ratherastory (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ratherastory) wrote2012-01-01 11:55 pm
ratherastory) wrote2012-01-01 11:55 pm
Entry tags:
Not the Fall, but the Landing
Title: Not the Fall, but the Landing
Summary: Fusion 'verse. This time around, it's Castiel who needs rescuing.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~4,400
Disclaimer: None of it is mine. Alas.
Warnings: Show levels of violence, occasional swearing, lots of gore
Neurotic Author's Note #1: What better way to kick off the New Year than with an instalment of the Fusion 'verse, am I right? Right.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Unbeta'd, as usual. Set between Many Happy Returns and Bless Us, Every One.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Also, yes, this is my unsubtle way of including moar Cas in my 'verse. ;)
Most people don't phone the bookstore ahead of time. It's not that kind of place. It's more the type of store where people drop in to browse quietly through the shelves and sit in the comfortable armchairs at the back of the shop with potential new acquisitions, drink Sophie's coffee and chat with her or Dean or whichever of the staff happens to be around at the time. The phone rings a lot on Mondays, when Dean isn't at work, because Mondays are when Sophie places her new orders and deals with shippers and large clients, but the rest of the week the phone stays mostly silent. People very rarely call ahead of time to see what books they have in stock, especially since Sam helped Sophie to set up a website where customers could check the store inventory for themselves.
Dean is the one who keeps the inventory up to date, along with helping Sophie with the accounts now, with Sam serving as a pro-bono IT guy when they need him. The website itself is cheap enough to maintain, and Sam has always been good with computers. So far there hasn't even been any site downtime, since it's not like they have thousands of customers and Sophie hasn't yet agreed to online ordering. So even if Sam has a bad day, the site basically runs itself. Dean figures it's the least they can do, given how flexible Sophie is when it comes to his occasionally having to take off in the middle of the day to go after Sam when he's going through a rough patch. Sophie doesn't seem to see it that way, though, and actually gave him a small raise earlier this year, commensurate with his increased responsibilities, the way she put it. He doesn't deserve it, but he's not in a position to refuse extra money, either, so he's just put his mind to working harder to earn the extra cash.
When the phone rings on a Thursday morning, Dean is surprised, but doesn't pay it much mind. He's ducking out the front door for a smoke break, Perry at his heels, and Sophie's already at the cash, so he lets her pick up, her cheerful tones already blending in to the musical chime of the front door bells. He gives Perry the signal that tells her it's okay to go find a convenient trash can to pee behind, leans against the wall and lights his cigarette, inhaling carefully. He's been trying to cut back, partly because Sam keeps giving him the stink-eye over his habit, but mostly because he's noticed that Sam has been coughing more since he came down with that flu a couple of months ago, a quiet, dry, hacking thing that won't quite go away. If that isn't incentive enough to keep cigarette smoke out of the house, Dean isn't sure what is. So he's taken to spacing out his cigarettes and smoking most of them at work, if only to keep them away from Sam's finicky lungs. He's halfway through his smoke when the store door opens, revealing Sophie, holding out the cordless phone she keeps by the cash register.
There's only one person who calls Dean at work. His phone ran out of minutes a couple of days ago, and there simply hasn't been enough cash before his next paycheque to buy another prepaid card. There are dozens of reasons that Sam could be calling that aren't an emergency. Hell, everyone in town jokes about how they're practically married, because Sam will call every so often to ask him to pick up milk on his way home from work, or just to let him know he's going to bed early when Dean stays out at the local bar with the guys on Thursday evenings. It's harmless teasing, and by now Dean is used to it, even if at the beginning it felt more like he was being judged and found wanting. He arches an eyebrow at Sophie.
"Everything okay?"
She makes a face like she's not sure how to answer that. "Sam wants to talk to you," she says instead, handing over the phone. "There's no one in the reading corner right now if you need some privacy."
He nods, drops his cigarette and grinds it underfoot, whistles for Perry, takes the phone and tucks it between his shoulder and his ear. "Sammy? What's up?"
"Dean."
The one word is enough to make Dean's heart skip a couple of very painful beats. He knows that tone, knows that it's the sound of Sam barely holding himself together. "Hey, okay, Sammy, I'm here. Take a breath, okay? What's happening?"
"Um," he can hear Sam forcing himself to take a deep breath, can imagine him reaching for the nearest solid surface to anchor himself. "I... can you come home? I'm sorry, I wouldn't ask, but..." Sam takes another breath, and this time it sounds like he's trying to swallow down a sob. "I just... there's a lot of blood, and I can't —it sounds like screaming, Dean. I can't—"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down," Dean drops his voice to make sure he's not overheard. "What did you do? Are you hurt?"
"No," Sam swallows. "No, it's not me. It's —it's Cas. He —I don' t know, I can't make the bleeding stop. Please come home, please."
"Yeah, okay, I'm on my way," Dean promises, his mind racing. None of it makes sense, but it's obvious Sam is teetering on the edge of hysterics, and whether or not what he's seeing is real is pretty much irrelevant. "You hang in there, okay?" But Sam has already hung up.
Sophie is waiting expectantly by the cash when he limps over and hands her back the phone. "You need to go home?"
He nods. "Sorry. He's... I don't know exactly what's happening, but it doesn't sound good. Sorry to bail on you."
She smiles. "It's fine. It's quiet, and I know Deb could use some overtime. I'll call her in. Just give me a call when you can, let me know if you'll be in tomorrow. I can't offer you a lift —are you going to be okay getting home?"
"Don't sweat it," Dean can't be bothered to so much as try to give her a reassuring smile, too busy clipping Perry's leash to her harness. "I'll call later, promise."
He makes it home in record time, imposing a speed that's going to be murder on his hip later on, fumbles his keys at the door and nearly drops them, cursing under his breath. Perry pushes past him into the house, then drops to her haunches and waits for him to unbuckle her harness, shooting him a puzzled look when he only unclips the leash.
"Sorry, baby," he tells her, "I'm probably still going to need help, so you're staying in harness." The house is quiet, but he can hear scuffling sounds coming from the back, along with two voices, pitched so low he can't make out the words. "Sam? Sammy, where are you?"
"Kitchen." Sam's about two seconds away from meltdown, by the sounds of it.
Perry follows close on Dean's heels without even being told as he limps into the kitchen, discarding his cane as he goes, and he stops short just inside the kitchen door. "Oh my God. Cas?"
There's blood everywhere. It's smeared in a thick track from the back door that leads to the garden all the way to the centre of the kitchen, where the table has been pushed aside. The phone is on the floor, the fast-busy signal telling Dean that his brother didn't even bother hanging up after the conversation ended, that he was too busy trying to keep Castiel from bleeding out all over their kitchen floor. He's not really succeeding, by the looks of things. Cas is sprawled on his back, legs splayed awkwardly, fingertips scraping at the smooth tile in an obvious effort not to grab at Sam. He's still wearing the same stupid trench coat and three-piece suit that Jimmy Novak put on all those years ago before allowing himself to be possessed, but the pristine white shirt is saturated with blood which is now soaking through the dish towels that Sam is using in a desperate attempt to staunch the flow. Cas' eyes are at half-mast, glazed with pain, his hair plastered to his head, skin clammy and deathly pale, even for him, each breath more laboured than the last. If Dean didn't know better, he'd swear he was dying.
Sam looks up at him, expression desperate. His favourite grey t-shirt is spattered with blood, his hands and forearms drenched in red. "I can't get it to stop. It won't stop…"
"Fuck!" Dean rubs a hand over his mouth. He can't do anything while Cas is on the floor, there's no way he'll be able to get up and down easily enough. "Okay. Okay, Sammy, you're going to have to leave that for a minute. Let me... we can pull out the sofa? We'll get him on there, and then we'll see about stopping the bleeding, okay? But you need to carry him, I can't do it. Can you do that?"
Sam swallows hard, but he nods. "Yeah. I got it."
"Okay. Stay there until I call you, keep the pressure on. Is he conscious?"
As if on cue Cas turns his head a little, fixes him with the stare that always feels like he's looking straight past Dean's skin and right into his soul. "Dean…" he rasps, then stops, as though he doesn't know what else to say.
Sam hushes him. "Don't talk, Cas. Don't talk, okay? Let us help. Don't talk. Please don't talk, okay?"
There will be time for explanations later. Dean closes his mouth with an audible click of teeth, makes himself walk calmly back into the living room in order to pull out the sofa bed.
"Perry, fetch the white box," he says quietly to the dog.
Commands have to be simple enough so she'll understand them, and that's the best he could come up with for the first aid kit that they keep in the upstairs bathroom. Sam put it together, tinkered with it until the handle was positioned in such a way that Perry could carry it easily in her mouth. Dean doesn't bother to see if she obeys –he knows she will– just pulls open the bed and snaps it into place, thankful that they at least had the presence of mind to get a pull-out sofa that was easy for him to handle on his own. It had made sense even back then: he'd spent weeks on this sofa while he was still healing from his surgery, unable to manage the stairs right off, and it was important he be able to make and unmake the bed on his own, on those days when Sam was too out of it to help.
Sometimes Sam has a weird sixth sense about things. He appears in the doorway, Cas cradled against his chest like an overgrown rag doll, just as Dean finishes pulling a clean sheet over the bed, as if he knew exactly when Dean would be ready for them. He lays Cas down gently, mindful not to jostle him, strokes his forehead once in a gesture of reassurance, leaving behind a smear of blood.
"I'll get you a chair," he says to Dean, his voice steady even though Dean can feel him shaking with the strain of holding himself together. "What else do you need?"
If there's one good thing he and Sam have inherited from their dad, it's how to handle themselves in a crisis. Dean eases himself down in order to sit on the bed next to Cas, settling near his hip, his bad leg stretched out to the side so that he can lean in as best he can.
"Perry's getting the first aid kit. Uh, boil some water, and see if you can't wash all that off your hands, Sammy." Cas' head is lolling, his breathing shallow, and Dean isn't sure that he's still conscious. "Okay, Cas, we have to get you out of that coat," he says, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Sit up for me. I'll help, okay? On three: one, two!" he yanks the angel up by his armpits, grunting with the effort when Cas does little more than slump against him. "That's good, Cas, you're doing great," he murmurs, pushing the coat down over Cas' arms and tugging it free. "You with me?"
Cas pulls in a weak breath. "Nowhere else to go… I'm sorry."
"Hey, are you kidding?" Dean eases him back until he's lying flat. "You did the right thing. You need help, you come to us, that's how it works. Tell me what happened," he says, pulling off Cas' tie and unceremoniously ripping his shirt open so he can survey the damage. He hisses through his teeth when he sees the wound, a deep puncture just below the ribcage, still seeping blood, though not nearly as badly as before, it seems. Dean isn't sure if that's a good sign, or if it just means Cas doesn't have any blood left to lose.
To his surprise, Castiel laughs weakly. "You should see the other guy," he says.
Dean snorts. "Four years, and it's only when you're bleeding out in my living room that you develop a sense of humour. Figures. Okay, Cas," he turns aside long enough to retrieve the first aid kit from where Perry just dropped it at his feet. She's lying a few paces away, muzzle on her paws, watching them both anxiously, but Dean knows she won't move until he tells her to. "If you can talk, you can tell me what you need. I can stitch up a human just fine, but I don't know what to do for angelic stab wounds."
Cas coughs, and to Dean's alarm blood froths at the corners of his mouth. "Just… stitch it closed. I can heal on my own but… stopping the bleeding will help." His eyes slip shut, and Dean shakes him.
"Hey, stay with me now. No passing out until I'm sure you're not going to die, okay? No dying. Got it? Sam!" he calls out, "how's that water coming?"
As if on cue, Sam appears, holding a bowl and the electric kettle in either hand. He's managed to wash off the blood from his hands, which is a small mercy. "I filled the kettle again, just in case."
Dean blows out his cheeks. "Okay, good. I need you to help me hold him still while I stitch this. We could go through every painkiller and bottle of booze in the house and he wouldn't turn a hair, so we may as well just do it as fast as we can. You good?"
Sam nods tightly. He stays quiet, but he kneels next to Cas' head and places both hands on his shoulders, rubs his thumb in comforting circles on Cas' upper arm, and Dean sees Cas relax a fraction under his touch. Right, then. Dean pulls out a needle and suturing thread –not exactly standard fare for a home first-aid kit, but old habits die hard– threads his needle and sterilizes it. The room is quiet except for Cas' laboured breathing as he cleans the blood away from the edges of the wound, as though the whole world is holding its breath, waiting.
Dean isn't exactly a surgeon, and this injury is pretty damned deep, even by their standards. He supposes that he shouldn't be surprised, since angels are given to fighting each other with swords, but it doesn't make his job any easier. If Cas were human, there is no way that he'd be trying this at all. He'd be too worried about collapsed lungs or perforated organs, about infection and whatnot spilling into the abdominal cavity. He's stitched up an injury like this only once, when Sammy was fifteen and got his thigh torn open by a black dog, and even then it was only makeshift, just a temporary thing because they were so far from a hospital and dad had broken three fingers on his right hand and couldn't do it. His hands had been shaking just as badly then, with Sam trembling beneath him, eyes wide with fear and pain and trust, but he knew that it just had to hold until they could drive to the hospital and have the real doctors do a proper job of it. Not for the first time in his life, Dean doesn't have the first clue what he's doing.
"Dean," Sam says softly, "it's okay. Cas knows you'll do a good job."
Christ, Dean really wants a cigarette and for none of this to be happening. He forces his hands to stop shaking, breathes as quietly as he can manage. Cas' flesh yields surprisingly easily to the needle, and after a few moments he settles into a rhythm, while Cas keeps his eyes squeezed shut and Sam counts quietly to help keep his breathing even, to help keep the pain at bay. The bleeding has stopped entirely, and so now it's just a question of making sure the sutures hold, that he's not leaving behind any holes in his friend that aren't meant to be there. Cas moans once, quietly, but Sam strokes his hair and he quiets again, doesn't so much as flinch as Dean is working. It feels like hours have passed by the time he's done, swabbing the site with alcohol wipes from the kit. Sam helps while he applies sterile pads over the neat row of stitches holding the edges of the wound together and then uses up all the gauze in the kit wrapping it securely. They'll have to get more, he thinks distractedly, and sooner rather than later, in order to change the bandages.
"Okay," Dean breathes out a sigh of relief. "We're gonna need blankets, keep him warm. Cas, you still with us?" he asks, and is rewarded when the angel stirs a little under Sam's touch. "Okay," he repeats. "I'm, uh, going to get the spare blankets. You –uh, Sammy… can you –are you okay staying with him?"
Sam nods, and he looks a little less tense than before. "It's okay, the screaming stopped. I can stay. I don't hear it anymore, so I can stay."
Dean hesitates. "Do I want to know?"
Sam shrugs. "I don't know. I could –there was light, when he was bleeding. It was the same, it sounded like screaming, I couldn't stop it. But you did," he looks up, mouth quirking into a smile, like Dean is the second goddamned coming, and Dean doesn't even know how to begin to deal with that, so he snaps his fingers at Perry and flees for the linen closet to find some clean blankets.
The kitchen is covered in blood. The door to the garden is still ajar, the frame smeared with bloody handprints, and a quick inspection of the backyard tells Dean that that's where Cas arrived –there's a bloody patch of grass by one of the raised vegetable beds that Sam tends obsessively, the grass crushed, the blood turning the earth to rusty-coloured mud. Perry's sniffing curiously at a puddle of blood in the middle of the kitchen floor, but she's too well-mannered to do anything else to it. They're going to have to clean all of this up sooner rather than later unless they want bloodstains all over the kitchen, and Dean can only contemplate with horror what might happen if a well-meaning neighbour decided to drop by right now to check on them. He's not sure how he would explain to Mrs. O'Keefe why their house looks like a triage tent in a war zone.
"Dean?"
He almost jumps out of his skin when Sam materializes seemingly out of nowhere. "Jesus, Sam, warn a guy!"
Sam hunches in on himself, shoves his hands into his pockets. "Sorry. I just… I think you should sit with Cas while I clean up."
He's still shaking a little, much to Dean's dismay, his shirt ruined beyond repair, his jeans in not much better condition. Crap. Sam's barely holding it together, and now Dean's snapping at him, which isn't going to help. He takes a step forward, reaches out slowly until he can grab Sam's elbow –a calculated risk, because sometimes Sam freaks out even if it's his brother touching his arms.
"Hey, Sammy, I'm sorry. C'mere," he tugs gently, and to his relief Sam lets himself be pulled into a hug, presses his face against Dean's clavicle. "You okay?" he asks softly, and Sam nods against his collarbone. "Okay, good. We're going to have to get you cleaned up too, you're covered in blood. What will the neighbours think?" he jokes, and Sam giggles quietly. Dean ignores the slightly hysterical edge to the laughter –he figures Sam's entitled after a day like this. "So what happened?"
"I don't know. I was weeding, and the next thing I knew Cas was there. He just –he fell. He fell and he needed help, and there was light coming from him. There isn't, usually, not like –not like Lucifer, but this time I could hear the screaming and I couldn't tell that there was blood, not at first. I called you because I couldn't get the bleeding to stop, and it was so loud. It was so loud I thought he was going to die."
Dean hugs him harder. "Cas isn't going to die. You did good, Sammy. He's going to be fine, I promise." Sam just clings a little more at that, and Dean pats his back awkwardly –damned giant of a brother makes it hard to do any kind of comforting when they're both standing up. "So I'll make you a deal. You go take a shower and change, and I'm going to try to get the worst of this mess cleaned up. Don't," he squeezes Sam's shoulders when he feels a protest trying to come out of Sam's mouth. "I can manage a mop, I promise, and that way we won't have dried blood all over your nice clean kitchen for the next year. I'm just going to rinse it off, so you can clean it all to your OCD specifications afterward, I promise. Go shower, I mean it. You need anything?"
Reluctantly Sam pulls away, scrubbing at his face with the back of one scarred wrist. "I'm okay," he mumbles. "Gonna take a shower. You shouldn't be lifting buckets of water. Let me, okay? I'll do it after. You should sit with Cas, make sure he's okay. I won't be long."
He heaves a sigh. "Okay, fine. But if you're not out in ten minutes I'm coming up to get you, okay? Take a Klonopin if you need one. Hell, take one even if you're not sure you need one. We got any Gatorade?"
Sam nods. "Fridge door. It's the generic stuff, but it's the same."
Cas is lying where Dean left him, propped up now with what looks like every pillow Sam could find and carefully covered with a clean sheet and several blankets. He's still deathly pale, but it's not like Dean knows what the indicators of good health are in an angel. He sets down the plastic bottle of the electrolyte drink from the fridge, grabs the edge of the sofa bed and leverages himself onto it before leaning forward and laying a hand on the angel's arm.
"Cas, wake up for a sec. Cas?"
Castiel stirs, and after a few moments of coaxing, his eyes flutter open. "Dean?" his voice is weak but steadier than it was. Dean feels a grin spread over his face.
"Hey, welcome back. I want you to drink this, okay?" he grabs the bottle and waggles it meaningfully. Obediently Cas puts his hand out to take it, only to have the bottle immediately slip from his grasp when he proves too weak to hold it up. Dean catches it before it spills everywhere. "Whoa, okay. Let me help, here. Just sit tight," he instructs, shifting gingerly until he's sitting alongside Cas and can hold the bottle for him without feeling like his leg is about to snap in half. It's a little awkward, but it works well enough. "That better?"
Cas nods after a few swallows. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it." Upstairs, Dean can hear the sound of the shower switching off. "How bad's the pain, Cas?"
"It's bearable."
Dean rubs a hand over his mouth. "I don't know what we can give you to help," he says, absent-mindedly running his free hand over Cas' forehead, automatically checking for fever. "You're pretty much immune to anything we've got and to most things we haven't got too, for that matter."
Cas' eyes have slipped shut. "Don't trouble yourself," he says, voice fading again. "I simply require rest. I won't impose long…"
"Moron," Dean strokes his hair. "You're not imposing. And if you think Sam or me are going to let you out of here before you're recovered, you've got another think coming. Got it?"
Cas hums something that sounds like agreement, but Dean didn't spend all those years in the field without being able to recognize the signs of exhaustion. He can hear Sam moving about slowly upstairs, probably changing his clothes, and the sound is a comforting one. It means that, against all odds, Sam is still keeping it together. They'll probably pay for it later, but right now Dean is more than willing to take the win. Cas is going to recover, Sam is okay, at least for now, and in a little while their kitchen will no longer look like a slaughterhouse. He's going to have to think of something to tell Sophie about why he's not going to be at work for the next few days, but he'll figure something out before he calls her later tonight. Lying about their lives is a skill he excels at, after all.
"Get some rest, Cas," he says, patting Cas on the knee. "We'll talk again when you wake up."
To his surprise, Cas forces his eyes open. "You should ward the house. In case…"
Dean grins. "Way ahead of you. You're the only angel allowed in the house." He gives Cas' knee another pat. "Don't worry, Cas, you're safe here. I promise."
Summary: Fusion 'verse. This time around, it's Castiel who needs rescuing.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: ~4,400
Disclaimer: None of it is mine. Alas.
Warnings: Show levels of violence, occasional swearing, lots of gore
Neurotic Author's Note #1: What better way to kick off the New Year than with an instalment of the Fusion 'verse, am I right? Right.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Unbeta'd, as usual. Set between Many Happy Returns and Bless Us, Every One.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Also, yes, this is my unsubtle way of including moar Cas in my 'verse. ;)
Most people don't phone the bookstore ahead of time. It's not that kind of place. It's more the type of store where people drop in to browse quietly through the shelves and sit in the comfortable armchairs at the back of the shop with potential new acquisitions, drink Sophie's coffee and chat with her or Dean or whichever of the staff happens to be around at the time. The phone rings a lot on Mondays, when Dean isn't at work, because Mondays are when Sophie places her new orders and deals with shippers and large clients, but the rest of the week the phone stays mostly silent. People very rarely call ahead of time to see what books they have in stock, especially since Sam helped Sophie to set up a website where customers could check the store inventory for themselves.
Dean is the one who keeps the inventory up to date, along with helping Sophie with the accounts now, with Sam serving as a pro-bono IT guy when they need him. The website itself is cheap enough to maintain, and Sam has always been good with computers. So far there hasn't even been any site downtime, since it's not like they have thousands of customers and Sophie hasn't yet agreed to online ordering. So even if Sam has a bad day, the site basically runs itself. Dean figures it's the least they can do, given how flexible Sophie is when it comes to his occasionally having to take off in the middle of the day to go after Sam when he's going through a rough patch. Sophie doesn't seem to see it that way, though, and actually gave him a small raise earlier this year, commensurate with his increased responsibilities, the way she put it. He doesn't deserve it, but he's not in a position to refuse extra money, either, so he's just put his mind to working harder to earn the extra cash.
When the phone rings on a Thursday morning, Dean is surprised, but doesn't pay it much mind. He's ducking out the front door for a smoke break, Perry at his heels, and Sophie's already at the cash, so he lets her pick up, her cheerful tones already blending in to the musical chime of the front door bells. He gives Perry the signal that tells her it's okay to go find a convenient trash can to pee behind, leans against the wall and lights his cigarette, inhaling carefully. He's been trying to cut back, partly because Sam keeps giving him the stink-eye over his habit, but mostly because he's noticed that Sam has been coughing more since he came down with that flu a couple of months ago, a quiet, dry, hacking thing that won't quite go away. If that isn't incentive enough to keep cigarette smoke out of the house, Dean isn't sure what is. So he's taken to spacing out his cigarettes and smoking most of them at work, if only to keep them away from Sam's finicky lungs. He's halfway through his smoke when the store door opens, revealing Sophie, holding out the cordless phone she keeps by the cash register.
There's only one person who calls Dean at work. His phone ran out of minutes a couple of days ago, and there simply hasn't been enough cash before his next paycheque to buy another prepaid card. There are dozens of reasons that Sam could be calling that aren't an emergency. Hell, everyone in town jokes about how they're practically married, because Sam will call every so often to ask him to pick up milk on his way home from work, or just to let him know he's going to bed early when Dean stays out at the local bar with the guys on Thursday evenings. It's harmless teasing, and by now Dean is used to it, even if at the beginning it felt more like he was being judged and found wanting. He arches an eyebrow at Sophie.
"Everything okay?"
She makes a face like she's not sure how to answer that. "Sam wants to talk to you," she says instead, handing over the phone. "There's no one in the reading corner right now if you need some privacy."
He nods, drops his cigarette and grinds it underfoot, whistles for Perry, takes the phone and tucks it between his shoulder and his ear. "Sammy? What's up?"
"Dean."
The one word is enough to make Dean's heart skip a couple of very painful beats. He knows that tone, knows that it's the sound of Sam barely holding himself together. "Hey, okay, Sammy, I'm here. Take a breath, okay? What's happening?"
"Um," he can hear Sam forcing himself to take a deep breath, can imagine him reaching for the nearest solid surface to anchor himself. "I... can you come home? I'm sorry, I wouldn't ask, but..." Sam takes another breath, and this time it sounds like he's trying to swallow down a sob. "I just... there's a lot of blood, and I can't —it sounds like screaming, Dean. I can't—"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down," Dean drops his voice to make sure he's not overheard. "What did you do? Are you hurt?"
"No," Sam swallows. "No, it's not me. It's —it's Cas. He —I don' t know, I can't make the bleeding stop. Please come home, please."
"Yeah, okay, I'm on my way," Dean promises, his mind racing. None of it makes sense, but it's obvious Sam is teetering on the edge of hysterics, and whether or not what he's seeing is real is pretty much irrelevant. "You hang in there, okay?" But Sam has already hung up.
Sophie is waiting expectantly by the cash when he limps over and hands her back the phone. "You need to go home?"
He nods. "Sorry. He's... I don't know exactly what's happening, but it doesn't sound good. Sorry to bail on you."
She smiles. "It's fine. It's quiet, and I know Deb could use some overtime. I'll call her in. Just give me a call when you can, let me know if you'll be in tomorrow. I can't offer you a lift —are you going to be okay getting home?"
"Don't sweat it," Dean can't be bothered to so much as try to give her a reassuring smile, too busy clipping Perry's leash to her harness. "I'll call later, promise."
He makes it home in record time, imposing a speed that's going to be murder on his hip later on, fumbles his keys at the door and nearly drops them, cursing under his breath. Perry pushes past him into the house, then drops to her haunches and waits for him to unbuckle her harness, shooting him a puzzled look when he only unclips the leash.
"Sorry, baby," he tells her, "I'm probably still going to need help, so you're staying in harness." The house is quiet, but he can hear scuffling sounds coming from the back, along with two voices, pitched so low he can't make out the words. "Sam? Sammy, where are you?"
"Kitchen." Sam's about two seconds away from meltdown, by the sounds of it.
Perry follows close on Dean's heels without even being told as he limps into the kitchen, discarding his cane as he goes, and he stops short just inside the kitchen door. "Oh my God. Cas?"
There's blood everywhere. It's smeared in a thick track from the back door that leads to the garden all the way to the centre of the kitchen, where the table has been pushed aside. The phone is on the floor, the fast-busy signal telling Dean that his brother didn't even bother hanging up after the conversation ended, that he was too busy trying to keep Castiel from bleeding out all over their kitchen floor. He's not really succeeding, by the looks of things. Cas is sprawled on his back, legs splayed awkwardly, fingertips scraping at the smooth tile in an obvious effort not to grab at Sam. He's still wearing the same stupid trench coat and three-piece suit that Jimmy Novak put on all those years ago before allowing himself to be possessed, but the pristine white shirt is saturated with blood which is now soaking through the dish towels that Sam is using in a desperate attempt to staunch the flow. Cas' eyes are at half-mast, glazed with pain, his hair plastered to his head, skin clammy and deathly pale, even for him, each breath more laboured than the last. If Dean didn't know better, he'd swear he was dying.
Sam looks up at him, expression desperate. His favourite grey t-shirt is spattered with blood, his hands and forearms drenched in red. "I can't get it to stop. It won't stop…"
"Fuck!" Dean rubs a hand over his mouth. He can't do anything while Cas is on the floor, there's no way he'll be able to get up and down easily enough. "Okay. Okay, Sammy, you're going to have to leave that for a minute. Let me... we can pull out the sofa? We'll get him on there, and then we'll see about stopping the bleeding, okay? But you need to carry him, I can't do it. Can you do that?"
Sam swallows hard, but he nods. "Yeah. I got it."
"Okay. Stay there until I call you, keep the pressure on. Is he conscious?"
As if on cue Cas turns his head a little, fixes him with the stare that always feels like he's looking straight past Dean's skin and right into his soul. "Dean…" he rasps, then stops, as though he doesn't know what else to say.
Sam hushes him. "Don't talk, Cas. Don't talk, okay? Let us help. Don't talk. Please don't talk, okay?"
There will be time for explanations later. Dean closes his mouth with an audible click of teeth, makes himself walk calmly back into the living room in order to pull out the sofa bed.
"Perry, fetch the white box," he says quietly to the dog.
Commands have to be simple enough so she'll understand them, and that's the best he could come up with for the first aid kit that they keep in the upstairs bathroom. Sam put it together, tinkered with it until the handle was positioned in such a way that Perry could carry it easily in her mouth. Dean doesn't bother to see if she obeys –he knows she will– just pulls open the bed and snaps it into place, thankful that they at least had the presence of mind to get a pull-out sofa that was easy for him to handle on his own. It had made sense even back then: he'd spent weeks on this sofa while he was still healing from his surgery, unable to manage the stairs right off, and it was important he be able to make and unmake the bed on his own, on those days when Sam was too out of it to help.
Sometimes Sam has a weird sixth sense about things. He appears in the doorway, Cas cradled against his chest like an overgrown rag doll, just as Dean finishes pulling a clean sheet over the bed, as if he knew exactly when Dean would be ready for them. He lays Cas down gently, mindful not to jostle him, strokes his forehead once in a gesture of reassurance, leaving behind a smear of blood.
"I'll get you a chair," he says to Dean, his voice steady even though Dean can feel him shaking with the strain of holding himself together. "What else do you need?"
If there's one good thing he and Sam have inherited from their dad, it's how to handle themselves in a crisis. Dean eases himself down in order to sit on the bed next to Cas, settling near his hip, his bad leg stretched out to the side so that he can lean in as best he can.
"Perry's getting the first aid kit. Uh, boil some water, and see if you can't wash all that off your hands, Sammy." Cas' head is lolling, his breathing shallow, and Dean isn't sure that he's still conscious. "Okay, Cas, we have to get you out of that coat," he says, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Sit up for me. I'll help, okay? On three: one, two!" he yanks the angel up by his armpits, grunting with the effort when Cas does little more than slump against him. "That's good, Cas, you're doing great," he murmurs, pushing the coat down over Cas' arms and tugging it free. "You with me?"
Cas pulls in a weak breath. "Nowhere else to go… I'm sorry."
"Hey, are you kidding?" Dean eases him back until he's lying flat. "You did the right thing. You need help, you come to us, that's how it works. Tell me what happened," he says, pulling off Cas' tie and unceremoniously ripping his shirt open so he can survey the damage. He hisses through his teeth when he sees the wound, a deep puncture just below the ribcage, still seeping blood, though not nearly as badly as before, it seems. Dean isn't sure if that's a good sign, or if it just means Cas doesn't have any blood left to lose.
To his surprise, Castiel laughs weakly. "You should see the other guy," he says.
Dean snorts. "Four years, and it's only when you're bleeding out in my living room that you develop a sense of humour. Figures. Okay, Cas," he turns aside long enough to retrieve the first aid kit from where Perry just dropped it at his feet. She's lying a few paces away, muzzle on her paws, watching them both anxiously, but Dean knows she won't move until he tells her to. "If you can talk, you can tell me what you need. I can stitch up a human just fine, but I don't know what to do for angelic stab wounds."
Cas coughs, and to Dean's alarm blood froths at the corners of his mouth. "Just… stitch it closed. I can heal on my own but… stopping the bleeding will help." His eyes slip shut, and Dean shakes him.
"Hey, stay with me now. No passing out until I'm sure you're not going to die, okay? No dying. Got it? Sam!" he calls out, "how's that water coming?"
As if on cue, Sam appears, holding a bowl and the electric kettle in either hand. He's managed to wash off the blood from his hands, which is a small mercy. "I filled the kettle again, just in case."
Dean blows out his cheeks. "Okay, good. I need you to help me hold him still while I stitch this. We could go through every painkiller and bottle of booze in the house and he wouldn't turn a hair, so we may as well just do it as fast as we can. You good?"
Sam nods tightly. He stays quiet, but he kneels next to Cas' head and places both hands on his shoulders, rubs his thumb in comforting circles on Cas' upper arm, and Dean sees Cas relax a fraction under his touch. Right, then. Dean pulls out a needle and suturing thread –not exactly standard fare for a home first-aid kit, but old habits die hard– threads his needle and sterilizes it. The room is quiet except for Cas' laboured breathing as he cleans the blood away from the edges of the wound, as though the whole world is holding its breath, waiting.
Dean isn't exactly a surgeon, and this injury is pretty damned deep, even by their standards. He supposes that he shouldn't be surprised, since angels are given to fighting each other with swords, but it doesn't make his job any easier. If Cas were human, there is no way that he'd be trying this at all. He'd be too worried about collapsed lungs or perforated organs, about infection and whatnot spilling into the abdominal cavity. He's stitched up an injury like this only once, when Sammy was fifteen and got his thigh torn open by a black dog, and even then it was only makeshift, just a temporary thing because they were so far from a hospital and dad had broken three fingers on his right hand and couldn't do it. His hands had been shaking just as badly then, with Sam trembling beneath him, eyes wide with fear and pain and trust, but he knew that it just had to hold until they could drive to the hospital and have the real doctors do a proper job of it. Not for the first time in his life, Dean doesn't have the first clue what he's doing.
"Dean," Sam says softly, "it's okay. Cas knows you'll do a good job."
Christ, Dean really wants a cigarette and for none of this to be happening. He forces his hands to stop shaking, breathes as quietly as he can manage. Cas' flesh yields surprisingly easily to the needle, and after a few moments he settles into a rhythm, while Cas keeps his eyes squeezed shut and Sam counts quietly to help keep his breathing even, to help keep the pain at bay. The bleeding has stopped entirely, and so now it's just a question of making sure the sutures hold, that he's not leaving behind any holes in his friend that aren't meant to be there. Cas moans once, quietly, but Sam strokes his hair and he quiets again, doesn't so much as flinch as Dean is working. It feels like hours have passed by the time he's done, swabbing the site with alcohol wipes from the kit. Sam helps while he applies sterile pads over the neat row of stitches holding the edges of the wound together and then uses up all the gauze in the kit wrapping it securely. They'll have to get more, he thinks distractedly, and sooner rather than later, in order to change the bandages.
"Okay," Dean breathes out a sigh of relief. "We're gonna need blankets, keep him warm. Cas, you still with us?" he asks, and is rewarded when the angel stirs a little under Sam's touch. "Okay," he repeats. "I'm, uh, going to get the spare blankets. You –uh, Sammy… can you –are you okay staying with him?"
Sam nods, and he looks a little less tense than before. "It's okay, the screaming stopped. I can stay. I don't hear it anymore, so I can stay."
Dean hesitates. "Do I want to know?"
Sam shrugs. "I don't know. I could –there was light, when he was bleeding. It was the same, it sounded like screaming, I couldn't stop it. But you did," he looks up, mouth quirking into a smile, like Dean is the second goddamned coming, and Dean doesn't even know how to begin to deal with that, so he snaps his fingers at Perry and flees for the linen closet to find some clean blankets.
The kitchen is covered in blood. The door to the garden is still ajar, the frame smeared with bloody handprints, and a quick inspection of the backyard tells Dean that that's where Cas arrived –there's a bloody patch of grass by one of the raised vegetable beds that Sam tends obsessively, the grass crushed, the blood turning the earth to rusty-coloured mud. Perry's sniffing curiously at a puddle of blood in the middle of the kitchen floor, but she's too well-mannered to do anything else to it. They're going to have to clean all of this up sooner rather than later unless they want bloodstains all over the kitchen, and Dean can only contemplate with horror what might happen if a well-meaning neighbour decided to drop by right now to check on them. He's not sure how he would explain to Mrs. O'Keefe why their house looks like a triage tent in a war zone.
"Dean?"
He almost jumps out of his skin when Sam materializes seemingly out of nowhere. "Jesus, Sam, warn a guy!"
Sam hunches in on himself, shoves his hands into his pockets. "Sorry. I just… I think you should sit with Cas while I clean up."
He's still shaking a little, much to Dean's dismay, his shirt ruined beyond repair, his jeans in not much better condition. Crap. Sam's barely holding it together, and now Dean's snapping at him, which isn't going to help. He takes a step forward, reaches out slowly until he can grab Sam's elbow –a calculated risk, because sometimes Sam freaks out even if it's his brother touching his arms.
"Hey, Sammy, I'm sorry. C'mere," he tugs gently, and to his relief Sam lets himself be pulled into a hug, presses his face against Dean's clavicle. "You okay?" he asks softly, and Sam nods against his collarbone. "Okay, good. We're going to have to get you cleaned up too, you're covered in blood. What will the neighbours think?" he jokes, and Sam giggles quietly. Dean ignores the slightly hysterical edge to the laughter –he figures Sam's entitled after a day like this. "So what happened?"
"I don't know. I was weeding, and the next thing I knew Cas was there. He just –he fell. He fell and he needed help, and there was light coming from him. There isn't, usually, not like –not like Lucifer, but this time I could hear the screaming and I couldn't tell that there was blood, not at first. I called you because I couldn't get the bleeding to stop, and it was so loud. It was so loud I thought he was going to die."
Dean hugs him harder. "Cas isn't going to die. You did good, Sammy. He's going to be fine, I promise." Sam just clings a little more at that, and Dean pats his back awkwardly –damned giant of a brother makes it hard to do any kind of comforting when they're both standing up. "So I'll make you a deal. You go take a shower and change, and I'm going to try to get the worst of this mess cleaned up. Don't," he squeezes Sam's shoulders when he feels a protest trying to come out of Sam's mouth. "I can manage a mop, I promise, and that way we won't have dried blood all over your nice clean kitchen for the next year. I'm just going to rinse it off, so you can clean it all to your OCD specifications afterward, I promise. Go shower, I mean it. You need anything?"
Reluctantly Sam pulls away, scrubbing at his face with the back of one scarred wrist. "I'm okay," he mumbles. "Gonna take a shower. You shouldn't be lifting buckets of water. Let me, okay? I'll do it after. You should sit with Cas, make sure he's okay. I won't be long."
He heaves a sigh. "Okay, fine. But if you're not out in ten minutes I'm coming up to get you, okay? Take a Klonopin if you need one. Hell, take one even if you're not sure you need one. We got any Gatorade?"
Sam nods. "Fridge door. It's the generic stuff, but it's the same."
Cas is lying where Dean left him, propped up now with what looks like every pillow Sam could find and carefully covered with a clean sheet and several blankets. He's still deathly pale, but it's not like Dean knows what the indicators of good health are in an angel. He sets down the plastic bottle of the electrolyte drink from the fridge, grabs the edge of the sofa bed and leverages himself onto it before leaning forward and laying a hand on the angel's arm.
"Cas, wake up for a sec. Cas?"
Castiel stirs, and after a few moments of coaxing, his eyes flutter open. "Dean?" his voice is weak but steadier than it was. Dean feels a grin spread over his face.
"Hey, welcome back. I want you to drink this, okay?" he grabs the bottle and waggles it meaningfully. Obediently Cas puts his hand out to take it, only to have the bottle immediately slip from his grasp when he proves too weak to hold it up. Dean catches it before it spills everywhere. "Whoa, okay. Let me help, here. Just sit tight," he instructs, shifting gingerly until he's sitting alongside Cas and can hold the bottle for him without feeling like his leg is about to snap in half. It's a little awkward, but it works well enough. "That better?"
Cas nods after a few swallows. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it." Upstairs, Dean can hear the sound of the shower switching off. "How bad's the pain, Cas?"
"It's bearable."
Dean rubs a hand over his mouth. "I don't know what we can give you to help," he says, absent-mindedly running his free hand over Cas' forehead, automatically checking for fever. "You're pretty much immune to anything we've got and to most things we haven't got too, for that matter."
Cas' eyes have slipped shut. "Don't trouble yourself," he says, voice fading again. "I simply require rest. I won't impose long…"
"Moron," Dean strokes his hair. "You're not imposing. And if you think Sam or me are going to let you out of here before you're recovered, you've got another think coming. Got it?"
Cas hums something that sounds like agreement, but Dean didn't spend all those years in the field without being able to recognize the signs of exhaustion. He can hear Sam moving about slowly upstairs, probably changing his clothes, and the sound is a comforting one. It means that, against all odds, Sam is still keeping it together. They'll probably pay for it later, but right now Dean is more than willing to take the win. Cas is going to recover, Sam is okay, at least for now, and in a little while their kitchen will no longer look like a slaughterhouse. He's going to have to think of something to tell Sophie about why he's not going to be at work for the next few days, but he'll figure something out before he calls her later tonight. Lying about their lives is a skill he excels at, after all.
"Get some rest, Cas," he says, patting Cas on the knee. "We'll talk again when you wake up."
To his surprise, Cas forces his eyes open. "You should ward the house. In case…"
Dean grins. "Way ahead of you. You're the only angel allowed in the house." He gives Cas' knee another pat. "Don't worry, Cas, you're safe here. I promise."
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