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Castiel sighed when he felt the weight of Sam’s glare on his back from across the bunker’s library. The Winchesters had always had the impressive skill of making the angel feel like half of his brain had leaked out through his vessel’s ears. Dean had been even more proficient at it than his brother—but that was before. Now, Sam held the upper hand. Dean’s gaze only made Castiel feel small and concerned.
“You’re just going to sit there and read?”
The angel sighed. He’d known that it was only a matter of time before Sam split the silence with more accusations.
“What else would you suggest I do?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Cas,” Sam shot back, his pitch rising with scathing sarcasm. “You could get your feathery ass over here and heal him, for instance.”
For a moment, Castiel only stared at the human. His first thought was how much like his brother Sam suddenly sounded.
His second was, Father help me.
“I won’t.”
Sam’s face twisted further. “You’re an ass.”
“I want to ensure that he is healthy, Sam.”
“And the way to do that is to just let him be miserable?”
“He is fine,” Castiel reiterated for what felt like the tenth time. “Slight congestion, an itchy throat, and a mild headache hardly constitutes grounds for desperate measures.”
“Using your grace is suddenly a desperate measure?”
The angel sighed. “Sam—”
“He’s sick, Cas,” the hunter interjected, standing with his brother cradled in his arms. Dean was finally asleep, his breathing audible even from where Castiel sat—wheezing and whistling and wet in a way that made the angel cringe in sympathy. But he met Sam’s accusing gaze evenly when the Winchester approached him.
“Heal him.”
Even as Sam reached the other side of the table and stopped, nearly within arm’s reach, Castiel didn’t move.
“His body needs the opportunity to strengthen its immune system, Sam,” he said, slowly and reasonably, despite the fact that he had repeated these exact words twice already. “It can’t do that without the virus. I know it’s difficult to see, but this is a good thing.”
Sam huffed an irritated breath. “You wouldn’t say that if it was your brother who was sick.”
The words struck with deadly accuracy. Castiel set his jaw against the phantom sensation of a sharp slap across his face. As acidic words rose in his throat, the hard lines of Sam’s forehead suddenly loosened and his eyes softened with wordless guilt.
With an effort, Castiel swallowed his retort and instead replied, “Dean is my brother in every way that matters.”
Before the last word, Sam was already backpedaling, somehow shaking his head and nodding simultaneously.
“I know that, Cas. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it how it sounded. It’s just…”
“Difficult.”
“Frustrating.”
Human and angel both paused when their voices synced. After a moment, Sam said, “Both, I guess.”
“I understand, Sam. I wish I could heal him in good conscience.”
Snorting, the hunter sank wearily into the chair across from Castiel, arms never jostling the bundle of blankets in his arms. Castiel watched, squinting, as Sam stared down at his brother with the exhausted love of an overwrought single parent. Stubble, bedhead that needed to be trimmed, undershirt without layers, bare feet and dark circles underlining red-rimmed eyes.
“Doesn’t make me feel much better,” he murmured.
For a long moment, they sat in heavy silence. Castiel watching Sam, Sam watching Dean, and Dean obliviously asleep. The sound of his labored breathing was all that remained until, finally, Castiel found the right words.
“You’re taking very good care of him, Sam.”
A slow shake of his head was Castiel’s only response, but it was true. In perfect opposition to his now-older brother, Dean had likely never been cleaner. Sam bathed him every day, kept him warm and clothed and fed and changed and comforted and entertained. Soft skin covered layers of healthy fat that Sam had worked hard to maintain, despite Dean’s tendency to remain quiet even when hungry.
Castiel had never seen one person so consistently pay so much attention to another. It was beautiful in a way that was likely to kill Sam before Dean was old enough to be independent.
“You should take care of yourself, too,” he added.
“I can’t. Dean’s sick.”
“And he’s resting. Perhaps you should, as well.”
“When he’s better.”
“Sam—” Castiel sighed, prepared to argue his point until it was made; but the words died in his throat when Sam’s gaze suddenly snapped to him, intense and unyielding like the angel had seen from Dean so many times in the past.
“No, Cas,” he snapped, the word breaking and draining the visage of anger he’d been trying to project. “I need to look after him.”
“You are—”
“You don’t get it.” Sam dropped his eyes back to the baby that he held against his chest.
After a pause, Castiel hazarded, “Enlighten me.”
Sam shook his head, like he was fighting some internal battle to which Castiel was not privy. Finally, just as the angel was sure that the conversation had died and Sam had declined to answer, the oldest Winchester’s quiet voice confessed,
“He raised me, Cas—he looked after me my whole life. No…” Clamping his eyes shut, Sam shook his head again, battling off his demons before he could open his eyes and continue. “No sick leaves, no rest days, no vacations… no complaints. He…”
“He was alone, Sam,” Castiel interjected, and saw the hunter flinch away from the truth of it. “You’re not. I can help you—I want to help you. I want you to let me. You know I…” Unexpectedly, the words died on his tongue.
He couldn’t. The words that should have been Dean’s, that he should have said before Dean was gone, before he lost that chance. All those words that had run through his head night after night with nothing to distract him except for Dean’s intermittent lucidity in search of food. If he had it to do over again, he knew exactly what he would have said.
And now, he couldn’t say a word of it.
“I know, Cas,” Sam said abruptly, and Castiel closed his mouth in mutual understanding. “And thank you. But I have to do this… because this is all I have left to give him.”
Frustrated that he hadn’t gotten through to the hunter like he’d thought he had, Castiel sighed and sat back in his chair.
“Everything?” he challenged.
To no one’s surprise, Sam didn’t back down. He met the angel’s stare and simply said, “Yes.”
Castiel had nothing to say to that.
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