One Species Too Many (Dean/Cas Big Bang) Part 2

[wallmakerrelict]

Part 1

As Sam stood on the darkened beach, watching the leathery sealskin twist and burn in the bonfire, he let out a sigh of relief that he had been holding in all week. It had been a rough hunt, especially without Dean and Cas to back him up, but luckily he had found help from a different source.

Sam turned to look at his companion, who was likewise watching the fire with an expression of satisfaction. It had been almost six years since Sam had watched Tamara drive away from the battle against the Magnificent Seven, which had cost her her husband. She had aged more than she rightfully should have, but she was still standing strong. It was more than Sam could say for a lot of hunters he had known six years ago.

Tamara shook her head with a faint smile as she voiced what Sam had been thinking: "Selkies. Who would have thought, huh?"

"It's a first for me too," Sam admitted.

"I could tell," said Tamara, "You would have been fish food if I hadn't showed up."

"I'm not too proud to admit it," Sam replied.

When the fire had burned down and the seal skin that had once belonged to the killer selkie had been reduced to ash, Sam and Tamara quenched the last of the flames and scattered the coals over the sand.

Tamara was quiet. Sam tried to break the ice by asking, "So, how have you been since… you know. Last time?"

Though Tamara hadn't yet shown a shred of weakness, when she looked up at Sam this time there was a shadow of grief lying behind her eyes. "What do you think?" she said, bitterly but not angrily.

Sam nodded in understanding. "You've been terrible," he said, "You've kept breathing, day by day, hoping that eventually it would hurt less and you could get on with your life. But at some point you realized that it would never stop hurting, and you had to keep going anyway. And now you're okay, or at least that's what you tell people, because they don't want to hear about how you're never going to be okay again."

Tamara raised her eyebrows at Sam. "You can't really understand," she said accusingly, "Dean came back. Isaac never will."

Sam smiled sadly. "Dean's not the only person I've ever lost."

They finished their work in silence, and then trekked back up the beach to their cars. Sam was about to say an awkward goodbye when Tamara spoke up.

"I've been running with a pair of hunters lately," she said, "They're sisters. Tough kids. Good in a fight. Kind of like you and your brother. They're up at Puget Sound right now, tracking a vampire nest. I was on my way there when I ran into you."

She didn't say anything else. It took Sam a moment to realize that he was being invited along. "Tamara…" he said regretfully, "I should really get back to Dean and Cas."

"Oh, I see how it is," said Tamara, "I save your life, but you're too busy to lend a hand in return, is that it?" She smiled to show that it was a joke, but it stung Sam anyway to know that she was right. "Seriously, Sam," she said, the smile dropping from her face, "If you have to go, then go. No hard feelings. But we could really use your help up there."

Sam hesitated for only a moment longer before pulling out his phone and dialing Dean's number.

"Dean?" he said, "Sorry to wake you, man. I'm gonna be gone a little longer than I thought."

-----

"Just a sec," Dean whispered into the phone. He leaned across the bed to make sure that Cas was still asleep, that the vibration of Dean's phone hadn't woken him. Cas had been up an hour ago, and he'd be up again in another two hours or so to feed the kittens. The last thing he needed was for his precious short span of sleep to be interrupted. The more tired Cas got, the more often his episodes happened, and though Dean had so far managed to snap Cas out of it without breaking anything since the milk glass, he preferred Cas not to drift off in the first place.

Carefully, Dean scooted out of bed and hopped into the hallway. When he had managed to close the bedroom door with Cas still snoring peacefully, he finally spoke to Sam again. "What the hell for?"

He leaned against the wall and listened as Sam explained about the selkie, Tamara, and the vampire nest in Washington.

"Go with her, man," he said when Sam had finished, "We owe her that much."

"What about Cas?" Sam asked, "Are you still making him do all the work?"

Dean frowned into the phone, too sleepy to care that Sam couldn't see him. "I've offered!" he said, "But he doesn't want my help. Says he's got it under control."

"Does he?"

"I dunno," Dean sighed, his eyes flicking toward the closed bedroom door, "He's tired, obviously. But things are good. I think we're good."

Sam chuckled. "Does that mean you're still getting laid?"

"Yes it does, bitch," Dean replied, refusing to let Sam make him feel embarrassed about his sex life, even though it was true that Cas's libido had tanked lately due to exhaustion, "Don't you have some vampires to kill?"

"Fine, jerk," said Sam, his smile evident even through the phone, "I'll give you a call when I hit Seattle."

"You do that," said Dean. He yawned loudly, but he didn't forget to add a quick, "Stay safe," before Sam hung up.

Dean hobbled back to bed, quietly setting the phone back on the nightstand and peeling back the covers inch by inch. Slowly, gently, he rolled his body up close to Cas and draped an arm over his sleeping form.

"Uh…" Cas mumbled in his sleep, his eyelashes fluttering softly, "Who was that?"

Dean murmured in reply, "Just Sam. Go back to sleep, babe."

Cas obeyed. A couple of hours later, when his phone alarm went off, he wriggled his way out from under Dean's arm to prepare another meal for the kittens. When all three of them were fed, he returned and re-arranged the arm around himself. Dean slept on, never knowing that Cas had been missing.

-----

The kittens learned to walk. This presented a whole new set of problems.

It wasn't enough anymore to just shut the door and hope they wouldn't stray too far from their box. They were walking with purpose, following every interesting sight and smell and hardly ever falling on their faces anymore. It seemed that they were always underfoot, and they had somehow perfected the art of making Dean trip over them.

"Don't they know that if I step on them, they'll die?" Dean grumbled after having to windmill his arms wildly in order to stay upright. Raz was rubbing up against Dean's cast as if he hadn't just almost caused both of their deaths.

Cas stooped to guide Raz away from Dean. "Please don't step on them if you can help it," he said.

That was easier said than done. Even though their nest box was in the TV room, they managed to get into every corner of the house, even through closed doors. Cas hypothesized that they were following Dean through the doors when he wasn't paying attention. Dean's theory was that they had all inherited Cas's angel-teleportation.

It didn't matter how careful Dean was about accounting for every kitten before leaving a room and always closing doors after himself. Somehow, after making himself a sandwich in a previously cat-free kitchen, he would turn around to find a little orange puffball watching him and his food. He would be brushing his teeth and some little hell-beast would decide to make a scratching post out of his leg. Or he and Cas would be about to get it on, only to be interrupted by confused mewing from under the bed.

The only way Dean could deal with it was to constantly remind himself that Cas loved them. Cas loved them and Dean loved Cas, so he would just have to deal with it.

In fact, just as Dean had told Sam, he loved Cas enough to offer his help with the kittens again and again. They were eating every four hours now, but they were still a long way from being able to make it through the night, and Cas was definitely showing the strain of keeping up with their punishing pace. Dean had no desire to get more involved with the kittens than he already was, but he couldn't stand to see Cas keep running himself ragged.

It didn't matter. The more Dean offered, the more resolved Cas seemed to become. Dean must have heard some variation on, "They are my responsibility," at least a dozen times in the last few days alone.

So for a while Dean's only interaction with the kittens was occasionally tripping over one. Then, finally Raz and Danny seemed to figure out that weaving between Dean's feet was a dangerous and unproductive game, and they began to steer clear of him. Dean might have been a little offended that he was being ignored, but if he actually missed the kittens' attention then he was never going to admit it.

Amber, on the other hand, abandoned almost all human contact as soon as she figured out how to get between rooms. She would roam all over the cabin, hiding in the most unlikely spots, and only coming out when she heard the sounds of Cas making her food. She never tried to trip Dean; she only yowled at him from afar and, if he sat very still, she would stalk over and chew on his socks. But most of the time she was nowhere to be seen.

Dean was returning to the couch from the kitchen, a freshly-made sandwich in hand, when he noticed the door to the broom closet standing a few inches open. He knew that Raz and Danny were back by the nest box, playing with Cas, but he figured that he had better make sure Amber wasn't in the closet before he closed the door.

Sure enough, she was there nestled behind a stack of dirty towels and an old mop head. Her black fur blended into the shadows almost completely, but the orange flash on her face gave her away. She stared out at Dean, tail twitching.

"C'mere, you dumb cat," said Dean, beckoning, "Someone's going to close this door on you by mistake and you'll starve in there."

Amber hissed at him.

Slowly, difficultly, Dean kicked his cast out in front of him and sat down on the carpeted floor, setting his sandwich and his single crutch down beside him. The lower angle let him reach into Amber's hiding spot to try to grab her. "Don't make this harder than it needs to - OW!" he said as Amber turned into a tornado of claws and teeth as soon as his hand touched her. She hissed again at his retreating hand, proud of having defended her territory from the invader.

Dean didn't know why he wasn't just leaving her be. He could have gone back to the couch and told Cas where she was, and then it wouldn't have been his problem anymore. But he had started this, and he was Dean Winchester, and he'd be damned if he was going to admit that he'd failed at retrieving a kitten from behind a mop.

He grabbed his sandwich off its plate. It was tuna. He was positive that cats liked tuna, though he wasn't sure if Amber could eat solid food yet. Finally he decided that she'd be fine if he gave her small enough pieces. He scratched a crumb of fish off of his sandwich - no more than could fit under his fingernail - and put it on the ground just on the other side of the towels that Amber was hiding behind.

A twitching nose appeared from behind the towels, and then the entire kitten zoomed out to pounce on the piece of fish. She lapped it up, and with much exaggerated licking and gulping she managed to get it down her throat. Dean expected her to jump back into her hiding place, but instead she just looked at him expectantly.

"Okay, then," Dean said as he picked another piece off his sandwich. Soon there was a little trail of tuna crumbs leading from the depths of the closet right up to Dean's lap. Amber followed it readily. She hesitated for a moment at the threshold between closet and hallway, but soon her desire for tuna outweighed her fear of exposure and she soldiered on. When she finally reached Dean, her nose almost bumping up against his leg as she grabbed the last piece of tuna, she looked up at him once more and said loudly, "Mew!"




"You realize that Cas is probably going to kill me for messing up his feeding schedule?" Dean told her.

"MEW!" she replied, unconcerned.

"Whatever," Dean sighed, "Are you going to try to kill me again if I pick you up?"

Amber stared at him in a way that seemed to say, "Try your luck, human."

"Fine," said Dean, "I'll leave you alone. Just don't go hiding in any more closets." He shut the closet door so she couldn't return to her old hiding place, and began to the task of getting back to his feet. It took him a few minutes before he was completely upright, sandwich in one hand and crutch in the other, and he expected Amber to be long gone by then. But when he looked around, he found her still sitting right behind him in the middle of the hall, staring with unblinking blue eyes.

He took a step. So did she. He took another step. She followed.

"I'm not giving you any more tuna," he said gruffly.

Cas voice floated down the hallway from the TV room. "Dean? Who are you talking to?"

Dean immediately felt his cheeks grow hot as he shouted back, "No one!" He hopped his way quickly back to the couch and went to work on his sandwich. It took him a moment to realize that Amber was still following him, sitting patiently at the foot of the couch and watching Dean intently.

"Oh, I see," said Cas. Raz was asleep in his lap, and Danny was perched on his shoulder, and Dean had to work very hard to convince his brain that that was not the cutest thing he had ever seen in his life. "You were talking to Ambriel."

"I wasn't talking to the cat, okay?" Dean lied.

"She seems to have gained an interest in you," Cas observed.

"She just wants my food," said Dean. He devoured the rest of his sandwich and held his empty hands up to Amber, showing her that there was none left. She just mewed at him again and stared harder.

It didn't matter what Dean did after that; whether he had food in his hands or not, Amber was his constant shadow. She was never directly underfoot, never in the way, but wherever Dean went she was not far behind. She only let him out of her sight during feeding times, when food proved to be more interesting than Dean, and at night, when she curled up with her brothers and allowed Dean to escape. But as soon as the food was gone or Dean emerged from his room, she was back to stalking him through the house.

"I don't get it," Dean said to Cas after two days had passed and Amber didn't seem to be at all tired of following him around, "Why does she like me now? I just gave her some tuna!"

"Perhaps she senses in you a kindred spirit," Cas said, not looking up from the pot of soup he was stirring.

"She's a cat," Dean said flatly, his tone revealing just how ridiculous he found that idea.

"Then maybe she’s just hoping that you will feed her more tuna," said Cas, humoring him.

"Yeah," said Dean.

From her place under the cabinets, where she had a good view of Dean where he sat at the kitchen table, Amber said, "Mew!"

-----

"NYA NYA NYA NYA NYANY…"

The alarm only went on for half a second longer than usual, but it was enough to wake Dean up. He opened his eyes to find Cas sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching the phone, his finger still on the button, frozen in that moment of harsh awakening.

Cas's silhouette turned as he glanced toward Dean, and Dean quickly closed his eyes again. He didn't want Cas to feel like he had to apologize for waking him up. After a few seconds of feigned sleep, Dean felt Cas rise off the bed. He waited until he heard the bedroom door open and close again before he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

Dean was no stranger to sleep deprivation, and he knew exactly how miserable it was. Cas had been catching naps a few minutes at a time for the last week, his longest uninterrupted sleep never lasting more than four hours. It wasn’t enough. Whatever Cas was now, he was human enough that he needed a full night’s sleep at least every now and then.

The hum of the microwave was barely audible through the bedroom door. Not for the first time, Dean felt the overwhelming urge to drag himself out of bed, hop his way to the kitchen, rip the bottles of formula out of Cas's hands, and send him back to get the sleep he so desperately needed. But he had tried that before, and Cas had only gotten pissy with him about it. "Please go back to bed, Dean," he had ordered, as if Dean were the one who needed rest.

When Cas returned to bed, Dean wormed one arm under his waist and wrapped the other arm around his shoulders. He squeezed Cas to his chest, silently begging him to stay. It didn't matter. In another four hours the alarm went off again. This time it took Cas nearly half a minute to blink his way groggily awake and turn it off. There was no point in Dean pretending to be asleep anymore.

"I'm sorry," said Cas when he noticed Dean staring at him.

"What happened to your reflexes?" Dean asked.

"You were holding me too tightly," said Cas, "I couldn't get to the phone in time."

They both knew that that was a lie. They both knew that Dean wanted to offer to take over, to let Cas stay in bed. And they both knew how Cas would answer.

So they skipped the words, leaving it at just a meeting of eyes.

Cas walked out. Dean rearranged his leg and tried to go back to sleep.

The next day, Cas was a mess. He stumbled through his chores like a zombie, and whenever he sat still for too long his eyelids would begin to droop. Every time he had a second to spare he flopped onto the couch with Dean, and every time he was curled up and asleep almost before he hit the cushions.

The tenth-odd time Cas returned to the couch where Dean was stretched out on it full-length, lying on his back and watching TV, he didn't so much as bother to ask Dean to scoot over and make room for him. He just draped himself over Dean's chest, laid his head on Dean's shoulder, and went out like a light.

For a second, Dean considered fishing the phone out of Cas's pocket and disabling the alarm. Or smashing it to pieces - that would have worked too. But he stopped himself only because he knew that Cas would blame himself if anything happened to the kittens, even if that something was just going without food for a few extra hours. The kittens were the whole point of this ordeal. Dean couldn't just force Cas to give up the work.

But on the other hand, this was getting ridiculous. Cas wouldn't be able to go on like this, not when there were more than two weeks to go before the kittens would be able to make it through the night. Two more weeks of this? Cas would be lucky to make it two more days.

As it turned out, he didn't even make it that long. The next night, around 2AM, Dean woke up to the sound of the hated alarm.

"NYA NYA NYA NYA NYANYANYANYANYA NYA NYA…"

"Cas," he groaned into his pillow.

"NYA NYANYANYANYANYANYA NYA NYANYANYA NYA NYA…"

He flipped the pillow over his head, trying to drown out the sound. "Cas, please!" he said, louder this time.

"NYA NYA NYANYANYANYANYANYANYA…"

When the alarm didn't stop, Dean finally uncovered his head, reached across the bed to Cas's nightstand, and grabbed the phone. He resisted the urge to throw it against the wall. Instead, he fiddled with it for a few seconds before he finally managed to find the button to silence the alarm, plunging the room back into blessed silence.

"What the hell, Ca…" Dean started to say. But when he looked down at where Cas lay next to him, the words dried up and stopped. Cas was sleeping so deeply that Dean had to check to make sure that he was still breathing. He was curled slightly, his arms limp all the way to his fingertips and his legs twisted awkwardly, his cheek so firmly smushed against his pillow that it was pulling his lip up and causing a puddle of drool to collect on the sheets below him.

For a few seconds, Dean just stared. Then he gently, very gently, rolled Cas over into a more comfortable-looking position. Cas didn't so much as sigh. But Dean did, slowly and deeply. He couldn't wake Cas up. He just fucking couldn't. He didn't have it in him.

But someone had to feed the kittens.

Dean wasn't sure if he could get his pants on over his cast without being loud enough to wake Cas, so he shrugged a shirt over his shoulders and hobbled his way to the kitchen naked from the waist down. He could hear the kittens mewing in the next room. They had learned well that noise from the kitchen in the middle of the night meant food, though they were probably less used to the loud thunks of Dean's crutches accidentally hitting the cabinets.

As it turned out, feeding baby kittens wasn't quite the same as feeding baby humans. Dean remembered his dad showing him how to dilute the liquid milk concentrate that they had fed to Sam when he was little, but the kittens' food came in a powder and Dean had to read the label to figure out how to mix it up properly.

Luckily, once he had managed to get the formula into liquid form, things mostly came back to him. He filled an entire bottle and warmed it up, even remembering to invert it a few times to even out any hot spots. Then he opened the door to the TV room where the kittens slept.

They were crying even louder than before, clearly not used to it taking so long to get their meal. "Shut your yaps," Dean hissed as he made his way toward them, "I've got your dinner."

By the time he managed to sit himself down, propped up against the wall by the nest box, the kittens had fallen silent and were instead looking at him suspiciously. "You are not the one who feeds us," they seemed to say. After a moment, Amber laid her ears back and hissed.

"Seriously?" Dean said to her, "Fine. Just for that, you're getting fed last."

He picked up Danny instead, who seemed to be much more accepting of the change in waitstaff, and tried to figure out how to translate his baby-feeding skills into kitten-feeding skills. He had cradled Sam in the crook of his arm, but Danny was way too small for that. He tried to approximate the position by putting Danny in the palm of his hand, and he was working on prying the tiny set of jaws open with the nipple of the bottle when a sound behind him nearly made him jump out of his skin.

"Dean?"

Cas stood in the doorway, hunched and bleary-eyed. Dean had to take several deep breaths before he could answer, "Jesus, Cas, you about gave me a heart attack. What are you doing up?"

Instead of answering, Cas asked a question of his own. "What do you think are you doing?" he said, and suddenly Dean felt all the air go out of him. Even after all the times Cas had refused Dean's help, Dean still believed in the back of his mind that Cas would be happy to find Dean stepping up and rescuing him from his endless cycle of work. But Cas didn't sound happy. He sounded pissed with a side order of utterly destroyed.

"I'm feeding your cats so you can sleep," said Dean simply, instantly on the defensive, "I'm helping you."

"I didn't want your help!" Cas snapped. Then, almost instantly, he pulled back. Surprised by his own outburst, his eyes flicked closed and his brow tightened. He sighed and the anger melted out of his face, leaving only disappointment. "I didn't want your help," he repeated, his voice softer this time.

"What?" Dean said. He was still frozen, a bottle in one hand and a kitten in the other. Danny wriggled impatiently until Dean put him down. "Why?"

"I didn't want your help," Cas said once more. He spoke slowly as if piecing together his thoughts with each word. "Not with this. This was my responsibility."

And now it was Dean's turn to feel annoyed, because this whole "responsibility" mantra that Cas had going on was bullshit. It made no sense for one person to kill himself with work when there was another willing to do half. "Dude, you were the one who gave me the lecture about accepting help when you need it," Dean sighed, "I'm doing this cause I love you, okay?"

Cas shook his head. "This is different. I needed to prove something."

"You don't need to prove anything to me," Dean insisted.

But Cas only shook his head again as he said, "I needed to prove it to myself."

Dean threw his hands up in frustration, making a few drops of milk fly off the bottle and hit him in the face. He set the bottle on the ground as he said, "What are you talking about?"

For a moment, Cas just stared at the ground. Then he crossed the short distance to where Dean was sitting and, folding his legs carefully under himself, joined him. First Cas leaned back against the wall as Dean was doing, then he tilted sideways so that he head was resting on Dean's shoulder. When he was silent for a moment longer, Dean thought he might have fallen asleep, but then Cas finally spoke.

"You care for people, Dean," he said, "You always have, all your life. You do it so tirelessly and so thanklessly that people begin to take it for granted. Even Sam. Even me. We lean on you without ever considering that you might fall under our weight. But you are only human, Dean, and you too need someone to lean on. I wanted to be that person for you, but through my own mistakes I have found myself needing your support more than anyone."

"No," dropped out of Dean's mouth almost before Cas had finished speaking, "You said it yourself: I'm the one who makes you feel useless, who treats you like a kid. You help me all the time."

Dean couldn't see Cas's face, but he could feel his sad smile in the way Cas's shoulders rose and tightened. "I try to help you in any way I can," Cas said, "But on the whole I am a burden to you. And you have too many burdens already."

"You're wrong, Cas," was all Dean could say.

"I'm not," Cas seamlessly replied, "I've seen the way you look at me when I… disconnect. You don’t trust me. You can’t, as long as I’m like that. I don’t blame you."

And Dean had no answer for that, because it was true. Cas’s episodes took Dean back to Purgatory, back to facing down the Leviathans when Cas was refusing to help. Back to the day Dean returned to the hospital, hoping that Cas would be able to take some of the weight off his shoulders, only to find him broken instead. However much Dean tried to rely on Cas, he couldn’t forget that fear.

Still, everything in Dean screamed at him to deny, deny, deny, because even though what Cas was saying was technically true, Dean felt deeply that it wasn't quite right. Cas was twisting the situation into its worst possible form. There had to be another way of coming at it, if only Dean could find the words to explain.

But Cas had already taken Dean's silence to mean that he agreed. He slid his hand across to grab Dean's, lacing their fingers together. Dean couldn't tell if Cas's grip was meant to give Dean comfort, or if Cas was trying to draw comfort from Dean.

"But," said Cas, "I want to get better. I have been getting better. Perhaps I'm not strong enough yet for you to rely on me, but at least I can do something.” He gestured toward the kittens in their box as he said, “Caring for them is easy; their needs are simple. I can take on this small responsibility. I should have been able to..." Then he stammered and trailed off, sounding so disappointed in himself that it nearly broke Dean’s heart.

Dean caught Cas's chin in his hand and lifted his head so he could see his face. Now that Dean finally understood what this was all about, the reason behind the sleepless nights and the stoic suffering, and what Dean had taken away from Cas by trying to do the work for him, he finally knew what to say.

"You think the kittens' needs are simple?" he laughed with an exaggerated wince, "Babe, you've got it backwards. These little things are bloodsuckers. Just look at that stack of pamphlets you brought home - they're so complicated that you need an instruction manual for them!"

Cas stared at Dean blankly, perhaps too tired to explain how badly Dean was missing the point. But Dean wasn't finished.

"Now, as for me?" he said, the joking laughter going out of his voice, "My needs are the simple ones. I need Sam, my car, a job to do, and some pie for after. And I need you. That's all. I've got everything I need right here, so don't go thinking you aren't good enough."

"But I'm not," Cas whispered, "Not anymore. I'm broken."

"Would you stop saying that?" Dean begged, "You're still you. So your brain doesn't work quite the same way it did; so what? That doesn't mean you're damaged goods."

"But the effect it has on you..."

The effect. Dean knew it well: that grip on his lungs, that stutter of his heart. That vertigo. It was terrifying to watch Cas go away within his own mind to a place where Dean could not follow.

But why?

Dean finally asked himself the question. They were not in Purgatory anymore. The Leviathans were gone. It wasn't as if their lives were in constant danger, so what was the harm in Cas checking out every once in a while?

Dean's mind filled in the answers for him: what if Cas got hurt, or hurt someone else, because he wasn't paying attention? But that was ridiculous. If anything, Cas was gentler and more careful than usual when he was having an episode. He avoided conflict. The closest he had come to hurting anything was dropping the milk glass, and that had been Dean's fault anyway.

And what if it happened in the middle of a hunt? But that was ridiculous too. Shit happens on hunts all the time, and Sam and Dean had a lifetime of experience dealing with that shit. If Cas were to go spacey for a few minutes, even in a really sticky situation, it wouldn't be anything they couldn't handle. Besides, if Dean had to protect Cas for that short time, and if Cas protected Dean the rest of the time, then by anyone's calculations Dean would still be in Cas's debt.

And what if Cas didn't come back? What if he stayed that way forever? By the way Dean's chest tightened at the very thought, that was the real question. That was the real source of terror.

But that wasn't fair, was it? Cas always came back. Always. Even when he was dead. Sometimes it took a while but no matter what, he came back to Dean. If death couldn't stop him, what chance did a little broken wall have?

Cas had proved time and time again that the last thing Dean needed to worry about was Cas leaving him. It was time that Dean showed a little faith in return.

Dean finally said, "That’s my problem, not yours."

"I'm the cause of it," Cas started to say, but Dean cut him off.

"No, I am. ‘Cause I worry, ‘cause I always think the worst is gonna happen," he said, "You're fine. And I just… need to learn to let you be fine. Look, we’re both messed up and together we're kind of a perfect storm of baggage and issues… but we're doing okay. I'm gonna lean on you, and you're gonna lean on me, and we're gonna hold each other up."

Cas was looking at Dean with an unreadable intensity.

Dean tightened his grip on Cas's hand. Then, unable to hold his gaze any longer, Dean retrieved the bottle and the kitten from where he had put them down and busied himself with trying to fit the former into the mouth of the latter. "Now," he said, businesslike, "How the hell do you get these things to eat?"

A slow smile crept over Cas's face. He reached over to still Dean's hands and gently flipped Danny over so that the kitten was lying on his belly instead of on his back. "They shouldn't eat in that position," he explained, "They could inhale the milk and contract pneumonia."

"Whoa," said Dean, "Maybe I should have read the pamphlets." But then Danny finally latched on, and from there it was easy. Danny suckled until his belly was round. When he couldn't eat any more, Dean passed him to Cas and started feeding Raz.

Amber mewed angrily, but Dean only pulled a face at her.

He had just gotten Raz into a comfortable position for nursing when he happened to look over at Cas. Cas had Danny draped over his knee, and was rubbing the kitten's back with two fingers in slow circles. Dean was about to ask him what he was doing when Danny suddenly opened his mouth and belched.

Dean snorted out a surprised laugh. "You burp them just like babies?"

With a tilt of his head, Cas answered, "They are babies."

Dean fell silent, preferring just to watch as Cas let Danny roam over his lap, steering the kitten with small movements of his hands. Finally Danny curled himself into a ball and fell asleep right between Cas's crossed legs. The look on Cas's face as he fondly regarded his sleeping charge, reaching down to stroke between the pair of fuzzy ears, was something that Dean was only just beginning to appreciate. Before, Dean had thought it a shame that Cas's hands, once so mighty, had been reduced to domestic labor. But now he saw what a blessing it was for Cas to trade in his sword for a bottle of milk and, if only just for a while, enjoy the chance to nurture instead of destroy.

The image sparked in Dean's mind a thought so pure and perfect that he couldn't stop himself from speaking it out loud.

"You'd make a good dad."

Cas looked up at him so suddenly and with such wide eyes that he almost seemed afraid. He searched Dean's face for any hint of condescension and, finding none, accepted the compliment with a smile.

"So would you."

-----

Cas slept.

Once the kittens were all fed, burped, and returned to their nest box that night, Dean put Cas back to bed. Dean returned to the couch, taking the phone with him so that Cas wouldn't hear it when it rang, and for the rest of the night Dean was the one who got up at odd hours to cater to the kittens' every need.

When Cas didn't wake up the next morning, Dean kept covering his duties. By noon the kittens had learned that Dean was their new source of food, and Raz and Danny had resumed walking directly under his feet wherever he went in an apparent attempt to either catch any stray pieces of edible material he might have dropped or make him trip and die. Dean wasn't sure which. Amber continued to follow him at a distance, but even she became more likely to dart forward and maul his leg every time it looked like he was holding something tasty, even if that something turned out to be the TV remote.

Later in the day, Dean made a pot of soup. After feeding himself and letting the kittens lick a few drops off his fingers (which earned him a good bite from Danny, who hadn't quite grasped the notion that the skin underneath the soup was not part of the meal), he tiptoed into the bedroom and left a bowl on the nightstand next to Cas's head. Cas didn't appear to have moved an inch when Dean went back into the room that evening, but the soup was gone to the last drop.

Cas didn't properly wake up until late morning on the second day, by which time Dean was thoroughly exhausted from crutching all around the house, completely fed up with the phone alarm, and seriously wondering how Cas had managed to do all this on his own for so long.

"Feeling better?" Dean asked when Cas emerged. He looked better. He was standing up straight, and his eyes were bright and alert.

Those eyes sparkled as they regarded Dean, who was lying flat on his back on the floor. The two orange kittens were roaming over his torso and legs. Amber was sitting next to his head and chewing on his hair. "Much," he confirmed, "I take it you've… bonded."

Dean grinned as he admitted, "They're not so bad. Except they poop everywhere. Everywhere." He gave a little shudder.

Cas looked like he might have laughed, if he had been one for laughing. "I'll get them a litter box," he promised.

They devised a system of shared responsibility that allowed them both to get a reasonable amount of sleep and, to Dean's joy, the sex that had dried up in the last week or so came roaring back. It still wasn’t easy. When one of them had free time, the other was usually busy with his shift in kitten-land. Much of the time the kittens managed to preoccupy both of them at once. And even when they managed to catch a few minutes to themselves - no time for sex, but enough for a make-out - the kittens seemed to be able to sense that they were being ignored and would turn up the volume on their mews to eleven.

The anticipation built until, during one of the precious few hours when neither of them had any pressing kitten-related work to do, Dean found himself being slammed flat on his back in bed so that Cas could climb on top of him and ride.

Dean tended to be loud during sex, always producing a steady stream of groans and filthy commentary. Cas was quieter, almost as if he were going into himself and getting lost in the moment. His eyes were half-lidded and staring at nothing as he bounced rhythmically on Dean's cock, his mouth wide and gasping. His moans were soft, like breaths that had snagged in his throat for just long enough to become raspy and deep. Dean knew what to listen for - he knew how Cas sounded when Dean was taking him too hard, the way his voice changed right before his orgasm, and, if Dean wanted to, how to make those little groans turn into full-throated screams.

Of course, amazing screaming sex took some effort on Dean's part - more effort than he was really able to exert with one leg in a cast to his hip. So for as long as he was injured, he was more than happy to lie back and let Cas do all the work. Like now, he didn't even have to move - just stay sprawled where Cas had put him and enjoy the sensation of Cas's warm, tight ass sliding slickly up and down his cock.

"You almost there, babe?" Dean murmured, reaching up with two fingers to touch the smear of pre-cum on the head of Cas's cock. He brought his fingers to his mouth, and Cas let out a little whimper as he watched.

"You first," Cas answered breathily, grinding faster, making Dean arch and groan.

Through his panting, Dean gasped out, "No, no, not yet. I want us to come together."

Cas nodded as he slowed his pace and began to jack himself off. "Give me some time," he said.

"Well, hurry up," Dean groaned, "I've been thinking about baseball to keep from shooting my load, and I'm not gonna hold out much longer!"

While Cas brought himself slowly to the brink, Dean continued to exert what he was sure was a superhuman effort to keep his own orgasm at bay. The sight of Cas rocking his hips forward and back, sweat beading on his chest and thighs, his cock hardening and pulsing in his grip, was almost more than Dean could take. Cas's hand stroked faster and faster as his moans became sharper and louder until he finally shouted, "Now, now!"

Finally, blessedly, Dean let go and came hard into Cas, his hips thrusting weakly against gravity and the weight of his cast. Cas fell forward and pressed his forehead to Dean's as he shot a thick stripe of cum almost as far as Dean's neck. When he lifted himself off of Dean's cock, both of them still shaking from the aftershocks, and let himself fall flat, the cooling semen made their chests and bellies slide obscenely against each other.

"We are really good at that, aren't we?" said Dean, wrapping his arms around Cas and giving a self-satisfied sigh.

Cas returned the embrace, replying pleasantly, "We? I don't seem to remember you contributing much from there on your back."

"Hey, I watched you ride me for like half an hour without coming," Dean returned, "I deserve a fucking endurance medal for that."

They were silent for several seconds, just breathing and listening to each other breathe, letting their heartbeats synchronize through the walls of their chests, and then Dean said, "Can we just stay this way forever?"

"The kittens need to be fed in an hour," Cas replied dreamily, his eyes falling closed.

"Can we just stay this way for an hour?" Dean amended, and Cas hummed contentedly.

Dean's eyes were just beginning to flutter closed, his body giving in to a comfortable, post-orgasmic sleep, when a noise penetrated the bedroom walls from the direction of the cabin's front door.

"Guys?" Sam shouted, "I'm back!"

-----

As much as Dean had enjoyed having his alone-time with Cas, and as much as it had given them a chance to work out a few things that had desperately needed working out, it was clear to all of them that the family wasn't complete until Sam was home. To Dean, it was like having a missing piece of himself returned to him. For Cas, it was getting his best friend back. Dean and Cas were happy together, but they weren't whole without Sam.

"Did you have fun with Tamara and her girls?" Dean asked across the kitchen table. Cas was flitting between the sink, and oven, the stove, going all-out to make a dinner worthy of Sam's return. He was even making a pie from scratch. ("Why haven't you married him yet?" Sam had asked when he'd noticed Cas rolling out pie crust, which had made Dean choke on his beer and turn a shade of red not previously known to science.)

"I didn't sleep with any of them, if that's what you mean," Sam was saying now, rolling his eyes.

Dean waggled his eyebrows. "That's actually not what I meant, but it's good to know that it was on your mind."

And this time it was Sam's turn to blush.

After dinner, Sam went to the TV room to play with the kittens, complaining that he'd missed out on seeing them grow up and demanding to make up for lost time. Dean pushed Cas after him with a kiss, saying, "I've got the dishes. You two go get your gossip on."

When the dishes were in a gleaming, dripping pile to the side of the sink, Dean poked his head into the TV room. Sam and Cas were sitting on the couch, their backs to Dean, speaking just loudly enough for Dean to overhear.

Sam leaned over sideways to scoop Danny up from where he was pawing at the couch, begging for attention. "He really loves you, you know," he said to Cas as he placed Danny onto his lap.

Dean was about to say that of course Danny loved Cas - all the kittens did - but he held his tongue and stayed in the doorway, quiet and out of sight.

"I know," Cas replied, "I just want him to be happy."

Sam sighed heavily. "Dude, happy doesn't come easy to him. Ever since he was little, life’s been teaching him that if he's happy, that means something terrible is about to blindside him. Happiness isn't something he tries to achieve, you know? It's something that happens to him sometimes in between disasters."

And that was when Dean figured out that they weren't talking about the cats.

"But," Sam continued, "If anything makes him happy, it's you."

"You, too," Cas said quickly.

Sam tilted his head from side to side, equivocally. "Nah, he needs me," he said, "Same way I need him. We'd die without each other. That's not happiness; that's survival. Happiness is in the things you didn't expect, the things you choose to hang on to even when it doesn't make any sense. The things you can live without, but you don't want to. I keep Dean alive. You make him happy."

Cas turned toward Sam so that Dean could see his face in profile, his eyes wide, his mouth eagerly forming the words, "What should I do?"

Sam chuckled. "Exactly what you're already doing," he said, "What you've always done. Just be there for him."

Cas's face turned back toward the floor, and even though Dean could only see the back of his head he could easily imagine the thoughtful expression in those blue eyes. "I will," Cas said quietly.

Slowly, quietly, Dean closed the door and retreated back into the kitchen. He banged a few pots and pans around to make Sam and Cas think he was still busy with the dishes, and then he used the other door - the one that didn't take him through the TV room - to get to bed.

Not long after, Cas joined him. Neither of them said a word as they scooted toward each other, letting limbs fall across bodies until they were hopelessly tangled together.

Sam had been right. Happiness was never something that Dean had tried to achieve. And yet somehow he had achieved it. He was happy.

And he intended to stay that way.

-----

Dean had gotten so used to thinking of the kittens as little, helpless, milk-devouring, poop-dispensing machines that he was honestly surprised at how quickly they grew up over the next couple of weeks.

With a little encouragement, all three of them learned to use the litter box. Cas agonized about what kind of litter to use, telling Dean horror stories about how, according to the pamphlets, kittens could inhale clay dust and get lung infections. Sam came to the rescue with his internet-searching skills once again, providing Cas with a list of safe materials.

Weaning them took no time at all. They took to solid food happily and eagerly. Cas called them advanced for their age, but Dean was pretty sure it had more to do with the fact that he had been sneaking them human food for weeks. Amber especially had a ravenous taste for tuna-flavored kitten chow.

They ate five times a day, and then four, and then three. Somewhat to everyone's surprise, they started getting full nights of sleep. Sam finally showed Cas how to disable the phone alarm, and Dean made them promise on pain of death to never activate it ever again.

They settled into a sort of comfortable routine, and Dean found it easy to imagine that this was the way life was supposed to be. No fighting, no danger. Their sleepless nights were due only to a kitten getting the sniffles, not because they had to stake out a lair or break into an archive. If the world were about to end, they wouldn't know it in their little cabin, and it wouldn't be their problem.

Dean probably couldn't have lived that way forever, but it was nice for a little while.

That was why Dean was somewhat thrown when he woke up one morning to find Cas packing all the kittens' belongings into boxes. All the kitchen drawers they had taken over were emptied; all the piles of toys and laundry were tidied away. Their nest box was broken down, and their litter box cleaned out and leaning upside-down against the wall. As for the kittens themselves, Danny and Raz were sitting forlornly in a plastic carrying crate behind a metal mesh door. Amber was nowhere to be seen.

"Good, you're up," said Cas, coming up behind Dean with a box full of unopened cans of kitten food, "I can't find Ambriel. Will you get her for me?"

Dean let his eyes travel obviously between Cas's armful of cans to the boxes of supplies to the crate full of kittens. "Cas," he said tensely, "What gives?"

Cas immediately put the cans on the ground, freeing his hands to rest on Dean's shoulders calmingly. "Don't you remember?" he said, "Today is the day the kittens go back to the shelter."

To be perfectly honest, Dean hadn't even been thinking about it. He had expected Cas to ignore the deadline, to keep the kittens as long as possible. He had imagined finally confronting Cas about it, putting up a token resistance against Cas's pleas, and then grudgingly allowing the cats to come along with them in the Impala, logistics be damned. He hadn't considered the possibility that Cas would give them up according to schedule, willingly and matter-of-factly.

And he definitely hadn't planned on feeling as much regret as he did at that moment.

"Dean," said Cas gently, reading the subtle hints of distress on Dean's face, "We knew this day was coming. You'll be getting your cast off next week, and we'll be on the road again. To keep them…"

"It wouldn't make any sense," Dean agreed, "I know that. Hell, that's what I told you from the very beginning. I'll get Amber; you get the rest of this stuff packed up."

It didn't take Dean long to find the third kitten. As soon as he hobbled into a more isolated part of the cabin, away from the frightening bustle of Cas's packing, she flitted out from behind a doorframe and meowed peevishly at Dean.

"I know," said Dean in a conversational tone, having long since come to terms with the fact that he was the kind of person who talked to cats as if they could understand, "You were just getting used to things here, and now everything's changing again. I know how that goes. It's not all bad though."

Slowly, moving toward her only in tangents and never in a straight line, Dean managed to shuffle close enough to pick Amber up. That was a new development, Amber letting Dean hold her. She wasn't exactly thrilled about it, and she made it very clear that she would bring the claws and teeth into play if he ever tried to take her somewhere she didn't want to go, but she didn't let anyone else hold her unless they had food in their other hand so Dean figured she trusted him at least a little. He scratched her ears soothingly as he brought her into the TV room.

But as soon as he knelt to put her in the carrier with her brothers, she turned on him.

"Ow!" he growled, flailing his way upright and sucking his finger where she had gouged him with her claws, "Fine, fine. You don't have to go in the carrier." Seemingly soothed by the promise, Amber relaxed in Dean's grip once again.

"Do you need help with her?" Cas asked.

"Nah," said Dean, "I'll just carry her on the way there. No big deal, right?"

Cas looked at him dubiously. "Are you sure you're alright?" he said, "I didn't mean for this to catch you by surprise."

"It's cool," said Dean, placing Amber on his shoulder where she happily used her claws to latch onto his shirt, "I'm just surprised you're taking it so well."

"This was always the plan," said Cas.

"Right," Dean echoed, "The plan."

Sam helped them load everything into the Impala, including the carrier which he set carefully in the back seat, and he said his goodbyes to the kittens. He would have liked to come along, but someone had to start packing the rest of their belongings for when they finally got back on the road in a few days.

"It's kind of a shame," Sam said as he tickled Amber under her chin as she sat perched on Dean's shoulder, "I was getting attached to them."

"They’re going to better homes than we can provide," said Cas as he helped Dean into the passenger seat. Dean still couldn't drive with his cast, so with Sam staying behind, Cas would be behind the wheel.

"Oh, of course," Sam said quickly, "There's no way we can keep them."

"Of course," Dean muttered as he closed the door. Amber crawled from his shoulder onto the top of the bench seat, curled up, and fell asleep.

They had been driving for less than five minutes when Dean broke the silence by asking, "How far is this place?"

Cas answered, "Swarms of hundreds of fireflies can synchronize their flashes of light so that the trees they rest on appear to luminesce in a mathematically predictable pattern."

A quick double-take and, yes, Cas was far out of it. It had been weeks since this had happened last, and Dean had let his guard down. Now the familiar fear rushed back, made worse by the fact that Cas was currently steering them along a narrow highway at fifty miles per hour.

Dean lurched to the left, his instinct telling him to grab the wheel before Cas drove them off the road, but then he remembered his promise. Cas was not broken. He was an angel of the Lord, and even with half his brain occupied with fireflies he had more than enough attention left over to drive a car. Dean froze with his hands outstretched, and then slowly pulled them back. A deep breath. Another.

Cas was fine. Dean could learn to be fine too.

"I don't know about mathematical patterns," Dean said, leaning stiffly back onto his side of the seat, "But I know fireflies. Me and Sam used to catch them in jars when we were kids."

Cas nodded, responding to Dean's participation in the conversation. "You would need a very big jar to hold the entire tree, but it might make it easier to graph the function."

"That's not quite what I meant." Dean tightened his grip on the door handle as they approached a bend in the road, but Cas made the turn without incident. Dean forced himself to relax, loosening his fingers one by one and resting his hands casually on his knees. "We caught them one at a time."

Dean followed Cas's lead, letting the conversation meander whichever way Cas wanted it to. When Cas abruptly stopped talking about fireflies and switched to ocean wave dynamics, Dean kept asking questions and making observations as best he could. When the conversation abruptly jumped back to fireflies, Dean told Cas about how he had made Sam night-lights out of jars of the insects, only to let them out as soon as Sam was asleep so they wouldn't have to spend the whole night imprisoned.

Cas spoke to Dean, not with the same care and deliberation that he normally did, but with all the same affection. It hadn't occurred to Dean before just how amazing it was that, even with his mind wandering over all of space and time, Cas still chose to speak to Dean and ask his opinions. Cas was different when he was like this - distracted and absorbed and likely to say whatever came into his head without thinking about it first - but he was still Cas.

By the time they pulled into the parking lot of the animal shelter, Dean was slouching in his seat, comfortable and relaxed, trusting Cas to get them where they were going even as they talked themselves in strange circles and through obscure topics that Dean could barely follow.

Cas pulled into a parking space and turned the key in the ignition. The engine died. In the sudden silence, Cas turned his head to look at Dean, and the intense clarity had somehow returned to his eyes. There was no transition, no jolt, no interruption. One moment Cas had been elsewhere, and the next he was back. The smoothness of the return seemed to confuse him, and he gripped the car keys, grounding himself in the sensation of points of metal digging into his palm.

Dean reached across and gently uncurled Cas's fingers, taking the keys back from him. "You with me?" he asked.

"Yes," said Cas, "I… apologize." But for once he sounded uncertain rather than ashamed.

Dean smiled. "For what?"

-----

Cas set the carrier on the front desk of the shelter, and Dean set Amber down beside it. Amber sniffed the air, looking extremely unhappy, and promptly hissed at the receptionist.

The receptionist, for her part, didn't seem to take it personally. "They've gotten so big!" she cooed, "I still can't thank you enough for taking them. We were so worried that they weren't going to make it, and then you swooped in like an angel."

Dean glanced at Cas proudly. "Yeah, he does that," he said.

The lobby of the shelter was bright and inviting, and the receptionist young and cheerful - she looked like a student, and her nametag read "Kait." There were racks of dog toys for sale, a forest of free-standing cat trees made of PVC and carpet, and a large machine that would print your pet's name on an ID tag for a small fee. Doors toward the back led to the kennels - the sounds of barking and yapping were coming from that direction. Dean could easily imagine families coming through here, nice families with kids begging for a kitten or a puppy. This was a good place.

But Amber was still balled up on the desk, hissing at anything that came near her, looking miserable. Dean scooped her up and put her back on his shoulder, which calmed her down somewhat.

"Thanks for sending us those pictures of the kittens last week," Kait was saying to Cas, "We put them up here in the lobby, and lots of people saw them. We already have homes lined up for these two little guys." She transferred Danny and Raz from their carrier to a large, two-leveled wire crate just behind the desk. They both immediately began exploring their new surroundings, climbing on the platforms and nesting in the fleece hammocks hanging from the lid. "We'll keep them up here until their families come in to pick them up later today," said Kait.

"What about Amber?" said Dean, unconsciously bringing a hand up to his shoulder to shield her.

Kait reached for Amber next, only to draw her hands away when Amber took a swipe at her. "No one has adopted her yet," Kait admitted, "But that's not uncommon. Usually it's the more colorful kittens that go first. They stand out more."

"Let me get this straight," said Dean, "The boys are going straight to new homes, and Amber's not… because she's black?"

Kait shrugged apologetically. "That's just how it tends to go," she said, "But we'll put her back in the cattery with the other kittens. I'm sure someone will take her home within the next couple of weeks."

"What, back there where all the dogs are barking?" said Dean, turning his body to keep Amber farther away from the noise, "She'll pitch a fit!"

"The cattery is separate from the dog runs…" Kait said, still trying to reach for Amber and looking like she wasn't quite sure what to do with Dean.

"Doesn't matter. I'm not leaving her here." Dean surprised himself with his own vehemence, but he knew that it was true. Amber was special to him, even more so than her brothers. He knew her. He knew that she hated this place, and that she'd be traumatized if she had to spend more than a day here. He knew that she didn't trust easy - if she barely tolerated Dean and Cas, who had raised her, how would she ever adjust to new owners who she'd never met before? And though he loved all her little quirks, if he was honest, he knew that with the way she bit and scratched at the least provocation she was unlikely to ever be adopted.

Cas rested his hand on Dean's back. "Dean," he said, "What do you want to do?"

And that was enough. Dean's hands dropped down from where they had been raised defensively. His heart slowed. Just knowing that Cas had his back no matter what he decided was enough to make Dean calm down and think rationally for a moment about what it was that he wanted. And then it was clear.

"Shit," Dean sighed, chuckling quietly at himself, "I guess we're keeping her."

-----

Dean's leg was sore.

It was mostly healed now, three months after getting the cast off, but he couldn't really take it easy like the doctors had told him to. So sometimes, especially after a rough hunt like the one they had just finished, it would start hurting him again. He tried to hide his limp, but then he almost tripped on a tree root as he picked his way through the edge of the forest.

Without drawing attention to it, Cas sidled over and offered Dean his arm. Dean leaned on him gratefully. Sam noticed, and gave them both those misty eyes like he was thinking about what font he was going to use on their wedding invitations.

As the trio stepped from the dirt floor of the woods back onto the pavement of the parking lot, Dean dug his keys out of his jacket. The Impala sat right where they'd left her, basking in the low afternoon sun. And there was something else basking on top of her.

"You stay out of trouble while we were gone?" Dean called out to Amber as they approached.

Amber popped her head up at the sound of Dean's voice and gave a raspy yowl in response. She stood limb-by-limb, stretching in every direction, before sitting on the edge of the car roof like a sphinx, eye-to-eye with Dean.

She had grown since Dean had walked her into the shelter to give her away only to walk right back out with her again. Her orange markings had darkened and blended into the black of her fur, turning her into a handsome tortoiseshell cat. She was small for her age, but she was quick, and she was turning into quite the hunter (of mice and shrews, mostly, instead of demons). Her electric blue eyes had faded, and were now turning the shade of coppery green that she would wear as an adult.

Cas frowned as Amber doubled herself over and began licking her own belly, right in the middle of a patch where the fur was shaved short. "She shouldn't be licking at her spay scar," he said, "We'll have to put the cone back on her if she doesn't stop."

"Aw, she hated that cone," Dean protested, flicking Amber's ear until she left her scar alone, "I'll keep an eye on her instead." He leaned one shoulder against the roof of the car and Amber stepped onto it, perching deftly.

"Her last round of vaccines is due soon," Sam pointed out as he dumped their supplies in the trunk.

"That reminds me," said Dean, "We need to get more of those flea drops for her skin. The flea collar didn't work at all."

"I found a kind that prevents heartworm too," said Cas, "We'll start giving it to her when she's due for another treatment next month."

Uninterested in the concern for her health that was on display, Amber carefully extruded her dagger-sharp claws and poked them into Dean's shoulder.

"Ow!" he said, swatting her gently away, "Okay, okay. We're going."

Dean picked up the water dish from where he had put it safely under the car, dumped it out, and slid into the driver's seat. The others soon joined him: Sam beside him and Cas right behind. Amber left Dean's shoulder to balance herself on the seat back.

Sam pulled out a map. "Jody called with a possible job two states over," he said, "We might make it tonight if we head out right away."

"No rest for the wicked, huh?" said Dean, but he was smiling even as he complained.

Curled up on the seat back, Amber began to purr. Cas reached forward to scratch between her ears and then, as an afterthought, he gave Dean's head an affectionate rub too.

Dean laughed as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the freeway.




(Art by krioboly)