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By the time Sam gets him out of the car and into the Bunker, Cas is sweating profusely and has started to shiver. Not the feral, wire-trigger tremor of a predator, but a bone-deep shaking that Sam would attribute, if this weren't an angel they were talking about, to a severe fever.
Cas makes it about halfway down the Bunker stairs, leaning heavily on Sam, before his knees seem to give out and he almost falls face-first down the remaining steps. Sam barely manages to hold him up, and they stumble in an ungainly tangle of limbs down to the ground floor.
"Dude, you're burning up," says Sam. Cas feels like a live brand beneath his layers of clothing.
"It's burrowing d-deeper," says Cas through chattering teeth. "It doesn't...like being resisted."
Sam grimaces at the Bunker ceiling, frustrated that his mere presence is making things worse for Cas. The angel blade is a cold, heavy weight on his hip, a reminder that some part of Cas, at least, isn't expecting to survive this. "Do you—uh, do you feel hot? Cold? Do you need some water?"
He isn't sure whether to treat this like a normal fever, whether the same cocktail of fluids and blankets and warm broth can allay symptoms in an angel. He wonders if he should make soup or something, wonders if Cas can eat, wonders if there's a danger of Cas throwing up, wonders if angels can feel nauseous.
He spends too long wondering, and snaps out of it when Cas sways on the spot, screwing his scarlet eyes shut. Shit. He tries to marshal his thoughts, tries to leap into action. Dean was always better at this.
"I'm—gonna touch your forehead, okay?"
Cas nods without opening his eyes. "Alright," he rasps, in the trademark blend of puzzlement and resignation with which Cas accepts most human customs that he doesn't understand.
Sam presses his palm against Cas's damp forehead, disturbed by the way the angel's skin somehow feels both clammy and hot.
"I think you might have a fever, Cas," he ventures. "Side effect of the spell, maybe."
"Angels don't get fevers," Cas mumbles. He leans forward into Sam's touch, seemingly without realizing it. His arms hang loosely by his sides. Sam feels the weight of Cas against his hand, the solidity of him, or his vessel, or whatever Cas is now, some strange and unique amalgam of mortal and divine, disassembled and reconstructed and battered to pieces over and over again.
Dean may be better than this, but Sam knows what to do. Sure, he's not usually the healthy one in scenarios like this, but he can remember what Dean used to do for him when they were kids and his temperature spiked, left him sweaty and shivering and miserable beneath scratchy motel sheets. He can remember the Trials and the way they gnawed through the chambers of his body, how it felt to know himself hollowed out by the powerful magic of ritual sacrifice. And he can remember, though not without the accompanying pang of residual grief and loss, a time in college when Jess had been sick, and Sam, caregiver for the first time in his life, had tucked her into bed and brought her soup and juice and towers upon towers of books. He knows what to do.
Cas, who has a bit of a one-track mind when it comes to certain situations, mumbles something unintelligible about handcuffs, and starts to lift his arms.
"Nope," says Sam, and bundles his friend towards the hall.
His first thought is to put Cas to bed, in the spare room they've had made up for him for—ages, really. But Cas, sagging against the wall as Sam reaches for the knob, makes a soft sound of dissent that causes Sam to turn back toward him.
"What?"
"I don't..." Cas hesitates. His face is open and vulnerable, in curious contrast to the dehumanizing effect of his bloodstained sclera. "I don't want to be alone."
So Sam ends up taking him back to the war room—the library is in no shape to for visitors at the moment—and depositing him in the most comfortable chair he can find, a wooden affair which is not particularly well-cushioned but is at least large enough to allow Cas to slump into its recesses. Sam finds a heavy woolen blanket in a closet somewhere, and then a dusty, patterned afghan for Cas's legs. Because he figures it can't hurt, he makes Cas a cup of tea.
Cas wraps unsteady hands around the mug and looks at the tea as if it's a slightly perplexing tome of lore.
"It's tea, Cas. Just, uh..." Sam falters, scrubs his hand awkwardly through his hair. "Just hold it, I guess."
Cas nods. "Thank you," he rasps.
"Don't..." Don't fucking thank me. "Don't thank me, man, it's my fault this is happening to you."
Cas somehow manages to look reproachful even with his red-rimmed eyes. "It was my choice, Sam. We had to save Dean."
Right. Right, it was Cas's choice, and Sam knows better than anyone what it is to stand by your choice, to want your choice to be respected. Rationally, he knows this. And yet Sam watches Cas list slightly sideways in the chair, tea slopping over the mug's rim and trickling over his shaking hands, and all he can think is, I did this. I did this.
"Sam? Are you alright?"
"Yeah, fine." The guilt is a writhing, ugly thing inside him. "I should be asking you that."
"I'm...the curse seems to have eased a little, for now." Cas struggles into a more upright position. He does look more lucid, or at any rate he seems calmer than the feral being that had staggered into the road in front of the Impala earlier that day. But Sam remembers how quickly Cas had shifted, even then, between clarity and the berserk rage of the spell, and he knows Rowena's curse could mount a renewed onslaught at any moment.
"You don't have to stand watch over me," Cas adds, as if reading his mind. He focuses on the mug again, cradles it carefully in his lap.
Sam nods, hoping Cas isn't noticing how many deep breaths he has to take before he can trust himself to speak. "I'll—be right back, okay?"
He escapes into the hall, pressing his forehead against the cool plaster of the wall, his eyes squeezed shut. He'll be fine. It's going to be fine.
Dean picks up on the second ring. "Hey, I'm almost home." His voice is faint and crackles with static—he must be passing through an area with bad reception—but Sam can hear how tired he sounds. "Town was a bitch to handle, though. You better not have put a scratch on my baby."
Hearing Dean's voice, the humor that can't be fully defeated by weariness, grounds Sam. He takes a slow breath, keeps his voice even. "Right. Just...step on it, okay?"
Dean's voice sharpens. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"It's Cas." Sam hates the way he can't completely keep his voice steady.
There's sudden silence on the other end of the line, just the soft purr of static. Sam takes another breath, blurts the rest out in a rush. "He's—I've got him here, but he's not—" He realizes he's shaking his head at the wall, even though Dean of course can't see him. "Rowena put a curse on him, he's not doing well, Dean."
"Shit." Dean's vehement curse blares out clearly from the phone. "Be—" his voice cuts out for a moment, comes back even fainter, "then we'll figure it out—"
"I'm about to lose you," Sam says tiredly. "Just hurry, I need—"
There's a shattering crash from the war room, followed by a heavy thud.
"Cas!" Sam whips around, almost dropping the phone. He sprints around the corner, cursing himself for leaving the angel on his own.
The mug is in pieces beside the chair, and Cas is convulsing on the floor beside it, his face contorted, his back thumping up and down against the floor as some unseen force twists his spine.
"Cas!"
Sam rushes forward, dropping to his knees and throwing out a hand to try to hold Cas still, or at least prevent the back of his head from hitting the chair leg. Cas's eyes are rolled back into his skull, his breath juddering harshly from between parted lips. His arm is splayed out to the side, right in the puddle of spilled tea.
There doesn't seem like there's anything to be done except hope this is temporary and wait for the angel to ride it out, so Sam leans over Cas, holding first his shoulder and then the back of his head. Cas is tangled in the blankets, his coat in disarray, and the line of his arching throat flexes like a bowstring as he heaves for breath.
Sam reaches over to try and loosen his friend's collar, but the moment his fingers touch the fabric, Cas goes completely still and his eyes snap into focus. In a flash, the angel has one hand on Sam's wrist and the other on his shoulder, and then Cas's knee is coming up, driving into Sam's stomach with the force of a pile driver.
The pain is absolute, driving all the breath out of him; he almost retches with the force of it, his vision going foggy for an instant. And in the next instant, Cas has hooked a foot behind Sam's knee and twisted powerfully off the ground, flipping them both over. The phone goes flying; Sam lands hard on his back, not that he has any breath left to lose. Before he can do anything else, Cas is coming down on top of him, straddling him, his hands around Sam's throat.
Not again, Sam thinks inanely, hyper-aware of the growing pressure on his windpipe. He grabs at Cas, but the angel's forearms are like steel, immovable.
"Cas," he croaks. "Castiel."
But there's no recognition in Cas's eyes—nothing at all, in fact, just blank intent. Sam's feet scrape helplessly against the floor. There's a tightness in his chest. In desperation, he lashes out, slapping Cas across the face—a clumsy blow, hampered by the angle he's working from—and slamming the edge of his other hand into the inside of Cas's elbow.
It works—the slap makes Cas jerk in surprise, and then his arm collapses, folding under the impact of Sam's secondary attack, and Sam heaves his whole body sideways and manages to throw the angel off of him. Cas is on his feet again almost immediately, executing some kind of half-roll, half-turn that gets him free of the last clinging blanket corner and brings him fluidly back around to face Sam.
It strikes Sam that Cas is—well, he's a good fighter, fast and deadly and skilled, but beyond that he's also a beautiful fighter. Even coarsened by the influence of Rowena's spell, his movements have a grace Sam's never seen in anyone else.
Of course, none of that helps Sam now. He scrambles to his feet with somewhat less dexterity and holds his hands out in what he hopes is going to be translated as a placating gesture, not a threatening one.
"Cas, listen to me, okay?" He backs up as Cas paces forward. The angel's knees are bent, his head lowered, his upper lip curled back in a snarl. "You're safe. You're in the Bunker. Dean's on his way." Cas doesn't respond; he's moving slightly sideways now, as if—and this is truly disconcerting—as if he's stalking Sam.
"I'm not going to fight you, Cas." Sam curses inwardly as another backward step sends him bumping against the map table; there's nowhere else to retreat to. The angel blade nudges his hip. "Cas, you're safe. You're with me. It's okay."
He can't tell if he sees a flicker of awareness in Cas's eyes, or if it's just a trick of the light. He tries again.
"Cas—"
Cas charges. Sam tries to sidestep, but Cas is moving too fast; in a flash he's got a hand twisted in the front of Sam's shirt, is shoving Sam into the table, and the next instant Cas's fist is connecting with his face, splitting the skin of his cheek open. Sam gasps, the fiery shock of the pain making him reel. A darkly-buried part of him relishes it, thinks dizzily, I deserve this. Another blow comes, a sloppy uppercut that makes up for in power what it lacks in finesse. It snaps Sam's head back; lights explode in his vision and he tastes blood as his teeth clack together over his tongue. He gropes, half-blind, for his friend. Clutches at Cas's shoulders, feels the muscles tensing there as the angel readies another swing.
That same dark, buried part of him, the part that's still grappling with the fact that it's his fault Cas is like this, that it's his fault Cas is suffering—that part of him would like to simply hang from Cas's clenched fist, take the punishment, treat it like some kind of twisted atonement. But Cas lashes out again, no sign of restraint in the brutal power of his hand, and through the bruising agony of it Sam realizes that Cas is going to recover, eventually—because Cas will be fine, Cas has to be fine—and when he recovers, the knowledge that he beat the ever-living shit out of Sam isn't going to be a positive. So however much Sam deserves this, it's not what Cas needs.
"Cas," he rasps again, through a mouthful of blood, and tries for a hail Mary—drags the angel forward, wraps his arms around him. Pins Cas's arms between their chests.
Cas jerks in surprise and Sam tightens his arms, lets his chin drop against the coiled steel of Cas's tensed shoulder. Cas smells like—like tea and blood and the dust of the road, and the acrid wrongness of witchcraft.
Cas makes a low, rough sound, halfway between a snarl and a sob, and his grip slackens. Sam pulls back a little, cautiously, in time to see the angel's face twist in sudden, anguished lucidity.
"N-no," Cas chokes, a noise of terrified denial, and sags suddenly in Sam's arms. Sam shifts, bracing himself to hold his friend up, but Cas is heavy and boneless and shaking in his arms, as if all the strength that had held him upright is suddenly gone. When the angel folds abruptly at the knees and sinks to the floor, Sam goes with him, trying to slow the descent. Cas's knees still crack loudly against the tile, but at least he ends up slumping sideways into Sam, instead of into the table leg. Sam braces a hand carefully against Cas's chest, lets trying to keep him from keeling over completely.
"I'm sorry," Cas gasps out. "Sam, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please—"
"Hey," Sam says. With the sleeve of his free arm, he wipes the blood off his face so that it won't drip onto Cas's shoulder. "Hey, hey, it's okay, I'm right here, Cas, I'm right here."
"If you won't—if you won't kill me, you have to restrain me," Cas pants, sounding half-angry, half-wrecked. "Sam, please, I'm begging you, just—" He pauses, gulps for air. Grips Sam's sleeve so tightly the fabric wrinkles all the way up to the shoulder.
"Alright," Sam soothes. "Alright, Cas, we can do that." His stomach turns at the idea of putting Cas in chains, but it seems like not being in chains is causing the angel more distress than the alternative. And who is Sam to be making the calls, anyway? I'm the reason this is happening. I did this.
Cas quiets at Sam's response, but he continues to shiver minutely, head bowed, fingers still curled in Sam's sleeve, breath coming shaky and ragged.
Sam shifts a little, trying to find a more comfortable position. He runs his hand through Cas's hair, pushes it off the angel's damp forehead. He does it unthinkingly, but Cas goes still at the contact, and Sam suddenly wonders if anyone has ever done this for Cas, if anyone has ever stroked his hair.
Probably not, he thinks, as Cas lets out one more slow, uneven breath and—actually relaxes. Only slightly, but still.
It seems such an easy thing. Sam's doing it on impulse, because he remembers appreciating it when he was young and sick and miserable, even if out loud he'd usually griped that he didn't need it, that he was fine, that he wasn't a baby.
Of course, Cas hasn't had a vessel for long, relatively speaking. Is there enough physicality to his true form that he could have accepted this kind of comfort, even if he'd been so inclined? Would he have needed it? And from who? It's not like angels have mothers, after all. Then again, Sam didn't have a mother, either, not really—and yet he's not a stranger to the hand on his forehead, the hand stroking his hair, the hand tracing careful circles on his back. It's just that it was always Dean.
"I'm sorry," Cas is mumbling over and over again, his voice slurring, dropping to a low, gravelly whisper as the curse continues to drain him.
"Shh," Sam says quietly. He rakes his fingers through Cas's hair again, carefully.
Dean took care of him. Dean made sure Sam knew he was cared for, loved, cherished. Dean ensured that no matter how isolated they were as kids, Sam never felt abandoned. Dean, in his rough, disgruntled way, is still taking care of Sam, and of Cas too, holding them together with the vast capacity for love that he will never admit to possessing. Sam can do the same, or try to, anyway—Sam can fucking keep it together and do this.
"Shh," he says again, and lets his arm slide around to Cas's shoulder, drawing him closer, taking his weight. He hesitates for a split second, then lowers his head, rests his chin against the top of Cas's head for a moment. Lifts it again, cards his hand through Cas's hair. Feels clammy warmth of Cas's forehead, the feverish heat radiating from his whole body. "It's alright. It's okay."
That is how Dean finds them, a small eternity later when he comes clumping down the stairs: Sam half-sitting, half-kneeling, with his back against one of the legs of the map table, his knees creaky and cramped, and Cas half-conscious in his arms.
Dean sets his duffel bag down on the table and comes to stand in front of them.
"Hey," Sam croaks.
"He looks like shit," says Dean, "in fact you both do."
Dean doesn't look aces himself—his expression is exhausted, his lips in a grim line. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows.
"I messed up," says Sam, feeling a hollow space twist itself open in the pit of his stomach, as he voices the sentiment that's been crawling along his gut for the past few hours. "I messed up, Dean—Rowena got him, and I don't know what to do—it's my fault—"
Dean exhales, lowering himself into a crouch in front of Sam and Cas. He reaches out, brushes gentle fingers against Cas's tea-soaked sleeve. "Hey, Cas. How you feeling?"
"Dean," Cas slurs, and lifts his head. Then, "Dean." Something cuts loose in his voice, making it crack in the middle of the name, and he makes a clumsy grab for Dean's wrist.
"Mark's gone," Dean says, letting Cas turn his arm over. His face has twisted in concern at the sight of Cas's crimsoned eyes, but his voice is steady.
"I told you that, Cas," Sam reminds gently, more to keep up a soothing tone than because he thinks the information is actually pertinent. He slips his hand under Cas's arm and shifts a little so that Dean can take the other arm. The broken skin over his cheekbone throbs; his mouth still tastes like blood. I deserve this, he thinks again.
"I know—but—everything's so hazy, and I couldn't..." Cas trails off, shakes his head as if trying to clear it. "I just wanted to—I just needed to—"
"To make sure, yeah, of course," says Dean, as he and Sam work on pulling Cas into a standing position. Sam stumbles getting up—his legs have fallen asleep—and Dean ends up doing most of the lifting, taking most of the angel's weight while Sam leans painfully on the edge of the table. "I'm good. Everything's fine, Cas. We're gonna fix you up, you're gonna be fine."
Sam swallows, tries to trust the gentle, reassuring tones of Dean's voice, but he's heard it too many times during the witness-questioning phases of hunts to buy into it completely. Even if they can find Rowena, there's no guarantee that the spell can be lifted, and meanwhile Cas is just going to get worse and worse—thrust into peril, yet again, because of Sam's actions—
Dean, now lowering Cas back into the mostly-comfortable chair, shoots him a stern, stow-your-crap look over the top of the angel's head. Sam swallows again, nods. He gets it. Gets that right now the important thing is to keep Cas calm, make sure he feels safe, cared for, protected. For once, a snide voice comments in his head. Sam ignores it.
Cas, stubborn as usual, mumbles a long sentence that sounds like it might be partially in a language other than English, but in which the word "restraints" is clearly audible. Sam sighs and turns to fetch the oft-mentioned handcuffs. He's aware, as he leaves the room, of Dean rewrapping Cas in the two blankets, of Dean beginning to clear the ceramic shards off the war room floor. He allows himself one small measure of relief—Dean is here. Dean's back, and Dean and Sam will figure this out, will fix it somehow, will find a way to heal their best friend. And—in the meantime Sam will handcuff Cas to a chair, because that's what Cas has asked for. And because even if Cas is suffering as a result of Sam's shitty decisions, the angel still deserves to get to make his own choices.
Doesn't mean I have to like it, Sam thinks grimly, retrieving the cuffs, holding them up for a moment so that they dangle cold and uncaring from his fingertips. The angel blade bumps his hip again, and he has to grit his teeth to keep from snatching it off his belt and flinging it across the room. Keep it together. He can do this for Cas. This much, he can do.