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The concrete floor quaked as Dean's stock-still body hit the ground. Cas had to stifle an unsteady breath once he spotted the growing stain on the hunter's shirt, a non-stop scarlet tearing through the layers of denim and flannel.
“Dean!” the angel yelled, but his voice felt alien even to his own ears. He tumbled over to his friend, footsteps heavy, gaze weighing heavier.
Dean opened his mouth, only to close it again. His eyes lingered frantically, searching the room for a threat that had already been long-dead, smote out of its bones the moment the gun's trigger was released. The ringing of bullet shots still clung onto the reticent air.
“Hold on,” Cas said, keeping Dean pinned down by the shoulders. He could already feel his diminishing grace itching at the tips of his fingers. “Let me heal you.”
“No..no,” Dean choked out, a useless hand waving him away. Every word felt like an insult to his ribs, seizing and releasing him recklessly. Blood dripped inside of him, the slow ripping of his heart taking forever to fritter away. “Your powers, they're-”
“Weak, I know,” Cas sighed. He didn't care if his abilities were dwindling or not. He needed to save Dean, no matter the cost. “Let me help you, Dean. Please. This will not be how you die.”
Dean exhaled, throttling a terrible cough. There wasn't much life left in him to protest. He nodded, feeble and forced.
Cas projected his grace onto the palm he laid atop the hunter's chest, wretched light flickering in and out. It reached throughout the broken parts, the cold parts, warming everything it latched onto. It touched the torn heart screaming in Dean's torso, cradling it with such luminosity, it could have willed a ghost town back to life.
Cas’s head would not stop pounding against its own walls, merciless and unending. Or as his hunter would put it, it hurt like a bitch.
But he would not stop until every vein was reconnected, every slither of skin stitched back together, every fractured bone put back into the right place. He would not, could not bear to stop until Dean's heart was whole again, untouched and just as he had left it.
“Cas,” Dean called from a distant universe. The angel had his eyes snapped shut, a restless thudding in his ears. “Cas, stop.”
“No,” Cas grunted. He can't stop now. Not when there was still something so fragmented. “Not yet.”
“Stop,” Dean repeated. “It's fine. I'm fine. You have to stop, man.”
Cas shook his head, shoving Dean further into the ground. There was something stuck—distorted and disruptive and evil. A darkness he did not know how to fix, a darkness that has always been there. He has to figure out how to fix it.
“I said stop,” Dean groaned, grabbing the angel's wrist and pushing him off easily with his newly-replenished strength. Cas rolled onto the floor beside him like a ragdoll, palm frozen mid-air still. The light danced around them a tiny breath longer, and dimmed.
Dean stood, knees buckling—crawled on shaky limbs. “What-” he staggered. “Cas?” he said as he tried to stir the angel back to sentience. “What the hell was that?”
Dean felt like he got shot in the heart again, twice this time, when Cas didn't even bother to answer the question.
He swore underneath his breath, the wild forest of his eyes catching a glimpse of the blood rapidly pooling on Cas’s wrinkled dress shirt. Right where Dean was shot.
Dean felt every attempt at properly breathing jam in his throat. “Shit, shit, shit,” he cursed over and over again, heaving the silenced angel into his lap. “Come on, Cas, heal yourself.”
“Dea-” Cas cut himself off, a gurgle of blood searing his throat. “It's g’nna take..a while..” he slurred, a steady trickle of blood dripping from his chin and onto the hunter's sleeve.
“What's going on? Why's this happening?” Dean questioned, his confusion burning with the desire to be satiated. “This never happened before. Healing someone's never done this to you before. So what the fuck, man?”
“I had t’..transfer the injuries you suffered,” Cas winced as the words left a metallic taste in his mouth. “Onto myself.”
“What?” Dean asked, voice breaking, horror dawning down on his face in an instant.
“It was the only way,” Cas huffed. If he wasn't speaking, the hunter would have thought him as lifeless as the smoked corpses surrounding them. “My powers aren't strong enough to.. heal you naturally. But I- I cannot just let you die, Dean.”
“So what, now you're just supposed to put a whammy on yourself to become a masochist with a saviour complex?” Dean said with a wavering tone. “Become the world's most stubborn altruist?”
“You were dying,” Cas simply replied in a whisper, exhausted and meek. "Did you.. assume I would just stand and watch? You know what I would have-" An untimely exhale. "..What I would have done had you not survived. How it would destroy me."
Somehow, Dean did not know what to say to that.
The angel entered a coughing fit, and then short gasps. His nails dug into Dean's forearm, clawing aimlessly weak. The thrashing of his suffering heart felt like an eternal agony to bear—like it would not keep in place, like it wanted to drain him completely until there was nothing left. His grace took all the time in the world to replenish itself.
Cas wanted to look at Dean, but all he saw was darkness. He wondered if he was dipping his toes between the fragile, immovable line of life and death. Standing directly on a barrier as he fought tirelessly against unconsciousness whilst his vessel was begging for mercy.
Dean hugged his body closer. “I've got you,” the hunter assured. “Just focus on healing yourself. Don't you worry about anything else. I've got you.”
The angel shuddered as the wound on his heart attempted to eat away at everything else. He was left tongue-tied, a hair’s breadth away from losing his epic battle against a single bleeding heart. But Dean anchored him, keeping him stable though all else was faded and disoriented.
“Hey. Hey! Don't you go closing those eyes,” Dean demanded. “You leave me like this and I'll bring you back to kill you thrice. You understand?”
Cas hummed longer than he should have. He let a small smile creep up on his face as he nodded his head into the hunter's chest at the absurd remark.
“Yep, that's it. Jus' stay awake. You're alright,” Dean swore to him like a prayer, carding gentle fingers through his angel's hair. “You're alright.”
And as his grace stitched the fissures in his heart little by little, Cas continued to let Dean hold him like he never has before. He had splinters too, in the heart he carried. Less angel, frighteningly human. He and Dean had twin bruises blossoming inside their ribcages. Bruises of which his powers could not patch-up, bruises of which only knew how to watch over each other.
Dean planted a kiss on his unkempt hair, and Cas felt something entirely new, something inside of him—of the both of them—beginning to mend.