Thy Fearful Symmetry - pt. 4
Title: Thy Fearful Symmetry
Word Count: ~7100
Warnings: misuse of Greek mythology
ETA: I apparently put the original draft version up instead of the edited one, so... u.u; I am going to fix that now.
masterpost | part 1 | part 2 | part 3
THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY
part 4
“So you can’t sense...” Sam shakes his head, making an expansive gesture with his hands. “Anything?”
“Nothing,” Cas replies. He glances over to Dean, though, and licks his lips. “Except for the pieces of my grace that remain in you and in Dean. I think that... until these labors are completed, the other pieces of grace will be much harder to find.”
Dean snorts. “And it’s not like those are going to be a walk in the park, either.” Certainly not if what Demeter had said was any indication; she might be willing to give Cas some help, but apparently she still hadn't entirely forgiven Dean. And instead of being led right to where they needed to go, they just had to search. And hope.
“We just hunt as usual, then,” Sam says.
“And what?” Dean snaps. “Just keep our fingers crossed that we'll happen across the grace?”
“What else can we do?” Cas asks, his voice edged with hardness. He crosses his arms over his chest, the blades of his shoulders sharp under the thin cotton of his t-shirt. Dean is forcibly reminded that as impatient as he and Sam might be, as frustrated, their feelings pale in comparison to Cas's. They only feel it on his behalf; he has to endure the pain of being graceless, of becoming more and more human. Dean shifts, his lips pursed, feeling contrite. “If that is the only way to find my grace, Dean, then I fail to see what other choice we have.”
No one says anything for a long moment, Dean conspicuously avoiding Cas's eye. Sam stands up and clears his throat. They both look over to him. “Why don't we go to Bobby's?” he suggests. “It'll be a place to regroup, try to come up with something. Maybe he'll know of something that can help.”
It's not a good plan, Dean thinks, not even by their standards, but at least it's a plan.
“You're telling me you met Demeter. The Greek goddess. Demeter.” Bobby rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his beer; none of them are stupid enough to interrupt him. “What the hell was she doing in the middle of nowhere? What the hell was she doing here? Kind of thought the Greeks would be, you know. Somewhere in Greece.”
“With so few devotees,” Cas explains, “it's likely her power is greatly diminished.” He's had to start eating regularly, too, and he spoons through his soup absently. “This is probably one of her...” He frowns and his brows furrow. “I guess you'd call it a vacation home.”
“Sure,” Bobby says, nodding. “Ain't the weirdest thing I've ever heard you idjits come back with by a long shot.” He stands up to take his bowl to the sink. Cas lifts his up towards Bobby to take, as well; the man obviously isn’t happy about it, but he snatches the bowl and stacks it on top of his own. “So what are you going to do now?” he asks, running water to wash the soup dregs away. “If she put a stopper in the grace detector, it sounds like you’re shit out of luck.”
No one says anything; Bobby just continues cleaning up the kitchen after supper.
Dean sighs. “You, uh.” He looks away for a moment, scratching the back of his head. “You mind if we crash here awhile, Bobby? Just until we come up with. With something.”
“Demeter indicated that since she assigned me the labors, if I hunted with the Winchesters they would be made apparent to me.” He looks over at Sam thoughtfully. “As though... The grace is only in the spirit of what we are doing. Doing it is what makes it manifest.”
Sam rubs at his chin thoughtfully. “You know, that does make sense.”
“Right, sure,” Dean says standing. He places his hands down flat on the table. Cas and Sam are welcome to discuss any weird metaphysical shit they want to, but he’s going to make damn sure they do it when he’s out of the room. “So!” he says loudly. “Bobby. Can we stay?”
“Of course you can, boy,” Bobby grunts. “Just don’t bother me and clean up after yourselves.” He stalks out of the room, a chorus of ‘thanks, Bobby’ following him out the door.
“You two can keep using your combined nerd power to figure this out, but I...” He yanks open the fridge and grabs another beer. He lifts it up and grins. “Have a date.”
“So, uh. Ben get those postcards I been sending him?”
Lisa laughs, warm and full. “He has them pinned up on a corkboard. I think he’s a little jealous - seeing all the places you’ve gotten to travel.”
“Oh believe me,” Dean snorts, “you’ve seen one rundown motel at the ass-end of nowhere you’ve seen them all.”
“You’ve been sending an awful lot lately. And calling a lot less.”
Something in Dean’s gut twists with guilt. “Yeah,” he replies, mouth dry. “I’m sorry, Lisa, we’ve been... busy and - “
“Hey, I don’t need excuses, Dean,” she says, and his gut twists again. “You said you had to go and I didn’t fight it; I wasn’t expecting to see you again for a long time, anyway.”
“Don’t.” He clears his throat. “Don’t say that, Lisa. I’ll be back. I promised.”
Lisa laughs. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Dean; you’ll just feel bad when you break them.”
The silence then lingers, and Dean isn’t quite sure what to say. He asks how she and Ben have been doing, how things are going with them, Ben’s school and Lisa’s work. It’s nice, if not entirely comfortable, and Dean feels a heavy pang. He misses them. He misses Lisa and Ben like hell and when this is all over...
When this is all over he’ll have a newly-human Cas and a brother back from hell. He’ll have to help them get things settled, then he’ll go back to the Braedens. Sam hasn’t said much about it and whatever whammy Cas put on him keeps the memories at bay, but Dean knows he hasn’t been sleeping well. Dean knows, intimately, what it’s like to see hell every time you close your eyes. He knows what it’s like to have it haunt your dreams. So he can’t leave Sam. He can’t. And when he lets himself want it, he wants to stay with Cas, too.
There’s a part of him that knows Lisa is right, that knows that as soon Sam showed up his life with Lisa and Ben was over. He wants to be part of their family. He even wants, with a deep, soul-heavy want, to be a father - to be Ben’s father. But he can’t have both, can he?
“I miss you,” he tells Lisa, his voice husky.
Lisa makes a pleased noise. “I miss you, too,” she says, her voice pitched low and seductive. “So. What are you wearing?” She hums, putting on a show of desire. “I bet it’s flannel.”
Dean laughs and in anticipation, undoes the button of his jeans. He thinks of telling Lisa about the dreams with Cas. But they’re just dreams and it’s never even been real sex. He pictures her: the scent of her hair, soft body, pretty smile spreading across her face. He should tell her, he thinks - knows that anything that makes him feel this guilty can’t be right. But he doesn’t say anything. “Yeah,” he answers, “it’s flannel. And denim.” Lisa laughs and Dean can’t help his answering grin. “But you play your cards right and I could be wearing nothing.”
“Oh, I like the thought of that,” Lisa breathes. “And then could I get you all spread out on my bed? Me on top of you, holding your arms down, pushing slow until I feel you inside me.”
Dean groans, shoving a hand in his boxers to wrap around his cock. “Lisa,” he groans. “Jesus, Lisa, yes.”
They find a comfortable rhythm at Bobby’s, even if it is less than exciting. Cas tells Sam and Bobby that he’s slowly becoming human, probably permanently; Bobby just grunts and accepts it. Sam admits he’d suspected something like that. He and Cas have a long discussion about souls and grace and the connection between mind and body, and Dean doesn’t care about any of it, really, especially not theory and hypotheticals.
They take Cas shopping and buy him a couple of pairs of jeans and two packs of plain white t-shirts. Sam and Dean don’t have much of a wardrobe between them, but they both donate a shirt or two they don’t want to Cas and even if he’s not going to be the most well-dressed guy around at least he doesn’t have to walk around in a fucking suit.
A ghost pops up a few towns over and they take care of that. Then a wendigo, then a nest of vampires. Cas doesn’t get in the way; he’s actually an asset, and he’s as tough a bastard human as he ever was when he was angelic. Just minus the smitey super powers. Dean doesn’t ask about his wings - even though, Christ, he still thinks about them sometimes, the thick black feathers as dark and rich as twilight - but he catches Cas rotating his shoulders, or rubbing at his back. It’s just another thing to add to all that they’ve lost.
Even if they’re making no progress, Dean doesn’t feel like he’s stuck. They’re hunting, they’re doing something. It’s becoming familiar, and Bobby and Cas have formed a weird grumpy old man group, sharing their combined knowledge and poring over some of the old junk Bobby’s collected over the years. So no one’s really expecting it when the first labor falls quite literally into their laps.
Cas folds his arms over his chest and tilts his head. “Dean,” he says, frowning. His legs spread wider and he sinks down further on the couch. Even in a pose of such ease, though, Cas still manages to look stiff. “That behavior’s incredibly inappropriate for a hospital.”
Dean grins, watching the two doctors on the screen make-out in the room of a coma patient. “It’s her last night there, dude. Before she goes to... Ecuador or wherever.”
“So they are celebrating.” Cas raises a dubious eyebrow as they leave the patient’s room and head to the male doctor’s office. The door shuts and the camera pans to the floor, where clothes are hastily being thrown. “With fornication.”
Dean’s grin widens. “Hell of a way to celebrate, I say. Look at her. Doctor’s smoking.”
The door bursts open, though, and Doctor Sexy stands there, looking aghast. The other doctors cover themselves up, babbling as they try to explain. Dean scoots a little closer, his attention sharpening.
Cas makes a noise. Dean doesn’t know what it means, but he can hear the condescension. “I don’t think she’s the one you are interested in.”
Dean scowls. He gets it enough from Sam, damn it, he doesn’t need Cas to start, too. He does not, he will vehemently argue, have a crush on Doctor Sexy. Not even a little. “Shut up, Cas.”
“I am not judging you,” Cas says, shrugging. “The actors are all incredibly good-looking - I suspect as a ploy to increase viewership.” He studies the screen for a long moment, his mouth pursed thoughtfully. “You are right, though. Dr. Cavanaugh is... exceptionally pretty.”
He shifts then, in what Dean thinks, doing practically a double-take, might actually be interest. “Cas,” he says, because if the dude’s figured out what his dick is for this might be actual cause for celebration, “are you saying you think this chick’s hot?”
“I could always see beauty in the human form,” Cas allows, “even as an angel. It is just... Now my body responds to that in ways it did not do previously. With my brothers, I was always connected. It was not intimate in the way sex is because it was not physical, but it’s comparable.” When he continues, his voice is quiet. “I miss that. Angels are not meant to be individual creatures and while I don’t regret breaking away I do miss the communion. I have... wondered.” He looks down, and Dean sees color bloom in his cheeks. It’s a far cry from that brothel in Maine.
“Um.” Dean clears his throat. “You could... I mean, the next time we’re out at a bar or something. If you see somebody you like.”
Cas stares and Dean feels drawn, compelled to meet his eyes. “Maybe,” Cas says, and Dean wonders who he’d go for, if Cas has a type. Maybe the dreams mean more than Dean thought they did. Maybe Cas wants a partner because he already knows pleasure alone, his hand wrapped around his dick, his head thrown back, sweat pooling at his clavicle as he jerks himself to completion. Dean feels a little light-headed suddenly and have Cas’s eyes always been that dark, that piercing blue? Cas swallows and Dean reflexively mirrors the action. “But for now I think I’ll keep my interest purely academic.”
The rest of the episode is much more tense, and neither tries to start another conversation. As the credits roll Dean debates staying to watch the next episode in the marathon. He’s pulled away, however, by Bobby.
“Hey,” Bobby says gruffly, poking his head into the living room. “We found something. Might have to do with Feathers and his grace.” Dean and Cas exchange a quick look and then follow Bobby out into the yard. Sam’s squatting down, cooing baby talk to a fluffball standing in front of him. “It’s a cat.”
Dean grunts. “Thanks for the info, Bobby,” he says. He points to the kitten and looks at Cas. “You getting anything from it? We’re not going to have to slay it are we?”
“I don’t know,” Cas says. “I can’t sense anything.” Sam gives him a look and then stands and backs away.
Cas walks up to the kitten and then bends down, sitting on his heels with his weight on the balls of his feet. “Are you the Nemean lion?” he asks, the expression on his face resolute and completely devoid of humor. Dean tries not to comment on how ridiculous talking to a cat is. The kitten meows sweetly, toddling up to Cas and rubbing its big head against one of his hands. Cas scratches the back of its neck and the kitten starts wriggling, moving closer to Cas until it bumps into his knee. He scratches harder, moving down its back. The kitten stands to its back legs and paws at him. “Oh.”
“What is it?” Dean asks, squatting down beside him. The kitten looks at him and hisses.
Cas unclips the kitten's collar. The little monster scampers away and Cas stands up, examining the collar's small silver bell.
Dean laughs. “You know what they say,” he jokes, listening to the bell's tinkle. “Every time a bell rings...”
The bell disintegrates in Cas's hand, leaving behind a small white feather. He glares at Dean. “I already have my wings,” he says. He opens his mouth wide and the feather floats up in a golden cloud. His lips glow in the haze, and the feather disappears on the tip of his tongue.
Sam scoops the kitten up, rubbing its ears. Bobby scowls. “I’m not letting you keep it,” he says, sending Sam a sharp glare. The kitten starts purring, almost in response, and Sam’s entire face lights up.
They wind up naming him Hercules.
The next labor turns out to be as easy as the first. After the success of the Nemean kitten - as Sam calls him - they decide to start hunting with more fervor. They’re investigating a haunting in Colorado when they find the analogue to the Lernean hydra.
Dean’s watching the bones burn with a satisfied look when Sam bumps his shoulder. “Hey,” he says, pointing. “Look over there.”
“What?” Dean follows the direction of Sam’s arm to see a huge, gnarled tree. It’s thick, the bark blackened and knobby. It has no leaves, and nine heavy boughs curling up towards the sky. They start low on the trunk, making the tree look like a short, stubby man with nine arms raised towards the sky. Or maybe a tree-octopus, Dean thinks. “Oh. That.”
“There are nine,” Cas says intently, walking over to Sam’s side. He studies the tree for a long moment, frowning as his eyes trace it from trunk to tip. “We’ll need an axe.”
The Impala is nothing if not prepared, and among the cache of weapons and over necessities Dean keeps in the trunk is a large axe. Cas grips the wooden handle tight, looking at the tree as though it has personally wronged him. Sam clears his throat. “You, uh. Want some help, man?”
“I don’t think so,” Cas says, and of course, he’s just going to chop down an entire fucking tree by himself. Dean rolls his eyes, and Cas’s gaze snaps to him. “Besides,” he says, tone clipped, “this is the only axe you have.”
Sam and Dean watch him as walks over, the axe slung over his shoulder. Dean pokes Sam. “Hey, didn’t the hydra’s heads grow back? You think this tree’s going to regrow whatever Cas chops off?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, shrugging. “Only one of the heads was immortal. Maybe all Cas has to do is chop off the right bough.”
Dean turns out to be right. Cas chops down the bough closest to him; as soon as it falls the entire tree starts shaking, a weird, gooey looking mold growing over the stump. It starts bubbling up into two bulbous growths, and then two branches burst out, covered in thick, amber sap. They grow quickly, and in a few seconds they’re as thick as their parent bough had been.
Dean and Sam exchange worried looks, and Cas reassess the tree, standing beside it, his axe on the ground, sap in his hair. He changes tactics and starts chopping the three at the base.
It takes longer, and even though Dean and Sam offer to do something, Cas still refuses their help. Sam reminds him that even Hercules had someone to assist him with the hydra, but Cas seems hellbent on doing it on his own. Once the trunk is cut halfway through, Cas throws the axe to the ground. He squares his shoulders and steps up to the tree. Dean’s not sure what he expected to happen, but it sure as fuck wasn’t for Cas to place both palms against the tree and start pushing.
“Cas,” he barks, “what the hell are you doing? You can’t push over a goddamn tree.”
“A human can’t,” Cas answers back. He sounds strained, and Dean stares, the effort it’s taking him to push obviously taxing. “But I am not fully human yet.” He grunts and gives one last shove, putting his shoulder against the tree and throwing his whole body into it. The tree moves, finally. Cas keeps pushing and Dean hears the sound of wood breaking as the heavy trunk separates. And then, with a great crash, the tree falls, smashing the fence surrounding the graveyard they’re in.
“Holy shit,” Sam says, taken aback. He blinks a couple of times. “Cas just pushed down a tree.”
“Yep.” Dean huffs. He starts walking over to Cas. “He just pushed down a tree.”
There’s sap and dirt all over Cas, but he’s not even breathing hard from the exertion. He just frowns, looking at the mess on his t-shirt. He wipes his hands on his jeans.
“You did it,” Dean says, clapping him on the back. “Damn, Cas, you actually did it.”
“Yes,” Cas replies succinctly. He bends over the stump; there’s new growth there already. A single, green leaf. Cas plucks it from the stump and starts rubbing it between his fingers. The skin peels away, until there’s another glowing feather in Castiel’s hand.
Dean grins, throwing one arm around Cas and one around Sam. “All right,” he says, “eat up. And then let’s get the hell out of here before someone notices we ruined their fence.”
Bobby finds their next hunt through an old friend of his. “There's been a string of deaths over in a small town in Minnesota,” he says. “They've all been trampled.”
“Trampled?” Dean says. “By what?”
Bobby pulls up the article his buddy had sent him and beckons Dean over the the computer. “By deer from the look of it,” he says, tapping the screen with a knuckle. “You boys want to head over and check it out?”
“Yes,” Cas says quickly, before either Dean or Sam could answer. He leans in close to the computer screen, looking over Bobby's shoulder. He's so close his chin is nearly touching Bobby, and gets shoved unceremoniously away.
“Thought Dean talked to you about personal space,” Bobby grunts.
“I apologize,” Cas says absently, still studying the computer. It's the first lead they've had in a week. “I think we should leave as soon as possible.”
“Fine with me,” Sam says. He looks at Dean and shrugs. “What about you?”
“I'm up for it,” Dean says. “Not like we have anything else to go on.”
They eat quickly and then leave. The town they're headed to has a population of about five thousand people, and hosts a small blueberry festival every year. The hunter that sent the info their way isn't sure what is causing the deaths, but he's certain it isn't average deer. He'd go himself, he'd told Bobby, but he's out in Arizona and he knows Bobby's been on the look-out for any hunts reasonably nearby.
“I bet this town has good pie,” Dean says as they pull into a little hotel. He's hoping that they can wrap things up quick, but it never hurts to have a base of operations and a few beds in case they need them.
“Why would this town's pie be better than any other?” Cas asks. They climb out of the car and grab their bags.
“They have a blueberry festival, Cas,” Dean explains. “So they've had a lot of practice.”
They check into the hotel; just one room, to save money. Dean loses paper-rock-scissors and winds up with the floor.
“Okay,” Sam says, pulling out his laptop and shifting into business mode. “The victims have all been men. Different races, but all around the same age - between twenty-three and thirty-two. And all single.”
“So what are you thinking?” Dean asks.
Sam types something, his fingers moving rapidly over the keys. “It looks... pretty straight-forward, actually,” he says. He waves Dean and Cas over. “Look. Deer woman. Said to have the body of a woman, but with hooves instead of feet. Lures men off and tramples them.” Sam grins. “Perfect fit.”
“Great,” Dean says. “You think we should talk to the victims' families? Or you want to go try to find her and gank her?”
“We shouldn't intrude on the families' grief if we don't have to,” Cas says. “I believe you are correct and that this is the work of Deer Woman; it says they were all found near the same jogging trail, so I think we should start there.”
“Awesome. It tell us how to kill her?” Dean asks, looking over Sam's shoulder at the screen.
Sam nods. “Yeah.”
“Then let's go.”
Cas still can't sense his grace, but when they get to the area of forest they want a few miles outside town, he says something is pulling him. “She's nearby,” he says. “And I think she has my grace.”
There's a rustle close by, barely audible, and Dean just writes it off as ambient forest noise. But Cas perks up immediately, stopping dead and listening carefully. “Cas, what are you - “
But before Dean can even finish his sentence Cas is bolting off, through thick clumps of trees.
“Damn it,” Dean curses. “Come on, Sam, we have to follow him.” The Winchesters run after him, following the sound of his boots and the trail he leaves in his wake. Dean's starting to get winded when finally they catch sight of Cas. He's standing in front of a young woman, her back against the trunk of a tree. She has dark skin and long hair in a glossy black curtain that falls over her shoulders. Her eyes are brown, but something about them isn't right, doesn't look quite human. She looks over and sees Dean and Sam and cries out, calling them to help her, to stop Cas before he hurts her.
Dean frowns, about to ask Cas what he's doing to the poor girl, when Cas's voice stops him, sharp as a snapped twig under his boot.
“Dean. Sam,” Cas says. “Look at her feet.”
They both look down at the same time, and that breaks whatever whammy she’d put on them. The skirt of her dress is long, an orange and tan leafy print, but it doesn’t come quite to the ground. Where her shoes or feet should be, there are hooves. “Huh,” Dean says. “Guess you found her.”
“Wait!” she says quickly, holding out a hand. “You’re... you’re hunters, aren’t you?”
Dean and Sam have closed in, and they stand next to Cas, surrounding her with her back against the tree. They nod, and she looks between all three, the deep, brown deers’ eyes wet with fear.
“I didn’t mean to hurt those men,” she says. “But one was hunting me, and the others were dicks. It’s normally easy for me to...” She looks away guiltily. “For me to lure men, but I don’t... I don’t want to kill them!” She wraps her arms around herself. “I don’t like killing anything; but I had to defend myself. Normally it’s easy for me, like I said, the men are easily entranced. But recently?” She puts a hand up to her neck, where a thin silver chain hangs down. “Something changed. It’s been hard to keep men away.” She grabs the necklace in her fist and looks up at the Winchesters fiercely. “You can’t blame me for that. You can’t blame me for keeping those bastards away from me.”
Dean’s about to tell her to shove it, that even though he understands why she did it, she still killed those men, but Cas puts an arm on his shoulder. “Dean,” he says quietly. “The golden hind was sacred to Artemis. It had to be captured alive.”
“We don’t condone what you did,” Sam said, “but.” He looks at the young woman, his eyes sympathetic. “We can understand.”
“But you should not do it again,” Cas says. “Or you’ll attract more attention to yourself.”
The girl smiles at him, her mouth quirked up in a gentle curve. “I have something that belongs to you, don’t I?” She pulls her necklace out from where it hangs between her breasts. It’s a silver antler, delicately wrought, with wire wrapped around two points to hang it from the chain. She unclips the chain and lets it pool in her palm, then hands it out to Cas. “Here,” she says. “I know you need it.” But when Cas reaches to grab it she pulls her hand away. “There’s a cost, though.”
Dean growls. “I think letting you get away with murder is enough, don’t you?”
She ignores him. Cas looks hesitant, but he licks his lips and asks “What is the cost?”
Her smile is bright and her eyes burn into Cas. “Come. Dance with me.”
She bolts off then, so suddenly that Dean and Sam realize she probably could have gotten away from them at any time. Her body shifts as she runs, shrinking down, her arms touching the ground and thickening into legs. They can hardly see her after a moment, she runs so fast.
Cas looks at Dean. “Excuse me,” he says, and then he runs off after her, nearly as quick as she had been.
“What the fuck,” Dean says, mostly to himself. He looks at Sam. “You think he’ll come back, or... ?”
Sam shrugs. “We should probably go after him.”
“Yeah.” Dean nods. “Yeah, let’s go.”
It takes them at least fifteen minutes to find him, and Dean’s getting really irritable from an afternoon spent tromping around the woods. “Cas,” he calls. “Cas, where the hell are you?”
“Don’t worry,” Sam says. “He knows where the hotel is. If we can’t find him, we can just go back and wait for him there. He’ll come back.”
“Sure,” Dean says. He takes particular pleasure in crushing a small fern under his boot. “If he’s not dead.”
Sam huffs. “She wasn’t going to kill him, Dean. She just wanted to dance.”
“Right. Because that’s normal.”
“God, Dean, you really worry too much. Cas can take care of himself.”
“Hey,” Dean says, poking his brother hard in the chest, “I have reason to worry. And I’m not saying he can’t take care of himself, I’m just saying that when he’s only at half-mast, nearly out of mojo and practically human, letting him run off with something that’s already killed four guys is not really a great fucking idea.”
Sam just rolls his eyes and ignores his brother. “Cas,” he calls, his hand cupped at his mouth like the horn of a loudspeaker. “Castiel!”
“Over here, Sam,” a voice answers back. Sam and Dean exchange glances and start jogging towards the voice.
They stumble into a clearing, thick with grass and lush, verdant plants. As soon as they break out of the trees, though, a deer - the deer, Dean thinks - who’d been standing beside Cas bolts off. Cas watches it go, looking remarkably placid for someone who’d gotten a piece of his grace back and danced with a supernatural creature.
He was also naked. Dean can’t really wrap his mind around that, because there’s Cas, standing in the middle of a forest. Naked.
“Dude, where are your clothes?” Sam asks.
Cas bends down and picks up the pile folded at his feet. “I’ll get dressed,” he says. “And then perhaps we can eat?”
“Sure,” Dean says, turning around to give Cas some privacy. Sam gives him a look Dean can’t quite read, and he really doesn’t feel like trying to decipher it. “Whatever you want, man. Just put on your fucking clothes.”
The third labor ended up being pretty literal - Hercules captured a deer, Cas did some kind of naked samba with a shapeshifting deer lady - but the fourth was analogous in name only.
“The Boar,” Dean says, reading the name of the bar they’re standing in front of. “Think it means anything?”
Cas is staring at the sign prohibiting anyone under twenty-one from entering the premises. “I don’t think it would behoove us to write this off as coincidence.”
They hadn’t even been looking for the next labor; it had just turned up while they were on another hunt. Cas was right, though; The Boar fit too well for it to be anything other than significant. And it has alcohol, which Dean doesn’t see as anything but a plus.
“Great,” he says, rubbing his hands together. He grins, first at Sam, then at Cas. “Let’s go get us some grace.”
They step into the bar. It’s old but obviously well-cared for, the kind of place with regulars and a familiar atmosphere. There are booths on the walls, and a few round, wooden tables littering the floor. There’s a dartboard, and two pool tables in the back. A few patrons are milling about, but it’s not busy yet, still a little too early to draw a big crowd.
Dean sits down at the bar and waves the bartender over. He’s an older man, wearing a green cap and a flannel shirt. His face is scarred and the lower half is covered by a matted gray beard. A framed newspaper article on the wall behind him names him Kai Maddox, the proprietor. He’s exactly the kind of man Dean would expect to run a bar like this one, and he grins despite himself. “Hey,” he says. “you got any food?”
The man grunts and points to an old menu stuck to the wall behind the bar. “Yeah. That.”
Dean reads over what they’ve got. “You guys want anything?” he asks Sam and Cas; they’re sitting on either side of him at the bar.
Sam shakes his head but Cas looks at the menu with interest. “Fried mushrooms,” he says. “The menu says they are famous.”
Dean rolls his eyes but asks for an order of the mushrooms for Cas and some of the gravy fries for himself. They all ask for beer.
“This is... odd,” Cas says, putting his palms against the bar. He stares at the space between his fingers, pressing down hard.
“Uh. What’s odd?”
“My grace,” Cas explains. “I can... sense it. But not in any specific location. It’s as though I’m in it; like it’s around me.” He looks around the bar, examining the ceiling, then the floor. Then he looks back at Dean. He taps on the bar. “I think the bar is my grace.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asks. He looks around the bar, too, but doesn’t seem to notice the presence of something supernatural like Cas does.
“Yeah,” Dean repeats around a mouthful of fry. A few drops of gravy dribble onto his chin. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“My grace has seeped in here,” Cas says. “But it won’t be difficult to remove. I think if I sit here, at the bar, the grace will migrate back into me. Or at least coalesce into a manageable form.”
“So we wait,” Dean says. He sucks gravy from his finger, then balls up his napkin and drops it in his empty basket. Cas still has some mushrooms left; he can probably grab one or two of those.
Cas nods. “We sit here and be patient.”
“So we just have to... sit here,” Sam repeats, looking at Cas, distinctly unimpressed.
Cas just nods again. “Yes,” he says. “Since my grace has seeped into this place, destroying it would only destroy my grace or disperse it further.”
Sam's eyebrows raise. “I, uh. Wasn't really suggesting destruction as a second option, Cas.”
“Oh.” Castiel frowns. “Then yes, Sam. Our only choice is to sit here.”
Sam puts his chin in his hand, looking like somebody pissed in his beer. “Great,” he says. “A real evening to remember.”
Despite Sam’s complaints, it really isn’t bad. They all drink enough to loosen up, and then Cas nearly doubles that. More people come in as the evening wears on, and the quiet grows into an amiable din. Sam starts chatting with some motorcycle chick who’d come in with two of her friends, and they have a friendly game of pool while Dean and Cas stay at the bar. They’d decided against hustling, just in case; they couldn’t afford to make someone angry and get kicked out before Cas had a chance to get his grace back.
“Hey,” Sam says in a whisper, leaning in close to Dean. “I’m going to... go. Paula and her friends invited me out with them and I think I’m going to accept the invitation. Meet you back at the hotel, later?”
“All right Sammy,” Dean says, giving his brother a lascivious grin and holding out his hand for a celebratory five. Reluctantly, Sam gives it. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t wait up.”
“Bye, Dean,” Sam says, his eyes narrowed. Dean just laughs.
Cas, who hasn’t said anything in at least five or ten minutes, suddenly taps him on the shoulder. “Dean,” he says, “look.” His eyes are wild and there’s a flush riding high in his cheeks. “These stools spin.” He pushes himself off the bar, hard, spinning around in a jerky circle. Then he promptly loses his balance and topples to the floor.
“Cas! Shit,” Dean says, getting up and wrapping an arm around Cas’s shoulders. “You okay, man?”
“Fine,” Cas mumbles. He grabs Dean’s shirt and gets carefully to his feet. Once upright, he starts, his eyes going wide and his head weaving like the room’s started spinning. “I think I’m no longer ambulatory.”
“Christ, Cas,” Dean says, putting him back on his seat, “how much did you drink?”
Apparently his inhuman ability to hold his liquor hadn’t followed him into being human, and he’d gotten himself soundly drunk.
“Less than a liquor store this time,” he rumbles, laying his head on the bar. He closes his eyes and rubs the bar in big circles with the flats of his hands. “I think I’m intoxicated.”
“No shit, sherlock,” Dean says.
Cas just sighs. “I didn’t feel anything, so I just kept drinking. I’m coming to believe this might have been a mistake.”
“It’s ‘cause you were doing shots, too, dumbass. Takes a second, but then it hits you all at once.”
“Oh. I see.” He sits up again and looks up at one of the bronze lamps hanging on a thick chain from the ceiling. “I think I should do more shots.”
Dean snorts. “Hell no,” he says. “You’re getting cut off. Water you can have - you’re going to have - but no more alcohol for you.”
“Where’s Sam?” Cas asks, his mouth turned down and his bottom lip stuck out in something Dean would almost categorize as a pout. “He would be sympathetic.”
“He left,” Dean says. He takes a sip of his beer, feeling smug as Cas glares. “Met some woman and went off with her and some of her friends just a minute ago.” He leans in conspiratorially and waggles his eyebrows in a manner that he thinks even Cas will pick up on as suggestive. “Said not to wait up.”
“Ahh,” Cas says, nodding. He looks a little hazy, his eyes half-lidded. “He’s going to sex... with her. That’s good. I hope it’s enjoyable for him.”
Dean laughs, because Cas is even more awkward drunk than he is when he’s sober. “I’m sure it will be, buddy.”
“Sex,” Cas says after a couple of seconds, apparently still thinking about Sam getting lucky. He looks around the bar; there are a lot of people now, and his eyes linger over one or two as he surveys the room. “That would be... interesting.”
Dean’s taken aback, his beer halfway to his mouth. He’s vividly reminded of the conversation they had over an episode of Doctor Sexy; how Cas had been curious, how he’d missed the sense of connection with his brothers, how he’d wanted to connect with someone now that he was becoming human. Connect intimately. Physically. Dean’s throat closes up and he thinks that even though it’s just sex, Cas going home with someone at a bar is a hell of a lot different than just paying somebody to give him a nice time.
“Are you saying you want to pick somebody up? You see somebody here you want to fuck?”
“Maybe,” Cas says. “I don’t know.” He gestures to a woman sitting in the back of the bar. She’s pretty, her hair braided into a long, thick tail that hangs down her back. “Do you see that woman? She has a cat named Mavis.” He smacks his lips together. “And she has a very bright soul.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty, I guess,” Dean allows.
“Yes,” Cas replies, sounding dreamy. His fingers drum a rhythm on his knee, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed. “Pretty.”
“You like brunettes, then?” Dean’s not sure why it’s important to get an accurate picture of Castiel’s tastes, but it seems suddenly vital.
Cas shrugs. “Not preferentially,” he says. “I like them as much as I like hair of any color.”
“Well, is there anything you are preferential about?”
Cas giggles, then his hand shoots to his mouth and his eyes go wide, like he can’t quite believe that sound came out of him. “Ignore that,” he says. He looks at the ceiling and raises one arm up. He spreads his fingers out, then curls all but his index finger to a fist. “Eyes that are nice.” Another finger goes up. “Brains.” He pops his ring finger up, but the pinkie comes with it. “Shapely breasts. Also big hands.” He sticks his thumb out. It wiggles a little and Castiel smiles. “Determination or. Attitude. I think the word you would use is badass.”
His arm falls and he sits up, looking at Dean intently, like he’s imparting some closely guarded secret. “And there is... One thing,” he says. He lowers his voice down to a whisper. “That I find arousing. More than I should.” He shakes his head. “You’ll be angry with me.”
Dean shifts closer. “No, dude, I won’t. Tell me.”
“Okay.” Cas claps a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.
Dean frowns at him. “Shoulders?” he asks. It’s not the weirdest fetish he’s ever heard of, but personally he doesn’t really get the appeal. “You like shoulders?”
“Not the shoulder,” Castiel says. He presses his lips together hard. “What I left there.” He lifts up Dean’s shirtsleeve and his fingertips touch the handprint. It makes Dean tingle, all over his body, and from the way Cas’s eyes go heavy it’s doing something for him, too.
“What the fuck,” Dean says, jerking away. “You can’t just... Goddamnit, Cas, you can’t just say shit like that.”
“I did that,” Cas says, still staring at Dean’s shoulder and apparently perfect content to ignore all Dean’s admonishments. “I raised you up. I saved you. I remade you.” Cas’s voice has gone deep, dark, and a little smitey, and Dean wonders what he’s thinking. “I think I may be a possessive partner.”
And just like that he snaps out of it. He turns back to the bar, resting his arms on the flat, wooden top. Dean’s left feeling a little shell-shocked and wondering if it’s only the handprint Cas finds so arousing, or maybe the person it’s on, too.
“I don’t think I’ll go talk to that woman,” Cas says. “I’m feeling drowsy. Oh!” He looks up at Dean, a pleased expression on his face. “And we can go.” He leans down until the tip of his nose touches the bar. “All my grace has returned to me now.”
“Great.” Dean stands up, then helps Castiel off his barstool. “We’re going back to the hotel to wait for Sam, okay? You’re going to have the mother of all hangovers in the morning.”
Cas just hums and follows him to the Impala.
~~~
part 5
Word Count: ~7100
Warnings: misuse of Greek mythology
ETA: I apparently put the original draft version up instead of the edited one, so... u.u; I am going to fix that now.
masterpost | part 1 | part 2 | part 3
THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY
part 4
“So you can’t sense...” Sam shakes his head, making an expansive gesture with his hands. “Anything?”
“Nothing,” Cas replies. He glances over to Dean, though, and licks his lips. “Except for the pieces of my grace that remain in you and in Dean. I think that... until these labors are completed, the other pieces of grace will be much harder to find.”
Dean snorts. “And it’s not like those are going to be a walk in the park, either.” Certainly not if what Demeter had said was any indication; she might be willing to give Cas some help, but apparently she still hadn't entirely forgiven Dean. And instead of being led right to where they needed to go, they just had to search. And hope.
“We just hunt as usual, then,” Sam says.
“And what?” Dean snaps. “Just keep our fingers crossed that we'll happen across the grace?”
“What else can we do?” Cas asks, his voice edged with hardness. He crosses his arms over his chest, the blades of his shoulders sharp under the thin cotton of his t-shirt. Dean is forcibly reminded that as impatient as he and Sam might be, as frustrated, their feelings pale in comparison to Cas's. They only feel it on his behalf; he has to endure the pain of being graceless, of becoming more and more human. Dean shifts, his lips pursed, feeling contrite. “If that is the only way to find my grace, Dean, then I fail to see what other choice we have.”
No one says anything for a long moment, Dean conspicuously avoiding Cas's eye. Sam stands up and clears his throat. They both look over to him. “Why don't we go to Bobby's?” he suggests. “It'll be a place to regroup, try to come up with something. Maybe he'll know of something that can help.”
It's not a good plan, Dean thinks, not even by their standards, but at least it's a plan.
“You're telling me you met Demeter. The Greek goddess. Demeter.” Bobby rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his beer; none of them are stupid enough to interrupt him. “What the hell was she doing in the middle of nowhere? What the hell was she doing here? Kind of thought the Greeks would be, you know. Somewhere in Greece.”
“With so few devotees,” Cas explains, “it's likely her power is greatly diminished.” He's had to start eating regularly, too, and he spoons through his soup absently. “This is probably one of her...” He frowns and his brows furrow. “I guess you'd call it a vacation home.”
“Sure,” Bobby says, nodding. “Ain't the weirdest thing I've ever heard you idjits come back with by a long shot.” He stands up to take his bowl to the sink. Cas lifts his up towards Bobby to take, as well; the man obviously isn’t happy about it, but he snatches the bowl and stacks it on top of his own. “So what are you going to do now?” he asks, running water to wash the soup dregs away. “If she put a stopper in the grace detector, it sounds like you’re shit out of luck.”
No one says anything; Bobby just continues cleaning up the kitchen after supper.
Dean sighs. “You, uh.” He looks away for a moment, scratching the back of his head. “You mind if we crash here awhile, Bobby? Just until we come up with. With something.”
“Demeter indicated that since she assigned me the labors, if I hunted with the Winchesters they would be made apparent to me.” He looks over at Sam thoughtfully. “As though... The grace is only in the spirit of what we are doing. Doing it is what makes it manifest.”
Sam rubs at his chin thoughtfully. “You know, that does make sense.”
“Right, sure,” Dean says standing. He places his hands down flat on the table. Cas and Sam are welcome to discuss any weird metaphysical shit they want to, but he’s going to make damn sure they do it when he’s out of the room. “So!” he says loudly. “Bobby. Can we stay?”
“Of course you can, boy,” Bobby grunts. “Just don’t bother me and clean up after yourselves.” He stalks out of the room, a chorus of ‘thanks, Bobby’ following him out the door.
“You two can keep using your combined nerd power to figure this out, but I...” He yanks open the fridge and grabs another beer. He lifts it up and grins. “Have a date.”
“So, uh. Ben get those postcards I been sending him?”
Lisa laughs, warm and full. “He has them pinned up on a corkboard. I think he’s a little jealous - seeing all the places you’ve gotten to travel.”
“Oh believe me,” Dean snorts, “you’ve seen one rundown motel at the ass-end of nowhere you’ve seen them all.”
“You’ve been sending an awful lot lately. And calling a lot less.”
Something in Dean’s gut twists with guilt. “Yeah,” he replies, mouth dry. “I’m sorry, Lisa, we’ve been... busy and - “
“Hey, I don’t need excuses, Dean,” she says, and his gut twists again. “You said you had to go and I didn’t fight it; I wasn’t expecting to see you again for a long time, anyway.”
“Don’t.” He clears his throat. “Don’t say that, Lisa. I’ll be back. I promised.”
Lisa laughs. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Dean; you’ll just feel bad when you break them.”
The silence then lingers, and Dean isn’t quite sure what to say. He asks how she and Ben have been doing, how things are going with them, Ben’s school and Lisa’s work. It’s nice, if not entirely comfortable, and Dean feels a heavy pang. He misses them. He misses Lisa and Ben like hell and when this is all over...
When this is all over he’ll have a newly-human Cas and a brother back from hell. He’ll have to help them get things settled, then he’ll go back to the Braedens. Sam hasn’t said much about it and whatever whammy Cas put on him keeps the memories at bay, but Dean knows he hasn’t been sleeping well. Dean knows, intimately, what it’s like to see hell every time you close your eyes. He knows what it’s like to have it haunt your dreams. So he can’t leave Sam. He can’t. And when he lets himself want it, he wants to stay with Cas, too.
There’s a part of him that knows Lisa is right, that knows that as soon Sam showed up his life with Lisa and Ben was over. He wants to be part of their family. He even wants, with a deep, soul-heavy want, to be a father - to be Ben’s father. But he can’t have both, can he?
“I miss you,” he tells Lisa, his voice husky.
Lisa makes a pleased noise. “I miss you, too,” she says, her voice pitched low and seductive. “So. What are you wearing?” She hums, putting on a show of desire. “I bet it’s flannel.”
Dean laughs and in anticipation, undoes the button of his jeans. He thinks of telling Lisa about the dreams with Cas. But they’re just dreams and it’s never even been real sex. He pictures her: the scent of her hair, soft body, pretty smile spreading across her face. He should tell her, he thinks - knows that anything that makes him feel this guilty can’t be right. But he doesn’t say anything. “Yeah,” he answers, “it’s flannel. And denim.” Lisa laughs and Dean can’t help his answering grin. “But you play your cards right and I could be wearing nothing.”
“Oh, I like the thought of that,” Lisa breathes. “And then could I get you all spread out on my bed? Me on top of you, holding your arms down, pushing slow until I feel you inside me.”
Dean groans, shoving a hand in his boxers to wrap around his cock. “Lisa,” he groans. “Jesus, Lisa, yes.”
They find a comfortable rhythm at Bobby’s, even if it is less than exciting. Cas tells Sam and Bobby that he’s slowly becoming human, probably permanently; Bobby just grunts and accepts it. Sam admits he’d suspected something like that. He and Cas have a long discussion about souls and grace and the connection between mind and body, and Dean doesn’t care about any of it, really, especially not theory and hypotheticals.
They take Cas shopping and buy him a couple of pairs of jeans and two packs of plain white t-shirts. Sam and Dean don’t have much of a wardrobe between them, but they both donate a shirt or two they don’t want to Cas and even if he’s not going to be the most well-dressed guy around at least he doesn’t have to walk around in a fucking suit.
A ghost pops up a few towns over and they take care of that. Then a wendigo, then a nest of vampires. Cas doesn’t get in the way; he’s actually an asset, and he’s as tough a bastard human as he ever was when he was angelic. Just minus the smitey super powers. Dean doesn’t ask about his wings - even though, Christ, he still thinks about them sometimes, the thick black feathers as dark and rich as twilight - but he catches Cas rotating his shoulders, or rubbing at his back. It’s just another thing to add to all that they’ve lost.
Even if they’re making no progress, Dean doesn’t feel like he’s stuck. They’re hunting, they’re doing something. It’s becoming familiar, and Bobby and Cas have formed a weird grumpy old man group, sharing their combined knowledge and poring over some of the old junk Bobby’s collected over the years. So no one’s really expecting it when the first labor falls quite literally into their laps.
Cas folds his arms over his chest and tilts his head. “Dean,” he says, frowning. His legs spread wider and he sinks down further on the couch. Even in a pose of such ease, though, Cas still manages to look stiff. “That behavior’s incredibly inappropriate for a hospital.”
Dean grins, watching the two doctors on the screen make-out in the room of a coma patient. “It’s her last night there, dude. Before she goes to... Ecuador or wherever.”
“So they are celebrating.” Cas raises a dubious eyebrow as they leave the patient’s room and head to the male doctor’s office. The door shuts and the camera pans to the floor, where clothes are hastily being thrown. “With fornication.”
Dean’s grin widens. “Hell of a way to celebrate, I say. Look at her. Doctor’s smoking.”
The door bursts open, though, and Doctor Sexy stands there, looking aghast. The other doctors cover themselves up, babbling as they try to explain. Dean scoots a little closer, his attention sharpening.
Cas makes a noise. Dean doesn’t know what it means, but he can hear the condescension. “I don’t think she’s the one you are interested in.”
Dean scowls. He gets it enough from Sam, damn it, he doesn’t need Cas to start, too. He does not, he will vehemently argue, have a crush on Doctor Sexy. Not even a little. “Shut up, Cas.”
“I am not judging you,” Cas says, shrugging. “The actors are all incredibly good-looking - I suspect as a ploy to increase viewership.” He studies the screen for a long moment, his mouth pursed thoughtfully. “You are right, though. Dr. Cavanaugh is... exceptionally pretty.”
He shifts then, in what Dean thinks, doing practically a double-take, might actually be interest. “Cas,” he says, because if the dude’s figured out what his dick is for this might be actual cause for celebration, “are you saying you think this chick’s hot?”
“I could always see beauty in the human form,” Cas allows, “even as an angel. It is just... Now my body responds to that in ways it did not do previously. With my brothers, I was always connected. It was not intimate in the way sex is because it was not physical, but it’s comparable.” When he continues, his voice is quiet. “I miss that. Angels are not meant to be individual creatures and while I don’t regret breaking away I do miss the communion. I have... wondered.” He looks down, and Dean sees color bloom in his cheeks. It’s a far cry from that brothel in Maine.
“Um.” Dean clears his throat. “You could... I mean, the next time we’re out at a bar or something. If you see somebody you like.”
Cas stares and Dean feels drawn, compelled to meet his eyes. “Maybe,” Cas says, and Dean wonders who he’d go for, if Cas has a type. Maybe the dreams mean more than Dean thought they did. Maybe Cas wants a partner because he already knows pleasure alone, his hand wrapped around his dick, his head thrown back, sweat pooling at his clavicle as he jerks himself to completion. Dean feels a little light-headed suddenly and have Cas’s eyes always been that dark, that piercing blue? Cas swallows and Dean reflexively mirrors the action. “But for now I think I’ll keep my interest purely academic.”
The rest of the episode is much more tense, and neither tries to start another conversation. As the credits roll Dean debates staying to watch the next episode in the marathon. He’s pulled away, however, by Bobby.
“Hey,” Bobby says gruffly, poking his head into the living room. “We found something. Might have to do with Feathers and his grace.” Dean and Cas exchange a quick look and then follow Bobby out into the yard. Sam’s squatting down, cooing baby talk to a fluffball standing in front of him. “It’s a cat.”
Dean grunts. “Thanks for the info, Bobby,” he says. He points to the kitten and looks at Cas. “You getting anything from it? We’re not going to have to slay it are we?”
“I don’t know,” Cas says. “I can’t sense anything.” Sam gives him a look and then stands and backs away.
Cas walks up to the kitten and then bends down, sitting on his heels with his weight on the balls of his feet. “Are you the Nemean lion?” he asks, the expression on his face resolute and completely devoid of humor. Dean tries not to comment on how ridiculous talking to a cat is. The kitten meows sweetly, toddling up to Cas and rubbing its big head against one of his hands. Cas scratches the back of its neck and the kitten starts wriggling, moving closer to Cas until it bumps into his knee. He scratches harder, moving down its back. The kitten stands to its back legs and paws at him. “Oh.”
“What is it?” Dean asks, squatting down beside him. The kitten looks at him and hisses.
Cas unclips the kitten's collar. The little monster scampers away and Cas stands up, examining the collar's small silver bell.
Dean laughs. “You know what they say,” he jokes, listening to the bell's tinkle. “Every time a bell rings...”
The bell disintegrates in Cas's hand, leaving behind a small white feather. He glares at Dean. “I already have my wings,” he says. He opens his mouth wide and the feather floats up in a golden cloud. His lips glow in the haze, and the feather disappears on the tip of his tongue.
Sam scoops the kitten up, rubbing its ears. Bobby scowls. “I’m not letting you keep it,” he says, sending Sam a sharp glare. The kitten starts purring, almost in response, and Sam’s entire face lights up.
They wind up naming him Hercules.
The next labor turns out to be as easy as the first. After the success of the Nemean kitten - as Sam calls him - they decide to start hunting with more fervor. They’re investigating a haunting in Colorado when they find the analogue to the Lernean hydra.
Dean’s watching the bones burn with a satisfied look when Sam bumps his shoulder. “Hey,” he says, pointing. “Look over there.”
“What?” Dean follows the direction of Sam’s arm to see a huge, gnarled tree. It’s thick, the bark blackened and knobby. It has no leaves, and nine heavy boughs curling up towards the sky. They start low on the trunk, making the tree look like a short, stubby man with nine arms raised towards the sky. Or maybe a tree-octopus, Dean thinks. “Oh. That.”
“There are nine,” Cas says intently, walking over to Sam’s side. He studies the tree for a long moment, frowning as his eyes trace it from trunk to tip. “We’ll need an axe.”
The Impala is nothing if not prepared, and among the cache of weapons and over necessities Dean keeps in the trunk is a large axe. Cas grips the wooden handle tight, looking at the tree as though it has personally wronged him. Sam clears his throat. “You, uh. Want some help, man?”
“I don’t think so,” Cas says, and of course, he’s just going to chop down an entire fucking tree by himself. Dean rolls his eyes, and Cas’s gaze snaps to him. “Besides,” he says, tone clipped, “this is the only axe you have.”
Sam and Dean watch him as walks over, the axe slung over his shoulder. Dean pokes Sam. “Hey, didn’t the hydra’s heads grow back? You think this tree’s going to regrow whatever Cas chops off?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, shrugging. “Only one of the heads was immortal. Maybe all Cas has to do is chop off the right bough.”
Dean turns out to be right. Cas chops down the bough closest to him; as soon as it falls the entire tree starts shaking, a weird, gooey looking mold growing over the stump. It starts bubbling up into two bulbous growths, and then two branches burst out, covered in thick, amber sap. They grow quickly, and in a few seconds they’re as thick as their parent bough had been.
Dean and Sam exchange worried looks, and Cas reassess the tree, standing beside it, his axe on the ground, sap in his hair. He changes tactics and starts chopping the three at the base.
It takes longer, and even though Dean and Sam offer to do something, Cas still refuses their help. Sam reminds him that even Hercules had someone to assist him with the hydra, but Cas seems hellbent on doing it on his own. Once the trunk is cut halfway through, Cas throws the axe to the ground. He squares his shoulders and steps up to the tree. Dean’s not sure what he expected to happen, but it sure as fuck wasn’t for Cas to place both palms against the tree and start pushing.
“Cas,” he barks, “what the hell are you doing? You can’t push over a goddamn tree.”
“A human can’t,” Cas answers back. He sounds strained, and Dean stares, the effort it’s taking him to push obviously taxing. “But I am not fully human yet.” He grunts and gives one last shove, putting his shoulder against the tree and throwing his whole body into it. The tree moves, finally. Cas keeps pushing and Dean hears the sound of wood breaking as the heavy trunk separates. And then, with a great crash, the tree falls, smashing the fence surrounding the graveyard they’re in.
“Holy shit,” Sam says, taken aback. He blinks a couple of times. “Cas just pushed down a tree.”
“Yep.” Dean huffs. He starts walking over to Cas. “He just pushed down a tree.”
There’s sap and dirt all over Cas, but he’s not even breathing hard from the exertion. He just frowns, looking at the mess on his t-shirt. He wipes his hands on his jeans.
“You did it,” Dean says, clapping him on the back. “Damn, Cas, you actually did it.”
“Yes,” Cas replies succinctly. He bends over the stump; there’s new growth there already. A single, green leaf. Cas plucks it from the stump and starts rubbing it between his fingers. The skin peels away, until there’s another glowing feather in Castiel’s hand.
Dean grins, throwing one arm around Cas and one around Sam. “All right,” he says, “eat up. And then let’s get the hell out of here before someone notices we ruined their fence.”
Bobby finds their next hunt through an old friend of his. “There's been a string of deaths over in a small town in Minnesota,” he says. “They've all been trampled.”
“Trampled?” Dean says. “By what?”
Bobby pulls up the article his buddy had sent him and beckons Dean over the the computer. “By deer from the look of it,” he says, tapping the screen with a knuckle. “You boys want to head over and check it out?”
“Yes,” Cas says quickly, before either Dean or Sam could answer. He leans in close to the computer screen, looking over Bobby's shoulder. He's so close his chin is nearly touching Bobby, and gets shoved unceremoniously away.
“Thought Dean talked to you about personal space,” Bobby grunts.
“I apologize,” Cas says absently, still studying the computer. It's the first lead they've had in a week. “I think we should leave as soon as possible.”
“Fine with me,” Sam says. He looks at Dean and shrugs. “What about you?”
“I'm up for it,” Dean says. “Not like we have anything else to go on.”
They eat quickly and then leave. The town they're headed to has a population of about five thousand people, and hosts a small blueberry festival every year. The hunter that sent the info their way isn't sure what is causing the deaths, but he's certain it isn't average deer. He'd go himself, he'd told Bobby, but he's out in Arizona and he knows Bobby's been on the look-out for any hunts reasonably nearby.
“I bet this town has good pie,” Dean says as they pull into a little hotel. He's hoping that they can wrap things up quick, but it never hurts to have a base of operations and a few beds in case they need them.
“Why would this town's pie be better than any other?” Cas asks. They climb out of the car and grab their bags.
“They have a blueberry festival, Cas,” Dean explains. “So they've had a lot of practice.”
They check into the hotel; just one room, to save money. Dean loses paper-rock-scissors and winds up with the floor.
“Okay,” Sam says, pulling out his laptop and shifting into business mode. “The victims have all been men. Different races, but all around the same age - between twenty-three and thirty-two. And all single.”
“So what are you thinking?” Dean asks.
Sam types something, his fingers moving rapidly over the keys. “It looks... pretty straight-forward, actually,” he says. He waves Dean and Cas over. “Look. Deer woman. Said to have the body of a woman, but with hooves instead of feet. Lures men off and tramples them.” Sam grins. “Perfect fit.”
“Great,” Dean says. “You think we should talk to the victims' families? Or you want to go try to find her and gank her?”
“We shouldn't intrude on the families' grief if we don't have to,” Cas says. “I believe you are correct and that this is the work of Deer Woman; it says they were all found near the same jogging trail, so I think we should start there.”
“Awesome. It tell us how to kill her?” Dean asks, looking over Sam's shoulder at the screen.
Sam nods. “Yeah.”
“Then let's go.”
Cas still can't sense his grace, but when they get to the area of forest they want a few miles outside town, he says something is pulling him. “She's nearby,” he says. “And I think she has my grace.”
There's a rustle close by, barely audible, and Dean just writes it off as ambient forest noise. But Cas perks up immediately, stopping dead and listening carefully. “Cas, what are you - “
But before Dean can even finish his sentence Cas is bolting off, through thick clumps of trees.
“Damn it,” Dean curses. “Come on, Sam, we have to follow him.” The Winchesters run after him, following the sound of his boots and the trail he leaves in his wake. Dean's starting to get winded when finally they catch sight of Cas. He's standing in front of a young woman, her back against the trunk of a tree. She has dark skin and long hair in a glossy black curtain that falls over her shoulders. Her eyes are brown, but something about them isn't right, doesn't look quite human. She looks over and sees Dean and Sam and cries out, calling them to help her, to stop Cas before he hurts her.
Dean frowns, about to ask Cas what he's doing to the poor girl, when Cas's voice stops him, sharp as a snapped twig under his boot.
“Dean. Sam,” Cas says. “Look at her feet.”
They both look down at the same time, and that breaks whatever whammy she’d put on them. The skirt of her dress is long, an orange and tan leafy print, but it doesn’t come quite to the ground. Where her shoes or feet should be, there are hooves. “Huh,” Dean says. “Guess you found her.”
“Wait!” she says quickly, holding out a hand. “You’re... you’re hunters, aren’t you?”
Dean and Sam have closed in, and they stand next to Cas, surrounding her with her back against the tree. They nod, and she looks between all three, the deep, brown deers’ eyes wet with fear.
“I didn’t mean to hurt those men,” she says. “But one was hunting me, and the others were dicks. It’s normally easy for me to...” She looks away guiltily. “For me to lure men, but I don’t... I don’t want to kill them!” She wraps her arms around herself. “I don’t like killing anything; but I had to defend myself. Normally it’s easy for me, like I said, the men are easily entranced. But recently?” She puts a hand up to her neck, where a thin silver chain hangs down. “Something changed. It’s been hard to keep men away.” She grabs the necklace in her fist and looks up at the Winchesters fiercely. “You can’t blame me for that. You can’t blame me for keeping those bastards away from me.”
Dean’s about to tell her to shove it, that even though he understands why she did it, she still killed those men, but Cas puts an arm on his shoulder. “Dean,” he says quietly. “The golden hind was sacred to Artemis. It had to be captured alive.”
“We don’t condone what you did,” Sam said, “but.” He looks at the young woman, his eyes sympathetic. “We can understand.”
“But you should not do it again,” Cas says. “Or you’ll attract more attention to yourself.”
The girl smiles at him, her mouth quirked up in a gentle curve. “I have something that belongs to you, don’t I?” She pulls her necklace out from where it hangs between her breasts. It’s a silver antler, delicately wrought, with wire wrapped around two points to hang it from the chain. She unclips the chain and lets it pool in her palm, then hands it out to Cas. “Here,” she says. “I know you need it.” But when Cas reaches to grab it she pulls her hand away. “There’s a cost, though.”
Dean growls. “I think letting you get away with murder is enough, don’t you?”
She ignores him. Cas looks hesitant, but he licks his lips and asks “What is the cost?”
Her smile is bright and her eyes burn into Cas. “Come. Dance with me.”
She bolts off then, so suddenly that Dean and Sam realize she probably could have gotten away from them at any time. Her body shifts as she runs, shrinking down, her arms touching the ground and thickening into legs. They can hardly see her after a moment, she runs so fast.
Cas looks at Dean. “Excuse me,” he says, and then he runs off after her, nearly as quick as she had been.
“What the fuck,” Dean says, mostly to himself. He looks at Sam. “You think he’ll come back, or... ?”
Sam shrugs. “We should probably go after him.”
“Yeah.” Dean nods. “Yeah, let’s go.”
It takes them at least fifteen minutes to find him, and Dean’s getting really irritable from an afternoon spent tromping around the woods. “Cas,” he calls. “Cas, where the hell are you?”
“Don’t worry,” Sam says. “He knows where the hotel is. If we can’t find him, we can just go back and wait for him there. He’ll come back.”
“Sure,” Dean says. He takes particular pleasure in crushing a small fern under his boot. “If he’s not dead.”
Sam huffs. “She wasn’t going to kill him, Dean. She just wanted to dance.”
“Right. Because that’s normal.”
“God, Dean, you really worry too much. Cas can take care of himself.”
“Hey,” Dean says, poking his brother hard in the chest, “I have reason to worry. And I’m not saying he can’t take care of himself, I’m just saying that when he’s only at half-mast, nearly out of mojo and practically human, letting him run off with something that’s already killed four guys is not really a great fucking idea.”
Sam just rolls his eyes and ignores his brother. “Cas,” he calls, his hand cupped at his mouth like the horn of a loudspeaker. “Castiel!”
“Over here, Sam,” a voice answers back. Sam and Dean exchange glances and start jogging towards the voice.
They stumble into a clearing, thick with grass and lush, verdant plants. As soon as they break out of the trees, though, a deer - the deer, Dean thinks - who’d been standing beside Cas bolts off. Cas watches it go, looking remarkably placid for someone who’d gotten a piece of his grace back and danced with a supernatural creature.
He was also naked. Dean can’t really wrap his mind around that, because there’s Cas, standing in the middle of a forest. Naked.
“Dude, where are your clothes?” Sam asks.
Cas bends down and picks up the pile folded at his feet. “I’ll get dressed,” he says. “And then perhaps we can eat?”
“Sure,” Dean says, turning around to give Cas some privacy. Sam gives him a look Dean can’t quite read, and he really doesn’t feel like trying to decipher it. “Whatever you want, man. Just put on your fucking clothes.”
The third labor ended up being pretty literal - Hercules captured a deer, Cas did some kind of naked samba with a shapeshifting deer lady - but the fourth was analogous in name only.
“The Boar,” Dean says, reading the name of the bar they’re standing in front of. “Think it means anything?”
Cas is staring at the sign prohibiting anyone under twenty-one from entering the premises. “I don’t think it would behoove us to write this off as coincidence.”
They hadn’t even been looking for the next labor; it had just turned up while they were on another hunt. Cas was right, though; The Boar fit too well for it to be anything other than significant. And it has alcohol, which Dean doesn’t see as anything but a plus.
“Great,” he says, rubbing his hands together. He grins, first at Sam, then at Cas. “Let’s go get us some grace.”
They step into the bar. It’s old but obviously well-cared for, the kind of place with regulars and a familiar atmosphere. There are booths on the walls, and a few round, wooden tables littering the floor. There’s a dartboard, and two pool tables in the back. A few patrons are milling about, but it’s not busy yet, still a little too early to draw a big crowd.
Dean sits down at the bar and waves the bartender over. He’s an older man, wearing a green cap and a flannel shirt. His face is scarred and the lower half is covered by a matted gray beard. A framed newspaper article on the wall behind him names him Kai Maddox, the proprietor. He’s exactly the kind of man Dean would expect to run a bar like this one, and he grins despite himself. “Hey,” he says. “you got any food?”
The man grunts and points to an old menu stuck to the wall behind the bar. “Yeah. That.”
Dean reads over what they’ve got. “You guys want anything?” he asks Sam and Cas; they’re sitting on either side of him at the bar.
Sam shakes his head but Cas looks at the menu with interest. “Fried mushrooms,” he says. “The menu says they are famous.”
Dean rolls his eyes but asks for an order of the mushrooms for Cas and some of the gravy fries for himself. They all ask for beer.
“This is... odd,” Cas says, putting his palms against the bar. He stares at the space between his fingers, pressing down hard.
“Uh. What’s odd?”
“My grace,” Cas explains. “I can... sense it. But not in any specific location. It’s as though I’m in it; like it’s around me.” He looks around the bar, examining the ceiling, then the floor. Then he looks back at Dean. He taps on the bar. “I think the bar is my grace.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asks. He looks around the bar, too, but doesn’t seem to notice the presence of something supernatural like Cas does.
“Yeah,” Dean repeats around a mouthful of fry. A few drops of gravy dribble onto his chin. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“My grace has seeped in here,” Cas says. “But it won’t be difficult to remove. I think if I sit here, at the bar, the grace will migrate back into me. Or at least coalesce into a manageable form.”
“So we wait,” Dean says. He sucks gravy from his finger, then balls up his napkin and drops it in his empty basket. Cas still has some mushrooms left; he can probably grab one or two of those.
Cas nods. “We sit here and be patient.”
“So we just have to... sit here,” Sam repeats, looking at Cas, distinctly unimpressed.
Cas just nods again. “Yes,” he says. “Since my grace has seeped into this place, destroying it would only destroy my grace or disperse it further.”
Sam's eyebrows raise. “I, uh. Wasn't really suggesting destruction as a second option, Cas.”
“Oh.” Castiel frowns. “Then yes, Sam. Our only choice is to sit here.”
Sam puts his chin in his hand, looking like somebody pissed in his beer. “Great,” he says. “A real evening to remember.”
Despite Sam’s complaints, it really isn’t bad. They all drink enough to loosen up, and then Cas nearly doubles that. More people come in as the evening wears on, and the quiet grows into an amiable din. Sam starts chatting with some motorcycle chick who’d come in with two of her friends, and they have a friendly game of pool while Dean and Cas stay at the bar. They’d decided against hustling, just in case; they couldn’t afford to make someone angry and get kicked out before Cas had a chance to get his grace back.
“Hey,” Sam says in a whisper, leaning in close to Dean. “I’m going to... go. Paula and her friends invited me out with them and I think I’m going to accept the invitation. Meet you back at the hotel, later?”
“All right Sammy,” Dean says, giving his brother a lascivious grin and holding out his hand for a celebratory five. Reluctantly, Sam gives it. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t wait up.”
“Bye, Dean,” Sam says, his eyes narrowed. Dean just laughs.
Cas, who hasn’t said anything in at least five or ten minutes, suddenly taps him on the shoulder. “Dean,” he says, “look.” His eyes are wild and there’s a flush riding high in his cheeks. “These stools spin.” He pushes himself off the bar, hard, spinning around in a jerky circle. Then he promptly loses his balance and topples to the floor.
“Cas! Shit,” Dean says, getting up and wrapping an arm around Cas’s shoulders. “You okay, man?”
“Fine,” Cas mumbles. He grabs Dean’s shirt and gets carefully to his feet. Once upright, he starts, his eyes going wide and his head weaving like the room’s started spinning. “I think I’m no longer ambulatory.”
“Christ, Cas,” Dean says, putting him back on his seat, “how much did you drink?”
Apparently his inhuman ability to hold his liquor hadn’t followed him into being human, and he’d gotten himself soundly drunk.
“Less than a liquor store this time,” he rumbles, laying his head on the bar. He closes his eyes and rubs the bar in big circles with the flats of his hands. “I think I’m intoxicated.”
“No shit, sherlock,” Dean says.
Cas just sighs. “I didn’t feel anything, so I just kept drinking. I’m coming to believe this might have been a mistake.”
“It’s ‘cause you were doing shots, too, dumbass. Takes a second, but then it hits you all at once.”
“Oh. I see.” He sits up again and looks up at one of the bronze lamps hanging on a thick chain from the ceiling. “I think I should do more shots.”
Dean snorts. “Hell no,” he says. “You’re getting cut off. Water you can have - you’re going to have - but no more alcohol for you.”
“Where’s Sam?” Cas asks, his mouth turned down and his bottom lip stuck out in something Dean would almost categorize as a pout. “He would be sympathetic.”
“He left,” Dean says. He takes a sip of his beer, feeling smug as Cas glares. “Met some woman and went off with her and some of her friends just a minute ago.” He leans in conspiratorially and waggles his eyebrows in a manner that he thinks even Cas will pick up on as suggestive. “Said not to wait up.”
“Ahh,” Cas says, nodding. He looks a little hazy, his eyes half-lidded. “He’s going to sex... with her. That’s good. I hope it’s enjoyable for him.”
Dean laughs, because Cas is even more awkward drunk than he is when he’s sober. “I’m sure it will be, buddy.”
“Sex,” Cas says after a couple of seconds, apparently still thinking about Sam getting lucky. He looks around the bar; there are a lot of people now, and his eyes linger over one or two as he surveys the room. “That would be... interesting.”
Dean’s taken aback, his beer halfway to his mouth. He’s vividly reminded of the conversation they had over an episode of Doctor Sexy; how Cas had been curious, how he’d missed the sense of connection with his brothers, how he’d wanted to connect with someone now that he was becoming human. Connect intimately. Physically. Dean’s throat closes up and he thinks that even though it’s just sex, Cas going home with someone at a bar is a hell of a lot different than just paying somebody to give him a nice time.
“Are you saying you want to pick somebody up? You see somebody here you want to fuck?”
“Maybe,” Cas says. “I don’t know.” He gestures to a woman sitting in the back of the bar. She’s pretty, her hair braided into a long, thick tail that hangs down her back. “Do you see that woman? She has a cat named Mavis.” He smacks his lips together. “And she has a very bright soul.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty, I guess,” Dean allows.
“Yes,” Cas replies, sounding dreamy. His fingers drum a rhythm on his knee, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed. “Pretty.”
“You like brunettes, then?” Dean’s not sure why it’s important to get an accurate picture of Castiel’s tastes, but it seems suddenly vital.
Cas shrugs. “Not preferentially,” he says. “I like them as much as I like hair of any color.”
“Well, is there anything you are preferential about?”
Cas giggles, then his hand shoots to his mouth and his eyes go wide, like he can’t quite believe that sound came out of him. “Ignore that,” he says. He looks at the ceiling and raises one arm up. He spreads his fingers out, then curls all but his index finger to a fist. “Eyes that are nice.” Another finger goes up. “Brains.” He pops his ring finger up, but the pinkie comes with it. “Shapely breasts. Also big hands.” He sticks his thumb out. It wiggles a little and Castiel smiles. “Determination or. Attitude. I think the word you would use is badass.”
His arm falls and he sits up, looking at Dean intently, like he’s imparting some closely guarded secret. “And there is... One thing,” he says. He lowers his voice down to a whisper. “That I find arousing. More than I should.” He shakes his head. “You’ll be angry with me.”
Dean shifts closer. “No, dude, I won’t. Tell me.”
“Okay.” Cas claps a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.
Dean frowns at him. “Shoulders?” he asks. It’s not the weirdest fetish he’s ever heard of, but personally he doesn’t really get the appeal. “You like shoulders?”
“Not the shoulder,” Castiel says. He presses his lips together hard. “What I left there.” He lifts up Dean’s shirtsleeve and his fingertips touch the handprint. It makes Dean tingle, all over his body, and from the way Cas’s eyes go heavy it’s doing something for him, too.
“What the fuck,” Dean says, jerking away. “You can’t just... Goddamnit, Cas, you can’t just say shit like that.”
“I did that,” Cas says, still staring at Dean’s shoulder and apparently perfect content to ignore all Dean’s admonishments. “I raised you up. I saved you. I remade you.” Cas’s voice has gone deep, dark, and a little smitey, and Dean wonders what he’s thinking. “I think I may be a possessive partner.”
And just like that he snaps out of it. He turns back to the bar, resting his arms on the flat, wooden top. Dean’s left feeling a little shell-shocked and wondering if it’s only the handprint Cas finds so arousing, or maybe the person it’s on, too.
“I don’t think I’ll go talk to that woman,” Cas says. “I’m feeling drowsy. Oh!” He looks up at Dean, a pleased expression on his face. “And we can go.” He leans down until the tip of his nose touches the bar. “All my grace has returned to me now.”
“Great.” Dean stands up, then helps Castiel off his barstool. “We’re going back to the hotel to wait for Sam, okay? You’re going to have the mother of all hangovers in the morning.”
Cas just hums and follows him to the Impala.
~~~
part 5