Archive of Our Own

Dean couldn’t have asked for a better day.

The angels had slept in that morning, and that translated to Dean getting to sleep in too. And there had been pie – fresh, warm, glorious, pie – with lunch. Then the whipped cream on top of this fabulous day was that Gabriel and Balthazar were being (suspiciously) well behaved.

Dean wanted to attribute that to the tentative promise he and Sam had made about taking them to an abandoned play park they’d discovered just outside of Sioux Falls. Bobby had spotted it while he was out on a supplies run, because Bobby was the only one who got to leave the house for supply runs – the lucky bastard. That could possibly be the only reason he hasn’t kicked them all out the front door yet.

But the cherry on top of the whipped cream on top of the awesome that has been today?

The angels were taking a mid-afternoon nap.

A nap.

In the month since the witch-bitch curse had gone into effect (and they still hadn’t found a fucking cure yet), the kids hadn’t taken a single nap. Not one. They would wake up at the ass-crack of dawn and run Dean and Sam (and to a lesser extent, Bobby) ragged until someone finally caved and popped in a Disney DVD to get an hour and a half of blessed peace.

Peace which, in Dean’s fine opinion, wasn’t very peaceful. Because those precious ninety minutes were spent cleaning up every single mess. And there were a lot of messes. He was even making a list. A lovely list that had started out being called ‘Top Ten What-The-Fuck Messes’. But it hadn’t stopped at ten. Oh no, it most certainly had not. That had been some pretty epic wishful thinking when he’d first written it down. Dean hadn’t had the time to count them, but he’s pretty sure that the list is pushing into the low fifties now.

Some of the greatest hits were:

• How the fuck did Gabriel get finger paint on the ceiling? Oh God, did these fuckers learn how to fly? (No, they haven’t.)
• When did Balthazar get his hands on flour and how the hell did nobody notice him covering the top of the ceiling fan’s blades with it?
• I don’t even wanna know how Gabriel made the shower run with lime-green jello instead of water.
• Where did they even get all these marshmallows?! Never gonna eat another s’more again.
• Reminder: Hide all writing utensils in the angel-proofed cabinet (unless it’s supervised colouring time) because you will spend the rest of the day scrubbing it off of every kitchen surface possible. Yes, even the ceiling. 

Gabriel and Balthazar had some kind of really sick fascination with getting things on the ceiling. Dean suspected it had something to do with getting him up on a ladder. He always made doubly sure that Sam and Bobby had the both of them on a tight leash and that Cas was on guard every time he had to climb up on the rickety deathtrap that Bobby kept for in-house work.  

But nothing like that had happened today. No, today was bordering on perfect and it was giving Dean a mild panic attack because he just knew something was going to happen. He didn’t know what, or when, or how. But something was going to explode and, with his luck, it was going to happen right in his face.

And that sounded way dirtier than he meant it to.

They were all taking full advantage of the impromptu blessing of this beyond-rare naptime. Bobby had taken what Dean dubbed the ‘things we need but don’t need bad enough to be down a caretaker for more than an hour’ shopping list and left in his pick-up truck for town. Sam was nose deep in the biggest tomb about witches that Bobby owned, translating like the mad genius he was.

And since there were no ridiculous messes to be cleaned, thanks to the (seriously suspicious) good behavior, Dean was out in the yard and checking under the impala’s hood. He hadn’t had a proper chance to work on her and make sure his baby was feeling good for way longer than he would have liked. It’s no surprise that it’s while he’s elbow deep in checking around the engine that the Samsquatch strikes, confirming Dean’s theory that shit was just waiting for someone to hit the ‘on’ switch.

He could always trust his brother to be the bearer of bad news.

“DEAN!”

He hit his head on the hood and got a nice long scratch down his forearm when he jumped in surprise. Even the great Dean Winchester can get startled when his moose of a little brother comes barreling out of the house yelling at the top of his lungs. To make matters worse, he’s got a half-asleep Gabriel tucked under one arm, Balthazar under the other and he’s got Cas’s coat over his shoulder.

Cas wasn’t with him.

He wasn’t even trailing behind him.

Dean didn’t have anything even close to clean enough to press over the slowly bleeding cut, so he turned to Sam with his arm cradled carefully in front of his chest and a frown firmly fixed in place. “What happened?”

Sam stopped short and both angels make disgruntled little sleepy noises. Balthazar rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn while Gabriel was mostly limp, his arms and legs dangled loosely along Sam’s hip. Dean kind of wanted to take a picture, just to rub it in the asshole’s face when they finally got him back to normal. It would probably earn him a one-way-ticket back into TV-land or something, but it would be worth it. Especially if he spread the picture out on the internet a bit.

Any vengeful little thoughts he might have been thinking flew the coop the moment Sam opened his mouth and hissed three little words.

“Cas is gone!”

Dean tensed. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“What the hell do you think I mean?” Sam was bitchfacing and it wasn’t pretty. “Castiel is gone. I thought I heard noises in the kid’s room and when I went to check these two were still sleeping and Cas wasn’t there. I checked the bathroom, the closets, everywhere. He’s not in the house, Dean.” He sucked in a breath and his eyes went wide to emphasize his next point. “He left without his coat.”

“Cas wouldn’t just leave.” He realized his point was a little moot about two seconds after the words were out of his mouth, because Cas really did have one helluva history for popping off on them without a word. But Cas couldn’t bamf off whenever he pleased right now.

Dean refused to believe that the feeling starting to push against his ribs was panic.

Cas was the good kid, the one they had to worry about the least. He listened, he helped translate the texts, he even helped clean on occasion. He wouldn’t just up and walk away without saying anything to anyone. Not on purpose at least. And even if he did, for a tyke he’s pretty good at taking care of himself. So there really wasn’t actually any reason for Dean to be panicking.

Unless somebody took him.

Oh Jesus Christ, that thought only served to make his chest go all tight and it ached. It was painfully reminiscent of that time when Sammy had been taken by Azazel and Dean didn’t know where the hell he was until Andy mind-whammied the location into his head.  Fuck no. If he started thinking along those lines, Dean was going to work himself up to the point where he might not-so-accidentally shoot something that won’t deserve being shot.

Dean must not have been very good at keeping his thoughts off his face just then because all of a sudden Sam had that stupid puppy-eyed feelings look on his face. The kind of look he gets when he wants to sympathize and talk about stuff that will undoubtedly lead into the dangerous territory of ‘chick-flick moments’. Dean schooled his features into the stoic-est of stoic looks he could muster and held up his hands to cut Sam off at the pass.

“I’m going to go wash up and get a band-aide. Then we’ll look for Cas.” He turned back to the car and closed the hood. “It’s nothing to worry about, Sam. I bet Cas is already back in their nest or something.”

“But Dean –”

“Seriously, Sammy. I’m sure he’s fine.”

Castiel was, in fact, not in the nest when Sam went to check. Dean came out of the bathroom with gauze wrapped around his forearm (because for some stupid reason they didn’t have any band-aides big enough to cover it and Bobby would throw a shit fit if Dean used ten of those little tabs he kept in the bathroom) to find Sam pacing the living room. Balthazar and Gabriel were curled on the couch and snoring.  

“He wasn’t in the nest.” Sam stopped pacing and planted himself like some sort of beanstalk-of-irritated-worry in front of Dean. “He’s not anywhere upstairs. I checked. Twice.”

“So I gathered.” Dean’s eyes were on the angels. “Sam. What’s got them so tuckered out?”

Sam looked over his shoulder and shrugged. “Hell if I know. But while they’re out we should look for Cas. You want to take the basement?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Dean.” Sam grabbed his arm as he turned away. “Are you…?”

He raised an eyebrow at him. “Am I what?”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

Out of all the stupid questions Sam could have asked, that had to rank right up there with the stupidest. “Why wouldn’t I be? Cas is fine. We’re gonna find him snoozing in a cupboard or something and you’ll feel like an idiot for getting all worked up about it. He’s an angel, Sam. Just coz’ he’s pint-sized doesn’t mean he’s any less smart.”

“What if something got in and took him?”

Dean fixed him with a flat look, even though his pulse fucking skyrocketed at the thought that some son-of-a-bitch hell-spawn might have Cas. “You really think there’s anything out there that could get past the both of us, kidnap an angel without waking the two other angels – one of which happens to be a fuckin’ archangel – and sneak out with neither of us noticing? “

“Well, no. But I’m just saying –”

“What? What, exactly, are you trying to say?”

“It’s okay to be worried about him, Dean.”

He jerked his arm out of Sam’s grip and rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake there’s nothing to be worried about. I’m going to check out the panic room – you check the main floor.”

Dean stomped out of the room before Sam could open his mouth and try the whole feelings thing again. He wasn’t worried. He wasn’t. Cas probably got up to take a piss and had just wondered off to crash in another part of the house.

The panic-room was still locked. Dean opened it and checked anyway. It was where they’d stored all of Bobby’s guns and things that could, in the hands of Gabriel or Balthazar, go boom in a very bad way and cause a big fucking mess. Cas had given them an angel proofing symbol that they’d chalked onto the inside of the door, just to make sure that no little troublemakers managed to get in.

Unsurprisingly, Cas wasn’t in the room.

He also wasn’t anywhere in the basement. Dean checked under the tables, in the cupboards, under the stairs, and he even checked in between the support beams running under the main floor. It required getting that stupid ladder and a flash light. He found a bunch of cobwebs, but no Castiel.

Sam’s voice came down the stairs, loud and annoyingly full of cautious optimism. “Did you find him?”

Dean avoided the last step on the ladder (it was broken and he had a sneaking suspicion it was Gabriel who broke it) and jumped down from the second.“Of course I did, Sammy. We’re sitting down here having a tea party. Sorry, we forgot to invite you.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, jerk.”

“Bite me, bitch.” He dragged the ladder back to its place against the wall.

That’s when he noticed it.

The basement door leading outside – the very same door he’d used in his escape when he sigil-banished Cas and went to say ‘yes’ to Michael – was open a crack. And that right there was all sorts of wrong. Dean knew for a fact that it had been shut and latched (though not locked) earlier because he had been the last one to use it. He’d come in and out that way (because he didn’t want to wake the napping angels) to get some of Bobby’s tools to use on the impala.

“Sam, I’m going to check outside.”

He climbed the few steps and pushed up. The door swung open with barely any creaking. It wasn’t heavy enough that a kid Cas’s size couldn’t push it open if they managed to get the latch up. Dean cursed and climbed out, eyes on the dirt. Sure enough, there were tiny foot prints and they led right out into the teetering towers of cars and scrap.

“Goddammit.”

Dean followed the footprints.

He lost the trail a few times when it ran over some grassy patches, but a good twenty minutes later, after his merry little stroll over pretty much every fucking inch of land that Bobby owned, Dean found himself back at the house and still completely and utterly Cas-less. He’d been out in the sun all afternoon and now he was sweaty and really thirsty.

He still wasn’t worried.

Dean went inside and got a bottle of water from the fridge. It was like ambrosia and he downed the entire thing before he even reached the living room. Sam was checking out the windows and Gabriel and Balthazar were wide awake and practically drooling in their Disney-stupor while watching Aladdin and Jasmine sing about their feelings.

He wrinkled his nose at the TV and walked up next to Sam. “When did they wake up?”

“Before you went outside. He wasn’t out there?”

“He was but he might not be anymore. But I’ll tell you now, he’s going to be a dirty little fucker by the time we find him.” Dean tilted his head to gesture outside. “I’m pretty sure he fell or sat down, hell he might have even rolled around in the dirt, a few times while I was tracking him.”

“Was he alone?”

“Looks like. I didn’t see signs of anyone else.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the angels on the couch. “They have anything to say on the matter?”

“Just that the only reason they were so tired was because they were up half the night plotting.”

Dean actually winced. “Fuck. Plotting about what? Anything to do with this bullshit Cas is pulling?”

“They wouldn’t say. But they said it has nothing to do with Cas. Besides, he spent the night with you, so he wasn’t in on whatever they were planning.” Sam looked at Dean and his eyes were doing that wide thing where he looks both concerned and scared and everything that makes Dean want to tuck him under the covers and promise him that dad would take care of any monsters under the bed – just like he used to when he was a kid. “Dean. They were worried about Cas. It was why I put the movie in, so they wouldn’t freak out.”

“You’re all being a bunch of sissies. I’m telling you, Cas is fine.” He pointedly did not look at Sam. Instead he focused on the plume of road-dust rising up behind a line of cars. Thank the ever loving God (ha), Bobby was back. He knew all the hidey-holes that Cas could have squished himself into. “Let’s go help Bobby bring the stuff in.”

Sam sighed and ruffled his hands through his hair. “So you’re really not worried about him?”

“Why should I be?”

“Dean, he’s a kid.”

“He’s an angel.” Dean headed for the kitchen and Sam followed. He chucked the water bottle into the recycling bin with damn near perfect accuracy, and he hadn’t even been looking.

“He’s an angel without his mojo!” Sam snapped, pulling the back door open harder than necessary and Dean winced when it bounced off the wall. He’s lucky Bobby was still in the truck or he would have gotten a hell of an earful for being so rough (it would’ve served him right too). “He’s like a disassembled gun without any bullets. And you’re trying to tell me you’re not worried?”

Dean brushed past the entirely-too-annoying-for-his-own-good moose. “This isn’t the first time Cas has fucked off on us without a word before. Why the hell should it be any different now that he’s a kid?”

Bobby was just pulling down the tailgate when they reached him. He took one look at them and his face pinched up into a frown. “What exploded this time?”

Sam beat him to the punch and Dean shot him a glare. “Cas is missing. We can’t find him anywhere.”

Bobby snorting, shaking his head, and turning back to his truck like it was no big deal that one of their angels was missing was not one of the several possible reactions that Dean was prepared for. He shared a look of disbelief with Sam before Bobby shoved at least a half-dozen boxes of frozen pizza against his chest.

“Don’t play dumb with me, boy. Yer angel is fine, now go stick those in the deep freeze.”

Dean didn’t budge. Did Bobby really think there wasn’t anything to worry about? (Not that Dean was worried, because he wasn’t.) But even he hadn’t reacted so… so lightly to the news.

“We’re not playing dumb. Cas really is gone.” Sam was looking at Bobby like he wanted to break out the silver and check to make sure he wasn’t a shifter.

Bobby leveled them both with a look that clearly, in no uncertain terms, stated that he wasn’t believing them. “No, he ain’t. I can see ‘im from here.”

Dean knew they must have looked five kinds of stupid, but both he and Sam both swiveled in place. Maybe Bobby was going senile, or blind, or he was seeing things or something. But Dean would swear on his baby that Cas was nowhere in sight. And Dean kind of had a sixth-sense when it came to noticing Cas and if he couldn’t see him, why the hell could Bobby?

“Oh for the love of –”

He wasn’t expecting Bobby to grab him with one hand on his chin and the other on his shoulder and spin him around. So he really can’t be held accountable for how the pizzas ended up unceremoniously on the ground. Dean frowned in the direction Bobby had pointed him in. He was facing one of the few stretches of actual grass that made up anything even close to resembling a lawn, and parked on the other side of it was the impala.

“I don’t –” Dean started and Bobby pushed him forward.

“In the car, idjit.”

Sam made a little hissing noise, like he was sucking air through his teeth. “Oh!”

“‘Oh’ what?” Dean squinted at his baby. The windows were down because he didn’t want the inside to be stifling when they go to the park later and even though Cas was tiny as a tyke, he should at least be able to see the top of his head through the window if he was in the car. Bobby had to drive by the impala to get to here, so he could understand if he saw Cas on the drive-by, but how the hell could Sam see him from over – holy shit was that a wing?

Dean was sprinting across the grass and yanking open the passenger door before he even realized he was doing it. It wasn’t because he was something like fifteen different kinds of relieved or anything, because Dean hadn’t been worried. Not at all. Cas was fine just like Dean had thought he would be. The little shit was even sleeping.  In the driver’s seat. Curled up around the jacket Dean had left there.

No, Dean definitely wasn’t thinking that he’s kind of adorable. Dean should be mad. Cas went on his little walk – God-only-knows-why – and then decided to continue his nap in the car without telling anyone and he was getting dirt all over the seat.

Every so often, Cas’s wings would twitch and arch up to catch in the cross-breeze. And every time they did, it shook a little cloud of dust and dirt from the feathers. And that little cloud proceeded to settle on the leather and pretty much all over Cas.

He made a little snuffling noise and pressed his face into the jacket. Dean maybe melted a little inside as he kneeled on the seat and reached over to poke him in the leg. “Hey, hey Cas.”

Cas’s nose crinkled and he made a displeased noise before curling up tighter. Dean did not smile. No, he didn’t. Because this wasn’t ridiculously cute and he was supposed to be mad. He wrapped his hand around Cas’s ankle and shook it slightly, jostling him. Cas grumbled again, but this time he cracked open his eyes. 

“G’way, Dean. M’sleeping.”

“Yeah, well, you’re gonna be up all night if you keep on sleeping and there’s no way we’re having that. And dude, you need a bath before we let you run loose again.”

Cas groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. “I bathed last night.”

“And now you’re dirty again. Funny how that works, huh?”

“What did Gabriel and Balthazar do to me while I was sleeping?” Cas sat up abruptly, flaring his wings and twisting to check for errant pieces of candy or dental floss or – after that one truly horrific afternoon – caramel. Cas checked the state of his clothes and the dirt on his feathers and he frowned before looking around, confusion making the familiar crease between his eyebrows. “Dean, why am I in the impala?”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “You don’t remember that you escaped the house via the basement?”

“No.”

“Or your little journey through the junk yard?”

“No.”

“I guess that means you definitely don’t know that we’ve been looking for your ass for nearly two hours because you’ve been missing. But hey, that’s okay, you apparently just sleep walked the long way to my car to snuggle up with my jacket.” Cas immediately looked down at the fabric he was still holding pretty tightly and he looked almost horrified at finding it there. He shoved it away as if it burned him and stared up at Dean with quite possibly the widest deer-in-the-headlights look he’s ever donned. Dean plowed on with his snark anyway. “That’s cool. Not like we weren’t worried or anything.”

Dean was being kind of an asshole about this despite not even being mad. Okay, so maybe he was slightly irritated. Relieved, but irritated. Because sleep walking? Really? That’s just all sorts of stupidly annoying. And Cas had been in the car the whole fucking time. Dean had even walked right past it when he’d lost the trail on the grass.

“Dean I –” Cas started and then dropped off, his eyes going from Dean’s face to over his shoulder and Dean almost winced because it didn’t take a Sammy-level of genius to know why and especially who was now standing behind him.

“I thought you said you weren’t worried.” The smug was practically wafting off Sam and Dean really didn’t want to see the look he was probably sporting to go with it.

“I wasn’t.” Dean shot back over his shoulder and then reached out for Cas. “C’mon, you’re getting my baby all dirty.”

Cas’s bottom lip wobbled and Dean’s whole body locked up, a chill running down his spine because he knew, he knew, what was about to happen next and oh God there was no way to stop it.

“I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t – it wasn’t my intention – I was only sleeping and I –”

And cue the waterworks. Which, of course, was quickly followed by the most accusing “Dean!” he had possibly ever heard from Sam. Dean didn’t think twice about dragging Cas across the seat and letting the pint-sized angel press his face into his chest. It took a little maneuvering, but he managed to crawl backward out of the car while practically cradling Cas in his arms – and he only hit his head once.

“Whoa, little dude, whoa. Calm down, it’s okay. I’m not mad.”

“Sure sounded like it to me.” Sam snapped and Dean pushed the car door open further with his hip, making sure it hit Sam because that little comment only made Cas cry harder.

“I’m not mad about the car. The impala’s easy enough to clean out.” He rubbed small circles between Cas’s wings and bounced him a little like he would a crying baby, even though Cas was no baby and it only served to make him cling harder.

Sam slammed the door shut and Dean ignored the bitchface directed his way. “Then what are you mad at, hm?”

“I’m not mad.”

“Then what are you?”

“Getting mad.”

Sam ignored his look of warning. “Really? Because I think you’re relieved. And you know what? You can’t be relieved without first being worried.”

Dean ground his teeth together. What the fuck was up with Sam and trying to get him to admit he had been (he hadn’t been) worried about Cas? It wasn’t that big of a deal and Jesus Christ that was Sam’s feelings eyebrow waggle. No. Fuck no. There would be none of that shit going on while Cas was soaking the front of his shirt.

Time for a strategic topic change.

“Shouldn’t that movie be over by now?”

Sam paled and whipped around to stare toward the house. As if he’d been waiting for that exact moment, Bobby’s very loud, very colourful (wow, he should write some of those down) swears came out the kitchen door. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d say Bobby was working his way through the alphabet. Sam was jumping the steps to the porch before Bobby reached ‘g’.

Dean leaned against the impala and continued to rub Cas’s back. “You can stop the waterworks at any time, y’know?”

Cas hic-coughed and shook his head. His feathers were rustling something crazy. “I angered you…”

“I’m not angry, Cas.”

“But y-you –” He sniffled again, lifting his head and holy crap those big, teary baby blues should be fucking illegal. “You sounded very –”

“Yeah, well, that’s how people sound when they find out they were wor… not worried… for stupid reasons.”

Cas rubbed his sleeve under his nose and thank fuck he looked like he had stopped crying. “You were worried about me?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m actually pretty sure I said that I wasn’t worried.” It was suddenly very hard to look at Cas and Dean decided that craning his neck to try and see through the kitchen window was a much better thing to do. “Why’d you go looking for my jacket anyway?”

“I was sleeping, Dean. I don’t know why I did anything that I did.”

Dean’s response was a grunt. He knew Cas was looking at him. He could see it out of the corner of his eye and he could practically feel the stare. And then the stare dropped and Cas was fidgeting with the open edge of Dean’s flannel.

“But I can guess why…” It was said so softly Dean almost missed it.

He looked back at Cas with one raised eyebrows “Oh?”

“You did the laundry this morning.”

“That’s cause for sleep walking and jacket stealing now?”

Cas pouted and twisted his fingers in Dean’s shirt, his wings twitched up closer to his back. “No. But you washed the sheets you’ve been using and they no longer smell like you.”

Two raised eyebrows. “Come again?”

He shifted in Dean’s arms and if he had his mojo, Dean’s ninety-six percent sure Cas would have popped off by now. “I’ve become… accustomed… to sleeping with you and when I joined Gabriel and Balthazar for their nap I… had trouble falling asleep. I remember being uncomfortable and dreaming that I was looking for something… and…” Cas shrugged and ducked his head, his cheeks red.

Dean mulled this over for a moment and felt the teasing grin stretch across his face. “So you’re saying you couldn’t sleep right coz’ your nest doesn’t smell like me, huh? Have I got you addicted to Eau-De-Dean?”

Cas’s face pinched into a frown and he started to push at Dean’s chest and wiggle. “You can put me down now.”

“Admit it and maybe I will.”

Cas pushed harder, his wings flaring unhappily. “Dean.”

Teasing kid-Cas would never not be fun. “Admit it and I’ll think about it.”

“Admit you were worried about me and maybe I will.” Cas shot back and Dean’s grin kinda froze in place because what the hell was he supposed to say to that?

He looked away again. “I wasn’t worried.”

“And I don’t like the way you smell.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

“Brat.”

“Assbutt.”

Dean’s urge to laugh was quelled by Bobby’s shout from the kitchen door. “Get in here and help clean up what yer idiot angels did this time!”

They both winced and shared incredulous looks when Sam’s mournful cry echoed over Bobby’s. “How did you even – Where did you find enough glue to stick the furniture on the ceiling?!”