Fic: Primary Care for Floranna (1/2)

[summergen_mod]

Type of Submission: Fiction
Title: Primary Care
Author: mollyamory
Recipient: floranna
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Notes: All sincere thanks to my beta readers, who know who they are, but will remain nameless until after the reveal. ;)

Summary: That was how they got you: turned you into a mushball, made you fetch blankets and Doritos and vodka, made you whine to Bobby Singer about the unfairness of your life.



Three weeks of planning, a month tracking down the right incantations, a week to consecrate the knife and another to run the little bastards to ground. Sam felt good about it. Their groundwork was solid, their preparation exhaustive and complete. They were back in the saddle, at the top of their game, as relaxed and rested as Winchester genetics would allow. They breached the upper level of the warren at sunset, just like Cas had instructed. Sam was in the lead, his brother at his back, the silver glint of the knife their only guide. The closer they got to the hideously malformed Abaddonites, the brighter the blade became. For weeks, Dean had been calling it Sting.

Down a winding staircase, down a ladder, down a dark hall, down until the tiled walls turned to concrete and the concrete turned to stone, until the flickering fluorescent lights became flickering torches. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped, slow and steady; somewhere in the shadows nearby, unseen animals skittered past them and away. Below them, the ground vibrated, and a strange mechanical groan seemed to emanate from the walls.

"This is all getting a little too Buffyesque for me," Dean said, low and quiet.

Sam threw a look over his shoulder that was meant to convey 'shut the hell up, you moron,' but it must have landed closer to 'please elaborate.' Dean dropped his voice into a register usually reserved for earthquakes and thunderstorms and intoned, "From beneath you, it devours."

Sam refined the look with as much judgment and disgust as he could manage, holding a flashlight on his own face so Dean could see it.

"Touchy," Dean said in his normal voice. But it was his inside voice, at least, so Sam counted that as a win.

The floor of the tunnel sloped gently downward and to the left, taking them in a long, wide spiral toward the cavern Cas had told them to expect at the bottom. The air was dense and stuffy, and smelled sickly of sulfur. The torches spaced at random intervals along the walls guttered pathetically in their sconces, and some had been extinguished altogether. The backpack Sam carried -- filled with ammo, salt, kerosene, and holy water -- was getting heavier with every step.

"What the hell," Dean broke out finally, "are they mole men? We're at the center of the Earth, here. This is ridiculous."

Sam stopped in his tracks and turned around, glaring. Dean was already backing up a step, hands held up at shoulder height -- a gun in one of them, a pair of half-eaten Twizzlers in the other. "Seriously, Dean?"

Dean looked from the candy to Sam, and lowered his hands. "Oh, hey, sorry, dude. You want one?"

"No, I do not want one! I want you to be serious. I want you to be alert. And most of all," he finished in a low hiss, "I want you to be quiet."

"Geez," Dean muttered. "Bossy."

"You're going to get us killed!"

"Me? You're the one who dragged us down here. I wanted to hand this one off to Bobby and go to Sea World." Dean tore off a piece of candy with his back teeth, and grinned. "Anyway, Cas is on this one with us. He's not gonna let us flame out for a pack of bug monks."

"Look," Sam said, "I get that you're all gung ho about angels now that Cas is one again, and I'll be happy to go upstairs with you when the time comes. But personally, I'd rather punch my ticket for that ride in a far, far distant future, all right? For now I just want to kill some cultists, get some dinner, and go to bed. Can we do that? Please?" He let his chin tremble just a little. "For me?"

"Jesus fucking Christ." Dean tucked the Twizzlers back into his pocket and shoved Sam on ahead. "Put away the eyes, Rover. I'll go quietly."

Sam didn't bother to hide his triumphant grin. "Talk like that won't get you into Heaven," he said.

Eventually, the tunnel ended, widening by gradual degrees until it formed an antechamber for the Great Hall on the other side. As expected, the Abaddonites were already deep into the ritual, their guttural voices rising and falling in a strange, atonal song. ("Like a Gregorian chant?" Sam had asked when Cas had tried to describe it to them; and Cas had said, "Yes. Only evil.") According to the plan, Sam was to wait until the chanting reached its peak ("You'll know") and bury the knife into the left eye of the guy in the middle while Dean read their own incantation off the back of a paper kid's menu from Denny's and anointed everybody he could reach with kerosene and matches.

The Cultists of Abaddon would be cleansed from the Earth with silver and fire, their environmentally unfriendly agenda would not be carried out, destruction would not be loosed upon the land. The Winchester Traveling Family Business could flip the sign on their door to 'closed' and go home. Or back to the motel, anyway, which was so close as to make no difference.

That was the plan.

This was what happened:

The chanting did not reach its peak. It didn't reach its peak because it was interrupted, mid-chant. It was interrupted by a sudden, loud, wet explosion that Sam only identified later as a sneeze. There was a moment -- a single, silent moment when the chanting had stopped and the disturbingly insectile cries of 'kill the interlopers!' had not yet begun -- when all eyes were trained in shock and dismay on Dean. Sam's included.

Dean's own eyes were so wide they showed white all around the edges. He and Sam stared at each other, the wreckage of months of work and planning crashing down around them, a thread of crystal clear silent communication opening up between them: Oh shit, What the hell, I didn't mean to, Fuck, Oh crap, RUN!

They ran. The Abaddonites ran after them. They ran faster. After that -- well.

For a very long while after that, there was just a lot of running.

Once Lucifer's cage opened, Sam expected the world to catch fire like he'd lit a match to it. He expected civilization to be washed away by the blood-dimmed tide, like Yeats had promised.

Instead, Armageddon staggered around the planet like the town drunk, knocking over people and buildings and entire townships at random intervals. A Horseman here, a Babylonian Whore there. A zombie plague somewhere along the way. Every now and then Lucifer would show up and menace him, or Zachariah would appear to demoralize Dean. It was a long, halting, exhausting shamble to the finish line. Looking back on the prelude to the most anticlimactic Apocalypse in the history of the word, what stood out most for Sam was that he and Dean fought a lot that winter.

Sam really hated fighting with Dean.

When it became obvious that getting Lucifer back into the cage was going to come down to Sam, he didn't really think of it in terms of making a choice. There were two things that could happen; one sucked, but the other was unacceptable. It was actually a little liberating, the idea that maybe he could somehow make up for all the ill-advised, stupid, and occasionally darkside crap he'd pulled in the past year.

The one thing that made him feel better about himself was that his own family drama was an After School Special compared to the epic, millennia-spanning cold war being waged between Heaven and Hell. His own pride didn't really hold a candle to Lucifer's, and Dean's good-little-soldier complex seemed almost healthy in comparison to Michael's. The idea that it all came down to a bunch of angels slugging out their daddy issues inside better-adjusted echoes of themselves was actually kind of funny when it wasn't mind-numbingly terrifying. Dean agreed with him completely, which had led to a long, heated, slightly-drunken mutual rant on the joys and benefits of familial communication that left Bobby hunched over his kitchen table with tears running down his cheeks, gasping for breath.

Sam honestly couldn't understand how brothers could go millennia without at least attempting to talk it all out. But then, he and Dean had spent most of the Apocalypse working on their relationship -- so admittedly, their priorities were a little weird.

Back in the motel room, Sam ripped off his jacket and hurled it onto his bed, followed by the consecrated knife and his backpack, and first one boot, then the other. He did all this in utter silence, while Dean stood behind him with a bright red nose, fuming.

"It's not like I planned it, Sam. It just happened."

"Two months of work," Sam said. "No, sorry, actually, it was two months of work for me."

"Hey, I helped!"

"In what universe does flirting with demonic librarians count as help, Dean?"

"The one where it got you your pretty glowy knife spell, dude. Look, I'm sorry, all right? If it makes you happy, I promise I'll never sneeze in your holier-than-thou presence again."

"I honestly can't think of a single thing you could do right now that would make me happy."

"Well, hell, Sam." Dean dropped onto his bed, elbows on his knees, and looked up at Sam with tired red eyes. "I haven't thought of anything I could do in the past thirty years that would make you happy. So welcome to the club."

"Don't say that," Sam snapped. He stared Dean down, exactly as pissed at him as he'd been a second ago, but for a completely different reason. Only Dean looked half-dead, like a faded photo of himself, and Sam's stupid protective instincts kicked in hard. "I mean it," he said, his temper failing him completely. "Don't you ever think that."

Dean visibly deflated. He looked away first, in favor of staring very pointedly at the fascinating sailboat photo on the wall. "Well, don't be such an asshole, then," he said, but Sam could hear the apology in it.

And just that fast, Sam wasn't mad anymore. It was like a fucking magic trick. He had no idea how Dean pulled it off, but it happened every time. He lowered himself to the bed across from Dean, and leaned over to lay the back of his hand across Dean's forehead. "You stop being such a head-case, and I will."

"So I'm a head-case, now," Dean said in a far lighter tone. He jerked back from Sam's hand like it had burned him, instead of the other way around. "Because I broke the sacred Hunter's rule against sneezing. Dad must have left that one out."

"Dude, you brought Twizzlers to a death ritual performed by insectile monks."

"I missed breakfast!"

"Look, I'm just worried about you." Sam fished in his duffle, pulled out a bottle of water, and handed it to his brother. "Drink that," he said. "All of it." He went back into his bag, pawing through clothes and books and way more chargers than they actually had electronics for, and finally came out with a bottle of extra strength Tylenol. He popped the cap and shook out three of them, passing them to Dean. "How long have you been feeling like shit?"

"Your bedside manner sucks," Dean grumbled, but he swallowed the pills, and the rest of the water, too. "Couple days," he admitted finally. "Figured it would pass." He chucked the empty bottle at the trash can by the door, missing by about a foot.

Sam watched it roll back toward them across the floor. "You've been off your game since I got back."

"Oh, God, we're gonna talk now."

"Yeah, we are. About your feelings. So drop the macho act and tell me what the fuck is going on, because I don't really feel right about sticking with the work like this if you're not into it."

Dean scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Seriously? We're doing this now? Me on my deathbed?"

"Before we go back out there. Yeah."

Dean shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it in the general direction of his pack, then let himself fall backwards, arms spread out to his sides. A sheen of sweat gleamed on his arms below the sleeves of his T-shirt. "It's not that I'm not into it," he said, staring up at the ceiling.

Sam nodded. "Okay," he said. "So what is it?"

He took his cue from Dean and didn't look at him, but he was hyper-aware of his brother's movements. He knew Dean's tells backwards and forwards, could read him like an open book. Dean was nervous. That made Sam nervous, too.

"It's just--"

"Hello."

Sam lurched to his feet, his heart pounding; beside him, Dean was doing the same plus getting ready to shoot. Castiel stood barely a foot in front of them, gazing at Dean's gun with a small frown. "Is this because I didn't knock?"

"Jesus, Cas." Dean lowered his gun hand, glaring. "I just about shot you in the head, you know that?"

"It would cause no lasting harm. I would simply reconstitute myself."

"Instant Angel: Just add annoying. I'll remember that the next time you swing by to drop off a coronary."

Cas inclined his head at Dean and said nothing.

"Well?" Sam said. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to congratulate you on your success."

"Yeah, well, two things, angelface." Dean popped the clip out of his gun, checked the chamber, then pointed the clip at Cas. "One, you need to step back about a foot so I can't tell what you had for dinner."

Cas took an obedient step back.

"And two," Sam finished for Dean, "we didn't exactly succeed."

"On the contrary. The ritual was stopped. The prophecy was not fulfilled. The Abaddonites have returned to their hibernating state until the next conjunction of the necessary celestial bodies, which will not occur for approximately six hundred and seventy-three years."

Sam exchanged a look with Dean. "Approximately," Sam said faintly.

"Yes."

Dean said, "Wait," and took a step forward into the space Cas had vacated at his request. He poked the clip at Castiel's chest again. "You're telling me we didn't actually have to waste any of those insect dudes? We just had to keep them from singing the land to death in a hundred mile radius?"

Cas raised his eyebrows. "Yes. The knife in the leader's eye, in combination with the incantation, would have destroyed them all instantaneously. But merely interrupting the ritual was enough to avert the disaster. I thought I had made that clear." He looked down at the clip Dean was holding. "Should I move further back?"

"And we did that," Dean said, his eyes cutting over to Sam for just a second. "We stopped it."

"Yes." Castiel looked so confused, Sam almost pitied him. "Thank you?"

"I stopped it." Dean turned to Sam wearing a smile so smug it was practically unsanitary. "By sneezing. You caught that, right, little brother?"

Sam sighed, and dropped back onto the bed, and dropped his face into his hands. "Two months."

Dean raised a triumphant fist in the air. "I'm too awesome for this world," he said.

Sacrificing his soul to trap Satan and avert Armageddon was not supposed to be something Sam bounced back from. He thought there would be eternal torment involved. At the very least he expected to be talked to death on a regular basis, that apparently being Lucifer's favorite form of torture. But Lucifer went radio silent as soon as Sam fell into the cage, and no torment ever actually occurred. Sam fell... and landed under a streetlamp five seconds later. Or five months, depending on who you asked.

Cas didn't know who did it. Crowley didn't know who did it. Bobby and Sam sure as hell didn't know who did it.

Dean, though. For reasons not entirely clear to Sam, Dean thought God did it. So from the moment Sam showed up on his doorstep, God was all right by Dean.

All was forgiven.

"You go," Dean said from the bed, where the blankets and pillows from both beds had nearly swallowed him alive. "Take Cas for backup. I'll be fine."

Sam stood halfway between the bed and the door, indecisive. Hibernating or not, they couldn't just let a bunch of bug-monks hang out beneath the Bexford County Library for the next six hundred years; somebody needed to go down there and set fire to them. But Dean's face was both pale and flushed, depending on what spot you looked at, his eyes were glassy and bloodshot, and more green goop had come out of his nose in the past hour than Sam liked to witness outside of a hunt.

"Can't you just fix him?" Sam asked Castiel.

"You know I'm not permitted to use my powers to manipulate Earthly events."

"It's not an event. It's a one-man plague."

Dean shifted uncomfortably in the bed. "I'm not sick. I'm just a little tired. And I have low blood sugar. All I ate today was licorice."

"Yeah, Dean, whatever. You're the kind of tired that usually comes with biohazard level four containment precautions, but you're not sick."

"I'm not!"

Castiel looked at Sam. "I believe he is lying to protect his self-image. Perhaps a doctor--"

"No," Dean said emphatically. "No way. No doctors. All I need is a cheeseburger, a beer, and the remote, and I'll be up and running in no time."

"I feel weird about leaving him alone like this," Sam confided to Castiel in a low voice. "He reverts to age three when he's sick. Look, you stay with him, and I'll--"

"You're not going by yourself," Dean said flatly. "I will come off this bed if I have to, Sam."

"And what?" Sam went to the foot of the bed and put his hands on his hips, looking Dean up and down. "Fall on me? You're not going anywhere."

"Well, somebody has to, and I'm way safer alone here with the sniffles and the SyFy channel than you would be by yourself with a bunch of bug-monks who may or may not be light sleepers."

Sam rubbed at his temple and forehead with one hand, eyes clenched shut. He had a headache coming on -- maybe from the flu, but more likely from Dean's excess of personality. There was no winning this, not for him; not without drastic measures involving rope or handcuffs or tranquilizers. Dean was the most stubborn son of a bitch Sam had ever known when he was dead wrong; when he was actually right about something, he was downright unstoppable.

"Okay," he said finally. "I'll go. I'll take Cas."

"Brilliant idea," Dean said generously. "I'm totally behind it."

"You're sure you'll be okay?"

"I'm not sick!"

"Right," Sam said, "you're just tired. So you'll rest, right?"

"I'll sleep like a baby, as soon as I'm done watching Omen III."

"That movie sucked," Sam pointed out. "And Damien was a crappy Antichrist."

"Don't worry, Sammy," Dean said, smiling warmly. "You'll always be my favorite."

In times of trouble, Winchesters tended to band together. Of course, ever since Sam had been old enough to know he was a Winchester, there'd only been the three of them. Banding together usually led to a whole lot of shouting -- and once Sam was tall enough to hold his own against Dean, a couple of fistfights here and there. Still, even Sam knew that wasn't the part that mattered. What mattered was, they had each other's backs.

Bobby's last name might be Singer, but he was kind of a Winchester all the same. Sam loved Bobby without reservation, the way he'd always wanted to love Dad but never quite managed. The father they got the first time had always done his best for them, even when his best had sucked, so Sam would never call Bobby a father out loud. But that was what Bobby was -- or the closest thing to one they still had in the world. He was a good one, too: just as tough as he had to be, and always, always there.

Castiel was nobody's father, and he was never going to be a brother, either. He had too many brothers of his own. But he was around a lot, and he was on their side, and he was pretty good in a fight. He was there when they needed him. And he knew things, important things he would sometimes tell them if they asked the right questions, kind of like an ineffable heavenly Google.

So, he couldn't really use his powers to help them anymore. And maybe he sometimes seemed less like an angel on their shoulders and more like a slightly stupid child Sam and Dean were raising together against their will, but whatever. Cas had saved Bobby and Dean when Sam couldn't. He knew how to band together when the chips were down. That made him Winchester enough for Sam.

As it happened, the insect monks weren't light sleepers. But they did wake up fast and mean when set on fire.

"Fuck, that hurts." Sam craned his head around as far as he could to assess the burn damage to the back of his shoulder. Not being Linda Blair, he couldn't see a thing. "How bad is it?"

"Extremely." Castiel leaned in for a closer look. "You have bubbles under your skin."

"Blisters. They're called blisters. Probably looks worse than it is." Sam flexed his arm and winced. "Or not. How big is it?"

"Approximately the size of my hand," Cas said, demonstrating.

Sam let out a scream and jerked away. It was a scream that he was going to translate into a manly bellow for Dean when he told the story back at the motel. "Ow! Don't touch it!"

"Sorry."

"We need a new plan." Sam carefully pulled his shirt back over the burn, trying not to flinch when the fabric brushed against it. "They're like flaming pinballs. We need a way to hold them down before we light 'em up."

"We have no tools for that."

"There's a pretty long sword in the trunk of the car." Sam looked back at the mouth of the passageway, thinking of the spiraling mile of tunnel between him and the Impala. "Not going to help us up there, though."

"Ah. Perhaps..." Castiel looked at the passageway, too; then he...flickered. Sam raised his eyebrows. "Here." Cas handed Sam a gleaming steel sword.

"I thought you weren't supposed to use your powers down here."

"Not to affect the outcome of human affairs." As Sam watched, a faint but definite tinge of pink spread over Castiel's face. "I merely saved you a trip you would have made on your own anyway. The rule doesn't apply."

"Uh-huh."

"It doesn't, Sam."

"Right." Sam hefted the sword experimentally. "Well, thanks."

"I did nothing you couldn't have--"

"Cas." Sam put a hand on the angel's shoulder and gave it a small shake.

"Right," Cas said. "Sorry."

"Operation flaming bug-monk," Sam said, "take two."

Sword in hand, Castiel one step behind, Sam set off toward the next pod. This one was affixed to the wall with thin, ropy strands of dark yellow goo that gave off an ammonia-like smell -- like urine taffy, Sam thought, and then immediately wished he could unthink it.

"Okay," he said. "We'll just count that last one as a trial run, okay? You squirt the pod with kerosene, I'll stab this sword through it and back off. Then you throw a match at it. Sound good?"

"What if the sword is not sufficient to pin the monk?"

It was a legit concern. The sword wasn't exactly Excalibur; it wasn't going to lodge deep in the rock, and skewering an Abaddonite barely slowed it down. Sam was counting on the bottom of the pod being thick enough to give the sword some purchase. Otherwise, the bug-monk was going to come screaming off the wall in flames, just like the last one had, and Sam was going to get another bug-hug flambé. Considering he'd barely survived the first one, that didn't bode well for his safety.

"It'll be fine," Sam said, carefully not meeting Castiel's eyes. "Just don't throw the match too soon."

"I will wait for your signal."

"My signal is going to be backing up really fast and yelling."

"Then I will wait for that."

Sam examined Cas for any sign of sarcasm or facetiousness, and found nothing. He was really, really starting to miss Dean. "On one," he said. "Three, two..."

Castiel painted the pod with kerosene on one, as planned. Sam stabbed it immediately and jumped back. Cas threw the match, the pod went up in flames. The monk inside the pod burned with it. Sam's planning skills were awesome. He had to wait till the flames died down before retrieving the sword, which was very, very hot and burned his hand enough to raise another blister. But the point was, everything else worked. He turned to Cas to congratulate him on a job well done.

"That was great," he said. "You-- hey. What's wrong?" Castiel's face was a pale, sickly grey.

"Nothing."

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Sam said. "Except I've seen you see a ghost, and it actually looks nothing like this. You look really pale."

"It's been a very long winter."

"And you're sweating."

"The fire is overly warm."

Sam took a step closer, peering at Castiel's eyes. They were bloodshot and glassy. "Are you... Castiel. Are you sick?"

"I'm an Angel of the Lord." Castiel drew himself up to his full height, which -- him still impersonating Jimmy Novak -- was not really all that impressive. It was even less impressive when he started to wobble.

Sam grabbed his shoulder to steady him. "You're an Angel of the Lord with the flu."

"I am immune to all Earthly infections. This is... something else."

"Well, maybe it's swine flu." Sam didn't know the difference between regular flu and swine flu, but he was pretty sure the swine variety was worse.

"Angels do not get pig viruses!"

Sam checked Castiel's forehead. Warm. Very, very warm. He supposed it could be from the flaming bug monk. Or maybe angels naturally ran hot -- Sam didn't usually get quite this personal with them. "You've got something," he said. "Dean's sick, and now you're sick, too. If it's not the flu, then..." An unpleasant idea occurred to him. "Maybe Dean's not sick with the flu either. Maybe it's something worse. Something supernatural, something that can affect angels, too."

"That is unlikely."

"We have to go check on him. If this is something like that zombie plague--"

"Sam." Castiel grasped Sam's arm. "Dean is in no immediate danger. I would know."

"How would you know?"

"I would sense it."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "How would you sense it? I thought you weren't supposed to be able to sense us anymore. Wasn't that the whole point of the graffiti on our ribs?"

Castiel pointed his red, glassy eyes at the ground. "I would prefer not to speak of it."

"Oh, well," Sam said. "If you'd prefer not to speak of it..." He jerked his arm away. "Too bad! What the hell is going on?"

After the end of the world was called on account of Winchesters, Sam gave a lot of thought to the idea of going back to school and picking up where his old life had left off. This was largely because Dean couldn't manage to shut up about it.

Dean's argument, as Sam understood it, was that Sam had always intended to continue his education; that Sam had always believed a normal life would make him happy; and that the few brief years of normal life Sam actually got had made him happy at the time. Therefore, returning to the place where his demon friends and demon professors and demon God-knows-what-else had manipulated him and eventually murdered his girlfriend should make him happy all over again.

Sam didn't think much of Dean's logic.

What Dean failed to consider, because he was Dean, was that Dean also made Sam happy, and had done so since Sam was old enough to toddle after him without falling on his little fat face. He made Sam mad, he made Sam irrational, and sometimes he made Sam want to light him on fire -- but he also made Sam feel normal in a way that Stanford never had. He pushed Sam to care about the world in concrete terms -- with his brain and his heart, yeah, but also with guns, knives, and fists applied as needed. Sam had spent so much of his life in his own head that it took a long time for those lessons to fully sink in.

It took even longer to figure out most of that was bullshit. Dean cared about the world after family, and he cared about himself with what was left after caring about Sam. Once Sam sorted that part out, there was no chance he was ever going to leave; Dean had mental problems and clearly needed looking after.

Sam found them a job in Maine, and after that, Massachusetts, and after that, Providence. He could have kept going -- New England had a fuckload of ghosts, and he had the Toronto Sun bookmarked on his laptop for when they finished those off. But Dean's arguments got weaker and weaker, and he stopped looking at Sam like he was trying to memorize him. He started going out again some nights and stopped chewing with his mouth closed at breakfast. He relaxed.

Sam stopped pinning them to the Eastern Seaboard. Stopped monitoring Dean's moods like a walking barometer. He stopped reminding Dean that he wasn't going anywhere, because eventually, Dean stopped needing to hear it.

"I'm sorry," Sam said, not believing what he'd just heard. "You did what?"

Cas refused to meet his eyes. "I formed a spiritual bond with your brother."

"A bond. Like--" Sam tried to find a proper simile and came up empty. "Like a bond bond?"

"Angels are sent to the Earth to protect and guide humans only under certain very specific circumstances and only in certain very special cases. When such a case and circumstance arises, a member of a specific caste of angels is assigned the task." Castiel put his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, then took them out again. Then put them back in. He looked... twitchy. Not something Sam was used to seeing on angelic faces. "I was assigned to your brother, and in order to fulfill my task it was necessary to monitor his well-being. This is a common practice, though usually a bond is only created to protect small children--"

"Children," Sam said. "Angels form bonds with children? Wait." He held up his hand before Cas could spout more convoluted nonsense at him. "Let's skip how unbelievably creepy that sounds. A certain caste, you said. What caste?"

Cas sighed. "The guardian caste."

"Guardian...angels."

"Yes."

"You're Dean's actual guardian angel."

Cas shifted his weight awkwardly. "I would rather you didn't speak of this to your brother in those terms."

Sam's eyes widened. "You slapped a guardian angel soul bond on Dean... and he doesn't even know about it?"

Castiel's hands twitched again. "Just a little one," he said.

They left with most of the Abaddonites still hibernating away, undisturbed by the blazing deaths of their pals. Cas assured Sam they'd still be there in the morning, and it wasn't like Sam suddenly didn't trust him. He was pissed, not stupid.

Really, really, really, really pissed.

Sam didn't say much on the way back to the motel. He didn't have to. Cas was more than willing to fall all over himself explaining how he'd done nothing wrong or even out of the ordinary, how he was sure Dean wouldn't actually mind, how there was really no reason at all to tell him.

"It did not allow me to track or locate you," Cas told him when they were settled in the car. He'd stopped sneezing for the moment, but his face was an unhealthy shade of green, and he wasn't very steady on his feet. His voice sounded like tectonic plates grinding together. "I was not privy to Dean's thoughts, nor did I influence him in any way."

Sam hadn't even thought about that possibility. Now it completely wigged him out. The idea of Cas spying on them was bad enough; the possibility of actual manipulation made Sam's hair stand on end. "Angels can do that?"

Cas looked at Sam warily, and after a moment said in a tentative voice, "No?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Your positive spin isn't very positive," he informed Cas, pulling out onto the street.

"I just want to reassure you that your safety was never compromised."

"It's not that I don't believe you," Sam said slowly, as if he were explaining it to a very small child. "It's just that I don't care. You latched yourself onto my brother's mind without his consent. At the very least, that's tacky. At worst, it's a violation of his trust."

"Technically, it's his soul I'm bonded to."

"Like that makes it better?" Sam slammed the car to a stop at a red light, throwing Cas forward against his seatbelt. It was satisfying in a petty way Sam wasn't proud of, but didn't regret at all. "Either way, I'm probably gonna have to punch you for it at some point. Unless Dean gets there first."

"If corporal punishment is customary under the circumstances, I accept your decision."

"I got it right out of the What To Do When an Angel Violates You handbook, passed down through the ages."

Castiel tilted his head to one side, as if he were listening to a distant translator. "Ah," he said after a moment. "That was sarcasm."

"It runs in my family," Sam said.

It was a lot to process. Guardian angels, bonds, mystical germ-sharing -- seriously, what the Hell? He wasn't sure if it was the actual germs or the symptoms of the germs making Castiel sick, but something was. Sicker by the minute. It made him worry about Cas, which was kind of annoying considering how mad Sam was, and it made him worry about Dean, which was kind of dangerous considering how fast they were going. He forced his foot to lighten up on the gas pedal.

"I apologize," Cas said eventually. "I should have spoken of this sooner."

"It would've been nice," Sam said, "yeah."

"The bond imparts no information beyond basic physical and emotional well-being."

"Bet that made the last year or so a lot of fun for you."

"From the moment I retrieved your brother from Hell, I experienced a steadily-increasing level of discomfort that gradually became excruciating as the necessity of your sacrifice became more obvious."

Sam swallowed hard, his hands tightening on the wheel as he pulled into a spot in front of their room. He killed the engine, but didn't get out of the car. Didn't even take off his seat belt.

"I didn't mean for that to happen," he said quietly. "I didn't have any other choice."

"It was one of the bravest acts I've ever witnessed." Castiel's gaze was fixed on the door to their hotel room, but Sam didn't think he was seeing it. "Humans are capable of great selflessness. I confess I didn't expect you to succeed, but you were stronger than any of us imagined." He turned to look at Sam, a faint smile on his lips. "Except for your brother, of course."

"If you're trying to butter me up so I don't rat you out to Dean the second we get through the door... it's working."

"I'm telling you the truth, Sam. You're the best damned person I know."

"Uh, thanks," he said, startled. That was a lot, coming from a freaking angel. Kind of a ringing endorsement, considering he'd been on Heaven's most-wanted list for most of the past five years or so. Sam felt ridiculously flattered by it -- until he realized Castiel was speaking literally.

"Thanks," he said again, in a completely different tone.

Castiel's eyes widened. "Not that you're damned any more," he said quickly. "Barring any future evil acts, the services you've rendered to Heaven in recent years have more than assured your soul a place there."

Sam clenched his teeth. "I feel so much better."

"You're still a very good person," Castiel said, a tinge of desperation underlying the words.

Sam let go of the steering wheel. "Let's just go inside."

The room was like a furnace. Sam started sweating the second he walked through the door. There was no sign of Dean, but the television was blaring something very dramatic about wormholes, and there was a large shivering ball of something on Dean's bed, still rolled up in both sets of blankets. Castiel took off his trench coat and immediately headed for the bathroom, his face an unsightly shade of grey. Sam winced a little on Cas's behalf, and went to turn the TV down. Dean's voice, pathetic and thick, rasped out, "I was watching that."

"Uh-huh." Sam stepped up to the bed. All that was visible of Dean was the very top of his head and a curl of fingers over the top edge of one blanket. "What happened?"

"It's fucking freezing in here, is what happened," Dean said. "And I'm out of tissues." His head lolled weakly against his pillow. "Did you bring me anything? I think I need some soup."

Sam's eyes rolled up to the ceiling. "Seriously?" he said. "After all I've done for you? Seriously?"

"Fine," Dean snapped, and started to struggle his way out of his cocoon. "I'll go myself--"

"I wasn't talking to you." Sam pushed Dean back down onto the bed; it was disturbingly easy. "I was talking to God."

Dean's eyebrows went up. "I didn't think you did that anymore."

"I just do it a little different now."

"Any luck?"

"No. Don't think he cares for my attitude these days," Sam said. "But it's a lot more satisfying now than it used to be."

"Well, don't get too cocky." Dean curled himself deeper into the covers, his eyes burning with fever in their sockets as he watched Sam. "Won't be much of a Heaven without you in it. Tormenting you till the end of time is part of my Eternal Reward."

"Yeah," Sam said. He smiled and tucked the covers tighter around Dean's chin. "That'll be great. Just me and you and your fondest memory of getting laid."

Dean made a snuffly sound that was probably meant to be a snort, but it ended in a coughing fit that made Sam's hands itch to grab him. Just to hold his bones together till it passed. He didn't; Dean wouldn't thank him for it. But he hovered, because that was what Dean let him get away with, and in a minute Dean was able to shift onto his back again and breathe.

"Ash said, special cases," Dean wheezed. "You and me, we're pretty special. Saved the world and all."

Sam gave in; he put a hand on Dean's shoulder and squeezed, reassuring himself that Dean was more solid, stronger, than he looked at the moment. He nodded, not really trusting his voice; not trusting himself to say the right thing even if he managed to speak.

He patted Dean's shoulder again, smiling down at him, then let go. "I'm going to call the desk for some extra blankets," he said.

"Awesome."

"Then I'll see about some meds and dinner. And something for you guys to drink. I think you're supposed to stay hydrated." With the exception of watching Jessica mope around their apartment with a box of Kleenex and a bottle of Nyquil once a year in school, Sam's experience with colds and the flu was pretty minimal. "Juice or something," he said, frowning. "Gatorade?"

"Rum," Cas said in a ragged voice, leaning weakly against the frame of the bathroom door. "A lot."

Part Two