The first thing Dean notices on the walk to campus health services is that, for not being that much shorter than him, Castiel is not very heavy, a fact that makes Dean want to drag the other boy home to Kansas and try to pass him off as "just a friend," if only so Mom can sit Cas down and fucking feed him. In all likelihood, Dean could just pick Cas up and carry him down to Fuller House with one arm at his back and one underneath his knees — but the dumb bastard insists on walking, even given the extent to which he's leaning against Dean and the ferocity with which he wraps his skinny arm around Dean's shoulder. Snow crunches as they traverse the paths, and Cas leaves a dribbling trail of — and Dean can't help wondering why they didn't just have a day off. It's the end of the semester, for God's sake, and the custodial staff has obviously decided to skive off.

Getting down to Fuller shows a similar story, albeit a more discouraging one. Cas breaks off from Dean and drops the bloody snowball he's been holding to his nose, swearing up one side and down the other that he can get himself inside — until he tries the door and finds it locked. He jostles the handle; it still doesn't budge. Jerking the door gets him all of nowhere — and finally, he pulls a cellphone out of the hip pocket of his black jeans (which look like their designer wanted them to fit tighter than they do). Dean says nothing about the fact that Cas has health services' number in his phonebook, not even when he slumps against the door and lifts up the leg that Travis kicked to get the weight off of it, and certainly not when they hear the loud ringing echo out of the building. Asking questions, Dean knows from experience, has great potential not to go well, either by inciting anger or by simply taking you somewhere you didn't want to go.

Hanging up his phone, shoving it back into his pocket, Cas half-sighs; the underlying groan takes over when he makes the mistake of stomping the ground in frustration. He staggers away from the door and, without waiting for permission, Dean comes to catch him, slipping Cas's arm back around his shoulders. "Who the Hell decided to close health services, but not cancel classes?" Cas gripes, leaning into Dean a little further this time. "I mean, honestly — what kind of harebrained, half-witted, moronic—"

"Do you wanna chill out with the damn… righteous indignation kick until we know if you're concussed or not?" Dean points out, brow furrowing as he looks down into the blue-eyed glare he's getting. "Hey…" he tacks on, almost apologetically. "I'm just saying, Cas. You probably shouldn't stress yourself after that—"

"You mean after your friends kicked me, got me in the stomach and the nose — which might be broken — took I don't even know what to the back of my head—"

"That would've been Travis's steel-toed boots."

"Then we are going to the hospital, because I am almost certainly concussed. Let's get walking."

Well, who is Dean to argue with that kind of logic? Holding Cas around the waist, letting Cas stumble along beside him because it's unlikely that his opinion on the matter of 'to pick the librarian up and bodily move him, or not to get a new one ripped' has changed since they first set off, hoping to have a nice chat with that bitch of a head nurse, Dean sets off down Willow Drive. They walk past the smaller housing units — the ones that hold maybe ten people, have working kitchens and bathrooms that don't service an entire hall, but you have to clean everything yourself — and head down the hill; the main dining hall, the post office, and the science center pass by them, just like the cars that come and go, no doubt skipping out for break early.

"Is it true the science building's haunted?" Cas asks as they take a right at the stop sign that marks the end of the road, making their way onto a sidewalk, which heads down another hill, leading them into town. Dean arches an eyebrow down at the other guy; he's pretty sure that he's never met a preacher's kid who believed in ghosts and things like that. Even Tessa — daughter of faith-healing Pastor Roy, back at home, and his wife Sue-Anne — didn't play into that kind of stuff, and she had some pretty strange taste. Cas shrugs. "It's nothing — I mean, you don't have to answer if you don't want to. It's just… one of my friends mentioned it, that he was down there, working late on a project, and some… strange things started happening."

"What kind of strange things?" Dean inquires, trying harder to think of who Castiel's friends are. He can't honestly recall any time he's seen the kid with anyone else, much less anyone else who acted friendly with him. Pretty much everyone seems to have the same attitude as Wayne and Travis: Novak's kid is a fucking freak, and it's in everyone's best interests to stay away from him, unless you want to go and remind him of where he stands with the rest of us.

"Well. What he said," Cas explains, looking up at Dean instead of at his feet, "was that he was in one of the chemistry labs, experimenting with this process he's devised to emulate the Philosopher's Stone…" He trails off briefly, at the bemused way Dean frowns and wrinkles his nose. "It was a mythical construct that could grant eternal life and turn lead into gold—"

"Like in Harry Potter?" Dean doesn't think before raising this question; he just spits it out, remembering Sammy's extended phase of trying to be a wizard because he read about magic in those freaking books.

Cas sighs in a way that suggests he's heard this question before and has grown increasingly tired of it. "Yes, like in Harry Potter. …The British edition is actually titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; Scholastic and the American editors made JK Rowling change it because… I think they thought 'Sorcerer's Stone' sounded more interesting, or something." Dean has to admit: it does pack more of a verbal punch than Philosopher's Stone — and then he has to ask how the Hell Castiel's friend is trying to get the eternal life part. "He's not, not really anyway. …He used to have a sort of fascination with living forever, and when we were seven, maybe eight, he tried to tell me that he'd invented a chocolate-covered pill to cure death… but it turned out to be a raisin. …Which I didn't find out until he'd already talked me into jumping my bike into this rather large abandoned construction site near my father's house." Dean snickers, until Cas concludes: "…while I was already halfway to the ground."

Dean demands: "Jesus Christ, Cas — I… what the Hell kind of friend does shit like that?"

He just shrugs again and shakes his head. "Gabriel has a certain sense of humor, and he didn't think that I'd actually agree to do it. …And, to be fair, I'd accidentally wrecked an elaborate Lego structure he'd worked on for months, and I wasn't that badly hurt."

For a moment, Dean thinks to ask how Cas defines not that badly hurt, considering he's currently trying to walk around with a likely concussion, but he doesn't get the time to take advantage of that notion: as they come to the bottom of the hill, approaching the stretch of sidewalk that takes them to the bridge over the freeway, Cas hits a patch of black ice with his good leg. He stumbles, and slides around; he even yelps — but Dean manages to catch him before he hits the ground. He wants to say something — several witty possibilities run through his mind: It's okay, I've got you; Whoa, there, Tiger, quit trying to run away on me; You just naturally graceful, aren't you — but instead, Dean finds himself distracted. As he stares down at the pallor on Cas's cheeks, and the earnest fear that's widened those blue eyes… Dean swallows thickly, trying to ignore the wrenching feeling he gets in the bottom of his stomach, as though someone filled it with ice and stuck it on a rollercoaster, trying to push away the compulsive, burning need he feels to protect Castiel — the only thing that snaps him out of it is Cas himself:

"Uh, Dean?" he points out, gently nudging his hip into Dean's. "I don't think that standing here is the best idea…"

"Yeah, right… Of course."

Dean gets them onto the bridge and Castiel asks if he can have a moment to sit and catch his breath. It's not a bad idea, Dean supposes, not least because he's been up and moving around on the bad leg for a while now, which can't be any good for him. For all it's cold, and for all the trees along the highway look like they're dead, and for all Cas has to slide some snow out of the way before he sits down, the weather really isn't so bad today. The sunlight's practically white, like it's been stripped down to its basics, what part sneaks out past the half-baked clouds, anyway — and trying to stare up at it makes Dean flinch, look back down to Castiel, at the pained contortion of his forehead and the dazed look in his eyes that Dean's been too busy to notice until now — oh, shit.

"Cas?" Dean prods, reaching out a hand but hesitating before he rethinks putting it on Cas's shoulder. "Hey, Cas, come on — talk to me."

"It's nothing," he lies, shaking his head and wincing. "Just a headache."

Fuck. "Can you still see? Is your vision blurry at all?"

"What kind of questions are those?"

"Just answer them, Cas!" Even in the best possible scenario with the new symptom, they have to walk the three blocks to Saint Pete's quickly.

"No!" Cas snaps. "My vision is not blurry, I can still see perfectly fine — now, what are you going on about?"

Dean stands and holds out a hand to help Cas up. "They're questions you're going to get at the hospital anyway," he explains, getting Cas back into position to use him as a human crutch. "They're supposed to help figure out how bad a concussion is."

They start to walk, and Cas huffs pensively. "Do I want to know how you know so much about concussion diagnostics?" he asks, at the end of the bridge.

Dean shakes his head. "Probably not."

The next three blocks pass in nearly perfect silence, marred only by the occasional grunt from Cas as the pace picks up. Explaining what happened to the nurse at the check-in desk is goddamn surreal: Dean jumps in, starting to tell her about how Travis and Wayne roughed him up… but when he gets to his own involvement, he chokes up. Some guilty sensation stings at the insides of his lungs — and Cas jumps in to say that Dean's a concerned friend and helped him get down from campus. As the nurse eyes them — more than a little suspiciously — Dean puts on his best 'we are lying, but oh, God, please believe us, we are just too damn charming for you not to' grin. The nurse rolls her eyes, demands Castiel's wrist, and slaps a purple plastic bracelet on it. Adjusting his hold on Cas's hip, Dean leads him over to the rows of chairs and sits them down. He wants to say something, anything — but the lack of words between them drags on for far too long, until Dean wonders if all he can hear anymore is the ticking of the clock on the wall and the obnoxious teenager picking ringtones for her iPhone without regard for the other people here.

"You know, you don't have to stay with me," Cas finally announces, keeping his voice down and glancing around as though he expects his father to come bursting through the doors at any minute.

"Yeah, well, I want to." Looking away from a lady who's come in with her sick kid, Dean sighs. "Cas," he whispers, just for the two of them to hear, because it's now or never and he needs to get this off his chest. "You know… Anything I said back there with the guys, and jerking on your arm… getting you on your knees like that… You know I didn't mean it, right?"

Cas nods. "And I told you that I forgive you." He wrinkles his nose, looking Dean up and down; his hand feels right at home on Dean's shoulder. "If you hadn't stepped in, they might have hung around and managed to do worse. Compared to other possibilities, this set of injuries isn't all that bad."

Dean doesn't know if he has the heart to point out that not all that bad still isn't good — but then one of the nurses calls out, "Castiel Novak," and he finds he doesn't have to. As he leads Cas back — feeling something like a hug when he snakes Cas's arm around his shoulders — Dean appraises the woman who's going to be looking out for him today — her smile looks genuine, if tired, and her scrubs have cartoon puppies on them. At least, he figures, she's better than the stupid bitches at the ER back in Lawrence.