March-Stalkers Mighty: Deleted scenes
Scenes that never made it in, or were substantially altered. As, for example, the scene in which Gabriel did actually get to throw a book of porn at Dean's head, rather than sending Anna to do it on his behalf.
The greatest change made after the first draft was complete was a major reshuffle of the events of the second half of the story, starting when Castiel, Gabriel, Sam, Gwen, and the other angels returned from outside. The problem was that the denouement took too long: Castiel wasn’t injured by the demon that was possessing Dean, the angels stayed outside the town for a few weeks, the meeting in the field was the first time that Bobby and Jody and Rufus and so on had met them, Lucifer attacked and was defeated (wounding Castiel’s wings badly in the process), and only after that did the angels (all of them, including Gabriel) move into the town as Castiel recovered. This meant that almost all of the wrapping up of the emotional plot and all of Dean’s realisations about his feelings happened well after the conclusion of the demon plot, with the result that the “finale” dragged out over several chapters. Obviously, several scenes were substantially rewritten in this process, or dropped altogether. These are they!
Jump to:
Alternate ending to the scene in which Sam, Gwen, and the angels return.
In Which Gabriel Throws Porn About.
The meeting in the field.
Clowning muddily in Ellen's outhouse.
This is the original ending to the chapter that is now VII.dexter, after Dean let the demon possess him and then suddenly there were surprise angels and brothers turning up all over the place. The chief difference in the action so far from the final ending is that Castiel is not seriously wounded - a little beaten up, but no injuries to his wings, and not leaking any grace. The conversation with Ellen has some obvious differences in that Castiel is not busy fainting all over Dean, and therefore goes on longer, until the angels leave on their own. I slipped a little of it - the Gabriel/Sam interaction - into a flashback in the next chapter in the final version, as I felt that was important, but the rest of it fell by the wayside.
“So demons are, what like the angelic version of vengeful spirits? Only not tied to one place?” Dean broke in. Cas gave him a confused look - which, fair enough, he’d probably never had to deal with a human ghost before - and Gwen was temporarily derailed.
“Like a werewolf’s a version of a cute little puppy,” Gabriel drawled disparagingly, eyes fixed on the rock face somewhere over Dean’s head. “They’re not some kind of spiritual leftovers. They’re a new thing altogether, made of blood and earth and memories and betrayal, and if they can’t find an angel’s heart to twist they’ll make do with yours.”
There was a moment of silence, just the crows calling far and faint across the marshes below, while Dean tried not to think about murder incarnate, grinning and delighted, spreading out across the lands like an infection, like a body turning against itself and enjoying it. Then Cas’ voice, low and rough.
“I came here three months ago to bring an end to the fighting. For all of us, humans and angels. Because I remembered -”
He broke off, eyes on Dean; and Dean chuckled a bit and rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked away, because, hey, they’d brought everything else out already today, so why not this too?
“They know, Cas.”
“I remembered a child,” Cas finished, and there was something in his voice that said he was still looking at Dean, that there was something he was saying under there that was meant for Dean alone, only Dean wasn’t used to reading his voice as well as the rest of him, and whatever that message was, he missed it. “And I couldn’t believe humans were as monstrous as my kin had found them to be.”
“And then you killed my dad,” Jo dropped like a lead weight of sarcasm across their delicate little web of nobody’s-actually-stabbing-anyone-right-now.
“Jo!” he heard Sam say, all reproachful, and he was going to pull out the “it was actually technically a wendigo” card again, which was really not the point here.
“Hey,” Dean cut in roughly, sharper than he’d ever spoken to Jo, and he saw her eyes widen at it, then narrow combatively. “He came here to patch things up, and we killed his brother and locked his other one up in a bull press, okay? This whole thing’s been a fucking mess for months. Years.”
“That’ll do,” Ellen rapped out, over Gwen and Sam and Hanael and whatever Jo had been about to hurl back into Dean’s face. They all quieted down, even the angel, but the damage had been done. Now it all felt like too many enemies in a small space, not tentative allies in the post-battle haze.
Ellen’s eyes were locked with Cas’; and the angel shook his head, awkward and uncomfortable, but didn’t give an inch. “I am… sorry for your loss. I did not kill him, but,” pressing on, gruff and stubborn, as Jo hissed and looked away in anger, “I must take some of the culpability for his death, and for Sam’s misfortune. No angel lifted a sword against a human that day, and none has since I came here, but I understand that in depriving you of your sight and spreading confusion to save Rachel, I created an opportunity for… other things.”
Ellen lifted her eyebrows grimly, and looked at Dean where he stood beside Cas, then at Sam stubbornly not moving away from Gabriel, and Gwen, shoulder to shoulder with Hanael. Hanael, the one angel who hadn’t been here before, and who couldn’t be held personally responsible for any deaths. Not that most people would see it that way.
“Just because they’re not monsters doesn’t make them friends,” Ellen said, almost gently.
Gabriel’s face twisted into something bitter and sarcastic, but he clenched his jaw shut and looked away without a word. Dean thought of him laughing with people who would have called themselves his friends around a table in the Roadhouse, then filthy and reduced in the cage and stubbornly reading Sam’s books, then glowing furious and awesome over Sam, snarling into a demon’s face.
“Maybe not,” he said, and felt Sam’s betrayed eyes boring into the side of his head. He ignored him for a moment, focussed on Ellen, because this much he wasn’t going to budge on. “Could make them allies, though.”
Ellen held his gaze for a minute, a whole thoughtful interrogation in it that Dean didn’t really get but stubbornly refused to flinch away from. Then she glanced over at Gabriel. “Where do you fit into this?”
“Nowhere,” Gabriel replied brightly. “I’m not getting pulled back into this bloody mess. I’m just the hired cart for getting the humans back home.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the hired cart who likes to drop rocks on us and tries to make the whole town think he’s been screwing around in my head,” he muttered, earning himself a reproachful “Dean!” from Sam’s direction and two of Cas’ fingers tucked discreetly through his belt loop to tug him pointedly back.
Gabriel’s mouth curled viciously. “Well, excuse me for trying to give you an out with your lynch-mob buddies.”
Gwen slipped in between them like a tiny terrifying cattle dog. “Okay, guys, tuck ‘em away and zip up. Ellen, what d’you think?”
“I think it’s time we got back home, before something else impossible decides to stick its oar in,” Ellen replied dryly. “Jo, honey, you good to walk?”
Jo shrugged, then nodded, not taking her eyes off Cas. Sam’s forehead crumpled up and he bounded forward like a disappointed gazelle. “But Ellen, we could really do something here. I mean, can you just imagine if we had humans and angels living in here together? We could take down anything! We could make the whole land safe!”
“I’m imagining,” she said darkly, “and I’m seeing a hell of a lot of bad blood. Look. No one will come hunting you, or get in your way if you want to put down demons. The rest we’ll have to talk about.”
“There are only the three of us here,” Cas said, then added like an uncertain afterthought, “and Gabriel. We came back to talk, not to fight.” He nodded in Sam’s direction, brisk and close to curt, getting ready to leave. “Sam and Gwen know where to find us when you want us.”
Ellen nodded. “We’ll get back to you within a week.”
Seemed like that was some sort of a signal. Cas did some weird little sleight-of-hand thing and his sword vanished back to wherever he kept it. Ellen and Hanael turned away. Dean turned around to find Cas, because he couldn’t just let him go without saying something, but Gwen was there already, tugging Cas aside to whisper something, so Dean had to step back and look around.
Ellen was strapping up her knee, which Dean hadn’t even noticed had been hurt. Rachel had flapped her way out of the crowded little space and up to the crest of the hill at some point, probably impatient with diplomacies or something, and was keeping an eye out. Sam was… huh. Edging toward Gabriel, who had his back to the wall so he could keep an eye on everyone and still managed to look like he was determined to pretend that the humans, and possibly the other angels, didn’t actually exist.
“So, um,” Sam tried earnestly. His hands were shoved too deep into the pockets of Dean’s jacket to look casual “You’ll… be in touch, right?”
Whatever that meant. Hadn’t Cas just implied that they’d have to ride out to wherever the angels were camped to communicate?
Gabriel slid his eyes sideways towards Sam, spikey as a defensive hedgehog. “Kinda have to, don’t I? if we’re going to organise anything at all?”
“Well, yes, but.” And damn, Sam was pulling out the worried hopeful puppy-dog eyes. “I’m sort of used to having you around now.”
“More fool you, kid,” Gabriel retorted acidly.
Sam flinched back like he’d been hit, like Gabriel being a dick was actually a surprise. “Fine,” he snapped after a moment, eyes narrow; and Gabriel looked away.
Dean would have left it there - well, okay, so he wouldn’t, he’d have come up with something far wittier than “fine,” - but he would have stopped actually trying, because clearly Gabriel didn’t want Sam to try and Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t actually worth the effort. But, because Sam was and always had been the master of worrying conversations to absolute tatters, he took a deep breath and said, kind of gentle, “Um. Thanks for coming when Cas called just now, anyway. Wasn’t sure you would.”
“Yeah, well,” Gabriel said uncomfortably to the wall. “If my own personal sun screen got turned to jam by a demon I’d have to sit in the shade to read, so.” Then he took unfair advantage of his ability to escape from awkward conversations by flying away.
Sam’s shoulders slumped.
Dean could have told him Gabriel wasn’t worth it. But apparently that wasn’t what Sam wanted to hear.
Which begged the question of what it was that Cas wanted to hear.
Dean hadn’t got a clue, and he had the distinct feeling that he was hopeless enough at the whole sensitivity shit that whatever he said could only make things worse. He wasn’t even sure what things were, why Cas was avoiding his eyes except for the occasional inscrutable dark look. But he could half remember that dream Cas, who apparently hadn’t been a dream, saying something about wanting a normal life like Dean’s (or with Dean?) instead of all this fighting, and Dean would stop and remember the specifics when he had a moment, because right now Gwen was turning away to hug Jo and Cas’ wings were opening, ready to lift him into the air.
Dean caught at his elbow before he could think twice about it. Cas’ flesh was smooth and cool and alive under his hand, and there was a worrying furrow on his forehead as he turned his head toward Dean that almost made Dean back off.
“So, hey,” Dean blurted out, and let go of Cas in favour of shoving his hands into his pockets (was that one Cas had picked up from him?). “I didn’t know you could do diplomacy.”
Cas blinked at him twice, and completely missed the implied compliment. “I can’t. I am not an archangel, I have had no formal training, and I prefer listening to drawing all eyes on myself.” Oh well. It had been a crappy compliment anyway.
Cas hesitated, and looked out over the marshes. His wings had sort of stopped at loose and half-open, catching the edge of the wind, and the powerful, down-cushioned leading edge of the left one was almost brushing against Dean’s upper arm with each breath. Dean ached unreasonably to lean in just far enough to feel it, to bury his fingers in the dark living warmth of him and prove that everything was okay.
More uncertainly, Cas continued, “Sam advised me to leave out the fact of the demons’ nature - to say only that we pursued them from our own lands - but I find dishonesty a… poor basis for negotiation.”
“Yeah, that might’ve helped. But bullshitting Ellen…” Dean rubbed the back of his neck, and grimaced.
The corners of Cas’ eyes creased faintly. “From what I had heard of her, I thought that would be unwise.”
Dean flashed him a grin, quick and relieved. “Damn straight.” The smudge of shadow at the edge of Cas’ mouth deepened, just a bit, and for a moment Dean felt like they were on the same page, like they could work something out.
Then, “You coming?” Hanael called to Cas.
The moment broke. Cas flexed his wings, a quick ripple of movement as the light shimmered across feathers, and he nodded.
He had other things to do. And so did Dean. They had a truce to negotiate, and a hell of a lot of people to convince somehow. He had to let Cas go.
Instead, he took a step in, right up into Cas’ space, and said low and urgent, “Cas. Some of the shit that demon said…”
Cas tilted his head, like he was hearing all the things Dean couldn’t ask. “Demons don’t lie, Dean,” he murmured, close enough that Dean could feel the warmth of him against his side. “They merely use the truth dishonestly.”
Great. More “pick your own truth.”
Or maybe just, you know. Taking things on trust.
Cas was right there. Eyes bright with shadow and full of a lifetime that Dean hadn’t got a clue about barely ten inches away, and it was really hard to think when Dean could feel the breath on his cheek.
“Look,” Dean said, because he really did want to say this bit, and if Cas was offended it might explain a bit of the reserve. “Sorry about the whole incubus thing, you know. I was…” He stopped, swallowed, and amended, “I’ve been sort of confused, these last few weeks.”
Cas’ mouth twisted into a small sad smile that said he knew that. “It is not of import,” he said, kind of gruffly, but it was, and Dean didn’t get it but he wanted to make that sadness go away. Only, where would he start?
The thing was. Cas being real, after years of existing just in Dean’s head, that was weird enough. Seeing him here, with other angels, in the same space as Jo and Gwen and Ellen of all people, actually talking to them… that was insane. Like… oil and water, or something. It made him feel too real, like there was this whole other part of him that Dean couldn’t understand, all those bits he’d been resolutely ignoring or hadn’t ever known about. Now he wasn’t just Dean’s, and he felt more alien than before.
Cas - Castiel, Dean had been right before, this wasn’t about half-imagined childhoods anymore. Castiel looked away, up at the clouds that stretched across the sky like clawmarks.
“Dean,” he rumbled; and Dean cut him off so that he wouldn’t have to say “I must go.”
“Cas, do me a favour?”
“Anything,” the angel said at once, and Dean flinched.
“Don’t say anything to a human,” he muttered, and was immediately glad that Gabriel had already left.
Cas gave him a waspish sort of look. “What about saying it to a friend?”
Dean rolled his eyes, then looked over at Jo, and the way her hand hovered around her stomach like she was holding in a phantom pain. Her shirt was a bloody ruin, and she moved as easy and free as if they hadn’t had a hard three-hour hunt and a twenty-minute uphill sprint and then a tussle with a few demons on top of that. He thought about trust, and about making the right compromises.
He took a deep breath, and asked.
---
That scene! The one I really didn’t want to lose so had to make Anna do it instead and slip Gabriel's snark into a note! Comes in the same place the scene with Anna does in the final version - in Charlie's garden, while weeding - but as Gabriel was inside the walls at this point in the original, he got to assault Dean in person earlier (rather than in a dream), and now he gets to be his own delivery boy.
Castiel’s throat jumped, and he tore his eyes away, and Dean silently cursed the loose cut of the trousers Castiel was wearing, because he really wanted to see if he -
“That’s why I can’t, Dean. You dreamt me as a siren. And Lucifer was the lord of persuasion.”
Then, before Dean could get control of his jaw again and work out just how to rage at Castiel until he gave up on that stupid idea about being an archdemon in training, or whatever, Gabriel loomed up beside Castiel and whacked Dean around the head with a book.
“I told you stay.”
Dean yelped, in a very manly fashion, jumped backwards away from where he definitely had not just been groping Gabriel’s brother’s thigh, and caught himself before he fell into the rosemary bush. Then he rubbed his poor abused head, and scowled.
“Oh, screw you, you’re not the archangel of me.”
Gabriel gave him a withering look, and tossed the book into his lap. “Do you even listen to the words before they come out of your mouth? Book. Read. Guys can fall in love with guys, guys can have sex with guys, guys can marry guys unless they’re living somewhere people are going to be dicks about it, and you’re a clueless insulated moron with the most incredible powers of denial I’ve ever come across.”
Castiel blinked at Gabriel like he was the one talking a foreign language now. Gabriel hooked an arm through his and gave him a terrifyingly bright smile (and Dean couldn’t miss the way Castiel relaxed into the touch, the relief of it, like everything was going to be okay now Gabriel was throwing his weight around). “Hey, little bro, I am the interpreter of virginal halfwits and we need to talk. Somewhere where Dean isn’t.”
“Hey, hold on,” Dean growled, pulling himself upright and brushing crushed thyme off his pants.
“Don’t talk to me, you sorry excuse for a bull’s ass. You don’t get to use words until you’ve read every quire in that book.”
Castiel didn’t look like he even wanted to argue.
---
This was, originally, the first time that any of the adults but Ellen had met the angels, so it had far more significance as a negotiation than it had later on. And also there was Charlie in it, because Dean, when asked to nominate civilians to bear witness, thought she was the most likely to talk to the angels like people instead of monsters.
In terms of Dean and Castiel’s relationship, this is the first time they’ve seen each other since the picnic, which in this version took place at one of the old hunting cabins. I won’t post that scene, as it’s long and almost nothing needed to be changed but the setting.
“Hey Cas!” he heard Sam call, bright and happy behind him, and there was a ripple of movement and colour on a rock high overhead at the peak of the clearing that Dean registered vaguely as Gabriel standing up and stretching his wings, but the only colour Dean was concerned with right now was the flash of blue as Castiel’s eyes crinkled up at the edges, and the sly hint of pink as his tongue snuck out to dab at the corner of dry lips.
And yes, Dean knew perfectly well there were at least eight pairs of eyes on his back as he snagged an arm around Castiel’s waist, ignored the questioning look, and tugged him in for a brush of a kiss. But firstly, he was allowed to do this, so screw everyone who wasn’t them who thought he wasn’t; and secondly, Cas looked tired and battle-steely, which Dean did not approve of; and thirdly, no way in hell was he going to pretend anymore when it came to Cas.
Castiel’s eyebrows lifted a bit, but his hand crept sort of shyly around Dean’s waist and spread out in the small of his back, holding him there as Castiel opened warm and luscious under his mouth.
Then Dean looked up.
Charlie looked kind of awestruck and smug at the same time. Bobby looked resigned, Sam was blushing and staring at his feet, and Jody was saying something to Ellen about how maybe Demian should have come along after all, whatever that meant.
Apparently there had been a very interesting conversation going on while Dean hadn’t been paying attention.
Castiel nudged Dean in the ribs with a pointy elbow, and Dean looked down into a stern “are you going to tell me what that was about?” face.
Dean shrugged and grinned, in a way that (probably, hopefully) said “hey, relax dude, no biggie.”
Castiel rolled his eyes. Dean had deep suspicious suspicions that he might have learned that one from Sam.
“So, hey, this is Cas,” he called out over the field, and started to trudge back with Cas. “Castiel,” he amended after a moment, because no one else got to use that nickname without permission. “And Gabriel,” he added unnecessarily, waving a hand at the other angel poised away overhead on a rock. “And Bobby’s the one in the cart, obviously, and then Rufus has the pony’s head, and Charlie’s there next to Gwen, and Jody with Ellen, and Samuel next to the wagon. Samuel Colt, not Campbell, ’cos he died years ago.” Which meant absolutely nothing to angels who didn’t know his and Sam’s mum’s name, he realised belatedly. But hey, Colt was used to being Samuel Colt-not-Campbell, so he could deal.
“Angel,” Bobby acknowledged shortly, offering pretty much exactly nothing in the way of an opening.
Castiel returned the flat stare with a faintly puzzled head-tilt. “Human,” he acknowledged back, with that careful little half-lift at the end that made it almost a question.
Ellen’s faint snort was lost as Sam pounced on Cas for one of his big warm full-body hugs, the kind where he had to bend down and sort of engulf you in enthusiasm. Which Dean was pretty sure weren’t really Castiel’s thing, because he wasn’t exactly casual with his touches. And, yeah, the hands that took a moment to settle on Sam’s back were a bit uncomfortable about it, and it took a moment more for the wings to curl forward a bit like they wanted to get in on the engulfing action too; but when Sam pulled back, his easy beam was matched by a warm little quirk at the corners of Castiel’s mouth.
“Hello Sam,” he said, dry as a bone.
Dean quashed the urge to do a proud little victory dance. He’d known Cas and Sam would get along just fine once they got a chance to meet properly. Dean had obviously taught them both well to recognise awesomeness when they saw it.
“Castiel. Good to meet you.” Jody held out her hand, tone brisk and professional. “Ignore the surly one with the beard, he’s like that with everybody. You got a title?”
Huh. She made it look so easy, reaching out to shake an angel’s hand like he was just any stranger, like Bobby and Rufus and even Ellen weren’t tracking every move and hint of Castiel’s just a bit too closely. Theory was all very well, but it was pretty well ingrained in every hunter to be damn jumpy anywhere outside the walls, even if they didn’t have an angel standing a few feet away from them.
Castiel turned so that he was facing her square on and considered her face like a puzzle, eyes all ice-blue and remote. There was nothing here of the soft hopeful Castiel of the cabin - the angel here was all commander and steel, all the strategist, with plans and thoughts that Dean couldn’t see. Then he looked down at her hand, and blinked.
“Shake,” Dean provided helpfully.
Castiel reached out both of his hands, hesitated a moment, then wrapped them gently around Jody’s. “Captain,” he said, in that gruff abrupt way that Dean secretly suspected meant he was shy. “Technically.”
“Okay then, Captain.” Jody shook once, a firm upwards and downwards motion, then let go. “I hear you did a solid by Sam here, and by our Jo. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Castiel said, earnest and unironic as someone who’s learned all his politeness by rote. “But I’m afraid in Sam’s case the effort was mostly Gabriel’s.”
“Speaking of.” Bobby lifted his voice pointedly in the direction of something beyond Dean. “You gonna join us, pedlar-man?”
“I dunno, Singer,” Gabriel’s voice drawled sweetly. “I was just considering running away to sea and becoming a pirate. You nattering jays over the small talk yet?”
The loose feathers closest to Castiel’s spine - the ones Dean privately thought of as the hackles - quivered just a little, so that it could have been only the wind. “Please forgive my brother,” he said, bland as smooth porridge. “He is like that with everybody.”
“I hear you,” Charlie chipped in, cheerful as if she had absolutely no sarcasm detector at all. “Brothers, huh? Hey, Gabriel, how’s tricks?”
“Hey look, it’s the apple-nymph!” Gabriel said, a bit brighter, feet squelching nearer through the mud. “How’d they sweet-talk you into this, Red?”
Charlie shrugged, and flashed her totally-not-modest modest grin. “Oh, begging and bribery. Those carboys are awesome, by the way. The mead I tried out on them is doing all sorts of evil slurpy things. As soon as autumn hits, I am all over the cyser action.”
Castiel gave Dean a bemused sort of look. Dean shrugged helplessly, because honestly, who knew? He’d been pretty sure this was meant to be a peace talk, but who was he to argue with delicious apple-and-honey alcoholic goodness?
“Yeah? There’s a bunch of spare airlocks in my wagon to fit them that I meant to toss in your direction too, only I was a bit tied up at the time.” Gabriel slipped into the ragged little circle like he belonged there, hands in pockets, forelock over eyes, wings tucked back casual and loose, all charm. “Speaking of, Colt, I’ve got a half-dozen silver ingots stashed away in there somewhere if you still need ‘em.”
Colt scrubbed a weathered hand over the grey-blond stubble on his cheek. “Always. Only we’ll have to work out the price again - I guess you aren’t really after those angel blades anymore.”
Beside Dean, Castiel’s silence went heavy and uncomfortable.
“Trading with angels too now, are we?” Jody asked, mildly enough; but Charlie narrowed her eyes like it was a rebuke, and Gabriel’s smile went glass-edged.
“Not angels, sweetheart,” he purred, all over his usual banter except for the brittle edge underneath. “Just me.”
---
This followed Lucifer’s defeat in the original draft. Castiel was wounded (Lucifer took his sword and slashed his wings, as the demon riding Dean ended up doing instead in the final version), thus giving Dean the impetus to demand that the portal be broken so that the angels could come home with them. So Gabriel's weak and shaky, but capable of moving around on his own, and is being a little brash to pretend he doesn't care about that whole resurrection thing.
Sam, Dean, and Gabriel wash the worst of the mud off in Ellen's outhouse before Dean takes an unconscious Castiel inside to tidy him up (at which point the bathroom scene in the final version resumes).
A bucket of cold water was upended over Dean’s head.
“Hey, sorry,” Sam said, grinning like a loon. “You had a lump of mud, right there. Oh wait, that’s your head.”
“I’ll show you mud,” Dean informed him, and hurled the contents of his bucket right into Sam’s face. Sam yelped and danced away, then tripped over Gabriel’s coincidentally outstretched foot and came down with a flailing crash onto the pile of kindling in the corner of Ellen’s outhouse.
Dean snickered the snicker of an older brother who had totally won that round, stripped off his trousers, and drew himself another bucket of water, while Sam stared at Gabriel with wide, betrayed eyes.
“Dude. You’re meant to be on my side.”
Gabriel blinked petulantly at Sam. “Says who? You splashed me!”
Sam stared at the angel - mostly naked, wings invisible, leaning against the wall, scrubbing vigorously at his neck and hair with a washbrush, dripping with water that had definitely not come from Sam’s bucket, forehead crumpled into a scowl and eyes sparkling, just a bit. Then he glanced at Dean, just long enough for Dean to see the worried teenager Sam’d been not too long ago, the one who’d never been sure what he ought to say because he was convinced that every time a conversation went down the drain it was his fault, and second-guessed everything ten times before it left his mouth because he was too clever for his own good.
Just when Dean was about to stick his oar in (around the very important business of scrubbing mud out of his goddamn privates, and how the hell had it gotten in there?), Sam turned his head back to Gabriel and narrowed his eyes.
“Oh, you’re on. Next prank war is three-way. Watch your back.”
Which apparently was the right way to go, because Gabriel threw back his head and laughed the way Dean hadn’t seen him do for months, since he’d been just the first pedlar of spring.
“Don’t challenge the Trickster to a prank war unless you know what you’re letting yourself in for, kiddo.”
“Bring it, angel,” Dean rapped back, because sure, the Trickster had a reputation but Dean had been one-upping Sam for years. Only he couldn’t keep his eyes from sliding sideways to where Castiel was slumped on the feed sacks along the driest wall. “Pretty sure he’s in my camp, and he’s going to be either completely confused by the whole thing or terribly sneakily evil.”
Sam snorted. “Sure, man. You’re the prank master.”
Then the door to the house banged open and Rachel stalked in, pristinely dressed in Jo’s old clothes and looking female and terrifying, and Dean yelped and grabbed for a shirt to hold in front of sensitive bits.
Sam, who had been too distracted to get around to taking his trousers off yet, snickered the snicker of a younger brother’s revenge. The treacherous son of a bitch.
“I have absolutely no interest in your genitals, Dean Winchester,” she informed the room strictly, and Dean glowered at her and at the parts currently protected by his shirt, because hey, what was wrong with his genitals? “Hanael and Ellen and Charlie and I have done with the bathroom proper,” and did she always sound that judgemental, like it was their fault they’d got muddier than the girls had? “so if you gentlemen have quite finished fooling about in here, I will take Castiel” (a name which apparently deserved some reverence) “and tidy him up before seeing to his wings.”
Dean blinked.
“Sure,” Gabriel drawled, “but you might want to limit yourself to cleaning up, lady, because I know you lot have almost a decade’s experience with stabbing yourselves on angel swords, but these guys? Generations of stitching and sewing and fixing things that other things have done to them that they can’t fix by wishing.”
Rachel’s eyes dropped down and away from Gabriel’s, but face stayed frosty as she gathered Castiel up into her arms (a hell of a lot easier than Dean ever could). “Noted, Gabriel. I will make sure his wings are clean before any of our gracious hosts come to tend to them.”
“Uh,” Sam put in helpfully.
Rachel swept out the door, into the main house.
Dean scowled, swapped his muddy pants for the clean ones Sam had fetched up from their house, and damn well swept after her.
By the time he got into the proper bathroom, the one Ellen hadn’t wanted to get mud all over, Charlie and Jo and Anna were gone. It was just Ellen and Rachel, undressing an unconscious Castiel with careful fingers as Rachel held him upright. Castiel’s head was lolling trustingly against Rachel’s shoulder, and the shadows and valleys of his body were half visible through the long narrow V up the side of his tunic as the women unfastened it.