Every Fertile Inch (6a/6)
Previous chapter.
Week 6.
11 kalends Octobris (September 21).
Note: Okay, so I give up on PWP. Warnings for this chapter of fantasy violence - of the monster-fight type, not domestic abuse or anything.
It had started out innocently enough. A quarrel in the morning, over nothing much - only Dean’s boundless and rather crude enthusiasm for chatter before breakfast, and Castiel’s lack of the same. Nothing terribly serious, logic would dictate; but Castiel wasn’t accustomed to arguing with Dean, even over small matters, and he found himself sulkier and more shaken than he’d expected.
They were out on patrol all day, the two of them - only a patrol, to keep the maps properly marked, nothing like a hunt. Castiel was soaring in slow zig-zags, scouting for signs of anything dangerous, Dean below on his horse with his favourite dog and a larger greyish one ranging out around him, shaggy and bloodthirsty. And maybe Castiel was a little further away than he would otherwise have been, maybe Dean was a little quieter. Maybe Castiel was a little distracted, tracing the complex little electric flickers of redcaps and gnomes and other more mundane life in the forest below. And his eyes were useless through the thick green thatch of the pine forest, of course, and he had no reason to be looking for something so large: the muted, roiling glow was nothing like the vibrant flare of werewolf, or wodewose, or any of those other creatures with a taste for flesh.
But excuses were for children, and those innocent of consequences.
The etayn rose to its feet with a bellow that shook the trees, lurching and shaking off branches like twigs. Dean shouted out something, to his horse or the dogs, and there was the sudden flurry of a scuffle. Castiel could see the grey-green scruff of its mane through the pines, feel it shake itself and stagger.
Castiel whistled, a high-pitched battle screech, anything to make it look at him instead, and folded his wings to dive.
The hound bayed.
It was high-pitched and sharp, closer to panic than the savage pack-triumph that he remembered, and it shot through him like ice. Everything seized up, muscle and bone and all the magic in his blood, and his body turned to lead between his wings.
“Mute, Chevy, mute! Get out! Cas!”
Something smacked into him and sent him tumbling through the air. Then it was a blur of branches whipping at him, rough bark scraping open his cheek and arm, and the cracking thuds of collision. Shields down, his mind screamed at him, and it was pure fierce instinct that had him reaching and grabbing for the nearest branch rather than curling up to keep his wings from snagging, because if he hit the ground like this -
He spat out a mouthful of grit, and pine gum, and blood.
The dog was still crying out, too loud. Every yelp sent shocks through Castiel’s body, cramping every muscle and emptying his blood until it felt thin and cold, until he wanted to wrap his arms around his knees and cough up everything in his stomach. He was battered and torn, ribs and wings and one leg, one side of his face burning fiercely where the bark had scoured it red, and he couldn’t close off the pain. And his senses were befuddled, so he could hardly feel anything of the world around him, reduced to just his eyes and his ears. But the etayn was blinking at him through the branches with its muddy, rough-hewn face, stubby hand still half raised, and if it reached for him -
It did worse. It turned away.
Dean was struggling to his feet, far too close. Horse nowhere to be seen, his dog bristling in front of him with legs planted wide and fur bristling, her ears and tail tucked back so tight they were almost invisible, hurling abuse at the vast thing towering in front of her.
The overgrown rocks behind Dean were piled too high and thick for him for him to duck away. And any other direction was well within the sweep of the etayn’s arms. Dean was trapped.
And whatever strange magic the humans had used to twist those hounds into monsters, Castiel would not watch helplessly again and see somebody else he loved die for it.
Castiel hauled himself upright, clinging to the branches above him as they dipped and swayed sickeningly. His muscles were loose as soggy bread. Dean set his jaw, and drew his gun from his belt.
The etayn rumbled, shaking the trees, and reached out.
Castiel stumbled forward along the branch, wings tangling in the tree and too heavy to lift, and screeched again with all his breath. But the thing wouldn’t be distracted. Only Dean flinched - then he put a bullet through its eye.
It staggered back with a roar, one enormous hand clapping over the injured eye. The other hand whipped out, and flung Dean into a tree.
There was a sickening crack, and Dean lay still.
The wind moaned through the trees, and the world swayed. It felt very far away.
Castiel’s wings were an unwieldy bulk, nothing more than muscle and bone and feather. His body was too much for them like this, too heavy, too long. And every other power was tamped down and muffled.
No better than a human.
Weak. And the dog was yelling, that ghastly halloo that had rung through his bones the day that -
The etayn never saw him coming.
He collided with it at the frantic speed of a tumble, wings crooked for a glide that was only just far enough. He was aiming for the throat, but his first wild slash cut uselessly at the breastbone and the knobbly, gnarled hide. Its bellow was bemused, deafening, tumultuous; and Castiel gritted his teeth and scrambled up on a mad surge of desperation. He barely missed its flailing hands, laid open its jugular in passing, got up to its shoulder as it gaped and felt its spine crack behind his heel as he launched himself clear of its reeling body.
His sword spun off somewhere on its own spinning silver arc. The maze of pine branches rushed up to meet him, then the bracken. Then the ground.
It wasn’t kind to him.
Behind him, the etayn fell, and trees groaned and cracked as they fell with it. That beast of Dean’s let out one last vicious howl, then fell silent.
Castiel actually couldn’t move. That was... new, and strange.
He stared at the pine cone that had landed in front of his nose. It looked like a pine cone.
His body felt like a dangerous, unfamiliar place.
With the dog quiet, though, his strength was creeping back in. Just enough that he could feel the tug of broken ribs and wingbones reaching for each other, the tingle of some savage blow to his kidneys mending itself.
And his body was marginally lighter. With effort, he could drag himself to his hands and knees. It pitched him into a coughing fit that set his ribs screaming.
The world was muffled in fleece.
The occasional crack and patter of damaged branches breaking loose, the thud of another pine cone on the back of his neck, the sharp smell of broken pine, the curl of his fingers through pine needles into the loamy earth, felt like they were happening to somebody a long way away. As if all Castiel was getting were the reports. And there was a terrible gulf opening up inside him.
He knew what he’d seen, and knew what he’d heard. Castiel had watched too many people die not to know that reinforcements usually came too late. That it took only a few seconds for anybody’s life to be changed beyond repair.
Dean’s back was broken. Or perhaps his skull.
But he couldn’t be. He couldn’t. It was impossible, because the sudden sharp reality of that was - it wasn’t possible because Castiel couldn’t bear it. There was simply no way that could happen.
He hadn’t realised just how completely this would break him.
The carpet of dried pine needles was soft and prickly under his hands and knees. He crawled a few steps, found a tree, hauled himself to his feet and clung through the flood of dizziness. And he couldn’t feel the warm, familiar pulse of Dean’s life.
The bile was rising in his throat, tasting like death. Castiel’s heart was pounding painfully now, trying to shunt the healing blood around his body too fast, and it took all he had to fight back the vivid sense-memory of the moment when he’d felt that one last pulse from Balthazar. Felt it go still.
Only a few yards, and he’d be clear of the trees. Only a few yards to the gap the etayn had torn in the forest with its raging. Dean was there. Castiel could put off this realisation for another minute, another few seconds, could make it not real until he saw, felt - but he had to get to Dean.
He was a pile of limbs and huddled body at the foot of a tree. The face was hidden under one arm, and one leg was bent at a sickening angle.
The dog barked again.
It was the sight as much as the sound that knocked Castiel to his knees.
Castiel wanted to scream against it. How dare Dean, how dare anybody, have so much power over him? How dare he burrow inside him and shatter him open into nothing and slash up the remains?
“Dog, be quiet,” he growled, and “stop.”
The beast ignored him: hovered with her tail down and ears flat between him and Dean, glared at him, and yipped.
Castiel didn’t have time for this.
He lurched to his feet and hauled her into the air by her throat. She struggled and gurgled, claws lashing at his thighs, and Castiel fought down the savage urge to break her in two. He flung her away from him instead, let her thud and tumble her way across the ground, and fell jarringly on one knee by Dean’s side.
Dean’s shoulder was warm under his hand, and messy with crumbled bark that must have shaken loose when he’d slammed into the tree. Not so much as there should be, though, Castiel noticed numbly: there was far more on the ground, as if the forest didn’t want to cling to Dean’s shirt. He didn’t belong out here, after all. He was a creature of the open field and the farm, of tame kindly land and a bright sky.
A thin branch lay broken under his body, and, about a foot up the tree, its stump oozed slow golden drops down towards Dean’s hand.
Castiel would have to carry him home.
Dean hated flying.
Castiel slammed his fist hard into the trunk of the tree. It cracked and swayed dangerously above him. He snarled at it: let it fall! Let it try to -
“Cas?” Dean groaned. Then again, louder and sharper, “Cas!”, and he was squirming between Castiel’s thigh and the tree, boxed in, trying to turn over and sit up.
The world staggered around him, giddy as the water in a bowl when you slip and almost let it fall. There were hands on his shoulders and Dean’s voice in his ears, rough with pain or relief or worry. Then Castiel was pitching forward, falling into him, hands grabbing for his shirt and hauling it up and getting all over him. There was hurt inside him, little snarls of pain and wrong that caught at Castiel’s frantic senses now that he could feel it: concussion, bruises, damage to the cords holding the shoulder together. Broken leg, and maybe that had been the snap that Castiel had heard, or maybe it had even been that branch under him, what did it matter. Castiel slid through him hungry as fire, seizing on those spots and throwing all he had at them. It was like hauling a comb through knotted hair: jammed, then jammed again, then hurt, then suddenly came loose all in a rush with a few little twinges left here and there, but he couldn’t stop to go back because he was weak and he had to fix everything else first before his heart gave out, and what if there was something terrible he’d missed?
“Fuck,” Dean was hissing somewhere somewhen outside in the coldness of the air, then, “Cas!” and Cas - Castiel - Cas was being shook, shaken, swaying, and “that’s enough, you hear me, you stubborn son of a bitch, fix yourself, would you? I’m fine, I’m good!”
Dean’s face swam sluggishly in and out of darkness in front of him as he blinked. Eyes, green eyes, too bright and worried. Fixed on Castiel. Alive.
Castiel slammed him into the tree so hard it shook.
“Do you have any idea,” he gritted out, without knowing what he was going to say next. Then that creature yelled, and barrelled into him from one side.
It was a shock of muscle and noise, and a bright flare of pain where its teeth sank into his wrist and pulled, and when Castiel looked at it he saw nothing of the sweetness that Dean seemed to find in it: only the bristling mane and savage eyes and dripping jaws of the beast.
“Chevy, mute! easy! mute!” Dean was growling, his hands locked around its muzzle, prying its jaws open, and “leave it!”, but all Castiel could really hear in his mind was the violent music of the pack.
It took all of his self-control, all of his fear for Dean, all of his certainty that Dean would never forgive him, not to lash out: to wait those two seconds before his arm was released and she backed away, growling between whimpers and swinging her head from side to side, eyes fixed on Dean. It left him hunched in over Dean, wings mantled sharp and high, breathing heavily; and when Dean looked back at him his eyes went very wide, and very deep.
“She’s scared, Cas,” and his hands slid around Castiel’s back, grabbing with his own desperation at Castiel’s skin through the rents in his shirt, “she’s just scared, and you look pretty damn scary right now, man, hell, what the fuck ripped off your face?”
Castiel’s hands fisted in Dean’s shirt, then in his hair, then slid down to his neck and his chest and to cup the lines of his shoulders, because they couldn’t keep still. “She almost got you killed,” he raged, spitting the words out into the claustrophobic space between them, and again, pressing his hands in hard against the tender spots at Dean’s ribs and throat, while Dean made little noises and grabbed at the back of Castiel’s neck, “she wouldn’t stop, Dean, and I couldn’t -”
Dean yanked at his hair, a sharp prickle across his scalp that tugged his head back and cut off his voice in a rush of breath. “What’d you expect, I told you you need to get to know them just like you would weapons and you’re a freaking angel, why would she trust you, you never even talk to her, man!”
“Dean, she killed my brother,” Castiel shouted into his face, because it was the only violence he could do.
Dean went very still all over. And so did Castiel too, when it sank in what he’d just said. He wasn’t allowed to say that to Dean: that was a fundamental rule. He couldn’t blame Dean for Balthazar’s death, directly or indirectly, aloud or in the quiet of his mind, or this whole fragile web would break.
But he was so very tired of biting his tongue about that creature in the house: of pretending to simply ignore it, and not see the blood on its jowls.
Dean just stared at him, eyes eloquent and wet, like there were a whole host of things he was thinking of saying and setting aside, and Castiel dropped his gaze away from the terrifying intentness of Dean’s and just listened to the slowing pound of his heart, hot and strong.
“Okay,” Dean said at last, all on an exhale, and dragged Castiel into something too rough to be a hug. “Okay, man.”
Castiel closed his eyes against the hard curve of Dean’s shoulder, and spread his fingers over the fragile span of ribs and backbone and skin. So much life in there, so vivid and strong, but so close to the surface - so easy to spill.
“Fuck, Cas,” Dean breathed after a minute, nose pressing cold into Castiel’s neck. “I saw you fall and I thought -”
I know what you thought, Castiel wanted to say, but it stuck on something in his throat.
“We should find your horse,” he said instead, and his voice rasped as if he’d been shouting. “And the other dog.”
Dean sighed, pulled back enough to press their foreheads together bruisingly hard for a moment, then let Castiel pull him to his feet. “Maxim took off after Leapfrog. Think he decided protecting a horse was the better part of valour.”
If only both dogs had decided on cowardice.
Castiel found his feet were reluctant to hold him steady. But his body was knitting its injuries slowly back together, with the exception of the dog bite, so they had no excuse.
Dean held out his hand to the black hound, who slunk up beside him with her eyes fixed on Castiel. Castiel shuddered and looked away.
The twisted body of the etayn lay in the broken debris of the forest, a great grey and brown thing like overgrown boulders, gashed with red here and there where it had impaled itself on the way down. Very close to them was its broad, six-toed foot, half the length of Castiel’s body from heel to toe.
Dean’s breath puffed warm into Castiel’s hair, too fraught to really be a laugh.
“Remind me never to piss you off.”
Castiel said nothing.
---
On the way home, he had to stop to vomit. He was barely even aware that Dean had dismounted and limped over before he felt the hand warm on his back.
---
The rest of the day was very strange.
Castiel felt like a cloud - like a child’s illusion of a cloud, at least, floating distant and serene so far above everything else, above the buffets and cross-currents of the lower air. Of course, anyone who’d run into one knew they were cold and miserable inside, and carried turbulence on their wings.
He said very little, because he had very little to say. Instead, he drifted through the afternoon’s tasks, body sluggish and exhausted, mind absolutely silent. The house was a little untidy, so he tidied it. It was his day to feed the chickens, so he fed them. The yoghurt that Sam had begun that morning was set, so he moved the urn into the cold cellar where it could mature more slowly. His body needed rest to refill its depleted reserves, so he dozed fitfully, draped across their bed half-dressed, face buried in the pillow that carried the scent of them both.
Dean came by, looked searchingly at him, looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t, squeezed his shoulder, then left again, saying nothing but that he had to let Bobby and Ellen know what had gone down.
Castiel bathed, scrubbing blood and pine sap and dirt from the strangest places. He did his best to groom out the mess it had made of his wings, so far as he could reach, but there were many spots that would have to wait on Dean or Rachel. Perhaps Gabriel. Castiel had the indistinct impression that this might be one mood in which he would not find his strange brother stifling.
But Gabriel was somewhere away down on the farms, and Castiel didn’t have the energy or the determination to reach out to his mind to call him. Castiel was surrounded by humans, by people he barely knew.
Rachel and Sam, too, were out of reach: still out on their patrol. A feeble semblance of legitimacy - technically, by the terms of the Charter, any interspecies patrol had to have at least two members of either species on it. But that was intended to prevent foul play, rising out of lingering resentments or the treachery of opportunism, and there had been no question of that today. And so, in the name of efficiency, the four of them had split up.
Too arrogant. Too incautious. And why had he let Dean wheedle him into bringing that dog?
It was a shame that Sam was still out. Sam’s presence would be a comfort and an anchor: the boundless, easy warmth of his heart under all those self-conscious teenage mannerisms. And the way he would, absolutely predictably, fuss around Castiel and try to make him hot tea and anything else he could do to help, until Castiel was distracted with grumbling at him and feeling the real solid weight of care and family pressing in against his heart.
He washed himself all over again, in water gone tepid and cloudy. Castiel had taken to being more thorough in his bathing lately, inside as well as out, because Dean was oddly squeamish about encountering faecal matter. Castiel had noticed, in fact, that all humans had very strong disgust reactions in general - although Gabriel had mentioned once their susceptibility to hygiene-related illnesses, so perhaps it was a defensive instinct.
So many frailties, humans had. How could Castiel ever hope to learn all of them, let alone defend against them?
Second half of this chapter.