AN:
So, despite the fact that this chapter has been done-ish for... well, a long while now... both my lovely beta-reader and myself have independently been devoured by our school work.
She's still in the throes of exams (as far as I know), and in order to let her struggle in peace, I corrected my own stupid story. We are getting neigh to the end, and I'm looking forward to calling this hot mess of a story complete.
For those of you who have finished your classes, for those who are still drowning in finals, and for those who are enviously not students but are very much still stuck doing whatever it is you have to do- I wish I could offer words of encouragement, or congratulations, or just warm feelings directed from my corner of the interwebs. But my finals killed me about a week ago and I have nothing left to give.
Other than this.
From me to you, my dear (and frankly far more patient then I deserve) readers: another chapter.
They had originally intended to only stay at Bobby's overnight, but their sense of purpose seemed to have fled in the wake of the storm. They would stay, if only long enough to make some sort of plan. Dean didn't know where to pick up- but he did know one thing and that was that they were not telling Sam that Michael had come by, because that meant telling him that Gabriel wouldn't be- and Dean was not mentally prepared to break his kid brother.
He came up out of the basement, Cas close on his heels, hands rucked up under Dean's shirt, fingers caught in the waistband of his jeans. The Angel seemed to be starving to touch him, like breaking skin contact would actually hurt him somehow, and Dean (not sure that it wouldn't) allowed it without complaint.
They got a quick shower before going to the grocery store with Sam. To be honest, quick was somewhat subjective at that point- but at least it was quiet... Or at least it was as quiet as they could manage, because distantly Dean was aware that Sam was somewhere nearby and didn't need to hear the two of them indulging in a little original sin.
They dressed in clean clothes, which felt wonderful, though it was a marginally difficult task for Dean considering the extra pair of hands doing their best to undermine his progress. Cas just kept touching him over and over, like suddenly remembering that he could, taking his time and taking everything out of Dean.
And he allowed that too.
Even if Sam didn't.
Heavy fist falls pounded against the door like a battering ram. "You two yahoos about done already?" Sam's voice promised the bitchface that Dean could hear even if he couldn't see.
"Yahoos?" Dean chuckled out the word against the curve of Cas' throat. There were hands tight in his hair, and the two of them were pressed together against the door Sam was so inconsiderately banging away on. It was the best they could manage with their clothes on, as close as they could get.
"Are we yahoos?" Cas' voice was worse for the wear, but he had done bad things with it down in the basement. It sounded like it hurt to speak. His words far rougher than normal, closer to a growl that anything else- but the Angel was smiling, rocking back and forth, a glimmer of amusement in his lidded eyes, still swimmingly dark with lust.
"You might be." Dean admitted in hushed tones and earned himself a sharp tug at his hair from Cas who took offense for some reason to the name calling.
Dean reluctantly moved his hands to the Angel's hip and pushed him back to hold him at arm's length. "We'll be right out." He called to the door.
"You better be." Sam grumbled. "Storm's rolling back in and I'd like to get food while we still can."
"Yeah yeah." His thumbs notched perfectly into the dimples of Cas' hip and Dean grinned while the Angel flashed another smile, hesitant with a glimpse of teeth. It was a shadow of Dean's own smirking grin that he wore like a second skin. It didn't suit the Angel or his gentle demeanor.
Dean kissed the smile off Cas. Slow and deliberate – just to make sure he got every last hint of it.
Maybe Sam needed to get food, but not Dean. He could live off the taste of the Angel. He was already half drunk on it.
But Sam was thundering at the door again. "Stop making kissy faces and let's go."
"M'not making kissy faces." The lie was as easy as it was obvious. But seriously, kissy faces? What were they, eight years old?
"I can hear you through the door." Sam complained in that way that he did so well.
"He can hear us through the door." Dean reiterated as if Cas hadn't heard, and the Angel blinked his heavy eyes and nodded like a promise to try and keep it down next time. "We'll have to behave."
"Aren't we behaving?"
Behaving badly perhaps. They were conducting themselves like two teenagers on prom night, and maybe Dean was a little too old for this, but if he was then Cas was DEFINITELY too old- and it didn't really matter except for the fact that Sam seemed hell-bent on interrupting them.
Everything could fall down around them right now and Dean wouldn't give a good god damn.
He deserved a few moments of mercy in the midst of a life that was borderline Hell on a good day. The world and its seemingly endless problems were feeling a bit too much for one lowly Winchester to handle.
All the problems he had seemed to be mounting and there was no solution in sight.
He still had a stubborn extra shadow clinging to his bare feet (though it was behaving itself for the time being).
He needed to keep himself from becoming vessel to an Archangel as well as possibly kill the very same holy creature, though he had no idea how he would manage that one.
There was a young girl somewhere, who had gotten involved because of him, and was very likely possessed with an Angel of her own. Dean had no idea if there was anything left to save in her- but he had to try because he was who he was.
Agreeing to help the Winchesters was some sort of cosmic death sentence. You got your frequent customer card punched each time you showed your face, and sooner or later you would get your free sandwich.
And in this case (as most cases) 'free sandwich' meant very and thoroughly dead.
Gabriel had tried to help them too- it hadn't ended well for him, and he was a damned Archangel. There was nothing that Dean could have done for him, but knowing that didn't stop the guilt.
Was it really wrong that Dean was grasping for any glimmer of hope, any speck of light in the coming darkness?
He didn't think so.
He would deal with Michael later. He would deal with a darkly looming apocalypse, fallen Angels, extra shadows, and everything else later.
Right now Cas' mouth was against his, teeth grazing his lower lip. The Angel kept kissing him like Dean was his primary source of oxygen and each time their mouths met was like forgiveness. Forgiveness for everything wrong Dean had done. Everything wrong he had thought of doing- everything he would completely fuck up in the near and distant future. His world had telescoped down to Cas' impossible mouth against his. He was as damned as a vandal in a shrine- but if an Angel, a creature born of heavenly grace and goodness could kiss him like this… could actually love him… who was he to consider it anything short of divine forgiveness?
Sam was the only thing that kept Dean from pulling Cas back down to the basement and trying his best to forget all the guilt he horded. He could sweat and strain in the Angel's embrace until that apocalypse came huffing and puffing at their door.
There were worst ways to go.
But Sam needed him.
And Dean had a suspicion that part of his baby brother would always need him.
And right now Sam needed him to keep his pants on and accompany him to the grocery store- which beneath all pretenses meant that Sam needed someone to take his mind off Gabriel.
And Dean's own needs, whatever he felt he deserved, whatever he felt that life owed him- it would always take a backseat to the moose waiting impatiently on the other side of the door.
He stole one last kiss like an apology and pulled his boots on, grabbing his gun and tucking it against a hip, beneath his shirt. His cell phone, battered and faded, it's little flip screen grey and scratched to hell, got tucked into a pocket with every good intention to charge it when they got back from the store.
He grinned and tipped Cas a faint smile as he pulled open the bathroom door.
Sammy looked over his shoulder, halfway down the hall, picking at the peeling wallpaper. They shared half a smile and a knowing look. It was the same look Dean had given him back in Main when he realized his brother had a live in boyfriend.
It had been weird, but Sam had been happy, so Dean let it go.
And now, even if just for an afternoon, Dean was happy too, and Sam let it go.
Sometimes they didn't even act like brothers.
Sometimes they were actually nice to each other.
.:.
The whole way into town Dean did his best to keep up an asinine conversation with Sammy, trying to get his brother to remember little details of a trip out west they had made when Sam was fifteen. Sam had managed to crack a few ribs and John had left his boys for almost a week in a dive motel in a town called Livermore. The motel didn't even have cable, so the brothers spent most of the hot California nights sitting on the bluffs behind a drive-in theater watching silent action films and filling in the dialogue as best they could. It was the first time Dean got Sam drunk- or at least that drunk- drunk enough that they had to stagger back to the motel, leaning on each other like they still hadn't gotten their land legs.
Cas watched them silently from the backseat of Sam's Toyota, one hand thrust into the front seat, the long fingers of his uninjured hand loosely curled against Dean's.
Dean kept the contact, but it was secondary in his mind, because he had actually got Sam to laugh by reenacting some of their awful movie dubs- they had watched 'Judge Dredd' at least nine times that summer and Sam never could keep it together when Dean went into his god-awful Stallone impression.
It had been a hazy week almost a lifetime ago, but it still drew that wry smile on his kid brother's face and a startled laugh from somewhere deep and innocent sounding, and Dean did his best not to over congratulate himself.
They drove to an all night WalMart- it was still early evening, but with the heavy storms most of the other businesses had closed shop. Small towns were weird like that sometimes. They got basics to make a few meals if they needed them, things that would keep, just in case they left and Bobby took his time coming home. Dean put a bottle of Wild Turkey on the conveyor belt and Sam eyed him, but didn't say anything.
Dean knew he couldn't just keep not telling Sam what had happened with Michael and Gabriel, but he also knew that he couldn't just do it sober.
Sometimes it was good to know yourself.
The ride back to Bobby's was more subdued, like the brothers could only keep up pretenses for so long before it became a bit too strained.
The rain was picking back up along with the wind and clouds dark enough that there was no way to tell if they had any daylight left or not. Sam turned on a CD and Dean did his best to not sneer at the music choice. He could suffer through the rebellious 90's rock if that's what he needed to do to make Sam happy, just not for very long.
His headache was making a stunning return, and Dean had almost forgotten about it. It wasn't the easiest thing to do, forgetting that about twenty-four hours prior he had been bleeding in a motel after having his brother perform an Angelic exorcism on him. It felt like months ago, the memory already dim in a haze of pain and head trauma.
Life happened fast on the road, days and hours bleeding together in an endless tar strip dotted with the same cheap motel again and again. The only things that seemed to change were the nightmares- and even then the variations were slight.
The highlights were the only part that stayed clear in Dean's mind. But he had been cracked on the head one too many times over the past few weeks to keep a linear prospective on things like he used to be able to. He supposed that he had only been back with Sam for two days or so now- but how could it have been a less than a week ago that he was burning the corpses of Andy's family outside of Absarokee?
He closed his eyes and took a measure of comfort in the familiar darkness and hum of the road.
This was home as much as Bobby's.
His phone was ringing- not that he could hear it over the music- but he could feel the tingling vibration jostle his leg. Without much thought he wrestled the stupid thing from his pocket and looked at the little screen glowing like a beacon in the dark of the car and felt his whole body recoil from the thing.
There was a saying along the lines of 'speak of the devil', though Dean never really understood it.
Andy's number flashed small and far too brightly at him.
Dean rejected the call with the push of a button and tossed his phone into the cup holder between the front seats.
Sam glanced at his brother, then down at the phone before flicking his eyes back to the rain blackened road. He didn't ask. He probably didn't want to know.
Dean let the phone ring all the way to voicemail three times, completely unheeded. And whereas that was certainly not the first mistake in all of this, it was one of the more dangerous ones.
Despite the lulling feeling of being on the road with the drone of the tires against the wet asphalt, and the push of wind against the side of the car as a semi barreled past in the west bound lane, Dean's head had started to pound. It began as a whisper, a creeping feelings like finger nails sliding over his scalp, only to dig in against his temples, piercing and sharp.
His phone rang again and Dean dug it out of cup holder- half tempted to roll down his window and just say goodbye to the damned thing, but it wasn't Andy's name that flashed at him this time. It was Bobby's. He pushed a hand over his eyes as he was rocked by a wave of relief, and flipped the phone open.
"Yeah?"
"Listen up, you jackass. I need to talk to you." Andy's voice didn't sound anything at all like Bobby's. There was no moment of disillusionment, just fuel for Dean's sudden anger.
"Are you at the house?" Dean suddenly felt far more unreasonable, the hairs on his neck prickling. Bobby's house was a sanctuary. The bad things weren't supposed to know where it was, much less get inside and use the phone.
"Is Bobby back?" Sam glanced at him sideways, curious until he saw Dean's face, then he looked worried, his hands tightening on the wheel.
Andy sighed over the line. "This was the only way I could get you to talk to me without causing some kind of freak out."
"A freak out?" Dean was fairly sure he was about to have one right now, regardless of her better intentions. "How'd you get in? There are wards."
"Damn it, Winchester. You're so fucking dense. It's like talking to a corpse- only the dead listen better than you do." She sighed and then spoke slowly, over enunciating just so that he might get the idea. "Forget about the damn house."
The cadence was all wrong, Dean couldn't reconcile the terse clip of her words to the girl he had met a handful of times. "I told you yesterday to get out of the kid, you son of a bitch. I suggest you leave Bobby's house before I get there or I swear to God I'll shoot you in the neck." It wasn't and idle threat. Sure, Dean didn't want to hurt the girl, but the thing inside of her? Shooting probably wouldn't be enough to satisfy him. He wanted to strangle the fucking thing for creeping around and generally just causing him nonspecific paranoia and anger. He would give Sam a chance to do his little Angelic exorcist routine first- but if that didn't work? Dean didn't think he could hold himself responsible for his actions.
"I'm not calling you, you enormous jackass- your phone's been dead since Columbus you're just too incredibly stupid to remember." She was speaking loudly for the first time, her voice clear and strong and honestly a little too intense to be coming from a seventeen year old girl. "Tell your brother to pull the car over."
"Fuck off." Dean said in the most elegant of ways.
"Tell him to pull over!"
"Dean?" Sam was glancing at him again, taking his eyes from the road in quick, jerky movements.
Then there came a sudden feeling very similar to being hit with a brick wall (he had been hit with enough to know for certainty), blunt and rough and incredibly painful- and then it was gone, quick like a slap, leaving Dean breathless and aching in every corner of his body.
"Tell him!" Andy yelled into his ear and when Dean did not answer he was rewarded with another swift and merciless pummel. His lungs refused to take in any oxygen and he felt the familiar, warm trickle of blood running from his nose. His head was reeling, his thoughts jumbled, and even if he could pull out the right words from the mess that was his brain, he wasn't about to do what she told him to.
But Sam must have been tired of waiting for him to answer because he pulled onto the shoulder of the highway and flipped on the hazard lights. He unbuckled his seat and was half turned, ready as ever to do whatever he needed to do- and then all hell broke loose in the front seat.
There was a deafening noise, like tens of thousands of birds all taking wing. And then feathers- just fucking FEATHERS.
Everywhere.
They were crimson red like a cheap horror movie bloodbath, even in the dark. It was like drowning in the softest cloud in the world, only Dean always imagined clouds to be cold like fog, and this was so very warm. It was the kind of warm that you could just quietly sink into, die, and never mind a single second of it.
Dean was freaking out. Trying to unbuckle his seatbelt even though he couldn't see it, and he couldn't really move against an enormous weight that was suddenly pressing him into his seat, pressing against his chest enough that he couldn't get a full breath and his lungs were screaming in protest. His vision was going red around the edges- or maybe that was just the color of the feathers, bleeding into his eyes.
Good god, but they were everywhere.
Dean was trying to find his gun but he couldn't remember where he put the stupid thing and the whole while that he struggled against the softest attack in the world, he could hear Sam letting loose a litany of curses.
The dome light came on, and it only amplified the vibrant color of the damn feathers, not just blood red, but deep ruby too, the colors shifting like mad in the feeble light, in some places so dark they looked almost black, and in others flecked with an eye burning red like looking at the sun too long- and Dean was forced to close his eyes.
He could hear the rain now and feel a brush of cold reaching him through the insurmountable mess of feathers. Which, as he felt around in a futile attempt to find something useful for his hands to be grabbing, were actually a bit boney in places.
Two thoughts came to him.
One: someone had opened their door and was free of the feathery-car-deathtrap. It explained the light and the fact that he had some distant sensory awareness of the outside world.
Two: The feathers were most likely attached to part of a wing. And there was no good reason why there should be a mess of wings crawling across the front seat, folded chaotically against the roof, poking about in any space that had previously resembled empty, slapping at the windows, and thrashing in a delightfully soft but violent way that was sure to injure someone.
Now, Dean did not think that an Angel would necessarily come down from heaven with the express plan to cuddle him into soft, feathery submission or death- but there existed the very simple fact that Castiel's wings were completely black last Dean saw them, and that sort of precluded these new wings from belonging to anyone he knew.
Dean was a hunter of opportunity; kill the monster when you see it and let someone else sort 'em out. And this was one of those beautifully opportunistic moments in which he found that he typically lost his humanity.
There were times in his life that Dean did not resemble anything close to a kind man.
He took hold of one of those long, arching bones hidden among all the rustling, blinding feathers, gripping it tight between his hands. It wasn't just bone and feathers either. Dean could feel sinew and tendons, flexing and trembling beneath his hands, rippling and sliding like the muscles of a snake.
And Dean twisted his grip, he used his shoulder, he used the horribly obscured dashboard in front of him- he wedged that bone against the side of the seat and kept pulling. The bone started to bend from the strain. The feathers were going crazy around him, wings beating and thrashing and somewhere to his left he heard a window smash, the sharp tinkling off glass an almost surreal addition to the other sounds.
Then the bone broke.
It snapped in his hands and he felt blood, hot and visceral and very real.
His stomach heaved, and this wasn't the first time he had broken a bone- but there was something very wrong feeling about breaking this one.
Dean's door was wrenched open and someone he couldn't see joined in the battle against his seatbelt.
Rain was falling harder, coming in at an angle and soaking the feathers and the side of Dean's face, almost cold enough to send his body into immediate shock. Dimly he could make out Sam at his side, switchblade knife in hand, thoughtlessly cutting the stubborn seatbelt that otherwise refused to release Dean.
And then he was stumbling out of the car, boots slipping in the wet gravel, hands looking for a weapon that he still couldn't find.
"What the fuck is that thing?" Dean was surprised to hear that he was yelling. The rain wasn't particularly loud, neither was the fairly nonexistent traffic at this late hour, but Dean's blood was singing with adrenaline and he didn't think he could have talked at a normal volume if he tried.
"How should I know?" Sam was yelling too, and at least they were both in the same overly loud boat.
"Cas is still in the car-" Dean was running around to the other side before he finished the sentence, struggling with the door. Of course it was locked, though the window was blown out, long red feathers probing out into the night like clumsy fingers. Dean couldn't even see Cas inside, just the churning mess of wings. And seriously, what was this thing?
"Cas!" He forced his arm in through the broken window, fumbling blindly at the lock. "Cas, are you alright?"
And to his credit, Dean did not actually scream when Cas suddenly popped his head out the window like a hollow eyed jack-in-the-box, sputtering feathers from his mouth and blinking wildly into the rain.
"I am fine, Dean," he said in a damnably even tone, not at all upset about this like he should be. "But I do need some help getting out. It's very difficult to move in here." The edge of a wing came free of where Cas had evidently been holding it out of the way and the erratic thing wetly slapped him in the face as it beat up and down. "Gabriel, you need to stop." Cas sounded annoyed, but distant and muffled by too many feathers. "You have to calm down. You're making this very difficult."
Dean just looked blankly at the broken window and all those feathers, his mind churning slowly, processing.
"Sam…?" The word didn't carry very far in the rain.
But his brother was coming around the driver's side, looking at his open door and the mess inside, knife still naked in his hand for whatever good it was going to do him.
"I think… that might be Gabriel." Dean spoke slowly, calming down far more quickly than he thought he would be able to, but it might have had something to do with the fact that he was out of immediate danger, soaking wet and starting to shiver.
That possibility of hope was enough- and just like that, Sam was crawling back in through his open door, suddenly very careful of the long wings splayed out across the seat, trying his best not to kneel on them.
Dean couldn't be sure, but he thought counted more than two wings. There were maybe three of the enormously inconvenient appendages on the driver's side alone. And that didn't make much sense mathematically, because there were at least four-ish more that he could count through the windows, all ruffled and flexing in the backseat. And just how many wings did Gabriel have anyways?
Dean managed to jimmy the lock on Cas' door and the dark haired man came spilling out, hair and clothes in disarray. He clung to Dean for just a moment until he got his balance and when he looked up his eyelashes were heavy with caught raindrops, his cheeks flushed from the breathtaking cold and Dean almost kissed him on principle.
"Gabriel came back." Cas said simply, as if that explained everything. And maybe it did.
"Yeah, I can see that." Dean did his best to sound as sarcastic as he felt this situation warranted, though there were notes of relief in his words that he chose not to address. "Did he bring some friends with him?"
"No." Cas blinked at him, confused by the question. "But I believe he is hurt." And he was gravitating back towards the car, pulling away from Dean.
The blood on Dean's hands was all but washed away in the rain and maybe that was for the best if the writhing thing in there really was Gabriel. He found himself really hoping that Cas was wrong, because if he wasn't then Sam was going to be pissed Dean him for breaking part of his boyfriend.
Cas crawled back in through his door and Dean watched helplessly as the Angel's secondhand tennis shoes vanished behind him into the jumble of red.
Standing in the rain was possibly the least helpful thing that Dean could think of doing, but there was no way he was going back into that clown car. He wiped his hands against his increasingly wet pant legs and waited.
Hey, it wasn't always his job to save the day.
Sometimes you have to stand back and let someone else have a go at it.
Looking back, Dean wouldn't say that winged-menace popped out of existence so much as it sort of slowly just ceased to be, fading out in stages. There was a point when all Dean could make out were the tumbling shadows, echoes of things that already seemed to be too red in his mind- like some kind of bad trip, a psychedelic hallucination too vivid to have ever been real. And then they were gone and he could see Sam and Cas hunched around the shotgun seat, heads close together, their words drowned out by the sound of the rain.
He cautiously made his way to one of the open doors and peered in to check the damage.
One interesting thing about Angels that Dean learned that night was that their Grace was less of a proper internal mojo and much more like piercingly bright, white light that did all sorts of holly havoc if it got out.
Another neat thing he learned was that if Angels were injured in very precise ways, that their Grace would start leaking out… all over the place.
Also? Apparently having your Grace trying its best to make a break for it was painful enough that it sort of overrode the conscious need or want to keep wings hidden away from the dirty mortal realm.
It was just lucky that no Good Samaritan noticed them on the shoulder and pulled over to help. They would have had a hell of a time explaining what they were doing and what exactly was wrong with their friend.
Somehow it was decided that Dean should be the one driving after all that.
Sam took the back seat, cradling Gabriel's head in his lap while Cas sat beside him, his older brother's short legs folded awkwardly over his own. They duck taped a two-man pup tent over the broken window to keep the rain out and Dean never asked Sam why he had either of those things in his car. He also never asked if it was a good idea to use more of the duck tape on Gabriel- because apparently they didn't have a first aid kit but they had a tent and like three rolls of tape, and who was Dean to question the logic of this?
Sam kept asking if Gabe would be ok.
Cas kept telling him that he didn't know.
After about five miles, Sam stopped asking.
Gabriel never said a word.
In all the mess, Dean sort of forgot about his headache, and Andy calling him- and maybe that was for the best. At least for the time being, because there was very little he could have done other than worry about what the creature wearing her was doing to him.
Instead, he counted mile markers while he drove. He was pushing the speed limit, coaxing Sam's Toyota up to eighty five- which was as fast as he felt they could go with the rain pouring down around them like it was. The ride was freakishly quiet aside from the steady flap flap flap of the makeshift tent-window, and as such, it really startled everyone when Gabriel spoke into the silence.
"Deano, you drive like an old lady."
"I would rather not crash and die, thanks." Dean tightened his grip on the wheel and risked a glance in the rear-view mirror, and it was wholly worth it to see the amazing look of relief on Sam's face.
"Oh, god. Are you alright?" Sam's voice came out a little choked but no one called him on it.
"Sure I am. Why wouldn't I be?" The blonde Angel made an unpleasant noise. "Did you- is this tape?"
"Your Grace needed to be contained." Castiel said simply. "Which I find odd since you told me that you had given up your Grace when you left home."
"I never said that."
"Yes." The frown was evident in Cas' voice. "You did."
"Well, I guess I lied." The blond said without any evident shame.
"That became apparent to me when you took hold of Michael and flew off together. You would not have been able to do that to him if you were not in full possession of your Grace."
"Cassy-" Gabriel made a long suffering noise. "Look, you're a nice kid, but today is a really good day for you to grow the hell up. I saved your life- for whatever that's worth to you- and the life of your funny looking boyfriend, all to get stabbed in the stomach for my efforts. I've had a bad day and you could at least say thank you and maybe grovel a little at my feet instead of whining about a few harmless little lies."
"Can we not do this right now, guys?" Sam butted in and Dean couldn't help the smile that tugged at the corners of his lips. You could always count on Sam to be the level headed one in these sorts of situations… not that this situation had ever really come up before as far as Dean knew… but, you know.
"I just fail to see how lying to me has been of any help to anyone." Cas muttered in a surprisingly grumpy voice and even if Dean couldn't see his face, he knew that there was quite probably some kind of epic pouting going on.
"What Cas means-" it was Dean's turn to try and separate them with words because it wasn't like he could just reach back there and knock them around, "is that he was worried about you, and he's glad you're ok."
"Cassy, is it true? Were you worried about me?" Gabriel sounded like he was trying not to laugh, which was probably a good plan seeing as the fist sized hole in his stomach was only being held together with half a roll of tape.
Castiel said nothing in his own defense and in some way that was enough.
Two mile markers flicked by outside and Dean counted them silently.
"I was worried about you too, kid." Gabriel said softly, but Cas didn't respond to that either.
.:.
They got back to Bobby's and roused Gabriel enough to help him stagger up the drive. Now that the adrenaline had well and truly ebbed away, Dean hurt. He hurt in unique and explicit ways that he did his best to ignore. But balancing the small Angel between them, Dean under one arm, and Sam under the other, made it annoyingly difficulty to pretend that he hadn't recently been half crushed under the same small Angel. For such a short little guy, Gabriel sure was heavy.
"It's because I'm so full of mercy." The blonde murmured into Dean's neck, breath hot and reeking of maple candy and blood.
"Excuse me?" Dean tried to look at the man clinging to his shoulder, but all he could see was a mess of sloppy hair.
Gabriel's feet were less than sure beneath him and the three of them listed to the left. "You were thinking about how heavy I am- it's from a disproportionate amount of mercy."
"I wasn't-" Dean started, but was cut short by Cas' cross words.
"He's lying again." His bright blue eyes flashed in annoyance. "It's his wings that are tipping him off balance."
Dean frowned and tightened his grip on Gabriel's jacket. "How many wings do you have exactly?"
The little Angel tilted his head back in a boneless motion so he could look proper at Dean and he had on that arrogant smile that he wore so well. "The prophet Mohammad once wrote that I had six hundred crimson wings."
"Gabriel, stop it." Cas said with an annoyed sigh. "You have nowhere near that many and you know it."
"Hey, I'm just saying what I heard. It's really kind of flattering."
"No, it's not. It's absurd and you know it." Cas corrected and took the keys from Dean, fumbling with the front door. "He has no more wings than any other Archangel." -which wasn't an answer at all, but Dean accepted it.
They waited for a subjective eternity while Cas struggled with the locks. Dean glanced at Sam, but the taller man's gaze was consumed with the Angel slumping between them.
"Sammy?" Dean spoke soft, just a whisper over the rain that still poured in sheets over them.
And Sam looked up with a weak smile. It just about broke Dean's heart to see Sam like this.
Some say that love makes people stupid- but stupid never look good on Sam, it look fucking miserable.
"Yeah?"
"Take him. I'll get the door." It took a moment of gentle maneuvering and then Sam scooped Gabriel up bridal style, the smaller man looking almost like a child in his arms.
Dean took the keys from Cas and unlocked the door on the first try, holding it wide to let the others in before tossing the key down onto a side table and then locking up the deadbolt.
"We're gunna' get some sleep." Sam said simply, heading off down the hall towards one of the extra rooms, but not before Dean heard Gabriel pleading softly.
"Aw, come on, five more minutes, Mom? I promise I'll be good."
The house grew quiet around them, the silence comfortably tucking Sam and Gabriel away and Dean was left dripping rainwater and shivering in the hall.
"He lied to me." Cas said softly, his voice not wholly mad, but there was a definite splinter in his tone.
"But he's alive." Dean felt a need to point out and was rewarded with a withering look which he did his best to shrug off. "Come on, you're happy to see him."
Cas only frowned harder which made Dean laugh as he kissed the angry line of the Angel's lips. "You can stand here and do that all you want. I'm 'gunna make us some dinner."
It would have been convenient if someone had thought to drag the grocery bags in the house when they hauled Gabriel in- as it was Dean found himself making a mad dash back out into the storm to retrieve dinner from the back of the car.
The trunk opened upward and served as an awning, sheltering him and Cas slightly from the storm. Dean shook water from his face and glanced at the man beside him.
"You could have stayed inside." He hadn't even noticed the Angel following him out the door.
Cas just blinked and sniffled against the cold, rubbing at the tip of his nose. "I would have missed you."
"I'm just getting the food." He wanted to sound exasperated, but it came out all wrong, like a warm, gentle, rationalization. "I would have been right back." He fumbled with the words and had to laugh at himself, because maybe he was stupidly in love with the very moist Angel standing beside him, but the feeling was mutual and he really couldn't ask for more than that.
"I'm helping you." Cas said simply, sounding almost surprised that Dean hasn't realized it already.
"Yeah, I bet you are." And god, but he was in a good mood. He ran a rough hand through Cas' hair and kissed rainwater from his forehead. "You're such a good helper."
Cas smiled softly up at him, not even realizing he was being teased, because that was the sort of person that he was.
And Dean chuckled and kissed him soundly, because that was the sort of person that he was.
Unfortunately that glowingly good mood was quick to die when Dean turned his attentions away from Cas' beautifully tempting mouth, and towards the wreck in the car.
The backseat was a mess, smears of blood too dark to be human had half dried into sticky patterns against the seats and the carpets. And Dean was sort of to blame for a portion of that as far as he could tell, but no one else had mentioned Gabriel's wing getting snapped and Dean wasn't going to be the one to bring it up.
Cas watched him curiously, leaning sleepily against the side of the car, saying nothing while Dean took stock of the damage. It was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. He tried not to imagine what would have happened to them if Gabe had crash landed while they were still driving instead of being pulled over to the relative safety of the highway's shoulder. There was no way Sam would have been able to drive with those wings enthusiastically everywhere. The Highlander could have easily ended up in oncoming traffic or plowing into any number of the tall pines that lined the roadways.
Dean tried to remember what had made them pull over in the first place, the whole thing had happened so fast and the adrenaline had coated everything in a sort of muddled haze. He mulled it over and started wrangling the food they bought back into the bags they had been tipped from.
And sometimes it was the stupid little things that bothered him the most.
Why had Sam pulled over?
He nearly dropped the bag while trying to hand it off to Cas.
It came back to him just as easily has he had forgotten it.
Andy had called him.
She had yelled at him to pull over and…
Dean started looking for his phone, suddenly needing to see it, hold it- reassure himself that she really had called.
It wasn't in his pockets. He pated himself down twice before fleeing the shelter of the trunk door, running round to the front, and pulling the passenger door open. Rain was falling in his eyes, blurring the sight of loose red feathers and even redder blood.
Maybe the phone fell out on the side of the road in the gravel and rain, and wouldn't that be perfect- but Dean found it, wedged in beside the seatbelt, a little sticky, but still intact. He flipped it open and felt something in him falter and grow cold when the little screen didn't light up. The stupid thing was dead.
But that didn't mean anything special right?
And it didn't matter that Andy had said the phone had been dead for almost a week, because Dean knew that he had used it since Columbus- he was sure of it.
He just wasn't sure that he had used it to talk to anyone other than Andy.
All hunters, at some point or another, ended up with a few loose screws. Dean remembered meeting some of John's fellow hunters- and being struck with how normal his dad suddenly would seem by comparison. And the crazy came in all different flavors- paranoia, hallucinations, weird dissociative issues, alcoholism, just plain fucking nuts…
For years there had been a niggling doubt in the back of his mind, taunting. He knew at some point he was going to go off the deep end, but he never expected that it would manifest in imagined phone calls from a teenage girl with great tits and a boy's haircut.
But… had he really imagined it? Had the wreckage of his mind somehow fabricated all those times he spoke to her over the phone? Patching up her shoulder? He shoving a sawed off shotgun in his face?
That couldn't be right.
Dean's subconscious couldn't hate him that much.
Right?
It must be the thing that had taken over Andy- it had weaseled its way into Dean's brain too. Somehow the entity had bypassed the normal strain of things and gone straight to the part of Dean's mind that wanted to believe that there was a job here for him to do, that there was someone who needed his help.
He had certainly hallucinated weirder things than phone calls while under the influence of monsters.
But that would mean he had could only prove he had spoken to Andy twice- once at her father's house and once in the hotel when she gave him back the journals… but what sort of motive would the thing possessing her have for getting into Dean's brain and pretending to call him on his cell?
He struggled to remember what they had talked about over the phone. He struggled to reconcile what she had told him against what he could prove had actually been the real Andy talking.
Hadn't she offered him help killing Michael? …something about a sword? Hadn't she talked to him about the journals…?
She had sounded afraid near the end of that conversation.
That particular phone call lingered in the tide of uneven memories that involved blacking out and bleeding on a motel floor with Sam leaning over him.
He took a slow breath in an attempt to calm himself, to let any logic there might have been in his thoughts to solidify. But he choked on the breath and ended up doubled over, coughing up searing pain. It was an awful and familiar feeling that Dean knew from a score of previous run-ins with monsters much larger and/or stronger than himself.
Gabriel had landed hard when he came home, and he had made that landing relatively on top of Dean.
The hunter had at least one fractured rib, maybe two if he was lucky. And this made the two of them even for Dean snapping the first wing he got his hands on.
He bit at the inside of his cheek, swallowing down the pain, forcing his breaths to even out, sharp, shallow things that he was at least in control of.
"Something's wrong." Castiel pointed out in a way that was not at all helpful. At some point while Dean had been distracted the Angel had snuck up on him, still clutching the brown grocery bag to his chest.
And Dean smiled, no worries Cas, not about me, a lunatic reckless shine to it. "It's fine." He felt like he might be sick. "Everything's fine. Let's get that food in the house. I'm starving." Dean shot him a look that he hoped was reassuring. He shoved his shaking hands into his jacket pockets along with his dead phone and tromped back up to the porch.
A frozen pizza was tossed into the old gas oven, and Cas was left to keep an eye on it (despite his protests) while Dean went to get cleaned up.
He grabbed a change of clothes for himself, tossing dry jeans and a t-shirt to Cas, before heading off to the bathroom.
The man in the mirror over the sink stared back at him, dead eyed and washed pale from standing too long in the cold, cold rain. There was blood in his left eye, a burst capillary. There was more blood under his nose and more in the teeth shaped indentations in his lower lip. All transitory violence. They would heal, same as his ribs. If he could manage to get two weeks' worth of nothing trying to kill him, he would look like a respectable, healthy human.
Right now he looked far more like a punching bag than a man.
As it was, he felt more like a punching bag than a man.
Not much of a coincidence there.
He certainly looked more like a punching bag than anything else.
"Awesome." He said aloud, but his reflection didn't look particularly amused by the comparison.
He rubbed at his face, hands rough and not exactly kind, nails catching at the dried blood on his lip. He needed a shower. That would fix things- or at least fix the cold. He hadn't even half dried off during the drive back to Bobby's and his jeans and undershirt clung to him like a second skin- a clammy and cold second skin.
A hot shower and a cold beer and maybe he would feel halfway closer to human.
Maybe after he ate.
He could take Cas with him, as there were no actual rules against taking two halfway indecent showers in a day, and that would definitely do wonders for what ailed him.
With that promise to himself for later, stripped out of the wet clothes, shedding that uncomfortable second layer of skin and risked a look down at himself. Chest bruised sickening colors, his ribs were molted purples and midnight blue, half of his stomach almost black.
Cautiously he felt along his ribs and he winced as the lowest left bone shifted unnaturally beneath his fingers accompanied by a sharp stab of pain that ripped his breath away. He looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to him at some point- The worst part was that he knew his body hadn't been this bad when they left Rapid City. He had taken off his shirt in the tattoo parlor and maybe there had been a little pale bruising along one hip, his elbows a bit scuffed, his knuckles cracked in places, but that was all normal stuff. It was nothing like this.
Something bad had happened to him back in the car– and he couldn't blame it all on Gabriel's crash landing. And Dean was afraid that it might be the same sort of something that happened back in the motel when Andy called him- but try as he might, he still couldn't quite remember any of it other than the phone, her, and Sam pulling him off the floor while he bled.
Dean made a decision not to answer his phone- possibly ever again. It didn't matter whether or not he had hallucinated the calls- the injuries were sure as hell real.
This wasn't him being a little punch-drunk.
This was severe trauma and internal bleeding.
He didn't like things he couldn't understand, and how Andy was able to beat him half to hell over a phone line was one of those things.
And there in the middle of his distrust and confusion was the irking feeling that if she hadn't called, demanding that they pull the car over right before Gabriel snapped himself back to Earth-
Well, Dean didn't want to think about that either. That unexplored avenue would probably have ended with Sam's little Toyota spinning off into oncoming traffic or something else equally lethal.
The pieces to this puzzle were all there in front of him, neatly laid out, he was sure of it.
He just couldn't make sense of them.
.:.
"How's he doing?" Dean nodded down the hall in the direction that Sam had carried his tiny broken man-Angel. His mangel? There had to be a better word for it.
Cas looked up from the piece of pizza half hanging out of his mouth and blinked slowly. "Who?" He spoke around the hot cheese like a pro.
"Your brother." Dena managed not to smile." You think he's 'gunna be ok?"
"It's still too early to tell. I'm not a physician and there's not much of anything that I can do for him." And it came out as a woefully bitter proclamation, and Dean believed him.
It took awhile for the grumpiness to work its way thought Cas, and for most of dinner, he sat at the table frowning. It was almost like he really was that upset at his big brother for lying to him. Almost.
But Dean wasn't buying it.
Just hours ago he had done his best to console Cas at the loss of the very same brother.
Also, Dean could see the small smile tugging at Cas' lips between sullen bites of pizza. There were hints of relief in those flitting moments. And maybe he was actually that bothered about being lied to, and maybe he was trying a little too hard to cling to that specific feeling, but it was painfully obvious how happy he was.
And that was something that Dean was willing to admit that he loved best in Cas. His complete inability to lie or hide a single feeling from his face served as the perfect counterbalance to Dean.
Leftovers were tossed into the fridge, saved for Sammy who was bound to emerge at some point in need of sustenance- fuel for his giant body. Dean leaned against the fridge, fingers still on the curving, cold handle, and looked at the small, cluttered but clean kitchen. The little table and Cas took up the majority of the room.
The Angel had changed into the clothes Dean had tossed at him, which incidentally were Dean's clothes- and the hunter still couldn't manage to get over how awesome Cas looked in a pair of his jeans and a worn, old t-shirt. It didn't matter that he had seen the Angel stripped down, without a stitch on, or that Dean had actually touched almost every inch of that heavenly skin- it didn't diminish an iota of that tumbling, clenching feeling that Dean got in his gut when he looked at Cas. In some ways clothes made it worse, and he thought that maybe it had to do with now he knew what was under the wrapping. Something still sent Dean's nerves tingling to see Cas wearing his clothes, and it was stupid, but it was also honest and maybe he would just have to learn to live with the feeling.
The weird feeling that he still wanted this man- even after the moment (or roughly two hours) of conquest had passed. It was the 'morning after' and that guttural longing hadn't diminished at all. It was a bit unfamiliar. He hadn't experience it with many women before, and definitely not with any men.
And you know what? That was ok with him.
He crossed the kitchen and put his hands on the back of Cas' chair. Cas glanced up at him, an expression caught between grumpiness and curiosity playing mildly over his face. His fingers brushed over Dean's, that smooth and wonderful physical contact that they both obviously craved.
"I am fully aware that you are by no means an expert on these things," Cas tipped his head back further, looking up at Dean, "but do you think that Gabriel will be…" and he frowned not finishing his question. His beautiful eyes left Dean's, looking at the table, the walls, his knees. He had the look of perfect uncertainty, like a child wanting assurance from his parents that there were no monsters under the bed, that his goldfish wasn't dead, and all those sorts of things that kids needed to be told even if they weren't true.
Cas needed someone to tell him that Gabe would be ok.
Dean had told worse lies.
"If Gabriel had the strength to make it back here then he," Dean started, and wasn't sure where he was going to take that thought. "The little weirdo will be fine. I've seen people come back from worse- I've seen you come back from worse."
The memory of that glowing hot feeling that accompanied Cas touching his soul hadn't faded or become jumbled in the weeks they had spent together. Cas had been bleeding out on the gravel of the scrap yard with a punctured lung and the minced bits of the brother who had attacked him scattered around him. The feeling of someone jumpstarting themselves on his soul had been as horrifying as it was painful and weirdly breathtaking.
It wasn't something that he would be willing to do again anytime soon- unless Cas needed him to…
The same undoubtedly went for Sam as well. The dumb Boy Scout would probably let Gabriel do worse to him- all the Angel had to do was ask.
And Gabriel seemed the sort to ask for a favor like that without a second thought.
"He'll be ok."
A hint of a smile touched Cas' eyes. "Do you think so?"
Dean made a soft mmhm sound before kissing Cas. It was his solution to most problems he had come across the past twenty-four hours, and until he found a problem that it couldn't fix he would keep on doing it.
"That makes me feel… marginally better." Cas mumbled against his mouth.
"You're welcome." He mumbled back between kisses. He could get lost doing this sort of thing, and that would be ok with him.
Cas pulled back suddenly, making a sharp noise in his throat like he had been burnt. His eyes were wide and a little frantic.
"What?" Dean felt his inner defenses suddenly go on alert, skin prickling on the back of his neck.
The Angel said nothing for a glacial second, holding his breath, eyes searching the room almost frantic. Dean saw very real tears welling up in those dark eyes and he actually shook Cas by the shoulders.
"What?" He demanded again.
Cas' breath hiccoughed and his gaze settled back into this realm, not quite meeting Dean's eyes. "I-" and it stopped there, almost like he was interrupted, but if he was it was by a voice that Dean could not hear. Cas listened to that silence, his expression growing distant and more upset until Dean shook him again.
"Castiel." Dean said the Angel's full name and he said it loudly.
"Dean, I…" Cas took a shuddering breath, like he was fighting a weight against his chest and losing. "I fell from heaven because I questioned God, I questioned my leaders, I… I thought I knew better."
Dean blinked rapidly into the unprovoked announcement.
"I lost everything because of a moment of doubt… " he paused again listening like he heard his voice on the wind. "But I found you and-" his eyes were swimming again with unshed tears and Dean found it hard to look at him. "If I had known you, really known you at all, I would have fallen for you, Dean. I didn't need my pride. I didn't need doubt. I didn't need Heaven. I just needed you." His fingers slid shakily from Dean's hand, up his arm, brushing over old and shallow scars. "I love you, far more than I should and-"
Dean cut him off with a kiss, really the best solution he could come up with. It was a slow kiss, hesitant and lingering, their noses brushing awkwardly because Dean hadn't taken the time to aim properly. It was reminiscent of a first kiss, uncertain but determined. It reminded the hunter of their actual first kiss, in the front seat of a door-less Ford, frantic and passionate and every bit like a last kiss. And that probably meant something, but it wasn't something that Dean wanted to think about.
A banging came to the back door not too far from where they were huddled against each other, loud enough that Dean jumped. Cas pulled back, his shallow breaths ghosting over Dean's lips, his dark eyes lidded and a million miles away. "Is something wrong?"
"Winchester!" Andy's voice was panicked and pleading on the other side of the oak door. And Dean honestly couldn't think of any person that, right then, he wanted interrupting him less. She pounded again, and he cursed under his breath. It sounded much more like the girl he first met than the one who had called him in the car- but how could he trust that?
"Damn it, stop fucking around with your boyfriend. This is serious." And she sounded serious, even a little afraid. Dean didn't trust her as far as he could throw her, but that unguarded panic was enough to give him pause- enough to sew a seed of alarm in the dark clouds that otherwise were occupying the majority of his mental processes.
"Just what the hell are you doing here?" He growled out as he struggled to uncurl himself from Cas, his whole body attempting to stage a rebellion against his sudden call for action.
He had been dumb enough to forgo arming himself with a weapon of any sort after changing clothes in the bathroom- and hindsight could be a real bitch sometimes, but this was Bobby's house and Dean knew where the old man kept his armaments. If he could just get to his feet there should be a loaded 9mm atop the fridge. And he honestly had no idea how much it was going to help, but if nothing else it would make him feel marginally better for a short period.
She kept up the pounding, relentless like war drums, and her hands must have really been hurting by now. "Let me in, Dean. You have to let me give you the sword."
"I don't need your sword, kid."
"Kid?" Cas was frowning. "What's going on, Dean?"
"It's Kaleb's daughter." Dean got to his feet only to be overwhelmed by a crashing wave of dizziness that left him clinging to the edge of the table. And he never should have been huddled over like that; his whole body was a network of aches and bruises, all connecting and mingling in their hatred of him. He staggered like a drunk to the fridge and pulled down the well oiled gun that was kept up there beside a half loaf of bread that had seen better days.
The pounding grew more incessant and Bobby must have laid some good strong wards on his house if she wasn't in already. Girl or Angel wearing a girl's meatsuit, the door should have been rattling in its frame by now. "Winchester, please! This isn't some fucking game. He's almost here."
As ominous as that sounded, Dean still didn't trust it, he didn't trust her. He had no reason to trust her and his aching chest was only a beautiful reminder of why.
"You have to let me it." And there was something like a sob on the end of her words and it was damnation to Dean.
"Fuck, I can't leave her out there." He cursed to himself and at that part of him that was made of old things like chivalry and honor and other useless bits he had picked up along the way.
"Leave her out …where?" Cas slowly stood, cautiously touching Dean's shoulder.
"Outside, Cas." He pointed his gun in the direction of the door, a grand gesture, wide and encompassing. Dean couldn't tell if Cas was intentionally being difficult or if the Angel just hadn't gotten back up to speed yet.
"Hurry!" The pounding was like thunder, small fists on wood, frantic now. "Fuck, Dean. He's almost here. Let me in!"
Cas moved haltingly, getting to the door with careful steps, heedless of the banging on the other side. He fumbled with the handle, seemingly still having not quite gotten the hang of them.
Dean leveled the gun at the door, aiming wide to Cas' left. "Careful. I don't know if she's still herself or if she's one of your brothers now."
The Angel looked over his shoulder, regarding Dean as if he were completely insane. He opened the door wide and stood there gazing out into the empty back porch and the wan lit scrap yard made a hazy silver gray in the rain, then turned back to Dean to look at him quizzically. "Is she coming by later?"
There was not a soul outside.
Dean struggled with this, brain instantly concocting wild scenarios as to where she could have gone, and none of them particularly plausible. "Andy?"
Cast her out
The unsuspected pain, like fire, like molten lead poured over his shoulder, was staggering and Dean forgot to breathe for an instant.
Deny her
And Dean remembered this with an almost crushing recollection.
This voice.
This booming voice clawing at the insides of his mind.
Just like in the motel.
He didn't think it was something that he had forgotten involuntary- it had been for survival. This was power that set fire to his blood and filled him with fear like iron and ice. He would have gone mad if he had been forced to live with even a shadow of this thing.
The gun fell from his grip, hitting the floor with a profound thud. Dean pressed his hands to his head and couldn't hold back an involuntary sound, something like a whimper and a growl, horror he didn't know mixing with righteous anger. This thing, the voice, was inside him pushing outward- or outside pushing in- there was no way to tell. It was surrounding him- it was him, or it would be soon if he didn't do something.
"Dean?" Cas' voice was like a bucket of water on a forest fire. Sure it was there, and it smoldered a little, it smothered a fraction of the destruction and there was a notable flicker of smoke in its wake, but it was hardly enough to take note of. It wasn't near enough to help.
Dean closed his eyes- he couldn't see past the bursts of blinding white anyways.
She would lead you by the hand to your ruin
Dean could feel the words down in his chest, forcing their way into his lungs. He was breathing those words just as readily as they were suffocating him.
Let me help you
And now it wanted to help? It was the thing that was killing him and it was offering its god damned help?
"Get out." Dean managed. It worked last time… sort of, though he did not know why and he honestly held no illusion that it would work a second time, but he had hope. It was all that he had other than the splitting pain.
Someone was touching him, an anchor to his place in the universe, but he didn't know who it was. Their hands cold against his neck, holding him down, pushing his own hands back from his face. Lips brushed against his ear, soft and strangely comforting.
"Tell him to go fuck himself." Andy's voice came to him mixed with strange tones, distant shouts and a low banging, a pop-pop-pop like gunfire.
We've no more time to wait for you to see things our way
You must let me in
And Dean didn't know where the voice wanted to go, it was already very much inside of him and he wanted nothing more than for it to get the fuck out.
The hour is late
My brothers have turned traitor
We are running out of time
You will let me in, Dean Winchester
You don't have any other choice
The pain seemed to lessen for a second, almost like the booming voice wanted to give Dean a slightly clear head to consider the offer on the table. There was a moment of silence, still enough that all Dean could hear was his own heart pumping blood and his own ragged breaths hissing out between his teeth.
And in that moment of clarity, Dean understood.
The voice was Michael.
It had to be, nothing else made sense.
Dean had his very own Archangel banging at the doors to his mind. Lucky Dean.
"Fuck you." He exhaled the words, "I'm not your meatsuit."
And then the world crashed in on itself and there was nothing left but the pain.