Dean hadn't slept well in Dunwich; he blamed the bed. He wasn't the type to remember his dreams, but he'd remembered them today; he'd dreamed of the Kline house. Nothing else, just the house; and Cas was in there. Somewhere. He was glad Cas wasn't a witch, because he didn't remember the last time he'd so quickly been pulled into orbit; Lee, maybe. But that was different. He'd been younger then. Naive, and missing Sam desperately; he'd known at the time that Sam was out of the life, that he'd never seen him again, and it had made him reckless. If it weren't for Lee—

Best not to think of that.

Point was, there was a reason Dean had fallen for Lee. Cas, though. Cas was something else.

He'd convinced Sam to let him look at the herds alone with Cas; just so they could hang out for a few hours. Sam was asking more questions in town, this time about the stone circles. He followed Cas up the hill, the midday air wavering with heat; the ground a tangle beneath his shoes. He couldn't stop glancing over at Cas as he walked. God, those cheekbones. Those eyes. There was no way he couldn't be trustworthy, with those eyes.

Cas noticed his gaze; smiled at him, bemused. Just a quirk at the corner of his lips. Dean decided he liked it much better than the polite, too-obvious smiles he put on in front of others. It made him look lighter, somehow.

As for the herd, well—"Cas, there's something wrong with your cows," Dean said bluntly. He was no expert on cows, but even he could tell. They grazed, but they were thin, obviously malnourished; their eyes rheumy; their steps faltering. Red sores spotted their backs. When Dean moved cautiously closer, he saw that there was a strange pattern, like pinpricks, along the edges. What did this remind him of?

Lisa. Ben. Those changelings. But this sucker, whatever it was, had a bigger mouth.

He reached around for the gun in his pocket, feeling Cas step up close behind him.

"Dean, please."

"Please what, you bastard?" Dean said. He was unconscionably scared to turn around. Not out of fear for his safety, but out of fear that when he did, Cas, the dorky little guy he'd so quickly become friends with, would be gone—and a monster would be standing in his place.

He turned around slowly, raising his gun. Witch-killing bullets, still. Hopefully it would deal with this shit, too.

Cas stared at him in obvious distress. His hands twisted over each other; his face, though otherwise impassive, was betrayed by the anguish in his eyes.

"You knew," Dean said.

"Dean," Cas said, softly. A breath. Like he'd been defeated. He closed his eyes, and Dean pressed his finger to the trigger—

"There's nothing unnatural about the cows," Castiel said, in his low rumble of a voice. He sounded very sure of himself.

"What do you mean, there's nothing unnatural about the cows?" Dean said, finding himself echoing Cas's flat intonation.

"Put the gun away, Dean. If you look again, you'll realize it."

Dean lowered his gun with difficulty, as though he wasn't sure if he wanted to. Though of course he wanted to. He wasn't even sure why he'd taken it out in the first place. Startled, he guessed. He hoped he hadn't scared Cas too badly.

He turned around and looked at the cows.

They were a bunch of sad looking cows. Obviously sick. Maybe it was some kind of poisoning, something in the food. He told Cas that.

"Good idea," Cas said. "I'll look into it."

"You should," Dean said.

They started back down the hill.

He was tired, for some reason. He didn't know why. Didn't know, either, why the image of those gaunt, soulless cows kept playing in his mind on the walk back to the Kline house. Their flat, yellowed teeth. The way their skin stretched and sagged. The resignation.

/

Cas realized he was out of it. He invited Dean inside, and Dean agreed, if only to give himself something to do. Cas was a bit of a tea fiend, though Dean would've preferred a beer. Still, he didn't want to be impolite, and the hot liquid itself seemed to do something for the uneasiness that had settled in his nerves.

"I hope I didn't disappoint you," Cas said. "What will you write about now?"

Dean shrugged, putting his empty cup back on his saucer. A small ring of tea pooled against the cool porcelain. Cas stood against the counter, leaning back, his legs crossed. He'd forgotten to pour himself a cup.

"Probably the stone circles," Dean said.

"That's a good subject for a story," Cas said, nodding eagerly. "In fact, if you wait till All Hallows' Eve, you could report on the orgies."

"—the what now?"

Cas shrugged. "It's the legend, anyway. All anyone knows is that strange things happen here on that night."

/

"Yeah," Sam said. "That lines up with what the others say. Supposedly, on Halloween, the mountains shake. People say all sorts of things—it meshes with the usual Halloween lore—but they were particular about the orgies. They aren't the usual kind. I'm not even sure if people are involved. There's just… creatures. Creatures on the mountain; no one knows what. No one's seen them."

"Well, great," Dean said. He'd a pounding headache; probably the heat. Sam had bitched to him to drink water, but he'd gone to the store and bought a pack of beer instead. It was almost as useful; and he could hold the cool glass to his forehead as he leaned against the hood of the car. "We can't stick around for three, four months waiting for something to happen."

"You're sure the cattle was a bust?"

"Sheesh, Sam, you wanna go check it out yourself? It really was nothing."

Sam held out his hands in surrender. "I'm not doubting you! It's just, they seemed pretty sure there was something off about it. I mean, the cattle mutilation was the reason we drove out here in the first place."

"I know," Dean said. "I know."

It wasn't the first time a hunt had dried up on them. For lack of leads, or any other reason. Hell, even with the hunt; the one that had started it all. But it never got easier to bear.

He still, too, remembered Cas' eagerness at the idea that the brothers might stay till Halloween. Thinking they were reporters following a story. Dean didn't want to say goodbye with some thin lie about how they'd be back soon. Didn't want to think about disappointing the guy, leaving him with his weird cursed town and no answers.

But Cas wasn't even the first witness he'd had to cut ties with. That was just life on the road.

"Maybe we could stay a few more days," Sam said.

"Really?" Dean side-eyed him. "I thought you were the one that hated the whole idea of this town?"

Sam shrugged. "I dunno. It's not like it'll kill us to dig a little deeper here." He glanced over at Dean pointedly, and Dean stopped his denial, realizing the out Sam had given him. He'd've done the same for Sam. With Sarah, with Madison—

Which meant this was the time where he should say "nah, I'm good," get in the car, and drive away from Dunwich, and the case, and Cas. But he didn't.

/

Though Sam kept up the pretense of working the case, there was really nothing more to be found. Dean, for his part, focused all his time on Cas. He drove over in the morning—found Cas already up and on the move, and joined him on the farm. There wasn't really much to be done. There were five chickens that laid eggs. Cas avoided the cattle; and the rest of the fields, but one, were lying unused. Still, that was more than enough. Dean had soon seen more zucchinis than he'd ever wanted to, and the damn things didn't seem ready to let up any time soon.

Cas wasn't an overly conscientious gardener. He was happy to take breaks, especially in the middle of the day, when he would usually retreat to the kitchen to make tea that Dean would drink. He'd begun to wonder why he didn't just tell Cas not to bother. He knew it had definitely gone too far when Cas, with an air of triumph, revealed that he'd discovered the wonders of the modern thermos, which meant they could skip the kitchen altogether, and instead just sit under the shade of the old trees.

It was kinda like a picnic, really.

"Hey, Cas," Dean said one afternoon, holding the thermos cup in his hand; "I dunno if me n' Sam are gonna be able to stay till Halloween."

"Oh," Cas said. Dean glanced over at him. Cas didn't seem surprised. Maybe a little down, but not surprised. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'm sorry to—to go," Dean said.

In a weird way, he didn't think he remembered the last time he'd had such peace of mind, before Dunwich. Maybe, years ago before the fire, before Mom died. But that was hazy, lost in memory, while this was bright, visceral. Still, he knew what Sam meant, about the curse on this town. He'd started to think it was getting to him, too. Today—well, it was the last day he would spend with Cas. Before he told Sam he was ready to leave.

He'd had weird dreams for the past couple nights, and they'd only grown more vivid. Always, he dreamed of the Kline house. At first he'd thought he was seeing it from the outside; but over the course of a few nights he'd realized he was seeing it from the inside.

He'd felt a jolt of disorientation at the moment, in the dream, when he realized he'd been looking at it all wrong. When he realized the house was around him, and felt a soft pull, like the lapping of waves, like something breathing.

He'd been in one of the rooms. In the way of dreams it looked like the attic room he and Sam shared in Zachariah Kline's house. He'd glanced over, unsurprised to find Sam asleep beside him. The slats of the roof seemed thin; almost broken. Or perhaps thick, covered in old earth. There was a smell as though it was covered in earth. Not garden loam, but the kind that gathered in haunted graveyards. A kind of zing on the back of your tongue.

He'd had a headache, in the dream. Not an ordinary one, but the kind that whited out your vision; the kind that sent him crashing back to the bed. He remembered thinking this was what Sam experienced in his visions, and at the thought, the white lance of pain had pulled back, allowing him to see what it was he'd been trying to see.

The open lawn of Sentinel Hill. Cut off by the trees around it and the blue sky above. Alone, but filled with beings that were there, and should be. Dean knew, in the dream, that in a sense they'd always been there, not on the same plane but in between the normal span of the world. He didn't see much of them. He heard them, though; like a ringing; a tinnitus that filled his ears until no other sound was discernable. They were huge; their heads seemed to touch the sky itself. And where he looked for faces, sure that he ought to see some, there were faces, but animal ones. He'd begun to be afraid.

Then Cas was there. Standing small among the giants, but as though he belonged as one of their number. Dean found himself rising from the bed—the stone? He wasn't sure what it was. He wasn't sure where he was, either, only the colors on his tongue made it hard to focus. He was pretty sure he was tripping. For a moment he worried, looking for Sam in the madness. He knew he needed Sam, if he was gonna get out of here. Sam would know the way.

But then Cas was at his arm. Pressing a hand to his shoulder. "Dean, don't worry. Sam will be along."

"Gotta get away," Dean said faintly. The giants around them had begun to move, faster and faster. The only clear image was Cas, and even he wavered a little around the edges, as though he'd been put through a prism. It reminded him of a 70's b-movie, only immediate and horrible. The touch of Cas was grounding, though; and the sharp scent of thunder filled the air, though the sky was clear. The giants seemed to be reaching for him, and when they touched him he felt himself grow lax in their grip, as though his body wasn't his to move.

"Good," Cas said gently. "Good. Perfect. Dean, you're doing so well."

He'd woken up with a raging hard-on and an uneasy sense that he'd stayed too long in the town of Dunwich.

On the hill, under the shade of the trees, Cas finally seemed to grope his way to an answer. "Dean. Are you a religious man?"

That startled a laugh out of him. "Fuck no."

"I see," Cas said. His cheeks were pink with the heat, and with sweat. "Is that something you think about often?"

"Hm?" Dean was drunk on the glimpse of Cas, the rough stubble of his five o'clock shadow, the dark wrinkles below his squinting eyes. Those blue, blue eyes—

"Fucking, I mean," Cas said, in a low voice, and the sound went straight to Dean's groin.

"Yeah," Dean admitted. "More when I'm with you."

That startled a smile out of Cas; one of those rare, true ones. He leaned forward, gently; and Dean met the motion. Felt Cas' rough chapped lips, uncertain like a virgin exploring the wonders of making out; the slide open as Dean pushed inside; then, as though figuring out the way of it, Cas was moving too, with a sudden frenzy; stifling Dean's groan in his own mouth, bringing one sturdy hand over the back of Dean's hair, over his cheek, pulling him closer until Dean was dropping the thermos cup—had he still been holding the cup? And climbing forward, bumping knees with Cas. And the heat, it pooled down, trickles of sweat where they moved under their clothes. The smell of the ground was rank and very near, now.

Dean leaned back to catch his breath, startled at the miasma that reminded him of the swamp he'd passed through with Sam; his breath moving through his lungs like he'd been drowning. Cas pressed the whorl of his thumb over Dean's cheek, down to his throat with the barest presence, just the rough sweat of his thumb. Yet Dean felt pinned by it. The smell was chokingly close in his nostrils, and he should have been afraid. Some deep, animal part of his brain was screaming at him to be afraid, as though he were again in that other place among the giants. But that part was drowned out by the low, pulsing want in him; the want that had him pressing up against Cas' other hand, legs open. He was still in his fucking jeans. He was still in his fucking jeans, and humping Cas' palm like a teenager. But he didn't care.

He was chasing his own desire, or maybe being hooked by it; by the lure in Cas' gaze, and the presence of his eyes; like the sea, dappled in sunlight, calm on the surface but deep, very deep.

He only saw wonder. He wasn't afraid of the deep.

Then—after; Cas said, "did that satisfy you?"

Dean looked over. "Satisfy? Yeah—that's one way of putting it. C'mon, let me return the favor."

Cas smiled again, quietly. "Maybe later. Right now, I'm happy just to make you happy." And—in the shade under the trees, far away from any prying gaze—he tangled his fingers in Dean's own.

.

.

.