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Branches snapped to his left when something moved through the forest with steps much heavier than those of a deer.
The light rain around here never seemed to stop falling.
Between the shadows, Dean caught a glimpse of moonlight reflected on obsidian skin, too smooth and slick to be human.
“Cas?” he finally dared to ask into the stillness of the forest.
Steps thumped heavily, and that sure as Hell wasn’t Cas.
Too forceful, too spaced out.
He managed to pull his arm over his head just in time to deflect an attack coming from the unexpected direction of above, followed by something wet and… slimy on his wrist.
Then he heard another thump, and now he was pretty sure that those sounds were leaps from tree to tree.
Cas, man, where are you? I could really use some backup here, he prayed.
Not even the patter of falling rain pierced through the fog around his mind any longer, the only thing that did were those thumps.
Then it leaped. The movement carried it high up into the air, only to crash directly into him with enough momentum that Dean was pushed to the ground, a stifled grunt escaping his throat. He rolled sidewards, just barely evading something that shot out of the creature’s face at incredible speed, hitting the grass instead of him with a wet smack.
A creepy-as-fuck noise, somewhere between a seriously pissed-off cat and a deflating balloon, told him he must have scored a hit. His enemy was fast, leaping away in a direction his eyes couldn’t even track.
A blinding light erupted from the tree, burning white-hot in his eyes.
“CAS!”
The angel sank to his knees with the blade still stuck in his chest, pure white glowing in place of his eyes and mouth.
“The forest decided to play a round of Fuck, Marry, Kill with us and there were only two players.”
“What the Hell is that supposed to mean?” Sam asked.
No thought, no plan—the only thing that mattered was keeping the grace in as he let himself fall into that dying body in front of him, knocking them both fully to the ground.
The ember outline of wings appeared beneath Cas’s body, turning blades of grass to ash as a herald of death.
The movement of pulling the blade out of Cas’s chest was the stuff of nightmares creeping over into reality. He let the offending metal drop to the ground.
He pressed his palms against the glowing eyeholes, effectively shutting off the stream of light.
For lack of more hands to stop the flow of grace, he covered Cas’s mouth with his own.
It was like getting torn apart from the inside and he could no longer hold back a dull scream straight into Cas’s mouth.
“Dean recharged me.”
“He what?”
Dean slid his hands to the sides, revealing a wide-eyed blue look of shock.
“After he killed me, that is.”
“He what?”
“Dean,” Cas broke the silence between them, his voice full of surprise as if he’d been convinced never to see him again.
He was a warrior. Now look how far he's fallen.
Testing the waters by lowering his head a bit, Dean stared directly into Cas’s eyes. Rain dripped from the tip of his nose directly into Cas’s face.
Cas stared back. Of course he did.
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop thinking.”
Time seemed frozen, both of them gauging the other’s reaction with held breath. The hands lifted from Dean’s back.
“You’re cold.”
“Yeah, uh—that’s what we humans do when we’re out in the rain for too long.”
Cas looked up at the sky, apparently not even having realized it was raining until this very moment. Frigging angels.
Cas’s eyes flared blue while the angel pushed both of his hands to the sides, then upwards in an arc. Suddenly Dean couldn’t feel the drizzle on his skin any longer. He glanced up and saw the drops just stop in midair, rolling off an invisible dome formed by nothing other than Cas’s will.
You know what I like about him? It’s that he's sarcastic, but he's thoughtful and appreciative, too.
“Dude, you couldn’t have done this before we got all soaked?”
“I didn’t notice the rain.”
“How could you not notice the rain? It was literally pouring down on us all this time.”
“I was distracted.”
The treacherous movement returned to the corners of Cas’s mouth, revealing his dry humor only to someone who knew where to look. Dean looked. And grinned.
“Wait a second,” Sam said, clearing his throat. “Did you two really…?”
He threw back his head with closed eyes, going full angel mode and whispering something in Enochian that sounded like “ah-el-lah-rah” while slotting his hand over Dean’s left shoulder with an iron grip.
No wings, no home.
Two spots of blue flared up above Dean and a breath-stopping clap of thunder rolled over them when Cas’s wings appeared against the moonlit sky, even more imposing in their ragged state than they would have been whole.
Dean finally gathered up his lost senses enough to rasp out a dazed, “Holy shit.”
“But guys, what about the monster?”
~
(Read Forest Fever here!)