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"All right, the bad news is, you fought the tree and the tree won." Dean knelt down and gently pulled Cas's grubby sweatpants the rest of the way off. "The good news is, the tree only took a little bite of flesh and didn't break any of your bones."
Cas straightened out his leg. When he pressed on the shallow gouge on his knee, fresh blood welled up in it. Dean swatted his hand away and replaced it with a big cotton ball soaked in alcohol. Cas hissed and jerked. Dean clamped a hand on his hip to keep him still.
"I didn't think it would be so hard to pull up one tiny maple," Cas panted out.
"It's been here longer than we have. We'll have to dig it out." Dean dabbed up the watery blood with a clean washcloth and smiled at Cas sympathetically. "Can I trust you to sit here and not touch that while I go get some gauze?" Cas narrowed his eyes at him and Dean's smile grew bigger. "Atta boy."
Dean heaved himself off the floor and rummaged around in the bathroom closet. Gauze, scissors, tape. By the time he'd returned Cas had also taken off his sweatshirt and both pairs of socks and was only dripping a little onto the floor, the crimson splatters stark in comparison to the white tiles Dean had just bleached clean hours ago.
Sighing, Dean knelt again. He made quick work of another swipe with alcohol and taped up Cas's battle wound.
"I'm not going to be able to walk much with the tape like this," Cas said.
"You're not going to walk much, period." Dean rose and helped Cas to his feet. "You're off the clock for the rest of the evening. Closin' time. Lights out."
"It's only 8 p.m."
"Sun's down and we're both tired. Time for bed."
Cas gave Dean a crafty look. "You just want to watch your show, don't you? The one with all the time-traveling dragons."
"First of all, they're time-traveling wyverns from the year 8990. Secondly, I'm not doing yard work in the dark and neither should you." Dean took Cas's hands and led him out of the bathroom, Cas favoring his uninjured leg as they picked their way down the hallway to their bedroom.
And wasn't that an impossible thing. Dean's pulse jumped thinking about it. He and Cas had a bed. Collectively. Shared. In a small house that was also theirs, on a scrabbly, overgrown lot that Cas was determined to tame by planting season. Through the window Dean could see the outline of old bricks Cas had put down for the garden plot; in the moonlight, the yard still looked wild, lush weeds and volunteers from summer dying back slowly as autumn brought heavier frosts. It was all theirs to clear away and make ready for tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, potatoes, herbs, squash, all sorts of flowers that would bloom one month after another.
He'd never let himself imagine any of it – not the house nor the yard nor the simple, comfortable bedroom scented like a pumpkin spice candle they'd burned earlier in the day, and certainly not this good life with Cas, who was climbing into their bed gingerly and looking up at Dean with unwavering affection in his face.
Dean climbed in beside him and put his arms around him. Felt the warmth of Cas's bare skin under his palms and Cas's breath against his throat.
"We should buy a chainsaw," Cas said.
Dean loved him with every cell in his body. "No," he said firmly.