March-Stalkers Mighty: 17/22
Passus VIII: Pes sinister.
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder, and bared his teeth in a wicked white grin. “I’m not good company. Shocked?”
Dean looked at the hard line of his shoulders, and thought of the Trickster’s easy wit and the way his enthusiasm had spread around the table like fire to paper.
“A bit,” he confessed.
For vneþe watȝ þe noyce not a whyle sesed,For scarcely was the sound of singing ceased, & þe fyrst cource in þe court kyndely serued,And the first course in the court properly served, Þer hales in at þe halle dor an aghlich mayster,When there hove in at the hall door an uncanny horseman, On þe most on þe molde on mesure hyghe;Among the most in the world for stature, Fro þe swyre to þe swange so sware & so þik,From the nape to the hip so square and so solid, & his lyndes & his lymes so longe & so grete,And his flanks and his limbs so long and so grete, Half etayn in erde I hope þat he were.Half giant on earth I think he must have been. Bot mon most I algate mynn hym to bene,But man must I at least allow him to be, & þat þe myriest in his muckel þat myȝt ride;And that the merriest of his mould that might ride, For of bak & of brest al were his bodi sturne,For in his back and his breast his body was strong, Bot his wombe & his wast were worthily smale,But his belly and his waist were elegantly small, & alle his fetures folȝande, in forme þat he hade,And all his features likewise, in the form that he had, ful clene; quite neat, For wonder of his hwe men hade, Yet all men had wonder at his hue, Set in his semblaunt sene; Set in his visage to see, He ferde as freke were fade, He sat as sturdy as a soldier, & oueral enker grene. And all of him was forest green.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anonymous, c. 1380s, translation mine. (The Green Knight rides straight into the Christmas feast at Camelot.)
When they rode out into the clearing where Gabriel’s wagon was drawn up, Dean pulled Leapfrog up sharply, then rolled his eyes towards the sky.
“Fuck. Seriously. How is this my life? Chevy, get back here.”
Gabriel, sprawled naked on his stomach in the grass, didn’t look up from his book. And come on, leaves and twigs and shit in sensitive spots, and also bugs.
“Screw you, Winchester, get yourself a wagon and make your own house rules.”
For the sake of peace, Dean bit back his retort. Chevy sighed and flopped down with her head on her paws, radiating silent disapproval at not being allowed to go and slobber all over Gabriel’s face (and, well, everywhere else, because dogs? Not so much with the personal space).
Then Sam, who’d been kind of excited on the way out here, like he couldn’t wait to see his shiny bestest friend, squeaked out “I’ll just go and... do something.” And he turned his gelding’s head and was gone.
Dean eyed Gabriel warily. Apparently, in addition to everything else, he had unexpected powers of making Sam go all awkward teenager. Which had, granted, been hilarious when Sam had actually been a teenager, but Dean could do without all the angsting again.
“... Dude. Pants.”
Gabriel, who’d been staring after Sam for some reason, looked back at Dean, and narrowed his eyes. Then the as-- the dic-- the son of a bitch just spread his legs a bit wider and waggled. “Bother you a bit too much does it, gorgeous?”
Dean kicked his foot out of the stirrup and slid down from Leapfrog’s back, trying hard to remember exactly why he’d spent the last nine days defending this guy to people back home. (And no, he wasn’t thinking about the way Gabriel’s wings sort of spread and fluttered invitingly, and he definitely wasn’t imagining black wings doing the same thing with serious intent.)
“Mostly I’m wondering what the hell’s up with you and Sam,” he said shortly.
Gabriel grinned obnoxiously, all teeth. “He walked in on me getting sweaty and athletic with three different women at once and now the poor kid’s bashful. What do you want?”
“Uh.” Dean’s brain shut down at that image. Three women? How did that even work? He had to be bullshitting, right? Although, seriously, who even knew with Gabriel.
He fished around in Leapfrog’s saddlebag, steering his thoughts carefully away from anything related to naked archangels. “Letter from Cas for you.”
Wariness crept over Gabriel’s face and left it dark. “What’s he want now?”
Dean took an impatient breath. He thought, deliberately, of “excuse me for trying to give you an out with your lynch mob buddies”: Gabriel throwing his oar in just when things were about to turn violent, giving them a common enemy before they could turn themselves properly into monsters.
“Not a clue. Just something he wanted to sort out with you about this thing with Bobby. You want it, or should I turn around and head on home?”
Gabriel rolled, one fluid shift of weight from hip to arm to wing to feet, and stalked over to snag the pants (thank goodness) that were draped over the running board of the wagon. “Yeah?” he replied, all sweet smile and shoulders and arrogant wing-tilt radiating completely unimpressed. “And you want me to believe he just handed you a secret letter about your precious Bobby and you didn’t open it, or try to wheedle it out of him?”
“This might come as a shock to you, smartass,” Dean said, very politely, holding the carefully folded letter out, “but I actually trust him to not screw me over the first chance he gets.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed into something unreadable, as his hands busied themselves just below Dean’s eyeline with something Dean devoutly hoped was fastening his belt. Then he huffed, and looked away.
“Sure, why not,” he said brightly, apparently to himself. “Just as logical as everything else in your stubborn little mind, after all.”
“You’d know,” Dean shot back automatically, but Gabriel raised a “stop bothering me, puny human” hand and snatched the letter, so Dean rolled his eyes a bit and unhooked the waterbag from Leapfrog’s saddle for a drink.
After a moment the angel strolled over, mussed up Chevy’s ears (to her intense delight), and informed Dean airily, “So apparently he doesn’t trust you. Basic spellwork: the ink won’t be legible until the sun’s directly overhead.”
“Okay,” Dean said sweetly, and glanced up at the not-quite-midday sun. “Neat trick. I’ll get him to show me how that works,” because he was ninety per cent sure Castiel would if he asked, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting Gabriel suspect the other ten.
Gabriel shrugged, a complicated movement of shoulder blades and shifting feathers, and wandered away to stare at one of the axles like he had been suddenly struck with an urge for basic vehicle maintenance.
So they were waiting.
Dean took off Leapfrog’s bridle so he could graze and rubbed down his neck and haunches with a handful of grass, more for something to do with his hands than because the horse needed it for a stop of a few minutes. Then he took another drink of water, and considered chasing down Sam. Sam liked Gabriel, right? Even if Gabriel was being all weird? They could probably carry on a conversation more easily than Dean and Gabriel, anyway.
“How’re you doing?” he dropped non-committally into the silence, after a while.
“Fuck off, Winchester,” Gabriel replied like a reflex.
“Okay then,” Dean retorted brilliantly. Then he tried, “Seen the other angels much lately?”
“You’re all too charming,” Gabriel replied, and flapped a hand vaguely in the direction of the town. “Why would the ladies want to come way out here to dance attendance on me?”
There was something about the way he said it that made Dean pause. Then he put away the water bag, and unclipped the other canteen. Hunter’s helper. “Okay,” he said neutrally, and took a sip. “Thought Anna and Rachel were meant to be checking in every couple of days?”
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder, and bared his teeth in a wicked white grin. “I’m not good company. Shocked?”
Dean looked at the hard line of his shoulders, and thought of the Trickster’s easy wit and the way his enthusiasm had spread around the table like fire to paper.
“A bit,” he confessed, not rising to the bait, and held out the canteen stiffly. “Thought you’d missed them.”
Gabriel laughed, quick and harsh, and took it. And shit, Dean knew the look in those eyes. He’d seen it before, too many times, in too many other faces. “You miss memories, kid. Then you get people instead.”
The metalwork around the mouth of the canteen glinted in the sun as Gabriel tipped it to his mouth. He didn’t stop at one sip.
Dean wasn’t exactly one to talk about healthy coping mechanisms, especially when it came to alcohol, but he was really biting his tongue here. Because, sure, Gabriel hadn’t had the easiest of times. And even in the mess of adrenalin and impressions that the other day had been, Dean hadn’t missed the way Rachel had arched her eyebrows at the mention of Gabriel like he was some useless deadbeat, and how even Castiel had seemed uncertain whether he had two other angels in his little posse here or three. But Gabriel wasn’t exactly making things easier on himself either.
And that look that Dean had recognised? From the eyes of a few people who’d gone through heavy shit and come out the other side halfway or more to broken. Not mad exactly, no matter what taunts kids sometimes threw in their direction (or Dean had thrown at Gabriel, though he totally deserved it, the little shit). Just the look of someone whose brain had broken in one little corner, one spot where they couldn’t piece everything together again, where humanity shattered and ferocious instinct came out. So that one little trigger, like the sound of a child crying in pain, or the flash of a colour they’d seen while everything was going down, or hell, an unexpected touch (Don’t touch him, Dean), would flick them over into obsession.
And if things were like that with Gabriel, then yes, he was dangerous, very dangerous, especially with all the power he held inside him. But he wasn’t dangerous to Sam, because the snarl that had taken over his face while he’d crouched over Sam’s panting body made a hell of a lot more sense.
Dean had seen a lot of little madnesses since he’d been old enough to notice, and the thing was, those bits of the mind where people were broken tended to be a lot more consistent than the sane parts. Sanity was flexible: it adapted and grew, and you couldn’t quite predict it. Madness fused something in one little corner of the mind like scar tissue. Once you knew where it was coming from, you could guess pretty well what would trigger it in someone, and what they’d do while it had its teeth in them.
Whatever else Gabriel’s particular brand of madness contained, it included protecting Sam. For whatever reason.
Well, no one had ever said this shit was logical.
Gabriel tossed the canteen back in Dean’s direction, half-empty, and Dean caught it automatically. “Hey,” he said vaguely, because he had wondered before. “This stuff actually work on you guys?”
“If we drink enough of it.” Gabriel didn’t bother looking at him, just crossed his arms over his chest and sat down on the running board.
Awkward.
Dean followed his example, a couple of yards down the side of the wagon so as not to accidentally touch him, and they sat in prickly silence for a minute.
“I can still kill you,” Gabriel observed.
Dean eyeballed him sideways. “Likewise. Only I’m pretty sure Sam and Cas together would kick my ass.”
Gabriel did one of his weird unsettling moments of absolute stillness, then cocked his head thoughtfully. “Castiel did grow up pretty scary.”
Dean smiled a bit, despite himself.
“He did, didn’t he? Sammy’s kind of scary too, when he gets his head set on something.” There was a sort of a lessening in the tension around Gabriel’s shoulders at that, so he added, “Shoulda seen him these last few days. He’s got this whole earnest peace-philosophy binge going on. Kid makes me exhausted just watching him. Pretty sure he’s just bewildering people into thinking this’s a good idea.”
Gabriel grunted and tipped his head back to stare at the sky, sunlight curling gold and warm into the shadows of his hair and wings. “Yeah? What about the ones who don’t?”
Dean shrugged. “Gwen and Ellen’ve been doing a lot of knocking stubborn heads together. Bobby just sits there and makes anyone who tries to argue logic feel like an idiot by being far more logical than them. Me... I’ve spent the last eight days yelling at people to get over themselves and figure out a way to work with angels so that we can actually fix this. And, well. About how what we did to you is pretty damn far from okay.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and grimaced at the ground. “Feels so damn good to be able to just come out and say it, you’ve got no idea.”
Gabriel made a vague grumbling noise in his throat that could have meant anything or nothing. Dean let it drop, and lapsed back into silence.
It was a long one.
Were there any neutral topics here?
In the spirit of sticking to purely scientific enquiry, Dean ventured, after a bit, “So what’s an archangel, then?”
“Shiny,” the representative of the species drawled.
“Yeah, got that memo, thanks, sparkles.” He didn’t expect the half-amused snort, but hey, not arguing. “You’re all badass and powerful and you’ve got a shiny sword. Only Cas was talking like archangels are meant to be diplomats or something, so how’s that add up?”
Gabriel eyed off the little cluster of birches at the edge of the clearing, like he was convinced that they were mocking him somehow but couldn’t quite read the language of the way their leaves danced in the breeze well enough to call them on it.
“Leaders,” he offered curtly at last. “A few born in each generation, no fewer than two, no more than five. Oligarchy - rule of the few, only it’s a random few, because they can be born to any family, got it?”
Dean nodded, said nothing, and took another swig.
“It’s like another family, okay?” Gabriel purred after a minute, nice and sarcastic, because apparently sounding polite was too confusing. “You’re more than friends, ’cos no matter how much you might piss each other off, you’re stuck with each other and you stick with each other. You know from the start that you’re going to have to work together, you’re going to be a team, you’ll be learning and facing and deciding things no other angel will get, so you spend pretty much all your time together. Like a swarm of fluffy little archangel ducklings,” he muttered, and there was something gleaming like melting honey under his eyelashes that warned that maybe this wasn’t such a neutral topic after all. “Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, me. It was unbalanced from the start, so when Joshua died - last of the old archangels - it took less than a year to go to hell.”
Dean cleared his throat. “What about your real brothers?” he offered carefully, because, well. Castiel had always seemed alone, when he’d been a kid.
“Not meant to have favourites. Which is bullshit, of course, but. Keeping up appearances.” Gabriel shoved his hands hard into his pockets, and smirked at his boots viciously. “Archangels are meant to be all born to different families. Balance of power and so on. Michael and Lucifer? Same father, different mothers, born three weeks apart, the horny old fox.”
“Wow.” Dean blinked, and handed over the canteen. “That’s messed up. He stick around?”
“On and off, for a few years. Then, nada.” Gabriel whistled, a little descending chirrup that was apparently meant to represent a deadbeat father vanishing over the horizon. “Those two... all they ever saw in the world was each other, and him. Tighter than you and Sam - I’m talking full-on obsession here. Never could tell at any moment whether they were trying to outdo each other or propose wild incestuous marriage.”
How had they got from “what’s an archangel” to deep-seated family screw-ups and Dean trying to work out whether he should be saying anything or slinking away quietly to avoid the inevitable shitstorm when Gabriel realised what he was laying bare, and to whom? Seriously, of all the useless people Gabriel could spill his guts to...
“Raphael, four years younger,” Gabriel said pleasantly to the grass. “Me, another seven after him. Of course, he just tagged along and stared adoringly at them and thought they were the best thing ever and never got around to having an original thought of his own, so when they decided to go for option C, tearing each other apart, well, he was kind of screwed.”
There wasn’t really much to say to that, so Dean made a sort of noise that he hoped conveyed “I hear ya, man,” or something non-objectionable like that. Because there was this snappy, defensive little undertone to Gabriel’s voice, not at all like someone who was offering up deep heartfelt truths because he thought Dean had earned them: more like someone who had been wanting to snarl them in the face of too many people for too long.
Gabriel was quiet beside him for a moment. Then he piped up, all we-are-changing-the-subject-now cheerfulness, “I was the baby. The cute, dimpled, golden-haired baby with the sunny disposition and the most innocent face you ever saw.”
Dean gave him a deeply suspicious look.
Gabriel batted his eyelashes. “Hey. I worked on that innocent face. Got me all the candy.”
“You and Sam are freakily alike sometimes,” Dean informed him, with a bit of an eyeroll; and Gabriel gave him a quizzical sort of look, snorted, and tossed the canteen back. Empty, of course.
Maybe this wasn’t going to end up amazingly messy after all. Weird.
Gabriel tilted his face up to the sun, pulled the letter out of his pocket and read it over twice, a neutral little frown on his face. Then he crumpled it, tossed it into the air, and watched with apparent pleasure as it burst into flames in front of his face.
Dean might have leaped sideways a little bit. “Holy shit,” he totally didn’t yelp, and brushed the charred remains of paper off his shoulder.
Gabriel hopped to his feet, shoved his hands in his pockets and smirked, bright as rain, “Party over! Tell little bro fine on all counts, I’ll meet him there an hour before you guys turn up, so off you toddle.”
Dean nodded curtly, clipped his canteen back onto his belt, and whistled to Chevy. “Right. I’ll fetch Sam and we’ll... see you next week, I guess.”
Gabriel jerked his head, just acknowledgement, every line of him radiating eagerness to be left alone. No wonder everyone kept finding excuses not to hang around with the prickly son of a bitch.
Dean rebridled Leapfrog without a word, swung up into the saddle and turned his head back towards the path. Then he changed his mind, and kept turning him until he was staring down at Gabriel again.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” he said, quick and don’t-you-dare-interrupt as years of brotherly shouting matches had taught him. “I get that you’ve had it rough. I do. The crap with your family, then being on your own, then going human and liking people then seeing them and angels turning on each other like another civil war, that’s gotta suck. Then that shit with the dogs, and what we did to you... I get it, man, I do. It sounds like hell, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
He a moment to draw in a deep breath, because Gabriel wasn’t trying to butt in. He was just staring all tight and frozen, thunderous, like he was considering going firebomb on Dean now.
Dean arched an eyebrow at him, and gambled his life on Gabriel being just far enough this side of sane that he wouldn’t use insanity as an excuse.
“Get over it,” he said brusquely. “Civil war, man. You’re not the only angel pretty torn up about it, from what I can see, and we’ve all lost people and done things we wish we hadn’t, okay? Let it go. ’Cos I’ve seen what happens to people who can’t.”
Gabriel blinked very slowly, lashes falling like a soft brown curtain over eyes that were burning into Dean’s throat. It was kind of terrifying.
Then he bared his teeth again and said, pleasant as if Dean had never spoken, “Hey Dean. You’re Lancelot. Castiel is Gareth.” His mouth twisted into the sweetest smile that ever a banshee had aimed at its victim’s lungs. “Don’t make me go all Gawain on your ass.”
Hell. Not more legend references. But wasn’t there a song about that one? Dean remembered songs better than books. Gawain. Gareth. Gareth, Gawain’s little brother, who’d been devoted to Lancelot until Lancelot had accidentally...
Oh. Right.
Hadn’t Gawain’s feud against Lancelot after that been the reason for the split of the Round Table? Or had that been something else?
“... Your brain is a very strange place,” Dean decided cautiously. Then he beat a totally dignified retreat.
“So, you and Gabriel, huh?”
Sam’s expression suddenly went from relaxed to shifty panic, like a colt who’s just realised that, yes, his legs are actually really that long.
“What?” was his complex and clever contribution to the conversation.
Dean rolled his eyes, because that was his duty as a big brother, and also if he could keep Sam wrong-footed with hints he might be able to work out what Sam thought this was. “Come on, Sammy. I saw the way you were looking at him back there. And if you want to pretend there’s nothing going on, maybe you shouldn’t bail the moment he looks at you funny,” he added, in case that was enough to make Sam think he’d rumbled him in whatever Sam figured was going on.
Sam stared fixedly at his gelding’s ears, and the wide welcoming tracts of cultivated land opening up in front of them as they turned in towards the home valley. “Um. I,” he said, because a nerdy genius he might be, but a good liar he wasn’t.
“Sammy,” Dean growled, in a Worried Older Brother warning tone.
Sam shot him a guilty look, and fidgeted with his reins. “Is it that obvious?” he asked, all muted and ashamed, which, what? Sam wasn’t allowed to look like that!
Dean kneed Leapfrog in closer to Sam’s horse, until his knee knocked against Sam’s. “Hey. Don’t go all everybody-thinks-I’m-a-freak on me, okay? No one else is going to notice. Hell, they’re all too busy with shrieking their heads off over making nice with angels. You gonna tell me what happened?”, which was a shot in the dark, because probably nothing had happened except a few arguments, but if Sam thought Dean knew something his mind would jump immediately on whatever he felt most guilty about, which was probably going to be the most important argument, so hey. Sometimes you had to be kind of underhanded in looking after Sam.
The sideburns Sam had been growing out twitched. Dean had mixed feelings about those sideburns. On the one hand, he secretly suspected they were out to take over the world. On the other, they were a really really good tell for Sam Is Trying To Lie To His Awesome Brother.
“It was just the once,” he mumbled at his hands.
“Uh-huh,” Dean returned, pretending not to be mystified. “And why am I not believing you?”
Sam scowled. “It was.” And, okay, that was the indignant half-whine, so maybe this was a limited truth rather than a lie. “He just. He thinks I’m a kid, okay? He apologised after,” he added, forlorn and a bit confused, and whoa. That sounded suspiciously like Gabriel’s little soft spot for Sam had gone too far, and he’d... invited Sam to come with him when he left, or maybe even tried to get him onside for some weird angel vengeance shtick against the demons, or something.
At least the douche had remembered himself in time, but it would be just like him to cover up a slip by making Sam think it was his own fault.
“You mad?” Sam muttered, sounding far too much like a kid again for Dean’s liking, so he freed his foot from the stirrup long enough to kick at Sam’s calf then nudged Leapfrog ahead.
“Hey. I’ve got far better things than that to be pissed about. Like who ate all those thank-you-for-not-letting-me-get-eaten-by-a-demon cookies Jo made me the other day?”
Sam snorted behind him. “Right. And who dragged her out there in the first place? I’m pretty sure those were actually ‘thank you Sam for dropping by with all your angel friends just when your brother had landed us in deep shit’ cookies.”
Dean waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. Keep dreaming. I’m totally in there, dude.”
A pinecone collided with the back of his head, and Chevy pricked up her ears and leapt to catch it out of the air, on the off chance that it might be interesting.
Let no one ever say Dean didn’t know how to annoy his little brother out of a funk.
“Need help, old man?”
“Go boil your head,” Bobby shot back from the depths of the cupboard under the sink, then muttered something about rats.
Dean leaned down for a whiff, and wrinkled his nose at the dark musky smell of buck rodent. “I’ll fetch down a pair of terriers this afternoon. You wanna get those pots out of there?”
It was stupidly normal, moving around Bobby’s kitchen, trying to find spaces for all the oversized pots and pans and crocks, passing things to each other without having to ask, Bobby wedged half in and half out of the cupboard and making a satisfied little grunt every time he managed to inch himself forward enough to grab another pot, Chevy lying under the table watching them intently in case there might be food. Normal in a way that felt refreshing, and almost surreal: no angels, no demons, no questions of sanity or monstrosity, no missing Sam. Just him and Bobby plotting against rats, and a sliver of hope for the future.
Normal enough that it felt like... not forgiveness, exactly. Not something handed down condescendingly from on high. Just like he and Bobby were okay again, like that had never been a question. Like something that filled up that old, empty ache that his father had left, the one that said he’d never be good enough. Not forgiveness - more like trust.
Dean didn’t realise he was whistling until Bobby eyeballed him.
“What’s got you hopping like a cock in the hen house?”
Dean grinned at him obnoxiously, and hopped up onto the bench to stash a big bread crock on one of the highest shelves. “What, can’t a guy just be happy around here?”
Bobby worked himself out from under the sink with the last of the pots and levered himself back up into his chair. “Not when he’s just spent three months being the whiniest son of a bitch I’ve seen since his daddy copped it. You gonna help me with that peach cobbler Missouri brought over yesterday, or what?”
“Twist my arm.”
Two bowls and two spoons and a hearty dollop of cobbler each later, Dean cocked an eyebrow over the table at Bobby. Because really, this all depended on him.
“So, you in for next week?”
Bobby took his time finishing his spoonful, ruminating like an old bull, then put the spoon down in the bowl with a deliberate clink and jabbed two fingers in Dean’s direction.
“Making nice with angels - it’s kill or cure, the way I figure it. We do it, and either they kill us all or we pull through strong. We don’t do it, none of us will be here come fifty years time. Now, you trust this Castiel angel,” he said bluntly. Dean ducked his head, couldn’t help the little private grin at his bowl, and Bobby grunted like he’d just had something confirmed and continued down his list. “Sam trusts him. Gwen too. Ellen thinks he’s on the level about making and keeping peace, at least.”
Dean looked up. “Wait, she does?”
“Says she doesn’t know angels but she does know young men, and no kid she knows could put that much earnestness into his face and not mean it.” Which meant she was thinking about him like a person, reading him like he was actually readable. Huh. “Jo figures he’s probably not lying but looks like she still wants to take her daddy’s death out of his ass, which means he hasn’t put some persuasive glamour on the lot of you who were out there last week. Missouri’s got one of her good feelings about the whole business. And I figure Gabriel’s got his number if anyone does, so if he’s down with this whole treaty business too, the wings are going to give it an honest go. Worth the risk, if we can keep the hotheads on both sides from getting into dogfights over nothing.”
He shrugged, like that decided everything, and went back to the peach cobbler.
Dean put down his spoon, and stared pointedly at Bobby’s legs. “You trust Gabriel’s call?”
Bobby ate impassively. “Knew the guy for years before he popped wings. He isn’t that different now, y’know. Drives a hard bargain, and he’s got a bitch of a tongue on him, but he’s probably the most honest pedlar out there at the moment. And there aren’t many human folks I know who’d stand as stubborn through that as he did,” jerking his head in the direction of the barn. “I figure I got his measure. So, looks like I gotta sack up and do my bit.”
“... Okay then.” How were there so many people around for whom this was all just some matter of simple logic, not the mind-twisting impossibility it had been for Dean?
“Besides,” Bobby admitted ruefully to his spoon, “Jody will have my hide if I back out now.”
The next day, Castiel moved into Dean’s bedroom.
It should have been another oil-and-water kind of brain twister, but maybe Dean’s brain was getting used to being twisted around, because the sight of him sitting on the edge of Dean’s bed and peering curiously around his room just made Dean feel unreasonably smug. In a jittery kind of way.
Anna had fetched Castiel’s things down from Gabriel’s wagon, but there wasn’t much to take up space. Apparently angels tended to travel light, which made sense, given they usually flew instead of trundling along with a horse and cart. There were a few clothes, a heavy felted wrap that unfolded into an almost waterproof blanket, and a broad roll of leather into which were slotted a razor and several combs for hair and feathers. Then there was a little bundle of pens, inks, parchment, needles for leather and cloth, thread and sinew, flints, knives, and a few other small tools, some of which looked magical and some mundane. The whole lot, once the clothes were hung up, took up about a third of the space on top of the chest next to Dean’s bed.
What he carried with him, of course, was more than just objects.
Dean was woken in the night, startling up from the couch to the sound of muffled cries and a thud, and met Sam wide-eyed and sleepily anxious in the door of his room. He charged into his own room with his heart in his throat, expecting to find that someone had taken matters into their own hands and broken through the window; but the only enemy was the one inside Castiel’s head.
Sweet-talking him down from flailing panic to consciousness without getting in the range of the dangerous, delicate wings, then finding himself dragged into the bed and wrapped in sweating angel as Castiel shook against him... well, it was pretty damn difficult after that to creep out from under the covers, once he was sleeping properly, and back to the cold couch.
The next week slid by in a haze of richly coloured impressions.
Waking up in the mornings with a crick in his neck from sleeping on the couch, but with that excitement in his belly like when he’d been a kid and known that something special was happening today. Taking a moment to place it, then realising, Cas. Castiel was in the house, stretched out on Dean’s bed, snoring faintly into his pillow, and Dean had breakfast to cook for three.
Sam, animated and intent as fuck, bouncing up every day ready to tackle the wrongs of the world and explain at terrifying length to anyone who’d listen how nice it would be if they could all just get along, all eager hand gestures and weirdly hypnotic conviction.
Charlie and Anna getting on like a terrifying red-headed house on fire, so much so that by the third day Anna was down there at the orchard with her, stayed the night, and didn’t bother coming back to the Roadhouse any night after that either.
Jo and Mark and Victor and a few others getting up and leaving the room (or the square, or whatever) every time an angel came in. Which was not as good as it could have been, but not as bad as the way some others (Gordon and Christian and so on) would just stay right where they were and watch, like they were waiting for a moment’s weakness.
Sam again, just here and there, looking faintly nervy at other people’s arguments about the unnatural and the freakish and the monstrous, that little muscle at the edge of his jaw going tight and pulling his mouth into that particular bitch-face of “I’m pretending that has nothing to do with me.” And no dog hairs turning up around the house but Chevy’s black and greyish silver.
Castiel emerging, pale at first and slow and deliberate in his movements, but refusing to stay indoors even if all he could do was to sit on the bench out by the dipping pond and watch them persuading the sheep that they really did want a swim, or to talk solemnly and awkwardly to anyone who came by, or to study the differences between all Chevy’s facial expressions (Dean helpfully drew them for him, because he was hopeless at telling the difference between a smile and bared teeth), or just to sit and soak up the sun.
It wasn’t peaceful. There was a tension running through most conversations: people pushing boundaries, trying to work out for themselves if the angels were for real. People curious and just a bit too inquisitive who wanted to hear a “real” angel talk (and yes, some people actually said that, like Gabriel didn’t count), or watch the way his wings moved like they thought they might be a trick. People whose questions barely concealed aggression, like they thought they could provoke the wild beast into flying for their throat or to prove that they weren’t letting their guard down.
Sometimes Dean couldn’t quite tell whether Castiel genuinely didn’t pick up on passive aggression or was choosing to ignore it, responding flat and even and distantly courteous no matter what they said; but other times, he caught the edge of that sly sarcasm underneath it that sent the other person away baffled. Those times, after the person had gone, he’d just snort quietly and knock his foot against Castiel’s; and Castiel wouldn’t quite look at him, but Dean could see the way the edge of his mouth softened into something wry and secret anyway, just for him. When they got back inside Castiel would kiss him, hard and sweet, and stare into his face like he could see right through him and tip the world sideways.
Then there was Rachel, stalking around stern and cool, always within calling distance of Castiel just in case.
And Anna, flitting around everywhere like some wide-eyed ethereal kid, asking questions of everyone about everything, because apparently humans were exotic and fascinating. She was much better than Rachel at getting people to smile back. Her own smile was small and half-rueful, a sweet secret thing in the corner of her mouth; but even when she was geeking out over how fascinating stove brushes were, or whatever, there was usually a sort of grave sad air hanging over her. Dean had to wonder whether that was an angel thing, slipping back into regrets as soon as they had nothing more cheerful to distract them.
Charlie nudging Dean and saying something excited and mystifying that sounded like she was congratulating him but never quite specified what for.
Doing quiet little jobs around the place, as soon as Castiel was well enough to help him - cleaning out the kennels, that sort of thing - while Castiel wore his puzzled studious frown like there was going to be a test later, and asked the weirdest questions. The way that, even though he had all this vast obscure angel knowledge, so much magic and so much of the world outside, he kept getting fascinated and confused by mundane little things like keyrings. Getting into the habit of just having him there, just being in each other’s space, being close. The luxury of knowing you could just reach out and touch simply because it felt so damn good, having someone’s hand rubbing slowly through your hair. Not all of it was stuff that made Dean’s dick sit up and take notice (though a light breeze was almost enough to do that lately, because apparently having Castiel around all the time was giving it ideas). Just a hand pressed into the small of a back for a moment, the brush of fingers across a table for no good reason, the quick warmth of lips against the corner of a jawline.
(And so what if people saw? They had plenty to gossip about already, and hell if Dean was hiding anymore.)
Then there were Castiel’s nightmares. They weren’t good, of course, but Dean cherished the outcome selfishly. After the first couple of nights of being startled out of sleep to play angel’s cuddle buddy, Dean stopped trying to sleep on the couch. Castiel sort of growled if he tried to disentangle himself afterwards anyway, which was far more persuasive than it should have been.
Besides. If Castiel felt safer with Dean there, and therefore slept better, and therefore healed better, it made perfect sense to do it. Dean was all about the logic.
Castiel wouldn’t tell him what the nightmares were about, but he pressed agonised whispers of apology and guilt into Dean’s throat as he was coming down from them, shaking against Dean’s chest. And once he begged Dean to tell him that his wings were still there, still real, not some transparent illusion of cobwebs and deceit. “Promise me you’ll kill me, Dean,” he snarled afterwards, eyes wide and too bright in the darkness, “if I become that.”
Four months before, Dean might even have given him that promise. Would have thought it was the right thing - the only thing to do, once someone was compromised.
He smoothed away the lingering sense of guilt, of his father looking at him dark with disappointment, by telling himself that Castiel probably hadn’t been really awake when he’d said that anyway.
So that shit wasn’t fun, but it did lead, nice and immediate, to the best thing about that week: mornings in bed. Because it turned out that Castiel really liked waking up next to someone; and Dean took all of ten seconds on the first morning to realise what a freaking awesome thing this was too.
Castiel, hovering over him on one elbow, eyes sliding dark and intense over Dean’s face or throat like a physical touch.
Castiel, stretched out lazily on his stomach making a rumbling noise into the pillow like a contented cat, as Dean slid in under the arch of one wing to run a hand down his back and nuzzle open-mouthed at his shoulder and neck and ear.
Castiel, trailing thoughtful promising kisses down the back of Dean’s neck, one hand snaking around his ribs to open hot and possessive over his heart (just like Sam, only really really not like Sam at all).
Castiel, half snoring into Dean’s arm where he’d fallen asleep on it and Dean hadn’t had the heart to move him until he’d lost all feeling and had to nip at Castiel’s ear to get it back, who only opened one eye enough to grumble and drape himself over all of Dean so that Dean had to move very quickly to make sure no one’s hips were touching any part of anyone else, because that was the line that he really couldn’t cross and stay sane.
Castiel, and all the beautiful little noises he made when he wasn’t really awake, or when his mouth was kissed red and swollen: the purring when Dean combed one hand slowly through the hair at the back of his head as he woke up, the confused muffled noise when he didn’t see a kiss coming, the dark little breaths like growls that he sucked in between shoves of his tongue when he was working Dean open, hot and breathlessly tender, all lush demand and strength.
Then there was that little peeved sound like a stifled whine which Dean was almost sure coincided, every time, with Dean discreetly shuffling his hips back an inch or two on the mattress when Castiel’s sleep-clumsy grappling brought him too close, or when he was a bit careless with where his hand fell so that Dean had to wriggle a bit to get it back up to safely above-the-belt zones. It was hard to tell, though, because that made no sense, and it was difficult to categorise memories and impressions properly when Castiel was working his way into Dean’s open mouth until Dean’s jaw and dick ached in equal measure.
And really, after a wake-up like that, Dean would have thought he deserved a fucking medal for not just pulling Castiel down against him, savaging his neck with lips and tongue and teeth, snugging body up against sleep-warm body and just pushing against him, anything, any friction so long as it was Castiel,until it was suddenly shockingly blindingly over.
Would have thought he deserved one, that is; except that the thought of Castiel’s face if he ever found out just what Dean’s stupid body seemed to think about their sweet, hot, goddamn loving morning kisses was the best boner-killer ever.
It was sort of doing Dean’s head in, but he couldn’t really find it in him to complain.
(Sam took to making the breakfast.)
The morning it changed, the morning it went from a haze of impressions to sharp painful focus and everything came crashing down, shouldn’t have been any different. It was the morning before they were to meet Gabriel to fix Bobby’s, but other than that nothing was different, nothing had changed. Right up until that point where it really really was, and sure as hell did.
Dean’s window opened to the west, and the pre-dawn light outside wasn’t strong enough to creep through the curtains. The line between dreaming and waking was a hazy one, hands and mouths warm and sweet on shoulders and necks and flanks in the dark.
Dean was lying on his back with a hot, familiar weight draped over his side and Castiel’s hair tickling at his nose. One wing was tucked snugly over him like he was a baby duck or something. Dean didn’t really have any grounds to whinge about that, though, because he had an arm wound around Castiel, a hand buried in that soft dark place between furled wing and body. It was sensitive there: Dean had learned that too light a touch made Castiel squirm and bat his hands away, but if he rubbed slow and firm Castiel would arch into it and groan, pressing the tender skin in against his touch.
Castiel’s mouth was half open against Dean’s throat, panting, harsh wet breaths snagging on over-sensitised skin where teeth and lips and tongue had been teasing for almost half an hour. His fingertips were scratching mindless maddening little circles low on Dean’s belly, and Dean’s blood was tingling hot under his skin. On every sweep, Castiel’s fingers brushed through that little trail of hair, just above the tie of Dean’s sleep pants, keeping Dean wobbling on that uncomfortable knife’s edge between greedy anticipation and will-he-won’t-he panic.
“Cas,” he murmured into the soft mess of hair under his lips; and he wasn’t sure what he meant to say, so it was easy to get distracted by the way his own voice came out somewhere between a croak and a growl, and the pleased rumble he felt deep in Castiel’s chest in response.
Sometimes Castiel made noises that were nothing like human; and hell, but they went straight to Dean’s belly.
Dean groaned, and nudged at Castiel’s hair until he lifted his head obediently to Dean’s to slot their mouths in together, open and willing. Kissing, Dean knew how to do. He was good at this, and it was safe, and he felt his shoulders relax and melt into the mattress under the soft persuasion of Castiel’s tongue.
Warm, sleep-ruffled feathers rustled velvety-soft around Dean’s hand as he drew his hand up over coiled muscle to Castiel’s shoulder. When he traced his fingers over the back of Castiel’s neck, the angel’s breath stuttered in his mouth.
Dean smirked into the kiss and stretched luxuriously under him, shifting hungry hips on the bed, trying to ignore the tempting whisper of fabric down there and the little damp spot that he could feel soaking through the front.
Castiel nipped at his lower lip, a sharp white spark of almost-pain that had Dean arching up into him and digging fingers into his neck, and Dean felt the sly tease of his mouth curving into a smile.
Then his hand slipped down, deliberately or with the roll of Dean’s own hips, moved just those final few inches too far to flicker over the inside of Dean’s thigh, and the backs of his knuckles brushed right there.
Sparks exploded behind Dean’s eyes, and he spat out something halfway between a curse and a gasp and was scrambling backwards on the bed until the back of his head slammed painfully into the wall.
The chill of the stone behind his shoulders shattered the safe, hazy darkness into bleak reality. Castiel was a hunched shape in the shadows, and Dean was fiercely irrationally glad that he couldn’t see his face, could put off just for a minute learning how he’d look at Dean now. Now that he’d felt that.
The silhouette of Castiel’s wings shrank down to settle along his back. Then his head tilted ever so slowly to one side.
“Dean,” came his voice, and it sounded... puzzled. Maybe a bit hurt.
Hell. Was it even possible that he hadn’t noticed?
“Mind where you’re putting your hands,” Dean snapped, flushing hot.
Castiel went very still.
Shit. Here it came.
“Dean, I... apologise,” he said tightly, which made no freaking sense. “I understood that you meant... when you...”
Castiel never stammered.
Dean could feel the weight of him staring in the dark, the heat radiating off the hand that was pressing into the mattress just by Dean’s calf.
Belatedly, he grabbed the pillow and dragged it into his lap. Castiel’s head turned to follow the movement; and Dean set his jaw and looked away, waiting for the storm.
“I don’t understand,” Castiel growled, low and uneven and frustrated; and Dean wanted to apologise, to come up with some wild plausible charming explanation that would cover all the facts and make this all go away, but his blood was beating painfully hard in his head and his dick and the words wouldn’t come, and Castiel would figure it out anyway.
The sound of Castiel’s impatient huff was loud and impossibly dear in the taut silence.
“This light is inadequate for your eyes, isn’t it.”
The warmth and weight of him on the bed vanished, then he was silhouetted against the crack in the curtains for a moment before they were open, filling the room and flushing his lean body with the faint pink light of morning, and -
“Holy shit,” Dean choked eloquently. His brain stuttered to a stop.
“Dean.” Castiel turned back toward the bed, sounding short and impatient and utterly bewildered, but Dean couldn’t even look up at his face because it was right there, and how was that even possible? And hell, he was staring, obviously staring.
His heart was beating loud erratic terror in his throat, and he wished it would stop because he was pretty sure Castiel could hear it.
He gulped in a deep breath, pasted on something that didn’t even feel like a grin, and gestured in the general direction of Castiel’s crotch. “You too, huh?” he said brightly, because making a joke of it was always the best way to carry off awkward and completely incomprehensible crap, right?
Dean felt rather than saw the puzzled tightening of Castiel’s eyes, the way he glanced down at himself and back up as if there was nothing remarkable there at all.
“And this comes as a surprise to you,” Castiel said in that deadpan way of his; and Dean looked up, because he had to see.
Castiel was watching him, wary and worried. But when he met Dean’s eyes he went still and stared for a long moment, and his eyes slowly grew wider in something like dread.
“This... comes as a surprise to you,” he said, flat and hoarse.
Dean’s fingers dug savagely into the pillow that was shielding him. “Of course it comes as a freaking surprise to me, Cas, I mean how the hell was I to know?”
“Am I so persuasive that you didn’t even...”
Only Castiel wasn’t the type to back down in the face of anger, even when he was wearing that sick look of self-disgust that twisted Dean’s gut even while he didn’t understand it, so before he could even finish that thought he lashed back, “What did you think we were doing, Dean. All this time!”
It wasn’t just an argument: there was this defensive pleading note in there, like he really wanted to know, like there was something he needed Dean to deny. But Dean hadn’t got a fucking clue, he’d thought this was settled and safe and now all those questions were suddenly ripped open again and Dean was riding high on fury and indignation and shame.
“I don’t know!” he snarled, everything in his body itching to get over there and shove into Castiel’s space and hurl the words right at him, grapple him close and shake him and keep him. “I don’t know, man, I don’t exactly have a map for this, I figured you knew.”
Castiel’s face just... froze, like someone had slammed the shutters on his eyes, and he took a fumbling step backwards. Something in the horrible grey look on his face broke through Dean’s panic to hiss bad, very very bad, right in that protective big brother part of his brain.
He was scrambling over the bed before he realised what he was doing, like his body had decided this was more important and staged a brisk takeover.
“Hey, no, man, don’t give me that look,” he babbled, reaching out to grab Castiel’s arm, wrist, shoulder, wing, anything, only Castiel jerked away from it like Dean’s touch would corrupt him, or he’d corrupt Dean, or something, and Dean had no idea anymore but Castiel just needed to stop looking like that. “Come back to me, Cas. It’s good, okay? It’s all good. I just didn’t think you’d want...”
“Go back to the sofa, Dean,” Castiel gritted out, eyes wide and wild like a trapped bird.
“It’s my bed!” Dean protested, too angry and confused for logic; and Castiel just turned and stalked out.
Dean growled his name like a plea and a curse, then yelled it, but it didn’t stop him. He just walked, straight past where Sam was blinking worried sleepiness in the doorway of his own room, past where Chevy was curled up in her bed under the kitchen table because Castiel got uncomfortable with her in the bedroom, straight out the front door with only his light pants on into the chill morning air.
Sam stared after him, scrubbed a hand over his face and stared again, like that would make things make sense. Then he stared at Dean, for a change of pace, and with all his hair standing up in bedhead fluff he looked kind of like a startled baby chicken.
“Dean,” he said very carefully, “What did you do to him?”
Dean was struggling between the sick feeling of wrong in his gut and the urge to grab something and shake it and demand to know what had just happened. Typical of anger to show up only long enough to screw things up then vanish just when it could be handy, just when he’d really love to be able to cling to it and think of nothing worse than that.
“I didn’t do -” he started, but it wasn’t true enough to finish.
He took another breath, and it shuddered in his chest. “I have no idea. Not a fucking clue.”
---
So, Lancelot/Gareth/Gawain!
In Malory’s version of the end of the Round Table,and a few others (the ones that focus on Lancelot), Lancelot accidentally killed Gareth either in escaping Guinevere’s chambers or (more commonly) in rescuing her from the pyre, after they were caught doing naughty adulterous capitally treacherous things together. The tragedy of it is that Lancelot had been the one to knight Gareth (a significant and lasting bond), and they had a very close relationship. However, because Gareth wasn’t wearing his armour and surcoat and all the other external trappings of his knighthood, Lancelot didn’t recognise him. Which is, of course, also symbolic. And usually convenient - this is how all those knights in those stories end up having battles with their best friends just because one of the pair has decided to go on an I MUST PROVE MYSELF quest and started wandering around the woods without colours, or in someone else’s colours.
Gawain’s rage against his former friend is, in this version, what drives Arthur on to take action against Lancelot for taking his wife, even after Lancelot has retreated to France and tried to make amends, and ends up with everyone dead.
The other version, which dominates (for example) the alliterative Morte Arthur of the fourteenth century, is the older Mordred story: Mordred rose up against Arthur (possibly while he was overseas or otherwise metaphorically inattentive), including trying to / managing to marry Guinevere, and that it was the war against his own illegitimate son that brought about the end.
(Malory, the great artist of patchwork and MUST INCORPORATE ALL THE VERSIONS OF CANON, did try to work this one in after the Gawain/Lancelot/Gareth thing, but most people forget about that because it isn’t nearly so interesting after Malory has poured so much narrative power into the Lancelot story. Malory, writing in the middle of the fifteenth century, in a prison cell, in the midst of the Wars of the Roses - i.e., a civil war that had dragged on for years and saw no prospect of ending before all of the leading figures were dead - had good reason to be more invested in the story of competing interests forcing friends apart and destroying an ideal nation than in some illegitimate son that people had forgotten about coming back with a faceless army to take charge.)
Either way, it’s a “destruction of the ideal society from within” metaphor - the older story is focussed on the king and his sexual transgressions and inability to be the perfect centre of the perfect society, so naturally its downfall follows his; the Lancelot version is rather about society’s inability to hold itself to its own high courtly rules, because it’s courtly love itself and the most admired figures of that community that screw everything over.
Here endeth the ramble. You could all have googled that anyway.
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder, and bared his teeth in a wicked white grin. “I’m not good company. Shocked?”
Dean looked at the hard line of his shoulders, and thought of the Trickster’s easy wit and the way his enthusiasm had spread around the table like fire to paper.
“A bit,” he confessed.
For vneþe watȝ þe noyce not a whyle sesed,For scarcely was the sound of singing ceased, & þe fyrst cource in þe court kyndely serued,And the first course in the court properly served, Þer hales in at þe halle dor an aghlich mayster,When there hove in at the hall door an uncanny horseman, On þe most on þe molde on mesure hyghe;Among the most in the world for stature, Fro þe swyre to þe swange so sware & so þik,From the nape to the hip so square and so solid, & his lyndes & his lymes so longe & so grete,And his flanks and his limbs so long and so grete, Half etayn in erde I hope þat he were.Half giant on earth I think he must have been. Bot mon most I algate mynn hym to bene,But man must I at least allow him to be, & þat þe myriest in his muckel þat myȝt ride;And that the merriest of his mould that might ride, For of bak & of brest al were his bodi sturne,For in his back and his breast his body was strong, Bot his wombe & his wast were worthily smale,But his belly and his waist were elegantly small, & alle his fetures folȝande, in forme þat he hade,And all his features likewise, in the form that he had, ful clene; quite neat, For wonder of his hwe men hade, Yet all men had wonder at his hue, Set in his semblaunt sene; Set in his visage to see, He ferde as freke were fade, He sat as sturdy as a soldier, & oueral enker grene. And all of him was forest green.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anonymous, c. 1380s, translation mine. (The Green Knight rides straight into the Christmas feast at Camelot.)
When they rode out into the clearing where Gabriel’s wagon was drawn up, Dean pulled Leapfrog up sharply, then rolled his eyes towards the sky.
“Fuck. Seriously. How is this my life? Chevy, get back here.”
Gabriel, sprawled naked on his stomach in the grass, didn’t look up from his book. And come on, leaves and twigs and shit in sensitive spots, and also bugs.
“Screw you, Winchester, get yourself a wagon and make your own house rules.”
For the sake of peace, Dean bit back his retort. Chevy sighed and flopped down with her head on her paws, radiating silent disapproval at not being allowed to go and slobber all over Gabriel’s face (and, well, everywhere else, because dogs? Not so much with the personal space).
Then Sam, who’d been kind of excited on the way out here, like he couldn’t wait to see his shiny bestest friend, squeaked out “I’ll just go and... do something.” And he turned his gelding’s head and was gone.
Dean eyed Gabriel warily. Apparently, in addition to everything else, he had unexpected powers of making Sam go all awkward teenager. Which had, granted, been hilarious when Sam had actually been a teenager, but Dean could do without all the angsting again.
“... Dude. Pants.”
Gabriel, who’d been staring after Sam for some reason, looked back at Dean, and narrowed his eyes. Then the as-- the dic-- the son of a bitch just spread his legs a bit wider and waggled. “Bother you a bit too much does it, gorgeous?”
Dean kicked his foot out of the stirrup and slid down from Leapfrog’s back, trying hard to remember exactly why he’d spent the last nine days defending this guy to people back home. (And no, he wasn’t thinking about the way Gabriel’s wings sort of spread and fluttered invitingly, and he definitely wasn’t imagining black wings doing the same thing with serious intent.)
“Mostly I’m wondering what the hell’s up with you and Sam,” he said shortly.
Gabriel grinned obnoxiously, all teeth. “He walked in on me getting sweaty and athletic with three different women at once and now the poor kid’s bashful. What do you want?”
“Uh.” Dean’s brain shut down at that image. Three women? How did that even work? He had to be bullshitting, right? Although, seriously, who even knew with Gabriel.
He fished around in Leapfrog’s saddlebag, steering his thoughts carefully away from anything related to naked archangels. “Letter from Cas for you.”
Wariness crept over Gabriel’s face and left it dark. “What’s he want now?”
Dean took an impatient breath. He thought, deliberately, of “excuse me for trying to give you an out with your lynch mob buddies”: Gabriel throwing his oar in just when things were about to turn violent, giving them a common enemy before they could turn themselves properly into monsters.
“Not a clue. Just something he wanted to sort out with you about this thing with Bobby. You want it, or should I turn around and head on home?”
Gabriel rolled, one fluid shift of weight from hip to arm to wing to feet, and stalked over to snag the pants (thank goodness) that were draped over the running board of the wagon. “Yeah?” he replied, all sweet smile and shoulders and arrogant wing-tilt radiating completely unimpressed. “And you want me to believe he just handed you a secret letter about your precious Bobby and you didn’t open it, or try to wheedle it out of him?”
“This might come as a shock to you, smartass,” Dean said, very politely, holding the carefully folded letter out, “but I actually trust him to not screw me over the first chance he gets.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed into something unreadable, as his hands busied themselves just below Dean’s eyeline with something Dean devoutly hoped was fastening his belt. Then he huffed, and looked away.
“Sure, why not,” he said brightly, apparently to himself. “Just as logical as everything else in your stubborn little mind, after all.”
“You’d know,” Dean shot back automatically, but Gabriel raised a “stop bothering me, puny human” hand and snatched the letter, so Dean rolled his eyes a bit and unhooked the waterbag from Leapfrog’s saddle for a drink.
After a moment the angel strolled over, mussed up Chevy’s ears (to her intense delight), and informed Dean airily, “So apparently he doesn’t trust you. Basic spellwork: the ink won’t be legible until the sun’s directly overhead.”
“Okay,” Dean said sweetly, and glanced up at the not-quite-midday sun. “Neat trick. I’ll get him to show me how that works,” because he was ninety per cent sure Castiel would if he asked, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting Gabriel suspect the other ten.
Gabriel shrugged, a complicated movement of shoulder blades and shifting feathers, and wandered away to stare at one of the axles like he had been suddenly struck with an urge for basic vehicle maintenance.
So they were waiting.
Dean took off Leapfrog’s bridle so he could graze and rubbed down his neck and haunches with a handful of grass, more for something to do with his hands than because the horse needed it for a stop of a few minutes. Then he took another drink of water, and considered chasing down Sam. Sam liked Gabriel, right? Even if Gabriel was being all weird? They could probably carry on a conversation more easily than Dean and Gabriel, anyway.
“How’re you doing?” he dropped non-committally into the silence, after a while.
“Fuck off, Winchester,” Gabriel replied like a reflex.
“Okay then,” Dean retorted brilliantly. Then he tried, “Seen the other angels much lately?”
“You’re all too charming,” Gabriel replied, and flapped a hand vaguely in the direction of the town. “Why would the ladies want to come way out here to dance attendance on me?”
There was something about the way he said it that made Dean pause. Then he put away the water bag, and unclipped the other canteen. Hunter’s helper. “Okay,” he said neutrally, and took a sip. “Thought Anna and Rachel were meant to be checking in every couple of days?”
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder, and bared his teeth in a wicked white grin. “I’m not good company. Shocked?”
Dean looked at the hard line of his shoulders, and thought of the Trickster’s easy wit and the way his enthusiasm had spread around the table like fire to paper.
“A bit,” he confessed, not rising to the bait, and held out the canteen stiffly. “Thought you’d missed them.”
Gabriel laughed, quick and harsh, and took it. And shit, Dean knew the look in those eyes. He’d seen it before, too many times, in too many other faces. “You miss memories, kid. Then you get people instead.”
The metalwork around the mouth of the canteen glinted in the sun as Gabriel tipped it to his mouth. He didn’t stop at one sip.
Dean wasn’t exactly one to talk about healthy coping mechanisms, especially when it came to alcohol, but he was really biting his tongue here. Because, sure, Gabriel hadn’t had the easiest of times. And even in the mess of adrenalin and impressions that the other day had been, Dean hadn’t missed the way Rachel had arched her eyebrows at the mention of Gabriel like he was some useless deadbeat, and how even Castiel had seemed uncertain whether he had two other angels in his little posse here or three. But Gabriel wasn’t exactly making things easier on himself either.
And that look that Dean had recognised? From the eyes of a few people who’d gone through heavy shit and come out the other side halfway or more to broken. Not mad exactly, no matter what taunts kids sometimes threw in their direction (or Dean had thrown at Gabriel, though he totally deserved it, the little shit). Just the look of someone whose brain had broken in one little corner, one spot where they couldn’t piece everything together again, where humanity shattered and ferocious instinct came out. So that one little trigger, like the sound of a child crying in pain, or the flash of a colour they’d seen while everything was going down, or hell, an unexpected touch (Don’t touch him, Dean), would flick them over into obsession.
And if things were like that with Gabriel, then yes, he was dangerous, very dangerous, especially with all the power he held inside him. But he wasn’t dangerous to Sam, because the snarl that had taken over his face while he’d crouched over Sam’s panting body made a hell of a lot more sense.
Dean had seen a lot of little madnesses since he’d been old enough to notice, and the thing was, those bits of the mind where people were broken tended to be a lot more consistent than the sane parts. Sanity was flexible: it adapted and grew, and you couldn’t quite predict it. Madness fused something in one little corner of the mind like scar tissue. Once you knew where it was coming from, you could guess pretty well what would trigger it in someone, and what they’d do while it had its teeth in them.
Whatever else Gabriel’s particular brand of madness contained, it included protecting Sam. For whatever reason.
Well, no one had ever said this shit was logical.
Gabriel tossed the canteen back in Dean’s direction, half-empty, and Dean caught it automatically. “Hey,” he said vaguely, because he had wondered before. “This stuff actually work on you guys?”
“If we drink enough of it.” Gabriel didn’t bother looking at him, just crossed his arms over his chest and sat down on the running board.
Awkward.
Dean followed his example, a couple of yards down the side of the wagon so as not to accidentally touch him, and they sat in prickly silence for a minute.
“I can still kill you,” Gabriel observed.
Dean eyeballed him sideways. “Likewise. Only I’m pretty sure Sam and Cas together would kick my ass.”
Gabriel did one of his weird unsettling moments of absolute stillness, then cocked his head thoughtfully. “Castiel did grow up pretty scary.”
Dean smiled a bit, despite himself.
“He did, didn’t he? Sammy’s kind of scary too, when he gets his head set on something.” There was a sort of a lessening in the tension around Gabriel’s shoulders at that, so he added, “Shoulda seen him these last few days. He’s got this whole earnest peace-philosophy binge going on. Kid makes me exhausted just watching him. Pretty sure he’s just bewildering people into thinking this’s a good idea.”
Gabriel grunted and tipped his head back to stare at the sky, sunlight curling gold and warm into the shadows of his hair and wings. “Yeah? What about the ones who don’t?”
Dean shrugged. “Gwen and Ellen’ve been doing a lot of knocking stubborn heads together. Bobby just sits there and makes anyone who tries to argue logic feel like an idiot by being far more logical than them. Me... I’ve spent the last eight days yelling at people to get over themselves and figure out a way to work with angels so that we can actually fix this. And, well. About how what we did to you is pretty damn far from okay.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and grimaced at the ground. “Feels so damn good to be able to just come out and say it, you’ve got no idea.”
Gabriel made a vague grumbling noise in his throat that could have meant anything or nothing. Dean let it drop, and lapsed back into silence.
It was a long one.
Were there any neutral topics here?
In the spirit of sticking to purely scientific enquiry, Dean ventured, after a bit, “So what’s an archangel, then?”
“Shiny,” the representative of the species drawled.
“Yeah, got that memo, thanks, sparkles.” He didn’t expect the half-amused snort, but hey, not arguing. “You’re all badass and powerful and you’ve got a shiny sword. Only Cas was talking like archangels are meant to be diplomats or something, so how’s that add up?”
Gabriel eyed off the little cluster of birches at the edge of the clearing, like he was convinced that they were mocking him somehow but couldn’t quite read the language of the way their leaves danced in the breeze well enough to call them on it.
“Leaders,” he offered curtly at last. “A few born in each generation, no fewer than two, no more than five. Oligarchy - rule of the few, only it’s a random few, because they can be born to any family, got it?”
Dean nodded, said nothing, and took another swig.
“It’s like another family, okay?” Gabriel purred after a minute, nice and sarcastic, because apparently sounding polite was too confusing. “You’re more than friends, ’cos no matter how much you might piss each other off, you’re stuck with each other and you stick with each other. You know from the start that you’re going to have to work together, you’re going to be a team, you’ll be learning and facing and deciding things no other angel will get, so you spend pretty much all your time together. Like a swarm of fluffy little archangel ducklings,” he muttered, and there was something gleaming like melting honey under his eyelashes that warned that maybe this wasn’t such a neutral topic after all. “Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, me. It was unbalanced from the start, so when Joshua died - last of the old archangels - it took less than a year to go to hell.”
Dean cleared his throat. “What about your real brothers?” he offered carefully, because, well. Castiel had always seemed alone, when he’d been a kid.
“Not meant to have favourites. Which is bullshit, of course, but. Keeping up appearances.” Gabriel shoved his hands hard into his pockets, and smirked at his boots viciously. “Archangels are meant to be all born to different families. Balance of power and so on. Michael and Lucifer? Same father, different mothers, born three weeks apart, the horny old fox.”
“Wow.” Dean blinked, and handed over the canteen. “That’s messed up. He stick around?”
“On and off, for a few years. Then, nada.” Gabriel whistled, a little descending chirrup that was apparently meant to represent a deadbeat father vanishing over the horizon. “Those two... all they ever saw in the world was each other, and him. Tighter than you and Sam - I’m talking full-on obsession here. Never could tell at any moment whether they were trying to outdo each other or propose wild incestuous marriage.”
How had they got from “what’s an archangel” to deep-seated family screw-ups and Dean trying to work out whether he should be saying anything or slinking away quietly to avoid the inevitable shitstorm when Gabriel realised what he was laying bare, and to whom? Seriously, of all the useless people Gabriel could spill his guts to...
“Raphael, four years younger,” Gabriel said pleasantly to the grass. “Me, another seven after him. Of course, he just tagged along and stared adoringly at them and thought they were the best thing ever and never got around to having an original thought of his own, so when they decided to go for option C, tearing each other apart, well, he was kind of screwed.”
There wasn’t really much to say to that, so Dean made a sort of noise that he hoped conveyed “I hear ya, man,” or something non-objectionable like that. Because there was this snappy, defensive little undertone to Gabriel’s voice, not at all like someone who was offering up deep heartfelt truths because he thought Dean had earned them: more like someone who had been wanting to snarl them in the face of too many people for too long.
Gabriel was quiet beside him for a moment. Then he piped up, all we-are-changing-the-subject-now cheerfulness, “I was the baby. The cute, dimpled, golden-haired baby with the sunny disposition and the most innocent face you ever saw.”
Dean gave him a deeply suspicious look.
Gabriel batted his eyelashes. “Hey. I worked on that innocent face. Got me all the candy.”
“You and Sam are freakily alike sometimes,” Dean informed him, with a bit of an eyeroll; and Gabriel gave him a quizzical sort of look, snorted, and tossed the canteen back. Empty, of course.
Maybe this wasn’t going to end up amazingly messy after all. Weird.
Gabriel tilted his face up to the sun, pulled the letter out of his pocket and read it over twice, a neutral little frown on his face. Then he crumpled it, tossed it into the air, and watched with apparent pleasure as it burst into flames in front of his face.
Dean might have leaped sideways a little bit. “Holy shit,” he totally didn’t yelp, and brushed the charred remains of paper off his shoulder.
Gabriel hopped to his feet, shoved his hands in his pockets and smirked, bright as rain, “Party over! Tell little bro fine on all counts, I’ll meet him there an hour before you guys turn up, so off you toddle.”
Dean nodded curtly, clipped his canteen back onto his belt, and whistled to Chevy. “Right. I’ll fetch Sam and we’ll... see you next week, I guess.”
Gabriel jerked his head, just acknowledgement, every line of him radiating eagerness to be left alone. No wonder everyone kept finding excuses not to hang around with the prickly son of a bitch.
Dean rebridled Leapfrog without a word, swung up into the saddle and turned his head back towards the path. Then he changed his mind, and kept turning him until he was staring down at Gabriel again.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” he said, quick and don’t-you-dare-interrupt as years of brotherly shouting matches had taught him. “I get that you’ve had it rough. I do. The crap with your family, then being on your own, then going human and liking people then seeing them and angels turning on each other like another civil war, that’s gotta suck. Then that shit with the dogs, and what we did to you... I get it, man, I do. It sounds like hell, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
He a moment to draw in a deep breath, because Gabriel wasn’t trying to butt in. He was just staring all tight and frozen, thunderous, like he was considering going firebomb on Dean now.
Dean arched an eyebrow at him, and gambled his life on Gabriel being just far enough this side of sane that he wouldn’t use insanity as an excuse.
“Get over it,” he said brusquely. “Civil war, man. You’re not the only angel pretty torn up about it, from what I can see, and we’ve all lost people and done things we wish we hadn’t, okay? Let it go. ’Cos I’ve seen what happens to people who can’t.”
Gabriel blinked very slowly, lashes falling like a soft brown curtain over eyes that were burning into Dean’s throat. It was kind of terrifying.
Then he bared his teeth again and said, pleasant as if Dean had never spoken, “Hey Dean. You’re Lancelot. Castiel is Gareth.” His mouth twisted into the sweetest smile that ever a banshee had aimed at its victim’s lungs. “Don’t make me go all Gawain on your ass.”
Hell. Not more legend references. But wasn’t there a song about that one? Dean remembered songs better than books. Gawain. Gareth. Gareth, Gawain’s little brother, who’d been devoted to Lancelot until Lancelot had accidentally...
Oh. Right.
Hadn’t Gawain’s feud against Lancelot after that been the reason for the split of the Round Table? Or had that been something else?
“... Your brain is a very strange place,” Dean decided cautiously. Then he beat a totally dignified retreat.
“So, you and Gabriel, huh?”
Sam’s expression suddenly went from relaxed to shifty panic, like a colt who’s just realised that, yes, his legs are actually really that long.
“What?” was his complex and clever contribution to the conversation.
Dean rolled his eyes, because that was his duty as a big brother, and also if he could keep Sam wrong-footed with hints he might be able to work out what Sam thought this was. “Come on, Sammy. I saw the way you were looking at him back there. And if you want to pretend there’s nothing going on, maybe you shouldn’t bail the moment he looks at you funny,” he added, in case that was enough to make Sam think he’d rumbled him in whatever Sam figured was going on.
Sam stared fixedly at his gelding’s ears, and the wide welcoming tracts of cultivated land opening up in front of them as they turned in towards the home valley. “Um. I,” he said, because a nerdy genius he might be, but a good liar he wasn’t.
“Sammy,” Dean growled, in a Worried Older Brother warning tone.
Sam shot him a guilty look, and fidgeted with his reins. “Is it that obvious?” he asked, all muted and ashamed, which, what? Sam wasn’t allowed to look like that!
Dean kneed Leapfrog in closer to Sam’s horse, until his knee knocked against Sam’s. “Hey. Don’t go all everybody-thinks-I’m-a-freak on me, okay? No one else is going to notice. Hell, they’re all too busy with shrieking their heads off over making nice with angels. You gonna tell me what happened?”, which was a shot in the dark, because probably nothing had happened except a few arguments, but if Sam thought Dean knew something his mind would jump immediately on whatever he felt most guilty about, which was probably going to be the most important argument, so hey. Sometimes you had to be kind of underhanded in looking after Sam.
The sideburns Sam had been growing out twitched. Dean had mixed feelings about those sideburns. On the one hand, he secretly suspected they were out to take over the world. On the other, they were a really really good tell for Sam Is Trying To Lie To His Awesome Brother.
“It was just the once,” he mumbled at his hands.
“Uh-huh,” Dean returned, pretending not to be mystified. “And why am I not believing you?”
Sam scowled. “It was.” And, okay, that was the indignant half-whine, so maybe this was a limited truth rather than a lie. “He just. He thinks I’m a kid, okay? He apologised after,” he added, forlorn and a bit confused, and whoa. That sounded suspiciously like Gabriel’s little soft spot for Sam had gone too far, and he’d... invited Sam to come with him when he left, or maybe even tried to get him onside for some weird angel vengeance shtick against the demons, or something.
At least the douche had remembered himself in time, but it would be just like him to cover up a slip by making Sam think it was his own fault.
“You mad?” Sam muttered, sounding far too much like a kid again for Dean’s liking, so he freed his foot from the stirrup long enough to kick at Sam’s calf then nudged Leapfrog ahead.
“Hey. I’ve got far better things than that to be pissed about. Like who ate all those thank-you-for-not-letting-me-get-eaten-by-a-demon cookies Jo made me the other day?”
Sam snorted behind him. “Right. And who dragged her out there in the first place? I’m pretty sure those were actually ‘thank you Sam for dropping by with all your angel friends just when your brother had landed us in deep shit’ cookies.”
Dean waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. Keep dreaming. I’m totally in there, dude.”
A pinecone collided with the back of his head, and Chevy pricked up her ears and leapt to catch it out of the air, on the off chance that it might be interesting.
Let no one ever say Dean didn’t know how to annoy his little brother out of a funk.
“Need help, old man?”
“Go boil your head,” Bobby shot back from the depths of the cupboard under the sink, then muttered something about rats.
Dean leaned down for a whiff, and wrinkled his nose at the dark musky smell of buck rodent. “I’ll fetch down a pair of terriers this afternoon. You wanna get those pots out of there?”
It was stupidly normal, moving around Bobby’s kitchen, trying to find spaces for all the oversized pots and pans and crocks, passing things to each other without having to ask, Bobby wedged half in and half out of the cupboard and making a satisfied little grunt every time he managed to inch himself forward enough to grab another pot, Chevy lying under the table watching them intently in case there might be food. Normal in a way that felt refreshing, and almost surreal: no angels, no demons, no questions of sanity or monstrosity, no missing Sam. Just him and Bobby plotting against rats, and a sliver of hope for the future.
Normal enough that it felt like... not forgiveness, exactly. Not something handed down condescendingly from on high. Just like he and Bobby were okay again, like that had never been a question. Like something that filled up that old, empty ache that his father had left, the one that said he’d never be good enough. Not forgiveness - more like trust.
Dean didn’t realise he was whistling until Bobby eyeballed him.
“What’s got you hopping like a cock in the hen house?”
Dean grinned at him obnoxiously, and hopped up onto the bench to stash a big bread crock on one of the highest shelves. “What, can’t a guy just be happy around here?”
Bobby worked himself out from under the sink with the last of the pots and levered himself back up into his chair. “Not when he’s just spent three months being the whiniest son of a bitch I’ve seen since his daddy copped it. You gonna help me with that peach cobbler Missouri brought over yesterday, or what?”
“Twist my arm.”
Two bowls and two spoons and a hearty dollop of cobbler each later, Dean cocked an eyebrow over the table at Bobby. Because really, this all depended on him.
“So, you in for next week?”
Bobby took his time finishing his spoonful, ruminating like an old bull, then put the spoon down in the bowl with a deliberate clink and jabbed two fingers in Dean’s direction.
“Making nice with angels - it’s kill or cure, the way I figure it. We do it, and either they kill us all or we pull through strong. We don’t do it, none of us will be here come fifty years time. Now, you trust this Castiel angel,” he said bluntly. Dean ducked his head, couldn’t help the little private grin at his bowl, and Bobby grunted like he’d just had something confirmed and continued down his list. “Sam trusts him. Gwen too. Ellen thinks he’s on the level about making and keeping peace, at least.”
Dean looked up. “Wait, she does?”
“Says she doesn’t know angels but she does know young men, and no kid she knows could put that much earnestness into his face and not mean it.” Which meant she was thinking about him like a person, reading him like he was actually readable. Huh. “Jo figures he’s probably not lying but looks like she still wants to take her daddy’s death out of his ass, which means he hasn’t put some persuasive glamour on the lot of you who were out there last week. Missouri’s got one of her good feelings about the whole business. And I figure Gabriel’s got his number if anyone does, so if he’s down with this whole treaty business too, the wings are going to give it an honest go. Worth the risk, if we can keep the hotheads on both sides from getting into dogfights over nothing.”
He shrugged, like that decided everything, and went back to the peach cobbler.
Dean put down his spoon, and stared pointedly at Bobby’s legs. “You trust Gabriel’s call?”
Bobby ate impassively. “Knew the guy for years before he popped wings. He isn’t that different now, y’know. Drives a hard bargain, and he’s got a bitch of a tongue on him, but he’s probably the most honest pedlar out there at the moment. And there aren’t many human folks I know who’d stand as stubborn through that as he did,” jerking his head in the direction of the barn. “I figure I got his measure. So, looks like I gotta sack up and do my bit.”
“... Okay then.” How were there so many people around for whom this was all just some matter of simple logic, not the mind-twisting impossibility it had been for Dean?
“Besides,” Bobby admitted ruefully to his spoon, “Jody will have my hide if I back out now.”
The next day, Castiel moved into Dean’s bedroom.
It should have been another oil-and-water kind of brain twister, but maybe Dean’s brain was getting used to being twisted around, because the sight of him sitting on the edge of Dean’s bed and peering curiously around his room just made Dean feel unreasonably smug. In a jittery kind of way.
Anna had fetched Castiel’s things down from Gabriel’s wagon, but there wasn’t much to take up space. Apparently angels tended to travel light, which made sense, given they usually flew instead of trundling along with a horse and cart. There were a few clothes, a heavy felted wrap that unfolded into an almost waterproof blanket, and a broad roll of leather into which were slotted a razor and several combs for hair and feathers. Then there was a little bundle of pens, inks, parchment, needles for leather and cloth, thread and sinew, flints, knives, and a few other small tools, some of which looked magical and some mundane. The whole lot, once the clothes were hung up, took up about a third of the space on top of the chest next to Dean’s bed.
What he carried with him, of course, was more than just objects.
Dean was woken in the night, startling up from the couch to the sound of muffled cries and a thud, and met Sam wide-eyed and sleepily anxious in the door of his room. He charged into his own room with his heart in his throat, expecting to find that someone had taken matters into their own hands and broken through the window; but the only enemy was the one inside Castiel’s head.
Sweet-talking him down from flailing panic to consciousness without getting in the range of the dangerous, delicate wings, then finding himself dragged into the bed and wrapped in sweating angel as Castiel shook against him... well, it was pretty damn difficult after that to creep out from under the covers, once he was sleeping properly, and back to the cold couch.
The next week slid by in a haze of richly coloured impressions.
Waking up in the mornings with a crick in his neck from sleeping on the couch, but with that excitement in his belly like when he’d been a kid and known that something special was happening today. Taking a moment to place it, then realising, Cas. Castiel was in the house, stretched out on Dean’s bed, snoring faintly into his pillow, and Dean had breakfast to cook for three.
Sam, animated and intent as fuck, bouncing up every day ready to tackle the wrongs of the world and explain at terrifying length to anyone who’d listen how nice it would be if they could all just get along, all eager hand gestures and weirdly hypnotic conviction.
Charlie and Anna getting on like a terrifying red-headed house on fire, so much so that by the third day Anna was down there at the orchard with her, stayed the night, and didn’t bother coming back to the Roadhouse any night after that either.
Jo and Mark and Victor and a few others getting up and leaving the room (or the square, or whatever) every time an angel came in. Which was not as good as it could have been, but not as bad as the way some others (Gordon and Christian and so on) would just stay right where they were and watch, like they were waiting for a moment’s weakness.
Sam again, just here and there, looking faintly nervy at other people’s arguments about the unnatural and the freakish and the monstrous, that little muscle at the edge of his jaw going tight and pulling his mouth into that particular bitch-face of “I’m pretending that has nothing to do with me.” And no dog hairs turning up around the house but Chevy’s black and greyish silver.
Castiel emerging, pale at first and slow and deliberate in his movements, but refusing to stay indoors even if all he could do was to sit on the bench out by the dipping pond and watch them persuading the sheep that they really did want a swim, or to talk solemnly and awkwardly to anyone who came by, or to study the differences between all Chevy’s facial expressions (Dean helpfully drew them for him, because he was hopeless at telling the difference between a smile and bared teeth), or just to sit and soak up the sun.
It wasn’t peaceful. There was a tension running through most conversations: people pushing boundaries, trying to work out for themselves if the angels were for real. People curious and just a bit too inquisitive who wanted to hear a “real” angel talk (and yes, some people actually said that, like Gabriel didn’t count), or watch the way his wings moved like they thought they might be a trick. People whose questions barely concealed aggression, like they thought they could provoke the wild beast into flying for their throat or to prove that they weren’t letting their guard down.
Sometimes Dean couldn’t quite tell whether Castiel genuinely didn’t pick up on passive aggression or was choosing to ignore it, responding flat and even and distantly courteous no matter what they said; but other times, he caught the edge of that sly sarcasm underneath it that sent the other person away baffled. Those times, after the person had gone, he’d just snort quietly and knock his foot against Castiel’s; and Castiel wouldn’t quite look at him, but Dean could see the way the edge of his mouth softened into something wry and secret anyway, just for him. When they got back inside Castiel would kiss him, hard and sweet, and stare into his face like he could see right through him and tip the world sideways.
Then there was Rachel, stalking around stern and cool, always within calling distance of Castiel just in case.
And Anna, flitting around everywhere like some wide-eyed ethereal kid, asking questions of everyone about everything, because apparently humans were exotic and fascinating. She was much better than Rachel at getting people to smile back. Her own smile was small and half-rueful, a sweet secret thing in the corner of her mouth; but even when she was geeking out over how fascinating stove brushes were, or whatever, there was usually a sort of grave sad air hanging over her. Dean had to wonder whether that was an angel thing, slipping back into regrets as soon as they had nothing more cheerful to distract them.
Charlie nudging Dean and saying something excited and mystifying that sounded like she was congratulating him but never quite specified what for.
Doing quiet little jobs around the place, as soon as Castiel was well enough to help him - cleaning out the kennels, that sort of thing - while Castiel wore his puzzled studious frown like there was going to be a test later, and asked the weirdest questions. The way that, even though he had all this vast obscure angel knowledge, so much magic and so much of the world outside, he kept getting fascinated and confused by mundane little things like keyrings. Getting into the habit of just having him there, just being in each other’s space, being close. The luxury of knowing you could just reach out and touch simply because it felt so damn good, having someone’s hand rubbing slowly through your hair. Not all of it was stuff that made Dean’s dick sit up and take notice (though a light breeze was almost enough to do that lately, because apparently having Castiel around all the time was giving it ideas). Just a hand pressed into the small of a back for a moment, the brush of fingers across a table for no good reason, the quick warmth of lips against the corner of a jawline.
(And so what if people saw? They had plenty to gossip about already, and hell if Dean was hiding anymore.)
Then there were Castiel’s nightmares. They weren’t good, of course, but Dean cherished the outcome selfishly. After the first couple of nights of being startled out of sleep to play angel’s cuddle buddy, Dean stopped trying to sleep on the couch. Castiel sort of growled if he tried to disentangle himself afterwards anyway, which was far more persuasive than it should have been.
Besides. If Castiel felt safer with Dean there, and therefore slept better, and therefore healed better, it made perfect sense to do it. Dean was all about the logic.
Castiel wouldn’t tell him what the nightmares were about, but he pressed agonised whispers of apology and guilt into Dean’s throat as he was coming down from them, shaking against Dean’s chest. And once he begged Dean to tell him that his wings were still there, still real, not some transparent illusion of cobwebs and deceit. “Promise me you’ll kill me, Dean,” he snarled afterwards, eyes wide and too bright in the darkness, “if I become that.”
Four months before, Dean might even have given him that promise. Would have thought it was the right thing - the only thing to do, once someone was compromised.
He smoothed away the lingering sense of guilt, of his father looking at him dark with disappointment, by telling himself that Castiel probably hadn’t been really awake when he’d said that anyway.
So that shit wasn’t fun, but it did lead, nice and immediate, to the best thing about that week: mornings in bed. Because it turned out that Castiel really liked waking up next to someone; and Dean took all of ten seconds on the first morning to realise what a freaking awesome thing this was too.
Castiel, hovering over him on one elbow, eyes sliding dark and intense over Dean’s face or throat like a physical touch.
Castiel, stretched out lazily on his stomach making a rumbling noise into the pillow like a contented cat, as Dean slid in under the arch of one wing to run a hand down his back and nuzzle open-mouthed at his shoulder and neck and ear.
Castiel, trailing thoughtful promising kisses down the back of Dean’s neck, one hand snaking around his ribs to open hot and possessive over his heart (just like Sam, only really really not like Sam at all).
Castiel, half snoring into Dean’s arm where he’d fallen asleep on it and Dean hadn’t had the heart to move him until he’d lost all feeling and had to nip at Castiel’s ear to get it back, who only opened one eye enough to grumble and drape himself over all of Dean so that Dean had to move very quickly to make sure no one’s hips were touching any part of anyone else, because that was the line that he really couldn’t cross and stay sane.
Castiel, and all the beautiful little noises he made when he wasn’t really awake, or when his mouth was kissed red and swollen: the purring when Dean combed one hand slowly through the hair at the back of his head as he woke up, the confused muffled noise when he didn’t see a kiss coming, the dark little breaths like growls that he sucked in between shoves of his tongue when he was working Dean open, hot and breathlessly tender, all lush demand and strength.
Then there was that little peeved sound like a stifled whine which Dean was almost sure coincided, every time, with Dean discreetly shuffling his hips back an inch or two on the mattress when Castiel’s sleep-clumsy grappling brought him too close, or when he was a bit careless with where his hand fell so that Dean had to wriggle a bit to get it back up to safely above-the-belt zones. It was hard to tell, though, because that made no sense, and it was difficult to categorise memories and impressions properly when Castiel was working his way into Dean’s open mouth until Dean’s jaw and dick ached in equal measure.
And really, after a wake-up like that, Dean would have thought he deserved a fucking medal for not just pulling Castiel down against him, savaging his neck with lips and tongue and teeth, snugging body up against sleep-warm body and just pushing against him, anything, any friction so long as it was Castiel,until it was suddenly shockingly blindingly over.
Would have thought he deserved one, that is; except that the thought of Castiel’s face if he ever found out just what Dean’s stupid body seemed to think about their sweet, hot, goddamn loving morning kisses was the best boner-killer ever.
It was sort of doing Dean’s head in, but he couldn’t really find it in him to complain.
(Sam took to making the breakfast.)
The morning it changed, the morning it went from a haze of impressions to sharp painful focus and everything came crashing down, shouldn’t have been any different. It was the morning before they were to meet Gabriel to fix Bobby’s, but other than that nothing was different, nothing had changed. Right up until that point where it really really was, and sure as hell did.
Dean’s window opened to the west, and the pre-dawn light outside wasn’t strong enough to creep through the curtains. The line between dreaming and waking was a hazy one, hands and mouths warm and sweet on shoulders and necks and flanks in the dark.
Dean was lying on his back with a hot, familiar weight draped over his side and Castiel’s hair tickling at his nose. One wing was tucked snugly over him like he was a baby duck or something. Dean didn’t really have any grounds to whinge about that, though, because he had an arm wound around Castiel, a hand buried in that soft dark place between furled wing and body. It was sensitive there: Dean had learned that too light a touch made Castiel squirm and bat his hands away, but if he rubbed slow and firm Castiel would arch into it and groan, pressing the tender skin in against his touch.
Castiel’s mouth was half open against Dean’s throat, panting, harsh wet breaths snagging on over-sensitised skin where teeth and lips and tongue had been teasing for almost half an hour. His fingertips were scratching mindless maddening little circles low on Dean’s belly, and Dean’s blood was tingling hot under his skin. On every sweep, Castiel’s fingers brushed through that little trail of hair, just above the tie of Dean’s sleep pants, keeping Dean wobbling on that uncomfortable knife’s edge between greedy anticipation and will-he-won’t-he panic.
“Cas,” he murmured into the soft mess of hair under his lips; and he wasn’t sure what he meant to say, so it was easy to get distracted by the way his own voice came out somewhere between a croak and a growl, and the pleased rumble he felt deep in Castiel’s chest in response.
Sometimes Castiel made noises that were nothing like human; and hell, but they went straight to Dean’s belly.
Dean groaned, and nudged at Castiel’s hair until he lifted his head obediently to Dean’s to slot their mouths in together, open and willing. Kissing, Dean knew how to do. He was good at this, and it was safe, and he felt his shoulders relax and melt into the mattress under the soft persuasion of Castiel’s tongue.
Warm, sleep-ruffled feathers rustled velvety-soft around Dean’s hand as he drew his hand up over coiled muscle to Castiel’s shoulder. When he traced his fingers over the back of Castiel’s neck, the angel’s breath stuttered in his mouth.
Dean smirked into the kiss and stretched luxuriously under him, shifting hungry hips on the bed, trying to ignore the tempting whisper of fabric down there and the little damp spot that he could feel soaking through the front.
Castiel nipped at his lower lip, a sharp white spark of almost-pain that had Dean arching up into him and digging fingers into his neck, and Dean felt the sly tease of his mouth curving into a smile.
Then his hand slipped down, deliberately or with the roll of Dean’s own hips, moved just those final few inches too far to flicker over the inside of Dean’s thigh, and the backs of his knuckles brushed right there.
Sparks exploded behind Dean’s eyes, and he spat out something halfway between a curse and a gasp and was scrambling backwards on the bed until the back of his head slammed painfully into the wall.
The chill of the stone behind his shoulders shattered the safe, hazy darkness into bleak reality. Castiel was a hunched shape in the shadows, and Dean was fiercely irrationally glad that he couldn’t see his face, could put off just for a minute learning how he’d look at Dean now. Now that he’d felt that.
The silhouette of Castiel’s wings shrank down to settle along his back. Then his head tilted ever so slowly to one side.
“Dean,” came his voice, and it sounded... puzzled. Maybe a bit hurt.
Hell. Was it even possible that he hadn’t noticed?
“Mind where you’re putting your hands,” Dean snapped, flushing hot.
Castiel went very still.
Shit. Here it came.
“Dean, I... apologise,” he said tightly, which made no freaking sense. “I understood that you meant... when you...”
Castiel never stammered.
Dean could feel the weight of him staring in the dark, the heat radiating off the hand that was pressing into the mattress just by Dean’s calf.
Belatedly, he grabbed the pillow and dragged it into his lap. Castiel’s head turned to follow the movement; and Dean set his jaw and looked away, waiting for the storm.
“I don’t understand,” Castiel growled, low and uneven and frustrated; and Dean wanted to apologise, to come up with some wild plausible charming explanation that would cover all the facts and make this all go away, but his blood was beating painfully hard in his head and his dick and the words wouldn’t come, and Castiel would figure it out anyway.
The sound of Castiel’s impatient huff was loud and impossibly dear in the taut silence.
“This light is inadequate for your eyes, isn’t it.”
The warmth and weight of him on the bed vanished, then he was silhouetted against the crack in the curtains for a moment before they were open, filling the room and flushing his lean body with the faint pink light of morning, and -
“Holy shit,” Dean choked eloquently. His brain stuttered to a stop.
“Dean.” Castiel turned back toward the bed, sounding short and impatient and utterly bewildered, but Dean couldn’t even look up at his face because it was right there, and how was that even possible? And hell, he was staring, obviously staring.
His heart was beating loud erratic terror in his throat, and he wished it would stop because he was pretty sure Castiel could hear it.
He gulped in a deep breath, pasted on something that didn’t even feel like a grin, and gestured in the general direction of Castiel’s crotch. “You too, huh?” he said brightly, because making a joke of it was always the best way to carry off awkward and completely incomprehensible crap, right?
Dean felt rather than saw the puzzled tightening of Castiel’s eyes, the way he glanced down at himself and back up as if there was nothing remarkable there at all.
“And this comes as a surprise to you,” Castiel said in that deadpan way of his; and Dean looked up, because he had to see.
Castiel was watching him, wary and worried. But when he met Dean’s eyes he went still and stared for a long moment, and his eyes slowly grew wider in something like dread.
“This... comes as a surprise to you,” he said, flat and hoarse.
Dean’s fingers dug savagely into the pillow that was shielding him. “Of course it comes as a freaking surprise to me, Cas, I mean how the hell was I to know?”
“Am I so persuasive that you didn’t even...”
Only Castiel wasn’t the type to back down in the face of anger, even when he was wearing that sick look of self-disgust that twisted Dean’s gut even while he didn’t understand it, so before he could even finish that thought he lashed back, “What did you think we were doing, Dean. All this time!”
It wasn’t just an argument: there was this defensive pleading note in there, like he really wanted to know, like there was something he needed Dean to deny. But Dean hadn’t got a fucking clue, he’d thought this was settled and safe and now all those questions were suddenly ripped open again and Dean was riding high on fury and indignation and shame.
“I don’t know!” he snarled, everything in his body itching to get over there and shove into Castiel’s space and hurl the words right at him, grapple him close and shake him and keep him. “I don’t know, man, I don’t exactly have a map for this, I figured you knew.”
Castiel’s face just... froze, like someone had slammed the shutters on his eyes, and he took a fumbling step backwards. Something in the horrible grey look on his face broke through Dean’s panic to hiss bad, very very bad, right in that protective big brother part of his brain.
He was scrambling over the bed before he realised what he was doing, like his body had decided this was more important and staged a brisk takeover.
“Hey, no, man, don’t give me that look,” he babbled, reaching out to grab Castiel’s arm, wrist, shoulder, wing, anything, only Castiel jerked away from it like Dean’s touch would corrupt him, or he’d corrupt Dean, or something, and Dean had no idea anymore but Castiel just needed to stop looking like that. “Come back to me, Cas. It’s good, okay? It’s all good. I just didn’t think you’d want...”
“Go back to the sofa, Dean,” Castiel gritted out, eyes wide and wild like a trapped bird.
“It’s my bed!” Dean protested, too angry and confused for logic; and Castiel just turned and stalked out.
Dean growled his name like a plea and a curse, then yelled it, but it didn’t stop him. He just walked, straight past where Sam was blinking worried sleepiness in the doorway of his own room, past where Chevy was curled up in her bed under the kitchen table because Castiel got uncomfortable with her in the bedroom, straight out the front door with only his light pants on into the chill morning air.
Sam stared after him, scrubbed a hand over his face and stared again, like that would make things make sense. Then he stared at Dean, for a change of pace, and with all his hair standing up in bedhead fluff he looked kind of like a startled baby chicken.
“Dean,” he said very carefully, “What did you do to him?”
Dean was struggling between the sick feeling of wrong in his gut and the urge to grab something and shake it and demand to know what had just happened. Typical of anger to show up only long enough to screw things up then vanish just when it could be handy, just when he’d really love to be able to cling to it and think of nothing worse than that.
“I didn’t do -” he started, but it wasn’t true enough to finish.
He took another breath, and it shuddered in his chest. “I have no idea. Not a fucking clue.”
---
So, Lancelot/Gareth/Gawain!
In Malory’s version of the end of the Round Table,and a few others (the ones that focus on Lancelot), Lancelot accidentally killed Gareth either in escaping Guinevere’s chambers or (more commonly) in rescuing her from the pyre, after they were caught doing naughty adulterous capitally treacherous things together. The tragedy of it is that Lancelot had been the one to knight Gareth (a significant and lasting bond), and they had a very close relationship. However, because Gareth wasn’t wearing his armour and surcoat and all the other external trappings of his knighthood, Lancelot didn’t recognise him. Which is, of course, also symbolic. And usually convenient - this is how all those knights in those stories end up having battles with their best friends just because one of the pair has decided to go on an I MUST PROVE MYSELF quest and started wandering around the woods without colours, or in someone else’s colours.
Gawain’s rage against his former friend is, in this version, what drives Arthur on to take action against Lancelot for taking his wife, even after Lancelot has retreated to France and tried to make amends, and ends up with everyone dead.
The other version, which dominates (for example) the alliterative Morte Arthur of the fourteenth century, is the older Mordred story: Mordred rose up against Arthur (possibly while he was overseas or otherwise metaphorically inattentive), including trying to / managing to marry Guinevere, and that it was the war against his own illegitimate son that brought about the end.
(Malory, the great artist of patchwork and MUST INCORPORATE ALL THE VERSIONS OF CANON, did try to work this one in after the Gawain/Lancelot/Gareth thing, but most people forget about that because it isn’t nearly so interesting after Malory has poured so much narrative power into the Lancelot story. Malory, writing in the middle of the fifteenth century, in a prison cell, in the midst of the Wars of the Roses - i.e., a civil war that had dragged on for years and saw no prospect of ending before all of the leading figures were dead - had good reason to be more invested in the story of competing interests forcing friends apart and destroying an ideal nation than in some illegitimate son that people had forgotten about coming back with a faceless army to take charge.)
Either way, it’s a “destruction of the ideal society from within” metaphor - the older story is focussed on the king and his sexual transgressions and inability to be the perfect centre of the perfect society, so naturally its downfall follows his; the Lancelot version is rather about society’s inability to hold itself to its own high courtly rules, because it’s courtly love itself and the most admired figures of that community that screw everything over.
Here endeth the ramble. You could all have googled that anyway.