A/N: This is the next story in a mild AU/canon divergence series called The Other Guardian 'verse. There's a detailed note about it on my profile page, but in brief: after Dean is raised from Hell by Castiel, an entire year passes before the Lilith rises and the seals start to break. During that time, Castiel is assigned to watch over the Winchesters, and finds himself growing closer and closer to Sam.

This story follows "Stepping Stones," but is completely standalone - not necessary to read any other stories first. Sam and Cas centric, but more in the style of "Looking for Love in Las Vegas," Dean often joins in.

Warnings: None.

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A Change in the Weather

The main lodge of the Devil's Thumb Ranch resort, nestled between the slopes of the Rocky Mountains and plains of sparkling snow, was a sprawling structure of huge timber logs and wrought iron accents, picture perfect from its wooden turrets to the sidewalks lit by blown-glass lanterns. Sam's first thought was that if a log cabin made a wish and its fairy godmother turned it into a log palace, it might look like this. Dean's first thought, coming out of his mouth as usual as he raised his eyebrows and jerked his head at the lodge beyond the Impala's foggy windows, was, "Wow—swanky, Sammy."

The adjunct bunkhouse, where they were actually staying, didn't get quite the same enthusiasm.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

Dean put the car in park and Sam rubbed his sleeve against his window, clearing the glass so he could peer out at the bunkhouse. It wasn't a bad-looking structure overall, a two-story building constructed of the same massive logs as the lodge and definitely in better repair than a lot of the places they'd stayed—but Dean seemed to be in a bitching mood, judging by the serious melodrama in the air as he slapped the steering wheel and turned to glare at Sam.

"What the hell, Sam? This is the last time I let you book the room—swear to God."

Sam just rolled his eyes and pulled his gloves on, wishing there were enough room in the front seat of the Impala to zip his parka up the rest of the way. "Dude, it's not that bad. We've got our own bathroom. Two beds. And we still get to use the lodge pool and everything, so…"

"Not that bad?" Dean echoed. "Sam, there were girls in bathrobes in that lodge. Walking across the lobby. There was a bar right in the restaurant. But instead, you booked us in the hobo shack ten miles down the road where you probably can't even drink the tap water."

"We're only two miles down the road," Sam told him, earning a sarcastic little head bobble from his ultra-mature older brother. "And the reason I booked us in the bunkhouse is because last time I got a room in a lodge like that one, you chewed me out for weeks about how much it cost. The bunkhouse is, like, $300 cheaper. We're only staying for one night anyway."

"Bathrobes, Sam," Dean shot back, as if that explained everything. Then he stepped out of the car and shut his door with a snap, his boots crunching on the snow-covered gravel as he marched back to the trunk. Sam made a face at the ceiling before following him into the cold.

The week had started out in typical Winchester fashion. Dean had caught the scent of a possible case in the mountains west of Denver; Sam had been skeptical about this one—more than skeptical, honestly—but since Dean was seriously jonesing for a hunt, they'd packed the car and headed out anyway, leaving the comfortable warmth of Bobby's house for the snowy Rockies. Dean had been all for camping out, but Sam knew enough about Colorado in March to call ahead and get a room at the only lodge even close to their destination. The week took a left turn when the case fell out of their laps for a change, the rumors Dean had been chasing debunked before they even arrived—but since the room was already paid for, and they didn't have another job lined up, Sam had convinced Dean to let them stay anyway.

Sam threw his bags over his shoulder and looked up at the row of icicles lining the gutter, and then shook his head as Dean pushed him toward the building. It was only one night, after all—it couldn't be that bad, even if Dean spent the whole time complaining.

Sam's own doubts about the bunkhouse started when he had to duck not just his head but his shoulders to get in the front door. He had to do the same thing to get from the entryway to the first-floor hallway, and he almost took himself out on the huge timber rafter hanging right at forehead level at the bottom of the stairs. The bunkhouse had definitely been built for people of more average height. Dean kept up a running commentary about Sam's choice in lodging, from the stairs that creaked like they were about to collapse and send both Winchesters down a level or two, to the weirdly dim common room at the top of the stairs that had serial killer slasher movie written all over it. Sam might have chimed in with a few concerns of his own if Dean had ever paused for breath.

Dean led the way down the very narrow corridor to their room, which came to a point like an arrowhead at the far end, the last two doors angled toward each other so sharply that Sam figured it was necessity and not courtesy that made the doors swing inward. Naturally their room was one of those. He had to duck partway just to get down the hall, and with the bags over his shoulders he was easily brushing both walls—which made it twice as awkward when the door across from theirs swung open just as Dean pulled to a halt in front of their room, scratching his ear with one absent finger.

"What was the door code?"

Sam was distracted from his brother's question by the person in the doorway of the neighboring room—a short, blond woman who didn't even come up to Sam's shoulder and stared at him and his muddle of bags with narrowed eyes, like she'd hit a Road Closed sign and was trying to decide if her Land Rover was up for off-roading it. After a moment she seemed to come to the same conclusion as Sam, namely that there was no way she was getting down the hall without Sam getting out of it first; Sam sent her an apologetic smile, but the woman just crossed her arms, her eyes fixed on him as Dean turned around and punched him in the shoulder.

"Dude! Door code."

"Uh…" Sam blinked, trying to get his head back in a helpful space. "It's the last four digits of the cell phone."

"What cell phone?"

"Mine," Sam told him.

Dean just rolled his eyes. "Which one?" he repeated.

Sam wanted nothing more than to get them in the room as quickly as possible, especially because the short, angry woman had started honest-to-God tapping her foot, but his mind was a jumble, struggling to remember which cell phone he'd used when he made the reservation and realizing that he'd never tried to call up just part of his phone number before. He rubbed a hand across his forehead as if that would dispel the mental wall. "Uh, it's… I think it's the one—"

The angry woman had had enough. "Excuse me," she snapped, managing to make the pleasantry sound like an insult. Then she set her shoulders and barreled into the hallway like a linebacker; Sam threw himself back against the wall to get out of the way but still ended up taking an elbow in the stomach, maybe not accidentally. With the weight of the bags on his shoulders it took him a minute to get his balance back, and when he did he looked up to find Dean grinning at him—not a very nice grin, but a very Dean grin all the same.

"You know those videos of tiny Chihuahuas chasing off, like, massive St. Bernards, and how everybody laughs because those big dogs look so stupid running from something you could fit in a purse?" Sam tipped his head to the side, unimpressed, but Dean cocked his eyebrows anyway. "You're the St. Bernard."

Sam rolled his eyes. "2-3-6-8. Open the door."

The last thing Sam saw as he banged his way through the narrow doorway after Dean was a man stepping out into the hall from the angry woman's room and glancing from side to side, obviously bewildered by her absence. Sam was tempted to give him a hint, but deciding it was more important not to have a repeat of what Dean would no doubt refer to forever as the "Chihuahua incident," he leveraged himself into his own room and dropped the bags, giving the man an apologetic smile just before the door shut between them.

"Well, it's official," Dean told him. "You are a crap travel agent."

Sam supposed he should have figured that the room would be small. The ceiling was tall enough for him to stand up straight, which was a plus, but it sloped down on the sides to about elbow level at its lowest point. The beds were short—Sam's feet were definitely going to hang over the end if he stretched out—and the closet was just a tiny nook in one corner that Sam was definitely never going to fit into. He glanced into the bathroom to find that the toilet and the sink were abysmally close together, and wondered briefly if he was going to be able to use the former without banging his knees on the latter.

"Oh, sure, it's just one night," Dean griped as he kicked his shoes off, flopping backward onto the bed closest to the window. "You suck, Sammy. There's no TV in here, no minibar—no mini fridge, even. What kind of hotel doesn't have a TV? And I don't like the idea of staying somewhere where I can tell the walls used to be trees."

Sam finished prying off his snow boots in the corner by the dresser and looked up at the log walls, knobby and uneven with yellow caulk jammed between the joints—then he wondered if the whole thing had been a setup, because in his moment of distraction he stood up too straight for the slanting corner of the room and slammed his head into one of the thick rafter poles, taking a knot right in the back of the skull. Sam bent in half and clutched his head, cursing under his breath; from the bed, Dean snorted like a boar.

"Jesus, Sam. Are you the right size for anything?"

Sam glared at his brother but chose to ignore him, just giving a long-suffering sigh as he stepped into the bathroom to wash the slush of melting snow from his hands. He wondered briefly if the bunkhouse was cursed when he turned on the faucet and the serious water pressure splattered cold water all over him, with an especially high concentration right about groin level, and then it got him again when he tried to leave the bathroom too fast and smacked his forehead into the doorframe. Dean glanced back at Sam from his position at the window.

"Got a little fly problem over here," Dean told him, waving a pamphlet for the ranch's day spa. He whacked the folded paper hard against the glass and then wrinkled his nose, tossing it straight into the trash can. "Huh. That one died bloody." Then Dean did a double-take in Sam's direction, fixated on his brother's wet jeans. "Dude—did you pee yourself?"

Sam rested his aching head against the crosspiece and wondered if one night here was going to be too much for them after all.

.x.

The Winchesters had moved again. Castiel was used to that by now—they were oddly transient for humans, who were largely a homing species. Still, finding them was never a challenge; Castiel followed his sense of them to a small room in an old wooden building, and then folded his wings, careful not to land in the bathroom. When he manifested in physical form, he found that his back and neck were strangely bent, as if the corner of the room in which he'd appeared wasn't tall enough to accommodate his vessel. From that position he evaluated his charges: Dean, who stood with his back to the angel and the dresser he'd alighted next to, restless arms crossed; and Sam, seated on the edge of one bed rifling through a pile of wrinkled clothes. Shirts and pants of various colors were strewn across most of the other bed as well.

The Winchesters were also bickering. Castiel had gotten used to that perhaps even faster than their constant relocating.

"Dean, I'm serious. We're not doing laundry in the same load anymore, so stop shoving your dirty clothes in my duffel bag, okay?" Sam sifted through the clothes in front of him and threw a pair of jeans onto the second bed—a little too forcefully, possibly, as they slid off the mattress and disappeared. "If you're not going to read the instructions on the tags, fine—but screw up your own clothes from now on."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry, Samantha—did some of your delicates get messed up taking a spin in the washing machine with normal clothes?"

Sam scoffed and flung a green t-shirt after the pair of jeans. "No, Dean," he shot back. "You threw my flannels in the dryer on high with your boxers, and they all shrunk. Now I can't wear any of them."

Dean reached down to grab a sweatshirt from the floor and hurled it at his brother's head. "Well, maybe you wouldn't have this problem if you weren't a giant gargantuan freak."

Sam tipped back until he was staring at the ceiling; he was silent for a moment, as if gathering strength, and then slowly shook his head, crumpling the sweatshirt into a ball between his large hands. "Yeah—you're right, Dean. I'm gargantuan. But you know what? Until you got hold of them, my flannels were, too—that's why I bought them. I basically have no shirts anymore."

Dean threw his hands up at his sides. "You need a shirt, princess? Here, let me help you." With an angry bob of his head Dean whirled around, hand outstretched as if reaching for the dresser—but when he found himself an inch from Castiel and his hand stopped by the angel's tan trench coat, he leapt back, jerking away as if the coat had burned him. "Holy Aunt Jemima!" Dean spit out in a rush, pressing his palm over his chest as if to calm the heartbeat that was pounding in his neck. "Cas! Are you trying to give me a coronary?"

Castiel narrowed his eyes, pondering the slang. "No," he decided. Then his gaze shifted to Sam, who had risen from the bed and was moving slowly toward the angel with wide eyes, rubbing his hands on his jeans.

"Cas. Hey. Um… sorry for… all of that. I guess we didn't see you when you came in."

Dean took another step backward and smacked his brother in the shoulder. "That is not the problem, dude," he growled, seemingly no longer irritated with Sam, but now irritated with Castiel instead. Dean was generally irritated with at least one person. "The problem is that he doesn't come in. He just pops up behind me and then stands there like American Psycho waiting to go apeshit on my ass." Sam rolled his eyes as Dean rounded on Castiel again, his features pinched with annoyance. "Seriously, Cas. Could you at least say something when you drop in, instead of ambushing me like some holy Spanish Inquisition?"

Castiel tried to tip his head to one side, though the angle of the roof pressing on his neck made the motion difficult. "What would you like me to say?" he asked.

Dean threw his arms out at his sides. "How about a good old-fashioned 'hello'?"

Humans were particular about their courtesies, Castiel had decided after weeks of assignment to the Winchesters. Dean was an especially confusing individual, liable to ignore pleasantries himself even though he seemed keen on Castiel following them. But this request didn't strike the angel as an unusually difficult one to honor, and since Sam was not objecting, probably not a selfish one on Dean's part, either. The angel adjusted his head against the beams of the ceiling.

"Hello, Dean," he said. Then he glanced at the second waiting figure. "Hello, Sam."

Sam sent him an encouraging smile. "Hey, Castiel."

Dean just rolled his eyes. "Great. Now would you get out of that corner? You look like a broken puppet standing there with your neck cranked. It's even creepier than normal."

Castiel did as he was asked, straightening back to his usual height as he stepped out into the center of the room. His gaze returned to Sam, who nodded at him once or twice, though Castiel was not sure what that meant—then the younger Winchester seemed to become aware of the state of the room, and he bent to scoop up an armful of clothes, clutching them to his chest as he moved back to his bed.

"So, uh, is this just a check-in, Cas?" Sam asked. He threw his mismatched bundle of clothing down to join the rest of it on the bed and then pulled the comforter over the whole pile. Dean watched his brother and shook his head slowly.

"Christ, Sammy. He doesn't care."

Castiel did care about Dean's thoughtless blasphemy—he was unsure what Sam was doing with his clothes, so it was difficult to know if he cared about that or not. But as Sam was already giving his brother a sharp look, ostensibly for his careless tongue, Castiel chose to focus on the younger Winchester.

"Are you on a case, Sam?" he asked.

"No," Sam told him at the same moment that Dean answered, "Yes." The two shared a look, Sam's lips turned down in an exasperated frown, and then Dean raked a hand back through his hair, his head bobbing from side to side. "Not exactly," he amended.

Sam sunk back onto the corner of the bed and folded his arms. "Not at all," he pushed, "because there's no such thing as Bigfoot, Dean. Everybody knows that."

Dean gave a heavy shrug, tugging on his earlobe with one loose hand. "I know," he said, though his voice sounded strangely high to Castiel. "But somebody saw something. It could have been our kind of thing… skinwalker, wendigo—whatever. Just 'cause some civvies call in a Bigfoot sighting to CNN doesn't mean we can ignore it."

Sam pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Man, why is this your white whale?" he muttered, dropping his hands to give his brother a flat look. "It was a bear, Dean. It's always a bear. And if it's not a bear, it's a hoax. How many times are we going to have to chase these rumors before you accept that there is no Sasquatch?"

Dean raised his eyebrows. "I don't know, Sam; I sort of feel like I'm looking at Sasquatch right now."

Sam took a breath and held it, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment. When he opened them again, he turned deliberately to Castiel instead, sighing as his expression smoothed back to neutrality. "Yeah. Anyway, bottom line—the case we were here for fell through, and unless we decide that bear has some friends who need rounding up…" Sam paused and threw a glance at his brother, who was opening and closing his hand like a talking mouth; the younger hunter rolled his eyes and sent Castiel an apologetic smile. "We're probably not going to stumble onto a case before we head out tomorrow."

Castiel struggled at times with the concept of sarcasm; he had learned to recognize when Dean was being facetious for the sake of insulting him, but he had more difficulty with Sam, already a complicated individual. He doubted Sam genuinely planned to go bear hunting, but the Winchesters could be impulsive at times, especially when Dean became restless. Castiel glanced at the older hunter, ignoring their conversation now as he noisily unwrapped the foil from a candy bar, and nodded shortly.

"I will… stay close," the angel said, catching Sam's eyes once more.

Sam opened his mouth as if to respond, but Dean cut him off, stepping between the two of them and shaking his candy bar at Castiel. "The hell you will," Dean said, though the words were somewhat mangled around his mouthful of chocolate and crunching peanuts. Castiel felt himself frown as he caught a glimpse of the churning mastication going on in Dean's mouth. "I've had it up to here with the angel stalker crap. If you're gonna be hanging around, you hang around with us—so we can see you, you get me? No more of that Invisible Man shit you've been pulling."

Castiel felt his brows draw together. "I don't understand."

Dean rolled his eyes at the ceiling, tucking another hunk of the chocolate bar into his cheek. "All right. Let me break this down for you, Cas. You've got two paths in front of you right now: friend or stalker. Friends hang out and have good times—they laugh and drink and if they're really smashed, maybe do some karaoke or pull donuts in the parking lot." Castiel glanced at Sam to see if the younger hunter planned to explain any of those terms, but Dean wasn't nearly finished, and he shook the rest of his candy bar in Castiel's face to get his attention. "Stalkers sneak around behind people's backs and take creepy pictures of them, and in the end somebody usually gets their head cut off by a buzz saw." Dean returned Castiel's stare as he chewed pointedly on the last of his bar. "So which do you want to be, Cas? A friend or a stalker?"

Castiel had often wondered at this tendency of humans—to phrase something in the form of a question when the desired answer was obvious, and the contrast between the two often ridiculous. He didn't understand what purpose the question served in this context. All the same, as Dean gave a hard swallow and began rolling his chocolate-covered index finger over and over impatiently, Castiel chose to oblige him.

"A friend," he said, glancing momentarily at Sam, who now stood at the edge of the bed with his hands tucked against his side.

Dean gave a hard nod. "Good," he said, licking the last of the chocolate from his lips. "Because stalkers get buzz-sawed. I don't care who they work for." Then Dean shrugged, all of the antagonism draining from his face as he reached out to slap his brother's shoulder. "Well, that's enough of that touchy-feely crap. I gotta hit the head. When I get out, the three of us'll go get some grub. I'm fucking starving."

Castiel wondered what "hit the head" meant, and what Dean meant to hit his head on, but before he could ask the older hunter disappeared into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him, rattling the coat hooks that stood out from the blonde wood.

"Just don't hit the sink," Sam called after him. There was an indistinguishable shout from behind the door that sounded a little like a curse, and Sam shook his head, laughing under his breath. Then he looked up and caught Castiel's eyes again, and the laugh turned into a smile, Sam's lips quirking upward at the corners. "Anyway," he started, grabbing his heavy coat from the floor and sliding one arm into the blue sleeve, "just come if you want to, Cas. You don't have to listen to Dean, but… it'd be nice."

Castiel returned the young man's smile with a slight frown. "You know I do not require food, Sam."

Sam shrugged the rest of the way into his coat. "How about company?" he asked.

Castiel considered that for a long moment. Then he tipped his head to one side. "Company could be acceptable," he replied, wondering why his words put a crooked little bend into the curve of Sam's lips. "I will… hang around," he finished.

Sam's face seemed lighter when he smiled.