"Dean? Fuck- Dean! Wake up or I'm gunna have to shoot him or something."
Dean stirred, fighting against the warm dark that had cocooned him in a safe embrace, somewhere far from hunts gone bad and mild concussions or belligerent younger brothers.
"Stop it. I don't want to shoot an Angel." Sam's voice almost sounded amused. Frustrated, scared and definitely tired- but amusement had wormed its way in somehow.
Surfacing from sleep was like trying to pull himself from under a wreckage of hurt, each stir of muscle brought a new spike of pain, a half remembered bone fracture or purpling bruise. He forced his eyes open and almost laughed, but it came out as a strangled, aborted sort of sound. Sam was angrily standing outside Dean's open door, hands up in a placating fashion and somehow the Angel had managed to free one of the seat belts, swinging it like a mace above his head. From the red welt on Sam's left wrist, it made for a decent weapon. Dean also took slight note of the fact that they seemed to have arrived in Sam's garage, the Highlander parked and sheltered under a florescent light that bathed them all in a bluish glow.
"Hey." The word clicked in his throat, catching dry and painful. He tried again. "Hey."
They both looked at him, Sam waring an expression of relief and the Angel with one of holy defiance.
"He won't let me near you." Sam explained simply, cradling his hurt wrist against his chest.
"Yeah?" He struggled to find his voice, pushing himself up to his elbows, muscles shaking in protest. "Can't say I blame him, Sasquatch." It was not much of a joke, but he made himself smile, so mission accomplished? He raised one hand and gently took hold of the other end of the seatbelt. "Come on, dude, put it down. No one's gunna hurt ya."
And shockingly, that is when the Angel decided to start talking. At least, Dean thought he did, though if they were really words, they were unlike any he had ever heard before. It was a bit like the trilling of bells, if bells were loud enough to shatter eardrums and send spider web cracks though the Highlander's safety glass windows. It was beautiful and painful and Dean was fairly sure he might be deaf. And then it stopped and both Dean and Sam were covering their ears and there was no sound other than a distant ringing that seemed to come from somewhere near Dean's temples, vibrating down the line of his jaw and thrumming all the way down through his ribs. He felt like a tuning fork and it was far from pleasant.
Dean thought he might be sick again, but then the Angel was putting a hand on his cheek and it was cool to the touch, soft and strangely soothing despite the scratch of dried blood between them. The ringing faded and so did the wave of nausea. The Angel swayed dangerously, dark eyes rolling back in its head and just like that it collapsed against Dean's chest in a heavy thud, forcing out a painful breath from his lungs. The seatbelt clattered to the concrete outside the vehicle and it was the only sound for a long, fragile moment.
"Sammy? You ok?" Dean craned his neck, trying to see his brother outside the opened door, crouched on the ground, cowering with his hands tightly pressed over his ears. "Sam, it's asleep. Come on, get up. Get it off me."
Sam did not seem able to hear him and Dean was on his own. " 'M too fucking hurt for this." He struggled to roll the limp Angel off of him and slid unceremoniously out of the Highlander, landing with a whomp on the hard ground. A concussion and a few busted ribs was not enough for one night, he needed a bruised tailbone as well.
"He'll be fine in a bit. He's just wound up."
Dean reeled, looking towards the hood of the car, and at first, he could not recognize the man who stood there. He was short, with golden hair cut similarly to Sam's, pushed carelessly back from his high forehead, keeping his bright eyes clear. He was watching Dean with a glint in his eyes, a slow smile starting as if it was all he could do to keep from grinning, but it was not a grin when it finally broke, it was more of a smirk than anything else.
Dean recognized him.
It was the first Angel he had found, the one kept by the coven. After a year of convalescing he hardly looked like the same man, but that damnable smirk was unmistakable. When Dean had saved him, they had gone back to his hotel, and there Dean had patched him up with disinfectant and a needle threaded with floss. Dean had made jokes, he could not just sit there silently while sewing an Angel back together, so he rattled on with some of the most inane anecdotes he knew, the whole while sure that the thing he was stitching up could not understand a word he was saying. The Angel never spoke other than soft grunts of pain from time to time, or short hisses of breath between gritted teeth, but every time Dean looked at its face, it was smirking at him. Just a cocky little half smile like they were sharing some sort of secret.
He walked around the car, dressed in sneakers and jeans and a red button up that looked too large for him and placed a quiet hand in Sam's hair and the hunter relaxed, lowering his hands and blinking wildly.
"You should have just let me come with you, kido." The Angel said, still smiling. "Even half dead and with his grace ripped out he could probably still take both you clowns."
"We're alright, Gabe." Sam said softly, standing on shaking legs.
"You named it?" Dean was incredulous.
"He named himself." Sam offered out a hand to help his brother up.
"Whatever, dude." He stood and rubbed at his head, wincing in pain and regretting both movements. "Why is it even here? You agreed to keep an eye on it until it was better." He looked sidelong at the creature standing off to the side, peering into the backseat curiously. "You told me you found a home for it, somewhere safe and out of the way where- Sam. Sam, no." Dean groaned. "This isn't like some lost puppy, or a bird with a broken wing or something. You can't just keep stray Angels."
"Dean, your head is still bleeding and there is a homicidal Angel passed out in my car. Can we talk about this later… please."
It was the please that got him. The brothers 'pleased' each other with sincerity so rarely it ended up carrying at least twice the weight of a normal supplication.
"Yeah, yeah. Fine." Dean waved it aside, he wasn't up to the argument right at that moment anyways. He stumbled into the house, head spinning and feet dragging, leaving his brother and the pipsqueak Angel carry the larger, broken one inside.
Sam's house looked a lot like Dean remembered it from last time he had visited, freakishly clean with piles of books being the only disruption to the sparse landscape, books and cake. The cake was new. It was pink and coconut covered and half eaten. It was a big hideous blob of junk food on the coffee table flanked with one bottle of beer and one of peppermint schnapps. Dean lowered himself to the recliner, smiling at the knowledge that his clothes were filthy. He took the beer and it was warm, but still drinkable.
Sam and the blonde Angel called Gabe slunk into the room, carrying the second Angel between them, its long black wings dragging on the floor, leaving weak smears on the hardwood. "How's it doing?" Dean sucked down a mouthful of tepid alcohol.
"He's doing better than I was when you found me, Deano." The short Angel winked over his shoulder as he helped to maneuver the long limbed creature to the couch.
"Deano?" Dean snorted into the bottle. "I liked you better when you didn't talk, shortstack."
Sam sighed and left for a second to snag the first aid kit, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table and looking pointedly at Dean. "Put the bottle down."
"Yes, doctor." He said with a sigh and settled the thing down with a clank, leaning forward so Sam could poke at him.
And Sam did his worst, manhandling the cracked ribs, scrubbing iodine on the head gash and peeking into his eyes with a pen light to see if they could still dilate. "Was it a car accident?"
"What?" Dean hissed when he saw Sam getting out the floss. "Dude, it was like this demon… bear thing. It took a round of buck shot to the face and curb stomped my sorry ass- it-" Sam had started sewing and Dean's stomach did a neat little flip. It did not seem to matter how many times he had gone through this very same sort of medical emergency with his brother, it never got easier to see a needle coming at your face. "Then it just left or something."
"Looked like a car accident."
"Don't say things like that, you'll jinx it or something." He closed his eyes, counting the stitches as they were made.
"Hood dented, you spilled out on the pavement-"
"Angel refugee meteor and giant demon bear bitchslap. My baby's just fine. Don't you talk about her like that."
"I'm assuming that it's the pain, head injury, or invisible monster that messed up your memory of it- but the Impala is going to need some serious body work. Now hold this tight and don't fall asleep again." Sam shoved a bit of gauze against Dean's head and scooted to the other side of the table to tend to the mess on his couch.
"It wasn't invisible." Dean sulked. His head was pounding and that ache at the base of his spine that he had been trying to ignore had worsened. "I must have scared it off."
"Punching bags are a bit scary." The little Angel said around a mouthful of frosting.
"When the floor stops falling away I'm gunna' come over there and shove your little face into that pretty pink cake."
"You could at least buy me a drink first, cowboy." He said around a second finger full of frosting.
"Stop flirting and help me clean him up." Sam was smiling for some reason, and the little Angle simply saluted and did as he was told. It made Dean uneasy on at least three levels.
Dean watched the two working for a while in silence, wishing he had some vicodin, but knowing Sam probably would not give him any until they were sure he would not simply slip off into a coma. "So, what's up with this guy?"
Gabe did not even look up from where he was gently scrubbing away at a patch of blood that was not quite the right color. "Looks like a broken ulna, dislocated shoulder, maybe some internal bleeding-"
"No, I mean what's he got against Sam?"
Sam glanced up at that, looking a bit curious as well.
"Oh, that's just the demon blood." Gabe shrugged liquidly. "Once Cassy's feeling a bit better he'll come around, realize Sam's not one of them."
Sam frowned but returned to his best efforts of wrestling the thing's shoulder back into its socket.
"Cassy?" Dean leaned forward in his chair, resting elbows on his knees, making a face. "You know him or do you just go around giving everyone stupid names?"
"Sure I know him. He's my brother."
The shoulder finally slid into place with a sickening, moist pop and Sam sighed in relief. "Your brother? Like you came from the same litter or as in 'we are all god's children?' "
Dean could not see Sam's face but he could hear the doubt in his words.
Gabe shrugged again, his movements slowing down a bit. "Either way?" He offered in way of an answer. "Angel's don't reproduce like you guys, so I doubt it would make much sense even if I tried to explain. Castiel's just… he's just my little brother. He's a good kid too." And Gabe was really smiling then, just for a moment, something warm and admirable and fleeting.
"Is he always so violent?" Sam was wiping his hands on his jeans and packing back up the first aid kit. There had been some small, superficial cuts, but all in all, the damage was not nearly as bad as it first looked. He was dressed in dark slacks and a once white buttondown that they had had to sort of cut off of him because slipping over his swollen shoulder just seemed mean. The blood had been cleaned away from his face and neck and arms, leaving him pale other than the myriad of colors blossoming over his rib cage, wrists, and his split lower lip. Settled into Sam's couch he looked so small, and defenseless, like a child. All the fight he had shown after his fall vanished from him in the peaceful throws of sleep.
"He's a good soldier." Gabe explained with another shrug. "Took over his own garrison around the time I fell, but honestly? We all just do what we have to." And Gabe was grinning again, all sloppy and confident. "Most days he's as gentle as a lamb at Sunday dinner."
"Yeah, well, if it's all the same, I think I'll keep my distance until he calms down a bit and you can explain to him that I'm not part of your war." Sam stood and stretched, holding a hand out to Dean. "Keys?"
Right. The Impala. Dean could not just leave his baby in the middle of nowhere Main on the side of the highway. "I'll come with and drive her back."
"You can't even walk straight." Sam explained carefully, like speaking to a child. "I'll take Gabe- AND he will drive the Toyota back." He added the last quickly upon seeing the look of panic crashing over Dean.
"Can Angels even drive?" Today was starting to finally feel a bit too much.
"This one can, big boy. Gigantor taught me last month." Gabe was grinning again, carefully laying a blanket over his sleeping brother. "Now you two play nice while we're out."
Reluctantly, Dean handed his keys to Sam. "Don't let that thing touch my baby."
"And you stay awake." Sam traded the keys for the tv remote.
"And you look out for bears." Dean awkwardly held the controller and slouched down in his chair.
"Right." And Sam gave him a gentle smile, the kind that meant 'be safe' and 'I'm worried about you' and a slew of other things that did not need to be voiced because they both knew the words by heart.
Dean watched them go and closed his eyes almost the same instant he heard the garage door close. He fought back the tired feeling, fairly sure that he would be alright for a while. His fingers felt a bit numb as they dug into the buttons on the remote, but that was probably just the last dregs of shock and nothing new to worry about.
He found some infomercial for stick-on plastic jewels that went on lady bits, it was absurd, but there were some decent looking chicks showing of as much skin as was acceptable for late night cable, and that was just fine with Dean. He watched in silence, letting his eyes settle at half-mast and smiling occasionally.
That was, until he got an itch. Not a normal one that can be scratched, but the kind that starts somewhere at the back of your head and creeps over you with something akin to a chill. It was the kind that let you know someone was watching you. Dean took a slow, even breath and darted his eyes to the couch, jumping slightly in his seat.
The Angel was awake, or sleeping with its eyes open- either way it was a bit intense. Dean had never seen eyes so blue on a person before; they were like looking into the sea during a storm, just as deep and twice as treacherous. It felt like falling, or drowning or something more poetic that Dean could not voice because he had never been that smooth with his words.
"Hey." And if Dean's voice trembled just a bit it did not mean anything more than that he was tired.
The Angel blinked those depthless eyes and Dean took it as a hello.
"You feeling alright? I mean, all cuts and scrapes and impact fractures aside?"
Another blink, this one followed by and bit of an overall muscle twitch and it was trying to roll itself over onto its stomach.
Dean rallied himself to his feet, staggered over to the couch and helped the gentle barrel roll, then made a perfunctory check over the thing's band aids and bits of tapped gauze. He adjusted the blankets and winced when he felt the slick squelch of its wings under his hand. The Angel looked just as pleased by the touch, flinching hard and making a sound a bit like a whimper.
"Sorry, dude." Dean whispered for no reason other than it felt wrong to speak at full volume so close to the poor broken thing. He wished that he could actually see the wings instead of the half remembered blur of shadows beyond the edge of his vision. "Don't move, ok?" And Dean struggled back to his feet and went to the kitchen, filling a pot with water and grabbing the roll of paper towels.
Cleaning the wings took longer than Dean had expected, partially because he could not easily see them and had to rely mostly on touch, partially because the Angel kept wincing and shying away, but mostly because they were just so damn big.
Sam came back before Dean had finished cleaning the first one.
"The rain washed most of the blood off we can have her towed to a shop in the morning if you want, but she's driving well enough you could probably make it to Bobby's." Sam tossed a set of keys on the table and settled down into the vacated recliner, picking up the forgotten beer from the floor. "What are you doing?"
"I've taken up basket weaving, what does it look like?" Dean muttered and placed a handful of soggy, loose feathers on the table. He had a neat little pile going beside him and for some reason it was fairly amusing that once detached, the long black feathers were quite visible. Though soaked in congealing blood they hardly resembled feathers and looked much more like a bunch of dead, soggy caterpillars, or again, something slightly more poetic- the head injury really was making it hard for him to come up with good analogies.
"How can you see what you're doing?"
"I can't, but it needs to be done and he's not up to it." Dean rolled his shoulders, "If you're gunna just sit there and watch I'll have to charge you."
Sam tossed back the last of the beer and stood, stealing the pot of dirty water and going into the kitchen.
"Where's your puppy?" Dean called over his shoulder, smoothing his hands down to the base of the first wing, satisfied with the work so far. The Angel on the other hand looked far from pleased. Even when Sam came in and sat down, Castiel had not looked away from Dean, he was transfixed, like he was stuck with his brights on. He was pale and trembling, his eyes wide and showing far too much white, but he had stopped whimpering and trying to get away, so it seemed that he had finally come to terms with the fact that Dean was going to help him. Whether or not the help was wanted.
"Gabe. His name is Gabe, and he's in the garage getting his brother's blood off the upholstery of my car."
"Are we going to talk about the fact that you are keeping a pet Angel?"
Sam set the pot back down beside Dean, full of clean water, and held out a cold beer. "He's not a pet. He's… more like a roommate."
Dean took the beer, still gently petting the clean wing, marveling at how soft the parts that weren't injured could be. "Roommates are typically human." He reminded.
"I don't remember that one from the roommate rulebook." Sam said and picked up the pile of filthy paper towels and went back to the kitchen. "He's a good friend, Dean. Just leave it alone."
He scoffed at his brother and started in on cleaning the second wing. "You want me to leave it alone? You've been living with a dude for a year and lying to me about it. This seems like one of those things we actually should talk about."
"You wanna hug it out? Geeze, Dean, you must have hit your head harder than I thought." And Sam was smiling, just a little as he sat back down on the recliner.
"Bite me." And maybe he was a little less gentle than he should have been with his handful of broken wing because Castiel was suddenly whimpering again, his eyes finally closed and a traumatized look on his pale face. "Sorry, dude." And Dean had lost count of how many times he had whispered those two words.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Gabe had come in through the kitchen and wore a purely indescribable look on his face.
"Since when has triage become so mysterious to you guys?" Dean looked over in exasperation. "And are Angels even allowed to swear?"
"They are when they catch an ape molesting their baby brother."
And Dean's hands were up in surrender so fast his wrists hurt. "What?" But Gabe did not answer, just stalked over on his short legs and roughly shoved Dean out of the way. The other Angel did not seem to take much notice of the change at first, but the longer his wings remained untouched the more he relaxed, until those eyes opened again. He looked up at his older brother, confusing settling over his delicate features. It was a blank, endearing sort of expression that would have been funny if Dean was not staring in growing discomfort between his own hands and the shifting black mess of wings that he had been basically petting for almost half an hour. Had he crossed over some angelic boundary? Were wings a kind of Angel taboo? Dean really hoped not. He did not want to consider the ramifications of feeling up an injured Angel, especially a male one.
Gabe had started talking in whatever weirdo angelic language that presumably, both he and his brother knew and the words did not seem like anything that should be allowed to be made by human larynges. It was all soft breath and distant thunder and the frantic beating of bird's wings. And for some strange reason it made Dean want to cry. He didn't of course, it did not matter how bad a night he was having.
Still trying to shake off the horror of what he may or may not have just done to the hurt Angel; Dean almost missed the thing sitting up. It was all jerky and stiff movements, joints cracking and punctuated with soft grunts of pain. No one offered to help him, he really looked determined to do it on his own. He did not speak to Gabe, but swayed where he sat, looking to be struggling to find his bearings.
Once he settled, he looked around the room, seemingly for the first time, his eyes flicking over Sam and the furniture with equal interest. He paused only a moment on Dean, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly and the corners of his lips tightening. But then he was looking elsewhere, at the tv that was still running, the remnant of the pink, fluffy cake, the drops of condensation forming on the neck of Dean's undrunken beer. The whole while Gabe was still talking, possibly in greeting, but maybe explaining things, maybe even asking how the war had been going. Dean could only guess.
Castiel took a rusty sounding breath, turning his head to look at his brother. He watched him for a few drawn out moments, blinking slowly from time to time, and then he suddenly punched the shorter man square in the jaw, rocking him back on the little table.
An extremely dense silence came into being. Dean had a hand halfway to his knife, Sam was almost out of his chair and Gabe was staring wide eyes and stricken at the other Angel. Then Castiel was lowering himself back down onto the couch, letting out two words that rattled the windows, and he closed his dark eyes again, settling himself in a determined way that looked like he wanted to be left alone.
Gabe started laughing, rubbing his jaw and grinning wildly.
"What the hell just happened?" Dean asked a little too loudly, ears still ringing.
"Cassy doesn't know how to use his inside voice yet. But he's feeling better."
"Are you alright?" Sam came out of his chair, resting a hand on the little Angel's shoulder in an oddly intimate way that Dean would have brought into question immediately if it wasn't for the collection of other strange little moments from that evening that made little to no sense whatsoever.
"Don't worry about it, kido. He hits like a girl." But there was already a bluish bruise forming despite his grin or words of reassurance. "He just needs a bit more sleep." The smile faded a bit as he stood, turning to Dean. "And you- try to keep it in your pants, ok?"
Dean just stared down at the shorter man blankly, so stunned by the suggestion that he was at a loss for words. It was a highly uncommon state to find Dean in, to be honest. One that Sam decided to take quick advantage of before his brother came back around and started swinging.
"It's almost four. The sun will be up in a few hours." He took Dean by the shoulders, gently steering him down the hall towards the back of the house. "I know how much you hate sunrises." They paused at the bathroom and Sam fished out two vicodin from the medicine cabinet before leading Dean to the little spare bedroom. It wasn't much, a few more piles of books, a computer sitting on a clean IKEA desk and one of those blue futon/couch things that folds open to be an uncomfortable bed. "There're blankets in the closet and I'll bring your duffle in from the Impala."
Dean stood there looking up at Sam, having to crane his neck far more than he remembered, and for a moment really missing when they were kids and he was the taller one. "Today- it's been a real weird day, Sammy."
Smiling, Sam nodded. "Next time, call ahead. We'll have a barbecue instead." It was a gentle promise that sounded absolutely wonderful right then. "Get some sleep."
Most of the time, being bossed around by his kid brother, really wound Dean up, but not tonight. He shoved the vicodin into the back of his throat and swallowed, grinning. "Yes, doctor."