Supernatural story: Combat Medicine | PG | Sam/Dean
Combat Medicine | LJ / DW / AO3
Castiel can't seem to quit his day job. They begin shouting at him -- or each other -- or both -- while his atoms are still settling into place.
Sam/Dean. PG.
~1,400 words
Summary: Castiel can't seem to quit his day job. They begin shouting at him -- or each other -- or both -- while his atoms are still settling into place.
Sam/Dean. PG.
~1,400 words
Notes: Written for
alittlefaith to cheer her up while she had the Martian Death Flu. Many thanks to the quick and cheerfully brutal destina for beta, and many apologies for the rampant fluff and silliness behind the cut tag. =D
Combat Medicine | by Molly
~
The most annoying voice in the universe interrupts the ethereal opalescent glide that is Castiel’s existence outside of the rumpled form of Jimmy Novak, followed almost instantaneously by the second-most annoying. Each shout is tinged with a desperation Castiel wishes, with his whole being, that he could ignore. But he is sworn by true friendship to heed one, and by oath and a certain unwilling, exasperated affection to heed the other. Even now, in the midst of internecine, intracelestial war.
In less time than it takes an electron to blink he arrives -- trench-coated and tied and bound in a shell of simulated flesh -- to find the two of them glaring around the room impatiently, as if they’d summoned him a week ago instead of what amounts, basically, to this very second. As if, indeed, they had the right to summon him at all. He rifles through the limited set of facial arrangements his time with the Winchesters has taught him to keep immediately on hand, and settles with surety on thin, tight lips and cold eyes under a furrowed brow. He is aiming for a quelling look of imminent heavenly wrath, but perhaps he is a bit too subtle.
They begin shouting at him -- or each other -- or both -- while his atoms are still settling into place.
“If I leave him to drown in a pool of his own mucus,” Sam starts in, “does that mean I won’t get into Heaven?” just as Dean demands, “Did that whole soul-rehousing project go belly-up, or is my little brother just a dick naturally?”
Castiel lets his gaze rest, momentarily, on Dean. It appears that he is unwell. His eyes are shiny and bloodshot, and his face has a sickly green pallor under its stubble. From the piles of crumpled tissues beside, across, and in the bed where he is swathed in blankets and propped up like an invalid, he does seem to be producing a great quantity of mucus. He also seems, to Castiel’s newborn nose, to be at least one week past his most recent shower.
On the nightstand beside his bed an array of liquids in widely varying colors and consistencies attests to attentive, if inexperienced, caretaking. Nyquil, Dayquil, a cardboard cup of stagnant-looking soup, and a prescription-labeled bottle of cough syrup of dubious provenance share the tabletop with a half-drunk coffee from Starbucks, an open can of Coca-Cola, and a disturbingly empty fifth of vodka. Presiding over this display of hunter field nursing, Sam stands at something less than his usual height, arms crossed, hunched under the crushing weight of fraternal responsibility. While Castiel does not consider himself an expert reader of the complexities of human expressions, he is Heaven’s foremost scholar in Winchester lore; he judges Sam to be tired, angry, and worried in equal measure.
“You would go straight to Hell,” Castiel says to Sam; then “No, it didn’t,” and “yes, I believe he is,” to Dean. To both of them he adds, “I thought we agreed you would address questions of these types to Bobby Singer. At least while War is still raging in Heaven.”
The brothers blush simultaneously, and share an odd, somehow pitiful glance. After a moment, Sam sighs and meets Castiel’s intent gaze. “Bobby stopped answering our calls a couple days ago.”
In this unwieldy, hastily-constructed body, the arrival of true heavenly wrath is accompanied by a bloom of pain tightening into a knot in the space just behind Castiel’s eyes. He says, “I see,” in a voice that would have melted the neurons of mere mortals in aeons past; in the Winchester brothers, today, it produces a slight wince. “In that case, I can certainly understand why you called me.”
“Can’t you fix him?” Sam says. “He’s driving me crazy. I mean, literally, crazy, Cas. Homicidal.”
“He’s not kidding. He’s already tried to kill me once, with that soup. I think he dug it up out of some old bomb shelter. The sell-by date was probably sometime in the fifties.”
“Green isn’t always mold, Dean. It’s the color vegetables are. You’d know that if you’d ever willingly eaten one--”
“Do you know,” Castiel says, “why no one has ever found a cure for the common cold?”
Sam and Dean jerk their heads toward Castiel and blink, as if they’ve only just discovered him standing there. Dean, his voice low and wary, says, “...no?”
“It is a punishment from God.” Castiel’s eyes sweep across the room, taking in the untouched bed near the door before settling on the dented pillow beside Dean’s. “For certain venial sins. Those falling somewhere between an Our Father and a flaming sword.”
Dean’s eyes go wide, his eyebrows rising toward his hairline. To compensate, Sam’s eyes narrow and his brows draw tightly together. “Incest is considered venial?” Sam says doubtfully.
Dean’s head whips around; he stares at Sam in horror. “Sam!”
“In your specific case, yes. Heaven doesn’t typically involve itself in the affairs of consenting adults. We find your relationship... weird. And frequently inconvenient. But not, technically speaking, a sin.” Castiel frowns. “Though you are conducting it outside the sacred bonds of marriage. That could be the problem.”
“I thought God was on permanent hiatus,” Sam says. “Since when is he punishing anybody for anything?”
“It’s handled at a slightly lower bureaucratic level. There is an angel specifically assigned to its oversight.”
“Okay,” Dean says slowly. “So then, how come nuns get colds? Or priests?”
“Or little kids,” Sam picks up. “Or for that matter, cats. Cats can get colds. Dogs can get colds.”
“I,” Castiel says in a deep, warning rumble, “am not that angel.”
“So wait,” Dean says. “I’m sick not because I’m getting busy with my little brother, but because I didn’t marry him first?”
“I don’t make the rules, Dean.”
“And how come I’m the one getting punished? I’m not even the one who--”
“Dean!” Sam hisses, horrified.
“...deserves it,” Dean finishes. “Which is totally what I was going to say all along, Sammy. Geez. You think I’m gonna tell an angel of the Lord who’s on top?”
Sam covers his face with both hands and groans.
“If I cure you,” Castiel says, reaching for the still, quiet, inner core of peace that has always guided him in times of confusion and doubt. It is, of course, not there. “If I cure you, you will not kill each other. And you will not call me again?”
“For at least a week,” Dean says swiftly.
“A month.”
Sam says, “A month, fine,” and clamps a hand around Dean’s shoulder, cutting off whatever Dean might have said. “Fix him.”
Castiel steps forward. He lays one hand gently on top of Dean’s head, and one -- it’s quite a stretch -- on top of Sam’s. He closes his eyes -- and then he opens them and steps back.
“There,” he says. “It is done. You are married.”
“We’re--what?” Dean demands, and Sam says, “Hey, wait, you can’t just--”
He allows them to process. There are unlikely physical threats; there is a great deal of shouting, and no small amount of profanity. Castiel pays no attention. Precious seconds tick by, in which angelic battles could be waged, and lost, or won, except that he is not there to fight them. Finally, Dean says, “So -- that’s it?”
Castiel tilts his head, considering. “Congratulations?”
“I mean, just, poof, we’re married? You don’t have to ask us?”
“It was not a request.”
Dean frowns; it is impossible to tell if he is angry, or hurt, or regretful. “We didn’t even have to hold hands?” he says plaintively.
“You are perfectly welcome to do so now,” Castiel says. “Soon your cold will pass. May I go?”
Sam takes a step forward. His eyes are dark and slitted. “How soon, exactly,” he says in a sharp, suspicious voice.
“Recovery is likely within five to seven days,” Castiel replies with a small, remorseless smile. “Dean should rest, and try to stay warm.”
“Cas!” one of them shouts; he isn’t sure who. He has already let go of mortal flesh and phased into a frequency beyond sight and sound, an infinite wave of divine impetus and lightning thought.
And attempt to remain hydrated, he adds, a ripple of laughter disturbing the speeding surface of his existence.
But there is much more shouting by then, and Cas doesn’t think they hear him.
~
end.
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