabriel’s snarling mouth. But, hey. Maybe Gabriel was a half-angel after all. If that was even possible. (Which was a deeply weird thought. Angel women were probably even scarier than normal women.)
Also, mentioning Gabriel right now? Like hell. That’d be blowing this whole pretend the world doesn’t exist thing right out of the water. And Dean really wasn’t eager to describe to Cas exactly what had gone down there.
Not that he was ashamed. Some guy in their home in disguise, some guy who was really a monster? Seriously? What else could they have done? Only he had a feeling that Cas wouldn’t see it that way.
Especially if he had known Gabriel before, like Gabriel had hinted. And technically they had violated the guest sanctuary in turning on him after they’d fed him and given him a bed, and come on, what kind of people did that?
Cas raised an eyebrow at him. It was sort of terrifying. It was an eyebrow of obedience and compulsion and cowing badass Deans into submission.
Dean resisted manfully.
“... Yeah, okay,” he muttered, and backed down. “Forget it. We’ll make do.”
Only then, of course, Sam had to go and screw things up.
Dean was halfway up the ladder, reinforcing the lining of the gutter to the cabin roof, and Sam was pacing up and down the length of the iron railing that encircled the tiny haven. Without warning, Dean’s extra-shaggy little brother wheeled back halfway through a lap, stalked up to Cas, gave him a pleading look, then scratched something into the dirt beside his hand with quick, determined strokes. Dean was down on the solid ground and moving over to look even before he saw Cas stiffen up, going from dozy to frost in a moment.
why do you kill us? Sam had written.
“Cas,” Dean growled, but the angel was already levering himself to his feet, one hand clutching at the wall beside him to keep himself steady. Sam just stared at the angel, not backing down, and Cas didn’t reply until he was standing square and tall on his own.
Then he looked down at Sam, eyes burning blue and cold, and said simply, “Because you kill us.”
And he shuffled into the cabin, and shut the door.
Sam stared after him, frowning. He actually looked frustrated, like he’d expected something deep and philosophical and political. Something that could be argued out. Like there was no way it could mean anything real, to anyone here.
Dean exhaled. “Way to go, Sammy.”
Sam made a huffy noise and stalked away. Dean was getting really tired of not knowing what his brother was thinking lately.
Dean gave Cas five minutes, then knocked, and pushed the door open.
“Just me,” he added, unnecessarily given he was the only one around with functioning knuckles, and peered into the relative gloom of the cabin.
Cas was a statue. He was sitting on his bed with his head turned to stare impassively at Dean, and he was... he was a stranger. Not just cool, but cold. Dean couldn’t make out much except the line of his good wing, half-furled and tense. The edge of it was silhouetted against the window, and it looked as sleek and sharp as steel.
Dean swallowed and looked away. There was a slow cold crawl of sweat breaking out on his forehead and between his shoulders, pushed out by that indescribable sense of other that hung heavy and warning in the air. Because Dean knew exactly how strong angels were, exactly how much impossible strength and magic was crammed into that strange fragile frame of bone and skin and feather, but he’d never felt it in Cas before.
“Hey man,” he forced out, awkward. “Don’t mind Sammy, okay? He just always has to prod at everything until it breaks, it’s what he does. And he’s extra pissy just lately,” since he ran into your little smoke trap and got turned into a monster, “so he’s not really Mister Tact.”
Cas didn’t reply, didn’t even move. But Dean hadn’t come in here to get a reply, he’d come in here to say that, so that Cas wouldn’t think they hated him or whatever. And he’d said that, so. Uh.
He turned away, and busied himself going through the cupboards and drawers, without really being sure what he was looking for. Sealed flour, sugar, dried herbs. (Cas probably didn’t want to think about it right now anyway. About his brother, about any of the other angels over the years.) Salt, lots of it, precious and abundant because that was one thing that the pedlars could have waxed fat on, shipping all of that up from the coast to everyone who needed it. (And Dean sure as hell didn’t want to.) Poppy syrup for pain relief, a few spices, and a half-eaten plait of garlic gone soft and mouldy. (Because thinking about it didn’t just mean thinking about Cas as one of them anymore, though that was bad enough.) Nails and screws and a spanner, but for some reason no hammer - someone must have taken it for somewhere else, and Dean would have to remember to bring up another. (It meant thinking of Cas, Cas as just himself, sitting down and thinking of ways to hurt Dean’s family. New creative ways, that no angel had ever done before.)
Whiskey. For people who needed that.
Dean couldn’t shake the horror of that little exchange, the mimicry of it, call and answer.
Why do you?
Because you do.
Something about it, and Dean didn’t know what, chilled him to the heart. Symmetry. Circularity. Something like that. Poisoned scars, and the deep inevitable gravel of Cas’ voice. No way out.
The edge of the drawer cracked a bit under Dean’s grip, driving a splinter into the skin.
They couldn’t do this. They couldn’t bring all that in here. It would break them into their pieces, crack them along their weakest lines. It would bring the battle in here, past the wards and the salt lines. And it would make sense for Cas to be scared of it, of that: there was one of him, weak and injured, and two of them plus the dogs to back them up. Except there wasn’t any fear in that look, in those eyes that Dean was pretty sure were still boring into his back. Not even accusation, for his dead brother. It was just... chilly. Like he’d withdrawn inside himself and locked all the doors.
And then Dean stumbled across the answer. The best solution ever, to everything.
He wrapped his hand around it, and remembered a tiny kid with dark wings and awed blue eyes, and the wordless raptures that he’d gone into over just one cup.
“Hey, Cas.”
He turned around, and felt his face split into a winning grin. “You guys still don’t have chocolate, right?”
Cas’ eyes lit up.
Dean was the most awesome ever.
It was only later, when both pairs of hands were wrapped around mugs (hot, because the heater worked now) and their shoulders were just touching, that Dean snuck another look at him. It was... disconcerting. Even while he was smiling, just a bit, that little bit of a crinkle at the edge of his eyes, Dean could still see the other Cas in there. The grown-up one, all chills and edges, so careful not to let his mouth curve too much. The one with all those unknown years weighing heavily behind his eyes. It was like before Dean had been looking at him to see only the similarities with the kid he’d been, and now, all he could see? Everything that had been screwed up and changed.
No wonder Cas watched the way he and Sam were together with that bemused, hungry intensity. No wonder, every now and then, he would flinch and look away. Clowning around with his brother probably hadn’t been a big part of his life. Couldn’t be, now.
Dean stopped looking at him, and stared up over the rim of his mug at the window. There was a pair of swallows building a nest in the eaves.
“What happened to you, Cas?” he asked, soft enough that Cas could pretend he hadn’t said anything if he needed to.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Cas’ long, elegant fingers turning his mug around and around between his palms, in a steady, numbing rhythm.
“War,” Cas said, all clipped and calm.
War.
Dean... really didn’t know what to say to that.
Sure, he’d been hunted - they’d been hunted - all his life, and it had got worse and worse as he’d got older. And sure, he’d read books. But... being hunted wasn’t war, was it? Being hunted was just evil crap out there doing what it did, and you could go out and shoot it, do anything to it, whatever it took to make it stop. War... war was people. Doing things no person should ever do to another person.
Dean was pretty sure he didn’t get it, but it didn’t sound like fun.
He cleared his throat, and nodded towards the bottle of whiskey at the back of the counter.
“You want I should top that up for you?”
Cas’ fingers stilled for a long moment on the clay. Then he said carefully, “I’m afraid that would have little effect on me.”
“Man, that sucks,” Dean said with feeling.
“Very possibly,” Cas allowed gravely, and took another sip of his chocolate.
So apparently Cas preferred just talking around things, rather than talking about them. Dean could do that.
The hunt was too near. With less than two hours to go before dark, they left the cabin. There were others, further from home. And if they left in the evening, their trail would be obscured (more or less) by the scents and bustle of the night by the time anyone tried to follow in the morning. Dean put Cas on the more placid mare, and led her by the bridle, because Cas hadn’t the foggiest how to use the reins and needed all his attention to stay upright just now.
The long shadows were just spreading out to blur together at the edges when Cas murmured, hoarse in the twilight, “There’s a light over there.”
“Don’t look at it,” Dean said shortly, because he was busy trying to make out the path, and he had no time for freaking marshlights just now.
“I am not a child, Dean,” Cas grumped.
A few minutes later, “There’s another. Four hundred yards, behind and to the left.”
Dean changed course.
Then, “A third. Behind us, and moving. We’re being hunted.”
Not marshlights, then.
Sam’s forehead crinkled up. Dean wordlessly handed Cas a gun. Iron, and salt - it’d slow most things.
Then the whistling started.
Bleak and lonely as the moors, it was, threading through the shadows of the stunted ash. It rose and fell with the wind, now far off, now skimming along the dark bulk of the granite ridge to their right. There might have been just one note, just one voice, or there might have been a dozen, curling thinly around each other and echoing through the gorse.
And it was beautiful.
That was the wonder of it. Pale and ethereal enough to creep in through your ear and break your heart.
So it did. Dean hardly noticed the hooves beneath him stumbling off the path, the ground growing soggy and treacherous, because his eyes were filling up with their own water and were fixed on what they couldn’t see. All those hundreds of little things, the tiny lonelinesses of three in the morning.
Sam, growing up, growing tall and lanky with his easy loose grin, going out so easily into the centre of every room, every gathering, throwing back his head and laughing and making people laugh while Dean sat in the corner and nursed his beer, and wasn’t needed. Sam burying himself in books that he didn’t need Dean to read to him now, hadn’t for years, books of far away and adventure and people who thought and wrote so very differently. Dean, just... staying here. Just staying, while everyone moved on around him, while Sam moved on out of sight.
(The whistling dipped and crooned, hauntingly persuasive, caressing the back of his knuckles and the line of his throat.)
Everyone else had their lives, their families, their livelihoods. Everyone else had worked out what it meant to be a grown-up, even Sam. Dean... just Dean, in the house he’d got from his Dad, waiting for Sammy to come home again, until the day he wouldn’t. Dean, who couldn’t work out how that whole marriage thing worked, though he was more than old enough that he ought to be doing that, ought to have some girl in mind that he thought he’d like to spend the rest of his life with (ought to be having kids, because so few were being born). And if he stopped to think, he didn’t particularly want to, couldn’t think of any girl he wanted in his house and his kitchen and his sofa and his bed morning and evening and winter and summer. (Long dark twigs like thorns scraped across Dean’s cheek, caught at the leather around his calves, and the thick smell of the bog wound into his nostrils.) Only, knowing that couldn’t stop the creeping inadequacy, the loneliness, the sense of being the only one whose life wasn’t properly mapped out, who just sort of flailed his way forward on stubbornness and a cocky attitude, with no one around to just treat him like a kid and point him in the right direction. And, shit, what would his father have said to that?
“Dean.”
... And then there was Cas.
Cas, whom Dean had failed, whom Dean should have been there to protect. No, Cas who’d left, who’d just walked out of Dean’s life, and who’d come back as an enemy. Cas, whose mortal human-like frame of flesh and ribs barely contained something so much stronger than Dean was, who could hold him down and end him in a moment if he wanted to. Who wouldn’t talk about it - who left Dean to guess, and to batten things down as best he could on his own, and refused to give him anything to rail at. Just sat there, too quiet, and looked at Dean all deep and blue and enigmatic and -
And any warmth Dean had seen - had thought he had seen - wasn’t that just him remembering the kid he wanted to remember? All those subtle little signals that Dean was picking up on, the way he thought he could see amusement or irritation or fondness in the barest signs in Cas’ face and body - wasn’t that just him making it up? Telling himself that he was special, that he and Cas had something, were something?
(The whistling was high and clear, so much easier than the thoughts, so much easier than the tug and squelch of hooves in thickening mud under Dean’s body, the way the horse was pulling against the reins.)
Cas hadn’t chosen them. He was with them because he was broken and he had no choice. There had been no promises. Tolerance.
The spell broke and shattered in a sudden hoarse shock of sound. Warm and familiar and raucous, and - dog. No, Sammy. Barking. All four feet planted wide and stubborn right in front of his horse’s nose, hurling wordless frustrated noise at Dean’s head. The other dogs took up the cry, bewildered and muddy, delighted to have someone taking charge and saying something they understood. Under the onslaught of animal noise the whistling broke and faltered, just for half a minute. Just enough. The mire was spread out before him, vast and treacherously dark in the late twilight.
Shit. Will-o’-the-wisp. Dean was such an idiot. Just because no one had met one for years didn’t mean they weren’t about.
He twisted in the saddle, flicked his eyes straight past all those little comforting candle-flame flickers that whispered and whistled to him in every corner to fasten on the slumped figure of Cas, hunched over his horse’s neck way over to the right.
“Cas,” he spat out, shuddering with aftershocks and fear. The whistling started up again, shriller and more painful. Dean gritted his teeth and turned his horse, forced himself not to push him, to let him pick his way carefully over the treacherous ground while Dean tore one-handed at the loaf in his saddle-bag and stuffed his ears with soft brown bread.
Cas raised his head and stared at Dean, distant and freezing in the dark. Then he lifted his hand, held it out, and licked his lips.
“I think,” he rasped dully, barely audible through Dean’s impromptu ear plugs, “we had better stay in contact.”
Dean almost laughed with relief, and kicked his gelding forward as soon as he was on solid earth. Cas’ hand was cool in his, and the skin felt paper-frail over the bones, but just the feel of it - touching someone else, skin on skin - was like the sunlight on his face, the most powerful antidote to the panic and isolation that the will-o’-the-wisp called up.
Dean tucked Cas’ hand up against his neck to free his own up and tore into the bread again. Cas closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like he hadn’t known how to breathe for whole minutes, and Dean glanced over to make sure Sam was still doing okay. Apparently the whole dog-shape thing was working for him, for once, because he was stepping delicately from one clump of marsh grass to the next, ignoring the will-o’-the-wisp’s sound, nose wrinkling in distaste every time he had to press a paw down into the black mud.
“I should have spotted it,” Cas growled hoarsely, and Dean shook his head and began pressing the bread into his ears, trying to grin. “Just be grateful you can’t ride for shit, man. That thing had no hope of leading you anywhere your horse didn’t want to go.”
Cas scowled at him, but there wasn’t much bite to it, and his fingers against Dean’s throat were light and trembling.
It was another very long half hour before the will-o’-the-wisp gave up, and subsided with a whine.
By the time they reached the next cabin, Cas was breathing too fast and shallow, clinging to the pommel and halfway to passing out. Dean didn’t even try helping him to dismount, just stepped up onto the lowest rail of the corral fence, locked his arms around the angel’s waist and lifted him down to the ground. Cas’ knees buckled as his feet hit, and Dean held him there, pressed between his own body and the mare’s, while Cas clamped his mouth and eyes shut and fought doggedly for the edge of consciousness. Dean tipped his forehead against Cas’ temple and breathed with him, just stood there and held him in the dark, shoved all of his pig-headedness into willing the fluttering pulse under his hand to steady out and carry on nice and strong.
He felt a little surge of victory when Cas’ fingers crept up to his stomach and knotted into his shirt.
“You with us, hot shot?” he teased quietly.
The scruff on Cas’ jaw scraped against Dean’s chin as the angel turned his head. This close, in the dim traces of starlight, his eyes looked colourless and piercing-bright, and Dean could see every clump of eyelashes and the traces of sweat over his forehead.
“Dean,” he rasped, all gravel. “Why are you doing this?”
Dean cocked an eyebrow at him. “Gonna need a bit more than that.”
“This. All of this. For me.” His voice was a frustrated rumble, like the world was personally offending him by not making sense, and Dean could feel the puff from every sibilant fanning out over Dean’s mouth and cheek.
Cas’ nose was right there, so Dean flicked it and grinned his most charming grin. “Don’t pretend to be stupider than you look, okay?”
“Dean.” Cas narrowed his eyes and brought his don’t-fuck-with-me glower of doom into play, which, okay, was pretty damn persuasive.
“... Fine.”
Dean wasn’t really used to having to spell this out. Him and Sam, they knew it, didn’t have to say it, just sort of punched each other on the shoulder and maybe cracked a beer and knew what they meant. Only apparently that dick of a brother of Cas’ that Dean couldn’t really feel much regret about hadn’t shown Cas what family was. So. Dean and Cas..?
Well, wasn’t like they’d had time to make a habit of words either. So, not words then. Dean could do that.
From this angle, he didn’t have to lean in very far at all to brush his lips against the corner of Cas’ mouth. It was kind of weird - not his usual thing - but, hey, Cas had started it last time, and it seemed to work. And it did feel good, the warm touch of skin on sensitive skin, the way Cas’ mouth softened in the hollow beside his. It felt like them. Like a promise, and protection, and all the stubborn ferocity of family.
“Nothing’s happening to you on my watch, you hear me?” he said gruffly to Cas’ cheek. “Not to either of you. Okay? We done?”
Cas appeared to consider this for a minute. Then he said, carefully nonchalant, “I believe your horse is getting impatient.”
Dean had no idea why Sam was wearing his despairing indulgent face.
Cas got worse quickly after that. Disorientation became unconsciousness, and unconsciousness became delirium. He flushed hot and cold, retched weakly, and drifted back and forth between feverish dreams and feverish waking, forehead tossing and rolling stickily on the damp skin of his forearms. And he sweated, little beads of salt and distress that crept their way down from the ridges of shoulders and wing joints to pool in the small of his back, leaving little salty-sweet glistening paths behind them that Dean thought might be traces of preening oil. The downy little feathers dusted across his spine between the wings were soaked, huddled into bedraggled little clusters, which meant that the down and contour feathers on the edges of the wings, where they pressed in against the body, had to be an uncomfortable squelchy mess.
Dean gave up on the reckless idea of getting any sleep himself and just stretched out beside Cas on the angel’s mattress, under the restless arch of his good wing, with a bowl of warm water and a cloth and a dry towel nearby to wipe him down from time to time. He recognised Dean, when he was awake, and knew where they were and what was going on, but he was paranoid and edgy, and anything but the gentlest touch made him flinch. Dean kept his hand in the small of Cas’ back, rubbing slow circles there all night, because it seemed to help a little.
It should have been weird, sharing a bed with someone who wasn’t Sammy. It should have been weird to have his face smushed into a shoulder that had a wing sprouting from behind it, shifting soft and musky-sweet against Dean’s cheek as he dozed. The strange heavy weight of it folding over his shoulder and down his back, twitching with Cas’ dreams, damp at the edges under his fingertips - that should have been all kinds of weird, and it probably was, but Dean had other things to think about.
Like when Cas broke the rules good and proper, murmuring very soft but very clear into the dark and his pillow, when Dean hadn’t even known he was awake.
“Dean. What happens if they find us.”
Dean felt his circling hand stutter in its rhythm, stiffening for a moment as he tried to shut down all the sudden possibilities that his thoughts went racing after.
“Not gonna happen, Cas,” he breathed. His own breath filled the little space between his mouth and Cas’ neck and the pillow, heated it into something restless and living just for a moment, then dissipated.
Cas was silent for another minute. Then he turned his head on the pillow, away from Dean. The sweat-stiff little locks at the base of his skull tickled against Dean’s nose.
“So bad as that,” he asked quietly, in that way he had of making questions not a question.
“Three people are dead because of the other day,” Dean said, as quick and neutral as he could. “What do you think?”
“You never told them about me.”
That one definitely wasn’t a question. Just a soft observation, breathed out into the sleep-heavy dark, with something like curiosity and a little bit like awe.
Dean grunted. “Just me and Sammy.” Then, after a minute, because he was pretty sure but there was something like sympathy to be shared here, he murmured “You?” into the curls.
Cas shifted, a restless little grumble of a movement. Dean could feel the slow beat of his heart, thrumming deep and steady through into him all down the long line of Cas’ body where it rested against his.
“We are not permitted to speak with humans,” Cas offered, a murmur tinged with old regret and resignation.
“Huh.”
Dean considered this, considered the perplexing image of an angel village, an angel crèche, and mother angels telling their baby angels (which all had big earnest blue eyes and dark hair, for some reason) not to go outside, not to play with the big scary humans. Or maybe, instead, a stern village council (all with wings), laying down hard laws, forbidding contact, policing, no fraternisation with the enemy. He thought of Gabriel, leaving all that and talking to village after village of humans, pretty much becoming a human.
Then he realised something, and poked Cas in the back.
“But you didn’t. You never spoke to me.”
“No.” Dean could hear the tiny almost-smile hovering at the corner of Cas’ mouth. “I didn’t.”
Dean snorted into his shoulder. “You sneaky son of a bitch.”
Cas made a small humming noise in his throat, pleased and sleepy. When he next drifted off, he slept soundly for almost half an hour. Dean totally took the credit for that one.
The hunters had definitely picked up on something yesterday. They were back early the next morning, distant baying on the wind, and not so distant.
So they moved again - strapped Cas to his horse and shifted, so they could take their time to lay a complicated trail, rather than just fleeing as quick and straight as they could.
Dean left the dogs tied up at the cabin, even Chevy. They’d be found in a day or two at most, they had food and water within reach, and if they got desperate they’d chew through the ropes anyway. And their scent would just be too easy to follow.
Cas almost screamed when Dean lifted him down this time, biting it back just in time to save Dean’s ears, then passed out before Dean could get him inside. The wound on his wing had come open again, and was oozing sickeningly. Apparently angels couldn’t just heal up from these wounds like Cas had used to when he was a kid - like his knee and ankle were pretty well sound again even now. And Gabriel, too, had healed up quick enough from the black eye he should have had, but not from the blade in his shoulder.
They hadn’t exactly had a chance to observe this sort of thing before.
Dean really didn’t want to have to cauterise it. Especially without knowing whether it would work on him.
They only got a couple of hours’ rest this time before they heard the hounds again.
“Please,” Cas croaked, all delirious, and Dean wanted so badly to give in to the pain and panic in his eyes.
“Sssh,” he murmured, and unhooked the fumbling fingers from his collar. “It won’t take long. Promise.”
He took Cas in front of him on his horse this time, cradling him against his body; but it didn’t seem to help much.
They were losing him. At this rate it wouldn’t even take a bullet or a knife.
This time, Dean cut back around and chose a cabin not far from the old cart road that wound its way out between the hills, down towards the fabled coast. He was carefully not thinking to himself about the reasons for that.
When he’d settled the deathly quiet angel on the bed, he came back outside and slumped down on the ground next to Sam. Sam didn’t look at him, just shifted a bit and pressed his shoulder in against Dean’s for a moment.
Sap.
Dean found himself abruptly, intensely, savagely missing Sam’s face, the broad forehead with the stupid hair all floppy over it, the great easy wide grin with the dimples.
Except they weren’t going to get that. Bobby wasn’t going to find anything, and even Gabriel had seemed to think there was nothing that could be done. Sam was going to just... stay like this. That was it. And that meant... well, Dean wasn’t going to think about what it meant. But he wasn’t throwing Sam out. Only. If Sam had been feeling all restricted at home for a couple of years now anyway, even in a human body... how happy was he going to be stuck like this? with everyone around him to remind him of what he was meant to be, treating him like a nice friendly animal?
If they didn’t find out and turn on him, anyway.
Dean swallowed, and scratched at the four-day stubble on his cheek.
“He needs to rest,” he said gruffly. “Needs to be able to just stay in his goddamned bed for more than a couple of hours and not get hauled around all over the place.”
Sam made a little grumbling sound of disagreement, and Dean looked at him as he nudged the stylus into place.
need to get him away, he scratched. Then he added a far over the space between him and away.
Dean scrubbed his hand over his mouth, and swallowed bile. “That too.” Which meant...
Sam just looked at him. And, well, he was harder to read like this, and Dean honestly had no idea what had been going through his head ever since he’d got turned, but this? This he got.
Bed. And travel. Both at once.
“Yeah, Sam. I know.”
He sat there for another minute, looking at the shadows and the sun. They hadn’t heard the hunt for over half an hour now, which meant the others must have turned back for home, to get there before nightfall. Dean honestly had no idea whether they thought they were hunting the downed angel, just some other angel, or trying to find him and Sam - or, maybe, just maybe, if they’d worked out that they were all together - but he wasn’t about to risk running into them. That could only get messy.
Especially since Dean was about to turn traitor.
He stood up abruptly, went into the cabin, and made sure everything was all set up for the night, everything in Sam’s reach, everything poured out and sorted so he could do as much as possible with paws and mouth.
Then he knelt down by Cas’ side and squeezed his shoulder. Cas’ eyes opened, but he stared right past Dean.
“Look, Cas,” Dean tried. Then, “Castiel?”
Cas blinked and frowned, eyes skidding sideways, brushing over Dean and snagging just for a moment.
“Gabriel,” Dean said grimly. “You know Gabriel, yeah? I’m gonna fetch him for you.”
Cas’ eyes sagged shut, then he forced them open again, unfocussed and puzzled.
Dean sighed. “Just... hold on, okay? You hear me? Hang in there until I get back, or I swear I’ll whoop your ass.”
Dean stared at Cas in sad, sad betrayal. “Pretty sure you’re not meant to be playing words that kicked it three hundred years ago, guys.”
Cas’ mouth quirked slyly. “If he can, I can.” Then he carefully played nudiustertian.
[The he-wolf] begged [the priest] not to deny to them in any way the gift and help of God, destined for their aid by divine providence. To remove all doubt he pulled all the skin off the she-wolf from the head down to the navel, folding it back with his paw as if it were a hand. And immediately the shape of an old woman, clear to be seen, appeared. At that, the priest, more through terror than reason, communicated her as she had earnestly demanded, and she then devoutly received the sacrament. Afterwards the skin which had been removed by the he-wolf resumed its former position.
When all this had taken place - more in equity than with proper procedure - the wolf showed himself to them to be a man rather than a beast. He shared the fire with them during the whole of the night, and when morning came he led them over a great distance of the wood, and showed them the surest way on their journey.
The History and Topography of Ireland, Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambriensis), 1185, trans. John O’Meara 1951. (On how common werewolves are in Ireland.)
Cas was weaker the next morning - stiff, and in pain, restless and a bit dizzy. The skin around the bullet wound was too warm, and Dean washed it again, warm water, heavy with salt. After all, it didn’t hurt angels, and it helped to clean wounds on humans, so there was no harm in trying.
It was a quiet morning, a bit subdued. Almost peaceful, though Dean did his best not to think that word, because there was no point tempting fate. He kept expecting to find himself restless, to want to get out and move and get away, and kept being surprised to find that he was still just sitting around, as the morning ticked by, still just happy to sprawl and doze on the grass in front of the cabin with the other two.
Cas had tried his tin soldier routine a bit when he’d first woken up, bleary-eyed and grouchy, but Dean kept finding that whenever he looked at the angel he couldn’t help this happy little grin that blossomed right up from the centre of his chest. There was a weird kind of contentment that hung around whenever Cas was nearby, and Dean didn’t know if it was his angel mojo or what, but it warmed Dean right through and made even this little shoddy cabin with the water heater that kept breaking feel like home. It hadn’t taken long for Cas to give up trying to keep his own mouth from softening in return.
Sam had crept into the cabin during the night and stretched out against Dean, face hidden in the side of his neck, like there wasn’t a perfectly good bunk on the other side of the cabin. Now he was sticking close, and if he was a bit huffy, he wasn’t actually pissed or anything. The sun was warm and kind, and it was easy not to think too much.
Cas spent about the better part of an hour, around mid-morning, lying on his stomach in the grass and talking to Sam, a low lazy murmur of questions and sort of getting-to-know-you, all stuff that could be answered with a nod or a headshake or a shrug, or, at a pinch, with numbers beat out with one paw, or a grimace and a shudder. Dean listened with half an ear, admiring the way Cas made an honest effort to turn the questions around so they were real questions, real conversation, not just an interrogation or something. Sometimes he pitched in, sketched in the background of whatever it was Cas was asking about, to give Sam’s answer a bit of context; but mostly he just lay and lazed, caught up on sleep and on the sound of Cas’ voice.
After a while Cas lapsed into silence and thought; then he worked himself carefully into a sitting position and asked Dean for a knife, a smooth straight stick of a certain weight and length, a few small sturdy bandages, and, if possible, a spare harness or bridle that he could take apart. An hour of careful work and delicate adjustments later, Sam had what amounted to a stylus strapped comfortable and secure to the inside of his right front leg, which he could click down into position to scratch words onto the ground, or up again to walk.
Dean celebrated by tousling their hair until they glared, and making burgers for lunch. And so what if they had slices of salted beef instead of minced meat, because of the whole no-fire thing, and slices off a loaf because buns squashed too easily in saddlebags? They were burgers if Dean damn well said they were burgers.
After lunch, because it was clearly his turn to prove that he was the most awesome big brother ever, Dean dug out a roll of paper from one of the cupboards and drew up a big grid on it for that word game Sam liked to play sometimes, with the columns numbered and the rows lettered. Then he made a whole lot of letter “tiles” with little squares of paper, shuffled them, and dealt.
Six rounds in, and his little brother and the newbie angel were handing his ass to him on a plate. Dean retired graciously (what, he did, he could do gracious, he wasn’t being a sore loser) and embarked on a successful career as a windbreak and commentator instead.
k2 down wittolry
“Come on, Sam, I’m not putting that on the board for you, that isn’t even a word.”
“Behaviour befitting a complaisant cuckold, or a simpleton. I believe it passed out of common usage about three hundred years ago.”
Dean stared at Cas in sad, sad betrayal. “Pretty sure you’re not meant to be playing words that kicked it three hundred years ago, guys.”
Cas’ mouth quirked slyly. “If he can, I can.” Then he carefully played nudiustertian.
“Holy maggots,” Dean breathed imploringly and proudly to the clouds overhead. “There are two of them.”
jerk you love it, Sam scratched into the dirt.
“Whatever, bit-” Dean stammered awkwardly to a stop, then worked it out, glared at Sam, and shoved his shoulder. “You did that on purpose.”
The look Sam shot him in return was pure mischief. Cas’ eyelashes swept down in a long, soft curve like a tease, and under them his eyes were just dancing, glittering at Dean brilliant and warm, even while his mouth was set as solemn as a dictionary.
It couldn’t last, though. Cas got worse as the day went on - got quieter and quieter, more dozy, pale but with cheeks that were far too flushed to be healthy. Fretful about something other than sickness, like there was somewhere he had to be, but he wouldn’t say what, and Dean was kind of scared to press. Five times, when the wind swung around to the north, Dean heard the music of hunting hounds, but he couldn’t tell how far away.
Sam paced, bored and frustrated. A couple of times he tried to help, scratching do you need water or food or poppy into the earth; but it was a painstaking process, and Cas had to prop himself up awkwardly on one elbow to read it, then Sam had to go and fetch Dean and point to the scratchings on the ground, at which point, honestly, Cas might just as well have called for Dean in the first place. So in the end, Sam gave up, and did nothing - just paced, and stared down any of the dogs who tried eyeballing him or Cas.
Sam hated doing nothing.
They kept talking, though, little murmurs of nothing, between Cas’ fitful dozes. Only about what wasn’t important, about what was right in front of them or all around them. It was kind of a relief, kind of childlike, as if there was nothing but them and now in all the world. An illusion, deliberately and doggedly cherished. Where they were all brothers, not enemies. Where they could smile and touch for no reason, and leave their sentences half finished. And no one was dead.
Dean took apart the water heater and laid the parts out on a sheet in front of the cabin, to frown at each of the pieces and try to work out why it was rattling and barely getting past luke-warm. It was one of those weird old things one of the other pedlars had brought through more than a dozen years ago, which worked strangely and brilliantly for the first year or so then tripped over their own ingenious complexity and ground themselves into confusion. The idea was that you wound it up with a handle that stuck out the side, and the slow release of the tension in the spring and so forth heated the water inside it. Then you did it again, and again, until it was as hot as you wanted, without needing firewood and flame and smoke. There were spells inside it too - little embedded charms that had something to do with amplification and translation of energy, or something like that - not really Dean’s kind of thing, but he could fiddle with the mechanics just fine.
One of the screws was almost stripped, which probably wasn’t helping, and the teeth of some of the cogs were all choked up with grime and mouse dirt, so he spent a while fixing those little basics first. At some point, Cas shuffled over and stretched out beside him; then he started asking questions; then Dean threw a cog and a wheel at him and told him to make himself useful; then Cas started poking curiously at the spells and how they worked with the motion of the other bits; and before Dean was quite sure how it was happening they were bickering passionately over reconstructions and improvements and tweaks, over greasy fingers and lost causes. Dean got to see what Cas looked like now when he laughed, and how he chewed his lower lip ragged when he was concentrating on his hands. And if it all felt way too easy, like they’d spent years learning to lean into each other’s silences and developing inside jokes... hey, Dean wasn’t complaining.
Possibly it wasn’t wise to let an angel in on human secrets like that, especially one who was so avidly fascinated by how things like that worked; but what was Cas going to do, steam them some beans?
The sun was beginning to redden with late afternoon when Dean came close to breaking the unspoken rules of peace.
He was folding a small blanket around Cas’ shoulders, to keep back the shivers. It was trickier than it should have been, because it had to hang very differently to how it would on a human - the wings kept Cas’ lower back and sides warm, but left the centre of his back bare, and Dean didn’t want to put any extra weight on the broken one so the blanket had to lie between them. It was the wings that were the problem, always the wings - those illogical, alien expanses of weakness and power and life. Dark and beautiful things, that made it difficult to move him, and impossible to hide; that made his body monstrous.
Dean realised, belatedly, that his hands had slowed on Cas’ chest, patting the rough wool absently where it lay.
“Cas,” he said abruptly. “Can you hide them?”
Cas blinked at him, sluggish and questioningly, like his eyelashes were heavy with soot.
“The wings,” Dean prompted, wondering vaguely why his chest was feeling too tight again. “Can’t you... you know... tuck them out of sight or something?”
He watched the puzzlement creep slowly over Cas’ face, tugging one eyebrow into a little twitch, tipping his head over to the left.
“They are too large for a cloak or blanket to disguise, Dean.”
“No, I mean...” Dean sank back onto his heels, which left his knees nudging the outside of Cas’. Maybe a bit too close to be polite, come to think of it, but Cas didn’t seem to mind. “I mean like... make them invisible. Like they’re not there at all, so you can wear human shirts and shit. It’s gotta be a hell of a lot easier explaining away some human-looking stranger than an angel, if...” If that thing happens that we’re not mentioning. If they find us and we have to play out our parts. If we have to remember what you are, and what you did. And what we did.
Cas just looked blank.
“... I thought you guys could do that,” Dean ended lamely.
Cas’ eyes sharpened into understanding, tugging faintly at the lines of exhaustion in his face. “There are stories. Myths. I have never heard of an angel who really could.”
“Huh.” Dean’s thoughts flickered uneasily over the image of Gabriel’s smooth human back and shoulders while he sponged away the sweat and dust of the road; over vast jagged wings like a sunburst framing Sam’s dangling body and Gabriel’s snarling mouth. But, hey. Maybe Gabriel was a half-angel after all. If that was even possible. (Which was a deeply weird thought. Angel women were probably even scarier than normal women.)
Also, mentioning Gabriel right now? Like hell. That’d be blowing this whole pretend the world doesn’t exist thing right out of the water. And Dean really wasn’t eager to describe to Cas exactly what had gone down there.
Not that he was ashamed. Some guy in their home in disguise, some guy who was really a monster? Seriously? What else could they have done? Only he had a feeling that Cas wouldn’t see it that way.
Especially if he had known Gabriel before, like Gabriel had hinted. And technically they had violated the guest sanctuary in turning on him after they’d fed him and given him a bed, and come on, what kind of people did that?
Cas raised an eyebrow at him. It was sort of terrifying. It was an eyebrow of obedience and compulsion and cowing badass Deans into submission.
Dean resisted manfully.
“... Yeah, okay,” he muttered, and backed down. “Forget it. We’ll make do.”
Only then, of course, Sam had to go and screw things up.
Dean was halfway up the ladder, reinforcing the lining of the gutter to the cabin roof, and Sam was pacing up and down the length of the iron railing that encircled the tiny haven. Without warning, Dean’s extra-shaggy little brother wheeled back halfway through a lap, stalked up to Cas, gave him a pleading look, then scratched something into the dirt beside his hand with quick, determined strokes. Dean was down on the solid ground and moving over to look even before he saw Cas stiffen up, going from dozy to frost in a moment.
why do you kill us? Sam had written.
“Cas,” Dean growled, but the angel was already levering himself to his feet, one hand clutching at the wall beside him to keep himself steady. Sam just stared at the angel, not backing down, and Cas didn’t reply until he was standing square and tall on his own.
Then he looked down at Sam, eyes burning blue and cold, and said simply, “Because you kill us.”
And he shuffled into the cabin, and shut the door.
Sam stared after him, frowning. He actually looked frustrated, like he’d expected something deep and philosophical and political. Something that could be argued out. Like there was no way it could mean anything real, to anyone here.
Dean exhaled. “Way to go, Sammy.”
Sam made a huffy noise and stalked away. Dean was getting really tired of not knowing what his brother was thinking lately.
Dean gave Cas five minutes, then knocked, and pushed the door open.
“Just me,” he added, unnecessarily given he was the only one around with functioning knuckles, and peered into the relative gloom of the cabin.
Cas was a statue. He was sitting on his bed with his head turned to stare impassively at Dean, and he was... he was a stranger. Not just cool, but cold. Dean couldn’t make out much except the line of his good wing, half-furled and tense. The edge of it was silhouetted against the window, and it looked as sleek and sharp as steel.
Dean swallowed and looked away. There was a slow cold crawl of sweat breaking out on his forehead and between his shoulders, pushed out by that indescribable sense of other that hung heavy and warning in the air. Because Dean knew exactly how strong angels were, exactly how much impossible strength and magic was crammed into that strange fragile frame of bone and skin and feather, but he’d never felt it in Cas before.
“Hey man,” he forced out, awkward. “Don’t mind Sammy, okay? He just always has to prod at everything until it breaks, it’s what he does. And he’s extra pissy just lately,” since he ran into your little smoke trap and got turned into a monster, “so he’s not really Mister Tact.”
Cas didn’t reply, didn’t even move. But Dean hadn’t come in here to get a reply, he’d come in here to say that, so that Cas wouldn’t think they hated him or whatever. And he’d said that, so. Uh.
He turned away, and busied himself going through the cupboards and drawers, without really being sure what he was looking for. Sealed flour, sugar, dried herbs. (Cas probably didn’t want to think about it right now anyway. About his brother, about any of the other angels over the years.) Salt, lots of it, precious and abundant because that was one thing that the pedlars could have waxed fat on, shipping all of that up from the coast to everyone who needed it. (And Dean sure as hell didn’t want to.) Poppy syrup for pain relief, a few spices, and a half-eaten plait of garlic gone soft and mouldy. (Because thinking about it didn’t just mean thinking about Cas as one of them anymore, though that was bad enough.) Nails and screws and a spanner, but for some reason no hammer - someone must have taken it for somewhere else, and Dean would have to remember to bring up another. (It meant thinking of Cas, Cas as just himself, sitting down and thinking of ways to hurt Dean’s family. New creative ways, that no angel had ever done before.)
Whiskey. For people who needed that.
Dean couldn’t shake the horror of that little exchange, the mimicry of it, call and answer.
Why do you?
Because you do.
Something about it, and Dean didn’t know what, chilled him to the heart. Symmetry. Circularity. Something like that. Poisoned scars, and the deep inevitable gravel of Cas’ voice. No way out.
The edge of the drawer cracked a bit under Dean’s grip, driving a splinter into the skin.
They couldn’t do this. They couldn’t bring all that in here. It would break them into their pieces, crack them along their weakest lines. It would bring the battle in here, past the wards and the salt lines. And it would make sense for Cas to be scared of it, of that: there was one of him, weak and injured, and two of them plus the dogs to back them up. Except there wasn’t any fear in that look, in those eyes that Dean was pretty sure were still boring into his back. Not even accusation, for his dead brother. It was just... chilly. Like he’d withdrawn inside himself and locked all the doors.
And then Dean stumbled across the answer. The best solution ever, to everything.
He wrapped his hand around it, and remembered a tiny kid with dark wings and awed blue eyes, and the wordless raptures that he’d gone into over just one cup.
“Hey, Cas.”
He turned around, and felt his face split into a winning grin. “You guys still don’t have chocolate, right?”
Cas’ eyes lit up.
Dean was the most awesome ever.
It was only later, when both pairs of hands were wrapped around mugs (hot, because the heater worked now) and their shoulders were just touching, that Dean snuck another look at him. It was... disconcerting. Even while he was smiling, just a bit, that little bit of a crinkle at the edge of his eyes, Dean could still see the other Cas in there. The grown-up one, all chills and edges, so careful not to let his mouth curve too much. The one with all those unknown years weighing heavily behind his eyes. It was like before Dean had been looking at him to see only the similarities with the kid he’d been, and now, all he could see? Everything that had been screwed up and changed.
No wonder Cas watched the way he and Sam were together with that bemused, hungry intensity. No wonder, every now and then, he would flinch and look away. Clowning around with his brother probably hadn’t been a big part of his life. Couldn’t be, now.
Dean stopped looking at him, and stared up over the rim of his mug at the window. There was a pair of swallows building a nest in the eaves.
“What happened to you, Cas?” he asked, soft enough that Cas could pretend he hadn’t said anything if he needed to.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Cas’ long, elegant fingers turning his mug around and around between his palms, in a steady, numbing rhythm.
“War,” Cas said, all clipped and calm.
War.
Dean... really didn’t know what to say to that.
Sure, he’d been hunted - they’d been hunted - all his life, and it had got worse and worse as he’d got older. And sure, he’d read books. But... being hunted wasn’t war, was it? Being hunted was just evil crap out there doing what it did, and you could go out and shoot it, do anything to it, whatever it took to make it stop. War... war was people. Doing things no person should ever do to another person.
Dean was pretty sure he didn’t get it, but it didn’t sound like fun.
He cleared his throat, and nodded towards the bottle of whiskey at the back of the counter.
“You want I should top that up for you?”
Cas’ fingers stilled for a long moment on the clay. Then he said carefully, “I’m afraid that would have little effect on me.”
“Man, that sucks,” Dean said with feeling.
“Very possibly,” Cas allowed gravely, and took another sip of his chocolate.
So apparently Cas preferred just talking around things, rather than talking about them. Dean could do that.
The hunt was too near. With less than two hours to go before dark, they left the cabin. There were others, further from home. And if they left in the evening, their trail would be obscured (more or less) by the scents and bustle of the night by the time anyone tried to follow in the morning. Dean put Cas on the more placid mare, and led her by the bridle, because Cas hadn’t the foggiest how to use the reins and needed all his attention to stay upright just now.
The long shadows were just spreading out to blur together at the edges when Cas murmured, hoarse in the twilight, “There’s a light over there.”
“Don’t look at it,” Dean said shortly, because he was busy trying to make out the path, and he had no time for freaking marshlights just now.
“I am not a child, Dean,” Cas grumped.
A few minutes later, “There’s another. Four hundred yards, behind and to the left.”
Dean changed course.
Then, “A third. Behind us, and moving. We’re being hunted.”
Not marshlights, then.
Sam’s forehead crinkled up. Dean wordlessly handed Cas a gun. Iron, and salt - it’d slow most things.
Then the whistling started.
Bleak and lonely as the moors, it was, threading through the shadows of the stunted ash. It rose and fell with the wind, now far off, now skimming along the dark bulk of the granite ridge to their right. There might have been just one note, just one voice, or there might have been a dozen, curling thinly around each other and echoing through the gorse.
And it was beautiful.
That was the wonder of it. Pale and ethereal enough to creep in through your ear and break your heart.
So it did. Dean hardly noticed the hooves beneath him stumbling off the path, the ground growing soggy and treacherous, because his eyes were filling up with their own water and were fixed on what they couldn’t see. All those hundreds of little things, the tiny lonelinesses of three in the morning.
Sam, growing up, growing tall and lanky with his easy loose grin, going out so easily into the centre of every room, every gathering, throwing back his head and laughing and making people laugh while Dean sat in the corner and nursed his beer, and wasn’t needed. Sam burying himself in books that he didn’t need Dean to read to him now, hadn’t for years, books of far away and adventure and people who thought and wrote so very differently. Dean, just... staying here. Just staying, while everyone moved on around him, while Sam moved on out of sight.
(The whistling dipped and crooned, hauntingly persuasive, caressing the back of his knuckles and the line of his throat.)
Everyone else had their lives, their families, their livelihoods. Everyone else had worked out what it meant to be a grown-up, even Sam. Dean... just Dean, in the house he’d got from his Dad, waiting for Sammy to come home again, until the day he wouldn’t. Dean, who couldn’t work out how that whole marriage thing worked, though he was more than old enough that he ought to be doing that, ought to have some girl in mind that he thought he’d like to spend the rest of his life with (ought to be having kids, because so few were being born). And if he stopped to think, he didn’t particularly want to, couldn’t think of any girl he wanted in his house and his kitchen and his sofa and his bed morning and evening and winter and summer. (Long dark twigs like thorns scraped across Dean’s cheek, caught at the leather around his calves, and the thick smell of the bog wound into his nostrils.) Only, knowing that couldn’t stop the creeping inadequacy, the loneliness, the sense of being the only one whose life wasn’t properly mapped out, who just sort of flailed his way forward on stubbornness and a cocky attitude, with no one around to just treat him like a kid and point him in the right direction. And, shit, what would his father have said to that?
“Dean.”
... And then there was Cas.
Cas, whom Dean had failed, whom Dean should have been there to protect. No, Cas who’d left, who’d just walked out of Dean’s life, and who’d come back as an enemy. Cas, whose mortal human-like frame of flesh and ribs barely contained something so much stronger than Dean was, who could hold him down and end him in a moment if he wanted to. Who wouldn’t talk about it - who left Dean to guess, and to batten things down as best he could on his own, and refused to give him anything to rail at. Just sat there, too quiet, and looked at Dean all deep and blue and enigmatic and -
And any warmth Dean had seen - had thought he had seen - wasn’t that just him remembering the kid he wanted to remember? All those subtle little signals that Dean was picking up on, the way he thought he could see amusement or irritation or fondness in the barest signs in Cas’ face and body - wasn’t that just him making it up? Telling himself that he was special, that he and Cas had something, were something?
(The whistling was high and clear, so much easier than the thoughts, so much easier than the tug and squelch of hooves in thickening mud under Dean’s body, the way the horse was pulling against the reins.)
Cas hadn’t chosen them. He was with them because he was broken and he had no choice. There had been no promises. Tolerance.
The spell broke and shattered in a sudden hoarse shock of sound. Warm and familiar and raucous, and - dog. No, Sammy. Barking. All four feet planted wide and stubborn right in front of his horse’s nose, hurling wordless frustrated noise at Dean’s head. The other dogs took up the cry, bewildered and muddy, delighted to have someone taking charge and saying something they understood. Under the onslaught of animal noise the whistling broke and faltered, just for half a minute. Just enough. The mire was spread out before him, vast and treacherously dark in the late twilight.
Shit. Will-o’-the-wisp. Dean was such an idiot. Just because no one had met one for years didn’t mean they weren’t about.
He twisted in the saddle, flicked his eyes straight past all those little comforting candle-flame flickers that whispered and whistled to him in every corner to fasten on the slumped figure of Cas, hunched over his horse’s neck way over to the right.
“Cas,” he spat out, shuddering with aftershocks and fear. The whistling started up again, shriller and more painful. Dean gritted his teeth and turned his horse, forced himself not to push him, to let him pick his way carefully over the treacherous ground while Dean tore one-handed at the loaf in his saddle-bag and stuffed his ears with soft brown bread.
Cas raised his head and stared at Dean, distant and freezing in the dark. Then he lifted his hand, held it out, and licked his lips.
“I think,” he rasped dully, barely audible through Dean’s impromptu ear plugs, “we had better stay in contact.”
Dean almost laughed with relief, and kicked his gelding forward as soon as he was on solid earth. Cas’ hand was cool in his, and the skin felt paper-frail over the bones, but just the feel of it - touching someone else, skin on skin - was like the sunlight on his face, the most powerful antidote to the panic and isolation that the will-o’-the-wisp called up.
Dean tucked Cas’ hand up against his neck to free his own up and tore into the bread again. Cas closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like he hadn’t known how to breathe for whole minutes, and Dean glanced over to make sure Sam was still doing okay. Apparently the whole dog-shape thing was working for him, for once, because he was stepping delicately from one clump of marsh grass to the next, ignoring the will-o’-the-wisp’s sound, nose wrinkling in distaste every time he had to press a paw down into the black mud.
“I should have spotted it,” Cas growled hoarsely, and Dean shook his head and began pressing the bread into his ears, trying to grin. “Just be grateful you can’t ride for shit, man. That thing had no hope of leading you anywhere your horse didn’t want to go.”
Cas scowled at him, but there wasn’t much bite to it, and his fingers against Dean’s throat were light and trembling.
It was another very long half hour before the will-o’-the-wisp gave up, and subsided with a whine.
By the time they reached the next cabin, Cas was breathing too fast and shallow, clinging to the pommel and halfway to passing out. Dean didn’t even try helping him to dismount, just stepped up onto the lowest rail of the corral fence, locked his arms around the angel’s waist and lifted him down to the ground. Cas’ knees buckled as his feet hit, and Dean held him there, pressed between his own body and the mare’s, while Cas clamped his mouth and eyes shut and fought doggedly for the edge of consciousness. Dean tipped his forehead against Cas’ temple and breathed with him, just stood there and held him in the dark, shoved all of his pig-headedness into willing the fluttering pulse under his hand to steady out and carry on nice and strong.
He felt a little surge of victory when Cas’ fingers crept up to his stomach and knotted into his shirt.
“You with us, hot shot?” he teased quietly.
The scruff on Cas’ jaw scraped against Dean’s chin as the angel turned his head. This close, in the dim traces of starlight, his eyes looked colourless and piercing-bright, and Dean could see every clump of eyelashes and the traces of sweat over his forehead.
“Dean,” he rasped, all gravel. “Why are you doing this?”
Dean cocked an eyebrow at him. “Gonna need a bit more than that.”
“This. All of this. For me.” His voice was a frustrated rumble, like the world was personally offending him by not making sense, and Dean could feel the puff from every sibilant fanning out over Dean’s mouth and cheek.
Cas’ nose was right there, so Dean flicked it and grinned his most charming grin. “Don’t pretend to be stupider than you look, okay?”
“Dean.” Cas narrowed his eyes and brought his don’t-fuck-with-me glower of doom into play, which, okay, was pretty damn persuasive.
“... Fine.”
Dean wasn’t really used to having to spell this out. Him and Sam, they knew it, didn’t have to say it, just sort of punched each other on the shoulder and maybe cracked a beer and knew what they meant. Only apparently that dick of a brother of Cas’ that Dean couldn’t really feel much regret about hadn’t shown Cas what family was. So. Dean and Cas..?
Well, wasn’t like they’d had time to make a habit of words either. So, not words then. Dean could do that.
From this angle, he didn’t have to lean in very far at all to brush his lips against the corner of Cas’ mouth. It was kind of weird - not his usual thing - but, hey, Cas had started it last time, and it seemed to work. And it did feel good, the warm touch of skin on sensitive skin, the way Cas’ mouth softened in the hollow beside his. It felt like them. Like a promise, and protection, and all the stubborn ferocity of family.
“Nothing’s happening to you on my watch, you hear me?” he said gruffly to Cas’ cheek. “Not to either of you. Okay? We done?”
Cas appeared to consider this for a minute. Then he said, carefully nonchalant, “I believe your horse is getting impatient.”
Dean had no idea why Sam was wearing his despairing indulgent face.
Cas got worse quickly after that. Disorientation became unconsciousness, and unconsciousness became delirium. He flushed hot and cold, retched weakly, and drifted back and forth between feverish dreams and feverish waking, forehead tossing and rolling stickily on the damp skin of his forearms. And he sweated, little beads of salt and distress that crept their way down from the ridges of shoulders and wing joints to pool in the small of his back, leaving little salty-sweet glistening paths behind them that Dean thought might be traces of preening oil. The downy little feathers dusted across his spine between the wings were soaked, huddled into bedraggled little clusters, which meant that the down and contour feathers on the edges of the wings, where they pressed in against the body, had to be an uncomfortable squelchy mess.
Dean gave up on the reckless idea of getting any sleep himself and just stretched out beside Cas on the angel’s mattress, under the restless arch of his good wing, with a bowl of warm water and a cloth and a dry towel nearby to wipe him down from time to time. He recognised Dean, when he was awake, and knew where they were and what was going on, but he was paranoid and edgy, and anything but the gentlest touch made him flinch. Dean kept his hand in the small of Cas’ back, rubbing slow circles there all night, because it seemed to help a little.
It should have been weird, sharing a bed with someone who wasn’t Sammy. It should have been weird to have his face smushed into a shoulder that had a wing sprouting from behind it, shifting soft and musky-sweet against Dean’s cheek as he dozed. The strange heavy weight of it folding over his shoulder and down his back, twitching with Cas’ dreams, damp at the edges under his fingertips - that should have been all kinds of weird, and it probably was, but Dean had other things to think about.
Like when Cas broke the rules good and proper, murmuring very soft but very clear into the dark and his pillow, when Dean hadn’t even known he was awake.
“Dean. What happens if they find us.”
Dean felt his circling hand stutter in its rhythm, stiffening for a moment as he tried to shut down all the sudden possibilities that his thoughts went racing after.
“Not gonna happen, Cas,” he breathed. His own breath filled the little space between his mouth and Cas’ neck and the pillow, heated it into something restless and living just for a moment, then dissipated.
Cas was silent for another minute. Then he turned his head on the pillow, away from Dean. The sweat-stiff little locks at the base of his skull tickled against Dean’s nose.
“So bad as that,” he asked quietly, in that way he had of making questions not a question.
“Three people are dead because of the other day,” Dean said, as quick and neutral as he could. “What do you think?”
“You never told them about me.”
That one definitely wasn’t a question. Just a soft observation, breathed out into the sleep-heavy dark, with something like curiosity and a little bit like awe.
Dean grunted. “Just me and Sammy.” Then, after a minute, because he was pretty sure but there was something like sympathy to be shared here, he murmured “You?” into the curls.
Cas shifted, a restless little grumble of a movement. Dean could feel the slow beat of his heart, thrumming deep and steady through into him all down the long line of Cas’ body where it rested against his.
“We are not permitted to speak with humans,” Cas offered, a murmur tinged with old regret and resignation.
“Huh.”
Dean considered this, considered the perplexing image of an angel village, an angel crèche, and mother angels telling their baby angels (which all had big earnest blue eyes and dark hair, for some reason) not to go outside, not to play with the big scary humans. Or maybe, instead, a stern village council (all with wings), laying down hard laws, forbidding contact, policing, no fraternisation with the enemy. He thought of Gabriel, leaving all that and talking to village after village of humans, pretty much becoming a human.
Then he realised something, and poked Cas in the back.
“But you didn’t. You never spoke to me.”
“No.” Dean could hear the tiny almost-smile hovering at the corner of Cas’ mouth. “I didn’t.”
Dean snorted into his shoulder. “You sneaky son of a bitch.”
Cas made a small humming noise in his throat, pleased and sleepy. When he next drifted off, he slept soundly for almost half an hour. Dean totally took the credit for that one.
The hunters had definitely picked up on something yesterday. They were back early the next morning, distant baying on the wind, and not so distant.
So they moved again - strapped Cas to his horse and shifted, so they could take their time to lay a complicated trail, rather than just fleeing as quick and straight as they could.
Dean left the dogs tied up at the cabin, even Chevy. They’d be found in a day or two at most, they had food and water within reach, and if they got desperate they’d chew through the ropes anyway. And their scent would just be too easy to follow.
Cas almost screamed when Dean lifted him down this time, biting it back just in time to save Dean’s ears, then passed out before Dean could get him inside. The wound on his wing had come open again, and was oozing sickeningly. Apparently angels couldn’t just heal up from these wounds like Cas had used to when he was a kid - like his knee and ankle were pretty well sound again even now. And Gabriel, too, had healed up quick enough from the black eye he should have had, but not from the blade in his shoulder.
They hadn’t exactly had a chance to observe this sort of thing before.
Dean really didn’t want to have to cauterise it. Especially without knowing whether it would work on him.
They only got a couple of hours’ rest this time before they heard the hounds again.
“Please,” Cas croaked, all delirious, and Dean wanted so badly to give in to the pain and panic in his eyes.
“Sssh,” he murmured, and unhooked the fumbling fingers from his collar. “It won’t take long. Promise.”
He took Cas in front of him on his horse this time, cradling him against his body; but it didn’t seem to help much.
They were losing him. At this rate it wouldn’t even take a bullet or a knife.
This time, Dean cut back around and chose a cabin not far from the old cart road that wound its way out between the hills, down towards the fabled coast. He was carefully not thinking to himself about the reasons for that.
When he’d settled the deathly quiet angel on the bed, he came back outside and slumped down on the ground next to Sam. Sam didn’t look at him, just shifted a bit and pressed his shoulder in against Dean’s for a moment.
Sap.
Dean found himself abruptly, intensely, savagely missing Sam’s face, the broad forehead with the stupid hair all floppy over it, the great easy wide grin with the dimples.
Except they weren’t going to get that. Bobby wasn’t going to find anything, and even Gabriel had seemed to think there was nothing that could be done. Sam was going to just... stay like this. That was it. And that meant... well, Dean wasn’t going to think about what it meant. But he wasn’t throwing Sam out. Only. If Sam had been feeling all restricted at home for a couple of years now anyway, even in a human body... how happy was he going to be stuck like this? with everyone around him to remind him of what he was meant to be, treating him like a nice friendly animal?
If they didn’t find out and turn on him, anyway.
Dean swallowed, and scratched at the four-day stubble on his cheek.
“He needs to rest,” he said gruffly. “Needs to be able to just stay in his goddamned bed for more than a couple of hours and not get hauled around all over the place.”
Sam made a little grumbling sound of disagreement, and Dean looked at him as he nudged the stylus into place.
need to get him away, he scratched. Then he added a far over the space between him and away.
Dean scrubbed his hand over his mouth, and swallowed bile. “That too.” Which meant...
Sam just looked at him. And, well, he was harder to read like this, and Dean honestly had no idea what had been going through his head ever since he’d got turned, but this? This he got.
Bed. And travel. Both at once.
“Yeah, Sam. I know.”
He sat there for another minute, looking at the shadows and the sun. They hadn’t heard the hunt for over half an hour now, which meant the others must have turned back for home, to get there before nightfall. Dean honestly had no idea whether they thought they were hunting the downed angel, just some other angel, or trying to find him and Sam - or, maybe, just maybe, if they’d worked out that they were all together - but he wasn’t about to risk running into them. That could only get messy.
Especially since Dean was about to turn traitor.
He stood up abruptly, went into the cabin, and made sure everything was all set up for the night, everything in Sam’s reach, everything poured out and sorted so he could do as much as possible with paws and mouth.
Then he knelt down by Cas’ side and squeezed his shoulder. Cas’ eyes opened, but he stared right past Dean.
“Look, Cas,” Dean tried. Then, “Castiel?”
Cas blinked and frowned, eyes skidding sideways, brushing over Dean and snagging just for a moment.
“Gabriel,” Dean said grimly. “You know Gabriel, yeah? I’m gonna fetch him for you.”
Cas’ eyes sagged shut, then he forced them open again, unfocussed and puzzled.
Dean sighed. “Just... hold on, okay? You hear me? Hang in there until I get back, or I swear I’ll whoop your ass.”