Salute all the brethren with an holy kiss
Written: 18 Mar 2012
Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel. OT4 gen relationship.
Rating: G
Length: c. 1400
Warnings: None
Notes: Futurefic for In His Image. Written for (but slightly amended from) the WAFF-a-thon at tiptoe39's journal. This once can be read on its own - the only background you need is that Team Free Will (including Gabriel) averted the season 5 Apocalypse (and paired off in the process), and have been trying to patch together the mess Lucifer made of the world since. This is two months later.
Summary: Original prompt was from mithrel: “Supernatural, Team Free Love, a villa in Rome.” Technically this remains Sam/Gabriel and Dean/Castiel for now, but the focus is on the group dynamic. Gabriel decides they all need a holiday, Castiel decides physical affection is the way to go, Dean and Sam blink a lot. Mostly fluff.
AO3 link.
It was Gabriel (of course it was) who decided that they needed a holiday.
He said that every post-Apocalyptic disaster clean-up volunteer who also hunted weird supernatural shit in their spare time needed angel-prescribed time off every two months like clockwork, for his own sanity. Dean not-so-secretly interpreted this as “Gabriel gets laid more often if Sam isn’t bitching about what the latest crappy motel mattress did to his back”.
Dean wasn’t sure why this meant that they had to spend a week in a villa in Rome instead of, you know, checking in at a slightly better class of motel and not looking at newspapers for a week. And also turning off all their phones, because honestly, most of their jobs these days came in from Bobby or Becky or someone else in their suddenly vast network of contacts, angelic and human. He wasn’t complaining, though, because Gabriel had managed to perform a miracle: Castiel had agreed, eventually, to join them every evening at six, and not to leave again until ten in the morning.
Dean was going to get whole nights with him.
---
On the first night, Sam was still in Wisconsin, tidying up a few loose ends after their last case (freaked-out witnesses weren’t really Dean’s thing). Dean and Gabriel kicked back on the patio of the villa with a beer each, and spent all afternoon planning what a wild time they’d have on the town that night without Sam there to make his Pouty Face of Epic Disappointment and Woe at them, until they (okay, Dean) dozed off in the late afternoon sun.
Crap, he was getting old. And he’d barely started on the good stuff.
He woke when Castiel turned up, looking kind of tense. Through half-opened eyes, Dean watched him step out onto the patio to join them, all the long elegant lines and economical movements of him, the determined eyebrows of doom and the soft fond corner of his mouth. Castiel leaned down by the first chair to kiss Gabriel (who tipped his head back for it and made a pleased noise), knelt down by the second to kiss Dean. Dean took shameless advantage of semi-consciousness to knot lazy fingers into his shirt, turn his face into the cool angle of his throat, and breathe him in.
They didn’t go out on the town that night.
Gabriel flitted off, eventually, to hang around Sam and be adoringly unhelpful at him. Dean took Castiel to check out the awesome mattresses, relishing the knowledge that when he woke up they’d all be there. His angel, his brother, his brother’s angel / angel’s brother, all of them under one roof and morning-lazy.
---
On the second night, Dean and Gabriel and Sam were sprawling around playing truth or dare when six o’clock struck, because Sam was a giant girl. (Though Dean was ready to admit that playing it with Gabriel was... something else.) When Castiel came in, he took a moment to stand and look around at them, eyebrows slightly less doom-laden than usual, like he thought he could get used to this. Dean waved his beer at him happily, and Castiel did that fond little half-twitch of his mouth he did when he thought Dean was being particularly relaxed and human.
Then he picked his way across the patio, by the same path as last night. Stooped by the first chair to kiss Gabriel, stooped by the second to kiss Sam, knelt down by the third to kiss Dean.
... Wait, what?
Dean blinked at Castiel.
Castiel blinked at Dean.
Dean blinked at Sam.
Sam boggled at the back of Castiel’s head.
Dean blinked at Gabriel.
Gabriel snickered into his cup.
Dean flipped Gabriel off on general principles.
“... Cas?” he asked carefully. Because, you know, maybe this was one of those things you weren’t meant to mention.
“Dean,” Castiel returned, all obliging and patient and dammit he was kneeling beside Dean’s chair with his hand on Dean’s knee, he knew Dean always got distracted when he did that.
“… Dude. Did you just kiss Sam?”
“He did,” Sam put in helpfully, sort of blankly.
Yeah, thanks Sam. That cleared things right up.
“Yes,” Castiel said simply.
Great, now he was wearing his Be Patient And Literal With The Confused Humans face. The one that meant Dean was going to have to work for it.
Okay. Winchester fall-back tactic number one: make a joke out of it.
“So, anything you guys want to tell me?”
“Ew. No, Dean!” Cue wounded-gazelle face from Sam. “I mean. Er. Not that I wouldn’t - I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with Cas - er, sorry Cas. I mean, not ew ew, just - ew.”
“Stop before you hurt yourself, honeybuns,” Gabriel suggested solicitously.
Castiel was giving Dean his Grave Yet Disappointed In You look. Damn. Dean hated that one.
“Dude. Dudes don’t kiss dudes.”
Grave Yet Disappointed acquired a side-order of I Invite You To Think About What You Just Said, with extra narrowed eyes.
“… Except, obviously - well. And you and Gabriel because you’ve got that weird angel-brother thing going on. But not friends.”
“A kiss is a token of affection, companionship, kinship, not only of lust,” Castiel pronounced carefully. “Sam is dear to me, as are you and Gabriel. To greet him only with words, and you two with a touch, would be an unnatural distinction.”
Because, yeah, Castiel had explained that a kiss was, for angels, like the closest thing they could do to some trusting grace-touch thing. Which, fine, though Dean suspected Gabriel of playing it up far more than he had to some days. But if he was still confused about what it looked like to humans…
“Yeah, but, on the mouth, it’s… weird,” Dean clarified gently. “To humans.”
Only then Castiel’s patient expression went suddenly hard and a little bit tired. “And what am I, Dean? Angel or human?”
“… Whoops,” Gabriel said quietly, and his eyes sparkled with something dark and warning.
… Dammit.
That question. That same freaking question. The one that had kept jumping out on them like some kind of grinning jack-in-the-box the first few weeks. (“Is it the all-powerful angel you want, Dean? or the human you think you will make of me?”) Dean had thought they’d salted and burned the son of a bitch.
Sam’s forehead crumpled up.
“Cas, hey. No. Not what I meant, okay?” Dean reached out and touched the stiff, stubbled line of his jaw. Because, Dean was really crap at this whole relationship thing, in lots of ways, but especially at words. They stuck in his throat, stumbled out far too late and looking all shabby and pointless. The only way he could say things that he really meant was with his body; but that was a language that Castiel was still learning.
Castiel didn’t pull away, but he didn’t move into it either. “How is that not what you meant?”
Dean threw a pleading look at Gabriel, and something the archangel saw there made his face slide in a moment from Dig Your Way Out Of Your Own Hole, Winchester to resigned and only slightly mocking. “You are, sparrow. Sam’s not. Kind of weird for him, yeah? Not exactly going to work with the whole casual manly backslaps thing you guys have got going on.”
Castiel’s throat jumped under Dean’s fingertips, and the dark shutter of his lashes fell into place over his eyes. “I understand. I apologise, Sam.”
“Um. I don’t mind…?” Sam ventured, awkward and unconvincing.
Castiel went and got his own chair.
Dammit. Dean hated not-arguments. They always ended up with Castiel looking resigned and small in a way that Dean couldn’t fix with abject grovelling. And he couldn’t exactly kiss him out of it now, either. Because Gabriel and Sam might not care about having an audience (okay, or Castiel really), but Dean wasn’t quite that far gone.
And also, also... this wasn't just Cas and Dean. This was, in some weird way he wasn't quite sure about yet, all of them. All four.
“… Chocolate, anyone?” Gabriel offered, kind of lamely.
Sam had his thinky-face frown on.
---
On the third night, Sam went out to get a couple more beers just before Castiel turned up.
Castiel stooped at the first chair to kiss Gabriel; gave the second chair a frown so puzzled and faint that Dean almost thought he’d imagined it; then stopped at the third to kiss Dean.
When Sam came back, he leaned over the first chair to make out with Gabriel for a minute (because it had been two freaking minutes since they’d seen each other, jesus); then, coming over to hand Dean his beer, stooped to drop a kiss on top of Castiel’s head.
… The sneaky son of a bitch.
Castiel blinked at him.
Sam grinned back, bright and smug. “Hi, you.”
Castiel’s eyes softened into his kick-ass little smile that meant everything.
“Hello, Sam.”
Gabriel was trying not to beam too much behind his cup. Dean was so onto him.