Fic: "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" - Part 1/3 [SPN]
TITLE: “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven” - Part 1/3
AUTHOR: nanoochka
CHARACTERS: Dean/Castiel, Sam, Crowley, Gramps Campbell
RATING: Hard R for violence, gore, swearing, and sexual situations
SUMMARY: Two weird cases, two different locations: Sam and Dean are forced to split up when calls from Samuel and Cas divide their attention between Iowa and Michigan, thinking that they might be dealing with two separate cases of Alphas. Although Cas is supposedly there to help, Dean’s lost trust in the angel’s priorities in the past year, and can’t help but feel that he’s running interference as Dean discovers that the rash of brutal animal slayings in the town of Springville are a symptom of something truly perverse.
WORD COUNT: This part: 8,430. Overall: 23,509 (The fuck?)
WARNINGS: Violence against domestic animals, slime
SPOILERS: Post-6x04, but kind of diverges from canon after that. It made more sense when I started writing it.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights to Supernatural or any of its associated content. No infringement intended. Eat it, Kripke.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Written for spn_reversebang . This is my first experience with writing for a fic challenge, and it’s been interesting, considering that the challenge was for 5000 words, and I wrote almost five times that amount. I’m still undecided as to whether or not I like deadlines, or if it just makes me think of grad school. :/ It was definitely a nice exercise in writing case!fic, which I’ve never done before; I don’t know that I see a lot in my future, but I definitely have a greater appreciation for those who do it well, including the show writers.
In the meantime, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for sansday for swooping in with her fantastic beta, which both motivated me to cross the finish line and gave me a big boost of confidence. Love also to miki_moo , who served as my one-woman cheerleading squad and, naturally, the inspiration to begin writing this at all. It’s a huge help to have an artist and a beta so firmly in your corner when you’re bitching about deadlines and in need of hand-holding, so these two wonderful people are as much to thank for this story as anything else. Finally, all my hugs and kisses to bauble for putting up with all my challenge questions, the late-night bitchfests, and for all the hard work she’s done moderating the challenge, along with ksock , julia_sets and attempt_unique . I wish you all lots of porn in your future, because I know this wasn’t easy.
Also, for the record, a big ol’ FU to Show for scamming my title. That is all.
Artist: miki_moo
Art Masterpost
Fic Masterpost
Not All Dogs Go to Heaven - Part 1/3 by nanoochka
As soon as the Impala roars past the sign that says, “Welcome to Springville: Population 1,850” and its first wave of cheerful, cookie-cutter houses, Dean begins to worry that the universe has conspired to domesticate his ass for the rest of his natural life.
He’s gonna kill Cas, and then he’s gonna kill Sam, and then he’s gonna sit back and see whether God has a three-strike policy when it comes to resurrections.
The calls came just two days before, almost simultaneously, the first from Samuel and the second from Castiel. His brother got the call from Grampa Campbell, of course, because even if Samuel is a lot of things starting with “sketch” and ending with “bag”, the man knows better than to call Dean directly, not when the relationship is still so new, so tenuous. Dean’s still getting over how readily Samuel handed baby Bobby John over to Christian, if the whole back-from-the-dead thing weren’t bad enough. Articulating the extent to which the whole family reunion feels wrong to him would take far longer than Dean can afford to spend on the subject, but in a weird way he appreciates the distance his grandfather keeps between them, or rather allows for Dean to keep between them, choosing to communicate with Sam instead.
According to Samuel, some weird shit is going on in small-town Iowa; and just outside of Grand Rapids, MI, according to Cas. In both cases there’s activity that seems to fit the description of another Alpha. They’re popping up all over the place, now, rapidly enough that the Winchester-Campbell team takes notice whenever something falls into their laps. While Iowa and Michigan aren’t painfully distant, they’re far enough away from each other that splitting up seems the only logical choice. It’s painfully obvious that Sam is going to stick with their grandfather and the other two that Dean would just as soon punch as look at them, family or not.
That pretty much leaves him to Cas. Same shit, different day, really.
Before the showdown with Lucifer, things were more or less at the point where Cas would talk to either of them, demonstrating a level of trust around Sam that hadn’t previously existed, at least not when he’d first pulled Dean out of Hell. Now things seem to be back the way they were, with Cas inexplicitly avoiding Sam and conducting all his business through Dean instead. To that end, Dean’s warning went unheeded, because Cas still doesn’t pick up the phone when Sam dials. It’s nothing he’s said out loud, and certainly he doesn’t protest to being in the same room with both brothers; but Dean knows his body language, his tells, can read from the tense set of Castiel’s shoulders that he trusts Sam’s return about as much as Dean, that something about it is not right.
A part of Dean wants to be smug about the fact that Cas ignored Sam’s prayers for a year, only to come running the second Dean called his name, but it also twists something in his chest that he doesn’t much like. It’s too simple, all of it, and Dean has about as much use for simple as he does a dick on his forehead. It’d been easy enough to say, We should call Cas, when the locusts and plague symptoms had started appearing a few weeks before, but Sam can’t understand how long it took Dean to put aside his personal mission to shun the angel-the most childish, vindictive way he could think of to respond to Castiel returning to Heaven without so much as a goodbye. Profound bond, his ass. At the time that Dean first went to live with Lisa and Ben, he’d promised himself he’d never utter Castiel’s name again, and that held up pretty well until Sam came back. Now he’s just fucked, and feeling inconsistent about the whole thing besides.
Anyone who says that Dean Winchester can’t carry a grudge would be wrong.
As per Castiel’s instructions, Dean navigates his way through all 2.5 streets of downtown Springville to 48 Coldwater Avenue, a quiet, suburban neighbourhood identical to every other he’s seen. The angel is lounging against a support beam on the front porch of the small, detached home when Dean pulls up to the curb out front, arms folded and smug in what he guesses is Castiel’s M.O. now. Every house is a variation of the same basic design, and this one in particular has no distinguishing feature save for the fact that it’s offensively pink.
“Are we here to investigate the owner’s questionable taste in plastic siding?” Dean quips as he climbs out of the car, and tries not to bristle under the laserbeam intensity of Castiel’s old, entirely familiar stare.
“This house does not currently have an owner,” Castiel replies lightly, which doesn’t really answer Dean’s question at all, but okay.
He hasn’t seen much of the angel since they were forced to deal with Raphael last month-and boy, does that sonuvabitch not bring up memories of happier times spent addressing the matter of Castiel’s virginity-and for a moment Dean thinks he registers a gleam of something in Castiel’s eyes that could mean anything from, Hey, good to see you again, to, Let’s get this over with. Since they aren’t exactly besties these days, he’s betting on the latter.
“You were a little vague over the phone,” Dean reminds him, for what might actually now be the thirtieth time. “Is this where the mysterious incident took place?”
“My lack of detail was not without good cause,” answers Cas, “and no. I directed you to this house because it is currently unoccupied. I believe the previous owners were evicted.” He steps across the porch and opens the door so easily that it might have been unlocked, although from the slight crunch of metal and wood Dean knows that it wasn’t. Castiel motions for him to enter, but Dean doesn’t move.
“That’s fascinating,” he deadpans, and after giving Castiel a look gestures in the direction of his car. “I know you’ve been outta the game for a while, Cas, but in my line of work I generally like to get right in the action and investigate the actual scene-not waste time going on property viewings.”
“I appropriated this location to save you the trouble of getting a hotel room,” says Cas. He gives a little sniff that could indicate offence or haughtiness, or both, or neither-Dean no longer knows with the guy. “By my estimation you’ll be here for a few days at least; I thought it would be ideal to have a base of operations, as it were.” For a few moments he just watches Dean for a reaction, and when he doesn’t get one, he huffs in frustration. “Very well, let’s visit the scene now and I’ll leave you to worry about your own accommodations.”
He starts to pull the door closed again, but Dean throws his hand out after a split-second decision. The thought of spending more than a day in this town doesn’t thrill him to the core, but it’s sort of to be expected and Cas has a point about the motel. Now that Dean’s no longer holding down a regular job, it isn’t his place to start throwing money around when he doesn’t have to. He could hustle some pool, but he’s been out of the game a bit too long to jump back into conning drunken truckers like in the old days.
“Okay, okay,” he gripes. “Don’t get pissy, we’ll do it your way. What do you got so far?”
Throwing the barest of self-satisfied looks over his shoulder, Castiel strides into the foyer of the house and pushes he door shut behind Dean. The inside is about as underwhelming as the exterior, if less violently coloured. With curiosity, Dean notes that it’s furnished, homey even, and then remembers that the previous resident got evicted. Keeping his boots on, Dean strolls through the ground floor of the house to the kitchen, which is small but brightly lit and overlooks a pleasant enough backyard.
“This town caught my attention several days ago,” Castiel begins, following Dean to the table. When he sits, Dean decides to remain standing, and fiddles with drawers and cupboards as a distraction. They’re all empty, so he quickly gives up and settles for fidgeting his hands instead. “A number of local pets have been disappearing one after the other, which would not be much cause for alarm were it not for reports of howling at night.”
Dean makes something like a snort. “So? Sounds like a wolf escaped from the zoo to me.”
“A town of this size does not have a zoo,” Castiel answers solemnly, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“Okay, so feel free to substitute any wild predator of your choice, here. They do get coyotes in Michigan, Cas. I don’t crawl out of bed for anything less than a werewolf, so you better be going somewhere good with this.” Dean folds his arms, and manages to hold back on a sneer when Cas gazes calmly back.
“A werewolf was my first thought, as it so happens,” he says. “But the disappearances have been happening outside of the full moon, and with no reported threats to the local townsfolk. Very unusual behaviour for a werewolf, at any rate.”
“D’you think we’re maybe dealing with another Alpha?” Forgetting his petty grudge for a moment as he goes into investigative mode, Dean pulls out a chair and settles himself at the table across from Castiel. The angel is looking at him impassively, but Dean knows he’s listening from the way his eyes track the movements of Dean’s facial expressions, his hands. “That shifter Alpha we tangled with, it could summon its abilities at any time and without having to shed its skin. What are the odds of there being a werewolf Alpha out there somewhere? Maybe it can transform at will, and without the full moon.”
Castiel is considering, but skeptical. “There is every possibility that your theory is correct, but no lore to indicate that a werewolf Alpha would restrain itself in such a way, and restrict its feeding only to small animals.” Dean’s been waiting for it, and sure enough, there’s that slow head-tilt. “It is rare enough to encounter a common werewolf that can repress its hunger for human flesh; an Alpha simply wouldn’t care.”
“It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that ever happened,” Dean suggests, and even as the words leave his mouth he’s thinking, Yeah, right. He attempts to make up for it with an ironic grin in Castiel’s direction, which receives a quirky smile in response.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Cas agrees. “But our luck is seldom if ever that good.” He has a point.
“Have you tuned in to any weird vibes?” asks Dean, figuring it couldn’t hurt to check. They haven’t really talked about it, but he knows the parameters of Cas’s power are a bit bigger these days; the way the angel zaps from place to place without any apparent effort suggests as much. If anyone out there has the ability to sense the presence of spooky shit, it’s him.
True to form, there’s a nod. “I have,” says Castiel. “There’s something I can’t put my finger on, which is why I brought you here. I thought you might be able to pick up on something that I’ve missed.”
“There’s a lot that you’ve missed,” Dean retorts, without thinking. One of Castiel’s eyebrows lift, but he doesn’t address the comment. Dean tries to move on without making too big a deal about it. “I guess I can stick around for a few days to see if something comes up. Maybe take a look at the town records or talk to animal control, find out if anything like this has happened before. Sam Squared and the Wonder Campbells are looking after the thing in Iowa, so it’s not like I’m needed right away.”
For a beat, Castiel just looks at him, blue eyes searching Dean’s face so thoroughly that Dean feels uncomfortable. He thinks he knows what Castiel’s going to ask, but then he says instead, “Any new theories on how your family was brought back to Earth?” The way he looks down at his hands immediately afterwards suggests to Dean that he’s a bit embarrassed, though about what he hasn’t a clue-about having not cracked the puzzle himself, yet. Probably.
“No, but we aren’t talking about that,” Dean says firmly. “Let’s just figure this shit out and get back to our lives. I’m sure you’re itching to ditch this plane again,” he adds, and if he’s actually starting to sound like an embittered fourteen-year-old girl at this stage, he doesn’t care.
“Efficient as always,” murmurs Castiel, and he moves to stand. In the tax accountant outfit, he looks uncomfortable and out of place in such a domestic setting as a suburban kitchen. “Let’s not keep you waiting, then.” With that, he blips out.
Yet again Dean feels like he’s left standing around with his dick in his hand, and he sighs. “Great. Go team.”
After changing into the suit and tie he packed just in case, Dean spends the rest of that day visiting the Springville police department and local animal control. Without Cas and his otherness around to confuse anyone and slow Dean down, he infiltrates the police station with no more difficulty than if he’d walked into a bar on a Friday night. Naturally, no one can figure out why a rash of dog and cat abductions would be of interest to the FBI, but Dean plays it off like similar occurrences have happened in neighbouring towns. He just about gets away with it, but thinks the law enforcement in this town wouldn’t know a con if it bit their ears off. The whole thing continues to scream bullshit until he discovers that half the pets disappeared from within their own homes, usually around the same time that witnesses from the neighbourhood reported sounds of baying and howling in the night. As far as police could tell, there were scratch marks and signs of struggle as the poor critters fought for their lives, but nothing to indicate the presence of another animal, or even a prankster-no sign of the remains, either. They were writing it off as the world’s most stealth coyote, and god damn if Dean isn’t ready to split before he’s even been there a full day.
Cas continues to make himself scarce, but he pops up again on Dean’s second night in town. By that point Dean is considering fucking off just to stick it to him, and let Cas deal with the case by himself.
“So glad you could remember about us mud monkeys down here,” Dean says when he appears, referencing the term he’d heard Uriel use a few times, back in the day.
He’s seated on a couch in the living room, drinking beer and picking half-heartedly at a pizza he had to collect himself, because he didn’t want to risk getting delivery to a house that’s supposedly unoccupied. To avoid further suspicion, all the lights are off; Dean’s reading an old copy of Fahrenheit 451 by flashlight, back shutters drawn against the inquisitive eyes of neighbours. His back is killing him from the few hours he spent trolling about in the woods just outside of town, looking for evidence of predators or werewolf activity, of which he found neither. He doesn’t like to admit that Castiel looks a bit stressed, too, like he’s just come back from a rough day at the office; but since Castiel supposedly runs the office, Dean decides he doesn’t care. He didn’t sign up for a solo job.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“A small unit of angels decided to defect to Nicaragua,” Castiel says, voice clipped and harassed-sounding. He takes a seat next to Dean on the couch, and Dean can feel the slump of his shoulders even from where their arms barely touch. “I was attempting to get things under control. Why are you reading in the dark?”
Dean snorts into his beer. “I’m not exactly supposed to be here, dude. Remember?” He thinks he sees Castiel’s eyes shining at him in the dark with amusement, and Dean resists the urge to point the flashlight beam directly into his face.
“I have cloaked your presence to onlookers,” he says, a trace of a smirk seeping into his tone. “You needn’t worry about being detected.”
Throwing down his book, Dean huffs aggressively and pushes himself up from the couch. “Thanks a lot. You couldn’t have mentioned this to me when I got here? I’ve been stumbling around in the dark for two days; my eyes feel like they’re fucked beyond all repair.”
“It must have escaped my attention.”
“I’m really loving the new you with an extra side of asshole, Cas,” Dean grates out. “Did you show up just to aggravate me, or are you actually here to help for a change?”
Castiel also stands, but ignores the comment except for a not-smirk. “There are things to be done tonight,” he informs Dean.
“Like what, exactly?” Dean asks, and once again he gets the feeling that he’s missing a big chunk of the puzzle. Although he doesn’t know why, there’s this nagging suspicion that Castiel’s probably hiding important information from him; he remembers when he used to trust Cas with almost anything. He now knows that Castiel has the capacity to get embarrassed about certain things beyond his control, but Dean can’t help with what he doesn’t know. “Did you find something?”
“Likely it’s nothing,” Cas says, “but I have managed to pinpoint a more precise location for the strange energy signature I mentioned. I thought you and I could engage in a stakeout.” He scrubs a hand through his hair and for a minute he looks exactly like the old Cas, rumpled and stressed out and with no one to confide in but Dean.
Shaking off the memory, Dean shrugs. “When you put it that way, it sounds like a real riot. I don’t suppose you brought donuts?”
Much to Dean’s dismay, Castiel’s eyes drop to Dean’s waistline and a singular eyebrow arches. For a whole three seconds Dean thinks the angel is being serious when he intones, “You aren’t getting any younger, Dean,” before he realizes that Cas is actually fucking with him. Apparently that’s something he does now, along with air quotes and torturing children. It raises Dean’s hackles, and if it’s a choice between running in the opposite direction and sitting Cas down for a serious chat, he doesn’t know which is the right one.
“Cute,” he shoots back, and heads for the door. “I’m not getting any more patient, neither.” Without bothering to see where it lands, Dean tosses the flashlight behind him in the direction of the couch. A grunt from Castiel that indicates that he probably took it in the chest, but Dean can’t even bring himself to feel smug about it.
Cas blips out twice during the car ride to the other side of town, which, all told, takes about ten minutes; the third time he’s about to disappear, Dean catches the faraway look he tends to get when he realizes he’s needed elsewhere, or that he left the oven turned on, and grabs the angel by the tie before he can go anywhere. Surprisingly, it works, and the look Castiel returns is wide-eyed and guilty.
“Can you freaking quit it?” Dean hisses, releasing his tie with more force than is necessary, strictly speaking or otherwise. He knows he’s being a bit testy, but Castiel’s here-one-minute-gone-the-next routine seems to be on overdrive lately. It’s bugging the hell out of Dean, who hates it when Castiel goes where he can’t follow-especially now that he knows there’s probably something going down on the other end that Castiel won’t talk about. “Either stay in the goddamn car, or get out and leave me to it. This back-and-forth thing is making me crazy.”
Rolling his eyes, Cas begins, “There are things-”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Big things afoot. Great. But you were the one who called me about this job, so at least have the decency to stick around for longer than a few minutes at a time before you’re off again. You’re either here, Cas, or you’re there-you can’t be both.” Honestly, Dean doesn’t mean for that to come out sounding like such an ultimatum, but now that it’s out he realizes he’s been thinking it all along. Unlike Lisa, Dean doesn’t believe it’s possible to settle for a little bit of two worlds and still be happy. He already knows he’ll never abandon hunting, and Castiel’s no different from him in that respect. But as it so happens, they’re on very different sides of that equation.
For a long, hard minute, Castiel does nothing more than look at him, taking in Dean’s angry grimace and his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. An undertone of barely-restrained impatience seeps into his tone as he says, “The very nature of my work, Dean, is to move between your world and mine. Why is this suddenly problematic for you?”
Dean snorts. “Right, and that worked out so well the last time you tried to play double agent, didn’t it, Cas?”
Not waiting for an answer, Dean makes a right as per Cas’s earlier directions, swinging the Impala around the corner so sharply that Cas is thrown into the door with an annoyed sound. Mentally, he apologizes to his baby for using her as the vehicle for his sudden passive-aggressiveness-literally, as it turns out-but he takes the next turn with no less violence. Surprisingly, Cas doesn’t engage Dean’s moodiness; he just braces himself between the door and the dashboard like Dean could crash the car at any moment, murder-suicide in the most spectacular way possible. He calms down after that, but to his embittered amusement Cas doesn’t relax his stance, or his glare.
They’re driving into the very outskirts of Springville, somewhere between suburb and country; the properties are large and surrounded by dense forest, the realm of the town’s most wealthy residents. The rest of the drive is completed in silence, Dean having snapped at Castiel not to hold his hand with the directions from the time they left the house. He follows the instructions they discussed beforehand without bothering to consult the angel for confirmation, and thinks that Castiel probably has to restrain himself from blurting out, “Right here,” or, “Left here,” every time Dean cuts it a little close. They pull up to a massive cul-de-sac that opens up at the very edge of the woods, four imposing mansions parked along the rim of a glimmering, tree-lined lake. Dean switches off the headlights and sidles up to the curb before killing the engine.
“Something is definitely here,” says Castiel, furrowing his brow at the rather picturesque surroundings. He looks to Dean for corroboration, but the only thing that feels off, to Dean, is the fact that people actually live in this kind of opulence-the garages look bigger than the house he’d shared with Lisa.
“Why would a werewolf move away from a populated area, to this?” Dean wonders out loud. It’s quiet, sure, but in his experience werewolves don’t really do peaceful all that well. “There’s hardly anywhere to feed, and you gotta figure it can’t be too concerned with hiding, if it’s been hitting targets in the middle of town up until now.”
“We still don’t know for sure that this is a werewolf,” Cas points out. His voice is cautious. “But I agree; whatever this is, its behaviour is becoming more strange, not less.”
“Well, I’m glad that you agree,” Dean mutters. Cas ignores him, and he grumbles to himself for a moment before piping up again. “Since you seem to suddenly be the expert, what do we do now?”
“I think we should wait,” Cas says, after a pause. “Perhaps something will make itself known.”
“You have no idea where this thing actually is, do you?” Dean’s eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline when he finally interprets Castiel’s indecisiveness for what it is.
Bizarrely, Castiel looks more relieved than annoyed. It’s worrying. “Not in the specific, no. I would place it within roughly two hundred metres of our location.”
“This isn’t Canada, Cas. I don’t speak Metric.”
“Nor am I a calculator, Dean.”
Dean glowers, but damned if he’s going to point out that Castiel’s angel brain is like an untapped well of information-simple unit conversion is probably one of the pre-loaded applications. He’s just being a dick again, and in no way is Dean the cause of that. “Fine. We wait. You just go ahead and let me know whenever ‘it’ comes closer than two hundred metres.”
Silence descends again, and rather than the sharp slap of awkwardness that so often occurs between him and Sammy whenever the subject of Hell or Sam’s mysterious reappearance comes up, to Dean this is a slow choke, like the car is being sucked gradually into a sinkhole. Since he’s usually the source of the discomfort, Castiel doesn’t tend to notice awkwardness in social situations, but from his restless shuffling on the passenger side, Dean can tell that he does now.
Eventually Cas says, “I do not understand what I have done to make you upset,” and glances once at Dean before looking away. The dim illumination of the streetlamps only darkens his confused expression, and the tight set of his posture screams ‘uncomfortable’ to Dean. Normally, Dean would accuse Castiel of being deliberately obtuse, because he knows the angel understands a lot more about human interaction than he lets on, but there is a moment of guilty realization wherein it occurs to him that Cas might be genuinely puzzled by the tension between them.
For some reason, this only serves to make Dean more upset, and he tells himself it’s because he can’t abide how much Cas needs to get a clue sometimes. “You haven’t done anything, Cas,” he snaps, looking out at the quiet lake so that he doesn’t have to look at his face. Even before the next few words escape his mouth, he feels pretty disgusted by how unfair he’s acting. “You never do anything-don’t act, don’t choose. You just keep rollin’.”
“I’m guilty of a lot of things, but I didn’t think inaction was one of them,” replies Cas, sounding even more baffled, if that’s possible. Dean doesn’t need better lighting to know the expression on Cas’s face, the furrowed brow, the wrinkled nose.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what?” Castiel hesitates for a moment, which is in itself pretty weird, and his voice sounds exponentionally rougher when he speaks again. “Dean, are you asking me to… choose a side?” Dean can feel Castiel’s stare intensifying with each passing second that he doesn’t respond, but he remains moodily silent. “Dean.”
“I’m not askin’ you to choose anything.”
The angel gives an angry sigh. “Dean,” he says again, more insistently.
“What?”
“We are no longer at war,” Castiel points out, and for a moment Dean can appreciate that he’s trying his best not to sound patronizing, though he mostly fails. “Heaven is on the brink of one, however; you should understand that’s where I am needed most.”
This, Dean ignores; he understands perfectly, but he doesn’t have to agree. “Y’know,” he starts, “sides are easy to choose in a war. We went to war with Lucifer, and obviously we weren’t gonna swear any oaths of allegiance to that son of a bitch. Maybe your asshole Dad wasn’t my first choice, either, but we weren’t exactly swimmin’ in options. Not much of a choice, when you think about it.” Dean risks a look at Cas, and finds the angel watching him very, very closely-more closely even than normal. It sends a shiver down his spine, but not enough of one to shut him up. “I’ve always thought that what matters is the side you take when there isn’t a fire under your ass.”
“I’m a soldier, Dean,” Castiel says slowly. “Every moment of my existence has been spent fighting one war or another. My… my ass has never not been on fire.”
“Not every moment,” says Dean, uselessly. Cas shoots him that sidelong glance again, mouth thinning into a line that Dean recognizes as the expression he makes when he’s at a loss for words. He knows they are both thinking about the same thing-the times where they didn’t fight. Dean would remember them more fondly if they didn’t make him feel like shit.
Cas sits and stares at his hands for a long time. It’s unnerving, but Dean can’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t just antagonize him further-so he stays silent. After several minutes go by he begins to wonder if Cas hasn’t finished with the conversation altogether, but then the angel says quietly, “You might not think that I miss how it was before, but I do.” Dean waits for more but it doesn’t come.
“Yeah, well, you don’t show it,” he says with a huff.
“What would that achieve, other than to make us both miserable?”
This comment hits home, but then, Dean’s already as close to miserable as he’s been in a while. More than anything he wants to say that it’s seriously awful trying to deal with the feeling that he’s lost Sammy all over again-if he ever really got him back-but at least last time he had Cas to temper the loneliness. However unlikely a confessor Castiel turned out to be, Dean’s had enough time to reflect upon the idea that the apocalypse might have gone very differently without Cas around to interpret all the things Dean didn’t know how to express, the personal demons he could never exorcise alone. A profound bond, indeed, but the foundations are crumbling beneath his fingertips. There’s a lot he still doesn’t know how to say, but for the first time he’s getting the sense that he isn’t the only one.
He opens his mouth to respond with something-anything, frankly-but a rush of lights flaring to life in one of the houses captures their attention. Followed by a woman’s scream that is audible even from this distance, it’s like the Winchester version of saved by the bell. In perfect synchronicity, Dean and Cas exchange a look.
“Go time,” Dean mutters, and puts a hand on the door, but Castiel’s fingers close around his wrist instead and then they are both inside the house. Dean is momentarily too startled to glare, and fights through the sucker-punch of mojo-nausea to assess their surroundings.
After a year of working construction, he’s picked up an annoying habit of noticing the interior build of houses before he even realizes he’s doing it. His first thought is that the house is nice but too open-concept to seem structurally sound, but Cas, who for some reason is still gripping Dean’s wrist like he’s worried they’ll become separated at the zoo, tugs at his arm and says, “Dean,” under his breath. Whenever Cas says his name like that-and by now Dean could recognize over two hundred and forty-five variations upon that one syllable-he knows it means Very Bad Things. For some reason Castiel’s look of distress impresses this fact upon him even more than the woman’s startled shrieks. Dean follows his gaze, and immediately sees why.
Crouched on the wood floor is a Hellhound, muzzle-deep in a housecat’s belly.
“Holy fuck,” Dean whispers, and doesn’t realize that his legs are propelling him backwards until his shoulders collide with the front door. Grimacing, Cas is pulled along with him, but his expression softens the moment he picks up on Dean’s ragged breathing and terrified stance. It’s all Dean can do to stop himself from clawing at the door like an animal desperate to escape, but it barely occurs to him that he shouldn’t be able to see the creature before him.
Of the few things that truly terrify Dean to the bone, Hellhounds top the list; for years he dreamed about Hell almost as much as the monsters which dragged him there in pieces. He more than anyone can appreciate the sulphurous stink, the aggrieved baying too deep and too haunting to be that of a living animal, the glaring red eyes and living mass of skin that seems made of writhing, human figures. Over forty years have passed and he can still describe the feel of claws ripping him open, teeth biting down, goring; if he can be grateful for anything, it’s that Jo and Ellen never saw the face of what killed them, even though Dean could picture it in his mind for months afterwards. This immediate recoil response is embarrassing for him as a Hunter, but his body simply refuses to obey the mind’s commands to move.
At first, Castiel doesn’t appear to understand, but when realization dawns he moves quickly, zapping himself to the woman’s side in order to put her to sleep and spirit her someplace safer. Dean still hasn’t budged when he reappears a moment later, but a small part of him feels satisfied that even Cas skirts around the animal with something resembling caution. They’re both looking at the beast and waiting for it to notice their presence, but attack seems to be the farthest thing from its mind as it continues to gorge itself on cat innards. Were it not for the obscene amount of blood glinting off its fangs and muzzle, it would look about as pleased as any canine digging into a meal, little wufs of pleasure escaping from its throat between bites.
“Cas,” Dean forces out, strangled. The angel is next to him in a heartbeat. “You need to get me out of here. Right now.”
“You’re panicking,” Castiel says, though for whose benefit isn’t clear. His face is warm and concerned when he situates himself directly in Dean’s field of vision, managing to block out the sight of the hound. Dean almost doesn’t register the feel of the angel’s hands on either side of his face. His arms and legs are starting to grow heavy, numb, pressure asserting itself upon his chest. It feels like a heart attack and could very well be one, for all he knows. “Dean, what you need is to breathe.”
“Please, Cas.” He shakes his head violently, once to each side against Castiel’s palms. The way his eyes frantically want to seek out the tableau a few feet away reminds him of how, as a kid, Sammy never used to be able to look away from a movie that petrified him too much to talk.
“I will not allow anything to happen to you,” Cas murmurs to him, and for a moment the angel’s forehead comes to rest against his own. Regaining his wits somewhat, Dean forces his eyelids closed and exhales a stuttering breath, and Cas takes this as a sign to keep talking. “You’re safe with me; there is no immediate danger. Look.”
“No.” He screws his eyes shut tighter and tries to clutch at his chest, where the pressure is greatest. The cant of his breathing is laboured and too fast; if Dean keeps this up he’s going to pass out, but his head is already spinning.
“I believe you’re having an anxiety attack,” says Castiel. “Calm down.” His voice is low in Dean’s ear. Some of the feeling returns to Dean’s hands and he realizes that he has taken a giant fistful of Castiel’s coat and is holding tight. Maybe Cas is right and he isn’t having a heart attack, but he wants to be. “Something about this isn’t right, Dean. If you take a deep breath and think about it, you know what I’m saying is true. We would both be dead by now if this creature is truly what it appears.”
“Why can I see it?” whispers Dean. For reasons he can’t analyze in his current state, he pushes his face against Castiel’s neck and breathes in his familiar, calming scent that’s like nothing else on Earth. Dean catches the brief shudder that goes through him, but Cas doesn’t shove him away.
“I think that only proves my point.” One of his hands leaves Dean’s face to touch his hair, gently drawing his head back. “You’re stronger than your memories of Hell, Dean,” he murmurs, and Dean opens his eyes enough to see Castiel staring back, intense as ever. Not for the first time- or the last, he’d guess-he wants to tell Cas to check the irrational faith he has in him at the door.
Instead, he inhales raggedly, rasping, “This is so fucked up.”
Surprisingly, Castiel nods, but doesn’t relinquish his grip, and from the determined set of his jaw Dean can tell he has no intentions of doing so until Dean is right. It’s one of those private, indefinable things between them, this ability to know what they need from each other, and when. Despite the bond he once shared with Sam, it’s not something Dean’s been able to say of his brother for a long time.
Dean closes his eyes again and tries to block out the noises coming from the Hellhound a few feet away, concentrating instead on the heat of the angel’s palm against his skin as he wills his heartbeat to slow down and his breathing to become regular. It does, incrementally, and he can feel Castiel begin to relax into his body, the tension bleeding out of him along with Dean’s. He steps away as Dean sighs, but only just far enough to give him space to move; when Dean flexes his fingers nervously, their hands touch. After a moment Dean pulls his eyes away from Castiel’s face, and looks. Though his gaze lingers a second longer, Castiel eventually does the same.
Finding itself the object of their attention, the Hellhound’s ears give a twitch and it pauses, licking the blood from its mouth as it raises its eyes from its meal. At this, Dean starts-the Hellhound’s eyes are not crimson, but a shade of reddish amber that, while not totally natural, wouldn’t be amiss on a common dog. There is something athletic and muscular about its build that reminds Dean a bit of a Doberman, a similar type of crisp, pointed alertness about its ears and snout. Were it not for the sulphurous smoke curling off its scaly, angry coat, seeming by its own rights a living thing, he might have guessed it was just a family dog gone feral. The creature makes a whining sound and sits back on its haunches, head tilted, tail thumping lightly against the floor. Only after staring for a full minute, getting his hackles back down and attempting not to lose his shit again, does Dean realize that something is definitely off about the Hellhound’s proportions, to say nothing of its behaviour.
He furrows his brow, but without glancing at Cas, says, “Does something seem off about-”
“Its size?” Castiel finishes for him. There’s another nod, an answering frown. “Yes. I have never seen a Hellhound so small.” Even his eyebrows seem perplexed. “This is highly unusual.”
“Overstating it as usual, Cas,” Dean huffs, although he’s momentarily grateful to have something to concentrate on other than the freak of nature in front of him. “The fact that we’re dealing with a runty cat eater gets no complaints from my end.” Ignoring the residual tremors in his hand, Dean fishes his gun from the waistband of his jeans. “Easier to kill, I’m thinking.” The thing’s tail is actually wagging at him now.
Castiel throws out a hand that catches Dean across the stomach, but he gets the point across when he prevents Dean from moving closer. “Wait,” he says, voice tight. “Do you not think we should… observe it?” The eyes he turns on Dean are wide and very blue, but Dean’s fucked if he doesn’t actually detect an edge of a pout in his expression.
“Did you come here to do science, or to get the job done?” he demands. “They holding a biology fair in Heaven?” To his credit, Cas glowers but doesn’t dignify that with a response. Dean feels his anxiety slowly turning to anger, and that at least is a relief. “I want to get the fuck out of here.”
“We have a rare opportunity to study a live Hellhound’s behaviour when it is not on the attack,” Castiel says. “Perhaps even use it to our advantage.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “The only ‘advantage’ we currently have is the fact that this thing seems to be retarded.” He can’t believe he actually has to explain this shit. “That can quickly change if we start messing with it, so I say we put a bullet in its face and go home.”
“There’s no guarantee that shooting it will not change that, either,” answers Cas. He sounds so damned reasonable that Dean rolls his eyes. “The last Hellhound you killed-”
“Yeah, I was there,” Dean snaps. “Cas, this isn’t the time to go off the reservation on me, okay? I get enough of that shit from Sam. We’ve got a job to do, so let’s do it. This place is giving me hives.”
He elbows his way past the angel, but finds himself staring into Cas’s “stubborn face” that can only mean one thing-Dean just got vetoed, though since when he became the careful one is beyond him. As he sidesteps Dean and falls into a crouch, Castiel shoots him one final look of contempt from over his shoulder, and then focuses back on the Hellhound. It eyes Cas as he makes his approach, and if Dean knew anything about animals-which is pretty funny, considering that Cas probably knows even less-he’d guess the sporadic thumping of its tail might signify wariness. There’s no growling or baring of teeth, but all the same Dean has visions of Castiel’s face getting torn off the moment he’s within reach. He keeps his distance and rests his index finger upon the trigger just in case.
“Should we bait it with something?” Cas wonders. His distant tone suggests he’s just thinking out loud, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“I’m not having this conversation,” he replies anyway.
The Hellhound still hasn’t budged from its sitting position when Cas settles himself onto his knees in front of it and sits back on his heels, the mangled cat a line in the sand between them. From what Dean can see, the Hellhound looks even smaller next to Castiel, barely reaching his chin. Every square foot of the foyer smells like rotting death, to which Cas seems oblivious; he’s looking at the dog so intently that there appears to be some kind of a Vulcan mind-meld taking place. Dean half expects Castiel to start communicating with the creature in a series of woofs and growls.
In spite of himself, he suggests, “Maybe put your hand out?” From what he can remember of Crowley’s Hound, it seemed to behave mostly like a normal dog… when it wasn’t busy relieving people of their entrails.
“I don’t want to get bitten,” Castiel answers, and Dean can hear the exasperation in his voice from way over here.
“Animals like to smell new people,” Dean scoffs. “I guess it’s kind of an animal.” Hearing himself, he shakes his head and mutters, For fuck’s sake, under his breath. “This is so stupid, Cas. I’m leaving.” He doesn’t move.
Cas puts his hand out and the Hellhound dips its head, its pointed nose coming within a half-inch of the proffered fingers while the rest of its body remains safely at a distance. It sniffs for what seems like a stone’s age, eyes flickering from Castiel’s hand up to his face. Eventually its ears perk up and it withdraws with a frantic wag of its long tail that sets Dean on edge. For all he knows, these things get riled up just before they’re about to go after a tasty, angel-shaped snack. When the Hellhound begins dancing its front paws and bows its body in the classic signal for, “Let’s play!”, chest to the ground and tail waving in the air, Dean officially has no fucking idea. To his credit, Castiel frowns and glances back at him in confusion.
A sharp, excited bark splits the silence of the foyer, and both Dean and Castiel give a start. Just as Castiel begins to come to his senses and back away, the Hellhound gives a meagre ‘ruff’ of annoyance and fidgets about for another moment, before it rears up on its hind legs and springs forward. Its paws connect squarely with Castiel’s shoulders and the angel falls backwards with surprise. There are bloody pawprints all over his trenchcoat and white shirt, though this is nothing compared to the slime of blood and saliva that coats his neck and face when the Hellhound applies itself to the task of eagerly licking every bit of Castiel’s skin it can reach.
Castiel makes a startled grunt and says, “Dean!” who clicks the safety off his gun but can’t rightly decide how to respond. Were it not for the blood and gore and rank stench of sulphur everywhere, this would be a panel straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
“Dean, what do I do?!” Cas yells, and though he’s managed to get his hands around the Hellhound’s muzzle, he seems undecided as to whether to punch the thing in the face.
Dean makes a mental note that this is not the right time to think about how hilarious Cas looks. He pats himself down for anything that could be used as to restrain the beast, and comes up empty-handed. Glancing back at Cas, he gets a sudden brainwave and says, “Cas, gimme your tie,” and gestures impatiently at the angel’s look of confusion. “C’mon!”
He begins fumbling with the scrap of blue fabric around his neck, trying to avert his face away from the Hellhound’s teeth and stinking breath, and when he’s managed to undo the knot, flings it in Dean’s general vicinity. Dean hesitates before swooping in to grab the discarded tie; he can’t help it. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickle in alarm the closer he gets, and the kick of his fight-or-flight tilts definitively in the direction of ‘flight’ with everything he’s worth. He doesn’t believe that Cas is in immediate danger, but he can’t bring himself to leave him there, trapped beneath the Hellhound’s weight as much as his indecision about what to do with it. Were their roles reversed, Dean hopes that Cas would be there to help him.
Edging closer, he sucks in a breath and grits his teeth before dropping in as close as he can to loop the tie around the Hellhound’s neck. He forces the shaking of his hands under control long enough to slide the knot forward, effectively leashing it. Naturally, the Hellhound goes berserk, unused to restraint, and there’s no small amount of resistance as Dean yanks back on the tie, pulling as hard as he can in order to release Castiel. Shoving against the Hellhound’s slippery chest, Cas springs to his feet as soon as he’s able. The creature whines piteously, jerking its head back and forth, but Dean almost sighs in relief when Castiel circles around and closes his hand around Dean’s, relieving him of the tie. He and the Hellhound are more or less evenly matched in strength, even for an animal of this size; Dean can see the corded tension in Castiel’s slender wrists as he attempts to get the Hellhound under control, and he wonders what the command is for ‘heel’ in Hell.
In spite of himself, Dean smirks at the picture of a spit-slimy and bloody Castiel trying to restrain an unruly Hellhound, but he backs away nevertheless. When their eyes meet, he reads alarm in Castiel’s gaze.
“Now what?” he asks belligerently.
“I don’t know,” Cas answers honestly. “Dean, I think…” He swallows slightly, and furrows his brow down at the Hellhound. “I think we have a very young animal on our hands. A baby, in fact.”
“Wait a minute,” Dean says, holding up his hands. “You’re saying you think this is a Hellhound puppy? Seriously?” It’s an absolutely cracked idea, but the more he considers it, the more sense it seems to make. Limited though his experience with Hellhounds may be, he’s never known one of them to be so small, or so… playful. It’s like they went down to the pound and got themselves a frisky Labrador pup, all excited energy and boundless love. “That still don’t explain why I can see it, Cas. Do you think Hellhounds only become invisible to humans as they age?”
Without hesitation, Cas says, “No. They are always invisible to human eyes, and Hellhounds do not grow in the way that you would understand. They simply exist; they are a part of Hell, formed by Lucifer’s own hands after the Fall.” He cocks his head, considering. “Since Sam imprisoned Lucifer in the cage, their numbers should be finite.”
“I hope this means you got some ideas,” Dean grumbles. “I don’t like it.”
“I must observe its behaviour more closely in order to formulate any kind of hypothesis,” Cas tells him, frowning. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, I can agree with you there,” snorts Dean, “but I think a more pressing concern is what the hell you plan to do with this thing.”
Still frowning, Castiel gnaws at his lip for a moment before he sighs, and looks at Dean. “You’re right.” He pauses, and Dean knows that expression on his face so well that he knows he won’t like what comes next. Sure enough, Castiel nods to himself, and lifts his eyes to stare at Dean intently before he says, “I will see you back at the house, Dean.” And then, both he and the Hellhound are gone.
“Oh, hell no-” Dean staggers back when he realizes exactly what this means. Repressing the urge to scream at the empty house, he throws his hands up and stares resignedly at the ceiling. “Cas, you motherfucker.”
Part Two
AUTHOR: nanoochka
CHARACTERS: Dean/Castiel, Sam, Crowley, Gramps Campbell
RATING: Hard R for violence, gore, swearing, and sexual situations
SUMMARY: Two weird cases, two different locations: Sam and Dean are forced to split up when calls from Samuel and Cas divide their attention between Iowa and Michigan, thinking that they might be dealing with two separate cases of Alphas. Although Cas is supposedly there to help, Dean’s lost trust in the angel’s priorities in the past year, and can’t help but feel that he’s running interference as Dean discovers that the rash of brutal animal slayings in the town of Springville are a symptom of something truly perverse.
WORD COUNT: This part: 8,430. Overall: 23,509 (The fuck?)
WARNINGS: Violence against domestic animals, slime
SPOILERS: Post-6x04, but kind of diverges from canon after that. It made more sense when I started writing it.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights to Supernatural or any of its associated content. No infringement intended. Eat it, Kripke.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Written for spn_reversebang . This is my first experience with writing for a fic challenge, and it’s been interesting, considering that the challenge was for 5000 words, and I wrote almost five times that amount. I’m still undecided as to whether or not I like deadlines, or if it just makes me think of grad school. :/ It was definitely a nice exercise in writing case!fic, which I’ve never done before; I don’t know that I see a lot in my future, but I definitely have a greater appreciation for those who do it well, including the show writers.
In the meantime, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for sansday for swooping in with her fantastic beta, which both motivated me to cross the finish line and gave me a big boost of confidence. Love also to miki_moo , who served as my one-woman cheerleading squad and, naturally, the inspiration to begin writing this at all. It’s a huge help to have an artist and a beta so firmly in your corner when you’re bitching about deadlines and in need of hand-holding, so these two wonderful people are as much to thank for this story as anything else. Finally, all my hugs and kisses to bauble for putting up with all my challenge questions, the late-night bitchfests, and for all the hard work she’s done moderating the challenge, along with ksock , julia_sets and attempt_unique . I wish you all lots of porn in your future, because I know this wasn’t easy.
Also, for the record, a big ol’ FU to Show for scamming my title. That is all.
Artist: miki_moo
Art Masterpost
Fic Masterpost
Not All Dogs Go to Heaven - Part 1/3 by nanoochka
As soon as the Impala roars past the sign that says, “Welcome to Springville: Population 1,850” and its first wave of cheerful, cookie-cutter houses, Dean begins to worry that the universe has conspired to domesticate his ass for the rest of his natural life.
He’s gonna kill Cas, and then he’s gonna kill Sam, and then he’s gonna sit back and see whether God has a three-strike policy when it comes to resurrections.
The calls came just two days before, almost simultaneously, the first from Samuel and the second from Castiel. His brother got the call from Grampa Campbell, of course, because even if Samuel is a lot of things starting with “sketch” and ending with “bag”, the man knows better than to call Dean directly, not when the relationship is still so new, so tenuous. Dean’s still getting over how readily Samuel handed baby Bobby John over to Christian, if the whole back-from-the-dead thing weren’t bad enough. Articulating the extent to which the whole family reunion feels wrong to him would take far longer than Dean can afford to spend on the subject, but in a weird way he appreciates the distance his grandfather keeps between them, or rather allows for Dean to keep between them, choosing to communicate with Sam instead.
According to Samuel, some weird shit is going on in small-town Iowa; and just outside of Grand Rapids, MI, according to Cas. In both cases there’s activity that seems to fit the description of another Alpha. They’re popping up all over the place, now, rapidly enough that the Winchester-Campbell team takes notice whenever something falls into their laps. While Iowa and Michigan aren’t painfully distant, they’re far enough away from each other that splitting up seems the only logical choice. It’s painfully obvious that Sam is going to stick with their grandfather and the other two that Dean would just as soon punch as look at them, family or not.
That pretty much leaves him to Cas. Same shit, different day, really.
Before the showdown with Lucifer, things were more or less at the point where Cas would talk to either of them, demonstrating a level of trust around Sam that hadn’t previously existed, at least not when he’d first pulled Dean out of Hell. Now things seem to be back the way they were, with Cas inexplicitly avoiding Sam and conducting all his business through Dean instead. To that end, Dean’s warning went unheeded, because Cas still doesn’t pick up the phone when Sam dials. It’s nothing he’s said out loud, and certainly he doesn’t protest to being in the same room with both brothers; but Dean knows his body language, his tells, can read from the tense set of Castiel’s shoulders that he trusts Sam’s return about as much as Dean, that something about it is not right.
A part of Dean wants to be smug about the fact that Cas ignored Sam’s prayers for a year, only to come running the second Dean called his name, but it also twists something in his chest that he doesn’t much like. It’s too simple, all of it, and Dean has about as much use for simple as he does a dick on his forehead. It’d been easy enough to say, We should call Cas, when the locusts and plague symptoms had started appearing a few weeks before, but Sam can’t understand how long it took Dean to put aside his personal mission to shun the angel-the most childish, vindictive way he could think of to respond to Castiel returning to Heaven without so much as a goodbye. Profound bond, his ass. At the time that Dean first went to live with Lisa and Ben, he’d promised himself he’d never utter Castiel’s name again, and that held up pretty well until Sam came back. Now he’s just fucked, and feeling inconsistent about the whole thing besides.
Anyone who says that Dean Winchester can’t carry a grudge would be wrong.
As per Castiel’s instructions, Dean navigates his way through all 2.5 streets of downtown Springville to 48 Coldwater Avenue, a quiet, suburban neighbourhood identical to every other he’s seen. The angel is lounging against a support beam on the front porch of the small, detached home when Dean pulls up to the curb out front, arms folded and smug in what he guesses is Castiel’s M.O. now. Every house is a variation of the same basic design, and this one in particular has no distinguishing feature save for the fact that it’s offensively pink.
“Are we here to investigate the owner’s questionable taste in plastic siding?” Dean quips as he climbs out of the car, and tries not to bristle under the laserbeam intensity of Castiel’s old, entirely familiar stare.
“This house does not currently have an owner,” Castiel replies lightly, which doesn’t really answer Dean’s question at all, but okay.
He hasn’t seen much of the angel since they were forced to deal with Raphael last month-and boy, does that sonuvabitch not bring up memories of happier times spent addressing the matter of Castiel’s virginity-and for a moment Dean thinks he registers a gleam of something in Castiel’s eyes that could mean anything from, Hey, good to see you again, to, Let’s get this over with. Since they aren’t exactly besties these days, he’s betting on the latter.
“You were a little vague over the phone,” Dean reminds him, for what might actually now be the thirtieth time. “Is this where the mysterious incident took place?”
“My lack of detail was not without good cause,” answers Cas, “and no. I directed you to this house because it is currently unoccupied. I believe the previous owners were evicted.” He steps across the porch and opens the door so easily that it might have been unlocked, although from the slight crunch of metal and wood Dean knows that it wasn’t. Castiel motions for him to enter, but Dean doesn’t move.
“That’s fascinating,” he deadpans, and after giving Castiel a look gestures in the direction of his car. “I know you’ve been outta the game for a while, Cas, but in my line of work I generally like to get right in the action and investigate the actual scene-not waste time going on property viewings.”
“I appropriated this location to save you the trouble of getting a hotel room,” says Cas. He gives a little sniff that could indicate offence or haughtiness, or both, or neither-Dean no longer knows with the guy. “By my estimation you’ll be here for a few days at least; I thought it would be ideal to have a base of operations, as it were.” For a few moments he just watches Dean for a reaction, and when he doesn’t get one, he huffs in frustration. “Very well, let’s visit the scene now and I’ll leave you to worry about your own accommodations.”
He starts to pull the door closed again, but Dean throws his hand out after a split-second decision. The thought of spending more than a day in this town doesn’t thrill him to the core, but it’s sort of to be expected and Cas has a point about the motel. Now that Dean’s no longer holding down a regular job, it isn’t his place to start throwing money around when he doesn’t have to. He could hustle some pool, but he’s been out of the game a bit too long to jump back into conning drunken truckers like in the old days.
“Okay, okay,” he gripes. “Don’t get pissy, we’ll do it your way. What do you got so far?”
Throwing the barest of self-satisfied looks over his shoulder, Castiel strides into the foyer of the house and pushes he door shut behind Dean. The inside is about as underwhelming as the exterior, if less violently coloured. With curiosity, Dean notes that it’s furnished, homey even, and then remembers that the previous resident got evicted. Keeping his boots on, Dean strolls through the ground floor of the house to the kitchen, which is small but brightly lit and overlooks a pleasant enough backyard.
“This town caught my attention several days ago,” Castiel begins, following Dean to the table. When he sits, Dean decides to remain standing, and fiddles with drawers and cupboards as a distraction. They’re all empty, so he quickly gives up and settles for fidgeting his hands instead. “A number of local pets have been disappearing one after the other, which would not be much cause for alarm were it not for reports of howling at night.”
Dean makes something like a snort. “So? Sounds like a wolf escaped from the zoo to me.”
“A town of this size does not have a zoo,” Castiel answers solemnly, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“Okay, so feel free to substitute any wild predator of your choice, here. They do get coyotes in Michigan, Cas. I don’t crawl out of bed for anything less than a werewolf, so you better be going somewhere good with this.” Dean folds his arms, and manages to hold back on a sneer when Cas gazes calmly back.
“A werewolf was my first thought, as it so happens,” he says. “But the disappearances have been happening outside of the full moon, and with no reported threats to the local townsfolk. Very unusual behaviour for a werewolf, at any rate.”
“D’you think we’re maybe dealing with another Alpha?” Forgetting his petty grudge for a moment as he goes into investigative mode, Dean pulls out a chair and settles himself at the table across from Castiel. The angel is looking at him impassively, but Dean knows he’s listening from the way his eyes track the movements of Dean’s facial expressions, his hands. “That shifter Alpha we tangled with, it could summon its abilities at any time and without having to shed its skin. What are the odds of there being a werewolf Alpha out there somewhere? Maybe it can transform at will, and without the full moon.”
Castiel is considering, but skeptical. “There is every possibility that your theory is correct, but no lore to indicate that a werewolf Alpha would restrain itself in such a way, and restrict its feeding only to small animals.” Dean’s been waiting for it, and sure enough, there’s that slow head-tilt. “It is rare enough to encounter a common werewolf that can repress its hunger for human flesh; an Alpha simply wouldn’t care.”
“It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that ever happened,” Dean suggests, and even as the words leave his mouth he’s thinking, Yeah, right. He attempts to make up for it with an ironic grin in Castiel’s direction, which receives a quirky smile in response.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Cas agrees. “But our luck is seldom if ever that good.” He has a point.
“Have you tuned in to any weird vibes?” asks Dean, figuring it couldn’t hurt to check. They haven’t really talked about it, but he knows the parameters of Cas’s power are a bit bigger these days; the way the angel zaps from place to place without any apparent effort suggests as much. If anyone out there has the ability to sense the presence of spooky shit, it’s him.
True to form, there’s a nod. “I have,” says Castiel. “There’s something I can’t put my finger on, which is why I brought you here. I thought you might be able to pick up on something that I’ve missed.”
“There’s a lot that you’ve missed,” Dean retorts, without thinking. One of Castiel’s eyebrows lift, but he doesn’t address the comment. Dean tries to move on without making too big a deal about it. “I guess I can stick around for a few days to see if something comes up. Maybe take a look at the town records or talk to animal control, find out if anything like this has happened before. Sam Squared and the Wonder Campbells are looking after the thing in Iowa, so it’s not like I’m needed right away.”
For a beat, Castiel just looks at him, blue eyes searching Dean’s face so thoroughly that Dean feels uncomfortable. He thinks he knows what Castiel’s going to ask, but then he says instead, “Any new theories on how your family was brought back to Earth?” The way he looks down at his hands immediately afterwards suggests to Dean that he’s a bit embarrassed, though about what he hasn’t a clue-about having not cracked the puzzle himself, yet. Probably.
“No, but we aren’t talking about that,” Dean says firmly. “Let’s just figure this shit out and get back to our lives. I’m sure you’re itching to ditch this plane again,” he adds, and if he’s actually starting to sound like an embittered fourteen-year-old girl at this stage, he doesn’t care.
“Efficient as always,” murmurs Castiel, and he moves to stand. In the tax accountant outfit, he looks uncomfortable and out of place in such a domestic setting as a suburban kitchen. “Let’s not keep you waiting, then.” With that, he blips out.
Yet again Dean feels like he’s left standing around with his dick in his hand, and he sighs. “Great. Go team.”
After changing into the suit and tie he packed just in case, Dean spends the rest of that day visiting the Springville police department and local animal control. Without Cas and his otherness around to confuse anyone and slow Dean down, he infiltrates the police station with no more difficulty than if he’d walked into a bar on a Friday night. Naturally, no one can figure out why a rash of dog and cat abductions would be of interest to the FBI, but Dean plays it off like similar occurrences have happened in neighbouring towns. He just about gets away with it, but thinks the law enforcement in this town wouldn’t know a con if it bit their ears off. The whole thing continues to scream bullshit until he discovers that half the pets disappeared from within their own homes, usually around the same time that witnesses from the neighbourhood reported sounds of baying and howling in the night. As far as police could tell, there were scratch marks and signs of struggle as the poor critters fought for their lives, but nothing to indicate the presence of another animal, or even a prankster-no sign of the remains, either. They were writing it off as the world’s most stealth coyote, and god damn if Dean isn’t ready to split before he’s even been there a full day.
Cas continues to make himself scarce, but he pops up again on Dean’s second night in town. By that point Dean is considering fucking off just to stick it to him, and let Cas deal with the case by himself.
“So glad you could remember about us mud monkeys down here,” Dean says when he appears, referencing the term he’d heard Uriel use a few times, back in the day.
He’s seated on a couch in the living room, drinking beer and picking half-heartedly at a pizza he had to collect himself, because he didn’t want to risk getting delivery to a house that’s supposedly unoccupied. To avoid further suspicion, all the lights are off; Dean’s reading an old copy of Fahrenheit 451 by flashlight, back shutters drawn against the inquisitive eyes of neighbours. His back is killing him from the few hours he spent trolling about in the woods just outside of town, looking for evidence of predators or werewolf activity, of which he found neither. He doesn’t like to admit that Castiel looks a bit stressed, too, like he’s just come back from a rough day at the office; but since Castiel supposedly runs the office, Dean decides he doesn’t care. He didn’t sign up for a solo job.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“A small unit of angels decided to defect to Nicaragua,” Castiel says, voice clipped and harassed-sounding. He takes a seat next to Dean on the couch, and Dean can feel the slump of his shoulders even from where their arms barely touch. “I was attempting to get things under control. Why are you reading in the dark?”
Dean snorts into his beer. “I’m not exactly supposed to be here, dude. Remember?” He thinks he sees Castiel’s eyes shining at him in the dark with amusement, and Dean resists the urge to point the flashlight beam directly into his face.
“I have cloaked your presence to onlookers,” he says, a trace of a smirk seeping into his tone. “You needn’t worry about being detected.”
Throwing down his book, Dean huffs aggressively and pushes himself up from the couch. “Thanks a lot. You couldn’t have mentioned this to me when I got here? I’ve been stumbling around in the dark for two days; my eyes feel like they’re fucked beyond all repair.”
“It must have escaped my attention.”
“I’m really loving the new you with an extra side of asshole, Cas,” Dean grates out. “Did you show up just to aggravate me, or are you actually here to help for a change?”
Castiel also stands, but ignores the comment except for a not-smirk. “There are things to be done tonight,” he informs Dean.
“Like what, exactly?” Dean asks, and once again he gets the feeling that he’s missing a big chunk of the puzzle. Although he doesn’t know why, there’s this nagging suspicion that Castiel’s probably hiding important information from him; he remembers when he used to trust Cas with almost anything. He now knows that Castiel has the capacity to get embarrassed about certain things beyond his control, but Dean can’t help with what he doesn’t know. “Did you find something?”
“Likely it’s nothing,” Cas says, “but I have managed to pinpoint a more precise location for the strange energy signature I mentioned. I thought you and I could engage in a stakeout.” He scrubs a hand through his hair and for a minute he looks exactly like the old Cas, rumpled and stressed out and with no one to confide in but Dean.
Shaking off the memory, Dean shrugs. “When you put it that way, it sounds like a real riot. I don’t suppose you brought donuts?”
Much to Dean’s dismay, Castiel’s eyes drop to Dean’s waistline and a singular eyebrow arches. For a whole three seconds Dean thinks the angel is being serious when he intones, “You aren’t getting any younger, Dean,” before he realizes that Cas is actually fucking with him. Apparently that’s something he does now, along with air quotes and torturing children. It raises Dean’s hackles, and if it’s a choice between running in the opposite direction and sitting Cas down for a serious chat, he doesn’t know which is the right one.
“Cute,” he shoots back, and heads for the door. “I’m not getting any more patient, neither.” Without bothering to see where it lands, Dean tosses the flashlight behind him in the direction of the couch. A grunt from Castiel that indicates that he probably took it in the chest, but Dean can’t even bring himself to feel smug about it.
Cas blips out twice during the car ride to the other side of town, which, all told, takes about ten minutes; the third time he’s about to disappear, Dean catches the faraway look he tends to get when he realizes he’s needed elsewhere, or that he left the oven turned on, and grabs the angel by the tie before he can go anywhere. Surprisingly, it works, and the look Castiel returns is wide-eyed and guilty.
“Can you freaking quit it?” Dean hisses, releasing his tie with more force than is necessary, strictly speaking or otherwise. He knows he’s being a bit testy, but Castiel’s here-one-minute-gone-the-next routine seems to be on overdrive lately. It’s bugging the hell out of Dean, who hates it when Castiel goes where he can’t follow-especially now that he knows there’s probably something going down on the other end that Castiel won’t talk about. “Either stay in the goddamn car, or get out and leave me to it. This back-and-forth thing is making me crazy.”
Rolling his eyes, Cas begins, “There are things-”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Big things afoot. Great. But you were the one who called me about this job, so at least have the decency to stick around for longer than a few minutes at a time before you’re off again. You’re either here, Cas, or you’re there-you can’t be both.” Honestly, Dean doesn’t mean for that to come out sounding like such an ultimatum, but now that it’s out he realizes he’s been thinking it all along. Unlike Lisa, Dean doesn’t believe it’s possible to settle for a little bit of two worlds and still be happy. He already knows he’ll never abandon hunting, and Castiel’s no different from him in that respect. But as it so happens, they’re on very different sides of that equation.
For a long, hard minute, Castiel does nothing more than look at him, taking in Dean’s angry grimace and his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. An undertone of barely-restrained impatience seeps into his tone as he says, “The very nature of my work, Dean, is to move between your world and mine. Why is this suddenly problematic for you?”
Dean snorts. “Right, and that worked out so well the last time you tried to play double agent, didn’t it, Cas?”
Not waiting for an answer, Dean makes a right as per Cas’s earlier directions, swinging the Impala around the corner so sharply that Cas is thrown into the door with an annoyed sound. Mentally, he apologizes to his baby for using her as the vehicle for his sudden passive-aggressiveness-literally, as it turns out-but he takes the next turn with no less violence. Surprisingly, Cas doesn’t engage Dean’s moodiness; he just braces himself between the door and the dashboard like Dean could crash the car at any moment, murder-suicide in the most spectacular way possible. He calms down after that, but to his embittered amusement Cas doesn’t relax his stance, or his glare.
They’re driving into the very outskirts of Springville, somewhere between suburb and country; the properties are large and surrounded by dense forest, the realm of the town’s most wealthy residents. The rest of the drive is completed in silence, Dean having snapped at Castiel not to hold his hand with the directions from the time they left the house. He follows the instructions they discussed beforehand without bothering to consult the angel for confirmation, and thinks that Castiel probably has to restrain himself from blurting out, “Right here,” or, “Left here,” every time Dean cuts it a little close. They pull up to a massive cul-de-sac that opens up at the very edge of the woods, four imposing mansions parked along the rim of a glimmering, tree-lined lake. Dean switches off the headlights and sidles up to the curb before killing the engine.
“Something is definitely here,” says Castiel, furrowing his brow at the rather picturesque surroundings. He looks to Dean for corroboration, but the only thing that feels off, to Dean, is the fact that people actually live in this kind of opulence-the garages look bigger than the house he’d shared with Lisa.
“Why would a werewolf move away from a populated area, to this?” Dean wonders out loud. It’s quiet, sure, but in his experience werewolves don’t really do peaceful all that well. “There’s hardly anywhere to feed, and you gotta figure it can’t be too concerned with hiding, if it’s been hitting targets in the middle of town up until now.”
“We still don’t know for sure that this is a werewolf,” Cas points out. His voice is cautious. “But I agree; whatever this is, its behaviour is becoming more strange, not less.”
“Well, I’m glad that you agree,” Dean mutters. Cas ignores him, and he grumbles to himself for a moment before piping up again. “Since you seem to suddenly be the expert, what do we do now?”
“I think we should wait,” Cas says, after a pause. “Perhaps something will make itself known.”
“You have no idea where this thing actually is, do you?” Dean’s eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline when he finally interprets Castiel’s indecisiveness for what it is.
Bizarrely, Castiel looks more relieved than annoyed. It’s worrying. “Not in the specific, no. I would place it within roughly two hundred metres of our location.”
“This isn’t Canada, Cas. I don’t speak Metric.”
“Nor am I a calculator, Dean.”
Dean glowers, but damned if he’s going to point out that Castiel’s angel brain is like an untapped well of information-simple unit conversion is probably one of the pre-loaded applications. He’s just being a dick again, and in no way is Dean the cause of that. “Fine. We wait. You just go ahead and let me know whenever ‘it’ comes closer than two hundred metres.”
Silence descends again, and rather than the sharp slap of awkwardness that so often occurs between him and Sammy whenever the subject of Hell or Sam’s mysterious reappearance comes up, to Dean this is a slow choke, like the car is being sucked gradually into a sinkhole. Since he’s usually the source of the discomfort, Castiel doesn’t tend to notice awkwardness in social situations, but from his restless shuffling on the passenger side, Dean can tell that he does now.
Eventually Cas says, “I do not understand what I have done to make you upset,” and glances once at Dean before looking away. The dim illumination of the streetlamps only darkens his confused expression, and the tight set of his posture screams ‘uncomfortable’ to Dean. Normally, Dean would accuse Castiel of being deliberately obtuse, because he knows the angel understands a lot more about human interaction than he lets on, but there is a moment of guilty realization wherein it occurs to him that Cas might be genuinely puzzled by the tension between them.
For some reason, this only serves to make Dean more upset, and he tells himself it’s because he can’t abide how much Cas needs to get a clue sometimes. “You haven’t done anything, Cas,” he snaps, looking out at the quiet lake so that he doesn’t have to look at his face. Even before the next few words escape his mouth, he feels pretty disgusted by how unfair he’s acting. “You never do anything-don’t act, don’t choose. You just keep rollin’.”
“I’m guilty of a lot of things, but I didn’t think inaction was one of them,” replies Cas, sounding even more baffled, if that’s possible. Dean doesn’t need better lighting to know the expression on Cas’s face, the furrowed brow, the wrinkled nose.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what?” Castiel hesitates for a moment, which is in itself pretty weird, and his voice sounds exponentionally rougher when he speaks again. “Dean, are you asking me to… choose a side?” Dean can feel Castiel’s stare intensifying with each passing second that he doesn’t respond, but he remains moodily silent. “Dean.”
“I’m not askin’ you to choose anything.”
The angel gives an angry sigh. “Dean,” he says again, more insistently.
“What?”
“We are no longer at war,” Castiel points out, and for a moment Dean can appreciate that he’s trying his best not to sound patronizing, though he mostly fails. “Heaven is on the brink of one, however; you should understand that’s where I am needed most.”
This, Dean ignores; he understands perfectly, but he doesn’t have to agree. “Y’know,” he starts, “sides are easy to choose in a war. We went to war with Lucifer, and obviously we weren’t gonna swear any oaths of allegiance to that son of a bitch. Maybe your asshole Dad wasn’t my first choice, either, but we weren’t exactly swimmin’ in options. Not much of a choice, when you think about it.” Dean risks a look at Cas, and finds the angel watching him very, very closely-more closely even than normal. It sends a shiver down his spine, but not enough of one to shut him up. “I’ve always thought that what matters is the side you take when there isn’t a fire under your ass.”
“I’m a soldier, Dean,” Castiel says slowly. “Every moment of my existence has been spent fighting one war or another. My… my ass has never not been on fire.”
“Not every moment,” says Dean, uselessly. Cas shoots him that sidelong glance again, mouth thinning into a line that Dean recognizes as the expression he makes when he’s at a loss for words. He knows they are both thinking about the same thing-the times where they didn’t fight. Dean would remember them more fondly if they didn’t make him feel like shit.
Cas sits and stares at his hands for a long time. It’s unnerving, but Dean can’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t just antagonize him further-so he stays silent. After several minutes go by he begins to wonder if Cas hasn’t finished with the conversation altogether, but then the angel says quietly, “You might not think that I miss how it was before, but I do.” Dean waits for more but it doesn’t come.
“Yeah, well, you don’t show it,” he says with a huff.
“What would that achieve, other than to make us both miserable?”
This comment hits home, but then, Dean’s already as close to miserable as he’s been in a while. More than anything he wants to say that it’s seriously awful trying to deal with the feeling that he’s lost Sammy all over again-if he ever really got him back-but at least last time he had Cas to temper the loneliness. However unlikely a confessor Castiel turned out to be, Dean’s had enough time to reflect upon the idea that the apocalypse might have gone very differently without Cas around to interpret all the things Dean didn’t know how to express, the personal demons he could never exorcise alone. A profound bond, indeed, but the foundations are crumbling beneath his fingertips. There’s a lot he still doesn’t know how to say, but for the first time he’s getting the sense that he isn’t the only one.
He opens his mouth to respond with something-anything, frankly-but a rush of lights flaring to life in one of the houses captures their attention. Followed by a woman’s scream that is audible even from this distance, it’s like the Winchester version of saved by the bell. In perfect synchronicity, Dean and Cas exchange a look.
“Go time,” Dean mutters, and puts a hand on the door, but Castiel’s fingers close around his wrist instead and then they are both inside the house. Dean is momentarily too startled to glare, and fights through the sucker-punch of mojo-nausea to assess their surroundings.
After a year of working construction, he’s picked up an annoying habit of noticing the interior build of houses before he even realizes he’s doing it. His first thought is that the house is nice but too open-concept to seem structurally sound, but Cas, who for some reason is still gripping Dean’s wrist like he’s worried they’ll become separated at the zoo, tugs at his arm and says, “Dean,” under his breath. Whenever Cas says his name like that-and by now Dean could recognize over two hundred and forty-five variations upon that one syllable-he knows it means Very Bad Things. For some reason Castiel’s look of distress impresses this fact upon him even more than the woman’s startled shrieks. Dean follows his gaze, and immediately sees why.
Crouched on the wood floor is a Hellhound, muzzle-deep in a housecat’s belly.
“Holy fuck,” Dean whispers, and doesn’t realize that his legs are propelling him backwards until his shoulders collide with the front door. Grimacing, Cas is pulled along with him, but his expression softens the moment he picks up on Dean’s ragged breathing and terrified stance. It’s all Dean can do to stop himself from clawing at the door like an animal desperate to escape, but it barely occurs to him that he shouldn’t be able to see the creature before him.
Of the few things that truly terrify Dean to the bone, Hellhounds top the list; for years he dreamed about Hell almost as much as the monsters which dragged him there in pieces. He more than anyone can appreciate the sulphurous stink, the aggrieved baying too deep and too haunting to be that of a living animal, the glaring red eyes and living mass of skin that seems made of writhing, human figures. Over forty years have passed and he can still describe the feel of claws ripping him open, teeth biting down, goring; if he can be grateful for anything, it’s that Jo and Ellen never saw the face of what killed them, even though Dean could picture it in his mind for months afterwards. This immediate recoil response is embarrassing for him as a Hunter, but his body simply refuses to obey the mind’s commands to move.
At first, Castiel doesn’t appear to understand, but when realization dawns he moves quickly, zapping himself to the woman’s side in order to put her to sleep and spirit her someplace safer. Dean still hasn’t budged when he reappears a moment later, but a small part of him feels satisfied that even Cas skirts around the animal with something resembling caution. They’re both looking at the beast and waiting for it to notice their presence, but attack seems to be the farthest thing from its mind as it continues to gorge itself on cat innards. Were it not for the obscene amount of blood glinting off its fangs and muzzle, it would look about as pleased as any canine digging into a meal, little wufs of pleasure escaping from its throat between bites.
“Cas,” Dean forces out, strangled. The angel is next to him in a heartbeat. “You need to get me out of here. Right now.”
“You’re panicking,” Castiel says, though for whose benefit isn’t clear. His face is warm and concerned when he situates himself directly in Dean’s field of vision, managing to block out the sight of the hound. Dean almost doesn’t register the feel of the angel’s hands on either side of his face. His arms and legs are starting to grow heavy, numb, pressure asserting itself upon his chest. It feels like a heart attack and could very well be one, for all he knows. “Dean, what you need is to breathe.”
“Please, Cas.” He shakes his head violently, once to each side against Castiel’s palms. The way his eyes frantically want to seek out the tableau a few feet away reminds him of how, as a kid, Sammy never used to be able to look away from a movie that petrified him too much to talk.
“I will not allow anything to happen to you,” Cas murmurs to him, and for a moment the angel’s forehead comes to rest against his own. Regaining his wits somewhat, Dean forces his eyelids closed and exhales a stuttering breath, and Cas takes this as a sign to keep talking. “You’re safe with me; there is no immediate danger. Look.”
“No.” He screws his eyes shut tighter and tries to clutch at his chest, where the pressure is greatest. The cant of his breathing is laboured and too fast; if Dean keeps this up he’s going to pass out, but his head is already spinning.
“I believe you’re having an anxiety attack,” says Castiel. “Calm down.” His voice is low in Dean’s ear. Some of the feeling returns to Dean’s hands and he realizes that he has taken a giant fistful of Castiel’s coat and is holding tight. Maybe Cas is right and he isn’t having a heart attack, but he wants to be. “Something about this isn’t right, Dean. If you take a deep breath and think about it, you know what I’m saying is true. We would both be dead by now if this creature is truly what it appears.”
“Why can I see it?” whispers Dean. For reasons he can’t analyze in his current state, he pushes his face against Castiel’s neck and breathes in his familiar, calming scent that’s like nothing else on Earth. Dean catches the brief shudder that goes through him, but Cas doesn’t shove him away.
“I think that only proves my point.” One of his hands leaves Dean’s face to touch his hair, gently drawing his head back. “You’re stronger than your memories of Hell, Dean,” he murmurs, and Dean opens his eyes enough to see Castiel staring back, intense as ever. Not for the first time- or the last, he’d guess-he wants to tell Cas to check the irrational faith he has in him at the door.
Instead, he inhales raggedly, rasping, “This is so fucked up.”
Surprisingly, Castiel nods, but doesn’t relinquish his grip, and from the determined set of his jaw Dean can tell he has no intentions of doing so until Dean is right. It’s one of those private, indefinable things between them, this ability to know what they need from each other, and when. Despite the bond he once shared with Sam, it’s not something Dean’s been able to say of his brother for a long time.
Dean closes his eyes again and tries to block out the noises coming from the Hellhound a few feet away, concentrating instead on the heat of the angel’s palm against his skin as he wills his heartbeat to slow down and his breathing to become regular. It does, incrementally, and he can feel Castiel begin to relax into his body, the tension bleeding out of him along with Dean’s. He steps away as Dean sighs, but only just far enough to give him space to move; when Dean flexes his fingers nervously, their hands touch. After a moment Dean pulls his eyes away from Castiel’s face, and looks. Though his gaze lingers a second longer, Castiel eventually does the same.
Finding itself the object of their attention, the Hellhound’s ears give a twitch and it pauses, licking the blood from its mouth as it raises its eyes from its meal. At this, Dean starts-the Hellhound’s eyes are not crimson, but a shade of reddish amber that, while not totally natural, wouldn’t be amiss on a common dog. There is something athletic and muscular about its build that reminds Dean a bit of a Doberman, a similar type of crisp, pointed alertness about its ears and snout. Were it not for the sulphurous smoke curling off its scaly, angry coat, seeming by its own rights a living thing, he might have guessed it was just a family dog gone feral. The creature makes a whining sound and sits back on its haunches, head tilted, tail thumping lightly against the floor. Only after staring for a full minute, getting his hackles back down and attempting not to lose his shit again, does Dean realize that something is definitely off about the Hellhound’s proportions, to say nothing of its behaviour.
He furrows his brow, but without glancing at Cas, says, “Does something seem off about-”
“Its size?” Castiel finishes for him. There’s another nod, an answering frown. “Yes. I have never seen a Hellhound so small.” Even his eyebrows seem perplexed. “This is highly unusual.”
“Overstating it as usual, Cas,” Dean huffs, although he’s momentarily grateful to have something to concentrate on other than the freak of nature in front of him. “The fact that we’re dealing with a runty cat eater gets no complaints from my end.” Ignoring the residual tremors in his hand, Dean fishes his gun from the waistband of his jeans. “Easier to kill, I’m thinking.” The thing’s tail is actually wagging at him now.
Castiel throws out a hand that catches Dean across the stomach, but he gets the point across when he prevents Dean from moving closer. “Wait,” he says, voice tight. “Do you not think we should… observe it?” The eyes he turns on Dean are wide and very blue, but Dean’s fucked if he doesn’t actually detect an edge of a pout in his expression.
“Did you come here to do science, or to get the job done?” he demands. “They holding a biology fair in Heaven?” To his credit, Cas glowers but doesn’t dignify that with a response. Dean feels his anxiety slowly turning to anger, and that at least is a relief. “I want to get the fuck out of here.”
“We have a rare opportunity to study a live Hellhound’s behaviour when it is not on the attack,” Castiel says. “Perhaps even use it to our advantage.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “The only ‘advantage’ we currently have is the fact that this thing seems to be retarded.” He can’t believe he actually has to explain this shit. “That can quickly change if we start messing with it, so I say we put a bullet in its face and go home.”
“There’s no guarantee that shooting it will not change that, either,” answers Cas. He sounds so damned reasonable that Dean rolls his eyes. “The last Hellhound you killed-”
“Yeah, I was there,” Dean snaps. “Cas, this isn’t the time to go off the reservation on me, okay? I get enough of that shit from Sam. We’ve got a job to do, so let’s do it. This place is giving me hives.”
He elbows his way past the angel, but finds himself staring into Cas’s “stubborn face” that can only mean one thing-Dean just got vetoed, though since when he became the careful one is beyond him. As he sidesteps Dean and falls into a crouch, Castiel shoots him one final look of contempt from over his shoulder, and then focuses back on the Hellhound. It eyes Cas as he makes his approach, and if Dean knew anything about animals-which is pretty funny, considering that Cas probably knows even less-he’d guess the sporadic thumping of its tail might signify wariness. There’s no growling or baring of teeth, but all the same Dean has visions of Castiel’s face getting torn off the moment he’s within reach. He keeps his distance and rests his index finger upon the trigger just in case.
“Should we bait it with something?” Cas wonders. His distant tone suggests he’s just thinking out loud, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“I’m not having this conversation,” he replies anyway.
The Hellhound still hasn’t budged from its sitting position when Cas settles himself onto his knees in front of it and sits back on his heels, the mangled cat a line in the sand between them. From what Dean can see, the Hellhound looks even smaller next to Castiel, barely reaching his chin. Every square foot of the foyer smells like rotting death, to which Cas seems oblivious; he’s looking at the dog so intently that there appears to be some kind of a Vulcan mind-meld taking place. Dean half expects Castiel to start communicating with the creature in a series of woofs and growls.
In spite of himself, he suggests, “Maybe put your hand out?” From what he can remember of Crowley’s Hound, it seemed to behave mostly like a normal dog… when it wasn’t busy relieving people of their entrails.
“I don’t want to get bitten,” Castiel answers, and Dean can hear the exasperation in his voice from way over here.
“Animals like to smell new people,” Dean scoffs. “I guess it’s kind of an animal.” Hearing himself, he shakes his head and mutters, For fuck’s sake, under his breath. “This is so stupid, Cas. I’m leaving.” He doesn’t move.
Cas puts his hand out and the Hellhound dips its head, its pointed nose coming within a half-inch of the proffered fingers while the rest of its body remains safely at a distance. It sniffs for what seems like a stone’s age, eyes flickering from Castiel’s hand up to his face. Eventually its ears perk up and it withdraws with a frantic wag of its long tail that sets Dean on edge. For all he knows, these things get riled up just before they’re about to go after a tasty, angel-shaped snack. When the Hellhound begins dancing its front paws and bows its body in the classic signal for, “Let’s play!”, chest to the ground and tail waving in the air, Dean officially has no fucking idea. To his credit, Castiel frowns and glances back at him in confusion.
A sharp, excited bark splits the silence of the foyer, and both Dean and Castiel give a start. Just as Castiel begins to come to his senses and back away, the Hellhound gives a meagre ‘ruff’ of annoyance and fidgets about for another moment, before it rears up on its hind legs and springs forward. Its paws connect squarely with Castiel’s shoulders and the angel falls backwards with surprise. There are bloody pawprints all over his trenchcoat and white shirt, though this is nothing compared to the slime of blood and saliva that coats his neck and face when the Hellhound applies itself to the task of eagerly licking every bit of Castiel’s skin it can reach.
Castiel makes a startled grunt and says, “Dean!” who clicks the safety off his gun but can’t rightly decide how to respond. Were it not for the blood and gore and rank stench of sulphur everywhere, this would be a panel straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
“Dean, what do I do?!” Cas yells, and though he’s managed to get his hands around the Hellhound’s muzzle, he seems undecided as to whether to punch the thing in the face.
Dean makes a mental note that this is not the right time to think about how hilarious Cas looks. He pats himself down for anything that could be used as to restrain the beast, and comes up empty-handed. Glancing back at Cas, he gets a sudden brainwave and says, “Cas, gimme your tie,” and gestures impatiently at the angel’s look of confusion. “C’mon!”
He begins fumbling with the scrap of blue fabric around his neck, trying to avert his face away from the Hellhound’s teeth and stinking breath, and when he’s managed to undo the knot, flings it in Dean’s general vicinity. Dean hesitates before swooping in to grab the discarded tie; he can’t help it. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickle in alarm the closer he gets, and the kick of his fight-or-flight tilts definitively in the direction of ‘flight’ with everything he’s worth. He doesn’t believe that Cas is in immediate danger, but he can’t bring himself to leave him there, trapped beneath the Hellhound’s weight as much as his indecision about what to do with it. Were their roles reversed, Dean hopes that Cas would be there to help him.
Edging closer, he sucks in a breath and grits his teeth before dropping in as close as he can to loop the tie around the Hellhound’s neck. He forces the shaking of his hands under control long enough to slide the knot forward, effectively leashing it. Naturally, the Hellhound goes berserk, unused to restraint, and there’s no small amount of resistance as Dean yanks back on the tie, pulling as hard as he can in order to release Castiel. Shoving against the Hellhound’s slippery chest, Cas springs to his feet as soon as he’s able. The creature whines piteously, jerking its head back and forth, but Dean almost sighs in relief when Castiel circles around and closes his hand around Dean’s, relieving him of the tie. He and the Hellhound are more or less evenly matched in strength, even for an animal of this size; Dean can see the corded tension in Castiel’s slender wrists as he attempts to get the Hellhound under control, and he wonders what the command is for ‘heel’ in Hell.
In spite of himself, Dean smirks at the picture of a spit-slimy and bloody Castiel trying to restrain an unruly Hellhound, but he backs away nevertheless. When their eyes meet, he reads alarm in Castiel’s gaze.
“Now what?” he asks belligerently.
“I don’t know,” Cas answers honestly. “Dean, I think…” He swallows slightly, and furrows his brow down at the Hellhound. “I think we have a very young animal on our hands. A baby, in fact.”
“Wait a minute,” Dean says, holding up his hands. “You’re saying you think this is a Hellhound puppy? Seriously?” It’s an absolutely cracked idea, but the more he considers it, the more sense it seems to make. Limited though his experience with Hellhounds may be, he’s never known one of them to be so small, or so… playful. It’s like they went down to the pound and got themselves a frisky Labrador pup, all excited energy and boundless love. “That still don’t explain why I can see it, Cas. Do you think Hellhounds only become invisible to humans as they age?”
Without hesitation, Cas says, “No. They are always invisible to human eyes, and Hellhounds do not grow in the way that you would understand. They simply exist; they are a part of Hell, formed by Lucifer’s own hands after the Fall.” He cocks his head, considering. “Since Sam imprisoned Lucifer in the cage, their numbers should be finite.”
“I hope this means you got some ideas,” Dean grumbles. “I don’t like it.”
“I must observe its behaviour more closely in order to formulate any kind of hypothesis,” Cas tells him, frowning. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, I can agree with you there,” snorts Dean, “but I think a more pressing concern is what the hell you plan to do with this thing.”
Still frowning, Castiel gnaws at his lip for a moment before he sighs, and looks at Dean. “You’re right.” He pauses, and Dean knows that expression on his face so well that he knows he won’t like what comes next. Sure enough, Castiel nods to himself, and lifts his eyes to stare at Dean intently before he says, “I will see you back at the house, Dean.” And then, both he and the Hellhound are gone.
“Oh, hell no-” Dean staggers back when he realizes exactly what this means. Repressing the urge to scream at the empty house, he throws his hands up and stares resignedly at the ceiling. “Cas, you motherfucker.”
Part Two