March-Stalkers Mighty: 15/22
Passus VIII: Pes dexter.
“There is... next to no self-preservation in the choices he makes,” Rachel said, and Dean got the impression she was picking her words carefully, almost like a warning. “If he thinks that he can better care for someone by sacrificing himself, he will do it without hesitation.”
There are giants in the sky!
There are big, tall, terrible giants in the sky!
...
And you’re climbing down, and you look below,
And the world you know begins to grow:
The roof, the house, and your mother at the door.
The roof, the house, and the world you never thought to explore.
And you think of all of the things you’ve seen,
And you wish that you could live in between,
And you’re back again, only different than before,
After the sky.
There are giants in the sky!
There are big, tall, terrible - awesome - scary - wonderful giants
In the sky!
Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, 1983. (Jack recounts his adventures up the Beanstalk.)
Dean stepped through onto the cool stone flags of Ellen’s guest bathroom, and let the curtain fall into place behind him with a heavy rustle. It was just Ellen and Rachel in there, undressing an unconscious Cas with careful fingers as Rachel held him upright. Cas’ head was lolling trustingly against Rachel’s shoulder, and the shadows and valleys of his back were half visible through the long narrow V between his tight-folded wings.
Dean’s “Hey” came out softer than he’d meant it, as he tried to remember what he’d meant to say.
Ellen looked up, and her eyes when she smiled were tired. “Take over here, would you? And come and join us in my kitchen when you’re done.”
Dean cleared his throat. “Sure. Course.” He stepped in to take her place, fumbling a bit as he tried to work out what she’d been doing with the wing on her side, and felt her moving away behind him to wash her bloodied hands in the basin. Rachel didn’t even look up to acknowledge the change in human. Maybe they were all the same to her anyway.
Cas’ wings were gummed to his sides and back with drying blood, and the skin was too cool against Dean’s fingers when he went to work the left one loose. Cas was meant to be warm, always just a bit warmer than Dean. Did angels go into shock?
The largest washtub was full in the corner, steaming gently.
There was no way Ellen could have forgiven Cas yet, because she wasn’t the sort to forgive easily. Seemed like she’d decided to ignore that, for now.
“Ellen,” he said carefully, and tried not to notice the shape of the muscles under his hand as he slid it down over the back of his left ribs, coaxing the blood-sticky feathers free. “Thank you.”
She paused in the door, and didn’t look back. “Don’t screw up, Dean Winchester.”
He let the smirk colour his voice, and the relief. “Yes ma’am.”
When they’d got close enough to home, Ellen had gone on ahead, to let everyone else know what was going on. Absolutely normal, that, after a hunt: alert everyone about any injured, about what was necessary, about who’d need looking after and if there was any special medical attention or funeral pyres needed ready for the main party’s arrival. Only this time, what she’d had to say was “no humans are badly hurt, we’re all coming home, we got Sam back, Gwen is alive after all, oh and hey, we’ve got three guests staying at the Roadhouse for a while who happen to be angels, so we need some people to start chipping away at the anti-angel sigils on the inside of the Gate’s lintel, and by the way we really need a bath.”
Not exactly your typical post-hunt brief. Well, except for the last part.
By the time they’d got home, Andy and Rufus and Pamela and Jody had already been effacing the symbols, while Ellen and Missouri and Victor and Christian and Gordon had been arguing vehemently under the ladders.
Cas had kept right on being passed out, where he was slumped in an impromptu chair made of Anna’s and Dean’s arms. Which was a bit disappointing. For some reason, Dean had really wanted him to be a part of this. It felt significant. All of them, passing under the lintel of the Gate, with its age-old paintings and symbols whose discovery everyone had forgotten. The feeling of realising that the boundary was crossed, and broken, and that Dean’s hands were still pressing determinedly against the grubby (real) linen of Cas’ pants, and that everyone could see them, all of them.
Gwen had put her hand on Rachel’s arm as her wings had flared, and there’d been a quick hissed argument of which Dean only heard “look like an enemy when you’re hanging overhead” and “down here you look almost human, and any bullet has to go through us.”
He’d swung around a little as they’d came to a halt just inside, planting himself squarely between Cas and anyone who might be getting any ideas. So many eyes on them, on him and Cas: Gordon’s hard and pitying, and Missouri’s indulgent and firm, and Jo’s large and brown and scared behind the tough, casual attitude. And Charlie had been there, for some reason, looking torn between terror and absolute thrill.
And Ellen had spoken. That speech had carried right over that moment when no one had known quite what to say, and given them something to shape it with. Mostly because it was, in one sense, absolutely traditional. Every word of it had been addressed to the two conscious angels, and every word of it had been the usual guest-welcome speech that had been spoken to Gabriel so many times before, the one that declared them all under their protection, safe from the world outside, welcome under their roofs and into their kitchens and halls, that promised sanctuary and healing as they needed it, and that forbade questioning and business for forty-eight hours. And it went on, of course, to the thinly veiled threats of what should happen if the guests themselves were to break the sanctions of hospitality: the violation of guest-bond, the closed doors, the vicious self-defence. All bets off.
Sam, who had all the correct responses memorised, had recited them in a low voice for the angels’ ears. And Rachel had picked up his words and repeated them, ringing and clear; and Anna, too, lower but eager and completely trusting.
And everyone there, of course, how could they help but chime in with their parts, the chorus section of the ritual, straggling awkwardly over their own vows to protect and cherish the guests, according to the mores instilled in them with every childhood story, every cuff about the head when a kid said some visiting stranger looked funny. Guests were fucking sacred, and they had to be, or you got cut off and withered and died. Just one pedlar telling another “don’t go there, it’s not worth the risk” and suddenly you’d only have half as much salt as you needed for the year.
Some things you just couldn’t do on your own, after all. Some things you needed the outside world for, even if you pretended it didn’t exist.
Even if you usually thought of the outside world as human.
Instead, three angels, standing on their feet (well, mostly) instead of being monstrous shapes outlined against the sky. Three angels, one unconscious and badly hurt, all of them roughed-up and bloodied and limping amongst roughed-up and bloodied and unhurt humans.
The speech had ended, less traditionally, with “and if you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with Singer or Mills tomorrow, I’ve got three guests to put up and a hell of a lot of blood to clean before I let them loose on my bedrooms, and someone’d better have hauled some hot water for me already.”
Not a gun had been raised; and for now, that was enough.
The silence that followed Ellen’s departure from the bathroom was probably awkward, but Dean was too busy gritting his teeth to notice. He hadn’t realised how badly Cas had got roughed up in that second round, when he’d been slowed by pain and weakness. With his wings lifted free of his body, too many scratches and gashes and scrapes were laid bare; and even where the skin of his torso was unbroken it was mottled and tender with the promise of bruises. Some of them were in the shape of Dean’s hands.
As Rachel tried to peel loose three secondary feathers from a gash on his right side, Cas made a low pained noise, and squirmed away from her hands. She hissed and flinched back, then returned determinedly to the task, fingers moving in with brusque little jerks like they weren’t used to moving gently and weren’t quite sure what to do.
“Easy, man,” Dean murmured in Cas’ ear, in case he was listening. “It’s just us, okay? Here, you got him?”
It was the work of a moment to fill a jug with warm water and bring it back, but even that earned him a glare that said she had expected no more than to be left to do everything herself. Kind of uncomfortable, having an angel glaring at you like that. Cas, even Gabriel at his worst, had only ever looked at Dean like he was a person. Maybe an enemy person sometimes, in Gabriel’s case, but not something alien. Rachel, though - Dean got the impression she’d put a knife in his throat in a minute if she thought she should, and not consider it murder.
Dean cocked an eyebrow at her, kind of grimly, and poured a trickle of warm water down Cas’ side, soaking the blood loose. She watched closely, like she thought he might suddenly try to drown Cas in the jug if left unsupervised.
“This would have gone much faster if we hadn’t had to wait for that ridiculous device of yours to warm the water up.”
Dean rolled his eyes, and went down on one knee to untie Cas’ pants and coax them down over his hips. “Lady, I’m not about to fling buckets of cold water over the guy with open wounds and broken bones.”
She cocked her head - the same bird-like mannerism as Cas, but on her it looked cool and hard as a hawk. “Why not?”
There was a set of claw-marks that had scraped their way down Cas’ ribs and snagged on the sharp jut of his right hip. Working the tips of his fingers under the waistband to lift it clear of the skin took almost enough concentration to distract Dean from what he was actually doing, from the shadow of dark hair that he wasn’t looking at in the crevice of the thigh just next to where Dean’s little finger was splayed, from the little knot of nervousness about whether his stupid inappropriate body was going to start doing stupid inappropriate things in a minute.
Rachel’s question helped too, of course, once it sank in. It was enough to bring Dean’s head up to blink at her, to see if he’d missed something; but there wasn’t a trace of humour there.
“Shock and fever?” he offered carefully. “Startling a body that’s already too cold and having a hell of a time pulling itself back together? Or don’t angels have to bother about that sort of thing?”
Something flickered over her face, gone in a moment. “I don’t know,” she said briskly. “The aftermath of a battlefield is not the place for calm observation and comparison. Some survived, some didn’t. What do you suggest?”
“Uh.” Dean had to drop his eyes back to the grubby curve of Cas’ side to keep from shuddering, because, cold. Or hardened, or whatever.
Not that he didn’t know people who’d started down that path, but usually you tried to pull them out of active hunting before they went too far.
“Well, washing him first. Making sure there’s nothing left in the cuts.” He tried to ignore the soft swell of flesh under his right hand as he slid Cas’ pants down, stamping down on the frantic little catalogue of Glimpses Caught Out Of The Corner Of His Eye ticking away in his head, because really, brain, not helping. “Then I’ll... um. Flush them with alcohol so they don’t go bad, just in case, and stitch them up.”
Cas’ feet were filthy, of course, and what was with angels never wearing shoes? Dean poured the contents of his jug over those, brushed the worst of it off onto the floor. They could clean up for Ellen later. (And feet were safe enough to stare at.)
“Very well.” Rachel gathered Cas into her arms again and carried him over to the tub, careful as a child who’s just been told that if she can keep the runt of a litter alive, it’s hers. The water swirled and steamed up around Cas’ body, lapping with soft tongues at blood and sweat and dirt; and Cas’ eyes slid open, something between a grumble and a relieved moan caught in his throat.
“Hey buddy!” Dean crouched down next to the tub and put his hand next to where Cas’ was draped over the rim. “You with us?”
Cas squinted at him, the vague blurry frown of the not really awake, and Dean ached with the urge to gather him in against his body and bury his face in his hair (even filthy like this) and trace over every inch of skin with the warmth of his own hands, to make sure it was okay.
“Dean,” he slurred out. “You have lost your shirt.”
“Wasn’t a shirt anymore so much as a mud sieve.” Dean picked up the jug and sluiced warm water gently down over Cas’ shoulder. “Plus it stank. Almost as bad as you right now.”
Cas closed his eyes and dropped his head forward with a pleased little sound, so that the water ran over the back of his neck and pooled in the hollow of his collarbone. When Dean dipped the jug back into the water for a refill, Cas just sort of curled up - arms folded up together on the edge of the tub, forehead resting against them, knees tucked underneath him, wings slumping lazily down from the peak to trail across the floor on either side of the bath - and went back to sleep.
“Huh.” Dean blinked down at the warm wet curve of angel back in front of him. Then he poured the jug over it, chasing the slide of mud and water with the side of his hand to sweep it off, because that seemed like a reasonable thing to do. And it was good to touch him, so goddamn good that it set Dean’s heart thumping, fierce and protective; but his body wasn’t revving up and sending blood rushing all over the place (and especially southward) like he’d been kind of worried it might.
Which was good, because honestly, Cas being all battered and unconscious wasn’t a pleasant thing, and it would have been kind of sick of his body to get all excited over that.
Rachel was frowning down at the back of Cas’ head like it was something strange and a bit marvellous, though her fingers didn’t still where they were combing damply through the coverts in the crook of Cas’ right wing.
“He trusts you.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean swallowed the pleased little lump in his throat and began chivvying the mud out of Cas’ hair with careful little sloshes, one hand guarding the side of the angel’s face to keep it from running into his eyes. Because it really wasn’t that complicated. “He can.”
She was silent for a minute, like she wasn’t sure what to make of it. Then she reached for one of Ellen’s toothed wooden spoons, and began using that to slide under the feathers, to hold them up and open while she trickled water down over them. “This sleep,” she said neutrally, with a peculiar weight behind it. “It is his body healing itself of what it can. If he didn’t feel safe, absolutely safe, it would put off the healing and keep him awake.”
“Okay,” Dean allowed, because she seemed to think this was something remarkable and important. Not like it was the first time Cas had passed out and trusted Dean to look out for him, after all. Letting Cas get hurt was right next to letting Sam get hurt on Dean’s to-do list, so. No surprises there. “Can you heal the ribs and the scratches from the demons?”
She looked at the bite mark on Cas’ shoulder (sluggishly leaking blood again, in the warm water) like she’d barely even noticed it before. Which, fair enough, they were closing up already, but Dean was pretty sure they should be closing faster and there was no point giving his body more things to do if it didn’t have to. When she reached out to touch it, Dean stilled her with a couple of fingers on the back of her hand (because it never paid to get grabby with a woman, even ones that couldn’t smite you), and she looked up at him without flinching away.
“No, not yet. Wanna wash them out first too, just to be sure.”
So they did that first, working cautiously together, turning Cas’ body this way and that so that his occasional little pained grumbles were muffled first in one neck then the other. And if Dean sort of manipulated things so that Rachel ended up washing pretty much everything below the waist and above the knee, well, that was only fair to Cas, because, yeah.
Then she showed him how to clean Cas’ wings properly. How to use the tines of the wooden spoons to draw the vanes of the feathers through without ruffling them (though she grumbled about not having a proper set of wing combs, like it was rude of Ellen not to have any). How the feathers lay in tracks or rows and you could lift up one whole row at a time with the long handle of the spoon to pour water underneath. How to press warm water gently through the worst bits without disturbing the lie of the feathers. How to angle the wing (since Cas wasn’t aware enough to do it himself) so that the dirty water ran down along the curve of it and back into the tub instead of all over the floor. How to draw your fingers carefully through the rows in long steady sweeps until the feathers lay smooth and gleaming; and how to start each sweep at the little nub just under the shoulder bone of the wing to gather the oil that seeped out there at a touch, so that the feathers collected it off your fingers as you went.
Dean was pretty clumsy at it, and got absolutely filthy, but he figured he wasn’t doing too badly for a guy who’d only ever had hair to deal with. And there was actually less dirt rubbed in there than Dean had expected, after all that rolling about on the ground and the moss. A hell of a lot less than in Dean’s hair, for one thing. He couldn’t quite get over the weirdness of getting Cas’ oil on his hands, but Rachel didn’t seem bothered by it, so maybe this was normal for angels, among friends.
Like kissing, his treacherous mind decided to add, so he stamped down firmly on that line of thought.
Then it was time to stitch up the mess Dean’s hands had made of Cas’ wings.
Rachel clipped off some of the feathers around the nasty gaping slash for Dean to work, but it didn’t help much. She couldn’t clip them off too close to the skin, because apparently there were blood vessels in the base, and she refused to cut too many feathers on the grounds that they weren’t like fur and wouldn’t grow back at all until Cas’ next moult, which was months away. Dean fought back the urge to snicker at the sudden image of Cas puffed up grumpy as a broody hen (wings bedraggled, feathers floating sadly through the air and getting all over the kitchen bench and into the food and the dog basket and Sam’s favourite tankard that he always left out on the counter), and just did his best with what he could. He’d sewn up more awkward wounds before, after all.
They didn’t talk much. Dean’s one attempt at conversation - asking if she had any kids or siblings or anything - made her go all rigid and inform him quietly that he should be careful with that sort of question because family was a delicate subject for most angels now.
Which made a painful kind of sense.
He didn’t start anything else; but, after a few minutes of holding Cas’ wing still and watching Dean’s fingers move like she was studying, she unexpectedly offered something of her own.
“He isn’t... easy to look after.”
Dean finished easing the needle through the delicate blue-black skin, then glanced down at where Cas’ face was pillowed on his own forearms again, hidden except for the edge of his cheekbone and the curve of one eyelash, almost passive in sleep. He thought of Cas’ determination to do everything himself; of his eyes, and the hot, implacable blue they went when he’d made up his mind and wasn’t going to budge.
He drew the thread carefully through in the needle’s path, pulling the ragged lips of the wound together; and the flesh tugged at the sinew like it was reluctant to give it up.
“Guess he wouldn’t be,” he allowed, wondering where this was going.
She reached out to lay a hand on Cas’ head; and there was something in the way she looked at him that made Dean realise just how much older she must be than Cas, like the ache there was in Ellen’s eyes every time she realised (again and again) that Jo was growing up.
“There is... next to no self-preservation in the choices he makes,” Rachel said, and Dean got the impression she was picking her words carefully, almost like a warning. “If he thinks that he can better care for someone by sacrificing himself, he will do it without hesitation.”
Someone opened a window in the front part of the house, and Dean heard the huff of a horse, the clatter of dishes, the hum and swell of voices in the main room of the Roadhouse. Ellen must have opened it up, brought people inside to chatter it out while she and Bobby and so on debriefed Sam and Gwen in the kitchen. The voices didn’t really reach back here, though: here it was quiet, the odd little peace of chilly bathroom flags and low voices.
“Sounds like him,” Dean said, quiet and gruff, because she was waiting for some reply.
A trickle of dirty water was curling down the back of Cas’ neck, trailing its way out of a little clinging rat’s-tail of wet hair. Dean reached up and brushed it away with his thumb, gentle as he could, and Cas sighed a bit into his arms.
Dean could live with “not easy.”
Neither of them said any more while Dean tied off the last few stitches, then it was just “got him?” and “you take that arm” while they drained the tub and patted him dry.
Sam’s old pants were too long on Cas’ legs, but it wasn’t like he was going to be walking just yet; and there wasn’t really any point slashing up a shirt to fit over his wings when they were just going to bundle him into bed anyway.
Rachel abandoned them while Dean was still towelling Cas’ hair dry - an awkward angle, sitting on the bench with Cas sort of slumped against his side, but it was a kind of awkwardness Dean could get used to - saying she had to make sure Anna was alright and the bedrooms were in order, and leaving strict instructions that Castiel was to go straight to bed and not be kept up talking.
Dean nodded obediently, smiled her sweetly out the door, and finished patting the last of the dampness from Cas’ hair. Then he let the towel drop and swung one leg over the bench so that Cas was leaning sideways into his chest, warm with steam and bathwater, skin whole and unhurt and just a bit pink where Rachel had healed him, matching the flush in his cheeks.
Dean gave in to temptation and pressed his mouth and nose into Cas’ hair, just in front of his ear. Now the stink of blood and sulphur and mud and sweat was gone, he mostly just smelled of wet skin and hair and the faint, sweet tang of freshly oiled feathers. Like Cas, and childhood; but something deeper and richer underneath now, mature, delicious and promising.
Dean’s fingertips skittered across the nape of Cas’ neck, where he was pretty sure he was sensitive. Then he brushed through the down feathers between the shoulder blades, still a bit straggly and dishevelled from their wetting.
Did down need oiling? Dean couldn’t remember.
He couldn’t help drawing his thumb down the long, supple curve of Cas’ spine, almost to the base, tracing the thrum of life beating deep inside him. Safe and strong.
The skin shivered under his touch.
Dean nosed at his temple, just a bit, and smiled.
“Knock it off, dude,” he murmured, pitching his voice low. “Your breathing changed pretty much as soon as I started sewing you up.”
A thin line of blue glinted up at him from under one eyelid, just a bit of sleepy indulgence and irritation.
“Don’t give me that look,” Dean hummed against his ear. “I got years of worrying about you to catch up on. Poor Sammy’s been getting a double dose all this time. If you want me not to gang up with your women to coddle you while you’re asleep, you’re going to have to wake up to stop me.”
“You make no sense,” Cas grumbled vaguely. Then, more carefully, with his wings drawing in a little closer from their loose, easy sprawl over the flags, “Are the others alright.”
It probably didn’t make much sense to grin stupidly over Cas’ inability to pronounce question marks, but hey, who was going to call Dean on it?
“Anna and Rachel are upstairs in the guest bedrooms. Sam and Gwen are with Ellen and Bobby and Jody and Missouri and probably a couple of others in the kitchen, hashing all this out. And the only stairs up to the guest bedrooms are through the kitchen, so no hotheads are going to go charging up there to take things into their own hands.”
Cas nodded slightly, just a little shift of his head, and though he didn’t pull away he curled in on himself a bit, cool and careful, so it wasn’t an embrace anymore. Just Dean holding him up. Again.
Which... made no sense.
Cas had been the one to kiss him, last time, to reach out and tug him in and clutch at Dean like he was starving. Cas had (apparently) sought out Dean’s dreams to speak to him, and said... something, something Dean wasn’t quite clear on, but something that had meant let me stay with you. Gabriel was meant to be the stand-offish one, not Cas. Dean hadn’t got a clue what it was Cas wanted to hear, and he had the distinct feeling that he was hopeless enough at the whole sensitivity shit that whatever he said could only make things worse.
“So, hey,” he blurted out instead. “I didn’t know you could do diplomacy.”
Cas blinked at him twice, and completely missed the implied compliment. “I can’t. I am not an archangel, I have had no formal training, and I prefer listening over drawing all eyes on myself.”
Oh well. It had been a crappy compliment anyway.
Cas closed his eyes for a moment, slow like a tired blink. The powerful, down-cushioned leading edge of his good wing was almost close to dry again already, brushing faintly against Dean’s upper arm with each breath. Dean ached unreasonably to lean in just far enough to feel it, to bury his fingers in the dark living warmth of him and prove that everything was okay, but he didn’t have the excuse for it that he’d had ten minutes ago.
More uncertainly, Cas continued, “Sam advised me to leave out the fact of the demons’ nature - to say only that we pursued them from our own lands - but I find dishonesty a... poor basis for negotiation.”
“Yeah, guess that might’ve helped. But bullshitting Ellen...” Dean rubbed the back of his neck, and grimaced.
The corners of Cas’ eyes creased faintly. “From what I had heard of her, I thought that would be unwise.”
Dean flashed him a grin, quick and relieved. “Damn straight.”
The smudge of shadow at the edge of Cas’ mouth deepened, just a bit, and for a moment Dean felt like they were on the same page, like they could work something out.
“Are you,” Cas said, low and gruff, then he stopped and looked away.
Dean made an enquiring noise, and carefully didn’t give in to the temptation to lean his cheek against Cas’ hair. A droplet of water escaped at the nape of Cas’ neck and trailed its leisurely way down the curve of his spine. Dean pretended that he wasn’t letting his eyes wander any further down along that path to imagine where it ended, under the faded blue fabric.
He reached out, before it reached Cas’ waistband, and smeared it into the skin.
Cas’ breath went shallow for a moment, and Dean wondered if he was in pain again.
“Are you sure,” Cas said carefully, and somehow Dean got the impression that he had originally meant to say something quite different. “Are you sure that we are safe in here, after you were so adamant that your people would kill me if they found me in the cabin.”
“If you walked out into the town square now you’d probably be dead,” Dean admitted bluntly. “But you’re staying in here until you’re better anyway, and if I have to yell at everyone in the damn place until you’re safe outside, I will.”
“How reassuring,” Cas murmur dryly, a bit warmer, a bit more sure. Which was important, because if he didn’t feel safe he wouldn’t sleep properly, heal properly.
But there were some questions Dean just couldn’t put off.
“Cas,” he said, low and urgent, “Cas. Some of the shit that demon said...”
Cas tilted his head, like he was hearing all the things Dean couldn’t ask. “Demons don’t lie, Dean,” he murmured, close enough that Dean could feel the warmth of him against his side. “They merely use the truth dishonestly.”
Great. More “pick your own truth.”
Or maybe just, you know. Taking things on trust.
Cas was right there. Eyes bright with shadow and full of a lifetime that Dean hadn’t got a clue about barely six inches away, and it was really hard to think when Dean could feel the breath on his cheek.
“Look,” Dean said, because he really did want to say this bit, and if Cas was offended it might explain a bit of the reserve. “Sorry about the whole incubus thing, you know. I was...” He stopped, swallowed, and amended, “I’ve been sort of confused, these last few weeks.”
Cas’ mouth twisted into a small sad smile that said he knew that. “It is not of import,” he said, kind of gruffly, but it was, and Dean didn’t get it but he wanted to make that sadness go away. Only, where would he start?
The thing was. Cas being real, after years of existing just in Dean’s head, that was weird enough. Seeing him here in Ellen’s house, or with other angels, or in the same space as Jo and Gwen and Ellen of all people, actually talking to them... that was insane. Like... oil and water, or something. It made him feel too real, like there was this whole other part of him that Dean couldn’t understand, all those bits he’d been resolutely ignoring or hadn’t ever known about. Now he wasn’t just Dean’s, and he felt more alien than before.
Dean had to ask him too many things. What he knew about this whole business with the demons having a leader, what it meant that Cas was apparently like that leader somehow, what compromises Cas had made that he regretted. What he’d been doing here as a kid, way before any of this had started.
Cas - Castiel, Dean had been right before when he’d introduced him to Ellen and Jo, this wasn’t about half-imagined childhoods anymore. Castiel looked away.
“Dean,” he rumbled; and Dean cut him off so that he wouldn’t have to say it.
“You need to sleep, okay? And I have to go join the little council down in the kitchen.”
Castiel sighed something like agreement, and turned his body just far enough to lean back in against Dean.
... Huh.
Seemed a sleepy Cas was a clingy one. Dean wasn’t sure why he was surprised by this, but it was a hell of a lot easier to think about than the feel of Castiel fitting snugly in under his chin, like he was perfectly happy just to fall asleep right here. And the weird thing was that something about that feeling exactly matched the funny warm tug at Dean’s heart, so sweet it was almost unbearable and made his hands kind of sweaty, like it fit there, and apparently this was all turning Dean into a total girl.
Dean thought of leaving him alone in one of the neat little guest rooms upstairs; then he thought of Sam, cooking enthusiastically and messily back at home.
“So,” he tried, going for casual, because he was almost sure Castiel was on board with him on this one, “soon as you’re better, am I leaving you here in Ellen’s rooms or taking you back to my place? I know it’s safer here, and Rachel would probably kick my ass if I stole you, but...”
Dean felt the private curve of Castiel’s smile against the meat of his throat. “Your house, Dean.”
And whoa, just the feel of those lips moving right there and suddenly your house sounded a hell of a lot like your bed, and it wasn’t the kitchen that Dean was imagining anymore.
“... Okay then,” he managed, and there was no way Castiel couldn’t feel the way his heart was trying to jump out through his mouth, but Dean just really really hoped he didn’t know why. “Okay.”
Dean’s brain wasn’t really catching up with this whole council thing. He was still stuck on how absolutely fucking joyful Sam looked, eyes bright and mouth irrepressible, even as he argued with Rufus over... something, Dean wasn’t really sure. Ellen and Jo were there, of course, and Gwen, and Bobby and Rufus and Missouri and Jody, and that was far too many voices to be spinning around Dean’s sluggish head after a long day when all he wanted was to drag his brother and his angel home and keep them safe.
It was one long round of debriefing and interrogation and arguing and repetition and hashing out details and events. Working out not what to do (because everyone needed to decide that or it was never going to work) but what story to tell to everyone else, and exactly how to tell it. And to be honest, it was all a bit of a blur.
He remembered Bobby grilling Sam for all the details of how they’d swung the skinwalker thing. Dean didn’t follow most of it, but there was something about chicory and fennel, and the blood of a skinwalker distilled with icemelt and the milk of a mothering bitch - a real dog, not a skinwalker, which made no sense. Had to be done at the dark of the moon, when the moon’s pull was at its weakest for things like shifters and skinwalkers. Then there had been various stones whose properties Dean didn’t know, but Bobby nodded along, looking kind of grim but not too worried, and said something about clarity of mind and steadfastness, so, okay, Dean could go with that. And there was a symbol painted on the inside of Sam’s forearm (only it wasn’t paint because it wouldn’t wash off), all blues and greys and flowing lines, which apparently Castiel had worked out as some kind of an anchor. Most of it meant as good as nothing to Dean, but Bobby’s face said plenty, and it said that Bobby was trying his hardest to find something that meant Sam had been screwed over but kept drawing a blank. He was cautiously, grudgingly, starting to hope.
The subject of the origin of the demons... that didn’t come up. Everyone who’d been out there today followed Ellen’s lead in keeping quiet on that one, though Bobby would have to know eventually, because it was up to Bobby to know exactly what every monster did and how it worked and where its weaknesses might be. But just now, that was... kind of inflammatory. It wasn’t that much of a leap from “angelic vengeful spirits” to “the angels made the demons,” and they really didn’t need that floating around right now. And everyone agreed that, so long as Sam could keep himself under control (stay human, not start ripping hearts out), it was wisest all around if no one outside the room knew that he was anything but what he’d always been.
Then back to the angels again. Dean would never have thought that there could be so many different positions between “they’re monsters” and “they’re friends.” Gwen and Sam were passionate about some big integrated community or something. Bobby and Rufus were wary and took a whole lot of convincing that the whole thing wasn’t just some cunning trick on the angels’ part to get their guard down. Jo was stubborn on the subject of not being friends with them, allies or not, which was a bit rich given what would have happened to her if Castiel hadn’t turned up when he had. Ellen dragged Dean into recounting all he could remember of what Castiel had been like as a child, which was all kinds of disorienting, having other people poking around at memories that Dean had kept so close for so long (and he had to clench his hands tighter around his mug, because they kept shaking). Bobby allowed that if it was possible to reason with them it was probably possible to make a deal with them, but that was it, given no one knew what other magics they might or might not have or whether this was actually some splinter group looking for new territory after their civil war and wanting to wipe out human competition. Whatever else they decided, Ellen insisted, the boundary wall should stay inviolable, as much to reassure everyone inside it as to defend against treachery. And Missouri agreed, and even Gwen, on the grounds that if angels did feel emotion like people, there were bound to be some angry and grieved enough to try something furious (which made Sam drop his eyes and look unhappy, but he didn’t raise an argument). And around and around in circles again, over and over until the room felt dizzy.
This wasn’t exactly Dean’s sort of thing. He was good at running with his gut, at making spur-of-the-moment decisions on instinct and charging into it, not hashing out all the whys and wherefores and the details of what everyone else might think. And okay, sure, he could keep up with it, most days, but today it was just making his head spin and his hackles rise, even though it was necessary, it had to be necessary.
Then it was Sammy running on at the mouth about all his new geeky angel knowledge and strange faraway animals with feet like goats’ and skin like horses’ and with horns that had single tines like a cow’s but were long as a stag’s, and flying with the angels, seeing all sorts of things you couldn’t see from the ground, and looking down to see a mountain cracked open like an egg and an entire forgotten city hidden underneath. All sorts of irrelevant and weird things, waxing lyrical about the way people paved their roads out there, of all things, like he had to get out all the words he hadn’t been able to say for weeks with a dog-shaped mouth. Until there couldn’t possibly be any question (and yes, Dean knew why none of the older folk there were interrupting him even when he’d been going on for ages about shit that had nothing to do with what they had to decide) that this was Sam, that all of his soul was there, bright and wondrous and over-excitable as ever.
Except Dean’s eyes kept struggling to close, and every time they did he saw the look on Jo’s face as he’d sliced her open painted on the inside of his lids. And finally his hands were shaking so badly with the adrenalin crash and exhaustion (not shock, Dean Winchester didn’t do shock), that before he knew it he heard the sound of clay shattering and felt luke-warm tea-with-brandy splattering his ankles.
He grudgingly agreed to drag his little brother off to bed (even knowing that as soon as the door closed behind them the topic of conversation would be Sam, all Sam). And if he was leaning on Sam a little heavily as they snuck out the back way into the evening light, and his hand was sort of permanently curled around the familiar weight of his amulet against his chest, back where it belonged... well, no one had to know.
The first thing he noticed really clearly was the thud of the mattress against his back, followed by the thud of his brother overbalancing and sprawling down on top of him, all mile-long limbs and delight. Dean’s hands were all over Sam’s chest and beating human heart, and Sam was looking down at him through a curtain of messy hair, pissy and exhilarated and exhausted.
Huh. Dean’s hands were tangled in Sam’s tunic. Castiel’s tunic. That was probably why he’d dragged Sam down with him. Dean was a genius. He could work things out.
Sam was a genius. Sam remembered all that stuff, all those details, all that complicated little spell that no one had ever done before that Gabriel and Castiel and he had worked out together, even while Sam was handicapped by being a dog. All those creepily monstrous details, monstrous blood, animal milk...
Dean shuddered hard, and squeezed his eyes shut against the warm hazel eyes and dimples beaming down at him, all open and happy.
“Guinevere’s garters, Sammy,” he muttered, before he could stop himself. “A skinwalker? What were you thinking?”
Sam huffed irritation, smelling like tea and booze and dried fruit, and poked him hard in the shoulder. “I was thinking that this way I’ve got hands and a voice, jerk,” he said easily. “You gonna let me up so I can go wash my feet?”
Dean’s fingers flexed in the linen against the rise and fall of Sam’s ribs. Sam’s body was curved in comfortably against his, a long line of familiar warmth like all those times they’d ended up in the same bed when they’d been kids (before Sam got freakishly large and took up all the space with his gigantic sprawling limbs). If Dean were all girly and clingy and didn’t know Sam would mock him forever for it, he’d say this was right where Sam belonged, and demand that he stay the night.
“I dunno, Sammy,” he drawled, like he was considering it. “Think I can trust you to leave the room and not come back with a pet chupacapra or some shit like that?”
Sam sighed, one of his big messy ohmygod-how-do-I-put-up-with-you sighs. It wasn’t very convincing when he was draping himself across Dean to tug the blanket over them. “Fine. I’ll just get mud all over your sheets, then.”
Dean opened his eyes and grinned at him, bright and shameless. “Not my problem. Guess who’s washing them in the morning, bitch?”
Sam gave him a sly look of terribly underhanded evil, and settled down against Dean’s side. “Guess who’s going to tell Gabriel that you just basically compared him to a pet?”
Dean gave him a death glare. Sam smirked like a barn cat who’d just put one over on a poor innocent dog. Then he bounced a bit on the mattress, with his excited “new thought!” beam.
“Hey. Speaking of dream-walking angels, did Cas get through to you that one time? He wasn’t sure.”
One time. That one time. Huh. So there had only been the once. Which meant all those other dreams...
“Yeah.” Dean blinked warily. “Hold on. We were talking about - wait, wait, Gabriel’s been in your dreams?”
Okay, maybe that had been a bit too loud, but if he wasn’t allowed to be over-protective when he’d just got his brother back, when else? And Castiel in Dean’s dreams, that was one thing - Castiel was safe, and Dean’s, and not an archangel with shaky loyalties and shakier sanity.
Sam eyed him patiently. “We went over that two hours ago, remember Dean? A few times, yes, mostly before - well.” He grimaced, and gestured down at the rest of his body. “I was getting... pretty frustrated, not being able to say anything, especially with Gabriel... being a bit of a mess, and Gwen half thinking she should be shooting someone, and so on. No one’s going to stop and look at what some dog’s scratching in the dirt when they’re in the middle of yelling, even if I could write that fast. Only of course when I dream, I dream of me as a person, you know, so Gabriel started visiting sometimes, so I could at least talk to someone in there.” He grimaced, and picked self-consciously at the stitching of Dean’s pillow. “Doesn’t sound like much, but it made a stupid amount of difference.”
“Huh.”
Dean turned his head on the pillow, until Sam’s fingers had to squirm back from under his cheek.
So Gabriel had a soft spot for Sam? He sure hadn’t been acting like it today when he’d said goodbye.
(Gabriel had flat-out refused to come back with them. He’d just shaken his head and stood there, with his back to the wall so he could keep an eye on everyone and still managing to look like he was determined to pretend that the humans, and possibly the other angels, didn’t actually exist.
“So, um,” Sam had tried earnestly, hands shoved too deep into the pockets of Dean’s jacket to look casual. “You’ll... be in touch, right?”
Whatever that meant.
Gabriel had slid his eyes sideways towards Sam, spikey as a defensive hedgehog. “Kinda have to, don’t I? If we’re going to organise anything at all?”
“Well, yes, but.” And Sam had pulled out the worried hopeful puppy-dog eyes. “You’re not allowed to just vanish, okay? I’m sort of used to having you around now.”
“More fool you, kid,” Gabriel had retorted acidly.
Sam had flinched back like he’d been hit, like Gabriel being a dick was actually a surprise. “Fine,” he’d snapped after a moment, eyes narrow, and Gabriel had looked away.
Dean would have left it there - well, okay, so he wouldn’t, he’d have come up with something far wittier than “fine,” - but he would have stopped actually trying, because clearly Gabriel hadn’t wanted Sam to try and Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t actually worth the effort. But, because Sam was and always had been the master of worrying conversations to absolute tatters, he’d taken a deep breath and said, kind of gentle, “Um. Thanks for coming when Cas called just now, anyway. Wasn’t sure you would.”
“Yeah, well,” Gabriel had said uncomfortably to the wall. “If my own personal sun screen got turned to jam by a demon I’d have to sit in the shade to read, so.” Then he’d taken unfair advantage of his ability to escape from awkward conversations by flying away.
Sam’s shoulders had just slumped.
Dean could have told him Gabriel wasn’t worth it. But apparently that wasn’t what Sam wanted to hear.)
But then, who knew what the moody son of a bitch was actually thinking. And, hey, if he was looking out for Sammy it was no more than he ought to be doing anyway, considering Sam had kept going to chat to him when he’d been locked in the barn.
Besides. He probably hadn’t been able to fight the power of the puppy-dog eyes. Dean’s little brother was awesome, an over-excitable giant of a kid (not a man, not while he was sprawled all over Dean’s bed grinning ear to ear and barely keeping his eyes open) who thought the best of everyone and had seen the world and who still looked at Dean, every now and then, like Dean had hung the stars.
“Hey.” Sam jiggled his leg against Dean’s, because he couldn’t stay still for two minutes together. “Hey, Dean.”
“Shut up, I’m sleeping,” Dean informed him, because no way was he ‘fessing up to that sort of thought.
Sam shuffled in closer and poked Dean’s nose. “Cool. So I can draw pink whiskers and glasses on your face, then?”
Dean opened one eye a slit to glare the promise of brotherly revenge. “That was once, and I was drunk. Time to move on, Sammy.”
“But it scarred me, Dean!” And there was the full-blown Sammy pout, with the shoved-out lower lip and the big damp eyes and the droopy hair, the one Dean could never say no to even when he knew Sam never used it when he was actually upset.
He reached up a lazy hand to make a mess of Sam’s hair in retaliation. “Oh, so now it’s my fault you’re a basket case?”
Sam batted him away, and leaned in earnestly, eyes shining. “Whales, Dean. We saw whales.”
Dean tried to think his way through that battered old bestiary that sat in the corner of one of Rufus’ rooms, the one that never got used for practical purposes because it was almost entirely proper animals, not monsters. “Aren’t they some kind of giant fish?”
Sam nodded eagerly, like giant fish were the most amazing thing ever. “Giant fish, only with smooth skin and these amazing eyes, like they’re thinking about you and think you’re sort of interesting and cute, but not really worth making a fuss over. One looked straight at me, Dean! I swear it was bigger than an etayn. And there were these enormous sea monsters with fangs and bodies like snakes’ and heads like horses’, except one had a head like a bull, which was kind of stupid because it had seaweed caught all over the horns.”
“Yeah, well, monsters don’t do common sense that often,” Dean agreed, because sometimes you just had to indulge Sam.
“Cas didn’t want to swim,” Sam added, with a bit of an eyeroll, “because apparently feathers are a bitch to get dry if you get salt water in them. Though he didn’t put it like that, because he’s Cas. Oh, and hey, I hadn’t realised how much time a day they have to spend grooming those things. I mean, I know you always see birds doing it, but you never really stop and think about the upkeep. Apparently just a couple of feathers shabby or out of place really affects the windstream, or something.”
“Okay, Sam, ballpark figure. How many waking hours since you got changed back have you spent not pestering angels with questions about wings and telepathy and angelic agriculture and, I don’t know, embroidery techniques? Are we gonna need an intervention here?”
“Screw you,” Sam tossed back sleepily, as his hand crept slyly up to nestle against Dean’s chest. “There’s just... so many amazing things out there, Dean. And it was only a few weeks, and we didn’t even see very much. And Gabriel...”
The familiar, contented rhythm of Sam Mumbling On faltered, and Dean opened an eye again.
“Well, he’s still a bit of a mess since, you know. He’s been pretty moody and he snaps at us pretty often for the most random stuff, and...” Sam petered off, and his mouth did that little unconscious twist that it made when he thought he might have screwed up but didn’t know how.
Except, huh. His eyes were down, fixed on the sheets, and Dean could have sworn in the poor light that he was blushing.Which, what?
“And he freaks out if you touch him when he’s not expecting it,” Sam continued, then abruptly, like he thought Dean made a habit of shit-stirring (which was totally uncalled-for in every way): “Seriously, don’t touch him, okay? Not even for a joke. He panics, and he hates that he panics, so just... if he snaps at you, don’t rise to it, okay? Just pretend you didn’t notice anything.”
Dean rolled his eyes, but Sam was giving him a pleading look, and somehow the movement turned into a nod.
Sam beamed, and snuggled in against the pillow, hair sneaking everywhere like a tangle of very stealthy weasels. “But sometimes he’s great, and he gets so thrilled by all of this stuff, still. Everything that’s out there, and all the weird forgotten places, and the ways different people do things. Cas doesn’t even get why it’s meant to be interesting, and Anna mostly thinks it’s interesting that I think it’s interesting, and Gwen only wanted to get home and sort things out, but Gabriel, he just... lights up.”
Okay. Soft spot, and common interest, and (reading between the lines) Sam looking at Gabriel like he knew everything and was the best thing since the horse-drawn plough. That made some sense. And then there’d been the expression on the archangel’s face when he’d landed among the rocks today, and the way he’d been crouched dead centre over Sam’s body... and not just that, Dean realised as he replayed it in his head. It hadn’t been just Gabriel. Sam had curled in against him like he knew to his bones that he was safe now, that complete physical trust that he’d only ever had with Dean before. And there was this quiet little thrilled note underneath his voice now, almost shy, like a kid looking for approval.
Apparently this whole infatuation thing he’d thought Sam had for the Trickster had grown when Dean wasn’t looking.
Huh.
“Came back, of course,” Sam mumbled, all slurred up and wistful and halfway to sleep, “just wish we could have taken longer. So many things I wanted to look at... much longer. Wasn’t done.”
Dean curled his arm over his brother’s chest and tugged him in close, covering over the worried little ache inside. Sam was too far along the road to sleep to call him on it anyway.
If you’re curious about what happened between Gabriel and Sam while they were away, there’s now a timestamp from Sam’s point of view.
“There is... next to no self-preservation in the choices he makes,” Rachel said, and Dean got the impression she was picking her words carefully, almost like a warning. “If he thinks that he can better care for someone by sacrificing himself, he will do it without hesitation.”
There are giants in the sky!
There are big, tall, terrible giants in the sky!
...
And you’re climbing down, and you look below,
And the world you know begins to grow:
The roof, the house, and your mother at the door.
The roof, the house, and the world you never thought to explore.
And you think of all of the things you’ve seen,
And you wish that you could live in between,
And you’re back again, only different than before,
After the sky.
There are giants in the sky!
There are big, tall, terrible - awesome - scary - wonderful giants
In the sky!
Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, 1983. (Jack recounts his adventures up the Beanstalk.)
Dean stepped through onto the cool stone flags of Ellen’s guest bathroom, and let the curtain fall into place behind him with a heavy rustle. It was just Ellen and Rachel in there, undressing an unconscious Cas with careful fingers as Rachel held him upright. Cas’ head was lolling trustingly against Rachel’s shoulder, and the shadows and valleys of his back were half visible through the long narrow V between his tight-folded wings.
Dean’s “Hey” came out softer than he’d meant it, as he tried to remember what he’d meant to say.
Ellen looked up, and her eyes when she smiled were tired. “Take over here, would you? And come and join us in my kitchen when you’re done.”
Dean cleared his throat. “Sure. Course.” He stepped in to take her place, fumbling a bit as he tried to work out what she’d been doing with the wing on her side, and felt her moving away behind him to wash her bloodied hands in the basin. Rachel didn’t even look up to acknowledge the change in human. Maybe they were all the same to her anyway.
Cas’ wings were gummed to his sides and back with drying blood, and the skin was too cool against Dean’s fingers when he went to work the left one loose. Cas was meant to be warm, always just a bit warmer than Dean. Did angels go into shock?
The largest washtub was full in the corner, steaming gently.
There was no way Ellen could have forgiven Cas yet, because she wasn’t the sort to forgive easily. Seemed like she’d decided to ignore that, for now.
“Ellen,” he said carefully, and tried not to notice the shape of the muscles under his hand as he slid it down over the back of his left ribs, coaxing the blood-sticky feathers free. “Thank you.”
She paused in the door, and didn’t look back. “Don’t screw up, Dean Winchester.”
He let the smirk colour his voice, and the relief. “Yes ma’am.”
When they’d got close enough to home, Ellen had gone on ahead, to let everyone else know what was going on. Absolutely normal, that, after a hunt: alert everyone about any injured, about what was necessary, about who’d need looking after and if there was any special medical attention or funeral pyres needed ready for the main party’s arrival. Only this time, what she’d had to say was “no humans are badly hurt, we’re all coming home, we got Sam back, Gwen is alive after all, oh and hey, we’ve got three guests staying at the Roadhouse for a while who happen to be angels, so we need some people to start chipping away at the anti-angel sigils on the inside of the Gate’s lintel, and by the way we really need a bath.”
Not exactly your typical post-hunt brief. Well, except for the last part.
By the time they’d got home, Andy and Rufus and Pamela and Jody had already been effacing the symbols, while Ellen and Missouri and Victor and Christian and Gordon had been arguing vehemently under the ladders.
Cas had kept right on being passed out, where he was slumped in an impromptu chair made of Anna’s and Dean’s arms. Which was a bit disappointing. For some reason, Dean had really wanted him to be a part of this. It felt significant. All of them, passing under the lintel of the Gate, with its age-old paintings and symbols whose discovery everyone had forgotten. The feeling of realising that the boundary was crossed, and broken, and that Dean’s hands were still pressing determinedly against the grubby (real) linen of Cas’ pants, and that everyone could see them, all of them.
Gwen had put her hand on Rachel’s arm as her wings had flared, and there’d been a quick hissed argument of which Dean only heard “look like an enemy when you’re hanging overhead” and “down here you look almost human, and any bullet has to go through us.”
He’d swung around a little as they’d came to a halt just inside, planting himself squarely between Cas and anyone who might be getting any ideas. So many eyes on them, on him and Cas: Gordon’s hard and pitying, and Missouri’s indulgent and firm, and Jo’s large and brown and scared behind the tough, casual attitude. And Charlie had been there, for some reason, looking torn between terror and absolute thrill.
And Ellen had spoken. That speech had carried right over that moment when no one had known quite what to say, and given them something to shape it with. Mostly because it was, in one sense, absolutely traditional. Every word of it had been addressed to the two conscious angels, and every word of it had been the usual guest-welcome speech that had been spoken to Gabriel so many times before, the one that declared them all under their protection, safe from the world outside, welcome under their roofs and into their kitchens and halls, that promised sanctuary and healing as they needed it, and that forbade questioning and business for forty-eight hours. And it went on, of course, to the thinly veiled threats of what should happen if the guests themselves were to break the sanctions of hospitality: the violation of guest-bond, the closed doors, the vicious self-defence. All bets off.
Sam, who had all the correct responses memorised, had recited them in a low voice for the angels’ ears. And Rachel had picked up his words and repeated them, ringing and clear; and Anna, too, lower but eager and completely trusting.
And everyone there, of course, how could they help but chime in with their parts, the chorus section of the ritual, straggling awkwardly over their own vows to protect and cherish the guests, according to the mores instilled in them with every childhood story, every cuff about the head when a kid said some visiting stranger looked funny. Guests were fucking sacred, and they had to be, or you got cut off and withered and died. Just one pedlar telling another “don’t go there, it’s not worth the risk” and suddenly you’d only have half as much salt as you needed for the year.
Some things you just couldn’t do on your own, after all. Some things you needed the outside world for, even if you pretended it didn’t exist.
Even if you usually thought of the outside world as human.
Instead, three angels, standing on their feet (well, mostly) instead of being monstrous shapes outlined against the sky. Three angels, one unconscious and badly hurt, all of them roughed-up and bloodied and limping amongst roughed-up and bloodied and unhurt humans.
The speech had ended, less traditionally, with “and if you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with Singer or Mills tomorrow, I’ve got three guests to put up and a hell of a lot of blood to clean before I let them loose on my bedrooms, and someone’d better have hauled some hot water for me already.”
Not a gun had been raised; and for now, that was enough.
The silence that followed Ellen’s departure from the bathroom was probably awkward, but Dean was too busy gritting his teeth to notice. He hadn’t realised how badly Cas had got roughed up in that second round, when he’d been slowed by pain and weakness. With his wings lifted free of his body, too many scratches and gashes and scrapes were laid bare; and even where the skin of his torso was unbroken it was mottled and tender with the promise of bruises. Some of them were in the shape of Dean’s hands.
As Rachel tried to peel loose three secondary feathers from a gash on his right side, Cas made a low pained noise, and squirmed away from her hands. She hissed and flinched back, then returned determinedly to the task, fingers moving in with brusque little jerks like they weren’t used to moving gently and weren’t quite sure what to do.
“Easy, man,” Dean murmured in Cas’ ear, in case he was listening. “It’s just us, okay? Here, you got him?”
It was the work of a moment to fill a jug with warm water and bring it back, but even that earned him a glare that said she had expected no more than to be left to do everything herself. Kind of uncomfortable, having an angel glaring at you like that. Cas, even Gabriel at his worst, had only ever looked at Dean like he was a person. Maybe an enemy person sometimes, in Gabriel’s case, but not something alien. Rachel, though - Dean got the impression she’d put a knife in his throat in a minute if she thought she should, and not consider it murder.
Dean cocked an eyebrow at her, kind of grimly, and poured a trickle of warm water down Cas’ side, soaking the blood loose. She watched closely, like she thought he might suddenly try to drown Cas in the jug if left unsupervised.
“This would have gone much faster if we hadn’t had to wait for that ridiculous device of yours to warm the water up.”
Dean rolled his eyes, and went down on one knee to untie Cas’ pants and coax them down over his hips. “Lady, I’m not about to fling buckets of cold water over the guy with open wounds and broken bones.”
She cocked her head - the same bird-like mannerism as Cas, but on her it looked cool and hard as a hawk. “Why not?”
There was a set of claw-marks that had scraped their way down Cas’ ribs and snagged on the sharp jut of his right hip. Working the tips of his fingers under the waistband to lift it clear of the skin took almost enough concentration to distract Dean from what he was actually doing, from the shadow of dark hair that he wasn’t looking at in the crevice of the thigh just next to where Dean’s little finger was splayed, from the little knot of nervousness about whether his stupid inappropriate body was going to start doing stupid inappropriate things in a minute.
Rachel’s question helped too, of course, once it sank in. It was enough to bring Dean’s head up to blink at her, to see if he’d missed something; but there wasn’t a trace of humour there.
“Shock and fever?” he offered carefully. “Startling a body that’s already too cold and having a hell of a time pulling itself back together? Or don’t angels have to bother about that sort of thing?”
Something flickered over her face, gone in a moment. “I don’t know,” she said briskly. “The aftermath of a battlefield is not the place for calm observation and comparison. Some survived, some didn’t. What do you suggest?”
“Uh.” Dean had to drop his eyes back to the grubby curve of Cas’ side to keep from shuddering, because, cold. Or hardened, or whatever.
Not that he didn’t know people who’d started down that path, but usually you tried to pull them out of active hunting before they went too far.
“Well, washing him first. Making sure there’s nothing left in the cuts.” He tried to ignore the soft swell of flesh under his right hand as he slid Cas’ pants down, stamping down on the frantic little catalogue of Glimpses Caught Out Of The Corner Of His Eye ticking away in his head, because really, brain, not helping. “Then I’ll... um. Flush them with alcohol so they don’t go bad, just in case, and stitch them up.”
Cas’ feet were filthy, of course, and what was with angels never wearing shoes? Dean poured the contents of his jug over those, brushed the worst of it off onto the floor. They could clean up for Ellen later. (And feet were safe enough to stare at.)
“Very well.” Rachel gathered Cas into her arms again and carried him over to the tub, careful as a child who’s just been told that if she can keep the runt of a litter alive, it’s hers. The water swirled and steamed up around Cas’ body, lapping with soft tongues at blood and sweat and dirt; and Cas’ eyes slid open, something between a grumble and a relieved moan caught in his throat.
“Hey buddy!” Dean crouched down next to the tub and put his hand next to where Cas’ was draped over the rim. “You with us?”
Cas squinted at him, the vague blurry frown of the not really awake, and Dean ached with the urge to gather him in against his body and bury his face in his hair (even filthy like this) and trace over every inch of skin with the warmth of his own hands, to make sure it was okay.
“Dean,” he slurred out. “You have lost your shirt.”
“Wasn’t a shirt anymore so much as a mud sieve.” Dean picked up the jug and sluiced warm water gently down over Cas’ shoulder. “Plus it stank. Almost as bad as you right now.”
Cas closed his eyes and dropped his head forward with a pleased little sound, so that the water ran over the back of his neck and pooled in the hollow of his collarbone. When Dean dipped the jug back into the water for a refill, Cas just sort of curled up - arms folded up together on the edge of the tub, forehead resting against them, knees tucked underneath him, wings slumping lazily down from the peak to trail across the floor on either side of the bath - and went back to sleep.
“Huh.” Dean blinked down at the warm wet curve of angel back in front of him. Then he poured the jug over it, chasing the slide of mud and water with the side of his hand to sweep it off, because that seemed like a reasonable thing to do. And it was good to touch him, so goddamn good that it set Dean’s heart thumping, fierce and protective; but his body wasn’t revving up and sending blood rushing all over the place (and especially southward) like he’d been kind of worried it might.
Which was good, because honestly, Cas being all battered and unconscious wasn’t a pleasant thing, and it would have been kind of sick of his body to get all excited over that.
Rachel was frowning down at the back of Cas’ head like it was something strange and a bit marvellous, though her fingers didn’t still where they were combing damply through the coverts in the crook of Cas’ right wing.
“He trusts you.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean swallowed the pleased little lump in his throat and began chivvying the mud out of Cas’ hair with careful little sloshes, one hand guarding the side of the angel’s face to keep it from running into his eyes. Because it really wasn’t that complicated. “He can.”
She was silent for a minute, like she wasn’t sure what to make of it. Then she reached for one of Ellen’s toothed wooden spoons, and began using that to slide under the feathers, to hold them up and open while she trickled water down over them. “This sleep,” she said neutrally, with a peculiar weight behind it. “It is his body healing itself of what it can. If he didn’t feel safe, absolutely safe, it would put off the healing and keep him awake.”
“Okay,” Dean allowed, because she seemed to think this was something remarkable and important. Not like it was the first time Cas had passed out and trusted Dean to look out for him, after all. Letting Cas get hurt was right next to letting Sam get hurt on Dean’s to-do list, so. No surprises there. “Can you heal the ribs and the scratches from the demons?”
She looked at the bite mark on Cas’ shoulder (sluggishly leaking blood again, in the warm water) like she’d barely even noticed it before. Which, fair enough, they were closing up already, but Dean was pretty sure they should be closing faster and there was no point giving his body more things to do if it didn’t have to. When she reached out to touch it, Dean stilled her with a couple of fingers on the back of her hand (because it never paid to get grabby with a woman, even ones that couldn’t smite you), and she looked up at him without flinching away.
“No, not yet. Wanna wash them out first too, just to be sure.”
So they did that first, working cautiously together, turning Cas’ body this way and that so that his occasional little pained grumbles were muffled first in one neck then the other. And if Dean sort of manipulated things so that Rachel ended up washing pretty much everything below the waist and above the knee, well, that was only fair to Cas, because, yeah.
Then she showed him how to clean Cas’ wings properly. How to use the tines of the wooden spoons to draw the vanes of the feathers through without ruffling them (though she grumbled about not having a proper set of wing combs, like it was rude of Ellen not to have any). How the feathers lay in tracks or rows and you could lift up one whole row at a time with the long handle of the spoon to pour water underneath. How to press warm water gently through the worst bits without disturbing the lie of the feathers. How to angle the wing (since Cas wasn’t aware enough to do it himself) so that the dirty water ran down along the curve of it and back into the tub instead of all over the floor. How to draw your fingers carefully through the rows in long steady sweeps until the feathers lay smooth and gleaming; and how to start each sweep at the little nub just under the shoulder bone of the wing to gather the oil that seeped out there at a touch, so that the feathers collected it off your fingers as you went.
Dean was pretty clumsy at it, and got absolutely filthy, but he figured he wasn’t doing too badly for a guy who’d only ever had hair to deal with. And there was actually less dirt rubbed in there than Dean had expected, after all that rolling about on the ground and the moss. A hell of a lot less than in Dean’s hair, for one thing. He couldn’t quite get over the weirdness of getting Cas’ oil on his hands, but Rachel didn’t seem bothered by it, so maybe this was normal for angels, among friends.
Like kissing, his treacherous mind decided to add, so he stamped down firmly on that line of thought.
Then it was time to stitch up the mess Dean’s hands had made of Cas’ wings.
Rachel clipped off some of the feathers around the nasty gaping slash for Dean to work, but it didn’t help much. She couldn’t clip them off too close to the skin, because apparently there were blood vessels in the base, and she refused to cut too many feathers on the grounds that they weren’t like fur and wouldn’t grow back at all until Cas’ next moult, which was months away. Dean fought back the urge to snicker at the sudden image of Cas puffed up grumpy as a broody hen (wings bedraggled, feathers floating sadly through the air and getting all over the kitchen bench and into the food and the dog basket and Sam’s favourite tankard that he always left out on the counter), and just did his best with what he could. He’d sewn up more awkward wounds before, after all.
They didn’t talk much. Dean’s one attempt at conversation - asking if she had any kids or siblings or anything - made her go all rigid and inform him quietly that he should be careful with that sort of question because family was a delicate subject for most angels now.
Which made a painful kind of sense.
He didn’t start anything else; but, after a few minutes of holding Cas’ wing still and watching Dean’s fingers move like she was studying, she unexpectedly offered something of her own.
“He isn’t... easy to look after.”
Dean finished easing the needle through the delicate blue-black skin, then glanced down at where Cas’ face was pillowed on his own forearms again, hidden except for the edge of his cheekbone and the curve of one eyelash, almost passive in sleep. He thought of Cas’ determination to do everything himself; of his eyes, and the hot, implacable blue they went when he’d made up his mind and wasn’t going to budge.
He drew the thread carefully through in the needle’s path, pulling the ragged lips of the wound together; and the flesh tugged at the sinew like it was reluctant to give it up.
“Guess he wouldn’t be,” he allowed, wondering where this was going.
She reached out to lay a hand on Cas’ head; and there was something in the way she looked at him that made Dean realise just how much older she must be than Cas, like the ache there was in Ellen’s eyes every time she realised (again and again) that Jo was growing up.
“There is... next to no self-preservation in the choices he makes,” Rachel said, and Dean got the impression she was picking her words carefully, almost like a warning. “If he thinks that he can better care for someone by sacrificing himself, he will do it without hesitation.”
Someone opened a window in the front part of the house, and Dean heard the huff of a horse, the clatter of dishes, the hum and swell of voices in the main room of the Roadhouse. Ellen must have opened it up, brought people inside to chatter it out while she and Bobby and so on debriefed Sam and Gwen in the kitchen. The voices didn’t really reach back here, though: here it was quiet, the odd little peace of chilly bathroom flags and low voices.
“Sounds like him,” Dean said, quiet and gruff, because she was waiting for some reply.
A trickle of dirty water was curling down the back of Cas’ neck, trailing its way out of a little clinging rat’s-tail of wet hair. Dean reached up and brushed it away with his thumb, gentle as he could, and Cas sighed a bit into his arms.
Dean could live with “not easy.”
Neither of them said any more while Dean tied off the last few stitches, then it was just “got him?” and “you take that arm” while they drained the tub and patted him dry.
Sam’s old pants were too long on Cas’ legs, but it wasn’t like he was going to be walking just yet; and there wasn’t really any point slashing up a shirt to fit over his wings when they were just going to bundle him into bed anyway.
Rachel abandoned them while Dean was still towelling Cas’ hair dry - an awkward angle, sitting on the bench with Cas sort of slumped against his side, but it was a kind of awkwardness Dean could get used to - saying she had to make sure Anna was alright and the bedrooms were in order, and leaving strict instructions that Castiel was to go straight to bed and not be kept up talking.
Dean nodded obediently, smiled her sweetly out the door, and finished patting the last of the dampness from Cas’ hair. Then he let the towel drop and swung one leg over the bench so that Cas was leaning sideways into his chest, warm with steam and bathwater, skin whole and unhurt and just a bit pink where Rachel had healed him, matching the flush in his cheeks.
Dean gave in to temptation and pressed his mouth and nose into Cas’ hair, just in front of his ear. Now the stink of blood and sulphur and mud and sweat was gone, he mostly just smelled of wet skin and hair and the faint, sweet tang of freshly oiled feathers. Like Cas, and childhood; but something deeper and richer underneath now, mature, delicious and promising.
Dean’s fingertips skittered across the nape of Cas’ neck, where he was pretty sure he was sensitive. Then he brushed through the down feathers between the shoulder blades, still a bit straggly and dishevelled from their wetting.
Did down need oiling? Dean couldn’t remember.
He couldn’t help drawing his thumb down the long, supple curve of Cas’ spine, almost to the base, tracing the thrum of life beating deep inside him. Safe and strong.
The skin shivered under his touch.
Dean nosed at his temple, just a bit, and smiled.
“Knock it off, dude,” he murmured, pitching his voice low. “Your breathing changed pretty much as soon as I started sewing you up.”
A thin line of blue glinted up at him from under one eyelid, just a bit of sleepy indulgence and irritation.
“Don’t give me that look,” Dean hummed against his ear. “I got years of worrying about you to catch up on. Poor Sammy’s been getting a double dose all this time. If you want me not to gang up with your women to coddle you while you’re asleep, you’re going to have to wake up to stop me.”
“You make no sense,” Cas grumbled vaguely. Then, more carefully, with his wings drawing in a little closer from their loose, easy sprawl over the flags, “Are the others alright.”
It probably didn’t make much sense to grin stupidly over Cas’ inability to pronounce question marks, but hey, who was going to call Dean on it?
“Anna and Rachel are upstairs in the guest bedrooms. Sam and Gwen are with Ellen and Bobby and Jody and Missouri and probably a couple of others in the kitchen, hashing all this out. And the only stairs up to the guest bedrooms are through the kitchen, so no hotheads are going to go charging up there to take things into their own hands.”
Cas nodded slightly, just a little shift of his head, and though he didn’t pull away he curled in on himself a bit, cool and careful, so it wasn’t an embrace anymore. Just Dean holding him up. Again.
Which... made no sense.
Cas had been the one to kiss him, last time, to reach out and tug him in and clutch at Dean like he was starving. Cas had (apparently) sought out Dean’s dreams to speak to him, and said... something, something Dean wasn’t quite clear on, but something that had meant let me stay with you. Gabriel was meant to be the stand-offish one, not Cas. Dean hadn’t got a clue what it was Cas wanted to hear, and he had the distinct feeling that he was hopeless enough at the whole sensitivity shit that whatever he said could only make things worse.
“So, hey,” he blurted out instead. “I didn’t know you could do diplomacy.”
Cas blinked at him twice, and completely missed the implied compliment. “I can’t. I am not an archangel, I have had no formal training, and I prefer listening over drawing all eyes on myself.”
Oh well. It had been a crappy compliment anyway.
Cas closed his eyes for a moment, slow like a tired blink. The powerful, down-cushioned leading edge of his good wing was almost close to dry again already, brushing faintly against Dean’s upper arm with each breath. Dean ached unreasonably to lean in just far enough to feel it, to bury his fingers in the dark living warmth of him and prove that everything was okay, but he didn’t have the excuse for it that he’d had ten minutes ago.
More uncertainly, Cas continued, “Sam advised me to leave out the fact of the demons’ nature - to say only that we pursued them from our own lands - but I find dishonesty a... poor basis for negotiation.”
“Yeah, guess that might’ve helped. But bullshitting Ellen...” Dean rubbed the back of his neck, and grimaced.
The corners of Cas’ eyes creased faintly. “From what I had heard of her, I thought that would be unwise.”
Dean flashed him a grin, quick and relieved. “Damn straight.”
The smudge of shadow at the edge of Cas’ mouth deepened, just a bit, and for a moment Dean felt like they were on the same page, like they could work something out.
“Are you,” Cas said, low and gruff, then he stopped and looked away.
Dean made an enquiring noise, and carefully didn’t give in to the temptation to lean his cheek against Cas’ hair. A droplet of water escaped at the nape of Cas’ neck and trailed its leisurely way down the curve of his spine. Dean pretended that he wasn’t letting his eyes wander any further down along that path to imagine where it ended, under the faded blue fabric.
He reached out, before it reached Cas’ waistband, and smeared it into the skin.
Cas’ breath went shallow for a moment, and Dean wondered if he was in pain again.
“Are you sure,” Cas said carefully, and somehow Dean got the impression that he had originally meant to say something quite different. “Are you sure that we are safe in here, after you were so adamant that your people would kill me if they found me in the cabin.”
“If you walked out into the town square now you’d probably be dead,” Dean admitted bluntly. “But you’re staying in here until you’re better anyway, and if I have to yell at everyone in the damn place until you’re safe outside, I will.”
“How reassuring,” Cas murmur dryly, a bit warmer, a bit more sure. Which was important, because if he didn’t feel safe he wouldn’t sleep properly, heal properly.
But there were some questions Dean just couldn’t put off.
“Cas,” he said, low and urgent, “Cas. Some of the shit that demon said...”
Cas tilted his head, like he was hearing all the things Dean couldn’t ask. “Demons don’t lie, Dean,” he murmured, close enough that Dean could feel the warmth of him against his side. “They merely use the truth dishonestly.”
Great. More “pick your own truth.”
Or maybe just, you know. Taking things on trust.
Cas was right there. Eyes bright with shadow and full of a lifetime that Dean hadn’t got a clue about barely six inches away, and it was really hard to think when Dean could feel the breath on his cheek.
“Look,” Dean said, because he really did want to say this bit, and if Cas was offended it might explain a bit of the reserve. “Sorry about the whole incubus thing, you know. I was...” He stopped, swallowed, and amended, “I’ve been sort of confused, these last few weeks.”
Cas’ mouth twisted into a small sad smile that said he knew that. “It is not of import,” he said, kind of gruffly, but it was, and Dean didn’t get it but he wanted to make that sadness go away. Only, where would he start?
The thing was. Cas being real, after years of existing just in Dean’s head, that was weird enough. Seeing him here in Ellen’s house, or with other angels, or in the same space as Jo and Gwen and Ellen of all people, actually talking to them... that was insane. Like... oil and water, or something. It made him feel too real, like there was this whole other part of him that Dean couldn’t understand, all those bits he’d been resolutely ignoring or hadn’t ever known about. Now he wasn’t just Dean’s, and he felt more alien than before.
Dean had to ask him too many things. What he knew about this whole business with the demons having a leader, what it meant that Cas was apparently like that leader somehow, what compromises Cas had made that he regretted. What he’d been doing here as a kid, way before any of this had started.
Cas - Castiel, Dean had been right before when he’d introduced him to Ellen and Jo, this wasn’t about half-imagined childhoods anymore. Castiel looked away.
“Dean,” he rumbled; and Dean cut him off so that he wouldn’t have to say it.
“You need to sleep, okay? And I have to go join the little council down in the kitchen.”
Castiel sighed something like agreement, and turned his body just far enough to lean back in against Dean.
... Huh.
Seemed a sleepy Cas was a clingy one. Dean wasn’t sure why he was surprised by this, but it was a hell of a lot easier to think about than the feel of Castiel fitting snugly in under his chin, like he was perfectly happy just to fall asleep right here. And the weird thing was that something about that feeling exactly matched the funny warm tug at Dean’s heart, so sweet it was almost unbearable and made his hands kind of sweaty, like it fit there, and apparently this was all turning Dean into a total girl.
Dean thought of leaving him alone in one of the neat little guest rooms upstairs; then he thought of Sam, cooking enthusiastically and messily back at home.
“So,” he tried, going for casual, because he was almost sure Castiel was on board with him on this one, “soon as you’re better, am I leaving you here in Ellen’s rooms or taking you back to my place? I know it’s safer here, and Rachel would probably kick my ass if I stole you, but...”
Dean felt the private curve of Castiel’s smile against the meat of his throat. “Your house, Dean.”
And whoa, just the feel of those lips moving right there and suddenly your house sounded a hell of a lot like your bed, and it wasn’t the kitchen that Dean was imagining anymore.
“... Okay then,” he managed, and there was no way Castiel couldn’t feel the way his heart was trying to jump out through his mouth, but Dean just really really hoped he didn’t know why. “Okay.”
Dean’s brain wasn’t really catching up with this whole council thing. He was still stuck on how absolutely fucking joyful Sam looked, eyes bright and mouth irrepressible, even as he argued with Rufus over... something, Dean wasn’t really sure. Ellen and Jo were there, of course, and Gwen, and Bobby and Rufus and Missouri and Jody, and that was far too many voices to be spinning around Dean’s sluggish head after a long day when all he wanted was to drag his brother and his angel home and keep them safe.
It was one long round of debriefing and interrogation and arguing and repetition and hashing out details and events. Working out not what to do (because everyone needed to decide that or it was never going to work) but what story to tell to everyone else, and exactly how to tell it. And to be honest, it was all a bit of a blur.
He remembered Bobby grilling Sam for all the details of how they’d swung the skinwalker thing. Dean didn’t follow most of it, but there was something about chicory and fennel, and the blood of a skinwalker distilled with icemelt and the milk of a mothering bitch - a real dog, not a skinwalker, which made no sense. Had to be done at the dark of the moon, when the moon’s pull was at its weakest for things like shifters and skinwalkers. Then there had been various stones whose properties Dean didn’t know, but Bobby nodded along, looking kind of grim but not too worried, and said something about clarity of mind and steadfastness, so, okay, Dean could go with that. And there was a symbol painted on the inside of Sam’s forearm (only it wasn’t paint because it wouldn’t wash off), all blues and greys and flowing lines, which apparently Castiel had worked out as some kind of an anchor. Most of it meant as good as nothing to Dean, but Bobby’s face said plenty, and it said that Bobby was trying his hardest to find something that meant Sam had been screwed over but kept drawing a blank. He was cautiously, grudgingly, starting to hope.
The subject of the origin of the demons... that didn’t come up. Everyone who’d been out there today followed Ellen’s lead in keeping quiet on that one, though Bobby would have to know eventually, because it was up to Bobby to know exactly what every monster did and how it worked and where its weaknesses might be. But just now, that was... kind of inflammatory. It wasn’t that much of a leap from “angelic vengeful spirits” to “the angels made the demons,” and they really didn’t need that floating around right now. And everyone agreed that, so long as Sam could keep himself under control (stay human, not start ripping hearts out), it was wisest all around if no one outside the room knew that he was anything but what he’d always been.
Then back to the angels again. Dean would never have thought that there could be so many different positions between “they’re monsters” and “they’re friends.” Gwen and Sam were passionate about some big integrated community or something. Bobby and Rufus were wary and took a whole lot of convincing that the whole thing wasn’t just some cunning trick on the angels’ part to get their guard down. Jo was stubborn on the subject of not being friends with them, allies or not, which was a bit rich given what would have happened to her if Castiel hadn’t turned up when he had. Ellen dragged Dean into recounting all he could remember of what Castiel had been like as a child, which was all kinds of disorienting, having other people poking around at memories that Dean had kept so close for so long (and he had to clench his hands tighter around his mug, because they kept shaking). Bobby allowed that if it was possible to reason with them it was probably possible to make a deal with them, but that was it, given no one knew what other magics they might or might not have or whether this was actually some splinter group looking for new territory after their civil war and wanting to wipe out human competition. Whatever else they decided, Ellen insisted, the boundary wall should stay inviolable, as much to reassure everyone inside it as to defend against treachery. And Missouri agreed, and even Gwen, on the grounds that if angels did feel emotion like people, there were bound to be some angry and grieved enough to try something furious (which made Sam drop his eyes and look unhappy, but he didn’t raise an argument). And around and around in circles again, over and over until the room felt dizzy.
This wasn’t exactly Dean’s sort of thing. He was good at running with his gut, at making spur-of-the-moment decisions on instinct and charging into it, not hashing out all the whys and wherefores and the details of what everyone else might think. And okay, sure, he could keep up with it, most days, but today it was just making his head spin and his hackles rise, even though it was necessary, it had to be necessary.
Then it was Sammy running on at the mouth about all his new geeky angel knowledge and strange faraway animals with feet like goats’ and skin like horses’ and with horns that had single tines like a cow’s but were long as a stag’s, and flying with the angels, seeing all sorts of things you couldn’t see from the ground, and looking down to see a mountain cracked open like an egg and an entire forgotten city hidden underneath. All sorts of irrelevant and weird things, waxing lyrical about the way people paved their roads out there, of all things, like he had to get out all the words he hadn’t been able to say for weeks with a dog-shaped mouth. Until there couldn’t possibly be any question (and yes, Dean knew why none of the older folk there were interrupting him even when he’d been going on for ages about shit that had nothing to do with what they had to decide) that this was Sam, that all of his soul was there, bright and wondrous and over-excitable as ever.
Except Dean’s eyes kept struggling to close, and every time they did he saw the look on Jo’s face as he’d sliced her open painted on the inside of his lids. And finally his hands were shaking so badly with the adrenalin crash and exhaustion (not shock, Dean Winchester didn’t do shock), that before he knew it he heard the sound of clay shattering and felt luke-warm tea-with-brandy splattering his ankles.
He grudgingly agreed to drag his little brother off to bed (even knowing that as soon as the door closed behind them the topic of conversation would be Sam, all Sam). And if he was leaning on Sam a little heavily as they snuck out the back way into the evening light, and his hand was sort of permanently curled around the familiar weight of his amulet against his chest, back where it belonged... well, no one had to know.
The first thing he noticed really clearly was the thud of the mattress against his back, followed by the thud of his brother overbalancing and sprawling down on top of him, all mile-long limbs and delight. Dean’s hands were all over Sam’s chest and beating human heart, and Sam was looking down at him through a curtain of messy hair, pissy and exhilarated and exhausted.
Huh. Dean’s hands were tangled in Sam’s tunic. Castiel’s tunic. That was probably why he’d dragged Sam down with him. Dean was a genius. He could work things out.
Sam was a genius. Sam remembered all that stuff, all those details, all that complicated little spell that no one had ever done before that Gabriel and Castiel and he had worked out together, even while Sam was handicapped by being a dog. All those creepily monstrous details, monstrous blood, animal milk...
Dean shuddered hard, and squeezed his eyes shut against the warm hazel eyes and dimples beaming down at him, all open and happy.
“Guinevere’s garters, Sammy,” he muttered, before he could stop himself. “A skinwalker? What were you thinking?”
Sam huffed irritation, smelling like tea and booze and dried fruit, and poked him hard in the shoulder. “I was thinking that this way I’ve got hands and a voice, jerk,” he said easily. “You gonna let me up so I can go wash my feet?”
Dean’s fingers flexed in the linen against the rise and fall of Sam’s ribs. Sam’s body was curved in comfortably against his, a long line of familiar warmth like all those times they’d ended up in the same bed when they’d been kids (before Sam got freakishly large and took up all the space with his gigantic sprawling limbs). If Dean were all girly and clingy and didn’t know Sam would mock him forever for it, he’d say this was right where Sam belonged, and demand that he stay the night.
“I dunno, Sammy,” he drawled, like he was considering it. “Think I can trust you to leave the room and not come back with a pet chupacapra or some shit like that?”
Sam sighed, one of his big messy ohmygod-how-do-I-put-up-with-you sighs. It wasn’t very convincing when he was draping himself across Dean to tug the blanket over them. “Fine. I’ll just get mud all over your sheets, then.”
Dean opened his eyes and grinned at him, bright and shameless. “Not my problem. Guess who’s washing them in the morning, bitch?”
Sam gave him a sly look of terribly underhanded evil, and settled down against Dean’s side. “Guess who’s going to tell Gabriel that you just basically compared him to a pet?”
Dean gave him a death glare. Sam smirked like a barn cat who’d just put one over on a poor innocent dog. Then he bounced a bit on the mattress, with his excited “new thought!” beam.
“Hey. Speaking of dream-walking angels, did Cas get through to you that one time? He wasn’t sure.”
One time. That one time. Huh. So there had only been the once. Which meant all those other dreams...
“Yeah.” Dean blinked warily. “Hold on. We were talking about - wait, wait, Gabriel’s been in your dreams?”
Okay, maybe that had been a bit too loud, but if he wasn’t allowed to be over-protective when he’d just got his brother back, when else? And Castiel in Dean’s dreams, that was one thing - Castiel was safe, and Dean’s, and not an archangel with shaky loyalties and shakier sanity.
Sam eyed him patiently. “We went over that two hours ago, remember Dean? A few times, yes, mostly before - well.” He grimaced, and gestured down at the rest of his body. “I was getting... pretty frustrated, not being able to say anything, especially with Gabriel... being a bit of a mess, and Gwen half thinking she should be shooting someone, and so on. No one’s going to stop and look at what some dog’s scratching in the dirt when they’re in the middle of yelling, even if I could write that fast. Only of course when I dream, I dream of me as a person, you know, so Gabriel started visiting sometimes, so I could at least talk to someone in there.” He grimaced, and picked self-consciously at the stitching of Dean’s pillow. “Doesn’t sound like much, but it made a stupid amount of difference.”
“Huh.”
Dean turned his head on the pillow, until Sam’s fingers had to squirm back from under his cheek.
So Gabriel had a soft spot for Sam? He sure hadn’t been acting like it today when he’d said goodbye.
(Gabriel had flat-out refused to come back with them. He’d just shaken his head and stood there, with his back to the wall so he could keep an eye on everyone and still managing to look like he was determined to pretend that the humans, and possibly the other angels, didn’t actually exist.
“So, um,” Sam had tried earnestly, hands shoved too deep into the pockets of Dean’s jacket to look casual. “You’ll... be in touch, right?”
Whatever that meant.
Gabriel had slid his eyes sideways towards Sam, spikey as a defensive hedgehog. “Kinda have to, don’t I? If we’re going to organise anything at all?”
“Well, yes, but.” And Sam had pulled out the worried hopeful puppy-dog eyes. “You’re not allowed to just vanish, okay? I’m sort of used to having you around now.”
“More fool you, kid,” Gabriel had retorted acidly.
Sam had flinched back like he’d been hit, like Gabriel being a dick was actually a surprise. “Fine,” he’d snapped after a moment, eyes narrow, and Gabriel had looked away.
Dean would have left it there - well, okay, so he wouldn’t, he’d have come up with something far wittier than “fine,” - but he would have stopped actually trying, because clearly Gabriel hadn’t wanted Sam to try and Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t actually worth the effort. But, because Sam was and always had been the master of worrying conversations to absolute tatters, he’d taken a deep breath and said, kind of gentle, “Um. Thanks for coming when Cas called just now, anyway. Wasn’t sure you would.”
“Yeah, well,” Gabriel had said uncomfortably to the wall. “If my own personal sun screen got turned to jam by a demon I’d have to sit in the shade to read, so.” Then he’d taken unfair advantage of his ability to escape from awkward conversations by flying away.
Sam’s shoulders had just slumped.
Dean could have told him Gabriel wasn’t worth it. But apparently that wasn’t what Sam wanted to hear.)
But then, who knew what the moody son of a bitch was actually thinking. And, hey, if he was looking out for Sammy it was no more than he ought to be doing anyway, considering Sam had kept going to chat to him when he’d been locked in the barn.
Besides. He probably hadn’t been able to fight the power of the puppy-dog eyes. Dean’s little brother was awesome, an over-excitable giant of a kid (not a man, not while he was sprawled all over Dean’s bed grinning ear to ear and barely keeping his eyes open) who thought the best of everyone and had seen the world and who still looked at Dean, every now and then, like Dean had hung the stars.
“Hey.” Sam jiggled his leg against Dean’s, because he couldn’t stay still for two minutes together. “Hey, Dean.”
“Shut up, I’m sleeping,” Dean informed him, because no way was he ‘fessing up to that sort of thought.
Sam shuffled in closer and poked Dean’s nose. “Cool. So I can draw pink whiskers and glasses on your face, then?”
Dean opened one eye a slit to glare the promise of brotherly revenge. “That was once, and I was drunk. Time to move on, Sammy.”
“But it scarred me, Dean!” And there was the full-blown Sammy pout, with the shoved-out lower lip and the big damp eyes and the droopy hair, the one Dean could never say no to even when he knew Sam never used it when he was actually upset.
He reached up a lazy hand to make a mess of Sam’s hair in retaliation. “Oh, so now it’s my fault you’re a basket case?”
Sam batted him away, and leaned in earnestly, eyes shining. “Whales, Dean. We saw whales.”
Dean tried to think his way through that battered old bestiary that sat in the corner of one of Rufus’ rooms, the one that never got used for practical purposes because it was almost entirely proper animals, not monsters. “Aren’t they some kind of giant fish?”
Sam nodded eagerly, like giant fish were the most amazing thing ever. “Giant fish, only with smooth skin and these amazing eyes, like they’re thinking about you and think you’re sort of interesting and cute, but not really worth making a fuss over. One looked straight at me, Dean! I swear it was bigger than an etayn. And there were these enormous sea monsters with fangs and bodies like snakes’ and heads like horses’, except one had a head like a bull, which was kind of stupid because it had seaweed caught all over the horns.”
“Yeah, well, monsters don’t do common sense that often,” Dean agreed, because sometimes you just had to indulge Sam.
“Cas didn’t want to swim,” Sam added, with a bit of an eyeroll, “because apparently feathers are a bitch to get dry if you get salt water in them. Though he didn’t put it like that, because he’s Cas. Oh, and hey, I hadn’t realised how much time a day they have to spend grooming those things. I mean, I know you always see birds doing it, but you never really stop and think about the upkeep. Apparently just a couple of feathers shabby or out of place really affects the windstream, or something.”
“Okay, Sam, ballpark figure. How many waking hours since you got changed back have you spent not pestering angels with questions about wings and telepathy and angelic agriculture and, I don’t know, embroidery techniques? Are we gonna need an intervention here?”
“Screw you,” Sam tossed back sleepily, as his hand crept slyly up to nestle against Dean’s chest. “There’s just... so many amazing things out there, Dean. And it was only a few weeks, and we didn’t even see very much. And Gabriel...”
The familiar, contented rhythm of Sam Mumbling On faltered, and Dean opened an eye again.
“Well, he’s still a bit of a mess since, you know. He’s been pretty moody and he snaps at us pretty often for the most random stuff, and...” Sam petered off, and his mouth did that little unconscious twist that it made when he thought he might have screwed up but didn’t know how.
Except, huh. His eyes were down, fixed on the sheets, and Dean could have sworn in the poor light that he was blushing.Which, what?
“And he freaks out if you touch him when he’s not expecting it,” Sam continued, then abruptly, like he thought Dean made a habit of shit-stirring (which was totally uncalled-for in every way): “Seriously, don’t touch him, okay? Not even for a joke. He panics, and he hates that he panics, so just... if he snaps at you, don’t rise to it, okay? Just pretend you didn’t notice anything.”
Dean rolled his eyes, but Sam was giving him a pleading look, and somehow the movement turned into a nod.
Sam beamed, and snuggled in against the pillow, hair sneaking everywhere like a tangle of very stealthy weasels. “But sometimes he’s great, and he gets so thrilled by all of this stuff, still. Everything that’s out there, and all the weird forgotten places, and the ways different people do things. Cas doesn’t even get why it’s meant to be interesting, and Anna mostly thinks it’s interesting that I think it’s interesting, and Gwen only wanted to get home and sort things out, but Gabriel, he just... lights up.”
Okay. Soft spot, and common interest, and (reading between the lines) Sam looking at Gabriel like he knew everything and was the best thing since the horse-drawn plough. That made some sense. And then there’d been the expression on the archangel’s face when he’d landed among the rocks today, and the way he’d been crouched dead centre over Sam’s body... and not just that, Dean realised as he replayed it in his head. It hadn’t been just Gabriel. Sam had curled in against him like he knew to his bones that he was safe now, that complete physical trust that he’d only ever had with Dean before. And there was this quiet little thrilled note underneath his voice now, almost shy, like a kid looking for approval.
Apparently this whole infatuation thing he’d thought Sam had for the Trickster had grown when Dean wasn’t looking.
Huh.
“Came back, of course,” Sam mumbled, all slurred up and wistful and halfway to sleep, “just wish we could have taken longer. So many things I wanted to look at... much longer. Wasn’t done.”
Dean curled his arm over his brother’s chest and tugged him in close, covering over the worried little ache inside. Sam was too far along the road to sleep to call him on it anyway.
If you’re curious about what happened between Gabriel and Sam while they were away, there’s now a timestamp from Sam’s point of view.