March-Stalkers Mighty: 6/22
Passus III: Pes sinister.
“Cas,” he rasped at the moon. “You should be resting.”
“So should you.”
Leontes: Chide me, deare Stone, that I may say indeed
Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she
In thy not chiding: for she was as tender
As Infancie and Grace. But yet, Paulina,
Hermione was not so much wrinckled, nothing
So aged as this seemes.
Polixenes: O, not by much.
Paulina: So much the more our Carver’s excellence;
Which lets goe by some sixteene yeeres, and makes her
As she liv’d now.
A Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare, c. 1610.
(Statue scene, V.iii, Leontes is confronted with the remarkably lifelike statue of his long-dead wife.)
“Just hold still, okay? Trust me.”
Cas’ good wing twitched nervously, half ruffled up.
Dean ran one hand down the leading edge from the shoulder, smoothing the little feathers there, the way he remembered used to calm Cas down. He’d kind of forgotten how soft they were. Too used to thinking of wings as weapons, all stiff and quivering and strong.
But the finger bones, of course, those were fragile.
The right wing was sagging and tired. The bullet had punched straight through just next to the third finger, breaking the bone and making a nasty mess of muscle and feathers. The bitch of it was the way all the muscles in the wing tugged on all the others, so there wouldn’t be any way to move it or hold it without putting strain on that spot. When Dean wrapped his fingers firm and gentle around the wrist, Cas flinched and almost jerked away.
“Easy,” Dean murmured, because he was used to this, talking people through it. “I know it all hurts now, but that’s just ’cos you’ve been dragging it around too much. This’ll make it better, promise.” Cas made a disgruntled noise, like he knew all that, but he relaxed a bit under Dean’s hand. “Can you hold it up a bit higher? I need to get the broken finger lying straight.”
It wasn’t just childhood memories he was going on here, petting Cas and poking at him because the differences had been fascinating. He knew this, knew how it worked; and most of that was because of the skeleton. One of the first angels they’d killed, five years back, and it had been Dean and Christian and Jody stripping it down to the bones and taking it apart, wiring it all back together again all dry and clean so that every joint moved nice and natural. Not a trophy, but a teaching tool. Because it was a hell of a lot easier to know where to aim if you knew what a thing was like on the inside.
It was a clean enough break, that was something. No shards of bone or anything, at least not that Dean could feel (though feeling through feathers was harder than feeling through skin, and it wasn’t like you could shave feathers off like you could with hair). Washing away the blood and tangled dirt, and clipping off the worst of the broken feathers as low as he could, must have hurt like hell, but Cas didn’t make a sound. He just sat there, one hand clenched on the thigh of his bad leg (sprained ankle, twisted knee, some nasty scrapes and bruises from crash-landing on it), the other hand holding his own wing high and steady for Dean’s attention.
Dean should have brought booze.
(Could angels even get drunk?)
“Okay,” he murmured finally. “Good as it’s gonna get. Let’s get this thing folded and strapped up.”
Dragging it into place was a joint effort, painstakingly slow. Dean wouldn’t have had a clue how to go about splinting a wing, and they didn’t really have time for that anyway. Strapping it all to Cas’ back was the best they could do for now.
Fifteen minutes. Twenty since they’d found him. The others would be getting close to rounding the head of the gorge. Only an hour before they might start wondering where Dean had got to.
Sam was pacing at the top of the ridge, keeping an eye out, just in case of... well, anything. Would’ve been great to have had another pair of hands to hold the wing in place, but hey, easy was off the cards lately.
Dean couldn’t help looking as he worked. It didn’t really count, anyway, with Cas’ head bowed like that and his eyes closed, with Dean kneeling behind him out of his line of sight anyway. Cas’ hair was shorter now, but just as wild. Maybe that came with the whole windspeed thing. It curled up at the back of his neck, a bit damp with sweat, and with the sun clear and warm on it like that it looked like there were hints of dark bronze in there. Dean had never noticed that before.
He memorised it carefully, just in case. That, and the little bumps of his spine, the curve of his bowed neck, the powerful (dangerous) sweep of his good wing from shoulder to elbow to wrist (the secondaries were as long as Dean’s forearm now, broad as three of his fingers). The way Cas shifted just the right way as Dean leaned into him to pass the strap around his chest, or under his arm, or up over his shoulder, without Dean having to say a word.
There were traces of the kid in there, but how had he missed seeing all these things change? How had he missed Cas becoming a man?
“Your friends just leave you there, or what?” he asked gruffly.
There was a faint sheen of sweat down the side of Cas’ throat, and smudges of dirt all over him from sleeping in that hollow and scrambling under the rock. One of them was smeared over his cheekbone like a bruise. Cas turned his head just enough for Dean to see that, not enough to meet his eyes.
“I expect they think me dead,” he replied neutrally. Each word had a strange weight to it, like it was precious and forbidden, and had to be dragged out.
“Right. Course.” Dean knotted the fourth band carefully where it wouldn’t rub. There was a string of dirty moss caught in the hair behind Cas’ left ear, and Dean reached up to comb it away without thinking about it. “Not for nothing, Cas, but your angel buddies sound like a bunch of dicks. Smoke bombs, shapeshifting curses, not even bothering to look for your body...”
His throat closed down then, took it upon itself to decide that, no, not going there. Because... yeah. If he started thinking of Cas as one of them, started trying to call him to account for yesterday - hell, even thought about yesterday...
“The curse on Sam was not performed by any of my garrison.” Cas said, in a voice that Dean couldn’t read at all; then he paused, like he was considering holding his tongue.
But he didn’t.
“And the darkness... was of my contrivance.”
... Which was exactly what Dean hadn’t wanted to know, goddammit.
He held his hands very still for a moment, breathed in carefully, then let it out in a long hiss. The feathers at Cas’ right shoulder shivered under it.
“Great,” he provided brightly, and pulled the next strap exactly tight enough, no harder.
Cas’ shoulders shifted uneasily under the heavy grey linen. He was quiet for a minute, and Dean thought maybe he’d be merciful and shut the hell up, but hey, why break a winning streak?
“... To throw you off Rachel’s tail,” he offered carefully.
Fuck. He was going to go there.
“You took out the dogs already,” Dean pointed out, feeling his voice rumble and scratch in his chest (against Cas’ back) as he leaned forward very carefully to cross the bandage under the angel’s left arm. Poisoned the dogs, his mind whispered, and he can’t have really known whether it would hurt them, and hell, the lives they’d been risking thinking they were onto a sure thing, even before the angels (Cas) had sprung something completely new on them, something fucking deadly. “Your pal could have just flapped its way off into the sky whenever.”
Huh. His fingertips were actually trembling against Cas’ neck.
“You did not know that,” Cas countered, curt and immediate, like he’d been waiting for this argument. “You would have kept hunting us. It was a demonstration. I intended -”
Dean tugged the ends of the last strap together and twisted them viciously into a knot. “Shut up.”
“Dean.”
Dean scrambled backwards on his knees and heels until he was staring at Cas’ back from over a yard away. “No. Just - don’t, Cas? Okay? I can’t think about this now.”
One vast wing, half-furled, dark and powerful and alien, shifting quietly with each breath in and out. One folded wing, fragile and broken, strapped up by Dean’s hands and fastened nice and secure across Cas’ body. The vulnerable curve of his spine between.
What he’d done. What Cas had done. What he’d done to Cas’ family, and Cas’ people had done to his.
“As you wish.”
Dean could just make out from here the steady rise and fall of Cas’ breathing, the faint stretch and relax of his ribs. It was only at this distance that he realised, belatedly, that he’d been feeling that all along, for almost half an hour, warm and careful against his chest.
Dean snatched up the rest of the bandages and stalked around to kneel in front of Cas, to strap up his ankle and knee. They were badly swollen, so the bandages would have to come off when they stopped, but they couldn’t risk either joint giving out on him while they were on the run. He set about making a quick, tidy job of it, ignoring the sensation of eyes boring into the top of his head.
“After all,” Cas said, after a very long minute, “I am more than used to pretending to remember less than I do.”
Hell.
Okay, so he’d always thought of Cas as a person, but he’d also always thought of him as a child. He’d assumed the strange boy had thought and felt back then, but as he’d grown up he’d second-guessed, and tried not to think, until the child he remembered was only a child; or, now and then, only an angel. Nothing else.
“You and me both, angel,” Dean muttered, and didn’t look up until he was done.
He’d never thought of Cas (never let himself think of him) as growing up, becoming a man, fitting in with his peers, and having to dissemble. Having to pretend, like Dean had, and to block and hide from his own memories.
Then, “Okay. Let’s see how Leapfrog manages with two on his back.”
Cas was treating them like fellow soldiers. Like that was the easiest thing for him to fall back on.
Made it a hell of a lot easier for Dean, too. Except that as soon as he realised that was what Cas was doing, he was furious as hell at that unnamed brother, at the unknown family, for bringing Cas up like that. Because, seriously. Who taught their kid to think it was easiest to talk to people like they were used to taking and giving orders, taking and giving deadly blows, and nothing more?
Dean replied in monosyllables whenever he could, and didn’t really look at him. Cas’ eyes were something else, and he really didn’t need to meet them right now.
Sam was scary-good at working his way through the bogs of the bleak western marches.
Dean was useless at it, and everyone knew it, so they went that way just in case anyone came along after who was trying to find him.
There was no way you’d be able to trace anyone through there anyway. The water gushed back in and the grass covered it up as soon as you raised your foot. Dean put canvas bags over Leapfrog’s hooves, to spread his weight a bit, and cut sticks to strap in an X-shape under his own boots. Even Cas got down and walked (well, hobbled), because here, caution was more important than speed.
Sam’s feet, of course, were broad and furry, and he had four of them now. He had it easier than any of them.
It was a solid two miles across the bogs, completely exposed except for the rolling tendrils of mist that stretched across and vanished on no logic but their own. It was a gamble, but a solid one: two hours since Dean and Sam given the others the slip, and they’d just be starting to realise that there was no trail to follow on the far side, wondering how far the angel could fly after all on a wounded wing, casting out feelers in whatever radius they estimated, wondering when Dean would join them. And they wouldn’t be at their most rational just now, and none of them were much good at reading or managing the dogs. There was enough time to cut across the bogs, and no one would guess it. Even if someone did pick up their trail from the end of the line of firs, they’d lose it here, for good.
Assuming they didn’t run into any other nasties.
They did next to no talking. It was easier just to shut up and carry on.
They climbed up and around the edge of the moors, veering away from the marshes and towards the depths of the forests. Dean walked to save Leapfrog’s back, and held his bridle because Cas was useless with a horse. He looked up and back over his shoulder just as they rounded the jut of a spur, and, huh.
Wow.
Apparently Dean hadn’t seen Cas properly before, in the barn, in the dark. Go figure. Daylight was a freaking revelation. Showed up the soft edges of the stupid bird’s nest of dark hair, and the stubborn rigidity of his posture, and the puzzled creases at the corners of his eyes, and the long fingers knotted in the horse’s mane, and the quizzical pissy twist of his mouth, and the way all those droopy dark eyelashes couldn’t hide the piercing blue of his eyes, deeper than the sky behind him.
Cas hadn’t just grown up tall. He’d grown up gorgeous.
“Watch your head,” Dean advised shortly. Even he had to duck to get under some of the gnarled old branches along this path, and he was just leading Leapfrog. Cas would be having to lean forward almost flat along his neck.
Midday was approaching, and Sam was barely visible in the forest gloom thirty yards ahead.
“This was not how I expected Sam to look when I saw him again,” Cas murmured suddenly, the first thing he’d volunteered for two hours.
Dean kicked half a rotten branch out of the way, guided Leapfrog around its remains.
What about me, he wasn’t going to ask, do I look like you expected? Did you think about that?
He chuckled, a bit awkward, and said “You just wait, Cas. You should see the kid now. He’s really something.”
We’ll fix it, then they can talk properly. We will.
Yeah, like that would fix anything.
“Dean,” Cas slurred, and Dean looked back to see his eyes fighting to close. “Won’t you be missed?”
“I’ll handle it, Cas. Don’t you drift off on me, okay? Just a bit longer.”
They holed up in one of the stolid little emergency cabins that were dotted here and there outside the walls, kept warded and stocked up just in case anyone was caught outside. Cas was listing and blinking in the saddle, and even Sam was looking kind of beat. Given Sam didn’t have working hands, and Cas didn’t have working feet, Dean banished them to the sunny little bank outside the front door while he unlocked everything, broke the angel wards, unsealed the tin trunk with the bed sheets and jars of dried fruit and meat and nuts and flour and so on, and got things set up for a few days’ use. Cas’ wings would have made a fit in any of the bunks awkward, so Dean dragged the mattresses off the top bunks and made up a bed in one corner for him instead.
It did occur to him that neither of the others could have eaten for over a day, but there wasn’t a lot in the cabin, and there was less in his saddlebags. And it would be too dangerous to do any cooking before nightfall - no point hiding your trail then sending up a column of smoke to say “hey guys, come and get us!” He took out some of everything cold anyway, and Cas ate silently, without objection or enthusiasm. Sam stared at the food with a sort of panic, then at his own muddy paws, until Dean took it all off him again and wordlessly cut it into pieces that were small enough not to need handling. Then he went to draw up a few buckets from the well, filled up the water urn inside the cabin, and put the rest in a bowl to wash the bog from Sam’s feet and belly.
Sam didn’t object, but he wouldn’t look at Dean while he was doing it. He’d hated having Dean help him with anything like this, even when he was sick or hurt, since he’d been tiny; but he hated being muddy too, so, he’d have to suck it up.
Cas just watched. It wasn’t the most cheerful of meals.
Then Dean left. Because a search party was the last thing they needed.
It made sense for Sam to stay, of course. They’d been lucky this morning - neither the Campbells nor Jo ever took much notice of dogs, and they’d been kind of distracted, but sooner or later someone would ask where this strange dog had come from. And Sam needed rest, and Dean needed to go back and grab food for a few days and say that he was heading off to find Sammy, and so on, and stable Leapfrog and get two fresh horses, in case they needed to move again. It made sense.
Still went against the grain, to leave him. To leave them both.
Three hours back, careful not to leave a trail, and the sun was westering by the time Dean got there.
The place was a storm, thrumming with fury and bewilderment and grief. Ellen’s eyes were red and dry and hot, and half the young men (and some of the women) were milling dangerously near the Roadhouse, their expressions fragile and sharp as glass, directionless and volatile.
Jo punched Dean hard and whirled away. He interpreted that as “I was worried about you, you little shit, and I didn’t find anything to stab,” and let her go.
Other than that, he kept everything curt and quick, let them all think he was worried about Sam (well, he was), sharply ignored the sympathy, and got everything together as quick as he could. Then he stuck his head (only his head) in through Bobby’s door.
Bobby had nothing on fixing Sam. By the look on his face, that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
“Me and Sam, we’re holing up in the woods for a few days until this blows over.”
Bobby didn’t look up. “Take more dogs.”
“I’m taking Chevy -”
“Take more damn dogs, boy. I don’t wanna be shooting down something with your face come next full moon.”
“Okay!” Dean growled. “Okay.”
Great. That meant more food to carry, and it meant wolfhounds. And they’d be a nuisance to have around Cas. Not that they’d actually go for him unless Dean said so, but... too small a space, too many complications. Especially if Cas made any sudden moves near Dean, and one of the dogs thought it should take care of things. And Sammy didn’t need a lot of dogs jostling him to work out who was the boss of whom.
But he wasn’t about to argue with Bobby right now. Not when Bobby hadn’t really met his eyes since Dean had let him down.
Bobby took a swig from the bottle sitting at his elbow, eyes fixed on the page. Dean backed out.
Three and a half hours back again, because it was a hell of a lot harder not to leave a trail with two horses and four dogs. By the time Dean got back, it was full dark. Two nights off the new moon.
Yes, it was dangerous. Sue him. Not like he could leave them alone for the night, not when they were both a mess and needed to eat.
Sam was stretched out full length in front of the half-open cabin door, eyes on the path. Dean nodded at him, slung the over-laden saddle packs down from both horses’ backs, and pulled the door shut before the dogs could push inside.
“How’s he doing?” he asked shortly. The exhaustion was hitting him, dragging heavy at his knees and eyes, like the thud of his feet on the ground as he’d dismounted had jarred it loose.
Sam shrugged. So, as well as could be expected.
“You?”
That just got a dirty look.
“I hear ya,” Dean muttered. “Come round the back, I gotta settle the horses.”
It was easier to talk to Sam without looking at him. It felt treacherous, but Dean didn’t want to see the velvety forehead wrinkle up, or the twitch of too-loose cheeks and lips. Those expressions were meant to be Sammy’s. Put them in that face and they looked twisted and grotesque.
So he just watched the sweep of his own hand as he brushed down the horses, the shift and twitch of their muscles under smooth skin as they lifted their feet one by one for him to inspect, and as he did he told Sam that Annie was dead too. Same claw-marks on her belly as had torn open Bill’s neck, some wraithlike opportunist in the smoky dark, but Annie had taken eighteen hours to die. And he told Sam that everyone was on edge, everyone would be out for blood, and that they’d have to keep a sharp eye out because he’d lay good money there’d be a hell of a lot of serious hunts in the next few days.
He didn’t tell Sam that Bobby hadn’t found anything. Sam had probably figured that by now.
There was a soft touch against the back of his calf, and he looked down at Sam’s too-long, too-worried face. Sam raised a paw, like he was going to gesture something; but as he did, Maxim, the big salt-and-pepper wolfhound who’d been edgy all evening, decided that enough was enough with this strange dog and shoved in between Dean and Sam with his hackles up and teeth bare. And, hell no you don’t. Maxim got Dean’s knee in his throat and a harsh “Out!”, completely on reflex, just at the same moment as Sam wrinkled back his lips and hurled a snarl right into his face, the back-the-hell-off kind of whole-body thing that would give any dog pause.
Huh. Apparently push Sam hard enough and he’d say “screw it” to that whole trying not to act like a dog thing.
Poor Maxim, confused and outnumbered and wrong-footed, went from top dog to rebuked puppy in a moment, and skittered away behind the horses.
Dean didn’t feel that sorry for him. It’d show the dogs he had Sammy’s back, anyway. Blatant favouritism always helped when it came to sorting out pack squabbles.
Sam growled again, frustrated and fed up, and shook out his coat. There was an eerie kind of a disconnect there, creeping into Dean’s bones. The sound, the gesture - there was nothing human about them.
Then Sam looked up, eyes narrowed and scowly, and raised his paw again.
Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Go on.”
G-A-B-R-
Dean blinked, and stared. The awkwardness and hurt and terror lurking around inside him stiffened, and joined forces in a sudden surge of anger. “Really, Sam? Of all the people you could ask after?”
Sam stared back at him, and, what the hell? That was disbelief. Outrage, even. Then he turned and stalked away into the darkness.
“I don’t know, okay?” Dean yelled after him. “I didn’t ask. And screw you too!”
The bay mare he was grooming twitched and flinched, and he bit down hard on his own lip, then ran a hand soothingly down her neck. “Sorry, baby,” he gritted out. “Almost done.”
You couldn’t really hang around outside and just keep to yourself when your brothers - your brother and the angel - needed feeding and couldn’t manage a pair of saddle packs themselves. Dean managed to put it off for a bit, though, feeding and watering the dogs and the horses, checking the wards on the lean-to that was all the shelter they had, that sort of thing. But eventually he had to go in, nod curtly at Cas, unpack everything, get plates and bowls and sort out food and so on.
Sam wasn’t there. Sam, apparently, felt that it was just fine for him to hang around outside and sulk.
Dean would have sworn he could feel Cas’ eyes on his back all the time he was doing it, but when he turned around to carry a plate over to the angel’s bed Cas was just sitting there, looking worn out and a bit flushed, with his eyes on the hands lying in his lap. Perfect obedient soldier.
Bit of a relief, really. Easier to deal with.
He left Sam’s plate on the floor by one of the bunks, and went outside to eat his own meal in silence.
The moon was a tiny sliver, hanging low and yellow over the crag. Sixteen days until it would wax full, and its power would be at its peak. Especially for things like werewolves. And skinwalkers. And shapeshifters. And... that sort.
The thing was, the thing was. What if this curse had a gradual effect? Seeing Sam there, teeth flashing and legs gone aggressively stiff, he’d looked just like a real dog, just for a moment. What if that was how it started? All persuasive little moments, easier and easier with time, with fury or pain or fear as the excuse? like how it got easier each time to shut out the pain in the eyes of the nasty sons of bitches they had to put down?
What if that was how Sammy became an animal?
All their lives and Sam had felt he wasn’t quite like the other kids. Always been terrified of being the freak. And now here he was.
Dean didn’t look around at the dragging footsteps behind him, the slow thud of a stick against the ground with every second pace.
“Dean,” Cas said, soft and low. Just that, just his name, like there was a whole story in it. Funny - that was how he always looked at Dean, too.
The whole speaking thing was new, but there was no way Dean would ever be mistaking his voice for anyone else’s.
“Cas,” he rasped at the moon. “You should be resting.”
“So should you.” Deep and rich, even when he was hardly saying anything, almost gentle. It was weirdly grounding, like a promise that everything would still be here tomorrow, nothing would fall apart, no one would vanish. Pretty stupid, if you stopped to think that it was an angel’s voice, but no one ever said Dean was bright. And when had his gut ever listened to his head anyway?
“Yeah,” he agreed, and didn’t move.
There was that same careful slip-shuffle of feet again, a little closer. Then a warm hand curled firm and sure around the back of Dean’s neck, pressed soft and held, just like he always used to do.
Dean sagged, like all the sharp little spikes that had been pinning him upright had dissolved together, all in one rush of fierce relief.
Cas didn’t try to talk, just stood there quietly. And seriously, Dean loved Sam, he did, but where had the kid got his habit of having to poke and prod and peer at every single fucking thing until it was all swollen and tender? Sometimes just shutting up and dealing was the best. Left you with a hell of a lot less shit to clean up after, too.
After all. Cas probably wasn’t at his best either, the poor son of a bitch. And he and Cas, they’d worked out how to do this for each other without words long ago. Even if it had only been about kids’ stuff back then.
Dean’s head nodded forward onto his chest, and he just stood there for a bit to enjoy it, to be grateful. Then, without quite planning to but not really minding, he brought out, “Bobby’s having no luck with this curse on Sam.”
Cas made a thoughtful sort of a rumble, just behind Dean’s ear. “It’s only been a day.”
Which might have been a good thought, but it just wasn’t going to fly this time.
“Yeah, but, he knows those books inside out, Cas.” Dean shifted a bit on his feet. His left shoulder swayed back a little way, and fetched up snug and solid against Cas’ body. “And I know how Bobby looks when he’s just being a stubborn old son of a bitch and refusing to give up.” He swallowed the grate in his throat, and said neutrally, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen, Cas.”
There was a light brush of hair and breath across his shoulder and behind his ear as Cas nodded, or bent his head, or something, like there was nothing more to be said. Like he got it, and wasn’t going to try to make it worse (one way or the other) by arguing.
Dean let the old breath slip out of him, tore his eyes from the dying moon, and turned halfway around, halfway in, so that he could see the shadow and light of Cas out of the side of his eye.
Cas lifted his free hand (his left) and brushed it carefully over Dean’s cheek, as if stubble was a peculiar and kind of ridiculous thing. There was a funny little curl at the side of his mouth that Dean wasn’t quite sure what to do with.
It made him look very real, here, right now. Disorienting. Dean had become very used to Cas not being real, to Cas only being a creature inside his own head. To locking him in there and carefully keeping him from the real world.
“Kinda thought I’d imagined you, sometimes,” Dean confessed, low and rough.
Cas let out a soft puff of air and leaned in to press his forehead against Dean’s temple. His breath brushed warm and damp over the corner of Dean’s chin; and Dean turned his face in to the touch, turned his body a little, because there was a sharp sweet ache inside him and it matched the feel of that breath, of Cas’ fingers tightening briefly on the back of his neck.
Cas made a small noise in his throat, almost like he’d been hurt. Then he moved just a little and touched their mouths together.
It felt good - a pleased little thrill rippling through Dean’s body - so he chased it, pushed in a little himself, the dry slide of his upper lip sideways across the seam of Cas’ mouth, the swell of Cas’ lower one (dry as Dean’s, rougher) under tingling skin. Good, and safe. Something to cling to, and to keep.
Cas sighed into it, pressed just a little harder for a moment, and Dean felt a hint of heat in the centre, a promise of something that he didn’t know how to understand, before it flitted away and Cas was breathing a soft kiss onto the corner of his lips.
“So did I you,” he rumbled, dark and breathless and deep.
(What the hell was it about Cas’ voice that made Dean’s stomach do that happy warm clench anyway?)
Dean smiled a bit, tired and aiming for wry, but it probably would have looked kind of soppy if anyone had been able to see it. As it was, it was just Cas, just Cas feeling the pull of it against the side of his face. That was okay.
Cas stepped back, clumsy, and looked out over where the ground fell away from their feet in scree and dark hawthorn. “Come and sleep.”
Dean stole his stick and gave him a shoulder to lean on instead.
Yeah, he had no idea what that kissing thing was about, but some families kissed each other, and maybe for angels that sort of thing was normal. Not really something Dean was going to kick up a fuss about. He’d rather keep it.
“Cas,” he rasped at the moon. “You should be resting.”
“So should you.”
Leontes: Chide me, deare Stone, that I may say indeed
Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she
In thy not chiding: for she was as tender
As Infancie and Grace. But yet, Paulina,
Hermione was not so much wrinckled, nothing
So aged as this seemes.
Polixenes: O, not by much.
Paulina: So much the more our Carver’s excellence;
Which lets goe by some sixteene yeeres, and makes her
As she liv’d now.
A Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare, c. 1610.
(Statue scene, V.iii, Leontes is confronted with the remarkably lifelike statue of his long-dead wife.)
“Just hold still, okay? Trust me.”
Cas’ good wing twitched nervously, half ruffled up.
Dean ran one hand down the leading edge from the shoulder, smoothing the little feathers there, the way he remembered used to calm Cas down. He’d kind of forgotten how soft they were. Too used to thinking of wings as weapons, all stiff and quivering and strong.
But the finger bones, of course, those were fragile.
The right wing was sagging and tired. The bullet had punched straight through just next to the third finger, breaking the bone and making a nasty mess of muscle and feathers. The bitch of it was the way all the muscles in the wing tugged on all the others, so there wouldn’t be any way to move it or hold it without putting strain on that spot. When Dean wrapped his fingers firm and gentle around the wrist, Cas flinched and almost jerked away.
“Easy,” Dean murmured, because he was used to this, talking people through it. “I know it all hurts now, but that’s just ’cos you’ve been dragging it around too much. This’ll make it better, promise.” Cas made a disgruntled noise, like he knew all that, but he relaxed a bit under Dean’s hand. “Can you hold it up a bit higher? I need to get the broken finger lying straight.”
It wasn’t just childhood memories he was going on here, petting Cas and poking at him because the differences had been fascinating. He knew this, knew how it worked; and most of that was because of the skeleton. One of the first angels they’d killed, five years back, and it had been Dean and Christian and Jody stripping it down to the bones and taking it apart, wiring it all back together again all dry and clean so that every joint moved nice and natural. Not a trophy, but a teaching tool. Because it was a hell of a lot easier to know where to aim if you knew what a thing was like on the inside.
It was a clean enough break, that was something. No shards of bone or anything, at least not that Dean could feel (though feeling through feathers was harder than feeling through skin, and it wasn’t like you could shave feathers off like you could with hair). Washing away the blood and tangled dirt, and clipping off the worst of the broken feathers as low as he could, must have hurt like hell, but Cas didn’t make a sound. He just sat there, one hand clenched on the thigh of his bad leg (sprained ankle, twisted knee, some nasty scrapes and bruises from crash-landing on it), the other hand holding his own wing high and steady for Dean’s attention.
Dean should have brought booze.
(Could angels even get drunk?)
“Okay,” he murmured finally. “Good as it’s gonna get. Let’s get this thing folded and strapped up.”
Dragging it into place was a joint effort, painstakingly slow. Dean wouldn’t have had a clue how to go about splinting a wing, and they didn’t really have time for that anyway. Strapping it all to Cas’ back was the best they could do for now.
Fifteen minutes. Twenty since they’d found him. The others would be getting close to rounding the head of the gorge. Only an hour before they might start wondering where Dean had got to.
Sam was pacing at the top of the ridge, keeping an eye out, just in case of... well, anything. Would’ve been great to have had another pair of hands to hold the wing in place, but hey, easy was off the cards lately.
Dean couldn’t help looking as he worked. It didn’t really count, anyway, with Cas’ head bowed like that and his eyes closed, with Dean kneeling behind him out of his line of sight anyway. Cas’ hair was shorter now, but just as wild. Maybe that came with the whole windspeed thing. It curled up at the back of his neck, a bit damp with sweat, and with the sun clear and warm on it like that it looked like there were hints of dark bronze in there. Dean had never noticed that before.
He memorised it carefully, just in case. That, and the little bumps of his spine, the curve of his bowed neck, the powerful (dangerous) sweep of his good wing from shoulder to elbow to wrist (the secondaries were as long as Dean’s forearm now, broad as three of his fingers). The way Cas shifted just the right way as Dean leaned into him to pass the strap around his chest, or under his arm, or up over his shoulder, without Dean having to say a word.
There were traces of the kid in there, but how had he missed seeing all these things change? How had he missed Cas becoming a man?
“Your friends just leave you there, or what?” he asked gruffly.
There was a faint sheen of sweat down the side of Cas’ throat, and smudges of dirt all over him from sleeping in that hollow and scrambling under the rock. One of them was smeared over his cheekbone like a bruise. Cas turned his head just enough for Dean to see that, not enough to meet his eyes.
“I expect they think me dead,” he replied neutrally. Each word had a strange weight to it, like it was precious and forbidden, and had to be dragged out.
“Right. Course.” Dean knotted the fourth band carefully where it wouldn’t rub. There was a string of dirty moss caught in the hair behind Cas’ left ear, and Dean reached up to comb it away without thinking about it. “Not for nothing, Cas, but your angel buddies sound like a bunch of dicks. Smoke bombs, shapeshifting curses, not even bothering to look for your body...”
His throat closed down then, took it upon itself to decide that, no, not going there. Because... yeah. If he started thinking of Cas as one of them, started trying to call him to account for yesterday - hell, even thought about yesterday...
“The curse on Sam was not performed by any of my garrison.” Cas said, in a voice that Dean couldn’t read at all; then he paused, like he was considering holding his tongue.
But he didn’t.
“And the darkness... was of my contrivance.”
... Which was exactly what Dean hadn’t wanted to know, goddammit.
He held his hands very still for a moment, breathed in carefully, then let it out in a long hiss. The feathers at Cas’ right shoulder shivered under it.
“Great,” he provided brightly, and pulled the next strap exactly tight enough, no harder.
Cas’ shoulders shifted uneasily under the heavy grey linen. He was quiet for a minute, and Dean thought maybe he’d be merciful and shut the hell up, but hey, why break a winning streak?
“... To throw you off Rachel’s tail,” he offered carefully.
Fuck. He was going to go there.
“You took out the dogs already,” Dean pointed out, feeling his voice rumble and scratch in his chest (against Cas’ back) as he leaned forward very carefully to cross the bandage under the angel’s left arm. Poisoned the dogs, his mind whispered, and he can’t have really known whether it would hurt them, and hell, the lives they’d been risking thinking they were onto a sure thing, even before the angels (Cas) had sprung something completely new on them, something fucking deadly. “Your pal could have just flapped its way off into the sky whenever.”
Huh. His fingertips were actually trembling against Cas’ neck.
“You did not know that,” Cas countered, curt and immediate, like he’d been waiting for this argument. “You would have kept hunting us. It was a demonstration. I intended -”
Dean tugged the ends of the last strap together and twisted them viciously into a knot. “Shut up.”
“Dean.”
Dean scrambled backwards on his knees and heels until he was staring at Cas’ back from over a yard away. “No. Just - don’t, Cas? Okay? I can’t think about this now.”
One vast wing, half-furled, dark and powerful and alien, shifting quietly with each breath in and out. One folded wing, fragile and broken, strapped up by Dean’s hands and fastened nice and secure across Cas’ body. The vulnerable curve of his spine between.
What he’d done. What Cas had done. What he’d done to Cas’ family, and Cas’ people had done to his.
“As you wish.”
Dean could just make out from here the steady rise and fall of Cas’ breathing, the faint stretch and relax of his ribs. It was only at this distance that he realised, belatedly, that he’d been feeling that all along, for almost half an hour, warm and careful against his chest.
Dean snatched up the rest of the bandages and stalked around to kneel in front of Cas, to strap up his ankle and knee. They were badly swollen, so the bandages would have to come off when they stopped, but they couldn’t risk either joint giving out on him while they were on the run. He set about making a quick, tidy job of it, ignoring the sensation of eyes boring into the top of his head.
“After all,” Cas said, after a very long minute, “I am more than used to pretending to remember less than I do.”
Hell.
Okay, so he’d always thought of Cas as a person, but he’d also always thought of him as a child. He’d assumed the strange boy had thought and felt back then, but as he’d grown up he’d second-guessed, and tried not to think, until the child he remembered was only a child; or, now and then, only an angel. Nothing else.
“You and me both, angel,” Dean muttered, and didn’t look up until he was done.
He’d never thought of Cas (never let himself think of him) as growing up, becoming a man, fitting in with his peers, and having to dissemble. Having to pretend, like Dean had, and to block and hide from his own memories.
Then, “Okay. Let’s see how Leapfrog manages with two on his back.”
Cas was treating them like fellow soldiers. Like that was the easiest thing for him to fall back on.
Made it a hell of a lot easier for Dean, too. Except that as soon as he realised that was what Cas was doing, he was furious as hell at that unnamed brother, at the unknown family, for bringing Cas up like that. Because, seriously. Who taught their kid to think it was easiest to talk to people like they were used to taking and giving orders, taking and giving deadly blows, and nothing more?
Dean replied in monosyllables whenever he could, and didn’t really look at him. Cas’ eyes were something else, and he really didn’t need to meet them right now.
Sam was scary-good at working his way through the bogs of the bleak western marches.
Dean was useless at it, and everyone knew it, so they went that way just in case anyone came along after who was trying to find him.
There was no way you’d be able to trace anyone through there anyway. The water gushed back in and the grass covered it up as soon as you raised your foot. Dean put canvas bags over Leapfrog’s hooves, to spread his weight a bit, and cut sticks to strap in an X-shape under his own boots. Even Cas got down and walked (well, hobbled), because here, caution was more important than speed.
Sam’s feet, of course, were broad and furry, and he had four of them now. He had it easier than any of them.
It was a solid two miles across the bogs, completely exposed except for the rolling tendrils of mist that stretched across and vanished on no logic but their own. It was a gamble, but a solid one: two hours since Dean and Sam given the others the slip, and they’d just be starting to realise that there was no trail to follow on the far side, wondering how far the angel could fly after all on a wounded wing, casting out feelers in whatever radius they estimated, wondering when Dean would join them. And they wouldn’t be at their most rational just now, and none of them were much good at reading or managing the dogs. There was enough time to cut across the bogs, and no one would guess it. Even if someone did pick up their trail from the end of the line of firs, they’d lose it here, for good.
Assuming they didn’t run into any other nasties.
They did next to no talking. It was easier just to shut up and carry on.
They climbed up and around the edge of the moors, veering away from the marshes and towards the depths of the forests. Dean walked to save Leapfrog’s back, and held his bridle because Cas was useless with a horse. He looked up and back over his shoulder just as they rounded the jut of a spur, and, huh.
Wow.
Apparently Dean hadn’t seen Cas properly before, in the barn, in the dark. Go figure. Daylight was a freaking revelation. Showed up the soft edges of the stupid bird’s nest of dark hair, and the stubborn rigidity of his posture, and the puzzled creases at the corners of his eyes, and the long fingers knotted in the horse’s mane, and the quizzical pissy twist of his mouth, and the way all those droopy dark eyelashes couldn’t hide the piercing blue of his eyes, deeper than the sky behind him.
Cas hadn’t just grown up tall. He’d grown up gorgeous.
“Watch your head,” Dean advised shortly. Even he had to duck to get under some of the gnarled old branches along this path, and he was just leading Leapfrog. Cas would be having to lean forward almost flat along his neck.
Midday was approaching, and Sam was barely visible in the forest gloom thirty yards ahead.
“This was not how I expected Sam to look when I saw him again,” Cas murmured suddenly, the first thing he’d volunteered for two hours.
Dean kicked half a rotten branch out of the way, guided Leapfrog around its remains.
What about me, he wasn’t going to ask, do I look like you expected? Did you think about that?
He chuckled, a bit awkward, and said “You just wait, Cas. You should see the kid now. He’s really something.”
We’ll fix it, then they can talk properly. We will.
Yeah, like that would fix anything.
“Dean,” Cas slurred, and Dean looked back to see his eyes fighting to close. “Won’t you be missed?”
“I’ll handle it, Cas. Don’t you drift off on me, okay? Just a bit longer.”
They holed up in one of the stolid little emergency cabins that were dotted here and there outside the walls, kept warded and stocked up just in case anyone was caught outside. Cas was listing and blinking in the saddle, and even Sam was looking kind of beat. Given Sam didn’t have working hands, and Cas didn’t have working feet, Dean banished them to the sunny little bank outside the front door while he unlocked everything, broke the angel wards, unsealed the tin trunk with the bed sheets and jars of dried fruit and meat and nuts and flour and so on, and got things set up for a few days’ use. Cas’ wings would have made a fit in any of the bunks awkward, so Dean dragged the mattresses off the top bunks and made up a bed in one corner for him instead.
It did occur to him that neither of the others could have eaten for over a day, but there wasn’t a lot in the cabin, and there was less in his saddlebags. And it would be too dangerous to do any cooking before nightfall - no point hiding your trail then sending up a column of smoke to say “hey guys, come and get us!” He took out some of everything cold anyway, and Cas ate silently, without objection or enthusiasm. Sam stared at the food with a sort of panic, then at his own muddy paws, until Dean took it all off him again and wordlessly cut it into pieces that were small enough not to need handling. Then he went to draw up a few buckets from the well, filled up the water urn inside the cabin, and put the rest in a bowl to wash the bog from Sam’s feet and belly.
Sam didn’t object, but he wouldn’t look at Dean while he was doing it. He’d hated having Dean help him with anything like this, even when he was sick or hurt, since he’d been tiny; but he hated being muddy too, so, he’d have to suck it up.
Cas just watched. It wasn’t the most cheerful of meals.
Then Dean left. Because a search party was the last thing they needed.
It made sense for Sam to stay, of course. They’d been lucky this morning - neither the Campbells nor Jo ever took much notice of dogs, and they’d been kind of distracted, but sooner or later someone would ask where this strange dog had come from. And Sam needed rest, and Dean needed to go back and grab food for a few days and say that he was heading off to find Sammy, and so on, and stable Leapfrog and get two fresh horses, in case they needed to move again. It made sense.
Still went against the grain, to leave him. To leave them both.
Three hours back, careful not to leave a trail, and the sun was westering by the time Dean got there.
The place was a storm, thrumming with fury and bewilderment and grief. Ellen’s eyes were red and dry and hot, and half the young men (and some of the women) were milling dangerously near the Roadhouse, their expressions fragile and sharp as glass, directionless and volatile.
Jo punched Dean hard and whirled away. He interpreted that as “I was worried about you, you little shit, and I didn’t find anything to stab,” and let her go.
Other than that, he kept everything curt and quick, let them all think he was worried about Sam (well, he was), sharply ignored the sympathy, and got everything together as quick as he could. Then he stuck his head (only his head) in through Bobby’s door.
Bobby had nothing on fixing Sam. By the look on his face, that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
“Me and Sam, we’re holing up in the woods for a few days until this blows over.”
Bobby didn’t look up. “Take more dogs.”
“I’m taking Chevy -”
“Take more damn dogs, boy. I don’t wanna be shooting down something with your face come next full moon.”
“Okay!” Dean growled. “Okay.”
Great. That meant more food to carry, and it meant wolfhounds. And they’d be a nuisance to have around Cas. Not that they’d actually go for him unless Dean said so, but... too small a space, too many complications. Especially if Cas made any sudden moves near Dean, and one of the dogs thought it should take care of things. And Sammy didn’t need a lot of dogs jostling him to work out who was the boss of whom.
But he wasn’t about to argue with Bobby right now. Not when Bobby hadn’t really met his eyes since Dean had let him down.
Bobby took a swig from the bottle sitting at his elbow, eyes fixed on the page. Dean backed out.
Three and a half hours back again, because it was a hell of a lot harder not to leave a trail with two horses and four dogs. By the time Dean got back, it was full dark. Two nights off the new moon.
Yes, it was dangerous. Sue him. Not like he could leave them alone for the night, not when they were both a mess and needed to eat.
Sam was stretched out full length in front of the half-open cabin door, eyes on the path. Dean nodded at him, slung the over-laden saddle packs down from both horses’ backs, and pulled the door shut before the dogs could push inside.
“How’s he doing?” he asked shortly. The exhaustion was hitting him, dragging heavy at his knees and eyes, like the thud of his feet on the ground as he’d dismounted had jarred it loose.
Sam shrugged. So, as well as could be expected.
“You?”
That just got a dirty look.
“I hear ya,” Dean muttered. “Come round the back, I gotta settle the horses.”
It was easier to talk to Sam without looking at him. It felt treacherous, but Dean didn’t want to see the velvety forehead wrinkle up, or the twitch of too-loose cheeks and lips. Those expressions were meant to be Sammy’s. Put them in that face and they looked twisted and grotesque.
So he just watched the sweep of his own hand as he brushed down the horses, the shift and twitch of their muscles under smooth skin as they lifted their feet one by one for him to inspect, and as he did he told Sam that Annie was dead too. Same claw-marks on her belly as had torn open Bill’s neck, some wraithlike opportunist in the smoky dark, but Annie had taken eighteen hours to die. And he told Sam that everyone was on edge, everyone would be out for blood, and that they’d have to keep a sharp eye out because he’d lay good money there’d be a hell of a lot of serious hunts in the next few days.
He didn’t tell Sam that Bobby hadn’t found anything. Sam had probably figured that by now.
There was a soft touch against the back of his calf, and he looked down at Sam’s too-long, too-worried face. Sam raised a paw, like he was going to gesture something; but as he did, Maxim, the big salt-and-pepper wolfhound who’d been edgy all evening, decided that enough was enough with this strange dog and shoved in between Dean and Sam with his hackles up and teeth bare. And, hell no you don’t. Maxim got Dean’s knee in his throat and a harsh “Out!”, completely on reflex, just at the same moment as Sam wrinkled back his lips and hurled a snarl right into his face, the back-the-hell-off kind of whole-body thing that would give any dog pause.
Huh. Apparently push Sam hard enough and he’d say “screw it” to that whole trying not to act like a dog thing.
Poor Maxim, confused and outnumbered and wrong-footed, went from top dog to rebuked puppy in a moment, and skittered away behind the horses.
Dean didn’t feel that sorry for him. It’d show the dogs he had Sammy’s back, anyway. Blatant favouritism always helped when it came to sorting out pack squabbles.
Sam growled again, frustrated and fed up, and shook out his coat. There was an eerie kind of a disconnect there, creeping into Dean’s bones. The sound, the gesture - there was nothing human about them.
Then Sam looked up, eyes narrowed and scowly, and raised his paw again.
Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Go on.”
G-A-B-R-
Dean blinked, and stared. The awkwardness and hurt and terror lurking around inside him stiffened, and joined forces in a sudden surge of anger. “Really, Sam? Of all the people you could ask after?”
Sam stared back at him, and, what the hell? That was disbelief. Outrage, even. Then he turned and stalked away into the darkness.
“I don’t know, okay?” Dean yelled after him. “I didn’t ask. And screw you too!”
The bay mare he was grooming twitched and flinched, and he bit down hard on his own lip, then ran a hand soothingly down her neck. “Sorry, baby,” he gritted out. “Almost done.”
You couldn’t really hang around outside and just keep to yourself when your brothers - your brother and the angel - needed feeding and couldn’t manage a pair of saddle packs themselves. Dean managed to put it off for a bit, though, feeding and watering the dogs and the horses, checking the wards on the lean-to that was all the shelter they had, that sort of thing. But eventually he had to go in, nod curtly at Cas, unpack everything, get plates and bowls and sort out food and so on.
Sam wasn’t there. Sam, apparently, felt that it was just fine for him to hang around outside and sulk.
Dean would have sworn he could feel Cas’ eyes on his back all the time he was doing it, but when he turned around to carry a plate over to the angel’s bed Cas was just sitting there, looking worn out and a bit flushed, with his eyes on the hands lying in his lap. Perfect obedient soldier.
Bit of a relief, really. Easier to deal with.
He left Sam’s plate on the floor by one of the bunks, and went outside to eat his own meal in silence.
The moon was a tiny sliver, hanging low and yellow over the crag. Sixteen days until it would wax full, and its power would be at its peak. Especially for things like werewolves. And skinwalkers. And shapeshifters. And... that sort.
The thing was, the thing was. What if this curse had a gradual effect? Seeing Sam there, teeth flashing and legs gone aggressively stiff, he’d looked just like a real dog, just for a moment. What if that was how it started? All persuasive little moments, easier and easier with time, with fury or pain or fear as the excuse? like how it got easier each time to shut out the pain in the eyes of the nasty sons of bitches they had to put down?
What if that was how Sammy became an animal?
All their lives and Sam had felt he wasn’t quite like the other kids. Always been terrified of being the freak. And now here he was.
Dean didn’t look around at the dragging footsteps behind him, the slow thud of a stick against the ground with every second pace.
“Dean,” Cas said, soft and low. Just that, just his name, like there was a whole story in it. Funny - that was how he always looked at Dean, too.
The whole speaking thing was new, but there was no way Dean would ever be mistaking his voice for anyone else’s.
“Cas,” he rasped at the moon. “You should be resting.”
“So should you.” Deep and rich, even when he was hardly saying anything, almost gentle. It was weirdly grounding, like a promise that everything would still be here tomorrow, nothing would fall apart, no one would vanish. Pretty stupid, if you stopped to think that it was an angel’s voice, but no one ever said Dean was bright. And when had his gut ever listened to his head anyway?
“Yeah,” he agreed, and didn’t move.
There was that same careful slip-shuffle of feet again, a little closer. Then a warm hand curled firm and sure around the back of Dean’s neck, pressed soft and held, just like he always used to do.
Dean sagged, like all the sharp little spikes that had been pinning him upright had dissolved together, all in one rush of fierce relief.
Cas didn’t try to talk, just stood there quietly. And seriously, Dean loved Sam, he did, but where had the kid got his habit of having to poke and prod and peer at every single fucking thing until it was all swollen and tender? Sometimes just shutting up and dealing was the best. Left you with a hell of a lot less shit to clean up after, too.
After all. Cas probably wasn’t at his best either, the poor son of a bitch. And he and Cas, they’d worked out how to do this for each other without words long ago. Even if it had only been about kids’ stuff back then.
Dean’s head nodded forward onto his chest, and he just stood there for a bit to enjoy it, to be grateful. Then, without quite planning to but not really minding, he brought out, “Bobby’s having no luck with this curse on Sam.”
Cas made a thoughtful sort of a rumble, just behind Dean’s ear. “It’s only been a day.”
Which might have been a good thought, but it just wasn’t going to fly this time.
“Yeah, but, he knows those books inside out, Cas.” Dean shifted a bit on his feet. His left shoulder swayed back a little way, and fetched up snug and solid against Cas’ body. “And I know how Bobby looks when he’s just being a stubborn old son of a bitch and refusing to give up.” He swallowed the grate in his throat, and said neutrally, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen, Cas.”
There was a light brush of hair and breath across his shoulder and behind his ear as Cas nodded, or bent his head, or something, like there was nothing more to be said. Like he got it, and wasn’t going to try to make it worse (one way or the other) by arguing.
Dean let the old breath slip out of him, tore his eyes from the dying moon, and turned halfway around, halfway in, so that he could see the shadow and light of Cas out of the side of his eye.
Cas lifted his free hand (his left) and brushed it carefully over Dean’s cheek, as if stubble was a peculiar and kind of ridiculous thing. There was a funny little curl at the side of his mouth that Dean wasn’t quite sure what to do with.
It made him look very real, here, right now. Disorienting. Dean had become very used to Cas not being real, to Cas only being a creature inside his own head. To locking him in there and carefully keeping him from the real world.
“Kinda thought I’d imagined you, sometimes,” Dean confessed, low and rough.
Cas let out a soft puff of air and leaned in to press his forehead against Dean’s temple. His breath brushed warm and damp over the corner of Dean’s chin; and Dean turned his face in to the touch, turned his body a little, because there was a sharp sweet ache inside him and it matched the feel of that breath, of Cas’ fingers tightening briefly on the back of his neck.
Cas made a small noise in his throat, almost like he’d been hurt. Then he moved just a little and touched their mouths together.
It felt good - a pleased little thrill rippling through Dean’s body - so he chased it, pushed in a little himself, the dry slide of his upper lip sideways across the seam of Cas’ mouth, the swell of Cas’ lower one (dry as Dean’s, rougher) under tingling skin. Good, and safe. Something to cling to, and to keep.
Cas sighed into it, pressed just a little harder for a moment, and Dean felt a hint of heat in the centre, a promise of something that he didn’t know how to understand, before it flitted away and Cas was breathing a soft kiss onto the corner of his lips.
“So did I you,” he rumbled, dark and breathless and deep.
(What the hell was it about Cas’ voice that made Dean’s stomach do that happy warm clench anyway?)
Dean smiled a bit, tired and aiming for wry, but it probably would have looked kind of soppy if anyone had been able to see it. As it was, it was just Cas, just Cas feeling the pull of it against the side of his face. That was okay.
Cas stepped back, clumsy, and looked out over where the ground fell away from their feet in scree and dark hawthorn. “Come and sleep.”
Dean stole his stick and gave him a shoulder to lean on instead.
Yeah, he had no idea what that kissing thing was about, but some families kissed each other, and maybe for angels that sort of thing was normal. Not really something Dean was going to kick up a fuss about. He’d rather keep it.