Work Text:
All his life, Dean had heard stories of the dragons. As a child, he’d accepted them blindly, as children do, but as he grew older, the lack of substance in the tales began to strike him, and by the time he was eighteen, he was fairly certain the dragons had never existed at all. Nothing but folk religion, he thought: the kind of thing old women believed in when the nights were long and cold.
When Dean was nineteen, the kingdom went to war. The first battle was fierce, and many died. Boy soldiers clutched his hands and prayed to the dragon lords, and Dean lied sweetly into their wide dark eyes: they will come for you, I know it. The dragons will protect you.
In truth, he knew nothing, was sure of nothing at all, until the moment the javelin pierced his side.
They left him for dead on the mountainside, under a great swollen knot of trees set into the rock. Dean closed his eyes and the ancient yearnings sprang up in his chest: protect me, lords. Protect me, dragonkind.
He didn’t believe, on a rational level, but the soul is never rational.
The first he felt of the dragon was the flutter of its wing, curving smooth around his shoulder. When he lifted his head, he found himself looking into clear blue eyes, wide and unblinking and sure.
“You asked for help?” said the dragon, and Dean’s throat fell dry.
“You heard me?”
The dragon inclined its head. “We protect our own.”
Dean’s injuries, it seemed, were too much for the mortal coil to harbour. In the dragons’ realm, though, gravity was lesser, and survival less difficult. Dean could cling to his dragon’s back with impunity, his chest pressed to its ridges, and feel his body light as a feather, buoyed under the dragon’s strength.
“Dean,” the dragon breathed against his neck as it set him down. From this angle, Dean could see the scaled expanse of its chest, the strength in its wings – and the pale unarmoured place just under its breast where a spear might strike home. A dragon would not show such a place to just anyone. This was a gesture of trust, and Dean’s gut dipped with the honour of it.
“Your name,” Dean said, lifting his face. He raised his arm half-consciously; the ache in his side had already dulled to a numb throbbing; he could feel the tissues knitting together again over the wound. His hand found the ridge of scutes on the dragon’s shoulder, and as he gripped there, he saw its bright eyes narrow minutely, responsive. “Please?”
“Castiel,” said the dragon. The mighty head arced gently, as if in a bow, although the idea that a creature as majestic as this might bow to a boy like Dean was beyond ridiculous. “I have been waiting for you, Dean. Waiting for your call.”
Dean’s chest was suddenly tight, his throat throbbing. “I’m – sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said.
Castiel smirked, nostrils flaring, the tiniest tendrils of smoke curling out: a warning, and a promise. “You were worth it,” he said earnestly, and the points of his teeth gleamed in the late sun’s light.